Fear God in your own village

Preface

Here is the true story of an attempt to put the fear of God into an American rural community ; that is, to bring order out of the chaos of its social and civic affairs, to put pride and co-operation in the place of suspicion and individualism, to make narrow prejudice and plain cussedness give way to sympathy and unselfish service.

Perhaps it will do you good — but it wasn't written for that purpose. It was written largely to explain to my wife why I am so frequently late to meals and why I have not spent more evenings in her dear presence.

Contents

CHAPTEB PAGE

I Deacon Bostick's Vote 1

II Neighbor Freeman's Barn ... 19

Chapter I Deacon Bostick's Vote

I do not recall when I met Deacon Bostick. It was probably after my first or second church service in Hilldale. But the first I heard about him was one day when Deacon Gordon, our school principal, told me that I had "just about won Deacon Bostick over."

"Won him over?" I said. "To what, from what? "

"Why, he is the only member of the Consistory holding out against you. When he gives in we will give you a call to the church and make it unanimous."

" But I thought I was called and called unanimously before I came here," I protested.

"No, we are just trying you out. All of us on the Consistory except Bostick are for you and so are most of the congregation, but some of the old timers like Bostick are hard to win over."

"And you think I have been here simply candidating for this little church these last four weeks? " I demanded.

" Of course."

"Well, let me tell you something for the good of my soul," I said, considerably riled. "I am not candidating. I do not give a lonesome cuss whether Deacon Bostick or anybody else wants to vote for me or not. This church is not choosing or rejecting me. I am choosing it. I have come here to put the fear of God in it. I am going to stay, votes or no votes."

Gordon looked at me a moment and then slapped me on the shoulder as he broke into a hearty laugh. " Good for you," he cried, then hesitated a moment and added, " but be sure the town doesn't put the fear of man in you."

DEACON BOSTICK'S VOTE S

Thereupon I went to my room at Uncle Josiah Nichols' and kicked myself. " There you go, you cocky young fool," I said. " This is a beautiful way to start your ministry, strutting around with a chip on your shoulder. Now get down on your knees by your bed and pray. Ask the Lord for forgiveness and a teachable spirit." But my knees would not bend and my lips refused to utter anything but imprecations against Deacon Bostick and all his ilk. What right had they to think that a minister should please them? I would have them know that I was no one-horse exhorter looking for a job and coming to them because I couldn't find a better one. I was a graduate of College, University, and Seminary. I had had a year's experience as a social survey investigator ("snooper," the farmers called it) over the United States and was coming to this little town with a wealth of theory inside of me and a wealth of experience in front of me.

I had come as pastor of the church and secretary of the Hilldale Neighborhood Association. The church was almost dead; in fact, it was only walking around to save funeral expenses. The Association was a civic organization, non-sectarian, made up of business men, wealthy residents and a few village people. It was three years old. It had been born in the mud, so to speak, for it owed its origin to a group of men getting together with the purpose of macadamizing a very bad road. When that had been accomplished and they had lifted themselves out of the mud they had not disbanded but worked on until they had secured a public library. Then they had tackled the mosquito problem and set to work on a large scale draining, flooding or oiling swamps or marshy places and eliminating mosquito breeding places. Almost before they knew it they had made their organization permanent and called it their Neighborhood Association.

But neither the church nor the association had been able to support a man on full time until, through the efforts of Mr. Townsend, the Association's president, they had united their forces and decided to secure one man in the dual capacity of resident minister and director of the Neighborhood Association. It had been exactly the sort of opening I had wanted — a combination of religious and social work in a rural community.

I was going to see what could be done in one country town. In fact, I was about to set the world afire. What right had the kindling to say it wouldn't burn? It ought to be mighty proud to have a part in the conflagration.

I argued all this for ten or fifteen minutes to the four walls of my room, and receiving no answer in reply I was convinced that I was right. As I was beginning to cool down there came a knock at the door and two young men of the village entered. They were George Biddle and James Stilwell. George was about thirty-three or thirty-four years of age, rather short, and partially bald. I learned later that he was a member of one of the oldest families, and that he was a real estate and insurance broker. James was a young carpenter of twenty-one or twenty-two years, with a clean face and quiet voice. George did most of the talking.

"Would you help us start some sort of boys' club here?" he said, after a rather embarrassed beginning. " There ain't no place for us fellows to go except the saloons or to the other villages."

