HIV and East Africa Thirty Years in the Shadow of an Epidemic 1st Edition Janet Seeley
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- 5. HIV and East Africa Thirty Years in the Shadow of an Epidemic 1st Edition Janet Seeley Digital Instant Download Author(s): Janet Seeley ISBN(s): 9780415524490, 0415524490 Edition: 1 File Details: PDF, 6.35 MB Year: 2013 Language: english
- 7. HIV and East Africa By traeing the shadow of the epidemie over the last 30 years in Uganda and more broadly in the region, HIVandEastAfrica investigates the impact ofthe epidemie on people's lives and livelihoods, plaeing the epidemie within the eontext of the social, politieal and eeonomie ehanges that have oeeurred over the last three deeades. Whilst it inevitably touehes on loss and suffering, the message is also about managing the impact of an epidemie whieh has had a profound impact on many lives. When one looks for traees in southern Uganda, onee thought to be the epieentre ofthe epidemie, it is hard to see any lasting impact at a eommunity-wide level. Delve deeper and there are sears to be found among families and patterns of change whieh are a direet result ofthe epidemie. The book goes on to explore the effeet of improved treatment and eare on pereeptions of the epidemie and eoncludes by putting HIV into the eontext of other disease outbreaks, refleeting on what we ean learn from the history of other epidemies as weH as the last 30 years ofthe HIV epidemie. Janet Seeley has been aetively engaged in research on HIV and AIDS sinee the late 1980s, including fouryears withMRC in Uganda (1989-1993) when she was responsible for setting up social seienee research in the unit, the programme she returned to Uganda to head in 2008. She is eurrently Professor of International Development at the University of East Anglia, UK.
- 8. Routledge Studies in African Development Self-Determination and Secession in Africa The post-colonial state Edited by Redie Bereketeab Economic Growth and Development in Africa Understanding global trends and prospects Horman Chitonge African Youth and the Persistence of Marginalization Employment, politics and prospects for change Edited by Danielle Resnick and James Thurlow HIV and East Africa Thirty years in the shadow of an epidemic Janet Seeley
- 9. HIV and East Africa Thirty years in the shadow of an epidemie Janet Seeley
- 10. First published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 7ll ThirdAvenue, NewYork, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Janet Seeley The right of Janet Seeley to be identified as author ofthis work has been asserted by her in aeeordanee with seetions 77 and 78 ofthe Copyright, Designs and Patents Aet 1988. All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reprinted or reprodueed or utilised in any form or by any eleetronie, meehanieal, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photoeopying and reeording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Produet or eorporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifieation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A eatalogue reeord for this book is available from the British Library Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Seeley, Janet. HIV and East Afriea : thirty years in the shadow of an epidemie / Janet Seeley. p. em. - (Routledge explorations in development studies ; 8) Includes bibliographieal referenees and index. 1. AIDS (Disease) - Soeial aspeets - Afriea, East. 2. AIDS (Disease) - Soeial aspeets - Uganda. 3. HIV-positive persons - Afriea, East - Soeial eonditions. 4. HIV-positive persons - Uganda - Soeial eonditions. 5. Afriea, East - Soeial eonditions. 6. Uganda - Soeial eonditions - 1979- 7. Resilienee (Personality trait) - Afriea, East. 8. Resilienee (Personality trait) - Uganda. 9. Time - Soeiologieal aspeets. I. Title. II. Series: Routledge explorations in development studies ; 8. RA643.86.A353S44 2013 362. 1969792009676-de23 ISBN: 978-0-415-52449-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-58997-7 (ebk) Typeset in Times by HWA Text and Data Management, London 20130ll788
- 11. For Charlotte
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- 13. Contents Preface IX Acknowledgements Xl Abbreviations XV Map ofEast Africa XVll 1 The shadow of an epidemie: an introduetion 1 2 Leaming to live with HIV: the background to an epidemie 17 3 Loss and grief 39 4 Progress and growth 57 5 Crises and change 75 6 The changing epidemie: treatment and eare 93 7 Managing 10ss and forgetting the pain? 111 Bibliography 121 Index 145
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- 15. Preface International AIDS eonferenees have been held annually or biennially for the last twenty-eight years. Sinee 1989, and with the exception of one year, eaeh has been given a theme. In 1989 it was 'the seientifie and social challenge of AIDS'; in 2004 it was'Aeeess for all'; and in 2012, 'Turning the tide together'. These themes refleet the evolution of the epidemie in terms of how donors, seientists, researehers and aetivists have approaehed and responded to it. They also reveal the changing priorities that HIV and AIDS have presented in the last three deeades; priorities that initially refleeted extreme pessimism have more reeently signalled relative optimism about managing the eondition. International AIDS eonferenees are aeeompanied by upbeat declarations or mission statements, pledging, for example, the 'end of AIDS'. Such energy, exeitement and rhetorie ean sometimes seem rather remote from the day-to-day lives of those who live with HIV infeetion. Many ofthose whom I have known who have lived with or are living with HIV inhabit a very different world from that ofthe international eonferenees. My work in Uganda has taken me to both these worlds of HIY, and the idea for this book has grown from this experienee. In the early 1990s my notes and ease studies in Uganda reeorded what then seemed to be a statie and distressing pieture of bereavement and loss. But the epidemie did not end then; the trajeetory of an infeetion that seemed to engulf an entire region has shifted. As time has passed and experienee inereased, treatment, for some at least, has improved. My assoeiation with Uganda has given me an understanding ofthe ways in whiehHIVboth slots into and influenees individuals' lives, why some efforts to prevent the spread of infeetion may be more sueeessful than others, why eampaigns to get people onto anti-retroviral treatment do not always sueeeed, and that different groups in soeiety have differing perspeetives and priorities whieh influenee their responses to poliey. While HIV has an impact on people's lives, it does so against the broader historieal, soeial and eeonomie eontext in whieh they live.
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- 17. Acknowledgements In 2005 Heiner Grosskurth, the then Director of the Medical Research Council/ Uganda Virus Research Institute (MRCIUVRI) Uganda Research Unit on AIDS, agreed to provide funding for me to follow up my work of fifteen years earlier on the impact of HIV on family and households in Uganda. A year later the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) gave me a grant (RES-062-23- 0051) to expand this work, which allowed not only a year-long study ofparticular households but also the analysis of existing quantitative data on demographie change. I am indebted to Heiner for his support and to both the MRC and ESRC for that funding for the research, which forms the foundation of this book. In addition to financial support, this book would not have beenpossible without the support of many different people. I am indebted to the late Daan Mulder, the first directorofthe MRCIUVRl Unit (thenProgramme) on AIDS in Uganda, who gave me the space to develop a programme of research that looked beyond HIV and individual behaviour to the daily struggles and joys of people's lives. Jane Kengeya-Kayondo, Daan's counterpart at UVRl, has continued to provide both support and friendship. I am grateful to Rosalind Eyben, David Nabarro, Peter Smith, Gilbert Lewis and David Bradley, who provided invaluable guidance in 1989-1993. I also fondly remember the late Joseph Ssonko, then chairman of the local sub-county council, who took me under his wing in 1989 and looked after me and the rest of the team through those first years of research in rural Uganda. In more recent times, in addition to the considerable help of Heiner Grosskurth, Pontiano Kaleebu, the present director of the MRCIUVRI Unit has given me much-valued friendship and support. The present director of UVRl, Edward Katongole Mbidde, and Sam Okware, Director of the Uganda National Council of Health Research Organisations, have both supported the writing of this book, and I have had the chance to discuss some of my ideas with Dr Okware as he has read and commented on the content. Thank you. None of the research that I do and have done would be possible without the support of a wonderful group of social science researchers in Uganda. In 1989- 1993 I worked with Ellen Kajura, Agnes Ssali, Januario Nabaitu, Justus Kizza- Wamala, Elizabeth Kabunga, Saverina Bukenya, Tanance Bukenya, Hussein Kawoya, Richard Lutwama, Abdallah Mubiru, Bayiye Musoke, Mary Mutebi and Ruth Ssenyonga. From 2006 I have had the privilege to work once again with
