CHAPTER IX

THE PENNY LUNCH AND FREE DISPENSARY

The following is a letter written by Mr. George W. Wheeler, which was published in our _Gospel Tidings_, of February, 1911:

PENNY LUNCH

“In an experience of twenty-six years in active, earnest, aggressive Rescue Mission work in this city, the writer cannot recall that any line of secular work taken up for the amelioration of the poor has ever called forth such universal expressions of interest, sympathy and co-operation as the 'Penny Lunch and Newsboys' Waiting Room,' opened by the Gospel Mission, at 304 Fourteenth Street, on Saturday, February 4. The city papers published pictures of the interior and exterior, and a portrait of our Superintendent, Mr. Kline, and were most generous in their endorsement of the enterprise, while the _New York Times_ and other papers spread the news far and wide that the cost of living had been solved in Washington by the Gospel Mission '_Penny Lunch_.'

“The opening of this lunch-room was made possible by a noble Christian woman of wealth, who was born, reared and now resides in this city. Her interest was aroused by reading a statement of the work and needs of the Gospel Mission, prepared by our Superintendent, and she came to see about the matter, learned its approximate cost, and sent a check to pay the expenses.

“For two weeks or more Mr. Kline and his assistants were busy papering, painting, etc., and finally the steam table and coffee urns, with many other essentials of a twentieth century up-to-date lunch-room were installed and the doors were opened to a waiting crowd. Mrs. Kline oversees the cooking, and everything is as clean and neat as in one's home.

“The menu consists of the following articles: Coffee, 1 penny; bread or rolls, 1 penny; beans, 1 penny; doughnuts, 1 penny; sour, 1 penny; beef stew, 3 pennies; one-half pie, 3 pennies. A lunch, consisting of soup, meat, vegetables, bread and coffee, 5 cents. This brings a well-cooked, clean, nourishing meal within the reach of all who have any income whatever.

“It was amusing to see the class of men and boys who came to have their appetites satisfied at the lowest cost. Newsboys, messenger boys, laboring men, teamsters, and all kinds of indescribables came, and they appeared greatly surprised to find such an attractive room with all the 'latest improvements' found in a lunch-room. And how they did eat! A big soup plate filled to the brim with bean soup, a big china cup filled with steaming hot coffee, a big brown roll or three slices of Corby's 'Mother's Bread.' These were good, and 'mighty filling at the price.'

“Well, the 'Penny Lunch' is launched, and whether the prices charged will pay the cost of the material, cooking and serving, or not, we feel certain that any little deficiency that may occur will be cheerfully met by the well-to-do of our community.

“A coffee-roasting firm has pledged five pounds of good coffee each week for use at the 'Penny Lunch' room, and we are sure dealers in other lines will be glad to assist. Corby Brothers have been furnishing from fifty to seventy-five loaves of bread for our 'bread line' for many months, and Browning & Baines, coffee dealers, have supplied six pounds of coffee a week for a long time past.

“We greatly appreciate the generous co-operation of all these dear friends, who help us to help others to help themselves.”

The benefits of the Penny Lunch can never be told till the books of eternity are opened, but some idea may be gathered when we state that the report of the bread line from May 12, 1911, to May 12, 1912, was 41,750, but the report from May 12, 1912, to May 12, 1913, was 18,950. The Bread Line is the name of a service at 6 A.M., the year round, when bread and black coffee is served to all who come for it. If people will come before daylight in the winter, or at that early hour in the summer for coffee, without cream or sugar, and a quarter of a loaf of bread, we believe they need it, and we gladly give it, not as a charity, but as a visible token of our sympathy. Now, the fact that 22,800 fewer people took bread and coffee free in the year 1912 to 1913, compared with the preceding year, can only be accounted for that when a man has a few pennies in his pocket he could buy a satisfactory breakfast, and gladly did so rather than to line up for an unrequited kindness.

How shamed many men were to take food in the bread line, but the loving word sweetened many a bitter cup. Once a hand so unusually white and well-kept reached for the cup of coffee. Mrs. Kline looked up and saw the face of a man who had been a minister of the gospel. She said, “Brother, take only the coffee, we want you to take breakfast at our family table this morning.” He sat down to drink the coffee with bitter tears coursing down his shamed face. Of course, every kindness was shown him, “for need has its right, and necessity its claim,” then the blessed Spirit came in and lo, he prayed, and God received back to a useful life a man who had found sorrow and sin bitter and the tears of remorse salt.

