Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

used Gideon's money. She was proud of that within herself which had impelled and compelled her to refuse it; but she wished she had it. Taking it,

which is at bottom so completely consistent, that she did not

emporary relief-or, perhaps, had it been to get permanent relief by weaving a sex spell-she would in that desperate mood have been able to compel. Unfortunately she was not seeking to be a pau

gracious alms a small part of the loot from the just wages of labor. But of real help-just wages for h

fered herself at the employer's own price. Day after day, from the first moment of the industrial day until its end, she hunted-wearily, yet unweariedly-with resolve living on after the death of hope. She answered advertisements; despite the obviously sensible warnings of the working girls she talked with she even consulted and took lists from the religious and char

emselves and attracted customers, the customers lost sight of matters of merchandise in the all-absorbing matter of sex. In offices a good-looking girl upset discipline, caused the place to degenerate into a deer-haunt in the mating season. No place did she find offering more than four dollars a week, except where the dress requirements made the nominally higher wages even less. Everywhere women's wages were based upon the assumption that women either lived at h

disguise the eagerness to have her back. She tore it up. She did not even debate the matter. It was one of her significant qualities that she never had the inclination, app

m where perhaps seventy-five girls were at work. She paused in the doorway long enough to observe the kind of work-a purely mechanical process of stitching a few trimmings in exactly the same way upon a cheap

d?" asked t

at those gir

ance rove contemptuously over the room full of workers. "I sh

y I go t

. Write you

. And within fifteen minutes she was seated in the midst of the sweating, almost nauseatingly odorous women of all ages, was toiling away at the simple task of making an ugly hat frame still more ugly by the addition of a bit of tawdry cotton ribbon, a buckle, a

she had planned to set aside for food a

el-framed spectacles set upon her snub nose, Susan saw that she had not even good health to mitigate her lot, for her color was pasty and on her dirty skin lay blotches of dull red. Except a very young girl here and there all the women had poor or bad skins. And Susan was not made disdainful by the odor which is far worse than that o

sses. Another race! The race into which she would soon be reborn under the black magic of poverty! As she glanced and reflecte

'll be dragged down." As impossible to escape the common lot as for a swimmer alone in mid-ocean to keep up in

her superior intelligence, her superior skill both of mind and of body, she could be thus dragged down and held far below her natural level? Why could she not lift herself up among

she bought from a pushcart man, the woman munched an apple with her few remnants of teeth. "Most of the girls is always kicking," said the woman. "

usan, marveling to find in this piteous creature t

Ain't you lonesome?' And I says to them, says I, 'Why, I'm used to being alone. I don't want anything else.' If they was all like me, they'd not be fightin' and drinkin' and makin' bad worse. The bosses always

e great joys of life. What a waste of pity, she now thought. She had overlooke

rt to get that profit which is the most high god of our civilization. A few of the youngest and most spirited girls-those from families containing several workers-indignantly quit. A few others murmured, but stayed on. The mass dumbly accepted the extra twist in the screw of the mighty press that was slowly squeezing them to death. Neither to them nor to Susan herself did it happen to occur that she was the cause of the general increase of hardship and misery. However, to have blamed her would have been as foolish and as unjust

first days, before the monotony of her task had begun to wear her down. Her first week's earnings were only four

pauperism. He was the most industrious and, in his small way, the most resourceful of men. He was insurance agent, toilet soap agent, piano tuner, giver of piano lessons, seller of pianos and of music on commission. He worked fourteen and sixteen hours a day. He made nominally about twelve to fifteen a week. Actually-because of the poverty of his customers and his too sympathetic nature he m

n of the only class she could hope to enter. "A woman," she decided, "can't even earn a decent living that way unless she has the money to make the right sor

most repellent seemed to her to be dependence up

eavy doses of smug morality. She felt that she could bear with almost any annoyances and humiliations to be in clean surroundings and to get food that was at least not so rotten that the eye could see it and the nose smell it. But she found all the homes full, with long waiting lists, filled for the most part, so the working girls said, with professional objects of charity. Thus she had no opportunity to judge for herself whether there was any truth in

the misfortunes which the poor bring upon themselves. It obscures the truth that modern civilization has been perverted into a huge manufacturing of decrepitude and disease, of poverty and prostitution. The

ines as wage-slaves. At two dollars a week, double what her income justified-she rented a room in a tenement flat in Bleecker street. It was a closet of a room whose thin, dirt-adorned walls were no protection against sound

n a friendly fancy to her. He was Julius Bam, nephew of the proprietor. In her third week he offered her the forewoman's place. "Y

taking a job I couldn't keep more than a day or two?

