YMCA – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

Fur Coats

The following is from an essay by Lloyd Douglas entitled, “Fur Coats,” published in the December 1919 issue of the YMCA’s monthly magazine, The Intercollegian.

“It was a good train, and we had been doing our fifty miles an hour all afternoon. But the trip was long, the book I had been reading had depressed me, and I was feeling the need of some congenial human society when the young doctor sauntered down the aisle and, upon receipt of my smile of welcome, dropped into the vacant chair.

“‘What’s the book?’ he inquired. I told him. It was Professor Cram’s brilliant little volume, Walled Towns.

“‘What’s it about?’ he persisted. I read him a few selected passages, specializing on the author’s indictment of modern society.

“‘This man thinks,’ I remarked, ‘that one of our chief errors is ‘the quantitative standard’ — the worship of bigness, the rejection of ‘the passion for perfection in favor of the numerical equivalent’ — exhibited alike by ‘the ignorant contractor, trying, by the aid of galvanized iron, to produce an effect of a tawdry, lying magnificence,’ and the exploiters of ‘foolish luxuries, and so-called amenities of life which we were far happier without.’ Pretty dismal invoice of the times, don’t you think?’ — for I hoped this young man might restore my optimism.

“‘Well,’ replied the doctor gravely, ‘I don’t believe he has overstated the case. I am blue, today, over certain matters closely related to this.’

“I told him to unpack his troubles from his old kit-bag and we’d look ’em over. He did so. He was on his way back, he said, from the annual ‘homecoming’ at his alma mater — one of the greater state universities of the middle west. There had been a thrilling football game, and a crowded program of social events.

“‘Nothing in all that to be blue about,’ I observed. ‘You must have had a mighty good time.’

“‘I am never going back!’ he said passionately. ‘Never!’

“Whereupon I handed him the inevitable ‘Why?’ — and waited for the story.

“‘Even at my own fraternity house,’ he began, with suppressed indignation, ‘I felt like a cat in a strange attic. The only values there were money values! The new outfit was cold, hard, worldly-wise, blasé, candidly snobbish! Many of the old grads were back. The youngsters coolly appraised their cars, their clothes, and accepted or rejected them on a financial basis. Some of the old fellows brought their wives out to the dance. The woman who appeared without a fur coat was extremely fortunate if she wasn’t snubbed by that selfish, silly, inordinately stupid bunch of new-rich!’

“‘A fur coat!’ I echoed, somewhat dazedly.

“‘Yes!’ snapped the doctor, angrily, ‘a fur coat! That’s the sign of the order now! The Inner Guard at the Greek portal asks the Outer Guard, ‘Who comes there?’ And the Outer Guard replies, ‘Looks like an old grad!’ Says the Inner Guard, ‘How did he get here?’ ‘Motored!’ ‘Spiffy car?’ ‘Not so very!’ ‘Come alone?’ ‘Wife with him!’ ‘Fur coat?’ ‘No!’ ‘Tell ’em we’re sorry!’

“‘But,’ I stammered, ‘what’s going to become of our justly celebrated Democracy if we have this sort of thing going on, right at the tap-root of the leadership we are training to bring us out of our social wilderness?’

“The doctor didn’t know. Presently, we discovered that we weren’t cheering each other’s mood very much, and he went back to his seat while I resumed the little book at the place where Professor Cram was saying, ‘Neither is education a universal panacea for this persistent disease of backsliding; it is not even a palliative or a prophylactic. The most intensive educational period ever known had issue in the most preposterous war in history [WWI, which had ended a year earlier], initiated by the most highly educated of all people, by them given a new content of disgrace and savagery, and issuing at last into Bolshevism and an obscene anarchy that would be ridiculous but for the omnipresent horror!’

“‘But the war!’ I reflected. ‘Surely it was guaranteed to furnish us a new outlook on life! It was to prove ‘a great regenerative agency, out of whose fiery purgation would issue forth a new spirit that would redeem the world.’

“I turned back to the little book and found the professor saying, ‘Every great war exhibits at least two phenomena following on from its end: the falling back into an abyss of meanness, materialism, and self-seeking, with the swift disappearance of the spiritual exaltation during the fight; and the emergence, sooner or later, of isolated personalities who have retained the ardor of spiritual regeneration and who struggle to bring the mass of the people back to their lost ideals.’

“Are these ‘isolated personalities’ now in preparation for their sublime task? Are they in college this winter? And what do they think of the ‘fur coat’ standard of human values?”

The Pearl Merchant

by Ronald R Johnson

From the November 1919 issue of The Intercollegian.

