CHAPTER XXVII

MEMPHIS--A CITY'S FAULT AND A NATION'S WRONG

"_Society must necessarily look at these things because they are created by it._"--HUGO.

On my arrival in Memphis I was greeted by a severe storm. Although chilled and almost starving my first desire was to secure my baggage, which I had sent on from Cleveland, and go to a hotel. But there were the conditions of the homeless and needy of Memphis to be studied. Under what more convincing and truthful conditions could I find need in Memphis for the erection and maintenance of a Municipal Emergency Home? So with renewed determination I decided to learn of what Memphis had to offer to the homeless, hungry worker.

My brisk walk from the railroad yards to the heart of the city warmed my thoroughly-numbed body. I realized that I must have food. I was at my goal. Here was a chance to work for the government. I expected to be shipped on the first boat. I know my personal appearance was decidedly against me as I entered Memphis. Soiled, black, unshaven, unwashed, I felt certain of arrest if seen by the police. Entering several hotels I asked work for a meal, but was promptly denied. The good things glowed in the dining-room windows. People seated at tables were eating all and everything they wanted. Outside on the street, well-dressed people hurried on to their homes. Must I beg, after all? No. Here, too, it was against the city ordinance as well as against my contract. I decided to try one more place. I entered one of the largest restaurants and approaching the manager, I said,

"I am hungry. Can I do something for you for a little to eat?"

He looked me squarely in the eye with a merry twinkle in his own and said,

"You look like the devil. Just drop in on a coal special?"

"No, a Standard Oil," I answered.

"Go back there," pointing toward the kitchen, "wash up, get some supper. My silver man has not shown up yet. If he does not, help them out in there."

What a feast that supper, for which I worked half an hour! What the black cook did not give me was not in the restaurant. The silver man came, and I was again on the street. I was growing so weary and felt the need of sleep, but with a clean face and clean hands, and a brush up, I had the courage to ask a policeman where I could get a free bed. He replied,

"In the jungles, or the jail. But I advise you not to go to the jail unless you have to."

At last, because forced to do so, I applied at the Y. M. C. A. They could not think of giving a bath, meal or bed to a homeless man in their beautiful palace, but gave me a ticket to the Gospel Union Mission on Front Street. This was an old building partly destroyed by fire, which had been condemned by the city,--a place fairly reeking with filth, sewer gas, and vermin. The Y. M. C. A. of Memphis would have committed a more Christian act to have literally kicked me into the street or turned me over to the police. But what did they care? I had been gotten rid of and was no longer a concern of theirs.

The old man at the Mission was reluctant to give me a bed for the night even with an order from the Y. M. C. A. He would so much, rather have had the ten cents. He told me I would have to saw wood the next morning for the privilege of sleeping there, which I did. Water was an unknown quantity, at least as far as a bath went, and no food was offered. The horrible experience I went through at the Hope Rescue Mission of Louisville did not exceed my experience in this awful place.

In the morning I hurried to the Post Office expecting letters and money, but the letters had been delayed. I knew absolutely no one in Memphis. I went to the office of the government works to see about my shipment. The boat would not leave until the following day so I was forced to spend another night in Memphis. As there was no other place, I was obliged to spend that night in the jungles,--the dense woods and willows which line the river bank. I had to do this if I wished to see what it meant to be destitute in Memphis. I made my way to the jungle. I was not alone. There were six other destitute men there. Four of these men were skilled craftsmen, all were Americans. The other two were unskilled laborers, one a German, the other a Swede. During the wakeful moments of that long, cold night I learned from each of these men that the reasons for his being there were just and honorable. All of the men were on their way to work. None of them were over thirty years of age. Two were not yet twenty-one. They called each other "Pal." Four of the men had already received transportation on the steamboat _Kate Adams_, to leave on the next day for Walnut Bend, where they were to labor on the government works riprapping the river banks with willows. They were to receive a dollar and twenty-five cents a day with board if they remained over a week on the job. If not, they were to receive but one dollar a day for ten hours' work. The German and the Swede were on their way to a railroad camp where work awaited them. Because they had no transportation they were compelled to work or beat their way to their destination. Two of these men had just money enough for a meager breakfast. It was a question in their minds whether to go without the breakfast or a bed. They decided to deny themselves the latter. The others were penniless and had to win their breakfasts in some way or continue to starve. They were all comfortably clothed. The Swede's suit seemed a particularly good one, but in the approaching daylight it was discovered that, while lying too near the fire, he had burned out one side of his coat and one trouser leg. Noticing this he remarked, "Well, boys I must sneak out of town unseen, in a hurry, for if the police see me now they will arrest me without question." He and others expressed a fear that I also felt all through that awful night--the fear of the Memphis police. I decided to postpone my study of the government works.

