Nels Anderson, "The Mission Mill", The American Mercury, v. 8 (August 1926), pp. 489-495.

I

My first recollections begin in the little Idaho town of Lewiston. There was a Catholic mission nearby, and it was there I first went to school. The priest came to our house one day and asked my mother if she would send my older brother and me to his convent school. My father liked the priest, and so, though we were Protestants, the two of us were sent.

All I remember about the priest is that he wore a long black cassock and smiled sweetly, even when he caught me stealing grapes in his garden. As for the convent, I can only remember its camphor smells and the echoes in its hall. It was a large building, but only one of the first floor rooms was occupied by the school. Here one teacher cared for all the grades. We used to recite the catechism and say prayers in unison every day, but I could never understand what it meant.

There was enough of the frontier left in Lewiston to attract the Salvation Army. The Army was a revelation to me, with its preaching and singing in the streets, its marching, and its horns and drum. I lost interest in saloons at once and turned to the Army. I followed it whenever they appeared, and I learned to sing its songs, though the words had no meaning to me. A boy of fourteen or so beat the drum. For days he was the center of my thoughts. I visioned myself walking the streets with that big bass drum.

One day the boy was not there. A man had the job. I went up to him while the meeting was in progress and asked if I couldn't learn. I've forgotten his answer but I recall that while he told the crowd how he had been saved he let me hold the drum, that it might not roll into the gutter. I was converted from that moment. Thereafter I used to gather with the rest of the town boys on the front seat when the Army marched into its hall and soon we were organized into a Sunday-school. Although I was only six or seven I managed to learn parts of some of the songs. A line in one of them, that remained with me for years, I sang "The old ox a-moving." I always wondered what it meant until one day ten years later I found a song-book and read "The old ark is moving."

I can't recall that I had any conception of God or even thought of God at all in those early days, either while chanting Catholic prayers or while singing Salvation Army hymns. The bare fact that I moved along with the crowd was enough to make me happy. To hold the drum while other boys looked on was a glorious experience. I cannot distinguish any difference in my feelings in front of a crowd listening to a Salvation Army man talk, and my feelings in front of another crowd where a man dressed as an Indian sold herb medicines. Nor can I distinguish any difference between the drum and the marching Army and the interesting things that went on in the saloons. I only know that my parents were not uneasy when I followed the drum. Later I lost interest in the Army and began to cultivate the saloons, where I had a chance to get an occasional nickel.

About five years later my family moved to Chicago. We took a flat on the West Side near Madison street. My father was a little concerned about us boys and started [end page 489] us off to Sunday-school. There were two missions near our home, the Helping Hand Mission in Madison street and the Kirkland Mission in Halsted. We began to go to the latter because my father had known it when he had lived in Chicago before. But soon we got acquainted with the other too.

We became Sunday-school addicts. We would go to the Kirkland at ten o'clock and to the Helping Hand at two. The Kirkland gave each child a stick of striped candy; the Helping Hand Mission gave each a whole bag of candy. Thus my first real interest in Sunday-schools centered in candy. But it was only incidental later on, for I became religious.

II

Before a year had passed, in fact, I discovered God, and in spite of all my later sophistication I have never been able to get any other conception of Him than that which came to me at this time. He was a tall, robust man with a flowing white beard, snow-white locks, and a Santa Claus face with a high, broad forehead beginning to grow bald. He wore a long white robe and stood about with a staff in His hand. He always stood about, never sitting on a throne, and never actively ruling the world, but just looking mildly on. He didn't have to do more because there were always the guardian angels on watch-thousands and thousands of them to follow us around with their books and pencils, and record our good and bad deeds. God stood on a green plain where the grass was tall and waving. Nothing appeared in the foreground, and nothing in the background; yet I had vague notions of other people being in His presence. In some unexplainable way He was connected with the angels and the angels were connected with us. It was all very real and easy to understand.

