Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/235

Washington Gladden 217 Massachusetts, and, for over thirty years, in Columbus, Ohio. He was the author of many books on the social and religious readjustment, of which perhaps On Being a Christian (1876), Applied Christianity (1886), Who Wrote the Bible? (1891), Tools and 'the Man (1893), The Christian Pastor (1898), and The Labor Question (191 1) have had the largest sale. No one of these volumes, however, was written merely in order to be published ; they grew out of the pressing problems of his minis- try. His fine-spirited Recollections (1909) indicates the stormy theological and sociological times through which he lived. He refused to be silent and he was fortunately mediatory by nature. His fairness won him a hearing and his good-will gave him effectiveness. He challenged the official conserva- tism of the Congregational churches, he threw his influence into the struggle for untrammelled investigation of the Bible, he insisted upon a larger share of the profits of industry for the labourers, he initiated the movement for the change of the time of election in Ohio from October to November, he had himself elected to the city council in Columbus when important franchises were to be decided, and became firmly convinced of the necessity of municipal ownership of pubKc works. He writes: "Dishonest men can be bought and ignorant men can be manipulated. This is the kind of government which private capital, invested in public-service industries, naturally feels that it must have. ... I do not think that the people of any city can afford to have ten or twenty or two hundred millions of dollars directly and consciously interested in promoting bad government." During a fierce street-car strike in Cleveland in 1886 he journeyed thither and spoke to a great meeting of employers and employees on "Is it Peace or War?" openly favouring the right of the workingmen to combine for the de- fence of their interests. In a later street-car strike in his own city he intervened, insisting upon the arbitration which the labourers desired and the employers refused. He was an enemy of war. As late as 1909 he declared that he wished secession had been tried : " I cannot help wishing that the ethical passion of the North for liberty had been matched with a faith equally compelling in the cogency of good-will." An enemy of social- ism, he became at length convinced that the functions of gov- ernment should be extended. His opinions moved slowly but