CONSERVATION 
 
 ofihe 
 
 MORAL 
 RESOURCES 
 
 ofihe 
 
 NATION 
 
 yf JTVDX /A HOME MISSIOJ^S 
 

 U^^ 
 
 M 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/conservationofmoOOcokerich 
 
Rev. Robert Forbes, D. D. 
 
 Corresponding Secretary 
 
 Board of Home Missions 
 
 and Church Extension 
 
CToie.^. /vU-v..^^ -^o^e.|^k 
 
 HE CONSERVATION 
 OF THE MORAL 
 RESOURCES OF 
 THE NATION 
 
 ^ h^l ■* 
 
 A Comprehensive Study 
 of Home Missions and 
 Church Extension 
 
 COMPILED BY 
 
 HENRY JOSEPH COKER 
 
>C4 
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 This book is dedicated to the 
 
 REV. ROBERT FORBES, D. D., 
 
 Corresponding Secretary of the 
 Board of Home Missions and Church Extension, 
 
 DR. PLATT and DR. BOSWELL, 
 
 his associates in ofi&ce, 
 and to the 
 
 BOARD OF MANAGERS 
 
6IUMPT0K ACCESSIOft O O 9f 'T ^ 
 
 177P 
 AMCMFT UBIAiY 
 
 JIJN, I 1938 PREFACE. 
 
 This book is a verbatim report of the proceedings 
 of the recent parliaments held in the interest of the 
 Board of Home Missions and Church Extension in 
 Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, Okla- 
 homa, Colorado, and in other states more remotely. 
 
 The addresses are in full, and are given by men of 
 first ability and experience. No more informed men on 
 their various themes could be found. 
 
 They have given their best years to the study and 
 work of their various departments, many of them in 
 actual service in the various missions spoken of and 
 wrought out, hence their utterances are the results of 
 actual contact with the work. 
 
 Any man, layman or minister, cannot afford to be 
 without this book for the understanding of his own 
 country, his religious obligation, and his better knowing 
 as a patriot what his full obligation is, and to the being 
 a fully informed man on the work of the Church of 
 God. 
 
 Every famliy should have it in the home. It is an 
 education to read its full pages for the children; for 
 youth in preparation of Epworth League topics and the 
 knowing of the acts of the Apostles of the Twentieth 
 Century. 
 
 The Compiler is indebted to the men and Mrs. Wil- 
 liams, for the permission to publish these addresses and 
 lectures. 
 
 We are trusting that in the churches renewed in- 
 terest will be taken in saving America, and bringing it 
 to Christ, for our nation's sake and the world's sake. 
 
 IJeNRY J. COKER. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Page. 
 Preview of the Work of the Parliament — 
 
 Rev. Henry Joseph Coker, D. D i 
 
 The Home Missionary in Nation Making — 
 Rev. Claudius B. Spencer, S. T. D., Kansas 
 
 City, Mo , 7 
 
 The Frontier, East, West and South — 
 
 Rev. Ward Piatt, D. D., Assistant Correspond- 
 ing Secretary, Philadelphia, Pa 15 
 
 The Cry of the Great City — 
 
 Rev. Charles Bayard Mitchell, D. D., Chi- 
 cago, 111 ( 29 
 
 The Winning of the West — 
 
 Rev. W. E. Doughty, A. M., New York City. . 47 
 
 America As a World Power — 
 
 Rev. Bishop Dr. Jno. L. Nuelsen, Omaha, Neb. 65 
 
 The Preservation of Our Civilization — 
 
 Rev. Bishop Dr. William A. Otiayle, Okla- 
 homa City, Okla. . 86 
 
 The Black Man in the Nation — 
 
 Rev. 1. L. Thomas, D. D., Baltimore, Md 106 
 
 The Jew, His Future — 
 
 Rev. Louis M. Potts, A. M., Pittsburg, Kan.. 116 
 
 Our Insular Possessions — 
 
 Rev. Benj. S. Haywood, D. D., Superintendent 
 
 Porto Rico Mission 125 
 
 Our Mongolian Peoples — 
 
 Rev. Herbert B. Johnson, D. D., Superintend- 
 ent Japanese Mission 142 
 
The Italians and Other Immigrants — 
 
 Rev. Frederick H. Wright, D. D., Superin- 
 tendent Italian Mission 163 
 
 The Bitter Cry of the Children — 
 
 Rev. Henry J. Coker, D. D 180 
 
 How Are We Meeting this Mighty Challenge — 
 Among the Jews. 
 Rev. Louis M. Potts, A. M., Pittsburg, Kan. . .188 
 
 Among the Black Men — 
 
 Rev. I. L. Thomas, D. D., Baltimore, Md....i95 
 
 Woman's Work — 
 
 Mrs. Delia L. Williams, National Correspond- 
 ing Secretary, Woman's Home Mission- 
 ary Society, Delaware, O 200 
 
 Kansas and the Board of Home Missions 
 AND Church Extension — 
 Rev. Bascom Roberts, Ph.D., D. S., Em- 
 poria, Kan. . .: 210 
 
 The Summons to a New Departure — 
 
 Rev. W. E. Doughty, A. M., New York City. .214 
 
 The Board of Home Missions and Church 
 Extension — 
 Rev. Chas. M. Boswell, D. D., Assistant Cor- 
 responding Secretary 225 
 
 Impromptu Address — 
 
 Rev. Dr. Bishop William A. Quayle, Okla- 
 homa City, Okla 231 
 
 The Responsibility Upon the Board of 
 Home Missions — 
 Rev. Ward Piatt, D. D., Philadelphia, Pa.... 237 
 
 The Conclusion of the Whole Matter — 
 
 Rev. Dr. Bishop William A. Quayle, Okla- 
 homa City, Okla ,1. ... , 252 
 
Rev. Fred H. Wright, D. D. 
 Superintendent Italian Mission 
 
 Rev. Claudius B. Spencer, LL. D. 
 Editor Central Christian Advocate 
 
 Rev. Benjamin S. Haywood, D. D. 
 Superintendent Porto Rico Mission 
 
OPENING SESSION OF PARLIAMENT. 
 
 Convened: 2 o'clock p. m. Prayer. 
 
 Scripture Reading: 15th Chapter of Matthew, by 
 Rev. Henry J. Coker, D. D. (Miracle of the Loaves and 
 Fishes). 
 
 Dr. Coker : That was a Home Missionary scene ! 
 Christ was a Home Missionary! We have been told 
 that he was a foreign missionary, and he was a foreign 
 missionary, but before he ever became a foreign mis- 
 sionary, he was a home misionary. There were many 
 people who tried to get him away from his own land, 
 from his own people, and once or twice he did go just 
 across the border, but his ministry, his whole life, his 
 whole thought, his passion, was for his own. "He came 
 unto his own — and his own received him not." So, to- 
 day, we come, and we have in our mind all the vast 
 crowds of people here, that are hungering and thirsting, 
 not so much for the bread that perisheth, as for the 
 bread of life, and we are to think of the multitudes that 
 are as sheep without a Shepherd. Fifty per cent of the 
 people of the United States never darken a church door. 
 Forty-five millions of people in America never darken a 
 church door of any sort, Roman-Catholic, Protestant, 
 Jewish or what-not. There are twenty millions that go to 
 
2 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 church regularly. Twenty-five millions of people that 
 go to church irregularly. There are forty-five millions 
 of people in America that never go, and some of these 
 are near you. Some of these will be found right in your 
 own midst. Some of these will be found in the down- 
 town districts of our great centers of population. These 
 are men, women, boys and girls, who are hungry. 
 They know not many of them, that they are 
 hungry, but they are starving for the bread of life. 
 Only three per cent of the laboring classes of the people 
 of America go to church. A great leader in religious 
 effort once made a canvass of the City of Columbus, 
 Ohio, in which he worked, and he found that about 3% 
 of the laboring classes, 17% of the rich, and about 55% 
 of the well-to-do went to church. The balance never 
 went to church. 
 
 A factory in New England was canvassed at one 
 time, a factory "manned" (that is scarcely the proper 
 term) — that was "girled" with girls. Perhaps that is 
 a little better. It was discovered that 15% went, mainly 
 to the Roman Catholic churches. 
 
 So that here we have the mighty multitudes over 
 which the Christ-heart almost breaks, within the sound 
 of bells, some of them, and without the sound of bells, 
 thousands and millions of them, even in Christian Amer- 
 ica, and that is the problem that is before us now. 
 
 I wonder, this afternoon, as we come here to learn 
 about these people; whether or no, it shall not educate 
 
Preview of Parliament 3 
 
 our hearts and make us feel the need, the positive need, 
 the actual necessity, of bringing America to Christ. 
 
 Beloved, I greet you in the name of the great Board 
 of Home Mission and Church Extension, that we here 
 represent. I greet you in the name of Methodism, in its 
 largeness, and yet in its one-ness, and in its unity. I 
 greet you in the name of Jesus Christ, and I pray that as 
 we tarry together for the hours until to-morrow night 
 shall arrive, it shall be a day and a night, a day and 
 another night, of individual and collective blessings, that 
 shall send us forth as great dynamos of power, and to 
 bring about revolutions in the knowledge of our people. 
 
 I remember once, traveling in England, I was trying 
 to find the cottage where Milton wrote his ^'Paradise 
 Lost." I stopped occasionally on the way, to find where 
 that cottage was. Stopping at a house 2j^ miles from 
 the place, I asked, "Can you tell me where Milton's cot- 
 tage is?" "Milton? No such man as Milton lives about 
 here." I replied, "No, I did not expect that John Milton 
 lived here now, but he did live, lived tremendously, a 
 while ago, and I understand there is a cottage here, 
 somewhere near by, where he wrote." The answer was 
 "No, I don't remember anything about him." We 
 reached the cottage, driving about two miles, to a little 
 snug village called Chalfant St. Giles. In the midst of it, 
 the structure stood with a great placard on its side, "Mil- 
 ton's Cottage." How strange that one should be so near 
 as important a place and yet not know. Brothers, are 
 
4 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 we "long-sighted," so that we do not see the things 
 near-by ? Jesus' heart ached for the multitudes near him. 
 May our hearts ache for the multitudes in our own land 
 today, and may we in our prayers and thought seel^ to 
 give them the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is the purpose 
 of the gathering; and so, let us pray. 
 
 PRAYER. 
 
 O, God, we come together in this presence this day 
 to learn. We are students. 
 
 We are apt to think of things as accomplished, or 
 near accomplishment, when sometime we shall find that 
 the multitudes are yet hungry. O, have we ministered 
 with these hands? Have we helped with these powers 
 of ours? Have our influences been all the time toward 
 the uplift of the mighty multitudes? 
 
 Almighty God, grant that in this great Conference 
 there shall come so much of enlightenment, inspiration 
 and enthusiasm, as that each of us shall go forth to do 
 His will, and to live His life among men, seeking to 
 uplift and bless all about us. 
 
 The prayer of our heart is — God save America; 
 save her from drunkenness, save her from licentiousness, 
 save her from the evils that are cursing her, save her 
 from bankruptcy of morals. 
 
 Save her to the high place of being God's chosen 
 agent in the salvation of men in all regions, everywhere, 
 nearby and beyond the sea. 
 
Prayer 5 
 
 Thou didst have a purpose, O Lord, in the estab- 
 lishment of this government. We are thy chosen people 
 today, for a mighty purpose. We have been chosen be- 
 cause of our abilities, and because of our peculiar fitness; 
 but if we today, in these days of seeming decHne in some 
 lines of churchly activities and power, if we shall lose 
 character with Thee, then the world is the poorer, and 
 the time is delayed when we shall be the light-house of 
 God for the salvation of the nations. O, God, may it 
 come to every heart of the men and women who' attend 
 here today and tomorrow, so that we too shall go down 
 into the garden with our Christ and say, "Father, not 
 my will but Thine be done." , 
 
 Have we had too much leisure? Have we been too 
 careful with our strength? Have we not been willing 
 to be sacrificed with Christ? Have we not been willing 
 to be nailed with Him upon the Cross? Have we not 
 been willing to go with Him in all the needy places of the 
 earth? He was the son of man and he died for men. 
 
 Help us to be partners with him, in the mighty 
 work of saving our own land and the world, through 
 Jesus Christ, our Lord. 
 
 It will now be necessary for me to make a few 
 introductory remarks. 
 
 We have a great program, and it is logical. We 
 shall have two addresses this afternoon, and then we 
 shall begin ''The Challenge" — the challenge that comes 
 
6 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 with its mighty swelHng tide of questions up to the 
 church. We shall continue The Challenge until to- 
 morrow noon, and then we shall consider the question, 
 "How are we meeting this mighty challenge," and you 
 will see where the replies are coming from. The night 
 sessions will be of more popular nature, but still a 
 challenge. 
 
 I now take great pleasure in introducing Dr. 
 Claudius B. Spencer, who is the editor of the Central 
 Christian Advocate. 
 
THE HOME MISSIONARY IN NATION MAKING. 
 
 REV. CLADIUS B. SPENCER. 
 
 Not long ago, I stood upon the very spot, where 
 Patrick Henry uttered those immortal words, "Give me 
 liberty or give me death." Not very long afterwards, I 
 climbed up into a high tower, and saw the place where 
 a lantern was hung out, to tell whether the men in that 
 fleet would come by land or sea, and the hero raced, 
 with clattering hoofs, to Lexington, to spread the alarm, 
 that those farmers might take up their arms, and at Con- 
 cord Bridge fire that shot which was heard around the 
 world and reverberates still. 
 
 Where were those names? They were both in 
 Christian churches. It is more than a coincidence. It 
 is one of those strange providences by which the Eternal 
 gives his great demonstrations and lessons for those that 
 see. 
 
 We always see, in tracing the story of his land, 
 that the growth, the founding, the discovery, and the 
 maturing of this land, has been connected with the 
 Christian church, and that is my aim. 
 
 Mr. Price says, "the religious impulse, and religious 
 consciousness, underlaid the discovery of America.'* 
 
8 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 I have stood in that little narrow street where John 
 Robinson preached the sermon before the Pilgrims 
 started in the Mayflower; and we all know that 
 before they voyaged through the ocean to implant in 
 New England a new commonwealth, they had a famous 
 meeting in the Mayflower. It was a religious meeting. 
 They took possession of this new world in the name of 
 God, and if we were to trace the story of the discovery 
 of all that coast line, we would find it animated by that 
 same principle. I haven't time, or I would like to trace 
 the difference in those religious ideas, the ideas that made 
 New England, that made Maryland. I had an entire 
 book copied, in the Congressional Library, so I might 
 get down to the facts, regarding the boast we often hear 
 that it was the Roman church that was the author of 
 civil liberty. I wish to disprove that, some of these fine 
 days. 
 
 If we look to see the animating motive, at the 
 foundation, we find it expressed in these very thoughts, 
 so beautifully pictured by Mrs. Hemans, of those Pil- 
 grims in the Gothic arches of those woods, and how the 
 wild woods rang with the anthem of the free, who had 
 journeyed part way across a world, that in the newly 
 discovered continent they might find that religious free- 
 dom on which all great progress must rest. 
 
 If this be true in the discovery in this western world, 
 it was equally true in its development. Across the moun- 
 tains came these rugged pioneers, and close upon their 
 trail came these very itinerants. 
 
The Home Missionary in Nation Making 9 
 
 Richard Nollis, that particular itinerant, always on 
 the trail of the uttermost man in the pioneering of the 
 early land, came across a man just making a clearing far 
 in the southwest. The man asked who he was, and the 
 answer was a Methodist preacher. The man said, "I 
 have just hitched my team and driven away in the wilder- 
 ness, to get away from the Methodist preachers." "You 
 cannot do that, in time or eternity; if you go to Heaven 
 you will find Methodist preachers; in Hell you will find 
 some renegade Methodist preachers, and I advise you 
 wherever you are, to make your peace with the Methodist 
 preacher." 
 
 There was always a call, always a vision of some- 
 body farther on, with that intrepid itinerant, and I never 
 will forget the impression made on me when I first read 
 the story of how he came to a stream, in quest of that 
 last man, thrust his horse into that stream, how the cur- 
 rent swept the horse from under him; and when at last 
 they found his body far down the stream, there was a 
 peace not of this world resting upon his face. 
 
 My friends, that was what made America. Mr. 
 Roosevelt, in his "Winning of the West," pictured a man 
 coming over from England, very much like the hardy 
 man that penetrated the wilds of Africa. He came into 
 the great wilderness of the far West, and found himself 
 by the banks of a great stream, making his way some 
 where into this unknown west. As he hung up his little 
 kettle to make an evening meal, he saw a canoe coming 
 
lo The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 around a bend in the stream, and out of that canoe came 
 a man he described as one would describe a Colossus. It 
 was Daniel Boone, the hardy prototype of the kind of 
 timber that made the Mississippi valley and laid the 
 foundation of the west, that came along that same line 
 as Oglesby and Logan, that Black Eagle of Illinois; and 
 that name never to be spoken but with reverence, that 
 will make the city of Springfield immortal a thousand 
 years from now. 
 
 Out of those places came the pillars of America, and 
 along those same trails, pushing on into the trackless 
 wilderness, the Methodist itinerant went, and so made 
 America possible. 
 
 You may think I have taken that last sentence for 
 granted, but let us stop and think, that it was those 
 itinerant preachers, on the trails of the farthermost man, 
 that brought about the early revivals of which the fathers 
 have spoken and some of them heard of with their own 
 ears. You remember they appointed a commission in 
 Princeton University to go out and investigate the re- 
 vivals, where they had all sorts of queer "psychic pheno- 
 mena," they would call it in these days, I suppose. Some 
 of those professors went back and reported that it would 
 be mighty good to have that same kind of affliction 
 break out in Princeton University. It was that which 
 held the pioneers in the leash, that kept them from 
 barbarism; made it possible to write in the constitution 
 of these states of the West the name of God; and made 
 this land a Christian state. 
 
The Home Missionary in Nation Makin£^ 1 1 
 
 You remember the time came when it was a question 
 whether it should be Kansa^e slave or Kansas free. 
 Who settled that question? Why, it was those grand 
 men over in New England, that went marching through 
 the streets of Boston, singing aloud the lines of 
 Whittier: 
 
 "We crossed the prairies as of old 
 
 Our fathers crossed the sea, 
 To make the west as they the east, 
 The homestead of the free." 
 
 It was that, which laid the foundations of our col- 
 leges. We have six colleges and one academy in the 
 State of Iowa, Methodist colleges, all croweded to the 
 doors. 
 
 How did that happen? I will tell you. It was 
 because there was in those Methodist pioneers a love 
 of that highest life, which they knew very well and 
 interpreted very wisely, could only be realized by Chris- 
 tian education. They went along through heavily 
 wooded prairies, where smoke came from the wigwams, 
 as I have heard men say that saw it with their own 
 eyes, and because it was so far from the college through 
 the timber, they started another college at Fayette, Iowa, 
 and called it the upper Iowa University. You know 
 the story. It is where they used to have their rendez- 
 vous. Along came the wind and took the roof off the 
 college. When they got it spiked on again, along came 
 a tempest a little more strenuous than the first, and took 
 the roof off again, and they spiked it on again. Along 
 
1 2 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 came a time when the reverberations reached the fur- 
 thermost hills of Iowa, and they had a meeting in that 
 little chapel. Men destined to be known to fame were 
 there. The lady who was the Dean of Women, we 
 would call it now, of Iowa, brought out a flag of red, 
 white and blue stars and stripes, that had been sewed 
 by the very hands of the girls who were members of 
 that school. She gave that flag to the student boys, 
 about to march to the front, and told them of the love 
 of country that had gone into every stripe of that flag, 
 told them to hold it on high in memory of those who 
 gave it to them, and told them if any of them fell, that 
 flag should rest on their bodies when placed in their 
 graves. Now then, if that is what lies at the founda- 
 tion of our American life, it is not wonderful that we 
 have come to what we have; and it is not wonderful 
 that we front the future with a gladdened heart. 
 
 Now, my friends, I know very well that today — 
 for it is today that we are here to consider it — there 
 are intakes from various streams and sewers which 
 would point to something of a different story than I 
 have alluded to, but I want to stand here this afternoon 
 and say, and hope that it will not be forgotten, that 
 with all of our faults, the time never has been when 
 there was so large a percentage of good men in this 
 country as there is today. 
 
 We say this is a grand nation. Sometimes it looks 
 as if it was kind of blown in the flask, or had that label 
 
The Home Missionary in Nation Making 13 
 
 but when you come to sample the contents, they do not 
 quite taste the same. Lord Roseberry told a friend of 
 mine that over in America, it was like a glass of whiskey 
 because "you keep pouring in the water until there isn't 
 very much of the whiskey left." It is that way with 
 America. You have been pouring in so much from the 
 outside w^orld that there isn't so much of the original 
 left." When I saw the election returns the other day 
 over in Missouri particularly, I thought America was 
 the glass of water and they put so much whiskey in, 
 there wasn't very much water left. I am glad to see 
 there were 2,000 people in St. Louis of the 50,000 
 voters there, who would stand up and carry a glass of 
 water with them into the poling place, instead of a 
 flask of whiskey. You cannot sow tares and reap 
 wheat. They have already had one murder in St. Louis, 
 directly chargeable to the saloons, since election day. 
 That goes with the bargain, put in like a chromo, when 
 goods are bought over that counter. I shall not speak 
 of that, for on this platform is a specialist in that, and 
 others who will analyze the American land of today. 
 It is for me to speak of what it is that lies behind us. 
 Behind us and pressing down upon us with radiant glory 
 and with lambent flame, are the figures of those who 
 laid here in this western hemisphere the foundations of 
 the American state. 
 
 Closing, I can but think of an incident last summer. 
 With Bishop Hamilton and the president of our college, 
 
14 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 we went up into the north, stopping over at the site ot 
 the ancient seat of learning. We pushed on through 
 glacial meadows, reminding me of our own prairies, to 
 where there are three great hills, that are said to con- 
 tain the three great gods of the Norse. One was the 
 grave of Thor, where we get our "Thursday," the god 
 of the hammer, whose motto was "I will either find a 
 way or I will make one.' 
 
 When we reached the top of that great hill, a little 
 maid came out, with some mead made after the ancient 
 recipe, in a long horn. She passed it to each of us, 
 and what I did not spill on my shirt front I drank, and 
 it was so very good I did not spill a drop that way. 
 The president of the University gave us a little story 
 of that hill, saying, *This is the grave of Thor. Away 
 down under the top of this hill, Thor sits with the sleep 
 of death upon his brow, and near him his horse is stamp- 
 ing on the pavement with his golden shoes, and neighing 
 loudly, that Thor shall come forth again, leap into his 
 saddle, and go riding off through the universe." 
 
 This is a metaphor in a way of that which brings 
 us here today. Thor is in the sleep of death ; Thor is 
 dead. The old heathenism, the old philosophies, are 
 dead, and we must come to this America, with a living, 
 a puissant a mighty Christ, or this land of ours will have 
 no leadership and no guaranty of a high distiny. (Ap- 
 plause. ) 
 
 Dr. Ward Piatt, author of the Frontier, was intro- 
 duced. 
 
THE FRONTIER, EAST, WEST AND SOUTH. 
 
 DR. WARD PLATT, ASSISTANT CORRESPONDING SECRETARY 
 
 OF THE BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS AND CHURCH 
 
 EXTENSION. 
 
 What is anybody going to do, after an introduc- 
 tion like that? (Laughter,) You are under no obliga- 
 tion to applaud, or to keep awake, during this speech. 
 I wont be as mean as the man making an address, who 
 said, "Wake that man up before I proceed." The reply 
 was, "Wake him up yourself; you are the man that put 
 him to sleep." It will be just a personal matter between 
 the speaker and yourself, if you want a little repose. 
 
 We have had a good year, because you have helped 
 us to have a good year. We find our income over last 
 year is $58,000, something of an increase. Last 
 year, the increase over the year before was $42,000, so 
 that we have had an increase of $100,000 in two years. 
 Last year our reduction in administration expenses was 
 $14,000, and this year we have been able to make an 
 additional reduction of $16,500. That makes $30,500 
 in two years added to the hundred thousland dollar 
 increase. While a year ago we had a debt of $165,000 
 that made us feel rather blue; this last year we were 
 able to pay something over $72,000 of that debt and to 
 
1 6 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 increase our appropriations for home missions by about 
 $30,000. Through the action of the general committee 
 and the plans submitted for the remaining debt of about 
 $96,000, if you give us even no better than what was 
 given us this past year, provision will be made to pay 
 off that debt; and the next year our appropriation will 
 be larger than the appropriation of last year, not only 
 by $30,000 but by $75,000; and we will be putting 
 $50,000 more into church extension than we are this 
 year. So we feel that somehow we are getting under 
 wayi 
 
 Now, the average of all Methodists, that is all 
 white American-speaking conferences last year or the 
 year before (I have not figured up the per capita for 
 last year) was 31c per capita for our board; but 
 in this reckoning we take in all those white 
 conferences in the South, where they can hardly 
 get their heads above water, some of those where 
 the pastor's support is less than $200 a year average. 
 That brings it down so the average is 31 cents. 
 You notice the Wisconsin conference, with all the 
 home missionary problems it has up there, strikes 
 the level of all Methodism. The Minnesota conference 
 dropped down below the average to 26 cents. You can 
 see where the Illinois and Indiana conferences are. We 
 do not understand the Indiana conference with the 
 average of 13 cents. We can talk about that now, be- 
 cause we are not there. (Laughter.) Dr. Haywood 
 
The Frontier 17 
 
 tells us about Porto Rico, with all its vast need, and 
 just come up out of the dirt; yet while the Illinois con- 
 ference gives 25 cents per capita, for which we are grate- 
 ful, and the Indiana conference 13 cents, we get from 
 little Porto Rico 16 cents a head. We are trying to 
 get up to $1 a head. You say that is too small, and so 
 it is, but we are going up to the Japanese standard. We 
 are going to have our Japanese Brother to speak to us. 
 The Japanese do not know any more than to send to us 
 $1.02 a head, for all the hundreds that belong to our 
 church in this country, men, women, and children, up 
 and down the Pacific coast. 
 
 You say I am trying tO' be sarcastic. Nothing is 
 farther from my thoughts. We might as well gtX at 
 the facts. That is what we are here for. When we come 
 up to what would be our normal average, let us thank 
 God, we will get this world evangelized in a very short 
 time. 
 
 I am going to speak now of the "frontier" of the 
 South. Louisiana is about as much a frontier state as 
 you find anywhere in the west, new railroads being con- 
 structed, cities being built, and calls coming for frontier 
 churches to be built. It is a vast territory and 
 we are much needed there. The south — what are 
 we there for? Dr. Thomas is representing the 20 col- 
 ored conferences in the south. Nobody would think 
 for a moment that was a losing investment, that it was 
 not the best thing to do! Three hundred thousand of 
 
1 8 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 whom a bishop in the south said, 'They are the best 
 body of colored people on this planet." We have 2,000 
 black preachers. In 45 years they have progressed from 
 3 to 57% of literacy. The remarkable progress that 
 race is making has not been paralleled by any race in his- 
 tory, and it is to the glory of Methodism, she has had a 
 hand in that. I am not talking ecclesiastical politics, but 
 the question is rising, whether the 20 black conferences 
 are going off by themselves, to help make a great con- 
 solidated black Methodism in this country. I am not 
 stopping to consider whether they can get along without 
 us. If you go over that south country, and figure what 
 the black man is going to be in the next 25 years, you 
 will straighten up and ask the question whether we can 
 spare the black man out of our Methodism. 
 
 While we have given money to support his preacher, 
 and help build his churches, yet if you will add all the 
 money spent in this direction they have actually added 
 five million dollars of church property to Methodism, 
 more than we have ever spent in the ways I mentioned. 
 It is a mighty race and it is coming to its own. 
 
 When we talk about those 20 colored conferences, 
 you ask why we are down there. We are not there be- 
 cause we want to be. We have 1300 white preachers 
 down there and they propose to belong to the Methodist 
 Episcopal church. 
 
 I have just been reading Parson Brownlow's book, 
 and how those 30 counties in east Tennessee stood 
 
The Frontier 19 
 
 squarly for the union. Did you notice in the last elec- 
 tion 30 counties in east Tennessee took a peculiar stand ? 
 They have a kind of individuality, down there. 
 
 There is a teacher in the Woman's Home Mis- 
 sionary school that is doing good work in a school in 
 Alabama. I said, *'will you put in a few sentences 
 why you want to belong to the Methodist Episcopal, 
 when there is another Methodist church," She said, 
 **There are some things that have been fought and bled 
 for, and that is what we stand for. Another thing is, 
 we want to belong to a church that takes in the whole 
 world, not just one section." 
 
 We have, white and black, in the South, 575,000 
 members and 3,300 preachers. We have over 8j^ mil- 
 lions in property. You cannot wash your hands of that 
 matter in a day. Take the different classes of people we 
 have in the South. I just touched on the colored man, 
 along that frontier. Take the five millions of lowland 
 whites. I haven't time in which to depict them. That 
 is a frontier problem. Take the four millions of mountain 
 whites, and out of their number into our Methodism are 
 coming preachers all out of proportion to their number. 
 
 In Kentucky and east Tennessee, the country is 
 awakening. It is like a great giant, and is just coming 
 to its own in a material sense. It is destined to be a 
 country of vast wealth. 
 
 The West Virginia conference fairly took my 
 breath away. When I was there a few weeks ago, I 
 
20 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 found our membership outnumbered any other Method- 
 ism in that state two to one. We have more members 
 of the Methodist Episcopal church in West Virginia 
 \than all the other Proteslfant Denominations put to- 
 gether, and that state in five years from now is going 
 to take a front rank in Protestantism, in Church archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 I know a professor in a school — if I named the 
 school some of you would recognize it — who came from 
 a place in Alabama, 20 miles from a railroad. He de- 
 termined he would get an education, and help to get 
 his brothers and sisters educated. He has been to Har- 
 vard this summer, taking a summer course to enlarge 
 his vision. You will hear from that man. Perhaps if 
 you went to the little Methodist church where he was 
 brought up, 20 miles from the railroad, with its simple 
 services, you might say, if Methodism in 40 years can- 
 not do anything better, you better close that up, but at 
 least 35 people came out of that church into the profes- 
 sional and mercantile life of the nation, as a mighty 
 Christian contribution to it. Perhaps the average church 
 anywhere does not have as good a history, of putting as 
 much good fiber into the community, in proportion to its 
 opportunities. I suppose there has not been a year 
 when, if you looked at that old church, you would think 
 it was doing any better than now. 
 
 One of seven district superintendents in a con- 
 ference there was asked to make an opening speech on 
 
 I 
 
The Frontier 2 1 
 
 the evening of our anniversary. He was a typical 
 mountain white who had lived 75 miles from a 
 railroad. The first train of cars he saw, was the 
 one that took him to school. When he got to Chat- 
 tanooga, he made his way as best he could by delivering 
 papers. He is now superintendent of an important dis- 
 trict, and presides in quarterly conferences over the very 
 men to whom he delivered newspapers. You might as 
 well try to stop the tide as to stop the irresistible forces 
 in those border conferences, and what we ought to do 
 is to nurture and encourage them. When asked **Why 
 don't you grow faster?" they reply, "We will grow fast 
 enough if you let our preachers alone and not be stealing 
 them away." They grow preachers down there all out of 
 proportion to what our other conferences do. I was 
 at the Blue Ridge Conference, a few weeks ago, in 
 North Carolina. A boy had come home, one raised in 
 the most humble circumstances there, and then a little 
 over 30 years of age. He had gone away to school, and 
 been transferred to a conference, who sent him to a 
 church with about $130 a year. He returned with 
 $1,300 pastoral support and additions to the church. He 
 reported about once in two weeks for recitations in the 
 school. The rest of the time he was going around 
 holding revival meetings and setting the country on fire. 
 The bishop preached in the morning. Of course, they 
 wanted to hear the boy preach in the afternoon. The 
 church was packed so you could hardly enter it. I 
 
22 The Conservation oj Our Moral Resources 
 
 found myself wedged in with the multitude. The 
 boy preached. His physique was so splendid I 
 could only think of Saul among his brethren. He was 
 preaching about Saul out looking after his Father's lost 
 asses. (Laughter.) It was a great occasion. It began 
 to warm up gradually. Something was getting hold of 
 me along with the rest, something defying analysis. We 
 were going into a state of liquidation along with the rest 
 of them. He kept straight on, and in his preaching told 
 us this — I cannot repeat it as he said it. He said : ''I 
 remember when we were living in a little house, and 
 father had come back from the army, never able to do 
 a day's work since, and the children were all sick. It 
 was not like it is now, when people have a doctor and 
 two nurses. We were all sick. Little sister died and 
 went to heaven. Mother would come to us once in a- 
 while and smooth down the cover. I heard mother talk- 
 ing to somebody, and asked, 'Mother, who were you 
 talking to?' and she said, 1 was talking with God, my 
 boy.' " He said, '*I hadn't made any public profession 
 then, but I believed in God from that moment." 
 
 The sermon wound up somewhere about that time. 
 Everybody got around the preacher. It was a place of 
 blessing. It was a sample of what these Southern fel- 
 lows are coming to be. He said he was going to Drew 
 Theological seminary. I said to somebody, I didn't 
 know what Drew would do with him when he got there, 
 but Drew would know that he had arrived. We can- 
 
The Frontier 23 
 
 not afford in the development of Methodism to go by 
 that one man, even. Those are the men of the future. 
 
 It was only the other day that I stood before the 
 Alabama conference. I had been before them about a 
 year previous. In pastoral support they get less than 
 $200 a year, with their people scattered like sheep over 
 the mountains. They need all their time, and more too, 
 to take care of their people, and they have to work a 
 little piece of land to keep bread and butter in the 
 mouths of their families. Do you think it was a be- 
 draggled, discouraged looking lot. No. The spirit of 
 victory was with them. I have not gotten over being 
 with them and I was there only a day. It is the kind of 
 Methodism you cannot get along without. 
 
 A week ago last Sunday I was speaking in the First 
 Church of Chattanooga. We took hold of Chattanooga 
 with both hands. What have you there? You have the 
 splendid First Church of Chattanooga, with a pastor, 
 assistant pastor and 700 or 800 members, with 8 or 9 
 other churches in Chattanooga. If you get far enough 
 away from Chattanooga with John Patton, the father 
 of the layman's movement, you will find there is a 
 mighty influence that is coming out of that border con- 
 ference. I think we can make it plain to you that the 
 Methodist Episcopal church has a Kingdom along that 
 border country, and that Kingdom will never be con- 
 served unless we do our part. 
 
24 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 THE WEST. 
 
 , Before you is the map of the United States. Here 
 you have a line, cutting the United States into two 
 equal parts, the 97th Meridian, that runs to the gulf. 
 Nine-tenths of all the people of this country live east of 
 the line. Here, where one-tenth of the people live, part 
 of the country is a mile up in the air. A man who went 
 to California for his health, wrote back, *'I am ten years 
 younger than I was a while ago." Later he wrote, 
 **Now I am 25 years younger." After a time they did 
 not hear from him, and somebody visiting in the east 
 was asked, "How is so and so. The last time we heard 
 he was 25 years younger." The reply was, "Haven't 
 you heard? He is dead." "What did he die from?" 
 "He died of cholera infantum." (Laughter.) 
 
 Yes. That elevated country is a world's sanitarium. 
 Still it is an arid country and great stretches, in early 
 geographies, were called our "Great American Desert." 
 Private capital pioneered the way, and the government 
 followed with great irrigation plants. Now this desert 
 is being reclaimed to make homes for millions. The 
 real estate man there has paraphased our old hymn. 
 
 "Little drops of water on the grains of sand. 
 
 Make a mighty difference in the price of land." 
 
 Another element is the discovery of dry farming. 
 A certain western mule walked over soil where corn had 
 been sown. It was so dry no grain came up. The 
 
The Frontier ^5 
 
 farmer noticed where the mule walked, the seed came 
 up, from the packing of the soil. He got the idea of 
 dry farming. Great areas are given over now to dry 
 farming and are raising passable crops. 
 
 I have not time to talk to you about it but there 
 has been great improvement out there. A man second 
 to Burbank alone is in the South Dakota agricultural 
 college. We have strawberries, raspberries, and cherry 
 trees perfected to withstand freezing up to 40 degrees 
 below zero. 
 
 I heard a bishop tell the other night that Burbank 
 made a recent discovery, a vegetable called potoon, a 
 cross between the potato and onion, to be planted on 
 desert soil. The onion so acts on the eyes of the 
 potato as to produce water enough to irrigate itself. I 
 doubt it. (Laughter.) 
 
 In South Dakota, in a month, there came 100 car 
 loads of people into one county. A great tide of set- 
 tlers went sweeping into Montana, driving 500,000 
 cattle off those plains, never to come back. Six thous- 
 and homesteaders, going into Montana, covered 2400 
 miles of country, with not a Protestant preacher in the 
 whole region. 
 
 In Curry county, in southwestern Oregon, were 2500 
 people, mostly Americans. Until our Presbyterian 
 friends went in there was not a single church, Protestant 
 or Catholic, in the whole county. 
 
 You say, "Why don't you spend all your money up 
 
26 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 there?" You would be in the same predicament we are 
 to make one dollar do for two or three dollars. We are 
 in a brown study about it, and the problem is to even 
 up the situation properly. 
 
 What does it all mean? It means this: If you 
 take that country up northwest, where we are looking 
 toward Asia, we may help to fulfill the purpose of 
 Jesus Christ to make those great lines of commerce just 
 what he made the great highways to Rome. When he 
 was lifted up on the cross, he captured those mighty 
 roads and made them the highways for his Gospel. He 
 will make that Pacific Coast luminous, if we do our 
 duty, and make it the great highway to re-enforce the 
 work of Christ in Asia. 
 
 The figures of the increase of population in these 
 western, northwestern and southwestern regions, are 
 almost incredible. The home mission boards of the 
 Protestant churches have simply distress signals out. 
 That is all we can do. 
 
 Texas has more miles of railroad than any other 
 state in the union. Galveston with 46,000 inhabitants 
 is the second export city in the United States, and not 
 so very far from the ditch called the Panama Canal, 
 looking towards Asia. The southern states stand ready 
 to raise full rations of all the rice eaten in the world, 
 and all the cotton to clothe the world's unclad. Who 
 can tell, in five years, what the tide of commerce is going 
 to be through the Panama Canal. You will have our 
 
The Frontier 27 
 
 civilization impacting on the Asiatic civilization. Will it 
 be a spiritual impact? Methodists are determined on 
 the speedy evangelization of the west and southwest 
 as a vast contribution to world salvation. 
 
 The cities on the west coast of South America will 
 be hundreds of miles nearer to New York City, than to 
 San Francisco, when the Panama Canal is completed. 
 What is to be our impact on South America in the next 
 few years? The ends of the earth are coming to us. 
 We are a mighty city set on the top of a hill. We can- 
 not save ourselves unless we save these other peoples. 
 We ought not to be saved, if we do not do what we can 
 to meet a situation like that. We have said it is our 
 duty to send the gospel to the ends of the earth. The 
 ends of the earth are coming to us. We cannot leave 
 this to another generation. It will be too late, then. 
 Whoever wins America wins world capitulation. And 
 is not God saying to rise and shine, for Thy light is 
 come and the Glory of the Lx)rd is risen upon Thee. 
 
 Music : "My country 'tis of Thee." 
 
 DR. COKER. 
 
 Though it does not seem long, about 30 years ago, 
 two young men stood at the bar of the South Kansas 
 conference in the City of Ottawa. We were a class of 
 27 young fellows, anxious that the conference should 
 admit us. I was without any particular certificate of 
 recommendation or knowledge, but the good brother 
 
28 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 whom I am to introduce to you soon, had a father who 
 made name and fame in the history of that state, Dr. 
 D. P. Mitchell, one of the mightiest of God's Yeomen 
 in establishing Methodism in the mighty state that now 
 has prohibition so deeply intrenched that we never hear 
 about rersubmission^ and the man who mentioned it 
 would be "called down" in any community. We have 
 worked together, he here, there and yonder, I here, there 
 and yonder, but we are together this afternoon, and it 
 gives my heart more than the usual amount of joy and 
 satisfaction to present to you my colleague in that class. 
 Dr. Charles B. Mitchell, pastor of St. James' Church, 
 Chicago, who will speak to you, in the continuation of 
 the study of the Challenge, as to the City Problem of 
 America. 
 
THE CRY OF THE GREAT CITY. 
 
 REV. CHARLES BAYARD MITCHELL, D, D. 
 PASTOR ST. JAMES' CHURCH, CHICAGO, ILL. 
 
 The boldest challenge ever flung into the face of 
 the church of Jesus Christ is the modern great city. 
 That same Jesus Christ has put out the fire on every 
 Jewish altar. He has caused every Roman and Grecian 
 idol to topple from its pedestal. He has freed and 
 aroused and energized the human mind. He has created 
 a new civilization which bears his name. He has broken 
 down the false philosophies of pagans and given to the 
 human thought a new vision of its possibilities for time 
 and for eternity. He has turned pagan Europe into 
 Christian Europe. 
 
 Christianity has won trophies on the banks of the 
 Yangste, Ganges, Nile, Niger, Zambesi, Rhine, Rhone, 
 Thames and Mississippi ; and w^herever it has gone in any 
 land. All false religions have disappeared like the mists 
 of the morning, and it is no longer a question as to the 
 power of His church to win its way in a new continent 
 It is true that if this hour, by some authoritative cable- 
 gram, every foreign missionary should be withdrawn 
 before sunrise from China, there are enough Christians 
 on the soil to keep the Gospel still going, and rejuvenate 
 
30 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 and save the 400 millions of Chinese people. There 
 are enough Indian Christians in India to keep the church 
 of Jesus Christ going there until its 300 millions 
 have been brought to the feet of Jesus. There is no 
 doubt as to the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to 
 win its way and to hold its ground in any country. 
 Sometimes in the midst of our abounding faith we 
 can almost hear the drum-beats of Divine Providence 
 beating the reveille of the millenial morning. But I re- 
 peat, that the boldest challenge that was ever flung in the 
 face of Jesus Christ is the great modern city. There is 
 no doubt about the ability of our gospel to adapt itself to 
 the Chinese mind, to the philosophic bent of the Hindu, 
 and to the Japanese. We have great churches on all the 
 continents; and I have no fear as to the ability of my 
 Christ to establish His church in any land. 
 
 Here is the problem : Is the church of Jesus Christ 
 adequate, in the 20th century, to come into the great 
 modern seething masses of population congested in our 
 great cities, win its way into the hearts of these strange- 
 ly engaged peoples, comfort them and build them into 
 the very walls which shall become the church of the 
 living God, the Kingdom of Jesus Christ? That is the 
 problem that turns my cheek pale, every time I walk 
 through the crowded streets of my city. Millions live 
 where formerly hundreds or thousands were un- 
 able to live together. Great cities of the past 
 were plague spots. They were not so great as 
 
The Cry of the Great City 31 
 
 now, because so many could not live together without 
 dying of diseases, plagues, and all sorts of evils making 
 for physical overthrow. It has been a great problem to 
 make it possible for millions of people to live in a small 
 territory, to furnish proper food and pure water, to 
 house and care for vast millions. So intimately related 
 is the problem of the soul and of the body, you have to 
 think of such things before you can get far with any 
 problem that has for its object the evangelization of the 
 multitudes. If you don't look out, they will die off 
 your hands like rats, before you can touch them with 
 the Gospel, if you have not the proper physical condi- 
 tions to keep them. Vast thousands of children are 
 growing rapidly up into maturity, taking their places 
 in our national life. 
 
 What are we to do to educate them, and qualify 
 them for sovereignty, in a democratic form of govern- 
 ment? Here are these great municipal problems. How 
 are we going to govern ourselves? We are still in the 
 experimental stage. The real trouble is, we do not 
 know how to run a city. Nobody does yet. It is a new 
 thing. We are just beginning the study of municipal 
 government. Very early in our American history we 
 were compelled to study national and state government. 
 Difficult problems grew out of the relations between the 
 states and the central government. As law makers and 
 students of politcal economy, we have been giving most 
 of our time to the study of the laws that regulate the 
 
3;2 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 states and the Union. We have worked on the problem, 
 how to relate the states to the Union, for 150 years. 
 Sometimes we think we have solved it; yet here is this 
 same old thing, with a new name, christened by Theo- 
 dore Roosevelt, the N'ew Nationalism! 
 
 It has been a gradual growth, growing out of our 
 attempts to adapt our national form of government to 
 the congregation of states. Some of the problems have 
 been wrought out at the cost of hundreds of thousands 
 of human lives and seas of human blood. A very lum- 
 inous article, in the Outlook, recently, attempted to out- 
 line the stages of that growth through these hundred 
 years^ — how we can relate the states to the nation, how 
 institutions reaching out with great arms across state 
 lines shall be regulated, whether by the state or national 
 central government. 
 
