LIFE AND DOUBT ON THE BOTTOMS
While studying the social conditions of this city, I took a residence
on the banks of the river among the squatters. There were about
fifteen hundred people living in shacks on this "no man's land." My
residence was a shack for which I paid three dollars a month. It was
at the bottom of a big clay bank, and not far from where the city
dumped its garbage. There was neither church nor chapel in this
neglected district, and the people were mostly foreigners; but the
children all spoke English.
During the early part of my stay in that shack, I entered my first
great period of doubting--doubt as to the moral order of the universe,
doubt on the question of God. I had gone through some great soul
struggles, but this was the greatest. It was for a time the eclipse of
my soul. For weeks I lived behind closed doors--I was shut in with my
soul. But the community around me called in a thousand ways for help,
for guidance, for instruction, and I opened the door of my shack and
invited the children in. I organized a Sunday School and taught them
ethics and religion. I got up little entertainments for them. I
procured a stereopticon, gave them lectures on my experience in Egypt,
and lectures on art, biography and history. I had a peculiar method of
advertising these lectures. I informed the little cripple boy on the
corner. He whispered the information to a section of the huts, at the
farthest end of which a golden-haired courier informed another
section; so that by the time the lecture was scheduled to begin, my
audience was ready, and most of them slid down the clay bank in front
of my door. Later I went out through the surrounding towns and cities,
lecturing, and raised money for a chapel, and we called it the "Chapel
of the Carpenter."
I never knew the meaning of the incarnation until I lived on "the
bottoms" with the squatters. I talked of great characters of history;
I reviewed great books. I travelled with these children over the great
highways of history, science and art, and very soon we had a strong
Sunday School, and helpers came from the city--but the door of my own
soul was still shut. It seemed to me that my soul was dead. I was
without hope for myself: everything around me was dark. Sometimes I
locked the door and tried to pray, but no words came, nor
thoughts--not a ray of light penetrated the darkness. My mind and
intellect became duller and duller. It was at this time that I came
across the writings of Schopenhauer; and Schopenhauer suggested to me
a method of relief. I may be doing him an injustice, but it was his
philosophy that made me reason that, as I did not ask to come into
life and had no option, I had a right to go out of it. There was
nothing spasmodic in the development of my thought along this line: it
was cold, calm reasoning; I had determined to go out of life. So, with
the same calm deliberation that I cooked my breakfast, I destroyed
every vestige of my correspondence; and, one night went to the river
to seek relief. I was sitting on the end of a log when a man, who had
been working twelve hours in a packing-house, came out to smoke, after
his supper. He had not washed himself. His bloody shirt stuck to his
skin--he was haggard, pale; and we dropped naturally into
conversation. In language intelligible to him I asked him what life
meant to him.
"The kids," he said, "that's what it means to me. I work like one of
the things I kill every day--I kill hundreds of them, thousands of
them every day. I go home and eat like one of them, and sleep like one
of them, and go back to hog it again like one of them."
"Do you get tired?"
"Tired? Tired as hell!"
"I mean--tired of life?"
"Oh, no," he said, "I aint livin' the best kind of a life, but what I
have is better than none. I don't know what's beyond--if there is any
life or none at all; but something in me makes me stick to this one.
Besides, if there is any chance for a better life here, he must be a
damned coward that would go out of it and leave it undone. Good
night."
I saw him retreat to his shack among the tall weeds. I heard the door
close. I fancied him lie down in a heap in the corner and go to sleep.
He was a better philosopher than I was, and he had called me a coward,
but he had not altered my determination. I began to sweat. It was like
the action of a fever on my body, and I became very nervous; but I was
determined to meet the crisis, and go.
A sudden change in affairs was created by an unearthly scream--the
scream of a woman. I looked around suddenly and discovered that the
only two-story shack on "the bottoms" was in a blaze, and the thought
occurred to me that I might be of some help and accomplish my purpose
at the same time.
In a moment I was beside the burning hut. It appeared that a lamp had
exploded upstairs, and that three small children were hemmed in. That
was the cause of the scream.
A plank that reached to the upstairs window was lying at the wood
pile. I pushed it against the house and climbed like a cat into the
burning bedroom. By this time the neighbours had collected, and I
helped the woman and lowered the three children down, one by one, and
then deliberately groped for the stairs to get hemmed in, the smoke
suffocating me as I did so. By the time I found the stairs, my hair
was singed, my arms were burned, but I was gradually losing
consciousness, and before I reached the bottom I fell, suffocated with
the smoke. In that last moment of consciousness, my whole life came up
in review. I had no regrets. I had played a part and it was over.
