salve" (antiphlogistine) and other medicines--a small wash basin,
soap, wash cloth and towel, flannel and a change of clothing for
baby.
Emma is bidden to heat water, which she does by filling an old
black kettle and standing it on the blazing embers of the open
fire.
How the nurse worked, and watched, and prayed as the hours passed,
and no improvement! The day came and went, and another night
brought closer the shadow--the little one seemed hardly to breathe.
Then the mother fled out in the darkness to rock back and forth in
an agony of weeping, which was hushed only when the quiet voice of
the nurse said: "You make it harder. Pray instead."
At last the waiting nurse feels the little body relax under
her touch. Sleep and restoration begin to steal back the ebbing
vitality--the little life is saved.
To-day within reach of this home, and many like it, the Mary
Isabel Alien Memorial Hospital at Gray Hawk, Kentucky, stands with
open doors and inviting beds for all who suffer. [Footnote:
Women's Board of Domestic Missions, Reformed Church in America.]
Whatever equipment and loving service can do to provide healing
may be found here.
* * * * *
"The military occupation of Porto Rico drew the attention of
the Christian churches of the United States to their opportunity
and responsibility for sending the light of the true Gospel to that
island where it had never penetrated. Soon after this the investigations
of a military surgeon demonstrated the important fact that ninety
per cent of the working population of the island were affected with
the hook-worm disease. Apart from other diseases which were present,
here was a great economic and humanitarian problem. The government
had done much, but as elsewhere, other agencies were needed if the
physical ills of the Porto Ricans were to be healed. In response to
this need Dr. Grace Atkins went to Porto Rico in 1900 as the first
medical missionary under the Woman's Board of Home Missions of the
Presbyterian Church. She started a clinic in a room of her rented
house, and treated many sick people in their homes. Being impressed
with how little she could do in this way for many who were seriously
sick, or who needed operations, she urged upon the Board the erection
of a hospital. In response to her call to the church, in February,
1904, the present hospital buildings in San Juan were opened to
receive patients. There were forty-five beds and, at that time,
this was the only hospital on the island in which the sick could
be properly treated.
"That there is need for the work and that the hospital is
meeting that need is shown by the number of those who come
for treatment. This has increased from seven thousand in 1907
to over nineteen thousand in 1914. The majority of these naturally
are treated in the dispensary, where a clinic is held daily, except
Sunday. On Monday all day is required to treat those who come, the
number reaching almost two hundred at times. Many come in from the
surrounding country, often walking from ten to thirty miles. All
classes of diseases are seen. Besides the more common ailments, with
which all are familiar, there are many cases of hook-worm anemia and
a number of other diseases peculiar to the tropics. Then there are
many who need surgical treatment. Blind men come in led by little
boys; some are brought in rocking chairs by their friends; others
are carried in hammocks, while still others arrive in coaches or
automobiles. One woman may have a piece of a needle broken off in
her hand and another a large tumor which needs a major operation
for its removal. Each one must be examined, a diagnosis made and
the proper treatment and instructions given. The most serious cases
are admitted to the hospital when there are beds available. On an
average six to eight cases a week have to be refused admission
because the beds are filled.
"In the private rooms are treated many Porto Ricans and many
Americans. The latter not only receive medical attention needed,
and much appreciated, on a foreign shore, but also an education
in practical Christianity which in many cases proves a great
surprise as well as a benefit to themselves and the hospital.
Practically all the patients in the wards are Porto Ricans. A
few of the more serious medical cases are admitted, but the
majority are those who need operations. Able to pay nothing or
very little, there is no other place where most of them can receive
treatment which will enable them to support themselves and those
dependent upon them. The blind have been made to see and the lame
to walk. So many apply for admission that there is always a waiting
list. Many lives have been saved in the children's ward by taking
in babies who have become sick from improper or insufficient food
due to ignorance or poverty. Tuberculosis of bones fend joints is
common and many little sufferers have been restored to health and
strength.
"That the work done in the hospital is not only helpful to
individuals but that it could be done by no other institution
present or projected is the testimony of the head of the
Department of Health, who is an American and has resided many
years on the island.
"One of the most important departments of the hospital is the
training school for nurses. There were practically no trained
nurses on the island and no provision for their training when
our school was opened. About sixty have graduated and are doing
faithful and efficient work as head nurses in our own and other
hospitals, and in the homes of their own people. There are usually
about fifteen pupil nurses. In addition to the regular hospital
work a department of district, or visiting, nursing has been started
and each one is trained to do actual practical work in the home. Not
only is this valuable for the nurse, but it makes it possible to
follow up many of the cases from the clinic, or hospital, and
supervise their diet and care and so try to keep them well, which
is especially important for the babies. One of the graduates is
doing this in connection with the settlement work of our church in
San Juan. Her work has suggested to the local Board of Health the
desirability of establishing a similar work on a larger scale. This
is an illustration of the indirect benefits of missions throughout
the world.
