"Broke," The Man Without the Dime

by Edwin A. Brown

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.”