It was a time when preachers, opera singers, orators, vaudeville acts, chautauquas, etc., filled the large theaters and the big opera houses such as the Grand Opera House, Steinway Hall, Weber Music Hall, Handel Hall with afternoons and evenings of entertainment for the citizens of the city, who by day and night were still working to rebuild Chicago after the great fire of 1871. Some 300,000 people survived the fire. Jobs were plentiful after the fire, People were eager to clean up and rebuild the center of the city. New entrepreneurs appeared overnight. New people poured off the railroads… from Europe, the East Coast and the South…Swedes, Jews, Irish, Germans, and Blacks rushed in for the promise of work and a better life.

In Spring of 1882, Felix Adler, founder of the Ethical Culture movement, traveled to Chicago, and gave a series of six public lectures on the aims and purposes of this new religion. He had realized that Ethical Culture could not grow with only one Society in New York. Adler attracted a large number of prominent business, educational, political, and “free-thinking” persons, some of whom volunteered to work on creating the second Ethical Culture Society in Chicago. By October 5th that year they had founded the Chicago Society, with the following preamble: “We, the undersigned, convinced that the time has come for a larger and higher statement of religious truth than the dominant theologies offer, and believing that the stress of religious teaching should be laid on the duty of moral improvement, (both of self and others), and that religions should guide and inspire us in the sublime path of moral progress, and having before our eyes the example of the New York Society for Ethical Culture” in New York City, and its six years of successful labors, do hereby agree to constitute ourselves an association to be known as the “Society for Ethical Culture of Chicago,” and we pledge ourselves to co-operate to the full extent of our ability in the application and propagation of these principles.”

In a few weeks some delegated members of their group were sent to New York to meet with Adler and interview persons for the position of Lecturer for the Society. Among those interviewed were prominent atheist orator Robert Ingersoll… and William Mackintire Salter. Salter, was the son of the Congregational minister, William Salter of Burlington, Iowa, whose church was a waystop on the Underground Railroad. The younger Salter was an excellent student who entered Knox College in Galesburg, IL at the age of 14. After graduating in 1871, he left for Yale Divinity school in Connecticut with plans to follow in his father’s footsteps. Uncertainty with his faith caused him to move on to Harvard Divinity School near Boston, where he hoped he could hold on to enough to become a Unitarian minister. His romance with the faith diminished further, and honored with a Parker Fellowship from Harvard, he went to Germany to study Plato and Aristotle. But ill health caused him to return home to the United States and his extended studies ceased. After two years of home nursing and a winter of herding sheep in Colorado, he returned to Boston. On the train from New York to Boston in late 1879, he met Felix Adler. He was taken with the ideals of Adler’s new religion with its stress on human service. Adler spoke not of a just creed, — but deed above creed — that, was his motto.

Salter soon became a colleague of Adler working with him in the New York Society. Adler highly recommended to the gentlemen from Chicago that William Mackintire Salter was their man. 1883. Salter accepted the challenge and the scene was set for his first fifteen years of service to the Chicago Society. And together they served the city of Chicago.

“To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one’s own, is ever the beginning of one’s real ethical development.” Felix Adler, Founder of the Ethical Culture Movement

1883 William Mackintire Salter, a young, well-educated son of a Congregationalist minister in Burlington, Iowa, and a 2-year colleague of Felix Adler, the founder of the Ethical Culture Movement, accepted the invitation of the twelve prominent Chicago citizens who were the Society’s organizing committee. Henry Booth, chair of the committee, and first judge of the juvenile court, was elected president of the new Society. Booth was formerly a law professor at the University of Chicago, and currently was head of the new law department at Northwestern University.

Before the year was out the newly formed congregation worked with non-Society members organizing the “Relief Works’ of the Society This was the umbrella under which the Society realized its ideal—that the Society should practice, as well as teach, Adler’s Ethical Culture theme “Deed beyond Creed.” The Relief Works introduced the idea of district nursing, patterned after the visiting nursing program created by the New York Society for Ethical Culture. A Society account of 1916 reports that the Visiting Nurses Association of the day continues on a larger scale. The Margaret Etter Creche (Nursery) was named in honor of the first district nurse employed by the Relief Works.

Salter addressed the social issues of the day in many of his Sunday discourses, such as: “The Mission of Ethical Societies”, “The Social Idea”, and “The Place of a Ethical Society in the Community”. 1886-87 Salter advocated the adoption of the eight-hour workday. 1887 Salter questioned the evidence used in the conviction of the Anarchists in the aftermath of the Haymarket Riot. He, along with Henry D. Lloyd, noted author and political economics lecturer, failed to secure enough signatures on petitions to save all but two of them from the hangman’s noose. Salter presented two addresses from the Society’s public Sunday platform in 1887: “What Shall be Done with the Anarchists?” and “The Cure for Anarchy”.

1888 Society member and attorney, James W. Errant, called attention to the gross abuses of the poor with an address entitled, “Justice for the Friendless and the Poor”, outlining a plan whereby they could receive relief. At that meeting the Bureau of Justice was conceived. Seventeen years later it merged with the Children’s and Women’s Protective Agency and thus the city’s Legal Aid Society was born. Members of the Society continued to serve on its Board well into the twentieth century.

