THE FEEDING OF THE HUNGRY
The problem of supplying myself with
food and drink in the half-starved city of Santiago,
after the steamer had been quarantined against me,
proved to be even more serious than I had anticipated.
In my walk up Marina and Enramadas streets and out
to the Caney road on Tuesday forenoon I passed two
or three restaurants bearing such seductive and tantalizing
names as “Venus,” “Nectar,”
and “Delicias,” etc., but they were
all closed, and in a stroll of two miles through the
heart of the city I failed to discover any food more
“delicious” than a few half-ripe mangoes
in the dirty basket of a Cuban fruit-peddler, or any
“nectar” more drinkable than the water
which ran into the gutter, here and there, from the
broken or leaky pipes of the city water-works.
Hot, tired, and dispirited, I returned about noon
to the Anglo-American Club, took another drink of
lukewarm tea from my canteen, nibbled a piece of hard
bread, and opened a can of baked beans. The beans
proved to be flavored with tomato sauce, which I dislike;
the hard bread was stale and tasted of the haversack
in which I had brought it ashore; and the tea was
neither strong enough to inebriate nor yet cool enough
to cheer. There did not seem to be any encouraging
probability that I should be fed by Cuban ravens or
nourished by manna from the blazing Cuban skies, and
in the absence of some such miraculous interposition
of Providence I should evidently have either to go
with a tin cup to the Red Cross soup-kitchen and beg
for a portion of soup on the ground that I was a destitute
and starving reconcentrado, or else return to the pier
where the State of Texas lay, hail somebody
on deck, and ask to have food lowered to me over the
ship’s side. I could certainly drink a cup
of coffee and eat a plate of corned-beef hash on the
dock without serious danger of infecting the ship
with yellow fever, typhus, cholera, or smallpox; and
if the captain should object to my being fed in that
way on the ground that the ship’s dishes might
be contaminated by my feverish touch, I was fully
prepared to put my pride in my pocket and meekly receive
my rations in an old tomato-can or a paper bag tied
to the end of a string.
With all due respect for Red Cross
soup, and the most implicit confidence in Red Cross
soup-kitchens, I inclined to the belief that I should
fare better if I got my nourishment from the State
of Texas even at the end of a string than
if I went to the Cuban soup-kitchen and claimed food
as a reconcentrado, a refugee, or a repentant prodigal
son. In the greasy, weather-stained suit of brown
canvas and mud-bespattered pith helmet that I had worn
at the front, I might play any one of these roles
with success, and my forlorn and disreputable appearance
would doubtless secure for me at least two tincupfuls
of soup; but what I longed for most was coffee, and
that beverage was not to be had in the Cuban soup-kitchen.
I resolved, therefore, to go to the pier, affirm with
uplifted hand that I was not suffering from yellow
fever, typhus fever, remittent fever, malarial fever,
pernicious fever, cholera, or smallpox, and beg somebody
to lower to me over the ship’s side a cup of
coffee in an old tomato-can and a mutton-chop at the
end of a fishing-line. I was ready to promise
that I would immediately fumigate the fishing-line
and throw the empty tomato-can into the bay, so that
the State of Texas should not run the slightest
risk of becoming infected with the diseases that I
did not have.
About half-past one, when I thought
Miss Barton and her staff would have finished their
luncheon, I walked down Gallo Street to the pier where
the steamer was discharging her cargo, hailed a sailor
on deck, and asked him if he would please tell Mrs.
Porter (wife of the Hon. J. Addison Porter, secretary
to the President) that a Cuban refugee in distress
would like to speak to her at the ship’s side.
In two or three minutes Mrs. Porter’s surprised
but sympathetic face appeared over the steamer’s
rail twenty-five or thirty feet above my head.
Raising my voice so as to make it audible above the
shouting of the stevedores, the snorting of the donkey-engine,
and the rattle of the hoisting-tackle, I told her
that I had not been able to find anything to eat in
the city, and asked her if she would not please get
my table-steward “Tommy” to lower to me
over the ship’s side a few slices of bread and
butter and a cup of coffee. A half-shocked and
half-indignant expression came into her face as she
mentally grasped the situation, and she replied with
emphasis: “Certainly! just wait a minute.”
