K IN G 'S BUSINESS P ICTURE FEATURE
An Arm
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E v e r y b ig c i t y has its Skid Row into which float the human flot sam and jetsam of organized society. Here come the failures, those who couldn’t “make it,” those who did not want to accept the responsibilities of life, those who could not face reality. This, and not alcohol, creates the derelicts who shuffle along the skid rows. Alcohol is their futile attempt at a solution, or an escape. But al cohol is neither a solution nor an escape. It is Satan laughing. New York’s skid row is called the Bowery (from the Dutch Bouwerie, the trail that led to Peter Stuyvesant’s farm). Here are the inevitable cheap and noisome “ beaneries,” bars and flop- houses (254 a night before inflation, now 754). And here the hapless fel lows, unwashed, unshaven, in soiled and threadbare clothes, unmatched shoes^ no socks, trudge up and down, panhandling and searching trash baskets and alleys for anything sale able to get some coins for a “ shot” at the bar or, better, a bootlegged pint of “ sneaky pete” (cheap wine “ souped up” with denatured alcohol, or simi lar), rubbing alcohol, Sterno (canned heat), bay rum, or anything at all with the precious alcohol in it (poi sonous or not) — for a few hours of oblivion in a dirty doorway. These men need help . . . and hope . . . and the knowledge of Christ. All this the Bowery Mission has been dispensing with an open hand for 80 years. The Mission has helped upwards of a thousand men a day (over a thousand on Sundays when there are few strollers to panhandle).
Four services daily bring the Gospel
A sotl| f!nds Christ at the altar,
message.
THE KING'S BUSINESS
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