The sun. (Jacksonville, Fla.) 1905-1908, 1906-08-25

Ject upon which the conversation
turned was the neighborhood and it's
history; and then Grandmother Ma
inuszkis. as the old lady was called.
proceeded to recite to them a string OF
horrors that fairly froze their blood.
She was a wrinkled-up and wizenei
personage-she must have been eigh-
ty-and as she mumbled the grim
story through her toothless gums. shs
seemed very old witch to them,
Grandmother Majauszkis had lived In
the midst Of misfortune so long that
1t had come to be her element, and
she talked about starvation, sickness
and death as otner people might about
weddings and holidays. M
The thing came gradually In the
first place as to the house they had
bought, 1t was not new at all, as they
had supposed; II was about fifteen
years old, and there was nothing new
upon It but the paint, which was so
bad that 1t needed to be put on new
every year or two. The house was
one of whole row that was built by
a company which existed to make
money by swindling poor people. The
family had paid fifteen hundred dol
lars for 1t, and 1t had not cost tho
builders Ave hundred when II was
new. Grandmother Majauszkis knew
that because her son belonged to a po
litical organization with a contractor
who put up exactly such houses. They
used the very flimsiest and cheapest
material; they built the houses doz-
en- at time. and they cared about
nothing at all except the outside
shine. The family could take her
word as to the trouble they would
have, for she had been through It all
she and her son had bought their
house In exactly the same way They
had fooled the company, however, for
her son was a skilled man, who made
as high as a hundred dollars month.
and as he had had sense enough not
to marry they had been able to pay
for the house. ~
Grandmother Majauszkiene saw
that her friends were puzzled at this
remark; they did not quite see how
paying for the house was "fooliny
the company" Evidently they were
very inexperienced. Cheap as the
houses were, they were sold with the
idea that the people who bought
them would not be able to pay for
them. When they failed-if 1t were
only single month--they would lose
the house and all that they had paid
on It, and then the company would
sell It over again. And did they often
get a chance to do that? Dieve!
Grandmother Majauszkiene raised
her hands). They did it--how often
no one could say, but certainly more
than half OF the time. They might
ask any one who knew anything at
all about Packingtown as to that;
she had been living there ever since
this house was built, and she could
tell them all about It And had It
ever been sold before? Susimilkie'
Why, since It had been built no less
than four families that their infor-
mant could name had tried to buy 1t
and failed She would tell them a
little about 1t.
The first family had been Germans.
The families had all been of different
nationalities had been rep
resentative of several races that had
displaced each other In the stock
yards. Grandmother Majauszkiene
had come to America with her son
at a time when 80 far as she knew
there was only one other Lithuanian
family in the district; the workers
had all been Germans then-skilled
cattle butchers that the packers had
brought from abroad TO start the bust
ness. Afterward, as cheaper labor
had come, these Germans had moved
away. The next were the irish
there had been six or eight years
when Packingtown had been a regrl-
lar Irish city. There were a few col.
onies Of them still here, enough to run
all the unions and the police force