SPOTLESS DETROIT
"_How many things shudder beneath the mighty breath of night._"--HUGO.
In the midst of the desperate winter of 1911 and '12 I passed a week
among the homeless of Detroit. During my brief stay, there appeared in
one of the daily papers the following notice, and a number of similar
ones:
"Charles Heague, thirty-six, no home, was picked up in the street after
midnight by Patrolmen Wagner and Coats. Both hands were frozen."
As in other cities, during the five long months of winter there is in
Detroit a vast army of out-of-work, homeless, starving men.
Detroit has many benevolent and charitable institutions, which, no
doubt, are doing a great deal of good. But the ones I came in contact
with were imperfect and do not serve their purpose. The McGregor
Mission, which shelters thousands of homeless men annually, is one of
the best, if not the best, in our nation. The spirit of kindness in
evidence was remarkable with but few exceptions, of which the most
important was that its doors were closed at ten P. M. Also I
saw twenty men and boys, early one Sunday morning, driven out of this
Mission when the mercury was far below zero, and not allowed to return
for two hours. Being Sunday, the saloons and other places of business,
as well as the other Missions, were closed. These half-clad men were
forced to remain on the streets. Their suffering was pitiful.
The McGregor Mission was decidedly inadequate for the vast army of
homeless workers in Detroit at that time. Here, also, men were seeking
every available place to sleep and many, for doing so, were thrust
into jail. The most noticeable feature of the incompleteness of this
institution was the lack of a department for women.
One of the most startling examples of maladjustment in Detroit was the
Michigan Free Employment Bureau, located in an old decaying building,
with window lights broken out of both door and window-sash. The floor
being much below the level of the ground, each comer carried in the
snow and filth, which soon melted into an icy slush. Think of it! Two
hundred homeless men, willing to work for a mere pittance, for an
existence, crowded into a congested room--which did not hold nearly all
of the applicants--many of them with broken shoes and sockless feet
standing in ice water for hours while they waited and hoped!
As a contrast to this object lesson, let me relate another. The
following Sunday afternoon I mingled with an audience of two thousand
people listening to a religious agitator who declared he _must_ raise
four thousand dollars at once for a Mission,--a Mission which after a
service of song and prayer let starving, homeless men freeze to death
on the street!
In thirty minutes he raised thirty-five hundred dollars. On another
afternoon a man, with pathetic words and appealing pictures, was
soliciting money for the lepers in India. To my question, "Are not
these unfortunates subjects of the British Crown, and being so are
there no appropriations made for their care by the English government?"
the speaker answered, "Yes; but so little, it is very inefficient."
It was then brought to his mind that Great Britain had recently spent
several million pounds to crown a king and that this being the case,
was it not rather inconsistent of them to ask people of other nations
to help care for their sick? To which the gentleman could only reply by
suggesting a harmony of opinion!
One of Detroit's daily papers misquoted me by saying: "I found scores
of mental defectives among the homeless workers roaming the streets of
Detroit." Only two actually came under my notice who could properly be
classed as mentally unbalanced. But after all I had seen, I fell to
wondering if there were not a slight degree of mental deficiency in the
minds of those who contribute to visionary institutions--which may
perhaps have their good qualities--and to foreign lands, while at our
very door, day after day, we hear the cry of the suffering, toiling
American citizens who need our gifts.
* * * * *
With my visit to "Spotless" Detroit, my wanderings ceased. To-day I
sit in my own home. In the closet of my study hangs a suit of wornout
jeans. A pair of coarse, badly-worn shoes lie on the floor. On a hook
hangs a tattered hat which I may never wear again. These things hold
for me a thousand sermons and a philosophy which if it could but be
revealed would be as deep and beautiful as any that has ever been
spoken. My arduous trials are over, but my work is not done. As long
as an opportunity presents itself, as long as the breath of life is
within me, I shall lift my voice in behalf of the oppressed, and our
cry against laws and customs that decree damnation, against hells and
influences which block progress toward a divine destiny, until our
beloved Stars and Stripes, the emblem of liberty, peace and justice,
which by greed, lust of gold and false ambitions have been so cruelly
and pitilessly destroyed, shall speak again of union,--of union in our
States, in the brotherhood of man, in the golden rule of Christ, in the
love of God.