Home Missions in Action Part 12

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 cla.s.ses in English, and mothers' cla.s.ses, sustains reading and club rooms with games and wholesome amus.e.m.e.nts 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt, "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 n.o.ble 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 mult.i.tudes 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 cla.s.ses.

"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 const.i.tute 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 unsurpa.s.sed, and since the revivals they have organized workers' bands and Bible cla.s.ses, 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 pa.s.sion and, in general, a most un-American att.i.tude toward the child, using him at the earliest possible age as a commercial a.s.set 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 cla.s.s.

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 superst.i.tion 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 pa.s.s, 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 a.s.signed 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 cla.s.ses, and meetings, and wholesome amus.e.m.e.nts 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 companions.h.i.+p as when the familiar music was sung by this Italian congregation.

_Quale amico abbiaino in Cristo!

Sempre p.r.o.nto 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_.