MY FIGHT IN NEW HAVEN
The experiences of 1894, '5 and '6 gave me a distaste--really a
disgust--with public life I felt that I would never enter a large city
again. I sought retirement in a country parish; this was secured for
me by my friend, the president of Tabor College, the Rev. Richard
Cecil Hughes.
It was in a small town in Iowa--Avoca in Pottawattomie County; I
stayed there a year.
In 1897 I was in Cleveland, Ohio, in charge of an institution called
The Friendly Inn; a very good name if the place had been an inn or
friendly. My inability to make it either forced me to leave it before
I had been there many months. It was in Cleveland that I first joined
a labour union. I was a member of what was called a Federal Labour
Union and was elected its representative to the central body of the
union movement.
Early in 1898 I was in Springfield, Mass., delivering a series of
addresses to a Bible school there. My funds ran out and not being in
receipt of any remuneration and, not caring to make my condition
known, I was forced for the first time in my life to become a
candidate for a church. There were two vacant pulpits and I went after
both of them. Meantime I boarded with a few students who, like their
ancestors, had "plenty of nothing but gospel."
They lived on seventy-five cents a week. Living was largely a matter
of scripture texts, hope and imagination. I used to breakfast through
my eyes at the beautiful lotus pond in the park. We lunched usually on
soup that was a constant reminder of the soul of Tomlinson of Berkeley
Square. Quantitively speaking, supper was the biggest meal of the
day--it was a respite also for our imaginations.
The day of my candidacy arrived. I was prepared to play that most
despicable of all ecclesiastical tricks--making an impression. I
almost memorized the Scripture reading and prepared my favourite
sermon; my personal appearance never had been so well attended to. The
hour arrived. The little souls sat back in their seats to take my
measure.
It was their innings. I had been duly looked up in the year-book and
my calibre gauged by the amount of money paid me in previous
pastorates.
The "service" began. My address to the Almighty was prepared and part
of the game is to make believe that it is purely extemporaneous. Every
move, intonation and gesture is noted and has its bearing on the final
result. I was saying to the ecclesiastical jury: "Look here, you
dumb-heads, wake up; I'm the thing you need here!" Sermon time came
and with it a wave of disgust that swept over my soul.
"Good friends," I began; "I am not a candidate for the pastorate here.
I was a few minutes ago; but not now. Instead of doing the work of an
infinite God and letting Him take care of the result I have been
trying to please _you_. If the Almighty will forgive me for such
unfaith--such meanness--I swear that I will never do it again."
Then I preached. This brutal plainness created a sensation and several
tried to dissuade me, but I had made up my mind.
It was while I was enjoying the "blessings" of poverty in Springfield
that I was called to New Haven to confer with the directors of the
Young Men's Christian Association about their department of religious
work. I had been in New Haven before. In 1892 I addressed the students
of Yale University on the subject of city mission work and, as a
result of that address, had been invited to make some investigations
and outline a plan for city mission work for the students. I spent ten
days in the slum region there, making a report and recommendations. On
these the students began the work anew. I was asked at that time to
attach myself to the university as leader and instructor in city
missions, but work in New York seemed more important to me.
I rode my bicycle from Springfield to New Haven for that interview.
When it was over I found myself on the street with a wheel and sixty
cents. I bought a "hot dog"--a sausage in a bread roll--ate it on the
street and then looked around for a lodging.
"Is it possible," I asked a policeman, "to get a clean bed for a night
in this town for fifty cents?"
"Anything's possible," he answered, "but----"
He directed me to the Gem Hotel, where I was shown to a 12 × 6 box,
the walls of which spoke of the battles of the weary travellers who
had preceded me. I protected myself as best I could until the dawn,
when I started for Springfield, a disciple for a day of the
no-breakfast fad.
Things were arranged differently at the next interview. I was the
guest of the leaders in that work and was engaged as "Religious Work
Director" for one year. I think I was the first man in the United
States to be known officially by that title.
The Board of Directors was composed of men efficient to an
extraordinary degree. The General Secretary was a worker of great
energy and business capacity and as high a moral type as the highest.
He was orthodox in theology and the directors were orthodox in
sociology. It was a period when I was moving away from both
standpoints.
To express a very modern opinion in theology would disturb the
churches--the moral backers of the institution; to express an advanced
idea in sociology would alienate the rich men--the financial backers.
A month after I began my work I "supplied" the pulpit of a church in
the New Haven suburbs called the Second Congregational Church of Fair
Haven. The chairman of the pulpit supply committee was a member of the
Board of Directors of the Y.M.C.A.
Gradually I drifted away from the Association toward the church. The
former was building a new home and many people were glad of an excuse
not to give anything toward its erection. So any utterance of mine
that seemed out of the common was held up to the solicitor. An address
on War kept the telephone ringing for days. It was as if Christianity
had never been heard of in New Haven. Labour men asked that the
address be printed and subscribed money that it might be done, but an
appeal to the teachings of Jesus on the question of war was lauded by
the sinners and frowned upon by the saints.
