Chapter XIII: Life and Doubt on the Bottoms

While studying the social conditions of this city, I took a residence on the banks of the river among the squatters. There were about fifteen hundred people living in shacks on this "no man's land." My residence was a shack for which I paid three dollars a month. It was at the bottom of a big clay bank, and not far from where the city dumped its garbage. There was neither church nor chapel in this neglected district, and the people were mostly foreigners; but the children all spoke English.

During the early part of my stay in that shack, I entered my first great period of doubting--doubt as to the moral order of the universe, doubt on the question of God. I had gone through some great soul struggles, but this was the greatest. It was for a time the eclipse of my soul. For weeks I lived behind closed doors--I was shut in with my soul. But the community around me called in a thousand ways for help, for guidance, for instruction, and I opened the door of my shack and invited the children in. I organized a Sunday School and taught them ethics and religion. I got up little entertainments for them. I procured a stereopticon, gave them lectures on my experience in Egypt, and lectures on art, biography and history. I had a peculiar method of advertising these lectures. I informed the little cripple boy on the corner. He whispered the information to a section of the huts, at the farthest end of which a golden-haired courier informed another section; so that by the time the lecture was scheduled to begin, my audience was ready, and most of them slid down the clay bank in front of my door. Later I went out through the surrounding towns and cities, lecturing, and raised money for a chapel, and we called it the "Chapel of the Carpenter."

I never knew the meaning of the incarnation until I lived on "the bottoms" with the squatters. I talked of great characters of history; I reviewed great books. I travelled with these children over the great highways of history, science and art, and very soon we had a strong Sunday School, and helpers came from the city--but the door of my own soul was still shut. It seemed to me that my soul was dead. I was without hope for myself: everything around me was dark. Sometimes I locked the door and tried to pray, but no words came, nor thoughts--not a ray of light penetrated the darkness. My mind and intellect became duller and duller. It was at this time that I came across the writings of Schopenhauer; and Schopenhauer suggested to me a method of relief. I may be doing him an injustice, but it was his philosophy that made me reason that, as I did not ask to come into life and had no option, I had a right to go out of it. There was nothing spasmodic in the development of my thought along this line: it was cold, calm reasoning; I had determined to go out of life. So, with the same calm deliberation that I cooked my breakfast, I destroyed every vestige of my correspondence; and, one night went to the river to seek relief. I was sitting on the end of a log when a man, who had been working twelve hours in a packing-house, came out to smoke, after his supper. He had not washed himself. His bloody shirt stuck to his skin--he was haggard, pale; and we dropped naturally into conversation. In language intelligible to him I asked him what life meant to him.

"The kids," he said, "that's what it means to me. I work like one of the things I kill every day--I kill hundreds of them, thousands of them every day. I go home and eat like one of them, and sleep like one of them, and go back to hog it again like one of them."

"Do you get tired?"

"Tired? Tired as hell!"

"I mean--tired of life?"

"Oh, no," he said, "I aint livin' the best kind of a life, but what I have is better than none. I don't know what's beyond--if there is any life or none at all; but something in me makes me stick to this one. Besides, if there is any chance for a better life here, he must be a damned coward that would go out of it and leave it undone. Good night."

I saw him retreat to his shack among the tall weeds. I heard the door close. I fancied him lie down in a heap in the corner and go to sleep. He was a better philosopher than I was, and he had called me a coward, but he had not altered my determination. I began to sweat. It was like the action of a fever on my body, and I became very nervous; but I was determined to meet the crisis, and go.

A sudden change in affairs was created by an unearthly scream--the scream of a woman. I looked around suddenly and discovered that the only two-story shack on "the bottoms" was in a blaze, and the thought occurred to me that I might be of some help and accomplish my purpose at the same time.

In a moment I was beside the burning hut. It appeared that a lamp had exploded upstairs, and that three small children were hemmed in. That was the cause of the scream.

A plank that reached to the upstairs window was lying at the wood pile. I pushed it against the house and climbed like a cat into the burning bedroom. By this time the neighbours had collected, and I helped the woman and lowered the three children down, one by one, and then deliberately groped for the stairs to get hemmed in, the smoke suffocating me as I did so. By the time I found the stairs, my hair was singed, my arms were burned, but I was gradually losing consciousness, and before I reached the bottom I fell, suffocated with the smoke. In that last moment of consciousness, my whole life came up in review. I had no regrets. I had played a part and it was over.

