_ PART II. SEEING ITALY AT MRS. O'FLANNAGAN'S EXPENSE
CHAPTER I. SEEING ITALY AT MRS. O'FLANNAGAN'S EXPENSE
Mrs. O'Flannagan lived in Limerick, the Irish colony of Louisville. Her husband, a policeman under the Grainger administration, was "doped by a friend" and, being found in a stupor, was fired by the Board of Public Safety. His friend's brother inherited the beat and the Tenth-street or side door of the saloon at ---- West Green Street, swung more loosely of hinge on Sunday than formerly.
Some days after his dismissal O'Flannagan, passing the cart of a hot-tamale man at the entrance to the ball park, became involved in an argument between the vendor, a Sicilian, and a boy and was knifed by the vendor. He was buried three days later after a convivial wake, the success of which was in some measure a consolation for his widow.
His estate, besides his widow, consisted of a four-room, shot-gun cottage, meagerly furnished, and three boys, Tim, Pat and Jerry.
Tim was fourteen, and after school sold papers at Fourth and Broadway. The other two boys were of sufficient years of discretion to dodge a motorcycle if the rider gave stentorian warning.
Mrs. O'Flannagan, a husky, rawboned dame, adopted the profession of a washlady, and found many ladies who were anxious to procure her services since the colored ladies had deserted their washtubs to work in the Axton tobacco factory.
Tim always brought home the worn outside paper of his bundle, or else one that some customer had glanced through and thrown away, for his mother to read. She was deeply interested in the progress of the World War.
After ten hours over the washtub, she would change her sud-soaked dress, get the boys their supper, clean and dry the dishes, scrub the two little chaps and put them to bed; then, after eight o'clock, sit down at the window where the street light shone in and read about those "devilish Huns," her moist, strong face, to which clung her brown hair, stringy from sweat, working and changing expression with feelings of sympathy and patriotism.
After she had read all about the war and the Red Cross, but nothing else, she got out a ball of gray yarn and needles and knitted till 10:30. She had promised to knit two pairs of socks a week for the Limerick Red Cross Unit. Then after her prayers, which were wholly intercessory, for her boys and their daily bread and the motherless boys in Flanders, her day's work was done. She went to the big bed by the window and kissed her three boys, then to her cot in the corner and slept the sound sleep of the faithful and the true.
She had not been to a picture show in three years; had never been in an automobile, nor to the derby, nor the State Fair, but each Sunday morning walked in to the Cathedral to early mass.
She was always at home, except when she made the trip to the grocery, or to The Puritan to deliver the wash, or to the knitting unit to exchange the pair of well-knitted socks (on the tops of which she always made a narrow border of red, white and blue) for more yarn.
She gave the boys twenty cents each every Saturday night to go to the picture show and for peanuts. They knew all the knot-holes in the ball park fence and all the home players by name and sight. They argued and sometimes fought over the umpire's decision.
The Government selected and named a training camp site, out the Preston Street car line, Camp Taylor. It was soon rumored around Limerick how they were burning down practically new buildings to make immediate room for barracks and were paying unheard-of prices for labor. Every one who owned a saw, hammer and square and who could hit the hammer with the nail, called himself a carpenter and journeyed thither. The paper boys became water boys at three dollars per day. So Tim gave up his paper stand and became a water boy.
Mrs. O'Flannagan, going down to the store for a pair of shoes and taking three dollars to pay for them, the price she had been paying for the same shoe for ten years, was forced to return home for three dollars more, as she was told: "Last week the price was raised to $5.98." Everywhere she went to buy some simple necessity she was told of a sudden similar raise.
The husbands and sweethearts of the few remaining colored washladies having procured jobs at the camp and the women themselves receiving liberal offers at other occupations, deserted the washtub. The ladies of The Puritan were forced to get Mrs. O'Flannagan or buy an electric washer and iron or surreptitiously do the family wash in the bathtub and dry it in the kitchenette.
