Hectares, S>ebentt) feertcs 
 JDelibereb at Be^auto 
 
 Social Rebuilders 
 
 CHARLES REYNOLDS JBROWN 
 
 Dean of Divinity School, Tale University 
 
 "And they said, Let us rise up and build' 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI
 
 Copyright, 1921, by 
 CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN 
 
 Printed in the United States of America
 
 TO 
 
 MARCUS D. BTJELL 
 
 TEACHER AND FRIEND 
 WHO TAUGHT ME TO READ THE GOSPELS 
 
 WITH A TRUER INSIGHT 
 
 AND TO FOLLOW THE ONE THERE PORTRAYED 
 WITH A MORE COMPLETE FIDELITY 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 IN GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CBAPTEB PAGF. 
 
 FOREWORD 7 
 
 I. THE LABOR LEADER WHO FREED THE 
 
 SLAVES 9 
 
 II. THE PROPHET WHO FOUGHT A WICKED 
 
 KING 43 
 
 III. THE HERDSMAN WHO PREACHED SOCIAL 
 
 JUSTICE 78 
 
 IV. THE MAN WHO EXALTED RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 ABOVE RITUAL 112 
 
 V. THE LEADER IN A DAY OF SOCIAL RE- 
 BUILDING. . . 147
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 THE chief distinction of this little book is 
 that it is a voice crying in the present wilder- 
 ness of confusion and disorder showing the 
 way out. The author is a modern prophet 
 with a message of God for the time. He 
 gives in these lectures a discriminating 
 appraisal of present-day industrial and social 
 conditions. He interprets the message of the 
 old Hebrew seers with rare spiritual insight 
 and proclaims their religion as the only hope 
 for the rebuilding of the world. Coming 
 from the ranks of the toiling masses, Dean 
 Brown speaks not as a partisan but with a 
 broad sympathy. For the reconstruction of 
 the world he looks not to institutions but to 
 ideals; not to new measures but to higher 
 motives. This volume breathes with passion- 
 ate eloquence for the humanizing of industry, 
 for the moralizing of social relations, and for 
 Christianizing the whole of life. For stimu- 
 lating thinking, and prophetic utterance upon 
 the vital issues of the time, these lectures will 
 be highly prized both by ministers and lay- 
 men. 
 
 The Mendenhall Lectures of DePauw Uni- 
 versity, to which this series of addresses be- 
 longs, was founded by the Rev. Mannaduke 
 H. Mendenhall, D.D., of the North Indiana 
 
 7
 
 8 FOREWORD 
 
 Conference of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church. The object of the donor was "to 
 found a perpetual lectureship on the evi- 
 dences of the divine origin of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures. The lecturers must be persons of wide 
 repute, of broad and varied scholarship, who 
 firmly adhere to the evangelical system of 
 Christian faith. The selection of lecturers 
 may be made from the world of Christian 
 scholarship, without regard to denomina- 
 tional divisions. Each course of lectures is to 
 be published in book form by an eminent pub- 
 lishing house and sold at cost to the faculty 
 and students of the University." 
 Lectures previously published: 
 
 1913, The Bible and Life, Edwin Holt 
 Hughes. 
 
 1914, The Literary Primacy of the Bible, 
 George Peck Eckman. 
 
 1917, Understanding the Scriptures, Fran- 
 cis John McConnell. 
 
 1918, Religion and War, William Herbert 
 Perry Faunce. 
 
 1919, Some Aspects of International Chris- 
 tianity, John Kelman. 
 
 1920, What Must the Church Do To Be 
 Saved? Ernest Fremont Tittle. 
 
 GEORGE R. GROSE, 
 President DePauw University.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE LABOR LEADER WHO FREED 
 THE SLAVES 
 
 THE Master never prayed that his follow- 
 ers should be taken out of the world into 
 some heaven of detachment from its sin and 
 pain. He prayed, rather, that they should be 
 kept from the evil of the world and be stead- 
 ily engaged in a sturdy effort to overcome 
 that evil with good. He put upon our lips 
 those words which impel us to look up into 
 the face of Infinite Perfection and say, ' l Thy 
 kingdom come." We are to look for it and 
 strive for it here and now. "Thy will be 
 done" here on earth as it is done in heaven! 
 The better mode of life which we crave is to 
 come down out of heaven from God. It is 
 to come down out of the realm of vision into 
 the realm of accomplished fact. And we are 
 not to limit our aspiration nor to cease from 
 that prayer until those high ends shall have 
 been achieved. 
 
 The two contrasting ideas in the matter of 
 personal excellence here suggested may bo 
 vividly seen in two types of men with whose 
 
 9
 
 10 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 work we are all familiar. John Bright and 
 Cardinal Newman lived in the same century. 
 They were citizens of the same country, and 
 for a time their lives were identified with the 
 same city. They were both men of marked 
 ability; they both came to be national figures 
 and both were earnest Christians. But at the 
 very time when John Bright was fighting 
 for the repeal of the wicked Corn Laws and 
 striving to better the social conditions in his 
 own country and laboring for the promotion 
 of international peace throughout the world, 
 Cardinal Newman was writing those pathetic 
 words which were recorded in his biography 
 by Wilfrid Ward: "The simple question is, 
 Can I be saved in the Church of England? 
 Would I be in safety were I to die to-night?" 
 He decided that he would not be "in safety," 
 so he entered the Roman Church. 
 
 It is significant, by the way, that the man 
 who was striving mainly to save his own 
 soul by the prudent cultivation of a personal 
 and private piety looked finally for his guid- 
 ance to the external authority of an ecclesias- 
 tical organization. The man who was los- 
 ing his life in seeking the high ends of social 
 justice looked for his guidance to that 
 "Inner Light" which is shed directly by the 
 Divine Presence in the hearts of all those
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 11 
 
 who have the will to do his will. In the judg- 
 ment of the one who makes to us the stronger 
 appeal, the main office of religion is not to 
 enable a man to make a safe retreat into the 
 security of paradise. The main office of re- 
 ligion is the restoration, the exaltation, and 
 the enrichment of everyday life in this pres- 
 ent world. 
 
 "The true mark of a saved man," someone 
 has said, "is not that he wants to go to 
 heaven but that he is willing to go to China, 
 or to the battlefields of France, or to the 
 slums of some great city, or to the last dollar 
 of his resources, or to the limit of his energy, 
 in order to set forward the kingdom of God 
 on earth." The old, selfish, luxurious idea 
 that a man's chief concern is to save his own 
 soul and thus gain by his prudent piety a 
 heaven of bliss, scarcely gets a rise out of the 
 troubled sea of modern life. 
 
 The Master of our Christian faith made all 
 this plain, and his forerunners, the prophets 
 of Israel, lived in the same high, heroic mood. 
 They had very little to say about * ' the sweet 
 by and by." They gave scant attention to 
 the hope of a blessed immortality awaiting us 
 in some unseen world. They did not pray for 
 "the wings of the dove" that they "might 
 fly away and be at rest." They prayed,
 
 12 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 rather, for the baptism of that Spirit which 
 is symbolized by the dove in the life of our 
 Lord to the end that here, in this present 
 order where we find ourselves, they too might 
 do always those things that pleased the 
 Father. They were to gain their peace not 
 by flight but by conquest. They were intent 
 upon having the divine will stand fast and 
 bear rule in the social and the domestic, in 
 the industrial and the political life of the 
 race. They were the heralds of a kingdom 
 whose leading notes were to be righteousness, 
 peace, and joy in the Divine Spirit. 
 
 The first book in the Bible deals entirely 
 with individuals. The first question asked in 
 it has to do with the personal standing of an 
 individual before God. ''Adam, where art 
 thou?" the Lord said. And the whole book 
 is made up of interesting stories about indi- 
 viduals Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, 
 Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. 
 These individuals (with the possible excep- 
 tion of Joseph during his stay in Egypt) are 
 portrayed as standing quite apart from the 
 organized life of industry and civics. 
 
 But the moment you turn the leaf and open 
 the second book in the Bible you enter upon 
 the history of a race. The book of Exodus 
 from start to finish is a social document it
 
 SOCIAL BEBUILDERS 13 
 
 might well be called ' ' the Story of an Ancient 
 Labor Movement." It shows us how a race 
 of slaves was delivered from bondage. It 
 outlines the growth of race consciousness ; it 
 portrays the laws and the institutions, the 
 social manners and customs which entered 
 into the shaping of a nation's life. In this 
 first lecture, then, on^the work of these lead- 
 ers in social rebuilding I wish to speak of 
 the chief figure in that interesting book. Let 
 me ask you to look at Moses, the labor leader 
 who freed the slaves. 
 
 You all know the story of those Hebrews 
 who went down to Egypt for food because 
 there was a famine in their own land of 
 Canaan. They remained there in the fat Nile 
 Delta for many years quite contented with 
 their lot. But at a later period " there arose 
 a king who knew not Joseph." The gifted 
 Hebrew, who had nobly served the interests 
 of Egypt and had secured a better status for 
 his fellow countrymen, had long since gone 
 to his reward, and his influence had faded out. 
 This later Pharaoh oppressed and enslaved 
 the helpless Hebrews until "their lives were 
 made bitter with hard bondage.*' 
 
 He set task masters over them, so that ' ' all 
 their service was with rigor." Their physi- 
 cal strength was being depleted by hard,
 
 14 SOCIAL KEBUILDEES 
 
 monotonous toil. But, worse than that, their 
 manhood and womanhood were being de- 
 stroyed by that ruthless system of industry. 
 They lost all zest and relish in life and their 
 whole capacity for spiritual response was 
 fast going. "They hearkened not to the spirit 
 of God for anguish of soul." It was the 
 tragedy wrought by an economic system 
 which brought defeat to all their better quali- 
 ties of mind and heart. And when their for- 
 tunes had reached this low ebb Moses, the 
 man of the hour, came upon the scene. 
 
 Let me notice three things about him. 
 First, he was a man of the people. His 
 parents were slaves. His father and mother 
 had known the bitterness and the defeat of 
 that hard bondage. They showed the service 
 stripes of economic slavery upon their faces 
 and upon their hearts. Moses had seen in his 
 own home the coarse fare and the rude con- 
 ditions of those who failed to secure an equi- 
 table share of the good things they helped 
 to create. 
 
 His own escape from it for a time, through 
 the generous action of the princess, did not 
 blind him to the injustice of it all. He was a 
 Hebrew of the Hebrews, and his heart beat 
 true to his own class. When he was grown to 
 man's estate his first recorded act was one of
 
 15 
 
 courageous participation in the ill fortunes of 
 his race. ' ' He refused to be called the son of 
 Pharaoh's daughter," who had taken him 
 under her care, choosing rather to suffer 
 affliction with his own people than to enjoy 
 the pleasures of an iniquitous system for a 
 season. 
 
 In like manner, present indications point to 
 the fact that the men who are to lead to-day 
 in the securing of a better type of industrial 
 life must come mainly from the ranks. The 
 men who have shared in the rough work of 
 the world have the first right to the floor, and 
 it is altogether fitting that they should be 
 heard. We wonder sometimes why wise pro- 
 fessors of economics, sitting comfortably 
 apart in well-endowed university chairs, or 
 canny millionaires who have made their piles, 
 or facile writers of clever articles on social 
 questions to be published in the "uplift maga- 
 zines," may not be permitted to tell these 
 wage-earners what to do and how to do it in 
 order to save them from the painful blunders 
 they often make in learning the way. But the 
 plain people will not follow those leaders 
 blindly, and they ought not. It belongs to 
 their advance that they should develop their 
 own leaders. The men who are to take the 
 right of the line in the forward movement of
 
 16 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 the common people must be bone of their 
 bone and flesh of their flesh. The fitness for 
 that larger measure of freedom and of pros- 
 perity which they crave with all its added re- 
 sponsibilities must come through the very 
 process of developing their own leadership 
 and of acquiring their own power of initia- 
 tive. 
 
 It is also significant that the social leaders 
 who have come from the more fortunate 
 classes have not, as a rule, proved themselves 
 altogether trustworthy as guides. It was 
 William Ewart Gladstone, a man of wealth 
 and of university training himself, who main- 
 tained that ' ' In almost every one of the great 
 political controversies of the last fifty years, 
 whether they affected the franchise or com- 
 merce or religion, the leisure class, the titled 
 class, and the educated class have been in the 
 wrong." Gladstone was no foe of wealth. 
 He suffered from no unjust prejudice as to 
 the value of education. He was himself born 
 in a castle and was a graduate of Christ 
 Church College in Oxford University, but he 
 saw the perils of privilege and the moral 
 blindness which sometimes befalls the chil- 
 dren of good fortune. 
 
 The large-minded employers of labor and 
 there are many of them in these days and the
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 17 
 
 number is constantly increasing are frankly 
 facing the fact that the number of things 
 which they can do for the men and women in 
 their employ is limited. The wage-earners 
 keenly resent every kind of paternalism. 
 They resent the idea of having "welfare 
 work" and "uplift schemes" imposed upon 
 them. They are not little children to be given 
 their bread and milk and tucked into bed at 
 the proper time, with a kiss and a prayer and 
 a fond good night. They too are responsible 
 members of society. They are not just 
 "hands" in the mill. They have heads on 
 their shoulders and hearts in their breasts 
 like the rest of us. They insist on being "con- 
 sulted" and "shown." And the wise em- 
 ployers are not working for their employees ; 
 they are working with them. They are en- 
 couraging the spirit of initiative and the 
 making of plans and the development of lead- 
 ership among the working people themselves. 
 When the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory in 
 the city of New York was burned a few years 
 ago and a hundred and forty-three working 
 girls with it, the citizens arranged a mass 
 meeting of protest for the following Sunday 
 afternoon. It was held in the Metropolitan 
 Opera House, and the place was packed, 
 orchestra, boxes, galleries and all. The late
 
 18 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 Bishop Greer, representing the Episcopal 
 Church, addressed the meeting, voicing the 
 Christian sentiment touching that horror. 
 Rabbi Wise spoke for the Hebrews and Mr. 
 Jacob H. Schiff, capitalist and philanthropist, 
 spoke for the people of good fortune and 
 social position. Many wise and kind words 
 were uttered by these gentlemen. 
 
 When they had finished, the chairman intro- 
 duced Miss Rose Schneiderman, the head of 
 the Shirt Waist Makers' Union. She walked 
 out to the front of the stage, paused a moment 
 to get control of her voice, and then said this 
 her words were burned into my memory as 
 with a hot iron. "This is not the first time 
 that working girls have been burned to death 
 in the city of New York because employers 
 were breaking the law. Each week on an 
 average comes the untimely death of at least 
 one of my fellow workers, and every year 
 hundreds of us are maimed by dangerous, un- 
 protected machinery. The lives of women 
 are cheap and property is sacred. There are 
 so many of us what does it matter if a hun- 
 dred and forty-three are burned alive? I 
 would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies 
 if I stood here and simply talked good fellow- 
 ship. We have tried you good people and we 
 have found you wanting. You are always
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 19 
 
 ready to give a couple of dollars apiece all 
 around for the sorrowing families, but when 
 we come out in the only way we know to op- 
 pose conditions which have become unbear- 
 able, the strong hand of the law is down upon 
 us instantly. I stand here to protest against 
 the injustice of it all. ' * 
 
 The audience listened to that vital thrust 
 which was in striking contrast to some of the 
 pallid, placid things which had been said by 
 the preceding speakers. It listened and re- 
 flected and drew a long breath. Then the peo- 
 ple rose to their feet and shouted their ap- 
 proval as no Metropolitan Opera House audi- 
 ence had ever shouted its satisfaction in the 
 triumph of some singer like Melba or Caruso. 
 The note of social justice had been struck by 
 one of the working people and the American 
 conscience responded with a loud "Amen." 
 Pity, compassion, kindliness they are all 
 good, but there is a demand for something 
 more fundamental! And when that deeper 
 note of justice sounded forth from the lips of 
 a worker the people were ready with their ap- 
 proval. 
 
 The words of that woman spoken on behalf 
 of all the toiling people who have suffered 
 hurt and loss by unfair deals constitute a 
 challenge to the moral forces of our nation.
 
 20 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 It is a challenge which must be met. It can- 
 not be met by a few gracefully worded reso- 
 lutions about "the dignity of labor" or by 
 occasional outbursts of generous feeling. It 
 must be met by patient, resolute, far-seeing 
 action, which looks toward a larger measure 
 of social justice. The religious people of the 
 land cannot sing nor can they pray aright 
 unless at the same time they are setting them- 
 selves man-fashion to meet that challenge. 
 The music of the anthem and the words of 
 the liturgy will stick in their throats like 
 Macbeth 's "Amen" unless they frankly ac- 
 cept that protest from the world of toil and 
 show themselves intent upon the correction 
 of the injustices of industrial life. 
 
 The policy of repression at this point is 
 altogether mistaken and dangerous. "Do we 
 want labor more disaffected than it is now? 
 It is easy to make it so. Do we want more 
 revolutionary leaders? They can be had for 
 the asking. So far as capital insists on de- 
 feating collective bargaining it will close the 
 safety valve. To bargain with the full 
 strength of a union is the one avenue through 
 which labor is to enter the new partnership. 
 It is the avenue through which business re- 
 sponsibilities are one by one to be taken on 
 by labor. So deep is the unrest that the one
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDEES 21 
 
 problem is to fix this responsibility on labor 
 groups at the safest points. This will force 
 labor to select the kind of leader required for 
 those duties, as we have long seen among co- 
 operators and in the older and steadier 
 unions." 
 
 "At a gathering of business men in Atlan- 
 tic City after the war Mr. John D. Rocke- 
 feller, Jr., and Mr. Charles M. Schwab 
 warned their fellows in language which ten 
 years ago would have classed them as 
 poseurs. 'Not only must we and our kind,' 
 it was said, 'gradually accept government 
 supervision to correct abuses inherent in com- 
 peting industry, but labor itself is to have 
 a new deal. It must have constructive recog- 
 nition. It must freely choose its representa- 
 tives to work with capitalistic directors." 1 
 
 The fact is stated and it is significant that 
 this ancient labor leader was not a glib talker. 
 He tried to beg off at first because of his lack 
 of eloquence. "I am slow of speech," he said 
 to the Lord, ' * and of a slow tongue. ' ' He felt 
 that this would disqualify him. He had not 
 learned that in almost all of the social move- 
 ments of the world the glib speakers have 
 come unduly to the front. They have de- 
 claimed to responsive audiences in a manner 
 
 i Labor's Challenge to the Social Order. J. G. Brooks. Pages 22, 414.
 
 22 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 most gratifying to themselves, but oftentimes 
 to the detriment of the very causes they 
 espoused. The orators, the spellbinders, the 
 men who talk loud and see red, have again 
 and again wielded an influence which was not 
 for the permanent well-being of their awe- 
 struck hearers. 
 
 The men of vision and insight, slow of 
 speech and slow of tongue though they are in 
 many situations, working not by burning ora- 
 tions nor by fiery appeals, but by wise, patient, 
 constructive effort, are the more significant 
 factors in the solution of these problems. 
 And these men, less conspicuous than the 
 orators but much more useful, are writing 
 those pages of social advance which later gen- 
 erations will read with gratitude and joy. It 
 is one thing to talk in glowing terms about 
 the righting of wrongs and it is quite another 
 and a very much harder and higher thing to 
 set in operation those forms of effort which 
 look toward the permanent correction of 
 those wrongs. 
 
 This man of the people, however, was not 
 an untrained ignoramus. "He was learned," 
 we read, "in all the learning of the Egyp- 
 tians." He shared actively in the benefits of 
 one of the highest civilizations of that early 
 date. He was no raw enthusiast, devoid of
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEBS 23 
 
 judgment and of experience. He had given 
 years of study and reflection to the problems 
 he was now set to solve. 
 
 The gap between theory and practice may 
 be wide it often is but it is never so wide 
 as the gap between ignorance and compe- 
 tence. We have all seen good causes go down 
 in defeat for the lack of competent, far-seeing 
 leadership. There were facts enough in the 
 minds of men; there was feeling enough in 
 the hearts of men; there was energy enough 
 in the strong right arms of men, but there 
 was a lack of that competent and worthy 
 leadership which can be gained only through 
 training and experience. Therefore their 
 contention failed. The hands on the clock of 
 social betterment were put back by those who 
 could talk and feel but could not wisely judge. 
 Some one has cleverly said, "The idealist 
 knows where to go but lacks facilities; the 
 practical man gets there but finds himself in 
 the wrong place." We must enlist the com- 
 bined action of both types of men for the 
 great advance. Here to-day, as in that far- 
 away scene on the banks of the Nile, there is 
 sore need of the patient application of eco- 
 nomic intelligence and of instructive expe- 
 rience as well as of social conscience and 
 moral enthusiasm to problems too vast and
 
 24 SOCIAL KEBUILDEBS 
 
 too intricate for any offhand impromptu solu- 
 tion. 
 
 During the Great War many fine words 
 were uttered in high places as to the worth 
 and significance of the workingman. He was 
 in the mines furnishing fuel for the winning 
 of the war. He was in the factories furnish- 
 ing munitions for the winning of the war. He 
 was on the farm furnishing food for the win- 
 ning of the war. He was on the railroads and 
 in the steamships furnishing transporta- 
 tion for the winning of the war. He was 
 simply indispensable in the hour when the 
 fate of civilization seemed to tremble in the 
 balance. 
 
 The workingman will not soon forget all 
 those fine words. Never again will he accept 
 willingly what was dealt out to him in certain 
 sections of the workaday world before the 
 war. The day when he could be told in blunt 
 fashion to "take it or leave it" is gone. The 
 "hire-and-fire" method of dealing in cavalier 
 fashion with working people has been hope- 
 lessly discredited. The workingman is on 
 his feet to-day insisting on his right to be 
 heard in the determination of those condi- 
 tions which so intimately and powerfully 
 affect his own welfare and the welfare of his 
 family. And I do not see anywhere in sight
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 25 
 
 any chairman of the meeting who will be able 
 to make him sit down and take whatever is 
 handed out to him. 
 
 There will come inevitably a better type of 
 labor leader from the ranks. The employing 
 class engaged in business on its own account 
 is not now drawing off the stronger brains 
 and the more aspiring wage-earners as it did 
 a generation ago. Then unoccupied land in 
 the West was still drawing away the more 
 resolute spirits from the crowded centers of 
 industry. To-day that land has practically all 
 been taken up. The amount of capital needed 
 to go into business for oneself in that day 
 was not so large. To-day the huge depart- 
 ment store, the corporation, or the trust en- 
 gaged in manufacture makes it all but im- 
 possible for the wage-earner to aspire to a 
 business of his own. The economic system is 
 not so elastic as it was forty years ago. The 
 abler wage-earners will of necessity remain 
 in their own class furnishing material for 
 that better type of labor leader. 
 
 The development of that more competent 
 and trustworthy type of leadership has 
 already made substantial progress. It was 
 one of our most thoughtful, careful observers 
 of social conditions and movements, John 
 Graham Brooks, who said in a recent book:
 
 26 SOCIAL KEBUILDERS 
 
 "At a sitting of the Commission on Industrial 
 Relations I sat beside the largest employer 
 of labor in his industry in this country (Mr. 
 Schaffner of Hart, Schaffner & Marx), and 
 probably in the world. He had listened for 
 several days to the testimony by employers 
 and by their attorneys and by labor men. He 
 turned to me and said, 'These labor repre- 
 sentatives are really better informed on the 
 subjects here treated and state their case 
 better than we do.' " The men who voiced 
 the toilers 7 point of view knew what they 
 were about and they moved straight toward 
 the goal they had in view with a measure of 
 insight which won the admiration of this 
 large employer of labor. 
 
 Furthermore, the opportunities for study 
 and training along these lines of interest 
 have been brought within the reach of thou- 
 sands of men and women to whom they were 
 formerly denied. The public libraries, with 
 great shelves of books upon social, industrial, 
 and political problems, are everywhere. The 
 papers and magazines dealing with these 
 questions are in the homes of all but the very 
 poorest of the people. The sons and daugh- 
 ters of the workingmen are finding their way 
 in large numbers to the colleges and universi- 
 ties of the land, where they often put to
 
 27 
 
 shame the sons of good fortune by the fidelity 
 and thoroughness they show in making use of 
 their advantages. We are all students of 
 economics these days it is in everything we 
 read and in everything we hear. It is in the 
 clubs and in the churches; it is in the air. 
 And out of all this there will come more men 
 and more women who are competent, as well 
 as willing, to point the way to a better type of 
 industrial life. " Education has already made 
 labor observant, and a more perfect organi- 
 zation will make it formidable." 
 
 In the second place we find that this ancient 
 labor leader began his work in the wrong 
 mood and with the wrong methods. He came 
 out one day and saw an Egyptian taskmaster 
 beating a Hebrew slave. His instant sym- 
 pathy for the oppressed and his race con- 
 sciousness impelled him to act. Here was a 
 wrong to be righted ! He caught ' l the nearest 
 way," as Lady Macbeth suggested to her 
 husband. He took the law into his own hands. 
 He promptly killed the fellow and hid his 
 body in the sand. 
 
 This mistaken leader undertook the social 
 deliverance of his people by a policy of per- 
 sonal violence. Class feeling, race loyalty, 
 sympathy for the helpless were strong in his 
 breast, and he gave to all this instant and
 
 28 SOCIAL REBUILDEKS 
 
 perilous expression by his act of murder. It 
 reacted upon him most unfavorably and he 
 was compelled to flee for his life. He went off 
 into the land of Midian, where he kept sheep 
 in that lonely region for a period of forty 
 years until he should have learned that the 
 work of industrial deliverance is not to be 
 undertaken in just that mood nor with those 
 particular weapons. 
 
 He was driven into the wilderness because 
 he undertook to replace the reign of law by 
 acts of personal violence. He had yet to dis- 
 cover that the right road out of industrial 
 bondage must lead inevitably along the foot 
 of Mount Sinai. The "new social order" 
 must come down out of heaven from God as 
 an essential part of that infinite moral order 
 which enfolds us all. 
 