When I came out of coma, I was lying on my cot in the hut, the neighbours crowding my little bedroom and standing outside in scores. One of the newspapers that had most severely criticized my interference in politics, gave me a pass to Colorado and return--and in the mountains of Colorado, the door of my soul opened again, and I saw the world beautiful--and opportunities that were golden for helpfulness and service awaiting my touch. So I returned to my hut with the sense of God more fully developed in me than it had ever been.

They had a system in that city that I was very much ashamed of--that I thought all men ought to be ashamed of--the segregation of the "social evil." I discovered that the city fined these poor creatures of the streets, and that these fines, amounting to thousands of dollars every year, went straight into the public school fund, so that it could truly be said that the more debauched society was, the more efficiently it could educate its children and its youth.

These houses in the red light district were built to imitate castles on the Rhine, and were owned by church people and politicians. Everybody winked at this condition. One minister of this town uttered a loud protest and took his children out of the public schools, but he had to leave the city. The Christians would not stand for such a protest. The newspapers would not touch it, trustees would not touch it, the great political parties would not touch it.

I joined the Knights of Labour in that city, an organization then in its prime of strength, but they would not touch it. I joined the People's Party in the hope that there I might do something about it. One of the leading members of that party importuned me to nominate him as presiding officer of the city convention. "On one condition," I told him; "that you appoint me chairman of the committee on resolutions." And the compact was made.

Five men were on that committee, and when I asked the committee to put in a resolution condemning the education of children from this fund, they refused. I could only persuade one of four to indorse my minority report, which, signed by two of us, condemned this remnant of Sodom left over; but it swept the convention and was carried almost unanimously. Even the three men on the resolutions committee who refused to sign it before, voted for it in convention. I am aware that it does not matter from what fund or funds the public school system is supported. I am aware also that one of the things we can do is to make that kind of thing cover up its head.

What I suffered for that resolution can never be recorded.

My period of inclement mental weather was followed by a period of poverty--destitution rather--I was physically unable to work with my hands and I had not yet tried to earn money by my pen. I was often so reduced by hunger that I could scarcely walk. At such times one feels more grateful for friendship. Into my life then came a few choice souls whose fellowship acted as a dynamic to my life. It was when things were at their worst that George D. Herron found me. The almost Jewish cast of feature, the strange, wonderful voice, the prophetic atmosphere of the man forced me to express the belief that I had never met a human being who seemed to me so like Christ. Then came George A. Gates, the president of Iowa College where Dr. Herron was a professor. About the same time came Elia W. Peattie and Ida Doolittle Fleming. Mrs. Fleming and her husband helped me organize a Congregational Church which, when organized, was a means of support.

The church was in a growing section of the city but I could not be persuaded to live there. I lived where I thought my life was most serviceable--on "the bottoms."

One night after a few days' involuntary fast I found in the hut two cents. To the city I went and bought two bananas--one I ate on the way back and the other I put in my hip pocket.

There were no streets, no lights, no sidewalks in that region. As I came to a railroad arch on the edge of the squatter community I saw a figure emerge from the deep shadows. I knew instantly I was to be held up, but as life was rather cheap down there I was not sure what would accompany the assault. A second figure emerged and when I came to within a few yards of them, I whipped the banana from my pocket and pointing it as one would a revolver I said--"Move a muscle, either of you, and I'll blow your brains out!"

"Gee!" one of them muttered; "it's Mr. Irvine."

They belonged to a gang of young toughs who lived in a dug-out on the banks of the river. Some of them had brothers in my school. There were about a dozen of them. They had hinted several times that they would clean me out when they had time, but they had delayed their plan. I took these fellows to my hut and we talked for hours.

When I produced the banana they laughed vociferously and invited me to their "hole." Next evening they gave a reception and, I suppose, fed me on stolen property. They had a stove--a few old mattresses and some dry-goods boxes.

I held their attention that night for four hours while I told the story of Jean Valjean. Next day we were all photographed together on a pile of stones near the "hole."

After that these fellows protected the chapel and made themselves useful in their way. In less than a year afterward half of them had gone to honest work; the rest went the way of the transgressor, to the penetentiary and the reform school.

