Chapter 6

"The question may be asked, as, indeed, it has been, 'What is the use of attempting to save a dying race?' and secondly, 'Can the race be saved?' I have little patience with Christian men and women who ask the first question, but shall reply most emphatically that on commercial grounds alone we should save these people. They ought to become a very valuable asset in the new economic development of the entire territory of Alaska. When properly trained and disciplined they make excellent workmen. Their natural adaptation to the climatic conditions should prove a valuable commercial asset. In the name of a common humanity; in the name of the gospel of the brotherhood of man, as well as for commercial reasons, I do not hesitate to say that they should be saved.

"Can they be regenerated physically? Possibly not as a race; but as individuals without hesitation I answer in the affirmative. The introduction of proper sanitary measures by the government; the development of educational systems by both church and state; and the ministry of spiritual advisers working hand in hand, would form a combination of agencies that in ten years would completely transform, rebuild and place on the sure road to health and prosperity, this people." [Footnote: Rev. M. C. Allaben, Woman's Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.]

* * * * *

The mountain made a steep descent to the road except for one shelving bit of level ground upon which rested, as if it had alighted there, a one-room cabin, for which an end of a tree trunk served as a doorstep. A loosely-hung wooden door provided the only light by day, except that given by the flickering of the flames from the burning logs on the old open fireplace.

On a big bed in the corner, the only one the home afforded, lay a little baby girl, burning with fever. Over her bent her young mother, widowed, though still in her early twenties.

Pretty fair-haired children of two and four years of age crouched in sleepy misery on the foot of the bed, sharing in their childish way their mother's anxiety.

An older girl of six, pretty, but already womanly in her busy household ways, heaped another log on the fire and hovered over it for warmth. She was barefoot and, like the others of the household, including the sick baby, wore the scanty day-time clothing, having no other, for they were of the very poor of the mountains.

It was the lonely, desolate hour between midnight and morning. The watchers in the cabin listened intently for the sound of hoof-beats which would mean that the Mission nurse had been home when the summons came, and would soon be with them.

Hark! Yes!--through the night came the beat, beat of the hoofs of old "Bess" as she struck the road in a swift steady trot.

Emma, the oldest girl, is down in the darkness at the road to meet the beloved nurse and help her dismount. She holds the lantern while the saddle-bags are swung off and old "Bess" is blanketed and tethered.

As she enters the cabin Miss M---- goes immediately to the bed, and holding the lantern for light, examines her little patient and finds a bad case of pneumonia. The Mission hospital is not yet completed, and there is no doctor within many miles. She must fight alone for the little life.

Swiftly the saddle-bags are unpacked, yielding the "wonderful salve" (antiphlogistine) and other medicines--a small wash basin, soap, wash cloth and towel, flannel and a change of clothing for baby.

Emma is bidden to heat water, which she does by filling an old black kettle and standing it on the blazing embers of the open fire.

How the nurse worked, and watched, and prayed as the hours passed, and no improvement! The day came and went, and another night brought closer the shadow--the little one seemed hardly to breathe. Then the mother fled out in the darkness to rock back and forth in an agony of weeping, which was hushed only when the quiet voice of the nurse said: "You make it harder. Pray instead."

At last the waiting nurse feels the little body relax under her touch. Sleep and restoration begin to steal back the ebbing vitality--the little life is saved.

To-day within reach of this home, and many like it, the Mary Isabel Alien Memorial Hospital at Gray Hawk, Kentucky, stands with open doors and inviting beds for all who suffer. [Footnote: Women's Board of Domestic Missions, Reformed Church in America.]

Whatever equipment and loving service can do to provide healing may be found here.

* * * * *

"The military occupation of Porto Rico drew the attention of the Christian churches of the United States to their opportunity and responsibility for sending the light of the true Gospel to that island where it had never penetrated. Soon after this the investigations of a military surgeon demonstrated the important fact that ninety per cent of the working population of the island were affected with the hook-worm disease. Apart from other diseases which were present, here was a great economic and humanitarian problem. The government had done much, but as elsewhere, other agencies were needed if the physical ills of the Porto Ricans were to be healed. In response to this need Dr. Grace Atkins went to Porto Rico in 1900 as the first medical missionary under the Woman's Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church. She started a clinic in a room of her rented house, and treated many sick people in their homes. Being impressed with how little she could do in this way for many who were seriously sick, or who needed operations, she urged upon the Board the erection of a hospital. In response to her call to the church, in February, 1904, the present hospital buildings in San Juan were opened to receive patients. There were forty-five beds and, at that time, this was the only hospital on the island in which the sick could be properly treated.

