From the Bottom Up Part 19

Once again the rafters seemed to shake with the violent vibrations of enthusiasm, and it was some time before order was restored. My initiation concluded, I made an address. It was as brief as the chairman's.

"Reference has been made to a great Master to-night," I said. "Let me ask you craftsmen of New Haven to stand and with all the power of your lungs give three cheers for the Master Craftsman of Galilee."

There was the shuffling of many feet for an instant--then a pause, a pause which was full of awe--then, with a roar like thunder, six hundred throats broke into wild applause for Jesus, whom such people ever gladly heard; and straightway, for the first time in the history of organized labour in New Haven, a union meeting was closed with the apostolic benediction.

Other unions followed suit. I carried a union card of the "Painters, Paper Hangers and Decorators," and there came a time when every street car on the streets of New Haven carried at least two of my friends, for I became chaplain of the Trolleymen's Union, and took an active part in their work.

I was a factor in the wage scale adjustments of the Trolleymen's Union for two years. I fought for them when they were right and against them when they were wrong. I fought on the inside. At first the railroad company looked upon me as a dangerous character; but when their spies in the union reported my actions, the general manager wrote me a letter of thanks and thereafter took me into his confidence. The public, also, looked upon me as inimical to the interests of business, but occasionally the newspapers got at the facts and published them.

The New Haven _Register_ of August 8, 1904, in its leading editorial on an averted strike, said:

"There is a general feeling in New Haven to-day of satisfaction in the news published in yesterday's papers, that the trolleymen's plans for a strike had been relegated to the ash heap.

"The trolleymen were evidently satisfied with the att.i.tude of the railroad managers, and satisfied that they were going to get fair treatment. We read with unusual pleasure the reports of 'cheers' at the meeting; and cheers, not for the little pleasantries of battle, but for the friendly propositions of peace. The sentiment shown by the trolleymen does full justice to their record as law-abiding and intelligent public servants.

"One or two phases of the completion of peace negotiations in the local trolley situation call for particular notice here and now. We do not remember, for instance, to have heard for some time of the active partic.i.p.ation in labour agitations of a regularly ordained clergyman of the Christian church. We noted, therefore, with respectful interest, the manner in which the Reverend Alexander Irvine took part in the meeting at which the final decision was made, and especially the influence which he brought to bear to clear the atmosphere.

Usually hot-headed sympathizers with the cause of labour agitation are the princ.i.p.al advisers at such a time. We remember, and the trolleymen certainly do, that at the critical juncture several summers ago, when a final decision was to have been rendered by the striking trolleymen, an agitator from Bridgeport not only agitated, but nearly managed to turn the balance toward an irreparable break in negotiations. We remember that New Haven people absolutely lost all patience at that juncture, and would have stampeded from their thorough sympathy with the trolleymen's cause had not better wisdom finally prevailed. Mr.

Irvine seems to have occupied that gentleman's shoes at the Sat.u.r.day night meeting, and to have acquitted himself much more to the taste of the public. His interest was, we take it, purely that of any citizen who has studied labour questions sufficiently to arrive at a fair and unprejudiced point of view, and who, moreover, possessed the requisite balance of mind and sincerity of purpose to counsel, when his counsel was asked, judicially. There was absolutely lacking, in his whole connection with the case, any of that sky-rocket, uncertain theorizing that makes the att.i.tude of so many labour 'organizers' so detrimental, in the public eye, to real labour benefit. New Haven has considerable to thank Mr. Irvine for in his att.i.tude in the past crisis. More sound advice and friendly counsel and wise sympathy from such men as he are needed in labour troubles."

Another New Haven paper, commenting editorially on my att.i.tude toward a strike carried on by the bakers' union, said:

"We commend to the Connecticut Railway and Lighting Company, which has now practically four strikes on its hands, in two Connecticut cities, the sentiment of the Reverend Alexander Irvine, in his sermon last Sunday night in reference to the striking bakers of this city who declared against a proposition to arbitrate with the bosses. 'If they have nothing to arbitrate,' said Mr. Irvine, 'they have nothing to strike about.' The proposition would seem to involve a sound principle of business ethics. An honest disagreement is always arbitrable. A body of workmen who make a demand which they are unwilling to submit to the judgment of a fair and intelligent committee deserve little sympathy if they lose their fight, and an employer who refuses to entrust his case to the honesty, fairness and justice of a committee of respectable citizens representing the best element of that public from which he derives his support, must not be surprised if he loses public sympathy."

I was elected a member of the teamsters' union while the teamsters were on strike. I was in their headquarters night and day, doing what I could for them; but I was unable to offset the bad leaders.h.i.+p which landed nine of them in jail.

