CHAPTER II

THE WELCOME IN THE CITY BEAUTIFUL TO ITS BUILDERS

"_And the gates of the city shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there._"--REV. 21:25.

On a bitter winter night, when the very air seemed congealed into piercing needles, as I was hurrying down Seventeenth Street in the City of Denver--the City Beautiful, the City of Lights and Wealth,--a young man about eighteen years of age stopped me, and asked in a rather hesitating manner for the price of a meal. At a glance I took in his desperate condition. His shoes gaped at the toes and were run down at the heels; his old suit of clothes was full of chinks soiled and threadbare, frazzled at ankle and wrist; his faded blue shirt was open at the neck, where a button was missing, and where the pin had slipped out that had supplied its place. His face and throat were fair, and he was straight and sound in body and limb.

"You look strong and well," I said to him, "why must you beg? Can't you work for what you eat? I have to."

His big, honest eyes took on a dull, desperate stare, as though all hope was crushed.

"This is the first time I have ever asked something for nothing," he said, "and I don't like to do it now, but I have been in Denver two days and I can't find a job. I am hungry." The last words trembled and he turned as though about to leave me. I stopped him.

"Wait a moment; I did not intend to turn you down. I am hungry myself; let us go across the street to the restaurant and get our dinner."

I had made up my mind to study this strong, able-bodied boy, who was workless, homeless, penniless, and suffering in our city beautiful, which is famous for its spirit of Western hospitality and even displays it as soon as you enter its gate by a great sign, "WELCOME."

As we sat at the table he told me that his home was on a farm back East, that he and his stepmother didn't get along very well, that his own mother died when he was ten years old and his stepmother had not been kind to him, but that he and dad were always great friends and had continued so up to the time he went away.

"I promised myself," he continued, as his hunger was appeased, "that as soon as I was old enough I would go West. I thought there were great chances for a young fellow like me out here, and so I worked and beat my way, and here I am to-day without a cent in my pocket. I have five dollars to my credit in the bank back in the old town near our farm, and if I knew anybody here I could get that money, pay my employment-office and shipment fee, go down to some works in Nebraska, and be at a job to-morrow," and he looked down in deep dejection.

"Well my lad," I said, "cheer up; all life is before you. Meet me to-morrow and we will see what can be done." On the following day I took him to my bank, signed a bit of paper, and the banker gave him the five dollars. As we left the bank and started down the street, he took an old brass watch out of his pocket and offered it to me.

"I want to give you something to show my appreciation of your kindness to me," he said. "Here is a watch the pawnshop man wouldn't give me anything on, but it keeps good time, and you are welcome to it if you will take it."

"No, I will not take it; you will need it when you get down on the works," I said. "Where did you sleep the night before I met you?" His face flushed and he hung his head. "Was it not in the city jail?"

"Yes, and it was the first time I was ever in a jail in my life."

I did not question him further, but to-day I can not quite understand why he was not detained there the usual thirty days for the unforgivable crime of being homeless, as that was the way Denver had of treating her destitute visitors.

Then he looked up with the true spirit of conquest in his eyes. "I'll tell you what I am going to do the first thing; I am going to get a clean, new suit of underclothing, then I am going to take a bath, and then get my shipment."

"Come on, my boy," I replied, and took him to a cheap store to buy his clean underwear. Afterward we went into a barber shop where he took his bath. Denver did not then have its public bath--the beautiful public bath later built through the efforts of the Denver Woman's Club. I waited to go with him to the employment office to get his shipment. When this was accomplished, we shook hands in a good-bye, and I wished him God-speed.

Two weeks later I received a letter in which he said: "I have a place to work here on a farm at big wages, with one of the best men in the world, and I am going to stay and work and save my money to help dad back on the old farm to pay off the mortgage. It is nearly paid off now and the farm will be mine some day."

After that incident I was haunted. The picture of that boy freezing and starving so far from home was constantly with me, and yet, I thought, how much more pitifully helpless a woman or girl placed in the same position. I fell to wondering about the many other boys and men and women who were homeless, and of what becomes of the homeless unemployed in our city. I knew I was not alone in this incidental help I had begun; there were hundreds of men and women helping cases just like this case of my boy. And thus I set out on my crusade.

