"W

HAT about the jobless man on the park bench?" is an old question that is being revived with familiar frequency now that the fever of war production and universal employment has spent itself.

The city policeman, with his eternal "Move on," was the one man who seemed to have a direct answer to the question. But Edwin Brown, of Denver-"Lodging House Brown"-has matched the policeman's answer with a better one. Mr. Brown would have the jobless, homeless man move on, but to a municipal emergency home, where he can find good food and a night's rest and a chance to look to-morrow's world in the face in better spirit.

Mr. Brown has been personally responsible for the establishment of many municipal lodging houses throughout the United States. In order to get the experience necessary to rouse the cities to the need of emergency shelters for the jobless, Mr. Brown, who is a man of wealth and education, has lived as a "down-and-outer." He has put on workmen's clothes and mingled with those he has sought to help. He has traveled without funds from one city to another, in order to "get the feel" of life as it appears to the man without a dime. Then he has gone to the press with his observations, and usually a municipal lodging house has been established as a result.

Nor has Mr. Brown been satisfied with the mere establishment of lodging houses for the unemployed. He has "checked up" on such institutions after they have been established. An instance of his methods along this line was shown last fall, when the problem of the unemployed was most acute. Park benches were filled, even on cold nights. Jobless men, many of them war veterans, slept covered with newspapers. Some of them were in Bryant Park, in New York City, huddled about the statue of William Cullen Bryant, the man who wrote: "Truth crushed to earth shall rise again -the eternal years of God are hers."

Yet New York, not so many years ago, built a municipal emergency home, at a cost of $250,000, for meeting just such conditions. There was plenty of empty space in it, while the benches in Bryant Park were full. There was a weighty conference on unemployment on at Washington, but no word came from that conference which might relieve the immediate necessities of the men on the park benches. Something was the matter; and just the nature of that something was brought to light by Mr. Brown, who came into the city room of a New York newspaper and said:

"I have just been to the New York Municipal Lodging House, and would like to know why it is that with between eight hundred and a thousand

BY ARTHUR CHAPMAN

beds there and the parks filled nights with men who are out of work, less than half the beds are occupied. When I asked the lodging-house keeper for the reason, he said: "This place is chiefly for men who vote here. We only permit non-residents to remain one night.'"

The city editor detailed a reporter, who first interviewed some of the men on the park benches. The reporter found from these men that they would rather sleep in parks, hallways, or anywhere else than apply at the New York Municipal Lodging House.

Then the reporter put on an old suit of clothes and applied at the lodging house, where he found conditions bad. He reported that the inmates were so concentrated on the floors, despite the great floor space and bed capacity, that their health was endangered.

The sup

per, according to the reporter's account, was bad, and the breakfast was worse. The ventilation was so poor that one man begged to be allowed to leave, only to be told to go back to his blanket on the floor or be put in jail. To pay for such quarters and such food the inmates had to work about the lodging house for two hours, or longer at Blackwell's or Randall's Island, thus depriving them of a chance to get jobs during the best time in the morning.

Yet it was only a few years ago that Mr. Brown was citing the New York Municipal Lodging House as something for other cities to copy. He had found there kindliness and cleanliness. To-day, in a time of greater public need, he finds the same institution cursed by unemployed men, who would rather shiver in the parks than go near it. So much for the lost motion that comes through political mismanagement.

The same condition obtains pretty generally throughout the country, Mr. Brown has found in the process of checking up on the lodging houses that have been established by municipalities. During war-time prosperity there was little use for such lodging houses. Some were even converted to other uses, apparently on the idea that universal employment was going to last forever. Most of the cities maintained their lodging houses, but permitted them to run down. The position of lodging-house keeper became a sinecure, to be handed out to some political favorite.

When unemployment began to be a problem in Boston, former Mayor Peters, of that city, put on a ragged suit of clothes and undertook the same sort of an investigation which Mr. Brown started in New York. He visited the Doston Municipal Lodging House incognito and had supper, lodging, and breakfast there. Then he sawed wood for an hour in the morning to pay for his entertainment. As a result of his experiences he asked

for $50,000 to make needed changes in the emergency home.