A series of “Economic Conferences” were held in downtown Chicago’s Madison Street Theatre, under the guidance of Salter and Society member, William R. Manierre, as chairman. A 1888 Society accounting of the series reads,“The aim was to bring together the leading representatives of business and labor interests in the hope that a closer association might bring about a mutual understanding and thus lessen the antagonism existing between them.”

No specific date has been been found to pinpoint the beginning of the Society’s children’s classes but their locations are mentioned from time to time. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the classes seem to always be located at a location other than with the adult Sunday program and held at least an hour earlier. Usually it was in one location but in the late 1880’s, three separate sites were indicated on a Sunday School promotional piece … the West side at the Society rooms at 270 W. Warren, the South side at Steinway Hall located at 17 W. Van Buren, and on the North side at the Masonic Hall, 615 N. Clark.

“There is a fatality about our thoughts. If we think things cannot be different from what they are, we but add so much to the dead inertia of the world, which keeps them as they are; while if we will not succumb, we may be part of the very forces that will help to make things different.”
William Mackintire Salter, Leader of the Society 1883-1892 and 1897-1907

1890 At the Society’s Annual Meeting in April 1890, the membership was recorded as 198. Activities of the Society included the Ethical School, The Ladies’ Charitable Union, the Young Peoples’ Union, and The Young Men’s Club.

1892 William Mackintire Salter, disappointed by the critical reaction of some of the membership and the consequential drop in the size of the Society due to his activity surrounding the Anarchists’ trial, asked the Society Board to release him from his Leadership of the Society. His resignation was dated February 1, 1892. He accepted the Philadelphia Ethical Society’s call to serve as their Leader.

Mangasar M. Mangasarian was in born Turkey in 1859. His affluent parents sent him to Roberts College in Constantinople where he was ordained a Congregational minister in 1878 and he served a church in Marsovan until 1880. Records show no date for his arrival in the United States, where he studied for the ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary, becoming the minister of the Spring Garden Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. After three years, he renounced the doctrine of Presbyterianism and tendered his resignation. “I cease to be a Calvinist. I have decided…if Calvin, Wesley and Edwards had the right…. I have the right….my future church will be a church governed by the people.” For three years Mangasar M. Mangasarian worked under the guidance of Felix Adler in New York City.

In 1892 the Chicago Society chose Mangasarian to be the Leader of the Society. He was a fiery orator drawing large crowds to the meetings in the Grand Opera House. Only one transcript of his many lectures at the Society has been located: “Woman’s Place in Free Thought” and only one other title, “An American Religion.” 1898 The members of the Society under the leadership of William Salter, began settlement house work in a very modest way in the near west side neighborhood where many new immigrants struggled for existence while trying to build a new life. First, in a frame storefront, they provided handmade blankets and layettes for new babies and teaching English and domestic skills to the mothers. For many summers they worked in cooperation with another agency, the Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund, maintaining a “baby tent” in Stanford Park, where trained nurses gave medical attention “free of charge” and milk was distributed.

By 1905 the Society built a free-standing brick building on the corner of Union St. & 14th Place which contained rooms for classes and a larger open room for group gatherings, plus housing for a head resident. Its aims were to assist its neighbors to higher standards of physical, mental and moral well-being, to secure work for many, provide kindergarten, educational and library facilities, domestic science and home-making, a summer camp experience, and much more.

The settlement was named Henry Booth House after the first and long-time President of the Society, and the first judge of the new Juvenile Court in Chicago. In 1914 articles of incorporation were issued to Henry Booth House and it became an independent body. Members of the Society continued to support the settlement, serving on its various Boards until the latter part of the 20th century. When the city’s expressway connection from downtown Chicago to the south and west sides was built, Booth House on 14th Place had to be razed to accommodate the new roadway. The city offered HBH a new neighborhood in which to work at 2328 S. Dearborn in the Harold Ickes Homes. Booth House became the first settlement house in a Chicago public housing project. Later HBH became an associate of the Hull House Association and then Michael Reese Hospital lent their support to HBH, expanding it to several satellite locations on the city’s near south side. Henry Booth House was created to help people in the urban environment and it is still in operation today.

“We are a new religion arising, basing itself on trust in man, calling to the hitherto unstirred depths of loyalty in him, –believing that he can love the good without thought of a reward, that the heaven of principle can reign in the human breast.”

William Mackintire Salter, Leader of the Society 1883-1892 and 1897-1907

The bibliography of the Ethical Movement is remarkable in its extent and importance, and has been recognized by educators, moralists and religious teachers, both national and international, as extremely valuable. First among its regular publications was ‘The International Journal of Ethics,’ a high-class quarterly journal [published in Chicago]. ‘The Standard’ published by the American Ethical Union in New York City, and issued eight months during the years 1914-1955, is invaluable as an official organ of the movement which focused public attention on the great ethical problems of the day, written by the Ethical leaders of the Movement and interspersed with essays of noted personages of the period. Also ‘The Standard’ contained news and notes on the various societies, profiling their members, activities and Sunday morning speakers and their topics.

The Chicago Society has a complete collection of the journals, hardbound year by year: thirty-four volumes, with worn and yellowed pages. We hope to have it indexed in the coming year.