In October 1919, Lloyd Douglas preached a sermon about Christ’s parable of the Pearl of Great Price. In the next month’s issue of The Intercollegian (the magazine put out by the YMCA in America), he published an essay that summarized the things he had said in that sermon. I told about that sermon in an earlier series of posts, and you can read them by clicking on the following links: Part One… Part Two… and Part Three.

Here is the article in the November 1919 issue of The Intercollegian:

“Only in recent times have civilized people worn jewelry for mere display. Their ornamental value formerly took second place to their symbolic significance. The amethyst has wrought many a moral miracle through its legendary power to protect its owner from evil thoughts. Who doubts that the man who had sacrificed many a pleasure to purchase an amethyst for this purpose failed to find help in its ownership?

“Once, a complete allegory of human aspiration, condensed into the telegraphic brevity of thirty-three words, was built around a pearl. Hear the story.

“The hero was a pearl trader. He was not a mere collector, playing at pearls for a pastime; he was a pearl-merchant, seriously making his business a life task. But he loved his vocation, and dealt only with the very finest pearls on the market. Years of shrewd and discriminating negotiations had brought him affluence. His capital stock now contained many pearls of exceptional value.

“Imagination suggests that the trader might have bought one of these cherished pearls in Athens. It was known to him as his ‘agnostic’ pearl. It stood for a neutral-tinted, convictionless attitude of mind — forever seeking evidence, cross-questioning witnesses, and examining testimony; but never arriving at a verdict. Whenever his heart proposed that he take a definite stand for something, he fondled his ‘agnostic’ pearl and remained non-committal. Indeed, he came to have much pride in his unfaiths, and was not offended when men called him a disbeliever. The word was not an epithet, but a distinction. Of all his goodly pearls, he loved this one best.

“But not much less ardently did he esteem the pearl he had found in Rome, the ancient seat of law. He called it ‘justice.’ It had kept him straight, many a time, when he might have cheated without it. Whatever happened, he would be just. Every man should have his due. But no man need expect more than his due. Sometimes the pearl-trader’s heart was moved to pity, for a moment, at sight of human wretchedness; sometimes he was sorely tempted to temper his justice with mercy, but the Roman pearl drew him up before he weakened. Mercy was enervating.

“Another pearl he had discovered in Alexandria — home of riches. When he thumbed the satin surface of his ‘prosperity’ pearl, he invariably experienced a thrill of pride in his wealth, and a longing for added riches. After all, honor and influence were not often far away from the man who held great possessions. Poverty, espoused even in the interest of fine and worthy ideals, was an intolerable curse. Who could afford to be poor?

“Many other pearls had this merchant, in the ownership of which he greatly rejoiced. But still he sought goodly pearls, not content with his possessions. Somewhere, he believed, there must be another jewel of rare value. It had become his sole passion to seek such pearls.

“One day — strangely enough, it was in the ancient city of his fathers — he was pointed to a pearl of such surpassing beauty and perfection that he knew he could never be happy until he had made it his own. He sought out the owner and, together, they discussed, long and earnestly, the peculiar significances attached to the super-pearl. It appeared that ownership of this pearl invested one with a simple, restful, childlike acceptance of the mysteries of life. The wearer would be unable to take pride in his unbeliefs, but would find himself saying, ‘I am persuaded. No; I do not pretend to explain; but I am persuaded!’ Moreover, the super-pearl was sure to guarantee a new state of mind to the four-square man who staked his all on the ‘quid pro quo.’ The wearer of this pearl would become so infatuated with Charity that his erstwhile emulation of pure justice would lose interest for him. And, again, this rare jewel had the power to distract a man’s thoughts from his own prosperity and focus his whole attention upon the happiness and welfare of others.

“The pearl-trader asked its price, somewhat nervously, it is to be believed; for he suspected that its value was beyond his reach. He was told that he might have it in exchange for his entire stock of pearls.

“Surely it must have demanded a long and serious mental struggle for the pearl-trader to arrive at a decision to exchange all of his precious jewels for this one pearl of great price. A friend, unacquainted with pearls, suggested that he ask the owner to cut the pearl in two (as diamonds are cut), but he only smiled sadly and replied, ‘Pearls cannot be cut, my friend. I must take it or leave it as it stands!’

“And so, he refused to trade. And so, he debated again the advisability of trading. And so, at length, he came with his precious pearls and gave them all for this one pearl of great price. For he was a merchant who sought goodly pearls, and he could not be satisfied until he had possessed the best! It is by this process, said the Master Teacher of us all, that the Kingdom of Heaven is achieved in the heart of the individual.”

Demos in the Saddle

by Ronald R Johnson

From the October 1919 issue of The Intercollegian.

