The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1893-11-01
A PLEA FOR THE POOR.
OLIVE HARPER SCORES THOSE WHO
. Cypress THEM.
Scathing Lecture 10 Ladies' of wealth
Fair Pay for the Honest WASH
women Those Who Push More
Guilty Than Those Who Fall.

1t has always seemed TO me that a
specially hot corner should be reserved
in the place that some people say doesn't
exist for those who live by grinding the
faces of the poor. II is hard enough &c
be poor, God knows; to do without the
thousand and one things that make the
difference between comfort and misery
10 see loved ones pine and wither fol
want of the necessities Of. life until the
machinery stops and falls apart and the
weary body is at rest
But it is not the work that I am com
planning about, for work is right, is hon.
est and should he a pleasure, but IL
should be paid for, and paid for willing
", and the poorer the person is who has
done the work the greater his or her
claim for pay. Half the talk about the
laziness of the poor and their unwilling
ness to work hard comes from two
causes. One is that a half starved man
or woman cannot put in day. with
the same vim that a well fed one can,
and another is that there is so little en-
enlargement TO work when the pay is
so grudgingly given. Often even when q
poor woman has toiled all day long clean
ing paint or washing or sewing she is
put off and told that she should have
her money next week
1 nave been brought in contact within
the last few years with hundreds OF
women who had the same tale TO tell
They would wash, iron, scrub or sew I'M
til ready to drop with pain and weari-
ness. and when they went to collect their
little earnings they We're coolly told to
wait till it suited their employers to pay.
They would not realize, those refined
ladies, that these few pennies or dollars
meant food, fire, rent and perhaps medi-
cine or burial. 1T was such a small
matter"
For these very trifies families have
been put out on the sidewalk shelterless
in the rain and sleet; others have gone
three days without food or fire. One
woman whom l know took home a large
washing which, with part pay on u
previous one. amounted to over 81. and
the lady Of the house" was out" and
the poor woman went back TO ind the
sheriff putting her things out on the
sidewalk, two of the children being sick
with measles. Neighbors afterward gave
them shelter for a few days, but these
sight. Now there is another baby. This
woman washed and scrubbed up to the
last day to keep these poor children and
is still struggling.
Another trouble with the poor IS that
every lady takes il for granted that her
own work is the only hard work the
poor wash or scrubwOman has to do, sc
that there is always an awful effort to
get at thorough cleaning. one Door
woman told me that she hated the words
thorough cleaning" for they always
meant the hardest and most wearing
and disagreeable toll for dollar day,
and there was not one lady" out Of 800
who did not set all the old scraps and
dry crusts saved up for a week before
her for her dinner Then, too, many
ladies" try to reduce the amount Of
their pay by making them take their
castoff garments and old shoes in part
payment at least.
The haggling over the scanty wages
of the poor woman by the same lady"
that pays 81 to s. for some cosmetic
only worth about 10 cents, or some other
extravagant folly, is a crime, and one
for which L think a punishment as hard
as that he bears who kills another in
the heat of passion should be the penalty.
But if this were TO come true we have
not prisons enough in the land TO hold
the women who think they are doing
righteous action in grinding the faces or
the poor and ''scrimping' on the poor
laborer's wages.
The utter heartlessness and lack OF
common humanity of our ladies' to-
ward their help passes description. They
will load the woman who comes in for
a days washing with enough work TO
kill a man, and then when the poor back
aches and the limbs almost fail they
will bring out perhaps a pair of blankets
to ''just run through before you go, IL
won't take minute.
Many persons would look upon a wom-
an as a hardened criminal and would
have sent her to prison, leaving the five
little children she is toiling so hard TO
keep together to starve or be scattered
here and there for pawning all the
wash" which she had in her house for
one Of these economical ladies'" The
lady went off and left no money TO pay
for the work when done, and the poor
mother, desperate with her hungry chill
dren around her and her angry landlord
threatening, pawned the things for just
the amount of the bill. II required the
hardest kind of work on the part of SYM
pathizing people TO save her from the
wrath-the righteous and religious wrath
of the owner Of the garments, who
can thus find herself guiltless Of wrong
when she neglects or refuses to pay for
honest work.
IL is no wonder that women go down
TO perdition when other women feel that
they are doing a meritorious actor in
'sscT-imping' their female help. 1 may
be old-fashioned and foolish, but 1 think
that those who push are more guilty
than those who fall.
OLIVE HARPER.