WHAT DR. HALLIMOND, OF THE NEW YORK BOWERY MISSION, SAYS ABOUT THE BREAD LINE
“There are in the Bowery men who never sleep in a lodging house because they have not the price, and they get their bed either by stealing or begging, and eat out of the garbage boxes. You who have never been to the Bowery know nothing of the agony or remorse that these men feel. Now, what are we to do with them? There is not anybody to look after them but us. Oh, the horrors of the homeless man! It is the many little comforts that go to make our comfortable life. They cannot keep clean. They cannot brush their clothes or comb their hair, they cannot take their shoes off their poor tired feet. These men gather there in the great meetings, and among them are many that are in the last stages of physical weakness. Many of them ought to be in the hospital instead of walking the street day and night. Many of them are dying of hunger. Sometimes we cannot get men to understand that we have people in our meetings that are dying of hunger. I am not using any figure of speech. It is not an unheard-of thing for men to drop dead in our meetings. That is why we have the 'bread line.' We dare not fail to help these people. People sometimes come to us with the very best of intentions, talking to us of the sin of indiscriminate charity; but, bless your life! is not God indiscriminate, for does not He cause the rain to fall on the just and unjust? Did Jesus Christ ever go through the hungry crowds and find out who was worthy and who was unworthy? Did He not spend His life to help just such men? These dear people some of them are spending seventy-five cents to find out where the other twenty-five cents is to go. I have made up my mind that if I ever find a man dying on my doorstep of hunger, and I can do anything to save him, I am going to do it, whether he deserves it or whether he does not.
“That is the origin of our bread line about which you have heard so much. We cannot help but have a bread line. In fact, I refuse to allow our work to be called a charity. It is not a charity, it is brotherly kindness. It is not a charity, but a kind hospitality, just a little evidence, just a little token, that there is somebody who cares for their poor weary hearts which these destitute brothers of ours possess. As long as the bread line exists, and God helping, it shall exist as long as there is need for it, people must know that there is something wrong with our social system, a problem that we cannot solve but that is up to the politician. As long as we are in this great, rich country with all the extravagances of wealth, then the bread line shall tell that there is something wrong, and that our Declaration of Independence, declaring, as it does, for 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,' is but a delusion and a snare.”