The following is an essay by Lloyd Douglas entitled, “Demos in the Saddle,” which was published in the YMCA’s monthly magazine, The Intercollegian, in October 1919. By “Demos,” he is referring to the Greek word Dēmos, which means “the people” or “the common people.” The word “democracy” is derived from it. And when he speaks of “the submerged tenth,” he’s talking about those living in poverty, at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. Hopefully these references will help you in understanding this essay. It seems to me that, on this occasion, he is trying to hint at his point rather than coming right out with it.

Here’s the essay:

“We have a very widely known porkitect, up our way, who, in obedience to the public clamor for fancy cuts of meat, determined to build a hog registering 99.76% pork; no waste, scrap, scrapple, or souse, but chops.

“So, after much patience and many studious hours spent over his blueprints, he constructed an oblong hog with a tiny, highly artistic foot at each corner thereof.

“The evolution was watched with respectful interest by all of the skilled porkitects in this and many other lands. They said in one voice, ‘When fully completed this will be some hog!’

“Yet, when the logical conclusion had been achieved, the perfected pork-chop hog was unable to locomote upon his fragile foundation. His defect was obvious. He needed legs to stand on. The porkitects of the world turned away, saying, ‘What we want is a hog with stronger legs.’

“Now they will try to outdo one another building better legs.

“You can carry any good thing too far. So soon as the general public realizes the good thing has been carried too far it rushes off in the opposite direction for a remedy — but doesn’t know when it has found the remedy. Once started in that direction, it keeps going until everybody on earth knows it has carried the good thing too far again. Trying to find a general specific that will cure all the ills of the social order now and forevermore is much like the search for the city of Detour. One sees the pointing hand indicating the way to Detour — but nobody seems to report having arrived there.

“Take aristocracy, for example. If you had asked anybody, a couple of parasangs ago, who were the aristocrats, he would have replied, ‘The Pedigreed.’ A little later the same query would have been answered, ‘The Rich.’ Of late we have fallen into the pleasant habit of saying, ‘The Intellectuals.’

“It’s quite too long of a story to account for these changes in the definition of ‘aristocrat.’ Perhaps you know the tale. It is bound in many volumes. And the books are all red. When it was required that one be pedigreed to be worth notice, that was undoubtedly a good thing — at the start — else it wouldn’t have started. But they carried this good thing too far. There was a reaction. Then the despised merchant (which might mean trader or highwayman — just as in these present days of profiteering) came into his own. The Rich told the Pedigreed where to get off. The supremacy of the Rich was succeeded — in our country, at least — by the supremacy of the Intellectuals. You and I know that the best people are the college-trained, and that we have an inalienable right to dictate to our current social order. But we seem to have carried this idea too far.

“Just now young Demos is in the saddle, galloping a mad Tam-o’-Shanter to goodness-knows-whither. The dinner-pail is not only dictating to the limousine but hooting at the laboratory.

“College opens again. Thousands of students take up their old task, or their new one, assured that the present ‘trend’ is to be ephemeral. In a few days the ‘restlessness’ will be quieted. The ‘submerged tenth,’ having come up for air, will close the hatches and duck again, presently.

“Don’t be too sure about that.

“What’s to be done, then? Obviously, we ‘college-trained’ must mind our step in the precarious travel of the hour. We had carried a good thing too far. We had bred a college type with too much chest and crust, and not quite enough friendly grip in the fingers of the right hand. Moreover, we had pooh-poohed some of the older instincts of mankind, on the ground that they were vestigial race-fears, etc. Many of us had swapped God for bunch of formulae deduced in the chemical and physical laboratories. We were trying to rid ourselves of untenable superstitions. Then we made war upon our own racial instincts. We went too far.

“A newly-rich man was strolling through The Louvre. He had not troubled to provide himself with a catalog. He made a brief inspection of a few of the paintings, leaning across the rail in an effort to get as close to them as possible. Presently, in a voice of fretfulness and annoyance, he said to the old verger, ‘I’ve been hearing, all my life, about these masterpieces. I’ve just looked at them. I’m frankly disappointed. I don’t see anything in them at all. They’re very ordinary, I should say.’

“‘Sir,’ replied the verger, ‘these pictures are not on trial, but the spectators are!’

“Not many college students will have the discernment to appraise the present crisis or sense the present need. The few who do so may have much to say of future interest. These few will be men of spiritual vision, to whom God is a tremendous Reality.

“Our world is very ill of a disease that indicates a prompt infusion of Vital Faith. If you have it, you can help.”

A Truthful Commencement Address

by Ronald R Johnson

From the June 1919 issue of the YMCA’s monthly magazine, The Intercollegian.

