“Justifiæ partes sunt non violare homines; verecundiæ non offendere.”—Cicero.
“Justice consists in doing no injury to men,—decency in giving them no offence.”
“He passed the prison. At the door hung an iron chain attached to a bell. He rang. The door opened. ‘Turnkey,’ he said, politely removing his cap, ‘will you have the kindness to admit me and give me lodging for the night?’ A voice replied, ‘The prison is not an inn. Get yourself arrested and you will be admitted.’” These words were spoken to Jean Val Jean at the prison door in the village of D—— in France, in 1815. All who have read the Victor Hugo masterpiece know the wonderful story.
In April, 1910, nearly one hundred years afterward, in the city of Spokane, I stepped up to a police officer whom I met on the streets and asked where I could get a free bed, having no money, nor friends, nor home in the city. He answered, “You can’t find anything like a free bed in this town.” Then I asked if I could sleep in the city jail. He replied, “No, you cannot. We have received instructions to send no one to the jail.” Then he added, “Get yourself run in and you can lodge there.”
Here was a condition of things I had met with nowhere else. Even the shelter of the prison was denied a penniless wayfarer. Nothing daunted, I resolved to try to the fullest what Spokane might offer one like me. I was told that one of the missions had a lodging house. They perhaps would take me in for charity. I determined to try. I met a man on the street and asked him where it was. He said he believed they once had such an institution. He thought it was closed, but he was uncertain. “Ask a cop,” he said. “You will find one on the next block.”
I went as directed and soon saw an officer of the Spokane police force. Stepping up to him, I asked for the mission lodging house. Instead of replying, he said, “What do you want to know for?”
It was, or ought to have been, his duty to answer my simple civil question. What right had he to question what I wanted to know for? What business was it of his why I wanted to know? But he was of the Spokane police force and was endowed with authority. I replied, “I am without money and I am looking for a place to sleep. I thought perhaps they might give me a bed.” I turned and started to leave him, but catching me roughly by the arm, he said, “Hold on here. Don’t you leave me.” I saw before me those horrible nights I had endured in other prisons, and my first impulse was to run. But I remembered the eighteen-year-old boy in Denver who was shot to death for running from a policeman.
Then the Spokane officer said to me, “Who are you, anyway?” I answered, as I had in Pittsburg, “I am an honest working man.”
“And what do you do?”
“I do anything I can to earn a living.” He pulled me around and looked at my face on both sides, then said. “Let me see your hands.” He regarded them closely, remarking, “They are pretty soft and white for a workingman’s.”
“There are thousands of workingmen who have soft hands,” I replied. “There are waiters, barbers, bookkeepers and clerks, and hundreds of positions which keep men’s hands soft and white.”