When I came out of coma, I was lying on my cot in the hut, the
neighbours crowding my little bedroom and standing outside in scores.
One of the newspapers that had most severely criticized my
interference in politics, gave me a pass to Colorado and return--and
in the mountains of Colorado, the door of my soul opened again, and I
saw the world beautiful--and opportunities that were golden for
helpfulness and service awaiting my touch. So I returned to my hut
with the sense of God more fully developed in me than it had ever
been.
They had a system in that city that I was very much ashamed of--that I
thought all men ought to be ashamed of--the segregation of the "social
evil." I discovered that the city fined these poor creatures of the
streets, and that these fines, amounting to thousands of dollars every
year, went straight into the public school fund, so that it could
truly be said that the more debauched society was, the more
efficiently it could educate its children and its youth.
These houses in the red light district were built to imitate castles
on the Rhine, and were owned by church people and politicians.
Everybody winked at this condition. One minister of this town uttered
a loud protest and took his children out of the public schools, but he
had to leave the city. The Christians would not stand for such a
protest. The newspapers would not touch it, trustees would not touch
it, the great political parties would not touch it.
I joined the Knights of Labour in that city, an organization then in
its prime of strength, but they would not touch it. I joined the
People's Party in the hope that there I might do something about it.
One of the leading members of that party importuned me to nominate him
as presiding officer of the city convention. "On one condition," I
told him; "that you appoint me chairman of the committee on
resolutions." And the compact was made.
Five men were on that committee, and when I asked the committee to put
in a resolution condemning the education of children from this fund,
they refused. I could only persuade one of four to indorse my minority
report, which, signed by two of us, condemned this remnant of Sodom
left over; but it swept the convention and was carried almost
unanimously. Even the three men on the resolutions committee who
refused to sign it before, voted for it in convention. I am aware that
it does not matter from what fund or funds the public school system
is supported. I am aware also that one of the things we can do is to
make that kind of thing cover up its head.
What I suffered for that resolution can never be recorded.
My period of inclement mental weather was followed by a period of
poverty--destitution rather--I was physically unable to work with my
hands and I had not yet tried to earn money by my pen. I was often so
reduced by hunger that I could scarcely walk. At such times one feels
more grateful for friendship. Into my life then came a few choice
souls whose fellowship acted as a dynamic to my life. It was when
things were at their worst that George D. Herron found me. The almost
Jewish cast of feature, the strange, wonderful voice, the prophetic
atmosphere of the man forced me to express the belief that I had never
met a human being who seemed to me so like Christ. Then came George A.
Gates, the president of Iowa College where Dr. Herron was a professor.
About the same time came Elia W. Peattie and Ida Doolittle Fleming.
Mrs. Fleming and her husband helped me organize a Congregational
Church which, when organized, was a means of support.
The church was in a growing section of the city but I could not be
persuaded to live there. I lived where I thought my life was most
serviceable--on "the bottoms."
One night after a few days' involuntary fast I found in the hut two
cents. To the city I went and bought two bananas--one I ate on the way
back and the other I put in my hip pocket.
There were no streets, no lights, no sidewalks in that region. As I
came to a railroad arch on the edge of the squatter community I saw a
figure emerge from the deep shadows. I knew instantly I was to be held
up, but as life was rather cheap down there I was not sure what would
accompany the assault. A second figure emerged and when I came to
within a few yards of them, I whipped the banana from my pocket and
pointing it as one would a revolver I said--"Move a muscle, either of
you, and I'll blow your brains out!"
"Gee!" one of them muttered; "it's Mr. Irvine."
They belonged to a gang of young toughs who lived in a dug-out on the
banks of the river. Some of them had brothers in my school. There were
about a dozen of them. They had hinted several times that they would
clean me out when they had time, but they had delayed their plan. I
took these fellows to my hut and we talked for hours.
When I produced the banana they laughed vociferously and invited me to
their "hole." Next evening they gave a reception and, I suppose, fed
me on stolen property. They had a stove--a few old mattresses and some
dry-goods boxes.
I held their attention that night for four hours while I told the
story of Jean Valjean. Next day we were all photographed together on a
pile of stones near the "hole."
After that these fellows protected the chapel and made themselves
useful in their way. In less than a year afterward half of them had
gone to honest work; the rest went the way of the transgressor, to the
penetentiary and the reform school.
