The sun., 1909-06-18
MOTHERS STORM 8 SCHOOLS
HYSTERIA STEMMED BY QUIET
WORD or CHILDREN.
Monitors Reassurc East Side Women who
Come Beating on Schoolhouse Gates
Because OF q Black Hand Fiction
some OF the Pupils Scared Too.

A fire engine Numbered past the Gouver-
neur street gate Of Public School lA7 just
after the lunch hour yesterday while the
children were forming lines in the yard
10 march 10 the classrooms. Ordinarily
tho whistling Of the engine and the rush
of It's passage would have aroused brief
excitement among the children, but 1t was
different yesterday.
They took fright and their nerves went
all to pieces in a second Because the lower
Eas, Side had been a-futter for several
DAYS because Of wild rumors that the Black
Hand meant to blow up school houses.
The children heard their elders talking
seriously about these things and they
brought the stories to school. The prin-
cipals and teachers Of half a dozen schools
in the neighborhood OF East Broadway and
Gouverneur street remembered the time
not so long ago when the Jewish women
took up the cry. The goyim are cutting
our children's throats!' and how much
trouble came Of it. So the teachers had
been quietly explaining to the older pupils
how foolish it was to believe or repeat
such stories as their mothers had been
telling AT home
But the roaring and whistling Of the
fire engine, which was followed as the
engines always are on the East Side by
crowds of excited and shouting dlers.
brought about just such crisis as the
teachers feared. A little Yiddish girl.
whose lung power was out of all proper
ton to her inches, whirled out Of line and
scurried for the Gouverneur street gate
like frightened quail. screaming
Her shrill cry, The Black Hand will
kill u.s." and her screams for her mother
reached every child in the yard. They
heeitated just an, instant, then breaking
away from the older boys and girls, the
monitors. who were running up and down
that Rebka was only baby afraid Of a
fire engine. they broke ranks and swept
toward the Gouverneur street gate. Their
treble voices rose to an alarming chorus
that was heard for blocks around and drew
TO the school hundreds Of mothers and
aunts and older sisters a good deal harder
to handle presently than the children.
The whole scare would have been over
In ten minutes had it not been for the
sudden rush Of the mothers and women
relatives Of the children. They came
-Mein kind! mein kind!" and beat upon
the gates with their bare hands. The
policeman was engulfed in swarm OF
them. They clawed at his coat and
pushed him this way and that and de-
manded passionately to be let into the
school yard. The whole quarter was
alarmed. and the policeman fearing
greater trouble. broke away and sent in
call for the reserves.
But the principal and the teachers
knew a better way than that to blight
panics. DR.. Ettinger turned the situation
over to the monitors, sixty boys and girls
old enough to think calmly. When the
monitors whistle blew they assembled
under Chief Monitor Alfred Meltzer and
his assistant. Albert Goldstein. threw
suards on the stairs and gates and posted
senttnels In the yards.
= Than, the mothers. wailing and wiring
ing their hands and continually crying
'Mein kind! mein kind!' were admitted.
The monitors took charge OF them
promptly and gave them good. straight
forward lecture for being foolish. You
could see two or three cool headed. steady
voiced boys at the foot OF the main stair
way soothing a group OF women. perhaps
twenty in the group. telling them not
to be foolish, that everything was all
right and asking them to 60 home so
the school could 60 on with its work.
In quarter OF an hour after the moni-
tors took charge there was no more
screaming in the schoolyard. The moni-
tors were permitted to take the mothers
into the classrooms where the smaller
children were seated at their desks
and sound as the most imaginative mother
could wish. But the children found it
difficult to take up the days routine after
the shock and excitement, and 50 the
principal dismissed school early.
The mischief had been done, though.
for big circle was around Public School
lT as soon as the news OF the stampede
Mashed through the streets. The report
spread all over the lower East Side that
the Black Handlers tried to blow up
School Ia because the School Board
wouldn't pay them a million dollars"
Lees than half an hour after the oom-
motion at DR.. Ettinger's school there was
trouble at School 4. at Pitt and Rivington
streets. Here again the noise of passing
fire engine proved just the thing to touch
of hysteria. The children were shep-
herded back into their classrooms and the
monitors showed them sitting quietly to
some Of the women that insisted on going
in.
At about the same time there was mob
Of half crazed women around Public
School II. at Madison and jackson
streets. Somebody started the story that
the Black Hand had thrown bomb into
the building and set fire to it and that sew
eral Of the children had been killed.
At Public School 81. in the same
locality, there was a repetition OF these
Incidents. Miss Margaret F. O'Connell.
the principal. sent her monitors out to
reason with their own people. and the
plan worked. Several other schools on
the lower East Side were besieged.
Nobody could explain just what started
the startling stories. There was report
tnat Yiddish newspaper had printed a
Paragraph saying that the Black Hand
society had demanded money from the
Board Of Education on a threat to blow
up school building but none Of the
Fast Side papers had printed anything
l a.