WHAT DR. HALLIMOND, OF THE NEW YORK BOWERY MISSION, SAYS ABOUT THE BREAD LINE

“There are in the Bowery men who never sleep in a lodging house because they have not the price, and they get their bed either by stealing or begging, and eat out of the garbage boxes. You who have never been to the Bowery know nothing of the agony or remorse that these men feel. Now, what are we to do with them? There is not anybody to look after them but us. Oh, the horrors of the homeless man! It is the many little comforts that go to make our comfortable life. They cannot keep clean. They cannot brush their clothes or comb their hair, they cannot take their shoes off their poor tired feet. These men gather there in the great meetings, and among them are many that are in the last stages of physical weakness. Many of them ought to be in the hospital instead of walking the street day and night. Many of them are dying of hunger. Sometimes we cannot get men to understand that we have people in our meetings that are dying of hunger. I am not using any figure of speech. It is not an unheard-of thing for men to drop dead in our meetings. That is why we have the 'bread line.' We dare not fail to help these people. People sometimes come to us with the very best of intentions, talking to us of the sin of indiscriminate charity; but, bless your life! is not God indiscriminate, for does not He cause the rain to fall on the just and unjust? Did Jesus Christ ever go through the hungry crowds and find out who was worthy and who was unworthy? Did He not spend His life to help just such men? These dear people some of them are spending seventy-five cents to find out where the other twenty-five cents is to go. I have made up my mind that if I ever find a man dying on my doorstep of hunger, and I can do anything to save him, I am going to do it, whether he deserves it or whether he does not.

“That is the origin of our bread line about which you have heard so much. We cannot help but have a bread line. In fact, I refuse to allow our work to be called a charity. It is not a charity, it is brotherly kindness. It is not a charity, but a kind hospitality, just a little evidence, just a little token, that there is somebody who cares for their poor weary hearts which these destitute brothers of ours possess. As long as the bread line exists, and God helping, it shall exist as long as there is need for it, people must know that there is something wrong with our social system, a problem that we cannot solve but that is up to the politician. As long as we are in this great, rich country with all the extravagances of wealth, then the bread line shall tell that there is something wrong, and that our Declaration of Independence, declaring, as it does, for 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,' is but a delusion and a snare.”

This seems a long interlude to the Penny Lunch chapter, but you can see the lunch counter where five cents can buy beans, bread and coffee, saves many a man from feeling that he takes charity. The bread line was instituted to fortify a man's stomach against needing to go to the saloon in the morning for the free lunch, also to give strength to a poor fellow so he could search for work.

The bread line food given each morning will not of itself sustain life, as we found out to our sorrow. One Tuesday night, as the writer entered the Mission for the purpose of conducting the service, I found the men at the door excited. On inquiry, I found a man lying on the front seat dying. The Emergency Hospital ambulance had already been called. I found a man who twenty years ago had been a leading patent attorney of this city. I saw the soul was about to depart. I said, “Mr. West, say, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.'” “No, I have lived wicked, I shall die wicked.” “O son, say, 'Lord Jesus, forgive me.'” “Too late, too late; I have heard you all, night after night, and I have rejected Christ. I must die as I have lived.”

I motioned the choir to sing softly, “Jesus receiveth sinful men.” I bent over him, urging repentance; the ambulance men were at my side, they picked him up and laid him carefully on the stretcher. I said, “Dear Mr. West, we are praying for you, pray for yourself.” I kept my hand tenderly on his head as the stretcher was slowly carried out, but he continued to say, “Too late, too late for me.”

He died within an hour, and the post-mortem showed he had died of inanition caused by slow starvation. We found he had tried to live on the bread and coffee of the bread line alone; he was too poor to buy food, too proud to tell his needs, and we were too stupid and too busy to realize his awful need. We thereby learned a good lesson, and the Superintendent and helpers now all look more carefully after the man who sits down claiming either exhaustion or sickness.

No man, woman or child is ever refused food because without money, but if a man can buy whisky, we think he ought to be able to buy food, though even then we look after him.

We cannot leave the granting of food to employees, so when the Superintendent and his wife are absent we have some pathetic cases. Mr. Gordon found a little fellow crying at the door. “What is the matter, little man?” said the big man. “Mother gave me ten cents to buy food for our family, and I have lost the money.” You may be sure Mr. Gordon obtained much more than ten cents' worth of food for the child. Very many families live in one furnished room and get all their food at the penny lunch counter. Seamstresses, all the dollar a day men for many squares, girls from the Agricultural Seed Bureau, come in and buy at cost the luncheon at the middle of the day. Many well-to-do people come in and take luncheon to watch the various grades of humanity who solve the cost of high living by taking meals at the Mission. All the street peddlers, the umbrella man, the shoestring and pencil man, the rag gatherers, eat at the counter, the better class sit at the tables.

Mr. Gordon saw a little altercation between a waiter and a customer, the waiter demanding four cents while the man had but three cents. “But you should not have ordered food unless you could pay for it.” The poor man looked dreadfully embarrassed, at last he looked up and said, “Will you lend me a cent, sir?” which was gladly done.

Many who come only for the cheap meal are induced by the kindness shown and by the good music and bright lights in the chapel, to go in to the services. There some song, some word from the speaker, some devout prayer, touches the chord of memory of what a mother, a faithful teacher or almost forgotten preacher has taught years ago, and, backed by the Holy Spirit, a prodigal son or a prodigal daughter returns to the Father's house.

Mr. Kline reports the meals furnished in the Penny Lunch Room from May 12, 1912, to May, 1913, to be 87,856, at an average cost of four and one-third cents per meal.

THE DISPENSARY

was opened February 1, 1912, after the need was very apparent, and further neglect of this branch of work seemed impossible.

