E THOUSAND OMELESS MEN RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION PUBLICATIONS WIDER USE OF THE SCHOOL PLANT. By Clarence Arthur Perry. Illustrated. I2mo. 404 pages. Price, postpaid, Si .21. AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS. By M. Louise Greene, M.Pd., Ph.D. Illustrated. I2mo. 380 pages. Second Edition. Price, postpaid, $1.25. LAGGARDS IN OUR SCHOOLS. A Study of Retardation and Elimination. By Leonard P. Ayres, Ph.D. 8vo. 252 pages. Third Edition. Price, postpaid, $1.50. MEDICAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOLS. By Luther Halsey Gulick, M.D., and Leonard P. Ayres, Ph. D. 8vo. 286 pages. Third Edition. Price, postpaid, $1.00. THE STANDARD OF LIVING AMONG WORKINGMEN'S FAMILIES IN NEW YORK CITY. By Robert Coit Chapin, Ph.D. 8vo. 388 pages. 131 tables. Price, postpaid, $2.00. CIVIC BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR GREATER NEW YORK. Edited by James Bronson Reynolds, for the New York Research Council. 8vo. 312 pages. Price, postpaid, $1.62. ONE THOUSAND HOMELESS MEN. A Study of Original Records. By Alice Willard Solenberger. i2mo. 398 pages. 50 tables. Price, postpaid, $1.25. THE ALMSHOUSE. Construction and Management. By Alex- ander Johnson. Illustrated. Plans and Specimen Records. i2mo. 274 pages. Price, postpaid, $1.25. HANDBOOK OF SETTLEMENTS. Edited by Robert A. Woods and Albert J. Kennedy. 8vo. 360 pages. Cloth, postpaid, $1.64. Paper, postpaid, $0.88. REPORT ON THE DESIRABILITY OF ESTABLISHING AN EMPLOYMENT BUREAU IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK. By Edward T. Devine, Ph.D., LL.D. 238 pages. Paper. Price, postpaid, $1.00. OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION. THE DELINQUENT CHILD AND THE HOME. By Sophonisba P. Breckinridge and Edith Abbott. THE DELINQUENT CHILD AND THE COURT. By Henry W. Thurston. BALTIMORE SALESWOMEN. By Elizabeth Beardsley Butler. LOCAL OPTION IN MASSACHUSETTS. By Amy F. Acton. CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE Publishers for the Russell Sage Foundation 105 EAST 22d STREET, NEW YORK RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION ONE THOUSAND HOMELESS MEN A STUDY OF ORIGINAL RECORDS BY ALICE WILLARD SOLENBERGER NEW YORK CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE . . MCMXI Copyright, 191 1, by THE RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION PRESS OF WM. F. FELL CO. PHILADELPHIA DEDICATED TO THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE CENTRAL DISTRICT, CHICAGO BUREAU OF CHARITIES, WHO SERVED DURING THE YEARS IQOO TO 1904, AND WHOSE INTEREST AND STEADFAST SUPPORT MADE POS- SIBLE MUCH OF THE WORK DESCRIBED IN THIS VOLUME M103866 FOREWORD THE untimely death of Mrs. Solenberger in December, 1910, after she had practically completed this work, but before it was ready for the press, has made a Foreword seem necessary. It had been Mrs. Solenberger's intention to write a preface and to add one more chapter summing up her conclusions. Since she was not able to do these final things, it is left for another to tell briefly the circumstances that led to the study here- in presented, and to indicate the probable message of the unwritten last chapter. In 1900 Mrs. Solenberger (then Miss Willard) was given charge of the Central District of the Chicago Bureau of Charities. The territory in the South Side of the city which it covered in- cluded within its borders what is called the "loop district" and the very important lodging house section that lies just beyond it. The general office of the Bureau, which was situated within the loop, referred all homeless applicants to the Central District office, as did later the four other South Side districts. For these reasons about one- third of the applicants dealt with at the Central District office were homeless men. Mrs. Solen- berger found that they were being treated in an vii FOREWORD inadequate manner. Accepting the conditions in the district as they were, she, with her associates, gradually evolved a new plan of treatment of the men. This consisted in applying to them the methods, with certain adaptations, used in the investigation and treatment of families. These methods became the practice of the office. Such was the genesis of this study. It was in no superficial way that Mrs. Solen- berger undertook her responsibility. Intensively and extensively it led her on until she had at her command all the remarkable data contained in this book. During the first three strenuous years not much was thought of beyond the way to in- crease the efficiency of the work. Not only did this mean greater care, greater skill, greater sympathy in dealing with applicants, but an ever enlarging knowledge of conditions in that sordid, dirty, and unpleasant South Side lodging house neighborhood, a neighborhood possessing, how- ever, a curiously quickening and vibrant atmos- phere for those who, like Mrs. Solenberger, really knew it. Here and there, scattered throughout this book are references to volunteered clues not only from the police, but from lodging house keepers and guests, which resulted time and time again in assistance that enabled her to trace men and boys and to learn the whole unvarnished truth about them when that truth vitally affected treatment. Her very quests, the splendid spirit of her work, intelligent, not to viii FOREWORD be hoodwinked, but human, natural, and dis- cerning, promoted a mutual understanding, fail- ing which no one may hope to get very far with that most elusive and impulsive creature, the home- less man. Indeed, Mrs. Solenberger's point of view in dealing with the men themselves has been so fundamentally subjective that her account of lodging house conditions, partly drawn from visits with health officials later, does not seem to belong to the main body of the study, and will be found in a separate chapter in the Appendix. Valuable as it is, it is not a part of Mrs. Solenberger's peculiar and unique contribution to the subject of homeless men. Others could have performed this service; no one else is yet equipped to give us the far more significant message. How soon Mrs. Solenberger herself realized the values of the gradually accumulating knowledge whose written record lay in the case histories in her district office, no one can say. The writer's recollection is that as early as the autumn of 1902 she was seeking advice in the preparation of tentative schedules for this study. Then, as well as later, she regretted that she did not know at the beginning of her work what she could learn only from experience; namely, the importance of certain lines of inquiry in connection with home- less men, not alone for purposes of social investiga- tion but for better constructive work. She has frankly indicated in the text where the absence of such knowledge in certain instances has reduced ix FOREWORD the significance of her conclusions. Nevertheless there may be an indirect benefit in the limitations of these earlier days. For, take it in the large, the amount of constructive work done for homeless men from one end of these four years to the other, a work based merely upon knowledge and in- sight, is so far ahead of that performed by many similar agencies whose equipment is perhaps greater, that it is worth while to be able to assert that only an ordinary desire efficiently to perform the task at hand supplied the impetus, and an ordinary district staff provided the equipment. At the beginning of the work there was no long look ahead to its possible uses as a study and in- terpretation. From Mrs. Solenberger's retirement from the Central District in 1903 to this year of grace 1911 may appear to some a long lapse of time. But her contribution to her subject was steadily growing in these years; no year was wasted. During them, among other things, the subsequent careers of many of these men and boys have been traced, and the results of different kinds of treat- ment in permanency of improvement or the re- verse, have been clearly revealed. To have ac- cepted as final the knowledge of these men's lives as they stood at the end of 1904 or 1905 or 1906, would in many instances have considerably in- creased the margin of possible error. Then again, there has been the steady, intensive work of drawing out of the silent, pregnant records FOREWORD the wealth of human illustration, which so vividly backgrounds and justifies Mrs. Solenberger's more general statements based upon the statistical analyses. And through it all has been the steady persistent purpose to read into the records of these men only that which could be read into them, the critical scrutiny, almost as if by another, of each statement, to test whether it was exaggerated or was securely and properly based. Turning now to a more detailed consideration of Mrs. Solenberger's methods, it should be said that she applied herself to her task with but one preconceived idea and one prejudice. She be- lieved that the personality-by-personality method of the chanty organization movement had been too little used with homeless men and boys, and that until we employ this method with them, neither our theories regarding vagrancy nor our efforts to reduce it will be based upon a solid foundation of knowledge. Our social responsibilities toward in- dividual wanderers and toward the families from which they come, will also remain unfulfilled. The writer distinctly remembers that Mrs. Solen- berger early indicated this principle as the central purpose of her study. She had no thesis to prove; her discriminating analysis of facts reveals this again and again. But she marshalled these facts so as clearly to show that the homeless man prob- lem could in no way be treated differently from the problem of the family. Certain factors, it is true, peculiar to these men require attention. xi FOREWORD Mrs. Solenberger has recognized these at their full value. For instance, she has by no means mini- mized the far-reaching results that will flow from the closing of the railroads to the brake beam or freight car dead-head. Nor has she minimized the need of inter-state agreements if no inter-state law be possible, to prevent "passing-on." On the other hand, she has shown us through the bio- graphies of these very real men and boys, how interwoven into them are all the social and indi- vidual causes of deterioration which are found in the family itself. Because the same moving forces exist among men, the same method must be used, though naturally with some variations and some additional agencies. How strikingly she reveals the blameworthy principle upon which some way- farer's lodges and woodyards are run, the principle of assuming that when a youth or a man is given and accepts work (made for him) that there the agency's responsibility ends. Here we learn the bitter lesson that activities like these are encourag- ing some men to break still further away from the responsibilities to which they should return. In so far as no reputable charity organization society would consider that it had dealt adequately with a family by giving the man work and going no deeper beneath the surface of his need, just so far should it and every other agency dealing with homeless men consider that they have failed, when they do this and nothing more for the wanderer. For in this last case the improbability that mere xii FOREWORD work will be a means of the wanderer's rehabilita- tion, is indicated by the very homelessness of his condition. It is altogether probable that some such purport expressed in much more felicitous phrase would have been Mrs. Solenberger's message in the sum- ming-up chapter never written. The genesis and the message have been given. A word as to the scope. One thousand records of homeless men have been carefully analyzed for all that they have to show as to the causes of homelessness, the characteristics of the homeless, their individual treatment, their environment, and the social remedies. In addition, certain broad questions touching the problem of all the homeless are treated sometimes with sidelights from sources other than the author's own exper- ience, but at no time without illustration.from this particular regiment. Among Mrs. Solenberger's papers were found rough drafts of two paragraphs which she evi- dently intended to include in a preface, and which are given with slight annotations: "The writer acknowledges valuable advice and assistance in the preparation of this volume re- ceived from Mr. Francis H. McLean, Field Secre- tary, Chanty Organization Department, Russell Sage Foundation; Mr. James Mullenbach, Super- intendent Chicago Municipal Lodging House (now Assistant Superintendent United Charities of Chicago); Dr. William A. Evans, Commissioner xiii FOREWORD of Health of Chicago (1910); Mr. William C. Ball, Chief Sanitary Inspector, Chicago Health Depart- ment; Dr. Adolf Meyer, Professor of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University; Dr. V. H. Podstata, Superintendent (1909) Illinois Northern Hospital for the Insane, Elgin, Illinois; Dr. O. C. Wilhite, General Superintendent (1909) Cook County Institution, Dunning, Illinois; Mr. John Koren, Expert Special Agent, United States Census; and many others to whom she wishes to extend thanks. "A very large amount of help has also been given by the charity organization societies and associated charities of cities from one end of the country to the other. The writer is especially grateful to the secretaries and agents of these societies who with invariable courtesy and promptness have upon request made recent investigations and reported all that could be learned at the present time re- garding some five hundred of the one thousand men whose cases are here considered. Without this help given by more than fifty different Amer- ican and Canadian societies many of the facts pre- sented in this study could not have been secured." It is difficult adequately to value Mrs. Solen- berger's work. Consciously limited as it is in scope, it is accurate in that field. It portrays clearly where society has failed, where the indi- vidual has failed. Inevitably, further light must alter or amend some of her conclusions, but this light must come from studies as intensive, as pains- takingly accurate as hers. The book is alike valu- xiv FOREWORD able to him who has realized the problem and to him who has not. It should develop a discerning interest among those who have scarcely thought of the homeless man. It should serve as a most useful guide for any one who is seeking to further by whatever means a more normal life for these wandering atoms of society. Offering no general panacea, Mrs. Solenberger has yet indicated varied ways in which progress lies. Her work speaks with the convincing and compelling power of truth. FRANCIS H. McLEAN xv TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD, by Francis H. McLean vii LIST OF TABLES xix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xxiv I. Introductory i II. Method of This Investigation . 14 III. Physical Condition of Homeless Men . . 32 IV. The Crippled and Maimed .... 44 V. Industrial Accidents in Relation to Vag- rancy 69 VI. The Insane, Feeble-minded, and Epileptic. 88 VII. Homeless Old Men 112 VIII. Occupations of the Men . . . .129 IX. Seasonal and Casual Labor . . . .139 X. Chronic Beggars 156 XI. The Interstate Migration of Paupers and Dependents 189 XII. Confirmed Wanderers or "Tramps" . . 209 XIII. Homeless, Vagrant and Runaway Boys . 239 APPENDICES A. SUPPLEMENTARY TABLES 277 B. THE CHEAP LODGING HOUSES . . . -314 C. HOMELESS MEN IN MINNEAPOLIS . . . 330 xvii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS D. ORDINANCE REGULATING LODGING HOUSES IN MINNEAPOLIS 335 E. REGULATIONS GOVERNING SANITARY CONDI- TIONS IN LODGING HOUSES, ADOPTED BY THE MINNESOTA STATE BOARD OF HEALTH, JANUARY n, 1910 342 xvm LIST OF TABLES TABLE PACE 1. General Data Concerning 1000 Homeless Men . .20 A. Ages, by Groups B. Nativity C. Conjugal Condition D. Amount of Education 1 1 . Defects and Diseases Among 627 Men . 36 III. General Data Concerning 86 Men Crip- pled by Disease ... 46 A. Ages, by Groups B. Causes of Crippling C. Amount of Self-support IV. Causes of Crippling (excluding cases where it was caused by illness or where men claimed industrial accidents) ... 50 V. General Data Concerning 55 Men Claiming Industrial Accidents 78 A. Number Injured, by Condition B. Amount of Self-support Before and After Injury C. Amount of Self-support Before and After Injury By Condition VI. General Data Concerning 89 Insane, Feeble- minded, and Epileptic Men . . 90 A. Nativity B. Amount of Self-support C. Confirmed Habits of 65 of These Men D. Length of Time Known to the Office xix LIST OF TABLES TABLE PAGE VIII. General Data Concerning 132 Homeless Old Men 114 A. Ages, by Groups B. Nativity C. Occupations D. Amount of Self-support at Time of Application IX. General Data Concerning 135 Chronic Beggars 164 A. Ages, by Groups B. Conjugal Condition C. Nativity D. Previous Occupations X. General Data Concerning 220 Tramps . 216 A. Ages, by Groups B. Conjugal Condition C. Nativity D. Amount of Self-support E. Verification of Stories XI. General Data Concerning 117 Homeless, Vagrant, and Runaway Boys . . . 240 A. Ages B. Nativity C. Occupations D. Physical and Mental Condition APPENDIX A 1. One Thousand Homeless Men. Conjugal Condition By Age Group . . . 277 2. One Thousand Homeless Men. Length of Time in the City Before Application to Bureau 277 3. College Men. Conjugal, Physical, and Men- tal Condition, Habits, and Occupations. By Nationality 278 4. Data on Special Groups of Diseases and De- fects 279 xx LIST OF TABLES TABLE PAGE 5. Tuberculous Men. Nationality, Conjugal Condition, and Occupation. By Age Group 280 6. Blind and Deaf Men. Amount of Self-support Before and After Injury. By Condition . 281 7. Men Crippled by Disease. By Causes and Age Group 282 8. Men Crippled by Disease. Amount of Self- support Before and After Injury. By Con- dition 283 9. Men Crippled Through General Accident or From Birth. Amount of Self-support Before and After Injury. By Length of Time Since Accident 284 10. Men Permanently Crippled Through General Accident or From Birth. Amount of Self- support Before and After Injury. By Con- dition 285 n. Men Who Claimed Industrial Accidents. Oc- cupations Before and After Injury . . 286 12. Men Who Claimed Industrial Accidents. Amount of Self-support Before and After In- jury. By Length of Time Since Accident . 287 13. Thirty-two Permanently Injured Men Who Claimed Industrial Accidents. Amount of Self-support Before and After Injury. By Condition 288 14. Brief Digest of Cases of 17 Men Permanently Injured in Actual and Probable Industrial Accidents 289 15. Insane, Feeble-minded, and Epileptic Men. Legal Residence 290 1 6. Forty-eight Insane, Feeble-minded, and Epi- leptic Men. Additional Handicaps . .291 17. Insane Men. Trades and Occupations . . 291 1 8. Homeless Old Men. By Conjugal Condition and Willingness and Ability of Children to Aid Them 292 xxi LIST OF TABLES TABLE PAGE 19. Occupations of 91 Men Skilled or Partly Skilled in More Than One Line of Work . 293 20. Occupations of the 1000 Homeless Men . 295 A. Professional Men 295 B. Business Men, etc 295 C. Clerical Workers and Salesmen . . 295 D. Skilled Workers 295 E. Partly Skilled .... .297 F. Miscellaneous 297 G. Unskilled 298 H. No Work Record . . 298 I. Work Record Not Known . . . 298 21. Number and Kinds of Applications Made by the looo Homeless Men and the 135 Chronic Beggars 299 22. Chronic Beggars. Physical and Mental Con- dition 300 23. Occupations Once Followed by Chronic Beg- gars of Class II 300 24. Brief Digests of Cases of the 1 1 Beggars of Class III 301 25. Brief Digests of Cases of 16 of the Beggars of Class IV 302 26. Physical and Mental Condition of the Tramps 304 27. Location (Urban or Country) of Previous Resi- dence, Character of Homes, and Family Re- lations of 63 Runaway Boys .... 304 A. Location of Home (City or Country) . 304 B. Character of Homes . . . .305 C. Family Relations of Homeless, Vagrant and Runaway Boys . . . .305 28. General Data Concerning 200 Minneapolis Homeless Men 306 29. Occupations of Homeless Men in Chicago and Minneapolis compared . . . 307 xxii LIST OF TABLES TABLE PAGE 30. Minneapolis Homeless Men. Physical and Mental Condition 308 31. Minneapolis Homeless Men. Trades and Occupations 309 32. Minneapolis Homeless Men. Eleven Industrial Accident Cases . . . .310 33. Minneapolis Homeless Men. Twenty-two Deformed, Injured, Crippled, and Mained 312 XXill LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (Eight full-page illustrations preceding Appendix B, p. 314) A ROOM IN ONE OF THE " IRONSIDES" Room 6 by 7 feet high, one of few having outer air and light. Wire netting above, supplemented by newspapers. Sides of corrugated iron. CUBICLE LODGING HOUSE Third floor. Main aisle, showing cross aisle at end lead- ing to fire escape obstructed by stove. Space between stove and corner. of rooms 22 inches. Main aisle 30 inches wide. CUBICLE LODGING HOUSE One of cross aisles obstructed by posts. Space between posts and wall of rooms 20 inches. A DARK ROOM IN A "FLOP" Top (fourth) floor. Majority of windows boarded up and otherwise obstructed. Reasonably clean; no bedding, only bare boards. INTERIOR VIEW OF A "FLOP" Third floor, showing new arrangement of beds (?). Clean, well lighted and ventilated. No bedding is provided. TOILET FACILITIES IN A "FLOP" First floor, showing wash room with cement floor, wash sinks, and shower bath. Taken after enforcement of Health Department regulations. A ROOM IN A CHEAP LODGING HOUSE Room on second floor containing four cots. No com- munication with outer air or light; very dark and dirty; air foul. DORMITORY LODGING HOUSE CONDUCTED BY A RELI- GIOUS ORGANIZATION Fourth floor. Aisles 30 to 36 inches wide, space between beds 6 to 36 inches. Windows on both ends. Air space less than required by Illinois law. xxiv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY THE homeless man has probably figured as a member of human society since its be- ginning. He is mentioned in earliest tra- dition and history; he appears in the literature of every race and nation. We cannot conceive of a period in which men have not been forced to ask aid of their fellows, or in which old age, sickness, and death have not acted as causes of dependence. It is probable, too, that from the very beginning faults of character led some to depend upon others from choice and not from necessity. The "sturdy beggar" was by no means unknown to the ancients, and laws for his suppres- sion very early appear upon the statute books of nations. [The modern tramp also had his prototype in earlier centuries. In fact, in the nomadic days of the race whole nations took to tramping. Later, tEeTranks of the crusaders as well as the ships of the early navigators contained men impelled to embark by the love of adventure quite as much as by the ardor of religion and patriotism. The HOMELESS MEN >f Jtoday has but inherited the wanderlust of the p:ut thoilgh 4 the beggar and the tramp are not pecul'iar to bur o\vri time and nation, it is none the less true that there has been a remarkable in- crease in the number of these men in the United States during the last two decades. Previous to the Civil War, the word "tramp" did not appear upon the statute books of any state in the Union. Today nearly all recognize his existence and en- deavor to cope with the problem he presents. ; [Twenty years ago a few small cheap lodging houses, built for the accommodation of homeless . working men, might have been found in some half dozen of our largest cities. Today there are a number of such lodging houses in every large city in the country; they house not only hundreds and thousands of "homeless" workingmen, but also large numbers of tramps, beggars, and petty criminals, j A number of theories have been advanced in recent years to account for this increase of the homeless and vagrant in America. Various meth- ods of solving the problems due to this increase have been suggested, none of which have as yet been very generally adopted or have proved strik- ingly successful when tried. Certain cities and towns by rigid enforcement of severe laws have been able to rid themselves for a time of these vagrants, but invariably other nearby cities have received those who have been cast out and the problem as a 2 INTRODUCTORY whole has remained unsolved. The army of tramps has continued to increase. That this will be the case until similar laws are passed and similar methods used in almost or quite all the states of the Union, is now coming to be generally recognized by those who must deal at first hand with these men. Just what these laws and methods should be, however, in order to be effective, is still open to debate. The chief difficulty, perhaps, lies in the fact that, familiar figure as the tramp has become, very few persons really know much about him or about the condi- tions under which he exists today, nor do they know the causes of his vagrancy or the results of such efforts to reform or reinstate him as have already been made in different parts of the country. It was with the hope of discovering facts that might throw light upon these questions and aid in bringing about a more general understanding of them that the present study was undertaken. The term "homeless man" might be applied to any man who has left one family group and not yet identified himself with another. It might include hundreds of men living in clubs, hotels, and board- ing houses, and its use would not necessarily imply a forlorn or penniless condition. But for the purpose of this study the term will be used to designate those men of the homeless class who live in cheap lodging houses in the congested part of any large city; and the particular thousand chosen for this study were applicants at the Chicago 3 HOMELESS MEN Bureau of Charities for some form of assistance during the years 1900 to 1903 inclusive. - By no means were all these men really homeless. A num- ber were married men with homes elsewhere, who had come to Chicago for work or for other reasons and who had met with misfortunes which finally led to their application for assistance.^ Often the only request of such men was for transportation back to their homes. Included, also, among the thousand were runaway boys, criminals, deserting husbands, and other applicants who for various reasons did not wish to return to their homes ;lthe majority, however, were unattached single men to whom the term "homeless" could be rightly applied. t The histories of these men, both before and for some time after they asked charitable help, have been traced. Many had applied for aid in a dozen or more cities and many have reapplied since 1903; a number are still known to the Bureau. The later histories of others who have not made recent application, have been investigated by correspondence and by personal interviews during the preparation of this volume; so that, while the original applications of the men occurred from seven to ten years ago, the study of their cases has extended to the present period. A number of the facts brought out by this investigation have been tabulated and classified and are here presented. Some account is also given of the efforts that the organization made to put the men applying for its 4 INTRODUCTORY help on their feet, or to secure adequate assist- ance for those incapable of self-support. These efforts were restricted by the laws and the facili- ties for dealing with dependents which now exist; that better laws and better facilities are urgently needed if better results are to be hoped for should be demonstrated by the chapters that follow. Little attempt has been made in the study to point out the causes of dependence or vagrancy in the individual cases. The contact of the charity agent with applicants is too brief and in the ma- jority of instances his knowledge of their real histories too superficial to warrant making very positive deductions. Moreover, even in cases that are carefully inquired into, opinions as to causes undergo frequent changes. In the first interview, a certain cause may be the most ap- parent; investigation brings to light another far more important. A few months' acquaintance with the man may lead the agent to change both his first and his second impression as to cause, and after an experience of several years, during which one plan of help after another has been tried and has failed, and traits and characteristics unsus- pected at first have been found to bear important relation to the man's inability to adjust himself to the world in which he lives, the agent may realize that alh his earlier impressions were wrong, and that only now is he able to estimate fairly the many elements which have contributed to the man's dependence. 5 HOMELESS MEN Only when a considerable number of men of like characteristics or habits are studied together is it practicable to say with any degree of certainty that some particular social or industrial cause or some individual trait produces vagrancy. In fact, even in such groups the individuals who compose them present contrasts in matters of physical and mental health, of training, temperament, and moral standards, so striking and so extreme that any but very broad generalizations as to causes are necessarily precluded. A study of the homeless men who apply to a charitable society will inevitably produce differ- ent results from a study of the men who apply at a municipal lodging house, at a down town mis- sion, or at a soup house. The proportion of the mentally or physically handicapped will be greatest in the group soliciting relief; able-bodied workmen will be most numerous among those who seek shelter at the municipal lodging house; the pro- portion of frauds and parasites will probably be largest among the applicants at the mission or at the soup house. Those who frequent the cheap lodging houses would probably supply the greatest variety of types; but since it is impossible to make a study there, the applicants at a well equipped charity office which works with modern methods will doubtless include a greater variety of types of lodging house men than are accessible to investiga- tion through any other channel. All large cities and some small ones in these 6 INTRODUCTORY days have cheap lodging houses in which men may secure a night's lodging at a cost of from ten to twenty-five cents. With the exception of Greater New York, the city of Chicago has a greater number of such houses and a larger floating tran- sient population than any other city in the United States. The reasons for this are many. Situated in the heart of the Mississippi Valley at the foot of Lake Michigan it attracts to itself during a part of the year thousands of harvest hands from the Northwest, deck hands from the lake boats, rail- way construction laborers, men from the lumber camps of the North, and men from all over the Central West who are employed in seasonal trades of many sorts. In normal times men of this class who come to Chicago need not long remain unemployed if they wish work. One seasonal trade may soon be fitted into another. The period between the closing of navigation in the autumn and the begin- ning of work in the lumber camps is not long. In February the ice-cutting season opens and this furnishes employment to thousands of men at a time of year when in many other cities work for unskilled laborers is especially scarce. The growth of Chicago is so rapid and constant that public works and private building practically never cease. One form of work resulting from this growth is what is designated as "wrecking." Old buildings, or sometimes comparatively new and good ones, are torn down to make way for newer 7 HOMELESS MEN and larger structures. The amount of such work in Chicago is considerable and gives employment to large numbers of men. During the course of the ordinary winter there are numerous heavy snowfalls, and the removal of snow from the down- town streets affords temporary employment for hundreds. On either side of Clark and State Streets on the South Side; on Canal, Desplaines, and Madison Streets on the West Side, and on lower Clark and Wells Streets on the North Side, there are rows of cheap lodging houses. For the man who lacks even the small amount required for admission to these, the Municipal Lodging House doors are always open, and every man who comes to Chicago hon- estly seeking work knows, or soon finds out, that he will have little difficulty in securing food and shelter without the need of begging for them in the interval before he finds employment. The Municipal Lodging House of Chicago has prob- ably done more extensive work than any other institution of its kind in the country in finding positions for men who apply for lodging. Alto- gether, no city in the United States offers more favorable opportunities for winter employment for the unskilled, or cheaper food and shelter than does Chicago. It is not strange, therefore, that the city attracts unemployed labor from all over the country. Among tramps and vagrants also Chicago is a favorite rallying place. It is the greatest railway 8 INTRODUCTORY center in the country ; trains from all points of the ' compass hourly pull into its freight and passenger stations and bring their quota of homeless men. Many of these make it their headquarters for the greater part of the year. The vagrancy laws are as a rule rather laxly enforced and begging is a safe as well as a lucrative business. And here, as in most other large cities, politicians are likely at election times to add to the comfort and security of a floating population whose votes may usually be counted upon in return for small favors. In this as in other cities, too, there are mingling with the less harmful tramps the more dangerous yegg- men and petty criminals, numbers of whom find it comparatively easy to hide themselves among the homeless throngs in the lodging houses.* Altogether, viewing the population of the cheap lodging houses from the standpoint of the social worker, it may be stated that it includes four dis- tinct though constantly merging classes of men. * No exact census of the total number of homeless men of various types in the lodging house districts of Chicago has been taken, but 40,000 is considered a conservative estimate by several careful stu- dents of the question who are closely in touch with local conditions. This number is somewhat increased at election times and very greatly increased when word goes out, as it did during the winter of 1907-8, that relief funds were being collected and free lodgings and food would be furnished to the unemployed. In December, January, February, and March of that winter all private lodging houses were filled to overflowing and the Municipal Lodging House, its anm-x. and two other houses which it operated gave a total of 79.41 1 lodg- ings to homeless men as compared with 6930 for the same months of the winter before, an increase of 72,481. The Health Department, which took charge of the municipal lodging houses and made a care- ful study of local conditions during the winter of 1907-8, estimated the number of homeless men then in Chicago to be probably not less than 60,000. HOMELESS MEN These classes may be summarized as follows: (i) Self-supporting. All men of whatever trade or occupation who support themselves by their own exer- tions. Some are employed all the year; some are seasonal workers; others casual laborers; but all are independent. (2) Temporarily dependent. Runaway boys; stran- gers who lack city references and are not yet employed; men who have been robbed ; victims of accident or illness; ( convalescents; men displaced by industrial disturbances, or by the introduction of machinery; misfits; foreigners unacquainted with the language and not yet employed, and other men without means who could again become self-supporting if tided past temporary difficulties. (3) Chronically dependent. Contains many of the .aged, the crippled, deformed, blind, deaf, tuberculous; the feeble-minded, insane, epileptic; the chronically ill; also certain men addicted to the continuous and ex- cessive use of drink or drugs, and a few able-bodied but almost hopelessly inefficient men. (4) Parasitic. Contains many confirmed wanderers or tramps; criminals; impostors; begging-letter writers; confidence men, etc., and a great majority of all chronic beggars, local vagrants, and wanderers. The first group is composed of able-bodied men who work all or most of the year and who expect to support themselves by their own exertions. In the second group are men capable of self-support, but temporarily and in many cases quite accidentally dependent. In the third are men who formerly belonged to the first and second groups but who, on account of age or chronic physical or mental disability, or for other reasons, such as the excessive use of drink or drugs, or extreme ignorance and inefficiency, have become continuously dependent 10 INTRODUCTORY upon the public for support. Men of this class may sometimes again become at least partly self- supporting and are not parasitic in spirit. In the fourth group are the parasites, the men, whether able-bodied or defective, who make a business of living of? the public and who apparently do so from choice rather than from necessity. Some are thieves and criminals, some clever impostors and beggars who live by their wits; still others are only " tramps," not necessarily criminal, but never- theless anti-social. This classification takes the self-supporting, self-respecting, able-bodied lodging house resident of average morality as the type nearest approach- ing the normal citizen. Men of the second group fall temporarily below this normal standard but may be brought back to it unless they are forced by circumstances still farther below normal and into the third group. All three of these groups are constantly contributing to the fourth, the dis- tinctly abnormal, with which society must deal along corrective and repressive lines. In the study of individual cases which follows, it will be seen that men of all four classes are in- cluded, and attention will frequently be called to the steps by which the men of the first two classes descend to the ranks of the chronically dependent and parasitic. But for convenience in considering so large a group as a thoiiiahJ, and also, it is be- lieved, for greater clearness, the men will not be classified for study according to the degree and HOMELESS MEN character of their dependence ^but will instead be divided according to some common characteristic into small groups, such as insane men, aged men, boys, beggars, etc. In every group will be found men who belong to each of the four classes mentioned. Among the aged men, for instance,* some are self-supporting, some temporarily dependent, some continuously dependent, and a few have been tramps or vagrants since their youth and are still dependent quite as much from choice as from necessity. By studying in a group by themselves the cases of all those over sixty, a clearer picture of homeless old men is presented than would be the case if they were classified with others according to the nature and amount of their dependence. In explanation of the fact that several important phases of vagrancy are barely mentioned in these pages, and that methods of prevention and cure of certain evils closely related thereto have hardly been considered, it should be stated that this work is not presented as a general treatise on the sub- ject, or as a study of the methods of dealing with vagrants in this country, or as a solution of the problems involved in their treatment. In order to cover the ground at all adequately, it has been necessary to hold closely to the immediate sub- ject and to omit the description and discussion of many interesting matters relating to the vagrancy problems as a whole. This was an investigation of * See Chapter VII, Homeless Old Men. 12 INTRODUCTORY typical homeless men in the second city of America ; the conditions there were the conditions under which such men live in many American cities; the efforts made in their behalf were made under the laws and with the facilities then and now available. No inductive treatment of investigated cases of individual homeless men has ever been attempted as a means of throwing light upon the general problem of vagrancy in America. It has seemed worth while, therefore, not only to make this study but to present its results in a form so detailed as to enable each reader to appreciate for himself its bearing upon the larger subject. CHAPTER II METHOD OF THIS INVESTIGATION ONE of the district offices of the Chicago Bureau of Charities* is located within half a dozen blocks of the heart of the lodging house section of the lower South Side, and during the four years in which the writer was connected with the society (from 1900 to 1903 inclusive) practically all applications of homeless men to the main office of the Bureau or to any of the South Side offices were referred to that district. When the office was first opened in the neighbor- hood a great many men applied out of curiosity to see what they could get and how far they could deceive the workers in charge. These men belonged to the class which makes a business of living at the expense of the public. Keen ques- tioning by trained workers almost immediately disclosed this fact and such men soon ceased to come in any considerable number, although a few ap- plied during every month of the year. That this class of men had thus "sampled" the office and * Since this study was undertaken the Chicago Bureau of Charities and the Chicago Relief and Aid Society have amalgamated under the name of the United Charities of Chicago, but for the sake of clearness, the original title is here used throughout. Homeless men are now interviewed and aided at the main office of the society and not at the Central District office above mentioned. '4 METHOD OF THIS INVESTIGATION had come to respect and avoid it on account of the strict investigation of their stories, was learned afterward from certain of the men themselves. Something in the manner of the interviews, how- ever, led these "rounders" and impostors to re- cognize that the spirit of the office was one of sympathy and helpfulness for real need, and this first "sampling" was soon followed by ap- plications from men of another sort whose stories were true, whose needs were real, and who were of a far more helpable type than the earlier applicants. These men were frequently referred to the office by men who had themselves been helped, but almost as frequently by those to whom material aid had been refused. Sometimes the sender was i-dentified, but more often the applicant could only say, "A man in the lodging house sent me," or "A fellow told me you helped men if they were sick or anything." In one instance a young boy made the following statement: "The fellow who sent me told me not to lie to you. He said that you would not hold it against me that you might help me anyway if I needed it, but that you'd find the lie out and I'd be ashamed that I had done it." No single fact gave the district workers a better opportunity to know these men and the conditions under which they lived than that the men themselves felt kindly toward the office and referred to it other men who were really helpable. The Bureau of Charities made and still makes a 15 HOMELESS MEN special effort to help unemployed men find work, and on this account still a third class of applicants came to the district office, men who asked noth- ing but employment, who were capable of self- support, and who were neither dependents nor vagrants. Such men frequently had some slight mental, physical, or temperamental handicap. Sometimes they were immigrants unacquainted with the language; sometimes strangers without city references or knowledge of how to go about find- ing the work they were able to do. Perfectly able- bodied men, capable of finding work for themselves, did not often apply; on the few occasions when they did, no special effort was made to help them, as the employment department of a charity office differs from an ordinary employment agency, and its reason for being is only that it may assist men to find work who might otherwise become appli- cants for relief. The Bureau of Charities for a number of years had an arrangement with the Western and Central Passenger Associations by which persons whose cases were investigated and recommended by the Bureau might secure railroad transportation at half rates. It was very difficult to secure such transportation otherwise than through the recom- mendation of the Bureau, and the railroad offices and depots, the police and city departments, and many other agencies that received appeals for passes or half rates, referred the applicants direct to the Bureau office. 16 METHOD OF THIS INVESTIGATION Through all these ways, as well as from ministers and private individuals all over thecity and through personal applications from the men themselves, large numbers of homeless men of many types came to the attention of the office in the course of a year, and opportunity for acquaintance with, and study of, this class was greater than would ordi- narily be the case.* In almost every instance when a homeless man applied for aid, an investigation was made, not merely to learn the truth or falsity of his story, but also to find out how best to help him back into normal social and industrial relations. Theoretic- ally, an investigation was made in every case re- ferred to the Bureau of Charities. Practically, no investigation beyond the original interview was made in a certain percentage of the cases of home- less men. For example, a man applied for half-rate transportation to St. Louis and admitted upon being questioned that he was able-bodied; that he had had no one but himself to support; that he had held a good position, paying $2. 50 a day, up to the previous day, and that he had left it volun- tarily. Manifestly, his was not a case to receive charitable assistance. His request was refused and no investigation made. Another instance, also representative of a type, was that of a man who asked to be sent to Colorado because he had * In the Central District office from 20 to 25 per cent of all appli- cations were those of homeless men. In the 1 1 other districts of the Bureau the percentage of homeless applicants during the same period was only 2 to 3 per cent. 3 17 HOMELESS MEN tuberculosis. He admitted that he had no money ; that he had neither friends nor relatives in Colo- rado able to assist him, nor any elsewhere who would send him money for living expenses. He was, moreover, too ill to be self-supporting there. Under the circumstances, it would have been cruel rather than kind to have granted his request and to have shipped a sick and penniless man to a com- munity upon which he had no claim and which would promptly have shipped him back. Other forms of assistance were offered and every effort made to make the man understand why his request was denied, but he refused other help and withdrew his application. He had not given enough infor- mation to enable the office to make an investiga- tion, and he never returned. Necessarily, his case was dropped. Another type of case which was not investi- gated was that of men who applied only for work at a time when the office was overwhelmed with serious calls for aid of all sorts from families in the district. Such men were questioned, their statements recorded, and they were given sugges- tions as to places where they might apply for employment. They were also asked to return if they did not find it or were in real need, but in the stress of more important work, the statements they made about themselves, while recorded, were not always verified. All such cases and any others which, for similar reasons, were not investigated, have been omitted from this study. The thou- 18 METHOD OF THIS INVESTIGATION sand cases have otherwise been taken just as they stand in the files and entirely without special selec- tion. But even in the " investigated " cases the amount of information secured varies greatly. Reasons for this variation lie in the fact that not all the interviews with the men were taken by agents of equal ability and training, nor had the inter- viewers exactly similar ideas of what kind of information was important to secure for the records. But what one might have wished to know in regard to a man and what one was able to learn were often found to be two very different things. It was not always possible to get all the information desired without needlessly offending and alienating the applicant. When a man asked only to be directed to a place where he might work for his lodging and when he seemed to be decent and self-respecting, the agent was hardly justified in asking him a series of minute questions as to his past history, his schooling, the age at which he began work, etc. Such facts and many others were secured in hundreds of cases where the men were known to the office for several months or years, but there were others in which the investiga- tion had to be confined to one or two work refer- ences, and the knowledge gained of such men was comparatively slight. In other instances the men gave false references or addresses, and about all that could be learned regarding them was that their stories were not true. 19 c HOMELESS MEN TABLE L GENERAL DATA CONCERNING 1000 HOMELESS MEN A. AGES, BY GROUPS 10 to 14 19 15 to 19 98 20 to 24 129 25 to 29.- 104 30 to 39 200 40 to 49 185 50 to 59 118 60 1069 85 70 or over 47 Not known 15 B. NATIVITY* American (including 41 Ne- groes) 625 German 92 English 66 Irish 61 Canadian 25 Scandinavian 24 Other 74 Not known 33 Total, Total 1000 1000 L C. CONJUGAL CONDITION Single 740 Married 78 Widowed 1 16 Divorced 15 Separated 49 Not known 2 Total. . . . 1000 D. AMOUNT OF EDUCATION Illiterate 52 Common school 872 College $ i Education not known 25 Total . 1000 A few of the men were too ill and some too old or too insane to answer questions intelligently. It is to be regretted that the item "not known" must appear so frequently in the statistical tables of this study, but the fact should be borne in mind that both interviews and investigations were originally made, not for future statistical purposes, but with the idea of learning the points in each case essential to a knowledge of how best to help the particular applicant; from a statistical standpoint, therefore, *The parents of 558 of the 1000 men were American; of 406, foreign born; and of 36, not known. Of the 625 men born in Amer- ica, the parents of 558 were American, and of 55, foreign born; of 3 the parentage was mixed, and of 9, not known. 20 METHOD OF THIS INVESTIGATION the records from which the tables have been made up were frequently found wanting. As will be seen by the accompanying table, 625 of the one thousand men (584 white and 41 colored), were born in America; 342 were foreign born,* and of 33 the birthplace was not known. Nineteen out of the thousand were between ten and fourteen years of age; 98 between fifteen and nineteen; the largest number in any one group being the 129 young men between the ages of twenty and twenty-four. Among the aged, nine were between eighty and ninety-five. f In noting the nationality, the ages, and the conjugal condition of the men, their own state- ments have been taken. In doing this we have run the same risk as do the makers of the United States Census; namely, that certain of the men may not have told the truth on these points. But as the instances would probably be rare in which they would have had any reason for misrepresent- ing their ages or nationality, and as such items are usually not absolutely verified in similar tables, that risk has been of necessity ignored. Regarding their conjugal condition, it is probable that there were some instances in which married * The birth places of the foreign born men were as follows: Canada, 25; England, 66; Ireland, 61; Scotland, 8; Wales, 3; Scandinavia, 24; Denmark, 3; Holland, 7; France, 12; Switzerland,!; Germany, 92; Austria, 6; Hungary, 3; Russia, 5; Poland, 5; Roumania, 4; Italy, 8; India, 3; West Indies, 2; Greece, Syria, Persia, and Trans- vaal, each i. t For additional data concerning the 1000 men, see Appendix A, Tables i and 2, p. 277. 21 HOMELESS MEN men who had deserted their families claimed to be single, and a few single men who, in order to use a pitiful story for begging purposes, claimed to be married. But it was, as a rule, comparatively easy for the Bureau's agent to verify or disprove these statements, and it is unlikely that any considerable number of such errors are listed among the cases tabulated in this study. A letter to a relative or even to an employer in the home town was almost sure to bring out the existence of a family if the man had one; and the familiarity of the agents with the fact that men past thirty sometimes mis- represent their conjugal state led the interviewers usually to ask, "Where is your wife?" or "How much of a family have you?" rather than "Are you married?" or "Have you a family?" In this way men were sometimes led to admit the existence of families which otherwise they might have failed to mention. Classified by conjugal condition, the number in each group was as follows:* Single 740 Married 78 Widowed 116 Divorced 15 Separated 49 Not known 2 Total looo In cases where the man was in friendly touch with his wife and family, expecting soon to return, * For table giving conjugal condition of the men classified by age groups, see Appendix A, Table i, page 277. 22 METHOD OF THIS INVESTIGATION he was entered as "married" in distinction to "widowed," "divorced," or "separated." Under "separated" are entered the cases of men legally separated from their wives; those who had deserted their wives; cases where separation was by mutual consent; also the cases of men whose wives had deserted them. It is unfortunate that the exact number of each of the four classes in- cluded under "separated" cannot be given, but while certain of the men admitted having left their families, very few would own to having deserted them. They claimed that they had left in order to find work and professed the intention of returning soon. This claim was made even in a few instances by men who admitted that they had not written to their homes nor heard from them in five years or more, and who acknowledged that their wives knew nothing of their whereabouts. Unquestionably, a number of these men had, in fact, left their homes with the sole intention of seeking work, but having failed to find it and hav- ing in time become tramps and vagrants, had felt ashamed to return in their penniless and degraded condition. They had continued to wander until even vague intentions of going back "some day" had left their minds and all responsibility for the support of their families had been abandoned. Effort was often made to persuade men of this class to return to their families, but I do not recall an instance in which it was successful. The 258 men who at the time of their applications were, or 23 HOMELESS MEN had been, married, owned to having 256 living children, of whom 144 were under sixteen. Two facts regarding the conjugal condition of these men are, perhaps, noteworthy. One is the great predominance of single men, due in part to the large number of young men in the thousand studied. The other fact of interest is that among this thousand men the widowers are nearly four times as numerous as among the male population at large.* It is the writer's belief that, while this percentage of difference would be found to be somewhat less in a study of men in lodging houses instead of among men who are applicants for charity, the number of widowers per thousand would still be found greater than among the general population. A large number of the men dated their vagrancy from the deaths of their wives and the breaking up of their homes which followed. Merely as a matter of interest, for the item probably has no intrinsic value, the number of instances in which the stories told by the men were found to be true or false has been recorded. In 126 cases we were unable to prove or disprove * POPULATION FIGURES (CENSUS OF 1900) Percent Single 23,666,836 60.6 Married 14,003,798 35.9 Widowed i, 182,292 3.0 Divorced 84,903 .2 Not known 121,412 .3 Aggregate men 39,059,241 100.0 24 METHOD OF THIS INVESTIGATION the men's initial stories, either because through age or for some other reason they were unable to give definite references, or because the persons to whom we were referred had moved and could not be found or else did not reply to letters. Ex- cluding the 126 whose stories could not be verified, of the remaining 874 cases the stories of 703 were found to be true, and 171 false.* Expressed in percentages, the stories of the one thousand men were mainly true in 70 per cent of the cases; mainly or wholly false in 17 per cent; and could not be verified in the remaining 1 3 per cent. These figures do not mean as much as would appear at first glance. The fact that his initial story could not be verified rarely meant that we knew nothing about the applicant; for sometimes his case was dealt with by the office continuously for several months or even years, and enough was learned of his character to enable us to judge pretty clearly as to the truth or falsity of his first statements. For similar reasons the fact that the man's first story was false does not imply that falsehood has been mingled with truth in the items classified in the tables accompanying this study. Upon investigation, some facts in regard to a man's life could usually be learned. For example, a lad of seventeen who claimed * In addition to the explanation of this statement given by the author it should be added that unskilful questioning would have elicited a very different result. The 703 men whose statements were in the main true, were helped to tell the truth by an intelligent and sym- pathetic inquiry. Editor. 25 HOMELESS MEN to be an orphan came to the office one day and asked to be given employment upon a farm in the country. He said that he had always lived in the country and did not like the city; that he was used to farming and had come to the city out of curiosity two weeks before but now wished to go back. This was the lad's story; but from a man friendly to the office who was living in the same lodging house, we learned that this boy was a runaway from a good home in Chicago. We soon learned further that both his parents were living; that he had been born and brought up in Chicago, and, with the exception of attendance at an occasional Sunday school picnic, had never seen the country in his life and, of course, had had no experience on a farm. Every word of the boy's story was false and yet there are few cases among those tabulated in this study upon which more complete information of all sorts was obtained. The boy is now twenty-three years old, is a confirmed va- grant, and still occasionally comes to the atten- tion of the Bureau. It would be pleasant to be able to record that all the original stories found to be true meant that the men who told them were really truthful; but the courts long ago took cognizance of the fact that there is "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth"; too much, therefore, must not be credited to the accounts of the men whose initial statements were "true." They were fre- quently led to tell the exact truth in order that 26 METHOD OF THIS INVESTIGATION they might be more likely to receive help after their stories had been investigated, but such truth by no means meant the whole truth, as the following story will indicate: A man came to the office on crutches, which he used on account of a recently broken leg. He told us the story of the accident, how and where it had occurred, and gave the name of the hospital in which he had been treated. These statements were found to be exactly true. He gave the names of three firms for which he had worked and of one personal friend, as references. All these spoke well of him. He also referred us to his record as a soldier, which we found to be excellent. After all these points had been verified, probably almost any one would agree that this case might be con- sidered "investigated" and that the agent knew the man well enough to deal intelligently with his problem. The case looked simple. Here, appar- ently, was an honest workman temporarily unable to support himself on account of an accident which he could not have foreseen nor avoided. That out of good wages he had not saved enough to carry himself through a rainy day was a point against him, but in this respect he was not different from hundreds of other strong, young fellows, with only themselves to support, who go on from year to year spending all they earn. Light work which he could do seated and which would enable him to earn his living until he could discard the crutches and return to his trade, would undoubtedly be the 27 HOMELESS MEN only aid required in order to reinstate him in a position of self-support. But what were the facts with which at this point we were not acquainted? This man had neglected to tell us that he was a periodic drinker of long standing; that during his drinking spells he had several times stolen money, though at other times he was honest; that he had served a term in the penitentiary for the last offense of the sort and that a warrant for his arrest was even then in the hands of the sheriff of an Illinois town. He had also neglected to mention that he had been married; that his wife was now dead, but that he had a little child dependent upon him who was in the care of his mother. He had further failed to give the names of certain employers, friends, and rela- tives whose statements regarding him would necessarily have been quite different in character from those of the few persons whom the agents of the Bureau had been permitted to interview. The experience with this case was one of a number which taught the district workers that as a source of real information in regard to an appli- cant, "work references," though necessary, are of less value than relatives. An interview with a single near relative is far more enlightening and helpful. The length of time that men were known to the office,* like the truth or falsity of their statements, * One day, 194 men; 2 days, 49; 2 days to i week, 143; i week to i month, 192; i month to 6 months, 163; 6 months to i year, 58; 28 METHOD OF THIS INVESTIGATION is very likely to mislead the reader who is not familiar with all the facts. A man may be en- tered as known to the office five or six years and yet the information in regard to him may be very meager. This is especially true of professional beggars who are repeatedly reported to the office by people from whom they beg, but about whom little can be learned; and of tramps who drop in once or twice a year for several years, but never give much information about themselves. On the other hand, acquaintance with some of the men was continuous for long periods. A few have been known from the early days of the Bureau to the present time. In one instance a lad who first came to its attention at the age of seven as a younger child in a dependent family, is now known to the Bureau as a confirmed vagrant of eighteen, although there is but slight record of him during the interval. As a general rule, more was known of men who are entered as "known to the office" during several months or years, than of those who applied but once or twice. This, however, was by no means always true. Code telegrams* to and from charity organization societies of other cities were frequently used in the investigation of cases requiring immediate action, and considerable information was sometimes secured about a man i year to 2 years, 55; 2 years to 10 years, 141; over 10 years, 5. Total, looo. For length of time the men were in the city before making application to the Bureau, see Appendix A, Table 2, p. 277. * See footnote on Transportation Code, in Chapter XI, Inter- state Migration of Paupers and Dependents, p. 208. 29 HOMELESS MEN within a few hours' time and his case finally dis- posed of in less than a day. There are a few instances of men who applied but once at the office, but who made statements which enabled the agents to trace the whole history of their lives. These facts must be kept in mind by the reader or he will be liable both to overestimate the importance of the truth or falsity of a man's statements and to underestimate the value of statistics based upon the study of men who were known to the office but a short time. No place in which to enter the amount of the applicant's education was specified upon the record cards of the Bureau, and this information was not always asked for. The items have therefore been made up from our general knowl- edge of the men after our investigations, and may be summarized as follows: Illiterate 52 Common School 872 College 51 Education not known . . . . 25 Total looo Any man able to read and write has been en- tered as having had a common school education, except such as are known to have had college training besides.* In the majority of cases the knowledge obtained of the amount of education * For facts of interest about the college men in this group, see Appendix A, Table 3, p. 278. 