VISIONS
"_Where there is no vision the people perish._"
--PROVERBS, 29:18.
During my social study I was asked by the president of a Charity Board
to become an employee of the city Board of Charity and Corrections in a
Western city. The Board consisted of three members. The president was
a young Presbyterian minister who was just beginning to catch, through
the mist of tradition, the light of new things. The other two members
of the Board were women, one the daughter of a corporation lawyer, a
young lady of large, kind heart, who for some time was connected with
the United Charities of Chicago and who seemed to believe in their
ancient system of charity in meeting the problem of destitution. The
other was an estimable Jewish lady who had some decided opinions in
regard to comfortable jails for honest, homeless, shelterless women and
girls. Considering the services of these estimable people on the Board,
gratuitous criticism would be unfair and much praise is due them for
their conscientious work and the initiative taken in many effectual
reforms which to them will be a lasting monument.
After six weeks' service I was found fault with by the Board, but the
only charge against me was that I was a _visionist_. It was rather
singular though that this charge should come on the day following my
visit to the County Poor Farm, the story of that visit being told in
one of the local papers the following day. I could not deny that I was
not guilty, for the press had exposed me, not only as a visionist who
saw things, but as one who told things. In fact I had been seeing and
telling things for six weeks. There seemed to be "the rub." I was _not_
a politician.
And so I was dismissed "broke" as far as the city Charity Board was
concerned, as a very pleasing vision I failed to see was my six weeks'
salary. But this can readily be accounted for as the city at this
writing was "broke" and I was forced to be content with a postponement.
With me, to meet postponement gracefully had become a virtue, for I had
long since learned to postpone such a non-consequential thing as a meal
a good many times, but I think I never missed any.
Ah, the visions of that six weeks, I can assure you, were not visions
of angels ascending and descending ladders! The first was that of an
old rookery building, with a ten cent tin sign on which was written
"City Board of Charities," directly opposite the city jail, where
all day long, and all night long, men and women either directly or
indirectly, for the crime of poverty, were being forced behind its iron
bars, and walls of stone.
It was obvious that the first thought of both beggar and criminal,
or the supposed criminal forced to come that way, was charity and
correction, one at the door of the alms station and the other at the
door of the police station. But he who has been shoulder to shoulder
with the victims of these two municipal institutions and has read
through the pleading, parched lips and tear-stained faces of the
victims of both these places, has learned an immutable lesson and can
not refrain from crying out for a better and a greater social life.
One who observes will quickly see throughout our nation how closely
allied--in all their phases--are Charity and Prisons and Missions.
While the church is lifting one thousand out of the gutter, society,
by a destructive social system and evil influences, is pushing ten
thousand in. Charity keeps many from actually starving to death, yet
the ever-increasing number of our needy is even "greater than man can
number." What is the price we pay?
My practical work with this board was that of investigator, that is,
I was sent out to see if the applicant for aid were really worthy,
to see that the Charity Board was not being robbed by dishonest
mendicants. Charity organizations seemed to be not so much concerned
with the relief of the helpless as with protecting the well-to-do
from imposition on the part of those who claim they are in distress.
I was given approximately eighty questions to ask. I was expected to
follow up these questions--many of them questions of reference--for
the purpose of ascertaining whether the applicants for aid were really
telling the truth. I rebelled a little at first at the thought of
conducting this third degree inquisition. It was even repulsive for me
to enter the door of the humblest home and state I was from the Charity
Board. I would so much rather have said that I was from the city
Department of Public Service for Labor.
From my first day, however, I continued to see visions,--not visions
of great numbers, not of saints, but of thousands of workingmen's
vacant homes, deserted for lack of work due to the inability of these
workingmen to earn a living. I saw the truth most forcibly revealed
that again the foundation of all business was a comfortable existence
and an opportunity to earn those comforts and the right of existence
by labor, and that people must have that privilege or be forced to go
where it _can_ be had. I saw many of those who remained struggling to
tide themselves over, hoping for a better day. Many were helpless for
lack of means to get away, and had therefore become dependents of the
State and city.
I saw nearly all of our attempted factories in ruins, and four
thousand workingmen driven from the city by the smelter trust; and
then came again the glowing vision of sixty million pounds of wool,
and an enormous production of cotton, grown annually in a radius
of five hundred miles around our very doors. This raw material was
being shipped two thousand miles to be worked into the most essential
commodities. Every day we were walking over the finest glass sand
in the world, yet we were denied the benefit of that most needful
and profitable industry. I knew we dwelt in the heart of the leather
producing district of the nation and yet no shoe factories. These are
but a few of the raw materials in the region of the Rocky Mountain
Western States. One who has made a study of industrial economics
knows too well why the State of Colorado has (to speak comparatively)
but seven people to the square mile. He well knows one reason to be
the protective associations which protect _big business_ instead of
protecting the people,--forever crying down co-operative industry which
is for the good of all.
In the homes of these asking alms which I visited, I saw the fearful
destroying effect on character of the wolf as he peered through
broken pane, and the cracks and crannies of door and wall. I saw the
humiliating tears and flushed faces of those who for the first time
were forced to beg. It was exactly like those of my associates who for
the first time had been thrust into prison. It needed but a glance to
tell me whether they had received "charity" before, for there is always
the spirit of being hardened to the "disgrace," just as there is in the
manner in which the prisoner treats the situation if he has previously
"done time."
Little children it is said will tell the truth when men and women lie.
I saw the father and mother, with the hope of making an impressive
plea, lest they fail to obtain the needed food and fuel, prevaricate
in replying to my many questions, or perhaps remain non-committal,
but often the little child at hand, conscious of the practiced deceit
of the parent, would speak the truth. Then would follow the austere
look of reproof from the parent or a sudden banishing from the room.
