THE FEEDING OF THE HUNGRY
The problem of supplying myself with food and drink in the half-starved
city of Santiago, after the steamer had been quarantined against me,
proved to be even more serious than I had anticipated. In my walk up
Marina and Enramadas streets and out to the Caney road on Tuesday
forenoon I passed two or three restaurants bearing such seductive and
tantalizing names as "Venus," "Nectar," and "Delicias," etc., but they
were all closed, and in a stroll of two miles through the heart of the
city I failed to discover any food more "delicious" than a few half-ripe
mangoes in the dirty basket of a Cuban fruit-peddler, or any "nectar"
more drinkable than the water which ran into the gutter, here and there,
from the broken or leaky pipes of the city water-works. Hot, tired, and
dispirited, I returned about noon to the Anglo-American Club, took
another drink of lukewarm tea from my canteen, nibbled a piece of hard
bread, and opened a can of baked beans. The beans proved to be flavored
with tomato sauce, which I dislike; the hard bread was stale and tasted
of the haversack in which I had brought it ashore; and the tea was
neither strong enough to inebriate nor yet cool enough to cheer. There
did not seem to be any encouraging probability that I should be fed by
Cuban ravens or nourished by manna from the blazing Cuban skies, and in
the absence of some such miraculous interposition of Providence I
should evidently have either to go with a tin cup to the Red Cross
soup-kitchen and beg for a portion of soup on the ground that I was a
destitute and starving reconcentrado, or else return to the pier where
the _State of Texas_ lay, hail somebody on deck, and ask to have food
lowered to me over the ship's side. I could certainly drink a cup of
coffee and eat a plate of corned-beef hash on the dock without serious
danger of infecting the ship with yellow fever, typhus, cholera, or
smallpox; and if the captain should object to my being fed in that way
on the ground that the ship's dishes might be contaminated by my
feverish touch, I was fully prepared to put my pride in my pocket and
meekly receive my rations in an old tomato-can or a paper bag tied to
the end of a string.
With all due respect for Red Cross soup, and the most implicit
confidence in Red Cross soup-kitchens, I inclined to the belief that I
should fare better if I got my nourishment from the _State of
Texas_--even at the end of a string--than if I went to the Cuban
soup-kitchen and claimed food as a reconcentrado, a refugee, or a
repentant prodigal son. In the greasy, weather-stained suit of brown
canvas and mud-bespattered pith helmet that I had worn at the front, I
might play any one of these roles with success, and my forlorn and
disreputable appearance would doubtless secure for me at least two
tincupfuls of soup; but what I longed for most was coffee, and that
beverage was not to be had in the Cuban soup-kitchen. I resolved,
therefore, to go to the pier, affirm with uplifted hand that I was not
suffering from yellow fever, typhus fever, remittent fever, malarial
fever, pernicious fever, cholera, or smallpox, and beg somebody to lower
to me over the ship's side a cup of coffee in an old tomato-can and a
mutton-chop at the end of a fishing-line. I was ready to promise that I
would immediately fumigate the fishing-line and throw the empty
tomato-can into the bay, so that the _State of Texas_ should not run
the slightest risk of becoming infected with the diseases that I did not
have.
About half-past one, when I thought Miss Barton and her staff would have
finished their luncheon, I walked down Gallo Street to the pier where
the steamer was discharging her cargo, hailed a sailor on deck, and
asked him if he would please tell Mrs. Porter (wife of the Hon. J.
