"Broke," The Man Without the Dime

Aimlessly we wandered into the city. Just as the clock in the city hall tower was striking the hour of nine, we passed a window on which was lettered, “Charity Club Rest Room.” The name looked good to us and we went in. A pleasant woman in charge told us she could not do anything then, but gave us a note to the police station, telling us that Captain Doran had a few beds for homeless men, and that we might also try the Salvation Army, telling us how to find it. We felt that it would be preferable to the jail, and after another two-mile walk we found the Army headquarters. We shouted, called, whistled, and even rattled the doors, but no response. That cry in the night was a familiar one to them. It had become common and the bruised in Paducah could go elsewhere—so far as they were concerned. Retracing our steps, we sought Police Headquarters. There was no other way. Our little note from the Charity Rest Room engendered a feeling of security, and we felt that, though helpless, we would not be committed to prison and the chain gang. The captain had no beds, but we were told to go into the police court room and lie on the benches. Broken, famished, exhausted, we lay down on the three-slat benches and were soon lost in a profound slumber from which we were only once disturbed when the chief of city detectives came in and turned on the lights, exercising what we supposed was his prerogative, and obliged us to tell him our pedigrees from Adam down. But we, undoubtedly, looked all right to him, for we were left to our rest until the sweepers came at five o’clock. The slats were cutting and hard. I awoke several times and in my wakeful moments heard the carpenter murmur the name of a little golden-haired baby girl, away up in a northern Indiana home. We left, unmolested. My pal was staked to a breakfast by a brother craftsman and told where he could find work in a nearby town. I cut wood for a good woman for half an hour with a stone hammer, for one of the best breakfasts cooked that morning in Paducah. She was the wife of a man who was employed in the railroad shops. Here the carpenter and I parted, not to meet again. He never learned my identity.

I preferred river travel, if possible, and applied to the steamer Dick Fowler for the privilege of working my way to Cairo, but was emphatically refused. The boat was due to leave. Deck fare was seventy-five cents, which I did not have. But I noticed a man,—apparently a business man of Paducah, who wore a fraternity badge of an order to which I belonged, in conference with the Captain. I showed my color in good standing and asked the loan of seventy-five cents. He gave me a dollar. Again I had broken my contract,—at least I had begged a loan.

Reaching Cairo, I walked a mile to a point where without difficulty I could catch a freight on the I. C., bound south. But this freight train ran no farther than Fulton, a town a hundred and forty miles from Memphis. It was nine o’clock when I reached there, and was exceptionally cold for that time of the year. I still had the remaining quarter of my dollar. Although the demands of hunger were strong and I was so broken for rest, I decided in favor of a bed. I was told where I could 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 were being cured, my cares forgotten. Work even for breakfast was not to be had in Fulton, at least in all the places I had tried. I perhaps could stand it until reaching Memphis if I could get away quickly. Going out to a point where all trains would slow up, I found two negroes, waiting with the same object in view. Seated on the ground by a camp fire they were actually eating breakfast, consisting of some late corn, pretty old and tough, yet full of milk, which they had plucked from a nearby field and roasted on the bright coals. The moment I joined them, one inquired,

“Yo’all had breakfast?”

To my negative answer, he said, “Hep yo’sef, man.” They had salt, and there and at that time it was the most refreshing green corn ever roasted. It satisfied me. I was ready to continue the battle.

The weather grew colder. It began to spit snow. Presently a mixed freight train hove in sight and my black friends made a dash for the forward cars. I chose what seemed to be an empty gondola about midway of the train, but it proved to be about two-thirds full of Portland cement. After the train started the brakeman came back over the train and 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 do it.”

“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 for the ever-increasing wind caught the cement and hurled it into clouds of dust 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 first stop. Whooping, coughing, sneezing, I got out of there and crept into an empty box car a little farther back. I congratulated myself on this shelter 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 you going?” I thought I was a novice, and here I was being hailed as an old timer. My head swelled as big as a Superintendent of the Pullman Company.

“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 long to wait, for very soon another mixed train came thundering along. As it slacked up, the only advantage offered was another of the Standard Oil tank cars. However, it was not covered with ice. I crawled in under the huge tank, lay flat down on my belly, and hung on to the rods. As yet I had only made about twelve miles. As we sped on, I felt relieved that we 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 from the first train and had caught this one. His black pal was lost in the scuffle somewhere, and we did not see him again. Just as the negro spoke to me the conductor and brakeman came rushing up to the car. Just ahead of our tank car, was a carload of valuable horses. After looking them over, as they turned to go back, the conductor spied us, and with stress, shaded with oratory of brilliant hue, he ordered us off. Because the train was moving, however, he did not wait to see if we obeyed.

