Stealing from the poor of the slums of New York City means in the summer sick men and women and little babies shut in stifling flats, drawing into their system with every breath the stenches of sweltering weather, their suffering and dying for lack of ice and fresh air. In the winter it means the old, the sick, the helpless starving and freezing to death for lack of food and a handful of coals. During the war when philanthropic associations were popping up like mushrooms and hanging out their signs at every street-corner and in every vacant room, a means was found to protect the public and see to it that our fighting men got what was intended for them. The men and women who do not pay their dues as committee members of a philanthropic organization have no right to a voice in administering its funds. They are stealing from the poor and deceiving the public. CHAPTER XXIII LEADERS OF THE HERD It was a cold, bleak morning during the November of 1920 that my work as inspector of dog licenses took me to an old tenement-house on a cross street between Avenue A and Exterior Street. On learning that the janitor lived two flights up, back, east, I climbed the stairs. The janitor’s eight-year-old daughter was in charge. She was a polite little girl and reminded me of a plant which, having struggled up in semidarkness, had gone to seed too early. She thought her mother would be back soon, she told me, and held the door open for me to enter. Then placing a chair near the cold kitchen-stove, she invited me to sit down. On my eyes becoming accustomed to the duskiness I saw that there was something on the bed in a little closet of a room that opened into the kitchen over which the little girl was hovering. The child’s anxiety was so evidently urgent that I instinctively left my seat and hastened to her assistance. The something on the bed was a fragile little scrap of humanity about a year and a half old. I am not a trained nurse, but even I could tell that the spark of life in that frail body was fading rapidly away. Questioning the little girl I learned that she really did not know where her mother was. She had been left to mind the baby, and that was all she knew. The filthy conditions of the flat of three small rooms would have made me know without seeing the little girl that its occupants were either Irish or Italians. A glance at the child assured me that they were Irish. Knowing the besetting sin of that race, I jumped to the conclusion that the mother had gone out and got drunk. There was no fire in the stove and no coal in the rusty tin bucket beside it. The little girl said neither she nor the baby had had any breakfast. It was so evident that the baby was dying, that I had to do something. I rushed to the door of the front flat on the same floor. “Jesus!” cried the Italian woman who answered my knock, as soon as I explained my errand. “Ain’t she got back yet?”