This is from Lloyd Douglas’s essay, “A Truthful Commencement Address,” published in the June 1919 issue of The Intercollegian, put out by the YMCA. The full title is, “A Truthful Commencement Address (As It Might Be Delivered by the President of Any College).”

“My Dear Young Friends — or perhaps I had better say, Young Ladies and Gentlemen, for during your four years’ residence here I have been unable to become acquainted with you, having been required to be absent almost constantly, shaking down wealthy alumni and supplicating the state legislature for the wherewithal to pay salaries to your dearly beloved instructors.

“You have now arrived at an epochal hour in your lives — or what would be that, if so many of you were not contemplating post-graduate work which will keep you in the rah-rah for another three to five years. The few of you who do step forth today to grapple with life — or, more strictly speaking, who are all packed up to go home for the summer — might be felicitated upon the triumphal termination to your college career, were it not for the well-known fact that fully seven-ninths of you have been working only for credits, electing the pipes and snaps, and just skinning through with an oh-be-thankful average of C flat.

“I have it from your instructors that some of you are graduating by a very narrow squeak. They tell me that a considerable number of you never did fire on more than two cylinders; and that some of your batteries need renewing, even before you start on the journey of life, due to hard driving on your joy rides.

“Honestly, it makes me laugh when I see you sitting there, looking so solemn and wise, squinting up at me through your black tassels and wondering how far your rented gown misses connections with the back of your collar — for I saw your marks at the Registrar’s office; and, say, they were some grades!

“Doubtless you hope that I will say something about your painful ascent of the Mount of Wisdom — which only three or four of you took on high — for the benefit of your pa and ma who are admiring the top of your mortar-board from the balcony; but I am afraid to attempt it, for fear some of the faculty may grin and give the whole thing away. That being the case, let us approach the matter with friendly frankness — and tell the truth.

“You came here, four years ago, flushed with enthusiasm to become educated men and women. You had bright dreams of fitting yourselves for eminent service to society. The sophisticated upperclassmen had that all shamed out of you by the first Thanksgiving. The little handful of you who did contrive to retain your youthful visions were hectored and badgered and chaffed throughout your course by a bunch of roughnecks, many of whom will not be able to buy, borrow, or bank ten years from now unless they inherit something that can be doled out to them in the form of a pension. The majority of you settled down early to the belief that the faculty was your common enemy and that the big fight of your lives was to avoid seeming to take a personal interest in your studies, lest you should become an object of ridicule among your mates.

“You missed the lectures by eminent men, which we provided for you at considerable expense, and went to the movies instead, to see the man with the big hat and the leather pants rescue the heiress to all of Fifth Avenue from Madison Square to Seventy-Second Street from the clutches of Desperate Mike, in a log hut at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

“On the night of the orchestral concert which we brought on for your delectation to play the music of the masters, you had a dance — the music being furnished by two snare drums, a tin whistle, a pair of cymbals, a cowbell, a pistol, a couple of wooden blocks covered with sandpaper, the whole accompanied by a boy with a fatuous grin who beat the time by bouncing himself up and down on the piano bench. Again, when we enticed one of the foremost American artists to come here with his exhibition, you held another dance which was announced as ‘Strictly Modern’ — so modern, indeed, that some of the chaperones left before it was out.

“I have it on pretty good authority that some of you young gentlemen who are going out to lead in the great constructive movements of our day — pardon my smiling — used to get yourselves excused early from the seven-to-nine P.M. sociology seminar, where you were discussing the best processes of redeeming our degraded social order and setting to rights a badly befogged civilization, so that you might attend a vaudeville in which the chief bill featured a group of tired, underfed, underpaid girls who danced to the tune of ‘By the Moon, I Spoon,’ and coughed, between verses, to the tune of T. B., which was followed by a brief skit in which a trained monkey appeared and smoked a cigarette. This latter act must have been tame stuff, however, since one need not spend one’s good money to see such things.

“Well, here you all are; still young enough to make good, even if you have thrown away a chance you’ll never have again. Some of you possess a glimmer of genius which you can cash in, provided you don’t bank too heavily on what your family thinks you have found here on this campus. Don’t let any of our Commencement felicitations fool you too much about the real value of your college training, for mighty few of you have got anything worth all the fuss we are making over you.

“If you should care to come back about twenty years from today to attend the reunion of your class, it may interest you to see us pass out a generous chunk of the alphabet to some of your classmates who were hooted as ‘greasy grinds’ and ‘moles’ because they kept at their jobs while you went to see the trained monkeys, a sight you might have had any morning while shaving, except, possibly, for the adjective.

