From the Bottom Up Part 25

My next and last job in the South was punching logs in Pensacola harbour for a dollar and six "bits" a day. There I got material for several stories of peons who had escaped from the woods.

While in Pensacola I made a visit, one Sunday morning, to the city jail and asked permission to address the prisoners. The jailer, of course, wanted to know what an unkempt labourer had to say to his charges.

In order to convince him I had to deliver an exegesis before the desk!

The cells were iron cages with stone floors.

A young Englishman, who had just landed after a long sea voyage the night before, was the first man to whom I talked. He claimed to have been drugged and robbed in a saloon. The fact of his incarceration was a small thing to him; what made him swear was the condition of his cage. The excrements of probably half a dozen of his predecessors in the cell lay around him, nauseating and suffocating him. Fire shot from his eyes as he pointed to it. He was bitter, sarcastic, sneering, and with evident and abundant cause.

Whatever I had to say to the men and women in that dungeon that morning was driven from my mind and my lips.

The young man pushed all the resentment of his soul over into mine! I spent that Sunday in working out a plan by which I could help Pensacola to clean up this social ulcer.

There was a Tourist Club there and I offered to lecture for them. It was arranged for the following Sunday afternoon. I called on the mayor and he promised to preside. I interviewed several aldermen and they promised to attend. I lectured for forty minutes on my experiences as a labourer in the camps of the South, and for ten minutes at the close described what I had seen in the city jail.

It was a somewhat heroic method of treatment, and I did not remain long enough to see the effect, but I at least deprived them of the plea of ignorance.

I found in Florida two Government officials who had done splendid work in behalf of labour. I mean the labourers who were decoyed by false promises and brutally abused on their arrival in the camps. They were both modest men--men unlikely to enter politics for personal advancement. I cut my articles out of the magazine and sent them to President Roosevelt, calling his attention to the conditions and commending these men to his notice. The result was that they were both promoted to positions where their usefulness was increased and the cause of labour considerably helped.

CHAPTER XXI

AT THE CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION

A group of literary people with whom I was acquainted had rented No. 3 Fifth Avenue, and were operating a cooperative housekeeping scheme. I became part of the plan and it was there that I first met the Rector of the Church of the Ascension, the Rev. Percy Stickney Grant.

Naturally, we talked of the church and its work. I was so impressed with Mr. Grant's bigness that I volunteered to devote some of my spare time to the work of his parish. A few weeks later I got a letter from him inviting me to become a member of his staff. This was a surprise to me, but I made no immediate decision. I was earning a comfortable living and devoting my spare time to the Socialist propaganda. I was _free_--very free--and I saw danger ahead in church work.

I had several interviews with Mr. Grant and went over the situation. I wasn't a man with Socialistic tendencies; I was a Socialist--a member of the party.

The danger ahead looked smaller to Mr. Grant than it did to me. He had absolute confidence in the broad-minded men of affairs around him. My Socialism was explained and understood. Just how to fit in was the next problem.

The mission of the church is at No. 10 Horatio Street. It was without a minister in charge. For a few Sunday evenings I conducted the service. The audience was composed of half a dozen parishoners and a dozen of my personal friends. Mr. Grant knew nothing of my ability in public address. I took his place one night in the church and that ended my career at the chapel. I had discarded an ecclesiastical t.i.tle I possessed but never used; I became a lay reader in the Episcopal Church--the church of my youth--the church in which I was baptized and confirmed.

The conference and discussion following the service was an afterthought. The audiences steadily grew. It was and is the most cosmopolitan audience I ever saw. I wanted to get acquainted with the people and suggested a sort of reception in the chapel. The ladies of the church provided refreshments.

"Who is that man?" one of the ladies at the tea table asked one night.

"He is a Socialist agitator," I answered.

"Why don't you ask him to talk?"

The man was Sol Fieldman and I asked him to speak for five minutes. He did so and from that time the character of the after-meeting changed.

The first few evenings after the change the speaking was very informal: any one of note who happened to be in the meeting was asked to speak. Later, the invitation was enlarged and any one who desired to speak could do so. Then came a time limit. A workingman asked that the refreshments be cut out. The table took up valuable s.p.a.ce and the time consumed in "serving" was "a pure waste," so he said. Then we arranged for a formal presentation of a topic and a discussion to follow it.

The Socialists were always in the majority. Every Socialist is a propagandist--not always an intelligent propagandist. Intelligent and leading Socialists are generally engaged Sunday evenings, so the majority of those who came to us were of the hard-working kind--limited, very limited, in the literary expression of the social soul flame that so pa.s.sionately moves them.

Some of our church officers who took an active part in the first year's meetings were somewhat alarmed at the brusqueness of these men and women, and undertook to correct their manners.

The Rector understood. And with great patience and tact he heard all.

The Church of the Ascension has in its members.h.i.+p some of the country's biggest leaders in industry; some of these men came to the meetings. What they saw and heard was different to what they expected.

They fraternized with the men of toil. It was a fraternity utterly devoid of patronage. There were free exchanges of thought. The average labouring man is incapable of such conference, for no matter how many years a member of a labour union it is only when he becomes a Socialist that he becomes an intelligent advocate of anything.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Church of the Ascension]

The Rector and I tried to avoid the notice of the newspapers and for about six months we succeeded. Then came the explosion of the bomb on Union Square and we were at once thrown into the limelight. I was on the Square that afternoon.

It was designed to be a ma.s.s meeting of the unemployed. The unemployed are not usually interested in any sort of propaganda; the more intelligent of the labour men are, and the Socialists are more so.

