“Waiting to Crawl into a Cellar for a Free Bed, Unfed, Unwashed—Fully Clothed They Spend the Night on Board Bunks, Crowded in Like Animals”
“Waiting to Crawl into a Cellar for a Free Bed, Unfed, Unwashed—Fully Clothed They Spend the Night on Board Bunks, Crowded in Like Animals”
“Is the American police system brutal toward the out-of-work man?”
The declaration of the radical Agnostic streetspeaker, that there was only one miracle he believed in, and that was “that St. Patrick drove all the snakes and toads out of Ireland, and that they came to America, got into politics and on to the police force,” is an unjust dogma, for in my observation every nationality represented on the police force is of the same character in administering the official duty and in taking advantage of the trust put in them where they are made a political adjunct to a municipality.
The policeman is the same as other men. He is a workingman, and like all men, he loves, he hates, he has his home, his social and business interests. He is of the community and should stand for the welfare of that community, and should never be allowed to divorce himself from the trust placed upon him by the common rights of all the people.
What greater examples of the virtues of character can we find anywhere than in the police? Their courage is noticeable. They will not hesitate to rush into danger, into fire, riot, water, to save lives and property. And over this character of courage is ever present the element of kindness toward the little child, the old and infirm, and often of the proffered dime to the homeless man. And yet he is an Ishmaelite—“his hand is against every man, and every man’s hand is against him,” which is a destructive condition.
ThePolice System taken as a wholethroughout our country is extremely brutal toward the out-of-work, homeless man. There are but few exceptions. This is largely because when a man is chosen for that position, for political reasons, he pledges himself, not so much to keep the peace and the law of the community, as to enforce the law of the political machine and vice trust of that city. And if the helpless, homeless man, defenseless because of poverty, is not shot or clubbed to death (which makes a perquisite for the coroner), he is often railroaded, by the testimony of one policeman, into the county jail where it costs five cents a day to keep him, while the sheriff and chief of police will receive of the tax-payers’ money thirty cents a day for his care. The capacity of these jails is from one to two hundred souls. So it can be plainly seen that it is much to the interests of these officeholders to keep them filled. The remedy? Simply divorce at once the police departments from politics, and under civil service examination, put intelligent, qualified men on the force. This is not only to serve honestly the community but your fellow citizen, the policeman, as well. It is not serving vicious private interests, which grant to the police a license to be dishonest, to shoot down or club to death homeless men on the street—which not infrequently results in the finding of policemen shot to death in vicious retaliation, supposedly always by a criminal. Then abuse will cease. As an example, I know of no better policed city than Boston. Study thesemen closely. Their spirit is kindliness. Though they may be armed as a protection from the drink-crazed, there is no evidence of gun or club. They are not seen drinking in the saloons. They do not meet you with rum-befouled breaths as in most cities, but with awelcomingface and a clear eye. Here the unfortunate is given kindly consideration. In return, the Boston public seems to co-operate in helping the police. The secret of this valued quality of the police of Boston lies in the fact that the police are indirectly appointed by the Governor of the State,—that is, the Governor appoints the Police Commissioner, and he in turn chooses his officers,after they have passed a satisfactory civil service examinationat 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 brutal by choice, but by command of the system which forces him to be brutal. In municipalities where police brutality is their shame, the change can only come through the elector and the tax-payer. A well regulated city is one founded on the human rights of all the people, and a well regulated 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 whoare so from choice, those that are mentally and physically normal, among the migratory workers, are exceedingly rare. If we hesitate at a Municipal Emergency Home and let ninety worthy men suffer or perish because ten out of the hundred are unworthy, why not close our public libraries, our hospitals, our parks, in fact, every public benevolence, lest some unworthy ones creep in?
We strive to weed out the impostor in many communities by throwing all idle men in prison, and when they cannot be used as a graft, and become an expense, or the awakened humane spirit of the city demands that they shall no longer commit this outrage, they are often run out of town. Or, after they have been humiliated by arrest, they are hauled in the police wagons to the outskirts of the city with a prison threat not to return, and turned destitute onto the next community. But this clearance test will not stand the light of constitutional liberty. Though our missions and churches are filled with many grand good people, the crucial treatment of the wage-earner is the underlying reason for the crumbling of our Christian faith. The Carpenter of Nazareth never questioned the man in need who came to learn of Him. To heal him, that was the predominant thought of His mind.
Are we, all of us, quite sure that we have not, during some period of our lives, appeared true and genuine when false? Let us not forget thatthe highest conception of a citizen of a Christian city is not what a man was yesterday, but what he is to-day, and what he is going to 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 individually is good and true for us collectively. Let us be self-reliant. To take the attitude that historydoesandmustrepeat itself is the attitude of cowards.
“The reason of idleness and crime is the deferring of our hopes; whilst we are waiting we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating and with crime.” This was Rome under the rule of its monarchical aristocracy of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Centuries. Under this aristocracy, greed for position, fame, and avarice for great wealth, was unparalleled.
