HIS WORK IN CHICAGO.
“How did you go about your work in this city?”
“The first thing that seemed necessary for me to do was to find a place where homeless boys of the city who had drifted into error and troubles of various kinds could be taken into the country and educated. I preached a sermon on this subject, and one member gave a fine farm of two hundred and forty acres for the purpose. Plymouth Church built Plymouth Cottage there, and the Illinois Training School was moved there, and other additions were made, gradually adding to its usefulness.”
“The church grew under your ministration there, did it not?”
“You can leave off that about me. It grew, yes, and we established a mission.”
“Was there not a sum raised for this?”
“Yes; Mr. Joseph Armour gave a hundred thousand dollars to house this mission, and the church has since aided it in various ways.”
“This Armour Institute is an idea of yours, is it not?”
“Well, it is in line with my ideas in what it accomplishes. It is the outcome of Mr. Armour’s great philanthropy.”
“Do you find, now that you have experimented so much, that your ideals concerning what ought to be done for the world were too high?” I asked.
“On the contrary,” answered Dr. Gunsaulus, “I have sometimes felt that they were not high enough. If they had been less than they are, I should not have accomplished what I have.”
“What has been your experience as to working hours?”
“I have worked twelve and fourteen, at times even eighteen hours a day, particularly when I was working to establish this institution, but I paid for it dearly. I suffered a paralytic stroke which put me on my back for nine months, and in that time you see I not only suffered, but lost all I had gained by the extra hours.”