Second in an occasional series of posts about North Unitarian Church in New Bedford, Mass.

Samuel Louis Elberfeld was minister at North Unitarian Church in New Bedford from 1919-1923. The Web site of John Elberfeld, his grandson, has an abridged version of one of Samuel Elberfeld’s sermons. It is a pulpit-pounding, fire-breathing, Unitarian social justice sermon — one of those social justice sermons that is supposed to make you squirm and feel very uncomfortable. So of course I can’t resist posting the abridged version here…

Abridged version of Rev. S. L. Elberfeld’s farewell sermon to the Unitarian Church in Charlestown, N.H., 1912. As reprinted in a supplement to The News Review, Charlestown, NH, August 5, 1976 (scanned by John Elberfeld, proofreading and minor edits by me).

It is needless to say that the Charlestown [New Hampshire] of the past and the Charlestown of today are different, and in the minds of some, vastly different. Formerly it was all residential and agriculture — today, it is part residential and part manufacture — and even the character of the farms and farming has changed. We have changed; but can you say that the change has been toward progression?…

We are not as cultured as we formerly were, but there are greater activities. As the old residents of the town die off their wealth dissipates to outside recipients and the Town must seek new ways of revenue and people, and the easiest way is to bring in manufacturing concerns. These factories bring people who help to populate the town and increase business. In the glow of an incoming factory I was even told by an enthusiast that it would add to our church number; but not a single addition has come to us through business boom. The gain has been elsewhere…

But no matter who loses or gains, the change has come about and must be accepted as a fact and we must adapt even our churches to the changed conditions…

If all the disreputable things were true about people in your midst that have come to me by hearsay in the four years that I have been with you, this community would undoubtedly be the worst morally on the fact of the globe…

You might criticize my being so far away from you on Sky Farm, but it is the best thing that could ever have happened to you who have listened to me so many Sundays. I was nearer heaven there than the maelstrom of gossip would ever permit me to get here. When some of the things that were mauled over here in the privacy of secret confab and repeated to other secret gatherings did finally reach me, I thanked God from the bottom of my heart that I did not have to live in the center of that evil talk, living apart from it all. I retained my ideals and my respect for the most of you and I preached those ideals of man, of religion, of God…

The keenly alive, uneducated or unscholarized human brain is just as valuable in the solution of town problems as the scholarized brain. It is the man as well as the brain that we are after; and let us not forget the heart which is often of more value when dealing with children. Cut out the heart and sympathy is done away with; and sympathy for and with the child is more than your knowledge of the details of running a school. Think of a parent bringing up a child by the brain process and no heart, no sympathy, with the child in that which interests it….

What is needed, then, is that the supervision of our schools be placed directly in the hands of those who have children of their own. For instance, take a case directly in hand. A driver of one of those long rides in the transportation of children from a distant farmhouse to a far distant school center thought it within his province to keep the children from talking, laughing, and singing on the way of the long drive. Arguments arose between the driver and the children whereupon the driver pushed his fist in the face of a child;– or as the child said, “Hit me in the face with his fist.” This, without investigation, was termed by some in authority over the schools as discipline. Heart, sympathy, for the child there was none. The father of the child took the matter in his own hands, interviewed the driver in a special manner and the children were allowed to talk, laugh and sing. They became respectful to the driver, and there was no more punching or depriving the children of their dinner pails and school dinner…

Permit me to say something on the transportation of pupils to the school centers. This is of importance to the town, for had you proper transportation those deserted farms in the outlying districts would have occupants. To know the importance of transportation you must realize how it affects real estate. Try to sell an outlying farm and the first question that is asked is how far to the school; what accommodations have you for carrying the children? Answer truthfully and the prospective buyer with children immediately gives up the idea of buying your farm.

I know of good farms going to ruin and helped to ruination by poor transportation and the centralization of education into school centers. Give me, not the old, but the New District school. Hardly a magazine but has something in it on this question and in favor of the New District School.

The town ought to own its own vehicles, covered in summer and covered and closed in winter. Let me describe to you how our children and some of the others were carried to school last winter…

The movement of a moving picture machine would have had to have been quickened many thousand times to have detected movement in the horse and sleigh that carried them through the biting cold and drenching rains of those long winter drives to the North Charlestown School. No cover overhead, not enough covering for the knees, for I furnished one robe; and they were always damp. A little one-horse sleigh with three children sitting with backs to the horse and curved dash of an improvised seat made of a seven-inch width board; one child seated with the driver who kept one foot out of the sleigh to allow the child to remain in. This lightning express left home at 7:30 a.m. and arrived at school about 9 a.m. with the children sometimes wet to the skin to sit out the day…

Ten weeks of travel morning and night through the bitter winter weather under those conditions enforced upon every man in this audience would cause a special town meeting to be called to consider purchasing vehicles for school transportation…

Many have asked why we don’t stay on the farm and become constant residents of Charlestown and we answer that you carry your calves and cows to market in winter better protected than your children to school. Money could not hire us to submit the children to another winter’s cruelty of transportation…

I am reminded here of a story told of a clash in the Senate between Senator Biley and Senator Borah of Idaho. One of Bomb’s measures “is a law providing for a bureau for children.”…

“I assume,” said the supercilious Biley, “that this bill, of the senator from Idaho is somewhat similar to that provision in the agricultural appropriation bill which makes some sort of a similar arrangement for calves and pigs!”

“Exactly,” smiled Borah at the Texan. “My bill seeks to have the government do for the children what it has already done for the calves and pigs.”

Whereupon Mr. Biley sat down heavily and became absorbed in Jeffersonian thought. Let us agree with Senator Borah to give to our children at least equal public advantages that we give to our calves and pigs…

When a measure for the advantage of the children comes up you will always find those brought up in the rigid school of home economics crying,– “We can’t afford it!” If we agree with them we must say then, that we can’t afford to give the boy who will in a few years become the man and the citizen, and the girl who is to become the mother of a succeeding generation, the best advantages educationally and morally.

That bugaboo Economy is the worst bug that ever worked itself into the human brain and heart! Economy! Shame! Let us be generous even to a fault when dealing with the matter of education and morals for the growing generation of boys and girls.

You needed town water and you got it; North Charlestown put up the same cry of its needs, they got it; you cry for good roads over which to send the automobiles, you get them while the farmer bumps his bumpity way to town; but when the cry goes out from the majority of the townspeople for the best of schooling, both grammar and high, for the young, both hands go up in horror. “We can’t afford it!”

We need a high school here in town and four years of it; two to start with and the other two to follow later. In sending the boys and girls away to other towns to receive their education you are weaning them away from the town, for all their interests are fixed outside of the home town — educational and social. The town spirit of the boys and girls is at very low ebb; the school hasn’t even a school yell. Who’s to give it to them and drill them in it? The girl school teachers and the janitor?

You need a man educator to start the first two years of high school and this man educator can allow you to dispense with an outside superintendent whose principal business is taking care of another town’s schools. This man educator can just as well take over the supervision of your schools and they will receive a more thorough supervision than they are now getting.

Many of you here believe in the liberal church but you contribute little or nothing to it. You’ll spend seventy-five cents for a seat in the theatre, besides the car fare, and expect to buy a reserved seat in heaven for twenty-five cents. You, boy, will spend ten cents for candy and drop one cent in the contribution box. The whole matter is that people pay for the pleasure they get out of a thing and not for the good they might do for themselves and others.

Common labor is paid from $550 to $600 a year and you cannot expect a minister who has spent years preparing for a pastorate of a church where all has gone out and nothing much in the way of earnings come in during that preparation to work for less than the price of common labor.

It is up to you, then, who expect to be married and buried by a liberal minister to help keep him in the community. You may not attend church once, twice, or a dozen times a year, but your money is good and the risk of taint will be run. Every one can afford to contribute weekly ten-cents, at least, five cents.

A final note: John Elberfeld’s Web site records that when the Elberfeld family moved back to Charlestown during the First World War, there was by then a high school, and one of the Elberfeld boys went to that high school. Presumably, then, Samuel Elberfeld’s farewell sermon had at least some effect.