30 METHOD OF THIS INVESTIGATION was not accurate enough to make possible a separation of high school from common school, although in 35 instances the men are known to have had high school training and the actual number of such men is probably much greater. My personal impression from acquaintance with the 872 men whose cases were entered under "common school" is that a large proportion of them had had but a slight amount of schooling. This impression is based upon the histories of the men, the ages at which they went to work or began to wander, and upon other facts which bore direct relation to the amount of their schooling. Only 52 of the men were known to be illiterate; that is, unable to read or write even in their own languages. Of these, 26 were of foreign birth. The feeble- minded in the group, of whom there were 20, have, of course, increased the number of illiterates. The 25 recorded as "not known" were probably illiterate, but lacking definite knowledge, I have not so entered them. CHAPTER III PHYSICAL CONDITION OF HOMELESS MEN THE statistics which have been gathered in regard to conditions of health among the thousand men here studied would seem to prove that a very large percentage of this class are physically or mentally below normal. It must, however, be borne in mind that these statistics relate after all to a group of homeless men who are not in all respects typical of the mass of such men in lodging houses,* since all of themjiave applied for relief. In general charity work, sickness has been found to be one of the commonest immediate causes (rarely the only cause) of need, and this seems to be true of charitable work for homeless men; a very large proportion apply for help because they are temporarily or permanently disabled by accident or disease. If, as has been already suggested, a study could be made of homeless men in lodging houses instead of among applicants for chanty, the per- centage of those in good health would undoubtedly * See Appendix B, p. 314, for a study of Chicago lodging houses and their relation to the health of homeless men. 32 PHYSICAL CONDITION OF HOMELESS MEN be much higher. No statistics, however, are avail- able for purposes of comparison. No physical "examination has ever been made of men in the lodging houses of any city; and although in a few municipal lodging houses physicians have been employed to examine the lodgers, they have, as a rule, examined and made records only of men who appeared, or claimed to be, ill. No systematic record has been kept of the number of the crippled, maimed, epileptic, feeble-minded, or the deaf and the blind among the lodgers. In the very few municipal lodging houses in this country where a physician has been in regular attendance, he has been employed chiefly if not wholly to watch for and to prevent the spread of contagious diseases among the men. Although the figures here presented as to the amount of defectiveness and disease among home- less men are more complete than any that can be discovered for purposes of comparison, these also are incomplete, for no private charitable society has the right to insist (as might a municipal lodging house) that every man who applies shall be ex- amined by a physician, nor is this necessary; and although agents of the Chicago Bureau were in- structed to note the physical and mental condition of every applicant, the statements of those who appeared to be and claimed to be in good health were not ordinarily corroborated. In attempting at the present time to follow up the cases of two- thirds of this group of a thousand men I have found 3 33 HOMELESS MEN that several have since died from diseases which must have been far advanced when they applied, although there were no visible evidences of disease at that time, and the men having made no com- plaint of being ill were not sent for examination. Such men are listed in this study among the able- bodied. So, also, are those who claimed to be suffering from rheumatism, heart disease, or other ailments, but who did not go to the physicians to whom they were sent nor return to the office of the Bureau. It would be unfair to conclude that none of these were actually ill. A chance meeting with friends who gave the needed help may have relieved them of the necessity of returning to the Bureau for further aid, and other quite as legitimate reasons may explain their not going for examina- tion. Nevertheless, in this study such men have not been given the benefit of the doubt but have been classed with the able-bodied. When a man applied for aid who was, or claimed to be, unable to support himself on account of his physical or mental condition, the society felt justified in taking the position that he should not receive aid, other than emergent, unless he was willing to allow his condition to be passed upon by a physician in order that we might know just how ill he was and the probable time when he would again be able to work. All such men and any others who seemed to be ill and who were willing to go, were sent to dispensaries or to private physicians. About a third of the examinations 34 PHYSICAL CONDITION OF HOMELESS ME f were made at the dispensaries of St. Luke's and other South Side hospitals; the remaining two- thirds by private physicians in friendly touch with the work of the office. Not infrequently, the assistance of a famous surgeon, alienist, or other specialist was secured. In a few doubtful cases several physicians were consulted. Self-evident defects, like the loss of a limb, were entered upon the records without further corrob- oration than was necessary to ascertain that a sound arm was not bound to a man's side, leaving his coat sleeve empty, or, in other cases, that similar deceits were not practiced. A few such cases were found and there were other "fake" or "phoney "cripples (to use the men's own terms) as well as a number of "hospital rounders." These have been listed in the tables of beggars, frauds, and impostors, in Chapter X. The examining doctors were invariably asked to determine the physical ability of the men to earn their own living, and 'frequently the reports returned to the office related only to this question ; as, for instance, "This man is suffering from a chronic organic disease which will incapacitate him for heavy labor for the remainder of his life, which probably will not be long. I should advise some light employment to. occupy his mind, but doubt whether he will ever again be able to be self-supporting. Good food and freedom from worry will prolong his life." Or, still more informally, " I found John Smith whom you re- 35 HOMELESS MEN TABLE II. DEFECTS AND DISEASES AMONG 627 MEN Number of Condition Instances Insanity* 52 Feeble-Mindedness* 19 Epilepsy* 18 Paralysis 40 Other Nervous Disorders! 21 Tuberculosis 93 Rheumatism 37 Venereal Diseases 21 Other Infectious Diseases f 15 Heart Disease 14 Diseases of Organs other than Heartf 19 Crippled, Maimed, t or Deformed from Birth or by Accidents 168 Rupture 1 1 Cancer 6 Blind including partly blind 43 Deaf including partly deaf 14 Defective Health through use of Drink and Drugs. . . 16 Defective Health from lack of nourishment and other causes 24 Con v^tescent 33 AgedlT 35 All other known diseases or defects! 7 Doubtfulf 16 Total instances 722 Total Number of Different Men in Defective Health or Condition 627 ferred to my office today a very sick man and have placed him in St. Luke's Hospital." The nature of these statements and the fact * See special chapters dealing with the insane, feeble-minded, and epileptic, and with the aged. t For additional data with regard to these groups, see Appendix A, Table 4, p. 279. J In addition to these 168 there were 86 men crippled or maimed by diseases, making a total of 254 in all. See Chapter IV, The Crippled and Maimed. Special data concerning the blind and deaf will be found in Appendix A, Table 6, p. 281. 36 PHYSICAL CONDITION OF HOMELESS MEN that men were sometimes referred to the Municipal Lodging House for a night's lodging and that reports received from that institution later stated that its physician had found them to be ill and had sent them to a hospital, will account for the item "doubtful" in Table II. No one of the men has been listed as suffering from a specific disease or defect, whose condition was not either self-evident or vouched for by a written or verbal statement by the physician who examined him. So far as it goes, therefore, the list of diseases and defects given in Table II, and the proportions in which they appear, may be depended upon as approximately accurate, with the exception of venereal diseases and tuberculosis. In regard to the former, unless a man had open sores, trouble with his eyes, or lameness not other- wise accounted for, which led the interviewer to suspect the presence of syphilis or kindred ailments, he was not sent to a physician for examination and the disease escaped noting. With so chance a method of detection, the number of such cases given is unquestionably too small. A man en- tered as blind or as crippled may also have been syphilitic without that fact being discovered. Locomotor ataxia, in a majority of cases a conse- quence of syphilis, and certain forms of paralysis sometimes so, are both common among men of de- fective health in lodging houses. Tuberculosis, the other disease of which there were undoubtedly more cases than the figures 37 HOMELESS MEN indicate, is difficult to recognize in its earlier stages, and unless a man complained of being ill, or his general appearance suggested the disease, he was not examined for it. Ninety-three of the men were, however, definitely known to be suf- ferers,* and a number of cases of chronic bronchitis may have developed into tuberculosis later; and pneumonia convalescents living perforce in the infected rooms of lodging houses must frequently have had the seeds of tuberculosis already at work in their systems at the time they applied to the Bureau for aid. Forty of the 93 tuberculous men gave Chicago as their legal residence and of these at least 30 are known to have been living in lodging houses for one year or more at the time they came to us. 1 1 is of course not possible to say positively where any- one suffering from a germ disease breathed in the infection that caused his illness, but, although in 44 cases (most of them non-resident) we knew that the men were afflicted with tuberculosis before they entered the lodging houses, in 38 cases there was a reasonable doubt as to whether this was the fact. In ii instances we knew, almost beyond question, that the men were in perfectly sound health previous to their taking up residence in the Chicago lodging houses, and the presumption is that they contracted the disease within them. One man of the 1 1 we knew for three years, and * For facts concerning nationality, conjugal condition, and occupa- tions of the tuberculous men, classified by age group, see Appendix A, Table 5, p. 280. 38 PHYSICAL CONDITION OF HOMELESS MEN tuberculosis developed -luring the last six months of that period. Another man, known to the office two years, developed the disease in the last three months of our acquaintance with him. Another, known two and a half years and for different reasons examined three times during that period by our physicians, showed symptoms of the disease only upon the last examination but died of it at Dunning* two months later. Several young boys from whose parents we learned that they had been in perfect health when they left home and that no member of their families was tuberculous, de- veloped the disease after a year or less of tramping and lodging house life, il tjsjrianifestly impossible to prove that any of tEesVmen, or many others whose records are similar, acquired the disease in the lodging houses, but from the chronically, unsanitary condition of those houses there is every reason to believe that they did so. i Although 627 men of the thousand were, by the methods of investigation and examination which have been noted, found to be diseased or defective,! the handicaps of many were slight, not really affecting their working power to any appreciable extent; those of others were temporary, not affecting it for long. One hundred and ninety- five of the thousand were addicted to the excessive * The Cook County Infirmary (almshouse) is situated at Dunning. t Classified by ten-year periods, the ages of these men were: Under 20 years, 41; 20 to 30 years, 137; 30 to 40 years, 130; 40 to 50 years, 134; 50 to 60 years, 85; 60 to 70 years, 55; above 70 years, 37; not known, 8. Total, 627. 39 HOMELESS MEN use of drink and known to be drug users. In all these cases the earning power of the men was more or less affected by these habits, but in only 16 instances (those included in Table II) was their health so seriously affected that their physical condition, as well as the habit itself, handicapped them in matters of employment. Thirty-three convalescents have been included in the table be- cause although dismissed from the hospitals as "cured" they were, in reality, so far from well that in some cases they would have been incapable of self-support for a number of weeks, even under the best of circumstances, while under those in which they are forced to live in the lodging houses, complete recovery is of ten long postponed or even unattainable in the end. Whether a physical condition is temporary or permanent is not easy in the beginning to deter- mine, and whether such condition be trifling or important can be judged only in relation to the particular man affected. For example, the loss of one eye did not affect the working ability of a day laborer, but the same loss suffered by a railroad engineer prevented him from securing work at his trade and was the chief cause of his dependence. Similarly, the loss of a finger or two would not incapacitate a sewer digger, but it threw out of employment and was an important contributory cause of the vagrancy of a certain factory man, to manipulate whose machine those particular fingers had been essential. In both instances, these slight 40 PHYSICAL CONDITION OF HOMELESS MEN handicaps formed active causes of dependence until the men succeeded in readjusting themselves to new trades or new forms of employment. Such adjustment for certain of the older men was found to be quite as difficult as was that in the cases of men whose labor had been displaced by the intro- duction of machinery. In fact, the physical handi- cap proved the greater obstacle. Lesser injuries than the two cited sometimes had far-reaching and unexpected results. A man on his way to newly-found and 'much-needed work one day gave an expressman a lift in handling a heavy trunk. By some awkwardness it slipped and crushed his right thumb. A trifling accident, per- haps, but the sore thumb, although given the best of surgical care from the beginning, not merely lost the man the permanent job to which he was going when the accident occurred, but kept him from any other work for several weeks. I n another very similar case, an injured thumb was not given proper care and the man ultimately lost his left arm. To what extent the defects and diseases listed in this and the three following chapters were due to causes related to the vagrancy of the men, is a question hard to decide with any certainty. Exposure and irregular living probably caused the dysentery from which a few of the men suffered. Similarly, the mode of life may have caused the rheumatic lamenesses with which 37 men were afflicted. The insanity of certain of the men HOMELESS MEN undoubtedly bore direct relation to lack of food, worry, and irregular habits, and it is well known that the number of seizures from which an epileptic suffers is increased by idleness and worry. In a few other ways the vagrant lives of these men may have been either directly responsible for their physical or mental conditions or largely contribu- tory to them. On the other hand, in numbers of cases such conditions were themselves the causes and not the effects of the vagrancy. This was especially true of the men who had met with industrial or other accidents involving the loss of a hand or a foot. Several men were known to have been fully self-supporting before such accidents occurred, but to have become partly or totally dependent afterward.* In other cases the physical or mental condition of a man seemed to be both a cause and an effect of his vagrancy. Take, for instance, a case in which from a spirit of adventure a young fellow starts out to beat his way on the railroad. Within a few months he meets with an accident which necessitates the amputation of his right arm or both his legs. He is ever afterward a cripple, and being, for a time at least, necessarily dependent, he develops into a confirmed vagrant. Here the physical handicap is caused by the vagrancy and itself produces further vagrancy. I The same is true when a man suffering from a slighrrhental disorder *See Chapter IV, The Crippled and Maimed; and Chapter V, Industrial Accidents. See also Appendix A, Tables 9-13, pp. 284- 288. 42 PHYSICAL CONDITION OF HOMELESS MEN wanders away from his friends and starts out on the "road/' Within a month his mode of life has greatly aggravated his insanity and he wanders on in this condition for months or even years unless some one stops him and assures his proper care. ^ No attempt has been made, therefore, to classify the defectiveness of the men according to causes. The relation of their physical condition to their economic dependence is a little less difficult to trace and will be indicated in some of the special studies which follow. 43 CHAPTER IV THE CRIPPLED AND MAIMED TWO hundred and fifty-four men, or more than a fourth of the one thousand studied, were either temporarily or permanently crippled or maimed. The disclosure of so large a proportion of handicapped men will probably provoke ques- tions in the minds of most readers, both as to whether a similar proportion would be found among other thousands of the homeless and shifting popu- lation, and as to what may have been the causes and what are the effects of all this crippling of men. It is not possible to compare the ratioof crippled and maimed in this group with that of the homeless men at large, because there are no statistics available in regard to the latter; but for the reasons men- tioned in a previous chapter, there is little question but that the percentage of crippled and maimed is larger among homeless men who have asked charity than it would be found to be among home- less men in general; a fact which should be con- stantly kept in mind lest one fall into the error of drawing unwarranted general conclusions from statistics which relate only to a particular, and in this regard a peculiar, group of men. But whether 44 THE CRIPPLED AND MAIMED or not the number of cripples per thousand is smaller among the homeless men in the lodging houses than in this group, the causes of crippling and the ratios in which they appear, and the indi- vidual and social results of it, would be much the same wherever homeless men might be studied. It has, therefore, seemed worth while to study with some care the histories of these 254 crippled men. MEN CRIPPLED BY DISEASE Illness was found to be responsible for a very large percentage of the crippling and maiming of this quarter-regiment of men, although a number who were in fact disabled by illness claimed to have been injured in industrial or general accidents. Forty men were paralytic; 21 had muscles so knotted and misshapen from rheumatism that they were seriously handicapped; 10 were suffering from locomotor ataxia; six were at least tempo- rarily crippled by venereal diseases; six had tu- berculous spines, had lost limbs, or were in other ways crippled or maimed through the ravages of tuberculosis, and three were crippled by other diseases. Eighty-six men in all, or 34 per cent of the 254, were thus crippled or maimed by dis- ease. Because of the lack of information on the records, it is not possible in a majority of these cases to go behind the diseases themselves to the underlying causes which produced them. Among the men 45 HOMELESS MEN TABLE III. GENERAL DATA CONCERNING THE 86 MEN CRIPPLED BY DISEASE* A. AGES, BY GROUPS B. CAUSES OF CRIPPLING Under 30 12 Paralysis 40 30 to 39 17 Rheumatism 21 40 to 49 23 Locomotor ataxia 10 50 to 59 19 Tuberculosis 6 60 or over 15 Venereal diseases 6 Other 3 Total 86 Total 86 C. AMOUNT OF SELF-SUPPORT (i) Self-supporting before (2) Self-supporting after injury injury Entirely 46 Entirely 3 Partly 4 Partly 25 Not at all 23 Not at all 58 Not known 13 Total 86 Total . . .86 who were victims of paralysis, locomotor ataxia, and venereal diseases, a number admitted that their habits and vices had alone been responsible for their present physical conditions. Only 17 of the 56 men suffering from these three forms of disease were, or, so far as we could learn, had ever been "hard drinkers"; but that licentiousness was a cause of their condition in many cases there can be but slight question, even though our investiga- tion of the previous histories of the men was not such as would necessarily disclose the existence of that vice./ In the cases of three men only among the 40 paralytics was the nature of the work in which they had been engaged responsible for their * See also Appendix A, Tables 7 and 8, pp. 282 and 283. 4 6 THE CRIPPLED AND MAIMED disease. Lead poisoning caused the paralysis of two men, who had been painters, and chronic bowel disorder caused by exposure produced it in the third, who had been a soldier. A fourth man claimed to be suffering from telegrapher's paraly- sis; but since, in tracing his history back for fifteen years, we were unable to learn that he had had any record of work, and since, moreover, he had been a tramp and a heavy drinker for at least that number of years, he should probably be included among the men who were the victims of t^ierrjvices rather than among those who sacrificed heal tli in pursuance of their daily work. Twenty, or only one-half, of the paralytics are known to have been entirely self-supporting* previous to the strokes which crippled them. Of the remainder, 12 were tramps and vagrants and had earned little or none of their own support; two had been partly self-supporting; one had been paralyzed in his childhood, and of five we do not know the facts as to self-support before paralysis. Following their paralysis, 31 were entirely dependent, seven partly self-supporting, and only two were able by peddling to be indepen- dent. Among the 21 men crippled by rheumatism were eight whose work during the major part of their lives had been of such a nature that it probably caused the disease; but two of the men had been * For data concerning amount of self-support among the men crippled by disease, see Table III, and Appendix A, Table 8, p. 283. 47 HOMELESS MEN tramps for several years prior to our acquaintance with them, and their wanderings may have been partly responsible for their crippled limbs. Four- teen of the rheumatic cripples, or two-thirds of the whole number, had good work records and were without bad habits, a larger proportion than was the case among the paralytics. Only four men were drunkards, one was an opium eater, and two were tramps; but out of these seven, four had had excellent work records before they became crippled. Thirteen of the rheumatic cripples had been fully self-supporting before becoming too lame to work, three had not sup- ported themselves, and of five we know too little to make positive statements on this point. Since being crippled 1 3 were totally dependent, eight partly self-supporting, and not one was entirely self-supporting. MEN CRIPPLED BY GENERAL ACCIDENT OR FROM BIRTH Excluding the 86 men crippled by illness there remained five who had been born crippled and 163 who had been crippled by accidents of various sorts. The exact nature of these accidents cannot be given in every instance, because the victims of them were frequently tramps and vagrants, men who at the time of our acquaintance with them had already become parasitic beggars, and it was impossible to learn the truth about their 48 THE CRIPPLED AND MAIMED injuries. Men injured while tramping claimed to have met with industrial accidents; men injured in drunken brawls in saloons claimed to have slipped and fallen on icy sidewalks. All manner of false claims were made; and while to prove that they were false was sometimes not very difficult, it was exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to learn just what the form of accident was which had crippled the man. Out of the whole number (254) of crippled and maimed, 55 men (21.7 per cent) claimed to have met with industrial acci- dents. A larger proportion of these men mis- represented the facts about themselves than did any other class of the crippled. For this, and for other reasons, it has seemed best to study the histories of these 55 men in a separate chapter,* and their cases are omitted from the tables and from the text of the remainder of this chapter. This leaves 1 1 3 men who were crippled from birth or who became so through accidents not directly occupational. For a large number of these accidents, neither society nor the men themselves can be held re- sponsible; they were accidents, pure and simple, which could not have been foreseen or prevented, and cannot be charged to bad industrial conditions, to indifference on the part of authorities to the welfare of citizens, nor to the individual careless- ness or recklessness of the men who suffered them. In almost one-half of the cases, however, the men's * See Chapter V, Industrial Accidents. 4 49 22 TABLE IV. CAUSES OF CRIPPLING (EXCLUDING CASES WHERE IT WAS CAUSED BY ILLNESS OR WHERE MEN CLAIMED INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS) Number While stealing ride or "beating" way 13 Hurt on As passengers 4 Railways Walking on tracks 2 Not known how (tramping sus- pected) 3 Falls of various sorts 18 Accidents in childhood 7 Born crippled or maimed 5 Street car accidents 6 Runaway horses 3 Run over by vehicles 2 Injured by jumping from windows during hotel fires. ... 2 Hurt in saloon fights while intoxicated ! . . 2 Hurt, not known how, while intoxicated 2 Flesh tears and blood poisoning from rusty wire and nail 2 Bullet wounds 2 Feet frozen 2 Knocked down and robbed (arm broken) Kicked by a horse Struck by a falling timber Thumb crushed by truck falling on it Leg amputated after a battle of the Civil War Exact cause of crippling not known 33* Total H3t * Of these 33 men the exact cause of whose crippling is not known the following facts are of interest: Seventeen were men who are known to have been dependents, tramps or beggars for a number of years before the accidents which crippled them occurred. Three were quite young tramps and beggars of whom too little is known to say whether their crippled condition was caused by their vagrancy or not; no work record could be discovered, however, and injuries while tramping are strongly suspected. Seven men with broken arms or legs, sprained ankles or other injuries are known to have met with general and not industrial accidents, since in each case these occurred when the men were unemployed. Of the six remaining cases three were respectable old men, three self-respecting and self- supporting younger men. Our records show nothing of cause of in- jury in these six cases and industrial accidents may have been the causes of crippling in one or more of these instances. fOf these, 82 were permanently crippled; 31 temporarily or the extent of injury not known. THE CRIPPLED AND MAIMED habits of drink, wandering, and vagrancy must be held as mainly responsible for the accidents which crippled them. This estimate is based upon a careful study of the records of the men, and includes 10 instances in which men admitted that they were intoxicated when they were injured, and 15 trespassing or tramping accidents on the rail- roads. It also includes a number of other cases where the men were habitual drunkards or con- firmed tramps, and in which there was every reason to regard individual causes as responsible for the injuries suffered. For instance, one of the two men crippled by having both feet frozen met with this accident while locked for two days in a box-car in which he was stealing a ride dur- ing a spell of zero weather. However, whether the original cause of this crippling was social or individual, or purely acci- dental, a man's adjustment to his changed con- dition, and his ultimate position in the industrial world, seem to depend in very large part upon his own spirit and temperament and his general attitude toward life. The man who was a vagrant and a tramp before his injury is likely to be one after it, and will often use his handicap as his most valuable begging asset. The man who was a worker will in most cases be a worker still, if not totally in- capacitated by his injuries or overwhelmed by dire poverty or friendlessness.* The actual amount of * For table showing amount of self-support before and after injury of the 113 men, classified by length of time since accident, see Ap- 5' HOMELESS MEN his physical handicap itself, apparently, has less to do with a man's failure to be self-supporting after an accident, than those qualities within him which are hard to describe but which make for character; this accounts for the fact that three men of this group who had lost both legs were fully self-supporting, and that five who had lost one or two fingers were parasitic and used these comparatively trifling handicaps as excuses for dependence. Speaking generally, the man who earns no part of his own support after he meets with an accident, and who makes no effort to do so, has a moral lack in his character which is more truly responsible for the fact of his vagrancy than is his physical lack of an arm or a leg. Among the cripples living in the cheap lodging houses, as among the men in general, some will be found who belong to each of the four main classi- fications mentioned in the opening chapter. Some will be continually self-supporting; others will be occasionally or temporarily dependent, but may easily be brought back to self-support; others are chronically dependent from necessity; and still others are willing parasites, although their injuries may be slight or temporary. Of the 1 1 3 men crippled by general accident or from birth, 49 belonged to the temporarily dependent ("help- able") class, 27 were chronically dependent, 31 pendix A, Table Q, p. 284. For similar data concerning 82 men permanently crippled, classified by condition, see Appendix A, Table 10, p. 285. 52 THE CRIPPLED AND MAIMED parasitic, and of the remaining six too little was known to classify. As might be expected from the fact that they are physically handicapped, these crippled and maimed men, more frequently than the able-bodied, shift for short periods from one group to another. The processes that tend to demoralize and force them into the lowest class are more clearly discernible in these cases than among the ab'e-bodied men, since it is probable that among the handicapped the causes of vagrancy in a large proportion of cases are objective rather than subjective. HELPABLE CRIPPLES None of the 1 1 3 men who were cripples from birth or who became so through general accident could be considered fully self-supporting at the time of their application to the Bureau of Charities; but study of the records shows that 49 men (43 per centof the number), belonged to the"helpable" class of lodging house men. They were readily helped back into positions of self-support. They did not require continuous assistance. Nineteen had friends or relatives elsewhere able to care for them, and were given transportation to them. Of these, one was a man with both legs amputated who found himself unable to get along in Chicago, although in his native city, where he was well known, he had worked up a paying business as a bootblack. Returning this man to his home took 53 HOMELESS MEN him out of the lodging house district, and saved him from further dependence. A boy of eighteen who was very seriously crippled was returned to his parents, with whom he has since remained. A man who had lost his left leg and left arm was sent to friends elsewhere, who gave him permanent employment. In Chicago he had been dependent. A Negro from the far South, brought North with others to take the place of strikers, was accidentally left in Chicago when the rest of the carload were returned by the company that had imported them. Unused to the city, and handi- capped by deformed feet, this man would soon have become a dependent for life if he had not, through the agency of the Bureau, been returned to the South. So far as I have been able to trace the cases today, every crippled man or boy sent by the Bureau to friends or relatives was permanently removed from the city lodging houses; and, undoubtedly, the prompt removal of these 19 men, the total cost of whose half-rate tickets was not over $100, saved some from per- manent vagrancy and all from much needless suffering. The story of one other man in this group is perhaps worthy of fuller mention, since it illus- trates not only by what mere chances able-bodied men may suddenly become helpless dependents, but also shows how possible it is, even in very serious cases, to save such men from chronic depend- ence. A trained young workman came to Chicago 54 THE CRIPPLED AND MAIMED for employment. He was rather above the grade of the average lodging house man, and therefore looked up a rooming house in a respectable part of town and had his trunk sent there instead of locating in the downtown part of the city. On his way to promised employment the day after his arrival, he climbed onto a railroad embankment which lay between himself and the factory just beyond the tracks. If he had but walked a block in either direction he might have passed safely under the embankment, but this he did not know. Just as he reached the top his hat blew off, and without a glance in either direction he sprang forward to catch it. As he did so he was struck by an express train and hurled many feet. When he recovered consciousness at the County Hospital, two days later, he found that one leg had already been amputated and that the use of his right arm was gone. Six weeks later he was dismissed from the hospital, and made his way with difficulty to his rooming place, only to find that his trunk had long before been sold for storage and that the blood-stained and torn garments which he had on were his only possessions. Among thousands of pitiful cases I do not recall a man whose mental anguish was greater than this man's when he first realized that at twenty-eight he was crippled for life, and that at that mo- ment he was penniless in a strange city, where he must either ask charitable help or die. No care and tactfulness of ours was able to lessen the 55 HOMELESS MEN bitterness of grief, the agony of humiliation which he suffered. It was some time before we could persuade him to return to the little eastern city from which he came. He had left it full of strength, energy, and health, and the thought of returning to be a burden upon his old mother or friends, or to enter in time the local poorhouse, was more than he could endure. But in Chicago his only alternative was to beg upon the streets, being a non-resident he was not eligible for admission to the Cook County poorhouse. Until replies to our letters to the East (which by several mischances were long delayed) could be received, the Bureau of Charities furnished food and lodging. A peg leg (made for him by a sympathetic carpenter in the lodging house) and a cane, soon enabled him to walk without crutches, and a famous surgeon who was consulted about the right arm gave promise of the ultimate return of part of its usefulness. The letters written to the superintendent of the Associated Charities of the man's home town, enlisted his interest and help; and when, four months from the date of his accident, the man was given half-rate transporta- tion back to his home, he went knowing that light work awaited him on his arrival, and that he need not be wholly dependent. During the current winter, in answer to a letter of inquiry, the writer has learned that this man has been entirely self- supporting throughout the eight years since his return. 56 THE CRIPPLED AND MAIMED Equally successful results followed the giving of prompt and adequate assistance to certain helpable cripples who were not sent out of the city. A well chosen peddler's outfit made two of these, each of whom had lost an arm, self-supporting for as long a period as we were able to follow them. For a man of sixty-seven, with an injured hip, who was able to earn a very small part of his own sup- port, the Bureau secured from a sister in England a pension of $5.00 a month for the remainder of his life. Various forms of assistance were given to others. Altogether, in the cases of 35 men out of the 49 of the "helpable" type of cripples, there is a reasonable basis for belief that the aid given at a critical time in their lives permanently saved them from further dependence upon society and from vagrancy, since in almost every instance it was the man's self-respect which hung in the bal- ance, as well as his economic independence. For 12 of the other 14 apparently helpable men, there is more of a question as to ultimate results, since they were known to the office for periods ranging only from one day to three or four weeks, when they dropped out of sight and their subse- quent histories could not be followed. Only of the remaining two men must known failure be reported. One, a Negro, had apparently when we knew him been helped back to a position of self-support, but has been unable to hold his own and is today a tramp and a vagrant. In the 57 HOMELESS MEN other case, for two years we watched and worked against the gradual deterioration of a really fine man; but the odds against him in the struggle for independence were very great, and association with idlers and beggars in the lodging houses finally converted him into one of their number. We failed utterly to save this man; but I have included him with the helpable cripples, because I believe that he had enough of self-respect and ability when he first applied to the Bureau for help to have been saved in the end if we could have found the right sort of work for him and if he could have been removed in time from the morally poisonous atmosphere of the lodging houses. CHRONICALLY DEPENDENT CRIPPLES Twenty-seven men in the group of 1 1 3 were at the time of their applications to the Bureau totally and continuously dependent but not parasitic in spirit. Eight of these men were, with the Bureau's help, made self-supporting for a time, but soon became dependent and remained so for the rest of their lives. I n the case of five other chronic dependents the burden of support was placed upon relatives at a distance, or upon the communities elsewhere of which they were legal residents. One of these men had left the poorhouse at Milwaukee and come to Chicago because he had the idea, which seems to be held all over America, that no matter how unfit a man may be, "any one can find work 58 THE CRIPPLED AND MAIMED in Chicago." Another was a deaf mute who had frozen both feet. He was sent to relatives in New York. A large percentage of these chronically depend- ent cripples had an additional handicap of some kind which accounted for their total dependence. Two were over seventy years of age, seven were between sixty and seventy, and two between fifty and sixty. Age alone might not have incapaci- tated these latter; but, as in addition they were per- manently crippled, complete self-support proved to be impossible. Two men of this group were epileptic as well as crippled, two were mildly insane, one was feeble-minded, and one very dull mentally. One was a deaf mute, and five had tuberculosis or some other chronic illness which seriously affected them. Several men in this group showed the results of failure to receive needed help at the beginning of their difficulties. Here is a typical story of one man whose dependence was due to this cause. He had always been fully self-supporting previous to the accident in which he lost one leg just below the hip. After the accident he became a street beggar, but never overcame an intolerable sense of shame and degradation. The man who sits on a public street with his hat before him and begs would seem, to most people, to be more shameless and hardened in his profession than the man who asks for a night's lodging at the door; but this particular street beggar said that he himself had 59 HOMELESS MEN chosen the former method because it saved him from the shame of asking for help. "When I sit there, anyone can see that I am helpless; I do not have to speak." Although this man had been begging for four years at the time he came to the attention of the Bureau, he had never become hardened to the practice, and when offered adequate help if he would stop it and co-operate in our effort to make him self-supporting, he instantly agreed and kept his promise even when by begging he could have increased from four to ten-fold the meager earnings which he made during the two years of attempted self-support through which he struggled. Help had come too late. The artificial leg which was furnished him through the Bureau should have been received four years earlier, before the muscles of the stump had become flabby and almost useless. He learned in time to walk without crutches but never without a cane, and he always limped badly, which made it difficult to secure work for him. Possible employers frankly told the writer that while they would be glad to help the man, the risk of accident to a cripple in a factory is so great that they could not afford to take it, lest a law-suit for damages be the sequel of an attempt to "mix philanthropy and business." Through personal influence and with difficulty, three positions in different factories where he might work seated were secured for the man during a period of a year and a half; but each, for reasons not connected 60 THE CRIPPLED AND MAIMED with his ability or persistence, was lost. A part- nership in a small shop was then secured, which bid fair for a time to solve his difficulties; but this had to be given up on account of the failing health of the man himself. Exposure, lack of food, and the unsanitary conditions in the lodging houses during the years before help came to him had done their work, and he was obliged to abandon his plucky fight for independence and go to the only haven for such wounded soldiers the county poorhouse, where he died of tuberculosis two months later. Every step in the history of this man's life, both before and after his accident, would indicate that if he had been given the aid he needed immediately after the accident, he might have been saved for many years of usefulness. The importance of prompt and adequate relief of some sort in the case of every self-respecting cripple condemned to live in a lodging house can- not be overestimated. The development of our awakened social conscience will, undoubtedly, lead in time to the passage of laws and to the adoption of methods in all states which will insure both better protection from accidents and needed sup- port for the injured after accidents occur. In the meantime, it is difficult to see how the men suffering from general accidents today are to be provided for except by means of an intelligent administra- tion of adequate charitable relief. So long as our hospitals dismiss cripples without an inquiry as to how they shall subsist after leaving; so long as 61 HOMELESS MEN municipal lodging houses, industrial homes, wood yards, and other charitable agencies which come in touch with these men after their dismissals from hospitals, are content to furnish a night's lodging or a day or two of inadequate work and then allow the' men to drift on; and so long as the few charities in the country which attempt to deal adequately and humanely with them are sorely handicapped by lack of means, by the indifference of the public, and by the unwillingness of em- ployers to give the men such work as they are able to do, it is difficult to see how there can be much change for the better in the conditions under which the homeless crippled and maimed now live. PARASITIC CRIPPLES With men as seriously handicapped as are some of the mendicant cripples seen on the streets, it is sometimes a question as to how far they may be able to contribute to their own support, even if they are willing to make the effort. But when numerous opportunities to earn at least a part of their living are offered such men and refused, there is no question but that the begging is con- tinued from choice and not from necessity. Among the 1 1 3 men crippled by general acci- dent or from birth, 31 were of this type. Three had lost both legs, too serious a handicap to make self- support possible, one may say. One of these, a young lad, had parents able and willing to care 62 THE CRIPPLED AND MAIMED for him but he preferred to beg. Another had artificial legs, and training in a trade in which, by his own admission, he could have earned his living had he so chosen. The third man had received large damages from the railway company responsible for his injury, but had squandered the money and made no effort to find employment, although he was well educated and could un- doubtedly have supported himself by some form of clerical work. This man took to begging at once and apparently without even a passing sense of shame, and he refused to give up the practice, although offered his full support until a position could be found for him. We were not able in a single case to win a man of this group of parasitic cripples back to a position of self-support, although the injuries of four were temporary and of 10 very slight. Every one of the 31 listed as parasitic was offered at least one opportunity for self-support; several of them many; but all refused work because they could make more money and make it more easily by begging. Not that the men themselves always put it in that way; a few claimed to prefer self-support to vagrancy, but these invariably found some excuse for giving up every position in which they were placed, and in a few weeks' time returned to their old begging stands and would make no further effort for independence. Some men claimed to be begging only to secure money for an artificial leg, saying they would go to 63 HOMELESS MEN work after obtaining one, but in no case when a leg had been purchased did the begging cease. An earnest recital of a desire to work as soon as an artificial leg is secured proves to be productive of such good results in the form of contributions from the public, that it is the favorite begging story of many one-legged mendicants. One man who is still known to the Bureau has used the story for eleven consecutive years, during which he has re- ceived money enough to purchase scores of legs. Not a few mendicant cripples who own artificial legs wear them by day and unstrap them and beg on the streets at night. There were even two in- stances in Chicago where men wore their artificial legs and were employed during the day but begged at the theatre doors at night. Five men in this group had no more serious physical defect than the loss of from one to three fingers, in two cases from the right hand, in three, from the left; a sixth man had a broken finger; but all six based their pleas for charitable assistance upon these comparatively slight handi- caps. Five of the six, all but the man with the broken finger, were well educated men for whom there was no apparent excuse for dependence. They were distinctly degenerate, and had been beggars and tramps almost from boyhood. Two were addicted to the drug habit and two were heavy drinkers. In the two groups (helpable and chronically dependent cripples) previously discussed, there 64 THE CRIPPLED AND MAIMED were a number of men who were dependen t because of their injuries, but in only one instance in this third group had a man descended to the ranks of the parasites since and chiefly on account of his handicap. F.ven in this case the injury was, per- haps, only indirectly responsible for his downfall, which came about not for lack of help at the time of his accident, but rather because of the receipt of too large an amount of material aid at once. He was a Negro laborer whose left arm was partly paralyzed through a railroad accident. He re- ceived $200 from the railroad company, which was the largest amount he had ever possessed at one time. He spent it as rapidly as possible, for drink and carousing, and when it was exhausted, unable to stand again in the ranks as a laborer, he became a drunkard and a tramp-vagrant. Six men out of the 1 1 3 were known to the office too slightly and for too short a time to make pos- sible any definite classification of their status [or habits. Of these, however, two were known to be tramps, and the stones of all six were either false or unconfirmable, so it is probable that these too must be added to the group of parasitic cripples. Several questions will naturally arise in the minds of people after reading thus far: " How can we tell to which class the cripple who applies to us belongs? We do not wish to help lazy im- postors who could get employment or have other means of support; but if, after all, only 31 or 5 65 HOMELESS MEN possibly 37 out of a group of 1 1 3 men belong to this latter class, shall we then not risk doing greater harm to the majority of cripples in need by refusing aid to all than by giving to all?" These questions have been put to the writer so many times that it is evident they must vex many sympathetic and conscientious people. The instinctive desire to help in some way causes them to revolt from the negative mandate of certain pseudo-scientific workers, who say "do not give," and who yet offer no substitute for giving. As a rule, but one answer can be made to the first question. The ordinary citizen cannot know merely by interviewing a beggar to what class he belongs, and to what extent, if at all, he should be aided. If definite knowledge is desired, and it is the only basis of intelligent help, investigation of the case had better be turned over to specially trained experts, of whom there are a few in almost every city of the Union. These men and women have met and dealt with hundreds of applicants where the ordinary citizen has known but few, and these few, as a rule, rather superficially. As to the second question, there is a fallacy in the argument of "helping the unworthy lest the worthy be missed" which many people fail to recognize. It lies in the supposition that the "worthy" man to whom a few cents or even a few dollars are given, is really helped by such aid. Assistance in finding employment, support until employed, removal from lodging house environ- 66 THE CRIPPLED AND MAIMED ment, surgical care, and general friendly interest, these are the things he needs. They may be fur- nished by anyone sufficiently interested to supply l hem, even better, perhaps, than by a charity or- ganization society which, on account of the large number of persons with whom it deals, cannot give as much time to following up the necessities of t he- particular applicant as can a private individual. But if, for lack of means or lack of time on the one hand, or through a feeling of inexperience on the other hand, the ordinary citizen hesitates him- self to take active steps for the man's restoration to usefulness, and is unwilling to ignore his condi- tion, he may refer him to the Chanty Organiza- tion Society, or to whatever agency is doing similar work in a similar way in his own city. To refer the cripple to such a society, however, and to do nothing more will probably help him as little as would the gift of a small dole, because in nine cases out of ten the man will either promise to go and then not go, or he will say that he has been there and that nothing was done for him. This latter statement is usually not true and should be verified. If the citizen cannot spare time to accompany the man, he should telephone or write a letter saying where he found him begging, if a beggar, and include a slight description, and if possible, an outline of his story. This will enable the agent of the society to report at once if the applicant is known to the office, and, should he fail to appear, to find him later. The one-legged HOMELESS MEN street beggar whose story is given on page 59, told the writer that at least 50 people had referred him to the Bureau of Charities during the four years of his dependence. When asked why he had not come he replied that he had not supposed the Bureau could do anything for him; it would not help him to be referred to a wood yard, which was where he thought single men were usually sent; and he "knew it would not be right" to ask for entire support, "no society could afford to give that," and he had thought that we might pub- lish his name as a pauper, which was something he could not endure, even if he had "got pretty low down." It required the assurance that his name would not be published, the promise of a personal letter to the superintendent, and the touch of personal interest shown by the gentleman who had seen him begging, before this cripple followed the advice that he had so often received. After a man has finally reached the office and his story has been thoroughly investigated, not to find out whether it is true, but to gain as much knowledge of his character and abilities as it is possible to secure, a plan for the permanent improvement of his condition may be worked out by the trained agent and the interested citizen; and in carrying out this plan, if the man prove to be helpable, the citizen will find opportunity to expend as much of his time and money as he can afford to give and as the case requires. 68 CHAPTER V INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS IN RELATION TO VAGRANCY TH E promptness with which vagrants in lodg- ing houses take advantage of any occurrence which will furnish them with a new or pop- ular story to use in appealing for help, is a matter for surprise even to persons familiar with the class. Most of these men are well informed about current events and many of them are inveterate newspaper readers. They are quick to notice and to make use of any item which suggests a new form of appeal. After every great calamity, such as the Galves- ton flood, the Baltimore fire, or the San Francisco earthquake, alleged "victims" make their appear- ance in various parts of the country. When the Klondike region was much in the minds of people, unfortunate Klondikers appeared in large numbers. After the Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago, "stranded actors" who had never stood behind the footlights, applied for aid. Similarly, any much discussed subject in newspapers or magazines is immediately seized upon and utilized. After the appearance of the statement attributed to Dr. 69 HOMELESS MEN Osier that men over sixty should be chloroformed, there was a marked increase for a few weeks in the number of men past that age who applied to the Bureau of Charities, and many of them referred to Dr. Osier's alleged dictum. Likewise, the cam- paign against tuberculosis which has been given so much publicity in newspapers and magazines has caused many a sound-lunged vagrant to claim to be afflicted with the White Plague. This is an especially popular disease among those who appeal for special transportation rates to the West. In the same way the numerous articles which have appeared in recent years upon the prevalence of industrial accidents in the United States and their alleged importance as a cause of vagrancy, have led many tramp-cripples to use stories of indus- trial accidents as a ground for special appeals for help. Such stories have apparently proved far more effective in soliciting sympathy and aid than would the recital of the mere facts regarding their accidents. So quick are these men to follow suggestion in the stories they tell that every claim of an industrial accident made by a homeless man should be thoroughly investigated. Otherwise sta- tistics on the relation between such accidents and vagrancy, from whatever source they may come, cannot be relied upon as accurate. Fifty-five out of the 254 crippled or maimed men in this thousand claimed to have met with injuries while at work and connected with that work. 70 INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS Assuming that these 55 were what they claimed to be, victims of work accidents, it is evident that about four out of five crippled vagrants came to their injuries elsewhere than at work. But this proportion of 55 to 2 54 cannot be accepted, because the claims of these 55 men are not sustained by the facts. In 28 out of the 55 cases every effort was made to ascertain the truth of the men's state- ments about the accidents. Of these 28, in only six cases were we able to prove that such accidents had actually occurred. Of the remaining 22, in two instances we lacked sufficient data to prove the men's stories: in four cases letters were unan- swered; two men gave false addresses; 12 were entirely unknown to the companies where they claimed to have worked; while in one instance an employer knew the man but no such accident as claimed had occurred at the foundry mentioned, and in still another the accident had occurred as stated, but the man was a trespasser and not an employe.* In the investigations we did not depend entirely upon the statements made by employers but attempted to prove the truth of the claims of the men in many other ways. The following stories will perhaps show more plainly than can readily be described, both the methods of investigation used and the types of stories which were told by * With regard to the general statements made by the 28 men whose cases were investigated, these were found to be true in 13 cases, false in 1 1 cases, and the statements of 4 of the men could not be verified. 71 HOMELESS MEN the 22 men whose claims were either proved to be false or whose histories showed that the accidents did not occur as claimed. E. M., a man of forty, claimed to have been an engineer on the - - Railroad and to have lost his left arm in a collision occurring at a certain time and place in the state of Washington. By his prompt action in emergency he said that he had saved the lives of 63 people. He said that he was a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and "well known to railroad men." He stated that the railroad company had done nothing for him, and that he was suing it for large damages, the case being then in the hands of a "prominent lawyer" in St. Paul, whose name he gave us. He also gave us the name of the physician in Spokane who had amputated his arm. Statement by statement this detailed story was disproved. There had never been an accident on the Railroad at the place mentioned; neither had there been one anywhere on the line in the month and year mentioned. The man's name was not registered as an engineer, nor as an employe in any capacity, in any division of the railroad. Neither could we learn that he was a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive En- gineers. The physician said to have treated him in Spokane was unknown in that city, nor was there a lawyer, prominent or otherwise, of the name he had given, listed in the St. Paul directory; and no such suit was then pending. The man was 72 INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS a peddler of small notions who probably used peddling as a screen for begging. His apparent familiarity with cities all through the Northwest led us to suspect that he was a confirmed tramp, and that he had lost his arm in the course of his travels. A second man, aged twenty-three, asked the office to furnish his meals for the next ten days at some restaurant, after which he felt sure that an injury to his right leg would be sufficiently healed to allow him to return to work, when he would repay all that had been advanced. This man had a straightforward way of talking and appeared to be quite honest in his story, which was to the effect that he had been hurt while in the employ of the - - Elevated Railroad, some months before. He claimed that the company had done nothing for him, he having even paid his own way in the hospital until his money gave out. He said that he had entered suit against the company and that his lawyer, a man of the name of - - in the Monadnock Block, thought the prospect of winning it was good. There chanced to be a lawyer in the Monadnock Block of the name mentioned, but he knew nothing of this man and had no case for any client against the elevated road. He suggested that the case might be in the hands of his brother, who also was a lawyer, and who had offices in the Unity Building. This gentleman knew nothing of the case, nor did another of the same name in another 73 HOMELESS MEN building, nor was his case known to the only other lawyer of that name in Chicago, who was also interviewed. Further investigation proved that no such suit had been brought against the - Elevated Company, and at the hospital we learned that the man had been a charity- and not a pay- patient, and that far from suffering from the results of an accident, he was temporarily crippled by a syphilitic ulcer on his leg! The man himself admitted this later and owned that he had been a rover for ten years and had never worked any- where. A third man claimed to have met with an acci- dent while in the employ of a certain railway, but we found that he had been injured while "lying asleep drunk on the tracks." Another, who claimed to have lost a leg and an arm in a stone quarry accident, described the quarry at his first call as in Montana and a year later as in New Hampshire. Every reference or clue that he gave in each interview was carefully followed up, but beyond ascertaining that he was a confirmed tramp, nothing very definite could be learned regarding him, and in this case, as in a number of other alleged work-accident cases, tramping injuries were strongly suspected.* It is much to be regretted that out of the 55 men who claimed to be suffering from injuries received * In 1 3 cases, or very nearly a fourth of those where work-accidents were claimed, the histories of the men, as revealed by investigation, strongly indicated that they had met with their injuries on the rail- roads while tramping. 74 INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS while at work, an attempt to verify their state- ments concerning the accidents was made in only half the cases (28 out of 55). These were almost all cases in which the accident was of comparatively recent occurrence, and where the truth as to its exact nature, the damages received, and other matters concerning it, were felt to bear sufficient relation to the man's present problem, and to the treatment of his case, to warrant careful investiga- tion of the accident itself. When the injuries which crippled him had been received from ten to twenty or more years before, and when, perhaps, he frankly admitted the receipt of damages which were now exhausted, or the promise of life em- ployment, all claim to which he had forfeited by his own acts, a man's statements on these points were accepted, and only matters more recently and vitally connected with his case were investigated. It is probable that in almost every instance where a man claimed to have met with such an accident the agent who first interviewed him questioned him regarding it, and especially asked whether the fault was his own and whether he had received damages; but not appreciating the possible statis- tical value of his statements on these points, the agent made no record of them. Almost the only test, therefore, which we have of the truth of the claims made by the remainder (27 out of 55) that they were crippled by work- accidents, is that of the truth or falsity of their general statements upon other matters. These 75 HOMELESS MEN were found to be true in 19 instances, false in four, and they could not be verified in the remaining four. Undoubtedly, certain of the 19 men whose statements in regard to recent matters were true, told the truth about their injuries, but it will not do to jump to the conclusion that all of them did so and that 19 more should, therefore, be added to our total of six proved industrial accident cases; for this test, as explained in an earlier chapter, is a most uncertain one, and it may be shown to be practically worthless in this case because we found upon investigation that three of these 19 men had never had any work records at all, but had been tramps and beggars from boyhood. A more thorough investigation in other cases might have proved a similar lack. However, in addition to the six men whose accident stories were found to be true, there were 20 cases out of the 55 in which investigation proved that the men had been bona fide workmen of such good character and habits (and our own further acquaintance with them tended to corroborate their apparent truthfulness in all matters), that they should perhaps be given the benefit of the doubt about their stories of injuries and counted with the six.* If these probable but not proved cases are counted with the verified ones, it makes a total of 26 cases out of the thousand homeless men, or 2.6 per cent, who had been injured while * For occupations before and after injuries of 55 men who claimed ndustrial accidents, see Appendix A, Table 1 1, p. 286. 76 INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS at work. If the six proved cases only are taken it appears that but .6 per cent out of the thousand met with such accidents. Of the 254 crippled and maimed in the thousand, the percentage of actual industrial accidents must lie between 2.3 per cent and 10.3 per cent.* If a careful study of the cases of a number of men who have met with industrial accidents were to be made, it would probably show that a large proportion of such accidents are occurring to married men whose families succeed in caring for them during the period of their disabilities, thus preventing them from drifting into the vagrant class. When in such cases standards of living are lowered, and the earnings of children taken out of school must be resorted to, the indirect results may be revealed only in later years in the under- mined vitality of these children. Yet this indirect result may be far more serious than the direct one. And such a study would probably also show that so long as they are able in any way to support themselves, unmarried workingmen who meet with industrial accidents will continue to be just what they were before they suffered such injuries workers, not idlers or parasites; for, as illustrated by the study of individual cases in the previous * The group of crippled and maimed homeless men considered in this study is numerically small, but proportionally it is large, since it is almost certain that there is a larger percentage of cripples and defective of all sorts among this particular thousand cases than would be found in any thousand, chosen at random from among homeless men in general, not all of whom had asked charity. 77 co ^T "" Z Q UJ >. u a ? >4t -:::-: - < - US u 2 |ST 8IK UJ E 31 VOOO fS - M rfN (S Jj I li i PORTINC | ^ N ;- . O ? Q 31 " s J i ? o " *? : >: 7 ;r K . c CL to u. UJ CO UJ - '-5 D ^ H o : r | | | : - -5 7 ^o 'ti ^ ti ^i * W ' O 3 i j,,**^ ir\ Z 2 < ^ ^ ' ' : (J 7 1 : ; 1 ! : : : 3 2 . g E : 3 1 5 <| gj-g 3 H i of g ^ -o o2 v, fc^ *~ ^IvSIJl I jtSujQQ E:s ' a S3.S-S 5^ s|gs w |-s 2 o 78 INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS chapter, the mere fact that he is temporarily or even permanently crippled does not usually lead a man to change his whole mode of life and become a tramp and a beggar.