To satisfy this greed, they built great monuments. They drew upon the entire country for labor to achieve their selfish aim and end. They not only lured the country’s populace by pomp and glittering gayety, but big business controlled the land for speculation and selfish pleasure, forcing the people into urban centers. Even the smaller cities built amphitheaters and “civic centers” larger than the population. Then the gluttons of big business discovered that basilicas, monuments for supposedly great men, triumphal arches, marvelous fountains and temples of 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 the eternal city had already begun. The working wage slave of the ancient Romans, so marvelously clever in his many crafts, was looked upon as being but little better than the animal which hauled the stone. There was no recognition of equality between the classes, nor consequently equal sharing of profits of production, or the creation of any public government institutions as a privilege of labor by the right of toil, to care for the bodily needs of the normal and healthy man who might need such an institution. The monarchical aristocracy of the Roman Empire did not believe in those things. But our political and industrial interests in this country are awakening to the fact that the foundation of all business is food, shelter and clothing, and that the honest demands of the people for the essentials of life shall be met and honestly distributed. They are recognizing that a reserve of unemployed labor is necessary to the progress of our industries and the promotion of our civilization, and the necessity of conserving that unemployed force.
We recognize that we are builders and that we are going to have a great name—not of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Century, but of this, the Twentieth Century,our century,—that we have already conquered sea and sky, and have put the “girdle ’round the earth in forty minutes.”
But every marvelous achievement, every boasted cry of liberty to make us free, will never make us great, until we learn that our ruling powermustbe God’s law of right and love.
“Where there is no vision the people perish.” —Proverbs, 29:18.
During my social study I was asked by the president of a Charity Board to become an employee of the city Board of Charity and Corrections in a Western city. The Board consisted of three members. The president was a young Presbyterian minister who was just beginning to catch, through the mist of tradition, the light of new things. The other two members of the Board were women, one the daughter of a corporation lawyer, a young lady of large, kind heart, who for some time was connected with the United Charities of Chicago and who seemed to believe in their ancient system of charity in meeting the problem of destitution. The other was an estimable Jewish lady who had some decided opinions in regard to comfortable jails for honest, homeless, shelterless women and girls. Considering the services of these estimable people on the Board, gratuitous criticism would be unfair andmuch praise is due them for their conscientious work and the initiative taken in many effectual reforms which to them will be a lasting monument.
After six weeks’ service I was found fault with by the Board, but the only charge against me was that I was avisionist. It was rather singular though that this charge should come on the day following my visit to the County Poor Farm, the story of that visit being told in one of the local papers the following day. I could not deny that I was not guilty, for the press had exposed me, not only as a visionist who saw things, but as one who told things. In fact I had been seeing and telling 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 was concerned, 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 this writing was “broke” and I was forced to be content with a postponement. With me, to meet postponement gracefully had become a virtue, for I had long since learned to postpone such a non-consequential thing as a meal a good many times, but I think I never missed any.
Ah, the visions of that six weeks, I can assure you, were not visions of angels ascending and descending ladders! The first was that of an old rookery building, with a ten cent tin sign on which was written “City Board of Charities,” directlyopposite the city jail, where all day long, and all night long, men and women either directly or indirectly, for the crime of poverty, were being forced behind its iron 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 and correction, one at the door of the alms station and the other at the door of the police station. But he who has been shoulder to shoulder with the victims of these two municipal institutions and has read through the pleading, parched lips and tear-stained faces of the victims of both these places, has learned an immutable lesson and can not refrain from crying out for a better and a greater social life. One who observes will quickly see throughout our nation how closely allied—in all their phases—are Charity and Prisons and Missions. While the church is lifting one thousand out of the gutter, society, by a destructive social system and evil influences, is pushing ten thousand in. Charity keeps many from actually starving to death, yet the ever-increasing number of our needy is even “greater than man can number.” What is the price we pay?
My practical work with this board was that of investigator, that is, I was sent out to see if the applicant for aid were really worthy, to see that the Charity Board was not being robbed by dishonest mendicants. Charity organizations seemed to benot so much concerned with the relief of the helpless as with protecting the well-to-do from imposition on the part of those who claim they are in distress. I was given approximately eighty questions to ask. I was expected to follow up these questions—many of them questions of reference—for the purpose of ascertaining whether the applicants for aid were really telling the truth. I rebelled a little at first at the thought of conducting this third degree inquisition. It was even repulsive for me to enter the door of the humblest home and state I was from the Charity Board. I would so much rather have said that I was from the city Department of Public Service for Labor.
From my first day, however, I continued to see visions,—not visions of great numbers, not of saints, but of thousands of workingmen’s vacant homes, deserted for lack of work due to the inability of these workingmen to earn a living. I saw the truth most forcibly revealed that again the foundation of all business was a comfortable existence and an opportunity to earn those comforts and the right of existence by labor, and that people must have that privilege or be forced to go where itcanbe had. I saw many of those who remained struggling to tide themselves over, hoping for a better day. Many were helpless for lack of means to get away, and had therefore become dependents of the State and city.
