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“BROKE”
THE MAN WITHOUT THE DIME

As Himself

“Broke”

THE AUTHOR

“BROKE”
THE MAN WITHOUT THE DIME

BY

EDWIN A. BROWN

ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

CHICAGO
BROWNE & HOWELL COMPANY
1913

COPYRIGHT, 1913
BY BROWNE & HOWELL COMPANY

Copyright in England
All rights reserved

PUBLISHED, NOVEMBER, 1913

THE · PLIMPTON · PRESS
NORWOOD · MASS · U·S·A

TO

THAT VAST ARMY, WHO, WITHOUT
ARMS OF BURNISHED STEEL, FIGHT
WITH BARE HANDS FOR EXISTENCE

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTORY

I was born on the 28th day of April, 1857, in the village of PortByron, Rock Island County, Illinois. The waves of the grand oldMississippi sang my lullaby through a long and joyful childhood. Sonear at hand was the stream that I learned to swim and skate almostbefore I was out of kilts. My father, A. J. Brown, at that time was theleading merchant and banker in the town. We were an exceedingly happyand prosperous family of six.

My father died when I was seven years of age. My mother, a woman ofexceptionally brilliant intellect and lovable character, has been withor near me almost all my life. She died in 1909 at the ripe age ofeighty-four.

When a boy in my teens I attended school in Boston, where I spentfour years. In the early eighties I moved to Colorado and have livedthere ever since. In 1897 I was married, and the intense interest andsympathy my wife has shown in my crusade for the homeless has been oneof my greatest encouragements. With no children for company, it hasmeant a great sacrifice on her part, for it broke up our home andvoluntarily separated us for nearly two years.

I have often wondered why I should have been the one to make thiscrusade, for all my life I have loved solitude, and have always beenover-sensitive to the criticism and opinions of others. My missionis not based upon any personal virtue of goodness, but I have beeninspired with the feeling that I had taken up a just and righteouscause, and the incentive of all my efforts has ever been that ofcompassion—not to question whether a hungry man has sinned againstsociety, but to ask why he is not supplied with the necessities ofexistence.[A]

I am trying to solve these questions: Are our efforts to help theunfortunate through the medium of our “Charities,” our “Missions,” andour churches all failures? Why is crime rampant in our cities? Whyare our hospitals, almshouses, our jails, and our prisons crowded tooverflowing? And these questions have resolved themselves for me intoone mighty problem: Why is there destitution at all,—why is therepoverty and suffering amidst abundance and plenty?

I am convinced that poverty is not a part of the great Eternal plan.It is a cancerous growth that human conventions have created andmaintained. I believe it was intended that every human beingshouldhave food and shelter. Therefore I have not only asked “Why?” but Ihave tried to find the remedy. My crusade has been constructive and notdestructive.

My mission is not to censure but to disclose facts. I am withoutpolitical or economic bias.

I shall ask my reader to go with me and see for himself theconditions existing in our great cities,—to view the plight of thehomeless, penniless wayfarer, who, because of the shortsightednessof our municipalities, is denied his right to decent, wholesome foodand to sanitary shelter for a night. And my concern is not only thehomeless man, but the homeless woman, for there are many such whowalk our streets, and often with helpless babes at their breasts andlittle children at their sides. And after my reader has comprehendedthe condition that I shall reveal to him, I shall ask him to enlisthimself in the cause of a Twentieth Century Free Municipal EmergencyHome in every city, that shall prove our claims to righteousness andenlightenment.

To-day there is everywhere a growing sense of and demand forpolitical, social, and economic justice; there is a more general anddefinite aim to elevate the condition of the less fortunate of ourfellow-citizens; there are united efforts of scientific investigatorsto discover and create a firm foundation for practical reforms. Iam simply trying to show the way to one reform that is practical,feasible, and—since the test of everything is the dollar—goodbusiness.

If I can succeed in showing that old things are often old only becausethey are traditional; that in evolution of new things lies socialsalvation; that the “submerged tenth” is submerged because of ignoranceand low wages; and that the community abounds in latent ability onlyawaiting the opportunity for development,—then this volume will haveaccomplished its purpose.

I am determined to create a systematic and popular sympathy for thegreat mass of unfortunate wage-earners, who are compelled by our systemof social maladjustment to be without food, clothing, and shelter. Iam determined our city governments shall recognize the necessity forrelief.

Let me not be misunderstood as handing out a bone, for an oppressivesystem. “It is more Godly to prevent than to cure.”

In these pages I shall undertake to show by many actual cases that theso-called “hobo,” “bum,” “tramp,” “vagrant,” “floater,” “vagabond,”“idler,” “shirker,” “mendicant,”—all of which terms are appliedindiscriminately to the temporarily out-of-work man,—the wanderingcitizen in general, and even many so-called criminals, are not whatthey are by choice any more than you or I are what we are socially,politically, and economically, from choice.

I shall call attention to the nature and immensity of the problem ofthe unemployed and the wandering wage-earner, as such problem confrontsand affects every municipality.

We find the migratory wage-earner, the wandering citizen, at certainseasons traveling in large numbers to and from industrial centers insearch of work. Most of these wandering wage-earners have exhaustedtheir resources when they arrive at their destination, and arepenniless—“broke.” Because of the lack of the price to obtain anight’s lodging, or food, or clothing, they are compelled to shift asbest they may, and some are forced to beg, and others to steal.

For the protection and good morals of society in general, for thesafety of property, it is necessary that every municipality maintainits own Municipal Emergency Home, in which the migratory worker, thewandering citizen, can obtain pure and wholesome food to strengthen hisbody, enliven his spirit, and imbue him with new energy for the nextday’s task in his hunt for work. It is necessary that in such MunicipalEmergency Home the wanderer shall receive not only food and shelter,but it is of vital importance that he shall be enabled to put himselfinto presentable condition before leaving.

The purpose of each Municipal Emergency Home, as advocated inthis volume, is to remove all excuse for beggary and other pettymisdemeanors that follow in the wake of the homeless man. The TwentiethCentury Municipal Emergency Home must afford such food and lodgingas to restore the health and courage and self-respect of every needyapplicant, free medical service, advice, moral and legal, and helpto employment; clothing, given whenever necessary, loaned when theapplicant needs only to have his own washed; and free transportationto destination wherever employment is offered. The public will then bethoroughly protected. The homeless man will be kept clean, healthy,and free from mental and physical suffering. The naturally honest butweak man will not be driven into crime. Suffering and want, crime andpoverty will be reduced to a minimum.

In looking over the field of social betterment, we find that Americais far behind the rest of the civilized world in recognizing theproblems of modern social adjustment. We find that England, Germany,Austria, France, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway, and other nations haveprogressed wonderfully in their system of protecting their wanderingcitizens. All these nations have provided their wage earners withold-age pensions, out-of-work funds, labor colonies, insurance againstsickness, labor exchanges, and municipal lodging houses.

Because of the manifest tendency to extend the political activitiesof society and government to the point where every citizen is providedby law with what is actually necessary to maintain existence, Iadvocate a divorce between religious, private, and public charities,and sincerely believe that it is the duty of the community, and ofsociety as a whole, to administer to the needs of its less fortunatefellow-citizens. Experience with the various charitable activities ofthe city, State, and nation, has proven conclusively to me that everyendeavor to ameliorate existing conditions ought to be, and rightly is,a governmental function, just as any other department in government,such as police, health, etc. The individual cannot respect societyand its laws, if society does not in return respect and recognize theemergency needs of its less fortunate individuals. Popular opinion,sentiment, prejudice, and even superstitions, are often influentialin maintaining the present-day hypocritical custom of indiscriminatealms giving, which makes possible our deplorable system of streetmendicancy.

The object of the personal investigation and experiences presented inthis volume is to lay down principles and rules for the guidance andconduct of the institution which it advocates.

The reader has a right to ask: How does this array of facts show tous the way to a more economical use of private and public gifts to theneedy? Are there any basic rules which will help to solve the problemof mitigating the economic worth of the temporary dependent? I shallgive ample answers to these queries.

In the hope that the facts here presented may bring to my reader asense of the great work waiting to be done, and may move him to becomean individual influence in the movement for building and conductingTwentieth Century Municipal Emergency Homes throughout our land, Ioffer this volume in a spirit of good-will and civic fellowship.

E. A. B.

Denver, September, 1913.

A Half-frozen Young Outcast Sleeping in a Wagon Bed. He Was Beaten Senseless by the Police a Few Minutes after the Picture Was Taken

“Broke”

CHAPTER I
My Itinerary and Working Plan

“The heart discovers and reveals a social wrong, and then demands that reason step in and solve the problem.”

It was in the Winter of 1908–9 that a voice in the night prompted me totake the initiative for the relief of a great social wrong—to start onwhat to me was a great constructive social reform.

As mysterious as life itself was the following of that voice for threeyears. I realized fully the importance of actually putting myself inthe place of the penniless man to gain the knowledge and fully graspall that life meant to him. It came clearly to me that the shaking ofhands through prison bars, and the regulation charity inquisition andinvestigation was idle and useless. Overcoming a sensitive dread ofbeing looked upon as an eccentric poseur, I purchased a workingman’ssuit of blue jeans, coarse shoes, and slouch hat, costing about fourdollars, and became a voluntary wandering student in the haunts of thehomeless and penniless.

I did not intend at first to investigate further than my own home city,Denver, but the demand reaching out, I felt compelled in the months ofFebruary and March, 1909, to visit Chicago, New York, and Washington.My visit to those cities being made exceedingly prominent by theAssociated Press I received on my return home over one thousand lettersfrom all parts of the country, and not a few from the Old World. Iawakened to the fact that my plea for a Municipal Emergency Home forthe city of Denver had become a national—yes, a world wide—issue.Many of these letters,—from the North, the East, the South and theWest,—bore invitations to come and investigate the condition of thehomeless among them. With such appeals I could not throw off theresponsibilities which I had assumed, in trying to make the world alittle better for having lived in it.

As the importance of my project grew upon me, my first thought was toobtain aid from influential institutions or individuals as a speedy wayof realizing my dreams; but on second thought I realized fully thatthat was not in accord with my plan, for my institution was to be agovernmental institution, and was to be created and maintained throughthat paternal medium. However, as an investigator I determined to testthe heads of the great foundations, and the mighty masters of finance,to feel their attitude toward unemployment and governmental ownershipand agencies for the betterment of social conditions. There were manychampions of the crusade against tuberculosis and the white slavetraffic, educational promoters, but the homeless, exposed, suffering,and penniless man or woman, boy or girl, standing ready to be employed,found no recognition nor were considered in their well-intentionedschemes. They could not see, or would not see, beyond their ownuseless, wasted efforts in meeting our problem of destitution.

My plan was brought to the notice of the Interstate CommerceCommission, which recognized my work as coming within the bounds of thelaw to the extent of granting me free railroad transportation, but leftit optional with the railroads to give it or not. In my demands theNew York Central absolutely ignored my request. The Pennsylvania—withsmooth abuse—slapped me on the back and wished me good luck andGod-speed, but could not think of carrying me for nothing. The Gouldand Harriman lines were always generous, and a number of other roadsoccasionally.

It was a one-man, shoulder-to-shoulder battle. I carried nocredentials. My plan of procedure was to go first to the leading hotelof each city I visited, because, after my investigations, I wanted tomeet the leading people of that city. Arriving at my hotel I would donmy emblems of honest toil—the blue jeans—and would make my study ofthe status of the homeless workingman of that particular city,—a studywhich held a message, and a message which usually startled the city.If an extended study, I usually lived at a workingman’s neat boardingor lodging house, where one in workingman’s clothes could walk in andout without comment. Armed with the array of facts I had collected,carrying my appeal for the Emergency Home, I would meet the variousprogressive civic societies of the city, and as far as possible leavesomething tangible in the minds of the members of “emergency homecommittees.” This plan I always carried out to the letter except, asdescribed in my narrative, in my Hudson River study and in Cleveland,as well as my study from Cleveland to Memphis, Tenn.

Yet after all, while I might enter in the life of the penniless andendure temporarily their privations, I could only assume on my partfor I knew that at a moment’s notice, in case of accident or sickness,by revealing my identity every care and comfort would be given me.Consequently I was free from that mental suffering which is evengreater than the physical suffering only those can understand who toilalone, homeless, penniless, and friendless in the world.

After my first visit to Chicago, New York, and Washington in 1909,I made a visit in the same year to Pueblo, Kansas City, Boston,Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Omaha, and Salt Lake City; and in the Winterof 1910, I visited San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Tacoma,Seattle, Spokane, and Minneapolis. This was followed by investigationsthrough the South, which really ended my crusade in the Spring of 1911,although I made a brief study of conditions in Milwaukee, Toledo, andDetroit during the following Winter of 1911–12.

CHAPTER II
The Welcome in the City Beautiful to its Builders

“And the gates of the city shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there.”—Rev. 21:25.

On a bitter winter night, when the very air seemed congealed intopiercing needles, as I was hurrying down Seventeenth Street in theCity of Denver—the City Beautiful, the City of Lights and Wealth,—ayoung man about eighteen years of age stopped me, and asked in a ratherhesitating manner for the price of a meal. At a glance I took in hisdesperate condition. His shoes gaped at the toes and were run downat the heels; his old suit of clothes was full of chinks soiled andthreadbare, frazzled at ankle and wrist; his faded blue shirt was openat the neck, where a button was missing, and where the pin had slippedout that had supplied its place. His face and throat were fair, and hewas straight and sound in body and limb.

“You look strong and well,” I said to him, “why must you beg? Can’tyou work for what you eat? I have to.”

His big, honest eyes took on a dull, desperate stare, as though allhope was crushed.

“This is the first time I have ever asked something for nothing,” hesaid, “and I don’t like to do it now, but I have been in Denver twodays and I can’t find a job. I am hungry.” The last words trembled andhe turned as though about to leave me. I stopped him.

“Wait a moment; I did not intend to turn you down. I am hungry myself;let us go across the street to the restaurant and get our dinner.”

A Familiar Scene in a Western City. The Boy Is “Broke”But Not Willing to Give Up

I had made up my mind to study this strong, able-bodied boy, who wasworkless, homeless, penniless, and suffering in our city beautiful,which is famous for its spirit of Western hospitality and even displaysit as soon as you enter its gate by a great sign, “Welcome.”

As we sat at the table he told me that his home was on a farm backEast, that he and his stepmother didn’t get along very well, that hisown mother died when he was ten years old and his stepmother had notbeen kind to him, but that he and dad were always great friends and hadcontinued so up to the time he went away.

“I promised myself,” he continued, as his hunger was appeased, “thatas soon as I was old enough I would go West. I thought there weregreat chances for a young fellow like me out here, and so I workedand beat my way, and here I am to-day without a cent in my pocket. Ihave five dollars to my credit in the bank back in the old town nearour farm, and if I knew anybody here I could get that money, pay myemployment-office and shipment fee, go down to some works in Nebraska,and be at a job to-morrow,” and he looked down in deep dejection.

“Well my lad,” I said, “cheer up; all life is before you. Meet meto-morrow and we will see what can be done.” On the following day Itook him to my bank, signed a bit of paper, and the banker gave him thefive dollars. As we left the bank and started down the street, he tookan old brass watch out of his pocket and offered it to me.

“I want to give you something to show my appreciation of your kindnessto me,” he said. “Here is a watch the pawnshop man wouldn’t give meanything on, but it keeps good time, and you are welcome to it if youwill take it.”

“No, I will not take it; you will need it when you get down on theworks,” I said. “Where did you sleep the night before I met you?” Hisface flushed and he hung his head. “Was it not in the city jail?”

“Yes, and it was the first time I was ever in a jail in my life.”

I did not question him further, but to-day I can not quite understandwhy he was not detained there the usual thirty days for theunforgivable crime of being homeless, as that was the way Denver hadof treating her destitute visitors.

Then he looked up with the true spirit of conquest in his eyes. “I’lltell you what I am going to do the first thing; I am going to get aclean, new suit of underclothing, then I am going to take a bath, andthen get my shipment.”

“Come on, my boy,” I replied, and took him to a cheap store to buy hisclean underwear. Afterward we went into a barber shop where he took hisbath. Denver did not then have its public bath—the beautiful publicbath later built through the efforts of the Denver Woman’s Club. Iwaited to go with him to the employment office to get his shipment.When this was accomplished, we shook hands in a good-bye, and I wishedhim God-speed.

Two weeks later I received a letter in which he said: “I have a placeto work here on a farm at big wages, with one of the best men in theworld, and I am going to stay and work and save my money to help dadback on the old farm to pay off the mortgage. It is nearly paid off nowand the farm will be mine some day.”

After that incident I was haunted. The picture of that boy freezingand starving so far from home was constantly with me, and yet, Ithought, how much more pitifully helpless a woman or girl placed inthe same position. I fell to wondering about the many other boys andmen and women who were homeless, and of what becomes of the homelessunemployed in our city. I knew I was not alone in this incidental helpI had begun; there were hundreds of men and women helping cases justlike this case of my boy. And thus I set out on my crusade.

Taking my initiative step into the forced resorts of the homeless ofDenver, I one night drifted into one of the big beer dumps where theysell drinks at five cents a glass which costs a dollar a barrel tomanufacture. Many men were in the place seeking shelter and a snackfrom the free lunch counter. Twenty-five stood at the bar drinkingenormous schooners of chemicals and water under the name of beercontaining just enough cheap alcohol to momentarily dull and lightencare. Not a few were drinking hot, strong drinks, which more quicklyglazed the eye, confused the brain, and loosened the tongue. A fewhad already crept into the stifling odors of the dark rear roomsand had dropped down in the shadowed corners with the hope of beingallowed to spend the night there. These rooms in earlier days had been“wine-rooms,” where the more “polite” and prosperous had gathered, butwho took the “wine-room” with them further up town as the city grew.

Among the many gathered around the big warm stove was a man whoseappearance told too plainly that the world was not dealing kindly withhim. Stepping up to him I said in a tentative way, “Have a drink?”

“No, I am not a drinker.”

I then asked, “Can you tell a fellow who is broke where he can get afree bed?”

He looked at me with an amused smile. “You are up against it, too, areyou, Jack? Well, I am broke, too, and the only free bed I know of isthe kind I am sleeping in, and that’s an oven at the brick yards. A lotof us boys go out there during these slack times.”

“An oven at the brick yards!” I said in astonishment. “How do you getthere?”

“Well, you go out Larimer Street to Twenty-third, then you turn outTwenty-third and cross Twenty-third Street viaduct. It’s about twomiles. You’ll know the kilns when you come to them; you can’t missthem. But don’t go before eleven o’clock; the ovens are not cool enoughbefore that time.”

“To-night I sleep in an oven at the brick yards,” I said to myself,with cast-iron determination.

It was a very cold night, but at eleven o’clock I started out LarimerStreet to find my free bed. Having crossed the Twenty-third Streetviaduct I was lost in darkness; there were no lights save in the fardistance. I stumbled along over the frozen ground, fearing at anymoment an attack, for Denver is not free from hold-ups. I could hearmen’s voices, but could see nothing. It was not a pleasure-outingexcept as the thrill caused by the swift approach of the unknown maybe pleasurably exciting. Finally the lights of the brick yard shoneupon me with its great, long rows of flaming kilns. I had arrived at mynovel dormitory. Stepping up to a stoker at work near the entrance, Iasked:

“Can you show a fellow where he can find a place to lie down out of thecold?”

He raised his head and looked at me, and said, “I’ll show you a place.”Leaning his shovel against the kiln, and picking up his lantern, hesaid, “Come with me.” He paused at a kiln. “Some of the boys aresleeping in here to-night.” I followed as he entered the low, narrowopening of a kiln and raised his light. We were in a round oven or kilnabout forty feet in circumference. By the light of his lifted lantern Icountedthirty men.

“There are about seventy sleeping in the empty kilns to-night; I thinkyou will find a place to lie down there,” he said, as he pointed to aplace between two men.

I at once lay down, and with a “Good-night” he left me to the darknessand to the company of those homeless sleepers, who, in all our greatcity, could find no other refuge from death.

The kiln was so desperately hot that I could not sleep, and habit hadnot inured me to that kind of bed. Had I been half-starved, weak, andexhausted, as were most of my companions, I, too, could have slept,and perhaps would have wanted to sleep on forever. No one spoke tome. I endured the night by going at intervals to the kiln’s openingfor fresh air. It was then when I looked up into the deep, dark,frozen sky, that I thought what a vast difference there is in being adestitute man from choice and a destitute man from necessity. At fouro’clock the time for a fresh firing of the kilns, we were driven fromthe great heat of that place out into the bitter cold of the wintermorning. Very few of the men had any kind of extra coat, but, thinlyclad as they were, they must walk the streets until six o’clock,waiting for the saloons or some other public places to be opened. Theirsuffering was pitiful. I afterward learned that many of these men,from this exposure, contracted pneumonia, and from this and many otherexposures filled to overflowing the hospitals of the city.

During the entire week I followed up my investigations. I found mensleeping in almost unthinkable places; in the sand-houses and theround-houses of the railroad companies, when they had touched theheart of the watchman.

I asked one of the railway men why the companies drove them away fromthis bit of comfort and shelter.

“Because they steal,” was his reply.

“What do they steal?” I asked.

“Oh, the supper pail of the man who comes to work all night, an oldsack worth a nickel, a piece of brass or iron, or part of the equipmentfrom a Pullman car, or anything they can sell for enough to buy ameal, or a bed, or a drink.”

“Do they steal those little things because they are hungry?” Iquestioned.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “They are often so successfulin not being detected, I expect that has made them bold. Some may havebeen hungry,” he said, after a thoughtful pause. “Work has been scarceand hard to find, you know.”

“Yes,” I replied, “they have, no doubt, tramped the streets for manya day, footsore, dirty, ragged, and penniless and worst of all,discouraged and desperate. They must have clothing and food as wellas a place to sleep. Without this they must suffer and die. They arehaunted by this fear of death, knowing well what hunger and exposuremeans and the utter impossibility of securing work with their raggedappearance.”

“Yes, I know,” said the man, patiently listening to my growingrealization of their desperation. “When they become bolder and breakinto a freight car to steal something, if not of much real value, orsomething to eat, they are usually caught and thrown into jail. Butthey can’t stop to think of that, I suppose; the poor devils have gotto live. You mustn’t give me away,” he added confidentially, “butI know a special agent for a big railroad company who made a boastof the number of men he had sent to the reformatory and put in thepenitentiary the past year.”

A Municipal Lodging House. An Average of Seventy MenSlept Each Night in the Denver Brick Ovens during the Cold Weather

I slept, or rather endured, the next night, with thirteen men whowere sleeping in a box car on a bed of straw. Some were smoking. Isit any wonder that many thousands of dollars’ worth of property aredestroyed by fire in one night? I found men asleep in vacant houseswith old rags and paper for beds. They also smoked, and endangered notonly this house but the entire city; besides, they often robbed thehouse of everything available, to satisfy their hunger. I found themsleeping in the loft of barns, the only covering the hay under whichthey crawled. I found them under platforms of warehouses with pieces ofdirty old gunnysacks, or a piece of old canvas for a covering. I foundthem curled down in the tower of the switchmen, in empty cellars, invat-rooms in breweries, in hallways, driven from one to the other, andsome “carrying the banner”—walking the streets all night. I found themin the rear-ways of saloons, on and beneath their tables, and last, butnot least, in that damnable, iniquitous hole, the bull-pen in the cityjail.

A few short years ago—the date and name is of no moment—a young maneighteen years of age was shot to death by a policeman in Denver. Iwent to the morgue and looked on the white, silent face of the murderedboy. His mother wired, “Can’t come to bury him; too poor.” And sohe was laid in a pauper’s grave; no, not a pauper’s grave, but acriminal’s.

I have noticed in my investigations in all the police systems ofour various municipalities—I exempt none—that where someone hasbeen murdered, or a sick man has been thrown into jail and his lifetaken there, or some other outrage has been committed by their wickedpolicies, they always try to blanket the wrong by making a publicstatement that the victim had “a record” and was well known to thepolice.

According to the newspapers, this young man’s diary showed that he hadbeen in the State seventy-four days and out of the seventy-four dayshe had worked sixty-four; but—convincing proof of his outlawry—theyfound on him a match-safe that a man declared had been stolen from him.As I looked on that dead boy’s face I seemed to read, above all else,kindness. Had he been kind to someone; in return, had this match-safebeen given to him? Hundreds of times have I seen these tokens ofappreciation given: match-safes, knives, and even clothes from oneout-of-work man to another—even an old brass watch that the pawnshopman considered of no value. The match-safe may have been given to thisyoung fellow by a hardened criminal with whom circumstances had forcedhim to associate.

“He ran from the officer.” If you, my reader, had ever been forced, asa lodger or a suspect, to spend a night in a western city jail, youwould take the chances of getting away by running rather than facethat ordeal again.

I was so deeply impressed by the injustice of this legal murder that,under anom de plume, I wrote a letter of defense for the boy to hismother, a copy of which I sent to the press. It reached the governingpowers of the city, but not the public. Almost immediately the officerwas arrested, tried,—and acquitted.

After my investigations in Denver had revealed such startlingconditions of those who must toil and suffer, my first impulse was tofly to the Church. I thought I had reason to believe the Church stoodfor compassion, mercy, and pity. I approached, therefore, severalof our leading clergymen. My first appeal was to the pastor of theChristian Church, and his reply was:

“My friend, if you succeed in getting a free Municipal Emergency Homefor Denver, you will build a monument for yourself.”

To this I answered: “I have no desire to build a monument; I want ourcity to build a shelter for those who may be temporarily destituteamong us.”

Another, a Baptist, asked if it were Christian. I turned from thisreverend gentleman with the belief that in his study of the Scriptureshe had omitted the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, in which,I believe, the substitution of the word love for charity is concededcorrect by the highest authority.

To another, a Methodist, I said, “Won’t you speak a word to your peoplethat an interest may be aroused to relieve the hardships of those whotoil, who happen to be without money, and have no place to rest?” Witha forced expression, he replied, “I don’t believe in the homeless andout-of-work. I have found them undeserving and dishonest.” I could onlyask what our Savior meant by “the least of these,” and reminded himthat the last words Christ spoke before His crucifixion were to a thief.

I then made my way to the home of the Presbyterian pastor of thelargest and most influential church in the city. I did not succeed inseeing the leader of this ecclesiastical society, but as I passed, Icould look into the basement of the brightly lighted church, and I sawapproximately fifty Japanese being taught—aliens who did not want ourreligion, but did want our language and modern ideas.

Going to the president of the Ministerial Alliance, I asked to beheard, but they had no time to listen. I then went to the Y. M. C.A. and the president said, “You can’t expect every fellow to throwup his hat for your concern.” Paradoxical as it may seem, the onlythree societies whom I asked for aid, who turned me down, were theMinisterial Alliance, the Bartenders’ Union, and the Y. M. C. A. Later,the Women’s Clubs, Labor Councils, and the Medical Societies were mywarmest friends.

I then went to those in authority in the administration of our city,and among the many objections raised to my plea, the first was therewere other things that needed attention more. For instance, there wereovercrowded hospitals, which must be enlarged. The sick, I was told,were lying on the floors, and several children were being placed in onebed, just as they are doing in Chicago to-day.

Then it was declared we would pauperize the people; we would encourageidleness instead of thrift. My investigations had taught me how uselessit is to talk ethics to a man with an empty stomach. The MunicipalEmergency Home I believed would encourage thrift instead of idleness.

And then our chief executive declared that something effectual shouldbe done to keep out of our State the army of consumptives who come toColorado. I could hardly see how that would be quite just or right. ButI could see, I thought, how the Municipal Emergency Home, rightly builtand conducted, with its sanitary measures would be a mighty influencein our combat against the great white plague. Then the all-powerfuldeclared the city could not afford it—the old cry of every cityadministration, where the political boss and machine politics rule,when it comes to creating an institution that is not in tune with theirpolicies.

Being abruptly asked what I knew about Municipal Emergency Homes, Iwas forced to confess that I had no knowledge whatever. I realized theneed of information. I did not even know there was in existence on thiswhole earth of ours such an institution as I was asking Denver to build.

I have been greatly misunderstood in regard to the class and characterof the destitute for whom I am asking favor. That I can now clearlyexplain, for what I found true in Denver in a small way I found truein every other city I visited. I classify them in two groups,—theunfortunate and the itinerant worker. Ninety per cent., taken as awhole throughout our country, are of the latter. The former and smallerpercentage are chained by habits of vice, which our social system hasforced upon them, or are physically weak, made so, many of them, inour prisons. And while, first, my plea is for the upright wage-earner,I am broad enough to feel that if we have been criminally thoughtlessand negligent enough to allow social evils to exist and make derelictsand dependents, we certainly ought to be honest enough to stand theconsequences and give them at least a place of shelter.

But the 4,000,000 homeless, honest toilers with us to-day affect thewelfare of every home in our nation. They are an important force andfactor in society. A moment’s reflection will show us quickly hundredsof good reasons why many of them at times should be moneyless andshelterless. As I throw back the curtain on these stories of humaninterest, I trust we may all of us catch forcibly the evident need ofnot sitting idly by, supinely asking a good God to help us, but ratherof letting our petition in word and act be a living prayer in helpingHim.

The boy whom I met on our Denver street, whose condition I havedescribed, can justly go to the Lord and complain, as well as proclaimto the world, that the City Beautiful held no welcome for him while inneed of life’s direst necessities. It is not to be wondered at thatthe so-called Christian people of the City and County of Denver haveforgotten that it is not enough to have a twenty-five thousand dollarWelcome Arch of myriads of sparkling lights, heralding to the world itshospitality to those entering its gate, and then forget their Christianduty to their fellow-men in need, for the City and County of Denver hasbeen in a political turmoil and has been concerned not so much withthe preservation of human rights as with the preservation of propertyrights. There is no other city in the region of the Rocky Mountainsthat could better afford to give a real welcome to the wanderingcitizen, the harvester and the builder, than Denver.

A city whose tax payers have permitted waste and extravagance to theextent of hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the expenditure of thetax payer’s money, surely could afford to create and maintain aninstitution where the wandering citizen, the homeless wage earner, mayfind a Christian welcome and humane care.

If this boy should have attempted to go to the local charityorganization, and had not been told that the Society did not help“floaters,” as I have known men in other cities to be told, he wouldundoubtedly have been informed, after going through a humiliatinginquisition, that his case would be investigated and if found worthyrelief afforded to him after such investigation. Imagine a hungry,homeless, penniless man, who must have whatever help he can getimmediately, being told that his case will be investigated and reliefafforded at some later date! What is a man in this condition to do?Did not the charity organization to whom the tax payers give money forthe express purpose of relieving the needy and distressed, compel thisvery individual to beg, to accost the citizens on the streets who havealready subscribed for his relief, and to still continue to beg fromthem? Does not such a charitable organization, by the acquiescence ofthe citizens of the city, put a premium on this hungry, homeless man togo and shift for himself as best he may, either by accosting citizenswho have already been burdened by his relief, or by stealing, robbing,and if necessary demanding a life, to satisfy the needs whereby hisexistence may be made possible?

At a Denver Employment Office. Many of these Men Sleptin the Brick Ovens the Night before

It is time that the citizens of the City and County of Denver, andfor that matter, of all other municipalities of the United States,shall awaken to the call of duty in their respective communities indealing rightly with those who are their wards, if they desire tominimize instead of increase the evils of pauperism brought about byindiscriminate alms-giving.

A great many times, through political intrigues, we find people atthe head of charity organizations in our cities that have no businessto be there. Their appointment to such places, in many instances, ispurely political, and they are, therefore, not competent to dispensethe money subscribed by the tax payers of the community. Very oftenonly those individuals can receive consideration at the hands of suchofficials who bring a letter of introduction, or have some personalpolitical “pull,” while an honest and deserving man, coming from someother portion of the City or State, without any acquaintance whatsoeverin the community in which he finds himself stranded, may receive noconsideration whatever at the hands of such so-called administrators ofpublic charity.

It has been conclusively proven that the charitable endeavors of ourso-called charity organization societies are extremely unscientific,wasteful, and have a detrimental and pauperizing effect in-so-faras the work of the charitable is devoted to reclamation and not toprevention, which is also one cause for its failure.

Consider a moment one startling fact evidencing the spirit shown byorganized charity in its effort so evidently to refrain from helpingthe needy: I found during my personal investigations that the societieskeepbanking hours from nine to five o’clock, and are closed atnoon on Saturdays! From noon on Saturday to nine on Monday, is it notpossible that some needy one in distress may need help?

Readiness on the part of the private citizen to subordinate personalinterests to the public welfare is a sure sign of political health; andreadiness on the part of public officials to use public offices forprivate gain is an equally sure sign of disease. Every municipality,by reason of its organization, supported by all of its citizens, oughtto supply all communal needs, instead of permitting certain specialinterests under the guise of “religious” and “charity” organizations toadminister to the needs of the less fortunate members of the community.

There are two very important facts that occupy the center of the stageof our complex civilization, to which all other facts are tributary,and which for good or ill are conceded to be of supreme importance.They are the rise of scientific and democratic administration of allthe needs of the people, and the decline of private, special interests,clinging to the preservation of property rights as against humanrights.

Determined is the demand of the people for a controlling voice intheir destinies. The disinherited classes are refusing to remaindisinherited. Every device within the wit of man has been sought tokeep them down, and all devices have come to naught. The efforts of thepeople to throw off their oppressors have not always been wise, butthey have been noble, self-sacrificing.

The report of charities and corrections at Atlanta for 1903 states thatfrom among thirty of the leading cities of our nation, Denver is theonly city reported as being severe toward its toilers, particularlytoward that class which it is pleased to call “beggars” and “vagrants.”Personal observation, however, proved to me that many other citiesin the list were equally as cruel, and yet it is astounding to notein this report that the arrests in Denver for the crime of beingpoor—begging and vagrancy—which has undoubtedly correspondinglyincreased with the city’s growth in the following years, was 6763,while New York City’s for the corresponding crime, and same periodof time was, for begging, 430; for vagrancy, 523; and Chicago, forbegging, 338; for vagrancy, 523. This is approximately Denver’s ratiowith all of the other cities in the report.

CHAPTER III
Chicago—A Landlord for Its Homeless Workers

“These hints dropped as it were from sleep and night let us use in broad day.”—Emerson.

On a stormy night in February, 1909, I arrived at the Auditorium Annexin Chicago. Donning my worker’s outfit and covering my entire personwith a large, long coat, unnoticed I left the hotel. Leaving the coatat a convenient place, I appeared an out-of-work moneyless man,seeking assistance in this mighty American industrial center. I made myway down Van Buren Street. Though the hour was late, there were manypeople abroad and almost every man, judging from his appearance, seemedto be needy. Stepping up to one on the corner of Clark Street, whoseemed to be a degree less prosperous than all the rest, I said, in thelanguage of the army who struggle:

“Say, Jack, can you tell a fellow where he can find a free flop?”

He raised his hand and pointed toward a stairway which led up over alarge saloon, “You can flop on the floor up there for a nickle.”

“But I am up against it right, pal. I am shy the coin for even thatto-night.”

Stepping up a little nearer to me and drawing more closely his tatteredrag of a coat about his frail, half-starved body, he replied:

“Honest to God, Shorty, I have only a dime myself, but say, this is afierce night to carry the banner. If you don’t get a place, come back.I can get along without my ‘coffee and’ for once.”

There are many places in Chicago where a poor man can get astrengthless cup of coffee and rolls for a nickle. One-half of thisman’s dime he proposed to spend for this supper, and the other half hewould give me to provide the “flop” on the floor he had told me of.

He continued, “I am in line for a pearl-diver’s (dishwasher’s) jobto-morrow. That means all a fellow can chew anyway. I can do betterwork than that, but when a fellow is down on his luck—but say,Shorty,” he added abruptly, as we moved to part, “if you don’t have awindfall like the Annex, Palmer, or the First National Bank, go over onthe West Side; you’ll find a free flop, and maybe between the sheets,and maybe a bath and supper; but look out for bulls and fly cops, anddon’t go too often, for you’re liable to be arrested and sent to theBridewell. I have been out of a job for two weeks. I have been to theflop several times, and I am afraid to go any more. I have had solittle to eat lately, and from all I hear, I don’t think I am strongenough for the battle of a workhouse; besides, I have never been in.Well, never mind, old man, you can find the place. It’s on UnionStreet, just off of West Madison, called ‘The City Lodging House.’”

How those last three words thrilled me! I who in fancy for months hadbeen building a Municipal Emergency Home, rounding out and perfectingin my mind all of its wonderful possibilities! There was then such aninstitution in the world, and here in Chicago, and in a moment’s time Iwas to grasp the tangible fact!

As I made my way toward my destination I saw evidence of the brutalpolice system, so notoriously obvious throughout our entire country.I had seen a half-starved, homeless man knocked down on the streetsof a Western city by an ignorant, rum-befouled bully of a policeman,simply because he stood a little too far out on the sidewalk, andwith a desire to learn something of the spirit of the police force ofChicago, I made my way to the Desplains Street Police Station, althoughpossessed with a foreboding that I might be arrested, and subjected tosome insult or abuse.

With a thumping heart under a false air of complacency I entered andasked the Captain where I could find a free bed. He looked pleasantlyenough upon me, and in words which held a tone of pride that he coulddo so, replied, “Why, yes, go to our Municipal Lodging House,” andturning to a subordinate, said, “Show this man the direction to NorthUnion Street.” The under officer pointed out the proper course, andI was soon lost in a maze of brilliant, scintillating, cheap saloon,café, and playhouse signs along West Madison Street. The half-hidden,frost-covered windows of restaurants were filled with tempting,wholesome food. The sparkling bar-room signs were a guide to warmthand temporary shelter. I reached North Union Street, and looking downan almost black street with occasionally a dim distant light, I saw nosign guiding the homeless man or boy, woman or girl, to Chicago’s giftto its penniless toilers.

With fear and difficulty I found an old shell of a building. Arrivingtoo late for a bed, I was allowed to lie down with sixty others,from boys of fifteen to old men of seventy, on the floor. In thefoul air, unwashed, unfed, with my shoes for a pillow, with achinglimbs, I endured, until daybreak, the sufferings which the temporarilyhomeless wanderer must suffer often many days until, if he does notfind himself in some one of the other public institutions, he findswork and can again enjoy the comforts of a bed. And yet, how much thisall meant to me! I did not sleep a moment of the night, yet abovethe dark side of it all, I caught the bright light of the goldenthought behind this institution, for the establishment of which theCity Homes Association, whose president was Mrs. Emmons Blaine, tookthe initiative, and which Raymond Robins worked into a tentativeestablishment.

Several years have passed since my first experience in Chicago. Atthat time I was deeply impressed with the fact that the city had notforgotten. My criticism was extremely friendly. The superintendentwrote, thanking me for my investigations, saying he believed it wouldhelp promote better things in Chicago in caring for its homelessworkers. But I was disappointed. To-day you walk through West MadisonStreet to Union Street, to Chicago’s free “flop.” On your right youwill notice a magnificent new railway station, which, its owners boast,cost twenty-five millions of dollars. Possibly at the very doorstep ofthis marvelous terminal, destitute men will ask you for help.

And a little further along, should you glance up at No. 623, you willread this sign, “The Salvation Army will occupy here a new six-storyfireproof hotel, to be known as the Workingman’s Palace. Rates 15 centsto 30 cents per night, $1 to $2 per week.”

“Stepping Up a Little Nearer to Me He Drew More Closely
His Tattered Rag of a Coat”

Huddled on a Stringer in Zero Weather

You have reached Union Street, and you enter the same dark old streetand the same old makeshift of an old building which thirty-five yearsago was a police station and later a storeroom for city wagons, untilmade into a “Municipal Emergency Home.” This shell accommodates onlytwo hundred and fifty men, and on many a night during the last winterit has sheltered five hundred men, besides as many more in the “annex.”There are four thousand in Chicago every winter’s night without a bedor the money to buy a bed. There are five thousand men in Chicago whoare willing to work ten long hours a day for a dollar a day, and thislodging-house can furnish two hundred men a day at that wage. Last yearthe ice companies, the street railway companies, and the packing-housespaid $1.75, and this past winter only $1.50, and out of that these menpaid $4.50 a week for board. That these men are willing to work forsuch wages shows that a large proportion who seek this free shelter arehonest workers. The chief of police gave orders and notice that menwould no longer be sheltered in the police stations, and yet on onewinter day an official of the Emergency Home marched sixty-eight downto a station and demanded they be taken in.

Follow this official through the institution and he will show you howhe stores men away in every nook available, even allowing many to situp all night on the stairs. He will show you how men lie down under andbetween the cots of those who are fortunate enough to get a cot itself.He will show you in one end of the dormitory, on filthy blankets andmattresses, men huddled and packed like swine, and he will tell youthat in the morning these men receive a certain portion of a loaf ofbread and a cup of a decoction called coffee; and yet those men arewilling to go out and work in the storm and cold for a dollar or adollar and a half a day. What a commentary on the humanity of a citythat is willing to see this strength crippled! What a lack of ordinarybusiness foresight to ignore the conservation of this human force!

You will find in this Municipal free “flop” of Chicago no departmentfor women. Thank God for that! You will find no separation of thesick from the well; you will find no medical examination other thanvaccination. Such a lodging-house is an institution driving men intointemperance, filling our hospitals, and spreading with frightfulfatality the white plague.

Those who come from abroad to learn of Chicago, and what it hasdone and is doing to banish destitution and its specter of homelesssuffering from its streets, may first visit the public institutionsrepresenting a city’s intelligence—the Art Institute, standing forits culture; its churches, charities and hospitals, representingits humanity. But they should also follow the course I traveled, toChicago’s so-called Municipal Lodging House, even though it will mean asad reflection upon a city’s care for its homeless workers.

Chicago is considered one of the greatest railroad centers of America;it is the hub of the fly wheel, East and West, North and South, ofa mighty railroad industry. The old proverb, that “all roads leadto Rome,” can certainly be applied to this of the greatest, mostremarkable of all modern industrial phenomena—the Metropolis withouta peer. It is estimated that there are over half a hundred differentrailroad lines running in and out of the city, all bringing theirquota of human energy and activity to be molded into the great mass ofindustrial humanity of the greatest of industrial giants—Chicago.

A very prominent railroad official of a Western railroad declaredthat the railroad “in a way may be called the chief citizen of theState.” If this statement be true, one cannot but acclaim that amighty responsibility rests upon it. First of all it means that atransformation of heart and system must take place toward the wanderingcitizen, the homeless wage-earner,—an absolutely different method anda cessation of the present inhuman brutality.

The one wonderful and most hopeful sign of our day is that members ofthe great human family are beginning to recognize, in all phases ofhuman endeavor, that our social life is absolutely dependent upon theco-operation and social service of one another. While the writer hasa strong indictment to offer against the managements of the variousAmerican railroads in dealing with the more unfortunate members ofsociety, nevertheless one cannot accept the already popularizedbeliefs that “the railroads lack the spark of human kindness.”

The extent of what so-called charitable experts are pleased to callthe “vagrancy” of the homeless, wandering wage-workers in the UnitedStates, can easily be determined by the industrial and economicconditions existing throughout the country. The demand for laborers ofall kinds continuously fluctuates in all industries and localities.The majority of the homeless, wandering wage-earners are unskilledlaborers, and because of their unorganized condition they are thereserve of that great standing army which is being maintained throughthe unjust, inhuman, and wasteful economic system, that pushes humanbeings down to the lowest level.

Most American railroads are to blame for the industrial conditions inwhich the unskilled laboring class finds itself. They offer starvationwages, shelter under unsanitary conditions, and permit the “canteen”and “padroni system” to pilfer, rob, and exploit the men working on thesections. And after the job at which they have been employed has beencompleted, they are left stranded whereever they have finished theirwork, instead of being given transportation to the nearest city orplace where other work can be obtained.

Hundreds of thousands of able-bodied, economically useful citizensof the country are being put to immature death by the railroads ofAmerica, and an equally appalling number are being maimed and crippledby “accidents,” and thereby made dependent charges on an alreadyoverburdened community.

From among the victims of the present-day railroad system (for it isa system) by which men are being crippled, maimed, and killed, thereis a silent but earnest appeal, from the builders of our cities,the harvesters of the nation’s crops, the miners of the nation’sresources, the scholars and teachers of the future republic, for amore scientifically humane treatment, and for a guarantee that “Life,Liberty, and Happiness” shall not be a by-word but a living reality.

The great public, that pays the “freight,” and even the officialsof the American railroad systems themselves, are awakening to arealization of the fact that the torn-out rail, the misplaced switch,the obstructing tie, the burned bridge, the cut wire, petty thefts, andair-brake troubles, are all too often the result of retaliation forthe inhuman abuse of the homeless, wandering wage-earner. Even thatportion of the great public that rides “the velvet” are beginning todemand more protection, for their own self-preservation. The spiritof the various commonwealths of the Union to co-operate and demand bylegislative provisions for safety is steadily on the increase.

Thousands of wandering wage-earners in search of work are killed onAmerican railroads, because society as a whole, and the railroadas a public carrier in particular, are ignorantly uninterested inthe welfare of the less fortunate members of society. The number ofso-called “trespassers” killed annually on American railroads exceedsthe combined total of passengers and trainmen killed annually. From1901 to 1903, inclusive, 25000 “trespassers” were killed, and anequal number were maimed, crippled, and injured. From one-half tothree-quarters of the “trespassers” according to the compilers of thesefigures were “vagrants,” wandering, homeless wage-earners in search ofwork to make their existence possible.

Let us examine the economic loss and the financial cost to therailroads alone, not considering the loss to the community of theso-called “vagrants” killed and injured. Even the railroads are unableto give accurate figures on this matter. Sometimes the trains stopand pick up the injured and dying victims of their system, and bearthem to hospitals, where the hospital and burial charges must, in mostcases, be paid or guaranteed by the railroads. In many of the Statesof the Union, a number of law-suits have been successfully foughtagainst railroads by so-called “vagrants” who have been thrown offa fast-moving train and injured, or maimed. Think of the barbarousorders of a railroad superintendent, to push or throw people from afast running train, or leave them on the vast plains of the West in adesperate blizzard, as I have seen done.

How much cheaper would it be for the railroads to furnish these lessfortunate members of the working-class with transportation to theirrespective destination, the nearest place where work is possible forthem, and thereby suffer fewer depredations, petty thefts, delays totraffic, hospital and burial charges, and other expenses.