Three or four times daily a limousine or sedan drove up in front of Mrs. O'Flannagan's and a daintily bedecked creature in a fifty-dollar hat and a two-hundred-dollar dress, wearing twenty-dollar shoes, stepped out exhibiting a none too slender calf encased in a five-dollar stocking, though her father might have gotten his start as a section-hand at two dollars per day on the L. & N. or have driven a huckster's wagon, or tended bar, or curried horses. She tripped into the house and, after shaking hands with the washlady (she was hard pushed), who was forced to quit work, wipe her hands on the roller towel and entertain her visitor, said:
"Oh, Mrs. O'Flannagan, Mrs. Rothchilds says you are a beautiful laundress and that you always return all the things when you promise. I had a nigger doing my work and she was an awful nuisance. I do believe she wore my stockings and my teddy-bears. Mrs. Rothchilds is a friend of mine; we live in adjoining apartments. There are four in her family and only three in mine and her son Leo has so many shirts. She tells me you have been her laundress for three years and that she pays you a dollar and a half a week. Now that's too cheap. You give up her washing and take mine. I will pay you three dollars a week and send it round in the car by Charles."
"I have been doing Mrs. Rothchilds' wash for more than three years. When prices went up so much she offered to pay me more, saying high prices had cut the heart out of the dollar. I said: 'No, you furnish the soap and starch and what you pay is enough. I want to do what I can to help these times, and the way to put the heart back in the dollar is to put prices down; we can all help do that. All I want is to make an honest living and bring up my three boys to be good men.' I sometimes think happiness consists in having few wants. I am glad to see you are doing so well. I believe I know you. You are Rachael Reubenstein, the daughter of Herman Reubenstein, who used to have the old-clothes store at Ninth and Market. You and I used to play dolls together. Father went on your father's bond when he bought all those clothes and jewelry from two coons for twenty dollars."
"Charles, start the car; let us leave this low neighborhood, and wash the car when you get back to the garage."
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The National War Work Council of the Y. M. C. A. and kindred organizations, having started their work and particularly that most important portion of soliciting funds from the general public, Mrs. Breckenridge Crittenden Clay, of 4897 Third Avenue, was elected as head of the women's committee.
Fair, young girls in fluffy dresses and of just that age supposed to be most appealing and irresistible to men, were placed in the office and bank buildings and were directed to shower their smiles upon the strangers in the hotel lobbies, while certain fat and willing dames past forty were given the residence sections of the great common people and told to make a house-to-house canvass. They were instructed, however, to omit the factories and business houses intermittently located in such sections, as they were to be looked after by a selected coterie who called in state and were supposed to be specially fitted for just such solicitations.
Mrs. Weissinger Robinson, who was not on the best of terms with Mrs. Clay, but who always helped in such campaigns for contributions, was assigned to the residence section of Limerick, while Mrs. Clay's most intimate friend, Mrs. Castleman Smith, was assigned to Third and Fourth avenues between Kentucky and Hill streets.
One hot afternoon, while Mrs. O'Flannagan was hanging out the wash, the car of Mrs. Robinson drove up to her door.
"Horace, climb out and tell whoever lives here to come to the car."
The chauffeur knocked on the door and when Mrs. O'Flannagan opened it, delivered his message. She came out, wiping her wet, water-wrinkled hands upon her flour-sack apron, supposing that here was another lady looking for a laundress.
"I am Mrs. Weissinger Robinson and this is Mrs. Decatur Jones. We are asking subscriptions for the Y. M. C. A. and other kindred institutions, the money to be used for the comfort and entertainment of our soldier boys in Europe, to furnish them with shelter huts near the front line where they may rest, have picture shows, theatricals, innocent games, a library and be given hot coffee, chocolate and other home-like things; they will also be given writing materials. We have been asked to visit each house in this section and ask contributions."
