After the public hearing on the water contract, several labour unions elected me to honorary membership. The carriage makers' union had so elected me, and a night was set for my initiation. It was a wild winter's night—the streets of the city were covered with snow, and the thermometer registered five above zero. Few hard-working men would come out a night like this. Who would expect them? I was rather glad of the inclement weather. I was weary and tired, and hoped the thing would soon be over. I entered an old office building on Orange street and climbed to the top floor.
A man met me as I reached the top of the stairs and led me to a door, where certain formalities were performed. There was an eye-hole in the door, through which men watched each other. There were whispered words in an unknown tongue, then a long pause. Why all this secrecy? What means this panther-like vigilance? It is a time of war. This body of craftsmen is an organized regiment.The battle is for bread. Before the door is opened there is a noise like the sound of far-off thunder. What can it mean? To what mysterious doings am I to become an eye-witness to-night? I became a little anxious, perhaps a little nervous, and regretful. An eye appeared at the hole in the door; there is a whispered conference and I find myself between two men marching up the centre of the hall to the desk of the presiding officer.
My entrance was the signal of an outburst of applause such as I had seldom heard before. The hall was small, and it was a mystery how six hundred men could be packed into it. But there they were, solidly packed on both sides of the hall, and as I marched through them they seemed to shake the whole building with their cheers. The chairman rapped for order, and made a short speech.
"I ain't what ye'd call a Christian," he said, "but I know the genuine article when I see it. If the Bible is true, Jesus went to the poor, and if the rich wanted him they'd have to look him up. Do you fellows ever notice the church ads in the Sunday papers? They remind me of the columns where ye look for a rent. They all advertise their 'modern improvements.' This minister is doin' th' Jesus business in th' old way. That's why we like him, an' that's why he's here."
Once again the rafters seemed to shake with the violent vibrations of enthusiasm, and it wassome 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 letterof 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 HavenRegisterof 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 attitude 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 participation 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 tobear to clear the atmosphere. Usually hot-headed sympathizers with the cause of labour agitation are the principal 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 Saturday 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 attitude 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 attitude in the past crisis. More sound advice and friendly counseland wise sympathy from such men as he are needed in labour troubles."
Another New Haven paper, commenting editorially on my attitude 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 couldfor them; but I was unable to offset the bad leadership 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 HartfordPostmade the following editorial comments on it:
"ONE CHURCH AND ITS PASTOR"Plain speaking is so much out of fashion 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 mass of 'glittering generalities,' a formal, perfunctory affair. Often it is omitted altogether. The pastor simply goes out, leaving the church to its fate, commending itto 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 class 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 masses, 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. Ifthere 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, anessential 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 iscertainly not worthy of the great Teacher who spoke of the great difficulty the rich man has in entering the kingdom of God."
"ONE CHURCH AND ITS PASTOR
"Plain speaking is so much out of fashion 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 mass of 'glittering generalities,' a formal, perfunctory affair. Often it is omitted altogether. The pastor simply goes out, leaving the church to its fate, commending itto 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 class 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 masses, 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. Ifthere 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, anessential 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 iscertainly not worthy of the great Teacher who spoke of the great difficulty the rich man has in entering the kingdom of God."
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 relationship, had always assumed and often explicitly stated on the records that the departing minister "had been called of God" elsewhere. If God 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 worship of God 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 superstition 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 Massachusetts, 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 churchreceived 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 businessability. 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 shipload 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 ship 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 pilferingthat 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 membership 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 God."
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—totheir 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."
"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 darkfigure pass with a sack of coal on his back. The figure looked familiar.
"Pardon me," I said, as I stepped out to make sure.
"Hello, Fritz!" I called. The coal heaver had only trousers and an undershirt 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 hell 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 régime. 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 endof 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 passed 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.
I looked around for something to do to earn a living. I found a young bookbinder in a commercial house, and as he was a master craftsman, I advised him to hang out a shingle and work for himself. He did so. When I was casting around for a new method of earning a living I thought of him, and asked him to take me as an apprentice. He did so, and I put an apron on and began to work at his bench. One day, when the reporters were hard up for news, one of them called for an interview.
"Have you ever published any sermons, Mr. Irvine?"
"Yes; one, and a fine one."
"Where was it published?"
"Right here in New Haven!"
"A volume?"
"Yes."