 In many countries of the old world there is 
 at this hour abundant evidence of that same 
 mistaken form of impulse which swept this 
 ancient leader off his feet. There have been 
 few more careful observers of conditions dur- 
 ing the Great War than Sir Philip Gibbs. 
 Here is his recent comment upon the situa- 
 tion in Europe: "The greatest failure of all 
 in my judgment has been the failure of labor. 
 I am for labor, having seen its men fighting 
 and dying in great masses for no selfish pur-
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 29 
 
 poses. Therefore many of us hoped most 
 from labor and looked for leaders in its ranks 
 who would show us the way out of our pres- 
 ent jungle. We thought that they would give 
 the call to a new fellowship of men, that they 
 would overstep the narrow frontiers of na- 
 tional interest, that they would get a new 
 honesty into politics and show the power of 
 open diplomacy. But have they done any of 
 these things? 
 
 "I see leaders of a small, pettifogging 
 spirit fighting for 'two-bob' extra on the 
 wages of their men while their European com- 
 rades are starving for coal. I see only the 
 selfishness of class interest, as greedy as that 
 of the profiteer, without any regard for the 
 welfare of the nation as a whole or for the 
 needs of Europe in distress. They refuse to 
 'delute labor' in the interest of the men who 
 fought for them or with them. Eecent his- 
 tory convicts them of a secret diplomacy as 
 bad as that of old statesmanship. Their 
 press has not been more honest than the capi- 
 talist press which labor has denounced. The 
 appeals of their leaders have not been to the 
 generous instincts of humanity, nor on behalf 
 of the world in agony, nor to any noble ideals 
 toward which we may all grope our way, but 
 to the same little tricky, selfish interests with
 
 30 
 
 an underlying menace of the bloody things 
 which have been the curse of national politics 
 as the game has been played by their op- 
 ponents. ' ' 
 
 We can sympathize with the resentment of 
 that ancient leader who killed the cruel task- 
 master even while we withhold our 'approval 
 from his method. He had the heart of a man 
 and he struck out man-fashion at the oppres- 
 sor, but they were not blows which were 
 counted to him for righteousness. The hot 
 indignation of youth at the sight of injustice 
 has immense moral value, but it must be in- 
 vested with deeper meaning and attach itself 
 to finer issues if it would accomplish results 
 worthy and lasting. The high task of social 
 betterment cannot be undertaken in anger or 
 in hatred it calls for the spirit of moral 
 faith. It will never have adequate spiritual 
 energy to gain the ends proposed until it 
 reaches the place where it puts the shoes 
 from off its feet because it stands on holy 
 ground. It must see with its own eyes that 
 symbol of the Divine Presence in the mys- 
 terious fire which burns and does not con- 
 sume. In the long run and in the last analysis 
 nothing is strong and nothing is good with- 
 out the consecration of a finer form of 
 faith.
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 31 
 
 I have wondered oftentimes if it might not 
 be well for some of the leaders of the I. W. W. 
 and other kindred organizations here in our 
 own country to go off for a time and enjoy in 
 similar fashion a quiet season of reflection in 
 the land of Midian. The idea that any individ- 
 ual who can talk loud, write with red ink, and 
 throw bombs upon occasion should be encour- 
 aged to upset all our existing arrangements in 
 order to introduce some untried scheme of 
 his own does not commend itself to the judg- 
 ment of those who really have the interests 
 of the working people at heart. It has been 
 well said that there are men all about us who 
 undertake to doctor society on the strength 
 of their own happy intuitions and their own 
 love of hearing themselves explode. The 
 term "quack" which we apply to those who 
 attempt to practice medicine in that same 
 rough-and-ready fashion would be entirely in 
 order here. 
 
 The working people to-day will be misled 
 if they think that breaking the wrists or the 
 heads of men who refuse to join their indus- 
 trial sect, or dynamiting the homes of men 
 who insist upon their right to work on terms 
 of their own choosing, or destroying the 
 property of men who will not be converted 
 to the particular theories advanced by certain
 
 32 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 agitators, will advance their interests. All 
 this moral defiance and contempt for prin- 
 ciple will react in frightful fashion upon 
 those who undertake to practice it. It will 
 fail inevitably, and it ought to fail. 
 
 Every effort and every utterance which 
 looks toward contempt for law or toward 
 the spread of mob violence defeats the very 
 ends it may have in view. The whole nation 
 applauded the Governor of Kentucky a year 
 ago when he upheld the majesty of the law. 
 A colored man there had been guilty of a foul 
 crime. He had been arrested, tried, con- 
 victed, and sentenced to death. He was in 
 prison awaiting the execution of that sen- 
 tence when a mob undertook to break into 
 the jail that it might lynch him or torture or 
 burn him alive. Then the Governor told the 
 mob that the state of Kentucky was under the 
 reign of law and that he was there to enforce 
 its demands. And he did it, even though it 
 cost the lives of half a dozen of the leaders of 
 that mob. White men and black men alike 
 the country over approved the courage and 
 the righteousness of his action. 
 
 Here in this broad land, where all power 
 belongs at last to the people, there is no man- 
 ner of excuse for deeds of violence, for dyna- 
 miting the homes and the places of business
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 33 
 
 belonging to others, or for assassination. If 
 the laws are not right, change them. If they 
 are not being enforced by the officials who are 
 in power, let the people elect men who will 
 enforce them. Here in this country authority 
 is not handed down from above by some 
 superman or supermen it is handed up by 
 the votes of the people themselves. And it is 
 the last act of insane folly and of open 
 wickedness for the working people or for any 
 set of people to try to overthrow the orderly 
 processes of government for which they them- 
 selves are finally responsible in order to re- 
 place them with the irresponsible action of 
 mob violence. Let all such go off into the 
 land of Midian to keep sheep, for forty years 
 if need be, as Moses did, until they too learn 
 the spirit and the temper in which social 
 progress is achieved! 
 
 But in order to avail ourselves of the value 
 of such reflection, there must be opportunity 
 for the open discussion of these high themes. 
 The right to freedom of speech for which 
 brave men in other days have fought and died 
 must not be yielded up at the behest of small 
 but well-financed groups of reactionaries. 
 Let's talk it out together! By the beat and 
 play of mind upon mind in the freest inter- 
 change of thought and conviction touching
 
 34 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 
 
 these vast issues are we to make our way 
 toward those conclusions which may be al- 
 lowed to stand. 
 
 Wise and cautious economists in all lands 
 are gravely theorizing over the proper dis- 
 tribution of what is produced between capital 
 and management and labor. "But in the 
 roar of the mill, in the machine shops, in 
 mines, and in railways where labor is thrown 
 together and organizes itself, this dispute 
 over the respective shares is becoming so 
 charged with hostilities that the legal and 
 police system in most countries is put to the 
 greatest strain. 
 
 "This strain is increasing if we mean by 
 that a growing determination on the part of 
 labor to break down the kind of authority 
 which ownership and management have as- 
 sumed to be theirs. The strain means more 
 than this because that part of our wage-earn- 
 ers bent either upon the destruction of the 
 wage system or upon very radical changes is a 
 growing and a more determined proportion of 
 our population." 1 We must maintain at any 
 cost within reason that dearly bought privi- 
 lege of free speech, both as a fundamental 
 human right and as a safety valve for that 
 
 1 Reprinted from Labor's Challenge to the Social Order (p. 423), by 
 John Brooks, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company.
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 35 
 
 high pressure of resentment which may so 
 easily become a social menace. 
 
 In the third place, this ancient labor leader 
 was finally fitted for his task by an open 
 vision of God. He was inducted into a richer 
 form of experience which gave him a vivid 
 and immediate sense of the Divine. In the 
 very forefront of his intellectual and moral 
 landscape there came to be a Presence, Su- 
 preme, August, Beneficent. This Presence 
 was always there, enjoining upon men the 
 performance of their duty, hallowing their 
 worship, sanctifying their hearts, their ac- 
 tions, and their purposes, directing them in 
 their efforts to establish that quality of com- 
 munity life worthy to be known as "His 
 Kingdom." In a word, this labor leader be- 
 came ' * a man of God, ' ' and that one fact put 
 iron in his blood, oxygen in the lungs of his 
 moral nature, and gave reach and grasp to his 
 aspiration. 
 
 He led his flock one day to the back of the 
 desert, even to Horeb, the Mount of God. 
 This rocky eminence was then regarded as 
 the earthly dwelling place of the Hebrew 
 Deity. He saw there a fire which burned but 
 did not consume. He heard a voice which 
 seemed divine. The voice spoke to him, not 
 about his own personal salvation; it spoke
 
 36 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 not of some hope of happiness in a blessed 
 hereafter. It spoke to him in terms of social 
 interest touching his own immediate responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 What deep notes are struck by the four 
 successive statements 1 they fall upon our 
 ears like the tolling of some distant cathedral 
 bell: "I am the God of thy fathers. I have 
 seen the affliction of my people who are in 
 Egypt. I have heard their cry by reason of 
 their taskmasters. I know their sorrows. I 
 have come down to deliver them." It was the 
 God of righteousness who was thus voicing 
 his interest in a body of working people. 
 
 How much it meant to that lonely shepherd 
 there on the slopes of Horeb, thinking all the 
 while of his fellow countrymen toiling as 
 slaves in the valley of the Nile! How much 
 it means to us facing as we do the necessity 
 for a larger measure of industrial peace and 
 a more evenly spread prosperity here in our 
 own great land ! The assurance of the divine 
 interest in all these problems, of the divine 
 compassion for those who suffer hurt, of the 
 divine readiness to aid in a worthy solution! 
 The outward setting of this scene is in a place 
 and a time far removed from our modern 
 American life, but the content of the picture 
 applies to the conditions confronting us as
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 37 
 
 directly as if it had all been written yester- 
 day in the city of New York. God sees and 
 God hears! God knows, and God is come 
 down to aid in the deliverance of any whose 
 lives are made bitter by hard bondage. 
 
 The people who think that God is only in- 
 terested in us when we are reading our Bibles 
 and saying our prayers, when we are going 
 to church or taking the sacrament, must think 
 that he is a Being narrow-minded and short- 
 sighted. They must think that he is asleep 
 most of the time, for only a small fraction of 
 our thought and strength is consumed in the 
 performance of these acts of devotion. God 
 is interested in all these questions of wages 
 and hours, in the sort of conditions which ob- 
 tain in mills and in mines, in the employment 
 of women and children for those exacting in- 
 dustries which overtax and undermine their 
 strength. He is interested in that sense of 
 economic insecurity, in the feeling of uncer- 
 tainty touching employment, in the dread of 
 an unsustained old age in which so many 
 workers spend all the best years . of their 
 lives. He is saying to us as he said of old, 
 "I have seen and I have heard; I know and 
 I am come down" to aid in having all this 
 changed for the better. 
 
 I am fully aware that there are short-
 
 38 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 sighted men, needing glasses without know- 
 ing it, who are inclined to brush the religious 
 motive entirely aside. They insist upon ' * the 
 economic interpretation of history, " which is 
 an ambitious attempt to account for every- 
 thing on the basis of a single set of facts, 
 leaving out of consideration other forces 
 which are even more potent. They insist 
 upon "the class struggle,'* forgetting ap- 
 parently that "we are all members one of 
 another," and if one class suffers, all the 
 other classes suffer with it. They insist that 
 everything may be trusted to "the push of 
 self-interest," if only that self-interest can 
 be made intelligent and organized, forgetting 
 that the bravest deeds are done, the finest 
 words are uttered, and the loveliest types of 
 devotion are developed almost uniformly by 
 the strength of motives altogether higher 
 than anything to be found in the push of self- 
 interest. These men all need to go back and 
 stand with this ancient labor leader at Horeb 
 until they too hear the same divine voice. 
 
 The narrow-minded selfishness of certain 
 industrial leaders in England was recently 
 rebuked by one of their own number in these 
 telling phrases. "Too many of us are saying 
 these days, 'It's our turn now.' How many 
 labor leaders have had a word to say in all
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 39 
 
 these months about the worth of work done 
 in honor? 'Fewer hours and more pay' has 
 been the battle cry. The bad workman de- 
 mands the same wage as the good, and the 
 right of the employer to discharge is denied 
 him by the threat of a boycott from the union. 
 The labor leader has been no kinder to his 
 own class than the former master of their 
 fate has been. Capital squeezes out the weak 
 competitor, but labor would cut off the chil- 
 dren of a whole city from their milk for an 
 added per cent in carrying it. The laborer 
 would silence the telephone and let coal lie 
 at the wharf in freezing weather for an in- 
 creased wage while his neighbor shivers." 
 Selfishness never did build a world fit for 
 people to live in, and selfishness never can. 
 I am an American citizen it is the glory 
 of my life that my lot has been cast here 
 under these friendly skies. I am proud of the 
 history of our country, and I rejoice in the 
 quality of the great men she has produced. 
 You would all agree with me no doubt that 
 the two greatest names- in our American his- 
 tory are those of Washington and Lincoln. 
 How much it means that they were both men 
 of vision, men of faith, men of prayer ! You 
 have all seen the picture of "Washington on 
 his knees at Valley Forge. He knelt there
 
 40 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 before God because he felt that the struggle 
 of the colonies to achieve their independence 
 and "to assume among the powers of the 
 earth that separate and equal station to which 
 the laws of nature and of nature's God en- 
 titled them" could not succeed without divine 
 help. 
 
 You may also have seen John Drinkwater's 
 play where Abraham Lincoln stands before 
 the map of the United States, erect, resolute, 
 and determined. He was looking that map 
 over, north, south, east, and west, as if he 
 were conscious already that during his four 
 years in the White House it would be blood- 
 stained almost beyond recognition. Then a 
 moment later, feeling his inadequacy to the 
 great task laid upon him, you saw him kneel 
 that he might receive divine help to save the 
 Union and to write the charter of freedom 
 for a subject race. In these great hard 
 hours of the world's history, when the prob- 
 lems of industry and of statesmanship are so 
 grave that they fairly stagger the human 
 mind and heart, what better thing can we 
 do than to direct the people everywhere to 
 look for aid and guidance from that same 
 Infinite Source whence it was sought by 
 Washington and by Lincoln! 
 
 The social question is always and every-
 
 SOCIAL KEBUILDERS 41 
 
 where a great deal more than a question of 
 bread and butter, of dollars and cents, of 
 wages and hours. It is a question of human 
 values. And for the gaining and maintenance 
 of those higher values which are at stake in 
 this huge process of production, distribution, 
 and exchange, we need the religious motive 
 and the power of spiritual vision. Without 
 that we cannot succeed with that, in the end, 
 we cannot fail. 
 
 You, as students in De Pauw University, 
 have a very direct responsibility in this mat- 
 ter. The college man is under peculiar obliga- 
 tions to use his training with fidelity and con- 
 science. He has been put in trust with these 
 advantages, now let him give a good account 
 of his stewardship! He has received five 
 talents of opportunity, now let him gain five 
 talents more through competent service ! The 
 torn and troubled condition of the world you 
 are to live in has multiplied that standing 
 obligation by ten. The spirit of unrest is 
 everywhere and the spirit of unreason has 
 widened its domain. There are movements 
 of thought and feeling just beneath the sur- 
 face of our American life which are a menace 
 to the strength and the stability of the Repub- 
 lic. There is a loud call everywhere for men 
 who can see, men who can think, men who
 
 42 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 can do the things which need to be done in this 
 day of rebuilding. 
 
 And the price of competence in meeting 
 that obligation is hard, serious, manly study 
 of the facts and principles which underlie 
 these questions. You cannot hope to gain that 
 knowledge of these economic and political 
 problems, these educational and religious 
 problems, which will enable you to do your 
 bit by a series of clever guesses or on the 
 strength of a few happy intuitions. The man 
 who reads nothing in his morning paper but 
 the sporting page and the amusement col- 
 umns will not know what kind of a world he 
 is living in. The man who has no taste for 
 talking out with his fellows in serious fashion 
 the graver issues will skate along over the 
 surface of life and when he is brought up 
 against some situation which offers a chal- 
 lenge to the best powers which can be brought 
 to bear he will show himself as helpless as a 
 child. If you never did it before, do it now ! 
 Take one long, square look at this world 
 which has been torn to pieces by the Great 
 War and then resolve once for all that by 
 steady, strenuous effort you will fit yourself 
 to perform your particular bit of that huge, 
 hard task in this day of social rebuilding.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE prophet Elijah has been called "the 
 Prophet of Fire." He was a red-hot sort of 
 man. He first appears upon the scene with 
 the threat of a coming drought which would 
 scorch the land of Israel as a punishment 
 for the wrongdoing of the people. His words 
 of rebuke to the guilty king and queen who 
 ruled and robbed the subject nation were like 
 coals of fire. He sought to burn out the sin 
 of the nation by the fervent heat of his moral 
 indignation. He won his victory over the 
 priests of Baal at the top of Mount Carmel 
 by calling upon God to ' * answer by fire. ' ' He 
 is said to have left this world "in a chariot 
 of fire." 
 
 His flaming methods may have been im- 
 perative. There are situations where fire is 
 "indicated" as the physicians say in their 
 careful diagnosis no remedy less radical 
 meets the situation. No soft-spoken, mild- 
 mannered apostle discoursing on "sweetness 
 and light" could have won out in the face of 
 
 43
 
 44 SOCIAL EEBUILDEBS 
 
 the flagrant, impudent wrongdoing of that 
 day. The fever of sinfulness in the body of 
 Israel's life had reached such a stage that the 
 hot poultice of denunciation was needed to 
 blister the surface of the inflamed portion 
 into some promise of recovery. It was said 
 of the One who came to make all things new 
 and to build an order of life which should 
 manifest his glory, "He shall baptize you 
 with the Holy Ghost and with fire." 
 
 The king of Israel in Elijah's day was a 
 wicked but weak-kneed individual whose 
 name was Ahab. While he was a mere boy 
 his f atiher had married him to a Tyrian prin- 
 cess. It seemed to the short-sighted poli- 
 ticians of that day a very clever thing to do. 
 They nodded their heads in glad approval. 
 It was "good business" to have those valu- 
 able Phosnician ports thus opened to Hebrew 
 trade. More than that, an alliance by mar- 
 riage with the rulers of Tyre in the north 
 might strengthen Israel against the encroach- 
 ments of Assyria, which had been pushing 
 south with her victorious armies. It was be- 
 fore the time of "open covenants openly ar- 
 rived at" and the clever diplomats may well 
 have found "fourteen points" where this al- 
 liance with the kingdom of Tyre would be 
 good for Israel.
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 45 
 
 But there was a big, nasty fly in this pot 
 of Phoenician ointment in fact two of them. 
 I wish to speak of them both in this story of 
 that prophet who fought the wicked king. 
 
 In the first place, the prophet fought 
 against the degradation of the national soul 
 by the introduction of a false mode of wor- 
 ship. When this Phoenician princess mar- 
 ried the young Hebrew king she brought with 
 her not only a strange face and a strange 
 tongue, she brought alien manners and an 
 alien faith. She brought her pagan deities 
 with her and called upon her husband to build 
 an altar to the heathen god Baal in the valley 
 of Samaria. She brought her pagan priests 
 to maintain the religious cult to which she 
 had been accustomed, for a princess must be 
 allowed spiritual privileges of her own choos- 
 ing. The first thing the Hebrew nation knew, 
 it had a section of full-fledged heathenism set 
 up in active operation at the very heart of its 
 own life. 
 
 It was no mere question of words and 
 names ; the spelling of the title of their deity 
 with four letters B-A-A-L, or with seven let- 
 ters, J-E-H-0-V-A-H. It was a question of 
 the character which those deities possessed in 
 the minds of their respective worshipers. It 
 was a question as to the influence of the
 
 46 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 
 
 homage paid them as registered upon the 
 lives of men. Jehovah was a God of right- 
 eousness, he was a covenant-making and a 
 covenant-keeping God. 
 
 The Semitic peoples were in that day, as 
 they are to this hour, a bargaining people. 
 The commercial instinct was present and ac- 
 tive, giving them a quick sense of the sacred- 
 ness of agreements and of the value of the 
 principle of equivalents. And the moral 
 teaching of the Hebrews was steeped in that 
 idea. They believed beyond a peradventure 
 that "with the same measure we mete it out, 
 it shall be measured back to us again. ' ' They 
 had scant regard for those backward and be- 
 nighted races who gave their allegiance to 
 gods who were notionate, whimsical, and not 
 to be depended upon. The bargaining Semite, 
 who knew the methods of honorable and 
 profitable trade, insisted that the Almighty 
 himself was a righteous Dealer who kept his 
 word with his people and insisted that they 
 too should stand to the bargains they had 
 made with him. He was a covenant-making 
 and a covenant-keeping God. 
 
 In a word, the Jews had come to believe 
 that Jehovah was a God of character he 
 would be pleased with obedience to the law of 
 justice, mercy, and truth and with nothing
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 47 
 
 less. Baal, on the other hand, was an idol 
 with a friendly feeling for licentiousness. He 
 was not inclined to make his devotees uncom- 
 fortable in their sins. He never intruded 
 upon them with any disturbing ideals. We 
 can see at a glance how different would be 
 the results wrought out by these respective 
 cults of worship. 
 
 We may witness the same confusion of in- 
 terest and the same outworking of diverse 
 results in the homage paid in our modern life. 
 We find many men and women who worship 
 the living God, the God and Father of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. He is a being of too pure 
 eyes to look upon any kind of wrongdoing 
 with approval. He calls upon those who wor- 
 ship him for obedience, for devotion, for self- 
 sacrifice. "Be ye holy," he is forever saying 
 to them by all the legitimate appointments of 
 our Christian faith, "for I am holy." 
 
 But there are other men who make to them- 
 selves images, not always from gold and sil- 
 ver or from wood and stone. They frame up 
 these little homemade deities from notions of 
 their own choosing. They want a religion 
 which will not interfere with their self-indul- 
 gent lives" or with their money-getting accord- 
 ing to methods which would not square with 
 the Sermon on the Mount. They put in the
 
 48 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 place of God that which is not God ; and when 
 any such substitution is made I care not how 
 graceful and polite they may be about it, they 
 too become out-and-out pagans. 
 
 You will sometimes hear a man beating the 
 air with some empty claim like this : ' * It does 
 not matter what a man believes if he is only 
 sincere. If he is a sincere Moslem, it is just 
 the same as if he were a sincere Christian.*' 
 And this religious moonshine is sometimes 
 supposed to indicate a very advanced and lib- 
 eral type of mind. 
 
 But look at the effect of the Moslem re- 
 ligion as compared with the Christian upon 
 the status of woman, upon the proper nurture 
 and training of childhood, upon the develop- 
 ment of civic and economic ideals. Look at 
 the conduct of the leading Christian nations 
 of the world as compared with the conduct of 
 the leading Moslem countries. Can anyone 
 imagine any Christian nation on earth doing 
 to any people what the Moslem government 
 of Turkey has done to the helpless Arme- 
 nians during the last twenty-five years? The 
 slaughter of men, the outraging of women, 
 the cruelty unspeakable to little children- 
 all this was done not by some criminal out- 
 laws who had broken away from the re- 
 straints of government or by small groups of
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 49 
 
 soldiers reacting from the stern discipline of 
 military life in war time. It was done, as is 
 almost universally believed, with the ap- 
 proval, if not with the direct connivance, of 
 the Moslem government at Constantinople. 
 It does make a tremendous difference what 
 men believe and how they worship. 
 
 It is a mark of mental indolence and of 
 moral laxity for anyone to maintain that it 
 does not matter what one believes if only he 
 is sincere. It is for every serious-minded 
 person to make it the business of his life to 
 square his faith with the facts so that his 
 belief will point to spiritual reality as the 
 needle to the pole. No other attitude could 
 be acceptable to Him who said, "I am the 
 truth; and ye shall know the truth; and the 
 truth shall make you free." The right sort 
 of worship will free the life from all that 
 hurts or hinders life ! 
 
 When a man worships he holds before the 
 eyes of his soul some supreme conception of 
 spiritual excellence. He says to himself and 
 to all hands : " I adore that. I give to that the 
 final allegiance of my heart. I swear to that 
 an undying loyalty. I desire at last to be like 
 that." If he is saying all this to a being of 
 Holy Love, the effect of it upon his own in- 
 most life will be one thing. If he is saying it to
 
 50 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 a Moslem deity of cruelty and bloodshed, or to 
 a Phoenician deity of shameful indulgence, 
 then the effect will be quite another thing. 
 Choose you this day whom ye will serve in 
 that final dedication of your life I 
 
 The nation as well as the individual is pos- 
 sessed of and by that which may fittingly be 
 called a soul. The nation develops and cher- 
 ishes certain traditions and sentiments which 
 are as the very breath of life to its nostrils. 
 The high moods and feelings which find ex- 
 pression in its music, its poetry, and its art 
 have in them a certain something which, like 
 the word of God, is " living, powerful, and 
 sharper than a two-edged sword. ' * The state 
 does not live by bread alone there are cer- 
 tain forms of energy unseen but mighty which 
 are as much a part of its life as its agricul- 
 ture, its manufactures, and its commerce. 
 When the captain of an English ship (which 
 had struck an iceberg and was fast sinking) 
 stood on the bridge and called out to the 
 sailors to put the women and children in the 
 lifeboats first, regardless of their own safety, 
 coupling his command with this stout appeal, 
 "Be British, men!" he was summoning into 
 action the national soul. His summons was 
 not in vain the common sailors rose to it in 
 heroic mood. And the development and main-
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDEES 51 
 
 tenance of this finer quality of national soul 
 is most intimately bound up with the style 
 and manner of the worship the nation ob- 
 serves. 
 