"That there is need for the work and that the hospital is meeting that need is shown by the number of those who come for treatment. This has increased from seven thousand in 1907 to over nineteen thousand in 1914. The majority of these naturally are treated in the dispensary, where a clinic is held daily, except Sunday. On Monday all day is required to treat those who come, the number reaching almost two hundred at times. Many come in from the surrounding country, often walking from ten to thirty miles. All classes of diseases are seen. Besides the more common ailments, with which all are familiar, there are many cases of hook-worm anemia and a number of other diseases peculiar to the tropics. Then there are many who need surgical treatment. Blind men come in led by little boys; some are brought in rocking chairs by their friends; others are carried in hammocks, while still others arrive in coaches or automobiles. One woman may have a piece of a needle broken off in her hand and another a large tumor which needs a major operation for its removal. Each one must be examined, a diagnosis made and the proper treatment and instructions given. The most serious cases are admitted to the hospital when there are beds available. On an average six to eight cases a week have to be refused admission because the beds are filled.

"In the private rooms are treated many Porto Ricans and many Americans. The latter not only receive medical attention needed, and much appreciated, on a foreign shore, but also an education in practical Christianity which in many cases proves a great surprise as well as a benefit to themselves and the hospital. Practically all the patients in the wards are Porto Ricans. A few of the more serious medical cases are admitted, but the majority are those who need operations. Able to pay nothing or very little, there is no other place where most of them can receive treatment which will enable them to support themselves and those dependent upon them. The blind have been made to see and the lame to walk. So many apply for admission that there is always a waiting list. Many lives have been saved in the children's ward by taking in babies who have become sick from improper or insufficient food due to ignorance or poverty. Tuberculosis of bones fend joints is common and many little sufferers have been restored to health and strength.

"That the work done in the hospital is not only helpful to individuals but that it could be done by no other institution present or projected is the testimony of the head of the Department of Health, who is an American and has resided many years on the island.

"One of the most important departments of the hospital is the training school for nurses. There were practically no trained nurses on the island and no provision for their training when our school was opened. About sixty have graduated and are doing faithful and efficient work as head nurses in our own and other hospitals, and in the homes of their own people. There are usually about fifteen pupil nurses. In addition to the regular hospital work a department of district, or visiting, nursing has been started and each one is trained to do actual practical work in the home. Not only is this valuable for the nurse, but it makes it possible to follow up many of the cases from the clinic, or hospital, and supervise their diet and care and so try to keep them well, which is especially important for the babies. One of the graduates is doing this in connection with the settlement work of our church in San Juan. Her work has suggested to the local Board of Health the desirability of establishing a similar work on a larger scale. This is an illustration of the indirect benefits of missions throughout the world.

"But men are souls and merely have bodies, so that, however important it is to heal the body, our Master came to save the soul and our duty is to point them to Him. Every day in the wards and in the clinic the Bible is read and prayer is offered. On Sunday a service is held in which the Gospel message is explained. They have never had the Bible and know nothing of the true Gospel. The are either entirely ignorant of religion or their ideas are erroneous. By the spoken word in the hospital and by giving them the written Word to carry to their homes, the way is prepared for the entrance into their hearts and lives of the divine Healer and Saviour.

"The three years' course affords opportunity for the thorough religious instruction of the nurses in a weekly Bible class and in the church services which they attend on Sunday. With very few exceptions they have become members of evangelical churches before graduation." [Footnote: Presbyterian Hospital, San Juan, P.I.]

* * * * *

"Of first importance in the physical well-being of the boy or girl is the knowledge that will lead to a wholesome development of body and mind.

"One of the most important phases of Home Mission medical work is instructing the students in Mission Homes and Schools in health and home sanitation, bringing to them something of the ideal for their older lives that Dr. David Starr Jordan expresses in "The Call of the Twentieth Century," where he speaks to the boy of to-day:

"So live that your after self--the man you ought to be--may in time be possible and actual. Far away in the twenties, the thirties of this century, he is awaiting his turn. His body, his brain, his soul are in your boyish hands. He cannot help himself. What will you leave for him? Will it be a brain unspoiled by lust or dissipation, a mind trained to think and act, a nervous system true as a dial in its response to the truth about you?"

The place and need of Home Missions as a present day healing force can be more fully realized when we consider the conditions peculiar to our country, which call urgently for greatly increased facilities for physical regeneration.

Pre-eminent among these are the constant influx of aliens from southern Europe and others of a dangerously low standard as regards sanitation and health--and the economic pressure which produces appalling congestion in living conditions.