“And now, we bid you farewell; knowing that you would like to get loose and have a little walk with Flossie before the 3:15 train which carries you back to Jonesville, and Susie, who wears the Itta Bitta fraternity badge and has promised to share your fortunes when they are divisible by two.

“Don’t be depressed because it’s too late to mend the job you’ve foozled. Buck up, and play the game! A lot of people just like you, who trifled away their chances to learn something in college, have managed to put it over by imitating other people who had learned something. If you want to do a really constructive piece of service before you leave us, write a brief confession of the manner in which you bungled your job, seal it, and deposit it with us, to be handed to your own boy when he arrives here for college training. Maybe it will help to keep him steady; for, unless a new crop of youngsters comes along pretty soon with more interest in the real business of college life than you evinced, the whole thing will get to be a joke.

“Kindly step to the platform now and get your diplomas. We have printed your names on them in English so you might have no trouble identifying your own. As for the rest of it, we have prepared it in Latin. Few of you will ever know just what it says; but — no matter.

“We are sorry to see you leave. We would not be sorry if we thought the next outfit that comes along would be any more diligent. In that case, we should speed you on your way with an almost unseemly hilarity. But we know that you have set an example for your juniors which will make them as nearly like you as peas in a pod.

“Go out in the world, then; and, after five years of hard knocks, do create some new sentiment about college life! For we want to keep old alma mater going — and we can’t, very well, unless there is a change of attitude on the part of our constituency toward the real business of higher education!”

Paste These Words in Your Hat

by Ronald R Johnson

From Douglas’s essay, “Wedding Clothes,” published in the May 1919 issue of The Intercollegian.

This is from “Wedding Clothes,” by Lloyd C. Douglas, in the May 1919 issue of The Intercollegian, the YMCA’s monthly magazine.

“The prince was about to be married. His father, the king, planned a banquet in honor of the nuptials. Only the blue-blooded and full-pedigreed were invited. They sent regrets. The king was enraged. He told his servants to go out and bring in anybody and everybody. The servants brought them.

“Some came because they were curious to see the king’s palace; some to eat; some to drink; some to be able to boast later that they had been there; some to follow the crowd. None of them felicitated the prince or inquired for the bride or cared a whoopteree for the wedding.

“Robes were provided at the door to cover the guests’ rags and patches, on the theory that if you can’t have interior respectability, you’d better try to rub some of it on the outside. One unkempt fellow said, ‘I’ll not wear their togs. They can take me just as I am, or throw me out!’ So they threw him out. It may have been a trivial reason for expulsion, but out he went.

“The man who told this fable added, ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’

“A long time ago, men were born into the Kingdom of Larger Opportunity. Then, so many of the pedigreed fell down on their jobs that the K. of L. O. was thrown open to the general public. They began coming from all quarters to attend the feast of wisdom provided by our institutions of higher learning.

“Some came because it was their parents’ wish; some because they had finished high school, and what else was there to do; some to participate in the sports and the games; some to enjoy the fun and frolic of student life; some to follow the crowd. They are still coming. Many are called, but few are chosen. The majority are pitched out of the K. of L. O. as soon as they enter — sometimes for trivial reasons.

“One man is rejected from the K. of L. O. because he doesn’t know how to speak his own language. Some people know five languages; he doesn’t know any. The vernacular has always served his purpose. Says he, “‘I done it’ is just as good as ‘I did it,’ haint it, so long as I really went and done it?” Then, the day comes when the Big Man, who has it all to say whether our young hero gets his chance in the K. of L. O., hears him talk, passes him up as either too stupid to have noticed the difference between his uncouth speech and the language of cultured men, or too lazy to have mended his slovenly talk, or too indifferent to care. Anyway, out he goes. Oh, not to perish utterly; just to become a second-rater, holding the light and grinding the knives and washing the dishes and collecting the data for some other fellow who hasn’t half his morals but twice his manners.

“Another is thrown out because he doesn’t know how to eat; thinks a knife will do, so long as he is careful not to cut his face. Another is thrown out because he is so beastly ungracious. Another is thrown out because, when he shakes hands, he offers a flabby, flaccid pudding to the Big Man who, having shaken it and put it aside, says, ‘He will not do. It’s his hand. There’s no bling in him!’ And, all the time, the bling may be in him — only one wouldn’t suspect it by shaking the dead fish attached to his wrist.

“The pity of it all is that every year men graduate and go out to win their way in the world, and mess things up for society, who lack any moral purpose, who would willingly double-cross their own grandmothers for a dollar, while other men, who have studied themselves round-shouldered and half-blind preparing to do their share of the world’s work — honest, industrious, sincere — are pitched out of the K. of L. O. for lack of some insignificant decoration, like the wedding garment.

