Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb-Jul 1912)

110 THE MOTION PICTURE STORY .MAGAZINE "Where is papa?" asked Tina for the hundredth time. "Far away, little one, but he'll come back soon," was the invariable answer. One evening, Tina had great news for her mother, and rattled away in Italian like a little old gossip. "I'm to have new shoes, mama," she announced, delightedly, with a contemptuous glance at the ragged ones she was wearing. "Well, I'm glad, my sweet," answered Maddalena. ' ' Who said so ? " "A very nice gentleman, mama. The matron says he's the governor of the State. And he came and looked around and said, 'Do you need anything here ? ' And I went right up to him and stuck out my foot and I said, 'Yes, sir, please, I need shoes.' And he said, ' So you do. Matron, see that this child has a new pair of shoes.' And then the matron said she had no shoes and no money to buy any. And then he said I should have my shoes, anyway. So, when the governor of the State says so, it is true — isn't it, mama ? ' ' "I think so, dear," answered Maddalena, whose knowledge of the gubernatorial power and character was very vague. As Tina had said, the governor had asked that shoes be given to those who needed them. To his amazement, he was informed that there were neither shoes nor appropriation for them. This gave him food for thought and suggested the solution of a problem that had been bothering him. Some weeks previous to this time, he had been waited upon by a delegation of women shirt-makers, who put before him the conditions prevailing in their trade. "Stop the convicts making shirts, sir," was the spokeswoman's earnest request. "Why, I cant do that. I had the prison authorities open the shop, and it has meant a lot to the prisoners. It has saved some of them from madness, many of them from vengefulness and viciousness. They are learning a trade — and self-respect. ' ' "A trade, sir?" asked the spokeswoman, incredulously. ' ' It isn 't anything a man can work at, once he's out of prison! Shirt-making's a woman's trade. It may be a good occupation for the convicts, but it is taking the bread out of the mouths of women and girls." This was the side of the shield that had not before been presented to the governor. Promising to think it over and give his decision after a tour of investigation thru State institutions, the governor dismissed the delegation. And it remained for Mario Fagri 's child, in her plea for shoes, to put the finishing rivet to the governor's decision. Little Tina had received more than a passing glance from the governor, for her temerity in addressing him with her quaint request, "I wanta da shoe, please,, sare guvno," had in it nothing of reprehensible boldness. It was the spontaneous outburst of intense desire and an appeal to one whom she believed a dispenser of benefits. He inquired of the matron concerning the child, and once again, in the recital of Maddalena 's misfortunes, the governor faced the problem of the competition of prison labor with the free labor of women and girls. And on learning of the lack both of shoes and an appropriation to supply them to*the State institutions, the thought occurred to him, "Why not have the convicts make shoes for the State?" Being a man quick to act and carry any point on which he set his mind, within a week Mario Fagri and his fellow-prisoners were seated before new and heavier machines and learning the trade of shoe-making. The change was more than acceptable to the men, for in that mysterious way in which news and information creep about a prison, even under the strictest enforcement of silence, it had become generally known that shirt-making was not a man's trade and that their work in the prison was injuring thousands of women while it was adding nothing to the men's value as workmen.