HOMELESS MEN CITY'S WARDS.
Cold Weather Causes Influx -- Will
Be Worked in Quarry.
The approach of winter is bringing to the city the usual influx of penniless and homeless, and the charitable institutions are beginning to realize it. Yesterday George W. Fuller, a former member of the park board and representing the municipal labor committee in an official capacity, told the park board that Saturday and Sunday night 150 men out of work and money applied to the institute for food and lodgings. Mr. Fuller suggested that the plan of last year, whereby the city and park board co-operated, be followed this year, of working the unemployed in mining rock and crushing it for road building in Penn Valley park. Single men could be fed and lodged at the institute, and men with families could be given supplies on the basis of a dollar's worth a day.
Last year the experiment cost the city $4,918, and about 90 per cent of the rock is piled up and has not been used.
W. H. Dunn, superintendent of parks, said that the idea was a good and commendable one, but the question that confronted the city was what is to be done with the unused rock quarried last year. He said that some of it could be used, but advised that if the city was going into the quarrying business again some disposition should be made of the rock on hand.
Gus Pearson, city comptroller, urged the board to take up the proposition another year.
"It segregates the man who will work from the fellow who will not," said Mr. Pearson.
"And it means that whatever the city gives the Helping Hand to care for the poor and lowly, it will get back in labor and rock," argued Mr. Fuller.
On motion of D. J. Haff the board set apart $2,000 from the West park district fund with which to pay for the rock that is to be quarried and broken at the rate of 80 cents a cubic yard.
