Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1891 — “THE GENTEEL POOR.” [ARTICLE]

“THE GENTEEL POOR.”

A Dying Woman’s Indictment of Our Social World. “There is help for all but the genteel poor,” is the eloquent indictment hurled at society by a pitiful woman who sought eternity and peace through the dark way of suicide. A woman of good education, of moral excellence, of honest purpose, of refined sensibilities, she was driven from starvation to death because no one would give her employment in New York because she had no “references.” In the letter left in the miserable garret where she lived she wrote: "Women who were so ignorant that I felt sorry for them would not take me into their kitchen because I could not show “city references.” I tried to explain that I had never had to work; and because I was not born and bred in the gutter I presume I must starve.” She might, however, have found easy employment in comfortable homes. There was plenty of steady work within her grasp. She confessed as much herself. These are her words: “Widowers who advertise for housekeepers, and then gently insinuate that you add wifely duties to domestic arrangements, are very plenty iu this city, but I do not approve of such economy.” SKc preferred starving, it seems, while she trudged the streets from house to house, in ail sorts of weather, seeking “any honest work, even to scrubbing.” But she could not give au affirmative answer to the maddening, stereotyped question, “Have you any references?” So she finally dashed out her brains by a leap from a fourth-story window, leaving behind on the bureau a “reference" that should open to her the gates of Paradise while many a “cnaritablo” grand lady knocks in vain at their bar. This is one of the saddest cases in the list of sad suicides, and is a mournful commentary upon the charity and humanity of large cities. ffbere is no harder condition imposed by life than that to which the "genteel poor” are subjected when roducod to destitution. There seems-to be literally no hope for them. They have neither the assurance to take opportunity by the throat and demand relief, nor the miserable obsequiousness to beg for. alms where they should have the right to earn their support. They too frequently have but one or two altern itives as the solution of their life problem, shame and death. This woman in New York prefers tho headlong plunge into the terrors of death to a dishonorable life. Happily ode can bo buried without "reference.” * Optimism. “Into each life some rain must fuli,” Is written, and none may doubt it, And better it is that rain should fall. For life would be dry without it.