by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing with this look at the proceedings of the Woman’s Home Missionary Society convention, held in October 1909 at the First Methodist Episcopal Church, situated at the northeast corner of Olive and 6th streets in downtown Los Angeles, we look at some notable discussions held on the afternoon of the second day, this being the 7th.
The Los Angeles Times of the 8th reported on some interesting comments made by a New Hampshire delegate who stated that “the population of our northeast has changed to a remarkable degree in the past few years” because “the New Englander has gone west, and the alien has taken his place” and, as a result, “the civilization has changed.”
She continued that, if the same rate of demographic shifting took place in the first decade of the 20th century as with the final one of the preceding century, her state would have about half the population be “aliens” and added that, recently, only two states had a smaller percentage of illiteracy, but now New Hampshire was 28th in that list. Any question of who the aliens were in New England under three centuries prior apparently was not considered.
Then came a call to those in attendance: “Sisters, we must double our membership . . . for the welfare of generations to come depends on what we accomplish in the opening of this wonderful century, when cities and States are taking on their character for all future time” and the Society “must respond to these needs, and we must do it now.”
While a full presentation on what was termed the “Mormon menace” was to be offered on the last day of the convocation, this delegate remarked on “the question of Mormonism” and pulled no punches:
And what of the Mormon, whose religion is a degradation and whose politics are a menace to the republic? These people are systematically colonizing a vast territory . . . the valleys of eight States are being colonized by drafting families, if they do not volunteer . . . and sending them out to start new Mormon centers of population.
It was added that a bishop supposedly told his LDS flock “we shall in the near future rule the West and then we will dictate the policy of the government at Washington,” though there was no citation of who said this and when. Again, the comment that Mormons were “systematically colonizing a vast territory” is more than ironic given what the Puritans and other religious “undesirables” who fled from England and other parts of Europe did in the 17th and 18th centuries, long before Joseph Smith founded his religion in upstate New York around 1830.
A delegate from Illinois, Mrs. B.S. Potter, deemed to have “one of the most charming personalities about the convention” and to be “a woman of rare diplomacy,” was also the Utah bureau secretary and offered her view of the situation in the LDS-dominated state, which joined the Union in 1896 not long after officially renouncing polygamy in the face of judicial rulings on the subject.
Her assessment was simple:
Thousands of Mormons are simply such because if they renounce Mormonism their business is gone, their social position is gone, and they are ostracized in every possible way. All these are glad to have us teach their children . . . We do not antagonize them by attacking Mormonism, but we teach the right, and by comparison, they are soon led to see the wrong . . . we teach the wrong of profanity, and yet one of the commonest sins among the Mormons is profanity.
The Los Angeles Express of the 9th devoted some space to a proposal broached at the convention the previous morning by Mrs. P.H. Bodkin, who told the assembly, “Southern California, and especially Los Angeles, is peculiarly cosmopolitan, and it is among the mixed races and the downtrodden foreigners that the needs are the worst.” This was why an orphanage was needed for the homeless children “of the foreign element.”
Bodkin went on to state that “Los Angeles has a foreign population that is probably not duplicated by any city of its size in the country” and reported that there were 6,000 Mexicans, 5,000 Italians, 5,000 Japanese, 4,000 Russians, 2,000 Chinese, 1,000 “Slavonians,” 600 Syrians and 500 Armenians resident in the Angel City. In the area covered by the Church’s Southern California conference, there were 60,000 Mexicans and 3,500 native Americans.
The delegate continued, “with such a large percentage of foreigners in the district we naturally have a large problem with which to cope” and a strongly felt need were “liberal donations for our Japanese home” as well as the newly opened Methodist hospital. Meanwhile, a Chicago delegate, speaking of Jews and “Bohemians” in the ghetto of the Windy City offered this remarkable statement, which can be readily pondered today:
These people become massed in the large centers of population and make them a real menace to the country. To save the country, we must save the city.
The assemblage then ended its official business for the day and delegates were invited to join the Los Angeles and Pasadena branches of the Society for a trip on the Pacific Electric Railway to the Cawston Ostrich Farm and other points of interest in the San Gabriel Valley before an evening reception was tendered to them at the prominent Ebell Club of Los Angeles.
At that event, Potter again commented on the “social ulcer” that was the Mormon church, blaming presidents Roosevelt and Taft for not doing enough to counter the pernicious influence of the LDS and she specifically scored the former who “did not take the proper stand for righteousness and against Mormonism when he had the chance.” As for Taft, she claimed that “Mormonism is permitted to exist . . . because of its great political influence.”
Reiterating some of the main points of her earlier presentation, Potter told Club members “Mormons contend that it is a violation of the Constitution of the United States to interfere with them in the practice of their faith,” though she didn’t appear to offer any direct challenges to this basic tenet of religious freedom.
She added that polygamy still existed within the LDS community, but this “is not the most objectionable tenet” because “Christian women will prevent polygamy increasing” and Potter offered that the biggest concern was that “the children of the Mormons are being carefully trained and their faith inculcated in them in a way,” as if this was not the case with children in other religions, “that will make them undesirable American citizens.”
Notably, Potter did not cause the biggest stir at the Ebell. Rather, this was Hilda M. Nasmith, who spoke on “The American Negro,” with the Times of the 12th summarizing her talk as the speaker suggesting:
the white man is responsible for about all the wrongs the negro ever committed, including dishonesty, outrages and many other sins of the calendar. She believes in the black man, she said and that he is capable of a high moral standard, and responds to education. She was very enthusiastic, but her words evidently gave offense to several club women, who got up and left the auditorium while she was speaking.
