objection that the country youth are induced by this cheap
living to leave for the city is not a strong one and needs but short
notice. Some of the most successful men of our cities come from the
country, but very few of the lower and pauper classes. This has been
shown by the investigations of Mr. Fox in England, and by our own
investigations in the United States.[51]

The consideration of these objections leads us to a closer examination
of the class of men frequenting the hotels of the Army. The men's work
being so much larger, let us look at the occupants of the men's hotels.
Here we must separate the comparatively few hotels of the higher class,
which, charging higher prices and harboring the working man, have a
different environment from the others. In these, the higher class, we
see a competition with the ordinary boarding and lodging houses which
single men frequent, a competition which, owing to the more healthful
social environment of the Army hotel, is to be welcomed and approved of
as a preventive of vice and degradation. The latter is often the result
of crowded, uncleanly, workingmen's lodgings, which drive their
occupants to the saloon. But the majority of the Army hotels are filled
with the lowest class of men, out of any steady employment. This class
is composed for the most part and under present conditions, of men who
are almost helpless cases.[52] Conditions can be conceived which would
result in the betterment of a certain percentage of these, but a large
number would always be hopeless. Many have been given their chances and
have thrown them away; some have had no chances, and some could not use
them if they had. Many are physical and moral wrecks. In their faces you
see no ambition. They simply exist as do animals. For such, except in
unusual cases, there is no remedy. Do all you can for them, and they
will slide back again; give them work, and if they are willing to take
it at all, they soon lose their positions. Some belong to the
pseudo-social class and are mere parasites feeding on society. Others
are anti-social, bitter and criminal.[53]

These men are not those with which the Army is successful, in its
industrial institutions, although many of them have been tried. They
secure their ten cents or fifteen cents for a bed in a cheap hotel by
any means which comes along. They form a class, which especially in the
older countries of Europe and increasingly in the new world, presents a
problem th