“How did the war affect the tenement-dwellers?”

That question has been asked me dozens of times.

The happiest persons I met during the war were in the tenements. Also, I will add, the most unreasonably unhappy and discontented person I met during that period was in the tenements.

Shortly after eight-thirty one sunshiny morning, with just enough nip in the air, I was hurrying along East Twenty-sixth Street sorting over a handful of complaints when a hand clutched my arm. Glancing up as I was brought to a halt my eyes stared into as discontented and unhappy a face as I had ever seen.

“Where are you going?” the woman whose hand still clutched my shoulder demanded, and the movement of her lips breaking up the expression of discontent somewhat, I recognized one of the best known of American women novelists.

“How do you happen to be out so early?” I countered. “I remember your telling me that you never allowed anything to break into your mornings—that you always worked until noon.”

“Work!” she exclaimed, throwing out her hand in a gesture of despair. “What’s the use of work? I can’t sell a line—not one line. They only want war, war, nothing but war. War! I’m sick of it. Why will people read about the war?”

“Because we’ve all got somebody at the front, I reckon—sons, brothers, husbands, sweethearts, or at least a friend,” I replied, trying to make my tone pleasant.

There could be no doubt about the woman’s harassed state of mind, whatever the cause. There were deep furrows between her brows, and the lines at the corners of her eyes looked more like turkey feet than those of a crow.

“I have not,” she exulted. “Not one drop of my blood is in this war. My family don’t believe in war. We——”

“I’ve always noticed,” I cut in, “that you conscientious objectors to war are damned careful to live and own property in a country that does believe in war.”

My cheeks burned, and I have an idea that I closely resembled a spitting wildcat. But I had listened to all of that sort of talk I was going to swallow from Hildegarde Hook and her “we villagers” ilk.

“My dear!” she exclaimed, and I saw that my one poor little cuss word had shocked her. “I had no idea that you felt so—so keenly about—about the matter. If I had, of course——”

“Well, I do feel keenly about this war. I feel keenly with every drop of blood in my body. There’s no use discussing it. You were speaking of your work. If you’d do publicity work——”

“Publicity work? I’d be only too glad to, but they say I’ve no training.”

No training! A woman who had written a half-score of popular novels, a number of short stories, and a multitude of articles!—no training!

“But did they know who you are? Did you give your name?” I asked—the idea that this woman did not have sufficient training as a writer to do publicity work seemed the height of absurdity.

She shook her head. She had tried every organization, she assured me. At the beginning of hostilities she might have gotten a position in Washington City, but the salary seemed too small. Now she regretted having refused that—if she had only known that the war would last so long, and that people would continue to read only war stories!

She was over her head in debt, she told me. Every piece of property she possessed had been mortgaged up to the hilt. If the war continued she would be on the street, without even a roof to cover her. What must she do?

Yet when I told her what I was doing I saw the surprise in her eyes change to contempt. It was all right to go through the tenements, even to live in them, for the sake of getting material. To live there for the sake of making both ends meet, to make my living, or even to take money for my work! That was another matter—put me quite beyond the pale of her respect.

When I assured her that, beginning at one dollar a day, I had worked my way up to ninety dollars a month, I saw that the last amount sounded good to her. And I also saw that even as the salary offered by the government had not been large enough to get her to work for her country, ninety dollars was not sufficient to cause her to forget her “position” as a novelist. It was a case of debt rather than dishonor.

Suddenly she discovered a reason to take a hurried departure. I felt no inclination to detain her. While working my way from a dollar a day to ninety the month I had learned

The chiefest of many reasons why tenement-dwellers appeared happily content during the war were: First, those who had sons, brothers, husbands, uncles, sweethearts, or cousins to the remotest degree in the service felt that they were doing their duty, a proud duty, to their country; second, workers were receiving a living wage, a vast majority living decently for the first time in their lives; third, they believed, they sincerely believed, that they were helping to “make the world safe for democracy.”

They were convinced that the United States had entered the war, taken their sons across the Atlantic “that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” They believed it as they believed in God, as they believed in their own existence.

The older ones, those who had come to the country as immigrants, believed that America had actually become the wonderful Promised Land of their dreams. For hadn’t they lived to see their own sons march down Fifth Avenue shoulder to shoulder with the sons of money kings? Didn’t their daughters, on coming home nights, tell of the daughter of yet another money king working in the same room, actually taking orders from her?

