BACK BAY'S BACK DOORS
Back Bay's Back Doors I HAD SHOWN the baggageman my ticket to Boston and had asked him to check my trunk to the Back Bay Station. He handed me a check which read, "Back Bay, Mass." I was about to...
...no North, no South...
...sometimes a condition of inherited self-satisfaction, though it is only fair to say that in these days of heart searchings it is often a condition of divine discontent...
...She Could Sympathize with Her A WOMAN ENGAGED a Swedish girl as housemaid...
...All the money is to be collected during one month next fall...
...Helen Weeks Barrett, formerly of Pratt Institute, whose remarkable executive ability is widely recognized...
...Old brick walls are being torn down and artistic iron fences put in their place...
...In reality, however, Back Bay is not a strip of land in Boston but a condition which knows no East, no West...
...Richards' work and not upon a few big contributions...
...The day the girl came the mistress was in tears...
...The plan was made by Mrs...
...Those who can suggest names of persons likely to want to contribute are asked to write them on slips of paper and send them to Mrs...
...The memorial is to take the form of a fund whose income shall be used to further the work in which Mrs...
...One Sunday evening, finding my way over these tracks, I took a walk along the beautiful esplanade upon the Charles bank, which had been opened to the public since my last visit to Boston, and watched the sun set behind one of the most picturesque sky lines in the world...
...Of its own unsightly places, its own ash barrels and garbage boxes, it has been serenely unconscious...
...My trunk justified the confidence of my friend and the baggageman by arriving on time, not to be sure on Beacon Street, but in a region not far from the Back Bay Station and separated from Back Bay itself by a network of railway tracks...
...Another admirable part of the plan is that office expenses are reduced to a minimum...
...But times have changed and the opening of the driveway along the Charles has revealed Back Bay's back doors to the people...
...The girl looked distressed and then said, "Oh, Missis, dat is a sorrow...
...Back Bay, you must know, has looked out all these long years over the Charles from its second floor library windows...
...Do not be afraid of duplicating names for the slips will all be sorted out and each person will be approached but once...
...These it is who have been touched by the divine discontent...
...Richards have been laid and, it seems to us, very wisely...
...I know yust how you feel...
...These are the unsightly places in the backyards of the Back Bay of unearned privilege...
...In doing so it has looked over its own back doors and back yards which lie two floors below...
...It is hoped that the greater part of the $100,000 sought will come in gifts of from fifty cents to a dollar...
...The woman replied, "I am sad because my son has gone back to Yale and I won't see him again for a long time...
...I was about to ask if this address was sufficient when the friend beside me said, "Back Bay...
...The consequence has been a mighty clearing up among those of Back Bay who care what the public thinks of them...
...Now an awakened social conscience has passed behind these back doors as the Charles embankment pushed itself behind Beacon Street, and the public has been admitted to a sight of the sources of unearned incomes...
...Why, it would be sufficient to say simply 'Back Bay, United States.' In fact I am not sure that 'Back Bay,' with nothing more would not have been enough...
...It is a condition of inherited privilege...
...Shrubbery is being planted and vines trained over the garages...
...Some of those who live in this region are seeking to get a glimpse of their own back doors and some are clearing them up...
...Richards was specially interested—that of Home Economics—and to which she gave her money, her time, and her strength with almost prodigal generosity...
...Barrett, 109 Johnson Street, Brooklyn, N. Y. Add to the name and address, a word or two to indicate the person's relation o the movement,—"Housekeeper," "Home-maker," or "Teacher of Domestic Science...
...Sometimes it has seen child labor, sometimes wages too small for decent living, sometimes brutalizing conditions of work and of home life, and sometimes premature old age, forced by unremitting toil...
...It seems admirable to us, in the first place, because its success will depend upon getting small contributions from all of the very great number of people who have been helped by Mrs...
...After a while the maid asked, "Why you feel so bad, Missis...
...But the real Back Bay, that place of inherited or otherwise unearned privilege, has its back doors also, over which its unseeing gaze has been traveling...
...The Ellen H. Richards Memorial PLANS FOR A MEMORIAL to Mrs...
...The income is for a time to go to the support of the Home Economics Journal...
...I should not have questioned this, of course, for geographically there is but one Back Bay, a strip of land in Boston whose most favored portion faces Beacon street and turns its back upon the beautiful Charles River...
...In the meantime state organizers are being selected who will in their turn select district organizers...
...my brudder, he been in yail six times since T'anksgiving...
Vol. 3 • September 1911 • No. 35