The cheerless house, the starving home was sowing the seed of crime.
I was a destroying angel. I was blackmailing my helpless victims into
dishonesty just as the plain-clothes man or uniformed police blackmail
the poor white slave of the Red-light District and the homeless,
out-of-work man of the street.
In my daily investigations I saw the dipsomaniac pleading for help,
yet this city offered no asylum for such as he except the city and
county jail. I saw the poor tubercular victim clinging to the thread
of life, dying from malnutrition, who, perhaps, could have gained his
health under different circumstances. I saw hundreds of strong, hardy
men demanding, by the divine right of living, the necessities of life.
I saw the mother suffering from privation, who saw no future, and
was without hope, whose soul and body throbbed with the life of the
unborn babe, whose demand was greater than the single life of man,--the
demand for the divine right of motherhood. And again I saw a vision,--a
general view of the private and public institutions, both benevolent
and correctional, which were in the city and which were crowded to
overflowing because of poverty. Then came my fatal vision,--my visit to
the Poor Farm.
The greatest city of the State is usually the fountain head, the output
camp for the entire State. When the unfortunate become homeless,
helpless and needy, they drift to the capital. The burden of the
indigent of the entire State is thus put upon that particular city
and county. I saw a great number turned away from the Poor House door
because of its already congested condition, who were then obliged to
exploit the community in other ways for the right of existence. I saw
in the tubercular ward twenty-five men in all stages of the disease,
and yet, _not one a native of the State_. Some had been in the State
only three weeks. They represented every part of our country. There was
absolutely no provision made by this city, county, or State for the
indigent, tubercular woman or girl. I had already heard continually in
the homes of the needy the appealing cry of the poor who suffer and
wait, hoping against hope for life and health, asking in one mighty,
smothered sob for a National Tubercular Sanitarium, an institution
which every State west of the Mississippi River should have.
In the blind ward of this traditional place for those who have missed
their aim (pioneers many of them, who hewed the logs and held the plow
and blazed the trails from '59 to '85), I saw twenty blind, thirteen
of whom were rendered blind by mine accidents, looking forward in the
darkness, ever in the darkness, for a home that has not the stigma
of charity, the infamy of a Poor House. Looking forward for the home
which is theirs by inheritance, and _every one a native of the State_
to which Winfield Scott Stratton, the multi-millionaire mining-man
and philanthropist, left _ten million dollars_ to build and support
ten years ago! He left it in the hands of three exceedingly wealthy
trusted friends to carry out his wishes who dwell and live in palaces
amidst beautiful surroundings, and as yet no home has been built,
and meanwhile the burying-ground of that final retreat, the Poor
House, becomes ever increasingly dotted with the new-made graves.
Monies belonging to these helpless, pioneer citizens who earned it
by the right of enduring hardships and toil, money belonging to the
hard-working people of the State, and to men still in the harness,
this money is denied while the people at large are overburdened with
taxation for the support of monarchical, handed-down institutions,--a
burden from which they can get no relief. This vision of truth thrown
upon the canvas of progress and humanity is forcibly applicable to
every Western State, in its appeal for an intelligent and humane
conservation of its citizens and most particularly the wage-earning
citizen. And although these few pages can only hint at the truth
revealed, they speak for National governmental action in placing our
people on the lands and the erection of national institutions for
our sufferers of the white plague. For co-operative industries of
equity by and for the people; for governmental ownership of all public
utilities and State institutions for our unfortunate, looking toward
the dawn of that glad, new day the light which is beginning to glow
through the press of this country. In Denver and many of the other
Western cities there is a movement for a better and a greater West.
Already in the new vision for the State of Colorado they have taken the
citizen from behind stone walls and iron bars. The cities are creating
municipal labor for the temporarily out-of-work man, which hand in hand
with Municipal Emergency Homes is just to tide over the rough place.
Imperfect and incomplete as its experimental beginning may be, who can
deny the awakening of a perfect aim toward a perfect end? There is no
wall of prejudice or selfishness, of ambition or unnatural greed, which
can be built that will overcome these arguments. These needs must be
met and shall be. No government can stand that is not founded on God's
governing laws of humanity.
APPENDIX
MUNICIPAL EMERGENCY HOMES VS. CHARITABLE LODGING HOUSES
In the hope that the story contained in these pages shall not have
been recorded in vain, the author begs to offer a few suggestions in
regard to Municipal Emergency Homes. Unless rightly built and rightly
conducted they may prove worse than useless. That the need is great
none can deny, and the institution should be strictly for the purpose
of filling that need. The suggestions contained in the following
paragraphs may solve some of the perplexities which confront the city
wishing to build an institution such as the situation demands.
THE FIRST STEP.
In every State of the Union, the Legislature should pass a bill giving
cities the right, under home rule, to erect and maintain a Municipal
Emergency Home. Every city ought to pass an ordinance for the creation
and maintenance of such Municipal Emergency Homes, and the budget of
the city should contain an appropriation for its maintenance, based on
the same reasons on which the appropriation is granted for running the
Health Department, Police Department, or any other Department of the
Municipal Government.
The ordinance to be passed by the city council ought to create and
develop a system that will give protection and opportunity to every
honest wandering citizen while sojourning, in search of work, in the
community.
In the cities of New York and Boston, an appropriation is made from
the public treasury for the care and maintenance of their Municipal
Emergency Homes. In Chicago a special budget is created and added to
the appropriation of the Police Department. It should properly have
been added to the Health Department.
THINGS TO AVOID.
