{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_16470/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_16470","id":"gutenberg_16470","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16470","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Category: Sociology","Christianity -- Controversial literature"],"text":"Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Jayam Subramanian and the\nOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n[Transcriber's note: The spelling inconsistencies of the original\nare retained in this etext.]\n\n\n\n  The Profits of Religion\n\n\n\n\n\n  An Essay in Economic Interpretation\n\n\n\n\n\n  By\n  UPTON SINCLAIR\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\nNEW YORK\nVANGUARD PRESS\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVANGUARD PRINTINGS\nFirst-January, 1927\nSecond-April, 1927\nThird-June, 1928\n\n\n\n\n\nPRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOFFERTORY\n\n\nThis book is a study of Supernaturalism from a new point of view--as a\nSource of Income and a Shield to Privilege. I have searched the\nlibraries through, and no one has done it before. If you read it, you\nwill see that it needed to be done. It has meant twenty-five years of\nthought and a year of investigation. It contains the facts.\n\nI publish the book myself, so that it may be available at the lowest\npossible price. I am giving my time and energy, in return for one\nthing which you may give me--the joy of speaking a true word and\ngetting it heard.\n\nNote to fifth edition, 1926: \"The Profits of Religion\" was first\npublished early in 1917. The present edition represents a sale of over\n60,000 copies, without counting a dozen translations. In this edition\na few errors have been corrected, but otherwise the book has not been\nchanged. The reader will understand that references to the World War\nare of the date 1917, prior to America's entrance.\n\nThis book is the first of a series of volumes, an economic\ninterpretation of culture, which now includes \"The Brass Check,\" \"The\nGoose-step,\" \"The Goslings,\" and \"Mammonart.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#CONTENTS#\n\n#Introductory#\n\nBootstrap-lifting\n\nReligion\n\n#Book One: The Church of the Conquerors#\n\nThe Priestly Lie\n\nThe Great Fear\n\nSalve Regina!\n\nFresh Meat\n\nPriestly Empires\n\nPrayer-wheels\n\nThe Butcher-Gods\n\nThe Holy Inquisition\n\nHell-fire\n\n#Book Two: The Church of Good Society#\n\nThe Rain Makers\n\nThe Babylonian Fire-God\n\nThe Medicine-men\n\nThe Canonization of Incompetence\n\nGibson's Preservative\n\nThe Elders\n\nChurch History\n\nLand and Livings\n\nGraft in Tail\n\nBishops and Beer\n\nAnglicanism and Alcohol\n\nDead Cats\n\n\"Suffer Little Children\" The Court-circular\n\nHorn-blowing\n\nTrinity Corporation\n\nSpiritual Interpretation\n\n#Book Three: The Church of the Servant Girls#\n\nCharity\n\nGod's Armor\n\nThanksgivings\n\nThe Holy Roman Empire\n\nTemporal Power\n\nKnights of Slavery\n\nPriests and Police\n\nThe Church Militant\n\nThe Church Triumphant\n\nGod in the Schools\n\nThe Menace\n\nKing Coal\n\nThe Unholy Alliance\n\nSecret Service\n\nTax Exemption\n\nHoly History\n\nDas Centrum\n\n#Book Four: The Church of the Slavers#\n\nThe Face of Caesar\n\nDeutschland ueber Alles\n\nDer Tag\n\nKing Cotton\n\nWitches and Women\n\nMoth and Rust\n\nTo Lyman Abbott\n\nThe Octopus\n\nThe Industrial Shelley\n\nThe Outlook for Graft\n\nClerical Camouflage\n\nThe Jungle\n\n#Book Five: The Church of the Merchants#\n\nThe Head Merchant\n\n\"Herr Beeble\" Holy Oil\n\nRhetorical Black-hanging\n\nThe Great American Fraud\n\nRiches in Glory\n\nCaptivating Ideals\n\nSpook Hunting\n\nRunning the Rapids\n\nBirth Control\n\nSheep\n\n#Book Six: The Church of the Quacks#\n\nTabula Rasa\n\nThe Book of Mormon\n\nHoly Rolling\n\nBible Prophecy\n\nKoreshanity\n\nMazdaznan\n\nBlack Magic\n\nMental Malpractice\n\nScience and Wealth\n\nNew Nonsense\n\n\"Dollars Want Me!\" Spiritual Financiering\n\nThe Graft of Grace\n\n#Book Seven: The Church of the Social Revolution#\n\nChrist and Caesar\n\nLocusts and Wild Honey\n\nMother Earth\n\nThe Soap Box\n\nThe Church Machine\n\nThe Church Redeemed\n\nThe Desire of Nations\n\nThe Knowable\n\n\"Nature's Insurgent Son\" The New Morality\n\nEnvoi\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#INTRODUCTORY#\n\n#Bootstrap-lifting#\n\nBootstrap-lifting? says the reader.\n\nIt is a vision I have seen: upon a vast plain, men and women are\ngathered in dense throngs, crouched in uncomfortable and distressing\npositions, their fingers hooked in the straps of their boots. They are\nengaged in lifting themselves; tugging and straining until they grow\nred in the face, exhausted. The perspiration streams from their\nforeheads, they show every symptom of distress; the eyes of all are\nfixed, not upon each other, nor upon their boot-straps, but upon the\nsky above. There is a look of rapture upon their faces, and now and\nthen, amid grunts and groans, they cry out with excitement and\ntriumph.\n\nI approach one and say to him, \"Friend, what is this you are doing?\"\n\nHe answers, without pausing to glance at me, \"I am performing\nspiritual exercises. See how I rise?\"\n\n\"But,\" I say, \"you are not rising at all!\"\n\nWhereat he becomes instantly angry. \"You are one of the scoffers!\"\n\n\"But, friend,\" I protest, \"don't you feel the earth under your feet?\"\n\n\"You are a materialist!\"\n\n\"But, friend, I can see--\"\n\n\"You are without spiritual vision!\"\n\nAnd so I move on among the sweating and groaning hordes. Being of a\nsympathetic turn of mind, I cannot help being distressed by the\nprevalence of this singular practice among so large a portion of the\nhuman race. How is it possible that none of them should suspect the\nfutility of their procedure? Or can it really be that I am\nuncomprehending? That in some way they are actually getting off the\nground, or about to get off the ground?\n\nThen I observe a new phenomenon: a man gliding here and there among\nthe bootstrap-lifters, approaching from the rear and slipping his\nhands into their pockets. The position of the spiritual exercisers\ngreatly facilitates his work; their eyes being cast up to heaven, they\ndo not see him, their thoughts being occupied, they do not heed him;\nhe goes through their pockets at leisure, and transfers the contents\nto a bag he carries, and then moves on to the next victim. I watch him\nfor a while, and finally approach and ask, \"What are you doing, sir?\"\n\nHe answers, \"I am picking pockets.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I say, puzzled by his matter-of-course tone. \"But--I beg\npardon--are you a thief?\"\n\n\"Oh, no,\" he answers, smilingly, \"I am the agent of the Wholesale\nPickpockets' Association. This is Prosperity.\"\n\n\"I see,\" I reply. \"And these people let you--\"\n\n\"It is the law,\" he says. \"It is also the gospel.\"\n\nI turn, following his glance, and observe another person\napproaching--a stately figure, clad in scarlet and purple robes,\nmoving with slow dignity. Ha gazes about at the sweating and grunting\nhordes; now and then he stops and lifts his hands in a gesture of\nbenediction, and proclaims in rolling tones, \"Blessed are the\nBootstrap-lifters, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.\" He moves on,\nand after a bit stops and announces again, \"Man doth not live by bread\nalone, but by every word that cometh out of the mouth of the prophets\nand priests of Bootstrap-lifting.\"\n\nWatching a while longer, I see this majestic one approach the agent of\nthe Wholesale Pickpockets' Association. The agent greets him as a\nfriend, and proceeds to transfer to the pockets of his capacious robes\na generous share of the loot which he has collected. The majestic one\ndoes not cringe, nor does he make any effort to hide what is going on.\nOn the contrary he cries aloud, \"It is more blessed to give than to\nreceive!\" And again he cries, \"The laborer is worthy of his hire!\" And\na third time he cries, yet more sternly, \"Render unto Caesar the\nthings which are Caesar's!\" And the Bootstrap-lifters pause long\nenough to answer: \"Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to\nkeep this law!\" Then they renew their straining and tugging.\n\nI step up, and in timid tones begin, \"Reverend sir, will you tell me\nby what right you take this wealth?\"\n\nInstantly a frown comes upon his face, and he cries in a voice of\nthunder, \"Blasphemer!\" And all the Bootstrap-lifters desist from their\nlifting, and menace me with furious looks. There is a general call for\na policeman of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association; and so I fall\nsilent, and slink away in the throng, and thereafter keep my thoughts\nto myself.\n\nOver the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and\nincredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting\nimpulse. There is, I discover, a regular propaganda on foot; a long\ntime ago--no man can recall how far back--the Wholesale Pickpockets\nmade the discovery of the ease with which a man's pockets could be\nrifled while he was preoccupied with spiritual exercises, and they\nbegan offering prizes for the best essays in support of the practice.\nNow their propaganda is everywhere triumphant, and year by year we see\nan increase in the rewards and emoluments of the prophets and priests\nof the cult. The ground is covered with stately temples of various\ndesigns, all of which I am told are consecrated to Bootstrap-lifting.\nI come to where a group of people are occupied in laying the\ncorner-stone of a new white marble structure; I inquire and am\ninformed it is the First Church of Bootstrap-lifters, Scientist. As I\nstand watching, a card is handed to me, informing me that a lady will\ndo my Bootstrap-lifting at five dollars per lift.\n\nI go on to another building, which I am told is a library containing\nvolumes in defense of the Bootstrap-lifters, published under the\nauspices of the Wholesale Pickpockets. I enter, and find endless\nvistas of shelves, also several thousand current magazines and papers.\nI consult these--for my legs have given out in the effort to visit and\ninspect all phases of the Bootstrap-lifting practice. I discover that\nhardly a week passes that some one does not start a new cult, or\nrevive an old one; if I had a hundred life-times I could not know all\nthe creeds and ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and\nliturgies, the hymns, anthems and offertories of Bootstrap-lifting.\nThere are the Holy Roman Bootstrap-lifters, whose priests are fed\nby Transubstantiation; the established Anglican Bootstrap-lifters,\nwhose priests live by \"livings\"; the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters,\nwhose preachers practice total immersion in Standard Oil. There\nare Yogi Bootstrap-lifters with flowing robes of yellow silk;\nTheosophist Bootstrap-lifters with green and purple auras; Mormon\nBootstrap-lifters, Mazdaznan Bootstrap-lifters, Spiritualist and\nSpirit-Fruit, Millerite and Dowieite, Holy Roller and Holy Jumper,\nCome-to-glory negro, Billy Sunday base-ball and Salvation Army\nbass-drum Bootstrap-lifters. There are the thousand varieties of \"New\nThought\" Bootstrap-lifters; the mystic and transcendentalist,\nSwedenborgian and Jacob Boehme Bootstrap-lifters; the Elbert Hubbard\nhigh-art Bootstrap-lifters with half a million magazinelets at two\nbits apiece; the \"uplift\" and \"optimist,\" the Ralph Waldo Trine and\nOrison Swett Marden Bootstrap-lifters with a hundred thousand volumes\nat one dollar per volume. There are the Platonist and Hegelian and\nKantian professors of collegiate metaphysical Bootstrap-lifting at\nseveral thousand dollars per year each. There are the Nietzschean\nBootstrap-lifters, who lift themselves to the Superman, and the\nart-for-art's-sake, neo-Pagan Bootstrap-lifters, who lift themselves\ndown to the Ape.\n\nExcepting possibly the last-mentioned group, the priests of all\nthese cults, the singers, shouters, prayers and exhorters of\nBootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic that\nthey do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and less at any\nother man's. Now and then you may see one bend and give a delicate\ntug, of a purely symbolical character: as when the Supreme Pontiff of\nthe Roman Bootstrap-lifters comes once a year to wash the feet of the\npoor; or when the Sunday-school Superintendent of the Baptist\nBootstrap-lifters shakes the hand of one of his Colorado mine-slaves.\nBut for the most part the priests and preachers of Bootstrap-lifting\nwalk haughtily erect, many of them being so swollen with prosperity\nthat they could not reach their bootstraps if they wanted to. Their\nrole in life is to exhort other men to more vigorous efforts at\nself-elevation, that the agents of the Wholesale Pickpockets'\nAssociation may ply their immemorial role with less chance of\ninterference.\n\n#Religion#\n\nThe reader, offended by this raillery, asks if I mean to impugn the\nsincerity of all who preach the supremacy of the soul. No; I admit the\nhonesty of the heroes and madmen of history. All I ask of the preacher\nis that he shall make an effort to practice his doctrine. Let him be\ntormented like Don Quixote; let him go mad like Nietzsche; let him\nstand upon a pillar and be devoured by worms like Simeon Stylites--on\nthese terms I grant to any dreamer the right to hold himself above\neconomic science.\n\nMan is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about\nhimself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny\nhis animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its\nweaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be\nharmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the\nformulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic\nself-indulgence? What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to\nthe poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? What are we to\nsay when we see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual\nheritage of mankind twisted to the knavish purposes of class-cruelty\nand greed? What I say is--Bootstrap-lifting!\n\nIt is the fate of many abstract words to be used in two senses, one\ngood and the other bad. Morality means the will to righteousness, or\nit means Anthony Comstock; democracy means the rule of the people, or\nit means Tammany Hall. And so it is with the word \"Religion\". In its\ntrue sense Religion is the most fundamental of the soul's impulses,\nthe impassioned love of life, the feeling of its preciousness, the\ndesire to foster and further it. In that sense every thinking man must\nbe religious; in that sense Religion is a perpetually self-renewing\nforce, the very nature of our being. In that sense I have no thought\nof assailing it, I would make clear that I hold it beyond assailment.\n\nBut we are denied the pleasure of using the word in that honest sense,\nbecause of another which has been given to it. To the ordinary man\n\"Religion\" means, not the soul's longing for growth, the \"hunger and\nthirst after righteousness\", but certain forms in which this hunger\nhas manifested itself in history, and prevails today throughout the\nworld; that is to say, institutions having fixed dogmas and\n\"revelations\", creeds and rituals, with an administering caste\nclaiming supernatural sanction. By such institutions the moral\nstrivings of the race, the affections of childhood and the aspirations\nof youth are made the prerogatives and stock in trade of\necclesiastical hierarchies. It is the thesis of this book that\n\"Religion\" in this sense is a source of income to parasites, and the\nnatural ally of every form of oppression and exploitation.\n\nIf by my jesting at \"Bootstrap-lifting\" I have wounded some dear\nprejudice of the reader, let me endeavor to speak in a more persuasive\nvoice. I am a man who has suffered, and has seen the suffering of\nothers; I have devoted my life to analyzing the causes of the\nsuffering, to find out if it be necessary and fore-ordained, or if by\nany chance there be a way of escape for future generations. I have\nfound that the latter is the case; the suffering is needless, it can\nwith ease and certainty be banished from the earth. I know this with\nthe knowledge of science--in the same way that the navigator of a ship\nknows his latitude and longitude, and the point of the compass to\nwhich he must steer in order to reach the port.\n\nCome, reader, let us put aside prejudice, and the terrors of the cults\nof the unknown. The power which made us has given us a mind, and the\nimpulse to its use; let us see what can be done with it to rid the\nearth of its ancient evils. And do not be troubled if at the outset\nthis book seems to be entirely \"destructive\". I assure you that I am\nno crude materialist, I am not so shallow as to imagine that our race\nwill be satisfied with a barren rationalism. I know that the old\nsymbols came out of the heart of man because they corresponded to\ncertain needs of the heart of man. I know that new symbols will be\nfound, corresponding more exactly to the needs of our time. If here I\nset to work to tear down an old and ramshackle building, it is not\nfrom blind destructfulness, but as an architect who means to put a new\nand sounder structure in its place. Before we part company I shall\nsubmit the blue print of that new home of the spirit.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#BOOK ONE#\n\n#The Church of the Conquerors#\n\n  I saw the Conquerors riding by\n      With trampling feet of horse and men:\n  Empire on empire like the tide\n      Flooded the world and ebbed again;\n\n  A thousand banners caught the sun,\n      And cities smoked along the plain,\n  And laden down with silk and gold\n      And heaped up pillage groaned the wain.\n\n Kemp.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#The Priestly Lie#\n\nWhen the first savage saw his hut destroyed by a bolt of lightning, he\nfell down upon his face in terror. He had no conception of natural\nforces, of laws of electricity; he saw this event as the act of an\nindividual intelligence. To-day we read about fairies and demons,\ndryads and fauns and satyrs, Wotan and Thor and Vulcan, Freie and\nFlora and Ceres, and we think of all these as pretty fancies,\nplay-products of the mind; losing sight of the fact that they were\noriginally meant with entire seriousness--that not merely did ancient\nman believe in them, but was forced to believe in them, because the\nmind must have an explanation of things that happen, and an individual\nintelligence was the only explanation available. The story of the hero\nwho slays the devouring dragon was not merely a symbol of day and\nnight, of summer and winter; it was a literal explanation of the\nphenomena, it was the science of early times.\n\nMen imagined supernatural powers such as they could comprehend. If the\nlightning god destroyed a hut, obviously it must be because the owner\nof the hut had given offense; so the owner must placate the god, using\nthose means which would be effective in the quarrels of men--presents\nof roast meats and honey and fresh fruits, of wine and gold and jewels\nand women, accompanied by friendly words and gestures of submission.\nAnd when in spite of all things the natural evil did not cease, when\nthe people continued to die of pestilence, then came the opportunity\nfor hysterical or ambitious persons to discover new ways of\npenetrating the mind of the god. There would be dreamers of dreams and\nseers of visions and hearers of voices; readers of the entrails of\nbeasts and interpreters of the flight of birds; there would be burning\nbushes and stone tablets on mountain-tops, and inspired words dictated\nto aged disciples on lonely islands. There would arise special castes\nof men and women, learned in these sacred matters; and these priestly\ncastes would naturally emphasize the importance of their calling,\nwould hold themselves aloof from the common herd, endowed with special\npowers and entitled to special privileges. They would interpret the\noracles in ways favorable to themselves and their order; they would\nproclaim themselves friends and confidants of the god, walking with\nhim in the night-time, receiving his messengers and angels, acting as\nhis deputies in forgiving offenses, in dealing punishments and in\nreceiving gifts. They would become makers of laws and moral codes.\nThey would wear special costumes to distinguish them, they would go\nthrough elaborate ceremonies to impress their followers, employing all\nsensuous effects, architecture and sculpture and painting, music and\npoetry and dancing, candles and incense and bells and gongs\n\n  And storied windows richly dight,\n  Casting a dim religious light.\n  There let the pealing organ blow,\n  To the full-voiced choir below,\n  In service high and anthem clear,\n  As may with sweetness through mine ear\n  Dissolve me into ecstacies,\n  And bring all heaven before mine eyes.\n\nSo builds itself up, in a thousand complex and complicated forms, the\nPriestly Lie. There are a score of great religions in the world, each\nwith scores or hundreds of sects, each with its priestly orders, its\ncomplicated creed and ritual, its heavens and hells. Each has its\nthousands or millions or hundreds of millions of \"true believers\";\neach damns all the others, with more or less heartiness--and each is a\nmighty fortress of Graft.\n\nThere will be few readers of this book who have not been brought up\nunder the spell of some one of these systems of Supernaturalism; who\nhave not been taught to speak with respect of some particular priestly\norder, to thrill with awe at some particular sacred rite, to seek\nrespite from earthly woes in some particular ceremonial spell. These\nthings are woven into our very fibre in childhood; they are sanctified\nby memories of joys and griefs, they are confused with spiritual\nstruggles, they become part of all that is most vital in our lives.\nThe reader who wishes to emancipate himself from their thrall will do\nwell to begin with a study of the beliefs and practices of other sects\nthan his own--a field where he is free to observe and examine without\nfear of sacrilege. Let him look into Madame Blavatsky's \"Secret\nDoctrine\", or her \"Isis Unveiled\"--encyclopedias of the fantastic\ninventions which terror and longing have wrung out of the tortured\nsoul of man. Here are mysteries and solemnities, charms and spells,\nilluminations and transmigrations, angels and demons, guides, controls\nand masters--all of which it is permissible to refuse to support with\ngifts. Let the reader then go to James Freeman Clarke's \"Ten Great\nReligions\", and realize how many billions of humans have lived and\ndied in the solemn certainty that their welfare on earth and in heaven\ndepended upon their accepting certain ideas and practicing certain\nrites, all mutually exclusive and incompatible, each damning the\nothers and the followers of the others. So gradually the realization\nwill come to him that the test of a doctrine about life and its\nwelfare must be something else than the fact that one was born to it.\n\n#The Great Fear#\n\nIt was not the fault of primitive man that he was ignorant, nor that\nhis ignorance made him a prey to dread. The traces of his mental\nsuffering will inspire in us only pity and sympathy; for Nature is a\ngrim school-mistress, and not all her lessons have yet been learned.\nWe have a right to scorn and anger only when we see this dread being\ndiverted from its true function, a stimulus to a search for knowledge,\nand made into a means of clamping down ignorance upon the mind of the\nrace. That this has been the deliberate policy of institutionalized\nReligion no candid student can deny.\n\nThe first thing brought forth by the study of any religion, ancient or\nmodern, is that it is based upon Fear, born of it, fed by it--and that\nit cultivates the source from which its nourishment is derived. \"The\nfear of divine anger\", says Prof. Jastrow, \"runs as an undercurrent\nthrough the entire religious literature of Babylonia and Assyria.\" In\nthe words of Tabi-utul-Enlil, King of ancient Nippur:\n\n  Who is there that can grasp the will of the gods in heaven?\n  The plan of a god is full of mystery--who can understand it?\n  He who is still alive at evening is dead the next morning.\n  In an instant he is cast into grief, in a moment he is crushed.\n\nAnd that cry might be duplicated from almost any page of the Hebrew\nscriptures: the only difference being that the Hebrews combined all\ntheir fears into one Great Fear. \"The fear of the Lord is the\nbeginning of wisdom,\" we are told by Solomon of the thousand wives;\nand the Psalmist repeats it. \"Dominion and fear are with Him,\" cries\nJob. \"How then can any man be just before God? Or how can he be clean\nthat is born of a woman? Behold, even the moon hath no brightness, and\nthe stars are not pure in His sight: How much less man, that is a\nworm? And the son of man, which is a worm?\" He goes on, in his lyrical\nrapture, \"Sheol is naked before Him, and Destruction hath no\ncovering.... The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His\nrebuke. ... The thunder of His power who can understand?\" That all\nthis is some of the world's great poetry does not in the least alter\nthe fact that it is an abasement of the soul, an hysterical perversion\nof the facts of life, and a preparation of the mind for the seeds of\nPriestcraft.\n\nThe Book of Job has been called a \"Wisdom-drama\": and what is the\ndenouement of this drama, what is ancient Hebrew wisdom's last word\nabout life? \"Wherefore I abhor myself,\" says Job, \"and repent in dust\nand ashes.\" The poor fellow has done nothing; we have been told at the\nbeginning that he \"was perfect and upright, and one that feared God,\nand eschewed evil.\" But the Sabeans and the Chaldeans rob him, and\n\"the fire of God\" falls from heaven and burns up his sheep and his\nservants, and \"a great wind from the wilderness\" kills his sons and\ndaughters; and then his body becomes covered with boils--a phenomenon\ncaused in part by worry, and the consequent nervous indigestion, but\nmainly by excess of starch and deficiency of mineral salts in the\ndiet. Job, however, has never heard of the fasting cure for disease,\nand so he takes him a potsherd to scrape himself withal, and he sits\namong the ashes--a highly unsanitary procedure enforced by his\nreligious ritual. So naturally he feels like a worm, and abhors\nhimself, and cries out: \"I know that Thou canst do all things, and\nthat no purpose of Thine can be restrained.\" By which utter,\nunreasoning humility he succeeds in appeasing the Great Fear, and his\nfriends make a sacrifice of seven bullocks and seven rams--a feast for\na whole templeful of priests--and then \"the Lord gave Job twice as\nmuch as he had before.... And after this Job lived an hundred and\nforty years, and saw his sons and his sons' sons, even four\ngenerations.\"\n\nYou do not have to look very deeply into this \"Wisdom-drama\" to find\nout whose wisdom it is. Confess your own ignorance and your own\nimpotence, abandon yourself utterly, and then we, the sacred Caste,\nthe Keepers of the Holy Secrets, will secure you pardon and\nrespite--in exchange for fresh meat. Here are verses from a psalm of\nthe ancient Babylonians, which \"heathen\" chant is identical in spirit\nand purpose with the utterances of Job:\n\n  The Sin that I have wrought, I know not;\n  The unclean that I have eaten, I know not;\n  The offense into which I have walked, I know not....\n  The lord, in the wrath of his heart, hath regarded me;\n  The god, in the anger of his heart, hath surrounded me;\n  A goddess, known or unknown, hath wrought me sorrow....\n  I sought for help, but no one took my hand;\n  I wept, but no one harkened to me....\n  The feet of my goddess I kiss, I touch them;\n  To the god, known or unknown, I utter my prayer;\n  O god, known or unknown, turn thy countenance, accept my sacrifice;\n  O goddess, known or unknown, look mercifully on me, accept my sacrifice!\n\n#Salve Regina!#\n\nAnd now let the reader leap three thousand years of human history, of\ntoil and triumph of the intellect of man; and instead of a Hebrew\nmanuscript or a Babylonian brick there confronts him a little\npublication, printed on a modern rotary press in the capital of the\nUnited States of America, bearing the date of October, 1914, and the\ntitle \"Salve Regina\". In it we find \"a beautiful prayer\", composed by\nthe late cardinal Rampolla; we are told that \"Pius X attached to it an\nindulgence of 100 days, each time it is piously recited, applicable to\nthe souls in purgatory.\"\n\n     O Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, cast a glance from Heaven,\n     where thou sittest as Queen, upon this poor sinner, your\n     servant. Though conscious of his unworthiness.... he blesses\n     and exalts thee from his whole heart as the purest, the most\n     beautiful and the most holy of creatures. He blesses thy\n     holy name. He blesses thy sublime prerogatives as real\n     Mother of God, ever Virgin, conceived without stain of sin,\n     as co-Redemptress of the human race. He blesses the Eternal\n     Father who chose you, etc. He blesses the Incarnate Word,\n     etc. He blesses the Divine Spirit, etc. He blesses, exalts\n     and thanks the most august Trinity, etc. O Virgin, holy and\n     merciful.... be pleased to accept this little homage of your\n     servant, and obtain for him also from your divine Son pardon\n     for his sins, Amen.\n\nAnd then, looking more closely, we discover the purpose of this\n\"beautiful prayer\", and of the neat little paper which prints it.\n\"Salve Regina\" is raising funds for the \"National Shrine of the\nImmaculate Conception\", a home for more priests, and Catholic ladies\nwho desire to collect for it may receive little books which they are\nrequested to return within three months. Pius X writes a letter of\nwarm endorsement, and sets an example by giving four hundred dollars\n\"out of his poverty\"--or, to be more precise, out of the poverty of\nthe pitiful peasantry of Italy. There is included in the paper a form\nof bequest for \"devoted clients of Our Blessed Mother\", and at the top\nof the editorial page the most alluring of all baits for the loving\nhearts of the flock--that the names of deceased relatives and friends\nmay be written in the collection books, and will be transferred to the\nrecords of the Shrine, and these persons \"will share in all its\nspiritual benefits\". In the days of Job it was with threats of boils\nand poverty that the Priestly Lie maintained itself; but in the case\nof this blackest of all Terrors, transplanted to our free Republic\nfrom the heart of the Dark Ages, the wretched victims see before their\neyes the glare of flames, and hear the shrieks of their loved ones\nwrithing in torment through uncounted ages and eternities.\n\n#Fresh Meat#\n\nIn the days when I was experimenting with vegetarianism, I sought\nearnestly for evidence of a non-meat-eating race; but candor compelled\nme to admit that man was like the monkey and the pig and the bear--he\nwas vegetarian when he could not help it. The advocates of the reform\ninsist that meat as a diet causes muddy brains and dulled nerves; but\nyou would certainly never suspect this from a study of history. What\nyou find in history is that all men crave meat, all struggle for it,\nand the strongest and cleverest get it. Everywhere you find the\nsubject classes living in the midst of animals which they tend, but\nwhose flesh they rarely taste. Even in modern America, sweet land of\nliberty, our millions of tenant farmers raise chickens and geese and\nturkeys, and hardly venture to consume as much as an egg, but save\neverything for the summer-boarder or the buyer from the city. It would\nnot be too much to say of the cultural records of early man that they\nall have to do, directly or indirectly, with the reserving of fresh\nmeat to the masters. In J.T. Trowbridge's cheerful tale of the\nadventures of Captain Seaborn, we are told by the cannibal priest how\nidol-worship has ameliorated the morals of the tribe--\n\n  For though some warriors of renown\n      Continue anthropophagous,\n  'Tis rare that human flesh goes down\n      The low-caste man's aesophagus!\n\nI suspect that we should have to go back to the days of the cave-man\nto find the first lover of the flesh-pots who put a taboo upon meat,\nand promised supernatural favors to all who would exercise\nself-control, and instead of consuming their meat themselves, would\nbring it and lay it upon the sacred griddle, or altar, where the god\nmight come in the night-time and partake of it. Certainly, at any\nrate, there are few religions of record in which such devices do not\nappear. The early laws of the Hebrews are more concerned with\ndelicatessen for the priests than with any other subject whatever.\nHere, for example, is the way to make a Nazarite:\n\n     He shall offer his offering up to the Lord, one he lamb of\n     the first year without blemish for a burnt offering, and one\n     ewe lamb of the first year without blemish for a sin\n     offering, and one ram without blemish for peace offerings,\n     and a basket of unleavened bread, cakes of fine flour\n     mingled with oil, and wafers of unleavened bread anointed\n     with oil, and their meat offerings.\n\nAnd the law goes on to instruct the priests to take certain choice\nparts and \"wave them for a wave offering before the Lord: this is holy\nfor the priest.\" What was done with the other portions we are not\ntold; but earlier in this same \"Book of Numbers\" we find the general\nlaw that\n\n     Every offering of all the holy things of the children of\n     Israel, which they bring unto the priest, shall be his. And\n     every man's hallowed things shall be his: whatsoever any man\n     giveth to the priest, it shall be his.\n\nIn the same way we are told by Viscount Amberley that the priests of\nCeylon first present the gifts to the god, and then eat them. Among\nthe Parsees, when a man dies, the relatives must bring four new robes\nto the priests; if they do this, the priests wear the robes; if they\nfail to do it, the dead man appears naked before the judgment-throne.\nThe devotees are instructed that \"he who performs this rite succeeds\nin both worlds, and obtains a firm footing in both worlds.\" Among the\nBuddhists, the followers give alms to the monks, and are told\nspecifically what advantages will thereby accrue to them. In the\nAitareyo Brahmanam of the Rig-Veda we read\n\n     He who, knowing this, sacrifices according to this rite, is\n     born from the womb of Agni and the offerings, participates\n     in the nature of the Rik, Yajus, and Saman, the Veda (sacred\n     knowledge), the Brahma (sacred element) and immortality, and\n     is absorbed into the deity.\n\nAmong the Parsees the priest eats the bread and drinks the haoma, or\njuice of a plant, considered to be both a plant and a god. Among the\nEpiscopalians, a contemporary Christian sect, the sacred juice is that\nof the grape, and the priest is not allowed to throw away what is left\nof it, but is ordered \"reverently to consume it.\" In as much as the\npriest is the sole judge of how much good sherry wine he shall\nconsecrate previous to the ceremony, it is to be expected that the\npriests of this cult should be lukewarm towards the prohibition\nmovement, and should piously refuse to administer their sacrament with\nunfermented and uninteresting grape-juice.\n\n#Priestly Empires#\n\nIn every human society of which we have record there has been one\nclass which has done the hard and exhausting work, the \"hewers of wood\nand drawers of water\"; and there has been another, much smaller class\nwhich has done the directing. To belong to this latter class is to\nwork also, but with the head instead of the hands; it is also to enjoy\nthe good things of life, to live in the best houses, to eat the best\nfood, to have choice of the most desirable women; it is to have\nleisure to cultivate the mind and appreciate the arts, to acquire\ngraces and distinctions, to give laws and moral codes, to shape\nfashions and tastes, to be revered and regarded--in short, to have\nPower. How to get this Power and to hold it has been the first object\nof the thoughts of men from the beginning of time.\n\nThe most obvious method is by the sword; but this method is uncertain,\nfor any man may take up a sword, and some may succeed with it. It will\nbe found that empires based upon military force alone, however cruel\nthey may be, are not permanent, and therefore not so dangerous to\nprogress; it is only when resistance is paralyzed by the agency of\nSuperstition, that the race can be subjected to systems of\nexploitation for hundreds and even thousands of years. The ancient\nempires were all priestly empires; the kings ruled because they obeyed\nthe will of the priests, taught to them from childhood as the word of\nthe gods.\n\nThus, for instance, Prescott tells us:\n\n     Terror, not love, was the spring of education with the\n     Aztecs....Such was the crafty policy of the priests, who, by\n     reserving to themselves the business of instruction, were\n     enabled to mould the young and plastic mind according to\n     their own wills, and to train it early to implicit reverence\n     for religion and its ministers.\n\nThe historian goes on to indicate the economic harvest of this\nteaching:\n\n     To each of the principal temples, lands were annexed for the\n     maintenance of the priests. The estates were augmented by\n     the policy or devotion of successive princes, until, under\n     the last Montezuma, they had swollen to an enormous extent,\n     and covered every district of the empire.\n\nAnd this concerning the frightful system of human sacrifices, whereby\nthe priestly caste maintained the prestige of its divinities:\n\n     At the dedication of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, in 1486,\n     the prisoners, who for some years had been reserved for the\n     purpose, were ranged in files, forming a procession nearly\n     two miles long. The ceremony consumed several days, and\n     seventy thousand captives are said to have perished at the\n     shrine of this terrible deity.\n\nThe same system appears in Professor Jastrow's account of the\npriesthood of Babylonia and Assyria:\n\n     The ultimate source of all law being the deity himself, the\n     original legal tribunal was the place where the image or\n     symbol of the god stood. A legal decision was an oracle or\n     omen, indicative of the will of the god. The power thus\n     lodged in the priests of Babylonia and Assyria was enormous.\n     They virtually held in their hands the life and death of the\n     people.\n\nAnd of the business side of this vast religious system:\n\n     The temples were the natural depositories of the legal\n     archives, which in the course of centuries grew to veritably\n     enormous proportions. Records were made of all decisions;\n     the facts were set forth, and duly attested by witnesses.\n     Business and marriage contracts, loans and deeds of sale\n     were in like manner drawn up in the presence of official\n     scribes, who were also priests. In this way all commercial\n     transactions received the written sanction of the religious\n     organization. The temples themselves--at least in the large\n     centres--entered into business relations with the populace.\n     In order to maintain the large household represented by such\n     an organization as that of the temple of Enlil of Nippur,\n     that of Ningirsu at Lagash, that of Marduk at Babylon, or\n     that of Shamash at Sippar, large holdings of land were\n     required which, cultivated by agents for the priests, or\n     farmed out with stipulations for a goodly share of the\n     produce, secured an income for the maintenance of the temple\n     officials. The enterprise of the temples was expanded to the\n     furnishing of loans at interest--in later periods, at\n     20%--to barter in slaves, to dealings in lands, besides\n     engaging labor for work of all kinds directly needed for the\n     temples. A large quantity of the business documents found in\n     the temple archives are concerned with the business affairs\n     of the temple, and we are justified in including the temples\n     in the large centres as among the most important business\n     institutions of the country. In financial or monetary\n     transactions the position of the temples was not unlike that\n     of national banks....\n\nAnd so on. We may venture the guess that the learned professor said\nmore in that last sentence than he himself intended, for his lectures\nwere delivered in that temple of plutocracy, the University of\nPennsylvania, and paid out of an endowment which specifies that \"all\npolemical subjects shall be positively excluded!\"\n\n#Prayer-wheels#\n\nThese priestly empires exist in the world today. If we wish to find\nthem we have only to ask ourselves:\n\nWhat countries are making no contribution to the progress of the race?\nWhat countries have nothing to give us, whether in art, science, or\nindustry?\n\nFor example, Gervaise tells us of the Talapoins, or priests of Siam,\nthat \"they are exempted from all public charges, they salute nobody,\nwhile everybody prostrates himself before them. They are maintained at\nthe public expense.\" In the same way we read of the negroes of the\nCaribbean islands that \"their priests and priestesses exercise an\nalmost unlimited power.\" Miss Kingsley, in her \"West African Studies\",\ntells us that if we desire to understand the institutions of this\ndistrict, we must study the native's religion.\n\n     For his religion has so firm a grasp upon his mind that it\n     influences everything he does. It is not a thing apart, as\n     the religion of the Europeans is at times. The African\n     cannot say, \"Oh, that is all right from a religious point of\n     view, but one must be practical.\" To be practical, to get on\n     in the world, to live the day and night through, he must be\n     right in the religious point of view, namely, must be on\n     working terms with the great world of spirits around him.\n     The knowledge of this spirit world constitutes the religion\n     of the African, and his customs and ceremonies arise from\n     his idea of the best way to influence it.\n\nOr consider Henry Savage Lander's account of Thibet:\n\n     In Lhassa and many other sacred places fanatical pilgrims\n     make circumambulations, sometimes for miles and miles, and\n     for days together, covering the entire distance lying flat\n     upon their bodies.... From the ceiling of the temple hang\n     hundreds of long strips, katas, offered by pilgrims to the\n     temple, and becoming so many flying prayers when hung\n     up--for mechanical praying in every way is prominent in\n     Thibet.... Thus instead of having to learn by heart long and\n     varied prayers, all you have to do is to stuff the entire\n     prayer-book into a prayer-wheel,\n\nand revolve it while repeating as fast as you can four words meaning,\n\"O God, the gem emerging from the lotus-flower.\" ... The attention of\nthe pilgrims is directed to a large box, or often a big bowl, where\nthey may deposit whatever offerings they can spare, and it must be\nsaid that their religious ideas are so strongly developed that they\nwill dispose of a considerable portion of their money in this\nfashion.... The Lamas are very clever in many ways, and have a great\nhold over the entire country. They are ninety per cent of them\nunscrupulous scamps, depraved in every way and given to every sort of\nvice. So are the women Lamas. They live and sponge on the credulity\nand ignorance of the crowds; it is to maintain this ignorance, upon\nwhich their luxurious life depends, that foreign influence of every\nkind is strictly kept out of the country.\n\n#The Butcher-Gods#\n\nIn this last sentence we have summed up the fundamental fact about\ninstitutionalized religion. Wherever belief and ritual have become the\nmeans of livelihood of a class, all innovation will of necessity be\ntaken as an attack upon that class; it will be literally a\ncrime-robbing the priests of their age-long privileges. And of course\nthey will oppose the robber--using every weapon of terrorism, both of\nthis world and the next. They will require the submission, not merely\nof their own people, but of their neighbors, and their jealousy of\nrival priestly castes will be a cause of wars. The story of the early\ndays of mankind is a sickening record of torture and slaughter in the\nname of ten thousand butcher-gods.\n\nThus, for example, we read in the Hebrew religious records how the\npriests were engaged in establishing the prestige of a fetish called\n\"the ark\"; and how the people of one tribe violated this fetish and\nwakened the wrath of Jehovah, the god. And he smote the men of\nBeth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord, even\nhe smote of the people fifty thousand and three score and ten men; and\nthe people lamented, because the Lord had smitten many of the people\nwith a great slaughter. And the men of Beth-shemesh said, Who is able\nto stand before this holy Lord God?\n\nThis terrible old Hebrew divinity said of himself that he was \"a\njealous god\". Throughout the time of his sway he issued through his\nministers precise instructions for the most revolting cruelties, the\nextermination of whole nations of men, women and children, whose sole\noffense was that they did not pay tribute to Jehovah's priests. Thus,\nfor example, the chief of his prophets, Moses, called the people\ntogether, and with all solemnity, and with many warnings, handed down\nten commandments graven upon stone tablets; he went on to set forth\nhow the people were to set upon and rob their neighbors, and gave them\nthese blood-thirsty instructions:\n\n     When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither\n     thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations\n     before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the\n     Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the\n     Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and\n     mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver\n     them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy\n     them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy\n     unto them: ... But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall\n     destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut\n     down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.\n     For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord\n     thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto\n     himself, above all people that are upon the face of the\n     earth.\n\nThe records of this Jehovah are full of similar horrors. He sent his\nchosen people out to destroy the Midianites, and they slew all the\nmales, but this was not sufficient, and Moses was wroth, and commanded\nthem to kill all the married women, and to take the single women \"for\nthemselves\". We are told that sixteen thousand single women were\nspared, of whom \"the Lord's tribute was thirty and two!\" In the Book\nof Joshua we read that he had an interview with a supernatural\npersonage called \"the captain of the Lord's host\", and how this\ncaptain had given to him a magic spell which would destroy the city of\nJericho. The city should be accursed, \"even it and all that are\ntherein, to the Lord\"; every living thing except one traitor-harlot\nwas to be slaughtered, and all the wealth of the city reserved to the\npriestly caste. This was carried out to the letter, except that\n\"Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the\ntribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing\"--that is, he hid some gold\nand silver in his tent; whereupon the army met with a defeat, and\neverybody knew that something was wrong, and Joshua rent his clothes\nand fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord, and\ngot another message from Jehovah, to the effect that the guilty man\nshould be burned with fire, \"he and all that he hath.\"\n\n     And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of\n     Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of\n     gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his\n     asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and\n     they brought them unto the Valley of Achor. And Joshua said,\n     Why hast thou troubled us? the Lord shall trouble thee this\n     day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them\n     with fire, after they had stoned him with stones.\n\nWe have no means of knowing what was the character of the unfortunate\ninhabitants of the city of Jericho, nor of the Hittites and the\nGirgashites and the Amorites and all the rest of the victims of\nJehovah. To be sure, we are told by the Hebrew priests that they\nsacrificed their children to their gods; but then, consider what we\nshould believe about the Hebrew religion, if we took the word of rival\npriestly castes! Consider, for example, that in this twentieth century\nwe saw an orthodox Jew tried in a Russian court of law for having made\na sacrifice of Christian babies; nevertheless we know that the Jews\nrepresent a considerable part of the intelligence and idealism of\nRussia. We know in the same way that the Moors had most of the culture\nand all of the scientific knowledge of Spain, that the Huguenots had\nmost of the conscience and industry of France; and we know that they\nwere massacred or driven out to death by the priestly castes of the\nMiddle Ages.\n\n#The Holy Inquisition#\n\nLet us have one glimpse of the conditions in those mediaeval times, so\nthat we may know what we ourselves have escaped. In the fifteenth\ncentury there was established in Europe the cult of a three-headed\ngod, whose priests had won lordship over a continent. They were\nenormously wealthy, and unthinkably corrupt; they sold to the\nrich the license to commit every possible crime, and they held\nthe poor in ignorance and degradation. Among the comparatively\nintelligent and freedom-loving people of Bohemia there arose a\ngreat reformer, John Huss, himself a priest, protesting against\nthe corruptions of his order. They trapped him into their power\nby means of a \"safe-conduct\"--which they repudiated because no\npromise to a heretic could have validity. They found him guilty\nof having taught the hateful doctrine that a priest who committed\ncrimes could not give absolution for the crimes of others; and they\nheld an auto de fe--which means a \"sentence of faith.\" As we read\nin Lea's \"History of the Inquisition\":\n\n     The cathedral of Constance was crowded with Sigismund (the\n     Emperor) and his nobles, the great officers of the empire\n     with their insignia, the prelates in their splendid robes.\n     While mass was sung, Huss, as an excommunicate, was kept\n     waiting at the door; when brought in he was placed on an\n     elevated bench by a table on which stood a coffer containing\n     priestly vestments. After some preliminaries, including a\n     sermon by the Bishop of Lodi, in which he assured Sigismund\n     that the events of that day would confer on him immortal\n     glory, the articles of which Huss was convicted were\n     recited. In vain he protested that he believed in\n     transubstantiation and in the validity of the sacrament in\n     polluted hands. He was ordered to hold his tongue, and on\n     his persisting the beadles were told to silence him, but in\n     spite of this he continued to utter protests. The sentence\n     was then read in the name of the council, condemning him\n     both for his written errors and those which had been proven\n     by witnesses. He was declared a pertinacious and\n     incorrigible heretic who did not desire to return to the\n     Church; his books were ordered to be burned, and himself to\n     be degraded from the priesthood and abandoned to the secular\n     court. Seven bishops arrayed him in priestly garb and warned\n     him to recant while yet there was time. He turned to the\n     crowd, and with broken voice declared that he could not\n     confess the errors which he never entertained, lest he\n     should lie to God, when the bishops interrupted him, crying\n     that they had waited long enough, for he was obstinate in\n     his heresy. He was degraded in the usual manner, stripped of\n     his sacerdotal vestments, his fingers scraped; but when the\n     tonsure was to be disposed of, an absurd quarrel arose among\n     the bishops as to whether the head should be shaved with a\n     razor or the tonsure be destroyed with scissors. Scissors\n     won the day, and a cross was cut in his hair. Then on his\n     head was placed a conical paper cap, a cubit in height,\n     adorned with painted devils and the inscription, \"This is\n     the heresiarch.\"\n\n     The place of execution was a meadow near the river, to which\n     he was conducted by two thousand armed men, with Palsgrave\n     Louis at their head, and a vast crowd, including many\n     nobles, prelates, and cardinals. The route followed was\n     circuitous, in order that he might be carried past the\n     episcopal palace, in front of which his books were burning,\n     whereat he smiled. Pity from man there was none to look for,\n     but he sought comfort on high, repeating to himself, \"Christ\n     Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy upon us!\" and when\n     he came in sight of the stake he fell on his knees and\n     prayed. He was asked if he wished to confess, and said that\n     he would gladly do so if there were space. A wide circle was\n     formed, and Ulrich Schorand, who, according to custom, had\n     been providently empowered to take advantage of final\n     weakening, came forward, saying, \"Dear sir and master, if\n     you will recant your unbelief and heresy, for which you must\n     suffer, I will willingly hear your confession; but if you\n     will not, you know right well that, according to canon law,\n     no one can administer the sacrament to a heretic.\" To this\n     Huss answered, \"It is not necessary: I am not a mortal\n     sinner.\" His paper crown fell off and he smiled as his\n     guards replaced it. He desired to take leave of his keepers,\n     and when they were brought to him he thanked them for their\n     kindness, saying that they had been to him rather brothers\n     than jailers. Then he commenced to address the crowd in\n     German, telling them that he suffered for errors which he\n     did not hold, and he was cut short. When bound to the stake,\n     two cartloads of fagots and straw were piled up around him,\n     and the palsgrave and vogt for the last time adjured him to\n     abjure. Even yet he could save himself, but only repeated\n     that he had been convicted by false witnesses on errors\n     never entertained by him. They clapped their hands and then\n     withdrew, and the executioners applied the fire. Twice Huss\n     was heard to exclaim, \"Christ Jesus, Son of the living God,\n     have mercy upon me!\" then a wind springing up and blowing\n     the flames and smoke into his face checked further\n     utterances, but his head was seen to shake and his lips to\n     move while one might twice or thrice recite a paternoster.\n     The tragedy was over; the sorely-tried soul had escaped from\n     its tormentors, and the bitterest enemies of the reformer\n     could not refuse to him the praise that no philosopher of\n     old had faced death with more composure than he had shown in\n     his dreadful extremity. No faltering of the voice had\n     betrayed an internal struggle. Palsgrave Louis, seeing\n     Huss's mantle on the arm of one of the executioners, ordered\n     it thrown into the flames lest it should be reverenced as a\n     relic, and promised the man to compensate him. With the same\n     view the body was carefully reduced to ashes and thrown into\n     the Rhine, and even the earth around the stake was dug up\n     and carted off; yet the Bohemians long hovered around the\n     spot and carried home fragments of the neighboring clay,\n     which they reverenced as relics of their martyr. The next\n     day thanks were returned to God in a solemn procession in\n     which figured Sigismund and his queen, the princes and\n     nobles, nineteen cardinals, two patriarchs, seventy-seven\n     bishops, and all the clergy of the council. A few days later\n     Sigismund, who had delayed his departure for Spain to see\n     the matter concluded, left Constance, feeling that his work\n     was done.\n\n#Hell-Fire#\n\nIf such a scene could be witnessed in the world today, it would only\nbe in some remote and wholly savage place, such as the mountains of\nHayti, or the Solomon Islands. It could no longer happen in any\ncivilized country; the reason being, not any abatement of the\npretensions of the priesthood, but solely the power of science,\nembodied in the physical arm of a secular State. The advance of that\narm the church has fought systematically, in every country, and at\nevery point. To quote Buckle: \"A careful study of the history of\nreligious toleration will prove that in every Christian country where\nit has been adopted, it has been forced upon the clergy by the\nauthority of the secular classes.\" The wolf of superstition has been\ndriven into its lair, but it has backed away snarling, and it still\ncrouches, watching for a chance to spring. The Church which burned\nJohn Huss, which burned Giordano Bruno for teaching that the earth\nmoves round the sun--that same church, in the name of the same\nthree-headed god, sent out Francesco Ferrer to the firing-squad; if it\ndoes not do the same thing to the author of this book, it will be\nsolely because of the police. Not being allowed to burn me here, the\nclergy will vent their holy indignation by sentencing me to eternal\nburning in a future world which they have created, and which they run\nto suit themselves.\n\nIt is a fact, the significance of which cannot be exaggerated, that\nthe measure of the civilization which any nation has attained is the\nextent to which it has curtailed the power of institutionalized\nreligion. Those peoples which are wholly under the sway of the\npriesthood, such as Thibetans and Koreans, Siamese and Caribbeans, are\npeoples among whom the intellectual life does not exist. Farther in\nadvance are Hindoos and Turks, who are religious, but not exclusively.\nStill farther on the way are Spaniards and Irish; here, for example,\nis a flashlight of the Irish peasantry, given by one of their number,\nPatrick MacGill:\n\n     The merchant was a great friend of the parish priest, who\n     always told the people if they did not pay their debts they\n     would burn for ever and ever in hell. \"The fires of eternity\n     will make you sorry for the debts that you did not pay,\"\n     said the priest. \"What is eternity?\" he would ask in a\n     solemn voice from the altar steps. \"If a man tried to count\n     the sands on the sea-shore and took a million years to count\n     every single grain, how long would it take him to count them\n     all? A long time, you'll say. But that time is nothing to\n     eternity. Just think of it! Burning in hell while a man,\n     taking a million years to count a grain of sand, counts all\n     the sand on the sea-shore. And this because you did not pay\n     Farley McKeown his lawful debts, his lawful debts within the\n     letter of the law.\" That concluding phrase, \"within the\n     letter of the law,\" struck terror into all who listened, and\n     no one, maybe not even the priest himself, knew what it\n     meant.\n\nThere is light in Ireland to-day, and hope for an Irish culture;\nthe thing to be noted is that it comes from two movements, one\nfor agricultural co-operation and the other for political\nindependence--both of them definitely and specifically non-religious.\nThis same thing has been true of the movements which have helped on\nhappier nations, such as the republics of France and America, which\nhave put an end to the power of the priestly caste to take property by\nforce, and to dominate the mind of the child without its parents'\nconsent.\n\nThis is as far as any nation has so far gone; it has apparently not\nyet occurred to any legislature that the State may owe a duty to the\nchild to protect its mind from being poisoned, even though it has the\nmisfortune to be born of poisoned parents. It is still permitted that\nparents should terrify their little ones with images of a personal\ndevil and a hell of eternal brimstone and sulphur; it is permitted to\nfound schools for the teaching of devil-doctrines; it is permitted to\norganize gigantic campaigns and systematically to infect whole cities\nfull of men, women and children with hell-fire phobias. In the\nAmerican city where I write one may see gatherings of people sunk upon\ntheir knees, even rolling on the ground in convulsions, moaning,\nsobbing, screaming to be delivered from such torments. I open my\nmorning paper and read of the arrest of five men and seven women in\nLos Angeles, members of a sect known as the \"Church of the Living\nGod\", upon a charge of having disturbed the peace of their neighbors.\nThe police officers testified that the accused claimed to be possessed\nof the divine spirit, and that as signs of this possession they\n\"crawled on the floor, grunted like pigs and barked like dogs.\" There\nwere \"other acts, even more startling\", about which the newspapers did\nnot go into details. And again, a week or two later, I read how a\nwoman has been heard screaming, and found tied to a bed-post, being\nwhipped by a man. She belonged to a religious sect which had found her\nguilty of witchcraft. Another woman was about to shoot her, but this\nwoman's nerve failed, and the \"high priest\" was called in, who decreed\na whipping. The victim explained to the police that she would have\ndeserved to be whipped had she really been a witch, but a mistake had\nbeen made--it was another woman who was the witch. And again in the\nLos Angeles \"Times\" I read a perfectly serious news item, telling how\na certain man awakened one morning, and found on his pillow where his\nhead had lain a perfect reproduction of the head of Christ with its\ncrown of thorns. He called in his neighbors to witness the miracle,\nand declared that while he was not superstitious, he knew that such a\nthing could not have happened by chance, and he knew what it was\nintended to signify--he would buy more Liberty Bonds and be more\nardent in his support of the war!\n\nAnd this is the world in which our scientists and men of culture think\nthat the battle of the intellect is won, and that it is no longer\nnecessary to spend our energies in fighting \"Religion!\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#BOOK TWO#\n\n#The Church of Good Society#\n\n  Within the House of Mammon his priesthood stands alert\n  By mysteries attended, by dusk and splendors girt,\n  Knowing, for faiths departed, his own shall still endure,\n  And they be found his chosen, untroubled, solemn, sure.\n\n  Within the House of Mammon the golden altar lifts\n  Where dragon-lamps are shrouded as costly incense drifts--\n  A dust of old ideals, now fragrant from the coals,\n  To tell of hopes long-ended, to tell the death of souls.\n\n  Sterling.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#The Rain Makers#\n\nI begin with the Church of Good Society, because it happens to be the\nChurch in which I was brought up. Heading this statement, some of my\nreaders suspected me of snobbish pride. I search my heart; yes, it\nbrings a hidden thrill that as far back as I can remember I knew this\natmosphere of urbanity, that twice every Sunday those melodious and\nhypnotizing incantations were chanted in my childish ears! I take up\nthe book of ritual, done in aristocratic black leather with gold\nlettering, and the old worn volume brings me strange stirrings of\nrecollected awe. But I endeavor to repress these vestigial emotions\nand to see the volume--not as a message from God to Good Society, but\nas a landmark of man's age-long struggle against myth and dogma used\nas a source of income and a shield to privilege.