The underworld and the upper

Front matter

Class

Book,

Copyright}! .

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Preface ix

Introduction xiii

Preface

The bringing together of these stories of salvation has been in contemplation for a long time. It has been the belief of the author that these illustrations from the "perpetual revival" will stimulate the Church to a deeper sense of its responsibility to the large numbers of unfortunate men and women who have drifted away from Christian homes to recruit the armies of tramps, criminals, and drunkards — all outcasts.

The Methodist Church was the first denomination to give official recognition to rescue work, by establishing, through its New York City Missionary Society, the Hadley Rescue Hall, on the Bowery. There were many rescue missions when Wesley Hall — as it was first called — was opened in 1904, in what had been successively a beer garden, pool and gambling house, and dance hall ; but they were all under independent auspices.

To the Rev. Samuel Hopkins Hadley, whose name the mission now bears, belongs the credit of establishing the mission, for to his persistence and to others who interested two laymen of means and others in the under-

ix x PREFACE

taking, may be ascribed the inauguration of the work. He has laid down his cross and taken the crown, but the work will remain as an enduring monument, not only in the mission itself and in the Old Jerry McAuley Water Street Mission, of which he was simultaneously superintendent, but in the lives of hundreds of men and women now scattered broadcast over the face of the earth. There is promise that other denominations soon will follow the example set by the Methodist Church; interdenominational and undenominational missions are also multiplying, but not in ratio to the increase in the army of the "down-and-outs."

The characters set forth in this volume are known to the author — many of them from the day of their redemption ; their testimonies are not overdrawn, but in many cases do not tell all the extremes to which sin has brought them. They are not intended as biography, nor written to catalogue crime and depravity. Each character has his phase of evil and his peculiar approach to salvation. Hundreds more of testimonies might be written, some of which possess even more startling features; but the book is not sent out to thrill the reader with the narration of crime and degradation, but the rather to lift up Him

PREFACE xi

who said, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."

Doubtless many will wish they might have a part in missionary endeavor which promises such glorious results. To such the opportunity is open, for earnest, prevailing prayer is needed for the leaders and their work; many who need the offices of the missions do not know of their work, and by directing such to these places their salvation may be accomplished; then there is the always acceptable help through generous gifts of money.

If the Church generally, and Christians in their individual relations, can be interested in the salvation of the lost, and if the ministers and lay workers are stimulated to higher reaches of service, then this little volume will be worth while, and will have accomplished its purpose.

Charles A. Stare.

New York, January, 1912.

Introduction

I have read a number of the stories in Mr. Starr's "The Underworld and the Upper," and am pleased to commend the general subject and Mr. Starr's manner of treating it. If I can judge by the effect that a similar book — "Twice Born Men" — produced on me and on others with whom I have conversed, there is a demand for such information as this book furnishes.

Those who have not visited the slums of a great city have no idea of the number of the wrecks that float about on their eddying currents. The average man and woman have little conception of the shameless depths to which drink carries its victims; they do not know to how many vices it is akin, and they do not realize how hard it is for the fallen to regain an honorable place among their fellows.

"The Underworld and the Upper" gives a few glimpses — a few only of the multitude that might be given — of the phases of life seen by those who are devoting themselves to rescue work. I say but a few, for at one meeting at Hadley Rescue Hall which I attended, nearly a dozen men gave experiences which

xiii xiv INTRODUCTION

ran the entire gamut of sin and sorrow, and more than a dozen rose for prayers. The contrast between the two groups was striking : the prodigals had all but forfeited their right to claim a likeness to the Creator, while in the reformed the image had been restored. Both groups showed the need of One who can "save to the uttermost," and the reformed were living miracles. They testified to Christ's continuing power to regenerate; and the power to convert a polluted heart into a spring overflowing with love — a worse than worthless existence into a life of service — is as mysterious as the power that nineteen hundred years ago opened the eyes of the blind, unstopped the ears of the deaf, and called back the spirit from the grave.

But the book will not only give renewed inspiration and new illustrations to those engaged in Christian work, but it will hold out hope to those who have been cast off by friends and relatives; to these it may bring a knowledge of Him "who sticketh closer than a brother." It may mean life to some in despair to know anew that man cannot fix a limit to God's pardoning power or close the door of mercy on a soul.

