Another friendly Jew, Mr. Richard L. Schindler, has come scores of times to our meetings, not to speak, but to use his influence to help protect us and otherwise encourage our work.
Still another friendly son of Abraham gave me information when enemies were plotting against me. He warned them that he would expose them if they did me any harm.
A HUNDRED THOUSAND FOOLISH YOUNG MEN.
Pastors and church people usually have no idea of the multitudes of men and youths from avenues, boulevards and suburbs, who swarm by the ten thousands through the vice districts of great cities on Saturday and Sunday nights, and by hundreds or thousands every other night. Fathers and mothers, sisters, sweethearts and neighbors are ignorant of the ruinous folly of several million American young men. I have counted them passing one street corner in the center of Chicago's red light district—red with the heart's blood of mothers, wives and babies—at the rate of 3,500 an hour. These are the young men of whom we read, "void of understanding" as the book of Proverbs fitly describes them. They gather by troops at the harlots' houses and throng the streets of shame without a blush. They are even ready to give reasons why they should support these slaughter houses, not knowing that "the dead are there and her guests are in the depths of hell."
One night I dreamed that I saw a young man stepping carelessly on and off a railway track, near a curve around which the express train might come thundering and screaming at any moment. Whether on the track or off it, the young man was indifferent to danger and wanton in his movements. But as I looked I saw in my dream, that there was nothing whatever above his coat collar—he had no head. This explained his recklessness. A hundred times I have told this dream to crowds of young men, to illustrate the folly of men who have heads and do not use them—"void of understanding." We have warned probably one hundred thousand of these foolish young men.
The Bible is always with us and always foremost. But some who would pay no regard to an open Bible in the street preacher's hand, instantly give heed when they see the Revised Statutes of Illinois open at the criminal code, and they listen carefully to the section which pronounces them criminal if they patronize an evil resort.
We quote to them the great utterance of Judge Newcomer, spoken before the Methodist Preachers' Meeting of Chicago, September 17, 1906, when he said:
THE CRIMES OF YOUNG MEN.
"The great majority of criminals now are young men—an appalling crop of them year by year. After seven and a half years' experience in the state's attorney's office, during which I have dealt with six thousand criminal cases, sending seven to the gallows and hundreds to the penitentiary and reformatory, I believe that the chief causes of crime among young men are: 1, Liquor; 2, Lust; 3, Drugs; 4, Bad associates. Of these, liquor, bad as it is, is not the chief cause of crime among young men. The chief cause is that next after liquor. The welfare of the city, of the commonwealth, of society as a whole, of the national life itself, is menaced, to a degree exceeding any other cause, by the social evil."
We have never hesitated to warn our hearers by the prisons, by the gallows, by the most tremendous issues of life, death and eternity.