XX
There was, however, in Toledo one man who could sympathize with my attitude; and that was a man whose determination to accept literally and to try to practice the fundamental philosophy of Christianity had so startled and confounded the Christians everywhere that he at once became famous throughout Christendom as “Golden Rule Jones.” I had known of him only as the eccentric mayor of our city, and nearly everyone whom I had met since my advent in Toledo spoke of him only to say something disparaging of him. The most charitable thing they said was that he was crazy. All the newspapers were against him, and all the preachers. My own opinion, of course, could have been of no consequence, but I had learned in the case of Altgeld that almost universal condemnation of a man is to be examined before it is given entire credit. I do notmean to say that there was universal condemnation of Golden Rule Jones in Toledo in those days: it was simply that the institutional voices of society, the press and the pulpit, were thundering in condemnation of him. When the people came to vote for his reëlection his majorities were overwhelming, so that he used to say that everybody was against him but the people. But that is another story.
In those days I had not met him. I might have called at his office, to be sure, but I did not care to add to his burdens. One day, suddenly, as I was working on a story in my office, in he stepped with a startling, abrupt manner, wheeled a chair up to my desk, and sat down. He was a big Welshman with a sandy complexion and great hands that had worked hard in their time, and he had an eye that looked right into the center of your skull. He wore, and all the time he was in the room continued to wear, a large cream-colored slouch hat, and he had on the flowing cravat which for some inexplicable reason artists and social reformers wear; their affinity being due, no doubt, to the fact that the reformer must be an artist of a sort, else he could not dream his dreams. I was relieved, however, to find that Jones wore his hair clipped short, and there was still about him that practical air of the very practical business man he had been before he became mayor. He had been such a practical business man that he was worth half a million, a fairly good fortune for our town; but he had not been in office very long before all the business men were down on him, and saying that what the town needed was a businessman for mayor, a statement that was destined to ring in my ears for a good many years. They disliked him of course because he would not do just what they told him to,—that being the meaning and purpose of a business man for mayor,—but insisted that there were certain other people in the city who were entitled to some of his service and consideration—namely, the working people and the poor. The politicians and the preachers objected to him on the same grounds: the unpardonable sin being to express in any but a purely ideal and sentimental form sympathy for the workers or the poor. It seemed to be particularly exasperating that he was doing all this in the name of the Golden Rule, which was for the Sunday-school; and they even went so far as to bring to town another Sam Jones, the Reverend Sam Jones, to conduct a “revival” and to defeat the Honorable Sam Jones. The Reverend Sam Jones had big meetings, and said many clever things, and many true ones, the truest among them being his epigram, “I am for the Golden Rule myself, up to a certain point, and then I want to take the shotgun and the club.” I think that expression marked the difference between him and our Sam Jones, in whose philosophy there was no place at all for the shotgun or the club. The preachers were complaining that Mayor Jones was not using shotguns, or at least clubs, on the “bad” people in the town; I suppose that since their own persuasions had in a measure failed, they felt that the Mayor with such instruments might have made the “bad” people look as if they had been converted anyway.
It was when he was undergoing such criticism as this that he came to see me, to ask me to speak at Golden Rule Park. This was a bit of green grass next to his factory; he had dedicated it to the people’s use, and there under a large willow-tree, on Sunday afternoons, he used to speak to hundreds. There was a little piano which two men could carry, and with that on the platform to play the accompaniments the people used to sing songs that Jones had written—some of them of real beauty, and breathing the spirit of poetry, if they were not always quite in its form. In the winter these meetings were held in Golden Rule Hall, a large room that served very well as an auditorium, in his factory hard by. On the walls of Golden Rule Hall was the original tin sign he had hung up in his factory as the only rule to be known there, “Therefore whatsoever things ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” In the course of time every reformer, every radical, in the country had spoken in that hall or under that willow-tree, and the place developed an atmosphere that was immensely impressive. The hall had the portraits of many liberal leaders and humanitarians on its walls, and a number of paintings; and in connection with the settlement which Jones established across the street the institution came to be, as a reporter wrote one day in his newspaper, the center of intelligence in Toledo.
Well then, on that morning when first he called, Jones said to me:
“I want you to come out and speak.”
“On what subject?” I asked.
“There’s only one subject,” he said,—“life.” And his face was radiant with a really beautiful smile, warmed with his rich humor. I began to say that I would prepare something, but he would not let me finish my sentence.
“Prepare!” he exclaimed. “Why prepare? Just speak what’s in your heart.”
He was always like that. Once, a good while after, in one of his campaigns, he called me on the telephone one evening just at dinner time, and said:
“I want you to go to Ironville and speak to-night.”
I was tired, and, as I dislike to confess, somewhat reluctant,—I had always to battle so for a little time to write,—so that I hesitated, asked questions, told him, as usual, that I had no speech prepared.
“But you know it is written,” he said, “that ‘in that hour it shall be given you what ye shall say.’”
I could assure him that the prophecy had somewhat failed in my case, and that what was given me to say was not always worth listening to when it was said; and then I inquired:
“What kind of crowd will be there?”
“Oh, a good crowd!” he said.
“But what kind of people?”
“What kind of people?” he asked in a tone of great and genuine surprise. “What kind of people? Why, there’s only one kind of people—just people, just folks.”
I went of course, and I went as well to Golden Rule Park and to Golden Rule Hall, and there wasnever such a school for public speaking as that crowded park afforded, with street cars grinding and scraping by one side of it and children laughing at their play on the swings and poles which Jones had put there for them; or else standing below the speaker and looking curiously up into his face, and filling him with the fear of treading any moment on their little fingers which, as they clung to the edge, made a border all along the front of the platform. And for a year or so after his death I spoke there every Sunday: we were trying so hard to keep his great work alive.