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its program of institutionalized charity. It was supported not only by the churches but to some degree by public funds from four Ohio counties. Much credit for the success of the early years of this institution is ascribed to Abram Metzler who began his services as superintendent in November of 1899 and continued till 1917.

The other venture in charitable institutions was the founding of a home for old people at Rittman, Ohio, in 1899." D. C. Amstutz of near Rittman, Ohio, offered his farm in support of a home for aged people, and by December of that year the building for the home was under construction with plans to solicit funds from churches in Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. When erected in 1899 the building was free of debt. A correspondent to the Herald of Truth for December 15, 1899; remarked: "We as a church are taking our first lessons in benevolence and mission work on a more extended scale and some patience need no doubt at times be exercised."

In 1901 the controlling body of the Old People's Home, the Mennonite Board of Charitable Homes, met at Rittman with M. S. Steiner as president of the board. Other members of the board came from Ohio but also from Illinois, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Missouri, Maryland, Ontario, and Idaho.

Social Problems and the Sense of Mission

This beginning of organized charity by the churches of Ohio was strongly influenced by the convictions of M. S. Steiner. Steiner's training and abilities made him an acute observer of the society of his time, and together with his evangelistic efforts enabled him to give direction to the new ventures. In 1899 he published a book, Pitfalls and Safeguards, in which he spoke his mind and convictions.' Steiner's book is in essence a devout churchman's way of looking at America's domestic problems and the need for applying the gospel to them. In Pitfalls and Safeguards Steiner gives vivid pictures of the social scenes to which he felt the church must address itself. There was no doubt in his mind about the corruption of wealth in American society at the turn of the century. He told of tramps shipped in boxcars to Kansas and Nebraska to work for a pittance in the wheat fields. He saw the poverty of city tenements where ten to forty-five people sleep in one room-representing one to a dozen families. He reported his conversation with an old Negro blacksmith in Mississippi. The Negro's wife