THE LIBRARY
of
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY
Toronto
It^t illentienfiaU Utttnxti, ^tbentd ^erteK
Beltbereb at Be^auto WlnHbttsiitp
Social Rebuilders
CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN
Dean of Divinity School, Tale UniTersity
*And thej said. Let us rise up and build^*
THE ABINGDON PRESS
NEW YORK CINCINNATI
EMMANUEE
Copyright, 1921, by
CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN
6519
Printed in the United States of America
TO
MARCUS D. BUELL
TEACHER AND FRIEND
WHO TAUGHT ME TO READ THE GOSPELS
WITH A TRUER INSIGHT
AND TO FOLLOW THE ONE THERE PORTRAYED
WITH A MORE COMPLETE FIDELITY
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
IN GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION
CONTENTS
PAGE
^
CHAPTEB
Foreword
I. The Labor Leader Who Freed thec**^^^
Slaves... 1^<3&^^?^ 9^
11. The Prophet Who Fought a Wicked ^^^
King ££^>UV^ 43""'''"^
III. The Herdsman Who Preached Social
Justice UAVS.C^.-r 78
The Man Who Exited Righteousness ^^
Above Ritual. . K ^^i^ ?^rV> 112 '^''^
The Leader in a Day of Social Re-
building
/^JUZX
A JJAY OF &C
147
%y^
FOREWORD
The chief distinction of this little book is
that it is a voice crying in the present wilder-
ness of confusion and disorder showing the
way out. The author is a modern prophet
with a message of God for the time. He
gives in these lectures a discriminating
appraisal of present-day industrial and social
conditions. He interprets the message of the
old Hebrew seers with rare spiritual insight
and proclaims their religion as the only hope
for the rebuilding of the world. Coming
from the ranks of the toiling masses, Dean
Brown speaks not as a partisan but with a
broad sympathy. For the reconstruction of
the world he looks not to institutions but to
ideals; not to new measures but to higher
motives. This volume breathes with passion-
ate eloquence for the humanizing of industry,
for the moralizing of social relations, and for
Christianizing the whole of life. For stimu-
lating thinking, and prophetic utterance upon
the vital issues of the time, these lectures will
be highly prized both by ministers and lay-
men.
The Mendenhall Lectures of DePauw Uni-
versity, to which this series of addresses be-
longs, was founded by the Rev. Marmaduke
H. Mendenhall, D.D., of the North Indiana
7
v//
8 FOREWORD
Conference of the Methodist Episeopal
Chnrch. The object of the donor was "to
found a perpetual lectureship on the evi-
dences of the divine origin of the Holy Scrip-
tures. The lecturers must be persons of wide
repute, of broad and varied scholarship, who
firmly adhere to the evangelical system of
Christian faith. The selection of lecturers
may be made from the world of Christian
scholarship, without regard to denomina-
tional divisions. Each course of lectures is to
be published in book form by an eminent pub-
lishing house and sold at cost to the faculty
and students of the University. ' '
Lectures previously published:
1913, The Bible and Life, Edwin Holt
Hughes.
1914, The Literary Primacy of the Bible,
George Peck Eckman.
1917, Understanding the Scriptures, Fran-
cis John McConnell.
1918, Religion and War, William Herbert
Perry Faunce.
1919, Some Aspects of International Chris-
tianity, John Kelman.
1920, What Must the Church Do To Be
Saved? Ernest Fremont Tittle.
George R. Grose,
President DePauw UniTersity.
jjm^^
CHAPTER I
THE LABOR LEADER WHO FREED
THE SLAVES
The Master never prayed that his follow-
ers should be taken out of the world into
some heaven of detachment from its sin and
pain. He prayed, rather, that they should be
kept from the evil of the world and be stead-
ily engaged in a sturdy effort to overcome
that evil with good. He put upon our lips
those words which impel us to look up into
the face of Infinite Perfection and say, ' ' Thy
kingdom come." We are to look for it and
strive for it here and now. ''Thy will be
done" here on earth as it is done in heaven!
The better mode of life which we crave is to
come down out of heaven from God. It is
to come down out of the realm of vision into
the realm of accomplished fact. And we are
not to limit our aspiration nor to cease from
that prayer until those high ends shall have
been achieved.
The two contrasting ideas in the matter of
personal excellence here suggested may be
vividly seen in two types of men with whose
9
^/ 1"^^'
10 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
work we are all familiar. John Bright and
Cardinal Newman lived in the same century.
They were citizens of the same country, and
for a time their lives were identified with the
same city. They were both men of marked
ability ; they both came to be national figures
and both were earnest Christians. But at the
very time when John Bright was fighting
for the repeal of the wicked Corn Laws and
striving to better the social conditions in his
own country and laboring for the promotion
of international peace throughout the world,
Cardinal Newman was writing those pathetic
words which were recorded in his biography
by Wilfrid Ward: ''The simple question is,
Can I be saved in the Church of England?
Would I be in safety were I to die to-night?"
He decided that he would not be ''in safety,"
so he entered the Roman Church. //^
It is significant, by the way, that the man
who was striving mainly to save his own
soul by the prudent cultivation of a personal
and private piety looked finally for his guid-
ance to the external authority of an ecclesias-
tical organization. The man who was los-
ing his life in seeking the high ends of social
justice looked for his guidance to that
"Inner Light" which is shed directly by the
Divine Presence in the hearts of all those
SOCIAL BEBUILDERS 11
who have the will to do his will. In the judg-
ment of the one who makes to us the stronger
appeal, the main office of religion is not to
enable a man to make a safe retreat into the
security of paradise. The main office of re-
ligion is the restoration, the exaltation, and
the enrichment of everyday life in this pres-
ent world. "^
"The true mark of a saved man," someone
has said, '*is not that he wants to go to
heaven but that he is willing to go to China,
or to the battlefields of France, or to the
slums of some great city, or to the last dollar
of his resources, or to the limit of his energy,
in order to set forward the kingdom of God
on earth." The old, selfish, luxurious idea
that a man's chief concern is to save his own
soul and thus gain by his prudent piety a
heaven of bliss, scarcely gets a rise out of the
troubled sea of modern life. j?:.
The Master of our Christian faith made all
this plain, and his forerunners, the prophets
of Israel, lived in the same high, heroic mood.
They had very little to say about "the sweet
by and by." They gave s cant attention to
the hope of a blessed immortalit v awaiting us
in some unseen world. They did not pray for
"t he wings of the dove" that thev "might
fly, ^y^iy a nd be at rest. ' ' They prayed,
12 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
rather, for the baptism of that Spirit which
is symbolized by the dove in the life of our
Lord to the end that here, in this present
order where we find ourselves, they too might
do always those things that pleased the
Father. They were to gain their p. gace not
by flig ht but by conques t. They were intent
upon having the divine will stand fast and
bear rule in the social and the domestic, in
the industrial and the political life of the
race. They were the heralds of a kingdom
whose leading notes were to be righteousness,
peace, and joy in the Divine Spirit.
The first book in the Bible deals entirely
with individuals. The first question asked in
it has to do with the personal standing of an
individual before God. "Adam, where art
thou?" the Lord said. And the whole book
is made up of interesting stories about indi-
viduals — Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel,
Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
These individuals (with the possible excep-
tion of Joseph during his stay in Egypt) are
iportrayed as standing quite apart from the
organized life of industry and civics.
But the moment you turn the leaf and open
the second book in the Bible you enter upon
the history of a race. The book of Exodus
from start to finish is a social document — it
SOCIAL REBUILDEES 13
might well be called ' * the Story of an Ancient
Labor Movement.'^ It shows us how a race
of slaves was delivered from bondage. It
outlines the growth of race consciousness; it
portrays the laws and the institutions, the
social manners and customs which entered
into the shaping of a nation's life. In this
first lecture, then, on the work of these lead-
ers in social rebuilding I wish to speak of
the chief figure in that interesting book. Let |j
me ask you to look at Moses, the labor leader u
who freed the slaves. ^
You all know the story of those Hebrews
who went down to Egypt for food because
there was a famine in their own land of
Canaan. They remained there in the fat Nile
Delta for many years quite contented with
their lot. But at a later period ** there arose
a king who knew not Joseph." The gifted
Hebrew, who had nobly served the interests
of Egypt and had secured a better status for
his fellow countrymen, had long since gone
to his reward, and his influence had faded out.
This later Pharaoh oppressed and enslaved
the helpless Hebrews until ''their lives were
made bitter with hard bondage." -i>
He set task masters over them, so that ''all
their service was with rigor." Their physi-
cal strength was being depleted by hard,
14 SOCIAL REBUILDEES
monotonous toil. But, worse than that, their
manhood and womanhood were being de-
stroyed by that ruthless system of industry.
They lost all zest and relish in life and their
whole capacity for spiritual response was
fast going. ' ' They hearkened not to the spirit
of God for anguish of soul." It was the
tragedy wrought by an economic system
which brought defeat to all their better quali-
ties of mind and heart. And when their for-
tunes had reached this low ebb Moses, the
man of the hour, came upon the scene.
Let me notice three things about him.
First, he was a man of the people. His
parents were slaves. His father and mother
had known the bitterness and the defeat of
that hard bondage. They showed the service
stripes of economic slavery upon their faces
and upon their hearts. Moses had seen in his
own home the coarse fare and the rude con-
ditions of those who failed to secure an equi-
table share of the good things they helped
to create.
His own escape from it for a time, through
the generous action of the princess, did not
blind him to the injustice of it all. He was a
Hebrew of the Hebrews, and his heart beat
true to his own class. When he was grown to
man's estate his first recorded act was one of
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 15
courageous participation in the ill fortunes of
his race. "He refused to be called the son of
Pharaoh's daughter," who had taken him
under her care, choosing rather to suffer
affliction with his own people than to enjoy
the pleasures of an iniquitous system for a
season.
In like manner, present indications point to
the fact that the men who are to lead to-day
in the securing of a better type of industrial
life must come mainly from the ranks. The
men who have shared in the rough work of
the world have the first right to the floor, and
it is altogether fitting that they should be
heard. We wonder sometimes why wise pro-
fessors of economics, sitting comfortably
apart in well-endowed university chairs, or
canny millionaires who have made their piles,
or facile writers of clever articles on social
questions to be published in the ''uplift maga-
zines," may not be permitted to tell these
wage-earners what to do and how to do it in
order to save them from the painful blunders
they often make in learning the way. But the
plain people will not follow those leaders
blindly, and they ought not. It belongs to
their advance that they should develop their
own leaders. The men who are to take the
right of the line in the forward movement of
16 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
the common people must be bone of their
bone and flesh of their flesh. The fitness for
that larger measure of freedom and of pros-
perity which they crave with all its added re-
sponsibilities must come through the very
process of developing their own leadership
and of acquiring their own power of initia-
tive.
^ It is also significant that the social leaders
who have come from the more fortunate
classes have not, as a rule, proved themselves
altogether trustworthy as guides. It was
William Ewart Gladstone, a man of wealth
and of university training himself, who main-
tained that ''In almost every one of the great
political controversies of the last fifty years,
whether they affected the franchise or com-
merce or religion, the leisure class, the titled
class, and the educated class have been in the
wrong." Gladstone was no foe of wealth.
He suffered from no unjust prejudice as to
the value of education. He was himself born
in a castle and was a graduate of Christ
Church College in Oxford University, but he
saw the perils of privilege and the moral
blindness which sometimes befalls the chil-
dren of good fortune. '^
The large-minded employers of labor — and
there are many of them in these days and th^
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 17
number is constantly increasing — are frankly
facing the fact that the number of things
which they can do for the men and women in
their employ is limited. The wage-earners
keenly resent every kind of paternalism.
They resent the idea of having ** welfare
work" and ''uplift schemes" imposed upon
them. They are not little children to be given
their bread and milk and tucked into bed at
the proper time, with a kiss and a prayer and
a fond good night. They too are responsible^
members of society. They are not just
''hands" in the mill. They have heads on
their shoulders and hearts in their breasts
like the rest of us. They insist on being "con-
sulted" and "shown." And the wise em-
ployers are not working for their employees ;
they are working with them. They are en-^
couraging the spirit of initiative and the
making of plans and the development of lead-
ership among the working people themselves. 4,
When the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory in
the city of New York was burned a few years
ago and a hundred and forty-three working
girls with it, the citizens arranged a mass
meeting of protest for the following Sunday
afternoon. It was held in the Metropolitan
Opera House, and the place was packed,
orchestra, boxes, galleries and all. The late
V
18 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
' Bishop Greer, representing the Episcopal
Church, addressed the meeting, voicing the
Christian sentiment touching that horror.
Rabbi Wise spoke for the Hebrews and Mr.
Jacob H. Schiff, capitalist and philanthropist,
spoke for the people of good fortune and
social position. Many wise and kind words
were uttered by these gentlemen.
When they had finished, the chairman intro-
duced Miss Rose Schneiderman, the head of
the Shirt Waist Makers' Union. She walked
out to the front of the stage, paused a moment
to get control of her voice, and then said this
— ^her words were burned into my memory as
with a hot iron. **This is not the first time
that working girls have been burned to death
in the city of New York because employers
were breaking the law. Each week on an
average comes the untimely death of at least
one of my fellow workers, and every year
hundreds of us are maimed by dangerous, un-
protected machinery. The lives of women
are cheap and property is sacred. There are
so many of us what does it matter if a hun-
dred and forty- three are burned alive? I
would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies
if I stood here and simply talked good fellow-
ship. We have tried you good people and we
have found you wanting. You are always
. SOCIAL REBUILDERS 19
ready to give a couple of dollars apiece all
around for the sorrowing families, but when
we come out in the only way we know to op-
pose conditions which have become unbear-
able, the strong hand of the law is down upon
us instantly. I stand here to protest against
the injustice of it all." ^
The audience listened to that vital thrust
which was in striking contrast to some of the
pallid, placid things which had been said by
the preceding speakers. It listened and re-
flected and drew a long breath. Then the peo-
ple rose to their feet and shouted their ap-
proval as no Metropolitan Opera House audi-
ence had ever shouted its satisfaction in the
triumph of some singer like Melba or Caruso.
The note of social justice had been struck by
one of the working people and the American
conscience responded with a loud "Amen."
Pity, compassion, kindliness — they are all
good, but there is a demand for something
more fundamental! And when that deeper
note of justice sounded forth from the lips of
a worker the people were ready with their ap-
proval.
The words of that woman spoken on behalf
of all the toiling people who have suffered
hurt and loss by unfair deals constitute a
challenge to the moral forces of our nation.
20 SOCIAL REBUILDEES
It is a challenge which must be met. It can-
not be met by a few gracefully worded reso-
lutions about *'the dignity of labor" or by
occasional outbursts of generous feeling. It
must be met by patient, resolute, far-seeing
action, which looks toward a larger measure
of social justice. The religious people of the
land cannot sing nor can they pray aright
unless at the same time they are setting them-
selves man-fashion to meet that challenge.
The music of the anthem and the words of
the liturgy will stick in their throats like
Macbeth 's *'Amen" unless they frankly ac-
cept that protest from the world of toil and
show themselves intent upon the correction
of the injustices of industrial life.
*• The policy of repression at this point is
altogether mistaken and dangerous. ' ' Do we
want labor more disaffected than it is now?
It is easy to make it so. Do we want more
revolutionary leaders'? They can be had for
the asking. So far as capital insists on de-
feating collective bargaining it will close the
safety valve. To bargain with the full
strength of a union is the one avenue through
which labor is to enter the new partnership.
It is the avenue through which business re-
sponsibilities are one by one to be taken on
by labor. So deep is the unrest that the one
SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 21
problem is to fix this responsibility on labor
groups at the safest points. This will force
labor to select the kind of leader required for
those duties, as we have long seen among co-
operators and in the older and steadier
unions. ' ' "
'*At a gathering of business men in Atlan-
tic City after the war Mr. John D. Rocke-
feller, Jr., and Mr. Charles M. Schwab
warned their fellows in language which ten
years ago would have classed them as
poseurs. 'Not only must we and our kind,'
it was said, * gradually accept government
supervision to correct abuses inherent in com-
peting industry, but labor itself is to have
a new deal. It must have constructive recog-
nition. It must freely choose its representa-
tives to work with capitalistic directors."^
The fact is stated and it is significant that
this ancient labor leader was not a glib talker.
He tried to beg off at first because of his lack
of eloquence. ''I am slow of speech," he said
to the Lord, ' ' and of a slow tongue. ' ' He felt
that this would disqualify him. He had not
learned that in almost all of the social move-
ments of the world the glib speakers have
come unduly to the front. They have de-
claimed to responsive audiences in a manner
iLabor'sChalle&ce to the Social Order. J. G. Brooks. Pages 22, 414..
22 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
most gratifying to themselves, but oftentimes
to the detriment of the very causes they
espoused. The orators, the spellbinders, the
men who talk loud and see red, have again
and again wielded an influence which was not
for the permanent well-being of their awe-
. struck hearers.
"" The men of vision and insight, slow of
speech and slow of tongue though they are in
many situations, working not by burning ora-
tions nor by fiery appeals, but by wise, patient,
constructive effort, are the more significant
factors in the solution of these problems.
And these men, less conspicuous than the
orators but much more useful, are writing
those pages of social advance which later gen-
erations will read with gratitude and joy. It
is one thing to talk in glowing terms about
the righting of wrongs and it is quite another
and a very much harder and higher thing to
set in operation those forms of effort which
look toward the permanent correction of
those wrongs.
* This man of the people, however, was not
an untrained ignoramus. "He was learned,"
we read, '*in all the learning of the Egyp-
tians." He shared actively in the benefits of
one of the highest civilizations of that early
date. He was no raw enthusiast, devoid of
./
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 23
judgment and of experience. He had given
years of study and reflection to the problems
he was now set to solve. ^
The gap between theory and practice may
be wide — it often is — but it is never so wide
as the gap between ignorance and compe-
tence. We have all seen good causes go down
in defeat for the lack of competent, far-seeing
leadership. There were facts enough in the
minds of men; there was feeling enough in
the hearts of men ; there was energy enough
in the strong right arms of men, but there
was a lack of that competent and worthy
leadership which can be gained only through
training and experience. Therefore their
contention failed. The hands on the clock of
social betterment were put back by those who
could talk and feel but could not wisely judge.
Some one has cleverly said, **The idealist
knows where to go but lacks facilities; the
practical man gets there but finds himself in
the wrong place.'* We must enlist the com-
bined action of both types of men for the
great advance. Here to-day, as in that far-
away scene on the banks of the Nile, there is
sore need of the patient application of eco-
nomic intelligence and of instruc tive expe-
rignce as well as o f social conscience and
moral enth usiasm to problem s too vast and
24 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES
too intricate for any offhand impromptu solu-
tion. ^
During the Great War many fine words
were uttered in high places as to the worth
and si gnificance of jhajg nrkingman . He was
in the mines furnishing fuel for the winning
of the war. He was in the factories furnish-
ing munitions for the winning of the war. He
was on the farm furnishing food for the win-
ning of the war. He was on the railroads and
in the steamships furnishing transporta-
tion for the winning of the war. He was
simply in dispensable in the^ hourjgdieg^he
fate of civilizationsee med to tremble in the
hal§iice.
The workingman will not soon forget all
those fine words. Never again will he accept
willingly what was dealt out to him in certain
sections of the workaday world before the
war. The day when he could be told in blunt
fashion to ''take it or leave it'* is gone. The
"hire-and-fire'* method of dealing in cavalier
fashion with working people has been hope-
lessly discredited. The workingman is on
his feet to-day insisting on his right to be
heard in the determination of those condi-
tions which so intimately and powerfully
affect his own welfare and the welfare of his
family. And I do not see anywhere in sight
'y
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 25
any chairman of the meeting who will be able
to make him sit down and take whatever is
handed out to him. '^
There will come inevitably a better type of
labor leader from the ranks. The employing
class engaged in business on its own account
is not now drawing off the stronger brains
and the more aspiring wage-earners as it did
a generation ago. Then unoccupied land in
the West was still drawing away the more
resolute spirits from the crowded centers of
industry. To-day that land has practically all
been taken up. The amount of capital needed
to go into business for oneself in that day
was not so large. To-day the huge depart-
ment store, the corporation, or the trust en-
gaged in manufacture makes it all but im-
possible for the wage-earner to aspire to a
business of his own. The economic system is
not so elastic as it was forty years ago. The
abler wage-earners will of necessity remain
in their own class furnishing material for
that better type of labor leader.
The development of that more competent
and trustworthy type of leadership has
already made substantial progress. It was
one of our most thoughtful, careful observers
of social conditions and movements, John
Graham Brooks, who said in a recent book:
26 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
** At a sitting of the Commission on Industrial
Relations I sat beside the largest employer
of labor in his industry in this country (Mr.
Schaffner of Hart, Schaffner & Marx), and
probably in the world. He had listened for
several days to the testimony by employers
and by their attorneys and by labor men. He
turned to me and said, 'These labor repre-
sentatives are really better informed on the
subjects here treated and state their case
better than we do.' " The men who voiced
the toilers* point of view knew what they
were about and they moved straight toward
the goal they had in view with a measure of
insight which won the admiration of this
large employer of labor. ■^
Furthermore, the opportunities for study
and training along these lines of interest
have been brought within the reach of thou-
sands of men and women to whom they were
formerly denied. The public libraries, with
great shelves of books upon social, industrial,
and political problems, are everywhere. The
papers and magazines dealing with these
questions are in the homes of all but the very
poorest of the people. The sons and daugh-
ters of the workingmen are finding their way
in large numbers to the colleges and universi-
ties of the land, where they often put to
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 27
shame the sons of good fortune by the fidelity
and thoroughness they show in making use of
their advantages. We are all students of
economics these days — it is in everything we
read and in everything we hear. It is in the
clubs and in the churches; it is in the air.
And out of all this there will come more men
and more women who are competent, as well
as willing, to point the way to a better type of
industrial life. ''Education has already made
labor observant, and a more perfect organi-
zation will make it formidable. ' ' '«-
In the second place we find that t his ancien t
labo r^ leader b e gan his wor k in_ih£L-wrfliIg
mood and with the wrong method s. He came
out one day and saw an Egyptian taskmaster
beating a Hebrew slave. His instant sym-
pathy for the oppressed and his race con-
sciousness impelled him to act. Here was a
wrong to be righted I He caught * ' the nearest
way," as Lady Macbeth suggested to her
husband. He took the law into his own hands.
He promptly killed the fellow and hid his
body in the sand.
This mistaken leader u ndertook the social
deliveran ce of his people l>y a policy of p er-
so nal violence Class feeling, race loyalty,
sympathy for the helpless were strong in his
breast, and he gave to all this instant and
N/
28 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
perilous expression by his act of murder. It
reacted upon him most unfavorably and he
was compelled to flee for his life. He went off
into the land ofMidian, where he kept sheep
in~tEat lionely^ region for a period of forty
years until he should have learned that^e
work of industrial deliverance^s not to be
underlaken in just j^at mood nor with those,
particularjv7eapons._
He was driven into the wilderness because
he undertook to replace the reign of law by
acts of personal violence. He had yet to dis-
cover that the right road out of industrial
bondage must lead inevitably along the foot
of Mount Sinai. The *'new social order"
must come down out of heaven from God as
an essential part of that infinite moral order
which enfolds us all.