Taking my initiative step into the forced resorts of the homeless of Denver, I one night drifted into one of the big beer dumps where they sell drinks at five cents a glass which costs a dollar a barrel to manufacture. Many men were in the place seeking shelter and a snack from the free lunch counter. Twenty-five stood at the bar drinking enormous schooners of chemicals and water under the name of beer containing just enough cheap alcohol to momentarily dull and lighten care. Not a few were drinking hot, strong drinks, which more quickly glazed the eye, confused the brain, and loosened the tongue. A few had already crept into the stifling odors of the dark rear rooms and had dropped down in the shadowed corners with the hope of being allowed to spend the night there. These rooms in earlier days had been "wine-rooms," where the more "polite" and prosperous had gathered, but who took the "wine-room" with them further up town as the city grew.

Among the many gathered around the big warm stove was a man whose appearance told too plainly that the world was not dealing kindly with him. Stepping up to him I said in a tentative way, "Have a drink?"

"No, I am not a drinker."

I then asked, "Can you tell a fellow who is broke where he can get a free bed?"

He looked at me with an amused smile. "You are up against it, too, are you, Jack? Well, I am broke, too, and the only free bed I know of is the kind I am sleeping in, and that's an oven at the brick yards. A lot of us boys go out there during these slack times."

"An oven at the brick yards!" I said in astonishment. "How do you get there?"

"Well, you go out Larimer Street to Twenty-third, then you turn out Twenty-third and cross Twenty-third Street viaduct. It's about two miles. You'll know the kilns when you come to them; you can't miss them. But don't go before eleven o'clock; the ovens are not cool enough before that time."

"To-night I sleep in an oven at the brick yards," I said to myself, with cast-iron determination.

It was a very cold night, but at eleven o'clock I started out Larimer Street to find my free bed. Having crossed the Twenty-third Street viaduct I was lost in darkness; there were no lights save in the far distance. I stumbled along over the frozen ground, fearing at any moment an attack, for Denver is not free from hold-ups. I could hear men's voices, but could see nothing. It was not a pleasure-outing except as the thrill caused by the swift approach of the unknown may be pleasurably exciting. Finally the lights of the brick yard shone upon me with its great, long rows of flaming kilns. I had arrived at my novel dormitory. Stepping up to a stoker at work near the entrance, I asked:

"Can you show a fellow where he can find a place to lie down out of the cold?"

He raised his head and looked at me, and said, "I'll show you a place." Leaning his shovel against the kiln, and picking up his lantern, he said, "Come with me." He paused at a kiln. "Some of the boys are sleeping in here to-night." I followed as he entered the low, narrow opening of a kiln and raised his light. We were in a round oven or kiln about forty feet in circumference. By the light of his lifted lantern I counted _thirty men_.

"There are about seventy sleeping in the empty kilns to-night; I think you will find a place to lie down there," he said, as he pointed to a place between two men.

I at once lay down, and with a "Good-night" he left me to the darkness and to the company of those homeless sleepers, who, in all our great city, could find no other refuge from death.

The kiln was so desperately hot that I could not sleep, and habit had not inured me to that kind of bed. Had I been half-starved, weak, and exhausted, as were most of my companions, I, too, could have slept, and perhaps would have wanted to sleep on forever. No one spoke to me. I endured the night by going at intervals to the kiln's opening for fresh air. It was then when I looked up into the deep, dark, frozen sky, that I thought what a vast difference there is in being a destitute man from choice and a destitute man from necessity. At four o'clock the time for a fresh firing of the kilns, we were driven from the great heat of that place out into the bitter cold of the winter morning. Very few of the men had any kind of extra coat, but, thinly clad as they were, they must walk the streets until six o'clock, waiting for the saloons or some other public places to be opened. Their suffering was pitiful. I afterward learned that many of these men, from this exposure, contracted pneumonia, and from this and many other exposures filled to overflowing the hospitals of the city.

During the entire week I followed up my investigations. I found men sleeping in almost unthinkable places; in the sand-houses and the round-houses of the railroad companies, when they had touched the heart of the watchman.

I asked one of the railway men why the companies drove them away from this bit of comfort and shelter.

"Because they steal," was his reply.

"What do they steal?" I asked.