I saw nearly all of our attempted factories inruins, and four thousand workingmen driven from the city by the smelter trust; and then came again the glowing vision of sixty million pounds of wool, and an enormous production of cotton, grown annually in a radius of five hundred miles around our very doors. This raw material was being shipped two thousand miles to be worked into the most essential commodities. Every day we were walking over the finest glass sand in the world, yet we were denied the benefit of that most needful and profitable industry. I knew we dwelt in the heart of the leather producing district of the nation and yet no shoe factories. These are but a few of the raw materials in the region of the Rocky Mountain Western States. One who has made a study of industrial economics knows too well why the State of Colorado has (to speak comparatively) but seven people to the square mile. He well knows one reason to be the protective associations which protectbig businessinstead of protecting the people,—forever crying down co-operative industry which is for the good of all.
In the homes of these asking alms which I visited, I saw the fearful destroying effect on character of the wolf as he peered through broken pane, and the cracks and crannies of door and wall. I saw the humiliating tears and flushed faces of those who for the first time were forced to beg. It was exactly like those of my associates who for the first time had been thrust into prison. It neededbut a glance to tell me whether they had received “charity” before, for there is always the spirit of being hardened to the “disgrace,” just as there is in the manner in which the prisoner treats the situation if he has previously “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 impressive plea, lest they fail to obtain the needed food and fuel, prevaricate in replying to my many questions, or perhaps remain non-committal, but often the little child at hand, conscious of the practiced deceit of the parent, would speak the truth. Then would follow the austere look 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 into dishonesty just as the plain-clothes man or uniformed police blackmail the 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 and county jail. I saw the poor tubercular victim clinging to the thread of life, dying from malnutrition, who, perhaps, could have gained his health under different circumstances. I saw hundreds of strong, hardy men demanding, by the divine right of living, the necessities of life. I saw the mother sufferingfrom privation, who saw no future, and was without hope, whose soul and body throbbed with the life of the unborn babe, whose demand was greater than the single life of man,—the demand for the divine right of motherhood. And again I saw a vision,—a general view of the private and public institutions, both benevolent and correctional, which were in the city and which were crowded to overflowing because of poverty. Then came my fatal vision,—my visit to the Poor Farm.
The greatest city of the State is usually the fountain head, the output camp for the entire State. When the unfortunate become homeless, helpless and needy, they drift to the capital. The burden of the indigent of the entire State is thus put upon that particular city and county. I saw a great number turned away from the Poor House door because of its already congested condition, who were then obliged to exploit the community in other ways for the right of existence. I saw in 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 State only three weeks. They represented every part of our country. There was absolutely no provision made by this city, county, or State for the indigent, tubercular woman or girl. I had already heard continually in the homes of the needy the appealing cry of the poor who suffer and wait, hoping against hope for life and health, asking in one mighty, smothered sob for a NationalTubercular Sanitarium, an institution which every State west of the Mississippi River should have.
In the blind ward of this traditional place for those who have missed their aim (pioneers many of them, who hewed the logs and held the plow and blazed the trails from ’59 to ’85), I saw twenty blind, thirteen of whom were rendered blind by mine accidents, looking forward in the darkness, ever in the darkness, for a home that has not the stigma of charity, the infamy of a Poor House. Looking forward for the home which is theirs by inheritance, andevery one a native of the Stateto which Winfield Scott Stratton, the multi-millionaire mining-man and philanthropist, leftten million dollarsto build and support ten years ago! He left it in the hands of three exceedingly wealthy trusted friends to carry out his wishes who dwell and live in palaces amidst beautiful surroundings, and as yet no home has been built, and meanwhile the burying-ground of that final retreat, the Poor House, becomes ever increasingly dotted with the new-made graves. Monies belonging to these helpless, pioneer citizens who earned it by the right of enduring hardships and toil, money belonging to the hard-working people of the State, and to men still in the harness, this money is denied while the people at large are overburdened with taxation for the support of monarchical, handed-down institutions,—a burden from which they can get no relief. This vision of truth thrown upon the canvasof progress and humanity is forcibly applicable to every Western State, in its appeal for an intelligent and humane conservation of its citizens and most particularly the wage-earning citizen. And although these few pages can only hint at the truth revealed, they speak for National governmental action in placing our people on the lands and the erection of national institutions for our sufferers of the white plague. For co-operative industries of equity by and for the people; for governmental ownership of all public utilities and State institutions for our unfortunate, looking toward the dawn of that glad, new day the light which is beginning to glow through the press of this country. In Denver and many of the other Western cities there is a movement for a better and a greater West. Already in the new vision for the State of Colorado they have taken the citizen from behind stone walls and iron bars. The cities are creating municipal labor for the temporarily out-of-work man, which hand in hand with Municipal Emergency Homes is just to tide over the rough place. Imperfect and incomplete as its experimental beginning may be, who can deny the awakening of a perfect aim toward a perfect end? There is no wall of prejudice or selfishness, of ambition or unnatural greed, which can be built that will overcome these arguments. These needs must be met and shall be. No government can stand that is not founded on God’s governing laws of humanity.
In the hope that the story contained in these pages shall not have been recorded in vain, the author begs to offer a few suggestions in regard to Municipal Emergency Homes. Unless rightly built and rightly conducted they may prove worse than useless. That the need is great none can deny, and the institution should be strictly for the purpose of filling that need. The suggestions contained in the following paragraphs may solve some of the perplexities which confront the city wishing to build an institution such as the situation demands.