She rushed back into the cabin to call Tommy, while
I sat down on a bag of beans with the comforting assurance
that if I did not get something to eat that afternoon
there would be a fracas on the State of Texas.
Mrs. Porter evidently regarded it as an extraordinary
state of affairs which forced the vice-president of
the Red Cross to go hungry in a starving city because
a ship flying the Red Cross flag refused to allow him
on board.
In five minutes more Tommy appeared
in the starboard gangway of the main-deck, and lowered
down to me on a tray a most appetizing lunch of bread
and butter, cold meats, fried potatoes, preserved peaches,
ice-water, and coffee. I resumed my seat on the
bag of beans, holding the tray on my knees, and gave
myself up to the enjoyment of the first meal I had
had in Santiago, and the best one, it seemed to me,
that ever gladdened the heart of a hungry human being
in any city. The temperature in the fierce sunshine
which beat down on my back was at least 130 deg.
F.; the cold meats were immediately warmed up, the
butter turned to a yellowish fluid which could have
been applied to bread only with a paint-brush, and
perspiration ran off my nose into my coffee-cup as
I drank; but the coffee and the fried potatoes kept
hot without the aid of artificial appliances, and
I emptied the glass of ice-water in two or three thirsty
gulps before it had time to come to a boil. Mrs.
Porter watched me with sympathetic interest, as if
she were enjoying my lunch even more than she had
enjoyed her own, and when I had finished she said:
“It is absurd that you should have to take your
meals on that hot, dirty pier; but if you’ll
come down every day and call for me, I’ll see
that you get enough to eat, even if they don’t
allow you on board.”
All the rest of that week I slept
in the Anglo-American Club and took my meals on the
pier of the Juragua Iron Company, Mrs. Porter keeping
me abundantly supplied with food, while I tried to
make my society an equivalent for my board by furnishing
her, three times a day, with the news of the city.
Getting my meals in a basket or on a tray over the
ship’s side and eating them alone on the pier
was rather humiliating at first, and made me feel,
for a day or two, like a homeless tramp subsisting
on charity; but when General Wood, the military governor
of the city, and Dr. Van De Water, chaplain of the
Seventy-first New York, came down to the State
of Texas one afternoon to see Mrs. Porter and
were not allowed to go on board, even for a drink of
water, my self-respect was measurably restored.
Dr. Van De Water had walked into the city from the
camp of his regiment, a distance of two or three miles,
in the fierce tropical sunshine, and was evidently
suffering acutely from fatigue and thirst; but the
State of Texas, where, under the Red Cross
flag, he naturally expected to find rest and refreshment,
was barred against him, and he had to get his drink
of water, as I got my daily bread, over the ship’s
side. The quarantine of the steamer against the
shore would perhaps have been a little more consistent,
as well as more effective, if the officers who superintended
the unloading and storing of the cargo had not been
permitted to visit every day the lowest and dirtiest
part of the city and then return to the steamer to
eat and sleep, and if the crew had not been allowed
to roam about the streets in search of adventures
at night; but I suppose it was found impracticable
to enforce the quarantine against everybody, and the
most serious and threatening source of infection was
removed, of course, when General Wood, Dr. Van De
Water, and the vice-president of the Red Cross were
rigidly excluded from the ship.
While I was living at the Anglo-American
Club and boarding on the pier of the Juragua Iron
Company the deserted and half-dead city of Santiago
was slowly awakening to life and activity. The
empty streets filled gradually with American soldiers,
paroled Spanish prisoners, and returning fugitives
from Caney; shops that had long been shut and barred
were thrown open under the assurance of protection
given by the American flag; kerosene-lamps on brackets
fastened to the walls of houses at the corners of
the narrow streets were lighted at night so that pedestrians
could get about without danger of tumbling into holes
or falling over garbage-heaps; government transports
suddenly made their appearance in the bay, and as
many of them as could find accommodation at the piers
began to discharge cargo; six-mule army wagons rumbled
and rattled over the rough cobblestone pavements as
they came in from the camps after supplies; hundreds
of hungry and destitute Cubans were set at work cleaning
the filthy streets; and in less than a week Santiago
had assumed something like the appearance that it
must have presented before the siege and capture.
