In disgust and despair I walked the streets the next day without being able to do anything. Like a criminal who returns to the scene of his crime I walked around the house. I felt a strong call to go in and beg forgiveness for her undoing. I have since learned that it has not done any harm. On the contrary, deserted by the charities the woman redoubled her energies. The cousin she was waiting for arrived a few days later, bringing some money with him. They bought a grocery store and she is earning her living. But at that moment I thought myself guilty of the greatest crime. I made many decisions, but stuck to the last, namely, to take notes of all the evil that organised charity was doing and at the first opportunity give them out for the benefit of the world.
I understood that the welfare of the poor did not concern the men at the head of the charity organisation; that it has become a business for them. A business they were managing, just as others manage factories. Their concern was to reduce the cost, to economise, just as the manufacturers try to produce the greatest amount of product with the smallest amount of outlay. And if hunger, starvation, sickness was the by-product, well, so much the worse for the poor.
One morning I received the following order:
"Investigate Sokol, Monroe Street, No. ----. Night visit preferable."
When I asked the Manager what he meant by night visit he told me between ten and eleven o'clock. Accordingly, at ten P. M. I knocked at the door of the above named family. In the few minutes that elapsed between the knocking and the opening of the door I heard a man groaning--as men groan under excruciating pain.
The woman, Mrs. Sokol, opened the door for me, and inquired who I was. I was instructed by the office not to tell them my identity under any circumstances. So I said I was from the Board of Health--that neighbours had claimed that they could not sleep on account of the man's groans, and I told Mrs. Sokol that we would have to see him and send him to a hospital. I entered the apartment. There were two rooms. In one room was the bed with the sick man in it. The other room was the kitchen, dining and reception room. A cold stove, a table, four chairs, and on one side two more folding beds. This was the furniture.