THE BEGINNING
The startling facts, which have been accumulating before the public, respecting the gambling dens, black holes, debauching theaters and saloons of Chicago, indicate a condition of moral peril which may well come home to every thoughtful citizen.
The last census of the Board of Education informed us that there were, in 1880, 35,578 children between six and twenty-one neither in public or private schools, nor at work. Cook County Sunday School statistics showed that “of the 135,694 of suitable age in our city, 85,694 do not regularly attend any Sunday School.” A published statement notes nearly twenty saloons to every church, and, as indicating the ominous encroachment upon the Sabbath from business alone, a well-known pastor stated publicly that on his way to church he counted two hundred places open on North Clark street, between Chicago avenue and the river, some half a mile. These figures may daze some minds by their very magnitude.
Thus ran the opening statement of a report “To the Congregational Churches of Chicago and Vicinity” dated April 24, 1882, and signed by a committee of seven. First among the signators was Caleb F. Gates, founder and first president of the Chicago City Missionary Society.
A Connecticut Yankee, Gates had arrived in Chicago April 14, 1853, six days short of his 29th birthday. Born in East Haddam, he had left home as a youth, when “a certain incompatibility of temperament…in time, by mutual consent, led to [his] separation [from home].” [Gates, 11] At the age of four, he was sent to live with relatives in Brooklyn, New York, but later that year was placed in the care of his mother’s sister in Springfield, New York. It was this aunt, Nancy Griswold, who would have the most influence on the young Gates.
According to his son’s biography of Gates, his aunt required the boy “to read his Bible, the Westminster Catechism, and The Missionary Herald,” and guided his religious and moral training. He would later recall: “Among the earliest memories of my life is that of an infant-class room, with its little raised seats, and pictures of Bible scenes hung on the walls and from the time I was six until I was twenty-one years old I cannot remember more than half a dozen Sundays when I did not go to church…” [Gates, 19] As an adult, Gates would credit his aunt for his love of good books, his interest in missionary work, and his commitment to charity.
Gates returned to East Haddam when he was 14 and finished high school there. After graduation he became an elementary school teacher and also taught Sunday school at the village’s Congregational church. Gates was 22 when he moved to Middletown in search of greater opportunities. Beginning as a clerk in a dry goods store, he went on to become first a teller, then a bookkeeper at the local bank. He married Mary Eliza Hutchins of East Haddam in May 1851, and in November the young couple moved to New Haven, where Gates became bookkeeper at the City Bank of New Haven.
Once again his dedication and acumen attracted favorable attention. When a friend acquired a large contract to build rolling stock for the Illinois Central Railroad, he offered Gates the position of secretary and bookkeeper. It was this position at the American Car Works that brought Gates to Chicago in 1853.
Like many a man from the East, Gates came armed with letters of introduction. In a letter to his wife, who was still in New Haven, he wrote:
my letters of introduction are all to prominent men in the Second Presbyterian Church, the aristocratic society of the city, and by going to that church I should probably be quickly settled in the best society. You see at once how strong the inducements are to sacrifice my Congregationalism to ease, comfort, and perhaps, lucrative connections with rich and influential members of that society…But I love the beautiful simplicity of our New England order too well to quickly give it up. [Gates, 69]
In the six-month interim before his family joined him, Gates found both a suitable residence and a congenial church in the area of what is now 26th Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, and quickly became involved in raising funds for a permanent building for the church.
Chicago had not had a Congregational church until 1851, when 42 members of the Third Presbyterian Church, including Philo Carpenter, the influential leader of the group, split with the Presbytery over its failure to oppose slavery and formed the First Congregational Church of Chicago. In the following year, 1852, the Plymouth Congregational Church was formed, also drawing most of its members from the First Presbyterian Church because of growing anti-slavery sentiment. During the course of the next 25 years the First Congregational Church was “Turned out of house once, burned out once...jeered at as the ‘nigger church’...[and] compelled to make steady sacrifices,” yet it became the most influential and largest Congregational church in the city.
