Project Gutenberg's The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition, by Upton Sinclair
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Title: The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition
Author: Upton Sinclair
Release Date: August 7, 2005 [EBook #16470]
Language: English
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The Profits of Religion
An Essay in Economic Interpretation
By
UPTON SINCLAIR
CONTENTS
NEW YORK
VANGUARD PRESS
VANGUARD PRINTINGS
First-January, 1927
Second-April, 1927
Third-June, 1928
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
OFFERTORY
This book is a study of Supernaturalism from a new point of view--as a
Source of Income and a Shield to Privilege. I have searched the
libraries through, and no one has done it before. If you read it, you
will see that it needed to be done. It has meant twenty-five years of
thought and a year of investigation. It contains the facts.
I publish the book myself, so that it may be available at the lowest
possible price. I am giving my time and energy, in return for one
thing which you may give me--the joy of speaking a true word and
getting it heard.
Note to fifth edition, 1926: "The Profits of Religion" was first
published early in 1917. The present edition represents a sale of over
60,000 copies, without counting a dozen translations. In this edition
a few errors have been corrected, but otherwise the book has not been
changed. The reader will understand that references to the World War
are of the date 1917, prior to America's entrance.
This book is the first of a series of volumes, an economic
interpretation of culture, which now includes "The Brass Check," "The
Goose-step," "The Goslings," and "Mammonart."
* * * * *
#CONTENTS#
#Introductory#
Bootstrap-lifting
Religion
#Book One: The Church of the Conquerors#
The Priestly Lie
The Great Fear
Salve Regina!
Fresh Meat
Priestly Empires
Prayer-wheels
The Butcher-Gods
The Holy Inquisition
Hell-fire
#Book Two: The Church of Good Society#
The Rain Makers
The Babylonian Fire-God
The Medicine-men
The Canonization of Incompetence
Gibson's Preservative
The Elders
Church History
Land and Livings
Graft in Tail
Bishops and Beer
Anglicanism and Alcohol
Dead Cats
"Suffer Little Children" The Court-circular
Horn-blowing
Trinity Corporation
Spiritual Interpretation
#Book Three: The Church of the Servant Girls#
Charity
God's Armor
Thanksgivings
The Holy Roman Empire
Temporal Power
Knights of Slavery
Priests and Police
The Church Militant
The Church Triumphant
God in the Schools
The Menace
King Coal
The Unholy Alliance
Secret Service
Tax Exemption
Holy History
Das Centrum
#Book Four: The Church of the Slavers#
The Face of Caesar
Deutschland ueber Alles
Der Tag
King Cotton
Witches and Women
Moth and Rust
To Lyman Abbott
The Octopus
The Industrial Shelley
The Outlook for Graft
Clerical Camouflage
The Jungle
#Book Five: The Church of the Merchants#
The Head Merchant
"Herr Beeble" Holy Oil
Rhetorical Black-hanging
The Great American Fraud
Riches in Glory
Captivating Ideals
Spook Hunting
Running the Rapids
Birth Control
Sheep
#Book Six: The Church of the Quacks#
Tabula Rasa
The Book of Mormon
Holy Rolling
Bible Prophecy
Koreshanity
Mazdaznan
Black Magic
Mental Malpractice
Science and Wealth
New Nonsense
"Dollars Want Me!" Spiritual Financiering
The Graft of Grace
#Book Seven: The Church of the Social Revolution#
Christ and Caesar
Locusts and Wild Honey
Mother Earth
The Soap Box
The Church Machine
The Church Redeemed
The Desire of Nations
The Knowable
"Nature's Insurgent Son" The New Morality
Envoi
* * * * *
#INTRODUCTORY#
#Bootstrap-lifting#
Bootstrap-lifting? says the reader.
It is a vision I have seen: upon a vast plain, men and women are
gathered in dense throngs, crouched in uncomfortable and distressing
positions, their fingers hooked in the straps of their boots. They are
engaged in lifting themselves; tugging and straining until they grow
red in the face, exhausted. The perspiration streams from their
foreheads, they show every symptom of distress; the eyes of all are
fixed, not upon each other, nor upon their boot-straps, but upon the
sky above. There is a look of rapture upon their faces, and now and
then, amid grunts and groans, they cry out with excitement and
triumph.
I approach one and say to him, "Friend, what is this you are doing?"
He answers, without pausing to glance at me, "I am performing
spiritual exercises. See how I rise?"
"But," I say, "you are not rising at all!"
Whereat he becomes instantly angry. "You are one of the scoffers!"
"But, friend," I protest, "don't you feel the earth under your feet?"
"You are a materialist!"
"But, friend, I can see--"
"You are without spiritual vision!"
And so I move on among the sweating and groaning hordes. Being of a
sympathetic turn of mind, I cannot help being distressed by the
prevalence of this singular practice among so large a portion of the
human race. How is it possible that none of them should suspect the
futility of their procedure? Or can it really be that I am
uncomprehending? That in some way they are actually getting off the
ground, or about to get off the ground?
Then I observe a new phenomenon: a man gliding here and there among
the bootstrap-lifters, approaching from the rear and slipping his
hands into their pockets. The position of the spiritual exercisers
greatly facilitates his work; their eyes being cast up to heaven, they
do not see him, their thoughts being occupied, they do not heed him;
he goes through their pockets at leisure, and transfers the contents
to a bag he carries, and then moves on to the next victim. I watch him
for a while, and finally approach and ask, "What are you doing, sir?"
He answers, "I am picking pockets."
"Oh," I say, puzzled by his matter-of-course tone. "But--I beg
pardon--are you a thief?"
"Oh, no," he answers, smilingly, "I am the agent of the Wholesale
Pickpockets' Association. This is Prosperity."
"I see," I reply. "And these people let you--"
"It is the law," he says. "It is also the gospel."
I turn, following his glance, and observe another person
approaching--a stately figure, clad in scarlet and purple robes,
moving with slow dignity. Ha gazes about at the sweating and grunting
hordes; now and then he stops and lifts his hands in a gesture of
benediction, and proclaims in rolling tones, "Blessed are the
Bootstrap-lifters, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven." He moves on,
and after a bit stops and announces again, "Man doth not live by bread
alone, but by every word that cometh out of the mouth of the prophets
and priests of Bootstrap-lifting."
Watching a while longer, I see this majestic one approach the agent of
the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association. The agent greets him as a
friend, and proceeds to transfer to the pockets of his capacious robes
a generous share of the loot which he has collected. The majestic one
does not cringe, nor does he make any effort to hide what is going on.
On the contrary he cries aloud, "It is more blessed to give than to
receive!" And again he cries, "The laborer is worthy of his hire!" And
a third time he cries, yet more sternly, "Render unto Caesar the
things which are Caesar's!" And the Bootstrap-lifters pause long
enough to answer: "Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to
keep this law!" Then they renew their straining and tugging.
I step up, and in timid tones begin, "Reverend sir, will you tell me
by what right you take this wealth?"
Instantly a frown comes upon his face, and he cries in a voice of
thunder, "Blasphemer!" And all the Bootstrap-lifters desist from their
lifting, and menace me with furious looks. There is a general call for
a policeman of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association; and so I fall
silent, and slink away in the throng, and thereafter keep my thoughts
to myself.
Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and
incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting
impulse. There is, I discover, a regular propaganda on foot; a long
time ago--no man can recall how far back--the Wholesale Pickpockets
made the discovery of the ease with which a man's pockets could be
rifled while he was preoccupied with spiritual exercises, and they
began offering prizes for the best essays in support of the practice.
Now their propaganda is everywhere triumphant, and year by year we see
an increase in the rewards and emoluments of the prophets and priests
of the cult. The ground is covered with stately temples of various
designs, all of which I am told are consecrated to Bootstrap-lifting.
I come to where a group of people are occupied in laying the
corner-stone of a new white marble structure; I inquire and am
informed it is the First Church of Bootstrap-lifters, Scientist. As I
stand watching, a card is handed to me, informing me that a lady will
do my Bootstrap-lifting at five dollars per lift.
I go on to another building, which I am told is a library containing
volumes in defense of the Bootstrap-lifters, published under the
auspices of the Wholesale Pickpockets. I enter, and find endless
vistas of shelves, also several thousand current magazines and papers.
I consult these--for my legs have given out in the effort to visit and
inspect all phases of the Bootstrap-lifting practice. I discover that
hardly a week passes that some one does not start a new cult, or
revive an old one; if I had a hundred life-times I could not know all
the creeds and ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and
liturgies, the hymns, anthems and offertories of Bootstrap-lifting.
There are the Holy Roman Bootstrap-lifters, whose priests are fed
by Transubstantiation; the established Anglican Bootstrap-lifters,
whose priests live by "livings"; the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters,
whose preachers practice total immersion in Standard Oil. There
are Yogi Bootstrap-lifters with flowing robes of yellow silk;
Theosophist Bootstrap-lifters with green and purple auras; Mormon
Bootstrap-lifters, Mazdaznan Bootstrap-lifters, Spiritualist and
Spirit-Fruit, Millerite and Dowieite, Holy Roller and Holy Jumper,
Come-to-glory negro, Billy Sunday base-ball and Salvation Army
bass-drum Bootstrap-lifters. There are the thousand varieties of "New
Thought" Bootstrap-lifters; the mystic and transcendentalist,
Swedenborgian and Jacob Boehme Bootstrap-lifters; the Elbert Hubbard
high-art Bootstrap-lifters with half a million magazinelets at two
bits apiece; the "uplift" and "optimist," the Ralph Waldo Trine and
Orison Swett Marden Bootstrap-lifters with a hundred thousand volumes
at one dollar per volume. There are the Platonist and Hegelian and
Kantian professors of collegiate metaphysical Bootstrap-lifting at
several thousand dollars per year each. There are the Nietzschean
Bootstrap-lifters, who lift themselves to the Superman, and the
art-for-art's-sake, neo-Pagan Bootstrap-lifters, who lift themselves
down to the Ape.
Excepting possibly the last-mentioned group, the priests of all
these cults, the singers, shouters, prayers and exhorters of
Bootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic that
they do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and less at any
other man's. Now and then you may see one bend and give a delicate
tug, of a purely symbolical character: as when the Supreme Pontiff of
the Roman Bootstrap-lifters comes once a year to wash the feet of the
poor; or when the Sunday-school Superintendent of the Baptist
Bootstrap-lifters shakes the hand of one of his Colorado mine-slaves.
But for the most part the priests and preachers of Bootstrap-lifting
walk haughtily erect, many of them being so swollen with prosperity
that they could not reach their bootstraps if they wanted to. Their
role in life is to exhort other men to more vigorous efforts at
self-elevation, that the agents of the Wholesale Pickpockets'
Association may ply their immemorial role with less chance of
interference.
#Religion#
The reader, offended by this raillery, asks if I mean to impugn the
sincerity of all who preach the supremacy of the soul. No; I admit the
honesty of the heroes and madmen of history. All I ask of the preacher
is that he shall make an effort to practice his doctrine. Let him be
tormented like Don Quixote; let him go mad like Nietzsche; let him
stand upon a pillar and be devoured by worms like Simeon Stylites--on
these terms I grant to any dreamer the right to hold himself above
economic science.
Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about
himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny
his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its
weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be
harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the
formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic
self-indulgence? What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to
the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? What are we to
say when we see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual
heritage of mankind twisted to the knavish purposes of class-cruelty
and greed? What I say is--Bootstrap-lifting!
It is the fate of many abstract words to be used in two senses, one
good and the other bad. Morality means the will to righteousness, or
it means Anthony Comstock; democracy means the rule of the people, or
it means Tammany Hall. And so it is with the word "Religion". In its
true sense Religion is the most fundamental of the soul's impulses,
the impassioned love of life, the feeling of its preciousness, the
desire to foster and further it. In that sense every thinking man must
be religious; in that sense Religion is a perpetually self-renewing
force, the very nature of our being. In that sense I have no thought
of assailing it, I would make clear that I hold it beyond assailment.
But we are denied the pleasure of using the word in that honest sense,
because of another which has been given to it. To the ordinary man
"Religion" means, not the soul's longing for growth, the "hunger and
thirst after righteousness", but certain forms in which this hunger
has manifested itself in history, and prevails today throughout the
world; that is to say, institutions having fixed dogmas and
"revelations", creeds and rituals, with an administering caste
claiming supernatural sanction. By such institutions the moral
strivings of the race, the affections of childhood and the aspirations
of youth are made the prerogatives and stock in trade of
ecclesiastical hierarchies. It is the thesis of this book that
"Religion" in this sense is a source of income to parasites, and the
natural ally of every form of oppression and exploitation.
If by my jesting at "Bootstrap-lifting" I have wounded some dear
prejudice of the reader, let me endeavor to speak in a more persuasive
voice. I am a man who has suffered, and has seen the suffering of
others; I have devoted my life to analyzing the causes of the
suffering, to find out if it be necessary and fore-ordained, or if by
any chance there be a way of escape for future generations. I have
found that the latter is the case; the suffering is needless, it can
with ease and certainty be banished from the earth. I know this with
the knowledge of science--in the same way that the navigator of a ship
knows his latitude and longitude, and the point of the compass to
which he must steer in order to reach the port.
Come, reader, let us put aside prejudice, and the terrors of the cults
of the unknown. The power which made us has given us a mind, and the
impulse to its use; let us see what can be done with it to rid the
earth of its ancient evils. And do not be troubled if at the outset
this book seems to be entirely "destructive". I assure you that I am
no crude materialist, I am not so shallow as to imagine that our race
will be satisfied with a barren rationalism. I know that the old
symbols came out of the heart of man because they corresponded to
certain needs of the heart of man. I know that new symbols will be
found, corresponding more exactly to the needs of our time. If here I
set to work to tear down an old and ramshackle building, it is not
from blind destructfulness, but as an architect who means to put a new
and sounder structure in its place. Before we part company I shall
submit the blue print of that new home of the spirit.
* * * * *
#BOOK ONE#
#The Church of the Conquerors#
I saw the Conquerors riding by
With trampling feet of horse and men:
Empire on empire like the tide
Flooded the world and ebbed again;
A thousand banners caught the sun,
And cities smoked along the plain,
And laden down with silk and gold
And heaped up pillage groaned the wain.
Kemp.