"Oh, the supper pail of the man who comes to work all night, an old sack worth a nickel, a piece of brass or iron, or part of the equipment from a Pullman car, or anything they can sell for enough to buy a meal, or a bed, or a drink."

"Do they steal those little things because they are hungry?" I questioned.

"Oh, I don't know," he said with a shrug. "They are often so successful in not being detected, I expect that has made them bold. Some may have been hungry," he said, after a thoughtful pause. "Work has been scarce and hard to find, you know."

"Yes," I replied, "they have, no doubt, tramped the streets for many a day, footsore, dirty, ragged, and penniless and worst of all, discouraged and desperate. They must have clothing and food as well as a place to sleep. Without this they must suffer and die. They are haunted by this fear of death, knowing well what hunger and exposure means and the utter impossibility of securing work with their ragged appearance."

"Yes, I know," said the man, patiently listening to my growing realization of their desperation. "When they become bolder and break into a freight car to steal something, if not of much real value, or something to eat, they are usually caught and thrown into jail. But they can't stop to think of that, I suppose; the poor devils have got to live. You mustn't give me away," he added confidentially, "but I know a special agent for a big railroad company who made a boast of the number of men he had sent to the reformatory and put in the penitentiary the past year."

I slept, or rather endured, the next night, with thirteen men who were sleeping in a box car on a bed of straw. Some were smoking. Is it any wonder that many thousands of dollars' worth of property are destroyed by fire in one night? I found men asleep in vacant houses with old rags and paper for beds. They also smoked, and endangered not only this house but the entire city; besides, they often robbed the house of everything available, to satisfy their hunger. I found them sleeping in the loft of barns, the only covering the hay under which they crawled. I found them under platforms of warehouses with pieces of dirty old gunnysacks, or a piece of old canvas for a covering. I found them curled down in the tower of the switchmen, in empty cellars, in vat-rooms in breweries, in hallways, driven from one to the other, and some "carrying the banner"--walking the streets all night. I found them in the rear-ways of saloons, on and beneath their tables, and last, but not least, in that damnable, iniquitous hole, the bull-pen in the city jail.

A few short years ago--the date and name is of no moment--a young man eighteen years of age was shot to death by a policeman in Denver. I went to the morgue and looked on the white, silent face of the murdered boy. His mother wired, "Can't come to bury him; too poor." And so he was laid in a pauper's grave; no, not a pauper's grave, but a criminal's.

I have noticed in my investigations in all the police systems of our various municipalities--I exempt none--that where someone has been murdered, or a sick man has been thrown into jail and his life taken there, or some other outrage has been committed by their wicked policies, they always try to blanket the wrong by making a public statement that the victim had "a record" and was well known to the police.

According to the newspapers, this young man's diary showed that he had been in the State seventy-four days and out of the seventy-four days he had worked sixty-four; but--convincing proof of his outlawry--they found on him a match-safe that a man declared had been stolen from him. As I looked on that dead boy's face I seemed to read, above all else, kindness. Had he been kind to someone; in return, had this match-safe been given to him? Hundreds of times have I seen these tokens of appreciation given: match-safes, knives, and even clothes from one out-of-work man to another--even an old brass watch that the pawnshop man considered of no value. The match-safe may have been given to this young fellow by a hardened criminal with whom circumstances had forced him to associate.

"He ran from the officer." If you, my reader, had ever been forced, as a lodger or a suspect, to spend a night in a western city jail, you would take the chances of getting away by running rather than face that ordeal again.

I was so deeply impressed by the injustice of this legal murder that, under a _nom de plume_, I wrote a letter of defense for the boy to his mother, a copy of which I sent to the press. It reached the governing powers of the city, but not the public. Almost immediately the officer was arrested, tried,--and acquitted.

After my investigations in Denver had revealed such startling conditions of those who must toil and suffer, my first impulse was to fly to the Church. I thought I had reason to believe the Church stood for compassion, mercy, and pity. I approached, therefore, several of our leading clergymen. My first appeal was to the pastor of the Christian Church, and his reply was:

"My friend, if you succeed in getting a free Municipal Emergency Home for Denver, you will build a monument for yourself."

To this I answered: "I have no desire to build a monument; I want our city to build a shelter for those who may be temporarily destitute among us."