- 18. xii Acknowledgements Elizabeth Kabunga, who is without doubt one of most talented fieldworkers I have ever known. With Elizabeth in the team in 2006 were Grace Tumwekwase, Fatuma Ssembajja, Ruth Nalugya, Thadeus Kiwanuka, Dominic Bukenya and Denis Nabembezi. I also thank the rest of the social science programme team who have given me so much support in recent years: Flavia Zalwango, Martin Mbonye, Faith Mirimo, Stella Settumba, Joseph Katongole, Stella Namukwaya, Sarah Nakamanya, Winfred Nalukenge, Rachel Kawuma, Matilda Ndagire Tarsh, Anastasia Zoolaga, Jovita Amurwon, Richard Muhumuza, Jessica Bukirwa and, more recently, Rwamahe Rutakuma and Godfrey Siu. Thank you also to Kenneth Ekom and Pamela Nasimmbi, who provided much-needed statistical support for our work under the guidance of Jim Todd and Jonathan Levin. Thank you also to Henry Nsubuga for many stimulating and informative conversations. Much of the case material in this volume is based upon the lives of people in Kyamulibwa in Uganda, who have accommodated the intrusion of researchers into their lives and shared their trials, tribulations and joys with uso As we all age, I am saddened by the recent deaths of 'Martha', 'Sara', 'Lydia' and 'Roda', and hope that this book will serve as a lasting memorial to their lives. I am grateful to Brent Wolff, who, as the then head of Social Science team in the MRCIUVRI Unit, welcomed me into his programme of research and gave me much good-natured support. Conversations with Anatoli Kamali, Gershirn Asiki, Billy Mayanja, Deogratius Ssemwanga, Fred Lyaboga, Chris Parry and others have broadened my understanding of HIV in Uganda. Tom Barton and Rachel King provided many welcome opportunities to talk about our shared interests in the social aspects of health, and helped me in sorting out my ideas. Oscar Alvarez Macotela helped me to sort out the data from the 2006-2007 Trajectory Study and was a joy to have with us in Uganda. Alice Martineau and Susan Kasedde each worked on different parts of the research and contributed to my understanding ofourfindings. Conversations withEddie Allison, Piers Blaikie, Ginny Bond, Laura Camfield, Josien de Klerk, Susie Foster, Sam Jackson, Ben Jones, Bmce Lankford, Adam Pain, Steve Russell, Francien Scholten and Alan Whiteside have helped me to fill some of the many gaps in my knowledge. I am indebted to Frank Ellis for sowing the seed ofthis book with his enthusiasm for the data that I shared with him from my work in the early 1990s. I am also indebted to the late Malcolm Ruel, who read and commented on my initial findings from 1991/1992, and the late Audrey Richards, for whom I worked for a memorable summer in 1981 and who taught me the importance of carefully documenting my research. Sarah Bemays and Laura Camfield have read and commented on parts of this book and have both been wonderful and inspiring colleagues. Danny Wight, with characteristic thoroughness, has also helped with his comments on parts of this book and thoughtful conversations about my work over the last twenty years. Thank you to Jonathan Koestle-Cate for drawing the maps for me. Tony Barnett has been untiring in his support for my work on HIV since we met in the early 1990s in Uganda. He has done much to shape this book and the ways in which I think about my work. I am indebted to Sarah Knights, who provided
- 19. Acknowledgements xiii editorial help atjust the right moment, and Sally Sutton, who gave invaluable help in the final stages. Thank you. The usual convention that any remaining errors are mine is completely tme, and I apologise to all those who have helped me for the remaining mistakes. The last words are for Stan Musgrave and Charlotte Seeley-Musgrave who continue to provide unquestioning support - thank you.
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- 21. Abbreviations AIDS ART ARV BRAC DAI DFID GPC HIV MFI MRC MRCIUVRI NGO NNRTI NRTI ODA PEPFAR UNAIDS UPE USE UVRI WHO Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome Antiretroviral TreatmentiTherapy Antiretroviral Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee Drug Access Initiatives Department for International Development (UK govemment) General Population Cohort Human Immunodeficiency Virus Micro Finance Institution Medical Research Council Medical Research CouncillUganda Virus Research Institute, Uganda Research Unit on AIDS Non-Govemmental Organisation non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor Overseas Development Administration President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief The Joint United Nations Progranune onHIV/AIDS Universal Primary Education Universal Secondary Education Uganda Virus Research Institute World Health Organisation
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- 23. Map of East Africa S U D A N E T H I O P I A S O M A L I A B U R U N D I T A N Z A N I A K E N Y A M O Z A M B I Q U E Z A M B I A U G A N D A D E M O C R A T I C R E P U B L I C OF CONGO R W A N D A M A L A W I I N D I A N O C E A N M A D A G A S C A R Gulu Eldoret Nakuru Nairobi Kisumu Mbale Mwanza Bujumbura Iringa Mbeya Mombasa Bukoba Kampala Masaka Dodoma Pemba Kigali Mbarara Dar es Salaam LAKE ALBERT VICTORIA MALAWI TAGNANYIKA T USKANA ZANZIBAR LAKE LAKE LAKE LAKE
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- 25. 1 The shadow of an epidemie An introduction This book is about the passing oftime and about the lives ofpeople in East Afriea who have lived sinee the 1980s in the shadow of the human immunodefieieney virus (HIV) epidemie. During this period their lives have been infiueneed by other faetors too, and it is the interplay between those faetors and HIV that is important in understanding the plaee of the epidemie in their lives. In 1982, aeeompanied by a munieipal social worker, I visited an area of unauthorised settlementonthe outskirts ofEldoret inwesternKenya. There we met two women. They both lived in one-room polythene and grass huts and eultivated the area ofwasteland nearby, growing maize to eat; their erops, however, had been destroyed by persistent and heavy rain. One woman was a widow and the other had been abandoned by her husband; one had eleven ehildren, the other ten. They were both members of one of the independent ehurehes in the town, but reeeived no help from the ehureh beeause it was poor. Our visit was the first time anyone from the munieipality had eome near them. We asked how they managed to feed their families. They said that they did 'eontraet work'. Although the widow's husband had been dead for eighteen years, she nevertheless had young ehildren. She told us eandidly that 'you get a paeket of maize if you sleep with a man, and that's where the ehildren eome from'. They deseribed themselves as eontraet workers beeause they were offering sex in exehange for food. In 1982 these women were at risk of sexually-transmitted infeetions that probably did not include HIV Two years later, the situation was entirely different as the virus had begun to spread in western Kenya. I have often wondered whether the women were subsequently infeeted with HIV The epidemie has profoundly affeeted the lives of some, while others have been less affeeted. It depends on where a person is and when and with whom they have sex. So mueh has happened in Eldoret in the last thirty years, not least the violenee that surrounded the eleetions in Kenya in 2008. The settlement where the two women lived has long gone; there are smart houses where the polythene and grass huts onee stood. The HIV epidemie has not happened in isolation: politieal uneertainty, social disturbanees, heavy rain, drought, pests and diseases, land pressures, broader eeonomie ehanges and the inereasing availability of publie goods - notably edueation- have all had an impaet upon lives and livelihoods. While the siekness and death eaused by HIV and the stigma and suspieion surrounding the eondition
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- 27. grit his teeth, that was his manner—gritting his teeth and foaming at the mouth with fury. At the end he gathered himself together, raising himself to his full height, and proclaimed his contempt for the women before him. The “ladies” of his acquaintance not only would refuse to vote were the ballot given them, but they would draw their skirts aside to keep from coming in contact with such despicable representatives of their sex. When he finished, the women around me clapped and shouted like mad. Amazed, I turned to the woman next me and asked what she meant by it. “He’s on our side,” she told me, her face glowing with satisfied pride. “He is our chief speaker. Applaud him. Applaud him.” I saw a great light. In my stupidity I had taken a seat among the Antis. Rising I crossed over the aisle. There was no seat, so I took my stand at the back of the room against the wall. A hand reached back and touched me. “I recognized you,” a sweet voice whispered, “and I knew you had gotten in the wrong pew.” It was a daughter of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. As a result of that man’s harangue a few months later I travelled more than one hundred miles to march in the suffrage parade through Boston. Now I not only worked for the sake of rubbing my rabbit’s foot and giving them the victory, but for the sake of getting behind the scenes and learning by my own personal observations whether or no the women leaders of the party were competent executives. I held a good many positions during my four years in the underbrush. In none did I find more competent leadership. In none did I ever see such indomitable pluck and perseverance, such undaunted courage. It takes courage, real courage, to work on regardless of insult and flattery. Especially when the insults and sneers come from those with whom you are the most closely associated. It takes pluck and perseverance to lay siege and to hammer and hammer and hammer to break down prejudice in small minds. That is what being a leader of the Suffrage Party meant.