The thing that it needed most in the first fortnight
after the surrender was a hotel, and a hotel it did
not have. Newspaper correspondents, officers
who had come into the city from the camps, and passengers
landed from the steamers had no place to go for food
or shelter, and many of them were forced to bivouac
in the streets. Captain William Astor Chanler,
for example, tied his saddle-horse to his leg one
night and lay down to sleep on the pavement of the
plaza in front of the old cathedral.
The urgent need of a hotel finally
compelled the steward of the Anglo-American Club to
throw open its twenty or more rooms to army officers,
cable-operators, and newspaper correspondents who had
no other place to stay, and to make an attempt, at
least, to supply them with food. A few cases
of canned meat and beans and a barrel of hard bread
were obtained from the storehouse of the Red Cross;
a cook and three or four negro waiters were hired;
and before the end of the first week after the capture
of the city the club was furnishing two meals a day
to as many guests as its rooms would accommodate,
and had become the most interesting and attractive
place of social and intellectual entertainment to
be found on the island. One might meet there,
almost any night, English war correspondents who had
campaigned in India, Egypt, and the Sudan; Cuban sympathizers
from the United States who had served in the armies
of Gomez and Garcia; old Indian fighters and ranch-men
from our Western plains and mountains; wealthy New
York club-men in the brown-linen uniform of Roosevelt’s
Rough Riders; naval officers from the fleet of Admiral
Sampson; and speculators, coffee-planters, and merchant
adventurers from all parts of the western hemisphere.
One could hardly ask a question with regard to any
part of the habitable globe or any event of modern
times that somebody in the club could not answer with
all the fullness of personal knowledge, and the conversation
around the big library table in the evening was more
interesting and entertaining than any talk that I had
heard in months. But the evenings were not always
given up wholly to conversation. Sometimes Mr.
Cobleigh of the New York “World,” who had
a very good tenor voice, would seat himself at the
piano and sing “White Wings,” “Say
au revoir, but not good-by,” or “The
Banks of the Wabash,” and then Mr. Cox, resident
manager of the Spanish-American iron-mines, would take
Cobleigh’s place at the instrument and lead the
whole assembled company in “John Brown’s
Body,” “My country, ’t is of thee,”
and “The Star-Spangled Banner,” until
the soldiers of the Ninth Infantry, quartered in the
old theater across the way, would join in the chorus,
and a great wave of patriotic melody would roll down
Gallo Street to the bay, and out over the tranquil
water to the transports lying at anchor half a mile
away. Sitting in that cheerful, comfortably furnished
club-room under the soft glow of incandescent electric
lights, and listening to the bright, animated conversation,
the laughter, and the old familiar music, I found
it almost impossible to realize that I was in the
desperately defended and recently captured city of
Santiago, where the whole population was in a state
of semi-starvation, where thousands of sick or wounded
were languishing in crowded hospitals and barracks,
and where, within a few days, I had seen destitute
and homeless Cubans dying of fever in the streets.
Miss Barton began the work of relieving
the wide-spread distress and destitution in Santiago
with characteristic promptness and energy. To
feed twenty or thirty thousand people at once, with
the limited facilities and the small working force
at her command, and to do it systematically and economically,
without wastefulness and without confusion, was a
herculean task; but it was a task with which experience
and training in many fields had made her familiar,
and she set about it intelligently and met the difficulties
of the situation with admirable tact and judgment.
Her first step was to ask the ablest, most influential,
and most respected citizens of Santiago to consult
with her with regard to ways and means and to give
her the benefit of their local knowledge and experience.
