Urban Pilgrims and Pioneers: Industry, Unions, Jesus and the Blue Collar Worker

by Jeanne Reppert

As the eye scans the rooftops of Philadelphia neighborhoods, one notices the taller structures that dot the skyline - the smokestacks of local factories. Some still belch out the clouds of smoke that they have contributed to the atmosphere for almost a century. Others stand idle, memorials to the activities that once occupied the inhabitants of these communities.

Many of the factories that sprawl below these smokestacks have become apartment buildings and office complexes. Other factories, however, still give economic life to the neighborhoods that surround them. Their laborers, although fewer in number, live nearby. Despite the urban flight that has plagued such communities, many working class families remain to work, recreate, and worship in local facilities.

One peculiarity of these working class communities is the traditional nature of their customs and way of life. Their neighborhoods seem closed to outsiders and their people appear suspicious of new ideas, especially those associated with the church or politics. Although the factories and industries have sustained their neighborhoods for decades, many even view their employers with suspicion, wondering when they, too, will be approached by their supervisor, pink slips in hand, and told that their division will be closed for financial reasons. Why has this part of the city remained so traditional? Why have its inhabitants become suspicious?

Shaping an Industrial City

To understand the traditional values and habits of these people and their sometimes suspicious and hesitant nature, one must understand the surroundings and events that have shaped them. Ray Bakke, urban minister and author, advocates classifying cities by function. Cities serve as points of interaction for cultures and thus bring together various neighborhood groups into larger relationships. Bakke describes some cities as industrial. Such cities "function like engines and throb with power. They are dirty, ugly, noisy, blue-collar factory cities" (1987:37-38). Philadelphia is an industrial city.

To understand the events that have shaped this industrial city, we must reach back into the past, recreating the beginnings of industrialization, when these neighborhoods were first occupied by the working class. We must not only investigate how industry functioned in its beginnings, but how religion and sometimes politics interacted in the daily lives of the working class and industry owners alike.

According to Sam Warner, author of The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Growth, Philadelphia's urban-industrial growth began in the first half of the nineteenth century, especially during the years of 1830-1860, a time when the city's economy was peaking (1971:50). Such growth threatened the smaller neighborhood communities that had preceded the massive influx of immigrants. In response, as Warner states, "Philadelphians of every class and background reacted in the same way to the loss of old patterns of sociability and informal community. They rushed into clubs and associations" (1971:61). Although these groups and clubs at first provided the necessary benefits of security, it was not long until these groups, as they multiplied in number, contributed to the growth of a detrimental privatism that would pervade the nineteenth century city, crippling a public system trying to alleviate the problems brought on by industrialization and urbanization (Warner 1971:62).

As industry and commerce grew in the nineteenth century, so did the polarity between the working class and the wealthy. With faster railway transportation, "large-scale production" and new machines that would change the specific tasks of laborers, "the rapid transition from the pre-industrial town economy to the industrial, big-city, regional economy created both great opportunities for personal wealth and widespread dislocation and personal defeat" (Warner 1971:63).

The Rise of Unions

Out of this disparity rose a powerful group of people who helped working class people adjust to their new tasks and neighborhoods. They pointed to the injustices perpetrated against the working class in industry and called for wealthy employers to share their wealth with those who had made such gains possible. These groups were the unions. According to Ken Fones-Wolf in his book, Trade Union Gospel, although labor unions were common to Philadelphia before 1870, they began to form a subculture that would vie for working people's loyalties from the end of the nineteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth century. By merging social, political, and religious activities, the unions would attempt to gain the commitment of workers before strikes were necessary (1989:29-31).

In their struggle to improve the plight of the working class, the unions were faced with numerous problems. Philadelphia industrial workers were unable to earn an income adequate for their needs. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the average wages of workers actually decreased some years. Most families had to have more than one wage earner in the home to meet all their financial needs. Although Philadelphia's cost of living was relatively low, families were still barely able to earn enough to maintain certain living standards (Fones-Wolf 1989:9-10).