1892 While Mr. Mangasarian was chosen by the Society to be its leader after Mr. Salter’s resignation, little is known of his tenure with the Society. He, too, had been an associate of Dr. Adler in New York. Judge Henry Booth, who had been a member of the founding and organizing committee of the Society, had been elected President continuing on in that office through the creative and productive first nine years of its social and educational work.

Society members continued their social work in the near West Side neighborhood.

1893 Members also participated in the Parliament of World Religions, aiding in organizing the World’s Congress of Religions during the World’s Fair Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

1896 A letter written by the Corresponding Secretary to the members and friends of the Society relates, “Mr. Mangasarian has deemed it unwise and impossible to continue his services with us as lecturer (due to the unfortunate condition of his eyes and his consequent inability to resume his work).” The Board of Trustees asked Mr. Salter to return to his previous position as lecturer. He accepted.

The Board has engaged the new and beautiful Steinway Hall, at 17 E. Van Buren Street, for the Sunday morning services.

Three Sunday Schools continued to meet: West Side at 166 S. Wood St.; South Side at 3116 Forrest Ave.; and North Side at 621 Wells St.

The Chicago Society adjusted itself to the requirement of the Illinois marriage law in a dignified way. The law provided that, “All persons belonging to any religious society, church, or denomination may celebrate their marriage according to the rules and principles of such religious society, church or denomination.” They passed a resolution which explained the Society’s position as follows:

”The love and practice of the good is not a secondary matter to us; it is our primary, highest concern. It makes our religion—in it we wish to educate our children, in accordance with it we wish to have the marriage ceremony performed, in following it we find our consolation in face of trial and trouble, and in harmony with it we wish the last rites to be performed over our remains!”

1904 There had been discussions between Mr. Salter and some of the members regarding building a permanent home for Henry Booth House. The trustees decided that at least $25,000 (half for land and building, and half for maintenance) must be subscribed to before the building could begin. The report from which this is taken shows nearly $11,000 in cash on hand and subscribed funds of over $21,000 promised. Land was purchased on the SW corner of 14th Place and Union.

“It is the pursuit of truth, not of error, that makes for growth and joy. One ‘I love’ is worth more than a thousand ‘I hate’. One ‘I believe’ will move the world, convert withered bones into human beings, shake the sleepers into life, and the glow of action when a million ‘I do not believes’ will not have the force of a passing puff of wind. The right spirit is more than the right opinion.”
Mangasar M. Mangasarian, Lecturer of the Society 1892 – 1897

1897 After M. M. Mangasarian resigned as the Society Leader, three outstanding speakers were appointed to join William M. Salter upon his return to the responsibilities of the Sunday public platform. The Staff of Lecturers included Ms Jane Addams, Founder and Director of Hull-House; Nathaniel Schmidt, Professor of Semite Languages and Literature at Cornell University; and Charles Zeublin, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. All three had spoken previously on the Society platform.

Records indicate that Professor Schmidt traveled back and forth between Chicago and the East coast continuing with his Cornell position and often speaking at the Eastern Ethical Societies.

Mr. Mangasarian, three years after his resignation, created the Independent Religious Society which met in Orchestra Hall on Sunday afternoons. He continued with his rationalist oratory for many years, and died in California at the age of 85 in 1944.

1900 Henry Booth House, still operatng in storefronts, published a small pamphlet about its work, stating; “Though we are in the heart of the Russian Jewish district, we apparenty have around us quite as many Irish as Jewish people. These two with a few Bohemians, complete our clientele …. the occupations of our neighbors are too varied for accurate classification. The Jews are tailors, junk dealers, and peddlers, and some of them with their wives, generally in the best one of their crowded rooms, sell kosher-food and other supplies needed by their people. The Irish work on the railroads, and for the city in various capacities, ….. The young girls work in laundries, bookbinderies, as cash girls and clerks in uptown stores, for the tailors in the ward and as home finishers …. Some of the young men work with their fathers, or are engaged in like occupations, but many of them are idle most of the time, living upon their families. But we should poorly fulfill our mission if we were merely an annex to the schools. We are in the Seventh ward to help the people to find a higher form of social life than would come to the unaided.”

A list of classes includes, kindergarten, concert, mythology, manual training, gymnastics for young women and young men, dancing, Reading Circle, sewing, Young Citzens Club, Knitting Club, Junior Dramatic Club, a Woman’s Club and Mothers’ meetings led with less than thirty volunteers. They plead for more space and more volunteers to help.

Finally in 1904 members began serious Booth House fundraising. In 1907 a new brick building at the corner of Union and 14th Place was raised. The estimated budget for the Society’s operational needs was $4800 and for Booth House, $2800, a total of $7600.

1907 A Convention of the American Ethical Societies was held December 28th, 29th and 30th hosted by the Chicago Society at the new Henry Booth House, Handel Hall and the Fine Arts Building. President Edwin S. Fechheimer was Chairman of the event, held in connection with An Ethical Congress.

The Ethical Convention topics were “A Summer School of Ethics”, “How to Meet the Ethical Needs of Great Cities”, and “Ethics in Business Affairs”. Dr. Felix Adler gave the Convention Address Sunday morning in Handel Hall.

The Ethical Congress portion of the meetings was led by Ms Jane Addams with most of the principal speakers from outside the Ethical Movement …. “hoping that by an exchange and clarification of views a contribution may be made to moral progress.” Topics of discussion held by the Congress were “Ethics and the Social Movement”, “Philosophical Basis of Ethics” and “Ethical Tendencies in the Churches”.