The object of this was to secure the cooeperation
and support of the best elements of the population,
and strengthen the working force of the Red Cross
by adding to it a local contingent of volunteer assistants
who were thoroughly acquainted with the city and its
inhabitants and who would be able to detect and prevent
fraud or imposition. There was danger, of course,
that people who did not need food, or were not entitled
to it, would seek to obtain it on false pretenses,
and that others, who perhaps were really in distress,
would try to get more food than they actually required
in order that they might make a little money by selling
the surplus. In anticipation of this danger,
Miss Barton decided to put the distribution of food
largely under local control. In the first place,
a central committee of three was appointed to exercise
general supervision over the whole work. The
members of this committee were Mr. Ramsden, son of
the British consul; Mr. Michelson, a wealthy and philanthropic
merchant engaged in business in Santiago; and a prominent
Cuban gentleman whose name I cannot now recall.
This committee divided the city into thirty districts,
and notified the residents of each district that they
would be expected to elect or appoint a commissioner
who should represent them in all dealings with the
Red Cross, who should make all applications for relief
in their behalf, and who should personally superintend
the distribution of all food allotted to them on requisitions
approved by the central committee. This scheme
of organization and distribution was intelligently
and judiciously devised, and it worked to the satisfaction
of all. Every commissioner was instructed to make
a requisition for food in writing, according to a
prescribed form, stating the number and the names
of heads of families needing relief in his district,
the number of persons in each family, and the amount
of food required for the district as a whole and for
each family or individual in detail. The commissioner
then appended to the requisition a certificate to the
effect that the petitioners named therein were known
to him and that he believed they were really in need
of the quantities of food for which they respectively
made application. The requisition then went to
the central committee, and when approved by it was
filled at the Red Cross warehouse and retained there
as a voucher.
I heard it asserted in Santiago more
than once that food issued by the Red Cross to people
who were supposed to be starving had afterward been
sold openly on the street by hucksters, and had even
been carried on pack-mules in comparatively large
quantities to suburban villages and sold there; but
I doubt very much the truth of this assertion.
Miss Barton caused an investigation to be made of
several such cases of alleged fraud, and found in
every instance that the food said to have been obtained
from the Red Cross had really come from some other
source, chiefly from soldiers and government transports,
whose provisions, of course, could not be distinguished
from ours after they had been taken out of the original
packages. Be this, however, as it may, the checks
upon fraud and imposition in the Red Cross scheme of
distribution were as efficient as the nature of the
circumstances would allow, and I doubt whether the
loss through fraudulent applications or through collusion
between commissioners and applicants amounted to one
tenth of one per cent. The Red Cross furnished
food in bulk to thirty-two thousand half-starved people
in the first five days after Santiago surrendered,
and in addition thereto fed ten thousand people every
day in the soup-kitchens managed by Mr. Michelson.
I do not wish to make any unjust or invidious comparisons,
but I cannot refrain from saying, nevertheless, that
I did not happen to see any United States quartermaster
in Cuba who, in the short space of five days, had unloaded
and stored fourteen hundred tons of cargo, given hot
soup daily to ten thousand soldiers, and supplied
an army of thirty-two thousand men with ten days’
rations. It is a record, I think, of which Miss
Barton has every reason to be proud.
But her beneficent work was not confined
to the mere feeding of the hungry in Santiago.
She sent large quantities of cereals, canned goods,
and hospital supplies to our own soldiers in the camps
on the adjacent hills; she furnished medicines and
food for sick and wounded to the Spanish prison camp
as well as to the Spanish army hospital, the civil
hospital, and the children’s hospital in the
city; she directed Dr. Soyoso of her medical staff
to open a clinic and dispensary, where five surgeons
and two nurses gave medical or surgical aid to more
than three thousand sick or sickening people every
day; she sent hundreds of tons of ice from the schooner
Morse to the hospitals, the camps, and the
transports going North with sick and wounded soldiers;
she put up tents to shelter fever-stricken Spanish
prisoners from the tropical sunshine while they were
waiting to be taken on board the vessels that were
to carry them back to Spain; and in every way possible,
and with all the facilities that she had, she tried
to alleviate the suffering caused by neglect, incompetence,
famine, and war.