EXPLORING MAIN STREET
J.W., Jr., found small opportunity to make himself obnoxious by becoming
a civic missionary before the time. He was busy enough with his
adjustment to the business life of "Delafield and Madison county," this
being the declared commercial sphere of the John W. Farwell Hardware
Company. J.W. always had known hardware, but hitherto in a purely
amateur and detached fashion. Now he lived with it, from tacks to
tractors, ten or twelve hours a day. He found that being the son of his
father gained him no safe conduct through the shop or with the
customers. He had a lot to learn, even if he was John Wesley Farwell,
Jr. That he was the heir apparent to all this array of cast iron and
wrought and galvanized, of tin and wire and steel and aluminum and
nickel, did not save him from aching back and skinned knuckles, nor from
the various initiations staged by the three or four other employees.
But he was getting his bearings, and not from the store and the
warehouse only. A good hardware store in a country town is a center of
democracy for town and country alike. In what other place do farmers and
artisans, country women and city women meet on so nearly equal terms?
Not in the postoffice, nor in the bank; and certainly not in the
department store. But the hardware store's customers, men and women all,
are masters of the tools they work with; and whoso loves the tools of
his craft is brother to every other craftsman.
It was in the store, therefore, that J.W. began to absorb some of the
knowledge and acquire some of the experiences that were to make his work
something to his town.
For one thing, he got a new view of local geography, in terms of tools.
All the farmers from the bottoms of Mill Creek called for pretty much
the same implements; the upland farms had different needs. The farmers'
wives who lived along the route of the creamery wagon had one sort of
troubles with tinware; the women of the fruit farms another. J.W. knew
this by the exchange of experiences he listened to while he sold milk
strainers and canning outfits. He found out that the people on the edge
of town who "made garden" were particular about certain tools and
equipment which the wheat farmer would not even look at.
And the townpeople he learned to classify in the same way. He was soon
on good terms with those store clerks who were handy men about the
house, with women who did all their own work, with blacksmiths and
carpenters, with unskilled laborers and garage mechanics. In time he
could almost tell where a man lived and what he did for a living, just
by the hardware he bought and the questions he asked about it.
Heretofore J.W. had thought he knew most of the people in Delafield.
But the first weeks in the store showed him that he knew only a few. Up
to this time "most of the people in Delafield" had meant, practically,
his school friends, the clerks and salespeople in certain stores--and
the members of the First Methodist Church.
That is to say, in the main, to him Delafield had been the church, and
the church had been Delafield. But now he realized that his church was
only a small part of Delafield. The town had other churches. It had
lodges. When the store outfitted Odd Fellows' Hall with new window
shades he learned that the Odd Fellows shared the place with strong
lodges of the Maccabees and Modern Woodmen. And there were other halls.
J.W. Farwell, Sr., was a Mason, but these other lodges seemed to have as
many members as the Masons, and one or the other of them was always
getting ready for a big public display.
The same condition was true of the country people. He began to hear
about the Farm Federation, and the Grange, and the Farmers' Elevator,
and the cooperative creamery, for members of all of these groups passed
in and out of the store.
One day J.W. remarked to the pastor who had dropped into the store: "Mr.
Drury, I never noticed before how this place is alive with societies and
clubs and lodges and things. Everybody seems to belong to three or four
organizations. And they talk about 'em! But I don't hear much about our
church, and nothing at all about the old church out at Deep Creek. Yet
I used to think that the church was the whole thing!"
The older man nodded. "It's true, J.W.," he said, "all the churches
together are only a small part of the community. They are the best, and
usually the best-organized forces we have, I'm sure of that; but the
church and the town have to reckon with these others."
"What good are they all? They must cost a pile of money. What for?"
"That's what you might call a whale of a question, J.W." John W.
Farwell, Senior, who had been standing by, listening, essayed to answer.
"And you haven't heard yet of all the organizations. Look at me, for
example. I belong to the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. I'm on
the Executive Committee of the Madison County Horticultural Society, and
I've just retired from the Board of Directors of the Civic League. Then
you must think of the political parties, and the County Sunday School
Association, and the annual Chautauqua, and I don't know what all."
"Yes, and I notice, dad, that a good many of these," said J.W., Jr.,
"are just for the men. The women must have nearly as many. Why,
Delafield ought to be a model town, and the country 'round here ought to
be a regular paradise, with all these helpers and uplifters on the job.
But it isn't. Maybe they're not all on the job."
"That's about it, my boy," his father agreed "I sometimes think we need
just one more organization--a society that would never meet, but between
the meetings of all the other societies would actually get done the
things they talk about and pass resolutions about and then go off and
forget until the next meeting."