Next to my discovery of God came my discovery of my duties toward Him. It was mine to do good and His to bless me. I must be charitable, kind, and obedient to my parents. I learned that when He blessed He returned four-fold, and that when He punished He exacted a four-fold payment for every bad deed. At this time I didn't pray. It never occurred to me that I should, for I had absolute faith that God would keep His promises. The promise that concerned me most was the one pertaining to rewards and punishments on the basis of four to one. I reduced this to an arithmetical formula. If I struck a boy I expected to get four blows in return, or the equivalent. Perhaps one slap from my mother would even the score. I expected no miracles. I knew that all these balances would be brought about in purely physical terms. I used to put a penny in the contribution box every Sunday, fully expecting to get four back during the week. One day I received a testimony that God did keep a faithful account.

I was then peddling papers up and down Madison street, the Bowery of Chicago. The Daily News and Journal were the major sheets of the day. There were also the Inter-Ocean and the Tribune, but they were of lesser importance. We used to buy papers for half a cent and sell them for a penny, and some days I earned as much as twenty-five cents. I sold my papers in saloons. One time a drunken man in a saloon in Madison street where the Northwestern Station now stands bought a paper. He had no pennies but he gave me a nickel to get changed. The bartender was busy, so I went outside for the pennies. On a sudden impulse, when I reached the door, I ran. The man did not follow, and so I made four cents. I was so elated by my success that I repeated the trick on other occasions. I felt no pangs of conscience. Each time I ran with a nickel I gained four cents.

Sometimes I would pitch pennies in the news alley. My winnings, on the whole, overbalanced my losses. Once I went broke and had no money to buy a new supply of papers. If I went home without money I would have to tell my mother that I had been gambling, or else I would have to lie. I knew that for the first offense my parents [end page 490] would punish me and that God would chastise me for the second, so another boy god I spent the afternoon begging pennies on the street. This boy had been the cause of my losses, but he promised to give me all the money he begged. He begged a while and then ran away, leaving me to make up the deficit. That evening the accounts were square again. God had punished me by letting the other boy cheat me, and then He made it possible for me to beg enough money so that I should have no fear of going home.

I made note of everything that happened to me, whether good or bad, and I was always weighing rewards against punishments. Once I stole an apple from a peddler's wagon and ran up the street. He followed in hot pursuit until I dropped the apple. For stealing I had been punished with the loss of the apple, but my escape from the peddler was a blessing for some good deed that was to my credit. Soon my parents began to feel that I was equal to the street life and ceased to worry about me. They became so absorbed in the struggle for a living that other things mattered little to them. If they had whipped me for tossing pennies it would have been for losing my money.

III

After a while I began running errands for some prostitutes who were our neighbors. There were three of them in a flat across our alley. My mother never objected. Often when I was in their home I saw them drink and smoke. At first I was shocked, but that was only because I had never seen women use tobacco. The fact that they were fallen women had no meaning to me until several years later. The only difference I saw then between them and the women at that mission was that the women at the mission didn't smoke. I liked them. They were generous and I never lacked for pennies to put in the contribution-box. On day one of them praised me for going to Sunday-school. On another occasion one of them strongly reproved her gentleman friend for using foul language in the presence of my sister and me.

Other prostitutes lived in a house in front of ours. My father called them "dirty things" because they used to stand in front of their place soliciting men and we had to pass them to get to our house in the rear. I used to wonder why my father disliked them because whenever I went into their house they would give me good things to eat. Often, when I went to meeting or to Sunday-school at the Helping Hand Mission, I heard talk about women who had fallen into sin. I used to feel sorry for them and I wondered how they looked when they "wallowed in the mire." I pictured great hordes of women in some part of the city steeped in sin, trying to get out of something that held them like quicksand. I never associated these fallen creatures with the women who fed me.

Although I went to Sunday-school regularly I went only occasionally to evening meeting. Here there was preaching and group singing, and, above all, testimony. I enjoyed the testimony. There was one old man who used to tell every week how he used to be a barrel house bum. Although I went in and out of saloons every day where they sold five-cent whiskey, had sawdust on the floor and gave away free lunch, I yet wondered what a barrel house was. In my fancy I drew pictures of rotund barrel houses where men rolled in sin. The old man's story was always the same and I enjoyed it, for its sameness made it true. I began to admire him so much and envied him the amens and other expressions of approval that he drew when he testified. I imagined myself in the distant future telling the same crowd stories about how I too had rolled in barrel houses. But how was I to get the experience? How empty I felt with no horrible past! I believed, but I had never been saved from anything vicious and sinful.