In many countries of the old world there is
at this hour abundant evidence of that same
mistaken form of impulse which swept this
ancient leader off his feet. There have been
few more careful observers of conditions dur-
ing the Great War than Sir Philip Gibbs.
Here is his recent comment upon the situa-
tion in Europe: **The greatest failure of all
in my judgment has been the failure of labor.
I am for labor, having seen its men fighting
and dying in great masses for no selfish pur-
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 29
poses. Therefore many of us hoped most
from labor and looked for leaders in its ranks
who would show us the way out of our pres-
ent jungle. We thought that they would give
the call to a new fellowship of men, that they
would overstep the narrow frontiers of na-
tional interest, that they would get a new
honesty into politics and show the power of
open diplomacy. But have they done any of
these things?
*'I see leaders of a small, pettifogging
spirit fighting for * two-bob' extra on the
wages of their men while their European com-
rades are starving for coal. I see only the
selfishness of class interest, as greedy as that
of the profiteer, without any regard for the
welfare of the nation as a whole or for the
needs of Europe in distress. They refuse to
'delute labor' in the interest of the men who
fought for them or with them. Recent his-
tory convicts them of a secret diplomacy as
bad as that of old statesmanship. Their
press has not been more honest than the capi-
talist press which labor has denounced. The
appeals of their leaders have not been to the
generous instincts of humanity, nor on behalf
of the world in agony, nor to any noble ideals
toward which we may all grope our way, but
to the same little tricky, selfish interests with
^
A
^
30 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
an Tinderlying menace of the bloody things
which have been the curse of national politics
as the game has been played by their op-
ponents. ' *
We can sympathize with the resentment of
that ancient leader who killed the cmel task-
master even while we withhold our approval
from his method. He had the heart of a man
and he struck out man-fashion at the oppres-
sor, but they were not blows which were
counted to him for righteousness. The hot
indignation of youth at the sight of injustice
has immense moral value, but it must be in-
vested with deeper meaning and attach itself
to finer issues if it would accomplish results
worthy and lasting. The high task of social
betterment cannot be undertaken in anger or
in hatred — ^it calls for the spirit of moral
faith. It will never have adequate spiritual
energy to gain the ends proposed until it
reaches the place where itA>uts the shoes
from off its feet because it stands on holy
ground.X It must see with its own eyes that
symbol of the Divine Presence in the mys-
terious fire which burns and does not con-
sume. In the long run and in the last analysis
nothing is strong and nothing is good with-
out the consecration of a finer form of
faith.
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 31
I have wondered oftentimes if it might not
be well for some of the leaders of the I. W. W.
and other kindred organizations here in our
own country to go off for a time and enjoy in
similar fashion a quiet season of reflection in
the land of Midian. The idea that any individ-
ual who can talk loud, write with red ink, and
throw bombs upon occasion should be encour-
aged to upset all our existing arrangements in
order to introduce some untried scheme of
his own does not commend itself to the judg-
ment of those who really have the interests
of the working people at heart. It has been
well said that there are men all about us who
undertake to doctor society on the strength
of their own happy intuitions and their own
love of hearing themselves explode. The
term ** quack" which we apply to those who
attempt to practice medicine in that same
rough-and-ready fashion would be entirely in
order here. ^^
The working people to-day will be misled
if they think that breaking the wrists or the
heads of men who refuse to join their indus-
trial sect, or dynamiting the homes of men
who insist upon their right to work on terms
of their own choosing, or destroying the
property of men who will not be converted
to the particular theories advanced by certain^
\
32 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
agitators, will advance their interests. All
this moral defiance and contempt for prin-
ciple will react in frightful fashion npon
those who undertake to practice it. It will
fail inevitably, and it ought to fail.
Every effort and every utterance which
looks toward contempt for law or toward
the spread of mob violence defeats the very
ends it may have in view. The whole nation
applauded the Governor of Kentucky a year
ago when he upheld the majesty of the law.
A colored man there had been guilty of a foul
crime. He had been arrested, tried, con-
victed, and sentenced to death. He was in
prison awaiting the execution of that sen-
tence when a mob undertook to break into
the jail that it might lynch him or torture or
burn him alive. Then the Governor told the
mob that the state of Kentucky was under the
reign of law and that he was there to enforce
its demands. And he did it, even though it
cost the lives of half a dozen of the leaders of
that mob. White men and black men alike
the country over approved the courage and
the righteousness of his action.
^ Here in this broad land, where all power
belongs at last to the people, there is no man-
ner of excuse for deeds of violence, for dyna-
miting the homes and the places of business/^
^)
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 33
belonging to others, or for assassination. If
tiie laws are not right, change them. If they
are not being enforced by the officials who are
in power, let the people elect men who will
enforce them. Here in this country authority
is not handed down from above by some
superman or supermen — it is handed up by
the votes of the people themselves. And it is
the last act of insane folly and of open
wickedness for the working people or for any
set of people to try to overthrow the orderly
processes of government for which they them-
selves are finally responsible in order to re-
place them with the irresponsible action of
mob violence. Let all such go off into the
land of Midian to keep sheep, for forty years
if need be, as Moses did, until they too learn
the spirit and the temper in which social
progress is achieved!
But in order to avail ourselves of the value
of such reflection, there must be opportunity
for the open discussion of these high themes.
The right to freedom of speech for which
brave men in other days have fought and died
must not be yielded up at the behest of small
but well-financed groups of reactionaries.
Let's talk it out together! By the beat and
play of mind upon mind in the freest inter-
change of thought and conviction touching
34 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
these vast issues are we to make our way
toward those conclusions which may be al-
lowed to stand.
Wise and cautious economists in all lands
are gravely theorizing over the proper dis-
tribution of what is produced between capital
and management and labor. **But in the
roar of the mill, in the machine shops, in
mines, and in railways where labor is thrown
together and organizes itself, this dispute
over the respective shares is becoming so
charged with hostilities that the legal and
police system in most countries is put to the
greatest strain. ^^
''This strain is increasing if we mean by
that a growing determination on the part of
labor to break down the kind of authority
which ownership and management have as-^
sumed to be theirs. The strain means more '
than this because that part of our wage-earn-
ers bent either upon the destruction of the
wage system or upon very radical changes is a
growing and a more determined proportion of
our population. ' '* We must maintain at any
cost within reason that dearly bought privi-
lege of free speech, both as a fundamental
human right and as a safety valve for that
•Reprinted from Labor's Challenge to the Social Order (p. 423), by
John Brooks, by permiasion fA the publishers, The Macmillan Company.
N
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 35
high pressure of resentment which may so
easily become a social menace. "^
In the third place, this ancient labor leader
was finally fitted for his task by an open
vision of God. He was inducted into a richer
form of experience which gave him a vivid
and immediate sense of the Divine. In the
very forefront of his intellectual and moral
landscape there came to be a Presence, Su-
preme, August, Beneficent. This Presence
was always there, enjoining upon men the
performance of their duty, hallowing their
worship, sanctifying their hearts, their ac-
tions, and their purposes, directing them in
their efforts to establish that quality of com-
munity life worthy to be known as **His
Kingdom." In a word, this labor leader be-
came *'a man of Grod,'* and that one fact put
iron in his blood, oxygen in the lungs of his
moral nature, and gave reach and grasp to his
aspiration. ^
He led his flock one day to the back of the
desert, even to Horeb, the Mount of God.
This rocky eminence was then regarded as
the earthly dwelling place of the Hebrew
Deity. He saw there a fire which burned but
did not consume. He heard a voice which
seemed divine. The voice spoke to him, not
about his own personal salvation; it spoke
36 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
not of some hope of happiness in a blessed
hereafter. It spoke to him in terms of social
interest touching his own immediate responsi-
_bility.
-^ What deep notes are struck by the four
successive statements! — they fall upon our
ears like the tolling of some distant cathedral
bell: **I am the God of thy fathers. I have
seen the affliction of my people who are in
Egypt. I have heard their cry by reason of
their taskmasters. I know their sorrows. I
have come down to deliver them. ' ' It was the
God of righteousness who was thus voicing
his interest in a body of working people.
^ How much it meant to that lonely shepherd
^ there on the slopes of Horeb, thinking all the
while of his fellow countrymen toiling as
^slaves in the valley of the Nile! How much
it means to us facing as we do the necessity
for a larger measure of industrial peace and
a more evenly spread prosperity here in our
own great land! The assurance of the divine
i nterest in all jhe se jprcLblems, of the divine,
co mpassion for those who suffer hu rt, of the
d ivme readiness to ^id in a worthy sa lution !
The outward setting of this scene is in a place
and a time far removed from our modem
American life, but the content of the picture
applies to the conditions confronting us as
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 37
directly as if it 'had all been written yester-
day in the city of New York. God sees and
God h earsl God knows^ and God is c ome
do wn to aid in the delivera jice of any whose
live s are^ade bitter by Jiard bondage .
The people who think that God is only in-
terested in us when we are reading our Bibles
and saying our prayers, when we are going
to church or taking the sacrament, must think
that he is a Being narrow-minded and short-
sighted. They must think that he is asleep
most of the time, for only a small fraction of
our thought and strength is consumed in the
performance of these acts of devotion. God
is interested in all these questions of wages
and hours, in the sort of condition s wliicJi oB^
tarn uTmOls and in mines , in thej mployme nt
of wo^en and children for those~exacting in-
dustries which overtax and undermine their
strength. He is inte rested in th at s ense of
e conomic inseourit v.ln^the feeling of unoer-
tainty touching employraent, in jthe dread^L
anTu nsustained old age In which so many
worke rs spend all the best years of thej r
lives. He is saying to us as he said of old,
'*l1&ave seen and I have heard; I know and
I am come down" to aid in having all this
changed for the better,
I am fully aware that there are short-
^i
38 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
sighted men, needing glasses without know-
ing it, who are inclined to brush the religious
motive entirely aside. They insist upon * ' the
economic interpretation of history," which is
an ambitious attempt to account for every-
thing on the basis of a single set of facts,
leaving out of consideration other forces
which are even more potent. They insist
upon "the class struggle," forgetting ap-
parently that **we are all members one of
another," and if one class suffers, all the
other classes suffer with it. They insist that
everything may be trusted to 'Hhe push of
self-interest," if only that self-interest can
be made intelligent and organized, forgetting
that the bravest deeds are done, the finest
words are uttered, and the loveliest types of
devotion are developed almost uniformly by
the strength of motives altogether higher
than anything to be found in the push of self-
interest. These men all need to go back and
stand with this ancient labor leader at Horeb
until they too hear the same divine voice. y^
The narrow-minded selfishness of certain
industrial leaders in England was recently
rebuked by one of their own number in these
telling phrases. * * Too many of us are saying
these days, 'It's our turn now.' How many
labor leaders have had a word to say in all
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 39
these months about the worth of work done
in honor? 'Fewer hours and more pay' has
been the battle cry. The bad workman de-
mands the same wage as the good, and the
right of the employer to discharge is denied
him by the threat of a boycott from the union.
The labor leader has been no kinder to his
own class than the former master of their
fate has been. Capital squeezes out the weak
competitor, but labor would cut off the chil-
dren of a whole city from their milk for an
added per cent in carrying it. The laborer
would silence the telephone and let coal lie
at the wharf in freezing weather for an in-
creased wage while his neighbor shivers."
Selfishness never did build a world fit for
people to live in, and selfishness never can.
I am an American citizen — it is the glory *
of my life that my lot has been cast here
under these friendly skies. I am proud of the
history of our country, and I rejoice in the
quality of the great men she has produced.
You would all agree with me no doubt that
the two greatest names, in our American his-
tory are those of Washington and Lincoln.
How much it means that they were both men
of vision, men of faith, men of prayer ! You
have all seen the picture of Washington on
his knees at Valley Forge. He knelt there
V
40 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
before God because he felt that the struggle
of the colonies to achieve their independence
and "to assume among the powers of the
earth that separate and equal station to which
the laws of nature and of nature ^s God en-
titled them" could not succeed without divine
help. yy
You may also have seen John Drinkwater 's
play where Abraham Lincoln stands before
the map of the United States, erect, resolute,
and determined. He was looking that map
over, north, south, east, and west, as if he
were conscious already that during his four
years in the White House it would be blood-
stained almost beyond recognition. Then a
moment later, feeling his inadequacy to the
great task laid upon him, you saw him kneel
that he might receive divine help to save the
Union and to write the charter of freedom
for a subject race. In these great hard
hours of the world's history, when the prob-
lems of industry and of statesmanship are so
grave that they fairly stagger the human
mind and heart, what better thing can we
do than to direct the people everywhere to
look for aid and guidance from that same
Infinite Source whence it was sought by
Washington and by Lincoln! //
The social question is always and every-
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 41
where a great deal more than a question of
bread and butter, of dollars and cents, of
wages and hours. It is a question of human ^^
values. And for the gaining and maintenance
of those higher values which are at stake in
this huge process of production, distribution,
and exchange, we need the religious motive
and the power of spiritual vision. Without
that we cannot succeed — ^with that, in the end,
we cannot fail. //
You, as students in De Pauw University,
have a very direct responsibility in this mat-
ter. The college man is under peculiar obliga-
tions to use his training with fidelity and con-
science. He has been put in trust with these
advantages, now let him give a good account
of his stewardship! He has received five
talents of opportunity, now let him gain five
talents more through competent service ! The
torn and troubled condition of the world you
are to live in has multiplied that standing
obligation by ten. The spirit of unrest is ^
everywhere and the spirit of unreason has
widened its domain. There are movements
of thought and feeling just beneath the sur-
face of our American life which are a menace
to the strength and the stability of the Repub-
lic. There is a loud call everywhere for men
who can see, men who can think, men who
42 SOCIAL REBUILDEES
can do the things which need to be done in this
iday of rebuilding. ^
And the price of competence in meeting
that obligation is hard, serious, manly study
of the facts and principles which underlie
these questions. You cannot hope to gain that
knowledge of these economic and political
problems, these educational and religious
problems, which will enable you to do your
bit by a series of clever guesses or on th^
strength of a few happy intuitions. The man
who reads nothing in his morning paper but
the sporting page and the amusement col-
umns will not know what kind of a world he
is living in. The man who has no taste for
talking out with his fellows in serious fashion
the graver issues will skate along over the
surface of life and when he is brought up
against some situation which offers a chal-
lenge to the best powers which can be brought
to bear he will show himself as helpless as a
child. If you never did it before, do it now !
Take one long, square look at this world
which has been torn to pieces by the Great
War and then resolve once for all that by
steady, strenuous effort you will fit yourself
to perform your particular bit of that huge,
hard task in this day of social rebuilding.
CHAPTER II
THE PROPHET WHO FOUGHT A
WICKED KING
The prophet Elijah has been called ''the
Prophet of Fire." He was a red-hot sort of
man. He first appears upon the scene with
the threat of a coming drought which would
scorch the land of Israel as a punishment
for the wrongdoing of the people. His words
of rebuke to the guilty king and queen who
ruled and robbed the subject nation were like
coals of fire. He sought to burn out the sin
of the nation by the fervent heat of his moral
indignation. He won his victory over the
priests of Baal at the top of Mount Carmel
by calling upon God to * ' answer by fire. ' ' He
is said to have left this world *'in a chariot
of fire."
His flaming methods may have been im-
perative. There are situations where fire is
''indicated" as the physicians say in their
careful diagnosis — no remedy less radical
meets the situation. No soft-spoken, mild-
mannered apostle discoursing on "sweetness
and light" could have won out in the face of
43
/
A'
1'
44 SOCIAL EEBUILDEBS
the flagrant, impudent wrongdoing of that
day. The fever of sinfulness in the body of
Israel 's life had reached such a stage that the
hot poultice of denunciation was needed to
blister the surface of the inflamed portion
into some promise of recovery. It was said
of the One who came to make all things new
and to build an order of life which should
manifest his glory, **He shall baptize you
with the Holy Ghost and with fire. ' '
The king of Israel in Elijah's d ay was a
wicked but weak-kneed individual whose
name w as Ahab . While he was a mere boy
his father had married him to a Tyrian prin-
cess. It seemed to the short-sighted poli-
ticians of that day a very clever thing to do.
They nodded their heads in glad approval.
It was ''good business" to have those valu-
able Phoenician ports thus opened to Hebrew
trade. More than that, an alliance by mar-
riage with the rulers of Tyre in the north
might strengthen Israel against the encroach-
ments of Assyria, which had been pushing
south with her victorious armies. It was be-
fore the time of ''open covenants openly ar-
rived at" and the clever diplomats may well
kave found "fourteen points" where this al-
liance with the kingdom of Tyre would be
good for Israel.
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 45
But there was a big, nasty fly in this pot
of Phoenician ointment — in fact two of them.
I wish to speak of them both in this story of
that prophet who fought the wicked king.
In the first place, 4he pr ophet fought
again st iske. degradation of thenaHonal t^Oltf "
6yme introduction of a false^moHe of wor-
ship J? ' When this Phoenician princess mar-
ried the young Hebrew king she brought with
her not only a strange face and a strange
tongue, she brought alien manners and an
alien faith. She brought her pagan deities
with her and called upon her husband to build
an altar to the heathen god Baal in the valley
of Samaria. She brought her pagan priests
to maintain the religious cult to which she
had been accustomed, for a princess must be
allowed spiritual privileges of her own choos-
ing. The first thing the Hebrew nation knew,
it had a section of full-fledged heathenism set
up in active operation at the very heart of its
own life.
It was no mere question of words and
names ; the spelling of the title of their deity
with four letters B-A-A-L, or with seven let-
ters, J-E-H-0-V-A-H. It was a question of
the character which those deities possessed in
the minds of their respective worshipers. It
was a question as to the influence of the
y
46 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
homage paid them as registered upon the
lives of men. Jehovah was a God of right-
eousness, he was a covenant-making and a
covenant-keeping God.
The Semitic peoples were in that day, as
they are to this hour, a bargaining people.
The commercial instinct was present and ac-
tive, giving them a quick sense of the sacred-
ness of agreements and of the value of the
principle of equivalents. And the moral
teaching of the Hebrews was steeped in that
idea. They believed beyond a peradventure
that **with the same measure we mete it out,
it shall be measured back to us again. ' ' They
had scant regard for those backward and be-
nighted races who gave their allegiance to
gods who were notionate, whimsical, and not
to be depended upon. The bargaining Semite,
who knew the methods of honorable and
profitable trade, insisted that the Almighty
himself was a righteous Dealer who kept his
word with his people and insisted that they
too should stand to the bargains they had
made with him. He was a covenant-making
and a covenant-keeping God.
In a word, the Jews had come to believe
that Jehovah was a God of character — ^he
would be pleased with obedience to the law of
justice, mercy, and truth and with nothing
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 47
less. Baal, on the other hand, was an idol
with a friendly feeling for licentiousness. He
was not inclined to make his devotees uncom-
fortable in their sins. He never ' intruded
upon them with any disturbing ideals. We
can see at a glance how different would be
the results wrought out by these respective
cults of worship. ^
We may witness the same confusion of in-
terest and the same outworking of diverse
results in the homage paid in our modern life.
We find many men and women who worship
the living God, the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ. He is a being of too pure
eyes to look upon any kind of wrongdoing
with approval. He calls upon those who wor-
ship him for obedience, for devotion, for self-
sacrifice. " Be ye holy, " he is forever saying
to them by all the legitimate appointments of
our Christian faith, *'for I am holy."
But there are ot her men who m^ kpi \. c) thp-Tn^
selves images, not always from gold and sil-
ver or from wood and stone. They frame u£
these little homemade deities from notions of
" - — ■<
their own choosmg. They want a religion
which will not interfere with their self-indul-
gent lives or with their money-getting accord-
ing to methods which would not square with
the Sermon on the Mount. They put in the
\/
48 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
place of God that which is not God ; and when
any such substitution is made I care not how
graceful and polite they may be about it, they
too become out-and-out pagans.
You will sometimes hear a man beating the
air witti some empty claim like this : ' ' It does
not matter what a man believe s if he is only
sincere. If he is a sincere Moslem, it is just
the'same as if he were a sincere Christian."
And this religious moonshine is sometimes
supposed to indicate a very advanced and lib-
eral type of mind.
But look at the effect of the Moslem re-
ligion as compared with the Christian upon
the status of woman, upon the proper nurture
and training of childhood, upon the develop-
ment of civic and economic ideals. Look at
the conduct of the leading Christian nations
of the world as compared with the conduct of
the leading Moslem countries. Can anyone
imagine any Christian nation on earth doing
to any people what the Moslem government
of Turkey has done to the helpless Arme-
nians during the last twenty-five years? The
slaughter of men, the outraging of women,
the cruelty unspeakable to little children —
all this was done not by some criminal out-
laws who had broken away from the re-
straints of government or by small groups of
y
V
SOCIAL REBUILDEES 49
soldiers reacting from the stern discipline of
military life in war time. It was done, as is
almost universally believed, with the ap-
proval, if not with the direct connivance, of
the Moslem government at Constantinople.
It does make a tremendous difference what
en believe and how they worship.
It is a mark of mental indolence and of
moral laxity for anyone to maintain that it
does not matter what one believes if only he
is sincere. It is for every serious-minded
person to make it the business of his life to
square his faith with the facts so that his
belief will point to spiritual reality as the
needle to the pole. No other attitude could
be acceptable to Him who said, '*I am the
truth; and ye shall know the truth; and the
truth shall make you free." The right sort
of worship will free the life from all that
hurts or hinders life !
When a man worships he holds before the
eyes of his soul some supreme conception of
spiritual excellence. He says to himself and
to all hands : ' 'I adore that. I give to that the
final allegiance of my heart. I swear to that
an undying loyalty. I desire at last to be like
that." If he is saying all this to a being of
Holy Love, the effect of it upon his own in-
most life will be one thing. If he is saying it to
i/
50 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
a Moslem deity of cruelty and bloodshed, or to
a Phoenician deity of shameful indulgence,
then the effect will be quite another thing.
Choose you this day whom ye will serve in
that final dedication of your life !
The nation as well as the individual is pos-
sessed of and by that which may fittingly be
called a soul. The nation develops and cher-
ishes certain traditions and sentiments which
are as the very breath of life to its nostrils.
The high moods and feelings which find ex-
pression in its music, its poetry, and its art
have in them a certain something which, like
the word of God, is "living, powerful, and
sharper than a two-edged sword.'* The state
does not live by bread alone — there are cer-
tain forms of energy unseen but mighty which
are as much a part of its life as its agricul-
ture, its manufactures, and its commerce.
When the captain of an English ship (which
had struck an iceberg and was fast sinking)
stood on the bridge and called out to the
sailors to put the women and children in the
lifeboats first, regardless of their own safety,
coupling his command with this stout appeal,
"Be British, men!" he was summoning into
action the national soul. His summons was
not in vain — the common sailors rose to it in
heroic mood. And the development and main-
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 51
tenance of this finer quality of national soul
is most intimately bound up with the style
and manner of the worship the nation ob-
serves.
