The Shame Of Skid Row

By JEROME ELLISON Danny, citizen of Detroit, U.S.A., has cost his city $18,500 since 1928, as a living discard. There are 400,000 like him on those human junk heaps called “skid row.” Some live in your city, at your expense, to the menace of your health – and conscience.

Roy Sutherland and Ted Thieda, plain- Thieda returned.”Three more around the clothes cops on the skid-row detail of the First corner. Call the wagon?” Precinct Detroit police, are known to vagrants Sutherland nodded, and told me what he throughout the Midwest as “The Ragpickers.” knew about Danny. Since June 17, 1828, Danny Their job is to keep depravity in their precinct had been arrested for drunkenness and from becoming too assertively public. A tour of vagrancy 128 times. He’d spent 4020 days in duty with them adds color to a national the Detroit House of Correction. In arrests, court embarrassment city council calls “The Skid-Row appearances, jail keep, medical and hospital Problem.” care he had cost the community $18,500. “You Sutherland is a short roly-poly man in his see what I mean?” Sutherland said. “How fifties, with a shock of curly white hair, a full, discouraging?” ruddy face and amiable blue eyes behind steel- In a few minutes the wagon came. Two rimmed spectacles. He wears a brown business uniformed policemen from the wagon roused the suit on the job and is always chewing an unlit four men, loaded them and drove off – for cigar. Thieda, a tall, muscular man in his forties, Danny, it was the 129th time. We resumed our is the athlete of the pair. They work from a worn, tour. unmarked city car. Sutherland, as senior, does “Funny thing,” Sutherland said. “I’ve most of the talking. been on this job twelve years, without anybody “There’s one.” We were hardly five paying much attention. And now just lately minutes out of headquarters, cruising Michigan there’s been an awful lot of interest.” Avenue. We pulled over to the curb and parked. That “awful lot of interest” goes for many A man was prone in an alley. Sutherland and I other cities. By sheer pressure of horror, civic went over to him. Thieda went to have a look up embarrassment and community expense, skid the street. row has pushed itself to the forefront among our The unconscious man was around fifty, major municipal problems. In the past three with sandy brown hair, a blotchy red skin and a years, mayor’s skid-row committees have been beard of many days. His face was streaked with formed in New York, Chicago, Detroit and half a clotted blood from a gash on his forehead. An dozen smaller cities. Under the label “homeless unlabeled pint bottle containing a pinkish fluid man,” the human derelict is now receiving lay at his side. He wore work shoes without scholarly attention, to find out what made him socks, soiled khaki trousers and a soot- homeless, and what can be done. blackened shirt. A blended stench of bodily By the best estimates I can come up excretions rose from him. with, at least 400,000 men are leading a skid- “Well,” Sutherland said, “darn if it isn’t row life. They cost taxpayers at least Danny. I’ll tell you later about Danny…Come on, $40,000,000 a year. If all were working, their tax fella.” He pointed to the man’s hands. “See the contributions would be at least $165,000,000, a pink stains between the fingers? Canned heat.” year, so the economic stakes are large. The humanitarian stakes are larger. There are things

