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 s
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