“Many are called, but few are chosen.

“Paste these words in your hat.

“For the man who gave them to us always knew what what he was talking about.”

Passenger or Crew Member?

by Ronald R Johnson

From Lloyd Douglas’s essay, “Taking the Grade,” published in The Intercollegian’s January 1919 issue.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to post the essays Lloyd Douglas published in The Intercollegian (the monthly magazine of the YMCA) from January 1919 through June 1920. Today’s article is entitled, “Taking the Grade,” and it was published in the January 1919 issue. (Let me just say in advance: some of Douglas’s essays haven’t aged well. This one was written right after the end of WWI.)

“A thoughtful friend of mine, who is something of a maxim-wright, informs me that ‘eventful eras produce prophets.’ If this is true — and it does jingle like an honest-to-goodness proverb — we must have been passing through an uncommonly stirring period, judging by the densit of the present population on the Isle of Patmos.

“These prophets seem to constitute a new species of the genus seer, in that they are agreed on at least one premise, to wit: we are entering upon an age of unprecedented possibilities for the advancement of civilization.

“Now the unanimity of this forecast surely cannot be charged to collusion among the prophets, for the business of prophesying is strictly a one-man job. The prophets do not ‘collude.’ Never yet have they held an annual conference to elect officers and have their picture taken. Prophets are about as chummy as comets.

“Therefore, when all of them declare, with certitude, each independently of the others, that we are now en route to better things — and that, too, in face of the traditional uncheerfulness of their trade — the combined effect of their predictions is very heartening.

“We will consider this as a settled fact, then–an incontrovertable, non-sinkable, self-bailable, time-lock, sunk-hinge Fact. The world is about to ‘take the grade’ to the upper levels. After a long and uneventful journey across the prairie, civilization makes ready to climb to a clearer and cleaner atmosphere. But the prophets have not said that the world is going to toboggan up to that altitude. Coasting is only good for movement in the opposite direction.

“Whoever is interested in this proposed ascent of civilization will join the crew. Erstwhile coal-passers will ply their shovels at the furnace doors. Persons previously on the passenger list will go forward to the tender and help the stokers. Certain husky people will get out behind and push. A few daring ones may go ahead and pull — though this is dangerous business, involving the risk of being run over; it is sincerely to be hoped that nobody will try to pull who hasn’t had a lot of previous experience in pushing.

“Of course, there are to be many passengers. Special cars will be made up for various parties, such as the dirty nations, the greedy nations, the ignorant nations, the self-infatuated nations, and the sick nations.

“Certain other passengers with special reservations are such incapacitated types as the great-grandson of old Timothy Waggles, who sat on the wharf swinging his feet and shouting, ‘Fool!’ at Robert Fulton when the latter was trying to make his steamboat go; and the son of Caleb Scroggins, who hee-hawed at Langley’s attempt at an aeroplane; and Willum the Last, himself, who turned all the resources of his empire into gunpowder and then pulled the trigger.

“All these will have to be hauled up the grade; plus one more passenger. Him I heard say, not long ago, ‘What’s all this talk about ‘missions’ and ‘increased missionary effort’ and ‘a larger missionary program’? Personally, I have never seen any good in missions, and I don’t see any good in them now! I consider all this chatter to be mere piffle!’

“So, we have to haul him too, along with Waggles and Scroggins and Willum. He will probably expect an assignment to the most luxurious coach on the train. We can’t ask him to ride forward in one of the rattan tourist cars, along with the ordinary supermen and the Hunkies and the Turks and the rest of that gang who went out to spread ‘kultur’ among their benighted brethren. No; we’ll have the porter make up the drawing-room compartment for this man, and ask the steward of the diner to send him all his meals.

“I think I can see him chatting with the senile Waggles and the infirm Scroggins and the other old fellow, on the way up, saying, ‘Mighty fine bit of country through which we are passing, gentlemen! Growing more and more beautiful with every mile. Notice how pure the air smells up here! And, just to think, we’re coasting up! Remarkable, isn’t it?’

“Now, if we could find some way of coaxing this man to stroll through the train and see what all we have on board, I believe he would want to join the crew; for he is not a bad sort. He is just getting a bit elderly in his habits of thought. All his life he has been ransacking the depths of his inexperience for wise words of caution for all who ‘waste their money and strength on missions.’ His mind has been lighted up, slightly, by the general illumination that has been observed by most people not utterly blind; but his voice still quavers the old tune. His mind and his mouth seem to have become disconnected in some manner.