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a citizen cannot allow to pass without protest County, California, are among the metropolitan and still retain his self-respect. These things areas where tax-supported rehabilitation occur daily along skid-row. My tour with the programs are being tried. Detroit, in this Detroit plain-clothes men revealed the kind of reporter’s view, is especially sparkling with new slum-within-slums that shakes the claim to slants on a scandal many generations old. civilization of even the most civilized American The most noxious of several skid-row cities. areas in the Michigan metropolis is a nineteen It also revealed that men can come back block section bounded by Cass, Howard, Fifth from skid-row. Eddie Rohan, a pleasant-faced and Jones streets. For five roaring blocks this fifty-four-year-old Irish-American who lives in miunicipal cancer lies athwart Michigan Avenue, Detroit, is a case in point. Statistically speaking, the main stem from the Michigan Central Eddie has returned from the dead. For a quarter Railroad Terminal to the glittering downtown century he lived either on the Avenue or in the hotel district. Skid row spills over for several Detroit House of Correction, a guest of the city blocks on each side of this main stem. The because of drunkenness. The normal end of the adjacent areas are vacant lots, junk yards, likes of Eddie used to be either the Wayne tenements, warehouses, abandoned factories County Hospital-for the insane-or the Wayne and dwellings and the close-packed, unpainted County Morgue. He is one of the 250 exhibits little houses of the very poor. This single cited to prove the Motor City’s contention that neighborhood, the beat of Sutherland and skid row can be abolished. Thieda, produces 10,000 arrests a year for This view is not universally held, and a drunkenness and associated offenses. session at a big-city magistrate’s bench helps A day on skid row begins at seven A.A., explain why. I recently followed a batch of a when the bars open. From six o’clock on, men dozen derelicts from their pass-out points, are stirring in the flophouses and alleys, crawling through the city jail, to the courtroom and from under newspapers or lean-tos in vacant sentence. Lined up in an unsteady row at the lots and dumps, emerging from abandoned bar of justice, they highlighted the whole tragedy basements and from beneath parked trailer of skid row. Even the judge was moved. He trucks, to be on the Avenue at the stroke. Once shook his head. “Why do they do it?” there, what happens depends upon a man’s economic status. The Promise of Detroit’s Program The man at the top of the social ladder sleeps in a flophouse and drinks in a bar. Just The judge had cards on each man, listing below him in prestige is the man who sleeps in a previous terms served on the same charge, mission and drinks out of a bottle purchased at a drunkenness. Twenty-five to fifty terms were not package-liquor store. Next in order are the men unusual; none had fewer than eight. He who sleep in dark places and drink nonbeverage ruled,”Thirty days for all.” Many, he knew, would alcohol. Bay rum, several brands of hair tonic be passed out in some filthy alley within a few and shaving lotion, vanilla and lemon extracts, days after serving their terms. That’s why so isopropyl rubbing alcohol – nineteen cents a half many experienced public officials say, “Skid row pint – lacquer thinner and canned heat are is hopeless.” widely consumed. Canned heat is a solution of Others are not so sure, and on economic pink wax in alcohol. The alcohol may be partially grounds alone, their cases deserve a hearing. It reclaimed by placing the waxy paste in a cloth costs about $1000 a year to keep a man in jail. and squeezing – hence the telltale pink stains Detroit’s Mayor’s Rehabilitation Committee costs between the fingers of those who favor the “Pink $25,000 a year. By spending a third of their time Lady,” the drink which results from mixing this in jail, the 250 men so far salvaged would have with an equal part of water. cost Detroit $83,000. Their taxes return to the Promptly at seven o’clock each morning public coffers $100,000 a year, putting the the elite begin going into the bars. The rest community $158,000ahead on the twelve- remain outside, hoping for a flush crony who’ll month. Minneapolis, New York and Alameda invite a man in for a drink, or the owner of a

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bottle, possibly in his debt from yesterday, who’ll into the weeds and disappear. In a 100-by-100give him a pull. Failing this, a man will turn to his foot lot near the Avenue there may be thirty men neighbor and say, “I have seven cents.” The asleep, none of then visible to the passer-by. In proper reply is “I have eleven,” or whatever the one place, long sections of forty-eight-inchamount may be. The chain continues until a sum diameter concrete sewer pipe were left at the is reached which equals the price of one of the curb for a construction project. At ten o’clock fluids previously mentioned. With the drink one night I found one or two sleeping men in aboard, a man is ready for his day’s each section of pipe. By midnight it’s another panhandling. day. “If all panhandling could be stopped,” Money on skid row is for liquor; other says William C. Sterling, director of the Mayor’s things can be had without payment or be gone Rehabilitation Committee in Detroit, “the worst without. How a man obtains his drinking money aspects of skid row would disappear. Its foulest depends upon how advanced he is in the mores horrors are maintained by the thoughtlessly of the Avenue. If he’s relatively a beginner, he given nickles, dimes and quarters of well- hits the streets around Labor Day, after a intentioned citizens.” summer with a railroad construction gang or with Midafternoon usually finds the pan- the fruit pickers, his pay in his pocket. He invests handler back on the Avenue with cash in his part of it in new finery, part in advance rent at a pocket. By this time the revelry in the bars is in flophouse, and part with a bartender, against full swing. The elite are all at the tables, future needs. For weeks or months he stupefied or asleep. Now and then, one will fraternizes on the street and in the bars. The day rouse himself, wait till his glass is filled, drain it arrives when his cash is gone and his deposits and go to sleep again. Others are drinking at the used up. His new suit, hat and shoes are bar, playing the juke box, talking. exchanged for “relievers” – shirt, dungarees and The conversation has to do mostly with sneakers. He begins patronizing the package the character and deeds of this or that jerk of liquor stores, where a brand of wine can be had recent or remote memory – resentments on skid for forty-nine cents a fifth. As money grows row are deep and abiding. Occasionally the tighter, he’ll resort to more economical theme changes. Once I overheard a panel beverages, through the lotions down to rubbing discussion on the topic, “If a man was born in alcohol and canned heat. 1876, how old is he now?” Estimates ranged Food and shelter can be obtained for a from fifty-nine to eighty-six, with each disputant while without cost. There are several missions defending his own arithmetic. If the juke box is where a man can get a meal without answering playing, somebody will get up from time to time questions, being preached at, singing hymns or and make random flapping motions, smiling a working. At other places he can have board, nearly toothless smile – falls take a widespread work and indefinite keep if he’ll “take a nose toll of front teeth. The performer is dancing, dive” – profess a religious conviction. This, by cutting the rug. He doesn’t last long; he has little skid row standards, is contemptible, and only a energy. Even the fights of skid row are mostly small percentage ever do it. slapstick affairs of short duration; neither Sooner or later, our man must decide contestant has the strength for a really whether to work or beg for his drinking money. If damaging blow. he works, as many do before the skid-row So the day wears on, drink and talk, neurosis lays too firm a hold, he hedges his wake and doze, until a man reaches his employment about with qualifications. objective – oblivion. This has to be timed so he Employment must be on a day or half-day basis makes his flop before passing out – to pass out and must yield a dollar an hour, which must be on the street is to risk being run in. Skid row paid promptly and without deductions. Work starts going to bed at dusk. All through the early teams of five men are often organized, with each evening you see men making their uncertain man working one day a week and contributing way back to the flophouses, the abandoned his earnings to the common liquor kitty. Income shacks, the vacant lots. The shabby figures fade is boosted by occasional sales of blood to