This period was one of total rejection by any means--powerful influences were at work to render my labour void--but they were offset for a time by the finer influences of life. I gave a series of addresses in Tabor College, Iowa, and they were the beginning of an awakening among the students. After the last word of the last address the student about whom the president and faculty were most concerned walked up the aisle and expressed a desire to lead a new life.

"Do it now," I suggested.

"Right here?"

"Yes, right where you stand."

The president and faculty gathered around him, making a circle; he stood in the midst, alone, and in that way with prayer and dedication from the lips of the young man and his friends began one of the most useful lives in the American ministry. This young man became an ascetic. I gave him to read the life of Francis of Assisi, and he went to the extreme in emulation. He divested himself of collars and ties and on graduating read his thesis for his Bachelor's degree collarless and tieless.

I was in New Haven when he came there to take his Divinity degree in Yale. He came without either collar or tie, but after days of prayer and fasting he was "led" to enter the University as others entered it. He is now pastor of the First Congregational Church in Rockford, Illinois; his name is Frank M. Sheldon. Nine men have gone by a similar route into the ministry, but Mr. Sheldon is the only one of them who has kept touch with the modern demands on religious leadership.

Birthdays have meant nothing whatever to me, but I made my thirty-second an occasion for a party on "the bottoms."

I could only accommodate seven guests. Two were favourite boys and the others were selected because of their great need. The hut was the centre of a mud puddle that January morning. I got a long plank and laid it from my doorstep to the edge of the clay bank. I took precaution not to announce the affair, even to the guests, but a grocer's boy who had been sent by a friend with some oranges lost his way and his inquiry after me created such a sensation that when he found me he was accompanied by about fifty children.

Old Mrs. Belgarde, my nearest neighbour, had whispered across the fence to her neighbour that something was sure to happen, for she had noticed me making unusual preparations that day. I think the origin of the party idea came with my first birthday gift--I mean the first I had ever received--it was a copy of Thomas à Kempis, given me by my friend the Reverend Gregory J. Powell. [I gave it later to a man who was to die by judicial process in the county jail.]

When the hour arrived a crowd of two hundred youngsters stood in the mud outside. On the top of the clay bank stood parents, crossing themselves and praying quietly that their offspring would be lucky enough to get in.

I had taught these children some simple rules of order, and when I opened the door I rang a little bell. There was absolute silence. They had been actually tearing each other's clothing to rags for a position near the door. I told them that I was so poor that I had scarcely enough food for myself. That the little I had I was going to share with seven of my special friends; of course they all considered themselves included in that characterization.

"Dear little friends," I said, "I never had a birthday party before; and now you are going to spoil this one."

Up to this time the crowd didn't know who the guests were. I proceeded to call the names. As those called made a move there was a violent fight for the door. Some of them I had to drag out of the clutches of the unsuccessful. Only six of the seven were there. There was a howl from a hundred throats to take the place of the absent one.

"No," I said sternly; "he'll come, all right." A roar of discontent went up and chaos reigned. I couldn't make myself heard; I rang the bell and again calmed them. I was at a loss to know what to say.

"Dear little folks," I said, "I thought you loved me!"

"Do too!" whined a dozen voices.

"Then if you do, go away and some day I will have a party for every child on 'the bottoms.'"

That quieted the youthful mob and they departed--that is, the majority departed. Some stayed and bombarded the doors and windows with stones. There were few stones to be found, and as it didn't occur to them to use the same stones twice they used mud and plastered the front of the hut with it.

This form of expression, however, did not disturb us much. I sent three of my guests into the back yard to wash and arrange their hair. They returned for inspection but didn't pass, the hair refusing to comply on such short notice. I put the finishing touches on each of their toilets and we sat down to supper. The oldest boy, "Fritz," was half past twelve and the youngest, "Ano," had just struck ten. Ano was a cripple and both legs were twisted out of shape--he hobbled about on crutches. "Jake" was eleven--two of his eleven years he had spent in a reformatory where he had learned to chew tobacco and to swear.

"Eddy" was also eleven, but the oldest of all in point of wits. I had a claim on Eddy: one day he was amusing himself by jerking a cat at the end of a string, in and out of Frau Belgarde's well. She was stealthily approaching him with a piece of fence rail when I arrived and possibly prevented some broken bones. "Kaiser" was nearly twelve; he too had been in a reform school--he liked it and would have been glad to stay as long as they wanted him--for he had three meals a day and he had never had such "luck" outside. "Whitey" was a little Swedish boy whose mother worked in a cigar factory. "Kaiser" and "Whitey" had a "dug-out" and they spent more nights together in it than they spent in their huts.