This weak-kneed king of Israel, shiver-
ing in the presence of the pagan princess he
had married, first tolerated, then encouraged,
and at last openly allied himself with the
degrading worship of Baal. Then the
prophet ^^li^h appeared upon the scene and
p roposed that the yival claimants u BQg- Jha
allegiance of the people should besub jected
t Q^this test .]) He suggested that he and the
priests of Baal should build two altars upon
the top of Mount Oarmel; that they should
lay their sacrifices upon the altars and then
call upon their respective deities to answer
by fire. And the ^god who actually answered L
bg^ fire_jEas_ to ^e proclaimed j ^e^^Jgod^of
Israel. The proposal met with instant and
hearty approval at the hands of the people
who had been halting between two opinions.
They uttered their indorsement in a great
shout — .''It is well spoken."
The plan proposed was carried out, and
rtl^e contrast in that scen e ^u pon the crest o f
Mount cTanhel'iyas v^lriking^ On one side
four hundred and fifty priests of Baal, on
the other side Elijah standing alone! On one
J
52 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
side the well-dressed objects of the royal
favor, fat, sleek, and well fed from the table
of Jezebel ; on the other side Elijah, the Tish-
bite, half naked, with a leather girdle about
his loins, gaunt, thin, shaggy, as a man who
had claimed his scanty fare from the ravens.
On one side the king and queen, yet with noth-
ing to aid them save an empty, useless idol
as the object of their misguided devotion ; on
the other side the single-handed prophet of
the living God who had at his command le-
gions of spiritual forces greater than all the
armies of earth.
The people gathered on the hillside and
sat through the livelong day with Oriental
yjL , patience. The priests of Baal called upon
^^V^ their deity from morning until noon. They
•^ \, worked themselves into a frenzy of excite-
ment like the howling dervishes of the East.
V They cut themselves with knives until the
\J^ blood gushed forth in token of their des-
perate earnestness. They cried incessantly,
"Oh Baal, hear us! Oh Baal, hear us!" But
*Hhere was neither voice nor any to answer
nor any that regarded," the sober record
says. All their frantic efforts availed noth-
ing. They were earnest, they were sincere,
they were persistent, but there was nothing
there. There was no such deity as Baal in
>
y
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 53
existence, and they might well have saved
their breath and their blood.
Then in the quiet of the evening hour the
p rophet Elij ah put his cl aims to th e_test^ JU
There was no rant, no frenzy, no cutting of i
his flesh with knives. He was calm and con-
fident as one who prayed to the living God.
"Oh thou God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
let it be known this day that thou art God
and that I am thy servant. Hear me, that
these people may know that thou art God and
that thou mayest turn their hearts back
again. ' *
"Then thefire_fell^" we read, on the altar
of JeEovan and i£ebumt offering was con-
sumed. The people rose to it — the God who
answered by actual achievement commanded
their allegiance. They uttered their cry,
"Jehovah is God! Jehovah is God!'' until it
echoed and reechoed acix)ss the plain of
Bsdraelon, which has witnessed so many vic-
tories of right over wrong.
This scene on Mount Carmel may be taken
aa a dra matic and poetic presentation of the
wi der tesFwh icE^is s tea^RTy l^eing ji ppllfif^ ^9 -
{ be rival clai manisjiip oa our alje^iaBce. Let
the religion which answers by facts of expe-
rience, by renewed hearts, by loftier moral
purposes, by increased spiritual vigor and
54 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
by finer forms of usefulness stand supreme!
Let every form of faith be judged by its
fruits I If paganism and infidelity would only
bring forward something more than clever
theories, we might take them seriously. If
they would only undertake an exhibit of the
sound, moral results consequent upon the ac-
ceptance of their interpretation of the su-
preme verities, we would then have something
to speak to other than a mere array of idle
talk. In the meantime, let that religion which
answers in terms of Christian effort, reaching
out in the name of Christ with the hospital,
the school, and the church into every nation
under heaven and into every section of hu-
man need, stand supreme I
In the second place, this prophet of God
fought against the social injustice of this
wicked king. There was a clajh o f interest
bet ween a pri vate citizen ^ nam ed HaEQtETand,
A£ab, t he king. Naboth had a vineyard near
the king's palace, and the monarch desired it
for a garden of herbs. But the land had been
in Naboth 's family for many years and he
refused to sell. "The Lord forbid that I
should give the inheritance of my fathers
unto thee." Then the king was ** peeved."
He went back to his palace heavy and de-
pressed. He lay down upon his bed, turned
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 55
his face to the wall and would not eat. He
was a man of small build and this petty,
childish humor was thoroughly characteristic.
But Jezebel, his queen , was no such weak- t ^^JlJ'
ling. * ' Why is thy spirit so sad ? ' ' she asked. ^
When he told her the occasion of his disap- ^^^^^
pointment, she laughed in his face. That was (\.Jt<^
not the way things were done in Tyre nor by |^ I ^ ^
kings generally in that rude age. ''Rise and'^'^Tj
eat bread," she said, "and let thine heart be
merry. I will give thee the vineyard of
Naboth." "Lady Macbeth will show the
Thane of Cawdor how to become king. There
is always a way to be bad. The gate of hell
stands wide open, or, if half -closed, a touch
will make it fly back. The road is broad that
leads to destruction and the going is easy."
Jezebel will not let "I dare not" wait upon
"I would." She was not "too full of the milk
of human kindness to catch the nearest way. ' '
She believed in *^ direct action J'
She decided, however, to show some regard ]/W a^
for the outward decencies. She would dress li^i^JL
up her wolfish deed in sheep's clothing. She/
would be properly ceremonious about it. She
wrote letters in the king's name and said,
"Proclaim a fast! Ring the church bell!
Put on a surplice! Say, 'Lord, Lord,' and
sing the long-meter Doxology through twice,
Jj
^
^
56 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
for the queen is about to do an evil deed in
the name of religion. ' '
When the fast was proclaimed Naboth, by
rt«^AM)rder of the queen, was given an exalted po-
'q>-^ sition among the people. Then two paid liars
Jr-? were brought forward to swear that during
r^ the fast they had heard him blaspheme God
and the king. On this trumped-up charge of
blasphemy and treason — the same two charges
f"^^ brought against Jesus Christ — Naboth was
"^ taken out and stoned to death. Then his
property was confiscated by the state as the
property of a man convicted of treason. He
was branded a felon and the land was duly
turned over to the king, who had coveted it
for a flower garden.
What an admirable plan for robbing an in-
nocent man of his land and of his life ! Jezebel
was an artist in wrongdoing. She knew how
to turn the trick with neatness and dispatch.
The program went through without a single
hitch like a well-arranged church wedding
rehearsed in advance. Where there is a will
there is a way. What are the Ten Command-
ments among friends I When Naboth had been
stoned to death on the false charge, Jezebel
said to her husband, "Arise and take your
vineyard, for Naboth is dead."
V , What an hour for a prophet of righteoDS-
«-' t^
1\ A h ''^-
SOCIAL REBUILDEBS 57
ness ! His work was all cut out for him and
laid ready to his hand. He saw even in that
far-off time that private citizens have rights
which cannot be overridden by wicked kings
or by grasping queens. He would let those
selfish, cruel monarchs know that there was a
God in Israel who could not be trifled with.
He was the tribune of the people, the first
great Commoner proclaiming his message
from on high that * * the welfare of the people
is the highest law of the land."
This man of God knew little or nothing
about the political forms of modern democ-
racy, but he had the spirit of it. He walked
by faith and not by sight, not having received
the promises but having seen them afar off.
He was persuaded of the fitness of that better
mode of life and he embraced it and confessed
himself a stranger and a pilgrim in such a
world as Ahab and Jezebel would have made
it. He was heart and soul for a better coun-
try. He would have .joined heartily in this
great hjonn of praise^ had it been current in
his day:
"We knelt before kings and we bent before lords.
For theirs were the crowns and theirs were the swords.
But the times of the bending and bowing are past,
For the day of the people Is dawning at last.
'Reprinted from ChriBtian Internationalism (p. 80), by W. P. Merrill,
by penmission of the publishers, The Macmilian Company.
58 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES
"Great Day of the Lord! The prophets and seers
Have sung of thy coming these thousands of years.
On the wings of war's whirlwind God's judgments fly
fast,
And the Day of the People is dawning at last."
^
K4>
A
The ugly deed of Ahab had been done at
»^night — Naboth was put out of the way under
,cover of darkness. But the wicked king was
awake next morning at daybreak. He started
down at sunrise to take possession of the
coveted vineyard. He rode in military state
from Samaria to Jezreel, but his joy was
short-lived. The news of his crime had come
to Elijah, and this prophet of God was on
hand to utter his protest against this act of
villainy. When the king drove up to the gate
of the vineyard, there stood the sturdy figure
the prophet with eyes like coals of fire.
y^^ Half in anger and half in anguish, for he
saw that he had sinned in vain, the king
sobbed out, ''Hast thou found me, mine
enemy?" The stern reply came back, "I
\^' have found thee, because thou hast sold thy-
self to do evil."
Here was wrongdoing facing righteousness
— and it was ashamed and afraid. Here was
guilt facing conscience and it trembled and
shivered like a leaf in the wind. Here was the
whole method of seeking pleasure in ways
/
SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 59
which God does not approve, having the cup
of joy dashed from its lips. The king thought
that he was going down that pleasant morn-
ing to take possession of a lovely vineyard,
but what he found in waiting was the day of
judgment in the person of that prophet of the
Lord. He went down to play with his flower
garden like a child with a new toy and he
had his death warrant read to him. ''
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh at
our puny efforts to outwit him. Be_sure_ymir
sin wil Hind you out ! (r od is not mocked. What
a man sows he reaps, and the harvest matches
the seed in kind and in amount. We live not in
a world of chance nor of magic, nor of end-
less good nature — we live under the reign of
law, where every man will be judged accord-
ing to the deeds done in the body.
Then follows that terrible denunciation of
the king and the queen for their social injus- j y\A/Y^
tice. ''Thou hast sold thyself to do evil. The (^jgj^
Lord will bring evil upon thee. The Lord saw
last night the blood of Naboth — where the
dogs licked the blood of Naboth the dogs shall
lick thine. And the dogs shall eat Jezebel."
Tj; wn« R fft^ rf nl threat a nd fearfully^ was^it .
fulfilled- When we turn to^the laterhistory
of this guilty king and queen, we find the
gruesome narrative which records the fulfill-
60 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
ment of that dire prediction. When Jehu
came to the throne, Ahab, the king, was slain
in an open field, and the dogs mutilated his
remains. Then Jehu drove to the royal
palace in his chariot. He saw Jezebel, the
queen, looking out from an upper window.
She had painted her face and arrayed herself
in finery, hoping by her personal attractions
to placate his wrath. He promptly ordered
her eunuchs to throw her out of the window.
The eunuchs saw that Jehu was now in the
ascendant and they instantly complied with
his stern command. "Throw her down,"
he said, and when they threw her to the pave-
ment, her blood was sprinkled on Jehu's
borses. He drove his chariot over her in ruth-
less fashion and went in to his dinner. When
he had eaten, he said to his servants, "This
cursed woman was a princess, the daughter
of a king — ^see to it iiiat she is decently
buried." But when the servants went forth
to bury her the record says that ' ' they found
no more than her skull and the bones of her
feet and hands." The dogs had eaten and
carried away all the rest. "I have seen the
wicked in great power and spreading himself
like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away,
and, lo, he was not. Yea, I sought for hina,
but he could not be found."
//
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 61
This prophet of the living God stood for
the supremacy of the moral law. He believed
that Mount Sinai was the highest peak on the/Uj|A|^^^
face of the globe. The king had sinned
against Naboth and against those principles
of social justice which underlie all human y^O jy
wellbeing and advance. He had sinned
against Him who has all these sacred in-
terests of his people in his holy hands. The
king had made himself the enemy of the race
by using his strength to oppress the weak.
And because there was a God in Israel, that
sort of thing could not go unpunished. The
sharp-toothed dogs of the divine penalty were
sure to reach the offender at the last.
Have we not need of the same sort of mes-
sage from on high here in our own day?
A hflb is still amogg ^s and Naboth stilj
s uffers wrong. The strong still use their ad-
vantage at times to oppress the weak. While
the war was on there was a nother wa r being
fought out in all the land^^f^eartJi. IteTvic^
tories and its defeats were not always re-
ported on the front page of the paper with
headlines and pictures. The advances and
retreats could not always be indicated by
pinning rows of little flags on some map of
the world ; but it was none the less a real war.
Xt_was the war of the exploited against the
^
62 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
exploiter^ big and little, rascally and respec-
table, personal and corporate. It was the
war of those who actually serve society by
the useful labor of hand or of brain against
those who have fallen into the easy, disgrace-
ful habit of eating their bread by the sweat
of some other man's brow. And the armistice
in that war will never be signed until the
questions involved have been settled and
have been settled right.
It must be steadily borne in mind that
privi lege crea tgs rpspmi^ibility.. <'To whom
much is given of him will much be required. ' '
* * To own is to owe. ' ' It was Ibsen who said,
"A man's gifts are not a property; they are
a duty. ' ' The bare fact of possession means
obligation. When the Lord of the whole earth
has planted a vineyard thick with high privi-
lege; when he has hedged it about in provi-
dential fashion with opportunities unparal-
leled ; when he has built the tower and dug the
wine vat and provided all the necessary facili-
ties for rewarding effort, he has a clear right
to receive the fruits of that vineyard in terms
of competent and unselfish service rendered
by the recipients of his bounty.
We have yet a long way to go in our mod-
em American life before that sense of stew-
ardsihip in the enjoyment of privilege is
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 63
recognized and realized. "When thousands
of newspapers are owned by groups that use
the power of the press for purposes other
than moneymaking ; when no man is honored
simply because he wastes more than his fel-
lows ; when the great material needs of life,
which are limited in amount, are in the hands
of the community; when the great mass of
ordinary business is in one form or another
cooperative, then shall we be able to guide
the flood of human thought and purpose away
from personal ambition and fear. Then rea-
son and sympathy may become indeed the
master-motives. It cannot be said that such
a life has heretofore failed, for it has never
been tried — individuals have lived it, but or-
ganized society has never made the effort.
For the first time since the world began we
have the natural and technical resources.
Therefore such a life is more possible to-day
than ever in the past, granted the will — a will
so strong and so moral as rightly to be called
religious."
If we are to advance toward the realization
of these high hopes there must come a radical
change of heart and a new mood in certain
quarters. The spirit of arrogance is alto-
gether too much in evidence in these troub-
lous times. It is a day which calls for wise
V
64 SOCIAL REBUILDEES
and patient action. Hear these words uttered
not by some reckless soap-box orator, but by
Franklin H. Giddings, of Columbia Univer-
sity, one of the most eminent sociologists in
this country :
"^^ *' There are three million unemployed in-
dustrial working persons, men and women, in
the United States now, and probably there
will be more. Wages are being reduced.
These reductions of force and pay were fore-
seen, and, by and large, they were inevitable.
The wage reductions for the most part are
proper in relation to the partial breakdown
of industry and the downward tendency of
prices.
"Unhappily there is another factor in the
situation that is neither necessary nor justi-
fiable. This is the vindictive and rather
brutal spirit in which a great deal of the
squeezing and cutting is being done, and the
quite unnecessary extent to which construc-
tive measures, the product of much patient
thinking and careful experimenting for the
better adjustment of relations between capi-
tal and labor, are being thrown into the dis-
card. Let it be said at once that the wiser
and more far-seeing employers are not guilty.
But there is a rabble of industrial upstarts,
new-rich profiteers, unintelligent, vulgar ruf-
J
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 65
fians, who have made millions of ill-gotten
gains out of war conditions, who are now
drunk with new power and obviously dis-
posed to go the limit in displaying it.
"A program of smashing and repression
is proclaimed. Labor legislation is to be at-
tacked and, wherever possible, repealed;
labor organizations are to be crippled or
broken and 'the welfare stuff' cut out. The
'fool machinery' of adjustment boards, pro-
tocols, industrial relations committees, em-
ployment secretaries, and 'all that sort of
thing, ' are to be scrapped, and employers will
get back to 'the good old way, the simple
plan' of dealing with 'the hired help' on the
'take it or leave it' basis. It is no secret that
this attitude was a big factor in the election,
and that it will play a large part in State
and national politics throughout the present
year and perhaps for a longer time. ' '
"It is a wild and foolhardy sowing of
dragons' teeth. Grant that there has been
provocation. There has been plenty of it.
Labor has been arrogant. Throughout the
war it had the whip hand and took advantage
of its opportunity. Revolutionary injfluences
controlled some of the organizations and pro-
fessional agitators did immeasurable harm.
Crazy talk about a social revolution became
66 SOCIAL REBUILDEKS
organized propaganda and often developed
into direct action. A great deal of unwise
and coddling legislation has been put on the
statute books. The saner and more conserva-
tive labor organizations, as well as the radi-
cal ones, have stupidly maintained the policy
of restricting production, of penalizing ener-
getic and faithful service, and of carrying
incompetents at full pay. They have fought
discharges of worthless and crooked em-
ployees and made ' organization issues ' out of
their cases.
**It is human nature to return evil for evil,
and now that employers have the whip hand
retaliation is to be expected. Nevertheless
it is folly. Wisdom prescribes a thoughtful
study of the entire problem, a firm insistence
upon the rights of property and of manage-
ment, a cool-headed resumption of control
over production, and a patient attempt to ad-
just real differences of interest where these
do not involve sacrifice of personal liberties,
efficiency, and honorable keeping of agree-
ments. Never were constructive measures,
enlightened views, and patient effort more
imperatively needed than now. ' '
The nations of the earth are_ being chal-
l enged m t nese grim times to decl ar e openly
b y what sort of principles they mean to live.
>^
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 67
They are being sTimmoned to show of what
sort of moral stuff they are composed. They
are being called upon to exhibit the measure
of moral opposition they can offer to that
bulk and mass of material force and national
immorality which brought upon the race the
disaster of the Great War. And whether
they like it or not, they must stand up and be
counted for or against the principle that
''might makes right," for or against the idea
that any government is at liberty to do any
frightful thing it may choose in order to
''ha,ck its way through," for or against the
idea that a ruthless class struggle is the
proper way to deal with industrial problems.
And it is for every nation which has not lost
its soul to make clear beyond a peradventure
that it holds the moral issues supreme and
stands ready to commit all its interests to the
keeping of those principles of right which are
at last to determine the outcome. "'
There are certain great social principles
which are now being urged on countless fields
with all the power of moral imperatives. The
world is indeed to be made ' ' safe for democ-
racy," but it must be a more real and thor-
oughgoing democracy than anything we have
yet seen if it is to stand the test of the trying
times which await us. And for the realization
68 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES
of those great social ideals there must be in
every land of earth a more resolute and
aspiring national soul. The man who thinks
that brawn and brains alone, without the re-
newing and directing power of spiritual
forces at their best, can secure and safeguard
human well-being and advance thereby writes
himself down a fool.
In all this work of social repair those wise
words~oF t^"British LaborJpafty^_which
stand as one of the great pronouncmnejits
called forth by the war, may well Jbe^ b^rne in
mind: **If we are to escape from the decay
of civilization itself, we must build a new
social order based not on fighting but on fra-
ternity, not on a competitive struggle for the
bare means of life but upon a deliberately
planned cooperation in production and dis-
tribution for the benefit of all who partici-
pate by hand or by brain ; not on the enforced
domination over subject nations, subject
races, subject classes, or a subject sex, but
on equal freedom in industry as well as in
government, upon that general consciousness
of consent and that widest possible participa-
tion in power which is characteristic of
democracy.''
The privileged lives are very much in evi-
dence these days. They dwell on the sunny
^
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 69
side of the street. They are clothed in purple
and fine linen. They fare sumptuously every
day on the best the market affords. They
ride swiftly to and fro in limousines or in
parlor cars. They are possessed as often as
not with sound health, clear heads and all the
advantages of training, culture, and social
position.
Well and good — all these choice things are
not to be despised ; they count in the final out-
come ! But let it be kept clearly in mind that
all the se advantages spell obligation in capi -
tal letters ^ *'To him that hath shall be
given," the Master said. It is always easier
to get on when you are on already. And then
swift on the heels of that statement came the
principle involved — * ' To whom much is given
of him will much be required." High privi-
lege carries with it responsibilities which
cannot be evaded. .
In many communities, even in this land of /jO
freedom, the strong still use their strength to a I
oppress the weak. I lived for nearly fifteen / > ^
years in the State of California. It is a great ^ ^
oil-producing State. A group of my friends, / .
all of them men of modest means, were pur- ^T^A/^
chasing a tract of oil land which promised /v^
good returns. They invited me to invest in ^\/
what seemed a safe and profitable enterprise. yjL/"
ckcAA
Y
70 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES
I did not have very much money but I put in
five hundred dollars of my savings with the
others. The wells were sunk and they struck
oil in abundance. There was a most encour-
aging and profitable flow of oil from those
wells.
Then the company naturally desired to ship
its oil to market, and it applied to the rail-
road for cars, as the tanks were all full and
the oil was still flowing. But somehow there
was a delay in getting cars. Then there was
a further delay, and the delay continued. The
oil was still flowing and was going to waste.
It did not seem possible to ship any of that
oil to market. And when the truth was fer-
reted out it was found that a certain large
concern here in the United States, which is
also in the oil business, controlled in under-
handed, sinister fashion that railroad and
pretty much all of the shipping facilities in
the State of California. And this concern
had instructed the railroad that no cars were
to be furnished to this company because they
wished to purchase those wells and that oil
land at their own price.
The owners of the smaller concern were
utterly helpless — they could not ship their
oil, and it was useless. They were finally
compelled to sell at the price offered by the
J
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 71
larger concern, which was far below the value
of the property. The price received scarcely
met the cost of sinking the wells and so we
lost all we had put in. It was not justice.
It was not the sort of commercial method
which makes for the well-being of society or
for the stability of the republic. In plain
English, it was an act of high-handed rob-
bery. And that sort of oppression is being
practiced to-day in many oonmiunities here in
our own land. »
In the face of such practices we are mov- »V^
ing swiftly to that point where capital may ^-"^i*^
be compelled to choose between confiscation Wj-A*
such as it has suffered in the empire of^A.^^
Russia o^r conse cration to those worthier ends '
which would be its highest honor and abiding
happiness in the kingdom of God. The
Naboths of the twentieth century will not
tamely submit to exploitation at the hands of
the Ahabs who have it in their power to
wrong the weak.
The hour has struck for a great forward
mov ementjn the establishment o f social ;ius^
tice thr ou ghout the world. It is a task which
will require untold amounts of energy and
of knowledge, of vision and of patience. The
bitterness of the class struggle must be re-
placed by an increased spirit of fair play and
72 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
cooperation. The secrecy and self-seeking
of partisan politics must be overborne by an
open-minded sense of justice and of concerted
effort for the larger well-being of all the na-
tions. The school must be made to realize
yet more profoundly the moral imperative of
translating knowledge into action and of in-
terpreting life afresh in terms of abiding
worth. And ''religion itself must be recov-
ered from the bondage of unproved dogma
and of unattractive ritual to be established
in the freedom of the faith, in the winsome-
ness of a finer form of goodness, and in the
larger efficiency of a united strength."