* * * * *
#The Priestly Lie#
When the first savage saw his hut destroyed by a bolt of lightning, he
fell down upon his face in terror. He had no conception of natural
forces, of laws of electricity; he saw this event as the act of an
individual intelligence. To-day we read about fairies and demons,
dryads and fauns and satyrs, Wotan and Thor and Vulcan, Freie and
Flora and Ceres, and we think of all these as pretty fancies,
play-products of the mind; losing sight of the fact that they were
originally meant with entire seriousness--that not merely did ancient
man believe in them, but was forced to believe in them, because the
mind must have an explanation of things that happen, and an individual
intelligence was the only explanation available. The story of the hero
who slays the devouring dragon was not merely a symbol of day and
night, of summer and winter; it was a literal explanation of the
phenomena, it was the science of early times.
Men imagined supernatural powers such as they could comprehend. If the
lightning god destroyed a hut, obviously it must be because the owner
of the hut had given offense; so the owner must placate the god, using
those means which would be effective in the quarrels of men--presents
of roast meats and honey and fresh fruits, of wine and gold and jewels
and women, accompanied by friendly words and gestures of submission.
And when in spite of all things the natural evil did not cease, when
the people continued to die of pestilence, then came the opportunity
for hysterical or ambitious persons to discover new ways of
penetrating the mind of the god. There would be dreamers of dreams and
seers of visions and hearers of voices; readers of the entrails of
beasts and interpreters of the flight of birds; there would be burning
bushes and stone tablets on mountain-tops, and inspired words dictated
to aged disciples on lonely islands. There would arise special castes
of men and women, learned in these sacred matters; and these priestly
castes would naturally emphasize the importance of their calling,
would hold themselves aloof from the common herd, endowed with special
powers and entitled to special privileges. They would interpret the
oracles in ways favorable to themselves and their order; they would
proclaim themselves friends and confidants of the god, walking with
him in the night-time, receiving his messengers and angels, acting as
his deputies in forgiving offenses, in dealing punishments and in
receiving gifts. They would become makers of laws and moral codes.
They would wear special costumes to distinguish them, they would go
through elaborate ceremonies to impress their followers, employing all
sensuous effects, architecture and sculpture and painting, music and
poetry and dancing, candles and incense and bells and gongs
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high and anthem clear,
As may with sweetness through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstacies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
So builds itself up, in a thousand complex and complicated forms, the
Priestly Lie. There are a score of great religions in the world, each
with scores or hundreds of sects, each with its priestly orders, its
complicated creed and ritual, its heavens and hells. Each has its
thousands or millions or hundreds of millions of "true believers";
each damns all the others, with more or less heartiness--and each is a
mighty fortress of Graft.
There will be few readers of this book who have not been brought up
under the spell of some one of these systems of Supernaturalism; who
have not been taught to speak with respect of some particular priestly
order, to thrill with awe at some particular sacred rite, to seek
respite from earthly woes in some particular ceremonial spell. These
things are woven into our very fibre in childhood; they are sanctified
by memories of joys and griefs, they are confused with spiritual
struggles, they become part of all that is most vital in our lives.
The reader who wishes to emancipate himself from their thrall will do
well to begin with a study of the beliefs and practices of other sects
than his own--a field where he is free to observe and examine without
fear of sacrilege. Let him look into Madame Blavatsky's "Secret
Doctrine", or her "Isis Unveiled"--encyclopedias of the fantastic
inventions which terror and longing have wrung out of the tortured
soul of man. Here are mysteries and solemnities, charms and spells,
illuminations and transmigrations, angels and demons, guides, controls
and masters--all of which it is permissible to refuse to support with
gifts. Let the reader then go to James Freeman Clarke's "Ten Great
Religions", and realize how many billions of humans have lived and
died in the solemn certainty that their welfare on earth and in heaven
depended upon their accepting certain ideas and practicing certain
rites, all mutually exclusive and incompatible, each damning the
others and the followers of the others. So gradually the realization
will come to him that the test of a doctrine about life and its
welfare must be something else than the fact that one was born to it.
#The Great Fear#
It was not the fault of primitive man that he was ignorant, nor that
his ignorance made him a prey to dread. The traces of his mental
suffering will inspire in us only pity and sympathy; for Nature is a
grim school-mistress, and not all her lessons have yet been learned.
We have a right to scorn and anger only when we see this dread being
diverted from its true function, a stimulus to a search for knowledge,
and made into a means of clamping down ignorance upon the mind of the
race. That this has been the deliberate policy of institutionalized
Religion no candid student can deny.
The first thing brought forth by the study of any religion, ancient or
modern, is that it is based upon Fear, born of it, fed by it--and that
it cultivates the source from which its nourishment is derived. "The
fear of divine anger", says Prof. Jastrow, "runs as an undercurrent
through the entire religious literature of Babylonia and Assyria." In
the words of Tabi-utul-Enlil, King of ancient Nippur:
Who is there that can grasp the will of the gods in heaven?
The plan of a god is full of mystery--who can understand it?
He who is still alive at evening is dead the next morning.
In an instant he is cast into grief, in a moment he is crushed.
And that cry might be duplicated from almost any page of the Hebrew
scriptures: the only difference being that the Hebrews combined all
their fears into one Great Fear. "The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom," we are told by Solomon of the thousand wives;
and the Psalmist repeats it. "Dominion and fear are with Him," cries
Job. "How then can any man be just before God? Or how can he be clean
that is born of a woman? Behold, even the moon hath no brightness, and
the stars are not pure in His sight: How much less man, that is a
worm? And the son of man, which is a worm?" He goes on, in his lyrical
rapture, "Sheol is naked before Him, and Destruction hath no
covering.... The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His
rebuke. ... The thunder of His power who can understand?" That all
this is some of the world's great poetry does not in the least alter
the fact that it is an abasement of the soul, an hysterical perversion
of the facts of life, and a preparation of the mind for the seeds of
Priestcraft.
The Book of Job has been called a "Wisdom-drama": and what is the
denouement of this drama, what is ancient Hebrew wisdom's last word
about life? "Wherefore I abhor myself," says Job, "and repent in dust
and ashes." The poor fellow has done nothing; we have been told at the
beginning that he "was perfect and upright, and one that feared God,
and eschewed evil." But the Sabeans and the Chaldeans rob him, and
"the fire of God" falls from heaven and burns up his sheep and his
servants, and "a great wind from the wilderness" kills his sons and
daughters; and then his body becomes covered with boils--a phenomenon
caused in part by worry, and the consequent nervous indigestion, but
mainly by excess of starch and deficiency of mineral salts in the
diet. Job, however, has never heard of the fasting cure for disease,
and so he takes him a potsherd to scrape himself withal, and he sits
among the ashes--a highly unsanitary procedure enforced by his
religious ritual. So naturally he feels like a worm, and abhors
himself, and cries out: "I know that Thou canst do all things, and
that no purpose of Thine can be restrained." By which utter,
unreasoning humility he succeeds in appeasing the Great Fear, and his
friends make a sacrifice of seven bullocks and seven rams--a feast for
a whole templeful of priests--and then "the Lord gave Job twice as
much as he had before.... And after this Job lived an hundred and
forty years, and saw his sons and his sons' sons, even four
generations."
You do not have to look very deeply into this "Wisdom-drama" to find
out whose wisdom it is. Confess your own ignorance and your own
impotence, abandon yourself utterly, and then we, the sacred Caste,
the Keepers of the Holy Secrets, will secure you pardon and
respite--in exchange for fresh meat. Here are verses from a psalm of
the ancient Babylonians, which "heathen" chant is identical in spirit
and purpose with the utterances of Job:
The Sin that I have wrought, I know not;
The unclean that I have eaten, I know not;
The offense into which I have walked, I know not....
The lord, in the wrath of his heart, hath regarded me;
The god, in the anger of his heart, hath surrounded me;
A goddess, known or unknown, hath wrought me sorrow....
I sought for help, but no one took my hand;
I wept, but no one harkened to me....
The feet of my goddess I kiss, I touch them;
To the god, known or unknown, I utter my prayer;
O god, known or unknown, turn thy countenance, accept my sacrifice;
O goddess, known or unknown, look mercifully on me, accept my sacrifice!
#Salve Regina!#
And now let the reader leap three thousand years of human history, of
toil and triumph of the intellect of man; and instead of a Hebrew
manuscript or a Babylonian brick there confronts him a little
publication, printed on a modern rotary press in the capital of the
United States of America, bearing the date of October, 1914, and the
title "Salve Regina". In it we find "a beautiful prayer", composed by
the late cardinal Rampolla; we are told that "Pius X attached to it an
indulgence of 100 days, each time it is piously recited, applicable to
the souls in purgatory."
O Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, cast a glance from Heaven,
where thou sittest as Queen, upon this poor sinner, your
servant. Though conscious of his unworthiness.... he blesses
and exalts thee from his whole heart as the purest, the most
beautiful and the most holy of creatures. He blesses thy
holy name. He blesses thy sublime prerogatives as real
Mother of God, ever Virgin, conceived without stain of sin,
as co-Redemptress of the human race. He blesses the Eternal
Father who chose you, etc. He blesses the Incarnate Word,
etc. He blesses the Divine Spirit, etc. He blesses, exalts
and thanks the most august Trinity, etc. O Virgin, holy and
merciful.... be pleased to accept this little homage of your
servant, and obtain for him also from your divine Son pardon
for his sins, Amen.
And then, looking more closely, we discover the purpose of this
"beautiful prayer", and of the neat little paper which prints it.
"Salve Regina" is raising funds for the "National Shrine of the
Immaculate Conception", a home for more priests, and Catholic ladies
who desire to collect for it may receive little books which they are
requested to return within three months. Pius X writes a letter of
warm endorsement, and sets an example by giving four hundred dollars
"out of his poverty"--or, to be more precise, out of the poverty of
the pitiful peasantry of Italy. There is included in the paper a form
of bequest for "devoted clients of Our Blessed Mother", and at the top
of the editorial page the most alluring of all baits for the loving
hearts of the flock--that the names of deceased relatives and friends
may be written in the collection books, and will be transferred to the
records of the Shrine, and these persons "will share in all its
spiritual benefits". In the days of Job it was with threats of boils
and poverty that the Priestly Lie maintained itself; but in the case
of this blackest of all Terrors, transplanted to our free Republic
from the heart of the Dark Ages, the wretched victims see before their
eyes the glare of flames, and hear the shrieks of their loved ones
writhing in torment through uncounted ages and eternities.
#Fresh Meat#
In the days when I was experimenting with vegetarianism, I sought
earnestly for evidence of a non-meat-eating race; but candor compelled
me to admit that man was like the monkey and the pig and the bear--he
was vegetarian when he could not help it. The advocates of the reform
insist that meat as a diet causes muddy brains and dulled nerves; but
you would certainly never suspect this from a study of history. What
you find in history is that all men crave meat, all struggle for it,
and the strongest and cleverest get it. Everywhere you find the
subject classes living in the midst of animals which they tend, but
whose flesh they rarely taste. Even in modern America, sweet land of
liberty, our millions of tenant farmers raise chickens and geese and
turkeys, and hardly venture to consume as much as an egg, but save
everything for the summer-boarder or the buyer from the city. It would
not be too much to say of the cultural records of early man that they
all have to do, directly or indirectly, with the reserving of fresh
meat to the masters. In J.T. Trowbridge's cheerful tale of the
adventures of Captain Seaborn, we are told by the cannibal priest how
idol-worship has ameliorated the morals of the tribe--
For though some warriors of renown
Continue anthropophagous,
'Tis rare that human flesh goes down
The low-caste man's aesophagus!
I suspect that we should have to go back to the days of the cave-man
to find the first lover of the flesh-pots who put a taboo upon meat,
and promised supernatural favors to all who would exercise
self-control, and instead of consuming their meat themselves, would
bring it and lay it upon the sacred griddle, or altar, where the god
might come in the night-time and partake of it. Certainly, at any
rate, there are few religions of record in which such devices do not
appear. The early laws of the Hebrews are more concerned with
delicatessen for the priests than with any other subject whatever.
Here, for example, is the way to make a Nazarite:
He shall offer his offering up to the Lord, one he lamb of
the first year without blemish for a burnt offering, and one
ewe lamb of the first year without blemish for a sin
offering, and one ram without blemish for peace offerings,
and a basket of unleavened bread, cakes of fine flour
mingled with oil, and wafers of unleavened bread anointed
with oil, and their meat offerings.
And the law goes on to instruct the priests to take certain choice
parts and "wave them for a wave offering before the Lord: this is holy
for the priest." What was done with the other portions we are not
told; but earlier in this same "Book of Numbers" we find the general
law that
Every offering of all the holy things of the children of
Israel, which they bring unto the priest, shall be his. And
every man's hallowed things shall be his: whatsoever any man
giveth to the priest, it shall be his.
In the same way we are told by Viscount Amberley that the priests of
Ceylon first present the gifts to the god, and then eat them. Among
the Parsees, when a man dies, the relatives must bring four new robes
to the priests; if they do this, the priests wear the robes; if they
fail to do it, the dead man appears naked before the judgment-throne.
The devotees are instructed that "he who performs this rite succeeds
in both worlds, and obtains a firm footing in both worlds." Among the
Buddhists, the followers give alms to the monks, and are told
specifically what advantages will thereby accrue to them. In the
Aitareyo Brahmanam of the Rig-Veda we read
He who, knowing this, sacrifices according to this rite, is
born from the womb of Agni and the offerings, participates
in the nature of the Rik, Yajus, and Saman, the Veda (sacred
knowledge), the Brahma (sacred element) and immortality, and
is absorbed into the deity.
Among the Parsees the priest eats the bread and drinks the haoma, or
juice of a plant, considered to be both a plant and a god. Among the
Episcopalians, a contemporary Christian sect, the sacred juice is that
of the grape, and the priest is not allowed to throw away what is left
of it, but is ordered "reverently to consume it." In as much as the
priest is the sole judge of how much good sherry wine he shall
consecrate previous to the ceremony, it is to be expected that the
priests of this cult should be lukewarm towards the prohibition
movement, and should piously refuse to administer their sacrament with
unfermented and uninteresting grape-juice.
#Priestly Empires#
In every human society of which we have record there has been one
class which has done the hard and exhausting work, the "hewers of wood
and drawers of water"; and there has been another, much smaller class
which has done the directing. To belong to this latter class is to
work also, but with the head instead of the hands; it is also to enjoy
the good things of life, to live in the best houses, to eat the best
food, to have choice of the most desirable women; it is to have
leisure to cultivate the mind and appreciate the arts, to acquire
graces and distinctions, to give laws and moral codes, to shape
fashions and tastes, to be revered and regarded--in short, to have
Power. How to get this Power and to hold it has been the first object
of the thoughts of men from the beginning of time.