A Municipal Emergency Home should not be designed to be a money-making
institution, but merely to provide shelter and food for men and women
who appear _temporarily_ destitute. If it should appear that those
demanding shelter in the Municipal Emergency Home should be afflicted
with any physical illness, it should be the duty of its superintendent
to transfer such individuals to a hospital ward, which may be a part of
the Municipal Emergency Home, or to the city or county hospital where
each man or woman may be thoroughly cured of any illness which has put
them into destitute circumstances or is unfitting them to perform any
kind of labor to make existence possible. The mind of the community is
being educated to see that the adjustment of individuals to a suitable
environment must be quickly but scientifically attempted. If unfit
they must, if possible, be made fit. The idea seems to be dawning that
permanent unfitness must be met with permanent adjustment.
A PROTECTION TO SOCIETY.
For the present, the Municipal Emergency Home stands, or rather
should stand, on the one hand as a link in the chain of governmental
institutions, not only as a public policy and agency which supports
the individual who either fails in life or is compelled to be one in
the ranks of destitute men because of economic conditions, but as an
institution wherein one may receive temporary relief under the rights
of citizenship. On the other hand, it should stand for the protection
of society from the degradations, annoyances and misdemeanors of
the individual who would thus be a burden upon his fellows and upon
society as a whole. In other words, the Municipal Emergency Home should
be one maintained and conducted _strictly by the municipality_ as a
governmental institution. It should be the tiding-over place for the
man or the woman without a job, a refuge to satisfy immediate needs, a
hospital in certain cases of sickness, an asylum in case of destitution.
ESSENTIALS TO SUCCESS.
The author believes that there are two factors essential to the success
of a Municipal Emergency Home; first, the co-operation of all public
departments in the city government, and second, the cooperation of the
public itself. When because of politics it has been found difficult
to introduce improvements and progressive ideas in a municipality
for relieving the temporarily distressed, it has become the custom
to recommend religious or private charities for the management of
relief-granting institutions. But no one can question the success and
the need of a Municipal Emergency Home who is willing to investigate
the wonderful success of the New York Municipal Lodging House and
the Buffalo Municipal Lodging House. These are conducted strictly
under city and County supervision and management. As such results as
have been obtained in New York and Buffalo, and which may come into
existence in any large city, under public management, why should
other cities question the popularity and success of a Municipal
Emergency Home under such management or doubt its advantages over
those mismanaged by religious and private charity, the latter not
infrequently run for profit?
USE OF APPROPRIATION.
The people of our cities may expect, and should forcibly demand from
its public officials, that the money expended in municipal "charities"
should be well adapted, elastic in its application, based upon wise,
scientific conclusions, and on a thorough exhaustive experimentation.
It is safe to say that New York stands in the front rank as the worst
governed city in America. But when such a city creates an appropriation
from its public treasury for the maintenance and management of a
Municipal Emergency Home, there can be no reason to doubt the wisdom
or the success of the experimentation of municipal charities. In fact,
we ought not to speak of municipal charity, but rather to say that
the city appropriates such money from tax-payers as has been earned
by those who are temporarily destitute,--that those housed in such
municipal institutions are but receiving assistance as an interest
on their past earnings. A Municipal Emergency Home should not be
considered as a charitable institution, but as an institution offering
the right to every toiler to receive the hospitality of his fellowmen
in time of need.
CO-OPERATION OF THE PUBLIC.
If the so-called influential and responsible people of every city
would use half the effort they now use in subscribing, managing
and advertising private charitable institutions to create a public
sentiment so that the city would establish a Municipal Emergency Home
with the most modern features, and if they then would continue in an
advisory and co-operative relation to it, the writer does not hesitate
to express his belief that the advantages, every time, would be on the
side of a Municipal Emergency Home or, as a matter of fact, on any
other so-called charitable institution managed by the community itself
as a governmental function and in a co-operative capacity.
The destitute man or woman who is compelled to apply for temporary
relief at a Municipal Emergency Home comes immediately into the care of
the city and may be turned at once to the protective treatment of which
many stand in need.
RELATION TO THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT.
It is well to bear in mind the fact that a scientifically managed
Municipal Emergency Home not only raises the standard of other lodging
houses in the city, but to make its influence most effective, the
co-operation of the Health Department is absolutely necessary. In
fact, the most humane, the most scientific and in all respects the
most desirable way to manage a Municipal Emergency Home is through the
direct management and supervision of the city Health Department,--never
under that of the Police Department. The institution deals with human
beings who are out of adjustment to the community. The homeless,
wandering citizen should not be considered as a derelict, a human
monster, a criminal, a vagrant and what not, to be hounded to death by
the brutal police system.
PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS AND THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT.
All religious, charitable and private lodging houses also should be
under a rigid inspection of the Health Department of the city, lest
they may become dangerous competitors to a Municipal Emergency Home by
undoing the work accomplished by this exemplary institution. Because
they can be maintained at a low standard of cleanliness and order, they
are sought by the tired, weary, homeless workingman, that is,--when
he has the money! No city should ever countenance an uninspected
sheltering place where human beings are forced to congregate, where
those harbored, in many instances, communicate disease to the country
boy, seeking a job, and teach him lessons in mendicancy, vice and crime.
CO-OPERATION OF THE CITY.
All public departments, especially the Health Department, Public
Works, Legal Department, Labor Department, should co-operate with the
Municipal Emergency Home. The Health Department should look after the
physical welfare of the city's guests, the Department of Public Works
should aid by giving all able-bodied, willing workers plenty of work
on all municipal undertakings, and by paying them the prevailing scale
of union wages in the respective industries. The Legal Department
should care for and protect against the private exploitation of the
homeless men and women, and above all else, shield them from the undue
interference of the police.