There are mountains of obstacles to be
overcome in realizing these great ideals. Just
so ! But it is the high office of faith to move
mountains. Faith can stand up and say,
"Fear not, only believe!" Believe in your-
self and in the sincerity of your own pur-
poses. If you cannot do that without flinch-
ing, then put yourself right so that you can !
Believe in your fellows — it may easily be that
many of them, perhaps most of them, are as
good as you are. Believe in God who is above
all and through all and in us all. And in that
high faith go forth and win.
The man of G-od, w hether he be lav or
clerical, has a great opportunity in this day
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 73
of social agitation and unrest. Let him be a
man of principle and of conviction, let him be
a man sure of his facts and possessed of an
honest sympathy for all who suffer from
social injustice, and he too will find his work
cut out and ready for him. Tt. is fp;;^ ||ia /^ q
c hurch of Jesus Ch rist to make it plain b e- ^ jUX^
yond a peradventure that if a man stands for I n
commercial and industrial methods which u-^^-cA
mean injustice and oppression, the mere ac- i-s,,jt_^
ceptance of a sound theology, or a more
scrupulous attention to the forms of religion,
will not suffice to save him from the conse-
quences of that wrongdoing. It is for the
church to make it clear that showy gifts to
charity and large schemes of benevolence
made possible by gains gotten in immoral
ways will not atone for acts of social injus-
tice. It is for every man to get his money as
well as to give it away according to methods
which the Almighty can approve.
When I was a pastor in California there
was an outlook from the belfry of my church
which was most suggestive. I could enter
that church steeple and look straight out
through the Golden Gate upon the world's
widest sea. I could see coming in the great
ocean liners of the Pacific Mail, the Korea,
the Siberia, the Manchuria, and the Mongolia,
v/
74 SOCIAL REBUILDEES
their very names suggestive of our points of
contact across the water. I knew that deep
down in the holds of those ships there were
the teas and the silks, the teakwood and the
lacquer and all the other treasures of the
Orient sent hither to enrich and to adorn our
American life.
Through the port holes of the steerage of
those ships I could sometimes see strange
faces and hear the murmur of alien tongues.
I could see men and women coming hither
to better their condition in this land of oppor-
tunity. And behind those who actually came,
I could see across that widest of all our
oceans a multitude of beseeching faces like
those mystic faces which make up the back-
ground of Raphael's Sistine Madonna in the
gallery at Dresden. They too were looking
this way. They were looking in through the
Golden Gate at my church steeple. They
were looking toward this Christian civiliza-
tion of ours as if dimly conscious that we had
here discovered a source of divine help to
which their imperfect faith was a stranger.
The moral appeal which all that made to
me was tremendous. And I feel sure at this
hour that all of those men and women who
suffer hurt and wrong here in our own broad
land at the hands of an unjust social system
y
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 75
are in similar fashion looking up at all the
church steeples with an unvoiced appeal in
their hearts. And they will not acquit us of
our responsibility unless we are bent upon
delivering to them in more generous measure
all those higher elements of our Christian
civilization which are made possible to us
through the gospel of Jesus Christ. They
are making their steady appeal to the spirit-
ual forces, symbolized by those church
steeples, for aid of a higher sort in the solu-
tion of these vexing problems of industrial
life.
Personally, I do not believe that their de- y tf^^^^
liverance will come by any sort of social revo- A^V ^^
lution. I do not believe that the advance of vij "^xX/
social sympathy and the more complete ex- L ^
pression of that sympathy in better institu- 5^ ^ i
tions and in a more finely organized life will (jAk^*^
mean that private ownership of the means of \ \ry\Mi
production will entirely disappear as the L \i
socialists desire, or that such private owner- \ yWV*"
ship ought to disappear. I do not believe n
that all competition will cease or that it could "^ \j
entirely cease without a resultant loss of in- ^^x (M^
centive to effort which we are not ready to ' v^^^i
incur. I do not believe that superior per- /Vv^^
sonal endowment and untiring industry will
cease to command a reward altogether excep-
76 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES
tional — I think that it is altogether best that
they should continue to command such a re-
ward. The exceptional rewards now held out
to such ability put a premium upon and effec-
tively stimulate the production and develop-
ment of those useful qualities in the lives of
many who might not show themselves equally
responsive to any other form of motive.
In the judgment of many there is need that
certain elements in our social order should be
more strongly championed at this time.
"There is," as Theodore S. Woolsey has said,
' ' a world-wide attack upon the rights of pri-
vate property taking shape in a variety of
forms from the blatant doings of Bolshevism
to the subtler theories of national ownership
and of the taxation of the savings of the
thrifty out of existence which, if successful,
will remove the principal incentive to labor.
^^^ ^/v^The basis of civilization is not humanitarian-
' jv ism; it is the maintenance of personal and
t y* ^-'property rights by a system of self-imposed
jK/^^ law."
//'' ij All this too I steadfastly believe, but I hold
Vji^^V" none the less that by the ever-widening sway
'^ y^ and rule of the spirit of Christ all these
*/' V , kingdoms of business and of politics, of edu-
V' >j^cation and of recreation, of home life and
J^^^^''^social life, must become kingdoms of our
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 77
Lord in the sense that they shall steadily and
consistently express his method and spirit.
How tremendously it would strengthen our
confidence in the moral supremacy of Chris-
tianity as we send forth our representatives
to those non-Christian nations were we here
at home wise enough, strong enough, and
good enough to make our own nation more
truly Christian! How magnificent would be
the moral challenge and the spiritual appeal
we could make did our missionaries go forth
from a nation of free men organized and
working together in that spirit of intelligent
good will which is the very essence of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ ! We can never stand
right with the God of all the higher values, or
right in the eyes of the outer world, or right
in our own eyes until we are striving reso-
lutely to make this total life of ours like a
holy city descending out of the realm of
vision and dream into the realm of accom-
plished fact, a holy city where God himself
shall dwell and reign forever and ever.
CHAPTER III
THE HEEDSMAN WHO PREACHED
SOCIAL JUSTICE
My whole approacli to these industrial
problems is naturally sympathetic. My
father was a workingman — ^he worked all his
life with his hands. He was a farmer in the
Middle West. He brought up his children to
work with their hands. There is no sort of
farm work, from the turning of the first fur-
row in the spring to the gathering in of the
last nubbin of corn in the fall which I have
not done, day in and day out, week in and
week out. I have come in many a time from
the field at night so tired that I scarcely cared
to eat my supper — I only wanted to tumble
into bed to get the rest needed for the next
day's work.
Therefore, when I see a group of working-
men coming out of a mill or a mine or a fac-
tory, weary and depleted at the end of the
day's toil, I know precisely how they feel.
When I hear them talk about bettering their
condition, it is no academic question for me —
I feel it in my bones and in my flesh which
78
J
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 79
have been wearied by the same sort of expe-
rience which they are undergoing now. ^
This man whose words we are to study in^'^'^'^
this lecture made his approach to the prob- t/^A-*-
lems of his day by the same direct route. ^^X/^IaA^'^^
lived with his feet on the bare ground even <y^juix>*^
when his head was among the stars. He was ___
not clothed in soft raiment — he came, like his
successor in the time of Christ, rough in dress
and rude in manner. He was emphatically
an outdoor man with the smell of the soil in
his garments and the accents of farm life in
his rugged speech. He was one of those
homely, weather-beaten people who make po-
tent appeal to us all. y .
The word of the Lord as it fell from his ^^M"^
lips was a word with the bark on it. He was {^J/iC{/\ -
not a Matthew Arnold discoursing about
*' sweetness and light,'* with a polite scorn for
the ways of the unwashed. He was a Thomas
Carlyle, with a bite in his tongue and a hot
hatred in his heart for all manner of sham.
He was no reed shaken with the wind — he
was built out of quartered oak.
He was once accused of preaching for the
money there was in it. He scorned the impu-
tation. ''No prophet am I" (in the profes-
sional sense he meant), "nor prophet's son.
I am a herdsman from Tekoa and a dresser
5
80 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
of sycamore trees." He kept a few sheep on
his meager farm and had a grove of sycamore
trees, which were not like our sycamores —
they bore a weak and watery sort of fig which
was eaten only by the very poor.
. He lived six miles south of Bethlehem, at a
Jplace called Tekoa. The region is as hilly
ks New Hampshire and about twice as rocky.
' - - '^ It was said that the shepherds of Tekoa had
to sharpen the noses of their sheep to enable
them to get down between the stones and nip
the green grass. It was a rugged, meager
sort of life which this man had lived, and we
can understand his instant hearty sympathy
with all the struggling people of his day. He
had eaten the hard fare of ill-paid labor.
He was what the "safe-and-sane" people — ■
which often means people who have been
dead for some time but are still going about
in order to save funeral expenses — ^would
have ca lled ^;\^ « gi ^« ^<^f ' ' Amos was once_
ajked in peremptory fashion t o leave the
c ountry for fear his words might st jr up the
oppress e^poo r t^ revolJLagainst their lords
and masters. He told his critics thaOie Wa5
i^onstrained to stay right there on his job.
The word of the Lord had come to him and
speak he must. ''The word of the Lord," as
they used the phrase, did not mean a book. It
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 81
was the phrase by which those early Hebrews
simply and accurately described one of those
commanding moral impulses which they be-
lieved to be divine in its origin and impera-
tive in its moral authority. ^'The Lord hath
spoken; who can but prophesy?"
Amos saw the rapid increase of wealth in-ftiA -^
his day and he knew that to the souls of many /vuft^ ^
it was a menace. He saw luxurious buildings rh'^'
given over to self-indulgence. He saw the ^ ^
gorgeous ritual employed in worship which ''^^^
had become more costly than holy. He saw
the contempt of the well-to-do for the strug- '^
gling poor. And he felt that all this was
wrong. He believed that it was an offense to
Him who is no respecter of persons, but cares
alike for us all.
Amos believed in one God, a God of right-
eousness, a God who was interested in the
political and commercial affairs of men. He
believed that the Hebrew nation had been
chosen of God, not for favoritism but for
service and that the bond between the Hebrew
people and their Maker was a moral bond.
And because he believed all this he felt that
they were endangering their standing before
him and their usefulness among the nations
of the earth by their mode of life. He there-
fore sought to recall them from their thought-
/
82 SOCIAL REBUILDEES
less extravagance and showy self-indulgence
to more worthy action.
He represented the Deity he worshiped as
being merciful and gracious, slow to anger
and plenteous in mercy. God had been pa-
tient beyond measure with those disobedient
people, but now the time had come for judg-
ment and correction. *'For three transgres-
sions and for four I will not turn away the
punishment of Judah. For three transgres-
sions and for four I will not turn away the
punishment of Israel. For three transgres-
sions and for four I will not turn away the
punishment of Damascus." Over and over
again he repeats that phrase, "For three
transgressions and for four."
It was not for some single act of wrong-
doing prompted perchance by passion or by
sudden temper. It was for their repeated and
cumulative acts of evil that they were be-
ing arraigned from on high. ' ' You have done
wrong and you have done it again and again
and again," the prophet seemed to say. You
have persisted in modes of life which you
knew were out of line with the will of God —
"For three transgressions and for four" —
therefore the day of the Lord is come when
you will be judged according to those deeds
done in the body.
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 83
He rebuked the people at these three points.
First, he denounced them for their showy,
useless extravagance. They had their *' win-
ter houses ' ' and their ' ' summer houses ' ' and
their ** palaces of ivory." They "stretched
themselves upon couches" and **ate lambs
from the flock and fatted calves from the
midst of the stall." They ''drank their wine
in huge bowls" and ** anointed themselves"
with costly perfumes. And all this at a time
when many of the poor were starving and
''the righteous were being sold for silver and
the needy for a pair of shoes." It was the
downright heartlessness and inhumanity of it
all which made it an offense in the sight of
God.
Have his words any application for us?
We talk about ' ' the high cost of living, ' ' and
Heaven knows that with the present scale of
prices it is not easy for people with ordinary
wages or fixed salaries to make both ends
meet. But go to the places where the lux-
uries of life are being sold, the fur coats and
the diamonds and the silk underwear — are
the dealers complaining because of the total
lack of trade? They tell us, on the contrary,
that the demand was never so keen as it has
been in the last two or three years. Go to the
most expensive hotels and restaurants in our
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84 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
great cities — are they all empty? They are
filled at almost all hours of the day and night
with people who are flinging money about as
if it were of no more worth than autumn
leaves. Gro to the high-priced places of
amusement and recreation — are they for-
saken ? They are filled to the doors with peo-
ple who seem to have money to burn. And
all this at a time when other people are starv-
ing to death for lack of food, not one here and
one there, but hundreds of thousands of them
in Armenia, in Syria, in Serbia, in Austria, in
Poland, in China, and in well-nigh half the
lands of the earth. Millions for luxury and
self-indulgence, but only the loose change to
meet the needs of our fellows who are in
want.
I sat not long ago in the dining car just
across from a young fellow who looked as if
he might have come from some expensive pre-
paratory school. The service was a la carte.
He would order one dish after another, eat a
little of it perhaps and then push it away
to order something else. When his check was
brought I saw the amount — it was $3.90 for
the lunch. He flung down a five-dollar bill
in careless fashion, told the waiter to keep
the change, and walked out with his chin up
and a cigarette in his mouth.
V
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 85
I do not suppose that the young chap had
ever earned a dollar in his life, or that he is
likely to earn a dollar within the next ten
years, perhaps never. He was eating his
bread by the sweat of some other man's brow,
and that was the way that he was eating it.
And all this at a time when the stories of
want and pain, of disease and death, which
come to us from the four quarters of the globe
make the heart of every decent man sick. In
these grim times all waste is crime and all
needless, senseless, showy luxury is a close
second. If that young fellow as he walked
out of the dining car could have met face to
face one of those starving children of Eu-
rope for whom Herbert Hoover has been
working and pleading, the appeal of want
might have pierced even the rhinoceros hide
of his moral nature and have awakened some
decent response.
The showy, extravagant self-indulgence is
not all being exhibited by the very rich —
much of it comes from the ''newly rich" and
from those who would not be termed rich at
all, but whose heads have been turned by the
high wages paid during the war and by a
scale of living suddenly advanced out of all
proportion to the taste and judgment of
those who indulge in it. Yet in the face of
86 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
all this extravagant expenditure how the
churches and the charities, the homes and the
hospitals, the small struggling colleges, and
the various institutions of benevolence have
to scheme and plan, scrape and save, in order
to meet their needs! ''For three transgres-
sions and for four," for repeated acts of
heartlessness and cruelty, I will not turn
away your punishment, saith the Lord of
Hosts.
In the second place, the prophet denounced
the people for their careless treatment of the
weak. ''Ye have sold the righteous for silver
and the needy for a song." In their eager-
ness to monopolize the land he pictured them
as panting for the very dust of the ground
upon the heads of the poor. They had tam-
pered with the weights and measures used in
business that they might add to their profits
— "Ye have made the ephah small and the
shekel great." They were "profiteers" of
the thirty-third and last degree before that
word had been coined. They were intent on
piling on all that the traffic would bear. They
bought in the cheapest market and sold in the
dearest, regardless of the effect of their
action upon the lives of the people. They
hired men for the least they could be induced
by their necessities to take, with no thought
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 87
of the social consequences of all this upon
lives which were equally precious with their
own in the eyes of God. All this had pro-
duced a hard and callous contempt for hu-
man values, a wretched scorn for the weak,
and a flat indifference to the social implica-
tions of their mode of life.
This prophet of old had come from the edge
of the desert where there was plain living
and high thinking. He had seen the strug-
gles of the poorer elements of society to
maintain themselves, and he felt for them.
He had lived in that very region where our
Lord was tempted when he was led into the
wilderness with the wild beasts to be tried
out. You can hear a note of reminiscence in
those words of Amos where he says it is as if
a man **did flee from a lion, and a bear met
him; or went into a house, and leaned his
hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.'*
The prophet had been compelled to live
simply and dangerously, and now this flat,
contemptuous disregard for the weak and
struggling by the more fortunate of earth
filled his soul with wrath.
Here, again, shall not our own land, strong,
brave, prosperous in so many sections of its
life, take heed? The working i)eople of the
world are not all in the powerful labor unions
88 SOCIAL EEBUILDEKS
where labor has become class conscious and
the workingmen are upon their feet able to
bargain collectively with their employers on
comparatively equal terms. The hundreds
of thousands of plain working people who are
not thus placed come in for our consideration.
* ' Take heed, ' ' the Master said, ' ' lest ye cause
one of these little ones to stumble." They
may or may not be little in physical stature,
but they are little in opportunity, in resource,
in the power of initiative, in trained intelli-
gence, and in ability to carve for themselves
at the big, long table where so many stronger
men with longer arms are reaching for the
choicest bits. Take heed that ye cause not
one of these weaker ones to stumble and fall
— it were better for a man to have a millstone
tied about his neck and be cast into the midst
of the sea. The Master would have us show
nothing less than a chivalrous concern for the
less fortunate of the earth.
Look upon this picture of Gary, the seat
of a great steel industry, as drawn in lines
that live and move and speak, by the hand of
Eay Stannard Baker:
"I went down to the city of Gary in a snow
storm, with a cold, raw wind blowing off the
Illinois prairies. The train was cold and the
city I had left behind was cold. I was going
>(
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 89
from a city suffering from a coal strike to a
city suffering from a steel strike.
''As I saw it at dusk on that December day
Grary seemed a kind of Titan, dwarfing all
the life around and within it. So few men
were seen, so dim and insignificant they were
compared with the stupendous machinery,
that one scarcely noticed them ! The mechan-
ism seemed to be operating itself. There it
was, a kind of monster squatting on the shore
of the gray lake! A tireless monster that
never sleeps, regardless of disputatious work-
ers, and capitalists and economists and poli-
ticians, toiling day and night, winter and
summer, Sundays, Christmas, the Fourth of
July! Thousands of men digging for their
lives in the mines of Minnesota and in the
coal fields and quarries of Indiana and Illi-
nois can scarcely keep it satisfied ! I felt the
implacable power of the mechanism and in
comparison the insignificance of the human
element in the process.
**It came to me that in its essence mankind
was there facing the problem whether ma-
chinery should dominate men or men machin-
ery*. Were men to be merely cogs or servants
of insensate mechanisms or were they to
stand out as masters using easily and freely
the tools they had built? Was the * genius of
\/
90 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
mechanism,' as Carlyle expressed it, to sit
forever 'like an incubus upon the soul of
man,' or was the soul of man to free itself
and command the genius of mechanism?"^
And this is the problem everywhere. Are
the human values to go down in defeat before
the mechanical process of producing material
values or is the huge, hard process of pro-
duction, manufacture, transportation, and ex-
change to be made to serve the human!
"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay."
A man's life or a nation's life consists not in
the abundance of the things that can be pro-
duced and owned. The human rather than
the material must be the final arbiter when
the system comes up for judgment. It was
said in Massachusetts that William L. Doug-
las was elected governor of the old Common-
wealth because he had shown that he could
make shoes and money and men all at once
and in the same factory. The industry which
does not make manhood as well as money
stands condemned. Take heed then, mas-
ters of industry, that you cause not one of the
least of these human beings bound up in your
• From The New Industrial Unrest, by Ray Stannard Baker, publiahed
by Doubleday, Page & Company.
v^
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 91
huge enterprise to perish in the worthier and
more enduring elements of his life !
The fate of any civilization is in the last
analysis a moral question. What do the peo-
ple care most about? What lines of interest
and of action command the largest share of
their time, their thought, and their enthusi-
asm? We all know how and why Rome went
to the wall. The Coliseum had crowded out
the Forum. The place of games, of spec-
tacles and of cruel, debasing forms of amuse-
ment had crowded out the place for the
serious, public discussion of those principles
of social and political well-being which make
a nation strong.
When the Roman people had given them-
selves over to those easy, lazy habits of
luxury and self-indulgence for a generation
or two, they found that the moral fiber of the
empire had been largely eaten away. And
when that mode of life had been followed
for a century or two, they found themselves
unable to stand up against the enemies who
came down from the north. May God in his
mercy save us here in America from becom-
ing amusement mad and dance crazy, from
being given over mainly to the pursuit of
material things and to costly habits of self-
indulgence! We would stand condemned be-
92 SOCIAL REBUILDEES
fore the ages were we thus to defeat the high
ends for which the Republic was founded by
our plain-living, God-fearing forefathers.
Why should there not be an ''Open
Forum" in every high school building in
every city of the land for the stated and
repeated discussion of those industrial meth-
ods and political principles which have to do
with the common good? To what better use
could those splendid structures, which now
stand so often dark and tenantless through
the fateful evening hours, be devoted ? There
are many who maintain that were the oppor-
tunity offered, there would be no adequate
response from the people who still suffer hurt
and loss because they have not been trained
to think clearly and steadily upon the deeper
issues of life. But personally I have not so
poor an opinion of my fellow citizens as to
believe that if the proposal had a fair trial
for a series of years, these wretched bed-
room farces and the superficial sort of amuse-
ment offered in the movies could compete
successfully every night in the week with
those places where grown-up people would be
asked to think upon the things which belong
to their peace.
You may remember that **In an Open
Forum held on a certain Sunday many cen-
\
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 93
turies ago in the village of Nazareth where
laymen were permitted to speak, a young car-
penter gave an address on social and eco-
nomic justice. ' ' He took his cue from a well-
known bit of literature current among the
people of his race, and in substance this is
what he said : ' ' The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me, because he anointed me to preach good
tidings to the poor : he hath sent me to bind up
the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to
the captives, to set at liberty them that are
bruised, and to proclaim the acceptable year
of the Lord."
His address brought a coldness over the
meeting, we are told, and at the close of the
exercises the " saf e-and-sane " opponents of
all such radical utterances were full of wrath.
They ' ' rose up, and thrust him out of the city,
and led him unto the brow of a hill . . .
that they might cast him down headlong."
But by the strange power of his own person-
ality he passed through their midst unhurt and
went his way. He moved on to Capernaum, a
still larger city, where he said it all over
again, and the people were astonished at his
teaching, for his word was with power. He
has come on down through the centuries with
the same social message. He is standing to-
day in the place of free speech *' insisting in
V
94 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
the same intrepid way that his Father's
world shall not be made a place of merchan-
dise, but a place where plain men and women
may live and grow into the likeness and
image of the Most High."
The Master had been fed upon sentiments of
social justice and of genuine democracy along
with his mother's milk. Luke, the physician
and intimate friend perhaps of Mary herself,
has preserved for us one of those ancient
cradle songs which may well have refresihed
the soul of the mother and filled the heart of
the growing child with the sacred music of a
better world.
"My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my
spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For
he hath regarded the low estate of his hand-
maiden : for, behold, from henceforth all gen-
erations shall call me blessed. For he that
is mighty hath done to me great things ; and
holy is his name. And his mercy is on them
that fear him from generation to generation.