The impoverished state of many working class neighborhoods led to debates over other issues. Although Pennsylvania had passed a law for an eight hour workday, industry still failed to adhere to this work practice (Fones-Wolf 1989:14). Labor unions also were suspicious of industry's power over its workers, calling wage earners "wage slaves" and demanding that "a new social order" be forged to replace the capitalist structures that profited from the working class' labor. Finally, unions objected to the close ties that Christianity had to the growth of the American industrial republic.

Christians and Social Darwinism

Fones-Wolf describes the religious sentiments of wealthy Christian leaders as being molded by the "Gilded Age." Included in this group were leaders like Russell Conwell. They attributed their wealth and good fortune to their piety. If one suffered financially, it was not because of the social problems delineated by the unions, but because of one's own "individual sin and depravity" (1989:34).

Martin Marty, in Protestantism in the United States: Righteous Empire, characterized the sentiments of the Gilded Age as those of Social Darwinists. According to Marty, this thought was associated with other scientific ideas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries:

"Part of the ingenuity of the Protestant ministers and much of their success can be seen in relation to the degree to which they were able to absorb . . . appropriate selective elements of that scientific theorizing and make it part of their gospel . . . What Social Darwinism added to the vocabulary of the Protestant promoters was the purported scientific base for competition in the motif of "the survival of the fittest."

This posed problems for ministers who had to reconcile this notion of economic "survival of the fittest" with a gospel that calls for the poor to be the responsibility of Christians and deplores the exploitation of weaker human beings (Marty 1991:154-55). It is ironic that while most Christians battled for the creationist cause against Darwinian evolution, these same evangelicals and fundamentalists unwittingly assimilated Darwinian ideas into their own theology.

More, however, lies behind the thoughts of the Gilded Age than Darwin. Many evangelicals and conservative Christians were wealthy industry owners themselves. The interests they strove to protect were many and diverse. One was the use of the working class' leisure time, especially during the Sabbath. According to Fones-Wolf, "Local elite and middle classes found it difficult to control rowdy Sabbath activities that often included drinking, gambling, and illegal gaming practices" (1989:47). Evangelicals and conservatives used these activities to gauge the moral character of their employees. In addition, these practices posed problems for ministers, who found the loud activities of the working class interfering in their services.

The Sabbath debate thus led conservative Christians to advocate "blue laws" that would restrict saloons from serving drinks on Sunday and would hopefully permanently close these establishments (Fones-Wolf 1989:47-48). The final results of this crusade however, were not successful. According to Jon Teaford in The Twentieth-Century American City: Problem, Promise and Reality, attempts were being made to close down saloons until 1925, but little progress was made. Teaford states that in 1923, the governor of Pennsylvania projected that about 1,300 saloons existed in the city of Philadelphia alone (1986:47).

Furthermore, when police attempted to raid and close these establishments, no real punishment was leveled against the owners. Finally in 1925, the effort to close down saloons was brought to a halt when police attempted to raid a ball at the Philadelphia Ritz Carlton Hotel. The middle class and elite wanted the beer of the saloons and taverns outlawed, but wanted to drink champagne at their own parties (Teaford 1986:47).

Misdirected Social Concern

The Christian middle and elite classes were also concerned about the spiritual state of working class children. Various groups were formed to express these concerns, including the Society to Protect Children from Cruelty and the Interchurch Child Care Society. Children were removed from homes because of parental drunkenness and because of poverty. Subsequent efforts by these organizations were focused mostly on Catholics and immigrants (Fones-Wolf 1989:52).

Several problems arose out of these activists' concern. Although some effort was made to improve the financial dilemma of families in danger of losing their children, money was so restricted that few families actually benefited. In addition, although most Protestant denominations supported the SPCC and ICCS, when children were removed from working class homes, Christians took little account of the beliefs of the child's family when teaching him or her about Protestant religion (Fones-Wolf 1989:52-53).

