"Broke," The Man Without the Dime

by Edwin A. Brown

Eminent scholars and authorities on economic, industrial and legal questions have well said, many times, that repressive measures and antagonistic treatment are never sufficient and never will be. Educational, constructive, scientific work alone will prevail. The religious and charitable organizations and societies may ask for police control and supervision, and for the repression of vagrancy in our cities, but the homeless and wandering wage-earners will be fed, because we have a Christ-given, common humanity.

A WOMAN’S QUESTION.

It has been said that the “tramp” question, the question of the homeless, hungry, wandering wage-earner is a woman’s question. It is. But what made it such? It has been made a woman’s question by the indifference and ignorance of our communities which have made no provisions for men and boys, women and girls, who are hungry and homeless.

Women as well as men have represented the conscience of our communities in a poor fashion, in a most dangerous fashion, in a criminal fashion, for they have created just about as many “tramps” with their petty little charities, as the man who gives dimes on the street for a night’s shelter. The women should know, the men too, that at the back doors or on the streets we cannot do the right thing. We can give only inadequate relief. We can only push a human being down the stairs of manhood to the level of a parasite.

THE HISTORICAL VIEW.

Let us look at the matter historically. We find that the mendicant of the Middle Ages stood in much the same relation to the community as the modern “tramp,” the homeless, wandering wage-earner. One existed, and the other exists, because of a certain sentimentality which permits one group of persons to live on the industry of another group. The community giving, in the mediæval days, was centered in the monastery, and since the time of Henry VIII the State has assumed that function. The monastery cared for the mediæval tramp. Let the Modern Twentieth Century State of Civilization (if such we may call our time) care for and cure his descendant, the homeless, wandering wage-earner, just as it takes care of the other needs of the people in the respective communities.

To be logical, every American city should maintain a Municipal Emergency Home for the wandering citizen, the homeless wage-earner, in order to complete the system of governmental institutions and agencies dealing with the needs of a modern complex society.

THE LEGAL ASPECT.

Rightfully, and legally, in America, the so-called Overseers of the Poor, the Boards of Charities and Corrections, are required to relieve the homeless and destitute at their discretion. In many cities they are fulfilling this duty toward the men temporarily destitute and homeless by graciously permitting them to be sheltered at the insanitary, degrading police stations, to be fed with water concoctions, to sleep in a dark vermin-infested corner from which they are ordered to move on in the morning. Perhaps this is acting according to their discretion, but the result shows that it is unwise to put power into the hands of private individuals who not only know not the evil they increase but who could scarcely do otherwise if they knew.

Historically, every modern city should maintain a Municipal Emergency Home. Logically, it ought to do it. Legally, it must do it. Let it no longer be a woman’s or a man’s question, but our question, the cities’ question. Let us all say that there must, nay, there shall be in every community for the homeless, wandering wage-earner, a decent, modern, sanitary shelter, a fitting meal, a place where the community can give individual, discriminating, scientific treatment, where there is an opportunity to get suitable work to make a decent living possible.