At the next stop, I leaped from my position and began looking over the horses. Three of them were down. I immediately ran to the side of the right 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. The conductor coming up said, “That’s right. I wish you would keep your eye on 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 the train as soon as it started, and he was. At the next stop, I said to him, “Get a rod and help me with the horses.” This he did. There were four of them down, but before the conductor could get to us, we had them 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 the black, too, was safe.

At nine o’clock, having been joined by three more white men, we finally rolled into Memphis.

CHAPTER XXVII
Memphis—A City’s Fault and a Nation’s Wrong

“Society must necessarily look at these things because they are created by it.”—Hugo.

On my arrival in Memphis I was greeted by a severe storm. Although chilled 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 were the conditions of the homeless and needy of Memphis to be studied. Under what more convincing and truthful conditions could I find need in Memphis for the erection and maintenance of a Municipal Emergency Home? So with renewed determination I decided to learn of what Memphis had to offer to the homeless, hungry worker.

My brisk walk from the railroad yards to the heart of the city warmed my thoroughly-numbed body. I realized that I must have food. I was at my goal. Here was a chance to work for the government. I expected to be shipped on the first boat. I know my personal appearance was decidedly against me as I entered Memphis. Soiled, black, unshaven, unwashed, I felt certain of arrest if seen by the police. Entering several hotels I asked work for a meal, but was promptly denied. The good things glowed in the dining-room windows. People seated at tables were eating all and everything they wanted. Outside on the street, well-dressed people hurried on to their homes. Must I beg, after all? No. Here, too, it was against the city ordinance as well as against my contract. I decided to try one more place. I entered one of the largest restaurants and approaching 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 and said,

“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 some supper. My silver man has not shown up yet. If he does not, help them out in there.”

What a feast that supper, for which I worked half an hour! What the black cook did not give me was not in the restaurant. The silver man came, and I was again on the street. I was growing so weary and felt the need of sleep, but with a clean face and clean hands, and a brush up, 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 jail unless you have to.”

At last, because forced to do so, I applied at the Y. M. C. A. They could not think of giving a bath, meal or bed to a homeless man in their beautiful palace, but gave me a ticket to the Gospel Union Mission on Front Street. This was an old building partly destroyed by fire, which had been condemned by the city,—a place fairly reeking with filth, sewer gas, and vermin. The Y. M. C. A. of Memphis would have committed a more Christian act to have literally kicked me into the street or turned me over to the police. But what did they care? I had 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 night even with an order from the Y. M. C. A. He would so much, rather have had the ten cents. He told me I would have to saw wood the next morning for the privilege of sleeping there, which I did. Water was an unknown quantity, at least as far as a bath went, and no food was offered. The horrible experience I went through at the Hope Rescue Mission of Louisville did not exceed my experience in this awful place.

In the morning I hurried to the Post Office expecting letters and money, but the letters had been delayed. I knew absolutely no one in Memphis. I went to the office of the government works to see about my shipment. The boat would not leave until the following day so I was forced 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 and willows which line the river bank. I had to do this if I wished to see what 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 of these men were skilled craftsmen, all were Americans. The other two were unskilled laborers, one a German, the other a Swede. During the wakeful moments of that long, cold night I learned from each of these men that the reasons for his being there were just and honorable. All of the men were on their way to work. None of them were over thirty years of age. Two were not yet twenty-one. They called each other “Pal.” Four of the men had already received transportation on the steamboat Kate Adams, to leave on the next day for Walnut Bend, where they were to labor on the government works riprapping the river banks with willows. They were to receive a dollar and twenty-five cents a day with board if they remained over a week on the job. If not, they were to receive but one dollar a day for ten hours’ work. The German and the Swede were on their way to a railroad camp where work awaited them. Because they had no transportation they were compelled to work or beat their way to their destination. Two of these men had just money enough for a meager breakfast. It was a question in their minds whether to go without the breakfast or a bed. They decided to deny themselves the latter. The others were penniless and had to win their breakfasts in some way or continue to starve. They were all comfortably clothed. The Swede’s suit seemed a particularly good one, but in the approaching daylight it was discovered that, while lying too near the fire, he had burned out one side of his coat and one trouser leg. Noticing this he remarked, “Well, boys I must sneak out of town unseen, in a hurry, for if the police see me now they will arrest me without question.” He and others expressed a fear that I also felt all through that awful night—the fear of the Memphis police. I decided to postpone my study of the government works.

