o'clock every evening. The Shelter, mark you, is
not precisely a Charity. The men have to pay. Here is shown the
excellent understanding of the psychology of the people which the
University Socialist misses. You cannot get hold of people by offering
them something for nothing; but you can get hold of them by tens of
thousands by offering them something good at a low price. For a
halfpenny the Salvation Army offers them tea, coffee, cocoa, or soup,
with bread-and-butter, cake, or pudding. All this food is cooked and
prepared at the Islington headquarters, and the great furnaces in the
kitchens of the Shelters are roaring night and day for the purpose of
warming-up the food, heating the Shelter, and serving the drying-rooms,
where the men can hang their wet clothes.

A spotlessly clean bed is offered for threepence a night, which includes
use of bathroom, lavatory, and washhouse. The washhouse is in very great
demand on wet nights by those who have been working out of doors, and by
those who wish to wash their underclothes, etc.

In addition to this, the men have the service of the Army orderlies, in
attention at table and in "calling" in the morning. The staff is at work
all night, either attending new-comers or going round with the various
"calls," which, as some of the guests are market porters, are for
unearthly hours, such as half-past three or four o'clock. The Shelters
are patronized by many "regulars"--flower-sellers, pedlars, Covent
Garden or Billingsgate odd men, etc.--who lodge with them by the week,
sometimes by the year. Lights are officially out at half-past nine, but
of course the orderly is on duty at the door until eight o'clock the
following morning, and no stranger who wants food and bed is refused. He
is asked for the threepence and for the halfpenny for his food, but if
he cannot produce these he has but to ask for the Brigadier, and, if he
is a genuine case, he is at once taken in.

Every Saturday night at half-past eleven certain of the orderlies,
supplied with tickets, go out, and to any hungry, homeless wanderer they
give a ticket with directions to the Shelter. These Saturday night
tickets entitle him, if he chooses to accept them, to bath, breakfast,
bed, and the Sunday service.

Further, the Shelter acts as employment agency, and, once having found
their man, the first step towards helping him is to awaken in him the
latent sense of responsibility. The quickest way is to find him work,
and