1911 This is the year the Society voted to change its original name to the Chicago Ethical Society. There was no record available of the reasoning behind the change, though the pundits have said it was because the city of Chicago wasn’t ready for culture yet.

“Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.” Jane Addams, Member of Staff of Lecturers of the Society, 1897-1912

1911 A report of the Recording Secretary, John F. Turner, states that 203 was the average Sunday attendance the previous year, up from 119 in 1909. It was not a gradually increasing number, but was affected by the renown of the speakers on the platform. The low attendance of 73 excelled to a high of 571 achieved by Professor Charles Zeublin, a member of the Society’s Staff of Lecturers which included Miss Jane Addams, Professor Nathaniel Schmidt and Mr. Salter. Leaders of other Societies and outside speakers “filled in.”

Meetings were held in Handel Hall at 40 E. Randolph and were soon moved to the new Steinway Hall at 17 E. Van Buren St. 1912 Among the outside speakers was Horace J. Bridges, recently new to America from London’s South Place Ethical Society where he had worked with Stanton Coit, founder of neighborhood guilds (settlement houses).

1913 This year Mr. Bridges was elected Leader of the Society and in accepting the honor, he said, “the increase of our audiences and additions to our membership are experimental proof of my contention, that we have to ‘to preach the word’, faithfully and fearlessly, in order to make our Society large and powerful as an influence for personal and civic righteousness in the community.”

The American Ethical Union held its Convention this year in the Fine Arts Building and its Banquet in the Hotel Sherman, at Clark and Randolph Sts. Mr. Bridges, at the age of 33, was recognized as the new Leader of the Society in an Inaugural Service held in a theater in the Fine Arts Building.

1914 Mr. Bridges was a prolific writer and outstanding speaker-representative of the Society. The following is the title of his talk on Sunday, March 1, “Ought Women to Seek Equality with Men?” in which he listed, “a bald summary of seven aspects of practical life in which equality for women is as yet unattained, but in which it cannot be denied to them without tyranny and insult to their humanity: 1. Educational Equality; 2. Political Equality; 3. Economic Equality; 4. Professional Equality; 5. Economic Freedom in Domestic Life; 6. Religious Equality; and 7. Equality in the Moral Demand made by Society upon Men and Women.”

1916 Dr. Bridges took part in organizing the Urban Conditions Among Negroes, later known as the Urban League. This organization was created to deal with the problem of the rapid influx of Negroes in wartime, to work in the industries which the war had deprived them of their customary numbers of immigrant recruits.

On Sunday, December 3rd, former Leader William Salter, presented a discourse on his published book, “Nietzsche and the War”, at 11 a.m. at the Society’s current meeting place, the Playhouse Theater in the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Ave.

1918 Henry Booth House opened its baby tent June 30 with a doctor and two nurses available. Several excursions were held during the summer: 3 mothers and 40 children went on a train ride to Weldon Mineral Springs Grove at Clinton, lllinois, and 152 children went on a Fourth of July excursion to Palos Park.

The Society and the staff of Booth House also took an active interest in the politics of running West Park II which adjoined their property.

The Young People’s Union of the Society which had suspended its activities during war was reorganized after the Armistice.

“This is a fellowship whose members come from many different religious ancestries. It requires neither acceptance nor denial of theological doctrines. It seeks to unite its members on the highest human aim, the will to promote righteousness in all the relations of life. The bond of union is not a creed but devotion to ethical progress.”
Horace J. Bridges, Leader of the Society 1913-1938

When compiling a history of any organization, work is crucially dependent on what factual dated work is left behind whether in the office of the organization, in the personal papers of those involved, or public records left in libraries, museums, newspaper morgues, or related organizations. What is good to find are the officer and committee reports, photographs of identified personages involved, newspaper clippings, diaries or appointment books. Needless to say, an officer and an assigned person-in-charge of keeping a Society profile helps even more. Before 1996 we had no permanent home and our story was scattered in many locations, offices or homes, with little or no control in transition times. Papers were taken away when leaders moved on, perhaps even destroyed when left behind.

So, what you read about in these chapters of history we owe to the dedication of some officer, office clerk, committee chair or Leader who said to their self that the past is important to creating the future. Horace Bridges helped in this effort a great deal.

From 1913 -1955 We express a debt of gratitude to the American Ethical Union for binding yearly 10 or so issues of The Standard with a hard cover and distributing them to the Societies. Among the pages there are reprinted essays and platform talks, plus as time went by they included “News and Notes” of the various Societies and listings of the Sunday platform speakers and their topics. Horace Bridges was Leader of the Chicago Ethical Society over a period of some thirty years and these selected titles list the wide spectrum of his Sunday public addresses:

• 11/09/20 Bolshevism, Fascism and The Middle of the Road
• 05/18/21 – The God of Fundamentalism
• 03/05/22 In Quietness and Confidence Shall Be Your Strength
• 10/07/23 – Dr. Woodrow Wilson and the Danger of Revolution
• 05/11/24 The Immigration Difficulty: What Should We Do About It?
• 03/29/25 The Illinois Law: the Teaching of Birth Control
• 03/14/26 – Taking the Profit Out of War
• 10/16/27 Man’s Instinctive Fear of Truth
• 04/22/28 Shakespeare’s “Tempest” and the Forgiveness of Injuries
• 10/23/29 he Collapse of the Traditional Conception of God
• 10/05/30 Chicago’s Bad Reputation and How to Redeem It
• 12/06/31 What Stays When Morals Change?
• 03/20/32 The Jew and the Arab in Palestine
• 12/03/33 Robert Ingersoll and a Century of Religious Progress

Don’t we wish that we had at least a copy of each of his addresses. Unfortunately the electronic technology age had not yet arrived.