\n\nIn the beginning, of course, the priest and the magician ruled the\nfield. But today, as I examine this \"Book of Common Prayer\", I\ndiscover that there is at least one spot out of which he has been\ncleared entirely; there appears no prayer to planets to stand still,\nor to comets to go away. The \"Church of Good Society\" has discovered\nastronomy! But if any astronomer attributes this to his instruments\nwith their marvelous accuracy, let him at least stop to consider my\n\"economic interpretation\" of the phenomenon--the fact that the\nheavenly bodies affect the destinies of mankind so little that there\nhas not been sufficient emolument to justify the priest in holding on\nto his job as astrologer.\n\nBut when you come to the field of meteorology, what a difference! Has\nany utmost precision of barometer been able to drive the priest out of\nhis prerogatives as rainmaker? Not even in the most civilized of\ncountries; not in that most decorous and dignified of institutions,\nthe Protestant Episcopal Church of America! I study with care the\npassage wherein the clergyman appears as controller of the fate of\ncrops. I note a chastened caution of phraseology; the church will not\nrepeat the experience of the sorcerer's apprentice, who set the demons\nto bringing water, and then could not make them stop! The spell\ninvokes \"moderate rain and showers\"; and as an additional precaution\nthere is a counter-spell against \"excessive rains and floods\": the\nweather-faucet being thus under exact control.\n\nI turn the pages of this \"Book of Common Prayer\", and note the\nremnants of magic which it contains. There are not many of the\nemergencies of life with which the priest is not authorized to deal;\nnot many natural phenomena for which he may not claim the credit. And\nin case anything should have been overlooked, there is a blanket order\nupon Providence: \"Graciously hear us, that those evils which the craft\nor subtilty of the devil or man worketh against us, be brought to\nnought!\" I am reminded of the idea which haunted my childhood, reading\nfairy-stories about the hero who was allowed three wishes that would\ncome true. I could never understand why the hero did not settle the\nmatter once for all--by wishing that everything he wished might come\ntrue!\n\nMost of these incantations are harmless, and some are amiable; but now\nand then you come upon one which is sinister in its implications. The\nvolume before me happens to be of the Church of England, which is even\nmore forthright in its confronting of the Great Magic. Many years ago\nI remember talking with an English army officer, asking how he could\nfeel sure of his soldiers in case of labor strikes; did it never occur\nto him that the men had relatives among the workers, and might some\ntime refuse to shoot them? His answer was that he was aware of it, the\nmilitary had worked out its technique with care. He would never think\nof ordering his men to fire upon a mob in cold blood; he would first\nstart the spell of discipline to work, he would march them round the\nblock, and get them in the swing, get their blood moving to military\nmusic; then, when he gave the order, in they would go. I have never\nforgotten the gesture, the animation with which he illustrated their\ngoing--I could hear the grunting of bayonets in the flesh of men. The\nsocial system prevailing in England has made necessary the perfecting\nof such military technique; also, you discover, English piety has made\nnecessary the providing of a religious sanction for it. After the job\nhas been done and the bayonets have been wiped clean, the company is\nmarched to church, and the officer kneels in his family pew, and the\nprivates kneel with the parlor-maids, and the clergyman raises his\nhands to heaven and intones: \"We bless thy Holy Name, that it hath\npleased Thee to appease the seditious tumults which have been lately\nraised up among us!\"\n\nAnd sometimes the clergyman does more than bless the killers--he even\ntakes part in their bloody work. In the Home Office Records of the\nBritish Government I read (vol. 40, page 17) how certain miners were on\nstrike against low wages and the \"truck\" system, and the Vicar of\nAbergavenny put himself at the head of the yeomanry and the Greys. He\nwrote the Home Office a lively account of his military operations. All\nthat remained was to apprehend certain of the strikers, \"and then I\nshall be able to return to my Clerical duties.\" Later he wrote of the\n\"sinister influences\" which kept the miners from returning to their\nwork, and how he had put half a dozen of the most obstinate in prison.\n\n#The Babylonian Fire-god#\n\nSo we come to the most important of the functions of the tribal god,\nas an ally in war, an inspirer to martial valour. When in ancient\nBabylonia you wished to overcome your enemies, you went to the shrine\nof the Fire-god, and with awful rites the priest pronounced\nincantations, which have been preserved on bricks and handed down for\nthe use of modern churches. \"Pronounce in a whisper, and have a bronze\nimage therewith,\" commands the ancient text, and runs on for many\nstrophes in this fashion:\n\n  Let them die, but let me live!\n  Let them be put under a ban, but let me prosper!\n  Let them perish, but let me increase!\n  Let them become weak, but let me wax strong!\n  O, fire-god, mighty, exalted among the gods,\n  Thou art the god, thou art my lord, etc.\n\nThis was in heathen Babylon, some three thousand years ago. Since\nthen, the world has moved on--\n\n  Three thousand years of war and peace and glory,\n  Of hope and work and deeds and golden schemes,\n  Of mighty voices raised in song and story,\n  Of huge inventions and of splendid dreams--\n\nAnd in one of the world's leading nations the people stand up and bare\ntheir heads, and sing to their god to save their king and punish those\nwho oppose him--\n\n  O Lord our God, arise, Scatter his enemies,\n  And make them fall; Confound their politics,\n  Frustrate their knavish tricks,\n  On him our hopes we fix, God save us all.\n\nRecently, I understand, it has become the custom to omit this stanza\nfrom the English national anthem; but it is clear that this is because\nof its crudity of expression, not because of objection to the idea of\npraying to a god to assist one nation and injure others; for the same\nsentiment is expressed again and again in the most carefully edited of\nprayer-books:\n\n  Abate their pride, assuage their malice, and confound their devices.\n  Defend us, Thy humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies.\n  Strengthen him (the King) that he may vanquish and overcome all\n                                                          his enemies.\n  There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God.\n\nPrayers such as these are pronounced in every so-called civilized\nnation today. Behind every battle-line in Europe you may see the\npriests of the Babylonian Fire-god with their bronze images and their\nancient incantations; you may see magic spells being wrought, magic\nstandards sanctified, magic bread eaten and magic wine drunk, fetishes\nblessed and hoodoos lifted, eternity ransacked to find means of\ninciting soldiers to the mood where they will \"go in\". Throughout all\ncivilization, the phobias and manias of war have thrown the people\nback into the toils of the priest, and that church which forced\nGalileo to recant under threat of torture, and had Ferrer shot beneath\nthe walls of the fortress of Montjuich, is rejoicing in a \"rebirth of\nreligion\".\n\n#The Medicine-men#\n\nAndrew D. White tells us that\n\n     It was noted that in the 14th century, after the great\n     plague, the Black Death, had passed, an immensely increased\n     proportion of the landed and personal property of every\n     European country was in the hands of the Church. Well did a\n     great ecclesiastic remark that \"pestilences are the harvests\n     of the ministers of God.\"\n\nAnd so naturally the clergy hold on to their prerogative as banishers\nof epidemics. Who knows what day the Lord may see fit to rebuke the\nupstart teachers of impious and atheistical inoculation, and scourge\nthe people back into His fold as in the good old days of Moses and\nAaron? Viscount Amberley, in his immensely learned and half-suppressed\nwork, \"The Analysis of Religious Belief\", quotes some missionaries to\nthe Fiji islanders, concerning the ideas of these benighted heathen on\nthe subject of a pestilence. It was the work of a \"disease-maker\", who\nwas burning images of the people with incantations; so they blew horns\nto frighten this disease-maker from his spells. The missionaries\nundertook to explain the true cause of the affliction--and thereby\nrevealed that they stood upon the same intellectual level as the\nheathen they were supposed to instruct! It appeared that the natives\nhad been at war with their neighbors, and the missionaries had\ncommanded them to desist; they had refused to obey, and God had sent\nthe epidemic as punishment for savage presumption!\n\nAnd on precisely this same Fijian level stands the \"Book of Common\nPrayer\" of our most decorous and cultured of churches. I remember as a\nlittle child lying on a bed of sickness, occasioned by the prevalence\nin our home of the Southern custom of hot bread three times a day; and\nthere came an amiable clerical gentleman and recited the service\nproper to such pastoral calls: \"Take therefore in good part the\nvisitation of the Lord!\" And again, when my mother was ill, I remember\nhow the clergyman read out in church a prayer for her, specifying all\nsickness, \"in mind, body or estate\". I was thinking only of my mother,\nand the meaning of these words passed over my childish head; I did not\nrealize that the elderly plutocrat in black broadcloth who knelt in\nthe pew in front of me was invoking the aid of the Almighty so that\nhis tenements might bring in their rentals promptly; so that his\nlittle \"flyer\" in cotton might prove successful; so that the children\nin his mills might work with greater speed.\n\nSomebody asked Voltaire if you could kill a cow by incantations, and\nhe answered, \"Yes, if you use a little strychnine with it.\" And that\nwould seem to be the attitude of the present-day Anglican\nchurch-member; he calls in the best physician he knows, he makes sure\nthat his plumbing is sound, and after that he thinks it can do no harm\nto let the Lord have a chance. It makes the women happy, and after\nall, there are a lot of things we don't yet know about the world. So\nhe repairs to the family pew, and recites over the venerable prayers,\nand contributes his mite to the maintenance of an institution which,\nfourteen Sundays every year, proclaims the terrifying menaces of the\nAthanasian Creed:\n\n     Whoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary\n     that he hold the Catholick faith. Which faith, except one do\n     keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish\n     everlastingly.\n\nFor the benefit of the uninitiated reader, it may be explained that\nthe \"Catholick faith\" here referred to is not the Roman Catholic, but\nthat of the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal Church of\nAmerica. This creed of the ancient Alexandrian lays down the truth\nwith grim and menacing precision--forty-four paragraphs of\nmetaphysical minutiae, closing with the final doom: \"This is the\nCatholick faith: which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be\nsaved.\"\n\nYou see, the founders of this august institution were not content with\ncultured complacency; what they believed they believed really, with\ntheir whole hearts, and they were ready to act upon it, even if it\nmeant burning their own at the stake. Also, they knew the ceaseless\nimpulse of the mind to grow; the terrible temptation which confronts\neach new generation to believe that which is reasonable. They met the\nsituation by setting out the true faith in words which no one could\nmistake. They have provided, not merely the Creed of Athanasius, but\nalso the \"Thirty-nine Articles\"--which are thirty-nine separate and\nbinding guarantees that one who holds orders in the Episcopal Church\nshall be either a man of inferior mentality, or else a sophist and\nhypocrite. How desperate some of them have become in the face of this\ncruel dilemma is illustrated by the tale which is told of Dr. Jowett,\nof Balliol College, Oxford: that when he was required to recite the\n\"Apostle's Creed\" in public, he would save himself by inserting the\nwords \"used to\" between the words \"I believe\", saying the inserted\nwords under his breath, thus, \"I used to believe in the Father, the\nSon, and the Holy Ghost.\" Perhaps the eminent divine never did this;\nbut the fact that his students told it, and thought it funny, is\nsufficient indication of their attitude toward their \"Religion.\" The\nson of William George Ward tells in his biography how this leader of\nthe \"Tractarian Movement\" met the problem with cynicism which seems\nalmost sublime: \"Make yourself clear that you are justified in\ndeception; and then lie like a trooper!\"\n\n#The Canonization of Incompetence#\n\nThe supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in all\nits operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind; that\nit banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes\nincompetence. Consider the power of the Church of England and its\nfavorite daughter here in America; consider their prestige with the\npress and in politics, their hold upon literature and the arts, their\ncontrol of education and the minds of children, of charity and the\nlives of the poor: consider all this, and then say what it means to\nsociety that such a power must be, in every new issue that arises, on\nthe side of reaction and falsehood. \"So it was in the beginning, is\nnow, and ever shall be,\" runs the church's formula; and this per se\nand a priori, of necessity and in the nature of the case.\n\nTurn over the pages of history and read the damning record of the\nchurch's opposition to every advance in every field of science, even\nthe most remote from theological concern. Here is the Reverend Edward\nMassey, preaching in 1772 on \"The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of\nInoculation\"; declaring that Job's distemper was probably confluent\nsmall-pox; that he had been inoculated doubtless by the devil; that\ndiseases are sent by Providence for the punishment of sin; and that\nthe proposed attempt to prevent them is \"a diabolical operation\". Here\nare the Scotch clergy of the middle of the nineteenth century\ndenouncing the use of chloroform in obstetrics, because it is seeking\n\"to avoid one part of the primeval curse on woman\". Here is Bishop\nWilberforce of Oxford anathematizing Darwin: \"The principle of natural\nselection is absolutely incompatible with the word of God\"; it\n\"contradicts the revealed relation of creation to its creator\"; it \"is\ninconsistent with the fulness of His glory\"; it is \"a dishonoring view\nof nature\". And the Bishop settled the matter by asking Huxley whether\nhe was descended from an ape through his grandmother or grandfather.\n\nThink what it means, friends of progress, that these ecclesiastical\nfigures should be set up for the reverence of the populace, and that\nevery time mankind is to make an advance in power over Nature, the\npioneers of thought have to come with crow-bars and derricks and heave\nthese figures out of the way! And you think that conditions are\nchanged to-day? But consider syphilis and gonorrhea, about which we\nknow so much, and can do almost nothing; consider birth-control, which\nwe are sent to jail for so much as mentioning! Consider the divorce\nreforms for which the world is crying--and for which it must wait,\nbecause of St. Paul! Realize that up to date it has proven impossible\nto persuade the English Church to permit a man to marry his deceased\nwife's sister! That when the war broke upon England the whole nation\nwas occupied with a squabble over the disestablishment of the church\nof Wales! Only since 1888 has it been legally possible for an\nunbeliever to hold a seat in Parliament; while up to the present day\nmen are tried for blasphemy and convicted under the decisions of Lord\nHale, to the effect that \"it is a crime either to deny the truth of\nthe fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion or to hold them up\nto contempt or ridicule.\" Said Mr. Justice Horridge, at the West\nRiding Assizes, 1911: \"A man is not free in any public place to use\ncommon ridicule on subjects which are sacred.\"\n\nThe purpose, as outlined by the public prosecutor in London, is \"to\npreserve the standard of outward decency.\" And you will find that the\none essential to prosecution is always that the victim shall be\nobscure and helpless; never by any chance is he a duke in a\ndrawing-room. I will record an utterance of one of the obscure victims\nof the British \"standard of outward decency\", a teacher of mathematics\nnamed Holyoake, who presumed to discuss in a public hall the\nstarvation of the working classes of the country. A preacher objected\nthat he had discussed \"our duty to our neighbor\" and neglected \"our\nduty to God\"; whereupon the lecturer replied: \"Our national Church and\ngeneral religious institutions cost us, upon accredited computation,\nabout twenty million pounds annually. Worship being thus expensive, I\nappeal to your heads and your pockets whether we are not too poor to\nhave a God. While our distress lasts, I think it would be wise to put\ndeity upon half pay.\" And for that utterance the unfortunate teacher\nof mathematics served six months in the common Gaol at Gloucester!\n\nWhile men were being tried for publishing the \"Free-thinker\", the\nPremier of England was William Ewart Gladstone. And if you wish to\nknow what an established church can do by way of setting up dullness\nin high places, get a volume of this \"Grand Old Man's\" writings on\ntheological and religious questions. Read his \"Juventus Mundi\", in the\ncourse of which he establishes a mystic connection between the trident\nof Neptune and the Christian Trinity! Read his efforts to prove that\nthe writer of Genesis was an inspired geologist! This writer of\nGenesis points out in Nature \"a grand, fourfold division, set forth in\nan orderly succession of times: First, the water population; secondly,\nthe air population; thirdly, the land population of animals; fourthly,\nthe land population consummated in man.\" And it seems that this\ndivision and sequence \"is understood to have been so affirmed in our\ntime by natural science that it may be taken as a demonstrated\nconclusion and established fact.\" Hence we must conclude of the writer\nof Genesis that \"his knowledge was divine\"! Consider that this was\nactually published in one of the leading British monthlies, and that\nit was necessary for Professor Huxley to answer it, pointing out that\nso far is it from being true that \"a fourfold division and orderly\nsequence\" of water, air and land animals \"has been affirmed in our\ntime by natural science\", that on the contrary, the assertion is\n\"directly contradictory to facts known to everyone who is acquainted\nwith the elements of natural science\". The distribution of fossils\nproves that land animals originated before sea-animals, and there has\nbeen such a mixing of land, sea and air animals as utterly to destroy\nthe reputation of both Genesis and Gladstone as possessing a divine\nknowledge of Geology.\n\n#Gibson's Preservative#\n\nI have a friend, a well-known \"scholar\", who permits me the use of his\nextensive library. I stand in the middle and look about me, and see in\nthe dim shadows walls lined from floor to ceiling with decorous and\ngrave-looking books, bound for the most part in black, many of them\nfading to green with age. There are literally thousands of such, and\ntheir theme is the pseudo-science of \"divinity\". I close my, eyes, to\nmake the test fair, and walk to the shelves and put out my hand and\ntake a book. It proves to be a modern work, \"A History of the English\nPrayer-book in Relation to the Doctrine of the Eucharist\". I turn the\npages and discover that it is a study of the variations of one minute\ndetail of church doctrine. This learned divine--he has written many\nsuch works, as the advertisements inform us--fills up the greater part\nof his pages with foot-notes from hundreds of authorities, arguments\nand counter-arguments over supernatural subtleties. I will give one\nsample of these footnotes--asking the reader to be patient:\n\n     I add the following valuable observation, of Dean Goode:\n     (\"On Eucharist\", II p 757. See also Archbishop Ware in\n     Gibson's \"Preservative\", vol. N, Chap II) \"One great point\n     for which our divines have contended, in opposition to\n     Romish errors, has been the reality of that presence of\n     Christ's Body and Blood to the soul of the believer which is\n     affected through the operation of the Holy Spirit\n     notwithstanding the absence of that Body and Blood in\n     Heaven. Like the Sun, the Body of Christ is both present and\n     absent; present, really and truly present, in one\n     sense--that is, by the soul being brought into immediate\n     communion with--but absent in another sense--that is, as\n     regards the contiguity of its substance to our bodies. The\n     authors under review, like the Romanists, maintain that this\n     is not a Real Presence, and assuming their own\n     interpretation of the phrase to be the only true one, press\n     into their service the testimony of divines who, though\n     using the phrase, apply it in a sense the reverse of theirs.\n     The ambiguity of the phrase, and its misapplication by the\n     Church of Rome, have induced many of our divines to\n     repudiate it, etc.\"\n\nRealize that of the work from which this \"valuable observation\" is\nquoted, there are at least two volumes, the second volume containing\nnot less than 757 pages I Realize that in Gibson's \"Preservative\"\nthere are not less than ten volumes of such writing! Realize that in\nthis twentieth century a considerable portion of the mental energies\nof the world's greatest empire is devoted to that kind of learning!\n\nI turn to the date upon the volume, and find that it is 1910. I was in\nEngland within a year of that time, and so I can tell what was the\ncondition of the English people while printers were making and papers\nwere reviewing and book-stores were distributing this work of\necclesiastical research. I walked along the Embankment and saw the\npitiful wretches, men, women and sometimes children, clad in filthy\nrags, starved white and frozen blue, soaked in winter rains and\nshivering in winter winds, homeless, hopeless, unheeded by the doctors\nof divinity, unpreserved by Gibson's \"Preservative\". I walked on\nHampstead Heath on Easter day, when the population of the slums turns\nout for its one holiday; I walked, literally trembling with horror,\nfor I had never seen such sights nor dreamed of them. These creatures\nwere hardly to be recognized as human beings; they were some new\ngrotesque race of apes. They could not walk, they could only shamble;\nthey could not laugh, they could only leer. I saw a hand-organ\nplaying, and turned away--the things they did in their efforts to\ndance were not to be watched. And then I went out into the beautiful\nEnglish country; cultured and charming ladies took me in swift, smooth\nmotor-cars, and I saw the pitiful hovels and the drink-sodden,\nstarch-poisoned inhabitants--slum-populations everywhere, even on the\nland! When the newspaper reporters came to me, I said that I had just\ncome from Germany, and that if ever England found herself at war with\nthat country, she would regret that she had let the bodies and the\nminds of her people rot; for which expression I was severely taken to\ntask by more than one British divine.\n\nThe bodies--and the minds; the rot of the latter being the cause of\nthe former. All over England in that year of 1910, in thousands of\nschools, rich and poor, and in the greatest centres of learning, men\nlike Dean Goode were teaching boys dead languages and dead sciences\nand dead arts; sending them out to life with no more conception of the\nmodern world than a monk of the Middle Ages; sending them out with\nminds made hard and inflexible, ignorant of science, indifferent to\nprogress, contemptuous of ideas. And then suddenly, almost overnight,\nthis terrified people finds itself at war with a nation ruled and\ndisciplined' by modern experts, scientists and technicians. The awful\nmuddle that was in England during the first two years of the war has\nnot yet been told in print; but thousands know it, and some day it\nwill be written, and it will finish forever the prestige of the\nBritish ruling caste. They rushed off an expedition to Gallipoli, and\nsomebody forgot the water-supply, and at one time they had ninety-five\nthousand cases of dysentery!\n\nThey always \"muddle through\", they tell you; that is the motto of\ntheir ruling caste. But this time they did not \"muddle through\"--they\nhad to come to America for help. As I write, our Congress is voting\nbillions and tens of billions of dollars, and a million of the best of\nour young manhood are being taken from their homes--because in 1910\nthe mind of England was occupied with Dean Goode \"On Eucharist\", and\nthe ten volumes of Gibson's \"Preservative\".\n\n#The Elders#\n\nWhat the Church means in human affairs is the rule of the aged. It\nmeans old men in the seats of authority, not merely in the church, but\nin the law-courts and in Parliament, even in the army and navy. For a\ntest I look up the list of bishops of the Church of England in\nWhitaker's Almanac; it appears that there are 40 of these\nfunctionaries, including the archbishops, but not the suffragans; and\nthat the total salary paid to them amounts to more than nine hundred\nthousand dollars a year. This, it should be understood, does not\ninclude the pay of their assistants, nor the cost of maintaining their\nreligious establishments; it does not include any private incomes\nwhich they or their wives may possess, as members of the privileged\nclasses of the Empire. I look up their ages in Who's Who, and I find\nthat there is only one below fifty-three; the oldest of them is\nninety-one, while the average age of the goodly company is seventy.\nThere have been men in history who have retained their flexibility of\nmind, their ability to adjust themselves to new circumstances at the\nage of seventy, but it will always be found that these men were\ntrained in science and practical affairs, never in dead languages and\ntheology. One of the oldest of the English prelates, the Archbishop of\nCanterbury, recently stated to a newspaper reporter that he worked\nseventeen hours a day, and had no time to form an opinion on the labor\nquestion.\n\nAnd now--here is the crux of the argument--do these aged gentlemen\nrule of their own power? They do not! They do literally nothing of\ntheir own power; they could not make their own episcopal robes, they\ncould net even cook their own episcopal dinners. They have to be\nmaintained in all their comings and goings. Who supports them, and to\nwhat end?\n\nThe roots of the English Church are in the English land system, which\nis one of the infamies of the modern world. It dates from the days of\nWilliam the Norman, who took possession of Britain with his sword, and\nin order to keep possession for himself and his heirs, distributed the\nland among his nobles and prelates. In those days, you understand, a\nhigh ecclesiastic was a man of war, who did not stoop to veil his\npredatory nature under pretense of philanthropy; the abbots and\narchbishops of William wore armor and had their troops of knights like\nthe barons and the dukes. William gave them vast tracts, and at the\nsame time he gave them orders which they obeyed. Says the English\nchronicler, \"Stark he was. Bishops he stripped of their bishopricks,\nabbots of their abbacies\". Green tells us that \"the dependence of the\nchurch on the royal power was strictly enforced. Homage was exacted\nfrom bishop as from baron.\" And what was this homage? The bishop knelt\nbefore William, bareheaded and without arms, and swore: \"Hear my lord,\nI become liege man of yours for life and limb and earthly regard, and\nI will keep faith and loyalty to you for life and death, God help me.\"\n\nThe lands which the church got from William the Norman, she has held,\nand always on the same condition--that she shall be \"liege man for\nlife and limb and earthly regard\". In this you have the whole story of\nthe church of England, in the twentieth century as in the eleventh.\nThe balance of power has shifted from time to time; old families have\nlost the land and new families have gotten it; but the loyalty and\nhomage of the church have been held by the land, as the needle of the\ncompass is held by a mass of metal. Some two hundred and fifty years\nago a popular song gave the general impression--\n\n  For this is law that I'll maintain\n    Until my dying day, sir:\n  That whatsoever king shall reign\n    I'll still be vicar of Bray, sir!\n\nSo, wherever you take the Anglican clergy, they are Tories and\nRoyalists, conservatives and reactionaries, friends of every injustice\nthat profits the owning class. And always among themselves you find\nthem intriguing and squabbling over the dividing of the spoils; always\nyou find them enjoying leisure and ease, while the people suffer and\nthe rebels complain. One can pass down the corridor of English history\nand prove this statement by the words of Englishmen from every single\ngeneration. Take the fourteenth century; the \"Good Parliament\"\ndeclares that\n\n     Unworthy and unlearned caitiffs are appointed to benefices\n     of a thousand marks, while the poor and learned hardly\n     obtain one of twenty. God gave the sheep to be pastured, not\n     to be shaven and shorn.\n\nAnd a little later comes the poet of the people, Piers Plowman--\n\n  But now is Religion a rider, a roamer through the streets,\n  A leader at the love-day, a buyer of the land,\n  Pricking on a palfrey from manor to manor,\n  A heap of hounds at his back, as tho he were a lord;\n  And if his servant kneel not when he brings his cup,\n  He loureth on him asking who taught him courtesy.\n  Badly have lords done to give their heirs' lands\n\n  Away to the Orders that have no pity;\n  Money rains upon their altars.\n  There where such parsons be living at ease\n  They have no pity on the poor; that is their \"charity\".\n  Ye hold you as lords; your lands are too broad,\n  But there shall come a king and he shall shrive you all\n  And beat you as the bible saith for breaking of your Rule.\n\nAnother step through history, and in the early part of the sixteenth\ncentury here is Simon Fish, addressing King Henry the Eighth, in the\n\"Supplicacyon for the Beggars\", complaining of the \"strong, puissant\nand counterfeit holy and ydell\" which \"are now increased under your\nsight, not only into a great nombre, but ynto a kingdome.\"\n\n     They have begged so importunatly that they have gotten ynto\n     their hondes more than a therd part of all youre Realme. The\n     goodliest lordshippes, maners, londes, and territories, are\n     theyres. Besides this, they have the tenth part of all the\n     corne, medowe, pasture, grasse, wolle, coltes, calves,\n     lambes, pigges, gese and chikens. Ye, and they looke so\n     narowly uppon theyre proufittes, that the poore wyves must\n     be countable to thym of every tenth eg, or elles she gettith\n     not her rytes at ester, shal be taken as an heretike.... Is\n     it any merveille that youre people so compleine of povertie?\n     The Turke nowe, in your tyme, shulde never be abill to get\n     so moche grounde of christendome.... And whate do al these\n     gredy sort of sturdy, idell, holy theves? These be they that\n     have made an hundredth thousand idell hores in your realme.\n     These be they that catche the pokkes of one woman, and here\n     them to an other.\n\nThe petitioner goes on to tell how they steal wives and all their\ngoods with them, and if any man protest they make him a heretic, \"so\nthat it maketh him wisshe that he had not done it\". Also they take\nfortunes for masses and then don't say them. \"If the Abbot of\nwest-minster shulde sing every day as many masses for his founders as\nhe is bounde to do by his foundacion, 1000 monkes were too few.\" The\npetitioner suggests that the king shall \"tie these holy idell theves\nto the cartes, to be whipped naked about every market towne till they\nwill fall to laboure!\"\n\n#Church History#\n\nKing Henry did not follow this suggestion precisely, but he took away\nthe property of the religious orders for the expenses of his many\nwives and mistresses, and forced the clergy in England to forswear\nobedience to the Pope and make his royal self their spiritual head.\nThis was the beginning of the Anglican Church, as distinguished from\nthe Catholic; a beginning of which the Anglican clergy are not so\nproud as they would like to be. When I was a boy, they taught me what\nthey called \"church history\", and when they came to Henry the Eighth\nthey used him as an illustration of the fact that the Lord is\nsometimes wont to choose evil men to carry out His righteous purposes.\nThey did not explain why the Lord should do this confusing thing, nor\njust how you were to know, when you saw something being done by a\nmurderous adulterer, whether it was the will of the Lord or of Satan;\nnor did they go into details as to the motives which the Lord had been\nat pains to provide, so as to induce his royal agent to found the\nAnglican Church. For such details you have to consult another set of\nauthorities--the victims of the plundering.\n\nWhen I was in college my professor of Latin was a gentleman with bushy\nbrown whiskers and a thundering voice of which I was often the\nobject--for even in those early days I had the habit of persisting in\nembarrassing questions. This professor was a devout Catholic, and not\neven in dealing with ancient Romans could he restrain his propaganda\nimpulses. Later on in life he became editor of the \"Catholic\nEncyclopedia\", and now when I turn its pages, I imagine that I see the\nbushy brown whiskers, and hear the thundering voice: \"Mr. Sinclair, it\nis so because I tell you it is so!\"\n\nI investigate, and find that my ex-professor knows all about King\nHenry the Eighth, and his motives in founding the Church of England;\nhe is ready with an \"economic interpretation\", as complete as the most\nrabid muckraker could desire! It appears that the king wanted a new\nwife, and demanded that the Pope should grant the necessary\npermission; in his efforts to browbeat the Pope into such betrayal of\nduty, King Henry threatened the withdrawal of the \"annates\" and the\n\"Peter's pence\". Later on he forced the clergy to declare that the\nPope was \"only a foreign bishop\", and in order to \"stamp out overt\nexpression of disaffection, he embarked upon a veritable reign of\nterror\".\n\nIn Anglican histories, you are assured that all this was a work of\nreligious reform, and that after it the Church was the pure vehicle of\nGod's grace. There were no more \"holy idell theves\", holding the land\nof England and plundering the poor. But get to know the clergy, and\nsee things from the inside, and you will meet some one like the\nArchbishop of Cashell, who wrote to one of his intimates:\n\n     I conclude that a good bishop has nothing more to do than to\n     eat, drink and grow fat, rich and die; which laudable\n     example _I_ propose for the remainder of my days to follow.\n\nIf you say that might be a casual jest, hear what Thackeray reports of\nthat period, the eighteenth century, which he knew with peculiar\nintimacy:\n\n     I read that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious\n     King's favorite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for 5600\n     pounds. (She betted him the 5000 pounds that he would not be\n     made a bishop, and he lost, and paid her.) Was he the only\n     prelate of his time led up by such hands for consecration?\n     As I peep into George II's St. James, I see crowds of\n     cassocks pushing up the back-stairs of the ladies of the\n     court; stealthy clergy slipping purses into their laps; that\n     godless old king yawning under his canopy in his Chapel\n     Royal, as the chaplain before him is discoursing.\n     Discoursing about what?--About righteousness and judgment?\n     Whilst the chaplain is preaching, the king is chattering in\n     German and almost as loud as the preacher; so loud that the\n     clergyman actually burst out crying in his pulpit, because\n     the defender of the faith and the dispenser of bishoprics\n     would not listen to him!\n\n#Land and Livings#\n\nAnd how is it in the twentieth century? Have conditions been much\nimproved? There are great Englishmen who do not think so. I quote\nRobert Buchanan, a poet who spoke for the people, and who therefore\nhas still to be recognized by English critics. He writes of the \"New\nRome\", by which he means present-day England:\n\n  The gods are dead, but in their name\n  Humanity is sold to shame,\n  While (then as now!) the tinsel'd priest\n  Sitteth with robbers at the feast,\n  Blesses the laden, blood-stained board,\n  Weaves garlands round the butcher's sword,\n  And poureth freely (now as then)\n  The sacramental blood of Men!\n\nYou see, the land system of England remains--the changes having been\nfor the worse. William the Conqueror wanted to keep the Saxon\npeasantry contented, so he left them their \"commons\"; but in the\neighteenth century these were nearly all filched away. We saw the same\nthing done within the last generation in Mexico, and from the same\nmotive--because developing capitalism needs cheap labor, whereas\npeople who have access to the land will not slave in mills and mines.\nIn England, from the time of Queen Anne to that of William and Mary,\nthe parliaments of the landlords passed some four thousand separate\nacts, whereby more than seven million acres of the common land were\nstolen from the people. It has been calculated that these acres might\nhave supported a million families; and ever since then England has had\nto feed a million paupers all the time.\n\nAs an old song puts the matter:\n\n  Why prosecute the man or woman\n  Who steals a goose from off the common,\n  And let the greater felon loose\n  Who steals the common from the goose?\n\nIn our day the land aristocracy is rooted like the native oak in\nBritish soil: some of them direct descendants of the Normans, others\nchildren of the court favorites and panders who grew rich in the days\nof the Tudors and the unspeakable Stuarts. Seven men own practically\nall the land of the city and county of London, and collect tribute\nfrom seven millions of people. The estates are entailed--that is,\nhanded down from father to oldest son automatically; you cannot buy\nany land, but if you want to build, the landlord gives you a lease,\nand when the lease is up, he takes possession of your buildings. The\ntribute which London pays is more than a hundred million dollars a\nyear. So absolute is the right of the land-owner that he can sue for\ntrespass the driver on an aeroplane which flies over him; he imposes\non fishermen a tax upon catches made many hundred of yards from the\nshore.\n\nAnd in this graft, of course, the church has its share. Each church\nowns land--not merely that upon which it stands, but farms and city\nlots from which it derives income. Each cathedral owns large tracts;\nso do the schools and universities in which the clergy are educated.\nThe income from the holdings of a church constitutes what is called a\n\"living\"; these livings, which vary in size, are the prerogatives of\nthe younger sons of the ruling families, and are intrigued and\nscrambled for in exactly the fashion which Thackeray describes in the\neighteenth century.\n\nAbout six thousand of these \"livings\" are in the gift of great land\nowners; one noble lord alone disposes of fifty-six such plums; and\nneedless to say, he does not present them to clergymen who favor\nradical land-taxes. He gives them to men like himself--autocratic to\nthe poor, easy-going to members of his own class, and cynical\nconcerning the grafts of grace.\n\nIn one English village which I visited the living was worth seven\nhundred pounds, with the use of a fine mansion; as the incumbent had a\nlarge family, he lived there. In another place the living was worth a\nthousand pounds, and the incumbent hired a curate, himself appearing\ntwice a year, on Christmas day and on the King's birth-day, to preach\na sermon; the rest of the time he spent in Paris. It is worth noting\nthat in 1808 a law was proposed compelling absentee pluralists--that\nis, clergymen holding more than one \"living\"--to furnish curates to do\ntheir work; it might be interesting to note that this law met with\nstrenuous clerical opposition, the house of Bishops voting against it\nwithout a division. Thus we may understand the sharp saying of Karl\nMarx, that the English clergy would rather part with thirty-eight of\ntheir thirty-nine articles than with one thirty-ninth of their income.\n\nThere is always a plentiful supply of curates in England. They are the\nsons of the less influential ruling families, and of the clergy; they\nhave been trained at Oxford or Cambridge, and possess the one\nessential qualification, that they are gentlemen. Their average price\nis two hundred and fifty pounds a year; their function was made clear\nto me when I attended my first English tea-party. There was a wicker\ntable, perhaps a foot and a half square, having three shelves, one\nbelow the other--on the top layer the plates and napkins, on the next\nthe muffins, and on the lowest the cake. Said the hostess, \"Will you\npass the curate, please?\" I looked puzzled, and she pointed. \"We call\nthat the curate, because it does the work of a curate.\"\n\n#Graft in Tail#\n\nAs one of America's head muck-rakers, I found that I was popular with\nthe British ruling classes; they found my books useful in their\ncampaigns against democracy, and they were surprised and disconcerted\nwhen they found I did not agree with their interpretation of my\nwritings. I had told of corruption in American politics; surely I must\nknow that in England they had no such evils! I explained that they did\nnot have to; their graft, to use their own legal phrase, was \"in\ntail\"; the grafters had, as a matter of divine right, the things which\nin America they had to buy. In America, for instance, we had a Senate,\na \"Millionaire's Club\", for admission to which the members paid in\ncash; but in England the same men came to the same position as their\nbirth-right. Political corruption is not an end in itself, it is\nmerely a means to exploitation; and of exploitation England has even\nmore than America. When I explained this, my popularity with the\nBritish ruling classes vanished quickly.\n\nAs a matter of fact, England is more like America than she realizes;\nher British reticence has kept her ignorant about herself. I could not\ncarry on my business in England, because of the libel laws, which have\nas their first principle \"the greater the truth, the greater the\nlibel\". Englishmen read with satisfaction what I write about America;\nbut if I should turn my attention to their own country, they would\nsend me to jail as they sent Frank Harris. The fact is that the new\nmen in England, the lords of coal and iron and shipping and beer, have\nbought their way into the landed aristocracy for cash, just as our\nAmerican senators have done; they have bought the political parties\nwith campaign gifts, precisely as in America; they have taken over the\npress, whether by outright purchase like Northcliffe, or by\nadvertising subsidy--both of which methods we Americans know. Within\nthe last decade or two another group has been coming into control; and\nnot merely is this the same class of men as in America, it frequently\nconsists of the same individuals. These are the big money-lenders, the\ninternational financiers who are the fine and final flower of the\ncapitalist system. These gentlemen make the world their home--or, as\nShakespeare puts it, their oyster. They know how to fit themselves to\nall environments; they are Catholics in Rome and Vienna, country\ngentlemen in London, bons vivants in Paris, democrats in Chicago,\nSocialists in Petrograd, and Hebrews wherever they are.\n\nAnd of course, in buying the English government, these new classes\nhave bought the English Church. Skeptics and men of the world as they\nare, they know that they must have a Religion. They have read the\nstory of the French revolution, and the shadow of the guillotine is\nalways over their thoughts; they see the giant of labor, restless in\nhis torment, groping as in a nightmare for the throat of his enemy.\nWho can blind the eyes of this giant, who can chain him to his couch\nof slumber? There is but one agent, without rival--the Keeper of the\nHoly Secrets, the Deputy of the Almighty Awfulness, the Giver and\nWithholder of Eternal Life. Tremble, slave! Fall down and bow your\nforehead in the dust! I can see in my memory the sight that thrilled\nmy childhood--my grim old Bishop, clad in his gorgeous ceremonial\nrobes, stretching out his hands over the head of the new priest, and\npronouncing that most deadly of all the Christian curses:\n\n\"Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou\ndost retain, they are retained!\"\n\n#Bishops and Beer#\n\nFor example, the International Shylocks wanted the diamond mines of\nSouth Africa--wanted them more firmly governed and less firmly taxed\nthan could be arranged with the Old Man of the Boers. So the armies of\nEngland were sent to subjugate the country. You might think they would\nhave had the good taste to leave the lowly Jesus out of this\naffair--but if so, you have missed the essential point about\nestablished religion. The bishops, priests, and deacons are set up for\nthe populace to revere, and when the robber-classes need a blessing\nupon some enterprise, then is the opportunity for the bishops, priests\nand deacons to earn their \"living.\" During the Boer war the blood-lust\nof the English clergy was so extreme that writers in the dignified\nmonthly reviews felt moved to protest against it. When the pastors of\nSwitzerland issued a collective protest against cruelties to women and\nchildren in the South African concentration-camps, it was the Right\nReverend Bishop of Winchester who was brought forward to make reply.\nNowadays all England is reading Bernhardi, and shuddering at Prussian\nglorification of war; but no one mentions Bishop Welldon of Calcutta,\nwho advocated the Boer war as a means of keeping the nation \"virile\";\nnor Archbishop Alexander, who said that it was God's way of making\n\"noble natures\".\n\nThe British God had other ways of improving nations--for example, the\nopium traffic. The British traders had been raising the poppy in India\nand selling its juice to the Chinese. They had made perhaps a hundred\nmillion \"noble natures\" by this method; and also they were making a\nhundred million dollars a year. The Chinese, moved by their new\n\"virility,\" undertook to destroy some opium, and to stop the traffic;\nwhereupon it was necessary to use British battle-ships to punish and\nsubdue them. Was there any difficulty in persuading the established\nchurch of Jesus to bless this holy war? There was not! Lord\nShaftesbury, himself the most devout of Anglicans, commented with\nhorror upon the attitude of the clergy, and wrote in his diary:\n\n     I rejoice that this cruel and debasing opium war is\n     terminated. We have triumphed in one of the most lawless,\n     unnecessary, and unfair struggles in the records of history;\n     and Christians have shed more heathen blood in two years,\n     than the heathens have shed of Christian blood in two\n     centuries.\n\nThat was in 1843; for seventy years thereafter pious England continued\nto force the opium traffic upon protesting China, and only in the last\ntwo or three years has the infamy been brought to an end. Throughout\nthe long controversy the attitude of the church was such that Li Hung\nChang was moved to assert in a letter to the Anti-Opium Society:\n\n     Opium is a subject in the discussion of which England and\n     China can never meet on a common ground. China views the\n     whole question from a moral standpoint, England from a\n     fiscal.\n\nAnd just as the Chinese people were poisoned with opium, so the\nEnglish people are being poisoned with alcohol. Both in town and\ncountry, labor is sodden with it. Scientists and reformers are\nclamoring for restriction;--and what prevents? Head and front of the\nopposition for a century, standing like a rock, has been the\nEstablished Church. The Rev. Dawson Burns, historian of the early\ntemperance movement, declares that \"among its supporters I cannot\nrecall one Church of England minister of influence.\" When Asquith\nbrought in his bill for the restriction of the traffic in beer, he was\nconfronted with petitions signed by members of the clergy, protesting\nagainst the act. And what was the basis of their protest? That beer is\na food and not a poison? Yes, of course; but also that there was\nproperty invested in brewing it. Three hundred and thirty-two clergy\nof the diocese of Peterborough declared:\n\n     We do strongly protest against the main provisions of the\n     present bill as creating amongst our people a sense of grave\n     injustice as amounting to a confiscation of private\n     property, spelling ruin for thousands of quite innocent\n     people, and provoking deep and widespread resentment, which\n     must do harm to our cause and hinder our aims.\n\nI have come upon references to another and even more plainspoken\npetition, signed by 1,280 clergymen; but war-time facilities for\nresearch have not enabled me to find the text. In Prof. Henry C.\nVedder's \"Jesus Christ and the Social Question,\" we read:\n\n     It was authoritatively stated a short time ago that Mr.\n     Asquith's temperance bill was defeated in Parliament through\n     the opposition of clergymen who had invested their savings\n     in brewery stock, the profits of which might have been\n     lessened by the bill.\n\nAlso the power of the clergy, combined with the brewer, was sufficient\nto put through Parliament a provision that no prohibition legislation\nshould ever be passed without providing for compensation to the owners\nof the industry. Today, all over America, appeals are being made to\nthe people to eat less grain; the grain is being shipped to England,\nsome of it to be made into beer; and a high Anglican prelate, his\nGrace the Archbishop of York, comes to America to urge us to increased\nsacrifices, and in his first newspaper interview takes occasion to\ndeclare that his church is not in favor of prohibition as a measure of\nwar-time economy!\n\n#Anglicanism and Alcohol#\n\nThis partnership of Bishops and Beer is painfully familiar to British\nradicals; they see it at work in every election--the publican\nconfusing the voters with spirits, while the parson confuses them with\nspirituality. There are two powerful societies in England employing\nthis deadly combination--the \"Anti-Socialist Union\" and the \"Liberty\nand Property Defense League.\" If you scan the lists of the organizers,\ndirectors and subsidizers of these satanic institutions, you find Tory\npoliticians and landlords, prominent members of the higher clergy, and\nlarge-scale dealers in drunkenness. I attended in London a meeting\ncalled by the \"Liberty and Property Defense League,\" to listen to a\ndenunciation of Socialism by W.H. Mallock, a master sophist of Roman\nCatholicism; upon the platform were a bishop and half a dozen members\nof the Anglican clergy, together with the secretary of the Federated\nBrewers' Association, the Secretary of the Wine, Spirit, and Beer\nTrade Association, and three or four other alcoholic magnates.\n\nIn every public library in England and many in America you will\nfind an assortment of pamphlets published by these organizations,\nand scholarly volumes endorsed by them, in which the stock\nmisrepresentations of Socialism are perpetuated. Some of these\nwritings are brutal--setting forth the ethics of exploitation in the\nmanner of the Rev. Thomas Malthus, the English clergyman who supplied\nfor capitalist depredation a basis in pretended natural science. Said\nthis shepherd of Jesus:\n\n     A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he\n     cannot get subsistence from his parents, and if society does\n     not Want his labor, has no claim of right to the smallest\n     portion of food, and in fact has no business to be where he\n     is. At Nature's mighty feast there is no cover for him. She\n     tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own\n     orders.\n\nSuch was the tone of the ruling classes in the nineteenth century; but\nit was found that for some reason this failed to stop the growth of\nSocialism, and so in our time the clerical defenders of Privilege have\ngrown subtle and insinuating. They inform us now that they have a deep\nsympathy with our fundamental purposes; they burn with pity for the\npoor, and they would really and truly wish happiness to everyone, not\nmerely in Heaven, but right here and now. However, there are so many\ncomplications--and so they proceed to set out all the anti-Socialist\nbug-a-boos. Here for example, is the Rev. James Stalker, D.D.,\nexpounding \"The Ethics of Jesus,\" and admonishing us extremists:\n\n     Efforts to transfer money and property from one set of hands\n     to another may be inspired by the same passions as have\n     blinded the present holders to their own highest good, and\n     may be accompanied with injustice as extreme as has ever\n     been manifested by the rich and powerful.\n\nAnd again, the Rev. W. Sanday, D.D., an especially popular clerical\nauthor, gives us this sublime utterance of religion on wage-slavery:\n\n     The world is full of mysteries, but some clear lines run\n     through them, of which this is one. Where God has been so\n     patient, it is not for us to be impatient.\n\nAnd again, Professor Robert Flint, of Edinburgh University, a\nclergyman, author of a big book attacking Socialism, and bringing us\nback to the faith of our fathers:\n\n     The great bulk of human misery is due, not to social\n     arrangements, but to personal vices.\n\nI study Professor Flint's volume in the effort to find just what, if\nanything, he would have the church do about the evils of our time. I\nfind him praising the sermons of Dr. Westcott, Bishop of Durham, as\nbeing the proper sort for clergymen to preach. Bishop Westcott,\nwhether he is talking to a high society congregation, or to one of\nworkingmen, shows \"an exquisite sense of knowing always where to\nstop.\" So I consulted the Bishop's volume, \"The Social Aspects of\nChristianity\" and I see at once why he is popular with the\nanti-Socialist propagandists--neither I or any other man can possibly\ndiscover what he really means, or what he really wants done.\n\nI was fascinated by this Westcott problem; I thought maybe if I kept\non the good Bishop's trail, I might in the end find something a plain\nman could understand; so I got the beautiful two-volume \"Life of\nBrooke Westcott, by his Son\"--and there I found an exposition of the\nsocial purposes of bishops! In the year 1892 there was a strike in\nDurham, which is in the coal country; the employers tried to make a\ncut in wages, and some ten thousand men walked out, and there was a\nlong and bitter struggle, which wrung the episcopal heart. There was\nmuch consultation and correspondence on episcopal stationery, and at\nlast the masters and men were got together, with the Bishop as\narbitrator, and the dispute was triumphantly settled--how do you\nsuppose? On the basis of a ten per cent reduction in wages!\n\nI know nothing quainter in the history of English graft than the\nNAIVETE with which the Bishop's biographer and son tells the story of\nthis episcopal venture into reality. The prelate came out from the\nconference \"all smiles, and well satisfied with the result of his\nday's work.\" As for his followers, they were in ecstacies; they\n\"seized and waltzed one another around on the carriage drive as madly\nas ever we danced at a flower show ball. Hats and caps are thrown into\nthe air, and we cheer ourselves hoarse.\" The Bishop proceeds to his\npalace, and sends one more communication on episcopal stationery--an\norder to all his clergy to \"offer their humble and hearty thanks to\nGod for our happy deliverance from the strife by which the diocese has\nbeen long afflicted.\" Strange to say, there were a few varlets in\nDurham who did not appreciate the services of the bold Bishop, and one\nof them wrote and circulated some abusive verses, in which he made\nreference to the Bishop's comfortable way of life. The biographer then\nexplains that the Bishop was so tender-hearted that he suffered for\nthe horses who drew his episcopal coach, and so ascetic that he would\nhave lived on tea and toast if he had been permitted to. A curious\ncondition in English society, where the Bishop would have lived on tea\nand toast, but was not permitted to; while the working people, who\ndidn't want to live on tea and toast, were compelled to!\n\n#Dead Cats#\n\nFor more than a hundred years the Anglican clergy have been fighting\nwith every resource at their command the liberal and enlightened men\nof England who wished to educate the masses of the people. In 1807 the\nfirst measure for a national school-system was denounced by the\nArchbishop of Canterbury as \"derogatory to the authority of the\nChurch.\" As a counter-measure, his supporters established the\n\"National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the\nDoctrines of the Established Church\"; and the founder of the\norganization, a clergyman, advocated a barn as a good structure for a\nschool, and insisted that the children of the workers \"should not be\ntaught beyond their station.\" In 1840 a Committee of the Privy Council\non Education was appointed, but bowed to the will of the Archbishops,\nsetting forth the decree of \"their lord-ships\" that \"the first purpose\nof all instruction must be the regulation of the thoughts and habits\nof the children by the doctrine and precepts of revealed religion.\" In\n1850 a bill for secular education was denounced as presenting to the\ncountry \"a choice between Heaven or Hell, God or the Devil.\" In 1870,\nForster, author of the still unpassed bill, wrote that while the\nparsons were disputing, the children of the poor were \"growing into\nsavages.\"\n\nAs with Education, so with Social Reform. During the struggle to\nabolish slavery in the British colonies, some enthusiasts endeavored\nto establish the doctrine that Christian baptism conferred\nemancipation upon negroes who accepted it; whereupon the Bishop of\nLondon laid down the formula of exploitation: \"Christianity and the\nembracing of the gospel do not make the least alteration of civil\nproperty.\"\n\nGladstone, who was a democrat when he was not religious, spoke of the\ncultured classes of England:\n\n     In almost every one, if not every one, of the greatest\n     political controversies of the last fifty years, whether\n     they affected the franchise, whether they affected commerce,\n     whether they affected religion, whether they affected the\n     bad and abominable institution of slavery, or what subject\n     they touched, these leisured classes, these educated\n     classes, these titled classes have been in the wrong.\n\nThe \"Great Commoner\" did not add \"these religious classes \", for he\nbelonged to the religious classes himself; but a study of the record\nwill supply the gap. The Church opposed all the reform measures which\nGladstone himself put through. It opposed the Reform Bill of 1832. It\nopposed all the social reforms of Lord Salisbury. This noble-hearted\nEnglishman complained that at first only a single minister of religion\nsupported him, and to the end only a few. He expressed himself as\ndistressed and puzzled \"to find support from infidels and\nnon-professors; opposition or coldness from religionists or\ndeclaimers.\"\n\nAnd to our own day it has been the same. In 1894 the House of Bishops\nvoted solidly against the Employers' Liability Law. The House of\nBishops opposed Home Rule, and beat it; The House of Bishops opposed\nWomans' Suffrage, and voted against it to the end. Concerning this\nestablishment Lord Salisbury, himself the most devout of Englishmen,\nused the vivid phrase: \"This vast aquarium full of cold-blooded life.\"\nHe told the Bishops that he would give up preaching to them about\necclesiastical reform, because he knew that they would never begin.\nAnother member of the British aristocracy, the Hon. Geo. Russel, has\nwritten of their record and adventures:\n\n     They were defenders of absolutism, slavery, and the bloody\n     penal code; they were the resolute opponents of every\n     political or social reform; and they had their reward from\n     the nation outside parliament. The Bishop of Bristol had his\n     palace sacked and burnt; the Bishop of London could not keep\n     an engagement to preach lest the congregation should stone\n     him. The Bishop of Litchfield barely escaped with his life\n     after preaching at St. Bride's, Fleet Street. Archbishop\n     Howley, entering Canterbury for his primary visitation, was\n     insulted, spat upon, and only brought by a circuitous route\n     to the Deanery, amid the execrations of the mob. On the 5th\n     of November the Bishops of Exeter and Winchester were burnt\n     in effigy close to their own palace gates. Archbishop\n     Howley's chaplain complained that a dead cat had been thrown\n     at him, when the Archbishop--a man of apostolic\n     meekness--replied: \"You should be thankful that it was not a\n     live one.\"\n\nThe people had reason for this conduct--as you will always find they\nhave, if you take the trouble to inquire. Let me quote another member\nof the English ruling classes, Mr. Conrad Noel, who gives \"an\ninstance, of the procedure of Church and State about this period\":\n\n     In 1832 six agricultural labourers in South Dorsetshire, led\n     by one of their class, George Loveless, in receipt of 9s. a\n     week each, demanded the 10s. rate of wages usual in the\n     neighbourhood. The result was a reduction to 8s. An appeal\n     was made to the chairman of the local bench, who decided\n     that they must work for whatever their masters chose to pay\n     them. The parson, who had at first promised his help, now\n     turned against them, and the masters promptly reduced the\n     wage to 7s., with a threat of further reduction. Loveless\n     then formed an agricultural union, for which all seven were\n     arrested, treated as convicts, and committed to the assizes.\n     The prison chaplain tried to bully them into submission. The\n     judge determined to convict them, and directed that they\n     should be tried for mutiny under an act of George III,\n     specially passed to deal with the naval mutiny at the Nore.\n     The grand jury were landowners, and the petty jury were\n     farmers; both judge and jury were churchmen of the\n     prevailing type. The judge summed up as follows: \"Not for\n     anything that you have done, or that I can prove that you\n     intend to do, but for an example to others I consider it my\n     duty to pass the sentence of seven years' penal\n     transportation across His Majesty's high seas upon each and\n     every one of you.