Part 3 (1/2)
Thank you indeed, and thank you still more for these seventeen years of most extraordinary service, and personal loyalty and friends.h.i.+p. I can never tell you how much I have appreciated them, and do appreciate them. I know I have made life harder for you--both in the work I have put on you--and by the way I have often left you to carry the burden unaided. But I know too that the Spirit has carried you on and filled you with new visions and powers of life. And that makes all the rest worth while. I am so glad that you are coming up to us at Cranberry. I know you will love its loveliness, and in its quiet and the sweep of sea and sky, you will find refreshment and renewed strength. And then we can talk not of plans and work, but what lies beneath them, faith and G.o.d and the abundant life.
As his forty years' ministry came to a close, there was throughout the entire city a growing crescendo of acclaim, which found fervent expression in words like these: ”He was our best friend for years.”
Deeper than the affection which drew forth such recognition was his profound faith in the Father-G.o.d of all mankind. It was Frank Nelson's limitless trust in his Heavenly Father that gave him his strength and influence. Many an evening on his way home he went into his church or chapel to pray, and lay before G.o.d the problems and griefs of his people which he carried in his great heart.
”Therefore to thee it was given Many to save with thyself; And, at the end of the day, O faithful shepherd! to come, Bringing thy sheep in thy hand.”[8]
FOOTNOTES:
[8] _Rugby Chapel_ by Matthew Arnold. Macmillan Co. Used by permission.
_The Spokesman of the City's Conscience_
”_He so stirred the very soul of our responsibility for social living that we felt he had come to break the old city's sleep of habit or despair._”
--_Miss Edith Campbell_
4
Frank Nelson loved the city, and was moved by its swift, tumultuous life; hence, he was able to stir it. No mere reformer or ”up-lifter” who sees only ugliness and sordidness can effect very far-reaching changes, and retain his faith. Mr. Nelson succeeded in both. He came to Cincinnati under the high compulsion of a mission, and relinquished his work on the same high plane of faith and vision. To have retained such conviction over a period of forty years in the sort of work which was his testifies to a quality of realism that is at once impressive and authoritative. He knew the vice and corruption that lurked the streets, and yet he reiterated to the end that ”there is a glory in the city seen in the faces of men and women, boys and girls, which is the immortal soul growing clean, and entering into paradise.” Something of that glory he created. Christ Church is located in Ward Six, formerly Ward Eight, and there also Mr. Nelson had his residence at 311 Pike Street. One of the boys who grew up in the district and is now a successful business man declares that this ward would be entirely different today if it had not been for Frank Nelson and the work carried on in Christ Church. But this clergyman's work and influence spread far outside his parish and beyond his ward.
By many Catholics, Jews, and Protestants Frank Nelson was acknowledged as ”the flaming sword of the Charter Movement”; the man who so interpreted the Community Chest that ”he made it a platform upon which every man could stand”; and in the minds of some of them he so o'er-leaped sectarian differences that they considered him their minister. His was a position as unique as it was remarkable considering the fact that he held no t.i.tle or high-ranking office such as Bishop.
This minister quickened the conscience of Cincinnati, and brought into full bloom vague, half-formed ideals. Many looked upon him as the spokesman of the city's conscience.
Mr. Nelson did not grow up in an age of radical and revolutionary economic and social programs. He was not a student of such philosophies, yet he had in his heart that particular treasure, namely an affection for people, for the fortunate and no less for the poor and the dispossessed. Without this love for the common man, these philosophies are never translated into the natural order of things nor ever become more than intellectual p.r.o.nouncements. He was neither a mystic nor a reformer, but a citizen who was deeply cognizant of religious faith as laying upon him and upon everyone a compulsive service. This mighty conviction he expressed in varying ways as we shall see, but never in more arresting words than in a sermon which he preached on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Presbyterian Church of The Covenant from the text, ”Ye shall not see my face except your brother be with you.” Though delivered in 1916, this sermon was recalled twenty-three years later on the occasion of Mr. Nelson's retirement as a consummate expression of his faith and convictions, namely that we are not isolated individuals each to be saved by means of self-centered piety, but only through practicing religion in fellows.h.i.+p with one another.