Ultimately, the efforts of the evangelical and conservative middle class and elite were not only unsuccessful but detrimental to their goal of the evangelization of the working class. These Christians underestimated the social importance of the saloon and tavern in working class life, and also devalued the freedom of workers to use their leisure time as they chose. They underestimated the problems that forced families to live in substandard conditions and sometimes necessitated the employment of their young (Fones-Wolf 1989:56-57).

The after-effects of these efforts still linger today when the working class considers the church and industry owners. The ends that these Christians sought - to establish a society where high morality and pietism prevailed, and where children could be raised in beneficial home environments - were admirable. Their means of accomplishing these ends, however, were both insensitive and unhelpful.

Working class families were striving to meet basic needs, not Nintendo sets and color televisions. The economic realities that forced these families to send both adults and children to work could not be altered by the insignificant financial aid middle and elite class Christians meted out. Although the concerns of the latter were laudable, one wonders if it was also cheaper for these wealthier Christians to institutionalize poor children than it was to raise their parents' factory wages. Given this past history of self-serving paternalism, it is not difficult to understand why working class people are still hesitant to jump on the evangelical bandwagon today.

Evangelism and Social Order

Not all evangelical activity during this time period was marked by the insensitivity and hypocrisy of the former two movements. Many industrial owners at least attempted to alleviate the burdens of their employees. They also were motivated by a genuine concern for their employees' souls and made many attempts to influence them with the gospel.

Evangelical tactics, however, were markedly different from those of the Social Gospel proponents who would follow them. These evangelicals saw their calling to help their employees as a "heaven-sent opportunity to guide national instincts" (Fones-Wolf 1989:40). In addition, evangelicals advocated a different set of values:

As discipline and hard work, not humanitarianism, became the keystone of Christian philanthropy, Protestant elites believed they could utilize private benevolence to achieve greater social order. (Fones-Wolf 1989:40)

According to Fones-Wolf, churches were the main recipients of this private benevolence. He states that in the decade following 1860, church property increased twofold and fifty million dollars was raised by these churches for mission activity in the city. Among the newly established churches were Oxford Church, Eighteenth Street Methodist Church, and Hermon Presbyterian Church, all with memberships that exceeded 400. These churches were supported by Matthias Baldwin, a local locomotive builder, and Henry J. Williams, a lawyer. Hatmaker John Stetson also supported the Baptist churches in Philadelphia with his contributions (1989:40).

One cannot mention the benevolence of evangelical Christians in Philadelphia without John Wanamaker coming to mind. This Philadelphia businessman backed such activities as camp meetings and revivals, social activities like the Centennial exhibit, and trade schools for employees' children. He gave generous donations to both the YMCA and the YWCA, two prominent organizations that effectively reached out to many of the needs of working class people (Fones-Wolf 1989:131). Finally, Wanamaker sponsored the work of Philadelphia's Bethany Church which provided, according to George Marsden, "a day nursery, kindergartens, diet kitchens, an employment bureau, a workingmen's club, a dispensary, and a college" (1980:83).

Again, however, the contributions of these men to the welfare of Philadelphia's working class did not go uncriticized by unions or proponents of the Social Gospel. In Martin Marty's opinion, the John Wanamakers of Philadelphia also advocated too heavily the maintenance of a society that was the fruit of the Protestant establishment. In Marty's eyes, John Wanamaker is a man "of wealth who sought security" (1986:91).