I went to my case and produced a book—I had sewed it, backed it, bound and tooled it. It was my first job, and I was proud of it. I am proud of it now. It is the best sermon I ever preached.
Another day a professor in the Yale Medical School called to have some books bound at the bindery.
"Who is that fellow at your bench?" he asked.
"Mr. Irvine," the bookbinder replied.
"The Socialist?"
"Yes."
He took the young man aside and told him that he could expect no recognition from the "best citizens" as long as he kept me. Off came my apron, and I looked around again.
I was very fond of Dr. T.T. Munger. In his vigorous days his was a great intellect, and when in his study one day he told me that I had no gospel to preach, I felt deeply the injustice of the charge. I could not argue. I would not defend myself. I valued his friendship too highly. I hit upon a plan, however. I had published in a labour paper seventeen sermons for working people. I went to a printer and told him that, if he would print them in a book,I would peddle them from door to door until I got the printer's bill. They were printed in a neat volume, entitled "The Master and the Chisel." I paid the printer's bill, and gave the rest away. I sent one to Dr. Munger; and this is what he said of it:
"Dear Mr. Irvine:"Many thanks for the little book you sent me. I have read nearly all the brief chapters, and this would not be the case if they were dull. That they certainly are not. Nor would they have held my interest if they did not in the main strike me as true. I can say more, namely, that they seem to me admirably suited to the people you have in charge, and good for anybody. They have at least done me good, and often stirred me deeply. Their strong point is the humanity that runs along their pages—along with a sincere reverence. I hope they will have a wide circulation."
"Dear Mr. Irvine:
"Many thanks for the little book you sent me. I have read nearly all the brief chapters, and this would not be the case if they were dull. That they certainly are not. Nor would they have held my interest if they did not in the main strike me as true. I can say more, namely, that they seem to me admirably suited to the people you have in charge, and good for anybody. They have at least done me good, and often stirred me deeply. Their strong point is the humanity that runs along their pages—along with a sincere reverence. I hope they will have a wide circulation."
The tide was ebbing, but it was not yet out. The announcement that I was a Socialist brought, of course, the members of the party around me, but on Sunday nights, when they came, expecting a discourse on economic determinism and found me searching for the hidden springs of the heart, and the larger personal life, as well as the larger social life, they went away disappointed and never came back.
As I looked around, however, at the churches and the university, I could find nothing to equal thesocial passion of the socialists—it was a religion with them. True, they were limited in their expression of that passion, but they were live coals, all of them, and I was more at home in their meetings than in the churches.
I soon joined the party and gave myself body, soul and spirit to the Socialists' propaganda. The quest for a living took me to a little farm on the outskirts of the city. There were eighteen acres—sixteen of them stones.
Gradually I began to feel that my rejection was not a mere matter of being let alone, of ignoring me; it was a positive attitude. There was a design to drive me out of the city. On the farm I was without the gates in person but my influence was within, among the workers. We spent every penny we had on the farm. I hired a neighbouring farmer to plow my ground and plant my seed, for I had neither horse nor machinery. I told him I had a little cottage in the woods in Massachusetts that I was offering for sale and I would pay him out of the proceeds. At first he believed me and did the work.
It took me two months to get that cottage sold and get the money for it. The farmer's son camped on my doorstep daily. Every day I met him, in the fields or on the road. I spoke in such soft tones and promised so volubly every time he approached methat he got the impression that I had no cottage—that I was a fraud and cheating his father. He spread that impression. He began after a while to insult me, to make fun of me. I debated with myself one afternoon whether when he again repeated his insults I should thrash him or treat him as a joke. I decided on the former. Meantime the check for the cottage came and relieved the situation. Despite my inability to become a Yogi, I believed in the New Thought. My wife and I used to "hold the thought," "make the mental picture," and "go into the silence." We did this regularly.
I had an old counterfeit ten-dollar bill for a decoy. I shut my eyes and imagined myself stuffing big bundles of them into the pigeon-holes of my desk.
I got an incubator, filled it with Buff Orpington eggs and kept the thermometer at 103° F. My knees grew as hard as a goat's from watching it. In the course of events, two chickens came. We had pictured the yard literally covered with them. These poor things broke their legs over the eggs. My wife was more optimistic than I was.
"Wait," she said, "these things are often several days late." So we waited; waited ten days and then refilled the thing and began all over again.