"Well, dad, what I want to find out," J.W. said, as he started off with
Mr. Drury to the post office, "is where the church heads in. Mr. Drury
is sure it has a big responsibility, and maybe it has. But what is it
willing to do and able to do, and what will the town let it do? It seems
to me that is the question."
J.W. heard his father's voice echoing after him up the street, "Sure,
that is the question," and Mr. Drury added, "Three questions in one."
J.W. found himself taking notice in a way he had not done before through
all his years in Delafield. As might be expected, he had come home from
college with new ideas and new standards. The town looked rather more
sordid and commonplace than was his boy's remembrance of it. Of late it
had taken to growing, and a large part of its development had come
during his college years. So he must needs learn his own town all over
again.
Cherishing his young college graduate's vague new enthusiasm for a
better world, he had little sympathy with much that Delafield opinion
acclaimed as progress.
The Delafield Daily Dispatch carried at its masthead every afternoon one
or more of such slogans as these: "Be a Delafield Booster," "Boost for
more Industries," "Put Delafield on the Map," "Double Delafield in Half
a Decade," "Delafield, the Darling of Destiny," "Watch Delafield Grow,
but Don't Stop Boosting to Rubber."
These were taken by many citizens as a sort of business gospel; any
"theorist" who ventured to question the wisdom of bringing more people
to town, whether the town's business could give them all a decent living
or not, was told to sell his hammer and buy a horn. J.W. said nothing;
he was too young and too recent a comer into the town's business life.
But he could not work up any zeal for this form of town "loyalty."
A big cannery had been built down near the river, where truck gardens
flourished, and there was a new furniture factory at the edge of the
freight yards. Hereabouts a lot of supremely ugly flats had gone up, two
families to each floor and three stories high; and in J.W.'s eyes the
rubbish and disorder and generally slattern appearance of the region was
no great addition to Delafield's attractions.
Still more did the tumbledown shacks in the neighborhood of the cannery
offend the eyes and, to be frank, the ears and nose as well. It was a
forlorn-looking lot of hovels, occupied by listless, frowsy adults and
noisy children. Here existence seemed to be a grim caricature of life;
the children, the only symbol of abundance to be seen, continued to be
grotesque in their very dirt. What clothes they had were second or
third-hand garments too large for them, which they seemed to be
perpetually in danger of losing altogether.
To J.W., Delafield had always been a town of homes; but in these dismal
quarters there was little to answer to the home idea. They were merely
places where people contrived to camp for a time, longer or shorter;
none but a Gradgrind could call them homes.
One of the factory foremen was a great admirer of Mr. Drury, who
introduced him to J.W. one day when the foreman had come to the store
for some tools. He had talked with J.W., and in time a rather casual
friendliness developed between them. It was this same Foreman Angus
MacPherson, a Scot with a name for shrewdness, who gave the boy his
first glimpse of what the factory and the cannery meant to
Delafield--especially the factory.
J.W. was down at the factory to see about some new band-saws that had
been installed; and, his errand finished, he stopped for a chat with
Angus.
"This factory wasn't here when I went off to college," he said. "What
ever brought it to Delafield?"
At that MacPherson was off to a perfect start.
"Ye see, my boy," he began, "Delafield is so central it is a good town
for a good-working plant; freights on lumber and finished stuff are not
so high as in some places. And then there's labor. Lots of husky fellows
around here want better than farm wages, and they want a chance at town
life as well. Men from the big cities, with families, hope to find a
quieter, cheaper place to live. So we've had no trouble getting help.
Skill isn't essential for most of the work. It's not much of a trick
nowadays to get by in most factories--the machines do most of the
thinking for you, and that's good in some ways. Only the men that 'tend
the machines can't work up much pride in the output. Things go well
enough when business is good. But when the factory begins to run short
time, and lay men off, like it did last winter, there's trouble."
J.W. wanted to know what sort of trouble.
"Oh, well," said MacPherson, "strikes hurt worst at the time, but
strikes are just like boils, a sign of something wrong inside. And
short-time and lay-offs--well, ye can't expect the factory to go on
making golden oak rockers just to store in the sheds. Somebody has to
buy 'em. But the boys ain't happy over four-day weeks, let alone no jobs
at all."
His sociology professor at Cartwright, J.W. recalled, had talked a good
deal about the labor question, but maybe this foreman knew something
about it too. So J.W. put it up to him: "What is at the bottom of it
all, MacPherson? What makes the thing the papers call 'labor unrest'?"