- 28. At the end of my week I was paid the promised ten dollars as promptly as I would have been by any other first-class business organization. On Monday evening I marched in the last suffrage parade in New York City, from the West Side headquarters to Durland’s. Much to the surprise of the marchers about me I insisted on carrying both a heavy banner and a transparency. The day after that election which gave the women of New York State the ballot I went to work for the International Young Men’s Christian Association—proof-reader in the multigraph department, otherwise known as the “guts” of the Association. Through our hands passed every order, every report, every circular of every sort before it was given to the public. Down in two little dark basement rooms we worked under electricity from eight-thirty until—many times after 10 P. M.
- 29. CHAPTER XIV STAMPING-GROUND OF THE MONKEY-PEOPLE “It was colossal!” Hildegarde Hook panted boisterously, as she burst into my room about four o’clock one morning during the Christmas holidays. “My ideal marriage—eleven o’clock at night, in a dark church with only the minister, the two contracting parties, and her best friend present. And Joe Ellen didn’t even change her dress —didn’t even sew up the slit in the back of her skirt.” Here she stopped panting long enough to laugh loud and long, after the manner of Greenwich Villagers too self-consciously innocent to consider the sleeper in the next room. “Harris had on his old yellow- and-purple Mackinaw, out at both elbows, and I think—yes, I’m sure, the pants he had on were the pair given him by my burglar.” Here she jounced herself down on the side of my bed, and drawing the pins from her hat, cast it on the top of my bureau. The pins she stuck into the mattress. “Now, dear, don’t you agree with me that it was an ideal marriage?—that is, of course, since our atrocious laws force us to go through that silly ceremony. Now don’t you think it an ideal way for two poets to be married?—so characteristic, so filled with color. Two struggling young geniuses!” “Is Harris a poet?” I questioned, as, having edged as far away from her as the wall would permit, I sat up in bed. “I’ve read several of Joe Ellen’s verses in the magazines. What’s Harris’s other name? What has he written?” “Casey—Harris Casey. Such a romantic name! Two epics and no end of lyrics. Jack Harland says that Harris’s longer epic is the most colossal thing in the English language since ‘Childe Harold.’ While I’m not sure that Jack will ever accomplish anything worth while in the
- 30. creative field, you must admit that he is a perfectly colossal critic. You do admit it?” she questioned so earnestly that any one entering the room might have fancied that she pled for the salvation of her immortal soul. “‘Childe Harold’ is not quite in the form of—” I began, determined not to be led into a controversy so early in the morning, for I still cherished the hope that she would take herself off. “Form!” Hildegarde cried, as though invoking her patron saint. “Form! the chief difference between poetry and prose. ‘Paradise Lost’ and ‘Lucile,’ for instance—both tragedies, in a way, yet each a different form. You don’t mind if I slip my feet under the cover for a bit?—I’ve taken off my slippers.” Without waiting for my reply she hoisted up her feet and began to tug at the bedclothes. Such looking feet! Her black stockings were without toes and heels and her bare flesh glistened with moisture. “Your feet are sopping wet!” I involuntarily expostulated. “I never take cold,” she assured me, in the act of sticking her feet between my sheets. “Please,” I begged, grabbing the bedclothes from her hands. “Please, get that bath-towel over there and dry them—give them a good rubbing. No use taking risks when you don’t need to.” “Risks!” she scoffed, in the act of stripping off one wet and tattered stocking. “That’s what my burglar and I disputed about. We’ve been sitting on a bench in Washington Square since twelve ——” “Of all things! And the ground covered with snow.” “He brushed off a bench and I am never conscious of my body when enthused,” she reproved me. “He is a stubborn man, but he finally had to admit the justice of my argument—considering the risks in an undertaking is the quickest way to insure defeat. Only a weak individuality will consider risks. Once I make up my mind to do a thing, I do it.” She was rubbing one foot with my face-towel after having tossed her stocking on my pin-cushion. “While making up your mind, don’t you consider the risks?” I inquired, huddling up in the far corner of the bed. The thought of
- 31. having her cold feet come in contact with my flesh made me feel like climbing over the headboard. “Not at all. Not at all,” she replied emphatically, as she let fly her second wet stocking and it landed on the fresh shirt-waist I had been so careful to hang on the back of a chair. “When the colossal idea of opening a tea-room struck me, instead of considering risks as a person of weaker mentality undoubtedly would, I went ahead and did. Now see where I am!—until this freeze came and burst my water-pipes and the gas froze on me I was feeding half the village.” “Half the village,” I murmured, at a loss for words—only a few days before Christmas her younger sister, a hard-working, serious girl, had been forced to pay two hundred and fifty dollars to keep Hildegarde’s eating-place from being closed. Having lived in the house with Hildegarde for more than three months, I realized the hopelessness of attempting to make her see the truth, so I changed the subject. “You didn’t finish telling me about the two poets. Did they go on a wedding trip?” “They are spending the night in my shop,” she told me, still busy rubbing her toes. “What on earth?” I questioned, so amazed that I forgot to notice that she was slipping her feet between my sheets. “You have no sleeping arrangements—only small tables and narrow benches.” “Joe Ellen said it was better than taking Harris to her room and to- morrow morning being ordered to leave the house or produce their marriage license. They don’t intend the general public to know of their marriage—not until they find a publisher for their first book of poems in collaboration.” “Oh!” was my meek reply, as I wondered why she had let me into such an important secret. “They might have gone to a hotel,” was my next remark, and being a normal idea it was so far out of focus that it impressed me as an inspiration. “Hotel?” she questioned indignantly. “That would have killed every bit of romance. Besides, Joe Ellen only had seven dollars and a half —a check she received for one of her short poems. Then, of course, as Mr. Freeland pointed out, there was Harris’s clothes.” “Who is he?”
- 32. “Mr. Freeland? He would have been best man had he received Harris’s note in time. It was he who discovered Harris—a terrible night last November. Harris had come up from Texas and was selling papers with his feet wrapped in an old piece of carpet he had fished out of a garbage-can.” Just what had become of my sense of humor that night I have never been able to decide. Certainly it was not with me. Instead of howling with laughter my brain felt as an egg looks when it is being prepared for scrambling. “Did Joe Ellen know him in Texas?” I asked, still feebly keeping to the details of the affair. “Exactly three days to the hour—that’s the reason they were married at eleven o’clock at night—exactly three days to the minute that they first met each other. Romance! Only a genius with Joe Ellen’s colossal brain could have thought out such a perfect climax. You won’t mind if I take your other pillow, will you, dear?” “Oh, no, certainly not,” I assured her, as I hastily extracted one of the two minute pillows from behind my back and handed it to her. As she settled herself, her head at the foot of my bed and her feet in the comfortably warm spot on which my shoulders had rested previous to her bursting into my room, I meekly inquired: “Anybody in your room?” “My burglar,” she answered in the matter-of-fact tone of one agreeing that two and two make four. “I hadn’t thought of bringing him in until he noticed that the policeman making his rounds looked at us. He got an idea that the officer was coming back and tell us to move on just to get a good look at him. He’s awfully psychic about policemen—says all men who have served three terms in Sing Sing are. Of course, if it had been the regular park policeman”—here she yawned and moved her feet nearer my corner of refuge—“it would have been all right. I’ve helped him take drunken women to Jefferson Market jail so often that we’ve got to be real pals.” She had hardly finished this last sentence when she began to snore, her buttonhole mouth wide open and her nose startlingly like the beak of a parrot. Convinced that I would never be able to get
- 33. back to sleep with such a noise so near, I slipped out of bed and proceeded to get my breakfast with a tiny alcohol-lamp. That was in the midst of one of the severest blizzards ever experienced in New York City. It was impossible to get coal, and gas- pipes all over town had frozen and burst. In spite of the warmth of my heavy blanket bath-robe I was chilled to the bone. I was sitting on my feet and eating my breakfast—a cup of hot tea without milk or sugar, and war bread with margarine—when I heard a plank in the hall outside my door groan. The burglar! Creeping noiselessly to the door I listened. Some creature was trying to pass without detection across the carpeted floor of the square hall. A second plank groaned. Opening my door to a crack I peered out. The candle in a saucer which our landlady, Miss O’Brien, had placed on a trunk the night before as a substitute for the gas-jet, had burned out. At first I could see nothing. Then I made out a tall oblong of duskiness—the doorway leading to the staircase. The next instant a dark object filled the dusky space. Another instant and the object disappeared. After a short wait I crept out and looked over the banisters. Once or twice, perhaps three times, I made out a sound so soft that it seemed an echo of the footfall of a cat on the carpeted stairs. Finally there came a sharp click that sent a gentle tremor through the house—the front door had opened and closed. Hurrying back to my room, regardless of the freezing air I threw up the little window and stuck my head far out. Approaching the electric light at the MacDougal Street corner of the square was what looked to be a comfortably dressed working man. He was walking quietly along— evidently on his way to or from work. My interest in Hildegarde Hook had been awakened by her telling me of her first meeting with this man, whom she always spoke of as “my burglar”—she never knew his name. “You know, I never really wake up until after twelve at night,” she had assured me. “Mother is like that—mother and I are just alike except that mother hasn’t my colossal brain. She says so herself.” Such was the introduction with which she always began her description of the incident.