Another of the testimony bearers that stands out in my memory was a woman [end page 491] who always told how she had neglected her Lord.

"He used to knock at my heart but I went the ways of sin and laughed. At last came a day of sorrow and I met my Lord face to face."

I always wondered what the day of sorrow was because whenever she reached that point she would burst out crying and sit down. Then we would all say, "God bless you!" I used to wonder if she cried because her sins hurt her so much.

She was married, but her husband never came to meeting. She had two boys about my age. They were ordinary boys of the streets and did all the things I did. I used to play with them and they would come to our house. Sometimes they would ask me to go to their house, but I was afraid to go near their mother because I could only think of her as a woman weeping. They lived on the same street as the women in the house of ill fame across our alley, and often I passed their place when I was running errands for these women.

One time, as I was going into the house of the latter with a bucket of beer that I had been sent to fetch from the corner saloon, I met the woman who wept about her sins. She grew very angry and said that it was wicked to go into such a house. This was the beginning of a series of disquieting revelations. I had learned to love Mrs. Loftis and the other scarlet women, and so I became seriously intent upon rescuing her from sin. But the more I pondered it the more involved the problem became. My sympathies leaned more and more to the women who drank beer, and I found myself hating the woman who always wept over her sins. I took my problem to my mother. She was an extremely practical woman.

"You've got to take everything them people say to you," she said, "with a grain of salt. I'd rather have Mrs. Loftis for a neighbor than that old nosey over there [meaning the lady who wept], always going around nosing into everybody's business. Why don't she stay at home and take care of her kids instead of gadding around to show she is a Christian? Mrs. Loftis minds her own business, don't she? Well, that's enough."

It was enough for me. I remained loyal to Mrs. Loftis and went on taking her pennies to the contribution-box. I began to develop a very superior attitude toward the woman with the tearful testimony. But gradually I began to realize that I was living in the devil's playground about which there was so much talk every Sunday. I was disappointed. All this time I had been living in sin and nothing had happened! I couldn't understand how people could get so worked up over so drab and monotonous a world.

IV

My new orientation didn't shatter my visions of barrel houses. The barrel house bum was still my hero. His adventures in the underworld, rolling in sawdust, throwing his money about, putting gray hairs in his mother's head and driving his father to an early grave, were fertile themes for my imagination. What pictures I had of a man throwing handfuls of money about, or putting gray hairs in his mother's head, or driving, actually driving, his father to his grave! Such things I could not think of figuratively. And after all that, such a man could yet be saved! My consuming desire was to give it a trial. I would have gladly gone through any horror for the privilege of standing up in that group of the saved, and telling them all about it.

One day when we were kneeling in prayer one of the mission workers who knelt beside me asked me why I didn't get up and tell how the Lord was blessing me.

"I haven't any big sins," I complained.

"Oh, yes you have," he assured me. "We've all got sins. We were born in sin. The best man in the world sins seven times a day, so the Bible says, and the rest of us sin more than we can bear." [end page 492]

He continued to coax, but I refused to rise. I feared to face that audience. Besides, I was occupied with a new matter: How much worse was I than the best man? I was somehow quite happy over the assurance that I had been born in sin. I had the Bible on my side. If the best man sins seven times a day, I must sin twice that. I couldn't doubt it, nor did I want to.

All week I mulled the matter over in my mind. Again and again I stood before that audience, bathed in smiles of approval. Speech after speech struggled through my mind but nothing seemed to take shape. Then my tongue would loosen, and I spoke even better than the barrel house bum. But I worried because my testimony was so much like his, or like that of the mission leader, or that of Nick the janitor. Then I resolved that I would make up a testimony of my own.

