第103章

"That's it exactly," exclaimed the old man, in triumph."And Isay to them pious charity fakers, `Git the hell out of here where you can't do no good.Git back to yer own class that makes all this misery, makes it faster'n all the religion and charity in the world could help it.Git back to yer own class and work with them, and teach them and make them stop robbin' and beatin'

the baby.'"

"Yes," said the girl, "you are right.I see it now.But, Mr.

Brashear, they meant well."

"The hell they did," retorted the old man."If they'd, a' had love in their hearts, they'd have seen the truth.Love's one of the greatest teachers in the world.If they'd, a' meant well, they'd, a' been goin' round teachin' and preachin' and prayin'

at their friends and fathers and brothers, the plutocrats.

They'd never 'a' come down here, pretendin' they was doin' good, killin' one bedbug out of ten million and offerin' one pair of good pants where a hundred thousand pairs is needed.They'd better go read about themselves in their Bible--what Jesus says.

He knew 'em._He_ belonged to _us_--and _they_ crucified him."The horrors of that by no means lowest tenement region, its horrors for a girl bred as Susan had been! Horrors moral, horrors mental, horrors physical--above all, the physical horrors; for, worse to her than the dull wits and the lack of education, worse than vile speech and gesture, was the hopeless battle against dirt, against the vermin that could crawl everywhere--and did.She envied the ignorant and the insensible their lack of consciousness of their own plight--like the disemboweled horse that eats tranquilly on.At first she had thought her unhappiness came from her having been used to better things, that if she had been born to this life she would have been content, gay at times.Soon she learned that laughter does not always mean mirth; that the ignorant do not lack the power to suffer simply because they lack the power to appreciate; that the diseases, the bent bodies, the harrowed faces, the drunkenness, quarreling, fighting, were safer guides to the real conditions of these people than their occasional guffaws and fits of horseplay.

A woman from the hilltop came in a carriage to see about a servant.On her way through the hall she cried out: "Gracious!

Why don't these lazy creatures clean up, when soap costs so little and water nothing at all!" Susan heard, was moved to face her fiercely, but restrained herself.Of what use? How could the woman understand, if she heard, "But, you fool, where are we to get the time to clean up?--and where the courage?--and would soap enough to clean up and keep clean cost so little, when every penny means a drop of blood?""If they only couldn't drink so much!" said Susan to Tom.

"What, then?" retorted he."Why, pretty soon wages'd be cut faster than they was when street carfares went down from ten cents to five.Whenever the workin' people arrange to live cheaper and to try to save something, down goes wages.No, they might as well drink.It helps 'em bear it and winds 'em up sooner.I tell you, it ain't the workin' people's fault--it's the bosses, now.It's the system--the system.A new form of slavery, this here wage system--and it's got to go--like the slaveholder that looked so copper-riveted and Bible-backed in its day."That idea of "the system" was beyond Susan.But not what her eyes saw, and her ears heard, and her nose smelled, and her sense of touch shrank from.No ambition and no reason for ambition.No real knowledge, and no chance to get any--neither the leisure nor the money nor the teachers.No hope, and no reason for hope.No God--and no reason for a God.

Ideas beyond her years, beyond her comprehension, were stirring in her brain, were making her grave and thoughtful.She was accumulating a store of knowledge about life; she was groping for the clew to its mystery, for the missing fact or facts which would enable her to solve the puzzle, to see what its lessons were for her.Sometimes her heavy heart told her that the mystery was plain and the lesson easy--hopelessness.For of all the sadness about her, of all the tragedies so sordid and unromantic, the most tragic was the hopelessness.It would be impossible to conceive people worse off; it would be impossible to conceive _these_ people better off.They were such a multitude that only they could save themselves--and they had no intelligence to appreciate, no desire to impel.If their miseries--miseries to which they had fallen heir at birth--had made them what they were, it was also true that they were what they were--hopeless, down to the babies playing in the filth.An unscalable cliff; at the top, in pleasant lands, lived the comfortable classes; at the bottom lived the masses--and while many came whirling down from the top, how few found their way up!

On a Saturday night Ashbel came home with the news that his wages had been cut to seven dollars.And the restaurant had been paying steadily less as the hard times grew harder and the cost of unadulterated and wholesome food mounted higher and higher.

As the family sat silent and stupefied, old Tom looked up from his paper, fixed his keen, mocking eyes on Susan.

"I see, here," said he, "that _we_ are so rich that they want to raise the President's salary so as he can entertain _decently_--and to build palaces at foreign courts so as our representatives'll live worthy of _us_!"