How To Manage On $45 A Month: Family Housed In One Room "He remembered that once site was better."
in a voice singularly lifeless, Mrs. Zinaida Petrovna Zaitzeff gave her own simple reason for the recent sulelde of for husband, Mr. Afansy Maximovich Zaltzeff, who "used to come home each night a little after five o'clock to the single room over a Chinese tailor's shop that for two Years has housed himself, his wife, and three children, One _morning Afansy Maximovich rose very quiet-and went to work, but he never came back, for the long hours from six. am, until five pin. at the YMCA. where he worked, plus watching his family eat nothing but soup and bread for two years, had sapped the last of his courage. He had worked two years last June for $45 per month, He had had no Increase in wages and there was no hope left in thun in any case. He hanged himself to the door of a room at the Foreign YMCA. and his wite, Alexandre, 11, Tasia, eight, and Victor, one year and ten months old, to whatever destiny is designed for' them in life, fon the wall, was there to remind the ex-soldier of his service. He fled from Russia to Harbin, and there, while he worked for the CER. he made "enough to live." That was $80 to $100 per month. "But milk" was 25 cents for _five bottles," observed his widow. There the children could be fed. Political changes, during which Afansay Ma: imovieh became a Chinese citizen, forced him to flee once more to Shanghai.
Here he worked steadily for a hope that may be what keeps his widow courageous enough to go on in the It was explained that to live upon $45 per month was an achievement for a foreign woman, her husband, and three children, and Mrs. Zaidzett pathetically assented, She is 34 but ther face, lined with wrinkles carved by worry, looks fifteen years more than that, while her body has that tense, wiry appearance that probably comes from a diet of "soup and nothing else" but bread, the latter furnished by the French Fathers, How It was Done While she spoke, she held young! 'Victor, clad in a dress, only, on hei Jap. He eried, anda. neighbour handed ther a' bottle of tea to as-stage his hunger. Huge eyes very white face speak reams on the subject of his need for milk which was also furnished by te French Fathers until recently. Ws mother, nite bereft. of the $45 a. month which, at least, paid "the $10 per month rent for her single" room, measuring about 10 fect by 10 fect, explained how she had "managed.
Bach day she did washing, ironing about $20 a month, while Alexandre was left to mind his younger siseer and care for Victor. Thirty dollars went for food. That is, for whatever was cheapest and most likely. to furnish the most volume of soup, tone gathered. The rest went. for shoes and clothing necessities f9r the children, Strive as they might, Mr. and Mrs. Zaltze could furnish their bare Yoom with no more than necessities, 'A single iron cot for themselves, a row, hard wooden cot barely two! feet wide for young Alexandre and hhis baby brother, and for Tasia, the trunk, three feet long, with a chair at its end for her feet—these with chairs comprised What "desperate were effected to acquire that much is best left to the imagination. "After working all day, the couple did their best to keep taels home clean. They even papered the rickety, thin wooden walls with fresh newspapers. They tried with tragic perseverance to save.
"But there was never enough. We were always in debt. Twas not sure of my $20, and every cent that was earned was already spent. It belonged to" someone else. couldn't buy shoes for the children, and so, when that was impossibis they went barefoot. We never bought any for ourselves. Sometimes the Russian Church gave us clothing Sometimes people I worked for gave me some. But my husband was very brave, He never complained, except sometimes he mentioned that life was very hard for us here. He 7 membered that it was not always One can readily imagine that. On. the walls, which somehow the managed to paint a cheery light tint, there are hanging photographs of the late Czar, Czarevitch and Czarina.
another wall hangs a photograph of the grandparents of white-faced Victor. They are dead now, but once they rejoiced in the wedding which took place in 1915 in Vyatsk, when: a whole village danced and_mado merry in the fashion of Old Russi,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.