“Born and brought up a true son of the tenderloin,” George Long survived as a child pickpocket in Madison Square Park in New York City.
At the age of 14, having “been thoroughly schooled in the ways of the underworld, he launched himself upon his career as a ‘grafter.’” Long became addicted to cocaine and morphine and for the next two decades lived as “a habitué of the dens of vice in the large cities… repellant even to the keepers of the lowest resorts.” He had, “time and time again” been thrown out of even “the filthiest brothels.”
George Long “floated about the country for years” arriving in Philadelphia “on the ‘hobo’s’ common carrier, the freight train.” A “wreck of a man” on Skid Row, Long was “dissipated and disheveled, unshaven, unkempt, and saturated with liquor… a ‘bum’ of the uttermost, guttermost type.”
Then he found religion. Long “fell upon his knees in the Galilee Mission and gave his heart to God” and dedicated himself to saving the souls of others.
“It takes a ‘down and outer’ to reform a ‘down and outer,’” he claimed. “Social workers try hard, but they can’t realize that feeling the other fellow has.” Long could talk with “them in their own language.” He met them where they lived, “in the heart of the city’s most disreputable and filthy sections” like Philadelphia’s Hell’s Half Acre—a place even more desperate than Skid Row.
“Bounded by Spruce and Walnut Street and Tenth and Eleventh” Hell’s Half Acre “is cut up by many small thorough fares filled with dilapidated houses. No less than 65 were being used for immoral purposes” including three gambling dens, two opium joints, and many pool rooms and speakeasies.”
At the heart of it, on Locust Street east of 11th, George Woodward, owned “20 vacant, ramshackle houses.” “Each was connected with the other by an underground passage, so that if a crime was committed in one, the perpetrator could easily make his way from that house to another, and so on to the street and to safety. One building in this group was known as the ‘get-away house.’”
Long convinced Woodward of his plans and the wealthy developer from Chestnut Hill turned over the houses, rent free. Long and his associates cleaned them up, removing “eleven wagonloads of beer bottles, playing cards, discarded frills and burbelows [furbelows?] of feminine wearing apparel, and other rubbish.” They made the former “getaway house” Long’s headquarters.
The Inasmuch Mission (named for the biblical passage: “And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me”) was born.
Beginning in March, 1911 Inasmuch offered help to “any man in need, providing that the beneficiary showed the desire to help himself.” And in the first six months more than 14,000 attended services, 8,731 meals were served and more than 2,000 took lodging. The mission placed 96 reformed men in paying jobs. At the second anniversary celebration, the first three rows were packed with men whose testimony so inspired Mrs. Woodward, she offered to donate funds for “a suitable building in which Mr. Long might carry out his original dream.”
Inspired by London’s Rowton Houses for working men and New York’s Mills Hotel, Philadelphia architects, Duhring, Okie & Ziegler designed a severe, four-story, fire-proof facility with a chapel for 300, an office, a restaurant, a kitchen, and 400 beds. In March 1914, Long and others dedicated the Inasmuch Mission “as a place where men will be cleansed, both mentally and physically.”
Meanwhile, Long’s evangelistic career grew in scope and scale. With the gift (also from Mrs. Woodward) of a “large touring car,” Long began a “series of automobile meetings” on street corners “throughout the Tenderloin.” Long provided sermons accompanied by musical entertainment.
The popular evangelist soon preached to gatherings of 1,000 in a giant Inasmuch tent pitched at 60th and Locust Streets. In the midst of the World War, Long lumped together local food profiteers, rent gaugers and the Kaiser. “Hell is too good for them,” Long shouted.
Followers cheered.
Long determined to break a preaching record in the summer of 1918. For ten weeks straight he packed tent meetings with as many as 3,000. Long moved indoors to the nearby Imperial Theatre, 219 South 60th Street, while architects drew up plans for a new 5,000-seat evangelistic tabernacle.
More confident than ever, Long pivoted his message from the pulpit to politics: “There are more gamblers, thieves, pickpockets and prostitutes in this city than ever before, and it depends upon our next mayor as to whether they are to remain here.”
He “censured women who wear immodest attire” Long claimed “such women were responsible for much of the widespread immorality” adding: “More men are being sent to hell today owing to women’s immodest dressing than ever before.”
And he critiqued fellow preachers: “The she-man in the pulpit, with his soft voice and ladylike manners, has been driving red-blooded men away from the church.” The headline read: “Evangelist Flays “Sissies” In Pulpit.”
Long, it seemed, was only getting started.
[Sources include: Blair Jaekel, “The Inasmuch Mission,” The World’s Work: A History of Our Time (Doubleday, Page & Company, 1913); “Inasmuch Mission: A Work of God Made Manifest,” The Church News of the Diocese of Pennsylvania (1915); G. Grant Williams, Hells Half Acre and Inasmuch Mission,” The Philadelphia Tribune, May 18, 1912; “Rose From Underworld,” The New York Times, May 12, 1913; and from The Philadelphia Inquirer: “Inasmuch Mission and Founder Have Done Great Work,” September 1, 1912; “To Conduct Street Missions in Auto,” January 15, 1913; “Inasmuch Mission will Provide Home for Men Desiring Reform,” January 24, 1914; “Inasmuch Mission Now in New Home,” March 24, 1914; “Scores Food Gougers,” July 8, 1918; “Tent Meetings Overflow,” July 27, 1918; “Evangelist Flays ‘Sissies’ In Pulpit,” August 4, 1919.]