A March 13, 1937 issue of the Chicago Daily News announced Bridges’ 25th anniversary of his Leadership of the Society would be celebrated April 28th with a testimonial dinner at the Blackstone Hotel. Dr. Bridges is to give the silver anniversary address the following Sunday in the Studebaker Theatre, the Society’s regular Sunday meeting site, a venue with a 1350 seating capacity.

The article goes on to say, “Carrying out the tradition of the Ethical Movement with regard to close contact with social, economic and governmental problems, he immediately began a systematic study and analysis of conditions in Chicago and it was not long before he had associated himself with various movements in public welfare and educational fields…. He was one of the organizers and for a long time served as president of the Chicago Urban League, an organization devoted to raising the social and economic standards of the city’s large Negro population, …still serving as a member of its governing board.”

He also was a member of the Chicago Crime Commission, and a member of the Chicago committee for defense of human rights against Nazism. In addition to giving Sunday addresses nearly every Sunday morning, October through mid-May, he conducted adult classes in ethics, philosophy, literature and comparative religion. He also is the author of several widely read books on ethical questions.

An additional community party in honor of Dr. Bridges was held in the large room at Hull House with many ethnic groups of the nearby Henry Booth House community dining, and entertaining with singing and dancing. More next month about Dr. Horace J. Bridges and the Society.

“….When the gentleman resents the affronts to all men as the mediaeval knight resented affronts to brother knights and to ladies of his own caste, and when his conscience impels him to demand for others every deference and consideration he desires for himself, then will he be most truly a gentleman, and then will his honor reach rational consistency and true ethical elevation.”
Horace J. Bridges, Leader of the Society, 1913-1944

1913 I. Horace Bridges, born in England, a self-educated orator and published author, worked prior to coming to Chicago as an assistant to Ethical Leader Stanton Coit in the South Place London Society. He and wife Lucy English had 3 sons, Leonard H.J., Frank S. and Horace E., and one daughter, Dorothy, who died in childhood.

1937 After the 25th anniversary celebration of Bridges’ tenure with the Society he continued in his Leadership position until 1944.

The Standard, the monthly publication of the American Ethical Union, carried an article in its January 1936 issue entitled: A Chicago Beacon, acclaiming Bridges’ relationship with the Chicago Urban League. Bridges, early in his Leadership, “was urged by Felix Adler (founder of the Ethical Movement in America) to make work towards the improvement of race relations in Chicago his special contribution as an Ethical Society Leader, along the line of social service, to the life of that city.”

Bridges was a League board member from the start,…and was its second president from 1919 to a few months ago…the task of writing of its beginnings and of its history naturally fell to him. The Chicago Urban League was, at the time, one of forty-five branches of the National Urban League.

1938 The May Ethical Society News-Letter/Sunday Bulletin gives an overview of the ongoing activities in the Society. The Sunday meetings were held at the Studebaker Theatre, 418 S. Michigan Ave. at 11 a.m., promptly.

The calendar for May reports that Bridges delivered the discourses on May 1st, 8th and 15th: The Children’s Sunday Assembly met in Suite 633 of the Fine Arts Building; The Literary Group’s monthly meeting discussed Gunnar Gunnarsson’s Ships in the Sky; The Civic Affairs Study Group together with other young people of the Society and Dr. Ralph Habas, associate Leader of the Society, met discussing Chicago’s civic problems; and the Henry Booth House Benefit, “International Night”, was held on Tuesday the 17th at the Chicago Women’s Club Theatre, 72 East 11th St., with Mexican, Russian, Lithuanian, Italian, Croation, Hebrew and other folk songs and dances as entertainment.

1940 In one of the issues of The Standard it reports “that Horace Bridges is used to recommending that for every modern novel read, one should read also one of an earlier vintage. Recently he has been returning to Scott, and at the May meeting of the Society’s Literary Group, he will review Guy Mannering.”

1943 Because of difficult rental conditions with no theater presently available, the Society decided on a bold experiment. It would hold its weekly public meetings on Wednesday evenings at 8 p.m. in Curtiss Hall on the tenth floor of the Fine Arts building which also houses the Studebaker and Playhouse Theatres which had been the Society’s Sunday meeting places for over thirty years. A year later in October of 1944, at the start of the 1945-46 program year, the members voted to return to Sunday morning meetings. It was apparently not successful.

In December of 1944 Dr. Bridges, with ill health accentuated, went for an extended stay in the Southwest seeking rest and recovery. The Leaders of sister Societies filled the Sunday platform hour: Algernon Black, Jerome Nathanson, and David S. Muzzey of New York; W. Edwin Collier, of Philadelphia; J. Hutton Hynd of St. Louis; Henry Neumann of Brooklyn, plus other noted speakers as: Dr. Max C. Otto and Dr. Curtis W. Reese rose to the need.