Another, a Baptist, asked if it were Christian. I turned from this reverend gentleman with the belief that in his study of the Scriptures he had omitted the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, in which, I believe, the substitution of the word love for charity is conceded correct by the highest authority.

To another, a Methodist, I said, "Won't you speak a word to your people that an interest may be aroused to relieve the hardships of those who toil, who happen to be without money, and have no place to rest?" With a forced expression, he replied, "I don't believe in the homeless and out-of-work. I have found them undeserving and dishonest." I could only ask what our Savior meant by "the least of these," and reminded him that the last words Christ spoke before His crucifixion were to a thief.

I then made my way to the home of the Presbyterian pastor of the largest and most influential church in the city. I did not succeed in seeing the leader of this ecclesiastical society, but as I passed, I could look into the basement of the brightly lighted church, and I saw approximately fifty Japanese being taught--aliens who did not want our religion, but did want our language and modern ideas.

Going to the president of the Ministerial Alliance, I asked to be heard, but they had no time to listen. I then went to the Y. M. C. A. and the president said, "You can't expect every fellow to throw up his hat for your concern." Paradoxical as it may seem, the only three societies whom I asked for aid, who turned me down, were the Ministerial Alliance, the Bartenders' Union, and the Y. M. C. A. Later, the Women's Clubs, Labor Councils, and the Medical Societies were my warmest friends.

I then went to those in authority in the administration of our city, and among the many objections raised to my plea, the first was there were other things that needed attention more. For instance, there were overcrowded hospitals, which must be enlarged. The sick, I was told, were lying on the floors, and several children were being placed in one bed, just as they are doing in Chicago to-day.

Then it was declared we would pauperize the people; we would encourage idleness instead of thrift. My investigations had taught me how useless it is to talk ethics to a man with an empty stomach. The Municipal Emergency Home I believed would encourage thrift instead of idleness.

And then our chief executive declared that something effectual should be done to keep out of our State the army of consumptives who come to Colorado. I could hardly see how that would be quite just or right. But I could see, I thought, how the Municipal Emergency Home, rightly built and conducted, with its sanitary measures would be a mighty influence in our combat against the great white plague. Then the all-powerful declared the city could not afford it--the old cry of every city administration, where the political boss and machine politics rule, when it comes to creating an institution that is not in tune with their policies.

Being abruptly asked what I knew about Municipal Emergency Homes, I was forced to confess that I had no knowledge whatever. I realized the need of information. I did not even know there was in existence on this whole earth of ours such an institution as I was asking Denver to build.

* * * * *

I have been greatly misunderstood in regard to the class and character of the destitute for whom I am asking favor. That I can now clearly explain, for what I found true in Denver in a small way I found true in every other city I visited. I classify them in two groups,--the unfortunate and the itinerant worker. Ninety per cent., taken as a whole throughout our country, are of the latter. The former and smaller percentage are chained by habits of vice, which our social system has forced upon them, or are physically weak, made so, many of them, in our prisons. And while, first, my plea is for the upright wage-earner, I am broad enough to feel that if we have been criminally thoughtless and negligent enough to allow social evils to exist and make derelicts and dependents, we certainly ought to be honest enough to stand the consequences and give them at least a place of shelter.

But the 4,000,000 homeless, honest toilers with us to-day affect the welfare of every home in our nation. They are an important force and factor in society. A moment's reflection will show us quickly hundreds of good reasons why many of them at times should be moneyless and shelterless. As I throw back the curtain on these stories of human interest, I trust we may all of us catch forcibly the evident need of not sitting idly by, supinely asking a good God to help us, but rather of letting our petition in word and act be a living prayer in helping Him.

The boy whom I met on our Denver street, whose condition I have described, can justly go to the Lord and complain, as well as proclaim to the world, that the City Beautiful held no welcome for him while in need of life's direst necessities. It is not to be wondered at that the so-called Christian people of the City and County of Denver have forgotten that it is not enough to have a twenty-five thousand dollar Welcome Arch of myriads of sparkling lights, heralding to the world its hospitality to those entering its gate, and then forget their Christian duty to their fellow-men in need, for the City and County of Denver has been in a political turmoil and has been concerned not so much with the preservation of human rights as with the preservation of property rights. There is no other city in the region of the Rocky Mountains that could better afford to give a real welcome to the wandering citizen, the harvester and the builder, than Denver.