Allow me, then, to bespeak for "The Underworld and the Upper" a reception and a read-

INTRODUCTION xv

ing. I am sure it will prove helpful to both those who desire to serve and those who need assistance.

I have recently read a poem by Walter Malone which is so in harmony with the lesson taught in "The Underworld and the Upper" that I venture to conclude with it. It is a splendid word of cheer.

Opportunity 1 They do me wrong who say I come no more

When once I knock and fail to find you in; For every day I stand outside your door,

And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win.

Wail not for precious chances past away,

Weep not for golden ages on the wane! Each night I burn the records of the day —

At sunrise every soul is born again!

Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped, To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;

My judgments seal the dead past with its dead, But never bind a moment yet to come.

Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep;

I lend my arm to all who say "I can!" No shame-faced outcast ever sank so deep

But yet might rise and be again a man!

Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast?

Dost reel from righteous Retribution's blow? Then turn from blotted archives of the past,

And find the future's pages white as snow.

Songs of East and West, by Walter Malone.

XVI

INTRODUCTION

Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from thy spell;

Art thou a sinner? Sins may be forgiven; Each morning gives thee wings to flee from hell,

Each night a star to guide thy feet to heaven.

CHAPTER I A Strong Arm Become Stronger

To Teddy the coming of a mission to the Bowery was a matter of life and death. True, there had been missions before that on the Bowery, and others came at a later date, but this mission really invaded Teddy as much as it did the Bowery. What right had a mission to start up alongside the gruesome Suicide Hall?

The block in which Christians planted the enterprise, which was in time destined to transform the entire Bowery, seemed to belong to Teddy. He had been born a few blocks away, it is true, but he had lived in it, or had been identified with the block for so long that it seemed as though it were all his. He had been a newsboy on one corner, had been employed at one time or another in one of the resorts on two sides of the block, and, when the mission arrived, he was doorman in another questionable place. He knew every nook and corner of the block, with its "getaways" for those who would evade the police; he knew all the crooked hallways and secret doors of the very building in which the

l mission was located. When its founders were inspecting the dark and forbidding recesses of the building before they had acquired it, they were themselves being inspected by Teddy, who had entered the building by the roof "to see what was going on."

It had been a dance hall for the elite of the section at one time; it had been a "respectable" beer garden, with a concert stage, retrograding into a resort for evil characters and vile deeds. There were a score of rooms where games of chance might be found in operation at once; still in place were the bars which had kept the police from raiding the poolroom which succeeded the concert garden. The little half-oval apertures in the hall were still there too. That was where the winner of a bet on the races put in his ticket to the cashier, whom he could not see, and obtained his winnings. What sort of a place was that for a mission !

"I'll have to go in and look those guys over," said Teddy, when the painter and carpenter were changing the dive into a gospel mission. He was there the first night and for many nights thereafter. You could see him glide into a rear seat like an apparition ; before the invitation was given he would glide out in the same uncanny way ere one of the

A STRONG ARM YOUTH 3

workers could reach him. He was attracted, this child of the underworld, but he was as suspicious as a guilty crook.

Some of the wiser ones did not try to reach him, but left the shy one to a Higher Worker, who knows the way to the Bowery heart, as well as to the one nurtured amid more auspicious influences. But once in a while they found opportunity to get a hand on his shoulder, to make him feel at home, or to say a kind word, and, in time, to tell him of the love of the Master for Bowery boys. To such he invariably shook his head. He had been led to admit that his mother had told him about Jesus in childhood, but that he long since had forgotten all about it.

Teddy was weighing the case carefully. Schooled in the sharp practices of the underworld, he mistrusted everyone not proven to be "square." He took no one at his own estimate. The testimonies of the converts sounded so wonderful that he found himself unable to believe them.

"If that's all true, I wish I could be like that," he said to himself; then he reflected that it couldn't be true.

Meanwhile, he was watching those men. Many nights converts were shadowed by the silent one. Alas ! he found many as he feared they would be, not living on the outside what they professed within the mission. Some of them, however, stood the acid test of his sleuthing. They were pure gold from the fire.

"Those guys is all right," he said to one worker; "wish't / was."

He continued to draw his meager pay for doing the dirty work for a man whose "pull" at headquarters permitted him to continue his questionable resort.

