The Northern States Mission

I have the privilege of representing seventy-four young men and women who are preaching the Gospel in the Northern States mission, also more than seven thousand Latter-day Saints who are there I should like to tell you, if I can, something about the way these missionaries are meeting the great social problems which are confronting the people there. ¶

Just a few days ago, a man from Toledo, Ohio, who claims a membership in the Church, came to my office to ask for some help. He said that he and his wife had been hunting over the city of Chicago for many days for work. I asked him the condition of the many men whom we see sitting on the park benches and other places, idle, in the city of Chicago. He said : "Come and go with me tonight, and I will take you down on the lake front and show you twenty-five thousand men or more — men who are willing to work and want work, and men who have nothing to eat." I went down through the subway under Michigan Avenue, and there I saw men in crowds, lying on the ground, with just a newspaper under them, keeping warm by the fires that they made from boxes that they had gathered from the stores. ¶

This man said to me that he had made all the efforts that he could, and if it came to the worst, he had told his wife the day before that he would get a gun and go down-town and get food for her to eat. There are many of the larger steel mills, automobile factories and others, that are only employing now from forty to sixty percent of their men. ¶

These social problems produce a feeling of unrest, and the thinking people are facing these problems and wondering how to meet them. ¶

The feeling is growing, in the colleges and in the universities, that our problems must be solved, not by legislation, but by establishing character in the youth as they grow up, and in the people. ¶

A minister of the Presbyterian church recently invited me to speak to his congregation. I asked him to suggest a subject and he said : "Tell us how the Latter-day Saints are meeting the social and economic problems which the world is facing at the present time." I had the privilege of explaining to them something about the law of tithing, and fast donations, and the way we take care of our poor through the wards and the Relief Societies. I also explained to them something of the character of the education which we give in our Sunday Schools, and Mutual Improvement, and other auxiliary organizations. After the meeting was over, the way that group of people gathered around and asked their questions indicated the interest which people are taking in these social problems. ¶

Recently one of the boys (missionaries) wrote me that he had been traveling on the highway, and was picked up by the vice-president of one of the railroads. This Elder and his companion were invited to the home of this gentleman and had a long conversation. This official of the railroad expressed himself, as the boys were leaving, that he ¶

considered the type of work that they were doing was of the very highest nature. He said that if they could carry that spirit among the people, and get others to feel as they felt, (that they were willing to spend their time in teaching principles of such value) that it would help to solve the problems. ¶

We have many other incidents which I thought I would tell you, but cannot, of men who have expressed themselves in a similar way. That is, that the teaching, by example, of young men and women who are willing to spend their time, sustaining themselves while they are doing it, makes an impression. It is an object lesson that impresses the people of the world. ¶

Thinking men, so far as intellectuality is concerned, appreciate the work of the Latter-day Saints. ¶

But there is another way by which men and women are impressed by the work of the missionaries that is in addition to and I think far greater than this intellectual way. It is illustrated by a gentleman with whom I rode a few days ago, who is now a member of the Church. For a long time his wife was a member of the Church, and had been actively working, but he was in opposition. He was a user of tobacco. There was scarcely an hour or minute that he did not have tobacco in some form in his mouth. He said to me that he used foul language, that he was in opposition to the Church and felt that he treated his wife all the time in a very undesirable way. He went to a Relief Society meeting with his wife, not at her request, but just through a suggestion of his own. He sat and listened to the testimonies^ — because it was a testimony meeting — of some of the sisters, and he expressed himself something like this : ¶

"While I was sitting there listening to them, a feeling came over me that passed through me from my head to my feet. I can't describe it, but it was such a feeling that it made the tears stream from my eyes. I felt myself crying. I felt ashamed. I did not know what was the matter with me." He said : "I went home. I threw my tobacco away, and from that day to this I have never touched it. I have treated my wife as I should do." He is now a president of the Mutual Improvement organization, and is a very fine man. ¶

It is that type of thing, wherein men and women change their lives, because the Spirit of the Lord comes over them, that will solve our social problems. ¶

I am appreciative of the work I am doing, and testify to you that I know that the Lord does inspire the hearts of people through his Spirit. I pray the Lord to bless us, that we may all have the spirit of missionary work, and I do it in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