\"\n\n#Suffer Little Children#\n\nThe founder of Christianity was a man who specialized in children. He\nwas not afraid of having His discourses disturbed by them, He did not\nconsider them superfluous. \"Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven\", He\nsaid; and His Church is the inheritor of this tradition--\"feed my\nlambs\". There were children in Great Britain in the early part of the\nnineteenth century, and we may see what was done with them by turning\nto Gibbin's \"Industrial History of England\":\n\n     Sometimes regular traffickers would take the place of the\n     manufacturer, and transfer a number of children to a factory\n     district, and there keep them, generally in some dark\n     cellar, till they could hand them over to a mill owner in\n     want of hands, who would come and examine their height,\n     strength, and bodily capacities, exactly as did the slave\n     oweners in the American markets. After that the children\n     were simply at the mercy of their oweners, nominally as\n     apprentices, but in reality as mere slaves, who got no\n     wages, and whom it was not worth while even to feed and\n     clothe properly, because they were so cheap and their places\n     could be so easily supplied. It was often arranged by the\n     parish authorities, in order to get rid of imbeciles, that\n     one idiot should be taken by the mill owener with every\n     twenty sane children. The fate of these unhappy idiots was\n     even worse than that of the others. The secret of their\n     final end has never been disclosed, but we can form some\n     idea of their awful sufferings from the hardships of the\n     other victims to capitalist greed and cruelty. The hours of\n     their labor were only limited by exhaustion, after many\n     modes of torture had been unavailingly applied to force\n     continued work. Children were often worked sixteen hours a\n     day, by day and by night.\n\nIn the year 1819 an act of Parliament was proposed limiting the labor\nof children nine years of age to fourteen hours a day. This would seem\nto have been a reasonable provision, likely to have won the approval\nof Christ; yet the bill was violently opposed by Christian employers,\nbacked by Christian clergymen. It was interfering with freedom of\ncontract, and therefore with the will of Providence; it was anathema\nto an established Church, whose function was in 1819, as it is in\n1918, and was in 1918 B.C., to teach the divine origin and sanction of\nthe prevailing economic order. \"Anu and Baal called me, Hammurabi, the\nexalted prince, worshipper of the gods\" ... so begins the oldest legal\ncode which has come down to us, from 2250 B.C.; and the coronation\nservice of the English church is made whole out of the same thesis.\nThe duty of submission, not merely to divinely chosen King, but to\ndivinely chosen Landlord and divinely chosen Manufacturer, is implicit\nin the church's every ceremony, and explicit in many of its creeds. In\nthe Litany the people petition for \"increase of grace to hear meekly\nThy Word\"; and here is this \"Word,\" as little children are made to\nlearn it by heart. If there exists in the world a more perfect summary\nof slave ethics, I do not know where to find it.\n\n     My duty towards my neighbour is ... To honour and obey the\n     King, and all that are put in authority under him; To submit\n     myself to all my governours, teachers, spiritual pastors,\n     and masters: To order myself lowly and reverently to all my\n     betters.... Not to covet nor desire other men's goods; But\n     to learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do\n     my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please\n     God to call me.\n\nA hundred years ago one of the most popular of British writers was\nHannah More. She and her sister Martha went to live in the\ncoal-country, to teach this \"catechism\" to the children of the\nstarving miners. The \"Mendip Annals\" is the title of a book in which\nthey tell of their ten years' labors in a village popularly known as\n\"Little Hell.\" In this place two hundred people were crowded into\nnineteen houses. \"There is not one creature in it that can give a cup\nof broth if it would save a life.\" In one winter eighteen perished of\n\"a putrid fever\", and the clergyman \"could not raise a six-pence to\nsave a life.\"\n\nAnd what did the pious sisters make of all this? From cover to cover\nyou find in the \"Mendip Annals\" no single word of social protest, not\neven of social suspicion. That wages of a shilling a day might have\nanything to do with moral degeneration was a proposition beyond the\nmental powers of England's most popular woman writer. She was\nperfectly content that a woman should be sentenced to death for\nstealing butter from a dealer who had asked what the woman thought too\nhigh a price. When there came a famine, and the children of these\nmine-slaves were dying like flies, Hannah More bade them be happy\nbecause God had sent them her pious self. \"In suffering by the\nscarcity, you have but shared in the common lot, with the pleasure of\nknowing the advantage you have had over many villages in your having\nsuffered no scarcity of religious instruction.\" And in another place\nshe explained that the famine was caused by God to teach the poor to\nbe grateful to the rich!\n\n     Let me remind you that probably that very scarcity has been\n     permitted by an all-wise and gracious Providence to unite\n     all ranks of people together, to show the poor how\n     immediately they are dependent upon the rich, and to show\n     both rich and poor that they are all dependent upon Himself.\n     It has also enabled you to see more clearly the advantages\n     you derive from the government and constitution of this\n     country--to observe the benefits flowing from the\n     distinction of rank and fortune, which has enabled the high\n     to so liberally assist the low.\n\n     It appears that the villagers were entirely convinced by\n     this pious reasoning; for they assembled one Saturday night\n     and burned an effigy of Tom Paine! This proceeding led to a\n     tragic consequence, for one of the \"common people,\" known as\n     Robert, \"was overtaken by liquor,\" and was unable to appear\n     at Sunday School next day. This fall from grace occasioned\n     intense remorse in Robert. \"It preyed dreadfully upon his\n     mind for many months,\" records Martha More, \"and despair\n     seemed at length to take possession of him.\" Hannah had some\n     conversation with him, and read him some suitable passages\n     from \"The Rise and Progress\". \"At length the Almighty was\n     pleased to shine into his heart and give him comfort.\"\n\n     Nor should you imagine that this saintly stupidity was in\n     any way unique in the Anglican establishment. We read in the\n     letters of Shelley how his father tormented him with\n     Archdeacon Paley's \"Evidences\" as a cure for atheism. This\n     eminent churchman wrote a book, which he himself ranked\n     first among his writings, called \"Reasons for Contentment,\n     addressed to the Labouring Classes of the British Public.\"\n     In this book he not merely proved that religion \"smooths all\n     inequalities, because it unfolds a prospect which makes all\n     earthly distinctions nothing\"; he went so far as to prove\n     that, quite apart from religion, the British exploiters were\n     less fortunate than those to whom they paid a shilling a\n     day.\n\n     Some of the conditions which poverty (if the condition of\n     the labouring part of mankind must be so called) imposes,\n     are not hardships, but pleasures. Frugality itself is a\n     pleasure. It is an exercise of attention and contrivance,\n     which, whenever it is successful, produces satisfaction....\n     This is lost among abundance.\n\nAnd there was William Wilberforce, as sincere a philanthropist as\nAnglicanism ever produced, an ardent supporter of Bible societies and\nforeign missions, a champion of the anti-slavery movement, and also of\nthe ruthless \"Combination Laws,\" which denied to British wage-slaves\nall chance of bettering their lot. Wilberforce published a \"Practical\nView of the System of Christianity\", in which he told unblushingly\nwhat the Anglican establishment is for. In a chapter which he\ndescribed as \"the basis of all politics,\" he explained that the\npurpose of religion is to remind the poor\n\n     That their more lowly path has been allotted to them by the\n     hand of God; that it is their part faithfully to discharge\n     its duties, and contentedly to bear its inconveniences; that\n     the objects about which worldly men conflict so eagerly are\n     not worth the contest; that the peace of mind, which\n     Religion offers indiscriminately to all ranks, affords more\n     true satisfaction than all the expensive pleasures which are\n     beyond the poor man's reach; that in this view the poor have\n     the advantage; that if their superiors enjoy more abundant\n     comforts, they are also exposed to many temptations from\n     which the inferior classes are happily exempted; that,\n     \"having food and raiment, they should be therewith content,\"\n     since their situation in life, with all its evils, is better\n     than they have deserved at the hand of God; and finally,\n     that all human distinctions will soon be done away, and the\n     true followers of Christ will all, as children of the same\n     Father, be alike admitted to the possession of the same\n     heavenly inheritance. Such are the blessed effects of\n     Christianity on the temporal well-being of political\n     communities.\n\nTHE COURT CIRCULAR\n\nThe Anglican system of submission has been transplanted intact to the\nsoil of America. When King George the Third lost the sovereignty of\nthe colonies, the bishops of his divinely inspired church lost the\ncontrol of the clergy across the seas; but this revolution was purely\none of Church politics--in doctrine and ritual the \"Protestant\nEpiscopal Church of America\" remained in every way Anglican. The\nlittle children of our free republic are taught the same\nslave-catechism, \"to order myself lowly and reverently to all my\nbetters.\" The only difference is that instead of being told \"to honour\nand obey the King,\" they are told \"to honour and obey the civil\nauthority.\"\n\nIt is the Church of Good Society in England, and it is the same in\nBoston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Charleston.\nJust as our ruling classes have provided themselves with imitation\nEnglish schools and imitation English manners and imitation English\nclothes--so in their Heaven they have provided an imitation English\nmonarch. I wonder how many Americans realize the treason to democracy\nthey are committing when they allow their children to be taught a\nsymbolism and liturgy based upon absolutist ideas. I take up the\nhymn-book--not the English, but the sturdy, independent, democratic\nAmerican hymn-book. I have not opened it for twenty years, yet the\ngreater part of its contents is as familiar to me as the syllables of\nmy own name. I read:\n\n  Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,\n  Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;\n  Cherubim and seraphim bowing down before Thee,\n  Which wert, and art, and ever more shall be!\n\nOne might quote a hundred other hymns made thus out of royal imagery.\nI turn at random to the part headed \"General,\" and find that there is\nhardly one hymn in which there is not \"king,\" \"throne,\" or some image\nof homage and flattery. The first hymn begins--\n\n  Ancient of days, Who sittest, throned in glory;\n  To Thee all knees are bent, all voices pray.\n\nAnd the second--\n\n  Christ, whose glory fills the skies--\n\nAnd the third--\n\n  Lord of all being, throned afar,\n  Thy glory flames from sun and star.\n\nThere is a court in Heaven above, to which all good Britons look up,\nand about which they read with exactly the same thrills as they read\nthe Court Circular. The two courts have the same ethical code and the\nsame manners; their Sovereigns are jealous, greedy of attention,\nself-conscious and profoundly serious, punctilious and precise; their\nexistence consisting of an endless round of ceremonies, and they being\nincapable of boredom. No member of the Royal Family can escape this\nregime even if he wishes; and no more can any member of the Holy\nFamily--not even the meek and lowly Jesus, who chose a carpenter's\nwife for his mother, and showed all his earthly days a preference for\nlow society.\n\nThis unconventional Son lived obscurely; he never carried weapons, he\ncould not bear to have so much as a human ear cut off in his presence.\nBut see how he figures in the Court Circular:\n\n  The Son of God goes forth to war,\n  A kingly crown to gain:\n\n  His blood-red banner streams afar:\n  Who follows in His train?\n\nThis carpenter's son was one of the most unpretentious men on earth;\nutterly simple and honest--he would not even let anyone praise him.\nWhen some one called him \"good Master,\" he answered, quickly, \"Why\ncallest thou me good? There is none good save one, that is, God.\" But\nthis simplicity has been taken with deprecation by his church, which\npersists in heaping compliments upon him in conventional, courtly\nstyle:\n\n  The company of angels\n    Are praising Thee on high;\n  And mortal men, and all things\n    Created, make reply:\n  All Glory, laud and honour,\n  To Thee, Redeemer, King....\n\nThe impression a modern man gets from all this is the unutterable\nboredom that Heaven must be. Can one imagine a more painful occupation\nthan that of the saints--casting down their golden crowns around the\nglassy sea--unless it be that of the Triumvirate itself, compelled to\nsit through eternity watching these saints, and listening to their\nmawkish and superfluous compliments!\n\nBut one can understand that such things are necessary in a monarchy;\nthey are necessary if you are going to have Good Society, and a Good\nSociety church. For Good Society is precisely the same thing as\nHeaven; that is, a place to which only a few can get admission, and\nthose few are bored. They spend their time going through costly\nformalities--not because they enjoy it, but because of its effect upon\nthe populace, which reads about them and sees their pictures in the\npapers, and now and then is allowed to catch a glimpse of their\nphysical Presences, as at the horse-show, or the opera, or the\ncoaching-parade.\n\n#Horn-blowing#\n\nI know the Church of Good Society in America, having studied it from\nthe inside. I was an extraordinarily devout little boy; one of my\nearliest recollections--I cannot have been more than four years of\nage--is of carrying a dust-brush about the house as the choir-boy\ncarried the golden cross every Sunday morning. I remember asking if I\nmight say the \"Lord's prayer\" in this fascinating play; and my\nmother's reply: \"If you say it reverently.\" When I was thirteen, I\nattended service, of my own volition and out of my own enthusiasm,\nevery single day during the forty days of Lent; at the age of fifteen\nI was teaching Sunday-school. It was the Church of the Holy Communion,\nat Sixth Avenue and Twentieth Street, New York; and those who know the\ncity will understand that this is a peculiar location--precisely half\nway between the homes of some of the oldest and most august of the\ncity's aristocracy, and some of the vilest and most filthy of the\ncity's slums. The aristocracy were paying for the church, and occupied\nthe best pews; they came, perfectly clad, aus dem Ei gegossen, as the\nGermans say, with the manner they so carefully cultivate, gracious,\nyet infinitely aloof. The service was made for them--as all the rest\nof the world is made for them; the populace was permitted to occupy a\nfringe of vacant seats.\n\nThe assistant clergyman was an Englishman, and a gentleman; orthodox,\nyet the warmest man's heart I have ever known. He could not bear to\nhave the church remain entirely the church of the rich; he would go\npersistently into the homes of the poor, visiting the old slum women\nin their pitifully neat little kitchens, and luring their children\nwith entertainments and Christmas candy. They were corralled into the\nSunday-school, where it was my duty to give them what they needed for\nthe health of their souls.\n\nI taught them out of a book of lessons; and one Sunday it would be\nMoses in the Bulrushes, and next Sunday it would be Jonah and the\nWhale, and next Sunday it would be Joshua blowing down the walls of\nJericho. These stories were reasonably entertaining, but they seemed\nto me futile, not to the point. There were little morals tagged to\nthem, but these lacked relationship to the lives of little slum-boys.\nBe good and you will be happy, love the Lord and all will be well with\nyou; which was about as true and as practical as the procedure of the\nFijians, blowing horns to drive away a pestilence.\n\nI had a mind, you see, and I was using it. I was reading the papers,\nand watching politics and business. I followed the fates of my little\nslum-boys--and what I saw was that Tammany Hall was getting them. The\nliquor-dealers and the brothel-keepers, the panders and the pimps, the\ncrap-shooters and the petty thieves--all these were paying the\npoliceman and the politician for a chance to prey upon my boys; and\nwhen the boys got into trouble, as they were continually doing, it was\nthe clergyman who consoled them in prison--but it was the Tammany\nleader who saw the judge and got them out. So these boys got their\nlesson, even earlier in life than I got mine--that the church was a\nkind of amiable fake, a pious horn-blowing; while the real thing was\nTammany.\n\nI talked about this with the vestrymen and the ladies of Good Society;\nthey were deeply pained, but I noticed that they did nothing practical\nabout it; and gradually, as I went on to investigate, I discovered the\nreason--that their incomes came from real estate, traction, gas and\nother interests, which were contributing the main part of the campaign\nexpenses of the corrupt Tammany machine, and of its equally corrupt\nrival. So it appeared that these immaculate ladies and gentlemen, aus\ndem Ei gegossen, were themselves engaged, unconsciously, perhaps, but\nnone the less effectively, in spreading the pestilence against which\nthey were blowing their religious horns!\n\nSo little by little I saw my beautiful church for what it was and is:\na great capitalist interest, an integral and essential part of a\ngigantic predatory system. I saw that its ethical and cultural and\nartistic features, however sincerely they might be meant by individual\nclergymen, were nothing but a bait, a device to lure the poor into\nthe trap of submission to their exploiters. And as I went on probing\ninto the secret life of the great Metropolis of Mammon, and laying\nbare its infamies to the world, I saw the attitude of the church to\nsuch work; I met, not sympathy and understanding, but sneers and\ndenunciation--until the venerable institution which had once seemed\ndignified and noble became to me as a sepulchre of corruption.\n\n#Trinity Corporation#\n\nThere stands on the corner of Broadway and Wall Street a towering\nbrown-stone edifice, one of the most beautiful and most famous\nchurches in America. As a child I have walked through its church yard\nand read the quaint and touching inscriptions on its grave-stones;\nwhen I was a little older, and knew Wall Street, it seemed to me a\nsublime thing that here in the very heart of the world's infamy there\nshould be raised, like a finger of warning, this symbol of Eternity\nand Judgment. Its great bell rang at noon-time, and all the traders\nand their wage-slaves had to listen, whether they would or no! Such\nwas Old Trinity to my young soul; and what is it in reality?\n\nThe story was told some ten years ago by Charles Edward Russell.\nTrinity Corporation is the name of the concern, and it is one of the\ngreat landlords of New York. In the early days it bought a number of\nfarms, and these it has held, as the city has grown up around them,\nuntil in 1908 their value was estimated at anywhere from forty to a\nhundred million dollars. The true amount has never been made public;\nto quote Russell's words:\n\n     The real owners of the property are the communicants of the\n     church. For 94 years none of the owners has known the extent\n     of the property, nor the amount of the revenue therefrom,\n     nor what is done with the money. Every attempt to learn even\n     the simplest fact about these matters has been baffled. The\n     management is a self perpetuating body, without\n     responsibility and without supervision.\n\nAnd the writer goes on to describe the business policy of this great\ncorporation, which is simply the English land system complete. It\nrefuses to sell the land, but rents it for long periods, and the\ntenant builds the house, and then when the lease expires, the\nCorporation takes over the house for a nominal sum. Thus it has\npurchased houses for as low as $200, and made them into tenements, and\nrented them to the swarming poor for a total of fifty dollars a month.\nThe houses were not built for tenements, they have no conveniences,\nthey are not fit for the habitation of animals.\n\nThe article, in Everybody's Magazine for July, 1908, gives pictures of\nthem, which are horrible beyond belief. To quote the writer again:\n\n     Decay, neglect and squalor seem to brood wherever Trinity is\n     an owner. Gladly would I give to such a charitable and\n     benevolent institution all possible credit for a spirit of\n     improvement manifested anywhere, but I can find no such\n     manifestation. I have tramped the Eighth Ward day after day\n     with a list of Trinity properties in my hand, and of all the\n     tenement houses that stand there on Trinity land, I have not\n     found one that is not a disgrace to civilization and to the\n     City of New York.\n\nIt happens that I once knew the stately prelate who presided over this\nCorporation of Corruption. I imagine how he would have shivered and\nturned pale had some angel whispered to him what devilish utterances\nwere some day to proceed from the lips of the little cherub with\nshining face and shining robes who acted as the bishop's attendant in\nthe stately ceremonials of the Church! Truly, even into the goodly\ncompany of the elect, even to the most holy places of the temple,\nSatan makes his treacherous way! Even under the consecrated hands of\nthe bishop! For while the bishop was blessing me and taking me into\nthe company of the sanctified, I was thinking about what the papers\nhad reported, that the bishop's wife had been robbed of fifty thousand\ndollars worth of jewels! It did not seem quite in accordance with the\ndoctrine of Jesus that a bishop's wife should possess fifty thousand\ndollars worth of jewels, or that she should be setting the bloodhounds\nof the police on the train of a human being. I asked my clergyman\nfriend about it, and remember his patient explanation--that the bishop\nhad to know all classes and conditions of men: his wife had to go\namong the rich as well as the poor, and must be able to dress so that\nshe would not be embarrassed. The Bishop at this time was making it\nhis life-work to raise a million dollars for the beginning of a great\nEpiscopal cathedral; and this of course compelled him to spend much\ntime among the rich!\n\nThe explanation satisfied me; for of course I thought there had to be\ncathedrals--despite the fact that both St. Stephen and St. Paul had\ndeclared that \"the Lord dwelleth not in temples made with hands.\" In\nthe twenty-five years which have passed since that time the good\nBishop has passed to his eternal reward, but the mighty structure\nwhich is a monument to his visitations among the rich towers over the\ncity from its vantage-point on Morningside Heights. It is called the\nCathedral of St. John the Divine; and knowing what I know about the\nmen who contributed its funds, and about the general functions of the\nchurches of the Metropolis of Mammon, it would not seem to me less\nholy if it were built, like the monuments of ancient ravagers, out of\nthe skulls of human beings.\n\n#Spiritual Interpretation#\n\nThere remains to say a few words as to the intellectual functions of\nthe Fifth Avenue clergy. Let us realize at the outset that they do\ntheir preaching in the name of a proletarian rebel, who was crucified\nas a common criminal because, as they said, \"He stirreth up the\npeople.\" An embarrassing \"Savior\" for the church of Good Society, you\nmight imagine; but they manage to fix him up and make him respectable.\n\nI remember something analogous in my own boyhood. All day Saturday I\nran about with the little street rowdies, I stole potatoes and roasted\nthem in vacant lots, I threw mud from the roofs of apartment-houses;\nbut on Saturday night I went into a tub and was lathered and scrubbed,\nand on Sunday I came forth in a newly brushed suit, a clean white\ncollar and a shining tie and a slick derby hat and a pair of tight\ngloves which made me impotent for mischief. Thus I was taken and\nparaded up Fifth Avenue, doing my part of the duties of Good Society.\nAnd all church-members go through this same performance; the oldest\nand most venerable of them steal potatoes and throw mud all week--and\nthen take a hot bath of repentance and put on the clean clothing of\npiety. In this same way their ministers of religion are occupied to\nscrub and clean and dress up their disreputable Founder--to turn him\nfrom a proletarian rebel into a stained-glass-window divinity.\n\nThe man who really lived, the carpenter's son, they take out and\ncrucify all over again. As a young poet has phrased it, they nail him\nto a jeweled cross with cruel nails of gold. Come with me to the New\nGolgotha and witness this crucifixion; take the nails of gold in your\nhands, try the weight of the jeweled sledges! Here is a sledge, in the\nform of a dignified and scholarly volume, published by the exclusive\nhouse of Scribner, and written by the Bishop of my boyhood, the Bishop\nwhose train I carried in the stately ceremonials: \"The Citizen in His\nRelation to the Industrial Situation,\" by the Right Reverend Henry\nCodman Potter, D.D., L.L.D., D.C.L.--a course of lectures delivered\nbefore the sons of our predatory classes at Yale University, under the\nendowment of a millionaire mining king, founder of the Phelps-Dodge\ncorporation, which the other day carried out the deportation from\ntheir homes of a thousand striking miners at Bisbee, Arizona. Says my\nBishop:\n\n     Christ did not denounce wealth any more than he denounced\n     pauperism. He did not abhor money; he used it. He did not\n     abhor the company of rich men; he sought it. He did not\n     invariably scorn or even resent a certain profuseness of\n     expenditure.\n\nAnd do you think that the late Bishop of J.P. Morgan and Company\nstands alone as an utterer of scholarly blasphemy, a driver of golden\nnails? In the course of this book there will march before us a long\nline of the clerical retainers of Privilege, on their way to the New\nGolgotha to crucify the carpenter's son: the Rector of the Money\nTrust, the Preacher of the Coal Trust, the Priest of the Traction\nTrust, the Archbishop of Tammany, the Chaplain of the Millionaires'\nClub, the Pastor of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Religious Editor of\nthe New Haven, the Sunday-school Superintendent of Standard Oil. We\nshall try the weight of their jewelled sledges--books, sermons,\nnewspaper-interviews, after-dinner speeches--wherewith they pound\ntheir golden nails of sophistry into the bleeding hands and feet of\nthe proletarian Christ.\n\nHere, for example, is Rev. F.G. Peabody, Professor of Christian Morals\nat Harvard University. Prof. Peabody has written several books on the\nsocial teachings of Jesus; he quotes the most rabid of the carpenter's\ndenunciations of the rich, and says:\n\n     Is it possible that so obvious and so limited a message as\n     this, a teaching so slightly distinguished from the\n     curbstone rhetoric of a modern agitator, can be an adequate\n     reproduction of the scope and power of the teaching of\n     Jesus?\n\nThe question answers itself: Of course not! For Jesus was a gentleman;\nhe is the head of a church attended by gentlemen, of universities\nwhere gentlemen are educated. So the Professor of Christian Morals\nproceeds to make a subtle analysis of Jesus' actions; demonstrating\ntherefrom that there are three proper uses to be made of great wealth:\nfirst, for almsgiving--\"The poor ye have always with you!\"; second,\nfor beauty and culture--buying wine for wedding-feasts, and\nointment-boxes and other #objets de vertu#; and third, \"stewardship,\"\n\"trusteeship\"--which in plain English is \"Big Business.\"\n\nI have used the illustration of soap and hot water; one can imagine he\nis actually watching the scrubbing process, seeing the proletarian\nFounder emerging all new and respectable under the brush of this\ncapitalist professor. The professor has a rule all his own for reading\nthe scriptures; he tells us that when there are two conflicting\nsayings, the rule of interpretation is that \"the more spiritual is to\nbe preferred.\" Thus, one gospel makes Jesus say: \"Blessed are ye\npoor.\" Another puts it: \"Blessed are the poor in spirit.\" The first\none is crude and literal; obviously the second must be what Jesus\nmeant! In other words, the professor and his church have made for\ntheir economic masters a treacherous imitation virtue to be taught to\nwage-slaves, a quality of submissiveness, impotence and futility,\nwhich they call by the name of \"spirituality\". This virtue they exalt\nabove all others, and in its name they cut from the record of Jesus\neverything which has relation to the realities of life!\n\nSo here is our Professor Peabody, sitting in the Plummer chair at\nHarvard, writing on \"Jesus Christ and the Social Question,\" and\nexplaining:\n\n     The fallacy of the Socialist program is not in its\n     radicalism, but in its externalism. It proposes to\n     accomplish by economic change what can be attained by\n     nothing less than spiritual regeneration.\n\nAnd here is \"The Churchman,\" organ of the Episcopalians of New York,\nwarning us:\n\n     It is necessary to remember that something more than\n     material and temporal considerations are involved. There are\n     things of more importance to the purposes of God and to the\n     welfare of humanity than economic readjustments and social\n     amelioration.\n\nAnd again:\n\n     Without doubt there is a strong temptation today, bearing\n     upon clergy and laity alike, to address their religious\n     energies too exclusively to those tasks whereby human life\n     may be made more abundant and wholesome materially.... We\n     need constantly to be reminded that spiritual things come\n     first.\n\nThere come before my mental eye the elegant ladies and gentlemen for\nwhom these comfortable sayings are prepared: the vestrymen and pillars\nof the Church, with black frock coats and black kid gloves and shiny\ntophats; the ladies of Good Society with their Easter costumes in\npastel shades, their gracious smiles and their sweet intoxicating\nodors. I picture them as I have seen them at St. George's, where that\naged wild boar, Pierpont Morgan, the elder, used to pass the\ncollection plate; at Holy Trinity, where they drove downtown in\nold-fashioned carriages with grooms and footmen sitting like twin\nstatues of insolence; at St. Thomas', where you might see all the\n\"Four Hundred\" on exhibition at once; at St. Mary the Virgin's, where\nthe choir paraded through the aisles, swinging costly incense into my\nchildish nostrils, the stout clergyman walking alone with nose\nupturned, carrying on his back a jewelled robe for which some adoring\nfemale had paid sixty thousand dollars. \"Spiritual things come first?\"\nAh, yes! \"Seek first the kingdom of God, and the jewelled robes shall\nbe added unto you!\" And it is so dreadful about the French and German\nSocialists, who, as the \"Churchman\" reports, \"make a creed out of\nmaterialism.\" But then, what is this I find in one issue of the organ\nof the \"Church of Good Society\"?\n\n     Business men contribute to the Y.M.C.A. because they realize\n     that if their employes are well cared for and religiously\n     influenced, they can be of greater service in business!\n\nWho let that material cat out of the spiritual bag?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n#BOOK THREE#\n\n#The Church of the Servant-girls#\n\n  Was it for this--that prayers like these\n    Should spend themselves about thy feet,\n  And with hard, overlabored knees\n    Kneeling, these slaves of men should beat\n  Bosoms too lean to suckle sons\n  And fruitless as their orisons?\n\n  Was it for this--that men should make\n    Thy name a fetter on men's necks,\n  Poor men made poorer for thy sake,\n    And women withered out of sex?\n  Was it for this--that slaves should be--\n  Thy word was passed to set men free?\n\n  Swinburne.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#Charity#\n\nAs everyone knows, the \"society lady\" is not an independent and\nself-sustaining phenomenon. For every one of these exquisite,\nsweet-smelling creatures that you meet on Fifth Avenue, there must be\nat home a large number of other women who live sterile and empty\nlives, and devote themselves to cleaning up after their luckier\nsisters. But these \"domestics\" also are human beings; they have\nemotions--or, in religious parlance, \"souls;\" it is necessary to\nprovide a discipline to keep them from appropriating the property of\ntheir mistresses, also to keep them from becoming #enceinte.# So it\ncomes about that there are two cathedrals in New York: one, St. John\nthe Divine, for the society ladies, and the other, St. Patrick's, for\nthe servant-girls. The latter is located on Fifth Avenue, where its\ntowering white spires divide with the homes of the Vanderbilts the\ninterest of the crowds of sight-seers. Now, early every Sunday\nmorning, before \"Good Society\" has opened its eyes, you may see the\ndevotees of the Irish snake-charmer hurrying to their orisons, each\nwith a little black prayer-book in her hand. What is it they do\ninside? What are they taught about life? This is the question to which\nwe have next to give attention.\n\nSome years ago Mr. Thomas F. Ryan, traction and insurance magnate of\nNew York, favored me with his justification of his own career and\nactivities. He mentioned his charities, and, speaking as one man of\nthe world to another, he said: \"The reason I put them into the hands\nof Catholics is not religious, but because I find they are efficient\nin such matters. They don't ask questions, they do what you want them\nto do, and do it economically.\"\n\nI made no comment; I was absorbed in the implications of the\nremark--like Agassiz when some one gave him a fossil bone, and his\nmind set to work to reconstruct the creature.\n\nWhen a man is drunk, the Catholics do not ask if it was long hours and\nimproper working-conditions which drove him to desperation; they do\nnot ask if police and politicians are getting a rake-off from the\nsaloon, or if traction magnates are using it as an agency for the\ncontrolling of votes; they do not plunge into prohibition movements or\ngood government campaigns--they simply take the man in, at a standard\nprice, and the patient slave-sisters and attendants get him sober, and\nthen turn him out for society to make him drunk again. That is\n\"charity,\" and it is the special industry of Roman Catholicism. They\nhave been at it for a thousand years, cleaning up loathsome and\nunsightly messes--\"plague, pestilence and famine, battle and murder\nand sudden death.\" Yet--puzzling as it would seem to anyone not\nreligious--there were never so many messes, never so many different\nkinds of messes, as now at the end of the thousand years of charitable\nactivity!\n\nBut the Catholics go on and on; like the patient spider, building and\nrebuilding his web across a door-way; like soldiers under the command\nof a ruling class with a \"muddling through\" tradition--\n\n  Theirs not to reason why,\n  Theirs but to do and die.\n\nAnd so of course all magnates and managers of industry who have messes\nto be cleaned up, human garbage-heaps to be carted away quickly and\nwithout fuss, turn to the Catholic Church for this service, no matter\nwhat their personal religious beliefs or lack of beliefs may be.\nSomewhere in the neighborhood of every steel-mill, every coal-mine or\nother place of industrial danger, you will find a Catholic hospital,\nwith its slave-sisters and attendants. Once when I was \"muck-raking\"\nnear Pittsburgh, I went to one of these places to ask information as\nto the frequency of industrial accidents and the fate of the victims.\nThe \"Mother Superior\" received me with a look of polite dismay. \"These\nconcerns pay us!\" she said. \"You must see that as a matter of business\nit would not do for us to talk about them.\"\n\nObey and keep silence: that is the Catholic law. And precisely as it\nis with the work of nursing and almsgiving, so it is with the work of\nvote-getting, the elaborate system of policemen and saloon-keepers and\nward-heelers which the Catholic machine controls. This industry of\nvote-getting is a comparatively new one; but the Church has been\nhandling the masses for so many centuries that she quickly learned\nthis new way of \"democracy,\" and has established her supremacy over\nall rivals. She has the schools for training the children, the\nconfessional for controlling the women; she has the intellectual\nmachinery, the purgatory and the code of slave-ethics. She has the\nsupreme advantage that the rank and file of her mighty host really\nbelieve what she teaches; they do not have to listen to table-rappings\nand flounder through swamps of automatic writings in order to bolster\ntheir hope of the survival of personality after death!\n\nSo it comes about that our captains of industry and finance have been\ndriven to a more or less reluctant alliance with the Papacy. The\nChurch is here, and her followers are here, before the war several\nhundred thousand of them pouring into the country every year. It is no\nlonger possible to do without Catholics in America; not merely\ndo ditches have to be dug, roads graded, coal mined, and dishes\nwashed, but franchises have to be granted, tariff-schedules\nadjusted, juries and courts manipulated, police trained and\nstrikes crushed. Under our native political system, for these\npurposes millions of votes are needed; and these votes belong to\npeople of a score of nationalities--Irish and German and Italian\nand French-Canadian and Bohemian and Mexican and Portuguese and\nPolish and Hungarian. Who but the Catholic Church can handle\nthese polyglot hordes? Who can furnish teachers and editors and\npoliticians familiar with all these languages?\n\nConsidering how complex is the service, the price is extremely\nmoderate--the mere actual expenses of the campaign, the cost of red\nfire and torch-lights, of liquor and newspaper advertisements. The\nrest may come out of the public till, in the form of exemption from\ntaxation of church buildings and lands, a share of the public funds\nfor charities and schools, the control of the police for\nsaloon-keepers and district leaders, the control of police-courts and\nmagistrates, of municipal administrations and boards of education, of\nlegislatures and governors; with a few higher offices now and then, to\nflatter our sacred self-esteem, a senator or a justice on the Supreme\nCourt Bench; and on state occasions, to keep up our necessary\nprestige, some cabinet-members and legislators and justices to attend\nHigh Mass, and be blessed in public by Catholic prelates and\ndignitaries.\n\nYou think this is empty rhetoric--you comfortable, easy-going,\nultra-cultured Americans? You professors in your classic\nshades, absorbed in \"the passionless pursuit of passionless\nintelligence\"--while the world about you slides down into the pit! You\nladies of Good Society, practicing your \"sweet little charities,\"\npursuing your \"dear little ideals,\" raising your families of one or\ntwo lovely children--while Irish and French-Canadians and Italians and\nPortuguese and Hungarians are breeding their dozens and scores, and\npreparing to turn you out of your country!\n\n#God's Armor#\n\nYou remember \"Bishop Blougram's Apology,\" Browning's study of the\npsychology of a modern Catholic ecclesiastic. He is not unaware of\nmodern thought, this bishop; he is a man of culture, who wants to have\nbeauty about him, to be a \"cabin passenger\":\n\n  There's power in me and will to dominate\n  Which I must exercise, they hurt me else;\n  In many ways I need mankind's respect,\n  Obedience, and the love that's born of fear.\n\nHe wishes that he had faith--faith in anything; he understands that\nfaith is all-important--\n\n  Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat.\n\nBut you cannot get faith just by wishing for it--\n\n  But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn!\n\nHe tries to imagine himself going on a crusade for truth, but he asks\nwhat there would be in it for him--\n\n     State the facts,\n  Read the text right, emancipate the world--\n  The emancipated world enjoys itself\n  With scarce a thank-you. Blougram told it first\n  It could not owe a farthing,--not to him\n  More than St. Paul!\n\nSo the bishop goes on with his role, but uneasily conscious of the\ncontempt of intellectual people.\n\n  I pine among my million imbeciles\n  (You think) aware some dozen men of sense\n  Eye me and know me, whether I believe\n  In the last winking virgin as I vow,\n  And am a fool, or disbelieve in her,\n  And am a knave.\n\nBut, as he says, you have to keep a tight hold upon the chain of\nfaith, that is what\n\n  Gives all the advantage, makes the difference,\n  With the rough, purblind mass we seek to rule.\n  We are their lords, or they are free of us,\n  Just as we tighten or relax that hold.\n\nSo he continues, but not with entire satisfaction, in his role of\nshepherd to those whom he calls \"King Bomba's lazzaroni,\" and\n\"ragamuffin saints.\"\n\nI wander into a Catholic bookstore and look to see what Bishop\nBlougram is doing with his lazzaroni and his ragamuffin saints here in\nthis new country of the far West. It is easy to acquire the\ninformation, for the saleswoman is polite and the prices fit my purse.\nAmerica is going to war, and Catholic boys are being drafted to be\ntrained for battle; so for ten cents I obtain a firmly bound little\npamphlet called \"God's Armor, a Prayer Book for Soldiers.\" It is\nmarked \"Copyright by the G.R.C. Central-Verein,\" and bears the \"Nihil\nObstat\" of the \"Censor Theolog.\" and the \"Imprimatur\" of \"Johannes\nJosephus, Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici\"--which last you may at first\nfail to recognize as a well-known city on the Mississippi River. Do\nyou not feel the spell of ancient things, the magic of the past\ncreeping over you, as you read those Latin trade-marks? Such is the\nDead Hand, and its cunning, which can make even St. Louis sound\nmysterious!\n\nIn this booklet I get no information as to the commercial causes of\nwar, nor about the part which the clerical vote may have played\nthroughout Europe in supporting military systems. I do not even find\nanything about the sacred cause of democracy, the resolve of a\nself-governing people to put an end to feudal rule. Instead I discover\na soldier-boy who obeys and keeps silent, and who, in his inmost\nheart, is in the grip of terrors both of body and soul. Poor, pitiful\nsoldier-boy, marking yourself with crosses, performing genuflexions,\nmumbling magic formulas in the trenches--how many billions of you have\nbeen led out to slaughter by the greeds and ambitions of your\nreligious masters, since first this accursed Antichrist got its grip\nupon the hearts of men!\n\nI quote from this little book:\n\n     Start this day well by lifting up your heart to God. Offer\n     yourself to Him, and beg grace to spend the day without sin.\n     Make the sign of the cross. Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son,\n     and Holy Ghost, behold me in Thy Divine Presence. I adore\n     Thee and give Thee thanks. Grant that all I do this day be\n     for Thy Glory, and for the salvation of my immortal soul.\n\n     During the day lift your heart frequently to God. Your\n     prayers need not be long nor read from a book. Learn a few\n     of these short ejaculations by heart and frequently repeat\n     them. They will serve to recall God to your heart and will\n     strengthen you and comfort you.\n\nYou remember a while back about the prayer-wheels of the Thibetans.\nThe Catholic religion was founded before the Thibetan, and is less\nprogressive; it does not welcome mechanical devices for saving labor.\nYou have to use your own vocal apparatus to keep yourself from hell;\nbut the process has been made as economical as possible by kindly\ndispensations of the Pope. Thus, each time that you say \"My God and my\nall,\" you get fifty days indulgence; the same for \"My Jesus, mercy,\"\nand the same for \"Jesus, my God, I love Thee above all things.\" For\n\"Jesus, Mary, Joseph,\" you get three hundred days--which would seem by\nall odds the best investment of your spare breath.\n\nAnd then come prayers for all occasions: \"Prayer before Battle\";\n\"Prayer for a Happy Death\"; \"Prayer in Temptation\"; \"Prayer before and\nafter Meals\"; \"Prayer when on Guard\"; \"Prayer before a long March\";\n\"Prayer of Resignation to Death\"; \"Prayer for Those in their Agony\"--I\ncannot bear to read them, hardly to list them. I remember standing in\na cathedral \"somewhere in France\" during the celebration of some\nspecial Big Magic. There was brilliant white light, and a suffocating\nstrange odor, and the thunder of a huge organ, and a clamor of voices,\nhigh, clear voices of young boys mounting to heaven, like the hands of\nmen in a pit reaching up, trying to climb over the top of one another.\nIt sent a shudder into the depths of my soul. There is nothing left in\nthe modern world which can carry the mind so far back into the ancient\nnightmare of anguish and terror which was once the mental life of\nmankind, as these Roman Catholic incantations with their frantic and\nceaseless importunity. They have even brought in the sex-spell; and\nthe poor, frightened soldier-boy, who has perhaps spent the night with\na prostitute, now prostrates himself before a holy Woman-being who is\nlifted high above the shames of the flesh, and who stirs the thrills\nof awe and affection which his mother brought to him in early\nchildhood. Read over the phrases of this \"Litany of the Blessed\nVirgin\":\n\n     Holy Mary, Pray for us. Holy Mother of God. Holy Virgin of\n     Virgins. Mother of Christ. Mother of divine grace. Mother\n     most pure. Mother most chaste. Mother inviolate. Mother\n     undefiled. Mother most amiable. Mother most admirable.\n     Mother of good counsel. Mother of our Creator. Mother of our\n     Savior. Virgin most prudent. Virgin most venerable. Virgin\n     most renowned. Virgin most powerful. Virgin most merciful.\n     Virgin most faithful. Mirror of justice. Seat of wisdom.\n     Cause of our joy. Spiritual vessel. Vessel of honor.\n     Singular vessel of devotion. Mystical rose. Tower of David.\n     Tower of ivory. House of gold. Ark of the covenant. Gate of\n     heaven. Morning Star. Health of the sick. Refuge of sinners.\n     Comforter of the afflicted. Help of Christians. Queen of\n     Angels. Queen of Patriarchs. Queen of Prophets. Queen of\n     Apostles. Queen of Martyrs. Queen of Confessors. Queen of\n     Virgins. Queen of all Saints. Queen conceived without\n     original sin. Queen of the most holy Rosary. Queen of Peace,\n     Pray for us.\n\n#Thanksgivings#\n\nFor another five cents--how cheaply a man of insight can obtain\nthrills in this fantastic world!--I purchase a copy of the \"Messenger\nof the Sacred Heart\", a magazine published in New York, the issue for\nOctober, 1917. There are pages of advertisements of schools and\ncolleges with strange titles: \"Immaculata Seminary\", \"Holy Cross\nAcademy\", \"Holy Ghost Institute\", \"Ladycliff\", \"Academy of Holy Child\nJesus\". The leading article is by a Jesuit, on \"The Spread of the\nApostleship of Prayer among the Young\"; and then \"Sister Clarissa\"\nwrites a poem telling us \"What are Sorrows\"; and then we are given a\nstory called \"Prayer for Daddy\"; and then another Jesuit father tells\nus about \"The Hills that Jesus Loved\". A third father tells us about\nthe \"Eucharistic Propaganda\"; and we learn that in July, 1917, it\ndistributed 11,699 beads, and caused the expenditure of 57,714 hours\nof adoration; and then the faithful are given a form of letter which\nthey are to write to the Honorable Baker, Secretary of War, imploring\nhim to intimate to the French government that France should withdraw\nfrom one of her advances in civilization, and join with mediaeval\nAmerica in exempting priests from being drafted to fight for their\ncountry. And then there is a \"Question Box\"--just like the Hearst\nnewspapers, only instead of asking whether she should allow him to\nkiss her before he has told her that he loves her, the reader asks\nwhat is the Pauline Privilege, and what is the heroic Act, and is\nRobert a saint's name, and if food remains in the teeth from the night\nbefore, would it break the fast to swallow it before Holy Communion.\n(No, I am not inventing this.)\n\nI quoted the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and pointed out how\ndeftly the Church has managed to slip in a prayer for worldly\nprosperity. But the Catholic Church does not show any squeamishness in\ndealing with its \"million imbeciles\", its \"rough, purblind mass\".\n\nThere is a department of the little magazine entitled \"Thanksgiving\",\nand a statement at the top that \"the total number of Thanksgivings for\nthe month is 2,143,911.\" I am suspicious of that, as of German reports\nof prisoners taken; but I give the statement as it stands, not going\nthrough the list and picking out the crudest, but taking them as they\ncome, classified by states:\n\n     GENERAL FAVORS: For many of these favors Mass and\n     publication were promised, for others the Badge of\n     Promoter's Cross was used, for others the prayers of the\n     Associates had been asked.\n\n     Alabama--Jewelry found, relief from pain, protection during\n     storm.\n\n     Alaska--Safe return, goods found.\n\n     Arizona--Two recoveries, suitable boarding place, illness\n     averted, safe delivery.\n\n     British Honduras--Successful operation.\n\n     California--Seventeen recoveries, six situations, two\n     successful examinations, house rented, stocks sold, raise in\n     salary, return to religious duties, sight regained, medal\n     won, Baptism, preservation from disease, contract obtained,\n     success in business, hearing restored, Easter duty made,\n     happy death, automobile sold, mind restored, house found,\n     house rented, successful journey, business sold, quarrel\n     averted, return of friends, two successful operations.\n\nAnd for all these miraculous performances the Catholic machine is\nharvesting the price day by day--harvesting with that ancient fervor\nwhich the Latin poet described as \"auri sacra fames\". As Christopher\nColumbus wrote from Jamaica in 1503: \"Gold is a wonderful thing. By\nmeans of gold we can even get souls into Paradise.\"\n\n#The Holy Roman Empire#\n\nThe system thus self-revealed you admit is appalling in its squalor;\nbut you say that at least it is milder and less perilous than the\nChurch which burned Giordano Bruno and John Huss. But the very essence\nof the Catholic Church is that it does not change; #semper eadem# is\nits motto: the same yesterday, today and forever--the same in\nWashington as in Rome or Madrid--the same in a modern democracy as in\nthe Middle Ages. The Catholic Church is not primarily a religious\norganization; it is a political organization, and proclaims the fact,\nand defies those who would shut it up in the religious field. The Rev.\nS.B. Smith, a Catholic doctor of divinity, explains in his \"Elements\nof Ecclesiastical Law\":\n\n     Protestants contend that the entire power of the Church\n     consists in the right to teach and exhort, but not in the\n     right to command, rule, or govern; whence they infer that\n     she is not a perfect society or sovereign state. This theory\n     is false; for the Church, as was seen, is vested #Jure\n     divino# with power, (1) to make laws; (2) to define and\n     apply them #(potestas judicialis)#; (3) to punish those who\n     violate her laws #(potestas coercitiva)#.\n\nAnd this is not one scholar's theory, but the formal and repeated\nproclamation of infallible popes. Here is the \"Syllabus of Errors\",\nissued by Pope Pius IX, Dec. 8th, 1864, declaring in substance that\n\n     The state has not the right to leave every man free to\n     profess and embrace whatever religion he shall deem true.\n\n     It has not the right to enact that the ecclesiastical power\n     shall require the permission of the civil power in order to\n     the exercise of its authority.\n\nThen in the same Syllabus the rights and powers of the Church are\naffirmed in substance:\n\n     She has the right to require the state not to leave every\n     man free to profess his own religion.\n\n     She has the right to exercise her power without the\n     permission or consent of the state.\n\n     She has the right of perpetuating the union of church and\n     state.\n\n     She has the right to require that the Catholic religion\n     shall be the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of\n     all others.\n\n     She has the right to prevent the state from granting the\n     public exercise of their own worship to persons immigrating\n     from it.\n\n     She has the power of requiring the state not to permit free\n     expression of opinion.\n\nYou see, the Holy Office is unrepentant and unchastened. You, who\nthink that liberty of conscience is the basis of civilization, ought\nat least to know what the Catholic Church has to say about the matter.\nHere is Mgr. Segur, in his \"Plain Talk About Protestantism of Today\",\na book published in Boston and extensively circulated by American\nCatholics:\n\n     Freedom of thought is the soul of Protestantism; it is\n     likewise the soul of modern rationalism and philosophy. It\n     is one of those impossibilities which only the levity of a\n     superficial reason can regard as admissable. But a sound\n     mind, that does not feed on empty words, looks upon this\n     freedom of thought only as simply absurd, and, what is more,\n     as sinful.\n\nYou take the liberty of thinking, nevertheless; you feel safe because\nthe Law will protect you. But do you imagine that this \"Law\" applies\nto your Catholic neighbors? Do you imagine that they are bound by the\nrestraints that bind #you#? Here is Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical\nof 1890--and please remember that Leo XIII was the #beau ideal# of our\ncapitalist statesmen and editors, as wise and kind and gentle-souled a\npope as ever roasted a heretic. He says:\n\n     If the laws of the state are openly at variance with the\n     laws of God--if they inflict injury upon the Church--or set\n     at naught the authority of Jesus Christ which is vested in\n     the Supreme Pontiff, then indeed it becomes a duty to resist\n     them, a sin to render obedience.\n\nAnd consider how many fields there are in which the laws of a\ndemocratic state do and forever must contravene the \"laws of God\" as\ninterpreted by the Catholic Church. Consider for example, that the\nPope, in his decree #Ne Temere#, has declared that Catholics who are\nmarried by civil authorities or by Protestant clergymen will be living\nin \"filthy concubinage\"! Consider, in the same way, the problems of\neducation, burial, prison discipline, blasphemy, poor relief,\nincorporation, mortmain, religious endowments, vows of celibacy. To\nthe above list, as given by Gladstone, one might add many issues, such\nas birth control, which have arisen since his time.\n\nWhat the Church means is to rule. Her literature is full of\nexpressions of that intention, set forth in the boldest and haughtiest\nand most uncompromising manner. For example, Cardinal Manning, in the\nPro-Cathedral at Kensington, speaking in the name of the Pope:\n\n     I acknowledge no civil power; I am the subject of no prince;\n     I claim more than this--I claim to be the supreme judge and\n     director of the consciences of men--of the peasant that\n     tills the field, and of the prince that sits upon the\n     throne; of the household of privacy, and the legislator that\n     makes laws for kingdoms; I am the sole, last supreme judge\n     of what is right and wrong.\n\n#Temporal Power#\n\nWhat this means is, that here in our American democracy the Catholic\nChurch is a rebel; a prisoner of war who bides his time, watching for\nthe moment to rise in revolt, and meantime making no secret of his\nintentions. The pious Leo XIII, addressing all true believers in\nAmerica, instructed them as to their attitude in captivity:\n\n     The Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and\n     government of your nation, fettered by no hostile\n     legislation, protected against violence by the common laws\n     and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and\n     act without hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it\n     would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in\n     America is to be sought the type of the most desirable\n     status of the church, or that it would be universally lawful\n     or expedient for state and church to be, as in America,\n     dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you\n     is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous\n     growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity\n     with which God has endowed His Church--But she would bring\n     forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she\n     enjoyed the favor of the laws and patronage of the public\n     authority.\n\nAccordingly, here is Father Phelan of St. Louis, addressing his flock\nin the \"Western Watchman\", June 27,1913:\n\n     Tell us we are Catholics first and Americans or Englishmen\n     afterwards; of course we are. Tell us, in the conflict\n     between the church and the civil government we take the side\n     of the church; of course we do. Why, if the government of\n     the United States were at war with the church, we would say\n     tomorrow, To hell with the government of the United States;\n     and if the church and all the governments of the world were\n     at war, we would say, To hell with all the governments of\n     the world....Why is it that in this country, where we have\n     only seven per cent of the population, the Catholic church\n     is so much feared? She is loved by all her children and\n     feared by everybody. Why is it that the Pope has such\n     tremendous power? Why, the Pope is the ruler of the world.\n     All the emperors, all the kings, all the princes, all the\n     presidents of the world, are as these altar boys of mine.\n     The Pope is the ruler of the world.\n\nYou recall what I said at the outset about Power; the ability to\ncontrol the lives of other men, to give laws and moral codes, to shape\nfashions and tastes, to be revered and regarded. Here is a man swollen\nto bursting with this Power. Dressed in his holy robes, with his holy\nincense in his nostrils, and the faces of the faithful gazing up at\nhim awe-stricken, hear him proclaim:\n\n     The Church gives no bonds for her good behavior. She is the\n     judge of her own rights and duties, and of the rights and\n     duties of the state.\n\nAnd lest you think that an extreme example of ultramontanist\narrogance, listen to the Boston \"Pilot\", April 6, 1912, speaking for\nCardinal O'Connell, whose official organ it is:\n\n     It must be borne in mind that even though Cardinals Farley,\n     O'Connell and Gibbons are at heart patriotic Americans and\n     members of an American hierarchy, yet they are as cardinals\n     foreign princes of the blood, to whom the United States, as\n     one of the great powers of the world, is under an obligation\n     to concede the same honors that they receive abroad.\n\n     Thus, were Cardinal Farley to visit an American man-of-war,\n     he would be entitled to the salutes and to naval honors\n     reserved for a foreign royal personage, and at any official\n     entertainment at Washington the Cardinal will outrank not\n     merely every cabinet officer, the speaker of the house and\n     the vice-president, but also the foreign ambassadors, coming\n     immediately next to the chief magistrate himself.\n\n     Incidentally, it may be mentioned that when a royal\n     personage not of sovereign rank visits New York it is his\n     duty to make the first call on Cardinal Farley.\n\n#Knights of Slavery#\n\nSuch is the worldly station of these apostles of the lowly Jesus. And\nwhat is their attitude towards their brothers in God, the rank and\nfile of the membership, whose pennies grease the wheels of the\necclesiastical machine? His Holiness, the Pope, sent over a delegate\nto represent him in America, and at a convention of the Federation of\nCatholic Societies held in New Orleans in November, 1910, this\ngentleman, Diomede Falconio, delivered himself on the subject of\nCapital and Labor. We have heard the slave-code of the Anglican\ndisciples of Jesus, the revolutionary carpenter; now let us hear the\nslave-code of his Roman disciples:\n\n     Human society has its origin from God and is constituted of\n     two classes of people, the rich and the poor, which\n     respectively represent Capital and Labor.\n\n     Hence it follows that according to the ordinance of God,\n     human society is composed of superiors and subjects, masters\n     and servants, learned and unlettered, rich and poor, nobles\n     and plebeians.\n\nAnd lest this should not be clear enough, the Pope sent a second\nrepresentative, Mgr. John Bonzano, who, speaking at a general meeting\nof the German Catholic Central-Verein, St. Louis, 1917, declared:\n\n     One of the worst evils that may grow out of the European war\n     is the spreading of the doctrine of Socialism, and the\n     Catholic Church must be ready to counteract such doctrines.\n     We must be ready to prevent the spread of Socialism and to\n     work against it. As I understand, you have a society of\n     wealthy people in St. Louis ready for such a campaign. You\n     have experienced leaders who are masters in their kind of\n     work. They are always insistent to show that this wealth was\n     and is in close touch with the Church, and therefore it will\n     not fail.\n\nThis, you perceive, is the complete thesis of the present book, which\ntherefore no doubt will be entitled to the \"Nihil Obstat\" of the\n\"Censor Theolog.\", and the \"Imprimatur\" of \"Johannes Josephus,\nArchiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici.\" No wonder that the \"experienced\nleaders\" of America, our captains of industry and exploiters of labor,\nare forced, whatever their own faith may be, to make use of this\nsystem of subjection. A few years ago we read in our papers how a\nJewish millionaire of Baltimore was presenting a fortune to the\nCatholic Church, to be used in its war upon Socialism. The late Mark\nHanna, the shrewdest and most far-seeing man that Big Business ever\nbrought into power, said that in twenty years there would be two\nparties in America, a capitalist and a socialist; and that it would be\nthe Catholic church that would save the country from Socialism. That\nprophecy was widely quoted, and sank into the souls of our steel and\nrailway and money magnates; from which time you might see, if you\nwatched political events, a new tone of deference to the Roman\nHierarchy on the part of our ruling classes. Today you cannot get an\nexpression of opinion hostile to Catholicism into any newspaper of\nimportance. The Associated Press does not handle news unfavorable to\nthe Church, and from top to bottom, the politician takes off his hat\nwhen the Sacred Host goes by. Said Archbishop Quigley, speaking before\nthe children of the Mary Sodality:\n\n     I'd like to see the politician who would try to rule against\n     the church in Chicago. His reign would be short indeed.\n\n#Priests and Police#\n\nAnd how is it in our national capital, the palladium of our liberties?