EDUCATION OF THE PUBLIC.
As to the co-operation of the great public itself, honest investigators
must find the overwhelming advantages in every respect on the side
of municipal management. If a city maintains and manages a modern
Municipal Emergency Home, charitably-inclined private doners can be
cheerfully advised to leave the entire problem to the city. Thus the
great many charitable and quasi-charitable institutions that have
failed to give relief where relief was most needed will fail to find
support. This is exactly the purpose of all municipal and governmental
undertakings,--firmly and scientifically to undertake the management of
all public affairs, taking it out of the hands of superficial private
organizations whose inadequate system, instead of doing good to the
needy, does much moral harm.
It is most desirable that the great public be _aroused and educated_ to
see that the homeless, wandering citizen needs special treatment,--that
he must, if necessary, be the object of expert, scientifically-trained
solicitude, and that the public must provide that scientific service.
When the public can be so educated, all applicants for shelter, food,
or work (whether they come from the so-called "tramp," "bum," or
"hobo," at the back door, or from the man on the street who begs a
dime, or from the Salvation Army representative on the street corner,
or from others who promiscuously ask donations for so-called "Lodging
Houses") may safely be referred to the Municipal Emergency Home
where the expert work of the community is being done, and the task
of uplifting humanity and of elevating the community itself is being
carried forward in the right way.
THE PROBLEM IN OTHER COUNTRIES.
It is quite remarkable that the Poor Law in England had its origin in
an attempt to meet the problems of the homeless, wandering wage-earner.
Yet there, as here, the homeless are rather on the increase, because of
unjust social and industrial conditions.
Nicholl quotes the following, purely utilitarian statement:
"The usual restraints which are sufficient for the well-fed, are
often useless in checking the demands of the hungry stomachs....
Under such circumstances, it might be considered cheaper to fill
empty stomachs to the point of ready obedience than to compel
starving wretches to respect the roast-beef of their more industrious
neighbors. It might be expedient, from a mere economical point of
view, to supply gratuitously the wants of able-bodied persons, if it
could be done without creating crowds of additional applicants."
This rudimentary economic advice has not been intelligently understood
either in England or in our country. The people of our cities still
look on while a group of men eat the cold roast beef of their more
fortunate neighbors--calmly look on and take no action.
Eminent scholars and authorities on economic, industrial and legal
questions have well said, many times, that repressive measures and
antagonistic treatment are never sufficient and never will be.
Educational, constructive, scientific work alone will prevail. The
religious and charitable organizations and societies may ask for
police control and supervision, and for the repression of vagrancy in
our cities, but the homeless and wandering wage-earners will be fed,
because we have a Christ-given, common humanity.
A WOMAN'S QUESTION.
It has been said that the "tramp" question, the question of the
homeless, hungry, wandering wage-earner is a woman's question. It
is. But what made it such? It has been made a woman's question by
the indifference and ignorance of our communities which have made
no provisions for men and boys, women and girls, who are hungry and
homeless.
Women as well as men have represented the conscience of our communities
in a poor fashion, in a most dangerous fashion, in a criminal fashion,
for they have created just about as many "tramps" with their petty
little charities, as the man who gives dimes on the street for a
night's shelter. The women should know, the men too, that at the back
doors or on the streets we cannot do the right thing. We can give only
inadequate relief. We can only push a human being down the stairs of
manhood to the level of a parasite.
THE HISTORICAL VIEW.
Let us look at the matter historically. We find that the mendicant of
the Middle Ages stood in much the same relation to the community as the
modern "tramp," the homeless, wandering wage-earner. One existed, and
the other exists, because of a certain sentimentality which permits
one group of persons to live on the industry of another group. The
community giving, in the mediæval days, was centered in the monastery,
and since the time of Henry VIII the State has assumed that function.
The monastery cared for the mediæval tramp. Let the Modern Twentieth
Century State of Civilization (if such we may call our time) care for
and cure his descendant, the homeless, wandering wage-earner, just
as it takes care of the other needs of the people in the respective
communities.
To be logical, every American city should maintain a Municipal
Emergency Home for the wandering citizen, the homeless wage-earner, in
order to complete the system of governmental institutions and agencies
dealing with the needs of a modern complex society.
THE LEGAL ASPECT.
Rightfully, and _legally_, in America, the so-called Overseers of the
Poor, the Boards of Charities and Corrections, are required to relieve
the homeless and destitute at their discretion. In many cities they are
fulfilling this duty toward the men temporarily destitute and homeless
by graciously permitting them to be sheltered at the insanitary,
degrading police stations, to be fed with water concoctions, to sleep
in a dark vermin-infested corner from which they are ordered to move on
in the morning. Perhaps this is acting according to their discretion,
but the result shows that it is unwise to put power into the hands of
private individuals who not only know not the evil they increase but
who could scarcely do otherwise if they knew.
_Historically, every modern city should maintain a Municipal Emergency
Home. Logically, it ought to do it. Legally, it must do it. Let it no
longer be a woman's or a man's question, but our question, the cities'
question. Let us all say that there must, nay, there shall be in every
community for the homeless, wandering wage-earner, a decent, modern,
sanitary shelter, a fitting meal, a place where the community can give
individual, discriminating, scientific treatment, where there is an
opportunity to get suitable work to make a decent living possible._
THE MORAL DUTY.