Never will I forget the day when I first called up Dr. C. H. Bowker, one of the leading physicians of the city, living on Massachusetts Avenue, near Thomas Circle, the very heart of the city, and told him of a man who had pneumonia, and of a woman in the shelter with a severe cold, and asked him to go to the Mission free of charge. I waited with bated breath for the reply. It was, “I am an exceedingly busy man, but I shall try to go within an hour.” Very much emboldened, I said, “Could you stop in once a day to see if anyone there has a contagious disease, or if anyone should be sent immediately to the hospital?”

The answer seemed very slow, and I fairly trembled, for our need was so great. At last he said, “Well, I have noticed if I put a duty on my daily program, I manage in some way to get it in.” From that day to this that blessed doctor has been at the beck and call of the Mission day and night; only God knows what a help and a comfort he has been to broken men and sorrowful women in that part of the city.

The February _Gospel Tidings_, of 1912, had the following:

GOSPEL MISSION DISPENSARY

“For several months we have had a house physician, and the use and need for him has steadily increased. The establishment of regular hours at which patients could see the doctor, and a proper place for consultation, naturally suggested the establishment of a dispensary. This appeared feasible to the Executive Committee, and Mrs. Monroe, Superintendent Kline and Dr. Bowker were appointed a committee to study the advisability of such an addition to our work. The report from this committee was favorable to the project, and active steps were at once taken to the establishment of a free general dispensary for the treatment of all classes of cases, or their reference, where necessary, to special institutions.

“The location of the Mission for dispensary work could not be better from any point of view. It is accessible to the hundreds needing its help. There is no conflict in its field by any other institution doing this class of work. Four rooms on the first floor of the Mission, with the chapel for a waiting-room, will serve admirably for dispensary needs at present. And these rooms are rapidly being put in shape by carpenters and painters. Shelves are being made for the pharmacy, a door cut through the partition, and running water is to be installed.

“Our printing plant will again demonstrate its usefulness by furnishing the necessary record blanks, labels, treatment cards, etc.

“The Executive Committee has placed Dr. Charles Harvey Bowker, 1204 Massachusetts Avenue, in full charge of the Gospel Mission Dispensary, and he will have associated with him at first Dr. O. C. Cox, 1320 Eleventh Street, N. W. A number of leading physicians and surgeons have evinced an interest and willingness to give their services, and Dr. Bowker will add them to the dispensary staff and assign them work as the clinic grows and they are needed.

“Dr. Bowker's experience in managing a hospital in his home city, and his hospital and dispensary work in Washington, assure us a businesslike management of this new branch of our work.

“Our need at present is for drugs and surgical dressing, and it is hoped that the druggists of the city may contribute.

“The dispensary opened Thursday, February 1, 1912, at 10 A.M., which will be the regular daily hour, and all those who are interested are invited to inspect the new rooms.”

You notice that we opened February 1, 1912, and our annual report in May _Tidings_, 1913, shows the following:

THE MISSION FREE DISPENSARY

_Staff_

Physician in charge, Dr. Charles H. Bowker, 1204 Massachusetts Avenue, N. W.

_Associates_

Dr. Oliver C. Cox, 1320 Eleventh Street, N. W. Dr. W. O. Owen, Southern Building. Dr. William F. Hemler, 706 Eighth Street, N. W. Dr. C. A. Simpson, 1217 Connecticut Avenue, N. W. Dr. C. F. Dufour, 1347 L Street, N. W. Dr. Adam Kemble, Cecil Apartments, Fifteenth and L Streets, N. W. Dr. Jesse Ramsburgh, The Portner.

_Hours for Treatment_

Medical and surgical cases treated daily, 11 to 12 A.M. Diseases of Women—Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Diseases of Men—Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Diseases of Children—Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Diseases of Ear, Eye, Nose and Throat—Monday and Thursday.

_Report for the Year Ending April 30, 1913_

Cases treated 2500 Referred to Hospital 80 Treated at homes 80

The dispensary is in need of a sterilizer and a special fund for medical supplies for those too poor to pay.

* * * * *

The sterilizer later was the gift of Dr. Jesse Ramsburgh, and we have a complete set of lenses for testing the eyes of school children.

It would break your heart to see the women with babies, the aged on crutches, the hosts of children, the aged victims of every vice, now broken and often repentant, seek the aid of these good men. Often we run short of remedies. “What do they do then?” you ask. Well, they simply go down in their own pockets and buy the necessities, and no one is turned empty away.

Think of a procession of sick and needy persons, 2500 human beings in line, and you will see in your mind what that blessed dispensary has done for the sorrowful of this city in one year.

I wish I dare to tell you the particulars of one of these great physicians who had not been living close to God, seeing our work of faith, seeing how the Mission people lay their many needs before a patient God, who meets every demand in answer to their prayer, and possibly feeling that in a mission he could not minister to a mind diseased without himself being in touch with the living God, was led to revise his views, make public confession of his faith and enlist in God's organized method of evangelizing the world by joining the church. We all need God, but the hand that reaches down to help sinful men must have the other hand clasped close in God's strong hand if he would do effective work.