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private-hospital blood banks at eight dollars a bathed and put to bed; shortly thereafter he pint. By this time our man is probably sleeping in died. the open, taking his meals at missions, The Wayne County Morgue is the end of supplemented by traditional skid-row cuisine. the line. Corpses arriving there from the Avenue At one point in our tour Sutherland asked are nearly always John Doe or Mary Roe, me, “Did you ever hear of mulligan stew? They unidentified. The afternoon I visited the morgue had one over there last night; let’s take a look.” there was John Doe No.1, male, white, age 46, In a vacant lot was a fire-blackened five gallon 5 feet, 8 inches, 180 pounds. Fell down the tin. To make mulligan, Sutherland explained, stairs of a Michigan Avenue flophouse and you start by bringing a tin of water to a boil. broke his skull. John Doe No.2, age 51, died of a Then you add wilted vegetables thrown out by broken neck “due to fall in alley.” Mary Roe, stores, old fish heads from the back of female, white, 45, fell off the stool of an East restaurants and chicken entrails from the Jefferson Street bar at 9:30 P.M. and died of a dressed fowl market. fractured skull. Aggressive crime by derelict men is Such is the rhythm of life and death on negligible, Sutherland says. Too tired for crime, skid row, Detroit, and a hundred other cities. they’re more preyed upon than preying. Once he There are, in the crazy symphony of the Avenue, pointed out a wiry, athletic young man in his other rhythms. Not all are willfully destructive twenties, dressed in a natty polo shirt, suede alcoholics, and not all are adverse to work. Oldshoes and knife-edged slacks. “We’re pretty age pensioners and handicapped persons sure that fellow’s a jack roller, only we haven’t sometime drift there because it’s the only place got the goods on him – yet.” A jack roller is a where they can live on what they have. But the man who specializes in beating and robbing chronic alcoholic is the hard core of the problem. drunks. Such men load our city jails and hospitals, turn Though women are seen in the bars in city streets into daytime nightmares. They the proportion of about one to thirty, sex on skid misuse charity, exploit mercy, degrade and row is pretty much a dead issue. “They just don’t finally destroy themselves. have the energy,” Sutherland says. What’s the matter with such men? Death on skid row is often sudden, and Employment conditions do not explain their always ugly. “Had a bad one last winter,” despair – steady jobs were going begging when Sutherland said. “Five of them holed up one cold I was in Detroit. And one can’t brush away the night in a junked trailer in an auto graveyard. problem by saying they’re “just alcoholics.” Mr. Had a stew, let the fire go out for the night. Yvelin Gardner, director of the National Canned heat went up, I guess. Anyway, the Committee on Alcoholism, says: “The problem of trailer blazed like a torch; all five burned to the typical alcoholic is quite distinct from that of death.” the skid row derelict. The usual alcoholic has a Casualties of skid row are taken to home, job and family, and a desire to maintain Detroit Receiving Hospital. There are “wine his community status. The homeless alcoholic sores” – foul smelling skin eruptions brought on has little ambition and less hope; his by prolonged deficiencies of diet. There are rehabilitation presents an entirely different broken bones and hideous head and eye equation.” wounds – from falls and beatings by jack rollers. On skid row, the homeless man’s There are alcoholic convulsions and delirium distress produces profit. I have neither observed tremens. These are taken to the psychopathic nor heard of any act of a derelict that compares section and placed in the violent ward in in degradation with the act, committed daily by restraint. There is total physical exhaustion, and sober and “respectable” merchants, of there is death. Now and then, a derelict strays deliberately selling sick, addled and helpless off and is lost. One old man was found in an men chemicals that are poisoning them to slow abandoned basement, indescribably filthy, death. crawling with lice, and near death. He was “Can our cities come up with a really effective answer to skid row?”