In every State of the Union, the Legislature should pass a bill giving cities the right, under home rule, to erect and maintain a Municipal Emergency Home. Every city ought to pass an ordinance for the creation and maintenance of such Municipal Emergency Homes, and the budget ofthe city should contain an appropriation for its maintenance, based on the same reasons on which the appropriation is granted for running the Health Department, Police Department, or any other Department of the Municipal Government.
The ordinance to be passed by the city council ought to create and develop a system that will give protection and opportunity to every honest wandering citizen while sojourning, in search of work, in the community.
In the cities of New York and Boston, an appropriation is made from the public treasury for the care and maintenance of their Municipal Emergency Homes. In Chicago a special budget is created and added to the appropriation of the Police Department. It should properly have been added to the Health Department.
A Municipal Emergency Home should not be designed to be a money-making institution, but merely to provide shelter and food for men and women who appeartemporarilydestitute. If it should appear that those demanding shelter in the Municipal Emergency Home should be afflicted with any physical illness, it should be the duty of its superintendent to transfer such individuals to a hospital ward, which may be a part of the Municipal Emergency Home, or to the city or county hospital where each man or woman may bethoroughly cured of any illness which has put them into destitute circumstances or is unfitting them to perform any kind of labor to make existence possible. The mind of the community is being educated to see that the adjustment of individuals to a suitable environment must be quickly but scientifically attempted. If unfit they must, if possible, be made fit. The idea seems to be dawning that permanent unfitness must be met with permanent adjustment.
For the present, the Municipal Emergency Home stands, or rather should stand, on the one hand as a link in the chain of governmental institutions, not only as a public policy and agency which supports the individual who either fails in life or is compelled to be one in the ranks of destitute men because of economic conditions, but as an institution wherein one may receive temporary relief under the rights of citizenship. On the other hand, it should stand for the protection of society from the degradations, annoyances and misdemeanors of the individual who would thus be a burden upon his fellows and upon society as a whole. In other words, the Municipal Emergency Home should be one maintained and conductedstrictly by the municipalityas a governmental institution. It should be the tiding-over place for the man or the woman without a job, a refuge to satisfy immediate needs,a hospital in certain cases of sickness, an asylum in case of destitution.
The author believes that there are two factors essential to the success of a Municipal Emergency Home; first, the co-operation of all public departments in the city government, and second, the cooperation of the public itself. When because of politics it has been found difficult to introduce improvements and progressive ideas in a municipality for relieving the temporarily distressed, it has become the custom to recommend religious or private charities for the management of relief-granting institutions. But no one can question the success and the need of a Municipal Emergency Home who is willing to investigate the wonderful success of the New York Municipal Lodging House and the Buffalo Municipal Lodging House. These are conducted strictly under city and County supervision and management. As such results as have been obtained in New York and Buffalo, and which may come into existence in any large city, under public management, why should other cities question the popularity and success of a Municipal Emergency Home under such management or doubt its advantages over those mismanaged by religious and private charity, the latter not infrequently run for profit?
The people of our cities may expect, and should forcibly demand from its 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 worst governed city in America. But when such a city creates an appropriation from its public treasury for the maintenance and management of a Municipal Emergency Home, there can be no reason to doubt the wisdom or the success of the experimentation of municipal charities. In fact, we ought not to speak of municipal charity, but rather to say that the city appropriates such money from tax-payers as has been earned by those who are temporarily destitute,—that those housed in such municipal institutions are but receiving assistance as an interest on their past earnings. A Municipal Emergency Home should not be considered as a charitable institution, but as an institution offering the right to every toiler to receive the hospitality of his fellowmen in time of need.
If the so-called influential and responsible people of every city would use half the effort they nowuse in subscribing, managing and advertising private charitable institutions to create a public sentiment so that the city would establish a Municipal Emergency Home with the most modern features, and if they then would continue in an advisory and co-operative relation to it, the writer does not hesitate to express his belief that the advantages, every time, would be on the side of a Municipal Emergency Home or, as a matter of fact, on any other so-called charitable institution managed by the community itself as a governmental function and in a co-operative capacity.
The destitute man or woman who is compelled to apply for temporary relief at a Municipal Emergency Home comes immediately into the care of the city and may be turned at once to the protective treatment of which many stand in need.
It is well to bear in mind the fact that a scientifically managed Municipal Emergency Home not only raises the standard of other lodging 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 respects the most desirable way to manage a Municipal Emergency Home is through the direct management and supervision of the city Health Department,—never under that of the Police Department. The institution dealswith human beings who are out of adjustment to the community. The homeless, wandering citizen should not be considered as a derelict, a human monster, a criminal, a vagrant and what not, to be hounded to death by the brutal police system.
All religious, charitable and private lodging houses also should be under a rigid inspection of the Health Department of the city, lest they may become dangerous competitors to a Municipal Emergency Home by undoing the work accomplished by this exemplary institution. Because they can be maintained at a low standard of cleanliness and order, they are sought by the tired, weary, homeless workingman, that is,—when he has the money! No city should ever countenance an uninspected sheltering place where human beings are forced to congregate, where those harbored, in many instances, communicate disease to the country boy, seeking a job, and teach him lessons in mendicancy, vice and crime.
