The Milwaukee Leader

A Night in a Flop House

For certain reasons this story will be written in the first person. In the second place the title is not absolutely correct. It should be Many Nights in a Flop House.

You who are reading this under the glow of an evening lamp, with no thoughts of where breakfast was coming from, much less your next night's flop, may, if you choose, ask the first panhandler you meet what a flop is. Briefly, it is a place to sleep, and does not come in the category of rooms with rugs, a bath not far distant and other such luxuries.

Flop houses do not contain such things, not in Milwaukee. If they exist then they should not be classified with flop houses.

Because my hair was getting gray behind and around the ears, to say nothing of linen not overly clean, I was turned down times without number when I applied for a job.

Persons who are obliged to resort to a flop house for shelter usually do not apply for "positions." There is a difference between a job and a position. In the latter case one is supposed to wear clean linen, be clean shaven and have a general air of prosperity. The flopper who can assume the latter condition I have failed to meet.

Of course you will wonder why I was out of a job or position in this glowing Republic of prosperity. Well, that is a personal matter--very personal--and need not concern you. And I freely admit that there is much prosperity in this country, but I have been told much of it is located in Wall Street.

I want to warn you now that I am not trying to solve the unemployment problem, nor the prohibition problem, one of the worst curses ever fostered in the country, the which is conducive to crime of almost every description. If you do not think I am right, read the papers. They fairly reek with crime details. And the dear public, or as Dave Rose used to say, "Mah Peepul," devour it with gusto. But back to the flop house.

There is one large dormitory room, with possibly 75 beds. They haven't been fumigated for months. Once in a while the linen is changed.

It is 2 a. m. Over in yonder corner a poor fellow who has been trying to find work enough to keep body and soul together, is coughing. He coughs incessantly. It is deep and hollow. In another bed a panhandler, drunk with bad booze, has managed to crawl into bed with his clothes on. Others snore until the ensemble resembles a Wagner crash.

The floor is littered with cigarette stubs, the offing of the last few draws before pulling up the covers.

Some there are who haunt the "slave market"--city employment agency--day after day with the faint hope that something may turn up that will offer food and a bed, even though they were inferior in quality to what one gets in a fifteen-cents-a-meal restaurant.

Oh, yes, such places do exist in Milwaukee! Driven to the starving point you can find them.

It is little short of a disgrace that Milwaukee does not possess a Mills, the man who founded the cheaper hotels in New York where a man with some self-respect could get a clean bed between clean sheets and the privileges--what a blessing!--of a shower.

My nights in a flop house are all the same. Drunks roll in at almost any hour, men who are trying to keep clean and maintain self-respect have to mingle with those whose foulness would be akin to the Augean stables. The line of talk one hears would cause the most hardened old-timer to blush with shame.

Every night a cop or plain-clothes man scans the register--as if one would be apt to give his right name if there was anything against him! Oh, these cops are all to the wise--some of the time.

I am not criticizing Milwaukee's police force, which in the main is efficient, but the regular bums and hoboes--there is a difference between a bum and a hobo--only give the bluecoats the laugh.

What of it if they get thirty in jail? That is no cause for worry. And it is a feather in the cap of some cops if they can run one in for vagrancy.

The flop house I have in mind is the --m hotel, where I stay when I have the price," the author of this article writes, in the course of a personal letter to the editor of The Leader.

Once a newspaper man, a series of tragic accidents has taken away his position and family and broken his health.

He is now a downtown news vendor.

"A wife and daughter passed away in the last six months," the letter continues. "But I made up my mind that as long as I had feet and hands I would not beg or accept charity--unless I could see where I could pay for it in the future."

Between panhandling and stealing I think I'd prefer the latter. A few months in jail at least would eliminate the worries of food and bed.

Others hardened timers, prefer to panhandle, and it is a common saying among the latter class that Milwaukee is "easy to get by in."

Well, I am practically a vagrant, and if the law wants me because I am out of employment, it can find me.

In Milwaukee's principal flop house it is always safer to pay for your bed before starting out in the morning. If one doesn't the chances are he will be obliged to carry the banner all night or crawl into a warm hallway for shelter, as I have done a number of times simply because I did not have the required two-bits to pay for the bed before starting on my daily pilgrimage for work.

Yes, there is unemployment here, lots of it. What is to be done about it? I give it up.

Why not go to one of the welfare societies, or whatever they are called, and apply for aid?

I'll drop in my tracks before I'll answer the cut and dried questions most of them put to one. True, they cannot give aid without some investigation, but suppose a man walked the streets four days without food, looking for work, and then be confronted with a battery of questions that would break down the walls of any fortress to say nothing of a heart.

It not only is time for the city and state to do something, but for the nation as well.

Will they? I cannot answer the question.

But it is time something was done--more than time.

Summer soon will be here, with its so-called prosperity, then many who are now suffering will relax.

It is always the case and always has been. It always will be.

You who were not obliged to stand in the soup line at the old armory, your coattails whipping about your legs in the stiff breeze, chilled to the bone; you who do not know the meaning of being obliged to resort to a flophouse for shelter: you who do not know where your next meal is coming from, think on these things. It won't hurt you.

Yes, the country is prosperous. But, as I have said before, most of the prosperity is somewhere in the vicinity of Wall Street. Think it over.