MacPherson hesitated a moment. Then he settled himself more comfortably
on a pile of boards and proceeded to deliver his soul, or part of it.
"I can tell you; but there's them that would ship me out of town if I
talked too much, so I'll have to be careful. John Wesley, you've got a
grand name, and the church John Wesley started has a good name, though
it's not my church. I'm a Scot, you know. But I know your preacher, and
he and I are of the same mind about this, I know. Well, then, if your
Methodist Church could find a method with labor, it would get hold of
the same sort of common people as the ones who heard Jesus gladly. These
working-men are not in the way of being saints, ye ken, but they think
that somewhere there is a rotten spot in the world of factories and
shops and mills. They think they learn from experience, who by the way,
is the dominie of a high-priced school, that they get most of the losses
and few of the profits of industry. They get a living wage when times
are good. When times are bad they lose the one thing they've got to
sell, and that's their day's work; when a loafing day is gone there's
nothing to show for it, and no way to make it up. Maybe that's as it
should be, but the worker can't see it, especially if the boss can still
buy gasoline and tires when the plant is idle. Oh, yes, laddie, I know
the working man is headstrong. I'll tell you privately, I think he's a
fool, because so often he gets into a blind rage and wants to smash the
very tools that earn his bite and sup. He may have reason to hate some
employer, but why hate the job? It's a good job, if he makes good
chairs. He goes on strike, many's the time, without caring that it hurts
him and his worse than it hurts the boss. And often the boss thinks he
wants nothing bigger than a few more things. Maybe he _is_ wild for a
phonograph and a Ford and golden oak rockers of his own in the parlor,
and photographs enlarged in crayon hanging on the walls--and a steady
job. But, listen to me, John Wesley, Jr., and you'll be a credit to your
namesake: these wild, unreasonable workers, with all their foolishness
and sometimes wickedness, are whiles dreaming of a different world, a
better world for everybody. 'Twould be no harm if some bosses dreamed
more about that too, me boy. Your preacher--he's a fine man too, is Mr.
Drury--he understands that, and he wants to use it for something to
build on. That's why I tell folks he's a Methodist preacher with a real
method in his ministry. Now I'll quit me fashin' and get back to the
job. I doubt you'll be busy yourself this afternoon."
He gripped J.W.'s hand, so that the knuckles were unable to forget him
all day, but what he had said gripped harder than his handshake. If the
furniture factory was a mixed blessing, what of the cannery?
Somewhat to his own surprise, J.W. was getting interested in his town,
but if at first he was inclined to wonder how he happened to develop all
this new concern, he soon ceased to think of it. So slight a matter
could not stay in the front of his thinking when he really began to know
something of the Delafield to which he had never paid much attention.
It was through Joe Carbrook that he got his next jolt. Joe, now spending
his vacations in ways that amazed people who had memories of his wild
younger manner, was in and out of the Farwell store a good deal. Also he
spent considerable time with Pastor Drury, though there is no record of
what they talked about.
"J.W., old boy," Joe asked one day, coming away from the pastor's
study, "have you ever by any chance observed Main Street?"
"Why, yes," J.W. answered, "seeing that two or three or four times a day
I walk six blocks of it back and forth to this store door, I suppose I
have."
"Oh, yes, that way," Joe came back at him, "and you've seen me, a
thousand times. But did you ever observe me? My ears, for instance," and
he put his hands over them. "Which one is the larger?"
Without in the least understanding what his friend was driving at, and
stupidly wondering if he ever had noticed any difference in Joe's ears,
J.W. stared with inane bewilderment. "Is one really larger than the
other?" he asked, helplessly.
Joe took his hands down, and laughed. "I knew it," he said. "You've
never observed my ears, and yet you think you have observed Main Street.
As it happens, each of my ears takes the same-sized ear-muff. But you
didn't know it. Well, never mind ears; I'm thinking about Main Street.
What do you know of Main Street?"
J.W. thought he could make up for the ear question. So he said, boldly,
"Joe Carbrook, I can name every place from here to the livery barn
north, and from here to the bridge south, on both sides of the street.
Want me to prove it?"
"No, J.W., I don't. I reckon you can. But I believe you're still as
blind as I've been about Main Street, just the same. I know Chicago
pretty well and I doubt if there's as big a percentage of graft and
littleness and dollar-pinching and going to the devil generally on
State Street or Wabash Avenue as there is an Main Street, Delafield."
"You're not trying to say that our business men are crooks, are you,
Joe?" J.W. asked, with a touch of resentment. "You know I happen to be
connected with a business house on Main Street myself."