On May 1st, I left Pilgrim Church. My farewell sermon was a fair statement of the case. The sermon was published in the press. The Hartford _Post_ made the following editorial comments on it:

"ONE CHURCH AND ITS PASTOR

"Plain speaking is so much out of fas.h.i.+on that when examples of it are discovered they rivet attention. Undoubtedly there was a good deal in the farewell sermon of the Reverend Alexander F. Irvine, who has just closed a pastorate of four and one-half years in the Pilgrim Congregational Church in New Haven, that was applicable only to that church, but possibly some statements have more or less general application. At any rate, it is an interesting case and the sermon was remarkable for its almost brutal directness, its cutting satire, its searching exposition of the wholesale spirit of charity mixed with kindly humour which runs through it.

"After four years and six months of labour, a clergyman is certainly qualified to speak of the characteristics of the pastorate. In most cases the farewell sermon is, however, a ma.s.s of 'glittering generalities,' a formal, perfunctory affair. Often it is omitted altogether. The pastor simply goes out, leaving the church to its fate, commending it to the care of the Almighty.

His private views are not expressed. Mr. Irvine retired in considerable turmoil, but he made his parting memorable by expressing his sentiments, and his frankness was absolute.

"In reviewing his pastorate, Mr. Irvine spoke of the children's services on Wednesday nights, the men's Bible cla.s.s and a group of sixty added to the church at its fiftieth anniversary as among the happy features of his administration. But he went on to say that those new members were not welcomed by the 'Society' because they brought no money into the treasury. The clash that went on during those four and one-half years is revealed by what the pastor said on this matter. He tried to democratize the church. He wanted to get in 'new blood.' He tried to interest the workingmen, as many other pastors have tried to do and are trying to do, with varying success. We hear a great deal about the church and the ma.s.ses, how they are drifting apart. Here is a minister who tried to bring them together. He had services when all seats were free, and workingmen were invited. He interested many of them, and many joined the church. But the attempt was a failure, for the church as a whole didn't take kindly to people without money. 'In the making of a deacon,' said Mr. Irvine, 'goodness is a quality sought after, but the qualifications for the Society's committee is cash--cold cash. If there is a deviation from this rule, it is on the score of patronage. Power in the case of the former is a rope of sand; in the latter it is law.' Again on this line, Mr.

Irvine said: 'It was inevitable that these workingmen should be weighed by their contributions. That is the standard of the Society.'

"How true it is that this standard is applied in more churches than the Pilgrim Church in New Haven those who are in the churches know. It is not true, of course, universally, but this is not by any means an isolated case. Possibly the organization of the Congregational churches is faulty in this respect. There is the church and there is the Society. The Society's committee runs the business of the church. It is apt to be made up of men to whom the dollar is most essential, and often the committee exercises absolute power in most of the affairs of the church. In this case it froze out a man who wanted to go out and bring in men from the highways and byways, and now he has gone to establish what he calls the church of the democracy. It is to be a church independent of the rich. There are such churches--not many, to be sure--but they come pretty close to the gospel of the New Testament.

"'A man here may do one of three things,' said the democratic clergyman in his good-bye address. 'He may degenerate and conform to type. He may stay for three or four years by the aid of diplomacy and much grace. He may go mad. Therefore, an essential qualification for this pastorate is a keen sense of humour. If my successor has this he will enjoy the community ministry for a few years and will do much good among the children--he will enjoy the view from the parsonage, the bay, the river, the mountains. He will make friends, too, of some of the most genuinely good people on earth. He must come, as I came, believing this place to be a suburb of paradise, and blessed will that man be if he departs before he changes his mind.'

"That is satire, and possibly out of place in the pulpit, but it may be that the words could be applied without stretching the truth to other pastorates. 'The preacher is their "hired man." He may be brainy, but not too brainy--social, but not too social--religious, but not too religious. He must trim his sails to suit every breeze of the community; his mental qualities must be acceptable to the contemporary ancestors by whom he is surrounded, or he does not fit.' The bitterness in those words is evident, but the truths they contain are important.

"It may be that more sermons with equal plain speaking would do good. It may be that the conservatism, not to say the Phariseeism, of the modern church requires a John the Baptist to pierce it to the core, and expose its inner rottenness. The church that does not welcome the poor man and his family with just as much heartiness, sincerity and kindly sympathy as it does the rich man and his family is certainly not worthy of the great Teacher who spoke of the great difficulty the rich man has in entering the kingdom of G.o.d."

I have delivered about two written sermons in twenty-five years. That farewell message was one of them. I wanted to be careful, fair, just.