A study of his annual reports indicates that from his St. George's days he was dominated by the vision of the Church as having a mission to the city. As early as 1903 he outlined the conditions that confront Christian people, and the relation of the Church to them:
The city of today is the point of concentration of the forces that are making the character, and determining the standards of our time. So complex is our modern civilization that it is not possible to separate the individual in our estimation of his standards and character from the conditions by which he is surrounded, and in which he lives. For they vitally influence his point of view, his ideals, his efforts to attain them. A boy who grows up in an atmosphere of openly accepted corruption will inevitably lack sensitiveness of moral perception. Our young men and women, our boys and girls are subjected to a moral pressure that is extremely difficult to resist. What is the duty of the Church? The moral welfare of these young people is its intimate concern. It may, and it must, bring to bear a counter pressure of high individual moral standards and ideals. It may, and it must, hold up before them faith in purity and honesty, and persuade them to receive it. But that is not enough. It must utter its word of protest against the rule of the Boss, not because it wishes to enter the arena of politics, not because it differs from him on political questions, not even because he is the denial of democracy, but because he maintains his power of corrupting manhood and womanhood by protecting and fostering vice in order that they may be his allies. It must utter its protest against the dictum, ”Whatever pays is right,” not because it wishes to dictate business methods, or to set itself up as an authority on economics, but because it finds this corruption in business demoralizing to standards and character. It must utter its protest against overcrowded and unsanitary tenement houses, not because it considers its function to be the censors.h.i.+p of buildings, but because such conditions breed immorality among the boys and girls. The individual message alone is made ineffective by the constant pressure of these conditions. To make that message effective, the conditions must be changed. And it is peculiarly the work of a church, situated as is Christ Church, to say and do what it can to make them intolerable to the conscience of a Christian city. I have said all this because I want you to see clearly the place in the pulpit and church of such preaching and work as we have tried to give and do. We must go forward with increasing energy and purpose, and that whether the results seem great or small. We may, and must, at least sow the seed in the faith that G.o.d will inevitably bring it to the harvest.
Again and again he thundered, ”The conditions must be made intolerable to the conscience of a Christian city,” and the spirit of the times rolled back the sterile answer, ”It can't be done in Cincinnati.” But he shook himself like a lion and took up the battle.
The fight for honest munic.i.p.al government in Cincinnati was a mighty one and the story of it is fairly well known, but a few pertinent facts are essential as a background to Mr. Nelson's part in it. For more than thirty years George B. c.o.x controlled the city by all the devices known to the wily, astute politician. Few presumed to run for any office on the Republican ticket without his approval. Unburdened by shame, he declared, ”I am the Boss of Cincinnati ... I've got the best system of government in this country. If I didn't think my system was the best, I would consider that I was a failure in life.” He openly derided reformers. Lincoln Steffens had surveyed and written up the city as he had many others and declared it under the dominance of ”the most vicious political gang in any city.” Few inroads were made on c.o.x's preserves until after his death in 1916. At the close of World War I, the city began to reap the bitterest and most evil results of its contentment with benevolent despotism, and in 1922 found itself verging on bankruptcy. Aroused citizens were determined not only that Cincinnati should have an efficient, economical government but also that its reputation as a sink of iniquity should be erased.
When the Republican organization perceived that an investigation was inescapable, it determined to name the investigators! The Republican Executive and Advisory Committee appointed a survey committee to devise a plan to solve the city's and county's most pressing administrative and financial problems. A distinguished group was selected; among the members were Frank H. Nelson, George H. Warrington, Charles P. Taft, and other eminent citizens some twenty-one in number. This committee engaged Dr. Lent D. Upson of the Detroit Bureau of Governmental Research, who with a large staff of specialists proceeded to turn the city and county governments inside out. The Upson Report furnished the ammunition for what turned out to be nothing short of a revolution.
A City Charter Committee had been organized which, after the Upson Committee reported, proposed an amendment to the city's home rule charter embodying the city manager plan of munic.i.p.al government and a small council of nine elected at large by proportional representation.