All public departments, especially the Health Department, Public Works, Legal Department, Labor Department, should co-operate with the Municipal Emergency Home. The Health Department should look after the physical welfare of the city’s guests, the Department of Public Worksshould aid by giving all able-bodied, willing workers plenty of work on all municipal undertakings, and by paying them the prevailing scale of union wages in the respective industries. The Legal Department should care for and protect against the private exploitation of the homeless men and women, and above all else, shield them from the undue interference of the police.
As to the co-operation of the great public itself, honest investigators must find the overwhelming advantages in every respect on the side of municipal management. If a city maintains and manages a modern Municipal Emergency Home, charitably-inclined private doners can be cheerfully advised to leave the entire problem to the city. Thus the great many charitable and quasi-charitable institutions that have failed to give relief where relief was most needed will fail to find support. This is exactly the purpose of all municipal and governmental undertakings,—firmly and scientifically to undertake the management of all public affairs, taking it out of the hands of superficial private organizations whose inadequate system, instead of doing good to the needy, does much moral harm.
It is most desirable that the great public bearoused and educatedto see that the homeless, wandering citizen needs special treatment,—that he must, if necessary, be the object of expert,scientifically-trained solicitude, and that the public must provide that scientific service. When the public can be so educated, all applicants for shelter, food, or work (whether they come from the so-called “tramp,” “bum,” or “hobo,” at the back door, or from the man on the street who begs a dime, or from the Salvation Army representative on the street corner, or from others who promiscuously ask donations for so-called “Lodging Houses”) may safely be referred to the Municipal Emergency Home where the expert work of the community is being done, and the task of uplifting humanity and of elevating the community itself is being carried forward in the right way.
It is quite remarkable that the Poor Law in England had its origin in an attempt to meet the problems of the homeless, wandering wage-earner. Yet there, as here, the homeless are rather on the increase, because of unjust social and industrial conditions.
Nicholl quotes the following, purely utilitarian statement:
“The usual restraints which are sufficient for the well-fed, are often useless in checking the demands of the hungry stomachs.... Under such circumstances, it might be considered cheaper to fill empty stomachs to the point of ready obedience than to compel starving wretches to respect the roast-beef of their more industrious neighbors. It might be expedient, from a mere economical point of view, to supply gratuitously the wants of able-bodied persons, if it could be done without creating crowds of additional applicants.”
“The usual restraints which are sufficient for the well-fed, are often useless in checking the demands of the hungry stomachs.... Under such circumstances, it might be considered cheaper to fill empty stomachs to the point of ready obedience than to compel starving wretches to respect the roast-beef of their more industrious neighbors. It might be expedient, from a mere economical point of view, to supply gratuitously the wants of able-bodied persons, if it could be done without creating crowds of additional applicants.”
This rudimentary economic advice has not been intelligently understood either in England or in our country. The people of our cities still look on while a group of men eat the cold roast beef of their more fortunate neighbors—calmly look on and take no action.
Eminent scholars and authorities on economic, industrial and legal questions have well said, many times, that repressive measures and antagonistic treatment are never sufficient and never will be. Educational, constructive, scientific work alone will prevail. The religious and charitable organizations and societies may ask for police control and supervision, and for the repression of vagrancy in our cities, but the homeless and wandering wage-earners will be fed, because we have a Christ-given, common humanity.
It has been said that the “tramp” question, the question of the homeless, hungry, wandering wage-earner is a woman’s question. It is. But what made it such? It has been made a woman’s question by the indifference and ignorance of our communities which have made no provisions for men and boys, women and girls, who are hungry and homeless.
Women as well as men have represented the conscience of our communities in a poor fashion, in a most dangerous fashion, in a criminal fashion, forthey have created just about as many “tramps” with their petty little charities, as the man who gives dimes on the street for a night’s shelter. The women should know, the men too, that at the back doors or on the streets we cannot do the right thing. We can give only inadequate relief. We can only push a human being down the stairs of manhood to the level of a parasite.
Let us look at the matter historically. We find that the mendicant of the Middle Ages stood in much the same relation to the community as the modern “tramp,” the homeless, wandering wage-earner. One existed, and the other exists, because of a certain sentimentality which permits one group of persons to live on the industry of another group. The community 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 Twentieth Century State of Civilization (if such we may call our time) care for and cure his descendant, the homeless, wandering wage-earner, just as it takes care of the other needs of the people in the respective communities.
To be logical, every American city should maintain a Municipal Emergency Home for the wandering citizen, the homeless wage-earner, in order to complete the system of governmental institutionsand agencies dealing with the needs of a modern complex society.
Rightfully, andlegally, in America, the so-called Overseers of the Poor, the Boards of Charities and Corrections, are required to relieve the homeless and destitute at their discretion. In many cities they are fulfilling this duty toward the men temporarily destitute and homeless by graciously permitting them to be sheltered at the insanitary, degrading police stations, to be fed with water concoctions, to sleep in a dark vermin-infested corner from which they are ordered to move on in the morning. Perhaps this is acting according to their discretion, but the result shows that it is unwise to put power into the hands of private individuals who not only know not the evil they increase but who could scarcely do otherwise if they knew.