\nAs a means of demonstrating the power of the church and the\nsubservience of our politicians, the Catholics have invented what they\ncall the \"Cardinal's Day Mass\": An elaborate procession of high\necclesiastics, dressed in gorgeous robes and jewels, through the\nstreets of Washington, accompanied by a small army of policemen, paid\nby non-Catholic taxpayers. The Cardinal seats himself upon a throne,\nand our political rulers make obeisance before him. On Sunday, January\n14, 1917, there were present at this political mass the following\npersonages: Four cabinet members and their wives; the speaker of the\nHouse; a large group of senators and representatives; a general of the\narmy and his wife; an admiral of the navy and his wife; the Chief\nJustice of the Supreme Court and his wife, and another Justice of the\nSupreme Court and his wife.\n\nAnd understand that the church makes no secret of its purpose in\nconducting such public exhibitions. Here is the pious Pope Leo XIII\nagain, in his Encyclical of Nov. 1, 1885:\n\n     All Catholics must make themselves felt as active elements\n     in daily political life in the countries where they live.\n     They must penetrate, wherever possible, in the\n     administration of civil affairs; must constantly exert the\n     utmost vigilance and energy to prevent the usages of liberty\n     from going beyond the limits fixed by God's law. All\n     Catholics should do all in their power to cause the\n     constitutions of states and legislation to be modeled on the\n     principles of the true Church.\n\nAnd following these instructions, the Catholics are organized for\npolitical work. There are the various Catholic Societies, such as the\nKnights of Columbus, secret, oath-bound organizations, the military\narm of the Papal Power. These societies boast some three million\nmembers, and control not less than that many votes. The one thing that\nyou can be certain about these votes is that on every public question,\nof whatever nature, they will be cast on the side of ignorance and\nreaction. Thus, it was the influence of the Catholic Societies which\nput upon our national statute books the infamous law providing five\nyears imprisonment and five thousand dollars fine for the sending\nthrough the mail of information about the prevention of conception. It\nis their influence which keeps upon the statute-books of New York\nstate the infamous law which permits divorce only for infidelity, and\nmakes it \"collusion\" if both parties desire the divorce. It is these\nsocieties which, in every city and town in America, are pushing and\nplotting to get Catholics upon library boards, so that the public may\nnot have a chance to read scientific books; to get Catholics into the\npublic schools and on school-boards, so that children may not hear\nabout Galileo, Bruno, and Ferrer; to have Catholics in control of\npolice and on magistrates benches, so that priests who are caught in\nbrothels may not be exposed or punished.\n\nYou are shocked at this, you think it a vulgar jest, perhaps; but\nduring a period of \"vice raids\" in New York I was told by a captain of\npolice, himself a Catholic, that it was a common thing for them to get\npriests in their net. \"Of course,\" the official added, good-naturedly,\n\"we let them slip out.\" I understood that he had to do that; for the\nPope, in his \"Motu Proprio\" decree, has forbidden Catholics to bring a\npriest into court for any civil crime whatsoever; he has forbidden\nCatholic policemen to arrest, Catholic judges to try, and Catholic\nlaw-makers to make laws affecting any priest of the Church of Rome.\nAnd of course we know, upon the authority of a cardinal, that the Pope\nis \"the sole, last, supreme judge of what is right and wrong.\" He has\nheld that position for a thousand years and more; and wherever you\nconsult the police records throughout the thousand years, you find the\nsame entries concerning Catholic ecclesiastics. I turn to Riley's\n\"Illustrations of London Life from Original Documents,\" and I find in\nthe year 1385 a certain chaplain, whose name is considerately\nsuppressed, had a breviary stolen from him by a loose woman, because\nhe has not given her any money, either on that night or the one\nprevious. In 1320 John de Sloghtre, a priest, is put in the tower \"for\nbeing found wandering about the city against the peace\", and Richard\nHeyring, a priest, is indicted in the ward of Farringdon and in the\nward of Crepelgate \"as being a bruiser and nightwalker.\" That this has\nbeen going on for six hundred years is due, not to any special\ncorruption of the Catholic heart, but to the practice of clerical\ncelibacy, which is contrary to nature, a transgression of fundamental\ninstinct. It should be noted that the purpose of this transgression,\nwhich pretends to be spiritual, is really economic; it was the means\nwhereby the church machine built up its power through the Middle Ages.\nThe priests had children then, as they have them today; but these\nchildren not being recognized, the church machine remained the sole\nheir of the property of its clergy.\n\n#The Church Militant#\n\nKnowing what we know today, we marvel that it was possible for Germany\nto prepare through so many years for her assault on civilization, and\nfor England to have slept through it all. In exactly the same way, the\nhistorian of a generation from now will marvel that America should\nhave slept, while the New Inquisition was planning to strangle her.\nFor we are told with the utmost explicitness precisely what is to be\ndone. We are to see wiped out these gains of civilization for which\nour race has bled and agonized for many centuries; the very gains are\nto serve as the means of their own destruction! Have we not heard Pope\nLeo tell his faithful how to take advantage of what they find in\nAmerica--our easy-going trust, our quiet certainty of liberty, our\nopen-handed and open-homed and hail-fellow-well-met democracy?\n\nWe see the army being organized and drilled under our eyes; and we can\nread upon its banners its purpose proclaimed. Just as the Prussian\nmilitary caste had its slogan \"Deutschland ueber Alles!\" so the\nKnights of Slavery have their slogan: \"Make America Catholic!\"\n\nTheir attitude to democratic institutions is attested by the fact that\nnone of their conventions ever fails in its resolutions to \"deeply\ndeplore the loss of the temporal power of Our Father, the Pope.\" Their\nsubjection to priestly domination is indicated by such resolutions as\nthis, bearing date of May 13th, 1914:\n\n     The Knights of Columbus of Texas in annual convention\n     assembled, prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness, present\n     filial regards with assurances of loyalty and obedience to\n     the Holy See and request the Papal blessing.\n\nOn June 10th, 1912, one T.J. Carey of Palestine, Texas, wrote to\nArchbishop Bonzano, the Apostolic Delegate: \"Must I, as a Catholic,\nsurrender my political freedom to the Church? And by this I mean the\nright to vote for the Democratic, Socialist, or Republican parties\nwhen and where I please?\" The answer was: \"You should submit to the\ndecisions of the Church, even at the cost of sacrificing political\nprinciples.\" And to the same effect Mgr. Preston, in New York City,\nJan, 1, 1888: \"The man who says, 'I will take my faith from Peter, but\nI will not take my politics from Peter,' is not a true Catholic.\"\n\nSuch is the Papal machine; and not a day passes that it does not\ndiscover some new scheme to advance the Papal glory; a \"Catholic\nbattle-ship\" in the United States navy; Catholic chaplains on all\nships of the navy; Catholic holidays--such as Columbus Day--to be\ncelebrated by all Protestants in America; thirty million dollars worth\nof church property exempted from taxation in New York City; mission\nbells to be set up at the expense of the state of California; state\nsupport for parish schools--or, if this cannot be had, exemption of\nCatholics from taxation for school purposes. So on through the list\nwhich might continue for pages.\n\nMore than anything else, of course, the Papal machine is concerned\nwith education, or rather, with the preventing of education. It was in\nits childish days that the race fell under the spell of the Priestly\nLie; it is in his childish days that the individual can be most safely\nsnared. Suffer little children to come unto the Catholic priest, and\nhe will make upon their sensitive minds an impression which nothing in\nafter life can eradicate. So the mainstay of the New Inquisition is\nthe parish-school, and its deadliest enemy is the American school\nsystem. Listen to the Rev. James Conway, of the Society of Jesus, in\nhis book, \"The Rights of Our Little Ones\":\n\n     Catholic parents cannot, in conscience, send their children\n     to American public schools, except for very grave reasons\n     approved by the ecclesiastical authorities.\n\nWhile state education removes illiteracy and puts a limited amount of\nknowledge within the reach of all, it cannot be said to have a\nbeneficial influence on civilization in general.\n\nThe state cannot justly enforce compulsory education, even in case of\nutter illiteracy, so long as the essential physical and moral\neducation are sufficiently provided for.\n\nAnd so, at all times and in all places, the Catholic Church is\nfighting the public school. Eternal vigilance is necessary; as\n\"America\", the organ of the Jesuits, explains:\n\n     Sometimes it is a new building code, or an attempt at taxing\n     the school buildings, which creates hardships to the\n     parochial and other private schools. Now it is the free text\n     book law that puts a double burden on the Catholics. Then\n     again it is the unwise extension of the compulsory school\n     age that forces children to be in school until they are 16\n     to 18 years old.\n\nAnd if you wish to know the purpose of the Catholic schools, hear\nArchbishop Quigley of Chicago, speaking before the children of the\nMary Sodality in the Holy Name Parish-School:\n\n     Within twenty years this country is going to rule the world.\n     Kings and emperors will pass away, and the democracy of the\n     United States will take their place. The West will dominate\n     the country, and what I have seen of the Western parochial\n     schools has proved that the generation which follows us will\n     be exclusively Catholic. When the United States rules the\n     world the Catholic Church will rule the world.\n\n#The Church Triumphant#\n\nThe question may be asked, What of it? What if the Church were to\nrule? There are not a few Americans who believe that there have to be\nrich and poor, and that rule by Roman Catholics might be preferable to\nrule by Socialists. Before you decide, at least do not fail to\nconsider what history has to tell about priestly government. We do not\nhave to use our imaginations in the matter, for there was once a\nGolden Age such as Archbishop Quigley dreams of, when the power of the\nchurch was complete, when emperors and princes paid homage to her, and\nthe civil authority made haste to carry out her commands. What was the\ncondition of the people in those times? We are told by Lea, in his\n\"History of the Inquisition\" that:\n\n     The moral condition of the laity was unutterably depraved.\n     Uniformity of faith had been enforced by the Inquisition and\n     its methods, and so long as faith was preserved, crime and\n     sin was comparatively unimportant except as a source of\n     revenue to those who sold absolution. As Theodoric Vrie\n     tersely puts it, hell and purgatory would be emptied if\n     enough money could be found. The artificial standard thus\n     created is seen in a revelation of the Virgin to St.\n     Birgitta, that a Pope who was free from heresy, no matter\n     how polluted by sin and vice, is not so wicked but that he\n     has the absolute power to bind and loose souls. There are\n     many wicked popes plunged in hell, but all their lawful acts\n     on earth are accepted and confirmed by God, and all priests\n     who are not heretics administer true sacraments, no matter\n     how depraved they may be. Correctness of belief was thus the\n     sole essential; virtue was a wholly subordinate\n     consideration. How completely under such a system religion\n     and morals came to be dissociated is seen in the remarks of\n     Pius II, that the Franciscans were excellent theologians,\n     but cared nothing about virtue.\n\n     This, in fact, was the direct result of the system of\n     persecution embodied in the Inquisition. Heretics who were\n     admitted to be patterns of virtue were ruthlessly\n     exterminated in the name of Christ, while in the same holy\n     name the orthodox could purchase absolution for the vilest\n     of crimes for a few coins. When the only unpardonable\n     offence was persistence in some trifling error of belief,\n     such as the poverty of Christ; when men had before them the\n     example of their spiritual guides as leaders in vice and\n     debauchery and contempt of sacred things, all the sanctions\n     of morality were destroyed and the confusion between right\n     and wrong became hopeless. The world has probably never seen\n     a society more vile than that of Europe in the fourteenth\n     and fifteenth centuries. The brilliant pages of Froissart\n     fascinate us with their pictures of the artificial\n     courtesies of chivalry; the mystic reveries of Rysbroek and\n     of Tauler show us that spiritual life survived in some rare\n     souls, but the mass of the population was plunged into the\n     depths of sensuality and the most brutal oblivion of the\n     moral law. For this Alvaro Pelayo tells us that the\n     priesthood were accountable, and that, in comparison with\n     them, the laity were holy. What was that state of\n     comparative holiness he proceeds to describe, blushing as he\n     writes, for the benefit of confessors, giving a terrible\n     sketch of universal immorality which nothing could purify\n     but fire and brimstone from heaven. The chroniclers do not\n     often pause in their narrations to dwell on the moral\n     aspects of the times, but Meyer, in his annals of Flanders,\n     under date of 1379, tells us that it would be impossible to\n     describe the prevalence everywhere of perjuries,\n     blasphemies, adulteries, hatreds, quarrels, brawls, murder,\n     rapine, thievery, robbery, gambling, whoredom, debauchery,\n     avarice, oppression of the poor, rape, drunkenness, and\n     similar vices, and he illustrates his statement with the\n     fact that in the territory of Ghent, within the space of ten\n     months, there occurred no less than fourteen hundred murders\n     committed in the bagnios, brothels, gambling-houses,\n     taverns, and other similar places. When, in 1396, Jean sans\n     Peur led his Crusaders to destruction at Micopolis, their\n     crimes and cynical debauchery scandalized even the Turks,\n     and led to the stern rebuke of Bajazet himself, who as the\n     monk of St. Denis admits was much better than his Christian\n     foes. The same writer, moralizing over the disaster at\n     Agincourt, attributes it to the general corruption of the\n     nation. Sexual relations, he says, were an alternation of\n     disorderly lust and of incest; commerce was nought but fraud\n     and treachery; avarice withheld from the Church her tithes,\n     and ordinary conversation was a succession of blasphemies.\n     The Church, set up by God as a model and protector of the\n     people, was false to all its obligations. The bishops,\n     through the basest and most criminal of motives, were\n     habitual accepters of persons; they annointed themselves\n     with the last essence extracted from their flocks, and there\n     was in them nothing of holy, of pure, of wise, or even of\n     decent.\n\n#God in the Schools#\n\nBut that, you may say, was a long time ago. If so, let us take a\nmodern country in which the Catholic Church has worked its will. Until\nrecently, Spain was such a country. Now the people are turning against\nthe clerical machine; and if you ask why, turn to Rafael Shaw's \"Spain\nFrom Within\":\n\n     On every side the people see the baleful hand of the Church,\n     interfering or trying to interfere in their domestic life,\n     ordering the conditions of employment, draining them of\n     their hard-won livelihood by trusts and monopolies\n     established and maintained in the interest of the Religious\n     Orders, placing obstacles in the way of their children's\n     education, hindering them in the exercise of their\n     constitutional rights, and deliberately ruining those of\n     them who are bold enough to run counter to priestly\n     dictation. Riots suddenly break out in Barcelona; they are\n     instigated by the Jesuits. The country goes to war in\n     Morocco; it is dragged into it solely in defense of the\n     mines owned, actually, if not ostensibly, by the Jesuits.\n     The consumes cannot be abolished because the Jesuits are\n     financially interested in their continuance.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nWe have read the statement of a Jesuit father, that \"the state cannot\njustly enforce compulsory education, even in case of utter\nilliteracy.\" How has that doctrine worked out in Spain? There was an\nofficial investigation of school conditions, the report appearing in\nthe \"Heraldo de Madrid\" for November, 1909. In 1857 there had been\npassed a law requiring a certain number of schools in each of the 79\nprovinces: this requirement being below the very low standards\nprevailing at that time in other European countries. Yet in 1909 it\nwas found that only four provinces had the required number of\nelementary schools, and at the rate of increase then prevailing it\nwould have taken 150 years to catch up. Seventy-five per cent of the\npopulation were wholly illiterate, and 30,000 towns and villages had\nno government schools at all. The government owed nearly a million and\na half dollars in unpaid salaries to the teachers. The private schools\nwere nearly all \"nuns' schools\", which taught only needle-work and\ncatechism; the punishments prevailing in them were \"cruel and\ndisgusting.\"\n\nAs to the location of the schools, a report of the Minister of\nEducation to the Cortes, the Parliament of Spain, sets forth as\nfollows:\n\n     More than 10,000 schools are on hired premises, and many of\n     these are absolutely destitute of hygienic conditions. There\n     are schools mixed up with hospitals, with cemeteries, with\n     slaughter houses, with stables. One school forms the\n     entrance to a cemetery, and the corpses are placed on the\n     master's table while the last responses are being said.\n     There is a school into which the children cannot enter until\n     the animals have been sent out to pasture. Some are so small\n     that as soon as the warm weather begins the boys faint for\n     want of air and ventilation. One school is a manure-heap in\n     process of fermentation, and one of the local authorities\n     has said that in this way the children are warmer in winter.\n     One school in Cataluna adjoins the prison. Another, in\n     Andalusia, is turned into an enclosure for the bulls when\n     there is a bull-fight in the town.\n\nThese conditions excited the indignation of a Spanish educator by the\nname of Francesco Ferrer. He founded what he called a \"modern school\",\nin which the pupils should be taught science and common sense. He\ndrew, of course, the bitter hatred of the Catholic hierarchy, which\nsaw in the spread of his principles the end of their mastery of the\npeople. When the Barcelona insurrection took place, they had Ferrer\nseized upon a charge of having been its instigator; they had him tried\nin secret before a military tribunal, convicted upon forged documents,\nand shot beneath the walls of the fortress of Montjuich. The case was\nthoroughly investigated by William Archer, one of England's leading\ncritics, a man of scrupulous rectitude of mind. His conclusion is that\nFerrer was absolutely innocent of the charges against him, and that\nhis execution was the result of a clerical plot. Of Ferrer's character\nArcher writes:\n\n     Fragmentary though they be, the utterances which I have\n     quoted form a pretty complete revelation. From first to last\n     we see in him an ardent, uncompromising, incorruptible\n     idealist. His ideals are narrow, and his devotion to them\n     fanatical; but it is devoid, if not of egoism, at any rate\n     of self-interest and self-seeking. As he shrank from\n     applying the money entrusted him to ends of personal luxury,\n     so also he shrank from making his ideas and convictions\n     subserve any personal ambition or vanity.\n\n#The Menace#\n\nThere are, of course, many people in America who will not rest idle\nwhile their country falls into the condition of Spain. There are\nanti-Catholic propaganda societies, which send out lecturers to\ndiscuss the Church and its records; and this is exasperating to devout\nbelievers, who regard the Church as holy, and any criticism of it as\nblasphemy. So we have opportunity to observe the working out of the\ndoctrine that the Church is superior to the civil law.\n\nOn June 12th, 1913, there came to the little town of Oelwein, Iowa, a\nformer priest of the Catholic Church, named Jeremiah J. Crowley, to\ndeliver a lecture exposing the Papal propaganda. The Catholics of the\ntown made efforts to intimidate the owner of the place in which the\nlecture was to be given; the priest of the town, Father O'Connor,\npreached a sermon furiously denouncing the lecturer; and after the\nlecture the unfortunate Crowley was surrounded by a mob of men, women\nand boys, and although he was six feet three in size, he was beaten\nalmost to death. At the trial which followed it developed that Father\nO'Connor and also his brother, a judge on the Superior Bench, were\naccessories before the fact.\n\nNor is this a solitary instance. The Catholic military societies, with\ntheir uniforms and their armories, are not maintained for nothing. As\nArchbishop Quigley declared before the German Catholic Central Verein:\n\n     We have well ordered and efficient organizations, all at the\n     beck and nod of the hierarchy and ready to do what the\n     church authorities tell them to do. With these bodies of\n     loyal Catholics ready to step into the breach at any time\n     and present an unbroken front to the enemy we may feel\n     secure.\n\nAnd so, on the evening of April 15th, 1914, a group of Catholics\nentered the Pierce Hotel in Denver, Colorado, overpowered a police\nguard and seized the Rev. Otis L. Spurgeon, an anti-Catholic lecturer.\nThey bound and gagged him, took him to a lonely woods, and beat him to\ninsensibility. The same thing happened to the Rev. Augustus Barnett,\nat Buffalo; the Rev. William Black was killed at Marshall, Texas. In\neach case the assailants avowed themselves Knights of Columbus, and\nefforts to punish them failed, because no jury can be got to convict a\nCatholic, fighting for his Pope against a godless state. The most\npious Leo XIII has laid down:\n\n     It is an impious deed to break the laws of Jesus Christ for\n     the purpose of obeying the magistrates, or to transgress the\n     law of the Church under the pretext of observing the civil\n     law.\n\nThere are papers published to warn Americans against the plotting of\nthis political Church. One of them, \"The Menace,\" has a circulation of\nmore than a million; and naturally the Knights of Slavery do not enjoy\nreading it. Year after year they have marshalled their power to have\nthis paper barred from the mails--so far, in vain. They caused an\nobscenity prosecution, which failed; so finally the press rooms of the\npaper were blown up with dynamite. At the present time there is a\n\"Catholic Truth Society\" with a publication called \"Truth\", to oppose\nthe anti-Catholic campaign; and that is all right, of course--except\nwhen the agents who collect the two-dollar subscriptions to this\npublication make use of Untruth in their labors--promising absolution\nand salvation to the families, dead and living, of those who \"come\nacross\" with subscriptions. In the \"Bulletin of the American\nFederation of Catholic Societies\" for September, 1915, I find a record\nof the ceaseless plotting to bar criticism of the Catholic Church from\nthe mails. Fitzgerald, a Tammany Catholic congressman, proposes a bill\nin Washington; and Judge St. Paul, of New Orleans, a member of the\nFederation's \"law committee\", points out the difficulties in the way\nof such legislation. You cannot pass a law against ridiculing\nreligion, because the Catholics want to ridicule Christian Science,\nMormonism, and the \"Holy Ghost and Us\" Society! The Judge thinks the\npurpose of the Papal plotters will be accomplished if they can slip\ninto the present law the words \"scurrilous and slanderous\"; he hopes\nthat this much can be done without the American people catching on!\n\nYou read these things for the first time, perhaps, and you want to\nstart an American \"Kultur-kampf.\" I make haste, therefore, to restate\nthe main thesis of this book. It is not the New Inquisition which is\nour enemy today; it is hereditary Privilege. It is not Superstition,\nbut Big Business which makes use of Superstition as a wolf makes use\nof sheep's clothing.\n\nYou remember how, when Americans first awakened to the universal\ncorruption of our politics, we used to attribute it to the \"ignorant\nforeign vote.\" Turn to Lecky's \"Democracy and Liberty\" and you will\nsee how reformers twenty years ago explained our political depravity.\nBut we probed deeper, and discovered that the purely American\ncommunities, such as Rhode Island, were the most corrupt of all. It\ndawned upon us that wherever there was a political boss paying bribes\non election day, there was a captain of industry furnishing the money\nfor the bribes, and taking some public privilege in return. So we came\nto realize that political corruption is merely a by-product of Big\nBusiness.\n\nAnd when we come to probe this problem of the spread of Superstition in\nAmerica, this amazing renascence of Romanism in a democracy, we find\nprecisely the same phenomenon. It is not the poor foreigner who\ntroubles us. Our human magic would win him--our easy-going trust, our\nquiet certainty of liberty, our open-handed and open-homed and\nhail-fellow-well-met democracy. We should break down the Catholic\nmachine, and not all the priests in the hierarchy could stop us--were\nit not for the Steel Trust and the Coal Trust and the Beef Trust, the\nLiquor Trust and the Traction Trust and the Money Trust--those masters\nof America who do not want citizens, free and intelligent and\nself-governing, but who want the slave-hordes as they come, ignorant,\ninert, physically, mentally and morally helpless!\n\nNo, do not let yourself be lured into a Kultur-kampf. It is not the\npennies of the servant-girls which build the towering cathedrals; it\nis not the two-dollar contributions for the salvation of souls which\nsupport the Catholic Truth Society and the Knights of Columbus and the\nHoly Name Society and the Mary Sodality and the National Shrine of the\nImmaculate Conception and all the rest of the machinery of the Papal\npropaganda. These help, of course; but the main sources of growth are,\nfirst, the subsidies of industrial exploiters, the majority of whom\nare non-Catholic, and second, the privilege of public plunder granted\nas payment for votes by politicians who are creatures and puppets of\nBig Business.\n\n#King Coal#\n\nThe proof of these statements is written all over the industrial life\nof America. I will stop long enough to present an account of one\nindustry, asking the reader to accept my statement that if space\npermitted I could present the same sort of proof for a dozen other\nindustries which I have studied--the steel-mills of Western\nPennsylvania, the meat-factories of Chicago, the glass-works of\nSouthern Jersey, the silk-mills of Paterson, the cotton-mills of North\nCarolina, the woolen-mills of Massachusetts, the lumber-camps of\nLouisiana, the copper-mines of Michigan, the sweat-shops of New York.\n\nIn a lonely part of the Rocky Mountains lies a group of enormously\nvaluable coal-mines owned by the Rockefellers and other Protestant\nexploiters. The men who work these mines, some twelve or fifteen\nthousand in number, come from all the nations of Europe and Asia, and\ntheir fate is that of the average wage-slave. I do not ask anyone to\ntake my word, but present sworn testimony, taken by the United States\nCommission on Industrial Relations in 1914. Here is the way the\nItalian miners live, as described in a doctor's report:\n\n     Houses up the canyon, so-called, of which eight are\n     habitable, and forty-six simply awful; they are disreputably\n     disgraceful. I have had to remove a mother in labor from one\n     part of the shack to another to keep dry.\n\nAnd here is the testimony of the Rev. Eugene S. Gaddis, former\nsuperintendent of the Sociological Department of the Colorado Fuel and\nIron Company:\n\n     The C.F. & I. Company now own and rent hovels, shacks and\n     dug-outs that are unfit for the habitation of human beings\n     and are little removed from the pig-sty make of dwellings.\n     And the people in them live on the very level of a pig-sty.\n     Frequently the population is so congested that whole\n     families are crowded into one room; eight persons in one\n     small room was reported during the year.\n\nAnd here is what this same clergyman has to say about the bosses whom\nthe Rockefellers employ:\n\n     The camp superintendents as a whole impressed me as most\n     uncouth, ignorant, immoral, and in many instances, the most\n     brutal set of men that I have ever met. Blasphemous bullies.\n\nSometimes the miner grows tired of being robbed of his weights, and\napplies for the protection which the law of the state allows him. What\nhappens then?\n\n     \"When a man asked for a checkweighman, in the language of\n     the super he was getting too smart.\" \"And he got what?\" \"He\n     got it in the neck, generally.\"\n\nAnd when these wage-slaves, goaded beyond endurance, went on strike,\nin the words of the Commission's report:\n\n     Five strikers, one boy, and thirteen women and children in\n     the strikers' tent colony were shot to death by militiamen\n     and guards employed by the coal companies, or suffocated and\n     burned to death when these militiamen and guards set fire to\n     the tents in which they made their homes.\n\nAnd now, what is the position of education in such camps? The Rev.\nJames McDonald, a Methodist preacher, testified that the school\nbuilding was dilapidated and unfit. One year there were four teachers,\nthe next three, and the next only two. The teacher of the primary\ngrade had a hundred and twenty children en-rolled, ninety per cent of\nwhom could not speak a word of English.\n\n     Every little bench was seated with two or three. It was\n     over-crowded entirely, and she could hardly get walking room\n     around there.\n\nAnd as to the political use made of this deliberately cultivated\nignorance, former United States Senator Patterson testified that the\ncompanies controlled all elections and all nominations:\n\n     Election returns from the two or three counties in which the\n     large companies operate show that in the precincts in which\n     the mining camps are located the returns are nearly\n     unanimous in favor of the men or measures approved by the\n     companies, regardless of party.\n\nAnd now comes the all-important question. What of the Catholic Church\nand these evils? The majority of these mine-slaves are Catholics, it\nis this Church which is charged with their protection. There are\npriests in every town, and in nearly every camp. And do we find them\nlifting their voices in behalf of the miners, protesting against the\nstarving and torturing of thirty or forty thousand human beings? Do we\nfind Catholic papers printing accounts of the Ludlow massacre? Do we\nfind Catholic journalists on the scene reporting it, Catholic lawyers\ndefending the strikers, Catholic novelists writing books about their\ntroubles? We do not!\n\nThrough the long agony of the fourteen months strike, I know of just\none Catholic priest, Father Le Fevre, who had a word to say for the\nstrikers. One of the first stories I heard when I reached the\nstrike-field was of a priest who had preached on the text that\n\"Idleness is the root of all evil,\" and had been reported as a \"scab\"\nand made to shut up. \"Who made him?\" I asked, naively, thinking of\nhis, church superiors. My informant, a union miner, laughed. \"#We#\nmade him!\" he said.\n\nI talked with another priest who was prudently saving souls and could\nnot be interested in questions of worldly greed. Max Eastman,\nreporting the strike in the \"Masses\", tells of an interview with a\nCatholic sister.\n\n     \"Has the Church done anything to try to help these people,\n     or to bring about peace?\" we asked. \"I consider it the most\n     useless thing in the world to attempt it,\" she replied.\n\nThe investigating committee of Congress came to the scene, and several\nclergymen of the Protestant Church appeared and bore testimony to the\noutrages which were being committed against the strikers; but of all\nthe Catholic priests in the district not one appeared--not one!\nSeveral Protestant clergymen testified that they had been driven from\nthe coal-camps--not because they favored the unions, but because the\ncompanies objected to having their workers educated at all; but no one\never heard of the Catholic Church having trouble with the operators.\nTo make sure on this point I wrote to a former clergyman of Trinidad\nwho watched the whole strike, and is now a first lieutenant in the\nFirst New Mexico Infantry. He answered:\n\n     The Catholic Church seemed to get along with the companies\n     very cordially. The Church was permitted in all the camps.\n     The impression was abroad that this was due to favoritism. I\n     honor what good the Church does, but I know of no instance,\n     during the Colorado coal-strike or at any other time or\n     place, when the Catholic Church has taken any special\n     interest in the cause of the laboring men. Many Catholics,\n     especially the men, quit the church during the coal-strike.\n\n#The Unholy Alliance#\n\nEverywhere throughout America today the ultimate source of all power,\npolitical, social, and religious, is economic exploitation. To all\nother powers and all other organizations it speaks in these words:\n\"Help us, and you will thrive; oppose us, and you will be destroyed.\"\nIt has spoken to the Catholic Church, for sixteen hundred years the\nfriend and servant of every ruling class; and the Church has hastened\nto fit itself into the situation, continuing its pastoral role as\nshepherd to the wage-slave vote.\n\nIn New York and Boston and Chicago the Church is \"Democratic\"; so in\nthe Elaine campaign it was possible for a Republican clergyman to\ndescribe the issue as \"Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.\" But the Holy\nOffice was shrewd and socially ambitious, and the Grand Old Party was\ndesperately in need of votes, so under the regime of Mark Hanna, the\nPresident-Maker, there began a rapprochement between Big Business and\nthe New Inquisition. Under Hanna the Catholic Church got\nrepresentation in the Cabinet; under him the Cardinal's Mass became a\ngovernment institution, a Catholic College came to the fore in\nWashington, and Catholic prelates were introduced in the role of\neminent publicists, their reactionary opinions on important questions\nbeing quoted with grave solemnity by a prostitute press. It was Mark\nHanna himself who founded the National Civic Federation, upon whose\nexecutive committee Catholic cardinals and archbishops might work hand\nin glove with Catholic labor-leaders for the chloroforming of the\nAmerican working-class. Hanna's biographer naively calls attention to\nthe President-maker's popularity among Catholics, high and low, and\nthe support they gave him. \"Archbishop Ireland was in frequent\ncorrespondence with him, and used his influence in Mr. Hanna's\nbehalf.\"\n\nAnd this tradition, begun under Hanna, was continued under Roosevelt,\nand reached its finest flower in the days of Taft, the most pliant\ntool of the forces of evil who has occupied the White House since the\ndays of the Slave Power. President Taft was himself a Unitarian; yet\nit was under his administration that the Catholic Church achieved one\nof its dearest ambitions, and broke into the Supreme Court. Why not?\nWe can imagine the powers of the time in conference. It is desired to\npack the Court against the possibility of progress; it is desired to\nfind men who will stand like a rock against change--and who better\nthan those who have been trained from childhood in the idea of a\ndivine sanction for doctrine and morals? After all, what is it that\nHereditary Privilege wants in America? A Roman Catholic code of\nproperty rights, with a supreme tribunal to play the part of an\ninfallible Pope!\n\nUnder this Taft administration the country was governed by the\nstrangest legislative alliance our history ever saw; a combination of\nthe Old Guard of the Republican Party with the leaders of the Tammany\nDemocracy of New York. \"Bloody shirt\" Foraker, senator from Ohio,\nvoting with the sons of those Irish Catholic mob-leaders whom the\nFederal troops shot down in the draft-riots! By this unholy\ncombination a pledge to reduce the tariff was carried out by a bill\nwhich greatly increased its burdens; by this combination the public\nlands and resources of the country were fed to a gang of vultures by a\nthievish Secretary of the Interior. And of course under such an\nadministration the cause of \"Religion\" made tremendous strides.\nCatholic officials were appointed to public office, Catholic\necclesiastics were accorded public honors, and Catholic favor became a\nmeans to political advancement. You might see a hard-swearing old\npolitical pirate like \"Uncle Joe\" Cannon, taking his cigar out of the\ncorner of his blasphemous mouth and betaking himself to the\n\"Cardinal's Day Mass\", to bend his stiff knees and bow his hoary\nunrepentant head before a jeweled prelate on a throne. You might see\nan emissary of the United States government proceeding to Rome,\nprostrating himself before the Pope, and paying over seven million\ndollars of our taxes for lands which the filthy and sensual friars of\nthe Philippine Islands had filched from the wretched serfs of that\ncountry and which the wretched serfs had won back by their blood in a\nrevolution.\n\n#Secret Service#\n\nThis Taft administration, urged on by the Catholic intrigue, made the\nmost determined efforts to prevent the spread of radical thought.\nBecause the popular magazines were opposing the plundering of the\ncountry, a bill was introduced into Congress to put them out of\nbusiness by a prohibitive postal tax; the President himself devoted\nall his power to forcing the passage of this bill. At the same time\nthe Socialist press was handicapped by every sort of persecution. I\nwas at that time in intimate touch with the \"Appeal to Reason\", and I\nknow that scarcely a month passed that the Post Office Department did\nnot invent some new \"regulation\" especially designed to limit its\ncirculation. I recall one occasion when I met the editor on his way to\nWashington with a trunkful of letters from subscribers who complained\nthat their postmasters refused to deliver the paper to them; and later\non this same editor was prosecuted by a Catholic Attorney General and\nsentenced to prison for seeking to awaken the people concerning the\nMoyer-Haywood case.\n\nFrom my personal knowledge I can say that under the administration of\nPresident Taft t the Roman Catholic Church and the Secret Service of\nthe Federal Government worked hand in hand for the undermining of the\nradical movement in America. Catholic lecturers toured the country,\npouring into the ears of the public vile slanders about the private\nmorality of Socialists; while at the same time government detectives,\npaid out of public funds, spent their time seeking evidence for these\nCatholic lecturers to use. I know one man, a radical labor-leader,\nwhose morals happened to approach those of the average capitalist\npolitician, and who was prevented by threats of exposure and scandal\nfrom accepting the Socialist nomination for President. I know a dozen\nothers who were shadowed and spied upon; I know one case--myself--a\nman who was asking a divorce from his wife, and whose mail was opened\nfor months.\n\nThis subject is one on which I naturally speak with extreme\nreluctance. I will only say that my opponent in the suit made no\ncharge of misconduct against me; but those in control of our political\npolice evidently thought it likely that a man who was not living with\nhis wife might have something to hide; so for months my every move was\nwatched and all my mail intercepted. In such a case one might at first\nsuspect one's private opponent; but it soon became evident that this\nnet was cast too wide for any private agency. Not merely was my own\nmail opened, but the mail of all my relatives and friends--people\nresiding in places as far apart as California and Florida. I recall\nthe bland smile of a government official to whom I complained about\nthis matter: \"If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.\"\nMy answer was that a study of many labor cases had taught me the\nmethods of the agent provocateur. He is quite willing to take real\nevidence if he can find it; but if not, he has familiarized himself\nwith the affairs of his victim, and can make evidence which will be\nconvincing when exploited by the yellow press. In my own case, the\nmatter was not brought to a test, for I went abroad to live; when I\nmade my next attack on Big Business, the Taft administration had been\nrepudiated at the polls, and the Secret Service of the government was\nno longer at the disposal of the Catholic machine.\n\n#Tax Exemption#\n\nToday the Catholic Church is firmly established and everywhere\nrecognized as one of the main pillars of American capitalism. It has\nsome fifteen thousand churches, fourteen million communicants, and\nproperty valued at half a billion dollars. Upon this property it pays\nno taxes, municipal, state or national; which means, quite obviously,\nthat you and I, who do not go to church, but who do pay taxes, furnish\nthe public costs of Catholicism. We pay to have streets paved and\nlighted and cleaned in front of Catholic churches; we pay to have\nthieves kept away from them, fires put out in them, records preserved\nfor them--all the services of civilization given to them gratis, and\nthis in a land whose constitution provides that Congress (which\nincludes all state and municipal legislative bodies) \"shall make no\nlaw respecting an establishment of religion.\" When war is declared,\nand our sons are drafted to defend the country, all Catholic monks and\nfriars, priests and dignitaries are exempted. They are \"ministers of\nreligion\"; whereas we Socialists may not even have the status of\n\"conscientious objectors.\" We do not teach \"religion\"; we only teach\njustice and humanity, decency and truth.\n\nIn defense of this tax-exemption graft, the stock answer is that the\nproperty is being used for purposes of \"education\" or \"charity\". It is\na school, in which children are being taught that \"liberty of\nconscience is a most pestiferous error, from which arises revolution,\ncorruption, contempt of sacred things, holy institutions, and laws.\"\n(Pius IX). It is a \"House of Refuge\", to which wayward girls are\ncommitted by Catholic magistrates, and in which they are worked twelve\nhours a day in a laundry or a clothing sweat-shop. Or it is a\n\"parish-house\", in which a celibate priest lives under the care of an\nattractive young \"house-keeper\". Or it is a nunnery, in which young\ngirls are held against their will and fed upon the scraps from their\nsisters' plates to teach them humility, and taught to lie before the\naltar, prostrate in the form of a cross, while their \"Superiors\" walk\nupon their bodies to impress the religious virtues. \"I was a teacher\nin the Catholic schools up to a very recent period,\" writes the woman\nfriend who tells me of these customs, \"and I know about the whole\nawful system which endeavors to throttle every genuine impulse of the\nhuman will.\"\n\nConcerning a large part of this church property, the claim of\n\"religious\" use has not even the shadow of justification. In every\nlarge city of America you will find acres of land owned by the\nCatholic machine, and supposed to be the future site of some\ninstitution; but as time goes on and property values increase, the\nchurch decides to build on a cheaper site, and proceeds to cash in the\nprofits of its investment, precisely as does any other real estate\nspeculator. Everywhere you turn in the history of Romanism you find it\nat this same game, doing business under the cloak of philanthropy and\nin the holy name of Christ. Read the letter which the Catholic Bishop\nof Mexico sent to the Pope in 1647, complaining of the Jesuit fathers\nand their boundless graft. In McCabe's \"Candid History of the Jesuits\"\nappears a summary:\n\n     A remarkable account is given of the worldly property of the\n     fathers. They hold, it seems, the greater part of the wealth\n     of Mexico. Two of their colleges own 300,000 sheep, besides\n     cattle and other property. They own six large sugar\n     refineries, worth from half a million to a million crowns\n     each, and making an annual profit of 100,000 crowns each,\n     while all the other monks and clergy of Mexico together own\n     only three small refineries. They have immense farms, rich\n     silver mines, large shops and butcheries, and do a vast\n     trade. Yet they continually intrigue for legacies--a woman\n     has recently left them 70,000 crowns--and they refuse to pay\n     the appointed tithe on them. It is piquant to add to this\n     authoritative description that the Jesuit congregation at\n     Rome were still periodically forbidding the fathers to\n     engage in commerce, and Jesuit writers still gravely\n     maintain that the society never engaged in commerce. It\n     should be added that the missionaries were still heavily\n     subsidized by the King of Spain, that there were (the Bishop\n     says) only five or six Jesuits to each of their\n     establishments, and that they conducted only ten colleges.\n\n#\"Holy History\"#\n\nAnd if you think this tax-exemption privilege should be taken away\nfrom the church grafters, let me suggest a course of procedure. Write\na letter about it to your daily newspaper; and if the letter is not\npublished, go and see the editor and ask why; so you will learn\nsomething about the partnership between Superstition and Big Business!\n\nIt is not too much to say that today no daily newspaper in any large\nAmerican city dares to attack the emoluments of the Catholic Church,\nor to advocate restrictions upon the ecclesiastical machine. As I\nwrite, they are making a new Catholic bishop in Los Angeles, and all\nthe newspapers of that graft-ridden city herald it as an important\nsocial event. Each paper has the picture of the new prelate, with his\nshepherd's crook upraised, his empty face crowned with a rhomboidal\nfool's cap, and enough upholstery on him to outfit a grand opera\ncompany. The Los Angeles \"Examiner\", the only paper in the city with a\npretense to radicalism, turns loose its star-writer--one of those\njournalist virtuosos who will describe you a Wild West \"rodeo\" one\nday, and a society elopement the next, and a G.O.P. convention the\nnext; and always with his picture, one inch square, at the head of his\neffusion. He takes in the Catholic festivity; and does it phaze him?\nIt does not! He is a newspaper man, and if his city editor sent him to\nhell, he would take the assignment and write like the devil. To read\nhim now you might think he had been reared in a convent; his soul is\nuplifted, and he bursts forth in pure spontaneous ecstacy:\n\n     Solemnly magnificent, every brilliant detail symbolically\n     picturing the holy history of the Roman Catholic Church in\n     the inexorable progress of its immense structure, which\n     rises from the rock of Peter, with its beacons of faith and\n     devotion piercing the fog of doubt and fear which surround\n     the world and the worldly, was the ceremony yesterday at the\n     Cathedral of St. Vibiana, whereby Bishop John J. Cantwell\n     was installed in his diocese of Monterey and Los Angeles.\n\nAnd then, a month later, conies another occasion of state--the\ntwenty-third Annual Banquet. the Merchants' and Manufacturers'\nAssociation of Los Angeles. I should have to write a little essay to\nmake clear the sociological significance of that function; explaining\nfirst, a nation-wide organization which has been proven by\ncongressional investigation and by the publication of its secret\ndocuments to be a machine for the corruption of our political life;\nand then exhibiting our \"City of the Angels\", from which all Angels\nhave long since fled; a city in the first crude stage of land\nspeculation, without order, dignity or charm; a city of real estate\nagents, who exist by selling climate to new arrivals from the East; a\ncity whose intellectual life is \"boosting\", whose standards of truth\nare those of the horse-trade. Its newspapers publish a table of\ntemperatures, showing the daily contrast between Southern California\nand the East. This device is effective in the winter-time; but last\nJune, when for five days the temperature went to over 110, and several\ntimes 114--the Los Angeles space was left empty!\n\nIn the same way, there is a rule that our earth-quake shocks are never\nmentioned, unless they destroy whole towns. On the afternoon of Jan.\n26th, 1918, a cyclone hit Pasadena, of violence sufficient to lift a\nbarn over a church-steeple and deposit it in the pastor's front yard.\nThat evening a friend of mine in Los Angeles called up the office of\nthe \"Times\" to make inquiry; and although they are only thirteen miles\naway, and have a branch office and a special correspondent in\nPasadena, the answer was that they had heard nothing about the\ncyclone! And next morning I made a careful, search of their columns.\nOn the front page I read: \"Fourth Blizzard of Season Raging in East\";\nalso: \"Another Earthquake in Guatemala\". But not a line about the\nPasadena cyclone. That there was plenty of space in that issue, you\nmay judge from the fact that there were twenty headlines like the\nfollowing--many of them representing full page and half page\nillustrated \"write-ups\":\n\n     Where Spring is January; Wealth Waits in California; The\n     Bright Side of Sunshine Land; Come to California:\n     Southland's Arms Outstretched in Cordial Invitation to the\n     East; Flower Stands Make Gay City Streets; Southland Climate\n     Big Manufacturing Factor; Joy of Life Demonstrated in Los\n     Angeles' Beautiful Homes; Nymphs Knit and Bathe at Ocean's\n     Sunny Beach; etc.\n\nNow we are in the War and our business is booming, we are making money\nhand over fist. It is all the more delightful, because we are putting\nour souls into it, we are lending our money to the government and\nsaving the world for Democracy! Our labor unionists have been driven\nto other cities, and our Mexican agitators and I.W.W.'s are in jail;\nso, in the gilt ball-room of our palatial six-dollar-a-day hotel the\nfour hundred masters of our prosperity meet to pat themselves on the\nback, and they invite the new Catholic bishop to come and confer the\ngrace of God upon their eating.\n\nThe Bishop comes; and I take up the \"Times\"--the labor-hating,\nlabor-baiting, fire-and-slaughter-breathing \"Times\"--and here is the\nepiscopal picture on the front page, the arms stretched four columns\nwide in oratorical beneficence. How the shepherd of Jesus does love\nthe Merchants and Manufacturers! How his eloquence is poured out upon\nthem! \"You represent, gentlemen, the largest and the most civilizing\nsecular body in the country. You are the pioneers of American\ncivilization.... I am glad to be among you; glad that my lines have\nfallen in this glorious land by the sunset sea, and honored to meet in\nintimate acquaintance the big men who have raised here in a few years\na city of metropolitan proportions.\"\n\nAnd then, bearing in mind his responsibilities as guardian of\nExploitation, the Bishop goes on to tell them about the coming\nclass-war. \"On the one side a statesman preaching patience and respect\nfor vested rights, strict observance of public faith; on the other a\ndemagog speaking about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers.\" And\nthen, of course, the inevitable religious tag: \"How will men obey you,\nif they believe not in God, who is the author of all authority?\" At\nwhich, according to the \"Times\", \"prolonged applause and cheers\" from\nthe Merchants and Manufacturers! The editor of the \"Times\" goes back\nto his office, and inspired by this episcopal eloquence writes a\n\"leader\" with the statement that: \"#We have no proletariat in\nAmerica!#\"\n\n#Das Centrum#\n\nIn order to see clearly the ultimate purpose of this Unholy Alliance,\nthis union of Superstition and the Merchants' and Manufacturers'\nAssociation, we have to go to Europe, where the arrangement has been\nworking for a thousand years. In Europe to-day we see the whole world\nin conflict with a band of criminals who have been able to master the\nminds and lives of a hundred million highly civilized people. As I\nwrite, the Junker aristocracy is at bay, and soon to have its throat\ncut; but there comes a Holy Father to its rescue, with the cross of\nJesus uplifted, and a series of pleas for mercy, written in Vienna,\nedited in Berlin, and sent out from Rome. The Holy Father loves all\nmankind with a tender and touching love; his heart bleeds at the sight\nof bloodshed and suffering, and he pleads the sacred cause of peace on\nearth and good-will toward men.\n\nBut what was the Holy Father doing through the forty-three years that\nthe Potsdam gang were preparing for their assault on the world? How\nwas the Holy Father manifesting his love of peace and good will? He\nis, you understand, the \"sole, last, supreme judge of what is right\nand wrong,\" and his followers obey him with the utmost promptness and\ndevotion--they express themselves as \"prostrate at his feet.\" And when\nthe masters of Prussia came to him and said: \"Give us the power to\nturn this nation into the world's greatest military empire\"--what did\nthe Roman Church answer? Did it speak boldly for the gentle Jesus, and\nthe cause of peace on earth and good-will towards men? No, it did not.\nTo Bismarck in Germany it said, precisely as it said to Mark Hanna in\nAmerica: \"Give us honors and prestige; give us power over the minds of\nthe young, so that we may plunder the poor and build our cathedrals\nand feed fat our greed; and in return we will furnish you with votes,\nso that you may rule the state and do what you will.\"\n\nYou think there is exaggeration in that statement? Why, we know the\nvery names of the prelates with whom the master-cynic of the\nJunkerthum made his \"deal.\" He had tried the method of the\nKultur-kampf, and had failed; but before he repealed the anti-Catholic\nlaws, he made sure that the Church had learned its lesson, and would\nnevermore oppose the Prussian ruling caste. We know how this bargain\nwas carried out; we have the record of the Centrum, the Catholic party\nof Germany, whose hundred deputies were the solid rock upon which the\nmilitary regime of Prussia was erected. Not a battle-ship nor a\nZeppelin was built for which the Black Terror did not vote the funds;\nnot a school-child was beaten in Posen or Alsace that the New\nInquisition did not shout its \"Hoch!\" The writer sat in the visitors'\ngallery of the Reichstag when the Socialists were protesting against\nthe torturing of miserable Herreros in Africa, and he heard the\ndeputies of the Holy Father's political party screaming their rage\nlike jaguars in a jungle night. All over Europe the Catholic Church\norganized fake labor unions, the \"yellows,\" as they were called, to\nscab upon the workers and undermine the revolutionary movement. The\nHoly Father himself issued precise instructions for the management of\nthese agencies of betrayal. Hear the most pious and benevolent Leo\nXIII:\n\n     \"They must pay special and principal attention to piety and\n     morality, and their internal discipline must be directed\n     precisely by these considerations; otherwise they entirely\n     lose their special character, and come to be very little\n     better than those societies which take no account of\n     Religion at all.\"\n\nIt is so hard, you see, to keep a man thinking about piety and\nmorality while he is starving! I am quoting from the Encyclical Letter\non \"The Condition of Labor,\" issued in 1891, and addressed \"to our\nVenerable Brethren, all Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops and Bishops\nof the Catholic World in Grace and Communion with the Apostolic See.\"\nThe purpose of the letter is \"to refute false teaching,\" and the\nsubstance of its message is:\n\n     This great labor question cannot be solved except by\n     assuming as a principle that private property must be held\n     sacred and inviolable.\n\nAnd again, the purpose of churches proclaimed in language as frank as\nany used in the present book:\n\n     The chief thing to be secured is the safe-guarding, by legal\n     enactment and policy, of private property. Most of all it is\n     essential in these times of covetous greed, to keep the\n     multitude within the line of duty; for if all may justly\n     strive to benefit their condition, yet neither justice nor\n     the common good allows any one to seize that which belongs\n     to another, or, under the pretext of futile and ridiculous\n     equality, to lay hands on other peoples' fortunes.\n\nAnd this, you understand, in lands where rapine and conquest,\nclass-tyranny and priestly domination have been the custom since the\ndawn of history; in which no property-right can possibly trace back to\nany other basis than force. In Austria, for example--Austria, the\nleader and guardian of the Holy Alliance--Austria, which had no\nReformation, no Revolution, no Kultur-kampf--Austria, in which the\nincome of the Catholic Primate is $625,000 a year! In other words,\nAustria is still to a large extent a \"Priestly Empire;\" and it was\nAustria which began the war--began it in a religious quarrel, with a\nSlav people which does not acknowledge the Holy Father as the ruler of\nthe world, but persists in adhering to the Eastern Church. So of\ncourse to-day, when Austria is learning the bitter lesson that they\nwho draw the sword shall perish by the sword, the heart of the Holy\nFather is wrung with grief, and he sends out these eloquent\npeace-notes, written in Vienna and edited in Berlin. And at the same\ntime his private chaplain is convicted and sentenced to prison for\nlife as Austria's Master-Spy in Rome!\n\nIt is a curious thing to observe--the natural instinct which, all over\nthe world, draws Superstition and Exploitation together. This war,\nwhich is hailed as a war against autocracy, might almost as accurately\nbe described as a war against the clerical system. Wherever in the\nworld you find the Papal power strong, there you find sympathy with\nthe Prussian infamy and there you find German intrigue. In Spain, for\nexample; in Ireland and Quebec, and in the Argentine. The treatment of\nBelgium was a little too raw--too many priests were shot at the\noutset, and so Cardinal Mercier denounces the Germans; but you notice\nthat he pleads in vain with the Vatican, which stands firm by its\nbeloved Austria, and against the godless kingdom of Italy. The Kaiser\nallows the hope of restoration of the temporal power at the peace\nsettlement; and meantime the law forbidding the presence of the\nJesuits in Germany has been repealed, and all over the world the\npropagandists of this order are working for the Kaiser. Sir Roger\nCasement was raised a Catholic, and so also \"Jim\" Larkin, the Irish\nlabor-leader who _is_ touring America denouncing the Allies. The\nCatholic Bishop of Melbourne opposed and beat conscription in\nAustralia, and it was Catholic propaganda of treachery among the\nignorant peasant-soldiers from Sicily which caused the breaking of the\nItalian line at Tolmino. So deeply has this instinct worked that, in\nthe fall of 1917 while the Socialist party in New York was campaigning\nfor immediate peace, the Catholic Irish suddenly forgot their ancient\nhorrors. The Catholic \"Freeman's Journal\" published nine articles\nfavoring Socialism in a single issue; while even \"The Tablet,\" the\ndiocesan paper, began to discover that the Socialists were not such\nbad fellows after all. The same \"Tablet\" which a few years ago allowed\nFather Belford to declare that Socialists were mad dogs who should be\n\"stopped with a bullet\"!\n\n     P. S. The reader will be interested to know that for the\n     statements on page 155, Upton Sinclair was described as a\n     \"scoundrel\" by a former prime minister of the Austrian\n     Empire, and brought suit against the gentleman, and after a\n     court trial was awarded damages of 500,000 crowns--about $7\n     in American money.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#BOOK FOUR#\n\n#The Church of the Slavers#\n\n  Bee, underneath the Crown of Thorn,\n    The eye-balls fierce, the features grim!\n  And merrily from night to morn\n    We chaunt his praise and worship him--\n  Great Christus-Jingo, at whose feet\n  Christian and Jew and Atheist meet!\n\n  A wondrous god! most fit for those\n    Who cheat on 'Change, then creep to prayer;\n  Blood on his heavenly altar flows,\n    Hell's burning incense fills the air,\n  And Death attests in street and lane\n  The hideous glory of his reign.\n\n  --Buchanan\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#Face of Caesar#\n\nThe thesis of this book is the effect of fixed dogma in producing\nmental paralysis, and the use of this mental paralysis by Economic\nExploitation. From that standpoint the various Protestant sects are\nbetter than the Catholic, but not much better. The Catholics stand\nupon Tradition, the Protestants upon an Inspired Word; but since this\nWord is the entire literary product, history and biography, science\nand legislation, poetry, drama and fiction of a whole people for\nsomething like a thousand years, it is possible by judicious selection\nof texts to prove anything you wish to prove and to justify anything\nyou wish to do. The \"Holy Book\" being full of polygamy, slavery, rape\nand wholesale murder, committed by priests and rulers under the direct\norders of God, it was a very simple matter for the Protestant Slavers\nto construct a Bible defense of their system.\n\nThey get poor Jesus because he was given to irony, that most dangerous\nform of utterance. If he could come back to life, and see what men\nhave done with his little joke about the face of Caesar on the Roman\ncoin, I think he would drop dead. As for Paul, he was a Roman\nbureaucrat, with no nonsense in his make-up; when he ordered,\n\"Servants obey your masters,\" he meant exactly what he said. The Roman\nofficial stamp which he put upon the gospel of Jesus has been the\nsalvation of the Slavers from the Reformation on.\n\nIn the time of Martin Luther, the peasants of Germany were suffering\nthe most atrocious and awful misery; Luther himself knew about it, he\nhad denounced the princely robbers and the priestly land-exploiters\nwith that picturesque violence of which he was a master. But nothing\nhad been done about it, nothing ever is done about it--until at last\nthe miserable peasants attempted to organize and win their own rights.