There was, however, in Toledo one man who could sympathize with my
attitude; and that was a man whose determination to accept literally
and to try to practice the fundamental philosophy of Christianity
had so startled and confounded the Christians everywhere that he at
once became famous throughout Christendom as “Golden Rule Jones.” I
had known of him only as the eccentric mayor of our city, and nearly
everyone whom I had met since my advent in Toledo spoke of him only
to say something disparaging of him. The most charitable thing they
said was that he was crazy. All the newspapers were against him,
and all the preachers. My own opinion, of course, could have been
of no consequence, but I had learned in the case of Altgeld that
almost universal condemnation of a man is to be examined before it is
given entire credit. I do not mean to say that there was universal
condemnation of Golden Rule Jones in Toledo in those days: it was
simply that the institutional voices of society, the press and the
pulpit, were thundering in condemnation of him. When the people came to
vote for his reëlection his majorities were overwhelming, so that he
used to say that everybody was against him but the people. But that is
another story.
In those days I had not met him. I might have called at his office, to
be sure, but I did not care to add to his burdens. One day, suddenly,
as I was working on a story in my office, in he stepped with a
startling, abrupt manner, wheeled a chair up to my desk, and sat down.
He was a big Welshman with a sandy complexion and great hands that
had worked hard in their time, and he had an eye that looked right
into the center of your skull. He wore, and all the time he was in the
room continued to wear, a large cream-colored slouch hat, and he had
on the flowing cravat which for some inexplicable reason artists and
social reformers wear; their affinity being due, no doubt, to the fact
that the reformer must be an artist of a sort, else he could not dream
his dreams. I was relieved, however, to find that Jones wore his hair
clipped short, and there was still about him that practical air of the
very practical business man he had been before he became mayor. He had
been such a practical business man that he was worth half a million, a
fairly good fortune for our town; but he had not been in office very
long before all the business men were down on him, and saying that what
the town needed was a business man for mayor, a statement that was
destined to ring in my ears for a good many years. They disliked him of
course because he would not do just what they told him to,--that being
the meaning and purpose of a business man for mayor,--but insisted that
there were certain other people in the city who were entitled to some
of his service and consideration--namely, the working people and the
poor. The politicians and the preachers objected to him on the same
grounds: the unpardonable sin being to express in any but a purely
ideal and sentimental form sympathy for the workers or the poor. It
seemed to be particularly exasperating that he was doing all this in
the name of the Golden Rule, which was for the Sunday-school; and they
even went so far as to bring to town another Sam Jones, the Reverend
Sam Jones, to conduct a “revival” and to defeat the Honorable Sam
Jones. The Reverend Sam Jones had big meetings, and said many clever
things, and many true ones, the truest among them being his epigram,
“I am for the Golden Rule myself, up to a certain point, and then I
want to take the shotgun and the club.” I think that expression marked
the difference between him and our Sam Jones, in whose philosophy
there was no place at all for the shotgun or the club. The preachers
were complaining that Mayor Jones was not using shotguns, or at least
clubs, on the “bad” people in the town; I suppose that since their own
persuasions had in a measure failed, they felt that the Mayor with such
instruments might have made the “bad” people look as if they had been
converted anyway.
It was when he was undergoing such criticism as this that he came to
see me, to ask me to speak at Golden Rule Park. This was a bit of green
grass next to his factory; he had dedicated it to the people’s use,
and there under a large willow-tree, on Sunday afternoons, he used to
speak to hundreds. There was a little piano which two men could carry,
and with that on the platform to play the accompaniments the people
used to sing songs that Jones had written--some of them of real beauty,
and breathing the spirit of poetry, if they were not always quite in
its form. In the winter these meetings were held in Golden Rule Hall,
a large room that served very well as an auditorium, in his factory
hard by. On the walls of Golden Rule Hall was the original tin sign
he had hung up in his factory as the only rule to be known there,
“Therefore whatsoever things ye would that men should do to you, do ye
even so to them.” In the course of time every reformer, every radical,
in the country had spoken in that hall or under that willow-tree,
and the place developed an atmosphere that was immensely impressive.
The hall had the portraits of many liberal leaders and humanitarians
on its walls, and a number of paintings; and in connection with the
settlement which Jones established across the street the institution
came to be, as a reporter wrote one day in his newspaper, the center of
intelligence in Toledo.
Well then, on that morning when first he called, Jones said to me:
“I want you to come out and speak.”
“On what subject?” I asked.
“There’s only one subject,” he said,--“life.” And his face was radiant
with a really beautiful smile, warmed with his rich humor. I began to
say that I would prepare something, but he would not let me finish my
sentence.
“Prepare!” he exclaimed. “Why prepare? Just speak what’s in your heart.”
He was always like that. Once, a good while after, in one of his
campaigns, he called me on the telephone one evening just at dinner
time, and said:
“I want you to go to Ironville and speak to-night.”
I was tired, and, as I dislike to confess, somewhat reluctant,--I had
always to battle so for a little time to write,--so that I hesitated,
asked questions, told him, as usual, that I had no speech prepared.
“But you know it is written,” he said, “that ‘in that hour it shall be
given you what ye shall say.’”
I could assure him that the prophecy had somewhat failed in my case,
and that what was given me to say was not always worth listening to
when it was said; and then I inquired:
“What kind of crowd will be there?”
“Oh, a good crowd!” he said.
“But what kind of people?”
“What kind of people?” he asked in a tone of great and genuine
surprise. “What kind of people? Why, there’s only one kind of
people--just people, just folks.”
I went of course, and I went as well to Golden Rule Park and to Golden
Rule Hall, and there was never such a school for public speaking as
that crowded park afforded, with street cars grinding and scraping by
one side of it and children laughing at their play on the swings and
poles which Jones had put there for them; or else standing below the
speaker and looking curiously up into his face, and filling him with
the fear of treading any moment on their little fingers which, as they
clung to the edge, made a border all along the front of the platform.
And for a year or so after his death I spoke there every Sunday: we
were trying so hard to keep his great work alive.