A week later I met one of the "pals." He told me the food down on the government works was good, for coarse food, and there was plenty of it, but the sleeping accommodations were extremely bad. "I would have stayed," he said, "although the work was such that I wore out clothes faster than my wages would replace them, but the water made me ill. Then, too, I saw a man drowned. After that I didn't care to stay."

Explaining the tragedy, he said, "You see it was this way. We were working with the willows from a barge in the river. The boy lost his balance and fell into the stream. The treacherous current instantly swept him from the barge. He tried to swim back. God! I never saw such a trial of strength for life. With the strong Indian overstroke, the muscles stood out on his arms and neck like cords of rope, wrought to such a tension it seemed as if the slightest blow would have snapped them like glass. But the look of anguish on his face! If I could only forget that! Almost exhausted, and seeing that his efforts to reach the barge were in vain, he turned to swim down stream and toward the shore, but a whirlpool caught him. For an instant he raised his calloused hands above his head, and then--all was over. No sooner had he disappeared than the boss demanded, with a violent oath, 'Bring on the willows.'"

"Were there no means of rescue provided for such an emergency?" I asked in horror.

His answer was nothing but the mention of the existence of so much red tape that a boat could not be provided which might possibly have saved that young man's life.

The man was so visibly affected while relating the incident that I was led to inquire the cause. He replied, as he abruptly left me,

"He was our pal that night in the jungles--my pal."

After hearing of this tragedy, I definitely decided not to go at all to the government works.

So filled was I with the obvious neglect by the city of Memphis of its toilers, I decided to tell the people of that city something of their thoughtlessness towards their homeless and needy workers, for whom they failed to provide food and shelter. So I called on the mayor and other influential citizens, telling them of my experiences and appealing to them to make a Municipal Emergency Home possible. All were in hearty sympathy with me. On invitation I met the City Club, an organization made up of the progressive business men of the city. Following my appeal to them, a Municipal Emergency Home Committee was appointed.

Leaving Memphis I went on to Birmingham, Alabama, that wonderfully active city, which because of its industries calls thousands of workingmen annually within its gate. My first effort here for the worker without the dime was to try to get medical treatment. Finding the dispensary closed at nine A. M., I was told it was open only one hour in the day, from twelve to one o'clock. The same conditions existed here in regard to the private charities as existed in other cities. Late in the afternoon I met a bricklayer, who told me in a casual way that a few weeks before, he had reached Birmingham, broke, and had been taken care of in a "speak easy" near the Louisville and Nashville Depot, which is filled with evil men and women. I had given him the impression that I was down and out. "They'll treat you right there," he said. "It is the only place I know of. Go there." Then he added, "I'll bet you're hungry," and as he left he offered me a quarter.

Later in the evening, while I stood on a downtown corner, a well-dressed, intelligent-looking man slapped me on the shoulder and said,

"Beg pardon. Are you a railroad man?"

"In a way," I replied.

"Can you direct me to the round-house?"

"No. What is the matter, want a place to sleep?"

"That is just it. Here is my union card. I happened to hit town broke. Don't know a soul, and don't know any of the boys. I know I could spend the night at the round-house, if I could find it."

Even here the jail denied shelter and the Salvation Army had nothing to offer a penniless man. I felt my going to Birmingham was at an opportune time as the Alabama Federation of Women's Clubs was in convention, and a beautiful, gracious lady, their State President, Mrs. Ferris Columan, kindly granted me a hearing. When I left I was conscious of the fact that I left a thought which would be carried to a great many of the kind hearts of Alabama.

I went on down to Mobile, then to New Orleans. Wherever I went, all through the South, I heard the cry in the night of cruel abuse and neglect of the wage-slave just as I heard it all through the North. I saw the blood drops of the peon, the broken, bruised and lacerated bodies of human beings leased from the prison to the convict camp. I heard the unceasing cry of woe from stone walls and iron bars, the mad shrieks from dungeon cells and torture chambers and the terror-striking bay of the bloodhound.

While what I have written of will remain an incurable wound, when I carried the message of progress, of justice and love, a plea for an institution for labor, for health, and for brotherly care, into the labor councils, the progressive Business Men's Union, composed of three hundred citizens, and the Women's Clubs (especially the Era Club), the intense interest shown by all of these for the oppressed heralds an illumined page in history and bespeaks a glorious victory for the South.