"Fritz," the oldest boy, began his career in the open by stealing his father's revolver; and, jumping on the first grocery wagon he found handy, he left town. Of course he was brought back and "sent up" for a year. "Franz," the absent one, was Ano's brother, and the toughest boy in the community.

These brief outlines describe the guests of my birthday party.

"When ye make a feast call the poor" was stretched a little to cover this aggregation--stretched as to the character of those invited. A blessing was asked, of course--by the host and repeated by the guests. Of things to eat there was enough and to spare. After dinner each one was to contribute something to the entertainment.

"Beginning here on my left with 'Whitey,'" I said, "I want each boy to tell us what he would like to be when he becomes a man." Whitey without hesitation said:

"A organ-man wid a monkey."

"Why?"

"'Cause."

Eddy said he would like to be a butcher, and as a reason gave: "Plenty ov beef to eat."

"Kaiser" preferred to be a "Reformatory boss."

"Ano," the cripple, said he would like to be a minister. When pressed for a reason he said, "That's what m' father says--dey ain't got notin' to do!"

In the midst of this social quiz a loud noise was heard outside. "Bang! Bang!! Bang!!!" The timbers of the hut shivered, the guests made a rush to the back door. I was there first and found Franz, the missing guest, his arms smeared with blood, his ragged jacket covered with hair of some sort and in his hand a bloody stiletto.

He rushed past me into the hut, got to the table and exclaimed: "Gee whiz! der ain't a ---- scrap left!"

"Look here, Franz," I said, "I want to know what you've been up to?"

"Ye do, hey? Ye look skeered, too, don't yer--hey?"

"Never mind how I look; tell me at once what you've been up to!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" he laughed, "d'ye tink I kilt some ol' sucker for 'is money--hey? Ha, ha! Well, I hain't, see? I've bin skinnin' a dead hoss an brot ye d' skin for a birfday present, see?"

The skin was lying in a bloody heap outside the back door. I arranged "Franz" for dinner and the party was complete.

I told some stories; then we played games and at ten o'clock they went home. The moment the front door was opened, about forty children--each with a lighted candle in hand--sang a verse of my favourite hymn: "Lead, Kindly Light." They knew but one verse, but that they sang twice. It was a weird performance and moved me almost to tears.

After they sang they came down the clay bank and shook hands, wishing me all sorts of things. Two nights afterward I had a different kind of a party. A bullet came crashing through the boards of my hut about midnight. Rushing to the door, I saw the fire flashes of other shots in a neighbour's garden. I went to the high board fence and saw one of my neighbours--a German--emptying a revolver at his wife who was dodging behind a tree.

My first impulse was to jump the fence and save the woman but the man being evidently half-drunk might have turned and poured into me what was intended for his wife; and the first law of nature was sufficiently developed in me to let her have what belonged to her! I tried to speak but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I was positively scared.

The old fellow walked up to the tree, letting out as he walked a volley of oaths. I recovered my equilibrium, sprang over the fence, crept up behind and jumped on him, knocking him down and instantly disarming him.

I went inside with them and sat between them until they seemed to have forgotten what had happened. Then I put them to bed, put the light out and went home. I examined the revolver and found it empty. Next morning I went back and told the old man that I would volunteer to give him some lessons in target practice; and that the reason I knocked him down was because he was such a poor shot. This old couple became my staunchest supporters.

I interested the students of Tabor College in the people of that out-of-the-way community, and before I built the Chapel of the Carpenter which still stands there I organized a college settlement which was manned by students.

The small church, the chapel on "the bottoms," the work of the college students and the increasing circle of converts and friends made the work attractive to me, but I had entered the political field in order to protest against and possibly remedy something civic that savoured of Sodom; and for a minister that was an unpardonable sin. The "interests" determined to cripple me or destroy my work. This they did successfully by the medium of a subsidized press and other means, fair and foul. It was a case of a city against one man--a rich city against a poor man and the man went down to defeat--apparent defeat, anyway: I packed my belongings and left. As I crossed the bridge which spans the river I looked on the little squatter colony on "the bottoms" and as my career there passed in review, for the second time in my life I was stricken with home-sickness and I was guilty of what my manhood might have been ashamed of--tears.