We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
•^
ftr%
2L l&fifi Mum0
E O
(Produced in co-operation with the National Committee on Prison Labor)
IN a wretched tenement room, on which the direst povert}^ had left its innumerable imprints, a wasted woman and a ragged little girl sat facing the door, as if momentarily expecting some one to enter. Several times the woman half rose at the sound of a step upon the creaking stairs, but after listening for a moment, she would resume her tense attitude and expression, her eyes always fixed upon the door.
"Mama," whimpered the child, "Tina is so hungry! Shall we eat soon?"
"Yes, carissima, soon. Thy father will bring something for his little Tina. Hush ! What is that ? ' '
It was only footsteps, heavily plodding up the creaking stairs. They reached the landing and dragged wearily past the door and started up the next flight. The woman's face grew ghastlier yet with disappointment. She clapped her hands tightly across her bosom and crushed back the anguish that struggled for utterance. The child crept to her and leaned against her knee, staring with great, questioning, hunger-hollowed eyes into her mother's face. Again there was the sound of steps upon the stairs.
"Ah!" gasped the woman, with a sob, " 'tis thy father at last. Now shalt thou eat, my poor little one!" She gathered the child to her and kist her pale cheeks. She almost smiled in her relief and hopefulness. The door was flung open and a young Italian stood in the doorway. The bitter expression on his face deepened as he looked at the woman and the child
105
and read the expectancy in their dumb relief at his arrival.
' ' Mario ! ' ' the woman whispered, frightened at his expression.
"Ni&nte!" he replied, despairingly, spreading his hands in a comprehensive gesture as of one who yields to unaccountable and overpowering fate.
Nothing! He had found no work; he had earned no money ; there was nothing to buy food with — and they were starving! The woman's mind whirled. She felt a great terror gradually possessing her. She put her thin arms about the child and looked with blazing, accusing eyes at the despairing Mario.
"And are we to die of starvation? Is our darling Tina to weep thru another night without so much as a spoonful of milk? What kind of a country is this that you have brought us to? We are to starve while there is plenty all about us? Other men find work — why not you?"
"Because," answered Mario bitterly, "they can do work I cannot do. I know none of their trades. I went just now to a shoe factory. The foreman said 'yes, he wanted men.' Then. he asked me if I could work one of the machines. I said 'yes,' for thou knowest, Maddalena, I am quick to learn. But when he told me to show him what I could do, he saw that I knew nothing about it. So he said he wanted only skilled labor, and sent me away."
"But," insisted Maddalena, "you must find something. We cant go another day like this. Look at the poor little Tina! And she is so good — the