"Sure, I know it, and there's Marshall Field's on State Street, and Lyon
& Healy's on Wabash Avenue, and Hart, Schaffner & Marx over by the
Chicago River; just the same as here. But I--well, of course, there's a
story back of it all. Mother heard a couple of weeks ago that one of our
old Epworth League girls was having a hard time of it--she's working at
the Racket store, helping to support her folks. They've had sickness,
and the girl doesn't get big wages. So mother asked me to look her up.
Mother can't get about very easily, you know, and since I'm studying
medicine she seems to think I'm the original Mr. Fix-It. I made a few
discreet inquiries, discreet, that is, for me, and can you guess who
that girl is? You can't, I know. Well, she's Alma Wetherell, and that's
the identical girl who gave me such a dressing down one day at the
Cartwright Institute four years ago. Remember? Say, J.W., that day she
told me so much of the deadly truth about myself that I hated her even
more for knowing what to say than I did for saying it. But she had a big
lot to do with waking me up, and I owe her something."
J.W. had not remembered the Institute incident. But he recalled that
Alma was at Cartwright that summer, and he had seen her at church
occasionally since he came home from college. She was living in town and
working in some store or other he knew, but that was all.
"What did you find out?" he asked Joe.
"I found out enough so that Alma has a better job, and things are going
easier at home. But that was just a starter. My brave John Wesley, do
you remember your college sociology and economics and civics and all the
rest? Never mind confessing; you don't; I didn't either. But I began to
review 'em in actual business practice. First I told the right merchant
what sort of a bookkeeper I had found slaving away for ten dollars a
week on the dark, smelly balcony of the Racket--and he's given Alma a
job at twenty in a sun-lighted office. Then I told Mr. Peters of the
Racket what I had done, and why. He didn't like it, but it will do him
good. That made me feel able to settle anything, and I'm looking around
for my next joy as journeyman rescuer and expert business adjuster.
Honest, J.W., I've not seen near all there is to see, but I'm swamped
already. You've got to come along, you and some others, and see for
yourself what's the matter with Main Street."
Not all at once, but before very long, J.W. shared Joe's aroused
interest. Pastor Drury was with them, of course; and the three called
into consultation a few other capable and trustworthy men and women.
Marcia Dayne had come home for a few weeks' holiday, and at once
enlisted. Alma Wetherell was able to give some highly significant
suggestions.
There was no noise of trumpets, and no publicity of any sort. Mr. Drury
insisted that what they needed first and most was not newspaper
attention, and not even organization, but exact information. So for many
days a group of puzzled and increasingly astonished people set about the
study of their own town's principal street, as though they had never
seen it before. And, in truth, they never had.
It was no different from all other small town business districts. The
Gem Theater vied with the Star and the Orpheum in lavish display of
gaudy posters advertising pictures that were "coming to-morrow," and in
two weeks of observation the investigators learned what sort of moving
pictures Delafield demanded, or, at least what sort it got. They took
note of the Amethyst Coterie's Saturday night dances--"Wardrobe, 50
cents, Ladies Free"--and of the boys and girls who patronized the place.
The various cigar and pocket-billiards combinations were quietly
observed, some of the observers learning for the first time that young
men are so determined to get together that they are not to be deterred
by dirt or bad air or foul and brainless talk.
The candy stores with soda fountains and some of the drug stores which
served refreshments took on a new importance. Instead of being no more
than handy purveyors of sweets, of soft drinks and household remedies,
they were seen to be also social centers, places for "dates" and
telephone flirtations and dalliance. Much of their doings was the merest
silly time-killing, but generally the youthful patrons welcomed all this
because it was a change from the empty dullness of homes that had missed
the home secret, and from the still duller and wasting monotony of
uninteresting toil.
It was Pastor Drury who suggested the explanation for all these forms of
profitless and often dangerous amusement. He was chatting with the whole
group one night, and merely happened to address himself first to J.W.,
Jr.
Your great namesake, J.W., was so much a part of his day that he
believed with most other great religious thinkers of his time that play
was a device of the devil. His belief belonged to eighteenth-century
theology and psychology. But even more it grew out of the vicious
diversions of the rich and the brutalizing amusements of the poor. Both
were bad, and there was not much middle ground. But here on Main Street
we see people, most of them young, who feel, without always
understanding why, that they simply must be amused. They feel it so
strongly that they will pay any price for it if circumstances won't let
them get it any other way. And Main Street is ready to oblige them.
