CHICAGO--A LANDLORD FOR ITS HOMELESS WORKERS
"_These hints dropped as it were from sleep and night let us use in
broad day._"--EMERSON.
On a stormy night in February, 1909, I arrived at the Auditorium Annex
in Chicago. Donning my worker's outfit and covering my entire person
with a large, long coat, unnoticed I left the hotel. Leaving the coat
at a convenient place, I appeared an out-of-work moneyless man,
seeking assistance in this mighty American industrial center. I made my
way down Van Buren Street. Though the hour was late, there were many
people abroad and almost every man, judging from his appearance, seemed
to be needy. Stepping up to one on the corner of Clark Street, who
seemed to be a degree less prosperous than all the rest, I said, in the
language of the army who struggle:
"Say, Jack, can you tell a fellow where he can find a free flop?"
He raised his hand and pointed toward a stairway which led up over a
large saloon, "You can flop on the floor up there for a nickle."
"But I am up against it right, pal. I am shy the coin for even that
to-night."
Stepping up a little nearer to me and drawing more closely his tattered
rag of a coat about his frail, half-starved body, he replied:
"Honest to God, Shorty, I have only a dime myself, but say, this is a
fierce night to carry the banner. If you don't get a place, come back.
I can get along without my 'coffee and' for once."
There are many places in Chicago where a poor man can get a
strengthless cup of coffee and rolls for a nickle. One-half of this
man's dime he proposed to spend for this supper, and the other half he
would give me to provide the "flop" on the floor he had told me of.
He continued, "I am in line for a pearl-diver's (dishwasher's) job
to-morrow. That means all a fellow can chew anyway. I can do better
work than that, but when a fellow is down on his luck--but say,
Shorty," he added abruptly, as we moved to part, "if you don't have a
windfall like the Annex, Palmer, or the First National Bank, go over on
the West Side; you'll find a free flop, and maybe between the sheets,
and maybe a bath and supper; but look out for bulls and fly cops, and
don't go too often, for you're liable to be arrested and sent to the
Bridewell. I have been out of a job for two weeks. I have been to the
flop several times, and I am afraid to go any more. I have had so
little to eat lately, and from all I hear, I don't think I am strong
enough for the battle of a workhouse; besides, I have never been in.
Well, never mind, old man, you can find the place. It's on Union
Street, just off of West Madison, called 'The City Lodging House.'"
How those last three words thrilled me! I who in fancy for months had
been building a Municipal Emergency Home, rounding out and perfecting
in my mind all of its wonderful possibilities! There was then such an
institution in the world, and here in Chicago, and in a moment's time I
was to grasp the tangible fact!
As I made my way toward my destination I saw evidence of the brutal
police system, so notoriously obvious throughout our entire country.
I had seen a half-starved, homeless man knocked down on the streets
of a Western city by an ignorant, rum-befouled bully of a policeman,
simply because he stood a little too far out on the sidewalk, and
with a desire to learn something of the spirit of the police force of
Chicago, I made my way to the Desplains Street Police Station, although
possessed with a foreboding that I might be arrested, and subjected to
some insult or abuse.
With a thumping heart under a false air of complacency I entered and
asked the Captain where I could find a free bed. He looked pleasantly
enough upon me, and in words which held a tone of pride that he could
do so, replied, "Why, yes, go to our Municipal Lodging House," and
turning to a subordinate, said, "Show this man the direction to North
Union Street." The under officer pointed out the proper course, and
I was soon lost in a maze of brilliant, scintillating, cheap saloon,
café, and playhouse signs along West Madison Street. The half-hidden,
frost-covered windows of restaurants were filled with tempting,
wholesome food. The sparkling bar-room signs were a guide to warmth
and temporary shelter. I reached North Union Street, and looking down
an almost black street with occasionally a dim distant light, I saw no
sign guiding the homeless man or boy, woman or girl, to Chicago's gift
to its penniless toilers.
With fear and difficulty I found an old shell of a building. Arriving
too late for a bed, I was allowed to lie down with sixty others,
from boys of fifteen to old men of seventy, on the floor. In the
foul air, unwashed, unfed, with my shoes for a pillow, with aching
limbs, I endured, until daybreak, the sufferings which the temporarily
homeless wanderer must suffer often many days until, if he does not
find himself in some one of the other public institutions, he finds
work and can again enjoy the comforts of a bed. And yet, how much this
all meant to me! I did not sleep a moment of the night, yet above
the dark side of it all, I caught the bright light of the golden
thought behind this institution, for the establishment of which the
City Homes Association, whose president was Mrs. Emmons Blaine, took
the initiative, and which Raymond Robins worked into a tentative
establishment.
* * * * *
Several years have passed since my first experience in Chicago. At
that time I was deeply impressed with the fact that the city had not
forgotten. My criticism was extremely friendly. The superintendent
wrote, thanking me for my investigations, saying he believed it would
help promote better things in Chicago in caring for its homeless
workers. But I was disappointed. To-day you walk through West Madison
Street to Union Street, to Chicago's free "flop." On your right you
will notice a magnificent new railway station, which, its owners boast,
cost twenty-five millions of dollars. Possibly at the very doorstep of
this marvelous terminal, destitute men will ask you for help.