 We are just beginning to learn how to run a city 
 government. What miserable failures we have had! 
 But that is the great problem to face now, how to run 
 the city. The trouble is that in nearly every 
 municipality the worst element comes to the sur- 
 face. In my town the men best capable are least 
 willing. Those who could succeed best, are succeeding 
 at their own private business, and too busy to attend to 
 civic problems. The men that live by graft and politics, 
 are the ones always in evidence. The ignorant, illiterate, 
 superstitious, vicious, are in the front. They put on 
 just as good a face as they can, to satisfy the demands 
 
Bishop Henry White Warren, L. L. D. ^^^I^OP J"^" L. Nuelsen, LL. D. 
 
 Bishop William A. Quayle, LL. D. Bishop Earl Cranston, LL. D. 
 
The Cry of the Great City 33 
 
 of respectable people; but underneath that surface 
 veneer are all the vicious elements, that make, not for 
 the city's good, but for the city's ill; and the ignorant 
 and vicious are largely in control. 
 
 Some of you recall Roosevelt's effort to clean up 
 things in New York city when he was police com- 
 missioner. He required that those applying for offices 
 in the police department shbuld pass some sort of civil 
 service examination. When a company of men applying 
 for responsible places in the police department were 
 asked to name five of the New England states, one man 
 replied: ''England, Ireland, Scotland, Whales and 
 Cork." (Laughter.) When asked to tell what they 
 knew about Lincoln — listen ye citizens : twenty of 
 them said, *'He was the president of the southern 
 confederacy." Forty said he was a great general in the 
 Union army. One said he won the battle of Bunker 
 Hill. One said he was assassinated by Garfield, another 
 said by Ballington Booth, and many said by Guiteau! 
 
 I cite that to show the type of men not only in 
 New York but in Chicago who are most likely to come 
 to the front and be the real rulers in our great municipal 
 centers. The worst lawlessness centers there. Do you 
 know, we are spending $3,500,000 daily on crime in 
 the United States? In one recent year in New York 
 City 253 murders were committed and 707 suicides. In 
 my own city last year 124 men were brutally murdered 
 in cold blood, and yet in London, many times its size, 
 
34 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 there were only 24 murders, last year; in Paris, larger 
 than Chicago, only 15 murders. In Germany, for every 
 100 murders, 98 are convicted and pay the full penalty 
 of the law ; in Spain 65 per cent ; but in the United States 
 only two out of 100 ever feel the clutch of the law. 
 These are things which make your hair curl, if you live 
 in Chicago, and the blood to curdle in your veins. I 
 am painting not too dark a picture, but giving simply a 
 glimpse of the situation. You know the causes: the 
 saloon, the gambling hell, brothel, dance hall, the cheap 
 miserable theater, and the expensive one, which in my 
 town is dirtier than the cheap. If you want dirt go 
 where you pay $2.50 a seat. They allow things in the 
 Auditorium they would hiss off the stage in Halsted 
 street. They call it **high art" in the Auditorium. The 
 illiterate, criminal, and pauper immigrant concenter in 
 the city, and with them the causes for the crime which 
 is there congested. How are you going to govern a city 
 with all those influences at work? That is the problem. 
 That is the challenge to Jesus Christ. There is the great 
 moral problem. Solve that and all the others will be 
 settled. We can solve it only by employing three 
 agencies, the home, school, and church. 
 
 The public schools are not what they ought to be, 
 but were it not for the work done by the average public 
 school teacher in the United States, we could not abide 
 as a nation for a twelve-month. We are absolutely de- 
 pendent upon the faithful teachers in the public schools. 
 
The Cry of the Great City 35 
 
 Without them it would not be long until we would have 
 a generation that would be utterly disqualified for free 
 government, and we would go down in ruins. I thank 
 God for the public schools, though they are not all they 
 ought to be. True, they are "godless," so called by the 
 class responsible for their godlessness. 
 
 I recognize the danger growing out of the fact 
 that the foreign child educated in the public school is 
 more or less alienated from his parents. The foreigner 
 finds it difficult tO' keep his grip upon his child growing 
 up in our cities, trained in our public schools in the 
 spirit of freedom, and with a feeling of superiority over 
 his illiterate parent, because he can speak English and 
 the father can not. Yet were it not for this great mill, 
 into which we pour these thousands of youthful grists, 
 and from which comes the material to constitute the 
 rising state, we would have a sad future before us. The 
 public school is doing a mighty thing, not all that we 
 would like, but still it is a great saving factor. 
 
 The home will help mightily, if good; and hurt 
 equally, if bad. What is the future of the American 
 home in the city? We hardly have homes any more in 
 town. We have flats, little congested quarters where 
 you have to drink condensed milk, and the old fashioned 
 hearthstone is a mere poetical expression, meaning noth- 
 ing to the rising generation. That home, to be helpful, 
 must have holy love, sacrifice and service, the three 
 fundamental principles of the Christian faith. Where 
 
36 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 are you going to get them in the modern city home? 
 In the homes of the rich, there is Httle home life. They 
 Hve in hotels and clubs in winter and migrate to the 
 country in summer. The great unchurched masses in 
 our city are the well-to-do, who live in hotels and clubs. 
 If they have a home it is in the country some where; and 
 who ever knew a man that lived in the country in the 
 summer time to go to church even during the summer? 
 
 When you come into the stratum of the middle 
 classes you find that they have to live in flats, and have 
 not the home such as you and I were brought up in; 
 nothing of real home life. Children are discounted. 
 Think of raising a child under a roof where there are 
 40 or 100 other families, congested into small quarters. 
 
 That condition is not so bad as you find when you 
 enter the lowest stratum. The rich have no homes, the 
 middle class live in flats, and the poor in slums. You find 
 here the boys and girls growing up in one room. What 
 are you going to do in the way of regenerating and sav- 
 ing the boy or girl without being brought face to face 
 with the social condition that involves such impurity as I 
 dare not hardly allow myself to think of in this pre- 
 sence — ^boys and girls not born, but damned into this 
 world, with no chance? It looks dark when I try to 
 think of the influence of home life upon the rising gen- 
 eration in our great cities. 
 
 Then there is the church, bringing, as I think, some 
 hope, and the true solution, if its influences are properly 
 
The Cry of the Great City 37 
 
 applied, going to the root of the whole matter. The 
 Church of Jesus Christ has a program broader than 
 socialism. SociaHsm undertakes to regenerate society 
 by improving social conditions. So does the church; 
 but the church has a broader program than that. It 
 undertakes to regenerate society by the improving of 
 social conditions, indirectly. Its primary aim is the 
 salvation of the individual, at the same time im- 
 proving social conditions. It is a social program, but 
 it is a salvation program. There is the difference. We 
 have in our modern times social reformers, doing a 
 splendid work. I do not wish to minify their work. 
 The Social Service Conference was held in our city last 
 week. They have a good program and are doing 
 things. They are not attempting to do everything, 
 but they are attempting to do something, some work, 
 along social-service lines. Those are things which are 
 important. One set of men cannot do everything, just 
 as one man cannot have everything. Senator Ingalls 
 was as long as a bean pole and as wide as a match. I 
 asked him, "Why don't you have some flesh on your 
 bones?" He replied, "O, Mitchell, one man can't have 
 everything." So you must not expect one institution to 
 do everything. They have a good program. My quarrel 
 is not with my own Christian brethren, who are at- 
 tempting to do something of that sort in a Christian 
 spirit, but my quarrel is with the modern so-called social 
 reformer, who thinks all you need to do is to give a man 
 
38 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 a better house, and he will get a better heart. That has 
 not been my observation. Give a man a better heart and 
 he will find a better home. My observation in Chicago is 
 that all the people who live in Drexel Boulevard, in 
 magnificent houses, are not wholly sanctified. 
 
 The trouble is, they assume that if men have better 
 physical conditions; after you have given every man 
 plenty to eat, good clothes to wear, and a good house, 
 the millenium is at hand. In Chicago a lot of folks 
 who have all those physical comforts are poor and 
 miserable and lost. The most lost and hopeless people 
 I find in my walks in the city are the rich, to whom no 
 one ever speaks of the soul, and who go their way un- 
 checked, "whose god is their belly,'' and who live only 
 for the gratification of physical sensations. They are not 
 happy. Christ says "How scarcely shall a rich man 
 enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Now, the Christian 
 church faces that awful situation in the city. What is 
 it going to do? It has three great laws, love, sacrifice 
 and service. Now, how is it going to apply the gospel 
 to the needs of that kind of folk? The great difficulty 
 is to get their attention, to get them to think long enough 
 to pay any attention to you. It takes a brass band; it 
 takes some such movement as we had recently in Chi- 
 cago, to attract the attention of the people at all. Take 
 a great city like ours, and if some such concerted effort 
 had not been put forth, you could not have shaken that 
 town at all. Thank God for what has been accom- 
 
The Cry of the Great City 39 
 
 plished — not all that we might desire, but the newspapers 
 have been compelled to give full reports of what the 
 church has been doing in these recent weeks. Night 
 after night in great central meetings, from six to eight 
 thousand people have been listening to the gospel 
 preached in its purity with absolute allegiance to the doc- 
 trine of Jesus and the authority of the word of God. 
 Ministers of our town have caught a new note. Those 
 who have hitherto talked about the gospel are now 
 preaching it. It has become popular to try at least to 
 make some self-respecting effort to win souls for Christ ; 
 and emphasis is put upon individual salvation, rather 
 than mere programs of social service and entertainment, 
 and such things not vital or effective for such an awful 
 problem as we face in our cities. The trouble is to 
 get the people's attention. The well-to-do are absorbed 
 in their social and business affairs. I asked a man why 
 he was not at church Sunday morning ; a splendid fellow, 
 a big-hearted fine business man. He said "I intended to 
 be at church yesterday morning but I had to go to my 
 office for my mail, as I had a very important business 
 matter. I spent the morning at my office." That was 
 enough — ^business! Why, that was the final and all 
 sufficient argument. When a man tells you his business 
 demands attention Sunday, what are you going to say? 
 Isn't that enough? 
 
 Yesterday I was talking with a fine family in my 
 church, and said, *'You told me you were coming to 
 
40 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 church Sunday night." "O, we were really intending 
 to, but some social friends came, so we had to stay home 
 with them." Social excuse — what can you say! Of 
 course, if folks come in Sunday to dinner and spend 
 the evening, you are not expected to go to church. What 
 are you going to do about it? Why not invite them to 
 church with you? "O, we never thought of that!" With 
 that class, you will find in a great congested center like 
 Chicago, there are so many social demands, professional 
 and business demands, that the difficulty is to get their 
 attention. Try to hold night meetings as we have, for 
 three weeks, in my church. I said, I am going to go 
 through with it, anyway, and let the people know I 
 believe in it, whether they do or not. So night after 
 night for three weeks, I pleaded with people to come 
 to church. I visited them, wrote them letters and postal 
 cards. I sent 50 women out, in our community, to get 
 after the people and still they would not come. We 
 would have a little handful, one hundred and fifty or 
 two hundred. The difficulty is to get the well-to-do to 
 stop long enough from social or business pursuits to 
 think about their souls. 
 
 Take the other stratum, the poor. So tremendous 
 is the bread and butter-battle, and the difficulty to keep 
 their souls in their bodies, that they have little thought 
 for their souls. On Saturday I was in a poor home, 
 near the stock-yards, to see a poor woman, and I would 
 have considered it an impertinence upon my part to 
 
The Cry of the Great City 41 
 
 have talked to her about her soul. As she held to her 
 bosom a little babe six months old, crying with hunger, 
 and the mother's breasts dried up for lack of proper 
 aiourishment, why should I talk to her about her soul 
 until I assured her at least she was to have coal enough 
 for the month and $5 worth of groceries, and that a 
 quart of fresh milk should come to the house every day 
 for the next month? You could not dare speak about 
 her soul until you got that part done. I got a letter 
 from an Irish woman before I started this morning to 
 the train. "My dear Riverend Father: My priest 
 cares for my soul but I must call on you, my dear Protes- 
 tant father, to send me some coal to keep me children 
 from freezing. Won't you please send me a ton of 
 coal?" You cannot expect people who just live a few 
 hours from the edge of starvation to have very much 
 time to give to the interests of their souls. They are so 
 crushed that all aspiration and hope are gone out of 
 them. We have literally thousands and thousands in our 
 great cities that are only twenty-four hours from abso- 
 lute want and suffering. How are you going to get their 
 attention? What are you going to do to win them and 
 save them for Christ and to themselves? Here are 
 right in our city; 100,000 Poles; I don't know how many 
 Croatians, Lithuanians and Slavs, Italians, and Rus- 
 sians — all classes and conditions of people, who have 
 come out from Europe, and are crowded into our city; 
 so vast in number, that ninety per cent of our nearly 
 
42 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 three millions hardly speak our tongue. They are either 
 foreign-born or of foreign parentage. You can ride 
 f« >r an hour on a street-car in Chicago and hardly see an 
 American or English sign. We have daily newspapers 
 in thirty different languages. We have whole communi- 
 ties which year in and year out, never hear a word of any 
 other language than their own, a foreign tongue. They 
 have their own stores and churches if they attend any 
 churches at all. They have their own trades, mingle 
 together, and we do not touch the fringe of them. They 
 are growing up in our great city, and we are within a 
 half hour's ride, a five cent fare, of a foreign missionary 
 field. 
 
 I will repeat, that the modern city is the boldest 
 challenge ever flung in the face of Jesus Christ. That 
 looks like a pretty dark picture. Conditions like that 
 have confronted, to a greater or less degree, the good 
 folk of our race for centuries. Something of that awful 
 want and crying need was heard by Confucius, stirred 
 the soul of Gautama, burned in the breast of Moham- 
 med, and of Zoroaster. I stand here today and fling back 
 into the faces of those good men of other countries and 
 other days, who tried to solve this problem and failed — 
 "You did the best you could, but I tell you *there is 
 only one name under Heaven, whereby man can be saved 
 and that is in the name of the only begotten, Jesus 
 Christ.' " I am a firm believer in the power of that Name 
 to transform a city like Chicago into one like the New 
 
The Cry of the Great City * 43 
 
 Jerusalem, lit as above, from Heaven. The gospel is 
 adequate. The church is equal to it, if she will go 
 about her task as though she believed in it, and if the 
 awful condition would grip the hearts of men and 
 women, and we could ever set our forces into action for 
 the salvation of those about us, we could woo and we 
 could win them. 
 
 Some time ago I was near Olivet, and as we came 
 around over the shoulder of Olivet, my companion said, 
 "Just stop a bit; this is the traditional site where it is 
 said, Jesus stopped and looked out over the city yonder 
 and wept over it." I got down from my horse, put my 
 arm through the bridle-rein and took out my pocket 
 Testament. Looking out over the beautiful city, as it is 
 yet, far more beautiful in the distance than near at hand, 
 I read how Jesus stood t)(iere and cried JDut: "Oh 
 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft would I have gathered 
 thee together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her 
 wings, but ye would not. Behold, your house is left 
 unto you desolate.'* 
 
 He looked there and saw what was the great cry 
 of that city. It had its towers and minarets, its splendid 
 temples. It looked like a fair, rich city, but Jesus saw 
 that underneath all its apparent wealth and material 
 prosperity, there were sin and crime, and he wept. Don't 
 you suppose that he is the same yesterday, to-day and 
 forever ? 
 
 I wonder if he does not, yet, weep somewhere, over 
 
44 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 some modern Chicago like he did over ancient Jerusa- 
 lem! I must confess to you, when I climbed the 
 hill west of Damascus, and looked out over the 
 oldest city of the world, looking, as one has said, 
 like a pearl in a cup of emerald; when I climbed the 
 bell-tower at Moscow, and looked out over that wonder- 
 ful city with its thousands of bell-towers and domes; 
 and when I climbed St. Isaac's, and looked out over St. 
 Petersburg; climbed St. Paul's, and looked out over 
 London and the Eiffel tower and looked out over 
 Paris, and then looked put over the cities of America, 
 with a bird's eye view — I am frank to say I only had 
 the man's eye-view and not the Christ's eye-view — I had 
 no tears to shed! We can look through those streets, 
 and know we have a remedy that can heal all sorrows, 
 wipe all tears away, convert hovels into homes, and 
 brutes into the children of God. Ought we not to weep, 
 rather than rejoice, at the conditions that exist, and 
 ought we not give ourselves, with consecration, to the 
 task of applying the remedy to improve these great 
 centers! It is a challenge to all who believe we have a 
 gospel which can do it. 
 
 It is a challenge to all who believe we have a gos- 
 pel, and can do it. 
 
 Week before last, I was called to see a man on 
 Cottage Grove avenue, who had an awful tragedy in 
 his life. He had only one boy, twelve years of age, who 
 had been playing with a gun, which he thought was un- 
 
The Cry of the Great City 45 
 
 loaded, and blew the top of his head off. The boy was a 
 beautiful child, and the wife went raving mad. He was a 
 livery stable man, with a little cottage attached to his 
 place of business. When I went over to see him, as soon 
 as he saw me — a friend told him I was coming to see if I 
 could not say something to give him some hope — he took 
 me to a little office where we sat down, and shut the door, 
 and locked it. We sat facing each other. He w^as 
 shrewd enough to place me so I faced the light of the 
 only window. He had his face in the shadow. I was 
 looking towards him, with the light falling on my 
 face. He put his hand on my knee and said, 
 "Mitchell, what can you say to me?" Then I tried 
 to comfort him. I tried the best I knew, as a Christian 
 minister, believing in that Book, to tell him some of the 
 things that would give him hope. I tried to show him 
 that what he knew not now he would know hereafter; 
 that God's grace could sustain him ; that he had not 
 wholly lost his only child, but would gain him again. 
 When I said that, he clenched my knee until it seemed as 
 though in a vise. He said, ''Mitchell, look me in the 
 eye." I looked him square in the face. "None of that 
 cant; none of that preacher-business; tell me, Mitchell, 
 as a man and a Mason ; tell me now, honest, do you be- 
 lieve that? Do you believe it?" Without flinching I 
 looked him back squarely in the eye and said : "I do be- 
 lieve it! and if I did not, I would quit preaching this 
 day. Of course I believe it. I risk my eternal soul on 
 
46 . The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 it." He hid his head in his arms and cried like a baby. 
 He said, "Mitchell, pray for me, that I may believe it, 
 too." O, brethren of the ministry, do we believe it? 
 I think the trouble with most of our failures in the city 
 is that we preach as though we hardly believed it. We 
 assume a kind of apologetic attitude, and go at it in a 
 half-hearted way, and men are not believing that we our- 
 selves are risking our eternal souls on it. I believe in it, 
 brethren; do you? And beheving in it. I am willing to 
 apply this gospel test to the great city, and I am willing, 
 as a representative of the Church of Jesus Christ, to an- 
 swer this challenge of the city. I am willing, with that 
 Book and with my Christ, to go into any city and under- 
 take to meet the challenge, to answer the cry, and to 
 supply the need. It will supply all their need, according 
 to the riches of grace in Christ Jesus, our Lord. 
 
THE WINNING OF THE WEST. 
 
 BY REV. W. E. DOUGHTY, EDUCATIONAL SECRETARY 
 laymen's missionary MOVEMENT. 
 
 There is a tradition that Christ died with his face 
 turned westward. Who knows but that our Lord, in 
 His passion for world supremacy, looked across centu- 
 ries and civilization, and saw the time when there should 
 arise a new nation on this side the Atlantic to fight val- 
 iantly for His Kingdom? Whether this be true or not, 
 I find my own heart steadied and strengthened as I re- 
 member that the same Christ looks today into our up- 
 turned faces and expects the men of the West to do their 
 full share in the work of redeeming His world. 
 
 Shall we not then together, today, face westward 
 with Christ and see what that West is of which we have 
 heard so much, and of which all of us are a part? I 
 know of no better way to express it than to say that the 
 West is an eye — an eye horizoned by prairies and moun- 
 tains and the world's greatest sea. The West is an eye 
 that sees to the heart of national and international is- 
 sues. It pierces through sham and fraud, and is satis- 
 fied only as it looks upon the uttermost parts. 
 
 But the West is not only an eye; it is an arm, full 
 
48 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 of strength, throbbing with the virility of a new civili- 
 zation. This ami reaches far; it is stretched out in 
 sympathy to the distressed and the needy; it touches 
 the commerce and finance of the world. It is an ann 
 that builds transcontinental railroads and conquers the 
 desert, and stops not at baffling mountain difficulties. 
 
 But the West is not only an eye and an arm, but a 
 voice which is calling aloud in sternness and strength. 
 It is a voice with an appeal for an understanding of its 
 pnoblems, for statesmanship in developing and using 
 its resources. It is a cry for courage and love and life 
 and healing and the living Christ. On a Massachusetts 
 battlefield there was a shot once that was heard around 
 the world. Today, there is a voice heard around the 
 world. It is the voice of the West. 
 
 But the West is also a heart — a heart that beats 
 high with life; that burns with the elemental passions! 
 This heart is a palace of golden dreams — dreams which 
 are being translated into reality in government, in edu- 
 cation, in religion. 
 
 But the West is not only an eye, and a voice, and 
 an arm, and a heart, but the West is' a brain. Here are 
 nerve centers of civilization. Here are springing up as 
 by magic schools and colleges, science and art. Here 
 are being developed captains of commerce, princes of 
 finance, so that when eastern railroads want new presi- 
 dents they often come west to get them. So, too, the 
 Methodist colleges farthest east have sitting in their 
 
The Winning of the West 49 
 
 president's chair men who were reared upon the prai- 
 ries. Wesleyan University took ShankHn from an Iowa 
 college, but he was born and reared in the prairie state 
 of Kansas. And w^hen Boston — conservative, cultured 
 Boston — wanted a new president, she did not take a 
 graduate of Harvard or Wesleyan, reared in the seclu- 
 sion of eastern classic halls, but a man who for the 
 last seventeen years has been the president of Baker 
 University. Dr. Murlin has grown up on the prairies, 
 but breathes the air of the world. Surely, the words 
 of O'Shaughnessey apply to the West : 
 
 ''We are the music-makers; 
 We are the dreamers of dreams; 
 Wand'ring by lone sea-breakers. 
 And sitting by desolate streams. 
 World losers and world forsakers. 
 On whom the pale moon gleams. 
 
 "Yet, we're the mavers and shakers 
 Of the world, forever, it seems. 
 One man w-ith a dream at pleasure 
 Shall go forth and conquer a crown, 
 And two with a new song's measure 
 Can trample a kingdom down." 
 
 In short, the West is a giant, and nothing less than 
 a princely offering w^ill win this giant to Christ. But 
 when the West is won, the impact upon the non-Chris- 
 
50 The Consefvation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 tian world will be tremendous. I desire to state four 
 propositions regarding the winning of the West: 
 
 I. Nothing less than a princely offering of money 
 and men and prayer can ever win the West because of 
 its size and resources. 
 
 The kind of men we want committed to the task 
 of winning the West are not caught by littleness and do 
 not respond to a limited appeal. He who would cap- 
 ture the West 'must worship the difficult. Look at the 
 size of it. Take Alaska; it is one-seventh as large as 
 Europe, one-sixth as large as the United States. Out 
 of it you .could carve seven states the size of Kansas 
 and two the size of New Jersey, and still have some ter- 
 ritory left. If you study our country you will discover 
 that only three states west of the Mississippi are as 
 small as all New England. Arizona is a little larger 
 than Italy with its thirty-two millions of people, and 
 only a little smaller than Great Britain. If you take 
 Arizona and New Mexico together, it is as far across 
 them as it is from Boston to Chicago. California is 
 twice as large as Korea, in which today are twelve mil- 
 lions of people. California is as large as France. 
 France has more than thirty-eight millions of popula- 
 tion; California has less than three millions, and yet 
 California can support as large a population as France. 
 If Montana were put down on the map at our Atlantic 
 seaboard, she would reach from Boston across New 
 England and New York to Cleveland, Ohio, and from 
 
The Winning of the West 51 
 
 north to south, from Boston to Raleigh, North Caro- 
 lina. Texas is five times as big as Illinois and has more 
 railroad mileage than any other state in the Union. 
 Texas is developing in a wonderful way. Just recently 
 one man has given eight millions of dollars to establish 
 a technical school there. If France were an island and 
 Texas a sea, and the island were in the midst of the 
 sea, and you were on the island, you would be out of 
 sight of land in every direction in Texas. If all the 
 people in the world, counting the population of the world 
 as fifteen hundred millions, were in the State of Texas, 
 not a man, woman or child anywhere else in the world, 
 there would be only eight to the acre! 
 
 No one has yet been able to compute the resources 
 of this vast West, but we are beginning to realize what 
 a gift of God its riches are. The greatest appeal for 
 home missions is not any statement of destitution. The 
 pity is that in a great cause like ours, the effectiveness 
 of the appeal often depends upon the pitiful story of 
 suffering and destitution that is told. There is weak- 
 ness and need enough — no question about that — but the 
 highest missionary appeal is not any statement of desti- 
 tution. The loudest summons to home missions is the 
 appeal of a great future, the call of limitless resources. 
 If we can leaven the thinking of American Christianity 
 with the conviction that one of our greatest achieve- 
 ments will be to lay hold of and release the power of 
 the riches and resources of America for the Kingdom 
 
52 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 of God, we will have made a great contribution to the 
 redemption of the world. I need mention but a few 
 of the material resources of the West to show how lim- 
 itless are its possibilities. 
 
 It is said by experts that Texas could raise one- 
 fifth more cotton than is now grown in all the world. 
 We now supply more than one-half of the cotton of the 
 world. It is also said that Texas and Louisiana are 
 so well suited in soil and climate to the raising of rice 
 that those two states could supply the rice markets of 
 the earth. So wonderful are the agricultural resources 
 of our country that it is hard to comprehend, even re- 
 motely, the value of a single year's harvests. It is 
 said that if the products of the farms of the United 
 States last year were put into twenty-dollar gold pieces, 
 they would make a pile seven hundred and twenty miles 
 high; and if laid on the earth, side by side, would make 
 a line of gold across Alaska, Canada, the United 
 States and Mexico to the Isthmus of Panama, and there 
 would then be enough left so that we could begin at New 
 York and run a line of twenty-dollar gold pieces across 
 the plains to the Mississippi, a cross the Rocky Moun- 
 tains to San Francisco, and some of them would fall off 
 into the Pacific Ocean before we got through. The 
 fact is that we can raise wheat enough to feed the world, 
 cotton and wool enough to clothe the world. We have 
 forests enough to build houses for the world, coal 
 enough to run the furnaces of the world, money enough 
 
The Winning of the West 53 
 
 to finance the world. In all this the West is doing her 
 full share. 
 
 11. Nothing less than a princely offering of money 
 and men and prayer can zmn the West to Christ because 
 of the character of her men. 
 
 There is a rich, riotous life going to waste in this 
 western land, and nothing but the manliness of Christ 
 can subdue and purify this life. Men of the type de- 
 lineated in "The Virginian" can be captured only by 
 strong men who have the Apostolic vision and the heart 
 of fire. 
 
 Our hearts have often been thrilled as we have 
 studied the history of the men and women who have 
 given their all for the winning of the West. I think 
 of that graduate of Yale who left great possibilities in 
 the East for a salary of $500 a year that he might 
 bring the message of the living Christ to a stragetic 
 frontier town. He is a spiritual prince out there now 
 with a thrilling grip on the great city that has grown 
 up around his church. A young couple with an income 
 of several thousands of dollars a year made their bridal 
 journey into the rawest kind of a frontier, where they 
 began their work for Christ with a salary of $300 a 
 year. I think of another, a machinist, with a splendid 
 salary, who saw an opportunity to serve the Kingdom, 
 and who turned his back upon the allurements of the 
 Eastern industrial centers and gave his life to the West. 
 One of our District Superintendents, who is building 
 
54 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 the future of an empire, received $400 salary last year. 
 How our hearts rejoice when we read that during the 
 year Texas seceded from Mexico, the Mississippi Con- 
 ference appointed a man by the name of Stevenson a 
 missionary to Texas! What an inspiration to the chil- 
 dren and youth of our time to hear about that Kansas 
 frontiersman who penetrated to the borders and lay 
 down to die, worn out with his toil. A companion who 
 was with him said, 'T suppose you would like to be 
 taken back to the East for burial?" But his reply was 
 worthy of the pioneer of the Gospel: "No, bury me 
 here, that I may serve notice on the devil that at least 
 six feet of Kansas soil are taken up for God." The 
 first train that went into Oklahoma carried a Methodist 
 preacher, and the moment the train stopped he staked 
 out a corner lot and began to build a Methodist church 
 with the $170 which he had collected from his fellow- 
 passengers on the journey down. When I think back 
 over the years of the men who have given their lives 
 for the frontier, I feel how worthy they were of a place 
 beside the greatest saints and statesmen of the earth. 
 Think of John Eliot, a missionary to the Indians when 
 New England was the frontier of Europe. He was 
 sixty years a pastor. His most famous saying was, 
 "Prayer and pains, through faith in Jesus Christ, will 
 do anything." That sentence was worth a lifetime of 
 toil. He was a graduate of Cambridge. He wrote the 
 first book published in America, and when he died he 
 
The Winning^ of the West 55 
 
 left behind thirty-six hundred Christian Indians with 
 twenty-four native preachers caring for them — a man 
 of whom Southey, the poet, says : "He was one of the 
 most extraordinary men of any country.' Think of 
 David Brainerd, that man of prayer who died at the 
 hOxTie of Jonathan Edwards when he was scarcely thirty, 
 and of whose prayer life Edwards says: "Among all 
 the days he spent in secret prayer and fasting, of which 
 he gives an account in his diary, there is scarcely an in- 
 stance of one which was not either accompanied or soon 
 followed with apparent success, and a remarkable bless- 
 ing in special influences and consolations of God's 
 spirit, and very often before the day ended." Every 
 Methodist ought to know the story of Jason Lee and 
 that one hundred and fifty-seven days' journey across 
 the continent, when there were no transcontinental rail- 
 roads and no trails that a white man had ever followed. 
 The leaves f rOxH his diary read like a bit out of the rec- 
 ord of the life of David Livingston or a William Carey. 
 Every boy in our Sunday schools ought to know the 
 thrilling story of Marcus Whitman's ride from Oregon 
 to Washington, that he might interview the President 
 and Secretary of State regarding the Oregon country, 
 and when some reproved him for his intense interest in 
 the political movements of the time, he said: "I was a 
 man before I became a missionary, and when I did be- 
 come a missionary I did not expatriate myself. I will 
 go to Washington, even though I have to resign my 
 place in this mission." 
 
56 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 The wo/nen, too, have had their full share in re- 
 deeming the frontier from savagery and sin. One never 
 can forget that scene in the Presbyterian Church at 
 Angelica, N. Y., when Whitman and his bride stood 
 before the altar to be married on the eve of their de- 
 parture for Oregon. After the ceremony the pastor an- 
 nounced the hymn : 
 
 "Yes, my native land, I love thee, 
 
 All thy scenes I love them well, 
 
 Friends, connections, happy country, 
 
 Can I bid you all farewell? 
 
 Can I leave you. 
 
 Far in heathen lands to dwell?" 
 
 Here as they began to sing and the audience realized 
 the meaning of it all to the young bride who stood before 
 the altar, one by one the voices w^ere choked and sobs 
 stopped the singing, until there was but one clear so- 
 prano voice ringing out its message. Without a tremor, 
 Mrs. Whitman sang the hymn through to the end. 
 
 It is for the sake of men and women like these, 
 and in their name, that we appeal to you for princely 
 offerings of money and men and prayer to carry on the 
 work that they so magnificently began. 
 
 III. Nothing less than a princely offering of 
 money, men and prayer can zmn the West because of its 
 unoccupied opportunities. 
 
The Winning of the West 57 
 
 The fact that there is much to be done in the way 
 of bringing the Gospel message to the West, is indi- 
 cated in a recent conversation with one of the Secre- 
 taries of our Board of Sunday Schools. He said that 
 he had just made an investigation of the tier of states 
 beginning with Wisconsin and Minnesota, through the 
 Dakotas out to the Pacific Coast. He says that in these 
 he found that there were 12,000 day-school districts 
 in which there wxre not a Protestant Sunday school of 
 any denomination. He found a family which had lived 
 thirteen years in a town of several hundred people. 
 The oldest child of twelve years had never heard a ser- 
 mon or been in a Sunday school. The mother had lived 
 there twenty-one years, and the only serxnon she had 
 heard preached in the town w^as sixteen years before, 
 and there had never been a Sunday school in all the 
 twenty-one years. 
 
 In the territory occupied by the New Mexico Mis- 
 sion of the Methodist Episcopal Church, according to 
 a recent investigation, of five hundred and thirty-seven 
 towns only seventy-five had Protestant churches. In, 
 Arizona, the Methodist Episcopal Church has one or- 
 dained missionary to every twenty-three thousand of 
 the population. There is certainly room for expansion. 
 Utahi is our Samaria, and the fact that Utah is not 
 thoroughly cultivated for the Gospel, may be shown by 
 the fact that there are four hundred postof fices in Utah, 
 and in only ninety of the places where these postoffices 
 
58 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 are found, are there Protestant churches. A Baptist 
 home missionary secretary says that there are forty 
 towns having five hundred population or over in the 
 state in which there is no Protestant work of any kind. 
 Wyoming, too, has many unoccupied opportunities. In 
 one town a young wox-nan school teacher, sixteen years 
 of age, who had been a Christian only a few weeks, was 
 asked to conduct a funeral service, and when she said 
 that it would be impossible for her to do it, the reply 
 was made that the nearest church was one hundred 
 miles distant and she was the only Christian they knew. 
 It was afterward discovered that there was no Sunday 
 school nearer to that village than seventy-five miles. 
 Think what that means when $250 will secure from the 
 Board of Home Missions and Church Extension, the 
 erection of a me'xnorial church! The Home Missions 
 Council last year made a study of Colorado and they 
 found, as a result of their investigation, that there were 
 one hundred towns in Colorado in which there was 
 neither Protestant nor Catholic church, and one hundred 
 and thirty-three in which there was no Protestant 
 church of any kind. One Superintendent of our Church 
 in Colorado recently made the statement that he could 
 open fifty new preaching places at once if he had the 
 money and the men. 
 
 These are only a few of the unoccupied opportu- 
 nities in this great western field, but enough has been 
 said to make it perfectly clear that offerings of money 
 
The Winning of the West 59 
 
 and 'men and prayer must be multiplied if the situation 
 is to be adequately met. There is no challenge quite so 
 urgent as the challenge of an unoccupied, strategic op- 
 portunity. 
 
 IV. Nothing less than a princely offering of 
 money, men and prayer can make the West what it 
 ought to he in the light of the fact that the West fronts 
 on the world. 
 
 The West has an impact on the non-Christian 
 world. That impact will increase. That impact must 
 be Christianized. There is no escape from the fact 
 that in these days one cannot abide in Jesus and abide 
 on one continent alone. It is perilous business, this, of 
 keeping house in sight of the world, but it cannot be 
 escaped. The white light of publicity blazes in our 
 faces, and the way we live our life will be seen by and 
 profoundly influence the whole world. We have sev- 
 eral thousand miles of frontage on the world's greatest 
 arena, where, in the days just ahead, the great commer- 
 cial, political and religious events will take place. It is 
 as though God had given us the best reserved seats that 
 we may look out upon the world's greatest game of 
 statesmanship and civilization. It will take leadership 
 of the rarest and highest kind, and consecration of the 
 deepest sort, to adequately cope with the bewildering 
 number and complexity of world problems that are 
 thrust upon us. What we need now is men with the 
 breadth of the prairies in their thinking; the height of 
 
6o The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 the mountains in their hearts and the smell of the planet 
 on all their garments ! It took the old Greeks forty 
 djays to go the length of the Mediterranean Sea from 
 Phoenicia to the pillars of Hercules. Today we can 
 cover the greatest stretch of open sea in the world, — 
 10,000 miles of Pacific ocean water, — in one-half the 
 ti/ne that they could go the length of the Mediterranean 
 with the fastest ships of the olden days. Our West 
 fronts right out on to that sea, onto which look out the 
 eyes of one-half the human race. 
 
 We are a race of world-confronting men commer- 
 cially, intellectually, racially and religiously. Think for 
 one moment of just one illustration of what is ahead: 
 When the Panama Canal is built. New York will be 
 nearer by ship to all the ports of Orient than England 
 is by from 200 to more than 2,000 miles. The iron 
 masters in Pittsburg can load their iron on board ves- 
 sels without leaving their own city, and that iron need 
 never leave the water until it is unloaded amid the wil- 
 derness of chimneys in Osaka, the Pittsburg of Japan, 
 or Shanghai, the Birmingham of the Orient. The farm- 
 ers in Nebraska and Iowa can load wheat on board ves- 
 sels without leaving their own states, and that wheat 
 need never leave the water until it is distributed in the 
 great hunger centers of the Oriental world. The cotton 
 and rice growers of the southwest can pour their pro- 
 ducts through Galveston, which is now the second ex- 
 port city in the United States, in tremendously increas- 
 
The Winning of the West 6i 
 
 ing volux-ne. Now, from New York to Shanghai it is 
 18,910 miles; then it will be only 10,885 miles. Now, 
 it is 19,535 niiles to Manila; then it will be 8,000 miles 
 nearer. All this will have a vast influence on the West 
 and Southwest, as well as the eastern ports of our land. 
 
 Then, too, this western country is better advertised 
 today than it ever was before. Every returned immi- 
 grant, — and they may now be numbered by hundreds 
 of thousands, — is an enthusiastic press agent and pro- 
 moter of the interests of America to the farthest con- 
 fines of Europe and Asia. In little hamlets and villages 
 thousands of miles from the great sea-ports, the name 
 and fame of America, with its golden opportunities, is 
 discussed in the market place and by the fireside. Let 
 us brace ourselves for the coming of the greatest tide 
 of peoples that the world has ever seen! These facts 
 challenged us to a new study of the frontier; to a new 
 grappling with the issues involved in its Christian con- 
 quest. To win the West will take a great offering, 
 but when the West is won, the impact on all the con- 
 tinents will be measureless. 
 
 Look also for one moment at another fact : Amer- 
 ica has been styled ''the crucible of God," ''the labora- 
 tory of the Almighty," "the melting-pot," for here it 
 seems that God is working out a final type of civiliza- 
 tion. If I read the signs of the times aright, any nation 
 which is to have a commanding future, must have at 
 least six marks. 
 
62 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 In the first place, any nation that is to have a com- 
 manding future must be strategically located and have 
 other favoring geographic conditions. Just note, for 
 there is no time for discussing them at length, some of 
 the things that indicate the place of strategy occupied 
 by the United States on the map: It is in the states- 
 'man's belt of power; it has the only great and densely 
 populated geographical area facing both the Atlantic 
 and the Pacific oceans. Then, too, our country is iso- 
 lated from other commanding powers, so that it has op- 
 portunity for developing its internal resources and de- 
 voting itself to the solution of its own problems as no 
 other great land. The United States is nearer, in the 
 aggregate, to all the great undeveloped parts of the 
 world than any other commanding power. 
 
 In the second place, the supreme nations of the 
 future will be large. On this point take the testimony 
 of Gladstone, that great statesman across seas, who said 
 "The United States has a natural base for the greatest 
 continuous empire ever established by mankind." 
 
 Again, the commanding nation must be rich, and 
 we have been reminding ourselves these days of the fact 
 that we grow more wheat twice over than any other land 
 in the world except Russia. We have one-half of the 
 railroads of the world, and, according to the most con- 
 servative estimates of' financial leaders, about forty 
 cents out of every dollar in the world is to be found 
 in the United States. We are rich. 
 
The Winning of the West 63 
 
 But further, any nation which is to have a com- 
 manding future, must not only be large and rich, but 
 cosmopolitan., We have been reminded again and again 
 how God is mingling here the blood of more nations 
 and more citizens of xnore nations than any other coun- 
 try on the globe. 
 
 In the next place, nations that have a command- 
 ing future must be democratic. Many men are saying 
 these days that Democracy is the inevitable future of 
 mankind. Democracy is a spirit, best expressed, per- 
 haps, by that potent phrase "a square deal." An equal 
 opportunity with equal punishments and equal rewards 
 for every man, — that is Democracy. Perhaps there is 
 no place in the world where there is so much of it as 
 in the United States. 
 
 Last of all and greatest of all, the commanding 
 nations of the future will be Christian. It is the busi- 
 ness of home missions to make America increasingly 
 the most Christian nation in the world. 
 
 Men of the West, shall we not pay the price of 
 the winning of the West: A great volume of prayer, 
 millions of money and the last son or daughter re- 
 quired to increase to the point of adequacy the forces 
 needed for the task! Christ calls us to this princely 
 sacrifice. 
 
 "I ask no heaven till earth be Thine, 
 No glory crown while work of mine 
 
64 The Conservation of Our Moral Resoiirces 
 
 Remaineth here. When earth shall shine 
 Among the stars, Her sins cast out, her captives free, 
 Her voice a music unto Thee — 
 For crown more work give Thou to me. 
 Lord here I am." 
 
 Bishop Henry W. Warren, said: We know the 
 Infinitely Good God never requires anything of any- 
 body without making just returns. When that small 
 boy helped Christ in one of his greatest miracles by 
 giving him his lunch, the Lord took it; that left the boy 
 hungry. How he happened to have anything left at that 
 time I do not know, because boys always eat their lunch 
 like other people, but he had it and offered it to the 
 Lord and I have no doubt that the first piece of heaven- 
 ly bread that He broke off in divine manner He gave 
 to that boy. So in our work, like the boy, He always 
 returns to us better than we give. 
 
 Years ago there was a Bethel ship in New York 
 harbor; a German got converted, went back to his own 
 people, and from that time until now there has been a 
 stream of German life and power and purity and de- 
 votion to God pouring in upon us, and we have ten 
 great conferences of Germans in this country; they 
 speak English and German mutually, agreeable one to 
 another, and to all who hear, and the Bishop who is to 
 speak to us tonight, born in Zurich, of Swiss parentage, 
 but in regard to territory, blood and name, German, I 
 am delighted to introduce to you Bishop Nuelson, of 
 Omaha. (Applause). 
 
Rev. Ward Piatt, D. D. 
 Assistant Corresponding Secretary 
 
 Rev. Chas. M. Boswell, D. D. 
 Assistant Corresponding Secretary 
 
 Rev. Henry J. Coker 
 ield Secretary and President of Parliaments 
 
 Rev. I. L. Thomas, D. D. 
 Field Secretary 
 
AMERICA AS A WORLD POWER. 
 
 BISHOP L. NUELSON, L.L. D. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Our good 
 Bishop Warren did not state what I am desirous of 
 stating: That he has a lecture on this same topic on 
 which I am to speak tonight: "America as a World 
 Power," and his lecture is so very much better than mine 
 that I cannot get over my amazement that I am to speak 
 to you. I can assure you that Bishop Warren, when he 
 delivers his lecture on '^America as a World Power" has 
 not borrwed anything from the address, which I am 
 going to deliver. 
 
 I do not know whether I can make the same state- 
 'xiient vice versa ; but I am glad to state to this audience 
 that the second speaker of this evening in order — or- 
 der of time — will be Bishop Quayle, and I sincerely 
 hope that Bishop Quayle did not undertake to come to 
 Denver on an automobile, but that he came here by 
 train, because last week we were to speak in one of the 
 conventions in Kansas and the good Bishop tried to 
 reach that place by automobile, and the first automo- 
 bile he took broke down, then he telephoned for an- 
 other, but the weight of his address was so heavy that 
 
66 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 the second automobile broke down and the Bishop did 
 not reach Wichita, where he was to speak at 8 o'clock, 
 until the next morning at 5 o'clock. (Bishop Quayle 
 at this time comes in. Applause). 
 
 (Bishop Nuelson continuing). You cannot imag- 
 ine my delight in being able to make the announcement 
 that Bishop Quayle has arrived. (Laughter and ap- 
 plause). 
 
 In his endeavor to reach Wichita last week, in an 
 automobile and breaking down twice, reminds me of the 
 story that I read of the boy who was asked to write 
 an essay on an automobile consisting of two hundred 
 and fifty words; the teacher had given that as a lesson, 
 and one little boy wrote about as follows : "Dad bought 
 a new automobile and he thought he could run it; he 
 took us out riding and when we were about three miles 
 from town he ran against a tree and we were all 
 pitched out, and the machine went to smash and we 
 had to walk home three miles over muddy roads, and 
 Dad had to carry the baby all the time, and the baby 
 was bawling all the time. These are ninety-seven 
 words, the other one hundred and fifty-three words is 
 what Dad said when he was walking home." (Laugh- 
 ter). 
 