There could be no amusement business if people were not clamoring to be
amused. And we know now why we have no right to say that all this clamor
is the devil's prompting. Isn't it queer that the church is only now
beginning to believe in the genuineness and wholesomeness of the play
instinct, though it is a proper and natural human hunger? Literally
everybody wants to play.
"People pay more for the gratification of this hunger than they do for
bread or shoes or education or religion. They take greater moral risks
for it than they do for money. We have seen people who undoubtedly are
going to the devil by the amusement route, unless something is done to
stop them. They go wrong quicker and oftener in their play than in their
work. Are we going to be content with denouncing the dance hall and the
poolroom and the vile pictures and the loose conduct of the soft-drink
places and Electric Park? Haven't we some sort of duty to see that every
young person in Delafield has a chance at first-hand, enjoyable, and
decent play?"
All agreed that the pastor was right, though they were not so clear
about what could be done.
But commercialized amusement was not all they found in their quiet
voyages of discovery up and down Main Street.
The chain stores had come to Delafield--not the "5 and 10" only, but
stores which specialized in groceries, tobacco, shoes, dry goods, drugs,
and other commodities. Alongside of them were the locally owned stores.
Altogether, Main Street had far too many stores to afford good service
or reasonable prices. With all this duplication on the one hand, and
absentee-control on the other, Main Street was a street of
underlings--clerks and salespeople and delivery men. That condition
produced low wages and inefficient methods, many of the workers being
too young to be out of school and too dense to show any intelligence
about the work they were supposed to do. Cheap help was costly, and the
efficient help was scarcely to be found at any price.
The investigators were frankly dismayed at the extent and complexity of
the situation. They had thought to find occasional cases calling for
adjustment, or even for the law. But instead they had found a whole
fabric of interwoven questions--amusements, wages, competition,
cooperation, ignorance, vulgarity, vice, cheapness, trickery, "business
is business." True, they had found more honest businesses than shady
ones, more faithful clerks than shirkers, more decent people in the
pleasure resorts than doubtful people. But the total of folly and evil
was very great; could the church do anything to decrease it?
And that question led the little company of inquisitive Christians into
yet wider reaches of inquiry. J.W. and Joe and Marcia at Mr. Drury's
suggestion agreed to be a sort of unofficial committee to find out about
the churches of Delafield. He told them that this was first of all a
work for laymen. The preachers might come in later.
Joe invited the others to the new Carbrook home on the Heights into
which his people had lately moved. The Heights was a new thing to
J.W.--a rather exclusive residential quarter which had been laid out
park-wise in the last four or five years; with houses in the midst of
wide lawns, a Heights club house and tennis courts and an exquisite
little Gothic church.
"When our folks first talked about moving out here I thought it was all
right; and I do yet, in some ways," explained Joe. "But the Heights is
getting a little too good for me; I'm not as keen about being exclusive
as I used to be. I've thought lately that exclusiveness may be just as
bad for people inside the gates, as for the people outside. But here we
are, as the Atlantic City whale said when the ebb tide stranded it in
front of the Board Walk. What are we up to, us three?"
"We're up to finding out about the town churches," said J.W. "Maybe they
can help the town more than they do, but we don't know how, and so far
we haven't found anybody else who knows how."
And Marcia said: "At least we know some things. We have the figures.
About one Delafield citizen in seven goes to church or Sunday school on
Sunday. Church membership is one in ten. And as many people go to the
movies and the Columbia vaudeville and the dance halls and poolrooms on
Saturday as go to church on Sunday, to say nothing of the crowds that go
on the other five days."
Joe Carbrook whistled. "That's a tough nut to crack, gentle people," he
said, "because you've simply got to think of those other five days. The
chances are that four times as many people in Delafield go to other
public places as go to church and Sunday school."
"What can the churches do?" asked J.W. "You can't make people go to
church."
"No," assented Marcia, "and if you could, it would be foolish. We want
to make people like the churches, not hate them. One thing I believe our
churches can do is to put their public services more into methods and
forms that don't have to be taken for granted or just mentally dodged.
Half the time people don't know what a religious service really stands
for."
"Meaning by that----?" Joe queried, as much to hear Marcia talk as for
the sake of what she might say.
"Well, they have seen and heard it since they were children. When they
were little they didn't understand it, and now it is so familiar that
they forget they don't understand it," Marcia responded, not wholly
oblivious of Joe's strategy, but too much in earnest to care. "I've
heard of a successful preacher in the East who seems to be making them
understand. He says he tries to put into each service four
things--light, music, motion; that is, change--and a touch of the
dramatic. Why not? I think it could be done without destroying the
solemnity of the worship. They did it in the Temple at Jerusalem, and
they do it in Saint Peter's at Rome and in Westminster Abbey and Saint
John's Cathedral in New York. Why shouldn't we do it here in our little
churches?"