He hath shewed strength with his arm; he
hath scattered the proud in the imagination
of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty
from their seats, and exalted them of low
degree. He hath filled the hungry with good
things ; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He hath helped his servant Israel, in remem-
y
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 95
brance of his mercy; as he spake to our
fathers, to Abraham and to his children, for-
ever." Reared in such an atmosphere and
with these words of social regeneration
sounding in his ears, we cannot wonder that
he became in due time the Friend and Cham-
pion of the common people who heard him
gladly.
In the third place, the prophet Amos ar-
raigned the people of his day for their infi-
delity to the obligations created by high
privilege, Israel was a chosen people, chosen
not for favoritism but for an exalted and an
exacting service. Chosen because of some
unusual capacity for moral insight and for
spiritual leadership to take the right of the
line in the religious advance of the whole
world! ''You only have I known of all the
families of the earth, ' ' Amos here represents
the Lord as saying to them. "You only have
I known, therefore will I punish you for your
iniquities." You are a privileged people,
richly and gloriously privileged, therefore
you are the more heavily and capably respon-
sible for the well-being of the race. And if
you turn aside and deny your high estate, I
will punish you the more severely.
"When Booker T. Washington was at
Tuskegee he used to say to the dusky-faced
96 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
students gathered there — and I have heard
him say it — ''You have not been brought here
to Tuskegee to be trained so that you might
go back and compete more successfully with
your untrained fellows, earning larger wages
than they are able to earn. You have not
been brought here to be trained so that you
might go back and establish better homes
and finer social standards than those to be
found to-day among your unprivileged neigh-
bors. You have been brought here to Tuske-
gee to be trained so that you may in due time
become more heavily and capably responsible
for the welfare of your race." If that sort
of thing can be said and done in the green
tree of a black man's school, what have we a
right to expect in the more seasoned timber
of every white man's college in the land?
The possession of privilege carries with it
a deposit of obligation upon which the whole
community has the right to draw. Therefore
the first thing which Amos undertook to do
was to dynamite the feeling of moral com-
placency and smug contentment out of those
Israelites. Their placid self-satisfaction was
blocking the way of advance. ''Woe to them
that are at ease in Zion, and to them that are
secure in the mountains of Samaria." He
would have them keenly and steadily con-
\
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 97
scious of the responsibilities which the divine
bounty had laid upon them in their better
moral estate.
You will find a host of people in this world
who are accustomed to measure themselves
by what is being done for them rather than
by what they can do for others. They seem
to think that because they live on the best
streets and are well-dressed; because they
fare sumptuously every day and ride to and
fro in high-priced motor cars; because they
have social position and opportunities in
abundance for training and culture, they must
of necessity be people of significance. They
have not learned as yet that ''Happiness,"
as some one has said, ''does not consist in
being able to sit down and order what you
want and have somebody bring it to you —
happiness is going after something yourself
and feeling anxious about it and finally get-
ting if
But these short-sighted people measure
themselves by what is being done for them
rather than by their ability to make some
proper return for all that in useful, compe-
tent, unselfish action. "By their fruits" we
are to judge men — ^by what all these advan-
tages of theirs produce in meeting the needs
of the world, by what they are able to give
/
98 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
off and to give up for the service of the higher
welfare of the various communities where
they stand.
In our estimate of goodness it is the posi-
tive rather than the negative qualities which
are to be emphasized. It is what a man does
rather than what he refrains from doing
which makes him good. You will sometimes
hear it said of some elderly saint who has
just gone to his reward : ' ' Oh, he was such a
good man! He never drank and he never
swore and he never smoked. He never in-
jured anyone, and I never heard him speak
an unkind word about anybody in his life."
And when that list of negative virtues is com-
plete you have in your mind the picture of
a life as innocent and as harmless as a pan
of skimmed milk.
^'But what did he do?" you are moved to
ask. How far did he make his life count for
righteousness in politics and in industry, in
securing better health conditions for his com-
munity and in promoting better educational
facilities, in making his church a power for
good in the life of his little world? If he
simply refrained, then his goodness was weak
and thin. Let every life be judged by the
positive contribution it makes to the general
good in terms of useful service.
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 99
This prophet saw the Lord standing upon
the wall of the city with a plumbline in his
hand. * ' Amos, ' ' he cried, ' ' what seest thou ? ' '
**A plumbline," the prophet replied. ''Be-
hold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of
my people Israel, ' ' saith the Lord ; * ' I will not
again pass by them any more. ' '
God was calling upon them for lives of in-
tegrity, straight up and down, and not vari-
able nor crooked. He was calling upon them
for a social order built by the square and by
the plumb, so that the power of gravitation
and the other elemental forces would not pull
it down. ''Seek good and not evil," he cried,
"that ye may live: Let justice run down as
waters, and righteousness as a mighty
stream. Then the Lord of hosts will be gra-
cious unto you."
The stern old prophet's morality was not
based on shrewd guesses as to what might
turn out for one's immediate advantage. It
did not rest upon expediency. He did not go
about saying, "Honesty is the best policy,"
"Integrity is a good investment," "Truth-
telling and fair dealing are more likely to pay
eight per cent profit than the opposite quali-
ties." His morality was grounded upon the
sense of agreement between the principles he
taught and the will of the Almighty. It was
100 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
grounded in the great moral order which en-
folds us all, whether we will or not. He there-
fore called upon men ''to meet upon the
level and to act by the plumb and to part
upon the square. So may men ever meet, act,
and part."
Here, again, we may well apply his message
to modem society in the United States of
America. You only have I known among the
nations of the earth in the bestowal of such
abundant resource and such unique oppor-
tunities. Therefore if you fail in your duty,
I will punish you. Why may we not in all
reverence and humility apply to our own land
those very words which Israel applied to her-
self when she was chosen of God for a high
and exacting service?
What nation hath God so nigh unto them as
the Lord our God is unto us in all things that
we call upon him for? Has God ever essayed
to take him a nation from the midst of
another nation by signs, by wonders, and
by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched
arm, as the Lord our God has done for us?
Did ever people hear the voice of God speak-
ing out of the midst of the fire as we have
heard? What nation hath statutes and judg-
ments so righteous as this law which I set be-
fore you this day? Keep, therefore, and do
SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 101
them, for this shall be your wisdom and your
understanding among the nations. *'I will
bless thee and thou shalt be a blessing. I will
make thee a great nation, and in thee shall
all the nations of the world be blessed."
''In a sense that never has been true before
what happens in America happens to all the
world. This fact brings no special credit to
us. It is the result of our situation, our herit-
age, our unexhausted resources, and our re-
cent emergence from our traditional isola-
tion. This new importance of America should
issue not in pride but in humility. But
whether it be faced with modest serviceable-
ness or with boasting, the fact remains, as an
Englishman has recently said, 'The United
States of America is the greatest potential
force, material, moral, and spiritual, in the
world.' "
It is for us, then, to see to it that this high
privilege is matched by the frank acceptance
of the grave responsibility which inevitably
goes with it. To whom much is given of them
will much be required. We are to develop
and maintain that high quality of national
soul which will make us competent to meet
the demands of our high estate.
It is not important nor desirable that the
Constitution of the United States and the Ten
V'
102 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
Commandments and the Sermon on thie
Mount should be made satisfactory to the red-
mouthed agitators and red-handed anarchists
who have reacted from the wicked regimes
in Southeastern Europe into treason and
violence. It is not desirable that the great
standards of political and moral well-being
which have been current among us should be
toned down to suit the whims of any of the
enemies of social order. But it is important
that all these leaders of unrest should be
toned up and called upon to sing their songs
of aspiration in harmony with the standards
just named. The ''Great Melting Pot" must
melt and fuse, it must refine and mold all
these varied elements in our composite life
until we have in abundance that sort of metal
in our political and industrial activities which
will bear the strain now being put upon it.
There are good and sufficient reasons for
believing that the undaunted vigor of our
American idealism may show itself equal to
that hard task. How splendid has been the
quality of our national life on certain august
occasions when it was put to the test! "Here
is the paradox of American politics," a wise
Harvard professor once said. ''The same
people who have impressed observers as
sharp traders and keen politicians have sur-
J
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 103
prised the world by acts of unprecedented
magnanimity and self-denial. What other
nation, while rejecting the principle of a
state church, maintains through the volun-
tary gifts of its population such vast organi-
zations for worship, as if to testify that it has
not only territory to develop and products to
sell, but a soul to save? What other coun-
try ever received an indemnity from a for-
eign government" (he was referring to
China) "and returned it, only to receive it
once more in the form of stipends for the edu-
cation of youths sent to the United States by
the grateful land ? When did another nation
win territory and return it to its occupants,
as in Cuba, or hold it in trust, as in the
Philippines ? When did ever another nation
at the end of a war like that with Spain
transport the defeated army to their homes
across the sea 1 When did ever a great Power
pause with such scrupulousness before pun-
ishing a weaker neighbor, like Mexico, and
meantime provide for her refugees friendly
shelter and support? Or when did any other
nation, having taken possession of a strip of
land and at enormous cost built a canal, ever
propose to satisfy its conscience by a volun-
tary payment to the former owners, or to
open the canal on equal terms to the fleets
V
104 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES
of the world? Works of supererogation like
these indicate a more complex type of char-
acter than a nation of shopkeepers could pro-
duce. Under the hardness of American com-
mercialism there lies a richer soil."^
In those days and weeks which followed
upon the signing of the armistice in the fall
of 1918 how full and strong was the tide of
moral idealism running at Washington, at
London and at Paris. Men felt that it was
morning everywhere. We had entered upon
the dawn of a new day. It was believed that
this nation, which had cast in its strength at
the eleventh hour in such measure as to tip
the scales toward victory for those principles
which we esteemed to be right, would now aid
in securing such a peace settlement as the
world had never seen at the close of any great
war.
Then, alas! there came a falling away
which we all deplore, a moral relaxation, a
lowering of tone, a return to the old material-
istic ways of thinking and of acting, a slack-
ening of purpose and a cheapening of our
ideals. We were not good enough to live up
to the high mood which possessed the soul of
> Reprinted from The Christian Life in the Modern World (p. 183), by
Francis G. Peabody, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan
Company.
V^
SOCIAL EEBUILDEBS 105
the nation when we entered the war, the mood
which was also ours when the victory was
won.
The government at Washington saw to it
that we were ''last in the war." When the
armistice had been signed and when the treaty-
had been framed at Paris, the United States
Senate seemed determined to see to it that
we should be ' ' last in peace. ' * We ought long
ere this (I am writing these words in Febru-
ary, 1921) to have made our peace with Ger-
many and have entered with the other nations
into some reasonable and promising agree-
ment — I put it simply and broadly that it may
include all forward looking minds — for a bet-
ter method of settling international differ-
ences as they may arise. Had there been more
statesmanship and less partisan politics at
both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in Wash-
ington, this result would have been achieved.
We ought to have made more progress to-
ward industrial peace and prosperity, toward
a more even spread of that well-being in
which all are meant to share. Had there been
a larger measure of social justice, a more
complete respect for the rights of the other
man and the other class, and a more insistent
spirit of good will, we would also have
achieved that. We ought to have relieved
ix
106 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
more of the distress of the world and to have
aided further in rebuilding the devastated
areas of human life. Had there been less of -^
the spirit of thoughtless extravagance and
self-indulgence, with more of the sense of
social obligation, we could also have achieved
that. The plain fact stands that we were not
good enough to do the things which we ought
to have done. -
When the fate of the Armenian people, for
example, and when so many other interests
vast and vital are trembling in the balance,
why should this nation, strong, rich, wise,
hopeful, stand aloof and refuse to assume its
just and equal portion of the common respon-
sibility for the peace and good order of the
world? In our case, as in every case, posses-
sion means obligation. To whom much is
given of him will much be required. We shall
never stand right before the God of the na-
tions or in the eyes of the world unless we
are willing to accept all the duties which go
with high privilege.
Hear these wise words from the gifted
pastor of one of the most active and eflBcient
Protestant churches in the city of New York :
*' Never before have greater things been
offered to safeguard liberty and democracy
— human lives in millions and wealth in bil-
\/
SOCIAL KEBUILDERS 107
lions have been poured out. Never before
was it so evident that the arm of flesh is no
defense and that safety lies in the unity of
the Spirit among the nations to maintain the
bond of peace. Never before have inter-
national relations been so searchingly scruti-
nized and the disease spots in imperialistic
commerce, tariff discriminations, and threat-
ening armaments exposed. Never before has
it been so generally recognized that a new
heart and right spirit must govern nations,
or all devices to preserve international order
are futile. And the probe has been put into
other relations, notably those of industry,
with far-reaching disclosures. Undoubtedly
the social control which the war has forced
upon us in manufactures, in commerce, in
transport, in the distribution of food and
fuel will not cease with the coming of peace.
This marks a distinct advance which the war
has hastened." *
"But," he adds in prophetic mood, ''men
of social insight are aware that public con-
trol, however valuable, will not better mat-
ters unless new motives come into play and
men become socially minded. Never was the
supreme need of the social spirit so patent.
It is the day of the Church of Christ as the
Fellowship of his spirit with the task of
/
108 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
spiritualizing every sphere of humaii so-
ciety. ' '^
Here, then, is our work cut out for us and
laid ready to our hand. The splendid words
of religion are to be made flesh that they may
dwell in the eyes of men full of grace and
truth. The language of religion is to be
translated into terms of life. Goodness is to
be made interesting, winsome, appealing by
the effectiveness with which it sets about the
building of a new heaven and a new earth
wherein shall dwell righteousness, peace, and
the joy of the Divine Spirit. It was your
own Frank Mason North who bade you and
the worshiping portion of the whole English-
speaking world sing a new song of social
aspiration in these high terms :
"Where cross the crowded ways of life,
Where sound the cries of race and clan.
Above the noise of selfish strife
We hear thy voice, O Son of Man.
"O Master, from the mountain side
Make haste to heal these hearts of pain.
Among these restless throngs abide,
O tread the city's streets again,
"Till sons of men shall learn thy love
And follow where thy feet have trod:
Till, glorious from thy heaven above,
Shall come the city of our God."
> In a Day of Social Rebuilding. H. S. Coffin, p. 189. Yale University
Piess.
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 109
Yonder, at the entrance of the harbor of
the city of New York there stands a huge
statue. It towers up for three hundred
feet from Bedloe's Island. Significantly
it is the figure of a woman, and in her right
hand she holds aloft a lighted torch. It is
Bartholdi's ''Statue of Liberty Enlighten-
ing the World."
Some years ago a certain set of Harbor
Commissioners felt that the expense of keep-
ing that torch lighted night after night was
not warranted. It served no practical pur-
pose, for the lighthouses along either shore
were adequate to guide the ships which en-
tered the harbor after nightfall. So for a
period the torch was dark.
But before the Great War came, another set
of Harbor Commissioners decided that this
was not the proper treatment for this gift
of fair France to our Republic. They had the
statue rewired and a great arc light placed
at the tip end of the torch — and again its rays
began to shine out across the dark waters of
the Atlantic.
While the war was on the light of that
torch was seen in France, and the people of
France rejoiced because the two great Repub-
lics, one on that side of the water and one on
this, were now standing together in a common
/
110 SOCIAL REBUILDEES
struggle for freedom and justice. The light
of that torch was seen in Britain, and the peo-
ple of Britain rejoiced because the two great
English-speaking nations, one on that side of
the water and one on this, were now knit to-
gether in an invincible alliance for righteous-
ness. The light of that torch was seen in Bel-
gium, and the people of that stricken country-
rejoiced because it shone out from the shores
of a great, kind friend, whose generous in-
terest was being nobly directed by Herbert
C. Hoover.
The light of that torch was seen in Ger-
many, and to the Kaiser and his mad asso-
ciates it revealed the handwriting on the wall.
Like Belshazzar of old, they saw written over
against their own names the same four fateful
words, ''Weighed, Wanting, Numbered, Fin-
ished. ' ' They knew full well that the entrance
into the struggle of that country where the
torch was lighted meant the downfall of Prus-
sian militarism.
Now, let that torch and all the great prin-
ciples for which we believe it stands — the
principle of equality before the law, the feel-
ing of respect for the poor man's rights, the
sense of obligation which must accompany
privilege of every sort, and the idea that the
human must forever be exalted above the
/
SOCIAL REBUILDEES 111
purely material values in this great economic
and political process — let that torch and all
the high principles there symbolized shine on.
And may its gleam never again be dimmed
until all the free peoples of earth shall walk
in the light of it.
^
CHAPTEE IV
THE MAN WHO EXALTED RIOHT-
EOUSNESS ABOVE RITUAL
We cannot make too plain the fact that re-
ligion is not primarily a system of beliefs to
be cherished. It utilizes beliefs, but they are
altogether secondary. Religion is not pri-
marily a set of forms to be observed; it
utilizes forms, but they too are secondary.
Religion is not primarily some tremendous
emotional upheaval through which a man may
pass on his way to glory; it may utilize this
either as a point of departure or as a line of
approach, but that also is secondary. Religion
is a life to be lived seven days in the week
in all those relationships which make up hu-
man existence. The man who is striving with
all his might and with all the grace Grod gives
him to live a life of reverent, obedient trust
and of unselfish action is religious, and no
other sort of man can be.
We are to study in this lecture the work
and the words of a man who made that big
truth stand out like a barn door. He kept
his eye upon that which was vital. He was
112
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 113
no rough man of the hills like Elijah the
Tishbite. He was no rude herdsman with
the smell of the fields in his garments like
Amos of Tekoa. Isaiah belonged to the for-
tunate class — 'he lived on Fifth Avenue. He
had an assured social position which gave
him ready access to the court and to the king.
He was entirely familiar with the customs
and the costumes of fashionable society, as we
find in that chapter where he rebukes the
showy extravagance of the idle rich.
He was also well educated: he shows that
literary skill which comes only to those who
have been trained. In all the Old Testament
there is nothing finer in their sweep and finish
than some of the utterances of this young
prophet. He had five talents of mental ability
and of personal charm where most of his
contemporaries were rubbing along as best
they might with only one or two apiece.
He had with all this an intense passion for
reality. He showed scant regard for the
trance and the ecstasy, the rhapsody and the
rhetoric upon which some of the would-be
prophets of his day set so mueh store. He
was strong in saving common sense and in
stout regard for the moral values. He was
sturdy in his insistence that men should
stand right in the sight of God. He stood
>/
U4 SOCIAL REBUILDEES
four square himself, for he was at once a re-
former and a statesman, a theologian and a
poet. By his words, by his work, and by his
worth he became the first citizen of his coun-
try, exercising a dominant influence upon the
history of the nation. He entered into no
political combinations, but by the sheer
strength of his own personality and by the
wisdom of his prophetic utterance he caused
the policies of his country to incline aright.
His call to be a prophet came at a great
national crisis. He lived under the reign of
the good King Uzziah. This ruler had been
sitting upon the throne for fifty-two years
and he had served his country well. He had
increased the material prosperity of his peo-
ple ; he had strengthened the fortifications of
his capital city, Jerusalem; he had brought
wisdom and conscience to bear upon the na-
tional policies. Now he was dead and the
nation must go on without him.
This young man whom I have described
saw the earthly majesty of the wise and good
king go down in defeat before the terrible
disease of leprosy. But in that same hour he
saw the heavenly majesty of the King of
kings, resplendent and enduring. His hero
worship passed over into religious faith. ' ' In
the year that King Uzziah died I saw the
J
SOCIAL EEBUILDEES 115
Lord, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted
up, and his train filled the temple. ' '
It is an experience which has been oft re-
peated. Night brings out the stars. Men
see the earth by day, but they see the heavens
best at night. In the year that King Uzziah
died Isaiah saw the Lord. In the year that
paganism sat upon the throne of the Boman
empire, Saul of Tarsus saw the Lord and he
became Paul the apostle, put in trust with
the gospel of moral recovery for a world that
was spiritually bankrupt. In the year when
Tetzel sold indulgences broadcast in Ger-
many, Martin Luther saw the Lord and
ushered in a mighty Reformation. In the
year when slavery lifted up its head in impu-
dent fashion and undertook to dominate the
councils of this nation, Abraham Lincoln saw
the Lord. In the year when Germany perpe-
trated her unspeakable outrage on Belgium,
Herbert H. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey
saw the Lord. In some hard hour of stress
and need every man of them gained a direct
and immediate sense of the divine concern
for human affairs and that vision of things
eternal gave him strength to act. In the year
that a greedy and godless form of human con-
trol all but wrecked the civilization of Eu-
rope men of vision in all the lands of earth
,/
116 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
saw the Lord, and they became highly resolved
that government of the people, by the people,
and for the people should not go down in de-
feat. In that same high mood this young
prophet of old, who was born to the purple,
came upon the scene with a vision of God as
a God of righteousness before his eyes.
He would have all men see those eyes of
glory looking into every gathering of diplo-
mats and every senate chamber, scanning the
state papers to which men were about to set
their hands. He would have us see those eyes
of glory looking into every counting room
and every manager's office, scanning the wage
scales and the price lists whereby men serve
or wrong, as the case may be, the interests
of other men and women whose lives are
bound up with their own in that common bun-
dle of economic organization. He would have
us see those eyes of glory looking into every
human soul, making plain the fact that only
those who have clean hands and pure hearts
can ascend into the hill of the Lord or stand
in his holy place, or engage with him effec-
tively in the rebuilding of a ruined world.
Isaiah was a poet and this was the refrain of
every song he sang : ' ' Holy, Holy, Holy is the
Lord of Hosts! The whole earth is full of
his glory."
y
SOCIAL KEBUILDERS 117
He was no moral prig, no spiritual snob,
pluming himself upon his superiority to all
his fellows. There in that same dread hour
when he saw the Lord he fell upon his face
in the dust and beat upon his breast and told
all the sins of his life. ' ' Woe is me ! for I am
undone. I am a man of unclean lips, and I
dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips ;
and mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord
of Hosts." Deep in his own soul he had an
active, poignant sense of sin.
The man who has no sense of sin usually
has very little sense of any kind. ''Blessed
are they that hunger and thirst after
righteousness, for they" — and they only —
''shall be filled." But in that same hour
when this frank confession came from the
young man's lips he felt his inner life cleansed
by the direct action of the Divine Spirit. He
saw the winged seraph flying toward him
through the open spaces of heaven and taking
a live coal from the altar and placing it upon
his unclean lips. He heard a voice say, ' ' Thy
sin is purged, thine iniquity is taken away."
And in the joy of moral renewal he gave him-
self at once in eager consecration to the high-
est he saw. When the divine voice said,
"Who will go for us I Whom shall I send?"
the young man answered back, "Here
/"
118 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
am I; send me." Thus he became a prophet
of the living God.
He made plain the fact that religion is not
high-sounding talk, nor tears of remorse, nor
graceful sentiment. Religion is the frank ac-
ceptance of the actual, everyday, backbreak-
ing task of making good in the presence of
temptation, of diflSculty, of moral obligation.
It involves a sturdy and heroic effort to
have the will of the Most High stand fast and
bear rule in all the affairs of ordinary life.
