Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1756-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities external link and the Library of Congress. Learn more
Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL
Newspaper Page Text
'-ww3Tr-'ir3WTri.r-J.j jrop' trminnKrrni&sjaf THIS IS THE STORY OF A WOMAN TO TAKE CARE By Jane Whitaker This is a page from life when life seems coldly brutal. When it takes from a man and a woman the best that is in them, and throws them, worked out, on the scrap pile. Life can do that with some men and some women, when there is no one but themselves to consider, and the broken" puppets will utter no com plaint, but accept the ruling of life as inexorable. But when there are others to suf fer because of the discard, there is al most a sublimity in the way that broken men and women will struggle. And in this page from life there are five dependent children and a mother who is worked out, but who is as ferociously fighting for her children as a crippled lioness for her cubs, the while she lavishes tenderness upon her hurt mate. The story was told to me by two of my friends the man told it with the tears close to his eyes; his wife' wept openly. "She came to our house begging. I said to my little boy: 'Tell her there isn't anything we can do,' because, you know, my own need all that we can manage, but my little boy said: 'Papa, this is terrible. If you would just see her.' "Meanwhile my wife had asked her in and set some food before her as I entered the room. She looked wild desperate. She was sobbing as she vainly tried to force the food down her poor throat. " 'A woman had me arrested for begging,' she told my wife. 'A wom an who lives in a nice home. She asked me to come in and make my self comfortable after I had told her about my children that are hungry and my husband who is sick, and I who am sick myself. " 'She told me to make myself comfortable, and then she went to the telephone and called up the po lice station, and told them, to send an WHO IS DESPERATELY FIGHTING OF HER YOUNG officer to arrest a beggar. " 'And I tried to get away, but she made me stay until the officer came, and he took me to the police station. " 'Oh, I was so afraid. I never wanted my children to know what their mother was doing, but I could not let them starve. I will not. I will steal for them before I will let them go hungry. There is no place for poor people. I have worked all my life, and worked hard, and my man worked until he got tuberculosis from your sweatshops, and even now he goes out gathering rags while the sweat wets his coat as though a hose had been turned on it. " 'At the station the man at the desk listened to the policeman tell that I had been begging. And then I told him why. " 'He said I should have applied to the charities. I said to him that if he could go to the charities and get from them 2 cents' worth of help I would be willing to stop begging and just turn on the gas and die, but the char ities do not help. I know, God, how well I know! " 'And then he said that I should go home and do the best I could. " 'What i9 the best I can do? Sit in my four rooms and watch my chil-. dren starving. Kill us all in a night, maybe. I don't know what I am to do. I am crazy, almost. " 'I went to my alderman and begged him to get me a license so I could sell things on Milwaukee ave nue. I don't care what. Shoestrings or papers anything that will bring in a few cents but he said there was too much opposition, and he could not afford to offend big politicians. It takes pull to get a license, and I haven't got it. " 'I had to be desperate before I begged. I laid awake at night think ing of my babies, the oldest one eleven my babies that would some day be such &t Comfort to me, but must be taken care of now, and. I , ISitfiWiirti'&iSiar i,tXit,:li-tiinttJ&W,:.-.thi-.'1rfc-m, iri'flu-. fai-infM jJj, W!ialC,r-- ...;W3S MMaHHHHB