"And what do you intend to do now?" I asked.
"I have my plans. I expect some one from my village who knows him and who knows that we were married. I am saving every cent I can for the steamship agency to buy a ticket."
She bent down over her work again. Meanwhile my coat was brought. I took leave, promised to look into the matter and went out.
In a few minutes I was in Greene Street. I looked up the number. Above the door hung a big sign, announcing the business of the firm, and on the door, near the knob, was nailed another little sign, with black letters on white enamel:
All was now clear why the woman was not helped in her fight, and why she was coerced through the "discontinuance." I remembered the Manager's answer:
"Who is supporting this institution? The poor or the rich?"
And of course they had to work for the ones that were supporting them.
Again, thinking how charitable institutions shield those who support them, I must speak of a case which is similar to the one just described in more than one detail. The only difference is in the fact that it happened in another town, instead of in New York. I was present in the office of the Institution when the woman was advised to accept a certain amount of money and go to New York. The woman, after suffering hunger and cold with her children for a long time finally accepted the most shameful conditions ever imposed upon a woman, upon a mother. She was compelled to give her children to the other woman. I was present when the investigator, Mrs. G., herself a mother of children, explained to the woman that it would be best to accept five hundred dollars and give her children up.
"You will not bring them up as well as they will. They have money, and if you really love your children, sacrifice yourself for them." That was the substance of her argument, and when the woman cried and pointed out that she had another child coming from this unnatural father, the investigator insulted her most grossly, calling her a prostitute. In the end she advised her to keep it secret, because if the other woman, the new Mrs. Schneider, heard about it, heard that the man had not ceased his relations with his wife, she might "get sore on the whole thing," and though the woman had a good case of adultery and bigamy against her husband the Institution--so active in other emergencies, such as strikes, when they send out scabs--did not do the slightest thing to help the woman to get justice. She was destitute, a foreigner and was helpless alone. She haunted her husband's place of business, a restaurant, from where she was ejected by the ever-obliging policeman on the corner.