I BECOME A SOCIALIST
I soon joined the party and gave myself body, soul and spirit to the
Socialists' propaganda. The quest for a living took me to a little
farm on the outskirts of the city. There were eighteen acres--sixteen
of them stones.
Gradually I began to feel that my rejection was not a mere matter of
being let alone, of ignoring me; it was a positive attitude. There was
a design to drive me out of the city. On the farm I was without the
gates in person but my influence was within, among the workers. We
spent every penny we had on the farm. I hired a neighbouring farmer to
plow my ground and plant my seed, for I had neither horse nor
machinery. I told him I had a little cottage in the woods in
Massachusetts that I was offering for sale and I would pay him out of
the proceeds. At first he believed me and did the work.
It took me two months to get that cottage sold and get the money for
it. The farmer's son camped on my doorstep daily. Every day I met him,
in the fields or on the road. I spoke in such soft tones and promised
so volubly every time he approached me that he got the impression
that I had no cottage--that I was a fraud and cheating his father. He
spread that impression. He began after a while to insult me, to make
fun of me. I debated with myself one afternoon whether when he again
repeated his insults I should thrash him or treat him as a joke. I
decided on the former. Meantime the check for the cottage came and
relieved the situation. Despite my inability to become a Yogi, I
believed in the New Thought. My wife and I used to "hold the thought,"
"make the mental picture," and "go into the silence." We did this
regularly.
I had an old counterfeit ten-dollar bill for a decoy. I shut my eyes
and imagined myself stuffing big bundles of them into the pigeon-holes
of my desk.
I got an incubator, filled it with Buff Orpington eggs and kept the
thermometer at 103° F. My knees grew as hard as a goat's from watching
it. In the course of events, two chickens came. We had pictured the
yard literally covered with them. These poor things broke their legs
over the eggs. My wife was more optimistic than I was.
"Wait," she said, "these things are often several days late." So we
waited; waited ten days and then refilled the thing and began all over
again.
We lost an old hen that was so worthless that we never looked for her.
In the fullness of her time she returned with a brood of fourteen! She
had been in "the silence" to some purpose!
"Well, let's let the hens alone," my wife said with a sigh; "they know
this business better than we do." But we kept on monkeying with mental
images--it was great fun.
During our stay on that farm I did four times more pastoral work than
I had ever done in my life. I was the minister of the nondescript and
the destitute. I presided over funerals, weddings, baptisms, strikes,
protests, mass meetings. Nobody thought of paying anything. To those I
served I had a sort of halo, a wall of mystery; to me it was often the
halo of hunger--of the wolf and the wall--yes, a wall, truly, and very
high that separated me from my own.
An incident will show what my brethren thought of my service to the
poor. I was in the public library one day when the scribe of the
ministerial association to which I belonged accosted me:
"Hello, Irvine!"
"Hello, C----! Splendid weather we're having, isn't it?"
"Splendid," replied C----; and in the same breath he said, "say, you
don't come around to the association; do you want your name kept on
the roll?"
I hesitated for a moment, then said: "Whatever would give you most
pleasure, brother--leaving it on or taking it off--do that!"
That was all--not another word--he reported that I wanted my name
removed, and that practically ended my ministerial standing in the
Congregational ministry.
The Jewish Rabbi who had taken part in our opening service met me on
the street one day.
"Dr. Smyth and I are coming to see you, Irvine," he said.
"I'll be mighty glad to see you both, Rabbi. What are you coming for?"
"Well, we think it's too bad that the labour gang use you as a sucker
and we want to see if we can't get a place in some mission for you."
"Rabbi, some of your rich Jews have been after you for appearing on
our platform. Come now, isn't that so?"
"Well, it's because they believe as I believe, that you are used as a
sucker."
"I don't like your word, Rabbi; but there are fifty ministers in town.
If Capital has forty-nine suckers, why not let Labour have one?"
That made him rather furious and he said:
"You remind me of Jesus, a fanatic. He died at 33 when he might have
lived to a good old age and done some good!"
"That," I said, "is the highest compliment I have ever received." I
bared my head at the word and then left him on the sidewalk.