 Now, I shall only try to give you 97 words. I 
 shall not endeavor to give you the other 153 words. 
 In the first place, I have not time to do that, and in 
 the second place, I think of that beautiful night in 
 
America as a World Power 67 
 
 Kansas last week, out there on the prairie when the 
 Bishop had time to think not only of 153 words, but of 
 1^536 words; no doubt he will give you some of them. 
 (Laughter). 
 
 The term *' World Power" is of comparatively re- 
 cent significance. There always have been powers that 
 were interested in different parts of the world, but not 
 until quite recently could we speak of "World Powers," 
 that is. Powers that are interested in all parts of the 
 world, whose influence is left in all parts of the world, 
 and whose voices must be listened to in every nook and 
 comer of the globe. This is true in the political world. 
 Go back with me, if you please, over the brief space of 
 thirty years and we search in vain for any "World 
 Powers." It is true England had her foreign depend- 
 encies, Russia pushed toward the East and toward the 
 South, towards the regions of the Caucasus and Central 
 Asia; France, and some other European nations, had 
 their foreign policies, and yet European politics were 
 controlled by European questions; the great question 
 was how not to disturb the European equilibrium in 
 case of a division of the Ottoman Empire, and all the 
 great questions that concerned the great statesmen of 
 Europe a generation ago were really European ques- 
 tions. 
 
 America, thirty years ago, was busy recovering 
 from the destructive internal war. We were bent upon 
 reconstruction in the South, and upon exploring and 
 
68 The Conservation oj Our Moral Resources 
 
 settling the great Northwest. It is true, America was 
 always defender of the Monroe doctrine. While say- 
 ing emphatically to the European powers: "Hands 
 Off," as regards the American continent, yet America 
 did not think for a moment to engage in the European 
 problems, or any of the problems of the far East. For 
 over a century the solemn injunction of Washington's 
 farewell address had been heeded; not to become en- 
 tangled in foreign alliances. All of our presidential 
 elections turned on internal questions. But within the 
 last thirty years a very great and momentous change 
 has taken place. A movement for world wide expan- 
 sion has taken place which is unparallelled in the his- 
 tory of the race. There were two events in the history 
 of forty centuries which had changed the territorial as- 
 pect of the civilized world more than any other events: 
 The conquests of Alexander the Great, and the con- 
 quest of the Caliphs. But great as the territorial 
 changes were, which ensued on account of these con- 
 quests, the territorial changes which took place during 
 the last thirty years were much greater. At first it 
 seemed as if America would not be affected by these 
 changes. But there came a war, one of the briefest 
 wars in the history of the world, and, from a military 
 standpoint, not very eventful ; only three battles were 
 fought worthy of that name, two on sea in different 
 parts of the world, and one on land, and yet this brief 
 war has brought consequences which seem altogether 
 out of proportion to the cause. 
 
America as a World Power 69 
 
 A foreign diplomat, residing in Washington, stated 
 that although he had lived in America only a few years, 
 he had seen two entirely different Americas : America 
 before the Spanish War was an entirely different na- 
 tion than America after the Spanish-American War. 
 We were, by that war, thrown out upon the wide arena 
 of world politics, and, as has been stated "Avuerica blew 
 up in the Maine and came down everywhere." The 
 great nations of the world have passed out of the "Pe- 
 riod of Nationalism of the Nineteenth Century" and 
 have passed into what Professor Reinsch calls the 
 "Period of National Imperialism". Whether we like 
 the expressions "Imperialism" and "Expansion" or not, 
 we cannot stem the tide of history, and history has 
 taken us out into that wide ocean of world wide ex- 
 pansion. 
 
 But not only in the field of politics and diplomatic 
 relation has the expression "World Power" a trem- 
 endous significance, but also in our economic relations. 
 There is a great conquest going on today, not a mili- 
 tary conquest, not a political conquest, not a conquest 
 for far lands and islands, but an economic conquest is 
 going on. The great nations say today "The World is 
 My Market," and they send their agents and their mer- 
 chants into all parts of the world. Asia with her limit- 
 less opportunities has opened her doors. South Amer- 
 ica shows to the world her immense resources, Africa 
 gives glimpses of her riches, all the countries are open 
 
70 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 for this commercial conquest. Of these three greatest 
 nations that are engaged in this conquest: Great Brit- 
 ain, Germany and the United States, two, the first two, 
 are co'xnpelled to trade in the great markets of the world 
 for the products of their industry, because they cannot 
 raise enough food stuffs to feed the millions of their 
 inhabitants ; England cannot do it, Germany cannot do it. 
 
 Let me give this illustration: At the close of the 
 Franco-Prussian war Germany had a population of 
 about 45,ooo,cxx). Since that time the population has 
 increased, not by immigration, or expansion, but the 
 surplus of births at the rate of 800,000 a year. Today 
 Germany has a population of 65,000,000 people, and 
 very soon it will have double the population that it had 
 thirty-five years ago; but (kniiany today can raise only 
 enough to feed 50,000,000 or 52,000,000 people, and she 
 is compelled to buy cotton and iron and other raw ma- 
 terials and manufacture these goods and sell these goods 
 in other countries and continents in order to buy bread 
 for the milHons which she cannot support. 
 
 But there is still another sphere in which we can 
 today, speak of World Powers, and that is the higher 
 sphere of moral and spiritual influence, and of all the 
 influences that make up civilization, to my mind, this 
 is the greatest sphere. 
 
 Our swift messengers of communication and trans- 
 portation carry noble thoughts and new discoveries and 
 the inspiration of great deeds with lightening rapidity 
 
America as a World Power 71 
 
 to all parts of the world. Today, for the first time in 
 the history of the world, every man is a neighbor to 
 every other man. Those barriers that have separated 
 nations and races for centuries, have fallen down and 
 whole races are enabled to look into the faces of each 
 other; the white race, and the brown race, and the black 
 race, and the yellow race, and the races of other colors : 
 Congresses are held in different places in the world, 
 religious problems, labor problems, scientific problems 
 are discussed; representatives of all the various nations 
 meet and discuss questions touching the welfare of 
 every nation in the world. You take today a man who 
 may live twenty miles from the nearest railway station 
 and postoffice. If he has a telephone in his house, that 
 man is in closer touch with London and Paris and Ber- 
 lin and Rome and Capetown and Madras and Calucutta 
 and Melbourne and Pekin and Tokio than his grand- 
 father who lived in New York was in touch with Bos- 
 ton or Baltimore, not to mention Chicago, or Denver, 
 which were not known at that time. (Applause). 
 
 That means that any one today who has a thought 
 worth thinking, who makes a discovery which will bene- 
 fit mankind, who does sOxTie deed, the inspiration of 
 which will help others, that any one who does this kind 
 of work may be, within twenty-four hours a teacher of 
 the whole world. The daily papers published in every 
 large city around the whole globe will communicate to 
 thousands and tens of thousands of readers that dis- 
 covery within twelve hours after it has been made. 
 
72 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 Now, let us for a moment look at the position 
 which America occupies in this modern world. God 
 has placed us geographically in a most remarkable posi- 
 tion. I like to look upon this whole world as a school 
 with God as the Great Master. I was a teacher for so 
 many years I cannot break away from that thought of 
 teaching, and I like to look on this world as a school. 
 
 Back in the beginning of history when God began 
 this business of teaching, He formed a great kinder- 
 garten class. He went to the Euphrates and Tigris and 
 Nile rivers, took 12,000,000 people and formed His 
 kindergarten class; a pretty big kindergarten class, but 
 God does things on a large scale. He took that kinder- 
 garten class and they had to spell out the most elemen- 
 tary lessons in morals and religion. He sent them some 
 great teachers, Abraham and Moses and Isaiah and 
 others. After some centuries had gone by, He went to 
 the Mediterranean and took a class of 50,000,000 peo- 
 ple in the Roman Empire to forni His next class. To 
 them He sent some great teachers in law and in art and 
 in philosophy and in morals and in religion, and they 
 had to spell out higher lessons and He sent to that class 
 the greatest teacher which He ever sent to this world: 
 His Son, Jesus Christ. Then He went still further. 
 He went to the Atlantic ocean and He took 500,000,000 
 living on each side of the Atlantic ocean and He formed 
 an advanced class, for centuries had to spell out 
 some additional lessons. Then God formed a still 
 
America as a World Power 73 
 
 larger class. He went to the Pacific ocean and took 
 the 800,000,000 of people on either side, and now He 
 is conducting these two classes; one class consisting of 
 500,000,000 people on either side of the Atlantic, and 
 800,000,000 people on the sides of the Pacific, and to 
 these people He gives the greatest lessons : The appli- 
 cation of 'moral and spiritual principles not only to in- 
 dividual life, but to the complex organism of the civic 
 and social and industrial life of whole nations and races. 
 This is the school in which we are, and America is 
 placed right in the center of these two great classes. 
 The two great storm centers of civilization are the At- 
 lantic and the Pacific oceans, and America is the only 
 country that extends from one to the other; no part too 
 hot for the white man to live in and no part too cold 
 but that wheat and corn and the other products neces- 
 sary for the sustenance of human life can be raised. 
 
 Thus by geographical position God has placed this 
 country of ours in a position where we can touch all 
 other nations. 
 
 For centuries the countries of the world were di- 
 vided into the great Orient, the countries of the rising 
 sun; and the Occident, the countries of the setting sun. 
 When we want to travel to the Orient we have to face 
 towards the West, and when we want to travel to the 
 countries of the setting sun, or the Occident, we have 
 to turn our faces to the rising sun. As Mr. Pronne- 
 tiere, the editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes, the 
 
74 The Conservation oj Our Moral Resources 
 
 •most influential publication in France says: "This is 
 the greatest theater for human activity that can be 
 imagined in this world." Not only our geographic po- 
 sition has placed us in such a place that we can be a 
 "World Power," but also the very composition of our 
 population puts us in touch with all the other countries 
 of this world, as does that of no other country. It is 
 remarkable how we^ can see the hand of God in the 
 makeup of our population. From the very beginning 
 God sent to this country the choicest representatives of 
 those European nations who have made European civ- 
 ilizations; they came from England and Scotland and 
 from Ireland and some of them from the Isle of Man 
 (Indicating Bishop Quayle). (Laughter). And they 
 came from other places; they came from Scandinavia 
 and Germany, and they were of the sturdy Anglo-Saxon 
 stock, the acme of European civilization. Men who 
 were trained in political science ; men who had the moral 
 courage to leave everything dear to human hearts in 
 order to enjoy liberty and freedom of conscience; the 
 very best blood of Europe came here. Some people talk 
 as if only the dregs of European society had been 
 shipped to America. Those undesirable citizens; the 
 criminals and the paupers, and all of those that Europe 
 wants to get rid of; but I do not believe a word of that; 
 it is not so. The very best people came from over 
 there; I, myself, came from there. (Applause and 
 laughter). I belong to that crowd and quite a number 
 
America as a World Power 75 
 
 of you belong to the same company, or your fathers, 
 or your mothers belonged to it. Now, those people 
 settled our Atlantic seaports ; they crossed the Alleghenys 
 and they laid the foundation of these magnificent com- 
 tmonwealths of this great country between the Alleg- 
 heny mountains and the Rocky mountains. Then when 
 the foundations were laid, God opened the door still 
 wider and now people come from Eastern Europe and 
 from Asia. 
 
 Twenty years ago the center of immigration was 
 Paris. If you will take a map of Europe and draw a 
 circle with Paris as center you will find that you in- 
 clude Great Britain and Scandinavia, and the Northern 
 part of Italy and Spain. But now the center of Euro- 
 pean immigration is Constantinople, and that takes in 
 Roumania and Bulgaria and Bohemia and Russia and 
 Greece and Southern Italy and Asia Minor, and these 
 are the countries from which our immigrants come. 
 God opened the door still wider and they come from 
 other parts of the world and they come from India and 
 China and Japan and from Korea. We may pass as 
 many restrictive laws as we have a mind to, but we can- 
 not close the doors so tight that no one will come. Now 
 God has a purpose in sending these people here. You 
 may go to any large dt^ today — I think it is as true of 
 Denver as of any othet large city — and draw a center 
 at the Court House, or the City Hall, and ask each man, 
 woman or child within a mile of the City Hall where 
 
76 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 she or he was born, or where her or his father and 
 mother were born, and then draw an imaginary Hne 
 from every man, woman and child to the country of 
 his or her birth, or to the country of the birth of his 
 or her father or mother, and you will touch every coun- 
 try under the shining stars. By the very composition 
 of our population we are in touch with every country 
 under the sun as no other nation is, and our population 
 today represents the civilization of the world. Why 
 there is no other country can say, as I heard one say: 
 **My mother was an Irishman and my mother-in-law was 
 a Dutchman, and my son's mother-in-law is a French- 
 man.'' 
 
 The manner in which, by the very composition of 
 our population, we influence other nations has brought 
 vividly to my mind an experience I had some years ago: 
 I was traveling in Northern Italy. I went to one of 
 the mountain villages; there were no roads leading to 
 that village. I had to climb over the rocks and follow 
 a foot path, and when I reached that village, the street 
 seemed to be deserted. Everybody seemed to be in 
 church. I saw only one man sitting in front of his 
 Inn, and it being time for dinner I sat next to him. 
 Suddenly he jumped up and pulled me into the house. 
 I had read of the "Black Hand" and other things of 
 that kind, and things began to look serious. I did not 
 relish being killed in that Italian village. My Italian 
 friend said: *The church is out and the procession 
 
America as a World Power 77 
 
 will pass around the open place, and no one is allowed 
 to be in the street, and that is the reason I have asked 
 you to come in the house." I noticed a great many 
 children and young women, and women who had been 
 young a good many years before, and old men but I saw 
 no men of the ages between i8 and 40 years of age. There 
 was no war at that time and I could not account for it. I 
 asked, "Where are the men?" 'They are in America," 
 was the reply, "these old men have returned from 
 America and these boys expect to go to America. These 
 men in America send money here regularly to keep 
 their families, and after they have earned enough so 
 they can buy their homes they will return." That was 
 one village in Northern Italy. Do you realize that 
 there are thousands of villages of that kind, not only 
 in Italy, but in Greece, in Bohemia, in Korea, in China, 
 in Japan and in every other country. There are thou- 
 sands and hundreds of thousands of people here who 
 earn money in this country and send it back, and write 
 letters back and send papers back. A postmaster of a 
 little village where a great many foreigners are em- 
 ployed, in the stone quarries, told me that in one week 
 he issued foreign money orders to the amount of thirty- 
 two thousand dollars. It was to Poles and Bohemians 
 who sent money back to their families. A postmaster 
 in a mining quarry in Southern Illinois told me that in 
 one month he issued orders for over one hundred thous- 
 and dollars. I have seen the statement somewhere that 
 
78 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 in one year three hundred millions of dollars were sent 
 to the countries of the world to buy real estate and 
 property. These people do not only send money, but 
 they write many letters. When they return they tell 
 of their experiences, and there are printed in American 
 papers in nearly every language spoken today, and tens 
 of thousands of these papers are sent abroad and these 
 people read them. The question arises, what are the 
 contents of these papers? What do these foreigners 
 write to their families and friends? What is the story 
 they have to tell when they return? What are the les- 
 sons? God sent them into this country as into a great 
 school and we are teaching them lessons every day. 
 And what are the lessons we are teaching them? What 
 are the impressions? What are the lessons which they 
 learn here, the Italians and the Koreans and the Bohem- 
 ians, and others? We sometiines speak of the great 
 dangers that come to our civilization from the foreign- 
 ers. Let me tell you, in a great many cases it is not 
 so much the question of how to protect our American 
 institutions, but the greater question is how to protect 
 those foreigners. You talk about the Continental Sun- 
 day here. I have lived nineteen years on the Continent 
 of Europe before I came to America and I know some- 
 thing about the Continental Sunday. What you call 
 the Continental Sunday here is not the Sunday there; 
 most of those people that come here are accustomed to 
 go to church Sunday morning, and the afternoons are 
 
America as a World Power 79 
 
 given up to excursions, et cetera, but when these foreign- 
 ers come here they see sights that they never saw there; 
 they see on Sunday morning people going to the parks 
 and amusement resorts, and see crowds of young men 
 clad in their baseball uniforms going to play baseball. 
 On the Continent it is the afternoon only; here, the 
 whole day from early morning to late at night. You 
 talk about the danger that comes to our institutions 
 from the votes of these foreigners. The danger arises 
 when those foreigners have learned some lessons; from 
 their American teachers. You cannot blame them for 
 that scandal in Ada;Tis county, Ohio, where the votes 
 were bought year after year. You cannot lay the blame 
 of the Lorimer scandal at the door of the foreigners. 
 The foreigner will sell his vote if the American politi- 
 cian prevails on him to do so. The trouble is that the 
 good people in America keep aloof from the foreigner 
 and leave him to the pernicious influence of the worst 
 elements in Axuerican public life. Then we are horri- 
 fied when he puts into practice the lessons he has 
 learned. 
 
 You remember a few years ago when that miser- 
 able Thaw trial filled the papers with unspeakable filth. 
 Do you realize that none of the German, or Swede, or 
 Norwegian, or Bohemian, or Polish papers printed those 
 reports? The foreigners who lived in this country had 
 to learn the details of that whole miserable thing from 
 their English speaking children who read it in English 
 
8o The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 papers. It is not, 'my friends, so much the question of 
 how to prevent the foreigners from tearing down our 
 institutions. They do not come here with the intention 
 of injuring this country. The question is how to train 
 them so that they give the best traits of their character 
 and the accumulated treasures of their civiHzation and 
 history to the "new world." 
 
 There is a still greater and more important ques- 
 tion, namely to teach them lessons which they in turn 
 will teach their own country/nen. There is a mighty 
 "backward wave" of immigration, a wave big with far 
 reaching influences. Think of it, for a moment, what it 
 would mean, not only for our own country, but for the 
 civilization of the world if all these hundreds of thous- 
 ands of foreigners could write to their friends and print 
 in their papers the fact that here is a great nation, a 
 mighty nation with large cities and vast rural communi- 
 ties, inhabited by strong, healthy, happy men and wo- 
 men, a whole nation without a saloon? Think of it, 
 what it would mean for the civilization of this whole 
 world! Think of what it would mean for democracy 
 and for the ideals of free government if all of these 
 foreigners could write back to their home country that 
 here is a great country where we have a government 
 from the people and for the people, and a government 
 free from graft and corruption. Suppose letters and 
 newspapers should be sent to all parts of the world con- 
 taining a message like this: "Here is a great country 
 
America as a World Power 8i 
 
 with great commercial enterprises and organizations in 
 which all the difficulties between capital and labor are 
 adjusted amicably by arbitation. It would exert a very 
 different influence from that created by accounts 
 of graft and boycotts, and strikes and dynamiting and 
 shooting, and all of those things. Whether we realize 
 it or not the very coinposition of our population has put 
 us into a position where we are influencing all the other 
 countries with our political ideas, our church ideas, our 
 moral ideas, our spiritual life; with all the elements that 
 make up our every day life. America is a "World 
 Power" in this respect as no other nation can be. 
 
 One more word. America is in a position to in- 
 fluence this world also on account of her immense re- 
 sources. These resources that God had given to this 
 country are si/nply stupendous; I am not going to 
 w^eary you v/ith statistics; they are forgotten as soon 
 as they are given, God has made this country so rich 
 that v»'e have hardly tapped our resources. Sometimes 
 people say that our fields do not produce as much now 
 as they used to; this is all nonsense. When you look 
 at the last report of the Secretary of Agriculture, you 
 will find that the figures of what America made out of 
 her fields and gardens is stupendous. You people in 
 Denver are accustomed to handle millions. I am not. 
 When I want to think of a very large sum, I have to 
 get at it in a rather clumsy way. I think of six mil- 
 lion dollars, and then I put the figure 2 before it and I 
 
82 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 have twenty-six millions, and before that I put the fig- 
 ure 9, and I have nine hundred and twenty-six million, 
 and before that I put 8, and I get eight thousand, nine 
 hundred and twenty-six millions, and that, xiiy friends, 
 is what we made last year in America from our fields 
 and farms, J. J. Hill says that we have simply scratched 
 the surface. Scratching the surface; and make eight 
 thousand, nine hundred and twenty-six millions of dol- 
 lars! — What are we going to make when we begin to 
 dig down? (Applause). 
 
 And most of that money was made in these great 
 Western states. Our farmers in the West are getting 
 so rich they do not know what to do with their money. 
 I believe if we did not have automobiles they would not 
 know what to do with their money. Not very long ago 
 in one of those little towns in Kansas, a banker told me 
 that he handled checks and drafts for eighty- five thous- 
 and dollars in payxTient for automobiles that the farm- 
 ers bought, and that the year after that he handled one 
 hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. In two years, 
 two hundred thousand dollars, in payment for automo- 
 biles for the farmers. I read a statement that a little 
 town, consisting of three thousand people, bought one 
 hundred and seventy- five automobiles and it took fifty- 
 one cars to transport them. That makes me think of 
 a farmer who does not live in Colorado, or Kansas, or 
 Nebraska, but in some other state in the central West. 
 He came to a garage one afternoon, and said: ''How 
 
America as a World Power 83 
 
 much do them there automobiles cost?'* The agent told 
 him the price, and then he said : "Do I get it for less 
 if I pay cash?" Yes, the agent thought he could make 
 a reduction. The farmer said "Do I get them for less 
 if I buy three?" He said: "Well, do you want to buy 
 three?" "Yes, it is this way: I and the old woman 
 want an automobile; I want to take her to church, and 
 then there is my son Charley, and he has a girl, and he 
 wants to take her riding, and then there is my son Jim, 
 and when Charley takes his girl they don't want to 
 have him tagging along, and, besides, Jim has a girl, 
 too, and so I will have to buy one for me and the old 
 girl, and one for Charley and one for Jim". And that 
 evening he drew his check for four thousand, three 
 hundred dollars for three automobiles, and I am in- 
 formed that that man gave for the salvation of Amer- 
 ica and the rest of the world the magnificent incredible 
 sum of fifteen dollars a year. That is not even 
 "Scratching the surface." (Laughter.) That is blow- 
 ing off of your sleeves the dust that settles there when 
 you are autoinobiling ; blowing it off and offering it to 
 the Lord. (Applause). But there are many, yes a 
 great host, in America who have a more consciencious 
 way of thanking the Lord for what our American na- 
 tion is. 
 
 My friends, we have the money; we have the 
 means ; we have people who are in touch with the world ; 
 we have been placed by God in this strategic position 
 
84 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 and here our church, the Methodist Episcopal church 
 is the strongest protestant church in this country. (Ap- 
 plause). And God has given us these great opportu- 
 nities; He has given us a church, the people and the 
 means and the position and the organization and every- 
 thing that is needed to bring this country to the feet 
 of Jesus Christ. (Applause). 
 
 My friends, it is time to quit doing little things; 
 it is time to quit dilly-dallying; it is time to quit fool- 
 ing; we are living in a great time. We are living in a 
 time of world influence and every time you work in 
 your own little community, every time you stand up 
 for what is right, in politics, in social life, in business; 
 and every time you do the right thing to the foreigner 
 with whom you come in touch, and every time you do 
 the right thing in your home, and in your church, you 
 are asserting an influence that is bound to go beyond your 
 little church, or your community, or your common- 
 wealth, or even your nation. You are asserting an in- 
 fluence that will be felt in its consequences all the world 
 over. 
 
 May God really lift us up with Jesus Christ in 
 heavenly places that from above there we may see this 
 country and see this world with all the needs and miser- 
 ies eliminated, and all its splendid resources developed, 
 and may we, as a church, measure up to these principles 
 that God has given us to do: To be co-workers with 
 Him in transforming these kingdoms and republics in- 
 to the Kingdom of our Lord, Jesus Christ. (Applause). 
 
Introduction 85 
 
 Bishop Henry W. Warren, in introducing Bishop 
 William A. Quayle, said: Now I have great pleas- 
 ure in introducing Doctor Quayle, and he will travel 
 with you in those regions celestial and divine, and you 
 will travel and not "break down.'^ 
 
THE PRESERVATION OF OUR CIVILIZATION. 
 
 BISHOP WILLIAM A. QUAYLE^ LIT. D. 
 
 Your majesty, the Bishop. The Bishop was speak- 
 ing by faith, not by sight. 
 
 Now, as I understand this situation, being a man 
 a little slow of comprehension, I gather from Bishop 
 Nuelson's remarks that I am to* say the bad words here 
 tonight; he said the good words; is that right? (Laugh- 
 ter.) 
 
 Now, I have been in this country so long that I have 
 gotten cured of saying bad words — I leave that to the 
 Germans. " (Laughter.) 
 
 It is a matter of great delight to one public speaker 
 when he can hear another public speaker ; one of the in- 
 firmities of the preacher business is that he himself talks 
 so much that he does not get to hear other professional 
 talkers, which is a great intellectual calamity; and in all 
 of my public life whenever there was any opportunity 
 whatsoever by any possible means I have made my ut- 
 most endeavor to hear my brethren speak and see the 
 faults of my own intelligence thereby. 
 
 I do not know what Bishop Nuelson was saying 
 
The Preservation of Our Civilization Z^ 
 
 about me before I arrived, and I feel a little fitful on 
 that subject, because you cannot tell what he says when 
 he begins to "remarking," and I do not know what to 
 refute to him when I do not know what he alleges; but 
 I will say this in self defense : This is the fourteenth an- 
 nual conference which I have had the honor and oppor- 
 tunity of touching in this official routine; fourteen annual 
 conferences officially related to this job in which we are 
 now. This is a great business when a converted youth 
 goes around and visits fourteen conferences, and, as far 
 as I know, with the exception of Brother Coker, all of 
 these speakers are good pious men ; you would not know 
 it unless you lingered with them, but the fact is the 
 same; the fourteen conferences, which have illumin- 
 ated our landscape and our observation Bishop Warren, 
 is a great honor, and this English brother, Brother 
 Henry Coker, to him we owe this business; and we are 
 glad 'e came from Hingland and got 'ere. If I had been 
 born and reared where he was — only one crowd of folks 
 — I do not know what under the sun would have hap- 
 pened to me ; it would have been so unvarigated and un- 
 eventful; but having been reared in this dear America 
 of ours, where you have here the things of the earth, 
 cosmopolitanism has got in my blood and continents 
 swarm around like an animalculae. Thank God I do not 
 belong to an island or Archipeligo or continent, but to 
 the vascular earth for which Jesus Christ died ; and it is 
 so much fun to have a word to say about this big mat- 
 
88 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 ter, and the only pathos imaginable is that a man does 
 not know how to use the big words that reach up to the 
 majesty of the big things. 
 
 When I was a little kid and listened to fairy stories 
 — when I was not being spanked — there had to be some 
 interruption of spanking — fairy stories was that inter- 
 ruption — and when I was being regaled with fairy 
 stories, with the natural aptitude of a boy child, the thrill 
 always came to me — not when the Brownies arrived, or 
 the fairies — that did not impress me much ; a little body 
 is never impressed with other little bodies; children do 
 not cut much figure with children ; we have got to get big 
 before children interest us much. When we are little 
 children big folks interest us, and when we get to be 
 big little children interest us; but the place where the 
 thrill came into me was when the Ogre arrived; the 
 Ogre was the big business; so with all of you boys; he 
 scared your wits out, but you did not have many wits to 
 scare out. (Laughter.) A boy does not have many 
 wits to deliver, whether by traffic or by scare. (Laugh- 
 ter.) But the Ogre — but you say, "What have we to do 
 with Ogres ?" You say, "We are people of the twentieth 
 century, and you are a man of the twentieth century, 
 and fairies are banished and fairy stories are nullified 
 or forgot, and we have naught to do with fairies or 
 brownies or Ogres." But I beg you to recollect that 
 fairy stories are the forecast of the world's life; they are 
 put into pictures; the world tomorrow. Did anybody 
 
The Preservation of Our Civilization 89 
 
 ever imagine anything? All we people do is to remem- 
 ber what we knew. Shakespeare, the most powerful 
 imagination that God has gifted to this world, 
 did not imagine so much as he saw and rehearsed. God 
 is the only imagination that counts in the universe; 
 everybody after Him is a ditto mark and a reproducer, 
 and the fairy stories are put before the child's mind 
 what, as a man, he must battle with, or elude, or fling 
 him out, or throttle him down, or fling him up to heaven 
 in high resolve. 
 
 The giant ; that is the trouble ; the Ogres, they have 
 to be dealt with ; the giant that has malignant blood and 
 whose frame is saturated with ill, and whose breath is 
 hate, and whose presence is venom, and whose shadow 
 is death. The Ogres are forever stalwart, malignant, 
 vituperative, evasive, shameless, polluting, accursed in 
 their severity of anger, and frightful. 
 
 What is the world going to do with giants? That 
 is the question. What are they going to do with the 
 ogres of the world? Why these fairy tales? They are 
 telling the world's story. Every once in awhile I get a 
 new book of Anderson, the delicious fairy writer from 
 Denmark, and I always love them; they are always 
 speaking something with a text unknown; and that is 
 somewhat delicious to ferret out a sermon without a 
 text. I think Mr. Harrison's way of going through a 
 sermon and not divulging the text until he got to the end 
 was delicious; he addressed the text down, instead of up; 
 
go The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 and in Anderson's fairy stories you must ferret out the 
 text in all the matters you read, because they are re- 
 writing the story that I have heard a great many men 
 remark and read in a great many ways; thinkers, wise 
 in their own conceit. 
 
 You would think that the colossal endeavor of civil- 
 ization was to construct civilization, the building up of 
 empire, the making of today. It is the rising out of the 
 marshes of the Northern sea. It is the invading miasms 
 of that strange miasmic realm where Saxon and Goth 
 proceeded; it is the coming away from a Gernian low- 
 land invaded by a marshy sea until she rises strong, 
 great and sublime. That is the endeavor of the world. 
 Oh, no, that is not the endeavor of the world; oh, no, 
 that is not the endeavor of the world! I am here tonight 
 to say in the name of history wherein the vast endeavors 
 of the world has builded up and builded up and builded 
 up, until tonight we stand upon the frontier of the morn- 
 ing of the world. I am here to say that the vast en- 
 deavor of the world is not the building of civilization, 
 but it is keeping that civilization built from demolition; 
 that is the great endeavor of the world; not how are 
 you going to get it cleaned today, but how are you going 
 to keep it clean ; not how you are going to make a great 
 auspicious civilization, but how are you to retain it? 
 Now, how is civilization to be maintained ? It is an easy 
 thing to light a star. God has no trouble about it; all 
 He says is to light it, but it is keeping the stars going — 
 
The Preservation oj Our Civilization 91 
 
 that is the trick. I could light a star myself if I had tar 
 and the kindHng, but I could not keep it going. The 
 thing to do is to keep it going. How are you going to 
 keep it going? , 
 
 Here is the sun, of which Bishop Warren knows a 
 thousand times more about than I do, but I do know 
 enough to know, or not to know, what ails the sun that 
 it don't burn out ; what ails the sun that it don't go low ? 
 I have been in three towns where there was natural gas, 
 and if I had not filled myself with hot air I would have 
 been cold. (Laughter.) What ails the sun that it don't 
 go out? The answer is: God ails the sun. Making the 
 sun was a puny job compared with the sun not going 
 out. Those vast explosions of the sun, those convulsions 
 of fire, those hundred thousand battles of the giants with 
 the flame a thousand miles wide like a prairie fire. Oh, 
 God had kindled the fires of the nation. What is the 
 reason that they don't burn out, and what is the reason 
 that the sun is not a cinder? You don't remember, do 
 you Bishop Warren? (Laughter.) 
 
 The Bishop does not remember it, and I do not 
 know; he forgot it and I never knew; and that is the 
 wonder of the sun. Why doesn't it go out? I will say 
 here tonight that in my humble belief, the thing we have 
 been slow to learn, and many of us have not mastered, 
 that, once achieved, is only the beginning of a higher 
 endeavor. 
 
 I remember once a good woman, when I was speak- 
 
92 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 ing on temperance (I think she was good) ; I was not 
 maudling, but very sober, and speaking truth as becom- 
 ing a red-headed Christian from Kansas; I was saying 
 this: "When prohibition can be gotten we would only 
 be put in the thick of the endeavor." I never said but 
 three smart things, and that was one of them. I said it, 
 and I was really kind of tickled over it, but I did not 
 tell them so. You cannot tell when I am tickled when 
 you look at me (laughter), but a lady who sat in the 
 audience (she was a relative of mine) said, "I wish I 
 had a big potato; I would throw it at him." There was 
 a woman who believed in it, and because a man who got 
 up and said that prohibition gotten was not retention, 
 she wanted to throw a potato at me. If she had I would 
 have eaten it. But it is a fact that achievement is not 
 possession; taking the land is not retaining the land. I 
 do not undervalue the endeavors of the world; I do not 
 undervalue the giants that have been in those days. 
 What I want to know now is, how, when great matters 
 have come to pass, how are we going to keep the fires 
 burning? How are we going to keep the sun's force 
 from burning out? How are we going to keep the 
 world's civilization from being a cinder? They say it is 
 a little difficult to live in the moon ; you will either freeze 
 up or burn up. \i you are in the shade, you are re- 
 frigerated, and if you are in the sun, you are inciner- 
 ated. Now, how are you going to keep a planet from 
 burning out, or cooling out, and I confess that that is 
 
The Preservation of Our Civilization 93 
 
 what we are hunting here tonight. How is a civilization 
 bought by the blood of God, gotten by the pureness of 
 men and women who love the truth, and who have told 
 us, and have been glad to live for it and die for it ; how 
 is it going to be kept? That is the question. 
 
 It is a great matter to have a republic at hand; I 
 thank God for it ; I Bless Him that He let me live at a 
 time when a government of the people and by them is 
 doing business in the world. I declare to you that a few 
 instances do not trouble me, because if there are flies in 
 the ointment I still retain the ointment bottle and all, 
 and throw the flies out. I say you have come to the 
 wrong place to settle ; but I do not think about the flies ; 
 I think about the ointment. If a few Senators get 
 mixed up, it don't worry me; if one Senator has a soiled 
 suit of clothes, a thousand of them will be pure. I do 
 not believe when a trial has been gone through and 
 through that we should be too quick to make remarks; 
 and what I say is this : So much good is here, so much 
 glory is on us, the day is so sweet, the sun is so bright, 
 the flowers are so beautiful with the morning dew, the 
 noon is coming — oh, God, bring us the noon. (Ap- 
 plause. ) 
 
 Here is American civilization ; it is beyond a perad- 
 venture, the superbest achievement of ^ the planet; the 
 proudest procedure is democracy, and the only thing 
 that is before it in the story of our planet is the history 
 and rise of the church of Jesus Christ; democracy and 
 
94 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 the church of Jesus Christ. There are lilHes which we 
 wish to cut, and great as the achievement is to get a 
 democracy, and great as the achievement is to learn to 
 get along with kings and to learn that a king is a great 
 figure (but he don't count for much when you get him 
 figured out) ; great it is to learn that, but great as that 
 is, it is not as great as the love of Christ, and the vaster 
 question is how are we going to keep it? Oh, America, 
 do not die! What will keep it from dying? Answer: 
 the church. Qh, God, keep it from dying! The little 
 red school house cannot do the job. It is mighty nice 
 to have it around, but it won't do the job. I have grown 
 up in the era of evolution. I have heard that ever since 
 I was a kitten and could mew ; I believe there is such a 
 thing. I believe in it; I do not know what it is, but I 
 seem to be as smart on that point as most people. Most 
 people who talk of evolution do not know what they are 
 talking about. They elucidate their character by that 
 chaste remark. I have heard people talk and have been 
 angry with people, and I believe calmly that nine people 
 out of ten with whom I have spoken confounded evolu- 
 ]tion with procedure. They thought of a thing and it 
 proceeded to evolve; an ostrich proceeds, but it don't 
 evolve. We get some ideas. If things are to be, we 
 thank God that they are so. 
 
 What is the further effect? The further effect is 
 that evolution cannot be kept on top without a mighty 
 fracas all the time. You keep it on top; you have got 
 
The Preservation of Our Civilization 95 
 
 cheerfully to take your man up — let's allow that evolu- 
 tion put him up, thrust him up, put him up in the sky. 
 Who is going to stand under his feet and hold him up? 
 And I say tonight that is the most serious question of all 
 the centuries. What is the reason that we call an Italian 
 a "Dago?" Answer, because he did not stand up with 
 Julius Caesar. They did not call them *'Dagos" in Ju- 
 lius Caesar's time. When you call Italians "Dagos" 
 they are a little responsible themselves, because they did 
 not stand up with Julius Caesar. No one would come 
 around and say, "Julius, you are a Dago." Where 
 would they have been if they had remarked that to Ju- 
 lius? (Laughter.) , 
 
 The thing that confronts the now is that that Em- 
 pire, to which Bishop Nuelson made reference, came in, 
 sprung in the story of the world, when one scepter 
 swayed the planet. What is the matter with the scepter ? 
 It shriveled in the wind. Is the wind stronger than yes- 
 terday? No, the wind is not stronger. Has the scepter 
 lost its majesty? No, it is Caesar's scepter, and Caesar 
 made the scepter. They tried to hold the scepter, and 
 sometimes a hundred men would hold the shivering arm 
 that held the scepter, and at last the scepter shivered and 
 broke; that is the reason they are "Dagos." They 
 could not hold their own. What are they good for, ex- 
 cept to take sustenance from America. Who are Egyp- 
 tians today? They are relatives of Mr. Pharoah, who 
 did things to Mr. Abraham's relatives, but they could 
 
96 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 not do anything to anybody's relatives now. Why not? 
 They cannot hold their own. 
 
 So, here tonight, Bishop Warren, I say, is this su- 
 perb country holding its own? 
 
 I remember the class in spelling, when they had to 
 stand up. I stood for a moment at the head of the class, 
 a feverish moment, but the trick in the spelling is not to 
 get at the head of the class, but to keep there. 
 
 Oh, civilization, what is thy name ? Answer, Baby- 
 Ion. 
 
 Oh, civilization, what is thy name? Niniveh. Oh, 
 civilization, what is thy name? Media, Persia. Oh, 
 civilization, what is thy name? Joppa. Oh, civilization, 
 what is thy name? Phoenicia. Or, civilization, what is 
 thy name ? Greece. Oh, civilization, what is thy name ? 
 Rome. Oh, civilization, what is thy name? The Holy 
 Roman Empire. Oh, civilization, what is thy name? 
 Napolean. Oh, civilization, what is thy name? Eng- 
 land. Oh, civilization, what is thy name? Gennany. 
 Oh, civilization, what is thy name? Ans., America. 
 (Applause.) Like a star they shine at night and dis- 
 solve. Like a snow flake in an angry sea, they could 
 not hold their own. We are here tonight on a problem 
 of retention of civilization. That is our business, and if 
 you know of any bigger job than that, speak to me about 
 it when the meeting is over; the holding of civilization 
 at its zenith ; it comes with the sun, and goes down with 
 the sun, but it gets up too early for most of the like of 
 
Rev. Herbert B. Johnson, U. D. 
 Superintendent Japanese Mission 
 
 Rev. Louis M. Potts, A. M. 
 Pastor First CKurcli, Pittsburg, Kansas 
 
 Rev. W. E. Doughty, A. M. 
 Secretary Laymen's Missionary Movement 
 
The Preservation of Our Civilization 97 
 
 us; in the middle of the day it is too hot for us, and it 
 goes down too late for us. How are you going to get 
 the sun of civilization to swing at noon? Some of you 
 are English and some are Irish. You have come to the 
 place where yoii ought to be Americans. You are not 
 Dutch or Irish, and I am not Mamx, and when you (in- 
 dicating Bishop Nuelson) said I was, I know what you 
 are, but I am too polite to tell it. (Laughter.) I am 
 an American. (Applause.) Here is the thing we are 
 to consider; how are we going to keep America at its 
 best? What has that to do with giants? You will say, 
 ''He gave out his text and left it." Don't you worry; 
 he didn't. He was laying the foundation for the sermon. 
 Now, what are you going to do with the ogres, the 
 giants ? There is the giant Greed ; his hand is horny and 
 his face is leather and his fingers clutch and there is no 
 blood from his palm; he has no flesh on the palm; the 
 skin is dry, and the bones are like a skeleton's bones; 
 there is blood all the while squeezed out ; he is squeezing 
 the blood — what blood? The blood of greed of human 
 life. The blood of men and women and children. What 
 are you going to do with the giant Greed? 
 
 Now, somebody is saying under his breath, *'He is 
 giving it to the Trusts." Don't you worry, I am a 
 smarter man than you think me. I am smart enough to 
 know that the Trusts do not monpolize the Greed of 
 the world. We have to face that question, and we know 
 we are as mean as any Trust that ought to be "busted." 
 Don't you worry about that. 
 
qS The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 I was traveling on the Pacific Coast some time ago, 
 and I got out to refresh my legs. You always want to 
 keep the main part of your intellectual equipment work- 
 ing, and I was out refreshing them, and I went to buy 
 some plums from a man standing near the train. I did 
 not care so much for the plums, but I said, "How many 
 for how much?" He said *'So many for so much," so 
 handed him out the money. I was trying a religious 
 philosophical experiment by an ex-manxman. I gave 
 him the full amount of money, but I did not get the full 
 amount of plums. I counted them after I got them in 
 the car and I ate what he gave and abstained from those 
 he did not give me. (Laughter.) You do not hear 
 much about that, do you ? Oh, no, Standard Oil ! Let's 
 not think of Standard Oil. We cannot think of that 
 with its twenty-five per cent. We will get along in our 
 political economy if we quit fussing at the Trusts. 
 Wouldn't it be fine to be rich, if you were? I think what 
 we want to know is, how to kill the giant of Greed. Hag- 
 gle, haggle. Life is hard; squeeze it harder. Who 
 is doing it? Greed is doing it. Accursed Greed. Lean 
 Greed. Long-fingered Greed. Who is Greed? The 
 Greed of the greedy. 
 
 Let me tell you something that is private, and I 
 don't want you to speak anyhing about it. I do not 
 want all I know to be given to the public, because they 
 would know as much as I do. This is what I want to 
 say : No civilization was ever ruined by the rich people 
 
The Preservation of Our Civilization 99 
 
 — never was — there never was enough of them to ruin 
 anything. Rich people never ruined anything. It is the 
 common people that kills civilization or makes it. That 
 is the thing you ought to know, and when will we learn 
 that? 
 
 Greed, that brother that bought three automobiles, 
 and saved the world to the tune of fifteen dollars? What 
 was his name? Greed, Greed. That fellow fussed at 
 Rockefeller. I don't know him; I know his sister-in- 
 law. He fussed at Rockefeller, and he eternally remarked 
 on J. Pierpont Morgan, and he says some things about 
 Mr. Huntington, and truck like that, and was so stingy 
 that God, to love him, had to look away from him and 
 has to turn his back on a lot of us. 
 
 Greed! What are you going to do with the giant 
 Greed? Nothing can master the giant of Greed but the 
 giant of the Church. You say you do not get along very 
 well ? No, we do not, but we are the only folks that get 
 along at all. The stingy fellow will not have an easy 
 time in the Kingdom of God. We have been saying that 
 for a thousand years. Peter's mother-in-law knew about 
 that. All the pack of mother-in-laws learned it, and 
 whatever the mother-in-laws know, the son-in-laws get 
 to learn for nothing, and it will be common information 
 before long; yet, verily, how will you tackle Greed to 
 rid us of it; the Lord only knoweth; the Lord under- 
 stands it. 
 
 We have seen persimmons converted, but they do 
 
100 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 not convert persimmons in August. It is about as un- 
 comfortable as anything you ever tried. We will carry 
 on a campaign to kill the giant Greed. Come on and 
 help us. 
 
 Men, what are we going to do with the giant Lust ? 
 Lust of what? Oh, well. Lust of power that is not legiti- 
 mate. Oh, well, Lust of appetite for stimulants that we 
 do not need. Oh, well, Lust of passions that are base 
 and belong in Hell. What are you going to do with 
 them? 
 
