John Wesley, Jr. Part 18

On the convention night Saint Marks was crowded with young colored people, some of whom came from places a hundred miles away. They were badged and pennanted quite in the fas.h.i.+on to which J.W. was accustomed.

But for their color, and, to be frank, for a little more restraint and thoughtfulness in their really unusual singing, they were just young Methodists at a convention, not different from Caucasian Methodists of the same age.

When J.W.'s turn came to speak, the chairman introduced him in the fewest possible words, but with the courtesy which belongs to self-respect, saying, "Mr. Farwell will make the delegates welcome in the name of the First Church Epworthians."

And he did. He had his notes, pretty full ones, to which he made frequent references, but the quality in his speech which drew the convention's cheers was its frank and natural simplicity.

"I would have begged off from this duty, if I could," he began, "but I knew from the moment I was asked that I had no decent excuse. But I knew so little of what I ought to say that it was necessary for me to dig, just as I used to do at school."

The result of my digging is that I know now and I want you to know that I know, why First Church young people should join in welcoming you to Delafield. Some of them don't know yet, any more than I did ten days ago; but I intend to enlighten them the first chance I get.

We First Church Epworthians might welcome you for many reasons, but I have decided to stick to two, because, as I have said, I have just been learning something about them.

We welcome you, then, because you represent the most eager hunger for complete education that exists in America to-day, unless our new Hebrew citizens can match it. No others can. The record of our church's schools for your race prove that it simply is not possible to keep the Negro youth out of school. They will walk further, eat less, work harder, and stay longer to get an education than for anything else in the world.

Not so many days ago I ignorantly thought that the 'three R's' was all that ought to be offered, partly because the need is so great. I hope you will forgive me that thought, when I tell you that now I know what ignorance it revealed in me. The great need is the strongest argument for the highest education. Because of your great numbers, and because of your ever intenser racial self-respect, the Negro must educate the Negro, be physician for the Negro, preach to the Negro, nurse the Negro, lead the Negro in all his upward effort. Otherwise these things will be done badly, or patronizingly, or not at all.

But if you are to do your own educational work, your educators must be fully equipped. It is not possible to send the whole race to college, but it is possible to send college-trained youth to the race. For this reason our church has established normal schools, colleges of liberal arts, professional schools, homes for college girls, so that the coming leaders of your people may have access to the best the world offers in science and literature, in medicine and law, in business and religion.

You will not mistake my purpose, I am sure, in saying that you know better than we can guess how your people, through no fault of theirs, have been long in bondage to the unskilled hand, the unawakened mind, and the uninspired heart. But it is more and more an unwilling bondage.

And our church, your church, has set up these schools and these training homes I have mentioned, as though she were saying, in the words of one of your own wonderful songs, 'Let my people go!' And the results are coming. Your two bishops, one in the South and one in Africa, your leaders in the church's highest councils, your educators, your far-seeing business men, your great preachers, are part of the answer to your church's pa.s.sion to give full freedom to all her people.

For you are _her_ people, the people of the Christian Church; we are all G.o.d's people. It seems to me that just now G.o.d is interested in bringing to every race in the world the chance of liberty for hand and head and heart. G.o.d has greater things for us all to do than we can now understand, but all his purposes must wait on our getting free from everything that would defeat our work.

Our First-Church young people welcome you because with all else you represent a great purpose to make religion intelligent. You know, as we do, that piety to be vital must be mixed with sound learning. You have the missionary spirit, which never thrives in an atmosphere of resistance to education. You are 'fellow Christians,' fellow workers. We are sharers with you in personal devotion to our Lord, and in the common purpose to make him Master of all life.

And, finally, let me say it bluntly, we welcome you because we believe in your pride of race, and honor it in you as we honor it in our fellow citizens of other races. They and you have some things in common, but you will not misunderstand me when I congratulate you on what is peculiar to you. You have been fully Americanized for more generations than most other Americans. You have no need to strive after the American spirit. I have a friend of Greek birth, who thinks pridefully back to the Golden Age of Greece, and I envy him his glorying. But your pride of race, turning away from the unhappy past, sees your Golden Age in the days to come, not in the dim yesterdays. You are the makers, not the inheritors, of a great destiny.

"For that n.o.ble future which is to be yours in our common America, you do well to hold as above price the purity and strength of your racial life. Better than we of Caucasian stock, you know that only so may all the values be fully realized which are to be Africa's contribution to the spiritual wealth of America and the world."

