It is an interesting thing to visit a social center in either Boston or New York. Ford Hall or Cooper Union serves as a good illustration. Here the majority of the people are Jews, radical through and through. They are intelligently awake and thoroughly skeptical. The Bible is not an open book to many of these people, and they have not learned to read history or current events with an open mind. Social conditions and economic pressure make it almost impossible for them to render a straight and just judgment. They have monstrous misconceptions of Protestants and the Protestant religion, for they see for the most part only the worst side. America means to them, instead of freedom, hope, and independence, only extortionate profiteering. =The Gospel for the Garment-workers.= How can we overcome this prejudice? How can we give these people an adequate and intelligible interpretation of the gospel? We must respect their faith. It will not solve the problem to make proselytes of a large number of our new Jewish citizens. We need to be definite, concrete, and practical, and to leave controversial matters and philosophical discussions out of the situation. We need to cultivate more reverence in our American churches, and a finer regard for the associations and experiences of the past of these people. As these words are being written, I can see from my window the tower of a church surmounted by a cross. It is the Judson Memorial Baptist Church on Washington Square. Sunday after Sunday there are gathered together large groups of people. Most of them live under sordid, cramped conditions, but they find in this church a ministry that appeals to them. The church is more interested in making good Americans out of these people, and in interpreting America to them than in securing their membership in the church. And rightly this church is justified in its attitude. By ministering to the people it is gaining their allegiance to the principles of Christianity as it could in no other way. To sum up the chapter, the making of garments, like other industries we have considered, is highly specialized. It has been taken out of the hands of the American group. The old-fashioned dressmaking and tailor shops have given way to the huge lofts where many factories are turning out clothing for men, women, boys and girls in large quantities. The workers are all city dwellers. They are all foreigners, most of them Jews, with a large intermingling of Italians. To meet their needs and to interpret the gospel to them the church must first of all come to know the conditions under which they live. It must create a public opinion that will demand an adjustment of the difficulties in the trade itself and then in the homes of the people. In the community in which they live it must show that the members of the Protestant churches are the best of friends and neighbors. CHAPTER V THE WORLD OF THE MINERS