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Ogden United Church of Christ, |
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Ogden United Church of Christ, |
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History
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THE PASTORATE OF THE REV. NOBLE STRONG ELDERKIN. 1905-1910-PART 1 In October 1903 the Rev. Elmer I. Goshen resigned his position at the Ogden First Congregational Church to take the pulpit of the First Congregational Church in Salt Lake City. For the next two years the Ogden church suffered a period of uncertainty as to who would lead the institution. In January 1904 the Rev. Edward J. Ridings arrived to take the pulpit, but he apparently remained only until June. Following a long summer and fall interim, where there was no recorded activity, evening services were begun again on October 2nd with Pastor Goshen presiding. He continued this pattern, preaching in Salt Lake City in the morning and then coming up to Ogden to preach in the evening. Despite this limited activity the membership stood at 175 persons at the end of l904. During 1905, up through mid-June, Pastor Goshen continued to fill the church at evening services. There then followed a summer holiday during which nothing happened. Finally on September 3rd the Rev. Noble Strong Elderkin arrived to fill the pulpit at the Ogden First Congregational Church. Noble Strong Elderkin was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1878. He received his clerical education at Yale Divinity School and was ordained as a Congregational minister in Chicago on June 15, 1905. The Ogden church was his first pastorate. The new minister was young and dynamic. He was excited about the growing scientific and technical age which was sweeping the nation in the first years of the new Twentieth Century. The highly moral stance taken by Theodore Roosevelt in national and world affairs influenced the young pastor's thinking. Elderkin organized a youth group under his leadership and reactivated a Men's Club. Music became important again and both a choir and individuals gave presentations. Instrumental musical performances were also presented. The pastor was a dynamic speaker and as a result the Ogden Standard began to reprint some of his sermons and also his so-called "editorials", usually presented at Sunday evening services. Others were invited to speak and the newspaper reprinted their talks as well. Mr. Eugene Battell, a leading Ogden Socialist was invited to express his views at the church. Professor F. M. Driggs of the State School For The Deaf and Blind described the education needed to help deaf and blind persons find their way in the world. Mrs. Kate S. Hilliard and David E. Cloyd debated whether it was necessary to belong to a church into order to be a proper follower of God and Jesus. All of these discussions filled the church with large audiences. The Rev. Elderkin, soon after his arrival became involved in the reform movement which was making a beginning in Ogden. At the time there were over sixty passenger trains a day arriving and departing at the Union Station at the lower end of 25th Street. Trains from every direction came and went night and day on the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Denver and Rio Grande, Utah Northern and Oregon Short Line railroads. Local commuters on the Bamberger electric line which ran from south of Salt Lake City to north of Ogden crowded into the city at another station nearby. Innumerable freight trains also moved in and out of Ogden carrying many "passengers" who could not afford the price of a coach seat. Many people had to layover for long hours at a time to make their train connections to other places. They found a myriad of facilities available to them to fill the void of the long hours of waiting. There were excellent hotels and good restaurants available. Delicious candy could be bought from the Shupe-Williams Candy Company near the Union Station. But more exciting on lower 25th Street were the always open saloons, the gambling halls, the houses of prostitution, the purveyors of the narcotics trade, as well as practically every other form of deviant behavior available to mankind. These activities made Ogden the "sin city" of the west. In order to operate openly the owners of the saloons, gambling halls, brothels, etc., found it necessary to buy off practically every city and county official in the area. Policemen were paid to look the other way on lower 25th Street. The corruption of the entire city and county administration was an open secret. Just how many local businessmen, land owners, renters of buildings, providers of services who remained silent over the state of affairs in Ogden is unknown. Those who protested were not popular. But there were those who protested anyway. Church leaders, Pastor Elderkin included, were vocal in their