THERE were two letters which made me decide to go back on the road again. One was from Franklin Jordan, who urged me to meet him in Washington, to which thousands of ex-service men were on their way to demand the payment of the bonus.
The other was from Eileen O’Connor, the president of the I. U. W. W. A., commonly called the “Women Itinerants’ Hobo Union,” or “Sisters of the Road.” She urged me to come to the Women Hoboes Convention, which was to be held in Webster Hall, New York City, in June.
I thought of my baby and how I had said that I would never leave her. I thought of my condemnation of my own father for having left me. But I thought, too, of Franklin Jordan, and of his words, “Where there is a free-speech or labor fight or unemployed demonstration, there’s where I belong,” and I decided to go to Washington and New York.
The women at Home Colony gave me a little going-away party. There were ten of them. All of them had some experience on the road. Eight of these ten women were mothers. Several of them had been married but they disregarded marriage ties. All of them lived in a state of free love with their men. The children in Home Colony were healthy, strong, happy children. Baby Dear came down with the other children to see me off. Half the folks from the Colony were on the dock. They were all happy that I was going to Washington to take part in the Bonus Army encampment and to the Women’s Hobo Convention. I asked no one to look after Baby Dear. The Colonists said nothing about it. She was a part of the Colony and everybody felt that they had an interest in her. Here was a genuine co-operative Colony. Most of the anarchists worked and shared alike. The children were accustomed to go to any house to eat and sleep. I knew Baby Dear was in good hands. My friends, my comrades, wafted their blessings to me, and the boat paddled up the beautiful Sound.
The next few days were unforgettable. I hitch-hiked most of the way to Washington, being picked up beyond Pittsburgh by three veterans in an old Buick and taken in to the Bonus Camp, where I met Jordan. The rebellion and the gayety and the misery of that camp were beyond description. I had a feeling of America, torn and striving America, being represented there with absolute veracity. I went from tent to tent doing what I could, washing clothes, writing letters, nursing the sick, encouraging the weak not to break up the Camp until they got their bonus. Into my ears they poured their stories of frustration and unemployment. In the confusion and the hatred of the forced breaking up of that camp, all the early teachings I had had against government and against politicians struck me with new and bitter force.
Most of the women, wives and sweethearts and trailers of that camp, many of them new to the road, but some of them old-time hoboes, hitch-hiked to New York, with me, for the Women Hoboes’ Convention. The slogan of that convention was “A home and a job for every man and woman,” and the result of it were plans for the Women’s Hobo College, which would set up service stations, information bureaus, and schools of social pathology.
Every station, for women of the road, we planned, should have cleaning and repair rooms for clothing, complete with service machines, patching material, dyes, shoe repairing tools and all washing and dry cleaning facilities, including the mechanical devices for quick drying. There should be cooking ranges, dishes, and dining room set-up for individual and collective feeding, and adequate places where women of the road, able in some fashion to procure their own food, could cook it for themselves. There should be also, we planned, a room with all facilities for writing letters and receiving mail, including typewriters, in case letters of application for jobs were to be sent. There should be a library, too, with books and magazines particularly specializing in the problems of women.
One of the most extensive plans made was for a personal hygiene room, one complete in bathing facilities and in safeguarding prophylactic equipment, inasmuch as most of the disease common to women of the road is due to inability to carry preventive medical equipment. There was to be in each station a personal counselor, to give friendly advice in problems of love and economics and birth control and pregnancy. There should also be a legal advisor. Sisters of the road are in need of good legal advice. Many of them are divorced or have grounds for divorce and alimony. Not a few are bigamists. A considerable number have either deserted their husbands, often with children, or have themselves been deserted. There are many lamsters—those who have either jumped their bonds or who have run away from orphan asylums or penal institutions. There are some women on the road who are entitled to legacies.
In addition to this, recreation rooms for games, meetings, arts and crafts were to be provided.
The information bureau of each college was to make a specialty of getting odd jobs, and jobs in exchange for board and room and personal necessities. They were to keep lists of cheap, comfortable lodgings, places of free lodgings, free meals, and the latest information on federal and state and municipal and private relief organizations. They were to be able to direct women to free medical clinics and to give advice on methods of free or cheap transportation.
Eileen O’Connor, thirty years old, with slender Irish face alight with enthusiasm and vision for more free and courageous women on the road and for making provisions for their welfare, inspired all of us. When we broke up, I helped her send recommendations for federal and state relief organizations, and have watched with interest since, the adoption of many of our plans in transient bureaus the country over.
