“To live honestly by one’s own toil, what a favor of Heaven!”—Hugo.

“Dell me, vhere I find me a lawyer?” In broken accents, these words came to me from a German laborer who stepped up to me out of five hundred unemployed men who thronged Second Street in the vicinity of the labor bureaus.

“I am a lawyer,” I responded; “what is the trouble?”

With an amused expression, eyeing closely my blue jeans, he said, “You vas not a lawyer.”

“No,” I answered, “I am not a lawyer, but tell me your name, and what is your trouble, and perhaps I can find you one.”

“My name is Steve Goebel. Vell, I dell you, I go there,” pointing to the employment office near at hand, “seven days ago, und I pay two tollars for a job at lumber camp Rainier, fifty, maybe seventy, mile avay. I pay my fare out there. I vork six days und six hours for vun seventy-five a day, ten hour a day, den dey dell me dey no vant me no more. I work so hard in rain und vet, und I vear mein clothes out, und I pay five tollars a veek board. Vhen dey dell me dey no vant me no more dey offer me dhree tollars for my six days und six hours’ work. I owe the commis, vhat you call it, fifteen cents for leedle tobac. Den dey take from me vun tollar hospital fee und dhree tollar poll tax, they say, or road tax, und offer me dhree tollar. I not take dot dhree tollar,—somevun dey rob me. I hafe leedle money. I come back part vay on boat, as far as my leedle money bring me, den I valk back here. I dell the office how I get treated und dey says nefer mind, ve get you anoder job, but I say I valk all night, I am hungry, den dey give me den cents for breakfast.”

I took this man to the office of the City Attorney and left him there to tell his story. I afterwards repeated the story to one of the leading newspaper writers of the city. He looked at me very earnestly, and said, “Do you think there will be a thing done about it?” I looked at him without reply, and he continued, “There won’t be a thing done. There is no law for the poor man here.”

The man had been robbed in as low and cowardly a manner as only a most depraved degenerate could be guilty of. Portland had helped to make that man destitute, and now he is forced to beg, steal or starve, until he finds another job, or perhaps, through desperation takes his life. Similar experiences in Portland have forced a great many to do that very thing. Several men have been found dead in a pretty green square in the heart of Portland’s breathing spot, called the Plaza, and postmortem examinations have revealed nothing in their stomachs. And these tragedies have taken place almost within a stone’s throw of the Associated Charities.

A great pile of water and pitch-soaked blocks of kindling wood was piled in front of No. 10 North Second Street, a Jap restaurant. Some of the blocks were so heavy it was with difficulty they could be carried even singly. The wood belonged to the Japs. An old man, an American, some sixty odd years of age, was carrying it in. I asked him if he did not want a helper. He said, “I would like a helper but there is so little in it and there is not enough for two. I am carrying this all in for thirty cents and it will take me, I think, three hours.”

This old man had a good, kind face, and his clothes, though worn, were clean. He continued, “I have been playing in a little hard luck of late and must get all out of my work possible.” I then asked him if he had breakfasted. He had not. I said, “I have a little money, come and have some breakfast and carry in the wood afterward.” He said, “No, I won’t take your money, I will soon be through here and get my pay.”

I was seated in Tragedy Square (the Plaza), near a neat, well-dressed young man, and while sitting there two young girls about sixteen or seventeen years of age came out of a door across the street, and passed through the Square. The young man remarked:

“Do you see those two young women? They have just come out of the Woman’s Department of the Free Labor Office. You can tell from their appearance they are honest girls, but they would sell all that is dear to them, even their purity, for something to eat and a place to sleep. I may be wrong but from their appearance I feel it is true.”

Stunned as by a blow, at the words from the lips of this stranger, with noticeable feeling I said, “That can’t be possible. In this city of wealth, whose citizens boast of their refinement, their reasonableness, and their kindliness!”

