Part 25 (1/2)

My next and last job in the South was punching logs in Pensacola harbour for a dollar and six ”bits” a day. There I got material for several stories of peons who had escaped from the woods.

While in Pensacola I made a visit, one Sunday morning, to the city jail and asked permission to address the prisoners. The jailer, of course, wanted to know what an unkempt labourer had to say to his charges.

In order to convince him I had to deliver an exegesis before the desk!

The cells were iron cages with stone floors.

A young Englishman, who had just landed after a long sea voyage the night before, was the first man to whom I talked. He claimed to have been drugged and robbed in a saloon. The fact of his incarceration was a small thing to him; what made him swear was the condition of his cage. The excrements of probably half a dozen of his predecessors in the cell lay around him, nauseating and suffocating him. Fire shot from his eyes as he pointed to it. He was bitter, sarcastic, sneering, and with evident and abundant cause.

Whatever I had to say to the men and women in that dungeon that morning was driven from my mind and my lips.

The young man pushed all the resentment of his soul over into mine! I spent that Sunday in working out a plan by which I could help Pensacola to clean up this social ulcer.

There was a Tourist Club there and I offered to lecture for them. It was arranged for the following Sunday afternoon. I called on the mayor and he promised to preside. I interviewed several aldermen and they promised to attend. I lectured for forty minutes on my experiences as a labourer in the camps of the South, and for ten minutes at the close described what I had seen in the city jail.

It was a somewhat heroic method of treatment, and I did not remain long enough to see the effect, but I at least deprived them of the plea of ignorance.

I found in Florida two Government officials who had done splendid work in behalf of labour. I mean the labourers who were decoyed by false promises and brutally abused on their arrival in the camps. They were both modest men--men unlikely to enter politics for personal advancement. I cut my articles out of the magazine and sent them to President Roosevelt, calling his attention to the conditions and commending these men to his notice. The result was that they were both promoted to positions where their usefulness was increased and the cause of labour considerably helped.

CHAPTER XXI

AT THE CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION

A group of literary people with whom I was acquainted had rented No. 3 Fifth Avenue, and were operating a cooperative housekeeping scheme. I became part of the plan and it was there that I first met the Rector of the Church of the Ascension, the Rev. Percy Stickney Grant.

Naturally, we talked of the church and its work. I was so impressed with Mr. Grant's bigness that I volunteered to devote some of my spare time to the work of his parish. A few weeks later I got a letter from him inviting me to become a member of his staff. This was a surprise to me, but I made no immediate decision. I was earning a comfortable living and devoting my spare time to the Socialist propaganda. I was _free_--very free--and I saw danger ahead in church work.

I had several interviews with Mr. Grant and went over the situation. I wasn't a man with Socialistic tendencies; I was a Socialist--a member of the party.

The danger ahead looked smaller to Mr. Grant than it did to me. He had absolute confidence in the broad-minded men of affairs around him. My Socialism was explained and understood. Just how to fit in was the next problem.

The mission of the church is at No. 10 Horatio Street. It was without a minister in charge. For a few Sunday evenings I conducted the service. The audience was composed of half a dozen parishoners and a dozen of my personal friends. Mr. Grant knew nothing of my ability in public address. I took his place one night in the church and that ended my career at the chapel. I had discarded an ecclesiastical t.i.tle I possessed but never used; I became a lay reader in the Episcopal Church--the church of my youth--the church in which I was baptized and confirmed.

The conference and discussion following the service was an afterthought. The audiences steadily grew. It was and is the most cosmopolitan audience I ever saw. I wanted to get acquainted with the people and suggested a sort of reception in the chapel. The ladies of the church provided refreshments.

”Who is that man?” one of the ladies at the tea table asked one night.

”He is a Socialist agitator,” I answered.

”Why don't you ask him to talk?”

The man was Sol Fieldman and I asked him to speak for five minutes. He did so and from that time the character of the after-meeting changed.

The first few evenings after the change the speaking was very informal: any one of note who happened to be in the meeting was asked to speak. Later, the invitation was enlarged and any one who desired to speak could do so. Then came a time limit. A workingman asked that the refreshments be cut out. The table took up valuable s.p.a.ce and the time consumed in ”serving” was ”a pure waste,” so he said. Then we arranged for a formal presentation of a topic and a discussion to follow it.

The Socialists were always in the majority. Every Socialist is a propagandist--not always an intelligent propagandist. Intelligent and leading Socialists are generally engaged Sunday evenings, so the majority of those who came to us were of the hard-working kind--limited, very limited, in the literary expression of the social soul flame that so pa.s.sionately moves them.

Some of our church officers who took an active part in the first year's meetings were somewhat alarmed at the brusqueness of these men and women, and undertook to correct their manners.

The Rector understood. And with great patience and tact he heard all.