WE FACULTY MEMBERS of The PSC have our classes and, while our work is coordinated into one harmonious whole as the result of our weekly faculty meetings and semi-weekly faculty classes, each of us has his subjects to carry.
    The one free lance who is unpredictable to discuss anything which may come to his mind is B.J.  Instead of discussing some topic in Chiropractic, he is liable to burst out with a series of talks such as the “Baconian Controversy.”  So, what he may say in his class assemblies comes to our ears through the grapevine, via student talks over coffee cups in The PSC cafeteria.
    We had been hearing something about The Pathfinders Club of America, so I asked B.J. to repeat it at a faculty meeting so all of us could get it direct.
    Here is another of those many facets of his:
    “Years ago, there lived in Davenport an insurance agent named Frank J. Wright.  In some way not clear to us, he came in contact with liberated ex-cons, or prison parolees.  He was convinced that while they were serving time they had plenty of time to realize that ‘crime does not pay,’ and had determined to be honest and go straight when they got out.  When released, they are given a suit which automatically brands them; $10 to live on until they find a job; and their prison complexion which is a dead give-away.  They usually buy a railroad ticket that will take them as far from the prison town as the $10 will secure.
    “They apply for a job.  ‘Name, please?  Where did you last work?  Recommendations?’  Convinced they should be honest, they mention prison, just released.  ‘We will take your address and let you know if, as, and when something opens up’; which practically slams the door in their faces.  In a few weeks, no job, getting hungry, they steal again to live.  Nobody would give them a chance.
    “Frank Wright determined to do something about such situations.  He formed The Pathfinders Club of America.  He solicited big employers of labor — Swift, Ford, Standard Oil, General Motors, etc.  They agreed to take on such men and women.  We joined as a charter member.
    “Wright held his meetings in the basement of the First Methodist Church, in Davenport.  He was a Methodist.  He made the serious mistake once of inviting an ex-con who had been tried, found wanting, given a job by a fellow member, to testify that the plan worked, at one of these meetings.  For this, the elders and minister of the church kicked Wright and his club out, refusing him future meetings in the church, contending the church was no place for ex-convicts.
    “About that time, Wright invented and patented a quick adjustable monkey wrench which he sold to Ford for $50,000.  He now had the wherewithal to go ahead, build his organization, put into enlarged action his dream of helping many ex-cons and parolees.
    “Wright moved to Detroit.  In summer he held meetings on the upper deck of the ferry that plied between Detroit and Port Windsor.  In winter, he was granted free office space in a large office building by the owner who was called an atheist, agnostic, and infidel.
    “In the years we have been a member of The Pathfinders Club of America, we have had opportunities to enroll as students in The PSC parolees and ex-cons, both men and women.  We meet them, talk to them, do not preach about the evils of crime, hand them tuition money in currency, and see that they become another member of our student family.  They enter, go through, and graduate.  Only two people know who they are, what their past is.  All that is important is their present and future.  We exact a promise from each to pay back, if, as, and when they get into practice and earn it, plus 6 per cent interest, all of which is kept in a separate revolving fund to help others who come after him or her.  Knowing he or she was helped by somebody before, gives him an incentive to help others to come after him.  We have yet to lose one dollar loaned in this way.  We do not even exact a signed note for the loan.  To date (1949) 288 persons have been helped this way.  Nobody else in our organization, except the two of us, knows who he or she is.  We could not trust this information to the many who profess to be Christians or their gossiping tongues.
    “Let us cite one example of many where this information leaked out and how it came about:
    “We had a woman student come here some years ago.  She was a parolee from South Dakota.  We do not remember what her crime was, but she was sentenced to ten years in the State Penitentiary.  She served her time and was paroled to us.
    “She had run a house of prostitution.  During her ten years, she had recollected the many homes she had broken up, the lives she had ruined.  She now desired to make restitution.  ‘Go thou and sin no more,’ — and she had come to the conclusion that the best way to do this was to save lives and prolong others through a Chiropractic service to the sick.  She came here fully resolved to dedicate the rest of her life to that objective.  We enrolled her under our usual understanding.
    “Everything ran smoothly for months.  One day she came to us and told us she was going to quit; that a new man student who had formerly been a customer of hers recognized her and had told his wife, who told other wives, who and what she had been.  It was soon gossiped throughout the student body, how she had made her living, how she had served time, etc.  Men began chasing and hanging around her like flies over honey; like proverbial leeches, giving her no rest or peace.  We told her to ignore such, carry on, and between us we would complete the job we had before us.
    “One day we were called to see a typhoid fever case in the boarding house in which she was staying.  In passing her sliding doors to go upstairs, we noticed her standing in front of the mirror of her dressing table with a gun in her hand.  Bursting in, we told her, ‘Put it down.  Lay that gun on the dresser.’  She looked up, startled, saw who it was, and did so.  We then asked her what she was going to do.  She said she was going to ‘end it all.’  We told her this was one of the most selfish acts we had ever known.  She contended her life was her own to do with as she pleased; that nobody else was interested in her or concerned over her future.  We told her this was not true, as she had a ten-year-old daughter to consider; and, what was more, after she graduated she would save hundreds of lives and would add thousands of years to thousands of others.  To take her life now was to take all these others with her.  She saw the logic.
    “We asked her to lay away the gun in the drawer and promise us she would never touch it again.  She put it away and when she graduated and left The PSC the gun was still in the drawer.  We have it now as a museum piece.  This woman is now in practice and doing a grand and glorious work.
    “It proves once again that these people are redeemable if a practical solution is offered them; they are given practical help; and that one can’t trust such information to people who otherwise think they are practicing Christianity in denouncing and dragging her down again when she is trying to climb up and out of a rut.  It also proves how poisonous gossip can be.  We may not be construed to be Christian but we think that is the practice of The Master”