Ministers who drew their salaries from the donations of wealthy industrialists were also accused by the working class of siding with the causes of the rich establishment. In Martin Marty's words:

Ministers catered to the affluent members who could build bigger churches. Staffs of what had once been peoples' churches were now often subject to the economic points of view of the rich on their boards ... The old Wesleyan injunctions to gain and save wealth were ripped out of Wesley's old "love not the world" context and preached to people much at home with the world, with wealth.
(1986:152)

The association of the clergy and the church with their wealthy benefactors also drew fire from the unions. Unionists accused the clergy of using the pulpit to side with employers (Fones-Wolf 1989:65). Ministers also began to fall out of touch with the needs of their working class church members. Because ministers so often spoke on behalf of their wealthy benefactors, working class people accused them of trying to raise their salaries by fraternizing with their employers (Fones-Wolf 1989:64). It is little wonder that today, when a minister attempts to bring up any issue outside of the biblical sphere, working class churchgoers close their ears and tell the minister, "Stick to the Scripture, Reverend."

Even the YMCA and YWCA became entangled in the web of accusations leveled at Christians by unionists and proponents of the Social Gospel. Tracing the history of these two organizations, Fones-Wolf asserts that neither group was founded to meet the needs of the working class. They were, on the other hand, established mostly for clerks, who were new to the city. Later, because of economic problems, the Y's stepped in to work with the urban working class. However, according to Fones-Wolf, "by-laws required that board members be attached to evangelical Protestant churches" (1989:129). These same boards were made up of industrial owners in the city - the very people who were antagonistic to the formation of the unions that threatened the welfare and stability of their businesses (1989:133). Although the YMCA and YWCA were only dedicated to saving souls at first, they soon found it impossible to resist the calls for social intervention. After much infighting, the advocates of the Social Gospel movement took over the associations and the evangelicals withdrew their support (1989:142).

Successful Revivals

Another activity that evangelicals supported were the tent revivals that attracted thousands of Philadelphia's working class population. Among the revival speakers were evangelists Billy Sunday and Dwight Moody. Sunday, an athlete who had played professional baseball for three years, was converted in a street meeting in Chicago in 1886 (Dorsett 1991:25). Subsequently, he left his career to work with the local YMCA (Dorsett 1991:43-44). Sunday's gift for preaching was soon recognized and he quickly became a partner of the evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman. Sunday also distinguished himself as a speaker by becoming close to the people he evangelized. When he came to a community, he would often help them build the tabernacle erected for the meetings. Later he would picnic with them and often play baseball with the men (Dorsett 1991:67).

Sunday came to Philadelphia during the height of his career in March 1915. Fifty thousand dollars was raised, and a tabernacle built for the revival that would take place on Logan Square. Sunday was a hit and "upwards of 25,000 persons had signed a Sunday pledge card, taken a vow of sobriety, and 'hit the sawdust trail' to win more souls for Christ" (Fones-Wolf 1989:184). Many of these converts were working class members of Philadelphia industries. One was even a member of the Central Labor Union.

Dwight L. Moody had also previously evangelized the inhabitants of Philadelphia. In 1875, industrialists including John Wanamaker supported a revival led by Moody and Ira Sankey (Fones-Wolf 1989:41). Moody, like Sunday, had also been able to draw the support of working class people, as he himself had worked in Chicago. In addition, Moody recognized the importance of reaching the cities, since they were the doors to reaching the nation for Christ (Marty 1986:164).

Yet even the work of these two evangelists drew fire from diverse critics. Despite Moody's popularity, he advocated the previously mentioned doctrine of Social Darwinism (Marty 1986:154). Moody also opposed advocates of "the eight-hour workday, greenbackism, and cooperatives" (Fones-Wolf 1989:41). According to Moody, immigrants who refused evangelism would succumb to a communism that could cripple the nation's welfare (Fones-Wolf 1989:41).

Sunday, likewise, had his share of critics. Opponents accused Sunday of strike breaking, referring to the downfall of the Labor Forward movement and strikes in 1914 (Fones-Wolf 1989:140). In addition, Sunday also preached heavily in favor of temperance and Sabbath observance. His sermons specifically attacked the work of the Social Gospel movement and liberal Protestants. Sunday's trip to Philadelphia caused strife and division, not only among the liberals and fundamentalists of his time, but also among the struggling labor organizations that desperately needed the support of the working class (Fones-Wolf 1989:185-87). Finally, critics of Sunday (and the wealthy millionaires who had brought him to Philadelphia) pointed out the hypocrisy of the wealthy backers of Sunday who quietly consumed alcoholic beverages in the privacy of their homes and elite clubs.

