From the Bottom Up Part 7

"Well," I said, "we are just entering business. In the first case I charged you merely for the work done; in the second, I charge you for the idea."

"What idea?" he inquired.

"The idea that cleanliness is part of any business man's capital."

"Well, go ahead."

When both signs were polished I offered to do the big plate-gla.s.s windows for ten cents each. This was thirty cents below the regular price, and I was permitted to do the job. Tim, of course, took his cap off, rolled his shirtsleeves up and worked with a will beside me.

After that, we swept the sidewalk, earning the total sum of thirty-five cents. We tried to do other stores, but the nationality of most of them was against us; nevertheless, in the course of the afternoon, we made a dollar and a half. I took Tim to "Beefsteak John's," and we had dinner. Then I began to boast of the performance and to warn Tim that on the following Sunday afternoon I should explain my success to the men in the bunk-house.

"Yes, yes, indeed, yer honour," said Tim, "y're a janyus! There's no doubt about that at all, at all! But----"

"Go on," I said.

"I was jist switherin'," said Tim, "what a wontherful thing ut is that a man kin always hev worruk whin he invints ut."

"Well, that's worth knowing, Tim," I said, disappointedly. "Did you learn anything else?"

"There's jist one thing that you forgot, yer honour."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Begorra, you forgot that if all the brains in the bunk-house wor put together they cudn't think of a thrick like that--the thrick of cleaning a window wid stuff from a dhrugstore! They aint got brains."

"Why haven't they?"

"Ach, begorra, I dunno except for the same raisin that a fish hasn't no horns!"

We retraced our steps to the drugstore and the tailor-shop and the hardware store, and paid our bills and I handed over what was left to Tim.

This experiment taught me more than it taught Tim. It made a better student of me. I had investigated the cases of a hundred men in that same bunk-house--their nationality, age and occupation--and I had tried to find out the cause of their failure. And my superficial inquiry led me to the conclusion that the use of intoxicating liquor was the chief cause.

The following table shows the trade, nationality and age of one of our Sunday audiences in the B---- bunk-house. The audience numbered 108, and were all well-known individually to the Lodging House Missionary.

_Trade_

Engineer 1 Waiter 1 Watchman 1 Labourers 17 'Longsh.o.r.emen 7 Junkmen 3 Mechanics 3 Coal Heavers 18 Street Peddlers 4 Beer Helpers 2 Knife Grinders 4 Tailors 4 Cooks 2 Cigar Makers 2 Upholsterer 1 Painter 1 Butcher 1 Shoemakers 6 Gardeners 3 Gilder 1 Jeweler 1 Oysterman 1 Bronzer 1 Truckman 1 Firemen 2 Last Maker 1 Farmer 1 Thieves and b.u.ms of various grades 18 ____ Total 108

_Nationality_

Germans 52 Americans 19 Irish 22 English 4 Swedish 2 Austrians 2 Scotch 2 Welsh 1 French 2 Greek 1 Cuban 1 ____ Total 108

_Age_

Between 20 and 30 21 " 30 and 40 30 " 40 and 50 29 " 50 and 60 20 " 60 and 70 8 ____ Total 108 Average age, 41 years

Despite my experience with Tim Grogan, I diagnosed the condition of these men as being entirely due to strong drink. I went back over the ground and investigated with a little more care the causes that led them to drink, and this was the more fruitful of the two investigations. I wondered why men would not even stick at a job when I got them work. A careful investigation led me to the belief that, when a man gets out of a job once, he loses just a little of the routine, the continuity, the habit of work, and it is just a little harder to apply himself when he begins again. If a man loses a job two or three times in a year, it is just as many times harder to go on with a regular job when it comes. Lack of regular employment is the cause not only of the physical disintegration, but of the moral disintegration also; so, these men who had been out of employment so often, actually could not stick at a job when they got it. They were disorganized. A few of them had the stamina to overcome this disorganization. I found the same to be true in morals. When a man made his first break, it was easier to make the second, and it was as easy for him to lose a good habit as to acquire a bad one.

The same thing holds good in what we call charity. A terrific soul-struggle goes on in every man and woman before the hand is put out for the first time. Self-respect is a tremendous a.s.set, and people hold on to it as to their very souls; but when a hand is held out once and the community puts alms therein, the fabric of self-respect begins to totter, and the whole process of disintegration begins.