 This weak-kneed king of Israel, shiver- 
 ing in the presence of the pagan princess he 
 had married, first tolerated, then encouraged, 
 and at last openly allied himself with the 
 degrading worship of Baal. Then the 
 prophet Elijah appeared upon the scene and 
 proposed that the rival claimants upon the 
 allegiance of the people should be subjected 
 to this test. He suggested that he and the 
 priests of Baal should build two altars upom 
 the top of Mount Carmel; that they should 
 lay their sacrifices upon the altars and then 
 call upon their respective deities to answer 
 by fire. And the god who actually answered 
 by fire was to be proclaimed the God of 
 Israel. The proposal met with instant and 
 hearty approval at the hands of the people 
 who had been halting between two opinions. 
 They uttered their indorsement in a great 
 shout -"It is well spoken." 
 
 The plan proposed was carried out, and 
 the contrast in that scene upon the crest of 
 Mount Carmel was striking. On one side 
 four hundred and fifty priests of Baal, on 
 the other side Elijah standing alone ! On one
 
 52 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 side the well-dressed objects of the royal 
 favor, fat, sleek, and well fed from the table 
 of Jezebel ; on the other side Elijah, the Tish- 
 bite, half naked, with a leather girdle about 
 his loins, gaunt, thin, shaggy, as a man who 
 had claimed his scanty fare from the ravens. 
 On one side the king and queen, yet with noth- 
 ing to aid them save an empty, useless idol 
 as the object of their misguided devotion ; on 
 the other side the single-handed prophet of 
 the living God who had at his command le- 
 gions of spiritual forces greater than all the 
 armies of earth. 
 
 The people gathered on the hillside and 
 sat through the livelong day with Oriental 
 patience. The priests of Baal called upon 
 their deity from morning until noon. They 
 worked themselves into a frenzy of excite- 
 ment like the howling dervishes of the East. 
 They cut themselves with knives until the 
 blood gushed forth in token of their des- 
 perate earnestness. They cried incessantly, 
 "Oh Baal, hear us! Oh Baal, hear us!" But 
 "there was neither voice nor any to answer 
 nor any that regarded," the sober record 
 says. All their frantic efforts availed noth- 
 ing. They were earnest, they were sincere, 
 they were persistent, but there was nothing 
 there. There was no such deity as Baal in
 
 53 
 
 existence, and they might well have saved 
 their breath and their blood. 
 
 Then in the quiet of the evening hour the 
 prophet Elijah put his claims to the test. 
 There was no rant, no frenzy, no cutting of 
 his flesh with knives. He was calm and con- 
 fident as one who prayed to the living God. 
 ' ' Oh thou God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, 
 let it be known this day that thou art God 
 and that I am thy servant. Hear me, that 
 these people may know that thou art God and 
 that thou mayest turn their hearts back 
 again." 
 
 "Then the fire fell," we read, on the altar 
 of Jehovah and tihe burnt offering was con- 
 sumed. The people rose to it the God who 
 answered by actual achievement commanded 
 their allegiance. They uttered their cry, 
 "Jehovah is God! Jehovah is God!" until it 
 echoed and reechoed across the plain of 
 Esdraelon, which has witnessed so many vic- 
 tories of right over wrong. 
 
 This scene on Mount Carmel may be taken 
 as a dramatic and poetic presentation of the 
 wider test which is steadily being applied to 
 the rival claimants upon our allegiance. Let 
 the religion which answers by facts of expe- 
 rience, by renewed hearts, by loftier moral 
 purposes, by increased spiritual vigor and
 
 54 SOCIAL REBUILDEES 
 
 by finer forms of usefulness stand supreme! 
 Let every form of faith be judged by its 
 fruits ! If paganism and infidelity would only 
 bring forward something more than clever 
 theories, we might take them seriously. If 
 they would only undertake an exhibit of the 
 sound, moral results consequent upon the ac- 
 ceptance of their interpretation of the su- 
 preme verities, we would then have something 
 to speak to other than a mere array of idle 
 talk. In the meantime, let that religion which 
 answers in terms of Christian effort, reaching 
 out in the name of Christ with the hospital, 
 the school, and the church into every nation 
 under heaven and into every section of hu- 
 man need, stand supreme! 
 
 In the second place, this prophet of God 
 fought against the social injustice of this 
 wicked king. There was a clash of interest 
 between a private citizen, named Naboth, and 
 Atab, the king. Naboth had a vineyard near 
 the king's palace, and the monarch desired it 
 for a garden of herbs. But the land had been 
 in Naboth 's family for many years and he 
 refused to sell. "The Lord forbid that I 
 should give the inheritance of my fathers 
 unto thee." Then the king was "peeved." 
 He went back to his palace heavy and de- 
 pressed. He lay down upon his bed, turned
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 55 
 
 his face to the wall and would not eat. He 
 was a man of small build and this petty, 
 childish humor was thoroughly characteristic. 
 
 But Jezebel, his queen, was no such weak- 
 ling. ''Why is thy spirit so sad?" she asked. 
 When he told her the occasion of his disap- 
 pointment, she laughed in his face. That was 
 not the way things were done in Tyre nor by 
 kings generally in that rude age. "Rise and 
 eat bread," she said, "and let thine heart be 
 merry. I will give thee the vineyard of 
 Naboth." "Lady Macbeth will show the 
 Thane of Cawdor how to become king. There 
 is always a way to be bad. The gate of hell 
 stands wide open, or, if half-closed, a touch 
 will make it fly back. The road is broad that 
 leads to destruction and the going is easy." 
 Jezebel will not let "I dare not" wait upon 
 ' ' I would. ' ' She was not * ' too full of the milk 
 of human kindness to catch the nearest way." 
 She believed in "direct action." 
 
 She decided, however, to show some regard 
 for the outward decencies. She would dress 
 up her wolfish deed in sheep's clothing. She 
 would be properly ceremonious about it. She 
 wrote letters in the king's name and said, 
 "Proclaim, a fast! Ring the church bell! 
 Put on a surplice! Say, 'Lord, Lord,' and 
 sing the long-meter Doxology through twice,
 
 56 SOCIAL BEBUILDERS 
 
 for the queen is about to do an evil deed in 
 the name of religion. J * 
 
 "When the fast was proclaimed Naboth, by 
 order of the queen, was given an exalted po- 
 sition among the people. Then two paid liars 
 were brought forward to swear that during 
 the fast they had heard him blaspheme God 
 and the king. On this trumped-up charge of 
 blasphemy and treason the same two charges 
 brought against Jesus Christ Naboth was 
 taken out and stoned to death. Then his 
 property was confiscated by the state as the 
 property of a man convicted of treason. He 
 was branded a felon and the land was duly 
 turned over to the king, who had coveted it 
 for a flower garden. 
 
 What an admirable plan for robbing an in- 
 nocent man of his land and of his life ! Jezebel 
 was an artist in wrongdoing. She knew how 
 to turn the trick with neatness and dispatch. 
 The program went through without a single 
 hitch like a well-arranged church wedding 
 rehearsed in advance. Where there is a will 
 there is a way. What are the Ten Command- 
 ments among friends ? When Naboth had been 
 stoned to death on the false charge, Jezebel 
 said to her husband, "Arise and take your 
 vineyard, for Naboth is dead. ' ' 
 
 What an hour for a prophet of righteous-
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDEES 57 
 
 ness ! His work was all cut out for him and 
 laid ready to his hand. He saw even in that 
 far-off time that private citizens have rights 
 which cannot be overridden by wicked kings 
 or by grasping queens. He would let those 
 selfish, cruel monarchs know that there was a 
 God in Israel who could not be trifled with. 
 He was the tribune of the people, the first 
 great Commoner proclaiming his message 
 from on high that ' ' the welfare of the people 
 is the highest law of the land." 
 
 This man of God knew little or nothing 
 about the political forms of modern democ- 
 racy, but he had the spirit of it. He walked 
 by faith and not by sight, not having received 
 the promises but having seen them afar off. 
 He was persuaded of the fitness of that better 
 mode of life and he embraced it and confessed 
 himself a stranger and a pilgrim in such a 
 world as Ahab and Jezebel would have made 
 it. He was heart and soul for a better coun- 
 try. He would have joined heartily in this 
 great hymn of praise 1 had it been current in 
 his day: 
 
 "We knelt before kings and we bent before lords, 
 For theirs were the crowns and theirs were the swords. 
 But the times of the bending and bowing are past, 
 For the day of the people is dawning at last. 
 
 'Reprinted from Christian Internationalism (p. 80), by W. P. Merrill, 
 by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company.
 
 58 SOCIAL REBUILDEKS 
 
 "Great Day of the Lord! The prophets and seers 
 Have sung of thy coming these thousands of years. 
 On the wings of war's whirlwind God's judgments fly 
 
 fast, 
 And the Day of the People is dawning at last." 
 
 The ugly deed of Ahab had been done at 
 night Naboth was put out of the way under 
 cover of darkness. But the wicked king was 
 awake next morning at daybreak. He started 
 down at sunrise to take possession of the 
 coveted vineyard. He rode in military state 
 from Samaria to Jezreel, but his joy was 
 short-lived. The news of his crime had come 
 to Elijah, and this prophet of God was on 
 hand to utter his protest against this act of 
 villainy. When the king drove up to the gate 
 of the vineyard, there stood the sturdy figure 
 of the prophet with eyes like coals of fire. 
 
 Half in anger and half in anguish, for he 
 saw that he had sinned in vain, the king 
 sobbed out, "Hast thou found me, mine 
 enemy?" The stern reply came back, "I 
 have found thee, because thou hast sold thy- 
 self to do evil." 
 
 Here was wrongdoing facing righteousness 
 and it was ashamed and afraid. Here was 
 guilt facing conscience and it trembled and 
 shivered like a leaf in the wind. Here was the 
 whole method of seeking pleasure in ways
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDEKS 59 
 
 which God does not approve, having the cup 
 of joy dashed from its lips. The king thought 
 that he was going down that pleasant morn- 
 ing to take possession of a lovely vineyard, 
 but what he found in waiting was the day of 
 judgment in the person of that prophet of the 
 Lord. He went down to play with his flower 
 garden like a child with a new toy and he 
 had his death warrant read to him. 
 
 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh at 
 our puny efforts to outwit him. Be sure your 
 sin will find you out ! God is not mocked. What 
 a man sows he reaps, and the harvest matches 
 the seed in kind and in amount, We live not in 
 a world of chance nor of magic, nor of end- 
 less good nature we live under the reign of 
 law, where every man will be judged accord- 
 ing to the deeds done in the body. 
 
 Then follows that terrible denunciation of 
 the king and the queen for their social injus- 
 tice. ' ' Thou hast sold thyself to do evil. The 
 Lord will bring evil upon thee. The Lord saw 
 last night the blood of Naboth where the 
 dogs licked the blood of Naboth the dogs shall 
 lick thine. And the dogs shall eat Jezebel." 
 
 It was a fearful threat and fearfully was it 
 fulfilled. When we turn to the later history 
 of this guilty king and queen, we find the 
 gruesome narrative which records the fulfill-
 
 60 SOCIAL BEBUILDERS 
 
 ment of that dire prediction. When Jehu 
 came to the throne, Ahab, the king, was slain 
 in an open field, and the dogs mutilated his 
 remains. Then Jehu drove to the royal 
 palace in his chariot. He saw Jezebel, the 
 qneen, looking out from an upper window. 
 She had painted her face and arrayed herself 
 in finery, hoping by her personal attractions 
 to placate his wrath. He promptly ordered 
 her eunuchs to throw her out of the window. 
 The eunuchs saw that Jehu was now in the 
 ascendant and they instantly complied with 
 his stern command. " Throw her down," 
 he said, and when they threw her to the pave- 
 ment, her blood was sprinkled on Jehu's 
 horses. He drove his chariot over her in ruth- 
 less fashion and went in to his dinner. When 
 he had eaten, he said to his servants, "This 
 cursed woman was a princess, the daughter 
 of a king see to it iiiat she is decently 
 buried." But when the servants went forth 
 to bury her the record says that ' * they found 
 no more than her skull and the bones of her 
 feet and hands." The dogs had eaten and 
 carried away all the rest. "I have seen the 
 wicked in great power and spreading himself 
 like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, 
 and, lo, he was not. Yea, I sought for him, 
 but he could not be found."
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 61 
 
 This prophet of the living God stood for 
 the supremacy of the moral law. He believed 
 that Mount Sinai was the highest peak on the 
 face of the globe. The king had sinned 
 against Naboth and against those principles 
 of social justice which underlie all human 
 wellbeing and advance. He had sinned 
 against Him who has all these sacred in- 
 terests of his people in his holy hands. The 
 king had made himself the enemy of the race 
 by using his strength to oppress the weak. 
 And because there was a God in Israel, that 
 sort of thing could not go unpunished. The 
 sharp-toothed dogs of the divine penalty were 
 sure to reach the offender at the last. 
 
 Have we not need of the same sort of mes- 
 sage from on high here in our own day? 
 Ahab is still among us and Naboth still 
 suffers wrong. The strong still use their ad- 
 vantage at times to oppress the weak. While 
 the war was on there was another war being 
 fought out in all the lands of earth. Its vic- 
 tories and its defeats were not always re- 
 ported on the front page of the paper with 
 headlines and pictures. The advances and 
 retreats could not always be indicated by 
 pinning rows of little flags on some map of 
 the world ; but it was none the less a real war. 
 
 It was the war of the exploited against the
 
 62 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 exploiters, big and little, rascally and respec- 
 table, personal and corporate. It was the 
 war of those who actually serve society by 
 the useful labor of hand or of brain against 
 those who have fallen into the easy, disgrace- 
 ful habit of eating their bread by the sweat 
 of some other man's brow. And the armistice 
 in that war will never be signed until the 
 questions involved have been settled and 
 have been settled right. 
 
 It must be steadily borne in mind that 
 privilege creates responsibility. "To whom 
 much is given of him will much be required." 
 ' ' To own is to owe. " It was Ibsen who said, 
 "A man's gifts are not a property; they are 
 a duty." The bare fact of possession means 
 obligation. When the Lord of the whole earth 
 has planted a vineyard thick with high privi- 
 lege; when he has hedged it about in provi- 
 dential fashion with opportunities unparal- 
 leled ; when he has built the tower and dug the 
 wine vat and provided all the necessary facili- 
 ties for rewarding effort, he has a clear right 
 to receive the fruits of that vineyard in terms 
 of competent and unselfish service rendered 
 by the recipients of his bounty. 
 
 We have yet a long way to go in our mod- 
 ern American life before that sense of stew- 
 ardship in the enjoyment of privilege is
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 63 
 
 recognized and realized. "When thousands 
 of newspapers are owned by groups that use 
 the power of the press for purposes other 
 than moneymaking ; when no man is honored 
 simply because he wastes more than his fel- 
 lows; when the great material needs of life, 
 which are limited in amount, are in the hands 
 of the community; when the great mass of 
 ordinary business is in one form or another 
 cooperative, then shall we be able to guide 
 the flood of human thought and purpose away 
 from personal ambition and fear. Then rea- 
 son and sympathy may become indeed the 
 master-motives. It cannot be said that such 
 a life has heretofore failed, for it has never 
 been tried individuals have lived it, but or- 
 ganized society has never made the effort. 
 For the first time since the world began we 
 have the natural and technical resources. 
 Therefore such a life is more possible to-day 
 than ever in the past, granted the will a will 
 so strong and so moral as rightly to be called 
 religious." 
 
 If we are to advance toward the realization 
 of these high hopes there must come a radical 
 change of heart and a new mood in certain 
 quarters. The spirit of arrogance is alto- 
 gether too much in evidence in these troub- 
 lous times. It is a day which calls for wise
 
 64 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 and patient action. Hear these words uttered 
 not by some reckless soap-box orator, but by 
 Franklin H. Giddings, of Columbia Univer- 
 sity, one of the most eminent sociologists in 
 this country: 
 
 "There are three million unemployed in- 
 dustrial working persons, men and women, in 
 the United States now, and probably there 
 will be more. Wages are being reduced. 
 These reductions of force and pay were fore- 
 seen, and, by and large, they were inevitable. 
 The wage reductions for the most part are 
 proper in relation to the partial breakdown 
 of industry and the downward tendency of 
 prices. 
 
 "Unhappily there is another factor in the 
 situation that is neither necessary nor justi- 
 fiable. This is the vindictive and rather 
 brutal spirit in which a great deal of the 
 squeezing and cutting is being done, and the 
 quite unnecessary extent to which construc- 
 tive measures, the product of much patient 
 thinking and careful experimenting for the 
 better adjustment of relations between capi- 
 tal and labor, are being thrown into the dis- 
 card. Let it be said at once that the wiser 
 and more far-seeing employers are not guilty. 
 But there is a rabble of industrial upstarts, 
 new-rich profiteers, unintelligent, vulgar ruf-
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 65 
 
 fians, who have made millions of ill-gotten 
 gains out of war conditions, who are now 
 drunk with new power and obviously dis- 
 posed to go the limit in displaying it. 
 
 "A program of smashing and repression 
 is proclaimed. Labor legislation is to be at- 
 tacked and, wherever possible, repealed; 
 labor organizations are to be crippled or 
 broken and 'the welfare stuff' cut out. The 
 'fool machinery' of adjustment boards, pro- 
 tocols, industrial relations committees, em- 
 ployment secretaries, and 'all that sort of 
 thing, ' are to be scrapped, and employers will 
 get back to 'the good old way, the simple 
 plan' of dealing with 'the hired help' on the 
 Hake it or leave it' basis. It is no secret that 
 this attitude was a big factor in the election, 
 and that it will play a large part in State 
 and national politics throughout the present 
 year and perhaps for a longer time." 
 
 "It is a wild and foolhardy sowing of 
 dragons' teeth. Grant that there has been 
 provocation. There has been plenty of it. 
 Labor has been arrogant. Throughout the 
 war it had the whip hand and took advantage 
 of its opportunity. Revolutionary influences 
 controlled some of the organizations and pro- 
 fessional agitators did immeasurable harm. 
 Crazy talk about a social revolution became
 
 66 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 organized propaganda and often developed 
 into direct action. A great deal of unwise 
 and coddling legislation has been put on the 
 statute books. The saner and more conserva- 
 tive labor organizations, as well as the radi- 
 cal ones, have stupidly maintained the policy 
 of restricting production, of penalizing ener- 
 getic and faithful service, and of carrying 
 incompetents at full pay. They have fought 
 discharges of worthless and crooked em- 
 ployees and made * organization issues ' out of 
 their cases. 
 
 "It is human nature to return evil for evil, 
 and now that employers have the whip hand 
 retaliation is to be expected. ' Nevertheless 
 it is folly. Wisdom prescribes a thoughtful 
 study of the entire problem, a firm insistence 
 upon the rights of property and of manage- 
 ment, a cool-headed resumption of control 
 over production, and a patient attempt to ad- 
 just real differences of interest where these 
 do not involve sacrifice of personal liberties, 
 efficiency, and honorable keeping of agree- 
 ments. Never were constructive measures, 
 enlightened views, and patient effort more 
 imperatively needed than now. ' ' 
 
 The nations of the earth are being chal- 
 lenged in these grim times to declare openly 
 by what sort of principles they mean to live.
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 67 
 
 They are being summoned to show of what 
 sort of moral stuff they are composed. They 
 are being called upon to exhibit the measure 
 of moral opposition they can offer to that 
 bulk and mass of material force and national 
 immorality which brought upon the race the 
 disaster of the Great War. And whether 
 they like it or not, they must stand up and be 
 counted for or against the principle that 
 "might makes right," for or against the idea 
 that any government is at liberty to do any 
 frightful thing it may choose in order to 
 "hack its way through," for or against the 
 idea that a ruthless class struggle is the 
 proper way to deal with industrial problems. 
 And it is for every nation which has not lost 
 its soul to make clear beyond a peradventure 
 that it holds the moral issues supreme and 
 stands ready to commit all its interests to the 
 keeping of those principles of right which are 
 at last to determine the outcome. 
 
 There are certain great social principles 
 which are now being urged on countless fields 
 with all the power of moral imperatives. The 
 world is indeed to be made "safe for democ- 
 racy," but it must be a more real and thor- 
 oughgoing democracy than anything we have 
 yet seen if it is to stand the test of the trying 
 times which await us. And for the realization
 
 68 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 of those great social ideals there must be in 
 every land of earth a more resolute and 
 aspiring national soul. The man who thinks 
 that brawn and brains alone, without the re- 
 newing and directing power of spiritual 
 forces at their best, can secure and safeguard 
 human well-being and advance thereby writes 
 himself down a fool. 
 
 In all this work of social repair those wise 
 words of the British Labor party, which 
 stand as one of the great pronouncements 
 called forth by the war, may well be borne in 
 mind: "If we are to escape from the decay 
 of civilization itself, we must build a new 
 social order based not on fighting but on fra- 
 ternity, not on a competitive struggle for the 
 bare means of life but upon a deliberately 
 planned cooperation in production and dis- 
 tribution for the benefit of all who partici- 
 pate by hand or by brain ; not on the enforced 
 domination over subject nations, subject 
 races, subject classes, or a subject sex, but 
 on equal freedom in industry as well as in 
 government, upon that general consciousness 
 of consent and that widest possible participa- 
 tion in power which is characteristic of 
 democracy." 
 
 The privileged lives are very much in evi- 
 dence these days. They dwell on the sunny
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 69 
 
 side of the street. They are clothed in purple 
 and fine linen. They fare sumptuously every 
 day on the best the market affords. They 
 ride swiftly to and fro in limousines or in 
 parlor cars. They are possessed as often as 
 not with sound health, clear heads and all the 
 advantages of training, culture, and social 
 position. 
 
 Well and good all these choice things are 
 not to be despised ; they count in the final out- 
 come ! But let it be kept clearly in mind that 
 all these advantages spell obligation in capi- 
 tal letters. "To him that hath shall be 
 given," the Master said. It is always easier 
 to get on when you are on already. And then 
 swift on the heels of that statement came the 
 principle involved ' ' To whom much is given 
 of him will much be required." High privi- 
 lege carries with it responsibilities which 
 cannot be evaded. 
 
 In many communities, even in this land of 
 freedom, the strong still use their strength to 
 oppress the weak. I lived for nearly fifteen 
 years in the State of California. It is a great 
 oil-producing State. A group of my friends, 
 all of them men of modest means, were pur- 
 chasing a tract of oil land which promised 
 good returns. They invited me to invest in 
 what seemed a safe and profitable enterprise.
 
 70 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 I did not have very much money but I put in 
 five hundred dollars of my savings with the 
 others. The wells were sunk and they struck 
 oil in abundance. There was a most encour- 
 aging and profitable flow of oil from those 
 wells. 
 
 Then the company naturally desired to ship 
 its oil to market, and it applied to the rail- 
 road for cars, as the tanks were all full and 
 the oil was still flowing. But somehow there 
 was a delay in getting cars. Then there was 
 a further delay, and the delay continued. The 
 oil was still flowing and was going to waste. 
 It did not seem possible to ship any of that 
 oil to market. And when the truth was fer- 
 reted out it was found that a certain large 
 concern here in the United States, which is 
 also in the oil business, controlled in under- 
 handed, sinister fashion that railroad and 
 pretty much all of the shipping facilities in 
 the State of California. And this concern 
 had instructed the railroad that no cars were 
 to be furnished to this company because they 
 wished to purchase those wells and that oil 
 land at their own price. 
 
 The owners of the smaller concern were 
 utterly helpless they could not ship their 
 oil, and it was useless. They were finally 
 compelled to sell at the price offered by the
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 71 
 
 larger concern, which was far below the value 
 of the property. The price received scarcely 
 met the cost of sinking the wells and so we 
 lost all we had put in. It was not justice. 
 It was not the sort of commercial method 
 which makes for the well-being of society or 
 for the stability of the republic. In plain 
 English, it was an act of high-handed rob- 
 bery. And that sort of oppression is being 
 practiced to-day in many communities here in 
 our own land. 
 
 In the face of such practices we are mov- 
 ing swiftly to that point where capital may 
 be compelled to choose between confiscation 
 such as it has suffered in the empire of 
 Russia or consecration to those worthier ends 
 which would be its highest honor and abiding 
 happiness in the kingdom of God. The 
 Naboths of the twentieth century will not 
 tamely submit to exploitation at the hands of 
 the Ahabs who have it in their power to 
 wrong the weak. 
 
 The hour has struck for a great forward 
 movement in the establishment of social jus- 
 tice throughout the world. It is a task which 
 will require untold amounts of energy and 
 of knowledge, of vision and of patience. The 
 bitterness of the class struggle must be re- 
 placed by an increased spirit of fair play and
 
 72 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 
 
 cooperation. The secrecy and self-seeking 
 of partisan politics must be overborne by an 
 open-minded sense of justice and of concerted 
 effort for the larger well-being of all the na- 
 tions. The school must be made to realize 
 yet more profoundly the moral imperative of 
 translating knowledge into action and of in- 
 terpreting life afresh in terms of abiding 
 worth. And "religion itself must be recov- 
 ered from the bondage of unproved dogma 
 and of unattractive ritual to be established 
 in the freedom of the faith, in the winsome- 
 ness of a finer form of goodness, and in the 
 larger efficiency of a united strength." 
 
 There are mountains of obstacles to be 
 overcome in realizing these great ideals. Just 
 so 1 But it is the high office of faith to move 
 mountains. Faith can stand up and say, 
 "Fear not, only believe!" Believe in your- 
 self and in the sincerity of your own pur- 
 poses. If you cannot do that without flinch- 
 ing, then put yourself right so that you can ! 
 Believe in your fellows it may easily be that 
 many of them, perhaps most of them, are as 
 good as you are. Believe in God who is above 
 all and through all and in us all. And in that 
 high faith go forth and win. 
 