The following Sunday found me very nervous. Time dragged. I went to Sunday school, but I couldn't sit still. I behaved so badly that the teacher had to speak to me several times. That evening I went to meeting as one walking on air. I tried to sing, but my mouth got dry and my tongue thick. I didn't dare look around, for I felt that the eyes of everyone were on me. When I wasn't looking at the floor I was gazing straight ahead. I felt most comfortable when a man was praying and I wished that he would go on indefinitely.

Soon the meeting was opened for testimony. I resolved to be the second to get up. But when the first speaker finished I waited. Someone else took the floor and I was relieved. A third person got up, and the fourth. The longer I waited the more fearful I became and the more ashamed of my cowardice. Finally, I resolved to follow the barrel house bum, and I caught myself wishing that he would not bear his testimony. But that was not to be: he never missed a chance. There was no backing out this time. But in my agitation I forgot my speech. Only a word here and there flashed through my mind. "The Lord is with me. . . .The Lord is with me." What went before and after was a blank. Then I tried to lift a thought from the barrel house bum: "Praise God, I'm washed as white as snow!"

No, I must not use that because they would know it was his. Already he was three-quarters through. I could not back out now. He was putting on the finishing touches: "This is the salvation He offers free to all. It saved me. It will save you."

I was on my feet but I couldn't feel the floor. My body seemed to be swelling and shrinking by turns, and then it would soar away in the air. It seemed that there was only one part of me that I was aware of: my hand. I was holding frantically on to the back of the chair. Had I released my hold I would have floated away. All around me was a whirl of lights and shadows, with a face here and there appearing and reappearing. Then there were the eyes! Everywhere there were eyes and all turned on me! I tried to speak but the words would not come. How long I struggled I do not know, but things about me slowly arranged themselves in order. People came out of the confusion and I knew them. I was standing in their midst.

"The Lord is with me day by day, and He blesses me," I faltered.

That wasn't what I planned to say. It came spontaneously-and then the supply ran out. I struggled for something else, something to round it out, but nothing came and I slid shamefacedly into my seat, followed by a chorus of amens and blessings from the audience. I didn't dare raise my head. A man sitting near me placed his arm about me and I was grateful.

After the meeting a number of people came around and complimented me. I thought I had failed miserably, but here I was being approved as I bad never expected to be, even after a speech like the barrel house bum's. I was proud and embarrassed and gloriously happy. I had been initiated. I was now in the class of the barrel house bum himself. As the weeks went on he waned as a hero and became an ordinary person. One day I overheard one of the mission women say to another [end page 493] that he was trying "to shine up to May."

I didn't know what that meant but I carried the news home to Mother, and she was not long in piecing the facts together to my complete understanding. May played the organ and occasionally sang solos. She had two or three songs and never sang any others. In fact, nobody ever expected her to. I used to watch and admire her, and the songs she sang I learned by heart. Whether or not the barrel house bum was really trying to impress her I cannot say, but I ceased to admire him after that, and I ceased to be interested in his story.

Almost every week after that I bore my testimony, but it was always the same testimony. I worried about it a great deal but couldn't change it. I tried doing without testimony one week but felt very unhappy, so I went on as before. One day my brother, inspired by my success in winning the approval of the elders, thought he would try, too. He got up before I did and assured the audience that: "The Lord is with me day by day and blesses me."

I was terribly angry with him for stealing my thunder. I could not testify that night, but the next week I had a new phrase, and things went well again.

V

My mother and father never went to the mission. Father had his nose on the grindstone and Mother was tied to the house. Perhaps they would not have gone anyway. Mother, in fact, was indifferent to religion. She listened to the gossip we brought home but never got to the inner meaning of it. In our home there was not the kind of atmosphere that would permit one to unburden one's heart. If I had religious struggles I had to live them out alone, for around our hearth there were no intimacies. So I began to lead a double life. I was one person at the mission and another at home, but it never disturbed me.

My real conflict came when I began to follow my mission group into the street. I followed, not as a participating member, but as a sympathy-radiating member. I was part of that little responsive nucleus that every mission worker likes to have before him when he starts a meeting on the street. It was here that I first became conscious of two worlds of thought and feeling on religion. I spent much of ray time in Madison street and the denizens of the street were familiar to me. Many of them were drunks. I had seen them again and again in their cups. From some of them I had begged pennies when they were drunk. I learned early that, if they had any money, they would give it to me when intoxicated, but that if I asked them when they were sober they would curse or laugh at me. These were the men who gathered at the street meetings. They had cynical smiles and were often outspoken in their cynicism.

