End of an Idealist

Fortnight ago a tall, emaciated, shabby old man sat slumped in Cincinnati's Union Station. He had fainted. The Travelers' Aid agent roused him, asked if anything could be done for him. The old man slowly raised his grey head, looked long at the agent, said apologetically: ''You would be very kind to notify Attorney Nicholas Klein. . . ."

Mr. Klein, prosperous Cincinnati lawyer, hastened to the station, was less astounded to find his vagrant friend James Eads How there than to see him so decrepit. They sped to the Klein home. A doctor was summoned.

The doctor examined the gaunt old man. He knew something of his story:

James Eads How was a stubborn idealist. He believed in the "actual, practical brotherhood of man." His family was rich. His grandfather was James Buchanan Eads, builder of the first bridge across the Mississippi at St. Louis, builder of the Mississippi jetties just below New Orleans. His father was James Flintham How, vice president and general manager of the Wabash Railroad. Young How entered Meadville Theological School, Unitarian institution at Meadville, Pa. Fellow students termed him eccentric, "crazy," because he gave the poor his allowance, his possessions, everything but meagre necessities. He made his room a hermit-like cell. He wanted to live the life of Christ, he would say. He entered Harvard, where he played football and baseball. His mystic generosity continued. He zealously tried to found a monastic order, The Brotherhood of the Daily Life. He dressed as a laborer and preached to mid-day crowds. The Brotherhood never materialized. After Harvard he went to Oxford, joined George Bernard Shaw's Fabian Society. After Oxford he studied medicine at Manhattan's College of Physicians & Surgeons. Although he never received a medical degree, all hoboes whom he tried to befriend called him "Doc."

His love of all mankind became concentrated to a particular interest in wandering, jobless workmen. He stubbornly believed that every vagrant could be persuaded to work. Newspapers ridiculed him, exaggerated his wealth, called him the "millionaire hobo." But his mother approved. When she died she willed him a half-million dollars, half in a trust, half to spend on his idealism. He spent all his money on his tramps. He financed the organization of the International Brotherhood Welfare Association, hobo "union." He founded some 60 hobo colleges, several lodging houses. Bums attended meetings and classes for the food he dispensed, ridiculed him for his gullibility. He knew of the sneers, the contempt, but persevered undaunted with his benevolence.

Unlike his mother, his wife, the one-time secretary whom he married when he was 50, disapproved of his life. Especially was she provoked when he entertained his hobo wards in their parlor, cooked them mulligan which he, a vegetarian, would not eat, in the fireplace. She left him two years ago. got her final divorce decree only a fortnight ago, now lives in Los Angeles, hopeless of getting a dower share in his inheritance.

How's long stubborn adherence to a skimpy vegetable diet (a plate of pea soup was often his whole meal; was what made him faint in the Cincinnati station. The doctor who examined him in Lawyer Klein's home diagnosed his condition as exhaustion caused by self-starvation. The Kleins fed their wandering friend (he used to mail the Klein children sticks of gum with a dime slipped under each wrapper), tried to put him to bed. He insisted on sleeping on a mattress, on the attic floor. Refreshed, he insisted he must go on from Cincinnati to Staunton, Va., Woodrow Wilson's birthplace. He refused a Pullman ticket, made the hot trip in a day coach. At Staunton he collapsed, died of pneumonia which his starved body could not resist. His death made much newspaper copy. Reporters interviewed hoboes passing through their communities. Hobo "kings" bragged that they would carry on his work, that hoboes were hopping on freight trains for his funeral in Washington, that he was a good "stiff" (man). Washington police prepared for an influx of hoboes at the funeral last week in All Souls' Unitarian Church (whence William Howard Taft was buried). After the services the body was to be cremated and sent on to the family home at St. Louis. Only one tramp, and he but a nominal one, was there--Harry W. Johannes Jr. of Baltimore, representing the idealistic International Brotherhood Welfare Association. He would not enter the church, remained outdoors, distributing copies of The Hobo News. The only funeral eulogy was a phrase from Matthew:--"I was an hungered and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink"--spoken by the minister of All Souls', Dr. Robert B. Day, the late idealist's classmate at Meadville Theological School.

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