The man who bravely undertakes to do this
by the grace of God is truly religious. **If ye
be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good
of the land: but if ye refuse and rebel, ye
shall be devoured with the sword, for the
mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. ' '
Isaiah set himself to the accomplishment of
these three high ends : First, he undertook to
lift the mind and practice of his nation from
a religion of ceremony up to a religion of
character. How his words on that point go
straight to the mark! — ''Hear, heavens,
and give ear, earth: for the Lord hath
spoken. I have nourished and brought up
children, and they have i:ebelled against me.
The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his
master's crib: but Israel does not know, my
people do not think." The Israelites were
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 119
showing less insight as to the source of
their own well-being than were the other ani-
mals.
**To what purpose is the multitude of your
sacrifices unto me ? saith the Lord : I am full
of burnt offerings, . . . and I delight
not in the blood of bulls. . . . When ye
come to appear before me, who hath re-
quired this at your hands? . . . Your
new moons and your sabbaths, the calling
of assemblies I cannot away with. . . .
When you spread forth your hands, I
will hide mine eyes: yea, when ye make
many prayers, I will not hear: Your hands
are full of blood. Wash you, make you
clean; put away the evil of your doings.
. . . Cease to do evil; learn to do well;
Then come, let us reason together" touching
our further cooperation in this great matter
of human well-being.
There were men in his day, as there have
been men in every day of human history, who
thought that they could couple together wor-
ship and wickedness and get away with it.
They thought that if their left hands were
full of worshipful observances, their right
hands might be full of robbery and oppres-
sion, yet in some way one would balance the
other; the worship would atone for the
120 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
wickedness and they could keep along with
both.
How long will it take men to learn that only
as we strive to have the horizontal relations
of our lives between man and man just and
true will the perpendicular relations of our
lives with our Maker through worship become
acceptable and fruitful! '*If thou bringest
thy gift to the altar," Jesus said, ''and there
rememberest that thy brother" — some one in
your employ, or some one who employs you,
some one with whom you have been engaged
in a political deal, or some one against whom
you have been cherishing a bitter and nasty
grudge — ^^"hath aught against thee; leave
there thy gift before the altar ; . . . first
be reconciled to thy brother" — by honest
dealing — "then come and offer thy gift."
"What does God want men to do?" Isaiah
would ask to-day in his blunt way. Many
would reply: "He wants men to go to church
and to be baptized. He wants them to take
the sacrament regularly and to say their
prayers and to read their Bibles."
Well and good — thou hast answered right.
The Lord does want men to do all of those
things, provided always that it be kept clearly
in mind that those things are means to an end
and not ends in themselves. If all those wor-
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 121
shipful activities aid men in doing justly, in
loving kindness, and in walking humbly be-
fore God, they are beautiful. If, however,
they are put forward as substitutes for up-
right, useful, and unselfish action in the ordi-
nary round and round, then they are worse
than useless — they become hateful in the sight
of Him with whom we have to do.
How far have we need of Isaiah's plain,
straight word to-day? Does the habit of
worship mean always fair dealing on the
part of those who offer it? Do the working
people in all our cities feel that it is always
better to work for a church member than for
one who is not? Does church worship on the
part of a landlord insure the just and con-
siderate treatment of his tenants ? Do people
generally flock to the merchant who is a pro-
fessed Christian, feeling sure that they will
on that account receive good goods at honest
prices? Do men rejoice when they hear that
the president of a railroad or of a steel cor-
poration or a woolen mill in whose employ
thousands of them stand is regularly attending
some orthodox church? Has none of the so-
cial injustice and industrial oppression prac-
ticed in the last generation emanated from
men who regularly take the sacrament at the
altar of Christ?
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122 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
These questions sound strange wiien I ask
them in this bald way. They ought not to
sound strange. It ought to go without saying
that worship and fair dealing always go to-
gether. But as we all know full well, some-
times they do and sometimes they do not.
Has the Christian Church, taking it by and
large, in these recent decades borne its testi-
mony by open utterance and by the consistent
lives of its members against the sin of greed,
for example, as it ought to have done? I do
not believe that it has. The ordinary preach-
ing of the gospel in any Christian church
would be calculated to make a man who was
drunken or licentious, who was a Sabbath-
breaker, or a profane swearer, feel decidedly
uncomfortable. All this is well, for these
forms of wrongdoing stand in need of rebuke.
But are there not men sitting in the pews of
the various churches playing the commercial
game as others play it, all unembarrassed by
any Christian scruples? Are there not to be
found at the communion table men who buy
labor and material alike in the cheapest mar-
ket and sell their products in the dearest
without ever thinking of the effect of their
action upon the human lives involved in that
process ? Are there not men along the broad
aisles of the various sanctuaries who seem to
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SOCIAL REBUILDERS 123
be dominated in tlie main purposes of their
lives by the spirit of greed, but because
they are clean and kind in their private
relations, they are not made to feel uncom-
fortable by the preaching of the average
pulpit?
Hear these plain, straight words as to the
need of more religion in business ! They were
not uttered by some clergyman whose main
office it is to preach the gospel. They were not
uttered by some theological professor sitting
comfortably in his seminary chair discussing
in more or less detached fashion the elements
of our Christian faith. They were spoken by
Mr. Oliver M. Fisher, one of the leading shoe
manufacturers of New England, upon his elec-
tion as president of the Boston Boot and Shoe
Club, and were addressed to his fellow-manu-
facturers :
' * This country has been a phenomenal suc-
cess in everything material. We have been
the wonder of the world, but we have lost, to
my mind, our balance, and have given far
more attention to the material side of life
than its importance warrants. The same at-
tention given to the development of the moral
and spiritual forces within us could bring
about in every community a vitalizing force
which would make better communities, and
124 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
thus make better the very business in which
we are engaged.
"From my own business experience there
is nothing on earth that business needs so
much to-day as religion. By that I mean the
sense of responsibility to God, to man, and
to the obligations that go with it, in order that
our relations with each other shall be the re-
lations of one brother to another. Obliga-
tions must be kept and the covenants we make
must be considered sacred and binding; there-
fore, I have come to feel after a long busi-
ness life that some form of Christianity is the
heart of the covenant of all business life. ' *
The minds of men ought never to have be-
come dull as to the vital elements in religion.
Hear what the great master spirits of the
Bible have said! They ought to know what
is essential and what is merely incidental.
Hear the words of Micah, who lived in the
same century with Isaiah! **He hath shewed
thee, man, what is good; and what doth
the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and
to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy
God?" Hear the words of James, who
preached habitually what has been called
**the gospel of common-sense" — ''Pure re-
ligion and undefiled before God the Father is
this, To visit the fatherless and widows in
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 125
their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted
from the world. ' '
Hear the words of Paul, the greatest of all
the apostles — ' ' The fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness,
faithfulness, mildness and self-control."
Hear also what our Lord Jesus Christ said
— * ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart. This is the first and great com-
mandment. And the second is like unto it,
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
In the same high vein our greatest Ameri-
can said upon one occasion : * ' Though I am a
man of faith and a man of prayer I am not a
member of any church. But if any church
will inscribe those two great words of the
Saviour, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thy-
self,' over its doors as the sole requirement
for membership, that church I will join with
all my heart." Isaiah had a passion for
reality, and he was intent upon lifting the
minds of his people from a religion of cere-
mony to a religion of character.
In the second place, this prophet rebuked
the selfish greed and the moral callousness of
many of the well-to-do people of his day.
*' Woe unto them that join house to house and
field to field" in their monopoly of the good
J
126 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
things of life ** until there is no room" for the
poorer people to live. Woe unto them who
trifle with moral distinctions, who seek to per-
suade themselves that it is possible to mix
their colors, *'who call evil good, and good
evil ; who put darkness for light, and light for
darkness ; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet
for bitter." **Woe unto them that are mighty
to drink wine, . . . and to justify the
wicked for a reward." He felt that the cruel,
grasping spirit of those who were bent upon
making light of moral standards and of mak-
ing gain at any cost was eating the moral
fiber out of Israel and making her unfit for
her work of spiritual leadership.
He believed that the well-to-do women of
that time were largely responsible. By their
mode of life they were setting the pace in an
unseemly expenditure. Then, as now, the men
went into the city early in the morning to
make the money and the women went in later
to spend it. The habits of the well-to-do were
being copied and followed away beyond the
measure of their financial ability by those
who were less fortunate. And the whole mad
race in showy self-indulgence had been to the
detriment of the entire social body.
''The daughters of Zion are haughty," he
said. "They walk with outstretched necks
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SOCIAL REBUILDERS 127
and wanton eyes." "The spoil of the poor
is in their houses. They have eaten up the
needy." The money which made possible
all that showy luxury had been gained by
methods which the Lord would not ap-
prove. Therefore the prophet said, '^'The
Lord will take away their ornaments and
their bracelets, their fine linen and their
costly apparel. ' ' When certain people under-
take to live in showy fashion without work-
ing it means always that certain other peo-
ple will have to work in humble fashion with-
out living.
**The point is not that Isaiah condemned
refinement or personal adornment, but that
these women were thinking of nothing else.
They lived in an artificial atmosphere of
vanity and futility. They were parasites fat-
tening upon the over-stimulated sensuality of
a corrupt society. And if the mothers of
Israel were to be like this, what was to become
of the children r'l
The Master of men brought out in telling
phrase the moral antagonism between the
spirit of religion and the spirit of greed or
self-indulgence. *'Ye cannot serve God and
mammon." If the love of money is the
'Reprinted from The Consuming Fire (p. 55), by Harria E. Kirk, by
permimioD of the publisher, The Macmillan Company. ,
/
128 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
wannest, the strongest, and the steadiest
love in a man's heart, then the love of Grod
has already gone down in defeat. It is highly
significant that the most searching words
Jesus Christ ever uttered were not directed
against the coarse sins of the flesh, hateful
as these offenses were in his pure eyes — his
most searching words were directed against
that love of gain which becomes the root of
all manner of evil.
Have we not need of the same pungent
message in our own day? When we enter the
places of worship frequented by the well-to-
do, we are led to wonder oftentimes if their
industrial and political methods during the
week have been such as to make them indeed
the favorites of heaven. How have they
borne themselves toward the weak for whom
also Christ died? People are more sacred and
precious than holy places. The poor and the
needy are more precious in his sight than all
Te Deums and stained-glass windows and
lovely altar cloths. Inasmuch as we have
done equity and kindness or have failed to do
it to one of the least of these, we have done
it or have not done it unto him.
Let people give as they live ! My own con-
viction and practice for the last thirty-odd
years favor the habit of giving steadily as a
V
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 129
mmimum the tenth of one's income to the
work of charity and religion. This old scrip-
tural rule has stood the test of experience.
The Jews were blessed in basket and in store,
in heart and in soul, by their practice of tith-
ing. The Mormon Church, whatever limita-
tions theological and moral may attach to
some of its positions, has been able by its sys-
tem of tithes to send forth an army of mis-
sionaries and to care for the needy of its own
communion with an admirable thoroughness.
This giving of the tenth need not be made
a hard-and-fast rule to be enforced univer-
sally with no regard for modifying circum-
stances. This might mean a lack of equity.
The man with an income of two thousand a
year and the man with twenty thousand are
not equally generous when they both prac-
tice tithing. The rule of the tenth would not
call forth an adequate measure of generosity
from Mr. Eockefeller, while it might take too
much from some humble toiler whose meager
wages barely suffice for the needs of his
family. But there may well be some definite
percentage of giving which mind and con-
science can approve.
The reckless extravagance of many of
those who have reaped a rich harvest during
the Great War, either from large profits or
130 SOCIAL KEBUILDERS
from high wages, seems to indicate that they
have thrown overboard any serious thought
of personal responsibility for the Christian
work of the world. There are Christian fam-
ilies which actually spend more on the theater
and the movies than they give to evangelize
the world. There are women who come to
church wearing hats which cost forty dollars
apiece and then give fifty cents or a dollar
to Christianize their own country. When we
look at the present disproportion in many
a professedly Christian home between the
amounts spent for luxury, pleasure, self-
indulgence, and the amount contributed to
make strong the work of Christ in the world
we wonder sometimes if we are worthy to be
called Christian. Let the scale of giving be
adjusted in consistent fashion to the scale of
living.
In the adjustment between attention to re-
ligious forms and attention to unselfish action
there are people who seem to feel that the
Lord above is not altogether bright. They
seem to think that he is so constituted that he
cares a great deal more about ritual than he
does about righteousness. What a curious
idea when we hold it up to the light! How
little it matters whether we have been bap-
tized with a great deal of water, as some
J
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 131
Christians are, or with very little, as other
Christians are, or with none at all, after the
manner of the Quakers and members of the
Salvation Army, who rely solely upon the
baptism of the Spirit ! How little it matters
whether we take the bread and the wine in the
sacrament from the hand of a man who was
ordained by a bishop or from one who was
ordained by a company of elders or from one
who was ordained by a group of his brother
pastors ! How much do you suppose the Lord
in heaven cares about all that if only people
in reverent fashion take the bread and the
wine in grateful remembrance of Him who
died for us all? But how tremendously it
matters whether or not those people, how-
ever they may have been baptized and how-
ever they may celebrate the sacrament, in
their dealings with their weaker fellows do
justly, love kindness, and walk humbly before
him! Righteousness rather than ritual has
been the major study and the main concern
of the great prophets and apostles of all time.
In these days of unrest upon which we have
fallen, the need of an intelligent and thorough
application of moral principle to all the con-
crete interests and relationships of everyday
life is imperative if the very fiber of our
hardly won civilization is not to be destroyed.
132 SOCIAL KEBUILDERS
This clear-cut statement appeared recently
in The New Republic: "These are trou-
bled times. As the echoes of the War die
away the sound of a new conflict rises on
our ears. All the world is filled with indus-
trial unrest. Strike follows upon strike. A
world that has known five years of fighting
has lost its taste for the honest drudgery of
work. Cincinnatus will not go back to his
plow, or, at the best, stands sullenly be-
tween his plow handles arguing for a higher
wage. The wheels of industry threaten to
stop. The laborer will not work because the
pay is too low and the hours are too long.
The producer cannot employ him because the
wage is too high and the hours are too short.
If the high wage is paid and the short hours
granted, then the price of the thing made
rises higher still, until even the high wages
will not buy it. The process apparently moves
in a circle with no cessation to it. ' '
We shall never gain our deliveranc? from
the distress which lies heavy upon the whole
world by any form of ritual or by any clever
economic or political device. We shall only
advance toward the restoration of well-being
by a more inclusive and persistent form of
social righteousness. From sheer necessity
we shall have to fall back upon that rule of
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SOCIAL REBUILDERS 133
life which bids men look not solely upon their
own immediate interest but also upon the in-
terests of their fellows. ''Among the Gen-
tiles the great ones exercise lordship and
dominion" over their weaker fellows. "It
shall not be so among you. If any man would
be great among you, let him serve. The
greatest of all is the servant of all. The Son
of man came not to be ministered unto but to
minister and to give his life a ransom for
many. ' '
Here in the Old Testament was a man pass-
ing in review those points of conduct where
strong men are most liable to fall. He was
uttering what has been called his "oath of
clearing." He is careful to scrutinize
closely and rigidly his treatment of his less
fortunate fellows. "If I despised the cause
of my man-servant or my maid-servant when
they contended with me; what, then, shall I
do when God riseth up ? . . . Did not he
that made me . . . make him . . .
If I have withheld the poor from their desire,
or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail ;
or have eaten my morsel alone, and the
fatherless hath not eaten thereof; ... let
mine arm fall from my shoulder blade."
This man of old saw that we are all objects
of the same divine interest and divine affec-
134 SOCIAL REBUILDEES
tion, and any measure of careless indifference
to the needs of one's fellows, any contemp-
tuous disregard for the rights of those who
stand within our employ or any useless showy
extravagance which would make against the
peace and welfare of the social body, where
we have become responsible and influential
members, would be a thing displeasing in
God's sight. It was One whom we all know
and honor who reached out with his all-em-
bracing sympathy and said, "I was hungry
and sick; I was naked and a stranger and ye
ministered unto me. Inasmuch as ye did it
to the least of these ye did it unto me. ' '
"When wilt Thou save the people,
O God of mercy, when?
Not kings and lords but nations,
Not thrones and crowns but men!
Flowers of thy heart, O God, are they;
Let them not pass like weeds away,
Their heritage a sunless day,
God save the people!"
In the third place, the prophet Isaiah
pointed to the One who could bring salvation.
He saw the life of his country imperiled for
lack of righteousness. He saw that the
wrongdoing of the people had made the whole
head sick and the whole heart faint. He saw
that the sorest need of Israel was not that of
fuel, nor of clothing, nor of education, neces-
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SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 135
sary as all these things are. Their sorest
need was to be found in their lack of char-
acter. They were not good enough to last.
They were not good enough to do their work
and to enjoy the favor of the Most High.
But the prophet saw also that all this could
be changed. He was not the prophet of de-
spair but the prophet of hope. ''Cease to do
evil; learn to do well. Seek justice, re-
lieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless,
plead for the widow. Come now, let us reason
together, saith the Lord : Though your sins be
as scarlet, they shall be white as snow ; tiiough
they be red like crimson, they shall be as
wool.'^ ''The people that walked in dark-
ness have seen a great light. . . . For
unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given :
and the government shall be upon his shoul-
der : and his name shall be called Wonderful
Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting
Father, The Prince of Peace." In that far
off Messianic hope touching a God who draws
near to save the people from their sins, the
prophet saw the dawning of a new day.
The final forces in human society are
always the spiritual forces. "Legislation
does not change men and women. It merely
alters relationships and opportunities. The
greater our material wealth, the more numer-
136 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES
ous our liberties, the more complex our social
organization, the larger our opportunities,
political and otherwise, the greater the de-
mand for sobriety, integrity, thoughtfulness,
and devotion. We have more wealth, more
machinery, more freedom, more opportunities
now than we have insight, self-discipline, in-
dustry, love, and faith. Therefore, we have
indifferent labor, luxury, extravagance, profi-
teering, unfairness, and unrest. The only
things that will ever bring the highest meas-
ure of peace, prosperity, and happiness to a
nation are the spiritual forces."
Here is the bottom question in our Chris-
tian faith to-day. It is not as to whether
Jesus Christ was bom of a virgin, or whether
the body which was laid in the tomb of Joseph
of Arimathaea after Jesus was crucified under
Pontius Pilate was the same body which was
raised again the third day, or the question
whether we have in every case the exact
words which fell from the lips of the Master
or only an approximately correct report of
them. These are all interesting questions, but
they are not central nor vital. The real ques-
tions are these: '*Is Jesus Christ a Saviour?
Can he save the people from their sins?"
And this is a matter of experience which
everyone can test for himself. It does not re-
J
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 137
quire for its determination technical scholar-
ship nor a knowledge of materials which are
accessible only to the trained intelligence — it
requires only an open mind and an honest
heart.
Does Jesus Christ renew our hearts and
purify our affections? Does he strengthen
our wills and place our feet more firmly in
the way of duty, causing us to walk evenly
and steadily in the way that goeth upward!
Does he take the aspirations which have
begun to droop and set them bravely against
the sky? Does he confirm and reenforce those
finer impulses which make for righteousness ?
If he can do that, if he does do that, for the
lives of men and women, then he is a Saviour,
the Desire of the nations and the Hope of
the race.
**Come now, let us reason together, saith
the Lord," touching that which is vital. Re-
ligion is not magic nor sleight-of-hand where-
by two and two can be made to look like
five or possibly fifty. Religion is not a piece
of moral shuffling whereby guilt can be im-
puted to innocence and righteousness can be
imputed to those who are doing wrong. Re-
ligion is a reasoned form of moral intercourse
between these finite spirits of ours and the
Infinite spirit of Him who is the Source and
138 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
the Summit of all being. It is the living of a
filial life in daily, hourly fellowship with Him
who is our Father in heaven. And its benefits
are to be realized in that direct impress of
the Spirit of God upon the heart of every man
who makes an honest and intelligent approach
to his Maker.
The social problems which are so vexing
the hearts of men to-day can be solved only on
the basis of this finer type of personal char-
acter here made possible. ''The fallacy of
the Socialist program, ' ' says Francis G. Pea-
body of Harvard, ''is not in its radicalism
but in its extemalism. It purposes to ac-
complish by economic change what can be at-
tained by nothing less than spiritual regen-
eration. Its program depends for efficacy on
unselfishness, brotherliness, and love of ser-
vice, but no way for the training of these
virtues is provided or indeed devised. Trans-
formation of business methods would, it is
assumed, convert the same people who are
HOW brutall}^ self-seeking and skillfully cruel
into agents of magnanimity, fraternity, and
justice."
"To Jesus, on the other hand, the root of
commercial wrongs is in commercialized de-
sire. The force of competition is not one
which can be abolished but it is one which can
J
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 139
be converted. However loyally a disciple of
Jesus Christ may enlist for a campaign of
social change, or however vividly he may
dream of a new industrial order more con-
sistent with Christian brotherhood, he finds
in the teaching of Jesus no encouragement to
delay discipleship until that better world
arrives. On the contrary, he finds set before
him the much more difficult task of creating
the characters which may utilize the better
order when it comes. "^
This prophet of old coveted that experience
of moral renewal for all his fellow citizens
to the end that his country might be sublime
in character. If the Great War has taught us
anything, it has taught us that ''when ma-
terial efficiency is separated from high pur-
pose and is lined up against moral reality, the
material efficiency will go down in defeat."
It may make a few successful skirmishes; it
may win an occasional battle, but it will lose
the war. We have seen ''the will to power"
stripped of all false ornament and standing
forth naked and unashamed in all its indecent
ugliness on Flanders Field. And we have
also lived to see the hateful thing go down in
defeat before the arms of righteousness.
1 Reprinted from The Christian Life in the Modern World (p. 82), by F.
G. Peabody, by permiasion of the publishers, The Macmillan Company.
/
140 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
The seraph flying through the open heavens
in order to touch the lips of that gifted young
Hebrew with a live coal from the altar of God
and thus set him free for his work as a
prophet of the Lord, symbolized the whole
spiritual order which overarches this earthly
life of ours. Our feet may plod along the
dusty roads of common life, but all the while
our heads and our hearts may be moving
freely among the stars. It doth not yet
appear what we shall be ultimately but
already we are the sons of Grod able, if we will
have it so, to be at last like him.
The ghost that walked in Hamlet to plague
the soul of the listless son, and the fateful
witches which plied the soul of Macbeth with
foul ambitions to wear the crown, cost what it
might, were used by the great dramatist to
give the sense of the vast, mysterious, intan-
gible forces which beat and play upon these
little lives of ours. And it is possible for
every one of us to be so renewed and enriched
by the impact of the Divine Spirit that when
the call of duty comes he will respond as did
this prophet of old in no uncertain tone,
''Here am I, send me." The final forces in
personal and in national life are the spiritual
forces.