The New Haven water company managed to get what was called an "eternal
contract" passed through both chambers of the city government. Only
labouring people opposed it. Naturally there was a strong suspicion of
foul play.
[Illustration: State Convention of the Socialist Party of Connecticut,
May 31, 1906]
A year afterward a man came to me with a grip-sack full of documents.
He had been expert book-keeper for the water company, and knew the
facts and figures for twenty-five years.
Among them were two cancelled checks--one for a thousand, which was
made out by and to the president, and dated the day a certain
committee was to meet to go over the terms of the contract. The other
was made out to a shyster lawyer and was for fifteen thousand. He
expected to create a sensation. The thing had worked on his conscience
until it became unbearable. He came to me because of what he had
learned of me at the water company office. It takes a civic conscience
to deal with such a problem and New Haven had no such thing at that
time.
He took the documents from one place to another--to ministers,
lawyers, judges, legislators, etc. Nothing could be done. They were
all the personal friends of the officials.
The papers wouldn't print anything about it. The book-keeper said he
thought he knew why "editors never had any water bills." Some radicals
got the big check printed in facsimile and scattered it abroad. The
aldermen had been bought; there was no doubt of that, but it was a
matter of business.
The whole agitation came back on the reformers like a boomerang.
Leading politicians determined to do something to vindicate the
leading citizen who had been accused. They elected him to the State
Senate! A city of a hundred thousand can by either a positive or a
negative process, destroy the usefulness of any man who would be its
servant.
I felt my loneliness very keenly--indeed, so much so that it was often
as though I had committed a great crime. Always, however, at the
breaking-point came a word of cheer--a note of approval.
Bishop Lines of Newark, New Jersey, who was then Rector of St. Paul's
church, sent me a note, that reached me in a dark hour.
"I do not suppose," he said, "that I look at things as you do, in all
respects, but I would like to assure you of my great regard for you
and of my implicit faith in your sincerity and goodness. I know that
the world's great sorrow rests upon your heart and that many men who
feel it not sit in judgment upon you."
The People's Church dwindled to a vanishing point. The farm produced
nothing. Autumn came and we lived largely upon apples.
"Make a break!" my wife said, but it seemed like running away from the
fight. The fight was already over and I was beaten--beaten, but
unaware of defeat.
One morning I was at the top of a big apple tree, shaking it for three
Italian women whom we believed to be worse off than ourselves. A
branch broke and I fell on my back on a boulder. I lay as one dead. My
wife found me there and hailed a passing grocer's wagon. The boy
whipped up his horse to bring a doctor, but on the way spread the news
that I had been killed by a fall. Among the first callers after the
accident were Donald G. Mitchell and his daughter, my neighbours. I
lay on a mattress on the lawn all afternoon in great agony.
Although it was with the greatest difficulty that we scraped together
the twenty-five dollars a month for the farm, my wife, putting her
philosophy of the New Thought to the test, had rented a house in the
city at seventy dollars a month. When she rented it, we hadn't seventy
cents. We were to move into it the day of the accident. I insisted
that we proceed.
"Send for Jimmy Moohan," I said. Jimmy was a genial old Irish
expressman whose stand was at the New Haven Green. Jimmy came and
looked me over. Then came Bob Grant, a foreman from a near-by
manufacturing concern, and after him four Socialist comrades on their
way home from work.
"Ah, Mother o' God," Jimmy said, "shure it's an ambulance yer
riverence shud haave."
"I want you, Jimmy; pile me in."
"Holy Saints," he exclaimed, "shure th' ould cyart'll jolt yer guts
out!"
"Pile me in."
So they lifted me on the mattress and laid me in the express wagon.
Bob Grant sat beside me; the four comrades steadied it--two on each
side.
"Git up now, Larry, an' be aisy wid ye."
When the wagon wheel mounted a stone, Jimmy blamed Larry and swore at
him. Occasionally he would turn around and say: "How's it goin', yer
riverence?"
I was in such agony that I sweat. Pains were shooting through every
part of my body but I usually answered:
"Fine, Jimmy, fine!"
