The Redemption of Freetown

by Charles M. Sheldon

"1. A building constructed on purpose for the work we need to do. This will cost anywhere from two thousand to three thousand dollars.

"2. This building must be equipped for kindergarten work. It must contain a day-nursery for the babies of mothers who are obliged to go away from home all day to labor, a kitchen where cooking can be taught, bath-rooms, a reading-room, smaller rooms for classes in sewing or music, a dispensary, an office, and a basement fitted for teaching trades.

"3. The plan also includes a list of premiums or prizes given to the people of Freetown to encourage neatness, thrift, and industry. These prizes are to be offered for the best gardens, the finest individual collection of vegetables, the neatest-looking front and back yard and alley, the neatest interior of a house, the best flower-beds, the largest and best fruit-garden, and the most improvements on any place in a year.

"4. The plan also includes the establishment of regular Sunday work, a Sunday school, preaching services, good music, and distribution of good reading-matter at the houses during the afternoon.

"5. To make the plan succeed, we must have money enough to endow the institution. It must be permanent in its character in order to produce results. As much money must be put into it as is put into a business of any sort where we expect to get large results. Over $50,000,000 are invested in the bicycle industry in the United States. The redemption of Freetown is of much more importance to the human race than all the bicycles in the world. It is useless to expect to lift up the people over there unless we can get and use large sums of money. I have estimated that it will take from $2,000 to $3,000 a year to maintain the work in Freetown on a successful basis.

"6. The last point in the plan is the most important."

The minister paused in his reading, and looked around at the three men. They were all very much interested, and Judge Vernon and Mr. Carlton seemed to be specially excited. Mr. Douglass went on.

"What is absolutely necessary to the success of this plan is the voluntary residence in the heart of Freetown of some of the best men and women in Merton. That is, the house must contain, all the year around, Christian men and women who are willing to live for certain weeks or months with the work, direct it from the centre, and give their talents, their strength, their wisdom, personally to a solution of the terrible problems over there. We can get money to build the house; we can get premiums to carry out our plans for encouraging industry; we can get enough money, probably, to endow the work.

"The question now is, Can we get people, the best and best-known, and most able to go over there and live with the people? That, to my mind, is the heart of the problem. When the Christian world is willing to give itself to the redemption of the unchristian world, it will be redeemed. When Christian Merton is willing to give itself for unchristian Freetown, it will be redeemed. The question really is, How many of the best men and women are ready to go and live for a while in that house?