dissent. The publisher of the Ogden Standard, William Glassman, also stood opposed to the corruption and gave the dissenters plenty of newspaper space. On the national level the reformers received encouragement from the crusade carried on by the Anti-Saloon League which called for absolute prohibition against the liquor trade in the United States. Through the efforts of the Anti-Saloon League, the Women's Christian Temperance Union and other groups opposed to the trade in liquor, prohibition had been voted for in four states. About twenty states had enacted aggressive temperance laws, and large numbers of communities and counties in the nation had voted themselves dry. Ashville, North Carolina, Greater Birmingham, Alabama, Kansas City, Kansas, sixty percent of the municipalities in the United States had voted themselves dry, as had 14 countries in Illinois, and two of four districts in Delaware. It was estimated that within ten years "our land may be practically free from the liquor curse." This was something that the reform leaders in Ogden prayed for fervently. They needed to make changes of every form in the social affairs of the city. Helping to lead the cause was the Rev. Noble Strong Elderkin. How the good pastor and his colleagues went about their campaign will be described in later chapters. Return to Introduction & Chapter List CHAPTER 11 The campaign to bring about the closing of saloons, which would aid in the end of prostitution, gambling, the narcotics trade, civil corruption and other nefarious activities in Ogden opened with a series of sermons offered on December 9,1907, by some of the ministers of the city. On the national level the pastors were inspired by the successes of the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and others, in trying to bring the end of the liquor trade in the United States. The Rev. Noble Strong Elderkin participated in this series. In his presentation Pastor Elderkin described the history of his own denomination and its previous association with liquor. He pointed out how on April 20, 1773, it was recorded in church archives that a New England meeting house was raised by churchmen who also consumed "one barrel West India rum and five barrels of New England rum" while in the process of building the church. Further, he reported, on September 5, 1810, at Farmington, Connecticut,
Again in 1825, Elderkin reported
Finally, the good Pastor reported, "as late as 1826 the Congregational Associations of Rhode Island and Connecticut insisted that the church which entertained the brethren should provide a liberal sideboard." He also indicated that "Artemus Haynes, the minister of the United Church on the Green in New Haven, told me that his church still has the toddy stick which was used to mix the one thing then necessary at all ecclesiastical functions .... " Not all churchmen agreed with this drunken practice, Elderkin remarked. In 1817 one Lyman Beecher remarked, "Rum consecrates our baptisms, and our weddings and our funerals. Our vices are digging the graves of our liberties." This said, Elderkin, "was a ray of light. For it was the time when a rope [was] needed to be stretched around the open grave to keep minister and mourners from toppling in on top of the casket." What was the point of this dreary recitation on clerical drunkenness, asked Elderkin? He responded that the attitude 6f the church had changed, because the "aroused and awakened church has concluded that the saloon costs too much. It gives us most of our criminals, paupers, insane. It brings poverty and pain, want and misery." The saloon pays us a fee, he said, "which we have thought until recently, paid us for harboring the nuisance," but which figures recently presented by one of his colleagues indicated that "the saloon costs Ogden and Weber County $5,000 more than it gives us in fees." Elderkin than proceeded to describe the closing of the saloons in Kansas City, Kansas, which once had 256 saloons within its city limits. "Did this closing," he asked, "have any effect on business." Some said, he remarked, "that closing the saloons meant the ruin of business. The bankers said it would lesson deposits and cause a tight money market." Further, Elderkin continued,
But, said Elderkin, "none of these things
happened." Rents, he reported, "were higher than ever.
Lumbermen can't supply the demand. The population increased 10,000 in
the year." Wages were raised, he said, "because men were more
efficient." He did note that some "businesses have suffered.
One ice dealer said his sales fell off thirty tons a day, but added that
he was glad of the great good which had been accomplished in the
city." Finally, the pastor reported, "The reduction in crime
has been marvelous. Police courts have closed, $50,000 a year saved in
the prosecution of crime."
Return to Introduction
& Chapter List THE PASTORATE OF THE REV. NOBLE STRONG ELDERKIN.