- 34. A stormy night during the previous winter she took shelter under the arcade in front of Madison Square Garden, waiting for a particularly heavy downpour to slacken. It was bitterly cold, and she noted that the only lighted window in sight was that of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She was just debating applying for shelter in the Society room on the plea of being a human animal, when she became aware that another person was occupying the opposite door-jamb. “Say, sis,” a man’s voice whispered, “kin youse see the door to that cigar-store at corner of Twenty-seventh Street?” When Hildegarde replied that she could, the voice added: “Keep your lamps peeled; when youse see that cop hidin’ in the shadder ’cross the corner go in, gimme the git-away, liker good gal.” Until then Hildegarde had not noticed the dark figure of the policeman, so nearly did his rain-washed rubber coat and helmet match the moist and glistening darkness surrounding him. Standing there in the doorway of Madison Square Garden she learned that the man who had spoken to her had served three terms in the penitentiary for burglary, and was wanted for a fourth offense. He had mistaken her for a “woman of the streets” and naturally supposed that she also was hiding from the rubber-clad officer of the law. When finally the policeman did enter the cigar-store Hildegarde and the burglar flitted around the corner at East Twenty-sixth Street, and hastened to the safer shadows of Lexington Avenue. Seated on a bench in Stuyvesant Square in the pouring rain, Hildegarde insisted that the burglar had “made a full confession,” and promised to lead an honest life. To further this end she required him to meet her once each month, at twelve o’clock at night, usually in Washington Square. As proof-reader in the multigraph department of the International Y. M. C. A. my wage was twelve dollars a week, and I found it the most uninteresting of all the positions held during my four years in the underbrush. This was doubtless because it was something I had done before. Not only had I read proof, but I had worked in a crowded dark basement under electric lights, and for long hours.
- 35. Reading the annual reports of the Y. M. C. A. secretaries from about every country of the world was something of a novelty, though many of them were far from interesting. What I did enjoy was the atmosphere, the spirit of the place— everybody spoke to everybody, and always with smiling courtesy. It was charming. Also it was comfortable to know that however ignorant you might be you would not be snubbed nor sneered at. The war had increased the work so much that the building on East Twenty-eighth Street swarmed with workers. Practically every day a new department was organized, only to be moved out the next day for the sake of getting larger quarters, and to make room for yet another new branch of work. For a good many years I had heard the two “Ys” sneered at for being “sectarian.” While at the Jane Leonard, Miss Stafford had retorted to my praise of the Y. W.: “Being a Catholic you know what I think of the Young Woman’s Christian Association.” She then assured me that both the Y. W. and the Y. M. were so “dead against Catholics” that they even refused to list them in their employment departments. In the multigraph department at the International Headquarters of the Y. M. I worked shoulder to shoulder with a young Catholic woman. Though she was not particularly efficient, she had held the position for several years; indeed, ever since she left school. Her younger sister was the private secretary of the head of one of the departments. Both these Catholic women had gotten their positions through the employment department of the Y. W. In the lunch-room of the International Headquarters I met several other Catholic women, all earning their daily bread working for the Y. M. I neither saw nor heard of their being discriminated against. One of them boasted to me: “Being a Catholic I’m not expected to go to prayers. That gives me an extra half-hour to do with as I please. I usually run out and do a little shopping or looking around, the stores are so convenient.” Now, I hold no brief for any Church—I believe in Justice. In all my dealings with the two “Ys” I never saw the slightest indication that any creed was discriminated against.
- 36. Is it because the two “Ys” stand for progress that Catholics abuse them, belittle their work? It may have been because of my long hours in the basement of the International Headquarters, or it may have been subsisting on such scanty meals—in any event soon after giving up my position in the multigraph department I was taken with a heavy cold. I know I had fever, for twice a day my pillows and sheets were saturated with perspiration. My head felt as big as a bushel measure, and was chockful of ache. Struggle as hard as I might, and I did struggle, I couldn’t get up sufficient strength to get down-stairs, even though after hours of struggle I succeeded in putting on my clothes. The first Sunday of this illness I think I must have been in a measure delirious, for I was obsessed by the idea that no hospital would take me in, that I must wait until Monday. With that idea planted firmly in my mind, I pinned a note on the pin-cushion—the name of the physician I wished called on Monday, and to which hospital I was to be taken. A ten-cent bottle of vaseline being all I possessed in the way of medicine, I put it beside my pillow and between dozes ate it. Sunday night I began to cough up the phlegm that had made my chest feel so painfully tight. Then I fell asleep, such a good, sound sleep. When I wakened it was Monday forenoon, my head had become normal in size, and all the ache had disappeared. How weak I was! Trying to walk from the bed to the window I almost fainted. If it had not been for Jack Harland, who also had a room on the top floor, I really don’t know what would have become of me. Miss O’Brien never came near me, neither did Hildegarde Hook. Jack, my tall, long-legged boy, as I used to call him, came twice a day, morning and evening, to ask how I felt and learn what he could get for me in the way of food. Later, when I was able partially to dress and keep my eyes open, he would come in evenings and read to me—the daily paper and parts of “Les Misérables” and of “Ninety-Three.” Wonderful Victor Hugo! When read by a sympathetic boy’s voice these books become wonderful indeed.
- 37. The first time I was able to creep out, on returning, mounting the four flights of stairs to my room, I realized that something was the matter with my heart. Instead of hunting a job next day, as I had planned, I knew that I must wait until I got stronger. Working with a fluttery heart like that I might drop in my tracks at any moment. I had paid a week’s rent and still had five dollars in my pocketbook, so why worry? Of course I would be fit before the end of the week. When that time came not only was my heart as fluttery as ever, but I realized that I had gained precious little, if any, strength. A problem faced me—must I give up my plan of living on my wages, go to the bank and get money to tide me over, or what? What would Polly Preston, who had no money in bank, do under the circumstances? How was I to feel as a working woman felt if I kept in the back of my mind the knowledge that I could go to the bank and get money to tide me over a rough place? Again what would Polly Preston do? On leaving a bench in Washington Square I returned to the rooming-house, and crawling up the stairs, I reached my room and took stock of my scanty wardrobe. It must be either my furs or my cloak. Fortunately, the weather was mild. I had exactly one dollar in my pocketbook, and to-morrow was rent day. The following day I set out soon after breakfast, wearing both my cloak and furs over my coat suit. Recalling that I had seen one or more pawn-shops on Sixth Avenue in the vicinity of West Fourteenth Street, I went there. In the first I was told brusquely that they did not accept wearing apparel of any sort. On leaving the second pawn-shop I held twenty dollars in my hand and was without my furs. Twenty dollars was ample provision for three weeks. Long before that time I would be able to get a good job now that work was so plentiful and so well paid. Spending the rest of the day on a bench in Washington Square with a library book in my hand convinced me that I must find some other way of occupying my time if I was to gain strength. The afternoon paper solved that problem.