How much would the respective communities, and society as a whole, bethe gainer, were the State, the municipality, to assume the expense forthe creation and maintenance of Municipal Emergency Homes, and therebymake it possible for the homeless, wandering wage-earner to receive thehospitality of the community and be furnished with those necessitiesupon which human life depends, thus co-operating with the railroads,reducing vice, crime, and pauperism, and abolishing the existence ofburdensome public charges.

In addition to the Municipal Emergency Home, provided with up-to-datesanitary facilities, the respective communities should furnishtransportation to those desiring to leave for other parts of thecountry where work can be obtained or may await them. Such a MunicipalEmergency Home ought to be the clearing-house for employers of laborand employees alike. Instead of the unemployed being exploited bythe grafting employment bureaus existing in the various cities, thebusiness men, the men who need help, and the railroads especially,could make their drafts for workingmen on such Municipal EmergencyHomes, which would be always in a position to assist them, while atthe same time assisting the honest laborer who seeks work to sustainhimself and make existence possible for those dependent upon him.

One of the greatest remedial agencies in solving this very seriousproblem is pre-eminently that of governmental and railroadco-operation, by which the land shall be taken out of the hands of thespeculator, and reclaimed for those who desire to make immediate use ofit and to live upon the fruit of their toil. Thus the many thousands ofhomeless, wandering American wage-earners, the itinerant and occasionalhelpers in our agricultural industry, as well as the casual, unskilledlaborers of our cities, could be given a real lift on the road toeconomic independence.

In most of the European countries, the so-called crime of “stealing aride” is almost unknown, because there the governments have establisheda chain of Municipal Emergency Homes where the itinerant workers arereasonably well taken care of,—provided not only with necessary food,shelter, and clothing, but given transportation to the nearest pointwhere employment may be secured.

“Just before Thanksgiving, 1911, Leaving the PublicLibrary, Chicago, after Being Ejected Because of the Clothes I Wore”

Would it not be a wise financial move on the part of the Americanrailroads, while they are investing millions in useless andsuperficial adornments on fifty-million-dollar terminals, to considerthe advisability of building an Emergency Home in every station wherethe wandering, homeless wage-worker can find comfortable shelter andbe given food to strengthen him on his way toward honest employmentwithout having to “beat” the railroads?

American railroads will be forced sooner or later to see that it is upto them to take care of the homeless, wandering wage-worker, or thehomeless, wandering wage-worker will take care of the railroads.

CHAPTER IV
The Merciful Awakening of New York

“I said, I will walk in the country. He said, walk in the city. I said, but there are no flowers there. He said, but there are crowns.”

In New York I repeated my Chicago plan. I left the Waldorf-Astoria atten o’clock, dressed in my blue jeans and with my cloak covering myoutfit until I could reach unobserved a place to leave it. The policewere courteous and directed me to New York City’s “House of God.”

Before entering I stepped back and looked at the wonderful building,beautifully illuminated. As I stood there with a heart full ofthankfulness for this gift to those in need, I saw a young girlabout fifteen years of age approach the woman’s entrance. Her mannerindicated that this was her first appeal for help. She hesitated toenter and stood clinging to the side of the door for support. At myright was the long dark street leading to New York’s Great White Way;on my left the dark East River. I could see the lights of the boats andalmost hear the splash of the water. As she raised her face and thelight fell upon it, I read as plainly as though it were written there,those lines of Adelaide Procter’s:

Then the door opened and I saw a motherly matron take the girl in herarms and disappear. This incident brought to me a startling revelation.This home was a haven between sin and suicide.

MUNICIPAL Lodging House, Department of PublicCharities, New York City

The night I slept in New York’s Emergency Home I was told a mother,with seven children, one a babe in arms, at one o’clock in the morning,had sought shelter there. And as the door was opened to receive her,she said, in broken, trembling words, “My man’s killed himself—he’sout of work.”

Many men were seeking admission. I entered with the rest. At the officewe gave a record of ourselves, who we were and where we were from, andwhat our calling was. Then we were taken into a large and spotlessdining-room, where we were given a supper of soup, and it was realsoup, too, soup that put health and strength into a man’s body andsoul. We also had coffee with milk and sugar, hot milk, and deliciousbread and butter, as much as anyone wanted of it. After supper we wereshown to a disrobing-room, where our clothes were put into nettedsanitary trays and sent to a disinfecting-room. In the morning theycame to us sweet and clean, purified from all germ or disease. Fromthe disrobing-room we went into the bathroom where were playing thirtybeautiful shower-baths of any desired temperature, and each man wasgiven a piece of pure Castile soap. As we entered the bath a man whosat at the door with a pail of something, gave each one of us on thehead as we passed him, a paddle full of the stuff. I said to theattendant, “What is that for?” “That’s to kill every foe on you,” hesaid, with an emphasis that was convincing. As he was about to give meanother dose, I protested. “That’s enough; I have only half my usualquantity tonight.” But I got another dab nevertheless.

After our bath and germicide, we were shown into a physician’sroom, where two skilled physicians examined each man carefully. Theperceptibly diseased man was given a specially marked night-robe andsent to an isolation ward, where he received free medical treatment.Those who were sound in health and body, were given a soft, cleannight-robe and socks, and were taken in an elevator up to the wonderfuldormitories. I was assigned to bed 310. There were over three hundredbeds in this dormitory, accommodating more than three hundred men.They were of iron and painted white, and placed one above the other,that is, “double-deck,” and furnished with woven wire springs. Themattresses and pillows were of hair, and exceedingly comfortable. Thelinen was snowy white.

I had been in bed but a short time when an old man about seventyyears of age took the bed next to mine. As he lay down in that publicplace I heard him breathe a little prayer, ever so softly and almostinaudibly, but I heard it—“Oh, God, I thank Thee!” And I said tomyself, “That prayer ought to build a Municipal Emergency Home in everycity of our land.” It came to me then what a great and wonderful socialclearing-house it was or could be.

I did not sleep, I did not want to sleep, but lay there taking mentalnotes of the soul’s activity. The room was quiet and restful except forthe restless man who silently walked the floor. As he came over near meI said to him, “Man, what is the matter?”

He came close to my bed and said, with a hot, flushed face, “I was notconsidered a subject for the isolation ward, but I am on the verge ofdelirium tremens. Feel my pulse, isn’t it jumping to beat the devil?”

I felt his pulse; it was jumping like a trip-hammer. But in the way ofassurance I answered, “No, your pulse is normal.”

“Have we been up here four hours? They gave me some medicine downstairsto take every four hours, and if I was restless, I was to send down forit and take a dose.”

“No, I think we have been up here about two hours. You might send downfor it, and if it is a good thing to take a full dose every fourhours, you might take a half-dose in two hours.”

He hesitated for a moment, then agreed. I advised him to cut out thedrink, and he went to the attendant for his medicine, received it, andslept like a babe until dawn. There is an attendant in each dormitoryall night long, and he must report to the office by telephone everyhour, not being allowed to sleep one moment on duty.

A few days later, after my visit was made public, I received manyletters at my hotel, and among them was one from this man. He thankedme for my bit of advice to cut out the drink, and said that he hadbraced up and had not drunk a drop since that night, and that hehad determined to be a man and fill a man’s place in the world. Hisresolution was not due to my advice at all. It was due to the influenceof "God’s House," to New York’s Municipal Emergency Home, and hadturned him back to his true inheritance.

At six o’clock in the morning we were called. Every man took the linenfrom his bed and put it in a pile where it was all gathered up andtaken afterward to the laundries. Every day fresh and spotless linen issupplied.

We then went down and dressed and were given our breakfast—as fine adish of oatmeal as I ever ate, and again most delicious hot coffee withmilk and sugar, bread and butter. And again every man had abundance. Isaid to a boy who sat on my right, “How do you feel this morning?”

“I tell you I feel as if someone cared for me,” he answered, “I feellike getting out and hustling harder than ever for a job to-day.”

This Municipal Emergency Home of New York’s is absolutely fire-proofand accommodates one thousand men and fifty women. The health of itsoccupants is more guarded than at the most costly private hotels.The ventilation is by the modern forced-air system, in which everyparticle of air is strained before entering the dormitories. The humaneconsideration of the comfort of the broken and weary wayfarer is alwaysin evidence, and speaks volumes for New York’s intelligence. There areno open windows on one side, freezing one portion of the sleeping-hall,while the other may be stifling with the heat. The method of fumigatingis of the best, as it does not injure in the least the leather of hat,suspender, glove, or shoe, or weaken the texture of the cloth. The sickman’s nightclothes are not even laundered with the well man’s clothing.The size, and degree of careful detail, of this wonderful home wasan outgrowth of the awful and fatal unsanitary old police stationlodgings, and yet the Commissioner of Police of New York recently toldme that notwithstanding the extensive character of the institution, itwas often pitifully inadequate, especially during the winter months.New York already needs at least four such homes.

CHAPTER V
Homeless—in the National Capital

“What is strange, there never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude, to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the state on the principle of right and love.”—Emerson.

It was late in the afternoon when I arrived at the Nation’s Capital,and rode to my hotel between tiers of newly erected seats, and bannersand flags and festooned arches, and myriads of many-colored lightswhich soon were to burst forth in royal splendor. Already the prodigaldisplay, costing half a million dollars, to inaugurate a president,was nearing completion. Already people were coming from far and near,spending five million more.

The New Willard hotel had assumed that air of distinction it alwaysdoes just before a happening of some national import. In the facesof the handsome men I saw and read the character of decision andintellect, and the many beautiful ladies, gowned in fabrics ofpriceless value, made an exceedingly pleasant study; and with thisvision before me I was proud to be an American. But I had notcome to study this side; it was “the other half” I wanted to know. Iwanted to learn how our Capital helps its poor, how a man out of work,penniless, and homeless, is cared for in Washington.

At about ten o’clock I went to my room to change my evening clothes formy workingman’s outfit. Walking down the stairs and slipping out a sidedoor, I was not noticed, and was soon lost in the avalanche of humanityon the streets.

I asked of the first policeman I met where I could get a free bed, andhe looked at me seemingly in surprise and said, “A free bed?” thencontinued, “Go to the Union Mission.” I asked, “Do they charge for abed there?” and he replied, “Yes, 10 or 15 cents.” “But I haven’t eventhat tonight,” I answered.

Municipal Lodging House, New York City RegisteringApplicants

Then he seemed to remember that Washington had a municipal lodginghouse, and told me I would find it on Twelfth Street, next to thepolice station. I asked two other policemen with similar results, andstarted in search of my desired object. I looked down PennsylvaniaAvenue, a blaze of lights, and for one mile I could see and readguiding signs of theaters, breweries, hotels, and cafés.

Presently I came to Twelfth Street, dark and gloomy, but there was nosign as in Chicago to guide the homeless man or woman, boy or girl, tothe door of the free home. It was with difficulty I found it. There wasa three-cornered box over the door, intended for a light, but it wasnot illuminated. Through smoke-dimmed windows there came a feeble lightby which I could just discern the words, “Municipal Lodging House,” andon the door the inscription, “To the Office.”

Before entering I stepped back into the street and looked up at thebuilding. It was an old three-story brick building, with no sign ofa fire escape. I entered and found myself in a low and very narrowpassageway. I applied to the “office” through a small window-door formy bed. There was an honest-faced, comfortably dressed young man justahead of me, who gave his occupation as machinist, received his bedcheck, and passed on.

When I stepped to the window and asked for a bed, I received no word ofwelcome from a woman seated at her desk, her demeanor being decidedlyunwelcome. Abruptly a man’s voice asked from within, “Are you willingto work for it?” I replied earnestly that I was. The woman thensnatched up a pen and asked, “Were you ever here before? Where were youborn? Where do you live? What is your business?”

My answers apparently being satisfactory, she thrust me a bed check,and said something about a light and something else which I did notunderstand, and slammed the door in my face. I stepped along andfound myself in the woodyard among piles of wood, saws, sawbucks, andsawdust. I tried several doors, and finally found one that admittedme. A narrow flight of stairs let me to a bathroom, where a number ofmen were already trying to get a bath. There were two attendants, onewho was working for his bed and breakfast, and the other, I judged apaid attendant. I was told to go into a closet and strip, and to hangon a hook all of my clothes except my shoes and stockings and hat.Having done this, I stepped out into the bathroom. It was heated by astove, which emitted no heat, however, as the fire was almost dead.There were two bathtubs, and six of us were standing nude in that coldroom waiting each for his turn. The boy working for his bed made apretense with a mop of cleaning the tubs after each bather, but leftthem nasty and unsanitary. I got into about six inches of water, andhurriedly took my bath, because of the others waiting. I did not wantto wash my head, so omitted that, but just as I got out of the tub theSuperintendent came in and said, “You haven’t washed your head yet; getback in there and wash your head.” I immediately and meekly complied.

Shivering with the cold, I got out, was given a towel to dry myself,and then a little old cotton nightshirt with no buttons on it. Severalof us being ready, we were led by the Superintendent up another flightof narrow stairs, through another long hall, and up two more series ofsteps to a small dormitory. I would have suffered with the cold if Ihad not seized an extra blanket from an unoccupied bed, and I sleptvery little. I was afraid to go to sleep, for if the building had takenfire not one man could have escaped. So I lay and took mental notes andsoul thoughts of my companions and surroundings, and of all I had seenand heard since I left Denver.

I heard one boy say to another, “I tell you, I’m hungry. I could eat amule and chase the rider up hill. Did you have any supper to-night?”And the other boy replied, “A policeman gave me a dime. What do youthink of that? And I got two scoops of beer and the biggest free lunchyou ever saw, and I feel fine.”

I heard a man say to the one next to him, “Do you think this place willbe pulled to-night?” and the other answered, “Why, no; what makes youthink so?” The first one said, “They pulled the Union Mission one nightfor vags, but I don’t think they will pull this place, because it’s acity lodging house.” Comforted by that thought, they both fell asleep.

During the night a frail boy, with no clothing except the thinnightshirt, went to the toilet, down the long cold halls and stairways,into the still more cold woodyard. When he returned he had a chill, andas he lay down I heard him groan. I said, “What is the matter, boy?”and he replied, “I have such a pain in my side.”

Just at daylight we were called, went down into a cheerless room, andwere given our clothes, then on down to the cramped dining-room, withscarcely any fire, where we were huddled together, thirty of us, whitesand blacks. Here we waited one hour for breakfast, and then we weredriven out into the woodyard for some reason we could not find out, andwaited another half-hour until breakfast was called. During that longwait almost the entire conversation was about work and where it couldbe found.

We went in to breakfast and sat down to a stew of turnips and carrots,in which there was a little meat. In mine there were three pieces ofmeat about as big as the end of one’s thumb. There was some coloredsweetened water called “coffee,” and some bread. I did not care formine, but the other men and boys ate ravenously. When the boy on myright had finished his, I said, “Ask for some more.” He replied, “Itwouldn’t do no good; they only allow one dish.” Then a hollow-eyed,thin-handed man on my left said, “Are you going to eat yours?” I said,“No,” and he eagerly asked if he could have it. I said, “You mostcertainly can,” and then he asked me if I was not well. It was thefirst word of kindness I had received. He took the dish and emptied itall into his, but glancing up I caught the appealing look of the boyopposite. He took the boy’s empty dish, putting part of it into hisdish, and the boy ate as though he had had nothing before.

Having finished breakfast, and while we were waiting to be assigned toour work, the door between our room and the inner room was left openfor a moment, and we saw the Superintendent seated at a well-appointedtable with flowers upon it, a colored man waiting upon him. One of theboys looking in said, “Oh, gee, look at the beefsteak,” and thenanother boy looked at me, and said, “You see how Washington treatsthe out-of-work, and this place is self-supporting, or more thanhalf-supporting.” And then a boy who had come early and worked his twohours for that bed and that breakfast, gave us a cheerful good-bye andstarted off to walk seven miles to begin work on a farm, a place he hadsecured the day before.

We waited to be assigned to our work. I wanted to saw wood, the woodlooked so clean and inviting, and, too, I had sawed wood when I was aboy on the farm, and knew how; but I was not allowed to do so, and wasgiven the task of making the beds. It was rather repellant to me atfirst, but I thought of those far down through the years of the past,a great deal more worthy than I, who had done things much more humblefor humanity’s sake. I can assure the honest man and boy who sleptbeneath those coverings that night that I had tried my best to makethem comfortable, although the linen was not changed, nor the blanketsaired.

Some of the men scrubbed, and some swept the floors and stairs; someworked about the dining-room; others sawed wood.

While waiting in the woodyard for breakfast, I jokingly said, as welooked at the wood, “What’s the matter of getting out of here? Then wewon’t have to work.” And one replied, “We can’t, we are locked in.”To prove if this was true I stepped to the door and found it as hesaid. We were locked in and could not have escaped in case of fire oraccident if we had tried.

There is a sign, sometimes seen to-day in the dance halls of ourWestern camps, “Don’t shoot the pianist, he is doing the best he can,”and so with the Superintendent of Washington’s Municipal LodgingHouse, under the conditions he may be doing the best he can. Workis always a grand thing. The floors and stairs were clean, also ourfood and dishes. He impressed me as being the right man in the rightkind of a place. But the Washington Federal Lodging House is only asuggestion of such an institution. As the house now stands it is thelodger, the workless man and boy, who keeps the floors and stairs andwindows clean. They do it willingly, but they should be treated fairlyfor their labor. Not one should be allowed to go to bed hungry. Heshould be given a clean, warm bed to sleep in, and a good wholesomebreakfast, and all he can eat. He should be given a pleasant welcome,an encouraging word, and a cheerful farewell,—it means so much, andcosts nothing.

I did not stay to see the inauguration. Somehow Washington had lostits brightness, and the grand men and beautiful women their interest. Ihad read almost every week for a number of years of “T. R.,” and of hisdemocratic way of walking on Sunday morning to church, and then I fellto wondering why he never walked to a few other places in Washington,which were only a stone’s throw from his home. But one with great carescannot be blamed for thoughtlessness in “little things.” I did not goto church as I intended. I spent the morning asking the press to appealto the city of Washington, where Lincoln and Washington lived, thought,and acted, the city of love, charity and freedom, not to let anotherday pass until they had started a movement and sent a delegation toinspect and to copy the Municipal Lodging House of New York, that they,too, might build one, to be the example of our country.

CHAPTER VI
The Little Pittsburg of the West and Its Great Wrong

“Even the night shall be light about me.”—Psalms 139:11.

In Pueblo, Colorado, I discovered they were finding men dead in anash-dump of a railroad company. Pueblo, called “The Little Pittsburgof the West,” is distinctly an industrial city. It naturally attractsthousands of workingmen during the course of the year, and when thedemand for labor is supplied, it follows that many men will congregatethere, willing to work but often unable to find employment immediately.

The great ash-dump, about a fourth of a mile in length, afforded warmthto the destitute homeless man, who had his choice between this exigencyand the city jail. Men would lie down on the warm cinders, and whilethey slumbered, the poisonous gases would asphyxiate them. The death oftheir brother workers had made men cautious and when I was there theyno longer crawled out upon the ashes, but lay down on the edge of thedump, where the ground held a certain degree of warmth.

I joined the miserable group one night, and as I lay there, and thenight grew cold and dark and still, I could see, like serpents, thetongues of blue poisonous fumes leap from crack and cranny. I stood theexposure to the limits of endurance, and then crept away to that otherhumane expression of Pueblo—its only “Municipal Emergency Home,” the“Bull-pen” in its old bastile.

It was midnight as I entered, and a man hearing me in the hall came outof an office and looked at me inquiringly. Finally he asked:

“What do you want?”

“I would like a place to sleep.”

“Come this way and go through yonder,” he said, pointing the way to thejailer’s office.

I went as directed. As I entered, the jailer, who was asleep in a largereclining chair, awoke and greeted me pleasantly enough.

“Good-evening. What can I do for you?”

“Can you show a fellow where he can lie down?”

He immediately got up, and picking up his bunch of keys, said, “Followme.”

I followed him through two huge iron-grated doors, to another doorwhich opened into a great dungeon cell,—Pueblo’s first open portal increating the criminal and crime. Huge chains with great iron ballsattached were lying in the passageway leading to the cell.

As the jailer swung back the monstrous iron door, he said:

“I think you will find a place there. If the hammocks are all taken,you can lie on the floor.”

The great key was turned, and I was in Pueblo’s “Municipal EmergencyHome.”

With the first dreadful feeling of suffocation and nausea caused by thefoul air and the odor of unwashed bodies and open drains, and the awfulfear of fire as I realized the impossibility of escape from behind somany iron-bound doors in the old rookery of a building, I would havebegged to be released, but neither the jailer nor anyone else appeareduntil six o’clock the next morning. I therefore had to endure, andafter I had finally adjusted myself to the frightful conditions aroundme, I was able to make my observations.

There were twenty canvas hammocks, all of unspeakable filthiness, hungone above the other, on iron frames. There was no pretense of bedding.The occupants covered themselves with their old ragged overcoats, ifthey happened to have any, and those who were not so fortunate, simplyshivered in their rags.

The cots were all taken and an old man some seventy-five years of agelay on the concrete floor, which was covered with tobacco juice and theexpectorations of diseased men. Vermin were running over the floor andon the tin dishes left there from the last night’s supper.

Water from the toilet of the women’s department above had run down thewall, and under this old man now sound asleep, and on into the wastebasin.

I walked back and forth in my horror for some time, passing in frontof the hammock beds and finally a man raised his head and, evidentlythinking I was walking for warmth, said:

“Friend, you will find it warmer over there by the steam pipes.”

I wonder why he called me “friend”? A spirit of kindness from one manto another, in a place like that! Think of it!

I spent the entire night walking the floor or sitting on an oldbattered, inverted tin pail, studying the wretched inmates of thedirty, desolate cell.

I saw a man get up, and with outstretched hands, feel his way to thedrinking place. I went over and helped him. He was totally blind.He told me he had once been kept in that place seventeen days. Aone-legged man who had gotten up, hobbling without his crutch, helpedhim back to bed.

Never was sound sweeter to my ears than the rattle of the jailer’s keyswhen he came to let me out. He kindly asked me to stay to breakfast,but I did not accept. I was only too glad to escape to my hotel, towash out the material evidence of contact with the foulness gatheredon that most miserable night.

Mayor Fugard, who had been in office only two weeks, had already madean appeal for a new City Hall and City Jail, and I felt it was acourtesy due him to call upon him before going to the press with mystory. When I told him I had paid a visit to Pueblo’s two city lodgingplaces, and had spent a night in the “Bull-pen,” he threw up his handsand exclaimed:

“Good heavens! You have more courage than I have. I am glad you havecome to our city and I am glad you have investigated conditions just asyou did. I want you to take your report to every paper in the city, forI desire everyone to know the conditions of these places, just as theyare.”

When I left Pueblo, I called on him to say goodbye, and he took me bythe hand and said:

“You may quote me to the public, through the press, as saying that, assoon as possible, Pueblo will abolish the ‘Bull-pen’ and will yet havea Free Municipal Emergency Home that she will not be ashamed to own.”

CHAPTER VII
“Latter-day Saints” Who Sin Against Society

When I lie down I say when shall the night be gone, and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day.—Job 7:4.

As Elizabeth Barrett Browning sang of Florence, so one may sing ofSalt Lake City. “Like a water lily resting on the bosom of a lake,”so rests the lovely Zion, reposing in a valley of green fields, treesand flowers and fruits, with placid lakes and flowing crystal streams;surrounded by soft gray mountains, rugged, clear cut, grand, theirpeaks covered with perpetual snow beneath whose surface lie untoldmillions of precious metals.

Besides precious metals, Salt Lake City has coal, oil, and salt, andan unsurpassed valley in agricultural fertility. Looking down upon themetropolis of Utah, one might almost fancy it a great sleeping townamong its green trees, but I can assure you it is not so. Enter itsgate and you will find it a veritable beehive of commercial industry, acity of a hundred thousand people, fast expanding, and becoming one ofthe great railway centers of the Western empire,—a city calling forthe workers and many of them, for it is just the “hewers and drawers”that Salt Lake needs and must have.

In Boston, I once stopped in Scolly Square and listened to a numberof Mormon missionaries expounding their doctrine. They were not, asmany might imagine, old men with long gray beards, but were young menof perfect physical manliness, with the clear-cut eyes of those wholead temperate lives. They talked of Moses and the prophets, and inthe midst of the talk, a well-dressed young man standing next to meinterrupted by crying out, “Don’t talk to us of the Blessed in Heaven,and those canonized by the church! Give us a little practical religion.Tell us what privileges Salt Lake City offers to the man who is poorbecause he must work with his hands. Has Salt Lake City abolished anyof the social evils that pauperize her people? Has she driven out thecorrupt political machine? Has she established a municipal building tooffer to temporarily homeless people shelter and food as a safeguardagainst the jail? Has she created a public bath, an emergency hospital,a free employment bureau? Tell us of a Christianity such as this, andwe will listen.” The Mormon Elders seemed stunned into silence, and asthe young man turned to leave, he addressed me, saying: “My God! HowI suffered in that city! I am a printer by trade. I became destitutelooking for work while there and suffered not only from hunger andexposure, but I was arrested and thrown into jail as a vagrant, simplybecause I was homeless, helpless, and penniless!”

It was during the first week in November that I left for Zion. On myjourney I was obliged to stop over at a station called Green River,about one hundred and fifty miles east of the city. The weather wascold and raw, there was no fire in the station, and I felt extremelyuncomfortable.

In the distance a dim light was visible, and I started to find outwhat it might offer of comfort, and possibly breakfast. On my way, Iencountered six young fellows just crawling out of a warehouse in whichwas stored baled hay, on top of which they had been trying to rest.They were all thinly clad; their teeth chattered with the cold, andthey shivered until their bones seemed to fairly rattle. They, too,went with me to the light which revealed a cheap restaurant. It wasonly a board shack but there was a stove in there touched with a deep,ruddy glow, and hot coffee and rolls was to be had for ten cents, andmuch more if one had the price.

Municipal Lodging House, New York City
Physicians’ Examination Room

Municipal Lodging House, New York City
“Now for a good night’s rest”

Seated at the table, one of the boys looked up to me and said, “Do youknow where a fellow can get a job around here?” He told me they hadbeen working just over the border in Colorado, in and around GrandJunction and Delta in the fruit belt, for the past six weeks.

“I thought I had a place for the winter. A ranchman said he would keepme at good wages, and I felt I was fixed, but the fellow who lived withhim last winter returned and he took him back. Us fellows are on ourway to Salt Lake City, but I am told just now that the harvest havingclosed, the town is full of idle men looking for work, and I thought ifI could strike a job here I would stay.”

“If you have been working steadily for six weeks in the fruit belt, Ipresume you have plenty of money to tide you over, and you will soon bein some place where you are needed?”

“No, we haven’t, that is the trouble, and we must walk or beat our wayto Salt Lake, although we have been working every day possible. We werepaid two dollars a day. It cost us a dollar a day to live. We lost agreat many days by stormy weather. Peaches could be picked only at acertain degree of ripeness, and often on pleasant days we would beobliged to wait for the fruit to reach that state, to be accepted bythe packers. So we haven’t much money left. Our clothes are worn out,and must be replaced. You can easily see how necessary it is for us tosave the little left of our earnings.”

I knew every word this boy was telling was true, for the Fall before, Ihad picked fruit for two weeks near Grand Junction to satisfy myselfwhat it meant to toil in an orchard,—to see what it meant to theorchard owner, and what it meant to the railroad in transporting thatfruit. Thus, I knew, from personal experience, that the worker whogarnered the harvest for the people, filled just as important a placeas the orchard owner or the railroad company.

“Last night,” the boy continued, “I tell you we were tired and hungrywhen we reached here. We walked twenty-five miles yesterday and eachof us fellows chipped in fifteen cents, and we bought three loaves ofbread, a piece of meat, some vegetables and coffee. We went down by therailroad track just below town and made one of the finest ‘Mulligans’you ever saw. Didn’t it smell good, that cooking ‘Mulligan’ and hotcoffee! And it was almost done when a fly cop of the railroad companycame along and shot our cans all full of holes and drove us away,declaring we were camped on ‘private property,’ the right-of-way ofthe railroad company. We were robbed with all the pitilessness thatwould be shown a hardened criminal!” His face took on a look of fierce,piercing hatred.

Those boys had been creating dividends for that railroad, and they knewit; and every one of them should have received free transportation toDenver, Salt Lake, or to some source of labor, instead of abuse andpersecution.

I looked out of the window and saw my train coming into the town, andI ran to catch it, and left my little company of toilers waiting andwatching for an opportunity to beat their way on a freight to the “Cityof Saints.”

After reaching Salt Lake, I looked down, from the window of afashionable and exclusive hotel, in the heart of the beautiful city,upon Salt Lake’s shame,—down upon dens of vice and iniquity that wouldput to shame many cities who boast of no moral standing whatever.

I found the boy’s report was true. The city was filled with men idleafter the summer and autumn work, which the early coming winter andsudden cold weather had closed down. I drifted around among these idlemen and talked to a great many. I found a vast number temporarilyhomeless, and out of money, suffering. Why was it? Industry seemedto be at its height, a great deal of building was going on; in fact,there seemed to be work of every sort for everyone. The reason was veryevident. Employment could not be obtained at any of the employmentoffices without money. It was the universal statement among thehomeless penniless men that not one employer would stake a man to liveuntil pay day.

In the evening I put on my worker’s outfit, and set out to look for afree bath and bed. I asked the first officer I met where the publicbath house was, as I was “broke.” He looked at me in astonishment, andthen replied, “I’ll tell you, Salt Lake is a little shy on free bathsjust now. You might go down to the Jordan River, but it’s pretty coldthis time of the year.”

Then I began to look for a bed, and asked another policeman where theCity Lodging House was, as I was in need of shelter. He raised his handand pointed through the alley to a bright light, the City Jail. And soin this city, amidst the “Latter-Day Saints,” men are compelled to losetheir self-respect, and seek shelter in a vermin-infested city jail, orelse become a common “Moocher.”

I did become a mendicant and went to the Y. M. C. A., but they coulddo nothing for me. I was about to enter the Salvation Army, when thelights went out and the place closed for the night.

I then joined a group of young fellows (who, by the way, had also comefrom the Grand Junction fruit district), and I asked them, “Boys, ifyou are busted, where are you going to sleep?” They answered, “In a‘side-door Pullman’ in the railroad yards.” Inviting myself, I said, “Iam with you.”

These young men were all strong, healthy fellows, except one whowas slight and delicate, whose large eyes seemed to hold a strange,intense light. There was the red glow of fever in his cheeks and whenhe coughed I caught a glimpse of a crimson stain. One of his pals wasthoughtful of him that night. He had a little money and he slipped itto the boy, who was sheltered from the first penetrating cold of theearly winter for one night at least, and had a warm supper, bed, andbreakfast.

Reaching the dark and gloomy railroad yard, we stealthily threadedour way among the cars, fearful of arrest from the yard watchman,looking for a car which possibly might contain some straw. Finally wefound one. The odor was that of a car in which hogs had recently beenshipped. Soon the half-starved, body-wearied boys were sound asleep,but for me, sleep was impossible,—I was perishing with the cold. Itwas a marvel how they could sleep at all. It was obvious that theywere suffering and only getting fitful snatches of sleep, which theirrestlessness plainly showed. The only reason they really kept fromfreezing was because they were huddled closely together. In a shorttime I realized that my experience would be dangerous to health if Iremained longer, and I slipped out and away.

As I walked up that great long broad street of the city, I thought agreat deal about Salt Lake and its people. I wondered if there was anydeep moral, humanely reasoning love there. I wondered if its citizens’love for their brothers in this great republic would much longer allowthose conditions to prevail. I wondered how they could be made to seethat they needed these itinerant workers for the upbuilding of theircity and the State, and if Salt Lake and Utah could be induced to dotheir share toward offering these men a decent welcome and a refugeuntil they could be placed at honest work.

CHAPTER VIII
Kansas City and Its Heavy Laden

“All religions are beautiful which make us goodpeople.”—Auerbach.

Just before the opening of the great harvests of Kansas, I reachedKansas City. Ten thousand men had congregated there in anticipation ofwork. The season was late and the harvest would not begin for a weekor ten days. The men must be right at hand. While all of them couldbe classed as homeless, migratory wage-earners, they were not allpenniless by any means. Only a small percentage of them were withoutactual means of subsistence, although there were probably a thousand ofreally penniless men in Kansas City when I reached there, men who mustbeg, or steal, to make existence possible.

By actual experience I soon found that immediate work was unobtainable.On the eve of my first night in the city I sat with a number ofunfortunates on the projection of the foundation of the Salvation ArmyHotel. Beside me was a stout young man of good manner and with apleasant, open face. Turning to him in a casual way, I said, “Where cana fellow find work?”

“I don’t know, unless you get a job down on the railroad,” he replied.“I live in Indianapolis. I’m out here to work in the Kansas harvests,but I’m sorry I started so soon for I’m here about two weeks in advanceof the work. It has been such a cold, late Spring.”

Just then a police officer came down the street—it is remarkable howunpleasant a drink or two will make a policeman,—and rapped us up withthe ingratiating command to “Move on!”

After the officer had passed, I again took a seat, but the boyremarked, “You had better not sit down again. He may return any moment,and he’ll club you. He clubbed me yesterday and I haven’t gotten overit yet.”

So we got up and walked toward the Employment Office to investigate thework he had spoken of, and as we walked I noticed that my companionlimped,—the result of the “clubbing” he had received from thepoliceman.

I could not help thinking of his needs and his situation. Seeking todraw him out, I asked as if I sought to have him treat, “Have you theprice of a beer?”

“No,” he replied, “if I had I would buy something to eat.”

“Are you hungry?”

With a forced laugh he replied, “Yes, I spent my last dime last nightfor a meal. I held it in my hand so long it had grown rusty but I hadto let it go at last.”

Putting my hand in my pocket and pulling out a silver dollar, Ilaughingly remarked, “Well, I’m not broke, but I will be when thislittle lump of sugar is gone. I’ll tell you, Jack, I’m a believer incombines, the kind of combine that a hundred cents make, and we’ll goshares on this one.”

I wish all Kansas City could have seen the expression of hope that litup that starving lad’s face. My sharing with him was something moresubstantial than the sermon or inexpensive advice usually handed to thestarving man.

“Well,” I said, “we’re partners now, and we may as well be broke as tohave only this, so let’s go and eat it.”

I led him away from the neighborhood of the City Hall and the CityJail, and the Board of Health and the Helping Hand Mission, and out ofall that black and heartless region, to where we could get a clean mealwithout being poisoned by some cheap slum eating house. We talked as wewent along, and I asked him where he had spent the previous night.

“Down in the yards in a freight car, and it rained nearly all night.The car leaked, and at about two or three o’clock in the morning itgrew very cold. I suffered a lot. I was afraid of being arrested, forwe’re not allowed to sleep in the yards. But the watchman was decentand let me stay until daylight.”

I had heard of the “Helping Hand” Mission Lodging House, known to thosewho are forced into it as the “House of Blazes,” and I asked him why hehad not gone there.

“There was no room,” he replied.

Coming from the chop-house we went to an employment office, where weread upon the blackboard:

“Wanted—Fifty men in Oklahoma, $1.35 a day, free shipment.”

We stepped inside for further information and found that board would bethree dollars and a half a week. The boy studied for a moment and thensaid:

“Let’s go.”

“You go,” I replied, “you are strong enough for the work, but I’m not.I may meet you down that way when the harvest opens.”

“I think I will go,” he replied. “It’s hard work, ten hours a day, andif I lose two days out of the week by bad weather or sickness or ahundred other reasons, or buy a few things I’ve got to have, I will bein debt to the company at the end of the week. But it’s better than tostay here and beg or starve. Some fellows can ‘mooch’ but that’s onething I’ve never got low enough to do, and I hope I never will. It’sonly a bare existence there, but as you say, the harvest will soon beopen. I’ll go.”

Suiting the action to the word, he went in, obtained histransportation, and on coming out, shook my hand with both his ownwhile he earnestly said good-bye and begged of me to be sure to meethim again if possible. He started off, and as he reached the firstcorner on his way to the depot, he stooped down and rubbed his kneeas if in pain, but cheerfully, and with a final wave of farewell, hestraightened up and disappeared.

But he could not disappear from my thoughts, this starving andshelterless boy, down and out, ill-used, yet ever ready at the firstsuggestion of hope to rush again into life’s battle. And so I haverelated this incident of meeting him at length, although it wasnothing in comparison with some of the terrible things I learned thatafternoon. In fact, rarely in any city, have I seen so much humanmisery publicly exposed, and in so small a space, as I did there,around the block bounded by Main and Delaware, and Fourth and FifthStreets.

I saw men driven like animals, eight at a time, into the bull pen ofthe city jail. When night fell and the streets were ablaze with light Iwas still walking about and observing. I felt in my pockets. The lastcent of my dollar was gone. The chop-house had left me broke. So Ibegan to inquire where the homeless and penniless could find shelter.

In the main, I found that conditions were the same as in Denver, exceptthat Kansas City had the “Helping Hand” institution, to which I havereferred,—an ostensibly “religious” institution, backed up in itsoperations by the co-operation of the city authorities.

Recalling what I thought I knew about this institution, it requiredsome courage to trust myself to its tender mercies, but I determined totry it and learn about the actual conditions existing there.

I went first to their religious service, where I heard an exceptionallyable address on the features of Christ’s humanitarianism, and on thewonderful merit which there was in the application of the “square deal”principle between man and man, individually and collectively.

The house was filled with a large number of men whose broken appearancetold only too plainly that the world was not dealing kindly and“squarely” withthem. When the speaker had ended his address the menwere asked to come forward and thereby signify that they had acceptedthe teachings of Christ as they were interpreted by the preacher. Not aman stepped forward.

That night, as a destitute workingman, at this same place I asked for abed. I was told I could have one but was expected to do two hours’ workfor it.

“I am perfectly willing to do so,” I replied.

The office was caged in by a heavy iron wire as though to be protectedfrom thieves. The man at the desk said:

“Well, leave me your hat, and when you have done your work in themorning you will get it.”

I humbly handed him my hat, and numbering it he threw it on a pile ofmany others. He was obviously holding my hat as a ransom, fearing totrust my honor.

I was given a bed check corresponding to the number of my hat, and toldto go upstairs. A man sat at a desk on which an old, smoky kerosenelamp was burning. He showed me into a room in whichone hundred andsixteen men were sleeping. He did not turn up the light, even fora moment, so that I might see the kind of a bed I was getting into.He explained this by saying he feared to awaken the dead-tired,half-starved individuals on the bunks. As a result I was afraid to getinto my bed at all, but laid down on the outside of the covering andstayed there all night. Not a word had been said about supper or a bath.

The odor of the hundred unwashed bodies was nauseating. There was theusual consumptive and asthmatic coughing, and the expectoration uponthe floor; there were no cuspidors, and the air was stifling.

Not far from me I heard a young man moaning, and every few moments hewould exclaim, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” I went to him and asked:

“What is the matter?”

“Oh, I am suffering from inflammatory rheumatism,” he groaned.

I felt of his arms and hands, and found them burning hot and swollenhard from his elbows to his finger-tips.

“Can’t I go out and get something for you?” I anxiously asked.

“I don’t know what to tell you to get. I need a doctor.”

I called an attendant. The sufferer asked if he could get a doctor fromthe city hall across the street.

“No, not until nine o’clock to-morrow morning,” was the answer.

The man had two rags about twelve inches long and three inches wide.All night long, at intervals of every twenty or thirty minutes, he wentto the water faucet, wet these rags, and bound them upon his arms.

I thought by contrast of New York City’s wonderful Municipal EmergencyHome, and of the kind medical treatment given at any hour of the nightto its inmates.

On arising in the morning we went down-stairs and waited an hour forour breakfasts. We could see our hats piled up behind the iron bars.

When the long wait was over, we were given a breakfast consisting ofdry bread, stewed prunes, and some liquid stuff called coffee, withoutmilk or sugar. What a hungry man would eat at that table, if he hadbeen able to stomach it, wouldn’t amount to a value of over three centsa meal. While we ate we were supposed to refresh ourselves spirituallyby reading the religious mottoes on the wall. “Come unto Me all ye thatlabor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest,” “Blessed are theMerciful,” “He came to preach deliverance to the captives,” and “Whendid you write Mother last?”

After that so-called breakfast I was sent to work in the long, poorlyventilated room, in which the hundred and sixteen men, unwashed,diseased, and foul, had slept the previous night. I worked two longhours making beds and cleaning floors, in payment of the three-centmeal I could not eat, and the bed I dared not get into. The Missionpeople valued our meal at ten cents, and our beds at ten cents, and wewere paying for it at labor at ten cents an hour, while at every otherplace in the city employers and the municipality were paying twenty andtwenty-five cents an hour for common labor.

The boys who had paid their ten cents for a bed sat out in the office,and stood a chance of getting a job at twenty or twenty-five cents anhour at the labor bureau, but the boys whose hats were held as a ransomhad no such opportunity.

It was not a “square deal.” And right there I saw one instance of itsdemoralizing tendency. In the room where I was at work a young boy wasdressing himself. He looked up at a coat and hat which hung by thedoor, and asked me, with an innocent look:

“Whose hat is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think it’s a tramp’s?”

“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t take it if I were you.”

After a moment’s thought he said:

“I’ve got a job this morning if I can get there, but I can’t stay herefor two hours and get it.”

In a few minutes I noticed that the boy and hat were both gone. Isuppose he thought it a fair exchange since he had been compelled toleave his own in the office, and who will say it was not?

The floors were filthy, the beds rotten. The blankets were stiff andthe sheets ragged; they were both contaminated with all the filthof diseased and unwashed men. I don’t believe the blankets had beenchanged for years or the sheets for weeks.

It seemed to be the custom of the superintendent of this place to keepup a show of cleanliness by making the men and boys do the scrubbingfor nothing. When a bed is to be looked at by a “charitably inclined”visitor, clean pillow slips and sheets are put on, but they are forexhibition purposes only. As for the beds that are actually in use,they are well worth the immediate attention of the Kansas City healthauthorities.

Municipal Lodging House, New York City
Favorite Corner, Female Dormitory

Only the real inmates, and not the casual visitors, can know the“Helping Hand” for what it is in practice. Morally, it is a breederof crime, and not an aid in any way to the recovery of self-respect.The only commendable feature about it is the Labor Bureau run inconnection,—an adjunct that every Municipal Emergency Home should have.

Such a Bureau is proof that the cry of men not wanting to work is afalse cry. I wish those who pay heed to it could have seen the objectlesson that morning when those hundreds of middle aged men, youngmen and boys, almost tumbled over one another in their eagerness toreach the window and get the jobs of carpet-sweeping, dish-washing,store-clerking, stenography, and other kinds of work that were beinggiven out.

Can such a rich city as Kansas City afford with impunity to neglect itsduty to its “hewers of wood and drawers of water?”

CHAPTER IX
The New England “Conscience”

“See to it only that thyself is here,— and art and nature, hope and dread, friends, angels and the Supreme Being shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”—Emerson.

Studying in Boston—as is said of Paris—is being born in Boston.

When a boy in my teens I spent four years there, and those fouryears awakened in me the brightest dreams and brightest hopes for asuccessful future.

After thirty years, I am again in this renowned center of intellectualculture as a student, but this time as a social student in pursuit ofknowledge of how our “Modern Athens” cares for the honest, out-of-work,penniless, homeless worker.

At half-past ten at night, in search of a free bed, I made my way downto a building, at least seventy or more years old, looking for Boston’sMunicipal Lodging House, “The Wayfarers Lodge,” better known as “TheHawkins Street Woodyard.” (Boston is rather given to pretty names. Theyhave a Deer Island also.)

My reception was not at all encouraging for a destitute man.I was not even asked if I was hungry, but was shown at once into abath-room, located down in the cellar, which was dark and uninviting.

After my bath I put on a nightshirt taken from a basket, and carryingmy hat, shoes, and stockings in my hand, I climbed two flights ofstairs to the dormitories, leaving the rest of my clothes to befumigated, as I supposed, but I doubt very much if that was done, asthey had none of the purified odor of thoroughly disinfected clothing Ihad noticed in New York.

There was no sign of medical inspection, nor any attempt at separationof the sick from the well. I should judge one hundred men to havebeen in the two dormitories that night. There were boys not more thanfifteen years old sleeping by the side of men of seventy. The bedswere shoved absolutely tight together, which gave the appearance ofall sleeping in one bed. When it became necessary for any one of themto get up during the night he was forced to crawl over the next men orover the head or foot of the bed.

As there were no cuspidors, the men expectorated into space withoutthought or care of where it fell.

Two men came in and took beds next to mine. The one on my right was anintelligent workingman, the one on my left was a drunkard witha horribly offensive breath from disease and rum.

The beds had no mattresses,—a blanket was simply thrown overthe woven wires,—and as I sank down on one, it became a stringbeneath me. A blanket was our only covering, and the pillows, filledwith excelsior, were as hard as boards.

I said to the man on my right:

“Did you have any supper to-night?”

“No, I didn’t, and I feel pretty weak and hungry. I spent my lastthirty cents this morning for a breakfast, and what do you think I gotfor it? I got a piece of beefsteak four inches square so tough I couldscarcely eat it, and some potatoes fried in rancid lard.”

I made no reply and the exhausted and half-starved man fell asleep.

“I wish I had a couple of drinks of whiskey,” said the man on my left.

“Oh,” I replied, “you don’t want much; one drink would do me.”

“Yes, but I’ve got beyond that,” he said; “it takes a good many drinksto do me, and they can’t come too fast, either.” Then, with a sigh,he added, “My dear old Daddy, God bless him, I have one thing toblame him for. He taught me to drink, and here I am in this charitybusiness—a drunkard.”

And he, too, turned over and fell asleep. But I could notsleep; asthmatics and consumptives were coughing constantly, and thewreckage around me was too much for my sympathies.

The coming of the daylight through the windows was a welcome sight.I got up and went to the drinking place, and asked a burly lookingattendant if it was time to get up.

“Naw, taint!” he snapped, with a wicked scowl.

When I went back to bed I saw this man lock the two doors leading fromour dormitory to the outside toilet rooms, and for half an hour themen were obliged to use the basin at the drinking place for sanitaryconvenience!

When the doors were finally unlocked, supposing it to be the signal forus to get up, I went with hat and shoes in my hands and sat down in achair by the door. When the attendant to whom I had spoken earlier,came up the stairs and saw me there, without a moment’s warning heseized me by the wrists, jerked me to my feet, and giving me a shovethrust me in a most brutal manner through the door, exclaiming:

“Now, will you stay in there until you are told to come out?”

I shuddered to think what would have happened if I had been ahalf-starved boy, and had resented that man’s insult. Doubtless I wouldhave been beaten into insensibility.

