SPOKANE
"_Justifiæ partes sunt non violare homines; verecundiæ non
offendere._"--CICERO.
"_Justice consists in doing no injury to men,--decency in giving them
no offence._"
"He passed the prison. At the door hung an iron chain attached to a
bell. He rang. The door opened. 'Turnkey,' he said, politely removing
his cap, 'will you have the kindness to admit me and give me lodging
for the night?' A voice replied, 'The prison is not an inn. Get
yourself arrested and you will be admitted.'" These words were spoken
to Jean Val Jean at the prison door in the village of D---- in France,
in 1815. All who have read the Victor Hugo masterpiece know the
wonderful story.
In April, 1910, nearly one hundred years afterward, in the city of
Spokane, I stepped up to a police officer whom I met on the streets and
asked where I could get a free bed, having no money, nor friends, nor
home in the city. He answered, "You can't find anything like a free
bed in this town." Then I asked if I could sleep in the city jail. He
replied, "No, you cannot. We have received instructions to send no one
to the jail." Then he added, "Get yourself run in and you can lodge
there."
Here was a condition of things I had met with nowhere else. Even the
shelter of the prison was denied a penniless wayfarer. Nothing daunted,
I resolved to try to the fullest what Spokane might offer one like me.
I was told that one of the missions had a lodging house. They perhaps
would take me in for charity. I determined to try. I met a man on the
street and asked him where it was. He said he believed they once had
such an institution. He thought it was closed, but he was uncertain.
"Ask a cop," he said. "You will find one on the next block."
I went as directed and soon saw an officer of the Spokane police force.
Stepping up to him, I asked for the mission lodging house. Instead of
replying, he said, "What do you want to know for?"
It was, or ought to have been, his duty to answer my simple civil
question. What right had he to question what I wanted to know for? What
business was it of his why I wanted to know? But he was of the Spokane
police force and was endowed with authority. I replied, "I am without
money and I am looking for a place to sleep. I thought perhaps they
might give me a bed." I turned and started to leave him, but catching
me roughly by the arm, he said, "Hold on here. Don't you leave me." I
saw before me those horrible nights I had endured in other prisons, and
my first impulse was to run. But I remembered the eighteen-year-old boy
in Denver who was shot to death for running from a policeman.
Then the Spokane officer said to me, "Who are you, anyway?" I answered,
as I had in Pittsburg, "I am an honest working man."
"And what do you do?"
"I do anything I can to earn a living." He pulled me around and looked
at my face on both sides, then said. "Let me see your hands." He
regarded them closely, remarking, "They are pretty soft and white for a
workingman's."
"There are thousands of workingmen who have soft hands," I replied.
"There are waiters, barbers, bookkeepers and clerks, and hundreds of
positions which keep men's hands soft and white."
"Yes, but your hands do not correspond with your clothes."
"I wear gloves when I work. There are a great many of us fellows who
do the hardest manual labor and wear blue jeans who wear gloves at our
work. There is a lot of work that will lacerate the most hardy hands."
His answer was, "Come with me. I am going to take you down anyway."
We were not far from the jail. He did not ring up a big team of
horses, a wagon and two or three men, or an automobile, to rush me to
the jail as they do in other cities, although they do this in Spokane,
also. We walked, and while we walked, he assured me twice that he would
take the softness out of my hands by thirty days on the rock pile. He
had absolutely and completely taken the law into his own hands before
we ever reached the jail. This policeman knew what could and would be
done to me, simply because I was apparently poor and helpless, and if
their system in Spokane was as it is in other cities, I could be so
nicely used for graft.
Fathers and mothers throughout America, what if it had been _your_ boy
in Spokane that night, without money and without a home? Think of the
awful result! Put him in my place--about to receive the first stigma
of a jail, to be thrust for thirty days among hardened criminals, made
such by this same social system, to receive wanton insults and abuse,
his health probably ruined for life,--possibly murdered! A man was
dying at that very time in the city of Spokane, from abuse in that same
city jail. Spokane began, from the first moment of my arrest, legally
to plunder me, soul and body.
As I walked, I tried to incorporate into my being, the suffering and
the feelings of such a man or boy. They would not have accepted his
statements as to his identity, no matter how hard he tried, as I knew
they would be obliged to receive mine, and there would have begun the
destruction of another American citizen.
On reaching the jail the officer stopped me in a dark entrance. Pulling
out his search-light he threw it over me, at the same time feeling me
all over. Why he did this I could not understand, unless he may have
thought I had a bomb to drop when I reached the Captain's office.
Intending only to make a quiet investigation of Spokane, I did not
leave my credentials at my hotel but had them in an inner pocket of my
vest. These included several letters recently received from prominent
and well-known people of the Coast. My proof was sufficient and I was
promptly released. They seemed to be surprised that I was sober, and
said, "Brown, how can you associate with these men and not drink?"
"That is not necessary," I replied. "There are thousands of homeless,
starving men in our nation to-day who never drink."
While I was telling my story to the force, a reporter for the leading
paper of the city came in, and that paper the next morning carried
a story which stirred the town. As a result Spokane is going to
have its Free Municipal Emergency Home. It is true that I found a
desperate condition of things in Spokane for the man without the dime.
But Spokane is no longer a country town, hid in the pine woods of
Washington. She is a city--a city of stupendous natural resources, a
city of a great awakening. She has begun a wonderful physical adornment
and is combining with it those benevolent adornments to conserve her
citizens. Spokane believes in the abolition of all influences that
destroy. She is a force in the world to-day.