The American issue. [volume], February 16, 1912, Image 9

About The American issue. [volume] (Westerville, Ohio) 1912-19??

Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

                
ON THE FIRING LINE
Group of superintendents and field workers of the Anti-Saloon League, who gathered in conference at
Washington, preceding the recent national convention.
Lighthouses Versus Saloons
Because Pennsylvania has not yet
risen to the point where it has decided
to abolish its saloons in toto, Right
Rev. James Henry Darlington, bishop
of the Harrisburg diocese of the
Episcopal church, is establishing light
houses in towns and hamlets in the
coal region of Pennsylvania near Mt.
Carmel in an effort to fight the sa
loons.
These lighthouses are usually frame
buildings of four or five rooms and
contain shower baths, a gymnasium
and rooms where games may be
played. There are now nearly a doz
en of the clubs established.
Mine owners and others who have
noticed the improvement in the work
of men and boys who have come
within the sphere of the lighthouses
speak with enthusiasm of the bishop’s
work. They tell of his midnight
drives through slush and mud over
mountain roads in order that he may
keep his word about opening a certain
club on a certain day; they point out
that these lighthouses cost money and
that miners haven’t much to spend on
such projects, and that there wouldn’t
be so many of the lighthouses but for
the bishop’s sermons in New York.
Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington
and everywhere that he gets a chance
to talk about his boys and the col
lections raised through his unending
efforts.
It was a saloon that gave the bishop
his inspiration. In company with a
member of the Episcopal church he
was strolling about a town on the
edge of the soft coal belt in one of the
central northern counties of Pennsyl
vania
“What’s that light streaming out
down there?” he asked, pointing to a
glaring spot on the landscape.
“It’s a saloon,” was the churchman’s
reply.
“Take me down, I want to see it.”
“But, bishop, it’s a tough place.
You wait until tomorrow and then
see it by daylight.”
Studied the Enemy.
“I’ll see it right now,” the bishop
insisted. “I’ll see it in full blast. It’s
something I’ve got to fight and fight
right and I want to study it.”
And the bishop did study that sa
loon. Among other things, he noted
about thirty youngsters of various
ages who were playing and frolicking
outside in the only well-lighted spot
in all that coal dust covered town.
Out of that study grew the bishop’s
“lighthouses.”
This incident occurred about one
month after Bishop Darlington, fresh
from city work in Brooklyn, where
he had served as rector of Christ’s
church for twenty-five years, assumed
his duties as first bishop of Harris
burg.
“Fight the saloon with its own
weapons—light, warmth, music and
companionchip,” says the bishop as he
tells of his work. “A growing boy—
a man, too—needs all these things.
“In the bleak coal towns the peo
ple usually go to bed at 8 o’clock.
That’s early for a boy, even though
he ha to rise at 5 o’clock, eat hur
riedly and get to his pit in time to
open doors or work switches as he
crouches hour after hour in the soli
tude of a mine for eight or ten hours.
“Think of it! Get up at 5, eat a
hand, stumble along half a mile
through the darkness to the pit, go
down hundreds of feet into a bleak,
dark mine; crouch in a niche for eight
or ten hours opening gates as cars
whiz by, with the chance of a car
breaking away and coming down on
you with live tons of coal in it; come
out of that hole in about the same
darkness you entered it; eat a hasty
supper, then either go to bed—or
where? Why, to that only bright spot
in the town—that saloon, where I saw
those boys playing in the light.
“And if out of that saloon they hear
the voices of their fathers or brothers
issuing in song and profane jest, why
shouldn’t these boys just naturally
want to grow up quick and be able
to take the only apparent pleasure
offered in their miserable lives?
“Hundred., of boys face this same
condition. To get them all out and
into another town where the environ
ment would be satisfactory would be
impossible. Besides, it would event
ually disrupt the town.
“So the saloon gave me the inspira
tion. Boys want light, music, games,
exercise. They enjoy being clean and
entertained. Go the saloon one better,
T thought, or at least equal it in at
tractiveness. and there is the problem
solved. So I planned those light
houses, as they are called, and began
establishing them.”