 The man of God, whether he be lay or 
 clerical, has a great opportunity in this day
 
 SOCIAL BEBUILDEES 73 
 
 of social agitation and unrest. Let him be a 
 man of principle and of conviction, let him be 
 a man sure of his facts and possessed of an 
 honest sympathy for all who suifer from 
 social injustice, and he too will find his work 
 cut out and ready for him. It is for the 
 church of Jesus Christ to make it plain be- 
 yond a peradventure that if a man stands for 
 commercial and industrial methods which 
 mean injustice and oppression, the mere ac- 
 ceptance of a sound theology, or a more 
 scrupulous attention to the forms of religion, 
 will not suffice to save him from the conse- 
 quences of that wrongdoing. It is for the 
 church to make it clear that showy gifts to 
 charity and large schemes of benevolence 
 made possible by gains gotten in immoral 
 ways will not atone for acts of social injus- 
 tice. It is for every man to get his money as 
 well as to give it away according to methods 
 which the Almighty can approve. 
 
 When I was a pastor in California there 
 was an outlook from the belfry of my church 
 which was most suggestive. I could enter 
 that church steeple and look -straight out 
 through the Golden Gate upon the world's 
 widest sea. I could see coming in the great 
 ocean liners of the Pacific Mail, the Korea, 
 the Siberia, the Manchuria, and the Mongolia,
 
 74 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 their very names suggestive of our points of 
 contact across the water. I knew that deep 
 down in the holds of those ships there were 
 the teas and the silks, the teakwood and the 
 lacquer and all the other treasures of the 
 Orient sent hither to enrich and to adorn our 
 American life. 
 
 Through the port holes of the steerage of 
 those ships I could sometimes see strange 
 faces and hear the murmur of alien tongues. 
 I could see men and women coming hither 
 to better their condition in this land of oppor- 
 tunity. And behind those who actually came, 
 I could see across that widest of all our 
 oceans a multitude of beseeching faces like 
 those mystic faces which make up the back- 
 ground of Raphael's Sistine Madonna in the 
 gallery at Dresden. They too were looking 
 this way. They were looking in through the 
 Golden Gate at my church steeple. They 
 were looking toward this Christian civiliza- 
 tion of ours as if dimly conscious that we had 
 here discovered a source of divine help to 
 which their imperfect faith was a stranger. 
 
 The moral appeal which all that made to 
 me was tremendous. And I feel sure at this 
 hour that all of those men and women who 
 suffer hurt and wrong here in our own broad 
 land at the hands of an unjust social system
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 75 
 
 are in similar fashion looking up at all the 
 church steeples with an unvoiced appeal in 
 their hearts. And they will not acquit us of 
 our responsibility unless we are bent upon 
 delivering to them in more generous measure 
 all those higher elements of our Christian 
 civilization which are made possible to us 
 through the gospel of Jesus Christ. They 
 are making their steady appeal to the spirit- 
 ual forces, symbolized by those church 
 steeples, for aid of a higher sort in the solu- 
 tion of these vexing problems of industrial 
 life. 
 
 Personally, I do not believe that their de- 
 liverance will come by any sort of social revo- 
 lution. I do not believe that the advance of 
 social sympathy and the more complete ex- 
 pression of that sympathy in better institu- 
 tions and in a more finely organized life will 
 mean that private ownership of the means of 
 production will entirely disappear as the 
 socialists desire, or that such private owner- 
 ship ought to disappear. I do not believe 
 that all competition will cease or that it could 
 entirely cease without a resultant loss of in- 
 centive to effort which we are not ready to 
 incur. I do not believe that superior per- 
 sonal endowment and untiring industry will 
 cease to command a reward altogether excep-
 
 76 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 tional I think that it is altogether best that 
 they should continue to command such a re- 
 ward. The exceptional rewards now held out 
 to such ability put a premium upon and effec- 
 tively stimulate the production and develop- 
 ment of those useful qualities in the lives of 
 many who might not show themselves equally 
 responsive to any other form of motive. 
 
 In the judgment of many there is need that 
 certain elements in our social order should be 
 more strongly championed at this time. 
 1 'There is," as Theodore S. Woolsey has said, 
 "a world-wide attack upon the rights of pri- 
 vate property taking shape in a variety of 
 forms from the blatant doings of Bolshevism 
 to the subtler theories of national ownership 
 and of the taxation of the savings of the 
 thrifty out of existence which, if successful, 
 will remove the principal incentive to labor. 
 The basis of civilization is not humanitarian- 
 ism; it is the maintenance of personal and 
 property rights by a system of self-imposed 
 law." 
 
 All this too I steadfastly believe, but I hold 
 none the less that by the ever-widening sway 
 and rule of the spirit of Christ all these 
 kingdoms of business and of politics, of edu- 
 cation and of recreation, of home life and 
 social life, must become kingdoms of our
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDEES 77 
 
 Lord in the sense that they shall steadily and 
 consistently express his method and spirit. 
 How tremendously it would strengthen our 
 confidence in the moral supremacy of Chris- 
 tianity as we send forth our representatives 
 to those non-Christian nations were we here 
 at home wise enough, strong enough, and 
 good enough to make our own nation more 
 truly Christian! How magnificent would be 
 the moral challenge and the spiritual appeal 
 we could make did our missionaries go forth 
 from a nation of free men organized and 
 working together in that spirit of intelligent 
 good will which is the very essence of the 
 Gospel of Jesus Christ ! We can never stand 
 right with the God of all the higher values, or 
 right in the eyes of the outer world, or right 
 in our own eyes until we are striving reso- 
 lutely to make this total life of ours like a 
 holy city descending out of the realm of 
 vision and dream into the realm of accom- 
 plished fact, a holy city where God himself 
 shall dwell and reign forever and ever.
 
 CHAPTER in 
 
 THE HEEDSMAN WHO PREACHED 
 SOCIAL JUSTICE 
 
 MY whole approach to these industrial 
 problems is naturally sympathetic. My 
 father was a workingman he worked all his 
 life with his hands. He was a farmer in the 
 Middle West. He brought up his children to 
 work with their hands. There is no sort of 
 farm work, from the turning of the first fur- 
 row in the spring to the gathering in of the 
 last nubbin of corn in the fall which I have 
 not done, day in and day out, week in and 
 week out. I have come in many a time from 
 the field at night so tired that I scarcely cared 
 to eat my supper I only wanted to tumble 
 into bed to get the rest needed for the next 
 day 's work. 
 
 Therefore, when I see a group of working- 
 men coming out of a mill or a mine or a fac- 
 tory, weary and depleted at the end of the 
 day's toil, I know precisely how they feel. 
 When I hear them talk about bettering their 
 condition, it is no academic question for me 
 I feel it in my bones and in my flesh which 
 
 78
 
 SOCIAL KEBUILDERS 79 
 
 have been wearied by the same sort of expe- 
 rience which they are undergoing now. 
 
 This man whose words we are to study in 
 this lecture made his approach to the prob- 
 lems of his day by the same direct route. He 
 lived with his feet on the bare ground even 
 when his head was among the stars. He was 
 not clothed in soft raiment he came, like his 
 successor in the time of Christ, rough in dress 
 and rude in manner. He was emphatically 
 an outdoor man with the smell of the soil in 
 his garments and the accents of farm life in 
 his rugged speech. He was one of those 
 homely, weather-beaten people who make po- 
 tent appeal to us all. 
 
 The word of the Lord as it fell from his 
 lips was a word with the bark on it. He was 
 not a Matthew Arnold discoursing about 
 " sweetness and light," with a polite scorn for 
 the ways of the unwashed. He was a Thomas 
 Carlyle, with a bite in his tongue and a hot 
 hatred in his heart for all manner of sham. 
 He was no reed shaken with the wind he 
 was built out of quartered oak. 
 
 He was once accused of preaching for the 
 money there was in it. He scorned the impu- 
 tation. "No prophet am I" (in the profes- 
 sional sense he meant), "nor prophet's son. 
 I am a herdsman from Tekoa and a dresser
 
 80 SOCIAL EEBUILDEBS 
 
 of sycamore trees. ' ' He kept a few sheep on 
 his meager farm and had a grove of sycamore 
 trees, which were not like our sycamores 
 they bore a weak and watery sort of fig which 
 was eaten only by the very poor. 
 
 He lived six miles south of Bethlehem, at a 
 place called Tekoa. The region is as hilly 
 as New Hampshire and about twice as rocky. 
 It was said that the shepherds of Tekoa had 
 to sharpen the noses of their sheep to enable 
 them to get down between the stones and nip 
 the green grass. It was a rugged, meager 
 sort of life which this man had lived, and we 
 can understand his instant hearty sympathy 
 with all the struggling people of his day. He 
 had eaten the hard fare of ill-paid labor. 
 
 He was what the "safe-and-sane" people 
 which often means people who have been 
 dead for some time but are still going about 
 in order to save funeral expenses would 
 have called "an agitator." Amos was once 
 asked in peremptory fashion to leave the 
 country for fear his words might stir up the 
 oppressed poor to revolt against their lords 
 and masters. He told his critics that he was 
 constrained to stay right there on his job. 
 The word of the Lord had come to him and 
 speak he must. "The word of the Lord," as 
 they used the phrase, did not mean a book. It
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 81 
 
 was the phrase by which those early Hebrews 
 simply and accurately described one of those 
 commanding moral impulses which they be- 
 lieved to be divine in its origin and impera- 
 tive in its moral authority. * ' The Lord hath 
 spoken; who can but prophesy?" 
 
 Amos saw the rapid increase of wealth in 
 his day and he knew that to the souls of many 
 it was a menace. He saw luxurious buildings 
 given over to self-indulgence. He saw the 
 gorgeous ritual employed in worship which 
 had become more costly than holy. He saw 
 the contempt of the well-to-do for the strug- 
 gling poor. And he felt that all this was 
 wrong. He believed that it was an offense to 
 Him who is no respecter of persons, but cares 
 alike for us all. 
 
 Amos believed in one God, a God of right- 
 eousness, a God who was interested in the 
 political and commercial affairs of men. He 
 believed that the Hebrew nation had been 
 chosen of God, not for favoritism but for 
 service and that the bond between the Hebrew 
 people and their Maker was a moral bond. 
 And because he believed all this he felt that 
 they were endangering their standing before 
 him and their usefulness among the nations 
 of the earth by their mode of life. He there- 
 fore sought to recall them from their thought-
 
 82 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 less extravagance and showy self -indulgence 
 to more worthy action. 
 
 He represented the Deity he worshiped as 
 being merciful and gracious, slow to anger 
 and plenteous in mercy. God had been pa- 
 tient beyond measure with those disobedient 
 people, but now the time had come for judg- 
 ment and correction. "For three transgres- 
 sions and for four I will not turn away the 
 punishment of Judah. For three transgres- 
 sions and for four I will not turn away the 
 punishment of Israel. For three transgres- 
 sions and for four I will not turn away the 
 punishment of Damascus." Over and over 
 again he repeats that phrase, "For three 
 transgressions and for four." 
 
 It was not for some single act of wrong- 
 doing prompted perchance by passion or by 
 sudden temper. It was for their repeated and 
 cumulative acts of evil that they were be- 
 ing arraigned from on high. ' ' You have done 
 wrong and you have done it again and again 
 and again," the prophet seemed to say. You 
 have persisted in modes of life which you 
 knew were out of line with the will of God 
 "For three transgressions and for four" 
 therefore the day of the Lord is come when 
 you will be judged according to those deeds 
 done in the body.
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 83 
 
 He rebuked the people at these three points. 
 First, he denounced them for their showy, 
 useless extravagance. They had their " win- 
 ter houses ' ' and their * ' summer houses ' ' and 
 their " palaces of ivory." They "stretched 
 themselves upon couches" and "ate lambs 
 from the flock and fatted calves from the 
 midst of the stall." They "drank their wine 
 in huge bowls" and "anointed themselves" 
 with costly perfumes. And all this at a time 
 when many of the poor were starving and 
 "the righteous were being sold for silver and 
 the needy for a pair of shoes." It was the 
 downright heartlessness and inhumanity of it 
 all which made it an offense in the sight of 
 God. 
 
 Have his words any application for us? 
 We talk about ' ' the high cost of living, ' ' and 
 Heaven knows that with the present scale of 
 prices it is not easy for people with ordinary 
 wages or fixed salaries to make both ends 
 meet. But go to the places where the lux- 
 uries of life are being sold, the fur coats and 
 the diamonds and the silk underwear are 
 the dealers complaining because of the total 
 lack of trade? They tell us, on the contrary, 
 that the demand was never so keen as it has 
 been in the last two or three years. Go to the 
 most expensive hotels and restaurants in our
 
 84 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 great cities are they all empty? They are 
 filled at almost all hours of the day and night 
 with people who are flinging money about as 
 if it were of no more worth than autumn 
 leaves. Go to the high-priced places of 
 amusement and recreation are they for- 
 saken! They are filled to the doors with peo- 
 ple who seem to have money to burn. And 
 all this at a time when other people are starv- 
 ing to death for lack of food, not one here and 
 one there, but hundreds of thousands of them 
 in Armenia, in Syria, in Serbia, in Austria, in 
 Poland, in China, and in well-nigh half the 
 lands of the earth. Millions for luxury and 
 self-indulgence, but only the loose change to 
 meet the needs of our fellows who are in 
 want. 
 
 I sat not long ago in the dining car just 
 across from a young fellow who looked as if 
 he might have come from some expensive pre- 
 paratory school. The service was a la carte. 
 He would order one dish after another, eat a 
 little of it perhaps and then push it away 
 to order something else. When his check was 
 brought I saw the amount it was $3.90 for 
 the lunch. He flung down a five-dollar bill 
 in careless fashion, told the waiter to keep 
 the change, and walked out with his chin up 
 and a cigarette in his mouth.
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEBS 85 
 
 I do not suppose that the young chap had 
 ever earned a dollar in his life, or that he is 
 likely to earn a dollar within the next ten 
 years, perhaps never. He was eating his 
 bread by the sweat of some other man's brow, 
 and that was the way that he was eating it. 
 And all this at a time when the stories of 
 want and pain, of disease and death, which 
 come to us from the four quarters of the globe 
 make the heart of every decent man sick. In 
 these grim times all waste is crime and all 
 needless, senseless, showy luxury is a close 
 second. If that young fellow as he walked 
 out of the dining car could have met face to 
 face one of those starving children of Eu- 
 rope for whom Herbert Hoover has been 
 working and pleading, the appeal of want 
 might have pierced even the rhinoceros hide 
 of his moral nature and have awakened some 
 decent response. 
 
 The showy, extravagant self-indulgence is 
 not all being exhibited by the very rich- 
 much of it comes from the "newly rich" and 
 from those who would not be termed rich at 
 all, but whose heads have been turned by the 
 high wages paid during the war and by a 
 scale of living suddenly advanced out of all 
 proportion to the taste and judgment of 
 those who indulge in it. Yet in the face of
 
 86 SOCIAL KEBUILDERS 
 
 all this extravagant expenditure how the 
 churches and the charities, the homes and the 
 hospitals, the small struggling colleges, and 
 the various institutions of benevolence have 
 to scheme and plan, scrape and save, in order 
 to meet their needs! "For three transgres- 
 sions and for four," for repeated acts of 
 heartlessness and cruelty, I will not turn 
 away your punishment, saith the Lord of 
 Hosts. 
 
 In the second place, the prophet denounced 
 the people for their careless treatment of the 
 weak. " Ye have sold the righteous for silver 
 and the needy for a song." In their eager- 
 ness to monopolize the land he pictured them 
 as panting for the very dust of the ground 
 upon the heads of the poor. They had tam- 
 pered with the weights and measures used in 
 business that they might add to their profits 
 "Ye have made the ephah small and the 
 shekel great." They were "profiteers" of 
 the thirty- third and last degree before that 
 word had been coined. They were intent on 
 piling on all that the traffic would bear. They 
 bought in the cheapest market and sold in the 
 dearest, regardless of the effect of their 
 action upon the lives of the people. They 
 hired men for the least they could be induced 
 by their necessities to take, with no thought
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 87 
 
 of the social consequences of all this upon 
 lives which were equally precious with their 
 own in the eyes of God. All this had pro- 
 duced a hard and callous contempt for hu- 
 man values, a wretched scorn for the weak, 
 and a flat indifference to the social implica- 
 tions of their mode of life. 
 
 This prophet of old had come from the edge 
 of the desert where there was plain living 
 and high thinking. He had seen the strug- 
 gles of the poorer elements of society to 
 maintain themselves, and he felt for them. 
 He had lived in that very region where our 
 Lord was tempted when he was led into the 
 wilderness with the wild beasts to be tried 
 out. You can hear a note of reminiscence in 
 those words of Amos where he says it is as if 
 a man "did flee from a lion, and a bear met 
 him; or went into a house, and leaned his 
 hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him." 
 The prophet had been compelled to live 
 simply and dangerously, and now this flat, 
 contemptuous disregard for the weak and 
 struggling by the more fortunate of earth 
 filled his soul with wrath. 
 
 Here, again, shall not our own land, strong, 
 brave, prosperous in so many sections of its 
 life, take heed? The working people of the 
 world are not all in the powerful labor unions
 
 88 SOCIAL REBUILDEES 
 
 where labor has become class conscious and 
 the workingmen are upon their feet able to 
 bargain collectively with their employers on 
 comparatively equal terms. The hundreds 
 of thousands of plain working people who are 
 not thus placed come in for our consideration. 
 "Take heed," the Master said, "lest ye cause 
 one of these little ones to stumble." They 
 may or may not be little in physical stature, 
 but they are little in opportunity, in resource, 
 in the power of initiative, in trained intelli- 
 gence, and in ability to carve for themselves 
 at the big, long table where so many stronger 
 men with longer arms are reaching for the 
 choicest bits. Take heed that ye cause not 
 one of these weaker ones to stumble and fall 
 it were better for a man to have a millstone 
 tied about his neck and be cast into the midst 
 of the sea. The Master would have us show 
 nothing less than a chivalrous concern for the 
 less fortunate of the earth. 
 
 Look upon this picture of Gary, the seat 
 of a great steel industry, as drawn in lines 
 that live and move and speak, by the hand of 
 Ray Stannard Baker: 
 
 "I went down to the city of Gary in a snow 
 storm, with a cold, raw wind blowing off the 
 Illinois prairies. The train was cold and the 
 city I had left behind was cold. I was going
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 89 
 
 from a city suffering from a coal strike to a 
 city suffering from a steel strike. 
 
 "As I saw it at dusk on that December day 
 Gary seemed a kind of Titan, dwarfing all 
 the life around and within it. So few men 
 were seen, so dim and insignificant they were 
 compared with the stupendous machinery, 
 that one scarcely noticed them ! The mechan- 
 ism seemed to be operating itself. There it 
 was, a kind of monster squatting on the shore 
 of the gray lake! A tireless monster that 
 never sleeps, regardless of disputatious work- 
 ers, and capitalists and economists and poli- 
 ticians, toiling day and night, winter and 
 summer, Sundays, Christmas, the Fourth of 
 July! Thousands of men digging for their 
 lives in the mines of Minnesota and in the 
 coal fields and quarries of Indiana and Illi- 
 nois can scarcely keep it satisfied ! I felt the 
 implacable power of the mechanism and in 
 comparison the insignificance of the human 
 element in the process. 
 
 ' ' It came to me that in its essence mankind 
 was there facing the problem whether ma- 
 chinery should dominate men or men machin- 
 ery. Were men to be merely cogs or servants 
 of insensate mechanisms or were they to 
 stand out as masters using easily and freely 
 the tools they had built? Was the 'genius of
 
 90 SOCIAL KEBUILDEES 
 
 mechanism,' as Carlyle expressed it, to sit 
 forever 'like an incubus upon the soul of 
 man,' or was the soul of man to free itself 
 and command the genius of mechanism?" 1 
 And this is the problem everywhere. Are 
 the human values to go down in defeat before 
 the mechanical process of producing material 
 values or is the huge, hard process of pro- 
 duction, manufacture, transportation, and ex- 
 change to be made to serve the human? 
 
 "Ill fares the land, to hastening Ills a prey. 
 Where wealth accumulates, and men decay." 
 
 A man's life or a nation's life consists not in 
 the abundance of the things that can be pro- 
 duced and owned. The human rather than 
 the material must be the final arbiter when 
 the system comes up for judgment. It was 
 said in Massachusetts that William L. Doug- 
 las was elected governor of the old Common- 
 wealth because he had shown that he could 
 make shoes and money and men all at once 
 and in the same factory. The industry which 
 does not make manhood as well as money 
 stands condemned. Take heed then, mas- 
 ters of industry, that you cause not one of the 
 least of these human beings bound up in your 
 
 'From The New Industrial Unrest, by Ray Stannard Baker, published 
 by Doubleday, Page & Company.
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 91 
 
 huge enterprise to perish in the worthier and 
 more enduring elements of his life ! 
 
 The fate of any civilization is in the last 
 analysis a moral question. What do the peo- 
 ple care most about? What lines of interest 
 and of action command the largest share of 
 their time, their thought, and their enthusi- 
 asm? We all know how and why Eome went 
 to the wall. The Coliseum had crowded out 
 the Forum. The "place of games, of spec- 
 tacles and of cruel, debasing forms of amuse- 
 ment had crowded out the place for the 
 serious public discussion of those principles 
 of social and political well-being which make 
 a nation strong. 
 
 When the Eoman people had given them- 
 selves over to those easy, lazy habits of 
 luxury and self-indulgence for a generation 
 or two, they found that the moral fiber of the 
 empire had been largely eaten away. And 
 when that mode of life had been followed 
 for a century or two, they found themselves 
 unable to stand up against the enemies who 
 came down from the north. May God in his 
 mercy save us here in America from becom- 
 ing amusement mad and dance crazy, from 
 being given over mainly to the pursuit of 
 material things and to costly habits of self- 
 indulgence ! We would stand condemned be-
 
 92 SOCIAL KEBUILDERS 
 
 fore the ages were we thus to defeat the high 
 ends for which the Republic was founded by 
 our plain-living, God-fearing forefathers. 
 
 Why should there not be an "Open 
 Forum" in every high school building in 
 every city of the land for the stated and 
 repeated discussion of those industrial meth- 
 ods and political principles which have to do 
 with the common good? To what better use 
 could those splendid structures, which now 
 stand so often dark and tenantless through 
 the fateful evening hours, be devoted? There 
 are many who maintain that were the oppor- 
 tunity offered, there would be no adequate 
 response from the people who still suffer hurt 
 and loss because they have not been trained 
 to think clearly and steadily upon the deeper 
 issues of life. But personally I have not so 
 poor an opinion of my fellow citizens as to 
 believe that if the proposal had a fair trial 
 for a series of years, these wretched bed- 
 room farces and the superficial sort of amuse- 
 ment offered in the movies could compete 
 successfully every night in the week with 
 those places where grown-up people would be 
 asked to think upon the things which belong 
 to their peace. 
 
 You may remember that "In an Open 
 Forum held on a certain Sunday many cen-
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 93 
 
 turies ago in the village of Nazareth where 
 laymen were permitted to speak, a young car- 
 penter gave an address on social and eco- 
 nomic justice." He took his cue from a well- 
 known bit of literature current among the 
 people of his race, and in substance this is 
 what he said : ' ' The Spirit of the Lord is upon 
 me, because he anointed me to preach good 
 tidings to the poor : he hath sent me to bind up 
 the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to 
 the captives, to set at liberty them that are 
 bruised, and to proclaim the acceptable year 
 of the Lord." 
 
 His address brought a coldness over the 
 meeting, we are told, and at the close of the 
 exercises the "safe-and-sane" opponents of 
 all such radical utterances were full of wrath. 
 They * * rose up, and thrust him out of the city, 
 and led him unto the brow of a hill . . . 
 that they might cast him down headlong." 
 But by the strange power of his own person- 
 ality he passed through their midst unhurt and 
 went his way. He moved on to Capernaum, a 
 still larger city, where he said it all over 
 again, and the people were astonished at his 
 teaching, for his word was with power. He 
 has come on down through the centuries with 
 the same social message. He is standing to- 
 day in the place of free speech "insisting in
 
 94 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 the same intrepid way that his Father's 
 world shall not be made a place of merchan- 
 dise, but a place where plain men and women 
 may live and grow into the likeness and 
 image of the Most High." 
 
 The Master had been fed upon sentiments of 
 social justice and of genuine democracy along 
 with his mother's milk. Luke, the physician 
 and intimate friend perhaps of Mary herself, 
 has preserved for us one of those ancient 
 cradle songs which may well have refreshed 
 the soul of the mother and filled the heart of 
 the growing child with the sacred music of a 
 better world. 
 
 "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my 
 spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For 
 he hath regarded the low estate of his hand- 
 maiden : for, behold, from henceforth all gen- 
 erations shall call me blessed. For he that 
 is mighty hath done to me great things ; and 
 holy is his name. And his mercy is on them 
 that fear him from generation to generation. 
 He hath shewed strength with his arm; he 
 hath scattered the proud in the imagination 
 of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty 
 from their seats, and exalted them of low 
 degree. He hath filled the hungry with good 
 things ; and the rich he hath sent empty away. 
 He hath helped his servant Israel, in remem-
 
 95 
 
 branee of his mercy; as he spake to our 
 fathers, to Abraham and to his children, for- 
 ever." Reared in such an atmosphere and 
 with these words of social regeneration 
 sounding in his ears, we cannot wonder that 
 he became in due time the Friend and Cham- 
 pion of the common people who heard him 
 gladly. 
 
 In the third place, the prophet Amos ar- 
 raigned the people of his day for their infi- 
 delity to the obligations created by high 
 privilege. Israel was a chosen people, chosen 
 not for favoritism but for an exalted and an 
 exacting service. Chosen because of some 
 unusual capacity for moral insight and for 
 spiritual leadership to take the right of the 
 line in the religious advance of the whole 
 world! "You only have I known of all the 
 families of the earth, ' ' Amos here represents 
 the Lord as saying to them. "You only have 
 I known, therefore will I punish you for your 
 iniquities." You are a privileged people, 
 richly and gloriously privileged, therefore 
 you are the more heavily and capably respon- 
 sible for the well-being of the race. And if 
 you turn aside and deny your high estate, I 
 will punish you the more severely. 
 