 Now I will tell you something — You know it — I 
 am only going to tell it ; you are so smart we don't have 
 to amplify things before you. When Rome was at its 
 brainiest, Rome was at its rottenest. How are 
 you going to kill the giant Lust? I will tell you how: 
 God and Christ's Church, God's Church has got to kill 
 him. Now, every once in awhile people ask me, as they 
 ask every Minister — a Minister is a sort of depot for 
 people to put their question marks in for free storage, 
 and they have asked me a great many times: "Why 
 doesn't the Christian Church get on faster, and why this 
 and that and the other grows faster than the Christian 
 Church." I do not have much respect for people that 
 ask that, because they do not use their brain. Nobody 
 with any understanding would ask why the Christian 
 Church does not get along faster; you have got to clean 
 up your ethical standard and spiritual nature to belong 
 
The Preservation of Our Civilization loi 
 
 to the Church. The people we have in the Church can- 
 not lie, cannot steal in the Church, cannot slander in the 
 Church, cannot do one hundred thousand things in the 
 Church and be a member of the Church, not one of 
 them. Every one of them is spoken against; outlawed 
 in the Church of God; thank God. 
 
 Why do we get along so slow ? The marvel is that 
 we get on at all; come over and quit your meanness. 
 Lust! Who is going to kill the giant Lust? No insti- 
 tution but the Church. Who is going to kill the giant 
 of Doubt? What is the name we call Doubt? Oh, 
 well, get philosophical about it. We call it the agnostic 
 mood. What is agnosticism? If we were big enough 
 we could reach out our hands and grab a star; we could 
 do it if we were big enough, but I never heard of any 
 one grabbing a star; my little son, when he was young, 
 would reach out and bawl because he could not, but I 
 said, "Son, bawl on; that is your nature; no one in this 
 family can grab a star." If we were big enough and 
 could hold it up Hke a candle and say, "Burn on," I 
 would like to walk around at midnight and hold a star, 
 and some one would say, "Who are you under the 
 light," I would say I am the fellow that grabbed the 
 star and am using it for a candle. If we were big 
 enough we could grab a star and hold it as a candle. 
 If we were great enough, we would grab after God. 
 
 Doubt! Who is going to kill Doubt? Down in 
 St. Louis, the other day, two girls killed each other after 
 
I02 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 kissing each other, and they left a note saying that life 
 was too hard; there was a Church three blocks away, 
 and if they had gone to the Church they would not have 
 committed suicide. Folks would not commit suicide that 
 go to church. Why? We everywhere in the church, 
 rich or poor, meet together and they are all equal in the 
 church. What was the trouble with these girls? Could 
 not get bread? Oh no, that is nonsense. When you 
 hear a woman cannot get bread, you can set it down as 
 sheer nonsense. Women cannot sometimes get the kind 
 of employment they want, but domestic service is the 
 best kind of service that they can do, but they won't 
 do it and now you women say "Amen." Sometimes the 
 preachers say the poor shopgirls cannot get work. If 
 they quit the shop they could get work fast enough. 
 They cannot all work in the shops, and there are too 
 many in the shops now; that is the trouble; they get 
 neurotic. They see a crowd go by; they see a man go 
 by; they meet him; they get married; they get tired of 
 each other and they get divorced; they live on a quiet 
 street, no excitement, and that is the reason that divorces 
 are going on. Those girls could have gotten employment. 
 I remember a poem I read years since ; people were 
 meeting the side of the sea, and one man said: "What 
 have you lost?" "I have lost my child." Another had 
 lost his fortune, another had lost this and that, and one 
 man sighed, and he looked at his hands and his hands 
 were wet with tears, and he said, "What have you lost, 
 
The Preservation of Our Civilization 103 
 
 friend?" and he said, 'Taith, lost faith." I think the 
 "Right of Way" ought to be given to everybody in crea- 
 tion. Why? Because it is the most perfect refutation 
 of agnosticism ever written. 
 
 Charley Steele did not believe, you remember, did 
 not believe, you remember, did not believe. Finally 
 Death came and he rose, clutched for his glasses; finally 
 strove to put them to his eyes; Death was coming, and 
 he said, " 'scuse me, I don't think I have been introduced 
 to you, and I am going out where the fitful wind and 
 angry seas are and no faith. Oh God, excuse me, I do 
 not think I have ever been introduced to you." 
 
 What are you going to do with the giant of Des- 
 pair? I was reading a book the other day in which the 
 story was told of two men who were wrestling on a 
 door step, and one man thought the door step led to a 
 lawn, and he saw his antagonist's face grow white when 
 the first wrestler almost twisted the man off the step, 
 but the night was dark and the wrestlers wrought, and 
 the wrestler saw a frenzy on the face of the other 
 wrestler and somehow fear crushed into the man's heart ; 
 the wrestler forced the man off the door step. It was 
 not a door step onto a lawn, but an abyss and the man 
 tumbled, and with a cry and a fearful struggle he 
 crashed down to manglement and death. Despair, with 
 thy white face and broken heart ! Who is going to save 
 the world from Despair? Answer, the Church. 
 
 We are here to wrestle with the giants. That is 
 
I04 The Conservation of Our HI oral Resources 
 
 what we are here for. We are here to wrestle with the 
 implacable, the superior, the demoralizer. We must not 
 give over the struggle I say here tonight, not because I 
 am a churchman, but I bless my God that I am, I say, 
 not because I am a preacher in the church (I thank my 
 God that they let me preach at all), but I say tonighf 
 with some degree of familiarity with the history of the 
 world, I say the solitary way to maintain the decency 
 of the now, the chasteness of the now, the sobriety of 
 the now, the desire to cleanse the Augean stables, the 
 only way to prevent its collapse and maintain its su- 
 premacy is by the church. (Applause.) 
 
 Men, if you believe in the betterment of the world; 
 if you think the Golden Age is not a fitful, feverish, 
 ignus-fatuus but a glorious realization of tomorrow, fight 
 for it, wrestle not with the lesser light, but against the 
 principalities and kingdoms of this world. 
 
 I wish Paul could come around here tonight. If 
 he could come around here tonight and look at this 
 crowd, he would say: "What crowd is this? This is 
 not an old man's crowd." The composite face of this 
 crowd is not an old body's crowd ; it is a crowd betwixt 
 middle age and youth, and what does that mean? To- 
 morrow ! And if Paul was here he would ogle, he would 
 say, "What town is this. Brother Warren?" And 
 Brother Warren, with that same splurge I have heard 
 him use, would say, "Denver, Colorado." I never heard 
 Brother Warren talk about Denver that he did not give 
 
The Preservation of Our Civilization 105 
 
 a kind of crow and cackle together, and Brother War- 
 ren would say (laughter) to Paul, "Denver, Colorado," 
 and Paul would say, "Is that near Ephesus?" and 
 Brother Warren would say, "A little West." He would 
 say it is not a town near Hispania, and the Bishop 
 would say, "It is a little West of Hispania," and Paul 
 would say, "It must be a sea town." 
 
 The wrestling is going on; it is not June yet; it is 
 May. What is better than May? June is. It is not 
 June, it is May. How are we going to push May in 
 June? By the Church of God. How are we going to 
 keep the world for the eternal June? By this Holy 
 Book. (Applause.) 
 
"THE BLACK MAN IN THE NATION." 
 
 REV. I. L. THOMAS, D. D., BALTIMORE, MD. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Brothers and Sisters: I am 
 delighted in the privilege I have this morning, to take 
 an humble part in this great movement. I am to speak 
 in reference to the black man in the nation. Historically, 
 we are to consider first, how the black man got in the 
 nation. He certainly did not get in of his own accord. 
 He was brought here as personal property, landing at 
 Jamestown, Va., in 1619. Looking back over the years, 
 we believe there was a providence in his coming, in 
 development, in the privilege of association, in drinking 
 from the reservoir of this great nation in its advance- 
 ment. What the black man has done, these years he 
 has been upon these shores, and his sympathy towards 
 his brothers and sisters in his far-off Fatherland, we 
 are glad to report to you, and appreciate the privilege of 
 saying a few words in reference to these eleven millions 
 of our people. 
 
 It might be interesting to reflect as to the purpose 
 of the black man's development in this republic. We 
 hear a theory that the Negro be exported to Africa. 
 That would be the biggest job America might undertake, 
 
The Black Man in the Nation 107 
 
 to get the black man out. He is coming in, in child 
 life, about as rapidly as anybody else, and would need a 
 great many ships constantly taking him over. The task 
 would seem too great to be undertaken and it looks as 
 if, in God*s purpose, he is in the nation to stay. 
 
 What has he done since arriving in this land. In 
 the first place he contributed service, in the days when 
 the colonies groaned under the burden and tyranny of 
 the mother country. When those humble few lifted 
 their voice to God, for relief, the answer seemed to be, 
 "The liberty you should enjoy, you must secure in con- 
 flict." Then came the Revolutionary War. The black 
 man contributed service that the colonies might win 
 their independence, and the first man to shed his blood 
 in that cause was a black man. 
 
 Then came another scene in the life of the nation, 
 of intense interest. The nation seemingly had become 
 sundered. The stars and stripes were not floating over 
 all. To keep the nation united required the shedding of 
 seas of blood. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, of blessed memory, made a call 
 to the boys of the north, who shouted in response, "We 
 are coming to preserve the union 300,ocx> strong.'* Later 
 the president issued another call for volunteers. The 
 black man answered 100,000 strong, from the rice 
 swamps, the cotton fields, everywhere in our great 
 southland. As little as you may consider it, he did a 
 little toward helping Old Glory to float again over this 
 nation. 
 
io8 The Conservation of Otir Moral Resources 
 
 When England sought to test the republic's ability 
 to exist as a nation, in the war of 1812, causing this 
 country to pass through one of the greatest trials it ever 
 experienced, the outcome of which decided whether the 
 United States should become a world power. The 
 black man helped to give this nation a place as one of 
 the great world powers, that should uplift the world to 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 In the war of 1846-8, when Mexico tried to extend 
 her boundary to include Texas and part of Louisiana, the 
 black man of the South was called from everywhere, 
 that he might help in the conflict against Mexico. The 
 Lone Star state and other border lands were saved for- 
 ever as part of this nation. 
 
 We have endeavored to do a little, and before de- 
 ciding the black man should leave America, remember 
 he has been loyal to the stars and stripes, and tried in an 
 humble way, to prove worthy of a place here. 
 
 He has borne his burdens with patience, waiting on 
 God and the nation to give him a man's chance. We are 
 not discouraged. As long as this church is for humanity, 
 regardless of race or color, the black man in your land 
 will look yonder, with his face toward the Christ, and 
 sing a song of trusting anticipation, that his day will 
 eventually come. 
 
 The black man has made progress here. We could 
 not have made it by ourselves. We had 270 years of 
 slavery and when tlie Emancipation Proclamation went 
 
The Black Man in the Nation 109 
 
 into effect, four million slaves were ignorant, could not 
 read, had had no chance to learn. We could not have 
 made the progress had it not been for blessed men and 
 women you represent, and your fathers, who lifted us 
 up when we could not help ourselves. Remember, there 
 are 800,000 black folk today, who bear scars of slavery. 
 In this brief period of opportunity, the contribution erf 
 the Negro in all walks of life is an evidence there is 
 something in him, and by the help of Grod, with a chance 
 like other men, it will come out. In centuries yet to 
 come, you will be able to see the black man coming, with 
 a cheerful song, saying to you, representing the other 
 races, "We are with you to uphold the best traditions of 
 America, and will prove true to the flag, any time the 
 black man is needed.** 
 
 The outlook for missionary endeavor is, first, that 
 the Negro must be considered an integral part of the 
 nation. To recognize all others, and exclude him, or 
 exile him to the outskirts, is not the purpose of God, nor 
 the teaching of the Methodist Episcopal and other 
 churches. As miserable as we are, we are here. If you 
 want your name to lead the nations of the earth in the 
 future, you cannot do it unless you help lift up these 
 eleven million Negroes under the flag. 
 
 It would be unwise to leave the black man to him- 
 self. We are nothing but a "child" race. We have had 
 just forty-five years to come where we are. Those to 
 whom I speak represent an opportunity of a thousand 
 
I lo The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 years, in development and civilization. To expect us, 
 just forty years old in the civilization of the world, to 
 be able to see from your angle, and stand where you do, 
 in my humble judgment is a requirement beyond the 
 ability of a child race. Give us time, and by the help 
 of God, we will delight you in future by a race 
 development ! 
 
 It is a great missionary field. O, if you could see 
 those black men in the South ! There are some of the 
 most heroic men for righteousness you could find in the 
 world. I am delighted that Bishop Cranston is present. 
 I have been with him in several conferences in the South. 
 As I looked at the man of God, dealing with us kindly, 
 not with the spirit of expecting us in forty-five years to 
 be up to his vision — like a father, leading all, in every 
 detail of helpfulness — I said, "God bless Bishop Cran- 
 ston!** May he live long! Representing the spirit of 
 Jesus Christ because we are lonely, and not up to the 
 point of life others have reached, he recognized we are 
 "in making," and ought to be helped in every way. 
 
 The Negro should be encouraged. Any man en- 
 couraged will try to do better. To discourage an in- 
 dividual, saying, "You can*t be anything," doesn't 
 help him. 
 
 Sometimes we find this situation : Three boys met, 
 a Hebrew, American and N«gro. It was asked of the 
 Jewish boy, "What are you going to do?" "I will be 
 a merchant. My fathers were." They asked the Amer- 
 
The Black Man in the Nation 1 1 1 
 
 ican boy, and he said, "I am going to be a lawyer or 
 statesman, as my fathers before me were." They asked 
 Sambo, "What are you going to be?" He said, "Fse 
 gwine to be nothing. My mother said I would be noth- 
 ing, and that my father before me was nothing, and 
 nothing from nothing leaves nothing." 
 
 If we are given a little encouragement and the 
 possibility of the race is recognized, there isn't any doubt 
 we will be able to take our place like others in this 
 nation. 
 
 Let me add — don't believe all you read in news- 
 papers about us. Highly colored things are written. 
 Many times the offender is not a black man in fact, but 
 another man whose face has been blackened. 
 
 The American Magazine ran some strong articles, 
 giving plain facts about the conditions in the South, and 
 put on the May number a frontispiece of a little Negro 
 boy, about 12 years old, with the world upon him, and 
 the little Negro was trying to keep the world from 
 crushing him. Little by little God is helping this Negro 
 child to develop strength, physically, mentally and 
 morally, and by and by, with the help of such men and 
 women as you, scattered over this land, and the effort of 
 the black man himself, we will be lifted up and stand 
 with you in every interest for the welfare of the nation. 
 
 We believe in OLD GLORY! When the Rough 
 Riders were being cut down by the sharp shooters of the 
 Spanish army, and would have been ruthlessly 
 
112 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 slaughtered, every man in the 9th and loth cavalry, they 
 saw their brothers in distress and made a charge in that 
 direction. The Spaniards saw them coming, falling as 
 they were shot down, but moving rapidly over their fal- 
 len comrades to help rescue the Rough Riders. It was 
 said they looked like a black cloud rising to the Span- 
 iards. They were able to save the rest of the Rough 
 Riders, and preserve that great man, Theodore Roose- 
 velt, to this nation. 
 
 It was a black man that planted Old GJory on the 
 Spanish fort, on the 4th day of July, of that memorable 
 year of the Spanish-American war. We believe in Old 
 Glory and will stand by her. The black man has never 
 supported insurrection, never proven disloyal anywhere. 
 He has been true to the creed of this nation. 
 
 We believe, too, in another flag, bearing the colors 
 of Humanity. Old Glory, great as it is, might fade 
 away in the providence of God, but one flag will ever 
 stand, its colors never fading away — the flag of human 
 liberty, having five colors, white, black, red, brown and 
 yellow. The black may be a little dim, but God will 
 keep rubbing out the obscuring dust of the years that 
 are past, until you see us with clearness as one of the 
 colors of this flag. 
 
 You cannot eliminate us, because you haven't any 
 real flag of human liberty without the black stripe. 
 
 I thank you for this hearing this morning. My 
 people cry unto God and the noble people of the land. 
 
The Black Man in the Nation 1 1 3 
 
 simply for a man's chance; that is all. Help us to get it, 
 and since we have helped to make it possible to have the 
 stars and stripes over all the land today, we ask that 
 the stars and stripes protect us, now. The Japanese, the 
 Chinese, have a government and a flag behind them. 
 The Italian, the Bohemian, every race represented here, 
 has a flag behind it. We have no flag but Old Glory. 
 Will the flag for which my father bled and died, protect 
 us, and help to get us a man's opportunity? The Chris- 
 tian people of the republic must largely answer that 
 question. (Amen.) 
 
 Bishop Cranston : It seems a little thing to ask, 
 simply a man's chance. What less could these people ask. 
 When I think of the way they are dealt with in cartoons, 
 I feel ashamed for American journalism. There are 
 types of Africans, as of white people. There is a com- 
 ical side to the African character, as there is to the best 
 people the world knows anything about. 
 
 The first year of the war, 1861, there came to me a 
 boy of yellow color, who had been at school in a little 
 town known as a station on the underground railway. 
 His name was Holland, and he wanted to be the servant 
 and cook of my captain and myself. We took him. I 
 cannot say much for him as a servant, or cook, but a 
 year or two passed by and Holland disappeared. Next 
 time I saw him, he was in the Republican National con- 
 vention at Cincinnati, that nominated Mr. Hayes, and I 
 got a little of his history. Disappearing from the office 
 
1 14 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 of cook and servant, that he had not filled with great ac- 
 ceptability, he re-appeared as a soldier, wearing the uni- 
 form of the men fighting the battles of the union. When 
 every commanding officer of his regiment had been shot 
 down, acting as Sergeant Major, Holland gathered up 
 the colors and carried them on. There he was, represent- 
 ing some district in the National convention, and I saw 
 what was the matter — he had too much man about him to 
 be satisfied in a menial position. Say, that is mean, isn't 
 it, for a black man to feel that way ? Lots of people think 
 so, and say he ought to be content to black boots all the 
 days of his life. I begrude no man his chance. It is a 
 small nature that can take no larger view of the problems 
 of God and humanity than that. 
 
 Let me tell you something, if you fancy all the peo- 
 ple of the South hold the Negro in contempt, it is not 
 true. It is not true of the church that bears our name 
 down there. I was talking to Bishop Haas last week, in 
 Baltimore, last meeting held there, in regard to connec- 
 tions between the churches. He said, ^'Whatever hap- 
 pens, we never can abandon the Negro." Some think we 
 are going to throw the Negro overboard, if there ever 
 should be a union between churches North and South. 
 Speaking for his charge, this man says, "Whatever hap- 
 pens we must never abandon the Negro." The situation 
 of the Negro in this country is exceedingly pathetic. 
 The worst of it is, he had no responsibility for bringing 
 about his attitude toward national affairs. He was 
 brought here by compulsion. He has simply endured 
 
The Black Man in the Nation 115 
 
 what came to him. He is doing- his best now to make 
 the best of a bad situation. Methodism cannot abandon 
 him to himself, even after these forty-five years of 
 progress. If ever you hear it said there is any dispo- 
 sition on the part of Methodists, whatever may happen 
 to us, to turn the black man down and refuse to help him 
 in his march toward better things, I think you may safely 
 contradict that. It is not true. You have listened to one 
 of those black men this morning. I guess God made him 
 an orator. What would you think of some of those in- 
 sulting, degrading "comical" cartoons of this man, as 
 an orator? 
 
 I heard a story of one of our Negro Methodist 
 preachers who went to another church. Asked why, he 
 said, "I wanted to go to a church which was more orderly 
 and put on a little more style." "What did you find that 
 is more orderly and stylish?" "Why, that church I be- 
 longs to now burns Roman candles and insect powder on 
 the altar." (Laughter.) That may be laughable, but it 
 indicates a disposition to keep fully up with the white 
 brethren, in all that pertains to the high church as well as 
 other things. 
 
 Dr. Coker: On a Kansas railroad train, behind 
 me were two colored women, evidently mothers. One 
 said, "I have six children. Five are all right, but there 
 has to be one white sheep in a family." The man you 
 just heard is not a "white sheep," in that 
 sense, thank God. Although his face may be dark, he 
 is one of God's noble'iTien." Now we are to hear from 
 brother. Louis M. Potts. 
 
'THE JEW, HIS FUTURE/' 
 
 REV. LOUIS M. POTTS, M. D. 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Brothers : I have the honor 
 to represent the people from whom the Christian church 
 received her Bible, her inception, her God and her Christ. 
 In view of that tremendous obligation, it ought to be 
 impossible that in any Christian community there should 
 be the least prejudice against these people. I am aware 
 that in some places, among some people, the Jew has all 
 the recognition he might crave, and in the abstract, is 
 considered among the choicest of peoples, but among the 
 majority I find a prejudice against the race in whose 
 veins flow the same blood that was in the veins of Jesus 
 Christ. It is not that I feel the least degree of shame 
 of Hebrew blood, indeed, rather the opposite, for if any 
 one has a right to be proud of origin, it is the Hebrew. 
 I am reminded of a citizen who never lost an opportunity 
 to relate that one of his ancestors on his father's side 
 was present when the Declaration of Independence was 
 signed. A Jew replied, 'That is fine, but my ancestors 
 were very much present when the Ten Commandments 
 were given, not simply on one side of the family, but 
 on both sides." I lament there is a prejudice against the 
 
The Jew, His Future 1 1 7 
 
 Jews and am not here to add to it. I would not say 
 an unkind word; they are still my people. 
 
 The people known as the Jews have a glorious past. 
 Although I am not here to speak of the past. I am to act 
 the prophet, and it is a difficult role. It is part of the Home 
 Missionary problem; and I am anxious you shall get my 
 viewpoint. I am to speak about the Jew and his future. 
 For the last 2,500 years, the Jew has been a wanderer 
 upon the face of the earth. He has been an omnipresent, 
 ubiquitous individual, a peaceful citizen, but always ac- 
 tive, and agressive. Cities have walled him within cer- 
 tain bounderes. Some nations have built walls about 
 themselves to keep out other people, but the Jew has 
 never been entirely walled in, or walled out. Even in 
 China the Jew has found a resting place inside the walls. 
 When General Grant made his tour around the world, 
 some one asked him the most remarkable thing that had 
 come under his observation and he replied, ''the most re- 
 markable thing was that over in China I saw a Jew 
 and Chinaman doing business together and the China- 
 man was getting the better of the Jew." 
 
 What is the future of this people? More Jews live 
 today than ever before in history. You recall that for 
 centuries the Jew has been persecuted among all natioas. 
 During the last attempt of Rome to disperse them — an 
 attempt that succeeded — over one million Jewish people 
 fell by the sword. Recalling all this, and taking my 
 statement, based upon the book, that there are more 
 
1 1 8 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 Jews today than ever before in the world's history, you 
 will understand the virility and power of this people. 
 
 What is to be their future? There is an 
 answer that claims to be Biblical. We are told the 
 Bible promise is unto the seed of Abraham forever. 
 They are the "Chosen people" and everything shall be 
 well with them. I am here to disabuse any mind of 
 that idea. Any theory of a chosen people, enervates the 
 Christian church. There is no chosen people in God's 
 plan. The idea God would select one family or tribe, 
 giving them everything, and denying others, is an in- 
 dictment against God's fairness. God is fair. All 
 through history the Jews have stumbled over this 
 thought. The prophet said, "The soul that sinneth it 
 shall die" whether Jew or Gentile. The Pharisees were 
 complaining and Jesus said, "You are children of the 
 Dfevil," whereupon they were much offended. They 
 wrapped their cloaks about them, and said, "Don't you 
 know we have Abraham to be our father?" The Lord 
 Jesus, rising, in his indignation, said that "God is able 
 to make out of these stones children unto Abraham." 
 There is no chosen people except as people choose them- 
 selves, by character and deed. 
 
 God did use the Jews, remarkably, for his aims. 
 God honored them because they had capacity, were intel- 
 lectual and spiritual. But when the Jews sought to confine 
 the wine of the new Gospel in the old bottles of the faith 
 which was Jewish, and would rule out the claims of the 
 
The Jew, His Future 119 
 
 Gentile peoples, God had to say, "Ye are rejected," and 
 they have been rejected as the chosen people since 
 that day. 
 
 Who are the "chosen people ?" If we are to use that 
 expression, the chosen people today are those in the 
 Christian church, and we shall be, as long, and as long 
 only, as we are missionary in our purpose and evange- 
 listic in our activities. When the Christian church shall 
 say, "Now we are well enshrined in the respect of the 
 world, we shall not mix with the slums of the earth, 
 and shall build, for ourselves, high spires, and splendid 
 edifies, somewhere in the suburbs of cities, and include 
 only the select," then the Lord shall say to us, "Ye are 
 rejected from being my chosen people." 
 
 There is another, the answer economic, the answer 
 philanthropic, an answer in one word — "Zionism," a 
 word to conjure by. It seeks to make out of Palestine 
 a Jewish commonwealth, of Jerusalem a Jewish capital. 
 It is a dream beautiful — ^but a dream. 
 
 I have time to state but two reasons why Zionism 
 must fail. First, the better class of the Jews won't go. 
 You, from the towns of this conference, ask your cloth- 
 ing merchant when he plans to go to Palestine. He will 
 laugh. If in Palestine, or as Zangwill and others would 
 have it. South Africa, or South America, if in any of 
 those three countries, should be established a Hebrew 
 state, the better class of Jews would not go. They are 
 doing very well in America. 
 
1 20 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 Second, the Jew is physically incompetent for pio- 
 neer work. For centuries he has been housed up in tene- 
 ments. Five million live in Russia, in conditions diffi- 
 cult for you to believe. Of all attempts to colonize the 
 Jew, only one has been at all successful, and that but in 
 limited degree in the Province of Kherson, Russia, 
 where Czar Nicholas established an agricultural col- 
 ony in 1804. 
 
 You ask, "What is to become of the Jew?" I be- 
 lieve that under God the Jew is to be assimilated by the 
 strong Christian civilization of America. You say, 
 'The wish is father to the thought." I grant that ; why 
 should not the wish be in my heart. But the wish is 
 not the only reason for my statement. If you say that 
 for centuries the Jew has resisted assimilation, I but 
 call your attention to Hebraic history. You will re- 
 member that after the death of Solomon, the ten north- 
 ern tribes seceded from Judah and set up a separate 
 government. The Old Testament records the stormy 
 history of these Iraelites. It is a record of a wandering 
 away from the laws of God and the chapter ends with 
 Assyria, the conqueror. 
 
 Assyria scattered the Israelites among her several 
 states and since then the question is often heard, ''What 
 has become of the ten tribes? They ceased to exist. 
 Why? Because in the first place, they lost racial con- 
 sciousness. In the second place they had not the pro- 
 tection of the peculiar customs Ezekial built up, in the 
 
The Jew, His Future 1 2 1 
 
 second captivity, and in the third place they allowed in- 
 termarriage, until they were not a Jewish people but a 
 mixture of many peoples. Those familiar with Amer- 
 ican conditions know that the process that destroyed the 
 Kingdom of Israel is operative in America. 
 
 There are two million Jews in this country. If the 
 present ratio of increase continues for another quarter 
 century, we shall have more Jews here than called Solo- 
 mon king. Solomon only had seven million subjects in 
 the climax of Jewish history. 
 
 I said the Jew is to be assimilated. The problem 
 is, shall the Jew be Americanized by non-Christian 
 civilization, or be Christianized by a wholesome American 
 civilization ? 
 
 The Jew has been persecuted, and hence is clannish to 
 the extreme. To his credit let it be said that he has 
 not been swerved from loyalty to Judaism by any perse- 
 cution. Had he been treated kindly I believe that long 
 ago the Jew would have turned to the Christian Gbspel. 
 Here in America, under kindly toleration, the Jew is 
 less a Jew than ever before. 
 
 There is in operation in this land a process that I 
 believe even now is giving the church its great oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 Note the condition of the Jewish churches. There 
 are two churches now, with a difference more radical, 
 between the Reform and Orthodox, than between the 
 most radical Catholic and Protestant. Dr. Singer in- 
 
T 22 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 sists the Jew is losing racial consciousness already, under 
 the reformed church. The reformed Jew is not as good 
 a Jew as I am and I am a Christian. The in- 
 fluence operating most effectively in undermining racial 
 consciousness is the matter of education. The Jew 
 loves learning as no other people. In our high schools 
 and universities there is a larger proportion of Jews 
 than one would expect from their relative number. I 
 am told there are so many Jews in Columbia University 
 that the real reason for abolishing football in that in- 
 stitution was that the Jewish students objected to 
 handling the "pigskin." 
 
 I started school life a lad of 9, and the first days 
 remember the fear with which I started. Somewhere 
 I had received the impression that the Gentile enjoyed 
 nothing better than the maltreatment of the Jew. 
 
 I have a picture in mind that grows more vivid 
 with the years. The background is a Russian yard, on 
 a hill, the mob coming in at the front gate, and the 
 mother fleeing with her youngsters to a neighboring 
 com field, where they hide. With terrified hearts the 
 mother and youngsters see their home demolished. The 
 feather beds, even, are torn, the feathers flying in the 
 air, and in the road people are being murdered. Why? 
 Because they were Hebrews ! The Jew has reason to hate 
 the Christian because he has been informed — and the 
 Russian Greek church by its conduct does not contradict 
 it — ^that the church of Christ stands for that kind of 
 
The Jew His Future 123 
 
 treatment. But when the Jew comes here and learns that 
 Americans are kindly in heart, that prejudice fades 
 away. It must fade. EvangeHstic effort is powerless 
 otherwise. 
 
 The wall of peculiar custom falls down under the 
 process of education. And the social relations which 
 our school system fosters leads to intermarriage. I 
 traveled recently from Davenport to Dubuque with a 
 Jewish salesman, 60 years old, who said his son married 
 a Gentile girl, and his daughter was being waited on by 
 a Gentile lad, and he confided in me he had no objections 
 to the union. Marriage between Jew and Gentile is so 
 rapidly increasing that the leaders of Judaism are 
 alarmed. 
 
 The same Jewish salesman said, *T have a young 
 daughter going to Presbyterian Sunday school. Recently 
 she said she did not want to go any more. She ex- 
 plained that the teacher, a woman, asked this question of 
 her class, 'Who are the most hated of all peoples?' The 
 answer was, The Jews.' " The tender-hearted lass went 
 weeping to her home, and did not want to go any more. 
 I do not blame her. If I were the Pastor of that good 
 woman — I am sure she did it thoughtlessly — she would 
 apologize to that family, or no longer teach in the Sun- 
 day school. We have enough prejudice in the world. 
 We cannot win the Jew by hating him. It is said, "He 
 killed our Christ." He killed his Christ, and has suf- 
 fered for it ; but I am aware, that in this good land there 
 
1 24 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 are Christian people who, if the Christ came, would cry, 
 "Crucify him!" Do not throw stones at the Jew, my 
 friends. Let us be tender and kind with him, for I be- 
 lieve in the coming quarter century we shall be opening 
 closed eyes and the Jew will come unto his Christ. 
 
 Dr. Coker: I am sure it is with patriotic hearts 
 that we meet tonight, realizing the great responsibilities 
 upon us. America never had in all history, so much 
 to do and so large a field to cover. Sometimes, when 
 we have been shouting our huzzahs for the American 
 flag, we have forgotten some other things. God save 
 America! The world needs America. Christ needs 
 America. Shall He have America? God help us to bring 
 this thing to pass. Our country has been broadened in 
 recent years, and extends across the seas now, to posses- 
 sions that are ours by force of conflicts in the past, ours 
 to evangelize, and to save the American flag that is over 
 them. They are Home Missions and therefore I intro- 
 duce with great pleasure, and I am sure to your great 
 profit, Dr. Benjamin S. Haywood. 
 
OUR INSULAR POSSESSIONS. 
 
 REV. DR. BEN J. S. HAYWOOD, SUPERINTENDENT OF 
 MISSIONS IN PORTO RICO. 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : I am 
 happy to greet the representatives of the church, than 
 which there has been none more loyal in special gifts to 
 the flag I represent. I come tonight to report, if you 
 please, and announce something of the dividends realized 
 by the investment made. Methinks not the least is this 
 splendid conference, joining hands with Rock River and 
 Michigan, in the education of a lad known now through- 
 out the church, because of his heroic endeavor in mere 
 childhood, and who, if I mistake not, will be widely 
 known by the service his splendid manhood will ultimately 
 bring to the church. 
 
 Our island possessions are three great divisions. 
 You will not expect me to dwell upon the Philippine or 
 Hawaiian group. Conditions are common and in very 
 large measure much the same, but I do tonight wish to 
 speak of a race who have had the **charred black end of 
 centuries as their portion — territorially small, and yet 
 history reveals that many of the greatest powers and in- 
 fluences have come from small territories. Bohemia, one 
 
1 26 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 of the smallest of the European countries, diamond- 
 shaped, hidden there in the heart of Europe, afforded the 
 ring wherein Frederick the Great won the fame that 
 makes him a world figure. Therefore, you will view, as 
 worthy your attention, this island whose shores are 
 washed by the waters of the Carribean, famed by Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes' Chambered Nautilus, a land almost we 
 might say of the lunar rainbow. It was my privilege to 
 see, a few weeks ago, at 12 130 at night, this bow of 
 promise yonder in God's sky. I am happy to speak to 
 people who recognize those living in that far-off land, as 
 a people progressing and advancing. You are not like 
 the lad I saw years ago, when visiting the central Illinois 
 conference. At the end of the railroad platform where I 
 arrived was a typical American boy. He was surprised 
 I did not know the church location and I explained I was 
 a stranger. He asked, 'Where do you live?" "In Porto 
 Rico." "Porto Rico. Gee, ye's a heathen, then, ain't 
 you?" I represent people who have striven for cen- 
 turies, who have never known any chance worthy the 
 name, until America gave it to them. The vegetation I 
 hold in my hand explains in some measure the situation. 
 Those who think they are competent to know say this 
 identical vegetation is described in the story of the prod- 
 igal son, as the husks on which the prodigal fed in the 
 foreign country. It is very nourishing for swine and is 
 oftimes in West Indies the only food that the swine eat. 
 When green, the hog can easily open the outer covering 
 
Our Insular Possessions 127 
 
 and the kernel within is very nutritious for swine. It 
 illustrates the food given these people for 400 years by 
 what I am compelled to say is a perverted form of 
 Christianity. The fruitage of that food can best be 
 realized when I announce to you that after four centuries 
 of such a diet, the Roman Catholic church turned over 
 to the United States twelve years ago, one public school 
 building, and in the entire islands but 500 schools, all fee 
 schools, nearly all parochial, where simply the instruction 
 of the church was given. After twelve years of our con- 
 ception of Americanism and higher civilization, we have 
 over 2,000 public schools in Porto Rico, and over every 
 one of them floats the stars and stripes. Of the 1,900 
 teachers over 1,500 are Porto Rican themselves. I doubt 
 if, in all the history of American education, this situation 
 has ever yet been paralleled, for those people, only 10% 
 of whom could read or write, have so advanced that our 
 census figures now reveal that 25% have mastered the 
 fundamental principles and are today reading and writ- 
 ing their names. 
 
 There is much misapprehension of where we are. It 
 has been seriously asked, by those misinformed, "In 
 which one of the Philippine Islands do we find Porto 
 Rico?" 
 
 In a western state, a lady sent up her card, for "in- 
 formation about Porto Rico," saying she was engaged 
 for an address before the Woman's Club. It developed 
 that she "understood it was an insignificant island in the 
 Indian Ocean just east of Africa." 
 
1 28 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 Go with me as we open the gateway to this land of 
 great beauty, five days from New York city, east and 
 south, over 200 miles south of Cuba, i,cxx) miles east of 
 Havana. Yonder lie the islands of this chain, a number 
 of them small indeed. The largest is only 100x50 miles, 
 but our census reveal a populaion of a million and a 
 quarter upon this island. Among these islands is one 
 which is Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. We 
 have a situation of wonderful charm. It is a land of 
 great scenic beauty. Mine eyes have seen nothing com- 
 parable, unless a part of the Swiss Alps might be so con- 
 sidered. It is a land of great value in its intrinsic worth. 
 Our market products are receiving the attention of the 
 world. The highest exports known under the Spanish 
 regime were twenty-two million. Last year the amount 
 was sixty-six million. You speak of your great corn 
 crops. I will speak of something sweeter. Last year 
 our sugar harvest amounted to 360,000 tons. We are 
 sweet enough to keep your politics in good order up here, 
 if you will just let us. It is a land of mineral wealth, 
 but these elements do not represent after all the value of 
 those islands to the United States government. I bring 
 a report, not read from a book, but what my own eye*? 
 have seen there. In years of service yonder, I have 
 threaded my ways through the humblest shacks. I slept 
 recently in a house 12x14, just eleven children, father, 
 mother and myself, and the rain began to pour so fiercely 
 the chickens, two goats and three hogs were brought in, 
 
Our Insular Possessions 129 
 
 and there was room for more. I know something* of the 
 situation from the so-called bottom. Likewise today I 
 am proud to tell you that upon our church rolls are the 
 names of judges, doctors and attorneys. The professions 
 are now a part of our Methodist membership and from 
 these two extremes I bring you tonight the observation 
 of these six years, and I declare it my judgment to be 
 as true that William McKinley must have been led by 
 God, in opening the door of promise and hope and truth 
 to these people as Moses was in the days of old. We are 
 told by one near him in thought and affection, that he 
 said, "God helping me, I will implant the American con- 
 science in the isles of the sea," as he rose from his knees. 
 Surely God's voice was speaking through his lips. 
 
 Now these people are misrepresented sometimes, 
 even in Congress. There you hear occasionally speeches 
 of ingratitude, but I think I know when I say to y lu that 
 in the rank and file of the Porto Rican people, there is a 
 keen, profound sense of loyalty, devotion and gratitude to 
 the American nation. Beautiful and significant is the fact 
 that on the humblest wall you frequently find, in moun- 
 tain regions, alongside the face of the Virgin Mary, an 
 humble wood cut of the face of William McKinley. 
 Some time ago, in the interior, I was riding on horseback 
 and saw a line of sixty-seven children, and an humble 
 shack answering the purpose of a public school. Exactly 
 at 9 o'clock the stars and stripes reached the pinnacle of 
 the flag pole, and they raised their voices in what I think 
 
1 30 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 was one of the most impressive little peons of praise I 
 ever heard, ''My County, Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of 
 Liberty, of Thee I Sing/' Out of this citizenship will 
 be carved a statehood of which you will be proud. I will 
 be glad to have the ushers give you these cards at the 
 close, not for subscriptions, but for the information given. 
 You can observe the figures, on self-support, and the 
 average wage was less than fifty cents a day. As Metho- 
 dists they are entitled to your consideration. But I want 
 to speak in a more general way. A transformation is 
 evolving, to a type that is winning the admiration of the 
 entire world. It seems to me, the Grace of God that can 
 extend down through centuries of darkness, ignorance, 
 of idolatry — for it is nothing else, it seems to me — repre- 
 sents a higher efficacy of the power of His Grace than 
 its influence over the so-called life of higher develop- 
 ment. 
 
 I have tonight a good illustration, in concrete form, 
 of our girlhood, there. This is drawn work by a girl of 
 15. She is the sole support of seven orphans. I buy 
 everything this girl makes. Her little mother-sister 
 heart, with infinite devotion, has toiled to keep the little 
 brood from starvation. There is not a bed in the home. 
 They did not know the use of knife and fork. They could 
 not read until recently. Now the Woman's Home Mis- 
 sion has enrolled three of the girls in our school. This 
 work challenges admiration, and represents mentality 
 that commands recognition. A few years ago I was in 
 
Our Insular Possessions 1 3 1 
 
 the upper peninsula of Michigan, visiting a great mine 
 at Calumet. One of the directors took me in the bowels 
 of the earth. I stumbled over a piece of ore. I looked 
 at it and cast it aside as worthless. I perceived my error 
 shortly afterward. When sailing for San Juan I was 
 handed a small express package, finding to my delight 
 and admiration this copper agate made from the same 
 identical piece of ore I had recklessly cast aside. I have 
 the thought that it will be God's way to gather some of 
 Heaven's richest gems, that may bedeck the diadem of 
 the King of Glory, some day, from islands like these I 
 represent. Hidden, it is your privilege and my great 
 privilege and honor to discover and polish them. You 
 are doing that here in the home land; they are doing it 
 there. I sent up my card a few weeks ago in a state 
 house in the middle west, to a distinguished state official, 
 whose decisions are watched very closely throughout 
 the entire country. I see again in memory a humble, 
 uncouth, rough-looking specimen of farm boyhood, as 
 I remember when he came to school and entered the 
 freshman class, a great, tall, overgrown boy — to- 
 gether combining more awkwardness than I had ever 
 seen in boyhood's form. After the transition of the 
 years I saw him commencement day. He had literally 
 milked his way through college. Commencement day 
 dawned. I can see, almost as yesterday, a white- 
 haired mother seated in the grove at Cornell, in an 
 old faded black alpaca dress, many times turned, and 
 
I. -^2 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 an old bonnet, but with a face radiant with the conscious- 
 ness of compensation, as her fine-appearing son won the 
 honors of the day and led the class. I had not seen him 
 since commencement day. The messenger who took in 
 my card came back to say, "He will receive you im- 
 mediately." Soon I was in the presence of this dignified 
 statesman, who took my hand with warm cordiality. I 
 said, "I have come to lay my tribute at your feet, for 
 you have distanced us all ; it must be comforting to know 
 that the mother knows it too." "Do you think she 
 knows?" he asked, almost breaking down. "She died 
 six months after commencement day, and she never knew 
 I ever made good other than that day. Do you think 
 she knows?" I said, "It is written in the book that no 
 good thing will be withheld from them that love Him 
 and walk uprightly before Him. The pledge of heaven is 
 given ; mother knows." 
 
 We are engaged in a like work with them, evolving 
 and transforming into lives you will be glad to admit to 
 your circle. If I have time, I want to speak of one or 
 two illustrations that prove these assertions. There are 
 some I always like to repeat. I will tell the story of Lily 
 your great society, Mrs. Williams, has put its mark upon 
 her — a little chocolate drop, that come to us strangely. 
 Some of these people are dark colored, but three-fifths 
 are as fair as you. The other day a gentlemen told me 
 that I spoke fairly good English for a Porto Rican. 
 One day on an island 1 was baptizing children. I had 
 completed the number when I heard, softly, "Senor, yo 
 
Our Insular Possessions i li:^ 
 
 tambien". — me too. I inquired the name "Leely." I ad- 
 mire the Calla family, but I never had seen one of that 
 shade. No one seemed to know whence she came, nor 
 do I know to this day. She drifted in from some place, 
 and was seeking this holy sacrament. Who was I, to 
 deny it? Turning to the minister I asked if he would 
 join me in it. I took her up, and we went through the 
 vows in Spanish. Then when the benediction was pro- 
 nounced I sat down to view a new possession, for Lily 
 was on my lap, calling me ''Daddy." Blessed be God, 
 this great Society this good woman represents, made a 
 life development possible. George O. Robinson, a name 
 that must ever be spoken in great appreciation by Metho- 
 dists, made possible the beautiful George O. Robinson 
 orphanage. We went to San Juan (the capitol), where 
 she saw for the first time electricity, and a street car, 
 from which she shrank in fear, calling it Diablo. Soon 
 we reached the home, and Lily was taken to what I 
 knew would prove the first real bath she ever knew. In 
 her beautiful Spanish she asked, 'Ts this Heaven?" Do 
 you not see how good it is to put some conception of a 
 better life, even in the heart of an ignorant, almost 
 barbarian child? 
 
 Shall I speak of a Hindoo woman, brought a slave, 
 to Porto Rico, 80 years of age (the ship load brought 
 with her having all passed away), who was led to Christ 
 eight years ago by Reverend Samuel Culpepper, of the 
 North Indiana conference — one of the most efficient men 
 
1 34 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 I have ever known for the saving of men that has been 
 sent to be my co-laborer. This woman has given ser- 
 vice as ChristHke as I have ever known. Five years ago 
 I was coming in on the sands of the beach, a Httle bit 
 discouraged. There are sometimes some hard problems 
 to meet. Homesickness was over me. I chanced to hear 
 a voice I recognized instantly as Mary's. Drawing near 
 an old, thatched Porto Rican hut, and peering within, 
 I saw on the floor a dying Porto Rican woman, and by 
 her side this old Hindoo woman, reading that great 14th 
 chapter of John's Gospel. You have known it if you 
 ever suffered deeply. Now% I understand the Christly 
 interpretation had never been my realization before. In 
 tender- voiced Spanish she said, '']w2.m\.2!' (the name of 
 the woman), ''Let not thy heart be troubled tonight; 
 neither be afraid. The Master has said, In my Father's 
 house there are many mansions.' " I could not but con- 
 trast the mansions of glory, that would soon be hers, 
 with the humble abode. The Hindoo woman could not 
 write or read, but she had memorized the entire 14th 
 Chapter of John's Gospel and several of the Psalms. I 
 saw by the pallor of the dying woman's face that disso- 
 lution was at hand. The old Hindoo woman bent over 
 tenderly, and took both hands, as she said, "Juanita, do 
 you hear?— Adios." I dare to believe that the gates of 
 pearl opened very wide that night to admit this new 
 bom soul. 
 