So I came back within the gates of the city--rejected, defeated,
deserted, and practically a pauper.
It had been a long fight but the city had conquered. A few more
attempts at work; a few more appeals for fair play, a few more
speeches for the propaganda; but as baggage in Jimmy Moohan's express
wagon I was down and out!
At a regular meeting of the Trades Council of New Haven a member moved
that a letter of sympathy be sent to me. A week after my fall, another
was made and carried to make me a member of the council and a third to
send me a check for fifty dollars. This was the only money I ever
received for my services to labour and as it arrived a few hours
before the agent called for his rent, it was very welcome.
It seemed odd to all sorts of people that, after being starved out, I
should bob up again in one of the largest houses on Chapel Street--I
couldn't quite understand it myself. My wife could, however. She said
the whole business of life was a matter of mental attitude and she
only laughed when I asked whether there was any chance of my being
kicked to death by a mule for the next month's rent!
I made another attempt to interest the students of Yale in the human
affairs of New Haven. Ten years previous to this, when there was some
suggestion that I take charge of Yale's mission work, I was astounded
to be told by the leaders of the Yale Y.M.C.A. that the chief end in
view was not the work but the worker. Yale's mission was to give the
student practice. Missions were to be laboratories--the specimens were
to be humans. The eternal questions of sin and poverty were to be
answered by the pious phrases and the cast-off junk of immature
students. I gave a series of talks on labour unions to a selected
group of students who were leaders.
I was a social evangelist then and, after the talks, took stock of the
results. Many fell by the wayside, but a group of strong men formed
themselves into a "University Federal Labour Union." Dick Morse,
captain of the 'Varsity crew, became president of it. Representative
union constitutions were studied. The following sentences from the
declaration of principles will illustrate how thoroughly these young
men got in line with the union movement:
"We believe it inconsistent and unworthy that a wage-worker should
take the benefits that accrue to a craft as a direct result of
organization and at the same time hold himself aloof from the
responsibilities and from his share of the expenses of that
organization.
"We believe that union men whenever possible should demand the union
label as a guarantee that the goods were manufactured under conditions
fair to labour. We believe that eight hours should constitute a day's
work."
In the preamble was this statement: "We do not look upon the labour
union as an ultimate conception of labour, but we believe that
whatever progress has been made in the lot of the labourer has been
due wholly to the organization of the wage-workers!"
The preamble concludes with this paragraph: "Believing, therefore, in
the cause of labour and desiring to add according to our ability to
the support of the union movement, we pledge ourselves to study it
intelligently and to support it loyally."
Here was the beginning of a splendid mission work among the students;
but the New Haven labour movement wasn't big enough to take it in; nor
was the American Federation of Labour. The labour men would have no
dealings whatever with the students. We managed to keep the big house
for a year, but we kept little else during that period. Twice we lost
the mental image of the monthly rent. Sam Read supplied it the first
time and Anson Phelps Stokes the other. These were my only borrowings
in New Haven. In that house I had one of the most bitter experiences
of my life.
"I think," said my wife to me, one morning at 2 A.M., "that the baby
will be born in an hour."
The announcement chilled me. There was but five cents in the house and
that was needed to telephone for the family physician. As I walked
down Chapel Street it seemed as if my heart was a nest of scorpions
spitting poison.
There was no breakfast in the house for the mother of the new-born
babe. The churches, the homes of the wealthy and the university filled
me with unutterable hate as I passed them. I was in the frame of mind
in which murder, theft, violence are committed.
I had held my integrity intact until that exigency. Then I only lacked
opportunity to smash my ideals--to bend my head, my back, my morals!
Cold sweat covered my body, my teeth chattered and my hands twitched.
My Socialist philosophy told me that society was in process of
evolution. Democracy at heart was correcting its own evils and like a
snake sloughing off its outworn skin. I was part of that process.
Reason pounded these things in on me but hate pushed them aside and
demanded something else. I wondered that morning whether after all
there weren't more reforms wrapped up in a stick of dynamite than in a
whole life of preaching and moralizing. In that fifteen-minute walk
there passed through my mind and heart all the elements of hell.
