YOUNG PREACHERS’ JOBS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXV, Issue 14259, 7 January 1947, Page 5

YOUNG PREACHERS’ JOBS

STUDY OF WORKING MAN’S PROBLEMS

EXPERIENCE AS AUTO WORKER

During free periods out at Ford’s River Rouge plant this past summer one might have been impressed with the seriousness of the conversation of one little knot of workmen. In the centre would have been a young man who, though dressed as a workman and obviously on good terms with them, looked more like, well, a preacher. And should you have listened to the conversation, this likeness would have seemed more pronounced, for it was usually about religion, states the Christian Science Monitor.

Actually that worker was a youthful preacher. He was James Carty, third-year student in the Theological School, Disciples Divinity House, University of Chicago. He was spending the summer as an auto worker, not so much to help build cars as to find out how those who do build cars live and think. Mr Canty was one of 7 theological students taking part in an on-the-jdb study of the working man’s problems. The group, including two women, came here to join in the initial venture in a plan organised by the Rev. Owen M. Geer, of Mt. Olivet Community Methodist Church, in Dearborn, and Mrs Rachel J. Rose, Executive Secretary of the Dearborn Community Fund. For a month, starting in June, the students lived at Pinebrook Farm, near Lyons, Mich., jointly owned by the Rev. Mr Geer and Mrs Rose, where they participated in a programme of prayer, discussion, recreation, and study. Here representatives and management and labour came to expound their social and, economic views and to tell about manufacturing problems. Plerbert M. Fink, graduate of the Yale Divinity School, assisted the Rev. Mr Greer in conducting this part of the programme.

Then they all went out and got jobs in Detroit’s large auto plants, including, besides Ford, Chevrolet, Dodge, Hudson and Packard. The two women got jobs as inspectors in a small parts plant. The men worked on assembly lines or Jn foundries and at other hand-labour tasks for a full month, rubbing elbows with the workmen, learning their problems and desires and philosophies and opinions.. The group working beside Mr Carty was typical of the workers at the other plants. Mr Carty says he learned much from his experience. And it is not to be doubted that the men with whom he had contacts learned something from him, for usually in those groups he was talking, they listening. The Rev. Mr Greer declares the students obtained a feeling, if not specific information, which they could have obtained in no other way. The manufacturers co-operat-ing have made no formal statements, but their wholehearted assistance in the project has been acknowledged by the sponsors. When the Rev. Mr Geer has left Dearborn to take a new pulpit in the West, the project will be carried on next year under Mrs Rose, and possibly with the help of denominational groups now interested, including 1 a special committee of the Central Methodist Church here.