 This is the work of our island possessions. Does it 
 
0217' Insular Possessions 135 
 
 pay? I think you might Hke to see her face, and in 
 closing I show it. My sister is an artist. I asked her 
 to paint it. You will see a face very Christly and saintly. 
 When I was coming home several years ago I asked old 
 Mary if she would not like to send a message. She said, 
 "Dear Lord, whoever you forget, do not forget the 
 Americans." Loving you so much, I knew she would 
 like to speak to you. I gave her the privilege at the end 
 of the morning services. She was bewildered and asked 
 them about it. She came, to our astonishment, clad in 
 a lady's blue serge bathing suit. Knowing she was go- 
 ing to speak to American people, she thought she ought 
 to be dressed a la Americana. To my amazement, she 
 began to speak in what seemed pretty good English. 
 After a few words, she paused and changed her speech 
 into Spanish, her little body all aquiver with emotion, 
 looking into my face with tearful eyes: "Brother, tell 
 them America sent me my Christ." 
 
 I have often wondered just who it may have been. 
 It may have been a humble washer woman in Nebraska, 
 who sends me a dollar every year for Porto Rico, or 
 that humble soul in California, who sends a golden five 
 dollar coin at Eastertide, or that Boston bootblack, with 
 a face so dirty and a look so hungry one day I gave him 
 a coin and told him to get something to eat and a bath. 
 He asked my name, and I gave him my card. Soon 
 after there came to Porto Rico this letter : "Say, Mister, 
 here is five cents for Porto Rico. Spend it all, and say 
 nothing about it." 
 
136 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 •• God knows the benefactor, and this I think I know, 
 that in the last great day, me thinks I can even now hear 
 the words of Christ as he taketh the hand of the favored 
 benefactor, and leading- them to the feet of old Hindoo 
 Mary, and say as only the Christ can speak, 'Inasmuch 
 as Ye did it unto one of the least of these, Ye did it unto 
 me." Truly I had rather be that benefactor then than 
 to be King George, crowned King of England and Em- 
 peror of all India, for there are crowns that fadeth not 
 away; there is gold that tarnisheth not, and there is a 
 reward of which the world knoweth not. 
 
 (Voice : I insist that the Doctor tell about his most 
 unique wedding party.) 
 
 Well, it was at a quarterly meeting. First was the 
 baptismal services, then the reception of a large class on 
 probation, then the sermon, and following that the wed- 
 ding. We never hold a quarterly meeting there without 
 weddings. I understand these presiding elders or dis- 
 trict superintendents do — occasionally^ — up here. That 
 night there were five barefooted brides and grooms. An 
 old, gray-haired man, 70 years of age, his son and his 
 son's son, with two other barefoot brides and grooms. 
 I began with the old gentleman first. His grandson had 
 walked 12 miles over the mountain to be present when 
 I married his ancestor. It is a sad fact that three- 
 fourths of the people of Porto Rico are living without 
 the blessing of the Church. They are not wholly at 
 fault. Rome demanded a minimum fee of $5 for every 
 
Our Insular Possessions 137 
 
 wedding service, and the average wage was 37 cents a 
 day. They could not pay it. In the communion service 
 I wish you could have heard the bridegroom's prayer. 
 We never permit that sacrament except when they are 
 living in lawful wedded relationship. When the meeting 
 was over they all stayed. We could not get them out. 
 We never have a building big enough to hold the people. 
 There was a little sea of faces beyond. You could not 
 get one to move until I had gone. Going out I felt 
 somehow an anxiety to see the finale of this situation. 
 I dropped behind a banana tree, saw the old bridegroom 
 come out with his wife, and seated her on the one horse. 
 Everybody else walked. When she was nicely adjusted 
 I saw him look around bashfully and, thinking himself 
 unobserved, I saw him take her hand gently in his and 
 imprint the lover's kiss thereon. I know that it is the 
 same love that ravished your heart and mine for those 
 dear unto us, for God made of one blood all nations of 
 men. 
 
 Three years ago, while traveling through the in- 
 terior of the main island, on the second day of the jour- 
 ney, about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, I had reached the 
 summit of the high mountain and had gone beyond 
 where there were cross trails on the mountain side. At 
 that place was a little Tienda shop (a. place where re- 
 freshments could be obtained). I ate my dinner, which 
 consisted of black coffee, beans and rice, beautifully 
 blended with garlic and grease, and at the conclusion of 
 
1 38 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 my repast I obtained consent of the keeper of this place 
 (a young man about 21 or 22 years of age) for the mes- 
 sage. Taking out my Spanish Testament I read the 
 story of Jesus Christ. When I had finished, to my sur- 
 prise, he asked for its repetition. **0, you have heard 
 this before, my brother." ''Never, never." After I had 
 finished the recital it seemed to dawn upon his mind, as 
 he said in his Spanish tongue, "O, yes, I have a Christ 
 here in my house today." Bringing out a figure of the 
 Crucified Christ, he placed it on the counter, adding, 
 'This is a Christ." Then bringing an image of the 
 Virgin Mary, placing it alongside, he called this the 
 mother of God. The third time he brought out his Saint, 
 "San Jose," which he declared was the most important 
 of the three, inasmuch as this Saint was compelled to 
 hear his prayers for redemption. Stirred to my heart's 
 depth, I replied, "O, my brother, this is not the Christ 
 of whom I read; this represents a dead Christ, but I 
 have read to you the story of the living Christ, who 
 taketh away the sin of the world. Then I sang my con- 
 version hymn, and it is as sweet in Spanish as in Eng- 
 lish. "There is a fountain filled with blood." To my 
 surprise, when I had completed the sixth stanza of the 
 hymn I found that I had an audience of more than two 
 hundred men, who were laboring on a nearby coffee 
 plantation, and had been attracted by the novelty of the 
 singing to the place. I read them the story of the 
 Christ, mounted my horse and rode down the mountain 
 
Our Insular Possessions i^q 
 
 side. About three weeks after that there came to my 
 office a long- petition, purporting to be from these men, 
 not one of whom could read or write, but they had gone 
 to a neighboring township and found a man who could, 
 and by their request he had affixed their signatures to 
 this instrument, in which they represented that there 
 were forty thousand in their township who could neither 
 read or write, and no schools had ever been placed for 
 the instruction of their children. 
 
 Furthermore, they stated that, except themselves, 
 none others had ever heard the story of the living 
 Christ, and they only on the occasion of my passing 
 through their mountain community — would I send them 
 a pastor-teacher, some one to open the door of oppor- 
 tunity to their children and tell them of the living Christ. 
 I had not a dollar at my command for this work, but on 
 arising from prayer I seemed to feel the presence of 
 Robert Mclntyre, now one of the great Bishops of our 
 Church, but then pastor of the First Church, Los An- 
 geles, Cal., and a member of my own conference (South- 
 ern California). I wrote a letter to Doctor Mclntyre, 
 stating the situation; he turned it over to his Epworth 
 League, and the next steamer brought back the answer 
 ' — a draft for $i8o — $15 per month. I had a young man 
 waiting. I sent him forward. Behold the fruitage of 
 that seed sowing on the mountain side. I have recently 
 held the quarterly meeting of that circuit, and now there 
 are twenty appointments thereon, and the young man 
 
140 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 who gave me his saint is now a class leader and walks 
 many miles over the mountain every Sabbath day to hold 
 religious services. I began services on this occasion at 
 7 o'clock; I got through at ii. They never got enough 
 there, and all remained to the Quarterly Conference; 
 you could not get them away; as far as I could see in 
 the moonlight there was a rim of faces. When ii 
 o'clock came, and I pronounced the benediction, I was 
 walking up the mountain side to the place where we 
 could seek rest for the night, when I was conscious of 
 being followed. On looking around I perceived seven 
 barefooted laboring men, who apologized for interrupt- 
 ing, but stated that they had come late to service; that 
 they had toiled on a coffee plantation all day and walked 
 six or seven miles over the mountain and had only had 
 one and one-half hours of the service. Would I tell 
 them something more about this great Christ, who loved 
 men well enough to die for men. I dropped under a 
 banana tree, told the old, old, sweet story (the sweetest 
 that lips can ever tell), the mission of my Christ to men, 
 and I had my reward, for when the noon of night 
 dawned I looked into seven faces divinely fair, who knew 
 the Prince of Peace. This is in part the story of life 
 evolution now operating in these Southern seas. A band 
 of faithful men and women, none more heroic to be 
 found under the sky, are there, evolving character for 
 eternity. Lowell never spoke truer in his conception of 
 right than when he declared in his immortal poem for 
 freedom : 
 
Our Insular Possessions 141 
 
 "For mankind is one in spirit, and an instinct bears 
 
 along, 
 Round the earth's electric circle in the swift flush of 
 
 right or wrong. 
 
 Whether conscious or unconscious, yet humanity's vast 
 
 frame, 
 Through its ocean-sundred fibers feels the gush of joy 
 
 or shame. 
 In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest find equal 
 
 claim." 
 
 Dr. Johnson was here introduced by the chairman. 
 
OUR MONGOLIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 BY HERBERT B. JOHNSON^ D. D.^ SUPERINTENDENT 
 PACIFIC JAPANESE MISSIONS. 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Friends : Never before have 
 our American people been so interested in the immigra- 
 tion question as at present. It is referred to by Pro- 
 fessor Jenks of Cornell University, a member of the 
 United States Immigration Commission, in a recent 
 magazine article, as *'The Urgent Immigration Prob- 
 lem ;" and Doctor Doughty, in his convincing and inspir- 
 ing address, named it as a problem which we have cre- 
 ated by our national prosperity. There is no denying 
 that it is one of our most pressing problems today. In 
 1905, as a member of the National Immigration Con- 
 gress, with five hundred others, I spent three days in 
 New York City in considering it. What a revelation 
 was our visit of inspection to the Immigrant Station at 
 Ellis Island! 
 
 Professor Jenks, in the article referred to, shows 
 that from 1819 to 1883 over 95 per cent of our immi- 
 grants came from Northern Europe; that in the latter 
 year, when nearly 650,000 arrived, the percentage was 
 reduced to 87, and that in the next twenty-five years 
 
Our Mongolian Peoples 1 43 
 
 not only had the arrivals per year doubled, reaching a 
 million and a quarter, but that 81 per cent of these came 
 from Southern and Eastern Europe, mostly from Italy, 
 Russia and Austria Hungary. 
 
 Dr. Wright, in his admirable address, will show us 
 that there is no menace in the immigration of the 
 Italians, but, on the other hand, that there are very 
 hopeful features in connection with their coming. 
 
 Much has been said in recent years in certain quar- 
 ters concerning our special immigration problem on the 
 Pacific Coast. There is no such problem today, for the 
 reason that years ago the exclusion of Chinese laborers, 
 the only class ever objected to, was secured by law in 
 Congress; and more recently the same class of Japanese 
 and Koreans has been restricted by the so-called "Gen- 
 tleman's Agreement" between Washington and Tokyo. 
 As proof of this, if proof is necessary, the San Fran- 
 cisco Chronicle, in a recent editorial, while the California 
 Legislature was in session, said : "Japanese laborers 
 have ceased to come, as a result of the friendly official 
 action of the Japanese government, in respect to whose 
 faith there is no question whatever." This paper, which 
 started the agitation against the Japanese, further said 
 in the same editorial: "In the face of this situation, 
 any anti-Oriental legislation, or attempted legislation, 
 will be justly regarded as demagogic attempts to gain 
 personal notoriety by stirring up race hatred." 
 
 But while we have no Asiatic immigration problem 
 
144 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 on our hands, we have a task that demands our very best 
 in thought and effort and prayer in Christianizing the 
 tens of thousands who are here and the few thousands 
 of the better classes who arrive annually. There are 
 from 60,000 to 80,000 Chinese in the country, at least 
 half of whom are west of the Sierra Nevada Mountains ; 
 and about 90,000 Japanese, more than half of whom are 
 in the three great states of California, Oregon and 
 Washington. 
 
 About 5,000 Chinese have come in annually for the 
 past three years, over half of whom are United States 
 citizens or returning merchants. The most encouraging 
 thing is that many students are now coming to enter our 
 schools, coming from all parts of China in contrast with 
 former immigrants, who have practically all come from 
 one province in Southern China. As is the case of the 
 Japanese students who have been in this country, this 
 will mean much, both in the matter of peaceful relations 
 between the two countries and in their taking back to 
 their people in the various parts of the country, the 
 things which will make China truly great, particularly 
 the spirit of our institutions and of our Christ. 
 
 It is not an easy task to win the Chinaman in this 
 country to the Saviour. While there are from twelve to 
 fourteen thousand in San Francisco, and several thou- 
 sands in some other cities, for the most part they are 
 widely scattered, a few hundred at most being found in 
 more than a few centers. There are few women among 
 
Our Mongolian Peoples 145 
 
 them, and family life is lacking. Trained workers are 
 few, and too many of our American people are indif- 
 ferent. While the Chinese are wonderful traders and 
 many of them are prosperous merchants, far too many 
 of them are gamblers and keepers of gambling dens. 
 In this they differ greatly from the Japanese. In the 
 larger communities are to be found Chinese temples or 
 joss houses, and superstitious observances are very preva- 
 lent among the people. 
 
 Much, very much, has already been accomplished. 
 Not including work by individual churches throughout 
 the country, which it is difficult, if not impossible, to 
 tabulate, about 6,500 have been baptized from the be- 
 gining, our Church standing third on the list, with about 
 1,200. The present membership is not more than one- 
 fourth of this. All the churches lost heavily in the great 
 fire in San Francisco, Dr. James, the superintendent of 
 our Chinese Missions, is now rebuilding. Dr. Otis Gib- 
 son, who spent his apprenticeship in China, was the first 
 superintendent. He was a man of God, of heroic type. 
 During the awful agitation and persecution before the 
 Anti-Chinese Exclusion law was passed he was wounded 
 and burned in efiigy. But he stood his ground and was 
 greatly beloved by the Chinese. When the roll of great 
 missionaries and missionary heroes is called, his name 
 will stand high among the greatest. 
 
 Dr. James, the present superintendent, reported the 
 last year was the most hopeful in many years. The 
 
146 The Cojiservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 pupils in the English schools increased from 178 to 635, 
 and the Sunday School scholars and the contributions 
 for self support nearly doubled. O'ther Chinese Chris- 
 tians gave last year for pastoral support, current ex- 
 penses and general benevolences nearly ten dollars per 
 capita, and in addition contributed several thousand dol- 
 lars to support their native missionary society in their 
 own province in China, where our Board of Foreign 
 Missions has no work. The pastor there is a product 
 of the work on the Pacific Coast, as are the pastors as- 
 sociated with Dr. James in California. 
 
 I have already called attention to the Japanese 
 population being about 90,000, over half of whom are 
 west of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and to the re- 
 striction of Japanese laborers on the part of the Japa- 
 nese government. Would it not be well for some of 
 our European governments to follow this example? For 
 each of the last two years about 2,500 Japanese have 
 come to Continental America, and about twice that num- 
 ber have returned. So far as Hawaii is concerned, about 
 1,500 have come each year and nearly 2,400 have re- 
 turned annually. For the past three years about 9,000 
 more of the laboring class have returned to Japan than 
 have departed. The quality of the immigrants has thus 
 greatly improved. Nearly 1,400 women and children 
 have come to Continental America during the past two 
 years. The Japanese are remarkably industrious, frugal 
 and generous. I shall have occasion to speak of their 
 
Our Mongolian Peoples 147 
 
 giving later. Their intelligence is generally recognized. 
 Almost without exception they are polite and gentle and 
 devoted to what they have in hand. A strong sense of 
 duty is a national characteristic. 
 
 Our work among the Japanese began in the Chinese 
 Mission in San Francisco, under Dr. Otis Gibson, when 
 there were not more than fifty Japanese in San Fran- 
 cisco. I wish to speak particularly of two young Japa- 
 nese who, desiring to study English, went there as 
 the most suitable place at the time, and found more 
 than they went to seek, namely, they found the Savior. 
 K. Miyama was the first, about 1877, and he at once 
 became a flaming evangelist among his people. There 
 were more Japanese then in Hawaii than here, those 
 islands not having been taken over by our government, 
 and the need among them was very great, especially the 
 need of Gospel temperance work. He went there when 
 there was not more than one other Christian in the 
 islands, and at once called upon the Consul General, 
 Hon. Taro Ando, to assist him. His fondness for liquor 
 caused him to decline, but repeatedly urged by Mr. Mi- 
 yama he came to the meetings and was gloriously con- 
 verted, together with his wife and his secretaries and 
 scores of other Japanese. This was the beginning of 
 our Hawaiian mission, which now includes successful 
 work among three nationalities — Japanese, Americans 
 and Koreans. Bishop Hughes, you will remember, re- 
 cently dedicated a fine new church for our American 
 
148 The Conservation oj Our Moral Resources 
 
 church there. Mr. Ando, the Consul, soon returned to 
 Japan and became the leading- layman of our leading 
 church in Tokyo and the president of the National Tem- 
 perance Society of Japan. Mr. Miyama, who led him to 
 Christ, returned and became his pastor, and later Na- 
 tional Temperance Evangelist. They worked and 
 planned and prayed together, and great was the prog- 
 ress made. And this was the direct result of the con- 
 version of a young Japanese in the Chinese Mission in 
 San Francisco; in short, this is the outcome of Home 
 Missions. 
 
 I said that there were two so converted, of whom 
 I wished to speak. The other is the Rev. S. Ogata, 
 D. D., the successor of Bishop Honda as president of 
 Aoyama College in Tokyo, and since 1886 a faithful and 
 efficient missionary to his people in Japan, the first and 
 only native Japanese missionary appointed by our Board 
 in New York. During the critical years when the Mis- 
 sionary Society could not hold property in Japan, and 
 when certain other boards were having serious trouble, 
 Brother Ogata held in trust our splendid and valuable 
 school and residence property at Aoyama, and there 
 never was a breath of suspicion as to his honesty or 
 integrity. He is now in this country on the invitation 
 of Depauw University, from which he graduated after 
 his conversion, and is now spending some time in the 
 West. I wish you to meet him and greet him in the 
 name of Christ and our Methodism. He is the direct 
 product of Home Mission work in San Francisco. 
 
Our Mongolian Peoples 149' 
 
 But after the coming of my predecessor, Dr. (now 
 Bishop) Harris, in 1886, many other young men were 
 called to the ministry in San Francisco and in our other 
 missions. I wish to refer briefly to two or three. T. 
 Ukai, after his conversion, went east to college — not to 
 Depauw, but to Simpson. On his return, like Miyama 
 and Ogata, he became Mr. Ando's pastor in Tokyo. 
 Later, when a suitable man was needed to organize the 
 Sunday School work of Japan, he became secretary of 
 the new Sunday School U(nion. It was not a nominal 
 appoinment. He threw his great soul into the work. 
 As an illustration of what he accomplished, a couple of 
 years ago he secured the use of a great new building in 
 Tokyo and arranged for a gathering of 12,000 Sunday 
 School children. The Buddhists wished to dedicate it 
 by using it first, but in co-operation with others and 
 with his American spirit — ^yea the spirit of Christ — he 
 secured it, packed it with Sunday School children, and 
 held one of the greatest Christian meetings that Japan 
 has known. Americans who were present said they 
 never before heard such singing. This man, like the 
 others mentioned, is a product of our Oriental Mission- 
 ary work on the Pacific Coast. I mention by name one 
 other — H. Kihara, at present District Superintendent of 
 the Japanese work in Korea. After his conversion in 
 San Francisco he organized one of our leading missions 
 in California, then went to the Hawaiian Islands, where 
 he was remarkably successful, then to Drew Theological 
 
1 50 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 Seminary for further preparation, then to Japan, where 
 he served the Church as a pastor, after which he was 
 chosen to open missionary work among the Japanese in 
 Korea. His work has so grown that, as already noted, 
 he is now District Superintendent. It is difficult to sep- 
 arate Home and Foreign mission work. They are essen- 
 tially one. But this great work of Brother Kihara, like 
 that already mentioned, is the direct result of Home 
 missionary work in San Francisco. I could mention 
 others, many others, but time fails me. Up to 1900 our 
 San Francisco work alone produced nine preachers, 
 most of them remarkably successful. During the same 
 period, or a little later, our little Oakland Mission, across 
 the bay, produced six, one of whom, Z. Hirota, is now 
 the successful pastor of our Japan Church in San Fran- 
 cisco. After laboring in Hawaii as a missionary, he 
 went to Garrett Biblical Institute for study. He is rec- 
 ognized as the greatest Japanese scholar on the Pacific 
 Coast. This is Home Mission work. Does it pay? 
 Our Portland Church has produced four preachers, one 
 of whom is in Hawaii, one in Japan, and two are about 
 to graduate from Kimball School of Theology in Ore- 
 gon and to enter our Coast work. 
 
 Possibly with the exceptions of our two new 
 missions in Colorado, in Denver and Pueblo, all of our 
 Japanese Churches have raised up from one to nine 
 Japanese preachers, who are preaching the Gospel m 
 
Our Mongolian Peoples i cj i 
 
 America, in Hawaii, in Japan or in Korea. Who can 
 estimate the influence? 
 
 But our Japanese missions have produced great lay- 
 men as well. I have mentioned Hon. T. Ando. Let 
 me speak briefly of two others. Sho Nemoto went out 
 from our mission in Oakland or in San Francisco to the 
 University of Vermont, and then to Japan, where he 
 entered politics. As a member of the Lower House of 
 the National District he caused to be passed an anti- 
 tobacco bill, applicable to minors under twenty years of 
 age, which was endorsed by the Upper House and by 
 the then Minister of Education in a special rescript. 
 Who can estimate its influence? And this is the influ- 
 ence of Home Mission work among the Japanese in 
 California. This same man secured the passage of an 
 anti-liquor law through the Lower House, which came 
 very near passing the Upper House. The cause of tem- 
 perance reform in Japan, which has made such remark- 
 able progress in the recent years, has its origin and in- 
 spiration in the Christian Church, and is largely due to 
 the influence of our Pacific Coast work. One other il- 
 lustration only : When the Lay Electoral Conference in 
 Japan wanted a man to represent it in the last General 
 Conference, before the Union was consummated, they 
 looked to a successful merchant, who, during the late 
 war, did a large importing business for the Japanese gov- 
 ernment. It was T. Fujiware, one of our Pacific Coast 
 converts. I have recently examined the records of our 
 
1 5 2 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 churches in San Francisco and Oakland. There are 
 successful merchants, doctors, dentists, photographers, 
 editors, teachers, etc., both in America and in Japan, 
 and many who are in government employ in influential 
 postions. More than a score have graduated from such 
 universities as Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Michigan, 
 Clark, California, Stanford, University of the Pacific, 
 Northwestern, etc. These are only a few. The same is 
 true of all our missions. Until recently young men have 
 predominated in our Japanese churches, which are in- 
 stitutional. As already noted, they have come from all 
 parts of Japan, and their influence it is impossible to 
 calculate. Now, much is being done in and for fam- 
 ilies. And here again the influence of our work is in- 
 calculable. 
 
 I have given illustrations from former days simply 
 because our older men have become more prominent 
 than those who are still with us. This is natural. But 
 the golden age of our mission work is not behind us. 
 This is easily recognized when we consider the baptisms 
 of recent years, and the gifts and spirit of our Japanese 
 Christians. 
 
 After a strenuous campaign of two or three weeks 
 in Southern California I returned to San Francisco last 
 Easter morning just in time to preach in our new 
 church, which seats, not including gallery, over three 
 hundred. It was well filled and beautifully decoraited. 
 After the sermon the children and their teachers gath- 
 
Our Mongolian Peoples 153 
 
 ered from the rooms below and it was my privilege to 
 baptize thirteen of the children in the name of the Holy 
 Trinity. It was a beautiful sight. Not including chil- 
 dren, of whom there have been many, we have baptized 
 between eight and nine hundred adults since I succeeded 
 Bishop Harris, seven years ago. And baptisms represent 
 conversions, for we maintain that baptism is "an out- 
 ward and visible sign of an inward spiritual grace.** A 
 few weeks ago, after preaching in Japanese in our Sac- 
 ramento Mission, I gave the invitation and three young 
 men arose for prayer. They came to the altar and two 
 came through in good Methodist fashion. The other 
 one returned home in spiritual darkness. He retired for 
 the night, but could not sleep. He arose and read his 
 Bible and engaged in earnest prayer, and God' met him 
 as he did you. The pastor. Brother Yoshida, a product 
 of our Coast Japanese work, by the way, wrote me the 
 particulars, and said that while he prayed, a flood of 
 light burst in upon his soul, which was filled with peace 
 which passeth understanding, and with joy unutterable 
 and full of glory. Did you ever hear of anything of the 
 kind among our American people? Our Asiatic friends 
 come to the Lord just as we do, by repentance toward 
 God and faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ. Some months 
 ago there was a serious railroad accident in Southern 
 California. Several races were represented. When the 
 surgeons came to perform the operations no questions 
 were asked as to which were born in the United States, 
 
1 54 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 which in Mexico and which in Japan. There was no 
 discrimination. All were treated alike — ^first come first 
 served — ^because they were human beings; they were 
 men. Would to God that all of our people would come 
 to look upon them in the same way in the matter of heal- 
 ing the awful disease of sin sickness! 
 
 One evidence of conversion is the willingness of 
 the converts to support the various enterprises of the 
 Church. Instead of quoting totals, I will indicate the 
 giving of our Christians per capita. And in place of 
 naming the amount for one year, I will give it per year 
 for the last seven years. As you know, our averages 
 are frequently thrown out by our people giving on a 
 spurt for a given year for church building or indebted- 
 ness. More than our average American Christians our 
 Japanese and Chinese Christians on the Coast are migra- 
 tory. There are many who cannot be found when the 
 collections are taken, though, for the most part, they 
 are faithful. Including, then, all our Christians, present 
 and absent, men, women and children, our Methoodist 
 Japanese Christians on the Coast have given, per capita, 
 per year, for the last seven years — how much do you 
 think? Ten dollars would be good giving under the cir- 
 cumstances, would it not? They gave more than fifteen 
 — more than twenty. They gave $20.43 P^^ capita per 
 >ear for the last seven years. The members did not 
 give it all. Their outside friends helped some in the 
 matter of property. But this very fact shows the good 
 
Our Mongolian Peoples 155 
 
 standing of our Christians. This is good giving, and 
 should indicate that our Japanese are converted clear 
 down to their pocketbooks. 
 
 A word or two concerning the spirit of our Chris- 
 tians : Recently our strenuous and honored ex-Presi- 
 dent, Mr. Roosevelt, came to California to deliver the 
 Charter Day address at the University of California, and 
 the Earl lectures before the Pacific Theological Seminary. 
 As he was to speak on moral topics, I wrote to our Japa- 
 nese pastors in Central California, and invited them to 
 come, assuring them that they could surely hear him, as 
 I had secured special tickets. Our pastor at Sacramento, 
 Brother Loshida, to whom I have already referred, 
 thanked me for my thought fulness, and stated that the 
 Japanese all admired Mr. Roosevelt and that it would be 
 a great privilege to hear him or even to see him. How- 
 ever, he added, 'T am engaged in a great work which I 
 cannot leave. Since you were here and the young men 
 were converted, the Lord has been graciously working, 
 and we have a great opportunity if we continue the 
 work." He sacrificed personal pleasure and stayed by 
 his job. 
 
 A year or so ago I was in need of a pastor for our 
 Portland church in Oregon. I wrote to a, young man in 
 Chicago who had previously served as pastor at River- 
 side. He went East for further preparation in Chicago, 
 but found a great opportunity for work among his coun- 
 trymen. He thanked me for the invitation, expressed 
 
156 The Co7iservahon of Our Moral Resources 
 
 his appreciation of the opportunity for work on the Pa- 
 cific Coast, and then added that he felt a special call to 
 remain and work among his countrymen in Chicago. In 
 contrast with a stated salary and a well organized church 
 in Portland, there was not a dollar to support his work 
 in Chicago. Dr. Rowe, the Superintendent of City Mis- 
 sions, was sympathetic and wished to assist, but was 
 unable. Brother Shimadzu, after having served as a 
 regular pastor, and after studying for years in the uni- 
 versity there, voluntarily chose to stay by his people 
 there and support his mission by his own hands, working 
 as a house servant, rather than come to the Coast, where 
 a comfortable salary awaited him. He simply recog- 
 nized an opportunity and a corresponding obligation. 
 That is the kind of men that God can honor and use. 
 Five years ago, when the great fire following the 
 earthquake in San Francisco was raging, our Christians 
 saw that our Church, which they greatly loved, must go. 
 Forgetful of self, they took down the pictures of their 
 former superintendents, Dr Otis Gibson and Bishop 
 Harris, from the wall, and, lifting tenderly the pulpit 
 Bible from the desk, carried them to the back yard and 
 hurried them in a large hole in the sand. They then 
 fled to one of the parks, where I found them the next 
 day. Later, when the fire had done its worst and the 
 ground was cool, they returned to the church lot, opened 
 the earth again and brought forth the Bible and the pic- 
 tures. Today they occupy a conspicuous place in our 
 
Our Mongolian Peoples 157 
 
 new and beautiful church in San Francisco. These were 
 Japanese — not preachers, but ordinary Christians. They 
 simply appreciated their fomier teachers and loved the 
 word of God. But it was beautiful. 
 
 As a further illustration of their devotion, our Japa- 
 nese preachers annually come from all parts of this great 
 West to our Annual Mission Meeting, at their own ex- 
 pense or the expense of their churches, without the cost 
 of a cent to the Board of Home Missions and Church 
 Extensions — one from Colorado, three from Washing- 
 ton, one from Oregon, and upwards of a dozen from 
 different parts of California. 
 
 One more illustration: A few years ago a tele- 
 gram came to me announcing the sudden passing of one 
 of our preachers, a local preacher, by the way. God 
 bless the local preachers. I went as quickly as possible, 
 and carefully investigated the circumstances. The night 
 before, after supper, he gathered the young men in the 
 mission for family worship. He read the fifteenth 
 chapter of St. John's Gospel and led in prayer. They 
 all prayed. He then retired and all was quiet. It was 
 afterward learned that he wrote a letter to his former 
 Presiding Elder. Later they heard a noise and dis- 
 covered that he was again engaged in prayer. In the 
 morning, as he did not appear, one of them called, and 
 later called again. As there was no response, they 
 opened the door and beheld Brother Rokujubu appar- 
 ently asleep-^-yes, he was asleep, asleep in Jesus. And 
 
158 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 I wish to say to you that when the time comes for me 
 to close my labors here, if I can pass away under cir- 
 cumstances so satisfactory to myself and to my friends 
 I shall count myself exceedingly happy. All who knew 
 him, Christian and non-Christian, American and Japa- 
 nese, spoke highly of him. They revere his memory. 
 Our Japanese Christians live well. They die well. 
 
 But my time is passing and I must say a few words 
 about the Koreans among us, and also concerning the 
 more recent comers, the Hindoos, though they are not 
 Mongolians. There are probably not more than five 
 thousand of both, and both peoples are widely scattered 
 here. 
 
 There is no other mission field today in which there 
 is a deeper interest than Korea. Think of a Presby- 
 terian prayer meeting in North Korea with an average 
 weekly attendance of 1,200! And think of the Korean 
 Christians banding themselves together in prayer and ef- 
 fort to win a million converts in twelve short months! 
 It is one of the most inspiring events in all missionary 
 history. A few years ago, when the Koreans began 
 emigrating, several thousand came to the Hawaiian 
 Islands, a large percentage being Christians. Dr. Wad- 
 man, a former fellow worker in Japan, and since 1904 
 the honored Superintendent of Hawaiian Mission of our 
 Church, was there to meet them and to extend to them 
 a welcome in the name of the Church. A great work 
 has been done, not only by him and the native pastors 
 
Our Mongolian Peoples 159 
 
 that have been raised up, but also by the representatives 
 of our Woman's Home Missionary Society. Their 
 splendid Susanna Wesley Home is a home indeed for 
 the Japanese and Korean women and children, as is also 
 the Ellen Stark Ford Memorial Home in San Francisco. 
 They have more recently established a home in Los An- 
 geles, and are about opening another in Seattle. 
 
 The Koreans not only came to Hawaii, but also to 
 the Coast. I at once recognized the opportunity and 
 communicated with the Missionary Office in New York. 
 I was assured that no other Protestant denomination 
 had plans for opening work, and also that our great 
 Church had no funds with which to do so. But I be- 
 gan in a humble way, drawing checks on the Bank of 
 Faith to pay the bills. The Board of Missions later 
 helped me. Conditions were greatly changed by the 
 earthquake and fire, and an exchange was made with 
 the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, they withdraw- 
 ing from Japanese work in San Francisco in our favor, 
 and we turning our Korean work to them, as they had 
 money to support it, and a Korean-speaking missionary 
 to superintend it, in the person of Dr. Reid. I mention 
 this as a proof that we are not wasting missionary money 
 in our Asiatic work on the Coast, but are so co-operat- 
 ing as to make the dollars contributed accomplish as 
 much as possible. 
 
 About the same time that we began work in San 
 Francisco we opened mission work for Koreans in Los 
 
i6o The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 Angeles, being- fortunate to have as a superintendent a 
 returned missionary from Korea, in the person of Mrs. 
 Florence Sherman. For years she conducted a Home 
 in that city, having as her assistant and co-worker 
 Brother Hugh Cynn (not Sin). Not only did he assist 
 her, but he took a regular course in our University of 
 Southern California and graduated with honor. The 
 First Methodist Church of Los Angeles recently sent 
 him out as a missionary to his people in Korea. As an 
 illustration of the suspicion and hatred of the Koreans 
 and Japanese for each other, I wish to mention an inci- 
 dent : Brother Cynn chose to go on the Japanese line, 
 when he might have gone on an American ship, and 
 asked me to make the arrangements for his outgoing. 
 Imagine his surprise on arrival at the ship, with his 
 wife and babies, to find that the Japanese had given 
 them a first-class cabin at a second-class price and a 
 missionary discount off of that! Would that our people 
 would come to take not only a grain of salt, but more, 
 when they hear the sensational statements concerning 
 the relations of the Japanese and the Koreans, both here 
 and across the Pacific! 
 
 On account of the fewness of numbers and their 
 being so widely scattered, no Mission Board has so far 
 felt it expedient to open work among the Hindus in this 
 country, most of whom are found in California. But 
 there is an interdenominational society that has been able 
 to do so. I refer to the American Bible Society. I won- 
 
Our Mongolian Peoples i6i 
 
 der if we realize what a missionary organization it is. 
 More than once it has scattered the Bible, or portions of 
 it, all over this country like leaves before an autumn 
 wind. It has its agents in Nfew York and Boston, San 
 Francisco and Seattle and other ports, with scriptures in 
 the various languages of our immigrants, and who can 
 tell of the influence of the blessed work? Fortunately, 
 the Pacific Coast agent. Dr. Mell, is a returned mission- 
 ary from India, who knows the people and loves them 
 and is able to work among them. 
 
 The people all over this and other English speaking 
 countries have lately been engaged in celebrating the 
 three hundredth anniversary of the translation of our 
 King James version of the English Bible. It is a great 
 event. Speakers like Mr .Roosevelt, of international 
 reputation, have paid their tribute to the Bible, and the 
 work of the various Bible societies. But there is to be 
 a greater celebration — God only knows when — in which 
 we can all participate, when the people gather from the 
 East and West, from the North and South, white and 
 black, yellow and brown, and of every color, to sing the 
 song of Moses and the Lamb, at which time the splendid 
 work of the American Bible Society, the British Bible 
 Society and all the other agencies for spreading a knowl- 
 edge of the word of God will be truly celebrated. 
 
 In our missionary work among our Mongolian peo- 
 ple here we have a great opportunity and a correspond- 
 ing obligation. God help us all to recognize both. And 
 
1 62 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 let us not make the mistake of concluding that because 
 the people are comparatively few and the results some- 
 what meager, that the work is not important,. We are 
 dealing with forces, not results. There is no greater 
 temptation to the missionary today, at home or abroad, 
 than to pad reports because of the demand for results. 
 Again I repeat, we are dealing with forces, and not with 
 results. Who can estimate the influences which have 
 been set in motion here? Every evangelistic or social 
 or other force set in motion here that makes for the up- 
 lift of the Mongolian peoples is bound to have untold 
 influ^ence, not only here, but in Hawaii, in Japan, in 
 Korea, in China, in India — yea, throughout all of Asia, 
 if not the world. 
 
THE ITALIANS AND OTHER IMMIGRANTS. 
 
 REV. DR. FREDERICK H. WRIGHT. 
 
 I make my plea especially for my Italian friend, 
 for you know I love him. I have been with him for 
 twelve years; I ought to know him. 
 
 Could you imagine me as an Italian just arrived in 
 this country ? I come with broken speech. I have been 
 in this country only "seexa mont.'* I am having a hard 
 time to make myself understood ; Americans are expect- 
 ing a great deal of me. It was only in 1870 that Victor 
 Emanuel entered Rome and gave a united Italy to the 
 world. Prior to that a 'x-nuzzle had been put upon the 
 mouth, heart and mind. Bishops Vincent and Hurst 
 told me that when they went to Rome before 1870 they 
 were not allowed to take their New Testaments with 
 them. No Bible could be brought into Rome. When 
 the Italian army entered that city there went also a rep- 
 resentative of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 
 taking with him Bibles on a wheelbarrow. Now we 
 have a Bible depository at Rome. Anyone can read the 
 Gospel of Jesus Christ right in the Eternal City. 
 Things do move. The world is going forward. Well, 
 just imagine me, a green Italian, only six months from 
 
1 64 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 my native land, trying to impress you with the fact that 
 I ought to have a fair chance. 
 
 Wat for you call me "Dago man," 
 
 An' make so bad a face? 
 Ees no room for Eetalian 
 
 Een deesa bigga place? 
 
 I s'uppose you are more better dan 
 
 Da Dago man could be. 
 But pleesa, Meester 'Merican, 
 
 I ask you wait an* see. 
 
 How long you leeva een deesa land? 
 
 Eh, thirtha-seven year? 
 Ees onla seexa mont', my fraud, 
 
 Seence I am comin' here. 
 
 I wish you geeve me time for try 
 
 An' see w'at I can do. 
 So mebba I gon' be, bimeby, 
 
 So good a man like you. 
 
 Baycause I am so strong, I guess 
 
 I gon' do pretty wel, 
 So long I stand to beezaness, 
 
 An' jus' bayhave my sal'. 
 
 My leeta chidron, too, ees strong — 
 
 Eh? Yo no gota none? 
 Yo married, Meester? Eh? How long? 
 
 Twalve year an' no got wan? 
 
The Italians and Other Immigrants 165 
 
 O ! I am sad for yo, my f rand, — 
 
 Eh! Why you laugh at me? 
 Excuse, I do not ondrastand; 
 
 I am so strange, yo see. 
 
 My "keeds ees no good breed," yo say? 
 
 Ah, wal, ees mebbe not, 
 But dey weel be more good som' day 
 
 Dan dose yo don'ta got; 
 
 An' dey be strong 'Merican, 
 
 More strong dan yo are, too. 
 Ees notta many Dago man 
 
 So skeenny Hka you. 
 
 O! please, 'my friend, no gotta mad! 
 
 Shak' han* bay fore yo go. 
 Excuse me! I am so sad 
 
 For speakin' to you so. 
 
 But w^y yo call me "Dago man," 
 
 An' make so bada face? 
 Eees no room for Eetalian 
 
 Een deesa bigga place? 
 
 He is making his appeal to you this morning. He 
 comes with the best blood of Europe coursing through 
 his veins. He asks you to give him a chance. The blood 
 of Abraham is in the Italian. Can you look at an Ital- 
 ian and not see that there is some strain of Jewish blood 
 in him? Sometimes I cannot tell one from another. 
 The blood of Ishmael is there, for when Mohammedan- 
 
1 66 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 ism caxTie, with its struggle to dominate southern Europe, 
 it left its impress, its name, and even its language, on 
 the people. The best peoples of Europe are mixed in 
 with the modern Italian, the noble Roman, the religious 
 Celt, the glorious Greek, the dashing Spaniard, the acute 
 Frenchman, the intellectual Norman. Yes, the old 
 NorsCxTian is there, with his Anglo-Saxon blood, and 
 in the tenth century he built up a civilization in Sicily 
 which w^as considered one of the marvels of the world. 
 I am glad to tell you that this Italian, who has done 
 so much for the world, is coming again to the knowledge 
 of Jesus. The other day I helped to receive thirty 
 Italian miners into the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 They gave me a collection for Home Missions. Last 
 year our Italian Mission raised $1,500 for benevolent 
 purposes. Our Board of Home Missions has shown 
 great faith in the Italians, and this year has appropriated 
 $35,760 for distribution in the territory covered by the 
 Italian Mission, besides giving to other cities farther 
 west. God be praised for great opportunities given us 
 to help these Italians to the knowledge of Jesus. They 
 are coming to the knowledge of Christ, and if they do 
 not get this knowledge by our instrumentality, they will 
 not get it at all. I say this without any desire to unduly 
 criticise the Roman Catholic Church. I am simply deal- 
 ing with a fact. The vast majority of Italians never 
 darken the door of a church, and they have no use for 
 the priest. These wx must reach with the Gospel or 
 they will become a menace to us, 
 
The Italians and Other Immigrants 167 
 
 A little while ago I was in an Eastern city, attend- 
 ing the dedication of an Italian chapel. Just before 
 reaching the city a lot of Italians boarded the train. By 
 my side sat a Down East Yankee, who did not know I 
 was interested in the little man from the Southland. 
 He said, among other things : "The Italians are the 
 best citizens we have. I have been in business twenty- 
 five years, and I say to you frankly, I would rather trust 
 an Italian than a Down East Yankee." 
 
 The Italians in the city referred to are skilled work- 
 men, none getting less than $2.50 a day, and some 
 $10.00. They are strongly anti-clerical. Not a man, 
 woman or child darkens the door of the Roman Church. 
 What are you going to do with them? To show how 
 they feel, the Sunday School Association of the State 
 tried to take a census of the church-going element, but 
 the Italians issued some dodgers urging their compa- 
 triots to refuse to give the desired information. They 
 wished everybody to know that the Italian colony was 
 anti-religious as well as anti-clerical. There is a fearful 
 outlook for that city unless we can in some way reach 
 the parents through the children. This we are trying 
 to do, and recent reports bring news of great progress. 
 
 Recently I attended a celebration in one of our large 
 cities, where I addressed forty-five Italian anarchists. I 
 do not know whether they knew that I was a preacher. 
 To have said, "Let us pray," w^ould have been a signal 
 for them to leave, so I decided that I must try and dis- 
 
1 68 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 cover some point of contact. I accordingly began 'iny 
 religious service by asking a very pertinent question — 
 some might call it impertinent, but I did not mean it to 
 be: "Boys, do you believe in the Pope?" They were 
 young fellows, none more than thirty-five or forty years 
 of age, and none under twenty, bright, intelligent fel- 
 lows, and some of them prosperous business men. They 
 all shouted ''No." I repHed, "Neither do I, except that 
 I believe he is a sinner, like the rest of us, and if he goes 
 to Heaven he will go the same way you and I do." They 
 all nodded approval, and I had won my point. I asked 
 again: "Boys, do you believe in the confessional?" 
 They shouted "No." I rejoined, "Neither do I. I be- 
 lieve we ought to pray God direct and confess to Him 
 our sins." They again nodded their heads, and I had 
 won my second point of contact. I spoke of the celibacy 
 of the priests, and asked various other questions con- 
 cerning the fundamental doctrines of the Roman Church, 
 and I found that they believed in nothing. Now, what 
 ought one to do with such a cOxUpany? Should we 
 count them Romanists? Surely our brethren of the 
 Roman faith would not like to reckon such a crowd as 
 true Catholics. Ought I to avoid proselyting? My 
 business as a minister of the Gospel is to be a prose- 
 lyter from the devil, and these men were going in the 
 wrong direction. Here was my opportunity to help 
 them. I said : "Boys, the Roman Catholic Church has 
 not got the monopoly of the Christian faith. If you do 
 
The Italians and Other Immigrants 169 
 
 not go to that church, come to us; we will do you good." 
 Then I commenced to preach the Gospel. Tears came 
 to the eyes of several, and at the close of my address I 
 invited them all to pray with me. Every one of those 
 forty-five anarchists knelt right down there and prayed 
 audibly with me. What was the result? Hear me. 
 Out of those forty-five irreligious men, thirty-five are 
 now members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and, 
 to say nothing of the gracious work done in their hearts, 
 I submit to you that such missionary work meant the 
 saving of thirty-five danger points in our American civ- 
 ilization. Is it not worth while to do some so-called 
 proselyting, notwithstanding the adverse criticisms of 
 certain dignitaries of the Roman Church? 
 