They had lived to see the stigma taken off work. A human soul was a human soul, regardless of the “guinea’s stamp.”

Once the war was won they believed that condition would continue—that the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful would continue to work shoulder to shoulder with their own. They believed that the downfall of German imperialism meant an end to human cootyism in the United States—a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

How many times did I see the light that never was on sea or land shining in the eyes of a tenement mother as she told me of her son sleeping under the poppies in France.

“It ain’t as if he didn’t have to go some time. We all has to,” she would tell me, with swimming eyes as her work-gnarled fingers twisted her gingham apron. “He couldn’t have gone a better way—for his country. He said that ’imself, when he was leavin’. ‘Mother,’ he says to me the last time he was home from camp, ‘mother, I wants you to promise that you won’t grieve none if—if I goes West. We all has to go some time, and a fellow couldn’t go a better way than for his country. I wants you to promise me, mother.’”

I believe two of the happiest persons I ever met were an old Jew and his wife. Going through a tenement, a decently kept house, I was directed by the janitor to a flat, second floor front, east, as containing the only dog in her house without a license. A tousle-haired woman with a dirty face and grouch opened the door.

“Naw, I ain’t got no dog,” she said, and she tried to shut the door in my face. Being warned by the janitor I had put the toe of my shoe in.

“What do you call that behind you?—a horse?” I asked, as a yellow-and-white mutt, almost as ill conditioned as the woman, jumped down from the bed in the alcove and stood at her heels.

“Git out from here,” she railed at the dog as she aimed a kick at it with a foot incased in an unlaced run-down shoe, without a stocking. “’Tain’t mine. I wouldn’t tell you no lie. I’m too much of a lady to lie about a dog. It belongs to my son; he brought the mutt home from camp before they sent ’im away. I’m just keeping it for ’im.”

“Is your son in France?” I asked, for at that time having a soldier in the family was the touch that made the whole world kin.

She shook her head. “They’ve sent ’im to another trainin’-camp down South.” Then recognizing the note of sympathy in my voice, she threw open the door and invited me in.

It was the dirtiest flat in a decently kept tenement-house that I had ever entered. There was plenty of substantial furniture—chairs, a round oak dining-table, a good deal table, and an abundance of cooking utensils and crockery. Dirt! The floor was strewn with newspapers, crusts of bread, potato-peel, dirt, and more dirt.

“Seems like they oughtn’t to make me pay license for my son’s dog an’ him a soldier?”

“That’s a nice dining-table,” I parried, for in spite of her dirt if her son was her sole support I was willing to give her time to take out a dog license.

Being Irish, at the mention of her table she began to boast. That was not to be compared to the one in her front room. The furniture in her front room was something grand. All the furniture in her flat was of the best, she never having been a believer in “cheap John stuff.” She’d like to show me her front room if it wasn’t that Dan’l, her husband, was such a one for throwing things around.

On my asking if her soldier son were her only child, I learned that she had one other living, a boy of twelve. Her husband “worked for the city,” got thirty dollars a week. But what was that to support a family on. Seemed like a rich city like New York oughter be able to pay better wages. Also it seemed like the government oughter pay more to the family of soldiers, to make up for taking them away. Her son, besides making good money as a plumber, was “in politics” for weeks before and during elections; he more than doubled his wages by working evenings.

As I was taking my leave she had the grace to apologize for her “things bein’ strewed around.” She used to take pleasure in her flat, she assured me, but now that the house had run down so there was no use wearing herself out trying to keep things up.

“What caused the house to go down so?” I inquired, glancing around the well-swept hall and stairs.

“Jews,” she replied, indicating the flat above her own. “I done let the janitor know what I think of her, takin’ dirty Jews in the house with decent Christians.”

Because of Eleanor I have a soft spot in my heart for Jews. Eleanor was my desk-mate during my first two years in the high school. She was a few years older than I, indeed I looked upon her as quite a young lady; but I thought then, and I never have changed my mind, that she was one of the loveliest and most beautiful girls I have ever known. No one could object to living in the house with Eleanor.

Once when living in a New York hotel I had seen three persons, unmistakably gentle people, turned away—told there were no rooms. After they left, the room-clerk smirkingly remarked on the gall of “such people,” thinking they’d slip in, when they knew that hotel never took Jews. The Sea Foam, I was told by the head waiter, would let every room stand empty before taking in Jews.