get it, or you're

here until he's making

er-with nothing for them as the result but duller brain, clumsier fingers, more wretched bodies? She realized why those above lost all patience with them, treated them with contempt. Only as one of them could any intelligent, energetic human being have any sympathy for them, stupid and incompetent from birth, made ever more and more stupid and incapable by the degrading lives they led. She could scarcely conceal her repulsion for their dirty bodies, their stained an

in some work, Miss

ng here. You ou

eart beat wildly. She wa

u can stay as long as you like-as long as your health lasts. But isn't there s

s no one,"

hat is, anyone who looks like you. I wouldn't suggest such a thing to a fool. But you coul

athetic eyes, her look and her habit of reticence, were always attracting confidences from such unexpec

marry the sort of man that wanted me. Then my looks went-like a flash-it often happens that way with us Irish girls. But I can get on. I know how to deal with

d-and Susan knew it was for the baby's sake that this good heart had hardened itself to the dirty work of

made her point with Susan-had set her to thinking less indefinitely. "I must take hold!" Susan kept saying to

elp wanted and situations wanted. Susan read the columns diligently. At first they acted upon her like an intoxicant, filling her not merely with hope but with confident

than living wages because they did not have to rely upon their wages for their support. And those help wanted advertisements were simply appeals for more girls of that sort-for cheaper girls; or they were inserted by employment agencies, masquerading in the newspaper as employers and lying i

her spare time at those advertisements in two papers she bought and one she bor

grand they are and how well off you'll be. But nobody'd be fool enough to answer one of 'em unless she was out of a job and had to get another and didn't care

ferent it was from the stories she used to get out of the Sunday school library and dream over! These almost actualities of getting on had nothing in them about honesty and virtue. According to them it was always some sort of meanness or trickery; and the particular meanness or tricks were, in these practical schools of success in session at each lunch hour, related in detail as lessons in how to get on. If the success under discussion was a

certain it was that, wherever she had the opportunity to see for herself, success came only by hardness of heart, by tricks and cheats. Certain it was also that the general belief among the workers was that success could be got in those ways only-and this belief made the falsehood, if it was a falsehood, or the partial truth,

ndure patiently and for the most part even cheerfully, how careful she was never to say or to suggest anything that might put ideas of what life might be, of what it was for the comfortable few, into the minds of these girls who never had known and could only be made wretched by knowing! How fortunate for them, she thought, that they had gone to schools where they met only their own kind! How fortunate that the devouring monster of industry had snatched the

ys trying to do the poor good-they ought all to be suppressed! If someone could tell them how to cease to be poor, that would indeed be good. But such a thing would be impossible. In Sutherland, where the best off hadn't so painfully much more than the worst off, and where everybody but the idle and the drunken, and even they most of the time, had enough to eat, and a decent place to sleep, and some kind of Sunday clothes-in Sutherland the poverty was less than in Cincinnati, infinitely less than in this v

abolished. She listened, but he did not convince her. He sounded vague and dreamy-as fanta

to know what was going on up in the light and air. She found every day news of great doings, of wonderful rises, of rich rewards for industry and thrift, of abounding prosperity and of opportunity fairly forcing itself into acceptance. But all this applied only to the few so strangely and so luckily chosen, while the mass was rejected. For that mass, from earliest childhood until death, there was only toil

ssantly to her shrinking heart. "Some

d toil-wrecked hands. Look at my masses of wrinkles, at my rags, at my leaky and rotten shoes. Think of my aloneness-not a friend-feared and cast off by my relatives because they are afraid they will have to give me food and lodgings. Look at m

take hold," cried Susan

ce was so beaming bright that Susan, despite her being clad in garments on

lessings the dear Master'll provide. My pastor tells me I'm the finest example of Christian fortitude he ever Saw. But"-and Mrs. Tucker

a place? The

en 'em with myself, when there's so many that has

ng to do? What pl

'll provide somethin

ese

nt. Not only was she not to be helped, but also she must help

knew it!" she cried. "Don't

rents were far, far beyond her ability to pay. She might as well think of moving to the Waldorf. She and Mrs. Tucker had to be content with a dark room on the fifth floor, opening on a damp air shaft whose odor was so foul that in comparison the Clinton Place shaft was as the pure breath of the open sky. For this shelter-more than one-half the free and proud citizens of prosperous America dwelling in cities occupy its like, or worse they paid three dollars a week-a dollar and a half

mselves, to their own earnings at work, they would be no better off than she, or at best so little better off that the difference was unimportant. If to live decently in New York took an income of fifteen dollars a week, what did it matter whether one got five or ten or twelve? Any wages below fifteen meant a steady downward drag-meant exposure to the dirt and poison of poverty tenements-meant the steady

made her up a kind of bed in the corner. They would not let her pay anything. She had rheumatism horribly, some kind of lung trouble, and the almost universal and repulsive catarrh that preys upon working people. Her hair had dwindled to a

n shocked them by harshly ordering them to be silent. "If God hears you," she said, "He'll think you're mo

w so that she had to prepare her food for swallowing by first pressing it with her fingers against her upper teeth. Used as Susan was to hearing horrors in this region where disease and accident preyed upon every family, she fled from the room and walked shuddering about the streets-the streets with their incessant march past of blighted and blasted

did not stay out long-Mrs.

marrying a Protestant, she being a Catholic. How ignorant some people is! O

d Susan, "did you

an martyrs," said Mrs. Tucker. "I had a good sc

Nero or of living under that God you and Mrs. Reardon

have afforded it. As it was all she ventu

nyon. She was wearing her summer dress still-old and dingy but clean. That look of neatness about the feet-that charm of a well-shaped foot and a well-turned ankle properly set off-had disappeared-with her the surest sign of the extreme of desperate poverty. Her shoes were much scuffed, were even slightly down at the heel; her sailor hat would have looked only the worse had it had a fresh ribbon on its crown.

em, the poor-the masses, all but a few of the human race-were hurried f

nding at full length before her. "Who is that pale, stooped girl?" she thought. "How dreary and sad she looks! How hard she is fighting to make her clothes look decent, when they aren't! She must be something like me-only much worse off." And then she realized that she was gazing at her own image, was pitying her own self. The room she and Mrs. Tucker and the old scrubwoman occupied w

he once attractive hair now looking poor and stringy because it could not be washed properly-above all, the sad, bitter expression about the mouth. Those pale lips! Her lips had been from

every detail. How she had fallen! Indeed, a fallen woman! These others had been born to the conditions that were destroying her; they

len w

things-even if this were true, could it be denied that only a few at best could rise, that the most-including a

ame room, joined her. "Admiring yourself?" she said

was mocking her. But the ton

in the way of one of those trusts. So of course they handed it to him good and hard. But he wasn't a squealer. He always said they'd done only what he'd been

this life?" asked Susan, st

welve per. But I'll not be any better off. My beau's too stupid ever to make much. If you see me ten years

e any way t

ar straight Jew. They say things are better than they used to be, and I guess they are. But not enough better to help me

her pale lips-was avoiding meeting he

and only the fools stay at it. Once in a while there's a girl who's lucky and gets a lover that's k

" said

er head-falls in love-supports a man-takes to drink-don't look out for her health-wastes her

nce at all, keeping

And, gosh! how the men do treat them! You haven't any idea. You wouldn't believe the horrible things the girls have to do to earn their money-a quarter or half a dollar-and maybe the men don't pay them

ay from her image,

hed Susan's fine sympathetic face, and in a burst of confidence said: "One night the landlady sent me up with seventeen men. And she kept the seventeen dollars I made, and took away from me half a dollar

anyon of Broadway-the majestic vista of lofty buildings, symbols of wealth and luxury so

think of kill

e's no hope, yet they keep on hopin'. And I've got pretty good health yet, and once in a while

for the sun,

?" inqui

he time. But here in New York there is so much sun. I love the sun. I get desperate-then out comes

it," said Rosa, "bu

clouds dared to appear and contest its right to shine upon the City of the Sun, and hardly a day

his starvation no doubt saved her from illness; but at the same time it drained her strength. Her vitality had been going down, a little each day-lower and lower. The poverty which had infuriated her at first was now acting upon her like a soothing poison. The reason she had not risen to revolt was this slow and subtle poison that explains the inertia of the tenement poor from babyhood. To be spirited one mu

roused her sluggish blood, that whipped thought into action. Anything-anything would

e tales with all the harrowing particulars and to find in each some evidence of the goodness of God to herself. Often Susan could let her run on and on without listening. But not that night. She resisted the impulse to bid her be silent, left the room and stood at the hall window. When she returned Mrs. Tucker was in bed, was snoring in a tranquillity that was the reverse of contagious. With her habitual cheerfulness she had adapted herself to her changed condition without fretting. She had become as ragged and

ble condition. She did not once glance at the face of the noisy sleeper-a face homely enough in Mrs. Tucker's waking hours, hide

d twisted and wrinkled fingers-the nails were worn and broken, turned up as if warped at

n to bed," re

She kneeled down upon the bare, sprung, and slanting floor, said a prayer, arose with a beaming face. "It's nice and warm in the room. How I do dread the winter

e it," sa

was of the same quality; yet the prices they paid for the tiny quantities they were able to buy at any on

rdon don't come?" sa

only work a one nig

o have come

n she started," said Susan.

put on her shoes, overskirt and waist, made a few

rmured: "An honest, God

aid Mrs.

permitted her to hear. It would be cruel to

could not draw that tea past her lips. She ate a piece of dry bread,

with her. The janitress halted them as they passed and told them that Mrs. Reardon was dead. She looked like another scrubwoman, living down the street, who was known always to carry a sum o

e had to die in some peculiarly awful way to receive the flattery of agitating an agitated street. Mrs. Reardon had died what was really

right away," s

o that can't be put,

s young as you to be so ha

eath isn't nearly so terrible as life? S

ng buttonholes, hooks and eyes. She drew a bucket of water from the tap in the hall and proceeded to wash her hair with soap; s

bbed herself from head to foot. She manicured her nails, got her hands and feet into fairly good condition. She put on her best underclothes, her one remaining pair of undarned stockings, the pair of ties she had been saving against an emergency. And once more she had the charm upon which she most prided herself-the charm of an attractive look about the feet and ankles. She then took up the da

t of the between seasons dress she had brought with her from Forty-fourth Street; she had not worn it at all. With the feeble aid of the mir

g that was fit for anything-including the unworn batiste dress Jeffries and Jonas had given her. And into it she put the pistol she had brought away from Forty-fourth Street. She made a

tail lurked behind the counter in the dark little shop. She put her bundles

the hat," said he. "And they're out of style. I can't give you more than four dollars for the

e bundles. "Sorry to have troubled you

pect to get, lady?"

-five d

ched the door he called from his desk at which he seemed a

y dollars," said Susan. "You know as well

ee a customer go away unsatisfied," s

y-five. At the next place I

out against a lady.

n the counter

to do me. You're right to tr

out a large tin box. With another key from another pocket he unlocked this, threw back the lid revealing a disorder of papers. From the depths he fished a pap

e me cleaner money

" grumbled he. But he

th delight. "My, but you do look like old times!" cried she. "How neat an

've got nothing to g

like. Still I do wish you was more religious. But you'll come to it, for you're naturally a good girl. And when you do, the Lord'll give you a more cont

"I'm going to leav

wn upon the bed. "Leav

" said Susan. "Here is my share of the rent for next week and h

o that there Morgue they wouldn't let me see her except where the light was so poor that I couldn't rightly swear it was her

n nature that amiable, easily sympathetic and habitually good-humored people are invariably hard of heart. In this parting she had no sense of loss, none of the melancholy that often oppresses us when we separate from someone to whom we are indifferent yet feel bound by the tie of misfortun

ot appreciated, she decided that they were

rs. Reardon's takin

e had a way of fawning and cringing and flattering-no doubt in well meaning attempt to show gratitude-but

g right away?"

said

to stay t

food! "No, I must go ri

but Catholics and Jews, and no true religion. It's dreadful the way things is over there-the girls are taking to the streets in droves. My lady friend was telling me that some of the mothers is sending their little girls out streetwalking, and some's e

ing," said Su

de, with carriages and automobiles speeding past, with clean, happy-faced, well dressed human beings in sight everywhere. It was like coming out of the dank darkness of Dismal Swamp into smiling fields with a pure, star-spangled sky above. She was free-free! It might be for but a moment; still it was fr

of the currents of life is horizontally along these strata, never vertically from one stratum to another. These strata, lying apparently in contact, one upon another, are in fact abysmally separated. There is not-and in the nature of things never can be any genuine human sympathy between any two strata. We sympathize i

well; her hair was satisfactory; the sharp air had brought some life to the pallor of her cheeks, and the release from the slums had restored some of the light to her eyes. "Why did I stay there so long?" she deman

as like one who has been on a far journey, leaving behind him everything that has been life to him; he dismisses it all because he must, until he finds himsel

reply. "He's g

penser go

n't been for a long time. H

d Susan, hanging

deep breath

was Saturday night and Broadway was thronged-with men eager to spend in pleasure part of the week's wages or salary they had just drawn; with women sparkling-eyed and odorous of perfumes and eager to help the men. The air was sharp-was the ocean air of New York at it

er adventuring the rapids, she advanced into the swi