No district of any big city in the world has such a desolate miserable look as the "charity blocks" in New York. They are grouped a little everywhere. For this, New York is like the body of Job, with sores and wounds all over.

Around all the gas houses near the river, north, south, east and west, take any of the gay streets of the metropolis. Forty-second Street, Thirty-fourth Street, Twenty-third and Fourteenth Streets. With what dirt and misery they start on the west, how they get brighter and gayer towards the middle, on Seventh Avenue, how they reach the climax at Fifth Avenue, and how the Third Avenue elevated in the east and Ninth Avenue elevated in the west cuts off the ugly part of the city, like the butcher who trims around the meat. The cheap tallow for the poor and the centre piece for the rich, and all comes from one and the same animal. Just as the meat, in proportion to its nutrition, costs the poor dearer than the rich, so do the apartments of the poor cost more than the Fifth Avenue houses, taking into consideration the comfort of the latter. As a matter of fact it is well known that Cherry, Henry, Monroe and Hester Street properties are more profitable, proportionately to the money invested, than Fifth Avenue apartments. No vacant house is to be seen around the celebrated "lung blocks." The terrible stench coming from across the river, where the garbage of the city is dumped, has killed the sense of smell of the poor wretches living there. They wonder at you when you keep handkerchief to your nose while passing. It is an ordeal to pass along Avenue A between Twenty-fifth and Thirty-fourth Streets. The poisonous gas combines with the stench of the slaughter house, and the piled up garbage in the river. Still the streets are full of children, playing, and God only knows why the poor have so many children.

My work brought me into daily contact with the children. "The nutty scribbler," they called me, the Italian boys pronouncing my title with their peculiar accent; the Russian with theirs and the Jewish boys translating it altogether into their idiom. Poor, underfed and oversmart children; ready-witted and half-witted. Child and old man. Buying sour pickles instead of bread when they get a penny, ready to do anything for a puff from a cigarette. Their ideal is not to become a workingman. They know too well where that leads. Kid Herman, Kid Twist and Red Larry are their heroes, and in childish contradiction, the policeman is their idol. How they swarm around a newspaper when there is "anything" in it. An interesting murder case, a robbery, a street shooting, these are the sensations of their lives. When the father comes home drunk they envy him and will soon imitate him. They help the burglars hide, and chase the pickpocket over the roofs, together with the detectives, giving advice in turn to the hunted how to escape and to the policeman how to catch him; rejoicing when the bad one has escaped and booing him along the street when he is handcuffed. And every year their domain extends a little further until it approaches the rich. A block from Riverside drive and two from Fifth Avenue—extending continually, like a cankerous wound.

One evening I visited a family that was pensioned by the charities. The father had just been discharged from the consumptive hospital as cured and I was instructed to see whether he was well enough to work. A plan was on foot to open a soda water stand for him, to keep him outdoors, lest he again become sick.

They had five children. The oldest, a girl, was twelve years old. It was ten o'clock and I expressed wonder that the children were not in the house. The mother's answer was not straight.

"They are playing, they are visiting neighbours, I sent them away," were her answers to my questions. I sensed a mystery and decided to wait until they came home. I talked with the man and asked him his prospects for the future, to which he hopefully answered that he was sure to get his old place in the clothing factory as presser. I questioned him about his life in the hospital and sought every way to prolong my visit. The mother was very anxious to get rid of me, but I stuck to the job. About half past ten the children came in, all pale and worn-out, hardly saying good-night, but going straight to bed.

"From where do you all come so late?" I asked.

"From the street," the mother answered and pushed them into the other room. I felt that it was useless to insist, so I retired. The street was deserted. No child's play was going on and the children of the applicant did not appear to be the sort who would stay until the last. I walked up and down the block without meeting a child. At the corner, near the gas house, on Fourteenth Street, I met a policeman and talked the matter over with him.

"The street has turned good these last few weeks. Don't know what's the matter," was his remark.

I did not agree with him and walked up and down the street until past midnight, when I decided to continue my investigation the next morning.

A postcard advised the office that I would be busy the following morning and could not report. At eight o'clock I was near the house of the consumptive family. The children all went to school. Not to compromise my work I stayed away until noon. The children came for lunch and returned to school. It was early in the spring and a glorious day. I could not help thinking of the beauty of the field and forest on such days, when the green is shooting out from the soil in the gardens, when the plough is carving out slices from mother earth and the birds are singing in the trees. I could not help thinking how life has taken these poor people out of their homes in the little villages of Russia, Poland, Italy and Roumania and has crowded them, nay, herded them together in what is called a tenement row, to sleep there and to work in a sweatshop in the day. How do they feel when they think of their homes, when they see a green leaf, when they hear the song of a bird? When one has colour in his face they say that he still has the "home colour." When they mention a feat of strength or endurance they add: "It was my first year here you know."

At three P. M. I was back at my post. I watched the children come from school. With their many-coloured dresses they looked from far away like a swarm of butterflies, but as they approached they became less gay, less expansive.