Finally, after another half hour, he yelled from the doorway:

“Hey, there, you fellers, get up and get out of here!”

Quickly we obeyed and were driven down into the cellar. From there wewere driven to the woodyard, where we were made to saw wood for twohours. The strong men sawed their stint in much less time than the weakones. For the latter it must have meant two long hours indeed, weakenedas many of them were by a chronic hunger and disease, and having gonesupperless to bed and being as yet without breakfast.

When I had finished paying for my “entertainment,” I was again driveninto a place to put my saw and saw-buck away, and then I was allowed togo to breakfast into a cheerless, overcrowded room; even at this stageof the game I was driven to three different places before I was allowedto be seated.

They brought me some bean soup with beans swimming in it, so bitterwith salt I could not eat it; a water cracker so hard I could not biteit, and a dirty slice of bread, that one of the indigent, but willingworkers, carried in his soiled hands and dropped by my plate.

A very hungry looking young man who sat beside me tasted his soup andexclaimed:

“I’m hungry, but I’ll beg or steal before I’ll eat this stuff.”

We both got up and left the “Hawkins Street Woodyard” in disgust;he going down the street for breakfast, and I in anotherdirection to my hotel.

During this, my social study, I have received many letters from theitinerant worker.[B]

I may add that I did not investigate Boston’s Associated Charities, butI did catch a suggestion or two that as far as helping the temporarilyout-of-work and destitute toiler, both man and woman, they wereinadequate and their good qualities did not exceed the “Hawkins StreetWoodyard.”

Dressed in my garb of a worker, which encourages confidence because itexcites sympathy, on another day, on the Boston Common, I was attractedby two idle men sitting on a nearby seat, one an Irishman and the othera Swede. They seemed to be feeling about as good as cheap Boston beercould make them, and the Irishman in an earnest yet jovial way wastrying to convince the Swede that the world was flat instead of round.I dropped down on the seat beside them, and just then the Swede saw aman he thought he knew, and abruptly left us.

I turned and said to the Irishman in a tentative way, “Where can afellow find a job?”

He replied, “Do what I’m doing. I’m an actor, and I’m playing thedrunkard’s part in ‘The Price of a Man’s Soul,’ every night, over atHell’s Corner on Tremont Street.”

This answer naturally surprised me; but without a trace ofastonishment, and with seeming indifference, I said,

“I am with you, friend, for that is a part in which I sparkle; but onthe square, what do you do for a living?”

“Well, I’m a barber, and as fine a barber as ever held a razor. I owneda big shop once, and I hired twenty men, but it went when I went. I amso low down now, no one wants me. Oh, occasionally I’ll get a job inone of the cheap places. I worked two hours last night in Cambridge,and two the night before in Chelsea.”

Then with sudden digression, I said, “Where can a fellow get a bed andsomething to eat if he’s broke?”

“You can go down to the Hawkins Street Woodyard. But don’t go thereunless you have to!” And he described its wretchedness, which I knewfrom my own experience. The man was truthful on that point, and Ibelieved in him.

I laughingly said, “What’s the matter with going down to the ‘Island’?”

“Well, I can tell you all about those places. I have done time in allof them. One day in Charles St. Jail, one week at Tewksbury, and fortydays at Deer Island.”

“Can a man with no crime but poverty go there and get work, and be paidfor it?”

He laughed sardonically. “You can get work all right, butyour pay is tough board and abuse. They’ll probably set you to digginggraves at Tewksbury. They die over there like sheep with a plague.”

“But what of Deer Island?”

“Well, I’m a barber, you know, and they put me in the barberdepartment. One day two of the prisoners, also doing my kind of work(all men who come there have to be shaved), were two minutes latecoming in from the yard to work. That made the attending officer mad,and he said, ‘I’ll fix ’em!’ and he forced those men for hours to standwith their faces to the wall with their hands over their heads. Itwas a question of obey or be thrown into a dungeon perhaps for days.I saw that punishment inflicted many times, and I saw men fall fromexhaustion and pain and be dragged out. Where they were taken, I don’tknow, and many of them were old men, too.

“One day I was sent over to the hospital to trim, as I was told, ayoung woman’s hair. I took only my shears and comb. On arriving there Ifound a young woman with a head of hair that shone like silk, and fellthree feet down her back. She was in tears and begging that it mightbe spared. She was only there for thirty days and it meant leaving theplace doubly disgraced. But the Matron declared she had seen a lousein her hair, and her word went. When I came in she asked me if I hadbrought the clippers. I said, ‘No.’ She ordered me to go andget them. Feeling sorry for the girl I told her it wasn’t necessary tocut the hair. I could clean her head perfectly without cutting off asingle hair. At this the Matron said, ‘Are you an officer or a prisonerhere? Get your clippers and do as you are told, and quickly!’ I knewwhat it meant to be disobedient. I saw before me the dungeon-inferno. Ileft the girl crushed and sobbing, and that wealth of hair almost worthits weight in gold upon the floor.

“There was a mutiny among a few of the men, demanding a change in theirfood. They were working all day for nothing but that food, but becauseof their demand, they were thrown into the dark dungeon, fed on breadand water for ten days, and I saw some of those men, as they came outfrom the darkness into the light, faint on the prison floor. One ofthem was an old man with a long, snow-white flowing beard, and youknow how proud an old man is of a beautiful beard. Well, I was orderedto cut it off and he pleaded as the young woman did for her hair, butin vain. He said to me, ‘This is my first time on the Island. My wifeknows I am here, but my children don’t. Wife has forgiven me, and I amto leave in a few days, and I had looked forward to such a happy homecoming, but they won’t recognize me now, and this puts upon me a doubleinfamy. All of my friends know I am here. I did not mean tobe uncivil, I meant to do right, but I was drawn into the revolt, notrealizing I was doing wrong which would put us in the dungeon. I feelso weary and broken. I wish now more than ever that my prayer in thedark dungeon had been answered, for I prayed many times in there, thatwhen the light came to me again it would be the light from that land ofHim who said, “I was sick and in prison and ye visited me.”’”

I looked in wonder at the man speaking to me, scarcely believing him.He noticed my expression and said, “Those were his words, his verywords. I remember them for they impressed me.”

“Is this true?” I asked. “Is there a law in Massachusetts allowing aman to be condemned and thrust into a dungeon for ten days for a pettyoffense like this?”

“I have not told to you one hundredth part of the suffering I saw atDeer Island. The cells there are absolutely dark. There is a smallslide in the door where the doctor peeps in to see if a man is dead, orgone mad.”

“If he is dead, what then?”

“Well, if he has no friends, he is put into a box and carried just overthe hill to the burying plot called ‘The Haven.’”

I was so touched by this man’s story, I could listen no longer. I gotup and took him by the arm and said, “Let’s cut out our fault.”

He replied, “I’ll have to, I guess, for its cutting me out.”

I strolled on up the Common, and thought of all it meant, “The Haven”over the hill. This man told me he had been a citizen of Boston all hislife. Who would believe this story of a destitute old floatsam cast upfrom the wreckage of America’s temple of Elegance? Had he told me thetruth or a lie? I have many reasons to believe every word he told mewas true, but there is no man who can verify this story, except the manwho has done forty days at Deer Island.

In a conventional visit to the Island, I looked into the men’s prisonjust far enough to see tier upon tier of small cells in which all theprisoners are locked for twelve hours of every day. The dungeons I didnot see as they are never open to visitors.

It was a clear beautiful day. Blue sky and blue sea, all around, whiteships sailing by, the men working in the fields, the women busy in thesewing rooms, all inspired me to think that Deer Island could be made aplace of hope and cheer. But that vision was far from the reality. Theprisoners kept a funeral silence, happiness or hope was not for them.Even their work was stolen from them.

I said to one intelligent looking man who was working in the garden,“It helps a fellow to come down here, doesn’t it?”

He answered, “Yes, if we are not made physical wrecks by the treatmentwe receive, it does help us. But then, when our time is up, we aredisgraced and thrown back helpless into the same old slums of the city,just as before.”

The Penal Commissioner of Boston told me that he could use thirty bedsa night in a Municipal Emergency Home, just to accommodate the men andwomen who were daily discharged destitute from Deer Island.

While Boston has done much for its poor, its sick, and its children,there still remains the problem of the utterly down and out, theshelterless and moneyless, but honest, workers.

Can Boston allow New York to excel it in caring for it shelterlessworkers? I hear the cry, “Where can we get the money?” When you askthat question you are putting a price on a man’s soul. I wish somegoddess of gentleness would touch the hearts of those “munificent” and“public spirited” citizens who founded the Boston Public Library, thatthey might also build a Municipal Emergency Home, and ornament itsfrieze with a perpetual beauty of words, “Dedicated to the advancementof the Commonwealth and Humanity.”

I am not without historical sentiment. I love local antiquities, ifthey can be mine to enjoy without oppression. Boston has old buryinggrounds and churches worth millions and millions of dollars.The dead have rested there a long time. Why not build for the livingwho have nowhere to lay their heads, a Municipal Emergency Home thatwould be a living force for the upbuilding of the morals and economicsecurity of the commonwealth?

CHAPTER X
Philadelphia’s “Brotherly Love”

“Hast thou Virtue? Acquire also the graces and beauties of Virtue.”—Franklin.

I had read that Philadelphia’s hospitality was her great virtue, andthat it was characteristic of her people to bestow upon the strangerand the homeless—who are and who come within her gates—a blessing ofcare and kindness nowhere else known,—to make them feel that at lastthey have found a haven.

The first Philadelphia police officer I met I asked several questionsabout the city. His manner toward me was a surprise. He seemed verywilling to talk with an apparently homeless man. We spoke of a numberof things, among them the Philadelphia Coat of Arms which ornamentedhis hat, representing the shield of honor and the scales of Justice.I said, “It is beautiful and stands for a high ideal.” He replieddoubtfully, “Yes, if it is carried out.”

I then strolled down to the corner of Eleventh and Race Streets, andseeing another policeman I approached him with the question:

“Where can a fellow get a free bed?”

He looked at me in surprise.

“I don’t know. You might go down to the station house on the nextcorner. They may give you a bunk.”

I walked slowly down to the station house. Was it possible that inthat great city of “Brotherly Love,” its police could not direct adestitute man or woman, boy or girl, to a place of rest, to a home ofshelter,—to be fed and given comfort and good cheer,—except to a jailand behind iron bars?

I entered the station where there were a number of men around the desk.I asked the Captain where a penniless man could get a free bed. Heasked,

“Haven’t you the price of a bed?”

“No, I have not a penny in my pocket.”

“Well, I’ll give you a cell,” he said, and opened a register to writemy name. I asked,

“Is there not a place in the city where a man can work for his supper,bed, and breakfast?”

“None that I know of,” was the answer. Then an officer said,

“You can go down to the Galilee Mission.”

I asked where it was, and they directed me. Just as I turned to go thepoliceman nearest to me handed me a dime.

MUNICIPAL Lodging House, New York City
Men’s Shower Baths

MUNICIPAL Lodging House, New York City
Female Showers and Wash Rooms

I started as directed, down to Winter and Darian Streets, to theGalilee Mission. I had proceeded but a short distance when I sawstanding on a corner one of the great army of workers. His appearancetold me plainly what he was,—his hands were calloused, and hishalf-worn shoes were covered with a white viscous substance, and a dimmist of lime dust clouded his entire person. I stepped up to him andasked where I could get a free bed.

“Don’t know of such a place in the city, but you can get a bed at theLombard Street woodyard by working three or four hours for it. Butdon’t go there unless you have to—they won’t treat you right.”

I thanked him and went on down to the Mission. As I approached it, oneof the followers of the Mission, with a Bible or hymn-book under hisarm, was at the door in an altercation with one of the great army ofunfortunates. The man had an honest face, but the glazed eyes told hehad been drinking. I heard the attendant say,

“Now, you get out of here or I’ll fix you! I’ll have an officer here ina minute, and he’ll land you in jail in pretty quick time.”

The man was at the drinking faucet at the side of the building.

“I haven’t done anything. All I’m doing is getting a drink of water.”

What the trouble was, I do not know, but what I saw was a seeminglypeaceable man abused, thrown out on the street, with the threat hurledafter him of police and prison.

I stepped around to another one of the attendants at the door, and Iasked if I could get a free bed there. He said in a hard way, “No, youcan’t.”

“I am willing to work for it.”

“Well, I don’t know whether there’s any left. If there is by half-pastnine or ten you can have one, but you understand you’ll have to workfor it.”

I said, “I am not very strong. Will the work be hard?”

“If you’re sick why don’t you go to the hospital?”

“I’m not sick enough for that.”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, if you get a bed here you’ll have towork good and hard for it whether you’re sick or well.”

“Could I get anything to eat before going to bed?”

“No, you can’t,” he answered.

I then strolled down to the “Friendly Inn,” supposedly a shelter fordestitute men, located on Ninth and Walnut Streets. I asked a pleasantlooking young man behind the desk if I could get a free bed. He told methey had no free beds nor any work to do to pay for one, but added, “Ihave no authority, but if you will wait until half-past ten o’clock,the Manager will be here and he may give you one.”

Remembering my brief encounter with the workingman on the corner,I did not wait but started for the “Lombard Street woodyard.” Afterreaching Lombard Street I walked for half a mile, and for the entiredistance the street was crowded with people, but I did not see a whiteperson until I reached the woodyard. The thrift of the colored peopleof Philadelphia was markedly noticeable. Saloons were rare in theneighborhood. Their homes were comfortable, they were well dressed andseemingly happy.

I came to a large four-story substantial brick building with a smalliron porch at its entrance. There was an iron balcony out from eachwindow and over the entrance door, and on the rear a similar row ofbalconies, but no fire escape that I could discover. If the buildinghad not been so large it could have been readily taken for a policestation, there were so many policemen about the place.

I entered and found myself in the presence, except for the policemen,of the first white man I had seen on Lombard Street. A kindly appearinggentleman asked me a number of questions, and among them if I was sick.My answer apparently satisfactory, he said,

“You will have to work for your lodging here.”

I asked, “How long?”

He replied, “Three or four hours.”

I was then ordered to take a bath, which was compulsory, and wasperfectly right and a good thing. Water, however, does not costmuch. After the bath I was shown into a large dormitory, thoroughlyventilated and immaculately clean (made and kept so by homelessworkers) containing fifty beds, of which thirty were occupied thatnight. The beds were very clean and comfortable, except the pillows,which were pretty thin and hard. I judged they were stuffed withcotton, and cotton gets into a lump sometimes. Some of the men coughedall night. At four o’clock, for some reason, one-half of the men werecalled, and why they were called at that hour I could not learn.At five o’clock the rest of us were called. I had slept in a cleanten-cent bed for six hours, and was then driven out. For the spiritto drive is also evident there. When we went into breakfast there wassome bread and spoons on the table. We had no need of a knife and fork,as we had nothing to use them for. We were then given a plate of beansoup and a cup of stuff called coffee. The soup had a nasty taste,like rancid lard or strong butter, and the material called coffee wasluke-warm, and nauseating. It had not the slightest flavor, taste, orstrength, and we were not given sugar or milk. This was our breakfast.I could not eat or drink a mouthful, and I was not the only one, forthere were others of the half-starved boys and men at that table whoate nothing, and those who did eat forced it down, and made faces whiledoing so.

Now, this was not because I was used to Bellevue-Stratford fare, for Ihave roughed it throughout the West in mining and cow camps, and knowgood coarse food from nasty coarse food.

We then went down in the reading-room, a sort of chapel, where therewas a rostrum with an organ and a pulpit on which was a carved cross.The room was filled with chairs. At one end was a large table coveredwith old magazines and papers. Did you ever notice how charity peoplethink old magazines are good enough for a poor man no matter how brightmentally he may be, or how much he loves to keep up with the times?

We were told we would have to wait until half-past six before going towork. I almost fainted from hunger, and was suffering terribly with aheadache. I went down to the door and asked if I could go out, sayingI would return. I was told, no, I could not. In this chapel I wasvirtually imprisoned, to be kept there and turned loose at the willof its superintendent. There were two big well-fed policemen sleepingon the chairs, and I fell to wondering what they were there for, andwhat they had had for breakfast. I wondered if they were there to watchus, and I said to one boy in a tentative way, “What’s the matter of usmaking a sneak?”

He replied, “No, I won’t, for I promised I would work, and if theycatch you trying to make a sneak, they’ll throw you in jail.”

Then I wondered what the large kindly man at the desk, who did not haveto wash or scrub floors or saw wood, had had for breakfast, and whatthe other big good-natured attendant had had, whose only business wasto boss the “under dog.” I also wondered what the other members of thesociety of organized charities had had for breakfast, and if they weredriven out of bed at four or five o’clock in the morning to eat it.

At six-thirty we were put to work. A number of us were sent to thewoodyard and several of us were put to washing, cleaning, and scrubbingthe floors and stairs.

I was set to washing, and I asked the “boss” attendant, “How longwill I have to work?” He replied, “three or four hours,” the same asthe attendant had told me at the door when I entered. However, afterworking from half-past six until twenty-five minutes to nine—keptin there just at the time when I ought to have been out looking forwork—I was allowed to go.

As I was leaving I said to a boy about fifteen years of age, “Areyou going now?” He said, referring to the attendant, “He’s not toldme that I could go. These people treat a boy mighty mean here. Theyworked me from half-past six yesterday morning until four-thirty in theafternoon.”

“Why didn’t you leave after you had worked for your bed and breakfast?”

“Well, it was so near dinner time, and I won’t beg or steal, so Iwaited for the cheap dinner, and they worked me, as I told you, untilfour-thirty in the afternoon, but I am going to try to get a jobto-day, if possible.”

Does Philadelphia need a Municipal Emergency Home? Philadelphians, you,too, send your delegation to New York and inspect their new MunicipalEmergency Home, that you, too, may have one even surpassing that NewYork Home, or at least turn the one you have into a humane one, foryou cannot afford to have New York surpass you in its humanitarianactivities. Keep the great reputation you have of “Brotherly Love” and“Hospitality,” and if you do, your lives and your city will continueresplendent, and this new refuge will speak in wonderful language thepraise of “The City of Homes.”

CHAPTER XI
Pittsburg and the Wolf

“I resolved that the wolf of poverty should be driven from mydoor.”—Andrew Carnegie.

Our train was late, and would not reach Pittsburgh until noon.

The porter had given me a pillow, and while we were sliding smoothlydown that great tongue of land between the Monongahela and AlleghenyRivers, where in 1754 stood an old French fort, and where to-daystands Pittsburg, the greatest industrial city of our nation withits population of 750,000 souls, I fell into a half wakeful reverie.I was thinking of its steel, and its iron, its glass, its coal, andits oil, of the mighty fortunes created there by the sweat of theworking masses; of the few who had made those great fortunes, of thestruggle, the worry, until the treasures of the earth were theirs,until they possessed gold and silver, and houses and lands, through theexploitation of those who must toil. We think or used to think of menwho from poverty had achieved great wealth, that they were self-madeand worthy of great honor, but that idea seems to be growing lesssignificant nowadays. I thought of the scandals that are rife, and thathave come to us from time to time from the great Iron City, and I sawthat achievement had left in many cases, indelible marks in a wreckageof mutilated homes and lives. Then my dream changed to the blue jeans,to the great industrial army of bread winners who filled just as greata place of import in the building up of the city, and of its greatfortunes, as did the few who exploit them. I thought, too, of theirbattles of the past for equity and justice, and of the one at that timegoing on at McKee’s Rocks; I thought of the lives sacrificed in suchbattles, of the contention and agony, of the suffering of body and mindfor life’s simple necessities, and all to keep together humble homes,to protect the manhood of honorable American citizens, and to insurethe safety of little children, to make a living wage possible.

We were nearing the city. Surely, I thought, this great city, with itsvast wealth, must abound in privileges to labor. I have heard thatpeople who achieve great wealth do not always forget. My first impulsewas to pass right through without trying to investigate conditions inPittsburg, for I had received many wounds of late from those in chargeof “charitable” institutions. I had been misunderstood and severelycriticised, called a seeker after notoriety, and my motives hadbeen questioned. All because I dared to prove to the world that theinstitution maintained and assisted by private charity, especially themethods of the charity organization society, cannot stand the test ofan honest and impartial investigation.

I was weary in mind and body, and had almost lost sight of what hadstood out before me as duty. The silent voice which had been leadingme on was scarcely perceptible. I had been reading Victor Hugo’s “LesMiserables,” and I held in my hand this great masterpiece. Aroused frommy lethargy I opened the volume and read, “A man should not recoil fromthe good he may be able to do.” I looked, and my wounds were healed,and thus I stopped in Pittsburg.

I found a neat room in a respectable neighborhood, where a man inworking clothes could walk in and out without comment. Soon I wason the street, an unemployed, destitute workingman, except, as Idiscovered afterwards, that I had in one of the pockets of my overallsa penny. My first object was to look for work. Inquiring I found thatit was estimated, on good authority, that there were 50,000 unemployedmen in Pittsburg and its environs at that time. At McKee’s Rocks alonethere were 8,000.

I went first to Pittsburgh’s Street Railway Company, where I foundone hundred and fifty young men in line putting in their applicationsfor work at twenty-four cents an hour. If those applications wereaccepted, the men were obliged, and were willing, to work one wholeweek for nothing to become qualified. I did not file an application.

I picked up a paper and read: “Ten men wanted as supers at a theater.Apply at the stage door entrance.” I went to the place, and foundfifty men waiting, although it was an hour before the appointed time.There were men of all ages and types, from some scarcely more thanboys to old men of seventy. I talked with a dozen who had prospectivework in sight and were willing to do anything to tide themselves overuntil their positions were secured. One man said, “I have a place in awholesale grocery open for me the first of next week, and although thiswork will only pay fifty cents a performance, it will buy me enoughto eat, and I can sleep any place until I get my job. I hope theywill choose me.” Then the manager came out and chose his ten men, thelargest, roughest of the lot. I was not among them, and the boy who wasgoing to work in the wholesale grocery was still on the street. The menselected were as pleased as though they had received a Christmas giftthat would not wear out, and one big, rough, tough looking fellow, withalmost tears of joy in his eyes, said, “Who would have tought dey wouldhave taken me wid dis front on?” as he looked down at his soiled andragged clothes; and another just as happy replied, “What do ye tinkdey want? A fellow with balloons on his legs and a cane? Naw, dey wanta feller that can do somethin’.”

I then drifted around among the employment offices, and found a littlearmy looking for, and getting, shipments to work. As I strolled about,I found a carpenter’s rule, which I picked up and slipped in the upperside pocket of my jumper. Strolling along a little further I saw on thesidewalk a bright new nail. I don’t know why I did it, but I pickedit up also, and put it into the lower pocket on the other side. Thenight was coming down and I was very tired and hungry. I began, as anindigent man, to look for a place of rest and a meal, the latter athing I never missed on these investigations, but often had to postponefor long periods. I was perfectly willing to work for that privilege ifI could find such a place.

I was compelled to try the so-called “Christian Missions,” and theymade a good starting point for my investigations,—investigationswhich proved to me that they prey upon the gullible with a pretense ofhelping the homeless.

I went first to the Salvation Army and asked for a bed. The attendanttold me he could not give me one as their lodging house was run forprofit and not for charity.

“I am willing to work for it. Have you no such place.”

“We have,” was the answer, “but it is closed.”

Then I went to the old Liberty Mission on Fourth Street and I readthe following inscription over the door, “The man who belongs nowherebelongs here.” Prayers were being said on the inside, and the doorwaywas blocked by a desk behind which sat a negro. I asked if I could geta free bed. He answered, “You can for ten cents.”

Still on the street, I made my way to the Volunteers of America onSecond Avenue, made an appeal for a bed, and was flatly denied thatcomfort unless I had twenty-five cents to pay for it.

So, touched by the lack of hospitality offered by “Christian”institutions in Pittsburg to an indigent man, I looked straight at thisVolunteer, and said earnestly, “Is there no place in all this greatcity where a destitute man can find an asylum for only one night?”and started for the door. I think my ardent manner created a littlesuspicion, for he called me back and said, “You might ask the Captain;he is out there holding service in the street.”

I stepped out just as they concluded their service. I addressed one ofthe followers and asked for the Captain. “He has just gone,” was theanswer, “but what do you want of him?”

“I am without means, and I wanted to know if he would give me a bed forthe night.”

The follower said, “No, I don’t think we can, but I can give you work.Do you want work?”

“I do, where is it, and what is it?”

The work proved to be driving one of their wagons four miles out in thecountry.

“And what do they pay?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

I said, “It is late and I am tired, and I want to be taken care of justfor to-night. I may find work at my trade to-morrow. Do you see?”

He replied with a sneer, “Oh, yes I see,” and abruptly turned his backupon me and went in to pray. All that was left for me was the publicpark.

Pittsburg has no breathing spots, squares, or parks down in the city,although there is a large fine park, I am told, several miles out.Just across the Allegheny River in Allegheny City (Greater Pittsburg)is a beautiful park with many statues, fountains, flowers, and trees;but I must cross the bridge and the toll was one cent. I reached downin my jeans for my last penny, paid my toll, and went over. How luckyI was in having that one last penny! It was one of the places where“the penny counts.” I had been told during the day that one of theinducements offered to Allegheny City for coming into Pittsburg wasthat this toll, a mighty revenue, would be abolished, but as yet itstill exists.

What a night of midsummer beauty it was! No singer ever sung, or artistever portrayed, a fairer scene! I was very tired and hungry, anddropped down on a seat to rest. “And the cares that infest the dayseem to fold up their tents like the Arabs and as silently steal away.”I could have dropped to sleep and slept with the peace of a littlechild; with no covering but the boughs of the green trees, with nowatcher but the stars in the sea of blue above me, with no company butthe song of the night bird that could sing all night.

Many people were seated on the benches. Near me were two men. I drew alittle nearer to them and engaged them in conversation.

“Are you out of a job, too?” one of them asked. “You can’t remain hereall night, if you are thinking of sleeping in the park, for the policewill drive you out. This would be a fine place to rest, wouldn’t it? Wewould like to remain here until daylight. We have work promised us atHomestead. We might as well walk out there to-night, and go before weare told to go.” The last words were to his partner. They turned to meagain saying, “Good-night, old man, hope you’ll have luck,” and weregone.

I then walked a long way up the park, noticing that already it had beencleared of its weary ones, that they had been driven from these hauntsof nature back into the black holes of the city. I saw but one oldwhite-haired man sitting with his head in his hands, sound asleep.

I stepped up to him, and touching him, said, “Why don’t you lie down onthe bench and sleep; you would rest so much more comfortably?”

He awoke with a startled look, and said, “I am afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

In a frightened manner he replied, “I don’t know.”

I knew he was afraid of the police.

“I don’t think anyone will trouble you.” He laid his old, exhausted,worn-out frame down upon the seat, and was almost immediately lostin the slumber he so needed. I had left him but a moment when I sawa policeman in the distance who stopped and viewed me closely, thenturned and went in the direction of the old man. I was inclined tofollow him, but I did not dare, nor could I wait to see the patheticfinish. I strolled back down the park and saw by a light in a distanttower that it was midnight. The park seemed utterly deserted but for adog sleeping under a bush.

I went back to the gate by which I had entered, and sat down near it.Between there and the bridge was the part of the city given over todens of vice, which are open all night, among them being scatteredplaces of legitimate business which are open only in the light of day,and in the night afford a deeper shelter for crime and the criminal.I took a seat near the entrance thinking that I would wait until anofficer came along, and get an actual example of his treatment to a manin my position.

MUNICIPAL Lodging House, New York City
Men’s Dining Room

The moon was setting behind the towers of the city. The shadows werelengthening; that part of the city near at hand looked grewsome.The park was silent and somber. As I waited I saw two men standingin the shadow just outside the park; from their manner, I knew theywere discussing me. Presently they started through the entrance towardme, and as they did so one of the men put his hand in his lower coatpocket. Half protruding from the pocket I caught the gleam of arevolver. As they approached, my heart for a moment seemed to standstill. I did not dare to run or cry out. I simply arose and stoodbehind the bench. They walked rapidly and directly toward me. When theycame near enough to observe me closely they stopped. Then one of themsaid in a disgusted manner, “I told you so; it’s only a hobo,” and theyhurriedly turned and left me.

I had to get back to Pittsburg, and learn what it means to the fullestto be a homeless man in this great industrial center. It came to methat I had spent my last penny coming over. How could I get back?Surely it was the place where the penny counts! During the day I hadbeen told that the only free crossing between Pittsburg and Alleghenywas the railroad bridge, used by the railroad employees. I must findthat. In spite of my startling experience, I was compelled to threadthe gloom of this black part of the city to find the bridge.

I found it and started to walk the ties, fearing at any moment that theheadlight of a fast approaching train might flash upon me. Suddenly Islipped on an oiled tie, falling. In the darkness I threw out my hand,clutching an iron rod. In my stumble I discovered for the first timethat two planks had been laid on the side of the bridge where one couldsafely walk. With a feeling of relief and security, I quickly steppedupon them, and the rest of my walk upon the bridge was filled with afeeling of gratitude for my escape.

Shortly after crossing the bridge, I saw a policeman and asked himwhere I could get a free bed, or if I would be allowed to sleep in thepark. He gave me a severe look and in a harsh manner said, “No, thereis no free beds in this town, and you can’t sleep in the park, either.”

I said I knew some people on Fifth Avenue who, perhaps, would take mein, but I did not care to trouble them at that hour. I asked him theway to the Avenue and he directed me. I had gone scarcely half a blockwhen he commanded me to stop.

He came up to me and said roughly, “Who are you, anyway? I don’tbelieve you have a place to go.”

I replied that I was an honest man.

“What is your business? What do you do?” were his next questions.

With no other thought, except that I must answer something, I told himthat I was a carpenter. He started to search me and all he found wasthe carpenter’s rule and the nail which I had picked up the previousday.

After that process, which by the way was quite illegal, he softenedtoward me somewhat and said, “Well, you seem to be an honest man, andif you have no other place to go you can go to the city prison,” andpointing to a bright light some distance down an alley, added, “It isover there. They’ll give you a cell.”

With his eye upon me, in spite of some hesitation I had to go as hedirected. I reached the prison and entered, and, as I had done in othercities, asked for a place to lie down until daylight.

I was asked no questions. The night sergeant simply said, “Come thisway,” and he locked me in a cell which, although it was not of thebull-pen type, was little better than one in its general appearance andcondition of uncleanliness. The only places in it where I could liedown were the floor or an iron slab which partly covered the lantine.I could hear the groanings of the unfortunate men and women who, forreasons of their own, were compelled to spend their nights in prison.I could hear other prisoners appealing to the jailers for medical aid,water, or release from their cells. One young fellow in a cell oppositemine, for about two hours hung in one position to the bars of his cellin an endeavor to attract some attention. Every little while I heardthe crying of a young girl, one who had “forgotten her mother and herGod.”

Never in any prison did I feel such oppression. I came near swooning.The thread of endurance as I lay on the stone floor snapped, and thedarkness that came upon me brought forgetfullness.

My sleep was of short duration. Long before daylight I asked to bereleased. The jailer, who seemed to hold a spark of humanity, said, “Iwouldn’t go out if I were you for the police are liable to pick youup.” Shortly after dawn I was released.

Taking my belongings from my lodging house I left for more comfortablequarters. After a refreshing bath and a restful sleep I interviewed theMayor of Pittsburg and the members of the City Council, and gave aninterview to the newspapers.

On the following morning, while passing by a newspaper office, Inoticed on the bulletin board a headliner reading:

“Free beds for the homeless poor of Pittsburg.”

CHAPTER XII
Omaha and Her Homeless

“A good mayor is useful; a man should not recoil before the good he may be able to do.”—Hugo.

In the Antelope State, on the Big Muddy River, on a plateau rising fromthe west bank of the river is built the city of Omaha, the metropolisof the State, with a population of 150,000 people. Omaha was calledthe “Gate City” on account of its important commercial position whenit was founded in 1854. It was one of the first to breathe of themighty progress of civilization in our great West; and, like all ofour growing Western cities, is eminently an industrial center—meatpacking, breweries, smelters, machine shops, brick yards,—and it isan important railway center. Because of all of this, it continuallybeckons through its portals a vast number of the army of the seekersafter work. Omaha, too, boasts of its culture and humanity, and of asocial distinction around which cluster names which in the years tocome will be intimately connected with the history of the country.

I reached Omaha on a Sunday morning in September. What a gloomy dayfor the penniless toiler this God’s day is, in the great city, whenunwashed, unfed, and homeless, he walks the streets! All places forobtaining work are closed and he can simply drift until Monday morning,when industrial activity is resumed.

I found the city of Omaha spending thousands of dollars for theentertainment and amusement of visitors to the annual convention of agreat fraternal organization. While its stores and blocks and publicbuildings had been placed on dress parade with gaudy decorations, andwhile the glad hand of hospitality was stretched out to these guestsfrom thousands of its citizens, there was no welcome for the honestlaborer who might happen to be homeless and penniless within its gates,and no provision for him but the filthy concrete floor of the hugesteel cages, beneath the crumbling plastered walls of the city jail.

I walked down the darker streets in the lower part of the city wherethe out-of-work are forced to gather. In Boston I thought I had neverseen such a gathering of human misery as I found on Boston Common, butnowhere have I found that condition so evident in a smaller way than inOmaha.

Approaching a policeman, I asked for the public baths. It was my firsttest to find out what our Western cities were doing to provide thatgreat sanitary necessity. I was told there was “nothing doing,” andthe policeman glanced significantly towards the “Big Muddy.” I do notknow of a single public bath west of Chicago except in Denver.

I then decided to try for the first time the Young Men’s ChristianAssociation, which poses as an institution assisting those needinghelp, and which is supported by benevolently inclined contributorsand its income enhanced in the same way. When I applied at the OmahaY. M. C. A. for a free bed and bath, a most affable, well-dressed,neat-looking clerk behind the desk assured me nothing would give himgreater pleasure than to accommodate me, but their beds and rooms werefixed up “pretty nicely,” in fact, too nicely to be given away. Then Iasked for a bath, and he assured me that was a member’s privilege only.

I then sought the Salvation Army. My answer there was to the effectthat if they gave fellows like me free beds they would be overrun everynight.

Next I went to the Union Gospel Mission on Douglas Street. The door tothe lodging house upstairs was locked. Downstairs a gospel meeting wasbeing held. I waited until the meeting was concluded. The dormitorywas not open, there were bright lights there, and people were going totheir beds. I approached the attendant, who was closing the door, andasked him if he would give me a bed. He kept right on closing the doorin my face, meanwhile saying that he wished that he had a free bedhimself, that he slept in the street when he hadn’t “the price.”

I then applied to members of the Volunteers of America. They could donothing for me as they had no lodging house, but thought I might findshelter at the City Mission. I went there and found the place lockedand dark. It was a reception about as cordial as that which I receivedonce at Genoa where I went to visit the birthplace of Columbus. Afterstanding on tiptoe reaching up and ringing the bell of that curioushouse for about five minutes a barber stepped out of the house nextdoor and said in a mixture of Italian and broken English: “Eh, MiestroColombo, eh not-a-to-home. No ring-a-de bell so damn-a loud. MiestroColombo eh dead, all a-right dead,—yes-a-four hundred years!”

Later with two or three other “down and outs,” I lay down on the grassin Jefferson Park. Very soon a policeman came along and drove us out.“How many times have I got to tell you fellows to get out of here? Now,get out of here!”

A short time afterward I met another policeman and asked him where Icould get a free bed, telling him I was broke. He looked at me rathersavagely and said, “You can’t get nothing like that in this town.” Thenhe added, “You might go to the city jail, but it is chock full now thatthe car strike is on.”

By this time it was midnight. From down in the lower part of thecity I saw a man standing listlessly on the curbing. In a moment hesat down. I strolled along and sat down beside him. He was penniless,starving, had eaten nothing since morning, and had no place to rest,but he was not hopeless. In fact, he was in a rather happy mood, forhe had a place to work ten miles out in the country, on a farm for onedollar and a half a day and board, and if he made good it would be anall winter job. Soon after daybreak he was going to start out. When Itold him I, too, was without a place to sleep, he told me I was welcometo his blankets which he had down in an old shed under the tracks wherethe owner had let him spread them down the night before. He doubted,however, whether I could stand it.

“I tried it last night, but if there was one I believe there were tenthousand rats infesting the place. I was fearful of losing myself forone minute for fear they might attack me, and so I spent the night justas I am spending this one. The farmer did not want me to come out untilMonday morning, although I wanted to go out Saturday with him when hehired me.”

Thoroughly tired out, I bade my hopeful midnight acquaintancegood-night, and sought my hotel. As I lay in my comfortable bed Ithought of the homeless, moneyless ones who belonged to Omaha thatnight and who were shelterless and hungry.

The next day I visited the City Jail. There I found eight ten-by-tencells, the bull-pens. Crowded into a single one of these, I countedfourteen men. The shocking closeness of the place was stifling, and Ihurried out.

I saw, far up the street, a great mob pressing down, and as soon as Igot within hearing and seeing distance, I made out two men driving ateam of horses hitched to an old wagon partly filled with potatoes. Themen were driving directly down the car track, hindering the trafficof the cars. Two policemen stood back of these men trying to get holdof the lines, and they were beating them or trying to beat them intoinsensibility. The men’s shirts were torn into shreds and the bloodran down over their faces and over their clothes to the bottom of thewagon. I did not find what the trouble was about, but it was as thoughI had caught a leaf from those other days of social unrest, when thepoor of France cried for bread, and the thoughtless paid so dearly fortheir folly.

There was no place for a homeless man in Omaha that night—not even inthe city jail. A strike was on.

CHAPTER XIII
San Francisco—The Mission, the Prison, and the Homeless

“Liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”—Isaiah 61:1.

Having received many letters from the Pacific Coast inviting me to comethat way, and having heard what a Mecca for the itinerate worker itwas, I felt impelled to investigate the “Commercial Emporium” of theWestern shore. I had already made my appeal to Salt Lake City, so Iwent directly through from Denver to the “Golden Gate.” I arrived inSan Francisco, one of the most wonderful and beautiful cities in allthe world, on Monday, February 8, and began at once my serious study ofthe problem I had come to investigate—the problem of the man who worksbut who may be playing in hard luck; the penniless man temporarily outof a job; the unfortunate boy seeking work far from home.

I found the wheels of progress and industry in the city exceedinglyactive and bright; yet I found a great many men out of work. Theemployment offices were crowded to overflowing. I found the men at thehead of these institutions perfectly willing to get a man a job atthirty dollars a month, for a fee of two dollars and a half, or fifteendollars a month for a fee of one dollar and a half, but they refusedpoint-blank to tide a man over, that is, to trust him for the fee untilhe drew his first pay.

I stood one morning in one of the employment offices in this greatcity and counted there two hundred workingmen, looking for work. By myside was a boy, hungry, homeless, penniless, who could not go to workbecause he had not the price to pay for that privilege. Until he couldget the price, he must beg, steal, or continue to starve. His sheltertwo nights before had been divided between the doorway of a freighthouse and the city prison, and the previous night in a “free flop”mission.

“I am not clean,” he said, “I am soiled and ragged and no one wants mearound,” and added, “God, if I could only get rid of the things thatwere given me last night, without money and without price.”

I said to him, “Go to the public bath,” and he asked with an expectantlook on his face, “Where is it?” I replied, “I don’t know,” and hesaid, “Even though I took a bath, these are the only clothes I have,and they must be cleaned.”

I did just what ten thousands of the good citizens of San Franciscoare doing every day, I helped the temporal needs of that boy; but itwas a wasted effort, and I knew it, for the next night he may havefared doubly worse than this one.

The boy told me a bit of his life’s history and the reason for hiscondition. He told it in such a clear, straightforward way, heimpressed me that he was telling the truth.

“My father is a merchant in Ohio and fairly well-to-do. I had aposition in one of my home town banks as assistant teller andbookkeeper, getting seventy-five dollars a month. Although I am buteighteen years of age I felt I was capable and ought to be earning moremoney. The institution I was working for felt they could not affordto raise my wages, and having a friend coming West, and also havingthat dream for the West, all of us Eastern boys have, and having fineletters of merit, I thought I could better myself, and I left, comingdirectly through to San Francisco. My ticket, however, was good to LosAngeles.

“After spending ten days here, I found it was impossible to get work inmy line of business even though I offered to take much less than I wasgetting at home. Realizing that my money was fast slipping away, I wenton to Los Angeles, where I found even a more discouraging conditionthan here.

“I made up my mind I would endure anything before I would askassistance from home, and so I filled my letters with tales ofprosperity and wonderful prospects. But finally, my money was all goneas well as my personal effects, including two hundred dollars worth offine clothes, which the pawnshops got for a few dollars. My chum hadreturned East, and then I began to look for anything to do. I startedinto the country. The hardships I have endured in trying to live andfind work in the California cities would fill a book, but the hardestexperience of all was at Santa Anna, where I was arrested and throwninto the Santa Anna jail for ten days, for illegally attaching myselfto the Santa Fe Railway, and aimlessly wandering about with no visiblemeans of support, and no objective place in view. I lost my hat theafternoon I was arrested in Santa Anna, and when I left the sheriffgave me this one. It was a pretty good ‘lid’ when he gave it to me.And so I made my way back here, and if I don’t strike something to doto-morrow I am going into the army. They will have to write Dad andget his consent. They will take care of me until they hear from him.Goodbye, old man, thanks to you, I am all right now until I hear fromhome.”

Here was a young man, strictly temperate, without one visible evilhabit, a young man of brain, brawn, grit; just such boys as Californiawants, needs, and should help and keep, and it had no place for him!

The rest of that day I tramped the streets looking for work, and Iinquired at a hundred places, I think, where work was going on, butall places seemed filled and no one seemed to want me—at least notthat afternoon. At several restaurants they offered to let me help washdishes for something to eat.

I could have begged, it is true, without being arrested, as the laborMayor at that time was in every sense a humanitarian, and soon aftertaking office had issued a mandate to his police department to molestno one on the street asking alms. When remonstrated with, he said,“We may be imposed upon many times, but I would rather help twentydishonest men than turn down one honest one.”

The spirit of alms-giving in San Francisco was markedly noticeable, andI asked a man whom I saw hand a dollar to a man who asked for aid, whythat spirit was so active. He replied, “If you had been here and gonethrough the terrible earthquake with us, you would fully understand. Wewere all dependent on one another at that time. We have all realizedwhat it means to be homeless. We have not forgotten.”

This observation seemed to apply only to the Mayor’s order and tothe citizens in general as I met them on the street; for I found thereligious bodies of an entirely different nature,—those at least, withwhich I came in contact, not being remarkably generous.

The night was coming down. It was exceedingly ominous to a destituteman. It had begun to storm, with a commingling of rain and snow, and achilly blast from the ocean.

Myriads of lights came out like a burst of good cheer from the FerryHouse to Golden Gate Park, but they held no warmth for the penniless,thinly clothed man. The restaurant windows seemed to glow with goodthings. I saw many, very many boys and men, and occasionally a poorlyclad girl, stand and look longingly at the tempting viands. I sawone young fellow down on Third Street standing before a cheap butexceedingly clean restaurant, whose windows were filled with tempting,wholesome food. I stopped and watched him. Among the passing crowd wasa workingman with a dinner pail. The young man reluctantly, it seemedto me, asked of him a dime. The workingman strode on, but had gone onlya few steps when he turned back. Stepping up to the young fellow, heput his arm about his shoulder and said, “What would you do with thedime if I gave it to you?” The penniless man’s face beamed with joy andappreciation of the sympathy shown, as he said, “I would buy somethingto eat.” The workingman gave him a quarter, a part of his day’s wages,and the hungry man entered the restaurant, and ate as though he hadbeen denied that blessing for a very long time. The workingman, as hewent his way, I heard whistling far down the street.

“The Small Dark Door Leads down under the Sidewalk andSaloon. San Francisco Free-flop of Whosoever-Will-Mission”

In this incident I saw in imagination the spirit of San Francisco’sbeautiful Municipal Lodging House, with its food, shelter, bath, andmedical attention, building up of character, good citizenship, andmaking for good government. I felt that the spirit of kindness shown bythat workingman would be the crowning virtue of this new and wonderfulHome.

It was getting late. I was very tired, and knew I must find shelterfrom the storm. I would not ask of anyone on the street the price ofa bed. Someone out of pity might give me money he actually neededfor himself. I decided to seek first some of the Good Samaritaninstitutions which make a business of helping the needy. But wherethey were I could only find out by inquiring of the policeman. I mustapproach them with all that dread and terror excited by the expectationof evil which all destitute men in our American “cities of liberty”come to look for at the hands of the police.

I approached an officer and asked him, “Can you tell a fellow where hecan get a free bed?”

He did not look at me suspiciously; he did not take the law in his ownhands by questioning me on the street; he simply placed his hand on myshoulder in a kindly way and said, “Right here is Kerney Street. Keepright down Kerney until you come to Pacific,—you can’t miss PacificStreet,—and you will see the ‘Whosoever Will’ Mission. They have somekind of a ‘free flop’ there, but if they don’t take care of you, go tothe city prison.”

It was eleven o’clock when I approached the "Whosoever Will" Mission.The meeting had just closed. I counted twenty men and boys standingon the street outside of the place. I slipped up to one of the boysand asked where the “free flop” was. He said, “About a block downthe street.” I asked him, “What is the show for getting a free bed?”“Mighty poor,” he replied, “us fellows all got left. If you want a bedyou have got to be here and go to the meeting and if you are luckyenough to get a ticket you can get a bed.”

Just then I glanced through the door and read an inscription, “He thatcometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.” In making a closer studyof this institution, I found it in appearance a veritable Cleopatra’sNeedle literally covered with quotations inside and out. I then askedwhere the lodging house was, and if he thought a man would stand anyshow of getting a bed without a ticket. He replied, “You might try,”and directed me to the “free flop” a block down the street on thecorner. There I encountered about twenty more men standing idly about.Seeing a light through a door, I entered, believing I was entering the“free flop,” but found myself in a negro saloon frequented entirelyby colored men. I went out again into the crowd, and stepped up to athin, emaciated boy, a boy evidently dying with some lingering malady.I asked him where the “flop” was, and he pointed down to the sidewalkand said, “It is under here, the entrance is there at the corner.” Islipped over to it, and found a very narrow and almost precipitousstairway leading down under the sidewalk and into a basement underthe saloon. This stairway was absolutely gorged with human beingsseeking shelter. After seeing that the sick boy had entered last andthat I might force him back into the night, I entered, and when it wasdiscovered, before I had scarcely gotten into the place, that I had noticket, a big bully violently thrust me toward the door and in a loudvoice shouted, “Get out of here,” and almost threw me up the “goldenstairs” and back into the street.