"Make a note of it, J.W.," ordered Joe. "It's worth suggesting to some
of the preachers."
J.W. made his note, rather absently, and offered a conclusion of his
own:
"The church must take note of the town's sore spots too. I've found out
that crowding people in tenements and shacks means disease and
immorality. Isn't that the church's affair? Angus MacPherson has taught
me that when the jobs are gone little crimes come, followed by bigger
ones; and sickness comes too, with the death rate going up. Babies are
born to unmarried mothers, and babies, with names or without, die off a
lot faster in the river shacks and the east side tenements than they do
up this way. Maybe the church couldn't help all this even if it knew;
but I'm for asking it to know."
"I'll vote for that," Joe asserted, "if you'll vote for my proposition,
which is this: our churches must quit trying just to be prosperous; they
must quit competing for business like rival barkers at a street fair;
they must begin to find out that their only reason for existence is the
service they can give to those who need it most; they've got to believe
in each other and work with each other and with all the other town
forces that are trying to make a better Delafield."
"That's right," said J.W. "I was talking to Mr. Drury this morning, and
I asked him what he would think of our starting a suggestion list. He
said it ought to be a fine thing. But he wants us to do it all
ourselves. Just the same, we can take our suggestions to him, and then,
if he believes in them, he can talk to the other preachers about them,
and, of course, about any ideas of his own. Because you know, I'm pretty
sure he has been thinking about all this a good deal longer than we
have."
It was agreed that the list should be started. Marcia was not willing
to keep it to themselves; she wanted to have it talked about in League
and Sunday school and prayer meeting, and then, when everybody had been
given the chance to add to it, and to improve on it--but not to weaken
it--that it be put out for general discussion among all the churches.
"And then," said Joe Carbrook, "we might call it 'The Everyday Doctrines
of Delafield,' If we stick to the things every citizen will admit he
ought to believe and do, the churches will still have all the chance
they have now to preach those things which must be left to the
individual conscience."
That was the beginning of a document with which Delafield was to become
very familiar in the months which followed; never before had the town
been so generally interested in one set of ideas, and to this day you
can always start a conversation there by mentioning the "Everyday
Doctrines of Delafield," The Methodist preacher gave them their final
form, but he took no credit for the substance of them, though, secretly,
he was vastly proud that the young people, and especially J.W., should
have so thoroughly followed up his first suggestion of a civic creed.
THE EVERYDAY DOCTRINES OF DELAFIELD
1. Every part of Delafield is as much Delafield as any other
part We are citizens of a commonwealth, and Delafield should
be in fact as well as name a democratic community.
2. Whenever two Delafield citizens can better do something
for the town than one could do it, they should get together.
And the same holds good for twenty citizens, or a hundred, or
a thousand. One of the town's mottoes should be, "Delafield
Is Not Divided."
3. Everything will help Delafield if it means better people,
in better homes, with better chances at giving their children the
right bringing-up, but anything which merely means more people,
or more money, or more business is likely to cost more than it
comes to. We will boost for Delafield therefore, but we will
first be careful.
4. Every part of Delafield is entitled to clean streets and plenty
of air, water, and sunlight. It is perhaps possible to be a Christian
amid ugliness and filth, but it is not easy, and it is not
necessary.
5. Every family in Delafield has the right to a place that can
be made into a home, at a cost that will permit of family self-respect,
proper privacy, and the ordinary decencies of civilized living.
Every case of poverty in Delafield should be considered as
a reflection on the town, as being preventable and curable by
remedies which any town that is careful of its good name
can apply.
6. Delafield believes that beauty pays better than ugliness.
Therefore she is for trees and flowers, green lawns, and clean
streets, paint where it properly belongs, and everybody setting
a good example by caring for his own premises and so inciting
his neighbor to outdo him.
7. The only industries Delafield needs are those which can
provide for their operation without forcing workers to be idle
so much of the time as to reduce apparent income, and so to
cause poverty, sickness, and temptation to wrongdoing. The
standard of income ought to be for the year, and not by the
day; in the interest of homes rather than in the interest of lodging
houses and lunch rooms.
8. Delafield can support, or should find ways to support, the
workers needed in her stores, shops, and factories, at fair pay,
without making use of children, who should continue in school,
and without reckoning on the desperation of those made poor
by their dependence on a job.
9. Amusements in Delafield can be and ought to be clean,
self-respecting, and available for everybody. This calls for playgrounds
and weekday playtime, as well as plenty of recreational
opportunities provided by the churches, without money-making
features.
