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.