Teddy was not a bad young man ; there was no vicious element in him when the rough bark was peeled off. He was a creature of environment. All of his playmates had grown up to be tough, and he was no different. Fighting all the while for life against everyone else, why should he not learn all their tough ways — and go a little farther, if he could?

His godly mother advised him to be good, and tried to get him started right, but he chose the tough life. If there was a prize fight about the neighborhood, as was frequent in the days when the noted dives were kept by ex-sluggers, Teddy was there with his friends. They would all emulate the fight in some back room until all had more or less skill and some hitting ability. Teddy had a natural quick-

A STRONG ARM YOUTH 5

ness and learned to hit a sudden and heavy blow.

It was a very convenient blow when his victim called for the police, because he objected to the loss of his wallet, or watch, or diamonds. This was not what Teddy and his tough companions named them. They had a lingo for their underworld operations, which the police were not supposed to know, and as the latter are close students of languages — such as are used by crooks — the vocabulary was changing constantly.

The youth had developed into a gangster. When he worked it was a blind to conceal from the police his real business, which was to make money without work. It was so easy to follow the half-drunken man with money or valuables into a dark spot on a side street, to place an arm under his chin, and shove the man, half choked, into a doorway; it was the work of an instant for deft fingers to remove everything from his pockets that promised ready cash and then shove the fellow out on the sidewalk, with a blow which confused him. When he recovered his senses enough to cry for the police the strong-arm youths were out of sight.

Others of the gang were expert in picking pockets. Teddy knew the psychological moment to land a blow in the victim's eye, if he discovered the theft, that in the confusion the confederates might escape; so he was a good assistant in this line too.

At one period of his career he was a "lobbygow" in Chinatown, carrying messages, principally for the "white wives" of the Chinamen. Here he learned the ways of the almondeyes, with their gambling and policy, and opium and cocaine-selling. He also met there many a man whose "roll" was entirely disproportionate to his wisdom, and usually the "roll" changed ownership.

This was his state when he came to the mission. One New Year's Eve a watchnight service was to be held. Teddy had been a regular visitor for many months, still unyielding, but with a battle raging within him between good and evil which no one suspected. He came to see what a watchnight service was like, for he never had heard of one before. After a season of singing and testimony all the converts were asked to gather at the platform to pray out the old year and in the new.

This was something new; usually the men Teddy knew would get drunk to celebrate the event, but here were men praying! When a plea was made for men to start the year right, Teddy refused to yield, but just before

A STRONG ARM YOUTH 7

the bells tolled the midnight hour Satan met with a severe defeat, for Teddy arose from his seat and started to join the others at the altar. He was met with open arms all along the way, and, amid the din from without which told of a new year born, a shout arose, heard above it all, and it told of a soul reborn.

The child of the streets was metamorphosed into a child of the King in a very short time, with a childlike faith that was a benediction to others on the firing line. Of course he gave up his job in the dive forthwith. Then he found out that his speech needed mending to conform to his new profession. He began to pray — and to watch — and awoke one night to a realization that he did not want to use wrong words any more and actually was not doing so. Other inclinations of the past dropped away in the same manner. He told one of his new friends after a time: "I saw a man down the street last night with a 'rock' as big as a dime. I could have taken it easily, but somehow I didn't do it. I don't understand what has come over me; I didn't want his diamond. I don't understand it."

It had not dawned upon him until his friend explained how old things pass away and all things become new to him who accepts Jesus ; that this was why he no longer wanted to steal. His testimony thereafter rang afresh as he told how God had taken away the desire to steal. A little while later he found that he no longer wanted to use his fistic skill to right his own or his neighbor's wrongs. Indeed, the hold-up child of the Bowery underworld had been transformed. From striving after "easy money" he had begun to work honestly at a trade, and became far happier than he had thought possible.

Others than the converts at the mission saw the change, however. Teddy walking down the Bowery, or some other East Side street where he was known, became a living epistle known and read of all men. His associates could not understand what had caused the change until Teddy told them it was Jesus, his new Friend ; even then they wondered.

His old boss at the saloon wondered too. He had known Teddy for many years, and had he heard that the young man had been sent to jail he would have manifested no surprise. But to be changed into a clean and straight fellow, as different from his former self as the day is from night, was another thing.