"How many saloons are here?"

" Seven."

" That is seven too many. How large is the village? "

" About a thousand."

"Any clubs among the young people now? "

" Only what is left of the Sterling Athletic Club. It is made up of a dozen fellows. They meet in an old shoemaker's shanty down near the station; don't do anything and are just about played out. Then there is a volunteer fire department that meets over here in the shed near the school-house.

There are about forty members in that, but they don't do much either."

" Suppose you give me a few days to look over the situation and think out a plan. Meantime will you prepare a list of all the young men in town and then in about ten days call a mass meeting of these fellows at the fire department shed? I will be there and we will start something — I don't know what."

They agreed and took their departure. For the next few days I was too busy finding out what the town was made of to worry about Deacon Bostick or the Consistory votes. The more I found out the more I realized that there was a struggle coming if the fear of God was to be put into the town and the more I thought of Gordon's warning, "Be careful that the town doesn't put the fear of man in you."

I didn't make a careful house-to-house social survey until months later. For the present I wanted just the outstanding facts about the recreations of the young people. The village was typical of hundreds of communities within a radius of thirty to fifty miles of any great American city, but there wasn't much consolation in that fact. Once it had been an agricultural neighborhood, but the spread of the neighboring city had increased land values from $150.00 to $1,500.00 an acre in a dozen years. The old farmers had been selling their farms and moving away. Most of the land had been bought up and turned into great estates by wealthy business men from the city. A few of these I had met and they promised to be interesting. But these only made up about ten or twelve per cent, of the population which totaled, as George had said, a little less than one thousand. The rest were largely gardeners, carpenters, masons, and laborers of various kinds. A few were commuters. Most of these were comparative newcomers, taking the place of the old farmers, who were either moving away or dying off.

The village was pretty well divided into " old timers " and " newcomers." The old timers were unselfishly shoving the burdens of the community upon the shoulders of the newcomers, and the newcomers, graciously but firmly protesting that they would not think of superseding those who had worked so long and so well, were declining the community responsibilities with great thanks. The plain fact was that both old timers and newcomers had the same aversion to work. Between them, the recreations of the young people, the church, the public school, the roads, and all the other social institutions had been sadly neglected.

There were, as the boys had said, seven saloons in town, each with its pool room. There was no other place of amusement. Young people were starving for a good time. There was a deal of immorality. Three miles to the west was Dellwood, an overgrown, unincorporated hamlet of ten thousand or more, and to this town every evening from fifty to seventy-five persons, young and old, were going by railway train to movie show, dance hall, or street.

What was Deacon Bostick's vote to be compared to trying to help remedy a situation like this? The Deacon, I decided, could go hang, or, if he preferred, he could fall head-first into his cistern and take his vote with him. I was going to get some clean recreations for this village.

I managed to get myself invited to a meeting of the Sterling Athletic Club down in the old shoemaker's shanty. Rough looking old place it was, about eight feet wide and ten feet long, with board walls, no carpet on the floor, an oil lamp, a few chairs, a bench, a table, and a three-legged stove. Half a dozen young fellows were there. Fred Black, a young contractor and builder, James Stilwell, Ed Skenlan and his father, Tom Skenlan, and two or three others. Most of them were either carpenters or masons. We played cards and swapped yarns that first evening, and the boys told me a little of the history of their club, how it had been started by a politician named Sterling, how it had had a golden age when its prowess in baseball and other athletics had been the envy of all the country around, how local rivalries and friction had started over hotly contested games and umpires' decisions, how there had been no one to patch up the difficulties, and how when the opposition had been finally vanquished and there was no outside enemy to challenge they waxed fat and kicked each other until their organization had but a handful left and pinochle was their most violent exercise. Two or three nights later I spent another evening in the shanty, and on the second or third evening after that I was made a member of the club. Then one rainy evening as we sat around the card table I told the boys I had a plan to propose. I proposed that with this club and the fire department as a nucleus we get together all the young fellows in town and furnish the whole village with plenty of clean recreation. It was a young man's job. Why should we wait for some one else to do it for us? I proposed that we do it ourselves by the following method:

Get up a petition to our Neighborhood Association asking them, first, to take us into their association as active members upon payment of our regular dues of $1.00 a year; second, to commission us as a recreation department to furnish the whole village, old and young — our fathers and mothers and smaller brothers and sisters included — with plenty of clean recreation; and third, if we were successful after two years' work, to help us build in our village a neighborhood house including a good motion picture show, a social room, bowling alleys, pool table, village library, and a room for the village fire department.

