Chicago's Zany Salvation Army Bell Ringers

Orwell said he'd never give
a Farthing to the Salvation Army

In his eminently wonderful chronicle of the plight of the homeless in depression era England, Down and Out in Paris and London, the great journalist of that era, George Orwell, ended his wonderful book by saying  "I will never fail to give money to a panhandler -- and I will never put another farthing in a Salvation Army kettle."

Orwell's complaint was that, when he was a member of the multitude of homeless in depression-era England of the 1930s, the Christian sect of the Salvation Army, wouldn't give the hungry guys a lousy piece of bread with margarine, unless they endured a long-winded evangelical religious diatribe.

The Salvation Army religious sect is better than that in the USA today.

No question, they help out a lot of people with food, clothing, etc. But their vaunted drug and alcohol religious-conversion re-hab program is an absurd throwback to their idiotic religious past.

Today they collect our money via bell ringers outside various Jewel-Osco and Walgreens stores throughout the Chicago metro area.

I would just -- in the past -- throw a little change into their kettles -- a nice Christmas gesture, you know.

But this year, I actually got to know some of the characters that the Salvation Army hires.

Some are decidedly weird -- some are outright scary.

Chicago Salvation Army bell ringers:
Some are decidedly weird -- some are outright scary

I got to know them while I spent the last few weeks gathering signatures outside of Walgreens' and Jewel-Osco stores, on behalf of a candidate for Appellate Court Judge.

I was standing right next to them, enduring the same bone-chilling cold and soliciting just as they were.

This is what I found:

-- The bellringers are paid employees of the tax-exempt 501(c)3 Salvation Army corporation.

-- They are paid, on the average, $400 a week.

-- One that I met, a black man named named Kenneth, outside the Walgreens at Waukegan and Lake Ave. in Glenview, was spouting wild political diatribes on behalf of Barack Obama (is this the official position of the tax-exempt Salvation Army Church?)

-- Another that I met, a Puerto Rican man, outside the Jewel-Osco at Kedzie and Howard in Evanston told me that he was a "streetwise" salesman -- who had sold a variety of items, including socks, T-shirts and drugs. He also told me that he that many bell ringers carried tweezers, so that if a dollar bill was just sticking up out of the top of the kettle, they could just pluck it out and pocket it. (Somehow, I got the idea that he might have had a pair of tweezers in his pocket.)

-- Another that I met, a rather loud, fat black girl from Lombard, in front of the Walgreens at Howard and Western, on the Chicago/Evanston border, wildly complained when I was smoking my pipe about 5 yards from her, in a fully legal fashion, 15 feet from the entrance -- with the wind blowing the smoke in the opposite direction. She wildly complained to the Walgreens manager -- who essentially told her to go F--- off. Great PR for the Salvation Army (don't ya think?).

A few years ago in Ohio, a Salvation Army bell ringer was convicted of stealing his entirely cash-packed drum.

Having seen the Chicago Salvation Army bell ringers, I am not at all surprised.

No wonder the great English writer, George Orwell told the Salvation Army to go F--- off.

Secular Holiday Greetings From The Christian Salvation Army

The Salvation Army is, to most Chicagoans and other urban dwellers, an integral feature in the Christmas landscape. And over its 145 years of existence, the quaint, British offshoot of the Methodist Church has become a fixture in the pop cultural firmament.

The 1940s Christmas classic Silver Bells, first sung by Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell was inspired by imagery of Salvation Army bellringers. The Beatles' surreal Strawberry Fields drew its name from John Lennon's reminiscences of a Liverpool Salvation Army orphans' home of that name. Simon and Garfunkle told us to "hear the Salvation Army band," in Hazy Shade of Winter and Jethro Tull mocked the Army's charitable efforts in Aqualung, sneering: "Salvation ala mode and a cup of tea."

But behind the anachronistic quasi-military garb and the oom-pah bands and the omnipresent seasonal bellringing is the often overlooked fact that the Salvation Army is a religious denomination. A Christian denomination.

In its organizational credo, it makes no secret of the fact that: "We believe that in the person of Jesus Christ the divine and human natures are united, so that he is truly and properly God and truly and properly man."


I holds regular services in regular churches and has a hierarchy of church leadership.

And like most mainstream Protestant churches (if people whose ecclesiastic garb consists of marching band uniforms can be called mainstream) it has been declining in membership.

The decline has been such, that it can no longer rely on its own Army regulars to ring the bells at Christmastime. So now it pays mercenaries around $8 per hour to shiver outside the Jewel-Oscos and Dominicks and ring those bells.

So I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised the other day, when the Spanish accented fellow bellringing for the Salvation Army outside the Jewel at Howard and McCormick in Evanston should have greeted me with the politically correct euphemism: "Happy Holidays."

I guess he was afraid of antagonizing Islamicists, Jews and Hindus, as well as Kwanzaa and Festivus enthusiasts with the forbidden mention of the Christian Holiday -- Christmas. At eight bucks an hour, you can't let a little thing like Christmas get in the way of your daily kettle take.

In his wonderful, but often overlooked libella, "Down and Out in Paris and London," George Orwell chronicled his two years as a homeless bum during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the closing passage of the work, he resentfully vowed, that now that he was financially back on his feet he would never again expect a panhandler to show gratitude if he gave him a penny. Nor would he ever put a farthing in a Salvation Army kettle.

He was resentful over the fact that the Salvation Army homeless shelters in England would subject him and his fellow hungry down-and-outers to interminably windy religious sermons and church services before reluctantly doling out meager rations of bread and margarine.


"Salvation ala mode and a cup of tea."

He found the Salvation Army's soldiers to be insultingly zealous in their religious proselitizing.

Orwell wouldn't have to worry about that today.

The Salvation Army has mostly hireling bellringers today. And far from haranguing you with Christian platitudes, they sheepishly mutter the sanitized secular salutation:

Happy Holidays.

If they are, in fact, an army, they could best be likened to the French army.


During the 20th century the French army was renowned for one thing and one thing only.

Surrender.