He was forced to believe there was something in the religion he did not understand. He had scoffed at it, but there was Teddy.

A STRONG ARM YOUTH 9

There were many insincere Christians; but Teddy, he wasn't. He knew that Teddy was not a fakir; that while he might parry or evade questioning, he would not lie when it came to the test, in the old life. Therefore he was sure that there was nothing false about the new life. And it stood before him and troubled him more than he liked to admit.

One night, in the shadow of his side-door vestibule, where he was a lookout, because his saloon was open after hours, and men and women were entering the Raines law resort, he confessed that Teddy puzzled him and had him thinking very hard.

"I wish I could get out of this business," he said; "it don't seem right any more. But what is a man to do? Here I have all my money in this business and I can't get out. But isn't it great the way Teddy is holding out?"

That was the secret; Teddy had troubled him. Scarce a word he spoke about it to his former associates, but his life told the story of salvation as lips could not.

The saloon man has been lured within the mission more than once, and the workers do not think it beyond the limits of faith to expect his conversion some day. If it ever comes, it will not be from the missionary's word or works, nor from what the other converts have to say; these may all have their part in the work of grace, but the chief factor will be a sermon writ in flesh and blood in the person of Teddy.

Teddy's old mother lived long enough to know of the wonderful change in her boy and to rejoice therein. Now Teddy has but two objects in life, to meet his dear old mother again one day, and to help others into the kingdom.

"If anyone had ever told me I would go to work at a trade and quit the crooked life," he said one night, "I would have told him he was 'nutty.' "

But the "strong arm" of the underworld has become the far stronger one of the upper; it is strong enough to labor honestly now; it is strong enough to raise a fallen brother.

Chapter II

"Panhandling," in the language of the underworld, originally meant the class of begging followed by the man or woman whose particular "graft" was to shove out a small tin pan before those passings elevated railroad stations or other much frequented places. This distinguished them from the ones who "sold" lead pencils, threw "sympathy fits" in the crowd, or plied one of the hundred other means of gaining a living without working which are to be found in any large city. It has come to mean almost any means of acquiring money "by the wits," as contrasted with criminal acts.

"Panhandler" was the title of a stalwart man who called at the American Embassy in London during the term of the late Thomas F. Bayard as Minister to the Court of Saint James.

"Mr. Bayard, I am an American and I am in distress. I am a native of Virginia. You have noticed that the name on my card is that of a former President. He was my grandfather. I am named after an ancestor of my 11 mother, who was chaplain to George Washington during the winter of Valley Forge. I have met with bad luck in London and I want to get home. Will you help me?"

This was the suave self-introduction of the stranger. It was followed by a story of twenty years of globe-trotting, couched in words that stamped the speaker as a man of education. The dark side of the twenty years was not referred to, neither was the fact that the "bad luck" experienced was only that his purse was not of equal extent with the drink supply of England and the Continent. He got the money, as he had from every other American representative with whom he had come in contact in the latter half of the twenty years; likewise from every American tourist who could be deceived by his blandishments.

He was not a tramp, though it was no novelty for him to "take the road." He was too well dressed for a tramp, and he would work — actually preferred to, between sprees — and no one yet has discovered a real tramp with a desire to labor, except it be to escape a severer punishment, and the emergency must be stringent.

If you had asked him why he was a wanderer, the answer probably would have been that he wanted to see the world. In his heart he knew that was not the reason, but he could not have explained the underlying principle of the unrest which impelled him to move on and on. He did not know that he was seeking rest, peace of heart; how could he know that he craved a thing of which he had no conception? He called it wanderlust; it was more than that. It was soul hunger and thirst — not the thirst which caused his heavy and constant drinking, but that which only a draught of the living waters can assuage.

Thousands of men are drifting along the world arteries with no greater realization of the reason. On, on, always going somewhere, but never arriving; finding one town after another has no place for them, soon they take the "blind baggage" or car roof to the next place, only to repeat the experience there.