Recalling all this I determined to see the Jew whose coming had caused this tenement-house to deteriorate so hopelessly that a dirty-faced Irishwoman should lose heart and ambition. Though the janitor had told me that the dog on the third floor had a license, I climbed the stairs.

The man who opened the door might have stepped from the pages of an old illustrated Bible. He was small, old, and slightly bent. He had a long gray beard, wore a black skull-cap, and heavy horn-rimmed spectacles rested on the bridge of his long hooked nose. The dressing-gown which he wore over his coat had a purple lining.

On learning my business he invited me in—oh, I must come in and see their dog, their grandson’s dog. The flat contained three rooms, an alcove, and a tiny hall. In the front room, at the end of the tiny hall, I found the old man’s mate, and like him she might have stepped fresh from the pages of an ancient Bible.

She also wore her dressing-gown, more gaudily colored than her husband’s, over her clothes. It was a chilly day, and unlike the Irishwoman, who had a coal-fire roaring in her stove, they had no heat excepting the sun shining in at their two front windows.

On a table at the old woman’s elbow sat a glass decanter about half full of purple wine, two wine-glasses, and a plate of unusual-appearing small cakes. Knowing it to be a Jewish holiday I fancied that I had interrupted some religious rite, and was for beating a hasty retreat. No, no, I must stay.

It was for their grandson. A stranger coming into their home so opportunely and joining them would insure a blessing on their house. Surely I wouldn’t refuse to join them in drinking to the health of their grandson, an American soldier somewhere in France.

Then it all came out, the reason for their little celebration. They had that morning been notified by the government that their grandson had been cited for bravery. Yes, he had been wounded in battle.

Then there was a short silence and I guessed the thought, the fear, that crossed their minds. It was not for long; they pushed it aside. It was for his country, America.

While sipping their grape-juice and dividing my seed-cake with the black-and-tan dog, the excuse for my visit, I learned bit by bit that this grandson was all they had. Ever since the accident through which the old man lost the sight of one eye this young man had been practically their sole support.

On my suggesting that they must miss his wages, both husband and wife quickly dissented. No, they had the government’s allotment. Besides,—the old woman glanced at the alcove in which I saw a narrow bed piled high with feather mattresses and pillows,—she kept a boarder. Yes, it was her grandson’s room, and the boarder was her grandson’s friend—a good young man, though not strong and handsome like the soldier who had been cited for bravery.

Unwillingly they admitted that there had been a time, just at first, when Uncle Sam was not so prompt as they had hoped he would be. Their allotment was late. Yes, it was more than a month, but what could you expect with so many soldiers on the pay-roll! The old grandmother had applied to the Red Cross. Since then they had had no trouble.

That was the key to the situation in the tenements during the war—the Red Cross. But for the Red Cross millions might have suffered, and perhaps thousands actually starved. While Uncle Sam was occupied with getting his fighting machine ready for action, the Red Cross stepped into the breach and saw to it that the families of his fighting men did not suffer.

A dozen times a day, during the war and after peace was declared, I entered homes that had been kept together by the Red Cross. It is the one philanthropic organization against which I heard no complaint, not one.

Strange as it may seem, the one human being against whom I never heard a word of censure was President Wilson. In spite of the abuse heaped on him by the newspapers, and the continued faultfinding of their richer fellow citizens, I never heard a tenement woman mention President Wilson’s name, or refer to him, except in praise and gratitude. His pictures in the tenements were almost as numerous as those of the Virgin Mary.

To the tenement woman President Wilson was the man who won the war, brought their sons back home, and stood for a continuation of Democratic conditions as existing during the war. Hundreds of tenement women gave me three reasons why they wished Mr. McAdoo in the White House.

The first was always because he was the President’s son-in-law—as Mr. Wilson couldn’t have a third term they thought “they” ought to send his daughter’s husband. Their two other reasons were: he had started the raise in wages, and had been the means of lowering the price of coal.

After the nominations, when my talk with tenement women turned to politics, I used to ask for an opinion of the nominees. Speaking of the man chosen by the Democrats they would reply:

“Seems like they might’ve done better’n get a man who’d divorced the mother of his children. Don’t look right to me.”

Political parties, take notice! The tenement woman has a vote.