1945  A. Eustace Haydon; born in Canada, educated at Shurleffe College in Upper Alton, IL, McMaster University in Toronto,… a lacrosse athlete and discus thrower, a banished Baptist minister charged with heresey, moving on to the position of general secretary of the local Y.M.C.A. to earn a living, and then became Professor of Comparative Religions at the University of Chicago, …a poet, orator and published author. He and wife Edith Jones also had 3 sons: Harold, Edward and Brownlee. Through the latter years of the Bridges’ leadership, Prof. Haydon came to hear Bridges, even presenting platform lectures as far back as March of 1935. He was appointed Leader of the Society in 1945.

“In the great distractions of the hour, by which the whole world is racked, we find a deeply stimulating challenge. Never before was the need for our principles so manifest. The torch handed to us by the hero spirits who have gone to their rest, must be kept blazing and carried with high courage into the regions of darkness through which mankind is toilsomely struggling.” 
Horace J. Bridges, on the occasion of the 1936 50th Anniversary of the Ethical Movement in America

1945 Professor Haydon became the lecturer of the Society. Some Leaders had initially began as lecturers of the Society, such as William Salter and Horace Bridges, and as time went by were later called Leaders (the official name of the professional head of the Society). Haydon declared after his retirement from the University of Chicago Divinity School, he could not take on the full responsibility of Leadership but would would gladly take on the platform program and would represent the Society to the general public. Horace Bridges had continued on in his Leadership role after his 25th anniversary celebration until 1944, when he retired. Haydon’s personal growth from heresy charges in Saskatoon, Canada (1911-12) to his moving to Chicago earning his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1916 and getting his first position at the Divinity School of the University, as professor of Comparative Religion, is told in W. Creighton Peden’s biography of Haydon, A Good Life in a World Made Good ( Peter Lang Publishing Inc., New York 2006.)

A Humanist Manifesto was first published in The New Humanist (First Series), for May-June, 1933, Vol.VI, No.3 It was a collective effort to present a developing point of view, not a new creed. A. Eustace Haydon was one of the authors of the document and was one of the signers along with Harry Elmer Barnes, Ernest Caldecott, A.J. Carlson, John Dewey, John H. Dietrich, Llewellyn Jones, R. Lester Mondale, Curtis W. Reese, Roy Wood Sellars, V.T. Thayer, Edwin H. Wilson, et al. More than 30 men came to general agreement. 1950’s The Society moved its Sunday public 11 a.m. morning program from the Cordon Club in the Fine Arts Building to the Engineers’ Building at 84 East Randolph Street, renting their meeting hall. The offices of the Society had been for some time at 203 N. Wabash Ave. The meetings of the Sunday School for Children was held there just a little over a two block walk from the adult meeting. Other groups such as the Board, the Young Adults Fellowship, and the Women’s Club held their weekly or monthly regular gatherings there. Cheiko Hata, former traveling interpreter for Margaret Sanger, worked as secretary for Haydon and his son, Ted, who led the Young Adults group.

Close support of Henry Booth House continues through the dedicated efforts of the Women’s Club and various Society individual members. HBH’s current director was Mrs. Edna Hansen, a member of the Society.

Some of the Special Events during Haydon’s Tenure:

• 1945 – Launched the Community Relations Service, studying racial and religious relations, published concluded data for organizations and individuals. Edw.(Ted) Haydon, AEH’s son, director.
• 1945 – Society member James G. White was elected president of the American Ethical Union.
• 1946 – Six weeknight forum meetings with UofC faculty members as speakers were held to discuss post-war problems.
• 1950 – The Society hosted the American Ethical Union’s Annual Assembly at the Sheraton Hotel on Michigan Avenue.
• 1956 – The American Humanist Association presented Haydon with “The Humanist Pioneer” award, carrying on the dissenting tradition of UofC’s George Burman Foster: “The tradition of nonconformity and independence of mind. His interpretation of religion as an outgrowth of human aspiration, as the group quest for the good life, undercut all the theologies, showing the religious to be natural human expressions.”
• Haydon held true to his willingness to publicly represent the Society and its principles. He spoke on the platforms of sister Societies. He spoke at local temples, held classes at the Hyde Park Y.M.C.A., was a popular dinner speaker for many Chicago organizations and had a weekly radio program on WIND. He traveled north, south, east and west, with the message of humanism. The Society has on file many of his discourses, Sunday platform, and radio. Some are included in Peden’s Haydon biography. Haydon resigned from Leadership because of ill health and age, retiring to his son Brownlee’s home in California, often speaking at the Society when he returned to the Midwest.

Fall 1956 – The Society returned to the Fine Arts Building and hired a Unitarian minister from Seattle, Rudolph Gilbert, as Leader.

“The new era is for the brave, the intelligent, the human-hearted, those who can throw wide their arms to say “Yes” to life in all its fullness, who can open their hearts to encircle their fellows with understanding and friendliness. The gods no longer inscribe the tablets of destiny on New Year’s Day. We engrave them with our deeds.”
Eustace Haydon, Leader of the Society, 1945-1956

1956 Little was found in our files about Rudolph Gilbert who the Society hired to guide the organization after Haydon had officially retired. From a Seattle Unitarian Church, he was perhaps hired as an interim leader, as he only stayed for a year. He was a typesetter hobbyist who brought his own printing press.