And a little further along, should you glance up at No. 623, you will
read this sign, "The Salvation Army will occupy here a new six-story
fireproof hotel, to be known as the Workingman's Palace. Rates 15 cents
to 30 cents per night, $1 to $2 per week."
[Illustration: "_Stepping Up a Little Nearer to Me He Drew More
Closely His Tattered Rag of a Coat_"]
[Illustration: _Huddled on a Stringer in Zero Weather_]
You have reached Union Street, and you enter the same dark old street
and the same old makeshift of an old building which thirty-five years
ago was a police station and later a storeroom for city wagons, until
made into a "Municipal Emergency Home." This shell accommodates only
two hundred and fifty men, and on many a night during the last winter
it has sheltered five hundred men, besides as many more in the "annex."
There are four thousand in Chicago every winter's night without a bed
or the money to buy a bed. There are five thousand men in Chicago who
are willing to work ten long hours a day for a dollar a day, and this
lodging-house can furnish two hundred men a day at that wage. Last year
the ice companies, the street railway companies, and the packing-houses
paid $1.75, and this past winter only $1.50, and out of that these men
paid $4.50 a week for board. That these men are willing to work for
such wages shows that a large proportion who seek this free shelter are
honest workers. The chief of police gave orders and notice that men
would no longer be sheltered in the police stations, and yet on one
winter day an official of the Emergency Home marched sixty-eight down
to a station and demanded they be taken in.
Follow this official through the institution and he will show you how
he stores men away in every nook available, even allowing many to sit
up all night on the stairs. He will show you how men lie down under and
between the cots of those who are fortunate enough to get a cot itself.
He will show you in one end of the dormitory, on filthy blankets and
mattresses, men huddled and packed like swine, and he will tell you
that in the morning these men receive a certain portion of a loaf of
bread and a cup of a decoction called coffee; and yet those men are
willing to go out and work in the storm and cold for a dollar or a
dollar and a half a day. What a commentary on the humanity of a city
that is willing to see this strength crippled! What a lack of ordinary
business foresight to ignore the conservation of this human force!
You will find in this Municipal free "flop" of Chicago no department
for women. Thank God for that! You will find no separation of the
sick from the well; you will find no medical examination other than
vaccination. Such a lodging-house is an institution driving men into
intemperance, filling our hospitals, and spreading with frightful
fatality the white plague.
Those who come from abroad to learn of Chicago, and what it has
done and is doing to banish destitution and its specter of homeless
suffering from its streets, may first visit the public institutions
representing a city's intelligence--the Art Institute, standing for
its culture; its churches, charities and hospitals, representing
its humanity. But they should also follow the course I traveled, to
Chicago's so-called Municipal Lodging House, even though it will mean a
sad reflection upon a city's care for its homeless workers.
* * * * *
Chicago is considered one of the greatest railroad centers of America;
it is the hub of the fly wheel, East and West, North and South, of
a mighty railroad industry. The old proverb, that "all roads lead
to Rome," can certainly be applied to this of the greatest, most
remarkable of all modern industrial phenomena--the Metropolis without
a peer. It is estimated that there are over half a hundred different
railroad lines running in and out of the city, all bringing their
quota of human energy and activity to be molded into the great mass of
industrial humanity of the greatest of industrial giants--Chicago.
A very prominent railroad official of a Western railroad declared
that the railroad "in a way may be called the chief citizen of the
State." If this statement be true, one cannot but acclaim that a
mighty responsibility rests upon it. First of all it means that a
transformation of heart and system must take place toward the wandering
citizen, the homeless wage-earner,--an absolutely different method and
a cessation of the present inhuman brutality.
The one wonderful and most hopeful sign of our day is that members of
the great human family are beginning to recognize, in all phases of
human endeavor, that our social life is absolutely dependent upon the
co-operation and social service of one another. While the writer has
a strong indictment to offer against the managements of the various
American railroads in dealing with the more unfortunate members of
society, nevertheless one cannot accept the already popularized
beliefs that "the railroads lack the spark of human kindness."
The extent of what so-called charitable experts are pleased to call
the "vagrancy" of the homeless, wandering wage-workers in the United
States, can easily be determined by the industrial and economic
conditions existing throughout the country. The demand for laborers of
all kinds continuously fluctuates in all industries and localities.
The majority of the homeless, wandering wage-earners are unskilled
laborers, and because of their unorganized condition they are the
reserve of that great standing army which is being maintained through
the unjust, inhuman, and wasteful economic system, that pushes human
beings down to the lowest level.
Most American railroads are to blame for the industrial conditions in
which the unskilled laboring class finds itself. They offer starvation
wages, shelter under unsanitary conditions, and permit the "canteen"
and "padroni system" to pilfer, rob, and exploit the men working on the
sections. And after the job at which they have been employed has been
completed, they are left stranded whereever they have finished their
work, instead of being given transportation to the nearest city or
place where other work can be obtained.