We lost an old hen that was so worthless that we never looked for her. In the fullness of her time she returned with a brood of fourteen! She had been in "the silence" to some purpose!
"Well, let's let the hens alone," my wife said with a sigh; "they know this business better than we do." But we kept on monkeying with mental images—it was great fun.
During our stay on that farm I did four times more pastoral work than I had ever done in my life. I was the minister of the nondescript and the destitute. I presided over funerals, weddings, baptisms, strikes, protests, mass meetings. Nobody thought of paying anything. To those I served I had a sort of halo, a wall of mystery; to me it was often the halo of hunger—of the wolf and the wall—yes, a wall, truly, and very high that separated me from my own.
An incident will show what my brethren thought of my service to the poor. I was in the public library one day when the scribe of the ministerial association to which I belonged accosted me:
"Hello, Irvine!"
"Hello, C——! Splendid weather we're having, isn't it?"
"Splendid," replied C——; and in the same breath he said, "say, you don't come around to the association; do you want your name kept on the roll?"
I hesitated for a moment, then said: "Whatever would give you most pleasure, brother—leaving it on or taking it off—do that!"
That was all—not another word—he reported that I wanted my name removed, and that practicallyended my ministerial standing in the Congregational ministry.
The Jewish Rabbi who had taken part in our opening service met me on the street one day.
"Dr. Smyth and I are coming to see you, Irvine," he said.
"I'll be mighty glad to see you both, Rabbi. What are you coming for?"
"Well, we think it's too bad that the labour gang use you as a sucker and we want to see if we can't get a place in some mission for you."
"Rabbi, some of your rich Jews have been after you for appearing on our platform. Come now, isn't that so?"
"Well, it's because they believe as I believe, that you are used as a sucker."
"I don't like your word, Rabbi; but there are fifty ministers in town. If Capital has forty-nine suckers, why not let Labour have one?"
That made him rather furious and he said:
"You remind me of Jesus, a fanatic. He died at 33 when he might have lived to a good old age and done some good!"
"That," I said, "is the highest compliment I have ever received." I bared my head at the word and then left him on the sidewalk.
The New Haven water company managed to get what was called an "eternal contract" passed through both chambers of the city government. Onlylabouring people opposed it. Naturally there was a strong suspicion of foul play.
State Convention of the Socialist Party of Connecticut, May 31, 1906State Convention of the Socialist Party of Connecticut, May 31, 1906ToList
State Convention of the Socialist Party of Connecticut, May 31, 1906ToList
A year afterward a man came to me with a grip-sack full of documents. He had been expert book-keeper for the water company, and knew the facts and figures for twenty-five years.
Among them were two cancelled checks—one for a thousand, which was made out by and to the president, and dated the day a certain committee was to meet to go over the terms of the contract. The other was made out to a shyster lawyer and was for fifteen thousand. He expected to create a sensation. The thing had worked on his conscience until it became unbearable. He came to me because of what he had learned of me at the water company office. It takes a civic conscience to deal with such a problem and New Haven had no such thing at that time.
He took the documents from one place to another—to ministers, lawyers, judges, legislators, etc. Nothing could be done. They were all the personal friends of the officials.
The papers wouldn't print anything about it. The book-keeper said he thought he knew why "editors never had any water bills." Some radicals got the big check printed in facsimile and scattered it abroad. The aldermen had been bought; there was no doubt of that, but it was a matter of business.
The whole agitation came back on the reformerslike a boomerang. Leading politicians determined to do something to vindicate the leading citizen who had been accused. They elected him to the State Senate! A city of a hundred thousand can by either a positive or a negative process, destroy the usefulness of any man who would be its servant.
I felt my loneliness very keenly—indeed, so much so that it was often as though I had committed a great crime. Always, however, at the breaking-point came a word of cheer—a note of approval.
Bishop Lines of Newark, New Jersey, who was then Rector of St. Paul's church, sent me a note, that reached me in a dark hour.
"I do not suppose," he said, "that I look at things as you do, in all respects, but I would like to assure you of my great regard for you and of my implicit faith in your sincerity and goodness. I know that the world's great sorrow rests upon your heart and that many men who feel it not sit in judgment upon you."
The People's Church dwindled to a vanishing point. The farm produced nothing. Autumn came and we lived largely upon apples.
