Religion: Bibles

One night in 1898 a shoe salesman and a paint salesman found themselves assigned the same room in a hotel in Boscobel, Wis. Said Shoe Drummer John H. Nicholson: “My custom is to read a portion of God’s word every night and give thanks for God’s care over me during the day.” Replied Paint Drummer Samuel Eugene Hill: “I, too, am a Christian. Let us have our devotions together.”

A year later, joined by an insurance man named Will D. Knights, Salesmen Nicholson & Hill resolved to organize a Christian society of drummers. Unable to agree upon a name, they prayed together until InsuranceMan Knights arose, exclaimed: ”The Christian Commercial Travelers’ Association! The Gideons!” Opening his Bible he read from Judges how the Lord had placed a sword in the hand of Gideon, “a man who was willing to do exactly as God wanted him to.”

Not until 1908 did the Gideons begin to make their name famed by putting free Bibles in hotels and hospitals. Since then Bible-giving has become their one big job. They have given away 1,300,000 at an average cost of $1, today boast that sooner or later they find donations to fulfill all requests with neat volumes now bound in whiskey-proof keratol. Until last week all three founders were still active in business and Gideon affairs. Then Death came to Samuel Eugene Hill, 70, in Beloit, Wis. To the funeral went Insurance Man Knights, 83, of Wild Rose, Wis., and John H. Nicholson, 75, now field secretary for the Gideons.

The one locality the Gideons never penetrated is the citadel of the U. S.Bible trade: Manhattan. There the New York Bible Society supplies free Holy Writ to the hotels and there flourishes the largest Bible publishing house in the Western Hemisphere, the American Bible Society. The latter organization, 120 years old, last week passed another milestone by dedicating a new $500,000 home, a six-story stone building at Park Avenue and 57th Street, remodeled and air-conditioned. Since 1853 the American Bible Society’s Bible House had been a landmark in fusty, downtown Astor Place. From its big old red brick building, it has sent out 135,000,000 Bibles and texts in 972 languages and dialects to all parts of the world. Bible House still belongs to the Society, will continue to be used as a storehouse for $2,000,000 worth of printing plates for Bibles in 49 languages. That the Society could move uptown and across the street from William Randolph Hearst’s swank Ritz Tower might seem evidence of prosperity. Actually it is an eleemosynary institution, well-endowed by people who are interested in providing people all over the world with the Word in their native Worrora, K’Pelle, Cakchiquel, Zapotec, Mpongwe of Karamojong. The Society sells a well-bound Bible in English for 30¢, will give one gratis to a needy person anywhere.