 When Booker T. Washington was at 
 Tuskegee he used to say to the dusky-faced
 
 96 SOCIAL KEBUILDERS 
 
 students gathered there and I have heard 
 him say it "You have not been brought here 
 to Tuskegee to be trained so that you might 
 go back and compete more successfully with 
 your untrained fellows, earning larger wages 
 than they are able to earn. You have not 
 been brought here to be trained so that you 
 might go back and establish better homes 
 and finer social standards than those to be 
 found to-day among your unprivileged neigh- 
 bors. You have been brought here to Tuske- 
 gee to be trained so that you may in due time 
 become more heavily and capably responsible 
 for the welfare of your race." If that sort 
 of thing can be said and done in the green 
 tree of a black man's school, what have we a 
 right to expect in the more seasoned timber 
 of every white man's college in the land? 
 
 The possession of privilege carries with it 
 a deposit of obligation upon which the whole 
 community has the right to draw. Therefore 
 the first thing which Amos undertook to do 
 was to dynamite the feeling of moral com- 
 placency and smug contentment out of those 
 Israelites. Their placid self-satisfaction was 
 blocking the way of advance. "Woe to them 
 that are at ease in Zion, and to them that are 
 secure in the mountains of Samaria." He 
 would have them keenly and steadily con-
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 97 
 
 scious of the responsibilities which the divine 
 bounty had laid upon them in their better 
 moral estate. 
 
 You will find a host of people in this world 
 who are accustomed to measure themselves 
 by what is being done for them rather than 
 by what they can do for others. They seem 
 to think that because they live on the best 
 streets and are well-dressed; because they 
 fare sumptuously every day and ride to and 
 fro in high-priced motor cars; because they 
 have social position and opportunities in 
 abundance for training and culture, they must 
 of necessity be people of significance. They 
 have not learned as yet that "Happiness," 
 as some one has said, "does not consist in 
 being able to sit down and order what you 
 want and have somebody bring it to you 
 happiness is going after something yourself 
 and feeling anxious about it and finally get- 
 ting it." 
 
 But these short-sighted people measure 
 themselves by what is being done for them 
 rather than by their ability to make some 
 proper return for all that in useful, compe- 
 tent, unselfish action. "By their fruits" we 
 are to judge men by what all these advan- 
 tages of theirs produce in meeting the needs 
 of the world, by what they are able to give
 
 98 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 off and to give up for the service of the higher 
 welfare of the various communities where 
 they stand. 
 
 In our estimate of goodness it is the posi- 
 tive rather than the negative qualities which 
 are to be emphasized. It is what a man does 
 rather than what he refrains from doing 
 which makes him good. You will sometimes 
 hear it said of some elderly saint who has 
 just gone to his reward : ' ' Oh, he was such a 
 good man! He never drank and he never 
 swore and he never smoked. He never in- 
 jured anyone, and I never heard him speak 
 an unkind word about anybody in his life.'* 
 And when that list of negative virtues is com- 
 plete you have in your mind the picture of 
 a life as innocent and as harmless as a pan 
 of skimmed milk. 
 
 "But what did he do?" you are moved to 
 ask. How far did he make his life count for 
 righteousness in politics and in industry, in 
 securing better health conditions for his com- 
 munity and in promoting better educational 
 facilities, in making his church a power for 
 good in the life of his little world? If he 
 simply refrained, then his goodness was weak 
 and thin. Let every life be judged by the 
 positive contribution it makes to the general 
 good in terms of useful service.
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 99 
 
 This prophet saw the Lord standing upon 
 the wall of the city with a plumbline in his 
 hand. * * Amos, ' ' he cried, * ' what seest thou ? ' ' 
 "A plumbline," the prophet replied. "Be- 
 hold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of 
 my people Israel, ' ' saith the Lord ; "I will not 
 again pass by them any more. ' ' 
 
 God was calling upon them for lives of in- 
 tegrity, straight up and down, and not vari- 
 able nor crooked. He was calling upon them 
 for a social order built by the square and by 
 the plumb, so that the power of gravitation 
 and the other elemental forces would not pull 
 it down. "Seek good and not evil," he cried, 
 "that ye may live: Let justice run down as 
 waters, and righteousness as a mighty 
 stream. Then the Lord of hosts will be gra- 
 cious unto you." 
 
 The stern old prophet's morality was not 
 based on shrewd guesses as to what might 
 turn out for one's immediate advantage. It 
 did not rest upon expediency. He did not go 
 about saying, "Honesty is the best policy," 
 "Integrity is a good investment," "Trnth- 
 telling and fair dealing are more likely to pay 
 eight per cent profit than the opposite quali- 
 ties." His morality was grounded upon the 
 sense of agreement between the principles he 
 taught and the will of the Almighty. It was
 
 100 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 grounded in the great moral order which en- 
 folds us all, whether we will or not. He there- 
 fore called upon men "to meet upon the 
 level and to act by the plumb and to part 
 upon the square. So may men ever meet, act, 
 and part. ' ' 
 
 Here, again, we may well apply his message 
 to modern society in the United States of 
 America. You only have I known among the 
 nations of the earth in the bestowal of such 
 abundant resource and such unique oppor- 
 tunities. Therefore if you fail in your duty, 
 I will punish you. Why may we not in all 
 reverence and humility apply to our own land 
 those very words which Israel applied to her- 
 self when she was chosen of God for a high 
 and exacting service? 
 
 What nation hath God so nigh unto them as 
 the Lord our God is unto us in all things that 
 we call upon him for? Has God ever essayed 
 to take him a nation from the midst of 
 another nation by signs, by wonders, and 
 by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched 
 arm, as the Lord our God has done for us? 
 Did ever people hear the voice of God speak- 
 ing out of the midst of the fire as we have 
 heard? What nation hath statutes and judg- 
 ments so righteous as this law which I set be- 
 fore you this day? Keep, therefore, and do
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 101 
 
 them, for this shall be your wisdom and your 
 Understanding among the nations. "I will 
 bless thee and thou shalt be a blessing. I will 
 make thee a great nation, and in thee shall 
 all the nations of the world be blessed." 
 
 "In a sense that never has been true before 
 what happens in America happens to all the 
 world. This fact brings no special credit to 
 us. It 1^ the result of our situation, our herit- 
 age, our unexhausted resources, and our re- 
 cent emergence from our traditional isola- 
 tion. This new importance of America should 
 issue not in pride but in humility. But 
 whether it be faced with modest serviceable- 
 ness or with boasting, the fact remains, as an 
 Englishman has recently said, 'The United 
 States of America is the greatest potential 
 force, material, moral, and spiritual, in the 
 world.' " 
 
 It is for us, then, to see to it that this high 
 privilege is matched by the frank acceptance 
 of the grave responsibility which inevitably 
 goes with it. To whom much is given of them 
 will much be required. We are to develop 
 and maintain that high quality of national 
 soul which will make us competent to meet 
 the demands of our higih estate. 
 
 It is not important nor desirable that the 
 Constitution of the United States and the Ten
 
 102 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 Commandments and the Sermon on the 
 Mount should be made satisfactory to the red- 
 mouthed agitators and red-handed anarchists 
 who have reacted from the wicked regimes 
 in Southeastern Europe into treason and 
 violence. It is not desirable that the great 
 standards of political and moral well-being 
 wtyich have been current among us should be 
 toned down to suit the whims of any of the 
 enemies of social order. But it is important 
 that all these leaders of unrest should be 
 toned up and called upon to sing their songs 
 of aspiration in harmony with the standards 
 just named. The "Great Melting Pot" must 
 melt and fuse, it must refine and mold all 
 these varied elements in our composite life 
 until we have in abundance that sort of metal 
 in our political and industrial activities which 
 will bear the strain now being put upon it. 
 
 There are good and sufficient reasons for 
 believing that the undaunted vigor of our 
 American idealism may show itself equal to 
 that hard task. How splendid has been the 
 quality of our national life on certain august 
 occasions when it was put to the test I ' ' Here 
 is the paradox of American politics," a wise 
 Harvard professor once said. "The same 
 people who have impressed observers as 
 sharp traders and keen politicians have sur-
 
 SOCIAL BEBUILDERS 103 
 
 prised the world by acts of unprecedented 
 magnanimity and self-denial. What other 
 nation, while rejecting the principle of a 
 state church, maintains through the volun- 
 tary gifts of its population such vast organi- 
 zations for worship, as if to testify that it has 
 not only territory to develop and products to 
 sell, but a soul to save? What other coun- 
 try ever received an indemnity from a for- 
 eign government" (he was referring to 
 China) "and returned it, only to receive it 
 once more in the form of stipends for the edu- 
 cation of youths sent to the United States by 
 the grateful land? When did another nation 
 win territory and return it to its occupants, 
 as in Cuba, or hold it in trust, as in the 
 Philippines ? When did ever another nation 
 at the end of a war like that with Spain 
 transport the defeated army to their homes 
 across the sea ? When did ever a great Power 
 pause with such scrupulousness before pun- 
 ishing a weaker neighbor, like Mexico, and 
 meantime provide for her refugees friendly 
 shelter and support? Or when did any other 
 nation, having taken possession of a strip of 
 land and at enormous cost built a canal, ever 
 propose to satisfy its conscience by a volun- 
 tary payment to the former owners, or to 
 open the canal on equal terms to the fleets
 
 104 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 of the world? Works of supererogation like 
 these indicate a more complex type of char- 
 acter than a nation of shopkeepers could pro- 
 duce. Under the hardness of American com- 
 mercialism there lies a richer soil." 1 
 
 In those days and weeks which followed 
 upon the signing of the armistice in the fall 
 of 1918 how full and strong was the tide of 
 moral idealism running at Washington, at 
 London and at Paris. Men felt that it was 
 morning everywhere. We had entered upon 
 the dawn of a new day. It was believed that 
 this nation, which had cast in its strength at 
 the eleventh hour in such measure as to tip 
 the scales toward victory for those principles 
 which we esteemed to be right, would now aid 
 in securing such a peace settlement as the 
 world had never seen at the close of any great 
 war. 
 
 Then, alas! there came a falling away 
 which we all deplore, a moral relaxation, a 
 lowering of tone, a return to the old material- 
 istic ways of thinking and of acting, a slack- 
 ening of purpose and a cheapening of our 
 ideals. We were not good enough to live up 
 to the high mood which possessed the soul of 
 
 'Reprinted from The Christian Life in the Modern World (p. 183), by 
 Francis G. Feabody, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan 
 Company.
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 105 
 
 the nation when we entered the war, the mood 
 which was also ours when the victory was 
 won. 
 
 The government at Washington saw to it 
 that we were "last in the war." When the 
 armistice had been signed and when the treaty 
 had been framed at Paris, the United States 
 Senate seemed determined to see to it that 
 we should be * ' last in peace. ' ' We ought long 
 ere this (I am writing these words in Febru- 
 ary, 1921) to have made our peace with Ger- 
 many and have entered with the other nations 
 into some reasonable and promising agree- 
 ment I put it simply and broadly that it may 
 include all forward looking minds for a bet- 
 ter method of settling international differ- 
 ences as they may arise. Had there been more 
 statesmanship and less partisan politics at 
 both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in Wash- 
 ington, this result would have been achieved. 
 We ought to have made more progress to- 
 ward industrial peace and prosperity, toward 
 a more even spread of that well-being in 
 which all are meant to share. Had there been 
 a larger measure of social justice, a more 
 complete respect for the rights of the other 
 man and the other class, and a more insistent 
 spirit of good will, we would also have 
 achieved that. We ought to have relieved
 
 106 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 more of the distress of the world and to have 
 aided further in rebuilding the devastated 
 areas of human life. Had there been less of 
 the spirit of thoughtless extravagance and 
 self-indulgence, with more of the sense of 
 social obligation, we could also have achieved 
 that. The plain fact stands that we were not 
 good enough to do the things which we ought 
 to have done. 
 
 When the fate of the Armenian people, for 
 example, and when so many other interests 
 vast and vital are trembling in the balance, 
 why should this nation, strong, rich, wise, 
 hopeful, stand aloof and refuse to assume its 
 just and equal portion of the common respon- 
 sibility for the peace and good order of the 
 world? In our case, as in every case, posses- 
 sion means obligation. To whom much is 
 given of him will much be required. We shall 
 never stand right before the God of the na- 
 tions or in the eyes of the world unless we 
 are willing to accept all the duties which go 
 with high privilege. 
 
 Hear these wise words from the gifted 
 pastor of one of the most active and efficient 
 Protestant churches in the city of New York : 
 " Never before have greater things been 
 offered to safeguard liberty and democracy 
 human lives in millions and wealth in bil-
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 107 
 
 lions have been poured out. Never before 
 was it so evident that the arm of flesh is no 
 defense and that safety lies in the unity of 
 the Spirit among the nations to maintain the 
 bond of peace. Never before have inter- 
 national relations been so searchingly scruti- 
 nized and the disease spots in imperialistic 
 commerce, tariff discriminations, and threat- 
 ening armaments exposed. Never before has 
 it been so generally recognized that a new 
 heart and right spirit must govern nations, 
 or all devices to preserve international order 
 are futile. And the probe has been put into 
 other relations, notably those of industry, 
 with far-reaching disclosures. Undoubtedly 
 the social control which the war has forced 
 upon us in manufactures, in commerce, in 
 transport, in the distribution of food and 
 fuel will not cease with the coming of peace. 
 This marks a distinct advance which the war 
 has hastened." 
 
 "But," he adds in prophetic mood, "men 
 of social insight are aware that public con- 
 trol, however valuable, will not better mat- 
 ters unless new motives come into play and 
 men become socially minded. Never was the 
 supreme need of the social spirit so patent. 
 It is the day of the Church of Christ as the 
 Fellowship of his spirit with the task of
 
 108 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 spiritualizing every sphere of human so- 
 ciety. * J1 
 
 Here, then, is our work cut out for us and 
 laid ready to our hand. The splendid words 
 of religion are to be made flesh that they may 
 dwell in the eyes of men full of grace and 
 truth. The language of religion is to be 
 translated into terms of life. Goodness is to 
 be made interesting, winsome, appealing by 
 the effectiveness with which it sets about the 
 building of a new heaven and a new earth 
 wherein shall dwell righteousness, peace, and 
 the joy of the Divine Spirit. It was your 
 own Frank Mason North who bade you and 
 the worshiping portion of the whole English- 
 speaking world sing a new song of social 
 aspiration in these high terms : 
 
 "Where cross the crowded ways of life, 
 Where sound the cries of race and clan, 
 
 Above the noise of selfish strife 
 We hear thy voice, O Son of M&n. 
 
 "O Master, from the mountain side 
 
 Make haste to heal these hearts of pain, 
 Among these restless throngs abide, 
 O tread the city's streets again, 
 
 "Till sons of men shall learn thy love 
 
 And follow where thy feet have trod: 
 Till, glorious from thy heaven above, 
 Shall come the city of our God." 
 
 ' In a Day of Social Rebuilding. H. 8. Coffin, p. 189. Yale University 
 Prese.
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 109 
 
 Yonder, at the entrance of the harbor of 
 the city of New York there stands a huge 
 statue. It towers up for three hundred 
 feet from Bedloe's Island. Significantly 
 it is the figure of a woman, and in her right 
 hand she holds aloft a lighted torch. It is 
 Bartholdi's "Statue of Liberty Enlighten- 
 ing the World. ' ' 
 
 Some years ago a certain set of Harbor 
 Commissioners felt that the expense of keep- 
 ing that torch lighted night after night was 
 not warranted. It served no practical pur- 
 pose, for the lighthouses along either shore 
 were adequate to guide the ships which en- 
 tered the harbor after nightfall. So for a 
 period the torch was dark. 
 
 But before the Great War came, another set 
 of Harbor Commissioners decided that this 
 was not the proper treatment for this gift 
 of fair France to our Republic. They had the 
 statue rewired and a great arc light placed 
 at the tip end of the torch and again its rays 
 began to shine out across the dark waters of 
 the Atlantic. 
 
 While the war was on the light of that 
 torch was seen in France, and the people of 
 France rejoiced because the two great Repub- 
 lics, one on that side of the water and one on 
 this, were now standing together in a common
 
 110 SOCIAL REBUILDEKS 
 
 struggle for freedom and justice. The light 
 of that torch was seen in Britain, and the peo- 
 ple of Britain rejoiced because the two great 
 English-speaking nations, one on that side of 
 the water and one on this, were now knit to- 
 gether in an invincible alliance for righteous- 
 ness. The light of that torch was seen in Bel- 
 gium, and the people of that stricken country 
 rejoiced because it shone out from the shores 
 of a great, kind friend, whose generous in- 
 terest was being nobly directed by Herbert 
 C. Hoover. 
 
 The light of that torch was seen in Ger- 
 many, and to the Kaiser and his mad asso- 
 ciates it revealed the handwriting on the wall. 
 Like Belshazzar of old, they saw written over 
 against their own names the same four fateful 
 words, " Weighed, Wanting, Numbered, Fin- 
 ished. ' ' They knew full well that the entrance 
 into the struggle of that country where the 
 torch was lighted meant the downfall of Prus- 
 sian militarism. 
 
 Now, let that torch and all the great prin- 
 ciples for which we believe it stands the 
 principle of equality before the law, the feel- 
 ing of respect for the poor man's rights, the 
 sense of obligation which must accompany 
 privilege of every sort, and the idea that the 
 human must forever be exalted above the
 
 SOCIAL BEBUILDEES 111 
 
 purely material values in this great economic 
 and political process let that torch and all 
 the high principles there symbolized shine on. 
 And may its gleam never again be dimmed 
 until all the free peoples of earth shall walk 
 in the light of it.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE MAN WHO EXALTED RIGHT- 
 EOUSNESS ABOVE RITUAL 
 
 WE cannot make too plain the fact that re- 
 ligion is not primarily a system of beliefs to 
 be cherished. It utilizes beliefs, but they are 
 altogether secondary. Religion is not pri- 
 marily a set of forms to be observed; it 
 utilizes forms, but they too are secondary. 
 Religion is not primarily some tremendous 
 emotional upheaval through which a man may 
 pass on his way to glory; it may utilize this 
 either as a point of departure or as a line of 
 approach, but that also is secondary. Religion 
 is a life to be lived seven days in the week 
 in all those relationships which make up hu- 
 man existence. The man who is striving with 
 all his might and with all the grace God gives 
 him to live a life of reverent, obedient trust 
 and of unselfish action is religious, and no 
 other sort of man can be. 
 
 We are to study in this lecture the work 
 and the words of a man who made that big 
 truth stand out like a barn door. He kept 
 his eye upon that which was vital. He was 
 
 112
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 113 
 
 no rough man of the hills like Elijah the 
 Tishbite. He was no rude herdsman with 
 the smell of the fields in his garments like 
 Amos of Tekoa. Isaiah belonged to the for- 
 tunate class he lived on Fifth Avenue. He 
 had an assured social position which gave 
 him ready access to the court and to the king. 
 He was entirely familiar with the customs 
 and the costumes of fashionable society, as we 
 find in that chapter where he rebukes the 
 showy extravagance of the idle rich. 
 
 He was also well educated: he shows that 
 literary skill which comes only to those who 
 have been trained. In all the Old Testament 
 there is nothing finer in their sweep and finish 
 than some of the utterances of this young 
 prophet. He had five talents of mental ability 
 and of personal charm where most of his 
 contemporaries were rubbing along as best 
 they might with only one or two apiece. 
 
 He had with all this an intense passion for 
 reality. He showed scant regard for the 
 trance and the ecstasy, the rhapsody and the 
 rhetoric upon which some of the would-be 
 prophets of his day set so much store. He 
 was strong in saving common sense and in 
 stout regard for the moral values. He was 
 sturdy in his insistence that men should 
 stand right in the sight of God. He stood
 
 114 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 four square himself, for he was at once a re- 
 former and a statesman, a theologian and a 
 poet. By his words, by his work, and by his 
 worth he became the first citizen of his coun- 
 try, exercising a dominant influence upon the 
 history of the nation. He entered into no 
 political combinations, but by the sheer 
 strength of his own personality and by the 
 wisdom of his prophetic utterance he caused 
 the policies of his country to incline aright. 
 
 His call to be a prophet came at a great 
 national crisis. He lived under the reign of 
 the good King Uzziah. This ruler had been 
 sitting upon the throne for fifty-two years 
 and he had served his country well. He had 
 increased the material prosperity of his peo- 
 ple ; he had strengthened the fortifications of 
 his capital city, Jerusalem; he had brought 
 wisdom and conscience to bear upon the na- 
 tional policies. Now he was dead and the 
 nation must go on without him. 
 
 This young man whom I have described 
 saw the earthly majesty of the wise and good 
 king go down in defeat before the terrible 
 disease of leprosy. But in that same hour he 
 saw the heavenly majesty of the King of 
 kings, resplendent and enduring. His hero 
 worship passed over into religious faith. "In 
 the year that King Uzziah died I saw the
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 115 
 
 Lord, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted 
 up, and his train filled the temple. ' ' 
 
 It is an experience which lias been oft re- 
 peated. Night brings out the stars. Men 
 see the earth by day, but they see the heavens 
 best at night. In the year that King Uzziah 
 died Isaiah saw the Lord. In the year that 
 paganism sat upon the throne of the Roman 
 empire, Saul of Tarsus saw the Lord and he 
 became Paul the apostle, put in trust with 
 the gospel of moral recovery for a world that 
 was spiritually bankrupt. In the year when 
 Tetzel sold indulgences broadcast in Ger- 
 many, Martin Luther saw the Lord and 
 ushered in a mighty Reformation. In the 
 year when slavery lifted up its head in impu- 
 dent fashion and undertook to dominate the 
 councils of this nation, Abraham Lincoln saw 
 the Lord. In the year when Germany perpe- 
 trated her unspeakable outrage on Belgium, 
 Herbert H. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey 
 saw the Lord. In some hard hour of stress 
 and need every man of them gained a direct 
 and immediate sense of the divine concern 
 for human affairs and that vision of things 
 eternal gave him strength to act. In the year 
 that a greedy and godless form of human con- 
 trol all but wrecked the civilization of Eu- 
 rope men of vision in all the lands of earth
 
 116 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 saw the Lord, and they became highly resolved 
 that government of the people, by the people, 
 and for the people should not go down in de- 
 feat. In that same high mood this young 
 prophet of old, who was born to the purple, 
 came upon the scene with a vision of God as 
 a God of righteousness before his eyes. 
 
 He would have all men see those eyes of 
 glory looking into every gathering of diplo- 
 mats and every senate chamber, scanning the 
 state papers to which men were about to set 
 their hands. He would have us see those eyes 
 of glory looking into every counting room 
 and every manager's office, scanning the wage 
 scales and the price lists whereby men serve 
 or wrong, as the case may be, the interests 
 of other men and women whose lives are 
 bound up with their own in that common bun- 
 dle of economic organization. He would have 
 us see those eyes of glory looking into every 
 human soul, making plain the fact that only 
 those who have clean hands and pure hearts 
 can ascend into the hill of the Lord or stand 
 in his holy place, or engage with him effec- 
 tively in the rebuilding of a ruined world. 
 Isaiah was a poet and this was the refrain of 
 every song he sang: "Holy, Holy, Holy is the 
 Lord of Hosts! The whole earth is full of 
 his glory."
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 117 
 
 He was no moral prig, no spiritual snob, 
 pluming himself upon his superiority to all 
 his fellows. There in that same dread hour 
 when he saw the Lord he fell upon his face 
 in the dust and beat upon his breast and told 
 all the sins of his life. "Woe is me ! for I am 
 undone. I am a man of unclean lips, and I 
 dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips ; 
 and mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord 
 of Hosts." Deep in his own soul he had an 
 active, poignant sense of sin. 
 
 The man who has no sense of sin usually 
 has very little sense of any kind. "Blessed 
 are they that hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness, for they" and they only 
 "shall be filled." But in that same hour 
 when this frank confession came from the 
 young man's lips he felt his inner life cleansed 
 by the direct action of the Divine Spirit. He 
 saw the winged seraph flying toward him 
 through the open spaces of heaven and taking 
 a live coal from the altar and placing it upon 
 his unclean lips. He heard a voice say, "Thy 
 sin is purged, thine iniquity is taken away." 
 And in the joy of moral renewal he gave him- 
 self at once in eager consecration to the high- 
 est he saw. When the divine voice said, 
 "Who will go for us? Whom shall I send?" 
 the young man answered back, "Here
 
 118 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 am I; send me.'' Thus lie became a prophet 
 of the living God. 
 
 He made plain the fact that religion is not 
 high-sounding talk, nor tears of remorse, nor 
 graceful sentiment. Religion is the frank ac- 
 ceptance of the actual, everyday, backbreak- 
 ing task of making good in the presence of 
 temptation, of difficulty, of moral obligation. 
 
 It involves a sturdy and heroic effort to 
 have the will of the Most High stand fast and 
 bear rule in all the affairs of ordinary life. 
 The man who bravely undertakes to do this 
 by the grace of God is truly religious. "If ye 
 be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good 
 of the land: but if ye refuse and rebel, ye 
 shall be devoured with the sword, for the 
 mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. ' ' 
 
 Isaiah set himself to the accomplishment of 
 these three high ends : First, he undertook to 
 lift the mind and practice of his nation from 
 a religion of ceremony up to a religion of 
 character. How his words on that point go 
 straight to the mark! "Hear, heavens, 
 and give ear, earth: for the Lord hath 
 spoken. I have nourished and brought up 
 children, and they have rebelled against me. 
 The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his 
 master's crib: but Israel does not know, my 
 people do not think." The Israelites were
 
 SOCIAL BEBUILDEES 119 
 
 showing less insight as to the source of 
 their own well-being than were the other ani- 
 mals. 
 
