IV
The Rev. Dr. Gantry was the first clergyman in the state of Winnemac, almost the first in the country, to have his services broadcast by radio. He suggested it himself. At that time, the one broadcasting station in Zenith, that of the Celebes Gum and Chicle Company, presented only jazz orchestras and retired sopranos, to advertise the renowned Jolly Jack Gum. For fifty dollars a week Wellspring Church was able to use the radio Sunday mornings from eleven to twelve-thirty. Thus Elmer increased the number of his hearers from two thousand to ten thousand—and in another pair of years it would be a hundred thousand.
Eight thousand radio-owners listening to Elmer Gantry—
A bootlegger in his flat, coat off, exposing his pink silk shirt, his feet up on the table. … The house of a small-town doctor, with the neighbors come in to listen—the drugstore man, his fat wife, the bearded superintendent of schools. … Mrs. Sherman Reeves of Royal Ridge, wife of one of the richest young men in Zenith, listening in a black-and-gold dressing-gown, while she smoked a cigarette. … The captain of a schooner, out on Lake Michigan, hundreds of miles away, listening in his cabin. … The wife of a farmer in an Indiana valley, listening while her husband read the Sears-Roebuck catalogue and sniffed. … A retired railway conductor, very feeble, very religious. … A Catholic priest, in a hospital, chuckling a little. … A spinster schoolteacher, mad with loneliness, worshiping Dr. Gantry’s virile voice. … Forty people gathered in a country church too poor to have a pastor. … A stock actor in his dressing-room, fagged with an all-night rehearsal.
All of them listening to the Rev. Dr. Elmer Gantry as he shouted:
“—and I want to tell you that the fellow who is eaten by ambition is putting the glories of this world before the glories of Heaven! Oh, if I could only help you to understand that it is humility, that it is simple loving kindness, that it is tender loyalty, which alone make the heart glad! Now, if you’ll let me tell a story: It reminds me of two Irishmen named Mike and Pat—”