THE NEW ENGLAND "CONSCIENCE"
"_See to it only that thyself is here,-- and art and nature, hope and
dread, friends, angels and the Supreme Being shall not be absent from
the chamber where thou sittest._"--EMERSON.
Studying in Boston--as is said of Paris--is being born in Boston.
When a boy in my teens I spent four years there, and those four
years awakened in me the brightest dreams and brightest hopes for a
successful future.
After thirty years, I am again in this renowned center of intellectual
culture as a student, but this time as a social student in pursuit of
knowledge of how our "Modern Athens" cares for the honest, out-of-work,
penniless, homeless worker.
At half-past ten at night, in search of a free bed, I made my way down
to a building, at least seventy or more years old, looking for Boston's
Municipal Lodging House, "The Wayfarers Lodge," better known as "The
Hawkins Street Woodyard." (Boston is rather given to pretty names. They
have a Deer Island also.)
My reception was not at all encouraging for a destitute man. I was not
even asked if I was hungry, but was shown at once into a bath-room,
located down in the cellar, which was dark and uninviting.
After my bath I put on a nightshirt taken from a basket, and carrying
my hat, shoes, and stockings in my hand, I climbed two flights of
stairs to the dormitories, leaving the rest of my clothes to be
fumigated, as I supposed, but I doubt very much if that was done, as
they had none of the purified odor of thoroughly disinfected clothing I
had noticed in New York.
There was no sign of medical inspection, nor any attempt at separation
of the sick from the well. I should judge one hundred men to have
been in the two dormitories that night. There were boys not more than
fifteen years old sleeping by the side of men of seventy. The beds
were shoved absolutely tight together, which gave the appearance of
all sleeping in one bed. When it became necessary for any one of them
to get up during the night he was forced to crawl over the next men or
over the head or foot of the bed.
As there were no cuspidors, the men expectorated into space without
thought or care of where it fell.
Two men came in and took beds next to mine. The one on my right was
an intelligent workingman, the one on my left was a drunkard with a
horribly offensive breath from disease and rum.
The beds had no mattresses,--a blanket was simply thrown over the woven
wires,--and as I sank down on one, it became a string beneath me. A
blanket was our only covering, and the pillows, filled with excelsior,
were as hard as boards.
I said to the man on my right:
"Did you have any supper to-night?"
"No, I didn't, and I feel pretty weak and hungry. I spent my last
thirty cents this morning for a breakfast, and what do you think I got
for it? I got a piece of beefsteak four inches square so tough I could
scarcely eat it, and some potatoes fried in rancid lard."
I made no reply and the exhausted and half-starved man fell asleep.
"I wish I had a couple of drinks of whiskey," said the man on my left.
"Oh," I replied, "you don't want much; one drink would do me."
"Yes, but I've got beyond that," he said; "it takes a good many drinks
to do me, and they can't come too fast, either." Then, with a sigh, he
added, "My dear old Daddy, God bless him, I have one thing to blame him
for. He taught me to drink, and here I am in this charity business--a
drunkard."
And he, too, turned over and fell asleep. But I could not sleep;
asthmatics and consumptives were coughing constantly, and the wreckage
around me was too much for my sympathies.
The coming of the daylight through the windows was a welcome sight.
I got up and went to the drinking place, and asked a burly looking
attendant if it was time to get up.
"Naw, taint!" he snapped, with a wicked scowl.
When I went back to bed I saw this man lock the two doors leading from
our dormitory to the outside toilet rooms, and for half an hour the
men were obliged to use the basin at the drinking place for sanitary
convenience!
When the doors were finally unlocked, supposing it to be the signal for
us to get up, I went with hat and shoes in my hands and sat down in a
chair by the door. When the attendant to whom I had spoken earlier,
came up the stairs and saw me there, without a moment's warning he
seized me by the wrists, jerked me to my feet, and giving me a shove
thrust me in a most brutal manner through the door, exclaiming:
"Now, will you stay in there until you are told to come out?"
I shuddered to think what would have happened if I had been a
half-starved boy, and had resented that man's insult. Doubtless I would
have been beaten into insensibility.
Finally, after another half hour, he yelled from the doorway:
"Hey, there, you fellers, get up and get out of here!"
Quickly we obeyed and were driven down into the cellar. From there we
were driven to the woodyard, where we were made to saw wood for two
hours. The strong men sawed their stint in much less time than the weak
ones. For the latter it must have meant two long hours indeed, weakened
as many of them were by a chronic hunger and disease, and having gone
supperless to bed and being as yet without breakfast.