- 38. The U. S. Employment Bureau on East Twenty-second Street was in need of volunteer workers. On calling the next morning shortly after nine I found the street in front of the Bureau crowded by men. When finally, having wormed my way in and up the stairs, I made myself known and offered my services I was quickly placed—given a chair at a long make-shift table, planks on top of saw-horses, and told to register applicants willing to take work in shipyards. That was a motley crowd—men holding jobs paying as high as five hundred dollars a month offered themselves for positions paying one-fifth that amount, and men who had no work at all refused jobs, the only ones they were fitted for, at three dollars a day. One dear old Frenchman I shall never forget. He had passed down the long line of registrars struggling to make himself understood when he reached me. Though he had lived in New York more than twenty years he could neither speak nor understand the American language. He was a highly paid cabinetmaker. Up to the outbreak of the World War his family comprised himself, his wife, five sons, and little Hortense. When he reached me, a bright day when winter’s smile seems spring, his little circle had dwindled within two years to himself and little Hortense. His five sons were under the poppies somewhere in France, his wife had died of a broken heart. He acknowledged his age, past sixty, but insisted he still had strength enough to work for America and France. He would take any job, at any wage. I gave him a card and sent him to an employer who had specially stipulated that he would take no man over forty. Within an hour that employer telephoned and asked for me. Instead of the blowing-up that the registrar at my elbow prophesied, he wished to thank me. The Frenchman was a tip-top workman, he said. Then he added: “It’s not often you find a person, man or woman, who knows when to break a rule. That’s what I called you up for—to thank you for breaking my rule. If you find any more men like your Frenchman, don’t ask his age, just send him along.” Learning that women were needed in the gas-mask factory at Long Island City, I got a card of introduction from the head of the
- 39. woman’s branch of the employment bureau, and journeyed out. This woman had told me that the wage was exceptional—twenty-five to forty a week. As fifteen dollars a week had, up to that time, been the highest I had received, and that for only a few weeks, I looked forward to making my fortune in the gas-mask factory in a few days. Another case of exaggerated wage. Fifteen dollars is what I was paid, and I would have had to work there a good long time before getting a raise. As it happened I worked there two days, received my training and was made an inspector at fifteen dollars a week, then decided to find another job. The fumes of gasolene gave me a hideous headache, and besides I had seen large crowds of women turned away from the doors every day. Returning to the employment offices of the Y. W., I stipulated that my next job must be work for the government, preferably in a munition plant. There were plenty of openings, and taking cards of introduction to several plants near New York City, I set out. “Even if you don’t find anything to suit you,” the woman at the employment desk told me, “it will be helping us, letting us know what you think of the places.” “Send only mature women to that plant in Hoboken. They want night-workers,” I advised her on my return. “Those other two places over in Jersey? If you have girls who have twenty dollars to spend before their wages begin to come in, send them there.” “But the clubwomen?” she questioned. “We were told that the clubwomen had thrown open their homes, would board women workers in those plants.” I showed her my figures, the lowest that I had been able to get, though directed by the employment office of the munition plant: three dollars a week for a small room, up two flights, seven dollars a week for two meals a day and three on Sundays, sixty cents car- fare,—that is if you caught a particular train making the trip for the purpose of taking munition workers. “The wage being eleven dollars a week, girls working there who room with and are fed by those clubwomen, will have just forty
- 40. cents with which to get lunch, laundry, and any other little luxury,” I went on. “And don’t forget she doesn’t get a dollar until the end of her second week. Her first week’s pay is held until she leaves—God knows for why—and she is not paid for her second week until she finishes it. In the meantime she has to pay for everything in advance, board, lodging, and car-fare.” “Those clubwomen!” she exclaimed, in disgust. “The fuss they made about taking munition workers in their homes for the sake of helping the government.” “That’s what being a worker means—everybody’s prey,” I replied, and the thought did not make me any the happier. “It’s gouge and squeeze, and when only a flicker of life remains fling them in an almshouse or a pauper’s grave. Ours is a Christian country.” During the two months that followed I worked a few days in a cigarette factory, in a second cracker factory, folded circulars, addressed envelopes, stamped envelopes, and folded more circulars. It was on this last job that I was taken for a labor organizer. Having nothing else to say to the woman working at my elbow, I asked if that printing-house was open or closed shop. Within three minutes she pattered off, and held a lengthy conversation with the forewoman. Within another three minutes this forewoman had informed me that as the work was “running short,” she would have no need of my services “right then.” Those two words, “right then,” so I was informed, prevented that forewoman’s dismissal from being a discharge. Had she discharged me I could have collected the wage due me; as I was “laid off,” I had to wait until the next pay-day. “There’s more ways of killing a dog besides choking it to death with butter,” the woman who explained the matter to me added. “Some of these days—if the workers’ day comes in my time—I’ll do some of the choking.” On returning to my friend of the Y. W. employment department, she gave me a handful of cards. “They’re all good positions, but I know which you’ll take,” she told me. “It’s the one with the smallest salary.”
- 41. “Why? I’m working for my living, living on my earnings,” I retorted, not a bit pleased by her declaration. “Yes, but you’ve got an enormous amount of curiosity,” she laughed at me. “That position is with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It’s in the office, posting the books, and the salary is only fifteen a week. You’ll take it because you want to see how it works.” I handed all the other cards back to her and set out for the offices of the A. S. P. C. A. There I was taken on and put to work at once— writing in a huge book the numbers for the current year of licensed dogs. It was not tenement work, but it touched the tenements and that pleased me. During my second week, on learning that the society needed license inspectors to take the place of the men who had gone to the front, I determined to apply. When told by a man in the office that the positions were for men only, I did not change my mind. Up I marched to Mr. Horton’s office. “Well,” said Mr. Horton, the manager, “we never have had a woman inspector. Still, I don’t know any reason why a woman shouldn’t hold the position. Do you know what the salary is?” “No, sir.” Mr. Horton smiled. “Do you know what the duties are?” “No, sir.” Mr. Horton smiled again. “Most of your work will be in the tenements, from house to house. Often from flat to flat. You’ll have to go wherever there is a dog—to see if it is licensed, healthy, and well cared for.” It so happened that I did know all this. That was my reason for wanting the job—it would take me into the tenements, to meet tenement-dwellers face to face as fellow human beings. I would see the homes from which the men and girls, my fellow workers for so many months, come. At last I was going into the tenements, stepping into a more dense section of the underbrush, where I would get at least glimpses of the heart of the jungle.
- 42. CHAPTER XV THE HEART OF THE JUNGLE The tenements of New York City! The change that I made— working with tenement-dwellers and living in rooming-houses to working in and living in the tenements—was like that experienced by a hunter when stepping from the outskirts to the depths of a jungle —a jungle abounding in treacherous quicksands and infested by the most venomous and noisome creatures of the animal kingdom—a swamp in which any misstep may plunge you into the choking depths of a quagmire or the coils of a slimy reptile. But there are two great differences between the jungles of civilization and those created by nature. In nature’s works there is always beauty—however noxious the creature, however venomous the reptile, there is always beauty. The tenements of New York City are monstrously hideous. In nature’s jungles the evolution is always upward from protoplasm to that most perfect of animals—man made in the image of his Maker. In the jungles of civilization the evolution is always downward—from man to beast, to reptile, and to that most noisome of living creatures, the human worm. In the tenements of New York City we see the forced decivilization of representatives of all the civilized peoples. In it there exist thousands more afflicted than Lazarus, thousands possessed of more devils than the Master cast out of the man of Gadarenes, thousands in whom the light of human intelligence will never even flicker. It is the greatest of all earthly hells. It is the product of human greed.
- 43. Comparing New York City to a jungle—the gilded zone of Fifth and Park Avenues are the tall timbers, the grove of leisure and pleasure wherein the human animal having all that nature and civilization can supply is supposed to grow to perfection—the superman. Leaving this zone, going east or west, with every step leisure and pleasure grow rapidly less, farther and farther behind do we leave fresh air and sunshine, and all that makes life desirable. I entered the tenements by two routes—as a social worker attached to Bellevue Hospital, and as a license inspector for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Polly Preston entered by yet another route—as a fugitive. Even to-day as I write, with more than a thousand miles between me and New York City, I recall my work in the tenements as a social worker with a shiver. Social work is dispensing as charity that which should have been paid as wages. Had the wage been paid there would have been no rickety baby, no tubercular manhood and womanhood, no need for homes for incurables. It is underpaying that drives persons to live in the tenements, it is ill health or ignorance that keeps them there. Possessing neither the blasphemous conceit formerly professed by Wilhelm Hohenzollern nor the sublime faith of the Pope, I did not enjoy acting as the personal representative of God Almighty. It used to make me sick as with nausea, more than once I was near to wringing my hands. Who was I that honest, hard-working men and women should cringe before me?—poor overworked, underfed human beings who from their birth to their death never lost consciousness of the snarling presence of that hell-hound Poverty. It was in my power to see that a quart of milk was delivered daily for Baby—real bottled grade A milk with all the cream in it. Johnnie was kept home for lack of shoes, and his father having been in the hospital going on five weeks, and his mother’s wages as scrubwoman only enough to buy food, there was no hope of his getting a pair unless—yes, I had the power to get for him a better pair than possessed by any boy on the Avenue. Wonderful lady! So all-powerful.
