Konrad Bercovici

“ It is like a surgeon in a hospital who becomes so hardened that the amputation of an arm or leg is nothing—a trifle.
The poor represent so much material. One sews aprons and shirtwaists for a living; she, the investigator, visits the poor. The hangman too makes a living! It's all business. There can be no love in such work. The men and women in charge of it have not chosen it because they want to devote their lives to succouring the suffering widow or orphan. They are not sisters of mercy. They are paid to do the work. They make a living so. ”

“ When the father comes home drunk they envy him and will soon imitate him. They help the burglars hide, and chase the pickpocket over the roofs, together with the detectives, giving advice in turn to the hunted how to escape and to the policeman how to catch him; rejoicing when the bad one has escaped and booing him along the street when he is handcuffed. And every year their domain extends a little further until it approaches the rich. A block from Riverside drive and two from Fifth Avenue—extending continually, like a cankerous wound. ”

“ Most of the time New York is tuning up. Each voice is practising its part of the score—the little solos for the violins to please the superficial sentimentalists, and the twenty bars for the horn to satisfy the martial spirit in men.
But don't, oh sightseers, don't think you know New York because you have sauntered through a few streets and eaten hot tamales in a Mexican restaurant, or burnt your tongue with goulash in some "celebrated Hungarian palace." Only to very few privileged ones is it given to hear the symphony—and they have to pay dearly for it. ”

“ If they all knew, as this mother did, and if they all were as sincere and truthful to their children, Death would always be preferable to the wreck of what remains. Then, and only then, would the eyes of the world be opened. Then would everything be clear—clear—that no man could with one hand ruin health and spirit, through factory and workshop and adulterated food, dark and dirty tenement houses and Wall Street speculation, and with another hand give donations of a few dollars to palliate the evil he had created. ”

“ A thousand tripping feet descending lightly from Heaven—a million voices lifting themselves to the gods, the wedding of everything earthly to everything celestial, the whole universe dancing—man, woman and beast, mountains, oceans and stars—singing the joy of creation.
It was music, the kind of which Fay never heard before—interlaced songs, each one grown out of the hearts of millions of people through thousands of years, songs breathing life, as different from the music she had heard to then as a photograph is to the object it tends to portray. ”

“ Pale, undersized, violent children at play in the iron street; the brown, steamy warmth of Jewish coffee-houses on Grand Street; sick tenement rooms quivering and breathless in summer heat—starkly hungry with the December wind cutting through broken windows; poets, musicians, men and women with the blood of heroes and martyrs, babies who might grow up to be the world's great—stunted, weakened, murdered by the unfair struggle for bread. ”

“ Chords struck on a guitar, to accompany a subdued voice, high colors on the window curtains, a mixed odor of garlic, incense and heavy-scented perfumes, suggest something indefinably Moorish, Alhambresque; slow yet passionate, like cold fire.
And lo! the mirage vanishes! You are out of the district. The modest warm curve of the Orient has disappeared, the arrogant cold straight line of the Occident stares at you. You are in the heart of busy old New York. ”

“ Evil growths cling to it—houses of prostitution, sweat-shops which employ the poor in their bitter need at less than living wages, stores that sell them rotten food and shabby clothing at exorbitant prices, horrible rents, and all the tragi-comic manifestations of Organised Charity.
Every person of intelligence and humanity who has seen the workings of Organised Charity, knows what a deadening and life-sapping thing it is, how unnecessarily cruel, how uncomprehending. ”

“ And thus guests, perfect strangers, felt the weight of words hurled at them as from a cannon's mouth.
And the door was never still. The Imperial was the home of all the disappointed, disabused men of the East Side; men and women from the four corners of the earth. Former poets who studied dentistry to earn a living, and who are now completely swallowed up by their profession, came nightly, to hear themselves mock the former music composer who is now a physician, and over the ears in real estate transactions. ”

“ I finally stammered out, while I took out my notebook.
No answer.
"Are you Mrs. S.?" I repeated again, as I regained my composure.
"Don't take away my children, Mister. Don't take away my children," the poor mother yelled and growing hysterical she repeated this terrible cry in heartrending tones, tearing her hair. "Don't take them away."
The poor tots came out from under the table. Quickly she pushed them back, and continued to cry at the top of her voice the same sentence: "Don't take away my children. They are mine, mine. My God, they are mine." ”