1905-1910----PART 3 On January 27, 1908, Pastor Noble Strong Elderkin began a series of
Sunday evening sermons or "editorials" presented to the Ogden
First Congregational Church. He directed himself to the problems of the city
of Ogden. Suggesting that it was easier to talk about the crimes, problems
and villians of the past than it was to discuss current local problems,
Elderkin told the tale about a preacher who went to supply a New Jersey
pulpit for a short time. The "good deacon assured the visiting brother
that it would hardly be courteous to attack any of the city's evils. 'If you
must pitch into someone,' the deacon volunteered, 'go for the Czar of
Russia, he'll never know anything about it. ", Elderkin remarked,
"The preaching which disturbs only the Russian emperor is everywhere
commended as humanitarian. The preaching which pleads with a man to repair
the breach in the wall opposite his own house is branded as brash and
brazen." He intended to be brash and brazen that evening. Elderkin insisted that what people did in Ogden at this moment counted
more than the affairs of people in the distant past or who lived in another
part of the world. The most important issue outstanding, he remarked, was
the morality of the community. That was the most difficult subject to
handle. Few men in a community, he said, "will hurl themselves into the
work of moral reform. Fewer still of men in public office dare to see that
every element in the community is given a 'square deal'" Instead, he
charged, There is in our city a considerable class of protected law breakers. This
class is composed of those who rent property to gamblers and prostitutes,
those who maintain houses resorted to for gambling, those who keep houses of
ill fame and assignation, those who keep saloons which violate the closing
laws as they choose, those who [offer to] the neighborhood that which is euphemistically called a boxing contest, etc. There are statutes
upon our books defining the privileges of those who pander to the beast and
brute in human kind. Most of them have absolutely no rights in the eyes of
the law. But strange to say in Ogden, as in many cities, men and women so
engaged are [accorded special privileges] by those employed to see that laws
are enforced. They pay a fee into the city treasury and for that paltry fee,
the mouth of the city's watch dog is muzzled. It is this element which almost every official fears. He will offend
anybody but these traffickers. in vice. For if they have their toes stepped on, they leave nothing
undone to punish the insolent abridger of their rights. We shall use no
other word here but "fear." We are a pack of cowards, and we might
as well put it so. Is there anything more disgusting than to have those whom
we elect serve the city cringing before a woman of low life or a man of low
life? I fail to see why we condemn the anarchist who appropriates to himself
special rights when he sees all about him men granted special privileges. A former county attorney told me certain laws were put on the books only
to please the prudent, not to be enforced. But you will notice these laws are enforced against those who incur the
displeasure of the officers. Suppose you wanted to start a gambling house in
Ogden tomorrow and would not pay the $200 for a month's protection, do you
suppose you would be left alone? Suppose you wanted to conduct a poker game
in the back of some saloon and refused to pay the $50 a month which somebody
says will quiet the whole police force----do you suppose for a moment that
you would be permitted to violate the sacred and holy law of the sovereign
state of Utah? Try it and see. Having laid out the problem, Noble Strong Elderkin in successive
"editorials" described in vivid detail how the corruption of the
city destroyed the physical character of young men, caused young women to
fall into white slavery, turned husbands into drunkards, destroyed home life
and generally demoralized the society. He then began to suggest that it was
the responsibility of the Mormon Church, since it was the strongest
religious force, and had the largest number of followers, to lead a
political campaign against those who would corrupt the city. The result of
this appeal brought about a mass meeting in Ogden on March 12, 1908, which
was held at the Mormon Tabernacle. President L. W. Shurtliff of the Weber
Stake and the Rev. Elderkin, who represented the evangelical churches, led
off with talks. Other local Mormon leaders and clergymen also participated. This strong action engendered a response from the politicians and the
police. A few days earlier Police Chief Browning ordered all the saloon men
of the city to close their places of business promptly at 12 o'clock,
midnight, and not to open again until 5 AM. The saloons also were to remain
closed on Sunday. This apparently put the saloons in line with what the law
then permitted. "The order was a sudden shock to the proprietors of the
saloons, but they all obeyed," reported the Standard on February
29th, 1908. A few days later the order went out that the saloons
and the gambling house proprietors should close their businesses as well
from 1 to 5 am. The Standard reported that the "saloon men seem
to be content with this new regulation." Actually, however, there was
growing evidence that the saloon men, gamblers, prostitutes and others had
gone underground and were still operating during the restricted hours behind
closed doors. And they were still paying off the politicians and police to
stay in business. In October, 1908, the Mormon church came out strongly against the
imbibing of liquor. At the seventy-ninth semi-annual conference of the
church it was voted unanimously to pledge the entire membership to the
support of prohibition legislation. The text, The Word of Wisdom, which
prohibits the use of all intoxicants by the faithful, was quoted and it was
stated that church members "will do all in their power that can
possibly be done .... to have such laws enacted by our legislature .... as
may be necessary to close saloons and otherwise to decrease the sale of
liquors and to enforce the Sunday Law." Pastor Elderkin welcomed the strong stance of the Mormon church on liquor
and criticized the American Party, the Gentile anti-Mormon political party
in Utah, for its continuous attack against the Mormons. In his
"editorial" of November 3, 1908, he said that the American Party
position "was influenced by motives of vicious attack alone." This
caused an angry response from a member of the American Party in the audience
and the fat was in the fire. Return to Introduction
& Chapter List THE PASTORATE OF THE REV. NOBLE STRONG ELDERKIN.