Hundreds of thousands of able-bodied, economically useful citizens
of the country are being put to immature death by the railroads of
America, and an equally appalling number are being maimed and crippled
by "accidents," and thereby made dependent charges on an already
overburdened community.
From among the victims of the present-day railroad system (for it is
a system) by which men are being crippled, maimed, and killed, there
is a silent but earnest appeal, from the builders of our cities,
the harvesters of the nation's crops, the miners of the nation's
resources, the scholars and teachers of the future republic, for a
more scientifically humane treatment, and for a guarantee that "Life,
Liberty, and Happiness" shall not be a by-word but a living reality.
The great public, that pays the "freight," and even the officials
of the American railroad systems themselves, are awakening to a
realization of the fact that the torn-out rail, the misplaced switch,
the obstructing tie, the burned bridge, the cut wire, petty thefts, and
air-brake troubles, are all too often the result of retaliation for
the inhuman abuse of the homeless, wandering wage-earner. Even that
portion of the great public that rides "the velvet" are beginning to
demand more protection, for their own self-preservation. The spirit
of the various commonwealths of the Union to co-operate and demand by
legislative provisions for safety is steadily on the increase.
Thousands of wandering wage-earners in search of work are killed on
American railroads, because society as a whole, and the railroad
as a public carrier in particular, are ignorantly uninterested in
the welfare of the less fortunate members of society. The number of
so-called "trespassers" killed annually on American railroads exceeds
the combined total of passengers and trainmen killed annually. From
1901 to 1903, inclusive, 25000 "trespassers" were killed, and an
equal number were maimed, crippled, and injured. From one-half to
three-quarters of the "trespassers" according to the compilers of these
figures were "vagrants," wandering, homeless wage-earners in search of
work to make their existence possible.
Let us examine the economic loss and the financial cost to the
railroads alone, not considering the loss to the community of the
so-called "vagrants" killed and injured. Even the railroads are unable
to give accurate figures on this matter. Sometimes the trains stop
and pick up the injured and dying victims of their system, and bear
them to hospitals, where the hospital and burial charges must, in most
cases, be paid or guaranteed by the railroads. In many of the States
of the Union, a number of law-suits have been successfully fought
against railroads by so-called "vagrants" who have been thrown off
a fast-moving train and injured, or maimed. Think of the barbarous
orders of a railroad superintendent, to push or throw people from a
fast running train, or leave them on the vast plains of the West in a
desperate blizzard, as I have seen done.
How much cheaper would it be for the railroads to furnish these less
fortunate members of the working-class with transportation to their
respective destination, the nearest place where work is possible for
them, and thereby suffer fewer depredations, petty thefts, delays to
traffic, hospital and burial charges, and other expenses.
How much would the respective communities, and society as a whole, be
the gainer, were the State, the municipality, to assume the expense for
the creation and maintenance of Municipal Emergency Homes, and thereby
make it possible for the homeless, wandering wage-earner to receive the
hospitality of the community and be furnished with those necessities
upon which human life depends, thus co-operating with the railroads,
reducing vice, crime, and pauperism, and abolishing the existence of
burdensome public charges.
In addition to the Municipal Emergency Home, provided with up-to-date
sanitary facilities, the respective communities should furnish
transportation to those desiring to leave for other parts of the
country where work can be obtained or may await them. Such a Municipal
Emergency Home ought to be the clearing-house for employers of labor
and employees alike. Instead of the unemployed being exploited by
the grafting employment bureaus existing in the various cities, the
business men, the men who need help, and the railroads especially,
could make their drafts for workingmen on such Municipal Emergency
Homes, which would be always in a position to assist them, while at
the same time assisting the honest laborer who seeks work to sustain
himself and make existence possible for those dependent upon him.
One of the greatest remedial agencies in solving this very serious
problem is pre-eminently that of governmental and railroad
co-operation, by which the land shall be taken out of the hands of the
speculator, and reclaimed for those who desire to make immediate use of
it and to live upon the fruit of their toil. Thus the many thousands of
homeless, wandering American wage-earners, the itinerant and occasional
helpers in our agricultural industry, as well as the casual, unskilled
laborers of our cities, could be given a real lift on the road to
economic independence.
In most of the European countries, the so-called crime of "stealing a
ride" is almost unknown, because there the governments have established
a chain of Municipal Emergency Homes where the itinerant workers are
reasonably well taken care of,--provided not only with necessary food,
shelter, and clothing, but given transportation to the nearest point
where employment may be secured.
[Illustration: "_Just before Thanksgiving, 1911, Leaving the Public
Library, Chicago, after Being Ejected Because of the Clothes I Wore_"]
Would it not be a wise financial move on the part of the American
railroads, while they are investing millions in useless and
superficial adornments on fifty-million-dollar terminals, to consider
the advisability of building an Emergency Home in every station where
the wandering, homeless wage-worker can find comfortable shelter and
be given food to strengthen him on his way toward honest employment
without having to "beat" the railroads?
American railroads will be forced sooner or later to see that it is up
to them to take care of the homeless, wandering wage-worker, or the
homeless, wandering wage-worker will take care of the railroads.