* Even when his handicap is very great he will generally struggle hard to maintain his independence and will not become a vagrant, unless the seeds of degeneracy have merely been lying dormant within him awaiting some favorable opportunity for growth, or unless ignorance, incompetency, ill-health, or some other additional handicap exists, which, together with his injury, makes self-support practically unattain- able.f The stories of two men, with whom we were dealing at the same time, will further illustrate this. One was the man referred to on page 74, who claimed to have been hurt while in the employ of a certain railroad company but who was, in fact, run over and injured while intoxicated and asleep on the tracks. This man, who was thirty-five * An inquiry into the drink, tramping, and begging habits, before and after injury, of the men who claimed industrial accidents, re- sulted in the following summary: Sixteen men drank to excess after becoming crippled; of these, 7 had drunk to excess before; 5 had not, and the previous habits of 4 in this regard are not known. Fifteen men were tramps after being crippled; of these, 7 had been tramps before; 3 had not, and the previous habits of 5 in this re- gard are not known. Twenty-three men begged after becoming crippled; of these, 3 had been beggars before; 5 had not, and the previous habits of 15 in this regard are not known. t For general and detailed data concerning amount of self-support before and after injury of the 5 5 men who claimed industrial accidents, and of the 32 permanently crippled, see Table V and Appendix A, Tables 11-13, PP- 286-288 79 HOMELESS MEN years of age and unmarried, had a record of four- teen years' employment in one place as an iron worker. He left this position one day of his own accord, and started West; the accident occurred soon after. We learned from his employers that the man had been in the habit of drinking occa- sionally, but never enough to interfere with his work. His record upon the whole was so favorable, that, ignoring his initial falsehood in regard to his injuries, we offered to help him secure an artificial leg; to supply his actual needs until he should become familiar with its use; and to assist him to find work when he should be able to take it again. All this was to be conditioned upon his stopping the practice of begging which he had taken up in the few weeks since his dismissal from the hospital. He promised to do this and further co-operated by giving us the names of friends who might be willing to contribute toward the purchase of the artificial leg. Letters had been written, and other steps taken in his behalf, when one day, about a week later, he came to the office and announced that he had changed his mind about the matter of begging and did not think it right, under the circumstances, to let us continue to make efforts to raise the money to buy him a leg, or to assist him in any way. There was some odd streak of honesty in this man which made him ashamed to deceive us, who had voluntarily offered to befriend him, even though at the same time he frankly confessed his 80 INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS intention to deceive the general public and live thereafter by begging. " I could get a leg for myself if I wanted one," he said. " I have this peg leg, and I could get work enough any time, without any help from you folks, to earn one of the other sort, if I wanted to, but I don't. You've treated me white, so 1 thought it wouldn't be honest not to tell you, but there's no use pretending that I'm going to give up drinking, the way I promised you, and go back to work, for I'm not. I like to travel and I can get a living without working. I know you don't like the way I'll get it, but I've made up my mind; I'm done with work. There's no use of your trying to argue with me, for I know what I'm going to do, but you treated me white so I thought I ought to let you know," and he stumped out of the office without giving me a moment's opportunity to "argue." He was apparently as good as his word, for within a week he was reported to the office as begging. We gave his name and description to the police, but they did not find him, and as he was not reported again it is probable that he left the city, to continue his begging elsewhere, telling a pathetic story of an industrial accident and of its blighting influence upon his career. The other man, aged forty-nine and also single, had learned the trade of a cooper in his youth, but the loss of his right thumb, which occurred while he was at work, prevented his further use of cooper's tools, and he abandoned the trade and 6 81 HOMELESS MEN became a sailor and a pilot on the lakes. He had spent his summers upon the vessels and had made Chicago his winter headquarters for twenty-five consecutive years, when a second industrial acci- dent resulted in the loss of his right leg. Almost as soon as he was discharged from the hospital, this hitherto self-supporting man began to sell pencils and to beg from door to door in Chicago, asking for money with which to purchase an arti- ficial leg. As has been stated in another chapter, this is a favorite story with crippled professional beggars, and from this man's general appearance, as well as from the fact that he took to begging so promptly after he left the hospital, it looked as though he had entered the class of parasites by choice, without any effort toward independence. This seemed the more likely as he did not at once come to the office when referred to it by a citizen. But he proved to be one of the hundreds of men whom it would have been most unfair to judge by appearances without a hearing and an investigation of his story. When seen and ques- tioned he frankly admitted the begging, but said that he had taken to it only as a last resort, after he had found that no one was willing to employ him while he was using crutches. He said that the thought of being continuously dependent, and of perhaps ending his days in the poorhouse, was so unbearable to him, that he had determined to secure an artificial leg for himself, somehow and at once, even at the temporary loss of his self- 82 INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS respect while begging from door to door. We looked up this man's record and found it excellent, and within a few days before we had taken steps to secure a leg for him had the good fortune to find easy work for him. One of his employers immediately took a great interest in the man, and in addition to making a small initial payment him- self towards the purchase of a leg, became respon- sible to the firm manufacturing it for the payment of the remainder of its cost. This enabled the cripple to secure the leg at once, and to pay for it himself, a little at a time, out of his earnings. In this way a habit of saving was for the first time established in the man, and after the leg was fully paid for he started an account in a savings bank, and has added something to it every month during the past six years.* While one must admit that many cripples are not as successful as this one, either in finding employment or in re-establishing their industrial independence, one thing seems to be clear from the story of this man's life: if, handicapped by the loss of a limb, he was able to meet all his expenses and still save several hundred dollars in a few years' time out of his very small salary as a watch- man, he might have saved a much larger amount * It is of interest to note that this man, who now has several hundred dollars in the bank, has himself become a small contributor to the Bureau of Charities, and also that on one occasion he helped a fellow-cripple to secure an artificial leg by going with him to the shop where his own had been purchased, and guaranteeing the full pay- ment, just as his employer had done for him. 83 HOMELESS MEN against the day of possible disability, if he had chosen to do so during the twenty-five or more years in which he had earned a much larger income. Eight of the 26 men* who had probably suffered industrial accidents, admitted that these had been caused by their own carelessness or disobedience of orders, and that they had no right under the law to claim damages. Ten men admitted having received damages for their injuries, six for permanent, and four for temporary injuries. Two men complained that lawyers had received the larger share of the money paid to them; and the damages received from his employers by a third man were absurdly small considering the nature of his injuries. Two men who told of promises of life positions, both admitted that they had by their own acts forfeited any claims to them. Seventeen of the 26 men who in all probability had actually suffered industrial accidents, had received permanent injuries. Every one of these men whose work history we knew had been fully self- supporting prior to his accident, and all but three of the 17 were still, after the accidents, in the main self-supporting. A brief digest, giving some interesting facts in regard to these 17 permanently injured men, will be found in the Appendix. f A German baker had accepted $100 in settlement from the company employing him at the time of his accident, because there was some question as to whose fault it was * See page 76. f See Appendix A, Table 14, p. 289. 8 4 INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS that both his hands were caught in a dough roller and so badly crushed that the bones of the right hand had to be removed. Another man, a German of Russian parentage, who was unfamiliar with English and rather ignorant, said that after his accident he had signed, without understanding its contents, a paper releasing the mining company from responsibility. His statement could not be verified. This man seemed so anxious to be self- supporting that special efforts were made to find employment for him as watchman or time-keeper. He was sent in all to 35 different firms of contract- ors, not one of whom could give him immediate employment; when one firm, later, sent word that they had a $12 a week position for him, the man had become discouraged by his many failures to secure work, had given up the attempt, and dis- appeared. Every effort was made to find him, but without success. This case is cited to show how extremely difficult it is for a man like this one who had an additional handicap in his ignorance of English, to secure work for himself after so disabling an accident as the loss of an arm. It is not to be wondered at that such men take to begging; they must do so in order to maintain life outside of almshouses, and if non-resident they are not even admitted to these. It should, how- ever, be noted that of the three men in this list of the permanently injured, known to be chronically dependent, two were so as much because of excessive drinking as because of their physical handicaps. 85 HOMELESS MEN It should be recognized that additional handi- caps like ignorance, drink, or other causes of dependence must be counted upon as likely to force into the vagrant class a certain percentage of all men with small or irregular incomes who meet with accidents; and students of these prob- lems must discover the means of withdrawing from the road, not only the men who deliberately choose vagrancy, but also those who slip down into it because of their moral weaknesses, or because of additional mental or physical handicaps. For these men, as well as for the immediate help of all cripples, it would be well if, in every community, there were some such agency as the Bureau for the Handicapped in New York City, which is maintained by the Charity Organization Society and which is doing a valuable work by securing for handicapped men the right sort of employment before they have been forced, from the lack of it, into chronic dependence and vagrancy. Such methods of alleviating unnecessary suffer- ing and of assisting men to become independent seem to be the most practical ones which can be put into immediate effect in American cities, pending the time when better laws of various sorts shall reduce the total number of our crippled and maimed, and shall provide other than philanthropic resources for the care of those who are likely still to be crippled by unpreventable accidents. For, how- ever much may have been said in this and the preceding chapter which would tend to prove 86 INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS that even when a man is handicapped his per- sonality and the strength of his desire for inde- pendence will have much to do with his ultimate attainment of it, it is certain that men who are permanently crippled or maimed to any serious extent are at a terrible disadvantage in the matter of finding employment; and that many undergo great suffering, both mental and physical, before they secure it, or before, failing to secure it, they sink into chronic dependence. It is not within the province of this study to discuss even briefly the various methods for safe- guarding machinery or for otherwise lessening the risks of accidents in various trades and occupations, which have been suggested or put into practice in parts of this country and in Europe; nor can the several plans for indemnity in cases of accident, nor of industrial insurance and the pensioning of injured men, be here considered. The aim in this chapter has been only to assist in throwing a clearer light upon the relation between industrial accidents and vagrancy, and to show how after all the personal equation enters into and must be considered in this as in every other phase of the problem of the vagrant. CHAPTER VI THE INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC NO one who comes in touch with homeless men as a class can long remain unac- quainted with the fact that a considerable number of them are mentally defective or diseased. In this particular group of a thousand men, 81 were found to be temporarily or permanently dependent on account of mental unfitness for work. In 52 cases the men were, or had recently been, insane; in 19, feeble-minded; and in 18, epileptic. Four of these were both epileptic and insane, and one was epileptic and feeble-minded.* All cases about which there might be a question are ex- cluded, and only those of men whose mental diseases or defects were either self-evident or were definitely ascertained are included. f The recog- nized number of the insane would be materially increased if there were added the border-line cases, *To avoid duplication they have been counted only with the epileptic. t Insanity is differently defined in different states and only those men are listed as insane who fall under the legal interpretation of insanity in the state of Illinois: "Unsoundness of mind by means of which a person is incapable of managing or caring for his own estate, or is dangerous to himself or others if permitted to go at large, or is in such a condition of mind or body as to be a fit subject for cure and treatment in a hospital for the insane." 88 INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC such as those of certain of the tramps in whom the overwhelming desire to wander seemed in itself little less than a form of mania, and also some of the well-born and highly educated degenerates whose extreme tendencies to vice and crime seemed to be due to lack of that mental balance which the ordinary individual possesses.* To the num- ber of the feeble-minded might also be added the cases of certain men who, while not actually imbecile, were yet so dull, ignorant, and incapable as to be greatly handicapped by their mental deficiencies.! THE INSANE One of the first questions of interest about insane homeless men is whether they are homeless and vagrant because of their insanity, or insane because of their vagrancy. The mode of life of the true tramp or vagrant, with its excitements, excesses, and irregularities, is such that it might reasonably be expected to cause insanity in a certain percentage of this type of cases, and that it actually does so can very readily be proved by study of the histories of many of the inmates of our state and county insane asylums. Even in the small group of 52 insane found in the thousand * It is probable, too, that many interviews were taken with men really insane, whose insanity was not recognized by the persons who interviewed them at the office. f Facts with regard to the legal residence of the men may be found in Appendix A, Table 15, p. 290. For additional handicaps of 48 of the men, see Appendix A, Table 16, p. 291. HOMELESS MEN TABLE VI. GENERAL DATA CONCERNING 89 INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC MEN A. NATIVITY American 53* English 4 German 1 1 Irish 3 Scandinavian 4 Canadian 2 Other 5 Not known 7 B. AMOUNT OF SELF-SUPPORT Entirely 13 Partly 19 Not at all 50 Not known 7 Total . . .89 Total 89 * Of the American born men, the parents of 45 were American; 3, German; 3, Scandinavian; I, other na- tionality; i, not known. Total C. CONFIRMED HABITS OF 65 OF THESE MEN Drink 21 Drugs 4 Wandering 24 Licentiousness. . . 16 D. LENGTH OF TIME MEN WERE KNOWN TO THE OFFICE Time Insane Feeble-minded Epileptic i day 3 3 3 i day to i week 3 3 4 i week to i month IO 4 4 i month to 6 months 1 1 4 5 6 months to i year 6 I i year to 2 years 7 , 2 years to 5 years 9 3 5 years to 10 years 3 Total . . fj 10 18 under consideration, there were four men of the confirmed vagrant type who were normal mentally when they first applied to the Bureau of Charities, but who became insane later during our acquaint- ance with them. 90 INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC Among homeless men who are not dissolute not a few go insane from the effects of worry and under-nourishment. Such cases are more numer- ous during periods of depression like that of 1907 -8, but even in normal times it is not unusual for a man who is old or otherwise industrially handicapped to suffer a mental breakdown from these causes. In five out of the 52 instances listed in this chapter, physicians diagnosed worry and under-nourishment as the chief causes of in- sanity, and in several other cases they were men- tioned as contributory causes. There are other ways in which the facts of homelessness or vagrancy account for insanity among homeless men, but judging from the histo- ries of these 52, whose cases are probably typical, insanity acts as a cause of vagrancy more often than vagrancy as a cause of insanity. More men in this group drifted onto the road after they had gone insane than were vagrant before becoming so. We lack definite information on this point in four cases, but, of the remainder, 12 men only had been residents of the cheap lodging houses pre- vious to going insane, while 36 had no records of vagrancy, dependence, or homelessness, until after the loss of reason. Just how these 52 insane men happened to be in the cheap lodging houses, instead of in hospitals or asylums,* is an interesting question. Almost * For data showing the kinds of institutions in which the insane men had been before applying for relief, see footnote on page 97. 9' HOMELESS MEN TABLE VII. GENERAL DATA CONCERNING 52 INSANE MEN B. OCCUPATIONS BEFORE BE- A. AGES, BY GROUPS COMING INSANE 20 to 29 8 Skilled 8 30 to 39 7 Partly skilled 6 40 to 49 20 Unskilled 10 50 to 59 9 In professions 1 1 60 to 69 4 In business i 70 to 79 i Clerical workers and sales- 80 to 82 2 men 10 Not known i Not known 6 Total 52 Total 52 C. DURATION OF MENTAL DISORDER Insanity recent 24 Insanity chronic 17 Duration of insanity not known 5 Cured 4 Temporarily cured but suffering from recurrent manias 2 Total 52 one-fourth of them had wandered away from relatives and friends. We found that this had occurred in most instances after their insanity had been recognized, but before the necessary steps had been taken to insure their care in hospitals. In a few cases, however, men came to us insane who, so far as their relatives knew, had left their homes in normal mental condition. It is probable, however, that the fact of their leaving home as they did was in itself the first manifestation of the insanity which was very marked at the time they came to our attention. In a number of other cases men had been sane when they left their homes, 92 INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC had come to Chicago for employment, and had been employed and fully self-supporting up to the time that "temper" or "queerness" incapaci- tated them for further work. One man showed no si^n of mental trouble but admitted that he had recently lost two places because of an ungovern- able temper. We sent him to another position, where the same thing happened again. We then suspected that something more serious than was apparent lay behind his difficulty in holding employment, but did not at once send him to a physician for examination. Within a fortnight, during which under-nourishment and worry had undoubtedly aggravated his trouble, he returned, this time so "hounded by enemies," so violent in language and manner, that there was no further question as to his condition. Another man who voluntarily gave up two good positions in succession confided to us that he did so because he did not like to work "near people." It was our first hint of the mental breakdown which was complete a week later, when he begged us to have him placed in solitary confinement for a year because of an imaginary offense against one of the workers in the office. In both these cases, and in all others like them, we consulted , employers in regard to the men, but in only one instance had an employer suspected that insanity was the real cause of the man's difficulty with foreman or fellow employes. The fact that they had wandered away from 93 HOMELESS MEN friends who might have cared for them, or that they had lost positions because of insanity and had been forced by necessity into dependence, ac- counted for the presence in the lodging house district of more than one-half of the 36 men who had become vagrants after the loss of reason. To account for the remainder required almost as many reasons as men. One man, a really dangerous maniac, had escaped from a private hospital for the insane in Wisconsin, to which we returned him as soon as this fact was ascertained and attendants could be sent for him. Three men had become deranged from blows on the head; one of these was a middle-aged Californian who, on his way to visit relatives in the East, had decided to stop over for a single day in Chicago. On his way from the railroad station to a hotel he was sandbagged and robbed of $150 and his hand baggage. The blow made him insane and his loss made him temporarily dependent. It was several weeks before he was dismissed from the hospital to which he was committed and was again able to resume his interrupted journey. Several men were alcoholics but not dependents until after their loss of reason. It may be of interest to note at this point that 23 of the 52 insane were men of refinement, from good homes; eight were college men and 10 or more were high school graduates. In n of these cases drink, drugs, and immorality are known to have caused insanity, and they may have been indirect causes 94 INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC in other cases. In only two cases out of the 52 do we know that insanity was inherited. Whatever may have been the causes of their disorder, and by whatever chances or mishaps they may have drifted or been forced into the life of the road and the cheap lodging houses, unquestionably the sufferings of the insane, as they wander about uncared for, are very great. A few of the harmless chronic insane are able to do a small amount of work, if they can find it, which often is not possible. But for most of the mentally diseased self-support is quite impossible.* Some did not know enough to secure what they needed by begging, and in a number of cases the delusions of the men kept them from accepting food when it was offered. The look of actual starvation was more often to be seen in the faces of the insane who came to the office than among any other class of applicants. I especially recall one lad who had wandered about the country for three months frequently traveling on tickets furnished by county poor relief agents who were anxious to avoid the expense of his care until he had covered a thousand miles of distance from his home and until the very slight unsound- ness of mind with which he had started out had developed into an acute and dangerous form of dementia. This lad, when he came to us, ad- mitted that he had eaten nothing for days, but we could not persuade him to taste food lest * For list of occupations of the insane men, see Appendix A, Table 7. P- 291. 95 HOMELESS MEN "enemies" had poisoned it. Fear lest the same enemies should discover where he was and attack him made it very difficult to detain him at the office until the arrival of the ambulance for which we had immediately telephoned. When it arrived he probably felt that he had indeed been betrayed into the hands of his enemies, but, under the cir- cumstances, we took the only possible course. Care reached the boy, as it did several others whom we sent to hospitals, too late to be of benefit. In the eight years since his commitment he has not yet recovered his reason. Starvation and exposure are not the only forms of physical suffering which the insane undergo during their wanderings. More than once men applied to us who had met with painful and serious accidents concerning which they could give no clear account. One man came whose left arm was hanging limp and useless at his side. When we took him to a nearby hospital for examination, the X-ray showed that the bones of the arm were shattered and that the arm itself was in very bad condition, so that immediate amputation was neces- sary. But the poor creature, whose sufferings for some time must have been intense, could give us no hint of how or when the accident had occurred.* Considering the mental as well as the physical sufferings which they endure, it is not strange that the idea that they are being persecuted is a com- * This man had been insane before his accident, so the pain of the broken arm was not the original cause of his mental condition. 96 INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC mon delusion among the homeless and wandering insane, and that the derangement which is very slight when they set out upon their journey, grows beyond hope of recovery by the time the men are finally admitted to hospitals for care. In 24 out of the 52 cases listed, the insanity of the men was recent.* Among these were some whose cases were incurable from the beginning, men whose brain tissues had been affected by locomotor ataxia, paralysis, tuberculosis, or other diseases. There were, however, other cases in which the weeks and months of strain and suf- fering through which the men had passed before they came to our attention were unquestionably responsible for the fact that, although their insanity was recent, they failed to recover after we had placed them in hospitals. Seventeen men were chronically insane when they applied to us. Of these, five had been dis- charged from state hospitalsf as cured, but had relapsed into their former mental condition under the stress and uncertainties of existence in the lodging houses. Most of the men whose insanity was chronic were only slightly unbalanced and were apparently harmless, although at what mo- ment a harmlessly demented person whose condi- * See Table VII, p. 92. t Thirty-six of the insane men had been inmates of institutions, as follows: insane asylums, 20; homes for the incurable, 3; poorhouses, 8;' jails, 2; workhouse, i; reform school, i; and drink cure, i. (Four of these men had been in more than one of the institutions mentioned.) Seventeen of the insane men had never been inmates of institutions, and regarding 3 the facts were not known. 7 97 HOMELESS MEN tion is constantly being aggravated by under-nour- ishment and worry may become dangerous is not easy to foretell. Five men we knew too super- ficially and for too short a time to be able to judge whether the insanity (which was in each instance slight) was chronic or recent. Of the remaining six cases of the 52, two were alcoholics who suffered from recurrent manias, but who were apparently normal when they applied to the Bureau; and four others (two of whom also were victims of drink) had but recently been dismissed from hospitals for the insane and had not yet been able to find employment and reinstate themselves. The methods of treatment which were followed in the cases of the insane who came to the Bureau of Charities differed according to the circumstances of each case.* Men who were so irresponsible that they would almost certainly have wandered on if not confined, and also those who were so violent as to be dangerous to themselves or others, were usually sent at once to the detention hospital on commitments made out by some member of the office force. If, however, the men were but slightly unbalanced, so that with the aid of com- rades in the lodging houses and by personal in- fluence we were able to hold them for a few days, we usually postponed such action until we could notify relatives of the men's whereabouts and condition and urge them to take the responsibility * For information regarding length of time men were known to the office, see Table VI, p. 90. 98 INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC for their care. By this delay we occasionally lost track of a man who should have been detained; but this happened far less often than might have been expected. Instances were rare, also, in which we could not sooner or later learn something of the histories of the men as well as the names and addresses of their friends. Only once did we fail to learn the identity of a man, and at the same time fail to hold him. In one other case we had an old man committed to the county insane asylum two weeks after his arrival in Chicago and were unable then or later to find any of his friends. He claimed to have come from Mar- tinique in the West Indies and to have reached Chicago by way of Mexico, Texas, Arkansas and several other states, through all of which he had wandered or been shipped by county poor officials, during a period of two years. Small wonder, perhaps, that his reason gave way after such jour- neyings ! Three men, who had been discharged from hos- pitals as cured, but who had relapsed after return- ing to the lodging houses, we persuaded to re-enter "state hospitals as voluntary patients, thereby saving us the necessity of having them confined against their will. Asylum care was not necessary for some of the men whose insanity though chronic was slight. We kept in touch with a number of these for several consecutive years, helping them at intervals with employment or other forms of aid. One of these men furnished a striking example 99 HOMELESS MEN of the close relation between the food supply and the mental condition of the insane. This man's insanity was, as a rule, so slight that he was able to support himself by peddling soap and small notions. But if for any reason he failed to dispose of enough goods to meet the cost of his necessities for a few days or a week, he would come to us so unbalanced mentally that it was with difficulty we could talk with him. Invariably, at such times even a single "square meal" and the loan of a dollar or two (which he never failed later to return) would so strengthen him and relieve his mind from worry that in a short time his mental balance would be restored and he could continue his work. The knowledge that he would certainly receive help when he needed it, probably accounted in large part for his ability to support himself in the intervals between his applications. These applications are now less frequent than at first and he has, in the last year or two, been able to take up some forms of work which pay better than peddling and which prove that his mental condition must, upon the whole, be gradually improving.* Alienists agree that the word insanity covers diseases some of which are incurable, others amen- able to improvement or cure; and that the cur- * Our apparent success in this case led us, acting under the advice of a physician, to try the experiment of furnishing plentiful food and light employment to several other slightly deranged men and women (some of whom were not homeless) in the hope that by doing so we might prevent a further development of their mental difficulties, and perhaps cure them. The results more than justified the neces- sary expenditure and effort. 100 INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC ability of many of them depends upon th'e'proriiiSt- ness with which they are recognized and treated. It has been estimated that the probability of recovery in certain forms of the disease decreases at the rate of 50 per cent every three months from the onset. Although this is open to more than one interpretation, the importance, both to the men themselves and to the country as a whole, of promptly detaining and securing care for the homeless and wandering insane cannot be over- estimated. That prompt care is not more often given is probably partly due to the fact that in- cipient insanity is not readily recognized as such by the laymen with whom the men come in touch; partly to the fact that when recognized the average citizen does not feel that it is personally his busi- ness to take the steps necessary to bring about the man's commitment to a hospital; and partly, also, to the fact that in many states the laws are so worded that it is very difficult to secure the com- mitment of an insane person to a hospital until his disorder has reached an acute, and, in many instances, an incurable stage. Probably, all three of these difficulties could be lessened, if not over- come, if in every large city there were special psychopathic clinics or dispensaries of general hospitals devoted to the care of nervous and mental cases similar to those which have already been es- tablished in New York City, Ann Arbor, and Balti- more, and the one now being established in Boston ; or if there were more psychopathic hospitals like 101 HOMELESS MEN ftavilion'F in \lbariy. These are places to which persons who are insane, or in bad nervous condi- tion, can go voluntarily, or in which they may be placed by others, without legal process, or any more delay than would be necessary to secure the admission of a patient to an ordinary hos- pital. In cities where clinics or hospitals of this type have been established, it has been found that a considerable percentage of the patients treated in them have been cured in a few weeks' time* and need never be brought up for legal commitment to the regular hospitals for the insane. If, after being treated at these clinics or hospitals for a few weeks, patients are found to be suffering from prolonged or incurable forms of insanity, they must then be committed through the required legal procedure to the regular hospitals for the insane where they can receive the further care they need.f * It should be stated, however, that some of these rapid cures are due in part to the reception of patients suffering from transitory dis- orders which would otherwise have to go without specialized treat- ment. t Dr. Adolf Meyer, Professor of Psychiatry in the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, Baltimore, remarks, on this point: "The majority of the disorders met with in tramps are of a rather insidious character, and one of the reasons for the lack of early institutional care is because there are today no institutions adapted to habit training, and disciplinary drill, which would give a sufficiently rea- sonable chance of improvement to warrant early interference in such cases. They demand different provisions from those which the ordi- nary patient requires, both as to type of treatment and as to home conditions after treatment is discontinued. This class of men will, however, undoubtedly share the benefit derived by the public gen- erally from the recent provisions made for the care of mental dis- orders in the centers of the population, the dispensaries and special wards mentioned above. But to make such help of lasting value much social service will have to be available in connection with these institutions." 102 INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC Such a method of first care for the insane would not deprive men of their freedom and legal rights any more than placing a typhoid fever or pneu- monia patient in a hospital deprives him of those rights. And, in the latter case, if the man were too ill to know what was best for him, he would be prevented from wandering the streets uncared for in his delirium. Yet the opposite is practically what is being permitted in many cases, very largely because we too often fail to realize that insanity is a disease, just as much as is pneumonia or typhoid fever, and should be treated as such. THE FEEBLE-MINDED* The condition of the feeble-minded man or boy who is found among the homeless is, if possible, even more pitiable and more hopeless than that of most of the insane. For even when he falls into the hands of persons who would gladly try to remove him from the road and provide care for him, in most instances little or nothing can be done in his behalf, for the reason that, after he has passed the age of sixteen, he is not eligible for admission to any institution for the feeble-minded in the United States.. The only other institution in which he may be placed for care is the poorhouse, and since in most states he is only admitted and not committed to this, it is of but little avail to send him there; he will almost invariably wander * For general data concerning this class, see Table VI, p. qo. 103 HOMELESS MEN away and be again upon the road within a short time. Perhaps no better idea can be given of the prob- lem which is presented to the charity worker when a feeble-minded homeless man applies for aid, than to cite one or two specific cases of this type. A lad of nineteen, who thought he could "weed a garden and water grass," asked us to send him to some place "where little children are" and where he could milk cows. He was taken first to a restaurant, where he ate ravenously, and then to the industrial department of a nearby lodging house, where his ability to work was tested. It was found that he did nothing except when watched, and could not do even the simplest tasks without much explanation and supervision. From a relative, whose address he gave us, we learned that the boy had been for years in the habit of wandering away from his home or from any place where his family put him. They had tried him in public and in private schools, and also in an indus- trial training school, but he could learn nothing and invariably soon ran away. He had somehow learned how to dispose of things by pawning them and his family found it very difficult to keep him decently clothed, because he would either sell or pawn whatever was given to him. He had once sold a new suit of clothes for 15 cents. His family were utterly discouraged with the problem of his care, and said they would welcome any suggestions or advice. The Bureau of Charities 104 INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC appealed to a child-placing agency for a working home in the country for him, but the lad was too old to be accepted by this society and, moreover, its agents felt certain that he would run away if sent to a farm. A few symptoms made it seem possible that the boy was insane rather than feeble-minded, and he was sent to the detention hospital for examination, but was dismissed as imbecile, not insane. The effort was then made to send him to the state school for the feeble-minded at Lincoln, Illinois. He was already three years older than the maximum age for admission to that institution, and so a special appeal in his behalf was made to the superintendent of the institution and to the governor of the state. After much work and many delays he was finally admitted to the Lincoln School. Four days later we received word that he had run away, and six months later, dirty, ragged and half-starved, he returned to the Bureau of Charities and begged for food. Here is another case quite similar. A lad of twenty told us, what was probably true, that he had been taken sick while doing odd jobs at Colum- bus, Ohio, and that "someone" had put him on a train and given him a ticket to Chicago. Upon his arrival he had been taken by the police from the depot to the county hospital, where he had remained for nine weeks and from which he had just been dismissed. These latter statements were verified. The boy still looked very ill and it was necessary to give him his entire support until he 105 HOMELESS MEN should be strong enough to work. In less than a week, however, he had a relapse and had to be returned to the hospital for several additional weeks of treatment. During this interval his history was looked up, and after much difficulty we learned that his mother had died in a poorhouse in Rochester, New York, and his father in a poor- house at Jacksonville, Illinois. Also that the boy himself was too feeble-minded to be capable of self-support and had been wandering about the country for some time. With the idea of saving the taxpayers of Cook County, upon whom he had no claim, further expense for this boy, and also with the hope of placing the burden of his care permanently upon the county of which he was a legal resident, we made arrangements to send him to Jacksonville, Illinois, to have him enter the poorhouse there, but, before arrangements were completed, the boy disappeared and we were never afterwards able to find him.* We were sometimes successful in securing care and support elsewhere for feeble-minded men and boys who drifted into Chicago; as, for instance, in one case where we found that a well-to-do man in Germany had sent his feeble-minded son to America in order to be rid of him. This young man had come to the country on a first-class ticket and had thus escaped being sent back by the immi- * For legal residence of the insane, feeble-minded, and epileptic men, see Appendix A, Table 15, p. 290. 106 INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC gration officials. He had, however, been in the country less than six months at the time of his application to the Bureau, and as we were able to prove that he was incapable of self-support and had been dependent ever since his arrival, the Immigration Department took up the case upon our request and promptly returned the man to Germany. In another case of this kind, although we proved that a feeble-minded son had been sent to this country by a man who was a government official of high standing in Germany, we were unable to have him returned because he had been here for three years a year beyond the limit of time* within which the Immigration Department at that period returned undesirable citizens. Money could have been raised to send this man back to Germany at private expense, and, in fact, the Bureau expected to do this, as the man claimed to be anxious and willing to return, but before any steps could be taken he dropped out of sight and we were unable to trace him. Among the feeble-minded and epileptic, as among the insane, men occasionally came to the office who had been seriously injured and could not tell just where or how they received their injuries. f One of these (who, by the way, had just * The period has now been extended to three years during which persons liable to become a public charge or found here in violation of the immigration laws may be deported. t For list of additional handicaps of 48 of the men, see Appen- dix A, Table 16, p. 291. 107 HOMELESS MEN been dismissed from the House of Correction to which he had been committed for vagrancy), had had his right hand so mangled in some sort of accident that the surgeon who examined it said that its use was permanently destroyed. The man, who was of very low mentality, could give few details of the accident. The feeble-minded are not, as a rule, long-lived. The average age of those who applied to us was much lower than that of the insane.* Almost without exception, too, these men were ailing, if not actually ill when they applied. One man, who was both deaf and so ill as to be utterly incapable of self-support, even if he had been mentally normal, came to us one evening and begged to be sent back to New York, from which place he had wandered away with a couple of tramps who had assured him that he could earn five dollars a day in Chicago. Since this man would almost certainly have wandered on to further suffering if not watched, we placed him for temporary care by courtesy of its superintendent in the detention hospital for the insane. A tele- gram to the Charity Organization Society in New York brought confirmation of his claim that that city was his home, and he was very promptly returned. Of cases similar to this in which feeble-minded men were returned to their relatives or legal residences, there were six in this group. Of four *The ages of the insane men are given in Table VII, p. 92. .08 INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC men we lost track almost immediately, and four others wandered away before we were able to accomplish much in their behalf. For three we were more or less successful in finding employment and in keeping them at work. One we placed in the local poorhouse.* The most that can be said, however, in regard to the treatment of any of these men, is that the wretchedness of some was temporarily alleviated and that Chicago itself was relieved of the burden of the support of a few others, very negative forms of help which cannot in any sense be called successful, since they did not, and from the nature of things could not, place the men themselves in positions of self-support or even assure their permanent removal from the road. THE EPILEPTICt Of the 1 8 epileptics in this group of the mentally diseased and defective there is not much to add to what has already been written about the insane and the feeble-minded. J It always seemed as if we should have been able to do more for the epileptics who applied to the Bureau of Charities for help than we actually * For length of time the feeble-minded men were known to the office, see Table VI, p. 90. f Additional facts concerning the epileptic will be found in Table VI, p. 90, and in Appendix A, Tables 1 5 and 16, pages 290 and 291 . I Four of these men were insane as well as epileptic and one was feeble-minded. 109 HOMELESS MEN accomplished. Between attacks most of them were so normal mentally, and so well physically, that they seemed to have a great advantage over either the insane or the feeble-minded. Practi- cally, we found that they were almost as difficult as the latter classes to keep employed and to render self-supporting. Epileptics who have good homes to fall back upon when unemployed may be able to earn their own support between attacks, but those with whom we dealt, who were homeless and friendless, were not able to do so. Provision for the care of epileptics throughout the country is more inadequate even than for the feeble-minded. Only Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana, and a few other states* have made separate provision for their care, although in some there are private and semi-private charities which treat a few cases. It is estimated that there are at the present time about 160,000 epileptics in the United States, and only about 5000 in all are cared for in institutions especially designed for them. Others are in insti- tutions for the insane and the feeble-minded, but the great majority of epileptics throughout the country are not receiving any form of institutional care. Men frequently begged us to send them to institutions for treatment, but there was in Illinois no place other than the poorhouse to which they * Among these are Kansas, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, which have either established separate institutions or epileptic divisions in asylums erected for the care of the feeble-minded or the insane. 110 INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED, AND EPILEPTIC might be sent, and they very generally revolted at the thought of entering that institution. The need of agricultural colonies for epileptics is very great.* We at the Bureau office could send epileptics who belonged elsewhere out of Chicago; we could secure aid from relatives for a few, and could find temporary employment, from time to time, for some others. In a few instances, where insanity was linked with epilepsy, we could and did place men in asylums for the chronic insane. But upon the whole our work for this class, as for the feeble- minded, was unsatisfactory and must remain so until the needs of these pathetic groups are more generally recognized and better provision is made for their care in all states of the Union. * It is estimated that there are 10,000 epileptics in the state of Illinois alone, and efforts to secure an appropriation from the legisla- ture to establish a state colony for their care, have several times been made. CHAPTER VII HOMELESS OLD MEN NO class of our applicants from among the homeless seemed to be more uniformly hope- less and unhappy than the men who had passed sixty, and who realized that the doors of industrial opportunity were being closed against them and that it was only a question of a short time before they must become wholly dependent upon charity. The tendency of modern industry is to discard from its ranks younger and younger men. If chance throws them out of employment, men who have passed sixty must almost invariably resort to casual labor. It is almost equally difficult for men in their fifties to find well-paid employment, while in certain lines of work men who drop out in their forties or even in their latter thirties are not eligible for re-employment, be- cause they have passed the fixed limits of age which prevail in those occupations. The men of these latter ages who find themselves obliged to apply for charity solely for this reason are, of course, very few in number compared with those who have passed sixty and who find the infirmities of real and not of arbitrarily fixed old age compli- 1 12 HOMELESS OLD MEN eating their problems of employment. Many men of sixty, however, are still quite strong and well, and none of these, if he is self-respecting and under the necessity for self-support, will accept the ver- dict that he is "too old" to be of further indus- trial value without a bitter struggle to prove the contrary. " I am as well able to work as I ever was. Better, too, because I am so much more experienced than a young fellow/' "Experience ought to count for something. I know there is a place for me somewhere if I can only find it." " It cannot be possible that I am never going to have steady work again. 1 am not old enough to be thrown out yet. I'll get located soon, but I'll have to ask for a little temporary aid." Pitifully often have men in the neighborhood of sixty made such statements when applying to the Bureau of Chanties for work or for financial aid. The first time they apply they assure us it will be "only a temporary matter." They are certain that they will soon find work and be able to repay all that may be advanced. Later on in the struggle come confessions of failure and discouragement and suffering. From being usually self-supporting and only occasionally lapsing into temporary de- pendence they become at best only partly self- supporting with almost continuous need for some charitable assistance. 8 113 HOMELESS MEN TABLE VIII. GENERAL DATA CONCERNING 132 HOMELESS OLD MEN A. AGES, BY GROUPS 601064 48 65 to 69 37 70 to 74 23 75 to 79 15 80 to' 84 5 8510.89 2 90 to 94 2 Total . . 132 B. NATIVITY American (i Negro) 68 Irish 24 German 15 English 13 Canadian 4 Scandinavian 2 I talian i Swiss i Not known 4 Total 132 C. OCCUPATIONS Skilled 28 Partly skilled 18 Unskilled 37 In professions 8 In business 13 Clerical workers and sales- men ii Miscellaneous i Not known 16 1). Total . AMOUNT OF SELF-SUPPORT AT TIME OF APPLICATION Fully self-supporting 3 Usually self-supporting but occasionally dependent. 37 Only partly self-supporting and in chronic need of some assistance 22 Wholly dependent 62 On borderline 3 Not known how supported. 5 132 Total 132 "Is tired and discouraged and says he is afraid he will have to give up and go to Dunning* soon/' is an entry on one record. "Says he is physically well but mentally weary/* is another. " Is having a hard struggle. " Is as strong as ever, but finds it increasingly hard to get work because he looks old/' this from the record of a man of sixty who had lived forty years in Chicago and who had had good work records with a number of Chicago firms. * The Chicago Almshouse. 114 HOMELESS OLD MEN lias had so little work this winter that he has almost starved but cannot bear the thought of the poorhouse." " Unable to find any work. Says he is penniless, friendless, and discouraged." " Has no work yet but says he would rather starve than go to Dunning." Such entries as these may be found on 50 per cent of the records of the old men applying to the Bureau, and these are not men who have been idle and profligate, but respectable Irish, German, or American workmen, or in some cases, business or professional men, many of whom have spent all their lives in Chicago and have contributed their fair quota to its prosperity and wealth. While, as has been stated, the dependence of a number of men who were under sixty was un- questionably due to advancing age, I have limited the study of the old men of the thousand to the i 32 who were sixty or more years old. The greater number of these were between sixty and seventy; with few exceptions, they were all still trying to earn their own support, and their appeals were first, if not solely, for work. Even of men over seventy, a few asked for employment. In nationality, the majority of the men were American; 82 per cent were English speaking. There were very few recent immigrants in the group and comparatively few were newcomers in Chicago. At the time of their applications 42 were apparently in sound health and not handi- capped by loss of limbs. But of the 90 who were HOMELESS MEN crippled or ill, only one was suffering from a tem- porary illness from which he later recovered. Most of the others were suffering from diseases or con- ditions common to old age, such as rheumatism, paralysis, blindness, deafness, etc., from which they were unlikely ever wholly, to recover. The "feebleness of age" is the only difficulty entered in the records of 24 men. Only three of the old men in the 1 32 are listed as self-supporting. These three owned property and were only accidentally and for a short time in need of assistance from the Bureau. One whose case has already been described,* had been sand-bagged and robbed immediately after his arrival in Chicago, becoming insane from the blow. Upon his recovery we helped him get into touch with his friends and he has been in no further need. The second was a man of seventy-three who owned a farm and received a pension, but who had answered a matrimonial advertisement in person and had been drugged and robbed and turned adrift. We aided him until his son came to take him home. The third man was eighty years old.f These men, while for the moment in real need of friendly care and financial aid, were not in any sense dependents, and their cases may herebeexcepted. * See Chapter VI, p. 94. t The condition of old men who wander about aimlessly from place to place is not due to a definite disorder, as is sometimes thought to be the case, but very likely arises from all sorts of different states of diminished efficiency which old age, or previous defects of personality plus old age, bring about. 1 16 HOMELESS OLD MEN Of the remaining 129, 37 (more than one-quarter of the total number) were still in the main self- supporting when they came to our attention. These were the younger and the stronger of the old men and, as before stated, they usually asked only for employment or for very temporary assist- ance. But the fact that all of them had passed sixty made it inevitable that they would soon lose their strength and ability to work and would become, like the men of the third group, only partly self-supporting and frequently dependent. In time all would reach a state of total dependence similar to that of almost half of the old men at the date of their first appeals to the Bureau.* Roughly classified on the basis of a knowledge of the life histories of the 1 32 old men, it appears that drink, licentiousness, spend-thrift habits, and vagrancy are the most clearly indicated causes of dependence in old age in 39 instances (30 per cent of the cases) ; and that in 85 instances (64 per cent) the men were of generally good character; while of eight of the men (6 per cent) too little is known to make a statement. The following examples are fairly typical of the licentious and spend-thrift cases. L. G. was sixty-five when he first applied to the Bureau. We found upon investigation that he had been tramping and begging for twenty years and that his entrance into the life of the road had been coincident with his final desertion of a hitherto * See Table VIII, p. 114. 117 HOMELESS MEN much neglected and abused family. It is probable that his whole life had been as misspent as were its declining years, but at seventy his age when he last called at our office he seemed to be as robust, as insolent, and as indifferent as at any time in his career. He is known to the charity organization societies of almost every large city in the Union. Another old man had been for a number of years prior to our acquaintance with him, a "wharf rat," an indescribably besotted and degraded type of lake-boat stevedore. One can feel nothing but pity for men like these who have to the very end of life wasted its oppor- tunities for usefulness. But few of them would either appreciate or desire different care from that accorded at the poorhouses into which, as a rule, they naturally gravitate to end their days. When they applied to the Bureau of Charities, therefore, we felt no compunctions in urging them to go to Dunning, for we knew that they would be far better off there than on the streets, and realized how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to raise from private sources the money necessary to pen- sion them or to place them in private institu- tions. It was old men of an entirely different class who furnished some of our most puzzling problems of treatment. Eighty-five of the 132, as has been said, were of good character and habits, and had always, previous to the advent of old age, been .18 HOMELESS OLD MEN self-respecting and fully self-supporting members of society. With these men the causes which were apparently most responsible for their final de- pendence were (i) the receipt of irregular and insufficient wages over a period of years which made saving for age difficult, if not impossible, (2) the rearing of families which had exhausted resources and in the end left no member able to care for the parents, (3) impracticability, or lack of "business sense" on the part of upright and industrious men, (4) loss of savings through bank failures, (5) business reverses for which the men themselves could not be blamed, (6) ill health or crippling accidents which destroyed earning ca- ? pacity before sufficient savings for age had been accumulated, and a few other miscellaneous causes, none of which indicated failure upon the part of the men themselves to do their best during their working years to prepare for oncoming age, j 1 have not attempted to list these causes in the exact order of their importance, for two or more of them so often appeared in a single case that it is difficult to judge their relative values in the whole group. For instance, one man lost all his savings ($ 15,000) in a bank failure within a month after a fall which broke his hip and made him a cripple for the ten remaining years of his life. If he had suffered either one of these misfortunes alone he would never have become a dependent, but he was unable to recover from the double blow. In another case, a business man who had 119 HOMELESS MEN lost all that he possessed in the panic of 1893 had not yet re-established himself when he became totally blind. Not fewer than 41, or almost 50 per cent of these 85 unfortunate old men were of considerable refinement and education; a few were university men. Among the latter there were several men of studious habits. I recall the tiny room of one which was literally filled with books, pamphlets, and manuscripts; not a chair in it, not even the cot, was available as a seat until it had been cleared in part of its burden of books. Another man, for whom we finally secured life work of a somewhat mechanical sort with a publishing firm, was a writer of ability, possessed of broad experience and culture. Dependence in each case was largely due to the lack of "business sense" before referred to. That men like these, or like any of the 85 whose lives contained no history of vice, should be forced in their old age to seek charity at all, is a pitiful thing, but that the agency to which they applied for aid should find difficulty the greatest diffi- culty in securing any sort of adequate help for them is a still greater pity. Yet this was the case in a majority of instances. Realizing as we did that, although the men past sixty might still be self-supporting for a time they would, in most instances, soon be in need of per- manent care, we always tried in our first interviews and investigations to discover all possible resources 1 20 HOMELESS OLD MEN for help. This was done in each case, whether the men applied for aid or for work. It required much tact in questioning and was by no means an easy task in many cases to gain the facts we needed, for the men were apt to be supersensitive and to resent the idea that their needs might be more than temporary. One poor old man, whom we knew for three years, almost starved to death in his room one winter before he would admit any necessity for charitable aid or confess that he could no longer earn enough to support life. When he made his final surrender to age, he gave us the address of a niece which he had withheld during all our ac- quaintance with him. By the exchange of a single letter we arranged for the old man's comfortable care in the home of this relative for the remainder of his days, but it had taken three years of suffering to bring him to the point of accepting it. This was an extreme case. Usually, we did not find it so difficult to persuade old men that it would be better to allow relatives to assist them. The real difficulty was to find any who were willing and able to do so. In a few instances, where men had for a number of years lost all trace of their families, they were able -to give slight clues by means of which, with the co-operating help of charity organization societies of other cities, we finally succeeded in finding their friends. But only in some 30 instances altogether did relatives furnish adequate assistance. 121 HOMELESS MEN The conjugal condition of the 1 32 old men was as follows : Single 58 Married 5 Widowed 47 Divorced 3 Separated 19 Total 132 Their children are the natural and most usual sources of help for the aged, but of these particular old men only 5 1 had living children and we failed to find these in 12 cases.* Of the children whom we did find, a number were either unwilling or unable to help their fathers. In four cases where children refused assistance, we learned that the men had deserted their families when the children were young and helpless and it was perhaps natural that they should later refuse to give filial aid when the vagabond parents needed it. Similar refusals to aid several of the habitual drunkards came from sons who had suffered much because of their fathers' vices. When the men were of good character we not infrequently were able to secure more or less help for them from employers, but this was not a re- source in any large proportion of the cases for two reasons: first, 37 men (28 per cent) had been day or unskilled laborers, and even if they had worked (as was not usually the case) for a single * See Appendix A, Table 18, p. 292. 122 HOMELESS OLD MEN firm for any considerable length of time, they were but little known to the companies which had employed them. The second reason was that 22 men, or 17 per cent, had been in professions (teach- ers, newspaper writers, artists, etc.), or engaged in small businesses of their own, so that they had had no employers to whom we could appeal in their behalf. When to this total of 59 men, or 45 per cent of the whole number we add those who had been drunken, profligate, vagrant, and ne'er-do- well for a number of years (see page 1 17), it will be seen that employers could be considered as a possible resource in only a comparatively small proportion of the cases. Uji_fact, investigation proved that a large proportion of these old men were actually just what they claimed to be, not only homeless but absolutely friendless, and we found it very difficult to secure from relatives, employ- ers, friends, or any other sources the funds neces- sary to pension or care for them in any way out- side of the almshouse. _j In only 12 cases* were we able to secure pledges of enough money from persons interested in their welfare to pay old men small weekly pensions for the remaining weeks of their lives. Those pen- sioned had all lived useful lives and were depend- ent in age solely from misfortune. The sums paid to them were $4.00 to $5.00 a week. Some of these men have died, but the pensions of several * These 12 are in addition to the 30 men for whom we persuaded relatives to take the entire responsibility. I2 3 HOMELESS MEN are still being paid and additional ones for other old men have since been established. This method of helping is unquestionably the one most acceptable to old men, for it permits them to remain in their accustomed neighborhoods and to be quite independent in their actions. Dread of life in an institution seems to be almost universal among them, although the particular institution most dreaded is, of course, the poorhouse. Unless, however, a pension is promised for as long as needed, to give it is of little use, one of its chief values being that it relieves the mind of the recipi- ent from worry, as well as his body from hunger. Dread and uncertainty of the future cause the greatest suffering to the homeless aged. But no one who has not personally tried to secure the contributions necessary to pension an old man can realize how hard is the task. The fact that an amount must be paid regularly and for a period of time which cannot possibly be foretold, usually makes even near relatives of old men hesitate to pledge themselves, and persons upon whom they have no claim will not usually sub- scribe to such funds at all. Even 50 cents or one dollar a month, when it must be pledged for an indefinite length of time, seems to most persons too much of an obligation to assume, but there must be at least 16 one-dollar-a-month pledges before even a small pension can be guaranteed. We found, too, that it was much more difficult to persuade persons to be financially responsible 124 HOMELESS OLD MEN for the care of the old- particularly of old mcn- than it was of tlu* yomi^. Interest in children is mmvi-Nal and our appeal for regular pensions to aid widows with children, or for "school scholar- ships" to enable young boys and girls to continue in school instead of going to work, were always promptly responded to. This difference is, of course, to be expected, since work for the young has elements of hope and interest in it which must always be lacking in work for the old. Perhaps this is also the reason why homes and institutions for children are numerous in all parts of the country and are sometimes in excess of existing needs, while those for old people are so compara- tively few that actual suffering results.^ The needs of only one particular class of the aged are at the present time at all adequately met. Soldiers' homes and soldiers' pensions for the veterans of the Civil War, at least in the northern states, have for many years furnished aid to a large proportion of the old men in the country who were or are in need of such help. This in itself may account for the fact that the general public has not yet begun to realize that within ten or fifteen years the number of old men who were not Union soldiers has been steadily growing. Among this increasingly large class of old men who do not, or cannot, receive aid from the govern- ment, there are and will continue to be many for whom institutional or other care outside of alms- houses must be provided. 