It was Theodore Eoosevelt, an astute and
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 141
successful politician, who wrote these signifi-
cant words just a short time before he died :
''We recognize and we are bound to war
against the evils of to-day. The remedies are
partly economic and partly spiritual, partly
to be obtained by laws but in greater part to
be obtained by individual and associated
effort, for character is the vital matter, and
character cannot be created by law. These
remedies include a religious and moral teach-
ing which shall increase the spirit of human
brotherhood, an educational system which
shall train men for every form of useful ser-
vice, and a government so strong, wise, just,
and democratic that neither lagging too far
behind nor pushing heedlessly in advance, it
may do its full share in promoting these
ends. ' '
This land of ours which we all love is
great to-day, in so far as it is truly great
in the eyes of God and in the sight of the
nations, not because of our broad acres and
our rich mineral deposits, not because of our
tens of thousands of miles of railroad and the
material wealth accumulated in our banks —
this country displays its true greatness only
in so far as its purposes and ideals are found
to be in harmony with the will of the Most
High. National greatness as well as personal
V
142 SOCIAL EEBUILDEKS
salvation is dependent upon the quality of
character within.
You may possibly remember how Phillips
Brooks stood one night in Westminster
Abbey, London — it was the night of the
Fourth of July. When he had finished his
splendid sermon from the text, ''The spirit
of man is the candle of the Lord, ' ' he paused
to add these significant words: ''May I ask
you to linger while I say to you a few words
more which shall not be unsuited to what I
have been saying, and which shall, for just a
moment, recall to you the sacredness which
this day — the Fourth of July, the anniversary
of American Independence — has in the hearts
of us Americans. If I dare — generously per-
mitted as I am to stand this evening in this
venerable Abbey so full of our history as
well as yours — to claim that our festival shall
have some sacredness for you as well as for
us, my claim rests on the simple truth that to
all true men the birthday of a nation must
always be a sacred thing. For in our thought
the nation is the making place of men. Not
by the traditions of its history, nor by the
splendor of its corporate achievements, nor
by the abstract excellence of its constitution,
but by its fitness to make men must each
nation be judged.
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SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 143
**It is not for me to glorify my country for
anything that she has been or done, but on
my country 's birthday I may ask you for this
prayer on her behalf — that on the manifold
and wondrous chance which Grod is giving
her; on her freedom and on her passion for
education; on her care for the poor man's
rights and on her countless quiet homes; on
her wide gates open to the east and to the
west and on that strange meeting of the races
out of which a new race is slowly being born
— I may ask you for your prayer that on all
these materials and machineries of manhood
the blessing of God the Father of man and
Christ the Son of man may rest. ' '^
The welfare of any land depends in the last
analysis on the qualities of mind and heart
possessed by the rank and file of the people.
And the only people who can show themselves
competent to cooperate with the God of na-
tions in the fulfillment of his great design
for all the lands of earth are those who by
the development of moral purpose and the
habit of spiritual aspiration become indeed
the instruments of the Most High. No man
can make good unless he is fitted and pre-
pared in heart no less than in hand and brain
1 By permission, from vol. 2 of Phillips Brooks Sermons. Copyright by
E. P. Button & Co.
/
V
144 SOCIAL KEBUILDERS
to meet the demands of this exalted service.
Be ye therefore ready, for in such an hour as
ye think not the call of duty comes.
When Admiral Dewey died in the city of
Washington he was eighty years old. He had
spent sixty-two of those years in the service
of his country. He came of fighting stock —
his great-grandfather had fought at Lexing-
ton in 1775 — and for George Dewey the color
of life was always red. When war threatened
with Spain in 1897 Admiral Dewey was
placed in command of the Asiatic squadron.
He got his ships together, coaled them, fitted
them out with food and munitions, and had
them at Hongkong the very day that the
Maine was blown up in the harbor of Havana.
He had made it the business of his life to be
ready.
He had studied the Philippines and the en-
trance to the harbor of Manila until he was
as familiar with it all as a college boy is with
'his own campus. When war was declared
the order was cabled to him, ''Destroy the
Spanish fleet and take Manila." He went in
at once and did it without the loss of a ship
or of a single man. He was ready. Not
many men were ready at that time. Four
months after that date our soldiers were
dying in droves in Cuba and in the military
r
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 145
camps in tMs country for lack of adequate
preparedness. All honor to the man who is
ready — ^when the morning comes he goes up !
Now, peace hath her problems and her vic-
tories no less renowned than war. The solu-
tion of these problems in civic, in economic,
and in religious life demands a service no
less heroic and no less competent than the
winning of battles by land or by sea. The
best gift that any man here in this univer-
sity can make to his country and to his God is
the gift of one more upright, devoted, trained,
and serviceable life, such as it lies within
the power of each one of us to furnish. And
when these great gifts are being made here,
there, and yonder, as men give of their best
to the highest they see, we shall behold the
kingdom of God coming with power and great
glory.
Come up, then, as college men to the help of
the Lord against the mighty disaster which
has befallen this poor world of ours. Build
here and there and everywhere temples of
fresh impulse and aspiration. Build walls of
nobler habit and of finer method. Build those
structures which shall stand when all earthly
tabernacles have been dissolved. Plan for
it and pray for it, that by competent leader-
ship, by enlisting the cooperation of right-
V
146 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
minded people and by the stimulus from
above, we may build with. Him cities fair and
new in that better social order which shall be
a joy to the whole earth and the dwelling
place of the Most High!
"O beautiful my country, ours once more!
What were our lives without thee!
What all our lives to save thee!
We reck not what we give thee,
We will not dare to doubt thee.
But ask whatever else and we will dare!"
>J
CHAPTER V
THE LEADER IN A DAY OF SOCIAL
REBUILDING
The Jews have a way of getting on. They
show their skill not only in commercial life
but in the political affairs of nations. For
nearly twenty centuries the Jew has been a
man without a country, yet he has been able
to make himself at home in all countries and
to put his feet on the rounds of the ladder.
Here was Joseph in the land of Egypt,
rising from the position of a slave boy until
he stood at Pharaoh's right hand. Here was
Daniel at the court of Babylon, preferred
above all the presidents and princes of the
realm. Here was Benjamin Disraeli, a Jew,
coming to be Prime Minister of Great Britain
and the trusted adviser of her Most Christian
Majesty Queen Victoria! And here in the
same long line was Nehemiah at the court of
Persia, appointed to be cupbearer to the
king!
The office of cupbearer in that far off time
was an important and lucrative position. It
was before the days of Federal prohibition,
147
V
148 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
and the man who looked after the king's wine
was by no means the last on the list. It was
his business to see to it that the king was not
poisoned in his cups by the paid tool of some
rival aspirant to the throne. The cupbearer
was a man honored and trusted in ofl&cial cir-
cles, and Nehemiah had done well for himself.
He lived at a time of great distress in his
own little country. Palestine at that time was
as unhappy as was Belgium during the last
three years of the War and for much
the same reason. Nebuchadnezzar had cap-
tured the city of Jerusalem. He had thrown
down the walls and destroyed the Temple.
Many of the people he had carried into cap-
tivity, and those who were left were poor and
disheartened. Industry was disorganized
and the whole country was trampled under
foot by a brutal invader.
Nehemiah learned of the sore distress of
his native land from a group of Jews who
were in Persia. He decided at once to throw
up his lucrative position at that foreign court
and return to Palestine as a leader in the
hard task of reconstruction. He made his
long, perilous journey across the wide
stretches of sand. When he reached Jeru-
salem, he made a personal survey of the
needs of the stricken city. He then organized
/
V
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 149
and directed those forces which were to re-
build the life of his nation. His example will
furnish us useful suggestion for our own
efforts in this hard period of the world 's his-
tory, when so much of the world has to be
rebuilt, and built better than it was before the
war.
The whole world has been torn to pieces
during the last six years. It has been torn
to pieces politically. The boundaries of many
countries have been shifted. There has been
a Republic of Poland created by taking terri-
tory from Austria, Germany, and Russia.
There is a Czecho-Slovakia and a Jugo-
slavia and a Lithuania, and many other new
and untried powers. Great areas of territory
on the continents of Asia and Africa have
been transferred from one control to another.
The geographies which we used six years ago
are of no more account to-day than so much
waste paper. The Baedeker guidebooks of
Europe have all been put into the discard.
The world has been torn to pieces indus-
trially. The work of manufacture was dis-
ordered by the diversion of vast amounts of
capital and millions of laborers into the task
of creating munitions. High wages were paid
and huge profits were gained because the
work could not be delayed until men should
^^
150 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
have struck closer bargains. *'A certain
mailed customer had appeared whose wants
were gigantic but mad and unsymmetrical.
He required only special things, but he re-
quired them in enormous quantities and he
would pay any price. The profit for serving
him was fabulous — and for profit he was
served. Holders of war contracts bid wages
Tip on each other in a fantastic manner. The
war contractor stood at his competitor's fac-
tory gate offering ten dollars or twelve dol-
lars a day for conamon labor, thereby upset-
ting all the schedules and entailing millions
of readjustments. ' ' The dislocation of indus-
try became an ominous fact. Now the muni-
tions are no longer needed in such huge quan-
tities and all that capital and labor must be
restored to those channels of activity which
have to do not with destroying men's lives
but with saving them. And the task of re-
turning to normal standards and conditions
in industry and conmierce is a most difficult
one to perform.
The world has been torn to pieces intellec-
tually and morally. Many of the old beliefs
and ethical standards have been rudely
shaken and in countless instances destroyed.
Millions of men and women were suddenly
thrown out of the wholesome moral habits to
v/
SOCIAL BEBUILDERS 151
which they were accustomed into new and un-
tried lines of action. The disaster of the war
was so appalling that the minds and hearts of
many stood aghast. They cried out in
anguish of spirit: ''Where now is thy God?
Is there knowledge with the Most High?'*
In all these diverse fields of human interest
the dislocation has been so serious as to ren-
der the work of rebuilding a primary obliga-
tion.
''Is Europe dying!'* asks Sir Philip Gibbs,
a wise observer of conditions during the
Great War and of the general drift since the
armistice was signed. "Is Europe dying? No
man, unless he is blind or drunk with opti-
mism, can deny that at the present time Eu-
rope is very sick. During the last year I
have visited many countries of Europe, and
in most of them I found a sense of impending
ruin and dreadful anxiety touching the fu-
ture. In some countries ruin is not impend-
ing — ^it is present and engulfing. Austria
is so stricken, starving, helpless, and hope-
less that she exists on charity alone and is
sapped of all vital strength. Germany is in a
better state, but people who imagine that her
factories are at full blast and that she will
soon be rich, strong, and truculent again are,
in my opinion, deluded by false evidence.
/'
152 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
Eussia is one great empire of misery, and no
mortal soul knows yet what agony she still
has to suffer before her social revolution has
worked itself out. Poland, like Eussia, is
typhus-stricken and starving in her cities,
ravaged by tidal waves of war. Italy stag-
gers under a vast load of debt, her paper
money worthless in its chase after high prices,
unemployment growing like creeping paral-
ysis, her constant strikes for higher wages
senseless and futile. France was joyous for
a little while with the intoxication of victory
after years of sacrifice, but to-day many of
her men are saying: *Our million dead will
never come to life again. Our debts will
never be paid. Our industries are decaying
for lack of coal. Our deaths last year were
higher than our births by two hundred and
twenty thousand, and our population is
diminishing. France, victorious, is dying. ^
England has been less hurt by the war than
most of the other countries who were in it,
but without analyzing our present discontent
it is enough to glance at the headlines of to-
day's paper or to have a chat with any dis-
charged and unemployed soldier to repudiate
the gains of England in the war." The
whole world has been torn to pieces and must
be rebuilt.
s/
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 153
You will notice these three things about
the work of this ancient prophet. First, he
did not bring to the task of reconstruction
money or material or men. He brought, how-
ever, that which was equally important — ^he
brought impulse and inspiration.
The work of social rebuilding does not live
by bread alone. It lives also by those great
words of faith and hope and love, of courage,
aspiration and high resolve which proceed
out of the mouth of God. In many quarters
to-day the sorest need is not that of money
nor of material; it is the need of better im-
pulses and of a finer quality of inspiration
on the part of the people who are responsible
for the task of rebuilding.
Here at the close of the Great War the
people of certain countries are utterly dis-
couraged by the calamities through which
they have passed. They have no heart to
take hold. In other lands the heads of the
common people have been turned by the high
wages paid during the war, and they have
lost all sense of proportion. They are ex-
hibiting a reckless and demoralizing ex-
travagance. In other sections the common
people have been made desperate by the
profiteering and the waste which they have
witnessed. They are disposed to fling com-
154 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
mon sense and sound principle to the winds.
In every community of earth to-day there is
need of those leaders who can furnish better
impulses and a finer quality of inspiration
for the great work of social repair.
How fine was the spirit shown by those
Jews when once the leadership of Nehemiah
was brought to bear upon them in the day of
reconstruction! "So built we the wall, for
the people had a mind to work; and they
labored together from the rising of the sun
until the stars appeared."
They were not working with their eyes on
the clock. They were not just waiting for
the whistle to blow. They were not trying to
get through the day with as little effort as
possible without actually losing their jobs.
They were bent upon accomplishing some-
thing. They had some sense of joy and pride
in their work. They wrought with their eyes
upon a worthy goal.
In many lands to-day one of the gravest
problems to be faced lies in the unwillingness
of able-bodied men and women to engage
again in ordinary productive effort. The ab-
normal conditions which prevailed for four
years seemed to weaken the spirit of self-
reliance and to replace the habit of personal
industry with a vague sense of dependence
/
V
SOCIAL REBUILDEES 155
upon society as a whole for the needed sup-
plies.
One of the tragic things in the work-a-day
world to-day is the fact that so many people
seem to have no pride nor joy in the work
they do. Several years ago President Eliot,
of Harvard, was addressing an audience of
labor union men on Sunday afternoon in
Fanueil Hall, Boston. He was speaking about
the responsibilities of labor, and his address
was packed with wise and cogent statement.
The following Sunday President Driscoll, of
the Central Labor Council of Boston, was
addressing a similar audience in the same
place. At one point in his address he looked
up from the manuscript he was reading to
say, "President Eliot spoke to you last Sun-
day about * The Joy of Work. ' ' ' Instantly a
wave of loud, derisive laughter swept over
the audience. The idea that any man could
be so utterly silly as to talk about ''the joy
of work" seemed to them like a bitter kind of
joke. And that laughter was the saddest
thing that old Fanueil Hall had heard in
many a day. These men had lost all sense of
pride and joy in their work without realizing
apparently that thereby they were losing
their own souls.
The manual laborer is not solely to blame.
V
156 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
The sorry conditions prevailing in mncli of
onr modern industry militate against the
thing for which I would plead. When I was
a boy growing up on an Iowa farm, the old
village shoemaker made boots with tops on
them for my father and for me. We would go
in together and he would measure our feet,
rights and lefts, and then select his leather
and proceed to make two complete pairs of
boots. When we went in ten days later to
try them on, if they fitted, as they almost
always did, he had the joy of seeing us walk
off in them and he had the satisfaction of
looking upon a completed piece of work from
his own hands and brain. All this is much less
easy in those huge shoeshops at Lynn or
Brockton, Massachusetts, where thousands of
men and women are working, each one per-
forming a single monotonous bit of labor with
a machine upon fifty thousand pairs of shoes
which pass through his hands in the same pe-
riod of time.
The wide introduction of machinery, the
minute division of labor, and the consequent
monotony of toil in many a factory, together
with the long remove between the efforts of
tens of thousands of men and women and the
finished product, have a direful influence
upon the artisan. We have overlaid the man
s/
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 157
with the machine for the sake of the cheaper
and more abundant supply of things.
One of the serious indictments of our pres-
ent industrial order lies in the fact that it
does not readily produce that morale which
is needed in the factory as well as in the
army. The surroundings of industry are
often coarsening and debasing. Many of the
articles manufactured are made 'Ho sell
rather than to serve. ' ' This underlying pur-
pose rapidly debases the industry and de-
grades the workers. As some one has cleverly
said, ' ' The making of a cotton lie or a wooden
lie reacts upon the morals of the man as
much as the making of a spoken lie.'* The
spirit of the place may be not one of good
will but one of ill will between those who em-
ploy and those who are employed. All this
is distinctly evil in its ultimate effect. There
is a constant moral loss when work is done
under such conditions or in such a mood.
There is a tremendous economic loss where
the work of the world is done in the wrong
way, but the moral loss in personal aspira-
tion, in that joy and pride in one's own work
which ought to accompany all useful indus-
try, in the fine sense of human fellowship in
wholesome activity, is more terrible still. It
was a glorious fact that those Jews under
s/
158 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES
this gifted leader stood ready to labor with
enthusiasm from the rising of the sun until
the stars appeared.
So long as men and women must work in
order to live there is nothing else for it. And
it is altogether best that it should be so. An
endless series of holidays or even half-holi-
days would be perdition for the race. Those
amiable loafers in the South Sea islands of
whom Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack Lon-
don write in such picturesque fashion, are
not to be envied. It has been their sad lot
to live where bread fruit and bananas can be
picked off the trees in tropical abundance,
enough in an hour to last for a week, where
the lazy fish in the warm waters of the bay
can almost be taken with the bare hand. But
those conditions have not furnished us that
robust and resourceful type of manhood
which most appeals to the moral imagination.
It would be the making of those easy-going
natives if they had to live for a few centuries
on Cape Cod or on the Labrador coast. It is
by the discipline of sturdy effort that all the
higher values are wrought out.
Nehemiah was ready also to pay the neces-
sary price for that complete knowledge of the
facts which would make him competent as a
leader. When he reached Jerusalem, he did
si
SOCIAL REBUILDEES 159
not flood the commimity with advance notices
of what he proposed to do for its uplift. Had
there been newspapers in that day he would
not have covered half i)ages of them with
flaming advertisements of the ''welfare
work" he proposes to inaugurate.
''He took his beast one night and rode out
over the city, taking stock of his task and of
his resources. He did not propose to allow
the wishes of a good heart to be a substitute
for the knowledge of a good head. He in-
sisted upon accurate information as a neces-
sary preliminary in community building. He
returned from his personal survey with that
definite information. Seven of the important
gateways of the city were in ruins ; the streets
were full of rubbish ; walls were to be rebuilt ;
and all of this must be done by voluntary
labor. "1
Thus he was able through his thorough
knowledge of the situation and the inspira-
tion he brought to develop the spirit needed
for the great task of reconstruction. He or-
ganized the people in such a way as to make
their service most effective. He distributed
his forces so that in rebuilding the walls of
the city "every man should built over against
'The Bible as a Community Book, A. E. Holt, p. 56. The WomanB
Press, New York.
160 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
his own house." Here was that combination
of self-interest and of public spirit which is
always to be desired. Every man would
want that part of the wall near his own home
to be solidly built, so that if a breach should
come under some hostile attack, it would not
come there. By this bit of strategy he induced
them to do square work, and square work only,
in the reconstruction of the life of their city.
It is a good plan always to urge people to
do the duty which lies nearest. That will
be the best possible preparation for duties
which lie further on. ''Wisdom," David
Starr Jordan used to say, ''is knowing what
to do next. Virtue is doing it." There are
far-sighted people, alas, who are forever try-
ing to love and pray for and Christianize
their fellow beings on the other side of the
globe, who have not yet learned to love the
people who live on the other side of the
street. Let every man do first the duty which
lies nearest. Let him build over against his
own life that particular part of the better
world for which he is made responsible. It
is a good division of labor when each man's
name can thus be openly attached to the bit
of work with which he is intrusted.
In the second place, Nehemiah showed the
people the wider significance of what they
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 161
were called to do. He was asked at one time
to go off for a trip into the country. He re-
fused. *'I am doing a great work," he re-
plied, *'I cannot come down."
He was laying bricks. But every brick
went into a wall. The wall was to surround
the capital city of his country as its main
defense. And the city was Jerusalem, the
place where the divine honor dwelt more con-
spicuously and more continuously for cen-
turies than at any other spot on earth.
When we remember what the salvation of
the world owes to the Jewish race ; when we
remember that the Jews wrote the Holy Scrip-
tures of our own faith; when we remember
that the Saviour of the world, the Desire of
the Nations, was born in Bethlehem of Judaea
of the house and lineage of David, we stand
ready to indorse the prophet's claim. To lay
bricks in a wall which protects the capital
city of a people whose life is so bound up with
the moral and spiritual advance of mankind,
is a great work, and he had better not come
down.
But this trusted leader was doing some-
thing other and greater than building a wall
— ^he was aiding in the rebuilding of a nation's
life. He knew that bricks and mortar, walls
and battlements furnish no sure defense.
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162 SOCIAL REBUILDEES
"The walls of Sparta are built of Spartans,"
sang the Greek poet. The worst enemies of
any city are inside rather than outside. ' ' Ex-
cept the Lord build the house, they labor in
vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the
city, the watchman waketh but in vain."
Except great principles and worthy ideals be
securely lodged in the minds and hearts of
the people who inhabit the city, nothing of
lasting worth is accomplished. Therefore,
along with his task of material achievement,
Nehemiah drew the attention of the people to
the law of God. "He gathered them together
and opened the book and read therein dis-
tinctly, so that all the people could under-
stand. He read from morning until midday,
and all the people were very attentive to
hear him. ' ' He would have every man among
them looking up into the face of his Maker
saying, "Thy word have I hid in my heart,
that I might not sin. Thy word is a lamp
unto my feet and a light unto my path. ' '
Nehemiah had the full sense of stewardship
in regard to the life of his country. Jeru-
salem was to be built as " a city that was com-
pact together" because the house of the Lord
was there, and all the tribes of earth would
come up in thought, in desire, and in aspira-
tion for the quality of spiritual leadership
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SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 163
there offered. He heard the voice of God
saying to Israel: ^'I will bless thee, and thou
shalt be a blessing. I will make of thee a
great nation, and in thee shall all the nations
of the earth be blessed." '*Save Israel," God
was saying to him in that high hour, ''that
Israel may help to save the world. ' '
For any man to have the humblest part in
laying line upon line, precept upon precept,
thought upon thought, and aspiration upon
aspiration, here a little and yonder a great
deal, in that finer quality of national life,
which was to reach out in Messianic fashion
for the betterment of the whole earth, was
indeed a great work. Where the sense of
individual obligation is held apart from the
broader social order it becomes weak and
thin. It is the larger vision which fires the
heart.
In the third place, the prophet united the
militant and the constructive virtues. He
was attacked by Sanballat, Tobiah, and Ge-
shom, three first-class rascals in that far off
time. They sneered at Nehemiah's undertak-
ing. "What would these feeble Jews dot
Will they fortify their city? If even a fox
would go up by the wall, he would break down
what they build. ' ' But the people had a mind
to work, and they kept right on laying bricks.
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164 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
Then the enemies of the divine purpose at-
tacked them in open hostility, and the
Hebrews had to defend themselves. *'Let
every man gird on his sword," their leader
cried. And the builders went forth each one
with his sword at his side. In one hand he
carried his trowel, and with the other he could
reach for his sword to repel the hostile attack.
The work was great and large, and the people
were scattered along the wall; but when the
trumpet sounded announcing an attack, they
went swiftly to that spot with their re-
enforcements and drove the enemy back.
