The Savannah morning news., 1902-06-29
BRAVE EAST SIDE WIFE.
HOW SHE FIGHTS AT ALL POINTS
FOR HER OWN.


PitiabIe Rooms In Order-Her
Trials with Tradesmen and Her
steady War Against ExtOrtiOn-
What She and Hers Eat, How She
Bays II, What She Pays for 1t and
How She Cooks 1t.
New York, June 27.-Between the
coal strike, the ice trust and the beef
combine, the East Side woman is
having a hard time of it this summer.
She may shrug her shoulders and
raise her eyes to heaven, but the coal
dealer and the ice peddler are not
to be placated. She may cry out
against the extortionate prices de-
manded by the butcher with whom
she has traded for years. but he will
simply fall back on the meat COM
bine. What can she do?
The East Side housewife is most
thoroughly misunderstood and mis-
represented of women. She is pictured
as living, without murmur, in squal-
or and filth-her favorite pastime TO
gossip and quarrel with her neighbors
or, better still, with her unfortunate
janitress-her children physically inn
poverished because she either cannot
or will not prepare food according to
the latest hygienic rulings of Ameri-
can cooking clubs-her husband to be
commiserated in the possession of a
saiTtIess, slatternly wife. Not being
able, rule, to speak English, she can
not refute these charges, and only
those who come into close, neighborly
To- xr,ff he afotn
true worth. She is at once the joy
and the despair of the typical settle
ment worker of the fine theories and
high ideals.
In reality, she wages perpetual war;
fare on the common. enemy of ALL
housekeepers, dirt, and under the most
exasperating, the most impossible con-
ditions. Her landlord does not set her
a shining example of sanitation and
cleanliness, nor does he provide for
her use the simplest of modern con-
veniences. Any woman who attempts
| to keep house in three rooms even in
| the simplest fashion, for her family
| of six, with perhaps ledger or two,
| must either pick up" continually or
take refuge on the fire escape from
| sheer lack of room. Hence she has
| little time for gossiping or quarreling.
For the sake of her children she will
| herself go hungry if necessary, and
| in the preparation of dishes peculiar
to her race or nationality, she could
win out, hands down." against the
average head of an American cooking
| school. And her husband, far from
| considering her as an obstacle to his
| progress, regards her as a beacon light,
| leading him ever onward to a bank &C
count and competency. She it is who
carries the family purse, purchases ev-
cry article in the family wardrobe and
| deposits the family savings in bank
of her own selection after giving the
latter deep and earnest consideration.
A VacHtiOnIess Life.
Summer lays on her shoulders only
there is no such word as vacation"
The babble of a thousand voices rises,
along with fetid odor and heat glare,
from the street below. Even had she
money to invest in luXuries like screens
and awnings, they would be impossi-
BILE because they would obstruct the
entrance of what little air enters her
apartments. The cooking of the
meals, a comforting process in winter,
| now converts her flat" into a fur
nace-room. The gradual shrinkage in
| the flve-cent chunk" of ice, has long
since converted the ice man into a
| deadly enemy. And through and over
~ dill IdIlSS the awful lear lndt ner
husband may be overcome by the heat
in the great factory where he is press
ing winter suits and overcoats for
twelve terrific, prostrating hours each
day, Then he would be taken to the
hospital from which she would be
barred by the blue-coated guardians
whose language she has not mastered
Yet all this she faces with a dim phil
osophy that is a mortal i'll to be
borne, not combatted, and that some
how she and her offspring will sur
vive the torrid wave.
The East Side, as it is popularity
known, covers compare lively small
area, somewhat less than half i square
mile, wherein is crowded a little city
of its own the Ghetto, with a popula-
ton of 500000 souls. Half a million
men, women and children. almost ex-
clusively Polish and Russian Jews
crowded into what might be described
as four good sized city blocks That
they live and thrive and become de-
cent citizens is the greatest proof of
the ability of the East Side wife and
mother.
Monetary conditions and a sordid
landlord set the limit of her apart
ment at three rooms. In the modern
tenement each of those must have ac-
cess to an open court or air shaft, but
there still stand hundreds of houses
erected before the present tenement
laws went into effect. In these the
best rooms will overlook the street or
court. according as it may be front
| or rear tenement. There will be two
| windows, from one of which runs the
| fire escape. A room ten feet square
is considered spacious, and a shallow
clothespress in this apartment is re-
| garded by its mistress with proper ap-
probation akin to gratitude. A door
and a window cut through the parti-
ton afford light and air" for the mid
| die room where the cooking is usually
done. Beyond is a still smaller room
SO designated merely by courtesy, and
! here there is neither ventilation nor
light-only Stygian darkness.
stoves NJ SOCIAL Standards
The average American housewife
making her first trip through the East
Side is impressed by the almost entire
| absence of carpets, the pretentiousness
of whatever pieces of furniture her
East Side sister may possess and the
peculiar arrangements of her china
closets. The landlord or his
representative looks at none
of these. The all-important cues
ton with him is whether the ten
utensils In good condition. If this be
the case, he feels assured that he has
secured a thrifty tenant who will meet
apparently counts for little with the
real East Slider, and judgement is never
| pronounced on a newcomer in the
neighborhood, until the janitor's wife
and perhaps the woman next door have
/ oil o. hos 81,