“The pup was a poor, dear helpless doggie,” the thin girl giggled.
“She said the pup was half-starved,” the stout girl went on. “I believe she was right about that. The children didn’t look as if either of them had ever had a square meal.”
“That’s the way they all are—those rich women,” asserted a man in overalls, who was standing at the prescription-counter. “They think more of animals than of their own kind. What did youse say to the jane?”
“Who, us?” the thin girl giggled between draws on her straw. “We kept out of her sight. We work in a specialty shop on Fifth Avenue, and she was one of our regular customers.”
“’Fraid of you job,” the man in overalls commented. “Knockin’ the bread out your own mouth wouldn’t help the kids none.”
“It would help the kids if we’d make the city government clean the tenement streets instead of wasting time dusting in front of vacant houses. They don’t get much more than dust, and those houses are vacant ten months in the year,” the stout girl asserted, as staring at me she waited for me to reply.
“If we lived up to our national professions,” I said, putting into words the thought that had been in my mind since the first day I began to work in the tenements, “the street-cleaners would begin in the tenements, where the greatest number would be benefited. In a democracy where the majority is supposed to rule, human life should be considered before property—babies should be more valuable than empty houses.”
“I see ’em starting to clean the streets in the tenements!” the thin girl jeered.
“If they don’t you’ll see tenement people living in those palaces, and the people from the palaces living in the tenements,” the stout girl retorted passionately. “They done it in Russia and we’ll do it here. Within ten years; I’m giving it to you straight.”
“Youse said it,” the man in overalls agreed emphatically.
I glanced into the faces of the six persons about me. The prescription clerk’s features wore the mask of those whose mental attitude is I-hold-my-tongue-and-let-you-do-the-talking. The eyes of the pale boy at the soda-fountain were like smouldering fires ready to flame with any powerful emotion. The square jaw of the man in overalls reminded me of a bull-dog. Of the three women the stout girl alone possessed the faculty for logical reasoning, yet the other two, once their emotions were aroused, would outstrip her, run ahead of her, leading a mob to burn, kill, destroy.