The head investigator, a woman who was once a socialist, and considers herself now a social worker, was announced to lecture. Her subject was "Advice to consumptives living in a large city." The subject was interesting and the lecturer an acquaintance of mine, so I decided to go and hear her. When the doors opened the hall was crowded with people. It was in her own district and she had decided to make a big show. All the poor depending on her were ordered to the lecture. Willy nilly, they had to go.

An interesting lot they were as they sat huddled up in old rags, their street clothes left at home, those they had on the poorest they could find. All pale, haggard, hungry, they really needed the advice.

Mrs. B. was a good talker and had her subject well in hand. Her son is a physician and from him she got all the fine points, figures and explanations. She started out very convincingly and proved that poverty and ignorance go hand in hand and are the father and mother of tuberculosis. She went on to explain the absolute necessity of rich and wholesome food (What irony—they that get two or three dollars a week shall have rich and wholesome food!), diversion, quiet, and above all "Air, fresh air all the time—Live on the top floor, do not mind the few stairs more! Sleep on the roof in the summer, and keep your windows open! For God's sake keep your windows open!... Let the sunshine clean your room—Light and air are the greatest enemies of microbes and tuberculosis and the greatest friend of man, especially the one touched with the white plague. Breathe, breathe every time you get a chance. Purify your lungs and keep under God's blue roof the greater part of your time."

Thus she finished. There was the usual applause and the usual questions by some outsiders, and that was all. At the finish we walked together, Mrs. B. and I, for a half hour and we spoke about the poor and their condition, about the iniquity of the present system, and her former work for Socialism, and she told me how she had pawned her watch and chain to pay the printers that were setting up the first Socialist weekly. Naturally I was astonished to hear that. I knew that she was one of the most cruel questioners at the office. If something was to be found out she was appealed to. She had a heart of stone, of granite, and her sensuous mouth could assume a smile that set the poor applicant trembling.

"And where is he now, your husband? Do you think that I am such a fool as to believe a single word of what you say?" And when the woman would cry she would say "Rot, rot, rubbish. I am too old in the business." Such was her attitude. How could she be so sincere when she spoke to others? How could she pawn her watch for a struggling Socialist paper? Was she once better, had her work killed her heart? Thus was I thinking when I left her, and was already trying to excuse her because I found that I too had, in my work for the Charity Institution, lost a good deal of my faith in mankind.

Some weeks afterwards, I was investigating the case of a tailor who was taken to the hospital suffering from the white plague. He had a wife and four children ranging from three to fourteen years. The woman had applied to charity and the office had a suspicion that the man belonged to an organisation that paid a sick benefit and was consequently not entitled to charity. I found out, through the secretary, that the man had once been a member but having fallen in arrears with his dues he was disqualified and was not receiving any benefits. The family was living on a first floor rear apartment in Monroe Street, two rooms, where the sunshine never comes, with windows opening in the yard, an ill-smelling dirty yard, and the people had no idea of hygiene. They never kept separate the dishes and pillows used by the sick one. They ate from them and slept on them.

The children, pale and sick, three of them short-sighted, the mother and little child with inflamed eyes, were in a horrible condition.

I immediately advised the office and succeeded in getting the family moved to the Bronx, near a park, and on the fifth floor. So little were the children accustomed to light that the first few days they felt dizzy. Their clothes and bedding was disinfected. Hurriedly the family was put on the pension list, rent, coal and three dollars per week. It was not much, it was not enough, but it was the best I could obtain for the unfortunate people.

A few weeks later the oldest girl too was taken to the hospital and the mother was treated in one of the clinics in the neighbourhood. She obtained two quarts of milk a day free.

They had not been long in the country—four or five years; had previously lived in a little village in Northern Russia. The man was a dealer in grains there, was always in the open air. The sudden change to a big city, a sweatshop, was too much for him, too much for all of them. Several months later, while I was in the neighbourhood, I went to visit the family. At the door of the fifth floor, I was told they had moved away long ago. Where? The people did not know, nor did the janitor, nor did the neighbours. When I returned to the office I looked up the records and found their new address, 171st Street. I took a note of it, and as my work brought me there a few days later, I called in. I was astonished to find the people living in a basement—the rooms were next to the engine room. It was a big apartment house and the heat in the rooms was suffocating.

"Woman," I cried, "what have you done? Why did you move from the other place?"

"The investigator told me to," was her answer.

"But you are killing yourself, ruining the broken health of your children."

She shrugged her shoulders, the children coughed, and even the baby had eyeglasses on. It was the district of Mrs. B.—the investigator who lectured so well on tuberculosis. I waited for her in the office and asked her why she had moved the family from the top floor to the basement.

"I can't run up so many stairs every day," she answered angrily. "I have a big district and they all live on top floors. Basements are cheaper and it is easier for me," she went on.

"But, Mrs. B., the whole family is touched by the plague. You know better than they do how necessary it is for them to live in light and airy rooms. You lecture on the subject."

To all this the investigator answered, "It's easy to lecture but to climb so many floors a day is too hard. Let them live in the basement. They will not die. It's not so terrible. Let them sit in the park ... let them go up on the roof."

No amount of talk could persuade her that it was dangerous for the people to live, eat, sleep in the basement, and when I had succeeded in convincing the manager that a change should be made, and I called on the woman, she was already so drilled by the investigator that she claimed her legs hurt her and her heart was weak and I had to give it up. She would not move from the basement.

A second child was taken to the hospital in a few months, but as a recompense for the mother's good behaviour the investigator did not, as usual, reduce the pension of the family.

The father died, the two older girls died, the mother with the other children returned to Russia to live ... to die.