125 HOMELESS MEN There are not enough homes for the aged of either sex, but while the number of homes for aged women may not be* adequate it is probably more nearly so than is the number for men; not only because homes for women are really more numerous than those which admit men, but because by the nature of their training, men are less capable of caring for themselves as they grow old than are women. A woman's ability to cook, to sew and. mend, to wash dishes and look after children, until she is quite advanced in years, renders her a much more useful member of a family than is an old man; and a friendless woman is likely to be offered her board and care in return for the little work she can do in a private family some years after a man of the same age has been declared industrially worthless and turned onto the streets to starve or beg. An old woman living on an income of $10 a month can make a real home for herself in almost any place where she finds the necessary roof and four sheltering walls. But men have no such ability, and for this reason if for no other they stand in pathetic need of home care as soon as their earning capacity is gone, whether Home be spelled with a small letter or a large one. When in trying to secure adequate aid for self- respecting old men we found that there were neither relatives nor friends who could be in- terested in their behalf, and when because of breaking health the men were no longer able to work, we invariably were confronted with a 126 HOMELESS OLD MEN problem which in most cases we were unable to solve because the lack of institutions made it impossible for us to offer the men the sort of care they should have had. As before stated, there were a few men whom we did not hesitate to send out to Dunning and who were quite willing to go there, but of the 25 whom we finally placed in the poorhouse, at least 16 should have been cared for in some place where they could have associated with a better class of men and where they would have been spared the unmerited stigma of shame which their residence in the poorhouse entailed. We placed six men in soldiers' homes and two in homes managed by the Little Sisters of the Poor. These latter institutions care for both men and women and do not charge an admission fee, an im- portant point in their favor when old persons are without means or friends. But in Chicago, at least, we could rarely place men in these homes; they were usually filled to their utmost capacity. Although we corresponded with managers of private institutions of other types in various parts of the country, and tried in a number of cases to secure admissions for old men in whom we were interested, we only once succeeded in our efforts. In this one case, after months of waiting and the exchange of many letters, we finally placed an old man whose sister paid the $300 entrance fee, in a new institution for the aged in the state of Kansas. In another case we almost succeeded in getting the required combination of a vacancy, 127 HOMELESS MEN exactly the right sort of old man, and the large admission fee, which would have enabled us to place another man in an institution in Ohio, but in the end we failed. In Illinois we could learn of no private homes for old men which had not long- waiting-lists. It is altogether probable, however, that when the present lack of adequate provision for the care of the aged is once fully realized in this coun- try it will be satisfactorily met.* The soldiers' homes in time may quite naturally be utilized for aged men who have not been soldiers. But in the meantime, a large amount of wholly unmerited suffering among the aged might be prevented if small pensions for certain types of men could more readily be secured from private benevolent sources, and if the existing institutions for the aged were better supported and endowed so that they could, when necessary, remit the high admission fees which at present effectually bar their doors to respectable but really friendless and homeless aged men. * Various plans are now being tried in different countries to meet the needs of the aged poor, the descriptions of which cannot be entered into in this volume. Whether small institutional homes, however, to which old men or women separately, or husbands and wives to- gether may retire when they are without means of support shall be built by the state, or whether private benevolence will meet this need, is impossible to foretell. But even if, as is the case in countries like England, the state shall undertake to pension all persons over a certain age, or as in countries like Germany a form of insurance to which employers, working men and women themselves, and the state jointly contribute, shall some time be adopted in this country, it will still be necessary for social workers to give careful individual treatment to cases of distress among the aged. 128 CHAPTER VIII OCCUPATIONS OF THE MEN IT is difficult to make any satisfactory classi- fication of the trades and occupations of the men under consideration. In America prob- ably more than in any country in the world men frequently shift from one form of employment to another. The pioneer spirit which has not yet worn itself out; the development of the resources of the country; combinations in trade, and many other changing industrial and social conditions, are continually leading men to abandon one form of work and take up another. This is true in all fields of work and in all classes of society. The man who inherits his father's business, trade, or profession, and follows it to the end of his life as so many men in older countries do, is the great exception in America. Mr. Roosevelt, who has been cowboy, writer, police commissioner, assist- ant secretary of the navy, soldier, governor, president, hunter, editor, and has not yet reached the end of his career, is not unlike thousands of other Americans in his versatility and in the diver- sity of the occupations which he has followed. When to the various positions which an ambitious 9 129 HOMELESS MEN and useful man is quite likely to hold in the course of his working years must be added several others which he takes up because he is no longer ambitious and useful, and because drink and misfortune have thrust him down, it will readily be seen that to list but a single one of his many occupations as the trade or business of the man, will be unsatis- factory if not actually misleading.* For example, among these homeless men, one was born on a farm and as a boy helped his father about the place as ( i ) farmhand ; when older he went into the village and learned the trade of (2) harnessmaker; about this time he fell under the spell of an evangelist who persuaded him to abandon his trade and enter the ministry. He did so and for six or eight years was (3) a country preacher; he then began to doubt his call to this profession and soon afterward left it and went to a nearby city where he studied law. He was admitted to the bar and became a successful (4) lawyer. During this period he held several political positions, (5) politician, including that of county attorney. He began to drink heavily, and at fifty-eight had lost standing and friends and was completely "down and out." He again sought employment in the trade of his youth, but finally sank to (6) casual labor and begging. Under what occupation shall this man be listed? Another man was first a farmer, then a car- * For a digest of the occupations of 91 men skilled or partly skilled in more than one line of work, see Appendix A, Table 19, p. 293. 130 OCCUPATIONS OF THE MEN pentcr, then a lawyer and politician and for several terms a member of the legislature of an eastern state. When a little past forty he went into the wholesale liquor business, at which he made a moderate fortune. The drink habit, however, later unfitted him for business and from this and other causes he lost his money. Finally, when almost penniless, he went to another city, determined to make a fresh start. Here his age and his appear- ance were against him in the search for clerical work and he turned his hand to anything he could find to do, including carpentry and work in a foundry. Finding such work too heavy he finally drifted down into complete and continuous de- pendence. When asked his business this man answered that he was "a carpenter by trade,"- but how insignificant a part of his industrial career had been devoted to his trade. A third man had been a teacher, a farmer, a horse dealer, a banker, a casual laborer, and finally a beggar. Still another had been a teacher of Latin and Greek in a high school, a hotel clerk, a church sexton, and a dish-washer in cheap restaurants. Fifteen distinct lines of work are represented in the industrial histories of these four men, and they have held a total of at least 21 different positions. But their careers, as may be seen by reference to the digest in Appendix A, are by no means un- usual or extreme. To list men by the trades of their youth would often, as has been shown, be to ignore the occupa- HOMELESS MEN tions of the years of their greatest industrial efficiency. To list them by their recent or last occupations would be even more to misrepresent their training and ability, since a very large propor- tion of these men had been gradually deteriorating for a number of years previous to their applications to the Bureau, and their "end-of-the-line" occupa- tions were very different from those which they had followed ten years earlier.* But to decide which of the several occupations of the years of their prime should be considered the chief one has, in some cases, presented a puzzling problem to the enumerator and one which the man's own state- ment about his life's work did not always help to solve. Take, for example, the case of the third man men- tioned above, the farmer, horse dealer, and banker who finally became a chronic dependent. Wearing a dirty broadcloth frock coat, and with tears rolling down his unshaven cheeks, this man assured me that his business was banking and that he could not get started again because he lacked capital; but after talking with him, and after writing in his behalf to persons who had known him for some time, I entered his occupation as horse dealer. In his earlier years as a farmer he had taken an * We learned by experience that degenerate or unfortunate busi- ness or professional men, clerks and salesmen almost invariably take to canvassing or seek employment with the addressing companies, when they can no longer work in their own lines, while the final occu- pations of artisans or laborers are likely to be peddling, odd jobs, or dish-washing in cheap restaurants. 132 OCCUPATIONS OF THE MEN interest in stock breeding and had finally special- ized in horse raising. During the course of a num- ber of years he had accumulated a considerable fortune by the sale of fine animals. At about the age of fifty he had invested his savings toward the establishment of a bank in a small western town, a man whom he knew but slightly being the real banker. When a year or two later this partner absconded, leaving him an unmerited burden of debt and disgrace, the man was unable to endure the obloquy and came to Chicago where no one knew him, to make a fresh start. He had never before lived in a city, knew little of clerical work, and had not been an active laborer in a great many years. He had no money. The result was in- evitable. We made every possible effort to save the man, but failed. He would not return to the little city where he was known and might pos- sibly, through friends, have found employment; and in Chicago he was a hopeless misfit. Hence, the apparent anomaly of a banker among home- less men applicants for chanty. We always made an effort to learn from appli- cants the names of former employers and the length of their service with them; and when men were in distress because of illness or misfortune, or when they were dependent because of old age, we were generally able by appealing to former long-time employers to secure help for them. In one or two instances small pensions for the remainder of life were contributed. In others, 133 HOMELESS MEN life positions at easy work were provided; and in still others, lump sums were given which tided applicants over their periods of distress without the necessity of appeals to strangers. There were cases, however, in which the men had really forgotten how long they had been employed and others in which they overstated their periods of legitimate work, not with the intention to deceive, but only with a pitiful and laudable desire to impress the interviewer with the fact that they had once known better days, and had not always been the hopeless and homeless dependents they now were. In other ways also the men tried to represent themselves as more valuable or important in- dustrially than the facts would warrant. A drug clerk with some knowledge of medicine would claim to be a doctor; a machinist's helper would claim to be a machinist; a fireman would pose as an engineer. If we were able to investigate the man's history at all, it was usually not difficult to discover and correct these deceptions. But they occurred so frequently that statistics in regard to the occupations and trades of homeless men cannot be depended upon as accurate unless the state- ments of the men have been verified. Following is the occupational grouping of the one thousand men as compiled from our records:* * For detailed lists of the different occupations or professions of the men included in the above groups, see Appendix A, Table 20, pp. 295-298. 134 OCCUPATIONS OF THE MEN (a) Professional 62 (b) Business 33 (c) Clerical workers and salesmen . .114 (d) In skilled trades 213 (e) In partly skilled trades . . .109 (f) Miscellaneous 7 (g) In unskilled occupations . . 334 (h) No work record ... .68 (i) Work record not known ... 60 Total 1000 In addition to the personal and subjective rea- sons for the variety of occupations of many of the men under discussion, there were causes of more wide-sweeping and general effect. The sudden and enormous increase in the num- bers of unemployed and wandering men in the country which is always coincident with trade depressions like that in 1907-8, leaves no doubt that the causes for much of this increase of un- employed men and this variety of occupation are industrial. In many parts of the West, for instance, there are numerous small and growing business enterprises, both mercantile and manu- facturing, and we are told that during periods of financial crises a large number of these enterprises fail, thus tending to throw out of employment men who have passed the prime of life. It is often difficult for such men to reinstate themselves and it is particularly so during hard times. It is not strange, therefore, that a certain proportion of them must seek casual labor which often means that they must leave their homes. These tempo- 135 HOMELESS MEN rary separations from families are for some men the first steps toward vagrancy. Since it is well known that each business de- pression results in the permanent as well as in the temporary augmentation of the vagrant popula- tion; and since, also, even in normal times certain industrial evils are responsible for the creation of a certain proportion of vagrants each year, it could probably be shown that the vagrancy of many of the men on the road today, as well as the descent of others to casual labor, was in the begin- ning due to an industrial cause.* As we have seen, there were few bona fide vic- tims of industrial accidents, but one industrial cause of vagrancy which we frequently noted was the effect upon very good men of the high speed pressure under which they are so often required to work. We knew a number of homeless men who were very fair workmen but who found it im- possible to work in factories or in other places where they felt themselves driven and under pressure. For example, a young Russian who was frequently out of work was given a position of some responsibility at the Municipal Lodging House one winter and surprised all who knew him by filling it remarkably well. When removed * In regard to child labor as a cause of vagrancy I can give no figures, for not all nor even any large proportion of the men were questioned as to the age at which they began work. In the few in- stances (some 100 or more) where the question was asked, we did not find that the men had, as a rule, been employed unduly early in life. I Ins, however, is such negative testimony and involves such a small group that it is quite worthless. 136 , OCCUPATIONS OF THE MEN from it ami placed in regular work outside of the institution he failed within a fortnight and was again upon the streets. The superintendent of the lodging house asked him why it was that he worked so well in the one place and so poorly in the other, and he gave this reply : " You let me do my work my own way. You do not say 'Hurry up, there, hurry up'! I cannot hurry it makes me sick, so I leave. But I like to work here can 1 come back?" This man was not slow in his movements, nor dull mentally. At the lodging house he worked rapidly and required little or no supervision. Some of the time he had five or six helpers working under his direction ; \ yet today he is in danger of becoming a vagrant in spite of his proved possibilities for usefulness, largely because he cannoj keep up with the pace of modern industry. .That a great many older men drop out for the same reason long before their years of real usefulness are over, is well known to all students of industrial problems, and we had many such cases among our homeless men applicants. The occupations of 60 men were not known. Some of these were applicants who were ill or in- sane, or very old, and were not questioned as to their trades. But at least a third of them were men who mentioned trades which we proved by investigation they had never followed but whose real trades we did not discover. Seventeen were HOMELESS MEN chronic beggars, among whom it is probable that a number had no work histories to record. These facts and others have been taken into account in making up the lists of the trades and occupations of the thousand men, and I have endeavored in each instance when a man had had several occupations, to enter as his chief one, that which he had followed during his best and most productive working years. The only exceptions to this rule have been made in some half dozen cases where men had been engaged both in a profession and in a business, or both in a trade and in a busi- ness, between which, in point of the time devoted to each, it was difficult to make a choice. In these cases the professions and the trades have been listed and the business ignored. 138 CHAPTER IX SEASONAL AND CASUAL LABOR AlONG the industrial causes of vagrancy, probably the most potent one is the sea- sonal and irregular character of employ- ment in a good many trades and occupations. Such trades and occupations are common to all sections of the country, but nowhere else are they so numerous, nowhere else do they furnish em- ployment for such great numbers of men, as in the Mississippi Valley. For it is this region which every year in the harvest fields, in the lumber camps, in railway construction, on the lake boats, and in many other forms of seasonal work furnishes employment to thousands of unskilled laborers. The fact that so many of these men stay, between jobs, in the cities of the Middle West, probably explains why the vagrancy problem is, in many respects, more serious in this section of the country than in any other. Minneapolis and St. Paul, Kansas City, Omaha, and St. Louis, as well as Cincinnati and Cleveland, each have large colonies of homeless men; but, as explained in an earlier chapter, no city is quite so popular, the year around, with homeless men of all types, as is Chicago. HOMELESS MEN One of the questions which we almost invariably asked the men who applied to the Bureau for aid, was "What was the longest time you ever worked at one place?" The replies were most enlighten- ing. When a man was unable to mention any place where he had worked for as long as two weeks, we knew our man without much further question- ing. On the other hand, this inquiry not infre- quently brought out the fact that a man who now to all appearance was a confirmed vagrant had once worked for fifteen or twenty years for a single employer. I recall one case of this kind in which we found that an old Irishman who had been more or less dependent for ten years had had a record of almost forty years' employment with a single firm. It was a question well worth asking, but we found the men's statements in regard to the length of time they had been continuously em- ployed had invariably to be corroborated by employers or they could not be depended upon. Few of the men failed to realize the import of the question, and in answering it they were often tempted to overstate the actual time spent in certain positions. Men would claim to have worked three years in a place when in fact the time was but three months; or a number of months, when the term of their employment had really been measured by weeks or days. There are two principal reasons why men who are employed in seasonal trades tend to deteriorate into tramps and vagrants. The first is found in 140 SEASONAL AND CASUAL LABOR the irregular character of the work itself which unsettles habits of industry and makes the men unwilling at last to accept steady employment. The second is found in the conditions under which the men live in the large cities during their periods of unemployment and the habits which they form at such times. When they work only a part of the year and are idle the remainder, it is surprising to see how soon they come to feel that this is the normal and best, if not the only, way to do. Not only will they not f seek work at other seasons than those in which they are in the habit of working, but will refuse it when offered. The case of one able-bodied Irishman of forty may be cited in point. This man had been employed in seasonal labor for a number of years, but heretofore had invariably saved enough of his summer earnings to carry him through the winter. This particular winter, however, he had been unusually extravagant, and although he admitted having had steady em- ployment on the railroads and in the harvest fields from the first of April to the middle of October, he was penniless in December. Not being of the type of men who will beg when hard pressed, he applied to us for work. We referred him to several places where work might perhaps be ob- tained, but he did not secure any. Every morning for a week he dropped in to ask if we had heard of any employment for him, and then spent the remainder of the day looking for it himself. One 141 HOMELESS MEN morning when he was growing almost desperate, he asked me if I would not dismiss a lame man whom we employed for the small amount of janitor work required at the office, and allow him to do it instead. Surprised at the request, I asked him what the lame man could then do. "He can go to some institution," he replied angrily. "Everywhere I go I find cripples doing the odd jobs. It is a shame! They ought not to be allowed to take the bread out of the mouths of honest workmen who have both arms and legs. There isn't work enough for everybody, so the strong men are the ones who should have it." I think this man's attitude toward cripples was rather unusual, but I mention him and it in order to contrast this conversation when he was almost desperate for lack of work and money, with another I had with him some weeks later. It was at the " 'height of the ice-cutting season, when our applica- tions from homeless men had fallen off greatly on account of the plentifulness of work. I met the man on the street. He seemed delighted at the chance encounter and shook hands very cordially. After the greeting was over, I said, "How does it happen that you aren't on the ice fields surely you know where to find work today?" " I don't need any," he replied. "Oh, you have a job, have you? That's good. Where is it?" "No, I mean I've got money. I don't need to work any more." 142 SEASONAL AND CASUAL LABOR "Well, you are lucky. Is it a large sum? Did some relative leave it to you? What are you going to do with it? Tell me all about it." "Relative! No, I ain't that lucky. You don't understand. I mean that I've got money that I worked for. I got a job that last day I was at the charity office and I worked nearly two months. Just stopped it here last Saturday. It was good pay and I've got a-plenty of it now. That's why I ain't working on the ice. I don't need to." He jingled the coins in his pockets as he spoke. " But surely the amount you saved from less than two months' work will not last you long. Why don't you take the ice work now when you can get it. You will be out of money again soon, and then what will you do?" "Oh, the summer work will be opening up by that time and I'll be all right. I won't have to come to you folks again. I'll be careful to save enough to carry me over next year. I never got caught that way before." I urged him further to take the ice work, on the ground that he could save a little money if he did so. "What should I save for?" was his reply. "I don't need to. I've no one but myself to look after. If I was a married man and had children, it would be different. A man with a family ought to work all the year 'round." " But you may get sick, and some day you will 143 HOMELESS MEN grow old. How will you live then if you haven't saved?" He laughed good humoredly. "Oh, well, I'm young enough yet. I ain't worrying about my old age, and I never was sick a day in my life. So you see there really ain't any need for my going on the ice this winter. I t's cold, hard work, and I never liked it, though I've done it many a winter when I was hard up." Then, as I still seemed unconvinced as to the wisdom of his idling, he added his final argument against going to work: "I'm real sorry to disappoint you, Miss, since / you seem so set on the idea of me working on the ice, but to tell the truth I really wouldn't think it was right to do it. I'd just be taking the work away from some poor fellow who needs it, and it wouldn't be right for a man to do that when he has plenty of money in his pocket.'' Arguments similar to the ones quoted were so frequently advanced by men whom I urged to take steady employment in order to save money for their future, that I believe this story fairly repre- sents the philosophy of a great many seasonal workers. They live from day to day, or rather from one job to the next. After a few years at seasonal employment they reach a point where they will not work continuously, even if they could. They really do not believe in doing so, nor will many of them admit any necessity for saving more than enough to carry them from one season to the 144 SEASONAL AND CASUAL LABOR next. No matter how much money they mii;ht receive for their labor the majority of the men would not save and would be found no better able to support themselves in times of adversity, illness, or old age than they are now. In the Mississippi Valley region in normal years, work for unskilled men is plentiful from the last of March till the middle of November, and the great majority of seasonal laborers are employed during most of that time. Lumber-camp work and ice cutting are winter trades which give additional employment to thousands of men during Decem- ber, January, and February. Why is it, then, that even in normal years hundreds of men may each winter be found penniless, and seeking employ- ment or charitable aid in the large cities of the country? I believe that the 'answer to these questions will be found by studying the conditions under which the men live in the cheap lodging houses of the cities and their habits of life during their periods of unemployment. From the men themselves, and also through daily co-operation with physicians, police officers, mission workers, lodging house keepers, and others who knew homeless men and the district well, we at the Bureau office gradually acquired a con- siderable knowledge of conditions in the lodging houses and of the habits of their residents. When the summer work is over the men, as has already been stated, flock in great numbers into the cities and crowd into the cheap lodging houses. 145 HOMELESS MEN Having had but little need of money while at their jobs many have requested their employers to hold back their wages until the end of the season, when they come to the city with from one to three or four months' earnings in hand, a fact which in itself accounts for the prompt downfall of a number of them.* It is the custom of many, however, to pay the winter's room rent in advance, at a favorite lodging house, in order that they may, in any event, be certain of shelter, and then to deposit the bal- ance of their money either with the clerk of the lodging house, or in a savings bank. If in the latter, the bank book is generally turned over to the clerk of the house to be locked in the office safe, in some cases with the distinct understand- ing that it shall not be given to its owner if he de- mands it when drunk. During the weeks which follow, the majority of the men live in complete idleness upon the money they have saved. How far it carries them into the winter depends of course upon the character and habits of the individual men themselves. Long periods of idleness usually prove more or less demoralizing to workmen of any type, even when they spend them in comfortable homes with the normal restraining influences exerted by wife and children, neighbors and friends. .When, how- ever, men are homeless and are massed in great * Robbery at night in the lodging houses accounts for the loss of the savings of a few of the men, while in some cases their money is taken from them in saloons or on the street while they are under the 'influence of liquor. See also page 318. 146 SEASONAL AND CASUAL LABOR numbers in city lodging houses where there are pnu-nVally no restraining and refining influences; where, in sharing a common living room they must of necessity associate with men who have long since become chronic tramps, confirmed beggars, or clever impostors, and where, moreover, public opinion as expressed by the majority of the men favors, rather than disapproves of drink, gambling, licentiousness, and other forms of vice, it is not surprising that many deteriorate rapidly and that such self-respect and decency as they may in the beginning have possessed is soon diminished or destroyed. Men who have higher standards of conduct, more resources within themselves and greater strength of character than the average un- skilled laborer possesses, might find it difficult to withstand the influences of such an environment combined with complete idleness and the knowledge that they are not responsible for the welfare of any human being but themselves. The wonder perhaps is not that so many plunge into debauches and indulgences of all sorts which last until their money is exhausted but rather that upon the whole so few of them do so. When at the end of a few days, weeks, or months, as the case may be, the homeless laborer finds his money exhausted, two courses are open to him. He can work or he can beg. Except during the short ice-cutting season, work for laborers is not plentiful during the winter months, and it usually becomes more and more scarce as the season 147 HOMELESS MEN advances.* Most of these men, therefore, could not, if they would, find steady employment, and many of them, after weeks of idleness and dissipa- tion, are so run down physically that they feel unequal to any sort of continuous hard labor, and do not seek it. "Odd jobs" or casual labor is the form of employment they seek, and such work accepted at a time like this has proved to be the right-about-face towards vagrancy of many a workingman in the cheap lodging houses. For working at odd jobs means putting in coal, sawing wood, scrubbing front steps, shoveling snow, and doing other similar short-lived tasks about private homes to secure enough of which to enable him to support himself a man must go from door to door asking for work. It is this last necessity which is the undoing of so many of the men who resort to casual labor, for even though he may ask only for work the man himself knows that most men who go from door to door are beggars and that when the householder gives him employment he usually rates him only as a rather decent sort of mendicant. He realizes too that among better grade workmen he has to a certain extent lost caste by resorting to employment of this sort, and that in the lodging houses the true vagrants refer to him disrespectfully as a "Molly" and despise him for working at all. When he is f * December, January, February, and March were the only months in the year when able-bodied and unemployed men, either married or - single, applied to the Bureau of Charities in any considerable numbers. 148 SEASONAL AND CASUAL LABOR given a job he is often "for charity" paid more than he knows his work is worth and whether he asks for it or not he is usually given a meal besides. There are even a number of housewives who take pride in the fact that when a man appeals to them for work, "showing that he has the right spirit," they never fail to offer him a meal instead if they have no work for him to do. When the "unthink- ing public" is thus doing what it can to break down the self-respect of casual laborers, it is not strange that the men themselves soon learn to ask for the food first and that in the end they cease to ask for work at all. ; There are many other men besides those engaged 1 in seasonal trades who at times, and for mere j industrial stop-gaps until better work can be; secured, depend upon casual labor as a means of! livelihood. Men of all grades of ability and skill among the thousand under consideration took such work when unable to find employment in their usual occupations, and it would be most unfair to imply that any large proportion of them became beggars in consequence. But it is nevertheless also demonstrated by this study that men, of whatever original strength of character, who for several consecutive years depend upon casual labor and at the same time continue to live in the cheap lodging houses, do in the end almost invari- ably become confirmed vagrants. Just as seasonal laborers gradually come to feel that they cannot work the year around, so casual 149 HOMELESS MEN laborers become so used to living from hand to mouth that many of them will refuse better work when it is offered. The excuse which they oftenest give is that they have not money enough to live upon until pay day; but that this is only an excuse is evident in part from the fact that men who are in earnest about wishing to secure steady employ- ment are very rarely withheld from taking it on this account. In the neighborhood of most shops and factories there are boarding houses whose keep- ers will trust men who are employed in them es- pecially if the men will give orders upon their wages, or make small advance payments as earnests of good faith. A fellow workman will often loan a man enough to tide him over until pay day. When we were able to offer a man a permanent position we not infrequently at the same time gave him a day's temporary employment in order that he might earn enough to pay a dollar in advance on account to his new landlady. In Chicago and New York men who have work are permitted to live at the municipal lodging houses until they have earned enough to pay their board elsewhere. There are many ways in which men who really desire steady work can tide themselves through until pay day. The fact is, that men in whom the casual labor habit is confirmed do not care to take steady work and will not do so even when provision for food and lodging is included with offers of better employment. We proved this again and again at the district office by securing positions as porters 150 SEASONAL AND CASUAL LABOR in institutions or hospitals, or as housemen in private homes, for casual laborers who seemed to show some fitness for such work. Very rarely were they willing to take them and when they did so it was often only to leave them within a week or two. The managers of a certain foundry in one of the suburbs of Chicago agreed for several years to give employment to any homeless men we might send to them. The pay to unskilled men was to be $1.50 a day, and by giving orders on their wages they could secure board and room in the neighbor- hood of the foundry without any advance payment. We tried to send only men who claimed to want steady work and who were able-bodied and not in the habit of drinking to excess. The men sent were therefore a little above the average of home- less men applicants. I am not able to give exact figures at this date but I well recall our disappoint- ment in learning from the company as we did from time to time, how very small a percentage of the men we sent to the works ever went at all and how very few of those who went stayed for more than one week. Our experience in this respect could probably be duplicated by scores of social workers in other cities, for it has frequently been proved that merely finding employment for homeless men will not solve their problems. Lack of employ- ment with a very large proportion of them is only a symptom, and treating the symptom will not cure the disease. HOMELESS MEN A long list of cases of men who begged for work, seemed really to want it, were sent to good posi- tions, did satisfactory work in the positions but soon left them of their own accord, might readily be cited. We found a position as houseman and gardener for one man. His employer became greatly attached to him, but at the end of six months he left without giving any reason. An- other man we placed as an orderly in a hospital. He proved very satisfactory in the work and was himself apparently satisfied with the position and pay, but in two months he left without saying why. A position as porter in a club house was given to another man; he held it three months. One as janitor was given to another; he held it five months. A place in the shipping department in a dry goods house was given to a man who had been seeking work for several months; he left in six weeks. Another man who was almost starving when he applied to us was given a position as floor- walker or usher in a dry goods store; he left it in eight weeks. I have not been able to follow the later records of all these men but the last named is today still in the habit of making frequent changes of position and locality, and has several times within the past six years had to apply to relatives or to charity for help. Many of the men for whom we found employment held the places for shorter periods than the ones mentioned; very few held them for longer; and in the class to which I am now referring all left their positions entirely of 152 SEASONAL AND CASUAL LABOR , their own accord. We found too upon investiga- tion that a number of the homeless men who were seeking work in Chicago and who were finally forced to apply to the Bureau of Charities for aid, had left excellent positions in other cities for no apparent reasons. So long as this is true it is quite evident that the men are not really reinstated industrially or socially when we merely find them employment. We must know that they are willing to hold as well as to take the positions offered, and it is a question whether helping vagrant workmen to secure employment does not in some cases do them actual harm rather than good, since the compara- tive ease with which they can secure work when they again decide they wish to take it, is one of the things which tends to confirm them in their habits of vagrancy. The underlying, rather than the immediate causes of unemployment must be sought out if a man is to be really helped, and to discover these underlying causes it will be necessary for social workers who deal with homeless men to make just as careful investigations when they ask for work as when they ask for food or money. The fact that they ask for the former instead of the lat- ter may signify little or nothing. Among the confirmed beggars considered in the following chap- ter, eight asked only for work when they appealed to the Bureau, but of the eight, two were too old and feeble to work at all, one was addicted to the 153 HOMELESS MEN drug habit, one was insane, another was crippled and very dull mentally, still another was syphilitic and almost blind, while of the remaining two one had a bad record for stealing and the last man was untrained and lazy and had just been discharged from the House of Correction after serving his third term for vagrancy. All of the eight were out of work chiefly because they were unemployable. Under the spur of necessity, or when as a matter of policy he thinks it best to do so, almost any vagrant who is physically able will work for a while but the question will always be how to keep him at work. We had a striking example of the importance of investigation in, work applica- tions in the case of a very decent-looking young fellow who came to the office one day and asked if we could send him to a "steady job." He said that he had been living by means of casual labor for several years but was tired of such an existence and wished to get back into the ranks of real workmen. He could give no references, claiming that no one that he had worked for would recall him. There seemed to be little that we could look up with regard to him, and as he was apparently anxious to find work at once, we sent him without investigation to the foundry above mentioned. A line from the manager the next day notified us that he had been employed and was then at work. In one week he left. From a lodging house man whom we knew well and whose statements could be trusted, we later SEASONAL AND CASUAL LABOR learned why. He said that this man had asked us for employment only because the police had suspected him of complicity in some recent robberies and were watching him closely. The man was not a thief but he was and had been from his boyhood a confirmed beggar. Knowing that the police would arrest him on the slightest excuse he had not dared to ply his usual trade. He might have sought casual employment but it was irregu- lar and did not pay well and he wished to earn enough to get away from the city at once. More- over, if he took steady work at a foundry the police who had really been able to prove nothing against him would be more likely to be thrown off their guard and be convinced that he was a steady work- man and not the crook they suspected him of being. These were the real reasons why he took the work and why later he left it. Our timely assistance, rendered without investigation, had in fact only aided him to continue in the very life of vagrancy from which we had vainly hoped that we were withdrawing him. 155 CHAPTER X CHRONIC BEGGARS UNDER the denomination of chronic beggars I have endeavored to include all the men, and only those, who were found upon in- vestigation to be deriving practically their entire support from the general public by begging and imposture.'. Other men in the thousand begged in^imes of unusual stress; some few, especially among the old or the crippled, begged frequently but only for a part of their support, continuing to earn the remainder by their own efforts. Some others, who did not beg from the public direct, asked aid more or less frequently from charity societies, while still others lived mainly, or entirely, upon the bounty of relatives. Since, therefore, all of the thousand applied for some form of charitable'aid at sometime in their careers, it has seemed best to limit the study of the beggars in the group to the 1 35 men in whom the habit of street or house-to-house begging was well es- tablished before the date of their first application to the Bureau of Charities, or in whom it became so soon afterwards.* At first glance, it may appear that the differences * For number and kinds of applications of the 1000 homeless men and the 135 chronic beggars, see Appendix A, Table 21, p. 299. .56 CHRONIC BEGGARS between these particular men and the others are slight, and of decree rather than of kind, and this is in some cases true. However, not only were there some men in the group who were not beggars in any sense of the word, but we found in dealing with applicants of all sorts that so long as a man still made an effort to earn even a part of his own support, or so long as he still had too much pride to ask aid of strangers, a foundation of self-respect remained upon which to base a hope and an effort for his complete restoration to independence, i But public begging on the streets and from door to door seems to have so degrading an effect upon charac- ter that only in rare instances can a man who has indulged in it for any length of time be reclaimed and brought back to normal social relations. . This appears to be true whether the man first resorts to such begging from choice or from what he considers, and what really may, at the moment, have been necessity. Beggars have long been popularly supposed to be of only two types, men who beg from "choice" and are "unworthy," and men who beg from "necessity" and are "worthy." That a thousand cumulative influences of heredity, environment, and training may have led to the "choice" on the part of the "unworthy" man, and that thriftless- ness, self-indulgence and vice may at bottom have been'responsible"for the misfortunes of the so-called "worthy" man, are facts which have often neither been realized nor taken into consideration. HOMELESS MEN The words necessity and choice are relative and variable in their meanings. The necessity of a man who is physically weak or mentally dull would not be the necessity of a strong man, while the choice of a life of vagrancy by one whose parents were paupers and who is himself uneducated and untrained, cannot fairly be compared with a similar choice upon the part of a man who, well- born and reared, had been given every incentive and opportunity for living an upright and useful life. Compare, for example, the following cases: A lad who was a member of a tramp family be- came paralyzed when five years old. Both of his parents begged and they used his pitiful con- dition as part of their stock in trade. Very early in life he himself was taught to beg and to exhibit his shrivelled leg to compel pity. He was never sent to school, never trained for any business but begging. This lad had an unusually bright mind, as well as a sunny disposition and other attributes which, if he could have received different training, might have assured him an honorable and useful position in life in spite of his physical handicap. But at seventeen, his age when he first came to the attention of the Bureau, he was, and today at the age of thirty-three he still is, a most accom- plished and successful beggar, and one who refuses to consider any other means of securing a living although he has several times been offered oppor- tunities to do so. The second man, an ex-minister, was well born, 158 CHRONIC BEGGARS carefully reared and educated, and had for a num- ber of years held the respect of the congregations which he served, but he entered upon a disgrace- ful career of vice and imposture when his children were almost grown. There may have been, in fact it can hardly be doubted that there were, objective as well as subjective reasons for this man's degeneration. They are not, however, readily discoverable, and few would question the conclusion that in any case his moral responsi- bility for his mode of life when he became a chronic impostor and beggar at forty, was im- measurably greater than that of the crippled pauper who was taught to beg at five or six. This particular man was in sound health, but we found in a number of other cases where men of good family "chose" to be mendicants, that inherited tendencies toward degeneration and the possession of weak bodies accounted at least in part for their profligacy. For example: A young fellow of twenty-seven came into the office one afternoon and spread out on the desk before me a letter of recommendation which had been refolded so many times that it was worn to tatters. Hastily fitting the parts together he read it with great rapidity, apparently knowing it by heart, and then produced an affidavit from a notary in St. Paul testifying that the letter was genuine. Having done this, he asked for money with which to purchase a ticket to his home in the East. He had been referred to the office by an Episcopal 159 HOMELESS MEN clergyman and we found upon investigation that he had begged of almost every clergyman of that denomination in Chicago. He had also ap- proached a number of prominent laymen. From these sources he had already received two railroad tickets and a considerable sum of money. Fur- ther investigation disclosed a very black record of begging, imposture, dishonesty, vice, and the use of drugs. But on going somewhat deeper into the case we learned that the youth's father, a man of means and of good family, had been a morphine eater and had died from the effects of the drug when his son was a baby, and that his mother, although long since recovered, was at the time of the boy's birth "a physical and mental wreck" because of the trouble she was having with her husband. The boy had been a weakling from birth and had taken to the use of morphine when in his teens. In several other similar cases we traced histories of frail health and moral perversion back to the infancies of the men. If, for the reasons indicated, it is difficult to decide how far men may be held personally respon- sible for their choice of mendicancy, it is at least equally hard to say what shall constitute the necessity under which they may be excused for begging. There are persons who believe that any man who is physically handicapped has a legiti- mate excuse for begging. Others feel that the amount of the handicap should decide the ques- 160 CHRONIC BEGGARS tion. Both classes overlook the fact that while a man may be necessarily dependent because of a handicap, he need not therefore necessarily beg. As was shown in earlier chapters, a number of crippled men begged who had resources which made their doing so wholly unnecessary. There are other persons who hold that no man ever begs from necessity since the taxes of the people pay for a poorhouse where any one who has neither friends nor money will receive care if he asks for it. These persons perhaps do not know that in Chicago at least and the same rule holds in many other communities indigent strangers are not eligible for public aid until they have lived six months in the county and have established "legal residence." The number of such strangers, however, most likely is not so large but that the private charities of the city could readily furnish the aid they need if they would apply to these organizations instead of begging. And while one can imagine circum- stances where a stranger might possibly be forced to beg, if he needed instant help, it is certainly true that generally speaking no man begs on the streets of Chicago from objective necessity while the poor- house stands ready to receive him, or private char- ity has not yet shown itself unable or unwilling to assist him. Subjective "necessity," however, accounts for the begging of a number of men, for to many, life in a poorhouse would mean the endurance of ii 161 HOMELESS MEN mental suffering far worse than the disgrace of begging. Such a one was a certain refined old blind man whom Chicagoans will recall as having begged for a number of years at the corner of Twelfth Street and Wabash Avenue and who is included among the beggars listed in this chapter. From his own point of view at least this man unquestionably begged solely from necessity. He had no relatives or friends able to help him, was totally blind, and being past seventy was not eligible for admission to the state's school nor to any home for the blind. Twice, on the advice of different persons, he went out to the poorhouse at Dunning and tried to accustom himself to the hard conditions there and to the enforced association with the degraded and diseased wrecks of men about him. But everything within him shrank from the life, and feeling that he could not endure it he returned to his begging stand where business men said "Good morning" as they dropped change into his cup and where kind hearted women occasionally sympathized and chatted with him. He begged, but no one who knew him could believe that he did so from a true choice, any more than it was from choice that he finally died after all in the dreaded poorhouse. He was never a willing dependent, and if he could have been pensioned or cared for in some way that would have spared him the necessity of begging he would undoubtedly have abandoned the habit.* * See Chapter VI I, p. 112. Homeless Old Men. 162 CHRONIC BEGGARS But shall we, on the score of subjective necessity, excuse the mendicancy of another blind old man of seventy-three who persisted in begging and tramping about the country, although he had both a son and a daughter willing and able to care for him, who felt deeply disgraced by their father's vagrant habits? It may appear that this man begged by deliberate choice and should have been made to feel the force of the law if he continued his mendicancy, but in spite of the apparent differences between them, this beggar was in fact no more truly parasitic by nature than the one just described. He was a simple, kindly, somewhat childish old man, against whom the most serious moral delinquencies which could in fairness be charged were that he had a very natural desire to travel about the world after having spent a lifetime in a single county, and that a harmless vanity and love of attention led him to crave and to seek the interest which cen- tered upon him whenever, white-headed, penniless, and blind, he appeared in a new community and asked aid to reach another. An inordinate desire for sympathy and attention seemed to be the only reason for the begging habits of several other men of the thousand who apparently begged from "necessity." The psychology of begging is subtle and com- plex, and is as yet but little understood even by persons who come into the closest and most frequent touch with mendicants, but it is probable HOMELESS MEN TABLE IX. GENERAL DATA CONCERNING 135 CHRONIC BEGGARS A. AGES, BY GROUPS 12 to 19 9 20 to 29 33 301039 25 401049 27 50 to 59 20 60 to 69 14 70 to 79 5 86 and 94 2 Total 135 B. CONJUGAL CONDITION Single 101 Married 2 Widowed 22 Divorced i Separated 7 Not known . . 2 Total '35 C. NATIVITY American (including Negro) 68 German 14 English 14 Irish 15 Canadian 6 Scandinavian 4 Italian 3 Other 4 Not known 7 Total 135 D. PREVIOUS OCCUPATIONS Professional men 1 1 College students 2 Skilled workers 25 Partly skilled 23 Unskilled 38 No work record 19 Not known 17 Total 135 that few begin to beg by definite choice, and equally few, if any, in America, have become chronic beggars solely because of compelling, objective necessity. In considering the 135 chronic beggars here listed no effort has been made to classify them by causes of mendicancy. Some facts about the group as a whole are presented briefly, and in the following pages a few common types of beggars, classified according to their marked characteristics and their attitude toward society, are described and discussed. CHRONIC BEGGARS The men have been divided into four classes as follows: CLASS I. Anti-social men who consider society their prey 48 CLASS II. Beggars who have drifted into the habit 44 CLASS I II. Beggars with personal and social handi- caps ii CLASS IV. Accidental Beggars 18 Miscellaneous 6 Men too little known to classify .... 8 Total 135 There were eight college men among the 135, and 103 who had had a common school educa- tion; 21 were illiterate and the amount of ed- ucation of three was unknown. The informa- tion obtained with regard to their ages, nativity, conjugal condition, and previous occupations, has been summarized in Table IX. The following additional facts may be of interest: Thirty-eight of the men drank to excess, seven took drugs, 46 were "tramps," and 18 had criminal tendencies. Eight had been in jails, four had been in peni- tentiaries, 10 had been in Chouses of correction, two had been in reform schools, two had been in drink cures, two had been in homes for the blind, two had been in orphanages. More knowledge of the men would undoubtedly have increased many of the figures given.* * For information concerning the physical and mental condition of these men, see Appendix A, Table 22, p. 300. ,6 5 HOMELESS MEN CLASS I ANTI-SOCIAL MEN WHO CONSIDER SOCIETY THEIR PREY Of chronic beggars who were distinctly anti- social when they came to our attention, if not actually criminal, there seem to have been at least 48 among the 1 35 men listed; there may have been more.* Each of these men had or could have had other means of support, but begged by preference. Some had near relatives able and willing to support them; others by their own admissions, could have supported themselves; and still others, while seriously handicapped physically, were offered opportunities for self-support and refused them. All made a business or profession of begging and 1 8 were criminal as well as mendicant. Most of these men seemed to have entered the "profession" young. Their average age was thirty-four and one-half years; 66 per cent were under forty years of age and 43 per cent under thirty. Eight had no work record at all and others had had very little legitimate employment and that some time previous to our acquaintance with them. A number of them were crippled or maimed, but several of these are known to have met with accidents while tramping or to have been * The figures as to the number of men in each particular group described in this chapter represent the writer's best judgment, based upon study of all available information regarding the men and per- sonal acquaintance with a large proportion of them. Fuller knowl- edge of facts, in certain doubtful cases, might have led to a different decision as to classification. The figures here given are therefore pre- sented as approximately rather than as absolutely exact. 166 CHRONIC BEGGARS injured after, and not before, they became mendi- cants.* Mentally, these 48 men represented a rather higher average of ability than was the case with the remainder of the chronic beggars. Sixteen of their number were well educated and had come from good families; five were college men; 10 others had been to high schools. The stories they told were ingenious and plausible and the men often showed pride in the originality and success of their own particular methods of im- posture. One man told me his method and said: "I have been at this business for seven years and that story works the best of any I have tried yet. It is original with me and is worth good money." Then he added, as if suddenly mistrusting the wisdom of having confided it to me, " I hope you won't let any one else get onto it." That many of the men consider imposture a business, if not quite a legitimate business, is evidenced by the way in which they refer to it. A persistent begging-letter writer, who was twice caught and sent to the penitentiary by the secre- tary of the charity organization society of an eastern city, said frankly when he was offered an opportunity to take legitimate employment upon his discharge, " I am quite satisfied with my pres- ent employment. It is easy, it pays well, and I'm my own boss. If I want to lay off for a few days * The stories of several of these maimed beggars are given in Chapter IV, p. 44. The Crippled and Maimed. .67 IOMELESS MEN >r go on a^^pree there's no one to kick about it, [ancHjean't see but that it's just as good a business Wany other." When warned that it was pro- hibited by law and that he would be arrested again if he continued in it, he admitted this but said that that was a chance he must look out for, adding, "There are risks of some sort in most any line." Several men held that their business was legiti- mate because they used no coercion. " I don't hold a man up with a gun," said one beggar. " He doesn't have to give to me if he doesn't want to, and if he wants to, I don't see that it's anybody's business but his and mine." Why the charity organ- ization societies or the police departments should try to protect the interests of citizens who are so "easy" as to be taken in by beggars is a matter which these men often claimed not to understand. The men who pretended to defend their mendi- cancy were few, however, in comparison with those who admitted its illegitimacy but regarded the possibility of arrest as one of the accepted risks of the business. "But you've no right to help the police," one man said. " If they can't get me of their own accord, it isn't fair for you to butt in and give me away." Disapproval of having the charity organization society report descriptions and facts regarding beggars to the police was not infrequently expressed in one way or another, not only by these men but by others, and while it never deterred us from doing so when such a course seemed necessary or best, it did lead us, for 168 CHRONIC BEGGARS the sake of our influence with the lodging house ap- plicants, to take such action only as a last resort and when all other efforts to persuade the men'jo abandon begging had failed. It is difficult to state just how many criminals there may have been among these 48 anti-social beggars, since it was often only after a man had "operated" in several cities that we were able, by correspondence, to discover that he was of this type. We know, however, that 10 men had served sentences other than for vagrancy, and that at least 18 had marked criminal tendencies. If all the facts could have been secured, it is probable that both these figures would have been greater.* Seven of the 18 men of known criminal tendencies were of foreign birth and had had criminal records both in Europe and in America. Among these one case may be interesting to cite, that of a Nor- wegian by birth, who has since died in an eastern penitentiary. We have since found upon investi- gation that this man, who was asking aid in Chicago in 1903-4, had a criminal record in this country and Europe which included among other offenses: big- amy, securing money from women under promise of marriage, defrauding a life insurance company, swindling several hotels and a lodge, receiving money under false pretenses, robbery, burglary, attempting to dispose of the body of a dead * I have not counted as criminals the petty thieves in the group. We found that there were a good many homeless men who would not scruple to steal a hat, an umbrella, or an overcoat if it was handy to do so, but who would not hold up a citizen nor break into a residence. .69 HOMELESS MEN infant, perjury when acting as a witness, and black- mail. His career was a long, continuous chain of crimes for several of which he had served terms in American and European prisons. But the sig- nificant thing about this man's history was that during all the years in which he was securing large sums of money by the methods referred to, he was at the same time constantly adding smaller amounts to his income by clever begging. His favorite method was to represent himself as almost starving in a strange city and to implore money for transportation to his family and to certain employ- ment in some other city. He was frail and deli- cate in appearance and in spite of his true character he preserved to the end of his career an innocent and almost boyish expression which served him well in his "profession." Another criminal beggar was a ne'er-do-well son of a fine Southern family, who shortly after his graduation from college killed a man in a drunken quarrel in a saloon. Because of his condition when the shooting occurred he was sentenced for manslaughter instead of murder and served but a few years in a penitentiary. While there his record was excellent, but immedi- ately upon his discharge he took up "refined" begging and imposture as a profession and is still making a good living at it. Another criminal beggar now serving time in a New York peni- tentiary was a very well educated German who was known to the charity organization societies of 170 CHRONIC BEGGARS several cities under eight different aliases. An- other man, also an educated German, was referred to the Chicago Bureau of Charities under two different names and was later found by the New York Charity Organization Society to be operat- ing under not fewer than twelve aliases. This man was later arrested by the New York society, but since his release has again been reported as begging both in New York and in other cities. There is little question but that an indeterminate penitentiary sentence was the only form of "assist- ance" which would have served to check the illegal careers of most of these criminal beggars, and other deterrent and reformative methods of treatment were as certainly needed by others of the parasitic group who were not so distinctly criminal but who were, nevertheless, anti-social in their tend- encies and habits. Lack of space prohibits detailed account of the attempts made by the Bureau to reinstate these parasitic beggars. There were a few of them who were reported to the office by citizens a number of times and from all parts of the city, but where they lived we never knew. They invariably gave false addresses and although in some instances we learned a good deal regarding them we were of course unable to influence them in any way. Twenty-one men of the 48 came to the office on their own initiative or when referred by citizens, but frankly declined to co-operate in any plans which might render them self-supporting. We 171 HOMELESS MEN took out warrants for the arrest of seven of these, only four of whom were found by the police. When brought into court citizens from whom they had begged refused to prosecute two of the men ; the third man was dismissed with a warning, and the fourth was fined. The results of arrest were rather more satis- factory in certain other cases which were brought into court but which do not happen to be among the particular thousand under consideration. Upon the whole, however, recourse to the law did not seem to be as effective a method of forcing these men to cease begging in Chicago as was a rather wide publication of their descriptions and stories in the newspapers, and sending letters of warning against them to pastors and other citizens. These measures usually led the men to leave the city, which relieved Chicago of their presence but as certainly inflicted them upon some other com- munity, so that nothing of permanent value was accomplished by such action. For 19 of the 48 parasites (40 per cent) many efforts looking toward reform were made, no one of which at the end of from five to eight years after- wards has proved to be of lasting success. /Two drug-users were cured in institutions and for a short time thereafter ceased public begging. Recent investigation, however, shows that both have since relapsed. Of other cases in which treatment \v;is lor a time apparently successful, the most typical, probably, t are those of two 172 CHRONIC BEGGARS blind beggars, one of whom has been known to the office seven and one-half years and the other ten, and for each of whom several hundred dollars and a great amount of time and effort have been spent. One of the two, through the Bureau's assistance, was taught a trade and furnished the material and machinery with which to work at it, making him entirely capable of earning his own living, but he sold the machinery and returned to begging. Almost as much was done for the other, but both today are again parasitic beggars. When a sufficient amount of effort has been spent to make a beggar self-supporting and it is proved beyond reasonable doubt that he is deter- mined to prey upon the community, I do not believe that it pays to waste further time or money in constructive work; deterrent and reformative measures should then be adopted, whether the man is physically handicapped or not. His influence is distinctly bad and he ought to be segregated, but whether he should be placed in a penitentiary, a reform school, a hospital, or on a farm colony must depend, in each individual case, upon the facts which careful investigation brings to light as to the nature and cause of his parasitism. CLASS II BEGGARS WHO HAVE DRIFTED INTO THE HABIT There is another type of beggar which from ex- perience with occasional as well as with chronic HOMELESS MEN beggars, I believe to be the commonest type of all, although in the group of 135 discussed in this chapter they appear to be somewhat less numerous than the more active and dangerous beggars just described. These are men who have once per- haps for a number of years been fully self- supporting and self-respecting citizens, who are not now criminal nor anti-social in spirit but who, from the combination of many causes, both social and individual, have gradually and almost uncon- sciously drifted into the habit of begging. That most of these men did not in the beginning possess strong characters, sound bodies, and well- trained minds, need hardly be stated. Many of them had never been very efficient or industrious, but neither had-fchey in the beginning been idlers nor dependents. The records show that their first appeals to charity were infrequent and not resorted to when work or other means of support were readily available. But many of them seem to have held no very strong convictions against begging a fact which may have been partly due to long association in lodging houses with men who lived by their wits. When, therefore, under the stress of some temporary necessity illness, acci- dent, lack of employment, or any other unantici- pated misfortune they crossed the line and dis- covered the ease with which they could live by begging, few of them probably again put forth quite the same amount of effort to maintain their independence. If, at the time they made their CHRONIC BEGGARS first appeals for charitable aid, alms had been refused and the particular sort of help which they really needed offered in its stead, there is little question but that many of them would gladly have accepted it and been saved from much later suffering and degradation. For the initial needs which lead men of this type to beg are in many cases trifling: a few dollars are stolen from them at a lodging house and for lack of these a man comes to want before he can find employment; a trunk is held for storage, and not being able to redeem it a man lacking proper clothing cannot take a place at his accustomed work, and in unaccustomed work he perhaps suffers some tem- porary injury which still further handicaps him. Behind these relatively trifling misfortunes which the men present as excuses for begging lie the undeniable facts that they had made no provi- sion for the future when they were earning com- fortable wages; that they had perhaps given up good positions when they held them without sufficient reasons for doing so, and that indulgence in drink and vice in very many cases accounted for their inability to carry themselves over small emergencies like those mentioned. Neverthe- less, they did not in these respects differ much from other workmen who did not become beggars, and study of their records shows that the de- terioration of many was so gradual that probably if at any time during a number of consecutive years they had received more intelligent help just 175 HOMELESS MEN when they needed it or 'could have been withdrawn from the lodging house environment, their further degeneration might have been prevented and they perhaps could have been brought back into normal relations with society, j There were at least 44 of these degenerate- workmen beggars among the chronic beggars under discussion and most of them had remained on the borderline for years, working when work was plentiful and begging when it was not. The nat- ural tendency in every case, however, had been for the work periods to grow shorter and those of willing dependence longer until the man's char- acter, health, and efficiency were so far impaired by his manner of life that he could no longer be self-supporting if he would.