IN SEATTLE
"_There are no bad herbs or bad men; there are only bad cultivators_"
--HUGO.
I shall never forget my first visit to Seattle several years ago. I
came from Tacoma by boat. As we rounded the point in the bay the magic
city burst into view. It seemed like the work of genii, this mighty
commercial gateway to the land of the Alaskan,--a wonderful, beautiful
city, solidly, grandly built and in so short a time. It is a miracle of
American industry and enterprise. Its citizens have force and power and
determined character. Yet here in this beautiful spot, I found, as in
other cities, the starving, homeless, and destitute.
"Will you give me enough to get something to eat?" asked an
eighteen-year-old young man as he stopped me on one of the principal,
prosperous streets of Seattle. He was such an object of pity that I
hesitated and regarded him closely before I replied. So soiled and
wretched was he that I stood apart lest he might touch me. Not alone
did his clothing speak of his misery, but his face seemed burned with
sin and neglect.
"Go to the Charity Society," I said.
"Will they help me?" he eagerly asked.
I looked at a clock nearby and saw that it was then fifteen minutes
after five.
"It will be useless for you to go there now as they close at five,
but," I said, "although I'm about broke, too, I will buy you a beer."
His lip trembled and tears actually filled his eyes as he said, "I can
find a lot of fellows who will buy me a beer, but I can't find anyone
who will buy me something to eat."
The next day I looked for work and to see what privileges were accorded
for the out-of-work, destitute man in Seattle. First, after a jungle
hunt, I found the Charity Society. After waiting a half-hour far up in
a very high building in a dark room with a lot of rubbish, I was seen
and put through a humiliating lot of questions. I was not asked if I
were sick, or hungry, or whether I had comfortable clothing or needed
medicine. I was asked if I were a church member, if I supported my
wife, and many other such questions. Then I was offered a ticket for
two twenty-cent meals at a restaurant and a bed at a Mission Lodging
House. I took the names and addresses of these places and making some
trivial excuse for not taking the tickets (although I could have given
hundreds of them away that night) I left. I found the restaurant in
a slum, and while I stood in its doorway I counted eight saloons.
The lodging house I found in the heart of the worst tenderloin ever
created. The sleeping quarters were in a basement. Its immediate
surroundings were Chinese and Japanese who come to this country
bringing all of their own vices and who then promptly adopt all of
ours. Three doors from the entrance to the lodgings is a brothel of the
lowest character. It harbors seventy-five scarlet women of the worst
type, and it is only one of the many near at hand. These places, which,
with all the other corrupting influences for sin, make up Seattle's
worst hell, cannot be described. Yet it is here that the heads of the
greatest of all the virtues send their homeless to rest. I rejoiced to
understand that Seattle abolished this frightful tenderloin at the end
of the administration which was in control of the city at the time of
my visit.
While loafing late in the evening in one of the big beer joints, a
strong, healthy fellow with whom I had been talking (and in our talk we
discovered we were both broke) said, "If I had thought for one moment I
would not have been at work by this time, I would not have sent so much
of my money home." Then he continued, "Where are you going to sleep
to-night?"
With a quick thought, I replied, "Oh, I am fixed for something
to-night. I have two places and you can surely have one of them if you
want it. One is at the Salvation Army. I was up there not long ago and
the attendant told me they couldn't think of giving me supper, bath and
breakfast, but if I would come and help him clean up between eleven and
twelve o'clock at night he would give me a place to lie down, and you
may have it. Do you want it?"
"You bet I do," he answered. Then I said, "It is nearly eleven o'clock
now. Let us go there."
As we approached the place I said, "I'll not go in and you will stand a
better show."
He went in with an uncertain manner. He was not used to begging.
Presently he returned and said, "I don't see anyone."
"He is back in there somewhere," I said, "hunt him up."
Trying again, I saw him come out with a broom. Looking through the
window he saw me, smiled and shook his hand as he began sweeping. He
had got his job and covering.
The next day I met two brothers, one of whom was pale and trembling and
staggered as he walked. I said to the elder boy (for they were only
boys), "What is the matter with the kid?"