Let everybody then make it his duty to appeal to the civic pride of the
women and men of the community. Let the people of the city instruct
its Mayor and City Council, or else themselves elect a man or a woman
to supervise the management and maintenance of a Municipal Emergency
Home of integrity, of resource, a place of sagacious and scientific
training. Then, and not until then, will the women of our cities be
able to shut their doors, the men their pockets, and point with pride
to the Municipal Emergency Home, which in every American city is as
necessary and as fundamental an institution as a hospital itself. In
fact it is a human psychological hospital, an economic betterment
provider, within the gates and welcome arch of every city.
The name of the institution is significant,--_Municipal Emergency
Home_. As the gate of the public system of institutions it should
stand, always open and ready to receive the homeless, wandering
wage-earner who may claim its hospitality. From it, he or she may go
forth to renumerative industry, to economic, social and industrial
betterment which is for the benefit of all humanity.
WHAT A TWENTIETH CENTURY MUNICIPAL EMERGENCY HOME SHOULD BE
In the following pages, the author wishes to give in detail the chief
aims, objects and principles upon which a model Twentieth Century
Municipal Emergency Home should be maintained:
I. It should provide, _free_ under humane and sanitary conditions,
food, lodging and bath, with definite direction for such immediate
relief as is needed for any man or boy, woman or girl, or even
families, stranded in the city where located, as well as for the
convalescent from the hospital. It should be able to give employment
to able-bodied men and boys, women and girls, provide them with the
necessaries of life, and make it possible for them to be economically
independent of the future. This should be _the chief aim, object and
principle_ upon which the maintenance of a model Twentieth Century
Municipal Emergency Home is based.
All consideration of causes, all efforts toward the enforcement of law
or reform in legislation, are secondary to this first duty of providing
a humane clearing-house for a scientific, systematic and intelligent
distribution of the industrial, economic and social human waste, which
gathers and disperses from season to season in the urban centers of
America and tends constantly to fester into idleness, vice and crime.
While the demands of this human clearing-house will be no small charge
upon the respective municipalities, the Municipal Emergency Home
will be primarily an institution of social service, collecting and
regulating the entire human resource of the city for the mutual benefit
of the community or those that serve it and of the individual that is
served.
This idea of connecting, in the most direct fashion possible, the
social strength of a community with the individual weakness of the
stranded man or boy, woman or girl, will be the first purpose of a
Twentieth Century Municipal Emergency Home. To further this end its
location should be easily accessible to the lodging house district of
the city. That the building should be sanitary and fireproof, the food
wholesome and nourishing, the beds comfortable and clean, one man to a
bed, not "double deckers," are matters of course. An isolation ward for
special cases such as men suffering from inebriety, insanity, venereal
disorders, etc., is a prime requisite.
A system of registration by the card system ought to be in use, each
card giving at a glance the significant facts such as name, age,
birthplace, occupation, physical condition, reference, residence,
nearest relative or friend, number of lodgings, disposition of the
case, etc. This card should be filled out by the applicant himself,
in order that the visitor may not be humiliated by an inquisition of
a jail- or charity-like character. The registration clerk should be a
man of good judgment, a man of honor, and with psychological training
whose actions should always be guided by firm but just and human
motives. Thorough physical investigation of each applicant, and the
investigation of the capabilities of each applicant, should be in all
cases intelligently conducted.
Every visitor's clothing, including hat and shoes, should be thoroughly
fumigated each night. All visitors should be required to bathe nightly
and only shower baths should be used.
A comprehensive physical examination of each visitor _should be made_
by competent examiners under the direction of a physician of the
Health Department of the city. All necessary operations, supplies
for simple medicaments, eye-glasses, crutches, bandages, trusses, in
fact every accoutrement and further treatment, if necessary for the
health and comfort of the visitor, should be supplied _free_. An entry
of the actual physical conditions of each visitor should be made on
his registration card after the first examination, and any change
therefrom noted thereon as it may occur from time to time. All cases
of infectious or chronic contagious diseases of a virulent nature
should be sent at once to the isolation ward. The accuracy and care of
this department is of immediate importance to the health of the entire
community and _absolutely essential_ to the effective and successful
administration of the Home.
Each visitor should be provided with an absolutely clean nightshirt and
a pair of slippers. The dormitories should be in all cases comfortable
and quiet, talking, reading and smoking therein strictly prohibited.
The morning call ought to be given in time to permit each visitor to
dress for breakfast and to be sent to employment if he or she is able,
in time for the day's work. The visitors desiring to find work in the
town where the Municipal Emergency Home is located should form in
line and pass the superintendent for distribution in accordance with
the facts of each case, clearly stated on each record card, as to the
physical condition, abilities and desires of each applicant for work.
This is the crux of the ministry and the administration of a Twentieth
Century Municipal Emergency Home. Clear-sighted, humane, resourceful,
definite, resolute action is now demanded, and unless this demand is
met with scientific exactness, with intelligent systematic application,
the whole service fails.
The superintendent will have before him the record card of every
visitor containing his original story, the report of his physical
condition, occupation, and such further important facts as may
have been discovered in the course of his relations with the Home.
Immediately at hand will be the employment resources for that day, the
name and address of every labor union headquarters, every benevolent
association, every dispensary and hospital, city and business
directories, railroad and factory directories with the names and
addresses of the respective superintendents under whose jurisdiction
the employment of help may come. Thus the superintendent will be
capable of intelligent co-operation with all agencies, public and
private, that may minister to the varying needs of the stranded men and
boys, women and girls whom he is to distribute and start on their way
to independent, economic usefulness in the community.
Men and women of all ages, nationalities, occupations, misfortunes,
face the superintendent and must be dealt with definitely, but wisely,
after a rapid comprehension of the visitor's needs, his card record,
and the resources at command. No higher test can be made of human
judgment, courage, right feeling, resource and common sense.