* The habit of begging did not, in any of these cases, become chronic until after drink, drugs, disease, accident, or age had seriously handicapped the man. At the time of their application to the Bureau only 10 of the 44 could be considered as in sound physical condi- tion and of these, six were over fifty-three years of age. Nineteen of the 44 (or 43 per cent) were habitual drunkards. This is a higher percentage of drunkenness than was found among other types of beggars or among homeless men in general. That these men had taken to mendicancy rather late in life is evidenced in part by the fact that their average age is forty-seven. That long resi- dence in cheap lodging houses had contributed to * See Chapter IX, p. 139. Seasonal and Casual Labor. 176 CHRONIC BEGGARS the demoralization of a majority of them is prob- able, since 48 per cent had spent an average of eight years in the district. Thirty-four per cent had been in Chicago less than a year, but of these, several had lived for some time in the cheap lodging houses of other cities. We have no record of the length of timeS per cent of the men had lived in the lodging houses, but in the remaining five cases (10 per cent) the men had been in Chicago for over twenty years and had undoubtedly spent a number of them in the lodging house district. In the matter of education these men did not rank high. None had been to college; only three had been to high school, and six (possibly eight) were wholly illiterate, being unable to read or write even in their own languages. Data concerning the lines of work they had followed during the periods of their greatest indus- trial efficiency show that comparatively few had been highly skilled workers. Fifteen were skilled, four partly skilled, and 25 wholly unskilled.* For the most degraded among these ex-work- men beggars, 'there was very little that we could do except to place them in hospitals or asylums when such action was necessary. Two of the men in this group went insane and one died of delirium tremens during our acquaintance with them, and eight of the most hideously besotted and diseased men of the whole thousand were among this par- * For list of occupations of these men, see Appendix A, Table 23, p. 300. 12 ,77 HOMELESS MEN ticular group of beggars all of whom had once been self-respecting workingmen. For the men who were not so degraded, however, we made many efforts at reclamation, all finally unsuccessful. Work was offered to almost every man; some refused it, others took it, but the result in the end was the same. Much more than em- ployment was needed to save them from further demoralization, and the remedies which were needed we were unable to furnish. We could not cut off their source of income, the indis- criminate relief furnished by charitable citizens, for too many people continue to believe that such relief is necessary to prevent suffering; we could not send the men to compulsory labor colonies where they could be kept until work habits were re-established, for the state provides none. We could not send the habitual drunkards among them to colonies or institutions where they might be cured of their habit, for none exist in Illinois which can, by law, hold men against their wills, and none of these men would go voluntarily. We could not forcibly remove them from the city lodging house district, and lastly, we were not able in any one of these particular cases to gain a sufficient influence over the men, or to put them in the way of being influenced enough by others, to persuade them to abandon permanently their habits of mendicancy, vice, and drink. , The greatest single difference between these degenerate- workmen beggars and the criminal and 178 CHRONIC BEGGARS parasitic group from which in spite of some com- mon characteristics I have separated them, is that as before stated, these men, during a period of several years at least, might have been brought back to right relations with society had it been possible to apply the constructive remedies needed to check their degeneration. In other words, society appears to have been at least as responsible as the men themselves for their final downfall, whereas some peculiar and perhaps inherent twist of character deformed the men of the other group and made their complete restoration to social health and usefulness doubtful almost from the beginning. CLASS III BEGGARS WITH PERSONAL AND SOCIAL HANDICAPS A third common type of city beggar is one whose personal and social development is sub- normal. Glancing at causes, in passing, merely to give a clearer picture of the type referred to: he is the boy, or the man grown from the boy, whose childhood has been neglected and who in consequence reaches manhood without the equip- ment necessary for fighting the battle of life. In many cases he has grown up in the poorer sections of a large city, popularly known as its "slums." He has had little if any schooling. We found a number of such boys and men to be unable to read or write and few of them had passed the third or fourth grade in school. 179 HOMELESS MEN At about fifteen this boy, who later becomes a mendicant, usually spends a year or two on the road as a tramp, after which he settles down in the lodging house section of his own or some other large city and drifts into the habit of chronic begging. The keener witted boys of this neglected type often develop into criminals or actively parasitic beggars like those first described, but the lads to whom I now refer are generally slightly below normal physically or mentally and for this or for other reasons they do not actively take up arms against society. Sometimes they are persistent in their begging, but usually are apa- thetic and dull and not at all individual or clever in their methods of gaining a living by mendicancy. Of the 1 1 boys or men of this type who are listed among these 135 chronic beggars, only two had work records of any kind; one of these for a short time had been a messenger boy and the other a newsboy both lines of work in which they received no training to fit them for later useful- ness. But while none of these men had ever been self-supporting, none seemed to beg from a desire to live at the expense of the public; rather they begged because they did not know how to find a liv- ing in any other way. The stories of our efforts in behalf of two or three of these "city-bred drifters" may be of interest.* * For brief digests of the cases of the 1 1 men in this class, see Ap- pendix A, Table 24, p. 301. 180 CHRONIC BEGGARS T. P. left school at about the third grade; between fourteen and fifteen years of age worked irregularly as a messenger boy, but by the time he was nineteen had tramped all over America and had twice been to Europe and back. He was a de- cent looking fellow, able-bodied and of average men- tality. He did not seem vicious nor was he even especially lazy ; he was simply untrained. We sent him to several places for employment. In one he found the work too heavy and from the others he was dismissed as incapable. He soon wandered onto the road again and has not for several years applied to the Bureau. There is little question but that this boy, who at twenty-one (his age when we last saw him) was still willing to work, might have developed into a useful citizen, instead of a tramp, if during his childhood and adolescence he could have received the sort of care, education, and industrial training needed to fit him for life. , The second story is that of a boy, also born in a large city, who when his own home was for some reason broken up, was placed in an immense institution for children. He remained there for a long period during which he received little or no individual training. Shortly after he left the in- stitution this lad met with an accident through which he lost one leg. We endeavored to help him by securing an artificial leg. His record in the interval between his dismissal from the or- phanage and his accident was not unfavorable to him and we hoped by prompt assistance and 181 HOMELESS MEN friendly supervision to save the boy from becom- ing a vagrant. It was not until after he had sold the leg and gone to begging again that we learned what perhaps we should have discovered earlier that he was too undeveloped mentally, too lacking in the habit of independent thought and action because of the long years he had spent under direction, to be able to care for himself even when given an amount of assistance which would have been sufficient to rehabilitate the average man who is not immoral. He did not beg because of his lameness, with the artificial leg he had learned to walk without a limp, nor did he deliberately choose to be dependent upon others. His mental incapacity to grapple with the problem of his own support alone seemed to account for his choice of the line of least resistance. Orphanage graduates and former wards of vari- ous institutions for children are sometimes found among homeless men, as might be expected from the fact of their homelessness, and I do not re- call one among those with whom I became ac- quainted whose capacity for independence when he entered the larger world had not been seriously affected by the fact that personal initiative had remained practically undeveloped during the long period of his stay in a large institution. The third man's story is also typical and is presented because it shows how useless is the method society at present employs in the hope of reforming beggars of this type. This man was 182 CHRONIC BEGGARS thirty-six at the time he was referred to the Bureau. He was perfectly sound physically and apparently of average intelligence. He did not drink to excess but was illiterate and had had no work record whatever. At the time he came to us he had been dismissed from the Bridewell,* after serving his third successive term for vagrancy. He asked only for work. We sent him to several positions for temporary employment; he took each of them and did fairly well for a man so untrained and so lazy by temperament. We watched him for several weeks, furnishing him a new job as soon as the last was completed, but it was not possible by such haphazard and unsci- entific efforts to fan into a living flame the faint spark of a desire for independence which the man for a short time had displayed. From one job to which he was sent he did not return to report and we never saw him again. He probably decided that an occasional short term in a house of cor- rection was pleasanter to endure than work every day of the year, and willingly slipped back into his old mode of life. Punishment by imprisonment is not what is needed for vagrants of this type, of whom there are perhaps several thousands in ^America, but rather commitment to compulsory labor colonies like those of Belgium and Switzerland, where habits of industry may be inculcated in men who have never worked or who have long been idle, * The Chicago House of Correction. 183 HOMELESS MEN and where untrained men may receive training which will fit them for self-support upon their dismissal. CLASS IV ACCIDENTAL BEGGARS One more quite distinct type of beggar who appears upon the streets of every city may be briefly discussed. This is the man who takes to begging from what would generally be termed "necessity/' certainly in each case either from misfortune for which he himself was not person- ally responsible, or from a compelling subjective necessity. Of such men there are far fewer who become chronic beggars than who follow begging for but a short time; and both relatively and abso- lutely the total number of such beggars is much smaller than is popularly supposed. All of these men have once been fully self-supporting but they differ from the "degenerate workmen'' in that they have not degenerated in character and thus drifted into begging, but in every case have maintained independence until because of age or some other unavoidable handicap they were no longer able to support themselves. If they refuse to go to a poorhouse where they might receive care without the need of publicly begging for it, such refusals are usually based upon the best instincts of the men. They feel themselves to be, and are, above the grade of the class of men 184 CHRONIC BEGGARS who at present drift into poorhouses to end their days, and they will not associate with them. In short, they are men who might be called "acci- dental" beggars, using the word much as the criminologist does when he describes a certain type of criminal as an "accidental criminal/' Eighteen men were of this type. So far as we could discover from personal acquaintance with the men themselves, or by means of conversation or correspondence with others who knew them well, no one of the 18 was parasitic in spirit. Their average age was fifty-seven, ten years greater than that of the degenerate-workmen beggars and twenty-five years greater than that of the men in the criminal and anti-social group. A few of these men had dropped almost directly from self-support into beggary, but more of them had suffered during a period of several years while ill health or old age had rendered them increasingly unable to live with- out charitable aid, but during which they had not relinquished their desire to be self-supporting. Although only one man in this group was physically in good condition and he was seventy- five years of age six of the 18 asked for work also when they were referred to us for material aid.* The digests in Appendix A give a few further facts about this group and show what we did or tried to do in their behalf. It will be noted that in several cases we did nothing which per- * For brief digests of the cases of 16 men in Class IV, see Appendix A, Table 25, p. 302. .85 HOMELESS MEN manently helped the men (in every case some temporary aid was furnished); the reasons for this were partly that we had no way of holding them and therefore sometimes lost track of men whom we should have been glad to aid further; and partly that we found ourselves quite unable to secure the sort of institutional care, or the money to supply adequate continuous aid outside of institutions, which was needed in certain of these cases as well as in many others. A society whose work is supported entirely by private con- tributions can go no further in helping its ap- plicants than the resources of the community and the contributions of its supporters and friends will permit. Within the four classes described, I have in- cluded all but 14 of the 135 beggars. The 14 not included were men whose characteristics, like those of the blind man who begged from a desire for sympathy, were rather unusual and were not found in any large proportion of beggars; or they were men about whom we knew too little to attempt to classify them, although they were reported to the office frequently so that it is fair to include them among "chronic" beggars. Y_To summarize, the four main types of beggars described in this chapter are: First, the anti-social men who consider society their prey. These are men of a rather high average mentality who practice imposture as a business and refuse oppor- 186 CHRONIC BEGGARS tunities for self-support when they are offered. Second, beggars who have drifted into the habit. These are men of weaker mentality who are easily influenced for or against better ways of living by their surroundings. They do not make begging a profession and do not generally become chronic beggars until drink or disease handicaps them. Third, beggars with personal and social handicaps. These men are socially subnormal, even though they are not necessarily mentally or physically subnormal. They are undeveloped or under- developed and cannot, if they would, compete successfully with men who have had normal op- portunities. Lastly, there are the "accidental" beggars, the men whose social relations were normal until age, accident, or disease put it beyond their power to maintain those relations and who then became beggars either from ignorance or from choice. ^ Enough has probably been said in the preceding pages to demonstrate that the chronic beggars in our cities have been recruited from environments and types of homes too various; have taken to begging for reasons too widely differing; are men whose natural abilities, training, physical and mental conditions and moral standards are too diverse in character and unequal in amount, for it to be practicable for lawmakers or social workers to attempt to consider and deal with them all "as a class." No single correctional law, no one inflexible 187 HOMELESS MEN method of treatment can be applied with success to all. Medical care is needed for some; special industrial training for others; material aid alone for a certain small group, and a number of dif- ferent forms of correctional and reformatory treat- ment in institutions and in colonies for still others. Here, as frequently before, the plea must be made for the consideration of the individual man upon the basis of his individual merits and needs as these shall be discovered through intelligent, thorough, and sympathetic investigation of his history. The task of re-building or of building up for the first time, self-respect and habits of industry in men who have become chronic beggars, is at best a difficult one. No matter how much time, effort, and money we may expend, and no matter how drastic may be our laws or how well equipped our penitentiaries, the effort, unless it is undertaken with at least a fair knowledge of the facts as to a man's physical condition, his abilities, tem- perament, training, and habits, will prove to be hopeless. 188 CHAPTER XI THE INTER-STATE MIGRATION OF PAUPERS AND DEPENDENTS* OF the many requests of many sorts which were made by homeless men who applied to the Bureau of Charities for aid, no single one was more frequently repeated than that for free or half-rate transportation to some other point. Tuberculous men asked to be sent to the health resorts of the West, or to be returned from them to relatives or friends in the East. Old soldiers asked transportation to soldiers' homes in other states where they thought they would be more con- tented. Young boys asked to be sent to their homes or to mythical uncles in the far West, who would start them up in business. "Out-of-works" asked half rates to Minneapolis, St. Louis, or Pittsburgh, sure that plenty of work could be found in other cities when it was scarce in Chicago. Insane men asked tickets to Washington in order that they might make important complaints to the Presi- dent; while innumerable tramp-paupers, who had for years been aimlessly drifting about the country * See also The Homeless Man and Organized Charity, by the author, in The Survey, Vol. XXI, p. 125. 189 HOMELESS MEN at the expense of the public, begged for "a charity ticket to anywhere/' being desirous only to keep moving and quite indifferent as to whether they went north or south, east or west. The fact that thousands and tens of thousands of boys, unemployed workmen, tramps and vagrants are stealing rides on the railroads and traveling about the country without personal expense is one with which all are familiar, but that a second very large army of wanderers is traveling from Maine to California, and back again, with its trans- portation paid out of charity funds, is a fact which is probably not so well known. i The most striking differences which exist be- tween the two armies of wanderers, are, first, that the "paid for" group includes hundreds if not thousands of women and children, while among those who beat their way women are so rare as to be almost unknown; and second, that although among the men who are traveling on charity tickets are some capable of self-support, the great majority are old, crippled, defective, or for some other reason chronically dependent, while in the other group the majority of men are young and able- bodied, and when dependent at all are as often so from choice as from necessity, j A most interesting chapter might be written about the tramp-women and the tramp-families on the road, figures as familiar to charity workers as men tramps, and whose restoration to normal living presents even more serious and difficult 190 INTER-STATE MIGRATION OF PAUPERS problems. But in this study the evils of the "passing on'' system can be considered only as they relate to homeless men, although attention need scarcely be called to the fact that since the welfare of large numbers of children is involved in the cases of women and of families, all that may be said of the unfortunate results of the practice among men, applies with even greater force to its other victims. A generally recognized principle of relief is that each community should bear the burden of the care of its own dependents. Laws regulating the voluntary passage, or the transfer by other people, of dependents from one county to another within a state, exist in the majority of states in the Union, and laws providing for the return of per- sons who are found to be insane or dependent after they have drifted or been sent across state lines, but before they have become legal residents of the new states, are upon the statute books of Massachusetts, New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and a few other states. The need for such laws has not yet, however, been generally recognized, and as a result certain states which are on the main lines of travel, and which have not yet so protected themselves, have been heavy sufferers from the unregulated migration of dependents from one section of the country to another; and a few large cities have become veritable dumping grounds for the dependents of all the surrounding country. 191 HOMELESS MEN Chicago, especially on account of the non-resi- dent dependents thrust upon her for care, has been afflicted with an enormous burden of expense. Unless there is a state law which empowers it to return dependents who are unwilling to go, doing this perhaps at the expense of the railroad which brought them into the state, a city cannot rid itself of this burden. It may return dependents to their homes or send them on to their destinations else- where, if they are willing to go, but if unwilling, it cannot compel them to leave. Dependent per- sons are not permitted to starve on the streets in America, and, under the laws existing in most states, they must be cared for either by public or private charity wherever they may elect to remain. In 1902 a large family of paupers came from Pennsylvania to Chicago. The man was blind, the woman crippled, and there were seven children, the oldest of whom was feeble-minded. The next child was only ten, so that it would be four years before he would be legally able by work to con- tribute to their support. In the meantime the entire family would have to be supported by charity. We ascertained that these people had never in their history been self-supporting. They had received public and private aid for fifteen years in the city from which they came, and they had been aided to reach Chicago by the poor relief agents of their own county and of a chain of counties extending across the three states through which they had passed on their way to Chicago. 192 INTER-STATE MIGRATION OF PAUPERS In spite of our definite knowledge of these facts, we were unable to return this family to Pennsyl- vania, for the simple reason that they refused to go. This one family has cost the public and private charities of Chicago, at a conservative estimate, not less than $9,000 or $10,000 since their arrival, and the amount is probably much larger, for they are professional beggars and have doubtless secured by begging more than the actual cost of their support. The Central District of the Bureau of Chanties, at the time I was connected with it, covered more than 20 square miles of city territory, some parts of which were very densely populated, but one- half of all the cases dealt with in the district office were those of non-residents. This was largely due to the fact that the Central District, as it was then defined, included the central portion of the city in which are most of the railroad stations, hotels, and cheap lodging houses. While more non-residents came to the Central District office than to any one of the 1 1 other district offices of the Bureau, no district entirely escaped the problem of their care and two other districts dealt with large num- bers of them. In 1902 it was discovered that three-fourths* of the population of the Cook County hospital, almshouse, insane asylum, and . * This proportion has since been considerably reduced because the county commissioners have instituted the plan of returning to their legal residences all non-resident insane and a few non-resident de- pendents of other sorts when they are willing to go and can furnish their home addresses. 13 193 HOMELESS MEN infirmaries, were non-residents. It may readily be seen from these facts how serious, from the eco- nomic side alone, is this problem of the unrestricted migration of dependents. There are a great many cases where the granting of charitable transportation to an applicant who requests it not only does no wrong to the com- munity to which he is sent, but is by far the best and most economical method of caring for the man himself. If, to save an old man from the necessity of entering the local poorhouse, the authorities in his native county send him, after an exchange of letters, to a relative in another state who is willing and able to care for him, the old man is helped, local taxpayers are legitimately relieved of expense, and no wrong is done to the community which receives the man. Similarly, if the friends and relatives of a consumptive, whose disease is not far advanced, are willing and able to pay his way to a western city, and to guarantee the expense of his care so long as he remains there, or until he recovers and is able to support himself, no complaint will come from the western commu- nity, nor from the states through which the man has passed on his way thither. Runaway lads; men who have met with crippling accidents away from their homes and wish to be returned to them; men who have definite promises of employment in other cities and are dependent where they are, all these and many others are manifestly greatly assisted by being sent to the places to which they 194 INTER-STATE MIGRATION OF PAUPERS wish to go, and if they are sent clear through to their destinations, after the facts in regard to their means of support upon arrival have been ascer- tained from reliable sources, no possible wrong will have been done to any one. The "if" clause in the last sentence is, however, a very important one, and upon the failure of private citizens and public authorities to abide by its simple provisions, hangs much of the suffer- ing and wrong connected with the system of send- ing dependents about the country as it is at present generally practiced. Just what the system re- ferred to is, and how and why it causes suffering and degradation, as well as an enormous waste of charitable funds, can perhaps best be illustrated by the stories of a few of the men whose cases have been considered in this study. The ones chosen have been selected almost at random from among more than one hundred of the same sort, and they are by no means extreme or unusual. A man of seventy-five lived, after his wife's death, with a daughter in New York state. Feel- ing that her brothers should share the cost of the old man's care, she one day sent him to the home of one of his sons in ^lichigan. He was unwelcome there and was soon sent to another son in the same state. This man, too, decided that his father was a burden, and the two sons together hit upon the plan of sending him to a distant cousin in Chicago. The old man, miserably unhappy where he was, readily consented to go, but the sons, being short HOMELESS MEN of money, paid their father's fare only to a nearby city, and told him to apply for help on reaching there, to the Masons to whose order he belonged. The Masons assisted him to a second city; Masons there to another, and so on until he reached Mus- kegon, Michigan, where some one shipped him by boat to Chicago. He arrived with but 12 cents in his pocket and not the least idea where his cousin lived or whether or not he would receive him. Some friendly stranger at the dock brought the old man to the Bureau of Charities office. There he admitted, when we questioned him, that he had not seen nor heard from his cousin in thirty years. He was not even certain that he lived in Chicago, but had "heard so." He also admitted that it was quite possible that his relative was no longer living, as he was somewhat older than himself and "never was very strong." It need hardly be stated that we failed to find this cousin in Chicago. We took care of the old man for fifteen days while we corresponded with the Masons, his sons, and his daughter, and at the end of that time, being unable to secure a promise of care for him from either of his sons, we sent the old man back to New York state, his legal resi- dence, to live with his daughter who agreed to receive him.* The cost of his care during the fort- night he had remained in Chicago, of a ticket to *One of the Masonic Homes in New York state would probably have received this man if his daughter had been unable to care for him. .96 INTER-STATE MIGRATION OF PAUPERS his destination, and of his expenses en route, were all necessarily met by private charity. One bitter December day a feeble, tottering, almost maudlin old man, who gave his age as ninety-four, was brought to us by the police. "Somebody," "somewhere," had bought him a ticket and put him on a train for Chicago. That was all he could tell us except that he had been traveling around for a long time and had been to "lots of places." Everybody had been good to him, he said, and had given him food and clothing and railway tickets. When we tried to question him he told a confused and disconnected story of having once had $3,000 which he had lost, and of brothers in Cincinnati, and daughters and sons living in a couple of Illinois cities. Every clue of any sort which he gave us we attempted to trace. We learned that he had wandered into and out of the Springfield, Illinois, Associated Charities office; that public authorities in Spring- field had sent him to Joliet, upon his own state- ment that he had a daughter there; that Joliet or some other city must have shipped him back to Springfield again, for he had been found there a few weeks later asking to be sent to Peoria. Whether this was done we could not learn. Alton, Illinois, knew him, and one or two other communi- ties had assisted him. We finally found in a small village in Illinois, a brother-in-law of the old man, who was unable to take care of him, but who gave us the addresses of his Cincinnati 197 HOMELESS MEN relatives. These, when appealed to, claimed also to be unable to care for him. No one of them knew where his sons or daughters lived, nor why, nor how long the old man had been wandering about uncared for. He was not a resident of Cook County, but as we could not learn where he really belonged, the only thing that could be done for him was to place him in the poorhouse at Dunning, which we did six weeks after his arrival in Chicago, the cost of his care in the interval having been met by private charity through the agency of the Bureau of Charities. It is a common custom for charity ticket trav- elers to secure letters from physicians, ministers, or others, addressed "To whom it may concern," and requesting aid for the applicants. A young epileptic, a resident of Chicago, was referred to us one day by a local county official, to whom he had applied for transportation. The man wished to go to New York City and pulled out of his pocket two letters from Chicago physicians, which testi- fied that he was "worthy" and unfortunate, and commended him to the charitable for aid. The letters were addressed "To whom it may concern," but the man said he intended to show them par- ticularly to county commissioners along the way so that they would pass him along without ques- tion. His only reason for wishing to go to New York proved to be that he expected a cousin from Germany upon a boat which would arrive the following week and wanted to be there to meet .98 INTER-STATE MIGRATION OF PAUPERS him. Since we found that this young fellow averaged at least one epileptic seizure a day, even when under no special excitement or strain, it was probably fortunate that we succeeded in persuading him to give up the trip to New York on our promise to write asking someone in that city to look out for the immigrant cousin. One of the physicians who had given him a letter for begging purposes had done so without learning the man's real reason for wishing to go to New York. The other said that he had written it out of charity, because the man had asked him to and had shown him his colleague's letter. He knew nothing of the man nor of the frequent seizures which would have made the long, uncertain journey exceedingly dangerous. One of the most pitiful and tragic examples of the sufferings caused by the "passing on" system which ever came to the attention of the Bureau of Charities, was that of another epileptic, a lad of twenty, who had been raised in an orphan- age in Virginia. After leaving the institution he went to work but soon met with an accident which fractured his skull and caused epilepsy. He was operated upon, but the attacks still continued with great frequency and the boy was no longer able to be self-supporting. His only relative was an uncle in the state of Washington, and local charity officials advised him to go to him and started the lad off on his journey across the continent, with a ticket only to the nearest large city. Even before 199 HOMELESS MEN he reached it, however, he had a seizure and was put off the train at a little town along the line of the railway. The people there cared for him a few days and then raised money to pay his way to New York City. At Newark, New Jersey, he was again put off the train and was taken to a hospital. He remained there for some little time and then some one gave him a ticket to Buffalo, but again he was put off the train before reaching his destination. This happened over and over again, and when he finally reached Chicago he gave us a list of not less than 16 or 18 cities and towns in which he had been harbored and given medical and other relief, as well as transportation. The transportation furnished to him had generally been towards the west, but sometimes it was north or south, or even for short distances back towards the east. A great many people had apparently taken an interest in his case. He had been a patient in private as well as in public hospitals, and in Columbus, Ohio, had been again operated upon. A physician in that city had given him a ticket to Chicago, but epileptic seizures while he was crossing Indiana had caused train officials to drop him off and he had received from county authorities in that state the aid which finally enabled him to reach Chicago. The Bureau of Charities wrote to the Virginia city from which he had started, and to every city and town that the boy claimed to have stopped in while on his way westward. We learned that all 200 INTER-STATE MIGRATION OF PAUPERS of his statements were true and incidentally, that not one of the many persons who had contributed money to enable the lad to continue to travel at such pitiful cost, had written to see whether the uncle in the western city would be willing to receive and care for his epileptic nephew when he should complete the long journey. The Bureau of Chari- ties took care of this boy until his uncle was heard from. During his stay in Chicago he was again placed in a hospital for care. After his dismissal he seemed much improved and since the uncle wrote agreeing to care for the lad if he could be sent to him, the Bureau purchased a ticket clear through to his destination and in addition arranged with the railway company that the boy was under no circumstances to be put off the train. Food for the trip was also given him so that he need not even leave the train for a meal along the way, and a telegram was sent notifying his uncle to meet the boy on his arrival. But in spite of all our precau- tions he never reached Washington. Somewhere on the plains he was put off the train and when next we heard of him he was being shipped from county to county eastward through Kansas. He died a few weeks later in an epileptic attack while on a train somewhere in Missouri. Similar stories might be told of many of the consumptives who are sent by their friends to that promised land of health "The West," but who, as non-resident dependents, are expelled from the western states and sent back again toward the east. 20 1 HOMELESS MEN As an example of the pauperization which in many cases results from the indiscriminate grant- ing of chanty tickets, the following case may be cited. A man of eighty-six came to the office one day asking transportation to Pittsburgh. He said that he had no relatives or friends in Pittsburgh, but thought he would be better off there than in Chicago. Upon investigation we found that this man had once been a self-respecting laborer, who had raised a family and had owned a home of his own. The home had long since been lost and the children scattered, and when age began to interfere with his ready employment, he had begun the practice of going from one city to another in the hope of bettering his condition. He could not recall and we could not find out how many years he had been on the road, but his complete pauper- ization and the strength of the hold which the habit of wandering had upon him, even at eighty-six:; showed that he must have been traveling for a long period of years. He said that he had never stolen a ride in his life but had traveled with his way paid by charity, all over America and part of Mexico. He had letters on his person showing that he had been in New Orleans the previous winter; from there he had traveled county by county, or from one large city to another, to Cin- cinnati. The mayor of Cincinnati had furnished him a ticket to Chicago and the man asked us to send him to Pittsburgh. Hundreds, possibly thousands of charitably intentioned individuals, 202 INTER-STATE MIGRATION OF PAUPERS of private charitable agencies, and of public offi- cials, must have furnished the money to pay the fares of this restless old mendicant, solely upon his own claim that he would be better off elsewhere. We refused to send him to Pittsburgh and finally succeeded in finding two of his grown and married children in Iowa, but the old man enjoyed travel- ing and did not wish to be sent to them. He said that if we did not care to pay his way to Pitts- burgh he "reckoned" that he could get there somehow, i Our refusal to grant transportation in cases where there was no good reason for sending men elsewhere, never seemed to trouble professional charity tramps of this type. I do not recall an instance in which our failure to recommend one of them for charity rates delayed an applicant for more than a few days, if he really wished to leave the city. Ministers, church societies, or private individuals, always stood ready to give money for transportation. One sturdy beggar, almost all of whose readily secured income was spent for whiskey, came from San Francisco to Chicago on charity tickets, and asked us to send him on to Philadelphia. We refused, and offered him well paid work instead, but he declined it and a few weeks later came to the office and boasted that he had begged from clergymen in the city enough to pay his full fare to Philadelphia. There was no reason for doubt- ing his story, since two clergymen of whom he had 203 HOMELESS MEN asked aid had telephoned the office about the man, and one of the two had urged us to send him East because he "could not find employment in Chicago" and would "undoubtedly be better off in Phila- delphia/' In another case a man who had also come from California, and who was blind in one eye and paralyzed, asked us to send him to Rochester, New York. He claimed that a wealthy brother of his had died there leaving him a large legacy, but that he had not received it and must go at once to look after his interests. We found that this man had been almost a year in making the trip from Los Angeles to Chicago. He was very dirty, indecently ragged, scarcely able to get about, and altogether not in any condi- tion to be sent on, even if it were necessary. We told him that we would write to the Rochester Charity Organization Society, asking them to look up the facts in regard to his legacy, and to let us know if it would be necessary for him to go on to that city. We also promised him that if they ad- vised that he should be helped to reach there, we would pay his fare all the way to his destination, which would in the end save him much more time than he would gain by going on without waiting for a reply to our letter. We offered, in the mean- time, to fit him out with clean and decent clothing; to give him an opportunity for baths and medical care, both of which he needed; and also promised to meet the expenses of his care in Chicago, until 204 INTER-STATE MIGRATION OF PAUPERS we heard from Rochester. He agreed to the plan, but when the reply to our letter came it stated that the man's brother, far from being wealthy, had died in poverty, leaving nothing for the care of his own family. The Rochester society advised us not to send the man, as he would at once be dependent upon public or private charity. We told him this, and while we refused, under the circumstances, to send him East to certain de- pendence, we offered instead to send him back to his sister in Los Angeles, with whom we had corresponded, and who was willing and able to care for him. In five days he could have been in Los Angeles, where he could have remained in comparative comfort for the rest of his life, but he refused both our offer and our advice, and said he would secure help elsewhere and push on to Rochester. He reached there four weeks later and has ever since been an inmate of the local almshouse. New York had to accept this man, who was "passed on" to her for care, because he was in such wretched physical condition upon his arrival that he could not have been sent back to California without danger to life, t A deformed cripple in a wheel chair arrived at the Grand Central Station in Chicago one day. He had spent the previous night in an Indiana town, from which the authorities had shipped him to Chicago, telling him to apply for admission to the poorhouse there, upon his arrival. This man had with him a number of printed slips 205 HOMELESS MEN for begging purposes, which set forth that he was "a born cripple of God, worthy of help from all charitable people." He told us that he had been traveling ever since his childhood and claimed never to have lived in any place long enough to acquire legal residence. We tried to trace his most recent wanderings, in the hope of learning something about him which might help us to de- cide where he really belonged, but we could not. He may have been born in some poorhouse, of a mother who had herself been a "passed on" pauper. Such cases, and they are not rare, appar- ently belong to no particular state for care. What shall be done with them? Even when they be- long to no particular state, cannot some method be devised that shall be less cruel and pauperizing to the unfortunate dependents, and that shall involve less waste of public and private charitable resources than does the present one of merely keeping them forever on the move from county to county and from state to state? What shall constitute legal residence in a county or state? Under what circumstances may a de- pendent from one community be shipped to an- other? By what method shall such transfer be made? How can states regulate or control the private as well as the public granting of trans- portation to paupers or dependents who wish to go to communities upon which they have no claim? It is the almost unanimous opinion of social workers and others who have given thought and 206 INTER-STATE MIGRATION OF PAUPERS attention to the problem that these are questions which cannot be satisfactorily answered by state legislation. No two states will pass identical laws, and unless the laws on this subject are uniform in all states, certain ones will still be imposed upon by others, and many of the evils of the present system will still persist. Undoubt- edly, what is needed is a federal law, if possible under the constitution, which shall regulate the inter-state migration of paupers and dependents. Penalties should be imposed for sending depend- ents from one state to another, except where they have a residence or have friends who will be responsible for their care, or where they will have immediate paying employment. This law should declare what shall constitute proof on these points, as well as what constitutes legal residence in a state, and federal officers should be designated to decide the questions arising under the law. In the meantime, until the need for such a law has been more generally recognized throughout the country, and until it has been passed and put into effect, individual states should protect them- selves by passing laws excluding non-resident dependents; and citizens may do much to lessen the evil by refusing to contribute towards the purchase of railroad tickets for any applicant until they have assurance from the point of destination that the person who asks transportation will be cared for there; and also by refusing to contribute to any charity society which sends unfortunates 207 HOMELESS MEN about the country without investigation and with- out purpose. NOTE. Over four hundred organizations and agencies of various sorts, including poor relief agents, mayors of cities, charity organization and relief societies, Jewish charities, institutions for dependents, have within the last few years entered into a voluntary contract to abide by the set of rules approved by a committee of the National Conference of Chari- ties and Correction entitled "Rules Governing the Issuance of Charity Transportation." This contract binds the signers not to furnish transportation to any applicant until they have received proof that the applicant will have care or employ- ment at his destination or (in the case of poor relief officials) that he has legal residence at destination. Also that trans- portation in any such case shall be given through to destination. The signers may write or wire (a telegraphic code has been prepared) to each other in order to obtain the necessary proof. Disputes between signers are referred for decision to a com- mittee of the Executive Committee of the National Con- ference. Societies or officials interested in this matter and those who may wish to have the benefit of this agreement, should write to the Charity Organization Department, Russell Sage Foundation, 105 East 22nd Street, New York City, which is acting as agent for the Transportation Committee of the National Conference of Charities and Correction. 208 CHAPTER XII CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS" A .MOST all "tramps" are "homeless men," but by no means are all homeless men tramps. The homeless man may be an able-bodied workingman, without a family; he may be a runaway boy, a consumptive temporarily stranded on his way to a health resort, an irrespon- sible feeble-minded or insane man, a professional beggar, or a criminal, but unless he is also a_wan- derer, he is not a "tramp." It can, therefore, only lead to confusion in any discussion of the so-called "tramp problem" of today if homeless men of the types mentioned and of the many others that may be found on the railroads or in the cheap lodging houses are classed as tramps when they have as yet no confirmed habits of wandering. The organization of modern industry leads to the massing of thousands of nominally homeless work- ingmen in the large cities. In order to avail them- selves of opportunities for employment which may occur in any part of the country, these men must be able to shift quickly from one place to an- other; and so long as they can, either by stealing their way or by paying small fees to brakemen, '4 209 HOMELESS MEN reach their changing places of employment with little or no personal expense, it is unlikely that they will voluntarily pay the regular rates. Hundreds of these workingmen may, therefore, be found beat- ing their way about the country, and at certain sea- sons when large numbers of them are needed at once in a particular section of the country, they have been known to take entire possession of a train, swarming onto it in great numbers and over- powering and controlling the engineer and other employes. More often, however, they are con- tent to steal or bribe their way to their destination, individually and without resort to force. Rail- way officials admit that in estimating the number of "tramps" that they carry in the course of the year they include thousands of men whom they know to be bona fide workmen. These seasonal and shifting workmen, however, are not tramps and should not fairly be classed as such. Neither should other men who, with a legitimate purpose, are on their way to known destinations, nor should those others who are only accidentally or quite temporarily upon the railroads be so classed. These men may and unquestionably do present many problems to the railroads and to so- ciety at large; but so long as they have as yet no firmly established habits of wandering; so long as it is, so to speak, the mere accessibility of the railroads themselves which accounts for their presence upon them, they are not as yet tramps, and the problems they present are mainly 210 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS" of prevention rather than of cure. These problems differ greatly from those presented by the true 1 1 amps, by the men in whom habits of wandering are fixed and confirmed and who probably will not permanently withdraw from the road until they are compelled by force of law to do so. However, while it is true that in the beginning there are very real differences between homeless men of the types referred to and true tramps, these differences soon disappear unless the men who are temporarily upon the road are soon with- drawn from it; for although a certain proportion of tramps step directly from normal social life into this other and abnormal mode of existence, by far the larger proportion of them are recruited from among homeless men; namely, from among men or boys who have already for some reason left their own family circles and have not yet returned to them or joined others. Such homeless men drift into tramp life not because of an instinct to wander which in the first instance causes them to seek the life, but because, having set out to find work or health, or having only accidentally drifted onto the road, they become accustomed to this manner of living and are later unwilling or unable to abandon it. The following case is a very typical one: A. B. was a printer, aged 35; married and with four children. He had a good work record in his home city; he drank occasionally but not to excess and he was paying in instalments for a home of 211 HOMELESS MEN his own when his wife, quite suddenly, died. Being unable to find a capable housekeeper he soon broke up his home and placed his children in institutions. In his intolerable loneliness follow- ing this action, he thought that he would be happier if he could go to some new place and find employment. He set out with this intention, but failing to secure work, and even more restless and lonely in this city than in his own, he went on to another. Still not finding work he went to a third city, in the meantime drinking considerably and be- coming daily more shabby in appearance. When his money was exhausted he began to beat his way from city to city, constantly associating with tramps both on the railroads and in the cheap lodging houses. Within a few months he no longer even made a pretense of seeking work but frankly dropped to the level of the men with whom the traveled, i When we knew him this man had been drifting and wandering aimlessly about the country for four years. He was sodden with whiskey and so degraded physically, mentally, and morally that it was difficult to believe he had ever been the clean and useful citizen, with a family and a home of his own, which correspondence with his home city proved him to have been less than five years be- fore. We did our best to save this man who had once been so well worth saving, but we did not succeed. In the course of his wanderings he had broken his left arm and, because of the condition 212 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS" of his system through the use of whiskey, the bone could not be made to knit, and he could never hope to recover the use of the arm. In spite of this handicap, however, we felt that if he could be persuaded to give up his habits of drink and of wandering, the man might again possibly become self-supporting. We appealed to him through his love for the children he had abandoned, and he agreed to stop tramping and to take a drink cure. We furnished him with new clothing and he went to an institution where he remained for about two weeks; then he left and wandered onto the road again without returning to the Bureau office. This is one case. Scores of others similar to it might be cited, which would show how readily able-bodied and capable workingmen degenerate into tramps when once they begin to steal rides and wander from place to place. And, as before stated, the workingman who leaves his home to seek employment is by no means the only man that the fatal accessibility of the railroads finally con- verts into a tramp. The seasonal laborer who in traveling to and from his changing places of em- ployment associates with tramps, in the end may travel more than he works. The runaway boy, who repeats the experiment of tramping too often, becomes enamored of the life and never returns to his home. The consumptive, still ostensibly seeking health, wanders until he dies. The feeble- minded man drifts until he no longer remembers 213 HOMELESS MEN where he really belongs. In fact, the tramp army is so continually growing by these accretions that any estimate of the number of true tramps upon the road at any given time must be a mere guess. The body is not static and a census is impossible. At just what point the bona fide workman who left his home at the beginning of a year seeking work, and who at the end of it is a tramp, changed from one to the other, no one can say with certainty least of all the man himself, who will probably claim to be the workman long after it is evident to others that he is, in fact, the tramp. Basing their estimates upon figures furnished by the railroads, some recent writers upon va- grancy have stated that there are probably not fewer than 500,000 "tramps" in America. Ed- mond Kelly, in his book entitled The Elimination of the Tramp, states:* "This figure (500,000) is calculated by taking as a basis the number of tramps killed on the rail- roads every year and multiplying this number by the figure representing the proportion of trainmen killed in the year to the total number of trainmen employed. The number of trespassers killed annually on American railroads exceeds the com- bined total of passengers and trainmen killed annually." The same basis of estimate is used by Orlando * Kelly, Edmond: The Elimination of the Tramp, New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1908. Footnote, p. i. 21 4 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS" F. Lewis in Vagrancy in the United States:* "The number of trespassers killed annually on American railroads exceeds the combined total of passengers and trainmen killed annually. From 1901 to 1905, inclusive, 23,964 trespassers were killed and 25,236 trespassers were injured. From one-half to three-quarters of the trespassers were vagrants. The annual totals of the killed and injured show no signs of decreasing." It is possible that so large an army of nominally homeless men and boys may be traveling about the country in one way and another, some steal- ing rides, some earning them on cattle trains, some riding on charity tickets, and some few paying their way, but it is only reasonable to suppose that a considerable proportion of these men, as of the rest of the traveling public, are taking but a single trip on the railroads or that they are traveling directly to their destinations, with genuine objects in view. To class them all as tramps is not only unfair to the men, but, as before said, confuses the discussion regarding either "homeless men" or "tramps." For whatever his other characteristics may be, whether or not he begs and whether or not he works, the one distinguishing mark of the true tramp is that he wanders. His propensity to wander and not his habit of begging nor his idle- "ness makes the problem of the tramp a harder * Lewis, Orlando F.: Vagrancy in the United States, p. 7. Pri- vately printed. 215 HOMELESS MEN TABLE X. GENERAL DATA CONCERNING 220 TRAMPS A. AGES, BY GROUPS 10 to 19 41 20 to 29 53 301039 46 40 to 50 32 50 to 60 19 60 to 70 13 70 or over 14 Not known 2 Total 220 C. NATIVITY American (including 5 Ne- groes) 167 German 14 English 14 Scandinavian 5 Irish 5 Other 13 Not known . . 2 B. CONJUGAL CONDITION Single. . . ." 169 Married 8 Widowed 24 Divorced 2 Separated 17 Total 220 D. AMOUNT OF SELF-SUPPORT Usually self-supporting.... 77 Not at all 96 Not known 47 Total 220 E. VERIFICATION OF STORIES* True 131 False 54 Unverifiable 35 Total 220 Total 220 one to solve than that of the beggar or the de- pendent, or the homeless man of any type who is willing to remain in a particular locality., If we class as tramps, then, only the men in this thousand who appeared to be thoroughly con- firmed in habits of wandering at the time that we * In 38 of the 54 false and in 1 6 of the 35 un verifiable cases, or in 54 cases altogether, investigation and later acquaintance with these men gave us a considerable knowledge concerning them. Concerning 35 men we knew very little beyond such facts as to age, physical con- dition, nationality, etc., as we could gain in the original interviews, and a few other facts, regarding their habits of drinking, begging or wan- dering, which the men admitted or we learned from lodging house keepers or often from men who knew them casually. Where they had come from or why they had originally set out were points that we could not ascertain in some 16 per cent of the tramp cases. 2l6 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS*' knew them, but 220, or less than one-fourth of the whole number, merit the name. Like the beggars, these 220 men were from all classes of society and represented almost every degree of education and training. A much larger percentage of this group were college men or men and boys from very good homes, than was the case with the beggars. In other respects, too, they differed from the men of that group, fewer being criminal and more being, in a sense, only acci- dentally upon the road. "Degenerate workmen" among tramps were very numerous, not only those men previously described who had set out to find work and had deteriorated during the search for it, but also seasonal laborers (there were 21 of these) and a considerable number of ped- dlers, traveling salesmen, soldiers and other men the nature of whose employment had tended to confirm them in habits of wandering. The nationality of these tramps is predominantly American. If the five Negroes in this group are included with the white Americans fully 76 per cent of the whole number listed are native born. In the entire group of the thousand homeless men only 62 per cent are American. I n ages the tramps ranged from mere lads to men in the nineties, but almost 43 per cent were under the age of thirty. In the group of one thousand but 35 per cent were under thirty. A comparison of the tables giving the conjugal condition of the tramps and of the thousand home- 217 HOMELESS MEN less men, shows that the percentage of men widowed, divorced, or separated from their wives is slightly greater in the former group than in the latter. Physically, the tramps varied from perfectly able-bodied young men to pitifully diseased and decrepit old ones.* It will be noticed that the proportion of the crippled and maimed among the tramps is high. Accidents while tramping were responsible for much of this crippling.t According to their habits of tramping the men in this group fall into three fairly distinct classes; for exactly as men who drink to excess may do so continuously, or only at certain more or less regular times, or periodically, with intervals of months or even of years between their defections from sobriety, so tramps in their wandering are of similar habits. Some wander continuously, others only at particular times or seasons, and still others periodically with long intervals of entirely normal life between the attacks. As an example of the first named type of wan- derer the man who tramps unceasingly the following case may be given: A young deaf mute, with an arm missing, came to the office one morning and asked for transporta- tion to St. Paul. He knew no one in that city and would have no means of support upon his arrival * For data concerning the physical and mental condition of the men, see Appendix A, Table 26, p. 304. t See Chapter IV, The Crippled and Maimed and Chapter V, In- dustrial Accidents in Relation to Vagrancy. 