Art. VIII.—A PHILANTHROPIC PERPLEXITY.
Will the publishers of the Prison Journal, or some one who has access to its columns enlighten an honest inquirer after the path of duty? It is presumed that the combined wisdom and philanthropy of the Prison Society can furnish all needed direction in the case I have at heart and in hand.
Of the grave and multiplied evils that spring from street begging, I have no doubt. Indeed I have done all I could in a private way to discountenance it. I have never encouraged a second call by a liberal donation, and perhaps have sometimes seemed harsh and unfeeling. But I am so well satisfied that it is the most inhuman thing we can do for the honest poor, and that it favors the arts and schemes of the dishonest, that I feel constrained to avoid every thing that should look like countenancing it. My neighbor’s gate and door are daily besieged by women and children with boys and baskets, and they seldom leave without some token of approval.
But I must hasten to a statement of my case. I was going to my place of business on Saturday afternoon, after dining heartily and happily upon a rare sirloin of beef, and saw a man on the door-steps of a house in Washington Square. He was perhaps forty years old, (more or less) rather shabbily dressed, with a dirty bundle under his arm, and some indications of hard drinking about his face. I noticed that he tried the handle of the door before he rang the bell, and was thus led to no very favorable impression of his design. Stepping behind a flight of steps, I noticed his movements as he went from door to door under successive rebuffs. As soon as he came up to my standing place, I said to him,
“Friend, do you know you are liable to be taken up for begging in the street?”
“I war’nt begging. I only asked for a bit of bread and cold meat.”
“Well, you will have a constable after you in a few minutes if you don’t stop that business.”
He turned on his heel and went from me, and as my eye followed him, and I remembered the well-furnished table from which I had just risen with no very grateful heart, I felt reproached; and quickening my steps, I followed and overtook him.
“Do you say you are hungry, friend?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Do you live in town?”
“No, I came in town last night.”
“Where from?”
“From Emmettsburg.”
“Is that your home?”
“Yes, I served my time there.”
“What is your business?”
“Shoemaking.”
“Why did you leave Emmettsburg?”
“To get work.”
“Well, you had better go to the Mayor’s, at the corner of Fifth and Chestnut Streets, and tell him you have no food, no home and no work.”
Off he went, and I followed by another route, and reached one door of the office, just as he entered at the other. Unfortunately the Mayor was at dinner, and I could only tell my story to the officer in attendance.
What shall be done with such a man? I asked.
“We can only send him down to Moyamensing for thirty days, or to Blockley,” was the reply.
Is that the only alternative—the prison, or the poor house, the latter with 2,700 inmates, and the former so overstocked as to make it a positive nuisance? Is it really so? There is work for one hundred men at this moment, in removing ice from the gutters, making the side walks passable, and the streets decent, and yet this able bodied vagrant must be imposed upon the tax-paying public as a prisoner or a pauper!
As we left the office, we saw the Emmettsburg shoemaker ignobly introduced to the ward room. I hope it will not be said that this is a case not likely to occur often, for in that event, I shall feel obliged to relate half a dozen other instances which have occurred within my own observation, and the details of which are any thing but agreeable.
I am clear in the opinion, that there must be some needless and sad defect in our municipal legislation or administration, if the power and capacity to work is found twenty-four hours in succession, associated with vagrancy and mendicity. Am I wrong in this opinion? And whether I am or not, pray tell me how to treat street-beggars.