ase, to No. -- East Eleventh Street, near the river," was
the burden of a message received one day in the Charities Building; "a
Hungarian family is in trouble." The little word that covers the widest
range in the language gives marching orders daily to many busy feet
thereabouts, and, before the October sun had set, a visitor from the
Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor had climbed
to the fourth floor of the tenement and found the Josefy family. This was
what she discovered there: a man in the last stages of consumption, a
woman within two weeks of her confinement, five hungry children, a
landlord clamoring for his rent. The man had long ceased to earn the
family living. His wife, taking up that burden with the rest, had worked
on cloaks for a sweater until she also had to give up. In fact, the work
gave out just as their need was greatest. Now, with the new baby coming,
no preparation had been made to receive it. For those already there, there
was no food in the house.

They had once been well off. Josefy was a tailor, and had employed nearly
a score of hands in the busy season. He paid forty-four dollars a month
rent then. That day the landlord had threatened to dispossess them for one
month's arrears of seven dollars, and only because of the rain had given
them a day's grace. All the money saved up in better days had gone to pay
doctor and druggist, without making Josefy any better. His wife listened
dismally to the recital of their troubles and asked for work--any light
work that she could do.

The rent was paid, and the baby came. They were eight then, subsisting, as
the society's records show, in January on the earnings of Mrs. Josefy
making ladies' blouse sleeves at twenty-five cents a dozen pairs, in
February on the receipts of embroidering initials on napkins at fifteen
cents apiece, in March on her labors in a downtown house on sample cloaks.
Three dollars a week was her wage there. To save car-fare she walked to
her work and back, a good two miles each way, getting up at 3 A.M. to do
her home washing and cleaning first. In bad weather they were poorer by
ten cents a day, because then she had to ride. The neighbors were kind;
the baker left them bread twice a week and the butcher gave them a little
meat now and then. The father's hemorrhages were more frequent. When, on a
slippery day, one of the children, going for milk, fell in the street and
spilled it, he went without his only foo