"But men are souls and merely have bodies, so that, however important
it is to heal the body, our Master came to save the soul and our
duty is to point them to Him. Every day in the wards and in the
clinic the Bible is read and prayer is offered. On Sunday a service
is held in which the Gospel message is explained. They have never
had the Bible and know nothing of the true Gospel. The are either
entirely ignorant of religion or their ideas are erroneous. By the
spoken word in the hospital and by giving them the written Word to
carry to their homes, the way is prepared for the entrance into
their hearts and lives of the divine Healer and Saviour.
"The three years' course affords opportunity for the thorough
religious instruction of the nurses in a weekly Bible class and
in the church services which they attend on Sunday. With very few
exceptions they have become members of evangelical churches before
graduation." [Footnote: Presbyterian Hospital, San Juan, P.I.]
* * * * *
"Of first importance in the physical well-being of the boy or girl
is the knowledge that will lead to a wholesome development of body
and mind.
"One of the most important phases of Home Mission medical work is
instructing the students in Mission Homes and Schools in health and
home sanitation, bringing to them something of the ideal for their
older lives that Dr. David Starr Jordan expresses in "The Call of
the Twentieth Century," where he speaks to the boy of to-day:
"So live that your after self--the man you ought to be--may in
time be possible and actual. Far away in the twenties, the thirties
of this century, he is awaiting his turn. His body, his brain, his
soul are in your boyish hands. He cannot help himself. What will you
leave for him? Will it be a brain unspoiled by lust or dissipation,
a mind trained to think and act, a nervous system true as a dial in
its response to the truth about you?"
The place and need of Home Missions as a present day healing
force can be more fully realized when we consider the conditions
peculiar to our country, which call urgently for greatly increased
facilities for physical regeneration.
Pre-eminent among these are the constant influx of aliens from
southern Europe and others of a dangerously low standard as regards
sanitation and health--and the economic pressure which produces
appalling congestion in living conditions.
"People are already living on certain portions of Manhattan Island
at a density which, if continued throughout the entire city, would
give New York a population of 197,372,635."
There is, on the other hand, the isolation and neglect of large
groups of people who are uninformed of sanitation and have only
precarious access to medical attendance, and whose needs call
insistently for help, as well as constitute a menace to the health
of these communities; such are found among Alaskans, Indians,
Mexicans, and others.
As the enlarging view of spiritual regeneration has come to include
the redemption of the environment so that it shall be an aid to
better living instead of an almost insupportable hindrance, so
also a newer and infinitely greater scope is daily coming to the
realm of healing science--that of prevention of disease and stamping
out of scourges rather than merely the healing of individuals after
disease has claimed them.
This wider vision of physical regeneration, Home Missions is seeking
earnestly to promote, that the better day for which humanity yearns
may be hastened, when His Kingdom will come on earth.
V
AN INTEGRATING FORCE
"Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth o'er a' the earth
May bear the gree and a' that,
For a' that and a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that,
_That man to man, the world o'er
Shall brothers be for a' that_."
"Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?"
"There is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor
free; but Christ is all and in all."
"One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who
is over all, and through all, and in all."
* * * * *
A prominent American clergyman lecturer and writer was traveling
through inland China a short time before the outbreak of the Boxer
rebellion, when the feeling toward foreigners was intensely
hostile.
Through a misadventure he became separated from the party with
which he traveled and found himself alone with his Chinese driver
and courier in a village, when a suspicious crowd quickly assembled
which refused to permit him to proceed.
Passports and letters from prominent Chinese officials were of no
avail with this prejudiced crowd which grew constantly more excited
and revengeful.
Suddenly through the threatening mass a man forced his way to the
side of Dr. P.----, exclaiming in English, "You Melican man?" "Yes,"
came the reply. Turning to the crowd he explained the friendliness
of American foreigners, and turning to Dr. P. again said, "Me
Melican man, too, I live San Francisco seven years." Then he said,
"You Jesus man? Me Jesus man, too; Mission, San Francisco, made me
Jesus man."
Turning again to the crowd he succeeded in persuading them, though
protesting and reluctant, to allow Dr. P. to proceed on his way
unharmed.
This incident stands for the myriad influences in the ebb and flow
of immigration that carry the impulses, the ideals, and the new
life of America into the heart of the old world civilizations.
To the great inert masses of people in these lands have thus been
brought the germs of free thought and action and the sustaining,
impelling faith that these might sometime be attained by them and
their children. That to them through unceasing struggle might also
come the better day when government would stand for freedom,
opportunity and progress, rather than the sword, prison,
banishment and oppression.
America has been the great inspirer of the world.