“I know whereof I speak,” he answered, “for I have a girl friend whom I have been helping for over a year. Just recently she confessed to me why she forgot the teachings of her childhood and mother, why she forgot her dream of being honorably married and becoming all that her mother was. She said, it was because she was hungry and had no place to sleep. She could not ask for charity or beg. ‘I didn’t know where or how to beg,’ she said, ‘but then I met you and you were kind to me.’ I did not know this when I met that girl. I thought she was what she was from choice and not from necessity.” As he got up to leave he said, “I am going to marry her and she shall be all that God intended her to be. I am going to help her, but there are many, very many girls who come to Portland, and who, through lack of life’s necessities, are forced to forget.”

And this instance could be multiplied a thousand times, and in a thousand ways, in a thousand cities.

In the afternoon, I began to look for work. I found that no privileges existed for labor; that the destitute working man, the man who was “broke,” was forced to seek shelter where the homeless dog and rat seeks shelter. Men here, as in other cities, were forced to the fermenting refuse thrown from stables because it held warmth! Often men slept out in the open air behind billboards and in a hundred other deplorable places, where they could get a little rest unless discovered by the police and thrown into jail.

In my search for work, I went to the offices of the Portland Light, Power and Electric Railway Company. I asked the clerk what show there was to get work as motorman or conductor. He answered, “pretty slim.” Nevertheless, he asked how old I was. When I told him, he said there was no work for me, that there was a brotherhood of the railway employees which was an adjunct to the company and one of its rules was not to hire a man over forty. I said, “It is true, I am fifty, but I am just as strong and well, able-bodied and competent as I was at twenty-five.” But that made no difference. I then asked, "If I were of an eligible age and you should give me work, what do you pay?" He said, “You are expected to work the first ten days for nothing. Then you receive twenty-four cents an hour for five years, then thirty cents as long as you live and work.” I said, “I am broke, and even though I were of an age to be chosen, I would be giving my time to you during those ten days, and a man will starve to death in nine.”

A man who looks for work does not lose his worthiness, but the man who is forced to ask alms, to ask something for nothing, does.

I then took the part of a cringing, disgraced, dependent with nothing to lose and nothing to gain, except to try and keep God’s gift, the spark of life, until in my own opinion, at least, I could place myself in a position to be honorable. I knew that I would be looked upon suspiciously by the police, possibly thrown into jail; that in all of the places where I would ask for aid, they would look upon me as mean, base, low,—mental defective perhaps, or a victim of some awful habit. My poverty would be, of course, all my fault, as “there is no need of any one’s being poor.”

I first looked for the Associated Charities. I scanned the papers closely, not knowing but that they might advertise to give a destitute man or woman, boy or girl, a lift. Finding no notice, I found the place at last, after a good deal of difficulty. Reaching there at about five minutes after five, I saw a sign on the door which told me they kept the usual “banking” hours, 9 A. M. to 5 P. M. I wondered whether, possibly, some one might not need a little help between 5 P. M. and 9 A. M.

The Y. M. C. A. here, also, had nothing to give an indigent man, any more than in the other cities where I had been.

Strolling down Burnside Street I came to an establishment with a sign, “People’s Institute,” over the door. I entered and asked for help. They had nothing to give away but religion. Yes, they had a reading-room, where a number of men sat reading in profound silence. Here I saw several other signs: “No Smoking,” “Do your reading here, your talking on the outside, but not at the door.”

I inquired where a man was supposed to talk, and was told that it was “in the park or a block down the street.”

I wandered down to the river. Glancing across to the other side I saw a huge sign, which read: “Salvation Army. Industrial Home.” I crossed the river and on reaching this work-house of faith and worship I saw that the lower floors were locked and dark. Climbing a stairway leading to the second story, I found myself in a rambling barrack. Hearing a noise in one of the rooms I made my way there and found a man preparing supper. I told him of my hard luck, and that I was willing to work for it if I could get a lodging for the night and supper and breakfast. He went right on pealing his onions and potatoes, telling me decidedly that the meals were for the officers of the Army and he was not allowed to give anything away. The Industrial part of the “Salvation Army Industrial Home” seemed to have ceased to be at the finishing of that great sign. The Captain told me later, however, that if I had asked the right man I would have been helped, but that I had asked the cook.