Addison Porter, secretary to the President) that a Cuban refugee in
distress would like to speak to her at the ship's side. In two or three
minutes Mrs. Porter's surprised but sympathetic face appeared over the
steamer's rail twenty-five or thirty feet above my head. Raising my
voice so as to make it audible above the shouting of the stevedores, the
snorting of the donkey-engine, and the rattle of the hoisting-tackle, I
told her that I had not been able to find anything to eat in the city,
and asked her if she would not please get my table-steward "Tommy" to
lower to me over the ship's side a few slices of bread and butter and a
cup of coffee. A half-shocked and half-indignant expression came into
her face as she mentally grasped the situation, and she replied with
emphasis: "Certainly! just wait a minute." She rushed back into the
cabin to call Tommy, while I sat down on a bag of beans with the
comforting assurance that if I did not get something to eat that
afternoon there would be a fracas on the _State of Texas_. Mrs. Porter
evidently regarded it as an extraordinary state of affairs which forced
the vice-president of the Red Cross to go hungry in a starving city
because a ship flying the Red Cross flag refused to allow him on board.
In five minutes more Tommy appeared in the starboard gangway of the
main-deck, and lowered down to me on a tray a most appetizing lunch of
bread and butter, cold meats, fried potatoes, preserved peaches,
ice-water, and coffee. I resumed my seat on the bag of beans, holding
the tray on my knees, and gave myself up to the enjoyment of the first
meal I had had in Santiago, and the best one, it seemed to me, that ever
gladdened the heart of a hungry human being in any city. The temperature
in the fierce sunshine which beat down on my back was at least 130 deg. F.;
the cold meats were immediately warmed up, the butter turned to a
yellowish fluid which could have been applied to bread only with a
paint-brush, and perspiration ran off my nose into my coffee-cup as I
drank; but the coffee and the fried potatoes kept hot without the aid of
artificial appliances, and I emptied the glass of ice-water in two or
three thirsty gulps before it had time to come to a boil. Mrs. Porter
watched me with sympathetic interest, as if she were enjoying my lunch
even more than she had enjoyed her own, and when I had finished she
said: "It is absurd that you should have to take your meals on that hot,
dirty pier; but if you'll come down every day and call for me, I'll see
that you get enough to eat, even if they don't allow you on board."
All the rest of that week I slept in the Anglo-American Club and took my
meals on the pier of the Juragua Iron Company, Mrs. Porter keeping me
abundantly supplied with food, while I tried to make my society an
equivalent for my board by furnishing her, three times a day, with the
news of the city. Getting my meals in a basket or on a tray over the
ship's side and eating them alone on the pier was rather humiliating at
first, and made me feel, for a day or two, like a homeless tramp
subsisting on charity; but when General Wood, the military governor of
the city, and Dr. Van De Water, chaplain of the Seventy-first New York,
came down to the _State of Texas_ one afternoon to see Mrs. Porter and
were not allowed to go on board, even for a drink of water, my
self-respect was measurably restored. Dr. Van De Water had walked into
the city from the camp of his regiment, a distance of two or three
miles, in the fierce tropical sunshine, and was evidently suffering
acutely from fatigue and thirst; but the _State of Texas_, where, under
the Red Cross flag, he naturally expected to find rest and refreshment,
was barred against him, and he had to get his drink of water, as I got
my daily bread, over the ship's side. The quarantine of the steamer
against the shore would perhaps have been a little more consistent, as
well as more effective, if the officers who superintended the unloading
and storing of the cargo had not been permitted to visit every day the
lowest and dirtiest part of the city and then return to the steamer to
eat and sleep, and if the crew had not been allowed to roam about the
streets in search of adventures at night; but I suppose it was found
impracticable to enforce the quarantine against everybody, and the most
serious and threatening source of infection was removed, of course, when
General Wood, Dr. Van De Water, and the vice-president of the Red Cross
were rigidly excluded from the ship.
While I was living at the Anglo-American Club and boarding on the pier
of the Juragua Iron Company the deserted and half-dead city of Santiago
was slowly awakening to life and activity. The empty streets filled
gradually with American soldiers, paroled Spanish prisoners, and
returning fugitives from Caney; shops that had long been shut and barred
were thrown open under the assurance of protection given by the American
flag; kerosene-lamps on brackets fastened to the walls of houses at the
corners of the narrow streets were lighted at night so that pedestrians
could get about without danger of tumbling into holes or falling over
garbage-heaps; government transports suddenly made their appearance in
the bay, and as many of them as could find accommodation at the piers
began to discharge cargo; six-mule army wagons rumbled and rattled over
the rough cobblestone pavements as they came in from the camps after
supplies; hundreds of hungry and destitute Cubans were set at work
cleaning the filthy streets; and in less than a week Santiago had
assumed something like the appearance that it must have presented before
the siege and capture. The thing that it needed most in the first
fortnight after the surrender was a hotel, and a hotel it did not have.