We talked over that proposal for two hours that night. I think it was one of the most religious meetings I was ever in. Yes, the air was blue with smoke, the table was covered with cards, and the fellows lounged around in all sorts of comfortable positions. But here were a dozen young men seriously considering taking up an unselfish work for the good of the town, for the spiritual wel-

DEACON BOSTICK'S VOTE 13 v

fare of the town, if you please. If that isn't religious, what is?

It took two or three meetings to thrash out details and make sure of just what we wanted. But finally every one of the members of the club signed the petition and then we called our mass meeting at the fire department shed. It will be long before I forget that meeting. The fire truck had been hauled out so as to make room for the thirty-five or forty fellows who had come to see what was up. They sat around the edges of the room on camp chairs, benches, boxes, or anything else that offered a seat. Everybody was talking before I entered, but the moment I came inside the door a funereal hush fell upon the group that lasted, in spite of all attempts to break it, until I had taken my departure. I called the^neeting to order and made some sort of speech. I tried to introduce a little humor at the beginning of it but it fell flat, so I abandoned the attempt and went on to outline the same plan I had proposed to the Sterling Athletic Club. Coneluding I said, " Here is a plan. Now what do you want to do with it? "

Not a word. A minute or two passed.

"Any questions to ask?" Nary a question. Two or three more minutes passed.

"Any objections to offer?" Nary an objection. More minutes.

"Doesn't any one in this house have the power of speech? "

No one had.

" All right," I said, " think about this business for a week. Then we will meet here again one week from tonight and either put this plan over or bury it." I went to the door and turned to face the crowd once more, " Good night," I said.

Then in one voice every one answered, " Good night."

As I walked home I wondered at the meaning of their silence and of that last vociferous " good night." Was it the silence of disapproval, of bashfulness, or the fear to speak out before the crowd? I made up my mind that it was the latter. This town had been so long without an organization or a leader that its young men had forgotten or never learned the American tradition of free discussion in public meetings. And somehow, as their " good night " rang in my ears, it seemed that there was in it the over tone of promise — even of wistfulness.

Anyway I wished I had that crowd of young fellows in church. That night as I lay listening to the chirping of the crickets I thought again of Deacon Bostick's pernicious vote and of Gordon's warning, " Be sure the town doesn't put the fear of man in you."

The following week the recreation department scheme was the talk of the town. The Sterling Athletic Club and the fire department became suddenly animated and held many meetings, called delinquent members to account, and collected much back dues. On Friday night we had another mass meeting and this time the silence was broken. Everybody broke it, sometimes all at once. Would we have a club house and where would it be? The East End boys (who lived on the east side of the community) insisted it must not be on the west side, and the Station boys (who lived near the railroad station on the west side of the community) insisted that it must not be on the east side. A few thought it would be best not to separate themselves from the $1.00 membership fee until the club was actually established. There was some little jealousy, too, that this scheme had been presented to the Sterling Athletic Club previous to the others. Did this mean that the Sterling Athletic Club boys were going to run the organization.

Underneath all this one thing was evident — everybody wanted the club and was taking it for granted. So the petition to the Neighborhood Association was presented and everybody signed it, making about forty-five signatures in all. One of the boys asked to be allowed to take the petition to a few fellows who had not been able to attend the meeting. He returned it Saturday with eight more names, making fifty-three in all.

On Sunday morning we devoted our church service to the need of clean recreation for our village. The service had been announced by post cards sent to every Protestant family as far as we had their names. The church that morning saw many faces for the first time in a dozen years. I read the petition and used it as a text for my sermon. There was no oratory and less rhetoric in that sermon. It was simply a rather crude expression of what everybody wanted. It wound up with an appeal to the members of the congregation to give their support to the organization the fellows were proposing, and help it along in every way they could.

After the benediction I hurried back to the door and shook hands with the congregation. When all were out save a few, one rather elderly gentleman, of medium height, a bald head fringed with gray, and dark eyes that batted, slapped me on the shoulder. " Dominie," he said, " that is the best service we ever had in this church. I tell you it was great. We hain't never had anything like it. I want to tell you I'm converted and I'm voting for you."