The most obvious method is by the sword; but this method is uncertain,
for any man may take up a sword, and some may succeed with it. It will
be found that empires based upon military force alone, however cruel
they may be, are not permanent, and therefore not so dangerous to
progress; it is only when resistance is paralyzed by the agency of
Superstition, that the race can be subjected to systems of
exploitation for hundreds and even thousands of years. The ancient
empires were all priestly empires; the kings ruled because they obeyed
the will of the priests, taught to them from childhood as the word of
the gods.
Thus, for instance, Prescott tells us:
Terror, not love, was the spring of education with the
Aztecs....Such was the crafty policy of the priests, who, by
reserving to themselves the business of instruction, were
enabled to mould the young and plastic mind according to
their own wills, and to train it early to implicit reverence
for religion and its ministers.
The historian goes on to indicate the economic harvest of this
teaching:
To each of the principal temples, lands were annexed for the
maintenance of the priests. The estates were augmented by
the policy or devotion of successive princes, until, under
the last Montezuma, they had swollen to an enormous extent,
and covered every district of the empire.
And this concerning the frightful system of human sacrifices, whereby
the priestly caste maintained the prestige of its divinities:
At the dedication of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, in 1486,
the prisoners, who for some years had been reserved for the
purpose, were ranged in files, forming a procession nearly
two miles long. The ceremony consumed several days, and
seventy thousand captives are said to have perished at the
shrine of this terrible deity.
The same system appears in Professor Jastrow's account of the
priesthood of Babylonia and Assyria:
The ultimate source of all law being the deity himself, the
original legal tribunal was the place where the image or
symbol of the god stood. A legal decision was an oracle or
omen, indicative of the will of the god. The power thus
lodged in the priests of Babylonia and Assyria was enormous.
They virtually held in their hands the life and death of the
people.
And of the business side of this vast religious system:
The temples were the natural depositories of the legal
archives, which in the course of centuries grew to veritably
enormous proportions. Records were made of all decisions;
the facts were set forth, and duly attested by witnesses.
Business and marriage contracts, loans and deeds of sale
were in like manner drawn up in the presence of official
scribes, who were also priests. In this way all commercial
transactions received the written sanction of the religious
organization. The temples themselves--at least in the large
centres--entered into business relations with the populace.
In order to maintain the large household represented by such
an organization as that of the temple of Enlil of Nippur,
that of Ningirsu at Lagash, that of Marduk at Babylon, or
that of Shamash at Sippar, large holdings of land were
required which, cultivated by agents for the priests, or
farmed out with stipulations for a goodly share of the
produce, secured an income for the maintenance of the temple
officials. The enterprise of the temples was expanded to the
furnishing of loans at interest--in later periods, at
20%--to barter in slaves, to dealings in lands, besides
engaging labor for work of all kinds directly needed for the
temples. A large quantity of the business documents found in
the temple archives are concerned with the business affairs
of the temple, and we are justified in including the temples
in the large centres as among the most important business
institutions of the country. In financial or monetary
transactions the position of the temples was not unlike that
of national banks....
And so on. We may venture the guess that the learned professor said
more in that last sentence than he himself intended, for his lectures
were delivered in that temple of plutocracy, the University of
Pennsylvania, and paid out of an endowment which specifies that "all
polemical subjects shall be positively excluded!"
#Prayer-wheels#
These priestly empires exist in the world today. If we wish to find
them we have only to ask ourselves:
What countries are making no contribution to the progress of the race?
What countries have nothing to give us, whether in art, science, or
industry?
For example, Gervaise tells us of the Talapoins, or priests of Siam,
that "they are exempted from all public charges, they salute nobody,
while everybody prostrates himself before them. They are maintained at
the public expense." In the same way we read of the negroes of the
Caribbean islands that "their priests and priestesses exercise an
almost unlimited power." Miss Kingsley, in her "West African Studies",
tells us that if we desire to understand the institutions of this
district, we must study the native's religion.
For his religion has so firm a grasp upon his mind that it
influences everything he does. It is not a thing apart, as
the religion of the Europeans is at times. The African
cannot say, "Oh, that is all right from a religious point of
view, but one must be practical." To be practical, to get on
in the world, to live the day and night through, he must be
right in the religious point of view, namely, must be on
working terms with the great world of spirits around him.
The knowledge of this spirit world constitutes the religion
of the African, and his customs and ceremonies arise from
his idea of the best way to influence it.
Or consider Henry Savage Lander's account of Thibet:
In Lhassa and many other sacred places fanatical pilgrims
make circumambulations, sometimes for miles and miles, and
for days together, covering the entire distance lying flat
upon their bodies.... From the ceiling of the temple hang
hundreds of long strips, katas, offered by pilgrims to the
temple, and becoming so many flying prayers when hung
up--for mechanical praying in every way is prominent in
Thibet.... Thus instead of having to learn by heart long and
varied prayers, all you have to do is to stuff the entire
prayer-book into a prayer-wheel,
and revolve it while repeating as fast as you can four words meaning,
"O God, the gem emerging from the lotus-flower." ... The attention of
the pilgrims is directed to a large box, or often a big bowl, where
they may deposit whatever offerings they can spare, and it must be
said that their religious ideas are so strongly developed that they
will dispose of a considerable portion of their money in this
fashion.... The Lamas are very clever in many ways, and have a great
hold over the entire country. They are ninety per cent of them
unscrupulous scamps, depraved in every way and given to every sort of
vice. So are the women Lamas. They live and sponge on the credulity
and ignorance of the crowds; it is to maintain this ignorance, upon
which their luxurious life depends, that foreign influence of every
kind is strictly kept out of the country.
#The Butcher-Gods#
In this last sentence we have summed up the fundamental fact about
institutionalized religion. Wherever belief and ritual have become the
means of livelihood of a class, all innovation will of necessity be
taken as an attack upon that class; it will be literally a
crime-robbing the priests of their age-long privileges. And of course
they will oppose the robber--using every weapon of terrorism, both of
this world and the next. They will require the submission, not merely
of their own people, but of their neighbors, and their jealousy of
rival priestly castes will be a cause of wars. The story of the early
days of mankind is a sickening record of torture and slaughter in the
name of ten thousand butcher-gods.
Thus, for example, we read in the Hebrew religious records how the
priests were engaged in establishing the prestige of a fetish called
"the ark"; and how the people of one tribe violated this fetish and
wakened the wrath of Jehovah, the god. And he smote the men of
Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord, even
he smote of the people fifty thousand and three score and ten men; and
the people lamented, because the Lord had smitten many of the people
with a great slaughter. And the men of Beth-shemesh said, Who is able
to stand before this holy Lord God?
This terrible old Hebrew divinity said of himself that he was "a
jealous god". Throughout the time of his sway he issued through his
ministers precise instructions for the most revolting cruelties, the
extermination of whole nations of men, women and children, whose sole
offense was that they did not pay tribute to Jehovah's priests. Thus,
for example, the chief of his prophets, Moses, called the people
together, and with all solemnity, and with many warnings, handed down
ten commandments graven upon stone tablets; he went on to set forth
how the people were to set upon and rob their neighbors, and gave them
these blood-thirsty instructions:
When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither
thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations
before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the
Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the
Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and
mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver
them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy
them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy
unto them: ... But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall
destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut
down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.
For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord
thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto
himself, above all people that are upon the face of the
earth.
The records of this Jehovah are full of similar horrors. He sent his
chosen people out to destroy the Midianites, and they slew all the
males, but this was not sufficient, and Moses was wroth, and commanded
them to kill all the married women, and to take the single women "for
themselves". We are told that sixteen thousand single women were
spared, of whom "the Lord's tribute was thirty and two!" In the Book
of Joshua we read that he had an interview with a supernatural
personage called "the captain of the Lord's host", and how this
captain had given to him a magic spell which would destroy the city of
Jericho. The city should be accursed, "even it and all that are
therein, to the Lord"; every living thing except one traitor-harlot
was to be slaughtered, and all the wealth of the city reserved to the
priestly caste. This was carried out to the letter, except that
"Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the
tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing"--that is, he hid some gold
and silver in his tent; whereupon the army met with a defeat, and
everybody knew that something was wrong, and Joshua rent his clothes
and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord, and
got another message from Jehovah, to the effect that the guilty man
should be burned with fire, "he and all that he hath."
And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of
Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of
gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his
asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and
they brought them unto the Valley of Achor. And Joshua said,
Why hast thou troubled us? the Lord shall trouble thee this
day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them
with fire, after they had stoned him with stones.
We have no means of knowing what was the character of the unfortunate
inhabitants of the city of Jericho, nor of the Hittites and the
Girgashites and the Amorites and all the rest of the victims of
Jehovah. To be sure, we are told by the Hebrew priests that they
sacrificed their children to their gods; but then, consider what we
should believe about the Hebrew religion, if we took the word of rival
priestly castes! Consider, for example, that in this twentieth century
we saw an orthodox Jew tried in a Russian court of law for having made
a sacrifice of Christian babies; nevertheless we know that the Jews
represent a considerable part of the intelligence and idealism of
Russia. We know in the same way that the Moors had most of the culture
and all of the scientific knowledge of Spain, that the Huguenots had
most of the conscience and industry of France; and we know that they
were massacred or driven out to death by the priestly castes of the
Middle Ages.
#The Holy Inquisition#
Let us have one glimpse of the conditions in those mediaeval times, so
that we may know what we ourselves have escaped. In the fifteenth
century there was established in Europe the cult of a three-headed
god, whose priests had won lordship over a continent. They were
enormously wealthy, and unthinkably corrupt; they sold to the
rich the license to commit every possible crime, and they held
the poor in ignorance and degradation. Among the comparatively
intelligent and freedom-loving people of Bohemia there arose a
great reformer, John Huss, himself a priest, protesting against
the corruptions of his order. They trapped him into their power
by means of a "safe-conduct"--which they repudiated because no
promise to a heretic could have validity. They found him guilty
of having taught the hateful doctrine that a priest who committed
crimes could not give absolution for the crimes of others; and they
held an auto de fe--which means a "sentence of faith." As we read
in Lea's "History of the Inquisition":
The cathedral of Constance was crowded with Sigismund (the
Emperor) and his nobles, the great officers of the empire
with their insignia, the prelates in their splendid robes.
While mass was sung, Huss, as an excommunicate, was kept
waiting at the door; when brought in he was placed on an
elevated bench by a table on which stood a coffer containing
priestly vestments. After some preliminaries, including a
sermon by the Bishop of Lodi, in which he assured Sigismund
that the events of that day would confer on him immortal
glory, the articles of which Huss was convicted were
recited. In vain he protested that he believed in
transubstantiation and in the validity of the sacrament in
polluted hands. He was ordered to hold his tongue, and on
his persisting the beadles were told to silence him, but in
spite of this he continued to utter protests. The sentence
was then read in the name of the council, condemning him
both for his written errors and those which had been proven
by witnesses. He was declared a pertinacious and
incorrigible heretic who did not desire to return to the
Church; his books were ordered to be burned, and himself to
be degraded from the priesthood and abandoned to the secular
court. Seven bishops arrayed him in priestly garb and warned
him to recant while yet there was time. He turned to the
crowd, and with broken voice declared that he could not
confess the errors which he never entertained, lest he
should lie to God, when the bishops interrupted him, crying
that they had waited long enough, for he was obstinate in
his heresy. He was degraded in the usual manner, stripped of
his sacerdotal vestments, his fingers scraped; but when the
tonsure was to be disposed of, an absurd quarrel arose among
the bishops as to whether the head should be shaved with a
razor or the tonsure be destroyed with scissors. Scissors
won the day, and a cross was cut in his hair. Then on his
head was placed a conical paper cap, a cubit in height,
adorned with painted devils and the inscription, "This is
the heresiarch."
The place of execution was a meadow near the river, to which
he was conducted by two thousand armed men, with Palsgrave
Louis at their head, and a vast crowd, including many
nobles, prelates, and cardinals. The route followed was
circuitous, in order that he might be carried past the
episcopal palace, in front of which his books were burning,
whereat he smiled. Pity from man there was none to look for,
but he sought comfort on high, repeating to himself, "Christ
Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy upon us!" and when
he came in sight of the stake he fell on his knees and
prayed. He was asked if he wished to confess, and said that
he would gladly do so if there were space. A wide circle was
formed, and Ulrich Schorand, who, according to custom, had
been providently empowered to take advantage of final
weakening, came forward, saying, "Dear sir and master, if
you will recant your unbelief and heresy, for which you must
suffer, I will willingly hear your confession; but if you
will not, you know right well that, according to canon law,
no one can administer the sacrament to a heretic." To this
Huss answered, "It is not necessary: I am not a mortal
sinner." His paper crown fell off and he smiled as his
guards replaced it. He desired to take leave of his keepers,
and when they were brought to him he thanked them for their
kindness, saying that they had been to him rather brothers
than jailers. Then he commenced to address the crowd in
German, telling them that he suffered for errors which he
did not hold, and he was cut short. When bound to the stake,
two cartloads of fagots and straw were piled up around him,
and the palsgrave and vogt for the last time adjured him to
abjure. Even yet he could save himself, but only repeated
that he had been convicted by false witnesses on errors
never entertained by him. They clapped their hands and then
withdrew, and the executioners applied the fire. Twice Huss
was heard to exclaim, "Christ Jesus, Son of the living God,
have mercy upon me!" then a wind springing up and blowing
the flames and smoke into his face checked further
utterances, but his head was seen to shake and his lips to
move while one might twice or thrice recite a paternoster.
The tragedy was over; the sorely-tried soul had escaped from
its tormentors, and the bitterest enemies of the reformer
could not refuse to him the praise that no philosopher of
old had faced death with more composure than he had shown in
his dreadful extremity. No faltering of the voice had
betrayed an internal struggle. Palsgrave Louis, seeing
Huss's mantle on the arm of one of the executioners, ordered
it thrown into the flames lest it should be reverenced as a
relic, and promised the man to compensate him. With the same
view the body was carefully reduced to ashes and thrown into
the Rhine, and even the earth around the stake was dug up
and carted off; yet the Bohemians long hovered around the
spot and carried home fragments of the neighboring clay,
which they reverenced as relics of their martyr. The next
day thanks were returned to God in a solemn procession in
which figured Sigismund and his queen, the princes and
nobles, nineteen cardinals, two patriarchs, seventy-seven
bishops, and all the clergy of the council. A few days later
Sigismund, who had delayed his departure for Spain to see
the matter concluded, left Constance, feeling that his work
was done.