Here I found a number of boys and men who, like myself, lingered aboutticketless and shelterless. I said to one of them, “What are we goingto do for a bed?” He replied, “I’ll tell you; you can get in if youwill drop down that manhole, and once in you’ll be mixed up with thecrowd and won’t be noticed. I let three fellows in that way the othernight. It’s mighty heavy but I’ll hold it up till you drop down if youwant to try it. But, say, I want to tell you if you ain’t got nothingon you, and you don’t want nothing on you, you’d better try the lumberyard. It isn’t so warm as down there, but it’s a great deal cleaner.That’s where I’m going.”

I was determined, however, to see this one free lodging house of SanFrancisco, but I hesitated for just a moment. I wasn’t quite surewhere I might land, and if I was discovered neither was I quite surethat I might not be murdered. But my fear quickly passed and I said,“All right, lift her up,” and down I went. I did not have far to drop,and found myself in that portion of the “heavenly flop” under thenegro saloon where hell overhead was already making the night hideous.Between the cracks in the old board floor I could see the light of thesaloon shining through. I made no attempt at trying to get a bed. All Iwanted was to make a few notes and get out.

The room where I found myself was filled with double board bunks, theupper bunks coming so near the ceiling, or floor of the saloon above,that a man could just crawl into them. Some of these poor objects weremaking an attempt to get a bath from a shower in a corner, but even ifthey succeeded in getting this excuse for a bath, they were obligedto crawl back into their filthy clothes or onto the still more filthybunks. Some men, under the sidewalk, I saw spread out old newspapers onthe boards, and lie down unwashed and unfed in their wretchedness.

Slipping out as quickly as possible, unnoticed, I reached the street.The night air and open street was as a pleasant dream which follows thewaking hours of one who suffers.

At the Salvation Army the attendant told me he was not authorized togive anything away, and all that was left me was the old city prison.

Threading up an alley, I found myself at the Old Bastile of SanFrancisco. The keeper at the door said he would allow me to lie downin the cell house, but first he must be assured I had neither knife,gun, or razor upon me. Satisfied I was not an escaped lunatic, or adesperado with an arsenal concealed about me, I was turned over tothe turnkey, who led me to the chamber of horrors, a long room aboutsixty by thirty feet. In the center was a row of large cells, or “drunktanks,” in which were being thrown the unfortunates of both sexesin all degrees of insanity, from the raving delirium tremens to thesemi-idiots, the fighting drunks, the laughing drunks, the sick drunksand the sleeping drunks. The jailer pointing to a pile of blankets,said, “Take one of those and find a place to spread it down.” Thelodgers were allowed to lie down on the stone floor in the narrowpassage which surrounded this row of cells. The passage was so narrowthat they had to lie in single file, which left just space enough towalk between them and the cells. I seized a blanket; there seemed to bejust one space left.

If you have ever been in an insane asylum, or in a cell house of yourStates prison, where some unusual sound startles and terrifies theinmates, you can frame some idea of what it means to sleep around the“drunk tanks” in the city prison. Women with disarranged clothing,and disheveled hair, were pleading and babbling, and begging to bereleased, declaring they could not breathe, and in piercing tonescrying that they were suffocating. Strange as it may seem, these womenthis night were more or less refined in voice and language, and themost vile and vulgar epithets hurled at them by the men derelicts inthe adjoining cells met with no response. Men raved and fought, andcursed and groaned. The jailer was kept busy separating them. As he wasforcing an aggressive prisoner from one cell to another, the toe of theunfortunate caught me in the side, which left me a sore and stingingremembrance of that awful night for several days.

When the call came to the lodgers to get out, it was like a voice fromthe immediate presence of God. We were each given a piece of breadand a cup of stuff called coffee. The jailer, George McLaughlin, wasa man of cast-iron decision and gruffness, yet under the most tryingcircumstances his actions toward these troublesome unfortunates wereexceedingly kind. As we drifted out of the Old Bastile, he gave us eacha word of good luck and a cheerful farewell. It was a jail, yes, andno man can ever sleep in a jail and keep his self-respect, but we werewelcome and not cast out.

San Francisco is at work. She has sent her delegation to New York Cityto inspect its beautiful and wonderful Municipal Lodging House. Thedelegates returned completely won over to the idea. San Francisco willsoon have its Emergency Municipal Home.

CHAPTER XIV
Experiences in Los Angeles

“Ye are not of the night nor the darkness.”—I Thessalonians5:5.

On one of Los Angeles’ perfect winter Sabbath mornings, I was idlystrolling down the street, when a breezy, pleasant faced womanappeared, looked at me closely and then asked if I was homeless. Thegenial little lady urged me with a great deal of force to come to theinstitution in which she was interested, and where, she assured me, Iwould be well fed and sheltered as long as I chose to stay. So pleasantwas the description of her home, her welcome so genuine, I rejoicedin the thought that here in hospitable Los Angeles was provided anemergency home for those with whom untoward circumstances had not dealtkindly.

I was interested at once in the invitation so kindly extended to me,and I asked the good woman how I would get to the “home.” She began bytelling me which street-car to take. I said, “Just give me the streetand number and I will walk." She answered, "I can not do that verywell.” She explained to me that she would give me carfare but was notallowed to do so. There was another woman a little further down thestreet who could and would give me the required nickel. Walking on downthe street, I was told by a man standing on the sidewalk that there hadbeen several women on the corner urging men to come out to a free home,and giving out carfare, but they would not return until the next Sundaymorning.

Following the woman’s directions, I took a car. After riding what Isupposed to be about two miles, I asked the conductor if we were nearlythere; he laughingly replied, “We haven’t started yet.” And then Ifound that this “home” was nearly four miles from the place wherelaborers congregated in the heart of the city. A four-mile walk—apleasant prospect for a hunger-weakened man, perhaps ill as well!

On finally reaching the place, I found it an institution of some kindof religious enthusiasts. There were many there. It was one of theirfeast days, and the end of the dinner was near at hand. I was given acordial welcome, and handed a plate of potatoes and beans. Tea, coffee,and meat I learned they regarded as sinful, smacking too much of theflesh.

This plate of potatoes and beans, the leader declared, was sanctifiedfood. On this feast day there had been a shower of pies and cakes,but the sanctified pie had run out. We were invited to remain toa four-hour feast of religious worship, which would be followed byanother feast of edibles. As this latter attraction was referredto many times, we had reason to believe a regular Belshazzar wasin store for us. Out in a sort of shed, after four long hours ofreligious praise, in a din of sound of voice and song, beneath swingingcollections of crutches and pipes and bottles, we were called to thepromised supper. Back into the banquet hall? Oh, no! But we carried thebackless benches in from the shed, and placed them in a row along bythe back or kitchen door of the house. I noticed there were only abouthalf seats enough for the guests, so that one half stood while theywaited, and it was nearly an hour from the time we began to gather forthe much heralded “full meal” before we were served.

The weather had changed. At the going down of the sun, in southernsemi-tropical climes in midwinter, there is a penetrating chill inthe air. Cold mist and rain is of frequent occurrence. With the fastfalling night had come a chilling fog cloud. It was an appalling, anappealing, a heart-rending, cruel sight, this company of two hundredand fifty men. There were no women among them.

As these destitute men stood there, half-clothed, enveloped in thevapor of the coming night, I read, on almost every face, despair andhopeless grief. I judged that a great many of them were tubercular,or the thin emaciated faces may have been evidences of exposure andwant. I, too, was suffering with the cold, and I turned to a strong,healthy young fellow near me and said to him, “That cup of hot coffeewill receive a hearty welcome.” Just then an attendant came out of thekitchen with a very large pitcher and filled it with cold water fromthe hydrant. My interlocutor turned and laughingly remarked, “Jack,there is your hot coffee!” Then the chief leader of this spiritualbeneficence appeared, rubbing his hands together, and said to avisiting brother as he glanced down the line, “Isn’t this glorious?”

After more prayer, they came to us bringing what they calledsandwiches, one for each man. These “sandwiches” were two very thinslices of bread, between which they had put a touch of some sour sortof sauce, and with each one was given acup of cold water. A gaunt,sunken-eyed man, with white trembling hands, said to me, “I am afraidthere won’t be enough to go around and we won’t get any.” But we gotours, and he swallowed it almost in a mouthful. I held mine waiting foran excuse to give it to him, and soon he asked me, “Aren’t you going toeat yours?” I replied, “No, I do not like the sauce between the bread.”I shall never forget how eagerly the thin hand grasped the slice, ashe exclaimed, “I would give a fortune, if I had it, for a cup of hotcoffee!” And then some hungry wretch spoke up, saying, “If Christ wason earth today, I think he would have changed that cup of cold water,given in his name, to hot coffee.” I asked this starving man if hecould not find work, and if he had no trade. “Yes,” he answered, “I ama lather, but since they use the steel laths it is hard for us to getthe work we formerly did. Besides,” he continued, “I am not young anylonger nor strong enough to keep steadily at work as I once could, eventhough I now had the work to do. I came down here believing I could getwork, easy work, out-doors in the fruit and orange groves, which wouldbe beneficial to my health, but the fruit trust hire all Japs becausethey can get them cheaper, and, even though I have offered to work ascheaply as they do, they will not hire me.”

The day was done and this little drift of the flotsam and jetsam of LosAngeles floated back to the city to buffet with chance and luck for aplace to sleep.

When I first arrived at the “institution,” I asked for the privilegeof staying until I could help myself. The attendant told me he wouldsee me after the service. As nothing was said to me again nor any of usurged or asked to remain, and being obliged to find something to eat, Ileft. As we went away, each man was offered a nickel for carfare, and Isaid to the helper who doled out the nickels, “Will you give me anotherto come back on? I must go to the city to look for work.” But I foundhe couldn’t think of such a thing.

No doubt, on the minds of the gullible rich and charitably inclinedwho contribute to such institutions, the report of this feast day andof the great number "fed" must have made a great impression. Thesepeople were teaching Christ, too, as they understood or pretended tounderstand Him. On this day, if they had found one man of characterstrong enough to accept and follow the beautiful Christ Life, wasit not worth while? From their standpoint, yes, but they overlookedutterly the sin of continuing the pauperization of those two hundredand fifty men, by their makeshift charity. During their four hours ofpraise and prayer and “testimony,” not one single word was said aboutthe causes that compelled those men to be there. Nor a single remedywas mentioned to change conditions, nor a word uttered against themethods used by religious societies, missions, single and associatedcharities, prison associations, societies for the prevention of crimeand mendicancy, in their dealings with mendicancy.

It was after dark when I again reached the city. The rain had ceased,and the myriads of scintillating lights filled the city with a glowof splendor. I began my testing of the generosity of the city of LosAngeles toward its destitute homeless. As in other cities, I met withrebuffs at all of those institutions and religious bodies ostensiblyexisting for the sole purpose of helping the homeless. I tried allthat I had heard of or that the police knew anything about. Finally,as I had been in other cities, I was driven to the Municipal buildingprovided for law-breakers and criminals. As I sat there waiting for thejailer to lock me in, I thought of the frightful night spent in thebullpens of other places,—of the nerve-racking night when I came sonear swooning in the city prison of Pittsburg, and last but not least,of that madhouse, the Old Bastile of San Francisco. As I heard theclang of iron doors, and in the distance the cursing of men and the cryof lost women, I said to myself, “I don’t think it necessary for me togo through this terrible trial to bring before the good people of LosAngeles the need of a Municipal Emergency Home,” and I quietly creptaway.

On the following Sunday, I addressed the Y. M. C. A., and I told themof my experiences in Los Angeles. I spoke of going first to one veryprominent institution and of being denied any of its privileges forless than thirty cents, in real money. I did not give the name of theestablishment and when I had finished, one of the officers of this bodygot up and said, “If Mr. Brown had come here he would have been takencare of.” I replied, “This was the first place I came to.” After theyhad caught their breath, he haltingly said, “But Mr. Brown, you did notsee the right man.”

I found in Los Angeles, as in every other city that I visited, thatthe Y. M. C. A. is nothing more nor less than a rich men’s club. Ifound men worth a great many thousands of dollars rooming there. Theypaid from thirty to fifty dollars a month for their rooms. And I foundboys on small salaries also living there but living on one and twomeals a day, in order to be able to pay their paltry room rent.

CHAPTER XV
In Portland

“To live honestly by one’s own toil, what a favor of Heaven!”—Hugo.

“Dell me, vhere I find me a lawyer?” In broken accents, these wordscame to me from a German laborer who stepped up to me out of fivehundred unemployed men who thronged Second Street in the vicinity ofthe labor bureaus.

“I am a lawyer,” I responded; “what is the trouble?”

With an amused expression, eyeing closely my blue jeans, he said, “Youvas not a lawyer.”

“No,” I answered, “I am not a lawyer, but tell me your name, and whatis your trouble, and perhaps I can find you one.”

“My name is Steve Goebel. Vell, I dell you, I go there,” pointing tothe employment office near at hand, “seven days ago, und I pay twotollars for a job at lumber camp Rainier, fifty, maybe seventy, mileavay. I pay my fare out there. I vork six days und six hours for vunseventy-five a day, ten hour a day, den dey dell me dey no vant meno more. I work so hard in rain und vet, und I vear mein clothes out,und I pay five tollars a veek board. Vhen dey dell me dey no vant me nomore dey offer me dhree tollars for my six days und six hours’ work. Iowe the commis, vhat you call it, fifteen cents for leedle tobac. Dendey take from me vun tollar hospital fee und dhree tollar poll tax,they say, or road tax, und offer me dhree tollar. I not take dot dhreetollar,—somevun dey rob me. I hafe leedle money. I come back part vayon boat, as far as my leedle money bring me, den I valk back here. Idell the office how I get treated und dey says nefer mind, ve get youanoder job, but I say I valk all night, I am hungry, den dey give meden cents for breakfast.”

I took this man to the office of the City Attorney and left him thereto tell his story. I afterwards repeated the story to one of theleading newspaper writers of the city. He looked at me very earnestly,and said, “Do you think there will be a thing done about it?” I lookedat him without reply, and he continued, “There won’t be a thing done.There is no law for the poor man here.”

MUNICIPAL Lodging House, New York City
Women’s and Children’s Dining Room

The man had been robbed in as low and cowardly a manner as only a mostdepraved degenerate could be guilty of. Portland had helped to makethat man destitute, and now he is forced to beg, steal or starve,until he finds another job, or perhaps, through desperation takes hislife. Similar experiences in Portland have forced a great many to dothat very thing. Several men have been found dead in a pretty greensquare in the heart of Portland’s breathing spot, called the Plaza, andpostmortem examinations have revealed nothing in their stomachs. Andthese tragedies have taken place almost within a stone’s throw of theAssociated Charities.

A great pile of water and pitch-soaked blocks of kindling wood waspiled in front of No. 10 North Second Street, a Jap restaurant. Some ofthe blocks were so heavy it was with difficulty they could be carriedeven singly. The wood belonged to the Japs. An old man, an American,some sixty odd years of age, was carrying it in. I asked him if he didnot want a helper. He said, “I would like a helper but there is solittle in it and there is not enough for two. I am carrying this all infor thirty cents and it will take me, I think, three hours.”

This old man had a good, kind face, and his clothes, though worn, wereclean. He continued, “I have been playing in a little hard luck of lateand must get all out of my work possible.” I then asked him if he hadbreakfasted. He had not. I said, “I have a little money, come and havesome breakfast and carry in the wood afterward.” He said, “No, I won’ttake your money, I will soon be through here and get my pay.”

I was seated in Tragedy Square (the Plaza), near a neat, well-dressedyoung man, and while sitting there two young girls about sixteen orseventeen years of age came out of a door across the street, and passedthrough the Square. The young man remarked:

“Do you see those two young women? They have just come out of theWoman’s Department of the Free Labor Office. You can tell from theirappearance they are honest girls, but they would sell all that is dearto them, even their purity, for something to eat and a place to sleep.I may be wrong but from their appearance I feel it is true.”

Stunned as by a blow, at the words from the lips of this stranger, withnoticeable feeling I said, “That can’t be possible. In this city ofwealth, whose citizens boast of their refinement, their reasonableness,and their kindliness!”

“I know whereof I speak,” he answered, “for I have a girl friend whomI have been helping for over a year. Just recently she confessed tome why she forgot the teachings of her childhood and mother, why sheforgot her dream of being honorably married and becoming all that hermother was. She said, it was because she was hungry and had no place tosleep. She could not ask for charity or beg. ‘I didn’t know where orhow to beg,’ she said, ‘but then I met you and you were kind to me.’ Idid not know this when I met that girl. I thought she was what she wasfrom choice and not from necessity.”

As he got up to leave he said, “I am going to marry her and she shallbe all that God intended her to be. I am going to help her, but thereare many, very many girls who come to Portland, and who, through lackof life’s necessities, are forced to forget.”

And this instance could be multiplied a thousand times, and in athousand ways, in a thousand cities.

In the afternoon, I began to look for work. I found that no privilegesexisted for labor; that the destitute working man, the man who was“broke,” was forced to seek shelter where the homeless dog and ratseeks shelter. Men here, as in other cities, were forced to thefermenting refuse thrown from stables because it held warmth! Oftenmen slept out in the open air behind billboards and in a hundred otherdeplorable places, where they could get a little rest unless discoveredby the police and thrown into jail.

In my search for work, I went to the offices of the Portland Light,Power and Electric Railway Company. I asked the clerk what show therewas to get work as motorman or conductor. He answered, “pretty slim.”Nevertheless, he asked how old I was. When I told him, he said therewas no work for me, that there was a brotherhood of the railwayemployees which was an adjunct to the company and one of its rules wasnot to hire a man over forty. I said, “It is true, I am fifty, but Iam just as strong and well, able-bodied and competent as I was attwenty-five.” But that made no difference. I then asked, "If I were ofan eligible age and you should give me work, what do you pay?" He said,“You are expected to work the first ten days for nothing. Then youreceive twenty-four cents an hour for five years, then thirty cents aslong as you live and work.” I said, “I am broke, and even though I wereof an age to be chosen, I would be giving my time to you during thoseten days, and a man will starve to death in nine.”

A man who looks for work does not lose his worthiness, but the man whois forced to ask alms, to ask something for nothing, does.

I then took the part of a cringing, disgraced, dependent with nothingto lose and nothing to gain, except to try and keep God’s gift, thespark of life, until in my own opinion, at least, I could place myselfin a position to be honorable. I knew that I would be looked uponsuspiciously by the police, possibly thrown into jail; that in all ofthe places where I would ask for aid, they would look upon me as mean,base, low,—mental defective perhaps, or a victim of some awful habit.My poverty would be, of course, all my fault, as “there is no need ofany one’s being poor.”

I first looked for the Associated Charities. I scanned the papersclosely, not knowing but that they might advertise to give a destituteman or woman, boy or girl, a lift. Finding no notice, I found the placeat last, after a good deal of difficulty. Reaching there at aboutfive minutes after five, I saw a sign on the door which told me theykept the usual “banking” hours, 9A. M. to 5P. M.I wondered whether, possibly, some one might not need a little helpbetween 5P. M. and 9A. M.

The Y. M. C. A. here, also, had nothing to give an indigent man, anymore than in the other cities where I had been.

Strolling down Burnside Street I came to an establishment with a sign,“People’s Institute,” over the door. I entered and asked for help. Theyhad nothing to give away but religion. Yes, they had a reading-room,where a number of men sat reading in profound silence. Here I sawseveral other signs: “No Smoking,” “Do your reading here, your talkingon the outside, but not at the door.”

I inquired where a man was supposed to talk, and was told that it was“in the park or a block down the street.”

I wandered down to the river. Glancing across to the other side I sawa huge sign, which read: “Salvation Army. Industrial Home.” I crossedthe river and on reaching this work-house of faith and worship I sawthat the lower floors were locked and dark. Climbing a stairway leadingto the second story, I found myself in a rambling barrack. Hearing anoise in one of the rooms I made my way there and found a man preparingsupper. I told him of my hard luck, and that I was willing to work forit if I could get a lodging for the night and supper and breakfast. Hewent right on pealing his onions and potatoes, telling me decidedlythat the meals were for the officers of the Army and he was not allowedto give anything away. The Industrial part of the “Salvation ArmyIndustrial Home” seemed to have ceased to be at the finishing of thatgreat sign. The Captain told me later, however, that if I had asked theright man I would have been helped, but that I had asked the cook.

For several hours I drifted around. In some of the “beer depots,” asthey call the saloons there, I found as many as two and three hundredmen at one time. A policeman, whom I saw fulfilling his duty by drivinga boy whom he suspected of being under age, from one of these resorts,directed me to two missions,—The Holy Rollers and the PortlandCommons. Should I be denied shelter there, he told me to go to thejail, but added that I should not go there unless I was obliged to.

The Commons had a name which indicated that it was meant to serve all.I climbed the stairs to an office. The only man available about theplace told me if I had been there and attended the service they mighthave done something for me. When I asked him if I could receive supper,bath, bed and breakfast by doing some service in return, he stared atme and asked me what kind of a place I thought they were running!

This is a simple statement of what a homeless man meets in Portland.If I had seen Staff Captain Bradley of the Salvation Army he wouldprobably have given me a bed; or, had I come in contact with Mr. W.G. MacLaren of the Portland Commons, I would have been taken care of.I did not meet Captain Bradley after my investigation, but I did meetW. G. MacLaren, and found him a sincere Christian gentleman, doing agreat deal to help those in need. I discovered, for the first time inmy experience, a life-line running from the city jail to a mission,and the mission was Portland Commons. The night captain of the jail,Captain Slover, who ought to be chief of police of that city, was atone end of the line and W. G. MacLaren at the other.

Many discouraged, unfortunate workers have, through the efforts ofthese two men, become honored citizens. Both Captain Slover and Mr.MacLaren know that private and individual effort is a failure; thatit is as one trying to dip the ocean dry; that under our national,municipal, social and political systems, their work is useless. Thesemen believe in municipal ownership as far as taking care of those inneed is concerned. They are strong advocates of a Municipal EmergencyHome.

In Portland I found a boy who had been dragged at two o’clock in themorning from a delivery wagon where he was trying to sleep, and putin jail. Captain Slover sent him to the mission. On the street I sawanother boy whom I had met in San Francisco a month before and whonow was on his way to Tacoma, to which place his brother had writtenhim to come, as he had a steady job for him with good pay. He hadbeen pulled out of a freight car at three o’clock that morning andtaken to jail. He told his story and they believed him. Afterward,while visiting that jail (the only Portland Municipal Lodging House) Ifound it such a filthy, disease- and crime-breeding institution that Iwondered that the police themselves did not succumb. I found Russiansthrown in there who were never in jail until they came to America. Isaw the “drunk tanks” into which unfortunates were crowded and where, Iwas told, they were often found dead from suffocation.

On Sunday morning I attended the First Congregational Church. It wasnot the regular service but a sort of joint meeting with the ForeignMissionary Commission. The minister preached thirty minutes about howmuch he pitied the poor little dwarfed soul. I heard not a singleword about trying to save the soul (and the body) of the hundreds ofshelterless and hungry men in the city of Portland who were searchingfor the possibility of carving out an existence for themselves andthose dependent upon them. In its neglect to care for these, the churchseemed an accessory to death rather than to the uplift of unfortunatemen and women.

During my entire work, I have been honored only once by being calledupon by a minister and asked to speak in his church. “The EveryDay Church,” it is called, situated far out, almost in the suburbs,on the east side of Portland. Its pastor, Rev. James Diamond Corby,will surely be heard from in the near future. He is one of the menof the hour in that city. TheOregonian, the leading newspaper ofPortland, which has been the bell sheep of Oregon for a great manyyears, and which thinks the jails and prisons of our country are tooattractive and should be made less so, did advocate the establishmentof a Municipal Emergency Home when I first went to Portland. On EasterSunday morning, however, they crucified my idea and cartooned theMunicipal Emergency Home, as the hairy hand of socialism tearing downthe American flag!

Shortly after leaving Portland I received the following letter whichspeaks for itself. Do not fail to read the postscript.

CHAPTER XVI
Tacoma

“The greatest bravery is theirs who humbly dare, and know no praise.”

I stood one day on the curbing of the principal street in Tacomawatching the construction of a sky-scraper. Near me stood a man ofthirty-five, also watching. In reply to a question of mine concerningthe wages of these builders who were taking such fearful risks, he said:

“They receive four dollars and a half a day, but one does not have tofloat in the open air on a steel beam fifteen stories high, only, inorder to hold his life in the balance. I am working for the lumbertrust for two dollars a day down in the Sound. I work on slippery logsunder which is a current so swift and treacherous that a misstep wouldbe absolutely fatal. But I was glad even to get that job for I wasbroke when I reached here and slept three nights sitting up in a chairin a saloon. The police thought I was a worthless old bum, I guess,for every little while they would come along and rap me awake. Out ofmy two dollars, I am saving a little, though, and I have a promise ofa better job. If I get that I will soon be able to send for the wifeand little ones,” and as he left me the thought touched his face withgladness.

It was a rainy day, the Puget Sound country being filled with rainand cloud during the winter months. I walked up to the City Hall,the Associated Charities, the Free Labor Bureau and City Jail, whichare all near together. I counted twenty-five men standing out in therain waiting for work. They were a pitiable lot. Stepping inside, Idiscovered why they were forced to remain in the storm. The officespace for applying for work was about large enough to accommodate sixmen comfortably, and there, also, was a very noticeable sign whichread, “No Loafing in Here.”

Tacoma offered no privileges for the destitute out-of-work man. Herehe will find no free bath but the Sound, no free bed but a chair in anall-night saloon or the jail, no free meal without begging or snatchingfrom the free lunch counter. I counted just one hundred men sitting upall night in chairs in the various saloons of the city, and once more Iappeal to Tacoma, and to every other city, not to take the saloon fromthe needy until it can give something in its place.

What a conflict of opinions troop in at the suggestion of the wordsaloon! The saloon is a livid, malignant tumor, a virulent festeringulcer discharging corruption, abhorrent, odious. It breathes diseasefrom neglected cheap lodgings, bull-pens and prisons. It is a destroyerof the City, State and Country; a murderer of reputation, character andsociety, a slayer of faith, love, hope and belief in God. Yet I havefound it (who can deny it?) a Christian institution, saving the livesof men. It is doing what the church does not, or will not do. It standsa haven to the man who is desperate. It offers shelter and food to thehomeless and destitute without demanding that he become a mendicant. Itis true it may be only a chair, but it is under a roof and provides himshelter from the night. The food may be snatched from a fly-infestedfree lunch, but whether he drinks or not there are no questions asked.

To all cities I want to say, “keep your saloons until you havesomething else to take their place.”

While I was making my investigations in Tacoma, I stepped into thePenal Mission. There was quite a large company praising God andtestifying what God had done for them. After seeing what I had seen,and knowing what I knew, I could not refrain from telling them that Ithought since God had done so much for them they surely ought to beginto do something for God. So I began by telling them a little of thesuffering as it had been revealed to me in Seattle and Tacoma. I wasabruptly interrupted by the leader who asked me if I were a Christian,and gave me to understand that this was a testimony meeting. That wasjust what I thought I was doing—testifying for Christ—and though Iwas remonstrated with by several men, semi-believers, for leaving, Isilently stole away.

While in Tacoma I met Archdeacon Grimes, an old, tried and true friend.He introduced me to the Tacoma Woman’s Club, which I found to be oneof the most active Women’s Clubs in this country. The labor councilsalso were deeply interested. Tacoma may have been thoughtless, perhapsin the past, but Tacoma is so no longer. The city has awakened to herneeds and is going to see that these needs are filled.

CHAPTER XVII
In Seattle

“There are no bad herbs or bad men; there are only badcultivators”—Hugo.

I shall never forget my first visit to Seattle several years ago. Icame from Tacoma by boat. As we rounded the point in the bay the magiccity burst into view. It seemed like the work of genii, this mightycommercial gateway to the land of the Alaskan,—a wonderful, beautifulcity, solidly, grandly built and in so short a time. It is a miracle ofAmerican industry and enterprise. Its citizens have force and power anddetermined character. Yet here in this beautiful spot, I found, as inother cities, the starving, homeless, and destitute.

“Will you give me enough to get something to eat?” asked aneighteen-year-old young man as he stopped me on one of the principal,prosperous streets of Seattle. He was such an object of pity that Ihesitated and regarded him closely before I replied. So soiled andwretched was he that I stood apart lest he might touch me. Not alonedid his clothing speak of his misery, but his face seemed burned withsin and neglect.

“Go to the Charity Society,” I said.

“Will they help me?” he eagerly asked.

I looked at a clock nearby and saw that it was then fifteen minutesafter five.

“It will be useless for you to go there now as they close at five,but,” I said, “although I’m about broke, too, I will buy you a beer.”

His lip trembled and tears actually filled his eyes as he said, “I canfind a lot of fellows who will buy me a beer, but I can’t find anyonewho will buy me something to eat.”

The next day I looked for work and to see what privileges were accordedfor the out-of-work, destitute man in Seattle. First, after a junglehunt, I found the Charity Society. After waiting a half-hour far up ina very high building in a dark room with a lot of rubbish, I was seenand put through a humiliating lot of questions. I was not asked if Iwere sick, or hungry, or whether I had comfortable clothing or neededmedicine. I was asked if I were a church member, if I supported mywife, and many other such questions. Then I was offered a ticket fortwo twenty-cent meals at a restaurant and a bed at a Mission LodgingHouse. I took the names and addresses of these places and making sometrivial excuse for not taking the tickets (although I could have givenhundreds of them away that night) I left. I found the restaurant ina slum, and while I stood in its doorway I counted eight saloons.The lodging house I found in the heart of the worst tenderloin evercreated. The sleeping quarters were in a basement. Its immediatesurroundings were Chinese and Japanese who come to this countrybringing all of their own vices and who then promptly adopt all ofours. Three doors from the entrance to the lodgings is a brothel of thelowest character. It harbors seventy-five scarlet women of the worsttype, and it is only one of the many near at hand. These places, which,with all the other corrupting influences for sin, make up Seattle’sworst hell, cannot be described. Yet it is here that the heads of thegreatest of all the virtues send their homeless to rest. I rejoiced tounderstand that Seattle abolished this frightful tenderloin at the endof the administration which was in control of the city at the time ofmy visit.

While loafing late in the evening in one of the big beer joints, astrong, healthy fellow with whom I had been talking (and in our talk wediscovered we were both broke) said, “If I had thought for one moment Iwould not have been at work by this time, I would not have sent so muchof my money home.” Then he continued, “Where are you going to sleepto-night?”

With a quick thought, I replied, “Oh, I am fixed for somethingto-night. I have two places and you can surely have one of them if youwant it. One is at the Salvation Army. I was up there not long ago andthe attendant told me they couldn’t think of giving me supper, bath andbreakfast, but if I would come and help him clean up between eleven andtwelve o’clock at night he would give me a place to lie down, and youmay have it. Do you want it?”

“You bet I do,” he answered. Then I said, “It is nearly eleven o’clocknow. Let us go there.”

As we approached the place I said, “I’ll not go in and you will stand abetter show.”

He went in with an uncertain manner. He was not used to begging.Presently he returned and said, “I don’t see anyone.”

“He is back in there somewhere,” I said, “hunt him up.”

Trying again, I saw him come out with a broom. Looking through thewindow he saw me, smiled and shook his hand as he began sweeping. Hehad got his job and covering.

The next day I met two brothers, one of whom was pale and trembling andstaggered as he walked. I said to the elder boy (for they were onlyboys), “What is the matter with the kid?”

“Sick. They let him stay in the hospital until he could walk. I guesshe is still sick.”

These boys, one a tradesman and the other out of work, had no home, nomoney, were obliged to beg, and were sleeping under the most horribleconditions. I think that if the search light could be thrown onevery man destitute of a home, and into the places he is forced bycircumstances to seek rest in Seattle, the humanitarians and the peopleof that city who really care would walk their streets and know no peaceuntil a remedy had been found.

As I looked up the street I saw a large stone building and asked acitizen where the city jail was. He pointed to the great stone buildingand said, “That is the City Hall. On the top floor is the City Jail.” Iremarked, “That is wonderful. That is the first jail I have ever foundlocated as that one seems to be. It must be very bright and light andsanitary, compared to most of the prisons, which are under or almostunder the ground.”

“Yes,” he replied, “it is, but it makes me shudder when I think of theawful den we had for years before that was built.”

I then strolled up and paid a visit of inspection to the jail.Reluctantly I was given an order by the police captain, directing theturnkey to grant me the privilege of looking about. The place impressedme with its cleanliness, its light and its good ventilation. He showedme first its bull-pen, one huge cell of concrete and steel, absolutelybare, where the inmates could only stand, lie down, or sit down on itsconcrete floor, and I remarked, “You must have as many as twenty-fivein there at a time.”

“Yes, seventy-five,” he replied, and I saw again before me the vision(though it was midday), of the midnight scene of that midnight hell.Then I asked, “Where is the lodgers’ cell?”

He looked at me a little quizzically for a moment, and then showed meanother cell about half as large as the bull-pen. “This is it,” he said.

It contained, as I remember, six young men or boys, I judged in theirteens, and at that time of day I could not understand why they shouldbe locked in there if they were only lodgers. So I said, “Lodgers areoften forced into the bull-pen, too, are they not?” and he said, “Yes.”This lodgers’ cell, as he called it, was also absolutely bare, a stonefloor the only rest for the man who must work or look for work onthe morrow. But there was the Associated Charities, and if the threehundred shelterless in Seattle could have found it between nine andfive o’clock, they would have been given a bed no doubt. At least a bedwas offered me there.

Then my turnkey tapped slightly on a solid steel door of a solid steelcell. The only possible means for the ingress and egress of air to thisdungeon was a small opening about half as large as an envelope. If Iam not mistaken there was a slide door on that opening which could beclosed, too, a device which is on all other similar torture chambersI have seen. He lightly tapped on the door, in a subdued way, withan expression as though he ought not to speak but must, and with anassumed, non-consequential smile, he said scarcely above a whisper,“There is a man in there.”

“What is he in there for?” I asked.

“They are trying to make him tell something they think he knows.”

Then he pointed to another one and said, “There is a man in that onealso.”

“And what is he in there for?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long are they kept in there?”

“Ten days, sometimes.”

I knew the rest. The people of Seattle know the rest, or if they donot, they can learn it from the other stories of this book. There maybe laws governing these torture hells and other prison abuses, but anygovernment that allows them to exist is a government that will ignorethe existence of these laws. I found in Seattle, also, six boys heldfor the Juvenile Court, locked in a cell in the county jail. I thoughtof Denver and her beautiful Detention Home for such as these.

Sunday evening came. I had heard frequently of a certain clergymansince coming to Seattle, and believing a change of thought and scenewould rest my tired heart and brain, I climbed the hill. I passed oneRomanist Church on the very crown of the hill so large and elaboratethat I fancied it must have cost a million. At last I reached theobject of my search. This church, too, looked down on Seattle’s bestand worst. I entered. It was a large church. I think perhaps threethousand people were in attendance. The minister, in surplice, wasgiving out his notices. One was that the Prison Association wantedmore clothing. (I afterward read that this same minister recommendedmore and harsher discipline in our jails, especially commending thewhipping-post.) As the service continued, however, I found that I couldnot intelligently receive a word. Between the sentences I could plainlyhear: “They are trying to make him tell something they think he knows!”

CHAPTER XVIII
Spokane

“Justifiæ partes sunt non violare homines; verecundiæ non offendere.”—Cicero.
“Justice consists in doing no injury to men,—decency in giving them no offence.”

“He passed the prison. At the door hung an iron chain attached to abell. He rang. The door opened. ‘Turnkey,’ he said, politely removinghis cap, ‘will you have the kindness to admit me and give me lodgingfor the night?’ A voice replied, ‘The prison is not an inn. Getyourself arrested and you will be admitted.’” These words were spokento Jean Val Jean at the prison door in the village of D—— in France,in 1815. All who have read the Victor Hugo masterpiece know thewonderful story.

In April, 1910, nearly one hundred years afterward, in the city ofSpokane, I stepped up to a police officer whom I met on the streets andasked where I could get a free bed, having no money, nor friends, norhome in the city. He answered, “You can’t find anything like a freebed in this town.” Then I asked if I could sleep in the city jail. Hereplied, “No, you cannot. We have received instructions to send no oneto the jail.” Then he added, “Get yourself run in and you can lodgethere.”

Here was a condition of things I had met with nowhere else. Even theshelter of the prison was denied a penniless wayfarer. Nothing daunted,I resolved to try to the fullest what Spokane might offer one like me.I was told that one of the missions had a lodging house. They perhapswould take me in for charity. I determined to try. I met a man on thestreet and asked him where it was. He said he believed they once hadsuch an institution. He thought it was closed, but he was uncertain.“Ask a cop,” he said. “You will find one on the next block.”

I went as directed and soon saw an officer of the Spokane police force.Stepping up to him, I asked for the mission lodging house. Instead ofreplying, he said, “What do you want to know for?”

It was, or ought to have been, his duty to answer my simple civilquestion. What right had he to question what I wanted to know for? Whatbusiness was it of his why I wanted to know? But he was of the Spokanepolice force and was endowed with authority. I replied, “I am withoutmoney and I am looking for a place to sleep. I thought perhaps theymight give me a bed.” I turned and started to leave him, but catchingme roughly by the arm, he said, “Hold on here. Don’t you leave me.” Isaw before me those horrible nights I had endured in other prisons, andmy first impulse was to run. But I remembered the eighteen-year-old boyin Denver who was shot to death for running from a policeman.

Then the Spokane officer said to me, “Who are you, anyway?” I answered,as I had in Pittsburg, “I am an honest working man.”

“And what do you do?”

“I do anything I can to earn a living.” He pulled me around and lookedat my face on both sides, then said. “Let me see your hands.” Heregarded them closely, remarking, “They are pretty soft and white for aworkingman’s.”

“There are thousands of workingmen who have soft hands,” I replied.“There are waiters, barbers, bookkeepers and clerks, and hundreds ofpositions which keep men’s hands soft and white.”

“Yes, but your hands do not correspond with your clothes.”

“I wear gloves when I work. There are a great many of us fellows whodo the hardest manual labor and wear blue jeans who wear gloves at ourwork. There is a lot of work that will lacerate the most hardy hands.”

His answer was, “Come with me. I am going to take you down anyway.”

We were not far from the jail. He did not ring up a big team ofhorses, a wagon and two or three men, or an automobile, to rush me tothe jail as they do in other cities, although they do this in Spokane,also. We walked, and while we walked, he assured me twice that he wouldtake the softness out of my hands by thirty days on the rock pile. Hehad absolutely and completely taken the law into his own hands beforewe ever reached the jail. This policeman knew what could and would bedone to me, simply because I was apparently poor and helpless, and iftheir system in Spokane was as it is in other cities, I could be sonicely used for graft.

Fathers and mothers throughout America, what if it had beenyour boyin Spokane that night, without money and without a home? Think of theawful result! Put him in my place—about to receive the first stigmaof a jail, to be thrust for thirty days among hardened criminals, madesuch by this same social system, to receive wanton insults and abuse,his health probably ruined for life,—possibly murdered! A man wasdying at that very time in the city of Spokane, from abuse in that samecity jail. Spokane began, from the first moment of my arrest, legallyto plunder me, soul and body.

As I walked, I tried to incorporate into my being, the suffering andthe feelings of such a man or boy. They would not have accepted hisstatements as to his identity, no matter how hard he tried, as I knewthey would be obliged to receive mine, and there would have begun thedestruction of another American citizen.

On reaching the jail the officer stopped me in a dark entrance. Pullingout his search-light he threw it over me, at the same time feeling meall over. Why he did this I could not understand, unless he may havethought I had a bomb to drop when I reached the Captain’s office.

Intending only to make a quiet investigation of Spokane, I did notleave my credentials at my hotel but had them in an inner pocket of myvest. These included several letters recently received from prominentand well-known people of the Coast. My proof was sufficient and I waspromptly released. They seemed to be surprised that I was sober, andsaid, “Brown, how can you associate with these men and not drink?”“That is not necessary,” I replied. “There are thousands of homeless,starving men in our nation to-day who never drink.”

While I was telling my story to the force, a reporter for the leadingpaper of the city came in, and that paper the next morning carrieda story which stirred the town. As a result Spokane is going tohave its Free Municipal Emergency Home. It is true that I found adesperate condition of things in Spokane for the man without the dime.But Spokane is no longer a country town, hid in the pine woods ofWashington. She is a city—a city of stupendous natural resources, acity of a great awakening. She has begun a wonderful physical adornmentand is combining with it those benevolent adornments to conserve hercitizens. Spokane believes in the abolition of all influences thatdestroy. She is a force in the world to-day.

CHAPTER XIX
Minneapolis

“I never wear hand-made laces because they remind me of the eyes made blind in the weaving.”—Marie Corelli.

The morning of April 19, 1910, found me in Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis,resting on the green moss below the “laughing waters” of MinnehahaFalls. This wonderful spot of nature took possession of my imaginationuntil I was in one of God’s factories, where a thousand creationswere coming into life and beauty. The sparkling translucent falls,touched with a silver light, became a marvelous lace-weaving loom. Icaught, white and shining, the actual resemblance to the hand-madeIrish, the Duchess and Rose-point. Over all this great workshop of theDiety was joy, peace and happiness. For the first time real lace to mewas beautiful, for it was of God’s creation. The vision of eyes madesightless, the stooped shoulders of the aged, the little, starvingchildren overworked for the mere pittance to exist, these were not inthe weaving. To the thoughtful, any adornment, the price of which ispaid by the blood of human lives, is no longer beautiful. Here I sawthat every bird and bee, all insect life, even the smallest and mostabject about me, either were building or had built homes.

I then remembered my mission to Minneapolis. “Surely,” I said tomyself, “with this temple of worship to which the good folks ofMinneapolis may come, thoughtlessness and selfishness will not be foundhere.”

Yet I wondered if I should find it. I had come to continue my battlefor my homeless brothers. The approach of late afternoon and nightfound me wandering about the streets a jobless, moneyless man lookingfor work and shelter. I found Minneapolis not in advance of othercities, and much behind many in its care for its homeless toilers.

I first went to a private employment office. There seemed plenty ofwork to do, work for everybody, but I could find no private officewhere they would give me work and trust me until pay day.

I visited the city free employment bureau where I counted fifty menlooking for work. There were chairs for fourteen. The rest seemedquite willing to stand as long as their feet held out, in the hopeof securing something. As I scanned their faces I thought a largepercentage of them seemed of the type driven to such a condition bylack of opportunity to make an honest living. Later I learned that manyof these men came day after day, hungry and cold, after having spentthe night huddled up somewhere in the open air.

Next I became a beggar. I began looking for a public institution whichwould give me a bed, since I was unable to pay for one. I first triedthe Associated Charities. The attendant took me into a little side roomwhere as in other places, all sorts of rubbish was stored, and asked methe usual list of humiliating questions. Finally he told me they coulddo nothing for me, as it was too near their closing time.

Doubtless this institution does many worthy things, but providingshelter for the homeless man without money is not among them.

Directed by the attendant at the Associated Charities (who at leasthad gotten rid of me), I went to the Union City Mission. The attendanthere, after making me repeat my questions regarding the possibility ofa penniless man getting a supper and bed, turned on his heel withoutanswering me and began to turn on the lights—for evening prayers! Atthe Salvation Army lodging house the attendant simply said: “We ain’tgot nothin’ to give away.” At the Y. M. C. A., “the beds were allfull.” The attendantdidn’t know whether or not he could allow me totake a bath,—simply a polite refusal.

Next I appealed to the police. Asking the first officer I met wherea man without money could get a bath, I was directed to the river.He then recalled the advice however, saying it was too early in theseason for the public baths to be open. Another policeman referredme to the old city lockup (Central Station) for lodging, saying, “Gothere. They will give you a cell.”

I did not go to the extreme of enduring the hardships forced upon theindigent, honest workers of Minneapolis. It was not necessary. I knewthe pitiful condition only too well.

Just as I finish this story there is laid on my study table a letter,which reads:

“In the latter part of the year 1910 the Board, realizing the necessityof providing some lodging place for the transient class unable to payfor accommodations, decided to install a Municipal Emergency Home onthe second floor of the old city lockup (Central Station). The work ofinstalling this home was accomplished at an expense of $3,426.28. Itwas opened on the tenth of January, 1911, prepared to accommodate fiftyapplicants. The first three months of its operation demonstrated thefact that in order to care for all demands it would be necessary toincrease the space.

“We have now a Municipal Emergency Home that will accommodate a hundredand forty. The house is just as sanitary as it is possible to make anemergency home. It has all modern improvements, separate beds, baths,medical attendance, and fumigation. Lodgers are furnished with cleannight-robes and socks and given a good wholesome breakfast. Of coursethis is entirely free. If a man has money we turn him away. The home issupported by public taxation.”

CHAPTER XX
In the Great City of New York

“The day-laborer is reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale. Yet he is saturated with the laws of the world.”—Emerson.

When my investigations on the Pacific coast were over I felt that thestrenuous part of my work,—that is the work of coming down to thepersonal level of destitute men,—was over. But from the South camesuch an appeal that I was prompted to continue my study at first handfor another year. So late in the summer of 1910, I found myself, apenniless man again, drifting along the docks on the west side of NewYork, seeking work as a longshoreman.

I was unsuccessful until about 10A. M. Then a flag was runup at pier forty-three indicating that a fruit ship from the south wasdocked. Just then a young man hurrying along asked, as he passed me,“Are you looking for work?” I answered in the affirmative.

“Hurry along then and we will get in on the job.”

Running breathlessly we reached the dock. There were two hundred aheadof us. After an hour of jostling, pushing, crowding and clashing withupraised hands we succeeded in getting near enough to the distributorto arrest his attention long enough to receive a work-check whichentitled us to work at the wage scale of twenty-five cents an hour.

