She did not need charity for she had an immense capacity for hard
work, but she sadly needed the service of the State's attorney
office, enforcing the laws designed for the protection of such
girls as her daughters.
We early found ourselves spending many hours in efforts to secure
support for deserted women, insurance for bewildered widows,
damages for injured operators, furniture from the clutches of the
installment store. The Settlement is valuable as an information
and interpretation bureau. It constantly acts between the
various institutions of the city and the people for whose benefit
these institutions were erected. The hospitals, the county
agencies, and State asylums are often but vague rumors to the
people who need them most. Another function of the Settlement to
its neighborhood resembles that of the big brother whose mere
presence on the playground protects the little one from bullies.
We early learned to know the children of hard-driven mothers who
went out to work all day, sometimes leaving the little things in
the casual care of a neighbor, but often locking them into their
tenement rooms. The first three crippled children we encountered
in the neighborhood had all been injured while their mothers were
at work: one had fallen out of a third-story window, another had
been burned, and the third had a curved spine due to the fact that
for three years he had been tied all day long to the leg of the
kitchen table, only released at noon by his older brother who
hastily ran in from a neighboring factory to share his lunch with
him.
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