There was a moment of silence, for the implications of the last sentence were not as plain as they might have been. But when the audience caught J.W.'s somewhat daring appeal to its racial self-respect it broke into such cheers as are not given to the polite phraser of conventional commonplaces.

CHAPTER VII

THE FIRST AMERICAN CIVILIZATION

The full record of J.W.'s commercial career must he left to some other chronicler, but an occasional reference to it cannot be omitted from these pages.

Pastor Drury's brother Albert, a Saint Louis business man who knew the old city by the Mississippi from the levees to the University, was a citizen who loved his city so well that he did not need to join a Boosters' Club to prove it. The two Drurys saw each other, as both averred, all too seldom. On the infrequent occasions when they met, as, for instance, during a certain church federation gathering which had brought the minister down to Saint Louis from Delafield, their "visiting" was a joyous thing to see.

Lounging in the City Club one day after lunch, with every other subject of common interest at least touched on, Brother Albert turned to Brother Walter: "And how goes the church and parish of Delafield? You told me long ago that you wanted to stay there ten years; it's more than eight now. Does the ten-year mark yet stand?"

"Yes, Al., it still stands, if nothing should interfere," said Walter.

He had never told his brother the reason back of that ten-year mark, and he was not ready, even yet, for that. Of late he had taken to wondering when and how the Experiment would come to its crisis. He wanted some help just now, and here might be an opening. So he went on, "I've been working away at several special jobs, as you know I like to do, and one of them has a good deal to do with a young fellow named Farwell, John Wesley Farwell, Jr., who'll be the mainstay of the best hardware store in Delafield before long if he sticks to it. Everybody calls him 'J.W.,'

and he's the sort of boy that has always interested me, he's so 'average,'" He paused; his thoughts busy with the Experiment.

"Well," his brother broke in, after a moment, "what's this young John Wesley Methodist been doing?"

"It isn't altogether what he has been doing, but it's what I'd like to see him get a chance to do," explained the preacher. "He's tied to the store and to Delafield, so far, and I've reasons for wanting him to see some parts of this country he'll never see from Main Street in our town."

"Well, brother mine, maybe he could be induced to leave that particular Main Street. There's where we get the best citizens of this village. Has he any objections to making a change--to travel, for instance?"

"I don't know," said Walter; "probably not. He's young, and has a pretty good education. I do know that he's ambitious to make himself the best hardware man in our section, and I believe he'll do it, in time.

Personally, I _want_ him to travel. But how would anybody go about getting him the chance?"

Albert Drury laughed. "That's easy, only a preacher couldn't be expected to see it. If any country boy really knows the stuff he handles, whether it is hardware or candy or hides, he can get the chance all right. This town wants him. Don't you know that the big wholesale houses recruit their sales forces by spotting just such boys as your John Wesley Farwell may be? But what do you mean by calling him average, if he's such a keen judge of hardware?"

"Oh, well, he _is_ more than average on hardware, but he's so beautifully average human; one of those chaps who do most of the real work of the world."

"All right, old man; I'm not sure that I follow you; but, anyway, I may be of some use. I'll tell you what I'll do; I know the very man. Peter McDougall, who's a friend I can bank on, is sales manager of the c.u.mmings Hardware Corporation. Nothing will come of it if Peter is not impressed, but all I need to do is to tell him there's a prospective star salesman up at Delafield, and his man who has that territory will be looking up your John Wesley before you have time to write another sermon. By the way," he added, "what part of the country did you say you wanted young Farwell to see?"

"I didn't say," the preacher admitted, "but I would like him to see something of the Southwest. I want to see what will happen when he b.u.mps up against the sort of civilization that followed the Spanish to America."

"Well, of course, you know that wholesale hardware houses don't run salesmen's excursions to help Methodist preachers try out the effect of American history on their young paris.h.i.+oners, no matter how lofty the motive," and Albert Drury poked his brother in the ribs. "But supposing this boy is otherwise good stuff he'll be in the right place, if he goes with the c.u.mmings people. A big share of their business is in that end of the world."

If J.W. had been told of this conversation, which he wasn't, he might not have been quite so mystified over the letter from the great Peter McDougall, which came a few weeks after the preacher's return from Saint Louis. McDougall he knew well by reputation, having heard about him from every c.u.mmings man who unpacked samples in Delafield. And to be invited to Saint Louis by the great man, with the possibility of "an opening, ultimately, in our sales force," was a surprise as interesting as it was unexpected. Naturally, J.W. could not know how much careful investigation had preceded the writing of that letter. The c.u.mmings Corporation did not act on impulse. But he would have accepted the invitation in any case.