I noticed among the workers as we continually passed and re-passed oneanother, a pale, slim young man. He had a hectic flush on his cheeksand wore colored eye-glasses. The work was extremely laborious, so muchso that, after working approximately an hour and being unaccustomedto such work, I began to tremble and to have frequent sensations ofdizziness. I realized that I must desist, so cashed in, receivingtwenty-five cents for my work. Just ahead of me, cashing in also, wasthe pale young man, whose whole frame seemed to shake involuntarily,while the flush on his cheeks had turned purple. It was evident that healso had no strength left to continue the work. As we left the pier andstrolled down West Street to Battery Park, he told me his story:

“I need money bad, but I couldn’t do that work. I am a Swiss, awatchmaker by trade, but because of my failing eyesight a specialistdeclared I must absolutely change my occupation or go blind. What canI do? I am fitted for nothing but my trade. While struggling for acomfortable existence for myself and young wife my health failed.I feel that the only hope of regaining it is an absolute change ofclimate. I have a friend in Texas who writes me of the opportunityoffered to the truck gardener there, but it takes money to go and ittakes money to establish yourself when you reach there. You see I haveno money. I believe, even here in New York State, if I could have anout-door, country life, I would speedily get well. I am living withmy sister in Brooklyn. She is poor, also, but it is a home. I supposeI might start out and work for enough to eat on my way, and steal mypassage to some health-giving climate. I may eventually be forced to dothis. But even if the railroads had not created State laws making it acriminal offense in all States to travel that way, I could not go now.”

MUNICIPAL Lodging House, New York City
Male Dormitory

MUNICIPAL Lodging House, New York City
Female Dormitory

He showed me a letter from the Johnsbury State Sanitarium for theInsane he had received that morning, stating that his wife was nobetter. She was laboring under an hallucination, demanding continuallythat mass be said for her. Her little babe was expected in about aweek, and it was expected of him as soon as possible to send clothingfor it.

I sat and pondered for awhile, looking far out to the Statue of LibertyEnlightening the World. Passing time had pierced it full of holes,letting the daylight through. I left the young man, and a little laterwas strolling around the docks on the East Side. Finally I came toWall Street. Here at the entrance of this street I came upon thequartermaster’s department of the United States Army. Over the door wasthe Coat of Arms,—the Eagle for Uncle Sam, the Sword for Defense, theKey for Security. Walking about half the length of Wall Street, I cameto the great sub-treasury of the United States, and directly across thestreet, almost in hand-shaking distance, the powerful banking concernof J. Pierpont Morgan & Co. Going on, I came to the other end of thisworld-renowned street where stands Old Trinity. I was weary beyondwords to express. So I sat down on the steps to rest. Presently, highup in its tower, the chimes began to ring. A little later, from withinthe church rang out an old familiar hymn, one stanza of which seemedpeculiarly appropriate.

“Good heavens!” I said to myself, “what ails that old bell ringer? Ishe stone deaf or gone mad? Is there not someone to arrest him?” I knewhow useless it would be to try to find that someone, for those with thewill to do so were in Europe, or in Newport, or up the Hudson, or inthe Adirondacks. As I took my weary way up Broadway, I heard in everystep on the pavement the familiar melody, familiar words:—

Leaving Broadway I turned into a large “scoop joint” (saloon). In thecorner where the free lunch was served a large brindle bull-dog waschained near a big stack of bread. I realized that I was on the Bowery.A little further up the street, just as I was passing a door-way, aman with a bundle came rolling down the stairs. From the sound of avoice above I knew he had been forcefully thrown out. He was aboutfifty years of age, almost helpless from the effects of alcohol or someother poison. Only slightly bruised, he regained his feet, but washopelessly unable to gather his effects. His bundle had burst open andthe contents were scattered about promiscuously. His helpless conditionattracted the attention of the many passers-by and a group soongathered to watch his futile efforts to regain his lost possessions.It was a sight too sad to be amusing. Suddenly a workingman steppedforward, gathered the belongings together, and fastened them securely.In the dull dazed face of the abandoned man there was a look of deepestgratitude. As his new friend had gathered up his belongings a smallbook with an inscription in gold letters fell from among them. As heheld up the book I, too, could read the title:The New Testament.That poor unfortunate impressed me as being as great as the greatestman that ever lived,for he had tried.

Through this great human funnel, the Bowery (and it is not the only onein New York through which pours the sin, the shame, the disease and thedisgrace of this great city), I wandered on. Seeing a crowd gatheredon the pavement in one place, I stopped and saw lying prone upon herface, a wretched creature whose skirt had fallen from her body. She laythere nude, defenseless, uncovered to the view of the morbid throng.The unfortunate, though helpless, was conscious of her shame, and wasmaking futile efforts to hide her disgrace. Just then there happenedalong a good Samaritan, who, stepping through the crowd, took from hisshoulders a blue cotton jumper and covered this wreck of womanhood.Turning to the gaping bystanders, he angrily heaped upon them soscathing a rebuke that with flushed faces and hanging heads they stoleaway. He asked of some women who stood near by if they would shield thewoman until the arrival of an ambulance. One of them kindly consentedto do so. I turned away sick at heart for I knew the pathetic finish,that the only open door New York held for this unfortunate one was aprison door.

As I went along, I saw again Old Trinity with its stained glasswindows, its old burying ground, worth millions, where the dead haverested for two hundred years, and I thought: “After all, it was theBowery that revealed to me to-day ‘the golden rule of Christ,’ whichalone can bring ‘the golden rule of man.’”

With the vanishing of the sunshine and shadows which all day longhad been playing in and about Union Square—whose bits of greenlawn, sparkling fountains, and many settees welcome the weary andheavy laden, for a little time at least, and invite rest,—came themyriad lights of the great city which follow the active day of toiland care. At evening I found myself resting there. I had taken aseat beside a white-haired, soft-spoken, slightly-bent man, clothedin a discolored suit, badly worn shoes and tattered hat,—a man whoseemingly had received all the blows and hardships our tough oldworld can give. Indifferently I drew him casually into conversation.The information I gained was taken out of the crucible of a patheticlife, and it revealed a story which may be summed up in a fewwords: Youth, hope, health, success, love, happiness, reverses,crosses, trials, temptations, error, ruin, impaired health, old age,discouragement,—no, not entirely. He still had left a spark ofcourage.He still believed in himself. He spoke of the detriment ofhis physical weakness, caused by a State institution (I knew it wasa prison) into which he was forced; of the prejudice against the mana little beyond middle life who was looking for work; of the pastthat stood as a barrier between him and an ability to re-establishhimself in society. Yet he hopefully added, “I have a job now atseven dollars a week and my board. I shall be able to get the decentclothes so essential in finding better work, with better pay.” Whenhe realized that I was apparently in a worse position than himself,for I seemed both workless and penniless, we talked of our mutualvicissitudes. He referred me to the Municipal Lodging House of NewYork, declaring he had found it both a refuge and a salvation at a timewhen it almost seemed to him that life meant utter abandonment, even toself-destruction.

I did not go to that beautiful home that night, but I stood insteadin the “Bread Line” on the northwest corner of Broadway and TwelfthStreet. It was ten o’clock, and although the bread was not to be givenout to the starving poor of the city until midnight, a crowd hadalready begun to collect in front of Old Grace Church, the wealth ofwhich is said to be almost fabulous. Extending up this street, longbefore the hour of distribution began, was a line in which I countedfive hundred men. There were no women among them. There was no jestor laughter. They seemed as mute as “dumb driven cattle.” Just atmidnight, after the line had been standing several hours, two menappeared with the bread. There was a sudden rush across the streetto be the first in line. A police rule seemed to be in force to theeffect that no one was allowed to stand on that side of the streetuntil the hour arrived for giving the bread away. After this long wait,my share of this left-over bread was a piece weighing just four ounces.When I remembered that during the throes of that long and bitter winterthis one bread line (New York has several) grew from five hundred totwo thousand men, the blazing cross which I could see from the highchurch tower became “the handwriting on the wall.”

Should you ask me why these men do not seek shelter in New York’sMunicipal Home, I could tell you in a few words. Notwithstanding thegenerous and hospitable character of the institution, it is usuallycrowded to overflowing.

While studying the character and the aspirations of the honestunemployed in all parts of the country, I found in most of them thedesire, the longing for country life. Even the hardened frequenterof saloons and other vicious places seemed anxious to change hisenvironment. They all recognized this to be of great benefit instarting life anew, and in trying to become useful members of society.I found many had gone to the country. Many more desired to go up theHudson River to work on the farms, in the fruit orchards and the openfields. I determined to follow them and see what it all meant.

So the following day found me again one of that army to whom societyis inclined, in fact is fond of referring to, as “men who won’twork,”—seeking an existence. I met a great many who, like myself, werelooking for work. But, unlike me (for I had money) some were starving,some were ill. Many were crippled from much walking, several showedme blisters on their ankles and feet as large as a twenty-five centpiece. I found work for one of my English tongue exceedingly difficultto obtain. At Tarrytown, I asked for work at an enormous estate witha national reputation. At this time they were employing three hundredmen, all Italians. There was no work for me. They had all the helpthey needed. When I asked for the privilege of working for my dinner,the foreman looked austerely at me and answered, indirectly, “Youunderstand if you did work here you would receive your pay but once amonth.”

“What is the pay?” I asked.

“A dollar and seventy-five cents a day, and you board yourself.”

Those Italian workmen were walking several miles a day to and from workfor that wage. I heard among them numerous complaints. I wondered why.In the land of the Comorra, on the drive from Sorrento to Pompeii, Ihad seen these same men in harness, hitched to wagons, hauling loads ofstone like beasts of burden.

MUNICIPAL Lodging House, New York City
Fumigating Chambers—Loading up

MUNICIPAL Lodging House, New York City
Fumigating Chambers—Sealed up

Someone told me if I wanted farm work I must travel further back inthe country, which I did. I was not successful in finding it until themorning of the second day. Just over a stone wall I saw five menat work picking cucumbers for pickles. A little way off stood a verylarge, beautiful farm house. I was right when I drew the conclusionthat the owner was a wealthy old farmer. He was holding his farm at afabulous sum, believing he would receive it from a certain land ownerwho would eventually buy at any price. Leaping the wall I confrontedthe farmer, who needed me exceedingly at one dollar a day and board,—Isupposed for not more than ten hours’ work, but asked no questions.I soon discovered that beside the old man, my field companions werethe old man’s son and their hired men. No one spoke. Noiselessly andsilently we worked, carrying the pickles in baskets on our shoulders,as fast as we gathered them, into a shed, where we emptied them intobarrels. It rained at intervals all day, but that made no difference.We worked on. The mud and wet ground soaked our shoes. The roughbasket, in constant contact with my shoulder, wore a hole through myjumper, which was a serious consideration when I reflected on my day’spay.

At noon we were called to dinner. After standing what seemed aninterminable time to a hungry man who for half a day had pickedcucumbers out on the wet ground, beneath dripping trees, we wereallowed to go in to dinner. In a rough outer room there was portionedout to each of the four hired men a bowl of tea, a tin plate containingvegetables and a small piece of meat. We were fed, about as thedog was fed, except that we sat at a table. Not one of my threefellow-workers had yet spoken to me. Turning to the one on my right Ismiled and made some off-hand remark about the tough meat, which justat that moment he seemed to be struggling with. He smiled back butmade no reply. I looked across the table at the slim, black eyed, busyfellow opposite me and made some non-consequential remark. He grinnedwith a little more accent than my right hand man. I then spoke to theman on my left, who was an old man of three score years and ten. He hadhis face very close to his plate and did not raise his head. I thendiscovered that one of the men was a Hun, the other a Pole. Neithercould speak or understand my language, and the old man, a Dutchman,was stone deaf. This was about the most convivial dinner party I hadever attended. The afternoon was about as jovial as the dinner, and wasaugmented by more showers and a big lot of pickles. Did you ever pickpickles? If not, don’t do it, at least not for one dollar a day, unlessyou must. How your back aches from continual stooping! Your fingers,black, bruised, and sore from the tiny, prickly cucumber points, drivea fellow to saying things he would not dare to say before his dad.

At four o’clock the farmer left, to haul the pickles to the picklefactory. At five o’clock the Dutchman and the Pole went in to milk.These men were working by the month, each receiving fifteen dollars amonth. On this farm many cows were milked. At six o’clock the son quit,which made little difference, as he spent most of his time in the shed.As he was leaving I said, “Is it time to quit?” He answered decidedly,“No, I’ll tell you when to quit.” And so the Austrian and I worked on.The son had mounted his motorcycle and flashed by us like a spark froma trolley. The Hun followed him with an intense look which seemed tosay: “When I get my American farm I, too, shall have one.”

It was getting dark, and still no call to stop work. If I had knownonly two words of Slavic it would have been a relief. But I did not.So I did the next best thing. I expressed my feelings by throwing mybasket as far as I could send it across the field and started towardthe house. The Hun looked amazed. As I drew near, far up in the housesomewhere, to the accompaniment of a tinkling piano, one of the oldfarmer’s daughters was singing in a voice absolutely devoid of tune,“I want to go to Heaven right away.” I hoped she would. Just then theson rode up on his spinning wheel and asked, “What did you quit for?” Ireplied, “I came up for a lantern.”

He then called the Hun. Ourcarte du jour for supper was a duplicateof the dinner, only it was stone cold. We plebs slept in an oppressiveattic room. We were called at threeA. M. to get up and go tomilking. Not being a regular man, I supposed I was not included in thecall, although I noticed the Hun responded. After my fellow-workersleft I turned over for a much-needed, final rest, but just as I wasdozing into sleep I heard the old farmer puffing up the stairs.

“Hey, you fellow,” he called, “get up there and get out and help thosefellers milk.”

“All right,” I responded. I did get up and out, but it was to thewoodshed where my bundle lay, and while I was putting it together theold man passed hurriedly by the window again, headed for the garretstairs with the look of Cain on his face, to see why I still lingered.I heard the heavy tread on the stairs, as I was passing out acrossthe lawn toward the nearest town. Yes, there was one dollar due me,but I sent word back to one of these, my proletaire brothers, thathe could have it, and I suggested that it might be well spent towardbuying a talking machine to be used while they dined at that bountiful,hilarious table, at the pickle farm.

CHAPTER XXI
New York State—The Open Fields

“Every man has something to sell if it is only his arms, and so has that property to dispose of.”—Emerson.

Pickle picking had not proved profitable. Continuing my search I foundthat factory work was out of the question. At all the factories whereI had applied the reply had been, invariably, “We have a hundredapplicants for every vacancy.” In one, it is true, I might have hadwork had I been a skillful hatter. But I wasn’t. So I resolved tofollow out my original intention of trying the fruit farms which lay onthe west side of the river, beginning at Balmville, some thirty milesup the stream.

With this in view I crossed the Hudson. The coming of the night foundme in densely-wooded, deeply-shaded intra-mural roadways, extendingfor miles, to which clung clambering vines bearing clusters of tinyfragrant flowers, and red, black and yellow berries. Here and therewere intersecting drive-ways, the entrances to which were guarded byhuge stone columns supporting massive gates, over which the summer hadalready begun to weave garlands of honeysuckle and eglantine.

I could see at times, far through the foliage, the shining light ofthe palaces. I could hear merry laughter and the sweet song of asinger with a wonderful voice singing a wonderful song. It was nearingmidnight. I was growing very hungry and weary. I saw a light in thedistance, near the road at the foot of a long hill. It was an inn. Thelight was in the bar-room. I entered. Two occupants, Italians (onebehind the bar), were quietly conversing. Entering I asked the manbehind the bar if he could give me supper and a bed, adding, “I havemoney.” He looked at me curiously. I did not wonder at it for I wastravel-worn. The bundle and stick I carried were covered with the dustof the highway.

In reply to my inquiry he answered, “I have no bed.” Turning to hiscompanion he said (in Italian), “He looks as though he had come a longway. I think he is from a prison. Let him sleep by the road. He willnot suffer.”

I looked straight at the man, saying, “I may be all that you say, but Iam honest.”

Slightly nonplussed he looked at me and grinned, saying, “Ah, you speakItalian!”

“I spent one winter on the blue bay of Naples,” I answered, “andunderstand a little.”

I had struck a sympathetic chord. He assured me that he told me thetruth when he said he had no bed to give, but he invited me to a goodsupper. Greatly refreshed and not caring to sleep by the roadside,I continued my journey. I decided that I could reach West Point bydaylight.

After I had traveled some distance, intuitively I became possessed ofa feeling of depression. I felt that I was in a realm which demandedcaution. A gargoyle on the roadside, until I saw what it really was,startled me nearly out of my senses. I heard the mournful baying ofhounds in the distance. I was conscious of climbing a mountain. Thewayside had become open, barren of trees,—its features mostly brushand rocks. I frequently passed large signs which I could not read fromthe center of the road, but becoming curious, I approached one of themand read: “The property of Sing Sing Prison of the State of New York.All trespassers are liable to be shot.” I was on Bear Mountain. Fearfulof the probability of being near to some headquarters, and that thiswarning might be carried out, I turned and went down in the deep woodsbelow, where I rested for the remainder of the night. As I turned backI saw far below me on the silver river a night boat throwing a powerfulsearch light on the dark shores of the stream.

When it was dawn I walked on. I could not but compare the humaneexpression of Bear Mountain, and the State of New York, to that littlerepublic of Switzerland, whose labor colonies cannot be differentiatedfrom the surrounding rural country. The traveler who enters or passesthat way sees no mark of his erring brethren, no sign to tell thetraveler he may be shot!

It was Sunday morning when I reached Newburgh, a city of thirtythousand people. I strolled up the hill to the low-roofed house whereWashington and his wife lived from April 4, 1782, to August 18, 1783.It is now used as a museum for Washington relics. “This,” I thought,“is no doubt of exceeding interest, and educational. I will go in.” Butbeing the Sabbath day, it was closed.

I had not heard from home or friends for a long time. I was gettinghungry and had spent all of my money, but I knew there were letters andrelief at the Post Office, so I made my way there. Being Sunday thePost Office was also closed. I did not wish to while away the time ina close, oppressive, ill-smelling back room of a saloon, or sit in theshadow somewhere on the street, even if the police did not interfere,but having a desire to read a good book, I hunted up the PublicLibrary. That, too, was closed. In fact the only things I found open onthis Lord’s Day in Newburgh were the streets, the saloons, the churchesand the jail.

During the week or ten days I was in the vicinity of Newburgh I read inthe daily papers the story of three starving men who had been picked upby the police. Two I particularly recall. One was found unconsciouson the car tracks on which he had thrown himself, soaked to the skin,in a cold, terrific rain storm. The other was found eating swill froma garbage can in an alley. Both were thought to bementally unsound.That is always the police report when these examples insult theintelligence of a city. Perhaps they were mentally unsound. Why not?Nothing will dethrone reason more quickly than starvation and neglect.They were berry pickers, the paper said.

The church bells were ringing. I looked down at my soiled appearanceand thought, “If I only had an opportunity to renovate, to regenerate,I could attend divine services.” But there was no available place forthe poor, the moneyless man or woman of Newburgh, to bathe but theriver. I looked in my bundle and found a piece of washing soap. Iwould first wash my blue shirt, and while I bathed it could be dryingin the sun. So I went to the river where many of Newburgh’s destituteand needy were already bathing, but the sewerage had so contaminatedthe water as to make it repulsive, and I felt that to bathe in there“the last man would be worse than the first.” Then I tried to overcomemy prejudice against going to church just as I was. I could slip intoa dark corner and scarcely be noticed. Being penniless I would ofcourse be humiliated when the contribution plate was passed. I would,perhaps, be regarded as a dead-beat, but what of that? It would onlybe a moment. Finally I decided to go. I walked to one of Newburgh’slarge churches, up a cool and shady street. I was early. The silence ofthe lofty edifice, with costly, beautiful, memorial windows to thosewho had gone to their rest, gave me food for thought long before theservice began. It was a strange coincidence that the scriptural readingincluded the following words: “For I was hungered, and ye gave me meat;I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took mein; naked and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was inprison, and ye came unto me.” The text was, “Go and sell that thouhast, and give to the poor.” I sat through the service undisturbed.

After a few days of rest I started out again to keep in touch with myunfortunate brothers from the highways and byways.

I went in search of work to the berry fields. Work is supposed to bethe ready collateral for self-preservation and maintenance, but duringa two-mile walk I stopped at the door of many beautiful and comfortablehomes and asked for the privilege of working for even a piece of breadand a cup of coffee. To see the owner or lady of the house, was out ofthe question. I only came in contact with the servants, and in everyinstance I was peremptorily denied. One or two said, “I would give youa little if I could, but I am not allowed to do so.” The servant isthe echo of the house.

Finally, a little way in from the road, on a small beautiful lawn, Isaw a sweet-faced, white-haired lady superintending a bright lad ofsixteen who was making a flower bed. I entered and tried to make apolite salutation but it was something of a failure as my slouch hathad slipped down and stuck on my ear. However, I said:

"I will work an hour for you for a piece of bread and a cup of coffee."

The lady inquired with interest, “Would you work for an hour for a cupof coffee and a piece of bread? Well, if you will help this boy for anhour, I will give you a good breakfast.” I readily assented. The taskfinished, and the breakfast as well, the lady assured me there was agreat deal of garden and other work to be done there. If I would waituntil the return of Mr. —--, which would be soon, he would probablygive me work as long as I wished to remain.

I had learned from the boy that the latter was a rich dominie of theneat little Episcopal chapel just at hand, which he owned, and thatI was working at the rectory. He soon came. After a brief externalexamination he asked the question, “Why are you a hobo?”

I replied in one word, “Circumstances.”

Apparently satisfied, he said, “What wages do you want?” I explainedthat I understood garden work, that I was a conscientious worker, andif I worked steadily ten long hours a day it ought to be worth onedollar a day and board. The gentleman thought not. He thought fivedollars a week would be a square deal. The lady, near and interested,said that a man had come along the day before and offered to work forfour dollars a week.

Having discovered I was a few days in advance of the berry pickingseason, after a moment’s reflection I told the gentleman I would trythe garden work at his offer.

One half of the garden, a very large one, was clean and growing. Theother half was choked with weeds, and in a very troublesome condition.I exceedingly enjoyed my garden work. When I was hired (although thehouse contained, I should judge, at least fifteen rooms) I was toldthat there was no place in the house for me to sleep. I met this bysaying that I could sleep any place, so I was given two comforters andleft to seek my own bed, which I found on a pallet of hay over thestable. However, I was very comfortable except for feeling the needof a pillow. In wakeful moments during the silent night I could hearthe beautiful Arabian horse, John, champing his fragrant hay, and Iwould sometimes call down, "Hello, John! How are you?" Several timeshe answered with a low whinny, as much as to say, “All right. How areyou?”

I dined with the cook and the work boy in the kitchen. We had allwe could eat and it was good. No one worked on the Sabbath but theold cook. We all went to church except her. The dominie asked me toattend. I slipped in on a rear seat. The sermon was on the building ofcharacter. The good lady, seeing me, came back and offered me a hymnbook. A pillow offered with the comforters would have held a greatermeaning, but I am sure that the thoughtlessness of this kind lady wasnot intentional. I am sure I could have had the pillow if I had askedfor it.

During my short stay at the Rectory many destitute men came to thedoor and asked for food. I noticed they were never turned away if theywere willing to work an hour for it, but I noticed, also, that theman was asked to perform his work before he was fed. The good dominieand I often exchanged thoughts. He had a pleasing way of making hishelp feel that they were his equals. He may not have realized it, butunconsciously he was building character in a much more effective waythan if he had put it into words.

I finally wished to leave. The dominie wanted me very much to remain.He said I was worth it, and he would give me the one dollar a day. Therains, I learned, were still delaying the fruit picking, so I decidedto remain a while longer. When at last I left and was paid for my work,I said, “If I was worth at the rate of one dollar a day for these lastfew days, was I not worth the same for all my work?”

“Oh, but that was not our bargain,” he replied,—which, of course, wastrue.

One day in one of our brief talks (which turned on the hungry man atthe door), I said, “Doctor, from a business point of view, I think youmake a mistake in asking a man to work before he is fed. A man with afull stomach can do twice as much work as one with an empty stomach.”

“But the man may not keep his part of the contract,” he answered.

“Then that is his disgrace and your misfortune. You have done yourpart. You have entertained the stranger in a humane way. By working himfirst is showing him your mistrust of him and that is demoralizing.”

I noticed after this little talk that the man who came to the door wasalways fed first.

CHAPTER XXII
The Laborer the Farmer’s Greatest Asset

“Letting down buckets into empty wells and growing old with drawing nothing up.”—Cowper.

Leaving the Rectory I found myself on the highway, seeking a fortuneas a berry picker. I heard rumors that men had actually made a stakeat the work,—that is, enough money (by rigid economy) to exist in thedestructive slums of a great city during the freezing winter monthswhen there is no work to be had.

The roads were lined with men and boys seeking work. The long droughthad been exceedingly detrimental to the fruit. It was dwarfed and ofinferior quality, which worked a hardship on the farmer as well ason the berry pickers. The farms and farm houses were exceptionallyattractive, and seemed to abound with comforts. Many of them werehomes of wealth and resembled country seats. The day was frightfullyhot. There had been a terrific thunder storm the night before and Iwas obliged to seek shelter for the night with a number of others in ashed. It was a sleepless night for the rain came in and prevented usfrom even trying to rest on the bare ground.

As I walked along the new State road, I came to an inviting shady spotby the roadside, near a deep hedge. Almost overcome by the heat andweary from lack of rest and sleep, I lay down with my bundle for apillow and was just falling asleep when I was suddenly aroused by avoice commanding me to move on. Looking up I saw I was being accostedby a big six-foot bully. In reply to my question, “Why?” he answered,“It makes no difference why, move on.”

Looking the man unflinchingly in the eye, I said,

“But it does make a difference why, and I will pretty quickly find outwhy a man, simply because he is poor and wants to rest on the side ofthe State road, is denied that privilege.”

The insolent swaggerer was nonplussed for the moment. I suppose hethought I was only a poor, starving berry picker or farm hand who, athis command, would cringingly creep on in the boiling sun, like a dog,to another shady spot.

“Who are you?” he then asked.

“I am a laborer looking for work,” I replied, “but I am also anAmerican. When I am insolently ordered to ‘move on’ on a publichighway, I’ll know the reason why if I have to go to Washington to findout. I know your actions have been tolerated in England and Europe fortwo thousand years. Since you ask me who I am, I am going to ask whoyou are.”

“I am foreman of this estate,” he answered. “This is the country estateof a very rich ex-United States Congressman, and the State road lineruns within six feet of the hedge.”

“Well, sir,” I replied, “I humbly beg your pardon. It is a principle ofmine never to ask or take something for nothing, unless it be to drawdividends on a few blocks of nine billion dollars of watered railroadstock. But say, if you would wall this little six-foot strip in, or putup a sign, ‘No trespassing,’ or ‘Beware of the dog,’ as others havedone, neither your master nor yourself would have further cause togrowl.”

As I wandered on I overtook an honest-looking man who said he was onhis way to a farm near Marlborough where he had worked for severalsummers and had always pulled out with enough money to carry him, in away, through the winter. It would have been much nearer for him to havewalked the railroad track, he said, but he was told in Newburgh thatif he did so he was liable to be arrested by the West Shore RailroadCompany. They had arrested a hundred and thirty-eight wandering men atKingston the day before and put them in jail, and so he thought it bestto follow the country road.

A little farther on, near some great elm trees, stood an old stonehouse. From the gilded signs and the many beer kegs in evidence, Isaw at once it was another one of the roadside lamps of ruin. Many menseemed to have gathered in and about the place and without disturbancewere resting beneath the trees. I joined them and just as I did soa farmer drove up in an automobile looking for help. Before he hadspoken, I asked, “Do you want help?”

“Well, I should say so,” he answered. “The farmers are all clamoringfor men, and are wondering where the temporary farm hands are thisyear.”

I suggested he might find a few of them in the Kingston jail. He saidthat because of the recent rains the fruit was ripening so rapidlythat it was decaying on the vines for the need of being gathered.Considering that the earnings of the railroad company were augmented bythe fruit shipments he granted that a little persuasive argument withthe latter might be of help. But did I want work, and would I work forhim? I certainly would.

“What do you pay?” I asked.

“A cent and a half a box for strawberries,—that is, if you will staythe season. If not, I will only pay one cent a box.” The reason forthis I found was that at the last gathering of a crop the fruit islight and the pickers cannot make nearly as much as in the beginning,and becoming discouraged, will quit. No matter if the farmer receivesten or thirty cents a box for his fruit, the picker receives no betterwage.

“You will board me, I suppose?”

“Oh, no, you board yourself. We have a good bunkhouse where you cansleep.”

“But I have no money. How will I get me something to eat?”

“I will pay you every night at the rate of one cent if you want it.”

“But I have no money at all. What will I do for supper and breakfast?”

“Tell any of the grocers in Middlehope that you are going to workfor me and they will trust you. You can come to my place and sleepto-night, so that you can begin work in the morning.”

Passing on to the village, I asked one of the merchants if he wouldtrust me for a bill of edibles until the following evening. He lookedat me hesitatingly. He had been deceived and that made him cautious.When saying that I only wanted a little, he consented and gave me thefollowing bill: bacon, five cents, bread, five cents, coffee, fivecents, can of corn, ten cents, total twenty-five cents.

I found later that there have been (and are still) thousands ofinstances when these willing workers have been denied this confidenceand have worked all day in the burning sun without supper, breakfastand dinner.

Reaching the farm I was not shown where to go to sleep. I was toldto go to the bunkhouse. I found a number of men already there with animprovised stove of rock and available sticks for fuel. With the aid ofmy willing contemporaries I managed to prepare and eat my supper. Therewas a promiscuous pile of filthy blankets to choose from for a bed. Iwent to the stable for straw on which to spread them, and as I pickedup one pair of blankets, a man who had been there for some time said,

“I wouldn’t use those blankets. A sick man occupied them last.”

“What was the matter with him?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but he was pretty sick.” Finally choosing a pair ofblankets which had the appearance of being a degree more wholesome thanthe others (and with at least a clean reputation), we laid down. Ina short time, we discovered the place was literally alive with nightprowlers, which drove us all out under the trees. This was preferableas long as it continued dry and warm, but at two A. M. a rain stormforced us back into the shack.

The next day I put in ten long hours picking berries. When I checked upI had earned just 50 cents—just enough to pay my store bill and buyanother meager day’s rations. I tried the cherries, the raspberriesand the gooseberries, but could do no better. I discovered that thepickers, no matter how clever they might be, did not, or could not,average over fifty cents a day, which, if they had spent it all forfood, would only have been sufficient to purchase about two-thirdsas much as they would have eaten if they had had enough. For otherfarm work the pay was one dollar, or one and a quarter dollars perday without board. With a few exceptions board was given with the onedollar. It was extremely difficult to get other farm work in berrypicking season. However, I myself was offered by an old farmer onedollar a day and board, to hoe corn.

The next day was Sunday. Could I work on Sunday? Being good Irishchurch people, they had been taught to remember the Sabbath day andkeep it holy. The old gentleman hesitated slightly but yielded finallywhen I told him I needed the money. Then, too, I was in much bettercompany working by myself in the field than sitting around the village.He would see what the old lady would say about it.

The old lady had been suffering with the toothache for the past twodays and had tried everything from ice down her back to boiling water,when an old woman driving by suggested filling the cavity of the toothwith fine-cut tobacco. This she declared to be a never-failing cure.The old lady tried it, but had swallowed the tobacco, and no mortal,she declared, ever before passed through such a sickness and survived!Consequently life just then seemed very uncertain, and this caused,on her part, a deep reflection on the subject of being very good. Butfinally she thought it would be all right for me to hoe on the Sabbathday, providing I did my hoeing down in the woodlot, instead of in theopen field on the hill.

It was pitiful to see these workers, after a hard day’s work, walkseveral miles to the village store with their few cents to buy theirsuppers, knowing that they must walk back before they could cook andeat it. Even though a man were not a drunkard, do you wonder thathe would spend a portion of that day’s pitiful wage for stimulantto create enough force to get back to his camp? All of the countrymerchants had coffee, tea and sugar done up in five-cent packages readyto hand out. They had many customers for such quantities.

One day, during my short investigation among these, a man was founddead in a barn, where he had crawled to rest. Was it any wonder? He hadin his possession only a few cents and a little package of groceries.Is it any marvel that another man was found dead, hanging in anorchard, or that another was killed by an automobile, in the darknessof the night? Seventy-five per cent of these workers were old men ormen beyond middle life. They were men of all sorts of trades, as wellas the unskilled. A great many were physically infirm, which disabledthem from following either their own trade or the more arduous work ofthe common laborer.

I heard during the time I was among these toilers, the wish expressedmany times by them that they, too, could own a garden tract, a bit ofland that they could cultivate, a place, however humble, that theycould call home. No; men do not, as many will tell you, seek the openfields tobe evil, but toshun evil.

There exists to-day in many of the villages, towns and cities ofNew York, the rule to grant to the police, marshal, or constable,as a perquisite to his office, money for every arrest he makes. InMilton I was told by one of its citizens that the fee was one dollar.Consequently they are on the lookout for poor, unfortunate workingmen.When they find one he is thrown into a dark hole of their city jailor lockup. In one of these villages, this wretched place of detentionwas partially filled with water when the men were put in. No matterhow prosperous the aspect of his farm, the farmer will tell you of thevicissitudes he must continually encounter before his crop is gatheredand sold, that many of the farms are carrying a heavy mortgage with anexcessive rate of interest which they can not pay off, but can onlysucceed in living and paying the usury,—that he is at the mercy ofthe middle man (the commission man) and, above all else, what a timehe has with his help, so hard to get, so unreliable when he does getit. If this is all true, do you wonder at it? Why, the horse, the cowand the hogs on these farms are better treated than their help! Theanimal must be well fed, housed comfortably and kept in good health tobe profitable. If these farmers would institute some kind of a recallwhich would rid them of the code of ethics now practiced among them,or which would force them to practice brotherly love, kindness andjustice; if they would create a new religion that will abolish thedeath-dealing, demoralizing, destructive influences which exist amongthem now; if they will cease being thoughtless; if they will beginto think,—then the weather will have lost much of its terror. Themortgage will be more easily raised. The faults of the commission manmay be overcome and the unpleasant specter of quantity and quality ofhelp will vanish.Labor is the corner-stone to the foundation of theedifice of prosperity. It is left to the farmer to make his way easy,his burden light.

Yet some who live in palaces, and many bold charlatans of trade who usethe name of philanthropy to guild their shady ways, will still cry,“Why don’t the out-of-work man help the farmer? Why don’t they go ontothe land?” They certainly do not mean in the domain of the Hudson.

In talking with an editor, I once advanced the thought of the advantageof cultivating every acre of the ground from New York to Albany. Theastonished editor replied, “Why, would you destroy the scenery of ourAmerican Rhine?”

Destroy the scenery! I could not but ask, surprisedly, “What is morebeautiful than a cultivated vineyard, or a farm supporting an Americanhome?” But this was what the search light revealed. The great estatesof the greatest financiers in the world; the palaces of wealthybrewers; the castles of whiskey distillers; monasteries of the Churchof England; Roman Catholic convents; orphans’ homes, reformatories forwhite slaves, States prisons, criminal insane asylums; United StatesWar Schools; government store-houses for high explosives; miles ofunsightly brick-yards (of the Brick Trust); acres of decaying old frameshacks; ice-houses (of the Ice Trust;) signs, “Don’t trespass” and“Beware of the dog”—and hundreds of hungry, starving men.

CHAPTER XXIII
Albany—In the Midst of the Fight

“As long as any man exists there is some need of him. Let him fight for his own.”—Emerson.

Between the hours of tenP. M. and midnight the next evening,I found myself (with another down-and-out worker) sitting in thesmoking-room of the Albany depot. My momentary acquaintance wasan Irishman. Presently another young fellow, whose appearance wasindicative of having recently put off a good many meals, came in andsat down near us. The Irishman looked squarely and inquisitively atthe new-comer (who was an Irish-American), and recognizing by somemutual instinct that he belonged to the army who must work and wander,abruptly said: “Who are you?”

“I am a tramp,” the young fellow replied.

“Then, I suppose,” continued the Irishman, “you have been in everyState in the Union.”

“Yes, every State,” answered the young fellow. “Well,” said theIrishman, “I’ll bet you have never been in the state of matrimony.”

“Yes,” quickly answered the man, “I have been in Utah, too.”

“How about the state of intoxication?”

“Do you mean the State of New York, or a personal experience with JohnBarleycorn? If you mean the latter, I can honestly say, I have neverbeen drunk.”

Thus we laughed and joked and then talked seriously for an extendedtime. These two men were on their way to the hop fields of New Yorkfor work. The younger of the two, when he had reached the age tofully comprehend, found himself in an Orphan Asylum. At fourteen hehad been given to a farmer for whom he did the work of a man. When hewas sixteen the family was broken up and the farm sold. He had beentaught no trade and had received very little book knowledge. With thenon-existence of this farm home, he became (to use the soubriquet ofdisrespect which is often put upon the forced migratory wage-slave) afloater.

There were only a few men in the smoking-room. Weary, almost beyondendurance, we lay down on the empty seats and fell asleep. Suddenlywe were awakened by a depot official saying, “This is no lodginghouse.” We were roughly asked many questions,—who we were, where wewere going, whether we had a ticket or the price of a ticket. When ouranswers proved unsatisfactory we were violently thrust into the street.I wondered at the time why we were not jailed, but I soon learned thattheir local prisons were full, and that the fact that they knew we hadno money was a good reason,—in fact our protection from arrest.

Undaunted, I stepped up to a policeman who was standing a little wayoff talking to a man, and asked him for Albany’s Municipal EmergencyHome. This officer, surprised at my question, hesitated to answer. Theman to whom he was talking, said, “Go to the Baptist Home. Tell themyou are penniless and they will take care of you. Here is my card. Theaddress is on it.”

We went to the home but found it closed and dark. To our ringing andknocking there was no response. I learned afterwards that even if theinstitution had been open, we would have found no welcome as it washouse-cleaning time. We next sought out the Salvation Army. It was nothouse-cleaning time with them but the place was much darker, moresecurely sealed against the homeless, hopeless wayfarer, than theBaptist Home.

A man on the street gave the two hop pickers the price of a supper, abreakfast and a place to rest, and very soon I was curled down on thecushions of an early morning train, riding the velvet into Rochester.

When, on this early Fall morning, I reached Rochester it was againGod’s day of rest. A number of workingmen were grouped a little waydown the street, and with assumed indifference I joined them. Theirconversation was on the possibility of getting work. All of them seemedto be idle. There was no prospect in sight in the city, and they haddecided to go into the apple orchards of the surrounding country. Inresponse to my inquiry as to whether there was any public place where afellow who was broke could get a meal with or without working for it,one of them replied, “I, too, am up against it, pal, or I would helpyou. The only place I have heard of is the Sunshine Rescue Mission onFront Street.”

I walked toward the Mission and as I went I caught sounds of a drunkenbrawl in a saloon. A little farther on a “scarlet girl” with a sad facetapped on the window and smiled. Just as I reached Front Street thepolice wagon came hurriedly dashing down the street. Three stalwartmembers of the police force, on the pay roll of the city of Rochester,got out of the wagon when it stopped at the Mission. I thought I mustbe mistaken in the place and that it was a police station. But no,there was the sign: “Sunshine Rescue Mission.” The officers entered.Brutally and roughly they brought out two men, thrust them into thewagon and took them off to the prison. They were scarcely out of sightbefore another policeman came down the street with another man whom hehurried into the Mission.

From the time I entered Rochester until I left, I saw evidences of a“vice trust,” the depravity of which could only be conjectured. I didnot dare remain there for I trembled at the thought of a homeless manasking for aid in that institution of a “humane” Christian city. Ihurriedly left Rochester for here more than any place that I had beenin there seemed to be something “rotten in Denmark.”

CHAPTER XXIV
Cleveland—The Crime of Neglect

“A servant grafted in my serious trust And therefore negligent.”—Shakespeare.

The midnight bell was striking. The great city of Cleveland was goingto rest as I rode to my hotel. I, too, was soon resting,—but notsleeping. I was forming a resolution to becomeabsolutely indigentfor an extended time. My assumed destitution previously had been ofvery brief periods, always having money at my hotel or in my pocketsfor my immediate needs. “What,” I reasoned, “does the man who at anymoment can place his hand in his pocket and secure relief know of thereal struggle of the penniless and homeless worker?”

I looked myself over. I was healthy, comparatively strong. I had notrade, yet was clever at many things. I was honest, sober, willing,industrious. So I entered, with an iron-clad resolve, into a mentalcontract, signing and sealing it, that I would go penniless to Memphis,Tenn., with a determination to secure work on the government works onthe Mississippi river for the winter. For I had discovered in my studyfrom New York to Cleveland many moneyless men striving to reach thesegovernment works.

I would not steal, nor beat a railroad train, nor beg, but if forcedto do so, I would ask succor from those institutions which stand,ostensibly, ready to help the needy. My itinerary, briefly given, wouldbe, Cleveland to Cincinnati, Cincinnati to Louisville, Louisville toMemphis.

The next morning, after sending my baggage on to Memphis and paying myhotel bill, I was completely broke, and found myself on the streets ofCleveland, destitute, looking for work. I strolled up to the PublicSquare while I was considering the best course to pursue. I had pulledon my blue jeans over a pretty good business suit, for my investigationwas to be of that class of toilers who must work with their hands aswell as of the class that does those things we faultily regard as morepolite work. Destitute, homeless, friendless, I must honorably reachthe government works,—that was the point I had to keep ever in mind.My first thought was as a hopeful medium to find work,—the newspapers.Stepping up to a news-stand I asked for a paper, and thrust my handdeep down in my pocket for the price. Thus it was that it came tome forcibly for the first time that I was broke. I looked at thenews-vender as he handed me the paper and said, “Never mind, old man,I have left my pocketbook at home.” Then I remembered I had a postagestamp and thought of offering that in exchange; but I remembered along delayed letter which must be sent home, and so I kept the stamp.I thought of the many places where the newspapers were on file and thenewspaper offices.

Just as I entered the Square, a man sitting on a bench reading amorning paper left abruptly, leaving the paper behind. I made a dashfor it with a half dozen other jobless men. I was the lucky one,however. Hurriedly I sought the want columns. I scanned them carefullyand made note of those things I knew I could do. I also made note ofan "ad" reading: “Wanted, fifty supers at the Opera House. Apply at 10A. M.” Handing the paper to the other boys, I left quicklyon my mission for work. The super’s job I kept as a last resort, ifall others failed. All others did fail. There were a great many idlemen and boys in Cleveland at that time. I saw the importance of beingearly, for the answer invariably was, “The place is filled long ago.”So ten o’clock found me at the stage door of the Opera House withseveral hundred others, hanging onto the hope of being a favored chosenone. I knew that if successful I could work here nights, and that theywould probably pay the same price offered in Pittsburg. Through the dayI could do something else. I would therefore earn quickly enough to buya six-dollar ticket to Cincinnati and be well on my journey to thegovernment works, where, from all I had heard, I would be comfortablylocated for the winter, and in line for making a stake.

The manager soon appeared and began rapidly to choose his men. Wediscovered we were to be millionaire senators in a great politicalplay. I noticed I was being intentionally shunned, and fearful of notbeing chosen, I remembered my good front beneath my workingman’s garb.I stepped up to the man and said, “I have better clothes than these.I can make an appearance for the part,” whereupon he immediately tookme. Our pay was to be three dollars and a half for eight performances,covering a week,—a little less than forty-four cents a performance.

Although I had landed a job I was no better off so far as the immediateneeds for existence went. So I saw that I must be active in order tocover the vacancy in some way. Already I was growing very hungry.

The first thing I did was to ask a man with a star for the MunicipalEmergency Home. He looked at me with a contemptuous smile, and seemedto regard me as one just dropped out of Russia, China, or some otherheathen country. At last he said: “There is nothing like that here. Inever heard of such a thing. Did you?”

No one will ever know what it means to be really hungry until he isbroke. There seemed no other way for me to win a dinner other thanto ask the various restaurants the privilege of working for it. Ofthe great number to which I applied, the answer was, “Nothing doing.”At last the proprietress of one restaurant told me she wanted someone very badly for the noon hour rush to wipe dishes, and in returnfor the work would gladly give me my dinner. I readily accepted theoffer, and was soon installed in the small kitchen of a very large,cheap restaurant. I was obliged to stand near the dishwasher and histubs, hemmed in by a very narrow space. In an instant the rush was on.Everything that was not nailed down or stuck to the wall was in theair. The busy boys would come in with a San Juan charge, literallyfiring the dishes into the big wash tub, and every time they did so Ireceived a shower-bath. Now, I would not have objected to a sprinkle ortwo, but an immersion was a crime, and in my position I could neitherretreat nor advance. The old lady appearing, I demanded a release,declaring our agreement was that I was to work for a meal and not abath. She declared the hour was now nearly up, and then, too, I didnot object as strenuously as I might have done, if, through the rainand the mist, I had not caught sight of rows of pies, cake, ice-creamand pudding. Also, perhaps as a panacea to my hurt feelings, the oldlady (who had a bass voice and weighed about three hundred pounds)threatened to put a few of the reckless flunkies out of commission ifthey did not exercise more caution.

True to her word, the moment the hour was spent, I was asked to sitdown to a banquet on the end of the cook’s table, and the order issuedto give me all the corned beef, cabbage and boiled potatoes I wanted.The pie, cake, ice-cream and pudding were not on the dishwiper’s menu,at least not that day, but I was to have all I wanted of what was givenme, and that meant a great deal. Regaining the street, I felt a strongdesire for a bath, clothes and all. Again approaching another appendixto the correctional laws of Cleveland, I asked for the free publicbaths. “Gad,” he said, as he eyed me closely, “how many baths do youtake a day?” He then referred me to Cleveland’s two public baths, whichwere so far out that he advised me decidedly to take a street car.

“And are they absolutely free?” I demanded.

“No, one will cost you five cents and the other two.”

I went to the lake.

In my little bundle I carried a small mirror, a hairbrush, a piece ofsoap, a couple of white collars and a towel. Ye gods, what a bath thatwas! The water was four degrees below freezing. However, I soon had onthe expression of the United States Senator whom I was to impersonateat the Opera House that night, who wouldn’t buy a vote, no, not if hedied for it, who could sit in the four o’clock Y. M. C. A. Sundayafternoon meeting with a face as long as a fiddle, and an expressionthat to the thought of a jackpot would prove fatal. Not one of theelite in the great audience that night ever dreamed of the battle I hadgone through that day in Cleveland for the privilege of sitting in thathonored seat!

We were an exceedingly interesting group of millionaire senators,for three-fourths of us were broke. After our great act, I timidlyapproached the manager, and asked him if he would please advance me aquarter as I had no place to sleep nor the money to buy a place. No, hecould not think of doing so. It was not their custom to pay until thelast performance. An old “senator” of sixty-eight years who sat next tome, one of the many in the same plight I was in, was waiting to learnthe result of my plea.