"How nice and home-like that will be for the boys! If every mother gives, she can be sure her boy over there will share in the giving. I have saved up forty dollars for winter clothes for my boys, but we will give ten of it. I am sorry I can not do more."
At night when the canvass of that section was completed Mrs. Robinson had collected $843.50, while Mrs. Castleman Smith, of the Third Avenue section, had collected $327.00.
Mrs. Decatur Jones, talking about the contributions with Mrs. Robinson, said: "I am so glad we put it over that Mrs. Castleman Smith. My husband gave me twenty-five dollars to contribute, but I thought that was too much, so gave Mrs. Smith, who had our district, two dollars. I knew there would be no trouble in collecting this city's apportionment. We always 'go over the top.' Limerick certainly did beautifully, and I might just as well have given all the twenty-five dollars, as I lost it playing bridge."
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The necessary fund having been raised by popular subscription, the Y. M. C. A., K. of C. and Salvation Army began the process of preparation to send over a corps of workers to look after the spiritual and physical welfare of the American boys sent overseas and assigned for training or fighting service to camp or trench in England, France, Italy, Russia and Mesopotamia.
In the list of recruits for International Y service there were barbers and lawyers, truck farmers and preachers, mechanics and professors, dentists and veterinarians, meat-eaters and vegetarians--an average lot of Americans picked up in the hurley-burley and hasty preparation for war.
All were recommended by men of standing in their respective communities. If among them there were a few black sheep, the responsibility rested with the local Y which made the investigation, or on those respectable local citizens who indorsed them, and not on the International Y. The Government, when applications for passports were filed, made an investigation by special agent of the applicant's loyalty and character.
Thus were gathered together several thousand men whose average of age was probably forty, nearly all starting from home with a conscientious desire to render real patriotic service in the great war.
There were a few young men who joined the Y to avoid more serious military service. There were a few others who had no other object than to see France and Italy at Mrs. O'Flannagan's expense. There were perhaps a very few who sought sinful adventure and experience.
The majority left home upon the receipt of a telegram ordering them to report in New York at once, prepared to sail for Europe. They were fired with zeal and patriotism, expecting to sail at once and upon arrival in Europe to serve in the front line under the very muzzle of German big Berthas.
When they arrived in New York they reported at the Hotel St. Andrews and were then assigned to that or some other hotel and directed to report the following morning at 347 Madison Avenue, where the International Y had its offices.
Then they stood in line a day or two, usually snubbed if they asked some one of the smaller office men a question, and when they sought information, or to comply with certain regulations at the desk designated in their printed instructions as the proper one, they were referred to some one else or told by a stenographer that the gentleman was out just at present, or that the applicant must first go to some other desk before he could attend to him. This was the ground-floor experience, where the utmost inexperience was slowly ground down to competency and the green Y men were gradually knocked and buffeted through in accordance with the regulations. In this way their patriotism and resolutions were given a dush and first shock, from which they never wholly recovered because of many subsequent similar experiences.
The office building was arranged much on the order of a Chinese restaurant; in that as you journeyed skyward conditions improved. The ground floor was the worst, but as the elevator ascended you met with more courtesy and consideration. By the time you passed the fourth floor the man behind the desk had time to answer a relevant question, as he was not riled by his own incompetency.
After they had been in New York a day or two they learned that their passports had not been issued and therefore there was no immediate prospect for sailing. They were then ordered to a training conference for ten days, which many attended for months, retaining their rooms and eating at an expensive hotel at the expense of Mrs. O'Flannagan.
At the conference, with the exception of lessons in the language of the country where they were to be located and the physical training given them, to many the time seemed wasted. They were subjected to daily lectures on morals and patriotism by professors who talked to them as to a group of fourth-grade boys, and sought to impress upon them that it would be unbecoming in a Y secretary to flirt with the girls of the street of Paris and London, or to lie around drunk in a front-line trench. But the professors could not help it; they were fifty and their habits were formed. They had been talking to boys from eight to sixteen years old for thirty years. They could not understand that a lawyer or dentist or preacher past forty might be a little set in his ways and might know almost half as much about the girls of the street and a plain drunk as a Boston college professor. The pupil might even have had the experience.
