A story

That happened around the turn of the century. The people I am talking about were a typical American family. They had not enough money to buy their own flat so they lived together with one family of Mexican workers. Thats why their flat was really crowded. They had only two rooms for five people - wife, husband and three kids.

Almost every evening Barnes(family surname) had a visitors. Basically that was their poor relations who asked for a credit . The most frequent visitor was Mr. Smith. He was married to Mrs. Barnes`s sister. He owned a pub earlier but was forced to sell it because of a big credits. Selling of a pub paricularly helped him but he still got quite a big credit. Mrs. Barnes helped him as she could but she was only a tailor and earned very few.

All the kids worked on a factory so they earned their pocket money only by themselves. They almost did not have a free time but sometimes instead of school they went to a variety shows. Of course they had not any money left after those shows so they forced to steal some kinds of food like candys from their neighbours.

That was an example of usual American family after the First World War.