We then began to try to find a place to rest, for that we must have.Our act was not over until nearly ten-thirty o’clock, compelling us tobe out late. My brother senator knew Cleveland better than I did andproposed going to the “charity” free lodging house where we could payby sawing wood an hour or more the next morning. We made our way to theold rookery, which was in a hole down under the hill, but when we gotthere it was closed and dark.

I then proposed the police station or the jail. He looked at me inastonishment and said, “Do you think I would go there? I’ll tell youwhere we can go. I slept there the other night, and—well, it mighthave been worse. It is on the floor of the High Ball Saloon on St.Clair Street. There is no use to hurry, as we can’t lie down untiltwelve o’clock.“ He then continued, “Let us find some newspapers tolie on.” So as we walked towards our destination we searched therubbish boxes on the street corners for paper with which to make a bed.Reaching the saloon, we stood about until midnight, at which time thelights were turned low and the side doors locked. Then we were allowedto lie down. We each had two newspapers which we spread under us.

After a moment I raised up and counted the little army of bedless menwho were obliged to seek shelter there that night. There were just aneven sixty lying upon the floor, and this number was augmented nowand then by a late arrival drifting in. A number of men stood at thebar, or lunch stand, and caroused all night. One, verging on deliriumtremens, had a prize fight with a stone post. While the place seemedclean and the floor clean for a great, cheap saloon, roaches by thehundred were scampering all about us, and the odor from a near-bytoilet could scarcely be endured. In a calm moment of the revelers,just as I felt that I might drop into a doze (my poor, weary, oldsenator was sleeping through it all), a big Dutchman, whose bonesprobably ached from coming in contact with the hard floor, raisedup and turned over. As he did so, he came down on a little Irishman.Jumping up, he slapped the Dutchman in the face and a rough house wasin order for an extended time. Occasionally a “cop” or a plain-clothesman came in and looked us over. For me to try to sleep was useless, andpromptly at five o’clock the order was given “Every man up.”

My political colleague and I strolled confidentially up an alley tothe Public Square. Here was located a beautiful example of Cleveland’shumanity to man in a small, yet seemingly perfect public lavatory.Every man, no matter how soiled or wretched, was given a towel and apiece of soap to cleanse himself, and often I heard someone say, “TomJohnson’s gift.”

Food was the next essential to our good behavior and well-being. Myassociate member proposed we try the “Charity” Lodging House again,which we did. Yes, we could have breakfast if we would saw and splitwood for an hour or more first. We would certainly do so. Imagine thestate we were in from lack of food and sleep. And yet this homelessold gentleman—and he was a gentleman—was eager and willing. Aftersplitting curly birch for over an hour, we were told to come tobreakfast. They gave us weak barley soup, poor bread, and the sameold “charity coffee.” The staying qualities of that breakfast wereextremely fleeting, for by the time we had climbed the hill we were nobetter off in regard to having our hunger appeased than when we wentin. As we came out we noticed a sign which read, as I remember it, tothis effect: “Persons coming here a second time must be expected totake orders from the city.” Not a very encouraging hope for the man whowas broke and who was only earning three-fifty per week, which he wouldnot get for six days.

Every day while in this city I found (aside from us senators) many menwho had secured work or would have gone to work, but who could find noone to trust them. The boarding-house keepers had been imposed upon somany times by penniless people that they were cautious. The contractoror employer will never pay in advance, only at a stated time,—oncea week, once in two weeks, or once a month. While there may beexceptions, through all my investigations in the larger cities of ourcountry, I have never found any relief for the penniless worker in thistime of need, either in public or private works. If he proves he is afine worker he is valuable to his employer and he wants to keep him.But he does not know him. He may have unconquerable habits. It wouldnever do to pay him his wage when the day is done. He might not return,so the employer hopes to hold him by offering him nothing, not even aword of inquiry as to his needs, or of encouragement. He forgets thathe is an asset to the community, that whether working for the city orthe individual, every laborer is just as worthy of respect and esteemas is the privileged owner of Forest Hill.

What an appeal for Cleveland’s Emergency Home to fill this place ofneed!

Reader, I want you to keep steadily in mind that you are looking atthe man I describe, not at me. I had multi-millionaire acquaintancesin Cleveland who would have granted me any request I might have made.I held credentials on which any bank in that city would have honoredmy check without question. I could have stepped into the home of theexceedingly prominent lodge of which I was a member in good standing,and could have had my every wish granted. I knew if I fell ill or metwith accident, to reveal my identity meant every care and comfort, thespeedy coming of a loving wife, kind relatives and friends. And so,after all, while I might endure, I could only assume.

My aged “senator” friend left me, to walk a long way in search ofsomeone he knew, who perhaps would make his burden light. I did notneed to be told the feelings of the old gentleman as he wearily tookhis departure. I had started for the Public Square to rest, thoughmomentarily, for there was a dinner which must be battled for. I passeda fruit store. There was an array of delicious fruit in front,—manybaskets of rich, purple grapes, marked ten cents. I was sure I couldhave eaten at least one basket. They were not directly in front of thewindow. It would have been so easy to pick up a basket unseen and bequickly lost in the crowd. After all itwas true, then, that starvingmen and boys filched bottles of milk from doorsteps, a loaf of breadfrom the bakery, or a pie from a wagon!

I stepped directly in front of the window and looked at the applesand oranges. A woman inside seemed to have her eye on me,—I fanciedsuspiciously. Instantly she stepped out and picking up one each of thefairest of the apples and oranges offered them to me. I hesitatinglyregarded her gift. “Take them,” she said, “God made them to be eaten.”I had had nothing to eat for eighteen hours except my “charity” bowlof barley soup and with it the warning not to come back. The city ofCleveland had nothing to offer. It remained for a poor woman to give mea portion of her small possessions.

I reached the Square. Broken, I dropped into a seat and was immediatelylost in sleep, from which I was suddenly awakened by a sharp blow onthe bottom of my feet, which, through the thin half-wornout soles, lefta burning sting. Lifting my head, I saw a burly policeman who growled,

“Keep your eyes open. This Square is for wide-awake people.”

“It certainly is not for the city of Cleveland, then, in its care forits homeless,” I remarked.

Remembering I was in a “Golden Rule” city, I felt that I could safelyreply to this august hint of the law, without fear of being “run in” orbeaten into insensibility, as I had seen helpless men treated in othercities for such presumption. He simply gave me a half comprehendinglook as he passed on. Now this officer was not the Chief of Policein that city. He was simply a subordinate, and a city of six hundredthousand people requires a large police force. Notwithstanding thespirit of the Chief of Police, or his high ideal of what a policedepartment really stands for, his good aim and end will be miscarriedcontinually by his hirelings, until the required qualifications of apoliceman are based upon intelligence, good-will, good morals, gooddeeds, and not upon the fact that he helped carry his ward.

I saw, however, during my short stay in this city evidences ofadvancement in the character of their police system, which spokevolumes for Cleveland, even though the homeless and temporarilymoneyless toiler, seeking work, found no help in the manyconsiderations for labor.

With the feeling that closing one’s eyes in the public park inCleveland might mean life imprisonment or at least, for the secondoffense, a rap on the head instead of the feet, which might disqualifyme for my seat in the “senate” that night, I forced myself to keepawake, and in order to do that I had to keep moving.

The agreement with myself was not to beg or steal. I was to be always“on the square.” I decided to continue to look for work. The daybefore, in search of work, I had climbed many stairs, entered stores,hotels, factories, even tried the City, all without success. I began tofeel that perhaps I was too old, yet several of them had said, “Comeagain. There are always chances. We may be able to use you in a fewdays.”

I realized I was weak from lack of sleep and nourishment. I must eatfirst. Just then I overheard one starving man say to another (the parkwas full of “wide-awake,” starving men), “Jack, I have ten cents, let’shave a couple of beers.”

“Honest, Bill, I’d rather have a loaf of bread for my share.”

“But you see,” returned Bill, “you can get a scoop of beer as big as atoy balloon and a free lunch like a Christmas dinner for the price of aloaf of bread.”

“All right, I’m with you,” said Jack who then continued, “Another weeklike the one gone by, and want will have me in a home for incurables.”

’Tis true I had forty-four cents due me for one day’s “session” in the“senate.” But what of that? It was not due until Saturday night attwelve o’clock. By that time hunger might drive a man to wreck, rob,murder or suicide, and there is no telling what a politician will do,even on a full stomach.

I then remembered hearing one “senator” telling another of a Catholicinstitution where he had received a hand-out for some work. Iremembered the name of the place. I also remembered hearing anothersay he had earned fifty cents that day beating carpets,—a job hesecured from the Associated Charities.

I first made my way to the Romanist institution. A Sister with a sweetface framed in folds of black and white met me at the door. She lookedkind enough to give me the institution, but she didn’t. If she had,Cleveland would have had, from the way I was feeling just then, aMunicipal Emergency Home about as quickly as one could change the sign.What she did give me was a job cleaning windows, for which I received abowl of cold coffee and a piece of bread. As I waited I caught glimpsesof delicious dishes of chicken, steaks, and other wholesome and daintyedibles. To the cook, a bright young Irish woman who had receivedorders to give me only what was before me, I said, as I looked at thebowl and bread, “Do these people believe in multiplying anything aroundhere?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Working hours.”

“What do you do for something to eat when you get really hungry?”

“Well, you see, this is an institution what believes in fasting.” Weboth laughed and this brought forth a Mother Superior followed bya Mother Inferior, whose faces were sour enough to start a picklefactory. I felt that I had committed some unpardonable offense andabbreviated my call by taking a speedy departure.

Scarcely were we seated that night in the “senate” before the old“senator” told of the square meal he had that day and of a fineplace he had found in a stable where we could sleep with the comfortbefitting our distinguished station. He had not seen it, but knew whereit was and how to find it. So after the session adjourned, we startedfor our newly-found shelter. It was now late in October. The nightswere unusually cold in Cleveland for that time of year. After walkingwhat seemed an interminable distance, the warm, bright street carspassing us frequently (the fare only three cents), we finally reachedour shelter. It was not as we fancied it would be,—a large, fine barn,half filled with new-mown hay. It was an old, closed-in, empty shed,with two stalls and two mangers. We entered. By striking a few matches,we could see to gather up enough of the refuse in the stalls to lie on,by placing it in the narrow mangers. The “senator” took one and I theother. He suggested that I take off my coat and place it over my headand shoulders, saying that by so doing I would be much warmer than ifI kept it on. I found this to be true. So exhausted and weary had webecome that we were soon lost in profound sleep, from which I awoke atthree o’clock, perishing with the cold. I crept over and felt of theold man. He was alive and sleeping soundly. I slipped out and walkedthe streets for an hour. By the time I was thoroughly warmed the dayhad begun to break. Very soon I found myself again in “wide-awake”Square. I wasn’t in the most amiable mood in the world. Far from it.I began to feel that I would like to stand on their city hall stepsand tell the people of Cleveland what I thought of them. I slippedinto that ideal little lavatory, and with the warm water, soap andclean towel, cleansed my hands and face until I felt refreshed. Then Ithought of Tom Johnson, and the bitterness left my heart. I actuallyforgot for the moment that I was starving and fell to wondering whitherGod had taken him and what great work he was doing in that land towhich he had gone.

I then left for the Labor Bureau of the Associated Charities. Perhaps Icould get work with enough pay in advance for a breakfast. On reachingthere I found twenty men and boys standing outside, and after waitingan hour there seemed to be very little work to be had. Only a few weresupplied. During my stay in Cleveland, as a test, I went every dayto this place but never succeeded in getting work. This was the onlyplace I had been able to find in Cleveland which even offered work toa man without money. I then tried for an hour to do something for ameal, but was unsuccessful. Going back to the Square I sat down andconsidered my contract and my feelings. I had agreed with myself to donothing that would make me lose my self-respect, yet I must eat orforfeit my contract. I glanced down at my hand. There was the goldencircle of love,—my wedding ring. Other starving men had been forced topawn this priceless emblem of sweet memories. I remembered a pennilessman whom I met in San Francisco, weak from the suffering caused byextreme want. He was an engraver by trade. Hoping against fate thateach day would bring him an opportunity, he walked and searched forthe place which he knew he could so ably fill. As we talked he told mea story from the book of his life; of a girl wife and a baby boy whomthe Angel had taken. While he talked he glanced down and turned uponhis finger a slender thread of gold. I saw that to this man, there layin that circle of love, a sacred memory,—the blossoming of an honestworkingman’s home, attributes of which were truth, love, honor andeternal fidelity. The workingman’s home,—without the intrusion ofpoverty—is the stronghold of a great and good citizen,the steadfastguiding star of a great government.

Speaking to me with that freedom born of the sympathy which bindsone homeless man to another (and he was a man, ambitious, free fromthe bondage of any bad habit), he said, “I will have to pawn my ringto-day, but,” with determined emphasis, “I will never lose it. Yet I ama little afraid of the pawnshop. Their rate of interest is theft, andthe time for redemption limited to one month.”

We then talked of New York City’s Provident Loan Association, whichis simply the poor man’s depository, the interest only one per cent,a month, and the time one year. The city that is without this socialgood is the city that does not belong to the present day progress, andmust savor of betrayal, of artifice, of ill-gotten gains. As I lefthim, I said, “Should you have to pawn your ring, look the matter up. Ofcourse, San Francisco must have so worthy an organization.”

Leaving the Square I found a pawnshop. Unlike the man in actualpoverty, I had not the dread fear of losing the cherished momento. Thepawnshop man scratched it, weighed it, raised his hand, shrugged hisshoulders, and said, “I giff you vun dollar.”

“But it cost ten,” I said.

“Vell, all right, I giff you vun dollar.”

There was no other way, I was helpless. So I replied, “All right, takeit.” He gave me the dollar and a pawn certificate demanding for theredemption of my ring a dollar and twenty-five cents if redeemed insideof thirty days. If redeemed within an hour, it made no difference.

I had already tested the institutions, religious and otherwise, whichexisted in Cleveland supposedly to shelter the destitute, and had beeneither locked out or turned back into the street. How big that dollarfelt in my hand! I fancied it was a twenty-dollar gold piece. I did notdare let go of it. With my old “senator” friend in mind, I saw a signwhich read, “Dinner twenty-five cents.” I could not get into the placequickly enough. I left greatly refreshed, but only half satisfied. Ifound the old “senator,” with whom I shared my fortune. He had beenunsuccessful in finding a job. He did as I did, spent twenty-five centsfor a meal and saved the other quarter for a bed. We were fixed forthat night, at least.

The next morning I saw a prosperous looking young man, standing on astreet corner. I don’t know what prompted me to do so, but I stepped upto him and inquired, “Do you know where a fellow can get a job?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Do what I am doing. I am taking subscriptions fora magazine and I am making two and three dollars a day, and it’s deadeasy.”

He handed me a card on which was the address of the office. Theagent told me he thought he had canvassers enough, but said, “You’rean intelligent looking cuss, I think I will try you.” He made thefollowing proposition: “We offer five of our leading periodicals fortwenty-five cents, providing the person will subscribe for four ofthem. These will come to him through the mail at twenty cents a monthfor one year. A collector comes every month for the twenty cents.”The twenty-five cents paid down for the five magazines was to be mycommission. That night I had just two dollars, and I think I was thehappiest man in Cleveland. I had landed a job, and I fully realizedthat I could have done twice as much if I had not been weakened by lackof nourishment and exposure while seeking work. After drawing my salaryas “senator” and working like a Trojan through the day, the next Sundayfound me at the Big Four Station with just six dollars in my pocket.Five dollars and twenty-five cents I paid for a ticket to Cincinnati.Spending the balance for food while on the road, I landed in that cityat midnight,broke. I had no money, but I possessed a wealth ofknowledge in regard to the city of high standards on the shore of theErie inland sea.

CHAPTER XXV
Cincinnati—Necessity’s Brutal Chains

“There is no contending with necessity, and we should be very tender how we censure those who submit to it. It is one thing to be at liberty to do what we will and another thing to be tied up to do what we must.”

I entered the depot and sank wearily into a seat. I felt pretty welland had a clear conscience. Had I not honorably paid my way fromCleveland to Cincinnati instead of trespassing on the property of amighty railroad company? I found a place to sit down, dropped my headforward and was soon fast asleep. But the sleep was of short durationfor in a few minutes I was rudely awakened by the depot policeman.

“Where are you going?” he said.

“Nowhere,” I answered. “I have no money.”

“Well, what are you doing here?”

“Can’t you see? I am trying to sleep?”

“Have you a railroad ticket?”

“No.”

“Well, you can’t stay here.”

“Have they a Free Municipal Emergency Home in this city?”

“No.”

“Where would you have me go?”

“Some other place.”

Knowing too well the result to the homeless, destitute wage-earner ofdisobedience to the scion of the law, I quickly left. To be absolutelyalone on the streets of a great, strange city at midnight, penniless,without a friend or acquaintance, was nothing to me, a strong, wellman. But to the homeless woman or girl, or the frail sick man or boy,my homelessness held a great meaning. Going a short way up the street,I saw a man standing on a corner, and from his dejected mien, I knewthat he, like myself, was a down-and-out.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” he answered.

“Where can a fellow that’s broke find a ‘flop?’”

“Explore me!”

“They have just driven me out of the Big Four.”

“They have just kicked me out of the L. & N. I am going to FountainSquare. It is now one o’clock. There is a train that leaves attwo-thirty from the L. & N. People are already going to the station.You can probably stay there unnoticed until the train leaves. I can’tgo back for they would know me, but keep your eyes open for bulls.” Andwith this advice he pointed out the way.

I went, and unnoticed I slept an hour sitting on a station seat. Whenthe train left, I was the only remaining individual in the waiting-roomand, of course, very conspicuous. The hint of the law for decency andorder at that station, came to me with the question, “Why didn’t youtake that train?”

“I did not want it.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I have no other shelter.”

With the deep, low-bred voice of an unfeeling brute, he emphaticallysaid, “Beat it.”

I, too, must now find Fountain Square. A switchman kindly pointed outthe direction. As I walked up the street, I raised my eyes to see ifthe day was breaking, but I might have known better. Automobiles andhacks containing only men came down the street and stopped before thelarge, red-curtained houses, and from the sound of revelry, of jest,laughter and music, I realized that I was in the redlight district. Ablack slave standing in a dimly lighted entrance to a passage betweentwo houses, said, “Hello, Honey, buy me a drink.”

“Why, girl, I could not buy a postage stamp that was canceled.”

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“I’m broke. I haven’t even a place to sleep tonight.”

“Come here.”

I stepped up a little nearer to her.

“Is yo’ sho’ nuff broke?”

“I most assuredly am.”

“Whah yo’ from?”

“From Cleveland.”

“What’s de matter wid Cleveland? Cleveland all gone to—?”

“It was for me, at least during part of the time I was there.”

“And has yo’ honest nowhah er to sleep?”

She put her hand in her purse and offered me a quarter. “Take that. Itwill buy yo’ a bed.”

Glancing up, I saw or fancied I saw the light of dawn. “No, girl.See, the day is breaking,” and as I went on to the Square, I knewthat I had seen in that poor, black slave girl an expression of humankindness that could not be found in the vocabulary of the Christian,intelligent, cultured city of Cincinnati. She had offered me, thehomeless, penniless, out-of-work man, a shelter.

Girl, for you and your kind, and your race, in the great South, the dayis dawning.

Fountain Square is a strip of concrete about fifty feet wide, extendingfor a block. In the center is a large, magnificent fountain. ThisSquare was acquired by the city as a gift, with a perpetual provisothat it should always be a market-place. Otherwise the city wouldforfeit the grant. Consequently, on one side, as a retainer, is builta six by ten foot iron, pagoda-roofed structure, under which areseveral tiers of shelves on which, for a short time each year, flowersare placed and sold. On either side benches were placed, but when Ireached the Square every available place seemed filled. The shelves inthe flower stand were crowded with homeless, drooping, broken humanbeings. The roof was a shelter from the frost. There were one hundredmen in this Cincinnati “Free Municipal Emergency Home” that night.Nor was this even free, for frequently the police of this humane cityraid the Square and drive all, to the last man, to prison. Exhaustionwas beating me down, and there seemed no other alternative, so withpalpitating heart lest I be singled out as a hopeless inebriate, throwninto jail and then onto the stone pile, I lay down on the frost-coveredstone at the feet of my homeless companions and fell into a sleep. Itwas only for a short time, however, for the rousing up of the men onthe bench awakened me and one said to me in a hoarse whisper, “ForGod’s sake, Jack, get up! Here comes a bull.” I quickly sprang to myfeet.

As the men were leaving the Square I saw a number of them enter a darkalley, and asked where they were going. I was told theEnquirerposted the “want-ad” sheets of the paper at its back door an hourbefore daylight. A group of fifteen men and two young women werealready there, striking matches and struggling to read the columns of“Help Wanted.” I finally succeeded in getting close enough to readthem. There were a number of things I could do. I took the list andstarted out only to realize the absolute necessity of a breakfast. Itried several places to work for this essential reinforcement to healthand strength, but failed. I thought over my effects again. No, I hadnothing except my eyeglasses. After all they were only for fine printwhile reading. I thought of the watchmaker in New York who was restingfrom going blind and of the boy I had met, who, without his glasses,was almost blind but who had pawned them for food; of another, a boywithout vice and industrious, selling the gold filling from his teethto help him over a rough place; of men I had seen, through want, pawntheir underclothing. It was a simple thing for me to part with myglasses. I got twenty-five cents on them.

After breakfast I began a strenuous search for work and at last, afterexplaining that I could handle horses, and was sober and industrious,I was hired at twelve dollars a week to drive a milk wagon at F—--,a big milk depot. But they did not want me for three days and therewas the rub. The manager of a large restaurant told me that if I wouldcome at two o’clock the next morning and work from two until four hewould give me my breakfast and a quarter of a dollar. I was exceedinglyhappy, for I, at least, was rich in prospects.

I went to the public bath and was absolutely refused a bath because Ihad not a nickel. The Salvation Army refused me assistance in any way,shape or manner. The Associated Charities had nothing to give away.They did not even have a bed in exchange for work. However they hadmeals in exchange for labor. By sawing wood for one or more hours theywould give me a meal. I knew what that meal would be, a decoction ofstuff made mostly of water, and I said, “You must give a pretty goodmeal for one and a half hours’ labor at the hard work of sawing wood.”This seemed to touch the head of this Charity institution, for in anoffended way he said:

“This is a Charity institution—not a Commercial one.”

The Y. M. C. A. refused me even a bath. I was beginning to get saucyand politely told the presiding officer of this commercial institutionhe had better take the word “Christian” out of their title. I was metwith such violent anathemas that I felt I was in the wrong and speedilyretired.

By this time circumstances were forcing my mental contract to assume anindia-rubber character, like laws of justice and good books. There wasa large religious convention in session in the city and if my contractwould allow me to ask aid of those institutions which stand avowed tohelp a destitute workingman, and these gentlemen of the cloth posed asrepresentatives of such heavenly safeguards against despair, I feltthat I was justified (although it was against a city ordinance and, ifcaught, I would be imprisoned), at least in asking of these the priceof a meal or a bed. So bringing into play a determined will and takinga stand at a convenient place where I was sure I would not be detected,I hesitatingly approached one saying, “Sir, would you kindly give anhonest workingman the price of a meal?“ He replied, without stoppingexcept to slap me cordially on the back.

"My dear boy, I have no money."

I then asked another, whose answer as he stopped for a brief instantwas:

“My dear friend, I have no change.”

To this I replied, “I did not ask for change particularly. I am nothard to suit, at least just now. A dollar will go farther than a dime.”

He only smiled and hurried on. I was their dear boy and dear friend,but not precious enough to find a place in their hospitality. I couldhave rested again that night on the stones of Fountain Square, orsuffered the insult and abuse of a Cincinnati prison, or have beenforced into the hospital, or have ended the struggle in the Ohio river,for all that Cincinnati or at least these two satellites of this mightyconvention cared.

The nights were extremely cold but the days were bright and warm inthe sunshine. Too weary to undergo further the trial without rest, Icrept away to the river bank, far enough away to be unmolested, awayfrom suspicion and question. Here on the sun-warmed gravel, with mylittle bundle for a pillow, I fell into a sweet sleep and pleasantdreams, not of pearly gates and golden streets, but of snowy beds andsumptuous tables. I slept for a long while and when I awoke the sunwas setting in some dense black clouds and the air had the chill of anapproaching storm. Remembering that I had a job at two o’clock on thecoming morning and the thought bringing a certain degree of comfort andcheer, I strolled into a large saloon, where there was a bright fire.Here I sat and talked to many workingmen who came that way. I read themany papers scattered about until the place closed, at midnight, when Iwas forced back to a bench in Fountain Square. Just as I arrived therea gust of wind and rain swirled through the streets and into the Squarewith a mad force. It was a harbinger of what was to follow. A fewmoments later there broke forth the most piercing equinoctial storm ofwind, snow and rain that I had ever known. It lasted for three days.

I crept into the office of an all-night lodging house. When it wasdiscovered that I did not want a bed and had no money I was requestedto vacate. I thought of going at once to the restaurant where I was towork in the morning but I remembered the manager had told me not tocome before two o’clock. Already wet from exposure I sought the shelterof the flower stand. Eight men ahead of me had taken refuge there,but they kindly allowed me to crowd in. While we were protected fromthe beating torrent of rain, we were thoroughly chilled and sufferingintensely.

After all, I was the favored one, for in a short time I would be in abig warm restaurant kitchen at work. It seemed an endless time beforeI found myself there with another man paring potatoes, and whilewe worked, he told me of the steamboat running from Cincinnati toLouisville, and of the opportunity many times for a man to work hisway to the latter city,—a suggestion which I resolved, if possible,to profit by. Four o’clock soon came, and my breakfast was earned. Itwas not as I thought it would be,—a portion of all the good thingsthat the restaurant afforded, and that I could eat against a week’stime of need. It was simply a twenty cent check for a breakfast at thelunch counter upstairs. I could have eaten four such meals without fearof any unpleasant results, but as he gave me the check he gave me myquarter also, saying, “We do not usually give more than a meal for thework, but I will make an exception this time, and as I told you, giveyou a quarter.” Why he did so, I have never been able to discover. Thatquarter meant a great deal to me, for I could spend it where I soughtshelter, and feel a degree of independence and welcome. Don’t thinkfor a moment the Y. M. C. A., the Salvation Army, or the AssociatedCharities got it! I was pretty sure, however, to save ten cents of itfor a bed at the Union Mission on the levee. On going there I asked forthe gift of a bed, and was decidedly refused. I was told it was not aChristian institution which gave gifts to the needy, but absolutely abusiness proposition with them. Whether that be true or not, I admiredthem for their honesty. This Mission was near the steamboat landing.

On the following morning I applied for the privilege of working myway to Louisville. I could do so, but the only work offered was thatof roustabout, loading and unloading heavy freight before leaving andwhile en route. I would receive no pay for my work, unless I signedto return, or make a round trip. The deck passage was a dollar and ahalf. The next morning, with two white and twenty black men, associateworkers, I was off for Louisville.

Life, in recent years, had not inured me to such arduous work. I thinkI could have stood the work more successfully than my trial in New Yorkif I had not been weakened by starvation, but at the test of carryinga heavy barrel, box, or bundle, I could not stand firm and waveredas I walked, which frightened me. I realized that I must desist. Imade an appeal to the boat officer to carry me to Louisville on thepromise that I would pay as soon as I had earned the money. I was aweather-beaten hobo, and of course, not to be trusted, but my requestwas granted, providing I would leave my little bundle as a pledge thatI would fulfil my promise.

As I was leaving the boat at Louisville, I stood with my little bluejeans bundle in my hand. The purser was there to see that I turned itover to the negro porter. The porter had an austere cruel expression,but instantly, as we stepped back to deposit it in the porter’s locker,his face turned to a glow of kindness and he handed me back thebundle, saying, “Hit the plank. Put it under your coat. You will not benoticed.” In that little package were all my earthly possessions. Itmeant a great deal to me. So taking the bundle I slipped away. I wasagain homeless on the streets of another great city, looking for work.

CHAPTER XXVI
Louisville and the South

“Kindness is wisdom. There is none in life but needs it and may learn.”

Shortly after my arrival in Louisville, Kentucky, true to the promiseI made myself in Cleveland, I sent the Navigation Company the cash duethem for my passage. I felt exceedingly happy that it could not be saidof me that I had stolen my journey.

In Louisville, as in every other city of the Union I have visited,I found it very hard work to get employment. I found the white manworking for the same wage as the black man, the black man working forjust one-third of what he ought to have been paid. This is true allthrough the South. I found the white men greatly embittered againstthe black men and declaring that the negroes kept wages down by beingwilling to work for far less than the white workers. This was not true.The negroes were just as restless as the white men because of the smallpay for labor. If the black workers were willing, or seemed willing,to work for less pay than the white workers, it was because they wereforced to do so to keep from starving.

As the night came down I was forced to seek shelter at an AssociatedCharities lodging house, in front of which was an open surface sewer,so vile that it was nauseating, the disease-breeding odor penetratingthe dormitory all through the night. I was met so gruffly that I feltas if I had offended someone by my application for shelter even thoughI was given to understand that I was expected to saw five barrels ofwood for it. I asked for the privilege of washing my hands and face;for a sheet of paper and an envelope that I might write a letterhome; for something to read, and a place to read it. All these littlebenefits, which meant just then so much to me and which cost nothing,were bluntly denied. I was told to go out in the rear yard amongstacks of rubbish, where it was cold and damp, until the time arrivedfor offering the hospitality of the place. Before going to bed I wasobliged to take a shower bath, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but whichwas spoiled by a small, dirty, rough towel to dry myself with. The bed,filthy, wretched and uncomfortable, I could scarcely have endured had Inot been so bruised and weary.

The usual charity breakfast dope of water soup, water coffee, andcoarse bread was given, for which I worked three hours. Edgeless toolsmade the work extremely difficult. Many of the men worked half a dayfor the night’s shelter. I would have enjoyed the exhilarating workon the wood for an hour if I had been given a breakfast. Any man wouldwho was able, and who wanted to keep his self-respect. I left the placeembittered. I felt that I had been robbed, as others did who wereforced into it, but it was a shelter.

The needs of another night were near at hand, and I had a half-day leftin which to look for work. I passed a fine restaurant where I noticedthe windows needed polishing up a bit. I stepped inside and asked theprivilege of cleaning them for a meal. My wish was granted. For myhour’s work I was given a delicious, wholesome meal and twenty-fivecents besides. I felt like doing a great deal for myself and somethingfor others. I was in luck.

After many trials I found work in a business place at five dollars perweek and board, for seven days in the week. I was to begin the nextmorning. From exposure on the deck of the steamer I had contracteda severe cold which settled into neuralgia, and one of my teeth wasaching beyond endurance. My twenty-five cents, which I was savingfor a bed, I was now obliged to spend in having the distractingmolar extracted. The first dentist to whom I described my pain andpossessions, refused to pull the tooth for less than fifty cents, butthe next man did it, and I was soon on the street feeling actuallyhappy,—but my bed money was gone.

I could not have returned to the Charity lodging house even if I hadcared to, as I was obliged to be at work at seven in the morning. Asit was now growing cold and dark, I was told by another “under-dog”of the Hope Rescue Mission. I followed his suggestion by going there.Entering, I registered my name, and discovered that my presence atthe evening meeting was demanded before I was eligible for a bed. Iattended the meeting and discovered that one must experience a changeof heart before he is actually certain of shelter, for the leader ofthis heavenly mansion said in his address, “You fellers need not thinkyou can come here and make a big spiel, and get a bed unless you meanwhat you say.” Immediately after the service of song and praise, wewere shown to bed. The door of this “heavenly refuge” was locked at teno’clock for the night, and going to bed at this hour was compulsory.

As we entered, the light, which was so dim that we could scarcelydistinguish one cot from the other, and which hid the filth in which wewere to rest, was in a moment turned out and all was darkness. Withoutundressing, I fell upon my bunk exhausted and was soon sound asleep,but at some unknown hour in the night I awakened. Notwithstanding myprecaution in not undressing I realized that I was covered with vermin.The filthy odor of sewer gas pervaded the place and poisoned everybreath of air we breathed. My first impulse was to get out of theplace, but where would I go? To go out onto the street at this timeof the night would probably mean arrest. I slid down from my bunk tothe floor and forced myself to remain there until we were called atdaylight.

All of these houses where a pretense is made of caring, perhaps, for“angels unawares,” are run with the greatest saving of expense. Theyusually have a number of physically weak dependents who volunteer theirservices for an existence. While we were lined up in a room next to theeating place, we had prayer. As all the guests did not feel inclinedto kneel, one of the religious attaches who seemed to regard it areligious duty to uphold the spirit of the institution demanded,

“What is the matter with you fellows, can’t you kneel?”

This demand caused some back talk and probably would have ended in arough house if at that moment the names of the worthy for breakfasthad not been called. The breakfast consisted of luke-warm brown water,called coffee, and coarse bread, lacking in quality and quantity. Anumber of the men received nothing, and as we sat down before thisprepared infusion of warm water, one of the volunteers looked straightat me and angrily said,

“Say, can’t you ask the blessing?”

Before I could, with resentment, ask what for, a man opposite looked atthe fellow and said:

“Gwan, I’ll put a lump on your thinker in a minute. Can’t you see thisfeller ain’t no mission stiff?”

It was now six o’clock. I had just one hour before going to work. Irealized that the annoyances I had contracted at this Rescue HopeMission, which each moment seemed to increase with startling force anddemand immediate action, must be gotten rid of. There was but one wayopen and that was the river. While hurriedly going there, I searchedfor some sort of vessel adequate to “boil up” with. Luckily I founda five gallon Standard Oil can, and reaching a secluded spot withavailable waste at hand for a fire, I hastily “boiled up.” I also tooka bath in the icy waters of the Ohio. Using my jeans for underclothing,and rolling in a bundle my now-purified wet garments, which in the rearof the business house where I had been engaged I hung on some boxesto dry, I entered, serene and smiling and started to work just as theclock struck seven.

After working twelve long hours, which included time to eat two meals,I asked the manager if he would kindly advance me the seventy-one centsdue for my day’s work.

“No, it is impossible,” he said. “It is not our custom. We pay onlywhen the week’s work is done. If you have no place to sleep that isyour affair, not ours.”

The reason the employer will not pay by the day is the same here aselsewhere,—because all working men are regarded as drinkers and theyare fearful of losing the worker. I realized that I could not workwithout rest. Louisville offered such a privilege to no one withoutmoney, although I had become one of her army of toilers.

I strolled down to the river thinking of my objective point, thegovernment works below Memphis, which would afford me both shelterand food. I decided to reach there as soon as possible. The steamer,Lucille Knowland, running between Louisville and Evansville, wasthen loading freight and was scheduled to leave the next day at two P.M. Approaching a pompous, uniformed officer I asked if there was anopportunity for a man to work his way to Evansville. “I don’t know,” hereplied, “Ask the cook.” I left at once for the kitchen where I found alarge, robust colored man,—the man I was looking for. In reply to myinquiry for the privilege of working my passage he kindly answered, “Ithink so, Jack. Come around at one o’clock to-morrow and see me.”

Going up the street I met another unlucky, a young man twenty-fiveyears of age, a cabinet finisher by trade. We exchanged stories of woe,and unconsciously entered into a partnership of ideas for a restingplace that night. While we sat on the stringer of a coal chute, apoor unfortunate victim of alcohol came drifting near. Overhearingour plans, he stopped and told us of a barber who was down and outwhen he first came to Louisville, and that he never refused an honest,homeless man the privilege of sleeping in a room in the rear of hisshop. We followed the dissipated fellow’s advice. After asking thebarber for a night’s resting place, he showed us the room. There wereonly a few old quilts on the floor, to be sure, but the place was veryclean and a good shelter. When we awoke the next morning, the firstwords with which my companion greeted me were, “When I dropped tosleep last night, I almost wished I would never wake up. To-day is asyesterday,—the same uncertain struggle.” Then he whistled a little andhopefully said, “But I may get work to-day.”

We parted, and I never saw him again. I left for my place of work.At one o’clock sharp I was on hand at the kitchen on theLucilleKnowland. The big cook took me and I was soon busily preparingvegetables for my passage.

My day and a half of work I donated to the establishment I had justleft. I have thought of writing them that they might use it as anadvancement to some homeless man for a place to sleep for a week untilhe could draw his five dollars for seven days’ work twelve hours a day.

Just before the boat left, a negro boy, the second cook, appeared onthe scene and I discovered that John Ray (that was the head cook’sname) was not taking me because he needed me, but simply because hewanted to help me. When night came he spoke to one of the officerswho gave me as fine a state room as there was in the officers’ cabin.I fell asleep, but at midnight I was suddenly awakened by a blackface thrust in at the door and a voice excitedly crying, “Get up! Theboat is on fire!” In another instant I was out. I saw the darkies,with trousers in one hand and shoes in the other, scared speechless,skidding to the fore part of the boat. There was a fire down in thehold, but it was quickly extinguished without disturbing a passenger,and we of the crew were simply called to fight fire if necessary. Ireturned to my berth. It was the first time for many a night that I hadenjoyed the comforts of a bed. I slept unruffled and refreshingly untilmorning.

The second morning we were in Evansville, and as I left John Ray I tookhim by the hand and said, “John Ray, if I ever get to Heaven I willsurely find you there, for Heaven is made up of hearts like yours!”

In Evansville I got work with the hope of being able to save myrailroad fare to Memphis but the pay was so meager I could scarcelyexist. On the return of the man whose place I was temporarily filling,I found myself, one Sunday the last of October, almost broke anda long way from Memphis. As I was walking that day I met a youngcarpenter standing on a corner with all he possessed on this earth ina suitcase, and moneyless. He told me briefly his situation. He wasmarried,—had a beautiful wife and a little golden-haired baby girl.But his wife—Ah, well, why go into details!Circumstances made atramp of him. That was enough. It was the old story of poverty, fatalto the American home. He was unable to get work in Evansville and wasgoing on to Birmingham, Alabama, where he was sure of employment. Hehad spent the past night in an office chair, with the permission ofthe night clerk of a hotel. Several times he had dropped asleep andbeen awakened (although he was not on the street) by the police withinsulting inquiries. I discovered that we were of the same mind in manythings. He did not want to beat or steal from the railroad by riding ablind or a box car. Both of us wanted to work our way, if possible. Hedecided to peddle or pawn his suit case and clothes. Not being able tosell them, he was obliged to let a second-hand dealer have them for twodollars. Their value was fully thirty-five.

We were directed two miles out of town to a place called Howe, where wemight be able to catch a local freight, but we were disappointed in anopportunity to work for our passage. There was the great Ohio river,spanned by a ponderous iron bridge, miles long, which must be crossed,and as no one was allowed to walk this bridge, our only alternativewas to steal a ride. Many trains passing through Howe were obligedto slow up and soon we were safely ensconced in a side-door Pullmanand swinging far out on the mighty trestle of iron which arched thestream. I had broken my contract. We soon discovered that we were ina car which had been in a wreck and was probably on its way to theshops. The ponderous sides and great heavy roof were held up and inplace temporarily by two-by-fours. After we crossed the bridge, thetrain seemingly attained a never-ending mile-a-minute speed, over crossroads, switches and springing piles. The roof and sides of the hugecar would bend down and groan and tremble and swerve. We were positivethat the next instant we would be crushed to death, from which thereseemed absolutely no retreat. To have leaped from the fast-moving trainamong the rocks which lined the right of way, would have been fatal.So having nothing else to hang to, we hung to each other. This wasthe only available car. A submarine boat or an aeroplane was a lifepreserver compared to our vehicle. But a shrill, sharp whistle, comingat that time, was music. We were actually stopping. The train pulledout and left us at a water-tank, happy in our release. We might havebeen in Kansas for all we knew, but looking up and across the fields wesaw a big house with a huge sign, “Whiskey Distillery.” We knew we werestill in Kentucky.

A track man told us all trains stopped there, which was encouraging.It was now late in the day and there would be no more trains untilmorning. The track man told us of an inn not far away. We went thereand spent the night.

The next morning we found ourselves waiting at the track, broke,except that I had a nickel and the carpenter a dime. Soon a trainswung into sight, and not having time to ask permission to work ourway, we quickly boarded an empty gondola. It was a mixed train and wediscovered that it was a freight which was very late. Immediately atthe first station, we did not wait for the train crew to hunt us outand probably shovel us off, but leaping out, we ran ahead. Scarcelybefore either the crew or ourselves knew it, we were helping to carrysacks of oats, and what not, from a car into the station. The conductorlooked at us curiously. When the work at that point was done, he said,“Come on back, boys, and ride in the caboose. No use of you fellerssitting out there in the cold.” When dinner time came, the train crewshared with us their dinners, and so we worked along with hand andheart, laughing and singing, until ten o’clock found us in Princeton,Kentucky.

While sitting in the depot, with no place to sleep, one of the stationemployees, kindly inclined and suspecting our position, said, “Boys,if you think of trying to spend the night here you had better nottry it, for you are liable to be picked up. They arrested a bunch ofout-of-work men here just the other night.” We then crept up into therailroad yards, to a cheap, all-night lunch place where the ownerkindly allowed us to lie down in a dark corner until morning. Then mypal decided to take another and a quicker route to Birmingham than theone I had planned, which was to go by way of Paducah. So we separated,he to find his desired train, I to find mine. I was told by a switchmanthat by walking out about a mile to the signal-tower I could catch afreight. What I did catch was a ponderous coal train, and mounting agondola which was loaded with fine nut coal heaped up very high in thecenter, I was soon off.

Custom had not filled me, as yet, with courage sufficient to ride thebumpers between the cars where the slightest accident meant instantdeath. I crawled on top of the coal and into a small vacuum in onecorner which was caused by heaping the coal high in the center. I feltvery comfortably fixed and everything worked smoothly up the long steepgrade we were climbing until we began to descend. When we commencedplunging like a cyclone through woods and fields, down hills andhollows, I saw that the coal was fast shifting down, seeking its leveland crowding me out of my pocket. I finally reached a point where I washanging on to the corner of the car by my fingers and toes and feelingevery moment that I would be dashed to the earth, for my strength wasalmost gone. Then we began to slow down.

“I Finally Reached a Point Where I Was Hanging on tothe Corner of the Car by My Fingers and Toes”

“I Would Have Continued to Ride on the Top as LessDangerous, if I had not been brutally forced on to the rods”

When we reached the end of a thirty-mile run we stopped for water.I had about decided to walk to Memphis, but just then an old darkeycame along with a span of mules hitched to the running gears of awagon, who was going five miles on my way. I asked could I ride. “Sho’nuff, sho’ nuff,” was the answer, and we were soon astride the reach,exchanging black and white thoughts. Everything was serenely pleasant.The old darkey had just been praising his mules for the virtue of beingreliable when an automobile hove into sight, coming directly toward us.Those mules jumped straight up in the air, plunged past the automobile,and with the swiftness of a scared wolf ran down the road to the firstturn to the right, which they took in spite of the old darkey. Inturning they tipped the skeleton of the wagon to such a degree that wewere both spilled by the roadside. Luckily the earth was deep and soft,and we escaped injury except a few bruises, but it was a sudden partingof the ways. I caught a last glimpse of the old negro at the brow ofthe hill, on the run after the mules, just as I reached the railroadtrack, quite content to try walking again for awhile.

I kept near to my beaten path, the railroad, and was told that fivemiles beyond was a point where all trains stopped. I discovered I couldnot walk much further. I was lame and sore and my shoes were wornout. I had now become, in the eyes of both the railroad and myself,a hardened criminal and could steal a ride without self-imputation.After walking what seemed to me a very long way I found myselfexhausted. Having eaten nothing since the noon before, that which I hadthen being given me from the dinner pail of the railroad man, I feltthe need of food. Seeing a large Kentucky farm house crowning a hillnot far away, I approached it.

Sitting on the wide piazza, in struggling rays of sunlight which playedthrough golden autumn leaves and vines festooned with an aftermathof purple blossoms, sat an elderly gentleman whose very mien seemedbubbling over with good nature. Beside him sat his motherly-lookingwife.

“Will you give me the privilege of working for something to eat?” Iasked.

“Ma, can you give this hungry man something to eat?” But Ma was alreadyup and half way to the kitchen. They gave me all I could eat and anicely tied-up lunch, as they said, “for a time of need.” When I hadeaten I asked,

“Now what can I do for you?”

“I have nothing for you to do. You are very welcome. We are alwaysglad to help a tired man. No one is ever turned away from the door ofold Colonel Chandler’s.” Then, in response to a question of mine, hereplied, “No; Ma, there, is the Christian side of the house. With meit is just a spiritual law, I guess.”

I caught a train of empty flat stone cars. Lying prone on one of theseI rode five miles. We stopped. It was the terminal for that train, anda stopping place for all trains. I waited. In a short time anotherfreight pulled in. From an empty box car came a familiar voice, “Hello!”

I sought the voice and found it was my pal, the carpenter, who had notsucceeded in going his way and so had decided to come mine. He wasfamished from hunger. The lunch from Colonel Chandler’s was alreadyneeded to raise a man from the dust. “The time of need” had come. Thenight was upon us, and we were yet twenty-two miles from Paducah. Wewere suffering intensely from the cold, and while we waited for arelief train we built a fire by the track. No sooner had we done sothan from out of the darkness somewhere we were joined by three otherdestitute men, bound our way.

Immediately a train came in sight. It was made up mostly of oil tanksand the only possible way to ride, except on the rods and brake beams,was to lie flat down under one of the huge oil tanks and hang on. Butit had rained somewhere and the rain had frozen as it fell. The trainwas covered with ice. The three other men took the advantage offered,regardless of all danger, but my pal and I, both novices, had not thecourage, and as one of the men swung on, cognizant of our fear, hecalled out,

“Oh, come on. You can’t beat a train and be an old woman.”

I began to realize the physical courage necessary in the make-up andcharacter of the man obliged to work and wander, to beat a railroad,braving dangers which from 1901 to 1905, inclusive, killed twenty-threethousand, nine hundred trespassers, and injured twenty-five thousand,two hundred and thirty-six, and each year shows no decrease. In thiswonderful example of physical courage in these migratory workers,worthy of our deepest concern, we cannot help but catch the spirit ofa greater courage in other workingmen—of one who freed four millionslaves; of one who, nearly two thousand years ago, dared to enter thetemple and cast out the thieves and the money-changers.

We had not long to wait. A moment later my companion and I werehidden in a box car of a following train. After an hour’s ride inthe darkness, we found ourselves seeking in a strange city (Paducah,Kentucky), a place of rest. As we passed through the yards we saw apoliceman striking matches or throwing bulls’ eyes into empty cars,looking for such men as we were.

