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“And the gates of the city shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there.”—Rev. 21:25.

On a bitter winter night, when the very air seemed congealed into piercing needles, as I was hurrying down Seventeenth Street in the City of Denver—the City Beautiful, the City of Lights and Wealth,—a young man about eighteen years of age stopped me, and asked in a rather hesitating manner for the price of a meal. At a glance I took in his desperate condition. His shoes gaped at the toes and were run down at the heels; his old suit of clothes was full of chinks soiled and threadbare, frazzled at ankle and wrist; his faded blue shirt was open at the neck, where a button was missing, and where the pin had slipped out that had supplied its place. His face and throat were fair, and he was straight and sound in body and limb.

“You look strong and well,” I said to him, “why must you beg? Can’t you work for what you eat? I have to.”

His big, honest eyes took on a dull, desperate stare, as though all hope was crushed.

“This is the first time I have ever asked something for nothing,” he said, “and I don’t like to do it now, but I have been in Denver two days and I can’t find a job. I am hungry.” The last words trembled and he turned as though about to leave me. I stopped him.

“Wait a moment; I did not intend to turn you down. I am hungry myself; let us go across the street to the restaurant and get our dinner.”

A Familiar Scene in a Western City. The Boy Is “Broke” But Not Willing to Give Up

I had made up my mind to study this strong, able-bodied boy, who was workless, homeless, penniless, and suffering in our city beautiful, which is famous for its spirit of Western hospitality and even displays it as soon as you enter its gate by a great sign, “Welcome.”

As we sat at the table he told me that his home was on a farm back East, that he and his stepmother didn’t get along very well, that his own mother died when he was ten years old and his stepmother had not been kind to him, but that he and dad were always great friends and had continued so up to the time he went away.

“I promised myself,” he continued, as his hunger was appeased, “that as soon as I was old enough I would go West. I thought there were great chances for a young fellow like me out here, and so I worked and beat my way, and here I am to-day without a cent in my pocket. I have five dollars to my credit in the bank back in the old town near our farm, and if I knew anybody here I could get that money, pay my employment-office and shipment fee, go down to some works in Nebraska, and be at a job to-morrow,” and he looked down in deep dejection.

“Well my lad,” I said, “cheer up; all life is before you. Meet me to-morrow and we will see what can be done.” On the following day I took him to my bank, signed a bit of paper, and the banker gave him the five dollars. As we left the bank and started down the street, he took an old brass watch out of his pocket and offered it to me.

“I want to give you something to show my appreciation of your kindness to me,” he said. “Here is a watch the pawnshop man wouldn’t give me anything on, but it keeps good time, and you are welcome to it if you will take it.”

“No, I will not take it; you will need it when you get down on the works,” I said. “Where did you sleep the night before I met you?” His face flushed and he hung his head. “Was it not in the city jail?”

“Yes, and it was the first time I was ever in a jail in my life.”

I did not question him further, but to-day I can not quite understand why he was not detained there the usual thirty days for the unforgivable crime of being homeless, as that was the way Denver had of treating her destitute visitors.

Then he looked up with the true spirit of conquest in his eyes. “I’ll tell you what I am going to do the first thing; I am going to get a clean, new suit of underclothing, then I am going to take a bath, and then get my shipment.”

“Come on, my boy,” I replied, and took him to a cheap store to buy his clean underwear. Afterward we went into a barber shop where he took his bath. Denver did not then have its public bath—the beautiful public bath later built through the efforts of the Denver Woman’s Club. I waited to go with him to the employment office to get his shipment. When this was accomplished, we shook hands in a good-bye, and I wished him God-speed.

Two weeks later I received a letter in which he said: “I have a place to work here on a farm at big wages, with one of the best men in the world, and I am going to stay and work and save my money to help dad back on the old farm to pay off the mortgage. It is nearly paid off now and the farm will be mine some day.”

After that incident I was haunted. The picture of that boy freezing and starving so far from home was constantly with me, and yet, I thought, how much more pitifully helpless a woman or girl placed in the same position. I fell to wondering about the many other boys and men and women who were homeless, and of what becomes of the homeless unemployed in our city. I knew I was not alone in this incidental help I had begun; there were hundreds of men and women helping cases just like this case of my boy. And thus I set out on my crusade.

Taking my initiative step into the forced resorts of the homeless of Denver, I one night drifted into one of the big beer dumps where they sell drinks at five cents a glass which costs a dollar a barrel to manufacture. Many men were in the place seeking shelter and a snack from the free lunch counter. Twenty-five stood at the bar drinking enormous schooners of chemicals and water under the name of beer containing just enough cheap alcohol to momentarily dull and lighten care. Not a few were drinking hot, strong drinks, which more quickly glazed the eye, confused the brain, and loosened the tongue. A few had already crept into the stifling odors of the dark rear rooms and had dropped down in the shadowed corners with the hope of being allowed to spend the night there. These rooms in earlier days had been “wine-rooms,” where the more “polite” and prosperous had gathered, but who took the “wine-room” with them further up town as the city grew.

