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September 1932
T h e K i n g ’ s B u s i n e s s
ilies and men out of work. Our Mission seats 2,100, and it is filled on Sunday nights, with a somewhat smaller at tendance every night in the week. Our crowd is well dressed and as orderly as any church congregation. We preach the same gospel to these thinking men and women that we preached in the saloon days when we were com pelled to work more or less upon emotion, and we find it now, as always, “ the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” T he W ay to B etter T hings It must not be overlooked that in the old saloon days, Christians did much to help the poor drunkards. Many were converted to Christ. Gold cures were numerous. I myself passed through the hands of most of the better ment movements. But one day I “ accidentally” (humanly speaking) ran into a fellow on the sidewalk in front of the Pacific Garden Mission on Van Buren Street in Chicago, and he did more than invite me inside; he helped me in, and what I saw and heard there I have never forgotten. Drunkards were sober; thieves were honest; old compan ions of barrel houses were well dressed and had monfey in their pockets. Old topers did not want it, and were free from it. Girls from the streets were clothed and in their right minds. I took a chance when they told me that Jesus Christ had saved them and that they did not want drink any longer. They talked about sudden conversion. I had not been raised that way, but everything else had failed, and I was desperate. Well, that is the story. God worked, and He is still working. He made life worth living. I found, first of all. that “ the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” and second, that “ no good thing will he withhold” from me. Believing that, I did not need lodging houses, or shelters, or reformations. I could walk the streets as a free man and know the thrill of living. I was so enthusiastic about it that I began to put God to the test and went to work immedi- [Continued on page 394]
has been through it. In those days, men could find food on the free lunch counters, but the suffering of women and children was beyond description. Little pinched faces would look in through the screened doors, and beg their fathers to come home. They would have no food for days. Bushnell’s Government Report stated that there were 109,554 death certificates signed in the United States, in one year, giving the direct cause of death as “ alcoholism.” Every large city had its slums, and the price it cost to~ care for them and keep them under control was enormous. Every city that neglected the slum was run by the slum. Men and women would go down into these districts to lose themselves. It is an unwritten rule of. the slum never to ask a man his name. He is given some other name, like Red, Sandy, Shorty, Fatty, Baldy, or Whity. My, how those men despised their slavery and bondage! One day the opportunity came for them to be free from the horrible saloon, and believe me, they arose en masse! Have you ever stopped to think who carried the country dry? It was not the Anti-Saloon League, or the W. C. T. U., or the ministers. Thank God, they all did fine work, but the thing that put through the Eighteenth Amendment was the men who were suffering because of the liquor traffic. Our first ward here (Grand Rapids, Mich.) went dry, and it will go dry again. Today there is not a city in the United States that has even a semblance of a slum. If there is one exception, it is the city that has completely ignored the laws of the land and has allowed the saloons to open. I have in mind one great city that has done that. Men are trying to tell us that this country would return to prosperity if we had the liquor back. Nothing in the world would give our country a greater jolt than that. We have a sober nation now, comparatively speaking. We fed 30,000 in a few weeks in Grand Rapids last winter, and in all that time, we saw only three men who were drinking. Much of our work is now on behalf of children and fam
C it y M is s io n , G r a n d R a p id s , M i c h . H ere food fo r bo d y a n d so u l is r e g u l a r l y d is p e n s e d to t h e m a n y t h a t NEED IT. I t is a l ig h t h o u s e t h a t p o in t s t h e w a y to t h e l if e w o r t h l iv in g .
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