"Sick. They let him stay in the hospital until he could walk. I guess
he is still sick."
These boys, one a tradesman and the other out of work, had no home, no
money, were obliged to beg, and were sleeping under the most horrible
conditions. I think that if the search light could be thrown on
every man destitute of a home, and into the places he is forced by
circumstances to seek rest in Seattle, the humanitarians and the people
of that city who really care would walk their streets and know no peace
until a remedy had been found.
As I looked up the street I saw a large stone building and asked a
citizen where the city jail was. He pointed to the great stone building
and said, "That is the City Hall. On the top floor is the City Jail." I
remarked, "That is wonderful. That is the first jail I have ever found
located as that one seems to be. It must be very bright and light and
sanitary, compared to most of the prisons, which are under or almost
under the ground."
"Yes," he replied, "it is, but it makes me shudder when I think of the
awful den we had for years before that was built."
I then strolled up and paid a visit of inspection to the jail.
Reluctantly I was given an order by the police captain, directing the
turnkey to grant me the privilege of looking about. The place impressed
me with its cleanliness, its light and its good ventilation. He showed
me first its bull-pen, one huge cell of concrete and steel, absolutely
bare, where the inmates could only stand, lie down, or sit down on its
concrete floor, and I remarked, "You must have as many as twenty-five
in there at a time."
"Yes, seventy-five," he replied, and I saw again before me the vision
(though it was midday), of the midnight scene of that midnight hell.
Then I asked, "Where is the lodgers' cell?"
He looked at me a little quizzically for a moment, and then showed me
another cell about half as large as the bull-pen. "This is it," he said.
It contained, as I remember, six young men or boys, I judged in their
teens, and at that time of day I could not understand why they should
be locked in there if they were only lodgers. So I said, "Lodgers are
often forced into the bull-pen, too, are they not?" and he said, "Yes."
This lodgers' cell, as he called it, was also absolutely bare, a stone
floor the only rest for the man who must work or look for work on
the morrow. But there was the Associated Charities, and if the three
hundred shelterless in Seattle could have found it between nine and
five o'clock, they would have been given a bed no doubt. At least a bed
was offered me there.
Then my turnkey tapped slightly on a solid steel door of a solid steel
cell. The only possible means for the ingress and egress of air to this
dungeon was a small opening about half as large as an envelope. If I
am not mistaken there was a slide door on that opening which could be
closed, too, a device which is on all other similar torture chambers
I have seen. He lightly tapped on the door, in a subdued way, with
an expression as though he ought not to speak but must, and with an
assumed, non-consequential smile, he said scarcely above a whisper,
"There is a man in there."
"What is he in there for?" I asked.
"They are trying to make him tell something they think he knows."
Then he pointed to another one and said, "There is a man in that one
also."
"And what is he in there for?"
"I don't know."
"How long are they kept in there?"
"Ten days, sometimes."
I knew the rest. The people of Seattle know the rest, or if they do
not, they can learn it from the other stories of this book. There may
be laws governing these torture hells and other prison abuses, but any
government that allows them to exist is a government that will ignore
the existence of these laws. I found in Seattle, also, six boys held
for the Juvenile Court, locked in a cell in the county jail. I thought
of Denver and her beautiful Detention Home for such as these.
Sunday evening came. I had heard frequently of a certain clergyman
since coming to Seattle, and believing a change of thought and scene
would rest my tired heart and brain, I climbed the hill. I passed one
Romanist Church on the very crown of the hill so large and elaborate
that I fancied it must have cost a million. At last I reached the
object of my search. This church, too, looked down on Seattle's best
and worst. I entered. It was a large church. I think perhaps three
thousand people were in attendance. The minister, in surplice, was
giving out his notices. One was that the Prison Association wanted
more clothing. (I afterward read that this same minister recommended
more and harsher discipline in our jails, especially commending the
whipping-post.) As the service continued, however, I found that I could
not intelligently receive a word. Between the sentences I could plainly
hear: "They are trying to make him tell something they think he knows!"