I could not escape the belief that at least seven of my predecessors who had been pushed out by unfair means had left with a lie on their lips. Pastor and people, in dissolving relations.h.i.+p, had always a.s.sumed and often explicitly stated on the records that the departing minister "had been called of G.o.d" elsewhere. If G.o.d was the author of their methods of dismissal, He ought to be ashamed of Himself.

There was no interregnum. The Sunday following that farewell sermon I preached my first sermon as pastor of the newly organized People's Church of New Haven. About thirty people left the old church and joined the new. Among them was a saintly woman, who had been a member for half a century of Pilgrim Church. We had one man of means--Philo Sherman Bennett, the friend of Mr. Bryan. The opening meeting was in the Hyperion Theatre. The creed was simple, and brevity itself: "This church is a self-governing community for the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d and the service of man." A Jewish Rabbi read the Scriptures, a Universalist minister made an address, and a judge of the city led in prayer. Part of my address was a series of serious questions: "Will this movement raise the tone of society? Will it increase mutual confidence? Will it diminish intemperance? Will it find the people uneducated and leave them educated? Will the voice of its leader be lifted in the cause of justice and humanity? Will it tend after all to elevate or lower the moral sentiments of mankind? Will it increase the love of truth or the power of superst.i.tion or self-deception? Will it divide or unite the world? Will it leave the minds of men clearer and more enlightened, or will it add another element of confusion to the chaos? These are the tests we put to this new church and to our personal lives."

We had an old hall in the outskirts of the city, on a railroad bank.

There we opened our Sunday School and began our church activities. I got a band of Yale men to go to work at the hall. The son of Senator Crane, of Ma.s.sachusetts, became head of the movement, but that plan was spoiled by a man of the English Lutheran persuasion, who was an instructor in Yale. It appeared that the church of which this man was a member had been trying to rent this old hall and, not succeeding in that, they claimed the community. This instructor complained to the Yale authorities, and without a word to me the Yale band was withdrawn. A few weeks after the Lutherans claimed another community, and went to work in it.

In the middle of our first year our little church received a staggering blow in the death of Mr. Philo S. Bennett. We had become very intimate. I dined with him once a week. He was about to retire from business, and after a rest he was to give his time to the church idea. He inquired about buildings, and he had fixed his mind on a $25,000 structure. He spoke to others of these plans, but in Idaho, that summer, he was killed in an accident. Mrs. Bennett sent for me and I took charge of the funeral arrangements. Mr. Bryan came on at once and helped. After the funeral he read and discussed the will. I was present at several of these discussions. The sealed letter written by the dead man was the bone of contention. Then the lawyers came in and the case went into the courts. The world knew but a fragment of the truth. It looked to me at first as if a selfish motive actuated Mr. Bryan, but as I got at the details one after another, details the world can never know, I developed a profound respect for him. He was the only person involved that cared anything for the mind, will or intention of the dead man, and his entire legal battle was not that he should get what Mr. Bennett had willed him, but that the designs of his friend should not be frustrated: not merely with regard to the fifty thousand--he offered to distribute that--but with regard to the money for poor students.

We missed Mr. Bennett, not only for his moral and financial help, but because of his great business ability. During the coal strike of 1902, for instance, when coal was beyond the reach of the poor, we organized among the working people a coal company. The coal dealers blocked our plans everywhere. We were shut out. Then the idea came to us to charter a s.h.i.+pload and bring it from Glasgow. It was the keen business ability of Mr. Bennett that helped us to success. We needed $15,000 to cable over. I laid the plans before Mr. Bennett; he went over them carefully and put up the money. Before we needed it, however, we had sold stock at a dollar a share, and the coal in Scotland brought in an amount beyond our immediate needs. This, of course, was "interfering with business men's affairs," and the dealers in coal were not slow to express themselves. I was a director of the coal company for some time. The newspapers announced that I was going into the coal business to make a living; but I had neither desire nor ability in that direction. It was a great day in New Haven when our s.h.i.+p entered the harbour and broke the siege. We sold coal for half the current price.

The idea of a church building had held a number of people in our little church for a long time, but after Mr. Bennett's death that hope seemed to die, and those to whom a church home was more than a church, left us; those of that mind that didn't leave voluntarily were lured away by ministers who had a building. The amount of ecclesiastical pilfering that goes on in a small city like New Haven is surprising.

Conversion is a lost art or a lost experience, and the average minister whose reputation and salary depend upon the number of people he can corral, usually has two fields of action: one is the Sunday School and the other is the loose members.h.i.+p of other churches. The theft is usually deliberate.