 Despite all the opportunities for work among the 
 Italians, we cannot disguise the fact that there is strong 
 prejudice in the minds of Americans against these Ital- 
 ians, and a little poem by T. A. Daly, written in broken 
 English and breathing a wonderful sympathy for these 
 immigrants from Italy, illustrates what this prejudice 
 produces : 
 
 "Leetla Joe, he always say, 
 When I am beeg man som' day, 
 Eef so be I gona grow 
 Strong an' fat, so like my pop 
 I weell go for be a cop, 
 Mebbe so, 
 
1 70 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 Soocha talk for four-year-old ! 
 Dongh he brag so beeg an' bold, 
 Een wan handa you could hold, 
 Leetla Joe. 
 
 Leetla Joe, he lay hees cheek 
 On my brest w'en he ees seeck. 
 Squeeze my arm an' tal' me: O! 
 Pretta soon I gona gat 
 Qranda muscle lika dat. 
 
 W'en I grow 
 Like my pop, how proud I be ! 
 Justa wait an' you weel see, 
 Ah ! so sweet to hug me, 
 
 Leetla Joe! 
 
 But because I'm 'fraid dat he 
 Wan day would be 'shame' of me — 
 'Shame for call me "pop," an' know 
 W'en he's fina 'Merican 
 I'm so poor old Dagoman — 
 
 W'en I go 
 Where hees grave ees on da heell, 
 Dere ees joy for me to feel 
 Dat my heart can keep heem steell, 
 
 Leetla Joe." 
 
 The little Italian boy breaks away from the past and 
 declares himself to be no longer an Italian, but an Amer- 
 
The Italians and Other Immigrants 171 
 
 ican. We must honor him for that, but if our preju- 
 dice against his father and mother nicknames them and 
 puts a barrier between parent and child, then, I say, we 
 are doing a great wrong both to the child and to the 
 parent. Away, then, with this prejudice. Stop nick- 
 naming these foreigners and apply a little of the golden 
 rule, and we shall be veritable preachers of righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 There are some Americans who have the impression 
 that the element which is coming over to this country 
 from Italy is undesirable, that it is the riff-raff of Italy, 
 but the sooner the better we disabuse ourselves of this 
 notion. The undeveloped brain with the best brawn 
 and muscle represents the Italian immigration. The 
 Italian government is becoming alamied over the tre- 
 mendous emigration and are taking steps to induce their 
 citizens to stay in Italy. This surely would not indicate 
 that it is 'the riff-raff that is coming here. To speak of 
 Italians, in the minds of some people, is to speak of so 
 many "black hands," but this is a gross exaggeration. 
 A very small percentage of the Italian immigrants is 
 dangerous. The vast majority are good, honest, indus- 
 trious, ambitious, desirable citizens, and already are 
 proving this by the results that are being achieved by 
 their children in school, college and commercial circles. 
 This riff-raff you hear so much about is not riff-raff. I 
 will prove it in two minutes. When they want to come 
 here they get a declaration from the mayor of the city 
 
172 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 where they were born, testifying to their good character, 
 and to the fact that there is no criminal record against 
 them. This they take to the American consul at the 
 port where they sail from. The steamship company has 
 a man watching to see that no undesirable immigrant 
 gets on board, for they know very well that if he suc- 
 ceeds they will have to bring him back at their own 
 expense and feed him on the way. The selfish motive 
 is thus appealed to, and the steamship representative 
 watches most carefully. In addition to this, a 'medical 
 inspector is sent from this country who carefully in- 
 quires into the physical condition of every immigrant 
 that goes on board. When they get to New York, they 
 are subjected to a more severe examination, and if any 
 of you have been present at Ellis Island, you will have 
 seen, as I have, that it is no easy matter to pass through 
 that ordeal. Don't tell me that such an ele/nent is riff- 
 raff. Once in a while a bad man or a bad woman may 
 slip through the hands of the inspectors, for no system 
 is perfect, but, in general, it is safe to assert that the 
 very best comes to us. The trouble is, that when these 
 poor immigrants arrive in this country they are sub- 
 jected to the severest kind of tests by the society they 
 are thrown into. They learn to drink our beer and 
 whiskey, and our beautiful American civilization some- 
 times ruins these poor fellows. I saw more drunken 
 men the first week I was back in this country than in all 
 my six years of sojourn in Italy. 
 
1 he Italians and Other Immigrants 173 
 
 Pennit me in closing to tell you a story of Italy 
 and Italians which may help you to understand who 
 these Italians are, and what we owe to them. I once 
 started on a trip through my district in southern Italy 
 under circumstances which I shall never forget. I was 
 packed in a postal diligence at three o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, and rode for six hours under very painful condi- 
 tions. Then I found a mule waiting for me, and for 
 three more hours I struggled on to reach my destination. 
 Arriving there, I found myself so stiff that I could not 
 get off the back of the mule. The Italians, however, 
 have an expressive way of describing "stiffness," for 
 one of them that helped me off whispered to the other 
 brother who had come to my rescue, "He is in one 
 piece.'' They rolled off the "one piece," which limbered 
 up and then went inside, where a crowd of men and 
 women had gathered. The only light in that dark kitch- 
 en was from the doorway, and the jam was so great 
 that at midday in sunny Italy I had to call for a light to 
 read the baptismal service. Three little tots were bap- 
 tized and sixty men and women received for the first 
 time the sacrament of the Lord's Supper amid a hush 
 as sacred as anything I ever felt. At such a meeting 
 as this, a woman came up to me one evening and said: 
 "Signore, I hear that you are going to America. I won- 
 der whether you will see my husband?" I told her that 
 America was a big place, but she repHed: "O, yes, I 
 know that, but I have a letter from him." And with 
 
1 74 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 that, she drew froxH the place nearest her heart a letter, 
 and asked me if I would read it. I would like to de- 
 scribe this woman to you. She was barefooted, had on 
 heavy skirts, a corsage outside trimmed with silks and 
 ribbons — the Italians know how to be artistic — a blue 
 waist underneath, a string of beautiful corals around 
 her neck, and gold earrings that almost reached her 
 shoulder. This little vanity was excusable. She was 
 dreadfully poor, and cherished the fiction that as long 
 as she held on to these heirlooms she was never poor, 
 and yet, she would never sell them. She had an ex- 
 quisite Grecian profile, for she was a Greek of the 
 Greeks in blood, though an Italian of Italians in envir- 
 onment, a charming olive complexion, large lustrous 
 black eyes and her hair done up as only an Italian 
 woman knows how to do it, with a covering in white 
 stiffened with starch as a crowning piece. There she 
 stood before me, a splendid specimen of Italian peasant 
 beauty. Her hands were horny with toil, for she had 
 been working in the fields from four o'clock in the 
 morning, and it was now nine o'clock at night. She 
 looked at me earnestly and asked: "Won't you please 
 read this letter from my husband ?" Now, I knew that 
 her pastor and others had read it to her before, but, 
 poor soul, she could not read her husband's love letter 
 herself. Eighty-five per cent in southern Italy and 
 Sicily at that time could neither read nor write, and this 
 is where the Pope has dominated soul and body for 
 
The Italians and Other Immigrants 175 
 
 hundreds of years, and we are ready to say to his holi- 
 ness, "If that is the best you can produce, step aside, sir, 
 and give us a chance.'* Don't wonder that the woman 
 wanted to hear her love letter more than once. You know 
 how you are when you get a love letter; you are not 
 content with the first reading, but it usually goes on to 
 the thirtieth. Now, it will be hard for me to give you 
 an exact translation of the letter. Our English language 
 is so cold and unpoetic! But I will do the best I can. 
 The letter began, "Mia Carissima Maria." I cannot 
 tell you how beautiful this is in Italian, but the best 
 translation I can give is this : "My precious darling 
 Mary." That is not so bad in cold English. I rather 
 imagine that if any of you young folks got a letter like 
 that you'd think somebody was hot after you. Her eyes 
 filled with tears as I continued to read in Italian: "I 
 wonder how you are getting along." "lo ho fame per 
 te e per i figli." "I have hunger for thee and the chil- 
 dren." Poor fellow ! He was homesick. Did you ever 
 get homesick? I have been seasick, but that is nothing 
 compared to homesickness. 
 
 I was once so homesick in the heart of the Appen- 
 nines that I got to my room, closed the door and began 
 to talk English to 'myself. I once told that story in 
 Philadelphia, and at the close a lady missionary came to 
 me and said : "I can go one better than that. I was 
 once so homesick that I shut myself up in my room and 
 cracked English jokes to myself." 
 
1 76 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 Did you know that there is a new disease in this 
 country occasioned by i/nmigration ? It is called "nos- 
 talgia," and is from the Italian, meaning "homesick- 
 ness." Doctors cannot cope with it; the poor immi- 
 grants are dying of it by the scores in America; dying 
 for a little bit of love from their American brothers and 
 sisters. God help them to "warm up" to these poor 
 homesick immigrants. 
 
 "I send you sixty dollars. It is all I have saved. 
 Keep it by you. I will send you some more as soon 
 as I can, and then you shall come to this blessed coun- 
 try. We will have our own little home and be happy 
 once more. Be patient, Mary; I am praying for you. 
 God keep you till we meet again." 
 
 He was a member of our church, and so was she, 
 both of them earnest, devoted Christians. Who was 
 this man? One of those you have packed into box cars 
 and sent out West to build your railroads ; men with like 
 passions to ourselves, with as strong affections as you 
 husbands have for your wives and children, and yet you 
 call them Italian "cattle" and Italian "dirt." But God 
 once took a piece of Italian dirt and made a Dante who 
 struck the heart of poesy, and nations listened to his 
 song. He once took a piece of Italian dirt and made a 
 Michael Angelo, one of the biggest men God ever made. 
 He saw an angel in the rough hewn marble ; nobody else 
 saw it, but he said, "I will make it fly forth," and out 
 it flew. God once took a piece of Italian dirt and made 
 
7 he Italians and Other Immigrants 177 
 
 a Raphael, a Tintoretto, a DaVinci, a Perugino, a Carlo 
 Dolce, an Andrea del Sarto, a Botticelli, a Fra Angelico, 
 who painted on his knees and got visions from heaven 
 of the angels, and these with their divinely tipped 
 brushes touch the lifeless canvas and lo ! they live today, 
 and will continue to live, while thousands go to see these 
 master works of Italian art. 
 
 God once took a piece of Italian dirt and trans- 
 muted it and made, it into a Galileo, who by the subtle 
 waves of light and heat which proceed from the planets, 
 guessed the velocity of their varied march. He once 
 took a piece of Italian dirt and made a Savonarola, he- 
 roic old monk; if he had been living today, methinks 
 he would have been a Methodist exhorter, turning his 
 own beloved people of Florence to righteousness. God 
 once made a piece of Italian dirt into a Copernicus, who 
 transformed astrology into astronomy. With another 
 piece of Italian dirt He made a Garibaldi, and made him 
 on the Fourth of July, too, the liberator of his country, 
 born on the birthday of our American independence. 
 Think of it ! And now the Italian government has made 
 the Fourth of July a national holiday and America and 
 Italy join hands together to celebrate the "Glorious 
 Fourth." God once made from Italian dirt a man 
 named Christopher Columbus, who sailed the unknown 
 seas and gave you and me the land we call our own. 
 Shame on you, if you go back on a "Dago" after that. 
 Then Portugal wanted to get a slice from the new coun- 
 
1 78 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 try, and she looked for another discoverer, and found 
 him in Amerigo Vespuccius. 
 
 By the way, you call yourselves Americans, do you 
 not? And you are proud of it? Where did you get 
 your name ? From an Italian. So you are all ''Dagos" 
 in name at least. Then England could not rest without 
 extending her territory, and she looked for another dis- 
 coverer, and none intrepid enough were found in merry 
 old England, and so she crossed the sea to Venice and 
 found an Italian called John Cabot. So, you see, it 
 took three Italians to give us the country we call our 
 own. Again I say, shame on you if you despise this 
 little Italian immigrant. 
 
 When you are inclined to be harsh with these 
 Italians, don't forget it was an Italian who gave you 
 the barometer; don't forget it was an Italian who gave 
 you the timepiece. An Italian discovered the first prin- 
 ciples of electrical science and put his name to the dis- 
 covery — Galvani — galvanism. An Italian gave you 
 telegraphy, and I have seen the house on Lake Como 
 where Professor Morse visited Alexander Volta, but all 
 poor Volta got was his name applied to the current of 
 electricity which drives your street car, illuminates 
 your home and streets. It was an Italian who gave us 
 the telephone, and if you do not believe it, look up the 
 record of the Supreme Court in the United States, ac- 
 cording Meucci the right to the discovery of the inven- 
 tion, You may go to Staten Inland today and see the 
 
The Italians and Other Immigrants 1 79 
 
 house where he and his fellow-exile, Garibaldi, made 
 soap and candles for a living, and that house is now 
 covered with a xnagnificent mausoleum, surrounded by 
 twenty-six massive columns. 
 
 Only a few days ago I talked with an old man who 
 made the first telephonic instrument for Meucci. And, 
 of course, you will not forget that it was an Italian who 
 crossed the sea a few years ago and gave us a new dis- 
 covery as he cried, *'I will girdle the globe without 
 wires," and his name was Marconi. Until Peary and 
 Cook quarreled, it was an Italian who planted the Ital- 
 ian flag farther north than any other man, in the interest 
 of science, and he has never been questioned for his in- 
 tegrity. His name is the Duke of Abruzzi, the cousin 
 of the present King of Italy. 
 
 What a debt we owe to this Italian. Shall we not 
 pay it, and demonstrate we have caught the spirit of our 
 Christ? For He once said of an Italian, "I have not 
 found such great faith, no, not in Israel," and it was an 
 Italian who stood on Calvary's Mount and looked and 
 Hved and believed, as he exclaimed, "Truly, this was the 
 Son of God." And when God had determined that the 
 Gospel should go to the Gentile world, it was an Italian 
 who was first selected as the first fruit of the Gospel, 
 Cornelius, a captain of an Italian band. Evidently, the 
 Master believed in the Italian. May we catch His spirit 
 and learn His way, and thus prove that we have in real- 
 ity caught His spirit. 
 
THE BITTER CRY OF THE CHILDREN. 
 
 DR. HENRY J. COKER^ D. D. 
 
 Claudian sang of decadent Rome, *'The Harvest 
 of men is past." He could have cried with similar em- 
 phasis of all other decadent peoples. What wrecks! 
 What havoc is made, when time is given to reap the 
 harvest of a nation^s doings ! What lessons may be pro- 
 filed therefrom! Assyria, Chaldea, Babylonia, Egypt, 
 Greece, and of more modern people. 
 
 Greece, resplendent Greece! what ninety years of 
 national career can be equal to hers? Yet glorious as 
 it was we readily learn that Glory of War, Art of 
 Brush, Shaping of Sculptor's Chisel are no guaranty of 
 long life — for Beauty without purity, Art without re- 
 ligion, Eloquence without conscience, Intellect without 
 holiness, Insight without love, are blossoms whose roots 
 are in the corruption of the grave. 
 
 And of Rome it may be said, ''that as long as she 
 was pure and simple in her home-life, so long as her 
 legislators came from the hardy self-denial of the farm, 
 so long as she was the Rome of the Fabii, the Cincin- 
 natti and the Elder Scipios, so long she prospered until 
 
The Bitter Cry of the Children i8i 
 
 none could withstand her. But when the old iron disci- 
 pHne yielded to effeminate luxury and gilded pollution, 
 when she lost her love of honor in man and purity in 
 woman, when her youth grew debased, enervated 
 and false, when her business became a flagrant 
 imposture and her religion a dishonest sham, 
 when, lastly, her literature became a seething 
 scum of abomination, such as degrades the very 
 conception of humanity — then we know how in long, 
 slow agony, the charnel house of her dominion crumbled, 
 until Rome, whom mightiest nations curtsied to, like a 
 forlorn and desperate castaway, did shameful execution 
 on herself." 
 
 And the Israelitish nation, God's care and pledge 
 to the world, proving recreant to his love and fatherly 
 interest ; and the Christl of God, could not keep his tears, 
 but out of sheer disappointment and weariness of wait- 
 ing and of love unrequited, cried, "Oh, Jerusalem, Jeru- 
 salem! How oft would I have gathered Thee, as a Hen 
 gathereth her chickens under her wings — but ye would 
 not, behold now is your house left unto you desolate.'* 
 
 And forty years later the red ashes of a desecrated 
 temple were slacked in the blood of her best defenders. 
 
 What wreckage along every shore and waste of 
 every energy! What was the cause of it all? Answer: 
 "The cry of sin-cursed, oppressed manhood, woman- 
 hood and childhood." No man can be great and influ- 
 ential who does not love the little child. Christ set his 
 
1 82 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 signet to this great truth. No nation is great, nor can 
 long endure whose children are not loved, nourished and 
 properly reared. 
 
 What now is this nation, of ours? Is it an excep- 
 tion? Is it more a child of God than the Jews? Will 
 He care for and save us from the same characterization 
 as we have just made of other peoples? Can He save 
 us, if He would, with sin upon us, or if we oppress the 
 widow and orphan in our eagerness to accumulate 
 wealth? When our wealth accumulates, will it save us, 
 if our men decay? Nay! And of America it can be said 
 even today that "we are grinding the seed corn" when 
 we make slaves of our children. 
 
 Do you hear the children weeping, oh! my brothers? 
 
 Ere their sorrow comes with years, 
 They are leaning their young heads against their mothers 
 
 And that cannot dry their tears. , 
 They are working in the playtime of the others, 
 
 In the country of the free." 
 "Our blood splashes upward, oh ! Gold Heaper, 
 
 And your purple shows your path; 
 But the child's sob in the darkness curses deeper, 
 
 Than the strong man in his wrath." 
 
 Is it: true that we are exacting a man's task from a 
 child? We, Americans! We, who after years of suffer- 
 ing fought and won our independence! We, who fought 
 
The Bitter Cry of the Children 1 83 
 
 and won and freed the black man! We who in the 
 beginning of our Nation's history sought the guidance 
 and protection and help of Him who said, "Suffer the 
 little children to come unto me, for of such is the King- 
 dom of Heaven !" We, who boast of our enlightenment 
 and whose chiefest harbor is impressively decorated with 
 a shaft having for its motto, "Liberty enlightening the 
 World," yet under whose shadow is perpetrated some 
 of the worst forms of slavery; where we send the light 
 to others and seek to teach others shall we not cleanse 
 ourselves? We, who lift the loads from others, shall 
 we not relieve the oppressed? We, who preach liberty 
 to the captives, shall we enslave little children? 
 
 Oh, America! — America of Bunker Hill — America 
 of Appomatox, America of San Juan — Libtity loving 
 country of Washington and Lincoln — shall we not let 
 the oppressed go free ? "As He died to\ make men holy, 
 let us *live' to make men free." Yet what are the facts : 
 
 "A little fellow who had been crushed in a mill, 
 when tcld he could not Hve long, cried out: "Oh! I 
 want to play some first !' " 
 
 Statistics are hard to secure. Two millions, five 
 hundred thousand children under 16 years of age are 
 empolyed at different tasks in our fair land. Twenty- 
 five regiments of one thousand each in coal mines alone. 
 One hundred thousand in textile factories. 
 
 When journeying up the Ohio River on a train I 
 sat by a commercial traveler who sold cotton goods. I 
 
184 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 asked concerning the truthfulness or otherwise of the 
 use of children in the cotton mills of the South and 
 he assured me as a man, that he had seen children as 
 young as six years and four years even who were em- 
 ployed in the spindle rooms eight and ten hours 
 a day. Indeed, he said they had small machin- 
 ery for small children. In a book of recent 
 date we read of a condition in the New England fac- 
 tories where children of the tender age tramp cloth in 
 bleach vats naked as the day they were born, until 
 their bodies are white as lepers. A traveler in a mid- 
 night underground train in ISTew York City found a boy 
 of twelve years, going to deliver a message where no 
 human eye or ear should venture, in the red light dis- 
 trict. Seven thousand, five hundred in glass factories; 
 twelve thousand in tobacco factories, receiving eight 
 cents for one hundred stogies, working fourteen to six- 
 teen hours a day ; ten thousand in saw mills ; seven thous- 
 and in foundries ; forty-two thousand in messenger serv- 
 ice; one hundred and thirty-eight thousand in various 
 forms of house work. Besides the newsboys, the thous- 
 ands in packing houses: shirt and collar factories, re- 
 ceiving, according to the Central Christian Advocate, 
 one and one-half cents for a stock collar which sells for 
 fifty cents ; making men's neckties, four cents each ; arti- 
 ficial flowers, one cent a dozen. Four children and their 
 mother earning only sixty cents a day, making violets. 
 Spargo tells of a four-year-old helping her mother, 
 
The Bitter Cry of the Children 185 
 
 making artificial flowers at eleven o'clock at night. The 
 mother saying to the child, ''Don't sleep! Don't sleep! 
 Just a few more." i 
 
 A doctor in a Southern mill says that the yearly toll 
 is one hundred fingers of very small children. Awful! 
 you say; can God bless a nation that has this 
 guilt upon it? Simply cannot even if he desired so to do. 
 It is against the constitutionality of man and God's 
 Kingdom. "If you make a man too soon you make a 
 small man." 
 
 Oh! In our efforts to conserve forests and other 
 indigenous resources of our Nation, let us not forget to 
 conserve God's choicest fruitage, the human soul. More 
 than iron, more than tree, more than coal or zinc, or 
 copper, silver, gold or diamond or even radium, He 
 loves the little ones and His will must ultimately prevail. 
 
 Joseph L. Bristow says, "The Government is never 
 better or worse than the opinion of the people," and 
 the character of the people is never better or worse than 
 the way the child is reared. And as we look at this 
 quarter of a million children under the lash of the task 
 master of the sweat shop or factory, what kind of citi- 
 zens may we expect? Thorough going, intelligent, loyal 
 or reactionary, socialistic, even anarchistic? At any 
 rate whatever they be the country will be. And it makes 
 it a little more dangerous that these children are largely 
 the children of foreign born peoples. Well may Edwin 
 Markham sing: 
 
1 86 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 "O, Masters, Lords, and rulers in the lands. 
 
 Is this the handiwork you give to God, 
 
 This monstrous thing, distorted and soul quenched? 
 
 How will you ever straighten out this shape 
 
 Touch it again with immortality, give back the upward 
 
 looking and the light; 
 Make right the immemorial infamies, 
 Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? 
 Oh, Masters, Lords, and Rulers of the Lands! 
 How will the future reckon with this man? 
 How answer his brute question in that hour 
 When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world? 
 How will it be with kingdoms and with kings. 
 With those who shaped him to the thing he is. 
 When this dumb terror shall reply to God 
 After the silence of the centuries?" 
 
 Rather may the sentiment expressed in the words 
 of Webster on Bunker Hill find an echo in every hearer's 
 heart: 
 
 "That motionless shaft will be the most powerful 
 of speakers. Its speech will be of civil and religious 
 liberty. It will speak of patriotism and courage. It 
 will speak of moral improvement and elevation of man- 
 kind. Decrepit age leaning against its base and ingen- 
 uous youth gathering around it, will speak to each 
 other of the glorious event with which it is connected 
 and exclaim, Thank God! I also am an American!'" 
 
The Bitter Cry of the Children 187 
 
 These little ones are easily won to a right path, 
 easily taught and moulded for God and righteousness. 
 Here is the place for work, patient, generous and Christ- 
 like sympathy and love. 
 
 Here at this point, with the care of a shepherd, we 
 can make Christian citizens and then make quickly a 
 Christian country. A little fellow seeing Miss Horton 
 (that matchless deaconness so long connected with Hal- 
 stead Street, Chicago), wanted to go with her when on 
 one of her missions of love. She tried to dissuade him, 
 told him to go home and get his face washed. He went, 
 but he was soon back, with the high places of his face 
 shining, and crying, "Now, I vill go mid you. Miss 
 Horton; now, I vill do mid you." But she said, "You 
 cannot go with me. I am going up five flights of stairs 
 to see a sick man and you cannot climb so many steps." 
 "I vill go mid you the stairs oop, Miss Horton," he 
 exclaimed, and he went. 
 
 So the multitudes that are adrift, cruelly ignorant 
 and neglected, imposed upon and oppressed, these in 
 flocks will go with us "the stairs up" if we only give 
 them a chance. 
 
HOW ARE WE MEETING THIS MIGHTY CHAL- 
 LENGE—FIRST, "AMONG THE JEWS/' 
 
 DR. LOUIS M. POTTS. 
 
 Would to God that I could use fifteen min- 
 utes, to tell you of accomplishments. The truth 
 compels me to say that, were I tabulating the work of 
 the church for the salvation of the Jew, it would re- 
 quire less than five minutes, for I answer the question 
 as to what we have done for the Jew, as a church, with 
 the remark that we have done nothing. It is not the 
 fault of the Board of Home Missions. It has done the 
 best it could with what you have to put into the hands 
 of its officers, and what I say is not criticism at all. 
 It is but another challenge to the church, to include 
 within its sphere of interest this people. 
 
 I ask you this question: "What people were first 
 in the mind of Christ," and you answer, "The Jews." 
 I ask, "What people are last in the mind of the church?" 
 and you answer, "The Jews," and the text for my brief 
 survey this afternoon is this : That the people who were 
 first in the mind of the Master are last in the mind of 
 the Master's church, and this, my brethren, ought not 
 to be. 
 
What are We Doing for the Jews 189 
 
 I am not unfamiliar with the work of certain or- 
 ganizations in the Ghettos of the cities. I have walked 
 the streets of every principal city, I think, of this land. 
 I have not time to go into details, but you must take 
 my word for it; I speak from the book. I have heard 
 figures as to results among the Jews in various lands. 
 I think I state the case conservatively when I say that 
 in the last century, the Christian church has received 
 and baptized but 12,400 Jewish souls. That is a very 
 small average. About 300 Jews, yearly, are received into 
 Christian churches. But have you thought of my state- 
 ment this morning? The Jew is increasing in numbers. 
 There is no race suicide among the orthodox Jews; 
 there is a little among the reformed Jews. They are 
 learning bad habits from you, folks; but the orthodox 
 Jew is prolific and there are children in the homes. It 
 will take 10,000 years to touch the outer rim of the 
 proposition at the present rate. The largest Jewish city 
 that ever was in the world, is New York City. A dear 
 old lady, at the close of this moming^s session, said she 
 believed in the prophecies, that some day the Jews were 
 to build up a great commonwealth in Palestine and the 
 dear old lady was sincere, but the fact is, where one 
 Jew goes to Palestine, ninety -nine come to our shores. 
 Not in all the history of Jerusalem, two thousand years 
 or more, did that city have one-fourth as many Jews as 
 now live in New York City. We have one million Jews 
 in New York City, and sad to state, the Jew is crowding 
 
I go The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 out the Christian church. There are more Jewish con- 
 gregations in New York City than Christian churches. 
 How long will it take, at the present rate, to influence 
 the Jew toward Christ? Two years ago there were 
 803 Jewish congregations in New York City. They con- 
 trol the wholesale whiskey trade, and control the largest 
 single industry in NJew York City, the clothing trade. 
 They control the amusement problem in the city and na- 
 tion, and I say, while I refrain from criticism, that the 
 world will indict the modern Jew for the kind of stuff 
 we are getting from the American stage, for ninety per 
 cent, of the houses of amusement are controlled by Jew- 
 ish people. Half of the newspapers are edited by Jewish 
 men. New York is becoming a Jewish city. The Jew is 
 not going to Palestine ; he is coming to New York City. 
 Today more Jews live in Chicago than in all Palestine. 
 You will get something of an idea of the Jewish problem 
 as you digest these figures. What are we going to do 
 with them? The Jew is an important factor in our city 
 problem. The problem of Jewish evangelization is a 
 most complex one, for three reasons: First. We do 
 not understand the Jew. We think we know the Jew 
 of the old Testament, but very imperfectly. Why, the 
 Reformed Jew does not believe in the Mosiac law, at 
 all. He does not believe in the Messiah. He never has 
 come; never will come. The orthodox Jew is the modern 
 Pharisee. It is hard to believe a story, I heard from a 
 good lady. It denotes such density it is almost incredible 
 
What are We Doing for the Jews igi 
 
 that any people working among Jews could be guilty of 
 such conduct. In a settlement house in Chicago, on a 
 certain occasion they were to have a social hour. They 
 were going to give the Jewish lads and lassies a treat. 
 After the program, refreshments came. The bread was 
 cut diagonal, and the sandwiches tied with blue ribbon 
 and everything lovely; but as soon as the sandwiches 
 were passed the Jewish lads began to throw them at 
 those in charge, and she wondered why. I asked, ''What 
 did you place between the two pieces of bread?" 'The 
 best deviled ham I could find." 
 
 We do not understand the Jew, and I venture to 
 say that the average street preaching, on the corner, in 
 Jewish Ghettos, while well meant, instead of winning 
 the Jew, drives him away from the Christ. 
 
 The other part of the problem is this : We do not 
 understand the Jew; the Jew does not understand us. 
 When I came to feel that Judaism was but half of the 
 Revelation, and that I had to look somewhere else for 
 the other half, I said to myself, lad that I was — 'T cannot 
 be a Jew, hence I am a Gentile." Had anybody asked 
 in those days, was I a Christian, "Why, of course, I am 
 a Gentile," would have been the answer. Gentile and 
 Christian are synonymous in the mind of the Jew. He 
 does not know the difference; that is the trouble. That 
 is why his hatred which was largely against the law, has 
 been turned against the church. 
 
 The trouble is this, when the Jew leaves his faith 
 
192 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 he is socially ostracised. It is a matter of loss of kin 
 and home and all that. When I think of it in this con- 
 nection, I marvel that 300 Jews annually leave their faith 
 for Christianity. 
 
 The Jew is more potent for good or evil than anj 
 other people. Read the stories of the city and you will 
 agree with me. He is acquisitive, he is "on his toes'* all 
 the while. He is in the forefront. There are two 
 American institutions the Jew threatens, not because he 
 is un-American, but he thinks he must protect himself 
 and his children from assimilation. The first is the 
 Christian Sabbath. The Reform Jew has no day of 
 rest. He is commercialism incarnate. His business 
 days are seven days a week and as many hours a day 
 as he is awake, and I am told that he dreams about his 
 business. It is in his blood. It is a part of him. Can 
 a man divorce himself from his family? His name and 
 his blood are intermixed with the family idea. The Jew 
 has taken up the idea of commerce. It is a part of his 
 blood. The Sabbath day is not in his mind and he resists 
 any attempt upon the part of any people to set aside, 
 legally, a day of rest. He says, this is not a Christian 
 nation; but a nation for the free, and he resists any at- 
 tempt to compel observation of a day of rest. 
 
 The other touches the American school. Two years 
 ago the Jew was so strong in New York City that he 
 was able to keep the name of Christ out of the Christ- 
 mas exercises at that time. The list of teachers in cer- 
 
What are We Doin^ for the Jews 193 
 
 tain sections of the city reads like a Jewish directory. 
 
 Now, the Jew is going to protect himself. He is 
 powerful, strong, never passive; and if we do not touch 
 his life with the higher love of the Qiristian Gospel, 
 materialistic as he is, and powerful as he is, he will 
 stamp the materialism of his nature and life upon these 
 institutions. 
 
 Aside from all this ; the Qiristian church owes much 
 to the Jew. Dr. Wright, in his splendid peroration, 
 mentioned such a list of characters as would charm any- 
 one into loving the Italians; but I will take every name 
 he mentioned, and I will put beside them all, one name; 
 and from the standard of achievement, and what the 
 world has derived, will outmatch every one of them — 
 and that one name is Moses; for without the inspiration 
 of life which has come to the world through the laws 
 given unto humanity by Moses, there would be lacking 
 inspiration for the achievements presented to you. 
 
 I will hastily give you the problem of Home Mis- 
 sionary work as touching the Jew. The Jew is a part of 
 the great city. We shall fail utterly to reach him, unless 
 we shall be able to stamp upon the city the impression 
 of Jesus Christ. The Jew is influenced by the things 
 which are large and imposing. I have seen a little 
 mission, in a crowded street, cheap in every respect. The 
 Jew says, ''What about the Christ? Is this his head- 
 quarters?" You have on your boulevards the spires of 
 churches for those who worship Him, and when you 
 want to reach His descendants, if you please, those of 
 kindred blood with the Saviour, you want to reach them 
 
194 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 in a 2x4 institution. They are not to be reached in that 
 way. It is a pity that Christianity is so represented. 
 
 The third element is this: You know we have 
 given the Jew up as hopeless. You say — it does not 
 matter; he is either to be saved by the fact he is of tne 
 Chosen People or he is to be saved in some way. You 
 do not trouble yourself about him at all, but he will be 
 lost unless we touch him. You say — there are some Jew- 
 ish converts and they may touch the other Jewish life. 
 The fact is, you must not depend upon the average Jew- 
 ish convert. In the address by Dr. Mitchell, we were 
 told eloquently about Jesus viewing the city. What 
 city? Jerusalem, a Jewish city, of the Jewish people. 
 The first great missionary hungered for the salvation of 
 his kinfolk. Shall the church live without a throbbing 
 of heart for those people? God forbid! I here want to 
 pledge with you my life, my influence, for the ushering 
 in of the day when the yearning of the Christ and the 
 hungering of St. Paul shall be mightily filled in the Chris- 
 tian church, yea, within the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 
 Dr. Coker. I hope we will listen to this appeal 
 with our hearts. This Bible is a Jewish book. There 
 is not a character in it of note that is not a Jew. Our 
 religion is a Jewish religion, born in the heart of the 
 Jewish people, and we ought to pray that they may be 
 brought within the fold. Brother Thomas will tell us 
 what we are doing for the black people. We ought to 
 be doing something for them also, in the name of our 
 Lord, who loves all men, everywhere. 
 
AMONG THE BLACK MEN. 
 
 REV. I. L. THOMAS^ D. D. 
 
 Brothers and Sisters: American Methodism 
 has a misison to the colored people of this country. In 
 Barbara Heck's stirring story of Philip Embry, preach- 
 ing the gospel in New York, his congregation numbered 
 five, and one was a colored woman. When Bishop 
 Asbury, having so many calls that he might preach to 
 the people, found that he could not fill them all, there 
 was a colored local minister, known as Black Harry, 
 whom the Bishop would send. The crowd expected to 
 hear the Bishop preach. Those who failed to get in the 
 meeting house, went away declaring "the Bishop 
 preached a wonderful sermon." 
 
 The church is facing the great challenge which 
 comes from the powers of darkness, and it is a question 
 as to what the church is able to do, toward helping to 
 gather in the black people of the republic. Surveying 
 that situation, I wish to call attention to a few things: 
 
 The 300,000 colored members of the Methodist- 
 Episcopal church are proud of their relation to this 
 great church that God has sent to help to lift them up, 
 and now what is the church doing, to draw the colored 
 
196 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 people, millions of them in this republic, away from the 
 powers of darkness? 
 
 In the first place, it is helping to give the colored 
 people of the country a Christian education. Thank 
 God for the great work that has been done through the 
 Freedmen's Aid Society. Twenty-four institutions of 
 learning are dotted over the south land, where the church 
 has been operating, helping to give these people a Chris- 
 tian education, and there have gone forward from these 
 institutions more than 13,000 graduates, scattering the 
 light among their people, and to the praise of God and 
 the training of this church, not one of those 13,000 
 graduates has ever been arrested or charged with any 
 crime for which they ought to be punished. 
 
 Again, I would say the church is helping to meet 
 this challenge by helping them join the band that has 
 been united, declaring the saloon must go. In the south- 
 land country where gigantic efforts have been made that 
 the saloon be swept out, no colored members of any 
 church have been as loyal to the temperance movement 
 as the black people in the Methodist Episcopal church. 
 
 Again, I would say, the church is helping my people 
 to have an exemplary ministry. To give you an idea, in 
 Forsythe, Arkansas, where there was a convention of 
 colored people, the agent of the railroad said he had 
 received a great number of packages of whiskey for 
 members of the convention. The people were opposed 
 to the coming of the Methodist Episcopal church; but 
 
Among' the Black Men 197 
 
 when our conference was held there, the railroad agent 
 said he had not received any express package of whiskey 
 for any member. Because of this uplift we have a 
 splendid Methodist Episcopal church today. 
 
 The church is answering this challenge by helping 
 the girls, too, of my race. Thank God for the noble 
 army of women, in the Women's Home Missionary So- 
 ciety. They have gone into the south and established 
 seventeen schools, touching the inner life of my people. 
 Girls from one- room cabins. One, I remember particu- 
 larly, came from a large log building, capable of a divi- 
 sion into four rooms. She said to her father, let's par- 
 tition off two bed rooms, and two other rooms. He said 
 "What does this mean, daughter." Together they 
 worked, she pasted paper over the logs, and when it was 
 done, the father and mother, with the rest of the family, 
 sat down, tears flowing down their cheeks, and said, 
 "Where did you get such ideas? God bless the folks 
 who gave them to you!" The girl answered, "In Fair- 
 home, Atlanta, Georgia." The church is helping us 
 give our girls that conception of home-making. 
 
 In the next place, it is helping the colored member- 
 ship to rely more upon itself in the way of self-support. 
 During the quadrennium closing 1908, the Board of the 
 Home Missions gave our people for missionary purposes 
 in the south $182,000; and in the same length of time 
 the colored membership put back in the treasury 
 $143,000, leaving the church in four years only contrib- 
 
I q8 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 uting $40,000 to help save eight milHon people in this 
 country to Jesus Christ. In other words, the church, has 
 given us on an average, for the twenty colored con- 
 ferences, a little less than $500 a year, so you see after 
 all we are not getting much. 
 
 In the next place, it is helping the race make good 
 citizens. A bishop who came, years ago, as editor of 
 the Christian Advocate, in Nashville, to a conference in 
 Chicago, said, "You are giving the south the best Speci- 
 mens of citizenship of any of the churches in our land." 
 
 Again, it is helping them believe more firmly in the 
 fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. Whilst my 
 skin is different from yours, I have a heart, and believe 
 in the same God, as my father, as you believe in. Of 
 different races, we believe God made of one blood, all 
 mankind, to dwell together upon the face of the earth. 
 
 Don't be afraid of my people. Some folks get a 
 little nervous, in the presence of black men and women. 
 They won't hurt you. Give us the clasp of your hand 
 as Jesus Christ touches your life, and you will inspire us 
 to walk with Christ. 
 
 In the last place, the church is helping us to have 
 a beautiful vision of the future of our people. We 
 look yonder, to see the sky clearing, as the children of 
 God, of all races are uniting for victory, to bring this 
 world to Christ. 
 
 My closing word is, we are grateful for the men 
 and women of your race who came among us in dark 
 
Amon^ the Black Men iqq 
 
 days, and many laid down their lives. The Reverend 
 Geo. Standing, one day in Atlanta said, "My boy, dying, 
 requested, 'Let the boys in black, for whom I have given 
 my life, bear me to my resting place.' '' More than one 
 hundred colored preachers and others who had come 
 under the influence of that blessed man, looked in his 
 face, this man past his 8oth birthday, and dropped their 
 tears upon his casket. 
 
 Down in Waynesboro, Georgia, a blessed woman 
 of the Women's Home Missionary Society, who came 
 down in early days, and gave her life for my people, 
 when she died, requested to be buried among the folks 
 she had given her life for. The colored women of 
 Waynesboro erected a monument to her memory. Every 
 year they go to that spot and say to the Father of us 
 all, "We shall keep her grave green, and tell the girls 
 of coming generations to do so; she was our friend." 
 
 We are grateful for everything done for us, and by 
 and by, we all shall report to Him, white man, black 
 man, every man of the human race. We shall lay our 
 trophies at the feet of Jesus and say, "We did what we 
 could." 
 
 (Dr. Coker briefly introduced Mrs. Williams.) 
 
WOMANfS WORK. 
 
 MRS. BELLA L. WILLIAMS, NATIONAL CORRESPONDING 
 SECRETARY_, WOMAn's HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 
 
 Mr. President: I sometimes think, we are not 
 really the older sister, but in a sense the mother of the 
 Board of Home Missions, for I am not sure whether, if 
 there had not been a Woman's Home Missionary So- 
 ciety, there would be today a Board of Home Missions. 
 I rather think it was the literature of the Woman's So- 
 ciety, and the information brought to the church, that at 
 least hastened the organization of the Home Board. So 
 we feel we have a right to say "Amen" to all that Dr. 
 Coker said. We ought to have a Woman's Home Mis- 
 sionary Society in every church in Methodism, and we 
 look forward to the day when we shall have it. Such 
 meetings as this help us, because our pastors, their wives^ 
 and men and women of influence in the church, are going 
 to feel there is work to be done by the Home Board and 
 by the Woman's Home Missionary Society, because 
 there is so much we can do, and ought to do, that the 
 church expects us to do, that the Home Board cannot 
 and does not do. I think it true, as Dr. Piatt said at a 
 
Woman s Work 201 
 
 meeting, that the work of the Home Board is to support 
 the pastors in their fields, to help in building schools, 
 parsonages, and things of that sort, and they do not do 
 what we are doing at all, which is work for women and 
 children, particularly. The church has so divided the 
 work that we cannot feel, if we neglect our own, there 
 will be anybody else to do it. It is important that every 
 woman feel that the church expects us to occupy a cer- 
 tain field of work within its borders. You have listened 
 to the challenges of various sorts, and I have been think- 
 ing they were not challenges of the men upon the plat- 
 form, nor the Board of Home Missions, but of God him- 
 self, given to the church, for its response. I address 
 my remarks to the point of how the Woman's Home 
 Missionary Society is meeting those challenges. Our 
 good brother who just spoke gave us some points. We 
 have seventeen schools in the south where colored girls 
 are taught. Girls come to us from cotton and rice fields, 
 without ever having seen a table spread, or used a fork 
 or knife, without proper clothing, perhaps everything 
 they have tied up in a handkerchief, and carried in their 
 hands, who have lived in a house of but one room. They 
 come asking for a chance. One of them, as 
 she came into one of our homes and saw its beauty, 
 asked, "Is this Heaven?" She responded quickly to it 
 We all love beautiful things, and we teach those girls 
 to love beauty and order, to be economical, to make their 
 clothing simply and well. We teach them all the details 
 
202 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 of nice housekeeping, because it all develops char- 
 acter. They go home and do just what Brother 
 Thomas said that girl did making better homes for their 
 own families. 
 
 There are things the church through our society is 
 doing for the colored girls that Brother Thomas did not 
 refer to — very important things, too. We are educating 
 teachers for the colored schools in the south. In many 
 cities of the south, a white teacher cannot teach in a 
 colored school. They must have colored teachers, if 
 any, and girls not educated in the church schools estab- 
 lished by northern churches, are poor teachers as a rule. 
 We are happy to say the girls trained in our schools take 
 the lead in the examinations, for public school places. 
 
 Another very important thing we do for the col- 
 ored people in the south, is to train a lot of girls for 
 minister's wives (laughter). I don't know what the 
 young men in the Freedmen's Aid Society schools would 
 do, after graduating from their schools, if they had to go 
 back to the cabins to get wives. They come to our 
 schools, and we cannot keep them away. We always 
 have a supply of the very best sort. 
 
 Miss Mitchell, of Atlanta, one of our teachers, heard 
 that one of our girl graduates married a graduate from 
 the university on the same campus, a young preacher. 
 They went out together, to do the work of the Methodist 
 Episcopal church, among the colored people of the south. 
 They went to a little settlement. They had one room 
 
Woman s Work 203 
 
 and a lean-to kitchen. They invited Miss Mitchell to 
 visit. Within a block, she knew which house in the 
 street was the parsonage, because it was clean and neat 
 and there were no clothes hanging on the fence, with 
 white curtains at the windows. They could not keep 
 her over night; but everything showed the training to 
 habits of cleanliness, industry and thrift. After two or 
 three years, there was another invitation, this time to 
 a village of some importance in the south. They had 
 a house of two or three rooms. They had a little one, 
 and the cradle and child were all in white. Everything 
 was neat. Don't you think it is an object lesson to the 
 people to have such a parsonage to go to? There was a 
 room the guest could stay in, over night. 
 
