A HOBO IN THE MAKING.
The Way the System Works.
The following letter appeared in the Letters from the People’s Column of the Post Dispatch:
An Appeal for help.
To the editor of the Post-Dispatch:
I lost my job two years and seven months ago. L L L L S LL LLL LLL LLLL LLLLLS LLLLLL went broke. Have only worked about 10 weeks in the past 14 months. Have a wife and four children, ages 3, 5, 7, and 9 years. Wife took children away to a sister out on a farm and she went into the city to work, but now she, too, isout on the farm and writes me that there is nothing to do. Her brother-in-law is not in a position to help her, and the children cry for bread and go out in the woods and eat blackberries because they (the children) are so hungry. The two older ones have not been to school for a year on account of no clothes. My wife sayas if I do not get work she will either give the children away or take them to the river and drown them and herself also. I have walked the streets here from one end to the other, but can find nothing to do. I am about shoeless and beginning to look like a tramp; my clothes are getting tattered; am afraid to beg, as the city has put on extra police to watch for beggars and am liable to get from 30 go 90 days in workhouse if caught begging. I have lost everything I had. Now, I am willing to accept any kind of a job. Have answered numerous advertisements and enclosed stamp for reply, but never ehard from anyone. I will be very thankful to anyone that will help me out. She (my wife) also writes and tells me that the youngest child, the 3-year-old, is sick with a high fever and no money for a doctor or medicine. JOHN BROWN.