“Anybody with a plan to suggest for persuading this man to put on his hat and walk through the train will confer a great favor on the crew who need his assistance. If we could get him into that car where the passengers are down on all fours around a wooden thing with six legs, ten horns, two tails, and a stinger, beseeching it to give them health and harvests, I know he would say, ‘What this bunch of drooling idiots want is a God with some sense; and a corps of doctors, and some tractors, and a threshing-machine, and a million dollars’ worth of soap! Why, I didn’t know we had anything like this aboard! What kind of a train is this? Let me get out and look!’

“And if he did get out, and saw what a tremendous amount of energy it was going to require to haul this miscellaneous outfit up the grade, I know that fellow well enough to believe that he would take off his coat and help. For he’s not a fool, even if he is old and fat.”

An Editorial Note

by Ronald R Johnson

The front page of the YMCA’s monthly newsletter, *The Intercollegian*, in the fall of 1919.

For those of you who who have been reading this site sequentially, I wanted to give you an overview of what I’ll be posting over the course of the next few weeks. I’ve spent the past several months sharing the sermons that Lloyd Douglas preached at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor (at the University of Michigan) during the 1919-1920 school year. A young student named Freda Diekhoff, whose father was a professor at the university, kept the transcripts of those sermons and donated them years later to the Lloyd Douglas archives at the university’s Bentley Historical Library. I have shared all of them but one. For some reason, Ms. Diekhoff’s collection skips from Washington’s Birthday to Palm Sunday. I will share the Palm Sunday sermon closer to that date.

In the meantime, I thought it might be appropriate to cover the articles that Douglas published in the YMCA’s monthly newsletter during this same period. That publication, The Intercollegian, featured an editorial by Douglas every month from January 1919 through June 1920. Over the next few weeks, I will post those essays, returning to Frieda Diekhoff’s collection in time for Palm Sunday.

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:

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

A New Start

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

Lloyd C Douglas, circa 1911-1912. From a promotional brochure in his 1909-1915 scrapbook.

Something happened to Lloyd Douglas between 1912 and 1913. In the previous post I told you that, in 1912, he invested secretly in Roger Zombro by writing anonymous ads for him in the Daily Illini. Neither of the two men ever mentioned it, but I have a lot of evidence to back up that hypothesis. (I have included it in the booklet The Secret Investment of Lloyd C Douglas, available upon request.) Of all the evidence I have gathered, the most important is this: Douglas’s writing style changed between 1912 and 1913, the exact period during which the anonymous “Zom” ads began running in the student newspaper.

Douglas had always been a powerful writer, but his earlier essays were intense. His sense of humor shined through, too, but overall he came across as a very serious young man. In the fall of 1913, though, he began displaying a more relaxed, whimsical style that would characterize his writing for the rest of his life. He was still a powerful writer, but he exercised that power in a new way: through a nonchalant, humorous presentation somewhat like that of Mark Twain. Prior to this, he reached out and grabbed you by the lapels with his writing, but now he disarmed you with humor and casually persuaded you. I believe it was his anonymous work on the “Zom” ads that gave him this breezy new way of expressing himself; but even if I’m wrong about the cause, the effect is obvious. In 1913, Douglas found his voice as a writer.

And there was something else: prior to this, Douglas’s writing was religious. It was church-oriented. In 1913, he put that behind him. He spoke as one who was deeply acquainted with the day-to-day lives of real people, both students and faculty. He focused on the things that mattered to his readers.

We see his new style exhibited in a weekly column he wrote in the Daily Illini called “The Sunday Sermonette” (later changed to “The Weekly Sermonette”). He doesn’t sound like a young man anymore; he sounds like a wise older man with a sense of humor and a very light touch. There were flaws in these “sermonettes” – they were often paternalistic and somewhat patronizing – but they were popular and down-to-earth, and they set a course for all of his future writing. For example, when he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1915, he started writing a weekly column in one of the local newspapers called, “The Saturday Sunset Sermonette,” aimed more at the townspeople than the students. The “sermonettes” in the Daily Illini set the pattern.

Here are some examples from the Daily Illini column:

On writing home to Mother: “If you wish to make a distinct hit with her, tell her how you are faring as to creature comforts. Since you came upon this planet, her chief concern has been your physical well-being. She was always glad, of course, when you exhibited any interest whatever in the development of your mind or the culture of your soul; but her first thought for you has always been cast in terms of food, clothes, shelter. Tell her where you are living. Draw a map of the house, showing the position of your room. Draw a diagram of the room, indicating doors, windows, closet, registers, book-cases – where you sit when you study, etc.” (“The Letter Home,” Daily Illini, Sunday, September 28, 1913, p. 4).

