THE MERCIFUL AWAKENING OF NEW YORK
"_I said, I will walk in the country. He said, walk in the city. I
said, but there are no flowers there. He said, but there are crowns._"
In New York I repeated my Chicago plan. I left the Waldorf-Astoria at
ten o'clock, dressed in my blue jeans and with my cloak covering my
outfit until I could reach unobserved a place to leave it. The police
were courteous and directed me to New York City's "House of God."
[Illustration: _Municipal Lodging House, Department of Public
Charities, New York City_]
Before entering I stepped back and looked at the wonderful building,
beautifully illuminated. As I stood there with a heart full of
thankfulness for this gift to those in need, I saw a young girl
about fifteen years of age approach the woman's entrance. Her manner
indicated that this was her first appeal for help. She hesitated to
enter and stood clinging to the side of the door for support. At my
right was the long dark street leading to New York's Great White Way;
on my left the dark East River. I could see the lights of the boats and
almost hear the splash of the water. As she raised her face and the
light fell upon it, I read as plainly as though it were written there,
those lines of Adelaide Procter's:
"The night cries a sin to be living
And the river a sin to be dead."
Then the door opened and I saw a motherly matron take the girl in her
arms and disappear. This incident brought to me a startling revelation.
This home was a haven between sin and suicide.
The night I slept in New York's Emergency Home I was told a mother,
with seven children, one a babe in arms, at one o'clock in the morning,
had sought shelter there. And as the door was opened to receive her,
she said, in broken, trembling words, "My man's killed himself--he's
out of work."
Many men were seeking admission. I entered with the rest. At the office
we gave a record of ourselves, who we were and where we were from, and
what our calling was. Then we were taken into a large and spotless
dining-room, where we were given a supper of soup, and it was real
soup, too, soup that put health and strength into a man's body and
soul. We also had coffee with milk and sugar, hot milk, and delicious
bread and butter, as much as anyone wanted of it. After supper we were
shown to a disrobing-room, where our clothes were put into netted
sanitary trays and sent to a disinfecting-room. In the morning they
came to us sweet and clean, purified from all germ or disease. From
the disrobing-room we went into the bathroom where were playing thirty
beautiful shower-baths of any desired temperature, and each man was
given a piece of pure Castile soap. As we entered the bath a man who
sat at the door with a pail of something, gave each one of us on the
head as we passed him, a paddle full of the stuff. I said to the
attendant, "What is that for?" "That's to kill every foe on you," he
said, with an emphasis that was convincing. As he was about to give me
another dose, I protested. "That's enough; I have only half my usual
quantity tonight." But I got another dab nevertheless.
After our bath and germicide, we were shown into a physician's
room, where two skilled physicians examined each man carefully. The
perceptibly diseased man was given a specially marked night-robe and
sent to an isolation ward, where he received free medical treatment.
Those who were sound in health and body, were given a soft, clean
night-robe and socks, and were taken in an elevator up to the wonderful
dormitories. I was assigned to bed 310. There were over three hundred
beds in this dormitory, accommodating more than three hundred men.
They were of iron and painted white, and placed one above the other,
that is, "double-deck," and furnished with woven wire springs. The
mattresses and pillows were of hair, and exceedingly comfortable. The
linen was snowy white.
I had been in bed but a short time when an old man about seventy
years of age took the bed next to mine. As he lay down in that public
place I heard him breathe a little prayer, ever so softly and almost
inaudibly, but I heard it--"Oh, God, I thank Thee!" And I said to
myself, "That prayer ought to build a Municipal Emergency Home in every
city of our land." It came to me then what a great and wonderful social
clearing-house it was or could be.
I did not sleep, I did not want to sleep, but lay there taking mental
notes of the soul's activity. The room was quiet and restful except for
the restless man who silently walked the floor. As he came over near me
I said to him, "Man, what is the matter?"
He came close to my bed and said, with a hot, flushed face, "I was not
considered a subject for the isolation ward, but I am on the verge of
delirium tremens. Feel my pulse, isn't it jumping to beat the devil?"
I felt his pulse; it was jumping like a trip-hammer. But in the way of
assurance I answered, "No, your pulse is normal."
"Have we been up here four hours? They gave me some medicine downstairs
to take every four hours, and if I was restless, I was to send down for
it and take a dose."
"No, I think we have been up here about two hours. You might send down
for it, and if it is a good thing to take a full dose every four
hours, you might take a half-dose in two hours."
He hesitated for a moment, then agreed. I advised him to cut out the
drink, and he went to the attendant for his medicine, received it, and
slept like a babe until dawn. There is an attendant in each dormitory
all night long, and he must report to the office by telephone every
hour, not being allowed to sleep one moment on duty.
A few days later, after my visit was made public, I received many
letters at my hotel, and among them was one from this man. He thanked
me for my bit of advice to cut out the drink, and said that he had
braced up and had not drunk a drop since that night, and that he
had determined to be a man and fill a man's place in the world. His
resolution was not due to my advice at all. It was due to the influence
of "God's House," to New York's Municipal Emergency Home, and had
turned him back to his true inheritance.
At six o'clock in the morning we were called. Every man took the linen
from his bed and put it in a pile where it was all gathered up and
taken afterward to the laundries. Every day fresh and spotless linen is
supplied.
We then went down and dressed and were given our breakfast--as fine a
dish of oatmeal as I ever ate, and again most delicious hot coffee with
milk and sugar, bread and butter. And again every man had abundance. I
said to a boy who sat on my right, "How do you feel this morning?"
"I tell you I feel as if someone cared for me," he answered, "I feel
like getting out and hustling harder than ever for a job to-day."
This Municipal Emergency Home of New York's is absolutely fire-proof
and accommodates one thousand men and fifty women. The health of its
occupants is more guarded than at the most costly private hotels.
The ventilation is by the modern forced-air system, in which every
particle of air is strained before entering the dormitories. The humane
consideration of the comfort of the broken and weary wayfarer is always
in evidence, and speaks volumes for New York's intelligence. There are
no open windows on one side, freezing one portion of the sleeping-hall,
while the other may be stifling with the heat. The method of fumigating
is of the best, as it does not injure in the least the leather of hat,
suspender, glove, or shoe, or weaken the texture of the cloth. The sick
man's nightclothes are not even laundered with the well man's clothing.
The size, and degree of careful detail, of this wonderful home was
an outgrowth of the awful and fatal unsanitary old police station
lodgings, and yet the Commissioner of Police of New York recently told
me that notwithstanding the extensive character of the institution, it
was often pitifully inadequate, especially during the winter months.
New York already needs at least four such homes.