Edwin A. Brown

“ The workingman’s home,—without the intrusion of poverty—is the stronghold of a great and good citizen, the steadfast guiding star of a great government.
Speaking to me with that freedom born of the sympathy which binds one homeless man to another (and he was a man, ambitious, free from the bondage of any bad habit) , he said, “I will have to pawn my ring to-day, but,” with determined emphasis, “I will never lose it. Yet I am a little afraid of the pawnshop. Their rate of interest is theft, and the time for redemption limited to one month.” ”

“ As long as an opportunity presents itself, as long as the breath of life is within me, I shall lift my voice in behalf of the oppressed, and our cry against laws and customs that decree damnation, against hells and influences which block progress toward a divine destiny, until our beloved Stars and Stripes, the emblem of liberty, peace and justice, which by greed, lust of gold and false ambitions have been so cruelly and pitilessly destroyed, shall speak again of union,—of union in our States, in the brotherhood of man, in the golden rule of Christ, in the love of God. ”

“ I thought of the lives sacrificed in such battles, of the contention and agony, of the suffering of body and mind for life’s simple necessities, and all to keep together humble homes, to protect the manhood of honorable American citizens, and to insure the safety of little children, to make a living wage possible.
We were nearing the city. Surely, I thought, this great city, with its vast wealth, must abound in privileges to labor. I have heard that people who achieve great wealth do not always forget. ”

“ If I can succeed in showing that old things are often old only because they are traditional; that in evolution of new things lies social salvation; that the “submerged tenth” is submerged because of ignorance and low wages; and that the community abounds in latent ability only awaiting the opportunity for development,—then this volume will have accomplished its purpose.
I am determined to create a systematic and popular sympathy for the great mass of unfortunate wage-earners, who are compelled by our system of social maladjustment to be without food, clothing, and shelter. ”

“ Why is crime rampant in our cities? Why are our hospitals, almshouses, our jails, and our prisons crowded to overflowing? And these questions have resolved themselves for me into one mighty problem: Why is there destitution at all,—why is there poverty and suffering amidst abundance and plenty?
I am convinced that poverty is not a part of the great Eternal plan. It is a cancerous growth that human conventions have created and maintained. I believe it was intended that every human being should have food and shelter. ”

“ Would it not be a wise financial move on the part of the American railroads, while they are investing millions in useless and superficial adornments on fifty-million-dollar terminals, to consider the advisability of building an Emergency Home in every station where the wandering, homeless wage-worker can find comfortable shelter and be given food to strengthen him on his way toward honest employment without having to “beat” the railroads? ”

“ I have often wondered why I should have been the one to make this crusade, for all my life I have loved solitude, and have always been over-sensitive to the criticism and opinions of others. My mission is not based upon any personal virtue of goodness, but I have been inspired with the feeling that I had taken up a just and righteous cause, and the incentive of all my efforts has ever been that of compassion—not to question whether a hungry man has sinned against society, but to ask why he is not supplied with the necessities of existence. ”

“ The greatest city of the State is usually the fountain head, the output camp for the entire State. When the unfortunate become homeless, helpless and needy, they drift to the capital. The burden of the indigent of the entire State is thus put upon that particular city and county. I saw a great number turned away from the Poor House door because of its already congested condition, who were then obliged to exploit the community in other ways for the right of existence. I saw in the tubercular ward twenty-five men in all stages of the disease, and yet, not one a native of the State. ”

“ I had seen a half-starved, homeless man knocked down on the streets of a Western city by an ignorant, rum-befouled bully of a policeman, simply because he stood a little too far out on the sidewalk, and with a desire to learn something of the spirit of the police force of Chicago, I made my way to the Desplains Street Police Station, although possessed with a foreboding that I might be arrested, and subjected to some insult or abuse. ”

“ If the mayor of a city has not the power to create and provide clean, wholesome, public benefits for the wage-earner in time of need (who has a civic right) , we should certainly demand that the saloon keeper be forced to serve free lunch, and keep his door open three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and twenty-four hours every day, for it is a degree more respectable to sleep in a saloon than in a jail. The first saloon keeper to throw a man out, should be the first to be thrown out of business. ”

“ The death of their brother workers had made men cautious and when I was there they no longer crawled out upon the ashes, but lay down on the edge of the dump, where the ground held a certain degree of warmth.
I joined the miserable group one night, and as I lay there, and the night grew cold and dark and still, I could see, like serpents, the tongues of blue poisonous fumes leap from crack and cranny. I stood the exposure to the limits of endurance, and then crept away to that other humane expression of Pueblo—its only “Municipal Emergency Home,” the “Bull-pen” in its old bastile. ”

“ Tacoma offered no privileges for the destitute out-of-work man. Here he will find no free bath but the Sound, no free bed but a chair in an all-night saloon or the jail, no free meal without begging or snatching from the free lunch counter. I counted just one hundred men sitting up all night in chairs in the various saloons of the city, and once more I appeal to Tacoma, and to every other city, not to take the saloon from the needy until it can give something in its place. ”