 "To what purpose is the multitude of your 
 sacrifices unto me f saith the Lord : I am full 
 of burnt offerings, . . . and I delight 
 not in the blood of bulls. . . . When ye 
 come to appear before me, who hath re- 
 quired this at your hands? . . . Your 
 new moons and your sabbaths, the calling 
 of assemblies I cannot away with. . . . 
 When you spread forth your hands, I 
 will hide mine eyes : yea, when ye make 
 many prayers, I will not hear: Your hands 
 are full of blood. Wash you, make you 
 clean; put away the evil of your doings. 
 . . . Cease to do evil; learn to do well; 
 Then come, let us reason together" touching 
 our further cooperation in this great matter 
 of human well-being. 
 
 There were men in his day, as there have 
 been men in every day of human history, who 
 thought that they could couple together wor- 
 ship and wickedness and get away with it. 
 They thought that if their left hands were 
 full of worshipful observances, their right 
 hands might be full of robbery and oppres- 
 sion, yet in some way one would balance the 
 other; the worship would atone for the
 
 120 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 wickedness and they could keep along with 
 both. 
 
 How long will it take men to learn that only 
 as we strive to have the horizontal relations 
 of our lives between man and man just and 
 true will the perpendicular relations of our 
 lives with our Maker through worship become 
 acceptable and fruitful? "If thou bringest 
 thy gift to the altar," Jesus said, ''and there 
 rememberest that thy brother" some one in 
 your employ, or some one who employs you, 
 some one with whom you have been engaged 
 in a political deal, or some one against whom 
 you have been cherishing a bitter and nasty 
 grudge "hath aught against thee; leave 
 there thy gift before the altar ; . . . first 
 be reconciled to thy brother" by honest 
 dealing "then come and offer thy gift." 
 
 "What does God want men to do?" Isaiah 
 would ask to-day in his blunt way. Many 
 would reply: "He wants men to go to church 
 and to be baptized. He wants them to take 
 the sacrament regularly and to say their 
 prayers and to read their Bibles." 
 
 Well and good thou hast answered right. 
 The Lord does want men to do all of those 
 things, provided always that it be kept clearly 
 in mind that those things are means to an end 
 and not ends in themselves. If all those wor-
 
 SOCIAL BEBUILDERS 121 
 
 shipful activities aid men in doing justly, in 
 loving kindness, and in walking humbly be- 
 fore God, they are beautiful. If, however, 
 they are put forward as substitutes for up- 
 right, useful, and unselfish action in the ordi- 
 nary round and round, then they are worse 
 than useless they become hateful in the sight 
 of Him with whom we have to do. 
 
 How far have we need of Isaiah's plain, 
 straight word to-day! Does the habit of 
 worship mean always fair dealing on the 
 part of those who offer it! Do the working 
 people in all our cities feel that it is always 
 better to work for a church member than for 
 one who is not? Does church worship on the 
 part of a landlord insure the just and con- 
 siderate treatment of his tenants I Do people 
 generally flock to the merchant who is a pro- 
 fessed Christian, feeling sure that they will 
 on that account receive good goods at honest 
 prices? Do men rejoice when they hear that 
 the president of a railroad or of a steel cor- 
 poration or a woolen mill in whose employ 
 thousands of them stand is regularly attending 
 some orthodox church? las none of the so- 
 cial injustice and industrial oppression prac- 
 ticed in the last generation emanated from 
 men who regularly take the sacrament at the 
 altar of Christ ?
 
 122 SOCIAL KEBUILDERS 
 
 These questions sound strange when I ask 
 them in this bald way. They ought not to 
 sound strange. It ought to go without saying 
 that worship and fair dealing always go to- 
 gether. But as we all know full well, some- 
 times they do and sometimes they do not. 
 
 Has the Christian Church, taking it by and 
 large, in these recent decades borne its testi- 
 mony by open utterance and by the consistent 
 lives of its members against the sin of greed, 
 for example, as it ought to have done? I do 
 not believe that it has. The ordinary preach- 
 ing of the gospel in any Christian church 
 would be calculated to make a man who was 
 drunken or licentious, who was a Sabbath- 
 Tsreaker, or a profane swearer, feel decidedly 
 uncomfortable. All this is well, for these 
 forms of wrongdoing stand in need of rebuke. 
 But are there not men sitting in the pews of 
 the various churches playing the commercial 
 game as others play it, all unembarrassed by 
 any Christian scruples? Are there not to be 
 found at the communion table men who buy 
 labor and material alike in the cheapest mar- 
 ket and sell their products in the dearest 
 without ever thinking of the effect of their 
 action upon the human lives involved in that 
 process? Are there not men along the broad 
 aisles of the various sanctuaries who seem to
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 123 
 
 be dominated in the main purposes of their 
 lives by the spirit of greed, but because 
 they are clean and kind in their private 
 relations, they are not made to feel uncom- 
 fortable by the preaching of the average 
 pulpit? 
 
 Hear these plain, straight words as to the 
 need of more religion in business ! They were 
 not uttered by some clergyman whose main 
 office it is to preach the gospel. They were not 
 uttered by some theological professor sitting 
 comfortably in his seminary chair discussing 
 in more or less detached fashion the elements 
 of our Christian faith. They were spoken by 
 Mr. Oliver M. Fisher, one of the leading shoe 
 manufacturers of New England, upon his elec- 
 tion as president of the Boston Boot and Shoe 
 Club, and were addressed to his fellow-manu- 
 facturers : 
 
 ' ' This country has been a phenomenal suc- 
 cess in everything material. We have been 
 the wonder of the world, but we have lost, to 
 my mind, our balance, and have given far 
 more attention to the material side of life 
 than its importance warrants. The same at- 
 tention given to the development of the moral 
 and spiritual forces within us could bring 
 about in every community a vitalizing force 
 which would make better communities, and
 
 124 SOCIAL KEBUILDERS 
 
 thus make better the very business in which 
 we are engaged. 
 
 "From my own business experience there 
 is nothing on earth that business needs so 
 much to-day as religion. By that I mean the 
 sense of responsibility to God, to man, and 
 to the obligations that go with it, in order that 
 our relations with each other shall be the re- 
 lations of one brother to another. Obliga- 
 tions must be kept and the covenants we make 
 must be considered sacred and binding ; there- 
 fore, I have come to feel after a long busi- 
 ness life that some form of Christianity is the 
 heart of the covenant of all business life." 
 
 The minds of men ought never to have be- 
 come dull as to the vital elements in religion. 
 Hear what the great master spirits of the 
 Bible have said! They ought to know what 
 is essential and what is merely incidental. 
 Hear the words of Micah, who lived in the 
 same century with Isaiah! "He hath shewed 
 thee, man, what is good; and what doth 
 the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and 
 to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy 
 God?" Hear the words of James, who 
 preached habitually what has been called 
 "the gospel of common-sense" "Pure re- 
 ligion and undefiled before God the Father is 
 this, To visit the fatherless and widows in
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 125 
 
 their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted 
 from the world." 
 
 Hear the words of Paul, the greatest of all 
 the apostles ' ' The fruit of the Spirit is love, 
 joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, 
 faithfulness, mildness and self-control." 
 Hear also what our Lord Jesus Christ said 
 ' ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart. This is the first and great com- 
 mandment. And the second is like unto it, 
 Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
 In the same high vein our greatest Ameri- 
 can said upon one occasion : ' ' Though I am a 
 man of faith and a man of prayer I am not a 
 member of any church. But if any church 
 will inscribe those two great words of the 
 Saviour, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
 with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thy- 
 self,' over its doors as the sole requirement 
 for membership, that church I will join with 
 all my heart." Isaiah had a passion for 
 reality, and he was intent upon lifting the 
 minds of his people from a religion of cere- 
 mony to a religion of character. 
 
 In the second place, this prophet rebuked 
 the selfish greed and the moral callousness of 
 many of the well-to-do people of his day. 
 1 'Woe unto them that join house to house and 
 field to field" in their monopoly of the good
 
 126 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 things of life "until there is no room" for the 
 poorer people to live. Woe unto them who 
 trifle with moral distinctions, who seek to per- 
 suade themselves that it is possible to mix 
 their colors, "who call evil good, and good 
 evil ; who put darkness for light, and light for 
 darkness ; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet 
 for bitter." "Woe unto them that are mighty 
 to drink wine, . . . and to justify the 
 wicked for a reward." He felt that the cruel, 
 grasping spirit of those who were bent upon 
 making light of moral standards and of mak- 
 ing gain at any cost was eating the moral 
 fiber out of Israel and making her unfit for 
 her work of spiritual leadership. 
 
 He believed that the well-to-do women of 
 that time were largely responsible. By their 
 mode of life they were setting the pace in an 
 unseemly expenditure. Then, as now, the men 
 went into the city early in the morning to 
 make the money and the women went in later 
 to spend it. The habits of the well-to-do were 
 being copied and followed away beyond the 
 measure of their financial ability by those 
 who were less fortunate. And the whole mad 
 race in showy self-indulgence had been to the 
 detriment of the entire social body. 
 
 "The daughters of Zion are haughty," he 
 said. "They walk with outstretched necks
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 127 
 
 and wanton eyes." ''The spoil of the poor 
 is in their houses. They have eaten up the 
 needy." The money which made possible 
 all that showy luxury had been gained by 
 methods which the Lord would not ap- 
 prove. Therefore the prophet said, "The 
 Lord will take away their ornaments and 
 their bracelets, their fine linen and their 
 costly apparel. ' ' When certain people under- 
 take to live in showy fashion without work- 
 ing it means always that certain other peo- 
 ple will have to work in humble fashion with- 
 out living. 
 
 "The point is not that Isaiah condemned 
 refinement or personal adornment, but that 
 these women were thinking of nothing else. 
 They lived in an artificial atmosphere of 
 vanity and futility. They were parasites fat- 
 tening upon the over-stimulated sensuality of 
 a corrupt society. And if the mothers of 
 Israel were to be like this, what was to become 
 of the children I ' n 
 
 The Master of men brought out in telling 
 phrase the moral antagonism between the 
 spirit of religion and the spirit of greed or 
 self-indulgence. "Ye cannot serve God and 
 mammon." If the love of money is the 
 
 1 Reprinted from The Consuming Fire (p. 55), by Harris E. Kirk, by 
 permission of the publisher, The Macmillan Company. .
 
 128 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 warmest, the strongest, and the steadiest 
 love in a man's heart, then the love of God 
 has already gone down in defeat. It is highly 
 significant that the most searching words 
 Jesus Christ ever uttered were not directed 
 against the coarse sins of the flesh, hateful 
 as these offenses were in his pure eyes his 
 most searching words were directed against 
 that love of gain which becomes the root of 
 all manner of evil. 
 
 Have we not need of the same pungent 
 message in our own day I When we enter the 
 places of worship frequented by the well-to- 
 do, we are led to wonder oftentimes if their 
 industrial and political methods during the 
 week have been such as to make them indeed 
 the favorites of heaven. How have they 
 borne themselves toward the weak for whom 
 also Christ died? People are more sacred and 
 precious than holy places. The poor and the 
 needy are more precious in his sight than all 
 Te Deums and stained-glass windows and 
 lovely altar cloths. Inasmuch as we have 
 done equity and kindness or have failed to do 
 it to one of the least of these, we have done 
 it or have not done it unto him. 
 
 Let people give as they live ! My own con- 
 viction and practice for the last thirty-odd 
 years favor the habit of giving steadily as a
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 129 
 
 minimum the tenth of one's income to the 
 work of charity and religion. This old scrip- 
 tural rule has stood the test of experience. 
 The Jews were blessed in basket and in store, 
 in heart and in soul, by their practice of tith- 
 ing. The Mormon Church, whatever limita- 
 tions theological and moral may attach to 
 some of its positions, has been able by its sys- 
 tem of tithes to send forth an army of mis- 
 sionaries and to care for the needy of its own 
 communion with an admirable thoroughness. 
 
 This giving of the tenth need not be made 
 a hard-and-fast rule to be enforced univer- 
 sally with no regard for modifying circum- 
 stances. This might mean a lack of equity. 
 The man with an income of two thousand a 
 year and the man with twenty thousand are 
 not equally generous when they both prac- 
 tice tithing. The rule of the tenth would not 
 call forth an adequate measure of generosity 
 from Mr. Rockefeller, while it might take too 
 much from some humble toiler whose meager 
 wages barely suffice for the needs of his 
 family. But there may well be some definite 
 percentage of giving which mind and con- 
 science can approve. 
 
 The reckless extravagance of many of 
 those who have reaped a rich harvest during 
 the Great War, either from large profits or
 
 130 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 from high wages, seems to indicate that they 
 have thrown overboard any serious thought 
 of personal responsibility for the Christian 
 work of the world. There are Christian fam- 
 ilies which actually spend more on the theater 
 and the movies than they give to evangelize 
 the world. There are women who come to 
 church wearing hats which cost forty dollars 
 apiece and then give fifty cents or a dollar 
 to Christianize their own country. When we 
 look at the present disproportion in many 
 a professedly Christian home between the 
 amounts spent for luxury, pleasure, self- 
 indulgence, and the amount contributed to 
 make strong the work of Christ in the world 
 we wonder sometimes if we are worthy to be 
 called Christian. Let the scale of giving be 
 adjusted in consistent fashion to the scale of 
 living. 
 
 In the adjustment between attention to re- 
 ligious forms and attention to unselfish action 
 there are people who seem to feel that the 
 Lord above is not altogether bright. They 
 seem to think that he is so constituted that he 
 cares a great deal more about ritual than he 
 does about righteousness. What a curious 
 idea when we hold it up to the light! How 
 little it matters whether we have been bap- 
 tized with a great deal of water, as some
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 131 
 
 Christians are, or with very little, as other 
 Christians are, or with none at all, after the 
 manner of the Quakers and members of the 
 Salvation Army, who rely solely upon the 
 baptism of the Spirit! How little it matters 
 whether we take the bread and the wine in the 
 sacrament from the hand of a man who was 
 ordained by a bishop or from one who was 
 ordained by a company of elders or from one 
 who was ordained by a group of his brother 
 pastors ! How much do you suppose the Lord 
 in heaven cares about all that if only people 
 in reverent fashion take the bread and the 
 wine in grateful remembrance of Him who 
 died for us all? But how tremendously it 
 matters whether or not those people, how- 
 ever they may have been baptized and how- 
 ever they may celebrate the sacrament, in 
 their dealings with their weaker fellows do 
 justly, love kindness, and walk humbly before 
 him! Righteousness rather than ritual has 
 been the major study and the main concern 
 of the great prophets and apostles of all time. 
 In these days of unrest upon which we have 
 fallen, the need of an intelligent and thorough 
 application of moral principle to all the con- 
 crete interests and relationships of everyday 
 life is imperative if the very fiber of our 
 hardly won civilization is not to be destroyed.
 
 132 SOCIAL REBUILDEES 
 
 This clear-cut statement appeared recently 
 in The New Kepublic: "These are trou- 
 bled times. As the echoes of the War die 
 away the sound of a new conflict rises on 
 our ears. All the world is filled with indus- 
 trial unrest. Strike follows upon strike. A 
 world that has known five years of fighting 
 has lost its taste for the honest drudgery of 
 work. Cincinnatus will not go back to his 
 plow, or, at the best, stands sullenly be- 
 tween his plow handles arguing for a higher 
 wage. The wheels of industry threaten to 
 stop. The laborer will not work because the 
 pay is too low and the hours are too long. 
 The producer cannot employ him because the 
 wage is too high and the hours are too short. 
 If the high wage is paid and the short hours 
 granted, then the price of the thing made 
 rises higher still, until even the high wages 
 will not buy it. The process apparently moves 
 in a circle with no cessation to it." 
 
 We shall never gain our deliveranc? from 
 the distress which lies heavy upon the whole 
 world by any form of ritual or by any clever 
 economic or political device. We shall only 
 advance toward the restoration of well-being 
 by a more inclusive and persistent form of 
 social righteousness. From sheer necessity 
 we shall have to fall back upon that rule of
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 133 
 
 life which bids men look not solely upon their 
 own immediate interest but also upon the in- 
 terests of their fellows. "Among the Gen- 
 tiles the great ones exercise lordship and 
 dominion" over their weaker fellows. "It 
 shall not be so among you. If any man would 
 be great among you, let him serve. The 
 greatest of all is the servant of all. The Son 
 of man came not to be ministered unto but to 
 minister and to give his life a ransom for 
 many. ' ' 
 
 Here in the Old Testament was a man pass- 
 ing in review those points of conduct where 
 strong men are most liable to fall. He was 
 uttering what has been called his "oath of 
 clearing." He is careful to scrutinize 
 closely and rigidly his treatment of his less 
 fortunate fellows. "If I despised the cause 
 of my man-servant or my maid-servant when 
 they contended with me; what, then, shall I 
 do when God riseth up? . . . Did not he 
 that made me ... make him . . . 
 If I have withheld the poor from their desire, 
 or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail ; 
 or have eaten my morsel alone, and the 
 fatherless hath not eaten thereof; ... let 
 mine arm fall from my shoulder blade." 
 
 This man of old saw that we are all objects 
 of the same divine interest and divine affec-
 
 134 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 tion, and any measure of careless indifference 
 to the needs of one's fellows, any contemp- 
 tuous disregard for the rights of those who 
 stand within our employ or any useless showy 
 extravagance which would make against the 
 peace and welfare of the social body, where 
 we have become responsible and influential 
 members, would be a thing displeasing in 
 God's sight. It was One whom we all know 
 and honor who reached out with his all-em- 
 bracing sympathy and said, "I was hungry 
 and sick; I was naked and a stranger and ye 
 ministered unto me. Inasmuch as ye did it 
 to the least of these ye did it unto me. ' ' 
 
 "When wilt Thou save the people, 
 
 O God of mercy, when? 
 Not kings and lords but nations, 
 Not thrones and crowns but men! 
 
 Flowers of thy heart, O God, are they; 
 Let them not pass like weeds away, 
 Their heritage a sunless day, 
 God save the people!" 
 
 In the third place, the prophet Isaiah 
 pointed to the One who could bring salvation. 
 He saw the life of his country imperiled for 
 lack of righteousness. He saw that the 
 wrongdoing of the people had made the whole 
 head sick and the whole heart faint. He saw 
 that the sorest need of Israel was not that of 
 fuel, nor of clothing, nor of education, neces-
 
 SOCIAL BEBUILDERS 135 
 
 sary as all these things are. Their sorest 
 need was to be found in their lack of char- 
 acter. They were not good enough to last. 
 They were not good enough to do their work 
 and to enjoy the favor of the Most High. 
 
 But the prophet saw also that all this could 
 be changed. He was not the prophet of de- 
 spair but the prophet of hope. * ' Cease to do 
 evil; learn to do well. Seek justice, re- 
 lieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, 
 plead for the widow. Come now, let us reason 
 together, saith the Lord : Though your sins be 
 as scarlet, they shall be white as snow ; though 
 they be red like crimson, they shall be as 
 wool." "The people that walked in dark- 
 ness have seen a great light. . . . For 
 unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given : 
 and the government shall be upon his shoul- 
 der : and his name shall be called Wonderful 
 Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting 
 Father, The Prince of Peace." In that far 
 off Messianic hope touching a God who draws 
 near to save the people from their sins, the 
 prophet saw the dawning of a new day. 
 
 Th,e final forces in human society are 
 always the spiritual forces. "Legislation 
 does not change men and women. It merely 
 alters relationships and opportunities. The 
 greater our material wealth, the more numer-
 
 136 SOCIAL REBUILDEBS 
 
 ous our liberties, the more complex our social 
 organization, the larger our opportunities, 
 political and otherwise, the greater the de- 
 mand for sobriety, integrity, thoughtfulness, 
 and devotion. We have more wealth, more 
 machinery, more freedom, more opportunities 
 now than we have insight, self-discipline, in- 
 dustry, love, and faith. Therefore, we have 
 indifferent labor, luxury, extravagance, profi- 
 teering, unfairness, and unrest. The only 
 things that will ever bring the highest meas- 
 ure of peace, prosperity, and happiness to a 
 nation are the spiritual forces." 
 
 Here is the bottom question in our Chris- 
 tian faith to-day. It is not as to whether 
 Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, or whether 
 the body which was laid in the tomb of Joseph 
 of Arimathaea after Jesus was crucified under 
 Pontius Pilate was the same body which was 
 raised again the third day, or the question 
 whether we have in every case the exact 
 words which fell from the lips of the Master 
 or only an approximately correct report of 
 them. These are all interesting questions, but 
 they are not central nor vital. The real ques- 
 tions are these: "Is Jesus Christ a Saviour? 
 Can he save the people from their sins?" 
 And this is a matter of experience which 
 everyone can test for himself. It does not re-
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 137 
 
 quire for its determination technical scholar- 
 ship nor a knowledge of materials which are 
 accessible only to the trained intelligence it 
 requires only an open mind and an honest 
 heart. 
 
 Does Jesus Christ renew our hearts and 
 purify our affections? Does he strengthen 
 our wills and place our feet more firmly in 
 the way of duty, causing us to walk evenly 
 and steadily in the way that goeth upward? 
 Does he take the aspirations which have 
 begun to droop and set them bravely against 
 the sky? Does he confirm and reenforce those 
 finer impulses which make for righteousness ? 
 If he can do that, if he does do that, for the 
 lives of men and women, then he is a Saviour, 
 the Desire of the nations and the Hope of 
 the race. 
 
 "Come now, let us reason together, saith 
 the Lord," touching that which is vital. Re- 
 ligion is not magic nor sleight-of-hand where- 
 by two and two can be made to look like 
 five or possibly fifty. Religion is not a piece 
 of moral shuffling whereby guilt can be im- 
 puted to innocence and righteousness can be 
 imputed to those who are doing wrong. Re- 
 ligion is a reasoned form of moral intercourse 
 between these finite spirits of ours and the 
 Infinite spirit of Him who is the Source and
 
 138 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 the Summit of all being. It is the living of a 
 filial life in daily, hourly fellowship with Him 
 who is our Father in heaven. And its benefits 
 are to be realized in that direct impress of 
 the Spirit of God upon the heart of every man 
 who makes an honest and intelligent approach 
 to his Maker. 
 
 The social problems which are so vexing 
 the hearts of men to-day can be solved only on 
 the basis of this finer type of personal char- 
 acter here made possible. ''The fallacy of 
 the Socialist program," says Francis G. Pea- 
 body of Harvard, "is not in its radicalism 
 but in its externalism. It purposes to ac- 
 complish by economic change what can be at- 
 tained by nothing less than spiritual regen- 
 eration. Its program depends for efficacy on 
 unselfishness, brotherliness, and love of ser- 
 vice, but no way for the training of these 
 virtues is provided or indeed devised. Trans- 
 formation of business methods would, it is 
 assumed, convert the same people who are 
 now brutally self-seeking and skillfully cruel 
 into agents of magnanimity, fraternity, and 
 justice." 
 
 "To Jesus, on the other hand, the root of 
 commercial wrongs is in commercialized de- 
 sire. The force of competition is not one 
 which can be abolished but it is one which can
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 139 
 
 be converted. However loyally a disciple of 
 Jesus Christ may enlist for a campaign of 
 social change, or however vividly he may 
 dream of a new industrial order more con- 
 sistent with Christian brotherhood, he finds 
 in the teaching of Jesus no encouragement to 
 delay discipleship until that better world 
 arrives. On the contrary, he finds set before 
 him the much more difficult task of creating 
 the characters which may utilize the better 
 order when it comes." 1 
 
 This prophet of old coveted that experience 
 of moral renewal for all his fellow citizens 
 to the end that his country might be sublime 
 in character. If the Great War has taught us 
 anything, it has taught us that "when ma- 
 terial efficiency is separated from high pur- 
 pose and is lined up against moral reality, the 
 material efficiency will go down in defeat." 
 It may make a few successful skirmishes; it 
 may win an occasional battle, but it will lose 
 the war. We have seen "the will to power" 
 stripped of all false ornament and standing 
 forth naked and unashamed in all its indecent 
 ugliness on Flanders Field. And we have 
 also lived to see the hateful thing go down in 
 defeat before the arms of righteousness. 
 
 1 Reprinted from The Christian Life in the Modern World (p. 82), by F. 
 G. Peabody, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company.
 
 140 SOCIAL BEBUILDEES 
 
 The seraph flying through the open heavens 
 in order to touch the lips of that gifted young 
 Hebrew with a live coal from the altar of God 
 and thus set him free for his work as a 
 prophet of the Lord, symbolized the whole 
 spiritual order which overarches this earthly 
 life of ours. Our feet may plod along the 
 dusty roads of common life, but all the while 
 our heads and our hearts may be moving 
 freely among the stars. It doth not yet 
 appear what we shall be ultimately but 
 already we are the sons of God able, if we will 
 have it so, to be at last like him. 
 
 The ghost that walked in Hamlet to plague 
 the soul of the listless son, and the fateful 
 witches which plied the soul of Macbeth with 
 foul ambitions to wear the crown, cost what it 
 might, were used by the great dramatist to 
 give the sense of the vast, mysterious, intan- 
 gible forces which beat and play upon these 
 little lives of ours. And it is possible for 
 every one of us to be so renewed and enriched 
 by the impact of the Divine Spirit that when 
 the call of duty comes he will respond as did 
 this prophet of old in no uncertain tone, 
 "Here am I, send me." The final forces in 
 personal and in national life are the spiritual 
 forces. 
 
 It was Theodore Roosevelt, an astute and
 
 SOCIAL KEBUILDEES 141 
 
 successful politician, who wrote these signifi- 
 cant words just a short time before he died: 
 "We recognize and we are bound to war 
 against the evils of to-day. The remedies are 
 partly economic and partly spiritual, partly 
 to be obtained by laws but in greater part to 
 be obtained by individual and associated 
 effort, for character is the vital matter, and 
 character cannot be created by law. These 
 remedies include a religious and moral teach- 
 ing which shall increase the spirit of human 
 brotherhood, an educational system which 
 shall train men for every form of useful ser- 
 vice, and a government so strong, wise, just, 
 and democratic that neither lagging too far 
 behind nor pushing heedlessly in advance, it 
 may do its full share in promoting these 
 ends." 
 