The Boston Mayor's visit to the Municipal Lodging House was the result of reading "Broke," a book in which Mr. Brown has set forth his impressions of several years of mingling with the unemployed-a book which from the standpoint of actual observation alone ranks with the studies of Wyckoff, Flynt, London, and others, with the added merit of a constructive purpose.

A youth who accosted Mr. Brown one February night in Denver several years ago was indirectly responsible for the establishment of many lodging houses. Also he was responsible for the investigations which have gained Mr. Brown the newspaper sobriquet of the "Millionaire Tramp."

Mr. Brown learned that this youth was sleeping at a brick kiln on the outskirts of the city. The next night Mr. Brown put on an old suit of clothes and tramped out to the kiln. It was about midnight, and the brick had been withdrawn. In the hot kiln were a dozen men, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion. Mr. Brown caught such snatches of sleep as he could, but frequently had to go to the opening of the kiln and get a breath of fresh air. About three o'clock in the morning, at the very coldest time. the men were awakened and informed that the workmen would have to fill the kiln with brick for the day's baking. Mr. Brown tumbled out into the cold with the rest. All were reeking with perspiration, and undoubtedly some of them contracted pneumonia and went to fill the overcrowded hospitals of the city and county. Since that night it has been one of Mr. Brown's chief contentions that municipal emergency homes, providing needy persons with shelter, are a good investment for a city from a financial point of view, as they save a heavy drain on hospitals and other institutions.

Mr. Brown entered immediately upon his crusade, which took him to New York, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington, Salt Lake, and other cities. Usually he dressed in some such garb as he wore that first night at the Denver brick yards-a well-worn suit, with overalls added perhaps, a blue shirt, a cheap handkerchief, and a disreputable looking hat. Sometimes he went from the best hotels in such clothes, and barely escaped being ejected by indignant bell-boys and doormen. At other times he would make long journeys from town to town without funds, living with "migratory labor" on the road and learning just what that type of laborer thinks of life.

In the course of his investigations Mr. Brown had countless disagreeable experiences and some which nearly cost him his life. He slept on the Denver and

Rio Grande Railroad ash-heaps at Pueblo, Colorado, just after several unfortunates who had crawled there for warmth had been suffocated by gaseous fumes. He was thrown into bull-pens and vermininfested jails. Sometimes he spent his nights voluntarily in such jails, with men who were forced to that disagreeable necessity rather than go through the alternative of freezing to death. One cold night in Salt Lake he sought shelter in a box car with some delicate youths who were trying to find employment in the West. The car was so cold that finally Mr. Brown was compelled to give up and seek his hotel, but not until the supposed down-and-outer had given his companions the price of lodgings elsewhere.

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One of his most trying experiences occurred at Pittsburgh, where he turned down by one charitable organization after another because he did not have a quarter for a bed and was sent away from a mission because he did not .have ten cents. Finally Mr. Brown went to a park in Allegheny City, paying his last cent to get across the bridge. But at nightfall the police drove him out of the park. He turned back toward Pittsburgh and was followed by two hold-up men. He saw the gleam of a revolver as they approached him, but they turned back finally, one of the men remarking, "I told you it was nothing but a hobo." Mr. Brown walked across a railway trestle as his only means of getting back to Pittsburgh, and nearly lost his life, as he slipped and narrowly escaped falling into the stream. In Pittsburgh he was promptly "run in" by a policeman, and spent the night in the city jail, amid indescribable conditions.

The New York Municipal Lodging House as it was conducted immediately after its founding is referred to by Mr. Brown as a good example of what such an institution should be.