With the General Secretary I never had an unkind word. Though a man of
boundless energy he was a man in supreme command of himself. We knew
in a way that we were drifting apart and acted as Christians toward
each other. What more can men do?
Mr. Barnes, the director, who was chairman of the pulpit supply
committee of the church, kept urging me to give my whole time to the
church. Every day for weeks he drove his old white horse to my door
and talked it over. I refused the call to the pastorate but divided
my time between them. For the Y.M.C.A. my duties were:
To conduct mass meetings for men in a theatre.
To organize the Bible departments and teach one of the classes.
Care and visiting of converts.
Daily office hour.
Literary work as associate editor of the weekly paper.
Writing of pamphlets.
To conduct boys' meetings.
For the church:
To conduct regular Sunday services.
Friday night prayer meetings.
Men's Bible class.
Visitation of sick and burial of the dead.
Class for young converts.
Children's meetings.
At the same time I entered the Divinity School of Yale University,
taking studies in Hebrew, New Testament Greek and Archæology. A little
experience in the church taught me that intellectually I was leaving
the ordinary type of church at a much quicker pace than I was leaving
the Y.M.C.A.
Dr. Edward Everett Hale told a friend once that he preached to the
South Church on Sunday morning so that he might preach to the world
the rest of the week. I told the officers of the church frankly that
I was not the kind of man needed for their parish; but they insisted
that I was, so I preached for them on Sunday that I might preach to a
larger parish during the week.
Two things I tried to do well for the church--conduct an evening
meeting for the unchurched--which simply means the folk unable to
dress well and pay pew rents--and conduct a meeting for children. I
organized a committee to help me at the evening meeting. The only
qualification for membership on the committee was utter ignorance of
church work. The very good people of the community called this meeting
"a show." Well, it was. I asked the regular members to stay away for I
needed their space and their corner lots with cushioned knee stools. I
made a study of the possibilities of the stereopticon. Mr. Barnes gave
me a fine outfit. I got the choicest slides and subjects published.
Prayers, hymns, scripture readings and illuminated bits of choice
literature were projected on a screen. I trained young men to put up
and take down the screen noiselessly, artistically, and with the
utmost neatness and dispatch. I discovered that many men who either
lacked ambition or ability to wear collars came to that meeting, and
they sang, too, when the lights were low. When in full view of each
other they were as close-mouthed as clams. The singing became a
special feature. My brethren in other churches considered this a
terrible "come-down" at first, but changed their minds later and
copied the thing, borrowing the best of my good slides and not a few
of the unique ideas accompanying the scheme.
A Methodist brother across the river said confidentially to a friend
that he was going to launch on the community "a legitimate
sensation"--a boys' choir. My plans for getting the poor people to
church succeeded. Such a thing as fraternizing the steady goers--goers
by habit and heredity--and the unsteady goers--goers by the need of
the soul--was impossible. The most surprising thing in these evening
meetings to the men who financed the church was the fact that these
poor people paid for their own extras. That goes a long way in church
affairs.
The weekly children's meeting I called "The Pleasant Hour." Believing
that the most important work of the Church is the teaching of the
children, it was my custom for many years in many churches to
personally conduct a Sunday School on a week day so that the best I
had to give would be given to the children. In my larger work for the
city two ideas governed my action. One was to get the church people
interested in civic problems and the other was to solve civic problems
or to attempt a solution whether church people were interested in them
or not.
I organized a flower mission for the summer months. We called it a
Flower House. An abandoned hotel was cleaned up. A few loads of sand
dumped in the back yard as a sort of extemporized seashore where
little children might play. Flowers were solicited and distributed to
the folks who had neither taste nor room for flowers. We did some
teaching, too, and gave entertainments. A barrel-organ played on
certain days by the sand pile; and that music of the proletariat never
fails to attract a crowd.
The flower mission developed into a social settlement. We called it
Lowell House. At first the church financed it, then it got tired of
that, and when I incorporated the settlement work in my church reports
in order to stimulate support, the settlement workers--directors
rather--got tired of the church and went into a spasm over it. Lowell
House is accounted a successful institution of the city now. It is
doing a successful church work among the poor--church work with this
exception, that its head worker--its educated, sympathetic
priestess--lives there and shares her little artistic centre with the
crowd who live in places not good enough for domestic animals.
In 1898 New Haven's public baths consisted of a tub in the basement of
a public school. I photographed the tub and projected the picture on a
screen in the Grand Opera House for the consideration of the citizens.
That was the beginning of an agitation for a public bath house--an
agitation that was pushed until the dream became a brick structure.
I was not particularly interested in the bath _per se_. It was an
opportunity to get people to work for something this side of heaven,
to emphasize the thought that men were as much worth taking care of as
horses--an idea that has not yet a firm grip on the mind of the
bourgeoisie.
The bath-house bill passed the Aldermanic and Councilmanic chambers,
was signed by the mayor and the matter of building put into the hands
of the Board of Health. The Board forgot all about it and some time
later the agitation began again and persisted until another city
government and another mayor had made a second law and carried it into
effect.
There was no ecclesiastical objection to my participation in this
movement. It was a small thing and cost little.