#Hell-Fire#
If such a scene could be witnessed in the world today, it would only
be in some remote and wholly savage place, such as the mountains of
Hayti, or the Solomon Islands. It could no longer happen in any
civilized country; the reason being, not any abatement of the
pretensions of the priesthood, but solely the power of science,
embodied in the physical arm of a secular State. The advance of that
arm the church has fought systematically, in every country, and at
every point. To quote Buckle: "A careful study of the history of
religious toleration will prove that in every Christian country where
it has been adopted, it has been forced upon the clergy by the
authority of the secular classes." The wolf of superstition has been
driven into its lair, but it has backed away snarling, and it still
crouches, watching for a chance to spring. The Church which burned
John Huss, which burned Giordano Bruno for teaching that the earth
moves round the sun--that same church, in the name of the same
three-headed god, sent out Francesco Ferrer to the firing-squad; if it
does not do the same thing to the author of this book, it will be
solely because of the police. Not being allowed to burn me here, the
clergy will vent their holy indignation by sentencing me to eternal
burning in a future world which they have created, and which they run
to suit themselves.
It is a fact, the significance of which cannot be exaggerated, that
the measure of the civilization which any nation has attained is the
extent to which it has curtailed the power of institutionalized
religion. Those peoples which are wholly under the sway of the
priesthood, such as Thibetans and Koreans, Siamese and Caribbeans, are
peoples among whom the intellectual life does not exist. Farther in
advance are Hindoos and Turks, who are religious, but not exclusively.
Still farther on the way are Spaniards and Irish; here, for example,
is a flashlight of the Irish peasantry, given by one of their number,
Patrick MacGill:
The merchant was a great friend of the parish priest, who
always told the people if they did not pay their debts they
would burn for ever and ever in hell. "The fires of eternity
will make you sorry for the debts that you did not pay,"
said the priest. "What is eternity?" he would ask in a
solemn voice from the altar steps. "If a man tried to count
the sands on the sea-shore and took a million years to count
every single grain, how long would it take him to count them
all? A long time, you'll say. But that time is nothing to
eternity. Just think of it! Burning in hell while a man,
taking a million years to count a grain of sand, counts all
the sand on the sea-shore. And this because you did not pay
Farley McKeown his lawful debts, his lawful debts within the
letter of the law." That concluding phrase, "within the
letter of the law," struck terror into all who listened, and
no one, maybe not even the priest himself, knew what it
meant.
There is light in Ireland to-day, and hope for an Irish culture;
the thing to be noted is that it comes from two movements, one
for agricultural co-operation and the other for political
independence--both of them definitely and specifically non-religious.
This same thing has been true of the movements which have helped on
happier nations, such as the republics of France and America, which
have put an end to the power of the priestly caste to take property by
force, and to dominate the mind of the child without its parents'
consent.
This is as far as any nation has so far gone; it has apparently not
yet occurred to any legislature that the State may owe a duty to the
child to protect its mind from being poisoned, even though it has the
misfortune to be born of poisoned parents. It is still permitted that
parents should terrify their little ones with images of a personal
devil and a hell of eternal brimstone and sulphur; it is permitted to
found schools for the teaching of devil-doctrines; it is permitted to
organize gigantic campaigns and systematically to infect whole cities
full of men, women and children with hell-fire phobias. In the
American city where I write one may see gatherings of people sunk upon
their knees, even rolling on the ground in convulsions, moaning,
sobbing, screaming to be delivered from such torments. I open my
morning paper and read of the arrest of five men and seven women in
Los Angeles, members of a sect known as the "Church of the Living
God", upon a charge of having disturbed the peace of their neighbors.
The police officers testified that the accused claimed to be possessed
of the divine spirit, and that as signs of this possession they
"crawled on the floor, grunted like pigs and barked like dogs." There
were "other acts, even more startling", about which the newspapers did
not go into details. And again, a week or two later, I read how a
woman has been heard screaming, and found tied to a bed-post, being
whipped by a man. She belonged to a religious sect which had found her
guilty of witchcraft. Another woman was about to shoot her, but this
woman's nerve failed, and the "high priest" was called in, who decreed
a whipping. The victim explained to the police that she would have
deserved to be whipped had she really been a witch, but a mistake had
been made--it was another woman who was the witch. And again in the
Los Angeles "Times" I read a perfectly serious news item, telling how
a certain man awakened one morning, and found on his pillow where his
head had lain a perfect reproduction of the head of Christ with its
crown of thorns. He called in his neighbors to witness the miracle,
and declared that while he was not superstitious, he knew that such a
thing could not have happened by chance, and he knew what it was
intended to signify--he would buy more Liberty Bonds and be more
ardent in his support of the war!
And this is the world in which our scientists and men of culture think
that the battle of the intellect is won, and that it is no longer
necessary to spend our energies in fighting "Religion!"
* * * * *
#BOOK TWO#
#The Church of Good Society#
Within the House of Mammon his priesthood stands alert
By mysteries attended, by dusk and splendors girt,
Knowing, for faiths departed, his own shall still endure,
And they be found his chosen, untroubled, solemn, sure.
Within the House of Mammon the golden altar lifts
Where dragon-lamps are shrouded as costly incense drifts--
A dust of old ideals, now fragrant from the coals,
To tell of hopes long-ended, to tell the death of souls.
Sterling.
* * * * *
#The Rain Makers#
I begin with the Church of Good Society, because it happens to be the
Church in which I was brought up. Heading this statement, some of my
readers suspected me of snobbish pride. I search my heart; yes, it
brings a hidden thrill that as far back as I can remember I knew this
atmosphere of urbanity, that twice every Sunday those melodious and
hypnotizing incantations were chanted in my childish ears! I take up
the book of ritual, done in aristocratic black leather with gold
lettering, and the old worn volume brings me strange stirrings of
recollected awe. But I endeavor to repress these vestigial emotions
and to see the volume--not as a message from God to Good Society, but
as a landmark of man's age-long struggle against myth and dogma used
as a source of income and a shield to privilege.
In the beginning, of course, the priest and the magician ruled the
field. But today, as I examine this "Book of Common Prayer", I
discover that there is at least one spot out of which he has been
cleared entirely; there appears no prayer to planets to stand still,
or to comets to go away. The "Church of Good Society" has discovered
astronomy! But if any astronomer attributes this to his instruments
with their marvelous accuracy, let him at least stop to consider my
"economic interpretation" of the phenomenon--the fact that the
heavenly bodies affect the destinies of mankind so little that there
has not been sufficient emolument to justify the priest in holding on
to his job as astrologer.
But when you come to the field of meteorology, what a difference! Has
any utmost precision of barometer been able to drive the priest out of
his prerogatives as rainmaker? Not even in the most civilized of
countries; not in that most decorous and dignified of institutions,
the Protestant Episcopal Church of America! I study with care the
passage wherein the clergyman appears as controller of the fate of
crops. I note a chastened caution of phraseology; the church will not
repeat the experience of the sorcerer's apprentice, who set the demons
to bringing water, and then could not make them stop! The spell
invokes "moderate rain and showers"; and as an additional precaution
there is a counter-spell against "excessive rains and floods": the
weather-faucet being thus under exact control.
I turn the pages of this "Book of Common Prayer", and note the
remnants of magic which it contains. There are not many of the
emergencies of life with which the priest is not authorized to deal;
not many natural phenomena for which he may not claim the credit. And
in case anything should have been overlooked, there is a blanket order
upon Providence: "Graciously hear us, that those evils which the craft
or subtilty of the devil or man worketh against us, be brought to
nought!" I am reminded of the idea which haunted my childhood, reading
fairy-stories about the hero who was allowed three wishes that would
come true. I could never understand why the hero did not settle the
matter once for all--by wishing that everything he wished might come
true!
Most of these incantations are harmless, and some are amiable; but now
and then you come upon one which is sinister in its implications. The
volume before me happens to be of the Church of England, which is even
more forthright in its confronting of the Great Magic. Many years ago
I remember talking with an English army officer, asking how he could
feel sure of his soldiers in case of labor strikes; did it never occur
to him that the men had relatives among the workers, and might some
time refuse to shoot them? His answer was that he was aware of it, the
military had worked out its technique with care. He would never think
of ordering his men to fire upon a mob in cold blood; he would first
start the spell of discipline to work, he would march them round the
block, and get them in the swing, get their blood moving to military
music; then, when he gave the order, in they would go. I have never
forgotten the gesture, the animation with which he illustrated their
going--I could hear the grunting of bayonets in the flesh of men. The
social system prevailing in England has made necessary the perfecting
of such military technique; also, you discover, English piety has made
necessary the providing of a religious sanction for it. After the job
has been done and the bayonets have been wiped clean, the company is
marched to church, and the officer kneels in his family pew, and the
privates kneel with the parlor-maids, and the clergyman raises his
hands to heaven and intones: "We bless thy Holy Name, that it hath
pleased Thee to appease the seditious tumults which have been lately
raised up among us!"
And sometimes the clergyman does more than bless the killers--he even
takes part in their bloody work. In the Home Office Records of the
British Government I read (vol. 40, page 17) how certain miners were on
strike against low wages and the "truck" system, and the Vicar of
Abergavenny put himself at the head of the yeomanry and the Greys. He
wrote the Home Office a lively account of his military operations. All
that remained was to apprehend certain of the strikers, "and then I
shall be able to return to my Clerical duties." Later he wrote of the
"sinister influences" which kept the miners from returning to their
work, and how he had put half a dozen of the most obstinate in prison.
#The Babylonian Fire-god#
So we come to the most important of the functions of the tribal god,
as an ally in war, an inspirer to martial valour. When in ancient
Babylonia you wished to overcome your enemies, you went to the shrine
of the Fire-god, and with awful rites the priest pronounced
incantations, which have been preserved on bricks and handed down for
the use of modern churches. "Pronounce in a whisper, and have a bronze
image therewith," commands the ancient text, and runs on for many
strophes in this fashion:
Let them die, but let me live!
Let them be put under a ban, but let me prosper!
Let them perish, but let me increase!
Let them become weak, but let me wax strong!
O, fire-god, mighty, exalted among the gods,
Thou art the god, thou art my lord, etc.
This was in heathen Babylon, some three thousand years ago. Since
then, the world has moved on--
Three thousand years of war and peace and glory,
Of hope and work and deeds and golden schemes,
Of mighty voices raised in song and story,
Of huge inventions and of splendid dreams--
And in one of the world's leading nations the people stand up and bare
their heads, and sing to their god to save their king and punish those
who oppose him--
O Lord our God, arise, Scatter his enemies,
And make them fall; Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On him our hopes we fix, God save us all.
Recently, I understand, it has become the custom to omit this stanza
from the English national anthem; but it is clear that this is because
of its crudity of expression, not because of objection to the idea of
praying to a god to assist one nation and injure others; for the same
sentiment is expressed again and again in the most carefully edited of
prayer-books:
Abate their pride, assuage their malice, and confound their devices.
Defend us, Thy humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies.
Strengthen him (the King) that he may vanquish and overcome all
his enemies.
There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God.
Prayers such as these are pronounced in every so-called civilized
nation today. Behind every battle-line in Europe you may see the
priests of the Babylonian Fire-god with their bronze images and their
ancient incantations; you may see magic spells being wrought, magic
standards sanctified, magic bread eaten and magic wine drunk, fetishes
blessed and hoodoos lifted, eternity ransacked to find means of
inciting soldiers to the mood where they will "go in". Throughout all
civilization, the phobias and manias of war have thrown the people
back into the toils of the priest, and that church which forced
Galileo to recant under threat of torture, and had Ferrer shot beneath
the walls of the fortress of Montjuich, is rejoicing in a "rebirth of
religion".
#The Medicine-men#
Andrew D. White tells us that
It was noted that in the 14th century, after the great
plague, the Black Death, had passed, an immensely increased
proportion of the landed and personal property of every
European country was in the hands of the Church. Well did a
great ecclesiastic remark that "pestilences are the harvests
of the ministers of God."
And so naturally the clergy hold on to their prerogative as banishers
of epidemics. Who knows what day the Lord may see fit to rebuke the
upstart teachers of impious and atheistical inoculation, and scourge
the people back into His fold as in the good old days of Moses and
Aaron? Viscount Amberley, in his immensely learned and half-suppressed
work, "The Analysis of Religious Belief", quotes some missionaries to
the Fiji islanders, concerning the ideas of these benighted heathen on
the subject of a pestilence. It was the work of a "disease-maker", who
was burning images of the people with incantations; so they blew horns
to frighten this disease-maker from his spells. The missionaries
undertook to explain the true cause of the affliction--and thereby
revealed that they stood upon the same intellectual level as the
heathen they were supposed to instruct! It appeared that the natives
had been at war with their neighbors, and the missionaries had
commanded them to desist; they had refused to obey, and God had sent
the epidemic as punishment for savage presumption!
And on precisely this same Fijian level stands the "Book of Common
Prayer" of our most decorous and cultured of churches. I remember as a
little child lying on a bed of sickness, occasioned by the prevalence
in our home of the Southern custom of hot bread three times a day; and
there came an amiable clerical gentleman and recited the service
proper to such pastoral calls: "Take therefore in good part the
visitation of the Lord!" And again, when my mother was ill, I remember
how the clergyman read out in church a prayer for her, specifying all
sickness, "in mind, body or estate". I was thinking only of my mother,
and the meaning of these words passed over my childish head; I did not
realize that the elderly plutocrat in black broadcloth who knelt in
the pew in front of me was invoking the aid of the Almighty so that
his tenements might bring in their rentals promptly; so that his
little "flyer" in cotton might prove successful; so that the children
in his mills might work with greater speed.
Somebody asked Voltaire if you could kill a cow by incantations, and
he answered, "Yes, if you use a little strychnine with it." And that
would seem to be the attitude of the present-day Anglican
church-member; he calls in the best physician he knows, he makes sure
that his plumbing is sound, and after that he thinks it can do no harm
to let the Lord have a chance. It makes the women happy, and after
all, there are a lot of things we don't yet know about the world. So
he repairs to the family pew, and recites over the venerable prayers,
and contributes his mite to the maintenance of an institution which,
fourteen Sundays every year, proclaims the terrifying menaces of the
Athanasian Creed:
Whoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary
that he hold the Catholick faith. Which faith, except one do
keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish
everlastingly.
For the benefit of the uninitiated reader, it may be explained that
the "Catholick faith" here referred to is not the Roman Catholic, but
that of the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal Church of
America. This creed of the ancient Alexandrian lays down the truth
with grim and menacing precision--forty-four paragraphs of
metaphysical minutiae, closing with the final doom: "This is the
Catholick faith: which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be
saved."
You see, the founders of this august institution were not content with
cultured complacency; what they believed they believed really, with
their whole hearts, and they were ready to act upon it, even if it
meant burning their own at the stake. Also, they knew the ceaseless
impulse of the mind to grow; the terrible temptation which confronts
each new generation to believe that which is reasonable. They met the
situation by setting out the true faith in words which no one could
mistake. They have provided, not merely the Creed of Athanasius, but
also the "Thirty-nine Articles"--which are thirty-nine separate and
binding guarantees that one who holds orders in the Episcopal Church
shall be either a man of inferior mentality, or else a sophist and
hypocrite. How desperate some of them have become in the face of this
cruel dilemma is illustrated by the tale which is told of Dr. Jowett,
of Balliol College, Oxford: that when he was required to recite the
"Apostle's Creed" in public, he would save himself by inserting the
words "used to" between the words "I believe", saying the inserted
words under his breath, thus, "I used to believe in the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost." Perhaps the eminent divine never did this;
but the fact that his students told it, and thought it funny, is
sufficient indication of their attitude toward their "Religion." The
son of William George Ward tells in his biography how this leader of
the "Tractarian Movement" met the problem with cynicism which seems
almost sublime: "Make yourself clear that you are justified in
deception; and then lie like a trooper!"
#The Canonization of Incompetence#
The supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in all
its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind; that
it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes
incompetence. Consider the power of the Church of England and its
favorite daughter here in America; consider their prestige with the
press and in politics, their hold upon literature and the arts, their
control of education and the minds of children, of charity and the
lives of the poor: consider all this, and then say what it means to
society that such a power must be, in every new issue that arises, on
the side of reaction and falsehood. "So it was in the beginning, is
now, and ever shall be," runs the church's formula; and this per se
and a priori, of necessity and in the nature of the case.
Turn over the pages of history and read the damning record of the
church's opposition to every advance in every field of science, even
the most remote from theological concern. Here is the Reverend Edward
Massey, preaching in 1772 on "The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of
Inoculation"; declaring that Job's distemper was probably confluent
small-pox; that he had been inoculated doubtless by the devil; that
diseases are sent by Providence for the punishment of sin; and that
the proposed attempt to prevent them is "a diabolical operation". Here
are the Scotch clergy of the middle of the nineteenth century
denouncing the use of chloroform in obstetrics, because it is seeking
"to avoid one part of the primeval curse on woman". Here is Bishop
Wilberforce of Oxford anathematizing Darwin: "The principle of natural
selection is absolutely incompatible with the word of God"; it
"contradicts the revealed relation of creation to its creator"; it "is
inconsistent with the fulness of His glory"; it is "a dishonoring view
of nature". And the Bishop settled the matter by asking Huxley whether
he was descended from an ape through his grandmother or grandfather.
Think what it means, friends of progress, that these ecclesiastical
figures should be set up for the reverence of the populace, and that
every time mankind is to make an advance in power over Nature, the
pioneers of thought have to come with crow-bars and derricks and heave
these figures out of the way! And you think that conditions are
changed to-day? But consider syphilis and gonorrhea, about which we
know so much, and can do almost nothing; consider birth-control, which
we are sent to jail for so much as mentioning! Consider the divorce
reforms for which the world is crying--and for which it must wait,
because of St. Paul! Realize that up to date it has proven impossible
to persuade the English Church to permit a man to marry his deceased
wife's sister! That when the war broke upon England the whole nation
was occupied with a squabble over the disestablishment of the church
of Wales! Only since 1888 has it been legally possible for an
unbeliever to hold a seat in Parliament; while up to the present day
men are tried for blasphemy and convicted under the decisions of Lord
Hale, to the effect that "it is a crime either to deny the truth of
the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion or to hold them up
to contempt or ridicule." Said Mr. Justice Horridge, at the West
Riding Assizes, 1911: "A man is not free in any public place to use
common ridicule on subjects which are sacred."
The purpose, as outlined by the public prosecutor in London, is "to
preserve the standard of outward decency." And you will find that the
one essential to prosecution is always that the victim shall be
obscure and helpless; never by any chance is he a duke in a
drawing-room. I will record an utterance of one of the obscure victims
of the British "standard of outward decency", a teacher of mathematics
named Holyoake, who presumed to discuss in a public hall the
starvation of the working classes of the country. A preacher objected
that he had discussed "our duty to our neighbor" and neglected "our
duty to God"; whereupon the lecturer replied: "Our national Church and
general religious institutions cost us, upon accredited computation,
about twenty million pounds annually. Worship being thus expensive, I
appeal to your heads and your pockets whether we are not too poor to
have a God. While our distress lasts, I think it would be wise to put
deity upon half pay." And for that utterance the unfortunate teacher
of mathematics served six months in the common Gaol at Gloucester!
While men were being tried for publishing the "Free-thinker", the
Premier of England was William Ewart Gladstone. And if you wish to
know what an established church can do by way of setting up dullness
in high places, get a volume of this "Grand Old Man's" writings on
theological and religious questions. Read his "Juventus Mundi", in the
course of which he establishes a mystic connection between the trident
of Neptune and the Christian Trinity! Read his efforts to prove that
the writer of Genesis was an inspired geologist! This writer of
Genesis points out in Nature "a grand, fourfold division, set forth in
an orderly succession of times: First, the water population; secondly,
the air population; thirdly, the land population of animals; fourthly,
the land population consummated in man." And it seems that this
division and sequence "is understood to have been so affirmed in our
time by natural science that it may be taken as a demonstrated
conclusion and established fact." Hence we must conclude of the writer
of Genesis that "his knowledge was divine"! Consider that this was
actually published in one of the leading British monthlies, and that
it was necessary for Professor Huxley to answer it, pointing out that
so far is it from being true that "a fourfold division and orderly
sequence" of water, air and land animals "has been affirmed in our
time by natural science", that on the contrary, the assertion is
"directly contradictory to facts known to everyone who is acquainted
with the elements of natural science". The distribution of fossils
proves that land animals originated before sea-animals, and there has
been such a mixing of land, sea and air animals as utterly to destroy
the reputation of both Genesis and Gladstone as possessing a divine
knowledge of Geology.
#Gibson's Preservative#
I have a friend, a well-known "scholar", who permits me the use of his
extensive library. I stand in the middle and look about me, and see in
the dim shadows walls lined from floor to ceiling with decorous and
grave-looking books, bound for the most part in black, many of them
fading to green with age. There are literally thousands of such, and
their theme is the pseudo-science of "divinity". I close my, eyes, to
make the test fair, and walk to the shelves and put out my hand and
take a book. It proves to be a modern work, "A History of the English
Prayer-book in Relation to the Doctrine of the Eucharist". I turn the
pages and discover that it is a study of the variations of one minute
detail of church doctrine. This learned divine--he has written many
such works, as the advertisements inform us--fills up the greater part
of his pages with foot-notes from hundreds of authorities, arguments
and counter-arguments over supernatural subtleties. I will give one
sample of these footnotes--asking the reader to be patient:
I add the following valuable observation, of Dean Goode:
("On Eucharist", II p 757. See also Archbishop Ware in
Gibson's "Preservative", vol. N, Chap II) "One great point
for which our divines have contended, in opposition to
Romish errors, has been the reality of that presence of
Christ's Body and Blood to the soul of the believer which is
affected through the operation of the Holy Spirit
notwithstanding the absence of that Body and Blood in
Heaven. Like the Sun, the Body of Christ is both present and
absent; present, really and truly present, in one
sense--that is, by the soul being brought into immediate
communion with--but absent in another sense--that is, as
regards the contiguity of its substance to our bodies. The
authors under review, like the Romanists, maintain that this
is not a Real Presence, and assuming their own
interpretation of the phrase to be the only true one, press
into their service the testimony of divines who, though
using the phrase, apply it in a sense the reverse of theirs.
The ambiguity of the phrase, and its misapplication by the
Church of Rome, have induced many of our divines to
repudiate it, etc."
Realize that of the work from which this "valuable observation" is
quoted, there are at least two volumes, the second volume containing
not less than 757 pages I Realize that in Gibson's "Preservative"
there are not less than ten volumes of such writing! Realize that in
this twentieth century a considerable portion of the mental energies
of the world's greatest empire is devoted to that kind of learning!
I turn to the date upon the volume, and find that it is 1910. I was in
England within a year of that time, and so I can tell what was the
condition of the English people while printers were making and papers
were reviewing and book-stores were distributing this work of
ecclesiastical research. I walked along the Embankment and saw the
pitiful wretches, men, women and sometimes children, clad in filthy
rags, starved white and frozen blue, soaked in winter rains and
shivering in winter winds, homeless, hopeless, unheeded by the doctors
of divinity, unpreserved by Gibson's "Preservative". I walked on
Hampstead Heath on Easter day, when the population of the slums turns
out for its one holiday; I walked, literally trembling with horror,
for I had never seen such sights nor dreamed of them. These creatures
were hardly to be recognized as human beings; they were some new
grotesque race of apes. They could not walk, they could only shamble;
they could not laugh, they could only leer. I saw a hand-organ
playing, and turned away--the things they did in their efforts to
dance were not to be watched. And then I went out into the beautiful
English country; cultured and charming ladies took me in swift, smooth
motor-cars, and I saw the pitiful hovels and the drink-sodden,
starch-poisoned inhabitants--slum-populations everywhere, even on the
land! When the newspaper reporters came to me, I said that I had just
come from Germany, and that if ever England found herself at war with
that country, she would regret that she had let the bodies and the
minds of her people rot; for which expression I was severely taken to
task by more than one British divine.
The bodies--and the minds; the rot of the latter being the cause of
the former. All over England in that year of 1910, in thousands of
schools, rich and poor, and in the greatest centres of learning, men
like Dean Goode were teaching boys dead languages and dead sciences
and dead arts; sending them out to life with no more conception of the
modern world than a monk of the Middle Ages; sending them out with
minds made hard and inflexible, ignorant of science, indifferent to
progress, contemptuous of ideas. And then suddenly, almost overnight,
this terrified people finds itself at war with a nation ruled and
disciplined' by modern experts, scientists and technicians. The awful
muddle that was in England during the first two years of the war has
not yet been told in print; but thousands know it, and some day it
will be written, and it will finish forever the prestige of the
British ruling caste. They rushed off an expedition to Gallipoli, and
somebody forgot the water-supply, and at one time they had ninety-five
thousand cases of dysentery!
They always "muddle through", they tell you; that is the motto of
their ruling caste. But this time they did not "muddle through"--they
had to come to America for help. As I write, our Congress is voting
billions and tens of billions of dollars, and a million of the best of
our young manhood are being taken from their homes--because in 1910
the mind of England was occupied with Dean Goode "On Eucharist", and
the ten volumes of Gibson's "Preservative".
#The Elders#
What the Church means in human affairs is the rule of the aged. It
means old men in the seats of authority, not merely in the church, but
in the law-courts and in Parliament, even in the army and navy. For a
test I look up the list of bishops of the Church of England in
Whitaker's Almanac; it appears that there are 40 of these
functionaries, including the archbishops, but not the suffragans; and
that the total salary paid to them amounts to more than nine hundred
thousand dollars a year. This, it should be understood, does not
include the pay of their assistants, nor the cost of maintaining their
religious establishments; it does not include any private incomes
which they or their wives may possess, as members of the privileged
classes of the Empire. I look up their ages in Who's Who, and I find
that there is only one below fifty-three; the oldest of them is
ninety-one, while the average age of the goodly company is seventy.
There have been men in history who have retained their flexibility of
mind, their ability to adjust themselves to new circumstances at the
age of seventy, but it will always be found that these men were
trained in science and practical affairs, never in dead languages and
theology. One of the oldest of the English prelates, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, recently stated to a newspaper reporter that he worked
seventeen hours a day, and had no time to form an opinion on the labor
question.
And now--here is the crux of the argument--do these aged gentlemen
rule of their own power? They do not! They do literally nothing of
their own power; they could not make their own episcopal robes, they
could net even cook their own episcopal dinners. They have to be
maintained in all their comings and goings. Who supports them, and to
what end?
The roots of the English Church are in the English land system, which
is one of the infamies of the modern world. It dates from the days of
William the Norman, who took possession of Britain with his sword, and
in order to keep possession for himself and his heirs, distributed the
land among his nobles and prelates. In those days, you understand, a
high ecclesiastic was a man of war, who did not stoop to veil his
predatory nature under pretense of philanthropy; the abbots and
archbishops of William wore armor and had their troops of knights like
the barons and the dukes. William gave them vast tracts, and at the
same time he gave them orders which they obeyed. Says the English
chronicler, "Stark he was. Bishops he stripped of their bishopricks,
abbots of their abbacies". Green tells us that "the dependence of the
church on the royal power was strictly enforced. Homage was exacted
from bishop as from baron." And what was this homage? The bishop knelt
before William, bareheaded and without arms, and swore: "Hear my lord,
I become liege man of yours for life and limb and earthly regard, and
I will keep faith and loyalty to you for life and death, God help me."
The lands which the church got from William the Norman, she has held,
and always on the same condition--that she shall be "liege man for
life and limb and earthly regard". In this you have the whole story of
the church of England, in the twentieth century as in the eleventh.
The balance of power has shifted from time to time; old families have
lost the land and new families have gotten it; but the loyalty and
homage of the church have been held by the land, as the needle of the
compass is held by a mass of metal. Some two hundred and fifty years
ago a popular song gave the general impression--
For this is law that I'll maintain
Until my dying day, sir:
That whatsoever king shall reign
I'll still be vicar of Bray, sir!
So, wherever you take the Anglican clergy, they are Tories and
Royalists, conservatives and reactionaries, friends of every injustice
that profits the owning class. And always among themselves you find
them intriguing and squabbling over the dividing of the spoils; always
you find them enjoying leisure and ease, while the people suffer and
the rebels complain. One can pass down the corridor of English history
and prove this statement by the words of Englishmen from every single
generation. Take the fourteenth century; the "Good Parliament"
declares that
Unworthy and unlearned caitiffs are appointed to benefices
of a thousand marks, while the poor and learned hardly
obtain one of twenty. God gave the sheep to be pastured, not
to be shaven and shorn.
And a little later comes the poet of the people, Piers Plowman--
But now is Religion a rider, a roamer through the streets,
A leader at the love-day, a buyer of the land,
Pricking on a palfrey from manor to manor,
A heap of hounds at his back, as tho he were a lord;
And if his servant kneel not when he brings his cup,
He loureth on him asking who taught him courtesy.
Badly have lords done to give their heirs' lands
Away to the Orders that have no pity;
Money rains upon their altars.
There where such parsons be living at ease
They have no pity on the poor; that is their "charity".
Ye hold you as lords; your lands are too broad,
But there shall come a king and he shall shrive you all
And beat you as the bible saith for breaking of your Rule.
Another step through history, and in the early part of the sixteenth
century here is Simon Fish, addressing King Henry the Eighth, in the
"Supplicacyon for the Beggars", complaining of the "strong, puissant
and counterfeit holy and ydell" which "are now increased under your
sight, not only into a great nombre, but ynto a kingdome."
They have begged so importunatly that they have gotten ynto
their hondes more than a therd part of all youre Realme. The
goodliest lordshippes, maners, londes, and territories, are
theyres. Besides this, they have the tenth part of all the
corne, medowe, pasture, grasse, wolle, coltes, calves,
lambes, pigges, gese and chikens. Ye, and they looke so
narowly uppon theyre proufittes, that the poore wyves must
be countable to thym of every tenth eg, or elles she gettith
not her rytes at ester, shal be taken as an heretike.... Is
it any merveille that youre people so compleine of povertie?
The Turke nowe, in your tyme, shulde never be abill to get
so moche grounde of christendome.... And whate do al these
gredy sort of sturdy, idell, holy theves? These be they that
have made an hundredth thousand idell hores in your realme.
These be they that catche the pokkes of one woman, and here
them to an other.
The petitioner goes on to tell how they steal wives and all their
goods with them, and if any man protest they make him a heretic, "so
that it maketh him wisshe that he had not done it". Also they take
fortunes for masses and then don't say them. "If the Abbot of
west-minster shulde sing every day as many masses for his founders as
he is bounde to do by his foundacion, 1000 monkes were too few." The
petitioner suggests that the king shall "tie these holy idell theves
to the cartes, to be whipped naked about every market towne till they
will fall to laboure!"
#Church History#
King Henry did not follow this suggestion precisely, but he took away
the property of the religious orders for the expenses of his many
wives and mistresses, and forced the clergy in England to forswear
obedience to the Pope and make his royal self their spiritual head.
This was the beginning of the Anglican Church, as distinguished from
the Catholic; a beginning of which the Anglican clergy are not so
proud as they would like to be. When I was a boy, they taught me what
they called "church history", and when they came to Henry the Eighth
they used him as an illustration of the fact that the Lord is
sometimes wont to choose evil men to carry out His righteous purposes.
They did not explain why the Lord should do this confusing thing, nor
just how you were to know, when you saw something being done by a
murderous adulterer, whether it was the will of the Lord or of Satan;
nor did they go into details as to the motives which the Lord had been
at pains to provide, so as to induce his royal agent to found the
Anglican Church. For such details you have to consult another set of
authorities--the victims of the plundering.
When I was in college my professor of Latin was a gentleman with bushy
brown whiskers and a thundering voice of which I was often the
object--for even in those early days I had the habit of persisting in
embarrassing questions. This professor was a devout Catholic, and not
even in dealing with ancient Romans could he restrain his propaganda
impulses. Later on in life he became editor of the "Catholic
Encyclopedia", and now when I turn its pages, I imagine that I see the
bushy brown whiskers, and hear the thundering voice: "Mr. Sinclair, it
is so because I tell you it is so!"
I investigate, and find that my ex-professor knows all about King
Henry the Eighth, and his motives in founding the Church of England;
he is ready with an "economic interpretation", as complete as the most
rabid muckraker could desire! It appears that the king wanted a new
wife, and demanded that the Pope should grant the necessary
permission; in his efforts to browbeat the Pope into such betrayal of
duty, King Henry threatened the withdrawal of the "annates" and the
"Peter's pence". Later on he forced the clergy to declare that the
Pope was "only a foreign bishop", and in order to "stamp out overt
expression of disaffection, he embarked upon a veritable reign of
terror".
In Anglican histories, you are assured that all this was a work of
religious reform, and that after it the Church was the pure vehicle of
God's grace. There were no more "holy idell theves", holding the land
of England and plundering the poor. But get to know the clergy, and
see things from the inside, and you will meet some one like the
Archbishop of Cashell, who wrote to one of his intimates:
I conclude that a good bishop has nothing more to do than to
eat, drink and grow fat, rich and die; which laudable
example _I_ propose for the remainder of my days to follow.
If you say that might be a casual jest, hear what Thackeray reports of
that period, the eighteenth century, which he knew with peculiar
intimacy:
I read that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious
King's favorite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for 5600
pounds. (She betted him the 5000 pounds that he would not be
made a bishop, and he lost, and paid her.) Was he the only
prelate of his time led up by such hands for consecration?
As I peep into George II's St. James, I see crowds of
cassocks pushing up the back-stairs of the ladies of the
court; stealthy clergy slipping purses into their laps; that
godless old king yawning under his canopy in his Chapel
Royal, as the chaplain before him is discoursing.
Discoursing about what?--About righteousness and judgment?
Whilst the chaplain is preaching, the king is chattering in
German and almost as loud as the preacher; so loud that the
clergyman actually burst out crying in his pulpit, because
the defender of the faith and the dispenser of bishoprics
would not listen to him!
#Land and Livings#
And how is it in the twentieth century? Have conditions been much
improved? There are great Englishmen who do not think so. I quote
Robert Buchanan, a poet who spoke for the people, and who therefore
has still to be recognized by English critics. He writes of the "New
Rome", by which he means present-day England:
The gods are dead, but in their name
Humanity is sold to shame,
While (then as now!) the tinsel'd priest
Sitteth with robbers at the feast,
Blesses the laden, blood-stained board,
Weaves garlands round the butcher's sword,
And poureth freely (now as then)
The sacramental blood of Men!
You see, the land system of England remains--the changes having been
for the worse. William the Conqueror wanted to keep the Saxon
peasantry contented, so he left them their "commons"; but in the
eighteenth century these were nearly all filched away. We saw the same
thing done within the last generation in Mexico, and from the same
motive--because developing capitalism needs cheap labor, whereas
people who have access to the land will not slave in mills and mines.
In England, from the time of Queen Anne to that of William and Mary,
the parliaments of the landlords passed some four thousand separate
acts, whereby more than seven million acres of the common land were
stolen from the people. It has been calculated that these acres might
have supported a million families; and ever since then England has had
to feed a million paupers all the time.
As an old song puts the matter:
Why prosecute the man or woman
Who steals a goose from off the common,
And let the greater felon loose
Who steals the common from the goose?
In our day the land aristocracy is rooted like the native oak in
British soil: some of them direct descendants of the Normans, others
children of the court favorites and panders who grew rich in the days
of the Tudors and the unspeakable Stuarts. Seven men own practically
all the land of the city and county of London, and collect tribute
from seven millions of people. The estates are entailed--that is,
handed down from father to oldest son automatically; you cannot buy
any land, but if you want to build, the landlord gives you a lease,
and when the lease is up, he takes possession of your buildings. The
tribute which London pays is more than a hundred million dollars a
year. So absolute is the right of the land-owner that he can sue for
trespass the driver on an aeroplane which flies over him; he imposes
on fishermen a tax upon catches made many hundred of yards from the
shore.
And in this graft, of course, the church has its share. Each church
owns land--not merely that upon which it stands, but farms and city
lots from which it derives income. Each cathedral owns large tracts;
so do the schools and universities in which the clergy are educated.
The income from the holdings of a church constitutes what is called a
"living"; these livings, which vary in size, are the prerogatives of
the younger sons of the ruling families, and are intrigued and
scrambled for in exactly the fashion which Thackeray describes in the
eighteenth century.
About six thousand of these "livings" are in the gift of great land
owners; one noble lord alone disposes of fifty-six such plums; and
needless to say, he does not present them to clergymen who favor
radical land-taxes. He gives them to men like himself--autocratic to
the poor, easy-going to members of his own class, and cynical
concerning the grafts of grace.
In one English village which I visited the living was worth seven
hundred pounds, with the use of a fine mansion; as the incumbent had a
large family, he lived there. In another place the living was worth a
thousand pounds, and the incumbent hired a curate, himself appearing
twice a year, on Christmas day and on the King's birth-day, to preach
a sermon; the rest of the time he spent in Paris. It is worth noting
that in 1808 a law was proposed compelling absentee pluralists--that
is, clergymen holding more than one "living"--to furnish curates to do
their work; it might be interesting to note that this law met with
strenuous clerical opposition, the house of Bishops voting against it
without a division. Thus we may understand the sharp saying of Karl
Marx, that the English clergy would rather part with thirty-eight of
their thirty-nine articles than with one thirty-ninth of their income.
There is always a plentiful supply of curates in England. They are the
sons of the less influential ruling families, and of the clergy; they
have been trained at Oxford or Cambridge, and possess the one
essential qualification, that they are gentlemen. Their average price
is two hundred and fifty pounds a year; their function was made clear
to me when I attended my first English tea-party. There was a wicker
table, perhaps a foot and a half square, having three shelves, one
below the other--on the top layer the plates and napkins, on the next
the muffins, and on the lowest the cake. Said the hostess, "Will you
pass the curate, please?" I looked puzzled, and she pointed. "We call
that the curate, because it does the work of a curate."
#Graft in Tail#
As one of America's head muck-rakers, I found that I was popular with
the British ruling classes; they found my books useful in their
campaigns against democracy, and they were surprised and disconcerted
when they found I did not agree with their interpretation of my
writings. I had told of corruption in American politics; surely I must
know that in England they had no such evils! I explained that they did
not have to; their graft, to use their own legal phrase, was "in
tail"; the grafters had, as a matter of divine right, the things which
in America they had to buy. In America, for instance, we had a Senate,
a "Millionaire's Club", for admission to which the members paid in
cash; but in England the same men came to the same position as their
birth-right. Political corruption is not an end in itself, it is
merely a means to exploitation; and of exploitation England has even
more than America. When I explained this, my popularity with the
British ruling classes vanished quickly.
As a matter of fact, England is more like America than she realizes;
her British reticence has kept her ignorant about herself. I could not
carry on my business in England, because of the libel laws, which have
as their first principle "the greater the truth, the greater the
libel". Englishmen read with satisfaction what I write about America;
but if I should turn my attention to their own country, they would
send me to jail as they sent Frank Harris. The fact is that the new
men in England, the lords of coal and iron and shipping and beer, have
bought their way into the landed aristocracy for cash, just as our
American senators have done; they have bought the political parties
with campaign gifts, precisely as in America; they have taken over the
press, whether by outright purchase like Northcliffe, or by
advertising subsidy--both of which methods we Americans know. Within
the last decade or two another group has been coming into control; and
not merely is this the same class of men as in America, it frequently
consists of the same individuals. These are the big money-lenders, the
international financiers who are the fine and final flower of the
capitalist system. These gentlemen make the world their home--or, as
Shakespeare puts it, their oyster. They know how to fit themselves to
all environments; they are Catholics in Rome and Vienna, country
gentlemen in London, bons vivants in Paris, democrats in Chicago,
Socialists in Petrograd, and Hebrews wherever they are.
And of course, in buying the English government, these new classes
have bought the English Church. Skeptics and men of the world as they
are, they know that they must have a Religion. They have read the
story of the French revolution, and the shadow of the guillotine is
always over their thoughts; they see the giant of labor, restless in
his torment, groping as in a nightmare for the throat of his enemy.
Who can blind the eyes of this giant, who can chain him to his couch
of slumber? There is but one agent, without rival--the Keeper of the
Holy Secrets, the Deputy of the Almighty Awfulness, the Giver and
Withholder of Eternal Life. Tremble, slave! Fall down and bow your
forehead in the dust! I can see in my memory the sight that thrilled
my childhood--my grim old Bishop, clad in his gorgeous ceremonial
robes, stretching out his hands over the head of the new priest, and
pronouncing that most deadly of all the Christian curses:
"Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou
dost retain, they are retained!"
#Bishops and Beer#
For example, the International Shylocks wanted the diamond mines of
South Africa--wanted them more firmly governed and less firmly taxed
than could be arranged with the Old Man of the Boers. So the armies of
England were sent to subjugate the country. You might think they would
have had the good taste to leave the lowly Jesus out of this
affair--but if so, you have missed the essential point about
established religion. The bishops, priests, and deacons are set up for
the populace to revere, and when the robber-classes need a blessing
upon some enterprise, then is the opportunity for the bishops, priests
and deacons to earn their "living." During the Boer war the blood-lust
of the English clergy was so extreme that writers in the dignified
monthly reviews felt moved to protest against it. When the pastors of
Switzerland issued a collective protest against cruelties to women and
children in the South African concentration-camps, it was the Right
Reverend Bishop of Winchester who was brought forward to make reply.
Nowadays all England is reading Bernhardi, and shuddering at Prussian
glorification of war; but no one mentions Bishop Welldon of Calcutta,
who advocated the Boer war as a means of keeping the nation "virile";
nor Archbishop Alexander, who said that it was God's way of making
"noble natures".
The British God had other ways of improving nations--for example, the
opium traffic. The British traders had been raising the poppy in India
and selling its juice to the Chinese. They had made perhaps a hundred
million "noble natures" by this method; and also they were making a
hundred million dollars a year. The Chinese, moved by their new
"virility," undertook to destroy some opium, and to stop the traffic;
whereupon it was necessary to use British battle-ships to punish and
subdue them. Was there any difficulty in persuading the established
church of Jesus to bless this holy war? There was not! Lord
Shaftesbury, himself the most devout of Anglicans, commented with
horror upon the attitude of the clergy, and wrote in his diary:
I rejoice that this cruel and debasing opium war is
terminated. We have triumphed in one of the most lawless,
unnecessary, and unfair struggles in the records of history;
and Christians have shed more heathen blood in two years,
than the heathens have shed of Christian blood in two
centuries.
