The Migrants: No. 1 Black Spot o f the United States
By Dorothy Clark Haskin
Part II
A Christian Migrant Family
T WO fundamental, evangelical organizations have en tered the needy mission field of American migrants: Mission to Migrants and Missionary Gospel Fellowship. Ralph E. Blakeman entered the field in 1936. He is a rail road postal clerk and as he read of the migrants in the news papers, he was touched by their need. On his days oif he went to the potato area in Shafter, California, and held a meeting with them. Since then, he has continued working among migrants. He has led scores of them to know Christ as Saviour and given the financial help necessary to many to get on their feet. He interested other Christians in working among them and organized the Mission to Migrants. Its board is composed of a number of earnest Christians in the Los Angeles area. The missionaries working under this board find Mr. Blakeman’s name a magic word which instantly secures co-operation on the part of the camp bosses and friendliness on the part of the people. The board now has thirty full-time or part-time workers. In 1939 Paul J. Pietsch, moved by the need of these people, left an assistant pastorate to organize the Missionary Gospel Fellowship. He has since resigned and the work is headed by the Reverend Max B. Kronquist. He is backed by a board of sincere Christians from the San Joaquin Valley. This society has forty-five missionaries on the field. The field is sufficiently large for both organizations. Both preach the simple gospel, are distressed by the need for workers and enthusiastic about the results. There is, how ever, a basic difference in their method. Missionary Gospel Fellowship places its workers in the twenty-eight government camps because these camps provide a central building for a meeting. From them, they fan out to other camps. Mission to Migrants places a missionary in a trailer, where meetings must be held out-of-doors and he can serve three or four camps over a week-end. There are multitudes of small camps to each government camp. Missionary Gospel Fellowship emphatically does not want their missionaries to live in the camps. They state, “We be lieve in living close enough to understand the people but not
close enough that we are living with them.” Mission to Migrants seeks to have the worker live in a trailer, or if necessary, a tent, among the migrants. It has been Mr. Blakeman’s personal experience that these people need someone with whom to counsel frequently if they are to live the Christian way. And that Scripture is best understood when it is not only told, but shown in men’s lives. It is probable that with the vast amount of work to do among the migrants that neither mission will be able to carry on a sufficiently extensive program to prove either method right. Enough that both are reaching the people by their own method with the SAME message of Christ’s redeeming blood. That it is a great door and effectual but there are many obstacles is true of the work among the migrants. There is often a lack of interest in them among God’s people. Even Christians who own ranches who employ itinerant labor often feel the solution is to buy a ten-thousand dollar cotton picker instead of spending ten thousand dollars for better housing for the migrants. There is a dearth of Christian workers. Those going into full-time Christian service seem more interested in the foreign field and those who stay in the United States prefer, or per haps are called, to regular church channels. It takes consecra tion to speak out of doors, with dogs running loose, and wind blowing dust into your mouth. The field has the dirt of Africa, the smells of China, the poverty of India and none of the glamour of being a foreign missionary. Money is still the unsolved problem of Christian work. Both of these organizations are faith works, depending upon the interest of a large number of people to carry on even a comparatively small work. In some instances the Mission to Migrant workers work in the harvest fields, supporting them selves. This problem can only be solved by complete conse cration on the part of every Christian. Then there is opposition from other religious groups. For forty years the Division of Home Missions of the National Council of Churches (formerly called the Home Mission Coun cil) has been in the field. They present a boy’s club, Sunday school and social betterment program. While the fundamental-
A Camp Service
Mexican Migrants in front of Camp Chapel
Page Ten
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
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