Directed by the attendant at the Associated Charities (who at least had gotten rid of me), I went to the Union City Mission. The attendant here, after making me repeat my questions regarding the possibility of a penniless man getting a supper and bed, turned on his heel without answering me and began to turn on the lights—for evening prayers! At the Salvation Army lodging house the attendant simply said: “We ain’t got nothin’ to give away.” At the Y. M. C. A., “the beds were all full.” The attendant didn’t know whether or not he could allow me to take a bath,—simply a polite refusal.
Next I appealed to the police. Asking the first officer I met where a man without money could get a bath, I was directed to the river. He then recalled the advice however, saying it was too early in the season for the public baths to be open. Another policeman referred me to the old city lockup (Central Station) for lodging, saying, “Go there. They will give you a cell.”
I did not go to the extreme of enduring the hardships forced upon the indigent, honest workers of Minneapolis. It was not necessary. I knew the pitiful condition only too well.
Just as I finish this story there is laid on my study table a letter, which reads:
“In the latter part of the year 1910 the Board, realizing the necessity of providing some lodging place for the transient class unable to pay for accommodations, decided to install a Municipal Emergency Home on the second floor of the old city lockup (Central Station). The work of installing this home was accomplished at an expense of $3,426.28. It was opened on the tenth of January, 1911, prepared to accommodate fifty applicants. The first three months of its operation demonstrated the fact that in order to care for all demands it would be necessary to increase the space.
“We have now a Municipal Emergency Home that will accommodate a hundred and forty. The house is just as sanitary as it is possible to make an emergency home. It has all modern improvements, separate beds, baths, medical attendance, and fumigation. Lodgers are furnished with clean night-robes and socks and given a good wholesome breakfast. Of course this is entirely free. If a man has money we turn him away. The home is supported by public taxation.”