Chapter 7

Jane Addams says, "The whole apparatus for supplying pleasure is wretchedly inadequate and full of danger to whomsoever may approach it.

"Who is responsible for its inadequacy and dangers? We certainly cannot expect the fathers and mothers who have come to the city from farms or who have immigrated from other lands to appreciate or rectify these dangers of the city.

"We cannot expect the young people themselves to cling to conventions which are totally unsuited to modern city conditions, nor yet to be equal to the task of forming new conventions through which this more agglomerate social life may express itself.

"The mass of these young people are possessed of good intentions and would respond to amusements less demoralizing and dangerous, if such were available at no greater cost than those now offered.

"Our attitude toward music is typical of our carelessness toward all these things which make for common joy."

The vicious, sensuous music of the dance hall, with accompanying words, often indecent and full of vulgar, suggestive appeal, are permitted a vogue throughout the entire country.

No diagnosing of the immigrant city problem or understanding of the task of securing civic righteousness can be obtained by Home Mission women without realizing the place and influence of amusements upon the lives of the young people of our land.

A noted English playwright stated that "the theatre is literally making the minds of our urban population to-day. It is a huge factory of sentiment, of character, of points of honor, of conception, of conduct, of everything that finally determines the destiny of a nation."

Hundreds, yes, thousands of young people attend the five-cent theatres every night, including Sunday, receiving the constant effect of vulgar music and a debased and often vulgar and suggestive dramatic art.

"Many immigrant parents," says Jane Addams, "are absolutely bewildered by the keen absorption of their children in the cheap theatres.

"One Sunday evening recently an investigation was made of four hundred and sixty-six theatres in the city of Chicago, and it was discovered that in the majority of them the leading theme was revenge, the lover following his rival, the outraged husband seeking his wife's paramour, or similar themes. It was estimated that one-sixth of the entire population of the city had attended the theatres on that day."

The same would generally be true of other large cities.

Nor is this low and vicious standard of cheap amusements confined to large cities; it is bound to prevail also where our backward people come into contact with white villages and communities. The cock fights and other demoralizing amusements of Spanish-speaking peoples and the dances of the Indians must be superseded by entertainment that is wholesome and helpful.

Through its own agencies and as it co-operates with others for betterment Home Missions must take into account the urgent demand for wholesome amusement for those who, on account of the conditions of their environment, are so much in need of the cheer and joy of attractive and elevating forms of entertainment.

Home Missions responds to the cry of the city's need through the ministry of the deaconess, who in turn is nurse, or visitor, or leader of kindergarten, day nursery, rescue home, or orphanage.

* * * * *

A gentle-voiced Italian mother it was whose ten children filled to overflowing the three-room tenement home, one room of which was without means of light or air. She lifted to her arms the youngest child of less than a year, clad in one ragged little garment, while she seated herself to tell in broken English and with many gestures her story to the deaconess who came to see if she could help about the oldest boy, who was giving trouble. The woman said she had been married in Italy when only fourteen years of age and was now thirty-one. She had come to America when her second child was a baby. Her husband was a longshoreman and earned twelve dollars a week for the support of the family of twelve. They were looking forward soon to the help of the earnings of the oldest child, a boy not quite fourteen. This boy was the problem! To escape the uproar and confusion of the crowded rooms he spent his time when he could escape from school, on the street. A gang adopted him. He was ill-nourished, and his teachers suspected him of receiving and using cocaine. Poor little scrap of humanity! with a hungry, craving body and no room for soul, mind or body to develop but the corrupting street, with its saloons and its gangs! From such a childhood he is destined soon to join the ranks of labor. Will he add to the number of America's criminals or can he possibly enter the ranks of good citizenship? If he were simply an individual case it would still be inexpressibly sad, but, alas, he stands for thousands in our land.

The deaconess will do her utmost for his rescue, but we cannot wonder at her feeling that great fundamental, preventive measures must be taken by the church and society to wipe out the city slums and all that they stand for of pestilential evil.

Of great significance are the disintegrating efforts of certain groups of socialists and anarchists who by means of Sunday-schools gather children of immigrants largely to inculcate in them the peculiar principles and doctrines of anarchism and their brand of socialism, as well as to crush out of their thought all idea of God and love and obedience to Him. These Sunday-schools, so destructive of all that is best and highest in the child soul, flourish in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago and other large cities.

* * * * *

The foreigners who stand perhaps in greatest need of the understanding sympathy and the harmonizing influence of the church are those isolated in the great mining regions, where the conditions of living are so hazardous and where maladjustments of every sort contribute to an atmosphere which breathes of hatred and discontent. It is estimated that our present industrial system, through criminal negligence, takes the huge toll of 45,000 workers killed every year.

