Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 153, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1911 — Trag [?] Aged Women [??]udges [ARTICLE]

Trag [?] Aged Women [??]udges

tithat becomes of Die destitute VY old women? There are Innumerable lodging bouses end mission* , and breed line* tor old men. One of tb# mnet baffling problem* of every leave city i* what to do with the old and decrepit mm, the tramps, the vagabonds. But what of the old women? No one seems to beer anything about them. When there ere so many charities tor the benefit of the aged man, why are there so few tor the aged woman? Go down the Bowery, or Third Avenue, and you will see countless dingy lodging houses, where tramps css mend the night for five oents begged from the passer-by. But how few such places there are for women! I have asked several of the mission and charity workers about what becomes of the old women. They seem puzzled. They really do not know. Their only answer is that there seems no need of many dbarltles for old women. But why? There are far more women in all eastern states than men. So where are all the wives and sisters of these men who fill the bread lines and east side lodging houses? The only answer is that women, however old and destitute —WORK! Every night and early morning finds an army of gray-headed, swoop-shoul-dered women scrubbing the floors of the huge office buildings all over ihe city.

When they are too old to be hotel maids or work in factories or sweat shops, they do not become tramps and beggars as do the men. But they take up the scrub brush and pall and spend the rest of their days on their knees, scrubbing through untold hours tor just enough to keep life to their weary old bodies. Go through any large building, hotel, apartment, or office, early In the morning, and on every few floors you will find a kneeling figure, a gray head and work-rounded shoulders, bending over the scrub brush. She will draw aside her pall to let you pass, gazing up to a dazed sort of way. Nothing seem* to me quite so pathetic as just the way these poor old women move their pafls and look up at you as you pass. There Is nothing of appeal or supplication in their expression. They have bo long been hurried by, unnoticed, that they expect nothing else. They are only a part of the cleaning machinery of the building. No one ever thinks of those kneeling figures as women. And when they look up at you (sometimes they are too weary to even raise their heads), it is only with the dazed blankness of sensibilities dulled by years of misery and want. And If you stop and slip something into her hand, so unused-is she to receive any help that she may be too surprised even to mumble her thanks. The Picture of • Drudge. Compare this old woman with the ' men of her age and class who beg from you on the street and exhaust the city charities. She is self-sup-porting. She WORKS. She is not a tramp or a supplicant. She does not haunt the missions and bread lines. She is earning her living—however wretched a living It may be. And she Is earning it honestly and by the hardest drudgery a woman can do. And yet she is gray-haired and weak and rheumatic? If she was your mother or grandmother you would think her too old and frail for even the lightest work. Do you know of anything more deserving of help than this great army of bent-shouldered, gray haired scrub women? What can be dime for them as a whole? I do not knew*. I am not a sociologist. I have no new theories for solving the problems of the poor. But Ido know this. If each of you who reads this article would help In some small way the scrub woman who washes up the office in which you work, It would bring a little happiness to a great many pitiful old women whose livfes ere more wretched. than you can know.