\nTheir demands do not seem to us so very criminal as we read them\ntoday; the privilege of electing their own pastors, the abolition of\nvilleinage, the right to hunt and fish and cut wood in the forest, the\nreduction of exorbitant rents, extra payment for extra labor,\nand--that universal cry of peasant communes whether in Russia,\nEngland, Mexico or sixteenth century Germany--the restoration to the\nvillage of lands taken by fraud. But Luther would hear nothing of\nslaves asserting their own rights, and took refuge in the Pauline\nsociology: If they really wished to follow Christ, they would drop the\nsword and resort to prayer; the gospel has to do with spiritual, not\ntemporal, affairs; earthly society cannot exist without inequalities,\netc.\n\nAnd when the peasants went on in spite of this, he turned upon them\nand denounced them to the princes; he issued proclamations which might\nhave been the instructions of Mr. John Wanamaker to the police-force\nof his \"City of Brotherly Love\": \"One cannot answer a rebel with\nreason, but the best answer is to hit him with the fist until blood\nflows from the nose.\" He issued a letter: \"Against the Murderous and\nThieving Mob of Peasants,\" which might have come from the Reverend\nWoelfkin, Fifth Avenue Pastor of Standard Oil: \"The ass needs to be\nbeaten, and the populace needs to be controlled with a strong hand.\nGod knew this well, and therefore he gave the rulers, not a fox's\ntail, but a sword.\" He implored these rulers, after the fashion of\nMethodist Chancellor Day of the University of Syracuse: \"Do not be\ntroubled about the severity of their repression, for it will save many\nsouls.\" With such pious exhortations in their ears the princes set to\nwork, and slaughtered a hundred thousand of the miserable wretches;\nthey completely aborted the social hopes of the Reformation, and cast\nhumanity into the pit of wage-slavery and militarism for four\ncenturies. As a church scholar, Prof. Rauschenbusch, puts it:\n\n     The glorious years of the Lutheran Reformation were from\n     1517 to 1525, when the whole nation was in commotion, and a\n     great revolutionary tidal wave seemed to be sweeping every\n     class and every higher interest one step nearer to its ideal\n     of life.... The Lutheran Reformation had been most truly\n     religious and creative when it embraced the whole of human\n     life and enlisted the enthusiasm of all ideal men and\n     movements. When it became \"religious\" in the narrow sense,\n     it grew scholastic and spiny, quarrelsome, and impotent to\n     awaken high enthusiasm and noble life.\n\n#Deutschland ueber Alles#\n\nAs a result of Luther's treason to humanity, his church became the\nstate church of Prussia, and Bible-worship and Devil-terror played\ntheir part, along with the Mass and the Confessional, in building up\nthe Junker dream. A court official--the Oberhofprediger--was set up,\nand from that time on the Hohenzollerns were the most pious criminals\nin Europe. Frederick the Great, the ancestral genius, was an atheist\nand a scoffer, but he believed devoutly in religion for his subjects.\nHe said: \"If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one would remain\nin the ranks.\" And Carlyle, instinctive friend of autocrats, tells\nwith jocular approval how he kept them from thinking:\n\n     He recognizes the uses of Religion; takes a good deal of\n     pains with his Preaching Clergy; will suggest texts to them;\n     and for the rest expects to be obeyed by them, as by his\n     Sergeants and Corporals. Indeed, the reverend men feel\n     themselves to be a body of Spiritual Sergeants, Corporals,\n     and Captains, to whom obedience is the rule, and discontent\n     a thing not to be indulged in by any means.\n\nSo the soldiers stayed in the ranks, and Frederick raided Silesia and\nPoland. His successors ordered all the Protestant sects into one, so\nthat they might be more easily controlled; from which time the\nLutheran Church has been a department of the Prussian state, in some\ncases a branch of the municipal authority.\n\nIn 1848, when the people of various German states demanded their\nliberty, it was an ultra-pious king of Prussia who sent his troops and\nshot them down--precisely as Luther had advised to shoot down the\npeasants. At this time the future maker of the German Empire rose in\nthe Landtag and made his bow before the world; a young Prussian\nland-magnate, Otto von Bismarck by name, he shook his fist in the face\nof the new German liberalism, and incidentally of the new German\ninfidelity:\n\n     Christianity is the solid basis of Prussia; and no state\n     erected upon any other foundation can permanently exist.\n\nThe present Hohenzollern has diligently maintained this tradition of\nhis line. It was his custom to tour the Empire in a train of blue and\nwhite cars, carrying as many costumes as any stage favorite, most of\nthem military; with him on the train went the Prussian god, and there\nwas scarcely a performance at which this god did not appear, also in\nmilitary costume. After the failure of the \"Kultur-kampf,\" the\nofficial Lutheran religion was ordered to make friends with its\nancient enemy, the Catholic Church. Said the Kaiser:\n\n     I make no difference between the adherents of the Catholic\n     and Protestant creeds. Let them both stand upon the\n     foundation of Christianity, and they are both bound to be\n     true citizens and obedient subjects. Then the German people\n     will be the rock of granite upon which our Lord God can\n     build and complete his work of Kultur in the world.\n\nAnd here is the oath required of the Catholic clergy, upon their\nadmission to equality of trustworthiness with their Protestant\nconfreres:\n\n     I will be submissive, faithful and obedient to his Royal\n     Majesty,--and his lawful successors in the government,--as\n     my most gracious King and Sovereign; promote his welfare\n     according to my ability; prevent injury and detriment to\n     him; and particularly endeavor carefully to cultivate in the\n     minds of the people under my care a sense of reverence and\n     fidelity towards the King, love for the Fatherland,\n     obedience to the laws, and all those virtues which in a\n     Christian denote a good citizen; and I will not suffer any\n     man to teach or act in a contrary spirit. In particular I\n     vow that I will not support any society or association,\n     either at home or abroad, which might endanger the public\n     security, and will inform His Majesty of any proposal made,\n     either in my diocese or elsewhere, which might prove\n     injurious to the State.\n\nAnd later on this heaven-guided ruler conceived the scheme of a\nBerlin-Bagdad railway, for which he needed one religion more; he paid\na visit to Constantinople, and made another debut and produced another\ngod--with the result that millions of Turks are fighting under the\nbelief that the Kaiser is a convert to the faith of Mohammed!\n\n#Der Tag.#\n\nAll this was, of course, in preparation for the great event to which\nall good Germans looked forward--to which all German officers drank\ntheir toasts at banquets--the Day.\n\nThis glorious day came, and the field-gray armies marched forth, and\nthe Pauline-Lutheran God marched with them. The Kaiser, as usual,\nacted as spokesman:\n\n     Remember that the German people are the chosen of God. On\n     me, the German emperor, the spirit of God has descended. I\n     am His sword, His weapon and His viceregent. Woe to the\n     disobedient and death to cowards and unbelievers.\n\nAs to the Prussian state religion, its attitude to the war is set\nforth in a little book written by a high clerical personage, the Herr\nConsistorialrat Dietrich Vorwerk, containing prayers and hymns for the\nsoldiers, and for the congregations at home. Here is an appeal to the\nLord God of Battles:\n\n     Though the warrior's bread be scanty, do Thou work daily\n     death and tenfold woe unto the enemy. Forgive in merciful\n     long-suffering each bullet and each blow which misses its\n     mark. Lead us not into the temptation of letting our wrath\n     be too tame in carrying out Thy divine judgment. Deliver us\n     and our ally from the Infernal Enemy and his servants on\n     earth. Thine is the kingdom, the German land; may we, by the\n     aid of Thy steel-clad hand, achieve the fame and the glory.\n\nIt is this Herr Consistorialrat who has perpetrated the great\nmasterpiece of humor of the war--the hymn in which he appeals to that\nGod who keeps guard over Cherubim, Seraphim, and Zeppelins. You have\nto say over the German form of these words in order to get the effect\nof their delicious melody--\"Cherubinen, Seraphinen, Zeppelinen!\" And\nlest you think that this too-musical clergyman is a rara avis, turn to\nthe little book which has been published in English under the same\ntitle as Herr Vorwerk's \"Hurrah and Hallelujah.\" Here is the Reverend\nS. Lehmann:\n\n     Germany is the center of God's plans for the world.\n     Germany's fight against the whole world is in reality the\n     battle of the spirit against the whole world's infamy,\n     falsehood and devilish cunning.\n\nAnd here is Pastor K. Koenig:\n\n     It was God's will that we should will the war.\n\nAnd Pastor J. Rump:\n\n     Our defeat would mean the defeat of His Son in humanity. We\n     fight for the cause of Jesus within mankind.\n\nAnd here is an eminent theological professor:\n\n     The deepest and most thought-inspiring result of the war is\n     the German God. Not the national God such as the lower\n     nations worship, but \"our God,\" who is not ashamed of\n     belonging to us, the peculiar acquirement of our heart.\n\n#King Cotton#\n\nIt is a cheap way to gain applause in these days, to denounce the\nPrussian system; my only purpose is to show that Bible-worship,\nprecisely as saint-worship or totem-worship, delivers the worshipper\nup to the Slavers. This truth has held in America, precisely as in\nPrussia. During the middle of the last century there was fought out a\nmighty issue in our free republic; and what was the part played in\nthis struggle by the Bible-cults? Hear the testimony of William Lloyd\nGarrison: \"American Christianity is the main pillar of American\nslavery.\" Hear Parker Pillsbury: \"We had almost to abolish the Church\nbefore we could reach the dreadful institution at all.\"\n\nIn the year 1818 the Presbyterian General Assembly, which represented\nthe churches of the South as well as of the North, passed by a\n#unanimous# vote a resolution to the effect that \"Slavery is utterly\ninconsistent with the law of God, which requires us to love our\nneighbor as ourselves.\" But in a generation the views of the entire\nSouth, including the Presbyterian Church, had changed entirely. What\nwas the reason? Had the \"law of God\" been altered? Had some new\n\"revelation\" been handed down? Nothing of the kind; it was merely that\na Yankee by the name of Eli Whitney had perfected a machine to take\nthe seeds out of short staple cotton. The cotton crop of the South\nincreased from four thousand bales in 1791 to four hundred and fifty\nthousand in 1820 and five million, four hundred thousand in 1860.\n\nThere was a new monarch, King Cotton, and his empire depended upon\nslaves. According to the custom of monarchs since the dawn of history,\nhe hired the ministers of God to teach that what he wanted was right\nand holy. From one end of the South to the other the pulpits rang with\nthe text: \"Cursed be Canaan; a servant to servants shall he be to his\nbrethren.\" The learned Bishop Hopkins, in his \"Bible View of Slavery\",\ngave the standard interpretation of this text:\n\n     The Almighty, forseeing the total degredation of the Negro\n     race, ordained them to servitude or slavery under the\n     descendants of Shem and Japheth, doubtless because he judged\n     it to be their fittest condition.\n\nI might fill the balance of this volume with citations from defenses\nof the \"peculiar institution\" in the name of Jesus Christ--and not\nonly from the South, but from the North. For it must be understood\nthat leading families of Massachusetts and New York owed their power\nto Slavery; their fathers had brought molasses from New Orleans and\nmade it into rum, and taken it to the coast of Africa to be exchanged\nfor slaves for the Southern planters. And after this trade was\noutlawed, the slave-grown cotton had still to be shipped to the North\nand spun; so the traders of the North must have divine sanction for\nthe Fugitive Slave law. Here is the Bishop of Vermont declaring: \"The\nslavery of the negro race appears to me to be fully authorized both in\nthe Old and New Testaments.\" Here in the \"True Presbyterian\", of New\nYork, giving the decision of a clerical man of the world: \"There is no\ndebasement in it. It might have existed in Paradise, and it may\ncontinue through the Millenium.\"\n\nAnd when the slave-holding oligarchy of the South rose in arms against\nthose who presumed to interfere with this divine institution, the men\nof God of the South called down blessings upon their armies in words\nwhich, with the proper change of names, might have been spoken in\nBerlin in August, 1914. Thus Dr. Thornwell, one of the leading\nPresbyterian divines of the South: \"The triumph of Lincoln's\nprinciples is the death-knell of slavery.... Let us crush the serpent\nin the egg.\" And the Reverend Dr. Smythe of Charleston: \"The war is a\nwar against slavery, and is therefore treasonable rebellion against\nthe Word, Providence and Government of God.\" I read in the papers, as\nI am writing, how the clergy of Germany are thundering against\nPresident Wilson's declaration that that country must become\ndemocratic. Here is a manifesto of the German Evangelical League, made\npublic on the four hundredth anniversary of the Reformation:\n\n     We especially warn against the heresy, promulgated from\n     America, that Christianity enjoins democratic institutions,\n     and that they are an essential condition of the kingdom of\n     God on earth.\n\nIn exactly the same way the religious bodies of the entire South\nunited in an address to Christians throughout the world, early in the\nyear 1863:\n\n     The recent proclamation of the President of the United\n     States, seeking the emancipation of the slaves of the South,\n     is in our judgment occasion of solemn protest on the part of\n     the people of God.\n\n#Witches and Women#\n\nTo whatever part of the world you travel, to whatever page of history\nyou turn, you find the endowed and established clergy using the word\nof God in defense of whatever form of slave-driving may then be\npopular and profitable. Two or three hundred years ago it was the\ncustom of Protestant divines in England and America to hang poor old\nwomen as witches; only a hundred and fifty years ago we find John\nWesley, founder of Methodism, declaring that \"the giving up of\nwitchcraft is in effect the giving up of the Bible.\" And if you\ninvestigate this witch-burning, you will find that it is only one\naspect of a blot upon civilization, the Christian Mysogyny. You see,\nthere were two Hebrew legends--one that woman was made out of a man's\nrib, and the other that she ate an apple; therefore in modern England\na wife must be content with a legal status lower than a domestic\nservant.\n\nPerhaps the most comical of the clerical claims is this--that\nChristianity has promoted chivalry and respect for womanhood. In\nancient Greece and Rome the woman was the equal and helpmate of man;\nwe read in Tacitus about the splendid women of the Germans, who took\npart in public councils, and even fought in battles. Two thousand\nyears before the Christian era we are told by Maspero that the\nEgyptian woman was the mistress of her house; she could inherit\nequally with her brothers, and had full control of her property. We\nare told by Paturet that she was \"juridically the equal of man, having\nthe same rights and being treated in the same fashion.\" But in\npresent-day England, under the common law, woman can hold no office of\ntrust or power, and her husband has the sole custody of her person,\nand of her children while minors. He can steal her children, rob her\nof her clothing, and beat her with a stick provided it is no thicker\nthan his thumb. While I was in London the highest court handed down a\ndecision on the law which does not permit a woman to divorce her\nhusband for infidelity, unless it has been accompanied by cruelty; a\nman had brought his mistress into his home and compelled his wife to\nwork for and wait upon her, and the decision was that this was not\ncruelty in the meaning of the law!\n\nAnd if you say that this enslavement of Woman has nothing to do with\nreligion--that ancient Hebrew fables do not control modern English\ncustoms--then listen to the Vicar of Crantock, preaching at St.\nCrantock's, London, Aug. 27th, 1905, and explaining why women must\ncover their heads in church:\n\n     (1) Man's priority of creation. Adam was first formed, then\n     Eve.\n\n     (2) The manner of creation. The man is not of the woman, but\n     the woman of the man.\n\n     (3) The purport of creation. The man was not created for the\n     woman, but the woman for the man.\n\n     (4) Results in creation. The man is the image of the glory\n     of God, but woman is the glory of man.\n\n     (5) Woman's priority in the fall. Adam was not deceived; but\n     the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression.\n\n     (6) The marriage relation. As the Church is subject to\n     Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands.\n\n     (7) The headship of man and woman. The head of every man is\n     Christ, but the head of the woman is man.\n\nI say there is no modern evil which cannot be justified by these\nancient texts; and there is nowhere in Christendom a clergy which\ncannot be persuaded to cite them at the demand of ruling classes. In\nthe city where I write, three clergymen are being sent to jail for six\nmonths for protesting against the use of the name of Jesus in the\nwholesale slaughter of men. Now, I am backing this war. I know that it\nhas to be fought, and I want to see it fought as hard as possible; but\nI want to leave Jesus out of it, for I know that Jesus did not believe\nin war, and never could have been brought to support a war. I object\nto clerical cant on the subject; and I note that an eminent\ntheological authority, \"Billy\" Sunday, appears to agree with me; for I\nfind him on the front page of my morning paper, assailing the three\npacifist clergymen, and making his appeal not to Jesus, but to the\nblood-thirsty tribal diety of the ancient Hebrews:\n\n     I suppose they think they know more than God Almighty, who\n     commanded the sun to stand still while Joshua won the battle\n     for the Lord; more than the God who made Samson strong so he\n     could slay thousands of his nation's enemies in a righteous\n     cause.\n\nRight you are, Billy! And if the capitalist system continues to\ndevelop unchecked, we shall some day see it dawn upon the masters of\nthe world how wasteful it is to permit the superannuated workers to\nperish by slow starvation. So much more sensible to make use of them!\nSo we shall have a Bible defense of cannibalism; we shall hear our\nevangelists quoting Leviticus: \"#They shall eat the flesh of their own\nsons and daughters.#\" Or perhaps some of our leisure-class ladies\nmight make the discovery that the flesh of working-class babies is\nrelished by pomeranians and poodles. If so, the Billy Sundays of the\ntwenty-first century may discover the text: \"#Happy shall be he that\ntaketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.#\"\n\n#Moth and Rust#\n\nIt is especially interesting to notice what happens when the Bible\ntexts work against the interests of the Slavers and their clerical\nretainers. Then they are null and void--and no matter how precise and\nexplicit and unmistakable they may be! Take for example the Sabbath\ninjunction: \"Six days shalt thou labor and do all that thou hast to\ndo.\" Karl Marx records of the pious England of his time that\n\n     Occasionally in rural districts a day-labourer is condemned\n     to imprisonment for desecrating the Sabbath by working in\n     his front garden. The same labourer is punished for breach\n     of contract if he remains away from his metal, paper or\n     glass works on the Sunday, even if it be from a religious\n     whim. The orthodox Parliament will hear nothing of\n     Sabbath-breaking if it occurs in the process of expanding\n     capital.\n\nOr consider the attitude of the Church in the matter of usury.\nThroughout ancient Hebrew history the money-lender was an outcast;\nboth the law and the prophets denounced him without mercy, and it was\nmade perfectly clear that what was meant was, not the taking of high\ninterest, but the taking of any interest whatsoever. The early church\nfathers were explicit, and the Catholic Church for a thousand years\nconsigned money-lenders unhesitatingly to hell. But then came the\nmodern commercial system, and the money-lenders became the masters of\nthe world! There is no more amusing illustration of the perversion of\nhuman thought than the efforts of the Jesuit casuists to escape from\nthe dilemma into which their Heavenly Guides had trapped them.\n\nHere, for example is Alphonso Ligouri, a Spanish Jesuit of the\neighteenth century, a doctor of the Church, now worshipped as St.\nAlphonsus, presenting a long and elaborate theory of \"mental usury\";\nconcluding that, if the borrower pay interest of his own free will,\nthe lender may keep it. In answer to the question whether the lender\nmay keep what the borrower pays, not out of gratitude, but out of fear\nthat otherwise loans will be refused to him in future, Ligouri says\nthat \"to be usury, it must be paid by reason of a contract, or as\njustly due; payment by reason of such a fear does not cause interest\nto be paid as an actual price.\" Again the great saint and doctor tells\nus that \"it is not usury to exact something in return for the danger\nand expense of regaining the principal!\" Could the house of J. P.\nMorgan and Company ask more of their ecclesiastical department?\n\nThe reader may think that such sophistications are now out of date;\nbut he will find precisely the same knavery in the efforts of\npresent-day Slavers to fit Jesus Christ into the system of competitive\ncommercialism. Jesus, as we have pointed out, was a carpenter's son, a\nthoroughly class-conscious proletarian. He denounced the exploiters of\nhis own time with ferocious bitterness, he drove the money-changers\nout of the temple with whips, and he finally died the death of a\ncommon criminal. If he had forseen the whole modern cycle of\ncapitalism and wage-slavery, he could hardly have been more precise in\nhis exortations to his followers to stand apart from it. But did all\nthis avail him? Not in the least!\n\nI place upon the witness-stand an exponent of Bible-Christianity whom\nall readers of our newspapers know well: a scholar of learning, a\npublicist of renown; once pastor of the most famous church in\nBrooklyn; now editor of our most influential religious weekly; a\nliberal both in theology and politics; a modernist, an advocate of\nwhat he calls industrial democracy. His name is Lyman Abbott, and he\nis writing under his own signature in his own magazine, his subject\nbeing \"The Ethical Teachings of Jesus\". Several times I have tried to\npersuade people that the words I am about to quote were actually\nwritten and published by this eminent doctor of divinity, and people\nhave almost refused to believe me. Therefore I specify that the\narticle may be found in the \"Outlook\", the bound volumes of which are\nin all large libraries: volume 94, page 576. The words are as follows,\nthe bold face being Dr. Abbott's, not mine:\n\n     My radical friend declares that the teachings of Jesus are\n     not practicable, that we cannot carry them out in life, and\n     that we do not pretend to do so. Jesus, he reminds us, said,\n     'Lay not up for yourself treasures upon earth;' and\n     Christians do universally lay up for themselves treasures\n     upon earth; every man that owns a house and lot, or a share\n     of stock in a corporation, or a life insurance policy, or\n     money in a savings bank, has laid up for himself treasure\n     upon earth. But Jesus did not say, \"Lay not up for\n     yourselves treasures upon earth.\" He said, \"Lay not up for\n     yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth\n     corrupt and where thieves break through and steal.\" And no\n     sensible American does. Moth and rust do not get at Mr.\n     Rockefeller's oil wells, nor at the Sugar Trust's sugar, and\n     thieves do not often break through and steal a railway or an\n     insurance company or a savings bank. What Jesus condemned\n     was hoarding wealth.\n\nStrange as it may sound to some of the readers of this book, I count\nmyself among the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. His example has meant\nmore to me than that of any other man, and all the experiences of my\nrevolutionary life have brought me nearer to him. Living in the great\nMetropolis of Mammon, I have felt the power of Privilege, its scourge\nupon my back, its crown of thorns upon my head. When I read that\narticle in the \"Outlook\", I felt just as Jesus himself would have\nfelt; and I sat down and wrote a letter--\n\n#To Lyman Abbott#\n\nThis discovery of a new method of interpreting the Bible is one of\nsuch very great interest and importance that I cannot forbear to ask\nspace to comment upon it. May I suggest that Dr. Abbott elaborate this\nexceedingly fruitful lea, and write us another article upon the extent\nto which the teachings of the Inspired Word are modified by modern\nconditions, by the progress of invention and the scientific arts? The\npoint of view which Dr. Abbott takes is one which had never occurred\nto me before, and I had therefore been completely mistaken as to the\nattitude of Jesus on the question. Also I have, like Dr. Abbott, many\nradical friends who are still laboring under error.\n\nJesus goes on to bid his hearers: \"Consider the lilies of the field,\nhow they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.\" What an apt\nsimile is this for the \"great mass of American wealth,\" in Dr.\nAbbott's portrayal of it! \"It is serving the community,\" he tells us;\n\"it is building a railway to open a new country to settlement by the\nhomeless; it is operating a railway to carry grain from the harvests\nof the West to the unfed millions of the East,\" etc. Incidentally, it\nis piling up dividends for its pious owners; and so everybody is\nhappy--and Jesus, if he should come back to earth, could never know\nthat he had left the abodes of bliss above.\n\nTruly, there should be a new school of Bible interpretation founded\nupon this brilliant idea. Jesus says, \"Therefore when thou doest thine\nalms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the\nsynagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men.\"\nVerily not; for of what avail are trumpets, compared with the millions\nof copies of newspapers which daily go forth to tell of Mr.\nRockefeller's benefactions? How transitory are they, compared with the\ngraven marble or granite which Mr. Carnegie sets upon the front of\neach of his libraries!\n\nThere is the paragraph, \"Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because\nthou canst not make one hair white or black.\" I have several among my\nfriends who are Quakers; presumably Dr. Abbott has also; and he should\nnot fail to point out to them the changes which scientific discovery\nhas wrought in the significance of this command against swearing. We\ncan now make our hair either white or black, or a combination of both.\nWe can make it a brilliant peroxide golden; we could, if pushed to an\nextreme, make it purple or green. So we are clearly entitled to swear\nall we please by our head.\n\nNor should we forget to examine other portions of the Bible according\nto this method. \"Look not upon the wine when it is red,\" we are told.\nThanks to the activities of that Capitalism which Dr. Abbott praises\nso eloquently, we now make our beverages in the chemical laboratory,\nand their color is a matter of choice. Also, it should be pointed out\nthat we have a number of pleasant drinks which are not wine at\nall--\"high-balls\" and \"gin rickeys\" and \"peppered punches\"; also\n#vermouthe and creme de menthe and absinthe#, which I believe, are\ngreen in hue, and therefore entirely safe.\n\nThen there are the Ten Commandments. \"Thou shalt not make unto thee\nany graven image.\" See how completely our understanding of this\ncommand is changed, so soon as we realize that we are free to make\nimages of molten metal! And that we may with impunity bow down to them\nand worship them and serve them--even, for instance, a Golden Calf!\n\n\"The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy _God_; in it thou\nshalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy\nmanservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that\nis within thy gates.\" This, again, it will be noted, is open to new\ninterpretations. It specifies maidservants, but does not prevent one's\nemploying as many married women as he pleases. It also says nothing\nabout the various kinds of labor-saving machinery which we have now\ntaught to work for us--sail-boats, naptha launches, yachts,\nautomobiles, and private cars--all of which may be busily occupied\nduring the seventh day of the week. The men who run these\nmachines--the guides, boatmen, stokers, pilots, chauffeurs, and\nengineers--would all indignantly resent being regarded as-\"servants\",\nand so they do not come under the prohibition any more than the\nmachines.\n\n\"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy\nneighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox,\nnor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.\" I read this\nparagraph over for the first time in quite a while, and I came with a\njolt to its last words. I had been intending to point out that it said\nnothing about a neighbor's automobile, nor a neighbor's oil wells,\nsugar trusts, insurance companies and savings banks. The last words,\nhowever, stop one of-abruptly. One is almost tempted to imagine that\nthe Divine Intelligence must have foreseen Dr. Abbott's ingenious\nmethod of interpretation, and taken this precaution against him. And\nthis was a great surprise to me--for, truly, I had not supposed it\npossible that such an interpretation could have been foreseen, even by\nOmniscience itself. I will conclude this communication by venturing\nthe assertion that it could not have been foreseen by any other person\nor thing, in the heavens above, on the earth beneath, or the waters\nunder the earth. Dr. Abbott may accept my congratulations upon having\nachieved the most ingenious and masterful exhibition of casuistical\nlegerdemain that it has ever been my fortune to encounter in my\nreadings in the literatures of some thirty centuries and seven\ndifferent languages.\n\nAnd I will also add that I respectfully challenge Dr. Abbott to\npublish this letter. And I announce to him in advance that if he\nrefuses to publish it, I will cause it to be published upon the first\npage of the \"Appeal to Reason\", where it will be read by some five\nhundred thousand Socialists, and by them set before several million\nfollowers of Jesus Christ, the world's first and greatest\nrevolutionist, whom Dr. Lyman Abbott has traduced and betrayed by the\nmost amazing piece of theological knavery that it has ever been my\nfortune to encounter.\n\n#The Octopus#\n\nDr. Lyman Abbott published this letter! In his editorial comment\nthereon he said that he did not know which of two biblical injunctions\nto follow: \"Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be\nthought like unto him\"; or \"Answer a fool according to his folly, lest\nhe be wise in his own conceit\". I replied by pointing out a third text\nwhich the Reverend Doctor had possibly overlooked: \"He that calleth\nhis neighbor a fool shall be in danger of hell-fire.\" But the Reverend\nDoctor took refuge in his dignity, and I bided my time and waited for\nthat revenge which comes sooner or later to us muck-rakers. In this\ncase it came speedily. The story is such a perfect illustration of the\nfunctions of religion as oil to the machinery of graft that I ask the\nreader's permission to recite it at length.\n\nFor a couple of decades the political and financial life of New\nEngland has been dominated by a gigantic aggregation of capital, the\nNew York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. It is a \"Morgan\" concern;\nits popular name, \"The New Haven\", stands for all the railroads of\nsix states, nearly all the trolley-lines and steamship-lines, and\na group of the most powerful banks of Boston and New York. It is\ncontrolled by a little group of insiders, who followed the custom of\nrail-road-wrecking familiar to students of American industrial life:\nbuying up new lines, capitalizing them at fabulous sums, and unloading\nthem on the investing public; paying dividends out of capital,\n\"passing\" dividends as a means of stock manipulation, accumulating\nsurpluses and cutting \"melons\" for the insiders, while at the same\ntime crushing labor unions, squeezing wages, and permitting\nrolling-stock and equipment to go to wreck.\n\nAll these facts were perfectly well known in Wall Street, and could\nnot have escaped the knowledge of any magazine editor dealing with\ncurrent events. In eight years the \"New Haven\" had increased its\ncapitalization 1501 per cent; and what that meant, any office boy in\n\"the Street\" could have told. What attitude should a magazine editor\ntake to the matter?\n\nAt that time there were still two or three free magazines in America.\nOne of them was Hampton's, and the story of its wrecking by the New\nHaven criminals will some day serve in school text-books as the\nclassic illustration of that financial piracy which brought on the\nAmerican social revolution. Ben Hampton had bought the old derelict\n\"Broadway Magazine\", with twelve thousand subscribers, and in four\nyears, by the simple process of straight truth-telling, had built up\nfor it a circulation of 440,000. In two years more he would have had a\nmillion; but in May, 1911, he announced a series of articles dealing\nwith the New Haven management.\n\nThe articles, written by Charles Edward Russell, were so exact that\nthey read today like the reports of the Interstate Commerce\nCommission, dated three years later. A representative of the New Haven\ncalled upon the editor of Hampton's with a proof of the first\narticle--obtained from the printer by bribery--and was invited to\nspecify the statements to which he took exception; in the presence of\nwitnesses he went over the article line by line, and specified two\nminor errors, which were at once corrected. At the end of the\nconference he announced that if the articles were published, Hampton's\nMagazine would be \"on the rocks in ninety days.\"\n\nWhich threat was carried out to the letter. First came a campaign\namong the advertisers of the magazine, which lost an income of\nthousands of dollars a month, almost over night. And then came a\ncampaign among the banks--the magazine could not get credit. Anyone\nfamiliar with the publishing business will understand that a magazine\nwhich is growing rapidly has to have advances to meet each month's\nbusiness. Hampton undertook to raise the money by selling stock;\nwhereupon a spy was introduced into his office as bookkeeper, his list\nof subscribers was stolen, and a campaign was begun to destroy their\nconfidence.\n\nIt happened that I was in Hampton's office in the summer of 1911, when\nthe crisis came. Money had to be had to pay for a huge new edition;\nand upon a property worth two millions of dollars, with endorsements\nworth as much again, it was impossible to borrow thirty thousand\ndollars in the city of New York. Bankers, personal friends of the\npublisher, stated quite openly that word had gone out that any one who\nloaned money to him would be \"broken\". I myself sent telegrams to\neveryone I knew who might by any chance be able to help; but there was\nno help, and Hampton retired without a dollar to his name, and the\nmagazine was sold under the hammer to a concern which immediately\nwrecked it and discontinued publication.\n\n#The Industrial Shelley#\n\nSuch was the fate of an editor who opposed the \"New Haven\". And now,\nwhat of those editors who supported it? Turn to \"The Outlook, a Weekly\nJournal of Current Events,\" edited by Lyman Abbott--the issue of Dec.\n25th, nineteen hundred and nine years after Christ came down to bring\npeace on earth and good-will toward Wall Street. You will there find\nan article by Sylvester Baxter entitled \"The Upbuilding of a Great\nRailroad.\" It is the familiar \"slush\" article which we professional\nwriters learn to know at a glance. \"Prodigious\", Mr. Baxter tells us,\nhas been the progress of the New Haven; this was \"a masterstroke\",\nthat was \"characteristically sagacious\". The road had made \"prodigious\nexpenditures\", and to a noble end: \"Transportation efficiency\nepitomizes the broad aim that animated these expenditures and other\nconstructive activities.\" There are photographs of bridges and\nstations--\"vast terminal improvements\", \"a masterpiece of modern\nengineering\", \"the highest, greatest and most architectural of\nbridges\". Of the official under whom these miracles were being\nwrought--President Mellen--we read: \"Nervously organized, of delicate\nsensibility, impulsive in utterance, yet with an extraordinarily\nconvincing power for vividly logical presentation.\" An industrial\nShelley, or a Milton, you perceive; and all this prodigious genius\npoured out for the general welfare! \"To study out the sort of\ntransportation service best adapted to these ends, and then to provide\nit in the most efficient form possible, that is the life-task that\nPresident Mellen has set himself.\"\n\nThere was no less than sixteen pages of these raptures--quite a\nsection of a small magazine like the \"Outlook\". \"The New Haven\nramifies to every spot where industry flourishes, where business\nthrives.\" \"As a purveyor of transportation it supplies the public with\njust the sort desired.\" \"Here we have the new efficiency in a\nnutshell.\" In short, here we have what Dr. Lyman Abbott means when he\nglorifies \"the great mass of American wealth\". \"It is serving the\ncommunity; it is building a railway to open a new country to\nsettlement by the homeless; it is operating a railway to carry grain\nfrom the harvests of the West to the unfed millions of the East,\" etc.\nThe unfed millions--my typewriter started to write \"underfed\nmillions\"--are humbly grateful for these services, and hasten to buy\ncopies of the pious weekly which tells about them.\n\nThe \"Outlook\" runs a column of \"current events\" in which it tells what\nis happening in the world; and sometimes it is compelled to tell of\nhappenings against the interests of \"the great mass of American\nwealth\". The cynical reader will find amusement in following its\nnarrative of the affairs of the New Haven during the five years\nsubsequent to the publication of the Baxter article.\n\nFirst came the collapse of the road's service; a series of accidents\nso frightful that they roused even clergymen and chambers of commerce\nto protest. A number of the \"Outlook's\" subscribers are New Haven\n\"commuters\", and the magazine could not fail to refer to their\ntroubles. In the issue of Jan. 4th, 1913, three years and ten days\nafter the Baxter rhapsody, we read:\n\n     The most numerous accidents on a single road since the last\n     fiscal year have been, we believe, those on the New Haven.\n     In the opinion of the Connecticut Commission, the Westport\n     wreck would not have occurred if the railway company had\n     followed the recommendation of the Chief Inspector of Safety\n     Appliances of the Interstate Commerce Commission in its\n     report on a similar accident at Bridgeport a year ago.\n\nAnd by June 28th, matters had gone farther yet; we find the \"Outlook\"\nreporting:\n\n     Within a few hours of the collision at Stamford, the wrecked\n     Pullman car was taken away and burned. Is this criminal\n     destruction of evidence?\n\nThis collapse of the railroad service started a clamor for\ninvestigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which of course\nbrought terror to the bosoms of the plunderers. On Dec. 20,1913, we\nfind the \"Outlook\" \"putting the soft pedal\" on the public indignation.\n\"It must not be forgotten that such a road as the New Haven is, in\nfact if not in terms, a National possession, and as it goes down or\nup, public interests go down or up with it.\" But in spite of all pious\nadmonitions, the Interstate Commerce Commission yielded to the public\nclamor, and an investigation was made--revealing such conditions of\nrottenness as to shock even the clerical retainers of Privilege.\n\"Securities were inflated, debt was heaped upon debt\", reports the\nhorrified \"Outlook\"; and when its hero, Mr. Mellen--its industrial\nShelley, \"nervously organized, of delicate sensibility\"--admitted that\nhe had no authority as to the finances of the road and no\nunderstanding of them, but had taken all his orders from Morgan, the\n\"Outlook\" remarks, deeply wounded: \"A pitiable position for the\npresident of a great railway to assume.\" A little later, when things\ngot hotter yet, we read:\n\n     In the search for truth the Commissioners had to overcome\n     many obstacles, such as the burning of books, letters and\n     documents, and the obstinacy of witnesses, who declined to\n     testify until criminal proceedings were begun. The New Haven\n     system has more than three hundred subsidiary corporations\n     in a web of entangling alliances, many of which were\n     seemingly planned, created and manipulated by lawyers\n     expressly retained for the purpose of concealment or\n     deception.\n\nBut do you imagine even that would sicken the pious jackals of their\noffal? If so, you do not know the sturdiness of the pious stomach. A\ncompromise was patched up between the government and the thieves who\nwere too big to be prosecuted; this bargain was not kept by the\nthieves, and President Wilson declared in a public statement that the\nNew Haven administration had \"broken an agreement deliberately and\nsolemnly entered into,\" in a manner to the President \"inexplicable and\nentirely without justification.\" Which, of course, seemed to the\n\"Outlook\" dreadfully impolite language to be used concerning a\n\"National possession\"; it hastened to rebuke President Wilson, whose\nstatement was \"too severe and drastic.\"\n\nA new compromise was made between the government and the thieves who\nwere too big to be prosecuted, and the stealing went on. Now, as I\nwork over this book, the President takes the railroads for war use,\nand reads to Congress a message proposing that the securities based\nupon the New Haven swindles, together with all the mass of other\nrailroad swindles, shall be sanctified and secured by dividends paid\nout of the public purse. New Haven securities take a big jump; and the\n\"Outlook\", needless to say, is enthusiastic for the President's\npolicy. Here is a chance for the big thieves to baptize themselves--or\nshall we say to have the water in their stocks made \"holy\"? Says our\npious editor, for the government to take property without full\ncompensation \"would be contrary to the whole spirit of America.\"\n\n#The Outlook for Graft#\n\nAnyone familiar with the magazine world will understand that such\ncrooked work as this, continued over a long period, is not done for\nnothing. Any magazine writer would know, the instant he saw the Baxter\narticle, that Baxter was paid by the New Haven, and that the \"Outlook\"\nalso was paid by the New Haven. Generally he has no way of proving\nsuch facts, and has to sit in silence; but when his board bill falls\ndue and his landlady is persistent, he experiences a direct and\nearnest hatred of the crooks of journalism who thrive at his expense.\nIf he is a Socialist, he looks forward to the day when he may sit on a\nPublications' Graft Commission, with access to all magazine books\nwhich have not yet been burned!\n\nIn the case of the New Haven, we know a part of the price--thanks to\nthe labors of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Needless to say, you\nwill not find the facts recorded in the columns of the Outlook; you\nmight have read it line by line from the palmy days of Mellen to our\nown, and you would have got no hint of what the Commission revealed\nabout magazine and newspaper graft. Nor would you have got much more\nfrom the great metropolitan dailies, which systematically \"played\ndown\" the expose, omitting all the really damaging details. You would\nhave to go to the reports of the Commission--or to the files of\n\"Pearson's Magazine\", which is out of print and not found in\nlibraries!\n\nAccording to the New Haven's books, and by the admission of its own\nofficials, the road was spending more than four hundred thousand\ndollars a year to influence newspapers and magazines in favor of its\npolicies. (President Mellen stated that this was relatively less than\nany other railroad in the country was spending). There was a professor\nof the Harvard Law School, going about lecturing to boards of trade,\nurging in the name of economic science the repeal of laws against\nrailroad monopolies--and being paid for his speeches out of railroad\nfunds! There was a swarm of newspaper reporters, writing on railroad\naffairs for the leading papers of New England, and getting twenty-five\ndollars weekly, or two or three hundred on special occasions. Sums had\nbeen paid directly to more than a thousand newspapers--$3,000 to the\nBoston \"Republic\", and when the question was asked \"Why?\" the answer\nwas, \"That is Mayor Fitzgerald's paper.\" Even the ultra-respectable\n\"Evening Transcript\", organ of the Brahmins of culture, was down for\n$144 for typing, mimeographing and sending out \"dope\" to the country\npress. There was an item of $381 for 15,000 \"Prayers\"; and when asked\nabout that President Mellen explained that it referred to a pamphlet\ncalled \"Prayers from the Hills\", embodying the yearnings of the\nback-country people for trolley-franchises to be issued to the New\nHaven. Asked why the pamphlet was called \"Prayers\", Mr. Mellen\nexplained that \"there was lots of biblical language in it.\"\n\nAnd now we come to the \"Outlook\"; after five years of waiting, we\ncatch our pious editors with the goods on them! There appears on the\npay-roll of the New Haven, as one of its regular press-agents, getting\nsums like $500 now and then--would you think it possible?--Sylvester\nBaxter! And worse yet, there appears an item of $938.64 to the\n\"Outlook\", for a total of 9,716 copies of its issue of Dec. 25th,\nnineteen hundred and nine years after Christ came to bring peace on\nearth and good will towards Wall Street!\n\nThe writer makes a specialty of fair play, even when dealing with\nthose who have never practiced it towards him. He wrote a letter to\nthe editor of the \"Outlook\", asking what the magazine might have to\nsay upon this matter. The reply, signed by Lawrence F. Abbott,\nPresident of the \"Outlook\" Company, was that the \"Outlook\" did not\nknow that Mr. Baxter had any salaried connection with the New Haven,\nand that they had paid him for the article at the usual rates. Against\nthis statement must be set one made under oath by the official of the\nNew Haven who had the disbursing of the corruption fund--that the\nvarious papers which used the railroad material paid nothing for it,\nand \"they all knew where it came from.\" Mr. Lawrence Abbott states\nthat \"the New Haven Railroad bought copies of the 'Outlook' without\nany previous understanding or arrangement as anybody is entitled to\nbuy copies of the 'Outlook'.\" I might point out that this does not\nreally say as much as it seems to; for the President of every magazine\ncompany in America knows without any previous understanding or\narrangement that any time he cares to print an article such as Mr.\nBaxter's, dealing with the affairs of a great corporation, he can sell\nten thousand copies to that corporation. The late unlamented Elbert\nHubbard wrote a defense of the Rockefeller slaughter of coal-miners,\npublished it in \"The Fra,\" and came down to New York and unloaded\nseveral tons at 26 Broadway; he did the same thing in the case of the\ncopper strike in Michigan, and again in the case of \"The Jungle\"--and\nall this without the slightest claim to divine inspiration or\nauthority!\n\nMr. Abbott answers another question: \"We certainly did not return the\namount to the railroad company.\" Well, a sturdy conscience must be a\ncomfort to its possessor. The President of the \"Outlook\" is in the\nposition of a pawnbroker caught with stolen goods in his\nestablishment. He had no idea they were stolen; and we might believe\nit, if the thief were obscure. But when the thief is the most\nnotorious in the city--when his picture has been in the paper a\nthousand times? And when the thief swears that the broker knew him?\nAnd when the broker's shop is full of other suspicious goods? Why did\nthe \"Outlook\" practically take back Mr. Spahr's revelations concerning\nthe Powder barony of Delaware? Why did it support so vigorously the\nStandard Oil ticket for the control of the Mutual Life Insurance\nCompany--and with James Stillman, one of the heads of Standard Oil,\npresident of Standard Oil's big bank in New York, secretly one of its\nbiggest stockholders!\n\nAlso, why does the magazine refuse to give its readers a chance to\njudge its conduct? Why is it that a search of its columns reveals no\nmention of the revelations concerning Mr. Baxter--not even any mention\nof the $400,000 slush fund of its paragon of transportation virtues? I\nasked that question in my letter, and the president of the \"Outlook\"\nCompany for some reason failed to notice it. I wrote a second time,\ncourteously reminding him of the omission; and also of another,\nequally significant--he had not informed me whether any of the editors\nof the \"Outlook\", or the officers or directors of the Company, were\nstockholders in the New Haven. His final reply was that the questions\nseem to him \"wholly unimportant\"; he does not know whether the\n\"Outlook\" published anything about the Baxter revelations, nor does he\nknow whether any of the editors or officers or directors of the\n\"Outlook\" Company are or ever have been stockholders of the New York,\nNew Haven and Hartford Railroad Company. The fact \"would not in the\nslightest degree affect either favorably or unfavorably our editorial\ntreatment of that corporation.\" Caesar's wife, it appears is above\nsuspicion--even when she is caught in a brothel!\n\n#Clerical Camouflage#\n\nI have seen a photograph from \"Somewhere in France\", showing a wayside\nshrine with a statue of the Virgin Mary, innocent and loving, with her\nbabe in her arms. If you were a hostile aviator, you might sail over\nand take pictures to your heart's content, and you would see nothing\nbut a saintly image; you would have to be on the enemy's side, and\nbehind the lines, to make the discovery that under the image had been\ndug a hole for a machine-gun. When I saw that picture, I thought to\nmyself--#there# is capitalist Religion!\n\nYou see, if cannon and machine-guns are out in the open, they are\nalmost instantly spotted and put out of action; and so with magazines\nlike \"Leslie's Weekly\", or \"Munsey's\", or the \"North American Review\",\nwhich are frankly and wholly in the interest of Big Business. If an\neditor wishes really to be effective in holding back progress, he must\nprotect himself with a camouflage of piety and philanthropy, he must\nhave at his tongue's end the phrases of brotherhood and justice, he\nmust be liberal and progressive, going a certain cautious distance\nwith the reformers, indulging in carefully measured fair play--giving\na dime with one hand, while taking back a dollar with the other!\n\nLet us have an illustration of this clerical camouflage. Here are the\nwives and children of the Colorado coal-miners being shot and burned\nin their beds by Rockefeller gun-men, and the press of the entire\ncountry in a conspiracy of silence concerning the matter. In the\neffort to break down this conspiracy, Bouck White, Congregational\nclergyman, author of \"The Call of the Carpenter\", goes to the Fifth\nAvenue Church of Standard Oil and makes a protest in the name of\nJesus. I do not wish to make extreme statements, but I have read\nhistory pretty thoroughly, and I really do not know where in nineteen\nhundred years you can find an action more completely in the spirit and\nmanner of Jesus than that of Bouck White. The only difference was that\nwhereas Jesus took a real whip and lashed the money-changers, White\npolitely asked the pastor to discuss with him the question whether or\nnot Jesus condemned the holding of wealth. He even took the precaution\nto write a letter to the clergyman announcing in advance what he\nintended to do! And how did the clergyman prepare for him? With the\nsword of truth and the armor of the spirit? No--but with two or three\ndozen strong-arm men, who flung themselves upon the Socialist author\nand hurled him out of the church. So violent were they that several of\nWhite's friends, also one or two casual spectators, were moved to\nprotest; what happened then, let us read in the New York \"Sun\", the\nmost bitterly hostile to radicalism of all the metropolitan\nnewspapers. Says the \"Sun's\" report:\n\n     A police billy came crunching against the bones of Lopez's\n     legs. It struck him as hard as a man could swing it eight\n     times. A fist planted on Lopez's jaw knocked out two teeth.\n     His lip was torn open. A blow in the eye made it swell and\n     blacken instantly. A minute later Lopez was leaning against\n     the church with blood running to the doorsill.\n\nAnd now, what has the clerical camouflage to say on this proceeding?\nDoes it approve it? Oh no! It was \"a mistake\", the \"Outlook\" protests;\nit intensifies the hatred which these extremists feel for the church.\nThe proper course would have been to turn the disturber aside with a\nsoft answer; to give him some place, say in a park, where he could\ntalk his head off to people of his own sort, while good and decent\nChristians continued to worship by themselves in peace, and to have\nthe children of their mine-slaves shot and burned in their beds. Says\nour pious editor:\n\n     The true way to repress cranks is not to suppress them; it\n     is to give them an opportunity to air their theories before\n     any who wish to learn, while forbidding them to compel those\n     to listen who do not wish to do so.\n\nOr take another case. Twelve years ago the writer made an effort to\ninterest the American people in the conditions of labor in their\npacking-plants. It happened that incidentally I gave some facts about\nthe bedevilment of the public's meat-supply, and the public really did\ncare about that. As I phrased it at the time, I aimed at the public's\nheart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach. There was a terrible\nclamor, and Congress was forced to pass a bill to remedy the evils. As\na matter of fact this bill was a farce, but the public was satisfied,\nand soon forgot the matter entirely. The point to be noted here is\nthat so far as concerned the atrocious miseries of the working-people,\nit was not necessary even to pretend to do anything. The slaves of\nPackingtown went on living and working as they were described as doing\nin \"The Jungle\", and nobody gave a further thought to them. Only the\nother day I read in my paper--while we are all making sacrifices in a\n\"War for Democracy\"--that Armour and Company had paid a dividend of\ntwenty-one per cent, and Swift and Company a dividend of thirty-five\nper cent.\n\nThis prosperity they owe in good part to their clerical camouflage.\nListen to our pious \"Outlook\", engaged in countermining \"The Jungle\".\nThe \"Outlook\" has no doubt that there are genuine evils in the\npacking-plants; the conditions of the workers ought of course to be\nimproved; BUT--\n\n     To disgust the reader by dragging him through every\n     conceivable horror, physical and moral, to depict with lurid\n     excitement and with offensive minuteness the life in jail\n     and brothel--all this is to overreach the object.... Even\n     things actually terrible may become distorted when a writer\n     screams them out in a sensational way and in a high pitched\n     key.... More convincing if it were less hysterical.\n\nDon't you see what these clerical crooks are for?\n\n#The Jungle#\n\nA four years' war was fought in America, a million men were killed and\nhalf a continent was devastated, in order to abolish chattel slavery\nand put wage slavery in its place. I have made a thorough study of\nboth these industrial systems, and I freely admit that there is one\nrespect in which the lot of the wage slave is better than that of the\nchattel slave. The wage slave is free to think; and by squeezing a few\ndrops of blood from his starving body, he may possess himself of\nmachinery for the distribution of his ideas. Taking his chances of the\npoliceman's club and the jail, he may found revolutionary\norganizations, and so he has the candle of hope to light him to his\ndeath-bed. But excepting this consideration, and taking the\ncircumstances of the wage slave from the material point of view alone,\nI hold it beyond question that the average lot of the chattel slave of\n1860 was preferable to that of the modern slave of the Beef Trust, the\nSteel Trust, or the Coal Trust. It was the Southern master's real\nconcern, his business interest, that the chattel slave should be kept\nphysically sound; but it is nobody's business to care anything about\nthe wage slave. The children of the chattel slave were valuable\nproperty, and so they got plenty to eat, and a happy outdoor life, and\nmedical attention if they fell ill. But the children of the sweat-shop\nor the cotton-mill or the canning-factory are raised in a city slum,\nand never know what it is to have enough to eat, never know a feeling\nof security or rest--\n\n  We are weary in our cradles\n  From our mother's toil untold;\n  We are born to hoarded weariness\n  As some to hoarded gold.\n\nThe system of competitive commercialism, of large-scale capitalist\nindustry in its final flowering! I quote from \"The Jungle\":\n\n     Here in this city tonight, ten thousand women are shut up in\n     foul pens, and driven by hunger to sell their bodies to\n     live. Tonight in Chicago there are ten thousand men,\n     homeless and wretched, willing to work and begging for a\n     chance, yet starving, and fronting with terror the awful\n     winter cold! Tonight in Chicago there are a hundred thousand\n     children wearing out their strength and blasting their lives\n     in the effort to earn their bread! There are a hundred\n     thousand mothers who are living in misery and squalor,\n     struggling to earn enough to feed their little ones! There\n     are a hundred thousand old people, cast off and helpless,\n     waiting for death to take them from their torments! There\n     are a million people, men and women and children, who share\n     the curse of the wage-slave; who toil every hour they can\n     stand and see, for just enough to keep them alive; who are\n     condemned till the end of their days to monotony and\n     weariness, to hunger and misery, to heat and cold, to dirt\n     and disease, to ignorance and drunkenness and vice! And then\n     turn over the page with me, and gaze upon the other side of\n     the picture. There are a thousand--ten thousand, maybe--who\n     are the masters of these slaves, who own their toil. They do\n     nothing to earn what they receive, they do not even have to\n     ask for it--it comes to them of itself, their only care is\n     to dispose of it. They live in palaces, they riot in luxury\n     and extravagance--such as no words can describe, as makes\n     the imagination reel and stagger, makes the soul grow sick\n     and faint. They spend hundreds of dollars for a pair of\n     shoes, a handkerchief, a garter; they spend millions for\n     horses and automobiles and yachts, for palaces and banquets,\n     for little shiny stones with which to deck their bodies.\n     Their life is a contest among themselves for supremacy in\n     ostentation and recklessness, in the destroying of useful\n     and necessary things, in the wasting of the labor and the\n     lives of their fellow-creatures, the toil and anguish of the\n     nations, the sweat and tears and blood of the human race! It\n     is all theirs--it comes to them; just as all the springs\n     pour into streamlets, and the streamlets into rivers, and\n     the rivers into the ocean--so, automatically and inevitably,\n     all the wealth of society comes to them. The farmer tills\n     the soil, the miner digs in the earth, the weaver tends the\n     loom, the mason carves the stone; the clever man invents,\n     the shrewd man directs, the wise man studies, the inspired\n     man sings--and all the results, the products of the labor of\n     brain and muscle, are gathered into one stupendous stream\n     and poured into their laps!\n\nThis is the system. It is the crown and culmination of all the wrongs\nof the ages; and in proportion to the magnitude of its exploitation,\nis the hypocrisy and knavery of the clerical camouflage which has been\norganized in its behalf. Beyond all question, the supreme irony of\nhistory is the use which has been made of Jesus of Nazareth as the\nHead God of this blood-thirsty system; it is a cruelty beyond all\nlanguage, a blasphemy beyond the power of art to express. Read\nthe man's words, furious as those of any modern agitator that\nI have heard in twenty years of revolutionary experience: \"Lay\nnot up for yourselves treasures on earth!--Sell that ye have\nand give alms!--Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of\nHeaven!--Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your\nconsolation!--Verily, I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly\nenter into the kingdom of Heaven!--Woe unto you also, you lawyers!--Ye\nserpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of\nhell?\"\n\n\"And this man\"--I quote from \"The Jungle\" again--\"they have made into\nthe high-priest of property and smug respectability, a divine sanction\nof all the horrors and abominations of modern commercial civilization!\nJewelled images are made of him, sensual priests burn insense to him,\nand modern pirates of industry bring their dollars, wrung from the\ntoil of helpless women and children, and build temples to him, and sit\nin cushioned seats and listen to his teachings expounded by doctors of\ndusty divinity!\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#BOOK FIVE#\n\n#The Church of the Merchants#\n\n       Mammon led them on--\n  Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell\n  From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts\n  Were always downward bent, admiring more\n  The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold,\n  Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed\n  In vision beatific.... Let none admire\n  That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best\n  Deserve the precious bane.\n\n  Milton.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#The Head Merchant#\n\nOurs is the era of commerce, as its propagandists never weary of\ntelling us. Business is the basis of our material lives, and\nconsequently of our culture. Business men control our politics and\ndictate our laws; business men own our newspapers and direct their\npolicy; business men sit on our school boards, and endow and manage\nour universities. The Reformation was a revolt of the newly-developing\nmerchant classes against the tyrannies and abuses of feudal\nclericalism: so in all Protestant Christianity one finds the spirit,\nideals, and language of Trade. We have shown how the symbolism of the\nAnglican Church is of the palace and the throne; in the same way that\nof the non-conformist sects may be shown to be of the counting-house.\nIn the view of the middle-class Britisher, the nexus between man and\nman is cent per cent; and so in their Sunday services the worshippers\nsing such hymns as this:\n\n  Whatever, Lord, we lend to Thee,\n  Repaid a thousand fold shall be;\n  Then gladly will we give to Thee,\n  Who givest all.