I said something about that being very nice, and I hoped he would help the boys all he could. He said that he would and went away. : ' Who was that gentleman? " I asked Mr. Gordon, who stood near.

" That old fellow you were just talking with? Why, that was Deacon Bostick."

I walked back to Josiah Nichols' house, pronouncing to the autumn leaves by the roadside much wisdom on the subject of country people and the country church. All one needed to do was to be practical and not lazy, and the Deacon Bosticks would all be converted and give up their narrow-mindedness. It was really very easy. But I had not yet lived with Deacon Bostick through the affair of the pump handle or the affair of the two chairs in the back of the church.

Chapter II Neighbor Freeman's Barn

The Directors granted the petition, of course, and received the signers as active members of the Neighborhood Association. They went further and turned the $53.00 annual membership dues back to these new members in the form of an appropriation for the use of the Recreation Departmento This was quite a blow to those who thought the whole scheme was an attempt on the part of the rich to fleece the poor. Just how they had figured that the rich were going to divide up this $53.00 so that none of them would receive too large a share of the boodle was something of a mystery. However, they soon recovered from the blow and began to ask questions. " Where are you going to begin? " " How much recreation can you give a village with only $53.00?" "It will be two years before a Neighborhood House can be built. Meantime, where are you going to meet? There is no building in the neighborhood that can be used as a club house." That simplymeant that there was no building upon whose front the words, " club house," appeared in large capital letters.

I suppose every village contains an element of this sort — men and women who feed on suspicion and breathe discouragement. They are a dead weight in the community, for they drag their feet whenever some one tries to put the wheels of progress under the town. Their favorite maxim is, " It can't be done." Their greatest pride is the deadness of their village. They boast about it. Wonderful things, they admit, have been done in other towns but not in this place. " This is the most peculiar spot on the earth." Some time ago a retired farmer in one of these villages heard that there was going to be an eclipse of the moon. He hitched up his team and drove to a neighboring town to see it.

But the enthusiasm of the young men was

NEIGHBOR FREEMAN'S BARN 21 v

too warm to be cooled by this element. A suitable place for a temporary club house was a poser. But some one suggested that Neighbor Freeman had a barn near the center of the village which might be used for this purpose. Neighbor Freeman was quite willing to rent the barn for a nominal sum for club house purposes. It was just an old red barn, a road and a swamp in front of it, and a field behind it.

We needed a floor. The young men who were carpenters agreed that they would give their labor in putting one in if we could afford the material. We asked the local lumber dealer if he would let us have the material and trust the Lord for payment. He said he would. Then for a couple of weeks the fellows were busy nearly every night working by the light of lamps and lanterns putting in a dance floor, a movable partition, a chimney, and wiring the place for electric lights. When they had finished they still had just a barn — clean and white to be sure and with a dance floor — but with no equipment, no games, no stove, no furniture, no anything, in short, but just a plain, bare barn.

At this juncture some one suggested that there were a lot of attics in our town where women stored the furniture that they got when they were married and many other household articles since. There might be enough equipment in these attics about the town to fit up a club room. It seemed worth trying, so we had printed and sent to every family in the neighborhood a notice listing a number of articles that could be used in a club room. "We want no citizen to feel," the notice read, " that he is under any obligation to inconvenience himself in any way and hope that none will sacrifice himself in his desire to show his good will to this Recreation Department. But if these articles, however battered or old, can be contributed to the temporary quarters they will be well cared for and well used, and we shall be very grateful."

The replies to that notice were interesting.

One man could only give a cuspidor. Another could give a second-hand pool table. Between those extremes we found, when the answers to this notice were all in, that we had the following equipment:

1 stove,

2 chandeliers,

2 phonographs, 1 chimney,

1 indoor baseball set,

1 pool table and pocket stops for same,

5 leather chairs,

Whiting for the walls,

12 decks of cards,

1 second-hand piano and pianola,

1 cuspidor,

3 sets checkers,

6 window shades,

Seven dozen glasses and odds and ends of dishes.,

24 camp chairs,

1 oil stove,

15 yards of matting,

1 water pitcher,

5 folding chairs,

Several subscriptions to magazines,

The barn was no longer bare. The Sterling Athletic Club turned over its entire equipment of nine chairs, twenty cups, a coffee boiler, an iron pail, and its treasury of $42.87 — " everything down to spare shirt," as one of the boys put it.

