“For two weeks or more Mr. Kline and his assistants were busy papering, painting, etc., and finally the steam table and coffee urns, with many other essentials of a twentieth century up-to-date lunch-room were installed and the doors were opened to a waiting crowd. Mrs. Kline oversees the cooking, and everything is as clean and neat as in one's home.
“The menu consists of the following articles: Coffee, 1 penny; bread or rolls, 1 penny; beans, 1 penny; doughnuts, 1 penny; sour, 1 penny; beef stew, 3 pennies; one-half pie, 3 pennies. A lunch, consisting of soup, meat, vegetables, bread and coffee, 5 cents. This brings a well-cooked, clean, nourishing meal within the reach of all who have any income whatever.
“It was amusing to see the class of men and boys who came to have their appetites satisfied at the lowest cost. Newsboys, messenger boys, laboring men, teamsters, and all kinds of indescribables came, and they appeared greatly surprised to find such an attractive room with all the 'latest improvements' found in a lunch-room. And how they did eat! A big soup plate filled to the brim with bean soup, a big china cup filled with steaming hot coffee, a big brown roll or three slices of Corby's 'Mother's Bread.' These were good, and 'mighty filling at the price.'
“Well, the 'Penny Lunch' is launched, and whether the prices charged will pay the cost of the material, cooking and serving, or not, we feel certain that any little deficiency that may occur will be cheerfully met by the well-to-do of our community.
“A coffee-roasting firm has pledged five pounds of good coffee each week for use at the 'Penny Lunch' room, and we are sure dealers in other lines will be glad to assist. Corby Brothers have been furnishing from fifty to seventy-five loaves of bread for our 'bread line' for many months, and Browning & Baines, coffee dealers, have supplied six pounds of coffee a week for a long time past.
“We greatly appreciate the generous co-operation of all these dear friends, who help us to help others to help themselves.”
The benefits of the Penny Lunch can never be told till the books of eternity are opened, but some idea may be gathered when we state that the report of the bread line from May 12, 1911, to May 12, 1912, was 41,750, but the report from May 12, 1912, to May 12, 1913, was 18,950. The Bread Line is the name of a service at 6 A.M., the year round, when bread and black coffee is served to all who come for it. If people will come before daylight in the winter, or at that early hour in the summer for coffee, without cream or sugar, and a quarter of a loaf of bread, we believe they need it, and we gladly give it, not as a charity, but as a visible token of our sympathy. Now, the fact that 22,800 fewer people took bread and coffee free in the year 1912 to 1913, compared with the preceding year, can only be accounted for that when a man has a few pennies in his pocket he could buy a satisfactory breakfast, and gladly did so rather than to line up for an unrequited kindness.
How shamed many men were to take food in the bread line, but the loving word sweetened many a bitter cup. Once a hand so unusually white and well-kept reached for the cup of coffee. Mrs. Kline looked up and saw the face of a man who had been a minister of the gospel. She said, “Brother, take only the coffee, we want you to take breakfast at our family table this morning.” He sat down to drink the coffee with bitter tears coursing down his shamed face. Of course, every kindness was shown him, “for need has its right, and necessity its claim,” then the blessed Spirit came in and lo, he prayed, and God received back to a useful life a man who had found sorrow and sin bitter and the tears of remorse salt.
WHAT DR. HALLIMOND, OF THE NEW YORK BOWERY MISSION, SAYS ABOUT THE BREAD LINE
“There are in the Bowery men who never sleep in a lodging house because they have not the price, and they get their bed either by stealing or begging, and eat out of the garbage boxes. You who have never been to the Bowery know nothing of the agony or remorse that these men feel. Now, what are we to do with them? There is not anybody to look after them but us. Oh, the horrors of the homeless man! It is the many little comforts that go to make our comfortable life. They cannot keep clean. They cannot brush their clothes or comb their hair, they cannot take their shoes off their poor tired feet. These men gather there in the great meetings, and among them are many that are in the last stages of physical weakness. Many of them ought to be in the hospital instead of walking the street day and night. Many of them are dying of hunger. Sometimes we cannot get men to understand that we have people in our meetings that are dying of hunger. I am not using any figure of speech. It is not an unheard-of thing for men to drop dead in our meetings. That is why we have the 'bread line.' We dare not fail to help these people. People sometimes come to us with the very best of intentions, talking to us of the sin of indiscriminate charity; but, bless your life! is not God indiscriminate, for does not He cause the rain to fall on the just and unjust? Did Jesus Christ ever go through the hungry crowds and find out who was worthy and who was unworthy? Did He not spend His life to help just such men? These dear people some of them are spending seventy-five cents to find out where the other twenty-five cents is to go. I have made up my mind that if I ever find a man dying on my doorstep of hunger, and I can do anything to save him, I am going to do it, whether he deserves it or whether he does not.