Historically, every modern city should maintain a Municipal Emergency Home. Logically, it ought to do it. Legally, it must do it. Let it no longer 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 every community for the homeless, wandering wage-earner, a decent, modern, sanitary shelter, a fitting meal, a place where the community can give individual, discriminating, scientific treatment, where there is an opportunityto get suitable work to make a decent living possible.
Let everybody then make it his duty to appeal to the civic pride of the women and men of the community. Let the people of the city instruct its Mayor and City Council, or else themselves elect a man or a woman to supervise the management and maintenance of a Municipal Emergency Home of integrity, of resource, a place of sagacious and scientific training. Then, and not until then, will the women of our cities be able to shut their doors, the men their pockets, and point with pride to the Municipal Emergency Home, which in every American city is as necessary and as fundamental an institution as a hospital itself. In fact it is a human psychological hospital, an economic betterment provider, within the gates and welcome arch of every city.
The name of the institution is significant,—Municipal Emergency Home. As the gate of the public system of institutions it should stand, always open and ready to receive the homeless, wandering wage-earner who may claim its hospitality. From it, he or she may go forth to renumerative industry, to economic, social and industrial betterment which is for the benefit of all humanity.
In the following pages, the author wishes to give in detail the chief aims, objects and principles upon which a model Twentieth Century Municipal Emergency Home should be maintained:
I. It should provide,freeunder humane and sanitary conditions, food, lodging and bath, with definite direction for such immediate relief as is needed for any man or boy, woman or girl, or even families, stranded in the city where located, as well as for the convalescent from the hospital. It should be able to give employment to able-bodied men and boys, women and girls, provide them with the necessaries of life, and make it possible for them to be economically independent of the future. This should bethe chief aim, object and principleupon which the maintenance of a model Twentieth Century Municipal Emergency Home is based.
All consideration of causes, all efforts toward the enforcement of law or reform in legislation, are secondary to this first duty of providing a humane clearing-house for a scientific, systematic and intelligent distribution of the industrial, economic and social human waste, which gathers and disperses from season to season in the urban centers of America and tends constantly to fester into idleness, vice and crime. While the demands of this human clearing-house will be no small charge upon the respective municipalities, the Municipal Emergency Home will be primarily an institution of social service, collecting and regulating the entire human resource of the city for the mutual benefit of the community or those that serve it and of the individual that is served.
This idea of connecting, in the most direct fashion possible, the social strength of a community with the individual weakness of the stranded man or boy, woman or girl, will be the first purpose of a Twentieth Century Municipal Emergency Home. To further this end its location should be easily accessible to the lodging house district of the city. That the building should be sanitary and fireproof, the food wholesome and nourishing, the beds comfortable and clean, one man to a bed, not “double deckers,” are matters of course. An isolation ward for special cases such as men suffering from inebriety, insanity, venereal disorders, etc., is a prime requisite.
A system of registration by the card system ought to be in use, each card giving at a glance the significant facts such as name, age, birthplace, occupation, physical condition, reference, residence, nearest relative or friend, number of lodgings, disposition of the case, etc. This card should be filled out by the applicant himself, in order that the visitor may not be humiliated by an inquisition of a jail- or charity-like character. The registration clerk should be a man of good judgment, a man of honor, and with psychological training whose actions should always be guided by firm but just and human motives. Thorough physical investigation of each applicant, 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 thoroughly fumigated each night. All visitors should be required to bathe nightly and only shower baths should be used.
A comprehensive physical examination of each visitorshould be madeby competent examiners under the direction of a physician of the Health Department of the city. All necessary operations, supplies for simple medicaments, eye-glasses, crutches, bandages, trusses, in fact every accoutrement and further treatment, if necessary for the health and comfort of the visitor, should be suppliedfree. An entry of the actual physical conditions of each visitor should be made on his registration card after the first examination, and any change therefrom noted thereon as it may occur from time to time. All cases of infectiousor chronic contagious diseases of a virulent nature should be sent at once to the isolation ward. The accuracy and care of this department is of immediate importance to the health of the entire community andabsolutely essentialto the effective and successful administration of the Home.
Each visitor should be provided with an absolutely clean nightshirt and a pair of slippers. The dormitories should be in all cases comfortable and quiet, talking, reading and smoking therein strictly prohibited.
The morning call ought to be given in time to permit each visitor to dress 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 the town where the Municipal Emergency Home is located should form in line and pass the superintendent for distribution in accordance with the facts of each case, clearly stated on each record card, as to the physical condition, abilities and desires of each applicant for work. This is the crux of the ministry and the administration of a Twentieth Century Municipal Emergency Home. Clear-sighted, humane, resourceful, definite, resolute action is now demanded, and unless this demand is met with scientific exactness, with intelligent systematic application, the whole service fails.
The superintendent will have before him the record card of every visitor containing his original story, the report of his physical condition, occupation, and such further important facts as may have been discovered in the course of his relations with the Home. Immediately at hand will be the employment resources for that day, the name and address of every labor union headquarters, every benevolent association, every dispensary and hospital, city and business directories, railroad and factory directories with the names and addresses of the respective superintendents under whose jurisdiction the employment of help may come. Thus the superintendent will be capable of intelligent co-operation with all agencies, public and private, that may minister to the varying needs of the stranded men and boys, women and girls whom he is to distribute and start on their way 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 human judgment, courage, right feeling, resource and common sense.