"People are already living on certain portions of Manhattan Island at a density which, if continued throughout the entire city, would give New York a population of 197,372,635."

There is, on the other hand, the isolation and neglect of large groups of people who are uninformed of sanitation and have only precarious access to medical attendance, and whose needs call insistently for help, as well as constitute a menace to the health of these communities; such are found among Alaskans, Indians, Mexicans, and others.

As the enlarging view of spiritual regeneration has come to include the redemption of the environment so that it shall be an aid to better living instead of an almost insupportable hindrance, so also a newer and infinitely greater scope is daily coming to the realm of healing science--that of prevention of disease and stamping out of scourges rather than merely the healing of individuals after disease has claimed them.

This wider vision of physical regeneration, Home Missions is seeking earnestly to promote, that the better day for which humanity yearns may be hastened, when His Kingdom will come on earth.

V

AN INTEGRATING FORCE

"Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a' that, That sense and worth o'er a' the earth May bear the gree and a' that, For a' that and a' that, It's coming yet, for a' that, _That man to man, the world o'er Shall brothers be for a' that_."

"Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?"

"There is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all and in all."

"One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all."

* * * * *

A prominent American clergyman lecturer and writer was traveling through inland China a short time before the outbreak of the Boxer rebellion, when the feeling toward foreigners was intensely hostile.

Through a misadventure he became separated from the party with which he traveled and found himself alone with his Chinese driver and courier in a village, when a suspicious crowd quickly assembled which refused to permit him to proceed.

Passports and letters from prominent Chinese officials were of no avail with this prejudiced crowd which grew constantly more excited and revengeful.

Suddenly through the threatening mass a man forced his way to the side of Dr. P.----, exclaiming in English, "You Melican man?" "Yes," came the reply. Turning to the crowd he explained the friendliness of American foreigners, and turning to Dr. P. again said, "Me Melican man, too, I live San Francisco seven years." Then he said, "You Jesus man? Me Jesus man, too; Mission, San Francisco, made me Jesus man."

Turning again to the crowd he succeeded in persuading them, though protesting and reluctant, to allow Dr. P. to proceed on his way unharmed.

This incident stands for the myriad influences in the ebb and flow of immigration that carry the impulses, the ideals, and the new life of America into the heart of the old world civilizations.

To the great inert masses of people in these lands have thus been brought the germs of free thought and action and the sustaining, impelling faith that these might sometime be attained by them and their children. That to them through unceasing struggle might also come the better day when government would stand for freedom, opportunity and progress, rather than the sword, prison, banishment and oppression.

America has been the great inspirer of the world.

Since the dawn of the twentieth century more than 10,500,000 immigrants have entered the United States. Through the pressure of economic conditions a large proportion of immigrants and their children are forced into the centers of poverty, crime and disease, the slum districts of our great cities, and into huge colonies in industrial centers where they both receive and contribute to conditions that have become pathological for the community, real sources of infection, both mental and physical. It is therefore not surprising to find that the children of immigrants reared in American cities contribute twice as many criminals as the sons of native whites of native stock. Our great industrial centers show an enormous aggregation of foreigners. It is said that these contain seven millions of the Slavs, the Latins, and the Asiatics, and those whose racial background makes difficult the conception of a democracy and their assimilation into it.

We confront a condition of grave peril to industrial interests as well as to our national well-being when, in addition to the overcoming of racial background, we must add the retarding effect of the segregation of large foreign colonies in mining and industrial centers. Great numbers of these aliens do not expect to become American citizens, but are here only to accumulate sufficient capital to return. "Of all the immigrants now comingone-third return to Europe and two-thirds of all those who return remain there." These constitute largely a mobile migratory and disturbing, unskilled wage-earning class.

They therefore are unfavorable to assimilative influences and tend to establish in modified forms the standards and customs of the communities from which they have come. "The town of Windber, in Western Pennsylvania, has a population of 8000 persons and is the center of twelve mining camps. It was founded by the opening of bituminous coal mines, for which purpose 1600 experienced Englishmen and 400 native Americans were brought into the locality. At the present, eighteen races of recent immigration are numbered among its mine workers. The Southern and Eastern Europeans among them have their churches, banks, steamship agencies and business establishments in the town to which they go to transact their affairs and to seek amusement." "Another illustration is the recently established iron and steel manufacturing community at Granite City and Madison, Illinois, which has the distinction of being the largest Bulgarian colony in the United States. These two cities join each other and for practical purposes are one. Fifteen years ago its site was an unbroken stretch of corn fields. The original wage-earners were English, Irish, Germans, Welsh and Poles; then followed Slovaks, Magyars, a few Croatians. Mixed groups came next, Roumanians, Greeks and Servians, and later Bulgarians, until that group alone numbered 8000; later still, the foreigners were augmented by the arrival of 4000 new immigrants--Armenians, Servians, Lithuanians, Slovaks, Magyars and Poles. Under normal industrial conditions the population of the community is estimated at 20,000 Here the various racial groups live entirely apart from any American influence."