"Make a break!" my wife said, but it seemed like running away from the fight. The fight was already over and I was beaten—beaten, but unaware of defeat.
One morning I was at the top of a big apple tree, shaking it for three Italian women whom we believedto be worse off than ourselves. A branch broke and I fell on my back on a boulder. I lay as one dead. My wife found me there and hailed a passing grocer's wagon. The boy whipped up his horse to bring a doctor, but on the way spread the news that I had been killed by a fall. Among the first callers after the accident were Donald G. Mitchell and his daughter, my neighbours. I lay on a mattress on the lawn all afternoon in great agony.
Although it was with the greatest difficulty that we scraped together the twenty-five dollars a month for the farm, my wife, putting her philosophy of the New Thought to the test, had rented a house in the city at seventy dollars a month. When she rented it, we hadn't seventy cents. We were to move into it the day of the accident. I insisted that we proceed.
"Send for Jimmy Moohan," I said. Jimmy was a genial old Irish expressman whose stand was at the New Haven Green. Jimmy came and looked me over. Then came Bob Grant, a foreman from a near-by manufacturing concern, and after him four Socialist comrades on their way home from work.
"Ah, Mother o' God," Jimmy said, "shure it's an ambulance yer riverence shud haave."
"I want you, Jimmy; pile me in."
"Holy Saints," he exclaimed, "shure th' ould cyart'll jolt yer guts out!"
"Pile me in."
So they lifted me on the mattress and laid me in the express wagon. Bob Grant sat beside me; the four comrades steadied it—two on each side.
"Git up now, Larry, an' be aisy wid ye."
When the wagon wheel mounted a stone, Jimmy blamed Larry and swore at him. Occasionally he would turn around and say: "How's it goin', yer riverence?"
I was in such agony that I sweat. Pains were shooting through every part of my body but I usually answered:
"Fine, Jimmy, fine!"
So I came back within the gates of the city—rejected, defeated, deserted, and practically a pauper.
It had been a long fight but the city had conquered. A few more attempts at work; a few more appeals for fair play, a few more speeches for the propaganda; but as baggage in Jimmy Moohan's express wagon I was down and out!
At a regular meeting of the Trades Council of New Haven a member moved that a letter of sympathy be sent to me. A week after my fall, another was made and carried to make me a member of the council and a third to send me a check for fifty dollars. This was the only money I ever received for my services to labour and as it arrived a few hours before the agent called for his rent, it was very welcome.
It seemed odd to all sorts of people that, after being starved out, I should bob up again in one of the largest houses on Chapel Street—I couldn't quite understand it myself. My wife could, however. She said the whole business of life was a matter of mental attitude and she only laughed when I asked whether there was any chance of my being kicked to death by a mule for the next month's rent!
I made another attempt to interest the students of Yale in the human affairs of New Haven. Ten years previous to this, when there was some suggestion that I take charge of Yale's mission work, I was astounded to be told by the leaders of the Yale Y.M.C.A. that the chief end in view was not the work but the worker. Yale's mission was to give the student practice. Missions were to be laboratories—the specimens were to be humans. The eternal questions of sin and poverty were to be answered by the pious phrases and the cast-off junk of immature students. I gave a series of talks on labour unions to a selected group of students who were leaders.
I was a social evangelist then and, after the talks, took stock of the results. Many fell by the wayside, but a group of strong men formed themselves into a "University Federal Labour Union." Dick Morse, captain of the 'Varsity crew, became president of it. Representative union constitutions were studied. The following sentences from thedeclaration of principles will illustrate how thoroughly these young men got in line with the union movement:
"We believe it inconsistent and unworthy that a wage-worker should take the benefits that accrue to a craft as a direct result of organization and at the same time hold himself aloof from the responsibilities and from his share of the expenses of that organization.
"We believe that union men whenever possible should demand the union label as a guarantee that the goods were manufactured under conditions fair to labour. We believe that eight hours should constitute a day's work."
In the preamble was this statement: "We do not look upon the labour union as an ultimate conception of labour, but we believe that whatever progress has been made in the lot of the labourer has been due wholly to the organization of the wage-workers!"
The preamble concludes with this paragraph: "Believing, therefore, in the cause of labour and desiring to add according to our ability to the support of the union movement, we pledge ourselves to study it intelligently and to support it loyally."
