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WHAT ARE WE TO t)0 ABOUT MARY?
Mary Anderson is 30 years old. Once she was pretty, 'but she now
looks like a wreck. Six years ago she married a man who vowed he loved
her better than he loved life itself ; who promised to work for her and pro
vide. One year later baby Margaretcame.
Husband Joe did fairly well for awhile. He had never had much school
ing and had not learned a trade. He did the woric of an unskilled laborer
pile'd ties, shoveled earth, pounded stone. Once in a great while he struck
luck and got an odd job which didn't tax his strength and which paid the
high-water wage of $2 a day. But mostly his pay was under $1.50; and
there were days of sickness and days of idleness.
Mary did work, too, in addition to the housework. She sewed some
times and now and then she took ms washings. She also had not had much,
education. She could do only simple, work. Then another baby came and
there wasn't money to allow "hen the care and rest she needed. She tried
to work before she was strong enough and something inside snapped.
They took her to a hospital and the doctors fussed over her; but they
couldn't perform miracles and she wasn't -well after that.
Husband Joe wasn't a member of any club. The nights he didn't spend
at home, where the babies fretted and where the ailing wife sometimes wasv
cross, he got into the habit of passing at a saloon, tl offered a kind ofv
cneer. Whereupon Mary scolded and the money went.
Six weeks ago, without waiting to see the third baby which wife had
told him was was on its way, Joe lit out. The cupboard was empty and
not a penny had been laid by.
Mary did washing and scrubbing as long as she could crawl. One
night, completely exhausted, she went to her shack of a home to find kittle
baby sick, 5-year-old Margaret hungry and not a thing to eat. Nearby,
in an open hallway she spied a coat hanging on a nail. She took thafcoat,
pawned it for 50 cents and bought milk for baby and bread for herself and.
Margaret.
The coat was traced, Mary was arrested,' but Judge Logan, in South,
Boston, when he had learned the facts, said he'd be switched if he'd send
her to jail. Instead he turned her over to the probation officer, a kindly"
woman. The children have been placed in a home for destitute children,
and' Mary is in a hospital, awaiting number three.
That is as far as our story goes. There are many Marys in Boston;
maybe as many as the well-housed, well-clad, well-fed women who get divi-
dends from copper mines or woolen mills or banks, and whose children go
to Harvard or to "Tech." Some of the latter probably contribute to the
children's home where Mary's little ones are staying, and to the hospital
where she hersW lies. And wonderj as they read the Transcript, why there
is so much turmoil and unrest
Of all the wise men who are going about telling people various things,
are therevnone who can do something for Mary?
WOMAN COULDN'T ,SERVE
Cumberland, Md., Oct. 16. In the
proceedings instituted by Mrs. Grace
Koentz of Midland to' have her name
placed on the November ballot as
Socialist candidate for treasurer of
Allegheny county, Judge Heflderson
ruled that the name must go on the
ballot, as Maryland "women, .have
civic rights, but that MrV., Koentz, if
elected, cannot serve, because Mary--larid
women have no political rights.
Suffragists found little satisfaction
in the ruling.
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