A week later I met one of the “pals.” He told me the food down on the government works was good, for coarse food, and there was plenty of it, but the sleeping accommodations were extremely bad. “I would have stayed,” he said, “although the work was such that I wore out clothes faster 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 were working with the willows from a barge in the river. The boy lost his balance and fell into the stream. The treacherous current instantly swept him from the barge. He tried to swim back. God! I never saw such a trial of strength for life. With the strong Indian overstroke, the muscles stood out on his arms and neck like cords of rope, wrought to such a tension it seemed as if the slightest blow would have snapped them like glass. But the look of anguish on his face! If I could only forget that! Almost exhausted, and seeing that his efforts to reach the barge were in vain, he turned to swim down stream and toward the shore, but a whirlpool caught him. For an instant he raised his calloused hands above his head, and then—all was over. No sooner had he disappeared than the boss demanded, with a violent oath, ‘Bring on the willows.’”

"Were there no means of rescue provided for such an emergency?" I asked in horror.

His answer was nothing but the mention of the existence of so much red tape that a boat could not be provided which might possibly have saved that young man’s life.

The man was so visibly affected while relating the incident that I was led 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 to the government works.

So filled was I with the obvious neglect by the city of Memphis of its toilers, I decided to tell the people of that city something of their thoughtlessness towards their homeless and needy workers, for whom they failed to provide food and shelter. So I called on the mayor and other influential citizens, telling them of my experiences and appealing to them to make a Municipal Emergency Home possible. All were in hearty sympathy with me. On invitation I met the City Club, an organization made up of the progressive business men of the city. Following my appeal to them, a Municipal Emergency Home Committee was appointed.

Leaving Memphis I went on to Birmingham, Alabama, that wonderfully active city, which because of its industries calls thousands of workingmen annually within its gate. My first effort here for the worker without the dime was to try to get medical treatment. Finding the dispensary closed at nine A. M., I was told it was open only one hour in the day, from twelve to one o’clock. The same conditions existed here in regard to the private charities as existed in other cities. Late in the afternoon I met a bricklayer, who told me in 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 Louisville and Nashville Depot, which is filled with evil men and women. I had given him the impression that I was down and out. “They’ll treat you right there,” he said. “It is the only place I know of. Go there.” Then he added, “I’ll bet you’re hungry,” and as he left he offered me a quarter.

Later in the evening, while I stood on a downtown corner, a well-dressed, intelligent-looking man slapped me on the shoulder and said,

“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 spend the night at the round-house, if I could find it.”

Even here the jail denied shelter and the Salvation Army had nothing to offer a penniless man. I felt my going to Birmingham was at an opportune time as the Alabama Federation of Women’s Clubs was in convention, and a beautiful, gracious lady, their State President, Mrs. Ferris Columan, kindly granted me a hearing. When I left I was conscious of the fact that I left a thought which would be carried to a great many of the kind hearts of Alabama.

I went on down to Mobile, then to New Orleans. Wherever I went, all through the South, I heard the cry in the night of cruel abuse and neglect 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 lacerated bodies of human beings leased from the prison to the convict camp. I heard the unceasing cry of woe from stone walls and iron bars, the mad shrieks from dungeon cells and torture chambers and the terror-striking bay of the bloodhound.

While what I have written of will remain an incurable wound, when I carried the message of progress, of justice and love, a plea for an institution for labor, for health, and for brotherly care, into the labor councils, the progressive Business Men’s Union, composed of three hundred citizens, and the Women’s Clubs (especially the Era Club), the intense interest shown by all of these for the oppressed heralds an illumined page in history and bespeaks a glorious victory for the South.

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 walked the streets of Houston I noticed that the police glanced at me suspiciously. Several of them, by their looks, seemed to be weighing my worth. After my arrival in this city, from morning until night I walked its streets in search of work, until compelled by the shadows of the night to seek a free place to rest.

During all my earnest endeavors that day the only opportunity for work came from a labor solicitor offering me a dollar a day and board to work 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 that I did not want to stay, or that I couldn’t stand the work, or that I might be taken ill, or that there should be some reasons why I could not work, my only bond is my body, what then?”