Possibly some of the men before sailing during their hundred nights on Broadway received a few instructions first-hand about the girls of the street and the evils of intemperance, which in a small measure prepared their innocent souls for the shock of a short sojourn in Paris. Certainly that experience with what the professors had told them was sufficient to keep them from unconsciously being led astray, though I have been told that some of them offered the new and heretofore unheard-of excuse: "She did tempt me and I did eat."
Then they were further trained to march and to sing; since when they landed upon foreign shores they undoubtedly would spend most of their time marching in bands about the streets of London and Paris and Rome and possibly in due course Berlin, singing: "The Yanks are Coming" and "America Done It," because the French, Italians and Germans know little or nothing about music, and any American Y man, especially a blacksmith from Shoulder Blade, Kentucky, could give them a few lessons. And the British--why, they could do nothing, or would do nothing, till they got there. They were drilled for a month or more in squads right and squads left and taught by music masters to sing: "Here We Are, Hear the Eagle Scream."
The last time they marched was when they marched off the boat on the other shore; after that when they walked they hoofed it. And the last time they sang was just before they heard the Italians sing. The first performance by comparison with the second sounded as a tom-tom concert in competition with the celestial choir. Talk about carrying coals to Newcastle; the most absurd performance of the Y was exporting American singers to entertain the Italian army.
Have you thought about it? Since Woodrow Wilson has been President, America has been afflicted with what might be called the Professors' Age. The professors in the Y certainly had the pull. If a kitchen was opened in Flanders, a professor of chemistry was the director in charge; a chef was no better than a kitchen scullion. If a tooth was to be pulled, a professor of anatomy performed the operation because he knew the root from the crown, while a dentist handled freight in a warehouse. A professor of mathematics was put in charge of motor vehicles, while a machinist arranged the programme for a vocal concert. A professor of languages would be made chief accountant, while an expert accountant was put in charge of a moving-picture machine. Professor Brown was given charge in France; Professor Greene in England, and Professor Black in Italy; and their regional directors were professor this and that; a professor of penmanship in Rome, a professor of biology in Genoa, a professor of languages in Brescia, and a professor of something else in Naples, Milan, Venice, Trieste and Palermo. There was as much of school-teacher dictatorship in the foreign Y as Secretary Lansing found at the head of the State Department. When a doughboy referred to the Y as "the damn Y," it is possible he recognized the secretary in charge as his former professor of mathematics or languages.
But slowly as these professors returned to America order came out of chaos; the Y adjusted itself and became an efficient machine. We can probably look upon it as a permanent organization in foreign lands by the time these gifted and well-trained executives, these learned expatriates, have all been called home.
Because of mismanagement and disorganization in the beginning, many a Y man who had left home with the best intentions, became disappointed and disgusted and so unfit for service.
He began by traveling from pillar to post and ended by seeing France and Italy at Mrs. O'Flannagan's expense. He returned home saying unkind things of the Y. Those who saw him traveling about, usually in an expensive car, burning gasoline which cost more than a dollar a gallon or traveling free on overcrowded trains, needed to transport troops or civilians on imperative business, said unkind things of the Y.
The men in the service of the Y had no reason for complaint at the reception or courtesy extended them by the foreign governments where they were placed. In Italy they had free first-class transportations and could frank their baggage. The organization was given free freight, express, postal and telegraph service. Certain government monopolies were waived and customs' charges revoked in its favor.
Nor could the men complain of the Y in the allowance for expenses and salaries, as the organization in every instance more than lived up to its agreement. No great criticism can be found with the organization. A man who wanted to work and serve had the opportunity. Just criticism for incompetence was local, and for discourtesy and dishonesty was individual. _