It is at this crucial point in the administration of a Municipal Emergency Home that one feature of the model home stands out with commanding significance. This is theEmployment Bureau. Daily opportunity for paid employment is the right arm of the most effective distribution, and the only genuine work test. Whether thiscan be assured or not in any given city, no one can say until it has been fairly applied and tried. When the employment resources of any city are thoroughly organized, if there still be men in any considerable number, able and willing to work, who cannot be given paid employment and who must suffer enforced idleness for any considerable length of time, then and not until then, will we know that the present industrial order has absolutely broken down. After all paid employment has been thoroughly taken advantage of, coming as it does from private resources, the respective municipalities should immediately put to work all able-bodied, willing wage-earners on municipal work of all kinds for which the city should pay them a decent, living wage, or rather the prevailing 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 know the facts of our present-day industrial and social system, and while enjoying the fruits of this present order, are determined to defend it against assaults. They also purpose to strive mightily in righting whatever wrongs may be proven to exist. The Municipal Emergency Home will help to supply these people with the real knowledge of conditions in the underworld, where millions of honest, able-bodied men and women are forced to spend their lives in enforced economic idleness and uselessness.
One of the most significant indications of the power of the Municipal Emergency 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 other helping agencies in the respective communities, it cannot be denied that their influence, their hooks of help, hang too high to catch many worthy persons among the vast army of wandering citizens who are in direst need. The “Hang-out,” the “Barrel-house,” and the “Free-flops” receive many times more human drift than Charity Bureaus, Missions and Workingmen’s Homes. This is seen to be inevitable when the conditions are rightly understood.
Humankind is but just beginning to understand and appreciate the everlasting truth of that great clause of Agur’s perfect prayer: “Feed me with food convenient for me,” and of one of the greatest sayings in the Gospel of the Kingdom: “For I was hungered and ye gave me meat; I was 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 a straightforward, resourceful meeting of the issues of his or her human lifefirst. After that, if you possess sincerity, faithand clear vision, it may be your privilege to speak to him or her, with controlling 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 Emergency Home, and what will impel the unfortunate woman or girl to accept its altruistic, humane but vigorous hospitality?”
The answer is easy. It has already been discovered that one of the chief sanctions, one of the main objects for municipal direction of such work isbeing a municipal enterprise, a part of the city administration, a wing of its manifold governmental functions, it challenges most effectively the co-operation of all public authorities. The very first step therefore in this mandatory municipal co-operation will be the closing of the police stations, these degrading and unsanitary hells of our barbaric age, to the itinerant or local toilers who have been either “run in” by the police or forced to find shelter for the night, and provision for the supply of all such applicants with tickets of admission and directions to the Municipal Emergency Home. This will partly relieve the police stations of our cities of one of their most disagreeable duties, rendered in the past without any adequate means and under conditions that befouled not only the stations but which degraded the needy visitors,thereby encouraging vagrancy, crime and vice, creating disease and, in many cases, causing untimely deaths.
The second answer to the question is that every policeman will be required to carry a supply of Municipal Emergency Home tickets in his pocket to give to all persons discovered in need, and to those found begging. These must be accompanied by a warning that he or she must not beg, because of the consequences, and that the city will take care of their monetary necessities. No police officer should be allowed to interfere or endanger the liberty of any such temporarily destitute people. All railroad stations should have, in a conspicuous place, an advertisement of the Home, calling the stranded wayfarer’s attention to its existence and location. Such notices will prove a blessing to them and a saving to the community. All newspapers should co-operate with the city authorities in printing in the “want ads” column the fact of the existence of such a Municipal Emergency Home, its location and the possible positions that may be filled by applying to the superintendent.
A most important step should be to provide every homeless man or boy, woman or girl who may have been discharged from the house of correction, from the penitentiaries, hospitals or other institutions, with the hospitality of the Municipal Emergency Home, thereby pledging the supportand good faith of the city to secure him food, shelter, an opportunity for honest employment, or the right, for a period, while enjoying the hospitality of the city, to look about for such labor as he or she may prefer.
No one who lays any claim to enlightened opinion upon subjects of this character believes any longer that arrest and incarceration in a penal or corrective institution is a final answer to the social obligations of the community in behalf of the so-called casual vagrant, the wandering citizen, the itinerant wage-worker, or petty criminal, as they are miscalled. It may be true, perhaps, that a three or six months’ imprisonment is the only present available means for “straightening up a drunk” or getting some “evil spirit” out of a young man’s heart. But at its best it is a very dangerous medicine, and surely when society leaves a man or boy, woman or girl at the prison gate, after a jail sentence of greater or less duration, and tells him or her to shift, each for himself or herself as best they may, it is simply an invitation and an encouragement to vagrancy, vice, crime and immorality.
The last important step in this mandatory municipal co-operation should be a direct attack upon the “barrel-houses,” “free-flops,” and “hang-outs,” certain cheap lodgings and Missions. To continue a campaign against vagrancy by an indiscriminate raiding of such resorts has proven to be a miserable failure. If there is no other free, accessible andserviceable place for the homeless and indigent man, boy, woman or girl, they will simply find another center, and the last may be worse than the first. On the other hand, having understood and provided for the actual needs of the temporarily unemployed homeless, we have cut off the base of evil supplies of “the mendicant army” through the use of tickets to a modern Municipal Emergency Home, and the co-operation of all other municipal departments and the great public. Then, and not until then, can a modern Christian community strike effectively the final blow against these recruiting stations of vice, immorality, crime and disease.