Riding a Standard Oil Car

“After Becoming Almost Helpless from Numbness by Comingin Contact with the Frozen Steel Shelf of the Car I Stood Up and Clungto the Tank Shielding My Face from the Storm”

Aimlessly we wandered into the city. Just as the clock in the cityhall tower was striking the hour of nine, we passed a window on whichwas lettered, “Charity Club Rest Room.” The name looked good to usand we went in. A pleasant woman in charge told us she could not doanything then, but gave us a note to the police station, tellingus that Captain Doran had a few beds for homeless men, and that wemight also try the Salvation Army, telling us how to find it. We feltthat it would be preferable to the jail, and after another two-milewalk we found the Army headquarters. We shouted, called, whistled, andeven rattled the doors, but no response. That cry in the night was afamiliar one to them. It had become common and the bruised in Paducahcould go elsewhere—so far as they were concerned. Retracing our steps,we sought Police Headquarters. There was no other way. Our little notefrom the Charity Rest Room engendered a feeling of security, and wefelt that, though helpless, we would not be committed to prison and thechain gang. The captain had no beds, but we were told to go into thepolice court room and lie on the benches. Broken, famished, exhausted,we lay down on the three-slat benches and were soon lost in a profoundslumber from which we were only once disturbed when the chief ofcity detectives came in and turned on the lights, exercising what wesupposed was his prerogative, and obliged us to tell him our pedigreesfrom Adam down. But we, undoubtedly, looked all right to him, for wewere left to our rest until the sweepers came at five o’clock. Theslats were cutting and hard. I awoke several times and in my wakefulmoments heard the carpenter murmur the name of a little golden-hairedbaby girl, away up in a northern Indiana home. We left, unmolested. Mypal was staked to a breakfast by a brother craftsman and told where hecould find work in a nearby town. I cut wood for a good woman for halfan hour with a stone hammer, for one of the best breakfasts cooked thatmorning in Paducah. She was the wife of a man who was employed in therailroad shops. Here the carpenter and I parted, not to meet again. Henever learned my identity.

I preferred river travel, if possible, and applied to the steamerDick Fowler for the privilege of working my way to Cairo, butwas emphatically refused. The boat was due to leave. Deck farewas seventy-five cents, which I did not have. But I noticed aman,—apparently a business man of Paducah, who wore a fraternity badgeof an order to which I belonged, in conference with the Captain. Ishowed my color in good standing and asked the loan of seventy-fivecents. He gave me a dollar. Again I had broken my contract,—at least Ihad begged a loan.

Reaching Cairo, I walked a mile to a point where without difficultyI could catch a freight on the I. C., bound south. But this freighttrain ran no farther than Fulton, a town a hundred and forty milesfrom Memphis. It was nine o’clock when I reached there, and wasexceptionally cold for that time of the year. I still had the remainingquarter of my dollar. Although the demands of hunger were strong and Iwas so broken for rest, I decided in favor of a bed. I was told where Icould find one for that price. It was a clean, comfortable, soft bed.In an instant I was lost in deep slumber and my aches and pains werebeing cured, my cares forgotten. Work even for breakfast was not to behad in Fulton, at least in all the places I had tried. I perhaps couldstand it until reaching Memphis if I could get away quickly. Going outto a point where all trains would slow up, I found two negroes, waitingwith the same object in view. Seated on the ground by a camp fire theywere actually eating breakfast, consisting of some late corn, prettyold and tough, yet full of milk, which they had plucked from a nearbyfield and roasted on the bright coals. The moment I joined them, oneinquired,

“Yo’all had breakfast?”

To my negative answer, he said, “Hep yo’sef, man.” They had salt, andthere and at that time it was the most refreshing green corn everroasted. It satisfied me. I was ready to continue the battle.

The weather grew colder. It began to spit snow. Presently a mixedfreight train hove in sight and my black friends made a dash for theforward cars. I chose what seemed to be an empty gondola about midwayof the train, but it proved to be about two-thirds full of Portlandcement. After the train started the brakeman came back over the trainand seeing me, asked, “Where are you going?”

“To Memphis.”

“Got any money?”

“No.”

“Well, you’ll have to see the flagman then.”

“All right, at the first stop.”

“No, you will have to do it now.”

“I am not used to walking mixed freight trains in motion. I can’t doit.”

“Yes, you can too.”

“You go to the devil.”

He passed on. I would not have run that train for ten thousand dollars.When we got full under way, I almost wished I had tried to do so forthe ever-increasing wind caught the cement and hurled it into clouds ofdust which enveloped me in a dense, fine powder, filling my eyes, nose,mouth and ears. Several times I was positive my respiration had ceased.It was with no small degree of joy, therefore, that I hailed the firststop. Whooping, coughing, sneezing, I got out of there and crept intoan empty box car a little farther back. I congratulated myself on thisshelter and good luck, when the flagman, who was on the lookout for me,stuck his head in the door saying, “Hello, old timer. Where are yougoing?” I thought I was a novice, and here I was being hailed as anold timer. My head swelled as big as a Superintendent of the PullmanCompany.

“I am going to Memphis if God and this traincrew will let me.”

“Have you any money?”

“No.”

“Have you a card?”

“No.”

“Well, you can’t ride this train.”

The train was moving. “Let me ride to the next stop.”

“Well, if you do, you will get off in the woods.”

Half believing he meant it I leaped from the train. I did not have longto wait, for very soon another mixed train came thundering along. As itslacked up, the only advantage offered was another of the Standard Oiltank cars. However, it was not covered with ice. I crawled in under thehuge tank, lay flat down on my belly, and hung on to the rods. As yet Ihad only made about twelve miles. As we sped on, I felt relieved thatwe were cutting down the miles. At the first stop, a voice greeted me.

“Hello.” It was one of my negro friends. He also had been ditched fromthe first train and had caught this one. His black pal was lost in thescuffle somewhere, and we did not see him again. Just as the negrospoke to me the conductor and brakeman came rushing up to the car.Just ahead of our tank car, was a carload of valuable horses. Afterlooking them over, as they turned to go back, the conductor spied us,and with stress, shaded with oratory of brilliant hue, he ordered usoff. Because the train was moving, however, he did not wait to see ifwe obeyed.

At the next stop, I leaped from my position and began looking over thehorses. Three of them were down. I immediately ran to the side of theright of way and getting a long reed began to prod them up. The darkey,seeing the crew coming, hid on the opposite side of the train. Theconductor coming up said, “That’s right. I wish you would keep your eyeon those horses into Memphis,” and I knew I was secure for a ride.

“Where is that nigger?” asked the conductor with emphasis.

“I don’t know,” was all I said. But I did know that he would be on thetrain as soon as it started, and he was. At the next stop, I said tohim, “Get a rod and help me with the horses.” This he did. There werefour of them down, but before the conductor could get to us, we hadthem all up. He saw us at work and called from two car-lengths away,

“Are they all right, boys?”

“All right,” we answered back. It was “boys” now, and I knew that theblack, too, was safe.

At nine o’clock, having been joined by three more white men, we finallyrolled into Memphis.

CHAPTER XXVII
Memphis—A City’s Fault and a Nation’s Wrong

“Society must necessarily look at these things because they arecreated by it.”—Hugo.

On my arrival in Memphis I was greeted by a severe storm. Althoughchilled and almost starving my first desire was to secure my baggage,which I had sent on from Cleveland, and go to a hotel. But there werethe conditions of the homeless and needy of Memphis to be studied.Under what more convincing and truthful conditions could I find need inMemphis for the erection and maintenance of a Municipal Emergency Home?So with renewed determination I decided to learn of what Memphis had tooffer to the homeless, hungry worker.

My brisk walk from the railroad yards to the heart of the city warmedmy thoroughly-numbed body. I realized that I must have food. I was atmy goal. Here was a chance to work for the government. I expected to beshipped on the first boat. I know my personal appearance was decidedlyagainst me as I entered Memphis. Soiled, black, unshaven, unwashed, Ifelt certain of arrest if seen by the police. Entering several hotels Iasked work for a meal, but was promptly denied. The good things glowedin the dining-room windows. People seated at tables were eating alland everything they wanted. Outside on the street, well-dressed peoplehurried on to their homes. Must I beg, after all? No. Here, too, it wasagainst the city ordinance as well as against my contract. I decidedto try one more place. I entered one of the largest restaurants andapproaching the manager, I said,

“I am hungry. Can I do something for you for a little to eat?”

He looked me squarely in the eye with a merry twinkle in his own andsaid,

“You look like the devil. Just drop in on a coal special?”

“No, a Standard Oil,” I answered.

“Go back there,” pointing toward the kitchen, “wash up, get somesupper. My silver man has not shown up yet. If he does not, help themout in there.”

What a feast that supper, for which I worked half an hour! What theblack cook did not give me was not in the restaurant. The silver mancame, and I was again on the street. I was growing so weary and feltthe need of sleep, but with a clean face and clean hands, and a brushup, I had the courage to ask a policeman where I could get a free bed.He replied,

“In the jungles, or the jail. But I advise you not to go to the jailunless you have to.”

At last, because forced to do so, I applied at the Y. M. C. A. Theycould not think of giving a bath, meal or bed to a homeless man intheir beautiful palace, but gave me a ticket to the Gospel UnionMission on Front Street. This was an old building partly destroyed byfire, which had been condemned by the city,—a place fairly reekingwith filth, sewer gas, and vermin. The Y. M. C. A. of Memphis wouldhave committed a more Christian act to have literally kicked me intothe street or turned me over to the police. But what did they care? Ihad been gotten rid of and was no longer a concern of theirs.

The old man at the Mission was reluctant to give me a bed for the nighteven with an order from the Y. M. C. A. He would so much, rather havehad the ten cents. He told me I would have to saw wood the next morningfor the privilege of sleeping there, which I did. Water was an unknownquantity, at least as far as a bath went, and no food was offered.The horrible experience I went through at the Hope Rescue Mission ofLouisville did not exceed my experience in this awful place.

In the morning I hurried to the Post Office expecting letters andmoney, but the letters had been delayed. I knew absolutely no one inMemphis. I went to the office of the government works to see about myshipment. The boat would not leave until the following day so I wasforced to spend another night in Memphis. As there was no other place,I was obliged to spend that night in the jungles,—the dense woods andwillows which line the river bank. I had to do this if I wished to seewhat it meant to be destitute in Memphis. I made my way to the jungle.I was not alone. There were six other destitute men there. Four ofthese men were skilled craftsmen, all were Americans. The other twowere unskilled laborers, one a German, the other a Swede. During thewakeful moments of that long, cold night I learned from each of thesemen that the reasons for his being there were just and honorable. Allof the men were on their way to work. None of them were over thirtyyears of age. Two were not yet twenty-one. They called each other“Pal.” Four of the men had already received transportation on thesteamboatKate Adams, to leave on the next day for Walnut Bend, wherethey were to labor on the government works riprapping the river bankswith willows. They were to receive a dollar and twenty-five cents aday with board if they remained over a week on the job. If not, theywere to receive but one dollar a day for ten hours’ work. The Germanand the Swede were on their way to a railroad camp where work awaitedthem. Because they had no transportation they were compelled to work orbeat their way to their destination. Two of these men had just moneyenough for a meager breakfast. It was a question in their minds whetherto go without the breakfast or a bed. They decided to deny themselvesthe latter. The others were penniless and had to win their breakfastsin some way or continue to starve. They were all comfortably clothed.The Swede’s suit seemed a particularly good one, but in the approachingdaylight it was discovered that, while lying too near the fire, he hadburned out one side of his coat and one trouser leg. Noticing this heremarked, “Well, boys I must sneak out of town unseen, in a hurry, forif the police see me now they will arrest me without question.” Heand others expressed a fear that I also felt all through that awfulnight—the fear of the Memphis police. I decided to postpone my studyof the government works.

A week later I met one of the “pals.” He told me the food down on thegovernment works was good, for coarse food, and there was plenty ofit, but the sleeping accommodations were extremely bad. “I would havestayed,” he said, “although the work was such that I wore out clothesfaster than my wages would replace them, but the water made me ill.Then, too, I saw a man drowned. After that I didn’t care to stay.”

Explaining the tragedy, he said, “You see it was this way. We wereworking with the willows from a barge in the river. The boy lost hisbalance and fell into the stream. The treacherous current instantlyswept him from the barge. He tried to swim back. God! I never saw sucha trial of strength for life. With the strong Indian overstroke, themuscles stood out on his arms and neck like cords of rope, wrought tosuch a tension it seemed as if the slightest blow would have snappedthem like glass. But the look of anguish on his face! If I could onlyforget that! Almost exhausted, and seeing that his efforts to reachthe barge were in vain, he turned to swim down stream and towardthe shore, but a whirlpool caught him. For an instant he raised hiscalloused hands above his head, and then—all was over. No sooner hadhe disappeared than the boss demanded, with a violent oath, ‘Bring onthe willows.’”

"Were there no means of rescue provided for such an emergency?" I askedin horror.

His answer was nothing but the mention of the existence of so much redtape that a boat could not be provided which might possibly have savedthat young man’s life.

The man was so visibly affected while relating the incident that I wasled to inquire the cause. He replied, as he abruptly left me,

“He was our pal that night in the jungles—my pal.”

After hearing of this tragedy, I definitely decided not to go at all tothe government works.

So filled was I with the obvious neglect by the city of Memphis of itstoilers, I decided to tell the people of that city something of theirthoughtlessness towards their homeless and needy workers, for whom theyfailed to provide food and shelter. So I called on the mayor and otherinfluential citizens, telling them of my experiences and appealing tothem to make a Municipal Emergency Home possible. All were in heartysympathy with me. On invitation I met the City Club, an organizationmade up of the progressive business men of the city. Following myappeal to them, a Municipal Emergency Home Committee was appointed.

Leaving Memphis I went on to Birmingham, Alabama, that wonderfullyactive city, which because of its industries calls thousands ofworkingmen annually within its gate. My first effort here for theworker without the dime was to try to get medical treatment. Findingthe dispensary closed at nineA. M., I was told it wasopen only one hour in the day, from twelve to one o’clock. The sameconditions existed here in regard to the private charities as existedin other cities. Late in the afternoon I met a bricklayer, who told mein a casual way that a few weeks before, he had reached Birmingham,broke, and had been taken care of in a “speak easy” near the Louisvilleand Nashville Depot, which is filled with evil men and women. I hadgiven him the impression that I was down and out. “They’ll treat youright there,” he said. “It is the only place I know of. Go there.” Thenhe added, “I’ll bet you’re hungry,” and as he left he offered me aquarter.

Later in the evening, while I stood on a downtown corner, awell-dressed, intelligent-looking man slapped me on the shoulder andsaid,

“Beg pardon. Are you a railroad man?”

“In a way,” I replied.

“Can you direct me to the round-house?”

“No. What is the matter, want a place to sleep?”

“That is just it. Here is my union card. I happened to hit town broke.Don’t know a soul, and don’t know any of the boys. I know I could spendthe night at the round-house, if I could find it.”

Even here the jail denied shelter and the Salvation Army had nothingto offer a penniless man. I felt my going to Birmingham was at anopportune time as the Alabama Federation of Women’s Clubs was inconvention, and a beautiful, gracious lady, their State President,Mrs. Ferris Columan, kindly granted me a hearing. When I left I wasconscious of the fact that I left a thought which would be carried to agreat many of the kind hearts of Alabama.

I went on down to Mobile, then to New Orleans. Wherever I went, allthrough the South, I heard the cry in the night of cruel abuse andneglect of the wage-slave just as I heard it all through the North.I saw the blood drops of the peon, the broken, bruised and laceratedbodies of human beings leased from the prison to the convict camp. Iheard the unceasing cry of woe from stone walls and iron bars, the madshrieks from dungeon cells and torture chambers and the terror-strikingbay of the bloodhound.

While what I have written of will remain an incurable wound, when Icarried the message of progress, of justice and love, a plea for aninstitution for labor, for health, and for brotherly care, into thelabor councils, the progressive Business Men’s Union, composed of threehundred citizens, and the Women’s Clubs (especially the Era Club),the intense interest shown by all of these for the oppressed heraldsan illumined page in history and bespeaks a glorious victory for theSouth.

CHAPTER XXVIII
Houston—The Church and the City’s Sin Against Society

“Do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger.”—Jeremiah,22: 3.

The weather was bright and cold when I reached Texas. As I walkedthe streets of Houston I noticed that the police glanced at mesuspiciously. Several of them, by their looks, seemed to be weighing myworth. After my arrival in this city, from morning until night I walkedits streets in search of work, until compelled by the shadows of thenight to seek a free place to rest.

During all my earnest endeavors that day the only opportunity for workcame from a labor solicitor offering me a dollar a day and board towork ten hours a day in the woods.

“How do they feed you?” I asked.

“As good as in any camp.” (I knew all that meant.)

“What are the sleeping accommodations like?”

“Well, it is a new camp, and, of course, they are not the best.”

“What is the fare to the camp?”

“Five dollars.”

“Do you pay the fare there?”

“No, but we advance it to you and take it out of your pay.”

“Is my pay assured when my work is done?”

“Oh, yes. You will be working for a mighty big corporation of Chicago,worth millions of dollars.”

“But when I reach there I am five dollars in debt to you. Suppose thatI did not want to stay, or that I couldn’t stand the work, or that Imight be taken ill, or that there should be some reasons why I couldnot work, my only bond is my body, what then?”

A Sick and Homeless Boy with His Dog on Guard. He isSleeping on a Bed of Refuse Thrown from a Stable, with an Old Man Lyingnear Him

His face flushed. “I suppose I could run away if I had the strength,” Icontinued, “and if I did, what then?” The already flushed face turnedscarlet.

“My friend,” I said, “for a mere pittance and a subsistence that youcannot recommend, you would make of me and these other destitutelaborers a peon with all the wicked evils of that slavery. Being aworkingman yourself is the only excuse to be given you for filling theposition as solicitor for human lives.”

After several futile efforts to secure work on the following day, Iwas advised by all institutions which stood supposedly to help thedestitute in Houston to the “Star of Hope Mission.” It was afterten o’clock when I arrived there and as I entered I noticed severalexceedingly well-groomed, well-dressed and well-fed men who looked asthough they were getting about six square meals a day. Innocent of whothey were and why they were there, I stepped up to an attendant at thedesk, saying, “Would you give a man who is broke a bed?” Absolutelyand purposely ignoring me, the man, in a gloating voice and obtrusivemanner, turned to one of these men in evidence, who proved to be oneWilliam Kessler, Chief of City Detectives, and said, “Here is a man whowants us to give him a free bed.”

Immediately this officer, within “this temple of peace, love and hope,”began one of those brutal, harsh inquisitions for which the policeforces of our nation are well-known and which they seem to think istheir prerogative. Such an illegal examination, brutally conducted,covers the helpless and innocent with the awful shadow of fear fatheredby the suspicion of cruel abuse, and the victims of such gross assault,in their loneliness, beyond all help, are forced to appear guilty ofsomething when they are not.

This “guardian of the peace” of Houston, in a most overbearing mannerasked me:

“Where are you from?”

“From New York,” I replied.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I work,” was my answer.

“What kind of work do you do?”

“I do any kind of work I can get to do to make an honest living,” Ianswered.

At this point of our conversation I turned my back to leave him, whenhe loudly called to a subordinate and said,

“Arrest that man.”

Instantly a rough hand was upon my shoulder. I demanded of the man,“Why do you arrest me? I have done no wrong.” But my appeal for releasewas absolutely ignored.

I resolved not to reveal my identity to anyone, and was taken half ablock down the street, where a patrol wagon was waiting, in which wereseated seven other unfortunate, homeless men like myself. Remember,the patrol wagon was waiting for me a half block away from the “Starof Hope Mission”! Why? Because it was so much more respectable than tohave it waiting for the victims of the Mission in front of its door.

After I had been forced into the wagon, while it passed the brightstreet lamps I studied the faces of my unlucky companions in crime. Allthese young fellows were between the ages of eighteen and thirty-threeand were skilled workers. As I looked upon them I immediatelyrecognized one of them as a young fellow to whom I had spoken thatafternoon while looking for work. He, also, was in the same conditionthat I was in, stranded and homeless. He told me the police, that veryday, ordered him out of town but because of his ill health he wasunable to walk. He also said that he was afraid to risk going into therailroad yards to get a freight, as the police were liable to arresthim, so as the night was very cold, fearing with his poor health thatit might be fatal if he should sleep outdoors, he finally decided to goto the “Star of Hope Mission,” where, as a sick man, instead of beinggiven relief and shelter, he was thrown into prison.

Arriving at the jail, we were immediately searched. While the nightcaptain took my record, I told him that I was there, not because ofhaving committed any crime, or as a political critic, but simply tostudy the conditions of the unemployed in the city; to study thechances of an honest workingman, temporarily out of work and withoutmeans to get the necessaries of life in Houston. Having never heard ofme, the Captain gave me an audible smile of suspicion and ordered methrown into the bull-pen, a dungeon of almost utter darkness.

The docket of the Houston City Jail for the night of November 28,1910, has the names of eight victims of the “Star of Hope Mission,”including myself. They were all run in by the Mission because theywere unfortunate enough to be without a night’s resting-place, andhad appealed to this so-called Christian institution, maintainedsupposedly for the express purpose of sheltering homeless boys and men.

While in jail I interviewed most of my fellow victims, and learned thatnot one of them had ever been in jail before. The torture of theirhumility was clear to me, for while speaking to them, they continuallyreverted to kind parents and a loving home. We were all sitting orlying down on the stone floor, as there was no other accommodation.While all of them were gloomily silent, I remarked:

“Well, cheer up boys, this is not so bad. It might be worse.”

One of them quickly answered, “You’re right, Mister. I hope they won’tlet us out until morning for I have no place to go.”

Then I said, “Supposing we were in a condemned prisoner’s cell and wereto be put to death to-morrow,” and one of them quickly replied, “Iwouldn’t care if we were for I have nothing to live for anyway.”

During this interval of imprisonment a local newspaper man who learnedof my being in the bull-pen, came at once to the dungeon and called me.I sprang to the steel barred door of this Houston hell, into which the“Star of Hope,” aided by the Houston police force, had thrown us, andsaid, “Here. What will you?”

The rays of a dim light revealed my face to the reporter, who askedme, “Are you Edwin A. Brown?” At the same time he pulled out of hispocket a New Orleans newspaper which had published a short time beforea counterfeit presentment. While glancing at the likeness, he remarked,“You are the man all right.” “When did you get into town? We have beenlooking for you for a week.” I replied, “I got into town this morningand into jail this evening.” (The New Orleans paper stated that I wasgoing to Houston.)

“Don’t worry. We’ll have you out of here in a few minutes.”

True to his word I was soon a free man and on my way with thejournalist to the office of the HoustonPost. After the interview,I left for my hotel, where, after the luxury of a refreshing bath, ona soft, snowy bed, I lay down to rest but not to sleep for while mybody rested, my thoughts were back in that wicked cell with those ofmy countrymen who saw no future and to whom life held no meaning. Notuntil the dawn of another glorious Texas day, a symbol of the lightglowing in the great hearts of the good people of Houston and of Texas,did I fall asleep.

The next morning the HoustonPost carried a startling story on thearrest of the victims of the “Star of Hope Mission,” supplemented bythe interview I had given, portraying Houston’s care for its homelessunemployed. The startling exposures made by the Houston press onexisting conditions were followed by my talk before the Conference ofState Charities then in session, and brought forth a volume of articlesin the various local papers, teeming with apologies for the inexcusableconduct of the “Star of Hope Mission” and the police system of thatcity.

CHAPTER XXIX
San Antonio—Whose Very Name is Music

“If mankind showed half as much love to each other as when one dies orgoes away, what a different world this would be.”—Auerbach.

I carried away in memory from San Antonio two pictures,—one of abeautiful, quaint old city, rich in historical lore; a city of wintersunshine, palms and flowers which make it truly “a stranger’s haven”;a picture of welcome and a spirit of kindness even to the homelessunemployed of which I caught glimpses during my brief sojourn in thatcity, though covered by thoughtlessness for their care of them.

The other picture is of the fifty destitute, homeless men I came incontact with during the few days I spent in San Antonio. I found allbut two anxious and looking for work. These two, like many a rich man’sson I know, impressed me that they would die before they would work.They seemed to have lost all self-respect and had no compunction inbegging a meal or a bed. One was a drinker and the other had a madpassion for reading anything and everything, yet even from these Ifrequently heard the expression, “I wish I had a job.”

There are, of course, the regulars, chained by habits of vice, on whomthe police can put their hands at any time. I know them at a moment’sglance. It was not these poor unfortunates I came to San Antonio tostudy, but the itinerant workers who are lured from their dull towns tonew and undeveloped centers of activity, believing work and high wagesawait them.

It was Saturday morning. While strolling down West Commerce Street,I met a young man in overalls, with jumper tucked under one arm. Igreeted him:

“Hello, Jack! Can you tell a fellow where he can find a job?”

He looked at me with a laughing twinkle in his eye and answered, “Ihave nothing like that up my sleeve. I wish I had, and if I could, Iwould share it with you, pal. I am dead broke, too, and,” he continued,“this is my birthday. I am twenty-one to-day. God, but I feel wretchedand dirty! I slept in a freight car last night in the I. & G. N. yardsbut it was a broken rest. The floor was hard and I was as cold as thedevil, and then, too, a fellow can’t sleep much when he is fearful thatat any moment a railroad or a city bull is going to put his hand uponhim.”

I then asked if he had yet breakfasted, and he answered, “No. I havenot eaten since yesterday morning.”

Making a trivial excuse, confessing I possessed a little money, we wentto breakfast. As we sat down I picked up the morning paper, and he saidat once, “Look at the want ads.” The only thing offered that morningwas by a man in the Riverside Building who wanted ten grubbers.

“Let’s look it up,” I said.

“All right,” he replied. “I can grub, and I’ll do anything.”

We left for the place. The man was paying ten dollars an acre to men togrub his land, but the agent believed the work was all done. From themanner of the official in charge we fancied we were not of the rightcolor or kind of men for the work.

As we came out of the Riverside Building the young man said, “I wouldgive a thousand dollars if I had it, for a bath and a shave.”

“Why don’t you go to the public bath?” I asked.

I wish all San Antonio could have seen the look of anticipated pleasureon that boy’s face when he asked eagerly, “Where is it?” and the lookof disappointment which replaced it when I said, “They haven’t anyhere. But,” I said, “you can get a free shave at the barber’s college.”He went there at once and got his shave.

When he came out of the barber’s college, I said, “Let’s go to the Y.M. C. A. They, perhaps, will give us a free bath.”

“Where is that?” he asked. “It is a rich man’s club, isn’t it? I don’tbelieve they want hoboes like us there.”

I answered, “No; it is a ‘Christian institution,’ and they are supposedto stand for just this very thing—to help young men who want to helpthemselves.”

We went to the Y. M. C. A. and when we reached the foot of the stairs Isaid to my companion, “You go up and ask them.”

“No,” he said, “I can’t do it. Why, it cut me even to ask for a freeshave where I knew they wanted me.”

I then said, “Let us go up together.”

Shyly he followed. I approached the attendant at the desk and asked fora free bath. At first he told me decidedly that their baths were formembers only. Then he asked me if I was a member of any organization.I replied I was not, and as I turned to leave he said, “I will make anexception this time, but it is not our custom. Do you want one or two?”

I said, “But one. This young man with me wants it.”

The attendant gave him a towel and the young man went to his bath. Butwe were given to understand, in a decisive manner, that we were notwelcome and not wanted.The bath thus given my companion was the firstgratuity ever granted me, in all my wanderings, by the Y. M. C. A.

The first remark the young man made after coming from the bath was, “Ifeel so good, I think I could go without eating for a week.”

Turning to me abruptly he said, “I tell you, Jack, I can’t beg orsteal, and I’m not going hungry or bedless another day.”

I suggested the Associated Charities. “They might possibly help us.”

“That would be begging, wouldn’t it? Besides, that place is for sickmen, isn’t it? I am not sick. No! I am going into the navy. Let us goover to the Post Office, to the United States Marine Office, and seewhat they have to offer.”

Although he was a young man, a graduate of the grammar school, aperfect type of physical manhood, straight as a poplar, five feeteleven inches in height and weighing a hundred and eighty pounds, hecould not get in, and was referred to Fort Sam Houston for enlistment.As we left he said, “I am going to ask the first soldier I see aboutgoing in. He probably will give me twenty-five cents for a meal andtell me to keep out of the goldarn place.” He continued, though, in adecided manner, “I am going into the army,—not because I want to, butbecause there seems to be no other immediate opportunity offered.”

And so we parted, he to enter the army, I to be left alone with mythoughts.

Two-thirds of our army to-day is made up of boys who are forced intoit. It is the volunteer who makes a good soldier, but these boys arenot volunteers—with them it is compulsory. Monday morning I went tothe army post to see if the boy had done what he said he was going todo. I found him there a soldier, giving three of the best years of hislife for sixteen dollars a month, instead of receiving the privilegeof labor by being temporarily cared for in a Municipal Emergency Homeuntil he could help himself.

And, now, I will portray briefly the story of “The young man with thehoe,” who made his way into southern Texas. He was penniless, and wasarrested on the Frisco line because he was discovered riding a freighttrain. He told me how he was given thirty days in a Texas convict camp,and how they nearly killed him there for being charged with trespassingon the property of the railroad company. I somehow felt that theconvict camp had almost killed the best within him, for he remarked aswe were strolling down the street toward our destination, “I have anice gun on me. I think I will pawn it, because if a fellow has a gunon him and has nothing to eat nor any place to sleep he is liable to dosomething he will be sorry for.” He took his gun into a pawnshop andleft it there for thirty-five cents.

These are but two incidents showing how badly this city needs aMunicipal Emergency Home. There are two-score others that sadden me asI think of them. What a beautiful thing it would be for San Antonio tobe one of the first cities in the South to build a home!

Leaving San Antonio on my way to Dallas, I stopped for a short time inAustin where the Texas Legislature was in session.

During my investigations I have never seen a public notice, in thepress or elsewhere, guiding a destitute person to the AssociatedCharities or publicly offering aid, until I came to Austin. Here I sawjust one such notice. It was not at the depot nor at any employmentoffice nor at the emergency hospital, nor at the prison door. It wasplastered up in the office of a first-class hotel which at that timewas headquarters for the assembled lawmakers of the State of Texas.Well, perhaps, that body of estimable gentlemen did need a littlecharity.

The spirit of power, energy and enterprise has been breathed into thecity of Dallas, with all its youth, strength and progress. There is notan old-fashioned thing about her. She fairly flows with the present.The things most in evidence in this city are new thoughts, new ways,new things. Realizing the spirit of the era, her badge of honor, herinsignia should be “Just Now,” covering two meanings.Just (in thespirit of justice) “disposed to render to each man his due”;Now, “inthe least possible time.”

When I told the people of Dallas that their beautiful public libraryof fifteen thousand volumes could afford to have on file for publicuse only one daily paper and that I had seen a dozen men and boyswaiting their turn to read the “want ads”; that the Salvation Armyhad turned many back into the street because they had no money; thata private employment office was robbing men and boys; that I hadfound a sixteen-year-old, starving boy in the city forced to beg orsteal, who declared that the Associated Charities of New York hadshipped seventeen of them from the Orphan Asylums through to Dallasand turned them adrift in the western country and that the SalvationArmy absolutely refused to give them aid; of a mother with five littlechildren, one a babe in arms, who spent thirty-six hours in a vacant,old storeroom which was absolutely barren, while the husband lookedfor work; of the suffering of the many toilers in Dallas walking thestreets all night, seeking shelter under death-dealing conditions, andthat none of these seemed to know that there was in existence sucha thing as organized charity in Dallas, and that many of them, evenhad they known it, would have taken the chances of starvation ratherthan to have asked alms, no matter how kindly disposed Dallas charityorganizations might be toward them,—they listened with deep interest.

Houston, San Antonio and Dallas received my counsel, not in thespirit of criticism, but as a message holding a great truth, amessage containing facts which must be regarded in acts that willreward themselves twofold in the still newer Houston, San Antonioand Dallas,—cities which every day are stirring into new industrialactivity the northern hills of the “Lone Star” State.

CHAPTER XXX
Milwaukee—Will the Philosophy of Socialism End Poverty?

“Politics rests on necessary foundations, and cannot be treated with levity.”—Emerson.

Following Christmas day, December 26, 1911, just at the beginning ofthe most bitterly cold winter weather our country had known for a greatmany years, I went to Milwaukee. The city was in the last few monthsof a Socialist Administration. I wanted to see what it meant to theworking classes and especially to that class I was deeply interestedin,— the homeless workingman, and at times the destitute, homelessworkingman. There were three of our important cities, which, because oftheir national prominence in social progress, I felt would add a climaxto my investigations: “Socialist” Milwaukee; “The Golden Rule” City ofToledo; and “Spotless” Detroit.

It was twenty degrees below zero when I arrived at Milwaukee and thisextremely cold weather heralded the speedy gathering of the ice crop.In this city there were four thousand unemployed homeless men, fullyone-fourth of them destitute, begging, thieving, sleeping on the floorsof the cheaper saloons, seeking all of those available places thatwould possibly keep aflame the spark of life, in addition to thosefinding shelter in the Milwaukee Rescue Mission.

In three days the ice crop was made and in four days’ time thirty-fivehundred of these men were on the ice. The five hundred who did not gowere too old, physically weak, or had not sufficient clothing. Many ofthose who did go, in the condition they were in, froze their faces,ears, hands and feet and from exposure were forced into the hospitalsand some into their graves. The wages paid by the ice company was adollar and seventy-five cents per day, from which the worker paid fivedollars per week for board. It is not necessary to refer again to thedays of work. For many reasons, the laborer is forced to lose timeduring the week,—yet the board must be paid.

The weather continued extremely cold for many weeks. I found theMilwaukee Rescue Mission incomplete and inadequate. In this bittercold I was denied admission to the institution by reason of its beingovercrowded, and, also, because its doors were locked at ten-thirtyP. M.

Late one afternoon I entered its waiting-room, a long narrow room,near the entrance. It was filled to suffocation with homeless men. I,with many others, was denied the privilege of working for shelter andfood. Too many had already applied. I was not to be denied a bountifulfive- or ten-cent meal providing I had the price. I heard an old man ofsixty-five abused and denied a second cup of coffee. Divine worship,however, was free and while I waited in the packed room for that hour Iread these inscriptions on the wall:

“Any man caught in the Act, will have cause to wish he hadn’t done it.”

“Even a moderate drinker will be denied lodging.”

“Whenever you smoke a cigarette, you may say, ‘Nearer my God to Thee.’”

“Keep your I’s on the spotter for he is watching you.”

Smoking was absolutely forbidden, yet no smoking-room provided.

Spitting on the floor was breaking a castiron rule, yet not a cuspidorwas provided for that use.

The hour for worship came and on the instant the lights were suddenlyturned out. As we stumbled over the benches and chairs, as well as overone another trying to get out, a man told us emphatically “to go in toworship [in a very large audience room, which had stood empty while wewere packed in the small one] or get out.” The religion or the mode ofworship of many of these men was not after their way, but that madeno difference. As the thermometer registered twenty-two degrees belowzero that night, it was not a very comfortable experience for thehalf-clothed men who were forced to walk the streets in search of othershelter.

I followed them out to see where they went, and just as I was leaving Irecalled the last motto I had read before the darkness was forced uponus:

“No law but love, no creed but Christ.”

Most of the men who sought other shelter went to the saloons and bythe big red-hot stoves kept from perishing. Others went to the tramwaystation or the depots, or the offices of the cheap lodging houses.

In one of the Milwaukee daily papers January 2, 1912, I read: “Thefirst man to be sent to the house of correction this year was JohnL—--, sentenced in the District Court yesterday to a term of ninetydays. He was begging on Grand Avenue, Sunday night.”

The spirit shown in the Milwaukee Rescue Mission, as revealed to me,was not Christian. The heart of the superintendent of this institutionmay be in the right place—I did not meet the gentleman—but the heartsof his subordinates (at least those I came in contact with), and thespirit of the institution were not. I heard men in the Police Court ofMilwaukee beg of the Judge to be sent to the House of Correction as arelief from suffering during the bitter cold winter.

This, my exposition of the condition of the unemployed homeless ofMilwaukee, should not be regarded as a criticism on Socialism,although the latter failed in its care and treatment of theirunemployed. There are many excuses to offer. An old, rotten politicaland social system, four thousand years old, could not be reconstructedin a moment’s time. Bound by City and State Charters and a nettedtangle of City and State laws, it was impossible for the administrationto carry out the fundamental principles of Socialism. That briefSocialist administration was more one of theory than of practicalinterest, although the Fire and Police Departments were not out ofcontrol of the administration except in matters of salary. The goodintent of the policies of the administration are reflected in manypermissive bills which went to the Legislature, in most cases toremain. Among them are bills providing for:

Men dealing in ice;

Unequivocal right to construct Municipal Lodging Houses and Tenements;

Public Comfort Stations;

An act through to build parks.

A municipal lighting plant was planned at this time and municipalmarkets. The unified press was against this administration, whichtaking all in all, it would not be fair to regard as a comprehensiveexample of Socialism, though I may well add that during it taxes werenot raised. At that time Milwaukee had the lowest tax rate of any largeAmerican city.

CHAPTER XXXI
Toledo—The “Golden Rule” City

“One of the common people (as Lincoln once humorously said) God must have loved because he made so many.”—Brand Whitlock.

Among the things that I found in the “Golden Rule City” of Toledo werethese:

Four National banks, fourteen State banks, savings banks and trustcompanies, whose combined resources were over sixty millions.

A splendid McKinley Monument built by popular subscription which wascompleted in one day.

A three hundred and fifty thousand dollar Y. M. C. A.

A two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollar Y. W. C. A.

A one hundred thousand dollar Newsboys’ Building. (How essential is theconservation of the Newsboy! When he is no longer small enough to be anewsboy and must do the work of an able-bodied man, what then?)

A four hundred thousand dollar Marble Art Museum. (The cost given doesnot include the value of the collection.)

Finest Municipal golf course in the world.

A Municipal Zoölogical Garden which is a wonder, the animals beinghoused, fed and sheltered at great cost.

Toledo has also an old ramshackle of a building, which ought to becondemned, called again by that pretty name which has become so popularwith federated charities, “The Wayfarer’s Lodge.” I made one attempt tostop there but it was closed. Its closing hour was eight-thirty P. M.But I caught its spirit, which was a little worse than the MilwaukeeRescue Mission to the homeless man, when I was politely, or ratherimpolitely, given to understand that in that most bitter cold weathereven, I was not welcome to warm myself by the old stove. I was told bya starving boy that the food given for one and a half or two hours’work was the usual three different concoctions of water, and to lookat the old inadequate den from the exterior was enough. This wretchedplace accommodates only fifty men, when every night during that bitterwinter there were from three to five hundred on the streets of Toledowho had no place to lay their heads.

Just across the Maumee river, in East Toledo, is an old frame policestation where I found a hundred and twenty-five men trying to sleepnightly on the floor. A little way from there, fifty were sleeping onthe floor of a Mission, with newspapers for beds. Each lodger was taxedfive cents for that privilege.

In this “Golden Rule City,” I found many men who had served time inthe jails for the crime of poverty. I was told by a citizen at thetime of my visit that three hundred men from one of their prisons werecompelled to put up ice for the city of Toledo, receiving no recompensefor their work but a cell and prison fare,—slavery more damnable thanever cursed the South. These were then pushed out on to the world againto become mendicants and criminals. Facts calling for prison reform astold in romances carry a great weight for good, but enforced reform iswhat is demanded of us to-day. Let us not be slow to act.

I have told of the many things I found in “The Golden Rule City ofOpportunities.” Let me tell of a few things I didnot find,—thingswhich might give an opportunity to those who come and are willing andmust work:

• Municipal Emergency Home.
• Emergency Hospital.
• Convalescent Hospital.
• Public Bath.
• Municipal Laundry.
• Municipal work for the unemployed at standard wages.
• Public Lavatories.
• Public Comfort Stations.

It may not be the fault of the progressive people of Toledo that theyhave not these beatitudes. Like Milwaukee, they too may be bound by aknotty web of State and City laws, which must be overcome before thepeople can really testify in action to what they really profess.

CHAPTER XXXII
Spotless Detroit

“How many things shudder beneath the mighty breath of night.”—Hugo.

In the midst of the desperate winter of 1911 and ’12 I passed a weekamong the homeless of Detroit. During my brief stay, there appeared inone of the daily papers the following notice, and a number of similarones:

“Charles Heague, thirty-six, no home, was picked up in the street aftermidnight by Patrolmen Wagner and Coats. Both hands were frozen.”

As in other cities, during the five long months of winter there is inDetroit a vast army of out-of-work, homeless, starving men.

Detroit has many benevolent and charitable institutions, which, nodoubt, are doing a great deal of good. But the ones I came in contactwith were imperfect and do not serve their purpose. The McGregorMission, which shelters thousands of homeless men annually, is one ofthe best, if not the best, in our nation. The spirit of kindness inevidence was remarkable with but few exceptions, of which the mostimportant was that its doors were closed at tenP. M. Also Isaw twenty men and boys, early one Sunday morning, driven out of thisMission when the mercury was far below zero, and not allowed to returnfor two hours. Being Sunday, the saloons and other places of business,as well as the other Missions, were closed. These half-clad men wereforced to remain on the streets. Their suffering was pitiful.

The McGregor Mission was decidedly inadequate for the vast army ofhomeless workers in Detroit at that time. Here, also, men were seekingevery available place to sleep and many, for doing so, were thrustinto jail. The most noticeable feature of the incompleteness of thisinstitution was the lack of a department for women.

One of the most startling examples of maladjustment in Detroit was theMichigan Free Employment Bureau, located in an old decaying building,with window lights broken out of both door and window-sash. The floorbeing much below the level of the ground, each comer carried in thesnow and filth, which soon melted into an icy slush. Think of it! Twohundred homeless men, willing to work for a mere pittance, for anexistence, crowded into a congested room—which did not hold nearly allof the applicants—many of them with broken shoes and sockless feetstanding in ice water for hours while they waited and hoped!

As a contrast to this object lesson, let me relate another. Thefollowing Sunday afternoon I mingled with an audience of two thousandpeople listening to a religious agitator who declared hemust raisefour thousand dollars at once for a Mission,—a Mission which after aservice of song and prayer let starving, homeless men freeze to deathon the street!

In thirty minutes he raised thirty-five hundred dollars. On anotherafternoon a man, with pathetic words and appealing pictures, wassoliciting money for the lepers in India. To my question, “Are notthese unfortunates subjects of the British Crown, and being so arethere no appropriations made for their care by the English government?”the speaker answered, “Yes; but so little, it is very inefficient.”It was then brought to his mind that Great Britain had recently spentseveral million pounds to crown a king and that this being the case,was it not rather inconsistent of them to ask people of other nationsto help care for their sick? To which the gentleman could only reply bysuggesting a harmony of opinion!

One of Detroit’s daily papers misquoted me by saying: “I found scoresof mental defectives among the homeless workers roaming the streets ofDetroit.” Only two actually came under my notice who could properly beclassed as mentally unbalanced. But after all I had seen, I fell towondering if there were not a slight degree of mental deficiency in theminds of those who contribute to visionary institutions—which mayperhaps have their good qualities—and to foreign lands, while at ourvery door, day after day, we hear the cry of the suffering, toilingAmerican citizens who need our gifts.

With my visit to “Spotless” Detroit, my wanderings ceased. To-day Isit in my own home. In the closet of my study hangs a suit of wornoutjeans. A pair of coarse, badly-worn shoes lie on the floor. On a hookhangs a tattered hat which I may never wear again. These things holdfor me a thousand sermons and a philosophy which if it could but berevealed would be as deep and beautiful as any that has ever beenspoken. My arduous trials are over, but my work is not done. As longas an opportunity presents itself, as long as the breath of life iswithin me, I shall lift my voice in behalf of the oppressed, and ourcry against laws and customs that decree damnation, against hells andinfluences which block progress toward a divine destiny, until ourbeloved Stars and Stripes, the emblem of liberty, peace and justice,which by greed, lust of gold and false ambitions have been so cruellyand pitilessly destroyed, shall speak again of union,—of union in ourStates, in the brotherhood of man, in the golden rule of Christ, in thelove of God.

CHAPTER XXXIII
CONCLUSION

“The greatest city is that which has the greatest men and women. If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the world.”—Walt Whitman.

As I put aside my pen in this my appeal for the Wandering Citizen,I see on my study table many letters, filled with questions. Thefollowing are the most frequently asked:

“Is not drink the principal cause of destitution?”

“Is the American police system brutal toward the homeless out-of-workman?”

“What of the impostor at the Municipal Emergency Home?”

Drink is not the primal cause of poverty. The first and all-importantcause is industrial conditions. But the traffic in alcohol is the mostpowerful ally of our plutocratic industrial system—in perpetuatingpoverty.

Despondent men drink for relief from self-consciousness, starving menfor stimulation, while circumstances, fate, or the vicissitudes oflife prompt many to resort to drink.

The man who works ten hours a day on a meager midday lunch of breadand cheese, must drink to beat out the day, and when the day is done,do you wonder that he seeks a stimulant? The comfortable, well-to-do,honest middle class drink but little, and if at all, very moderately.The world’s main consumers of alcohol are—the very poor forforgetfulness, the idle rich for pleasure. Broken hearts are found bothin the palace and hovel.

The saloon, that dissolvent of self-respect, character and chastity,mocking the intelligence of every community, leaving its trace andputting a brand of shame upon this our boasted enlightened era, wemay not believe in as an institution. And yet, this same saloon isa refuge meaning as much to the wandering, homeless wage-earner, asdid, in the old days, the shelter of the good monks to the storm-lostwanderer of the Alps, and until each city is honorable enough to giveto the homeless poor man something in place of the saloon, it certainlyought not to be mean enough to take from him that agent of life-savingsustenance. One of the most brilliant newspaper writers that I met inmy crusade told me that while down-and-out in Portland, Oregon, helived for one week on what he snatched from the free lunch counter. Inmany places they have forced from the saloon the free lunch, the restchairs, the tables and papers. They demand that they close at midnightor earlier, and all day Sunday. Take notice, where they are doing this,they are not opening their churches very fast as a substitute, and evenif they did, there is very little to sustain life in a plaster-of-parisimage or a stained-glass window.

