CHAPTER XIX
Minneapolis
“I never wear hand-made laces because they remind me of the eyes made blind in the weaving.”—Marie Corelli.
The morning of April 19, 1910, found me in Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis, resting on the green moss below the “laughing waters” of Minnehaha Falls. This wonderful spot of nature took possession of my imagination until I was in one of God’s factories, where a thousand creations were coming into life and beauty. The sparkling translucent falls, touched with a silver light, became a marvelous lace-weaving loom. I caught, white and shining, the actual resemblance to the hand-made Irish, the Duchess and Rose-point. Over all this great workshop of the Diety was joy, peace and happiness. For the first time real lace to me was beautiful, for it was of God’s creation. The vision of eyes made sightless, the stooped shoulders of the aged, the little, starving children overworked for the mere pittance to exist, these were not in the weaving. To the thoughtful, any adornment, the price of which is paid by the blood of human lives, is no longer beautiful. Here I saw that every bird and bee, all insect life, even the smallest and most abject about me, either were building or had built homes.
I then remembered my mission to Minneapolis. “Surely,” I said to myself, “with this temple of worship to which the good folks of Minneapolis may come, thoughtlessness and selfishness will not be found here.”
Yet I wondered if I should find it. I had come to continue my battle for my homeless brothers. The approach of late afternoon and night found me wandering about the streets a jobless, moneyless man looking for work and shelter. I found Minneapolis not in advance of other cities, and much behind many in its care for its homeless toilers.
I first went to a private employment office. There seemed plenty of work to do, work for everybody, but I could find no private office where they would give me work and trust me until pay day.
I visited the city free employment bureau where I counted fifty men looking for work. There were chairs for fourteen. The rest seemed quite willing to stand as long as their feet held out, in the hope of securing something. As I scanned their faces I thought a large percentage of them seemed of the type driven to such a condition by lack of opportunity to make an honest living. Later I learned that many of these men came day after day, hungry and cold, after having spent the night huddled up somewhere in the open air.
Next I became a beggar. I began looking for a public institution which would give me a bed, since I was unable to pay for one. I first tried the Associated Charities. The attendant took me into a little side room where as in other places, all sorts of rubbish was stored, and asked me the usual list of humiliating questions. Finally he told me they could do nothing for me, as it was too near their closing time.
Doubtless this institution does many worthy things, but providing shelter for the homeless man without money is not among them.