“ Silvio Romano was terribly incensed. Several times he made up his mind to tell the youth they had reached the parting point. To dare sneer at Rossini! Rossini, the greatest master of them all—the god of music! let alone Donizetti—it was nothing less than sacrilege.
After those thoughts had had their sway, more practical ones presented themselves. Romano thought of the difficulty to find another man. Salvatore was such a good barber!
A hard battle between business and artistic ideals, indeed! ”

“ The indignities to which the poor are subjected in the offices of charity and by the employés of these organisations are of such a nature that it is my honest belief that criminals get more consideration in the police station, before the judge or in prison. After all, what are the poor guilty of? Is poverty a crime? Is it not the inevitable result of the present organisation of society? Is it possible that in the present industrial system there should be no poor and no helpless human beings? ”

“ From Vasilenko's restaurant spread tales of marvellous recoveries from all kinds of diseases which the healer discovered as soon as he felt the man's pulse. It was as if the holy man from Omsk had himself sent Stephan Ivanoff to New York to save all the poisoned men. And when a man was very severely ill Stephan spoke mysteriously of occult communications with the man "out there" and gave a brew of special herbs grown on the tombs of holy men and ordered Chinese leeches and dry-cupped in a special way until the man was saved. ”

“ They are the offspring of degenerates—of the poor."
In all the world, in all the charitable institutions, poverty is a crime. Thus are the children, the orphans, treated like little would-be criminals and every move is regarded with suspicion. Not half of the money given for their food is spent on food and not a half that is given for their clothing is spent for them. The whole institution is a shame and the man who thought he was performing a good deed when he left a bequest to shelter the children of the poor is cursed instead of being blessed. ”

“ A few cuts on the faces of customers bore witness to the young man's distraction.
The next day Romano, feeling much better, was in the shop again.
Toward noon there was an idle hour, and the two men sat down to talk music. It soon developed into a quarrel. Romano was an admirer of the old Italian school of Rossini and Donizetti; Salvatore Gonfarone bowed at the shrine of Verdi and Puccini.
"Pah! Rossini was nothing but a——"
"Basta, Signor! Rossini was the greatest master. Your Puccinis are nothing but noise makers."
"And you love Rossini only because you can play his things on the guitar." ”

“ They are the greatest sufferers. Under the cloak of charity men and women are tortured. Each piece of bread is scalded with tears and pains, and if another Napoleon should arise there is a job waiting for him—to burn down the modern Inquisition, destroy the torture chamber, abolish the "Question," the "Test," to save the poor from organised charity. ”

“ Early in the morning she will return to the children and buy bread and milk with the price of a night's degradation. How that brute tore the shawl from her face! "Show your sweet face, madame. If you are ashamed to show yourself there is no need to come here at all." When a young woman has lost her shame why should she beg? It's midnight now. I can't sleep. Where is she now? Where are they all? All those organised charity has driven to the street. ”

“ And you can hear music streaming out from every window. The sound from a grand piano on which some one is essaying Beethoven's "Appassionata," or Sarasate's undying and hackneyed "Gypsy Airs," played on a violin to a very inadequate accompaniment. Song, music and color, whichever way you turn.
But you only get the fringe of it, until you come down to Moskowitz's cellar on Rivington Street. And though the wine there is not as good as the music, the place is always full—to the glory of the Roumanians who know that no wine could be so good as to surpass the quality of the music one hears there. ”

“ If it had not been only yesterday that she seemed so determined not to part with them I would think that prospective matrimony is the cause of her change of heart. The Little God is a mean fellow, and with his dart often poisons a heart; especially a mother's. But after all I know this is not the reason. The woman is too hungry to think of love. Nature is on her guard. She does not want hungry beings to procreate. What is more certain is that she can't stand hunger, can't see her children hungry, and has probably made up her mind that the children's health, life, is worth her unhappiness. ”

“ THE HOLY HEALER FROM OMSK
From Fourth Street to the confines of 14th Street below First Avenue and the East River is one of the Russian districts in New York. It is inhabited to a great extent by Russian laborers. The Russian "Inteligentsia" of New York is so busy talking about the people, the "narod," it has had no time to go and see and talk with the people.
The odor of cooked cabbage and burned fats dissolves into the stronger odors of the oiled high boots and the numerous Russian steam baths of the district. ”

“ Some day some one should chart New York—some one who does not know a thing about statistics, who will study every section just for the love of it, without even thinking of selling the story to a newspaper. ”

“ But giving to the organised charities is worse than stealing the last crust of bread from the lost in the desert. Man's pride, his sense of shame is his last property, the only one he has that might help him in his struggle when he is down. Organised charity robs him of this last thing, robs him and his wife and his children and children's children. ”