The Times of the 11th covered another element of the conference, this being “the rally of the Department of Young People’s Work” which was held at the Simpson Auditorium, where an Abraham Lincoln centennial event was held earlier in 1909. There were two speakers, though Caroline Lee, who was a former student and current teacher at the Methodist school for Chinese children in San Francisco, was given short shrift as the paper merely reported that Lee “spoke of the help given her people by the missionary society.”
The Rev. Matt S. Hughes of the First Methodist Church of Pasadena was the focus, instead, as he lectured at length on the work of young Methodist boys and girls, who “all have dreams of great accomplishments and they are always active and full of enthusiasm,” this being “an arrangement of nature to keep their bodies from blowing up.” Hughes offered that “what a wonderful thing it is that God starts the child full of hope,” though he confessed that “as we grow older, with the hardships and failures, hope gradually diminishes”—what the Creator’s role in that change, however, was not addressed.
Hughes told the young audience that they “should never be ashamed of your enthusiasm” as “it is the greatest thing you will ever have in this world or in heaven” and that “youth is the time for great audacity” and “the time of rashness.” He went on to suggest that “youth today is worth more to the kingdom of God than ever before” and he seemed to downplay the important of public education by claiming “our public schools cannot give children brains” and were not just engaged in “a training and developing process” but its system “really is a forcing process,” as if this was not the case with religious schools.
In the 19th century, the pastor went on, three great religious movements were fundamentally ones for the youth, these being Sunday Schools, the Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.) and the Young Women’s Christian Association (Y.W.C.A.), and young persons’ societies, but Hughes lamented that “many men have written on church work, but they have all overlooked the young people.”
On Sunday the 11th, the Rev. Charles Edward Locke of the host church gave “an anniversary sermon” to the convention delegates under the heading of “Love and Duty” and presented a notable historical analysis by stating,
Christ has done much for woman. The crowning act of God’s busy week of creation was the making of man. Four thousands years later, out of the tragedy and triumph of Calvary [Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection] a new order of beings came into existence—I mean woman. Christianity has emancipated woman . . .
Christianity has recognized the social claim of woman . . . Christianity has extended to women all educational advantages; has recognized the home to be woman’s supreme theme; has made her a factor in church and state, and has increasingly regarded her legal rights . . .
Jesus has highly exalted woman. He has made her the custodian of the peace and happiness of the world. Next to Christ Himself the divinest influence making for the regeneration of mankind, is a good woman.
Locke detailed the work of the Society and its 3,300 auxiliaries with more than 150,000 members and he continued that “consecrated Christian womanhood must counteract the diabolical and pernicious attacks upon our Lord and His truth,” but, importantly, the Times, while including the above comments, left out other particularly incendiary and vengeful attacks on what the Los Angeles Herald quoted him as saying were the “hysterical high priestesses of preposterous nonsense!”
Specifically, Locke lambasted Annie Besant, Mary Baker Eddy, Emma Goldman and Katherine Tingley,” for their teaching of Christian Science (Eddy) and Theosophy (Besant and Tingley, the latter setting up her society at Point Loma near San Diego and who also successfully sued the Times for libel—which might explain why the paper excised these comments) and Goldman’s particularly radical views on all kinds of subjects.
In his remarks reported by the Herald and left out by the Times, Locke thundered:
O, Christian women, you must be most industrious in your ministry to Christ! Nowadays many deceitful and erratic women are using their unique opportunities for leading humanity astray. A colossal deception that has a woman founder calls itself Christian . . . [and] has been anti-Christ from the beginning. It calls itself science, but it defies all well-known canons of science . . .
A tidal wave of delusion is upon us. A suffering humanity has been swept from its foundations in the hope of finding surcease from bodily ills. When the reaction comes the poor victims will be left high and dry without faith in God or man and disgusted with themselves and life.
The conference resumed on Monday the 11th “and was little interfered with by the entertaining the President of the United States,” as William Howard Taft visited greater Los Angeles (and would return again in 1911). The delegates went out “to pay their respects” from the steps to the church “and were rewarded by a most gracious bow from the President,” despite Potter’s fulminations against him and his predecessor for a lack of action against the “Mormon menace.”
National officer elections, the presentation of life memberships to babies and toddlers (Bodkin’s 8-month-old grandson became the youngest ever member of the Society!), reports, fundraising and other activity took place as the conference came to a close. Some of the reports concerned missionary work among Black people in the South and among Latinos and native Americans, while the president of Albion College in Michigan, Dr. Samuel Dickie, lectured on “Temperance, and Its Future in America.” Potter gave her talk on Mormonism, but there were no summaries, perhaps because the subject had been amply covered previously.
The Woman’s Home Missionary Society conference is both interesting and instructive because it reflects on so many issues from the early 20th century with respect to religion and the variation in practices, immigration and assimilation, cultural differences, demographic shifts, race and ethnicity, the role of women, Americanization and patriotism, and much more. It is also notable that one innocuous little postcard can be a springboard to diving into these issues, including exploring aspects of life well more than a century ago that still have resonance today.
Still resonate??? Resonates as loudly as the noise Niagara Falls makes, I’d say. Thanks again for your daily dose of history!
Hi Michele, we’re glad that you follow the blog regularly, including those that resonate very loudly!
As mentioned in this post, the Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Church reported during their 1909 convention on the fund raising of their newly established (1903) Methodist Hospital. In recent years, I twice accompanied my wife for her surgery and hospitalization at this hospital in Arcadia, where it relocated in 1957. Though not large, the hospital left an excellent impression on me with its cleanliness and well-managed professional services. During our second visit, following its merger in 2022 with USC to become USC Arcadia Hospital, I found that their high standard of care and hospitality remained unchanged.