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The Michigan Home for Girls

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 30, 1909

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 52.

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The Michigan Home for Girls

By W. H. McKee

For the last six years Mrs. McKee and I have been engaged in the establishment and promotion of a “home for girls,” and have been so intensely occupied as to have written very rarely for any of our publications. Perhaps but few of our brethren, with whom we were formerly so closely in touch, have any knowledge of what we have been doing, or indeed that we were in the work at all. We have the greatest reason for thankfulness to our Heavenly Father that he has so mercifully continued us in his service, and has maintained in us full sympathy with every line of truth for these last days. He has also kindly provided us with a field of labor wherein we can effectively make known the third angel’s message in all its phases.
The Home of which Mrs. McKee is matron and I superintendent is situated on an eighty-acre farm, ten miles south of Grand Rapids, Mich. It was established in the spring of 1903, under the initiative of Mrs. McKee, Mrs. Nellie H. Richmond, and myself, and organized under the State law, with a board of trustees of seven persons. Its first title was The Grand Rapids Home for Friendless Girls. The following year it was reorganized, with a shorter name, Michigan Home for Girls, and a board of five trustees. The articles of association of the Home, duly filed in the county clerk’s office and with the Michigan department of state, mention in its formal preamble, that the Home is established under an act of the legislature “for the incorporation of associations not for pecuniary profit.”
The second article states that “the purpose of this organization is to provide a home for needy or unfortunate girls and women who may be committed to its care from various sources, or who make application personally for reception. This Home is to be established and developed on the industrial or cottage plan, and its intent is to provide for the material needs of those who are the recipients of its privileges, and to furnish for them all possible uplifting and beneficial influences, physical, intellectual, and spiritual.”
The eighth article of the by-laws reads thus:—
“All profits accruing to the association from the different industries which it may carry on, or funds received from any other source, shall be used for the support of the Home or turned in to its general fund.”
The superintendent, matron, farmer and his family, nurses, and teacher—with one exception—have so far all given their services without return, and to ask our leading workers to do the same. It is this fact which has made it possible to develop the work. A charity can not be carried on upon a commercial basis, and remain a charity. It necessarily becomes a business. The realization of this fact led us to give our services
The Home started with forty acres of land, an old house of four rooms, a barn, and twenty-five cents in cash. It has now eighty acres of land, a house of twenty-three rooms, heated with steam and lighted by an acetylene gas-plant, and piped for water in kitchen, treatment-rooms, and bath-rooms; there is also barn, ice-house, corn-crib, workshop, farmhouse of eight rooms, with a good barn which was enlarged and remodeled this last summer, and an eight-room house in the city, which has been used heretofore as a city cottage. This is now to be sold and the proceeds devoted to the development of the Home proper.
Up to this time the Home has been built up and supported from direct donations solicited principally by Mrs. McKee from the general public. The continual concentration and close communion development of charitable organizations and interests, parallel with the growth of corporate trusts, is making it rapidly more and more difficult to obtain sufficient funds for the support and development of the Home through solicitation. We are told that religious and denominational prejudices have much to do with this also,—in fact, a gentleman prominent in business and religious circles said directly to Mrs. McKee, “Now, if you could only be persuaded to give up this Saturday business, you wouldn’t need to go out of Grand Rapids to get all the money you want for that Home.”
But whether this be so or not, it has become necessary to take different measures, in a wider field, to obtain sufficient money to fully establish the plant and put the Home upon a self-supporting basis. This is proved to be entirely possible by the experiences of the past two years. In order to obtain the foundation for this in a sufficient industrial plant, and to finish paying for the property, it is necessary to curtail the work and take but a few girls for some time, while Mrs. McKee and I, with such assistants as will undertake the effort with us, go out to earn the money necessary. In doing this we shall not hesitate to seek the good will and good offices of our own people wherever we go. In representing the Home we carry the whole message.
In her work so far Mrs. McKee has brought the truth to great numbers in all walks of life, and especially to business and professional men and society women, who would not, otherwise, have found an opportunity of hearing it. One day while interviewing a bank president in his private office at the bank, he said to her, “Mrs. McKee, I understand you are a Seventh-day Adventist.” She replied that she was. “Well,” he continued, “that 1844 movement was the biggest piece of tomfoolery I ever heard of.” She answered, “Pardon me, sir! Perhaps you never heard the other side of the story.” “I didn’t know there was any other side to it,” he said. “There certainly was,” she replied. “So,” he said, “if that is true, I should certainly be glad to hear it.” “If you have time, sir,” said Mrs. McKee, “I would be pleased to sit down here right now and explain that to you.”
He handed her a chair, and leaning back at ease in his seat, listened intently for half an hour to an explicit detailed statement of William Miller’s experience, the prophecy of the 2300 days, and the judgment. When she closed, he remarked: “That presents the matter in a very different light; I thank you for explaining it to me.”
A professional man once said to Mrs. McKee: “Such a praiseworthy effort as yours ought to command immediate and generous support, and yet”—thoughtfully—“perhaps it is in the purpose of Providence that you are sent to the many instead of to the few; that which you have to say is needed. I am myself a better man because you have come into my office to-day.”
It is true that it has been possible, in the providence of God, to establish in this Home a work that is unique. We have been told that it has a wider scope and a deeper influence than any other charity anywhere established. This is true only because it teaches the gospel in its entirety, and is an object-lesson of the practise of the precepts of the Bible and the Testimonies.
Isaiah 58 is eminently a chapter for Seventh-day Adventists, for in it the Lord exhorts that we “break every yoke” and “let the oppressed go free,” and that we “bring the poor that are cast out” to our house, and combines with these works of mercy and charity the observance of the Sabbath. This chapter is the text for this Home.
Some have been inclined to belittle the necessity for such a Home as this, but experiences among our own people, where even camp-meetings have been entered by agents of the evil one to deceive, delude, and entice, not to mention the condition of society in general—the “white slave traffic” which receives such frequent mention in the public prints, and the facts of which are actually alarming the nation and commanding the attention even of the chief executive,—all these things, and many more, corroborating the prophetic word that in these last days deceivers shall “wax worse and worse,” make advisable and essential the establishment of such homes, where the sinned against may seek a refuge, and the sinning may find opportunity for repentance, regeneration, and the renewal of their womanhood, in the strength of which they may “go and sin no more.” W. H. McKEE.
Byron Center, Mich.