\n\nThe first duty of every man under the competitive system is to secure\nthe survival of his own business; So on the Sabbath, when he comes to\ndeal with eternity, he is practical and explicit:\n\n  Nothing is worth a thought beneath\n  But how I may escape the death\n     That never, never dies;\n  How make mine own election sure,\n  And when I fail on earth secure\n     A mansion in the skies.\n\nJust as the priest of the aristocratic caste figures God as a mighty\nConqueror--\n\n     Marching as to war\n  With the cross of Jesus\n     Going on before--\n\nso the preacher to the trader figures the divinity as a glorified\nMerchant keeping books. This Head Merchant has a monopoly in His line;\nHe knows all His rivals' secrets, so there is no getting ahead of Him,\nand nothing to do but obey His Word, as revealed through His clerical\nstaff. The system is oily with protestations of divine love; but when\nyou read the comments of Luther upon Calvin and of Calvin upon Luther,\nyou understand that this love is confined to the inside of each\ndenomination. And even so restricted, there is not always enough to go\naround. Recently I met a Presbyterian clergyman, to whom I remarked,\n\"I see by the papers that you have just finished a church building.\"\n\"Yes,\" he answered; \"and I have had three offers of a new church.\" I\ndid not see the connection, and asked, \"Because you were so successful\nwith this one?\" The reply was, \"They always take it for granted that\nyou want to change when you've finished a new building, because you\nmake so many enemies!\"\n\nThe business man puts up the money to build the church, he puts up the\nmoney to keep it going; and the first rule of a business man is that\nwhen he puts up the money for a thing he \"runs\" that thing. Of course\nhe sees that it spreads his own views of life, it helps to maintain\nhis tradition. In the days of Anu and Baal we heard the proclamation\nof the divine right of Kings; in these days of Mammon we hear the\nproclamation of the divine right of Merchants. Some fifteen years ago\nthe head of our Coal Trust announced during a great strike that the\nquestion would be settled \"by the Christian men to whom God in His\nInfinite Wisdom has given control of the property interests of this\ncountry\". And on that declaration all pious merchants stand; whatever\ntheir denominations, Catholic, Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist,\nPresbyterian or Hebrew, their Sabbath doctrines are alike, as their\nweek-day practices are alike; whether it is Rockefeller shooting his\nBayonne oil-workers and burning alive the little children of his\nminers; or smooth John Wanamaker, paying starvation wages to\ndepartment-store girls and driving them to the streets; or that\nclergyman who, at a gathering of society ladies, members of the \"Law\nand Order League\" of Denver, declared in my hearing that if he could\nhave his way he would blow up the home of every coal-striker with\ndynamite; or the Rev. R.A. Torrey, Dean of the Bible institute of Los\nAngeles, who refused to employ union labor on the million dollar\nbuilding of the Institute, declaring that \"the Church cannot afford to\nhave any dealings with a band of fire-bugs and murderers!\"\n\n#\"Herr Beeble\"#\n\nThe business of the Clerical Department of the Merchants' and\nManufacturers' Association is to justify the processes of trade, and\nto preach to clerks and employees the slave-virtues of frugality,\nhumility, and loyalty to the profit system. The depths of sociological\ndepravity to which some of the agents of this Association have sunk is\ndifficult of belief. Twelve years ago I was invited to address the\nbook-sellers of New York, in company with a well-known clergyman of\nthe city, the Reverend Madison C. Peters. This gentleman's address\nmade such an impression upon me that I recall it even at this\ndistance: a string of jokes spoken with an effect of rapid-fire\nsmartness, and simply reeking with commercialism. I could not describe\nit better than to say that it was on the ethical level of the \"Letters\nof a Self-Made Merchant to His Son\". Again, I attended a debate on\nSocialism, in which the capitalist end was taken by another famous\nclergyman, pastor of the Metropolitan Temple, the Rev. J. Wesley Hill.\nHe was so ignorant that when he wished to prove that Socialism means\nfree love, he quoted a writer by the name of \"Herr Beeble\"; he was so\ndishonest that he garbled the writings of this \"Herr Beeble\", making\nhim say something quite different from what he had meant to say. I\ncould name several clergymen of various denominations who have stooped\nto that device against the Socialists; including the Catholic Father\nBelford, who says that we are mad dogs and should be stopped with\nbullets.\n\nOr consider the Reverend Thomas Dixon. This gentleman's pulpit-slang\nused to be the talk of New York when I was a boy; and when I grew up,\nand came into the Socialist movement--behold, here he was, chief\ninquisitor of the capitalist Holy Office. I had a friend, a man who\nsaved my life at a time when I was practically starving, and to whom\ntherefore I owe my survival as a writer; this friend had been a\nclergyman in a Middle Western state, and had preached Jesus as he\nreally was, and so was hated and feared like Jesus. It happened that\nhe was unhappily married, and permitted his wife to divorce him so\nthat he might marry the woman he loved; for which unheard of crime the\norganized hypocrisy of America fell upon him like a thousand devils\nwith poisoned whips. The Reverend Dixon's holy rage was fired; he\napplied his imagination to my friend's story, producing a novel under\nthe title of \"The One Woman\"; and it is as if you were reading the\nstory of Jesus and the Magdalen transmitted through the personality of\na he-goat. Of late years this clerical author has turned his energies\nto negrophobia and militarism, making millions out of motion-picture\nincitements to hatred and terror. The pictures were made here in\nSouthern California, and friends in the business have described to me\nthe pious propagandist in the position of St. Anthony surrounded by\nswarms of cute and playful little movie-girls.\n\nOr take the Rev. James Roscoe Day, D.D., S.T.D., LL.D., D.C.L.,\nL.H.D., a leading light of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who offers\nhimself as comic relief in our Clerical Vaudeville. Dr. Day is\nChancellor of Syracuse University, a branch of the Mental Munitions\nDepartment of the Standard Oil Company; his function being to\nmanufacture intellectual weapons and explosives to be used in defense\nof the Rockefeller fortune. It is generally not expected that the\nmakers of ruling-class munitions should face the dirty and perilous\nwork of the trenches; but ten years ago, during a raid by an active\nsquad of muckrake-men, Chancellor Day astonished the world by rushing\nto the front with both arms full of star-shells and bombs. He\nafterwards put the history of this gallant action into a volume, \"The\nRaid on Prosperity\"; and if you want the real thrill of the class-war,\nhere is where to get it!\n\nThe Chancellor is a quaint and touching figure; an enthusiast and\ndreamer, idealist and martyr, in whom the ordinary human virtues have\nbeen fused, absorbed, transformed and sublimated into a new supreme\nvirtue of loyalty to Exploitation, patriotism for Profiteering. He\nbegan life as a working-man, he tells us, in the good old American\nfashion of hustle for yourself; but he differed from other Americans\nin that he had an instant, intuitive recognition of the intellectual\nand moral excellence of Plutocracy. The first time he met a rich man,\nhe quivered with rapture, he burst into a hymn of appreciation. So\nvery quickly he was recognized as a proper person to have charge of a\nMental Munition Works; and the ruling classes proceeded to pin medals\nupon the bosom of his academic robes--D.D., S.T.D., L.L.D., D.C.L.,\nL.H.D.\n\nThe Chancellor knows the masters of our Profit System, those\n\"consummate geniuses of manufacture and trade by which the earth has\nyielded up her infinite treasures.\" And having been at the same time\nin intimate daily communion with the Almighty, he can tell us the\nAlmighty's attitude towards these prodigies. \"God has made the rich of\nthis world to serve Him.... He has shown them a way to have this\nworld's goods and to be rich towards God....God wants the rich men....\nChrist's doctrines have made the world rich, and provide adequate uses\nfor its riches.\" Also the Chancellor knows our great corporations, and\ngives us the Almighty's views about them; they mean that \"the forces\nwith which God built the universe have been put into the hands of\nman.\" Likewise by divine authority we learn that \"the sympathy given\nto Socialism is appalling. It is insanity.\" We learn that the income\ntax is \"a doctrine suited to the dark ages, only no age ever has been\ndark enough.\" Somebody raises the issue of \"tainted money\", and the\nChancellor disposes of this matter also. As a Deputy of Divinity, he\nsettles it by Holy Writ: \"Paul permitted meat offered to idols to be\neaten in the fear of God.\" And then, to make assurance doubly sure, he\nsettles it with plain human logic; and you are astonished to see how\nsimple, under his handling, the complex problem becomes--how clear and\nclean-cut is the distinction he draws for you:\n\n     Every boy knows that one cannot take stolen goods without\n     being a partaker with the thief. But the proceeds of\n     recognized business are quite a different thing.\n\n#Holy Oil#\n\nAnd here is Billy Sunday, most conspicuous phenomenon of Protestant\nChristianity at the beginning of the twentieth century. For the\nbenefit of posterity I explain that \"Billy\" is a baseball player\nturned Evangelist, who has brought to the cause of God the crowds and\nuproar of the diamond; also the commercial spirit of America's most\npopular institution. He travels like a circus, with all the\npress-agent work and newspaper hurrah; he conducts what are called\n\"revivals\", in an enormous \"tabernacle\" built especially for him in\neach city. I cannot better describe the Billy Sunday circus than in\nthe words of a certain Sidney C. Tapp, who brought suit against the\nevangelist for $100,000 damages for the theft of the ideas of a book.\nSays Mr. Tapp in his complaint:\n\n     The so-called religious awakening or \"trail-hitting\" is\n     produced by an appeal to the emotions and in stirring up the\n     senses by a combination of carrying the United States flag\n     in one hand and the Bible in the other, singing, trumpeting,\n     organ playing, garrulous and acrobatic feats of defendant,\n     by defendant in his talk leaping from the rostrum to the top\n     of the pulpit, lying prone on the floor of the rostrum on\n     his stomach in the presence of the vast audience and from\n     thence into a pit to shake hands with the so-called\n     \"trail-hitters\" and the vulgar use of plaintiff's thoughts\n     contained in said books. Said harangues and vulgarisms of\n     said defendant and horns, drums, organs and singing by said\n     choir and vast audience which are assembled by means of said\n     newspaper advertisements for the purpose of inducing a habit\n     of free and copious flow of money through religious and\n     patriotic excitement produced by and through the vulgarisms,\n     scurrility, buffoonery, obscenity and profanity of defendant\n     pretending to be in the interest of the cause of religion\n     through what he denominates \"hitting the trail\", the real\n     object being to induce a religious frenzy and enthusiasm\n     which he announces in advance is to result in large\n     audiences composed of thousands of people generously\n     contributing vast sums of money on the last day and night of\n     the so-called revival which is invariably appropriated by\n     the defendant and through which scheme and device defendant\n     has become enormously wealthy.\n\nAs I write, the evangelist is in Los Angeles, and twice each day he\nholds forth to a crowd of ten or fifteen thousand; in addition the\nnewspapers print literally pages of his utterances. The entire\nProtestant clergy for a score of miles around has been hitched to his\ntriumphal chariot, and driven captive through the streets. Here in\nthis dignified city of Pasadena, home of millionaire brewers and\nchewing-gum kings, all the churches have been plastered for weeks with\ncloth signs: \"This Church is Cooperating in the Sunday Campaign.\" To\ngive a sample of the intellectual level of the performance, here is\nwhat Billy has to say about modern thought:\n\n     All this blasphemy against God and Jesus Christ, all this\n     sneering, highbrow, rotten, loathesome, higher criticism,\n     wriggling its dirty, filthy, stinking carcass out of a\n     beer-mug in Leipzig or Heidelberg!\n\nWhether willingly or reluctantly, the preachers sit upon the platform\nand smile while Billy thus slangs the devil; and being themselves,\npoor fellows, at their wits end to draw the crowd, they watch and see\nhow he does it, and then return to their own churches and try the same\nstunt; so the manners of the baseball diamond spread like a contagion.\nI open my morning paper, and find a picture of an intense-looking\nclerical gentleman, the Rev. J. Whitcomb Brougher, pastor of the\nBaptist Temple. He is discussing certain slanderous rumors which he\nhas heard about Billy Sunday, and he offers ten thousand dollars\nreward to anyone who can prove these things; though, as he says,\n\n     The dirty, low-down, contemptible, weazen-brained,\n     impure-hearted, shrivelled-souled, gossipping devils do not\n     deserve to be noticed.... Scandal-mongers, gossip-lovers,\n     reputation-destroyers, hypocritical, black-hearted,\n     green-eyed slanderers.... Corrupt, devil-possessed, vile\n     debauches.... Immoral, sin-loving, vice-practicing,\n     underhanded sneaks.... Carrion-loving buzzards and\n     foul-smelling skunks.\n\nYou will be prepared after this to hear that when the Socialists were\nnear to carrying Los Angeles, this clergyman preached a sermon in\nsupport of the candidate of \"Booze, Gas and Railroads\".\n\nIn so far as Billy Sunday is trying to keep the neglected youth of our\nstreets from drinking, gambling and whoring, no one could wish him\nanything but success; but his besotted ignorance, his childish crudity\nof mind, make it impossible that he could have any success except of a\ndelusive nature. He is utterly devoid of a social sense; utterly\nunaware of the existence of the forces of capitalism which are causing\ndepravity ten times as fast as all the evangelists in creation can\nremedy it. So he is precisely like the Catholics with their \"charity\",\ncleaning up loathsome and unsightly messes for a thousand years, and\nnever stopping to ask why such messes continue to come into existence.\n\nMore than that, I question whether the spirit of commercialism which\nhe fosters does not help the development of evil more than his\npreaching hinders it. The newspapers always report the cost of the\ntabernacle, and of the \"free-will offering\", which amounts to hundreds\nof thousands of dollars in each \"campaign\". In each city the expenses\nare guaranteed by men who are generally the most sinister exploiting\nforces of the community; they welcome and fete him, and he visits\ntheir homes, and is in every way one of the crowd. After the big silk\nstrike in Paterson, N.J., the employers, Jews and Catholics included,\nall subscribed a fund to bring Billy Sunday to that city; and it was\nfreely proclaimed that the purpose was to undermine the radical union\nmovement. This was never denied by Sunday himself, and his whole\ncampaign was conducted on that basis.\n\nLater Billy came to New York, where he met a certain rich young man,\nperhaps a thousand times as rich as any that lived in Palestine. This\nyoung man came to Billy and said: \"What shall I do to inherit eternal\nlife?\" And Billy told him to keep the commandments--\"Do not commit\nadultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor\nthy father and thy mother.\" The young man answered; \"All these have I\nkept from my youth up.\" And Billy said: \"Yet lackest thou one thing;\nsell all that thou hast and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt\nhave treasure in heaven; and come follow me.\" And when he heard this\nhe was very sorrowful, for he was very rich.\n\n--No, I have got the story mixed up. That is what happened in\nPalestine. What happened in New York is that Billy said, \"I am\ndelighted to meet you, Mr. Rockefeller.\" And Mr. Rockefeller said,\n\"Come be my guest at my palace in the Pocantico Hills; and then we\nwill go together and you may preach submission to my wage-slaves in\nthe oil-factories at Bayonne and elsewhere.\" And Billy went to the\npalace, and went and preached to the wage-slaves, telling them to\nbeware the \"stinking Socialists\", and to concentrate their attention\non the saving of their souls; so the rich young man was delighted, and\nhe sent for all the newspaper reporters to come to his office at 26\nBroadway, and told them what a great and useful man Billy Sunday is.\nAs the New York \"Times\" tells about it:\n\n     Mr. Rockefeller seldom gives interviews and certainly he has\n     never been charged with having an excess of verbally\n     expressed enthusiasm on any subject. But he talked for an\n     hour and a half about the evangelist. He was full of the\n     subject of Billy Sunday. \"Billy did New York a lot of good,\"\n     he said. He went on to tell of 187 meetings held in 100\n     different factories, attended by 50,000 men. \"That's good\n     work.\" And he expressed his satisfaction with Sunday's\n     theology: \"He believes the Bible from cover to cover and\n     that is good enough for me.\" The Sunday campaign had cost\n     $200,000, and \"If it had stopped here, if it was not kept\n     up, it would be poor business; a poor dividend on the\n     $200,000 and the work invested. But we expect to get\n     dividends in the next year.\"\n\nAgain you note the symbolism of the counting-house!\n\n#Rhetorical Black-hanging#\n\nIt is the duty of the clergy, not merely to defend large-scale\nmerchants while they live, but to bury them when they die, and to\nplace the seal of sanctity upon their careers. Concerning this aspect\nof Bootstrap-lifting I quote the opinion of an earnest hater of shams,\nWilliam Makepeace Thackeray:\n\n     I think the part which pulpits play in the death of kings is\n     the most ghastly of all the ceremonial: the lying eulogies,\n     the blinking of disagreeable truths, the sickening\n     flatteries, the simulated grief, the falsehood and\n     sycophancies--all uttered in the name of Heaven in our State\n     churches: these monstrous Threnodies which have been sung\n     from time immemorial over kings and queens, good, bad,\n     wicked, licentious. The State parson must bring out his\n     commonplaces; his apparatus of rhetorical black-hanging....\n\nAnd this, of course, applies not merely to kings of England, but to\nkings of Steel, kings of Coal, kings of Oil, kings of Wall Street.\nLeland Stanford, son of a great king of Western railroads, died; and\nstanding over his coffin, a Methodist clergyman, afterwards Bishop,\npreached a sermon of fulsome flattery, wherein he likened young Leland\nto the boy Christ. In the year 1904 there passed from his earthly\nreward in Pennsylvania a United States senator who had been throughout\nhis lifetime a notorious and unblushing corruptionist. Matthew Stanley\nQuay was his name, and the New York \"Nation\", having no clerical\nconnections, was free to state the facts about him:\n\n     He bought the organization, bribed or intimidated the press,\n     got his grip on the public service, including even the\n     courts; imposed his will on Congress and Cabinet, and upon\n     the last three Presidents--making the latter provide for the\n     offal of his political machine, which even Pennsylvania\n     could no longer stomach--and all without identifying his\n     name with a single measure of public good, without making a\n     speech or uttering a party watchword, without even\n     pretending to be honest, but solely because, like Judas, he\n     carried the bag and could buy whom he would.\n\nSuch was the lay opinion; and now for the clerical. It was expressed\nby a Presbyterian divine, the Reverend Dr. J.S. Ramsey, who stood over\nthe coffin of \"Matt\", and without cracking a smile declared that he\nhad been \"a statesman who was always on the right side of every moral\nquestion!\"\n\nIn that same year of 1904 died the high priest of our political\ncorruption, Mark Hanna. He had belonged to no church, but had backed\nthem all, understanding the main thesis of this book as clearly as the\nwriter of it. In his home city of Cleveland the eulogy upon him was\npronounced by Bishop Leonard, in St. Paul's Episcopal Church; while in\nthe United States Senate the service was performed by the Chaplain,\nthe Rev. Edward Everett Hale. This is a name well-known in American\nletters, as in American religious life; it was borne by a benevolent\nold gentleman, a Unitarian and a liberal, who organized \"Lend-a-Hand\nClubs\" and such like amiabilities. \"Do You Love This Old Man?\" the\nsigns in the street-cars used to ask when I was a boy; and I promptly\nanswered \"Yes\"--for my mother took the \"Ladies' Home Journal\", and I\nswallowed the sentimental dish-water set out for me. But when I read\nthe Rev. Edward's funeral oration over the Irrev. Mark, I loved\nneither of them any longer. \"This whole-souled child of God,\" cried\nthe Rev. Edward, \"who believed in success, and knew how to succeed by\nusing the infinite powers!\" You perceive that the Chaplain of the\nMillionaires' Club agrees with this book, that the \"infinite powers\"\nin America are the powers that prey!\n\n#The Great American Fraud#\n\nAmong the most loathesome products of our native commercial greed is\nthe patent medicine industry, \"The Great American Fraud,\" as its\nhistorian has called it. In 1907 this historian wrote:\n\n     Gullible America will spend this year some seventy-five\n     millions of dollars in the purchase of patent medicines. In\n     consideration of this sum it will swallow huge quantities of\n     alcohol, an appalling amount of opiates and narcotics, a\n     wide assortment of varied drugs ranging from powerful and\n     dangerous heart depressants to insidious liver stimulants;\n     and, far in excess of all other ingredients, undiluted\n     fraud. For fraud, exploited by the skillfullest of\n     advertising bunco men, is the basis of the trade.\n\nOne by one Mr. Adams tells about these medical fakes: habit-forming\nlaxatives, head-ache powders full of acetanilid, soothing-syrups and\ncatarrh-cures full of opium and cocaine, cock-tails subtly disguised\nas \"bitters\", \"sarsaparillas\", and \"tonics\". He shows how the fake\ntestimonials are made up and exploited; how the confidential letters,\ntelling the secret troubles of men and women, are collected by tens\nand hundreds of thousands and advertised and sold--so that the victim,\nas he begins to lose faith in one fake, finds another at hand, fully\ninformed as to his weakness. He quotes the amazing \"Red Clause\" in the\ncontracts which the patent-medicine makers have with thousands of\ndaily and weekly papers, whereby the makers are able to control the\npress of the country and prevent legislation against the \"Great\nAmerican Fraud.\"\n\nThere are a thousand religious papers in America, weekly and monthly;\nand what is their attitude on this question? Mr. Adams tells us:\n\n     Whether because church-going people are more trusting, and\n     therefore more easily befooled than others, or from some\n     more obscure reason, many of the religious papers fairly\n     reek with patent medicine fakes.\n\nHe gives us many pages of specific instances:\n\n     Dr. Smith belongs to the brood of cancer vampires. He is a\n     patron and prop of religious journalism. It is his theory\n     that the easiest prey is to be found among readers of church\n     papers. Moreover he has learned from his father-in-law (who\n     built a small church out of blood-money) to capitalize his\n     own sectarian associations, and when confronted recently\n     with a formal accusation he replied, with an air of injured\n     innocence, that he was a regular attendant at church, and\n     could produce an endorsement from his minister.\n\nAnd here is the \"Church Advocate\", of Harrisburg, Pa., which publishes\nquack advertisements disguised as editorials. One of them Mr. Adams\nparaphrases:\n\n     As Dr. Smith is, on the face of his own statements, a\n     self-branded swindler and rascal, you run no risk in\n     assuming that the Rev. C.H. Forney, D.D., L.L.D., in acting\n     as his journalistic supporter for pay, is just such another\n     as himself!\n\nAnd again:\n\n     Will the editor of the \"Baptist Watchman\" of Boston explain\n     by what phenomenon of logic or elasticity of ethics he\n     accepts the lucubrations of Dr. Bye, of Oren Oneal, of\n     Liquozone, of Actina, that marvelous two-ended mechanical\n     appliance which \"cures\" deafness at one terminus and\n     blindness at the other, and all with a little oil of\n     mustard?\n\nAnd again:\n\n     The \"Christian Observer\" of Louisville replied to a\n     protesting subscriber, suggesting that the \"Collier\"\n     articles were written in a spirit of revenge, because\n     \"Collier's\" could not get patent medicine advertising. When\n     I asked the Rev. F. Bartlett Converse for his foundation for\n     the charge, he said that one of the typewriters must have\n     written the letter! Doubtless also the same highly\n     responsible typewriter imitated the signature with startling\n     fidelity to Dr. Converse's handwriting!\n\nAnd here is--would you think it possible?--our \"Church of Good\nSociety\"! It has an organ in Chicago called the \"Living Church\", most\ndignified and decorous. You have to study quite a while to ascertain\nwhat denomination it belongs to; it will not tell you directly, for\nthe Anglician pose is that it is #the# church\n\n  Elect from every nation,\n    Yet one o'er all the earth,\n  Her charter of salvation,\n    One Lord, one Faith, one Birth;\n  One holy name she blesses,\n    Partakes one holy food,\n  And toward one Hope she presses,\n    With every grace endued.\n\nAnd this one holy institution was found setting at its peak the black\nflag of the trader, the \"Jolly Roger\" of the modern commercial\npirate--\"Caveat emptor!\" To quote the precise words:\n\n     The editors and publishers of the \"Living Church\" assume no\n     responsibility for the assertions of advertisers.\n\nAnd so it threw open its columns to the claims of America's champion\nlabor-baiter, the late C.W. Post, that his \"Grapenuts\" would prevent\nappendicitis, and obviate the need of operations in such cases!\n\nAnd here is the \"Christian Endeavor World\", organ of one of the most\npowerful non-sectarian religious bodies in the country. Some one wrote\ncomplaining of its medical advertising, and the answer was:\n\n     To the best of our knowledge and belief, we are not\n     publishing any fraudulent or unworthy medical\n     advertising.... Trusting that you will be able to understand\n     that we are acting according to our best and sincerest\n     judgment, I remain, yours very truly, The Golden Rule\n     Company, George W. Coleman, Business Manager.\n\nWhereupon the historian of \"The Great American Fraud\" remarks:\n\n     Assuming that the business management of the \"Christian\n     Endeavor World\" represents normal intelligence, I would like\n     to ask whether it accepts the statement that a pair of\n     \"magic foot drafts\" applied to the soles of the feet will\n     cure any and every kind of rheumatism in any part of the\n     body? Further, if the advertising department is genuinely\n     interested in declining \"fraudulent and unworthy\" copy, I\n     would call their attention to the ridiculous claims of Dr.\n     Shoop's medicines, which \"cure\" almost every disease; to two\n     hair removers, one an \"Indian Secret\", the other an\n     \"accidental discovery\", both either fakes or dangerous; to\n     the lying claims of Hall's Catarrh Cure, that it is \"a\n     positive cure for catarrh\", in all its stages; to \"Syrup of\n     Figs\", which is not a fig syrup, but a preparation of senna;\n     to Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root, of which the principal medical\n     constituent is alcohol; and, finally, to Dr. Bye's Oil Cure\n     for cancer, a particularly cruel swindle on unfortunates\n     suffering from an incurable malady. All of these, with other\n     matter, which for the sake of decency I do not care to\n     detail in these columns, appear in recent issues of the\n     \"Christian Endeavor World\".\n\n#Riches in Glory#\n\nThere came recently to Los Angeles a \"world-famous evangelist\", known\nas \"Gipsy\" Smith. There was a shirt-waist strike at the time, and the\ngirls were starving, and they sent a delegation to this evangelist to\nask for help. They told him how they were mistreated, exposed to\ninsults, driven to sell their virtue because their wage would not\nsupport life; and to their plea he made answer: \"Get Jesus in your\nhearts, and these questions will take care of themselves!\"\n\nSo we see the most important of the many services which the churches\nperform for the merchants--taking the revolutionary hope of Jesus, for\na kingdom of heaven upon earth, and perverting it into a dream of a\ngolden harp in an uncertain future. To appreciate the fullness of this\nbetrayal, take the prayer which Jesus dictated--so simple, direct and\npractical: \"Give us this day our daily bread\", and put it beside the\nhymns which the slave-congregations are trained to sing. In my\nneighborhood is a one-roomed building with a plate glass front, upon\nwhich I observe a painter inscribing in red, white and blue letters\nthe sign \"#Glory Mission.#\" I approach him, and he drops his work and\nwelcomes me with eager cordiality. Am I \"living in grace\"? I answer\nthat I am. I have to shout the good tidings into his ear, as he is\nvery deaf. He presents me with his card, which shows that he bears the\ntitle of \"Reverend\", also the sobriquet of \"Mountain Missionary\". I\nask him to permit me to examine the hymn-book which he uses in his\nwork, and with touching eagerness he presses upon me a well-worn\nvolume bearing the title \"Waves of Glory\". I seat myself and note down\na few of the baits it sets out for hungry wage-slaves:\n\n  O, there's a plenty, O, there's a plenty,\n  There's a plenty in my Father's bank above!\n\n  Riches in glory, riches in glory,\n  Royal supply our wants exceed!\n\n  Feasting, I'm feasting,\n  I'm feasting with my Lord!\n\n  Beautiful robes, beautiful robes,\n  Beautiful robes we then shall wear!\n\n  Jerusalem the golden,\n  With milk and honey blest!\n\n  Yes, I'll meet you in the city of the New Jerusalem,\n  I'll be there, I'll be there!\n\n  Blest Canaan land, bright Canaan land,\n  I love to be in Canaan land!\n\n  Oh, Beulah land, sweet Beulah land,\n  As on the highest mount I stand,\n  I look away across the sea,\n  Where mansions are prepared for me!\n\n  In the sweet bye and bye\n  We shall meet on that beautiful shore--\n\nI stopped there, being reminded of Joe Hill, poet of the I.W.W. who\nwas executed a few years ago in Utah, and who used this tune in his\nlittle red book of revolutionary chants:\n\n  You will eat, bye and bye,\n  In the glorious land above the sky;\n  Work and pray, live on hay,\n  You'll get pie in the sky when you die!\n\n#Captivating Ideals#\n\nIn one of the writer's earlier novels, \"Prince Hagen\", the hero is a\nNibelung out of Wagner's \"Rheingold\", who leaves his diggings in the\nbowels of the earth, and comes up to look into our superior\ncivilization. The thing that impresses him most is what he calls \"the\nimmortality idea\". The person who got that up was a world-genius, he\nexclaims. \"If you can once get a man to believing in immortality,\nthere is no more left for you to desire; you can take everything he\nowns--you can skin him alive if it pleases you--and he will bear it\nall with perfect good humor.\"\n\nAnd is that merely the spiritual deficiency of a Nibelung--or the\neffort of a young author to be smart? Would you like to hear that view\nof the most vital of Christian doctrines set forth in the language of\nscholarship and culture? Would you like to know how an ecclesiastical\nauthority, equipped with every tool of modern learning, would set\nabout voicing the idea that the function of the teaching of Heaven is\nto chloroform the poor, so that the rich may continue to rob them in\nsecurity?\n\nHere under my hand is a volume in the newest dress of scholarship,\ndated 1912, and written by Professor Georges Chatterton-Hill, of the\nUniversity of Geneva. Its title is \"The Sociological Value of\nChristianity\", and from cover to cover it is a warning to the rich of\nthe danger they run in giving up their religion and ceasing to support\nits priests. It explains how \"the genius of Christianity has succeeded\nin making the individual suffering, the individual sacrifices, which\nare indispensible for the welfare of the collectivity, appear as\nindispensible for the individual welfare.\" The learned professor makes\nplain just what he means by \"individual suffering, individual\nsacrifices\"; he means all the horrors of capitalism; and the advantage\nof Christianity is that it makes you think that by submitting to these\nhorrors, you are profiting your own soul. \"By making individual\nsalvation depend on the acceptance of suffering, on the voluntary\nsacrifice of egotistical interests, Christianity adapts the individual\nto society\".\n\nAnd this, as the professor explains, is not an easy thing to do, in a\nworld in which so many people are thinking for themselves. \"The only\nmeans of causing the rationalized individual to consent to the\nsacrifice ... is to captivate him with a sufficiently powerful ideal\"\nAnd the professor shows how beautifully Jesus can be used for this\npurpose. \"Jesus, the so-called humanitarian, never ceased to insist on\nthe necessity of suffering, the desirableness of suffering--of that\nsuffering which a weak and sickly humanitarianism would fain suppress\nif it could.\"\n\nYou get this, you \"blanket-stiff\", you \"husky\", or \"wop\", or whatever\nyou are--you disinherited of the earth, you proletarians who have only\nyour labor-power to sell, you weak and sickly ones who are condemned\nto elimination? There has come, let us say, a period of\n\"overproduction\"; you have raised too much food, and therefore you are\nstarving, you have woven too much cloth, and therefore you are naked,\nyou have finished the world for your masters, and it is time for you\nto move out of the way. As the sociologist from Geneva phrases it,\n\"Your suppression imposes itself as an imperious necessity.\" And the\nfunction of the Christian religion is to make you enjoy the process,\nby \"captivating you with a sufficiently powerful ideal\"! The priest\nwill fill your nostrils with incense, your eyes with candle-lights and\nimages, your ears with sweet music and soothing words; and so you will\nperish without raising a finger! \"Here,\" reflects the professor, \"we\nsee how magnificently the teaching of Jesus applies to all classes of\nsociety!\"\n\nSomebody has evidently put up to our Christian sociologist the\nembarrassing fact that so many of those who survive under the\ncapitalist system are godless scoundrels. But do you think that\ntroubles him? Not for long. Like all religious thinkers, he carries\nwith his scholar's equipment a pair of metaphysical wings, wherewith\nat any moment he may soar into the empyrean, out of reach of vulgar\nmaterialists, like you and me. \"Inequality signifies inequality of\ncapacity,\" he explains; but the standard whereby we judge this\ncapacity \"cannot be the standard of the moral law.\"\n\n     The laws which govern the biological evolution of man are\n     known, but those which govern his moral nature cannot be\n     known; the moral nature appertains to the Absolute, and\n     hence is not subject to the law of inequality!\n\nAs an exhibition of metaphysical wing-power, that is almost as\nwonderful as the flight of Cardinal Newman when confronted with the\nfact that his divinely guided church had burned men for teaching the\nCopernican view of the universe; that infallible popes had again and\nagain condemned this heresy #ex cathedra#. Said the eloquent cardinal:\n\n     Scripture says that the sun moves and the earth is\n     stationary, and science that the earth moves and the sun is\n     comparatively at rest. How can we determine which of these\n     opposite statements is the very truth #till we know what\n     motion is#?\n\n#Spook Hunting#\n\nDo not imagine that it is only in Geneva that Christian professors\nrealize this peril from the loss of faith. It is never far from the\nthoughts of any of them--for, of course, no man can look at the\npresent system and not wonder how the poor stand it, and more\nespecially #why# they stand it. There have been many thinking men who\nhave given up the miracle-business quite cheerfully, but have stood\nappalled at the idea of letting the lower classes find out the truth.\nYou note that idea continually in the writings of Professor Goldwin\nSmith, who was a free-thinker, but also a #bourgeois# publicist, with\na deep sense of responsibility to the money-masters of the world. He\nwas about as honest a man as the capitalist system can produce; he was\nthe #beau ideal# of the New York \"Evening Post\", which indicates his\npoint of view. He wrote:\n\n     It can hardly be doubted that hope of compensation in a\n     future state, for a short measure of happiness here, has\n     materially helped to reconcile the less favored members of\n     the community to the inequalities of the existing order of\n     things.\n\nWhen I was a student in Columbia University, I took a course called\n\"Practical Ethics\", under a professor by the name of Hyslop. The\ncourse differed from most of the forty that I tried, in that it gave\nevidence that the professor was accustomed to read the morning paper.\nHe had learned that American politics were rotten; his idea of\n\"Practical Ethics\" was to outline in elaborate detail a complete\nscheme of constitutional changes which would make it impossible for\nthe \"boss\" to control the government. I think I must have been born\nwith a charm against #bourgeois# thought, for the good professor never\nfooled me an instant; I remember I used to smile at the idea of how\nquickly the \"boss\" would brush through his constitutional cobwebs. The\nreforms required an elaborate campaign of publicity--and of course\nlong before they could be put into practice, the politicians would be\nready with devices to make them of no effect.\n\nSoon after this, my ethical professor resigned and went to hunting\nspooks. I don't want to be unfair to him; I know that he is a\ndetermined and courageous man, and it seems possible that he may\nreally have bagged some spooks. All I wish to point out here is the\nmethod he uses in seeking to persuade the heedless rich to support the\nspook-hunting industry. The very same argument as we got from the\nUniversity of Geneva and the University of Toronto! Says our head\nspook-hunter:\n\n     There has been no belief that exercised so much power upon\n     the poor as that in a future life. The politicians, men of\n     the world, have known this so well as to postpone the day of\n     political judgment by it for many years.\n\nAnd again:\n\n     The Church, having lost all its battles with science, and\n     having abandoned a strenuous intellectual defense of its\n     fundamental beliefs, has lost its power over the poor and\n     the laboring classes.... The spiritual ideal of life has\n     gone out of the masses as well as the classes, and nothing\n     is left but a venture on a struggle with wealth.\n\nAnd again, more menacingly yet:\n\n     The rich will learn in the dangers of a social revolution\n     that the poor will not sacrifice both wealth and\n     immortality.\n\nWhat is to be done about this? The question answers itself: Step up,\nladies and gentlemen, and empty your purses into the Psychical\nResearch hat! So that we may accumulate statistics as to the cost of\nmilk and honey in Jerusalem the Golden!\n\nYou read what I had to say about Bootstrap-lifters, and the Wholesale\nPickpockets' Association making use of their incantations. You admired\nmy ability to sling language, but not my taste; and you certainly did\nnot think that I would back my rhetoric with facts. But what do these\nquotations mean, unless they mean what I have said? Are not these\nthree professors men of culture? Are they not as \"spiritual\" as any\nmen of learning you can find in our present-day society?\n\nAnd now stop for a moment and put yourself in the position of the\nyoung student of the working-class, who goes to these books and\ndiscovers that truth is not truth, but only a bait for a snare. Who\ndiscovers that professors of ethics, practical or impractical, are not\ninterested in justice among men, but only in collecting funds for\ntheir specialty; that in order to get funds, they are willing to teach\nthe rich how to paralyze the minds of the poor! Do you wonder that\nsuch young students conclude that #bourgeois# thinkers do not know\nwhat honesty is, but are prostitutes, retainers and lackeys, to be\nkicked out of the temple of truth?\n\n#Running the Rapids#\n\nAnd now, can you form to yourselves a clear concept of what it means\nto society that practically all its moral teaching should be in the\nhands of men who are incapable of clean, straight thinking? That all\nthe intellectual prestige of the Church should be lent to the support\nof vagueness, futility, and deliberate evasion? Here we are, all of\nus, caught in the most terrific social crisis of history; I search for\na metaphor to picture our position, and I recall a canoe-trip in the\nwilds of Ontario, hundreds of miles down a long swift river. You sit\nin the bow of the canoe, your partner in the stern, watching ahead;\nand there comes a slide of smooth green water, and you go over it, and\ninto a torrent of foaming white, which seizes you and rushes you along\nwith the speed of a race-horse.\n\nWith every sense alert, you watch for the rocks, and when you see one,\nyou dip your paddle on one side or the other and with a quick motion\ndraw the canoe clear of the danger. If by any chance you fail to do\nit, over you go, and your partner with you, and all your belongings go\ndown-stream, and maybe you are sucked into a whirlpool, and not seen\nfor several hours afterwards. Precisely like this is the voyage of\nlife, for the whole of society and for every individual. The paddle\nwhich would save us from the rocks is experimental science; but in\nmost of our canoes we put a man who has no paddle, but a Holy Book;\nand he casts up his eyes and murmurs words in ancient Greek and\nHebrew, and now and then, when he sees an especially formidable\nobstruction--a war, or the gonococcus, or the I.W.W.--he casts a holy\nwafer upon the foaming torrent.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nAnd mind you, it isn't as if I could save myself and you could save\nyourself; we are all in the same canoe, and we all go overboard\ntogether. You, perhaps, have a son who is drafted into the trenches in\nwinter-time, and drowned in blood and mud, because in Europe the\nCatholic party supported militarism, and kept aristocratic criminals\nin control of states. Or you find yourself involved in a marital\ntragedy, and in order to free yourself from unendurable misery, you\nare obliged to go to law-courts dominated by the tradition of Paul,\nthe Roman bureaucrat, who despised women, and regarded marriage as a\nmeans of gratifying an unclean animal desire. \"It is better to marry\nthan to burn,\" he said, with unmatchable brutality; and so of course\nthose who think him a voice of God can form no conception of the\ndignity and grace of love, and if you want sound and wholesome\nsex-conventions, you will be as apt to find them among the Ashantees\nor the Kamchadals as among the followers of the Apostle to the\nGentiles.\n\nYou go to a so-called \"divorce-court,\" which is dominated by this\nChristian taboo, and exists for the purpose of barring you from a\nsecond chance at the gratification of your unclean animal desire. You\nare not permitted to tell your own story, for that would be\n\"collusion;\" you listen while your intimate friends recite the pitiful\nand shameful details of your domestic misfortune, under the\ncross-questioning of lawyers who have suppressed for the time whatever\ndecent instincts they may possess, and follow blindly the details of a\nprescribed procedure, at the cost of all sincerity, humanity and\ntruth. The next morning you find that the privacy guaranteed you by\nlaw has been taken from you by corrupt court officials, who have sold\ncopies of the testimony to the newspapers, so that all the intimate\ndetails of where you slept and where your wife slept and what you saw\nyour wife doing have been thrown out to journalistic jackals, who\nscream with glee as they rend the carcass of your dead love. And in\nthe end, perhaps, you find that you have gone through this horror for\nnothing--the august court with its Roman Catholic judge throws out\nyour petition, its suspicions having been excited by the fact that\nwhen you discovered your domestic tragedy, you sought to behave like a\ncivilized person, with pity and self-restraint, instead of like a\nsultan in Turkey, or a basso in an Italian grand opera.\n\n#Birth Control#\n\nI assert that the control of our thinking on ethical questions by\nminds enslaved to tradition and priestcraft is an unmitigated curse to\nthe race. The armory of science is full of weapons which might be used\nto slay the monsters of disease and vice--but these weapons are not\nallowed to be employed, sometimes not even to be mentioned. Consider\nthe misery which is piling itself up in the slums of our great\ncities--the degenerate, the defective, the insane, who are multiplying\nas never before in history. There exists a perfectly harmless and\npainless method of sterilizing the hopelessly unfit, so that they can\nnot reproduce their hopeless unfitness; but religion objects to this\noperation, and so the law does not make use of this knowledge. There\nexists a simple, entirely harmless, and practically costless method of\npreventing conception, which would enable us to check the blind and\nfutile fecundity of Nature, and to multiply as gods instead of as\nanimals. Consider the festering mass of misery in the slums of our\ngreat cities; consider the millions of terrified, poverty-hounded\nwomen, bearing one half-nurtured infant after another, struggling\ndesperately to feed and care for them, and seeing them drop into the\ngrave as fast as they are born--until finally the mother, worn out\nwith the Sisyphean labor, gives up and follows her misbegotten\noffspring. Consider how many women, in their agony and despair,\nmake use of the methods of the primitive savage, to escape from\nNature's curse of fecundity. Dr. Wm. J. Robinson has estimated\nthat in the United States alone there are a million abortions\nevery year; and consider that all this hideous mass of suffering--a\nbloody European war going on continually, unheeded by any newspaper\ncorrespondent--might be avoided by the use of a simple sterilizing\nformula, which we are not permitted to give! The Federation of\nCatholic Societies have placed a law upon the statute-books of the\nnation, and of all the states as well; the whole power of police and\ncourts and jails is at the service of religious bigots, and a young\ngirl is sent to prison and forcibly fed with a tube through the nose\nfor telling poverty-ridden slum-women how to keep from becoming\npregnant!\n\nAnd go among the sleek, cynical men of the world, the judges and\ndistrict attorneys, the commissioners of correction and doctors who\nperpetrated this infamy under, a so-called \"reform\" administration in\nNew York City--and what do you find? The first thing you find is that\nthey themselves, one and all, practice birth-control with their wives\nor their mistresses. The second thing you find is that the\nstatute-books are crowded with other laws which they make no pretense\nof enforcing; for example, the law which forbids the saloons to be\nopen on Sunday--which law they take the liberty of understanding to\nmean that the saloons shall not have their front doors open on Sunday.\nYou will find that they are not at all afraid of the religious taboos;\nthey are afraid of the religious vote--and even more they are afraid\nof the campaign contributions of sweat-shop manufacturers and\nlandlords, who cannot see what would become of prosperity if the women\nof the slums were to cease to breed. So once more we discover the wolf\nin sheep's clothing, the trader, making use of Tradition-worship;\nhiding behind the skirts of devout old maiden aunts and grandmothers,\nwho repeat the instructions which God gave to Adam and Eve, \"Be\nfruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.\" As if God were as\nblind as a Fifth Avenue preacher, and could see no difference between\nthe Garden of Eden, full of all fruits that grow and all creatures\nthat run and fly and swim, and a modern East Side tenement-room, with\nan oil stove and no windows and no water-closet, and the price of\ncabbage seven cents a pound!\n\n#Sheep#\n\nThere are more than a hundred thousand Protestant churches in America.\nThey own more than a billion dollars' worth of property, and in the\nWest and South they dominate the intellectual life of the country. I\ndo not wish to be unfair in what I say of them. They are far more\ndemocratic than the Catholic Church; they fight valiantly against the\nliquor traffic and those forms of graft which are obvious, or directly\nderived from vice. There are among their clergy many men who are\nhonestly seeking light, and trying to make their institutions a factor\nfor progress. But they are caught in the spirit of Lutheran\nscholasticism, narrow and ignorant, dogmatic and jealous; and they\ncannot help it, because they are pledged by their creeds and\nfoundations to Tradition-worship; they have to believe certain things\nbecause their ancestors believed them, they have to act in certain\nways, because of certain facts which existed in the world three\nthousand years ago, but which now are known only to historians.\n\nYou are familiar with the habit of a herd of sheep to follow the\nexample of their leader; if this leader leaps over a stick, all the\nrest will leap when they come to that spot, even though the stick may\nhave been taken away in the meantime. The scientist explains this\nseeming-foolishness by the fact that sheep once lived in high\nmountains, and fled from their enemies in swiftly rushing herds; when\nthe leader leaped across an abyss, the others had to leap, without\nwaiting to see in the dust and confusion. Now there are no mountains\nand no enemies, but the sheep still jump. And in exactly the same way\nthe tailor still sews buttons at the back of your dress-coat, because\na couple of hundred years age all gentlemen wore swords; in the same\nway our railroad builders make cars narrow and uncomfortable and\nliable to overturn, because a hundred years ago all cars were hauled\nby mules. In the same way the Orthodox Hebrew will eat no pork, in\nspite of the fact that the microscope affords him complete protection\nagainst disease; the orthodox Catholic will not eat meat on Friday,\nbecause he thinks Jesus was crucified on that day; the orthodox\nAnglican will not marry his deceased wife's sister, because of\nsomething he reads in Leviticus; the orthodox Baptist requires total\nimmersion in a climate quite different from that of Palestine; the\northodox Methodist refuses to enjoy fresh air and exercise on the\nSabbath.\n\nIn ancient Judea, you see, the people lived an open-air life, tending\nsheep and working the fields; so it was an excellent thing for them to\nrest from labor one day of the week, and to gather in temples to hear\nthe reading of the best literature of their time. But nowadays the\ncity slave spends his week-days shut up in an office, poring over a\nledger, or in a sweat-shop, chained to a sewing-machine. Obviously,\ntherefore, the thing to do on the seventh day is to lure him into the\nopen air, and persuade him to run and play. But do we do that, we\nhuman sheep? We write ancient Hebrew laws upon our modern\nstatute-books, and if the city slave goes into a vacant lot and tries\nto play base-ball, we send a policeman and take him to jail, and next\nmorning he is fined five dollars, and probably loses his job.\n\nIn the city where I live, a city supposed to be free and enlightened,\nbut in reality heavily burdened with churches, there are tennis courts\nbuilt and paid for out of public funds, my own included; yet I cannot\nuse these tennis courts on Sunday, because of the ancient Hebrew\ntaboo. My mail is not delivered to me, the swimming pool in the park\nis closed to me, the library is closed nearly all day. If I enquire\nabout it, I am told that it is desirable that city employees should\nhave one day's rest a week; but when I ask why it might not be\npossible to relay the employees, so that they might all have one, or\neven two days' rest a week, and still give the public their rights on\nSunday, there is no answer. But I know the answer, having probed our\npolitics of hypocrisy. There is a \"church vote\" at which all\npoliticians tremble; there are clergymen, humanly jealous when their\npeculiar graft is threatened, and hoping that if the law enforces a\ngeneral boredom, the public may be more disposed to endure the boredom\nof sermons.\n\nIn New York City the theaters are closed on Sunday; but moving\npictures having come into being since the days of Puritan rule, the\npicture-shows are free to keep open. The law permits \"sacred\nconcerts\"--which, under the benevolent sway of Tammany, has come to\nmean any sort of vaudeville; so what we have is a free rein to the\nimbecilities of \"Mutt & Jeff\" and the obscenities of Anna Held and\nGaby Deslys--while we bar the greatest moralists of our times, such as\nIbsen and Brieux.\n\nI speak with some crossness of this Sabbath taboo, because of an\nexperience which once befell me. In the second decade of this century\nof enlightenment and progress, in our free American democracy, whose\nconstitution proclaims religious toleration, and forbids the\nestablishment by the state of any form of worship, I was made to serve\na sentence of eighteen hours in the state prison of Delaware for\nplaying a game of tennis on the Sabbath. I was duly arrested upon a\nwarrant, duly sentenced by a magistrate, duly clad in a prison\ncostume, duly set to work upon a stone-pile, duly locked up over night\nin a steel-barred cell full of vermin--in a building housing some five\nhundred wretches, black and white, thirty of them serving life-terms\nunder circumstances which never permitted them a breath of fresh air\nnor a glimpse of the sunshine or the sky. They had no exercise court\nto their prison, and the inmates were not permitted to speak to one\nanother, but ate their meals in dead silence, and walked back to their\ncells with folded arms, and had their only occupation working for a\nsweat-shop contractor; this on the outskirts of the pious city of\nWilmington, with no less than ninety-one churches! The writer was\ninformed that he would return to this institution regularly every week\nunless he abandoned his godless habit of playing tennis on a private\nclub court on Sunday; he only escaped the painful punishment by making\nthe discovery that at the Wilmington Country Club it was the custom of\nthe leading officials of the city and state to play golf every Sunday,\nand by threatening to employ detectives and have these mighty ones\narrested and sent to their own prison. Which shows again the\nimportance of understanding this relationship of Superstition and Big\nBusiness!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#BOOK SIX#\n\n#The Church of the Quacks#\n\n  They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,\n  And how one ought never to think of one's self,\n  And how pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking--\n  My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking\n      How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!\n      How pleasant it is to have money.\n\n  Clough.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#Tabula Rasa#\n\nNature has given us a virgin continent, a clean slate upon which to\nwrite what we will. And what are we writing? What is our intellectual\nlife? I came to the far West, which I had been taught by novelists and\npoets to think of as a place of freedom. I came, because I like\nfreedom; I am staying because I like the climate. I find that what\nfreedom means in the West is the ability of ignorant and fanatical\npersons to start some new, fantastical quirk of scriptural\ninterpretation, to build a new cult around it, and earn a living out\nof it.\n\nMy first contact with that sort of thing was when I went to the Battle\nCreek Sanitarium to investigate hydrotherapy, and found myself in a\nnest of Seventh-day Adventists. Three generations or so ago some odd\ncharacter hit upon the discovery that the Christian churches had let\nthe devil snare them into resting on the first day of the week,\nwhereas the Bible states distinctly that the Lord \"rested on the\nseventh day\". So here is a million dollar establishment, with a\nthousand or two patients and employees, and on Friday at sundown the\nsilence of death settles upon the place, and stays settled until\nsundown of Saturday, when everything comes suddenly to life again, and\nthere is a little celebration, like Easter or New Year's, with what I\nused to call \"sterilized dancing\"--the men pairing with men and the\nwomen with women.\n\nThey are decent and kindly people, and you learn to put up with their\neccentricities; it is really convenient in some ways, because, as not\nall the city shares their delusions, there are some stores open every\nday of the week. But then you discover that the Sanitarium is training\n\"medical missionaries\" to send to Africa, and is teaching these\nsupposed-to-be-scientists that evolution is a doctrine of the devil,\nand not proven anyhow!\n\nYou get the shrewd little doctor who is running this establishment\nalone in his office, and he will smile and admit that of course it is\nnot necessary to take all Bible phrases literally; but you know how it\nis--there are different levels of intelligence, and so on. Yes, I know\nhow it is. You have an institution founded upon a certain dogma, and\nrun by means of that dogma, and it is hard to change without smashing\nthings. It is especially convenient when servants and nurses have a\nreligious upbringing, and do not steal the pocket-books of the\npatients. People will come from all over the country, and pay high\nprices to stay in such a sanitarium; you can make vegetarians of them,\nwhich you think more important than teaching abstract notions about\ntheir being descended from monkeys. Also you can manufacture\nvegetarian foods for them, and build up an enormous business--so\nobtaining that Power which is the thing desired of men.\n\nThis is but one illustration of a sort of thing of which I could cite\na hundred. The city in which I live is headquarters of another sect,\nthe \"Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene\"; primitive Methodists,\nBible-worshippers not content with the King James version, but going\nback to the Sinaitic MS. They have a \"University\", located in one of\nthe most beautiful spots that Nature ever made; an institution with\nseventy-five students. A couple of years ago I happened to meet the\n\"president,\" who was a preacher with grease on the ample expanse of\nhis black broadcloth waistcoat, and a speech full of the commonest\ngrammatical errors, such as \"you was\" and \"I seen\". The past year\nwitnessed a split, and the founding of a brand new church and\n\"University\"--because one of the preachers insisted upon preaching so\nmuch that the students got no chance to study; also because he sent\nhome a rich man's daughter whose shirt-waists revealed too much of her\nfleshly nature.\n\nAnd there is an even stranger phenomenon in the locality, taking you\nback to the Libyan desert and the time of Thais. A lady friend of\nmine, generously blessed with this world's goods, asks me have I seen\nthe hermit. \"Hermit?\" I say, and she replies, \"Didn't you know there\nwas a hermit? He lives on a mountain, in a cave, and never has\nanything to do with the world. He has no books; he contemplates\nspiritually.\" I picture my friend with her large limousine, a rolling\npalace full of ladies, drawing up at the door of this hermit's cave.\n\"He received you?\" I ask. \"Yes, he was quite polite.\" \"And what was\nyour impression of him?\" \"Oh, how he stank!\" I answer that this is the\nodor of sanctity, and my friend thinks that I am enormously witty; I\nhave to explain to her that I am not jesting, but that there are\ndefinite physiological phenomena incidental to the ecstatic life.\n\n#The Book of Mormon#\n\nOr let us take a trip to Salt Lake City, the headquarters of a still\nstranger cult.\n\nOn the morning of the 22nd of September, 1827, the Angel of the Lord\ndelivered unto Joseph Smith, Jr., an ignorant farmer-youth in a\n\"backwoods\" part of New York State, some plates which had \"the\nappearance of gold\". As we know from the scriptures, it is the habit\nof the Angel of the Lord to appear in unexpected places and to make\nmiraculous revelations to men in humble walks of life; so, as devout\nbelievers, we hold ourselves in readiness. In this case the plates\nwere written in \"reformed Egyptian\"; but the Angel thoughtfully\nprovided Joseph Smith, Jr., with Urim and Thummim, two magic stones\nwith which to read the records. They proved to deal with a mystery\nwhich has haunted the minds of Bible students for centuries--the fate\nof the \"lost ten tribes of Israel\", who were now revealed to have been\nthe ancestors of the American Indians. The Angel told Smith to found a\nnew religion, and gave him prophecies concerning things in general;\nso, on the 6th of April, 1830, in the town of Manchester, N.Y., there\nwas formally launched the \"Church of the Latter Day Saints.\" Smith\nturned over to his followers his translation of the miraculous plates,\ncalled \"The Book of Mormon\"; obviously genuine, for it read precisely\nlike the books which we already know are the revealed word of God.\nBut, on chance that this might not be sufficient, we were offered in\nthe preface two documents, the \"Testimony of Three Witnesses\", and the\n\"Further Testimony of Eight Witnesses\". The latter being the shorter,\nmay be quoted:\n\n     Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues and people,\n     unto whom this work shall come: That Joseph Smith Jr., the\n     translator of this work, has shewn unto us the plates of\n     which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold;\n     and as many of the leaves as the said Smith hath translated,\n     we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings\n     there-on, all of which has the appearance of ancient work\n     and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record with\n     words of soberness, that the said Smith has shewn unto us,\n     for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the\n     said Smith hath got the plates of which we have spoken. And\n     we give our names unto the world, to witness that which we\n     have seen, and we lie not, God bearing witness of it.\n\n  Christian Whitmer\n  Jacob Whitmer\n  Peter Whitmer, Jr.\n  John Whitmer\n  Hiram Page\n  Joseph Smith, Sr.