One miner of every hundred dies because his employer cares less for the lives of his men than for the few extra dollars, the cost of proper safety arrangements.

"In the course of the Pittsburgh survey it was discovered that by industrial accidents Allegheny County alone loses more than five hundred workmen every year, sixty per cent of whom are young men who have not yet reached the prime of life. This loss falls not upon the people who determine the degree of protection from injury and decide about the introduction of safety devices, but upon the widows, the orphans and the aged parents."

Here the resourceful Home Missionary is an inestimable help. She is often a Slavish or Bohemian girl, knowing from actual experience all the sordidness, the monotony, the tragedy that envelop the mine and its workers, for in many cases she herself has been a part of it, herself Christianized, educated and trained by Home Missions. She speaks the language of the mines, she knows its innermost life. When the frequent accidents, throw their desolation and fearful economic burdens upon the homes, she comforts and sustains. She helps the stricken wife and children to keep to decency and right. She teaches night classes in English, and mothers' classes, sustains reading and club rooms with games and wholesome amusements to hold the boy miner from the lure of the saloon. She conducts the Sunday-school and is herself a peripatetic Christian settlement, with all that it implies of sacrifice, service and the salvation of soul and body.

A commentary on the need of Home Missions in the mining sections is forcibly presented in the following testimony.

Before the Commission of Industrial Relations (February, 1915) Mrs. Dominiki from the Colorado mines, speaking of the general labor conditions in the district in which she lived, said:

"I never saw a church in any of the coal camps except Trinidad. There were no halls where people might meet but there were always plenty of saloons.

* * * * *

"Hotels, boarding houses of many descriptions, stores, saloons and gambling dens, are visible on every street. Everything suggested money-making and money-spending." [Footnote: The Outlook--February 17, 1915.]

This typical mining town does not pretend to have any sacred days or sacred hours. Business, money-making and sporting are the great aim of life. The mines work seven days each week and twenty-four hours each day. The great concentrators know no pause; the cables are ever busy transporting the mineral from the tunnels to the mills.

The streets are full of busy teams on the Sabbath, just as on any other day; the same is true of all the stores but one, the proprietor of which put out as his first advertisement, "This store will be closed on the Sabbath." The saloons and gambling dens boom in iniquity on the Lord's Day as well as on any other day.

The first service was held on the street. A wagon answering for pulpit, platform and choir-loft, the noble few, interested and willing-hearted, were organized for Christian work; and after a long, severe, self-sacrificing struggle, with help of friends here and there, a comfortable meeting house was completed, even to a bell in its tower. The Sabbath bell is now heard, What a message it declares! What memories it awakens! Who can tell what its influence shall be?

"'The next thirty-five miles is an American Sodom,' said the conductor.

"What did the converted coal miner find, when he accepted this difficult trust? Saloons in abundance--in one town eleven in a row--each saloon with its attendant gambling den, dance house, etc. He found this region a hotbed of infidelity. He saw multitudes of young people of all nations under the sun making holiday of the sacred hours of the Sabbath, and, saddest of all, knowing no better. There were no gospel services, nor Sunday-schools, for there was no place to hold them.

"While I have spent much time in visiting the five towns of this neglected field, I selected one place as a center for extra effort, and here I commenced a series of gospel meetings. The result is a church of seventeen members and a Sunday-school of fifty scholars. As all these towns are dreadfully cursed with saloons, we are trying to create a temperance sentiment. Fifty have already signed the pledge, among them some of the worst drunkards in the town. Forty-five children have joined the 'Children's Band' and are trying to keep their lives clean. We have bought half an acre of ground, whereon to build a church and parsonage. Work is already commenced in good faith."

* * * * *

"With the opening and development of the hard coal mines of Pennsylvania in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, a large migration of Welsh miners began to arrive in the state. They were Protestants and fervently religious. Immediately the organization of religious life began. In 1831 different denominational elements gathered together and began Sunday-school and church life in Carbondale, Pa. The Congregational Church there has been a steady factor of religious life ever since, first among the Welsh exclusively, but later among all classes.

"In similar manner churches were organized all over the anthracite district. To-day fully two-thirds of the churches of the Congregational faith in the state are of Welsh origin, and barring a few in agricultural regions all are among miners or mill hands, joyfully affording the privileges of the Gospel to the poor.

"These churches have made a large contribution to the religious life of the state; they are fervently and effectively evangelistic. It is probably true that the Welsh people are the most thoroughly evangelized of any in the state to-day. Twelve churches have received one hundred or more members each on confession of faith within a year.

