Conventioneers

 At its start, photo journalism was a costly business involving wood engravings to reproduce the layers of a photograph for printing.  But in the 1890s and early 1900s it became possible to produce pictures quite cheaply by the halftone process. This basically turned original photographs into a series of dots which could be printed. This was OK for a quick read of a newspaper, but not always so good for deciphering and restoring pictures all these years later.

Previously line drawings had been the norm and this continued well into the early 20^th century. They might have been taken from photographs or just done by the artist on the spot. An example of the latter is of Charles and Maria Russell facing each others at a court hearing in 1906, as reported in the Pittsburgh Press for April 26, 1906:

This article is about one typical line drawing from 1899. It is found in the St Louis Post-Dispatch. The issues for October 7 and 8, 1899, give a running  review on a three day Bible Student convention, held in the Tabernacle Church, 19^th and Morgan Streets, St Louis, with an attendance estimated to top 300 people on the final day, the Sunday.

One of the headings talked of “Pentecostal Scenes.”

The Pentecostal movement with its “signs” of healings and glossolalia mushroomed at the end of the 19^th century in America. As a side-note here, one of its parent groups was The Christian and Missionary Alliance and this was where William H Conley nailed his colors to the mast after leaving association with Zion’s Watch Tower.

But the heading “Pentecostal Scenes” did not describe a “Pentecostal” meeting. Rather it seems more to refer to large numbers getting baptised all at one time. In contrast to what might be seen elsewhere, the write-up specifically described the behavior of those who were there.

“The audience at no time allowed its enthusiasm to get the best of it and become frenzied or fanatical. It was happy, but reasonably so. There was no shouting. The “Believers” are a practical people and do not counternence going to extremes on any subject at any time. They counsel moderation and their meetings are always attended with order and deliberation.”

We note here, and in the headline that the Bible Students were calling themselves “Believers” on this occasion.

The write-up may be influenced by a press release, but appears quite independent. CTR’s baptism talk lasted two hours – as a reflection of the times it was noted there were both Jews and Negroes in the audience – and the review covered Bible Student belief on the millennium and organization, or rather lack of it.

Anyhow, to finally get to the point of this article, the paper sent a staff artist to capture the scene. This is the result:

The curiosity is that it wasn’t just men, but both men and women in the picture. Why the artist chose these particular subjects is not known, but it gives an interesting flavor of the types of people you might just meet at a late 19^th century Bible Student convention.