Talk about the influence of home on children! Among a group of children I spied the oldest girl of the consumptive man. She walked more slowly than the others, as though she wanted to retard something that waited for her at home. Finally she took leave of the others and entered the hall. By and bye the other sisters and two brothers came. I waited outside. A quarter of an hour later the oldest girl and the second brother, about nine years old, came out, still chewing the piece of bread they had for tea. They walked hand in hand, and I followed them. They turned the corner and entered a tenement house near Fourteenth Street. I intended to follow them upstairs when I observed many other children of about the same age coming. Some were as young as six and seven, however. Some were biting apples, others, boys of nine to twelve years, throwing away the last bit of the butt of a cigarette, with the regretful gesture of the workingman before the factory door closes on him and the bell rings.

"Where in heaven are you all going?" I asked a group of boys.

"None of your rotten business," was the reply in chorus. I withdrew and watched. One after another they went up the stairs until I had counted nearly a hundred. When I saw no more coming I went up the stairs, the dark, ill-smelling stairs, until I reached the third floor. It was a rear yard house. Dark, dirty, dingy. On the third floor I stopped and listened. A buzzing noise came from one of the apartments, as though a thousand hands were crushing silk paper between the fingers. Soon a door opened. A little girl came out. I did not speak to her. Interested, I entered the apartment without knocking at the door. In a room 10 x 15, were two long tables and on both sides sat the little boys and girls on benches. On the tables were piled up all sorts of candies and chocolates, which the children put in paper boxes that lay near them. So engrossed were they in their work that they hardly lifted an eye to see who had entered. A big burly Italian met me and asked what I wanted.

"Is Mr. Salvator Razaza living here?" I asked.

"No Razaza. What you want come here. Get out and shut up." And not very gently he pushed me out.

So this was where they all went. So this was what they were doing. Filling boxes with candy when they had no bread to eat. Here was the place where they buried their youth—the children of the poor!

Outside I saw an old man grinding a hand organ, but there were no children to dance around him on the sidewalk. The street was deserted.

"Rotten business," remarked the old fellow. "No children. Me not know what the matt. All the bambinos morte, sick? Sacre Madonna," the old man shook his head, packed up his organ and thoughtfully went away, carrying his music to other places, where the children are not packing candies in boxes while their stomachs are empty. No, no, old man. The children are not dead. They never die. "The children of the poor never die," as Mrs. Barker puts it. They pack candies, but the mystery was only half solved. The rest was easy to get at, late at night, when the children of the consumptive man came home. They had to unburden themselves. All five were working there—piece work, and they were making as much as forty cents a day, the five of them combined. More than a hundred were working in that factory, while many other hundreds of children worked in other factories which had of late started in the neighbourhood. Willow plumes, artificial flowers and packing candies were the chief trades, while the making of cigarettes and labelling of patent medicine bottles and boxes occupied a minor position. On close investigation I found that more than fifty per cent. of the people pensioned by charity had their children at work in these murderous shops.

Through a ruse I obtained entrance to several of them. It is so terrible, so unbelievable that I keep from describing it, knowing beforehand that you will say "exaggerated." One hundred children in one room, windows and doors tightly closed. So that the attention of people may not be attracted the children must not talk, must not sing. One little gas burner in the middle of the room is all the light there is. The toilet is almost always out of order. The piece work has so sharpened their ambition that their little fingers fly and they do not want to spare the time for personal necessities. The little girls and boys strong enough to keep back all these hours soon get bladder diseases—while the weaker ones—well, their clothes tell the tale. But the ladies want willow plumes and artificial flowers and Miss So and So has to be given a nice looking box of candy by her beau. The rich men have to get richer and give more money to the charity institutions, and hospitals must be endowed with millions and the sanatoriums for the poor consumptives and the cheap milk mission and the free doctor—all this must be kept up and costs money—and money must be made.

When I reported what I had found out I was told by the Manager not to report it to the Factory Inspectors, because it was so much better that the children should train themselves from early youth to shift for themselves and become self-supporting, and that ultimately they would have to go to work—what was the difference? I was told that I was not telling them anything new, only I should find out who the children were working for and how much they were earning, so that the pension could be reduced accordingly.

"But they are little tots," I argued.

"Well, they are all older than you think," I was answered, "and idleness is so very dangerous."

"But the places are unsanitary," I further insisted.

"They can't build special factories for them, it's too costly in the first place, and secondly it would make too much noise and they would not be permitted to work."

"They will all get sick—consumptive," I said.

"Well, well, it is not so terrible. They have a remarkable power of resistance, and if they do get sick—we will take care of them. That's what we are here for. Mr. Baer, you are an anarchist."

Thus ended my interview on behalf of the children of the poor. I did something on my own hook.

The result?

The factories were moved away to another place. They could easily do it. They did not build any special houses for the trade. Later on I learned that one of the biggest concerns in willow plumes did half of their work through outside contractors and that the price was so low that no woman could make a living at it. The head of this concern is one of the biggest philanthropists and contributors to charities. Still he might not know! Just as the young lady does not know from where her Christmas pleasure money comes—and distraction is absolutely needed.