- 44. “Johnnie, bring a chair for the lady. Let ’er see what nice manners you’ve got.” And Johnnie, tripping over his own feet incased in a pair of men’s shoes past mending and too broken for his father to wear, drags forward the only whole chair in the flat. Another typical case was that of Mary Kane. The tenement in which I found her was like ninety-nine out of every hundred in New York City. Dark halls with crooked stairs and air foul for lack of ventilation and over-crowding. “Stop cryin’, Mamie. Here’s a lady from Bellevue. Maybe she can get you to go to the country.” And her mother, haggard and overworked to the point of desperation, turns to me with a wan smile which, in her effort to make it gracious, becomes a ghastly grin. When I reply that it is because the society sending convalescing children to the country had reported that Mary had not used the card entitling her to two weeks in their home that I have called, her grin becomes that of a beaten dog. Again it is lack of shoes and a few clothes. In this case the husband and father is not in Bellevue. He had stopped in the corner saloon on his way home with his wages. Mary has a tendency to T. B. To spin her life out even a few months will require plenty of fresh air and the right kind of food. Hospital social service is to supplement the work of the doctors and nurses of that particular hospital. Fortunately, Mary has been in Bellevue. I took her size and the number of her shoes, and promised to get them along with another card entitling her to another two weeks in the country. Time passes and again we are notified that Mary has not used her card. On my return to the tenement practically the same scene confronted me. Only this time the mother had a black eye, the baby tugging at her breast was whimpering, and Mary seated near a window, the only window in the flat from which a glimpse of the sky may be had, looked more like a ghost than a living child. Before I was well in the door the mother hustled me back again into the hall. In a neighbor’s flat, a trifle lighter than her own because there were two windows in the front room opening on the
- 45. street, she started to tell me her story. Because I had known many tenement wives and mothers I recognized that she was lying and stopped her. “Who was that snoring in your back room?” I asked her. And fact by fact I draw the story from her. The husband and father of the family had stolen the shoes and clothes sent for Mary, had sold them and gotten drunk on the proceeds. So drunk that— Oh, she didn’t mind a black eye so much, she assured me. He didn’t really mean it, being a good man when not in liquor. What she regretted was that he had missed two days at work. Then with a grin like a cringing beaten dog she admitted that since Saturday noon she and Mary had lived on tea, without either milk or sugar, and part of a loaf of bread given her by a neighbor. To-morrow? Maybe by to-morrow her husband would be sober enough to return to his job. Then came that terrible look—the look that made me want to wring my hands, to get off the earth, had such been possible. The look of a cringing human soul pleading to the All-Powerful for something dearer than life—to give Mary another chance. A succession of such scenes is what entering the tenements as a social worker means. One sees only the abnormal, hears only the groans of the suffering, and of the misdeeds of the criminals. Entering the tenements as an inspector of dog licenses for the A. S. P. C. A. brought me face to face with normal conditions—the well and the sick, the innocent and the criminal, the devils and the angels. I met them all, and so far as my time permitted I tried to get the point of view of each individual. Hardest of all, I tried to get the point of view of the owners of tenement-houses—the originator or the perpetuator of the greatest of earthly hells. After working among and living in the property of the tenement-house owners for twenty-one months I believe that I succeeded. GET MONEY—IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE BY WHAT MEANS, GET MONEY—is the point of view of the owners of tenement-house property in New York City.
- 46. They have no civic pride, no pride of race, no feeling of brotherhood. Greed, that’s all, GREED. Never do they consider the health or good name of the city, or the health or comfort of their tenants. It is get money, and more money. Like the idle married woman, they are a curse, a mildew, sapping the very life-blood of those whose welfare and comfort should be their first aim. Poverty of itself is not degrading. It is the filthy dens in which the poor of New York are forced to live that decivilizes them, converting human beings into beasts and reptiles. I do not believe that Abraham Lincoln himself could have risen above a childhood passed in the average New York tenement. It is not the location, for the tenements among which I worked occupy the healthiest and most convenient portions of Manhattan Island. It is the landlord—the eternal drive of the house-owner for money, and more money. I have talked with hundreds of them, and found but one exception. That one was a stable-keeper, whose tenement-houses are situated in the lower gas-house district, and about whom I shall write farther on. My remedy for tenement-house conditions is to make the owners live in them for twelve successive months. Force every tenement- owner to live with his or her family in the house that belongs to him or her, to pass one winter and one summer. What a cleaning up and tearing down there would be. When that happens the police force of New York can be cut down to half, and the Health Department can go out of business. Neither the police nor the workers of the Health Department will have to do without city jobs. There will be room in the Department of Street- Cleaning. Then the cleaning will begin in those sections containing the greatest number of inhabitants, not in those having the most expensive property.
- 47. CHAPTER XVI BURROWING IN My going to live in the tenements came about in a roundabout way. While existing in the Jane Leonard I let it be known that I was looking for a small flat in a tenement. The only one offered me was that of a young artist who had been called to Washington City by the government. It was in a “model tenement,” had two rooms, a kitchen, electric lights, gas for cooking, steam-heat, hot and cold water, and the windows of the comfortably large living-room overlooked East River and Blackwell’s Island. “What more can you expect for the money?” Miss Stafford, who had learned of the place and insisted on taking me to see it, exclaimed pettishly when told that it was not what I wanted. “Five dollars and twenty cents a week! It really is remarkable. The furniture is fit for Fifth Avenue, real antique. They say Mr. Howard spent thousands furnishing it. On account of the river view, you know.” She lifted a window and with a flourish of her chubby hand indicated the sluggishly flowing river. And with another flourish the almshouse on Blackwell’s Island. “The house is so well kept,” she assured me, as she turned from the window. “Such nice people live here. The agent is a lady of the old school. She told me herself that she never accepted a tenant without a thorough personal examination. I really can’t see what more you want, since you have set your heart on living in a tenement.” The truth of the matter was that I did not want so much. To any one with even a superficial knowledge of tenement conditions the
- 48. rent of the flat told the story. I had already learned enough about the private affairs of my fellow workers to know that none of them lived in such expensive quarters. For the sake of getting sufficient room for their family they were forced to do without conveniences. At the premium station the girls had looked at me with awe when told that I paid two dollars and a half a week for one room. They lived in flats of from five to seven rooms, the rental of which was from ten to fifteen dollars a month. One of them, describing her home, said: “We’ve got seven rooms, real large rooms, and only one is dark. It’s a cold-water flat. What you want a hot-water flat for?—pay for hot water and never get it. Mother says it’s better to have seven rooms and pay for gas when you needs hot water than to be packed in five rooms paying for hot water that you can never get.” At that time the tenement-dweller who paid above twenty dollars a month rent either received an exceptionally high wage or had several children working. My experience had taught me that my neighbors in the model tenement would be of the lesser professional class and well paid office workers. I not only did not wish to live among such people, but I was dead set against having a lady-of-the- old-school agent. I wished to learn the truth about tenement conditions. However, I realized the uselessness of trying to explain to Miss Stafford. Though I talked all day she would not understand. It was because I felt sure that Hildegarde Hook would understand that I went to live in the Greenwich Village rooming-house in which she spent her winters. But my faith in her understanding began a rapid evaporation the evening after I moved in. Hildegarde was busy cleaning, with a grubbing-hoe, the basement in which she afterward conducted her tea-room. She invited me to dine with her. On learning that this, my first meal, was to be cooked in her basement, I accepted with the proviso that I pay for all materials. After my winter with Alice and observing the economies of the hat-trimmer, Hildegarde’s manner of buying seemed nothing short of reckless extravagance. At one of the most expensive stalls in Jefferson Market she bought lettuce, tomatoes, and hothouse
- 49. cucumbers at a price that would have fed Alice and me for days. At yet another high-priced place she selected and I paid for a large loaf of bread, which she declared to be the only kind she ever ate. Next came salad dressing, unsalted butter, sugar, fresh cream cheese. Sure that this would be all, I carefully folded and stored in the bottom of my bag the remains of my five-dollar bill. I did not know Hildegarde. Declaring that the grade of foodstuffs carried in the Jefferson Market was a disgrace to the city, she led me to a meat- shop on a cross street. Tenderloin steak! My hair almost stood on end. Three pounds! What on earth was she going to do with it? Then I had a happy thought. Such a cheerful solution. The next day being Sunday she planned for me to take all three meals with her. Though I cannot be sure that while paying for that steak I wore a smiling countenance, I am sure that I was not so glum as I most certainly would have been had I known what was to become of it. Hildegarde ate it—two pounds and three-quarters of underdone steak, at one sitting. When I said that I only wished a small piece, she gave me the bone. And she ate that red dripping meat without bread, potatoes, or vegetable of any sort—two pounds and three- quarters of underdone steak. It was not an appetizing sight. When she had swallowed the last mouthful she explained that, being a meat-eater, she only ate other things for the sake of filling up. When she finished that process the provisions which I had believed would last us both through Sunday had all disappeared—the last of the quarter of a pound of sweet butter together with the last of the pound of granulated sugar on the last slice of bread. Our sightseeing began on a narrow street both crooked and short. Keeping pace with Hildegarde’s eager steps I entered at one end and walking rapidly halted near the centre of the block. “Sniff,” panted Hildegarde. “Sniff.” “Why, it’s a stench,” I replied indignantly, and instead of sniffing I held my nose. “What on earth is it?” “Cesspools,” she assured me. “Those houses are awfully old. There is not a drain in this street. Typhoid in the summer, croup and
