"Broke," The Man Without the Dime

by Edwin A. Brown

“I made up my mind I would endure anything before I would ask assistance from home, and so I filled my letters with tales of prosperity and wonderful prospects. But finally, my money was all gone as well as my personal effects, including two hundred dollars worth of fine clothes, which the pawnshops got for a few dollars. My chum had returned East, and then I began to look for anything to do. I started into the country. The hardships I have endured in trying to live and find work in the California cities would fill a book, but the hardest experience of all was at Santa Anna, where I was arrested and thrown into the Santa Anna jail for ten days, for illegally attaching myself to the Santa Fe Railway, and aimlessly wandering about with no visible means of support, and no objective place in view. I lost my hat the afternoon I was arrested in Santa Anna, and when I left the sheriff gave me this one. It was a pretty good ‘lid’ when he gave it to me. And so I made my way back here, and if I don’t strike something to do to-morrow I am going into the army. They will have to write Dad and get his consent. They will take care of me until they hear from him. Goodbye, old man, thanks to you, I am all right now until I hear from home.”

Here was a young man, strictly temperate, without one visible evil habit, a young man of brain, brawn, grit; just such boys as California wants, needs, and should help and keep, and it had no place for him!

The rest of that day I tramped the streets looking for work, and I inquired at a hundred places, I think, where work was going on, but all places seemed filled and no one seemed to want me—at least not that afternoon. At several restaurants they offered to let me help wash dishes for something to eat.

I could have begged, it is true, without being arrested, as the labor Mayor at that time was in every sense a humanitarian, and soon after taking office had issued a mandate to his police department to molest no one on the street asking alms. When remonstrated with, he said, “We may be imposed upon many times, but I would rather help twenty dishonest men than turn down one honest one.”

The spirit of alms-giving in San Francisco was markedly noticeable, and I asked a man whom I saw hand a dollar to a man who asked for aid, why that spirit was so active. He replied, “If you had been here and gone through the terrible earthquake with us, you would fully understand. We were all dependent on one another at that time. We have all realized what it means to be homeless. We have not forgotten.”

This observation seemed to apply only to the Mayor’s order and to the citizens in general as I met them on the street; for I found the religious bodies of an entirely different nature,—those at least, with which I came in contact, not being remarkably generous.

The night was coming down. It was exceedingly ominous to a destitute man. It had begun to storm, with a commingling of rain and snow, and a chilly blast from the ocean.

Myriads of lights came out like a burst of good cheer from the Ferry House to Golden Gate Park, but they held no warmth for the penniless, thinly clothed man. The restaurant windows seemed to glow with good things. I saw many, very many boys and men, and occasionally a poorly clad girl, stand and look longingly at the tempting viands. I saw one young fellow down on Third Street standing before a cheap but exceedingly clean restaurant, whose windows were filled with tempting, wholesome food. I stopped and watched him. Among the passing crowd was a workingman with a dinner pail. The young man reluctantly, it seemed to me, asked of him a dime. The workingman strode on, but had gone only a few steps when he turned back. Stepping up to the young fellow, he put his arm about his shoulder and said, “What would you do with the dime if I gave it to you?” The penniless man’s face beamed with joy and appreciation of the sympathy shown, as he said, “I would buy something to eat.” The workingman gave him a quarter, a part of his day’s wages, and the hungry man entered the restaurant, and ate as though he had been denied that blessing for a very long time. The workingman, as he went his way, I heard whistling far down the street.