The New York Tribune states: "It is a somewhat startling announcement that more than one-third of the adult male inhabitants of New York City are unnaturalized aliens. There are, according to the census, 1,433,749 males in the city, of twenty-one years or more, and of these more than 500,000 have not become naturalized. In the whole state there are 718,940 foreign-born white men of voting age who have not become citizens. It needs no argument to prove that this is not a desirable state of affairs, and that if perpetuated it would be mischievous, if not disastrous."

From the figures collected in an investigation of four months in New York City Night Court, it appears that 7.7 per cent of the women arrested and convicted for keeping disorderly houses and solicitation were foreign-born.

In New York City all the conditions created by immigration are enormously accentuated, for within itself and its suburbs it has a foreign population exceeding the whole population of Chicago.

"It is at once the largest Catholic city of history and the largest Jewish city of history."

Statistics furnished by the industrial department of the Y.M.C.A., based upon the census of 1910, give the proportion of two out of every three of the inhabitants of the following cities as foreign-born or of foreign-born parentage.

181,511 Columbus 104,402 Spokane 233,650 Indianapolis 213,381 Denver 116,577 Dayton 207,214 Portland 248,381 Kansas City 558,485 Baltimore 319,198 Los Angeles 168,497 Toledo 237,194 Seattle 423,715 Buffalo 100,253 Albany 267,799 Jersey City, N.J. 124,096 Omaha 347,469 Newark, N.J. 137,249 Syracuse 224,326 Providence 687,029 St. Louis 102,054 Bridgeport 1,549,008 Philadelphia 465,766 Detroit 150,174 Oakland 104,839 Cambridge 112,571 Grand Rapids 560,603 Cleveland 218,149 Rochester 670,585 Boston 533,905 Pittsburgh 125,600 Paterson, N.J. 301,408 Minneapolis 373,857 Milwaukee 129,867 Scranton 2,185,283 Chicago 214,744 St. Paul 106,294 Lowell 145,986 Worcester 4,766,883 New York 133,605 New Haven 119,295 Fall River

This tabulation suggests all that these dominant cities represent of congestion of industrial and social pressure, and their powerful effects upon new Americans in their most impressionable period.

"The significant feature of the situation of which the foregoing illustrations are typical," say such authorities as Prof. Jeremiah W. Jenks and W. Jett Lanck, "is the almost complete ignorance and indifference of the native American population to the recent immigrant colonies and their condition. This attitude extends even to the native churches. Comparatively few agencies have been established for the Americanization and assimilation of Southern and Eastern European wage-earners.

"Not only is a great field open for social and religious work, but vast possibilities are offered for patriotic service in improving these serious conditions which confront a self-governing republic."

That the crowding, struggling foreigner of many races and tongues may take his place as a voting American, in whose hands rests a predominating influence upon the present and future of this nation, it is essential that he catch the vision of those fundamental, inspiring ideals which have made America the hope of the hopeless, the very land of promise, to the oppressed of the world.

He must be touched by an integrating force, a dynamic power, capable of revealing and developing the inherent best in him and contributing to him of the essential best in America.

"Religion alone answers this need in fullest measure. It is the great quickening power which can resolve ancient inheritance of personal and race antagonisms and hatreds into a struggle for higher individual and community welfare."

Eternally true are the Master's words, "Man cannot live by bread alone"; he must have the spiritual communion which can give to him and to society the uplifting conception of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. This is the great integrating, harmonizing power that the church of Christ must bring to the solving of America's insistent immigrant problem.

* * * * *

Before taking up in detail the study of what Home Missions is actually accomplishing as an integrating force, let us turn briefly to consider some of the powerful disintegrating factors operative among immigrants and their children.

Second to the great fact of labor and its demands in our cities is the need and demand for recreation. The reaction from the monotony of factory life, with its exacting, fatiguing tension of machine-tending, and the crowdedness of the tenement home, sends the laboring multitudes into the streets at night seeking diversion and amusement. This is pre-eminently true of the young, who find commercialism waiting at night to "extract from them their petty wages by pandering to their love of pleasure" after having utilized their undeveloped labor power in its factories and shops by day.