On rags-to-riches stories: “Reacting against an ancient notion that a man must be hereditarily rich and influential to achieve greatness, book markets of our country are glutted with biographies of eminent men who came up into positions of trust and honor from homes of poverty…. In view of the highly prosperous state of our civilization, perhaps it might be just as well to ease up a bit now on advice for the poverty-stricken and make some effort to provide an inspirational pabulum upon which the rich man’s son may feed” (“Washington,” Daily Illini, Sunday, February 22, 1914, p. 4).

On hanging out with the crowd: “The student who fails to provide for an occasional hour by himself becomes about as original and inventive in his thought and speech as the funnel of a phonograph” (“The Man Himself,” Daily Illini, Sunday, October 5, 1913, p. 4).

On rushing around campus, taking oneself too seriously: “Many people here, students and others, are afflicted with a ‘busy’ bee. They maintain the breathless attitude of one who leaps from an engagement brimful of crisis to another even more fraught with fearful consequences…. Cold-blooded as it sounds to say it, the world was hobbling along – handicapped, to be sure, but managing to struggle painfully along – before any of us arrived and it is… possible that the world may continue to do business when the grass is a foot high over the place where our tired bodies rest from their frenzied scramble to attend to so many important things at once” (“How Doth the Little Busy Bee?” Daily Illini, Sunday, April 26, 1914, p. 4).

These are just a few examples. A little later (the 1914-1915 school year), he also began writing “Pen Portraits” of the university’s top administrators. As with the “Zom” ads, he published them anonymously – only this time his identity was revealed. I’ll tell you about it in my next post.

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

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Douglas Is Coming!

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

As part of his contract with the University of Illinois YMCA in 1911, Lloyd Douglas agreed to give a series of lectures at some of the other universities in the region. Between March and November of 1912, he spoke at the University of Iowa, Simpson College (at Indianola, Iowa), and Milliken University (in Decatur, Illinois). The Y at each location did its utmost to get male students interested (the women had their own YWCA-sponsored meetings at the same time – yes, they were segregated), and some of the promotional materials are amusing. They treat Douglas like a celebrity.

From the *Iowa City Citizen*, undated, in Douglas’s 1909-1915 Scrapbook, Douglas Papers, Box 5, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

*The Simpsonian*, undated. In Douglas’s 1909-1915 Scrapbook.

From the *Decatur Herald*, undated. In Douglas’s 1909-1915 Scrapbook.

That’s a lot of hype, but Douglas was equal to it. His scrapbook contains clippings from both the college and city newspapers, and they all raved.

From the Simpsonian: “It is sufficient to say that Douglas made a deep impression on the religious life of Simpson men – and that is saying much in a school like this, where religious appeal is so familiar that, to use Douglas’s own expressive phrase, ‘people’s souls become grooved and calloused’ with well-meant but ineffective religious effort.” (Milliken was a Methodist college.)

From the Decatur Herald: “Interest was not allowed to lag at any moment…”

From the Iowan: “A body of over two hundred students listened to one of the most fascinating addresses of its kind last evening at the natural science center by Lloyd C. Douglas…”

From the Iowa City Citizen: “Mr. Douglas delivered another of his stirring addresses last evening.”

From the Simpsonian again: “The results of the meetings show very clearly that the average college man, even though of no special religious tendencies, can be made to feel a genuine interest in Christianity if it is presented to him in a sane, rational, and unprejudiced manner. The power to do this Mr. Douglas possesses in a remarkable degree.”

Rev. H. F. Martin sent this report to the Lutheran Observer regarding the series of lectures at the University of Iowa: “The editor of the ‘Daily Citizen’ remarked to [Rev. Martin] that within his knowledge no religious campaign among the students had ever made such an impress as this one.”

Perhaps the most significant statement, viewed from our vantage point today, came from Professor Edward Diller Starbuck, a pioneer in the field of Psychology of Religion, who taught at the University of Iowa: “Mr. Douglas is, in my opinion, just the man for us. He has thought his world through until he can speak of the deeper things of the spiritual life without compromise and with perfect candor. University life has been sadly in need of just such a message as he is giving, which is profoundly spiritual and at the same time is in accord with a modern world-view.”

In my own opinion, Starbuck was a bit too generous. Douglas had only gotten started “thinking his world through” and arriving at a workable theology. But Starbuck was right about this much: the modern state universities were “sadly in need” of a message that was “profoundly spiritual and at the same time [was] in accord with a modern world-view.” I would argue that we’re still in need of such a message. Most evangelists are anti-intellectual, and most Christian intellectuals are not evangelists. Douglas was trying to bring those two things together, and Starbuck saw that he was on the right track.

In my next post I’ll talk about the message that Douglas delivered in these lectures, and I’ll explain why he was really just getting started.

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

← Back