Since the dawn of the twentieth century more than 10,500,000
immigrants have entered the United States. Through the pressure of
economic conditions a large proportion of immigrants and their children
are forced into the centers of poverty, crime and disease, the slum
districts of our great cities, and into huge colonies in industrial
centers where they both receive and contribute to conditions that have
become pathological for the community, real sources of infection, both
mental and physical. It is therefore not surprising to find that the
children of immigrants reared in American cities contribute twice as
many criminals as the sons of native whites of native stock. Our great
industrial centers show an enormous aggregation of foreigners. It is
said that these contain seven millions of the Slavs, the Latins, and
the Asiatics, and those whose racial background makes difficult the
conception of a democracy and their assimilation into it.
We confront a condition of grave peril to industrial interests as well
as to our national well-being when, in addition to the overcoming of
racial background, we must add the retarding effect of the segregation
of large foreign colonies in mining and industrial centers. Great numbers
of these aliens do not expect to become American citizens, but are here
only to accumulate sufficient capital to return. "Of all the immigrants
now comingone-third return to Europe and two-thirds of all those who
return remain there." These constitute largely a mobile migratory and
disturbing, unskilled wage-earning class.
They therefore are unfavorable to assimilative influences and tend
to establish in modified forms the standards and customs of the
communities from which they have come. "The town of Windber, in
Western Pennsylvania, has a population of 8000 persons and is the
center of twelve mining camps. It was founded by the opening of
bituminous coal mines, for which purpose 1600 experienced Englishmen
and 400 native Americans were brought into the locality. At the
present, eighteen races of recent immigration are numbered among its
mine workers. The Southern and Eastern Europeans among them have their
churches, banks, steamship agencies and business establishments in the
town to which they go to transact their affairs and to seek amusement."
"Another illustration is the recently established iron and steel
manufacturing community at Granite City and Madison, Illinois, which
has the distinction of being the largest Bulgarian colony in the United
States. These two cities join each other and for practical purposes are
one. Fifteen years ago its site was an unbroken stretch of corn fields.
The original wage-earners were English, Irish, Germans, Welsh and Poles;
then followed Slovaks, Magyars, a few Croatians. Mixed groups came next,
Roumanians, Greeks and Servians, and later Bulgarians, until that group
alone numbered 8000; later still, the foreigners were augmented by the
arrival of 4000 new immigrants--Armenians, Servians, Lithuanians, Slovaks,
Magyars and Poles. Under normal industrial conditions the population
of the community is estimated at 20,000 Here the various racial groups
live entirely apart from any American influence."
The New York Tribune states: "It is a somewhat startling
announcement that more than one-third of the adult male inhabitants
of New York City are unnaturalized aliens. There are, according to
the census, 1,433,749 males in the city, of twenty-one years or more,
and of these more than 500,000 have not become naturalized. In the
whole state there are 718,940 foreign-born white men of voting age
who have not become citizens. It needs no argument to prove that
this is not a desirable state of affairs, and that if perpetuated
it would be mischievous, if not disastrous."
From the figures collected in an investigation of four months in
New York City Night Court, it appears that 7.7 per cent of the
women arrested and convicted for keeping disorderly houses and
solicitation were foreign-born.
In New York City all the conditions created by immigration are
enormously accentuated, for within itself and its suburbs it has a
foreign population exceeding the whole population of Chicago.
"It is at once the largest Catholic city of history and the
largest Jewish city of history."
Statistics furnished by the industrial department of the Y.M.C.A.,
based upon the census of 1910, give the proportion of two out of every
three of the inhabitants of the following cities as foreign-born or of
foreign-born parentage.
181,511 Columbus 104,402 Spokane
233,650 Indianapolis 213,381 Denver
116,577 Dayton 207,214 Portland
248,381 Kansas City 558,485 Baltimore
319,198 Los Angeles 168,497 Toledo
237,194 Seattle 423,715 Buffalo
100,253 Albany 267,799 Jersey City, N.J.
124,096 Omaha 347,469 Newark, N.J.
137,249 Syracuse 224,326 Providence
687,029 St. Louis 102,054 Bridgeport
1,549,008 Philadelphia 465,766 Detroit
150,174 Oakland 104,839 Cambridge
112,571 Grand Rapids 560,603 Cleveland
218,149 Rochester 670,585 Boston
533,905 Pittsburgh 125,600 Paterson, N.J.
301,408 Minneapolis 373,857 Milwaukee
129,867 Scranton 2,185,283 Chicago
214,744 St. Paul 106,294 Lowell
145,986 Worcester 4,766,883 New York
133,605 New Haven 119,295 Fall River
This tabulation suggests all that these dominant cities represent
of congestion of industrial and social pressure, and their powerful
effects upon new Americans in their most impressionable period.