Evangelist James B. Sly addressed a crowd in Fairmount Park eleven years before Sunday's arrival. His words typify the rhetoric of the numerous tent revivals and camp meetings held by evangelical Christians during this time. On Labor Sunday Rev. Ely spoke of the plight of the working man in his sermon, "Justice and Mercy, or a Suggested Motto for Labor Unions." Fones-Wolf describes the effects of his sermon:

But Ely stunned the largely working-class crowd, stating that labor frequently did not give a fair day's work although they expected a fair day's wage . . . It is impossible to say how many union families never returned for subsequent tent meetings.
(1989:146)

Contemporary Repercussions

The ministries of this era were as diverse as they were divisive. Although Christians attempted to propagate the gospel among working class people, their efforts were not always reflective of wholesome biblical teaching. Despite the growth of the church in buildings and in souls during this time, much damage was also done by those who had done the greatest amount of ministry. Evangelical efforts to reach both African Americans and women at this time were even less successful than their efforts to reach working class males. Such failures have contributed to the racism, sexism, and privatism that still plague the working class neighborhoods of Philadelphia today.

The debate between the members of the labor unions, proponents of the Social Gospel, and conservative evangelicals left the working class in a state of confusion. As they were caught in the crossfire of theological and sociological debates, their faith in both religious and political systems waned. Many lessons may be applied to current trends in industrialization and urbanization.

The liberal-fundamentalist debate still rages in urban America. Likewise, the working class still suffers from the same instability that plagued them a century ago. As fewer and fewer working class employees are needed by industries because of mechanization and recession, economic struggles will increase for these families. Seminary-trained pastors look to the suburban populations of the America to build and fill the churches of the 1990s and (among many other urban populations) the working class neighborhood is largely ignored.

As conservative seminaries debate what constitutes evangelism - soul-winning or social reform - decades worth of urban souls are lost due to suburban wealth, indecision, and complacency. As urban problems snowball, it is imperative that Christians decide that evangelism does indeed constitute both soul-winning and social reform. This will ultimately require agonizing self-sacrifice on the part of wealthy middle class Christians. Evangelists and evangelicals must agree that these two aspects of evangelism are not mutually exclusive.

Finally, as American industries migrate to the Third World to recreate the conditions they imposed on urban America a century ago, Christian evangelicals must not repeat the mistakes of the past. If we fail to heed the lessons that American urban industrialization has left of us, our millions of dollars and hours of overseas missionary work will be in vain. Our evangelization efforts might leave behind a number of churches and believers but we will also leave behind the exploited and confused victims of a capitalistic society, numb and properly inoculated against the gospel of Christ.

Jeanne Reppert graduated from the University of North Carolina and completed her M.A.R. studies in urban mission at Westminster Seminary in 1994.

From Urban Mission, published by Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, September 1994. Used by permission.

Bibliography
Ray Bakke. The Urban Christian: Effective Ministry in Today's Urban World. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1987.

Lyle W. Dorsett. Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America. Grand Rapids; William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991.

Ken Fones-Wolf. Trade Union Gospel: Christianity and Labor in Industrial Philadelphia, 1865-1915. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.

George M. Marsden. Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870 - 1925. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Martin E. Marty. Protestantism in the United States: Righteous Empire. 2nd Edition. New York: Scribner Book Companies, Inc., 1986.

Jon C. Teaford. The Twentieth-Century American City: Problem, Promise, and Reality. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.

Sam Bass Warner. The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth. 2nd Edition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971.

Comments

Be the first one to add a comment.

To post a comment, please login or register

Urban Pilgrims and Pioneers: Industry, Unions, Jesus and the Blue Collar Worker

God's Word

Urbana Stories

35 days until

December 27-31, 2009