It is at this crucial point in the administration of a Municipal
Emergency Home that one feature of the model home stands out with
commanding significance. This is the _Employment Bureau_. Daily
opportunity for paid employment is the right arm of the most effective
distribution, and the only genuine work test. Whether this can be
assured or not in any given city, no one can say until it has been
fairly applied and tried. When the employment resources of any city
are thoroughly organized, if there still be men in any considerable
number, able and willing to work, who cannot be given paid employment
and who must suffer enforced idleness for any considerable length of
time, then and not until then, will we know that the present industrial
order has absolutely broken down. After all paid employment has
been thoroughly taken advantage of, coming as it does from private
resources, the respective municipalities should immediately put to work
all able-bodied, willing wage-earners on municipal work of all kinds
for which the city should pay them a decent, living wage, or rather the
prevailing scale of union wages in the respective trades.
There is an increasing number of people in this country--quiet,
hard-working, hard-thinking, plain folk who are determined to know
the facts of our present-day industrial and social system, and while
enjoying the fruits of this present order, are determined to defend
it against assaults. They also purpose to strive mightily in righting
whatever wrongs may be proven to exist. The Municipal Emergency Home
will help to supply these people with the real knowledge of conditions
in the underworld, where millions of honest, able-bodied men and women
are forced to spend their lives in enforced economic idleness and
uselessness.
One of the most significant indications of the power of the Municipal
Emergency Home is the length and depth of its searching influence.
Its hooks will reach clear down to the bottom of the human sewerage,
in the dark channels of life, altogether unknown to the "other half"
of our human society. Without disparaging the splendid work of other
helping agencies in the respective communities, it cannot be denied
that their influence, their hooks of help, hang too high to catch many
worthy persons among the vast army of wandering citizens who are in
direst need. The "Hang-out," the "Barrel-house," and the "Free-flops"
receive many times more human drift than Charity Bureaus, Missions and
Workingmen's Homes. This is seen to be inevitable when the conditions
are rightly understood.
Humankind is but just beginning to understand and appreciate the
everlasting truth of that great clause of Agur's perfect prayer: "Feed
me with food convenient for me," and of one of the greatest sayings in
the Gospel of the Kingdom: "For I was hungered and ye gave me meat; I
was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in;
naked and ye clothed me."
The stranded man or boy, woman or girl needs food, shelter and a
straightforward, resourceful meeting of the issues of his or her
human life _first_. After that, if you possess sincerity, faith and
clear vision, it may be your privilege to speak to him or her, with
controlling power, of the ministry and message of the _Son of Man_.
The sympathetic reader may well ask: "How will stranded men and boys,
women and girls, learn of the existence of a Municipal Emergency
Home, and what will impel the unfortunate woman or girl to accept its
altruistic, humane but vigorous hospitality?"
The answer is easy. It has already been discovered that one of the
chief sanctions, one of the main objects for municipal direction
of such work is _being a municipal enterprise_, a part of the city
administration, a wing of its manifold governmental functions, it
challenges most effectively the co-operation of all public authorities.
The very first step therefore in this mandatory municipal co-operation
will be the closing of the police stations, these degrading and
unsanitary hells of our barbaric age, to the itinerant or local toilers
who have been either "run in" by the police or forced to find shelter
for the night, and provision for the supply of all such applicants
with tickets of admission and directions to the Municipal Emergency
Home. This will partly relieve the police stations of our cities of one
of their most disagreeable duties, rendered in the past without any
adequate means and under conditions that befouled not only the stations
but which degraded the needy visitors, thereby encouraging vagrancy,
crime and vice, creating disease and, in many cases, causing untimely
deaths.
The second answer to the question is that every policeman will be
required to carry a supply of Municipal Emergency Home tickets in his
pocket to give to all persons discovered in need, and to those found
begging. These must be accompanied by a warning that he or she must
not beg, because of the consequences, and that the city will take care
of their monetary necessities. No police officer should be allowed to
interfere or endanger the liberty of any such temporarily destitute
people. All railroad stations should have, in a conspicuous place, an
advertisement of the Home, calling the stranded wayfarer's attention to
its existence and location. Such notices will prove a blessing to them
and a saving to the community. All newspapers should co-operate with
the city authorities in printing in the "want ads" column the fact of
the existence of such a Municipal Emergency Home, its location and the
possible positions that may be filled by applying to the superintendent.
A most important step should be to provide every homeless man or
boy, woman or girl who may have been discharged from the house of
correction, from the penitentiaries, hospitals or other institutions,
with the hospitality of the Municipal Emergency Home, thereby pledging
the support and good faith of the city to secure him food, shelter, an
opportunity for honest employment, or the right, for a period, while
enjoying the hospitality of the city, to look about for such labor as
he or she may prefer.
No one who lays any claim to enlightened opinion upon subjects of
this character believes any longer that arrest and incarceration in
a penal or corrective institution is a final answer to the social
obligations of the community in behalf of the so-called casual
vagrant, the wandering citizen, the itinerant wage-worker, or petty
criminal, as they are miscalled. It may be true, perhaps, that a three
or six months' imprisonment is the only present available means for
"straightening up a drunk" or getting some "evil spirit" out of a young
man's heart. But at its best it is a very dangerous medicine, and
surely when society leaves a man or boy, woman or girl at the prison
gate, after a jail sentence of greater or less duration, and tells him
or her to shift, each for himself or herself as best they may, it is
simply an invitation and an encouragement to vagrancy, vice, crime and
immorality.