Probably the most important thing, next to governmental relief, that was accomplished there was the dissemination of birth control propaganda and information on venereal disease prophylaxis. The tremendous decline in the birth rate, venereal disease and abortions that has been seen in America the last few years is partly the outcome of that convention.
I moved into a little room in Washington Square with Franklin Jordan. Intelligent as he was, he was not unlike Bill Steward in that he divided his time between several women. The nights with him were precious, however, and I was glad whenever he stayed with me. We did a great deal of drinking together. New York was a lonely place for me. I lost myself in the street crowds. I could not bear to mingle with the Village poets or any of the crowd I had known there before.
As I was walking down the Bowery one evening, I stopped in front of the Bowery Mission near Grand Street. I saw a crowd of forlorn men and a few women going in. There was a sign in the window, “Coffee and sandwiches served free.” I went in. The place was crowded, and before eight o’clock they locked the door. At least a dozen men and women got up in the meeting and testified that they had been drunkards and thieves and prostitutes, and “through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ” they had been saved. How does Jesus Christ’s blood save a man from sin? What were these people saved from? Could Otto, Katherine and Lefty have been saved the same way? It wasn’t clear to me. As I passed out of the hall an elderly lady stopped me.
“Can I give you a lift home?” she asked. “My car is waiting for me.”
I stepped into her car, but instead of taking me to my room, she took me to her own home, where we had a long talk, as a result of which I got, through her influence, a job at Mercy Shelter, a mission which was conducted in a four-story brick building on East Nineteenth Street. No sisters of the road fell into the hands of the Home Missionary Society. The home was exclusively for penniless women of Protestant churches.
The day I was hired, Mrs. Amber, the superintendent, told me about their restrictions.
“We’re very particular who we take here,” she said. “We do not take any drunks or prostitutes, and positively no one with social diseases. There are plenty of hospitals for them. Now, Miss Thompson, you understand that this is a Christian home, and although Mrs. Robinson said you were not an active Christian, she believes that you are fitted for this position. We need someone who understands women and who can be helpful to them. You’ll get twenty-five dollars a month, your board and washing, and we’ll furnish the uniforms.”
I was happy in my new position, pleased with the women who worked in Mercy Home, and with the Board of Trustees. Everybody seemed honest and anxious to help, although some of the old ladies on the Board of Trustees didn’t know what it was all about. Mercy was a temporary shelter. We housed forty women. They slept two in a room. The meals were fine. The only work the guests did around the house was to help to keep it clean, and serve the meals. I was the assistant superintendent, and took the records of the girls, tried to find them jobs, and urged them to keep in touch with their families. No one was supposed to stay in the Shelter over two weeks, and usually we were able to find some sort of a position or get the girl back to her parents in less time than that.
During the nine months that I was there I took the records of over two hundred girls and had got acquainted with most of the social agencies. I joined the Social Service club and weekly met with the representatives of the agencies working with homeless women.
I loved my job and the girls. I read letters from their parents and from their lovers. I helped them write letters. I dreamed some day of having a big institution of my own.
Then something happened. I don’t know yet what it was. My jinx, which had been keeping its distance, caught up with me and tripped me. It was on a Friday afternoon, after the Board of Trustees had had their tea. Mrs. Adams, the chairman of the board, came to me, her face solemn and stern, and I knew something was wrong, though I didn’t know what it was until she spoke.
“Miss Thompson,” she said, “we’re very sorry to tell you that we must ask you to resign at once. We all knew that you had had some experience in the underworld and we felt that this would help you to understand the women who come here. But we have just learned from a reliable source that you have been diseased. You know perfectly well we wouldn’t admit anybody else who had such terrible diseases.”
There was nothing I could say, for, of course, what she said was perfectly true. I could only feel lost and at loose ends again.
The day I was kicked out of Mercy Home, I went to the Social Service Exchange Register and learned that there was a position open in Alabama at the Women’s Municipal Relief Station. I applied for the position and got it. Jordan wanted to go south anyway, so, in a week, we were on the way.
The Alabama Female Service Bureau for Transient Women was located in the same building with a dozen other relief organizations. I began as a case taker. Our applicants were wandering colored and white women. Daily I interviewed from twelve to twenty-five women.