218 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS" there. For this reason we refused to send him. Instantly he changed his request to one for a ticket to a city in central Illinois; then to one in Iowa, then to one "anywhere out West/' writing in explanation, "I've just come from the East." He was impatient of questions, but in addition to a few other facts we finally learned that he had been in Chicago less than three hours; neverthe- less he wrote on a piece of paper, " I must go on; I cannot stay; I have nothing to do so I travel always. I do not stay anywhere. I must go before night." We refused to assist him to " travel always," offering instead several different forms of aid if he would remain in Chicago, but he would not consider staying and I have little doubt soon succeeded in begging from someone an amount sufficient to purchase a ticket to "somewhere." The " I have nothing to do" may have explained in large part the restlessness of this particular man, but we dealt at the office with a number of men, and of women too, who were able-bodied and who might have worked, but who possessed, as this deaf mute did, a veritable mania for wan- dering. And usually, as in his case, they were quite indifferent as to the direction they should take or the method of their going if only they could go somewhere and at once. Very rarely could we persuade a tramp of this extreme type to remain in the city even for a single day to re- ceive needed medical treatment or for any other reason, even though he himself might recognize 219 HOMELESS MEN and admit the wisdom of our request. " I must go on before night/' would still be the dogged and unreasoning reply to all our argument or entreaty. Nothing but forcible arrest, to be followed prob- ably in most cases by medical as well as correc- tional treatment, can bring to a halt these half- insane victims of restlessness. Our experience at the office, however, fortunately indicated that by no means all the men who may be classed as continual wanderers are of quite so extreme a type as this; and the total number of men who tramp without resting I believe to be far smaller than that of the second type of tramps, those who wander only at special times or seasons, notably in the dull periods of their trades or in the spring and summer months of the year. Among these men who wander only at certain times must be included the great majority of boy tramps. In this group, too, are many of the scores and hundreds of homeless men (other than seasonal workmen) who crowd the city lodging houses in winter and who disappear from them as if by magic in summer. Many inmates of poor- houses, too, leave these institutions in the spring- time to enjoy the freedom of life on the road during the mild weather. Always in April, in Chicago, or when the season was late, in May, we would have for a few days or a fortnight a noticeable increase in the number of homeless men appli- cants at the district office. In time we learned to recognize this as the signal that the annual 220 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS" exodus of tramps from the county poorhouse had begun. In the late fall the same men (who were generally crippled, old, or diseased) would again apply for aid and would admit that they had been "tramping" in the interval. The first snow of November sent them back to the shelter of the poorhouse and we did not see them again until the following spring. The third and psychologically, perhaps, the most interesting type of tramp, is the periodical wan- derer. In this class may be listed the tramp- workmen with whom many employers of labor, particularly in the mill cities of the East, are familiar. These men, who are often experts in their special lines, will remain at one place for several months or even for a year or more, but when the wanderlust attacks them, will go on "sprees" of tramping, not dissimilar, in many respects, from those of periodic drinkers; for while the lust to wander is upon them, families are neglected, savings are spent, and all responsi- bility is thrown to the winds. Among the families that we came in touch with in the district office, there were a number in which the man was a periodic deserter, and several of these men ad- mitted, when questioned, that they "took to the road for awhile" whenever they abandoned their families. One man, a very fine worker and, when at home, a kind husband and father, de- serted his family at regular intervals just six years apart. His wife was forced to apply to the 221 HOMELESS MEN Bureau for aid during his third absence from home, because continuous illness had exhausted the savings her husband had left with her, which he had supposed would carry the family through until his return. This man came to the office later and paid back the money we had advanced to his wife. He spoke shame-facedly of his wandering, but said that when the attacks came it was useless for him to try to fight them. He simply "had to go." The late Josiah Flynt was apparently a tramp of this periodic type and there are more such men upon the road than is generally realized, men of ability and even, like Flynt, of cultivation, who at certain times seem utterly unable to control an abnormal restlessness which urges them to forsake the comforts and conventions of their own homes for the freedom from responsibility, the novelty, and the varied interests of life on the "open road." The newspaper and stage caricatures of the tramp which invariably represent him as a dirty and idle beggar must be in large part responsible for the popular idea that he is a man who never works and who lives wholly by begging. A study of the history of the men in this group does not confirm this common supposition. Thirty-five per cent of them were found to be generally self- supporting, or at least not dependent upon the public for support. Several owned property and had independent incomes of their own; not a few 222 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS" others were "remittance men," supported by regular allowances from relatives at a distance. These allowances, in some cases, were granted with the distinct understanding that they were at once to cease if the men returned to their homes. In one instance we found that a tramp of seventy had been thus supported for thirty-five years. Certain other men were pensioners upon the less stated bounty of relatives. One reprobate young Englishman of good family, whom we knew for some time, showed us letters from his mother and sister, the contents of which proved that he had received $2500 from them within eighteen months. In reply to a letter which the office wrote to his mother, she sent $100 more in order that we might pay for her son's care in an institution for the cure of drunkenness. Tramps like these rarely if ever beg of strangers, although they often do not hesitate to apply for "loans" to men from their own colleges or fra- ternities, or to others who are acquainted with their families at home and may therefore be relied upon for help in emergency. But in addi- tion to these men with specially provided incomes there are among tramps a good many others who enjoy tramping but who have an inborn repug- nance to begging and who will not do so under any condition. There are others who claim to prefer to be independent and who generally are so, but who will beg when they cannot readily find employment. 223 HOMELESS MEN From the nature of the life they lead, the form of work which tramps most often choose, if they work at all, is casual labor; although some of them peddle and others are in the habit of taking almost any sort of position which is available when they need it, and in which the work is not too heavy, hold- ing it for but a week or two and then wander- ing on again until the amount they have earned is exhausted. This last was the habit of one tramp who had graduated from an eastern university and had then taken Hebrew and Sanscrit at the University of Chicago. He usually sought employ- ment in bakeries or restaurants, and at the time that we knew him had lived in this way for several years, apparently making no use whatever of his superior education. A large proportion of the 220 tramps, however, 96,* or 43 per cent of the group, were not self- supporting, and unquestionably merited their wide- spread reputation for idleness and for utter disin- clination to work. Thirty-eight of the 96 were men who had never worked in their lives; or, differ- ently stated, over 17 per cent of the whole group of 220 men were of the socially neglected type described at length in Chapter X.f Of the re- maining 1 24 tramps, 77 were generally self-support- ing, and it is not definitely known whether the other 47 were or not. See Table X, p. 216. t See pages 179-184. This docs not include runaway boys of school age 22 4 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS" \ So many temperamental and environmental Lie tors which must have played important parts in the careers of the tramps are necessarily un- known to the writer, that it is not practicable to attempt to state just what number of men had left their homes for one particular reason or another, but what some of these reasons were both ac- cording to the men themselves and as found by investigation it may be worth while to note. (1) RESTLESSNESS. Commonest of all, especi- ally among the younger men and boys, was what they themselves called "just restlessness" that abnormal craving to see the world and the people who inhabit it that the Germans have so aptly termed die Wanderlust^ Approximately a third of the 22CTtramps were men who seemed in the be- ginning to have left their homes for this reason alone. Many of them stated unequivocally that no other or contributory reason existed; that they were not unhappy, nor overworked, nor in difficulties of any kind, and that nothing but this restlessness had started them to wandering. Letters to their homes, in many cases, brought replies which confirmed the men's statements, but on the other hand a good rnany men not included in this one-third gave restlessness as their excuse for wandering when we found upon investigation that other and very pertinent reasons for their leaving home had in fact been present. (2) To SEEK WORK. A second reason which was frequently given, but which, like the first, ? '5 225 HOMELESS MEN was not always the truth, was to look for em- ployment, the men claiming to be unable to secure it in their own towns or cities. Unquestionably, a great many homeless men are honest searchers for work, but industrial conditions alone cannot be held responsible for all the wandering about in search of work that is done by men who plead the lack of it in their own town as their excuse for starting out. Not only have some of these men voluntarily left good positions because of mere restlessness, but a number of others are seeking work in strange cities because of excellent reasons which prevent them from securing it where they are well known. (3) FAILURE AT HOME. In fact, a third reason for their first setting out from home, which was admitted by a number of men, was that they had made failures of their lives up to that point and wished to start anew in other communities. A vague "somewhere out West" was usually the goal they sought, but of the men who applied to us, not one had succeeded in his hope of establish- ing a new and better career and almost all were rapidly sinking lower and lower in the social scale. Indulgence in^drink was more often than anything else the reason for the failure of these men in their own towns or cities and continued to be the cause of it. Two or three drug-users had similarly wrecked their prospects at-home and taken to tramping, and in a few other cases en- tanglements with women or other scandals which 226 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS" had become known and had affected their opportu- nities for the future, had led men to set out upon the road. In many of these cases the psychologi- cal effect upon the men of disgrace, combined, as it was, with the sudden and enforced breaking of all the tics which had linked them to normal so- ciety in their own communities, was very marked. I he idea that no one would now know or care whether they made a success of the remainder of their lives, tended to make them feel that effort was not worth while and caused them to deterio- rate with startling rapidity. (4) INEFFICIENCY. Still another form of "fail- ure at home" which sent men onto the road was financial failure, by which I do not mean the large and spectacular failures of ill-advised business ventures but the pitiful and far more common failures of well-intentioned but inefficient men. Such men, even when long confirmed in the habit of wandering, would almost invariably ask us for work, and would explain, some of them apathetically and some bitterly, how they had never had a chance; how other men always got the advances while they themselves were the first to be laid off when business became slack. When asked what sort of work they wanted or were able to do, they would reply, "Oh, any kind of work whatever; I'm willing to do anything that is honest," but when we tried to fit them into particular places, employers found them to be sjupid or untrained, or for some other reason 227 HOMELESS MEN incapable of effective work. Men of this type are much to be pitied and if by some means places which they were really capable of filling could be found for them, many might become self-support- ing; but the charity worker who has the practical task of trying to discover such positions for them feels at times that few homeless men who are mentally normal present a harder problem for solution than do these who are respectable, well- meaning, anxious to earn their own way, but hope- lessly inefficient. (5) BREAKING OF HOME TIES. Family diffi- culties, quarrels and disagreements between hus- bands and wives, the desertion of the wife, or in many cases her death which led to the breaking up of the home, were reasons for taking to the road ad- mitted by a number of tramps. Some wife deserters were among these but just how many it would be impossible to state, since, as previously noted, a number of the men admitted that they had "left" their families but very few that they had de- serted them. Almost invariably they would claim an intention to return home "before long" or as soon as they got a job, even though they may have been tramping and idling for a number of years, during which they had never communi- cated with their homes. The fact of actual homelessness, however, is alone responsible for the presence of a certain proportion of the home- less men in the cheap lodging houses, and it was unquestionably the real reason why a small per- 228 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS" centage of these tramps first took to wandering. Our investigation proved that the greater number of widowers who left their homes upon the break- ing up of their families had at that time already reached an age when to do so was to invite ruin. For the severing of connections with life-long friends and acquaintances in their own towns and the attempt to establish themselves anew elsewhere, when over fifty, had been a fatal mis- step, from the results of which very few of these men had been able themselves to recover. We succeeded in reinstating a few of them when they had not been too long on the road by returning them to their home cities, but for those in whom the habit of wandering had become firmly estab- lished, we could do nothing. (6) To ESCAPE THE LAW. A certain rather limited number of the tramps with whom we came in touch admitted that they had left their homes in order to escape the legal consequences of par- ticular acts. Our own investigations discovered this to be the fact in a few other ceases where men had given a different reason for their first wander- ing. It is well known that criminals take to tramping at times to avoid the surveillance of the police, but as not many criminals are confirmed wanderers, they are not true tramps under the defi- nition used in this chapter, and therefore are not included with them. The few criminals here referred to are of a weaker type. Several were men who had jumped their bonds after arrest for 229 HOMELESS MEN first offenses. Of these, one was a physician who had forged a note and fled to escape the peni- tentiary. It had been more than seven years since he had committed the offense but he still lived in constant, nervous dread of discovery and arrest. Not daring to register his true name and that of the college in which he had received his medical training, he was unable to practice his pro- fession, and without references he claimed to be unable to secure even clerical work; he therefore became a beggar and was one of the cleverest ever reported to the office. He had been in to see us a number of times and had been known to us under half a dozen names for almost three years before he one day confessed his true name and told of the forgery that had made him an outcast. (7) MENTAL OR PHYSICAL DEFECTS OR ILLNESS. These were the direct or indirect reasons why a number of men who later became tramps left their homes. The consumptive who wanders is a familiar figure in charity offices; insane men and feeble- minded men, as shown in a previous chapter, fre- quently drift onto the road. So also do epileptics when the fact that they suffer from frequent seizures becomes known and affects their relations with their friends, or their opportunities for securing employment in their home towns. All these men degenerate with peculiar rapidity into chronic wanderers. The seven reasons cited above were, in sub- stance, the ones given by practically all of the 230 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS" confirmed wanderers in this group, as well as by hundreds of other men in the thousand tramps in the making who were asked why they had left their homes. It will be noted that only those having the true fever to wander, some 70 men, or less than a third of the whole number, had in the beginning intended to rove for the sake of roving. All of the others had merely drifted into the habit because the railroads, unguarded, were always at hand, and because at no point in their careers, after they took to roving, had society raised effective barriers to prevent them from drifting further, or extended helping hands to draw them back toward normal life.* Only men with a true instinct for wandering can be said to be "born tramps" and many even of these would never become confirmed in their habits of roaming if it were, a little more difficult for them to indulge their abnormal propensities in this direction; but if the facts brought out by this study of 220 cases are typical, not more than 31 per cent of the chronic wanderers can plead an active desire as their excuse for being on the road. Almost 70 per cent are mere drifters, men who might under different conditions have remained at home and have become useful citizens. (8) UNGUARDED RAILWAY TRACKS. It is the mere accessibility of the railroads more than any- thing else, I believe, that is manufacturing tramps * For data concerning the truth or falsity of their stories, see Table X, p. 216. 231 HOMELESS MEN today. So long as it is possible for practically any man or boy to beat or beg his way about the country on the railroads, we shall continue to have tramps in America. When we succeed in abso- lutely closing these highways to any but persons having a legitimate right to be upon them, we shall check at its source the largest single contributory cause of vagrancy, and the problem of the tramp, as such, will practically be solved. As an unem- ployed, untrained, sick, or irresponsible homeless man he will still need attention, but this can be given him with incomparably less difficulty when once he is deprived of the facilities he now has for wandering from one place to another. The railroads estimate that the tramps (under which name, as before stated, they include all homeless men who travel without paying regular fares) cost them not less than $18,500,000 a year.* In this enormous sum many items of expense are included. If a tramp is injured when stealing a ride, the railroads must pay at least for his tem- * Major Panghorn, representing President Murray of the Balti- more and Ohio Railroad, gave this figure as an estimate in the follow- ing statement made at the National Conference of Charities and Correction, Minneapolis, June, 1907: "Never in the history of the American railroads has there been such a vicious, such a destructive horde of vagrants on the railroads of America as now. Now estimating that twenty per cent of the damage done is by the tramps, that is twenty millions a year. Say it is ten per cent, that is ten millions a year. Add the maximum and the minimum of police protection. In the one case it is %i 5,000,000 and in the other instance it is $25,000,000. Take the mean of the two and it is $18,500,000 that vagrants cost us in money per annum." Discussion on Vagrancy, Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1907, p. 7). 232 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS porary care in a hospital. If he is killed, his body cannot be left by the roadside; the railroads must pay for its decent burial, and they do this in hun- dreds of cases each year. Then, too, the tramp is a great destroyer of property. While stealing a ride in a freight car he may break open boxes of crackers and of canned goods, and eat food the actual value of which may be but ten or fifteen cents, but because he has disturbed the contents of these boxes, the railroad is unable to deliver them in good order and is held responsible by shippers for their full value. The camp fires of tramps and their carelessly flung cigarette ends have destroyed much valuable property belonging to private citizens as well as to the railroad com- panies. When railway police officers arrest men for trespassing certain expenses of their trials must in every case be met by the railroad, and not infre- quently because of the diversity of the laws in different states and the varying interpretations made of them by justices within a single state the railroads are unable to secure convictions of the men and are required by the courts to carry them out of the towns at once, lest they become local nuisances when discharged. These are a few of the expense items which go to make up the sum mentioned above. And yet in large sections of the country the railroads are helpless to rid themselves of the tramps because they are unsup- ported by the laws, or rather by the local enforce- 233 HOMELESS MEN ment of the laws, in these districts. It becomes a temptation, therefore, when the railroad police- men discover that a certain justice in a particular city or town, is willing to convict and punish the tramps before him, for these officers to carry tres- passers to this place if possible before attempt- ing to arrest them, and :n such instances it usually will not be long before the taxpayers will rebel at the expense for the workhouse maintenance of non-resident men which the frequent convictions by this judge is forcing upon them. The chief difficulty in the situation seems to lie in the fact that as the laws are now framed in most of our states, the community in which the tramp is brought into court and convicted is responsible for the cost of his maintenance in the jail or workhouse, and the feeling is everywhere common that this is benefiting the railroads at the expense of local taxpayers. "The tramp is not a resident of this county. The railroad has brought him here. Let the railroad take him where he really belongs and there convict him if it can." This, in substance, is the reasoning ad- vanced in all sections of the country. A letter asking "What do you do with the tramps?" was sent to the chiefs of police of 100 American cities, a few years ago, and more than half of them replied, "Give them so many hours to get out of town." Such a negative policy in dealing with these men can only result in a greater expense to every community in the long run, for 234 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS" the cost of the tramp is met somehow and some- where every day of the year and each community will receive from some other just as many tramps as it passes on. Moreover, until the "tramp problem" is fairly met and intelligently grappled with in every state of the Union, the total number of wanderers will continue to increase and the needless loss to the country as a whole, both of good citizens and of money, will be more appalling than it now is. If the migrations of tramps could be controlled, as already suggested, under some sort of federal inter-state commerce law, the problem might per- haps be solved, but it is most unlikely that these vagrants can be dealt with by the national govern- ment until long after individual states have dis- covered how best to deal with them locally. Students of the problem now generally believe that little progress can be made by any state until the responsibility for the treatment of the tramp is assumed by the state as a whole; until the laws which affect him are state laws; until the cost of his arrest and punishment or treatment is met by the state, and not by counties or cities within the state. For the man who proves upon investigation, after detention, to be not a true tramp but merely an unfortunate, a sick, or an insane homeless man, whose place of legal residence can be discovered, let the state, if it has none already, enact laws to enable it to send him back to his home. If he belongs within the state, or if he has been a 235 HOMELESS MEN tramp so long that he has no legal residence in any section of the country, let the state in which he has been found and arrested bring his wander- ings to an end by placing him in a proper institu- tion. Each commonwealth will require a certain minimum equipment of good institutions, if it would deal effectively with all the various types of men that are on the road, but many states already have several of the needed institutions which should be available for the treatment of tramps whose legal residence cannot be deter- mined as well as for men who are legal residents of the particular state. These institutions should include a hospital for the insane; a sanatorium for consumptives; a colony for epileptics; an indus- trial home for the feeble-minded ; a general hospital to which any man who is ill may be sent; a home for the incurably ill; an industrial training school for young boys; a farm colony for the treatment of inebriates, to which they should be sent on indefinite sentences and from which they should be released only under probation; and lastly, a compulsory farm colony for the treatment of vagrants and tramps to which they should be committed on indefinite sentences and where they could be taught trades and trained in habits of work. Given all these institutions and a carefully drawn state vagrancy law, similar to that of Massachusetts, and given also a strong law prohibiting railroad trespass, and there will be 236 CONFIRMED WANDERERS OR "TRAMPS" little doubt but that the particular state having such laws and such an institutional equipment will effectually and permanently rid itself of tramps. The words "rid itself of tramps" are used advisedly, for so long as only one or two, or half a dozen states possess such laws and enforce them, the tramp problem will still exist in all the rest of the country. Vagrants will simply avoid the states where they know they will be arrested and will flock into the others where laws are less strict or less well enforced. But if a few of the larger states like New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois should decide to deal with tramps in the way indicated, adjoining states would soon be forced to do the same and gradually still others, as these found that they could no longer pass on vagrants, would do so in self defense, until finally we might have railway trespass laws that were adequately enforced all over the country. Massa- chusetts has already passed very effective vagrancy and railway trespass laws, and Massachusetts alone of all the states of the Union has practically all the institutions just mentioned. In New York state for a number of years a bill for a compulsory labor colony has been presented to succeeding leg- islatures, but it has not yet become law; and Indiana, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Washing- ton are agitating the question of founding such colonies. Undoubtedly as little by little a more intelligent public opinion regarding the tramp is evolved, and as the processes which are needlessly 23? HOMELESS MEN bringing him into existence are better realized and understood throughout the country, the states will one after another equip themselves with laws and institutions that will enable them individually and jointly to cope successfully and finally with the problem of his elimination, a problem which at the present time, owing to the fact that his number is still on the increase, looks discouraging if not hopeless. 238 CHAPTER XIII HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS A week rarely passed during the four years the writer was connected with the Chicago Bureau of Charities in which there was not an appeal for help from some vagrant, homeless, or runaway boy, and at certain seasons of the year there were often several such appeals in a week. It was an unwritten rule of the office that the case of one of these wandering boys must always have right of way over any other work that might be in hand. He was interviewed with special tactfulness lest his suspicions be aroused. Very few questions were asked of him; he was allowed to tell his story in his own way and no surprise was expressed at the remarkable statements sometimes made (as for instance, when an unusually small boy of ten claimed to have been fully self-supporting for six years). The usual rules of the office were set aside and the boy was invited into the private rooms where he helped the stenographer file her letters and became the friend and general assistant of the superintendent and all the visitors. No 239 HOMELESS MEN TABLE XL GENERAL DATA CONCERNING 117 HOME- LESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS 10 years. 12 years. 13 years. 14 years. 15 years. 1 6 years. 17 years, 1 8 years, 19 years, Total . A. AGES 4 8 7 19 22 117 B. American * NATIVITY (including 5 101 4 ii Negroes) . . . German Other Not known i Total 117 * The parents of 82 of the American boys were American (including 5 Negroes); 7, Ger- man; 9, others; i, mixed; and 2, not known. C. OCCUPATIONS Skilled work Unskilled* Never worked f- In school Not known . . Total 9 "s 21 22 117 * Farm hands, 10; hotel boys, 9; newsboys, 8; messengers, 3; office boys, 3; laborers, 6; factory hands, 3; odd jobs, 5; other work, 10. t These were older boys, six- teen to nineteen years of age. Two of them were illiterate, one of the two having no school rec- ord though born in Chicago. D. PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CONDITION Good 77 Defective 40 Blind (partly), 2; deaf (entirely,* 2; partly, i), 3; crippled (tempora- rily, i ; permanently, 8), 9; epileptic.f 3; feeble- minded, J 3; ill (tem- porarily, cause not known), 2; convales- cent, 5; heart disease, i; tuberculosis, 12. Total 117 * One was syphilitic also. t One was crippled also, one was feeble-minded and the third had been locked into a freight- car when beating his way in winter and had had his feet frozen. t Epileptic also in one case. effort was made to force his confidence, but the informal friendliness with which he was treated usually won it within a day or two, after which the 240 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS better qualities in the lad could be appealed to; and with the office to act as intermediary, to lessen the difficulties and misunderstandings which he thought lay before him if he returned unan- nounced to his home, it was generally possible to bring about a reconciliation and to return the boy who was a runaway^ to his parents or guardians within a few days or a week. Lads who were not runaways were, as a rule, less difficult to reach and deal with, since a majority of them asked in the first interview to be sent home and gave all the information about themselves which we needed. Some others, however, wished to remain in Chicago and asked us for work, and in these cases we frequently found it necessary, after investigating their circumstances, to advise the boys to abandon this idea and go back to their homes instead. If they refused to do this, as they sometimes did, the responsibility of the office for the boy's wel- fare at once became great, and as much tact and patience was required in dealing with such lads as with runaways. The boys that came to the office were from all sections of the country and even from Canada, and in a few cases from Europe. More boys came from Cincinnati and St. Louis the two largest cities within a radius of a few hundred miles of Chicago than from any other cities, but the ease with which they could travel, without cost, on the railroads,* brought us applications from boys * For discussion of this subject, see Chapter XII, pp. 231-238. 16 241 HOMELESS MEN whose homes were as far east and west as Bos- ton and San Francisco and as far south as New Orleans. Out of the group of a thousand homeless men there were in all 117 boys under twenty years of age.* Only 19 of these lads were under fifteen years of age; but 98 were from fifteen to nineteen, and it is notable that of this latter number con- siderably more than half were sixteen and seven- teen years of age, these being apparently the years in a boy's life when he is most likely to be restless and ready to wander away from home if he is not kept interested and happy in it. Perhaps the most striking and singular fact disclosed by a study of the histories of these 1 1 7 lads is that although all of them were nominally "homeless" very few of them wer actually so. When closely questioned only 20 boys even claimed to be without homes, and our investigations proved that the statements of 1 3 of these were false in this regard, and that those of two others were probably false, since all the names and addresses which they gave us were fictitious and we could learn but little concerning them. Sixty-three boys out of the i 17 had run away from their homes; nine more were probably runaways; and, as before stated, only 20 in all the group even claimed to be homeless, and but five of these really were so. Even in these latter cases we were able to find relatives or friends willing to receive and care * See Table XI, p. 240. 2 4 2 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS for two of the boys, leaving a total of but three boys who had in fact no homes of any sort to which they might have returned had they wished to do so.* If then, as seems to be proved by this study, the majority of boys on the road and in city lodging houses are not actually homeless, it is of interest to try to discover whether there is anything unusual about them or about the homes or environments from which they come that can account for their vagrancy or their unwillingness to remain at home. Many questions on these two points occur to the mind, but in the limits of a single chapter only a few of them can be an- swered or discussed. The nationality of the boys was mainly Amer- ican. Only 15 had been born abroad, four in Germany and 11 in other countries. Only 17 of the 101 who were born on American soil were known to have foreign parents. In two cases the parentage was not learned but in the remaining 82 cases, or 70 per cent of the whole number, it was known to be American. In answer to the question as to whether the boys came from the cities or the country, we found that 24 of the 1 17 boys (20 per cent) were from Chicago homes, usually from the poorer neighborhoods; but even omitting the resident boys, the table shows that 48,1 or a majority of the remaining 93, were city * One of these three was an orphan whose history we could not trace; the other two had both been born in poorhouses and had been abandoned by their pauper mothers. t See footnote to Table 27, Appendix A, p. 304. 243 HOMELESS MEN boys.* It is perhaps worth noting that of the 63 boys who had run away from their homes, 38 per cent were from the country or from small towns, while of the 54 boys who had left their homes with the knowledge and consent of their parents but 29 per cent had come from rural communities. Apparently the desire of the boy belonging to the small town or country to see the great city leads him to break over parental authority and run away from home in more cases than does the city boy's dream of adventure. ^ The character of the homes from which the 1 17 boys came has been noted. f In 28 instances we were unable to learn the whereabouts of or else knew too little about the boys' homes to judge as to their character, but of the remaining 89 boys we found that only 12 came from "poor" homes in the sense that they were degraded and immoral as well as destitute. Twenty-seven came from homes that might be called medium in character, homes where the neighborhood environment was not always good and where lack of means and occasionally the ignorance of parents kept the children from the fullest opportunities for educa- tion and development. But in these homes the children were not unloved, and the boys were trained and cared for as well as are the sons in the average American home where the income ranges * For information as to whether boys came from city, town or country, character of homes, and family relations, see Appendix A, Table ayA-C, pp. 304-305. t See Appendix A, Table 278, p. 305. 244 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS from $75 to $100 a month. Forty-three boys, or almost one-half of the 89, came from what 1 have designated as "good" homes. All these terms are relative, but in this classification a home is counted as "good" when the neighborhood environment is good, when the family income is sufficient to insure the children's physical well-being, and when the parents are moral and intelligent people who love their children and endeavor to give them the best education and the best opportunities for normal development that they can command. The existence of a "cruel stepmother" is not infrequently mentioned by a vagrant boy as his excuse for leaving home. Only 10 boys in this group were found upon investigation to have stepmothers, and of these but one was "cruel." The harshness of this woman, a Bohemian, had been in fact the cause of the lad's running away, and recent investigation proves that he and another stepson in the same family are still upon the road. Three of the boys who had stepmothers told us that they were happy at home, that their step- mothers were "very good" to them, and that they had run away for entirely other reasons. In the six other cases a lack of sympathy between the boys and their stepmothers apparently had had something to do with the desire of the lads to leave home; no "cruelty," however, had existed in any of these cases. But while stepmothers may, in the popular mind, too frequently have been charged with 245 HOMELESS MEN cruelty and personally blamed for the vagrancy of boys, it is a fact which may or may not be significant that less than one-half of the vagrant and runaway boys here listed had both parents living and in normal family relations. It is quite possible that the lack of love and guidance of one or the other own parent which a broken home implies, may have had more to do with the desire of cer- tain of these boys to leave their homes than they themselves realized or than we were able to discover. All but two of the 25 boys listed as "full or- phans"* were over seventeen years of age and in most instances they had been in orphanages or in the care of societies which place children in pri- vate homes for care or adoption. Twelve had run away from such homes or institutions; 13 had set out to find work with the knowledge and consent of their guardians. It is to be regretted that no light can be thrown by this study upon the extent to which child labor must be considered as a cause of vagrancy. f The question as to the age at which they began work was not often asked of the men who applied; and among these boys we lack information in 36 instances out of the total of 66 who worked. J Of the 30 boys whose age at beginning work we know, 10, or one-third, had been employed under fourteen, four as newsboys, three on farms, * See Appendix A, Table ayC, p. 305. t For note on Child Labor see Chapter VIII, p. 136. J See Table XI, p. 240. 2 4 6 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS and three as hotel boys; but in none of these 10 cases could we trace a clear connection between the youthful ages at which the boys began to work and their vagrancy. The nature of their employ- ment as newsboys, messenger boys, bell boys, etc., occupations which give little or no training for men's work, and which frequently threw them into bad company, was, in a few cases out of the 66, apparently directly responsible for vagrant habits. Records of the occupations of the boys* show that very few of them were employed in lines of work in which they received training of value. Nine only were learning trades. Fifty-seven were employed at unskilled work. Eight boys, al- though they had not been in school for many years, had never done any sort of work. One of these ran away from his home in Chicago when only seven years of age and succeeded in reaching Buffalo before he was taken in charge and sent back.j All of these eight boys who had never done any form of work were confirmed tramps and vagrants at the time of their applications to the office. Twenty-one boys were in school up to the time that they left home, and probably a number of the 22 whose school record is listed as "not known" were also school boys. Although a number of the boys under twenty who applied to the Bureau of Charities had been * See Table XI, p. 240. fThis boy has spent almost all of his life since that date as a tramp, wandering all over America and Europe. 247 HOMELESS MEN on the road for some time when we knew them, and still others had come from homes in which they had received but little care and training, a surprisingly small proportion of them were really "bad." Only six in the group of 117 seemed to have had marked criminal tendencies, although 1 1 had been in jail for more or less trifling offenses,* and several had been pronounced "incorrigible" by parents or guardians. However, a careful study of a number of these boys after an interval of from five to eight years during which most of them have grown to manhood, justifies a strong faith in the good inherent even in many so-called incorrigible or criminally inclined boys if they can be given a fair chance to overcome bad habits in a changed environment. Among those found at the present time, 1 5 have been listed as "doing well."t These include several remarkable instances of boys apparently fated to be tramps or criminals who have entirely reformed and have become the pride of their parents. One case of this sort is especially striking: A Chicago boy of seventeen, American born of * Four of the 1 17 boys had been in orphanages; 10 in homes for dependent children; 4 in poorhouses; and 19 in newsboys' or working boys' lodging houses. Two had been confined in parental schools; 4 in state reform or industrial schools; and 1 1 in jails or houses of correction. Seven had been placed out, indentured, or adopted from institutions, and 2 had been placed out by some un- known agency. Fifty-nine had never been inmates of charitable or correctional institutions. Information is lacking on the points men- tioned above in 26 cases which makes it seem probable that several of the figures should be greater. A number of boys had been inmates of two or more correctional or charitable institutions. t For information concerning after career of the boys, see page 263. 248 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS foreign parents, left home because his sisters "picked at him" on account of his laziness and bad habits. He went down to the levee district where he became the pupil of a negro Fagin who had six or eight boys in his training. This man knocked the boy down and kicked him brutally about the face and head one day because he sus- pected him of not turning over the full amount of a certain theft. According to the boy's story, he was then locked in a room and left without food or care until the following day, when he succeeded in getting out and was referred by a "man in the lodging house" to the Bureau office. When he came to us this boy was the most miserable looking of all the miserable creatures who had ever applied to us for help. His shaggy, uncut hair was matted with blood and dirt, his face was a mass of bruises partly covered by a dirty bandage, his clothing was torn and filthy, and the poor lad was faint and trembling with hunger. Food, surgical treat- ment, and a bath were instant needs; the only question was, which should be furnished first. We took care of this boy and had him at the office daily for a week. Everyone grew fond of him and he was helpful and gentlemanly and seemed pathetically grateful for the consideration and friendliness with which he was treated. He asked to be sent to the country to live on a farm. His parents were consulted and approved the plan, and arrangements were completed to send him the following day, when, given an instant's oppor- 249 HOMELESS MEN tunity in conjunction with the temptation, he broke open a desk, robbed the office of f 1 1 and a small penknife, and fled. Careful search with the assistance of the police and of three or four lodging house men who offered their services, failed to find the boy in his old haunts, and as he did not return to his home all hope of reclaiming him was abandoned. The parents of this boy have been visited recently and it has been learned that at the time of his disappearance he went to Omaha where he at once applied for and received work. He did well and was several times ad- vanced. At the end of two years he wrote to his parents. He kept in touch with them for three years more, when he returned to Chicago where he is now at home working steadily and giving to his mother, who is very proud of his success, part of each week's pay. Of the 117 boys considered in this study, 62 asked only for transportation; 34 asked only for work.* With the exception of a few boys of a degraded type who were already beggars when they first came to our attention, almost all were independent in spirit and anxious to be self-support- ing. The following reasons for coming to Chicago given by the 54 non-runaway boys are indicative of their general character: *Of the 63 runaway boys, 30 asked for transportation; 22, for work; 7, for food, lodging or other aid; and 4 made no request. (These latter were reported by citizens.) Of the 54 non-runaway boys, 32 asked for transportation; 12, for work; 8, for food, lodging, or other aid; and 2 made no request. Several of the boys made requests in addition to the one listed. 2 5 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS For work 24 To join the navy * 6 On way east or west to relatives 7 To beg 3 For medical treatment i Had none f 2 Gave none, or none recorded 6 Chicago residents 5 Total 54 These statements tend to prove that while certain of them may later have become chronic vagrants from inability to find employment or from the evil associations of the road itself, few set out without definite and legitimate objectives. While the boys who leave their homes with the permission of parents or guardians do so from much the same motives as those which lead boys to run away without such permission, the reasons which these latter give for running away cannot be included because in a large proportion of cases they were found not to be the actual reasons. The mere fact that they had run away and did not wish their parents to know their whereabouts led these boys to tell fictitious stones far more often than was the case with the other lads.J In other respects than that of truthfulness, there * Each of these boys failed to pass the preliminary examinations and was returned by the Bureau to his home. t Feeble-minded and epileptic boys shipped into Chicago by public officials of other cities in order to be rid of them. I The reasons why these boys ran away are given later in the chapter (p. 264) but they represent the writer's opinion after thorough acquaintance with the boys and investigation of their cases, and only in part the boys' own statements. 251 HOMELESS MEN were fairly marked differences between the non- runaway and the runaway boys in the group, and it has seemed worth while for a better picture of the latter group to consider them and certain of their characteristics separately. On the average the boys who have run away from their homes are much younger than the others who may be found on the road or in lodging houses.* The records show that 52 boys, or over 82 per cent of the runaways, were under eighteen, while but 24 boys, or 44 per cent of the other group, were under that age. This difference in age would alone account for the undoubted fact that few runaway boys are actually capable of self-support and that many of them are therefore in danger of becoming bona fide tramps unless they are removed from the road. Then, too, the younger the boy the less likely is he to be settled in his habits or re- sponsible in his actions. Often he is still a dreamer and a romancer at seventeen, although he may have attained almost the stature of a man. He is erratic and changeable, a creature of moods and impulses. One who deals with grown men and women who are mentally normal can usually count with a fair degree of confidence upon their actions under specific circumstances. Self-preservation, love of family, the desire for personal liberty * The ages of the 63 runaways were: 10 years, i; 12 years, 3; 13 years, 4; 14 years, 8; 15 years, 4; 16 years, 16; 17 years, 16; 18 years, 7; and 19 years, 4. Twenty had been in school; 39, at work (only 2 of these were under fourteen); 3 had had no occupation, and the occupation of i was not known. 252 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS and other natural instincts and desires may be trusted to restrain them from certain actions under certain conditions. But with boys espe- cially with the type of boy who runs away from his home it is different. One can never be sure that a given stimulus will produce the expected reaction. Tell a young boy that he will be arrested if he commits a certain offense and he may do it at once out of a mere childish curiosity to see the inside of a jail or from a desire to have a ride in the patrol wagon. Similarly, some chance word, some picture or story, or even some sound, like the whistle of a distant engine on the railroad, may act as the suggestion which leads the boy to run away from his home. To attempt, in the case of every lad who runs away, to give a definite reason for his action, would be impossible. The boys themselves cannot tell. Some vague instinct to wander, inherited per- haps from past ages of the race, appears in a number of cases to be the only reason for their setting out. In others a mere impulse leads them away. In still others there seems to be nothing as definite as impulse; chance alone sets them to wandering. But once he is on the road, who can possibly foretell what a boy will do? A mistaken sense of honor, hurt pride, a passing whim, or simple curiosity may lead him to do things from which we should have expected that all his^natural instincts as well as his home training would have withheld him. 253 HOMELESS MEN For example, a Chicago boy of ten went down town after school one day with two boys who lived near him, brothers, nine and thirteen years old. One of them had a quarter which admitted the trio to a vaudeville show and supplied them with candy. After leaving the show they wan- dered about the streets for several hours. The two brothers then went home, but their ten-year- old neighbor refused to go with them. Toward midnight he strayed into a State Street lodging house where he was allowed to remain over night. He wandered about the down town streets for the next three days, returning each night to the lodging house where he told the clerk that he was an orphan and worked at one of the large dry goods stores. The fourth morning, one of the older lodgers at the house, a man well known at the Central District office of the Bureau, brought us word that the boy was there and an agent was sent from the Bureau to look him up. He found that the clerk of the lodging house had that morning turned the boy over to a woman officer of a popular and well-known religious organization. This wo- man was seen late in the day and said that she had placed the child for care and adoption in a good family home in the city This had been done without any attempt to verify the boy's statement that he was a homeless orphan. This story is told less to illustrate the irresponsible way in which the cases of children are sometimes disposed of than to show the boy's strange acquiescence in 254 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS the plan. Having had experience with this sin- gular trick of young boys, and suspecting that this one's story was false, the agent of the Bureau went to the police department to see if a lost boy fitting the description of this child had been re- ported and learned that he was the only son of well-to-do parents who were living within two miles of the foster home in which the boy had been placed and who had been searching for him in great anxiety ever since the night of his disappear- ance. Why had this boy who had been perfectly happy in his own home allowed himself to be placed in a less desirable home among strangers rather than admit that he was not the orphan he had claimed to be? Was it all a game which he con- sidered still unfinished? A twelve-year-old lad went even further with- out confessing the truth about himself. His home was in a city in Iowa. A blind beggar with a hand organ and a monkey came along the street one day and the boy followed, remaining with him until evening, when the beggar camped on the outskirts of the city to eat his supper. He shared his food with the boy and then invited the more-than-willing lad to accompany him in his travels. This arrangement continued several months or until, somewhere in Indiana, the beg- gar got into a drunken row and was arrested. The boy told us that he gave the police his home address, but whether or not he did so the authorities shipped him back only as far as 255 HOMELESS MEN Chicago. There he gravitated to the Newsboys' Home, which is in the same block with the Central District office of the Bureau of Charities, and one of the newsboys advised him to apply to us for transportation to his home. We wrote at once to the charity organization society of the Iowa city asking them to see if the boy's story was true and to notify his parents of his. whereabouts and request them to send the amount required for his fare home. In three days, replies were received verifying his story, but in that short interval the lad was picked up by the police and taken to the Juvenile Court. He had been advised by the boys at the Newsboys' Home to tell the matron there that he was an orphan; therefore, he told the same story to the judge. After .a cross- questioning which failed to shake the lad's story, he was pronounced a "dependent child" and sent to the Farm School at Glenwood, Illinois, where, after considerable difficulty, he was traced by the Bureau's agent who secured an order for his re- lease from the Juvenile Court and sent him home. In another case a boy allowed himself to be given by the Juvenile Court into the custody of a child-placing society, which sent him to a country home 200 miles away, only to discover, eight months later, by a confession from the boy him- self, that he was a runaway from a good home of his own in Ohio. Instances like these are not unusual or rare, as anyone accustomed to dealing with vagrant or runaway boys can testify. 256 ' HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS Wanderlust, "spring fever," or "restlessness" as the boys themselves termed it, a desire to travel and see the world, to break the monotony of endless school days by new experiences and adventures (and perchance to make a fortune!), was found to be the underlying reason why 37 at least of the 63 boys here listed as runaways left their homes. Frequently some occurrence at school or at home was the immediate or more apparent cause. For instance, one boy could give no better excuse for leaving an excellent home than that a new teacher did not read stones Friday afternoons as her predecessor had done. Another had been set back in school and a third was "tired of going to school." In each instance in which boys claimed to have had difficulties with their stepmothers or other members of their families, when the boys were sent back to their homes they set out again within a few days or weeks, indicating that restlessness rather than the reason which they mentioned may have been the underlying cause of their leaving home. With some boys wanderlust is little more than an acute attack of spring fever.* With others it is an intermittent fever returning at intervals during a period of several years after which they recover. With a few it is a disease which becomes chronic and the runaway boy develops at maturity into the confirmed tramp. * Fifteen boys out of 37 whose wandering was due to this cause left home only in the spring or early summer months. A group of 8 more left within three to six weeks after school opened in the fall. The other 14 left at various times during the other months of the year. 7 257 HOMELESS MEN Of the 37 wanderlust cases, I have attempted to trace 22 at the present time. The families of six had moved and could not be found. Of the 16 boys who could be found 1 1 have given up wandering and are doing well. Five have become tramps. Of the 1 1 who today are at home or doing well elsewhere, five were such persistent runaways at the time we knew them that it was a grave ques- tion whether it was worth while to send them home to their parents again. One had run away three times and had been on the road off and on for two and a half years, and the others had similar records. Eight of the 1 1 who have turned out well came from good homes. Of the remaining three, two came from medium homes. The third came from a distinctly bad home; environment and training were bad and the family has been on the records of the local charity organization society for a number of years. In spite of these facts this boy, who is now twenty-one, did not remain a tramp, and on the whole has turned out fairly well. He is at work most of the time and has no vicious habits. Of the five who are still tramps one ran away first at seven years of age, another at eleven, a third is said by his family to be a "born wan- derer," and the fourth ran away first at the age of sixteen but has never been at home for over a month at a time in the five years since. The fifth boy's case is somewhat peculiar. He first ran away at the age of seventeen. Previous to this time he had been a rather wilful but not 258 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS otherwise bad boy. He came of good family and had an excellent home. His own mother was dead, but his stepmother had not, so far as we could learn, been unkind to the boy. He had finished the grammar grades and one year in the high school and was rather a favorite with his teachers. His training, his home, his neighborhood environment, and, so far as an onlooker could judge, every in- fluence surrounding this boy was good, and yet from the day he first ran away he steadily de- generated until, in spite of all the efforts made by friends and family to reclaim him, he became what he still is a tramp and a street beggar. For- tunately, such cases while not rare are not fre- quent enough to warrant any one in giving up his faith in the accepted valuation of good home sur- roundings and training. As an offset to this case is the following: This boy, one of the 1 1 wanderers who are now doing well, was well-behaved up to the age of fifteen when he ran away. It was a case of spring fever, from which he recovered in a week or two and returned to his home. The taste of freedom, however, had unsettled him, and after dis- tressing his parents greatly for a few months by disobedience and unruliness, he again ran away. This time he stayed longer and his father's efforts to trace him failed. After a while the boy came home again, but after his second trip he was still more changed for the worse. He became defiant of all rule and spent his time upon the streets, 259 HOMELESS MEN often staying out until late at night. He smoked considerably and once or twice even drank to ex- cess. When September came the boy refused to go back to school and his father whipped him. He ran away a third time. His mother's grief and anxiety over his loss soon began to affect her health and the boy's father spent two months going from one eastern city to another in a vain attempt to find him. Late the following March, this lad, hungry, dirty, and ragged, came into the Central District office of the Bureau of Charities and asked for work. He had beaten his way West but was unable to find work enough in Chicago to enable him to live. He admitted that he was a runaway but was unwilling to go home, although he agreed to let us write to his parents and tell them where he was. During the week or ten days following his application we kept the boy at the office as much as possible, employing him at odd jobs and gradually winning his confidence. His father telegraphed asking us to send him home in care of the conductor, and the lad finally gave us a reluctant promise to return to his home, but he seemed to dread meeting his parents. The follow- ing day a man friendly to the office, who lived in the lodging house where we had placed the boy, told us that he had heard this lad with another, with whom also the office was dealing at the time, planning to beat their way West the next day. I sent for the two boys on some pretext and had talks with each of them separately. In this talk 260 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS the eastern boy's real objection to going home came out. His clothing was shabby and the boys in his home neighborhood would know that he had not succeeded and he was not willing to let them see him come back "looking like a tramp." The promise to purchase a complete new outfit for him settled that difficulty. It was harder to draw out of the boy what his other objection was, but it finally came. "When I get home they will be glad to see me especially mother and they won't say anything; but after I've been home for a while they will begin to throw it up to me that I ran away, and the first time I do anything a little bit out of the way my father will try to put me in a reform school, and I'll never stand that. I'll run away for good if they try it. Now I've had a hard time since I left home, and I am older and have learned a lot, and if I go home this time I will stop all nonsense and try to do right. I'm a lot changed, but of course they won't know that, and I can't tell them, and they won't understand, and I know if they don't and if my father threatens to whip me or to send me to a reform school or anything like that, I will just have to run away again, so I thought perhaps I had better not go home at all." I promised to write to his father and to explain things so that he would "under- stand." The boy was put upon his honor not to run away, and after the purchase of a new suit, shoes, and a cap, his ticket was secured the follow- ing day and he was sent home. Four days later 261 HOMELESS MEN we received a touchingly grateful letter from his father saying that the boy had arrived safely and seemed to be much changed for the better so that he hoped the family would have no further worry about him. Seven years later, in answer to a recent letter, his father reports that from a wild, unmanageable boy, this lad has developed into a fine man. He went back to school for a while and then to work as an apprentice to learn the ma- chinist trade, attending night school in order to continue his studies. He is now earning $2.75 a day and has a number of men working under him. He has bought himself a piano and is taking music lessons. He has taken several courses in a cor- respondence school and reads and studies con- stantly. His father writes: "We have not had a moment's anxiety regarding him since the day of his return and he is a pride and comfort to us both." Cases like this convince one that an attempt to reinstate the boys should be made in every instance, no matter how little hope of success there may appear to be at the time it is made. The result of attempts to trace the after-careers of 59 of the 117 homeless, vagrant, and runaway boys, at a period of from five to eight years after the dates of their applications to the Bureau of Chanties, may be summarized as follows:* * Most of the recent investigations of these cases were made by charity organization societies in cities and towns all over the country who very kindly lent their services in these and many other cases where re-investigation was requested. 262 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS Unable to find boys' families . . 21 No replies to letter . . . . 4 . Boys' whereabouts not known to rela- tives 2 Doing well 15 Doing fairly well 4* [ 23 Doing well when last heard from 4! Still tramping or begging 4 In state training school ... i In poorhouse i In institution for feeble-minded . . i Dead 2 Total . . 59 Cases not looked up ... 58 Total 117 The cases of 58 were not looked up. For va- rious reasons some of the boys gave false addresses at time of application. Some were lost track of then; some died. In others the writer hesitated to reopen cases where no new application had been made. It has been shown that out of a total of 30 who could be traced today, 23, or almost 77 per cent of the number traced, have turned out well, and of the few known to be still wandering only two are markedly degenerate, and there may yet be chances of reform in the cases of the others. In one instance we returned a boy to his home three times and the last time he stayed there and is * Two weak mentally. Two at home but not yet steadily em- ployed. t One, i year ago; two, 2 years ago; and one, 3 years ago. 263 HOMELESS MEN today working with his father and doing well. In another case a boy began running away at nine years and kept it up until he was eighteen, at which time he suddenly decided that he was tired of wandering and went to work. He is today the owner of a good-sized ranch in the West where his love of freedom and an outdoor life is apparently satisfied without his childish desire to wander. | The probable * reasons why the runaway boys left their homes may be stated as: Wanderlust, 37; difficulties with parents, step-parents or guardians, 5; difficulties with brothers or sisters, 9; mere impulse, 7; had to work too hard, i ; too little known of cases to judge, 4. Therefore we see that 22 of the runaway boys left their homes for other reasons than wanderlust alone, although even in these cases it may have been present in a lesser degree. Difficulties with parents, step-parents, brothers, sisters, or other members of the family were given as causes in 14 instances, three of which we were unable to verify. Of the five boys who had difficulties with their parents or guardians, one ran away because his uncle with whom he lived scolded him for being lazy. Another left home because his par- ents objected to certain of his companions and he considered it "none of their business" whom he went with. A twelve-year-old left because he was unjustly punished by his father who had * Author's opinion after investigation, not the boys' statements, which often differed greatly from the above reasons. 