Читать книгу Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms - Guido Bruno - Страница 7

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Of course you have seen Salvation Army wagons on the streets. An elderly gentleman usually occupies the driver’s seat. The horse moves on slowly and solemnly as if to the air of a very slow litany. The wagon is loaded with papers and books, with pieces of old furniture, and with bundles of clothing. The wagon proceeds from door to door. The horse stops. The old gentleman descends from his seat, rings the bell of the house and asks:

“Any old things for the Salvation Army?”

You have heard a good deal of the Salvation Army, and so you don’t hesitate to turn over some things you cannot use to the wagon. The elderly gentleman in Salvation uniform takes everything he can get hold of. You, of course, think that the magazines are sent to hospitals to be read by the poor lonesome patients, that the clothes are distributed among the needy, and the furniture given to some wretched families who have no beds to sleep on or to others whose hardhearted landlord deprived them of chairs and tables. Let us take a walk to one of the many industrial homes of the Salvation Army when the wagons come in, and the things are assorted and assigned to the different departments, and you will see what a gross mistake you made by assuming that your gifts are given away. They go to the needy all right, perhaps to the neediest of the needy, but for cash exclusively, and no credit is granted.

Books and magazines are turned over at once to the book department, which conducts a book store on Fourteenth Street near Union Square, not in the name of the Salvation Army, but in the name of the Reliance Book Store. Its employees are experienced booksellers who do not wear the Salvation uniform. In fact, every possible indication that this store belongs to the Salvation Army is carefully concealed. Magazines are here sold wholesale to other dealers or retail to you or to me or to anybody. The magazines given to the Salvation Army by charitable people are sold for from five to fifteen cents each. A very well-equipped rare book department attracts collectors from all over the city; “Book Prices Current” is the guide for the sales prices. School books are sold in great quantities. I believe the profit of this shop to be far greater than of any other book shop in the city, as its proprietors do not need to pay for the books they are selling.

There seems to be a good deal of hypocrisy in concealing the fact that the Salvation Army owns the Reliance Book Store. Why not put a sign out that would tell everyone that the books and magazines sold have been received as gifts for the poor and sick by the Salvation Army?

The so-called industrial homes sustain furniture factories where skilled labor is employed to rejuvenate furniture collected by the wagons. Antique furniture dealers have the pick of the really valuable things and hundreds of dollars are often paid for something which has been carted away as junk by the Salvation Army’s ragman.

The “Salvation Army Department Store,” a sort of a systematized and orderly looking junk shop, contains and displays everything to fit out men and women from head to foot. The things are scrupulously clean, but sold at far higher prices than in the shops of our friends on Baxter Street.

The buyers who come here are mostly people recently picked up by the Salvation Army and employed in some of their shops. They are not treated with the courtesy due to a customer, but with the brutality of a charity worker.

It will not be out of place to interject here a few words about the methods employed by the Salvation Army in recruiting its shopmen. They are unfortunate people out of work without a home, down-and-out in spirit, perhaps just released from hospital or prison. They receive some food, a bed remembered with a shudder in years to come and they receive a few pennies for work which represents many dollars to the Army. Mental and physical constraint is constantly exercised over them. The discipline of a Salvation Army Industrial Home is very similar to the prison rules of twenty-five years ago. All these brokendown men to whom the Salvation Army “grants a temporary home” were originally promised regular work and employment through friends of the army. Naturally, it is in the interest of the Army to keep them as long as possible, especially if they happen to be good workmen, and only such men are really welcomed with open arms. They will not receive the promised employment as long as the Army can possibly keep them in its own shops. To quit the “home” is synonymous with an escape from prison and usually they are worse off when they quit the Salvation Army than before they went in. The few cents they earned they were compelled to spend in small purchases in the Salvation Army Department Store. Thus the Salvation Army robs unfortunate men and women of the last shred of their faith in humanity.

The Salvation Army is the greatest bargain hunter in New York. Trained bookmen and art experts choose the most valuable among the books and pictures brought in on collection wagons. They employ connoisseurs of bric-a-brac and do a large business with the antique dealers.