When I had finished paying for my "entertainment," I was again driven
into a place to put my saw and saw-buck away, and then I was allowed to
go to breakfast into a cheerless, overcrowded room; even at this stage
of the game I was driven to three different places before I was allowed
to be seated.
They brought me some bean soup with beans swimming in it, so bitter
with salt I could not eat it; a water cracker so hard I could not bite
it, and a dirty slice of bread, that one of the indigent, but willing
workers, carried in his soiled hands and dropped by my plate.
A very hungry looking young man who sat beside me tasted his soup and
exclaimed:
"I'm hungry, but I'll beg or steal before I'll eat this stuff."
We both got up and left the "Hawkins Street Woodyard" in disgust; he
going down the street for breakfast, and I in another direction to my
hotel.
During this, my social study, I have received many letters from the
itinerant worker.[B]
[B] See worker's letter in the Portland story, Chapter xv.
I may add that I did not investigate Boston's Associated Charities, but
I did catch a suggestion or two that as far as helping the temporarily
out-of-work and destitute toiler, both man and woman, they were
inadequate and their good qualities did not exceed the "Hawkins Street
Woodyard."
* * * * *
Dressed in my garb of a worker, which encourages confidence because it
excites sympathy, on another day, on the Boston Common, I was attracted
by two idle men sitting on a nearby seat, one an Irishman and the other
a Swede. They seemed to be feeling about as good as cheap Boston beer
could make them, and the Irishman in an earnest yet jovial way was
trying to convince the Swede that the world was flat instead of round.
I dropped down on the seat beside them, and just then the Swede saw a
man he thought he knew, and abruptly left us.
I turned and said to the Irishman in a tentative way, "Where can a
fellow find a job?"
He replied, "Do what I'm doing. I'm an actor, and I'm playing the
drunkard's part in 'The Price of a Man's Soul,' every night, over at
Hell's Corner on Tremont Street."
This answer naturally surprised me; but without a trace of
astonishment, and with seeming indifference, I said,
"I am with you, friend, for that is a part in which I sparkle; but on
the square, what do you do for a living?"
"Well, I'm a barber, and as fine a barber as ever held a razor. I owned
a big shop once, and I hired twenty men, but it went when I went. I am
so low down now, no one wants me. Oh, occasionally I'll get a job in
one of the cheap places. I worked two hours last night in Cambridge,
and two the night before in Chelsea."
Then with sudden digression, I said, "Where can a fellow get a bed and
something to eat if he's broke?"
"You can go down to the Hawkins Street Woodyard. But don't go there
unless you have to!" And he described its wretchedness, which I knew
from my own experience. The man was truthful on that point, and I
believed in him.
I laughingly said, "What's the matter with going down to the 'Island'?"
"Well, I can tell you all about those places. I have done time in all
of them. One day in Charles St. Jail, one week at Tewksbury, and forty
days at Deer Island."
"Can a man with no crime but poverty go there and get work, and be paid
for it?"
He laughed sardonically. "You can get work all right, but your pay is
tough board and abuse. They'll probably set you to digging graves at
Tewksbury. They die over there like sheep with a plague."
"But what of Deer Island?"
"Well, I'm a barber, you know, and they put me in the barber
department. One day two of the prisoners, also doing my kind of work
(all men who come there have to be shaved), were two minutes late
coming in from the yard to work. That made the attending officer mad,
and he said, 'I'll fix 'em!' and he forced those men for hours to stand
with their faces to the wall with their hands over their heads. It
was a question of obey or be thrown into a dungeon perhaps for days.
I saw that punishment inflicted many times, and I saw men fall from
exhaustion and pain and be dragged out. Where they were taken, I don't
know, and many of them were old men, too.
"One day I was sent over to the hospital to trim, as I was told, a
young woman's hair. I took only my shears and comb. On arriving there I
found a young woman with a head of hair that shone like silk, and fell
three feet down her back. She was in tears and begging that it might
be spared. She was only there for thirty days and it meant leaving the
place doubly disgraced. But the Matron declared she had seen a louse
in her hair, and her word went. When I came in she asked me if I had
brought the clippers. I said, 'No.' She ordered me to go and get them.
Feeling sorry for the girl I told her it wasn't necessary to cut the
hair. I could clean her head perfectly without cutting off a single
hair. At this the Matron said, 'Are you an officer or a prisoner here?
