The Christian people of Washington made a generous response to that call, and by the next issue of the Tidings we announced that we could give fifty cents a day for six hours' work, leaving time to hunt a better place, and yet pay lodgings and food.
The October Tidings of 1910 said:
A MENACE
“What is the most important question now in Washington? From our standpoint it is the care of the unfortunate and the sinful. Why? In order to protect your home. When a man walks the streets hungry, cold and friendless, and looks through the window of your happy home and he sees you surrounded with the comforts he lacks, do you know you are in danger? Unless the unfortunate are comforted, they will surely dynamite our great cities.
“The Gospel Mission stands between you and this danger. We make these sons of sorrow realize that they need be only temporarily sidetracked from the great highway of success, that the grace of God, their renewed will power and our friendly hand may yet restore them to home, friends and society, and make them useful men.”
CHAPTER IX
The Penny Lunch and Free Dispensary
The following is a letter written by Mr. George W. Wheeler, which was published in our Gospel Tidings, of February, 1911:
PENNY LUNCH
“In an experience of twenty-six years in active, earnest, aggressive Rescue Mission work in this city, the writer cannot recall that any line of secular work taken up for the amelioration of the poor has ever called forth such universal expressions of interest, sympathy and co-operation as the 'Penny Lunch and Newsboys' Waiting Room,' opened by the Gospel Mission, at 304 Fourteenth Street, on Saturday, February 4. The city papers published pictures of the interior and exterior, and a portrait of our Superintendent, Mr. Kline, and were most generous in their endorsement of the enterprise, while the New York Times and other papers spread the news far and wide that the cost of living had been solved in Washington by the Gospel Mission 'Penny Lunch.'
“The opening of this lunch-room was made possible by a noble Christian woman of wealth, who was born, reared and now resides in this city. Her interest was aroused by reading a statement of the work and needs of the Gospel Mission, prepared by our Superintendent, and she came to see about the matter, learned its approximate cost, and sent a check to pay the expenses.