A city whose tax payers have permitted waste and extravagance to the extent of hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the expenditure of the tax payer's money, surely could afford to create and maintain an institution where the wandering citizen, the homeless wage earner, may find a Christian welcome and humane care.

If this boy should have attempted to go to the local charity organization, and had not been told that the Society did not help "floaters," as I have known men in other cities to be told, he would undoubtedly have been informed, after going through a humiliating inquisition, that his case would be investigated and if found worthy relief afforded to him after such investigation. Imagine a hungry, homeless, penniless man, who must have whatever help he can get immediately, being told that his case will be investigated and relief afforded at some later date! What is a man in this condition to do? Did not the charity organization to whom the tax payers give money for the express purpose of relieving the needy and distressed, compel this very individual to beg, to accost the citizens on the streets who have already subscribed for his relief, and to still continue to beg from them? Does not such a charitable organization, by the acquiescence of the citizens of the city, put a premium on this hungry, homeless man to go and shift for himself as best he may, either by accosting citizens who have already been burdened by his relief, or by stealing, robbing, and if necessary demanding a life, to satisfy the needs whereby his existence may be made possible?

It is time that the citizens of the City and County of Denver, and for that matter, of all other municipalities of the United States, shall awaken to the call of duty in their respective communities in dealing rightly with those who are their wards, if they desire to minimize instead of increase the evils of pauperism brought about by indiscriminate alms-giving.

A great many times, through political intrigues, we find people at the head of charity organizations in our cities that have no business to be there. Their appointment to such places, in many instances, is purely political, and they are, therefore, not competent to dispense the money subscribed by the tax payers of the community. Very often only those individuals can receive consideration at the hands of such officials who bring a letter of introduction, or have some personal political "pull," while an honest and deserving man, coming from some other portion of the City or State, without any acquaintance whatsoever in the community in which he finds himself stranded, may receive no consideration whatever at the hands of such so-called administrators of public charity.

It has been conclusively proven that the charitable endeavors of our so-called charity organization societies are extremely unscientific, wasteful, and have a detrimental and pauperizing effect in-so-far as the work of the charitable is devoted to reclamation and not to prevention, which is also one cause for its failure.

Consider a moment one startling fact evidencing the spirit shown by organized charity in its effort so evidently to refrain from helping the needy: I found during my personal investigations that the societies keep _banking hours_ from nine to five o'clock, and are closed at noon on Saturdays! From noon on Saturday to nine on Monday, is it not possible that some needy one in distress may need help?

Readiness on the part of the private citizen to subordinate personal interests to the public welfare is a sure sign of political health; and readiness on the part of public officials to use public offices for private gain is an equally sure sign of disease. Every municipality, by reason of its organization, supported by all of its citizens, ought to supply all communal needs, instead of permitting certain special interests under the guise of "religious" and "charity" organizations to administer to the needs of the less fortunate members of the community.

There are two very important facts that occupy the center of the stage of our complex civilization, to which all other facts are tributary, and which for good or ill are conceded to be of supreme importance. They are the rise of scientific and democratic administration of all the needs of the people, and the decline of private, special interests, clinging to the preservation of property rights as against human rights.

Determined is the demand of the people for a controlling voice in their destinies. The disinherited classes are refusing to remain disinherited. Every device within the wit of man has been sought to keep them down, and all devices have come to naught. The efforts of the people to throw off their oppressors have not always been wise, but they have been noble, self-sacrificing.

The report of charities and corrections at Atlanta for 1903 states that from among thirty of the leading cities of our nation, Denver is the only city reported as being severe toward its toilers, particularly toward that class which it is pleased to call "beggars" and "vagrants." Personal observation, however, proved to me that many other cities in the list were equally as cruel, and yet it is astounding to note in this report that the arrests in Denver for the crime of being poor--begging and vagrancy--which has undoubtedly correspondingly increased with the city's growth in the following years, was 6763, while New York City's for the corresponding crime, and same period of time was, for begging, 430; for vagrancy, 523; and Chicago, for begging, 338; for vagrancy, 523. This is approximately Denver's ratio with all of the other cities in the report.