THE INDUSTRIAL PLANT
was really brought about by two tragedies. One cold day I went to the Mission, and on the outside I saw a man, whom I shall call Kelly, shivering at the door. He looked like death, pale, trembling, the lips and nostrils drawn as if in extreme pain. “What is the matter, Kelly?” I said. “I am starving to death; amid all these happy people I am left out. I have walked the streets hunting work till I can walk no more.”
At that time we did not provide food of any kind, but I said, “Let us go up stairs to the Mission,” where Mr. Proctor, then acting as Superintendent, provided bread and coffee. I set the man to re-whitewashing the dormitories, and we kept him till he secured work.
The other was the case of a young man just released from Moundsville Penitentiary. After I had given the lesson one Tuesday night, I was led to tell in detail the story of Valentine Burke, a man converted in the St. Louis jail, from reading one of Mr. Moody's sermons in a city newspaper. Mr. Burke afterward became a valuable citizen, held the position of assistant warden, and led hundreds of lost men into the clear light of the gospel. When I had finished, a well-dressed man on the front seat said, “I am just out of Moundsville; no one has spoken a kind word to me, I have had nothing to eat to-day, I see no way but to steal again.” He was only about twenty-two years of age. I put my arm over his shoulder and said, “Son, we will take care of you and get you work.” The Superintendent took him up stairs, gave him bread and coffee, then a warm bath, but he was so weary the men had to help him to get to bed. We all tried to get that boy work, but as soon as the word penitentiary was mentioned every door was closed. I remember walking up Capitol Hill, crying aloud to God, “Give us an industrial plant or the sorrows of homeless, workless men will take my life.”
I paid for the food for a week. He tried also to obtain work, but I think the sight of my anxious face worried him—I have learned not to carry sorrow in my face since then. That boy slipped through our fingers and went back to crime. Now, at whose hands will that soul, anxious for better things, be required?
Before I went for my summer vacation I urged before the Board an industrial plant. Mr. Kline strenuously objected. During that vacation I laid the matter very fully before God in prayer and felt constrained to urge the starting of an industrial work.
At our first meeting in September Mr. Kline said, “Brethren, I have come to see the need of an industrial plant, not only so that men can earn lodging, but where, after conversion, we can keep a man a few days to teach him the way of life.” A Mission worker often prays himself into light.
Again I was forced to borrow money with which to purchase a horse and wagon. Mrs. Spindle loaned me the $150 needed. That fall my little book, called “The Life of Gustavus Adolphus,” published by The Lutheran Publication Society, Philadelphia, came out. The house gave me $25 in cash, if I remember correctly, and 100 copies of the book, which I sold at 40 cents a copy. So I gave the $65 of my own on the horse and wagon in paying back Mrs. Spindle for the loan.
In some way we also secured a paper baler, thus we gave two men work in collecting books, newspapers, etc., and two men at the baler. In the November Gospel Tidings we announced that the wagon from the Gospel Mission would call on the first and fifteenth of the month, and would accept papers, rags, clothes, bottles, etc., saying, “We have old men who separate these things and label and bale this material.” The money was used to feed and care for these unfortunates.
The city people responded most generously, and in this way our industrial branch was started, and greatly benefited the Mission for two and a half years.
Later we obtained a wood-saw run by a gasoline engine, and we started the penny bundling industry, where we could use eight or ten men and make the double purpose of work for unfortunate men and yet make the industry self-supporting.
When the United States granted wood pulp to be brought into the country free of duty, our paper industry was destroyed, as we could not sell the paper, and the government took our woodyard and killed our wood industry, but they both did much good in their day.
The Gospel Mission in the fall of 1914 will again open a laundry, wood cutting, rope-making, printing, and chair caning in the line of industries for men who will gladly work rather than eat the bread of charity.
CHAPTER II
Rescue Mission Work
When I was called to assist in the Gospel Mission, I was not a novice in rescue work, having been among the workers of the Sunday Breakfast Association in Philadelphia, Pa., for twelve years under the direction of Mr. Lewis Bean, probably one of the ablest mission workers of this or any other country. The Sunday Breakfast is, so far as I know, the largest Rescue Mission of this country.