10. The forms of amusement provided for pay can be and
should be influenced by public opinion, positively expressed,
rather than by public indifference. Any picture house would
rather be praised for bringing a good picture to town than condemned
for showing a bad one. Picture people enjoy praise as much as preachers
do.
11. Delafield's many organizations should tell the whole town
what they are trying to do, so that unnecessary duplication of
plan and purpose may first be discovered and then done away with.
12. Whenever a Delafield church, or club, or society, proposes
to engage in a work that is to benefit the town, the plan ought
to be made known, and in due time the results should be published
as widely as was the plan. This will help us to learn by
our Delafield failures as well as by our Delafield successes.
13. The churches of Delafield are Delafield property, as the
schools are, though paid for in a different way. Neither schools
nor churches exist for their own sakes, but for Delafield, and
then some.
14. Every church in Delafield should have a definite parish,
and every well-defined section or group should have a church.
The churched should lead in providing for the unchurched, and
the overchurched might spare out of their abundance of workers
and equipment some of the resources that are needed.
15. The first concern of all the churches should be to reach
the unchurched and to make church friends of the church-haters.
This goes for all the churches; it is more important to get the
sense of God and principles of Jesus into the thought of the
whole town than to set Protestant and Roman Catholic in mutually
suspicious and hateful opposition; devout Jew and sincere
Christian must realize that righteousness in Delafield cannot be
attended to by either without the other.
16. The churches of Delafield believe that all matters of social
concern--work, wages, housing, health, amusement, and morals--are
part of every church's business. Therefore they will not
cease to urge their members always to deal with these matters as
Christian citizens, not merely as Christians.
17. Every child and young person in Delafield ought to be in
the day school on weekdays, and in Sunday school on Sunday.
Delafield discourages needless absence from one as much as
from the other.
18. Delafield wants the best possible teachers teaching in all
her schools. She insists on trained teachers on week days, and
needs them on Sundays. Therefore she believes that teacher-training
is part of every church's duty to Delafield.
"There's one thing about all this that bothers me," said J.W. when they
had finished the final draft of the Every Day Doctrines, "not that it's
the only one; but some of these Doctrines stand small chance of being
put into practice until the church people are willing to spend more
money on such work. It can't be done on the present income of the
churches, or by the usual money-raising methods."
"That's a fact," Joe Carbrook agreed. "I'd already made up my mind that
the Carbrooks would have to dig a little deeper, and so must everybody
else who cares."
"Yes, but how to get everybody else to care; that's the trouble," J.W.
persisted. "Dad's one of the stewards, you know, and they find it no
easy job to collect even what the church needs now. They have a deficit
to worry with every year, almost."
Marcia Dayne was the only other member of the "Let's Know Delafield"
group who happened to be present at this last meeting. She had been
waiting for a chance to speak. "I'm surprised at you two," she said.
"Don't you know the only really workable financial way out?"
"Well, not exactly," J.W. admitted. "I suppose if we could only get
people to care more, they would give more. It's a matter of letting them
know the need and all that, I guess. For instance--"
Marcia was not ready for his "for instances." "John Wesley, Jr.," she
interrupted with mock severity, "as a thinker you have shone at times
with a good deal more brilliance than that. If you had said it just the
other way 'round you would have been nearer right. People _will_ give if
they care, of course, but it is even more certain that they will care if
they give. The thing we need is to show them how to give."
Joe Carbrook broke into an incredulous laugh. "In other words, my fair
Marcia, you want Christians to give before they care what it is they are
giving to, or even know about it. Don't you think our church will be a
long time financing the Every Day Doctrines on that system?"
Joe and Marcia never hesitated to take opposite sides in a discussion,
and always with good-humored frankness. So Marcia came back promptly: "I
know you think it unreasonable," she said, "but there's a condition you
overlook. We became Christians long before any of us thought about
studying Delafield's needs. And if we and all the rest of the Christians
of the town had accepted our financial relation to the Kingdom and had
acted on it from the start, there would always be money enough and to
spare."
"Oh, yes," Joe said understandingly, "I see now. You mean the tithe."
Marcia knew, no matter how, that Joe had begun to think about tithing,
and this seemed the opportune time to stress it a little more. It could
help the Every Day Doctrines, and both Joe and J.W. were keen for that.
So Marcia admitted that she did mean the tithe. "I don't pretend to know
how it began, any more than I know how real homes were established after
the Fall, or how keeping Sunday began; I do know these began long before
there was any fourth or fifth commandment, or any Children of Israel.