In 1855 the American Car Works closed, and within the year Gates became a partner with Thomas George and Edward Hamilton in a firm that manufactured metal wares and sold stoves and pumps. When the 1857 depression put the company out of business, Gates consoled himself with the thought that “everyone keeps confidence in my integrity, and I could ask a favor of any of our creditors with no fear of rejection on the ground of ill will.” [Gates, 81]
To be an ethical Christian businessman was of paramount concern to Gates. He was well aware that “the seductions of business are powerful.” [Gates, 70] But his interest was not in the acquisition itself.
Toiling for money merely for the sake of money, I despise, but the possession of money with a heart to use it for the good of others is a rich gift. To me there is greater pleasure in the power to relieve the wants of the truly needy than in aught else I know of I would, then, by industry, thrift, and enterprise acquire wealth, and I intend to labor hard for such an end. I mean to do business on truly honest principles, to get trade wherever I can without any sacrifice of self-respect or compromising of integrity. I do not believe in doing business at a loss, for that will endanger our safety as a firm and be wronging our creditors. I shall therefore strive to make every transaction yield its fair quota of profits and no more.
There can be no success without labor and steady perseverance; I shall… [set] an example to those in my employ… [Gates, 79-80]
In 1858 Gates went to work for E. W. Blatchford, with whom he later formed a partnership in the Chicago White Lead & Oil Co. Gates became president of this company and remained with it for the last 32 years of his life. From 1867 to 1872 Gates commuted from his farm in Geneva, Illinois, then moved back into the city.
Through the various vicissitudes of his business life, Gates continued his active role in church work. In 1874 he was appointed to the auditing committee of the Chicago Theological Seminary, which his son Frank attended. Professor Samuel Ives Curtiss, who shared Gates’s commitment to practical Christian work, wrote of Gates: “None of us who were then members with him of the First Church can forget the enthusiasm with which he led the way in taking up the work at the Randolph Street Mission and how he shared in the labors of that noble enterprise.” [Gates, 126]
Gates was superintendent of the Randolph Street Mission for nearly two years. He sought to know and meet the needs of the people in that “destitute district.” Drawing from these experiences, he began to shape a plan for greater mission work. He wrote:
In my judgement there should be on every half-mile square of the neglected portions of this and every other city of our land a center of religious work, not in any strictly denominational sense or way, but Christlike, all-comprehensive. During the last year, again and again have the children asked if we could not have meetings to which their parents could come; but our hall is engaged every night of the week in the interests of trade unions and labor societies of various kinds… [we need a building in which] I would have in charge a suitable matron or man to welcome every wanderer that crossed the threshold, and made his call a pleasant and profitable one. I would have papers there for the poor man to read the daily news; and, to keep him from temptation, I would have somewhere in the room a counter where in winter a cup of hot coffee and a sandwich could be procured for five cents, and in summer some cooling drinks, with a pleasant word of interest thrown in. I would have on the tables for reading and for free distribution such pithy presentations of the laws of health, temperance, Sabbath-keeping, personal and family economy and thrift, as would be helpful in the households. On every hand I would have posted prominently notices of the Sunday-school and Bible classes, with invitations to attend. I would have in the building a well-arranged group of rooms for the Sunday-school, Bible classes, infant class, etc., so arranged that they could be easily thrown together for general exercises and preaching services…I would have a working room in this home which should be the depository for statistics of the district, so complete, so constantly reviewed and renewed that it should at any time afford information of the suffering that needed either temporal or spiritual relief; and I would make this Home a safe channel for gifts to the really poor and needy. [Gates, 129-31]
Like many Christian men of conscience, Gates believed that in saving the bodies of the needy, one could also save their souls--a vital mission at a time when the poor could be seduced by vice on the one hand and atheistic socialism on the other. As he wrote:
I believe that such a work is needed and is practicable; and steadily carried, would clasp the avenues and alleys with something better than hooks of steel--even the bonds of Christlike love. It is sadly true that many homes in this great city are not Christian in spirit and life. What is our duty in regard to them? Simply to make them Christian by doing just what the Master did and commanded his disciples to do--let the blessed influences of Christianity radiate into all the homes of the city. To do this is not an easy task, but it is the appointed work of Christians, and woe be to them if they neglect it! [Gates, 131]