When my income was about forty dollars a month, subscribed by very poor people, a pastor who had been building up his church at the expense of his neighbours, wrote me that he was trying to persuade one of our members to join his church. It was the most brazen thing I had ever known. He felt that our dissolution was a matter of time, and he wanted his share of the wreckage. He went after the only person in our church who had an income that more than supplied personal needs.

Afterward, this same minister entered into a deal with the trustees of the hall we used, by which the hall and the Sunday School were handed over to him. Of course, we made no fight over the thing--we just let him take them. This is called "bringing in the Kingdom of G.o.d."

We were not free from dissension within our own ranks, either. Mr.

Bryan came to lecture for us in the largest theatre in town. Admission was to be by ticket, on Sunday afternoon. The committee of our church that took charge of the tickets began to distribute seats--the best seats and boxes--to their personal friends. Thousands were clamouring for tickets. It was an opportunity to give the city a big, helpful meeting, and to do it democratically and well. But the committee would brook no interference.

I announced in the papers that all tickets were general admissions, and "first come, first served" would be our principle. Sunday morning, when I was half-way through my discourse, one of the committee handed me a note. I did not open it until I finished. It was a threat that if I did not call off the democratic order, the committee would leave the church. The meeting was a great success, and the committee made good its threat. What the writer of the following letter expected of me I have no idea, nor did his letter enlighten me:

"DEAR SER:

"Wen I gave my name for a church member it was fer a peeples church, not a fol-de-rol solo and labour union church.

"Drop my name."

We had at our opening a solo by the finest singer in the city, and I had thanked the labour unions for their help. His name was dropped.

An educated woman thought she saw in our simple creed an open door she had been seeking for years. She joined us with enthusiasm. One day I was calling on her, and as I sat by the door I saw a dark figure pa.s.s with a sack of coal on his back. The figure looked familiar.

"Pardon me," I said, as I stepped out to make sure.

"h.e.l.lo, Fritz!" I called. The coal heaver had only trousers and an unders.h.i.+rt on, and looked as black as a Negro. Sweat poured over his coal-blackened face. We gripped hands. The lady watched us with interest.

"Do you know him?" she asked.

"Yes, indeed!" I said. "And you must know him, for he is one of our deacons."

She never came back. Democracy like that was too much for her. The deacon himself left our church a few months later because he discovered that I did not believe in a literal h.e.l.l of "fire and brimstone," whatever that is.

The chairman of our trustees was a business man who was very much engrossed with the New Thought. He saw a great future for me if I would get "in tune with the infinite." I was more than willing. He expounded to me the wonders of the new regime. Would I take lessons in healing? Certainly! He paid an American Yogi a hundred dollars to teach me. I was unaware of the cost. At first it was by correspondence. His chirography looked like a plate of spaghetti. I was instructed how to take a bath and when. The second letter ordered me to sleep with my head to the East. I was "a Capricorner, buoyant, lucky," so he said. At the end of a month I paid him a visit. He showed me how to manipulate a patient--absent or present--and how to charge!

The correspondence was taken verbatim from a ten-cent book on astrology; I got tired, and handed the letters over to my wife. She took them seriously, and when she had made what she thought was progress she inadvertently told the chairman of the trustees. That settled him. He resigned forthwith, and we saw him no more.

I thought we had reached the point where there was nothing further to lose; but I was mistaken. I had been charged with being a Socialist, and, curious to know what a Socialist was, I began to study the subject. What I feared came upon me: I announced myself a Socialist.

That settled the Single Taxers; they left in a bunch! No, hardly in a bunch; for two of them remained.

The Universalists invited us to use their church for our Sunday night meetings. We thought that a fortunate windfall. We were to pay five dollars a night. We did so until one week we had nothing to eat and we let the rent wait. The trustees of the Universalist Church met and pa.s.sed a resolution something like this: "Resolved, that in order that the good feeling existing between the People's Church and the Universalist Church be maintained, that the People's Church be requested to pay the rent after each service." We paid up and quit.

The most intelligent man in our church was a young draftsman in the Winchester Arms Company. He was a man of boundless energy and great courage. He lost his job. No reason was given. His wife, before her marriage, had been a trained nurse, and in her professional life had nursed the wife of a bank president, who was a director in the gun company. One day these ladies met, and the lady of the bank said she would find out why the husband of her former nurse was discharged. The director got at the facts, and gave them to his wife, _sub rosa_: "He belongs to Irvine's church--and Irvine is an anarchist." The young man got another job in another city. After a few discharges of that kind, men who did not want to leave the city got scared and gave me a wide berth.