JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 368

Think what you will of the religious organization of General Booth’s Salvation Army, they really do some good albeit with a whomping hammer of the creator’s message at the end of it all.  This is the 16th in a series of posts on the History of Blank and Empty Things, an unfilled, blank ticket for the promise of a safe and warm place to sleep and a good sturdy meal.  It was a promise for some sort of hope, for attention, addressed to “the waste” of society, the specialty of the Army, “fighting want and hunger and hopelessness”, doing this via the “industrial home”, training men for work and finding them jobs.  The Salvation Army was adamantly opposed to “wanton charities”:  “the bread line breads bums; banish the Bread Line!; the professional beggar is created by indiscriminate charity…”  They took a very hard line.  On the other hand the hard line may not have worked all that well for far as filling the ranks for the soldiers of god; people certainly took advantage of the charity offered by the SA.  The financial report for the Industrial Home (in Washington DC) for 1917 showed that there were 122 meetings held, with an attendance if 4,300, with 34,921 meals supplied, and 21,215 beds made available–and only 21 “conversions”.  

The blank admission card for the industrial home, shown below, seems to me a look at a piece of hope that may have been in the hands of a person who needed it; I can imagine staring at it, wondering what I should do with it, exactly; to take the help, or not.  In 1917, there weren’t that many options….