A mistaken idea floats about that the whole east side is socialistic. I made a special investigation to find out how it stood. I found some men who were still Socialists, some who had been, some who still pretended to be, some still clinging to it as a profession.

But nowhere did I find any one hating the doctrine so profoundly as on Third Street and Second Avenue, where lives Mrs. Rachael Rosenberg. She rents out furnished rooms. The first thing she asked me when I applied for a room was:

"Are you a Socialist? If you are, I don't want you. If you are not, we will talk business."

"I am not a Socialist," I told her. "Still, I never heard of people refusing them as boarders!"

"I suppose you know all about Socialism from books," Mrs. Rosenberg put in sneeringly. "But I tell you one never knows anybody or anything until you come in close contact with 'em. I will only go and see that the stew does not burn, and after I will tell you what I know."

And this is the story as she told it to me:

"My husband's name is Moritz Rosenberg. We came here in President Cleveland's time—which is more than you and many others could say. At home he was—what's the use to tell you what! Here he became a cloak operator. After the Cleveland financial crisis, when men died of starvation, I decided to help out my Moritz. We lived on Catharine Street, near the river, in two rooms only. I put out a shingle 'Boarders Wanted,' and got two the same day. I bought a double bed for them. Each one paid four dollars a month, so my whole rent cost me two dollars. And that was not all. I gave them breakfast and supper for two dollars a week. Things were cheap then. I actually earned our food.

"Why shouldn't a woman help her husband especially if God has not given her any children? Well, after a while we moved out to a bigger apartment on Monroe Street, four rooms with bath and all other conveniences. So I rented two more rooms to four more people. It gave me a lot of work, but we saved all my Moritz earned and more.

"He had a steady job at Kuntzman's and worked there year in, year out. He had started with Kuntzman's and worked there—yes, strike or no strike, good season, slack season, fourteen dollars a week every week.

"I treat my boarders well, so that once moved in no one moves out, unless his wife comes from Europe or he marries, if he is a single man. I shall live many years for each dollar I made as a marriage broker—and every couple as happy as could be.

"Well, one day I lost a boarder. He had his foot caught in a machine. They took him to the hospital at noon, and in the evening he was dead.

"It was too bad. He was a nice fellow. But I, who was I to mourn him? I paid sixteen dollars rent. So I put out a shingle the same day 'Boarders wanted.' On the next day I got a new boarder. I was not particular then. Especially when I saw a nice clean young man, with teeth as white as grains of polished rice; and a voice he had like silk, like pure silk, so soft and nice. He did not bargain, he did not talk. Five dollars a month, five dollars. I asked him what time he had to get up in the morning, because if he had to get up later than the other bedfellow, he should sleep near the wall, not to be disturbed, or if he had to get up earlier the other will sleep near the wall. He did not care. It was all fixed up and in the evening he brought his trunk. It was as heavy as stone—full of books.

"After supper my other boarders used to sit at a game of cards. Not that they were gamblers, but what else should they have done? They drank tea, soda water, a can of beer sometimes. Sometimes my Moritz sat with them for a while—just to make them feel at home. Believe me, I did not lose at them. They paid for tea and sugar. Why shouldn't they? Was I their mother? In America one has to pay for everything.

"But that new boarder I got, he wouldn't play cards and wouldn't drink beer. He sat in a corner and read books till late at night.

"Then after a few weeks the others, too, stopped playing cards. They all sat up late in the night and talked. The new boarder was explaining all the time how their bosses got richer every day. Every night the same thing. He was a Socialist.

"My husband was very busy, worked overtime, Sundays, whole nights. It was already fourteen years that he worked for Kuntzman, and we had put aside a nice little sum of money.

"One evening my Moritz came home very angry. Kuntzman had engaged a new foreman, an Italian fellow, and the two of them, my husband and he, couldn't agree. After supper, I told him to go to sleep, but he did not want to. He went in to talk with the boarders. I went to bed. Late at night Moritz came in.

"'You sleep,' he said.

"'What is it?'

"'You know, that new boarder is perfectly right in what he says about bosses!' Moritz said to me.

"'What do you mean?' I asked.

"'Them bosses are making piles of money,' he explained to me as clear as day; 'they make on the men at least fifty per cent. Look at Kuntzman,' he said. 'He started out with two machines, now he has four hundred. That Socialist is right; the bosses are getting rich.'

"I told him to go to sleep and not bother about other people's fortune, but my Moritz could not sleep the whole night.

"The next evening he went again in the boarders' room to hear the Socialist talk. When he came in to sleep he told me:

"'That Socialist is absolutely right. He proved by his books. Peshe! do you know what I will do?'

"'What?' I asked.

"'Since bosses are getting rich, I will become a boss. The Socialists are right.'

"With the money we had both worked so hard to save, Moritz Rosenberg opened a shop with a partner, also one of our boarders who put in his money. And in one year we lost all we had.

"He had to go and beg Mr. Kuntzman to take him on again. I am again taking boarders.

"But no Socialist liar will ever cross my threshold, and if I lay my hands on that one—if ever I see him, with his flowing necktie and book under his arm, going around to poor people to tell them such lies! Fourteen years of our work gone on account of him—fourteen years."

A sharp chocky odor of burning meat, her stew on the stove, drove her to the kitchen. I tiptoed out of the room, ran down the stairs and kept on running for blocks and blocks, for fear of Mrs. Rosenberg.