THE LITTLE PITTSBURG OF THE WEST AND ITS GREAT WRONG
"_Even the night shall be light about me._"--PSALMS 139:11.
In Pueblo, Colorado, I discovered they were finding men dead in an
ash-dump of a railroad company. Pueblo, called "The Little Pittsburg
of the West," is distinctly an industrial city. It naturally attracts
thousands of workingmen during the course of the year, and when the
demand for labor is supplied, it follows that many men will congregate
there, willing to work but often unable to find employment immediately.
The great ash-dump, about a fourth of a mile in length, afforded warmth
to the destitute homeless man, who had his choice between this exigency
and the city jail. Men would lie down on the warm cinders, and while
they slumbered, the poisonous gases would asphyxiate them. The death of
their brother workers had made men cautious and when I was there they
no longer crawled out upon the ashes, but lay down on the edge of the
dump, where the ground held a certain degree of warmth.
I joined the miserable group one night, and as I lay there, and the
night grew cold and dark and still, I could see, like serpents, the
tongues of blue poisonous fumes leap from crack and cranny. I stood the
exposure to the limits of endurance, and then crept away to that other
humane expression of Pueblo--its only "Municipal Emergency Home," the
"Bull-pen" in its old bastile.
It was midnight as I entered, and a man hearing me in the hall came out
of an office and looked at me inquiringly. Finally he asked:
"What do you want?"
"I would like a place to sleep."
"Come this way and go through yonder," he said, pointing the way to the
jailer's office.
I went as directed. As I entered, the jailer, who was asleep in a large
reclining chair, awoke and greeted me pleasantly enough.
"Good-evening. What can I do for you?"
"Can you show a fellow where he can lie down?"
He immediately got up, and picking up his bunch of keys, said, "Follow
me."
I followed him through two huge iron-grated doors, to another door
which opened into a great dungeon cell,--Pueblo's first open portal in
creating the criminal and crime. Huge chains with great iron balls
attached were lying in the passageway leading to the cell.
As the jailer swung back the monstrous iron door, he said:
"I think you will find a place there. If the hammocks are all taken,
you can lie on the floor."
The great key was turned, and I was in Pueblo's "Municipal Emergency
Home."
With the first dreadful feeling of suffocation and nausea caused by the
foul air and the odor of unwashed bodies and open drains, and the awful
fear of fire as I realized the impossibility of escape from behind so
many iron-bound doors in the old rookery of a building, I would have
begged to be released, but neither the jailer nor anyone else appeared
until six o'clock the next morning. I therefore had to endure, and
after I had finally adjusted myself to the frightful conditions around
me, I was able to make my observations.
There were twenty canvas hammocks, all of unspeakable filthiness, hung
one above the other, on iron frames. There was no pretense of bedding.
The occupants covered themselves with their old ragged overcoats, if
they happened to have any, and those who were not so fortunate, simply
shivered in their rags.
The cots were all taken and an old man some seventy-five years of age
lay on the concrete floor, which was covered with tobacco juice and the
expectorations of diseased men. Vermin were running over the floor and
on the tin dishes left there from the last night's supper.
Water from the toilet of the women's department above had run down the
wall, and under this old man now sound asleep, and on into the waste
basin.
I walked back and forth in my horror for some time, passing in front
of the hammock beds and finally a man raised his head and, evidently
thinking I was walking for warmth, said:
"Friend, you will find it warmer over there by the steam pipes."
I wonder why he called me "friend"? A spirit of kindness from one man
to another, in a place like that! Think of it!
I spent the entire night walking the floor or sitting on an old
battered, inverted tin pail, studying the wretched inmates of the
dirty, desolate cell.
I saw a man get up, and with outstretched hands, feel his way to the
drinking place. I went over and helped him. He was totally blind.
He told me he had once been kept in that place seventeen days. A
one-legged man who had gotten up, hobbling without his crutch, helped
him back to bed.
Never was sound sweeter to my ears than the rattle of the jailer's keys
when he came to let me out. He kindly asked me to stay to breakfast,
but I did not accept. I was only too glad to escape to my hotel, to
wash out the material evidence of contact with the foulness gathered
on that most miserable night.
Mayor Fugard, who had been in office only two weeks, had already made
an appeal for a new City Hall and City Jail, and I felt it was a
courtesy due him to call upon him before going to the press with my
story. When I told him I had paid a visit to Pueblo's two city lodging
places, and had spent a night in the "Bull-pen," he threw up his hands
and exclaimed:
"Good heavens! You have more courage than I have. I am glad you have
come to our city and I am glad you have investigated conditions just as
you did. I want you to take your report to every paper in the city, for
I desire everyone to know the conditions of these places, just as they
are."
When I left Pueblo, I called on him to say goodbye, and he took me by
the hand and said:
"You may quote me to the public, through the press, as saying that, as
soon as possible, Pueblo will abolish the 'Bull-pen' and will yet have
a Free Municipal Emergency Home that she will not be ashamed to own."