After several futile efforts to secure work on the following day, I was advised by all institutions which stood supposedly to help the destitute in Houston to the “Star of Hope Mission.” It was after ten o’clock when I arrived there and as I entered I noticed several exceedingly well-groomed, well-dressed and well-fed men who looked as though they were getting about six square meals a day. Innocent of who they were and why they were there, I stepped up to an attendant at the desk, saying, “Would you give a man who is broke a bed?” Absolutely and purposely ignoring me, the man, in a gloating voice and obtrusive manner, turned to one of these men in evidence, who proved to be one William Kessler, Chief of City Detectives, and said, “Here is a man who wants 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 police forces of our nation are well-known and which they seem to think is their prerogative. Such an illegal examination, brutally conducted, covers the helpless and innocent with the awful shadow of fear fathered by the suspicion of cruel abuse, and the victims of such gross assault, in their loneliness, beyond all help, are forced to appear guilty of something when they are not.

This “guardian of the peace” of Houston, in a most overbearing manner asked 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,” I answered.

At this point of our conversation I turned my back to leave him, when he 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 release was absolutely ignored.

I resolved not to reveal my identity to anyone, and was taken half a block down the street, where a patrol wagon was waiting, in which were seated seven other unfortunate, homeless men like myself. Remember, the patrol wagon was waiting for me a half block away from the “Star of Hope Mission”! Why? Because it was so much more respectable than to have 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 bright street lamps I studied the faces of my unlucky companions in crime. All these young fellows were between the ages of eighteen and thirty-three and were skilled workers. As I looked upon them I immediately recognized one of them as a young fellow to whom I had spoken that afternoon while looking for work. He, also, was in the same condition that I was in, stranded and homeless. He told me the police, that very day, ordered him out of town but because of his ill health he was unable to walk. He also said that he was afraid to risk going into the railroad yards to get a freight, as the police were liable to arrest him, so as the night was very cold, fearing with his poor health that it might be fatal if he should sleep outdoors, he finally decided to go to the “Star of Hope Mission,” where, as a sick man, instead of being given relief and shelter, he was thrown into prison.

Arriving at the jail, we were immediately searched. While the night captain took my record, I told him that I was there, not because of having committed any crime, or as a political critic, but simply to study the conditions of the unemployed in the city; to study the chances of an honest workingman, temporarily out of work and without means to get the necessaries of life in Houston. Having never heard of me, the Captain gave me an audible smile of suspicion and ordered me thrown 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 they were unfortunate enough to be without a night’s resting-place, and had appealed to this so-called Christian institution, maintained supposedly for the express purpose of sheltering homeless boys and men.

While in jail I interviewed most of my fellow victims, and learned that not one of them had ever been in jail before. The torture of their humility was clear to me, for while speaking to them, they continually reverted to kind parents and a loving home. We were all sitting or lying 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’t let us out until morning for I have no place to go.”

Then I said, “Supposing we were in a condemned prisoner’s cell and were to be put to death to-morrow,” and one of them quickly replied, “I wouldn’t care if we were for I have nothing to live for anyway.”

During this interval of imprisonment a local newspaper man who learned of 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, and said, “Here. What will you?”

The rays of a dim light revealed my face to the reporter, who asked me, “Are you Edwin A. Brown?” At the same time he pulled out of his pocket a New Orleans newspaper which had published a short time before a counterfeit presentment. While glancing at the likeness, he remarked, “You are the man all right.” “When did you get into town? We have been looking for you for a week.” I replied, “I got into town this morning and into jail this evening.” (The New Orleans paper stated that I was going 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 the journalist to the office of the Houston Post. After the interview, I left for my hotel, where, after the luxury of a refreshing bath, on a soft, snowy bed, I lay down to rest but not to sleep for while my body rested, my thoughts were back in that wicked cell with those of my countrymen who saw no future and to whom life held no meaning. Not until the dawn of another glorious Texas day, a symbol of the light glowing in the great hearts of the good people of Houston and of Texas, did I fall asleep.

The next morning the Houston Post carried a startling story on the arrest of the victims of the “Star of Hope Mission,” supplemented by the interview I had given, portraying Houston’s care for its homeless unemployed. The startling exposures made by the Houston press on existing conditions were followed by my talk before the Conference of State Charities then in session, and brought forth a volume of articles in the various local papers, teeming with apologies for the inexcusable conduct of the “Star of Hope Mission” and the police system of that city.

CHAPTER XXIX
San Antonio—Whose Very Name is Music

“If mankind showed half as much love to each other as when one dies or goes away, what a different world this would be.”—Auerbach.

I carried away in memory from San Antonio two pictures,—one of a beautiful, quaint old city, rich in historical lore; a city of winter sunshine, palms and flowers which make it truly “a stranger’s haven”; a picture of welcome and a spirit of kindness even to the homeless unemployed of which I caught glimpses during my brief sojourn in that city, though covered by thoughtlessness for their care of them.

