y one carrot at a time,
one egg. When rent-week comes--and it comes twice a month--they cut the
food by half to pay for housing. They are underfed, they are denied
everything but toil--save _love_. Child after child they bear. The toil
increases, the stint is sharper, the worry infinite. Now they must
clothe their children, feed them, dress them, wash them, amuse them.
They must endure the heart-sickness of seeing a child underfed. They
must fight the demons of disease. Possibly they must stop a moment in
the speed of their labor and face death. Only for a moment! Need calls
them: mouths ask for food, floors for the broom, and the pay-envelope
for keen reckonings. Possibly then the husband will begin to
drink--possibly he will come home and beat his wife, drag her about the
floor, blacken her eyes, break a rib. The next day the task is taken up
again--the man is fed, the children clothed, the food marketed, the
floor scrubbed, the dress sewn. And then as the family grows there come
hard times. The man is out of work--he wants to work but cannot. Rent
and the butcher and grocer must be paid, but there are no wages brought
home. The woman takes in washing. She goes through the streets to the
more prosperous and drags home a basket of soiled clothes. The burden of
life grows heavier--the husband becomes accustomed to the changed
relationships. Very often he ceases to be a wage-earner and loafs about
saloons. From then on the woman wrestles with worlds of
trouble--unimaginable difficulties. Truly, running a state may be easier
than running a family. And yet the woman toils on; she does not
complain; she sets three meals each day before husband and children; she
sees that they have clothes; she gives the man his drink money; she
endures his cruelty; she plans ambitiously for her children. Or possibly
the man begins to work again, and then one day is killed in an accident.
There is danger of the family breaking up. But the woman rises to the
crisis and works miracles. She keeps her head; she takes charge; she
toils late into the night; she goes without food, without sleep. Somehow
she manages. There was a seamstress in Greenwich Village who pulled her
family of three and herself along on two hundred and fifty dollars a
year--less than five dollars a week! If luck is with the woman the
children grow up, go to work, and for a time ease the burden. But then,
wha