For several hours I drifted around. In some of the “beer depots,” as they call the saloons there, I found as many as two and three hundred men at one time. A policeman, whom I saw fulfilling his duty by driving a boy whom he suspected of being under age, from one of these resorts, directed me to two missions,—The Holy Rollers and the Portland Commons. Should I be denied shelter there, he told me to go to the jail, but added that I should not go there unless I was obliged to.

The Commons had a name which indicated that it was meant to serve all. I climbed the stairs to an office. The only man available about the place told me if I had been there and attended the service they might have done something for me. When I asked him if I could receive supper, bath, bed and breakfast by doing some service in return, he stared at me and asked me what kind of a place I thought they were running!

This is a simple statement of what a homeless man meets in Portland. If I had seen Staff Captain Bradley of the Salvation Army he would probably have given me a bed; or, had I come in contact with Mr. W. G. MacLaren of the Portland Commons, I would have been taken care of. I did not meet Captain Bradley after my investigation, but I did meet W. G. MacLaren, and found him a sincere Christian gentleman, doing a great deal to help those in need. I discovered, for the first time in my experience, a life-line running from the city jail to a mission, and the mission was Portland Commons. The night captain of the jail, Captain Slover, who ought to be chief of police of that city, was at one end of the line and W. G. MacLaren at the other.

Many discouraged, unfortunate workers have, through the efforts of these two men, become honored citizens. Both Captain Slover and Mr. MacLaren know that private and individual effort is a failure; that it is as one trying to dip the ocean dry; that under our national, municipal, social and political systems, their work is useless. These men believe in municipal ownership as far as taking care of those in need is concerned. They are strong advocates of a Municipal Emergency Home.

In Portland I found a boy who had been dragged at two o’clock in the morning from a delivery wagon where he was trying to sleep, and put in jail. Captain Slover sent him to the mission. On the street I saw another boy whom I had met in San Francisco a month before and who now was on his way to Tacoma, to which place his brother had written him to come, as he had a steady job for him with good pay. He had been pulled out of a freight car at three o’clock that morning and taken to jail. He told his story and they believed him. Afterward, while visiting that jail (the only Portland Municipal Lodging House) I found it such a filthy, disease- and crime-breeding institution that I wondered that the police themselves did not succumb. I found Russians thrown in there who were never in jail until they came to America. I saw the “drunk tanks” into which unfortunates were crowded and where, I was told, they were often found dead from suffocation.

On Sunday morning I attended the First Congregational Church. It was not the regular service but a sort of joint meeting with the Foreign Missionary Commission. The minister preached thirty minutes about how much he pitied the poor little dwarfed soul. I heard not a single word about trying to save the soul (and the body) of the hundreds of shelterless and hungry men in the city of Portland who were searching for the possibility of carving out an existence for themselves and those dependent upon them. In its neglect to care for these, the church seemed an accessory to death rather than to the uplift of unfortunate men and women.

During my entire work, I have been honored only once by being called upon by a minister and asked to speak in his church. “The Every Day Church,” it is called, situated far out, almost in the suburbs, on the east side of Portland. Its pastor, Rev. James Diamond Corby, will surely be heard from in the near future. He is one of the men of the hour in that city. The Oregonian, the leading newspaper of Portland, which has been the bell sheep of Oregon for a great many years, and which thinks the jails and prisons of our country are too attractive and should be made less so, did advocate the establishment of a Municipal Emergency Home when I first went to Portland. On Easter Sunday morning, however, they crucified my idea and cartooned the Municipal Emergency Home, as the hairy hand of socialism tearing down the American flag!

Shortly after leaving Portland I received the following letter which speaks for itself. Do not fail to read the postscript.