And I've gone over all the whole subject with Mr. Drury--he has a lot of
practical pamphlets on the tithe. I believe that it is the easiest,
surest, fairest and cheerfulest way of doing two Christian things at
once--acknowledging God's ownership of all we have, and going into
partnership with God in his work for the world, what the books sometimes
call Christian Stewardship."
"I'd like to see those pamphlets," said J.W.
"It's queer you haven't seen them before this," said Marcia. "Mr. Drury
has distributed hundreds of them. But maybe that was when you were away
at Cartwright. Anyway, I'll get some for you."
Joe was holding his thought to the main matter. "Marcia," said he, "if
you can make good on what you said just now, pamphlets or no pamphlets,
I'll agree to become a tither. First, to start where you did, how is
tithing easier than giving whenever you feel like giving?"
Now, though Marcia expected no such challenge, she was game. "I'm not
the one to prove all that, but I believe what I said, and I'll try to
make good, as you put it. But please don't say 'give' when you talk
about tithing, or even about any sort of financial plan for Christians.
The first word is 'pay,' Giving comes afterward. Well, then; tithing is
the easiest way, because when you are a tither you always have tithing
money. You begin by setting the tenth apart for these uses, and it is no
more hardship to pay it out than to pay out any other money that you
have been given with instructions for its use."
"Not bad, at all," said Joe. "Now tell us why it is the surest way of
using a Christian's money."
By this time Marcia was beginning to enjoy herself. "It is the surest
because it almost collects itself. No begging; no schemes. You have
tithing money on hand--and you have, almost always--therefore you don't
need to be coaxed into thinking you can spare it. If the cause is a real
claim, that's all you need to find out. And when you begin to put money
into any cause you're going to get interested in that cause. Besides,
when all Christians tithe there will be more than enough money for every
good work."
J.W. had not thought much of the tithe except as being one of those
religious fads, and he knew that every church had a few religious
faddists. But he had long cherished a vast respect for Marcia's good
sense, and what she was saying seemed reasonable enough. He wondered if
it could be backed up by evidence.
Joe smilingly took up the next excellence of the tithe which Marcia had
named. "Let me see; did you say that the tithe is the fairest of all
Christian financial schemes?"
"Not that, exactly," Marcia corrected. "I said it was the fairest way of
acknowledging God's ownership and of working with him in partnership.
And it is. It puts definiteness in the place of whim. It is proportional
to our circumstances. It is not difficult. Mr. Drury says that forty
years' search has failed to find a tither who has suffered hardship
because of paying the tithe."
"Well, Joe," J.W. put in, "if Marcia can produce the evidence on these
three points, you may as well take the fourth for granted. If tithing is
the easiest, surest and fairest plan of Christian Stewardship, seems to
me it's just got to be cheerful. I'm going to look into it, and if she's
right, as I shouldn't wonder, it's up to you and me to get our finances
onto the ten per cent basis."
Joe was never a reluctant convert to anything. When he saw the new way,
his instinct was for immediate action. "Let's go over to Mr. Drury's,"
he proposed, "and see if we can't settle this thing to-day. I hope
Marcia's right," and he looked into her eyes with a glance of something
more than friendly, "and if she is I'm ready to begin tithing to-day."
Pastor Drury, always a busy man, reckoned interviews like this as urgent
business always. Not once nor twice, but many times in the course of a
year, his quiet, indirect work resulted in similar expeditions to his
study, and as a rule he knew about when to expect them. He produced the
pamphlets, added a few suggestions of his own, and let the three young
people do most of the talking. They stayed a long time, no one caring
about that.
As they were thanking the pastor, before leaving, Joe said with his
usual directness, "Marcia _was_ right, and here's where I begin to be a
systematic Christian as far as my dealings with money are concerned."
J.W., not in the least ashamed to follow Joe's lead, said, "Same here.
Wish I'd known it sooner. Now we've got to preach it."
And Joe said to Mr. Drury, in the last moment at the door, "Mr. Drury,
if we could all get a conscience about the tithe, and pay attention to
that conscience, half the Everyday Doctrines would not even need to be
stated. They would be self-evident. And the other half could be put into
practice with a bang!"
The Delafield _Dispatch_ got hold of a copy of the "Everyday Doctrines"
and printed the whole of it with a not unfavorable editorial comment,
under the caption "When Will All This Come True?"
But Walter Drury, when he saw it, said to himself, "It has already come
true in a very real sense, for John Wesley, Jr., and these others
believe in it." And he knew it marked one more stage of the Experiment,
so that he could thank God and take courage.