"Broke," The Man Without the Dime

by Edwin A. Brown

Just as I entered the Square, a man sitting on a bench reading a morning paper left abruptly, leaving the paper behind. I made a dash for it with a half dozen other jobless men. I was the lucky one, however. Hurriedly I sought the want columns. I scanned them carefully and made note of those things I knew I could do. I also made note of an "ad" reading: “Wanted, fifty supers at the Opera House. Apply at 10 A. M.” Handing the paper to the other boys, I left quickly on my mission for work. The super’s job I kept as a last resort, if all others failed. All others did fail. There were a great many idle men and boys in Cleveland at that time. I saw the importance of being early, for the answer invariably was, “The place is filled long ago.” So ten o’clock found me at the stage door of the Opera House with several hundred others, hanging onto the hope of being a favored chosen one. I knew that if successful I could work here nights, and that they would probably pay the same price offered in Pittsburg. Through the day I could do something else. I would therefore earn quickly enough to buy a six-dollar ticket to Cincinnati and be well on my journey to the government works, where, from all I had heard, I would be comfortably located for the winter, and in line for making a stake.

The manager soon appeared and began rapidly to choose his men. We discovered we were to be millionaire senators in a great political play. I noticed I was being intentionally shunned, and fearful of not being chosen, I remembered my good front beneath my workingman’s garb. I stepped up to the man and said, “I have better clothes than these. I can make an appearance for the part,” whereupon he immediately took me. Our pay was to be three dollars and a half for eight performances, covering a week,—a little less than forty-four cents a performance.

Although I had landed a job I was no better off so far as the immediate needs for existence went. So I saw that I must be active in order to cover the vacancy in some way. Already I was growing very hungry.

The first thing I did was to ask a man with a star for the Municipal Emergency Home. He looked at me with a contemptuous smile, and seemed to regard me as one just dropped out of Russia, China, or some other heathen country. At last he said: “There is nothing like that here. I never heard of such a thing. Did you?”

No one will ever know what it means to be really hungry until he is broke. There seemed no other way for me to win a dinner other than to ask the various restaurants the privilege of working for it. Of the great number to which I applied, the answer was, “Nothing doing.” At last the proprietress of one restaurant told me she wanted some one very badly for the noon hour rush to wipe dishes, and in return for the work would gladly give me my dinner. I readily accepted the offer, and was soon installed in the small kitchen of a very large, cheap restaurant. I was obliged to stand near the dishwasher and his tubs, hemmed in by a very narrow space. In an instant the rush was on. Everything that was not nailed down or stuck to the wall was in the air. The busy boys would come in with a San Juan charge, literally firing the dishes into the big wash tub, and every time they did so I received a shower-bath. Now, I would not have objected to a sprinkle or two, but an immersion was a crime, and in my position I could neither retreat nor advance. The old lady appearing, I demanded a release, declaring our agreement was that I was to work for a meal and not a bath. She declared the hour was now nearly up, and then, too, I did not object as strenuously as I might have done, if, through the rain and the mist, I had not caught sight of rows of pies, cake, ice-cream and pudding. Also, perhaps as a panacea to my hurt feelings, the old lady (who had a bass voice and weighed about three hundred pounds) threatened to put a few of the reckless flunkies out of commission if they did not exercise more caution.

True to her word, the moment the hour was spent, I was asked to sit down to a banquet on the end of the cook’s table, and the order issued to give me all the corned beef, cabbage and boiled potatoes I wanted. The pie, cake, ice-cream and pudding were not on the dishwiper’s menu, at least not that day, but I was to have all I wanted of what was given me, and that meant a great deal. Regaining the street, I felt a strong desire for a bath, clothes and all. Again approaching another appendix to the correctional laws of Cleveland, I asked for the free public baths. “Gad,” he said, as he eyed me closely, “how many baths do you take a day?” He then referred me to Cleveland’s two public baths, which were so far out that he advised me decidedly to take a street car.

“And are they absolutely free?” I demanded.

“No, one will cost you five cents and the other two.”

I went to the lake.

In my little bundle I carried a small mirror, a hairbrush, a piece of soap, a couple of white collars and a towel. Ye gods, what a bath that was! The water was four degrees below freezing. However, I soon had on the expression of the United States Senator whom I was to impersonate at the Opera House that night, who wouldn’t buy a vote, no, not if he died for it, who could sit in the four o’clock Y. M. C. A. Sunday afternoon meeting with a face as long as a fiddle, and an expression that to the thought of a jackpot would prove fatal. Not one of the elite in the great audience that night ever dreamed of the battle I had gone through that day in Cleveland for the privilege of sitting in that honored seat!