Newspaper Page Text
opens Rev. James E. Walker, Mr. Sun
day's assistant, visits the city, stirs up
interest, and stimulates the organiza
tion of choirs, a corps of ushers, per
sonal workers, and cottage prayer
meetings. Committees of all kinds are
appointed to look after every detail of
the work. Including committees to
plan for work among men In shops
and factories, among business women,
among students, among boys and girls,
and among church members. By the
time that the Sunday party arrives an
Immense amount of preparatory work
has been done, and the city, stirred by
newspaper accounts of what Is going
on, is on tip-toe of expectation.
It Is the preliminary work that fills
the tabernacle at the first services.
On Sunday mornings co-operating
churches close, and their members go
to the forenoon service in the taber
nacle, which Is always overflowing.
A Sunday campaign Is a magnificent
justification of the Christian Endeavor
Committee system. A Chinese worker
once said to a friend whom he was
inviting to the society gathering,
"You've got to come, for we have a
committee to fetch you." Billy Sun
day has committees to fetch people.
He believes In hard commmlttee work.
His associates are organizers of com
mittees to reach all classes, business
men, business women, nurses, servant
maids, students, boys and girls. The
committees, each under a local church
worker, cover the whole city, and
through the committees the leaders
are able to accomplish an amazing
amount of work.
Lei us see how some of the depart
ments attack their tasks.
Rev. Isaac Ward, who Is director of
men's work, is a man's man, kindly,
sympathetic and straightforward. His
specific task is to reach men wherever
he can find groups to talk to. Of
course he works through the Young
Men's Christian Association, and with
its aid secures admission to many fac
tories. But he also seekB out facto
ries and shops where meetings have
never been held, explains the purpose
of the campaign, and almost always
gets permission to conduct meetings
during the lunch hours.
Often the men he addresses are in
different, sometimes they are positive
ly hostile; but that does not matter,
while the men are eating their lunches,
the members of the little party begin
to sing, and when the men have fin
ished eating they, too, are tempted to
join In the songs. There Is something
about the singing ? or is it the sing
ers? ? that melts opposition. Faces
relax, the sneer disappears, the light
of a new interest illumines the eyes.
Mr. Ward explains the campaign, sets
right some common false impressions,
and then makes a simple, manly ap
peal to the men to cut out their sins
and be true men. If he has a motto
in this work, It Is this: "Back to God
and back to the church." It is amaz
ing how ready men are to respond.
In one shop in Boston, where no meet
ing had ever been held before, two
thousand men listened earnestly to
the message, and, when Mr. Ward ap
pealed to them to discard their evil
ways, 1,500 showed their intention of
trying by shooting their hands into
the air.
The work's jxist beginning In Bos
ton, but In some cities Mr. Ward and
local workers have held as many as
seventy meetings a week.
It is work that pays. Many wives
have written that after these meetings
they saw for the first time in their
lives the color of a ,pay envelope. In
one city two saloons situated near a
big factory went out of business be
cause the men had no more use for
booze. One woman said after some
shop meetings: "I knew when I saw
my husband coming home that some
thing had happened to him. I knew
because he took oft his hat and waved
It to me as I stood in the window, and
I knew because he passed the corner
saloon." In another factory, not in
Boston, after the usual short talk, a
laborer came up to Mr. Ward and
said: "I wish I had heard that talk
twenty years ago. At that time I was
superintendent of this shop; but booze
got me, and now I'm only a common
laborer."
Billy Sunday encourages the idea of
delegations to the tabernacle> Many
a man will come with his comrades in
a group who would hesitate to go
alone. So Mr. Ward Invites the men
at shops and in factories to come in
groups. Special seats are reserved
for them, and special admission tick
ets are distributed. All workers in
the Sunday party follow this policy.
Work among business girls is even
more highly organized than the fac
tory work with men. A business wo
men's committee has charge of this
work, under the direction of Miss
Frances Miller, of the Sunday party.