The last important step in this mandatory municipal co-operation
should be a direct attack upon the "barrel-houses," "free-flops,"
and "hang-outs," certain cheap lodgings and Missions. To continue a
campaign against vagrancy by an indiscriminate raiding of such resorts
has proven to be a miserable failure. If there is no other free,
accessible and serviceable place for the homeless and indigent man,
boy, woman or girl, they will simply find another center, and the last
may be worse than the first. On the other hand, having understood and
provided for the actual needs of the temporarily unemployed homeless,
we have cut off the base of evil supplies of "the mendicant army"
through the use of tickets to a modern Municipal Emergency Home, and
the co-operation of all other municipal departments and the great
public. Then, and not until then, can a modern Christian community
strike effectively the final blow against these recruiting stations of
vice, immorality, crime and disease.
An intelligent, scientific, systematic and centralized campaign of
publicity must be _ceaselessly_ carried on for this Free Home. Free
tickets of direction and admission must be constantly distributed
through fraternal and charitable societies, labor unions, institutions,
hotels, business offices, churches, clubs, housewives, railroad
conductors, brakemen, and other officials and citizens. As soon as
it is generally known that every applicant, without exception, is
absolutely certain of wholesome food and sanitary shelter _free_, with
such help next morning as his need demands, the cooperation of the
humane public will be immediate and constant. In this campaign for
publicity the daily press, through news items and editorial comment,
should be the most powerful ally for the extension of the service to
the needy.
Two vitally important considerations of administration now claim our
attention. One is the matter of an arbitrary limitation upon the number
of nights one of these unfortunate, homeless, wandering wage-earners
may remain and enjoy the hospitality of the city. The other is the
question of the so-called work-test, so much asked for by charitable
organizations.
This, the greatest of all problems confronting the Municipal Emergency
Home, we must face courageously in the endeavor to demonstrate its
practicability to social service. Either in the name of Christian
Brotherhood, sympathy for unfortunate humanity, or other high and holy
sentiments, men are given to "cant." So they exploit the institution,
or in the name of preventing pauperization, preserving, a man's
self-respect, a business administration, and other like high sounding
terms, the institution subtly exploits its charges. This much seems
certain: The arbitrary, _lump_ method of dealing with men is always and
everywhere wrong and inhuman.
A model Municipal Emergency Home _should not have an arbitrary time
limit_ on the extension of its hospitality to the needy. The injustice
of such limitation is manifest in instances such as that of a visitor
suffering from a bruise, wound, broken arm, injured leg,--of one
who is awaiting money from friends, or transportation home, or to a
place where employment is offered, or for the coming of the first
pay-day after being re-established in industry. Neither should any
Municipal Emergency Home have that inhuman, wasteful, robbing work
test. To argue or reason that because one hundred or more men and
boys lined up in front of a desk at five o'clock in the morning are
alike because of the fact of having received a night's shelter and
two meals and that, therefore, each alike should do three hours' work
on a wood pile, or in the city streets, is to say the least, not only
unscientific, but inhuman exploitation. In every such group there
will be found not only a wide difference in resources and needs, but
a wider difference in men. In such a group will be capable, earnest,
sober and willing workingmen displaced by industrial depression,
disturbances or inventions; all classes of casual laborers, between
jobs; boys seeking their fortunes; victims of child labor; disabled,
sick and aged industrial and social waste; beats, and frequently strays
from the higher walks of professional criminals. All these challenge
intelligent and resourceful discrimination. Surely the true interest of
the community as well as that of the unfortunate, wandering citizen, is
best served by at once sending men, able and willing to work, to paid
employment; separating the boys of tender ages from this human drift,
and starting them home or to steady, profitable employment for the
security of their future; directing the sick, infirm or aged to such
institutions as will best minister to their needs.
The writer's personal experiences and observations of the lump work
test in operation, as he saw it in the various religious and charitable
lodging houses throughout the country, seem to justify the following
statement:
First. The worthy, average visitor to a Municipal Emergency Home will
work diligently. Those chained by habits of vice will shirk. The
crippled, sick and aged will simply "mark time." This results in the
most fit man in the group being exploited for the benefit of the least
fit, and in putting upon the backs of those members of the community
least able to bear this burden, part of the charitable charge for the
incompetent and unworthy.
Second. There seems to be little foundation for the idea that a
lump work test conserves a man's self-respect. On the contrary the
conditions of its application are such as must always be more or less
degrading, and it invariably operates to hold together the good and bad
elements of a group, to the inevitable injury of the good.
Third. Where the lump work test involves some financial benefit for
the institution, the best of superintendents become less eager to
re-establish his most fruitful, most capable, willing-to-work visitors
in paid industry.
Fourth. As an indication of character, the work test is almost
valueless. Men of ordinary sense see through the thin disguise of the
claim that it helps to preserve their self-respect, and recognize its
true lineaments as a subtle exploitation that deprives them of the
opportunity of getting paid employment for that day, or as a penal
service to prevent their frequent return.
Fifth. The quick deterioration of even fairly good workmen through
getting used to a low standard of living by charitable contributions
that lessen the economic pressure and seem to offer escape from the
legitimate costs of life, is apparent to every thoughtful observer.
Hard times, and an empty stomach, make it easy to submit to the kindly
exploitation of a "Flop-house" wood-yard. The loss of self-respect
is forgotten in relief from the necessity of trying to play a man's
part in the industrial order, until the man that was an independent,
capable, willing, but unfortunate wage earner is transformed into a
half-parasite,--an individual of a special character, a man whose face
is familiar only to charity workers, and to the charitably-inclined
public.
Summing up the effect of these two arbitrary lump restrictions it
seems that they operate always to the injury of the service and are
tolerated for one of three reasons. The first is that they provide
some check upon the number and return of the visitors. The second
is that they provide a subtle means of exploiting helpless men for
the financial benefit of the institutions, and the third, that the
institution thereby escapes the obligations of discriminating and
effective distribution.
Mr. Raymond Robins, the first superintendent of the Chicago Municipal
Lodging House, in substantiation of the above argument says:
"It may be well to say that the Chicago Municipal Lodging House
began operations with both restrictions in force. A three nights'
limit and three hours' work daily from each able-bodied lodger were
required by the rules. Experience and observation of the results of
the enforcement of these restrictions in Chicago and other cities
convinced the administration that they were _cruel and unjust_. The
substitution of an employment bureau, effective co-operation with
other charitable and correctional agencies, and daily discriminating
distribution, have enabled the Chicago Municipal Lodging House to
abolish both restrictions entirely. Not only has this substitution
not resulted in overcrowding the house or increasing the number of
human parasites that seek its hospitality, but, on the contrary, the
proportion of the worthy men has steadily risen under the new régime.
The 'Chicago System' provides food, lodging, baths and distribution
for a maximum of two hundred lodgers daily at an annual cost to the
municipality of ten thousand dollars."
In conclusion, let it be understood that the keyword for the
successful administration of a model Municipal Emergency Home is
co-operation,--co-operation in the interior management, co-operation
in all external relations, co-operation with all existing agencies
for human service, co-operation for the creation of new ones when
found to be necessary from time to time; co-operation with all other
sister cities and States in creating a body of approved information and
legislation upon the broadest principles of humanity, for the service
of helping the wandering citizen, the unemployed masses, of removing
the causes, of bettering conditions and of correcting wrongs throughout
the world.
Standing as the collective social action of the whole people for
meeting honestly and scientifically the communal obligation to the
outcast, wandering, unemployed wage-earner, the homeless man and woman,
without special regard for race or class or sect, serving no private
scheme, or ulterior motive, the Twentieth Century Municipal Emergency
Home will be a potent witness to the practical expression in municipal
administrations of that awakening social conscience which is the
growing hope for righteousness in all the nations of the earth.
Following are suggestions for the printed cards to be used both as
advertisement and admission tickets for the needy:
I
THIS TICKET IS GOOD FOR
LODGING, FOOD AND BATH AT THE
MUNICIPAL EMERGENCY HOME
(Location)
_________________ _____________________
SUPT. ASST. SUPT.
TELEPHONE_________________
(Reverse side)
The City of ---- is maintaining a Municipal Emergency Home for the
benefit of all wandering citizens, homeless and indigent men and
boys, women and girls in this City. Lodging, food, a bath and other
necessaries of life are being provided _free_ to every applicant.
Those seeking work are given employment. The crippled, injured, old
or infirm are sent each morning to hospitals, dispensaries or homes.
Each applicant receives the personal attention of the superintendent,
and upon personal investigation his or her case is disposed of upon
the facts so determined alone. Employment is given to suit the
applicants and only able-bodied people will be sent to work. All
loyal citizens of the City of ---- are earnestly requested to refer
needy, homeless fellow-men to the Municipal Emergency Home by means
of this ticket.
BY AUTHORITY OF ----
II
GET YOUR HELP
FROM THE
MUNICIPAL EMERGENCY HOME
(Location)
SKILLED AND UNSKILLED LABOR CAN BE OBTAINED
WITHOUT CHARGE TO EMPLOYER OR EMPLOYEE
CARE TAKEN TO SUPPLY SITUATIONS WITH
COMPETENT MEN
__________________ __________________
ASST. SUPT. SUPT.
TELEPHONE__________
In conclusion, I refer to New York's Municipal Emergency Home, as a
guide for the technical plans which too can be improved upon, and are
being improved upon as we understand this great subject more clearly.
THE END
Transcriber's Note
The table below describes the various issues encountered in the
preparation of this text. Where there are other instances of a
misspelled word, it is assumed to be a printer's error, and was
corrected. Other dubious cases are merely noted here. Hyphenated
words are given as printed. Where the hyphenation occurred at a line
break, it was removed if there were other unhyphenated instances.
The spelling of "Pittsburgh" in Chapter XI varies. Historically, the
final 'h' has come and gone, removed and restored by Post Office fiat.
By the time of the publication of this text, it had been restored for
good, but it seems the 'h'-less spelling still had some currency.
The word 'lantine' on p. 115 is most likely a corruption of 'latrine',
but has been allowed to stand.
p. ap[p]licants Added.
p. 40 itiner[e/a]nt Corrected.
p. 54 repellant _sic._
p. 89 and he said, ["/']I'll fix 'em!["/'] Nested quotes.
p. 92 floatsam _sic._
p. 115 lantine _sic._ 'Latrine'?
p. 116 forgetfullness _sic._
p. 119 accom[m]odate Added.
p. 123 itinerate _sic._
p. 138 occur[r]ence Added.
p. 146 and get my pay.["] Added.
p. 150 not[h]ing Added.
p. 151 [pealing] potatoes _sic._
p. 161 accom[m]odate Added.
p. 163 Tacoma [Woman's] Club _sic._
p. 178 Diety _sic_ Deity.
p. 211 vil[l]age Added.
p. 228 approach[i]ng Added.
p. 245 ["flop"/'flop?'"] Nested quotes.
p. 256 Lou[si/is]ville Transposed.
p. 273 Pa[c/d]ucah Corrected.
p. 331 ap[p]licants Added.
exist[a/e]nce Both corrected.
p. 346 don[e/o]rs Corrected.