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This is question Mayor Albert E. Cobo the father beat up on them all. The only solace placed before a committee of Detroit citizens in was Eddie’s mother, who favored him when she 1949, when a series of articles in the Detroit could. Her presence in the home made life Free Press exposed skid-row conditions. The endurable. committee reported in the affirmative and When Eddie was fourteen his mother recommended specific steps. State laws died of pneumonia, and for a while Eddie didn’t governing the sale of liquor were to be enforced. care whether he lived or not. The old man “got A state rehabilitation camp was to be more cantankerous than ever; you just couldn’t established for chronic alcoholics who failed to live with him.” After two more years, none of the respond to therapy. A section of skid row was to boys even tried. Jim, the oldest, finished high be condemned, and rebuilt as an attractive school and was staked to a law-school municipal parking lot. A counseling and education by an uncle. Today he’s a district employment service, staffed by men possessing judge in the old hometown. A year later, Art, the a sympathetic grasp of alcoholic problems, was middle one, went to work in a steel plant in to be set up in the heart of skid row. Youngstown. That left Eddie, by then a So far, only the last of these proposals sophomore in high school, alone with his father. has materialized. The counseling service has for In 1914, when Eddie was sixteen, he joined the two years occupied an unlabeled store front at Army, with his father’s permission. 339 W. Jefferson – and here I found the first For the first time in his short life Eddie gleam of real hope in many weeks among the was “something like happy.” He joined a cavalry men of skid row. unit, got on well with the men, loved the animals Nobody enters the committee’s head- and within a year was promoted to corporal. By quarters unless he wants to. There’s noting to late 1916 it was beginning to look as if America eat, no place to sleep, and nobody gets anything might become a belligerent in World War I. free except advice. Yet in the two years since it Eddie was filled with dreams of glory in the opened, 1670 men have sought it out. It has service of his country. shown, on a pilot scale, that men can be One night in the winter of 1916-17, Eddie returned in quantity from the half death of skid went on a party. His unit was then stationed in a row. New England state. It was a fairly wild party, After talking with some of the men who held in a hotel of dim repute locally on a night drop in at 339, the judge’s question – “Why do when the local police raided it. Because women they do it?” – doesn’t seem to pose such a were present, the court was able to give Eddie mystery. Indeed, it is claimed by Bill Sterling, the maximum sentence – two years in the director at 339, that you can’t make any penitentiary. Eddie was then eighteen. progress until you answer it – until you find out He couldn’t believe it at first. “How could what’s eating away at the heart of each they give a guy two years for doin’ what individual man. Take the case of Eddie Rohan. It everybody else does?” Surely the Army would took weeks to find out what was really bothering do something, the Army understood these Eddie. But once it was talked through and things. But the Army washed its hands of the settled, Eddie straightened out, apparently for matter. His uncle, the big lawyer back home? good. Eddie is nearly two years sober now, and The uncle wrote that Eddie had got himself into doesn’t mind yarning about his skid-row days. It this; Eddie could get himself out. Eddie went to explains a lot about Eddie and about skid row. the state penitentiary for two years of hard labor. Eddie was born in a small Ohio city in Hard labor, in the down-East penitentiary 1898, the youngest of three sons of a stern of those days, meant polishing marble table tops father who worked in a brickyard. Life at home ten hours a day, six days a week. You worked was not happy. “The old man always seemed to with a paste made of acid and pumice, rubbing it go out of his way to make it clear he didn’t have on the marble with a piece of carpet. The acid no damn use for me.” His brother took the got under your fingernails and burned. If you father’s cue. The oldest brother “beat up on” the complained, you got a week in solitary. Two next youngest, they both beat up on Eddie, and years.

