Work for a Meal: The Salvation Army’s ‘Elevator’ Opens in Seattle

At exactly 5 o’clock yesterday afternoon the Salvation Army opened its food and shelter department in newly fitted-up quarters at the southwest corner of Third and South Second streets by serving 150 needy men with a substantial meal of Irish stew, good soup and plenty of bread. In the future fish, corned beef and cabbage will be added to the bill of fare. From now on it will be unnecessary for able-bodied men to go hungry in this city, or be without a roof to cover their heads. The Salvation Army will take care of needy men, asking only that they give an equivalent in work. The price of meals has been placed at five cents, but if a person is penniless he can eat the same by giving value received in labor in one of three departments—the repair shop, the woodyard and the basket factory—the three combined being termed in Salvation Army parlance “the elevator,” meaning taking something useless and elevating it by making it into something useful, or taking a useless man and elevating him into a useful citizen.

The “elevator” occupies the two buildings formerly known as the Overland and New York houses, giving four stores on the ground floor and thirty sleeping rooms above, and will be under the immediate charge of Special F. H. Fowler, assisted by Sergeant H. M. Wallace and a corps of cooks, carpenters and other mechanics who will have charge of the various departments.

The buildings were in terribly dilapidated condition, and all the mechanics at work to put them in their present condition are giving their labor free, receiving only their food in return. The ground floor has been papered, painted and scrubbed throughout, and the four stores divided into departments. The corner store is the office, where records will be kept and donations received and stored in large clothes presses adjoining. The adjoining double store is the dining room, fitted up with double lunch counters and a large range and kitchen at the rear, with capacity to feed 500 persons a day. The counters will accommodate seventy-five men at once. The kitchen is specially inviting, cleanliness being one of the cardinal virtues of the institution.

The next store adjoining on Weller street will be the sleeping and reading room. About 130 men can be accommodated with a shake-down without charge. An immense boiler in this room, capacity 240 gallons, heated from coils in a large stove, will furnish hot water to four convenient bath rooms on the sides of a large wash room to the rear of the dormitory. Bathing will be one of the luxuries furnished free and insisted on to insure comfort to all occupants. Tubs, boards, boilers, hot and cold water in the wash room will furnish conveniences for the men to keep their clothes clean, and in the event of having only one suit, a hot room has been added to the wash room so that while the individual is taking a bath his wash can be drying. A still further precaution for cleanliness has been taken by adding a fumigating room, to be known as the “chamber of horror,” in which all animate things taken in that have survived the boiling process will meet a slow death by poisonous asphyxiation.

The following rules, painted on the walls, will govern the inmates: “No loud talking allowed. No profane language allowed. Positively no smoking allowed. Doors close 11 p.m., open 6 a.m. Meals from 6 to 11 a.m. Meals from 3 to 6 p.m. No sleeping between 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. Each person will be responsible for his own. Prayer meeting daily at 12:20. These rules will be strictly enforced.—Special F. H. Fowler.”

The three departments, except the culinary, will not be in full work until next week. In the repair shop everything of a dilapidated nature and not utterly useless will be received and made over for sale second-hand. This will embrace furniture, clothing, tools and in fact every imaginable article used or worn and thrown away as useless. This department will have plumbers, electricians, carpenters, bricklayers, shoemakers and others to meet all demands for work of either class. The basket factory will occupy a large room in the rear of the building, with practical basketmakers in charge, and orders will be received for baskets of every description made from split cedar and alder gathered in the neighboring hills.

The woodyard is an extensive adjunct located adjoining the building on South Second street, and is a roofed-in place 50 by 100 feet. Here wood will be cut to any length and size to order. The wood will be bought by the Army from farmers and shipped in on barges and carts, and as railroad tracks adjoin the building the wood can be dumped into the shed from the cars. A kindling wood department will be added, furnishing three kinds of kindling: clear pitch, dry kindling in sacks and bundled fir.

The rooms on the upper floor will be fitted up for poor families to pay rent and for men anxious to change their surroundings in order to lead better lives. In this connection Special Fowler said: “I have two men now, one a morphine fiend and the other addicted to liquor. Both are anxious to reform, but unable to resist temptation. By coming here they will be away from all those influences, and we hope to cure them, body and soul.” There will be only one entrance to the place, and that always guarded, as Special Fowler will have twenty-five men to assist him.

A special meeting was held at the barracks Tuesday evening in honor of the opening of the new department, and Maj. P. Morton, in charge of the Northwestern department, which includes Washington, Oregon, Montana and Idaho, was present. He reviewed the work of the food depot and thanked the Oregon Improvement Company for the use of the buildings for one year at a nominal rental, with privilege of extension. He also thanked the electric light company, which will furnish lights free of cost. Special Fowler said that he did not think there were a dozen hobos among the 150 men who were sawing wood for food to eat. Nearly all the wood on hand was sawed up last evening, and the officers of the Army would like to hear from men who have good dry wood for sale.