The American issue. [volume] (Westerville, Ohio) 1912-19??, 1920-01-02
BOWERY MISSIONS HAS
FEW CALLS FOR HELP
Down and Cutters Are Mighty
Scarce These Days of Prohi-
bition, Reports Show
HOSPITALS HARD HIT
Alcoholic Wards in Bellevue and
Kings County HospitalsAbout
Out of Commission

The New York Tribune of Decem-
Der 70 prints a remarkable story of
the Transformation that has taken
place in the Bowery section as a re-
suit OF the war better wages and Pro-
hibition.
According to the Tribune, the tide
OF "down-and-outers' in New York
is at the lowest cbb in history.
On December Is when tie first real
winter weather gripped New York
City only one man applied for bed
inthe famous Bowery Mission where,
under similar conditions, says the
Tribune, five years ago there would
have been about 5000 applicants. The
story continues:
At the Municipal Lodging
House at 524 Z Fifth street
which has a capacity OF 900 men
and women, only o. men and two
women were sheltered. This
number is fewer than the average
at this time last yer when the
mercury at no time went below
nine degrees above zero.
In no night so far this month has
the lodging house sheltered as
many as 100 persons.
Alcoholics Less Numerous
There has been a tremendous slump
also in the commitments to the alco-
holic wards OF hospitals. According
to Bird S Golfer Commissioner of
Charities, the demands upon the city
for charitable assistance never were
so few. Child commitments, he said,
are extremely light. The alcoholic
wards in Kings County and Bellevue
hospitals are now out OF business and
ambulance calls have fallen off IS per
cent. Mr. Golfer is quoted as saying:
Up until Monday the Municipal
Lodging House has scarcely done
enough business to warrant its
existence. We could almost af-
ford to send applicants to the ho-
tells. We don't expect to see con-
ditions much worse.
Bowery Mission Workers Speak
The. Tribune quotes A. c. Baker,
secretary OF the Bowery Mission, and
Charles Bealevre, for sixteen years
directly connected with handling APP
peals for assistance, as saying;
THE only needy persons along the
Bowery today are the lazy bum who
won't work. and the sick. A man who
wants work can get it in three hours.
Last night with the mercury down to
zero only four men came 10 us for
help and only one wanted bed.
Under ordinary circumstances nine
out OF ten OF the 500 men we had at
meeting here would have asked for 4
bed. The war, better wages and Pro-
hibition virtually have eliminated the
Bowery bum and the bread line.
Times were bad in l914-15 and 1915
To- but the bread line OF / 500 to 1000
men night dropped in the winter OF
19l7-l8 to IS a night We have had
no real bread line for three years.
at used to be that you could get
thousand snow shovelers in an hour
by going TO the saloons along the
Bowery. Now you couldn't get 40.
At one time we could get rooms on
short order for several hundred men.
We can not now. The men who for
merly came to us for beds now pay
their own rent. A man 6S
years old who had been a Bowery
bum for 50 years, came hert recently
SO slicked up we hardly recognized
him. Eighteen months ago. he said,
1 was just what | had been for a hall
century Bowery bum. Now have
just finished paying for $500 Liberty
Bond for my little granddaughter
No Disorder
But improved conditions are not
seen alone in the passing of the bum.
The statement put out by the Asso-
citation Opposed to National Prohibit
tons that Prohibition has fostered
and encouraged anarchy receives
black eye in the following statement
from these two mission workers as
quoted in the Tribune. They say:
One of the most remarkable
aspects of the Bowery population
served by the mission is that not
a single radical outbreak has &C.
CURED along Bowery in all the
unrest since the armistice. The
soap-box orator is unknown to the
Bowery despite the one thousand
to two thousand men who are
subject to spasmodic unemploy-
ment. If anyone should display
the red flag in the Bowery / am
confident that some of the $4,000
members of the Bowery brother
hood would tnob him