However, only one combination Sunday bulletin/newsletter has turned up, which announced the platform message for December 16th to be “Religious Humanism.” Other activities listed were: The Women’s Club was presenting Dr. Herman Finer at a Friday evening fund-raising lecture, “Reminiscences of G.B.S.”; Fellowship Evenings in members’ homes to get members acquainted; and a 20-40 Club meeting on Sunday evenings for social fellowship.

1957-1964 During these Leadership-less years the membership hosted a 75th anniversary celebration in the Fall of 1957. Dr. Jacob VanPraag of Holland, Chairman of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, was a special guest, as was the President of the American Ethical Union. Dr. Haydon was honored by those at the speakers’ table along with Judge Edith Sampson, the Mistress of Ceremonies.

The Society also hosted in 1960 an 80th birthday testimonial dinner for Haydon at the Quadrangle Club of the University of Chicago where he spent many years teaching at the Divinity School. Honoring Dr. Haydon after dinner were professors from the University, plus Edwin Wilson, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association, and Charles Geldzahler, President of the Chicago Ethical Society.

Rents in downtown Chicago became more than the membership could manage. Sunday morning meetings were moved to various mid-southside locations,…Henry Booth House, the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club, a Montessori School, a ballet school on 57th Street, and even a time or two in the president’s downtown office, before they were able to return to the Fine Arts Building.

1964 Walter Lawton came to Chicago in 1964 to become the Leader of the Society. He had served two years as a Leader-at-Large for the American Ethical Union, making regular trips to small leaderless Societies to give the Sunday platform and also to meet with their Board and its committees. Born in Georgia, maintaining his southern gentleman composure throughout his life, he was forever open to new ideas and experiences. Serving as director of Camp Madison Felicia, he brought his skills as an outdoorsman to the directorship of the Weis Ecology Center….Though he was involved in the environmental movement, committed to urban education, and programs to alleviate poverty, no passion consumed Lawton’s energies more than the cause of the Civil Rights Movement. He went to Alabama working with the AEU’s Southern Project on Race in the neighborhoods, even starting a care center for children. Though he never marched to Selma with Martin Luther King, he did march with him and got to know him personally later through the protest activities in the streets of Cicero, Illinois. Within a year or so of working with the Chicago members to form a Social Projects Committee, an enrichment and tutoring program called Horizons was created for pre-high school boys. Its goal: to improve basic skills in English, and provide enrichment experiences to help them move on to high school instead of becoming dropouts. Lawton also was the primary organizer of what stills exists today, our Memorial Day Camp Weekend. The prime social event of the year started at the Y.W.C.A. Camp on the shores of Lake Michigan just north of the Indiana border, starting Saturday morning with fun, workshops, discussion groups, swimming, square dancing and a bonfire, …ending Monday morning after breakfast. Later when the Y Camp was sold to developers, the weekend moved to the Chicago Church Conference camp in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Geneva.

1968 After much sharing of information and feelings, the Chicago Ethical Society members with the guidance of Walter Lawton, changed its name to the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago, with the hope of further clarifying its basic beliefs to the general public.

“FREE MEN standing together can make freedom great…Free Men standing alone may be lost in the struggle.”
Rudolph W. Gilbert, Leader 1956-1957

“I am committed to a quest for a healthier and more nearly equitable society and to a better understanding and practice of personal and social motivation and achievement.”
Walter Lawton, Leader 1964-1968

The decade of the 1960s initiated a fervor of activism that the Society had not seen during the latter years of Bridges leadership which transitioned into the pre-WWII years and lasted through the Haydon years. Internal society affairs kept the organization together. Haydon’s speaking engagements kept the Society’s name alive in the city, and often took him to the East coast as well as the West coast. He was invited to speak at Wisconsin’s Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Jr.’s memorial held in the Congress of the U.S., he was dinner companion with Eleanor Roosevelt at the American Youth Organization at Orchestra Hall (You will recall that Mrs. Roosevelt many years later became co-chairman with Algernon Black of the American Ethical Union’s Encampment for Citizenship). He accepted invitations to speak at Temple Sholom, and he held religious history classes at the Baptist Church and the “Y” in the Hyde Park neighborhood.

1964-69 When Walter Lawton joined us he quickly involved himself in several ethical concerns, …. environmental issues, urban education, plus what he brought back from his experiences in the civil rights movement in the South …. racial integration and poverty. The Society membership realized reluctantly after a time that they could not support a full time Leader to meet the family needs. Soon he and Grace and their three children moved back East where Walter continued to work within the Ethical Movement.

1970 Harold J. Quigley started his Ethical Leadership with the new Cleveland Ethical Society where he became a friend of Carl Stokes, mayor of Cleveland. He was currently Leader of the Los Angeles Society, when he heard of the vacancy in Chicago and quickly applied to the Chicago Society…his five children were grown and he and his wife Wilma were eager to return to the Midwest. Quigley in his early years had been the minister of a Presbyterian church in Haverstraw, New York, always active in civic affairs. In 1960 he was ousted from that position for dropping his beliefs in the word of God.