CHAPTER VIII

A BUNK-HOUSE AND SOME BUNK-HOUSE MEN

I made my headquarters, while a lodging-house missionary, in the Mulberry Street bunk-house. It was only a block from Chatham Square, and central. The first thing I did was to clean it. I proceeded with soap and water to scrub it out, dressed in a pair of overalls. While performing this operation, a tall gaunt figure lurched into the room with his hands in his pockets--a slit for a mouth, s.h.a.ggy eyebrows, rather small eyes. He looked at me for a moment as if in astonishment, and then he said:

"h.e.l.lo, bub, what's de game?"

"I'm a missionary," I answered.

"Ye are, eh?"

"Yes. When I finish cleaning the floor, I am going to attempt to clean up some other things around here."

"Me too, hey?"

"Yes; don't you think you need it?"

He laughed a hoa.r.s.e, gutteral laugh, and said:

"Don't get bughouse, boss. Ye'd wind up just where ye begun--on the floor."

This man, who was known in the bunk-house as "Gar," was known also by the names of "McBriarty" and "Brady." He had been in the army, but they could not drill him. He had spent fifteen years in State's Prison for various offences, but for a good many years he had been bungling around in cheap lodging houses, getting a living by his wits. He was the toughest specimen of a man I ever saw. There was a challenge in him which I at once accepted. It was in his looks and in his words. It was an intimation that he was master--that missionaries were somewhat feeble-minded and had to do with weak people. I was not very well acquainted with the bunk-house at the time, but I outlined a plan of campaign the major part of which was the capture of this primordial man. Could I reach him? Could I influence and move him to a better life? If not, what was the use of trying my theological programme on others? So I abandoned myself to the task. I knew my friends and the officers of the missionary society would have considered it very ill-advised if the details of the plan had been known to them, so I slept in the bunk-house and stayed with him night and day. Of course, I would not have done it if I had not seen beyond him: that if I could gain this man, I would gain a strategic point. He himself would be a great power in the bunk-house; first of all, because he was physically fit. He was selected because he could pitch any two men in the house out of it; and even from a missionary's point of view, that was important. He resented at first my interference, but gentleness and love prevailed, and he finally acquiesced.

The hardest part of the plan was to eat with him in an underground restaurant where meals cost five and ten cents a piece. When he was "tapering off," I went with him into the saloons. He visited the cheap fake auction-rooms and would buy little pieces of cheap jewelry occasionally and sell them at a few cents' profit. These things nauseated me. There was no hope of finding this man any work. He did not want work, anyway; could not work if he had it.

He tried, during the first week that I was with him, to disgust me; first with his language and then with his actions. He put the lights out in the dormitory one night, and in the darkness pulled three or four men out of the bunks, cuffed them on the side of the head and kicked them around generally. He thought this was the finishing touch to my vigil. When the superintendent came up and lit the lamp again, he had an idea that it was the bouncer and came over to his cot, which was beside mine, and found him snoring. When all was quiet, the bouncer said to me:

"What did ye tink of it, boss, hey?"

"Oh," I said, "that was a very tame show, and utterly uninteresting."

"Gee!" he said, "you must have been a barker at Coney Island."

The test of my theology on him proved a failure. The story of the prodigal son was a great joke to him. He said of it:

"Say, bub, if you ever strike an old gazabo as soft as dat one, lemme know, will ye?" Prayer to him was "talking through one's hat."

In a few weeks he straightened up and began to give me very fine a.s.sistance in the bunk-house. His change of mind and heart almost lost him his job, for he lost a good deal of his brutality--the thing that fitted him for his work. In ushering insubordinate gentlemen downstairs, he did it more with force of persuasion than with the force of his shoe. He continued my campaign of cleaning, and decorated the kalsomined walls with chromos that he bought at one penny apiece.

He was a psychologist and would have probably been surprised if anybody had told him so. He could tell at once the moral worth of a lodger; so he was a very good lieutenant and picked out the best of the men who had reached the bottom--and the bunk-house was the bottom rung of the social ladder. Every day he had his story to tell--of the newcomers and their possibilities. His conversion was a matter of slow work. Indeed, I don't know what conversion meant in his case. It certainly was not the working out of any theological formula that I had preached to him.

The telling of this man's story in churches helped the work a great deal. It was the kind of thing that appealed to the churches--rather graphic and striking; so, unconsciously we exploited him. We could have gotten a hundred dollars to help a man like this--whose life after all was past or nearly past--to one dollar we could get for the work of saving a boy from such a life!