This committee appoints two women
in each large department store and in
each office building to work among
the women where they are. These se
lect a girl on each floor of the store,
or on each floor of the office building,
and these girls are expected to reach
the girls around them, invite them to
the meetings, and, if they can, win
them to Christ. Hundreds of girls are
doing this work in Boston. One girl
in the first three weeks of the cam
paign led to Christ eighteen girls and
one young man. Sometimes the work
ers meet opposition, but more often
they receive encouragement. They,
too, plan to bring delegations to the
tabernacle; they issue the tickets, and
talk up the meetings. One large store
sent a thousand girls to one of the
meetings.
But observe, long before the girls in
a store reach the point of wanting to
go in a body, a great deal of personal
work has been done among them.
They have been prayed for as well as
invited. Their interest has been
aroused. They have been thinking
about spiritual things. It needs, per
haps, but one strong word to draw
them "over the line." Many a girl
and man, too ? is on the very verge of
decision before she comes with her
delegation. Is it any wonder that
hundreds are led to make the great
decision?
Three days a week special noon
meetings are held for the business
girls. Lunch is served ? three sub
stantial sandwiches and a cup of cof
fee ? for five cents, and after lunch
Miss Frances Miller talks to the girls
for half an hour. She speaks every
half hour from 11:30 A. M. to 1:30
P. M. A great host of devoted women
from Boston churches prepare and
serve these lunches. The high-watef
mark was reached one day when they
provided for thirteen hundred girls.
Today Congregational women will .be
on duty; another day, Baptist women,
and so around the denominations.
Another worker, Mrs. William
Asher, is detailed to reach the girls in
factories. She holds noon meetings at
these places, and with great success.
She goes wherever there are girls who
cannot attend the noon meetings. She
has meetings in the Young Women's
Christian Association, meetings for
servant-maids, and, perhaps most In
teresting of all, meetings for hospital
nurses. She especially emphasizes the
wonderful opportunity for service that
a hospital nurse enjoys, and many
have found long-lost ideals as they lis
tened to her warm words of sym
pathy.
In one factory in Philadelphia,
which at first refused to admit the
workers, a Christian Endeavor girl
started a lunch-hour song. The move
ment grew, and led to the formation
of a prayer circle and the winning of
160 girls for Christ. The boas of
another factory also refused permis
sion to hold meetings. The girls got
three hundred signatures to a petition,
and the firm yielded. "I had no idea,"
said the superintendent, "that these
girls were interested in religion."
Work among boys and girls is in
the hands of Miss Alice Miriam Gam
lin. Her meetings are held almost
entirely in churches immediately after
the day schools close.
Miss Gamlin also holds meetings
for parents to press home the need
of their co-operation to help their chil
dren to live straight, true lives. Some
times the indifferent are aroused when
this problem is put before them. One
day a worker visited a woman whose
boy had signed a card at one of the
meetings, promising to take Christ
as his Saviour and live for him. In
vited to attend a meeting for parents,
this woman said that she was not in
terested. The worker produced the
boy's card, and said: "Your boy sign
ed this. You recognize his handwrit
ing. Don't you think you ought to
help him to lead this kind of life?"
The woman was tk^jderstruck. She
said at last: "If my tnry is interest
ed in religion, I really ought to be
interested, too."
At the Sunday meetings the con
verts, or trail-hitters, are not pushed
out into the night and forgotten. They
sign cards, giving name and address
and denominational choice, and these
cards are sifted out and handed to co
operting pastors in the various dis
tricts. The pastors look up those who
sign the cards, invite them to church,
and give them a cordial welcome.
But more than that. During the
campaign something is done for the
spiritual wants of the converts, and
all others who care to take advantage
of the service. Miss Grace Saxe holds
Bible classes in churches, giving sev
eral courses of Bible lectures. Mies
Miller also organizes Bible classes in
stores and offices. These classes meet
once a week, and are conducted by the
girls themselves. Very often they
continue long after the Sunday party
has gone.
One wants to speak of the work
done by Miss Fetterolf among stu
dents, and by Miss Lamont in Bible
study; but what we have written will
give an Idea of the careful organiza
tion of every detail of these tremen
dous campaigns.