That was in 1843; for seventy years thereafter pious England continued
to force the opium traffic upon protesting China, and only in the last
two or three years has the infamy been brought to an end. Throughout
the long controversy the attitude of the church was such that Li Hung
Chang was moved to assert in a letter to the Anti-Opium Society:
Opium is a subject in the discussion of which England and
China can never meet on a common ground. China views the
whole question from a moral standpoint, England from a
fiscal.
And just as the Chinese people were poisoned with opium, so the
English people are being poisoned with alcohol. Both in town and
country, labor is sodden with it. Scientists and reformers are
clamoring for restriction;--and what prevents? Head and front of the
opposition for a century, standing like a rock, has been the
Established Church. The Rev. Dawson Burns, historian of the early
temperance movement, declares that "among its supporters I cannot
recall one Church of England minister of influence." When Asquith
brought in his bill for the restriction of the traffic in beer, he was
confronted with petitions signed by members of the clergy, protesting
against the act. And what was the basis of their protest? That beer is
a food and not a poison? Yes, of course; but also that there was
property invested in brewing it. Three hundred and thirty-two clergy
of the diocese of Peterborough declared:
We do strongly protest against the main provisions of the
present bill as creating amongst our people a sense of grave
injustice as amounting to a confiscation of private
property, spelling ruin for thousands of quite innocent
people, and provoking deep and widespread resentment, which
must do harm to our cause and hinder our aims.
I have come upon references to another and even more plainspoken
petition, signed by 1,280 clergymen; but war-time facilities for
research have not enabled me to find the text. In Prof. Henry C.
Vedder's "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," we read:
It was authoritatively stated a short time ago that Mr.
Asquith's temperance bill was defeated in Parliament through
the opposition of clergymen who had invested their savings
in brewery stock, the profits of which might have been
lessened by the bill.
Also the power of the clergy, combined with the brewer, was sufficient
to put through Parliament a provision that no prohibition legislation
should ever be passed without providing for compensation to the owners
of the industry. Today, all over America, appeals are being made to
the people to eat less grain; the grain is being shipped to England,
some of it to be made into beer; and a high Anglican prelate, his
Grace the Archbishop of York, comes to America to urge us to increased
sacrifices, and in his first newspaper interview takes occasion to
declare that his church is not in favor of prohibition as a measure of
war-time economy!
#Anglicanism and Alcohol#
This partnership of Bishops and Beer is painfully familiar to British
radicals; they see it at work in every election--the publican
confusing the voters with spirits, while the parson confuses them with
spirituality. There are two powerful societies in England employing
this deadly combination--the "Anti-Socialist Union" and the "Liberty
and Property Defense League." If you scan the lists of the organizers,
directors and subsidizers of these satanic institutions, you find Tory
politicians and landlords, prominent members of the higher clergy, and
large-scale dealers in drunkenness. I attended in London a meeting
called by the "Liberty and Property Defense League," to listen to a
denunciation of Socialism by W.H. Mallock, a master sophist of Roman
Catholicism; upon the platform were a bishop and half a dozen members
of the Anglican clergy, together with the secretary of the Federated
Brewers' Association, the Secretary of the Wine, Spirit, and Beer
Trade Association, and three or four other alcoholic magnates.
In every public library in England and many in America you will
find an assortment of pamphlets published by these organizations,
and scholarly volumes endorsed by them, in which the stock
misrepresentations of Socialism are perpetuated. Some of these
writings are brutal--setting forth the ethics of exploitation in the
manner of the Rev. Thomas Malthus, the English clergyman who supplied
for capitalist depredation a basis in pretended natural science. Said
this shepherd of Jesus:
A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he
cannot get subsistence from his parents, and if society does
not Want his labor, has no claim of right to the smallest
portion of food, and in fact has no business to be where he
is. At Nature's mighty feast there is no cover for him. She
tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own
orders.
Such was the tone of the ruling classes in the nineteenth century; but
it was found that for some reason this failed to stop the growth of
Socialism, and so in our time the clerical defenders of Privilege have
grown subtle and insinuating. They inform us now that they have a deep
sympathy with our fundamental purposes; they burn with pity for the
poor, and they would really and truly wish happiness to everyone, not
merely in Heaven, but right here and now. However, there are so many
complications--and so they proceed to set out all the anti-Socialist
bug-a-boos. Here for example, is the Rev. James Stalker, D.D.,
expounding "The Ethics of Jesus," and admonishing us extremists:
Efforts to transfer money and property from one set of hands
to another may be inspired by the same passions as have
blinded the present holders to their own highest good, and
may be accompanied with injustice as extreme as has ever
been manifested by the rich and powerful.
And again, the Rev. W. Sanday, D.D., an especially popular clerical
author, gives us this sublime utterance of religion on wage-slavery:
The world is full of mysteries, but some clear lines run
through them, of which this is one. Where God has been so
patient, it is not for us to be impatient.
And again, Professor Robert Flint, of Edinburgh University, a
clergyman, author of a big book attacking Socialism, and bringing us
back to the faith of our fathers:
The great bulk of human misery is due, not to social
arrangements, but to personal vices.
I study Professor Flint's volume in the effort to find just what, if
anything, he would have the church do about the evils of our time. I
find him praising the sermons of Dr. Westcott, Bishop of Durham, as
being the proper sort for clergymen to preach. Bishop Westcott,
whether he is talking to a high society congregation, or to one of
workingmen, shows "an exquisite sense of knowing always where to
stop." So I consulted the Bishop's volume, "The Social Aspects of
Christianity" and I see at once why he is popular with the
anti-Socialist propagandists--neither I or any other man can possibly
discover what he really means, or what he really wants done.
I was fascinated by this Westcott problem; I thought maybe if I kept
on the good Bishop's trail, I might in the end find something a plain
man could understand; so I got the beautiful two-volume "Life of
Brooke Westcott, by his Son"--and there I found an exposition of the
social purposes of bishops! In the year 1892 there was a strike in
Durham, which is in the coal country; the employers tried to make a
cut in wages, and some ten thousand men walked out, and there was a
long and bitter struggle, which wrung the episcopal heart. There was
much consultation and correspondence on episcopal stationery, and at
last the masters and men were got together, with the Bishop as
arbitrator, and the dispute was triumphantly settled--how do you
suppose? On the basis of a ten per cent reduction in wages!
I know nothing quainter in the history of English graft than the
NAIVETÉ with which the Bishop's biographer and son tells the story of
this episcopal venture into reality. The prelate came out from the
conference "all smiles, and well satisfied with the result of his
day's work." As for his followers, they were in ecstacies; they
"seized and waltzed one another around on the carriage drive as madly
as ever we danced at a flower show ball. Hats and caps are thrown into
the air, and we cheer ourselves hoarse." The Bishop proceeds to his
palace, and sends one more communication on episcopal stationery--an
order to all his clergy to "offer their humble and hearty thanks to
God for our happy deliverance from the strife by which the diocese has
been long afflicted." Strange to say, there were a few varlets in
Durham who did not appreciate the services of the bold Bishop, and one
of them wrote and circulated some abusive verses, in which he made
reference to the Bishop's comfortable way of life. The biographer then
explains that the Bishop was so tender-hearted that he suffered for
the horses who drew his episcopal coach, and so ascetic that he would
have lived on tea and toast if he had been permitted to. A curious
condition in English society, where the Bishop would have lived on tea
and toast, but was not permitted to; while the working people, who
didn't want to live on tea and toast, were compelled to!
#Dead Cats#
For more than a hundred years the Anglican clergy have been fighting
with every resource at their command the liberal and enlightened men
of England who wished to educate the masses of the people. In 1807 the
first measure for a national school-system was denounced by the
Archbishop of Canterbury as "derogatory to the authority of the
Church." As a counter-measure, his supporters established the
"National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the
Doctrines of the Established Church"; and the founder of the
organization, a clergyman, advocated a barn as a good structure for a
school, and insisted that the children of the workers "should not be
taught beyond their station." In 1840 a Committee of the Privy Council
on Education was appointed, but bowed to the will of the Archbishops,
setting forth the decree of "their lord-ships" that "the first purpose
of all instruction must be the regulation of the thoughts and habits
of the children by the doctrine and precepts of revealed religion." In
1850 a bill for secular education was denounced as presenting to the
country "a choice between Heaven or Hell, God or the Devil." In 1870,
Forster, author of the still unpassed bill, wrote that while the
parsons were disputing, the children of the poor were "growing into
savages."
As with Education, so with Social Reform. During the struggle to
abolish slavery in the British colonies, some enthusiasts endeavored
to establish the doctrine that Christian baptism conferred
emancipation upon negroes who accepted it; whereupon the Bishop of
London laid down the formula of exploitation: "Christianity and the
embracing of the gospel do not make the least alteration of civil
property."
Gladstone, who was a democrat when he was not religious, spoke of the
cultured classes of England:
In almost every one, if not every one, of the greatest
political controversies of the last fifty years, whether
they affected the franchise, whether they affected commerce,
whether they affected religion, whether they affected the
bad and abominable institution of slavery, or what subject
they touched, these leisured classes, these educated
classes, these titled classes have been in the wrong.
The "Great Commoner" did not add "these religious classes ", for he
belonged to the religious classes himself; but a study of the record
will supply the gap. The Church opposed all the reform measures which
Gladstone himself put through. It opposed the Reform Bill of 1832. It
opposed all the social reforms of Lord Salisbury. This noble-hearted
Englishman complained that at first only a single minister of religion
supported him, and to the end only a few. He expressed himself as
distressed and puzzled "to find support from infidels and
non-professors; opposition or coldness from religionists or
declaimers."
And to our own day it has been the same. In 1894 the House of Bishops
voted solidly against the Employers' Liability Law. The House of
Bishops opposed Home Rule, and beat it; The House of Bishops opposed
Womans' Suffrage, and voted against it to the end. Concerning this
establishment Lord Salisbury, himself the most devout of Englishmen,
used the vivid phrase: "This vast aquarium full of cold-blooded life."
He told the Bishops that he would give up preaching to them about
ecclesiastical reform, because he knew that they would never begin.
Another member of the British aristocracy, the Hon. Geo. Russel, has
written of their record and adventures:
They were defenders of absolutism, slavery, and the bloody
penal code; they were the resolute opponents of every
political or social reform; and they had their reward from
the nation outside parliament. The Bishop of Bristol had his
palace sacked and burnt; the Bishop of London could not keep
an engagement to preach lest the congregation should stone
him. The Bishop of Litchfield barely escaped with his life
after preaching at St. Bride's, Fleet Street. Archbishop
Howley, entering Canterbury for his primary visitation, was
insulted, spat upon, and only brought by a circuitous route
to the Deanery, amid the execrations of the mob. On the 5th
of November the Bishops of Exeter and Winchester were burnt
in effigy close to their own palace gates. Archbishop
Howley's chaplain complained that a dead cat had been thrown
at him, when the Archbishop--a man of apostolic
meekness--replied: "You should be thankful that it was not a
live one."
The people had reason for this conduct--as you will always find they
have, if you take the trouble to inquire. Let me quote another member
of the English ruling classes, Mr. Conrad Noel, who gives "an
instance, of the procedure of Church and State about this period":
In 1832 six agricultural labourers in South Dorsetshire, led
by one of their class, George Loveless, in receipt of 9s. a
week each, demanded the 10s. rate of wages usual in the
neighbourhood. The result was a reduction to 8s. An appeal
was made to the chairman of the local bench, who decided
that they must work for whatever their masters chose to pay
them. The parson, who had at first promised his help, now
turned against them, and the masters promptly reduced the
wage to 7s., with a threat of further reduction. Loveless
then formed an agricultural union, for which all seven were
arrested, treated as convicts, and committed to the assizes.
The prison chaplain tried to bully them into submission. The
judge determined to convict them, and directed that they
should be tried for mutiny under an act of George III,
specially passed to deal with the naval mutiny at the Nore.
The grand jury were landowners, and the petty jury were
farmers; both judge and jury were churchmen of the
prevailing type. The judge summed up as follows: "Not for
anything that you have done, or that I can prove that you
intend to do, but for an example to others I consider it my
duty to pass the sentence of seven years' penal
transportation across His Majesty's high seas upon each and
every one of you."
#Suffer Little Children#
The founder of Christianity was a man who specialized in children. He
was not afraid of having His discourses disturbed by them, He did not
consider them superfluous. "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven", He
said; and His Church is the inheritor of this tradition--"feed my
lambs". There were children in Great Britain in the early part of the
nineteenth century, and we may see what was done with them by turning
to Gibbin's "Industrial History of England":
Sometimes regular traffickers would take the place of the
manufacturer, and transfer a number of children to a factory
district, and there keep them, generally in some dark
cellar, till they could hand them over to a mill owner in
want of hands, who would come and examine their height,
strength, and bodily capacities, exactly as did the slave
oweners in the American markets. After that the children
were simply at the mercy of their oweners, nominally as
apprentices, but in reality as mere slaves, who got no
wages, and whom it was not worth while even to feed and
clothe properly, because they were so cheap and their places
could be so easily supplied. It was often arranged by the
parish authorities, in order to get rid of imbeciles, that
one idiot should be taken by the mill owener with every
twenty sane children. The fate of these unhappy idiots was
even worse than that of the others. The secret of their
final end has never been disclosed, but we can form some
idea of their awful sufferings from the hardships of the
other victims to capitalist greed and cruelty. The hours of
their labor were only limited by exhaustion, after many
modes of torture had been unavailingly applied to force
continued work. Children were often worked sixteen hours a
day, by day and by night.
In the year 1819 an act of Parliament was proposed limiting the labor
of children nine years of age to fourteen hours a day. This would seem
to have been a reasonable provision, likely to have won the approval
of Christ; yet the bill was violently opposed by Christian employers,
backed by Christian clergymen. It was interfering with freedom of
contract, and therefore with the will of Providence; it was anathema
to an established Church, whose function was in 1819, as it is in
1918, and was in 1918 B.C., to teach the divine origin and sanction of
the prevailing economic order. "Anu and Baal called me, Hammurabi, the
exalted prince, worshipper of the gods" ... so begins the oldest legal
code which has come down to us, from 2250 B.C.; and the coronation
service of the English church is made whole out of the same thesis.