In the fall of 1881 the Congregational Ministers’ Union began to discuss how it might be more effective in the city where “the proportion of churches to population continued to diminish” and where churches had little chance of being self-sufficient. Although several individual Congregational churches already operated missions, their efforts fell far short of the need. In 1883 Gates recalled:
Ten years from the fire brought us to the autumn and winter of 1881, and upon a careful survey of the field it was found that our population had increased so far beyond the provisions for their moral and religious culture that the condition of vast stretches of the city was absolutely alarming. The press gathered and spread the facts before us. The pulpit made them texts for stirring sermons, and the ministers of our own denomination invited laymen in for counsel, as to what we ought to do in the matter. [Gates, 14]
On February 6, 1882, a committee, which included Gates and Curtiss, was formed to “consider the religious destitution of the city and what could be done to meet it.” [Gates, 14] Their report was presented by Reverend Burke F. Leavitt on March 2, 1882, in the first public meeting called by the group. The report, which “almost staggered our belief,” said Gates, detailed crowded sections of the city having high crime rates, poor living conditions, and few churches and Sunday schools. The intense interest generated at this meeting was carried over to a second meeting, held on April 6, 1882, when 125 representatives of Chicago’s Congregational churches again heard the “startling facts…[about the gambling dens, black holes, debauching theatres [which indicate a condition of moral peril...[where one district with upwards of 60,000 people, is said to have but one, or at most two, small English speaking Protestant churches.” And considering the “alarming lawlessness and immorality,” they concluded that “we have in our city a missionary field second in importance to none in the world.” [Report to the Congregational Churches, 1882]
The church representatives responded by approving the establishment of an “Executive Committee of Missionary Effort in Chicago and Vicinity” consisting of six laymen, Caleb F. Gates, Silas M. Moore, Robert E. Jenkins, F. S. Hanson, William E. Hale, Fredrick G. Ensign, and the Reverend Leavitt, with authority to employ a superintendent of missionary effort and to apportion the necessary expenses among the 23 Congregational churches of the Chicago area.
The beginning of the Chicago City Missionary Society was this committee of seven, a group dedicated to establish and carry out a program of city missionary work. These Christian men were already involved in their churches and in the community, and their concern for and commitment to the people of the city was evidenced by generous contributions of time and money. The missionary program these men proposed was submitted to the churches on April 24 and within several weeks efforts to secure support and acquire a superintendent were under way.
By August the committee found the right man in the Reverend Julius C. Armstrong, a minister in the southwest Chicago suburb of Lyonsville who had been the major force in founding the LaGrange Congregational Church. At the time of his new appointment in Chicago, he was serving both suburban churches, which was not unusual when a new congregation could not afford a full-time minister. Armstrong would spend 33 years as superintendent of the missionary society.
The first major work of the committee was to aid the newly organized First Congregational German Church which needed a chapel. Funds were raised, two lots purchased in Bridgeport and a brick building erected in November 1882. This situation presented a problem: how could donors be sure their gifts were going to be used as they intended? Under Congregational policy the church members would own the building and would be able, if they chose, to sell it, remortgage it, or otherwise dispose of it. In this particular case, the committee of seven had paid $1,219 and held the bill for an additional $1,090, while the church members had invested $788 in the building. In fact, there had been other occasions when “valuable properties had been lost to the denomination by trusting the titles to mission churches not yet well developed into self support, and...in other cases liens had been created that the best judgement of leading laymen did not approve.” [1883 A.R., 7] Concern over safeguarding property led to the decision to form “an incorporated society, with a continuous life and right to purchase and hold real estate.” On November 8, 1882, when reporting on the missionary work, the committee of seven had its plan of incorporation endorsed by a representative conference of the churches. A certificate of incorporation was filed with the Office of the Secretary of State of Illinois on December 14, and the Chicago City Missionary Society was certified as a legally organized corporation on December 30, 1882.