This period was one of total rejection by any means--powerful
influences were at work to render my labour void--but they were offset
for a time by the finer influences of life. I gave a series of
addresses in Tabor College, Iowa, and they were the beginning of an
awakening among the students. After the last word of the last address
the student about whom the president and faculty were most concerned
walked up the aisle and expressed a desire to lead a new life.
"Do it now," I suggested.
"Right here?"
"Yes, right where you stand."
The president and faculty gathered around him, making a circle; he
stood in the midst, alone, and in that way with prayer and dedication
from the lips of the young man and his friends began one of the most
useful lives in the American ministry. This young man became an
ascetic. I gave him to read the life of Francis of Assisi, and he went
to the extreme in emulation. He divested himself of collars and ties
and on graduating read his thesis for his Bachelor's degree collarless
and tieless.
I was in New Haven when he came there to take his Divinity degree in
Yale. He came without either collar or tie, but after days of prayer
and fasting he was "led" to enter the University as others entered it.
He is now pastor of the First Congregational Church in Rockford,
Illinois; his name is Frank M. Sheldon. Nine men have gone by a
similar route into the ministry, but Mr. Sheldon is the only one of
them who has kept touch with the modern demands on religious
leadership.
Birthdays have meant nothing whatever to me, but I made my
thirty-second an occasion for a party on "the bottoms."
I could only accommodate seven guests. Two were favourite boys and the
others were selected because of their great need. The hut was the
centre of a mud puddle that January morning. I got a long plank and
laid it from my doorstep to the edge of the clay bank. I took
precaution not to announce the affair, even to the guests, but a
grocer's boy who had been sent by a friend with some oranges lost his
way and his inquiry after me created such a sensation that when he
found me he was accompanied by about fifty children.
Old Mrs. Belgarde, my nearest neighbour, had whispered across the
fence to her neighbour that something was sure to happen, for she had
noticed me making unusual preparations that day. I think the origin
of the party idea came with my first birthday gift--I mean the first I
had ever received--it was a copy of Thomas à Kempis, given me by my
friend the Reverend Gregory J. Powell. [I gave it later to a man who
was to die by judicial process in the county jail.]
When the hour arrived a crowd of two hundred youngsters stood in the
mud outside. On the top of the clay bank stood parents, crossing
themselves and praying quietly that their offspring would be lucky
enough to get in.
I had taught these children some simple rules of order, and when I
opened the door I rang a little bell. There was absolute silence. They
had been actually tearing each other's clothing to rags for a position
near the door. I told them that I was so poor that I had scarcely
enough food for myself. That the little I had I was going to share
with seven of my special friends; of course they all considered
themselves included in that characterization.
"Dear little friends," I said, "I never had a birthday party before;
and now you are going to spoil this one."
Up to this time the crowd didn't know who the guests were. I proceeded
to call the names. As those called made a move there was a violent
fight for the door. Some of them I had to drag out of the clutches of
the unsuccessful. Only six of the seven were there. There was a howl
from a hundred throats to take the place of the absent one.
"No," I said sternly; "he'll come, all right." A roar of discontent
went up and chaos reigned. I couldn't make myself heard; I rang the
bell and again calmed them. I was at a loss to know what to say.
"Dear little folks," I said, "I thought you loved me!"
"Do too!" whined a dozen voices.
"Then if you do, go away and some day I will have a party for every
child on 'the bottoms.'"
That quieted the youthful mob and they departed--that is, the majority
departed. Some stayed and bombarded the doors and windows with stones.
There were few stones to be found, and as it didn't occur to them to
use the same stones twice they used mud and plastered the front of the
hut with it.
This form of expression, however, did not disturb us much. I sent
three of my guests into the back yard to wash and arrange their hair.
They returned for inspection but didn't pass, the hair refusing to
comply on such short notice. I put the finishing touches on each of
their toilets and we sat down to supper. The oldest boy, "Fritz," was
half past twelve and the youngest, "Ano," had just struck ten. Ano was
a cripple and both legs were twisted out of shape--he hobbled about on
crutches. "Jake" was eleven--two of his eleven years he had spent in
a reformatory where he had learned to chew tobacco and to swear.
"Eddy" was also eleven, but the oldest of all in point of wits. I had
a claim on Eddy: one day he was amusing himself by jerking a cat at
the end of a string, in and out of Frau Belgarde's well. She was
stealthily approaching him with a piece of fence rail when I arrived
and possibly prevented some broken bones. "Kaiser" was nearly twelve;
he too had been in a reform school--he liked it and would have been
glad to stay as long as they wanted him--for he had three meals a day
and he had never had such "luck" outside. "Whitey" was a little
Swedish boy whose mother worked in a cigar factory. "Kaiser" and
"Whitey" had a "dug-out" and they spent more nights together in it
than they spent in their huts.