"I shall never forget one night I went there, disguised as a down-and-outer," he said. "I went from the Waldorf Astoria, where I had donned my disguise, and when I told an officer I was penniless and hungry-which was true, as I did not have a cent with me and had not eaten for a considerable time-I was not treated as a felon, but had the Municipal Lodging House pointed out to me. First I was given a good meal-not a few scraps, but a first-class, well-cooked meal, of the kind that puts a man at peace with all the world. Then came a showerbath, and as I stepped into it the attendant put a germicide on my head and good-naturedly and picturesquely described its purpose as he did so. I was given a clean nightgown and climbed into a clean, warm bed. Next to me was a poor, feeble wanderer, probably seventy years old. As he crawled into the bed -perhaps the first comfortable bed he had reposed in for years-I heard him sigh, devoutly: 'God, I thanks thee!'

"Nor are the benefits of a municipal lodging house all for men. I saw a woman and seven children come to the

EDWIN BROWN, WEALTHY PHILANTHROPIST OF DENVER, WHOSE PERSONAL INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE CONDITION OF THE JOBLESS HAVE RESULTED IN THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MANY MUNICIPAL LODGING HOUSES

New York Municipal Lodging House one night-driven to the street by a drunken husband and father. Also I saw a young girl hesitate before ringing the lodging house bell. The Tenderloin was to the west and the dark river to the east. As she stood on the steps in indecision, the door opened and she was gathered into motherly arms."

Mr. Brown's method of establishing municipal lodging houses was through publicity. He would visit a town that seemed to be in need of such an institution and, putting on his disguise as a down-and-outer, would visit the various charitable institutions in search of lodgings. Almost without exception, he says, he has been turned down by such institutions.

"While organized charity has its place in dealing with families," said Mr. Brown, "it seems to have no place in its scheme for the individual who is totally without means or shelter and who needs immediate help. It is no use asking such men for a dime or a quarter for a bed. One might just as well ask for a dollar."

Generally Mr. Brown's quest led to his arrest as a vagrant and a night in the bull-pen. On his release he would visit the local newspaper and tell his story, and the city administration generally

would "get busy" to remedy conditions on finding public sentiment aroused. One municipal lodging house after another was started through such personal efforts on Mr. Brown's part.

Mr. Brown has found, he says, that municipal lodging houses are proving to be a National asset in these days of inlustrial reconstruction when non-employment, especially among the unskilled classes, has again come to the fore.

"While unemployment conferences are being held," Mr. Brown says, "the unemployed man cannot wait for aid. War workers were able to save little from their high wages, because the cost of living advanced proportionately. The man out of work needs something for his immediate necessities, which a wellconducted emergency home supplies. A poorly conducted lodging house is worse than none at all.

"I do not hesitate to declare that ninety per cent of the unfortunates I have met would work if they had the opportunity. But these men, who have no place to turn, sleep in places where they contract illness from exposure. Then they crowd into the hospitals that are conducted at public expense. Many of these men drift into crime through their desperate condition. A man is hardly to be blamed for doing something desperate when he is cold, hungry, and miserable. It reminds me of what I heard a youth say at the municipal lodging house in Boston, where we were given miserable beds and where we could not eat the stuff that was given us at breakfast. The boy pushed the stuff away in disgust, saying, 'Oh, I'm going out and win a breakfast on the street.' Which meant that he was ready for something desperate that might bring him the price of a meal."

Mr. Brown is slight of frame, but his keen blue eyes tell of unusual determination. Sometimes, when carrying on investigations in big cities, he has been unable to stir out of his hotel for days. owing to the unnerving sights he has witnessed when he has been herded into some bull-pen with men who have committed no crimes. He nearly lost his life a few years ago while investigating working conditions among the sheep camps in the Far West. In throwing a heavy sheep into a dipping vat he sustained an injury which threatened to prove fatal. But as soon as he was able to stir about he began an investigation of conditions in sanatoria for the tubercular in the Rocky Mountain region. He secured employment in these institutions as a potato peeler or in any other humble capacity. As a result of his investigations he published a "white list," showing the institutions where patients received more than perfunctory

care.

But lodging houses have been and still are his hobby, and when one of these municipal institutions is started it will be found generally that "Lodging House Brown" has had something, directly or indirectly, to do with it.