1905-1910----PART 4 In early November, 1908, just before a major election, Pastor Elderkin
found himself accused of committing the worst possible crime a Gentile in
Utah could commit, which was to say something nice-about the Mormon church
when that institution came out against the liquor industry and the other
purveyors of corruption in the state. He defended his position by stating
that it was the right of any church organization to interfere in politics
when the need was great. "I sought to show that outside of Utah when
the church grew interested in politics it was a sign of hopeful utility.
Everywhere the church seeking to lift the moral status of the community is
commended. Only in Utah do I find the principle assailed." He
continued, " .. .labor unions and lodges and the liquor interests are
all in politics and most of them for their own selfish interests." Why
should
The church has certain ideals of righteousness, justice and brotherhood. It may accomplish much by the impress it makes upon character. But, if it is wise, it will set over against personality and environment. The church has not only the right but the duty to impress itself upon the environment.. ... [The] most potent changes in environment.. .. may be accomplished through and by the ballot. The church is heartily accorded the right to minister to the wreakage of the saloon and the gambling house and the brothel. These are openly in politics to uphold their ideals, such as they are. The church, too, has ideals. In order to realize these ideals of brotherhood it goes into politics to fight the institutions which dehumanize and devitalize human life. The old sacramental idea of the church has about gone. The church is simply an organization believing in the righteousness of God and its ultimate victory. In the struggle against the saloon, the gambling house, and the brothel Pastor Elderkin did not care what a person's institutional beliefs were, all that was necessary was that a person stand for the right. "People have asked me how to vote," Elderkin noted. I have told them definitely and explicitly we want certain things in our community, certain men stand for those things. I have told people how to vote in order to gain those things. I haven't thought of myself, but I frankly confess that I am thinking of my children and the children of others. That's sentimental and furthermore its selfish, I suppose. But these people think that I have studied the question and that I know certain legislation may be obtained. If I lie to them, use the opportunity to deceive them, they will and they ought to lose confidence in me. The issue was confused in Utah, Elderkin remarked, but if the head of the Mormon church, "is persuaded after thorough study that certain men will serve the righteous interests of the community more than others, he would be a coward not to plead for their election." Elderkin insisted, he himself also "would be a coward not to plead for the election of these men." The real issue the world over, Elderkin concluded, "is on the question of the right of dehumanizing influences to dehumanize longer. And in the tremendous battle of righteousness with unrighteousness the church can naught else but stand for the things which belong to the Kingdom of God." Despite the attempt to overthrow the forces of evil in Ogden, the problems of the saloon, the gambling house and the brothel still remained. They operated from behind closed doors, but their wares were still available, and they still had the protection of the authorities. Noble Strong Elderkin demonstrated this when one night in mid-January, 1909, he decided to go "raiding." Late in the evening he reconnoitered and entered into several gambling houses. He found out where they were by obtaining a list from the" present county attorney [who] very graciously looked the matter up with the identical courtesy which marked all his favors to me as clerk of the court." Having located the gambling establishments Pastor Elderkin then met two unnamed police officers and asked them to go raiding with him. They were rather reluctant but went along. They could detect nothing, however, because the doors were closed at the gambling halls and a person looking through a peep hole insisted there was nothing going on inside. At the Elephant Club they tried to get in because the "window over the stairway was open and one could hear every call to the disobedient dice." On trying to enter the establishment, which Elderkin had just left only twenty minutes before, he and the policemen were prevented from doing so by a "nicely dressed young man who said there was nothing going on inside. Asking why there was so much noise going on, "he reassured us that a few congenial souls who had told their wives they were going to lodge were playing checkers and flinch and tiddley-winks." When someone else opened the door to enter everyone could now see that the well dressed young man had been lying and Elderkin demanded that the policemen arrest him. They somewhat reluctantly did so, also discovering that the young man's name was Henry White. The officers ordered him to appear in court the next morning at 10 am, which the gentleman politely promised he would