Among the many gathered around the big warm stove was a man whose appearance told too plainly that the world was not dealing kindly with him. Stepping up to him I said in a tentative way, “Have a drink?”

“No, I am not a drinker.”

I then asked, “Can you tell a fellow who is broke where he can get a free bed?”

He looked at me with an amused smile. “You are up against it, too, are you, Jack? Well, I am broke, too, and the only free bed I know of is the kind I am sleeping in, and that’s an oven at the brick yards. A lot of us boys go out there during these slack times.”

“An oven at the brick yards!” I said in astonishment. “How do you get there?”

“Well, you go out Larimer Street to Twenty-third, then you turn out Twenty-third and cross Twenty-third Street viaduct. It’s about two miles. You’ll know the kilns when you come to them; you can’t miss them. But don’t go before eleven o’clock; the ovens are not cool enough before that time.”

“To-night I sleep in an oven at the brick yards,” I said to myself, with cast-iron determination.

It was a very cold night, but at eleven o’clock I started out Larimer Street to find my free bed. Having crossed the Twenty-third Street viaduct I was lost in darkness; there were no lights save in the far distance. I stumbled along over the frozen ground, fearing at any moment an attack, for Denver is not free from hold-ups. I could hear men’s voices, but could see nothing. It was not a pleasure-outing except as the thrill caused by the swift approach of the unknown may be pleasurably exciting. Finally the lights of the brick yard shone upon me with its great, long rows of flaming kilns. I had arrived at my novel dormitory. Stepping up to a stoker at work near the entrance, I asked:

“Can you show a fellow where he can find a place to lie down out of the cold?”

He raised his head and looked at me, and said, “I’ll show you a place.” Leaning his shovel against the kiln, and picking up his lantern, he said, “Come with me.” He paused at a kiln. “Some of the boys are sleeping in here to-night.” I followed as he entered the low, narrow opening of a kiln and raised his light. We were in a round oven or kiln about forty feet in circumference. By the light of his lifted lantern I counted thirty men.

“There are about seventy sleeping in the empty kilns to-night; I think you will find a place to lie down there,” he said, as he pointed to a place between two men.

I at once lay down, and with a “Good-night” he left me to the darkness and to the company of those homeless sleepers, who, in all our great city, could find no other refuge from death.

The kiln was so desperately hot that I could not sleep, and habit had not inured me to that kind of bed. Had I been half-starved, weak, and exhausted, as were most of my companions, I, too, could have slept, and perhaps would have wanted to sleep on forever. No one spoke to me. I endured the night by going at intervals to the kiln’s opening for fresh air. It was then when I looked up into the deep, dark, frozen sky, that I thought what a vast difference there is in being a destitute man from choice and a destitute man from necessity. At four o’clock the time for a fresh firing of the kilns, we were driven from the great heat of that place out into the bitter cold of the winter morning. Very few of the men had any kind of extra coat, but, thinly clad as they were, they must walk the streets until six o’clock, waiting for the saloons or some other public places to be opened. Their suffering was pitiful. I afterward learned that many of these men, from this exposure, contracted pneumonia, and from this and many other exposures filled to overflowing the hospitals of the city.

During the entire week I followed up my investigations. I found men sleeping in almost unthinkable places; in the sand-houses and the round-houses of the railroad companies, when they had touched the heart of the watchman.

I asked one of the railway men why the companies drove them away from this bit of comfort and shelter.

“Because they steal,” was his reply.

“What do they steal?” I asked.

“Oh, the supper pail of the man who comes to work all night, an old sack worth a nickel, a piece of brass or iron, or part of the equipment from a Pullman car, or anything they can sell for enough to buy a meal, or a bed, or a drink.”

“Do they steal those little things because they are hungry?” I questioned.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “They are often so successful in not being detected, I expect that has made them bold. Some may have been hungry,” he said, after a thoughtful pause. “Work has been scarce and hard to find, you know.”

“Yes,” I replied, “they have, no doubt, tramped the streets for many a day, footsore, dirty, ragged, and penniless and worst of all, discouraged and desperate. They must have clothing and food as well as a place to sleep. Without this they must suffer and die. They are haunted by this fear of death, knowing well what hunger and exposure means and the utter impossibility of securing work with their ragged appearance.”

“Yes, I know,” said the man, patiently listening to my growing realization of their desperation. “When they become bolder and break into a freight car to steal something, if not of much real value, or something to eat, they are usually caught and thrown into jail. But they can’t stop to think of that, I suppose; the poor devils have got to live. You mustn’t give me away,” he added confidentially, “but I know a special agent for a big railroad company who made a boast of the number of men he had sent to the reformatory and put in the penitentiary the past year.”