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Meanwhile, America had begun and and out, in and out, until it totaled sixty-seven ended a war. Eddie’s unit was back from terms in the Detroit House of Correction alone. France, covered with glory, medals and Eddie’s case has elements common to promotions. Hardly anybody even remembered almost all the skid-row case histories which have Eddy. “The first thing I did when I got out was been taken. There’s the early loss of a beloved give that warden a piece of my mind. Then I got parent. A study in New Haven revealed that 49 out of the state. Then I got drunk.” In the course per cent of homeless men lost one or both of the spree, Eddie made his way back to his parents by death alone before they were twenty, home town. to say nothing of loss of parent by divorce, He asked his father for a bed and a place separation and desertion. There’s the shattering to clean up, and was thrown out of the house. reversal of fortune in early-adult or late- His uncle gave him a bed until he slept it off, adolescent experience. And there’s the set then bought him a suit, gave him ten dollars and disbelief in the kindness and decency of man. ordered him to leave town. “We’ve got a good During his sixty-seventh term in the name in this town so far; we don’t want it House of Correction Eddie heard about the city’s jeopardized.” new experiment at 339 W. Jefferson. He They didn’t have a good name with decided, “God knows why,” to drop in there Eddie. To put as much distance between himself when he got out. and Ohio as he could, he rode freight trains to Eddie didn’t know it, but the men in California. charge at 339 were still pretty much at sea. The mental twist common to the men of Their first step had been to interview 250 skid row was now set in Eddie’s mind. He had homeless men on the Avenue. Eighty per cent lost faith in the good will of men. Except for this showed good prospects for rehabilitation. Three tragic quirk, he might have taken steady work quarters were between forty and fifty-nine, with and established himself. But a steady job an increasing percentage of younger men, brought to mind unrelieved drudgery on hard veterans of World War II. Three quarters had stone; responsibility meant an unmerciful eight grades or more of education, a better-than- Yankee jurist, a father who “had no damn use” average IQ – there was one Ph.D.-and had been for him, and a stuffed-shirt uncle. At twenty-one regularly employed within the past five years. Eddie felt permanently frustrated, and knew the None was happy with his lot, and nearly nervous tension such a state of mind induces. half had specific suggestions for their own Drinking relieved this tension. He gravitated to reclamation. They wanted clinical help, stricter skid row, where potables were cheap, and regulation of flophouses and bars, and, of all where the companionship of the despairing things, chance to work their way out of their could always be found. difficulties. This willingness to work was a new The first twelve years weren’t too bad, note in skid-row literature. My own belief is that it Eddie recalls. He picked fruit in the California was induced by the usually sympathetic attitude valleys, worked in the Washington lumber of the Detroit interviewers. In any event, the camps, was a gandy-dancer – the section hand voice of skid row was at last heard in its own who used to tamp stone between the ties with behalf. It turned out to be a voice full of agonized his feet – on a dozen railroads, returning to skid awareness of its own misery, with a note of hope row after each spell of work. Eddie’s last eight for better days. years on skid row were more rugged. He always Local members of Alcoholics Anonymous hankered to get back to Ohio, and every couple were consulted, and literature of the Yale School of years would head that way. He’d get as far as of Alcohol Studies was examined. Only about 5 Detroit, then lose heart. Finally, Detroit became per cent of AA’s have ever been on skid row. headquarters. He stopped working and lived by Still, stories like Eddie’s had been heard before panhandling. “My drinkin’ seemed to go out of in AA, so there was assurance that recovery control.” The rubbing alcohol and canned heat was possible. But AA success, even an AA he once spurned became the basis of his diet. beginning required hope and initiative, which He’d made jails before, but never as now – in were so lacking along skid row. Could there be

