American Magazines – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

The Writing Contest

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

I’ve told you that Douglas began writing for The Christian Century in 1920. It started with a contest, centered around an intellectual named John Spargo.

Spargo, an Englishman, had begun preaching in the Methodist Church at the age of 14, and his sermons were printed in the newspapers. But he became aware of social inequities and eventually left the church to become a socialist lecturer and writer. He moved to America, and it was there that he developed “an evolutionary, spiritual understanding of the processes of social change” that put him at odds with other socialist thinkers. He never gave up his faith in God, and he insisted on combining socialism with Christianity, “a true synthesis” that “was his most unique contribution to socialist theory in America” (Markku Ruotsila, John Spargo and American Socialism (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 61, 68).

In the May 20, 1920, issue of the Christian Century, Spargo published an article that was meant to bolster the confidence of Christian leaders. The main point of his wide-ranging essay was his belief that the church would never be obsolete. He admitted that, in earlier years, he and his socialist friends had wondered what use they would make of the elaborate cathedrals “after the revolution,” when there would no longer be a need for churches. But now Spargo realized that the church would always be a vital and necessary part of social life, even if capitalism ceased to be.

That was the point he was trying to make.

Unfortunately, he digressed near the end of his essay to say that preaching, at least as it was being done in most mainstream churches in 1920, was relatively insignificant and would not endure. In predicting that the church would live on after the revolution, he did not mean that the typical Sunday morning church service would endure. He felt certain that preaching would no longer be necessary, because it was already proving itself worthless. Music and worship were vital to Christian life, but preaching wasn’t:

The pulpit is an anachronism in the modern world. Preaching comes down to us from a past age, when few possessed Bibles and fewer still could read them for themselves. It was necessary then when the believers assembled together to have someone read and explain the Word to them. Today when almost every person can read for himself, when Bibles can be purchased for a few cents, there is no need for such a service. The average man in the pew is quite as capable of reading the Bible and interpreting any passage which interests him as the average minister. That is probably the reason why the old-fashioned expository sermon and the sermon on doctrinal subjects are rarely heard in our cities nowadays…. The old hour-long interpretation with its illustrations arranged as ‘Firstly,’ ‘Secondly,’ ‘Thirdly,’ and ‘Finally Brethren’ has given place to the fifteen minute ‘snappy talk’ upon some topical subject or some abstract question. The old time ‘Lyceum’ lecture has supplanted the sermon.
John Spargo, “The Futility of Preaching”

Not only did he say that the “average man in the pew” could read the Bible as well as “the average minister,” but he went on to say, “The average minister is a poor guide in matters sociological,” meaning that sermons now tended to be on subjects that were best left to the sociologists. He was really just trying to say this: that the church’s role was not to meddle in politics and social reform, but to remake people into followers of Jesus; and if people became followers of Jesus, then they would behave in socially-responsible ways (Ruotsila, pp. 138-139).

I say this digression was unfortunate because the editor, Charles Clayton Morrison, seized upon it and made it the primary focus, ensuring that readers would misunderstand Spargo’s comments and even take offense. Morrison was good at his job. He was trying to increase the circulation of his magazine, and one of his methods was to identify potentially controversial statements in the articles he published, then provoke his readers into responding. He wanted the magazine’s articles discussed for weeks afterwards in the “Letters to the Editor” section, and you can see him stirring the pot again and again, throughout the 1920s.

I don’t know what title Spargo had originally given to his essay, but he did say later that Morrison changed it. The piece was published under the provocative heading, “The Futility of Preaching.” Morrison put it on the front page, and he included a quotation that would surely anger his readers (most of them ministers or lay leaders):

It is very doubtful, to my mind, whether all the preaching that will be done in America during the next twelve months, let us say, will add as much to the well-being of America as the work of one honest, efficient farmer, or as that of a humble schoolteacher in some ‘little red schoolhouse.’
Ibid.

And if that wasn’t enough to get his readers’ attention, the editor announced a competition:

Mr. John Spargo in his extraordinary article on “The Futility of Preaching,” in this issue of The Christian Century, has flung down the gauntlet to tradition and to those who hold that it is by ‘the foolishness of preaching’ that the Kingdom of God is to be brought in. Without doubt the article will arouse decided if not violent reactions from our readers. These reactions should be directed into rational formulations, and in order to encourage such a discussion of the radical question Mr. Spargo has raised, The Christian Century will give a prize for the strongest and most effective article it receives on the other side. The article should be not a detailed reply to Mr. Spargo but a constructive, non-controversial setting forth of the essential place of preaching in the life of the church and in social and ethical progress…. For the best article the prize will be $50. For the second best, $25. For the third best, $10…. It is hardly imaginable that this brilliant and original utterance of the distinguished socialist philosopher will fail to stir to their roots the convictions of the ablest writing men—and women—among our readers.
Charles Clayton Morrison, The Christian Century, May 20, 1920

Over sixty readers took the bait, out of which there were six finalists. One of them was Lloyd Douglas.