 This land of ours which we all love is 
 great to-day, in so far as it is truly great 
 in the eyes of God and in the sight of the 
 nations, not because of our broad acres and 
 our rich mineral deposits, not because of our 
 tens of thousands of miles of railroad and the 
 material wealth accumulated in our banks 
 this country displays its true greatness only 
 in so far as its purposes and ideals are found 
 to be in harmony with the will of the Most 
 High. National greatness as well as personal
 
 142 SOCIAL REBUILDEES 
 
 salvation is dependent upon the quality of 
 character within. 
 
 You may possibly remember how Phillips 
 Brooks stood one night in Westminster 
 Abbey, London it was the night of the 
 Fourth of July. When he had finished his 
 splendid sermon from the text, "The spirit 
 of man is the candle of the Lord," he paused 
 to add these significant words: "May I ask 
 you to linger while I say to you a few words 
 more which shall not be unsuited to what I 
 have been saying, and which shall, for just a 
 moment, recall to you the sacredness which 
 this day the Fourth of July, the anniversary 
 of American Independence has in the hearts 
 of us Americans. If I dare generously per- 
 mitted as I am to stand this evening in this 
 venerable Abbey so full of our history as 
 well as yours to claim that our festival shall 
 have some sacredness for you as well as for 
 us, my claim rests on the simple truth that to 
 all true men the birthday of a nation must 
 always be a sacred thing. For in our thought 
 the nation is the making place of men. Not 
 by the traditions of its history, nor by the 
 splendor of its corporate achievements, nor 
 by the abstract excellence of its constitution, 
 but by its fitness to make men most each 
 nation be judged.
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 143 
 
 "It is not for me to glorify my country for 
 anything that she has been or done, but on 
 my country's birthday I may ask you for this 
 prayer on her behalf that on the manifold 
 and wondrous chance which God is giving 
 her; on her freedom and on her passion for 
 education; on her care for the poor man's 
 rights and on her countless quiet homes; on 
 her wide gates open to the east and to the 
 west and on that strange meeting of the races 
 out of which a new race is slowly being born 
 I may ask you for your prayer that on all 
 these materials and machineries of manhood 
 the blessing of God the Father of man and 
 Christ the Son of man may rest." 1 
 
 The welfare of any land depends in the last 
 analysis on the qualities of mind and heart 
 possessed by the rank and file of the people. 
 And the only people who can show themselves 
 competent to cooperate with the God of na- 
 tions in the fulfillment of his great design 
 for all the lands of earth are those who by 
 the development of moral purpose and the 
 habit of spiritual aspiration become indeed 
 the instruments of the Most High. No man 
 can make good unless he is fitted and pre- 
 pared in heart no less than in hand and brain 
 
 1 By permission, from vol. 2 of Phillips Brooks Sermons. Copyright by 
 E. P. Button & Co.
 
 144 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 to meet the demands of this exalted service. 
 Be ye therefore ready, for in such an hour as 
 ye think not the call of duty comes. 
 
 When Admiral Dewey died in the city of 
 Washington he was eighty years old. He had 
 spent sixty-two of those years in the service 
 of his country. He came of fighting stock 
 his great-grandfather had fought at Lexing- 
 ton in 1775 and for George Dewey the color 
 of life was always red. When war threatened 
 with Spain in 1897 Admiral Dewey was 
 placed in command of the Asiatic squadron. 
 He got his ships together, coaled them, fitted 
 them out with food and munitions, and had 
 them at Hongkong the very day that the 
 Maine was blown up in the harbor of Havana. 
 He had made it the business of his life to be 
 ready. 
 
 He had studied the Philippines and the en- 
 trance to the harbor of Manila until he was 
 as familiar with it all as a college boy is with 
 his own campus. When war was declared 
 the order was cabled to him, "Destroy the 
 Spanish fleet and take Manila. ' ' He went in 
 at once and did it without the loss of a ship 
 or of a single man. He was ready. Not 
 many men were ready at that time. Four 
 months after that date our soldiers were 
 dying in droves in Cuba and in the military
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 145 
 
 camps in this country for lack of adequate 
 preparedness. All honor to the man who is 
 ready when the morning comes he goes up ! 
 
 Now, peace hath her problems and her vic- 
 tories no less renowned than war. The solu- 
 tion of these problems in civic, in economic, 
 and in religious life demands a service no 
 less heroic and no less competent than the 
 winning of battles by land or by sea. The 
 best gift that any man here in this univer- 
 sity can make to his country and to his God is 
 the gift of one more upright, devoted, trained, 
 and serviceable life, such as it lies within 
 the power of each one of us to furnish. And 
 when these great gifts are being made here, 
 there, and yonder, as men give of their best 
 to the highest they see, we shall behold the 
 kingdom of God coming with power and great 
 glory. 
 
 Come up, then, as college men to the help of 
 the Lord against the mighty disaster which 
 has befallen this poor world of ours. Build 
 here and there and everywhere temples of 
 fresh impulse and aspiration. Build walls of 
 nobler habit and of finer method. Build those 
 structures which shall stand when all earthly 
 tabernacles have been dissolved. Plan for 
 it and pray for it, that by competent leader- 
 ship, by enlisting the cooperation of right-
 
 146 SOCIAL REBUILDEBS 
 
 minded people and by the stimulus from 
 above, we may build with Him cities fair and 
 new in that better social order which shall be 
 a joy to the whole earth and the dwelling 
 place of the Most High! 
 
 "O beautiful my country, ours once more! 
 What were our lives without thee! 
 What all our lives to save thee! 
 We reck not what we give thee, 
 We will not dare to doubt thee, 
 But ask whatever else and we will dare!"
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE Jews have a way of getting on. They 
 show their skill not only in commercial life 
 but in the political affairs of nations. For 
 nearly twenty centuries the Jew has been a 
 man without a country, yet he has been able 
 to make himself at home in all countries and 
 to put his feet on the rounds of the ladder. 
 
 Here was Joseph in the land of Egypt, 
 rising from the position of a slave boy until 
 he stood at Pharaoh's right hand. Here was 
 Daniel at the court of Babylon, preferred 
 above all the presidents and princes of the 
 realm. Here was Benjamin Disraeli, a Jew, 
 coming to be Prime Minister of Great Britain 
 and the trusted adviser of her Most Christian 
 Majesty Queen Victoria! And here in the 
 same long line was Nehemiah at the court of 
 Persia, appointed to be cupbearer to the 
 king! 
 
 The office of cupbearer in that far off time 
 was an important and lucrative position. It 
 was before the days of Federal prohibition, 
 147
 
 148 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 and the man who looked after the king's wine 
 was by no means the last on the list. It was 
 his business to see to it that the king was not 
 poisoned in his cups by the paid tool of some 
 rival aspirant to the throne. The cupbearer 
 was a man honored and trusted in official cir- 
 cles, and Nehemiah had done well for himself. 
 
 He lived at a time of great distress in his 
 own little country. Palestine at that time was 
 as unhappy as was Belgium during the last 
 three years of the War and for much 
 the same reason. Nebuchadnezzar had cap- 
 tured the city of Jerusalem. He had thrown 
 down the walls and destroyed the Temple. 
 Many of the people he had carried into cap- 
 tivity, and those who were left were poor and 
 disheartened. Industry was disorganized 
 and the whole country was trampled under 
 foot by a brutal invader. 
 
 Nehemiah learned of the sore distress of 
 his native land from a group of Jews who 
 were in Persia. He decided at once to throw 
 up his lucrative position at that foreign court 
 and return to Palestine as a leader in the 
 hard task of reconstruction. He made his 
 long, perilous journey across the wide 
 stretches of sand. When he reached Jeru- 
 salem, he made a personal survey of the 
 needs of the stricken city. He then organized
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 149 
 
 and directed those forces which were to re- 
 build the life of his nation. His example will 
 furnish us useful suggestion for our own 
 efforts in this hard period of the world's his- 
 tory, when so much of the world has to be 
 rebuilt, and built better than it was before the 
 war. 
 
 The whole world has been torn to pieces 
 during the last six years. It has been torn 
 to pieces politically. The boundaries of many 
 countries have been shifted. There has been 
 a Republic of Poland created by taking terri- 
 tory from Austria, Germany, and Russia. 
 There is a Czecho-Slovakia and a Jugo- 
 slavia and a Lithuania, and many other new 
 and untried powers. Great areas of territory 
 on the continents of Asia and Africa have 
 been transferred from one control to another. 
 The geographies which we used six years ago 
 are of no more account to-day than so much 
 waste paper. The Baedeker guidebooks of 
 Europe have all been put into the discard. 
 
 The world has been torn to pieces indus- 
 trially. The work of manufacture was dis- 
 ordered by the diversion of vast amounts of 
 capital and millions of laborers into the task 
 of creating munitions. High wages were paid 
 and huge profits were gained because the 
 work could not be delayed until men should
 
 150 SOCIAL REBUILDEES 
 
 have struck closer bargains. "A certain 
 mailed customer had appeared whose wants 
 were gigantic but mad and unsymmetrical. 
 He required only special things, but he re- 
 quired them in enormous quantities and he 
 would pay any price. The profit for serving 
 him was fabulous and for profit he was 
 served. Holders of war contracts bid wages 
 up on each other in a fantastic manner. The 
 war contractor stood at his competitor's fac- 
 tory gate offering ten dollars or twelve dol- 
 lars a day for common labor, thereby upset- 
 ting all the schedules and entailing millions 
 of readjustments. ' ' The dislocation of indus- 
 try became an ominous fact. Now the muni- 
 tions are no longer needed in such huge quan- 
 tities and all that capital and labor must be 
 restored to those channels of activity which 
 have to do not with destroying men's lives 
 but with saving them. And the task of re- 
 turning to normal standards and conditions 
 in industry and commerce is a most difficult 
 one to perform. 
 
 The world has been torn to pieces intellec- 
 tually and morally. Many of the old beliefs 
 and ethical standards have been rudely 
 shaken and in countless instances destroyed. 
 Millions of men and women were suddenly 
 thrown out of the wholesome moral habits to
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 151 
 
 which they were accustomed into new and un- 
 tried lines of action. The disaster of the war 
 was so appalling that the minds and hearts of 
 many stood aghast. They cried out in 
 anguish of spirit: " Where now is thy God? 
 Is there knowledge with the Most High?" 
 In all these diverse fields of human interest 
 the dislocation has been so serious as to ren- 
 der the work of rebuilding a primary obliga- 
 tion. 
 
 "Is Europe dying?" asks Sir Philip Gibbs, 
 a wise observer of conditions during the 
 Great War and of the general drift since the 
 armistice was signed. "Is Europe dying? No 
 man, unless he is blind or drunk with opti- 
 mism, can deny that at the present time Eu- 
 rope is very sick. During the last year I 
 have visited many countries of Europe, and 
 in most of them I found a sense of impending 
 ruin and dreadful anxiety touching the fu- 
 ture. In some countries ruin is not impend- 
 ing it is present and engulfing. Austria 
 is so stricken, starving, helpless, and hope- 
 less that she exists on charity alone and is 
 sapped of all vital strength. Germany is in a 
 better state, but people who imagine that her 
 factories are at full blast and that she will 
 soon be rich, strong, and truculent again are, 
 in my opinion, deluded by false evidence.
 
 152 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 Russia is one great empire of misery, and no 
 mortal soul knows yet what agony she still 
 has to suffer before her social revolution has 
 worked itself out. Poland, like Russia, is 
 typhus-stricken and starving in her cities, 
 ravaged by tidal waves of war. Italy stag- 
 gers under a vast load of debt, her paper 
 money worthless in its chase after high prices, 
 unemployment growing like creeping paral- 
 ysis, her constant strikes for higher wages 
 senseless and futile. France was joyous for 
 a little while with the intoxication of victory 
 after years of sacrifice, but to-day many of 
 her men are saying: 'Our million dead will 
 never come to life again. Our debts will 
 never be paid. Our industries are decaying 
 for lack of coal. Our deaths last year were 
 higher than our births by two hundred and 
 twenty thousand, and our population is 
 diminishing. France, victorious, is dying.' 
 England has been less hurt by the war than 
 most of the other countries who were in it, 
 but without analyzing our present discontent 
 it is enough to glance at the headlines of to- 
 day's paper or to have a chat with any dis- 
 charged and unemployed soldier to repudiate 
 the gains of England in the war." The 
 whole world has been torn to pieces and must 
 be rebuilt.
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 153 
 
 You will notice these three things about 
 the work of this ancient prophet. First, he 
 did not bring to the task of reconstruction 
 money or material or men. He brought, how- 
 ever, that which was equally important he 
 brought impulse and inspiration. 
 
 The work of social rebuilding does not live 
 by bread alone. It lives also by those great 
 words of faith and hope and love, of courage, 
 aspiration and high resolve which proceed 
 out of the mouth of God. In many quarters 
 to-day the sorest need is not that of money 
 nor of material; it is the need of better im- 
 pulses and of a finer quality of inspiration 
 on the part of the people who are responsible 
 for the task of rebuilding. 
 
 Here at the close of the Great War the 
 people of certain countries are utterly dis- 
 couraged by the calamities through which 
 they have passed. They have no heart to 
 take hold. In other lands the heads of the 
 common people have been turned by the high 
 wages paid during the war, and they have 
 lost all sense of proportion. They are ex- 
 hibiting a reckless and demoralizing ex- 
 travagance. In other sections the common 
 people have been made desperate by the 
 profiteering and the waste which they have 
 witnessed. They are disposed to fling com-
 
 154 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 mon sense and sound principle to the winds. 
 In every community of earth to-day there is 
 need of those leaders who can furnish better 
 impulses and a finer quality of inspiration 
 for the great work of social repair. 
 
 How fine was the spirit shown by those 
 Jews when once the leadership of Nehemiah 
 was brought to bear upon them in the day of 
 reconstruction I "So built we the wall, for 
 the people had a mind to work; and they 
 labored together from the rising of the sun 
 until the stars appeared." 
 
 They were not working with their eyes on 
 the clock. They were not just waiting for 
 the whistle to blow. They were not trying to 
 get through the day with as little effort as 
 possible without actually losing their jobs. 
 They were bent upon accomplishing some- 
 thing. They had some sense of joy and pride 
 in their work. They wrought with their eyes 
 upon a worthy goal. 
 
 In many lands to-day one of the gravest 
 problems to be faced lies in the unwillingness 
 of able-bodied men and women to engage 
 again in ordinary productive effort. The ab- 
 normal conditions which prevailed for four 
 years seemed to weaken the spirit of self- 
 reliance and to replace the habit of personal 
 industry with a vague sense of dependence
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 155 
 
 upon society as a whole for the needed sup- 
 plies. 
 
 One of the tragic things in the work-a-day 
 world to-day is the fact that so many people 
 seem to have no pride nor joy in the work 
 they do. Several years ago President Eliot, 
 of Harvard, was addressing an audience of 
 labor union men on Sunday afternoon in 
 Fanueil Hall, Boston. He was speaking about 
 the responsibilities of labor, and his address 
 was packed with wise and cogent statement. 
 The following Sunday President Driscoll, of 
 the Central Labor Council of Boston, was 
 addressing a similar audience in the same 
 place. At one point in his address he looked 
 up from the manuscript he was reading to 
 say, "President Eliot spoke to you last Sun- 
 day about 'The Joy of Work.' " Instantly a 
 wave of loud, derisive laughter swept over 
 the audience. The idea that any man could 
 be so utterly silly as to talk about "the joy 
 of work" seemed to them like a bitter kind of 
 joke. And that laughter was the saddest 
 thing that old Fanueil Hall had heard in 
 many a day. These men had lost all sense of 
 pride and joy in their work without realizing 
 apparently that thereby they were losing 
 their own souls. 
 
 The manual laborer is not solely to blame.
 
 156 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 The sorry conditions prevailing in much of 
 our modern industry militate against the 
 thing for which I would plead. When I was 
 a boy growing up on an Iowa farm, the old 
 village shoemaker made boots with tops on 
 them for my father and for me. We would go 
 in together and he would measure our feet, 
 rights and lefts, and then select his leather 
 and proceed to make two complete pairs of 
 boots. When we went in ten days later to 
 try them on, if they fitted, as they almost 
 always did, he had the joy of seeing us walk 
 off in them and he had the satisfaction of 
 looking upon a completed piece of work from 
 his own hands and brain. All this is much less 
 easy in those huge shoeshops at Lynn or 
 Brockton, Massachusetts, where thousands of 
 men and women are working, each one per- 
 forming a single monotonous bit of labor with 
 a machine upon fifty thousand pairs of shoes 
 which pass through his hands in the same pe- 
 riod of time. 
 
 The wide introduction of machinery, the 
 minute division of labor, and the consequent 
 monotony of toil in many a factory, together 
 with the long remove between the efforts of 
 tens of thousands of men and women and the 
 finished product, have a direful influence 
 upon the artisan. We have overlaid the man
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 157 
 
 with the machine for the sake of the cheaper 
 and more abundant supply of things. 
 
 One of the serious indictments of our pres- 
 ent industrial order lies in the fact that it 
 does not readily produce that morale which 
 is needed in the factory as well as in the 
 army. The surroundings of industry are 
 often coarsening and debasing. Many of the 
 articles manufactured are made "to sell 
 rather than to serve. ' ' This underlying pur- 
 pose rapidly debases the industry and de- 
 grades the workers. As some one has cleverly 
 said, ' ' The making of a cotton lie or a wooden 
 lie reacts upon the morals of the man as 
 much as the making of a spoken lie." The 
 spirit of the place may be not one of good 
 will but one of ill will between those who em- 
 ploy and those who are employed. All this 
 is distinctly evil in its ultimate effect. There 
 is a constant moral loss when work is done 
 under such conditions or in such a mood. 
 There is a tremendous economic loss where 
 the work of the world is done in the wrong 
 way, but the moral loss in personal aspira- 
 tion, in that joy and pride in one's own work 
 which ought to accompany all useful indus- 
 try, in the fine sense of human fellowship in 
 wholesome activity, is more terrible still. It 
 was a glorious fact that those Jews under
 
 158 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 this gifted leader stood ready to labor with 
 enthusiasm from the rising of the sun until 
 the stars appeared. 
 
 So long as men and women must work in 
 order to live there is nothing else for it. And 
 it is altogether best that it should be so. An 
 endless series of holidays or even half-holi- 
 days would be perdition for the race. Those 
 amiable loafers in the South Sea islands of 
 whom Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack Lon- 
 don write in such picturesque fashion, are 
 not to be envied. It has been their sad lot 
 to live where bread fruit and bananas can be 
 picked off the trees in tropical abundance, 
 enough in an hour to last for a week, where 
 the lazy fish in the warm waters of the bay 
 can almost be taken with the bare hand. But 
 those conditions have not furnished us that 
 robust and resourceful type of manhood 
 which most appeals to the moral imagination. 
 It would be the making of those easy-going 
 natives if they had to live for a few centuries 
 on Cape Cod or on the Labrador coast. It is 
 by the discipline of sturdy effort that all the 
 higher values are wrought out. 
 
 Nehemiah was ready also to pay the neces- 
 sary price for that complete knowledge of the 
 facts which would make him competent as a 
 leader. When he reached Jerusalem, he did
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 159 
 
 not flood the community with advance notices 
 of what he proposed to do for its uplift. Had 
 there been newspapers in that day he would 
 not have covered half pages of them with 
 flaming advertisements of the "welfare 
 work" he proposes to inaugurate. 
 
 "He took his beast one night and rode out 
 over the city, taking stock of his task and of 
 his resources. He did not propose to allow 
 the wishes of a good heart to be a substitute 
 for the knowledge of a good head. He in- 
 sisted upon accurate information as a neces- 
 sary preliminary in community building. He 
 returned from his personal survey with that 
 definite information. Seven of the important 
 gateways of the city were in ruins ; the streets 
 were full of rubbish; walls were to be rebuilt; 
 and all of this must be done by voluntary 
 labor." 1 
 
 Thus he was able through his thorough 
 knowledge of the situation and the inspira- 
 tion he brought to develop the spirit needed 
 for the great task of reconstruction. He or- 
 ganized the people in such a way as to make 
 their service most effective. He distributed 
 his forces so that in rebuilding the walls of 
 the city "every man should built over against 
 
 "The Bible as a Community Book, A. E. Holt, p. 56. The Womans 
 Prese, New York.
 
 160 SOCIAL KEBUILDERS 
 
 his own house. ' ' Here was that combination 
 of self-interest and of public spirit which is 
 always to be desired. Every man would 
 want that part of the wall near his own home 
 to be solidly built, so that if a breach should 
 come under some hostile attack, it would not 
 come there. By this bit of strategy he induced 
 them to do square work, and square work only, 
 in the reconstruction of the life of their city. 
 
 It is a good plan always to urge people to 
 do the duty which lies nearest. That will 
 be the best possible preparation for duties 
 which lie further on. "Wisdom," David 
 Starr Jordan used to say, "is knowing what 
 to do next. Virtue is doing it." There are 
 far-sighted people, alas, who are forever try- 
 ing to love and pray for and Christianize 
 their fellow beings on the other side of the 
 globe, who have not yet learned to love the 
 people who live on the other side of the 
 street. Let every man do first the duty which 
 lies nearest. Let him build over against his 
 own life that particular part of the better 
 world for which he is made responsible. It 
 is a good division of labor when each man's 
 name can thus be openly attached to the bit 
 of work with which he is intrusted. 
 
 In the second place, Neheiniah showed the 
 people the wider significance of what they
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 161 
 
 were called to do. He was asked at one time 
 to go off for a trip into the country. He re- 
 fused. "I am doing a great work," he re- 
 plied, "I cannot come down." 
 
 He was laying bricks. But every brick 
 went into a wall. The wall was to surround 
 the capital city of his country as its main 
 defense. And the city was Jerusalem, the 
 place where the divine honor dwelt more con- 
 spicuously and more continuously for cen- 
 turies than at any other spot on earth. 
 
 When we remember what the salvation of 
 the world owes to the Jewish race; when we 
 remember that the Jews wrote the Holy Scrip- 
 tures of our own faith; when we remember 
 that the Saviour of the world, the Desire of 
 the Nations, was born in Bethlehem of Judaea 
 of the house and lineage of David, we stand 
 ready to indorse the prophet's claim. To lay 
 bricks in a wall which protects the capital 
 city of a people whose life is so bound up with 
 the moral and spiritual advance of mankind, 
 is a great work, and he had better not come 
 down. 
 
 But this trusted leader was doing some- 
 thing other and greater than building a wall 
 he was aiding in the rebuilding of a nation 's 
 life. He knew that bricks and mortar, walls 
 and battlements furnish no sure defense.
 
 162 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 1 'The walls of Sparta are built of Spartans," 
 sang the Greek poet. The worst enemies of 
 any city are ineide rather than outside. " Ex- 
 cept the Lord build the house, they labor in 
 vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the 
 city, the watchman waketh but in vain." 
 Except great principles and worthy ideals be 
 securely lodged in the minds and hearts of 
 the people who inhabit the city, nothing of 
 lasting worth is accomplished. Therefore, 
 along with his task of material achievement, 
 Nehemiah drew the attention of the people to 
 the law of God. "He gathered them together 
 and opened the book and read therein dis- 
 tinctly, so that all the people could under- 
 stand. He read from morning until midday, 
 and all the people were very attentive to 
 hear him. " He would have every man among 
 them looking up into the face of his Maker 
 saying, "Thy word have I hid in my heart, 
 that I might not sin. Thy word is a lamp 
 unto my feet and a light unto my path." 
 
 Nehemiah had the full sense of stewardship 
 in regard to the life of his country. Jeru- 
 salem was to be built as "a city that was com- 
 pact together" because the house of the Lord 
 was there, and all the tribes of earth would 
 come up in thought, in desire, and in aspira- 
 tion for the quality of spiritual leadership
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDEBS 163 
 
 there offered. He heard the voice of God 
 saying to Israel: "I will bless thee, and thou 
 shalt be a blessing. I will make of thee a 
 great nation, and in thee shall all the nations 
 of the earth be blessed." "Save Israel," God 
 was saying to him in that high hour, "that 
 Israel may help to save the world. ' ' 
 
 For any man to have the humblest part in 
 laying line upon line, precept upon precept, 
 thought upon thought, and aspiration upon 
 aspiration, here a little and yonder a great 
 deal, in that finer quality of national life, 
 which was to reach out in Messianic fashion 
 for the betterment of the whole earth, was 
 indeed a great work. Where the sense of 
 individual obligation is held apart from the 
 broader social order it becomes weak and 
 thin. It is the larger vision which fires the 
 heart. 
 
 In the third place, the prophet united the 
 militant and the constructive virtues. He 
 was attacked by Sanballat, Tobiah, and Ge- 
 shom, three first-class rascals in that far off 
 time. They sneered at Nehemiah's undertak- 
 ing. "What would these feeble Jews dot 
 Will they fortify their city? If even a fox 
 would go up by the wall, he would break down 
 what they build. ' ' But the people had a mind 
 to werk, and they kept right on laying bricks.
 
 164 SOCIAL REBUILDEBS 
 
 Then the enemies of the divine purpose at- 
 tacked them in open hostility, and the 
 Hebrews had to defend themselves. "Let 
 every man gird on his sword," their leader 
 cried. And the builders went forth each one 
 with his sword at his side. In one hand he 
 carried his trowel, and with the other he could 
 reach for his sword to repel the hostile attack. 
 The work was great and large, and the people 
 were scattered along the wall; but when the 
 trumpet sounded announcing an attack, they 
 went swiftly to that spot with their re- 
 enforcements and drove the enemy back. 
 "So built we the wall; for people had a mind 
 to work" that was their rallying cry. And 
 the wall went steadily up, and the moral fiber 
 of the nation was steadily strengthened by 
 devotion to a common task. 
 
