Commissioner's Half-Century

Fifty years a Salvationist this week was Alexander Martin Damon, the only U. S.-born officer ever to become a territorial commander with the rank of commissioner, second highest rank in the Salvation Army. Commissioner Damon commands the Army's biggest single province, the Eastern Territory (New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Ohio). He and his wife, who heads the district's Home League, are one of the few Army couples to be paid as much as $30 a week for their joint work. Many an archbishop supervises a smaller domain than Commissioner Damon's, with its 700 Army posts, 8,000 bandsmen and singers, 35,000 soldiers, annual budget of $1,600,000 in New York City alone.

"Soup, soap and salvation" was the motto of the Army's fiery-eyed founder, General William Booth. The Salvationists whom thriving young Grocer Damon heard in Lowell, Mass, in the '80s were so poor they could offer only the last. Damon thought that enough and joined. "We got stoned sometimes," he recalls of his early years as trombone in an Army band. At Quincy, Mass, the whole band was once arrested for disturbing the peace. The others were sentenced to 30 days in jail but 16-year-old Damon was overlooked because he was so small.

Soon Salvationist Damon switched to soul-saving. His steady rise to the Eastern commissionership in 1935 paralleled the Army's own growth in the U. S.. Commissioner Damon, with piercing blue eyes, shock of white hair and resonant voice, played a leading role in that change. Since 1893 he has traveled 1,099,787 miles, spoken at countless thousands of meetings, made thousands of converts. Last month 900 sinners came forward at his meetings.

Founder Booth made autocracy a prime part of the Army's tradition and Commissioner Damon has a control that verges on the absolute. He has charge of his terri tory's budget, initiates programs, promotes and transfers officers, has full disciplinary power over them. "We have rules," says he, "and they are very rigid. We feel that officers' lives should be kept apart." Officers cannot smoke, use alcohol, go to the theatre. Since the choice of a mate requires the approval of their superiors, nearly all of them marry within the ranks, rear another generation of Salvationists. Mrs. Commissioner Damon was Captain Annie Barrow before her marriage. The Damons' daughter, Mrs. Adjutant Lyell Rader of Newark, is an active Army officer too.

"People used to think of us as working only among drunkards and harlots," says Commissioner Damon. But the Army works wherever it gets the chance. In Pittsburgh last week Commissioner Damon got a bouquet of flowers from a Jew who has given a dollar a day to the Army ever since World War I because it was kind to him when he was a doughboy. "You see," the Commissioner said happily, "you cast your bread on the waters and you never know how or when it will come back."

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