Four Years in the Underbrush: Adventures as a Working Woman in New YorkAnonymous
History
Four Years in the Underbrush: Adventures as a Working Woman in New York
Anonymous
Women employees -- New York (State) -- New York
He promised to do the best he could, and I left him trying to locate his
workers, to send them to the address. Back at the tenement, the cars
were still standing motionless in the middle of Twenty-third Street—I
found that the ambulance had not arrived. That gave me an idea—I would
appeal to Miss Wadley.
It was not a case for a hospital social service, I knew that. But I
realized that as a big stick the social service department of Bellevue
had considerable weight. Though I did not know that it would be needed
to make the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children function
promptly, I was determined to be on the safe side. I was not taking
chances with those girls and their drunken mother.
For a wonder Miss Wadley was out. The worker in charge of the office,
the only one who had not finished her work for that day, consented to do
all in her power. We had never seen each other before, but she took my
word for it, and telephoned urging the children’s society to prompt
action.
At one o’clock the wagon of the society stopped before the tenement, and
two agents went in. There was no need for me to follow them. The
ambulance from Bellevue had not come, so the janitor was there to report
conditions.
One of the hideous features of that case was that the mother, that woman
who had become no better than a beast, belonged to a respectable
family—all of them, excepting her, persons of refinement and education.
Another case that I reported to the children’s society was that of a man
who was breeding dogs in the presence of children. As soon as I struck
the block I was told about the man, a Polack, who was “shaming” the
neighborhood. When I said I would investigate the matter several women
begged me not to go near this man, or the houses of which he was the
janitor.
I went and I met a dog whose eyes were on a level with my own. It was
with this huge animal that he had terrorized the women and children on
the block. When he called the dog out he expected to see me beat a hasty
retreat.
He did not know what I had learned about myself, or rather about my
clothes—they had become so permeated with the scent of dogs that the
animals always sniffed me over and then proceeded to treat me as a
long-lost friend. This tall black-and-white giant of a dog rubbed his
muzzle against my shoulder, then taking his seat at my side, snuggled
his head under my hand.
The man was impressed, but not sufficiently to cause him to change his
mind. He had declared when I first entered his flat that he would not
get a license for either of his three dogs, and he dared me or anybody
in New York to try to make him. He was just one of the thousands and
tens of thousands of blustering immigrants of low mentality that come
into our country every day. He was a huge brute himself and imagined he
could cow everybody with whom he came in contact.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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