 After a few years, she visited them again, in a city, 
 in a two-story house. Everything was beautiful and 
 clean inside and outside, as before. The man was a 
 power in the church, and the woman his equal in that 
 regard. I think it is good for the women of the race, 
 to train good, consecrated, capable, minister's wives. 
 
 Sometimes people say, "Why don't you train those 
 girls for servants, and bring them north?" Why, we 
 can't afford it. It costs too much, in the first place, and 
 they would not come. We have better things for them 
 to do than bring them north. We can do our own work 
 here if necessary. We want them there for salt for 
 their own race. They are attached to their homes, as we 
 
204 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 are. They don't want to come north. So much for the 
 colored people. 
 
 The white people in the mountain regions and some- 
 times in the lower plains, need just as much as the col- 
 ored people. We have schools where we do the same for 
 them. The poor white people are more helpless than 
 colored people, in many respects, in the mountain 
 region. The colored girls can earn money and often 
 come with money in their pockets. The white girls can- 
 not. They don't know how to do anything and southern 
 people do not want white servants. They come without 
 money, as a rule, or much clothing, with nothing behind 
 them. They come saying simply, "We want as good a 
 chance as the colored girls." 
 
 I had a letter recently from Arkansas, the third 
 from that region, asking me to establish a training school 
 in western Arkansas, in domestic science. The presiding 
 elder wrote, **I was reared near your school in North 
 Carolina; I know all about it. I have seen your school 
 at Athens, Tenn., and Boaz, Ala. We want just such a 
 school here." Those people need us. We have been 
 asked to Alabama. We cannot get to those places be- 
 cause we haven't enough money now. Those girls are 
 being made into missionaries, into deaconesses, taking 
 up church life and service among those people. 
 
 A few years ago, I was at Ritter home, at Athens, 
 Tennessee. It was a rainy Sunday. The girls had 
 been out in the morning. They met in the sitting room 
 
Woman s Work 205 
 
 in the evening for worship. After they were through, I 
 said, "Girls, I would like to have you tell me what your 
 ideals are for the future? What are you going to do?" 
 It would have been very interesting if you could have 
 heard it! You would have begun to feel in your pocket 
 for another dollar to help those girls. A young widow 
 who recently lost her husband, said, "I have nothing now 
 to live for, for myself. I would like to take training as a 
 nurse, to go out among people in the mountains, and see 
 what I could do to help them." That was a beautiful 
 thought. 
 
 A girl said, "We have a big family at home. I 
 am the oldest. My mother is not very strong. I am 
 going home to help mother, and see what we can do to 
 to help my sister come to school. I can teach school. 
 After a while that sister can help mother and send an- 
 other, until we have all come here and have the train- 
 ing I have had." That is generous, isn't it? That is 
 the spirit of service, to help somebody else. 
 
 Those girls not only learn to cook, but learn the 
 way of Jesus Christ. They have their own prayer meet- 
 ings, class meeting and Bible study, and a beautiful 
 Christian life develops, in the genial atmosphere of those 
 homes. 
 
 On the Pacific coast we have homes for our Japanese 
 people and our Chinese girls and women, in San Fran- 
 cisco and Los Angeles ; and are establishing another near 
 Seattle. We are trying to help the people we heard 
 
2o6 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 about yesterday. You haven't heard anything about 
 Alaska. We have two homes in Alaska. We have gath- 
 ered together the native people, and have a carpenter 
 shop, a little hospital. We find we are ministering to 
 those people just what they need and they are responsive. 
 Two earnest explorers for Christ married the day they 
 were graduated from school, and started for the region 
 away up on the Behring sea. When they arrived, they 
 had no house, and went into the government building, a 
 while. We built them a house, with one side for the boys 
 and girls. We started out with the girls, only, but found 
 where there was no boys' school, the Freedmen's Aid 
 Society, or some other, had not gone before us, our girls 
 had no husbands when they got through. They cannot 
 marry boys that have never had training. We are 
 trying the same work almost at the Arctic Circle, that 
 we are in Texas and Louisiana. The good New Jersey 
 conference built a large boat, that cost $i,ooo. They 
 gave the money for it to be built, in Seattle. The boat 
 is bringing people to our mission so that we will have 
 to build another building soon. They tell us we will 
 have to build still another building, because we have to 
 keep the girls all summer. We cannot let them go over 
 to Nome, twenty-seven miles, because there are so many 
 bad Americans there. 
 
 When the seed is planted, the work grows and 
 spreads until one thing develops another. 
 
 We work among our Spanish-American people 
 
Woman s Work 207 
 
 down in the southwest. We have three such homes as 
 I have described, at Albuquerque, Tucson and Los An- 
 geles. Beautiful young Spanish girls are trained. 
 
 Suppose these were your daughters, and you were 
 in the position of those colored people, mountain people, 
 those in Spanish America, or Alaska! What would 
 we, if we were there, want somebody to do for us ? 
 
 One scarcely knows where to begin with our city 
 problem. We have nearly 400 deaconesse> working in 
 one way or another, trying to help out the people that 
 need just such help as they can give them. We had a 
 description yesterday of some places called homes, that 
 are not homes at all. Have you ever been out, a cold, 
 stormy evening, driving along in the dark, and passing a 
 little hamlet, seen one house after another lit up, and 
 pictured to yourself what was inside that house, how the 
 father had come home from his work, tired, hung his 
 coat in the hall, gotten his accustomed seat, and all the 
 troubles of the day were forgotten at once, for he was in 
 his own home. Then the children home from school, 
 happy hearted, with empty dinner pails, and hungry as 
 bears. I was brought up in the country — I know. 
 Mother flying around, with a hot supper almost ready. 
 Presently it is on the table, all are seated and the father 
 asks the blessing. They begin the everlasting clatter 
 about what has been seen or done during the day. 
 Everybody is interested in what everybody says. The 
 family is shut in to its own confidences, each loving the 
 other. 
 
2o8 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 That is what we are trying to do in this Women's 
 Home Missionary Society for all these people for whom 
 we are working. We want them to have homes. If we 
 could clean up some of the terrible places in the city, 
 wouldn't it be the greatest thing ever done for humanity ? 
 Think of twenty people living in one room! If we could 
 get people into proper homes we would not have social- 
 ists. The deaconesses go into those places. With their 
 own hands they scrub the floors, wash the children, ^-^i^ 
 their clothing and try to get them into comfortable cir- 
 cumstances. They try to impress people that they must 
 make home attractive. Do you blame men for not spend- 
 ing evenings at such homes? Or the children for living 
 in the streets? The whole problem is solved by Christi- 
 anity and good homes. 
 
 Not only in cities are our deaconesses doing this 
 work. In some sections of our country people need to 
 be shown how to keep a home respectable and attractive. 
 Three weeks ago, in the anthracite region, Hazeldon, 
 Pa., I saw three missionaries working to that end. They 
 care for the sick and comfort in sorrow. There is 
 plenty of sorrow. In the afternoon Sunday school, I 
 asked if the older ones might not remain for class meet- 
 ing. I want to give you the testimony of a young 
 Bohemian, an attractive young man. He said, "When 
 I came to this country, I had neither father, mother, 
 brother, sister, but since finding Christ I have." After 
 the meeting I asked, "What are your plans?" He said, 
 
Woman s Work 209 
 
 "I am laying up money to go to school, and I am to 
 preach the gospel to my people. I want them to know 
 what I have found out." 
 
 There is work for us in this country. People say, 
 "Anybody can go to church that wants to, in this coun- 
 try ; there is no need of missionary work." They don't 
 want to; there is the need for missionary work. We 
 want consecrated, earnest young women to go among 
 those people and see what they can do for them. We 
 want young women in the home churches that will or- 
 ganize the young women and instruct them. 
 
 The prophet of old saw the vision for which he 
 prayed, "If the vision tarry, wait for it, for it will suiely 
 come." We need the vision. We need this opening of 
 our eyes, to see our opportunities, the greatest the world 
 has ever had. May the Lord give us the vision, and he 
 surely will, if we wait and earnestly seek it. 
 
 (Music.) 
 
KANSAS AND THE BOARD OF HOME MIS- 
 SIONS AND CHURCH EXTENSION. 
 
 By Bascom Robbins, Ph.D., Superintendent Em- 
 poria District, South Kansas Conference. 
 
 Kansas, being in the center of the United States, 
 which is the center of the world, is the hub of the 
 universe. 
 
 It was the battle ground of freedom. Two distinct 
 civilizations contended for supremacy. The one de- 
 termined that slavery should be imbedded in the con- 
 stitution; the other equally insistent, that the foul blot 
 should not stain her fair escutcheon. The latter pre- 
 vailed, and when the struggle became national, sent 
 more soldiers than she had voters. This spirit of liberty 
 and enterprise has become her characteristic so that she 
 is constantly at the front. It is said that an English- 
 man, Frenchman and Kansan met at a banquet in 
 Paris. The Englishman lifted his glass and said, "Here 
 is to England, the sun who rules the day.'' The French- 
 man said, "Here is to France, the moon who proudly 
 rules the night." The Kansan said, "Here is to Kan- 
 
What the Board is Doings for the West 21 1 
 
 sas, U. S., the Joshua who commanded and both sun 
 and moon stood still.'' 
 
 The evening's flow of wine overcame the dry 
 Kansan and his two companions put him in a coffin and 
 placed him in the cemetery. When he awoke next 
 morning he exclaimed, "The judgment day and a Kan- 
 san the first man raised." 
 
 "The world will be slow to admit the discovery of 
 the frigid pole until a Kansan, or formerly of Kansas 
 is connected with the enterprise. 
 
 Kansas was the Board of Home Missions' first 
 great opportunity. 
 
 Sturdy union soldiers and sons of Easterners, 
 anxious for one of Uncle Sam's farms, covered our Kan- 
 sas prairies. The Methodist itinerant followed the trail 
 and claimed the country for his "King." The Board, 
 by its method of small appropriations to individual men 
 supported a multitude of workers. 
 
 The wisdom of such policy is now apparent, as we 
 were thus able to render "first aid" to a larger number 
 and save the country lads who are now our church 
 leaders in the cities. 
 
 Kansas was the Board of Church Extensions' first 
 great opportunity. 
 
 The sod cabin or the lonely tree might be suitable 
 temple for temporary proclamation and organization, 
 but Methodism had come to stay, so must provide more 
 permanent quarters. 
 
212 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 Bishop Fowler once said : "A man in the boarding 
 hall may leave on the next train; the man in a rented 
 house may go at the end of the month; but the man in 
 his own home is likely to be a fixture." 
 
 So the church in the private house may disband; 
 the church in the hired hall may be transient; but the 
 church in its own edifice is a permanent contribution to 
 the community. 
 
 The Board of Church Extension royally responded 
 to this demand until the four conferences have received 
 $215,071 in donations and $239,085 in loans, helping 
 into existence 1,033 ^^ ^^ i^037 churches. 
 
 III. 
 
 Kansas has produced results of which the Board 
 is proud. 
 
 Methodism germinated as though indigenous to the 
 soil. Intensive cultivation has produced abundant fruit- 
 age. The revivalist and church builder, under the 
 blessing of God, have accomplished the seemingly im- 
 possible. If corn and alfalfa are king in the agricultural 
 realm Methodism is king in the religious world. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Kansas will be the Board's productive endowment 
 for conquests elsewhere. 
 
 We are not now a feeble company; we are a vie- 
 
What the Board is Doin^ for the West 2 1 3 
 
 torious regiment; we are a mighty brigade. Our four 
 conferences have 120,000 members, 144,000 in our 
 Bible schools, 759 conference ministers and four and 
 three-fourths million dollars of church property. We 
 are no longer poverty stricken. Most of us are men 
 financially. The Board is receiving returns, as we have 
 paid into its treasury $144,116 during the past four 
 years. However, the Board has returned $78,936 of 
 that amount for missionary and church extension work 
 in our four conferences. 
 
 Our people could do much more. As an illustra- 
 tion. About half of the members of Emporia district 
 are country people. About half of these are women. 
 Should each country woman give one tgg per day the 
 Board of Home Missions and Church Extension would 
 receive from them two and a half times more than the 
 district paid last year. We ought to help the Board 
 save the nation since we are largely English speaking 
 people — only in the North, West and Southeast parts of 
 the state have we any foreign problem worthy the name. 
 We ought to help because we do not have to struggle 
 with the city slum problem. Kansas will continue to 
 make good with the Board of Home Missions and 
 Church Extension. 
 
THE SUMMONS TO A NEW DEPARTURE 
 
 By W. E. Doughty, Educational Secreteary Lay- 
 men's Missionary Movement. 
 
 Every vision is twin brother to a task. As the 
 closing hours of this parHament, with its vision of op- 
 portunity, draw near, it is fitting that we consider what 
 we can do to '/neet the challenge which has been pre- 
 sented to us these days. We have been facing anew 
 the home missionary task of American Christianity. A 
 bewildering array of problems has been marshalled be- 
 fore us. "There are problexTis we have inherited ; prob- 
 lems we have created, and problems of destiny." The 
 need now is not for more speeches but the forming of 
 great purposes. If we have heard the call aright, it is 
 a summons to a new departure for us as individuals and 
 for the church of which we are a part. We have been 
 finding out what kind of an hour this is into which we 
 have come; we must now determine whether we will 
 be men adequate to the demands of this hour. The is- 
 sues have been made perfectly clear; we must now de- 
 cide what our attitude is to be toward them. 
 
 To adequately do our share in the solution of 
 American religious problems, there must be a four-fold 
 
The Summons to a New Departure 215 
 
 program of advance. Let us thoughtfully consider this 
 program together and then go away quietly into the will 
 of God with an indiscouragable purpose to make this 
 the time of a new departure in our work for the King- 
 dom of God. 
 
 I. A PROGRAM OF PRAYER. 
 
 The deepest missionary need of our time is the 
 need for the development of a vitality in the church 
 that will be equal to the strain of the imperialism of 
 Christ. We must have a Christianity worth propogating 
 if we are to make a compelling appeal to the men who 
 are not now yielded to Jesus Christ. There is no end 
 of speaking and writing, and holding committee meet- 
 ings, and forming policies, and rushing to and fro, but 
 there is need of a dynamic to make all this effective. 
 The Church of Christ needs a high and fine spiritual 
 touch, and the development and deepening life of prayer 
 if she is to grapple successfully with the tremendous 
 problems she is facing. Prayer has broken down more 
 barriers than all the battalions and battle ships in the 
 world. There must be more definiteness in our pray- 
 ing; more time spent upon this most important mis- 
 sionary service that any of us can render, and more pas- 
 sion for prayer like that which characterized our Mas- 
 ter. It has been a very great blessing to me personally 
 to notice that all of Christ's calls to service have a sac- 
 
2i6 The Conservation 0/ Our Moral Resources 
 
 rifice clause. It was truly said of Him: "He saved 
 others; Himself He cannot save." That principle is 
 true in the life of every true missionary worker in our 
 day. We must advance on our knees, and there must 
 be true sacrifice. No more stirring phrase has ever 
 been spoken concerning the home missionary then this : 
 "The frontier has always advanced over missionaries 
 graves." 
 
 I commend to your attention a careful study of the 
 possibilities of the life of prayer, and suggest, among 
 other strong and helpful publications, "Individual Pray- 
 er as a Working Force," by Gregg, and "Intercession a 
 Mighty Means of Usefulness," by McClure. There is 
 also in course of preparation a package on "Prayer and 
 Missions" which will be issued by the Laymen's Mis- 
 sionary Movement, and we trust it may be of very 
 great service to the missionary leaders of America. 
 
 In the "Life of Sheldon Jackson" the story is told 
 of a prayer-meeting at Sioux City on the banks of the 
 Missouri river. Sheldon Jackson and a small group of 
 companions remained for several hours in prayer that 
 Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas centering at that point 
 might be captured for the Empire of Christ. If we 
 could take in all the significance of those kneeling fig- 
 ures there by the river, we would learn all the mission- 
 ary lessons we would need this hour. We could not do 
 better than to read once more the biography of David 
 Brainerd, perhaps the most conspicuous man of prayer 
 
The Summons to a New Departure 2 1 7 
 
 that the home missionary enterprise has ever produced. 
 If the reading of such books and the study anew of the 
 prayer teachings and practice of the Bible would bring 
 us to a deepened purpose to pray more for the evange- 
 lism of America and the world, a new era would dawn 
 in our missionary activities. 
 
 II. A PROGRAM OF EDUCATION. 
 
 The Church was never so intelligent regarding the 
 missionary enterprise as today, yet much remains to be 
 done. There are large sections of the church where her 
 greatest need is a "first aid to the ignorant." It is one 
 of the most striking sayings of perhaps Methodism's 
 foremost missionary orator today, that "the greatest 
 hindrance to missions is the blight of the township 
 mind." Just a few days ago it was my pleasure to go 
 over the scenes depicted in "David Harum" and to visit 
 the little church whose members incurred the wrath of 
 David Harum because he said "they were so narrow 
 that fourteen of them could ride on a lumber wagon 
 seat without crowding." I have been greatly struck 
 by the closing words of Seeley's "Expansion of Eng- 
 land," when he says "I cannot make history more inter- 
 esting than it is except by falsifying it. So when I 
 find a man who says that he does not find history in- 
 teresting, it does not occur to me to alter history ; I try 
 to alter the man." Put the word "missions" in each 
 
2i8 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 place where the word "history" occurs in this quotation, 
 and you have a strong statement of the case, for, when 
 I find a man who does not find missions interesting, 
 it does not occur to 'me to change missions; I try to 
 change the man. The educational problem is the task 
 of naturalizing in the thinking and purpose of every 
 man, woman and child in the church, the spirit and pur- 
 pose and program of missions. This is an immense task 
 and will take constant, patient and increasing cultiva- 
 tion. 
 
 Most of us are familiar with many of the mission- 
 ary materials that are being prepared for the various 
 organizations in the church. But I suggest there ought 
 to be a very much larger use of missionary matter on 
 bulletin boards, such as charts and striking statistics put 
 up in vestibules of churches where they can readily be 
 seen by passing congregations. 
 
 I would also call attention to the very valuable bit 
 of missionary work that is being done by Emory Metho- 
 dist Church at Pittsburg, of which the Rev. Dr. E. A. 
 Piper is pastor. They have conducted a series of com- 
 munity studies by means of an organization which they 
 call 'The Church Census Club." There were some 
 alarming facts revealed by the canvas of the section of 
 the city in which Emory Church is located. The most 
 startling thing about the statistics is that 9,000 persons 
 expressed themselves as preferring the Methodist Epis- 
 copal church and yet were not members or attendants 
 
The Summons to a New Departure 219 
 
 of any church. Such a study is possible in any com- 
 munity, and would be of extreme value. Emory Church 
 followed up its work by organizing what is called *The 
 Hospitality Club" in which definite responsibilities are 
 committed to definite groups of people, such as the 
 young people, women, children and men. 
 
 It is hoped that there will be a book issued soon 
 on the Country Church problem which should be stud- 
 ied by thousands of our Methodist churches. 
 
 It seems desirable once more to emphasize the fact 
 that the Sunday school is the strategic missionary op- 
 portunity of our day. A wealth of materials for mis- 
 sionary instruction has been prepared at great pains and 
 expense, and these materials are now available for our 
 use. 
 
 And last of all, let me say that it is a private and 
 growing conviction that no method has yet been devised 
 that any where near approaches in effectiveness and 
 thoroughness the mission study class. The small group 
 of people meeting regularly under trained leaders to 
 study a theme a long enough time so that a large and 
 deep impression may be made, is the most valuable in- 
 tensive campaign of missionary education that can be 
 conducted. All infjorxnation regarding materials if or 
 missionary education may be obtained by writing the 
 Young People's Missionary Department, 150 Fifth Ave- 
 nue, New York. 
 
220 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 III. A PROGRAM OF FINANCE, 
 
 The educational campaign is necessary as an in- 
 spiration. It deepens conviction, arouses emotions, 
 gives an intelligent conception of the missionary enter- 
 prise. The educational campaign should be followed 
 by a financial campaign. Let it be re-e'xiiphasized as 
 strongly as possible that we need a thorough-going 
 church- wide campaign to make clear the principles of 
 stewardship. The ownership idea is Pagan; steward- 
 ship in Christian. Vast sections of the church have not 
 yet any clear and lofty ideals of the stewardship of 
 money and life and service. Some materials are now 
 being prepared by the Laymen's Missionary Movement 
 and by the Missionary Education Move/nent which will 
 be of great service in promoting stewardship. 
 
 I am so often reminded of that interesting letter 
 written by Mr. Lincoln to General McClellan during a 
 vexatious delay in one of the campaigns of the Civil 
 War. The letter was to this effect: "Dear General: 
 If you do not intend to use the army, I would like to 
 borrow it. Yours, A. Lincoln." Sometimes when I 
 think of the millions of members of the Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church, and reflect upon what God has a right 
 to expect of us as the largest Protestant denomination 
 of North America, it seems that some one might say to 
 us "If you do not intend to use this mighty Methodist 
 army, let us borrow it for a while." 
 
1 he Summons to a New Departure 221 
 
 I have been greatly stimulated also by a study of 
 the motto of the Oklahoxiia State Sunday School Asso- 
 ciation. It has on it a picture of two jack- rabbits. On 
 one side is a jack- rabbit sitting up with his paws folded, 
 looking wise. On the other end is a jack- rabbit bound- 
 ing away across the prairies as hard as he can go, and 
 underneath the picture is the motto: "Our motto is to 
 git up and git and not to sit up and sit.'' It will take 
 immense energy and forsighted statesmanship to arouse 
 and train the Methodist Episcopal Church, but it is a 
 bit of work infinitely worth while. 
 
 IV. A PROGRAM OF SERVICE. 
 
 Our aim should be to increase to the point of ade- 
 quacy the number of carefully prepared candidates 
 needed for our home and foreign missionary activities. 
 While the Methodist Church is making a splendidly in- 
 creasing contribution to the leadership of the mission- 
 ary forces of the world, there is still great need that a 
 systematic and thorough cultivation of the whole field 
 be made to discover young people who ought to be in 
 training for missionary service at home and abroad. 
 Let us emphasize three points : 
 
 In the first place there should be a scientific study 
 of one's own community and an unhesitating acceptance 
 of the responsibilities revealed by such a study. An in- 
 vestigation of this kind should always be followed by an 
 
222 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 enlistment of volunteer workers in various kinds of 
 service that are always possible in a community. 
 
 There should also be a definite appeal made to our 
 strong men and women to consecrate some definite por- 
 tion of their tixne to the work of missionary education 
 and finance in the local church. 
 
 Both these would lead to and be a part of a church- 
 wide campaign to enlist those who desire to become 
 home or foreign missionaries. One method which has 
 been employed in several churches with great effective- 
 ness, 15 to set aside at least one Sunday during each year 
 to be known as "Kingdom Day" or by some other ap- 
 propriate title, when, in all the services of the day, the 
 appeal for service to the community, and for the set- 
 ting aside of definite time for missionary education, 
 and for the commitment of life to home or foreign mis- 
 sionary service outside of the community, is laid upon 
 the heart of every person in the church and congrega- 
 tion. This method is commended to all our churches. 
 
 Shall we not then go forth from these days of in- 
 spiration and blessing with this four-fold program in 
 our thoughts, and with a definite purpose to do our best 
 to carry out such a program? There will be difficul- 
 ties and opposition, but no obstacles which prayer and 
 faith and patient effort cannot overcome. Let us not 
 forget that God desires these things more than any of 
 us possibly can. 
 
The Stcmmons to a New Departure 223 
 
 I was greatly interested the other day in reading 
 a sentence from an essay submitted by a boy in one of 
 our public schools on the subject of the American Revo- 
 lution. One of the questions to be discussed in this es- 
 say was : "What toreign power assisted the colonies 
 in the days of the Revolution?" and this boy answered: 
 "The Foreign Power that helped the Colonies in the 
 days of the Revolution was God." Surely, God was 
 on the side of the pioneers in those early days, but the 
 God of Bunker Hill and Valley Forge is still the God of 
 the American Republic. 
 
 Any agitation of the thorough-going sort proposed 
 will arouse the animosity of some people just as a bril- 
 liant newspaper reporter in New York City has aroused 
 the enmity of his friends because of his persistent un- 
 covering of wrong in the city and national life. One 
 day one of his friends was reproving him for his activ- 
 ity in these matters, and said to him, "Oh, you are al- 
 ways kicking the world." The young newspaper man 
 flashed back at him this great sentence: "Yes, I am 
 always kicking the world, but remember that I am al- 
 ways kicking it toward the goal." After all, it is a 
 matter of purpose as to what we shall get done after 
 this parliament closes. This is but the beginning. 
 
 "One ship sails east and another sails west. 
 With the selfsame winds that blow. 
 'Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales 
 That tells us which way they go." 
 
224 ^^^ Conservation of Our Moral Resouras 
 
 "Like the winds of the sea are the waves of fate 
 As we journey along thorugh life. 
 'Tis the set of the soul that decides its goal 
 And not the calm or the strife." 
 
 Having formed this purpose, shall we not go out 
 to make Christ King in America as never before and 
 together say: 
 
 "We'll crown Him high and free 
 Christ who was and is to be 
 The Master of Eternity." . 
 
THE BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS AND 
 CHURCH EXTENSION. 
 
 CHARLES M. BOSWELL^ D. D., ASSISTANT CORRESPONDING 
 SECRETARY. 
 
 In a recent conversation with one of America's most 
 successful and highly esteemed inventors, this statement 
 was made: "A large portion of the genius of this 
 country is devoted to an effort to develop a projectile 
 that will penetrate any armor, and another large portion 
 of the inventive genius of the land is equally at work 
 in an endeavor to create an armor that will resist any 
 projectile that may be hurled against it." 
 
 This is a strong and suggestive illustration of the 
 religious efforts being made in the United States and 
 its insular possessions at this time. Persistent attempts 
 are being made to institute those things in America that 
 will break down our Protestant religious institutions and 
 character. At the same time religious leaders are seek- 
 ing to provide that which will resist and hurl back all 
 such attempts that are made. The latter, of course, aims 
 to keep America Christian and Protestant. 
 
 The Board of Home Missions and Church Exten- 
 sion is the institution of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
 
226 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 called into existence in order to rally its people around 
 the flag of our Lord Jesus Christ under the banner of 
 "America for Christ," do the work that shall perpetuate 
 the Christian institutions in the country and hold our 
 nation for God, 
 
 The general cry of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
 is the "World for Christ," and in order to bring that 
 about it has organized the Board of Foreign Missions to 
 look after the lands beyond the seas and get the Gospel 
 to the people thereof. At the same time it has organized 
 the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension to 
 get the Gospel of the Son of God to the people of the 
 United States and its insular possessions. To the latter 
 has been given all the work heretofore done by the Mis- 
 sionary Society in America, plus the work of the Board 
 of Church Extension, which institution we represent 
 tonight. 
 
 At a recent meeting of the General Committee of 
 Home Missions and Church Extension at New York, 
 with the Bishops present representing Methodism as ex- 
 isting in America and some foreign lands, and two rep- 
 resentatives from all the districts of American Metho- 
 dism with a local representation from the Board of 
 Home Missions and Church Extension at Philadelphia, 
 after looking over all the interests involved and the 
 needs demanded, as well as the money required, it was 
 decided to ask the church to give as its minimum con- 
 tribution for missionary work in the homeland the sum of 
 
Board of Home Missions and Church Extension 227 
 
 a million and a half of dollars. These same Bishops 
 and district representatives, with representatives from 
 the Board of Foreign Missions substituted for those of 
 the Home Board at Philadelphia, in a meeting at Al- 
 bany, New York, after carefully surveying foreign fields 
 and needs, concluded to request the church for a million 
 and a half of dollars as its minimum contribution, the 
 same as had been asked for the Board of Home Mis- 
 sions. This puts both boards on an equal basis, mak- 
 ing the apportionments equal with conferences, districts, 
 churches and individuals. 
 
 Under the care of the Board of Home Missions and 
 Church Extension at the present time are 4,000 mis- 
 sionaries who are at work among the colored people of 
 the South; the needy whites of the mountains in the 
 Southland; in mission work in large cities; among the 
 Indians and foreign people of the far West; on the 
 frontiers; up in Alaska; in Hawaii and in Porto Rico. 
 These are preaching the Gospel, in addition to English 
 speaking people, to the Welsh, Swedes, Germans, Nor- 
 wegian and Danish, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, 
 Bohemians, Hungarians, Italians and Portuguese; also 
 to deaf mutes. They are laboring in behalf of the 
 68,000,000 of our population who are not in evangelical 
 churches. They work in the cities, in tenement houses, 
 red light districts, and foreign quarters. They are in 
 the rural sections of New England and the rapidly de- 
 veloping states and territories of the far Northwest. 
 
228 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 They are up in the ice-bound regions of Alaska taking 
 care of those who are there seeking the gold that God 
 has placed in the pockets of the earth. They are over in 
 Porto Rico among the 500,000 people assigned to 
 Methodism for evangelization. 
 
 For them the Board of Home Missions and Church 
 Extension is making this appeal. It wants missionaries 
 who are willing to go to any class of people, without 
 regard to color of skin, or language of tongue, or the 
 conditions in which they live, to give them a knowledge 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ. We desire money in order 
 that men may have a sufficient support to take care of 
 them, their wives and children, while they themselves 
 are laboring to save the land in which they live. 
 
 In some places the average salaries of Methodist 
 ministers who are working in hard mission fields is 
 $264 ; in others $234 ; in yet others $202. It is for these 
 that we seek to secure sufficient funds to give the kind 
 of living that such work deserves. We seek to furnish 
 parsonages for the missionary where he may be located, 
 in which he may leave his wife and children while he is 
 off on his large circuit, and to which he may return for 
 comfort after the labors that have demanded such sac- 
 rifice. We are striving to furnish churches by the mak- 
 ing of loans or donations, so that every section of the 
 country in which there is not a church will have one sup- 
 plied for the great denomination of which we are a part. 
 We have aided up to this time over 1 5,000 such churches 
 
Board of Home Missions and Church Extension 2 29 
 
 which could not have had an existence had it not been 
 for the helping hand extended to them by us. At pres- 
 ent over 800 churches are seeking financial help from 
 the institution which we represent. There are 837 towns 
 in the State of Washington without a religious service. 
 There are 200 school districts in Montana without a Sun- 
 day school of any character. 
 
 For such we are calling to men and women that 
 they may give themselves and their money to Christian- 
 ize the section in which such work is needed. 
 
 Two hundred and fifty dollars will be an in- 
 spirational gift through which other contributions may 
 be secured that will secure the erection of a church cost- 
 ing from $1,500 to $2,000 in addition to the cost of the 
 ground. Any one giving such an amount may place up- 
 on the building a name of a loved one and thus con- 
 stitute a memorial that will do great good — ^special gifts 
 in honor of the one for whom it has been named. When 
 sufficient money has been given to this Board for the 
 purposes indicated, a great step will have been taken 
 toward the movement in which America shall be brought 
 to our Lord Jesus Christ, and when America has been 
 conquered all other nations are sure to follow. 
 
 The Board of Home Missions and Church Exten- 
 sion is creating Home Missionary enthusiasm, intelli- 
 gently informing the people concerning the fields, show- 
 ing how the Gospel can reach the strangers from for- 
 eign lands, influencing persons to go to all sections of 
 
230 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 America as missionaries, securing money for the evan- 
 gelization of the homeland by the support of mission- 
 aries, erection of homes and building of churches. 
 
 As our fathers and mothers, when the call came to 
 save the country in the days of '61, placed their all upon 
 the nation's altar, not even holding their lives dear, so 
 may we, when the call is given "America for Christ" 
 consecrate the best we have to bring that day to pass. 
 
 (Dr. Coker called on Bishop Quayle, who at this 
 moment entered the church.) 
 
IMPROMPTU ADDRESS. 
 
 BISHOP QUAYLE. 
 
 It is not my time to speak. However, this whole 
 business we are in today, is so engaging, not to say 
 thrilling, that it would be a poor order of appreciation, 
 that would not say a word of enthusiasm. 
 
 The song of state's rights was a song of littleness, 
 standing for the little against the large. United States' 
 rights are better than State's rights, because bigger. 
 
 Now, that seems to me to be about as I read his- 
 tory, the pith of State's rights. Say, what you like, a 
 continent is more to be desired than an island. I read 
 a funny old book, written when America was just found. 
 It said, ''America is like unto an island, the length and 
 breath thereof, however, no man knoweth." 
 
 My father and mother lived on an island. When 
 they got big, they moved out. We are big, over here. 
 If God would help us in our mentality, and spiritual na- 
 ture, to be as big as the continent, that is what we need. 
 If somebody would invite me to join a church that 
 snugged up to itself and hugged itself, and gave no 
 thought to anybody else, never passed the hat for any- 
 body but itself, not a minute would I belong to a thing 
 
^32 The Co7tservatton of Our Moral Resources 
 
 reduced to a diminished unit. I want to belong to a 
 thing that reaches out into the universe. If I had an 
 arm long enough I would reach out and grab the coat tail 
 of a star — just for the fun. I would not expect to hold 
 the star back but I would like to hold its coat tail for a 
 minute. The trouble is, that people do not live in con- 
 tinents of thought. Cicero always thrills me as though I 
 were caught in an electric storm, on a mountain summit. 
 Why ? Because he thought from north to south, through 
 the forest, over the mountains, to the purple sea. He 
 was big enough to have continents in his perspective. 
 When we get big enough to see continental proportions, 
 that is when we will walk in God's way. 
 
 You remember the lean kine, in the Bible, that ate 
 the fat ones, and did not get fat. What business has a 
 minister to keep on eating the members' chickens, in his 
 church, and never fatten up ? All district superintendents 
 ought to be fat. The lean kine consumed the fat kine 
 and grew not fat. If we get big notions we ourselves 
 will grow big, so we can say, 'T can see to the western 
 rim of the continent." 
 
 When I was pastor of a church (that is all I know 
 except farming — farming is my specialty), every once 
 in a while I would have some lean brethren say they did 
 not wish collections. So I did not take collections. Noth- 
 ing like being little like your brethren. But I would 
 dump all collections into one heaping collection and take 
 it. My theory was, to see a great big collection being 
 
Impromptu Address 233 
 
 taken would widen them out. One morning we said, 
 "We will take five minutes before the sermon, $1500 a 
 minute, come on in." We got it. We didn't take any 
 "collections," we took "a collection." I said, "We don't 
 take collections in this church." The secretaries do not 
 like "omnibusing ;" but still what the secretaries want is 
 big bussing, — they just want the bus full. We put 
 plenty in, and took it all up at once and widened them 
 out. Did I apologize? Never once. I said, "I feel so 
 frisky this morning I don't know what to do; we are 
 going to have a collection, everybody that is big, chip in. 
 If there are any small people, don't give." It is wonder- 
 ful how many chips were in that basket. 
 
 I don't want to belong to a little church, that has 
 no universal interest. The church of God on the ground 
 is filling up the church of God which is in the skies. If 
 we don't hurry up in this world, God won't have a big 
 church, and it would be a pity for Jesus to preach to a 
 small congregation. The church on earth is giving away 
 people to the church of the First Born, which is in 
 heaven. We call it death roll, but we ought to say, the 
 roll of the people that have been called up higher. They 
 are full brothers, we the probationers. How much ought 
 we to broaden out the church of God on this earth? I 
 like the Home Missionary movement because it has 
 vision, and breadth, and scope, and makes life con- 
 tinental in the Methodist church. I understand this 
 church is in Springfield, Illinois. Is there anything to 
 
234 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 that? (Voice, Yes.) That is where I bought a ticket 
 to. They have a church in Oklahoma City. What are 
 the churches in Springfield and Oklahoma doing, when 
 they give to the Board of Home Mission and Church Ex- 
 tension ? Answer : They are becoming as wide as the 
 flag of the stars and stripes, thank God, in Porto Rico, 
 and the North Pole, which is our harbor at the north. 
 
 Doesn't it make you feel good, out at Hillsboro, 
 Jacksonville and Quincy, to feel you are one with every 
 Methodist Episcopal church on the continent? That is 
 what this means. In other words, this is strategic, states- 
 manlike, and a continental appeal to the bigness that is 
 in people's minds. 
 
 They want to build churches where they havn't got 
 any. Go over to help the folks that need help. Let them 
 have a Methodist Episcopal church everywhere. Some 
 times I dedicate two churches a. Sunday, and again three 
 churches on a Sunday. Isn't that fine ? That is the way 
 we do in Oklahoma. I am going up to the little town 
 of Minneapolis next Sunday and dedicate two churches. 
 They said, "Stay two Sundays." "Not much, Mary 
 Anne, I haven't got two Sundays, I am William A. 
 Quayle." So they will dedicate two churches on Sun- 
 day in Minneapolis and Oklahoma, you see what they 
 are doing. Building churches. What kind? Methodist 
 Episcopal. Who helped them? The Board of Church 
 Extension and the Board of Home Missions. Don't you 
 have to have a finger in that pie ? You can have it. I'll 
 
Impromptu Address 235 
 
 tell you what I think, this is to you privately, and don't 
 let the laymen hear what I say ! If you men will "spunk 
 up," and without any sort of equivocation, ovasion, hesi- 
 tation or apology in your voices, say, "Come on, folks, 
 we are going to be big today and help the United States 
 of America." The preacher usually says, "Now, broth- 
 ers, I regret to state that we have now come to a matter 
 I don't like to suggest, but in view of the fact it is one of 
 the collections of the church, and I will be asked whether 
 collections have all been taken in full, I desire that you 
 may contribute your mite," (Laughter.) or words to 
 that affect. You hear that, right along. Spunk up! 
 I think you are big enough to be big. Prove it to me. 
 The laymen will respond to that, as sure as you live. 
 They won't all answer it. Some of the laymen won't 
 answer to anything but the summons of death ; but they 
 are very few, and we can do this thing without missing 
 them. I know America reasonably well. If anything 
 will appeal to our laymen, it is going to be the thing. 
 You talk tiddly winks to them, they say, "O, pshaw, 
 we are doing that all the time. Put a church on the ice 
 banks of Alaska, and put ten churches over in Hay- 
 wood's County. That is the thing. Do something big! 
 Most people who are poor are very willing for the 
 rich to give. That is a curious wrinkle of the gray 
 matter and white, in most people's brain. We do not 
 need the rich man to give more, we need the every day 
 man to give more. There are not enough rich people. 
 
236 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 any way, to make much difference whether they give 
 more or less. There are few of them, but the ordinary, 
 every day folks, poor people, that own thousand acre 
 farms, and things like that, where the soil is 1700 miles 
 deep, in Illinois — we better spunk up! Come on now. 
 Let me tell you, if the farmers of Illinois, who are Meth- 
 odists, would give according as God has prospered them 
 and demands of them, we would have three million dol- 
 lars. This thing is easy. You know we can do it. 
 Let's make the big appeal. Once upon a time^ — I was 
 just born, I didn't notice anyboldy's call, I was calling 
 lively myself, and listening to my own voice — ^but there 
 was a call ''Come over and save the union." Come fellows 
 quit the plow in the field, left the bolt of muslin on the 
 counter, left the hot iron in the blacksmith shop, and 
 went to save the union. Why? They answered the big 
 call. Come and save America. That is the call. I think 
 they will answer it. Brother Coker. 
 
 Dr. Coker, in introducing Secretary Piatt, said: 
 We have come, I think to the climax of this con- 
 vention or will, when the Amen is said. We have here 
 tonight one of the great secretaries of the Board of 
 Home Misisons and Church Extensions, who knows 
 more in a moment than most of us in a year. He has 
 facts and figures, and I am glad tonight to present Dr. 
 Ward Piatt, who will speak upon how the Board is meet- 
 ing the mighty challenge that is coming from every- 
 where. Thank God, we will meet it and conquer it! 
 
THE RESPONSIBILITY UPON THE BOARD OF 
 HOME MISSIONS. 
 
 REV. WARD PLATT, D.D. 
 
 I think I will hardly rise to an introduction as large 
 as that. I must say in passing that I know you have an 
 appreciation of the work of Dr. Coker. These conven- 
 tions, in the various parts of the country, have elevated 
 the whole level of missionary interest. I remarked today 
 that in one state, where there are four conferences, and 
 as many conventions were held, the increase in offerings 
 to our board, the first year was between $7,cxx> and 
 $8,000. When an increase is reached, you will find on 
 the average it does not again get below that. A man 
 that can preach thirty years, and save a thousand dol- 
 lars, must be a mighty fine financier. He can run con- 
 ventions, or anything. He has never yet drawn on our 
 board for a dollar for expenses in all this great work. 
 It is a great thing to have a man representing the great 
 cause, that can do work like that. And you are not 
 going to leave him in the lurch. He reminds me of the 
 irrepressible Irishman that sent for a setting of game 
 eggs, and was sent duck eggs. Somebody said, "How 
 
238 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 are your game chicks?" "O, splendid, feet on them like 
 ducks. Nothing under Heaven can tip them over." 
 Coker is always right side up. 
 
 I want to express to you, for our Board, tonight, 
 our great appreciation of the co-operation of the dis- 
 trict superintendents and pastors, of this conference. 
 You have helped us to make this convention what it has 
 been. 
 
 The Woman's Home Missionary Society is the 
 strong right arm of the Board of Home Missions and 
 Church Extensions, and we could not do without it, any 
 more than you could have a home without a wife. They 
 do not cross lines with us anywhere, and yet their work 
 is absolutely fundamental and essential to ours. When- 
 ever you want to help in the most vital fashion, to bring 
 speedily the millenium to America, and through America 
 to the world, stand by the Woman's Home Missionary 
 organization. If you haven't one in your church, per- 
 suade the good women there to see to it that there is 
 such an auxiliary. 
 
 Three- fourths of the world is at present in a state 
 of change. There has never been such an epoch since 
 the days of Adam.. Japan not long ago took upon her- 
 self a new front and has become the leader of the 
 Orient. She has been learning from the United States, 
 and now has become the schoolmaster of Asia. Japan to- 
 day, more than any other nation, is fixing the standards 
 and prescribing the methods for the school system of the 
 
Responsibility of Board of Home Missions 239 
 
 Orient. China within five years has made more rapid 
 strides toward western civihzation than did Japan dur- 
 ing the first ten years of her mercantile advance. The 
 movement gathers force constantly, to have schools of 
 the western kind scattered widely over that country. 
 In japan you have about six million at school and in 
 the same proportion, when China comes up to that 
 standard, you will have more than fifty million at school 
 in that country — more than any other nation of the 
 earth. If you go to Turkey, you will find that within 
 three years' time literally a nation has been born, that 
 from one end of that Empire to another you have free- 
 dom of speech. Very recently Persia has had the cover 
 lifted, and the predominant idea is that the western learn- 
 ing shall be within the reach of the people of Persia. 
 In South Africa, where the different nationalities are 
 beginning to feel a sense of unity, a national conscious- 
 ness is awaking. There are 500,000 inmates of institu- 
 tions of higher learning in India, and the question ever 
 pressing toward realization is, **We are to be a nation 
 for ourselves." In Corea and Siam are marvelous 
 awakenings. Three-fourths of the human race rising 
 from the lethargy of the past, look out and say, "We are 
 going to have a civilization and learning like that of the 
 United States of America." This country stands today 
 as a city set on a hill. The Americanism of the world is 
 close at hand. As demonstrated by W. T. Stead in his 
 book, what the United States of America is, is to deter- 
 
240 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 mine in the next ten or fifteen years what is to be the 
 character of this earth ; and then there is another peculiar- 
 ity about that. You will notice that the old faiths are 
 putting on a new front, and Buddhism finds that in the 
 light of this modern progress, and in the new desire 
 for learning, and in the pushing back of the mediaeval 
 darkness, that it cannot stand that kind of illumination, 
 and so it begins to take upon itself the methods of 
 Christianity. The Buddists have organized something 
 like the Y. M. C. A. in order to hold their younger gen- 
 eration. You will find that Confucianism has given it- 
 self a new emphasis, as it thinks, by installing Buddha 
 recently in the position of a deity, exalting him, think- 
 mg possibly he might rank with the Lx)rd Jesus Christ. 
 You will find that Mohammedanism takes on an ag- 
 gressive front. There is this thought, seemingly, among 
 the old faiths, that the day has come in which they must 
 stand their ground, and every one of those ancient faiths 
 takes upon itself a modern front. 
 