Here was the beginning of a splendid mission work among the students; but the New Haven labour movement wasn't big enough to take it in; nor was the American Federation of Labour. The labour men would have no dealings whateverwith the students. We managed to keep the big house for a year, but we kept little else during that period. Twice we lost the mental image of the monthly rent. Sam Read supplied it the first time and Anson Phelps Stokes the other. These were my only borrowings in New Haven. In that house I had one of the most bitter experiences of my life.
"I think," said my wife to me, one morning at 2 A.M., "that the baby will be born in an hour."
The announcement chilled me. There was but five cents in the house and that was needed to telephone for the family physician. As I walked down Chapel Street it seemed as if my heart was a nest of scorpions spitting poison.
There was no breakfast in the house for the mother of the new-born babe. The churches, the homes of the wealthy and the university filled me with unutterable hate as I passed them. I was in the frame of mind in which murder, theft, violence are committed.
I had held my integrity intact until that exigency. Then I only lacked opportunity to smash my ideals—to bend my head, my back, my morals!
Cold sweat covered my body, my teeth chattered and my hands twitched. My Socialist philosophy told me that society was in process of evolution. Democracy at heart was correcting its own evils and like a snake sloughing off its outworn skin. I was part of that process. Reason pounded these things in on me but hate pushed them aside and demandedsomething else. I wondered that morning whether after all there weren't more reforms wrapped up in a stick of dynamite than in a whole life of preaching and moralizing. In that fifteen-minute walk there passed through my mind and heart all the elements of hell.
It was a new experience to me—I had not travelled that way before. I went into a little restaurant to use the 'phone. I laid the nickel on the counter, when I had finished, and as I did so the waiter said, "It's a 'phone on me, Mr. Irvine;" and he rang up five cents in the cash register.
"Ah," I said, "you know me then?"
"Sure thing," he said, "don't you know me?"
I shook my head.
"Gee!" he said, "you're sick. You look like hell!"
"I feel like it."
"What's up?"
"You heard me 'phone?"
"Sure—aint you glad?"
"Yes—but——"
"Say, have a cup of hot coffee, won't you?"
"Thank you, I think I will."
His intuition was keen enough to perceive that the trouble was mental and as I took the coffee he said:
"Discouraged a bit, hey?"
Without waiting for a reply he proceeded to tell me how a few words of mine at one of thetrolleymen's midnight meetings had changed his life. He went into details and as he went on I saw a look of contentment on his face and as I watched, it changed the look on my own.
I could not drink his coffee but I shared his comradeship and as I went back home I became normal. Hate left my heart. I was beaten, in a way; but the love of mankind was a fundamental thing and the other was a mental storm that passed over and left no ill results.
Things took a new turn that morning. We saw a rift in the clouds and were encouraged. It became clear that my work in New Haven was ended.
I took a commission from the Young Men's Christian Association on West 57th Street to open up meetings in some of the big shops and factories of New York.
Mr. Charles F. Powlison, who is one of the largest minded and noblest hearted men in the Association, is special secretary there, and it was through his faith and confidence that the work came to me.
The Interborough Rapid Transit Company gave us permission to hold meetings in several of their largest shops.
I enjoyed the work very much—these big crowds of men in jumpers and overalls had a fascination for me. The work in the Interborough went well for a year. I reviewed great books, I gave the biographies of the world's greatest men, I talked of ethics,science, art and religion. I taught the truth as I understood it; but it was all utterly unsectarian and universal. In one shop the company cleaned out the junk and replaced it with a restaurant: the superintendent told me it was the result of my work there. My talks were never over fifteen minutes long and seldom over ten. I was always assisted by a musician of some sort.
The work went well for a year in the big shops; then my part in them came to an abrupt end.
The board of directors at the West Side Y.M.C.A. is composed of representative men of affairs in New York—men of big responsibilities and large wealth; as splendid a set of men as ever governed an institution.
This particular Y.M.C.A. was a pioneer institution in a big way. It stood for large things when those things were unpopular. It was a heretic in a way. In ten years the procession came up and the institution seemed to stand still.
It had given the Y.M.C.A. world a larger outlook in religion and it may be that it will yet become a pioneer in giving it a larger sociology.
I was one of two men to address the board of directors one night and I stated the case at more length than I do here.
"What shall I tell those workingmen you stand for?" I asked. "Do you believe in the right of the workers to organize? If you do, say so, and, as your representative, let me tell them that you do."