And that is enough for the present purpose of the story of J.W.'s first business venture away from Delafield. Not without some hesitation did he close with the c.u.mmings offer; but after he had talked it all over with the folks at home, and then all over again out at Deep Creek with Jeannette Shenk, who was both sorry and proud, it was settled. Reaching Saint Louis, the canny McDougall looked him over and thought him worth trying out; so over he went to the stock department. Then followed busy weeks in the buildings of the c.u.mmings Hardware Corporation down by the river, learning the stock. He discovered before the end of the first day that he had never yet guessed what "hardware" meant; he wandered through the mazes of the vast warehouses until his legs ached much and his eyes ached more.

At last came the day when he found himself on the road, not alone, of course, but in tow of Fred Finch, an old c.u.mmings salesman who had occasionally "made" Delafield. The c.u.mmings people did not throw their new men overboard and let them swim if they could. They had a careful training system, of which the stockroom days were one part, and this personally conducted introduction to the road was another.

Albert Drury had been sufficiently interested in his brother's wish to drop a hint to McDougall, to which that hard-headed executive would have paid no attention if it had not fitted in just then with the requirements of his sales policy. But the hint sent J.W. out with Finch over the longest route which the house worked for trade. On the map this route was a great kite-shaped thing, with its point at Saint Louis, and the whole Southwest this side of the Colorado River included in the sweep of its sides and top.

To Fred Finch it was a weary journey, but J.W. gave no thought to its discomforts. He was seeing the country, as well as learning to sell hardware, and both occupations were highly absorbing. Before long he found too that he was seeing a new people. Storekeepers he knew, as being of his own guild; the small towns were much like Delafield, when you had become used to their newer crudeness of architecture and their sprawling planlessness; and the people who used hardware were very much like his customers at home.

He had no fear of failing to become a salesman, after the first few experiences under Finch's watchful eye; his father had taught him a sort of salesmans.h.i.+p which experience could only make more effective. He knew already never to sell what he could see his customer ought not to buy, and he knew always to contrive as much as possible that the customer should do the selling to himself. The elder Farwell used to say, "Let your customer once see the advantage that buying is to him, and he won't care what advantage selling is to you."

Now, as has been said before, this is not a salesman's story. Let it suffice to say that before the two got back to Saint Louis J.W. knew he had found his trade. He was a natural salesman, and so Fred Finch reported to Peter McDougall. "If it's hardware," he said, "that boy can sell it, and I don't care where you put him. He can sell to people who can't speak English, and I believe he could sell to deaf mutes or the blind. He knows the line, and they know he knows it. Why, this very first trip he's sold more goods on his own say-so than on the house brand. Said he knew what the stuff would do, and people took that who usually want to know about the guarantee." All of which Peter McDougall filed where he would not forget it.

But to go back to the trip itself. Along the railway in Kansas J.W.

began to see box-cars without trucks, roughly fitted up for dwellings.

Dark-skinned men and women and children were in occupation, and all the household functions and processes were going on, though somewhat primitively.

"Mexicans," said Finch, as J.W. pointed out the cars. "Section hands; when I first began to make this territory you never saw them except right down on the border, but they have moved a long way east and north.

I saw lots of them in the yards at Kansas City last time I was there."

J.W. watched the box-car life with a good deal of curiosity. Here and there were poor little attempts at color and adornment; flowers in window boxes and bits of lace at the windows. Delafield had plenty of foreigners, but these were foreigners of another sort. They seemed to be entirely at home.

"I suppose," he said to Finch, "these Mexicans have come to the States to get away from the robbery and ruin that Mexico has had instead of government these last ten years and more."

"Yes," Finch answered, "thousands of 'em. But not all. Some of these Mexicans are older Americans than we are. We took 'em over when we got Texas and New Mexico and California from Old Mexico. They were here then, speaking the Spanish their ancestors had learned three hundred years ago and more. But they're all the same Mexicans, no matter on which side of the Rio Grande they were born. Of course those born on this side have had some advantages that the peons never knew."

"But do you mean," J.W. wanted to know, "that they are not really American citizens?"

Fred Finch said no, he didn't mean exactly that. Certainly, those born on this side were American citizens in the eyes of the law, and those who came across the Rio Grande could get naturalized. But that made little real difference. A Mexican was a Mexican, and you had to deal with him as one.