- 50. pneumonia in the winter—people die like flies. Jack Harland says we may have a few cases of Asiatic cholera here this fall if the hot weather will only continue long enough.” I stared at her—a tall, voluptuously developed woman of twenty- six. Her eyes were large, blue-gray, and expressive. Her brows were dark and well defined, her mouth like a buttonhole. Her nose, though not large, curved over it, and reminded me of the beak of a parrot. Nature, as though begrudging the generous amount of material used in making one woman, had not only skimped her chin but taken a snip out of the middle of it. “Don’t you love it?” she panted, her face shining with enjoyment. “Don’t you love it?” “I think it is horrible that people have to live in such holes.” “W-e-e-ll, if you will look at it from a utilitarian point of view,” my guide drawled patronizingly. Then she added with gusto: “From the point of the artist it is colossal. Swarms of ’em come here—for types, you know. The starving children of Belgium and famine sufferers— colossal studies!” “Do you think they actually suffer for food?” “My dear!” Hildegarde stopped on the corner and catching me by the shoulder brought me to a sudden stand-still. “I talked to a little girl who lived in that fifth house. The most desperate-looking child I ever saw. She told me she never had anything for breakfast before going to school except the dregs from a can of beer and a left-over potato, or a crust of bread. Sometimes she didn’t get the beer—that depended on how drunk her parents were when they fell asleep. Colossal! Think of the literary atmosphere!” “You come here for atmosphere?” I inquired, thinking that the effrontery needed to commercialize the misfortunes of that child was what was colossal. “Not often,” she replied, puckering her lips and drawing her brows together. “To tell the truth these people are too—too prosperous for me, for my purpose.” Here squinting her eyes she thrust her face nearer mine. “To let you into a secret—I’m specializing on the underworld, crooks and their sort. My burglar took me to a joint on
- 51. the East Side kept by one of the most famous crooks in New York,— in the whole world. All his customers are crooks. Colossal!” Had I been a profane woman I would have called her a damned fool. “It may not be safe for you—not exactly,” Hildegarde told me, panting eagerly. “But if you’ve got the pep I’m willing to take you. A policeman wouldn’t dare go there alone. With me, having been introduced by my burglar, it’s different. Would you like to go to- night?” “Not to-night, thank you. I must be getting back.” “I’ll go with you as far as Bleecker Street. It’s on my way to the East Side joint to meet my burglar,” she agreed, and we turned toward Washington Square. “Have you written many stories about crooks?” I inquired, for, though she always spoke of herself as an author and of everything she did, even the tea-room she was planning, as a means of getting material for her “real work,” she had never mentioned the names of her stories. “Not yet.” She panted so vigorously and her eyes shone so eagerly that I was sure of having touched a subject she liked. “You see I specialize on one type at a time. My last before taking up crooks was newsboys.” “You wrote a newsboy story?” “Newsboys who had made a fortune of one hundred thousand dollars and over. It was colossal. The editor told a friend of mine that it was the greatest spread that ever appeared in ——” “Spread?” I interrupted. “I thought you said you wrote short stories.” “Story-writing as you understand it is a dead art,” she assured me solemnly. “Pictures! The future of the picture story is colossal.” That night before I fell asleep for the first time in my new quarters, I decided that Hildegarde was not one who would understand my determination to live in the tenements. I never confided in her. During the months that followed, working day after day in the tenements, from eight-thirty in the morning to five of an afternoon, I
- 52. never lost sight of that determination. Having decided to sublet a small furnished flat, I was continually on the lookout for it. Before I finally found such a flat, Miss O’Brien had demanded my room. “Miss Porter, Miss Porter.” She was standing on the parlor floor as she shouted up the stairs to me on the top floor. “I want your room, an’ I want it at onct. An’ I want you should know I’m a lady—I’ll not be insulted in my own house.” The insult referred to was a note left on the hat-rack at the front door that morning on my way to work. In it I objected to having a strange man sleep in my bed during the day, while I was at work. In Greenwich Village, when the origin of tobacco-smoke is feminine, it is invariably accompanied by crums of face-powder and smudges of rouge. There were no such marks on my bureau. But the odor of tobacco-smoke in the sheets of the bed! The signs of soot and grease grimed hands on my towels! I was paying four dollars and a half for my room, small with a slanting roof and a half- window on the top floor. I had no intention of sharing it with an unknown man even for the sake of helping my grunting, groaning landlady. In more ways than one Miss O’Brien was out of the ordinary. Her name, her religion, and her brogue to the contrary, she boasted of being English. As a consequence she was not descended from an Irish king nor did she have a saint in her family. She was red-hot for suffrage, because she wanted a law passed to force women working outside the home to make their own beds and clean their own rooms. “’Tain’t right for women in business not to do their share of the housework,” she would tell me, while leaning on a stub of a broom or wiping my mirror with a dirty rag. “I don’t mind doin’ for men—it’s only right I should, they bein’ men an’ payin’ me.” “The women pay you. I pay a half-dollar more than the man who vacated it without giving you notice. You told me so yourself.” “I ain’t sayin’ you don’t pay all the room’s worth,” she assured me, and maybe by this time having smeared my mirror to her satisfaction she would be propped against the facing of my door. “What I says an’ what I stands by is that it ain’t right for you and Hildegarde Hook
- 53. not to do your rooms regular—you bein’ women an’ not men. No, it ain’t right, Miss Porter. You hadn’t oughter treat no woman like that.” When she found that I intended to take her at her word and give her her room, she became repentant and offered to let me “stay on.” Unfortunately for her good intentions the atmosphere of Greenwich Village had become boring. Even a woman’s hotel, the only vacancy to be found at that season, promised a welcome relief. My stay in that Adamless purgatory was not very long. Before I had been there one week an old woman occupying the room to the left of me objected to my using my typewriter between seven and eight in the evening. Before the end of my second week an old woman at my right positively forbade me to touch it mornings before eleven, and before I had completed my third week an old woman in front of me entered a violent protest against my using it at all. God defend me from idle women! In a fit of I’ll-take-anything-I-can-get I applied to the agent of the Phipps tenements. She had no vacancy, but on my second call, seeing that I was near desperation, she suggested that I go talk to a Mrs. Campbell who lived in another house owned by the same company. Mrs. Campbell was taking her sick daughter to Staten Island for the summer. For five dollars a week, one dollar and sixty cents above what she was paying for her flat unfurnished, she sublet to me for the summer. There were three small rooms, a minute clothes-closet, a toilet, gas, and both hot and cold water. On East Thirty-second Street between First and Second Avenues, this place was within walking distance of the A. S. P. C. A., and so saved both car-fare and time. Built around a court each of the forty- eight flats was so arranged that it opened on both the street and the court. As a consequence the ventilation was excellent. Four of the flats on each floor opened on a little balcony, and I was lucky enough to get one. When I mentioned that there was no bath, Mrs. Campbell looked pensive. After a pause her daughter explained. “There are two baths—one for men and the other for women. They are in the basement. Sundays people stand in line, taking turns
- 54. at using them.” She paused and glanced at her mother, who was still gazing pensively into space. “We always—” She paused and again glanced at her mother. “We always make out with the set tubs,” the older woman told me. “It’s not very handy, stooping under the china-closet, but it’s better than bathing in a tub used by so many.” Glancing at the set tubs I realized the advantage of being small. It seemed an easy matter for these two little women to step on a chair and then into the tub, but how about big me? Yet I managed it somehow. That summer the only thing in the way of bathing I did was in that set tub; crouching under the built-in china cupboard, I splashed the water over various parts of my anatomy. Once you make up your mind you can do almost anything. Unlike the model tenement in which the artist lived, this place was a slice of tenement life in New York City. Of the two blind sons of the Irishwoman who had the flat next mine, one went out daily with his little tin cup, while the other, who was not totally blind, made brooms in a workshop for the blind. Their unmarried sister was a trained nurse. The three supported the mother, who, being Irish, like Lot’s wife was continually looking back and weeping over past glories. The flat beyond this family was occupied by the matron of one of the city courts; next came two more women, a Swede and Hollander. The first was a forewoman in a shirt-waist factory, the other before becoming a helpless cripple from rheumatism had been a dressmaker. Across the court on the same floor was an Italian tailor with nine children, an undertaker’s assistant, a clerk in a Second Avenue grocery, and the driver of a milk-wagon. Occupying other flats in the house were a stevedore, a Greek peddler, an Italian who helped in a coal-and-ice cellar, a Hungarian street-sweeper, a man who drove a dump-cart, a baker, a butcher, several factory workers, a cook, an incapacitated nurse, two Russians whose business nobody knew, and myself, who because of my khaki frock was called by the children the “army nurse.”