Then we set to work. We organized our Executive Committee, made up of two of the Directors of the Neighborhood Association and five local business men. This Executive Committee appointed an Athletic Committee, a House Committee, and an Entertainment Committee.

The Athletic Committee organized a baseball team and two Boy Scout Troops. One of the Scout Troops died in infancy, but the other struggled along for a little while and then seemed to stand still. I happened to be Scout Master of this troop and was getting discouraged with the slow progress we were making. There were about fifteen boys in the troop and the limit of my ability seemed to have been reached when I had taught them how to tie five kinds of knots, repeat the Scout Oath and the Scout Law, and to salute with three fingers. A generous rich man had offered to buy uniforms for the boys, but I declined the offer on the ground that we ought to earn our own uniforms. I cannot say that this decision was altogether popular with the boys. A uniform at that time cost $4.80, which seemed to these youngsters an awful amount to squander on clothes. They would save up their nickels and pennies until they had about $2.00 on hand and then spend it on something useful like a circus, or peanuts, or a soda fountain.

One day it occurred to me that if I could lower jthe limit perhaps one boy might get over and the other boys seeing his suit would be encouraged to work harder for their own. So I offered to pay for the hat for the first Scout who could save up enough money to buy the rest of his uniform. As the hat was worth $1.25, this made it necessary to save only $3.55. Two or three weeks after this announcement was made, one of the young

Scouts, Robert Jackson, came breathlessly into my office. (I had opened a little office near the railroad station and had secured the services of a girl to handle clerical work.) Robert counted out on my desk $3.55, in nickels, dimes, and pennies and demanded to be measured at once for his uniform. I took his measurements, filled out the order, and sent it promptly to the Boy Scout Headquarters in the city. The following morning Robert again appeared, wanting to know if his suit had arrived. He came in two or three more times that day. By dire catastrophe that order was held up in New York for about three weeks during which Robert came to the office not less than one thousand times. On the afternoons of the last week he met the express trains as they came in. It was rather pathetic to see him watching eagerly the 2.45 express and then following the disappearing train down the track with eyes from which the hopefulness of youth had almost departed. One morning, however, by some chance the package arrived in my office about three minutes before Robert. He rushed in with his knife open, cut the string, and pulled out the uniform. Now I had in the office, as I have said, a girl as clerk — a modest, retiring little Methodist. But it took physical force to prevent Robert from stripping and putting on his uniform in her presence. He finally compromised, agreeing to put on the trousers in his own home. A few minutes later he was parading up and down the street with a glory that Solomon never dreamed of. During the following week I ordered six more uniforms.

The House Committee began the administration of the club room with ideals as high as heaven and faith in human nature as beautiful as it was sweet. It proposed just two rules " no booze " and " no gambling." " Let the honor system take care of any other regulations, " said the House Committee. I regret to say that we found these simple rules were not as effective as they should have been. A group of the younger members whose energy exceeded their respect for law or property soon began to turn things upside down in the club room. They fenced with the pool cues and played the piano with their toes. Some became adept in juggling chairs and others developed physical grace by practicing the Salome dance on the pool table. Of course, if these fellows could have been detected in the process they would have been expelled. Although we had a moral certainty concerning some of them they were usually able to prove an alibi. In the course of four or five months the club room began to look and smell like a pig pen. Then we found it necessary to employ a janitor to keep the place clean and to maintain discipline. The cleaning part was not difficult, but we were unable to find any human being big enough to maintain discipline among these younger and more irresponsible boys. So one by one they were dropped from the membership. Some of them later recognized the error of their ways and rejoined the club and became staunch members.

Others cherish a grudge in their hearts to this day.

If the whole truth is to be set down here it must be recorded also that the rule against liquor was not always kept. On ordinary occasions we were safe. But at dances a number of the young men had an idea that a village dance was not complete unless there was much drinking of whiskey just outside the door. On at least one occasion a quantity of liquor was donated for this purpose by one of the local saloons with the evident intention of breaking up the Department. On another occasion two of the members broke up a dance by insisting on their right to maintain their honor by making mince meat of each other's faces. These members later made a public apology and their humiliation was a lesson to the rest of the Department.