' ' So built we the wall ; for people had a mind
to work" — that was their rallying cry. And
the wall went steadily up, and the moral fiber
of the nation was steadily strengthened by
devotion to a common task.
The two lines of effort here suggested may
well be followed at this very hour. The mili-
tant and the constructive virtues are both in
demand. The minds of all honest-hearted
people to-day are strongly set upon that
wholesome industry which ministers to the
peace and prosperity of society. But the
sword as well as the trowel has to be taken
along. It is necessary for the friends of
righteousness to smite hip and thigh the ene-
mies of the divine purpose. The rum-seller,
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SOCIAL REBUILDEES 165
the gambler, and the brothel-keeper, the in-
dustrial slacker, the political grafter, and the
ruthless profiteer — these are the Sanballats
of modern life, and they have to be fought
all klong the line. When they hinder the work
of social reconstruction, they have to be
beaten back that the good work may go on.
Here at this hour in our own land the worst
enemies of the republic are not to be found
among those red-mouthed individuals who
are forever screaming about revolution. The
actual influence of these showy, noisy souls
upon the great body of our citizens, as we
saw in the last presidential election, is almost
negligible. The worst enemies are to be
found among those who are too indifferent,
too selfish, too preoccupied to raise a hand.
''Let George do it!" Let anybody do it, so
long as we are not disturbed.
Here we were in the summer of 1920
charged with the responsibility of selecting
a President of the United States. In the face
of the vital and vexing national questions he
would have to consider, and in the face of
the world problems with which he would have
to deal, had there ever been a time when it
was more important that a man, strong, wise,
just, far-seeing, competent, statesmanlike,
should be sent to the White House 1 What a
y
166 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
challenge the responsibility of selecting such
a man offered to thoughtful, discriminating,
patriotic, and honest citizens everywhere!
You would have expected them to rise up and
insist upon having their way rather than
leave the grave responsibility of making suit-
able nominations to the short-sighted, parti-
san politicians who are always so actively on
the job.
Here we were charged also with the respon-
sibility of electing a Congress to deal in a
large and just way with those vast problems
at home and abroad, and to show us some-
thing better than the dallying and vaporing
in the United States Senate which has humili-
ated us all. It is the duty of every right-
minded man and of every right-minded
woman, now charged with a new political re-
sponsibility, to go forth with sword and
trowel to fight and to build in that better
quality of national life so sorely needed for
our own security and for the wider service
of the world's need.
I could speak of many different directions
which this work of rebuilding might well take
— let me name just two. There must come,
in the first place, here in our own land as
well as in other lands, a better type of indus-
trial life. It is not a mere question of wages
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 167
and hours — wages are high to-day and the
hours are being adjusted more and more
with reference to the needs of life. It is a
question as to the mood and temper in which
men with capital and organizing, administra-
tive ability, and men with muscle and
mechanical skill shall act. Shall they act
together in the spirit of cooperation and
brotherhood, or shall they draw apart in the
spirit of antagonism? In my judgment we
shall only achieve that larger measure of
peace and prosperity in the workaday world
where it is so sorely needed as we realize
these three great social principles.
1. There must come a more democratic
spirit in the control of the great industries.
Every man, whether he be a millionaire or a
hodcarrier, is consulted as to who shall be the
mayor of his city and who shall compose the
city council. He is consulted as to who shall
be the governor of his State and who shall sit
in the Legislature. He is consulted as to who
shall be President of the United States and
who shall make up our national Congress. He
is compelled to live under the laws made and
executed by those officials, and it is only just
that he should be consulted.
But touching that which affects his welfare
and the welfare of his family much more inti-^
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168 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
mately and steadily than all this he has some-
times been scarcely consulted at all. He has
been offered employment on certain terms,
and has been told that he could either ''take
it or leave it" and that was all there was
about it. He has not been consulted touching
the various methods and conditions which
affect his employment in that industry. He
has not been called into conference, either
personally or through his representatives,
touching those policies which will determine
the spirit and temper in which the work is to
be done. He has been treated as a "hand"
rather than as a man.
The man who invests his money and his
organizing, administrative ability in any
enterprise has a clear right to be heard
touching the operation of that industry. And
the plain men and women not possessed of
capital or of five talents each of that organiz-
ing ability, but putting in for years together
the best part of their lives in the work they
do — they too have a right to be heard. And
the broad-minded employers (of whom there
are many to-day, and the number is steadily
increasing) are recognizing that fact. They
are encouraging the spirit of initiative, the
extension of responsibility, the development
of plans by the workers themselves for the
J
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 169
improvement of the enterprise and for the
larger welfare of all those whose lives are
bound up together in that economic organiza-
tion.
One of the largest and most important
railroad corporations in the country, the
Pennsylvania, opened the New Year with a
plan for consultation with their employees
which will surely make for better relations.
The plan provides for a system of committees,
local and regional, culminating in a joint re-
viewing committee of the whole Pennsylvania
system. On each one of these committees the
managers and the employees have equal rep-
resentation. Questions which arise are to be
settled by the local or regional committee ac-
cording to the issues involved, but the final
authority is lodged with the joint reviewing
committee, whose decisions are to be accepted
as final. In order to prevent a possible dead-
lock in the committees through the lining up
of employees' representatives on one side
and the managers on the other, a two-thirds
vote is required for all decisions. This plan
does not deny the right to strike, but it in-
sures a reasonable time for discussion of any
differences or grievances before such action
looking toward a strike could be taken. The
hearty agreement upon this plan by both
170 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
managers and employees, giving to both sides
a voice in determining questions of policy,
promises a lessening of friction and an in-
crease of the spirit of cooperation.
''Inasmuch as the workers contribute to
production the indispensable factor of their
toil and skill, the Christian thinker must
recognize the fairness of labor's insistence
upon being heard in all adjustments which
have to do with the industry. The battle for
a voice in wage-fixing has been pretty well
fought through; but industrial democracy
really implies more than such collective bar-
gaining in wages and hours. It implies that
labor shall be heard in all questions which
have to do with the conditions in which the
laborer works, with the shop and its control,
with the control of the industry itself through
place on boards of directors. The trade union
is fighting and winning a great battle against
paternalism. Capitalists are not as a rule
moved by impulses to oppression. Undoubt-
edly the majority of them mean well by their
men. They are willing to do all within their
power for the men except to let the men have
the power to do for themselves. But pater-
Halism is an insidious foe to democracy.
. . . The Christian ideal is not a class
struggle and a class triumph, but a coopera-
/
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 171
tion on all sides for the good of the whole
community. ' '
2. There must come a more equitable dis-
tribution of the good things of life between
those who toil mainly with their heads and
those who toil mainly with their hands. You
notice that I do not say equal, I say equitable.
I believe that it is altogether just and desir-
able that to men of five talents of organizing
and administrative ability there should be
given an exceptional reward. It is in that
way that the development of exceptional abil-
ity is stimulated. But the distribution has
not always been equitable.
Let me put the matter in concrete form:
Some years ago in the city of New York a
gentleman died whose name was Cornelius
Vanderbilt. He was a man possessed of many
splendid traits of character in his personal and
domestic life. He was highly esteemed and
beloved by a wide circle of personal friends.
He gave generously of his means to the work
of religion, of education, and of charity. I
am not singling him out for any sort of per-
sonal attack, which would be manifestly un-
fair. I merely select him as an outstanding
figure in a certain system.
When this gentleman died we are told that
he left a fortune in round numbers of one
172 SOCIAL EEBUILDEES
hundred and eighty millions of dollars, which
at that time was regarded as a very large
fortune. The question arose instantly, How
far did that one hundred and eighty millions
of dollars represent a service actually ren-
dered to society by Mr. Vanderbilt, a service
for which society could well afford to pay
him that sum of money? Or, How far did it
represent money which was really earned by
the engineers and the firemen, the brakemen
and the section hands on the railroads he con-
trolled? How far did it represent money
paid by farmers who shipped their produce
to market over those railroads ? How far did
it represent money contributed by the con-
sumers of that produce who had to pay more
because of the freight rates charged? How
far did it represent money contributed by the
passengers who traveled on those railroads?
The money was undoubtedly in his hands, but
did it represent an equitable pajment made
for an actual service rendered to society ?
Let me ask another man to come forward
and stand up alongside of Mr. Vanderbilt. If
we should accept for the purpose of illus-
tration the old Usher Chronology (sometimes
printed in the margins of our Bibles) as being
accurate, we would find that Adam and Eve
lived here on earth four thousand and four
J
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 173
years before Christ. In round numbers, then,
the human race, according to that reckoning,
has been here on earth about six thousand
years. Now, suppose that Adam had lived
until this day. Suppose that he had worked
steadily three hundred days in the year for
those six thousand years. Suppose that he
had been possessed of no ordinary ability but
had been a man capable of earning one hun-
dred dollars a day, which is very good pay —
better than that received by any professor in
Yale University at the present time. If Adam
had worked for six thousand years, three
hundred days in the year and had received
one hundred dollars a day in wages over and
above the cost of his keep, he too would have
been at this time in possession of exactly
$180,000,000, not making allowance for the
interest on his savings.
Now, the question arises. Did Mr. Vander-
bilt, in his short lifetime, render a service to
society equal in value to what a man capable
of earning one hundred dollars a day would
have rendered if he had worked three hun-
dred days in the year for the period of six
thousand years? I do not know what you
think about it, but I do not believe that he
did. If I were a betting man, I would put
my money on Adam.
174 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
We all know that if every man had all that
he earns by actual service rendered to society
by the labor of either hand or brain, and if no
man had any more than he earns by such
service rendered, the whole industrial ques-
tion would be settled. There must come a
more equitable distribution of the good things
of life between those who labor mainly with
their hands and those who labor mainly with
their heads.
''The many and varied schemes, now so
vigorously undertaken by intelligent em-
ployers, of conciliation, arbitration, cooper-
ation, profitsharing, and industrial partner-
ship are not to be regarded as forms of benefi-
cence or magnanimity. To initiate them in
the spirit of paternalism or patronage or
charity is, in the present temper of the
working classes, to foredoom them to failure.
They represent a candid recognition of the
fact that the wage-system in its bare economic
form must be supplemented, if it is not to be
supplanted; that the line of division between
employer and employed must be effaced by
fraternalism, if it is not to be obliterated by
socialism. Schemes of industrial reform must
be incorporated with the business, adapted to
the type of industry concerned, and charged
to production. The proper payment for them
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 175
is not gratitude, but loyalty. They are one
form of evidence that the industrial order,
imperfect as it is, may be developed by intel-
ligence and ingenuity into a system of mutual
advantage, which is certainly more accessible,
and may perhaps be more durable, than the
vague ventures which social revolution now
so lightly proposes to make. ' '^
3. There must come a steadier exaltation
of the human values at stake. What is it all
for, this huge process of production, distribu-
tion, and exchange? What is the final oflSce
of these mills and mines, these farms and fac-
tories, these steamships and railroads, these
stores and banks? The process certainly
does not exist for the purpose of creating im-
mense private fortunes in the hands of a few
or for the mere increase of a cheaper and
more abundant supply of things. The process
is meant to minister to human well-being. Its
office is to make human life richer, worthier,
more joyous. It must stand or fall ultimately
by its success or failure at that point.
It was John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who said:
* * The soundest industrial policy is that which
has constantly in mind the welfare of em-
ployees as well as the making of profits.
•Reprinted from The Christian Life in the Modern World (p. 102), by
F. G. Peabody, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company.
176 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
When human considerations demand it this
policy subordinates profit to welfare. In-
dustrial relations are essentially human
relations. The day has passed when the con-
ception of industry as chiefly a revenue-
producing process can be maintained."
The wealth of the nation is not indicated,
as Ruskin used to argue in his strenuous way,
by its broad acres, or by its mineral wealth,
or by the thousands of miles of railroad that
may have been built, or by the accumulated
wealth stored up in its banks. ''The wealth
of the nation is indicated always by the num-
ber of healthy, happy, clear-eyed, and aspir-
ing men, women, and children it can show."
The human values are supreme and final.
Here is a man who builds a factory, and
he carries it on in such fashion that the smoke
which flies from his factory chimney is the
black flag of piracy. Men and women are
there being robbed of the finer results which
should flow from their employment. They
may or may not be receiving good wages, but
they are not working in that mood and tem-
per which makes for the development of the
finer values. Here is another man on the
other side of the city who builds a factory,
and he carries it on in such a fashion that
the smoke which flies from his chimney is
\
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 177
like a pillar of cloud by day guiding the peo-
ple whose lives are bound up in that enter-
prise toward the land of promise. He shows
so much of the spirit of social justice, so much
consideration for the people in his employ, and
he maintains such a spirit of cooperation and
good will in the enterprise that the human
values are being constantly advanced.
The man who builds and operates this
second factory may be making shoes, or
steam engines, or cotton cloth, or anything
you please, but what is much more to the
purpose he is making manhood and woman-
hood in the lives of all those who stand in his
employ. We are to judge of the fitness or the
unfitness of all methods of industry by their
outcome in the creation or the destruction of
these human values.
''The fundamental ethical teaching of
Jesus is the supreme worth of every per-
sonality in the sight of God. The primary in-
terest of Christianity in all economic problems
is, therefore, that human values shall be kept
in the first place. If modern societies could
once be made to act upon the simple principle
that a man's life consisteth not in the abun-
dance of the things that he possesseth, that
all social institutions are made for man, not
man for the institutions, and consequently
178 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
are to be judged by their effect on men,
women, and children, the longest single stride
toward the bringing in of the kingdom of God
on earth would have been taken. For this
principle, once set to work, would quickly
reach out to most vital implications."
In the second place, there must come in this
day of social rebuilding the development and
maintenance of a finer quality of national
soul. The most terrible thing the world saw
during the Great War was not the outrage
upon Belgium, awful as that was in its bar-
barity, nor the sinking of the Lusitania with
the drowning of hundreds of helpless women
and children, nor the judicial murder of men
like Captain Fryatt or women like Edith
Cavell. All this was frightful in the extreme,
but there was something worse. The most ter-
rible thing we saw in the Great War was the
evidence of the utter decay of what had been
a great national soul in Germany.
There was a Germany once, the Germany
of Luther and Melanchthon, of Kant and
Hegel, of Goethe and Schiller, of Beethoven
and Bach, of Carl Schurz and Franz Sigel,
which was honored and esteemed throughout
the world. In that Germany all the nations
of the earth were being blessed. But in the
year 1914 the world suddenly awoke to the
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 179
fact that this Germany which had been held
in honor was gone.
In the years following 1870 the German
people turned over the keeping of their soul
into the hands of certain false gods. The
gospel most industriously preached in Ger-
many during that period was not the Gospel
according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
It was the gospel according to Treitschke,
Nietzsche, and Bemhardi. It was ''another
gospel" which was not ** another" but a
counsel of evil. In this gospel of the New
Testament I read, ''Among the Gentiles the
great ones exercise lordship and dominion. It
shall not be so among you. If any man would
be great among you let him serve. The great-
est of all is the servant of all."
But in this other gospel I find these virtues
of compassion, pity, and self-sacrifice spumed
as belonging to what these misguided men
were pleased to call * ' the slave morality. " "I
denounce Christianity," said Nietzsche, "as
the greatest of all possible corruptions, since
it combats the good red blood of human life.
The qualities of mercy, charity, self-sacrifice
are utterly pernicious since they mean the
transfer of power from the hands of the
strong to the hands of the weak whose proper
business it is to serve the strong. Therefore
J
180 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
be hard. Face life defiant. Live dangerously.
Will to live in perfect power." So far
Nietzsche! And this was the gospel indus-
triously preached and practised in Germany
during the years following 1870, and it
brought about the decay of a great national
soul.
Now all that will have to be changed. In
the future, as in the past, we shall have to
live with Germany and to reckon with Ger-
many as one of the potent factors in the
world's life — and we cannot live on good
terms with a nation possessed of such a mood
as that just indicated. It will have to be
changed.
It cannot be changed by contempt, bitter-
ness, and hatred. Satan does not cast out
Satan. Beelzebub, the prince of the devils,
does not turn around and cast out all the
other devils. The quality of national life in
Germany can only be changed by a finer
quality of national soul in those countries
with which Germany will have to live. There
must be a finer quality of soul in Britain,
in France, in Italy, and in the United States
of America. And that plain fact brings home
to us all an immediate sense of duty.
We can readily see the defects in other
nations — are we equally ready to recognize
J
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 181
them in our own national life? It is for us
to ask ourselves whether at this hour the
stream of personal ambition and of self-
interest is not running more strongly here in
our own land than is the sense of the necessity
for social discipline, for ordered activity, and
for the acceptance of our full share of respon-
sibility for the peace and good order of the
world.
"If drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the law:
Lord God of hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget.
"Par-called our navies melt away.
On dune and headland sinks the fire;
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the nations, spare us yet.
Lest we forget, lest we forget.
"The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart;
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart;
Lord God of hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget."
The duty of contributing to the develop-
ment of that finer quality of national soul is
immediate and personal. The government of
this country is not at Washington — it has
182 SOCIAL REBUILDERS
never been at Washington. The government
is here. It is here and there and yonder
wherever the people are. The court of last
appeal in this land is what the people think
and feel and that upon which they are highly
resolved. And to the development and main-
tenance of that public sentiment, that quality
of national soul, every man and woman
among us is constantly giving either of his
best or some poor weak substitute which rep-
resents that which is second or third rate.
And upon the quality of that common soul the
issue of these great days will turn.
I have the feeling that the young people
who have been privileged to live through the
last six years, witnessing one of the great
epochs in human history, will have a much
more vivid sense of the content and meaning
of this period and of its bearing upon the
future of the race than they have of some of
the significant periods of history in the past.
I was told recently of a certain high school —
I do not remember just where it was ; it was
not in Indiana and I hope it was not in Con-
necticut — where an examination was being
held in history. The teacher placed certain
questions on the blackboard and among the
rest was this query: "Write what you know
about Magna Charta. ' '
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 183
When the papers were handed in it was
found that one young lady in the second year
of high school had produced the following:
*' Magna Charta was a soldier in the Revolu-
tionary War. He was shot in a battle and his
wife at once went to the front to take care
of him. But when she found that he was
dead, Mrs. Charta took up his gun and said,
'Shoot if you must this old gray head, but
I will fight it out on this line if it takes all
summer.' "
The young lady had a number of historical
references in her production, but, as we say
in baseball, she did not get her hits very well
''bunched." The young people of this gen-
eration will have a much more real and accu-
rate sense of the meaning of these recent
events during the Great War and of their
bearing upon the further unfolding of our
civilization.
It is a great time to be alive. And to be
alive and young is heaven itself. For a thou-
sand years other men and women will turn
back and study with profound interest the
significant history of the last six years and
the still more significant history of those six
years which are just ahead. They will realize
more fully than do we the bearing of all that
upon the whole future welfare of our race.
y
184 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
*'For our own age this much can be said.
The stake was never so great nor so widely
realized. To shake ourselves free forever
from the tyranny of war or to be condemned
to the prospects of conflicts growing steadily
more savage and destructive till civilization
becomes its own murderer; to lift industrial
life into a genuine cooperation between direc-
tion and labor, capital and brain and muscle,
or to watch the world of industry desolated
by struggles fiercer than in the fiercest days
of the past ; to rid the world of ancient forms
of poverty and disease and behold joy in
widest commonalty spread, or to acquiesce
in still more glaring contrasts of wealth and
poverty than we knew when the arts of ex-
ploitation were still comparatively young —
these are the issues that face us to-day.
Nothing seems too good to be hoped for;
nothing too evil to be feared."
It was the distinguished author of **The
American Commonwealth," James Bryce,
who wrote these words in a letter to a friend
less than a year ago : " In my judgment there
has never been a time at which the systematic
and impartial study of social and economic
questions has been so urgent as at the present
day. We stand on the threshold of a new
age. The problems which confront us and
SOCIAL EEBUILDERS 185
the other leading democratic states of the
world are of the most complex and the most
vital character and can only be solved by
patient examination conducted in the spirit
of scientific detachment accompanied by a
wide diffusion of adult civilization. To avert
the grave conflict between classes and inter-
ests we must in good time inquire into and
determine so far as possible their courses and
conditions. We need, therefore, to-day and at
once a much more adequate provision for
social research and for giving publicity to the
result of such research. But to be most fruit-
ful our work must be conceived in a large
and liberal spirit."
How much it would mean for the develop-
ment of this finer quality of national soul if^
as Dr. William P. Merrill, of the Brick
Church, New York, has pointed out, that
fifteenth psalm, revered alike by Catholic,
Protestant, and Hebrew, could be chanted in
the terms of national and international life !
In that event the ancient scripture would
read like this : a^
* ' Lord, what nation shall stand in thy pres-
ence or dwell in thy holy hill? The nation
that walketh uprightly, that setteth justice
first and speaketh the truth in its heart. The
nation that slandereth not its neighbors, nor
186 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
setteth spies upon another nation, nor clierish-
eth a grudge toward any people. The nation
that sweareth to its own hurt and changeth
not, in whose eyes a reprobate nation is de-
spised. The nation that useth not its strength
to oppress the weak or to destroy the help-
less. The nation that doeth these things shall
never be moved." If these noble sentiments
might be embedded in the spirit of the na-
tion's life, it would mean a quality of soul in
which all the nations of the world would be
blessed.
When I reflect upon the task of creating
this spirit and temper among our people, I
think instantly of the work of the teachers
in our public schools. We saw at the begin-
ning of this lecture that Nehemiah did not
bring money nor material to the task of social
rebuilding — no more do they, for the public
has paid them so meagerly that they have
little money to bring. It has been a reproach
to the nation that these public servants in the
only institution we have which speaks to all
classes, all races, and all creeds alike should
have been so sadly underpaid.
But, like the prophet of old, these public-
school teachers bring to the work of rebuild-
ing impulse, inspiration, and leadership.
They are not merely engaged in the work of
J
SOCIAL REBUILDERS 187
imparting information. They are not merely
teaching boys and girls to read, write, and
add up columns of figures. They are doing
something vastly more significant than merely
increasing the measure of technical skill in
each pupil. They are at work upon the task
of maturing, enriching, and ennobling human
personality at its most plastic period for a
better America. They are steadily saying to
the generation whose day of opportunity is
just dawning, ^'Let us rise and build the bet-
ter world that is to be."
The call of the hour is for trained, compe-
tent consecrated leaders to stamp that period
of history which lies in the immediate future
more clearly and more firmly with the like-
ness and image of the Son of God. We want
men and women who know something of his-
tory so that all the foolish experiments which
have been tried in the past and have failed
will not have to be tried over again. We want
men who know something of those sound
economic principles which must underlie all
human well-being and advance. We want men
who know something of the psychology of the
human mind, that they may be able to antici-
pate and rightly to appraise those thought
movements which are destined to become
controlling. We want men with the scientific
4
188 SOCIAL EEBUILDERS
habit of mind so that they will be able to
*'draw the thing as they see it for the God
of things as they are." And then coupled
with all that skill in the use of the materials
of hnman well-being, we want men and women
of vision and high purpose who will work
steadily for human betterment with their
eyes and their minds upon that social order
which hath foundations, whose builder and
maker is God.
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