"The significant feature of the situation of which the foregoing
illustrations are typical," say such authorities as Prof. Jeremiah
W. Jenks and W. Jett Lanck, "is the almost complete ignorance and
indifference of the native American population to the recent immigrant
colonies and their condition. This attitude extends even to the native
churches. Comparatively few agencies have been established for the
Americanization and assimilation of Southern and Eastern European
wage-earners.
"Not only is a great field open for social and religious work, but
vast possibilities are offered for patriotic service in improving
these serious conditions which confront a self-governing republic."
That the crowding, struggling foreigner of many races and tongues
may take his place as a voting American, in whose hands rests a
predominating influence upon the present and future of this nation, it
is essential that he catch the vision of those fundamental, inspiring
ideals which have made America the hope of the hopeless, the very land
of promise, to the oppressed of the world.
He must be touched by an integrating force, a dynamic power, capable
of revealing and developing the inherent best in him and contributing
to him of the essential best in America.
"Religion alone answers this need in fullest measure. It is the great
quickening power which can resolve ancient inheritance of personal
and race antagonisms and hatreds into a struggle for higher individual
and community welfare."
Eternally true are the Master's words, "Man cannot live by bread
alone"; he must have the spiritual communion which can give to him
and to society the uplifting conception of the Fatherhood of God
and the brotherhood of man. This is the great integrating, harmonizing
power that the church of Christ must bring to the solving of America's
insistent immigrant problem.
* * * * *
Before taking up in detail the study of what Home Missions is
actually accomplishing as an integrating force, let us turn briefly
to consider some of the powerful disintegrating factors operative
among immigrants and their children.
Second to the great fact of labor and its demands in our cities is
the need and demand for recreation. The reaction from the monotony of
factory life, with its exacting, fatiguing tension of machine-tending,
and the crowdedness of the tenement home, sends the laboring multitudes
into the streets at night seeking diversion and amusement. This is
pre-eminently true of the young, who find commercialism waiting at
night to "extract from them their petty wages by pandering to their
love of pleasure" after having utilized their undeveloped labor power
in its factories and shops by day.
Jane Addams says, "The whole apparatus for supplying pleasure is
wretchedly inadequate and full of danger to whomsoever may
approach it.
"Who is responsible for its inadequacy and dangers? We certainly
cannot expect the fathers and mothers who have come to the city
from farms or who have immigrated from other lands to appreciate
or rectify these dangers of the city.
"We cannot expect the young people themselves to cling to
conventions which are totally unsuited to modern city conditions,
nor yet to be equal to the task of forming new conventions through
which this more agglomerate social life may express itself.
"The mass of these young people are possessed of good intentions
and would respond to amusements less demoralizing and dangerous,
if such were available at no greater cost than those now offered.
"Our attitude toward music is typical of our carelessness toward
all these things which make for common joy."
The vicious, sensuous music of the dance hall, with accompanying
words, often indecent and full of vulgar, suggestive appeal, are
permitted a vogue throughout the entire country.
No diagnosing of the immigrant city problem or understanding of
the task of securing civic righteousness can be obtained by Home
Mission women without realizing the place and influence of amusements
upon the lives of the young people of our land.
A noted English playwright stated that "the theatre is literally
making the minds of our urban population to-day. It is a huge factory
of sentiment, of character, of points of honor, of conception, of
conduct, of everything that finally determines the destiny of a nation."
Hundreds, yes, thousands of young people attend the five-cent
theatres every night, including Sunday, receiving the constant
effect of vulgar music and a debased and often vulgar and suggestive
dramatic art.
"Many immigrant parents," says Jane Addams, "are absolutely
bewildered by the keen absorption of their children in the cheap
theatres.
"One Sunday evening recently an investigation was made of four
hundred and sixty-six theatres in the city of Chicago, and it was
discovered that in the majority of them the leading theme was
revenge, the lover following his rival, the outraged husband
seeking his wife's paramour, or similar themes. It was estimated
that one-sixth of the entire population of the city had attended
the theatres on that day."
The same would generally be true of other large cities.
Nor is this low and vicious standard of cheap amusements confined
to large cities; it is bound to prevail also where our backward
people come into contact with white villages and communities. The
cock fights and other demoralizing amusements of Spanish-speaking
peoples and the dances of the Indians must be superseded by
entertainment that is wholesome and helpful.
Through its own agencies and as it co-operates with others
for betterment Home Missions must take into account the urgent
demand for wholesome amusement for those who, on account of the
conditions of their environment, are so much in need of the cheer
and joy of attractive and elevating forms of entertainment.
Home Missions responds to the cry of the city's need through the
ministry of the deaconess, who in turn is nurse, or visitor, or
leader of kindergarten, day nursery, rescue home, or orphanage.
* * * * *