Mr. Sunday is a centre of it all.
His spirit vitalizes it. The influence
of his vibrant personality is felt in
every part of the organization. For
him organization is a means to an end.
In itself it is worthless; but so far as
it accomplishes results for the king
dom, it is good and necessary.
If the churches would organize as
carefully and work as faithfully, they
would get larger results than come to
them today. ? The Christian Endeavor
World.
L Temperance ||
UNDOING THE WORK OF THE
SAIiOON.
By Ex-Governor J. Frank Hanly, of
Indiana.
I am told over and over again that
I am making much noise about a
small matter; that if I let the liquor
traffic alone It will let me alone. . . .
It Is not true that if you let the traffic
alone It will let you alone.
In the middle of my term of office
as Governor of Indiana, there came
into my office, one afternoon, a little
woman. She was plainly clad. Her
dress was calico. Her shoes were
coarse. The evidences of toll were
upon her hands. She led by the hands 1
a little child scarcely three years old,
bright-eyed, with sunlit hair, and
there was something In him that ap
pealed to the best there was In me; ;
and, stirred by his bright eyes, I
said to the mother, as kindly as I
knew:
"Madam, what can I do for you?"
She said: "Governor, I have come
to ask you to give me back my hus
band."
"Give you back your husband!
Why, madam, I haven't your hus
band."
"Oh, yes, you have, Governor. You
have had him for Ave months ? ever
since last September, down at Jeffer- v
sonville, in the State Reformatory,
and I want you to give him back to
me."
"In Jeffersonville, in the State Re
formatory? Then your husband is
a bad man, a criminal, and I can't give
him back to you."
"No, he is not a criminal, Governor, j
I know he committed a great crime '
highway robbery in the night-time. I
do not palliate his offense, or excuse '
it; but, after all, he was not a crimi- j
nal."
"Not a criminal, and committed a
highway robbery in the night-time?
Woman, it is the gravest crime but
one the law knowB, and the man who
undertakes its commission takes the
hazard of taking human life. No.
Your husband is a criminal, and I
cannot give him back to you. My
duty to society and to the Common- 1
wealth precludes my giving him back
to you."
And then she said: "Sir, I mis
judged you. I thought you were a
juBt man, and that you would exer- ;
cise your great power with consid- ;
erate kindness. If I were rich, I
would employ counsel, and they would
come here and you would hear tWm
by the hour, and you would not judge
until you had heard; but when I come
in my weakness and In my poverty,
you pass judgment before you have
heard me."
Rebuked, I bowed my head, and
then she said:
"We were boy and girl together out
here in an Indiana village, my hus
band and I. We grew to manhood '
and womanhood together. We came
to love each other, and four years
go we stood at the altar and plighted ?
ourselves in the solemn ceremony of
marriage. We turned from the
church with high hopes. We were -
poor, but we were young and strong,
and my husband was honest and sober
and industrious. We were too poor
to buy a home, but we found one of
two rooms that we could rent, and we
rented them, and we were happy there.
Then, three years ago, the baby came
this little boy ? and he drew our
lives closer together and melted our
hearts into one. It was his, it was
mine, and we had begun to build air
castles about him.
"There was no cloud upon our sky
until last September, on Labor Day,
when my husband went with a party
of friends down to Shelbyville, twenty
miles away, to attend a Labor Day
celebration; and down there, for the
first time in his life, he indulged in
Intoxicants, and by night he was
maudlin drunk. Starting home with
his companions in a conveyance, and
meeting a stranger in the highway,
in the darkness, they stopped him and
robbed him. But before they reached
the city of Indianapolis, overcome and
aroused by the thought of the great ;
crime in which he had helped, my *
husband got out of the vehicle, walk- ;
ed back to Shelbyville, reached it in
the gray dawn of the early morning,
and, hunting up the sheriff, surren
dered himself, and told the whole piti- ;
ful story.
"They arrested him, and he sent for