 Another fact to be taken into consideration is that 
 three-fourths of the human race today is of an open 
 mind, of a plastic nature, where for all the centuries it 
 has been like granite and steel, against anything like 
 progress. You know that the tendency of the oriental 
 mind is to become fixed, like it has been fixed by those 
 centuries. This is an opportunity that comes once in 
 the world. We are the people who stand over against 
 that opportunity. The faces of three-fourths of human- 
 
Responsibility of Board of Home Missions 2 4 1 
 
 ity are directed toward this city, this Hght upon a hill; 
 and whatever we are in this country, we are to stamp 
 the world with our image in the next fifteen years. Then 
 the question comes: What kind of a country we are, 
 and how necessary it is to elevate that image to that of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. I will suppose that you have 
 before you here a map of the United States, and that 
 the map be colored, as much of it dark blue as would 
 represent the proportion of the people that are not gath- 
 ered into the evangelical churches. Then let as much 
 of it be colored white as would represent those gathered 
 in. You will notice that less than one-fourth of that map 
 is white. In other words, we have about twenty million 
 of people in the evangelical churches, and about seventy 
 millions outside of the evangelical churches. You say, 
 "Why don't you call in all the missionary forces from 
 all the frontiers across the sea and concentrate them, 
 concentrate every energy, upon making more of that 
 map white?" You would not think that any such nar- 
 row interpretation is worth while. It would not be 
 worth my time or your support, to attempt to initiate 
 anything of that character; but we must see to it that 
 this map is painted white, in order that the light of the 
 world may shine in the dark corners of the earth. Say 
 for example, that twenty-four millions of money are 
 given now for the evangelization of the world, by the 
 so-called Christian nations, and that eighty-five per cent, 
 comes from the Anglo-Saxon. He is not your typical 
 
242 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 saint, but he does respond to the claim of the Gospel 
 upon him, as does no other man, and of that went v- four 
 milHons of dollars, about ten and one-half millions, or 
 approximately half of it, comes out of the United States 
 of America. Broadly speaking, it does not come out 
 of that blue, it comes out of that white, and if I were 
 before you tonight, and enlarging upon the fact the 
 world was starving for corn, and one-half of all the 
 corn that kept the world from starving came out of 
 that white spot, and all that blue was corn land un- 
 developed, you might say, ''What is the use of talking 
 about that? That white spot has kept nearly half the 
 world from starvation; why doesn't the other part go 
 to work and break up as much more white as you have 
 now, you would keep the rest of the world from starv- 
 ing?" It is my conviction if there was not a furrow 
 turned anywhere else, beyond what is now being done, 
 in fifteen years more the world can be evangelized. Is 
 Home Missions and Church Extensions a narrow propo- 
 sition, confined between two oceans? It is not America 
 for America's sake, but for the world's sake. When you 
 come to think of breaking up that corn field, you know 
 there are more stones in it, of ancient obstacles, than any 
 other particular plot of ground you can find anywhere 
 else. I need not stop to enumerate various problems 
 that confront the Board, but I will say that this Board — 
 as you have termed it, the greatest Protestant body in 
 the world — is today helping to support 4,000 Methodist 
 
Responsibility of Board of Home Missions 243 
 
 preachers in missionary work. That is one Methodist 
 preacher out of every four. They are preaching the 
 Gospel in twenty-five different languages, and dialects, 
 on American soil. It is pretty hard work to draw the 
 line between home missions and foreign missions. 
 
 Then, if you consider church extension, 15,000 
 church buildings have been helped into existence or over 
 a crisis by the church extension work. One-half of all 
 the buildings are in this country. What do I mean about 
 painting that map white? I mean this — I don't know 
 how long ago it was we went into Iowa. You may 
 regard it in some respects as a high water mark of 
 Methodism. The greater number of the churches there, 
 were helped into existence by the church extension board. 
 
 The State of Colorado about twelve years ago had 
 15,000 members, giving $20,700 for all the benevolences. 
 Our share may have been about $3,000. I am not saying 
 we did not get our share. It was pretty largely then 
 home missionary proposition. Now, after twelve years, 
 Colorado Methodism has 30,000 members, instead of 
 15,000, and they gave, within a year, not $20,700 to 
 benevolences, but they gave ninety thousand dollars to 
 the benevolences. I think about $11,000 of that money 
 came to us. I am not saying we did not get our share; 
 but is it a good thing to have a Board of Home Mis- 
 sions and Church Extension, that keeps the ground under 
 the feet of men, in order that they can take up money 
 for the other benevolences of the church? You can see 
 
244 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 how fundamental to our entire Methodism is the Board 
 of Home Missions and Church Extension, as well as 
 fundamental to the future of world evangelization. Take 
 the American city as a type of the difficulty of the paint- 
 ing of this map white. There isn't any city like it in 
 any so-called Christian country. Our English brethren 
 tell us the best thing we can do is to build great central 
 halls in those cities and gather the unevangelized people 
 together. It is greatly to the credit of the British 
 Brethren, for what they are doing, but the fact is, in 
 London and Manchester, they could not get any audience 
 together, but ninety per cent, could understand the Eng- 
 lish language. In parts of this country you would have 
 to preach it in fifty-four different languages, to make it 
 understood. If tens of dollars would be sufficient in any 
 other Christian land, hundreds would not do the same 
 thing on American soil. That is brought about largely 
 by the immigrant coming into our country, and there 
 had been no invasion like it since the beginning of time. 
 He is coming in at the rate of three a minute. Not one 
 in twenty-five ever gets beyond New York or Penn- 
 sylvania. Take a single example of this congested popu- 
 lation and of the responsibilities that are accumulating 
 upon the church. Cut that map of the United States into 
 two equal parts. There are as many people in New 
 York as in the whole western half of the United States. 
 One-third of all the people living in New York came 
 into it in fifteen years. Its growth equals that of any 
 
Responsibility of Board of Home Missions 245 
 
 five states west of the Mississippi, put together. The 
 growth of New York in five years makes the whole city 
 of St. Louis. There are as many people absolutely un- 
 churched, of either Protestantism or Catholicism in that 
 one state, as populate the whole Pacific slope. You 
 ask us what we are coming to. We might as well take 
 the hopeful outlook. A woman told her pastor she had 
 been troubled with her eyesight. She said, "I consulted 
 an optimist, and I am seeing better than I did a while 
 ago!'' That is the kind of eyesight we need. Brother 
 Potts has been telling us, in his inimitable fashion, about 
 the Jew. Who does not revere the Jew? — for in him 
 is the race and personality of Christ! There are one 
 million Jews in Manhattan Island. If they all started 
 to the Protestant churches, you would find that 330,000 
 could not get into a church at all. That is one class of 
 foreigners. You say they would not come to our church 
 at all. Don't be sure. The fact is, when the mother 
 tongue of any people brings home to them the story of 
 Jesus, they are like ourselves — they submit and they 
 come under the spell and charm of his name. There 
 are people I suppose that say New York has gotten so 
 big and so bad, and there are so many foreigners there 
 we cannot touch that proposition. If that is going to be 
 the case, somebody will say, your opportunity is too 
 small for my spirit, and you would be speaking rightly 
 concerning that matter. When you think of this, our 
 Lord Jesus Christ said, ''All power is given unto me, 
 
246 7 he Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 in Heaven and in Earth." That is all that is necessary. 
 He said, "Go ye, therefore, tell this story everywhere, to 
 everybody, and lo, I am with you always, even unto 
 the end of the world." Everything crumbles away when 
 our Christ is with us. "Ah," but you say, "We have so 
 little," — never mind about that. Jesus faced 5,000 
 hungry ones, and said, "You need not send any away 
 hungry. How much have you?" Our hope is the 
 divine interpretation of this matter. Somehow will be 
 supplied the mission link. Christ's blessing transformed 
 the five loaves and two fishes, and everybody was satis- 
 fied and happy when they were through, and they gath- 
 ered up twelve basketsfull, instead of five loaves. That 
 is the only way we will attain the end. Twelve baskets- 
 full are better than five loaves! It is because of this 
 Christ is in our midst, and because, with the gladness in 
 your hearts, you are going to keep step with his im- 
 perial march. There is no doubt concerning what 
 Christ's purpose is, for the whole world, through the 
 agency of this land of ours. And when I note this fact 
 also — that we have in our hands the power to do this 
 work — I mean in the material sense. . You say — What 
 is the board asking? The boards are asking this year, 
 foreign and home, one million and a half each. You 
 say — That is a lot of money; I don't see how we can 
 ever reach it. 
 
 A brother got this on his heart, and he wrote our 
 board upon it. I looked over his communication, as it 
 
Responsibility of Board of Home Missions 247 
 
 lay on my desk. He told his experience. He felt that 
 something must be done right away. He said, "I went 
 out to the hen house." He wanted to relieve his mind. 
 He told those hens that something had to be done and 
 done right away. He said, *'I am going to organize you 
 into a missionary society." It was the cold month of 
 December. *'I will feed you and encourage you, and do 
 everything I can. Every last cent you can raise goes to 
 the cause of foreign missions in December, and in Janu- 
 ary to home missions." Those hens gave a little over 
 $17. It is not fair to compare Methodists to hens, but 
 if the Methodists gave, for twelve months' time, just 
 what the hens gave us, in two months' time, we would 
 have over twelve millions in our treasury, instead of one 
 and a half. 
 
 Let us indeed be thankful we have so much, so 
 easily within our reach. What is the purpose of all 
 this? O'ue of the first works of the Board of Home 
 Missions and Church Extensions, is that in addition to 
 other calls upon it, it must get to the heart of these 
 great American cities, because, no matter what you do 
 with the rest of the country ten cities will sink the 
 country, unless they are evangelized, far beyond the 
 present. 
 
 Whoever stands in the city and in an effective fash- 
 ion delivers the message of Jesus Christ, stands at the 
 heart of the world, because if you cannot evangelize the 
 American city, what are you going to do with Calcutta, 
 
248 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 and Hong Kong, at long range? If you cannot give the 
 Italian who comes in shoals under the very eaves of our 
 churches this message of peace to which he will gladly 
 yield, what will you do with our missions in Italy? If 
 you cannot give a square deal to eleven millions black 
 people on our soil — more than there are in Africa — 
 what is to be the future in Africa? I am a crank on 
 foreign missions, and this is not to be taken as an in- 
 vidious comparison, but the time has come when we 
 must vindicate the spirit and power of our Protestantism, 
 because the whole world looks on to see what it is doing 
 at home. There never was a time like this. Wonders 
 can be accomplished, when the church shall merely come 
 up to a dollar a member, or a postage stamp a week. 
 You say you are not considering any such picayune 
 proposition as that! Let us take it just as a basis of 
 computation. 
 
 Talking about the resources of the church, makes 
 me think of Dr. Luccock. At one of the Kansas con- 
 ferences, a brother stood up and introduced Dr. Luccock, 
 not realizing what might follow. Dr. Luccock re- 
 marked : ''Kansas has a few resources. If all the chick- 
 ens raised in Kansas were one rooster, he would bestride 
 the mountains like a colossus ; his crow would shake the 
 rings off Saturn ! If all the hogs were one hog, with one 
 swoop of his snout he would dig a sea level canal from 
 ocean to ocean. If all the mules raised in a single year 
 were one mule, that mule could kick out the back end of 
 all creation." (Laughter.) 
 
Responsibility of Board of Home Missions ^49 
 
 When you talk about resources, all that Methodism 
 has to do, is to lay down the postage stamp a week. 
 You say — that is not worth talking about! The Lord 
 help us up to that level, and what will follow. We will 
 double the appropriations, wherever needed, on the long 
 frontier; and instead of having less than $60,000 a year 
 for the city appropriation, that would not clean up one 
 section of Manhattan Island, we will have a million an^ 
 a half dollars appropriated to the cities. We will do 
 that every year, when the church comes up to a nickel 
 a week, on the average. Will anybody go without a 
 meal of vituals to do that? We will have 23/2 millions 
 for our rural work and five millions for the cities, 
 $500,000 for New York and for Chicago; and every 
 city in proportion from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Meth- 
 odism can do it as easily as that, and let us thank God 
 for it. 
 
 Then, too, we will take this into consideration, that 
 Methodism will come to her own, only as she realizes the 
 kingdom of the Ljord Jesus Christ in this world. If I 
 look back into the New Testament, it may be I will 
 notice that a stake is being driven at Antioch, at Corinth, 
 at Rome. That is the outline of the great Kingdom of 
 Christ. Somebody interrupts and says, that is not merely 
 the geography of the Kingdom of Christ, that is also 
 the outline of the enlargement of that Kingdom of the 
 mighty pioneer, the Apostle. He realized a Kingdom 
 commensurate to what He planted. When God came 
 
250 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 to Saul of Tarsus, to John Wesley, and saw that in any 
 one of such he had a steadfast swivel that would hold, 
 and on which he could turn his mighty world purpose, 
 he was just as sure of all the race to follow Abraham, 
 of the bringing of the Gentiles, and the present status of 
 our board of Methodism, as he is tonight, because He 
 had the man on whom He could lean! 
 
 I don't know to whom I am talking tonight, but 
 this forward movement is near to this great uplift, but 
 I am talking to some man or girl who in the silence of 
 the home will realize that what you will, you may do. 
 Great things will come from your personal resolves. 
 Nine-tenths of all the money for missionary purposes 
 comes from one-tenth of the church, and the other tenth 
 comes from less than one-half of the number left. In 
 taking a concensus of opinion to know what was the 
 supreme obstacle in the way of the advance of the King- 
 dom, the majority answered — the condition of the work- 
 ing church. It is not India, it is not the cast system, not 
 privation to be endured, things to be learned. We come 
 at last face to face that a great mountain, and its roots 
 are in the church where you and I worhsip, and the 
 pastor that faces today the average American congrega- 
 tion — I speak it in the spirit of love — is in the heart and 
 center of the most needy missionary field anywhere on 
 this planet, and the question is this: shall we not come 
 to our own, only as we realize in ourselves and in our 
 churches this great purpose. 
 
Responsibility of Board of Home Missions 251 
 
 I heard of a bridge that was being built near the 
 City of Boston, across a body of water where the tide 
 was coming in. The engineer, in the foundation, had 
 gotten down to an old watermain. He could not remove 
 it. On the bank was a railway. They had a locomotive, 
 tandem, and chains around it, but they could not start 
 it. An old Scotchman said, 'T will take it out for you." 
 Everybody laughed when they saw a couple of old mud- 
 scows, with planks, boards, ropes and chains. At low 
 tide he got them where the water main was, put beams 
 between the two mudscows, and fastened the ropes and 
 chains securely. He went and sat down on the bank and 
 lighted his pipe. Everybody laughed. In half an hour 
 they began to get the idea. The mudscows began to show 
 signs of disturbance. Soon the ropes attached to the 
 planks, "smoked," and people said, "Will the old mud- 
 scows hold?" Then out came the water main. It means 
 this — if I will take myself and my church out into the 
 eternal current of the tides of Almighty God and anchor 
 myself — (it all depends on the anchorage, you must be 
 a mudscow, it depends on your anchorage), God will lift 
 us, carry us out, and lift this world with us. That is 
 God's purpose. America for Christ and the world for 
 Christ. I think you will say with me tonight — I am 
 only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I 
 can do something. What I ought to do, that by the 
 grace of God, I will do. 
 
 (Music.) 
 
THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 
 
 WM. A. QUAYLE^ D. D., LL.D. 
 
 It would not be polite to say, of so nice an introd- 
 ducer, that everything he said was not so, would it? 
 
 Well, I won't speak of that now. Coker is a nice 
 man. He has his failings. He will exaggerate. 
 (Laughter.) But he learned that mainly down at 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 It is lovely to be with you folks. You look nice and 
 you doubtless have some relation to your looks. It is 
 really too bad to stop a speech such as we were listening 
 to tonight. It was a notable speech, by a very notable 
 man. He has some brains around him. Brother Piatt! 
 I don't know just where they are located (laughter) ; but 
 they are located, all right. Some people have brains, 
 but they are dislocated. 
 
 I suppose there are not many men alive that like to 
 hear themselves talk. Once in a while there is one. I 
 am not. I love to hear other folks talk and I love to 
 hear Brother Piatt talk. He has got something to say. 
 I wish he had hustled on and spent the time, and I would 
 have said Amen. 
 
1 he Conclusion of the Whole Matter 253 
 
 America is the fascination of history. There never 
 was anything like it. We have had the last chance at the 
 world. It is a big chance. You know nothing seems to 
 me to be so wonderful about America as God hiding it 
 so long. It is no trouble to go across the Atlantic. I 
 have done in myself for instance (laughter). If you 
 have got funds you can get across very quickly — if not 
 you can swim across. (Laughter.) 
 
 When I lived in Chicago, I used to go out to see 
 the reproduction of the ship in which Columbus crossed 
 the pond, and really it was not a very big boat; but it 
 was bigger than necessary. Some of the other vessels 
 that came with him were not so large. When the At- 
 lantic is quiet there is no trouble at all. Any light thing 
 can swim it. I have. (Laughter.) The wonder to me 
 is not that Columbus came across, but that they had not 
 been doing that little trick for hundreds of years. They 
 do say in American history that some of the Vikings 
 did come across, but they do not seem to recollect just 
 who they were. May be they were dead before the his- 
 torian arose. I don't know how that is, but I have been 
 up to Newport visiting the Vanderbilts (laughter), and 
 I have seen the structure they say the Vikings built. 
 It is up at Newport News. But all of that sort of thing 
 is really persiflage. There is nothing involved in it. It 
 is not a question of who got across first, but who taught 
 the rest of us how to get across. It seems to me pitifully 
 trivial, to argue the point whether Columbus was the first 
 
254 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 man to come across. Who cares who came across first. 
 The Vikings left no track. That is the trouble with 
 them, they did not ridge the ocean into a roadway. 
 Columbus came across and left an ocean track and any- 
 body can sail it now. The marvel is not the discovery 
 of America but its non-discovery. Why didn't we know 
 about it sooner? Were not those Vikings grave? Did 
 they not care for the adventurous deep, with the billows 
 that rise and crusted with foam, breaking like a hun- 
 dred avalanches? Did that intimidate them? Why 
 didn't they come across and teach the world the way ? I 
 have a notion that that is a secret of God. I think that 
 God was keeping this vast world on which he meant to 
 build the future of mankind, keeping it back until he 
 grew a race of people who are fitted to sail the great 
 ocean and there develop a new civilization in the un- 
 known world. We found America. It was found in the 
 days when the world was growing strangely alert, when 
 men were beginning to yearn for real freedom. Then, 
 and only then, was a highway built across the mighty 
 ocean and new world was established for freedom of re- 
 ligion and of citizenship. God hid it. We hear some- 
 times about God hiding things in the hollow of his hand. 
 I think the reason America was not discovered sooner 
 was because God's hand was down with the palm over 
 America and they could not see it. When the day came 
 and the world had developed sufficiently, then God lifted 
 his hand, Columbus saw the vision, sailed the seas and 
 
The Conclusion of the Whole Matter 2t^^ 
 
 cried, "There is the land." What God needed was a 
 land to which he could transport people that had drunk 
 the draft of freedom. God needed a place where imperial 
 democracy could once more lift up its face and 
 drink in the starlight of the dawn of a new era. 
 That is what God needed, a new chance for 
 men, a new world where he could set his looms up and 
 see what man could weave. He hid this land until then. 
 Otherwise you cannot explain it. Ships had been big 
 enough for a long time. There was no reason why in- 
 trepid sailors could not go across the ocean. They never 
 really got out of sight of land. Why didn't they? God 
 was hiding this. We did not need a new Rome and 
 Caesar here. We did not need a new dynasty of vio- 
 lence and might under the mask of law. What we need 
 in America was reorganization of the relations of man- 
 kind. Here was the fact — the time came and this Christo- 
 pher Columbo, speaking as if I was a learned man, which 
 I am not — Christopher Columbus, speaking as a plebian, 
 which I am, drew a map by wetting on his finger, and 
 said to Ferdinand and Isabella, "That is how it looks 
 like." He wet his finger again because the line was dry- 
 ing out, "That is what it looks like." It took fifty to 
 one hundred years to get them to see what it really 
 looked like. Not afraid to undertake the task, Martin 
 Luther, mountain bred, wrote out a declaration of in- 
 dependence for the human soul. He was a preacher 
 and he said, "There is nobody betwixt a man and his 
 
^56 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 God." You say that everybody knows that. Well, every- 
 body knows a lot of things now. They did not know 
 for a long time that water is H2O. I do not care much 
 what water is, it is wet and I want it. The common- 
 places of the world are the strategies and discoveries of 
 genius. We all say now, 'There is nobody between a 
 man and God." Who found that out? Jesus found that 
 out and told it, but somehow people did not harken, and 
 they believed there was a priesthood between man and 
 God. They looked and they could not see God. The 
 priests were too fat and the people could not see God. 
 They said, 'There is a church between man and God." 
 The church was a cathedral with great walls and gloomy 
 interior and it reached high into the heavens, but they 
 could not see God. Martin Luther pushed the priest- 
 hood and the church aside. He said, **I do declare it is a 
 clear sky and never a cloud and I see God." That is 
 what he said, 'T see God." They said, "You don't." 
 He said, "O, I see Giod." When he got so he could see 
 God himself then here was a new country and plenty of 
 folks who had seen God said, 'T guess we will go out 
 yonder where there is plenty of room and lots of sky 
 and look at God." That is the way it was. They came 
 out here to populate this world. I wish I had belonged 
 back then. A red-headed man in the frontier days had 
 plenty of room for his activities. If I had lived in those 
 days I would not have been speaking in meetings. I 
 would have been running ships with my ancestors across 
 
The Conclusion of the Whole Matter 257 
 
 the mid-Atlantic and landing the boat on the beaches of 
 Hberty and jumping out to see what the interior looked 
 like. Here was a new world and here were a people who 
 said, ''I see God." What a glorious thing it was, men 
 and women, that you had a new continent where the 
 folks had said that liberty could come and they settled 
 down and began to keep house. The fellow that dis- 
 covered this country came from the south of Europe. He 
 was born and brought up in Italy. He was a Spaniard 
 by location and then he was an American by immigra- 
 tion, thank God. That is what he was. 
 
 Ponce de Leon came over and said, **There is a 
 water over here. If you drink of it and bathe in it you 
 will be young forever." The womon all wanted to come 
 over and get in that spring. A lot of them said, ''You 
 go and hunt that thing up." In these days you do not 
 need a spring like that. You go to the drug store and 
 have it put up in bottles. The Spaniards took the beau- 
 tiful part of America and they came backing up the 
 Mississippi river. They went into Texas, where I am 
 now. They came to Kansas, where I was brought up. 
 When they came there and saw nothing but hay, nothing 
 sticking up higher out of the ground, they said, "Not 
 much." Do you observe, brothers, that in the provi- 
 dence of the Almighty God the fact remains, no matter 
 how you account for it — I account for it by providence 
 — that these people that discovered America did not in- 
 undate America with their civilization but the people of 
 
258 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 the free faith, with their inspired faces like a thousand 
 morning lights of summer, who said, "I see God" — they 
 came up here and they seized this great arable America 
 for the Lord jesus Christ. They came up here and laid 
 hold of this country for the Son of God and you can 
 say what you like, those Puritan brothers had quite a 
 ship but I don't think they had as many descendants as 
 the descendants let on. That is my judgment. I think a 
 whole lot of those alleged Puritans did not come over in 
 that boat. I think there is some mixup on that. But 
 never mind, the boat was well laden. What was in it? 
 You say "Magna Charta." No, the Declaration of In- 
 dependence, the Constitution of the United States, the 
 school house, the preacher, the open Bible, and the sense 
 that God had to be reckoned with. That was what was 
 in the boat. 
 
 It is the things we do and the things we believe in, 
 that count. God doesn't care much how a man, or a 
 preacher, dresses, but he cares how he behaves. God 
 puts the preacher on the road that leads to Him, and the 
 preacher's duty along that road is to save you. The 
 parson came to this land, and in his hands he had a book. 
 He said, 'The soul that sinneth, it shall die." That is 
 kind of drastic, isn't it ? Most folks don't like that kind 
 of talk. It is not very refreshing talk, but it is God's 
 talk, and people better listen to it. 
 
 And so the boat came over here, and this land, hid- 
 den so long, had its baptism at the hand of God. 
 
The Conclusion of the Whole Matter 259 
 
 Brothers, this America of ours had no common start, no 
 common patronage. Its destinies were watched over. 
 When no longer hidden by God, to this new land came 
 the Huguenots, Swedish, Dutch Protestant and the Puri- 
 tan Protestants. With united destinies, they began to 
 settle up a new world for God. It is the only world that 
 ever had been settled for God up to now. Doesn't that 
 make you proud? Doesn't it make your heart sing? 
 Does it make you rejoice? We settled up America for 
 God. O, that was a day of days when it began to be, 
 and then here we were, such a long way off!^ — and the 
 Britishers were just a little bit timid of the water. 
 Brother Coker got across the water because he is so dry 
 he could not be troubled with the damp. You know 
 the English brethren are fearful of the water. The 
 Englishmen are afraid of water. Only a few 
 came over first. Just a few more kept coming over. 
 Those who arrived had children. They did not 
 need any Roosevelt suggestions those days. A few 
 more kept coming over. The ocean was so wide and 
 so wet it was a long way across, and rather dangerous. 
 So America was let alone with the parson and the Bible 
 and the public school and the west wind. The people 
 in the new land climbed the Alleghenies and they could 
 not see any water to the west, and they said, "Don't 
 that beat all!" You can't climb anything in England 
 but what you see water, it is such a little place, you 
 know. Here they were, and here was the parson and 
 
26o The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 the open Bible, the public school, and here the illimit- 
 able landscape. They put their back against a moun- 
 tain range and looked out to sea when the fogs were 
 not too thick. They said, 'It's a long way across the 
 water." They got feeling frisky about it. First they 
 talked all the time about the old home land. They 
 named all their places English names. Then when they 
 felt a little at home they called them Indian names. 
 When they got on the mountain and looked westward 
 there was no sea. The west wind came, they knew not 
 whence, nor how far. Pretty soon (everything is 
 "pretty soon" to God, and so we won't be precise about 
 a few hundred years), these folks said, *T think we 
 can possibly boss ourselves!" The king said, 'T can 
 rule you." They said, 'Thankyouvery much, we can rule 
 ourselves." That was heresay. What made it? Answer: 
 The sea was so wide, and the king was so far across, 
 you could not see him, you could only hear him once in 
 a while, and his talk did not sound so big when you could 
 not see the megaphone through which it came. The 
 folks were so used to looking after themselves, cutting 
 the forests down, building cabins, contending with wild 
 beasts, and when the Barbarian came sneaking through 
 the trees, leaning one arm over the cradle, thrusting the 
 gun out and remarking, ''Better stay off tonight, baby is 
 asleep and wife is tired" — after a century of becoming 
 afraid of savages or wild beasts, they became tired of 
 having a little codger, across a thousand miles of water, 
 
The Conclusion of the Whole Matter 261 
 
 saying, "I will protect you." They said, ''No, thank 
 you." Had it been just a little stream between, we 
 could not have got along so well. What I want to put 
 before our thought tonight is, these matters seen under 
 the prophecies of God, show that we were sent to go 
 housekeeping for ourselves, to develop a new social_ or- 
 der her. We were not an arm with a body, we were a 
 body with an arm. The people here thought they were 
 capable of looking after their own matters and writing 
 a Magna Charta of their own. Think of that! When 
 the old English Magna Charta was written, it was by 
 barons and dignitaries. The common man hadn't a 
 thing to do with it. The barons said, in the Magna 
 Charta, to King John, you cannot do it in your way any 
 more. I forget the rest, it is not written in good Amer- 
 ican. In effect that is what they said — you cannot do 
 it that way any more. But they were barons, they had 
 their underlings and they stood up, face to face, and 
 said, ''You cannot do that way any more to us" — that 
 is, "to us barons." 
 
 Did they care what the king did to the serf, and 
 the scullion, the swine-herd, and the digger in the soil? 
 They did not. 
 
 The people over here had been so long away from 
 a king, that they did not know what one looked like. 
 They had not seen enough barons to trouble their eye- 
 sight any. They said, "Let us try ruling, a spell, our- 
 selves, and see what we can do." So those fellows got 
 
262 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 out ail old sword that had been lying around the house 
 a longi while, that they used once in a while when they 
 had to. Dipping it in blood, they wrote the first Magna 
 Charta of their race, covering all ranks, and they called 
 it the Declaration of Independence. It was written for 
 the ordinary man. It was not written by a baron, it 
 was written by a Democrat. Now, what do you think 
 of that? Written by red-headed Thomas Jefferson, 
 Democrat. Who >vas he? A man who stood for the 
 uncommon dignity of the common man. I leave it to 
 you to answer. It was worth God concealing two con- 
 tinents for a thousand years, and worth digging an 
 ocean 3,000 miles wide to keep intruders out, and wait- 
 ing until there came the parson and the book, and the 
 schoolhouse, to meet the west wind's breath. It was 
 worth it, to have a Magna Charta, written for the or- 
 dinary man. They said, ''We are all barons over here," 
 and King George did not believe it. He was a Mis- 
 sourian and they "showed" him. 
 
 Now, then, what followed that? Why, this fol- 
 lowed that: We are getting ourselves ready. Ready 
 for what? Answer: Ready to hear God and mind 
 Him. That is what we were getting ready for. Get- 
 ting ready, and the providence of God was with us, and 
 the providence of God championed our armies, and put 
 pillars of cloud and fire as we needed thqm and when 
 we needed them. We were getting ready. For what? 
 America! Providence! Now, men and women, Amer- 
 
The Conclusion of the Whole Matter 263 
 
 ica has a providence of God, to stand on its own feet, 
 to resist foreign intrusion. You know that funny doc- 
 trine called the Monroe doctrine, that John Quincy 
 Adams thought up and wrote down. That is who 
 thought that up and wrote it down. What does it 
 mean? It means, "You folks keep off." That is what 
 it means. It says, "Foreigners can't do business in this 
 country as foreign potentates." One time when Abra- 
 ham Lincoln, of blessed memory, was pretty busy doing 
 things at home, France thought, "Here is a good time 
 to sneak in." It sneaked in and it sneaked out, but it 
 left a dead king here. We were not so busy with our 
 own domestic infelicity and spanking our own young 
 ones that we could not see that the Monroe Doctrine 
 had time to do business. We kept them out. These 
 two continents are going* to be preserved for "whom 
 it may concern," and from whom it don't concern, 
 moreover. 
 
 Now, men and women, I call to you to consider 
 that it is no less essential that America should be pre- 
 served to political independence than that it should be 
 preserved to and have religious supremacy and inde- 
 pendence. We are not in any condition to let a foreign 
 ruler rule over us, neither are we in any condition to 
 let a foreign ecclesiastical potentate rule over us. We 
 are Methodists. Consider this, brothers and sisters, 
 that America is the only place where the church has 
 taken its chance, since Pentecost. The only place. In 
 
264 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 Europe they have had the theory the church had to be 
 nursed on the bottle, and they have had a state church. 
 I am not complaining about it; I am just talking about 
 it. They have a state church in England, and another 
 state church in Scotland — isn't that funny? — one king- 
 dom, and two different kinds of state churches, one 
 Presbyterian and another Episcopalian. In Sweden 
 they have a state church, and in Germany. In this 
 country the parson with his book called the Bible, and 
 his school house, and the west wind blowing in his face, 
 said, "I rather think, brothers and sisters, that the 
 church can stand alone. Let's give it a trial." That 
 ■was a discovery like the Reformation, wasn't it? We 
 tried and succeeded, thank God, and the church is stand- 
 ing alone. Every once in a while you fall in with some 
 kind of ecclesiastical booby, who gets worried and 
 scared. He gets into hysterics and says, "My brethren, 
 the church's best days are past. We are now come to 
 where the church has arrived at a state of decay." He 
 weeps some, but his tears are not worth bottling, so the 
 Lord does not bottle them. The Lord would not fool 
 away a tear bottle on that kind of weep. Brothers, 
 when I hear that kind of talk I am amused. I will tell 
 you why — ^because every church — this building — gives 
 it the lie. Who is building these churches? Every- 
 body is building them. Who is protecting them? 
 God is. 
 
The Conclusion of the Whole Matter 265 
 
 Is the government giving us subsidies ? We do not 
 want government subsidies. We want God's chance, 
 and that is all. This is the only place where the church 
 has taken its chance, and risked all on its merits, and 
 the church has succeeded more here than any place on 
 earth, thank God ! We ask nobody to pay our preachers 
 for us. You know, if I was not an humble man, I would 
 get proud once in a while. I noticed when they said 
 how many millions were given for missions in the 
 world, that America gave most of it. Then I got proud. 
 It is a modern miracle, that a free church, with no gov- 
 ernmental support, has achieved a success never 
 achieved by the church of Jesus Christ until now. Think 
 of that! 
 
 I ask you to answer me, whether it was not worth 
 while for God to keep hidden in the hollow of his hand, 
 a world where we could try that matter out? I never 
 hear the moan of the heart-ache in foreign lands, I 
 never hear the rumble of the voices of Russian 
 peasantry, but what I thank God America is showing 
 them the way. *'What ails those people?" America 
 ails them. Think of Portugal wanting a president? 
 My God! About as wide as your finger at the end, 
 and they are environed by kings. They want a presi- 
 dent. Who taught them that? America taught them 
 that. Who teaches despotism that it better mitigate 
 its tyranny? America does. I never forget that once 
 when I was going abroad — the less frequently you have 
 
266 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 been abroad the more you must refer to it — I saw a 
 woman put back, on her ship, a woman with dark hair, 
 and a dark face, and eyes that seemed to be all tears, 
 a face out of which laughter seemed to have died so 
 long ago it was not even a memory. She was a woman 
 from Italy. She beat her head against the irons of the 
 ship and cried as though her life were desolate. What 
 was the story? She was a pauper. They were sending 
 her back home and there she was, beating her forehead, 
 because her dream was shattered. She thought she was 
 coming into a new world. Now they were thrusting 
 her back to the old world. Men and women, I want you 
 to answer me. Wasn't it worth going through the toils 
 of God and man and the battles of the Revolutionary 
 fathers? Wasn't it worth while going through the 
 battering ram days of the world of the rebellion, to 
 create a land, the presence of which even in dreams, 
 made people think that Heaven was on earth. That is 
 America. Now, my point is, we must keep it for the 
 thing il was put here for. We must keep the Bible book 
 open. We must keep the school house open. You say 
 what has the church to do with the school house ? Well, 
 you know I am just a simple minister and I could not 
 argue, but inasmuch as the Bible invented the school 
 house, I think the Bible will have to stay around to 
 keep the school house going. Or, I will put it this way. 
 You know I am an American. My father was a for- 
 eigner, my mother was a foreigner. I am an American. 
 
The Conclusion of the Whole Matter 267 
 
 I believe in the public school with such passion that 
 sometimes I get a little ashamed of it, for fear I might 
 brag on it when I was not noticing it. But I will tell 
 you this, men and women, with my American fealty, 
 and my devotion to this country's institutions, I will 
 speak not as a minister, but rather as a man and Amer- 
 ican citizen, that if you take the sublime moralities of 
 Christianity out of the public schools they are not worth 
 keeping open. You say, "Why, that is extravagant," 
 but you know it is not, when you review the whole sit- 
 uation. What we need now is not to make people in- 
 telligent, so much as to make people morally competent 
 to use their intelligence to good ends. A bad man who 
 has cleverness can do more harm than a dozen of his 
 kind who have less education. Bancroft Libmy 
 
 I have grown up with this doctrine pounded into 
 me — "We must educate or perish." I read that some- 
 where, once. When you get so you can read, there 
 is no telling what you will read. "We will educate or 
 we will perish," but I declare to you that education will 
 not keep us from perishing. It is morality we need, be- 
 hind arithmetic. Lots of people can figure that two and 
 two make four, but people sometimes try to figure that 
 two times three of the other fellow's make twenty-four 
 of ours. A foreign man was selling plums, and was 
 asked, "How many for ten cents?" "Eight." "Here 
 is ten cents." Thinking I did not notice, he put in six. 
 I did not let on, I just wanted to see how many he 
 
268 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 would steal when I did not look on. Didn't he know 
 how to count? Yes. Did he think two multiplied by 
 four was six? No. What made him do it? Answer: 
 He was a thief. Don't young fellows know that a car 
 ride costs a nickel? Yes. Do they think it is worth a 
 nickel? Presumably they do for they would not ride. 
 Why do you have to pay as you enter cars, built to 
 prevent the young thief or the old bald-headed thief, or 
 the dressed-up thief with the fine hat, from stealing 
 rides. If they had all been honest as I was, you could 
 all run and jump on the front end. Didn't we know we 
 ought to be? Yes, but we were dishonest. Personally 
 I never preferred to steal a nickel. It seemed to me too 
 small, but there are plenty of small people who would. 
 My proposition is, it is morality which makes intellect- 
 uality useful and safe. 
 
 You know that Francis Bacon invented the refrig- 
 erator car when he was not busy one day. He found 
 out that cold would prevent putrefaction. Everybody 
 knows now. That is a very great contribution to mod- 
 ern life. You can take a frozen chicken across a con- 
 tinent and it is all right as long as you keep it 
 freezing, but as soon as you thaw it out, a Methodist 
 minister will smell it out and where will that chicken go? 
 We must discover something that will prevent morals 
 from putrefying. What is it? It is Giodliness. We 
 must preserve the institutions we have received for peo- 
 ple who shall not be born for a thousand years. 
 
The Conclusion of the Whole Matter 269 
 
 Shall America be kept alive, for its great services 
 for human kind? Everybody says, "yes." If we are 
 to retain America, as we have had it, we must keep it 
 religious and we will, bless God, and we will put money 
 into it. Bless all true workers to this end. Please 
 God, keep America religious. 
 
 A man wrote me the other day from New York. 
 In New England they say that *'New York" is *'out 
 West," and they think Oklahoma is ''West." I regard 
 Oklahoma as being half way. You go out and sit down 
 a spell when you get that far, because you are tired then, 
 and go on the rest of the way. The man wrote to me 
 form New York. I didn't know him at all. He did me 
 the honor to write me a note. He said, "What did I 
 mean when I said that America was for Americans." 
 You know I always know what I mean. I differ from 
 some in that regard. I said to him (with the type- 
 writer), I mean that this American civilization is so 
 new, distinct and dissimilar, that folks that don't want 
 it better not come over. This civilization is for people 
 that like it. If we are going to keep America, let the 
 church of God get up and do business. If you believe 
 in America, do business. You say, what has this got to 
 do with religion? What has religion got to do with 
 this? It has all to do with it. We must keep busy or 
 America will lose its place among the constellations of 
 the world. Because I love America, I want America 
 to be God-like. Because I believe in America, I believe 
 
270 The Conservation of Our Moral Resour-ces 
 
 in Christianity, and I do know this, that after all the 
 talk is over, and after all the volley of words has vented 
 itself on the air, and died away like the distant sum- 
 mons of thunder in a summer storm^ that if America 
 is not a Christian civilization it will be no civilization 
 at all. I mean to say, it could have been produced by 
 no methods and it could have been grown under no 
 auspices but the auspices of Christianity, and we people 
 are honor bound to the future and we are love bound 
 to God, to keep this America, that God has kept to this 
 time, for a million years hereafter, so it can hold up it? 
 torch, and the broken hearted and broken spirited across 
 the *world can see it. We have got to do this thing or 
 America will go to naught — and I think we are going 
 to do it. 
 
 I was over to New York one time on Sunday and 
 most of the stores were closed. That is worth re- 
 membering. Most of the stores in Chicago are closed 
 on Sunday — not most of the saloons, but I will tell you 
 this — that unless Chicago learns that the State of Il- 
 linois has outgrown the village of Chicago, the State of 
 Illinois will be ground to powder between their fingers, 
 in the years to come. City's rights in a great city is a 
 principle no better than state rights in the South. It is 
 wrong everywhere. Chicago must obey the State of 
 Illinois. But you know, as you go through the land, 
 some how or other, lots of people don't go to church. 
 I drive around in Oklahoma a good deal in an open 
 
1 he Conclusion of the Whole Matter 271 
 
 buggy, and go in an automobile when I find a foolish 
 man who will drive me around. I find a lot of people 
 that are not getting out to hear me preach, that are not 
 very intelligent. (Laughter.) I will tell you what I 
 find. Most of them are at home on Sunday, sitting on 
 the front step. Did I get mad because they were not 
 going to hear me preach? No, I just thanked God that 
 though they were not going to the Gospel house, the 
 Gospel house had given them a day to rest up. The 
 plow was loose in the field, the horse in the pasture, the 
 man was with the children on the porch. He was not 
 even spanking the children. He was taking the day off 
 to rest, so he could begin early the next morning. Was 
 it worth while? 
 
 It is worth while. Christianity is doing business 
 in America, as you all know who have the penetration 
 to perceive our growth. If the Bible is not taught in the 
 public schools, we must do the more teaching in Sunday 
 schools and pulpits, and go from house to house, spread- 
 ing the Gospel, with all its wonderful height and depth 
 and width. 
 
 The church is doing most of the work of the police. 
 Our cities could afford to take up a collection and pay 
 the preachers. They wont do it you know but they 
 could afford to do it mighty well. The preachers are 
 releasing the city from paying lots of policemen. If the 
 preachers and churches were not around you would 
 have to have lots more policemen. We must in the 
 
272 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 church of God, keep patriotism aUve, so that America 
 against all days shall do the thing that America only 
 can do. 
 
 O, America, I love thee. O, America, I have seen 
 thy name in my dreams and in my waking. I hear the 
 happy voices call. O, America, wake them, America, 
 and lead them to thy Christ. If America will do that, 
 it will live forever. I hope that America will be here 
 to answer the roll call. 
 
 I hope that America will be heard to answer the 
 roll call. I rather think it will. We must admit there 
 are other good people. We are engaged in the com- 
 mon cause, of keeping America alive, so that America 
 may keep the world alive, and we must not forget what 
 Dr. Piatt has said, that the world is looking at us and lis- 
 tening to us, and- waiting for us as it never did before, 
 and we must be good. In order to be good, we must be 
 converted, and in order to stay good, we have to stay 
 converted. God keep this country good. Along the 
 two highways of our commerce, are ships whose seams 
 have not been kept calked. They leak. A leaky vessel 
 will not carry freight or passengers. O, America! If 
 you start forgetting the God that grew you, that builded 
 you, that led you, that blesses you — O, America ! instead 
 of sailing the seas forever, answering to the breath of 
 the wind, and the conqueror of the beckoning waves, 
 you will be in some shore shallows, where vampires of 
 national dissolution keep national graves filling forever. 
 
1 he Conclusion of the Whole Matter 273 
 
 God Almighty help us, and God almighty show us, that 
 when we are "passing the hat" for the church of GoU 
 we are lifting up the banner, and we won't let it fall. 
 We are keeping this America of ours, please God, 
 against all perils, for the unborn generations yet to 
 come. 
 
 Dr. Coker: This is a man's job, as somebody 
 has said, requiring soul, heart and body. It needs the 
 Christian man's effort. Without that we must fail. We 
 must and we will succeed. We have more light than 
 yesterday. We have seen visions and dreamed dreams. 
 Our hearts have been opened and our intellects stirred. 
 What are we going to do about it ? In the name of God, 
 I ask you. Are we going to grind at the same rate? 
 Are we going to yield about the same amount of grist? 
 Or are we going to put ourselves, with all our hearts 
 and souls, under this mighty burden and help Christ to 
 lift this world. Brothers, I plead with you tonight, that 
 there may come upon you the holy spirit, in all earnest- 
 ness and power, in a mighty revival time, such as shall 
 sweep this land of ours, and make your mighty state 
 incorruptible, politically and socially. Not longer to tol- 
 erate Chicago's twenty-five miles of diabolical saloons 
 and brothels, with her thirty millions spent annually 
 for gambling and licentiousness, but to clean house in 
 the name of God, and make this state and city worthy 
 of the memory of the man who struck the shackles for- 
 ever from a race of men, so the glory of God may rest 
 
274 The Conservation of Our Moral Resources 
 
 upon you. I am from Kansas, but somehow Kansas 
 seems to be linked to all the nation. It seems to me 
 there is a breath coming from Kansas, that our brethren 
 down there are praying for us in this convention. 
 
 I feel in my soul the responsibility of the mighty 
 task. Shall we save America? Shall we save America? 
 Won't you people help save America? 
 
 God help us to be men and women that shall stand 
 four-square to all the mighty propositions that are up 
 against us, and may the stars and stripes, as they float 
 over yonder capitol, as I have been proud to see in these 
 days we have been here, represent the sympathies of 
 honest men, and the purity of beautiful cities and honor- 
 able policies. Let us pray, as we close this convention 
 this hour, for the strength of purpose to go forth to do 
 His will and conquer all. 
 
 Prayer by Bishop Quayle. 
 
 After which the convention adjourned. 
 
^ MCRRITT ^ 
 W PRINTING «> W 
 STA. CO. 
 OKNVKR