“ Imagine a hungry, homeless, penniless man, who must have whatever help he can get immediately, being told that his case will be investigated and relief afforded at some later date! What is a man in this condition to do? Did not the charity organization to whom the tax payers give money for the express purpose of relieving the needy and distressed, compel this very individual to beg, to accost the citizens on the streets who have already subscribed for his relief, and to still continue to beg from them? ”

“ And while, first, my plea is for the upright wage-earner, I am broad enough to feel that if we have been criminally thoughtless and negligent enough to allow social evils to exist and make derelicts and dependents, we certainly ought to be honest enough to stand the consequences and give them at least a place of shelter.
But the 4,000,000 homeless, honest toilers with us to-day affect the welfare of every home in our nation. They are an important force and factor in society. ”

“ Can Boston allow New York to excel it in caring for it shelterless workers? I hear the cry, “Where can we get the money?” When you ask that question you are putting a price on a man’s soul. I wish some goddess of gentleness would touch the hearts of those “munificent” and “public spirited” citizens who founded the Boston Public Library, that they might also build a Municipal Emergency Home, and ornament its frieze with a perpetual beauty of words, “Dedicated to the advancement of the Commonwealth and Humanity.” ”

“ It has been made a woman’s question by the indifference and ignorance of our communities which have made no provisions for men and boys, women and girls, who are hungry and homeless.
Women as well as men have represented the conscience of our communities in a poor fashion, in a most dangerous fashion, in a criminal fashion, for they have created just about as many “tramps” with their petty little charities, as the man who gives dimes on the street for a night’s shelter. ”

“ I found many men who had served time in the jails for the crime of poverty. I was told by a citizen at the time of my visit that three hundred men from one of their prisons were compelled to put up ice for the city of Toledo, receiving no recompense for their work but a cell and prison fare,—slavery more damnable than ever cursed the South. These were then pushed out on to the world again to become mendicants and criminals. Facts calling for prison reform as told in romances carry a great weight for good, but enforced reform is what is demanded of us to-day. Let us not be slow to act. ”

“ Let the people of the city instruct its Mayor and City Council, or else themselves elect a man or a woman to supervise the management and maintenance of a Municipal Emergency Home of integrity, of resource, a place of sagacious and scientific training. Then, and not until then, will the women of our cities be able to shut their doors, the men their pockets, and point with pride to the Municipal Emergency Home, which in every American city is as necessary and as fundamental an institution as a hospital itself. ”

“ It is not to be wondered at that the so-called Christian people of the City and County of Denver have forgotten that it is not enough to have a twenty-five thousand dollar Welcome Arch of myriads of sparkling lights, heralding to the world its hospitality to those entering its gate, and then forget their Christian duty to their fellow-men in need, for the City and County of Denver has been in a political turmoil and has been concerned not so much with the preservation of human rights as with the preservation of property rights. ”

“ The cities are creating municipal labor for the temporarily out-of-work man, which hand in hand with Municipal Emergency Homes is just to tide over the rough place. Imperfect and incomplete as its experimental beginning may be, who can deny the awakening of a perfect aim toward a perfect end? There is no wall of prejudice or selfishness, of ambition or unnatural greed, which can be built that will overcome these arguments. These needs must be met and shall be. No government can stand that is not founded on God’s governing laws of humanity. ”

“ One of the greatest remedial agencies in solving this very serious problem is pre-eminently that of governmental and railroad co-operation, by which the land shall be taken out of the hands of the speculator, and reclaimed for those who desire to make immediate use of it and to live upon the fruit of their toil. Thus the many thousands of homeless, wandering American wage-earners, the itinerant and occasional helpers in our agricultural industry, as well as the casual, unskilled laborers of our cities, could be given a real lift on the road to economic independence. ”

“ Its hooks will reach clear down to the bottom of the human sewerage, in the dark channels of life, altogether unknown to the “other half” of our human society. Without disparaging the splendid work of other helping agencies in the respective communities, it cannot be denied that their influence, their hooks of help, hang too high to catch many worthy persons among the vast army of wandering citizens who are in direst need. The “Hang-out,” the “Barrel-house,” and the “Free-flops” receive many times more human drift than Charity Bureaus, Missions and Workingmen’s Homes. ”

“ It was one of the first to breathe of the mighty progress of civilization in our great West; and, like all of our growing Western cities, is eminently an industrial center—meat packing, breweries, smelters, machine shops, brick yards,—and it is an important railway center. Because of all of this, it continually beckons through its portals a vast number of the army of the seekers after work. Omaha, too, boasts of its culture and humanity, and of a social distinction around which cluster names which in the years to come will be intimately connected with the history of the country. ”

“ From among the victims of the present-day railroad system (for it is a system) by which men are being crippled, maimed, and killed, there is a silent but earnest appeal, from the builders of our cities, the harvesters of the nation’s crops, the miners of the nation’s resources, the scholars and teachers of the future republic, for a more scientifically humane treatment, and for a guarantee that “Life, Liberty, and Happiness” shall not be a by-word but a living reality. ”