"Fritz," the oldest boy, began his career in the open by stealing his
father's revolver; and, jumping on the first grocery wagon he found
handy, he left town. Of course he was brought back and "sent up" for a
year. "Franz," the absent one, was Ano's brother, and the toughest boy
in the community.
These brief outlines describe the guests of my birthday party.
"When ye make a feast call the poor" was stretched a little to cover
this aggregation--stretched as to the character of those invited. A
blessing was asked, of course--by the host and repeated by the
guests. Of things to eat there was enough and to spare. After dinner
each one was to contribute something to the entertainment.
"Beginning here on my left with 'Whitey,'" I said, "I want each boy to
tell us what he would like to be when he becomes a man." Whitey
without hesitation said:
"A organ-man wid a monkey."
"Why?"
"'Cause."
Eddy said he would like to be a butcher, and as a reason gave: "Plenty
ov beef to eat."
"Kaiser" preferred to be a "Reformatory boss."
"Ano," the cripple, said he would like to be a minister. When pressed
for a reason he said, "That's what m' father says--dey ain't got
notin' to do!"
In the midst of this social quiz a loud noise was heard outside.
"Bang! Bang!! Bang!!!" The timbers of the hut shivered, the guests
made a rush to the back door. I was there first and found Franz, the
missing guest, his arms smeared with blood, his ragged jacket covered
with hair of some sort and in his hand a bloody stiletto.
He rushed past me into the hut, got to the table and exclaimed: "Gee
whiz! der ain't a ---- scrap left!"
"Look here, Franz," I said, "I want to know what you've been up to?"
"Ye do, hey? Ye look skeered, too, don't yer--hey?"
"Never mind how I look; tell me at once what you've been up to!"
"Ha, ha, ha!" he laughed, "d'ye tink I kilt some ol' sucker for 'is
money--hey? Ha, ha! Well, I hain't, see? I've bin skinnin' a dead hoss
an brot ye d' skin for a birfday present, see?"
The skin was lying in a bloody heap outside the back door. I arranged
"Franz" for dinner and the party was complete.
I told some stories; then we played games and at ten o'clock they went
home. The moment the front door was opened, about forty children--each
with a lighted candle in hand--sang a verse of my favourite hymn:
"Lead, Kindly Light." They knew but one verse, but that they sang
twice. It was a weird performance and moved me almost to tears.
After they sang they came down the clay bank and shook hands, wishing
me all sorts of things. Two nights afterward I had a different kind of
a party. A bullet came crashing through the boards of my hut about
midnight. Rushing to the door, I saw the fire flashes of other shots
in a neighbour's garden. I went to the high board fence and saw one of
my neighbours--a German--emptying a revolver at his wife who was
dodging behind a tree.
My first impulse was to jump the fence and save the woman but the man
being evidently half-drunk might have turned and poured into me what
was intended for his wife; and the first law of nature was
sufficiently developed in me to let her have what belonged to her! I
tried to speak but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I was
positively scared.
The old fellow walked up to the tree, letting out as he walked a
volley of oaths. I recovered my equilibrium, sprang over the fence,
crept up behind and jumped on him, knocking him down and instantly
disarming him.
I went inside with them and sat between them until they seemed to have
forgotten what had happened. Then I put them to bed, put the light out
and went home. I examined the revolver and found it empty. Next
morning I went back and told the old man that I would volunteer to
give him some lessons in target practice; and that the reason I
knocked him down was because he was such a poor shot. This old couple
became my staunchest supporters.
I interested the students of Tabor College in the people of that
out-of-the-way community, and before I built the Chapel of the
Carpenter which still stands there I organized a college settlement
which was manned by students.
The small church, the chapel on "the bottoms," the work of the college
students and the increasing circle of converts and friends made the
work attractive to me, but I had entered the political field in order
to protest against and possibly remedy something civic that savoured
of Sodom; and for a minister that was an unpardonable sin. The
"interests" determined to cripple me or destroy my work. This they did
successfully by the medium of a subsidized press and other means, fair
and foul. It was a case of a city against one man--a rich city against
a poor man and the man went down to defeat--apparent defeat, anyway: I
packed my belongings and left. As I crossed the bridge which spans the
river I looked on the little squatter colony on "the bottoms" and as
my career there passed in review, for the second time in my life I was
stricken with home-sickness and I was guilty of what my manhood might
have been ashamed of--tears.