The other picture is of the fifty destitute, homeless men I came in contact with during the few days I spent in San Antonio. I found all but two anxious and looking for work. These two, like many a rich man’s son I know, impressed me that they would die before they would work. They seemed to have lost all self-respect and had no compunction in begging a meal or a bed. One was a drinker and the other had a mad passion for reading anything and everything, yet even from these I frequently heard the expression, “I wish I had a job.”

There are, of course, the regulars, chained by habits of vice, on whom the police can put their hands at any time. I know them at a moment’s glance. It was not these poor unfortunates I came to San Antonio to study, but the itinerant workers who are lured from their dull towns to new and undeveloped centers of activity, believing work and high wages await them.

It was Saturday morning. While strolling down West Commerce Street, I met a young man in overalls, with jumper tucked under one arm. I greeted 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, “I have nothing like that up my sleeve. I wish I had, and if I could, I would 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 wretched and dirty! I slept in a freight car last night in the I. & G. N. yards but it was a broken rest. The floor was hard and I was as cold as the devil, and then, too, a fellow can’t sleep much when he is fearful that at any moment a railroad or a city bull is going to put his hand upon him.”

I then asked if he had yet breakfasted, and he answered, “No. I have not eaten since yesterday morning.”

Making a trivial excuse, confessing I possessed a little money, we went to breakfast. As we sat down I picked up the morning paper, and he said at once, “Look at the want ads.” The only thing offered that morning was 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 to grub his land, but the agent believed the work was all done. From the manner of the official in charge we fancied we were not of the right color or kind of men for the work.

As we came out of the Riverside Building the young man said, “I would give 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 pleasure on that boy’s face when he asked eagerly, “Where is it?” and the look of disappointment which replaced it when I said, “They haven’t any here. 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’t believe they want hoboes like us there.”

I answered, “No; it is a ‘Christian institution,’ and they are supposed to stand for just this very thing—to help young men who want to help themselves.”

We went to the Y. M. C. A. and when we reached the foot of the stairs I said 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 free shave 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 for a free bath. At first he told me decidedly that their baths were for members 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 an exception 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. But we were given to understand, in a decisive manner, that we were not welcome and not wanted. The bath thus given my companion was the first gratuity 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, “I feel 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 or steal, 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 sick men, isn’t it? I am not sick. No! I am going into the navy. Let us go over to the Post Office, to the United States Marine Office, and see what they have to offer.”

Although he was a young man, a graduate of the grammar school, a perfect type of physical manhood, straight as a poplar, five feet eleven inches in height and weighing a hundred and eighty pounds, he could 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 about going in. He probably will give me twenty-five cents for a meal and tell me to keep out of the goldarn place.” He continued, though, in a decided manner, “I am going into the army,—not because I want to, but because there seems to be no other immediate opportunity offered.”

And so we parted, he to enter the army, I to be left alone with my thoughts.

Two-thirds of our army to-day is made up of boys who are forced into it. It is the volunteer who makes a good soldier, but these boys are not volunteers—with them it is compulsory. Monday morning I went to the army post to see if the boy had done what he said he was going to do. I found him there a soldier, giving three of the best years of his life for sixteen dollars a month, instead of receiving the privilege of labor by being temporarily cared for in a Municipal Emergency Home until he could help himself.

And, now, I will portray briefly the story of “The young man with the hoe,” who made his way into southern Texas. He was penniless, and was arrested on the Frisco line because he was discovered riding a freight train. 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 trespassing on the property of the railroad company. I somehow felt that the convict camp had almost killed the best within him, for he remarked as we were strolling down the street toward our destination, “I have a nice gun on me. I think I will pawn it, because if a fellow has a gun on him and has nothing to eat nor any place to sleep he is liable to do something he will be sorry for.” He took his gun into a pawnshop and left it there for thirty-five cents.

These are but two incidents showing how badly this city needs a Municipal Emergency Home. There are two-score others that sadden me as I think of them. What a beautiful thing it would be for San Antonio to be 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 in Austin where the Texas Legislature was in session.

During my investigations I have never seen a public notice, in the press or elsewhere, guiding a destitute person to the Associated Charities or publicly offering aid, until I came to Austin. Here I saw just one such notice. It was not at the depot nor at any employment office nor at the emergency hospital, nor at the prison door. It was plastered up in the office of a first-class hotel which at that time was headquarters for the assembled lawmakers of the State of Texas. Well, perhaps, that body of estimable gentlemen did need a little charity.

