Revolution and Other Essays | Page 5

man cannot get food and shelter whenever
he feels like working for it. Modern man has first to find the work, and
in this he is often unsuccessful. Then misery becomes acute. This acute
misery is chronicled daily in the newspapers. Let several of the
countless instances be cited.
In New York City lived a woman, Mary Mead. She had three children:
Mary, one year old; Johanna, two years old; Alice, four years old. Her
husband could find no work. They starved. They were evicted from
their shelter at 160 Steuben Street. Mary Mead strangled her baby,
Mary, one year old; strangled Alice, four years old; failed to strangle
Johanna, two years old, and then herself took poison. Said the father to
the police: "Constant poverty had driven my wife insane. We lived at
No. 160 Steuben Street until a week ago, when we were dispossessed. I
could get no work. I could not even make enough to put food into our
mouths. The babies grew ill and weak. My wife cried nearly all the
time."
"So overwhelmed is the Department of Charities with tens of thousands
of applications from men out of work that it finds itself unable to cope
with the situation."--New York Commercial, January 11, 1905.
In a daily paper, because he cannot get work in order to get something
to eat, modern man advertises as follows:

"Young man, good education, unable to obtain employment, will sell to
physician and bacteriologist for experimental purposes all right and
title to his body. Address for price, box 3466, Examiner."
"Frank A. Mallin went to the central police station Wednesday night
and asked to be locked up on a charge of vagrancy. He said he had been
conducting an unsuccessful search for work for so long that he was sure
he must be a vagrant. In any event, he was so hungry he must be fed.
Police Judge Graham sentenced him to ninety days'
imprisonment."--San Francisco Examiner.
In a room at the Soto House, 32 Fourth Street, San Francisco, was
found the body of W. G. Robbins. He had turned on the gas. Also was
found his diary, from which the following extracts are made
"March 3.--No chance of getting anything here. What will I do?
"March 7.--Cannot find anything yet.
"March 8.--Am living on doughnuts at five cents a day.
"March 9.--My last quarter gone for room rent.
"March 10.--God help me. Have only five cents left. Can get nothing to
do. What next? Starvation or--? I have spent my last nickel to- night.
What shall I do? Shall it be steal, beg, or die? I have never stolen,
begged, or starved in all my fifty years of life, but now I am on the
brink--death seems the only refuge.
"March 11.--Sick all day--burning fever this afternoon. Had nothing to
eat to-day or since yesterday noon. My head, my head. Good-bye, all."
How fares the child of modern man in this most prosperous of lands? In
the city of New York 50,000 children go hungry to school every
morning. From the same city on January 12, a press despatch was sent
out over the country of a case reported by Dr. A. E. Daniel, of the New
York Infirmary for Women and Children. The case was that of a babe,
eighteen months old, who earned by its labour fifty cents per week in a

tenement sweat-shop.
"On a pile of rags in a room bare of furniture and freezing cold, Mrs.
Mary Gallin, dead from starvation, with an emaciated baby four months
old crying at her breast, was found this morning at 513 Myrtle Avenue,
Brooklyn, by Policeman McConnon of the Flushing Avenue Station.
Huddled together for warmth in another part of the room were the
father, James Gallin, and three children ranging from two to eight years
of age. The children gazed at the policeman much as ravenous animals
might have done. They were famished, and there was not a vestige of
food in their comfortless home."--New York Journal, January 2, 1902.
In the United States 80,000 children are toiling out their lives in the
textile mills alone. In the South they work twelve-hour shifts. They
never see the day. Those on the night shift are asleep when the sun
pours its life and warmth over the world, while those on the day shift
are at the machines before dawn and return to their miserable dens,
called "homes," after dark. Many receive no more than ten cents a day.
There are babies who work for five and six cents a day. Those who
work on the night shift are often kept awake by having cold water
dashed in their faces. There are children six years of age who have
already to their credit eleven months' work on the night shift.