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some sort of boost over the hump from the been cruelly unjust. Still, he said, it was no Avenue to the AA group? The committee reason for destroying oneself. Other men had decided it would be worth the city’s effort to help survived worse deals and were now sober, these men find sober friends, jobs, medical working and happy. Perhaps Eddy would like to treatment and advice. The city council voted met some of them. He went to AA and found funds, and 339 West Jefferson was opened. congenial friends. For a couple of weeks he took Aware of the contempt of the drinking temporary jobs, dishwashing. Then he got a man for the teetotaler, the committee recruited permanent job in a hotel, which he still holds. men, as counselors, who’d had personal The pattern of Fred’s recovery is less knowledge of alcoholism. Two of the staff’s four smooth – and more typical. In the beginning, men had themselves experience, and recovered Fred called twice a week at 339 for conferences, from, serious drinking problems. The staff began attending AA meetings and got a job in a consisted of an administrative officer, an factory. His wife came down to talk about employment counselor, a personal counselor reconciliation. In six months debts were paid off and a clinical psychologist. There were, besides and Fred was back with his family. He took a the small offices, a place to sit down and wait, a night job as a waiter, in addition to his factory few magazines and a bathroom where a man job. The counselors at 339 suggested that he could borrow soap and a razor. Clients began to ease up; one job was enough. But Fred drove appear, tentatively at first, then in a steady on. One night dead tired, he took another drink – stream. All sorts of men arrived, in all stages of then another, and another. He lost both jobs and disrepair, and a special program had to be his family, and stayed drunk on skid row two devised for each individual. months. He returned to 339, asking if he might There was Fred C., who went out one try again. “I wasn’t really listening to AA the first evening two years ago to get a jar of olives and time. This time I know I’ll make good.” He’s been a quart of milk, and didn’t come back. Fred is a back on the job four months now, the debts are thirty-year-old veteran with a wife, two children paid off again, and his wife is pondering. and a car. Until the night of the olives, he Of the committee’s 1670 clients, about worked on an assembly line in one of the 250 are, like Eddie, very probably in the clear. automobile plants. Fred’s expenditures for liquor Another 500 are, like Fred, still troubled by and his sprees set him at odds with his wife. relapses. The committee has bright hopes for After going for the olives, he took up residence their recovery. “The thing we watch for,” Bill on skid row. Six months later he was in bad Sterling told me, “is the significant change in shape, and he knew it. He heard about 339, and attitude. When hostility and resentment begin to one hot day, staggered in to see about it. The make way for a little humility and trust, a man’s committee can draw on the services of other chances sharply improve.” Of the remainder, agencies as needed. Fred was shaky, 520 never came back, and 400 the committee incoherent, dirty and many weeks unshaved. does not think it can help at this time. Before anything more was attempted, he was The influx of new men off the Avenue sent to the Receiving Hospital for five days of has affected nearby AA groups. The average rest and vitamins. alcoholic is of foreman, white-collar or executive Eddie Rohan, whose prognosis, on the status, still possessing home, job and friends. basis of his record, was most unfavorable, The down-and-outer does not always assimilate turned out to be one of the committee’s pleasant readily. It’s not a matter of snobbery, but of surprises. He’s one of the ten-in-one who get the community of interest. AA friendships thrive idea immediately and progress toward firm best, its members say, on shared problems. Bill recovery without a relapse. Sterling regards it as inevitable, as traffic from The first step, with Eddy, was to let him the Avenue increases that an all-skid-row AA get some resentments off his chest. The group will develop. counselor, who had himself wielded a mean Such is the battle of skid row as waged bottle in his day, agreed that Eddie’s father was in one city, Detroit. Similar warfare, usually with no ideal parent and the prison sentence had smaller gains, is in progress in every sizable

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population center. Skid row wears many faces. It’s that bad or worse. The grim, In the crossroads village it’s the shack under the hopeless shuttle, filthy alley to jail and back bridge, over by the town dump. In the country again, is the course of a huge ghost army of seat, it’s the half block of blind pigs somewhere men. What will be done? It rests with the cities. between the courthouse and the depot. In Certain minimum steps seem imperative. Sober Chicago it’s West Madison Street; in San men are deliberately selling poison to, sick and Francisco it’s Howard; in New York it’s the stupefied fellow citizens. I like to think that there Bowery; in Kansas City it’s Main; in Houston it’s are a few things Americans just won’t stand for, Congress. I chose Detroit for a close-up, not and that poisoning for profit must be one of because its skid row is the worst, but because them. it’s about the big-town average. No official of any THE END city of comparable size could honestly say, “But it isn’t that bad here.”

Source: Saturday Evening Post, December 20, 1952

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