The spirit of power, energy and enterprise has been breathed into the city of Dallas, with all its youth, strength and progress. There is not an 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, her insignia should be “Just Now,” covering two meanings. Just (in the spirit of justice) “disposed to render to each man his due”; Now, “in the least possible time.”

When I told the people of Dallas that their beautiful public library of fifteen thousand volumes could afford to have on file for public use only one daily paper and that I had seen a dozen men and boys waiting their turn to read the “want ads”; that the Salvation Army had turned many back into the street because they had no money; that a private employment office was robbing men and boys; that I had found a sixteen-year-old, starving boy in the city forced to beg or steal, who declared that the Associated Charities of New York had shipped seventeen of them from the Orphan Asylums through to Dallas and turned them adrift in the western country and that the Salvation Army absolutely refused to give them aid; of a mother with five little children, one a babe in arms, who spent thirty-six hours in a vacant, old storeroom which was absolutely barren, while the husband looked for work; of the suffering of the many toilers in Dallas walking the streets all night, seeking shelter under death-dealing conditions, and that none of these seemed to know that there was in existence such a thing as organized charity in Dallas, and that many of them, even had they known it, would have taken the chances of starvation rather than to have asked alms, no matter how kindly disposed Dallas charity organizations might be toward them,—they listened with deep interest.

Houston, San Antonio and Dallas received my counsel, not in the spirit of criticism, but as a message holding a great truth, a message containing facts which must be regarded in acts that will reward themselves twofold in the still newer Houston, San Antonio and Dallas,—cities which every day are stirring into new industrial activity 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 of the most bitterly cold winter weather our country had known for a great many years, I went to Milwaukee. The city was in the last few months of a Socialist Administration. I wanted to see what it meant to the working classes and especially to that class I was deeply interested in,— the homeless workingman, and at times the destitute, homeless workingman. There were three of our important cities, which, because of their national prominence in social progress, I felt would add a climax to my investigations: “Socialist” Milwaukee; “The Golden Rule” City of Toledo; and “Spotless” Detroit.

It was twenty degrees below zero when I arrived at Milwaukee and this extremely cold weather heralded the speedy gathering of the ice crop. In this city there were four thousand unemployed homeless men, fully one-fourth of them destitute, begging, thieving, sleeping on the floors of the cheaper saloons, seeking all of those available places that would possibly keep aflame the spark of life, in addition to those finding shelter in the Milwaukee Rescue Mission.

In three days the ice crop was made and in four days’ time thirty-five hundred of these men were on the ice. The five hundred who did not go were too old, physically weak, or had not sufficient clothing. Many of those who did go, in the condition they were in, froze their faces, ears, hands and feet and from exposure were forced into the hospitals and some into their graves. The wages paid by the ice company was a dollar and seventy-five cents per day, from which the worker paid five dollars per week for board. It is not necessary to refer again to the days of work. For many reasons, the laborer is forced to lose time during the week,—yet the board must be paid.

The weather continued extremely cold for many weeks. I found the Milwaukee Rescue Mission incomplete and inadequate. In this bitter cold I was denied admission to the institution by reason of its being overcrowded, and, also, because its doors were locked at ten-thirty P. 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 and food. Too many had already applied. I was not to be denied a bountiful five- or ten-cent meal providing I had the price. I heard an old man of sixty-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 I read 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 cuspidor was provided for that use.

The hour for worship came and on the instant the lights were suddenly turned out. As we stumbled over the benches and chairs, as well as over one another trying to get out, a man told us emphatically “to go in to worship [in a very large audience room, which had stood empty while we were packed in the small one] or get out.” The religion or the mode of worship of many of these men was not after their way, but that made no difference. As the thermometer registered twenty-two degrees below zero that night, it was not a very comfortable experience for the half-clothed men who were forced to walk the streets in search of other shelter.

I followed them out to see where they went, and just as I was leaving I recalled the last motto I had read before the darkness was forced upon us:

“No law but love, no creed but Christ.”

Most of the men who sought other shelter went to the saloons and by the big red-hot stoves kept from perishing. Others went to the tramway station or the depots, or the offices of the cheap lodging houses.

In one of the Milwaukee daily papers January 2, 1912, I read: “The first man to be sent to the house of correction this year was John L—--, sentenced in the District Court yesterday to a term of ninety days. 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 institution may be in the right place—I did not meet the gentleman—but the hearts of his subordinates (at least those I came in contact with), and the spirit of the institution were not. I heard men in the Police Court of Milwaukee beg of the Judge to be sent to the House of Correction as a relief from suffering during the bitter cold winter.