We have been slow to comprehend what is called the "tramp nuisance." We have studied it from almost every other angle, but we have failed to see a spiritual truth exemplified in the hobo, and we have failed to apply, except in incipient cases, the soul remedy, the only one of avail. It is not an evil to be solved by philosophy, or philanthropy, by soup-houses, or workhouses, or by prisons, but by applied theology. We must strike deeper to find the root of this disease of the body politic, and must understand the yearning of a soul which sends him searching up and down the earth for that which Jesus Christ alone can give. There is need of an "Apostle to the Wanderer/' to bear him the message of salvation as a satisfaction for that unutterable yearning. Millionaires who have become hobos that they might study causes have brought no solution of the tramp question; humble missionaries have seen it solved numberless times.

Native of the Old Dominion, reared in luxury, an "F. F. V." in his own right, the childhood and youth of Clarke gave no promise of life-wreck. From the ancestral mansion to the pauper's couch on the floor of a pleasure pavilion in a public park is a far reach, undreamed of in those days; but sin drives so many beloved sons into the far country.

While attending a private school in his native State, with other students he visited the Monticello home of Thomas Jefferson. There a drink of whisky was offered the lad — his first. He drank it with no thought that he would become a drunkard, or that fortytwo years later he would be seeking a cure, and that he would find the only one.

In college he kept up the hot pace of the fastest set. He had money and a strong constitution, and he emerged from college with a fixed habit. He still maintained his respectability, the high standing of his family covering his faults.

After the death of his father a large sum of money came to him. It was the signal for beginning a debauch which lasted for two years. Wine, fast company, luxury, and prodigality all contributed to the wreck which came at the end of that period, when Clarke found that he was broke.

Most persons start to see the world when the purse is corpulent. The reverse stimulated Clarke to that intent. He worked, "bummed," or panhandled his way around the world five times. Sometimes he was upon the pinnacle of prosperity; more often he was on the toboggan of defeat; always he was dropping lower in the social scale and that scale of self-respect by which one measures his own character.

The international tramp sometimes may seem to be, but actually very seldom is, in a hurry. With more time than money at his disposal, strange scenes allure him until the novelty wears off ; then it is on to the pursuit of the will-o'-the-wisp — something new — once more. So it was with Clarke; he became as familiar with Whitechapel haunts in London, with the Latin Quarter of Paris, the fan-tan joints of Hong Kong, the Boca of Buenos Ayres, or the Levee of Chicago and Chinatown of San Francisco, as with the Bowery of New York, and he was at home in any of them.

In the bush country of Australia he became a "swagga" of the land ; he earned and begged his way among the swarms of beggars of Bamboo Square and Flag Street, in Calcutta. Like Paul, but with different purpose, might he have said, "I am become all things to all men." Strangely, he never got into jail. They were plenty enough along the route ; this universal institution had not lacked keepers nor incentive for utilizing their services. Perhaps it was his predisposition to work that militated to keep Clarke out of jail.

A rugged constitution refused to be wrecked by drink and neglect; abused mental powers came out clear from debauch after debauch. Sober, he preferred to work ; drunk, he could not or would not work, and no person was high enough to escape his persuasive begging.

One day he saw an American flag in the harbor of a far-off quarter of the globe and it thrilled him more than anything he had seen in years. He was sober at the time and he resolved to see his old home again. It was on the homestretch of this jaunt that his loftiest panhandling was accomplished, including the incident related. Foreign representatives of the United States furnished him a large part of the passage money to New York.

Arriving with but a few dollars, he sought and obtained work, taking the first thing which offered itself. As before, pay day was the signal for a spree. In foreign lands, where pay day comes once a quarter, he had been sober that long at a stretch. Where pay day came with Saturday night, Sunday found him maudlin — and broke — as a rule; generally, Monday or Tuesday he found a new job. Almost everything dignified with the name of labor fell to his lot, until there came a time when all avenues of employment were closed because of his habits and condition. Nor could he put on "a front" and beg. His friends understood him too well to be taken in by his blandishments ; his stories lost their novelty, his appeals their force.

And none but the ransomed ever knew

How deep were the waters crossed, Or how dark the night that the Lord passed through —

No one has been able to picture adequately the despair which engulfs a man when he first feels himself lost. He does not come to that realization suddenly, though it always startles him. It has been seeping through the brain tissues, spurring at times an effort to escape the vortex into which consciousness tells him he is being drawn; but there is always hope ahead. Something will turn up, surely !