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
Footnotes
[A] The author asks forbearance for the direct personalities contained in the Introductory, which has nothing to do with the writer’s appeal, and it is simply given as a reply to many inquiries.
[B] See worker’s letter in the Portland story, [Chapter xv].