do. After all this Pastor Elderkin and the two policemen were standing around on the street discussing the matter. They were greeted by a member of the police committee of the city council who expressed shock. "Gambling in Ogden?" he exclaimed. "Do you mean to tell me that there are men in the community who operate gambling houses?" That was too much for the good pastor and he decided to go home. It was one o'clock in the morning. "I told Mrs. Elderkin that I had been out raiding .... with the Ogden police force. She said 1 didn't look as though 1 had done any strenuous work. But then, she didn't know." The next morning at l0 am Pastor Elderkin went to court, but Henry White did not appear. It was suggested that he "had forgotten his appointment." On looking into this Elderkin discovered that the man's real name was Jim Baker and that he was part owner of the club they had "raided" the night before. One of the policemen who had arrested the man confessed that he "knew all the time who the man was, what his business was, and what his real name was." The officer told Elderkin, in defending his deception, "that these fellows usually carried around with them two names." Thus ended Noble Strong Elderkin's "raid" upon a gambling hall. Return to Introduction & Chapter List THE PASTORATE OF THE REV. NOBLE STRONG ELDERKIN. 1905-1910----PART 5 Noble Strong Elderkin continued his campaign against the illicit businesses protected by the city administration. He railed against Belle London, the most prominent Ogden bordello owner. The newspapers called her the "queen" of the underworld. The authorities were totally at her beck and call. "No one dares protest," Elderkin remarked. "The police who are braver than the bravest when in the presence of a drunkard, quake and tremble in her's. Her displeasure means removal from the force .... " With great irony Pastor Elderkin suggested the voters of Ogden ask the state legislature to remove the laws which made illegal the illicit businesses of 25th Street and the protection of such by the city administration.
In early September, 1909, Noble Strong Elderkin and a number of other prominent men of the city decided to organize a new political party and put up candidates for an upcoming municipal election. The major campaign issue would be "prohibition without any reservations or strings attached. " This action was a dismal failure. It caused Elderkin to lose the good will of many, including William Glassmann, owner of the Ogden Standard. This gentleman had political and reform ideas of his own. In the municipal election of November 1"\ 1909, Glassman was elected mayor and all but one of his supporting candidates were swept into office. Despite efforts to subvert the election by intimidating voters and buying votes, the ruling establishment fell. The Standard claimed Glassmann's victory was accomplished despite the efforts of those from lower 25th Street to defeat him. Pastor Elderkin, because he had helped organize an opposing political party, now found he had lost credibility with the new city leadership. The Standard took him to task asking, "Is not the Reverend Elderkin a good deal of a busy-body, with a greater love for mixing in politics than preaching the gospel and spreading the spirit of charity; and is he not a most inconsistent dabbler in things worldly?" The good pastor also found himself in trouble in his own church. In January, 1910, some in the church threatened to withdraw their membership "unless the pastor abandoned his pulpit talks on the social evils of the city." He refused to back off, remarking that the "courage of the average Christian here in Ogden ought to delight the men who love slime and adore scum." Anger and recriminations flew back and forth. On June 14, 1910, Elderkin submitted his resignation, announcing he was accepting the call of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Lawrence, Kansas, beginning in September. In a valedictory sermon offered in mid-July Noble Strong Elderkin demonstrated he had lost none of his fire. He claimed he had reached a number of conclusions about the situation in Ogden. First, he remarked, "One might better preach red-flag anarchy here in Ogden than simple decency." Second, he stated, "The gospel that hurts business, the gospel that assails political jobbery, the gospel that disturbs one's pleasure in indolent ease is not wanted in Ogden." Third, he charged his ministerial colleagues had "maintained a dignified silence in the presence of monstrous injustice." They were "giving the pews what the pews want. The pews demand silence." Those in the pews, he concluded, had souls which "are shriveled and whose religion is a mere system of antiquated platitudes." The Ogden Standard, while still criticizing some of his behavior, bid Elderkin a gracious farewell. The paper described the pastor as a fighting preacher----"fighting real and imaginary foes. His crusades have been the promptings of a radical mind, of an uncompromising theorist, and over eager soul." He was "sincere, but a zealot." His efforts were misdirected by "his lack of understanding of the great world outside the pillars of his church."
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