\n  Hyrum Smith\n  Saml. H. Smith\n\nThe subsequent career of the Church of the Latter Day Saints bore out\nthe Angel's prophesies and proved conclusively its divine origin; it\nwas persecuted as the saints of old were persecuted, and its followers\nproceeded to massacre the nearby unbelieving populations, just as the\ndivinely guided Hebrews had done. Driven from place to place, they\nbuilt at Nauvoo, Ill., a beautiful temple, according to plans revealed\nin a vision, exactly like Solomon. Finally they settled in Utah, where\nthey have a magnificent marble tabernacle, and some 300,000 followers.\nThe United States government, not being entirely Biblical, objected to\ntheir practice of allowing the patriarchs of the tribe to have as many\nwives as they could support; the government confiscated the church's\nproperty, and forced it to conceal the practice of polygamy, as is\ndone by elderly church members in other parts of the country. Recently\nthe head of the church, who bears the title of \"Prophet, Seer and\nRevelator\", was persuaded to permit an examination of one of its\nsecret plates, the \"Book of Abraham\", by egyptologists, who found that\nit was ordinary Egyptian hieroglyphics, not \"reformed\", but containing\nprayers to the sun-god. But this will of course make no difference to\nthe devout followers of Joseph--any more than it has made to devout\nCatholics and Episcopalians that German scholars have proven that the\nBible legends and ritual have come from the Babylonians, and that the\nfour gospels date from the second and third centuries after Christ.\n\n#Holy Rolling#\n\nAll over America you will find these weird Bible-cults, some of them\npathetic, some of them dangerous, some of them merely grotesque. Thus,\nfor example, there was John Alexander Dowie, who founded the\n\"Christian Catholic Church in Zion\" and dressed himself up in scarlet\nand purple robes with stars on. Through his Zion City Bank and Zion\nCity Realty Company he became enormously wealthy; he finally announced\nhimself as \"Elijah the Restorer.\" I remember as a boy how he brought\nhis gospel to New York, and P.T. Barnum with Tom Thumb and the white\nelephant never made such a sensation. The ridicule of the metropolis\noverwhelmed the old prophet, and he died and passed on his robes and\nhis tabernacle and his bank to his son; straightway, according to the\nrule of all religions, the followers fell to quarrelling and splitting\nup, and suing one another in the law-courts.\n\nAlso there are the \"Holy Rollers\" and \"Holy Jumpers\", ghastly sects\nwhich cultivate the religious hysterias, and have spread like a plague\namong the women of our lonely prairie farms and desert ranches. The\n\"Holy Rollers\", who call themselves the \"Apostolic Church\", have a\nmeeting place here in Pasadena, and any Sunday evening at nine o'clock\nyou may see the Spirit of the Lord taking possession of the\nworshippers, causing moans and shrieks and convulsions; you may see a\nwoman holding her hands aloft for seventeen minutes by the watch,\nmaking chattering sounds like an ape. This is called \"talking in\ntongues\" and is a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit. If you come\nback at eleven in the evening, you will find the entire congregation,\nmen and women, prostrate on the floor, or hanging over the benches;\nand maybe a child moaning in terror, having a devil cast out.\n\nYou may be interested, perhaps, to know how to throw yourself into\nthese convulsions. Here is a paper called \"Trust\", which is \"published\nMonthly (D.V.) in the interests of Elim Faith Work and Bible Training\nSchool.\" Elizabeth Sisson writes on \"The Pentecostal Baptism\", and\ntells the story of her experiences. She \"camped on the Word of God,\"\nshe declares.\n\n     I went up to Calgary in Canada, and the leader of the\n     mission told me, \"You can go down to the mission and stay\n     there all day. There is plenty of wood, and you can stay\n     there all night.\" I went down, and there was plenty of \"let\n     go\" in me. I cried, and prayed all I knew, and got\n     wonderfully loosed....\n\n     Then the Lord said to me, \"Now, no more praying!\" God told\n     me it was mine. What was there left for me to pray about. He\n     spoiled my praying and I took up praising. I praised God\n     that He who worked in the Upper Room was working the same in\n     me. I praised, and I praised, and I praised. The devil said\n     to me, \"That's mechanical.\" I said, \"I'll praise You Lord,\n     and if You want real praise, You'll have to put the wind in\n     the sails.\"\n\n     That's the way I came through. One morning I was just\n     getting out of bed, \"this gibberish, this jargon\" as the\n     enemy likes to call it, began to come. The Lord said, \"Let\n     it babble!\" I let. The babble increased, and by night I was\n     up to my neck. I let. I still let. That's all. Someone else\n     does the work, and it does not tire you.\n\nAnd here is another paper. \"Meat in Due Season: published monthly, or\nas often as the Lord leads.\" The editor quotes the Bible, \"Call upon\nthe name of the Lord,\" and explains that \"Call means #call#.\" The word\nappears to have a special meaning to these pentecostal persons--it\nmeans working yourself into a frenzy of agitation; as the editor puts\nit, \"you must #lay# hold of the #horns# of the #altar#.\" He goes on to\nexhort--the bold face being his:\n\n     Pray as if your very life depended upon it! The first few\n     minutes seemingly all the powers of hell will contend every\n     word, the next few, relief in a measure will come, more\n     liberty in calling. In a very little while you will be #dead\n     to the room, dead to the chair#, dead to everyone around\n     you, dead to all and tremendously alive to your desperate\n     need and emptyness; this conviction will grow as you\n     increase calling upon Him. It maybe you'll weep, it maybe\n     you'll perspire, it maybe your clothing will be deranged, it\n     maybe your throat will get sore. Never for a moment let your\n     mind rest on the condition of your person. Open your mouth\n     and God has promised to fill it. Ask persistently until the\n     very floor seems to sink beneath you and the fountains of\n     the deep, of your heart let loose. Like David, \"pour out\n     your soul\" like one would pour water out of a bucket. I have\n     seen hundreds get through right at this point. When\n     #self-thought, reticence, decorum, reserve, propriety and\n     dignity# had all been thrown to the four winds of heaven.\n     Self was then obliterated and consciousness of person gone.\n     Draw near to God and He will draw near to you saith the\n     scripture, but you must draw near to Him first.\n\nThese enthusiasts derive their practices from the Shakers, a sect\nwhich originated in England, but was driven by persecution to the New\nWorld. The Shakers call themselves the \"United Society of True\nBelievers in Christ's Second Coming,\" and were founded by Ann Lee, who\nvariously termed herself the \"Female Christ\", the \"Holy Comforter\",\nand the \"God-anointed Woman\". They might be termed the suffragettes of\nreligion, for they pray always to \"Our Father and Mother, which are in\nheaven.\" They were taught the convenient doctrine that their Founder\nhad \"spiritual illumination\", so that any evidence of the senses used\nagainst her might deceive. She governed through terror, holding that\nby her mental powers she could inflict torment upon any of her\nfollowers. Fortunately she taught absolute celibacy, and so there are\nnow only about a thousand of her disciples.\n\nBible Prophecy\n\nThis far western country swarms with those fanatics who await the\nreturn of Christ, and find in Bible chronology positive evidence that\nhe is coming on a specified day. Seldom do I give a lecture on\nSocialism that some eager old lady does not come up to me and point\nout how futile are my hopes, because the Millenium will come before\nthe Revolution. Several times I have come on an item in the\nnewspapers, telling of a group of people, sometimes whole villages,\nselling their goods and going out into the fields to shout and sing\nand pray, expecting the vision of the Lord and His Angels in the\nskies. I have in my hand a pamphlet entitled \"Shekineh: The Glory of\nGod in Israel, Facts Mathematically Foretold, of the Soon Coming of\nOur Blessed Lord.\" It is earnestly, yearningly written, in that spirit\nof feeble-minded affectionateness which the Bible-sects seem to\nencourage:\n\n     Now dear reader you see that these problems tell a wonderful\n     story which I know are the Eternal Truths of God. Jesus is\n     soon coming. I believe that from now on we can say, next;\n     week perhaps our blessed Lord will return. Yet the time may\n     not end till the close of the A.M. year, which will be March\n     20th, 1897. But let us take up the sickle of God, etc. Oh,\n     my Christian friends, live near the Blessed Christ, and gain\n     eternal life through Jesus Our Lord!\n\nIn the public library I find another pamphlet, entitled \"The Our\nRace,\" which proves that the \"lost ten tribes of Israel\" are not the\nAmerican Indians, but the Irish! And here is a publication of the\n\"Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society,\" declaring:\n\n     The great pyramid in Egypt is a witness to all the events of\n     the ages and of our day. The pyramid's downward passage\n     under \"a Draconis\" symbolizes the course of Sin. Its first\n     ascending passage symbolizes the Jewish Age. Its Grand\n     Gallery symbolizes the Gospel Age. Its upper step symbolizes\n     the approaching period of tribulation and anarchy,\n     \"Judgment\" upon Christendom.\n\nIt is a Sunday morning, and I sit in the California sunshine revising\nthis manuscript, when a decorous-looking young man approaches, having\na sack over his shoulder. \"From the Bible-students,\" he says politely,\nand hands me a little paper, \"The Bible Students' Monthly: an\nIndependent, Unsectarian Religious Newspaper, Specially devoted to the\nForwarding of the Lay-men's Home Missionary Movement for the Glory of\nGod and Good of Humanity.\" The leading article is headed \"The Fall of\nBabylon: Ancient Babylon a Type--Mystic Babylon the Antitype: Why\nChristendom must Suffer--the Final Outcome.\" A note explains:\n\n     The following article is extracted from Pastor Russell's\n     posthumous volume entitled \"The Finished Mystery,\" the 7th\n     in the series of his Studies in the Scriptures and published\n     subsequent to his death. Pastor Russell held the distinction\n     of being the most fearless and powerful writer of modern\n     times on ecclesiastical subjects. In this posthumous volume,\n     which is called \"his last legacy to the Christians on\n     earth,\" is found a thorough exposition of every verse in the\n     entire book of Revelation and also an elucidation of the\n     obscure prophecy of Ezekiel. The book contains 608 pages,\n     handsomely bound in embossed cloth.\n\nPastor Russell used to publish a two-column sermon in some\nhundreds of Sunday newspapers, together with a presentment of his\nfeatures--solemn, stiff, white-whiskered, set off with a \"choker\" and\na black broadcloth coat. There are five million such faces in America,\nbut if you have an impulse to despair for your country, remember that\nit produced Mark Twain and Artemus Ward, as well as Pastor Russell and\nthe Moody and Sankey hymn-book. I quote one passage from \"The Finished\nMystery\", in order that the reader may know what it means to \"hold the\ndistinction of being the most fearless and powerful writer of modern\ntimes on ecclesiastical subjects.\" Pastor Russell does not approve of\nthe Methodists, and he quotes twelve verses of Revelation, line by\nline and phrase by phrase, showing how the evil course and downfall of\nthe Wesleyan system were divinely foretold. Thus:\n\n     \"But that they should be tormented five months.\"--In\n     symbolic time, 150 years--5x30=150. (Ezek. 4:6.) Wesley\n     became the first Methodist in 1728. (Rev. 9: 1.) When the\n     Methodist denomination, with all the others, was cast off\n     from favor in 1878 (Rev. 3:14) its powers to torment men by\n     preaching what Presbyterians describe as \"Conscious misery,\n     eternal in duration\" came to an end legally, and to a large\n     extent actually.--Rev. 9:10.\n\nP.S. A few months pass, and while this book is going to press, \"The\nFinished Mystery\" is suppressed by the government and several score\n\"Bible Students\" are landed in jail for sedition.\n\n#Koreshanity#\n\nSuch are the beliefs built on the Bible. But there are other ancient\nwritings with strange nomenclature and ritual and symbolism,\ncalculated to impress the unlettered; also our prophets have\nimaginations of their own, and can invent nomenclature and ritual and\nsymbolism never seen in heaven nor on earth before. Thus there is Dr.\nNewo Newi New, who called himself \"Archbishop of the Newthot Church,\"\nand gathered about him a harem of devoted females in San Francisco,\nand was landed in jail for using the mails to defraud. Or there is\n\"Oahspe, the Cosmic Bible,\" a work of brand-new revelation with a\nbrand-new view of the universe and all things therein:\n\n     The reader soon discovers that he must radically revise not\n     only his ideas of celestial Cosmogony, but the order and\n     significance of names and titles commonly applied to the\n     Transcendental Brethren. The great provinces of Etheria are\n     presided over by chiefs, chosen for their superior\n     development in wisdom and love. For our solar system to\n     cross one of these provinces requires about 3,000 years, and\n     between them are belts of high Etherian light which take\n     several years to pass over. The passage of each province is\n     a cycle of earthly history, and the crossings are called\n     Dawns of Dan.\n\nAnd here is Koreshanity, a revelation vouchsafed by the Lord to Dr.\nC.R. Teed of Chicago in the year 1889. This new seer took the name of\nKoresh, which is Hebrew for Cyrus, \"the Shepherd from Joseph, the\nStone of Israel, the Sun-Man; the illuminating center of the Son of\nman\", and went out on the streets of the city to preach that the earth\nis a hollow sphere with the stars inside. The street urchins of the\npork-packing metropolis threw stones at him, and the irreverent\nnewspapers took up his adventures, with the result that followers\ngathered, and now there is a flourishing colony in Florida, with a\ndignified magazine called \"The Flaming Sword\", and a collection of\npropaganda volumes: \"The Cellular Cosmogony, an Exposition of Koreshan\nUniversology and the New Geodesy\"; \"The Immortal Manhood, the Laws and\nProcesses of its Attainment in the Flesh\"; \"The Great Red Dragon, by\nLord Chester\"; \"The Coming of the Shepherd from Joseph, The Standing\nof the Great Ensign, by Koresh.\" The \"Religio-science\" of this Chicago\nrevelator is based, first upon some precise measurements of the earth\nwhich prove that its surface is concave; and second upon some\nphilological discoveries very much resembling puns. Thus the \"cross of\nChrist\" is explained in a sense of the word more common among\nhorse-breeders than among theologians:\n\n     The highest characteristic of the alchemical law is the\n     cross of Christ with sensual man. The cross means that the\n     Lord God, in order to perpetuate his own being, descends\n     into the race of sensuality.\n\nAnd again, when someone asks about meteors:\n\n     The word Heaven means things heaved up, that is, heaved up\n     from their material basis, the earth; thus, the meteors\n     which fall to the earth are composed of metallic, mineral,\n     and geological substances, being materialized or actually\n     created in the atmosphere by an alchemico-organic process\n     from zones or belts periodically open, which precipitate\n     their contents in the form or shape of meteors.\"\n\nAnd perhaps I ought also to quote the \"Indicia of Human Progress\", by\n\"Berthaldine, Matrona\". I don't know what a \"Matrona\" is--unless it is\na female matron. This female matron tells me that now is the \"Time of\nRestitution\", and explains that \"the prolification of the human race\nhas reached a fruition of the adultery of the truth and good of the\nLord with the fallacies and evils of the mortal hells\" ...We have\ncome, it seems, to the \"age of Pisces\", which is \"one of the greatest\nradical prolification\"; and what we now need is the \"power of\npolarization\", so that we may join the \"White Horse Army of the Most\nHigh\", which is the organization of the \"Aquarian age\", proclaimed by\nKoresh on January 15th, 1891.\n\n#Mazdaznan#\n\nAnd here is another and even more startling revelation from Chicago,\ngiven to a seer by the name of Dr. Otoman Prince of Adusht Ha'nish,\nprophet of the Sun God, Prince of Peace, Manthra Magi of Temple El\nKatman, Kalantar of Zoroastrian Breathing and Envoy of Mazdaznan\nliving, Viceroy-Elect and International Head of Master-Thot. If you\nhad happened to live near the town of Mendota, Illinois, and had known\nthe German grocer-boy named Otto Hanisch, you might at first have\ntrouble in recognizing him through this transmogrification. I have\ntraced his career in the files of the Chicago newspapers, and find him\nherding sheep, setting type, preaching prestidigitation, mesmerism,\nand fake spiritualism, joining the Mormon Church, then the \"Christian\nCatholic Church in Zion\", and then the cult of Brighouse, who claimed\nto be Christ returned.\n\nFinally he sets himself up in Chicago as a Persian Magus, teaching\nYogi breathing exercises and occult sex-lore to the elegant society\nladies of the pork-packing metropolis. The Sun God, worshipped for two\nscore centuries in India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, has a new shrine on\nLake Park Avenue, and the prophet gives tea-parties at which his\ndisciples are fed on lilac-blossoms--\"the white and pinkish for males,\nthe blue-tinted for females\". He wears a long flowing robe of pale\ngrey cashmere, faced with white, and flexible white kid shoes, and he\nsells his lady adorers a book called \"Inner Studies\", price five\ndollars per volume, with information on such subjects as:\n\n     The Immaculate Conception and its Repetition; The Secrets of\n     Lovers Unveiled; Our Ideals and Soul Mates; Magnetic\n     Attraction and Electric Mating.\n\nA Grand Jury intervenes, and the Prophet goes to jail for six months;\nbut that does not harm his cult, which now has a temple in Chicago,\npresided over by a lady called Kalantress and Evangelist; also a\n\"Northern Stronghold\" in Montreal, an \"Embassy\" in London, an\n\"International Aryana\" in Switzerland, and \"Centers\" all over America.\nAt the moment of going to press, the prophet himself is in flight,\npursued by a warrant charging him with improper conduct with a number\nof young boys in a Los Angeles hotel.\n\nI have dipped into Ha'nish's revelations, which are a farrago of every\nkind of ancient mysticism--paper and binding from the Bible,\nillustrations from the Egyptian, names from the Zoroastrian, health\nrules from the Hindoos, laws from the Confucians--price ten dollars\nper volume. Would you like to discover your seventeen senses, to\ndevelop them according to the Ga-Llama principle, and to share the\n\"expansion of the magnetic circles\"? Here is the way to do it:\n\n     Inhale through nostrils for four seconds, and upon one\n     exhalation, speak slowly:\n\n     Open, O thou world-sustaining Sun, the entrance unto Truth\n     hidden by the vase of dazzling light.\n\n     Again inhale for four seconds, and breathe out the following\n     sentence upon one exhalation as before:\n\n     Soften the radiation of Thy Illuminating Splendor, that I\n     may behold Thy True Being.\n\nI have a clipping from a Los Angeles newspaper telling of the\nprophet's arriving there. He takes the front page with the captivating\nheadline: \"Women Didn't Think Till They Put On Corsets\". The interview\ntells about his mysteriousness, his aloofness, his bird-like-diet, and\nhis personal beauty. \"Despite his seventy-three years, Ha'nish\nevidences no sign of age. His keen blue eyes showed no sign of\nwavering. There were no wrinkles on his face, and his walk was that of\na man of forty.\" The humor of this becomes apparent when we mention\nthat at Ha'nish's trial, three or four years ago, he was proven to be\nthirty-five years old!\n\nBeing thus warned as to the accuracy of American journalism, we shall\nnot be taken in by the repeated statements that the Mazdaznan prophet\nis a millionaire. But there is no doubt that he is wealthy; and as all\nAmericans wish to be wealthy, I will quote his formula of prosperity,\nhis method of accomplishing what might be called the Individual\nRevolution:\n\n     When hungry and you do not know where to get your next piece\n     of bread, do not despair. Thy Father, all-loving, has\n     provided, you with everything that will meet all cases of\n     emergency.\n\n     Place your teeth tightly together, with tongue pressing\n     against the lower teeth and lips parted. Breathe in, close\n     lips immediately, exhaling through the nostrils. Breathe\n     again; if saliva forms in your mouth, hold your breath so\n     you can swallow it first before you exhale. You thus take\n     out of the air the metal-substance contained therein; you\n     can even taste the iron which you convert into substance\n     required for making the blood. Should you feel that,\n     although you have sufficient iron in the blood, there is a\n     lack of copper and zinc and silver, place upper teeth over\n     lower, keep lower lip tightly to lower teeth, now breathe\n     and you can even taste the metals named. Then should you\n     feel you need more gold element for your brain functions,\n     place your back teeth together just as if you were to grind\n     the back teeth, taking short breaths only. You will then\n     learn to know that there is gold and silver all around us.\n     That our bodies are filled with quite a quantity of gold.\n\n#Black Magic#\n\nWhat all this means is that we have a continent, with a hundred\nmillion half-educated people, materially prosperous, but spiritually\nstarving; so any man who possesses personality, who looks in any way\nstrange and impressive, or has hunted up old books in a library, and\ncan pronounce mysterious words in a thrilling voice--such a man can\nfind followers. Anybody can do it with any doctrine, from anywhere,\nPersia or Patagonia, Pekin or Pompei. I would be willing to wager that\nif I cared to come out and announce that I had had a visit from _God_\nlast night, and to devote such literary and emotional power as I\npossess to communicating a new revelation, I could have a temple, a\nuniversity, and a million dollars within five years at the outside.\nAnd if at the end of five years I were to announce that I had played a\njoke on the world, some one of my followers would convince the\nfaithful that I had been an agent of God without knowing it, and that\nthe leadership had now been turned over to him.\n\nI would not be understood as believing that all our cults are\nundiluted fakery, for that would be doing injustice to some earnest\npeople. There are, in this country, many followers of the Persian\nreformer, Abbas Effendi, who call themselves Babists, and who have\nwhat I am inclined to think is the purest and most dignified religion\nin existence. There was a man named Jacob Beilhardt, who founded a\ncult in Illinois with the painful name of \"Spirit Fruit Colony\", who\nnevertheless was a man of spiritual insight, a true mystic; he was\nhonest, and so he failed, and died of a broken heart. Also there are\nthe Christian Scientists and the Theosophists, so exasperating that\none would like to throw them onto the rubbish-heap, who yet compel us\nto sift over their mountains of chaff for the grains of truth which\nwill bear fruit in future.\n\nWhile we western races have been exploring the natural world and\nperfecting the mechanical arts, the Hindoo students have been\nexploring the subconscious and its strange powers. What Myers and\nLodge and Janet and Charcot and Freud and Jung are telling us today\nthey had hints of a long time ago; and doubtless they have hints of\nother things, upon which our scientists have not yet come. I have\nfriends, perfectly sane and competent people, who tell me that they\ncan see auras, and use this ability as a means of judging character.\nShall I say that there are no auras, simply because I do not happen to\nhave this gift of seeing them? In the same way, having read Gurney's\n\"Phantasms of the Living,\" I am not ready to ridicule the claim of the\nYogi adepts, that they are able to project some kind of astral body,\nand to communicate with one another from distant places. But granting\nsuch occult powers in a world of economic strife, what follows? Simply\nnew floods of charlatanism, elaborate and complicated systems of\nritual and metaphysic for the deluding and plundering of the\ncredulous.\n\nI have seen the thing working itself out in one case known to me. A\nyoung man had a gift of mental healing; I know, because I saw it work;\nbut it did not always work, and that was annoying. He was penniless\nand had a taste for power, and to eke out his erratic endowment he got\nhimself books of Eastern lore, and day by day as I watched him I could\nsee him becoming more and more impressive, mysterious and forbidding.\nToday he is a full-fledged wonder-worker, with the language of a dozen\nmystic cults at his tongue's end, and the reverent regard of many\nwealthy ladies. I have never tried to break through his guard, but I\nfeel certain that he is a deliberate charlatan.\n\nThis is an economic process, automatic and irresistible. Just as the\nmanufacturer of honest foods is driven out by the adulterator, so the\nworker of miracles drives out the sincere investigator. As a result we\nhave here in America a plague of Eastern cults, with \"swamis\" using\nsoft yellow robes and soft brown eyes to win the souls of idle society\nladies. These teachers of ancient Hindoo lore despise us as a race of\nbarbarians; but they stay--whether because of love of man or woman, I\ndo not pretend to say.\n\nThere are the Theosophists of many brands, with schools and institutes\nand temples and colonies, and a doctrine as complex and detailed and\nfantastic as that of the Roman Catholics. I have already referred to\nthe writings of Madame Blavatsky, a runaway Russian army officer's\ndaughter, whose career reads like a tale out of the Arabian Nights.\nAnd there is Annie Besant, who was once an ardent worker in the\nSocial-democratic Federation; H.M. Hyndman tells of his dismay when\nshe went to India and walked in a procession between two white bulls!\nHere in California is Madame Tingley, with a colony and a host of\nfollowers in a minature paradise. Men work at money-lending or\nmanufacturing sporting-goods, and when they get old and tired they\nmake the thrilling discovery that they have souls; the theosophists\ncultivate these souls and they leave their money to the soul-cause,\nand there are lawsuits and exposes in the newspapers. For, you see,\nthere is ferocious rivalry in the game of cultivating millionaire\nsouls; there are slanders and feuds, just as in soulless affairs.\n\"Don't have anything to do with Madame Tingley,\" whispers a\nTheosophist lady to my Wife; and when my wife in all innocence\ninquires, \"Why not?\" the awe-stricken answer comes, \"She practices\nblack magic!\"\n\nLet me add that I do not say that she practices black magic. I do not\nbelieve that she #could# practice it, even if she wanted to--I do not\nbelieve in black magic. My purpose is merely to show how theosophists\nquarrel: going back to the days of Anu and Baal and the bronze Image\nof the Babylonian fire-god:\n\n  Let them die, but let me live!\n  Let them be put under a ban, but let me prosper!\n  Let them perish, but let me increase!\n  Let them become weak, but let me wax strong!\n\n#Mental Malpractice#\n\nThis is the other side of the fair shield of religious faith. Why, if\nthere be a power which loves and can be persuaded to aid us, may there\nnot also be a power which hates, and can be persuaded to destroy? No\nreligion has ever been able to answer this, and therefore none has\never been able to escape from devil-terrors. Even Jesus was pursued by\nSatan, and the Holy Catholic Church has its ceremonies for the\nexorcising of demons, and a most frightful formula for cursing. And\nhere are our friends the Christian Scientists, proclaiming the\nunreality of all evil, their ability to banish disease by convincing\nthemselves that they are perfect in God--yet tormented by a squalid\nphobia called \"Mental Malpractice\", or \"Malicious Animal Magnetism\".\n\nChristian Science is the most characteristic of American religious\ncontributions. Just as Billy Sunday is the price we pay for failing to\neducate our base-ball players, so Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy is\nthe price we pay for failing to educate our farmer's daughters.\n\nThat she had a power to cure disease I do not doubt, because I have a\nlittle of it myself. At first my opinion was that her \"Science\" made\nits way by curing the imaginary ailments of the idle rich. If a person\nhas nothing to do but think that he is sick, you can work easy\nmiracles by persuading him to think that he is well; and if he has\nnothing to do but think that he is well, he will help you to build\nmarble churches and maintain propaganda societies. But recently I have\nexperimented with mental healing--enough to satisfy myself that the\nsubconscious mind which controls our physical functions can be\npowerfully influenced by the will.\n\nI told the story of some of these experiments in Hearst's Magazine for\nApril, 1914. Suffice it here to say that if you will lay your hands\nupon a sick person, forming a vivid mental picture of the bodily\nchanges you desire, and concentrating the power of your will upon\nthem, you may be surprised by the results, especially if you possess\nanything in the way of psychic gifts. You do not have to adopt any\ntheories, you do not have to do it in the name of any divinity,\nancient or modern; the only bearing of such ideas is that they serve\nto persuade people to make the experiment, and to make it with\npersistence and intensity. So it has come about that \"miracles\" of\nhealing are associated with \"faith\"; and so it comes about that\nscientists are apt to flout the subject. But read of the work of Janet\nand Charcot and their followers at the Salpetriere; they have proven\nthat all kinds of seeming-organic ailments may be entirely hysterical\nin nature, and may be cured by the simplest form of suggestion.\nUnderstanding this, you may find it more easy to credit the fact that\ncripples do sometimes throw away their crutches in the grotto of\nLourdes. For my part, I can believe that Jesus performed all the\nmiracles of healing attributed to him--including the raising up of\npeople pronounced to be dead by the ignorance of that time. I am\nconvinced that in the new science of psycho-analysis we have a\nuniverse as vast as the universe of the atom or of the stars.\n\nThe Christian Scientists have got hold of this power; they have mixed\nit up with metaphysic and divinity, and built some four or five\nhundred churches, and printed the Mother Church alone knows how many\nmillion pamphlets and books. I once invested three of my hard-earned\ndollars for a copy of the Eddy Bible, and let myself be stunned and\nblinded by the flapping of metaphysical wings. It is unadulterated\nmoonshine--as the Platonist and Berkeleyan and Hegelian and other\northodox collegiate metaphysical magi can prove to you in one minute.\nWhat interests me about the phenomenon is not the slinging of\ntremendous words, but the strictly Yankee use which is made of them.\nThere is no nonsense about saving your soul in Christian Science; what\nit is for is to remove your wen, to nail down your floating kidney,\nand to enable you to hustle and make money. We saw in our politics the\ngrowth of a Party of the Full Dinner-Pail; contemporaneous therewith,\nand corresponding thereto, we see in our religious life the\ndevelopment of a Church of the Full Pocket-Book.\n\nIt is a strict religion--strictly cash. The heads of the cult do not\nissue cheap editions of \"Science and Health, With Key to the\nScriptures\", to relieve the suffering of the proletariat; no--the work\nis copyrighted, in all its varying and contradictory editions, and the\nprice is from three to seven-fifty, according to binding. Treatments\ncost from three dollars to ten, whether you come and get them or take\nthem over the telephone. And we have no nonsense about charity, we\ndon't worry about the poor who fester in our city slums; because\npoverty is a product of Mortal Mind, and we offer to all men a way to\nget rich right off the bat. You may; come to our marble churches and\nhear people testify how through the power of Divine Mind they were\nenabled to anticipate a rise in the stock-market. If you don't avail\nyourself of the opportunity, the fault is yours, and yours also the\npunishment.\n\nAs to the management of the Church, the Roman Catholic hierarchy is a\nBolshevik democracy in comparison. The Church is controlled by an\nabsolutely irresponsible self-perpetuating body of five men, who alone\ndictate its policy. I have in my hand a letter from a Christian\nScience healer who was listed as an \"authorized practitioner\", and who\nwithdrew from the Church because of its attitude on public questions.\nHe sends me a copy of his correspondence with the editors of the\n\"Christian Science Monitor\", containing a detailed analysis of the\nposition of that paper on such issues as the Ballinger land-frauds. He\nwrites:\n\n     I am thoroughly convinced now that the policy of the Church\n     is consciously plutocratic. The only recommendation I have\n     heard of the latest appointee to the Board of Directors is\n     that he is one of the richest men in the movement.\n\nAfter the Titanic disaster, Senator La Follette brought in a carefully\ndrawn bill to compel steamship companies to provide life-boats and\ntrained crews. The \"Christian Science Monitor\" opposed this bill; and\nwhen my correspondent cited the fact, he brought out a quaint bit of\nmetaphysical logic, as follows:\n\n     One would prefer to travel on a vessel without a single\n     boat, rather than on some other vessels which were loaded\n     down with life-boats, where the government of Mind was not\n     understood!\n\n#Science and Wealth#\n\nThe truth is that the brand of Mammon was on our Yankee religion from\nthe day of its birth. In the first edition of her new Bible \"Mother\"\nEddy dropped the hint to her readers: \"Men of business have said this\nscience was of great advantage from a secular point of view.\" And in\nher advertisements she threw aside all pretense, declaring that her\nwork \"Affords an opportunity to acquire a profession by which one can\naccumulate a fortune.\" When her pupils did accumulate, she boasted of\ntheir success; nor did she neglect her own accumulating.\n\nIt has been a dozen years since I looked into this cult; in order to\nbe sure that it has not been purified in the interim, I proceed to a\nstreet corner in my home city, where is a stand with a sign:\n\"Christian Science Literature.\" I take four sample copies of a\nmagazine, the \"Christian Science Sentinel\", published by the Mother\nChurch in Boston, and turn to the \"Testimonials of Healing\". In the\nissue of August 11, 1917, Mary C. Richards of St. Margarets-on-Thames,\nEngland, testifies: \"Through a number of circumstances unnecessary to\nrelate, but proving conclusively that the result came not from man but\nfrom God, employment was found.\" In the issue of December 2, 1916,\nFrances Tuttle of Jersey City, N.J., testifies how her sister was\nsuccessfully treated for unemployment by a scientist practitioner.\n\"Every condition was beautifully met.\" In the same issue Fred D.\nMiller of Los Angeles, Cal., testifies: \"Soon after this wonderful\ntruth came to me, Divine Love led me to a new position with a\nresponsible firm. The work was new to me, but I have given entire\nsatisfaction, and my salary has been advanced twice in less than a\nyear.\" In the issue of January 27, 1917, Eliza Fryant of Agricola,\nMiss., testifies how she cured her little dog of snake-bite and\nremoved two painful corns from her own foot. In the issue of August 4,\n1917, Marcia E. Gaier, of Everett, Wash., testifies how it suddenly\noccurred to her that because God is All, she would drop her planning\nand outlining in regard to real estate properties, \"upon which for\nnine months all available material methods were tried to no effect.\"\nThe result was a triumph of \"Principle\".\n\n     While working in the yard one morning and gratefully\n     communing with God, the only power, I suddenly felt that I\n     should stop working and prepare for visitors on their way to\n     look at the property. I obeyed this very distinct command,\n     and in about an hour I greeted two people who had searched\n     almost the entire city for just what we had to offer. They\n     had been directed to our place by what to material sense\n     would seem an accident, but we know it was the divine law of\n     harmony in its universal operation.\n\nAfter this no one will wonder that John M. Tutt, in a Christian\nScience lecture at Kansas City, Mo., should proclaim:\n\n     My friends, do you know that since the world began Christian\n     Science is the only system which has intelligently related\n     religion to business? Christian Science shows that since all\n     ideas belong to Mind, God, therefore all real business\n     belongs to Him.\n\nAs I said, these people have the new-old power of mental healing. They\nblunder along with it blindly, absurdly, sometimes with tragic\nconsequences; but meantime the rank and file of the pill-doctors know\nnothing about this power, and regard it with contempt mingled with\nfear; so of course the hosts of sufferers whom the pill-doctors cannot\nhelp flock to the healers of the \"Church of Christ, Scientist\".\nAccording to the custom of those who are healed by \"faith\", they\nswallow line, hook, and sinker, creed, ritual, metaphysic and\ndivinity. So we see in twentieth-century America precisely what we saw\nin B.C. twentieth-century Assyria--a host of worshippers; giving their\nworldly goods without stint, and a priesthood, made partly of fanatics\nand partly of charlatans, conducting a vast enterprise of graft, and\nharvesting that thing desired of all men, power over the lives and\ndestinies of others.\n\nAnd of course among themselves they quarrel; they murder one another's\nMortal Minds, they drive one another out, they snarl over the spoils\nlike a pack of hungry animals. Listen to the Mother, denouncing one of\nher students--a perfectly amiable and harmless youth whose only\noffense was that he had gone his own way and was healing the sick for\nthe benefit of his own pocket-book:\n\n     Behold! thou criminal mental marauder, that would blot out\n     the sunshine of earth, that would sever friends, destroy\n     virtue, put out Truth, and murder in secret the innocent,\n     befouling thy track with the trophies of thy guilt--I say,\n     Behold the \"cloud\" no bigger than a man's hand already\n     rising on the horizon of Truth, to pour down upon thy guilty\n     head the hailstones of doom.\n\nAnd again:\n\n     The Nero of today, regaling himself through a mental method\n     with the torture of individuals, is repeating history, and\n     will fall upon his own sword, and it shall pierce him\n     through. Let him remember this when, in the dark recesses of\n     thought, he is robbing, committing adultery and killing.\n     When he is attempting to turn friend away from friend,\n     ruthlessly stabbing the quivering heart; when he is clipping\n     the thread of life and giving to the grave youth and its\n     rainbow hues; when he is turning back the reviving sufferer\n     to his bed of pain, clouding his first morning after years\n     of night; and the Nemesis of that hour shall point to the\n     tyrant's fate, who falls at length upon the sword of\n     justice.\n\n#New Nonsense#\n\nIn a certain city of America is a large building given up entirely to\nthe whims of pretty ladies. Its floors are not floors but\n\"Promenades\", and have walls of glass, behind which, as you stroll,\nyou see bonnets from Paris and opera cloaks from London, furs from\nAlaska and blankets from Arizona, diamonds from South Africa and beads\nfrom the Philippines, grapes from Spain and cherries from Japan,\nfortune-tellers from Arabia and dancing-masters from Petrograd and\n\"naturopaths\" from Vienna. There are seventy-three shops, by actual\ncount, containing everything that could be imagined or desired by a\npretty lady, whether for her body, or for that vague stream of emotion\nshe calls her \"soul\". One of the seventy-three shops is a\n\"Metaphysical Library\", having broad windows, and walls in pastel\ntints, and pretty vases with pink flowers, and pretty gray wicker\nchairs in which the reader will please to be seated, while we probe\nthe mysteries of an activity widely spread throughout America, called\n\"New Thought.\"\n\nWe begin with a shelf of magazines having mystical titles: Azoth;\nMaster Mind; Aletheian; Words of Power; Qabalah; Comforter; Adept;\nNautilus; True Word; Astrological Bulletin; Unity; Uplift; Now. And\nthen come shelves of pretty pamphlets, alluring to the eye and the\npurse; also shelves of imposing-looking volumes containing the lore\nand magic of a score of races and two score of centuries--together\nwith the very newest manifestations of Yankee hustle and graft.\n\nAs in the case of Christian Science, these New Thoughters have a\nfundamental truth, which I would by no means wish to depreciate. It is\na fact that the mysterious Source of our being is infinite, and that\nwe are only at the beginning of our thinking about it. It is a fact\nthat by appeal to it we can perform seeming miracles of mental and\nmoral regeneration; we can stimulate the flow of nervous energy and of\nthe blood, thus furthering the processes of bodily healing. But the\nfact that God is Infinite and Omnipotent does not bar the fact that He\nhas certain ways of working, which He does not vary; and that it is\nour business to explore and understand these ways, instead of setting\nour fancies to work imagining other ways more agreeable to our\nsentimentality.\n\nThus, for example, if we want bread, it is God's decree that we shall\nplant wheat and harvest it, and grind and bake and distribute it.\nUnder conditions prevailing at the moment, it appears to be His decree\nthat we shall store the wheat in elevators, and ship it in freight\ncars, and buy it through a grain exchange, with capital borrowed from\na national bank; in other words, that our daily bread shall be the\nplaything of exploiters and speculators, until such a time as we have\nthe intelligence to form an effective political party and establish\nIndustrial Democracy. But when you come to study the ways of God in\nthe literature of the New Thought, do you find anything about the\nMillers' Trust and the Bakers' Trust and how to expropriate these\nagencies of starvation? You do not!\n\nWhat you find is Bootstrap-lifting; you find gentlemen and lady\npractitioners shutting their eyes and lifting their hands and\npronouncing Incantations in awe-inspiring voices--or in Capital\nLetters and LARGE TYPE: \"God is infinite, God is All-Loving, #GOD WILL\nPROVIDE.# Bread is coming to you! #Bread is coming to you!! BREAD IS\nCOMING TO YOU!!!\"\n\nYou think this is exaggeration? If so, it is because you have\nnever entered the building of the pretty ladies, and sat in the\ngray wicker chairs of the metaphysical library. One of the highest\nhigh-priestesses of the cults of New Nonsense is a lady named\nElizabeth Towne, editor of \"The Nautilus\"; and Priestess Elizabeth\ntells you:\n\n     I believe the idea that money wants you will help you to the\n     right mental condition. Be a pot of honey and let it come.\n\nI look over this Priestess' magazine, and find it full of testimonials\nand advertisements for the conjuring of prosperity. \"Are you in the\nsuccess sphere?\" asks one exhorter; the next tells you \"How to enter\nthe silence. How to manifest what you desire. The secret of\nadvancement.\" Another tells: \"How a Failure at Sixty Won Sudden\nSuccess; From Poverty to $40,000 a year--a Lesson for Old and Young\nAlike.\" The lesson, it appears, is to pay $3.00 for a book called\n\"Power of Will.\" And here is another book:\n\n     Master Key: Which can unlock the Secret Chamber of Success,\n     can throw wide the doors which seem to bar men from the\n     Treasure House of Nature, and bids those enter and partake\n     who are Wise enough to Understand and broad enough to Weigh\n     the Evidence, firm enough to Follow their Own Judgment and\n     Strong enough to Make the Sacrifice Exacted.\n\n#\"Dollars Want Me\"#\n\nI turn to the shelves of pamphlets. Here is a pretty one called \"All\nSufficiency in All Things,\" published by the \"Unity School of\nChristianity\", in Kansas City; it explains that God is God, not merely\nof the Soul, but also of the Kansas City stockyards.\n\n     This divine Substance is ever abiding within us, and stands\n     ready to manifest itself in whatever form you and I need or\n     wish, just as it did in Elisha's time. It is the same\n     yesterday, today and forever. Abundant Supply by the\n     manifestation of the Father within us, from within outward,\n     is as much a legitimate outcome of the Christ life or\n     spiritual understanding as is bodily healing.... \"Know that\n     I am God--all of God, Good, all of Good. I am Life. I am\n     Health. I am Supply. I am the Substance.\"\n\nAnd here is W.W. Atkinson of Chicago, author of a work called \"Mind\nPower\". Would you like to be an Impressive Personality? Mr. Atkinson\nwill tell you exactly how to do it; he will give you the secret of the\nMagnetic Handclasp, of the Intense, Straight-in-the-eye Look; he will\ntell you what to say, he will write out for you Incantations which you\nmay pronounce to yourself, to convince yourself that you have #Power#,\nthat the INDWELLING PRESENCE with all its #MIGHT# is yours. Mr.\nAtkinson rebukes mildly the tendency of some of his fellow\nBootstrap-lifters to employ these arts for money-making; but you\nnotice that his magazine, \"Advanced Thought\", does not decline the\nadvertisements of such too-practical practitioners.\n\nNext comes a gentleman with the musical name of Wallace Wattles, who\ntells in one pamphlet \"How to Be a Genius\", and in another pamphlet\n\"How to Get What you Want\". The thing for you to do is--\n\n     Saturate your mentality through and through with the\n     knowledge that YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.... Look upon\n     the peanut-stand merely as the beginning of the department\n     store, and make it grow; you can.\n\nAnd Mr. Wattles wattles on, in an ecstasy of acquisitiveness:\n\n     Hold this consciousness and say with deep, earnest feeling:\n     I CAN succeed! All that is possible to any one is possible\n     to me. I AM success. I do succeed, for I am full of the\n     Power of Success.\n\nImagine, if you please, a poor devil chained in the treadmill of the\ncapitalist system--a \"soda-jerker\", a \"counter-jumper\", a book-keeper\nfor the Steel Trust. His chances of rising in life are one in ten\nthousand; but he comes to the Metaphysical Library, and pays the price\nof his dinner for a pamphlet by Henry Harrison Brown, who was first a\nUnitarian clergyman, and then an extra-high Bootstrap-lifter in San\nFrancisco, an Honorary Vice-President of the International New\nNonsense Alliance. Mr. Brown will tell our soda-jerker or\ncounter-jumper exactly how to elevate himself by mental machinery. All\ncalculations of probabilities are delusions of the senses; if you have\nfaith, you can move, not merely mountains, but Riker-Hegeman's,\nMacy's, or the Steel Trust. \"How to Promote Yourself\" is the title of\none of Mr. Brown's pamphlets, in which he explains that--\n\n     Your wants are impressed on the Divine Mind only by your\n     faith. A doubt cuts the connection.\n\nA second pamphlet, which we are told is now in its thirtieth edition,\nbears the thrilling title of \"#Dollars Want Me#!\" In it Mr. Brown lays\nclaim to being a pioneer:\n\n     I believe that this little monograph is the first utterance\n     of the thought that each individual has the ability so to\n     radiate his mental forces that he can cause the Dollars to\n     feel him, love him, seek him, and thus draw at will all\n     things needed for his unfoldment from the universal supply.\n\n\"What are Dollars?\" asks our author; and answers:\n\n     Dollars are manifestations of the One Infinite Substance as\n     you are, but, unlike you, they are not Self-Conscious. They\n     have no power till you give them power. Make them feel this\n     through your thought-vibrations as you feel the importance\n     of your work. They will then come to you to be used.\n\n\"What is Poverty?\" Mr. Brown asks, and answers himself:\n\n     Poverty is a mental condition. It can be cured only by the\n     Affirmation of Power to cure: I am a part of the One, and,\n     in the One, I possess all! Affirm this and patiently wait\n     for the manifestation. You have sown the thought seed.\n\nAnd our author goes on to hand out packages of these\nthought-seeds--\"Affirmations\" as they are called, in the jargon of the\nNew Conjuring:\n\n  I desire a deep consciousness of financial freedom.\n  I desire that the flow of prosperity become equalized.\n  I desire a greater consciousness of my power to attract the dollar.\n  The Indwelling Power cares for my purse.\n  I own whatever I desire.\n\n  I can afford to use dollars for my happiness.\n  I always have a good bank account. I actually see it.\n  My one idea of the law is to use, use, USE.\n\n#Spiritual Financiering#\n\nIf the symbolism of the Episcopal Church is of the palace, and that of\nthe non-conformist sects of the counting-house, that of the\nInternational New Nonsense Alliance is of Wall Street and the\n\"ticker\". \"What is your rating in the Spiritual Bradstreet?\" asks\nWilliam Morris Nichols in the publication of the \"'Now' Folk\", San\nFrancisco:\n\n     Is it low or high? Is your credit with the Bank of the\n     Universe good or poor? If you draw a spiritual draft are you\n     sure of its being honored?\n\n     If you can answer that last question affirmatively, you are\n     on the road to become a Master in Spiritual Financiering.\n\n     Have you an account with the First (and only) Bank of\n     Spirit? If not, then you should at once open one therewith.\n     For no one can afford to keep less than a large deposit of\n     spiritual funds with that Bank.\n\nAnd how do you proceed to open your account? It is very simple:\n\n     Intend the mind in the direction indicated by your desire.\n     Seek for the Light and Guidance by which you may open up the\n     way for your Spiritual Substance, which governs material\n     supply, to reach you and make you as rich as you ought to\n     be, in freedom and happiness. All this you can, and when in\n     earnest, will do.\n\nI turn over the advertisements of this publication of the \"'Now'\nFolk\". One offers \"The Business Side of New Thought.\" Another offers\n\"The Books Without an If\", with your money back IF you are not\nsatisfied!\n\nAnother offers land in Bolivia for two dollars an acre. Another quotes\nShakespeare: \"Tis the mind that makes the body rich.\" Another offers\ntwo copies of the \"Phrenological Era\" for ten cents.\n\nThere is apparently no delusion of any age or clime which cannot find\ndupes among the readers of this New Nonsense. One notice commands:\n\n     Stop! A Revelation! A Book has been written entitled\n     \"Strands of Gold\" or \"from Darkness into Light!\"\n\nAnother announces:\n\n     The Most Wonderful Book of the Ages: The Acquarian Gospel of\n     Jesus the Christ, Transcribed from the Book of God's\n     Remembrance, the Akashic Records.\n\nAnd here is an advertisement published in Mr. Atkinson's paper:\n\n     Numerology: the Universal Adjuster! Do you know: What you\n     appear to be to others? What you really are? What you want\n     to be? What would overcome your present and future\n     difficulties? Write to x, Philosopher. You will receive full\n     particulars of his personal work which is dedicated to your\n     service. No problem is too big or too small for Numerology.\n     Understanding awaits you.\n\nAnd looking in the body of the magazine, you find this Philosopher\nimparting some of this Understanding. Would you like, for example, to\nunderstand why America entered the War? Nothing easier. The vowels of\nthe Words United States of America are uieaeoaeia, which are numbered\n2951561591, which added make 45, or 4 plus 5 equals 9. You might not\nat first see what that has to do with the War--until the Philosopher\npoints out that \"9 is the number of completion, indicating the end of\na cosmic cycle.\" That, of course, explains everything.\n\nAnd here is a work on what you perhaps thought to be a dead science,\nAstrology. It is called \"Lucky Hours for Everybody: A True System of\nPlanetary Hours--by Prof. John B. Early. Price One Dollar.\" It teaches\nyou things like this:\n\n     Saturn's negative hours are especially good for all matters\n     relating to gold-mining.... The Sun negative rules the\n     emerald, the musical note D sharp, and the number four. The\n     lunar hours are a good time to deal in public commodities,\n     and to hire servants of both sexes....\n\n     A recent lady visitor informed me that she had made several\n     vain attempts to transact important business in the hours\n     ruled by Jupiter, usually held to be fortunate, while she\n     was nearly always fortunate in what she began in the hours\n     ruled by Saturn. Upon investigation I found her name was\n     ruled by the Sun negative, and that she had Capricorn with\n     Saturn therein as her ascendant at birth, which explains.\n\nAnd finally, here is a London \"scientist\", reported in the \"Weekly\nUnity\" of Kansas City, who proves his mental power over two-horse\npower oil engines which fail to act. \"Going a little apart, he came\nback in a few minutes and said: 'The engine is all right now and will\nwork satisfactorily.' and without any further difficulty it did.\" We\nare told how Dr. Rawson gave a demonstration of his method to a\nnewspaper reporter the other day. Fixing his gaze as though looking\ninto space, he apparently became absorbed in deep contemplation and\nsaid aloud: \"There is no danger; man is surrounded by divine love;\nthere is no matter; all is spirit and manifestation of spirit.\"\n\nYou might at first find difficulty in believing what can be\naccomplished by \"demonstrations\" such as this; not merely are\ntwo-horse power oil engines made to work, but the whole gigantic\nmachine of Prussian militarism is prevented from working. You may\nrecall how Arthur Machen's magazine story of the Angels of Mons was\ntaken up and made into a Catholic legend over-night; now here is a\nNew-Nonsense legend, complete and perfect, going the rounds of our\nNonsense magazines:\n\n     London, Dec. 14.--Shell-proof and bullet-proof soldiers have\n     been discovered on the European battle-fronts. Heroes with\n     \"charmed lives\" are being made every day, according to\n     Frederick L. Rawson, a London scientist, who insists he has\n     found the miraculous way by which they are developed. He\n     calls it \"audible treatment\". \"Practical utilization of the\n     powers of God by right thinking,\" is the agency through\n     which Dr. Rawson declares he can so treat a man that he will\n     not be harmed when hundreds of men are being shot dead\n     beside him. This amazing treatment includes a new type of\n     prayer. It is being administered to hundreds of men audibly,\n     and to hundreds more by letter. Nothing since the war began\n     has aroused so much talk of modern miracles as have many of\n     the statements of Dr. Rawson....\n\n     At the taking of a wood there were five hundred yards of \"No\n     Man's Land\" to be crossed. Our troops could not get across.\n     Then Capt.----, who practices this method of prayer, treated\n     them for an hour before they started, and not a man was\n     knocked out. He was the only officer left out of eighty in\n     his brigade. He simply held onto the fact that man is\n     spiritual and perfect and could not be touched. A bullet\n     fired from a revolver only five yards away hit him over the\n     chest, tore his shirt and went out at the shoulder. But it\n     never penetrated his chest. He was frequently in a hail of\n     shells and bullets which did not touch him.\n\n#The Graft of Grace#\n\nAll this is grotesque; but it is what happens to religions in a world\nof commercial competition. It happens not merely to Christian Science\nand New Thought religions, Mazdaznan and Zionist, Holy Roller and\nMormon religions, but to Catholic and Episcopalian, Presbyterian and\nMethodist and Baptist religions. For you see, when you are with the\nwolves you must howl with them; when you are competing with fakirs you\nmust fake. The ordinary Christian will read the claims of the New\nThought fakers with contempt; but have I not shown the Catholic Church\npublishing long lists of money-miracles? Have I not shown the Church\nof Good Society, our exclusive and aristocratic Protestant Episcopal\ncommunion, pretending to call rain and to banish pestilence, to\nprotect crops and win wars and heal those who are \"sick in\nestate\"--that is, who are in business trouble?\n\nThe reader will say that I am a cynic, despising my fellows; but that\nis not so. I am an economic scientist, analyzing the forces which\noperate in human societies. I blame the prophets and priests and\nhealers for their fall from idealism; but I blame still more the\ncompetitive wage-system, which presents them with the alternative to\nswindle or to starve.\n\nFor, you see, the prophet has to have food. He has frequently got\nalong with almost none, and with only a rag for clothing; in Palestine\nand India, where the climate is warm, a sincere faith has been\npossible for short periods. But the modern prophet who expects to\ninfluence the minds of men has to have books and newspapers; he will\nfind a telephone and a typewriter and postage-stamps hardly to be\ndispensed with, also in Europe and America some sort of a roof over\nhis meeting place. So the prophet is caught, like all the rest of us,\nin the net of the speculator and the landlord. He has to get money,\nand in order to get it he has to impress those who already have\nit--people whose minds and souls have been deformed by the system of\nparasitism and exploitation.\n\nSo the prophet becomes a charlatan; or, if he refuses, he becomes a\nmartyr, and founds a church which becomes a church of charlatans. I\ncare not how sincere, how passionately proletarian a religious prophet\nmay be, that is the fate which sooner or later befalls him in a\ncompetitive society--to be the founder of an organization of fools,\nconducted by knaves, for the benefit of wolves. That fate befell\nBuddha and Jesus, it befell Ignatius Loyola and Francis of Assisi,\nJohn Fox and John Calvin and John Wesley.\n\nA friend of mine who has made a study of \"Spiritualism\" describes to\nme the conditions in that field. The mediums are people, mostly women,\nwith a peculiar gift; whether we believe in the survival of\npersonality, or whether we call it telepathy, does not alter the fact\nthat they have a rare and special sensitiveness, a new faculty which\nscience must investigate. They come, poor people mostly--for the\nwell-to-do will seldom give their time to exacting and wearisome\nexperiments. They come, wearing frayed and thin clothing, shivering\nwith cold, obviously undernourished; and their survival depends upon\ntheir producing \"phenomena\"--which phenomena are capricious, and will\nnot come at call. So, what more natural than that mediums should\nresort to faking? That the whole field should be reeking with fraud,\nand science should be held back from understanding an extraordinary\npower of the subconscious mind?\n\nEver since we came to Pasadena, various ladies have been telling us\nabout the wondrous powers of a mulatto-woman, a manicurist at the\ncity's most fashionable hotel. The other day, out of curiosity, my\nwife and I went; the moment the \"medium\" opened her mouth my wife\nrecognized her as the person who has been trying for several months to\nget me on the telephone to tell me how the spirit of Jack London is\nseeking to communicate with me! The #seance# was a public one, a\ngathering composed, half of wealthy and cultured society-women, and\nhalf of confederates, people with the dialect and manners of a\nvaudeville troupe. A megaphone was set in the middle of the floor, the\nroom was made dark, a couple of hymns were sung, and then the spirit\nof Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke through the megaphone with a Bowery\naccent, and gave communications from relatives and friends of the\nvarious confederates. \"Jesus is with us\", said Dr. Holmes. \"The spirit\nof Jesus bids you to study spiritualism.\" And then came the voice of a\nchild: \"Mamma! Mamma!\" \"It is little Georgie!\" cried Dr. Holmes; and\none of the society ladies started, and answered, and presently burst\ninto tears. A marvelous piece of evidence--especially when you recall\nthat the story of this mother's bereavement had been published in all\nthe papers a couple of months before!\n\nAnd this kind of swindling is going on every night in every city of\nAmerica. It goes on wholesale for months every summer at Lily Dale, in\nNew York State, where the spiritualists hold their combination of\nChautauqua and Coney Island. And the same thing is going on in the\nfield of mental healing, and of all other \"occult\" forces and powers,\nwhether real or imaginary. It is going on with new spiritual fervors,\nnew moral idealisms, new poetry, new music, new painting, new\nsculpture. The faker, the charlatan is everywhere--using the mental\nand moral and artistic forces of life as a means of delivering himself\nfrom economic servitude. Everywhere I turn I see it--credulity being\nexploited, and men of practical judgment, watching the game and seeing\nthrough it, made hard in their attitude of materialism. How many men I\nknow who sit by in sullen protest while their wives drift from one new\nquackery to another, wasting their income seeking health and happiness\nin futile emotionalism! How many kind and sensitive spirits I\nknow--both men and women--who pour their treasures of faith and\nadmiration into the laps of hierophants who began by fooling all\nmankind and ended by fooling themselves!\n\nIn each one of the cults of what I have called the \"Church of the\nQuacks\", there are thousands, perhaps millions of entirely sincere,\nself-sacrificing people. They will read this book--if anyone can\npersuade them to read it--with pain and anger; thinking that I am\nmocking at their faith, and have no appreciation of their devotion.\nAll that I can say is that I am trying to show them how they are being\ntrapped, how their fine and generous qualities are being used by\nexploiters of one sort or another; and how this must continue, world\nwithout end, until there is order in the material affairs of the race,\nuntil justice has been established as the law of man's dealing with\nhis fellows.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#BOOK SEVEN#\n\n#The Church of the Social Revolution#\n\n  They have taken the tomb of our Comrade Christ--\n    Infidel hordes that believe not in man;\n  Stable and stall for his birth sufficed,\n    But his tomb is built on a kingly plan.\n  They have hedged him round with pomp and parade,\n    They have buried him deep under steel and stone--\n  But we come leading the great Crusade\n    To give our Comrade back to his own.\n\n  Waddell.