 The two lines of effort here suggested may 
 well be followed at this very hour. The mili- 
 tant and the constructive virtues are both in 
 demand. The minds of all honest-hearted 
 people to-day are strongly set upon that 
 wholesome industry which ministers to the 
 peace and prosperity of society. But the 
 sword as well as the trowel has to be taken 
 along. It is necessary for the friends of 
 righteousness to smite hip and thigh the ene- 
 mies of the divine purpose. The rum-seller,
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 165 
 
 the gambler, and the brothel-keeper, the in- 
 dustrial slacker, the political grafter, and the 
 ruthless profiteer these are the Sanballats 
 of modern life, and they have to be fought 
 all along the line. When they hinder the work 
 of social reconstruction, they have to be 
 beaten back that the good work may go on. 
 
 Here at this hour in our own land the worst 
 enemies of the republic are not to be found 
 among those red-mouthed individuals who 
 are forever screaming about revolution. The 
 actual influence of these showy, noisy souls 
 upon the great body of our citizens, as we 
 saw in the last presidential election, is almost 
 negligible. The worst enemies are to be 
 found among those who are too indifferent, 
 too selfish, too preoccupied to raise a hand. 
 "Let George do it!" Let anybody do it, so 
 long as we are not disturbed. 
 
 Here we were in the summer of 1920 
 charged with the responsibility of selecting 
 a President of the United States. In the face 
 of the vital and vexing national questions he 
 would have to consider, and in the face of 
 the world problems with which he would have 
 to deal, had there ever been a time when it 
 was more important that a man, strong, wise, 
 just, far-seeing, competent, statesmanlike, 
 should be sent to the White House? What a
 
 166 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 challenge the responsibility of selecting such 
 a man offered to thoughtful, discriminating, 
 patriotic, and honest citizens everywhere! 
 You would have expected them to rise up and 
 insist upon having their way rather than 
 leave the grave responsibility of making suit- 
 able nominations to the short-sighted, parti- 
 san politicians who are always so actively on 
 the job. 
 
 Here we were charged also with the respon- 
 sibility of electing a Congress to deal in a 
 large and just way with those vast problems 
 at home and abroad, and to show us some- 
 thing better than the dallying and vaporing 
 in the United States Senate which has humili- 
 ated us all. It is the duty of every right- 
 minded man and of every right-minded 
 woman, now charged with a new political re- 
 sponsibility, to go forth with sword and 
 trowel to fight and to build in that better 
 quality of national life so sorely needed for 
 our own security and for the wider service 
 of the world's need. 
 
 I could speak of many different directions 
 which this work of rebuilding might well take 
 let me name just two. There must come, 
 in the first place, here in our own land as 
 well as in other lands, a better type of indus- 
 trial life. It is not a mere question of wages
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 167 
 
 and hours wages are high to-day and the 
 hours are being adjusted more and more 
 with reference to the needs of life. It is a 
 question as to the mood and temper in which 
 men with capital and organizing, administra- 
 tive ability, and men with muscle and 
 mechanical skill shall act. Shall they act 
 together in the spirit of cooperation and 
 brotherhood, or shall they draw apart in the 
 spirit of antagonism? In my judgment we 
 shall only achieve that larger measure of 
 peace and prosperity in the workaday world 
 where it is so sorely needed as we realize 
 these three great social principles. 
 
 1. There must come a more democratic 
 spirit in the control of the great industries. 
 Every man, whether he be a millionaire or a 
 hodcarrier, is consulted as to who shall be the 
 mayor of his city and who shall compose the 
 city council. He is consulted as to who shall 
 be the governor of his State and who shall sit 
 in the Legislature. He is consulted as to who 
 shall be President of the United States and 
 who shall make up our national Congress. He 
 is compelled to live under the laws made and 
 executed by those officials, and it is only just 
 that he should be consulted. 
 
 But touching that which affects his welfare 
 and the welfare of his family much more inti-
 
 168 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 mately and steadily than all this he has some- 
 times been scarcely consulted at all. He has 
 been offered employment on certain terms, 
 and has been told that he could either "take 
 it or leave it" and that was all there was 
 about it. He has not been consulted touching 
 the various methods and conditions which 
 affect his employment in that industry. He 
 has not been called into conference, either 
 personally or through his representatives, 
 touching those policies which will determine 
 the spirit and temper in which the work is to 
 be done. He has been treated as a "hand" 
 rather than as a man. 
 
 The man who invests his money and his 
 organizing, administrative ability in any 
 enterprise has a clear right to be heard 
 touching the operation of that industry. And 
 the plain men and women not possessed of 
 capital or of five talents each of that organiz- 
 ing ability, but putting in for years together 
 the best part of their lives in the work they 
 do they too have a right to b6 heard. And 
 the broad-minded employers (of whom there 
 are many to-day, and the number is steadily 
 increasing) are recognizing that fact. They 
 are encouraging the spirit of initiative, the 
 extension of responsibility, the development 
 of plans by the workers themselves for the
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 improvement of the enterprise and for the 
 larger welfare of all those whose lives are 
 bound up together in that economic organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 One of the largest and most important 
 railroad corporations in the country, the 
 Pennsylvania, opened the New Year with a 
 plan for consultation with their employees 
 which will surely make for better relations. 
 The plan provides for a system of committees, 
 local and regional, culminating in a joint re- 
 viewing committee of the whole Pennsylvania 
 system. On each one of these committees the 
 managers and the employees have equal rep- 
 resentation. Questions which arise are to be 
 settled by the local or regional committee ac- 
 cording to the issues involved, but the final 
 authority is lodged with the joint reviewing 
 committee, whose decisions are to be accepted 
 as final. In order to prevent a possible dead- 
 lock in the committees through the lining up 
 of employees' representatives on one side 
 and the managers on the other, a two-thirds 
 vote is required for all decisions. This plan 
 does not deny the right to strike, but it in- 
 sures a reasonable time for discussion of any 
 differences or grievances before such action 
 looking toward a strike could be taken. The 
 hearty agreement upon this plan by both.
 
 170 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 managers and employees, giving to both, sides 
 a voice in determining questions of policy, 
 promises a lessening of friction and an in- 
 crease of the spirit of cooperation. 
 
 "Inasmuch as the workers contribute to 
 production the indispensable factor of their 
 toil and skill, the Christian thinker must 
 recognize the fairness of labor's insistence 
 upon being heard in all adjustments which 
 have to do with the industry. The battle for 
 a voice in wage-fixing has been pretty well 
 fought through; but industrial democracy 
 really implies more than such collective bar- 
 gaining in wages and hours. It implies that 
 labor shall be heard in all questions which 
 have to do with the conditions in which the 
 laborer works, with the shop and its control, 
 with the control of the industry itself through 
 place on boards of directors. The trade union 
 is fighting and winning a great battle against 
 paternalism. Capitalists are not as a rule 
 moved by impulses to oppression. Undoubt- 
 edly the majority of them mean well by their 
 men. They are willing to do all within their 
 power for the men except to let the men have 
 the power to do for themselves. But pater- 
 nalism is an insidious foe to democracy. 
 . . . The Christian ideal is not a class 
 struggle and a class triumph, but a coopera-
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 171 
 
 lion on all sides for the good of the whole 
 community. ' ' 
 
 2. There must come a more equitable dis- 
 tribution of the good things of life between 
 those who toil mainly with their heads and 
 those who toil mainly with their hands. You 
 notice that I do not say equal, I say equitable. 
 I believe that it is altogether just and desir- 
 able that to men of five talents of organizing 
 and administrative ability there should be 
 given an exceptional reward. It is in that 
 way that the development of exceptional abil- 
 ity is stimulated. But the distribution has 
 not always been equitable. 
 
 Let me put the matter in concrete form: 
 Some years ago in the city of New York a 
 gentleman died whose name was Cornelius 
 Vanderbilt. He was a man possessed of many 
 splendid traits of character in his personal and 
 domestic life. He was highly esteemed and 
 beloved by a wide circle of personal friends. 
 He gave generously of his means to the work 
 of religion, of education, and of charity. I 
 am not singling him out for any sort of per- 
 sonal attack, which would be manifestly un- 
 fair. I merely select him as an outstanding 
 figure in a certain system. 
 
 When this gentleman died we are told that 
 he left a fortune in round numbers of one
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDEBS 
 
 eighty 
 
 - 
 
 " " 
 
 e tho l 
 
 rH~r ; =-
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 173 
 
 years before Christ. In round numbers, then, 
 the human race, according to that reckoning, 
 has been here on earth about six thousand 
 years. Now, suppose that Adam had lived 
 until this day. Suppose that he had worked 
 steadily three hundred days in the year for 
 those six thousand years. Suppose that he 
 had been possessed of no ordinary ability but 
 had been a man capable of earning one hun- 
 dred dollars a day, which is very good pay 
 better than that received by any professor in 
 Yale University at the present time. If Adam 
 had worked for six thousand years, three 
 hundred days in the year and had received 
 one hundred dollars a day in wages over and 
 above the cost of his keep, he too would have 
 been at this time in possession of exactly 
 $180,000,000, not making allowance for the 
 interest on his savings. 
 
 Now, the question arises, Did Mr. Vander- 
 bilt, in his short lifetime, render a service to 
 society equal in value to what a man capable 
 of earning one hundred dollars a day would 
 have rendered if he had worked three hun- 
 dred days in the year for the period of six 
 thousand years? I do not know what you 
 think about it, but I do not believe that he 
 did. If I were a betting man, I would put 
 my money on Adam.
 
 174 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 
 
 We all know that if every man had all that 
 he earns by actual service rendered to society 
 by the labor of either hand or brain, and if no 
 man had any more than he earns by such 
 service rendered, the whole industrial ques- 
 tion would be settled. There must come a 
 more equitable distribution of the good things 
 of life between those who labor mainly with 
 their hands and those who labor mainly with 
 their heads. 
 
 "The many and varied schemes, now so 
 vigorously undertaken by intelligent em- 
 ployers, of conciliation, arbitration, cooper- 
 ation, profitsharing, and industrial partner- 
 ship are not to be regarded as forms of benefi- 
 cence or magnanimity. To initiate them in 
 the spirit of paternalism or patronage or 
 charity is, in the present temper of the 
 working classes, to foredoom them to failure. 
 They represent a candid recognition of the 
 fact that the wage-system in its bare economic 
 form must be supplemented, if it is not to be 
 supplanted; that the line of division between 
 employer and employed must be effaced by 
 fraternalism, if it is not to be obliterated by 
 socialism. Schemes of industrial reform must 
 be incorporated with the business, adapted to 
 the type of industry concerned, and charged 
 to production. The proper payment for them
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 175 
 
 is not gratitude, but loyalty. They are one 
 form of evidence that the industrial order, 
 imperfect as it is, may be developed by intel- 
 ligence and ingenuity into a system of mutual 
 advantage, which is certainly more accessible, 
 and may perhaps be more durable, than the 
 vague ventures which social revolution now 
 so lightly proposes to make. ' n 
 
 3. There must come a steadier exaltation 
 of the human values at stake. What is it all 
 for, this huge process of production, distribu- 
 tion, and exchange! What is the final office 
 of these mills and mines, these farms and fac- 
 tories, these steamships and railroads, these 
 stores and banks? The process certainly 
 does not exist for the purpose of creating im- 
 mense private fortunes in the hands of a few 
 or for the mere increase of a cheaper and 
 more abundant supply of things. The process 
 is meant to minister to human well-being. Its 
 office is to make human life richer, worthier, 
 more joyous. It must stand or fall ultimately 
 by its success or failure at that point. 
 
 It was John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who said : 
 ' * The soundest industrial policy is that which 
 has constantly in mind the welfare of em- 
 ployees as well as the making of profits. 
 
 1 Reprinted from The Christian Life in the Modern World (p. 102), by 
 F. O. Peabody, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company.
 
 176 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 
 
 When human considerations demand it this 
 policy subordinates profit to welfare. In- 
 dustrial relations are essentially human 
 relations. The day has passed when the con- 
 ception of industry as chiefly a revenue- 
 producing process can be maintained." 
 
 The wealth of the nation is not indicated, 
 as Buskin used to argue in his strenuous way, 
 by its broad acres, or by its mineral wealth, 
 or by the thousands of miles of railroad that 
 may have been built, or by the accumulated 
 wealth stored up in its banks. "The wealth 
 of the nation is indicated always by the num- 
 ber of healthy, happy, clear-eyed, and aspir- 
 ing men, women, and children it can show." 
 The human values are supreme and final. 
 
 Here is a man who builds a factory, and 
 he carries it on in such fashion that the smoke 
 which flies from his factory chimney is the 
 black flag of piracy. Men and women are 
 there being robbed of the finer results which 
 should flow from their employment. They 
 may or may not be receiving good wages, but 
 they are not working in that mood and tem- 
 per which makes for the development of the 
 finer values. Here is another man on the 
 other side of the city who builds a factory, 
 and he carries it on in such a fashion that 
 the smoke which flies from his chimney is
 
 SOCIAL BEBUILDERS 177 
 
 like a pillar of cloud by day guiding the peo- 
 ple whose lives are bound up in that enter- 
 prise toward the land of promise. He shows 
 so much of the spirit of social justice, so much 
 consideration for the people in his employ, and 
 he maintains such a spirit of cooperation and 
 good will in the enterprise that the human 
 values are being constantly advanced. 
 
 The man who builds and operates this 
 second factory may be making shoes, or 
 steam engines, or cotton cloth, or anything 
 you please, but what is much more to the 
 purpose he is making manhood and woman- 
 hood in the lives of all those who stand in his 
 employ. We are to judge of the fitness or the 
 unfitness of all methods of industry by their 
 outcome in the creation or the destruction of 
 these human values. 
 
 "The fundamental ethical teaching of 
 Jesus is the supreme worth of every per- 
 sonality in the sight of God. The primary in- 
 terest of Christianity in all economic problems 
 is, therefore, that human values shall be kept 
 in the first place. If modern societies could 
 once be made to act upon the simple principle 
 that a man's life consisteth not in the abun- 
 dance of the things that he possesseth, that 
 all social institutions are made for man, not 
 man for the institutions, and consequently
 
 178 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 are to be judged by their effect on men, 
 women, and children, the longest single stride 
 toward the bringing in of the kingdom of God 
 on earth would have been taken. For this 
 principle, once set to work, would quickly 
 reach out to most vital implications." 
 
 In the second place, there must come in this 
 day of social rebuilding the development and 
 maintenance of a finer quality of national 
 soul. The most terrible thing the world saw 
 during the Great War was not the outrage 
 upon Belgium, awful as that was in its bar- 
 barity, nor the sinking of the Lusitania with 
 the drowning of hundreds of helpless women 
 and children, nor the judicial murder of men 
 like Captain Fryatt or women like Edith 
 Cavell. All this was frightful in the extreme, 
 but there was something worse. The most ter- 
 rible thing we saw in the Great War was the 
 evidence of the utter decay of what had been 
 a great national soul in Germany. 
 
 There was a Germany once, the Germany 
 of Luther and Melanchthon, of Kant and 
 Hegel, of Goethe and Schiller, of Beethoven 
 and Bach, of Carl Schurz and Franz Sigel, 
 which was honored and esteemed throughout 
 the world. In that Germany all the nations 
 of the earth were being blessed. But in the 
 year 1914 the world suddenly awoke to the
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDEES 179 
 
 fact that this Germany which had been held 
 in honor was gone. 
 
 In the years following 1870 the German 
 people turned over the keeping of their soul, 
 into the hands of certain false gods. The 
 gospel most industriously preached in Ger- 
 many during that period was not the Gospel 
 according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 
 It was the gospel according to Treitschke, 
 Nietzsche, and Bernhardi. It was " another 
 gospel" which was not "another" but a 
 counsel of evil. In this gospel of the New 
 Testament I read, "Among the Gentiles the 
 great ones exercise lordship and dominion. It 
 shall not be so among you. If any man would 
 be great among you let him serve. The great- 
 est of all is the servant of all." 
 
 But in this other gospel I find these virtues 
 of compassion, pity, and self-sacrifice spurned 
 as belonging to what these misguided men 
 were pleased to call ' ' the slave morality. " "I 
 denounce Christianity," said Nietzsche, "as 
 the greatest of all possible corruptions, since 
 it combats the good red blood of human life. 
 The qualities of mercy, charity, self-sacrifice 
 are utterly pernicious since they mean the 
 transfer of power from the hands of the 
 strong to the hands of the weak whose proper 
 business it is to serve the strong. Therefore
 
 180 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 be hard. Face life defiant. Live dangerously. 
 Will to live in perfect power." So far 
 Nietzsche! And this was the gospel indus- 
 triously preached and practised in Germany 
 during the years following 1870, and it 
 brought about the decay of a great national 
 soul. 
 
 Now all that will have to be changed. In 
 the future, as in the past, we shall have to 
 live with Germany and to reckon with Ger- 
 many as one of the potent factors in the 
 world's life and we cannot live on good 
 terms with a nation possessed of such a mood 
 as that just indicated. It will have to be 
 changed. 
 
 It cannot be changed by contempt, bitter- 
 ness, and hatred. Satan does not cast out 
 Satan. Beelzebub, the prince of the devils, 
 does not turn around and cast out all the 
 other devils. The quality of national life in 
 Germany can only be changed by a finer 
 quality of national soul in those countries 
 with which Germany will have to live. There 
 must be a finer quality of soul in Britain, 
 in France, in Italy, and in the United States 
 of America. And that plain fact brings home 
 to us all an immediate sense of duty. 
 
 We can readily see the defects in other 
 nations are we equally ready to recognize
 
 SOCIAL BEBUILDERS 181 
 
 them in our own national life? It is for us 
 to ask ourselves whether at this hour the 
 stream of personal ambition and of self- 
 interest is not running more strongly here in 
 our own land than is the sense of the necessity 
 for social discipline, for ordered activity, and 
 for the acceptance of our full share of respon- 
 sibility for the peace and good order of the 
 world. 
 
 "If drunk with sight of power, we loose 
 Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe, 
 
 Such boasting as the Gentiles use 
 Or lesser breeds without the law: 
 
 Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, 
 
 Lest we forget, lest we forget. 
 
 "Far-called our navies melt away, 
 
 On dune and headland sinks the fire; 
 
 Lo, all our pomp of yesterday 
 Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! 
 
 Judge of the nations, spare us yet, 
 
 Lest we forget, lest we forget. 
 
 "The tumult and the shouting dies; 
 
 The captains and the kings depart; 
 Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, 
 
 An humble and a contrite heart; 
 Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, 
 Lest we forget, lest we forget." 
 
 The duty of contributing to the develop- 
 ment of that finer quality of national soul is 
 immediate and personal. The government of 
 this country is not at Washington it has
 
 182 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 
 
 never been at Washington. The government 
 is here. It is here and there and yonder 
 wherever the people are. The court of last 
 appeal in this land is what the people think 
 and feel and that upon which they are highly 
 resolved. And to the development and main- 
 tenance of that public sentiment, that quality 
 of national soul, every man and woman 
 among us is constantly giving either of his 
 best or some poor weak substitute which rep- 
 resents that which is second or third rate. 
 And upon the quality of that common soul the 
 issue of these great days will turn. 
 
 I have the feeling that the young people 
 who have been privileged to live through the 
 last six years, witnessing one of the great 
 epochs in human history, will have a much 
 more vivid sense of the content and meaning 
 of this period and of its bearing upon the 
 future of the race than they have of some of 
 the significant periods of history in the past. 
 I was told recently of a certain high school 
 I do not remember just where it was ; it was 
 not in Indiana and I hope it was not in Con- 
 necticut where an examination was being 
 held in history. The teacher placed certain 
 questions on the blackboard and among the 
 rest was this query: "Write what you know 
 about Magna Charta."
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 183 
 
 When the papers were handed in it was 
 found that one young lady in the second year 
 of high school had produced the following: 
 ' ' Magna Charta was a soldier in the Revolu- 
 tionary War. He was shot in a battle and his 
 wife at once went to the front to take care 
 of him. But when she found that he was 
 dead, Mrs. Charta took up his gun and said, 
 'Shoot if you must this old gray head, but 
 I will fight it out on this line if it takes all 
 summer.' " 
 
 The young lady had a number of historical 
 references in her production, but, as we say 
 in baseball, she did not get her hits very well 
 "bunched." The young people of this gen- 
 eration will have a much more real and accu- 
 rate sense of the meaning of these recent 
 events during the Great War and of their 
 bearing upon the further unfolding of our 
 civilization. 
 
 It is a great time to be alive. And to be 
 alive and young is heaven itself. For a thou- 
 sand years other men and women will turn 
 back and study with profound interest the 
 significant history of the last six years and 
 the still more significant history of those six 
 years which are just ahead. They will realize 
 more fully than do we the bearing of all that 
 upon the whole future welfare of our race.
 
 184 SOCIAL KEBUILDEES 
 
 "For our own age this much can be said. 
 The stake was never so great nor so widely 
 realized. To shake ourselves free forever 
 from the tyranny of war or to be condemned 
 to the prospects of conflicts growing steadily 
 more savage and destructive till civilization 
 becomes its own murderer; to lift industrial 
 life into a genuine cooperation between direc- 
 tion and labor, capital and brain and muscle, 
 or to watch the world of industry desolated 
 by struggles fiercer than in the fiercest days 
 of the past ; to rid the world of ancient forms 
 of poverty and disease and behold joy in 
 widest commonalty spread, or to acquiesce 
 in still more glaring contrasts of wealth and 
 poverty than we knew when the arts of ex- 
 ploitation were still comparatively young 
 these are the issues that face us to-day. 
 Nothing seems too good to be hoped for; 
 nothing too evil to be feared." 
 
 It was the distinguished author of "The 
 American Commonwealth," James Bryce, 
 who wrote these words in a letter to a friend 
 less than a year ago : "In my judgment there 
 has never been a time at which the systematic 
 and impartial study of social and economic 
 questions has been so urgent as at the present 
 day. We stand on the threshold of a new 
 age. The problems which confront us and
 
 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 185 
 
 the other leading democratic states of the 
 world are of the most complex and the most 
 vital character and can only be solved by 
 patient examination conducted in the spirit 
 of scientific detachment accompanied by a 
 wide diffusion of adult civilization. To avert 
 the grave conflict between classes and inter- 
 ests we must in good time inquire into and 
 determine so far as possible their courses and 
 conditions. "We need, therefore, to-day and at 
 once a much more adequate provision for 
 social research and for giving publicity to the 
 result of such research. But to be most fruit- 
 ful our work must be conceived in a large 
 and liberal spirit." 
 
 How much it would mean for the develop- 
 ment of this finer quality of national soul if, 
 as Dr. William P. Merrill, of the Brick 
 Church, New York, has pointed out, that 
 fifteenth psalm, revered alike by Catholic, 
 Protestant, and Hebrew, could be chanted in 
 the terms of national and international life! 
 In that event the ancient scripture would 
 read like this : 
 
 ''Lord, what nation shall stand in thy pres- 
 ence or dwell in thy holy hill? The nation 
 that walketh uprightly, that setteth justice 
 first and speaketh the truth in its heart. The 
 nation that slandereth not its neighbors, nor
 
 186 SOCIAL KEBUILDEES 
 
 setteth spies upon another nation, nor cherish- 
 eth a grudge toward any people. The nation 
 that sweareth to its own hurt and changeth 
 not, in whose eyes a reprobate nation is de- 
 spised. The nation that useth not its strength 
 to oppress the weak or to destroy the help- 
 less. The nation that doeth these things shall 
 never be moved. ' ' If these noble sentiments 
 might be embedded in the spirit of the na- 
 tion's life, it would mean a quality of soul in 
 which all the nations of the world would be 
 blessed. 
 
 When I reflect upon the task of creating 
 this spirit and temper among our people, I 
 think instantly of the work of the teachers 
 in our public schools. We saw at the begin- 
 ning of this lecture that Nehemiah did not 
 bring money nor material to the task of social 
 rebuilding no more do they, for the public 
 has paid them so meagerly that they have 
 little money to bring. It has been a reproach 
 to the nation that these public servants in the 
 only institution we have which speaks to all 
 classes, all races, and all creeds alike should 
 have been so sadly underpaid. 
 
 But, like the prophet of old, these public- 
 school teachers bring to the work of rebuild- 
 ing impulse, inspiration, and leadership. 
 They are not merely engaged in the work of
 
 SOCIAL REBUILDERS 187 
 
 imparting information. They are not merely 
 teaching boys and girls to read, write, and 
 add up columns of figures. They are doing 
 something vastly more significant than merely 
 increasing the measure of technical skill in 
 each pupil. They are at work upon the task 
 of maturing, enriching, and ennobling human 
 personality at its most plastic period for a 
 better America. They are steadily saying to 
 the generation whose day of opportunity is 
 just dawning, "Let us rise and build the bet- 
 ter world that is to be." 
 
 The call of the hour is for trained, compe- 
 tent consecrated leaders to stamp that period 
 of history which lies in the immediate future 
 more clearly and more firmly with the like- 
 ness and image of the Son of God. We want 
 men and women who know something of his- 
 tory so that all the foolish experiments which 
 have been tried in the past and have failed 
 will not have to be tried over again. We want 
 men who know something of those sound 
 economic principles which must underlie all 
 human well-being and advance. We want men 
 who know something of the psychology of the 
 human mind, that they may be able to antici- 
 pate and rightly to appraise those thought 
 movements which are destined to become 
 controlling. We want men with the scientific
 
 188 SOCIAL EEBUILDEKS 
 
 habit of mind so that they will be able to 
 "draw the thing as they see it for the God 
 of things as they are." And then coupled 
 with all that skill in the use of the materials 
 of human well-being, we want men and women 
 of vision and high purpose who will work 
 steadily for human betterment with their 
 eyes and their minds upon that social order 
 which hath foundations, whose builder and 
 maker is God.
 
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