"In these later months these Welsh Christians are pressing into the evangelization of other nationalities, which constitute a very large part of the population in the anthracite regions, and their splendid zeal helped to make the 'Billy Sunday' campaign in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton the most wonderful, even that spectacular man has ever conducted. As personal workers they are unsurpassed, and since the revivals they have organized workers' bands and Bible classes, and have gone out into all the country for fifty miles around holding meetings in which singing, personal testimony and prayer have been made marvelously effective, while their earnest labors in local churches which they have joined as members, have in many cases verily revolutionized the life and multiplied the power of the churches." [Footnote: Rev. A.E. Ricker, Congregational Home Missionary Society.]

* * * * *

The Italian immigrant is perhaps more widely distributed throughout our land than any of the other nationalities composing the immigration of the past twenty years.

From New Orleans, with its 60,000, to New York with its nearly half a million, scarcely a city is without an Italian colony, and even villages and rural districts show a quota of these ubiquitous, hard working, promising new Americans.

Italy, the land of art and beauty, contributes to us citizens with an enormous capacity for industry and economy, warmth of nature, response to beauty and openness to religious appeal, with a tendency to crimes of passion and, in general, a most un-American attitude toward the child, using him at the earliest possible age as a commercial asset for the family.

Physically they are of marvelous vitality and strength, and like other hardy peasant stock have great endurance and are very prolific. Early marriages, arranged by the parents, and large families, are the rule among them.

All of these factors are of greatest significance to us as a nation, though we can not here enter into a discussion of the grave potentialities involved in the absorption by our nation of a virile, prolific, though not highly intelligent class.

We cannot, however, fail to be impressed with the urgent necessity of imparting to such a people the ideals and standards essential to their adoption into our body politic.

The church is qualified beyond all other agencies to accomplish this end, and to give spiritual direction to the Italian-Americans who are turning from the superstition and inadequacy of the religion which is fast losing its hold upon them in Italy, as well as America, and from which they are rapidly drifting into indifference and unbelief.

In a late investigation made by the Italian government into conditions in southern Italy the beneficial effect of the returning immigrant was expressed in the strongest terms.

In effect this report said that "greater than the benefit any laws that the government could pass, better than any training which the government could give the people was the beneficial influence of the returning immigrant. Not merely did he bring new wealth into the country, but what was of still greater importance than the imported wealth, he brought with him the American spirit of intelligence, and enterprise which made of him a much worthier and more helpful citizen." [Footnote: The Immigrant Problem--Jenks and Lanck.]

* * * * *

He came of generations of Waldensian Protestant ancestry in Italy, this alert, efficient, cultured Italian pastor. He found the parish to which he was assigned composed of several thousand of his countrymen in a Hudson river town; the building to be used for church purposes a dirty, run-down old hall, a part of the most disreputable corner of the town.

There was not one Italian Protestant, or sympathizer, so far as he could discover, in the community and there seemed to be the greatest apathy to the Mission on the part of the old aristocratic church of the town.

Several blocks away a fine new brick church was in process of construction, to be used for Italian Catholics. Truly the prospect was not encouraging for the Protestant Mission.

However, generations of those who endure and overcome had written deep within him an unfailing courage and a conquering faith.

He began to cultivate Italians in their stores, on the streets, in their homes, wherever he might. His charm and sincerity opened the way and won true friends. In his discussions with them he found those who were questioning the authority of their former faith; it seemed out of harmony in this new land, and they were turning from it to unbelief.

Here was the opportunity for him to offer them the new faith and the One who said "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life," and compellingly he did it.

The story that follows is of absorbing interest, but we can only touch it in outline and record-how the groups of converts joined the pastor in repairing, painting, electric lighting of the building, until it became truly inviting.

How there came to be a library with books in English and Italian, and evening classes, and meetings, and wholesome amusements to compete with the dance halls and saloons for the young people. There were at times stereopticon lectures on things historic and civic, and dramatic presentations of the Prodigal Son and other Bible stories which the pastor himself prepared and trained the people to present.

How a wonderful Sunday-school grew and glowed with happiness and enthusiasm, even though threatening priests sometimes pressed in ordering out the children and shaking excited fists in the faces of the teachers.

How beyond all else in depth and influence were the beautiful church services, reverent and meaningful, bringing close to waiting hearts the burden-lifting, life-giving Jesus the Christ.

Did ever the precious hymn, "What a Friend we have in Jesus" seem quite so fraught with joy and sweet companionship as when the familiar music was sung by this Italian congregation.

