y humanity who have forgotten what sunshine may mean and who know no
joy that life was meant to hold!

In one of these rooms, clean, if cleanliness were possible where walls
and ceiling and every plank and beam reek with the foulness from sewer
and closet, three women were at work on overalls. Two machines were
placed directly under the windows to obtain every ray of light. The
room, ten by twelve feet, with a small one half the size opening from
it, held a small stove, the inevitable teapot steaming at the back; a
table with cups and saucers and a loaf of bread still uncut; and a small
dresser in one corner, in which a few dishes were ranged. A sickly
geranium grew in an old tomato-can, but save for this the room held no
faintest attempt at adornment of any sort. In many of them the cheapest
colored prints are pinned up, and in one, one side had been decorated
with all the trademarks peeled from the goods on which the family
worked. Here there was no time for even such attempts at betterment. The
machines rushed on as we talked, with only a momentary pause as interest
deepened, and one woman nodded confirmation to the statement of another.

"We've clubbed, so's to get ahead a little," said the finisher, whose
fingers flew as she made buttonholes in the waistband and flap of the
overalls. "We were each in a room by ourselves, but after the fever,
when the children died and I hadn't but two left, it seemed as if we'd
be more sensible to all go in together and see if we couldn't be more
comfortable. We'd have left anyway, and tried for a better place, but
for one thing,--we hadn't time to move; and for another, queer as it
seems, you get used to even the worst places and feel as if you couldn't
change. We'll have to, if the landlord doesn't do something about the
closets. It's no good telling the agent, and I don't know as anybody in
the house knows just who the landlord is. Anyway, the smell's enough to
kill you sometimes, and it's a burning disgrace that human beings have
to live in such a pig-pen. It's cheap rent. We pay five dollars a month
for this place. When I came here it was from a neck-tie place over on
Allen Street, that's moved now, and my husband was mate on a tug and
earned well. But he took to drink and sold off everything I'd brought
with me, and at last he was hurt in a fight round the corner, and died
in hospital of gangrene. Mary's husband there was a bricklayer and had
big wages, but he drank them fast