To be continued…

For a free PDF copy of the booklet, The Secret Investment of Lloyd C. Douglas, fill out the form below:

Anonymous at the Atlantic

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

In 1857, just before the Civil War, an all-star cast of New England’s most respected writers worked together to launch a new publishing venture: a literary magazine called the Atlantic Monthly. All of these men were highly respected on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (hence the title of the magazine), and all of them had three names. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell were the most famous members of this group. They wanted to provide intelligent, cultured reading material for the rising professional class. They got other well-known authors to write for them: for example, Samuel Clemens (known popularly as “Mark Twain”). To spice things up, they wrote anonymously, giving readers the fun of trying to guess the author (M. A. DeWolfe Howe, The Atlantic Monthly and Its Makers (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1919).

Over time, the Atlantic began giving bylines to the regular articles but, just for fun, they kept one section of each issue anonymous. Authors could rant and clear the air and make controversial statements in this section without ruining their reputations. They called it the Contributors’ Club, and it soon became the most talked-about section of the magazine. Over the years, it was not only a forum for the already-famous (Mark Twain, Sarah Orne Jewett, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, D. H. Lawrence, Vladimir Nabokov) but was also a good place for aspiring writers to break into the business. As one reader noted years later, the Contributors’ Club was “the nearest thing to a Welcome mat ever thrown across the pathway of aspiring writers” (Irene Bertschy of Rhame, North Dakota, quoted in Philip B Eppard and George Monteiro, A Guide to the Atlantic Monthly Contributors’ Club (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1983), p. xix).

This was especially true during the editorship of Ellery Sedgwick. By the early 20th century, the Atlantic had become the most respected American magazine that nobody subscribed to. Muckrakers’ journals like McClure’s and Collier’s were the big-name magazines now. The Atlantic still stood for quality, but it just wasn’t popular… until Sedgwick, a young hotshot editor, bought the magazine in 1908 and turned it around. He didn’t have a lot of money in the beginning, so he solicited aspiring writers, giving them a chance to get started in the Contributors’ Club. He had a good eye for talent, and he made helpful suggestions to his writers – those who were lucky enough to work with him.

Ellery Sedgwick from https://photogravure.com/collection/xxxi-ellery-sedgwick-editor-the-atlantic-monthly/

Of course, the Contributors’ Club was anonymous, but that was the beauty of it: it gave unknown writers a chance to show what they could do. Ever heard of Ralph Bergengren… or Elizabeth Woodbridge Morris… or F. Lyman Windolph? They were just a few of the anonymous members of the Club in 1917.

How about Lloyd C. Douglas? He joined the Club that same year.

Actually, he had aimed higher. A letter from “The Editor” dated a year earlier (October 26, 1916) seems to indicate that Douglas had sent a full article for publication. “This is racy and interesting,” Sedgwick told him, “and yet it really belongs in the Contributors’ Club.” Having Ellery Sedgwick speak so highly of the piece must have been encouraging, but having the essay demoted to anonymous status in the Contributors’ Club was probably not good news. And Sedgwick also wanted Douglas to do some heavy editing. “Is it too dampening a suggestion to say that, if there were some means of syncopating the piece so that it would be not more than 1600 words, we might use it there [in the Contributors’ Club]? You see, the first editor of the Atlantic has passed down to his successors the tradition that the first rule of the Club is to have no one take up too large a share of the talk, and even when the discourse is so interesting and sprightly as this, it ought not to be quite so long.” But he left it up to Douglas to figure out how to trim it. “Is there not a page or two which might come out of the paper toward its center? Of this, you are a better judge than we.”

There is no record of Douglas’s reaction to this letter. We don’t know what the piece was, so there’s no way of telling if he ever resubmitted it. But he didn’t give up; over the next eight years, he contributed five essays to the Club and was proud to call himself a Club member. I’ll talk about those contributions in my next post.

Douglas’s article “An Interrupted Homily” appeared in the Contributor’s Club of the November 1917 issue of the *Atlantic.*

For a free PDF copy of the booklet, The Secret Investment of Lloyd C. Douglas, fill out the form below:

Douglas’s Development as a Writer from 1915 to 1921

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

As busy as Douglas was during his years in Ann Arbor, both as a pastor and as a public speaker, he also spent a lot of time developing his craft as a writer. I’ve already mentioned his weekly column in the Ann Arbor Times-News and his occasional articles in The Congregationalist magazine. But he also had other avenues for his writing.

Just as he had done in his other pastorates, he continued to supply the local newspapers with printable summaries of his sermons. There’s an art to this. You don’t just hand them your sermon and expect them to print it verbatim. Douglas was a master at summarizing and pulling out the best parts of his sermons, so that the local editors didn’t have to trim them down. As a result, he was able to place before the public, week-after-week, the things he was telling his congregation.