Get your clippers and do as you are told, and quickly!' I knew what it
meant to be disobedient. I saw before me the dungeon-inferno. I left
the girl crushed and sobbing, and that wealth of hair almost worth its
weight in gold upon the floor.
"There was a mutiny among a few of the men, demanding a change in their
food. They were working all day for nothing but that food, but because
of their demand, they were thrown into the dark dungeon, fed on bread
and water for ten days, and I saw some of those men, as they came out
from the darkness into the light, faint on the prison floor. One of
them was an old man with a long, snow-white flowing beard, and you
know how proud an old man is of a beautiful beard. Well, I was ordered
to cut it off and he pleaded as the young woman did for her hair, but
in vain. He said to me, 'This is my first time on the Island. My wife
knows I am here, but my children don't. Wife has forgiven me, and I
am to leave in a few days, and I had looked forward to such a happy
home coming, but they won't recognize me now, and this puts upon me a
double infamy. All of my friends know I am here. I did not mean to
be uncivil, I meant to do right, but I was drawn into the revolt, not
realizing I was doing wrong which would put us in the dungeon. I feel
so weary and broken. I wish now more than ever that my prayer in the
dark dungeon had been answered, for I prayed many times in there, that
when the light came to me again it would be the light from that land of
Him who said, "I was sick and in prison and ye visited me."'"
I looked in wonder at the man speaking to me, scarcely believing him.
He noticed my expression and said, "Those were his words, his very
words. I remember them for they impressed me."
"Is this true?" I asked. "Is there a law in Massachusetts allowing a
man to be condemned and thrust into a dungeon for ten days for a petty
offense like this?"
"I have not told to you one hundredth part of the suffering I saw at
Deer Island. The cells there are absolutely dark. There is a small
slide in the door where the doctor peeps in to see if a man is dead, or
gone mad."
"If he is dead, what then?"
"Well, if he has no friends, he is put into a box and carried just over
the hill to the burying plot called 'The Haven.'"
I was so touched by this man's story, I could listen no longer. I got
up and took him by the arm and said, "Let's cut out our fault."
He replied, "I'll have to, I guess, for its cutting me out."
I strolled on up the Common, and thought of all it meant, "The Haven"
over the hill. This man told me he had been a citizen of Boston all his
life. Who would believe this story of a destitute old floatsam cast up
from the wreckage of America's temple of Elegance? Had he told me the
truth or a lie? I have many reasons to believe every word he told me
was true, but there is no man who can verify this story, except the man
who has done forty days at Deer Island.
In a conventional visit to the Island, I looked into the men's prison
just far enough to see tier upon tier of small cells in which all the
prisoners are locked for twelve hours of every day. The dungeons I did
not see as they are never open to visitors.
It was a clear beautiful day. Blue sky and blue sea, all around, white
ships sailing by, the men working in the fields, the women busy in the
sewing rooms, all inspired me to think that Deer Island could be made a
place of hope and cheer. But that vision was far from the reality. The
prisoners kept a funeral silence, happiness or hope was not for them.
Even their work was stolen from them.
I said to one intelligent looking man who was working in the garden,
"It helps a fellow to come down here, doesn't it?"
He answered, "Yes, if we are not made physical wrecks by the treatment
we receive, it does help us. But then, when our time is up, we are
disgraced and thrown back helpless into the same old slums of the city,
just as before."
The Penal Commissioner of Boston told me that he could use thirty beds
a night in a Municipal Emergency Home, just to accommodate the men and
women who were daily discharged destitute from Deer Island.
While Boston has done much for its poor, its sick, and its children,
there still remains the problem of the utterly down and out, the
shelterless and moneyless, but honest, workers.
Can Boston allow New York to excel it in caring for it shelterless
workers? I hear the cry, "Where can we get the money?" When you ask
that question you are putting a price on a man's soul. I wish some
goddess of gentleness would touch the hearts of those "munificent" and
"public spirited" citizens who founded the Boston Public Library, that
they might also build a Municipal Emergency Home, and ornament its
frieze with a perpetual beauty of words, "Dedicated to the advancement
of the Commonwealth and Humanity."
I am not without historical sentiment. I love local antiquities, if
they can be mine to enjoy without oppression. Boston has old burying
grounds and churches worth millions and millions of dollars. The dead
have rested there a long time. Why not build for the living who have
nowhere to lay their heads, a Municipal Emergency Home that would be a
living force for the upbuilding of the morals and economic security of
the commonwealth?