This, my exposition of the condition of the unemployed homeless of Milwaukee, should not be regarded as a criticism on Socialism, although the latter failed in its care and treatment of their unemployed. There are many excuses to offer. An old, rotten political and social system, four thousand years old, could not be reconstructed in a moment’s time. Bound by City and State Charters and a netted tangle of City and State laws, it was impossible for the administration to carry out the fundamental principles of Socialism. That brief Socialist administration was more one of theory than of practical interest, although the Fire and Police Departments were not out of control of the administration except in matters of salary. The good intent of the policies of the administration are reflected in many permissive bills which went to the Legislature, in most cases to remain. 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 municipal markets. The unified press was against this administration, which taking all in all, it would not be fair to regard as a comprehensive example of Socialism, though I may well add that during it taxes were not raised. At that time Milwaukee had the lowest tax rate of any large American 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 were these:

Four National banks, fourteen State banks, savings banks and trust companies, whose combined resources were over sixty millions.

A splendid McKinley Monument built by popular subscription which was completed 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 the conservation of the Newsboy! When he is no longer small enough to be a newsboy and must do the work of an able-bodied man, what then?)

A four hundred thousand dollar Marble Art Museum. (The cost given does not include the value of the collection.)

Finest Municipal golf course in the world.

A Municipal Zoölogical Garden which is a wonder, the animals being housed, fed and sheltered at great cost.

Toledo has also an old ramshackle of a building, which ought to be condemned, called again by that pretty name which has become so popular with federated charities, “The Wayfarer’s Lodge.” I made one attempt to stop 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 Milwaukee Rescue Mission to the homeless man, when I was politely, or rather impolitely, given to understand that in that most bitter cold weather even, I was not welcome to warm myself by the old stove. I was told by a 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 look at the old inadequate den from the exterior was enough. This wretched place accommodates only fifty men, when every night during that bitter winter there were from three to five hundred on the streets of Toledo who had no place to lay their heads.

Just across the Maumee river, in East Toledo, is an old frame police station where I found a hundred and twenty-five men trying to sleep nightly on the floor. A little way from there, fifty were sleeping on the floor of a Mission, with newspapers for beds. Each lodger was taxed five cents for that privilege.

In this “Golden Rule City,” I found many men who had served time in the jails for the crime of poverty. I was told by a citizen at the time of my visit that three hundred men from one of their prisons were compelled to put up ice for the city of Toledo, receiving no recompense for their work but a cell and prison fare,—slavery more damnable than ever cursed the South. These were then pushed out on to the world again to become mendicants and criminals. Facts calling for prison reform as told in romances carry a great weight for good, but enforced reform is what 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 of Opportunities.” Let me tell of a few things I did not find,—things which might give an opportunity to those who come and are willing and must 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 they have not these beatitudes. Like Milwaukee, they too may be bound by a knotty web of State and City laws, which must be overcome before the people 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 week among the homeless of Detroit. During my brief stay, there appeared in one of the daily papers the following notice, and a number of similar ones:

“Charles Heague, thirty-six, no home, was picked up in the street after midnight by Patrolmen Wagner and Coats. Both hands were frozen.”

As in other cities, during the five long months of winter there is in Detroit a vast army of out-of-work, homeless, starving men.

Detroit has many benevolent and charitable institutions, which, no doubt, are doing a great deal of good. But the ones I came in contact with were imperfect and do not serve their purpose. The McGregor Mission, which shelters thousands of homeless men annually, is one of the best, if not the best, in our nation. The spirit of kindness in evidence was remarkable with but few exceptions, of which the most important was that its doors were closed at ten P. M. Also I saw twenty men and boys, early one Sunday morning, driven out of this Mission when the mercury was far below zero, and not allowed to return for two hours. Being Sunday, the saloons and other places of business, as well as the other Missions, were closed. These half-clad men were forced to remain on the streets. Their suffering was pitiful.

The McGregor Mission was decidedly inadequate for the vast army of homeless workers in Detroit at that time. Here, also, men were seeking every available place to sleep and many, for doing so, were thrust into jail. The most noticeable feature of the incompleteness of this institution was the lack of a department for women.

One of the most startling examples of maladjustment in Detroit was the Michigan Free Employment Bureau, located in an old decaying building, with window lights broken out of both door and window-sash. The floor being much below the level of the ground, each comer carried in the snow and filth, which soon melted into an icy slush. Think of it! Two hundred homeless men, willing to work for a mere pittance, for an existence, crowded into a congested room—which did not hold nearly all of the applicants—many of them with broken shoes and sockless feet standing in ice water for hours while they waited and hoped!

