"Broke," The Man Without the Dime

by Edwin A. Brown

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.