While the primary cause for incorporation was to hold property, and thereby establish the society as a viable institution, it was just one means to a greater end. The certificate of incorporation stated that “The object for which…the Society was formed was] to promote Religion and Morality in Chicago and vicinity....” In May 1883, in an address on the work of the Chicago City Missionary Society to the Congregational Club, Gates explained that “the Society was brought into existence to meet a felt want, and for the discharge of a sacred duty that burdened the hearts of the churches. It was not intended to do the work that properly belongs to the individual churches, nor to detract in any way from their obligations, but simply to be the medium for all the churches of our denomination and good citizens of Chicago and vicinity to do such general missionary work as they could not well prosecute in their individual capacity.” [1883 A.R., 7]
Gates went on to explain the three chief objectives of the Society’s work. First, in the better neighborhoods, workers would attempt, through house visitation and neighborhood survey, to determine where new churches could be founded and supported, and initiate preaching services, Sabbath schools, and prayer meetings. Second, Gates wanted to assist the weaker churches already established in the mission fields through financial assistance and, more importantly, through fellowship, encouraging and assisting them in their work. The group’s third aim was to “labor in and for the neglected districts of the city.” [1883 A.R., 13] Gates went onto stress the urgency and magnitude of the problem to be dealt with, describing several districts that were overwhelmed by crime, vice, and prostitution. Referring to “our imperiled homes,” he pointed out that “every family saved to industry, virtue, thrift, adds to the wealth of the community, and becomes a tax-paying element to lighten the common burdens of society, while every family lost to industry and good morals through vice and crime becomes a burden upon the industry of all the rest, and transmits...vicious tendencies to the next generation....” [1883 A.R., 19]
Gates was equally concerned about “the value of human souls” and “those in danger of eternal loss.” He saw the growth of dehumanizing forces as threatening to tear apart the total fabric of the soul as well as society. The task was “to save industry, sobriety, virtue, and religion in the neglected classes of Chicago,” and this work “ought to be done simply ‘In His Name’, and without any regard to denominational lines; but if we cannot secure that union of all Christians...let us as Congregationalists and citizens, at least enter some one district….” [1883 A.R., 19] Gates made his point well and the Chicago Congregational Club responded by pledging its “hearty and generous support.”
The range of activities that the Chicago City Missionary Society was able to undertake with this support was considerable: it organized and maintained the Orton Mission on West Lake Street near Seymour Avenue, founded October 15, 1882; the Ashland Avenue Mission on 12th Street near Ashland Avenue, established June 17, 1883; and the Sedgwick Street German Mission, located near 1460 North Sedgwick, formed June 3, 1883. Within a year this last mission had a Sunday school of 375 children, a five-day-a-week kindergarten, and was able to offer services in both German and English.
In September 1883, the Society aided the women of the Plymouth Congregational Church to establish a kindergarten on Portland Avenue near 31st Street. With an average attendance of 65 through the winter, this effort expanded to include mothers’ meetings, an industrial school, and a Sunday school with 190 children. Eventually this mission moved a few blocks west to become the Doremus Congregational Church, which continues to function at that 3039 South Normal location.
The Society also organized the Lake View Congregational Church in April 1883 on the near North Side in the town of Lake View. This was the first of more than 100 churches that the Society would establish or assist in organizing over the next 50 years.
Looking to the task at hand, Gates wrote in the Society’s annual report:
When we look over these unoccupied fields, and see the swarms of children in their streets and alleys, when we see the masses of men that issue from these fields on Sunday to listen to harangues by Communists and Socialist leaders, who hold forth in blasphemous strains against God, the Church, the laws of property, of family and social life,…we are oppressed with the greatness of the enterprise in which we are engaged, to permeate these masses with the leaven of the Gospel. If we would ourselves be saved, and have something valuable in the way of institutions to transmit to our children, we must… go out into all these by-ways of our city, seek the lost ones, and by the grace of God save them. [1884 A.R., 10]