Newspaper correspondents, officers who had come into the city from the
camps, and passengers landed from the steamers had no place to go for
food or shelter, and many of them were forced to bivouac in the streets.
Captain William Astor Chanler, for example, tied his saddle-horse to his
leg one night and lay down to sleep on the pavement of the plaza in
front of the old cathedral.
The urgent need of a hotel finally compelled the steward of the
Anglo-American Club to throw open its twenty or more rooms to army
officers, cable-operators, and newspaper correspondents who had no other
place to stay, and to make an attempt, at least, to supply them with
food. A few cases of canned meat and beans and a barrel of hard bread
were obtained from the storehouse of the Red Cross; a cook and three or
four negro waiters were hired; and before the end of the first week
after the capture of the city the club was furnishing two meals a day to
as many guests as its rooms would accommodate, and had become the most
interesting and attractive place of social and intellectual
entertainment to be found on the island. One might meet there, almost
any night, English war correspondents who had campaigned in India,
Egypt, and the Sudan; Cuban sympathizers from the United States who had
served in the armies of Gomez and Garcia; old Indian fighters and
ranch-men from our Western plains and mountains; wealthy New York
club-men in the brown-linen uniform of Roosevelt's Rough Riders; naval
officers from the fleet of Admiral Sampson; and speculators,
coffee-planters, and merchant adventurers from all parts of the western
hemisphere. One could hardly ask a question with regard to any part of
the habitable globe or any event of modern times that somebody in the
club could not answer with all the fullness of personal knowledge, and
the conversation around the big library table in the evening was more
interesting and entertaining than any talk that I had heard in months.
But the evenings were not always given up wholly to conversation.
Sometimes Mr. Cobleigh of the New York "World," who had a very good
tenor voice, would seat himself at the piano and sing "White Wings,"
"Say au revoir, but not good-by," or "The Banks of the Wabash," and then
Mr. Cox, resident manager of the Spanish-American iron-mines, would take
Cobleigh's place at the instrument and lead the whole assembled company
in "John Brown's Body," "My country, 't is of thee," and "The
Star-Spangled Banner," until the soldiers of the Ninth Infantry,
quartered in the old theater across the way, would join in the chorus,
and a great wave of patriotic melody would roll down Gallo Street to the
bay, and out over the tranquil water to the transports lying at anchor
half a mile away. Sitting in that cheerful, comfortably furnished
club-room under the soft glow of incandescent electric lights, and
listening to the bright, animated conversation, the laughter, and the
old familiar music, I found it almost impossible to realize that I was
in the desperately defended and recently captured city of Santiago,
where the whole population was in a state of semi-starvation, where
thousands of sick or wounded were languishing in crowded hospitals and
barracks, and where, within a few days, I had seen destitute and
homeless Cubans dying of fever in the streets.
Miss Barton began the work of relieving the wide-spread distress and
destitution in Santiago with characteristic promptness and energy. To
feed twenty or thirty thousand people at once, with the limited
facilities and the small working force at her command, and to do it
systematically and economically, without wastefulness and without
confusion, was a herculean task; but it was a task with which
experience and training in many fields had made her familiar, and she
set about it intelligently and met the difficulties of the situation
with admirable tact and judgment. Her first step was to ask the ablest,
most influential, and most respected citizens of Santiago to consult
with her with regard to ways and means and to give her the benefit of
their local knowledge and experience. The object of this was to secure
the cooeperation and support of the best elements of the population, and
strengthen the working force of the Red Cross by adding to it a local
contingent of volunteer assistants who were thoroughly acquainted with
the city and its inhabitants and who would be able to detect and prevent
fraud or imposition. There was danger, of course, that people who did
not need food, or were not entitled to it, would seek to obtain it on
false pretenses, and that others, who perhaps were really in distress,
would try to get more food than they actually required in order that
they might make a little money by selling the surplus. In anticipation
of this danger, Miss Barton decided to put the distribution of food
largely under local control. In the first place, a central committee of
three was appointed to exercise general supervision over the whole work.