In the fall of 1924 the critical issue was submitted to the electorate, and a significant victory won. ”This new movement, its representatives youthful, clear-eyed, energetic and determined, took its place in the books of our history as the first reform enterprise of any permanence in a great city of the United States.”[9] In this crusade of civic warriors Frank Nelson ranked as ”a flaming sword,” to use the colorful phrase of his friend Mr. Ralph Holterhoff. He was a constant worker in planting the first seeds of the moral rightness of the cause, the crusader whose faith clarified the fundamental religious background inherent in good government. During the initial campaign of 1924, Mr.
Nelson, preaching this gospel from his pulpit, carried his parish with him into the righteous cause, and he literally toured the city wards as well. When the City Charter Committee was given permanent form, following the sweeping victory of November 1924, it is significant that the organization meeting was held in the Parish House of Christ Church.
Among the speakers were Mr. Nelson, Charles P. Taft, John R. Schindel, and Henry Bentley, who was known as ”the Commander of the legions that gave a city a new body and a new soul,” all of them leaders in the campaign, and members and vestrymen of Christ Church. Another paris.h.i.+oner, Ralph Holterhoff, was, almost single-handed, responsible for financing the Committee's work for its next fifteen years.
Repeatedly throughout successive years Mr. Nelson spoke at Charter rallies, giving a series of remarkably effective addresses which a.s.sisted immeasurably in sustaining the zest and interest of citizens in the reform ideal. As Mr. Murray Seasongood has said, ”The technique of good local government has been developed by study, but the will to bring about good local government has not been infused into the residents of our cities.” Toward that will and fusion in the city of Cincinnati, men are agreed that Frank Nelson's moral and spiritual contribution was enormous. Leaders declare that in routing the forces of corrupt government from their strongholds, his was the most powerful voice raised in the city. His trenchant words, his statesmanlike ability spurred the lagging energies and fired men's spirits to greater effort; he gave the necessary courage and drive and inspiration to carry through and maintain the reform movement. ”It is the man of ideals and faith,”
Frank Nelson reiterated, ”who has more courage than any politician. We shall set our faces steadfastly to the victory not only for good government and efficiency, but for the morality and the righteousness and the power of faith in this community.” In the opinion of Mr. Ralph Holterhoff, the treasurer of the City Charter organization, Mr. Nelson, by his extensive contacts with all cla.s.ses of citizens, radiating not only through his parish but throughout the entire fabric of Cincinnati's economic and social life, aroused the people with more success than any other individual. He literally mustered thousands of recruits who became zealous apostles and voters for the cause, although many had not voted for years because they felt nothing could be done about the existing evils. During the recurring campaigns for councilmen, Mr. Nelson was at the beck and call of the organization, giving extravagantly of his time and vitality at many rallies, particularly at the opening meeting of campaigns, where he either was the keynote speaker or took such part as expressed the religious convictions that lay behind the movement.
”Hearing him,” wrote Alfred Segal, a newspaper columnist, ”people felt that good government was more than a matter of efficiency and economy.
It had to do with civic self-respect and social morale and bright ideals.”
Because the issue was clearly moral, this minister did not hesitate to use his pulpit and his parish organization to further the cause. It is a tribute to his church that he met with only minor criticism. He carried his people with him because he enabled them to perceive the relations.h.i.+p between religion and politics. Of course he met with criticism from those who felt that a clergyman should remain aloof from politics, yet at the same time he was genuinely admired and respected by those who did not agree with him. Several of his bitterest political critics, such as, for example, James Garfield Stewart, and Doc Hagen, a ward politician, were not lacking in keen appreciation of his position. And on other civic issues where he made no concealment of his opinions he was, according to Herbert Bigelow, the minister of The People's Church and a former city councilman, ”never a trimmer, and those who have seen him in tight places never saw him crawl.”
Though the Cincinnati Community Chest is not in politics, it has definitely influenced the course of good government because of the character of the people who carry on the work of the numerous social agencies which it comprises. In 1913, these agencies were organized into a Council, and Frank Nelson's vision, enthusiasm and tireless efforts were determining factors in welding together the diverse religious and racial groups engaged in social service throughout the city. Through this Council, multiple activities were coordinated, and Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant welfare agencies were kindled with new spirit and power which resulted in greater efficiency and an increased opportunity for reaching larger numbers of people. As a consequence, the majority of the social welfare enterprises were able to make a united financial appeal, and since 1919 have continued together without a break in the ranks. Charles P. Taft says of the Cincinnati Community Chest: