The Bridgeport evening farmer. [volume] (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1866-1917, 1911-01-13
AS THE POOR LIVE.

To the Ed1tOr:-S1r: An editorial
recently appeared in praise Of Mr..
Fagan's article in the Atlantic Month
lyl, against socialism, decries the ten
dency in our popular magazine to
paint 1ugubrious pictures of poverty
in America. These pictures, the ed
itor seems to believe, show the acct
dental. not the usual, conditions Of
American life.
The two cases cited seem unfortun-
atae. 1t questions the truth of the
story of the poor luncheon now OBJ
tanned for fifteen cents despite the
rise in the prices of meat, eggs, milk.
butter, and many other foodstuffs; and
it believes the story of a Chicago gar
ment worker, sweated and insulted by
her employer, to be wildly inconsist-
ent with all reasonable proba bility."
And this wild inconsistency, we are
given to believe, applies to many of
the terrible stories of poverty that
appear in our magazines Now, I'M
less one is in daily contact with the
intimate lives of the poor, I question
whether one can properly judge the
reasonable probability of these stor-
les. What does the editor of a pa
per know of the life Of the immigrant
girl who makes garments? Is he IA
miliar with the armies of men who
labor in New York every day and yet
are unable, year after year, to make
a wage that shall bring their families
married women who go out to toll
can he wisely decide, for instance,
whether the story of the day nursery
mother, which Miss Jane Adams
tells. is typical or is only an unusual
case? This mother lost her oldest
child. and, after the funeral, asked
her friend for a dollar, that she might
stay home from work one day and
hold the baby left to her in her arms.
For the dead child "had often asked
her to hold him, and she had never
had time" That such a story cali
be told of single mother is a blot on
our civilizations; but who but the man
or woman who daily views the lives
of the poor can wisely pronounce on
the frequency Of these terrible hap
penings?
Now, for the most part, our maya
zine writers and our Investigators who
have given us such terrible pictures
of the waste Of human life, as the
Pittsburgh Survey" and the Stand
ard Of Liaing in New York l., are PEG
ditions of which they write. They
know far more of the reasonable
probabilities" of their stories than
does the man who must spend his day
at his desk. They are good Ameri-
cans, too, and would gladly think our
civilization other than what their sad
facts teach them to believe it to be
Whether or not the conditions
among the mass of the workers in
America to-day should be remedied
by socialism or by finer individual
ism, is a matter for serious debate;
but the truths concerning poverty
here to-day-its dwarfing of youth,
its destruction of vitality-should
cease to be debated by thoughtful
men. The high rent, the insufficient
wage, the long hours of labor should
be regarded with such horror as that
Of the abolitionist toward chattel sla-
very. And as the story of the suffer-
ings Of the slave was never ade-
quately told, so the story of those
who live in great poverty to-day is
not told strongly enough. Our mag
azine writers make a poor and insult
ficient job of it. We need a more
terrible vision than has yet been CIV
en- to us.
MARY WHITE OvINGTON.