The members of this committee were Mr. Ramsden, son of the British
consul; Mr. Michelson, a wealthy and philanthropic merchant engaged in
business in Santiago; and a prominent Cuban gentleman whose name I
cannot now recall. This committee divided the city into thirty
districts, and notified the residents of each district that they would
be expected to elect or appoint a commissioner who should represent them
in all dealings with the Red Cross, who should make all applications for
relief in their behalf, and who should personally superintend the
distribution of all food allotted to them on requisitions approved by
the central committee. This scheme of organization and distribution was
intelligently and judiciously devised, and it worked to the satisfaction
of all. Every commissioner was instructed to make a requisition for food
in writing, according to a prescribed form, stating the number and the
names of heads of families needing relief in his district, the number of
persons in each family, and the amount of food required for the district
as a whole and for each family or individual in detail. The commissioner
then appended to the requisition a certificate to the effect that the
petitioners named therein were known to him and that he believed they
were really in need of the quantities of food for which they
respectively made application. The requisition then went to the central
committee, and when approved by it was filled at the Red Cross warehouse
and retained there as a voucher.
I heard it asserted in Santiago more than once that food issued by the
Red Cross to people who were supposed to be starving had afterward been
sold openly on the street by hucksters, and had even been carried on
pack-mules in comparatively large quantities to suburban villages and
sold there; but I doubt very much the truth of this assertion. Miss
Barton caused an investigation to be made of several such cases of
alleged fraud, and found in every instance that the food said to have
been obtained from the Red Cross had really come from some other source,
chiefly from soldiers and government transports, whose provisions, of
course, could not be distinguished from ours after they had been taken
out of the original packages. Be this, however, as it may, the checks
upon fraud and imposition in the Red Cross scheme of distribution were
as efficient as the nature of the circumstances would allow, and I doubt
whether the loss through fraudulent applications or through collusion
between commissioners and applicants amounted to one tenth of one per
cent. The Red Cross furnished food in bulk to thirty-two thousand
half-starved people in the first five days after Santiago surrendered,
and in addition thereto fed ten thousand people every day in the
soup-kitchens managed by Mr. Michelson. I do not wish to make any unjust
or invidious comparisons, but I cannot refrain from saying,
nevertheless, that I did not happen to see any United States
quartermaster in Cuba who, in the short space of five days, had unloaded
and stored fourteen hundred tons of cargo, given hot soup daily to ten
thousand soldiers, and supplied an army of thirty-two thousand men with
ten days' rations. It is a record, I think, of which Miss Barton has
every reason to be proud.
But her beneficent work was not confined to the mere feeding of the
hungry in Santiago. She sent large quantities of cereals, canned goods,
and hospital supplies to our own soldiers in the camps on the adjacent
hills; she furnished medicines and food for sick and wounded to the
Spanish prison camp as well as to the Spanish army hospital, the civil
hospital, and the children's hospital in the city; she directed Dr.
Soyoso of her medical staff to open a clinic and dispensary, where five
surgeons and two nurses gave medical or surgical aid to more than three
thousand sick or sickening people every day; she sent hundreds of tons
of ice from the schooner _Morse_ to the hospitals, the camps, and the
transports going North with sick and wounded soldiers; she put up tents
to shelter fever-stricken Spanish prisoners from the tropical sunshine
while they were waiting to be taken on board the vessels that were to
carry them back to Spain; and in every way possible, and with all the
facilities that she had, she tried to alleviate the suffering caused by
neglect, incompetence, famine, and war.