264 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS promised not to whip him for a certain offense and then had changed his mind and done so. " It was not the first time he had lied to me," the boy said, "but I will never give him a chance to again." The fourth came from a very poor home where he had an indifferent stepmother and a more indifferent father who was brutally harsh in his dealings with his sons. This boy had tubercu- losis but was considered only lazy by his father who beat him cruelly when the disease incapaci- tated him for work. He died soon after he came to our attention. The fifth boy claimed that his father had turned him out of his home, but as we were unable to verify this or any other statement that he made and as the boy seemed refined and well cared for, his story in regard to mistreatment was almost unquestionably false. A majority of the boys who ran away from home on account of difficulties with members of their families did not have complaints to make of their parents, but rather of older brothers and sisters. "My sisters are always picking at me," said one boy. "My older brother is too mean to live with," said another. "They never let a fellow alone," said a third. One very fine lad ran away for the rather unusual reason that his father insisted that he apologize for some offense to a younger brother. This carefully-reared boy of sixteen left his home on this trivial excuse and his parents had no idea 265 HOMELESS MEN of his whereabouts for three months. Our letter to his home was answered by a telegram saying that both parents were en route to Chicago and asking us to hold the boy. He had not returned to the office as he had been requested to do, and when they arrived he had again dropped out of sight like the proverbial needle in a haystack. In this instance, as in a number of others, when we wished to find a lost man or boy, we called not for the help of the police but for the willing services of one or two of the lodging house men whom we had known for some time and with whom we were in friendly touch. By noon we had a clue and at nine o'clock that evening the boy walked into his parents' room at the hotel. He has remained at home since that escapade and today is doing well. Probably nothing is more surprising to one who works with runaway and vagrant boys than their strange indifference to the claims of their parents upon them. In every instance, without exception, where we notified parents that we had their sons in our care, the letter from the Bureau of Charities was the first word of any kind received from the boy. That their parents loved them and would suffer and grieve over their loss seemed never to occur to the lads. The boy mentioned above admitted reluctantly that his mother "might worry some" over his three months' silence. But, although he had long before gotten over his pique because of the "injustice" of his father's request, 266 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS he refused to consider going home or even writing to his mother because why? because the new suit, the new overcoat, and a beautiful gold watch which had been given him as a sixteenth birthday present, had all been sold or pawned for food in the course of his wanderings, and he would not go home until he had earned enough to redeem his watch and go back as well-dressed as he had started out. Truly, a boy's pride is a thing to be reckoned with! As before stated, the large majority of the boys who applied to the Bureau were independent in spirit and anxious to be self-supporting. That they were not able to be so was ever a matter of surprise to them. Employers, as a rule, are not anxious to give work to unattached and homeless boys who can give neither school nor home refer- ences and who are generally more or less shabby in appearance. The occasional boy who is able to overcome such objections and secure the coveted employment is surprised to find how inadequate are the $3.00 or $4.00 or $5.00 he may earn to cover all his weekly expenses of food, lodging, car fare, clothing and incidentals. With the realization that it is not going to be an easy matter to "make his fortune/' the boy becomes somewhat discouraged, but with his discourage- ment there is liable to come an access of stubborn pride a renewed determination never to return home until he can prove to the brother who has abused him or to the sister who has treated him 267 HOMELESS MEN with contempt that he has made a mark in the world. Just at this point in his career, the runaway boy, and the one who leaves home with permis- sion as well, if he is under eighteen, is in the greatest danger of drifting into tramp life. For in nine cases out of ten he cannot accomplish self- support in spite of his praiseworthy determina- tion to do so, and failing to succeed in one city he strikes out for another; failing there, he goes on to another, and so he continues, month after month, in ever increasing danger from the evil influences of the road itself and of the older men who travel it who, as a rule, have no scruples against teaching these lads to beg and doing what- ever else they can to injure them morally. Taking the cases of the 117 boys as a whole and recalling also the many other " homeless " boys we knew well at the Bureau office but who are not included among the thousand cases, I should say that investigation did not show that their homes, or their schools, or their work environ- ment were sufficiently abnormal in character or unsatisfactory even to the boys themselves, to account for their desire to tramp or to strike out for the cities to seek employment and inde- pendence. There were isolated instances of abuse at home; there were numerous cases of temporary misunderstanding and lack of the sympathy and appreciation of his peculiar trials which the boy at adolescence needs; there were, undoubtedly, cases 268 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS in which distaste for school had much to do with the temptation to wander; there were other in- stances where the nature of a boy's employment predisposed him toward idleness and vagrancy; but in the great majority of the cases we dealt with it was the spirit of restlessness and longing for change which seems to be common to almost all youths in their teens, that more than any- thing else was responsible for their presence upon the road and in the lodging houses. Doubtless thousands of boys who do not leave their homes experience the same desires, dream the same dreams, but are less venturesome in spirit or are held by habit or by better developed powers of judgment and foresight than are possessed by those who yield to these vagrant instincts. If the fact were more generally recognized that boys in their natural development from childhood to manhood very generally experience this desire to wander, which if indulged may lead to disastrous consequences, ways of counteracting it by means of directed travel or of work or amusements of special interest to them and adapted to their needs could, and in many cases would be devised by parents and teachers. But it is only quite recently that the need for manual training in the schools, for boys' clubs, for directed games in city playgrounds, and for various other means of reaching and interesting lads in their teens has been realized by any considerable number of persons, and in too many neighborhoods the 269 HOMELESS MEN adolescent boy is still, perhaps, the least considered individual in the whole community.* A preventive measure of an entirely different character which would act as a great deterrent to boys who take to the road, would be the closing of the railroads to trespassers. Even among the boys who came to Chicago to seek work, with their parents' permission, it was exceptional for us to find one who had paid railroad fare to reach the city. Almost invariably they had stolen their way. If stealing their way could be made abso- lutely impossible it is certain that fewer lads would even be tempted to "tramp" and fewer still would in the end become vagrants through association on the railroads with older wanderers. f And that a great many boys, both runaways and boys who have left their homes with the con- sent of their parents, do degenerate into tramps after a short experience on the road and in the great cities, is a fact which, unfortunately, cannot be questioned. The mere fact that 117 boys are found in a group of a thousand homeless men shows that the proportion of youths who are wandering is very high. A similar or greater proportion of boys under twenty will be found * An interesting and even nearer approach to filling the specific needs of the really adventurous boy may be found in the summer road trip of a boys' club, which contains elements not present even in the club camp. The possibilities in the Boy Scout and similar movements should also be carefully considered. Editor. t The question of the practicability of closing the railroads to trespassers is discussed in Chapter XII, Confirmed Wanderers or "Tramps," pages 231 to 238. 270 HOMELESS, VAGRANT, AND RUNAWAY BOYS listed in any municipal lodging house or way- fayers' lodge where statistics regarding the ages of applicants are kept. And in this connection it should be remembered that young American lads are by nature independent in spirit and it is probable that the percentage of those who apply to charity organizations or institutions of any kind for aid is small in comparison with the total number who are traveling about the country. A surprisingly large number of older tramps and homeless men whom we knew at the office, con- fessed that they had entered the life as runaways and had never communicated with their parents in the interval since leaving home. One man brought or sent to us at different times not fewer than six young lads who had drifted into the lodging house where he stayed, because he said they were "nice little chaps" and he hated to see them go the way he had gone. Various railroad companies in their reports re- garding the extent of trespassing on their lines comment especially upon the large number of young boys to be found among the tramps. One line in the central West claims that 75 per cent of all trespassers on the road are boys "traveling about to see the country." This percentage is not substantiated by figures and is probably an exag- geration, but if even one-half, or one-fourth, or only one-tenth of the so-called tramps upon the railroads are in fact mere boys, it constitutes an- other very strong reason for doing everything 271 HOMELESS MEN possible to close the railroads to them as well as to all other classes of wanderers. In all the large cities and in many of the small cities of the country there are charity organization societies or associated charities which will gladly take up any "boy case" that may be reported to them. In places where no such societies exist to which the homeless boy who asks aid at the door, or who applies to a citizen for employment, can be sent, the Young Men's Christian Association might, perhaps, undertake the task of investigating the boy's story and of helping to get him back to his home. If the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion has no branch in the town the services of some particular individual who is specially inter- ested in boys and is tactful in dealing with them, could undoubtedly be enlisted. Charity organization societies throughout the country would be glad to co-operate with any organ- ization or individual who undertakes the work of in- vestigating the stories of these boys. As a general rule, much more satisfactory results will be reached if correspondence is opened with such societies, which can send an agent to call upon a boy's rela- tives or friends, than will be the case if letters are written direct to the parents of the boy. For not only do the boys frequently give false addresses, causing letters to go astray or to be returned un- answered, a difficulty which the agent of a charity organization or similar society may be able to over- come by reference to a local directory or by inquiries 272 HOMELESS, VAGRAVT, *ND RL of principals of the public schools o. trained agent of a society of this sor the boy's home and a talk with his p able to report to the inquirer a number c the character of that home, the neighborhc ronment, the attitude of the parents towau child, and many other matters which may be inv<~ uable to him in his effort to understand and deal in the best possible manner with the boy himself. However much the individual citizen and the social agency may hesitate to deal with the adult wanderer, however much they may disclaim re- sponsibility, they cannot avoid making an in- telligent effort to open the way for the wan- dering boy to retrace his steps toward home. The runaway boy constitutes one of the sources of vagrancy but slightly affected by economic causes. The closing of the railways and adequate provision for juvenile recreation will be effec- tive preventives, but before and after these have been accomplished the boy who has actually broken away must receive wise and thorough-going atten- tion. As we have seen, these boys are still young | enough to be easily influenced for good as well as for evil. If, as our experience at the Bureau of Charities apparently demonstrated, many, if reached in time, could readily be persuaded to return to their homes, every individual and agency that comes in touch with these lads in whatever capacity, should en- deavor to bring about their reinstatement before it is too late. .8 273 APPENDICES APPENDICES a. l] ;.-;. t/s UJ K 3$ -::: 0\ UJ UJ o ES R * : * : " '. !T OQ > t < ^. &ss O\ ' 00 ** *^ F 'Soor^t^i'NMrioo ^oo OM o - | S M rA ^-^-00 88 SN 8 CQ w\ O Ov 00 "^ O ^ i^ > I \o -2 \Q rf\ 1 OC O o ^ ^h ^O fS ^O o gg ^o **"* ^o c< ** 2 *N O O\ '^OO fA f* 00 z H r /-. u^ C| . ^ 5 c t. *r O O rr\-vo p uu CO Z U) "N"** "S Tj- ^ frl O c ^ o\ 00 O\ r< rd i^ J^ r^ 1 <" 7- -^ -"r t>. $< ^? ^VOVO ^t^ . 1 OD ;;;;;;;;;; < ^ ^ ^ ,^ ^j. N f^ c\ 3Tuj < H 2, ^- f*- l^ o\ H" oi xfci S,5 S <^^ m :T : o UJ C* U Q.* w> o ON gg ONiTN . 3" ^- < f- . - . 2 ujO UJ XI, 5- ff\ rr\ 5 r n . (T! * IT-S 2 s % ' ' I ' ^T\ -.e ^ " ? ^s t; k. *- v> < < 'rt^ScrtSi to C/5 /^^^oS^? 3 Q^S^^^"-^ o O <^ a, * u 0^ g r "S^^Btccxc^c^ rs o 1 S rt wu.oo;7oi w f- ^ H ^QQ HOOc/)C H H jg t2 ^2 TT! oCCccEc^ B *** *- 3 *- C II! 2 *- J5 o APPF-NmCF-S TABLE 4. DATA ON SPECIAL GROUPS OF DISEASES AND DEFECTS (SUPPLEMENTING TABLE II, p. 36) OTHER NERVOUS DISORDERS: Locomotor ataxia, 10; neuritis, 3; neuralgia, 2; neurasthenia, 2; sciatica, shingles, chorea, and spinal trouble (not tubercular), each 1 21 OTHER INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Pneumonia, 4; malaria, 3; dysen- tery, 3; typhoid fever, 2; influenza, erysipelas, and glan- ders, each i 15 DISEASES OF ORGANS OTHER THAN HEART: Bright's disease, 6; bronchitis, 5; lung trouble, 2; ulceration of the stomach, 2; gall stones, nephritis, bladder trouble, and liver trouble, each i 19 ALL OTHER DEFECTS AND DISEASES: Lead poisoning, 2; varicose veins, 2; pernicious anaemia, cleft palate, and defective speech, each i 7 DOUBTFUL: Asthma, 6; dropsy, 3; catarrh, 2; men known to be ill but exact nature of trouble not known, 5 16 279 HOMELESS MEN 1' -~ i I - UV1US9JVS 1003 rr\ rr\ 00 - ~o~oo~ 00000005 280 - ! 2 - :- " ' I ^ | APPENDICES Si en * ~. "v C^OO - - - 'a o^. -o-a^ c c ra c c - := v ^ "is o . 'i/5 2 o T'w .. 073 > ex o ^ t2:| -g > " ca ca =vg s ^^ gS5gg| ooo-^ L - HOMELESS MEN i : : - - ^ f 2 S 1 1 n n - - VO 9^ cu ^Q j: - s? o 'a o UJ w rr\ VO rA. o e < ^ Q Z S Q < CO II - . N - "5 UJ CO ^^ D 5 > DO | -- r, ^ *> A - 5 1 1 M CO 5 | . a 2 . o TT V0_ >~ ft. CQ Q c q q q q q O UJ J ^ 2* s f^ ?i ^ 8 1 o. 5 U 1 2 - J? 9 - JB UJ 7 r^ UJ _ < H 1 ^? i o ^ ^ ^ fc 1 2 2 2 5 1 l 282" APPENDICES UJ t | l| ' i Q * z tt M UJ lx ~~ fA 00 PI tv^ ** ^ o ^ Lu UJ CO cu I r^ oo M ^ M n r? H 0, oi i 2 U) t m ITS cu CO ^ n f^ CO lS U. COQ 1 | | ^ ^ r, . _ . ff U"\ 0~ z* H J |1 2 U) 03 | * H 00 SQQ ^ < 1 7* ^ 1 .>^ 2 t n rs. CO * cu -^ ^ *f ' 3 * co5 u. -& Q UJ CO 1 o ^ r. ^ - - ^> rr\ CQ Q UJ | vo ^h ^O O o ^^ i cu x! Qu 5 u 1 O O VO VO rr\ z UJ .2 ^- -6 g D UJ U CQ t 1 i 1 1 . "2 S 8 c ^ ^ 2 ^ > H o 283 HOMELESS MEN u, ^. C cS ".^^o *i o OS "r% r vo ^ S M f^ rrs Q) U* ^^ *^ Hf- 5? ^J* ^^2 AMOU> CCIDEN oi u E I- w s ^ ITS o -p^ q^ ^3 * - h o is^ It * "c.s'i ** . < z _ o.^ "c" o mC UJ p 53 ^^.f^ff^^f^f^^Q^ Q^ i^ . S ^ s^ O "^ 3 UJ '"i "" "^ ^ 00 bO^ ^ ^ ^H CO uj ^: C< J u. >. g c c w 2 Oi ^ o i r rr\ ^f O 9 Si "% ^ O.j- ^ 1 ~ * "SS f-H M ** *& _g C -Q zo UJZ QUJ EFORE 1 s5 ^^^ : ii NO rn o c5 ^ f J QQ *^ fl\ 2 0\ "2 ^"s s 11 1 i l/N u. $ 1 * * *^ *^^ ^^ o O OH 1 ^t"00 OON'^t^O'^rrN O O g ^ ^ rjOOVOVO^-^rrs^ 8 I , ^ : -.2 I Q Q-. ^ h c c 0^ 4^'C "-n % CU LU JS : * i : : : : ^ : <^ 3 "T5 CU (jj jr *^ O v v ' c c'-sfV;: UJQu 1 : * 2 :-^ llli! '^ tj f ^ V ^_] ^ J *^ ^ f ^^ i^ t/i ^ ? a5: *- O5U. UJUU as * 1 JljKilisji 2 Per cent. . ^E^^^ JS .*~* X5 - C a> ^ss^ r S S -B|. H 5 <5 ^uttuiu ro. Q>- st 9 UJ 1 <>- 1 -.... . ...... j* UJ 21 -JuJ 1 1 "." " I vo = D 10 ?s H u. C/) 1 *m.; : OV ; ; ;- ; : : JB- u. H g E * -- o J2 285 HOMELESS MEN 4) - 0> JQ '5 -C APPENDICES .-. UlQ coir So ,| E 2 2 ^ ^ ^ 0> t> 1) O 0> *- c c x c > o OOloOHOZ 1 Per cent 287 HOMELESS MEN i D z* *J c 1 UJ n _ JS z J2 Bi D fc " 4 ** (LI DbS f 3 li u. UJ CO tS-| - :J :- q 1 3 {Jj c Q D V) Si tt D lj 00 p cs . rs cs ljT\ q 3 | ri* UJ i ^H Qi ^ E O -d* u. UJ *Q ^ 3 "^ --* "^^ * * . * 1C CO o ^^ * * C ^ ~~~ <. 'r _o> *^ z j^ o * < H ^ *^ CTJ D< 2- r 1 c MM S^ cu ft. r^ |J J u. UJ CO 4 .:*- q ll D ^ ^ 4) ^ r^Q 5 0000 ^^ O S* ~o- t - rrN jrsvo r; rj 8 -C -C ^"Lo S W | ! = T* Sk "u ; St s^ So : E-S "I c S ** 2 ^ <8 ? UJ _J 03 1 lllllll | & s| H ^- _ | 288 APPENDICES "S "S I III! i II II 2 I i ~, i * is It ill o= I* ji =11^ ^ ale' -s M M MM^S-M * -a X 3 .5 .S .S.S'c32 ) .S .S.S ?3-tT* I 1 111 6 J1 SI ^^sS s S ssS- s1i s s >>^ s'S J5 J5 c^c)5tiS $ <$$ Don 55 1 c .. I I 2|- o I !! cSI o o, so JS *^Z 8- S ^-a S^ O rJifJ' 111! Ill i I is g | ! "*! Is >. t 10 Sa~S . 33 II I! .S . S E SE S E SJ o< o < c5 u O -" * fO 19 289 in lii il ft 8 ei si ^1 B- ll 5S BK "I |- 81 ijK ^s J3 N 13 l ill |fi| 1 = 1 |IHli a HOMELESS MEN umouq jo/y & < i - 2 tliOft " N OJIX9JW S UJ U famuur) .a z UJ SVSUV)f 3 Q vysvjq^fri 5 CO UJ uofiuiqsvrfi < viuv^suusj J vwoqvpio \ " f- O swsnqovssvfy "S UJ -J viutSjtj a vpvuvj N 1 cL z utwsstpy QJ ( J utsuoyst/tf M TD *- H uvSiqiiffl \ n S-5 ou UJ VjOSZUUlffl r< u ^ siouim - n CX.^ Uu jnytpyuuo^) c 1 '2 n otqo r < N IS ^ z vituoftjvj r P\ rr\ vuvipuj r rf\ Sr UJ ^0 x ffwyy r r\ -^ r - 00 "2.8 Q ofoyiqj : ^ o ^ r rf\ rrs W<> r u i a N - \ a S tl TABLE 15. INSANE, FEEBLE- i C Feeble-minded . . * 1 UJ ~g "O <^ C . c _OU If II S c E-a I'i * i> u "a. 290 APPENDICES TABLE 16. FORTY-EIGHT INSANE, FEEBLE-MINDED AND EPILEPTIC ADDITIONAL HANDICAPS Insane: Epilepsy, 5; paralysis, 4; old age, 4; tuberculosis, 3; rheumatism, 2; locomotor ataxia, 2; syphilis, leg off, broken arm, deaf, defective speech, rupture, and ill health, each i. (Four men had more than one additional handicap.) 27 Epileptic: Slightly insane, 4; mentally weak, paralysis, tuber- culosis, rupture, leg off, hip injured, feet frozen, and ill health, each I. (One man had more than one additional handicap.) 12 Feeble-minded: III health, 5; collar bone broken, hand hurt, deaf and defective speech, each i 9 Total 48 TABLE 17. INSANE MEN. TRADES AND OCCUPATIONS In Skilled Trades: Machinist, 2; carpenter, barber, electrician, stone cutter, painter, and switchman, each i 8 In Partly Skilled Trades: Packer, miner, farmer, fireman, soldier, and cook, each i 6 Clerical workers, 6; salesmen, 4 10 In Professions: Physicians, 2; lawyers, 2; draughtsmen, 2; minister, actor, teacher, civil engineer, and journalist, each i ii In Business: Merchant, i i In Unskilled Occupations: Laborers, 5; odd jobs, 2; fisherman, porter, and peddler, each i 10 No work record, i i Occupation not known, 5 5 Total 52 2 9 I HOMELESS MEN >- H j a srs.'s.sj 1 5 ^r < tx, Q z 1 00 '^ t^ m O\ SN CO t^ CO UJ z e z j j J ||| : : : :- ,1 5 Q z 1 CO - I^N r X OO SQ g 1 < *fi ?Q z UJ * V ^D ^^ M -? ^ " r< vo * *^ ON Q >U 9 I QQ 1 , l.o z 1 l^'l . ^ .vo O UJ > * s 5 "* 5 I 1" O tyjtJJ 1 |'S r d rrv- < ^ o UJ M o .5 88 .*** ! " | 1 00 : : : : -^- TABLE 1 1 1 fljl! 1 ? 292 APPENDICES 293 HOMELESS MEN " * W> 9S1j|fJJ3 o O ^ U -J u. *j ^ ^ <% do c aooooocc <"o8 <^ o\ ^ rsniiHi-i^ll 1 - 1 Q 5:uOOU4^cx.^Q^ci. r>00 O\ O fi rr\ 1^00 ON O ir\ir\ *r\vO \O 294 APPENDICES TABLE 20. OCCUPATIONS OF THE 1000 HOMELESS MEN (Seepage 135) A. PROFESSIONAL MEN Physicians 10 Teachers 7 Actors 6 Ministers (one ex-priest) .... 5 Druggists 6 Lawyers 5 Civil Engineers 5 Newspaper men 4 Architects 2 Draftsmen 2 Dentists 2 Lecturers 2 Veterinary Surgeon Organist and musician Inventor Sculptor Chemist Writer.. Total B. BUSINESS MEN, ETC. Owned and managed Saloon Lake boat Restaurant Hotel Grocery Notion and Confection- ery store Delicatessen *Not known . . Manufacturers of Soap Carriages Trunks *Not known . . Brokers 3 Insurance agents 3 Theatrical agents i Carried forward 22 * Letters of reference stated: "Once a prosperous merchant with business of his own." Brought forward 22 Theatrical managers i Advertising business 2 Real estate business .... Mail order business. . . . Contractor Photographer Silk buyer Horse dealer Total . . 33 C. CLERICAL WORKERS AND SALESMEN Clerical or Office Workers (Including 12 bookkeepers, 2 expert accountants, and 5 stenographers, also bank clerks, etc.) 75 *Salesmen 39 Total. . . . 114 D. SKILLED WORKERS! Printers 13 Machinists 18 Painters 28 Carpenters 14 Iron workers 8 Bakers 8 Carried forward 89 * Among these dry goods salesmen were the most numer- ous, grocery salesmen, next. t It must be borne in mind that although 213 men are listed as having been in skilled trades a very considerable number of these had not worked at their trades for many years. Old men, sick men, cripples, drunkards, and confirmed wanderers are among them. In the group too are men who were unable to hold positions because of incompe- tence. Often in reply to our letters to employers we would re- 295 HOMELESS MEN Brought forward 89 Brought forward 127 Blacksmiths 8 Metal polishers 5 Cabinet makers 7 Engineers 5 Shoe cutters 6 Switchmen 5 Tailors 7 Steel workers 3 Stone cutters 5 Wood workers 3 Barbers 5 Leather workers 3 Plumbers 3 Carried forward 127 Bricklayers 3 Cigarmakers 3 ceive word that a man was "a Upholsterers 3 poor workman"; "incompetent"; Electricians 3 "steady but not a good machin- Tinners 2 ist" or similar comment which Boilermakers 2 accounted for the unemployment Cobblers 2 of so-called "skilled" workers. Bridge builders 2 In fairness, however, to many (structural iron workers) of the men in this group as well Coopers 2 as to others listed in these tables Silversmiths 2 showing the employment of the Candymakers 2 thousand, it should be stated Book binders 2 that although very capable and Gardeners 2 highly skilled men sometimes Telegraph operators 2 applied to us for aid, their need Weavers 2 of help was often purely acci- Brass worker dental and very temporary. Brewer The fact that they were at some Cameo cutter time obliged to apply for cjiari- Chimney builder table aid and that they are in- Dyer eluded in a group of homeless Furrier men many of whom were chron- Galvanized iron worker ically dependent and parasitic Harness maker must not be interpreted to mean Hat maker that they were doomed to re- Lace maker main among such men. Given Plaster cast maker reasonable opportunities to re- Plasterer cover their footing practically all Piano tuner the skilled and trained workers Roofer who were not degenerate and Saddle maker addicted to vice, were able again Shoe laster and in many cases soon again Stove maker to become self supporting. Tanner Not infrequently we received Wax worker letters from one to three years Window trimmer afterward from men whom we Watchmaker had aided, telling us that they Engraver were doing well; had married; Lithographer had savings accounts, etc., and R. R. conductor returning to the office small sums Hotel steward which had been loaned or given to them when they were in trouble. Total 213 APPENDICES E. PARTLY SKILLED Soldiers 14 Sailors 14 *Cooks 12 Miners 9 Farmers f8 Machinist helpers 4 Coachmen 4 Railroad porters 7 Firemen 3 Nurses 3 Elevator men 2 Pressers 2 Hod carriers 2 Brakeman Bill poster House mover Lineman Packer Soda water clerk. . 90 ^Partly skilled employes in factories Bicycle 2 Powder 2 Electrical Supply 2 Cotton 2 Mattress. . . 2 10 Carried forward 100 * These were not trained "chefs" but men with no special training who drifted into the work by becoming cooks at R. R. construction, lumber camps, etc., and later continued as cooks in cheap restaurants and saloons. f These were middle aged or old men who had once been managing farmers. Farm labor- ers are included with unskilled . laborers. J A number of factory workers are included with the skilled workers listed on p. 295. Noneof Brought forward 100 Carriage Chandelier Furniture Glass Brush Clothing Shoe Woven wire Not known . Total . 109 F. MISCELLANEOUS Professional athlete i "Gentlemen" 3 Magician i Magnetic healer i Horse breaker i Total those listed in the above table were more than partly skilled. The two mattress factory em- ployes, for instance, were young Roumanian immigrants who had been students in their own coun- try and who had had but short experience in the mattress fac- tory which they entered when they came to Chicago. These were men of good family, well educated and refined. All three were foreign-born and were landowners at home, not wage-earners. It would not be fair to list them as having no work record, at least one of the three having managed a large estate for his father for a number of years, but it is difficult to list the sort of work in which they had been employed, when they had worked. 297 HOMELESS MEN G. UNSKILLED Laborers *244 Newsboys or men 15 Houseman! ' Canvassers 9 Waiters 9 Hotel employes 9 Restaurant work 12 Janitors 7 Peddlers , 6 Odd Jobs 4 Messenger boys 4 Watchmen 2 Fisherman i Hospital orderly i Bootblack. . i Total 334 * A number of men are listed as laborers who have done no work for years drunkards, tramps, old men and others. Teamsters are included with these. Ninety-six, or almost 43 per cent, of the men listed as laborers were employed in out- door seasonal occupations. t The occupations which are bracketed are those most com- monly chosen by once able- bodied and more skilled work- men as they drift downward be- cause of drink or physical in- H. No WORK RECORD School (21) or college (2) boys 23 Criminals, tramps, feeble- minded and others 45 Total 68 WORK RECORD KNOWN NOT ability. Many hundreds of men were employed in such occupa- tions when they applied to the Bureau for aid, but these were not the trades or occupations of their most productive years. They have therefore been listed under the latter and only the men for whom canvassing, ped- dling, etc., was found to be the chief and not the secondary oc- cupation have been listed as above. t This includes men who are entered as "Soldiers," but who are Civil War veterans who have probably done other work since the war. There are also five in- stances in which no entry of a man's business was made upon the record, or could be dis- covered from letters of reference. 298 APPENDICES Q * z < "S q q q q o q o < 8 VJ ^ ^ iT !T 2 I ^ 8 2 & t a z to o E CO * UJ X -l U | ^^^^{^J^^ J s > 5 C v-> 7 = t M ' ; - H w UJ Q **> T Z te * 2 1 !>, UJ "Q ^^ c^ .JO ^^ c/) ^ c UJ Q^ ^ g ! '*s ^5 *^ UJ /5 co CQ ^ o {J ^ : g> 1 a> -5 >p I .S ^ 3 _ c c tso 'S'S ; 5 00 2"Sxo^- SOHJtf^So "rt O H HZ ss 55 t q q q q q o o o 8 ft. U, tf\ ~ - 7 1 o-85 S5 S,5* 0^ ra 1 - i^ ^ ... Q 1 ! J UJ ui ^ ; ^ : : s 5 1 c o z < 1 bO c I rsi 1 | i i | TABLE ! 1 g> ei ^ -a Nililli lldSlllg 3 o f- HOMELESS MEN TABLE 22. CHRONIC BEGGARS. PHYSICAL AND MEN- TAL CONDITION Condition Number Per Cent In good health* 44 33.0 Diseased, defective or maimed 91 67.0 Total 135 loo.o DISEASES, DEFECTS, ETC., OF THE 91 BEGGARS Crippled or maimed by accident or from birth: (i) Tempo- rary hand injured, 4; leg injured, i; foot broken, i; arm broken, 3. Total, 9. (2) Permanent leg and arm off, 2; both legs off, 4; one leg off, n; one arm off, 5; one foot off, 2; deformed, i; thumb off, i; one or more fingers off, 4 39 Crippled or maimed by disease: locomotor ataxia, i; paralysis, 12; rheumatism, 4; venereal diseases, 2; tuberculosis, i. 20 Blind, 10; deaf, 2 12 Insane, 5; feeble-minded, 2; epileptic, 2 9 With defective speech, 2; syphilitic, 2; tuberculous, 4; can- cer, i; chorea, i; rupture, i; general debility from drink, drugs, age or other causes, 9 20 Total instances ioof * Eight of these men claimed illness or crippling which they did not have. t Nine men suffered two or more or^fie above defects or diseases. TABLE 23. OCCUPATIONS ONCE FOLLOWED BY CHRONIC BEGGARS OF CLASS II (Seep. 173) Skilled workers: Machinists, 2; painters, 2; carpenters, 2; switchmen, 2; telegraph operator,* tailor, metal polisher, glass blower, wood finisher, iron worker and type setter, each i 15 Partly skilled: Canvasser, insurance agent, factory employe, and cook, each i 4 Wholly unskilled 25 Total 44 * Man's own statement. Not proven. Doubtful. 300 APPENDICES TABLE 24. BRIEF DIGESTS OF CASES OF THE 11 BEG- GARS OF CLASS III (See p. 179) Na- Physical Where No. Age tion- CM. few** Comments ality Ho* UP 51 ai Amer. Good Chicago A confirmed wanderer; first left home at age of 7; has been all over the world; steals sometimes; has been in jail for vagrancy several times. Illiterate, en- tirely untrained. Parents poor but self-respecting, and do not drink. 537 Irish Good New York Can read a little; drinks to excess; is a City confirmed wanderer. Admits seven consecutive years of idleness. Nothing known of parents. 785 36 Amer. Good Chicago Nothing known of parents. Admits six years without any work; claims to have occasionally done odd jobs previous to that, but we cannot learn that he has done anything but beg in 15 years. In Bridewell three times for vagrancy. Not a tramp. 566 19 Amer. Good Orphanage Untrained, lazy, a confirmed wanderer and chronic beggar. Has been in jail and work house. 178 19 Amer. Good Chicago and New A wanderer, begs incessantly in all cities. Claims to have once worked as a York messenger boy, but had been idle for City five years previous to our acquaintance with him. 833 17 Ger. Good Orphanage Untrained, no work record; rather a 158 Amer. Leg off Chicago clever beggar; peddles to screen begging. Untrained; newsboy; was given leg and and or- sold it; not vicious but a chronic beggar. 215 21 Eng. Good phanage New York Brief work record as a newsboy; a wan- 917 12 Amer. Slightly Chicago derer and beggar for years. Runs away from home and begs on street; rnfn- 6111 parents respectable people. Bureau finally sent boy to Home for Feeble- tally minded. 604 22 Amer. Crippled Not known Injured while tramping. A confirmed leg wanderer; drinks; begs. 485 17 Amer. Good New York A confirmed tramp and beggar. Father and begs also; they go around together. Chicago 301 I g > g > ^ I P.> HOMELESS MEN > 1 2 3 Q E o "* & o c "^ - s .ls I ti!p=l on I 8 2 g^ 1*1 rt S'^c^.SO S u 3^^t!:-S "oj o> < ^ ^ 8 -S - -- X Ctf H U CQ u. Eo U 2.S-2 = S CQ U. J- Z 2J u 2 2 2 co O OJ 1> C Ilia " " co co E E d 6 " g co S E = Q < < < o . a ^ g u g g PS ci _J CQ _J J 53;^ - O *\ t>- OO fTN o\ 00 ^ ^ r\ 302 APPENDICES i -> t u ^s t3 ~ O "O i i 28 IS S 8 *j * 4> flj 3 r; n ~ "^-J JS J ^ ^3 C = c J? cl c-^ rt - * " E SE c s | 1-8 e .1 -* i_ J3 g* 1-1 * -s c ^ .00 O O VO <^N ^ '^^O C* (TS 8 | u z 3 Number xf rA CJ\ M rr rf t>.00 Q Q\O rr\ rr\ V) V O /-N a^a!^=Szz "<5 f2 307 HOMELESS MEN TABLE 30. MINNEAPOLIS HOMELESS MEN. PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CONDITION Number Per Cent In good physical and mental condition 79 40 In defective physical or mental condition. ... 121 60 Total 200 100 Defective condition temporary 22 Defective condition permanent 73 Not known which 26 Total number of men defective 121 Deformed, Crippled,* Injured, and Maimed: Both feet off, 2; parts of both feet off, 2; one leg off, 9; injured hip, 2; leg broken, 2; right arm off, 4; hand injured, 2; club foot, one foot off, injured leg, ankle crushed, broken arm, bro- ken wrist, hand deformed, thumb off, crooked spine, broken clavicle, severely burned, each i 34 Blind, 2; blind in one eye, 3; diseased eyes, 3; deaf and dumb, 2; deaf, 2; partly deaf, i 13 Insane, 14; feeble-minded, 4; epileptic, 2 20 Tuberculosis, 11; rheumatism, 8; venereal diseases, 6; paral- ysis, 5; cancer, 2; blood-poisoning, 2; heart disease, 3; brights disease, ulcer of the stomach, typhoid fever, and erysipelas, each i 4 ' Convalescent, 3; feeble from age, 9; frail reason not known, 2; ill from excessive use of alcohol (2) morphine (i), 3; vari- cose veins, eczema, boils, and nervous prostration, each i ; ill (nature of trouble not known), 4 25 Total defects, 133; individual men, 121. * This number includes several cases where men lost limbs through disease. If the cases of 5 men suffering from rheumatism and 5 from paralysis are added to the 34 crippled from other causes listed above it makes the total of crippling from all causes in the group 44 instances (43 men). 3 o8 APPENDICES TABLE 31. MINNEAPOLIS HOMELESS MEN. TRADES AND OCCUPATIONS Clerical Workers and Salesmen: Clerical workers, 4; salesmen, 6 10 In Skilled Trades: Carpenters, 7; tailors, 4; machinists, 3; iron moulders, 3; butchers, 3; harness makers, 2; boiler- makers, 2; cigar makers, 2; candy makers, 2; painters, 2; telegraph operator, dyer, baker, wood turner, printer, plumber, saw-filer, upholsterer, shoemaker, blacksmith, and tobacco packer, each i 41 In Partly Skilled Trades: Sailors, 4; cooks, 4; factory employes, 4; miners, 3; switchmen, 3; soldiers, 2; machinist helper, drug clerk, and steward, each i 23 Business Men: In commission business, i ; in real estate business, i 2 Professional Men: Teachers, 4; writer, minister, druggist, and actor, each i 8 In Unskilled Occupations: Laborers, 82; farmers, 7; teamsters, 3; peddlers, 3; waiters, 2; porter, office boy, orderly, ser- vant, and odd jobs, each i 102 Miscellaneous: Street preacher, i ; horse trader, i 2 No Work Record: In school, 2; in college, i; never worked, 8. 1 1 Not known i Total . . . 200 309 HOMELESS MEN TABLE 32. MINNEAPOLIS HOMELESS MEN. DATA CON- No. Na- tion- ality tion Age TRADE OR OCCUPATION Nature of Defect Before Accident After Accident I Ger. Single 57 Boiler maker Peddler Right leg off at thigh. 2 Amer. Single 20 Seasonal la- Seasonal Left hand injured. borer laborer 3 Dane Single 27 Seasonal la- None Left leg off. borer 4 Amer. Single 29 Seasonal la- Laborer Hip injured. borer 5 Cana. Single 52 Seasonal la- None Arm broken (man borer also insane). 6 Amer. Single 21 Seasonal la- None Hip injured. borer 7 Amer. Single 35 Carpenter, Nonet Part of one foot off. seasonal la- borer 8 Amer. Single 23 Seasonal la- Nonet Right leg broken. borer 9 Amer. Single 34 Marine fireman Laborer Clavicle broken. seasonal la- borer IO Dane Marriedt 27 Laborer Laborer Ankle crushed. II Amer. Single 25 Seasonal la- borer Nonet Parts of both feet amputated. * Three men not here listed claimed industrial accidents but were hurt in other ways. t Family in Europe. I Accident recent. 310 APPENDICES CERNING ELEVEN INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT CASES* Permanent \ Temporary \ How Accident Occurred Dam ages Comments I In boiler works. None Man drinks to excess but is I In paper mill. None generally self-supporting. Man drinks to excess but is I In lumber camp. None generally self-supporting. Man drinks to excess but is I In lumber camp (fell off load None generally self-supporting. Drinks and wanders but gen- of logs). erally self-supporting. I In lumber camp (struck by None Asso. Char, sent man to I falling tree). In lumber camp (chopped in None Insane Hospital. This man goes around beg- the hip). ging with his father who is blind and crippled both drink to excess. I In lumber camp (both feet None Refuses light work offered by frozen). Asso. Char. Lost track of him. I Injured doing general work None Drinks to excess and begs. on a farm. I Hurt while shoveling snow. None Generally self-supporting; was given employment by Asso. Char. I Chunk of ice fell on foot Noneg A good man generally self- when man were cutting supporting. ice. i Feet frozen while working None|| Drinks but not to excess; for N. P. R. R. generally self-supporting. g Company contributed small amounts several times. || Company paid hospital expenses and fare to Minneapolis. HOMELESS MEN TABLE 33 MINNEAPOLIS HOMELESS MEN. DATA CRIPPLED AND MAIMED (Ex- No. Na- tion- ality SSaf tion Age TRADE OR OCCUPATION Nature of Defect Before Accident After Accident I Swed. Single 36 Seasonal la- None* Right hand off. borer a Dane Single 23 Laborer Casual la- Right leg off at borer knee. 3 Irish Separated 70 Seasonal la- Left hand deformed. borer f 4 Ger. Single 54 Harness Club-foot. maker 5 Amer. Single 31 Bookkeeper Bookkeeper "Crooked spine." 6 Norwe. Single S3 Laborer Porter Left leg off. 7 Ger. Single 40 Tailor Peddler Right leg off at thigh. 8 Eng. Separated 32 Laborert None Severely burned all over body. 9 Scot. Married 42 Laborer Casual la- Wrist broken. borer IO Amer. Single 24 None None Left leg off above knee. II Swed. Single 42 Laborer Peddler Both feet off. 12 Ger. Single 40 Farmer Farmer Both feet and one thumb off. 13 Swed. Married SO Laborer Peddler* Parts of both feet off. M Amer. Single 25 Telegraph Telegraph Left leg off. operator operator IS Amer. Single 19 Cigar maker None Left leg off. 16 Amer. Single 42 Laborer Peddler Right arm off and man syphilitic. 17 Swiss Widowed 72 Commission Commission Right arm off. man man 18 Amer. Single 28 Seasonal la- Seasonal la- Arm injured and in- borer borer fected. 19 Amer. Widowed 55 Switchman None* Right arm off. 20 Finn Single 29 Laborer None Left leg off. 21 Amer. Single 43 Seasonal la- Laborer Sore on right hand. borer 22 Amer. Single 27 Shoemaker Casual la- Left leg "lame." borer * Accident recent. t Doubtful. No work record for many years. 312 APPENDICES CONCERNING TWENTY-TWO DEFORMED, INJURED, eluding Industrial Accident Cases) Perma- nent Cause Comments Yea Run over by train "own fault." Not Man a tramp and a hard drinker; has been begging since the accident. Offered perma- working at the time. nent work and refused it. Yea Run over by train Drinks. Bad record. four years before. "Own fault." Yes Born so. Tramp, criminal, beggar. Frequently in jail. Deserted family. m Born so. A hard drinker, and long a "ne'er do well." Not Not known (tubercu- Given brace by Asso. Char. Able to work known Yes lar?) Tubercular bone. Tubercular bone. again. Generally self-supporting. Man also syphilitic; generally self-supporting. A hard drinker and a tramp. No Burned at tramps' Deserted his family; tramping four years; camp fire. drinks to excess. No A fall when drunk. Has lost many positions through drink. Yes A syphilitic wound on Tramp, beggar. Never worked. Several leg. times in iail. Yes Feet frozen. Drinks; does not beg; relatives assist some- what. Yes Frozen. Owns property. Has good income but came to Minneapolis to beg. Yes Frozen. Begs. In jail for vagrancy several times. Yes Run over while steal- Restless, hot-tempered, unsteady, no vices. ing ride on R.R. Asso. Char, secured permanent position for him. Yes Run over by train. J Criminal, tramp. Often in jail. Lost leg when fourteen years old. Yes Arm amputated be- Tramp. Hard drinker. Arm off eight years. cause of "blood- poisoning" (syph- ilis?) Yes Cause not known. Lost arm in his youth in Switzerland. A fine man. Self-supporting. No Cause not known. Man a tramp and hard drinker. Yes Cause not known.? Unable to use other arm because of neuritis. Sent to Poorhouse. A pretty good sort of a man. No vices. Yes Cause not known.J A tramp. Little known regarding him. All references false. No Cause not known. Drinks to excess occasionally, but a pretty good sort of man. Usually self-supporting. Not Cause not known. Sickly. A fair record but never holds jobs known long. Suspect tramping accident. Attending physician says "not an industrial accident." 313 APPENDIX B THE CHEAP LODGING HOUSES AND THEIR RELATION TO THE HEALTH OF HOMELESS MEN* The lodging house environment, as we have seen in this book, plays such an important part in the lives and destinies of the homeless men and boys who inhabit them, that it seems worth while to give a fairly detailed account of the houses. Twenty or twenty-five years ago there were few if any cheap lodging houses of the types with which we are now familiar; and today there is no more striking evidence of the rapid and enormous growth in the number of "homeless" men in the country than is shown by the increase both in number and in size of the buildings erected for their accommodation in our cities. Formerly, unattached workingmen in large cities, as a rule, roomed in private houses where they also boarded, or in small cheap hotels somewhere near their places of employment. It was not until the latter eighties and the early nineties that large buildings put up exclusively for the accommodation of homeless men began to make their appearance in Chicago and New York, and it has been only since 1900 that these have also become numerous in the small cities of the country. The evils they present are both physical and moral. *See also Reinstatement of Vagrants through Municipal Lodging Houses, by the author, in Proceedings National Conference of Chari- ties and Correction, 1903, pp. 404-411. 314 A ROOM IN ONE OF THE "IRONSIDES" Room 6 by 6 by 7 feet high, one of few having outer air and light. Wire netting above, supplemented by newspapers. Sides of corrugated iron. Third floor. Main aisle, showing cross ;i'>l<- at md leading to fire escape obstructed by stove. Space between stove and corner of rooms 22 inches. Main aisle 30 inches wide. CUBICLE LODGING HOUSE One of cross aisles obstructed by posts. Space between posts and wall ot rooms 20 inches. ~ SI * - U o ^ o c O 9 -J C8 U. -o z-S-S EJS! s*| if Q S u I z "' ll >. I! G l APPENDICES In the common living rooms of the lodging houses criminals, life-long vagrants, and the most degraded and degenerate specimens of humanity mingle with men who are merely unfortunate, with inexperienced lads from the country who have come to the city in search of work, and with runaway boys in their most impressionable period. That moral deterioration among these latter classes should in many instances occur is inevitable. Moreover, the most far-reaching evil influences of the lodging houses are intangible and their ultimate harm- fulness cannot be measured or even estimated. In addition, however, to the moral unhealthfulness that exists in practically all of them, and that plays a most important part in the manufacture of vagrants which is constantly in progress in America, there are, in most of the houses, unsanitary physical conditions which must be taken into account if one is to understand why so many homeless men are weakened and diseased after comparatively short residence within them. It is with this latter feature of lodging house life rather than with the moral evils incident to it that this study will deal. The cheap lodging houses in Chicago are mainly of two types: the dormitory type, which was the earlier; and the small room type, sometimes known as the "cubicle" or "cell" lodging house, which is more recent and today more generally popular with the men. For a dormitory lodging house a large building is chosen, usually one not originally built for the pur- pose, and the ground floor is sub-let for a store or a saloon. In some houses, however, the living room or general assembly room for the lodgers and the office and HOMELESS MEN perhaps the washrooms besides, are found on the ground floor. Each floor above the first is devoted wholly to sleeping purposes. According to the law in Illinois, there must be a space of two feet horizontally on each side of each cot or bed in lodging house sleeping rooms; but very little atten- tion is paid to this law in the majority of houses. 1 have seen as many as six cots standing in a row next each other without any space between them, and dozens of others in the same room standing but a few inches apart. 1 do not recall a single dormitory lodging house in which beds are so placed as to allow the re- quired two feet of air space on every side (including the head and foot) of each bed. However, in spite of the over-crowded condition of these great dormitory rooms it should be possible to ventilate them without much difficulty, for in almost all houses an entire floor is given up to the sleepers and each floor has windows at front and back if not (as in corner houses) on one side as well. But for several reasons the air in these rooms is as a rule very far from pure. For one thing, the winters in Chicago are quite severe and, fuel being expensive, it is not economical for lodging house keepers to lower the temperature of their sleeping rooms for the sake of ventilating them. Moreover, the often thinly-clad lodgers would not long patronize a house whose rooms were chilly, and with very few exceptions homeless men seem to have an aversion to fresh air which is even greater than that which the tramp is popularly supposed to have to water. No matter how often the windows may be opened by an employe of the house or by the occasional "fresh air fiend" that strays into a lodging house, some 3.6 APPENDICES man in the room will soon close them.* And it is per- haps not surprising that he does so, at least in winter, for cots are usually placed within a foot of the windows at either end of the rooms and when the windows are opened the men who occupy beds near them must lie in draughts which are uncomfortable if not actually dangerous. Another, and the greatest cause of impure air in many of the dormitory lodging houses is the fact that toilet rooms with partition walls not reaching to the ceiling open directly out of the rooms in which the men sleep. The doors of these toilet rooms are usually open are often fastened back by the men in order that their slamming may not disturb the sleepers and the odors that pollute the air in some of the houses are intolerably offensive. f However, when all is said that may be regarding the unsanitary conditions and the impure air in the dormitory lodging houses, they nevertheless have advantages in these regards over the small room or cubicle style of lodging house which, as before stated, is now the more common and the more popular with the men. These houses furnish their lodgers with one thing which they cannot have in the others privacy. * On the evening of May 29, 1909, the writer accompanied by an officer of the Chicago Department of Health and an officer of the Chicago Municipal Lodging House, went through 20 or more of the cheap lodging houses of the city, and although the night was warm almost to sultriness, we found the windows closed and locked in almost every house that we visited. In three we found windows, at the rear only, open about six inches. In but one house was the air at all pure: there a large pane of glass, half the size of the window itself, had been broken out and there was a sufficient supply of fresh air in the room. t Water-closets in a number of the houses visited in May, 1909, were out of order, and in few if any of the houses visited were the toilet rooms sanitarily clean. HOMELESS MEN Each man sleeps alone in a tiny room, the door of which he may lock when he enters, and this fact alone accounts for their greater favor. The partitions which separate these tiny 5 x 6 ft. rooms from each other are usually not over seven feet high, and in order to prevent a man's next neighbor from reaching over the partition and stealing his clothing while he sleeps, wire netting is stretched and fastened firmly over the tops of all the rooms.* The first picture in the group accompanying this Appendix shows how, in many of the cubicle lodg- ing houses, the corrugated iron walls of the cubi- cles are extended to the outer walls of the build- ing, making it possible for the few men who occupy rooms with windows to control the ventilation of an entire floor. As there are sometimes 200 or more cubicles or cells on a floor, none of which, except perhaps four at either end of the long building, have access to outer light and air, this is a very serious defect in ar- rangement. No one could blame the man occupying the room illustrated, if he closed his window when the mercury dropped toward zero, but his doing so would condemn more than 200 fellow lodgers to breathe air that is both limited and impure the whole night through. Nor can the air of the central cells furthest from the outer walls be greatly purified at any time during the twenty-four hours even though the windows of these * In spite of this precaution against robbery a great many petty thefts are committed in the lodging houses. Some of the men supply themselves with strong pieces of wire, bent to a hook at the end, which they reach through the wire netting and hook into the clothing of a neighbor. Drawing it up to the top of the room they succeed in holding the garments and rifling the pockets. Not infrequently some very decent man was obliged to appeal to the Bureau of Charities for aid because he had been robbed in this way. (See also page 146.) 3 ,8 APPENDICES outside rooms be opened. In every building with cubicles, a corridor of considerable width should sep- arate the last row of cubicles from an outer wall that contains windows, and these should be kept open night and day unless artificial means of ventilation are in- stalled in the buildings. The air in the majority of the cubicle rooms, which are surrounded by outer corridors, is better than that in houses like the one illustrated; but in none of the lodging houses containing cubicles is it good. For not only are the more central cells too far from the windows to receive much benefit from the fresh air which enters them, but in the cubicle rooming-houses as in the dormitory houses the plumbing is frequently out of order and the offensive odors permeate the air of even the most distant cells. Little attempt is made to keep the toilet rooms clean and it would in fact be a most difficult matter to do this, since unpainted, soft wood floors are the rule in most of the lodging houses.* In New York and some other cities the law requires that mattresses shall be covered or encased with a water-proof covering of some kind. There is no such provision in the Illinois or Chicago laws or ordinances and the condition of the mattresses in some of the houses is better imagined than described. Comforters, thick and heavy, and wellnigh impossible to cleanse, are almost universally preferred to blankets in the Chicago lodging houses, and no clerk or manager with whom I have talked even made the claim that the com- forters were ever washed or cleaned in any way. In the better houses it is generally claimed that sheets are * Stale and disagreeable/ if not sickeningly offensive odors were noticeable in the sleeping apartments of the majority of the lodging houses visited by the writer. 319 HOMELESS MEN changed and washed at least once a week. In a few they are said to be changed oftener if the tenant of the room changes, but many houses frankly acknowledge that sheets are changed but once in two weeks. From the appearance of the bed linen in still other houses it is evident that washing occurs even less frequently, and in one or two of the worst houses the sheets are ap- parently used without washing until they wear out.* Before attempting to show how direct a relation there is between the unsanitary conditions in the lodging houses and the health of the men who inhabit them, I wish to touch briefly upon the risk run by all lodgers in the so-called "cubicle" lodging houses if fire should occur in one of them. In order to use for bedroom purposes as much of the floor space as possible, the aisles between the rooms in houses of this type are purposely made narrow. When the ground space covered by the building is large, including three or four ordinary city lots, as is the case with several of the South Side lodging houses in Chicago, these narrow aisles are numerous and have many turns in them. Some of the aisles afford no passage through to others but are mere blind alleys. With windows only at the front and rear ends of the buildings and with the light from these obstructed by the walls of the cubicles near them, all the central parts of the build- ings are necessarily dark and this darkness would in- * Lodging-house clerks are not infrequently themselves "homeless men." Two men whom we knew well at the Bureau office later be- came clerks in popular houses, and from these men and from two or three others with whom the district office frequently came in touch, we learned many interesting facts regarding the income, the cost of maintenance, and the general management of the cheap lodging houses, as well as their customs in regard to the changing of bed linen, the care of the rooms, etc. 320 APPENDICES crease the danger to the lodgers if fire should break out. In one of the largest South Side lodging houses one in which nearly a thousand men are accommodated each night a man connected with the house acted as guide when a few years ago another Bureau worker and myself asked to go through the building. This man carried a lighted taper with him to illumine the almost total darkness of many of the aisles between the rooms, and twice on a single floor he unintentionally went down blind alleys thinking that they were open ones. Several other times he seemed uncertain as to whether aisles with several turns in them were open or blind. If some one more or less familiar with the house, with a light in his hands, experienced such difficulty in finding his way about when wide awake and not at all apprehensive or nervous, what would be the experience of scores and hundreds of men unfamiliar with the devious turnings of the narrow aisles if they were suddenly roused from sleep by the cry of " Fire"? The third picture in the group was taken recently in one of the largest and most popular cheap lodging houses in Chicago and shows one of the cross aisles of the building with large posts obstructing the passage. There are three of these posts in the aisle shown and as many or more in several others. There is but 20 inches of space for the men to pass through between the posts and the walls of the rooms. Several of the main aisles leading to fire escapes in the same house are blocked by small sheet iron stoves. These stoves in winter are some- times red hot. The aisle itself is 30 inches wide but the space between the corner rooms and the stoves is but 22 inches. Smoke-blinded and panic-stricken men 21 321 HOMELESS MEN would have but little chance of escape in aisles thus blocked. While the two types of lodging houses already de- scribed, the dormitory and the cubicle, are the com- monest to be found in Chicago, there are a few of another and even more undesirable kind. I refer to the small hotels or private houses in which numbers of men are housed with even greater over-crowding and in more filthy and unhealthful conditions than those described in the previous pages. One of the lodging houses occupies a building which was once used as a small hotel. The erection of office buildings on each side of it permanently closed its windows except those at front and rear, and so darkened it that it could no longer be used for its original purpose; but every night homeless men sleep in its unventilated and uncleaned rooms breathing air so foul that one entering from out- doors finds it suffocating and intolerable. I do not know of any house in Chicago where conditions are worse than in this one, in which the majority of the rooms are absolutely without access to the outer air, but in other sections of the city and in other cities throughout the country, particularly in their foreign quarters, are a number of houses where conditions similar to this exist, and where disease is bred as in culture tubes. That the lodging houses of Chicago are in fact centers of infection that endanger the lives not only of their tenants but of thousands of other persons in the city, is a demonstrable fact. In 1905 the superintendent of the county institutions at Dunning made a study of the sources from which 322 APPENDICES the cases of tuberculosis received at the tuberculosis hospital came. \\c found that while scattered cases came from all parts of the city one to a block, or one to six or eight blocks as the case might be from a single block in South Clark Street in which there were a num- ber of cheap lodging houses, 174 cases of tuberculosis had been received in five years; 36 in the last year (1904). A total of 238 men had been admitted to the hospitals in five years from certain lodging houses on the same street, covering a distance of less than two blocks. From one block on another lodging house street 90 cases had been received during a similar period, 42 of which had come from a single house 17 in a single year.* The house referred to accommodated only about 200 men a night. * Workers at the Central District office of the Bureau of Charities were very familiar with this particular lodging house, which was on the dormitory plan and was managed by a well known religious or- ganization. A man who for two years was clerk of the house had been one of our applicants, and a large number of the homeless men who came to us for aid gave this lodging house as their place of resi- dence. 1 have visited the place at three o'clock in the afternoon and counted at that hour five consumptives lying on the beds, hacking and coughing and spitting on the floor. The clerk explained that he did not ordinarily allow men to remain in the beds during the day but that these men were not feeling very well and he was sorry for them and so had permitted them to register early for the night in order that they might lie down and rest. There were three or four large cuspidors in this room but the clerk said it was hard to get the men to use them. He ordered them to do so while we were there, but undried sputum was visible in many places upon the dirty floor of the room. [In order to ascertain whether such a condition of affairs would be tolerated today (191 1), while this book was being prepared for the press a letter of inquiry was sent to the Health Department of Chi- cago. The reply said that: Although the extent of the jurisdiction of the health department of the City of Chicago over lodging houses is somewhat doubtful, inspections of their sanitary conditions are now frequently made and cleaning and repairs are ordered when found necessary. The department, however, does not claim that such supervision is adequate. Editor.] 323 HOMELESS MEN Four blocks on West Madison Street, in which the lodging houses are fewer and somewhat smaller than in the three blocks referred to on South Clark Street, furnished 204 cases for the Dunning hospital in five years, and two short blocks on Desplaines Street, 58 more. One hundred and twenty-three cases from the nine lodging house blocks referred to,* in a single year went to Dunning to die. Only 951 cases were admitted that year to the tuberculosis hospital from among all the 2,000,000 and more population of the remainder of Chicago and Cook County. This fact gives an idea of how exceedingly large must be the proportion of tuberculosis cases in the lodging house district alone, for I have mentioned the figures of cases sent to Dunning for but nine of the 30 odd blocks in Chicago in which cheap lodging houses for men exist and in which conditions similar to those described are breeding the disease. The tuberculosis hospital at Dunning has until recently been mainly one at which none but patients in the last stages of the disease were received. The men who were sent there from the lodging houses all went there to die some to die within twenty-four hours. To say that 123 men went there from the lodging houses within a district of nine blocks during a single year means that a very much larger number of men in these same houses were ill with tuberculosis, and that the lack of cuspidors, the use of soiled bedding, and the dry- sweeping of the floors are making the " risk " of infection * It is difficult to give an estimate of the total population of these particular blocks but as they are in the section of the city mainly devoted to business purposes their population cannot be up to the average of city blocks. 324 APPENDICES scarcely a risk at all but a certainty for hundreds of men.* The great majority of the non-resident tuberculous applicants for aid at the office were men or boys on their way to or from the supposedly health-giving "West," who were either too ill upon their arrival at Chicago to go further, or (quite as often the case) lacked the means to do so. Not infrequently one of these unfortunates died within a few days after his application to the office, and we had the sad duty of notifying his relatives and attending to the details of the shipment of his body. No matter what their condition might be, nor how much their presence in the lodging houses might endanger the lives of other lodgers, tuberculous men who were strangers in the city and indigent could find refuge nowhere else but in these houses. No hospital in Chicago will open its doors to them. Even the county institutions are not supposed to care for any but the resident poor of the county, although in common humanity they again and again accepted for temporary care non-resident consumptives of whose presence in the lodging houses we notified them. In a great many cases where the men were strong enough to travel we made investigations as quickly as possible by letter or telegraph to discover whether they had relatives willing and able to care for them, and then sent the men back to their homes permitting them to remain in a lodging house in the interval simply because there was no other place in which to house them. * For a record of the 93 men among the thousand known to be suffering from tuberculosis, see Chapter IN, Physical Condition of the Men, p. 38. 32$ HOMELESS MEN Lodging house keepers all claim that they will neither harbor nor receive for a night a man who is ill; and we knew of cases where a consumptive's condi- tion was so apparent on sight, that he did in fact have great difficulty in securing a bed in the district; but if the man who asks for a room is able to stand and if he assures the clerk as he generally does that he expects to go on "out West" or to his friends the next morning, the chances are that he will be assigned a room without question.* As the cubicle lodging houses of our cities are at present constructed it is admittedly almost, if not quite, impossible to make them sanitarily clean and safe. The corrugated iron partition walls which reach to the unpainted floors would prevent the latter from being well scrubbed even if scrubbing were to be substituted for the dry sweeping which is now generally the cus- tom. Either these partitions should be placed so as to clear the floor by several inches to allow room for cleaning under them, or else all walls and partitions should join cement floors with a curve instead of an * At the present time (1909) whenever a man suffering from tu- berculosis is removed from a lodging house to Dunning, the city health department is notified and fumigates the house. This was not done a few years ago, but the futility of this single precaution taken by the health department today is evident when one considers that if a consumptive is not taken to Dunning but is merely turned out on the streets, or if, in spite of his illness, he is allowed to stay in a lodging house several days or weeks, this fact is never called to the attention of the department and nothing is done about the matter. When a case of tuberculosis is reported it takes from two to three days of the time of several men from the health department to dis- infect one of the larger houses; but an officer of the department of health stated in talking with me in the spring of 1909 that they unfortunately had no means of knowing that their work would not be nullified by the admission on the following day of one or more other consumptives to the same house. 326 APPENDICES angle at the place of joining the form of construction now being used in all modern hospitals for contagious diseases. In Appendix I"), page 335, will be found a copy of an ordinance "licensing and regulating the construction, maintenance, and operation of lodging houses in the city of Minneapolis" which was passed in May, 1910, by the council of that city. Minneapolis is a young city with less than 300,000 inhabitants, but it hopes to cure certain sanitary evils within its lodging houses identical with those described in the preceding pages as belonging to Chicago, before they are beyond control. The law referred to has so many excellent provisions that its text is given in full. The require- ments that the floors shall be painted or shellaced; that cuspidors containing disinfecting liquid shall be provided in "each hall, room, cubicle, water closet, washroom and bathroom"; the order that every case of an infectious disease must at once be reported to the health department and also the clause in the law which provides for the very frequent inspection of the lodging houses by officers of that department, may render less necessary in that city the change in the construction of the lodging houses which has just been recommended. In a large number of our states the laws regulating lodging houses are neither explicit nor broad enough to insure the best construction or operation of lodging houses, and, unfortunately, such laws as exist are upon the whole poorly enforced because the responsibility for conditions is often divided between the state and the city health authorities. Each claims not to have full jurisdiction, and between the two many evils which even under present laws might readily be eliminated are 327 HOMELESS MEN allowed to flourish. Where the provisions of a city's ordinance touching upon the construction and operation of lodging houses are more drastic than those of the state law, it is generally held that the city health de- partment is not within its legal right if it carries its activities beyond those covered by the state law. The city health department therefore is handicapped by the fact that it can enforce only such provisions of the lodg- ing house ordinances as are covered by the laws of the state, and in Illinois and in certain other states the state board of health is equally handicapped by the limita- tions of state laws regarding the lodging houses.* In Chicago, the state board of health is said to be on one fence and the city health department on another, with "many evils lying between which neither of the officials are willing to jump down and interfere with/' Such an unfortunate situation can only be remedied by having identical state and city laws, which shall clearly place the responsibility for their enforcement. This is now the case in Minnesota where the new city ordinance to regulate lodging houses in Minneapolis, passed May 13, 1910, is almost an exact duplicate in its essential provisions of the regulations governing lodging houses adopted by the Minnesota State Board of Health on January 1 1, 1910. f All that has been said in the previous pages about the danger of contagion from tuberculosis in the lodging houses might be said with equal truth of venereal and * The health board in Boston and the Massachusetts state authorities work together in this matter. See Proceedings National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1903, page 415. fSee Appendix D, page 335 and Appendix E, page 342. 328 APPENDICES other infectious diseases; and if an epidemic of small- pox should occur in a city, the lodging houses would almost certainly prove dangerous centers of infection. Considering how serious a menace to the general health of cities the lodging houses so frequently are, and to how great an extent the health and even the lives of men who contract contagious diseases within them are being sacrificed, it is not possible to lay too great emphasis upon the need for cordial co-operation between state and city health authorities in all states, and for better laws than those now in force in most states to regulate the construction and operation of city lodging houses. 329 APPENDIX C HOMELESS MEN IN MINNEAPOLIS The "twin cities" of St. Paul and Minneapolis which form the gateway to the great Northwest are somewhat off the line of the true tramps' itinerary westward from Chicago, which leads either by way of St. Louis and Kansas City to Los Angeles and southern California, or through Omaha and Denver to San Francisco and the northern coast states. The cities mentioned, however, are directly in the route of hundreds and thousands of homeless seasonal laborers on their way to and from the Dakotas and the other northwestern wheat states, and they are also used as winter headquarters by thousands of lumber camp laborers who prefer residence in one of these cities rather than in Chicago because the distance to the woods is shorter and their chances of securing lumber camp em- ployment are greater. For these reasons one finds in both Minneapolis and St. Paul homeless men colonies somewhat out of pro- portion to the size of these cities. The figures for St. Paul are not available, but in Minneapolis in 1910 a study of the cheap lodging houses was made by an agent of the Minneapolis Associated Charities. It was found that the 105 lodging houses that the city then contained offered lodgings at thirty cents per night or less for 5800 men. The average number of lodgers each night was 3300. It was estimated that at certain times during the winter there were undoubtedly not fewer than 6000 homeless men per night requiring accommodation. 