An intelligent, scientific, systematic and centralized campaign of publicity must beceaselesslycarried on for this Free Home. Free tickets of direction and admission must be constantly distributed through fraternal and charitable societies, labor unions, institutions, hotels, business offices, churches, clubs, housewives, railroad conductors, brakemen, and other officials and citizens. As soon as it is generally known that every applicant, without exception, is absolutely certain of wholesome food and sanitary shelterfree, with such help next morning as his need demands, the cooperation of the humane public will be immediate and constant. In this campaign for publicity the daily press, through news items and editorial comment, should be the most powerful ally for the extension of the service to the needy.
Two vitally important considerations of administration now claim our attention. One is the matter of an arbitrary limitation upon the number of nights one of these unfortunate, homeless, wandering wage-earners may remain and enjoy the hospitality of the city. The other is the question of the so-called work-test, so much asked for by charitable organizations.
This, the greatest of all problems confronting the Municipal Emergency Home, we must face courageously in the endeavor to demonstrate its practicability to social service. Either in the name of Christian Brotherhood, sympathy for unfortunate humanity, or other high and holy sentiments, men are given to “cant.” So they exploit the institution, or in the name of preventing pauperization, preserving, a man’s self-respect, a business administration, and other like high sounding terms, the institution subtly exploits its charges. This much seems certain: The arbitrary,lumpmethod of dealing with men is always and everywhere wrong and inhuman.
A model Municipal Emergency Homeshould not have an arbitrary time limiton the extension of its hospitality to the needy. The injustice of such limitation is manifest in instances such as that of a visitor suffering from a bruise, wound, brokenarm, injured leg,—of one who is awaiting money from friends, or transportation home, or to a place where employment is offered, or for the coming of the first pay-day after being re-established in industry. Neither should any Municipal Emergency Home have that inhuman, wasteful, robbing work test. To argue or reason that because one hundred or more men and boys lined up in front of a desk at five o’clock in the morning are alike because of the fact of having received a night’s shelter and 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, not only unscientific, but inhuman exploitation. In every such group there will be found not only a wide difference in resources and needs, but a 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, between jobs; boys seeking their fortunes; victims of child labor; disabled, sick and aged industrial and social waste; beats, and frequently strays from the higher walks of professional criminals. All these challenge intelligent and resourceful discrimination. Surely the true interest of the community as well as that of the unfortunate, wandering citizen, is best served by at once sending men, able and willing to work, to paid employment; separating theboys of tender ages from this human drift, and starting them home or to steady, profitable employment for the security of their future; directing the sick, infirm or aged to such institutions as will best minister to their needs.
The writer’s personal experiences and observations of the lump work test in operation, as he saw it in the various religious and charitable lodging houses throughout the country, seem to justify the following statement:
First. The worthy, average visitor to a Municipal Emergency Home will work diligently. Those chained by habits of vice will shirk. The crippled, sick and aged will simply “mark time.” This results in the most fit man in the group being exploited for the benefit of the least fit, and in putting upon the backs of those members of the community least able to bear this burden, part of the charitable charge for the incompetent and unworthy.
Second. There seems to be little foundation for the idea that a lump work test conserves a man’s self-respect. On the contrary the conditions of its application are such as must always be more or less degrading, and it invariably operates to hold together the good and bad elements of a group, to the inevitable injury of the good.
Third. Where the lump work test involves some financial benefit for the institution, the best ofsuperintendents become less eager to re-establish his most fruitful, most capable, willing-to-work visitors in paid industry.
Fourth. As an indication of character, the work test is almost valueless. Men of ordinary sense see through the thin disguise of the claim that it helps to preserve their self-respect, and recognize its true lineaments as a subtle exploitation that deprives them of the opportunity of getting paid employment for that day, or as a penal service to prevent their frequent return.
Fifth. The quick deterioration of even fairly good workmen through getting used to a low standard of living by charitable contributions that lessen the economic pressure and seem to offer escape from the legitimate costs of life, is apparent to every thoughtful observer. Hard times, and an empty stomach, make it easy to submit to the kindly exploitation of a “Flop-house” wood-yard. The loss of self-respect is forgotten in relief from the necessity of trying to play a man’s part in the industrial order, until the man that was an independent, capable, willing, but unfortunate wage earner is transformed into a half-parasite,—an individual of a special character, a man whose face is familiar only to charity workers, and to the charitably-inclined public.
Summing up the effect of these two arbitrary lump restrictions it seems that they operate always to the injury of the service and are toleratedfor one of three reasons. The first is that they provide some check upon the number and return of the visitors. The second is that they provide a subtle means of exploiting helpless men for the financial benefit of the institutions, and the third, that the institution thereby escapes the obligations of discriminating and effective distribution.
Mr. Raymond Robins, the first superintendent of the Chicago Municipal Lodging House, in substantiation of the above argument says: