How natural it was and how inevitable that the poor should not be there shone clear as day the moment that I regarded the matter from the subjective attitude of a genuine worker.
From their status as citizens in a free land, American workingmen have acquired, together with the sense of individual freedom, the quality, in very marked degree, of self-respect. It exhibits itself sometimes in highly contradictory fashion, for it is sensitive and jealous in the making; but self-respect is none the less a fundamental characteristic.
Besides Dennis and three others, who were Roman Catholics, the men at Mrs. Schulz’s boarding-house did not go to church. In talking with them I discovered that all had been more or less in the habit of church-going in their country homes, but that the habit had dropped completely from them upon coming to live in town. The case was perfectly apparent. The mere suggestion of a mission church was insulting to them and, from the new idea of churches for the rich, they had learned their first lesson in class distinctions. Every feature of such a church, its richly dressed occupants in their high-priced pews, and the general atmosphere of merely social superiority, would have inflicted upon these men, in spite of a cordial welcome, as deep a wound to their self-respect as they would have felt in being decoyed to a formal reception in a lady’s drawing-room. To them, the latter function could not be more obviously intended for another class than theirs.
One night, before I left the factory, Albert spoke his mind to me on the subject with much freedom. Several times I had asked him to come with me to church, and on this particular Saturday evening I spoke of a preacher whom I hoped to hear in the morning, and who, I urged, would surely interest him.
“Look here, John,” he said, finally, “it’s all right you asking me to go to church, but I ain’t going. I used to go regular when I lived to home, although I ain’t no church-member. It was different out there, for most everybody went and chipped in what they could, and everybody sat where they liked, and it wasn’t one man’s church more than another’s. You go to church if you like. That’s your own business. But I ain’t going to no one-horse mission chapel that the rich has put up so they won’t be bothered with the poor in their own churches. You say they treat you well when you go to church on Michigan Avenue. I don’t doubt it. What reason would they have for not treating you well? But, all the same, they take you in for charity, for you couldn’t pay for a seat in one of them churches. No, sir, the rich folks build their churches for themselves, and they keep them up for themselves, and I ain’t never going to interfere with that arrangement. I don’t mind going to the meetings of the Association once in awhile, for there’s fellows of your own kind there, and you hear some good speaking and singing. I ain’t got much use even for that, for it’s only a sideshow that’s run mostly by the rich, but I ain’t got no use at all for your churches.”
Nevertheless, on the whole, I was sorry the next morning that Albert was not with me. There were moments when I did not regret it, but the sermon, for all its strange setting, was one which could scarcely have failed to impress him.
After a seven o’clock breakfast, which seemed luxuriously late, and which Dennis and I shared alone on Sunday mornings, I set out as usual for the South Side. It was five miles to my destination in that section of the city, and I always walked both ways, for sometimes I had not the fare, and, in any case, ten cents saved was no mean item in a careful account of possible economy.
The Sundays of my term of service in the factory were, for the most part, splendid winter days, and this was of the best. No snow lay on the ground, no winter wind stirred the dust in the long, quiet streets, and clear from out the cloudless sky came the glowing rays of the sun, tempering the cold air to the exquisite delicacy of reviving warmth wherein you catch your breath with wonder, so charged is it with the mystery of the coming spring. Walking, on such a day, is of the essence of delight. Some measure of bodily exercise is needed to keep one warm, and this forth-faring on a holiday, free from the necessity of labor, which begins almost with the dawn of consciousness after sleep and ends only as the night of sleep closes down upon one, is a form of pleasure which life does not often match.
The spell of it bore me company through the factory region, and where there opened to my view mile after mile of lumber-yards, with unsightly piles of seasoning timber stretching away to where the vessels lie in the canals which are fed from the river, and there rise the gaunt bulks of towering elevators, and the tall chimneys that everywhere send forth their ceaseless volumes of black smoke. All this was eloquent of work, and wages, and the means of decent living, and it therefore had a beauty which will not be denied to it by one who knows something of the misery of the unemployed. Even the grotesque ugliness of the long lines of buildings, as I entered the closely built-up sections of the town, could not rob me of the comforting sense of shelter and much legitimate business among the well-paid working poor.
But, before crossing thence to the South Side, there remains a belt through which even the stanchest optimism on its way to church on a bright Sunday morning could scarcely pass without misgivings. A varying foreign population, chiefly from southern and eastern Europe, thickens here to a point of incredible crowding, and sweat-shops abound, and cheap bakeries, and there is a marked increase in the number of pawn-shops and saloons.