routine, the continuity, the habit of work, and it is just a little
harder to apply himself when he begins again. If a man loses a job two
or three times in a year, it is just as many times harder to go on
with a regular job when it comes. Lack of regular employment is the
cause not only of the physical disintegration, but of the moral
disintegration also; so, these men who had been out of employment so
often, actually could not stick at a job when they got it. They were
disorganized. A few of them had the stamina to overcome this
disorganization. I found the same to be true in morals. When a man
made his first break, it was easier to make the second, and it was as
easy for him to lose a good habit as to acquire a bad one.

The same thing holds good in what we call charity. A terrific
soul-struggle goes on in every man and woman before the hand is put
out for the first time. Self-respect is a tremendous asset, and
people hold on to it as to their very souls; but when a hand is held
out once and the community puts alms therein, the fabric of
self-respect begins to totter, and the whole process of disintegration
begins.




CHAPTER VIII

A BUNK-HOUSE AND SOME BUNK-HOUSE MEN


I made my headquarters, while a lodging-house missionary, in the
Mulberry Street bunk-house. It was only a block from Chatham Square,