So the promoters of the ma.s.s meeting for the unemployed were Socialists. It was at this meeting that a police official declared to a man who had the temerity to question him that the policeman's club was mightier than the Const.i.tution of the United States.

No permit was given and no ma.s.s meeting held, but the mult.i.tude was there and when the police began to disperse it the people who were neither Socialists nor unemployed resented being driven off the streets. I saw men clubbed and women deliberately ridden over by the mounted police. I kept moving: I wanted to be where it was most dangerous. I suffered for months with a bruised arm that I got as I went with the crowd in front of the horses: it was a blow aimed at a man's head; I was clubbed on the back for not moving fast enough. At every turn, at every angle of the Square, the police were as brutal as any Cossack that ever wielded a knout.

Late on that afternoon the police opened the Square--that is, the people were permitted to cross it in all directions. My study was at No. 75 Fifth Avenue, and I was moving in that direction past the fountain when the explosion took place. I was hurled off my feet; that is, the shock to my nervous system was so great that I collapsed. My first flash of thought was of the battle-field!

Fifteen feet in front of me two men staggered. It seemed to me that one of them had been ripped in twain. He fell and the other fell on top of him. Instantly the policemen around me seemed crazed: as I staggered to my feet one of them struck me a terrific blow with his club. The blow landed between my shoulders, but glanced upward, striking me on the back of the head. I tumbled over, dazed, but the thought that his next blow would murder me seemed to give me superhuman strength and I ran. As I turned he attacked another man and I thought I was free. I was mistaken, however, for he gave chase and if I had not escaped into the crowd I would have fared badly at his hands.

My nerves were so badly shattered that on the way to my room I fell several times. The following Sunday night the Civic Federation packed our meeting with their speakers.

Mr. Gompers's representative in New York was the first man put up. He was furnished with quotations from alleged Socialist writers on the question of religion. Then a woman from Boston who had once been a Socialist, sent a note to me--I was presiding--asking for extended time. I was the only Socialist in the place who knew what was going on.

The newspapers had all been "tipped off," as the _Herald_ reporter told me later. The discussion waxed so warm that fifty people were on their feet at once, shouting for recognition.

Humour in such a situation is a tremendous relief. I managed to inject some into the discussion and it was like grease to a cartwheel. In a humorous way I turned the light on the Civic Federation and the audience laughed. Next day every newspaper in New York had an account of the meeting. From that time until the end of the first year of the meeting the papers reported not only what happened but much that never happened. Most of them were humorous in their treatment. The Marceline of the press gave us much s.p.a.ce in its characteristic style.

The result was that we were forced to have policemen guard the door so that when the chapel was full the crowd unable to gain admittance could be dispersed. We admitted by ticket for some weeks, but the plan didn't work well. Of course, many who came were moved solely by curiosity, but for two years the chapel has been filled at every meeting. On the wildest winter nights it looked sometimes as if the choir was to be my only audience, yet when the after-meeting opened, the place was as full as usual.

The Sunday evening service is designed to be of special helpfulness to working people; it is an extra service permitted by the canons of the church, and in this instance directed to helpful and constructive social criticism. The discourses have not been theological in any sense, but I have seen men and women converted, experiencing a change of heart in exactly the same manner as people are converted in revival meetings. The same energies of the soul were released and the same results obtained with this extra consideration, that the change was a new att.i.tude toward society as well as a change of heart.

Men and women who had not been in church since they were children have found an atmosphere--a spiritual atmosphere--that has been a distinct help to them during the week. There have been unique examples of this that cannot be recorded or catalogued. If we were padding a year-book, bolstering a creed or attracting men merely to put our tag on them the meetings would have waned long ago, for the cla.s.s of people who attend are quick to discover undercurrents or ulterior motives.

The spiritual atmosphere is created by a combination of forces. The picture of the Ascension by La Farge has contributed not a little to it--even to people to whom the circ.u.mstance was a myth. The architecture and music contributed much.

We held the after-meeting in the church one night--to accommodate hundreds of people who couldn't get into the chapel. The meeting was a failure. The most radically minded men told me that they couldn't talk in the church.

"Why?" I asked one man.

"---- if I know, but it took the fight out of me!"

It took the fight out of all. So we went back to the chapel. One man whom I have known for years as a Socialist agitator who fought the intellectuals in his party and was a materialist of the most radical kind made this statement at the last meeting of the first year:

"I appreciate the courage of Mr. Grant in opening this church to the people and opening its pulpit to a representative of the people. I am grateful for the fine fellows.h.i.+p, the freedom of discussion, the music, the beautiful architecture and the inspiration that comes from such contact, but these are the smallest of what has come to me during the past winter. I am the son of an orthodox Rabbi but I have been an atheist all my life. I have been over-bitter and destructive in my addresses. I have learned something here. I did not expect nor did I want to, but I have. I am now a believer in the immortality of the soul and I look forward to life instead of death. This has influenced my work, my life. Instead of a hundred words against human slavery to one for human freedom I speak a hundred for human freedom to one against human slavery. That may seem small to you. It's big to me--it's a new psychology."

A school teacher, a brilliant young Jewess, said: "The inspiration of that service in the church lasts all week with my scholars. I am worth twice as much as I was to the public schools."

A letter from a trained nurse says: "I am going away for the summer, but before I go I want you to know how much of a blessing your service has been to me, and to both physicians and nurses in this hospital, for we have all been at one time or another, and we have always talked over your topics with interest and profit."