_Quale amico abbiaino in Cristo! Sempre pronto a compatir Ogni nostro pensier tristo Tutto il nostro gran fallir! Ma qual pace noi perdiamo, Quali pene noi soffriam, Sol perche non confidiamo Tutto a Lui mentre preghiam_.

Already from this Mission sixteen earnest Christian members have returned to Italy, each having two Bibles, one to give away.

Who can measure the leavening force of the gospel carried by the many who return and who are scattered up and down throughout all the lovely land of Italy.

Home Missions is not bounded in its results by the seas surrounding the home land, but reaches far away into the heart of the old world across the seas.

It is not possible here to differentiate the various races and peoples in our land, each of whose particular circumstances and need and reaction upon our national life makes an urgent claim upon the integrating power of Home Missions and the church.

* * * * *

Passing mention only can be made of the special needs of the Mexicans in the United States, thousands upon thousands of whom are voting citizens and yet are quite unable through deep ignorance, and lack of standards of life to take their places as part of the people who govern.

El Paso, Texas, shows 40,000 permanent Mexican residents; Southern California, 80,000. They form one-half the population of Arizona and more than half of New Mexico and are found in other Western and Southwestern states.

Home Missions is giving a very valuable and varied service to these Americans from old Mexico.

* * * * *

The Orientals of America form a distinct group. Marked racial differences and their background of the mystic, age-old East leave them separated and apart in a conglomerate civilization whose assimilative power is the wonder of the age. They form thus far the largest body of "irreconcilables," to use Prof. Lowell's term, found in our land.

"It is indeed largely a perception of the need of of homogeneity as a basis for popular government and the public opinion on which it rests, that justifies democracies in resisting the influx in great numbers of a widely different race.

"One essential condition to a democracy is that people should be homogeneous to such a point that the minority is willing to accept the decisions of the majority on all questions that are normally expected to arise." [Footnote: Public Opinion and Population Government--A. Lawrence Lowell.]

The German poet, Goethe, a most penetrating thinker, declared that the prime quality of the real critic is sympathy. There is no other realizing and understanding approach to a man or a race. "The significant ideals, the organized energy, the sustaining vitality of an alien people must be sought and understood in order to come into sympathetic touch with them." This is the only key to mutual understanding and respect.

It is especially needful that the Oriental should be considered from this standpoint: in varying degrees, according to their race and standard, they lay a grave responsibility upon Home Missions. By the tens of thousands they are here, Hindus, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese, bringing their ancient faiths, raising their temples in our Christian land. Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Brahmanism, and many other alien and heathen faiths count their adherents by the thousands, while many one-time Christian folk are turning to the modern forms of these religions.

The fact that rescue homes for Chinese slave girls are a feature of Home Mission work among Orientals tells its own story of degrading customs transplanted to America's shores.

Through colporteurs, evangelists, deaconesses, schools, homes, hospitals and churches, Home Missions is giving the Christ to the Orientals; and they, returning, carry the "new life" gained in America to their great awakening lands where rests so much of the world's future destiny. A great international evangelism is being poured out by Home Missions; for these Christians that are "scattered abroad go everywhere preaching the gospel."

A noted Japanese evangelist, Rev. Kiyomatsu Kimura, for six years pastor of the Congregational church of Kioto, known as the Moody of Japan, because of his great power as a soul winner, has been visiting this country, preaching to his own people (January, 1915).

In Hawaii, as a result of his three months of labor, one thousand Japanese and Koreans accepted Christ.

In New York City his brief stay admitted of only three evening meetings, when twenty decided for the Christian faith. Probably just as remarkable results will attend his efforts in Chicago and the far West.

Rev. Mr. Kimura received his training in personal and evangelistic work in the Moody Institute of Chicago.

"An American artist on the wall of a library building has striven to represent the spirit of America by a procession of men, women and children.

"They are all marching together with eager expectation on their upturned faces and the morning light shines on them."

Yes, America offers hope, a future, the upward path, to the crowding millions, but only as the light of God illumines and makes clear the way and His voice stills the hate of race and class, saying "Come unto Me," and "Bear ye one another's burdens."

VI

SOURCES OF POWER

Lover of souls, indeed, But Lover of bodies too, Seeing in human flesh The God shine through; Hallowed be Thy name, And, for the sake of Thee, Hallowed be all men, For Thine they be.

Doer of deeds divine, Thou, the Father's Son, In all Thy children may Thy will be done, Till each works miracles On poor and sick and blind, Learning from Thee the art Of being kind.

For Thine is the glory of love, And Thine the tender power, Touching the barren heart To leaf and flower, Till not the lilies alone, Beneath thy gentle feet, But human lives for Thee Grow white and sweet.