The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-04-17

for him to assume again. Breakfast
is provided and after it fair amount
of work in the adjoining woodward
is required of him in payment of his
bill And not two in a hundred thous-
and of the guests have to be punished
for misconduct or refusal to work
In Providence, l found an old
bleachery being transformed into the
most modern and complete of these city
lodges. The management is the same
as in that Boston, the arrangement
slightly different. One extensive DOR
mitory was flooded with sunshine, when
saw it. | noted one or two other
points of difference. The great wood
yard is entirely inclosed and can be
lighted by electric lights, enabling the
men to work at any time and in any
weather.
1t has been found in Providence,
as elsewhere, that with no wood-cut-
ting to be done on Sunday morning,
three times as many men apply for
lodging on Saturday night as on any
other night of the week. But with the
electric lighting of the woodward, they
are made to do their stint of work Sat
urdays before they get their lodging.
And the tramp who likes to keep per-
petual Sabbath, HES away from Prov
idence alike on Saturdays as ON other
days. He very often HES away to
Worcester.
In the course of these investigations,
[ tried the accommodations of a cheap
| lodging house, and spent the night in
trying to maintain a 'trocha," as you
recollect they called it in Cuba, against
an army of the natives. That expe-
rience emphasizes my agreement with
the published report of Mr.. Cummings
| the capable and trusted overseer of the
! poor in Providence. He asks: What
good can you expect of man who has
| become infested with vermin? Yet
| one nights lodging in the majority of
the cheap lodging houses is sufficient
to get him in that shape, and thereby to
| prevent a respectable and deserving
man from getting employment
Mr.. Cummings gives it as his con-
VictiOn, after years of practical eXpe-
| rience, that fully 60 per cent of the men
on the road are not chronic tramps but
are forced there temporarily in order
to better their conditions, and he de-
clares himself to have positively known
that before the establishment of the
lodge in Providence, many a poor fell
low was driven to commit petty crime
in order to secure a clean and tOlerable
shelter
What are we in Worcester doing
about this. as a civic corporation, and
in line with what public health and
simple humanity demands of us? As
far as l can learn we are doing abso-
go in the old shiftless way that every
city round about us has repudiated
and revolted from.
The only exception to this negli-
gence that we can offer is the Welcome
Mission. and it is not ours at all in our
municipal capacity. 1t is a private
charity, supported by private contribu-
nd rt-no, aft
licited to give for its support, they nat
urally object that they taxed already
by the city for just such a humane and
common sense attention to the
poor mans need. To demand
of Welcome Mission, with its
insufficient and unsuitable accom-
mediation, with its inadequate support,
that it do what it is our business as a
city to be doing, is utterly unjust, and
to demand this of Welcome Mission,
while all the time we as a city are de-
feattng its every effort by our sense
less harboring and encouraging Of
| tramps, seems almost infamous.
Let us have the subject ventilated.
If We citizens of Worcester are already
doing the right thing, let us have it
known and glory in it.
| AS soon as we have provided, as a
CITY, for the just and kindly entertain
ment of those who need it, let us stop
| the indiscriminate giving to able-bodied
men at our back doors or on the
streets. When We have stopped this
sentimental and usually hurtful form Of
charity let us set ourselves with intel
| ligent and eOnsecrated purpose to the
bestOWal of our charity where it will
| do good instead of evil.
And Worcester, with its Welcome
mission, with its Door of Hope, with its
Temporary home and nursery, with its
Associated charities, with it's many an
other wise and beautiful phila8tropN
VIII furnish us ample opportunity for
doing all the personal and private good
we can. For Worcester need not blush
for any lack of charitable men and wO-
men, or Of generous goodwill.
I'VE, citizens of Worcester. can well
afford to frankly confess our imperfec-
tions and be heartily ashamed of them.
The only thing we can't afford is to
stupidity or selfshly continue in them.
We have an honorable name among the
cities of the land. Beautiful for situa-
ton IS our Worcester It is noted far
and divide as a peaceable and orderly
community. It ranks among the first
for clean and capable administration Of
municipal affairs. Not if we can help it
small 1t suffer the reproach of wanting
IN humanity or wide-awake ability, or
natural good sense"