It was a new experience to me--I had not travelled that way before. I
went into a little restaurant to use the 'phone. I laid the nickel on
the counter, when I had finished, and as I did so the waiter said,
"It's a 'phone on me, Mr. Irvine;" and he rang up five cents in the
cash register.
"Ah," I said, "you know me then?"
"Sure thing," he said, "don't you know me?"
I shook my head.
"Gee!" he said, "you're sick. You look like hell!"
"I feel like it."
"What's up?"
"You heard me 'phone?"
"Sure--aint you glad?"
"Yes--but----"
"Say, have a cup of hot coffee, won't you?"
"Thank you, I think I will."
His intuition was keen enough to perceive that the trouble was mental
and as I took the coffee he said:
"Discouraged a bit, hey?"
Without waiting for a reply he proceeded to tell me how a few words of
mine at one of the trolleymen's midnight meetings had changed his
life. He went into details and as he went on I saw a look of
contentment on his face and as I watched, it changed the look on my
own.
I could not drink his coffee but I shared his comradeship and as I
went back home I became normal. Hate left my heart. I was beaten, in a
way; but the love of mankind was a fundamental thing and the other was
a mental storm that passed over and left no ill results.
Things took a new turn that morning. We saw a rift in the clouds and
were encouraged. It became clear that my work in New Haven was ended.
I took a commission from the Young Men's Christian Association on West
57th Street to open up meetings in some of the big shops and factories
of New York.
Mr. Charles F. Powlison, who is one of the largest minded and noblest
hearted men in the Association, is special secretary there, and it was
through his faith and confidence that the work came to me.
The Interborough Rapid Transit Company gave us permission to hold
meetings in several of their largest shops.
I enjoyed the work very much--these big crowds of men in jumpers and
overalls had a fascination for me. The work in the Interborough went
well for a year. I reviewed great books, I gave the biographies of the
world's greatest men, I talked of ethics, science, art and religion.
I taught the truth as I understood it; but it was all utterly
unsectarian and universal. In one shop the company cleaned out the
junk and replaced it with a restaurant: the superintendent told me it
was the result of my work there. My talks were never over fifteen
minutes long and seldom over ten. I was always assisted by a musician
of some sort.
The work went well for a year in the big shops; then my part in them
came to an abrupt end.
The board of directors at the West Side Y.M.C.A. is composed of
representative men of affairs in New York--men of big responsibilities
and large wealth; as splendid a set of men as ever governed an
institution.
This particular Y.M.C.A. was a pioneer institution in a big way. It
stood for large things when those things were unpopular. It was a
heretic in a way. In ten years the procession came up and the
institution seemed to stand still.
It had given the Y.M.C.A. world a larger outlook in religion and it
may be that it will yet become a pioneer in giving it a larger
sociology.
I was one of two men to address the board of directors one night and I
stated the case at more length than I do here.
"What shall I tell those workingmen you stand for?" I asked. "Do you
believe in the right of the workers to organize? If you do, say so,
and, as your representative, let me tell them that you do."
[Illustration: The Lunch Hour in an Interborough Shop]
The next time I addressed a big shop meeting I gave the musician all
the minutes save three. Several hundreds of men stood around
me--disorganized, poorly paid men.
"Men," I said, "there is in this city a thing called the Civic
Federation. Its leaders are directly the owners of this shop. In it
are also leaders of labour, Mitchell and Gompers. There are several
bishops of various beliefs. Now the Civic Federation tells us--tells
the world--that it believes in labour unions. What I want to suggest
is this: A dozen of you get together; write a note to your masters and
ask them if that belief applies to _you_?"
Of course I knew it didn't apply to them, but I got very tired merely
telling the slaves to be good, and ended my service there in that way.
A spy at once informed the superintendent, and I was told--the
Y.M.C.A. was told--that I could never enter their shops again. The man
who succeeded me as a speaker at that shop, the following week, went
much further; he positively advised them to organize, for hardly in
the United States could one find greater need of organization.