The Social Work of the Salvation Army

by Edwin Gifford Lamb

Along the line of religious environment we find the hotels differ a great deal. In London there seems to be a strong influence of this kind, most of the hotels of both classes holding gospel meetings frequently. For instance, at the Quaker Street Elevator Home, which is partly a hotel and partly an industrial home, meetings are held nearly every night with good attendance, and at the Burne Street Hotel well attended meetings are held every night except Wednesdays and Saturdays, these nights being given over to the men for washing their clothes. But in the United States we find, as a rule, that the Salvation Army hotels are run with very little religious influence. In a few cases, meetings are held regularly, but more often no provision is made for them. Meetings are generally in progress somewhere in the neighborhood at the regular Army corps, and the men are left to attend these meetings if they wish. Generally they are willing to take advantage of the hotel, but do not care for the sentimental form of religion preached by the Army. Hence, in most of the hotels, we find the religious influence limited to the texts on the walls, and to the attitude of the employees, who are not always Salvationists or converted men.

Some hotels of both classes are fitted with a kitchen and lunch counter. This is nearly always the case in London, where the hotels have a counter, over which the food is sold, and then taken to a seat by the purchaser. In several cases the counter is divided so that it opens into different rooms, and there are two grades of prices, the lower price being paid for food somewhat damaged and stale.[45]

We need not dwell long on the subject of the women's hotels, as that does not form an important part of the Army's work. The women's hotels, even more than the men's, have tended to fall into two classes. There is a great difference between the hotel for women who are almost destitute, and the hotel for respectable working girls, who have positions as clerks and stenographers, and who happen to have no home of their own. A typical hotel of the former class is situated near the Dearborn Street Railway Depot in Chicago. It consists of three floors, and has accommodation for fifty girls or women. The woman officer in charge lives here herself, and seeks to have an environment as homelike as possible. She states, however, that occasionally the women come in noisily and are troublesome. There is a great difference between one woman and another, and she wishes she had one floor with better accommodation than the rest for the better element among them. The price paid per bed at this hotel is 10 cents. A good example of this class of hotel in England, is the one situated on Hanbury Street, Whitechapel, London, where there are three floors, two upper floors given over to dormitories containing 276 beds in all, and the ground floor containing a dining room, kitchen, small hall, and office. Here, women are turned away quite often because of lack of room. 2d. is charged for a bed, and for food a scale of prices, such as tea, ½d.—soup, ½d.—bread, ½d.—etc. There are nine officers working here, and nine other workers, six of the latter receiving 3s. per week, and three receiving 1s. per week.

With the higher class hotels for women, the Army has not had much success. This is easily understood, as the respectable girl does not like to be connected with a hotel run by an organization which is prominent for its slum and rescue work. These hotels charge a higher rate for rooms and are situated in a good quarter of the city.[46] They are frequented by shop girls, bookkeepers, clerks and stenographers. Apparently, no great religious pressure is brought to bear on the girls and women, but this would probably depend on the officer in charge.

The growth of the Hotel Department of the Army's work, like that of the Industrial Department, has, of recent years, been great. Soon after the publication in 1890 of General Booth's book, "Darkest England," the hotel work was started in England, and its progress has been rapid. In the United States at first the work did not make much headway. When Commander Booth-Tucker came to take charge in 1896, there were three small men's hotels situated in the cities of Buffalo, San Francisco, and Seattle. At the present time, nearly every large city in England and the United States has one or more of these hotels, the latter country having 71 men's hotels and 4 women's hotels, with a total accommodation of 8,688. The tendency now is toward fewer of the lower class hotels, and more of the higher class; in other words, toward fewer hotels where beds can be had for 10c and 15c, and more where they will cost 20c and 25c. The Army gives as its reason for this the fact that the cheaper hotel cannot be maintained in a wholesome manner and be self-supporting.[47] Similar to the Industrial Department in its management, the Hotel Department has its divisions, its graded officers with their various responsibilities, and its head officer in charge at the national headquarters. In the United States, however, unlike the Industrial Department, the Hotel Department has no separate financial company, in the form of a corporation, behind it. In some instances, deserving men are given bed tickets and meal tickets free, by officers detailed for the purpose, and, to that extent the hotels are a charity. This is done with due discretion and does not make an appreciable difference. The amount of charity indulged in by the Army in this way is, however, probably responsible for the fact that in 1907, there was a loss to the Army in this department of $4,500.00, not a very large amount, considering the number of hotels concerned.

Coming to the value of the Army hotels from the point of view of the social economist, care must be taken to discriminate between their commercial and their philanthropic aspects. The public has a mistaken idea of the work carried on by this branch of the Army. Many people have an idea that thousands of homeless, starving men and women are nightly taken care of in these Army hotels. Putting aside the question whether such would be good relief policy or not, the statement itself is not true. In a majority of cases the man or woman in order to gain admittance must have the price, and in many instances, that price will also admit them to the regular cheap lodging house outside of the Army. We are not finding fault with the system of charging, since from the point of view of true relief, provided that bona-fide, destitute cases are not left without help, the price should be required, as it would be a great evil to throw open the hotels to the crowds of regular beggars and social parasites who constantly throng any institution supposed to be charitable; but since the Army hotel movement claims to be a self-supporting business, it is not to be regarded as different from any other lodging business, except in those points in which it excels the other. With this caution we believe that we still can distinguish two lines along which credit is to be given the Army. The first is the environment which the Army has created for its guests. It is not necessary here to show what a great factor environment is in this case, but simply to emphasize its importance. From our description of the Army hotel, it is seen that, with certain exceptions, the Army maintains cleanliness, cheerfulness, and a homelike atmosphere around its lodging houses.[48] In this important respect then, the Army hotel is to be commended. Secondly, the Army has indirectly, by its competition with the ordinary cheap lodging houses, led them to adopt improvement for purely commercial reasons. If a man has only ten cents, he is going to invest that ten cents to the best advantage, and the old time lodging houses have found it necessary to improve their conditions in order to meet the competition of the Army. For this too, credit is to be given the latter. In addition the competition reacts on the Army and tends to make it keep up its own standard.

In order more clearly to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of cheap lodging houses, whether Army hotels or not, it would be well here to consider objections to their existence. Three objections have been raised to all cheap lodging houses in general.

1. That they herd together a low class of vagrants and vicious characters.

2. That their cheapness lowers the standard of living.