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n#Christ and Caesar#\n\nIn the most deeply significant of the legends concerning Jesus, we are\ntold how the devil took him up into a high mountain and showed him all\nthe kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and the devil said unto\nhim: \"All this power will I give unto thee, and the glory of them, for\nthat is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If\nthou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine.\" Jesus, as we\nknow, answered and said \"Get thee behind me, Satan!\" And he really\nmeant it; he would have nothing to do with worldly glory, with\n\"temporal power;\" he chose the career of a revolutionary agitator, and\ndied the death of a disturber of the peace. And for two or three\ncenturies his church followed in his footsteps, cherishing his\nproletarian gospel. The early Christians had \"all things in common,\nexcept women;\" they lived as social outcasts, hiding in deserted\ncatacombs, and being thrown to lions and boiled in oil.\n\nBut the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one defeat, for\nhe knows human nature, and the strength of the forces which battle for\nhim. He failed to get Jesus, but he came again, to get Jesus' church.\nHe came when, through the power of the new revolutionary idea, the\nChurch had won a position of tremendous power in the decaying Roman\nEmpire; and the subtle worm assumed the guise or no less a person than\nthe Emperor himself, suggesting that he should become a convert to the\nnew faith, so that the Church and he might work together for the\ngreater glory of God. The bishops and fathers of the Church, ambitious\nfor their organization, fell for this scheme, and Satan went off\nlaughing to himself. He had got everything he had asked from Jesus\nthree hundred years before; he had got the world's greatest religion.\nHow complete and swift was his success you may judge from the fact\nthat fifty years later we find the Emperor Valentinian compelled to\npass an edict limiting the donations of emotional females to the\nchurch in Rome!\n\nFrom that time on Christianity has been what I have shown in this\nbook, the chief of the enemies of social progress. From the days of\nConstantine to the days of Bismarck and Mark Hanna, Christ and Caesar\nhave been one, and the Church has been the shield and armor of\npredatory economic might. With only one qualification to be noted:\nthat the Church has never been able to suppress entirely the memory of\nher proletarian Founder. She has done her best, of course; we have\nseen how her scholars twist his words out of their sense, and the\nCatholic Church even goes so far as to keep to the use of a dead\nlanguage, so that her victims may not hear the words of Jesus in a\nform they can understand.\n\n     'Tis well that such seditious songs are sung Only by\n     priests, and in the Latin tongue!\n\nBut in spite of this, the history of the Church has been one incessant\nstruggle with upstarts and rebels who have filled themselves with the\nspirit of the Magnificat and the Sermon on the Mount, and of that\nbitterly class-conscious proletarian, James, the brother of Jesus.\n\nAnd here is the thing to be noted, that the factor which has given\nlife to Christianity, which enables it to keep its hold on the hearts\nof men today, is precisely this new wine of faith and fervor which has\nbeen poured into it by generation after generation of poor men who\nlive like Jesus as outcasts, and die like Jesus as criminals, and are\nrevered like Jesus as founders and saints. The greatest of the early\nChurch fathers were bitterly fought by the Church authorities of their\nown time. St. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, was turned out of\noffice, exiled and practically martyred; St. Basil was persecuted by\nthe Emperor Valens; St. Ambrose excommunicated the tyrannical Emperor\nTheodosius; St. Cyprian gave all his wealth to the poor, and was\nexiled and finally martyred. In the same way, most of the heretics\nwhom the Holy Inquisition tortured and burned were proletarian rebels;\nthe saints whom the Church reveres, the founders of the orders which\ngave it life for century after century, were men who sought to return\nto the example of the carpenter's son. Let us hear a Christian scholar\non this point, Prof. Rauschenbusch:\n\n     The movement of Francis of Assisi, of the Waldenses, of the\n     Humiliati and Bons Hommes, were all inspired by democratic\n     and communistic ideals. Wiclif was by far the greatest\n     doctrinal reformer before the reformation; but his eyes,\n     too, were first opened to the doctrinal errors of the Roman\n     Church by joining in a great national and patriotic movement\n     against the alien domination and extortion of the Church.\n     The Bohemian revolt, made famous by the name of John Huss,\n     was quite as much political and social as religious.\n     Savonarola was a great democrat as well as a religious\n     prophet. In his famous interview with the dying Lorenzo de\n     Medici he made three demands as a condition for granting\n     absolution. Of the man he demanded a living faith in God's\n     mercy. Of the millionaire he demanded restitution of his\n     ill-gotten wealth. Of the political usurper he demanded the\n     restoration of the liberties of the people of Florence. It\n     is significant that the dying sinner found it easy to assent\n     to the first, hard to assent to the second, and impossible\n     to concede the last.\n\n#Locusts and Wild Honey#\n\nThis proletarian strain in Christianity goes back to a time long\nbefore Jesus; it seems to have been inherent in the religious\ncharacter of the Jews--that stubborn independence, that stiff-necked\ninsistence on the right of a man to interview God for himself and to\nfind out what God wants him to do; also the inclination to find that\nGod wants him to oppose earthly rulers and their plundering of the\npoor. What is it that gives to the Bible the vitality it has today?\nIts literary style? To say that is to display the ignorance of the\ncultured; for elevation of style is a by-product of passionate\nconviction; it is what the Jewish writers had to say, and not the way\nthey said it, that has given them their hold upon mankind. Was it\ntheir insistence upon conscience, their fear of God as the beginning\nof wisdom? But that same element appears in the Babylonian psalms,\nwhich are as eloquent and as sincere as those of the Hebrews, yet are\nread only by scholars. Was it their sense of the awful presence of\ndivinity, of the soul immortal in its keeping? The Egyptians had that\nfar more than the Hebrews, and yet we do not cherish their religious\nbooks. Or was it the love of man for all things living, the lesson of\ncharity upon which the Catholics lay such stress? The gentle Buddha\nhad that, and had it long before Christ; also his priests had\nmetaphysical subtlety, greater than that of John the Apostle or Thomas\nAquinas.\n\nNo, there is one thing and one only which distinguishes the Hebrew\nsacred writings from all others, and that is their insistent note of\nproletarian revolt, their furious denunciations of exploiters, and of\nluxury and wantonness, the vices of the rich. Of that note the\nAssyrian and Chaldean and Babylonian writing contain not a trace, and\nthe Egyptian hardly enough to mention. The Hindoos had a trace of it;\nbut the true, natural-born rebels of all time were the Hebrews. They\nwere rebels against oppression in ancient Judea, as they are today in\nPetrograd and New York; the spirit of equality and brotherhood which\nspoke through Ezekiel and Amos and Isaiah, through John the Baptist\nand Jesus and James, spoke in the last century through Marx and\nLassalle and Jaures, and speaks today through Liebknecht and Rosa\nLuxemburg and Karl Kautsky and Israel Zangwill and Morris Hillquit and\nAbraham Cahan and Emma Goldman and the Joseph Fels endowment.\n\nThe legal rate of interest throughout the Babylonian Empire was 20%;\nthe laws of Manu permitted 24%, while the laws of the Egyptians only\nstepped in to prevent more than 100%. But listen to this Hebrew law:\n\n     If thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee,\n     then thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a stranger or\n     a sojourner, that he may live with thee: Take thou no\n     interest of him, or increase; but fear thy God that thy\n     brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him any\n     money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.\n\nAnd so on, forbidding that Hebrews be sold as bond servants, and\ncommanding that at the end of fifty years all debtors shall have their\ndebts forgiven and their lands returned to them. And note that this is\nnot the raving of agitators, the demand of a minority party; it is the\nlaw of the Hebrew land.\n\nThere has been of late a great deal of new discovery concerning the\nearly Jews. Conrad Noel summarizes the results as follows:\n\n     The land-mark law, which sternly forbids encroachment upon\n     peasant rights; consideration for the foreigner; additional\n     sanitary and food laws; tithe regulations on behalf of\n     widows, orphans, foreigners, etc.; that those who have no\n     economic independence should eat and be satisfied; that\n     loans should be given cheerfully, not only without any\n     interest, but even at the risk of losing the principal. To\n     withhold a loan because the year of release is at hand in\n     which the principal is no longer recoverable, is described\n     as a grave sin. When you are compelled to free your slaves,\n     you must give them sufficient capital to embark upon some\n     industry which shall prevent their falling back into\n     slavery. A number of holidays are insisted upon. There must\n     be no more crushing of the poor out of existence, for God\n     cares for these people who have been driven to poverty, and\n     they shall never cease out of the land. Howbeit there shall\n     be no poor with you, for the Lord will bless you, if you\n     will obey these laws.\n\nBut then prosperity came, and culture, which meant contact with the\ncapitalist ideas of the heathen empires. The Jews fell from the stern\njustice of their fathers; and so came the prophets, wild-eyed men of\nthe people, clad in camel's hair and living upon locusts and wild\nhoney, breaking in upon priests and kings and capitalists with their\nfurious denunciations. And always they incited to class war and social\ndisturbance. I quote Conrad Noel again:\n\n     Nathan and Gad had been David's political advisers, Abijah\n     had stirred Jeroboam to revolt, Elijah had resisted Ahab,\n     Elisha had fanned the rebellion of Jehu, Amos thunders\n     against the misrule of the king of Israel, Isaiah denounces\n     the landlords and the usurers, Micah charges them with\n     blood-guiltiness; Jeremiah and the latter prophets, though\n     they strike a more intimate note of personal repentance,\n     strike it as the prelude to that national restoration for\n     which they hunger as exiles.\n\n     The first chapters of Isaiah are typical of the Old\n     Testament point of view. Just as the prophets of the\n     nineteenth century thundered against the \"Christian\"\n     employers of Lancashire, and told them their houses were\n     cemented with the blood of little children, so Isaiah cries\n     against his generation: \"Your governing classes companion\n     with thieves; behold you build up Sion with blood.\" Their\n     ceremonial and their Sabbath keeping are an abomination to\n     God. \"When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes\n     from you. Your hands are full of blood.\" The poor man is\n     robbed. The rich exact usury. \"Woe unto you that lay house\n     to house and field to field, that ye may dwell alone in the\n     midst of the land.\" \"Wash you, make you clean, put away the\n     evil of your doing from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;\n     learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed,\n     judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, let us\n     reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be\n     blood-colored, they shall be as white as snow; though they\n     be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing\n     and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. But if ye\n     refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured by the sword.\n\n#Mother Earth#\n\nAnd nowadays we have the Socialist and Anarchist agitators, following\nthe same tradition, possessed by the same dream as the ancient Hebrew\nprophets. I have mentioned Emma Goldman; it may be that the reader is\nnot familiar with her writings, and does not realize how very Biblical\nshe is, both in point of view and style. Let me quote a few sentences\nfrom a recent issue of her paper, \"Mother Earth\", on the subject of\nour ruling classes and their social responsibility:\n\n     Yes, you idle rich, you may howl about what we mean to do to you!\n     Your riches are rotten and your fine clothes are falling from your\n     backs. Your stocks and bonds are so tainted that the ink on them\n     should turn to acid and eat holes in your pockets and your skins. You\n     have piled up your dirty millions, but what wages have you paid to the\n     poor devils of farm hands you have robbed? And do you imagine they\n     won't remember it when the revolution comes? You loll on soft couches\n     and amuse yourselves with your mistresses; you think you are \"it\" and\n     the world is yours. You send militiamen and shoot down our organizers,\n     and we are helpless. But wait, comrades, our time is coming.\n\nDoubtless the reader is well satisfied that the author of this tirade\nis now in jail, where she can no longer defy the laws of good taste.\nThey always put the ancient prophets in jail; that is the way to know\na prophet when you meet him. Let me quote another prophet who is now\nbehind bars--Alexander Berkman, in his \"Prison Memoirs of an\nAnarchist\", discussing the same subject of plutocratic pretension:\n\n     Tell me, you four hundred, where did you get it? Who gave it\n     to you? Your grandfather, you say? Your father? Can you go\n     all the way back and show there is no flaw anywhere in your\n     title? I tell you that the beginning and the root of your\n     wealth is necessarily in injustice. And why? Because Nature\n     did not make this man rich and that man poor from the start.\n     Nature does not intend for one man to have capital and\n     another to be a wage-slave. Nature made the earth to be\n     cultivated by all. The idea we Anarchists have of the rich\n     is of highwaymen, standing in the street and robbing every\n     one that passes.\n\nOr take \"Big Bill\" Haywood, chief of the I.W.W. Hear what he has to\nsay in a pamphlet addressed to the harvest-hands he is seeking to\norganize:\n\n     How much farther do you plutes expect to go with your\n     grabbing? Do you want to be the only people left on earth?\n     Why else do you drive out the workers from all share in\n     Nature, and claim everything for yourselves? The earth was\n     made for all, rich and poor alike; where do you get your\n     title deeds to it? Nature gave everything for all men to use\n     alike; it is only your robbery which makes your so-called\n     \"ownership\". Capital has no rights. The land belongs to\n     Nature, and we are all Nature's sons.\n\nOr take Eugene V. Debs, three times candidate of the Socialist Party\nfor President. I quote from one of his pamphlets:\n\n     The propertied classes are like people who go into a public\n     theatre and refuse to let anyone else come in, treating as\n     private property what is meant for social use. If each man\n     would take only what he needs, and leave the balance to\n     those who have nothing, there would be no rich and no poor.\n     The rich man is a thief.\n\nI might go on citing such quotations for many pages; but I know that\nEmma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and Bill Haywood and Gene Debs may\nread this book, and I don't want them to close it in the middle and\nthrow it at me. Therefore let me hasten to explain my poor joke; the\nsentiments I have been quoting are not those of our modern agitators,\nbut of another group of ancient ones. The first is not from Emma\nGoldman, nor did I find it in \"Mother Earth\". I found it in the\nEpistle of James, believed by orthodox authorities to have been James,\nthe brother of Jesus. It is exactly what he wrote--save that I have\nput it into modern phrases, and changed the swing of the sentences, in\norder that those familiar with the Bible might read it without\nsuspicion. The second passage is not in the writings of Alexander\nBerkman, but in those of St. John Chrysostom, most famous of the early\nfathers, who lived 374-407. The third is not from the pen of \"Big\nBill\" but from that of St. Ambrose, a father of the Latin Church,\n340-397, and the fourth is not by Comrade Debs, but by St. Basil of\nthe Greek Church, 329-379. And if the reader objects to my having\nfooled him for a minute or two, what will he say to the Christian\nChurch, which has been fooling him for sixteen hundred years?\n\n#The Soap Box#\n\nThis book will be denounced from one end of Christendom to the other\nas the work of a blasphemous infidel. Yet it stands in the direct line\nof the Christian tradition: written by a man who was brought up in the\nChurch, and loved it with all his heart and soul, and was driven out\nby the formalists and hypocrites in high places; a man who thinks of\nJesus more frequently and with more devotion than he thinks of any\nother man that lives or has ever lived on earth; and who has but one\npurpose in all that he says and does, to bring into reality the dream\nthat Jesus dreamed of peace on earth and good will toward men.\n\nI will go farther yet and say that not merely is this book written for\nthe cause of Jesus, but it is written in the manner of Jesus. We read\nhis bitter railings at the Pharisees, and miss the point entirely,\nbecause the word Pharisee has become to us a word of reproach. But\nthis is due solely to Jesus; in his time the word was a holy word, it\nmeant the most orthodox and respectable, the ultra high-church\ndevotees of Jerusalem. The way to get the spirit of the tirades of\nJesus is to do with him what we did with the early church\nfathers--translate him into American. This time, since the reader\nshares the secret, it will not be necessary to disguise the Bible\nstyle, and we may follow the text exactly. Let me try the twenty-third\nchapter of Matthew, omitting seven verses which refer to subtleties of\nHebrew casuistry, for which we should have to go to Lyman Abbott or\nSt. Alphonsus to find a parallel:\n\n     Then Jesus mounted upon a soap-box, and began a speech,\n     saying, The doctors of divinity and Episcopalians fill the\n     Fifth Avenue churches; and it would be all right if you were\n     to listen to what they preach, and do that; but don't follow\n     their actions, for they never practice what they preach.\n     They load the backs of the working-classes with crushing\n     burdens, but they themselves never move a finger to carry a\n     burden, and everything they do is for show. They wear\n     frock-coats and silk hats on Sundays, and they sit at the\n     speakers' table at the banquets of the Civic Federation, and\n     they occupy the best pews in the churches, and their doings\n     are reported in all the papers; they are called leading\n     citizens and pillars of the church. But don't you be called\n     leading citizens, for the only useful man is the man who\n     produces. (Applause). And whoever exalts himself shall be\n     abased, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.\n\n     Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and Catholics, hypocrites!\n     for you shut up the kingdom of Heaven against men; you don't\n     go in yourself and you don't let others go in. Woe unto you,\n     doctors of divinity and Presbyterians, hypocrites! for you\n     foreclose mortgages on widows' houses, and for a pretense\n     you make long prayers. For this you will receive the greater\n     damnation! Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and Methodists,\n     hypocrites! for you send missionaries to Africa to make one\n     convert, and when you have made him, he is twice as much a\n     child of hell as yourselves. (Applause). Woe unto you, blind\n     guides, with your subtleties of doctrine, your\n     transubstantiation and consubstantiation and all the rest of\n     it; you fools and blind! Woe unto you, doctors of divinity\n     and Episcopalians, hypocrites! for you drop your checks into\n     the collection-plate and you pay no heed to the really\n     important things in the Bible, which are justice and mercy\n     and faith in goodness. You blind guides, who strain at a\n     gnat and swallow a camel! (Laughter). Woe unto you, doctors\n     of divinity and Anglicans, hypocrites! for you bathe\n     yourselves and dress in immaculate clothing but within you\n     are full of extortion and excess. You blind high churchmen,\n     clean first your hearts, so that the clothes you wear may\n     represent you. Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and\n     Baptists, hypocrites! for you are like marble tombs which\n     appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead\n     men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so you appear\n     righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and\n     iniquity. (Applause). Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and\n     Unitarians, hypocrites! because you erect statues to dead\n     reformers, and put wreathes upon the tombs of old-time\n     martyrs. You say, if we had been alive in those days, we\n     would not have helped to kill those good men. That ought to\n     show you how to treat us at present. (Laughter). But you are\n     the children of those who killed the good men; so go ahead\n     and kill us too! You serpents, you generation of vipers, how\n     can you escape the damnation of hell?\n\nAt this point, according to the report published in the Jerusalem\n\"Times\", a police sergeant stepped up to the orator and notified him\nthat he was under arrest; he submitted quietly, but one of his\nfollowers attempted to use a knife, and was severely clubbed. Jesus\nwas taken to the station-house followed by a riotous throng, and held\nupon a charge of disorderly conduct. Next morning the Rev. Dr.\nCaiaphas of Old Trinity appeared against him, and Magistrate Pilate\nsentenced him to six months on Blackwell's Island, remarking that from\nthis time on he proposed to make an example of those soap-box orators\nwho persist in using threatening and abusive language. Just as the\nprisoner was being led away, a detective appeared with a requisition\nfrom the Governor, ordering that Jesus be taken to San Francisco,\nwhere he is under indictment for murder in the first degree, it being\ncharged that his teachings helped to incite the Preparedness Day\nexplosion.\n\n#The Church Machine#\n\nThe Catholics of His time came to Jesus and said, \"Master, we would\nhave a sign of Thee\"--meaning that they wanted him to do some magic,\nto prove to their vulgar minds that his power came from God. He\nanswered by calling them an evil and adulterous generation--which is\nexactly what I have said about the Papal machine. The Baptists and\nMethodists and Presbyterians and other book-worshippers of his time\naccused him of violating the sacred commands so definitely set down in\ntheir ancient texts, and to them he answered that the Sabbath was made\nfor man and not man for the Sabbath; he called them hypocrites, and\nquoted Karl Marx at them--\"This people honoreth me with their lips,\nbut their heart is far from me.\" Because he despised the company of\nthe respectables, and went among the humble and human folk of his own\nclass in the places where they gathered--the public houses--the\nchurchly scandal-mongers called him \"a man gluttonous and a\nwine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners\"--precisely as in the\nold days they used to sneer at the Socialists for having their\nmeetings in the backrooms of saloons, and precisely as they still\ndenounce us as free-lovers and atheists.\n\nBut the longing for justice between man and man, which is the Kingdom\nof Heaven on earth, is the deepest instinct of the human heart, and\nthe voice of the carpenter cannot be confined within the thickest\nchurch-walls, nor drowned by all the pealing organs in Christendom.\nEven in these days, when the power of Mammon is more widespread, more\nconcentrated and more systematized than ever before in history--even\nin these days of Morgan and Rockefeller, there are Christian clergymen\nwho dare to preach as Jesus preached. One by one they are cast out of\nthe Church--Father McGlynn, George D. Herron, Alexander Irvine, J.\nStitt Wilson, Austin Adams, Algernon Crapsey, Bouck White; but their\nvoices are not silenced, they are like the leaven, to which Jesus\ncompared the kingdom of God--a woman took it and hid it in three\nmeasures of meal till the whole was leavened. The young theological\nstudents read, and some of them understand; I know three brothers in\none family who have just gone into the Church, and are preaching\nstraight social revolution--and the scribes and the pharisees have not\nyet dared to cast them out.\n\nIn this book I have portrayed the Christian Church as the servant and\nhenchman of Big Business, a part of the system of Mammon. Every church\nis necessarily a money machine, holding and administering property.\nAnd it is not alone the Catholic Church which is in politics, seeking\nfavors from the state--the exemption of church property from taxation,\nexemption of ministers from military service, free transportation for\nthem and their families on the railroads, the control of charity and\neducation, laws to deprive people of amusements on Sunday--so on\nthrough a long list. As the churches have to be built with money, you\nfind that in them the rich possess the control and demand the\ndeference, while the poor are humble, and in their secret hearts\njealous and bitter; in other words, the class struggle is in the\nchurches, as everywhere else in the world, and the social revolution\nis coming in the churches, just as it is coming in industry.\n\nIt is a fact of deep significance that the majority of ministers are\nproletarians, eking out their existence upon a miserable salary, and\nbeholden in all their comings and goings to the wealthy holders of\nprivilege. Even in the Roman Catholic Church that is true. The\nordinary priest is a man of the working class, and knows what working\npeople suffer and feel. So in the Catholic Church there are\nproletarian rebellions; there is many a priest who does not carry out\nthe political orders of his superiors, but goes to the polls and votes\nfor his class instead of for his pope. In Ireland, as I write, the\nyoung priests are defying their bishops and joining the Sinn Fein, a\nnon-religious movement for an Irish Republic.\n\nWhat is it that keeps the average workingman in subjection to the\nexploiter? Simply terror, the terror of losing his job. And if you\ncould get into the inmost soul of Christian ministers, you would find\nthat precisely the same force is keeping many of them slaves to\nTradition. They are educated men, and thousands of them must resent\nthe dilemma which compels them to be either fools or hypocrites. They\nhave caught enough of the spirit of their time not to enjoy having to\npose as miracle-mongers, rain-makers and witch-doctors; they would\nlike to say frankly that they do not believe that Jonah ever swallowed\nthe whale, and even that they are dubious about Hercules and Achilles\nand other demigods. But they are part of a machine, and the old men\nand the rich men who run the machine have laid down the law. Those who\nfind themselves tempted to think, remember suddenly that they have\nwives and children; they have only one profession, they have been\nunfitted for any other by a life-time of study of dead things, as well\nas by the practice of altruism.\n\nBut now the Social Revolution is coming; coming upon swift wings--it\nmay be here before this book sees the light. And who knows but then we\nmay see in America that wonderful sight which we saw in Russia, when\nChristian monks assembled and burned their holy books, and petitioned\nthe state to take them in as citizens and human beings? It is my\nbelief that when the power of exploitation is broken, we shall see the\nDead Hand crumble into dust, as a mummy crumbles when it is exposed to\nthe air. All those men who stay in the Church and pretend to believe\nnonsense, because it affords an easy way to earn a living, will\nsuddenly realize that it is possible to earn a living outside; that\nany man can go into a factory, clean and well-ventilated and humanly\nrun, and by four hours work can earn the purchasing power of ten or\nfifteen dollars. Do you not think that there may be some who will\nchoose freedom and self-respect on those terms?\n\nAnd what of those thousands and tens of thousands who join the church\nbecause it is a part of the regime of respectability, a way to make\nthe acquaintance of the rich, to curry favor and obtain promotion, to\nget customers if you are a tradesman, to extend your practice if you\nare a professional man? And what about the millions who go to church\nbecause they are poor, and because life is a desperate struggle, and\nthis is one way to keep the favor of the boss, to get a little better\nchance for the children, to get charity if you fall into need; in\nshort, to acquire influence with the well-to-do and powerful, who\nstand together, and like to see the poor humble and reverent,\ncontented in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call\nthem?\n\n#The Church Redeemed#\n\nDo I mean that I expect to see the Church--all churches--perish and\npass away? I do not, for I believe that the Church answers one of the\nfundamental needs of man. The Social Revolution will abolish poverty\nand parasitism, it will make temptations fewer, and the soul's path\nthrough life much easier; but it will not remove the necessity of\nstruggle for individual virtue, it will only clear the way for the\ndiscovery of newer and higher types of virtue. Men will gather more\nthan ever in beautiful places to voice their love of life and of one\nanother; but the places in which they gather will be places swept\nclean of superstition and tyranny. As the Reformation compelled the\nCatholic Church to cleanse itself and abolish the grossest of its\nabuses, so the Social Revolution will compel it to repudiate its\ndefense of parasitism and exploitation. I will record the prophecy\nthat by the year 1950 all Catholic authorities will be denying that\nthe Church ever opposed Socialism--true Socialism; just as today they\ndeny that the Church ever tortured Galileo, ever burned men for\nteaching that the earth moves around the sun, ever sold the right to\ncommit crime, ever gave away the New World to Spain and Portugal, ever\nburied newly-born infants in the cellars of nunneries.\n\nThe Social Revolution will compel all churches, Christian, Hebrew,\nBuddhist, Confucian, or what you will, to drive out their formalists\nand traditionalists. If there is any church that refuses so to adapt\nitself, the swift progress of enlightenment and freedom will leave it\nwithout followers. But in the great religions, which have a soul of\ngoodness and sincerity, we may be sure that reformers will arise,\nprophets and saints who, as of old, will preach the living word of\nGod. In many churches today we can see the beginning of that new\nCounter-Reformation. Even in the Catholic Church there is a\n\"modernist\" rebellion; read the books of the \"Sillon\", and Fogazzaro's\ntrilogy of novels, \"The Saint\", and you will see a genuine and vital\nprotest against the economic corruption of the Church. In America, the\n\"Knights of Slavery\" have been forced by public pressure to support a\n\"War for Democracy\", and even to compete with the Y.M.C.A. in the\ntraining camps. They are doing good work, I am told.\n\nThis gradual conquest of the old religiosity by the spirit of modern\ncommon sense is shown most interestingly in the Salvation Army.\nWilliam Booth was a man with a great heart, who took his life into his\nhands and went out with a bass-drum to save the lost souls of the\nslums. He was stoned and jailed, but he persisted, and brought his\ncaptives to Jesus---\n\n  Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath,\n  Unwashed legions with the ways of death.\n\nIncidentally the \"General\" learned to know his slum population. He had\nnot wanted to engage in charity and material activities; he feared\nhypocrisy and corruption. But in his writings he lets us see how\nutterly impossible it is for a man of real heart to do anything for\nthe souls of the slum-dwellers without at the same time helping their\ndiseased and hunger-racked bodies. So the Salvation army was forced\ninto useful work--old clothes depots, nights lodgings, Christmas\ndinners, farm colonies--until today the bare list of the various kinds\nof enterprises it carries on fills three printed pages. It is all done\nwith the money of the rich, and is tainted by subservience to\nauthority, but no one can deny that it is better than \"Gibson's\nPreservative\", and the fox-hunting parsons filling themselves with\nport.\n\nAnd in Protestant Churches the advance has been even greater. Here and\nthere you will find a real rebel, hanging onto his job and preaching\nthe proletarian Jesus; while even the great Fifth Avenue churches are\nmaking attempts at \"missions\" and \"settlements\" in the slums. The more\nvital churches are gradually turning themselves into societies for the\npractical betterment of their members. Their clergy are running boys\nclubs and sewing-schools for girls, food conservation lectures for\nmothers, social study clubs for men. You get prayer-meetings and\npsalm-singing along with this; but here is the fact that hangs always\nbefore the clergyman's face--that with prayer-meetings and\npsalm-singing alone he has a hard time, while with clubs and\neducational societies and social reforms he thrives.\n\nAnd now the War has broken upon the world, and caught the churches,\nlike everything else, in its mighty current; the clergy and the\ncongregations are confronted by pressing national needs, they are\nforced to take notice of a thousand new problems, to engage in a\nthousand practical activities. No one can see the end of this--any\nmore than he can see the end of the vast upheaval in politics and\nindustry. But we who are trained in revolutionary thought can see the\nmain outlines of the future. We see that in these new church\nactivities the clergy are inspired by things read, not in ancient\nHebrew texts, but in the daily newspapers. They are responding to the\nactual, instant needs of their boys in the trenches and the camps; and\nthis is bound to have an effect upon their psychology. Just as we can\nsay that an English girl who leaves the narrow circle of her old life,\nand goes into a munition factory and joins a union and takes part in\nits debates, will never after be a docile home-slave; so we can say\nthat the clergyman who helps in Y.M.C.A. work in France, or in Red\nCross organization in America, will be less the bigot and formalist\nforever after. He will have learned, in spite of himself, to adjust\nmeans to ends; he will have learned co-operation and social solidarity\nby the method which modern educators most favor--by doing. Also he\nwill have absorbed a mass of ideas in news despatches from over the\nworld. He is forced to read these despatches carefully, because the\nfate of his own boys is involved; and we Socialists will see to it\nthat the despatches are well filled with propaganda!\n\n#The Desire of Nations#\n\nSo the churches, like all the rest of the world, are caught in the\ngreat revolutionary current, and swept on towards a goal which they do\nnot forsee, and from which they would shrink in dismay: the Church of\nthe future, the Church redeemed by the spirit of Brotherhood, the\nChurch which we Socialists will join. They call us materialists, and\nsay that we think about nothing but the belly--and that is true, in a\nway; because we are the representatives of a starving class, which\nthinks about its belly precisely as does any individual who is\nravening with hunger. But give us what that arrant materialist, James,\nthe brother of Jesus, calls \"those things which are needful to the\nbody,\" and then we will use our minds, and even discover that we have\nsouls; whereas at present we are led to despise the very word\n\"spiritual\", which has become the stock-in-trade of parasites and\nposeurs.\n\nWe have children, whom we love, and whose future is precious to us. We\nwould be glad to have them trained in ways of decency and\nself-control, of dignity and grace. It would make us happy if there\nwere in the world institutions conducted by men and women of\nconsecrated life who would specialize in teaching a true morality to\nthe young. But it must be a morality of freedom, not of slavery; a\nmorality founded upon reason, not upon superstition. The men who teach\nit must be men who know what truth is, and the passionate loyalty\nwhich the search for truth inspires. They cannot be the pitiful\nshufflers and compromisers we see in the churches today, the Jowetts\nwho say they used to believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy\nGhost. Rather than trust our children to such shameless cynics, we\nwill make shift to train them ourselves--we amateurs, not knowing much\nabout children, and absorbed in the desperate struggle against\norganized wrong.\n\nIt is a statement which many revolutionists would resent, yet it is a\nfact nevertheless, that we need a new religion, need it just as badly\nas any of the rest of our pitifully groping race. That we need it is\nproven by the rivalries and quarrels in our midst--the schisms which\nwaste the greater part of our activities, and which are often the\nresult of personal jealousies and petty vanities. To lift men above\nsuch weakness, to make them really brothers in a great cause--that is\nthe work of \"personal religion\" in the true and vital sense of the\nwords.\n\nWe pioneers and propagandists may not live to see the birth of the new\nChurch of Humanity; but our children will see it, and the dream of it\nis in our hearts; our poets have sung of it with fervor and\nconviction. Read these lines from \"The Desire of Nations,\" by Edwin\nMarkham, in which he tells of the new Redeemer who is at hand:\n\n  And when he comes into the world gone wrong,\n  He will rebuild her beauty with a song.\n  To every heart he will its own dream be:\n  One moon has many phantoms in the sea.\n  Out of the North the norns will cry to men:\n  \"Baldur the Beautiful has come again!\"\n  The flutes of Greece will whisper from the dead:\n  \"Apollo has unveiled his sunbright head!\"\n  The stones of Thebes and Memphis will find voice:\n  \"Osiris comes: Oh tribes of Time, rejoice!\"\n  And social architects who build the State,\n  Serving the Dream at citadel and gate,\n  Will hail Him coming through the labor-hum.\n  And glad quick cries will go from man to man:\n  \"Lo, He has come, our Christ the artisan,\n  The King who loved the lilies, He has come!\"\n\n#The Knowable#\n\nThe new religion will base itself upon the facts of life, as\ndemonstrated by experience and reason; for to the modern thinker the\nbasis of all interest is truth, and the wonders of the microscope and\nthe telescope, of the new psychology and the new sociology are more\nwonderful than all the magic recorded in ancient Mythologies. And even\nif this were not so, the business of the thinker is to follow the\nfacts. The history of all philosophy might be summed up in this\nsimile: The infant opens his eyes and sees the moon, and stretches out\nhis hands and cries for it; but those in charge do not give it to him,\nand so after a while the infant tires of crying, and turns to his\nmother's breast and takes a drink of milk.\n\nMan demands to know the origin of life; it is intolerable for him to\nbe here, and not know how, or whence, or why. He demands the knowledge\nimmediately and finally, and invents innumerable systems and creeds.\nHe makes himself believe them, with fire and torture makes other men\nbelieve them; until finally, in the confusion of a million theories,\nit occurs to him to investigate his instruments, and he makes the\ndiscovery that his tools are inadequate, and all their products\nworthless. His mind is finite, while the thing he seeks is infinite;\nhis knowledge is relative, while the First Cause is absolute.\n\nThis realization we owe to Immanuel Kant, the father of modern\nphilosophy. In his famous \"antinomies\", he proved four propositions:\nfirst, that the universe is limitless in time and space; second, that\nmatter is composed of simple, indivisible elements; third, that free\nwill is impossible; and fourth, that there must be an absolute or\nfirst cause. And having proven these things, he turned round and\nproved their opposites, with arguments exactly as unanswerable. Any\none who follows these demonstrations and understands them, takes all\nhis metaphysical learning and lays it on the shelf with his astrology\nand magic.\n\nIt is a fact, which every one who wishes to think must get clear, that\nwhen you are dealing with absolutes and ultimates, you can prove\nwhatever you want to prove. Metaphysics is like the fourth dimension;\nyou fly into it and come back upside down, hindside foremost, inside\nout; and when you get tired of this condition, you take another\nflight, and come back the way you were before. So metaphysical\nthinking serves the purpose of Catholic cheats like Cardinal Newman\nand Professor Chatterton-Hill; it serves hysterical women like\n\"Mother\" Eddy; it serves the New-thoughters, who wish to fill their\nbellies with wind; it serves the charlatans and mystagogs who wish to\nbefuddle the wits of the populace. Real thinkers avoid it as they\nwould a bottomless swamp; they avoid, not merely the idealism of\nPlatonists and Hegelians, but the monism of Haeckel, and the\nmaterialism of Buechner and Jacques Loeb. The simple fact is that it\nis as impossible to prove the priority of origin and the ultimate\nnature of matter as it is of mind; so that the scientist who lays down\na materialist dogma is exactly as credulous as a Christian.\n\nHow then are we to proceed? Shall we erect the mystery into an\nUnknowable, like Spencer, and call ourselves Agnostics with a capital\nletter, like Huxley? Shall we follow Frederic Harrison, making an\ninadequate divinity out of our impotence? I have read the books of the\n\"Positivists\", and attended their imitation church in London, but I\ndid not get any satisfaction from them. In the midst of their dogmatic\npronouncements I found myself remembering how the egg falls apart and\nreveals a chicken, how the worm suddenly discovers itself a butterfly.\nThe spirit of man is a breaker of barriers, and it seems a futile\noccupation to set limits upon the future. Our business is not to say\nwhat men will know ten thousand years from now, but to content\nourselves with the simple statement of what men know #now#. What we\nknow is a procession of phenomena called an environment; our life\nbeing an act of adjustment to its changes, and our faith being the\nconviction that this adjustment is possible and worth while.\n\nIn the beginning the guide is instinct, and the act of trust is\nautomatic. But with the dawn of reason the thinker has to justify his\nfaith; to convince himself that life is sincere, that there is\nworth-whileness in being, or in seeking to be; that there is order in\ncreation, laws which can be discovered, processes which can be\napplied. Just as the babe trusts life when it gropes for its mother's\nbreast, so the most skeptical of scientists trusts it when he declares\nthat water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, and sets\nit down for a certainty that this will always be so--that he is not\nbeing played with by some sportive demon, who will today cause H20 to\nbehave like water, and tomorrow like benzine.\n\n#Nature's Insurgent Son#\n\nLife has laws, which it is possible to ascertain; and with each bit of\nknowledge acquired, the environment is changed, the life becomes a new\nthing. Consider, for example, what a different place the world became\nto the man who discovered that the force which laid the forest in\nashes could be tamed and made to warm a cave and make wild grains\nnutritious! In other words, man can create life, he can make the world\nand himself into that which his reason decides it ought to be, The\nmeans by which he does this is the most magical of all the tools he\nhas invented since his arboreal ancestor made the first club; the tool\nof experimental science--and when one considers that this weapon has\nbeen understood and deliberately employed for but two or three\ncenturies, he realizes that we are indeed only at the beginning of\nhuman evolution.\n\nTo take command of life, to replace instincts by reasoned and\ndeliberate acts, to make the world a conscious and ordered\nproduct--that is the task of man. Sir Ray Lankester has set this forth\nwith beautiful precision in his book, \"The Kingdom of Man\". We are, at\nthis time, in an uncomfortable and dangerous transition stage, as a\nchild playing with explosives. This child has found out how to alter\nhis environment in many startling ways, but he does not yet know why\nhe wishes to alter it, nor to what purpose. He finds that certain\nthings are uncomfortable, and these he proceeds immediately to change.\nDiscovering that grain fermented dispels boredom, he creates a race of\ndrunkards; discovering that foods can be produced in profusion, and\nprepared in alluring combinations, he makes himself so many diseases\nthat it takes an encyclopedia to tell about them. Discovering that\ncaptives taken in war can be made to work, he makes a procession of\nempires, which are eaten through with luxury and corruption, and fall\ninto ruins again.\n\nThis is Nature's way; she produces without limit, groping blindly,\nexperimenting ceaselessly, eliminating ruthlessly. It takes a million\neggs to produce one salmon; it has taken a million million men to\nproduce one idea--algebra, or the bow and arrow, or democracy.\nNature's present impulse appears as a rebellion against her own\nmethods; man, her creature, will emancipate himself from her law, will\nsave himself from her blindness and her ruthlessness. He is \"Nature's\ninsurgent son\"; but, being the child of his mother, goes at the task\nin her old blundering way. Some men are scheduled to elimination\nbecause of defective eyesight; they are furnished with glasses, and\nthe breeding of defective eyes begins. The sickly or imbecile child\nwould perish at once in the course of Nature; it is saved in the name\nof charity, and a new line of degenerates is started.\n\nWhat shall we do? Return to the method of the Spartans, exposing our\nsickly infants? We do not have to do anything so wasteful, because we\ncan replace the killing of the unfit by a scientific breeding which\nwill prevent the unfit from getting a chance at life. We can replace\ninstinct by self-discipline. We can substitute for the regime of\n\"Nature red in tooth and claw with ravin\" the regime of man the\ncreator, knowing what he wishes to be and how to set about to be it.\nWhether this can happen, whether the thing which we call civilization\nis to be the great triumph of the ages, or whether the human race is\nto go back into the melting pot, is a question being determined by an\ninfinitude of contests between enlightenment and ignorance: precisely\nsuch a contest as occurs now, when you, the reader, encounter a man\nwho has thought his way out to the light, and comes to urge you to\nperform the act of self-emancipation, to take up the marvellous new\ntools of science, and to make yourself, by means of exact knowledge,\nthe creator of your own life and in part of the life of the race.\n\n#The New Morality#\n\nLife is a process of expansion, of the unfoldment of new powers;\ndriven by that inner impulse which the philosophers of Pragmatism call\nthe #elan vital#. Whenever this impulse has its way, there is an\nemotion of joy; whenever it is balked, there is one of distress. So\npleasure and pain are the guides of life, and the final goal is a\ncondition of free and constantly accelerating growth, in which joy is\nenduring.\n\nThat man will ever reach such a state is more than we can say. It is a\nperfectly conceivable thing that tomorrow a comet may fall upon the\nearth and wipe out all man's labor's. But on the other hand, it is a\nconceivable thing that man may some day learn to control the movements\nof comets, and even of starry systems. It seems certain that if he is\ngiven time, he will make himself master of the forces of his immediate\nenvironment---\n\n  The untamed giants of nature shall bow down---\n  The tides, the tempest and the lightning cease\n  From mockery and destruction, and be turned\n  Unto the making of the soul of man.\n\nIt is a conceivable thing that man may learn to create his food from\nthe elements without the slow processes of agriculture; it is\nconceivable that he may master the bacteria which at present prey upon\nhis body, and so put an end to death. It is certain that he will\nascertain the laws of heredity, and create human qualities as he has\ncreated the spurs of the fighting-cock and the legs of the greyhound.\nHe will find out what genius is, and the laws of its being, and the\ntests whereby it may be recognized. In the new science of\npsycho-analysis he has already begun the work of bringing an infinity\nof subconsciousness into the light of day; it may be that in the\nevidence of telepathy which the psychic researchers are accumulating,\nhe is beginning to grope his way into a universal consciousness, which\nmay come to include the joys and griefs of the inhabitants of Mars,\nand of the dark stars which the spectroscope and the telescope are\ndisclosing.\n\nAll these are fascinating possibilities. What stands in the way of\ntheir realization? Ignorance and superstition, fear and submission,\nthe old habits of rapine and hatred which man has brought with him\nfrom his animal past. These make him a slave, a victim of himself and\nof others; to root them out of the garden of the soul is the task of\nthe modern thinker.\n\nThe new morality is thus a morality of freedom. It teaches that man is\nthe master, or shall become so; that there is no law, save the law of\nhis own being, no check upon his will save that which he himself\nimposes.\n\nThe new morality is a morality of joy. It teaches that true pleasure\nis the end of being, and the test of all righteousness.\n\nThe new morality is a morality of reason. It teaches that there is no\nauthority above reason; no possibility of such authority, because if\nsuch were to appear, reason would have to judge it, and accept or\nreject it.\n\nThe new morality is a morality of development. It teaches that there\ncan no more be an immutable law of conduct, than there can be an\nimmutable position for the steering-wheel of an aeroplane. The\nbusiness of the pilot of an aeroplane is to keep his machine aloft\namid shifting currents of wind. The business of a moralist is to\nadjust life to a constantly changing environment. An action which was\nsuicide yesterday becomes heroism today, and futility or hypocrisy\ntomorrow.\n\nThis new morality, like all things in a world of strife, is fighting\nfor existence, using its own weapons, which are reason and love.\nObviously it can use no others, without self-destruction; yet it has\nto meet enemies who fight with the old weapons of force and fraud.\nWhether it will prevail is more than any prophet can say. Perhaps it\nis too much to ask that it should succeed--this insolent effort of the\npigmy man to leap upon the back of his master and fit a bridle into\nhis mouth. Perhaps it is nothing but a dream in the minds of a few,\nthe scientists and poets and inventors, the dreamers of the race.\nPerhaps the nerve of the pigmy will fail him at the critical moment,\nand he will fall from the back of his master, and under his master's\nhoofs.\n\nThe hour of the decision is now; for this we can see plainly, and as\nscientists we can proclaim it--the human race is in a swift current of\ndegeneration, which a new morality alone can check. The struggle is at\nits height in our time; if it fails, if the fibre of the race\ncontinues to deteriorate, the soul of the race to be eaten out by\npoverty and luxury, by insanity and disease, by prostitution, crime\nand war--then mankind will slip back into the abyss, the untamed\ngiants of Nature will resume their ancient sway, and the tides, the\ntempest and the lightning will sweep the earth clean again. I do not\nbelieve that this calamity will befall us. I know that in the diseased\nsocial body the forces of resistance are gathering--the Socialist\nmovement, in the broad sense--the activities of all who believe in the\npossibility of reconstructing society upon a basis of reason, justice\nand love. To such people this book goes out: to the truly religious\npeople, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness here and now,\nwho believe in brotherhood as a reality, and are willing to bear pain\nand ridicule and privation for the sake of its ultimate achievement.\n\n        From discord and defeat,\n      From doubt and lame division,\n        We pluck the fruit and eat;\n  And the mouth finds it bitter, and the spirit sweet....\n      O sorrowing hearts of slaves,\n        We heard you beat from far!\n      We bring the light that saves,\n        We bring the morning star;\n  Freedom's good things we bring you, whence all good things are....\n\n#Envoi#\n\nI have come to the end of my task; but one question troubles me. I\nthink of the \"young men and maidens meek\" who will read this book, and\nI wonder what they will make of it. We have had a lark together; we\nhave gone romping down the vista of the ages, swatting every venerable\nhead that showed itself, beating the dust out of ancient delusions.\nYou would like all your life to be that kind of lark; but you may not\nfind it so, and perhaps you will suffer disillusionment and vexation.\n\nI have known hundreds of young radicals in my life; they have nearly\nall been gallant and honest, but they have not all been wise, and\ntherefore not so happy as they might have been. In the course of time\nI have formulated to myself the peril to which young radicals are\nexposed. We see so much that is wrong in ancient things, it gets to be\na habit with us to reject them. We have only to know that a thing is\nold to feel an impulse of impatient scorn; on the other hand, we are\ntempted to welcome anything which can prove itself to be\nunprecedented. There is a common type of radical whose aim in life is\nto be several jumps ahead of mankind; whose criterion of conduct is\nthat it shocks the bourgeois. If you do not know that type, you may\nfind him--and her--in the newest of the Bohemian cafes, drinking the\nnewest red chemicals, smoking the newest brand of cigarettes, and\ndiscussing the newest form of #psycopathia sexualis#. After you have\nwatched them a while, you realize that these ultra-new people have\nfallen victim to the oldest form of logical fallacy, the non sequitur,\nand likewise to the oldest form of slavery, which is self-indulgence.\n\nIf it is true that much in the old moral codes is based upon\nignorance, and cultivated by greed, it is also true that much in the\nold moral codes is based upon facts which will not change so long as\nman is what he is--a creature of impulses, good and bad, wise and\nfoolish, selfish and generous, and compelled to make choice between\nthese impulses; so long as he is a material body and a personal\nconsciousness, obliged to live in society and adjust himself to the\nrights of others. What I would like to say to young radicals--if there\nis any way to say it without seeming a prig--is that in choosing their\nown path through life, they will need not merely enthusiasm and\nradical fervor, but wisdom and judgment and hard study.\n\nIt is our fundamental demand that society shall cease to repeat over\nand over the blunders of the past, the blunders of tyranny and\nslavery, of luxury and poverty, which wrecked the ancient societies;\nand surely it is a poor way to begin by repeating in our own persons\nthe most ancient blunders of the moral life. To light the fires of\nlust in our hearts, and let them smoulder there, and imagine we are\ntrying new experiments in psychology! Who does not know the radical\nwoman who demonstrates her emancipation from convention by destroying\nher nerves with nicotine? Who does not know the genius of revolt who\ndemonstrates his repudiation of private property by permitting his\nlady loves to support him? Who does not know the man who finds in the\nphrases of revolution the most effective devices for the seducing of\nyoung girls?\n\nYou will have read this book to ill purpose if you draw the conclusion\nthat there is anything in it to spare you the duty of getting yourself\nmoral standards and holding yourself to them. On the contrary, because\nyour task is the highest and hardest that man has yet undertaken--for\nthis reason you will need standards the most exacting ever formulated.\nLet me quote some words from a teacher you will not accuse of holding\nto the slave-moralities:\n\n     Free dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thoughts will I\n     hear, and not that thou hast escaped a yoke.\n\n     Art thou such a one that can escape a yoke? Free from what?\n     What is that to Zarathustra! Clear shall your eye tell me:\n     free to what?\n\n     Canst thou give to thyself thy good and thine evil, and hang\n     thy will above thee as thy law? Canst thou be thine own\n     judge, and avenger of thy law?\n\n     Fearful it is to be alone with the judge and the avenger of\n     thy law. So is a stone flung out into empty space and into\n     the icy breath of isolation.\n\nOut of the pit of ignorance and despair we emerge into the sunlight of\nknowledge, to take control of a world, and to make it over, not\naccording to the will of any gods, but according to the law in our own\nhearts. For that task we have need of all the resources of our being;\nof courage and high devotion, of faith in ourselves and our comrades,\nof clean, straight thinking, of discipline both of body and mind. We\ngo to this task with a knowledge as old as the first moral impulse of\nmankind--the knowledge that our actions determine the future of life,\nnot merely for ourselves but for all the race. For this is one of the\nlaws of the ancient Hebrews which modern science has not repealed, but\non the contrary has reinforced with a thousand confirmations--that the\nsins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and\nfourth generations.\n\nI get letters from the readers of my books; nearly always they are\nyoung people, so I feel like the father of a large family. I gather\nthem now about my knee, and pronounce upon them a benediction in the\nancient patriarchal style. Children and grandchildren of my hopes, for\nages men suffered and fought, so that the world might be turned over\nto you. Now the day is coming, the glad, new day which blinds us with\nthe shining of its wings; it is coming so swiftly that I am afraid of\nit. I thought we should have more time to get ready for the taking\nover of the world! But the old managers of it went insane, they took\nto tearing each other's eyes out, and now they lie dead about us. So,\nwhether we will or not, we have to take charge of the world; we have\nto decide what to do with it, even while we are doing it. Let us not\nfail, young comrades; let us not write on the scroll of history that\nmankind had to go through yet new generations of wars and tumults and\nenslavements, because the youth of the international revolution could\nnot lift themselves above those ancient personal vices which wrecked\nthe fair hopes of their fathers--bigotry and intolerance,\nvindictiveness and vanity, envy, hatred and malice and all\nuncharitableness!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\nA\n\nAbbott, Lyman 175-191\nAbbott, L.F. 189\nAdams 214\nAdventists 237\nAmberley 52\nAnglican Church 47-88\nAppeal to Reason 144\nArcher 133\nAssyria 32\nAtkinson 267\nAustria 155\nAztecs 32\n\nB\n\nBabists 254\nBabylonia 26, 32, 50\nBaxter 183\nBeilhardt 254\nBerkman 288\nBesant 250\nBible-students 246\nBismarck 153\nBlack Magic 253\nBlavatsky 23, 256\nBlougram 109\nBonzano 121, 126\nBooth 298\nBootstrap-lifting 11, 266\nBrougher 209\nBrown 268\nBuchanan 68, 159\nBuckle 41\nBurns 75\n\nC\n\nCaesar 161\nCannon 143\nCarlyle 163\nCarnegie 177\nCatholic Church 27, 105-157, 295\nCatholic Encyclopedia 67\nCentrum 152\nCharcot 258\nChatterton-Hill 220\nChinese 74\nChristian Endeavor World 216\nChristian Science 254-264\nChurchman 101, 102\nClark 23\nClough 235\nColumbus 115\nConway 127\nCurates 71\n\nD\n\nDarwin 56\nDay 205\nDebs 289\nDixon 204, 205\nDowie 242\nDurham 80\n\nE\n\nEastman 140\nEddy 257, 261\nEducation 81\nEngland 49, 73, 75\nEngland, Church of 47-88\nEpiscopal Church 89-102\nEucharist 59\n\nF\n\nFerrer 51, 133\nFish 65\nFlint 78, 79\nFogazzaro 298\nForaker 143\nFrederick 163\n\nG\n\nGalileo 51\nGallipoli 61\nGarrison 167\nGladstone 57, 58, 81\nGoldman 287\nGoode 59, 61\nGreen 63\nGurney 254\n\nH\n\nHagen 219\nHale 213\nHammurabi 85\nHampton 181\nHa'nish 250\nHanna 122, 142, 153, 213\nHarris 72\nHarrison 304\nHaywood 288\nHebrew 36, 173, 284, 285\nHenry the Eighth 66, 67\nHill, Joe 219\nHill, Rev. J.W. 204\nHolmes 276\nHoly Rollers 242, 243\nHubbard 190\nHuss 38, 41\nHuxley 56, 58\nHyndman 256\nHyslop 223\n\nI\n\nInquisition 39, 51\nIreland 43\nIsaiah 287\n\nJ\n\nJanet 258\nJastrow 32\nJehovah 35, 36\nJesuits 148\nJesus 74, 100, 101, 161,\n   172, 174, 175, 176, 197, 221,\n   258, 281, 282, 290, 291, 292\nJews 284, 286\nJob 25, 26, 55\nJoshua 37\nJowett 54\nJungle 190, 194, 197\nJunker 152\n\nK\n\nKaiser 164-166\nKant 303\nKemp 19\nKing Coal 137\nKingsley 34\nKnights of Columbus 123\nKoreshanity 248\n\nL\n\nLa Follette 260\nLandor 34\nLankester 306\nLea 39\nLeeky 136\nLeo XIII 119, 123\nLigouri 174\nLi Hung Chang 75\nLondon 276\nLos Angeles 149, 150, 208, 209, 217\nL.A. Examiner 149\nL.A. Times 44, 151\nLourdes 258\nLuther 161, 163\n\nM\n\nMacGill 42\nMachen 273\nMallock 77\nMalthus 77\nManning 118\nManu 285\nMarkham 302\nMarx 71, 173\nMassey 55\nMazdaznan 250\nMcCabe 148\nMcDonald 139\nMellen 185\nMenace 135\nMilton 199\nMorality 308\nMore 85\nMorgan 99, 101\nMormon 239, 240\nMoses 36, 37\n\nN\n\nNazarite 29\nNew Haven 180, 181\nNew Thought 264\nN.Y. Evening Post 223\nN.Y. Sun 193\nN.Y. Times 211\nNichols 270\nNoel 83, 286\nNorthcliffe 72\nNumerology 271\n\nO\n\nOahspe 248\nO'Connell 120\nOpium 74\nOutlook 175-198\n\nP\n\nPaine 87\nPaley 87\nPasadena 150, 208, 276\nPatent Medicine 214\nPatterson 139\nPaul 56, 161, 207\nPeabody 99\nPeters 204\nPhelan 119\nPillsbury 167\nPius IX 116\nPlowman 64\nPope 67, 121, 143\nPositivists 304\nPost 216\nPotter 98\nPrescott 32\nPreston 127\nProtestant 201\nPrussia 153, 163\n\nQ\n\nQuakers 177\nQuay 212\nQuigley 129\n\nR\n\nRauschenbusch 163, 283\nRawson 272\nReformation 163, 201\nReligion 16, 17\nRig-Veda 30\nRobinson 228\nRockefeller 138, 177, 190, 192, 211\nRoosevelt 142\nRussell, C.E. 95, 181\nRussell, G. 82\nRussell, Pastor 247\nRyan 105\n\nS\n\nSacred Heart 113\nSalpetriere 238\nSalvation Army 298\nSanday 78\nSegur 117\nShaftesbury 74, 82\nShakers 244, 245\nShelley 87, 183\nSiam 34\nSinn Fein 295\nSmith, Gipsy 217\nSmith, Goldwin 223\nSoap Box 290\nSocialist Movement 311\nSpain 131\nSpiritualism 275\nStalker 78\nSterling 45\nSunday 207, 210\nSwinburne 103\nSyracuse 205\n\nT\n\nTablet 157\nTacitus 170\nTaft 142-144\nTammany 93, 143\nThackery 68, 212\nTheosophists 254, 255\nThirty-nine Articles 54\nTingley 256\nTorrey 203\nTractarian 55\nTrinity 94\nTrinity Corporation 95\nTrowbridge 29\n\nV\n\nVedder 76\nVoltaire 53\n\nW\n\nWaddell 279\nWagner 219\nWall Street 181\nWanamaker 203\nWard 55\nWattles 268\nWesley 170\nWestcott 79\nWhite, A.D. 52\nWhite, Bouck 192\nWilberforce 56, 88\nWilliam 63\nWilson 169, 186\n\nY\n\nYogi 255\nYork 76\n\n       *       *       *       *       *","title":"The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":85860}