"Broke," The Man Without the Dime

by Edwin A. Brown

“You go,” I replied, “you are strong enough for the work, but I’m not. I may meet you down that way when the harvest opens.”

“I think I will go,” he replied. “It’s hard work, ten hours a day, and if I lose two days out of the week by bad weather or sickness or a hundred other reasons, or buy a few things I’ve got to have, I will be in debt to the company at the end of the week. But it’s better than to stay here and beg or starve. Some fellows can ‘mooch’ but that’s one thing I’ve never got low enough to do, and I hope I never will. It’s only a bare existence there, but as you say, the harvest will soon be open. I’ll go.”

Suiting the action to the word, he went in, obtained his transportation, and on coming out, shook my hand with both his own while he earnestly said good-bye and begged of me to be sure to meet him again if possible. He started off, and as he reached the first corner on his way to the depot, he stooped down and rubbed his knee as if in pain, but cheerfully, and with a final wave of farewell, he straightened up and disappeared.

But he could not disappear from my thoughts, this starving and shelterless boy, down and out, ill-used, yet ever ready at the first suggestion of hope to rush again into life’s battle. And so I have related this incident of meeting him at length, although it was nothing in comparison with some of the terrible things I learned that afternoon. In fact, rarely in any city, have I seen so much human misery publicly exposed, and in so small a space, as I did there, around the block bounded by Main and Delaware, and Fourth and Fifth Streets.

I saw men driven like animals, eight at a time, into the bull pen of the city jail. When night fell and the streets were ablaze with light I was still walking about and observing. I felt in my pockets. The last cent of my dollar was gone. The chop-house had left me broke. So I began to inquire where the homeless and penniless could find shelter.

In the main, I found that conditions were the same as in Denver, except that Kansas City had the “Helping Hand” institution, to which I have referred,—an ostensibly “religious” institution, backed up in its operations by the co-operation of the city authorities.

Recalling what I thought I knew about this institution, it required some courage to trust myself to its tender mercies, but I determined to try it and learn about the actual conditions existing there.

I went first to their religious service, where I heard an exceptionally able address on the features of Christ’s humanitarianism, and on the wonderful merit which there was in the application of the “square deal” principle between man and man, individually and collectively.

The house was filled with a large number of men whose broken appearance told only too plainly that the world was not dealing kindly and “squarely” with them. When the speaker had ended his address the men were asked to come forward and thereby signify that they had accepted the teachings of Christ as they were interpreted by the preacher. Not a man stepped forward.

That night, as a destitute workingman, at this same place I asked for a bed. I was told I could have one but was expected to do two hours’ work for it.