One day, when the mission group was singing "Stand Up, Stand Up, for Jesus," one of this outer circle added "Till Jesus says sit down." I thought it was very funny, and giggled. The woman who wept saw me giggling and made a wry face. This had a profound effect on me and caused me considerable uneasiness.

Sometimes May sang in the street. One day she was singing her favorite, the one she sang most and the one I liked best. I thought it was too sacred to be sung in the streets:

That verse and the tune are all I remember of May. I have never heard the words since, so I may not even be quoting then, correctly. I used to sing it "lonely Jesus" before I reasoned out that it was "lowly Jesus." I watched the faces of the men while she sang, and took a sort of personal pride in the talent she displayed. When she finished one of the men near me grinned and passed some remark about her being a "beaut." I was sick and disgusted. I began to hate the outer ring so much that I wondered why the people of the mission group were so eager to save them. [end page 494]

The cynicism of the street was having its effect. I hated the crowd because it was full of sin, and yet, if I could have had my way, all the saved folks in the world would have withdrawn themselves to some remote place. Early in the Spring, when I fast went out with the mission folks, I used to sing with them just as I did inside. But I soon gave up the practice because it identified me with the evangelists and made me share the ridicule heaped upon them. I became silent, though still sympathetic. I admired the mission workers for their courage but I was always uncomfortable myself. I was especially uncomfortable at the close of the meeting, when they would call for the hands of persons who wished to be prayed for. Then they would ask the penitents to come to the center of the circle and kneel in the prayer group. I would feel sorry for any man who was saved.

Sometimes drunken men would come forward sobbing, and they were accepted for their good intentions. This disturbed me, for often I would see the same men drunk afterwards. Sometimes I would become so tense in my feelings at the close of a meeting that I would pray in my heart that no men would come forward to be saved. It was a relief when none stepped out, for I hated to see a man kneel with all that circle of scoffers about him. I felt that the sinners should have been coaxed inside the mission in Madison street. I was always happy when they saved souls in the mission.

This was only the beginning of my change of heart. At first, when I left Sunday school with my candy and my Sunday school cards I carried everything in my hands until I reached home. Later I began to put these evidences of being a Sunday school boy in my pocket. By this time we had been in Chicago more than a year and I had many friends among the boys of the street, only a few of whom went to Sunday school. Some of them were just entering their teens and could not even be tempted by the candy. In that crowd the Sunday school boy was a sissy. There was only one way for him to prove he wasn't a sissy and that was by fighting. But this didn't pay, for it was always the older and bigger boys that one had to fight.

One day I chanced to get into the confidence of a blind man. He offered me the job of leading him about. My duties were simple. I was to take him from one begging place to another and stand about as though I were his son. Whenever an opportunity came I was to call him Papa so the people could hear me. For this I got fifty cents a day, which was more than I could earn by selling papers. Moreover, the job was much more interesting. I must have held it for about two weeks, so I had at least two absences from Sunday school. My parents had no objection to the job, though they had not been advised about my full duties. I told them only that I was to lead the blind man around and watch that the boys didn't steal his cap. This, they thought, was a worthy work. I liked the job for the new world it introduced me to, especially on Sundays. The blind man made four stands every Sunday. When the people went in we were at one church and when they came out we were at another. That was before noon. After noon we visited two other churches in the same manner.

The church-goers were a revelation to me, They were well-dressed and serious, and they carried their Bibles and song books where everybody could see. I didn't regard this approvingly. One day a small boy came by. He was clean, well-garbed, very wholesome and sweet looking. He carried a Bible. As he passed he gazed at the blind man and me. In his eyes there was mild curiosity, but he said nothing. The way he shied and sidled past us outraged me.

"Go on, you sissy!" I hurled at him.

I must have frightened him, for he hurried on, and I felt better. It was soothing to my feelings. It released something that had been piling up in me for a long while. [end page 495]