p. 12 | OUR WORK AND WORKERS by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 5, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 44.

OUR WORK AND WORKERS.

By Editor

ELDER W. J. STONE reports ten converts as a result of meetings held at Belt, Mont.

THE southern California camp-meeting, at Los Angeles, is now in progress. Elders N. C. McClure, W. T. Knox, Baxter Howe, S. Thurston, and the editor of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES are in attendance.

THE General Conference Association is contemplating the purchase of a schooner for the use of our workers in Central America, and the Foreign Mission Board recommends the establishment of a Spanish paper in Argentina.

FROM the Indicator of October 21 we compile the following items of progress in New York Conference: Elder A. E. Place reports the baptism of four persons at Schroon Lake. Five were baptized at Natural Bridge by Elder P. Z. Kinne. Three converts at Fulton and two at Roosevelt are reported by Elder D. A. Ball. A report from Rochester says that several had lately begun keeping the Sabbath of the Lord, and six were awaiting baptism. The brethren at Darien Center are erecting a new house of worship.

AT the recent annual meeting of West Virginia Tract Society, Elder R. C. Porter related various instances where the SIGNS OF THE TIMES had been the means of bringing people to a knowledge of the truth. "In one instance where a company of thirty that came out supposedly under the labors of a minister, twenty-eight out of the thirty had been reading the SIGNS, and there obtained their first impressions of the truth." The society adopted the following resolution:—

Resolved, That we recognize in the rapidly fulfilling signs of the times the evidence of the nearness of the coming of Christ, and that we make more earnest efforts to place the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, the American Sentinel, and our small tracts, in the hands of the people, to prepare them for this important event.

ON the 3d inst. Elder W. C. Grainger and Brother T. K. Okohira sailed from San Francisco for Japan, for the purpose of opening up a mission work in the Island Empire. Brother Grainger is one of our oldest California laborers, having spent some ten years as teacher and principal in Healdsburg College. He has recently been in charge of the Japanese school in San Francisco. For several years he has had a burden for the work in Japan. Brother Okohira is a young Japanese of unusual intelligence and zeal for the truth and for his people. He has been in America for eight years, and since his conversion has taken a great interest in the Japanese school in San Francisco. He was given a ministerial license at the last session of the California Conference. His family connections in Japan are mostly connected with the government service. Altogether, these two brethren seem to be eminently fitted for the work in that field, and they go with the full confidence and many prayers of their California colaborers.

WE have received a handsome souvenir of the Working Men's Home and Medical Mission, 42 and 44 Custom House Place, Chicago, of which Dr. J. H. Kellogg, of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, is the efficient superintendent. It contains eight fine photo-engraver views, besides a general description of the practical Christian work the institution is designed to do. In addition to this souvenir, we have lately received a copy of the Chicago Inter-Ocean of October 12, containing a report of a meeting of church workers and philanthropists, at Willard Hall, at which this Home and Mission was quite fully discussed. There were about six hundred of Chicago's leading church workers present, and a number of addresses were delivered, that of Dr. Kellogg being the chief. From his statement of the work of the institution, we take the following paragraphs:—

"Our plan as regards homeless men is to furnish clean, comfortable lodgings and wholesome food, under Christian influences, and at the lowest possible cost, and to furnish employment to men who are utterly destitute of means, so as to encourage the principle of self-support. We aim, not merely to relieve the immediate necessities of the homeless man, but to lift him out of his dependent condition to one of self-respecting independence.

"We have maintained the baths and laundry during the last three and a half years, and in connection with this a dispensary in charge of a qualified physician and visiting nurses. Later we established at Forty-seventh Street a social settlement, also equipped with baths, and have connected with it a dispensary for women and children, with visiting nurses, kindergarten, and kitchen-garden teachers.

"About six months ago we moved into larger quarters on Custom House Place, at Nos. 42 and 44, and added the conveniences for lodging three or four hundred men, together with an industrial department, to furnish employment to penniless men applying for food or lodging. The penny lunch counter furnishes wholesome food in liberal quantities at one cent a dish.

"As to the results. More than one hundred thousand bath and laundry tickets have been issued to men who had no other means of getting clean. That the men appreciate this opportunity is evidenced by the fact that before we moved into our present larger quarters, a line of men would be seen to form every morning about six o'clock. Sometimes by eight o'clock, when the doors would be opened, nearly two hundred men would be found in line. One very cold morning in November, two years ago, I counted in line 185 men, a large number of whom had been shivering for two hours in the cold, waiting for a chance to wash their shirts.

"The city shelter is not intended to be a permanent home for the friendless man, but only the open door to a new life. After getting a start in the right direction, the man who has been discouraged or intemperate is helped to find employment out of the city. The atmosphere of the slums is not salubrious; it breathes the miasma of physical and moral infection. The pure atmosphere of the country is essential to the permanent recovery of this class. We have several farms in Michigan, aggregating 500 acres, and a canning factory connected with them, which furnishes employment for the summer season to from one hundred to three hundred persons, raising small fruits, peas, and other garden products. Another farm of 160 acres, recently donated to us, in La Salle County, Illinois, is nearer the city, and can be more conveniently used as a country branch of our industrial department. We have some eleven hundred agents in different parts of the United States, who have, in the last three years assisted us in finding homes for more than two hundred homeless boys and girls, and who are prepared to assist us in finding employment and homes for homeless men and women after they have been so helped morally that they are prepared to enter the domestic circle of an ordinary home."

A significant feature of this great work is the fact that Dr. Kellogg was enabled to begin operations by a donation of $40,000 from two of our brethren (the brethren Wessels) of South Africa, who, after a personal observation of both localities, were constrained to say that they thought there was as much need to work for the heathen of Chicago as for those of South Africa.