- 55. Of June evenings, when I first moved in I used to sit on my doorstep, with my feet on the little balcony overlooking the court, and try to untangle the conversations being carried on around me in eleven foreign languages. As the days wore on, the July sun beat down on the tenements. When there was a breeze it was to be avoided, not enjoyed. Though hot and prickly in its feel, worse, many times worse, were the odors with which it was laden—the odors of decaying garbage and the filth of unwashed streets. Those torrid summer nights! Instead of trying to untangle foreign tongues, I used to try to stop my ears against the wails of sick children, the weak frettings of a baby too far gone to make louder protests. When at last, worn out by hard work and lack of sleep, I would doze off, it was only to be wakened by the shriek of the baby’s mother—never again in this world would her baby disturb her neighbors. Or when by chance I managed to sleep through the first part of the night, the “French girl” would have a brainstorm and arouse the whole house. The nightmare scene that followed! Men, women, and children would rush out on their little balconies in their night-clothes. The more amiable would remonstrate with her, reminding her of the sick and sleeping children. A few, the two Russians and an Irishman, would curse the girl and threaten to call the police. Though this girl was born in the United States, the daughter of native Germans, she persisted in calling herself French. Her mother was a cook in a private family and the girl herself had been trained as a lady’s maid. Getting “notions” in her head, so the mother explained, she had proclaimed her intention of devoting herself to moving pictures. Her brain-storms were caused by her parents suggesting that she return to her old job and earn her own living. The loud curses and abuse she hurled at them! When the pleadings and threats of their neighbors failed to stop this row, the musicians of the tenement would fetch out their instruments and practise usually for the rest of the night. Hideous as this may sound, the blast of the cornet, the pipings of a flute and two piccolos, and the groans of a bass violin were no
- 56. worse than the curses of the men and the wailings of the women and children. When the musicians kept at it long enough the “French girl” was shamed into silence or indistinct grumbling. Then there were nights when there would be no sleep—only subdued cursing, complaints, and stench—the stench of unmoved garbage, of the unwashed streets, of the laundry opposite, and several other unclassified stenches. I used to get up in the mornings feeling worse than a wet rag—like a wet dish-rag saturated with stench. All day long I trudged the streets, such filthy streets, with overflowing garbage-cans that had not been emptied for days and days. How I longed to possess the power which the people because of my khaki attributed to me! “Lady, my baby is so sick. The landlord’s done cut off the water, and I has to go up and down six flight of stairs to get every drop of water we use. Won’t you please speak to the landlord, lady? My baby is so sick.” This was a little Italian woman on lower First Avenue, the mother of six small children. When I reminded her that I was not a city employee, that I had no authority, she came back at me with the statement that I was educated, the landlord would listen to me. By actual count I found forty-nine children living on that top floor of that six-story flat-house. Not one of them looked to be above eight years old. Several of them were sick, and the mother of one family ill in bed. Because the law forbade the owner of the house to raise the rent any higher on these, his regular tenants, he had hit on the happy idea of cutting off the water. He was out when I got his office on the wire. I left word with the woman’s voice claiming to be his secretary that if the water was still cut off at four o’clock I would report the house to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. This society may have been as helpless in the matter as the one I represented, but I didn’t know of any other threat to make. It had the desired effect. Hardly a day passed without at least one such appeal being made to me. It almost seemed that people had the idea that heartless landlords, dead horses, and deader cats were my specialty.
- 57. One woman trailed me three successive mornings in a house-to- house search from East Seventy-first Street to East Seventy-ninth and Exterior Streets. The first day she found me I was sitting on the river-wall in the shade of a derrick, eating my lunch—two Georgia peaches. “It’s just a chance I seen you,” she called, as she crossed from the corner. “I told my daughter if I found you I know’d you’d do it, and I set out to find you.” Halting in front of me she wiped the streaming perspiration from her purple and crimson blotched face. “Sit down and tell me about it,” I invited, making room for her in the scanty shade of the derrick. Though I had no recollection of her face, I knew she belonged in some one of the hundreds of homes that I had visited during the past few days. “My grandbaby’s got the browncreeters,” she told me, as taking her seat at my side, she began to fan her face with her apron. “Bronchitis is pretty serious for a young baby,” I admitted; not knowing in what other way I could be of use to her I asked: “Do you want me to have it taken to Bellevue?” She shook her head. “It’s the dead horse, corner of Avenue A. You seen it the day you was at my daughter’s about her dog, a French poodle.” If she had not mentioned the dead horse I certainly would not have remembered her daughter’s dog. All white woolly dogs in the tenements, and about twenty-five per cent are white and woolly, are dignified by the name of French poodle. I did remember the dead horse. “I promised your daughter to telephone the Health Department about that horse, and I did so,” I replied, a bit nettled by her having chased me down after I had explained to her daughter and numerous others in the vicinity of that dead horse that I was not a city employee, had no authority to get dead animals moved. “She knows you did. She watched and seen you go in the drug- store on the corner. Last night when her baby was took so bad her husband went after medicine, and the drug-store man told ’im you’d called up about the horse.” In her eagerness to conciliate she stopped fanning and placed her hot hand on my arm. “They never
- 58. done nothin’. This sun makes it worse—all swelled up and we’s afraid it’ll bust.” What could I say? I had done my best and nothing had come of it. Living in the tenements I knew how hideous night could be made by a stench. This dead horse was worse than anything that I had had to endure. “I thought if I paid for the telephone you wouldn’t mind speakin’ again.” Gouging down in her stocking she brought up a rusty leather pocketbook. “My grandbaby’s awful sick!” There was no use trying to reason with her, trying to explain. Besides, it was a very small favor to ask for a sick baby. She followed me to the nearest drug-store, stood at the door of the telephone-booth, and listened while I begged for the removal of the dead horse—called attention to the number of children in the vicinity, and made special mention of her sick grandbaby. The next day but one I saw her coming toward me across the hot sun-baked playground of John Jay Park. There were deep circles under her eyes, and in spite of the heat her heavy cheeks were only slightly colored. “I hunted for you yesterday, everywhere, but I missed you,” she reproached, as I met her in the middle of the scorching-hot playground. “That dead horse— It’s terrible and the dogs——” “Come on,” I interrupted, leading the way to the drug-store. “Now that the dogs are after it I can get it moved. That’s what the society is for—protecting dogs.” Back in the same telephone-booth I called up the same city department, was answered by the same operator, who gave me the same official. After telling him that I was an inspector for the A. S. P. C. A., I told him of the dead horse, the number of days it had been on the street, and that the dogs were after it. “You must give us time,” he drawled. “New York is a good big city, you know, and——” “Yes, and you get a good big salary,” I clipped in, imitating his drawl, and making my voice as insolent as possible. “I don’t care a whoop about your time. It’s my business to protect the health of the dogs in this district. I report at Society headquarters every afternoon
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