The applicants were the end-product of unemployment. Day after day I heard the same story. “My man lost his job.” “I lost my job.” “We want to get to Nashville where my mother is.” “We was on relief in Florida and they cut us off and I’m going to Chicago.” “Ah lived on that plantation for twenty-five years and Mistah Jones tried hard to keep me, but they foreclosed the mortgage on it and put us all out.” “The longer Ah worked the more Ah went in debt.” “Ah owe everybody money.” “Lost my insurance and pawned everything.”
Many of these women had children with them and had come in box cars or had hitch-hiked. Many of them had walked all the way. Quite a number had driven in their own cars, mostly dilapidated Fords. When I first came, the organization refused to give them gas, but soon I convinced them of the advantage of giving gas, along with a few days’ board and room and the clothes they needed. The procession seemed endless. I was happy at Mercy Home but here at the Women’s Service Bureau I was transported to a peace and joy that I had never had before. I was giving service to my own kind, sisters of the road.
Franklin Jordan was a poetic lover. He loved me with words more than he did with his body. It was a joy to have him all to myself. We had two adjoining rooms in a clean rooming house. He made no attempt to work. I paid the bills. He spent his time at Labor Union Hall, and at the Library.
In less than six months I had complete charge of the Transient Bureau, and was doing some public speaking at conferences and in churches. Life was joyous and crowded. I had forgotten my past.
“Im so very happy,” I told Jordan one night.
“Look out,” he warned me. “God takes care that the trees don’t grow into the sky.”
One day when I looked over the line of the men’s waiting room, I recognized Lefty, the pickpocket, I had known with Big Otto. I walked over to him and shook hands and asked him what I could do for him.
“I just did a ‘Sixer’ on a chain gang in Mississippi, and I’m on the bum,” he explained. “I want to get transportation back to New York. I’m afraid of these southern bulls. I can’t get in touch with any of the old mob.”
I took him in to the case worker and said, “This is an old friend of mine. I hope you will look after him.”
Next day the director of the bureau said to me, “We’re sorry, Miss Thompson, but we must ask you to resign. You have a criminal record, we find, and in your application you said nothing about it. You’ve been doing splendid work here, and you helped build up our organization so that it is a credit to the South, but what would we do if some newspaper got hold of this and said that the chief of the Female Transient Bureau had been a jailbird, an associate of thieves? We like you and appreciate your work but we just must let you go. Please understand that we have nothing personal against you and if we were just individuals it would be all right. But this is a government organization and anything that would discredit this organization would bring shame upon the government.”
So Lefty had double-crossed me! Smarting still with the dislike he had felt for me when I had been a part of the gang, he had taken this opportunity to undermine the foundation I had built under myself.
It leaked out among the men and women who were living in the relief station that I had been fired for having a record. They all drew up a petition. The newspapers said later that one transient wrecked a passenger train in revenge for the organization firing me. Two days later, in the men’s shelter house, a fire broke out, said to be a protest against the organization for letting me go. But Jordan and I were meanwhile on our way to California, riding in a box car.
I had drunk very little for the past two years, and had cut out smoking entirely, but when we got under way we had two flasks of whiskey.
“Cut it, Box Car,” Jordan told me. “Booze will floor you. You don’t need that much liquor.” But I drank and insisted that he should drink.
We took our time, and in twelve days reached the outskirts of Los Angeles. We were both drunk most of the time. Coming into the S. P. yards, at Los Angeles, we rode on the bumpers of a freight. A railroad Dick saw us and hollered and caught the car behind us. He climbed up on the car and stood right above us and yelled down at us.
“Don’t you get off until we stop,” he commanded. “You’re under arrest.”
It isn’t clear to me just what happened in the next few seconds. Jordan and I looked at each other questioningly, deciding whether to jump for it or not, and then I felt myself going and reaching out—whether to save Jordan or to be saved by him, I don’t know. And then the track came up to meet us and I felt a terrific jolt which dazed me as I hit the cinders. I was conscious of the rumbling wheels of the freight train as they passed on and on endlessly close to my ears, over my head, terrifying and surrounding me with their rumbling—conscious of the fact that I was holding onto Jordan’s hands, which felt strange and heavy and lifeless save for an intermittent twitching. Then I became suddenly acutely aware of things again and saw that half of Jordan’s body was on the right of way beside me, and half was under the train. I tugged at him with all my strength, but knew, as I did so, that it was too late. Already the wheels of more than a score of cars had passed over his legs near his hips. As the last car went by I collapsed on the track, holding the hands of a legless, lifeless man—my lover.