Harold was well-versed in publicity and public relations. For two years he had been Director of Education and Special Events for the Protestant Radio Commission. And for four consecutive summers he taught Religious Radio Workshops at the Federated Theological Faculties at the University of Chicago. He took some classes with the outstanding on-campus humanist, A. Eustace Haydon.

Quigley jumped into work with the membership on numerous special events and civic involvement. He, with committee help, created our Humanist of the Year Award with accompanying workshops. Among the prominent Chicagoans recognized were: Leon Depres, Chicago Alderman; Stan Dale, radio talk show personality; Dr. Quentin Young, Cook County Hospital; Dr. Lonny Myers, Institute for the Study of Human Sexuality; Anna Langford, Chicago politician and Alderwoman; Elmer Gertz, human rights lawyer; and Studs Terkel, author and radio personality.

Harold continued his social activism, accompanied by Society members: standing in peace vigils on downtown streets with the “Women for Peace”; working with Dr. Quentin Young to save Cook County Hospital; marching in protests against the Vietnam War; he participated in abortion counseling; and had a regularly scheduled 5- minute radio commentary.

The Society had a small Sunday School for children and the Women’s Club had monthly meetings which maintained contact with Henry Booth House and, to move with the times, opened its membership to men, gradually becoming the social and public affairs committee of the Society. There was a winter weekend at Camp Reinberg in far Glenview, small-theater fund-raisers and other social and educational get-togethers.

The membership, because of limited funds, moved out of the city going north to Evanston, renting a park district community house and then Oakton Public School at the corner of Ridge Ave and Oakton Street. Harold and Wilma accommodated the Society office needs in their apartment in Chicago’s Edgewater community.

“Everything in each person yearns to be free, to be complete, to be appreciated and to be part of a meaningful existence. Humanists come to meet together to express these ideals and to renew themselves so that they will live to see their own flowering and that of their Society.”
HAROLD J. QUIGLEY, Leader 1971 – 1979

1982 The small Society struggled to stay vital. Sunday Meetings were held regularly, the Memorial Day Weekend continued, the small Sunday School was held every Sunday and with the financial help of the American Ethical Union, it stayed alive. Joy McConnell, an Associate Leader of the St. Louis Society agreed to a new plan to provide parttime Leadership. She would come to Chicago one week each month to strengthen the lay leadership and participate in the board meetings, give a platform address, work with the Sunday school parents and teachers, and membership committee.

In 1989 Joy returned to St. Louis but she recommended a Chicago woman, a soon to be graduate of Meadville / Lombard Theological school, Jone Johnson, as a outstanding candidate for a parttime Leader.

1991 The Board invited Joy McConnell’s suggested candidate, Jone Johnson, to give a platform address, and on March 31, 1991, her title: “A Humanist Prospective on Easter.”

The Board then invited both Joy and Jone and their families to the Society’s Memorial Day Weekend at Lake Geneva, WI. In the months that followed much consideration was given to the hiring of Jone, and for the onset of the 1991-92 program year, Jone opened the season with “Beginnings”.

1995 The Society’s Board minutes and other records reveal that at various times throughout the life of the Society the membership longed to have a home of its own and had search committees looking from time to time. During the years Jone was with us was no exception. Soon the Society was to receive an unbelieveable gift. Two of our long-time staunch members, Faith and Gordon Greiner, left a legacy of over two million in stocks and bonds to the Society. Stipulations of the gift was that the membership provide a permanent home for Society activities and have a program on the environment each year. And, holding to that commitment, the interchange of ideas began. In September Jone tendered her resignation citing total disagreement on the direction that the Society was planning. Jone offered her cooperation in planning for the transition and wished the Society “all the best in its contined endeavors.”

The Society moved into their first “home” during the Summer and Fall of 1996 beginning its 114th year of existence with platform programs and a Sunday School at 7574 N. Lincoln Avenue, Skokie, Illinois 60077. Caring for the home brought new reponsibilities for the membership, building a new cohesiveness and additional programming. The membership named the location The Greiner Center.

2007-2008 We celebrated our 125th anniversary at the Greiner Center on October 6th of 2007 with a dinner, reminiscent programming, music, and, on Sunday morning, Bob Berson, Leader of the Northern Westchester, (New York) Ethical Society was the platform speaker.

2008 We are most grateful to the American Ethical Union for its financial support during the tough years and to the AEU Leaders who gave their spiritual and oratory support in the early years with long train rides from the East coast and later in the 21st century the crowded airplane connections. Also to Assistant Leaders that the Society hired during the years: Dr. Ralph Habas, Ted Haydon, and Maryell Cleary.

We are indebted to the many in the membership who gave of their time and their creative talents to keep Felix Adler’s idea of a “faith born of ethics” alive. We are grateful to our wedding officiants, starting with Tom Hoeppner, who served alone for several years. We dare not start to name those members who have given of themselves time and again. Someone would be overlooked and we do not want to forget anyone. Thank you.

“An Ethical Society is a community of individuals dedicated to making our lives and our world more humane, more ethical. …. Searching for a better understanding of how the world actually is, what potentials exist, and what yet must be done to build a better life: through analysis and critique of social and personal conditions, through creative inquiry for realistic solutions to heal pain, reduce suffering, and add to hope…”
JONE E. JOHNSON – Leader 1991-1995