NEW HAVEN AGAIN--AND A FIGHT
In December, 1901, the New Haven Water Company applied for a renewal
of its charter. The city had been getting nothing for this valuable
franchise, and there was considerable protest against a renewal on the
same terms. The Trades Council asked the ministers of the churches to
make a deliverance on the question, but there was no answer. I was
directly challenged to say something on the subject. I attended a
hearing in the city hall. It was the annual meeting night of our
church, and I closed the church meeting in the usual manner.
As quickly as possible I made my way to the public hearing. The
committee room was crowded; on one side were the labouring men and on
the other the stockholders and officers of the company. Several
prominent members of my church, whom I had missed at the annual
meeting, were in the committee room.
When called upon to speak, I asked the committee to hold the balance
level. "We tax a banana vendor a few dollars a year for the use of
the streets," I said, "then why should a rich corporation be given an
infinitely larger use of them for nothing?"
This provoked the rich men of the church, for most of them were
stockholders in the company, and two of them were officers.
The thing was talked over afterward in the back end of a small store
where all the church policies were formulated. One of the members was
sent to the parsonage to question and warn me. My visitor spoke of
former pastors who had been "called of God" elsewhere for much less
than I had done. Another man came later, and asked for a promise that
I would keep out of such affairs in the future.
This was the first fly in the ointment, the first break in the most
cordial of relationships between me and the church.
The church had been organized fifty years when this incident occurred.
We were preparing to celebrate the golden jubilee.
I gathered the officers together, and we went over the articles one by
one. Not a man in the church believed in "everlasting damnation," but
they voted unanimously to leave the hell-fire article just as they had
found it. They had all subscribed to it, and it "hadn't hurt them."
"Do you mean to tell me," I asked, "that none of you believe in
eternal punishment, and yet you are going to force every man, woman,
and child who joins your church to solemnly swear before God that they
do believe in it?" There was a great silence. "Yes, that's exactly
what's what," one man said.
This incident illustrates the seared, calloused, surfeited condition
of the average mind in the churches. It is glutted with sham, and
atrophied by the reiteration of high-sounding but meaningless, pious
phrases.
I managed to persuade them to so amend their by-laws that children
baptized into the church became by that act church members. They did
not know that by that amendment they were setting aside two-thirds of
their creed, because they didn't know the creed.
One of my sermons at the Jubilee attracted the attention of Philo S.
Bennett, a New York tea merchant, who made his home in New Haven. We
became very close friends. One day Mr. Bennett and Mr. W.J. Bryan
called at the parsonage. I happened to be out at the time, but dined
with them that evening. Next morning a church member, who was a sort
of cat's-paw for the rich men, called at the parsonage and informed me
of the "disgust" of the leading members. "They won't stand for it!" he
said vehemently.
When I spoke at the city hall they catalogued me as a Socialist, and
when Mr. Bryan called, they moved me into the "free and unlimited
coinage of silver" column. By "they," I mean four or five men--men of
means, who absolutely ruled the church. The deacons had nothing to
say, the church had as little. "The Society" was the thing. The
"Society" in a Congregational church is a sort of secular adjunct
charged with the duty of providing the material essentials. Their word
is law, the only law. In their estimation business and religion could
not be mixed, nor could things of the church be permitted to interfere
in politics. The purchase of an alderman was to them as legitimate as
the purchase of a cow. Some of them laughed as they told me of buying
an election in the borough. It was a great joke to them. They were
patriotic, very loudly patriotic, and their special hobby was "the
majesty of the law."
I was to be punished for that water company affair, and a man was
selected to administer the punishment. I had brought this man into the
church; I had created a church office for him, and pushed him forward
before the men. He was supposed to be my closest friend. He came to
the parsonage one morning, to talk over casually the question of
salary.
"Now," he said, "you don't care how we raise your salary, do you?"
"Of course not."
"Well, the Society's hard up this year and can only raise $1,600; but
the church will raise the other $400, and I have one of them already
promised."
This seemed a most unusual proceeding, but I was unsuspecting. A few
months afterward this man, with tears in his eyes, said:
"Mr. Irvine, whatever happens you will be my friend--won't you?"
He was doing their work, and wincing under the load of it.
"Brother," I said, "when I know whether you are playing the rôle of
Judas or John, I will be better able to answer you."
At the end of the year it all came out. I was literally fined $400 for
attending that meeting.
As my term of service drew to a close, the workingmen who had joined
the church during my incumbency got together. They were in a majority.
A church meeting was called, and a motion passed to call a council of
the other churches. The purpose of the call was to advise the church
how to proceed to force its own Society to pay the pastor's salary. A
leading minister drew up the call. All ministers knew the record of
the church: only one minister in its history had left of his own
accord. The council met. It was composed of ministers and laymen of
other churches. Among the laymen was the president of the telephone
company. I had publicly criticized the company for disfiguring the
streets with ugly cross-bars that looked like gibbets. The
president's opposition to me was well known.
The council, under such influence, struck several technical snags, and
adjourned. The president of the council wrote me later that the
president of the telephone company had advised him not to recall the
council, and he had come to that decision.
Concerning the defrauding me of my salary, the best people in that
church to this day, when speaking of it, say: "Well, we didn't owe it
to him, _legally_." The Society spent the money in fitting up the
parsonage for my successor.