330 APPENDICES The number and the capacity of the lodging houses is increasing and it is estimated that at the present time fully 45,000 different homeless men are annually domiciled in Minneapolis for one or more nights. That this number will continue to increase with the growth of the city and of opportunities for seasonal employment afforded by the country surrounding it, can scarcely be questioned. Already it has been found expedient to pass state laws and city ordinances regu- lating the construction and management of the cheap lodging houses in order to prevent disease among the men who inhabit them. The need for a municipal lodging house is receiving attention in Minneapolis* because at certain seasons so many men come into the city that they more than fill all the private lodging houses and must appeal to the police for overnight care in the stations. The Associated Charities of Minneapolis has among its applicants a considerable proportion of homeless men, and is one of several charity organization societies that employ specially trained agents to deal with these men. The methods of investigating the histories of homeless men and of aiding them were similar in the Minneapolis and Chicago societies, and a study has therefore been made of 200 cases of men who asked aid of the former society, to ascertain whether those apply- ing in the two cities are much alike or, if not, in what respects they differ. f * A municipal lodging house was opened in Minneapolis in January, IQII. Editor. t The 200 Minneapolis records like the Chicago records were t.iken just as they stood in the files, except that uninvestigated cases were excluded. The proportion of cases in which the information secured about the men was meager, is also about the same in the two groups. 33' HOMELESS MEN Study of the records tends to show that in habits and general characteristics the homeless men of the larger and the smaller city are much alike, although in some other respects there are differences between them.* Comparison of the tables showing the ages of the men proves that a larger proportion of the Minneapolis men are young under thirty years of age and a smaller proportion are over sixty, than was the case in Chicago. In matters of health the percentages are almost exactly alike for the men of the two cities; 62 per cent of the one thousand Chicago men were in defective mental or physical condition, and 60 per cent of the Minneapolis group were in defective condition. The percentages of tuberculosis and of insanity are higher among the Minneapolis applicants. The percentage of crippling is nearly the same 16.7 per cent in Chicago, 17.5 per cent in Minneapolis. The proportion of indus- trial accidents is apparently larger in the northern city. Perhaps the most striking difference between the men of the northwestern city and those of Chicago is discovered by comparing the nationality tables of the two groups. Among the Chicago applicants 62.5 per cent were American born and of these only 1 1 per cent were of foreign parentage. In Minneapolis but 44.5 per cent were American and of these over 66 per cent were "first generation" Americans whose parents had been born abroad. Germans came next to Americans in point of number in the Chicago group but, as perhaps might be expected from the nature of the general popu- lation in Minnesota, the Scandinavians far outnumbered the men of other nationalities in the Minneapolis group. * For ages, nativity, occupations, and other data concerning the Minneapolis homeless men, see Tables 28 to 33, at the close of Ap- pendix A, pp. 306-313. 332 APPENDICES This larger proportion of foreigners or "first genera- tion" Americans in the northern city very likely ac- counts for some other differences between the men of the two cities, one of which is that the percentage of professional and business men and of skilled workers in the Minneapolis group is decidedly smaller than in the Chicago group. Five of the men were listed as illiterate, 184 had had a common school education, nine were college men, and the amount of education of two was not known. It is possible that this same fact of a smaller per- centage of Americans also has some relation to the further fact that a smaller proportion of the Minneapolis men are degraded and degenerate; fewer are separated from their wives; fewer have criminal records; and a much smaller percentage are professional beggars or tramps. Ninety-three* drank to excess, 39 were confirmed wanderers, 13 were chronic beggars, 6 had criminal tendencies, and 3 were confirmed drug users. t The stories told by the men were found to be true in 1 54 instances, false in 26 instances, and in 20 cases the stories could not be verified. Although unskilled laborers form a large proportion of the home- * This is a much higher percentage of drunkenness than was discovered among the Chicago applicants, but in each of the above cases the man was either seen intoxicated by the Associated Charities agent or admitted when questioned that he frequently drank to excess. Whether the extreme cold of Minneapolis influenced a higher per- centage of the homeless men of that city to drink to excess, or whether the lower percentage of drunkenness in the Chicago group is due to the fact that the Chicago workers failed to learn the truth regarding the drink habits of many of the applicants, are questions which unfortunately cannot be answered. t The institutional records of the Minneapolis homeless men were as follows: Confined in workhouse, 20; jail, 17; penitentiary, 4; re- form schools, 3. Inmates of poorhouse, 10; drink cure, 3; insane asylum, 3; orphanage, 2; soldiers home, school for deaf, school for feeble-minded, and home for the aged, each i. 333 HOMELESS MEN less men of Minneapolis, not many of these are mere casual laborers living upon odd jobs and frequently dependent upon charity. The work of many of the laborers is seasonal as in Chicago, but, perhaps because winter employment in the lumber camps is near at hand and easy to procure, fewer of them spend several months at a time in idleness in the lodging houses. Taken as a whole, the homeless men applicants for charity in Minneapolis seem to average better in health, better in habits of industry, and better in morals than the Chicago applicants, but although this may be true there are many evidences that the processes which tend to make homeless men in any city less healthy, less industrially useful, and less moral are operative in Minneapolis as in Chicago. The health and sanitary conditions in the lodging houses at the time this study was made, were bad, although they have recently been improved.* Seasonal labor, with its long periods of unemployment, with the concomitant evils of drink and vice, is destroying habits of industry and demoraliz- ing the unskilled laborers of Minneapolis just as it is do- ing in Chicago and other cities; and lastly, the ease with which they can beat their way about the country is making tramps of scores of these men of the Northwest, exactly as it is doing in the East, the West and the South. "The enforcement of the new city ordinance has resulted in closing five or six of the most unsanitary houses in Minneapolis. Editor. 334 APPENDIX D ORDINANCE REGULATING LODGING HOUSES IN MINNEAPOLIS An ordinance licensing and regulating the construction, maintenance and operation of lodging houses in the City of Minneapolis. The City Council of the City of Minneapolis do ordain as follows: SECTION i. Definition. The term "lodging house" as used in this ordinance shall be taken to mean and include any house or building or portion thereof, in which the compartments are arranged on the cubical plan or the dormitory plan, and in which persons are harbored or received, or lodged for hire, or any part of which is let to any person in which to sleep. License. No building or part of any building in the City of Minneapolis shall be used after June ist, 1910, as a lodging house unless the proprietor thereof has obtained a license as herein provided. SEC. 2. Any person, company or corporation desir- ing a license to use, conduct or operate as a lodging house any building or any part of any building in the city of Minneapolis shall file with the Commissioner of Health of said city a written application to the City Council for such license, giving in such application the full name and address of the proprietor of the proposed lodging house, the name of the owner of the premises and the location and portion of the building or buildings 335 HOMELESS MEN intended to be used as a lodging house. Upon the filing of any such application for a lodging house license, the premises therein described shall be inspected by the Commissioner of Health or his deputies, who shall keep a permanent record of such inspection, giving the character, construction and size of the building; whether or not the building has proper sewer and water connections; the number, location and dimensions of each proposed sleeping room; the number and size of outside windows in each proposed sleeping room; other ventilation, if any, in each proposed sleeping room; the number of water closets on each floor ; the number of set wash basins on each floor; the number and descrip- tion of all bathing apparatus on each floor; the number and kind of receptacles for refuse; and the number of beds or lodgers allowed in each sleeping room. The Commissioner of Health shall present to the City Council all applications for such license. Such license shall be issued to the applicant by the Commissioner of Health only when authorized and directed by the City Council so to do, upon the presentation by the applicant of a receipt from the City Treasurer showing payment into the city treasury of the license fee required for such license; but no such license shall be issued until all the regulations relating to lodging houses have been complied with by the applicant for such license. The annual license fee for such license is hereby fixed and established at five dollars ($5.00) for each lodging house containing not to exceed fifteen (15) beds and ten (10) cents additional for each bed in excess of fifteen. Provided, that ten dollars ($10.00) shall be the maxi- mum license fee. All licenses issued under this ordi- nance shall expire on the first Monday of May next following the issuance of the same. 336 APPENDICES SEC. 3. Every lodging house in the city of Minne- apolis shall be inspected by the Commissioner of Health or his deputies regularly and at least once every month. Each licensee shall cause his license to be continuously and conspicuously displayed in the office or halls of his lodging house. No more lodgers shall be accommodated in any sleeping room in any lodging house than the number permitted by the license. Each general sleeping room shall be adequately ventilated in such a manner as to be beyond the control of lodgers and to the satisfaction of the Department of Health. Four hundred cubic feet of air space shall be provided for each bed or lodger. The beds in all lodg- ing houses and in every room in which beds are let for lodgers shall be separated by a passageway of not less than two (2) feet horizontally, and all the beds shall be so arranged that under each of them the air shall freely circulate. Lodging houses shall be conducted in accordance with rules and regulations adopted from time to time by the Department of Health. No beds or bunks shall be placed one above another, and no one shall be permitted to sleep, lodge or dwell in a cellar or basement. In every lodging house there shall be provided for each lodger a separate bed, with bedstead, bedding and bed clothes, and no lodger shall be allowed to sleep elsewhere than in such bed. All mattresses shall be provided with waterproof coverings and shall be so arranged as to be at all times easily inspected. All beds, bed clothing, mattresses and pillows shall always be kept clean and free from vermin. No comforters shall be permitted but blankets used instead. Clean sheets and clean pillow cases shall be furnished for each 337 HOMELESS MEN bed and shall be changed as often as necessary to keep the same clean or as may be required by the Department of Health. Nothing but iron or metal bedsteads shall be used. All cubicles shall be so constructed that the partitions thereof shall not extend to within two feet of the ceiling, and there shall be provided in said partitions a space of at least two square feet in area for the purpose of ventilation, such space to be within eighteen (18) inches of the floor. SEC. 4. All plumbing fixtures mentioned in this or- dinance except wash bowls shall be placed in a room or compartment entirely shut off from sleeping rooms by an airtight partition extending from floor to ceiling. The entrance to this room or compartment must not connect directly with a sleeping room; such room or compartment must be provided with a window which will open to the outer air and have at least 300 square inches of glass area. Provided, however, that in build- ings not to exceed three stories in height now in use in lodging houses where plumbing is now installed in inside rooms or compartments, said compartments can be ventilated by well lighted and ventilated light shafts with at least an area of 9 square feet, said area or light- well to continue up and through roof with sky-light and ventilators to meet with the approval of the Com- missioner of Health. All interior partitions in toilet rooms or compartments shall be dwarfed and must not extend closer than 6 inches to the floor nor more than 7 feet high. Provision shall be made to light said compartments with gas or electric ight and the same shall be lighted continuously during the night. The floors and side walls up to a height of three feet shall be made of marble, tile, slate, plastic, 338 APPENDICES mastic asphalt or other waterproof and non-corrosive materials that will meet with the approval of the Com- missioner of Health. Each room or compartment shall have a floor drain properly constructed in same. Pro- vided, however, that wash room and toilet rooms as above provided may be combined into one room of sufficient size to meet with the approval of the Com- missioner of Health. In every lodging house there shall be provided in above mentioned toilet rooms one or more water closets on each floor. All water closets shall be connected with brass floor flange approved by the Department of Health. There shall be provided in each toilet room above mentioned one or more urinals on each floor. In every lodging house there shall be at least one wash room on every floor. Every such wash room shall be provided with hot and cold water, set wash basins or washing appliances with running water, both in number and in character satisfactory to the Commissioner of Health. Such individual appli- ances or set basins shall be provided on each floor satisfactory to the Commissioner of Health. In every lodging house, shower or tub baths shall be provided. All such baths shall be provided with hot and cold water and shall at all times be accessible for the use of lodgers. Provided, however, that in addition to the above requirements, the installation of the plumbing system and all pipes, fixtures, etc., shall be installed and subject to the provisions of the plumbing ordinances of this city relating to the installation and maintenance of such plumbing. All alterations or construction of above mentioned rooms shall be in accordance with the building ordinance of this city. SEC. 5. Waier and Towels. In every lodging house 339 HOMELESS MEN there shall be at all times provided for the use of lodgers an adequate supply of water and clean towels. Cleanliness. Every lodging house and every part thereof shall be at all times kept clean and free from dirt, vermin, filth, garbage and rubbish, in or upon the premises belonging to or connected with the same. All water closets, wash basins, baths, windows, fixtures, fittings and painted surfaces shall be at all times kept thoroughly clean and in good repair. The floors of all rooms, passages, and stairways shall be sound, in good repair and either be shellaced or painted, and the same shall be either scrubbed, wet-swept or otherwise treated as often as is necessary to keep them thoroughly clean. All walls and ceilings shall be thoroughly cleaned and whitewashed at least twice each year, or as often as the Department of Health may require. Spitting and Cuspidors. In each hall, room, cubicle, water closet, wash room and bath room of every lodging house there shall be provided a sufficient number of cuspidors or spittoons. In every such room, etc., there shall be continuously and conspicuously displayed a sign " Spitting forbidden except in proper receptacles/' All such cuspidors or spittoons shall be constructed of durable waterproof material, shall at all times contain a sufficient quantity of disinfecting liquid as the Com- missioner of Health may direct, and the same shall be thoroughly cleansed and disinfected at least once daily. Illness. It, shall be the duty of the keeper, agent or owner of every lodging house to report forthwith to the department of health any person suffering from any of the following infectious diseases: Measles, diphtheria, membranous croup, scarlet fever, smallpox, chicken- pox, epidemic cholera, typhoid fever, rotheln, plague or tuberculosis. Each lodging house shall be provided 340 APPENDICES with a room sufficiently tight to be used for a fumigating room if necessary. SEC. 6. All licenses granted or issued under this or- dinance shall be subject to revocation at any time by the City Council in its discretion. SEC. 7. Any person violating any of the provisions of this ordinance shall on conviction thereof before the municipal court of the city of Minneapolis, be punished by a fine of not to exceed $50 nor less than $10 for each offense, or upon default in the payment of such fine, by imprisonment not to exceed sixty days. SEC. 8. This ordinance shall take effect and be in force from and after its publication. Approved May i4th, 1910. APPENDIX E REGULATIONS GOVERNING SANITARY CON- DITIONS IN LODGING HOUSES, ADOPTED BY THE MINNESOTA STATE BOARD OF HEALTH, JANUARY n, 1910 162. These regulations governing the sanitary con- ditions in lodging houses shall apply only to cities having a population of 10,000 and upwards. 163. A "lodging house" shall be taken to mean and include any house or building or portion thereof pro- vided with sleeping quarters arranged on the "cubicle" plan, i. e., with dividing partition walls which do not extend to the ceiling or with sleeping quarters arranged on the dormitory plan and in which persons are har- bored or received or lodged for hire. 164. These regulations are to be enforced by the local health officer in each city. 165. No building or part of any building shall be used after May i, 1910, as a lodging house unless the proprietor thereof has received a license from the local health officer. 1 66. The applicant must file with the local authorities in duplicate a written application on a form prescribed by the State Board of Health, dated, signed by himself, and correctly setting forth (a) The full name and address of the proprietor of the proposed lodging house and of the owner of the premises in question; (b) The location of the proposed lodging house; (c) What portions of the building or buildings it is intended to use as a lodging house. 342 APPENDICES The applicant must also file with the local health authorities a certificate from the local authorities governing the construction of buildings, and from the fire department, stating that the owner or lessee of said premises in question has complied with the regu- lations of said departments applicable to said premises as a lodging house. After an application for a lodging house license is made the premises must be inspected by the local health authorities within ten (10) days, who shall report upon the same in writing immediately to the local health officer or the commissioner of health as to (a) The character, construction and size of the building; (b) Whether or not the building is connected with municipal water service or street sewer, or both; (c) The number, location and dimensions of each proposed sleeping room; (d) The number and size of outside windows in each proposed sleeping room ; (e) The number of water closets n each floor; (f) The number of set wash basins on each floor; (g) The number and description of all bathing apparatus on each floor; (h) The number of beds or lodgers allowed in each sleeping room. 167. No license shall be granted until (a) The provisions of Regulation 166 have been met, and (b) Until all regulations relating to lodging houses have been complied with, and 343 HOMELESS MEN (c) Until there has been paid into the city treasury a license fee as follows: Two (2) dollars for a lodging house containing not to exceed ten (10) beds, and ten (10) cents extra for each additional bed. 168. Annually not later than January ist, every owner or lessee of a lodging house shall pay into the city treasury a fee similar to that prescribed in Regu- lation 167, in return for which he shall receive a cer- tificate renewing his original license; but the same shall not be issued until he has complied with all regulations governing lodging houses. 169. Every lodging house for which a license is issued shall be inspected by an officer detailed by the local health authorities within two (2) weeks after the issue of such permit, and thereafter at least once a month. 170. No keeper of a lodging house shall receive lodgers therein without displaying continuously and conspicuously in the office or hall thereof a license issued for that purpose by the local health authorities. Such license shall be valid only for the premises and for the period prescribed therein. 171. No keeper of a lodging house shall accommodate in any sleeping room thereof a number of lodgers greater than the number permitted by the local health authori- ties, nor shall he accommodate any lodger in any room for which permission has not been granted for such use. 172. In every lodging house each general sleeping room shall always be adequately ventilated to the satis- faction of the local health authorities, and in such manner as to be beyond the control of lodgers. In every sleeping room the minimum floor area shall be 60 square feet per bed, and under no circumstances 344 APPENDICES shall there be provided less than 400 cubic feet of air space per bed. Neither side of any bed shall be at any time nearer than 2 feet to the side of any other bed. All beds shall be so arranged that the air shall circu- late freely under each of them. In the case of all lodging houses for which permits are for the first time applied for after May i, 1910, no beds or bunks shall be placed one above another. 173. Except when extreme severity of the weather prevents, all windows of sleeping rooms, water closets, wash rooms and bath rooms shall be kept open at least one foot at the bottom and one foot at the top from 10.00 a. m. to 2.00 p. m. daily. Beds occupied at night shall be turned over and exposed to the air daily for four consecutive hours. For the accommodation of lodgers working at night, special beds or rooms shall be set apart for their use during the day; but the bedding of such beds must be turned over and exposed to the air in a room with outside windows opened, as above described, for at least four consecutive hours daily. 174. In every lodging house there shall be provided for each lodger a separate bed with bedstead, bedding and bed clothes satisfactory to the local health author- ities, and no such lodger shall be allowed to sleep else- where than in such bed. All mattresses shall be provided with waterproof coverings, and shall be so arranged as to be at all times easily capable of thorough inspection. All beds, bed clothing, mattresses and pillows shall always be kept clean and free from vermin. Clean sheets and clean pillow cases shall be furnished 345 HOMELESS MEN for each bed at least once a week; provided, however, that they shall be furnished as often as a new lodger occupies the bed. In the case of all lodging houses for which licenses are for the first time applied for after the year 1909, the frames of all beds shall be of metal. 175. All cubicles shall be so constructed that the partitions thereof shall not extend higher than seven (7) feet above the floor and one (i) foot from the ceiling, and there shall be a space of at least six (6) inches between the lowest part of said partitions and the floor. In every sleeping room all windows opening to the outer air shall be separated from any cubicle in such room by an unobstructed corridor at least three (3) feet wide. 176. In every lodging house there shall be provided at least one water closet on each floor, and water closets shall be provided on every such floor in the ratio of at least one to every fifteen (15) beds or fraction thereof. Every water closet shall be adequately ventilated by an unobstructed opening to the outer air. No gas or offensive smell shall be allowed to escape from any water closet, sewer or outlet into any sleeping room or part thereof. Each water closet shall be pro- vided with a self-closing door. In no lodging house shall any person be allowed to sleep in a room in which there is a water closet. 177. In every lodging house there shall be at least one (i) wash room on each floor. In every such wash room there shall be provided, with running water, set wash basins or individual washing appliances satisfactory (both in number and character) to the local health authorities. Such in- 346 APPENDICES dividual appliances shall be provided in proportion to the number of beds on the same floor, as follows: One such appliance for every ten (10) beds or fraction thereof. 178. In every lodging house, shower baths shall be provided in the ratio of at least one (i) to every fifty (50) beds or fraction thereof; or tub baths shall be provided in the ratio of at least one (i) to every twenty- five (25) beds or fraction thereof. All such baths shall be provided with hot and cold running water and shall at all times be accessible for the use of lodgers, free of charge. 179. In every lodging house there shall at all times be provided for the use of lodgers, free of charge, an adequate supply of water and clean towels. 1 80. In every lodging house the floors of all water closets, wash rooms and bath rooms, and the walls thereof to a height of at least four (4) feet above the floor shall be constructed of such durable waterproof material (not wood or metal) as may be approved by the local health authorities. 181. Every lodging house and every part thereof shall at all times be kept clean and free from dirt, ver- min, filth, garbage and rubbish in or on the premises belonging to or connected with the same. All water closets, wash basins, baths, windows, fix- tures, fittings and painted surfaces shall at all times be kept thoroughly clean and in good repair. The floors, walls and ceilings of all rooms, passages and stairways must at all times be in good repair; and the floors of all rooms, passages and stairways must be scrubbed or wet-swept at least once daily before 6 p. m. If painted with oil, all walls and ceilings shall be 347 HOMELESS MEN thoroughly washed with soap and water twice yearly, and at such other times as the local health authorities may direct. 182. In each hall, room, cubicle, water closet, wash room and bath room of every lodging house there shall be provided a sufficient number of cuspidors or spit- toons. In every such room, hall, cubicle, water closet, wash room and bath room there shall be continuously and conspicuously displayed a sign reading as follows: "Spitting forbidden except in proper receptacles/' All cuspidors or spittoons shall be of durable water- proof material and of a form to be prescribed by the health authorities, shall be thoroughly cleansed and disinfected at least once daily before 6 p. m., and shall at all times contain such a quantity of a disinfecting liquid as the local health authorities may direct. 183. In every lodging house, all sleeping rooms shall be fumigated at least once every two weeks in such manner as the local health authorities may direct. Disinfection of premises, furniture and belongings shall immediately follow the death or removal of any person suffering from an infectious disease in any lodging house, and shall be performed under the direction of the local health authorities. 184. It shall be the duty of the keeper, agent or owner of every lodging house to report forthwith to the local health authorities the occurrence of any illness in said house. 185. In no lodging house in which men are lodged (except in a municipal lodging house in which there is a separation of sexes in distinct departments) shall any woman or girl be lodged, or any boy under the age of 348 HOMELESS MEN sixteen years unless accompanied by his father or legal male guardian. 186. In every lodging house there shall be set apart at least one (i) room, satisfactory to the local health authorities, which shall be reserved at all times as a place in which any lodger falling ill at said house shall be isolated. 187. In case any lodging house, for which a permit is in force, is not or shall not be conducted in strict compliance with the laws of the State of Minnesota and the regulations of the State Board of Health, it shall be the duty of any person having knowledge of such non- compliance forthwith to report the particulars to the local health authorities. On being satisfied that any lodging house for which a permit is in force fails to comply strictly with the laws of Minnesota and the regulations of the State Board of Health, the local health authorities shall promptly notify the keeper, agent or owner of such non-compliance and direct that the defects set forth in said notice be remedied within a period of time to be not more than thirty (30) days. Failure to comply with such an order within the time specified therein shall be sufficient cause for revoking the license issued. 349 INDEX INDEX A. B., Story of, 211-213 Accidental beggars, 184-186, 187 Accidental criminals, 185 Accidents, as a cause of crippling, 48 false claims in regard to, 48, 49 industrial. See Industrial Occidents. protection from, 61 relief for, 61 responsibility for, 51 to the feeble-minded, 107- 108 to the insane, 96 Addressing companies, 132 Adolescence, 269-270 Adventurous boys, 269-270 After-careers of homeless, va- grant and runaway boys, 262- 264 Age. See Old Men. Aged poor, 128 Ages, by groups, of 1000 men, (Table) 20 of Minneapolis men, (Table) 306, 332. See also tables of General Data for spe- cial groups. Agricultural colonies for epilep- .tics, 1 1 1 Albany, Pavilion F, 102 Aliases, Germans of many, 170- 171 Almshouse, annual exodus, 221. Alton, Illinois, 197 Amusements for boys, 269 Ann Arbor, psychopathic clinic, 101 Anti-social beggars, arrest, 172 attempts to deal with, 171- 172 attitude, 167-168 average, age, 166 description, 166 education, 167 efforts to reform, 172-173 mental ability, 167 proportion of criminals, 169 publication of stories and descriptions, 172 stories of criminals, 169- 171 Appeals for help, new forms, 69 Applicants at Chicago Bureau of Charities, various kinds, 14-16 for aid, cases not investi- gated, 17, 1 8 Applications, number and kind, made by the 1000 homeless men and the 135 chronic beggars, (Table) 299 Arm, loss of, story of locomotive engineer, 72 Artificial legs, furnished to crip- ples, 63, 64, 82-83 353 INDEX BAD boys, 248 Baker, case of, 84 Ball, William C, xiv Baltimore, psychopathic clinic, 101 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 232 Baltimore fire, 69 Beating one's way, 209-210, 212, 213.334 Beggar applicant for work, story of, 1 54-1 55 Beggars, antiquity, i door to door, 148 from choice, 157 ministers and, 203 Minneapolis, 333 reporting to police, 168-169 two types, 157 worthy and unworthy, 157. See also Chronic Beggars. Begging, artificial leg story, 82-83 causes, 164 Chicago, 9 demoralizing effect, 157 from choice, 62-63, 79-8 1 psychology of, 163-164 without asking, 59-60 Begging-letter-writer, story of, 167-168 Belgium, labor colonies, 183 Bell boys, 247 Better days, 134 Blind and deaf men, amount of self-support before and after injury, by condition, (Table) 281 Blind beggar, story of, 162 Blind beggar and boy from good home, 255-256 Blind old man of seventy-three, 163 Blindness, 37 Blows on the head, 94, 1 16 Board of Health, 328 psychopathic clinic, 101 Bohemian step-mother, 245 Bootblack, legless, 53-54 Boy, institution bred, story of, 181-182 Boy of twelve from Iowa, story of, 255-256 Boy scout, 270 Boy tramp, case of, 247 Boy tramps, 220, 271 Boys, homeless, vagrant and run- away, after-careers, 262- 264 age at beginning work, 246- 247 ages, (Table) 240, 242 bad, 248 broken homes, 245-246 child labor, 246 city or country origin, 243, 244, (Table) 304 criminals, 248 cruel step-mother, 244 dangerous point, 268 data as to residence, home, family, (Tables) 304-305 dealing with, 239-241 degeneracy, 270 economic causes, 273 falsity, 242 general data, (Table) 240 good inherent, 248 homelessness, alleged, 242 homes, character of, 243, 244, (Table) 305 354 INDEX Boys, incorrigible independence of spirit, 267, 269, 271 institutions, 248 interviewing, 259 methods of dealing with, 272-273 nativity, (Table) 240, 243 non-runaways, reasons for coming to Chicago, 250- 251 occupations, (Table) 240, 247 orphans, 246 physical and mental condi- tion, (Table) 240 proportion to men, 270-271 reformation, 248-250 reinstatement, 273 requests, 250 restlessness, 268-269 runaways, reasons for leav- ing home, 251. See Run- away Boys. school, 247 seeking work, 250, 251 self-support, difficulties of, 267-268 sources, 241 stories, 239, 242 trespassing on railroads, 270 truthfulness, 251 wanderlust, 264 Boys, untrained, 179-184 Boys' clubs, 269 Bridewell, 183 Broken homes of boys, 245-246 Brotherhood of Locomotive En- gineers, 72 Brothers, difficulties with, 264, 265 lUilT.ilo, 200, 247 Building wrecking, 7, 8 Bureau for the Handicapped, New York City, 86 Business depressions, 135 sense, 119, 120 CALAMITIES, victims of, 69 Californian, sandbagged, 94 Camps for boys, 270 Canada, 241 Canvassing, 132 Care for the insane, need of prompt, 95, 96, 101-103 Carelessness as a cause of work accidents, 84 Cases omitted from the present study, 18 Casual labor, cause of home- lessness, group study, 6 foundry near Chicago, experience of, 151, 154- 155 individual study, 5 investigating applicants, 154-155 leaving positions without reason, 152-153 nature, 148-149 steady work and, 150-151 uncertainty about, 2, 3, 5, 6 Census, U. S., 21 statistics of conjugal condi- tion, 1900, 24 Central District of the Bureau of Charities, proportion of non- resident cases, 193 Central Passenger Association, 16 355 INDEX Change, boys' desire for, 268-269 Character, in cripples, 52 Charitable societies and cripples, 61,62 Charity Organization Societies, 67, 1 68, 262 boy cases, 272 Charity Organization Society, New York City, 86, 108 Charity Transportation, National Conference Rules, 208. See also Transportation. Chicago, almshouse, 114, 115, 118 begging, 9 city and state boards of health, 328 Department of Health, 317 Detention Hospital for the Insane, 108 employments for the un- skilled, 7, 8 floating population, 7 estimate of number of home- less men, 9 lodging houses, 7, 8, 314-329 lodging house inspection, 323 Municipal Lodging House, 8, 9. 37. 136, 317 non-resident dependents, 192 popularity with the home- less, 139 St. Luke's Hospital, 35, 36 seasonal employments, 7, 8 South side officer of the Bureau of Charities, 14 tramps, 8-9 United Charities, 14 Chicago, vagrancy laws, 9 vagrants, 8-9 work opportunities, 58-59 yeggmen, 9 Chicago boy of seventeen, story of, 248-250 Chicago boy of ten who left good home, 254-255 Chicago Bureau of Charities, 3-4 amalgamation with Chicago Relief and Aid Society, 14 applications of homeless men, 1900-1903, 14, 15 cases not investigated, 17, 18 Central District office, 14, 17 data concerning 1000 home- less men, (Table) 20, 21- 25 employment seekers, 16 helpable applicants, 1 5 information from applicants, nature and value, 25-30 investigation of applicants, 17 opportunities for study of homeless men, 14-17 railroad transportation at half rates, 16 reputation with homeless men, 15 "samplers," 14, 15 Chicago Relief and Aid Society, '4 Child labor, 136, 246 Children, interest in, 125 Children's aid to fathers, 122 Choice, 161 Chronic beggars, accidental beg- gars, 184-186 356 INDEX Chronic beggars, brief digest of cases of 1 6 of the beggars of Class IV, (Table) 302-303 ages, (Table) 164 anti-social men who consider society their prey, 166- 173. See Anti-social Beg- gars. blind old man of seventy- three, 1 6) brief digest of 1 1 beggars of Class III, (Table) 301 choice, 158 classes, 165 college men, 165 conjugal condition, (Table) 164 dealing with as a class, 187- 188 definition, 156 education, 165 ex-minister, case of, 158- 59 general data, (Table) 164 individuals, 188 miscellaneous data, 165 morphine eater, 154-160 nativity, (Table) 164 occupation once followed by Class II, (Table) 300 paralyzed lad, case of, 1 58 physical and mental condi- tion, (Table) 300 previous occupations, (Table), 164 refined old blind, 162 reformation, 188 summary of classes, 186- 187 treatment needed, 187-188 Chronic beggars, who have drifted into the habit, 173- 1 79. See Degenerate- workmen-beggars. with personal and social handicaps, 179-184 unclassified, 186 Chronic dependent cripples, 58- 62 Chronic insane, 97-98 Chronic wanderers, 250 Cincinnati, 139, 197, 202, 241 City boys and country, 243-244, (Table) 304 City-bred drifters, 179-184 City health department and lodging houses, 328 Civil War, 125 Claims of parents, boys' indiffer- ence to, 266 Classification of homeless men, 10, II Clerks in lodging houses, 320 Cleveland, 139 Clubs for boys, 269 Code telegrams, 29 College men, 30, (Table) 278 aged, 120 insane, 94 Colonies, compulsory labor, 183, 237 Columbus, O., 105, 200 Common school education, 30 Companions, boys', 264 Compulsory labor colonies, 183, 237 Confirmed wanderers. See Tramps. Conjugal condition of 1000 men, 20-24, (Tables) 20 and 277 357 INDEX Conjugal condition of Minnea- polis men, (Table) 306 of old men, 122 Continual wanderers, 218-220 Convalescents, 40 Cook County Hospital, propor- tion of non-residents, 193-194, Cook County Infirmary, 39 Cooper, story of, 8 1 Criminals, 229 proportion among chronic beggars, 169 proportion among Minnea- polis men, 333 Cripples, attitude of one man toward, 142 by accident or from birth, 48-53 by disease, 45-48; amount of self-support before and after injury, by condition, (Tables) 46 and 283 ; gen- eral data concerning, (Ta- ble) 46 by general accident or from birth, amount of self- support before and after injury, (Table) 284; by causes and age group, (Table) 282; causes of crippling, (Table) 50 character, 52 charities and, 61, 62 chronically dependent, 58- 62 claiming industrial acci- dents, occupation before and after injury, (Table) 286; amount of self-sup- port before and after, (Ta- bles) 78 and 287; general data concerning, (Table) 78 deformed, injured and maimed, twenty-two cases in Minneapolis, 312-313 fake, 35 helpable, 53-58 inadequate provision for, 61, 62 industrial position, 51 mendicant, 64 parasites, 52, 62-65 proportion, 44-45 self-support among, 47-48, 51-52. See also general tables. vagrancy among, 53 Cruel father, 265 Cruelty in boy's homes, 245 Cubicle rooming houses. See under Lodging Houses. DAKOTAS, 330 Damages, 84 Deaf mute tramp, story t>f, 218- 219 Deceptions as to occupations, 134 Defects and diseases, (Table) 36 among Minneapolis men, 332 data on special groups, (Table) 279 Defects or illness as a cause for leaving home, 230 Deformed cripple in wheel chair, case of, 205-206 Degeneracy among Minneapolis men, 333 358 INDEX Degenerate - workmen beggars, average age, 176 beginnings, 174-175 causes, 175 character, 174 degradation, 178 drunkenness, 176 education, 177 habits, 176 hopelessness, 178 lines of work, 177 lodging house life, 176-177 numbers, 174 society's responsibility, 179 work of itself insufficient help, 178 Delusions of the insane, growth, 95. 96-97 Denver, 322 Dependent cripples, 58-62 additional handicaps, 59 Dependents, laws regulating passage and transfer, 191 non-resident, 207 problem of unrestricted mi- gration, 193-194 returning, 192 Deserting the family, 221-222, 228 Detention Hospital for the In- sane, Chicago, 1 08 Disease, crippling effects, 45, 46 vagrancy and, 41-43 Disgrace, 227 Dishwashing as occupation, 131, 132 Doing well, boys after running away, 263 Door-to-door seekers for work, 148 Drifters, city-bred, 179-184 Drinking habits, 40, 226 as a handicap in accident, 86 as a cause of insanity, 98 of Minneapolis men, 333 results, 46 Drug habits, 40, 226 Drunkards, institutions for, 178 Dunning (almshouse), 39, 114, 115, 118, 127, 162, 198, 322 tuberculosis hospital, 323, 324, 326 Dysentery, 41 EDUCATED German criminal beg- gars, 170-171 Education, amount among 1000 men, (Table) 20, 30, 31 lack of early, 179-184 of Minneapolis men, 333. See also general tables. Elevated railroad employe, story of, 73' 74 " Elimination of the Tramp, The," citation from, 214 E. M., story of, 72 Employers' aid of old men, 122- 123, 133 Employment, difficulty of home- less boys' getting, 267-268 finding and keeping, 151, 54 need of investigating appli- cants, 154-155 of Minneapolis men, 333-334 seekers, 16 sometimes insufficient help of itself, 178 359 INDEX End-of-the-line occupations, 132 Enemies, delusion of, 93, 96 Engineer, locomotive, story of, 72 England, aged poor, 128 English pensioned tramp, case of, 223 Epileptic orphan from Virginia, story of, 199-201 Epileptic young man desirous of going to New York, story of, 198-199 Epileptic wanderers, 230 Epileptics, agricultural colonies, in general data, (Table) 90 Illinois, NO-HI number in the U. S., no problem, 109-1 10 provision for care among the states, no, in Escaping the law, 229-230 Evans, William A., xiii Examinations, physical, 33-37 Ex-minister, case of degeneracy, 158-159 Experts in investigation, 66 Eye, loss of, 40 FACTORY pressure, 136 Fagin, Negro, 249 Failure at home, 226-227 Fake cripples, 35 False claims in regard to acci- dents, 48, 49 False stories, of Minneapolis men, 333 Falsehood and truth in state- ments of homeless men, pro- portion, 24, 25 Family aid for old men, 121, 122 in cases of accidents, 77 Family quarrels, 228-229 Farm School at Glenwood, 256 Father, cruelty of, 265 Federal law, 207 Federal laws for tramps, 235 Feeble-minded, the average age, 108 cases of two lads, 104-106 condition, 103-104 general data, (Table) 90 German immigrants, 106-107 legal residence, 106 length of time known, 109 problem, 104-106 return of men to homes else- where, 106-109 treatment, 106-109 unaccountable accidents, 107-108 Fifty, age of, 229 employment after, 112 Final occupations, 132 Financial failure, 227 Fingers, loss of, 40-41, 52, 64 First care for the insane, 101-103 First generation Americans, 332, 333 Floating population, Chicago, 7 politicians and, 9 Flynt, Josiah, 222 Food, mental condition and, 91, 95, 96, loo Foreigners, 332. 333 Forgery, 230 Fortune, making a, 267-268 - Forty, employment after, 112 I Foundry experience, with home- less men, 151, 154-155 3 6o INDEX Fresh air in lodging houses, 316, 3 "7. 3i8 Friencllessness of old men, 123 Friendly help, method, 67, 68 GALVESTON flood, 69 Games in city playgrounds, 269 (.ifiu-ral data, Minneapolis men, (Table) 306 German baker, case of, 84-85 German criminal beggars, stories of, 170-171 German immigrants, cases of feeble-minded, 106-107 German of Russian parentage, case of, 85 Germans, among homeless men, 332 Germany, 243 aged poor in, 128 Glenwood, 111., 256 Good homes, boys who leave, 254-262, (Table) 305 Groups, 10 HALF-RATE transportation, 16, 17 Handicapped, Bureau for, New York City, 86 Hard times, 135 Harvesting, 7 Health, 32-43 of Minneapolis men, 332. See also Physical Condition. Health boards, need of co-opera- . tion of city and state, 328- 329 Hebrew and Sanskrit student tramp, 224 3 6, Help, for cripples, need of prompt, 59-62 too much at once, 65 effectual, 66-67 work without investigation, Helpable cripples, 53-58 Helpable men, 15 Hereditary insanity, 95 Heredity, influence, 154-160 High school graduates, 31 Homeless men, antiquity, i classification, 10, n group study of causes, 6 individual study of causes, 5 recent increase, 2 scope of the present work, 4. 12, 13 use of term in the present work, 13 Homelessness, of boys, alleged, 242 simple, 228-229 Homes, boys', character of, 243, 244, (Table) 305 breaking up of, 24 for the old, 125-128 Honesty, odd, 79-81 Horse dealer, case of, 132-133 Hospitals, cripples and, 61, 62 for the insane, 101-103 Hurry, 136-137 ICE-CUTTING, 7, 142-144, 145 Idleness, demoralizing effects, 146-148 Idleness, an Irishman's case, 141- '44 among tramps, 224 INDEX Ignorance as a handicap in acci- dent, 85, 86 Illinois, epileptics in, 1 10-1 1 1 institutions for the aged, 128 law in regard to space in lodging house sleeping rooms, 316 lodging house laws, 328 Illiterates, 30 Immigration department, 107 Impostors, 14, 15, 64, 65, 66 Imposture, 167 a business, 167, 168 Imprisonment of vagrants, 182, 183 Incapacity, instances of, 181, 182 Independence maintained under double handicap, 81-83 Independence of spirit in Ameri- can boys, 267, 269, 271 Indiana, 237 Industrial accidents, 49, 69-87 among Minneapolis men, 332 as basis of appeal for aid, 70 brief digest of cases of 17 men, (Table) 289 carelessness, 84 damages, 84 determined one-legged beg- gar, story of, 79-81 difficulty of securing work after, 85 drink, 86 effect on general course of life, 77, 79 false stories, 71-74 family care, 77 general data, (Table) 78 ignorance, 85, 86 Industrial accidents, eleven cases in Minneapolis, 310-311 independence maintained, story of, 81-83 laws, 86 method of investigating sto- ries, 72-74 miscellaneous data, 84 need of investigating stories, 70 permanent injuries, 84, 85, 87 personal equation, 87 proportion of victims, 70-77 proved cases, percentage, 76-77 responsibility, 84, 85 self-support, amount of, (Table) 78 uninvestigated cases, 75-76 vagrancy and, 69-87 Industrial depression as causes of vagrancy, 135-136 Industry, old men and, 1 12 rapid pace, 136-137 Inefficiency, 227-228 Information, good source, 28 Injuries, effect on general course of life, 77, 79 permanent, 84, 85, 87 seriousness, 40-41 Inquiry, value of skilful, 25 Insane, the, 42, 43, 89-103 ages, (Table) 92 blows on the head, 94, 1 16 care, need of prompt, 95, 96, 101-103 cause or effect of vagrancy, 89-91 362 INDEX Insane, the, additional handicaps of 48 men, (Table) 291 causes, 89-95 chronic, 97-98 college men, 94 curability, 101 definition, 88 duration of disorder, (Table) 92 "enemies," 93, 96 food supply, 100 general data, (Tables) 90 and 92 growth of delusion, 95, 96- 97 habits, (Table) 90 heredity, 95 hospitals, 101-103 institutions, 91, 97 legal residence, (Table) 290 length of time known, nativity, (Table) 90 losing position, 93, 94 Minneapolis men, 332 nativity, (Table) 90 occupations, (Table) 92 proportion, 88 psychopathic clinics, 101- 103 recent, 97 refined men, 94 relapses, 97, 99 self-support among, (Table) 90, 95 starvation, a cause of, 95, 96 sufferings, 95 temporary, 94 trades and occupations, (Tables) 92 and 291 treatment, 98-99 Insane, the, unaccountable acci- ik-nts, 96 under-nourishment, 91 wanderers, 230 worry, 91 Institution-bred men, 182 Institution records, of insane men, 91, 97 of homeless boys, 248 of Minneapolis men, 333 Institutions needed, 125-128, 236 Insurance for old age, 128 Interstate immigration of paupers and dependents, 189, 208 Investigated cases, varying amounts of information, 19, 20 Investigation of applicants at the Chicago Bureau of Chari- ties, 17 Investigation of applicants for work, need of, 154-155 when not made, 17, 18 Investigation experts, 66 Iowa, 255, 256 Irishman of forty, story of, 141- 144 Iron-worker, story of, 79-81 Iroquois Theater fire, 69 JACKSONVILLE, 111., 106 Johns Hopkins University Medi- cal School, 102 Joliet, 197 Juvenile Court, 256 KANSAS, institution for the aged, 127 363 INDEX Kansas City, 139, 330 Kelly, Edmond, quoted as to the number of tramps in America, 214 Klondike, 69 Koren, John, xiv LABOR colonies, 183, 237 Lameness, 37 Laws regulating lodging houses, 327-328, 335, 342 Lead poisoning, 47 Leaving home, 92, 93, 104, 185. See also Runaway Boys. breaking of ties, 228-229 defects or illness, 230 to escape the law, 229-230 failure at home, 226-227 inefficiency, 227-228 reasons for, 225-231 probable reasons in case of runaway boys, 264 restlessness a cause, 225 seeking work, 225-226 Leaving positions without reason, 152-153 Legal residence, federal law, 207 of indigent persons, 161 of insane, feeble-minded, and epileptic, (Table) 290 state laws, 206-207 Legs, loss of both, 52, 53, 54,62-63 Length of time 1000 men were known to the office, 28-29 Letters "to whom it may con- cern," 198 Lewis, Orlando F., quoted as to number of trespassers killed on railroads, 215 L. G., case of, 117-118 Licentiousness, results, 46 Lincoln, 111., 105 Little Sisters of the Poor, 127 Locomotive Engineers, Brother- hood of, 72 Locomotor ataxia, 37, 45, 46 Lodging houses, aisles, 320- 321 application for, Minnesota, 335 baths, Minneapolis law, 339 baths, Minnesota law, 347 bedding, 319-320, 337 beds, etc., Minneapolis law, 337-338 beds,etc., Minnesota law, 345 blankets, 319 blind alleys, 320-321 Chicago, 314-329 classes of inmates, 9, 10 cleanliness, Minneapolis law, 340 cleanliness, Minnesota law, 347 clerks, 320 conditions, 145 cubicle type, 315, 317-318 definition, Minneapolis law, 335 Department of Health, 223, 326 detailed account, 314-329 dormitory type, 315-316 fees, Minnesota, 344 fire risk, 320-321 floors, 3 19, 323 fresh air, 316, 317, 318 fumigation, 326 Illinois law, 316 364 INDEX Lodging houses, illness, Minne- apolis, 340, 341 illness, Minnesota law, 348 increase in recent years, >,\.\ infection, 322-323, 324 insanitary condition, 39 inspection in Chicago, 323 jurisdiction, 327 laws, 327 licenses, Minneapolis, 355- 336, 341 licenses, Minnesota law, 343 mattresses, 319 Minneapolis, 327, 328, 342 Minneapolis ordinance, 335 Minnesota State Board of Health regulations adopt- ed Jan. ii, 1910, 342 moral atmosphere, 58 moral and physical evils, 314-315 New York law as to mat- tresses, 319 number, 7 odors, 319 over-crowded conditions, 322 partitions, 326 physical examinations, 33 privacy, 317 productive of insanity, 97 recent increase, 2 robbery in, 146, 318 sanitation, 317, 326 sanitation, Minneapolis law, 338-339 sanitation, Minnesota law, 342 sheets, 319-320 small hotels, 322 Lodging houses, source of in- fection, 322-323 sources of information, 320 spitting, 323 spitting, Minneapolis law, 340 spitting, Minnesota law, 348 toilet rooms, 317, 319 tuberculosis contracted in, 38 tuberculous lodgers, 323- 326 two types, 3 1 5 ventilation, 316, 317, 318 ventilation in cubicle type, 318 ventilation in Minneapolis, 337 ventilation, Minnesota law, 345 water closets, 317 Los Angeles, 204, 205, 330 Los Angeles beggar, case of, 204, 205 Losing positions, 93, 94 Loss of savings, 1 19-120 Lumbering, 7 Lumber camps, men from, 330 McLEAN, Francis H., xiii Maimed. See Cripples. Man of eighty-six, story of, 202- 203 Man of ninety-four, passed on in Illinois, 197-198 Man of seventy-five, passed on from New York State, 195-197 Manual training, 269 Martinique, 99 365 INDEX Masons, 196 Massachusetts, Board of Health, 328 institutions, 237 railway trespass laws, 227 vagrancy law, 236, 237 Matrimonial advertisement, case of answering, 1 16 Mendicant cripples, 64 Mental deficiencies, forms, 88, 89 Mental incapacity, 181-182 Messenger boy, story of, 181 Messenger boys, 247 Method of the present investiga- tion, 14-31 applicants, kinds of, 14-17 general data, (Table) 20 information from applicants, nature and value, 25-30 information from investiga- tion, verifying, 19 investigation of cases, 17-19 Mexico, 202 Meyer, Prof. Adolf, xiv quoted on early care for the insane, 102 Middle West, vagrancy problem, '39 Migration of dependents, laws, 191 Migration of paupers and de- pendents, 189-208 Ministers, beggars and, 203 Minneapolis Associated Charities, 330,331 Minneapolis homeless men, 139, 330-334 age, (Table) 306, 332 beggars, 333 Minneapolis homeless home, comparison with Chicago study, 332-334 conjugal condition, (Table) 306 criminals, 333 defectives, 332 deformed, injured, crippled and maimed, twenty-two cases, (Table) 312-313 degeneracy, 333 drink habits, 333 education, 333 employment, 333-334 false stories, 333 foreigners, 333~334 general data, (Table) 306 health, 332 industrial accidents, 332 industrial accidents, eleven cases, (Table) 310-311 insanity, 332 institutional records, 333 kinds of application, (Table) 306 laws, 331 length of time in Minneapo- lis before application, (Ta- ble) 306 lodging house conditions, 327, 328, 334 municipal lodging house, 33 1 nationality, (Table) 306, 332 occupations, (Table) 307, (Table), 309 ordinance regulating lodging houses, 335 physical and mental condi- tions, (Table) 308, 332 seasonal labor, 334 INDEX Minneapolis homeless men, state regulations, 342 statistics, 330, 331 study of cases, } \ i tuberculosis, 332 Minnesota, 237 Minnesota State Board of Health, 328 regulations for lodging houses, 342 Mississippi Valley, seasonal labor, 139. 145 Monadnock Block, 73 Moral perversion, influence of heredity, 159-160 Moral responsibility, difference in, 158-159 Morphine eater, case of, 159-160 Mullenbach, James, xiii Municipal Lodging House of Chicago, 8, 9, 37, 136 Municipal lodging houses, Min- neapolis, 331 physical examination, 33 physicians, 33 Murray, Oscar G., 232 NATIONAL Conference of Chari- ties and Correction, 208, 232 Nativity, of 1000 men, (Table) 20, 21 of Minneapolis men, (Table) 306, 332 See also general tables. Necessity, 158-161 . begging from, 184-186 Neglected childhood, 179-180 Negro laborer, case of a, 65 Negro strike-breaker, story of, 54 Negro tra.nps, 216, 217 Newark, N. J., 200 New Orleans, 202, 243 Newsboys, 246, 247 Newsboys' Home, 256 New York City, Bureau for the Handic;ippi'il, 86 Charity Organization So- ciety, 86, 108 cheap lodging houses, 7, 314 psychopathic clinic, 101 New York State compulsory labor colony, 237 Non-residents, 193 Non-runaway boys, reasons for coming to Chicago, 250-251 Norwegian criminal beggar, story of, 169-170 Nothing to do, 219 OCCUPATIONAL accidents. See Industrial Accidents. Occupational age limits, 1 12 Occupations, business depres- sions, 135 causes of diversity, 135 Chicago and Minneapolis compared, (Table) 307 deceptions, 134, 137 difficulty of listing men under one, 129-132 diversity, 129-132 employers' aid, 133-134 factory pressure, 136-137 final, 132 grouping, (Table) 135 horse dealer, case of, 132- 133 367 INDEX Occupations of Minneapolis men, (Table) 309 of 91 skilled workers, (Table) 293-294 of looo homeless men, (Table) 295-298 once followed by chronic beggarsofClassII,(TabIe) 300 principle used in listing, 138 unknown, 137-138 Odd jobs, 132, 148-149. See also Casual Labor. Ohio, 256 institution for the aged, 128 runaway boy, 256 Old age pensions, 128 Old men, homeless, 112-128 ages, (Table) 1 14 almshouse, 114, 115 causes of dependence, 117, 119 children's aid, 122 conjugal condition, 122 conjugal condition and will- ingness and ability of children to aid them, (Table) 292 definition, 1 15 difficulty of finding em- ployment, I 1 2- 1 15 difficulty of finding help for, 1 20 Dunning (almshouse), 114, 115. 127 employers' aid, 122-123, 133 exceptional cases, 116 friendlessness, 123 general data, (Table) 1 14 Old men. homeless, good char- acter cases, 118-121 homes and institutions, 125- 128 licentious and spend-thrift cases, 1 1 7- n 8 loss of savings, 1 19-120 nativity, (Table) 114, 115 occupations, (Table) 114 pensions, 123-124, 133 poorhouse, 118, 124, 127 pride, 121 private institutions, 127-128 problems, 118-121, 126 refined, 120 relatives' aid, 121 self-support, (Table) 114, 116, 117 soldiers' homes, 125, 127 various plans for in different countries, 128 Old women, 126 Omaha, 139, 330 One-legged beggars, stories of, 68,79-81 One-legged cripples, 64 Ordinance regulating lodging houses in Minneapolis, 335 Orphan boys, 246 Orphanage graduates, 182 Orphanages, 246 Osier, Dr., 69-70 PACE, keeping up with the, 136- '37 Painters, 47 Pangborn, Jos. G., 232 Paralysis, 45, 46 causes, 46, 47 3 68 INDEX Paralysis, self-support under, 47 P.ir.iK /<.'il I. ul, case of, 158 Parasites, 52, 166-173. Sec.7i//- social Beggars. Parasitic cripples, 62-65 Parentage, statistics, 20 Parents' claims, boys' indiffer- ence to, 266 "Passed on" paupers, 206 Passenger Associations, 16 "Passing on" system, 191-193 stories of, 195-206 Pauper family passed on from Pennsylvania to Chicago, 192- 193 Pawning, 104 Peddling, 100, 132 Pennsylvania, 237 Pensioned tramps, 223 Pensions from friends for old men, 123-124, 133 Peoria, Illinois, 197 Periodic deserters of family, 22 1- 222 Periodical wandering, 221-222 Permanently crippled through general accident or from birth, amount of self- support before and after injury, (Table) 285 by alleged industrial acci- dents, amount of self- support before and after injury, (Table) 288 Permanently injured in actual and probable industrial acci- dents, brief digest of 17 cases, (Table) 289 Personal interest, 67, 68 Philadelphia, 203, 204 "Phoney" cripples, 35 Physical condition of homeless men, 32-43 able-bodied, 34 accidents, 42 convalescents, 40 defects and diseases, (Table) 36, 37 drink and drugs, 40 examination by the Chicago Bureau of Charities, 34 examinations by charitable societies, 33 examinations in lodging houses, 33 extent of handicap, 39, 40 fake cripples, 35 importance, 40 injuries, seriousness, 40-41 insanity, 42, 43 of Minneapolis men, (Table) 308, 332 tuberculosis, 37-39 vagrancy and, 41-43 venereal diseases, 37 Physician forger, story of, 230 Pittsburgh, 202, 203 Playgrounds, city, 269 Podstata, Dr. V. H., xiv Police tramp disposal, 234 Politicians, floating population and, 9 Poorhouses, 124, 127, 161, 162 Pressure in factories, etc., 136 Pride, boys', 266-267 obstacle in old men, 120 Printer, story of, 211-213 Promptness in help, need of, 59- 62 Psychology of begging, 163-164 369 INDEX Psychopathic clinics, 101-103 Publication of descriptions and stories of criminal beggars, 172 QUEERNESS, 93 RAILROAD accidents, alleged, 72- 74 Railroad construction, 7 Railroad police and tramps, 233- 234 Railroad transportation at half rates, 16 Railroads, boy trespassers, 270, 271 cost of tramps, 232-233 responsibility for tramps, 234 state laws as to tramps, 233- 234 tramps and, 209-2 1 o trespass laws, 236, 237 trespassers killed, 214-215 unguarded, 231, 270, 272 Ranch owner, 264 References, value of, 27, 28 Refinement, insanity and, 94 Reformation, boy of seventeen, 248-250 criminal beggars, 172-173 runaway boys, 263 Reinstatement of runaway boys, 259-262, 273 Relapses, beggars, 172 the insane, 97, 99 Relatives, aid for old men, 121 value of testimony, 28 Remittance men, 223 Responsibility for accidents, 84, 85 Responsibility of men crippled by accident, 51 Restlessness in boys, 257, 268- 269 of tramps, 218-220 Rheumatism, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48 Robbery in lodging houses, 146, 3.8 Rochester, N. Y., 106, 204, 205 Roosevelt, Theodore, 129 Rounders, 14, 15 Runaway boys, 242, 252-262 after-careers, 258 average age, 252 characteristics, 252-253 Chicago boy of ten, story of, 254-255 cruel father, 265 data as to residence, homes, family, (Tables) 304-305 family quarrels, 264-266 fictitious stories, 251 from good homes, 254-256 general data concerning homeless, vagrant and, (Table) 240 impulse, 253 indifference to parental claims, 266 instinct to wander, 253 peculiar case of lad of seventeen, 258-259 pride, 266-267 probable reasons for leaving home, 264 psychology, 252-253 reasons for leaving home, 251, 257, 265 370 INDEX Runaway boys, reformation. story of a. 259-262 scolding at home, 264, 265 spring fever, 257 strange ways, 254-255 tired of school, 257 unjust father, 264-265 w.irulerlust, 257-258, 264 Russell Sage Foundation, 208 Russian, story of young, 136- '37 ST. Louis, 139, 241, 330 St. Luke's Hospital, Chicago, 25, 36 St. Paul, Minn., 72, 139, 159, 218,330 "Sampling" the office of the Chicago Bureau of Charities, '4 San Francisco, 242, 330 earthquake, 69 Sandbagging, 94, 116 Savings, 144-145, 146 Scandals, 226 Scandinavians, 332 School, boys tired of, 257 Schooling, 30, 31 Seasonal employments, Chicago, 7.8 Seasonal labor, 334 character and conditions, 140-141 field, 139 length of time in one place, 140 lodging house life, 145-148 Middle West, 139 Minneapolis, 334 Seasonal labor, odd jobs, 148- 149. See also Casual Labor. philosophy of workers, 141- 145 savings, 144-145, 146 Seasonal wandering, 220-221 Seeking work, 225-226 Self-support, among insane men, 95 among insane, feeble-minded and epileptic, (Table) 90 among men crippled by accident or from birth, (Table) 50 among men crippled by disease, (Table) 46, 47, 48 among old men, (Table) 1 14, 1 16, 1 17 boy's difficulties, 267-268 character in, 52 crippled young man, 54-56 under double handicap, 81- 83 Separation from family, 23 Single men, 24 Sisters, difficulties with, 264, 265 Sixty, age of, 112, 113, 117 men over, 70 Skilled workers, occupations of 91, (Table) 293-294 Slums, 179 Smallpox, 329 Snow removal, 8 Soap peddler, case of, 100 Social responsibility for degen- erate-workmen beggars, 179 Soldiers' homes and pensions, 125, 127 INDEX Solitary confinement, desire for, 93 South Clark St., Chicago, 323 Southern criminal beggar, story of, 170 Spitting, 323 Spokane, Wash., 72 Sprees of tramping, 221 Spring fever, 257 Springfield, 111., 197 Starvation, 95, 96 State institutions needed, list of, 236 laws as to dependents, 206- 207 lodging house jurisdiction, 327-328 tramp laws, 235-237 Steady work, 150-151 Stealing rides, 209-210, 212, 213 Stepmother, 245 Student tramp, 224 Study of homeless men, group, 6 industrial, 5 results, 6 Subjective necessity, 161, 162 Subnormal personal develop- ment, 179-180 Summer road trip, 270 Syphilis, 37 lameness caused by, 74 Switzerland, labor colonies, 183 TEENS, boys' dangerous age, 269 Telegrapher's paralysis, 47 Temper, 93 Thieves, petty, 169 Thumb, result of injury to, 41 Time in city before application to bureau, (Table) 277 T. P., story of, 181 Trades, boys in, 247 seasonal, 7 Tramp-families, 190 Tramp life a form of mania, 89 Tramp- women, 190 Tramp workmen, 221 Tramps, 209-238 ages, (Table) 216, 217 antiquity, i arrest by railroads, 233-234 beating their way, 209-210, 212, 213 begging, 223 beginnings, 211-214 boy, 181 caricatures, 222 casual labor, 224 causes, 2, 3, 5, 334 Chicago, 8, 9 college men, 217 conjugal condition, (Table) 216 continual wanderers, 218- 220 criminals, 229 crippling of, 218 definition, 209-21 1 degenerate workmen, 217 destructiveness on railroads, 233 difficulty of disposing of, 234 distinguishing mark, 215 educated, 224 education, 217 expense to railroads, 232-233 false stories of, 72-74 federal law, 235 372 INDEX Tramps, general data, (Table) 216 grouped by habits of wander- ing, 218 how homeless men become, 21 1, 214 idle, 224 incomes, 223 kind of work, 244 law, 2, 3 mental condition, 218, (Table) 304 nativity, (Table) 216, 217 number in America, 214 number killed on railroads, 214,215 paid for, 190 peddling, 224 pensioners, 223 periodical, 221-222 physical condition, 218 physical and mental condi- tion, (Table) 304 problem, 215-216, 235, 238 proportion, 216-217 proportion of boys, 271 public opinion, 237-238 railroads and, 209-210 reasons for leaving home, 225-231 recent increase, 2 remittance men, 223 seasonal laborers, 217 seasonal wanderers, 220-22 1 self-support among, 190, (Table) 216, 222-223, 224 state dealings with, 235-237 verification of stories, (Table) 216 westward route from Chi- cago, 330 Transportation, charitable, 189- 190, 194 i is code, 208 evils of, 195-208 federal law, 207 public readiness to contri- bute to, 203 requests for, 189 state laws, 206-207 to home or friends, 53, 54 to home, story of young workmen, 54-56 Transportation committee of the National Conference, 208 Travel for boys, 269 Trespassers killed on railroads, number, 214, 215 Truth and falsehood in state- ments of homeless men, pro- portion, 24, 25 Truth, partial, 27, 28 Tuberculosis, 37-39, 45, 4^ alleged victims, 70 among Minneapolis men, 332 source of cases received at Dunning, 323 Tuberculous applicants, 325 Tuberculous men, by age groups, (Table) 280 Tuberculous strangers in Chicago, 325 Tuberculous wanderers, 230 Turning out well, boys, 263 UNDER-NOURISHMENT, 91 Unemployment, underlying causes, 151, 153-154 373 INDEX Unguarded railroads as a cause of tramps, 231, 270, 272 United Charities of Chicago, 14 University of Chicago, 224 VAGRANCY, antiquity, i as a cause of crippling acci- dents, 51 causes, 2, 3, 5 causes among cripples, 53 Chicago, 8-9 disease and, 41-43 law, 2, 3 law of Massachusetts, 236 limitation of the present work, 12 recent increase, 2 saving from, 53, 54, 57- See also Tramps. "Vagrancy in the United States," citation from, 215 Venereal diseases, 37, 45, 46, 328- 329 Ventilation of lodging houses, 316, 31? Vice, results, 46, 47 Virginia boy, 197 WANDERERS, confirmed. See Tramps; Vagrancy. Wandering, characteristic mark of the tramp, 215 continual, 218-220 different habits of, 218 Wandering, mania for, 219 periodical, 221-222 seasonal, 220-221 See also Leaving Home; Tramps; Vagrancy. Wanderlust, 221, 225, 257 Washington, 237 Western businesses in financial crises, 135 Western Passenger Association, 16 Widowers, 24, 229 Wilhite, Dr. O. C., xiv Winter employment for the unskilled, 8 Wisconsin, 94 Wives, death of, 24 Women, aged, 126 entanglements with, 226 tramps, 190 Work injuries. See Industrial Accidents. Work, refining, 141-144 Workman struck by train, story of, 54-56 Work-references, 28 Worry, 91, 100 Worthy and unworthy appli- cants, 66 Wrecking buildings, 7, 8 YEGGMEN, 9 Young Men's Christian Associa- tion, 272 374 OUR SLAVIC FELLOW CITIZENS By EMILY GREENE BALCH Associate Professor of Economics at Wellesley College FKW recent books of serious purpose have 111:1 great an impression on the reviewers. The New York Sun, widely known for its critical discrimination, devoted over five columns to a review. " Miss Balch," said the Sun, "is richly gifted with tin- qualities and training demanded for the complicated and important task which she has accomplished in this volume. The literary charm, the well-balanced proportion of fact, description and analysis (both intellectual and moral), and the remarkable self-restraint and fairmindedness which she exhibits, raise her work above the level of mere sociological investigation, and establish it in the category of books which the ordinary reader should not pass by." The London Spectator, one of the leading literary journals of England, gave it over a page review, finding it " a remarkable example of the thoroughness with which the work of economic investigation is carried on in the United States." The review sums up with this sentence: "We can warmly recommend Our Slavic Fellow Citizens to every one who is interested either in the future of the Slavs, with which the future of Europe promises to be more and more bound up, or in the conditions and pros- pects of European immigrants in the New World." FROM OTHER REVIEWERS An important contribution to the literature of immigration. Boston " Transcript." Miss Balch has been studying this question for years and her work is regarded as a very important achievement. " Review of Reviews." Miss Balch has given us one of the most valuable books on immigration that we know of, a work full of guidance, of truth, of understanding. Chicago " Record-Herald." Prof. Balch may well dispute with Miss Tarbell for the Ameri- can laurel due womanhood for patient investigation and consum- mate skill in marshalling her accumulations. Pittsburgh " Post." Prof. Balch brought to her task an insight into the history, the grouping and the race psychology of these people which made one believe that she was a Slav herself. . . . T<. this she adds a statistician's eye for detail, a socialist's discernment of causes and the facile pen of a ready writer. Prof. Edward A. Steiner in " The Survey." 8vo. 550 Pages; 48 full-page Illustra- tions ; Tables. 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