He also continued to draw on his connections with the YMCA by being a frequent contributor to their monthly magazine, The Intercollegian (which briefly joined with similar organizations under the title, The North American Student). The earliest submission that I can find was in 1915, then there were a few in 1917 and 1918, but during the 1919-1920 school year, he was in every issue, and his articles were featured prominently on the last page – except for February 1920, in which it appeared on page one.

Also in 1919, the YMCA’s publishing house, Association Press, printed a booklet of his called The Fate of the Limited. “The Limited” was the name of a train, and the booklet was a parable about where society was headed, just after the war ended. The train had passengers from a variety of social groups, and the story was all about their different reactions when the train became stalled.

Douglas was still quite upset about the war, and still dead-serious about getting young people to do something important with their lives. The first page of The Fate of the Limited gives you the idea:

And here’s the last page:

But Douglas also had his more humorous side.

In the fall of 1919, he wrote a series of anonymous limericks in the University of Michigan’s campus newspaper, the Michigan Daily. These humorous poems gave advice to freshmen. In one, “Concerning Discipline,” a “newcomer” gushes about the guys from across the hall stopping by for a visit and how he chattered about his accomplishments in high school. “The Old-Timer replies”:

My friend, this means you’ve spilled the beans;

I shudder at your story.

No doubt these men will come again,

But when they do, be sorry.

[Why should he be sorry? Because of a little thing called “hazing”:]

Last year a lad – he was not bad,

Just talkative and flighty –

Addressed a loud and merry crowd

On State Street in his nighty.

But Douglas wasn’t aiming exclusively at students. During his years as pastor in Ann Arbor, he also began a new tradition. For three years in a row (1916-1918), and then again a few years later, he published small Christmas-themed gift books that approached the season in a way he couldn’t do from the pulpit. Here are summaries of each:

The Inn Keeper (1916): about an inn that’s always full on December 24th and even gives Santa one of the best rooms, but a mysterious visitor always has to be put up in the stable because there’s “no room in the inn.” To be honest, this booklet seems like a rough draft. I’m not sure what Douglas was trying to do, but (for me, at least) it doesn’t work. I think he was trying to say that we still shuffle Jesus off to the periphery because we’re too busy focusing on Santa Claus, but he tries to do it all through innuendo. The most interesting part of the booklet is the guest list for the 24th and 25th. See how many of them you can decipher. (I’ll give you the first one: Miss L. Toebough = mistletoe bough.)

After this whimsical treatment of the season, his booklet the next year was much more sober. For in December of 1917, the world was at war…

Christmas – One Thousand Nine Hundred and Seventeen Years After (1917): The following two-page spread establishes the mood. He’s speaking with a young woman at the card shop:

“Merely because I don’t happen to have a starred service-flag in my window doesn’t mean that I can face Christmas with a merry heart,” he wrote. “For, as long as my neighbor displays one in his window, it is almost equivalent to having one in mine – in its effect upon my holiday mood…. Maybe we had better not try to go to Bethlehem at all this Christmas. Perhaps a journey to Calvary would be more appropriate.”

The Dilemma of Santa Claus (1918): This booklet begins as a humorous and insightful description of the negotiation process children go through with Santa between Thanksgiving and Christmas; it transitions into a poignant and thought-provoking consideration of what happens in children’s minds when they learn the truth about Santa; there’s a short section about how, as parents, we appreciate him even more when we see the light of Christmas in our children’s eyes; and it concludes with the “dilemma” – the fact that Santa Claus is German, and everything German is hateful right now. (The war ended in November.) He admits that he and his readers will need to forgive the Germans someday. But he reminds us that children neither know nor care what nationality Santa is.

As far as I can tell, he didn’t publish another Christmas booklet until An Affair of the Heart (1922), which was during his years in Akron, Ohio. That one focused on the miraculous details of the Christmas story (the choir of angels, the wisemen following the star) and drew his readers’ attention to the most significant miracle of all: the fact that, two thousand years later, we were still talking about the child born in that manger.

Whether in the local paper, in magazines, or in holiday booklets, during the years 1915-1921, Douglas was doing the most important thing that anyone can do if they’re serious about being a writer: he was writing. Most importantly, he was writing for audiences. He didn’t just write things and hide them in his desk drawer; he wrote things for publication. Not that he earned much money from these pieces; he didn’t. But he developed the writing habit and began to build an audience that looked forward to his next article or booklet.

But there were two other publications that he wrote for during these years, and each one played a particularly important role in his development: The Atlantic Monthly and The Christian Century. Over the next few blog posts, I’ll tell you about each of those periodicals and the specific ways in which they helped his career as a writer.

For a free PDF copy of the booklet, The Secret Investment of Lloyd C. Douglas, fill out the form below: