From their status as citizens in a free land, American workingmen have acquired, together with the sense of individual freedom, the quality, in very marked degree, of self-respect. It exhibits itself sometimes in highly contradictory fashion, for it is sensitive and jealous in the making; but self-respect is none the less a fundamental characteristic. Besides Dennis and three others, who were Roman Catholics, the men at Mrs. Schulz’s boarding-house did not go to church. In talking with them I discovered that all had been more or less in the habit of church-going in their country homes, but that the habit had dropped completely from them upon coming to live in town. The case was perfectly apparent. The mere suggestion of a mission church was insulting to them and, from the new idea of churches for the rich, they had learned their first lesson in class distinctions. Every feature of such a church, its richly dressed occupants in their high-priced pews, and the general atmosphere of merely social superiority, would have inflicted upon these men, in spite of a cordial welcome, as deep a wound to their self-respect as they would have felt in being decoyed to a formal reception in a lady’s drawing-room. To them, the latter function could not be more obviously intended for another class than theirs. One night, before I left the factory, Albert spoke his mind to me on the subject with much freedom. Several times I had asked him to come with me to church, and on this particular Saturday evening I spoke of a preacher whom I hoped to hear in the morning, and who, I urged, would surely interest him. “Look here, John,” he said, finally, “it’s all right you asking me to go to church, but I ain’t going. I used to go regular when I lived to home, although I ain’t no church-member. It was different out there, for most everybody went and chipped in what they could, and everybody sat where they liked, and it wasn’t one man’s church more than another’s. You go to church if you like. That’s your own business. But I ain’t going to no one-horse mission chapel that the rich has put up so they won’t be bothered with the poor in their own churches. You say they treat you well when you go to church on Michigan Avenue. I don’t doubt it. What reason would they have for not treating you well? But, all the same, they take you in for charity, for you couldn’t pay for a seat in one of them churches. No, sir, the rich folks build their churches for themselves, and they keep them up for themselves, and I ain’t never going to interfere with that arrangement. I don’t mind going to the meetings of the Association once in awhile, for there’s fellows of your own kind there, and you hear some good speaking and singing. I ain’t got much use even for that, for it’s only a sideshow that’s run mostly by the rich, but I ain’t got no use at all for your churches.”