As a contrast to this object lesson, let me relate another. The following Sunday afternoon I mingled with an audience of two thousand people listening to a religious agitator who declared he must raise four thousand dollars at once for a Mission,—a Mission which after a service of song and prayer let starving, homeless men freeze to death on the street!

In thirty minutes he raised thirty-five hundred dollars. On another afternoon a man, with pathetic words and appealing pictures, was soliciting money for the lepers in India. To my question, “Are not these unfortunates subjects of the British Crown, and being so are there 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 spent several million pounds to crown a king and that this being the case, was it not rather inconsistent of them to ask people of other nations to help care for their sick? To which the gentleman could only reply by suggesting a harmony of opinion!

One of Detroit’s daily papers misquoted me by saying: “I found scores of mental defectives among the homeless workers roaming the streets of Detroit.” Only two actually came under my notice who could properly be classed as mentally unbalanced. But after all I had seen, I fell to wondering if there were not a slight degree of mental deficiency in the minds of those who contribute to visionary institutions—which may perhaps have their good qualities—and to foreign lands, while at our very door, day after day, we hear the cry of the suffering, toiling American citizens who need our gifts.

With my visit to “Spotless” Detroit, my wanderings ceased. To-day I sit in my own home. In the closet of my study hangs a suit of wornout jeans. A pair of coarse, badly-worn shoes lie on the floor. On a hook hangs a tattered hat which I may never wear again. These things hold for me a thousand sermons and a philosophy which if it could but be revealed would be as deep and beautiful as any that has ever been spoken. My arduous trials are over, but my work is not done. As long as an opportunity presents itself, as long as the breath of life is within me, I shall lift my voice in behalf of the oppressed, and our cry against laws and customs that decree damnation, against hells and influences which block progress toward a divine destiny, until our beloved Stars and Stripes, the emblem of liberty, peace and justice, which by greed, lust of gold and false ambitions have been so cruelly and pitilessly destroyed, shall speak again of union,—of union in our States, in the brotherhood of man, in the golden rule of Christ, in the love 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. The following are the most frequently asked:

“Is not drink the principal cause of destitution?”

“Is the American police system brutal toward the homeless out-of-work man?”

“What of the impostor at the Municipal Emergency Home?”

Drink is not the primal cause of poverty. The first and all-important cause is industrial conditions. But the traffic in alcohol is the most powerful ally of our plutocratic industrial system—in perpetuating poverty.

Despondent men drink for relief from self-consciousness, starving men for stimulation, while circumstances, fate, or the vicissitudes of life prompt many to resort to drink.

The man who works ten hours a day on a meager midday lunch of bread and 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 for forgetfulness, the idle rich for pleasure. Broken hearts are found both in the palace and hovel.

The saloon, that dissolvent of self-respect, character and chastity, mocking the intelligence of every community, leaving its trace and putting a brand of shame upon this our boasted enlightened era, we may not believe in as an institution. And yet, this same saloon is a refuge meaning as much to the wandering, homeless wage-earner, as did, in the old days, the shelter of the good monks to the storm-lost wanderer of the Alps, and until each city is honorable enough to give to the homeless poor man something in place of the saloon, it certainly ought not to be mean enough to take from him that agent of life-saving sustenance. One of the most brilliant newspaper writers that I met in my crusade told me that while down-and-out in Portland, Oregon, he lived for one week on what he snatched from the free lunch counter. In many places they have forced from the saloon the free lunch, the rest chairs, the tables and papers. They demand that they close at midnight or earlier, and all day Sunday. Take notice, where they are doing this, they are not opening their churches very fast as a substitute, and even if they did, there is very little to sustain life in a plaster-of-paris image or a stained-glass window.

The saloon, with its shelter, its warmth, and its free lunch, saving the life of the half-clad perishing man, holds a very strong argument for its existence. If the mayor of a city has not the power to create and provide clean, wholesome, public benefits for the wage-earner in time of need (who has a civic right), we should certainly demand that the saloon keeper be forced to serve free lunch, and keep his door open three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and twenty-four hours every day, for it is a degree more respectable to sleep in a saloon than in a jail. The first saloon keeper to throw a man out, should be the first to be thrown out of business. Keep the saloons until every city is honorable and humane enough in its strife for civic beauty to create public privileges, adequate Municipal Emergency Homes, public drinking fountains and comfort stations. Then, with a clear conscience, we may legislate the enormous profit off of the impure concoctions, and when this is done, the dragon will have been given at least one effectual blow.