San
Joaquin County
Biographies
ERNEST FOX
Prominent among the important
sociological agencies at work in Stockton for the betterment of society and the
making of the city one of the choice places of residence in the United States
must be rated the Stockton Coffee Club, at 22 North Center Street, organized by
Noel Garrison, the progressive and popular principal of the Stockton high
school, but suggested by Ernest Fox, the originator of the American Coffee Club
movement, and now the manager of the local club. The movement is based upon the English Coffee
Club plan, with the addition of the non-profit and automatic extension feature. In England, coffee clubs are private
enterprises conducted for the profit of the proprietor; but Mr. Fox’s plan has
eliminated private ownership and provides that any profits resulting must go
into extensions and betterment of service.
Under the plan of Mr. Fox, the club
is positively kept out of the restaurant business, and so does not arouse the
antagonism of other restaurants or any precautionary opposition of dealers in
other lines who may fear that the scope of the movement might be enlarged to
include their own. The sale of coffee
and other foods is not the primary purpose of the club; the primary motive is
the maintenance of a social club-room, and the sale of the coffee is made
merely as a means of financing the club.
One result of this policy is that the patrons of the place do not feel
that they are the recipients of charity; and since service is the purpose of
the club, and not commercial gain, the help employed find that the work is
dignified and there is little or no trouble in getting workers to wait upon
others.
Mr. Fox organized the first club in
San Diego in 1898, and this pioneer club, watched with keen interest from the
Pacific to the Atlantic, experienced a wonderful growth as long as it held to
the Fox plan. The next club was
organized in San Jose on November 22, 1900; and seven years later the Stockton
Club was organized. Since then there has
been a movement to effect a state supervising organization, and this should be
of peculiar satisfaction to Mr. Fox, who started the ball a-rolling in America,
and has helped to organize nearly all the coffee clubs in California. It should also interest the sociological
student, for funds for the club are obtained for the most part through one
dollar membership fees, donations and receipts from concerts and
entertainments. Mr. Fox, who was born
and reared in England, enters heartily into American life, and is very strongly
inclined to the humane side of life everywhere; and in his laudable efforts, he
is ably and loyally assisted by his good wife.
February 13, 1907, witnessed the
organization of the Coffee Club in Stockton, at 229 East Weber Avenue, from
which place it was removed to 22 North California Street, and thence to 446
East Weber Avenue, and finally to its present location at 22 North Center
Street, where it is now to be seen in a flourishing condition. It provides free reading and social rooms,
with checkers, chess, dominoes, etc., and lunch at reasonable prices. The purpose, in short, is to provide a social
center free from degrading influences, for the human being is in need of rational
enjoyment.
Mr. Fox fought against the idea that
the Coffee Club movement should prove a substitute for the saloon, although
ninety per cent of the contributions were made on that theory. Mr. Fox stated, in a letter to the “American
Issue,” of December 4, 1903, his view upon the subject. “I do not call our Coffee Club a saloon
substitute,” he says. “It is more than
that. It is a social center free from
all that is evil, and is used by dozens of young men, many of them homeless,
who would otherwise not known what to do.
Good treatment may be good enough for a horse or a dog, but a human
being needs fellowship. It is partly
because this fellowship has been denied to him that he has taken the substitute
supplied by the saloon; always bear in mind that the saloon is the substitute,
and that the wild revelry of the saloon has been substituted for rational
enjoyment.”
The first coffee club in California
was incorporated through the efforts of Mr. Fox in 1898 at San Diego, but it
eventually failed because they started a bakery, going outside of their
original scope and purpose. The second
coffee club was started in San Jose in 1900; and Mr. Fox is still interested in
its wonderful success and has furnished every manager for it since. He has also taken a very live interest in the
Lodi Coffee Club, which was opened in 1911.
He also helped to establish the Santa Rosa Coffee Club, which is
financially the most successful of any in the state; and he and his associates
are now ready to organize the second branch of the Stockton Club, which will be
a mixed club for women as well as men.
Mr. Fox has devoted twenty-three years of his life to this work, and his
heart and soul are in it.
He was born at Sandbach, England, on
April 7, 1868, the son of William and Sarah (Pedley) Fox; his father was an English
school teacher, who later became a photographer. He lost his devoted wife at Sandbach in 1891,
and in 1896 he brought his two daughters, the subject of this sketch, and two
older brothers, William and Frank, to San Diego, the youngest brother, Arnold,
having preceded him to America. He died there only three weeks after he
arrived. Ernest was brought up in the
Congregational Church in England, but attended the Methodist day school at
Sandbach; and when only fourteen, he went to work in a drapery and dry goods
store in his native town.
At Stockton, in 1907, Mr. Fox was
married to Miss Adelaide May Waite of Seattle, a daughter of Charles A. Waite
and a distant relative of former Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite. She attended school at Minneapolis and
Seattle. Her mother, who was Martha A.
Mathews before her marriage, is still living at Seattle, a native of
Pennsylvania. Like her husband, Mrs. Fox
belongs to the Congregational Church.
She has entered actively into the work of her husband, and has been one
of the determining factors to make real the purpose of the Stockton Coffee Club
Association. This purpose is to provide
a place of refreshment, recreation and amusement where no intoxicating liquors,
cigars or tobacco in any form shall be sold; and it is not surprising that
about 800 people daily visit the Stockton Coffee Club to lunch, read, rest or
enjoy a social chat. The income from the
lunch counter pays all expenses. On
April 9, 1923, Mr. Fox opened a second Coffee Club at 19 South Hunter Street,
where a restroom and reading room for women are provided. The Stockton Coffee Club was duly
incorporated under the laws of California, but is not profit-sharing to its
stockholders, being a benevolent association, though not a charity. In 1905 Mr. Fox revisited England and was
everywhere enthusiastically received when he appeared to tell of the great
reform work started by him here in California.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1485-1486. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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