The saloon, with its shelter, its warmth, and its free lunch, savingthe life of the half-clad perishing man, holds a very strong argumentfor its existence. If the mayor of a city has not the power to createand provide clean, wholesome, public benefits for the wage-earner intime of need (who has a civic right), we should certainlydemand thatthe saloon keeper beforced to serve free lunch, and keep his dooropen three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and twenty-fourhours every day, for it is a degree more respectable to sleep in asaloon than in a jail. The first saloon keeper to throw a manout,should be the first to be thrownout of business. Keep the saloonsuntil every city is honorable and humane enough in its strife for civicbeauty to create public privileges, adequate Municipal Emergency Homes,public drinking fountains and comfort stations. Then, with a clearconscience, we may legislate the enormous profit off of the impureconcoctions, and when this is done, the dragon will have been given atleast one effectual blow.

“Waiting to Crawl into a Cellar for a Free Bed, Unfed,Unwashed—Fully Clothed They Spend the Night on Board Bunks, Crowded inLike Animals”

“Is the American police system brutal toward the out-of-work man?”

The declaration of the radical Agnostic street speaker, that therewas only one miracle he believed in, and that was “that St. Patrickdrove all the snakes and toads out of Ireland, and that they came toAmerica, got into politics and on to the police force,” is an unjustdogma, for in my observation every nationality represented on thepolice force is of the same character in administering the officialduty and in taking advantage of the trust put in them where they aremade a political adjunct to a municipality.

The policeman is the same as other men. He is a workingman, and likeall men, he loves, he hates, he has his home, his social and businessinterests. He is of the community and should stand for the welfare ofthat community, and should never be allowed to divorce himself from thetrust placed upon him by the common rights of all the people.

What greater examples of the virtues of character can we find anywherethan in the police? Their courage is noticeable. They will nothesitate to rush into danger, into fire, riot, water, to save livesand property. And over this character of courage is ever present theelement of kindness toward the little child, the old and infirm, andoften of the proffered dime to the homeless man. And yet he is anIshmaelite—“his hand is against every man, and every man’s hand isagainst him,” which is a destructive condition.

ThePolice System taken as a whole throughout our country isextremely brutal toward the out-of-work, homeless man. There arebut few exceptions. This is largely because when a man is chosen forthat position, for political reasons, he pledges himself, not somuch to keep the peace and the law of the community, as to enforcethe law of the political machine and vice trust of that city. And ifthe helpless, homeless man, defenseless because of poverty, is notshot or clubbed to death (which makes a perquisite for the coroner),he is often railroaded, by the testimony of one policeman, into thecounty jail where it costs five cents a day to keep him, while thesheriff and chief of police will receive of the tax-payers’ moneythirty cents a day for his care. The capacity of these jails is fromone to two hundred souls. So it can be plainly seen that it is muchto the interests of these officeholders to keep them filled. Theremedy? Simply divorce at once the police departments from politics,and under civil service examination, put intelligent, qualified menon the force. This is not only to serve honestly the community butyour fellow citizen, the policeman, as well. It is not serving viciousprivate interests, which grant to the police a license to be dishonest,to shoot down or club to death homeless men on the street—which notinfrequently results in the finding of policemen shot to death invicious retaliation, supposedly always by a criminal. Then abuse willcease. As an example, I know of no better policed city than Boston.Study these men closely. Their spirit is kindliness. Though they maybe armed as a protection from the drink-crazed, there is no evidenceof gun or club. They are not seen drinking in the saloons. They donot meet you with rum-befouled breaths as in most cities, but with awelcoming face and a clear eye. Here the unfortunate is given kindlyconsideration. In return, the Boston public seems to co-operate inhelping the police. The secret of this valued quality of the police ofBoston lies in the fact that the police are indirectly appointed bythe Governor of the State,—that is, the Governor appoints the PoliceCommissioner, and he in turn chooses his officers,after they havepassed a satisfactory civil service examination at the State House.Such police officials should not receive the sobriquet of “bull” or“cop,” but that of “officer” and “gentleman.”

The American citizen who chances to be a police officer is not brutalby choice, but by command of the system which forces him to be brutal.In municipalities where police brutality is their shame, the changecan only come through the elector and the tax-payer. A well regulatedcity is one founded on the human rights of all the people, and a wellregulated police is the strong right arm of a good city government.

“What of the impostor at the Municipal Emergency Home?”

Study teaches us that the out-of-work men who are so from choice,those that are mentally and physically normal, among the migratoryworkers, are exceedingly rare. If we hesitate at a Municipal EmergencyHome and let ninety worthy men suffer or perish because ten out ofthe hundred are unworthy, why not close our public libraries, ourhospitals, our parks, in fact, every public benevolence, lest someunworthy ones creep in?

We strive to weed out the impostor in many communities by throwingall idle men in prison, and when they cannot be used as a graft, andbecome an expense, or the awakened humane spirit of the city demandsthat they shall no longer commit this outrage, they are often runout of town. Or, after they have been humiliated by arrest, they arehauled in the police wagons to the outskirts of the city with a prisonthreat not to return, and turned destitute onto the next community.But this clearance test will not stand the light of constitutionalliberty. Though our missions and churches are filled with many grandgood people, the crucial treatment of the wage-earner is the underlyingreason for the crumbling of our Christian faith. The Carpenter ofNazareth never questioned the man in need who came to learn of Him. Toheal him, that was the predominant thought of His mind.

Are we, all of us, quite sure that we have not, during some period ofour lives, appeared true and genuine when false? Let us not forgetthat the highest conception of a citizen of a Christian city is notwhat a man was yesterday, but what he is to-day, and what he is goingto be to-morrow, and what we are going to help him to be.

There is an eternal law that what is good and true for us individuallyis good and true for us collectively. Let us be self-reliant. To takethe attitude that historydoes andmust repeat itself is theattitude of cowards.

“The reason of idleness and crime is the deferring of our hopes; whilstwe are waiting we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eatingand with crime.” This was Rome under the rule of its monarchicalaristocracy of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Centuries. Under thisaristocracy, greed for position, fame, and avarice for great wealth,was unparalleled.

To satisfy this greed, they built great monuments. They drew upon theentire country for labor to achieve their selfish aim and end. They notonly lured the country’s populace by pomp and glittering gayety, butbig business controlled the land for speculation and selfish pleasure,forcing the people into urban centers. Even the smaller cities builtamphitheaters and “civic centers” larger than the population. Thenthe gluttons of big business discovered that basilicas, monuments forsupposedly great men, triumphal arches, marvelous fountains and templesof myth were a poor relief for the oppressed wageearner. When toolate, they reluctantly offered their watered charity in free baths,free coffee and free soup, but the decadence of the grandeur of theeternal city had already begun. The working wage slave of the ancientRomans, so marvelously clever in his many crafts, was looked upon asbeing but little better than the animal which hauled the stone. Therewas no recognition of equality between the classes, nor consequentlyequal sharing of profits of production, or the creation of any publicgovernment institutions as a privilege of labor by the right oftoil, to care for the bodily needs of the normal and healthy man whomight need such an institution. The monarchical aristocracy of theRoman Empire did not believe in those things. But our political andindustrial interests in this country are awakening to the fact thatthe foundation of all business is food, shelter and clothing, and thatthe honest demands of the people for the essentials of life shall bemet and honestly distributed. They are recognizing that a reserve ofunemployed labor is necessary to the progress of our industries and thepromotion of our civilization, and the necessity of conserving thatunemployed force.

We recognize that we are builders and that we are going to have a greatname—not of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Century, but of this, theTwentieth Century,our century,—that we have already conquered seaand sky, and have put the “girdle ’round the earth in forty minutes.”

But every marvelous achievement, every boasted cry of liberty to makeus free, will never make us great, until we learn that our ruling powermust be God’s law of right and love.

CHAPTER XXXIV
Visions

“Where there is no vision the people perish.” —Proverbs, 29:18.

During my social study I was asked by the president of a Charity Boardto become an employee of the city Board of Charity and Corrections in aWestern city. The Board consisted of three members. The president wasa young Presbyterian minister who was just beginning to catch, throughthe mist of tradition, the light of new things. The other two membersof the Board were women, one the daughter of a corporation lawyer, ayoung lady of large, kind heart, who for some time was connected withthe United Charities of Chicago and who seemed to believe in theirancient system of charity in meeting the problem of destitution. Theother was an estimable Jewish lady who had some decided opinions inregard to comfortable jails for honest, homeless, shelterless womenand girls. Considering the services of these estimable people on theBoard, gratuitous criticism would be unfair and much praise isdue them for their conscientious work and the initiative taken in manyeffectual reforms which to them will be a lasting monument.

After six weeks’ service I was found fault with by the Board, but theonly charge against me was that I was avisionist. It was rathersingular though that this charge should come on the day following myvisit to the County Poor Farm, the story of that visit being told inone of the local papers the following day. I could not deny that I wasnot guilty, for the press had exposed me, not only as a visionist whosaw things, but as one who told things. In fact I had been seeing andtelling things for six weeks. There seemed to be “the rub.” I wasnota politician.

And so I was dismissed “broke” as far as the city Charity Board wasconcerned, as a very pleasing vision I failed to see was my six weeks’salary. But this can readily be accounted for as the city at thiswriting was “broke” and I was forced to be content with a postponement.With me, to meet postponement gracefully had become a virtue, for I hadlong since learned to postpone such a non-consequential thing as a meala good many times, but I think I never missed any.

Ah, the visions of that six weeks, I can assure you, were not visionsof angels ascending and descending ladders! The first was that of anold rookery building, with a ten cent tin sign on which was written“City Board of Charities,” directly opposite the city jail,where all day long, and all night long, men and women either directlyor indirectly, for the crime of poverty, were being forced behind itsiron bars, and walls of stone.

It was obvious that the first thought of both beggar and criminal,or the supposed criminal forced to come that way, was charity andcorrection, one at the door of the alms station and the other at thedoor of the police station. But he who has been shoulder to shoulderwith the victims of these two municipal institutions and has readthrough the pleading, parched lips and tear-stained faces of thevictims of both these places, has learned an immutable lesson and cannot refrain from crying out for a better and a greater social life.One who observes will quickly see throughout our nation how closelyallied—in all their phases—are Charity and Prisons andMissions. While the church is lifting one thousand out of the gutter,society, by a destructive social system and evil influences, is pushingten thousand in. Charity keeps many from actually starving to death,yet the ever-increasing number of our needy is even “greater than mancan number.” What is the price we pay?

My practical work with this board was that of investigator, that is, Iwas sent out to see if the applicant for aid were really worthy, to seethat the Charity Board was not being robbed by dishonest mendicants.Charity organizations seemed to be not so much concerned withthe relief of the helpless as with protecting the well-to-do fromimposition on the part of those who claim they are in distress. I wasgiven approximately eighty questions to ask. I was expected to followup these questions—many of them questions of reference—forthe purpose of ascertaining whether the applicants for aid were reallytelling the truth. I rebelled a little at first at the thought ofconducting this third degree inquisition. It was even repulsive for meto enter the door of the humblest home and state I was from the CharityBoard. I would so much rather have said that I was from the cityDepartment of Public Service for Labor.

From my first day, however, I continued to see visions,—notvisions of great numbers, not of saints, but of thousands ofworkingmen’s vacant homes, deserted for lack of work due to theinability of these workingmen to earn a living. I saw the truth mostforcibly revealed that again the foundation of all business was acomfortable existence and an opportunity to earn those comforts and theright of existence by labor, and that people must have that privilegeor be forced to go where itcan be had. I saw many of those whoremained struggling to tide themselves over, hoping for a better day.Many were helpless for lack of means to get away, and had thereforebecome dependents of the State and city.

I saw nearly all of our attempted factories in ruins, andfour thousand workingmen driven from the city by the smelter trust;and then came again the glowing vision of sixty million pounds ofwool, and an enormous production of cotton, grown annually in a radiusof five hundred miles around our very doors. This raw material wasbeing shipped two thousand miles to be worked into the most essentialcommodities. Every day we were walking over the finest glass sandin the world, yet we were denied the benefit of that most needfuland profitable industry. I knew we dwelt in the heart of the leatherproducing district of the nation and yet no shoe factories. These arebut a few of the raw materials in the region of the Rocky MountainWestern States. One who has made a study of industrial economicsknows too well why the State of Colorado has (to speak comparatively)but seven people to the square mile. He well knows one reason to bethe protective associations which protectbig business instead ofprotecting the people,—forever crying down co-operative industrywhich is for the good of all.

In the homes of these asking alms which I visited, I saw the fearfuldestroying effect on character of the wolf as he peered throughbroken pane, and the cracks and crannies of door and wall. I saw thehumiliating tears and flushed faces of those who for the first timewere forced to beg. It was exactly like those of my associates who forthe first time had been thrust into prison. It needed but aglance to tell me whether they had received “charity” before, for thereis always the spirit of being hardened to the “disgrace,” just as thereis in the manner in which the prisoner treats the situation if he haspreviously “done time.”

Little children it is said will tell the truth when men and women lie.I saw the father and mother, with the hope of making an impressiveplea, lest they fail to obtain the needed food and fuel, prevaricatein replying to my many questions, or perhaps remain non-committal,but often the little child at hand, conscious of the practiced deceitof the parent, would speak the truth. Then would follow the austerelook of reproof from the parent or a sudden banishing from the room.The cheerless house, the starving home was sowing the seed of crime.I was a destroying angel. I was blackmailing my helpless victims intodishonesty just as the plain-clothes man or uniformed police blackmailthe poor white slave of the Red-light District and the homeless,out-of-work man of the street.

In my daily investigations I saw the dipsomaniac pleading for help,yet this city offered no asylum for such as he except the city andcounty jail. I saw the poor tubercular victim clinging to the threadof life, dying from malnutrition, who, perhaps, could have gainedhis health under different circumstances. I saw hundreds of strong,hardy men demanding, by the divine right of living, the necessitiesof life. I saw the mother suffering from privation, who sawno future, and was without hope, whose soul and body throbbed withthe life of the unborn babe, whose demand was greater than the singlelife of man,—the demand for the divine right of motherhood. Andagain I saw a vision,—a general view of the private and publicinstitutions, both benevolent and correctional, which were in the cityand which were crowded to overflowing because of poverty. Then came myfatal vision,—my visit to the Poor Farm.

The greatest city of the State is usually the fountain head, the outputcamp for the entire State. When the unfortunate become homeless,helpless and needy, they drift to the capital. The burden of theindigent of the entire State is thus put upon that particular cityand county. I saw a great number turned away from the Poor House doorbecause of its already congested condition, who were then obliged toexploit the community in other ways for the right of existence. I sawin the tubercular ward twenty-five men in all stages of the disease,and yet,not one a native of the State. Some had been in the Stateonly three weeks. They represented every part of our country. There wasabsolutely no provision made by this city, county, or State for theindigent, tubercular woman or girl. I had already heard continually inthe homes of the needy the appealing cry of the poor who suffer andwait, hoping against hope for life and health, asking in one mighty,smothered sob for a National Tubercular Sanitarium, aninstitution which every State west of the Mississippi River should have.

In the blind ward of this traditional place for those who have missedtheir aim (pioneers many of them, who hewed the logs and held the plowand blazed the trails from ’59 to ’85), I saw twenty blind, thirteenof whom were rendered blind by mine accidents, looking forward inthe darkness, ever in the darkness, for a home that has not thestigma of charity, the infamy of a Poor House. Looking forward forthe home which is theirs by inheritance, andevery one a native ofthe State to which Winfield Scott Stratton, the multi-millionairemining-man and philanthropist, leftten million dollars to build andsupport ten years ago! He left it in the hands of three exceedinglywealthy trusted friends to carry out his wishes who dwell and livein palaces amidst beautiful surroundings, and as yet no home hasbeen built, and meanwhile the burying-ground of that final retreat,the Poor House, becomes ever increasingly dotted with the new-madegraves. Monies belonging to these helpless, pioneer citizens whoearned it by the right of enduring hardships and toil, moneybelonging to the hard-working people of the State, and to men stillin the harness, this money is denied while the people at large areoverburdened with taxation for the support of monarchical, handed-downinstitutions,—a burden from which they can get no relief. Thisvision of truth thrown upon the canvas of progress andhumanity is forcibly applicable to every Western State, in its appealfor an intelligent and humane conservation of its citizens and mostparticularly the wage-earning citizen. And although these few pages canonly hint at the truth revealed, they speak for National governmentalaction in placing our people on the lands and the erection of nationalinstitutions for our sufferers of the white plague. For co-operativeindustries of equity by and for the people; for governmental ownershipof all public utilities and State institutions for our unfortunate,looking toward the dawn of that glad, new day the light which isbeginning to glow through the press of this country. In Denver andmany of the other Western cities there is a movement for a better anda greater West. Already in the new vision for the State of Coloradothey have taken the citizen from behind stone walls and iron bars. Thecities are creating municipal labor for the temporarily out-of-workman, which hand in hand with Municipal Emergency Homes is just to tideover the rough place. Imperfect and incomplete as its experimentalbeginning may be, who can deny the awakening of a perfect aim toward aperfect end? There is no wall of prejudice or selfishness, of ambitionor unnatural greed, which can be built that will overcome thesearguments. These needs must be met and shall be. No government canstand that is not founded on God’s governing laws of humanity.

APPENDIX
Municipal Emergency Homes vs. Charitable LodgingHouses

In the hope that the story contained in these pages shall not havebeen recorded in vain, the author begs to offer a few suggestions inregard to Municipal Emergency Homes. Unless rightly built and rightlyconducted they may prove worse than useless. That the need is greatnone can deny, and the institution should be strictly for the purposeof filling that need. The suggestions contained in the followingparagraphs may solve some of the perplexities which confront the citywishing to build an institution such as the situation demands.

THE FIRST STEP.

In every State of the Union, the Legislature should pass a billgiving cities the right, under home rule, to erect and maintain aMunicipal Emergency Home. Every city ought to pass an ordinance for thecreation and maintenance of such Municipal Emergency Homes, and thebudget of the city should contain an appropriation for itsmaintenance, based on the same reasons on which the appropriation isgranted for running the Health Department, Police Department, or anyother Department of the Municipal Government.

The ordinance to be passed by the city council ought to create anddevelop a system that will give protection and opportunity to everyhonest wandering citizen while sojourning, in search of work, in thecommunity.

In the cities of New York and Boston, an appropriation is made fromthe public treasury for the care and maintenance of their MunicipalEmergency Homes. In Chicago a special budget is created and added tothe appropriation of the Police Department. It should properly havebeen added to the Health Department.

THINGS TO AVOID.

A Municipal Emergency Home should not be designed to be a money-makinginstitution, but merely to provide shelter and food for men and womenwho appeartemporarily destitute. If it should appear that thosedemanding shelter in the Municipal Emergency Home should be afflictedwith any physical illness, it should be the duty of its superintendentto transfer such individuals to a hospital ward, which may be a partof the Municipal Emergency Home, or to the city or county hospitalwhere each man or woman may be thoroughly cured of any illnesswhich has put them into destitute circumstances or is unfitting them toperform any kind of labor to make existence possible. The mind of thecommunity is being educated to see that the adjustment of individualsto a suitable environment must be quickly but scientifically attempted.If unfit they must, if possible, be made fit. The idea seems to bedawning that permanent unfitness must be met with permanent adjustment.

A PROTECTION TO SOCIETY.

For the present, the Municipal Emergency Home stands, or rathershould stand, on the one hand as a link in the chain of governmentalinstitutions, not only as a public policy and agency which supportsthe individual who either fails in life or is compelled to be one inthe ranks of destitute men because of economic conditions, but as aninstitution wherein one may receive temporary relief under the rightsof citizenship. On the other hand, it should stand for the protectionof society from the degradations, annoyances and misdemeanors ofthe individual who would thus be a burden upon his fellows and uponsociety as a whole. In other words, the Municipal Emergency Homeshould be one maintained and conductedstrictly by the municipalityas a governmental institution. It should be the tiding-over place forthe man or the woman without a job, a refuge to satisfy immediateneeds, a hospital in certain cases of sickness, an asylum incase of destitution.

ESSENTIALS TO SUCCESS.

The author believes that there are two factors essential to the successof a Municipal Emergency Home; first, the co-operation of all publicdepartments in the city government, and second, the cooperation of thepublic itself. When because of politics it has been found difficultto introduce improvements and progressive ideas in a municipalityfor relieving the temporarily distressed, it has become the customto recommend religious or private charities for the management ofrelief-granting institutions. But no one can question the success andthe need of a Municipal Emergency Home who is willing to investigatethe wonderful success of the New York Municipal Lodging House andthe Buffalo Municipal Lodging House. These are conducted strictlyunder city and County supervision and management. As such results ashave been obtained in New York and Buffalo, and which may come intoexistence in any large city, under public management, why shouldother cities question the popularity and success of a MunicipalEmergency Home under such management or doubt its advantages overthose mismanaged by religious and private charity, the latter notinfrequently run for profit?

USE OF APPROPRIATION.

The people of our cities may expect, and should forcibly demand fromits public officials, that the money expended in municipal “charities”should be well adapted, elastic in its application, based upon wise,scientific conclusions, and on a thorough exhaustive experimentation.

It is safe to say that New York stands in the front rank as the worstgoverned city in America. But when such a city creates an appropriationfrom its public treasury for the maintenance and management of aMunicipal Emergency Home, there can be no reason to doubt the wisdomor the success of the experimentation of municipal charities. In fact,we ought not to speak of municipal charity, but rather to say that thecity appropriates such money from tax-payers as has been earned bythose who are temporarily destitute,—that those housed in suchmunicipal institutions are but receiving assistance as an intereston their past earnings. A Municipal Emergency Home should not beconsidered as a charitable institution, but as an institution offeringthe right to every toiler to receive the hospitality of his fellowmenin time of need.

CO-OPERATION OF THE PUBLIC.

If the so-called influential and responsible people of every city woulduse half the effort they now use in subscribing, managingand advertising private charitable institutions to create a publicsentiment so that the city would establish a Municipal Emergency Homewith the most modern features, and if they then would continue in anadvisory and co-operative relation to it, the writer does not hesitateto express his belief that the advantages, every time, would be on theside of a Municipal Emergency Home or, as a matter of fact, on anyother so-called charitable institution managed by the community itselfas a governmental function and in a co-operative capacity.

The destitute man or woman who is compelled to apply for temporaryrelief at a Municipal Emergency Home comes immediately into the care ofthe city and may be turned at once to the protective treatment of whichmany stand in need.

RELATION TO THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT.

It is well to bear in mind the fact that a scientifically managedMunicipal Emergency Home not only raises the standard of otherlodging houses in the city, but to make its influence most effective,the co-operation of the Health Department is absolutely necessary.In fact, the most humane, the most scientific and in all respectsthe most desirable way to manage a Municipal Emergency Home isthrough the direct management and supervision of the city HealthDepartment,—never under that of the Police Department. Theinstitution deals with human beings who are out of adjustmentto the community. The homeless, wandering citizen should not beconsidered as a derelict, a human monster, a criminal, a vagrant andwhat not, to be hounded to death by the brutal police system.

PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS AND THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT.

All religious, charitable and private lodging houses also shouldbe under a rigid inspection of the Health Department of the city,lest they may become dangerous competitors to a Municipal EmergencyHome by undoing the work accomplished by this exemplary institution.Because they can be maintained at a low standard of cleanliness andorder, they are sought by the tired, weary, homeless workingman, thatis,—when he has the money! No city should ever countenancean uninspected sheltering place where human beings are forced tocongregate, where those harbored, in many instances, communicatedisease to the country boy, seeking a job, and teach him lessons inmendicancy, vice and crime.

CO-OPERATION OF THE CITY.

All public departments, especially the Health Department, PublicWorks, Legal Department, Labor Department, should co-operate with theMunicipal Emergency Home. The Health Department should look afterthe physical welfare of the city’s guests, the Department of PublicWorks should aid by giving all able-bodied, willing workersplenty of work on all municipal undertakings, and by paying them theprevailing scale of union wages in the respective industries. The LegalDepartment should care for and protect against the private exploitationof the homeless men and women, and above all else, shield them from theundue interference of the police.

EDUCATION OF THE PUBLIC.

As to the co-operation of the great public itself, honest investigatorsmust find the overwhelming advantages in every respect on the sideof municipal management. If a city maintains and manages a modernMunicipal Emergency Home, charitably-inclined private doners can becheerfully advised to leave the entire problem to the city. Thusthe great many charitable and quasi-charitable institutions thathave failed to give relief where relief was most needed will failto find support. This is exactly the purpose of all municipal andgovernmental undertakings,—firmly and scientifically to undertakethe management of all public affairs, taking it out of the hands ofsuperficial private organizations whose inadequate system, instead ofdoing good to the needy, does much moral harm.

It is most desirable that the great public bearoused andeducated to see that the homeless, wandering citizen needs specialtreatment,—that he must, if necessary, be the object ofexpert, scientifically-trained solicitude, and that thepublic must provide that scientific service. When the public can beso educated, all applicants for shelter, food, or work (whether theycome from the so-called “tramp,” “bum,” or “hobo,” at the back door, orfrom the man on the street who begs a dime, or from the Salvation Armyrepresentative on the street corner, or from others who promiscuouslyask donations for so-called “Lodging Houses”) may safely be referredto the Municipal Emergency Home where the expert work of the communityis being done, and the task of uplifting humanity and of elevating thecommunity itself is being carried forward in the right way.

THE PROBLEM IN OTHER COUNTRIES.

It is quite remarkable that the Poor Law in England had its origin inan attempt to meet the problems of the homeless, wandering wage-earner.Yet there, as here, the homeless are rather on the increase, because ofunjust social and industrial conditions.

Nicholl quotes the following, purely utilitarian statement:

This rudimentary economic advice has not been intelligently understoodeither in England or in our country. The people of our cities stilllook on while a group of men eat the cold roast beef of their morefortunate neighbors—calmly look on and take no action.

Eminent scholars and authorities on economic, industrial and legalquestions have well said, many times, that repressive measures andantagonistic treatment are never sufficient and never will be.Educational, constructive, scientific work alone will prevail. Thereligious and charitable organizations and societies may ask forpolice control and supervision, and for the repression of vagrancy inour cities, but the homeless and wandering wage-earners will be fed,because we have a Christ-given, common humanity.

A WOMAN’S QUESTION.

It has been said that the “tramp” question, the question of thehomeless, hungry, wandering wage-earner is a woman’s question. Itis. But what made it such? It has been made a woman’s question bythe indifference and ignorance of our communities which have madeno provisions for men and boys, women and girls, who are hungry andhomeless.

Women as well as men have represented the conscience of our communitiesin a poor fashion, in a most dangerous fashion, in a criminal fashion,for they have created just about as many “tramps” with theirpetty little charities, as the man who gives dimes on the street for anight’s shelter. The women should know, the men too, that at the backdoors or on the streets we cannot do the right thing. We can give onlyinadequate relief. We can only push a human being down the stairs ofmanhood to the level of a parasite.

THE HISTORICAL VIEW.

Let us look at the matter historically. We find that the mendicant ofthe Middle Ages stood in much the same relation to the community as themodern “tramp,” the homeless, wandering wage-earner. One existed, andthe other exists, because of a certain sentimentality which permitsone group of persons to live on the industry of another group. Thecommunity giving, in the mediæval days, was centered in the monastery,and since the time of Henry VIII the State has assumed that function.The monastery cared for the mediæval tramp. Let the Modern TwentiethCentury State of Civilization (if such we may call our time) care forand cure his descendant, the homeless, wandering wage-earner, justas it takes care of the other needs of the people in the respectivecommunities.

To be logical, every American city should maintain a MunicipalEmergency Home for the wandering citizen, the homeless wage-earner, inorder to complete the system of governmental institutions andagencies dealing with the needs of a modern complex society.

THE LEGAL ASPECT.

Rightfully, andlegally, in America, the so-called Overseers of thePoor, the Boards of Charities and Corrections, are required to relievethe homeless and destitute at their discretion. In many cities they arefulfilling this duty toward the men temporarily destitute and homelessby graciously permitting them to be sheltered at the insanitary,degrading police stations, to be fed with water concoctions, to sleepin a dark vermin-infested corner from which they are ordered to move onin the morning. Perhaps this is acting according to their discretion,but the result shows that it is unwise to put power into the hands ofprivate individuals who not only know not the evil they increase butwho could scarcely do otherwise if they knew.

Historically, every modern city should maintain a Municipal EmergencyHome. Logically, it ought to do it. Legally, it must do it. Let it nolonger be a woman’s or a man’s question, but our question, the cities’question. Let us all say that there must, nay, there shall be in everycommunity for the homeless, wandering wage-earner, a decent, modern,sanitary shelter, a fitting meal, a place where the community cangive individual, discriminating, scientific treatment, where there isan opportunity to get suitable work to make a decent livingpossible.

THE MORAL DUTY.

Let everybody then make it his duty to appeal to the civic pride of thewomen and men of the community. Let the people of the city instructits Mayor and City Council, or else themselves elect a man or a womanto supervise the management and maintenance of a Municipal EmergencyHome of integrity, of resource, a place of sagacious and scientifictraining. Then, and not until then, will the women of our cities beable to shut their doors, the men their pockets, and point with prideto the Municipal Emergency Home, which in every American city is asnecessary and as fundamental an institution as a hospital itself. Infact it is a human psychological hospital, an economic bettermentprovider, within the gates and welcome arch of every city.

The name of the institution is significant,—Municipal EmergencyHome. As the gate of the public system of institutions it shouldstand, always open and ready to receive the homeless, wanderingwage-earner who may claim its hospitality. From it, he or she may goforth to renumerative industry, to economic, social and industrialbetterment which is for the benefit of all humanity.

WHAT A TWENTIETH CENTURY MUNICIPAL EMERGENCY HOME SHOULD BE

In the following pages, the author wishes to give in detail the chiefaims, objects and principles upon which a model Twentieth CenturyMunicipal Emergency Home should be maintained:

I. It should provide,free under humane and sanitary conditions,food, lodging and bath, with definite direction for such immediaterelief as is needed for any man or boy, woman or girl, or evenfamilies, stranded in the city where located, as well as for theconvalescent from the hospital. It should be able to give employmentto able-bodied men and boys, women and girls, provide them with thenecessaries of life, and make it possible for them to be economicallyindependent of the future. This should bethe chief aim, object andprinciple upon which the maintenance of a model Twentieth CenturyMunicipal Emergency Home is based.

All consideration of causes, all efforts toward the enforcement oflaw or reform in legislation, are secondary to this first duty ofproviding a humane clearing-house for a scientific, systematicand intelligent distribution of the industrial, economic and socialhuman waste, which gathers and disperses from season to season in theurban centers of America and tends constantly to fester into idleness,vice and crime. While the demands of this human clearing-house willbe no small charge upon the respective municipalities, the MunicipalEmergency Home will be primarily an institution of social service,collecting and regulating the entire human resource of the city forthe mutual benefit of the community or those that serve it and of theindividual that is served.

This idea of connecting, in the most direct fashion possible, thesocial strength of a community with the individual weakness of thestranded man or boy, woman or girl, will be the first purpose of aTwentieth Century Municipal Emergency Home. To further this end itslocation should be easily accessible to the lodging house district ofthe city. That the building should be sanitary and fireproof, the foodwholesome and nourishing, the beds comfortable and clean, one man to abed, not “double deckers,” are matters of course. An isolation ward forspecial cases such as men suffering from inebriety, insanity, venerealdisorders, etc., is a prime requisite.

A system of registration by the card system ought to be in use, eachcard giving at a glance the significant facts such as name, age,birthplace, occupation, physical condition, reference,residence, nearest relative or friend, number of lodgings, dispositionof the case, etc. This card should be filled out by the applicanthimself, in order that the visitor may not be humiliated by aninquisition of a jail- or charity-like character. The registrationclerk should be a man of good judgment, a man of honor, and withpsychological training whose actions should always be guided by firmbut just and human motives. Thorough physical investigation of eachapplicant, and the investigation of the capabilities of each applicant,should be in all cases intelligently conducted.

Every visitor’s clothing, including hat and shoes, should be thoroughlyfumigated each night. All visitors should be required to bathe nightlyand only shower baths should be used.

A comprehensive physical examination of each visitorshould be madeby competent examiners under the direction of a physician of theHealth Department of the city. All necessary operations, suppliesfor simple medicaments, eye-glasses, crutches, bandages, trusses, infact every accoutrement and further treatment, if necessary for thehealth and comfort of the visitor, should be suppliedfree. An entryof the actual physical conditions of each visitor should be made onhis registration card after the first examination, and any changetherefrom noted thereon as it may occur from time to time. All cases ofinfectious or chronic contagious diseases of a virulent natureshould be sent at once to the isolation ward. The accuracy and care ofthis department is of immediate importance to the health of the entirecommunity andabsolutely essential to the effective and successfuladministration of the Home.

Each visitor should be provided with an absolutely clean nightshirt anda pair of slippers. The dormitories should be in all cases comfortableand quiet, talking, reading and smoking therein strictly prohibited.

The morning call ought to be given in time to permit each visitor todress for breakfast and to be sent to employment if he or she is able,in time for the day’s work. The visitors desiring to find work in thetown where the Municipal Emergency Home is located should form inline and pass the superintendent for distribution in accordance withthe facts of each case, clearly stated on each record card, as to thephysical condition, abilities and desires of each applicant for work.This is the crux of the ministry and the administration of a TwentiethCentury Municipal Emergency Home. Clear-sighted, humane, resourceful,definite, resolute action is now demanded, and unless this demand ismet with scientific exactness, with intelligent systematic application,the whole service fails.

The superintendent will have before him the record card of everyvisitor containing his original story, the report of his physicalcondition, occupation, and such further important factsas may have been discovered in the course of his relations withthe Home. Immediately at hand will be the employment resources forthat day, the name and address of every labor union headquarters,every benevolent association, every dispensary and hospital, cityand business directories, railroad and factory directories with thenames and addresses of the respective superintendents under whosejurisdiction the employment of help may come. Thus the superintendentwill be capable of intelligent co-operation with all agencies, publicand private, that may minister to the varying needs of the stranded menand boys, women and girls whom he is to distribute and start on theirway to independent, economic usefulness in the community.

Men and women of all ages, nationalities, occupations, misfortunes,face the superintendent and must be dealt with definitely, but wisely,after a rapid comprehension of the visitor’s needs, his card record,and the resources at command. No higher test can be made of humanjudgment, courage, right feeling, resource and common sense.

It is at this crucial point in the administration of a MunicipalEmergency Home that one feature of the model home stands out withcommanding significance. This is theEmployment Bureau. Dailyopportunity for paid employment is the right arm of the most effectivedistribution, and the only genuine work test. Whether this canbe assured or not in any given city, no one can say until it has beenfairly applied and tried. When the employment resources of any cityare thoroughly organized, if there still be men in any considerablenumber, able and willing to work, who cannot be given paid employmentand who must suffer enforced idleness for any considerable length oftime, then and not until then, will we know that the present industrialorder has absolutely broken down. After all paid employment hasbeen thoroughly taken advantage of, coming as it does from privateresources, the respective municipalities should immediately put to workall able-bodied, willing wage-earners on municipal work of all kindsfor which the city should pay them a decent, living wage, or rather theprevailing scale of union wages in the respective trades.

There is an increasing number of people in this country—quiet,hard-working, hard-thinking, plain folk who are determined to knowthe facts of our present-day industrial and social system, and whileenjoying the fruits of this present order, are determined to defendit against assaults. They also purpose to strive mightily in rightingwhatever wrongs may be proven to exist. The Municipal Emergency Homewill help to supply these people with the real knowledge of conditionsin the underworld, where millions of honest, able-bodied men and womenare forced to spend their lives in enforced economic idleness anduselessness.

One of the most significant indications of the power of the MunicipalEmergency Home is the length and depth of its searching influence.Its hooks will reach clear down to the bottom of the human sewerage,in the dark channels of life, altogether unknown to the “other half”of our human society. Without disparaging the splendid work of otherhelping agencies in the respective communities, it cannot be deniedthat their influence, their hooks of help, hang too high to catch manyworthy persons among the vast army of wandering citizens who are indirest need. The “Hang-out,” the “Barrel-house,” and the “Free-flops”receive many times more human drift than Charity Bureaus, Missions andWorkingmen’s Homes. This is seen to be inevitable when the conditionsare rightly understood.

Humankind is but just beginning to understand and appreciate theeverlasting truth of that great clause of Agur’s perfect prayer: “Feedme with food convenient for me,” and of one of the greatest sayings inthe Gospel of the Kingdom: “For I was hungered and ye gave me meat; Iwas thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in;naked and ye clothed me.”

The stranded man or boy, woman or girl needs food, shelter and astraightforward, resourceful meeting of the issues of his or her humanlifefirst. After that, if you possess sincerity, faith andclear vision, it may be your privilege to speak to him or her, withcontrolling power, of the ministry and message of theSon of Man.

The sympathetic reader may well ask: “How will stranded men and boys,women and girls, learn of the existence of a Municipal EmergencyHome, and what will impel the unfortunate woman or girl to accept itsaltruistic, humane but vigorous hospitality?”

The answer is easy. It has already been discovered that one of thechief sanctions, one of the main objects for municipal directionof such work isbeing a municipal enterprise, a part of the cityadministration, a wing of its manifold governmental functions, itchallenges most effectively the co-operation of all public authorities.The very first step therefore in this mandatory municipal co-operationwill be the closing of the police stations, these degrading andunsanitary hells of our barbaric age, to the itinerant or local toilerswho have been either “run in” by the police or forced to find shelterfor the night, and provision for the supply of all such applicantswith tickets of admission and directions to the Municipal EmergencyHome. This will partly relieve the police stations of our cities of oneof their most disagreeable duties, rendered in the past without anyadequate means and under conditions that befouled not only the stationsbut which degraded the needy visitors, thereby encouragingvagrancy, crime and vice, creating disease and, in many cases, causinguntimely deaths.

The second answer to the question is that every policeman will berequired to carry a supply of Municipal Emergency Home tickets in hispocket to give to all persons discovered in need, and to those foundbegging. These must be accompanied by a warning that he or she mustnot beg, because of the consequences, and that the city will take careof their monetary necessities. No police officer should be allowed tointerfere or endanger the liberty of any such temporarily destitutepeople. All railroad stations should have, in a conspicuous place, anadvertisement of the Home, calling the stranded wayfarer’s attention toits existence and location. Such notices will prove a blessing to themand a saving to the community. All newspapers should co-operate withthe city authorities in printing in the “want ads” column the fact ofthe existence of such a Municipal Emergency Home, its location and thepossible positions that may be filled by applying to the superintendent.

A most important step should be to provide every homeless man orboy, woman or girl who may have been discharged from the house ofcorrection, from the penitentiaries, hospitals or other institutions,with the hospitality of the Municipal Emergency Home, thereby pledgingthe support and good faith of the city to secure him food,shelter, an opportunity for honest employment, or the right, for aperiod, while enjoying the hospitality of the city, to look about forsuch labor as he or she may prefer.

No one who lays any claim to enlightened opinion upon subjects ofthis character believes any longer that arrest and incarceration ina penal or corrective institution is a final answer to the socialobligations of the community in behalf of the so-called casualvagrant, the wandering citizen, the itinerant wage-worker, or pettycriminal, as they are miscalled. It may be true, perhaps, that a threeor six months’ imprisonment is the only present available means for“straightening up a drunk” or getting some “evil spirit” out of a youngman’s heart. But at its best it is a very dangerous medicine, andsurely when society leaves a man or boy, woman or girl at the prisongate, after a jail sentence of greater or less duration, and tells himor her to shift, each for himself or herself as best they may, it issimply an invitation and an encouragement to vagrancy, vice, crime andimmorality.

The last important step in this mandatory municipal co-operationshould be a direct attack upon the “barrel-houses,” “free-flops,”and “hang-outs,” certain cheap lodgings and Missions. To continue acampaign against vagrancy by an indiscriminate raiding of such resortshas proven to be a miserable failure. If there is no other free,accessible and serviceable place for the homeless and indigentman, boy, woman or girl, they will simply find another center, and thelast may be worse than the first. On the other hand, having understoodand provided for the actual needs of the temporarily unemployedhomeless, we have cut off the base of evil supplies of “the mendicantarmy” through the use of tickets to a modern Municipal Emergency Home,and the co-operation of all other municipal departments and the greatpublic. Then, and not until then, can a modern Christian communitystrike effectively the final blow against these recruiting stations ofvice, immorality, crime and disease.

An intelligent, scientific, systematic and centralized campaign ofpublicity must beceaselessly carried on for this Free Home. Freetickets of direction and admission must be constantly distributedthrough fraternal and charitable societies, labor unions, institutions,hotels, business offices, churches, clubs, housewives, railroadconductors, brakemen, and other officials and citizens. As soon asit is generally known that every applicant, without exception, isabsolutely certain of wholesome food and sanitary shelterfree, withsuch help next morning as his need demands, the cooperation of thehumane public will be immediate and constant. In this campaign forpublicity the daily press, through news items and editorial comment, should be the most powerful ally for the extension of theservice to the needy.

Two vitally important considerations of administration now claim ourattention. One is the matter of an arbitrary limitation upon the numberof nights one of these unfortunate, homeless, wandering wage-earnersmay remain and enjoy the hospitality of the city. The other is thequestion of the so-called work-test, so much asked for by charitableorganizations.

This, the greatest of all problems confronting the Municipal EmergencyHome, we must face courageously in the endeavor to demonstrate itspracticability to social service. Either in the name of ChristianBrotherhood, sympathy for unfortunate humanity, or other high and holysentiments, men are given to “cant.” So they exploit the institution,or in the name of preventing pauperization, preserving, a man’sself-respect, a business administration, and other like high soundingterms, the institution subtly exploits its charges. This much seemscertain: The arbitrary,lump method of dealing with men is always andeverywhere wrong and inhuman.

A model Municipal Emergency Homeshould not have an arbitrarytime limit on the extension of its hospitality to the needy. Theinjustice of such limitation is manifest in instances such as that ofa visitor suffering from a bruise, wound, broken arm, injuredleg,—of one who is awaiting money from friends, or transportationhome, or to a place where employment is offered, or for the comingof the first pay-day after being re-established in industry. Neithershould any Municipal Emergency Home have that inhuman, wasteful,robbing work test. To argue or reason that because one hundred or moremen and boys lined up in front of a desk at five o’clock in the morningare alike because of the fact of having received a night’s shelterand two meals and that, therefore, each alike should do three hours’work on a wood pile, or in the city streets, is to say the least, notonly unscientific, but inhuman exploitation. In every such group therewill be found not only a wide difference in resources and needs, buta wider difference in men. In such a group will be capable, earnest,sober and willing workingmen displaced by industrial depression,disturbances or inventions; all classes of casual laborers, betweenjobs; boys seeking their fortunes; victims of child labor; disabled,sick and aged industrial and social waste; beats, and frequently straysfrom the higher walks of professional criminals. All these challengeintelligent and resourceful discrimination. Surely the true interest ofthe community as well as that of the unfortunate, wandering citizen, isbest served by at once sending men, able and willing to work, to paidemployment; separating the boys of tender ages from this humandrift, and starting them home or to steady, profitable employment forthe security of their future; directing the sick, infirm or aged tosuch institutions as will best minister to their needs.

The writer’s personal experiences and observations of the lump worktest in operation, as he saw it in the various religious and charitablelodging houses throughout the country, seem to justify the followingstatement:

First. The worthy, average visitor to a Municipal Emergency Home willwork diligently. Those chained by habits of vice will shirk. Thecrippled, sick and aged will simply “mark time.” This results in themost fit man in the group being exploited for the benefit of the leastfit, and in putting upon the backs of those members of the communityleast able to bear this burden, part of the charitable charge for theincompetent and unworthy.

Second. There seems to be little foundation for the idea that alump work test conserves a man’s self-respect. On the contrary theconditions of its application are such as must always be more or lessdegrading, and it invariably operates to hold together the good and badelements of a group, to the inevitable injury of the good.

Third. Where the lump work test involves some financial benefit for theinstitution, the best of superintendents become less eager tore-establish his most fruitful, most capable, willing-to-work visitorsin paid industry.

Fourth. As an indication of character, the work test is almostvalueless. Men of ordinary sense see through the thin disguise of theclaim that it helps to preserve their self-respect, and recognize itstrue lineaments as a subtle exploitation that deprives them of theopportunity of getting paid employment for that day, or as a penalservice to prevent their frequent return.

Fifth. The quick deterioration of even fairly good workmen throughgetting used to a low standard of living by charitable contributionsthat lessen the economic pressure and seem to offer escape from thelegitimate costs of life, is apparent to every thoughtful observer.Hard times, and an empty stomach, make it easy to submit to the kindlyexploitation of a “Flop-house” wood-yard. The loss of self-respectis forgotten in relief from the necessity of trying to play a man’spart in the industrial order, until the man that was an independent,capable, willing, but unfortunate wage earner is transformed intoa half-parasite,—an individual of a special character, aman whose face is familiar only to charity workers, and to thecharitably-inclined public.

Summing up the effect of these two arbitrary lump restrictions itseems that they operate always to the injury of the service and aretolerated for one of three reasons. The first is that theyprovide some check upon the number and return of the visitors. Thesecond is that they provide a subtle means of exploiting helpless menfor the financial benefit of the institutions, and the third, thatthe institution thereby escapes the obligations of discriminating andeffective distribution.

Mr. Raymond Robins, the first superintendent of the Chicago MunicipalLodging House, in substantiation of the above argument says:

In conclusion, let it be understood that the keyword for thesuccessful administration of a model Municipal Emergency Homeis co-operation,—co-operation in the interior management,co-operation in all external relations, co-operation with all existingagencies for human service, co-operation for the creation of new oneswhen found to be necessary from time to time; co-operationwith all other sister cities and States in creating a body of approvedinformation and legislation upon the broadest principles of humanity,for the service of helping the wandering citizen, the unemployedmasses, of removing the causes, of bettering conditions and ofcorrecting wrongs throughout the world.

Standing as the collective social action of the whole people formeeting honestly and scientifically the communal obligation to theoutcast, wandering, unemployed wage-earner, the homeless man and woman,without special regard for race or class or sect, serving no privatescheme, or ulterior motive, the Twentieth Century Municipal EmergencyHome will be a potent witness to the practical expression in municipaladministrations of that awakening social conscience which is thegrowing hope for righteousness in all the nations of the earth.

Following are suggestions for the printed cards to be used both asadvertisement and admission tickets for the needy:

I

(Reverse side)

II

In conclusion, I refer to New York’s MunicipalEmergency Home, as a guide for the technical planswhich too can be improved upon, and are being improvedupon as we understand this great subjectmore clearly.

THE END