MAKE OLD HOSPITAL
CITY LODGING HOUSE.
PLAN OF JAMES EADS HOWE,
THE KING OF TRAMPS.
A Committee Will Call Upon the
Mayor Today and Lay the Mat-
ter Before Him -- Jobs
for Everybody.
James Eads Howe, ex-millionaire and tramp, is determined to make Kansas City a better place to live in, particularly for the unemployed. A meeting of a committee of five appointed at a congress of the unemployed held at labor headquarters Sunday, met in the same building yesterday afternoon and outlined a plan either to get the idle man a job or send him where he can get one.
Resolutions embodying the idea that the out-of-work is entitled to a job were adopted. The committee, composed of four men and a woman, then considered means of bringing this to pass.
"We do not want to bring a hobo convention to Kansas city," said Mr. Howe. "What we want is to get jobs for the citizens of Kansas city who are in need of them and to send aliens who cannot be accommodated here either to their homes or to some place where they can get a job."
It was a beautiful plan that was outlined, scientific, visionary and almost practicable -- worthy of any college professor. By some means the city is to be persuaded to undertake public improvements enough to give work to all who need it. Kansas Cityans are to get the jobs first and then an effort is to be made to ship all the others to their homes or to places where they can get jobs. Who is to pay the railroad fee has not yet been decided. Then the vagrancy law is to be amended so that an out-of-work cannot be arrested merely because he happens to be unfortunate.
Still there are those wanderers who drift into the city and cannot find work, although perfectly willing to toil. What is to be done with them, or with the surplus of men whom the city may not be able to supply with work on its public improvements? The Hobo King solves this problem in a jiffy.
"While strolling through the city," he said, "I saw an old building which they said was the old city hospital. The thought occurred to me that this was an admirable place to be used for a municipal lodging house such as are found in every other large city in the country. Let us appoint a committee to wait upon the mayor tomorrow to see what can be done."
It was so ordered, and Mrs. Charles Ferguson, wife of the pastor of the All Souls' Unitarian church, Thirty-fifth street and Baltimore avenue, the feminine member of the committee, was one of those appointed to wait on the mayor. Charles Nelson, business manager of the Bartenders' union, was another, and Charles Sumner, a stereotyper, was the third.
Howe comes here as the representative of the Brotherhood Association of the Unemployed, a society with headquarters at St. Louis. The other members of the committee are Mrs. Ferguson, Charles Sumner, H. L. Curry, a laborer from Chicago, and Mr. and Mrs. Creighton, who conduct the Creighton mission at 309 Main street, where 125 unemployed are being lodged nightly, free of charge. The king tramp will stay in town until he thinks that his mission here is accomplished. A meeting of the unemployed will be held this afternoon at 5 o'clock at the Creighton mission, where action will be taken on the recommendations of the committee.
