No doubt, on the minds of the gullible rich and charitably inclined who contribute to such institutions, the report of this feast day and of the great number "fed" must have made a great impression. These people were teaching Christ, too, as they understood or pretended to understand Him. On this day, if they had found one man of character strong enough to accept and follow the beautiful Christ Life, was it not worth while? From their standpoint, yes, but they overlooked utterly the sin of continuing the pauperization of those two hundred and fifty men, by their makeshift charity. During their four hours of praise and prayer and “testimony,” not one single word was said about the causes that compelled those men to be there. Nor a single remedy was mentioned to change conditions, nor a word uttered against the methods used by religious societies, missions, single and associated charities, prison associations, societies for the prevention of crime and mendicancy, in their dealings with mendicancy.
It was after dark when I again reached the city. The rain had ceased, and the myriads of scintillating lights filled the city with a glow of splendor. I began my testing of the generosity of the city of Los Angeles toward its destitute homeless. As in other cities, I met with rebuffs at all of those institutions and religious bodies ostensibly existing for the sole purpose of helping the homeless. I tried all that I had heard of or that the police knew anything about. Finally, as I had been in other cities, I was driven to the Municipal building provided for law-breakers and criminals. As I sat there waiting for the jailer to lock me in, I thought of the frightful night spent in the bullpens of other places,—of the nerve-racking night when I came so near swooning in the city prison of Pittsburg, and last but not least, of that madhouse, the Old Bastile of San Francisco. As I heard the clang of iron doors, and in the distance the cursing of men and the cry of lost women, I said to myself, “I don’t think it necessary for me to go through this terrible trial to bring before the good people of Los Angeles the need of a Municipal Emergency Home,” and I quietly crept away.
On the following Sunday, I addressed the Y. M. C. A., and I told them of my experiences in Los Angeles. I spoke of going first to one very prominent institution and of being denied any of its privileges for less than thirty cents, in real money. I did not give the name of the establishment and when I had finished, one of the officers of this body got up and said, “If Mr. Brown had come here he would have been taken care of.” I replied, “This was the first place I came to.” After they had caught their breath, he haltingly said, “But Mr. Brown, you did not see the right man.”
I found in Los Angeles, as in every other city that I visited, that the Y. M. C. A. is nothing more nor less than a rich men’s club. I found men worth a great many thousands of dollars rooming there. They paid from thirty to fifty dollars a month for their rooms. And I found boys on small salaries also living there but living on one and two meals a day, in order to be able to pay their paltry room rent.
CHAPTER XV
In Portland
“To live honestly by one’s own toil, what a favor of Heaven!”—Hugo.
“Dell me, vhere I find me a lawyer?” In broken accents, these words came to me from a German laborer who stepped up to me out of five hundred unemployed men who thronged Second Street in the vicinity of the labor bureaus.
“I am a lawyer,” I responded; “what is the trouble?”