The duty of submission, not merely to divinely chosen King, but to
divinely chosen Landlord and divinely chosen Manufacturer, is implicit
in the church's every ceremony, and explicit in many of its creeds. In
the Litany the people petition for "increase of grace to hear meekly
Thy Word"; and here is this "Word," as little children are made to
learn it by heart. If there exists in the world a more perfect summary
of slave ethics, I do not know where to find it.
My duty towards my neighbour is ... To honour and obey the
King, and all that are put in authority under him; To submit
myself to all my governours, teachers, spiritual pastors,
and masters: To order myself lowly and reverently to all my
betters.... Not to covet nor desire other men's goods; But
to learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do
my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please
God to call me.
A hundred years ago one of the most popular of British writers was
Hannah More. She and her sister Martha went to live in the
coal-country, to teach this "catechism" to the children of the
starving miners. The "Mendip Annals" is the title of a book in which
they tell of their ten years' labors in a village popularly known as
"Little Hell." In this place two hundred people were crowded into
nineteen houses. "There is not one creature in it that can give a cup
of broth if it would save a life." In one winter eighteen perished of
"a putrid fever", and the clergyman "could not raise a six-pence to
save a life."
And what did the pious sisters make of all this? From cover to cover
you find in the "Mendip Annals" no single word of social protest, not
even of social suspicion. That wages of a shilling a day might have
anything to do with moral degeneration was a proposition beyond the
mental powers of England's most popular woman writer. She was
perfectly content that a woman should be sentenced to death for
stealing butter from a dealer who had asked what the woman thought too
high a price. When there came a famine, and the children of these
mine-slaves were dying like flies, Hannah More bade them be happy
because God had sent them her pious self. "In suffering by the
scarcity, you have but shared in the common lot, with the pleasure of
knowing the advantage you have had over many villages in your having
suffered no scarcity of religious instruction." And in another place
she explained that the famine was caused by God to teach the poor to
be grateful to the rich!
Let me remind you that probably that very scarcity has been
permitted by an all-wise and gracious Providence to unite
all ranks of people together, to show the poor how
immediately they are dependent upon the rich, and to show
both rich and poor that they are all dependent upon Himself.
It has also enabled you to see more clearly the advantages
you derive from the government and constitution of this
country--to observe the benefits flowing from the
distinction of rank and fortune, which has enabled the high
to so liberally assist the low.
It appears that the villagers were entirely convinced by
this pious reasoning; for they assembled one Saturday night
and burned an effigy of Tom Paine! This proceeding led to a
tragic consequence, for one of the "common people," known as
Robert, "was overtaken by liquor," and was unable to appear
at Sunday School next day. This fall from grace occasioned
intense remorse in Robert. "It preyed dreadfully upon his
mind for many months," records Martha More, "and despair
seemed at length to take possession of him." Hannah had some
conversation with him, and read him some suitable passages
from "The Rise and Progress". "At length the Almighty was
pleased to shine into his heart and give him comfort."
Nor should you imagine that this saintly stupidity was in
any way unique in the Anglican establishment. We read in the
letters of Shelley how his father tormented him with
Archdeacon Paley's "Evidences" as a cure for atheism. This
eminent churchman wrote a book, which he himself ranked
first among his writings, called "Reasons for Contentment,
addressed to the Labouring Classes of the British Public."
In this book he not merely proved that religion "smooths all
inequalities, because it unfolds a prospect which makes all
earthly distinctions nothing"; he went so far as to prove
that, quite apart from religion, the British exploiters were
less fortunate than those to whom they paid a shilling a
day.
Some of the conditions which poverty (if the condition of
the labouring part of mankind must be so called) imposes,
are not hardships, but pleasures. Frugality itself is a
pleasure. It is an exercise of attention and contrivance,
which, whenever it is successful, produces satisfaction....
This is lost among abundance.
And there was William Wilberforce, as sincere a philanthropist as
Anglicanism ever produced, an ardent supporter of Bible societies and
foreign missions, a champion of the anti-slavery movement, and also of
the ruthless "Combination Laws," which denied to British wage-slaves
all chance of bettering their lot. Wilberforce published a "Practical
View of the System of Christianity", in which he told unblushingly
what the Anglican establishment is for. In a chapter which he
described as "the basis of all politics," he explained that the
purpose of religion is to remind the poor
That their more lowly path has been allotted to them by the
hand of God; that it is their part faithfully to discharge
its duties, and contentedly to bear its inconveniences; that
the objects about which worldly men conflict so eagerly are
not worth the contest; that the peace of mind, which
Religion offers indiscriminately to all ranks, affords more
true satisfaction than all the expensive pleasures which are
beyond the poor man's reach; that in this view the poor have
the advantage; that if their superiors enjoy more abundant
comforts, they are also exposed to many temptations from
which the inferior classes are happily exempted; that,
"having food and raiment, they should be therewith content,"
since their situation in life, with all its evils, is better
than they have deserved at the hand of God; and finally,
that all human distinctions will soon be done away, and the
true followers of Christ will all, as children of the same
Father, be alike admitted to the possession of the same
heavenly inheritance. Such are the blessed effects of
Christianity on the temporal well-being of political
communities.
THE COURT CIRCULAR
The Anglican system of submission has been transplanted intact to the
soil of America. When King George the Third lost the sovereignty of
the colonies, the bishops of his divinely inspired church lost the
control of the clergy across the seas; but this revolution was purely
one of Church politics--in doctrine and ritual the "Protestant
Episcopal Church of America" remained in every way Anglican. The
little children of our free republic are taught the same
slave-catechism, "to order myself lowly and reverently to all my
betters." The only difference is that instead of being told "to honour
and obey the King," they are told "to honour and obey the civil
authority."
It is the Church of Good Society in England, and it is the same in
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Charleston.
Just as our ruling classes have provided themselves with imitation
English schools and imitation English manners and imitation English
clothes--so in their Heaven they have provided an imitation English
monarch. I wonder how many Americans realize the treason to democracy
they are committing when they allow their children to be taught a
symbolism and liturgy based upon absolutist ideas. I take up the
hymn-book--not the English, but the sturdy, independent, democratic
American hymn-book. I have not opened it for twenty years, yet the
greater part of its contents is as familiar to me as the syllables of
my own name. I read:
Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim bowing down before Thee,
Which wert, and art, and ever more shall be!
One might quote a hundred other hymns made thus out of royal imagery.
I turn at random to the part headed "General," and find that there is
hardly one hymn in which there is not "king," "throne," or some image
of homage and flattery. The first hymn begins--
Ancient of days, Who sittest, throned in glory;
To Thee all knees are bent, all voices pray.
And the second--
Christ, whose glory fills the skies--
And the third--
Lord of all being, throned afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star.
There is a court in Heaven above, to which all good Britons look up,
and about which they read with exactly the same thrills as they read
the Court Circular. The two courts have the same ethical code and the
same manners; their Sovereigns are jealous, greedy of attention,
self-conscious and profoundly serious, punctilious and precise; their
existence consisting of an endless round of ceremonies, and they being
incapable of boredom. No member of the Royal Family can escape this
regime even if he wishes; and no more can any member of the Holy
Family--not even the meek and lowly Jesus, who chose a carpenter's
wife for his mother, and showed all his earthly days a preference for
low society.
This unconventional Son lived obscurely; he never carried weapons, he
could not bear to have so much as a human ear cut off in his presence.
But see how he figures in the Court Circular:
The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain:
His blood-red banner streams afar:
Who follows in His train?
This carpenter's son was one of the most unpretentious men on earth;
utterly simple and honest--he would not even let anyone praise him.
When some one called him "good Master," he answered, quickly, "Why
callest thou me good? There is none good save one, that is, God." But
this simplicity has been taken with deprecation by his church, which
persists in heaping compliments upon him in conventional, courtly
style:
The company of angels
Are praising Thee on high;
And mortal men, and all things
Created, make reply:
All Glory, laud and honour,
To Thee, Redeemer, King....
The impression a modern man gets from all this is the unutterable
boredom that Heaven must be. Can one imagine a more painful occupation
than that of the saints--casting down their golden crowns around the
glassy sea--unless it be that of the Triumvirate itself, compelled to
sit through eternity watching these saints, and listening to their
mawkish and superfluous compliments!
But one can understand that such things are necessary in a monarchy;
they are necessary if you are going to have Good Society, and a Good
Society church. For Good Society is precisely the same thing as
Heaven; that is, a place to which only a few can get admission, and
those few are bored. They spend their time going through costly
formalities--not because they enjoy it, but because of its effect upon
the populace, which reads about them and sees their pictures in the
papers, and now and then is allowed to catch a glimpse of their
physical Presences, as at the horse-show, or the opera, or the
coaching-parade.
#Horn-blowing#
I know the Church of Good Society in America, having studied it from
the inside. I was an extraordinarily devout little boy; one of my
earliest recollections--I cannot have been more than four years of
age--is of carrying a dust-brush about the house as the choir-boy
carried the golden cross every Sunday morning. I remember asking if I
might say the "Lord's prayer" in this fascinating play; and my
mother's reply: "If you say it reverently." When I was thirteen, I
attended service, of my own volition and out of my own enthusiasm,
every single day during the forty days of Lent; at the age of fifteen
I was teaching Sunday-school. It was the Church of the Holy Communion,
at Sixth Avenue and Twentieth Street, New York; and those who know the
city will understand that this is a peculiar location--precisely half
way between the homes of some of the oldest and most august of the
city's aristocracy, and some of the vilest and most filthy of the
city's slums. The aristocracy were paying for the church, and occupied
the best pews; they came, perfectly clad, aus dem Ei gegossen, as the
Germans say, with the manner they so carefully cultivate, gracious,
yet infinitely aloof. The service was made for them--as all the rest
of the world is made for them; the populace was permitted to occupy a
fringe of vacant seats.
The assistant clergyman was an Englishman, and a gentleman; orthodox,
yet the warmest man's heart I have ever known. He could not bear to
have the church remain entirely the church of the rich; he would go
persistently into the homes of the poor, visiting the old slum women
in their pitifully neat little kitchens, and luring their children
with entertainments and Christmas candy. They were corralled into the
Sunday-school, where it was my duty to give them what they needed for
the health of their souls.
I taught them out of a book of lessons; and one Sunday it would be
Moses in the Bulrushes, and next Sunday it would be Jonah and the
Whale, and next Sunday it would be Joshua blowing down the walls of
Jericho. These stories were reasonably entertaining, but they seemed
to me futile, not to the point. There were little morals tagged to
them, but these lacked relationship to the lives of little slum-boys.
Be good and you will be happy, love the Lord and all will be well with
you; which was about as true and as practical as the procedure of the
Fijians, blowing horns to drive away a pestilence.
I had a mind, you see, and I was using it. I was reading the papers,
and watching politics and business. I followed the fates of my little
slum-boys--and what I saw was that Tammany Hall was getting them. The
liquor-dealers and the brothel-keepers, the panders and the pimps, the
crap-shooters and the petty thieves--all these were paying the
policeman and the politician for a chance to prey upon my boys; and
when the boys got into trouble, as they were continually doing, it was
the clergyman who consoled them in prison--but it was the Tammany
leader who saw the judge and got them out. So these boys got their
lesson, even earlier in life than I got mine--that the church was a
kind of amiable fake, a pious horn-blowing; while the real thing was
Tammany.
I talked about this with the vestrymen and the ladies of Good Society;
they were deeply pained, but I noticed that they did nothing practical
about it; and gradually, as I went on to investigate, I discovered the
reason--that their incomes came from real estate, traction, gas and
other interests, which were contributing the main part of the campaign
expenses of the corrupt Tammany machine, and of its equally corrupt
rival. So it appeared that these immaculate ladies and gentlemen, aus
dem Ei gegossen, were themselves engaged, unconsciously, perhaps, but
none the less effectively, in spreading the pestilence against which
they were blowing their religious horns!
So little by little I saw my beautiful church for what it was and is:
a great capitalist interest, an integral and essential part of a
gigantic predatory system. I saw that its ethical and cultural and
artistic features, however sincerely they might be meant by individual
clergymen, were nothing but a bait, a device to lure the poor into
the trap of submission to their exploiters. And as I went on probing
into the secret life of the great Metropolis of Mammon, and laying
bare its infamies to the world, I saw the attitude of the church to
such work; I met, not sympathy and understanding, but sneers and
denunciation--until the venerable institution which had once seemed
dignified and noble became to me as a sepulchre of corruption.
#Trinity Corporation#
There stands on the corner of Broadway and Wall Street a towering
brown-stone edifice, one of the most beautiful and most famous
churches in America. As a child I have walked through its church yard
and read the quaint and touching inscriptions on its grave-stones;
when I was a little older, and knew Wall Street, it seemed to me a
sublime thing that here in the very heart of the world's infamy there
should be raised, like a finger of warning, this symbol of Eternity
and Judgment. Its great bell rang at noon-time, and all the traders
and their wage-slaves had to listen, whether they would or no! Such
was Old Trinity to my young soul; and what is it in reality?
The story was told some ten years ago by Charles Edward Russell.
Trinity Corporation is the name of the concern, and it is one of the
great landlords of New York. In the early days it bought a number of
farms, and these it has held, as the city has grown up around them,
until in 1908 their value was estimated at anywhere from forty to a
hundred million dollars. The true amount has never been made public;
to quote Russell's words:
The real owners of the property are the communicants of the
church. For 94 years none of the owners has known the extent
of the property, nor the amount of the revenue therefrom,
nor what is done with the money. Every attempt to learn even
the simplest fact about these matters has been baffled. The
management is a self perpetuating body, without
responsibility and without supervision.
And the writer goes on to describe the business policy of this great
corporation, which is simply the English land system complete. It
refuses to sell the land, but rents it for long periods, and the
tenant builds the house, and then when the lease expires, the
Corporation takes over the house for a nominal sum. Thus it has
purchased houses for as low as $200, and made them into tenements, and
rented them to the swarming poor for a total of fifty dollars a month.
The houses were not built for tenements, they have no conveniences,
they are not fit for the habitation of animals.
The article, in Everybody's Magazine for July, 1908, gives pictures of
them, which are horrible beyond belief. To quote the writer again:
Decay, neglect and squalor seem to brood wherever Trinity is
an owner. Gladly would I give to such a charitable and
benevolent institution all possible credit for a spirit of
improvement manifested anywhere, but I can find no such
manifestation. I have tramped the Eighth Ward day after day
with a list of Trinity properties in my hand, and of all the
tenement houses that stand there on Trinity land, I have not
found one that is not a disgrace to civilization and to the
City of New York.
It happens that I once knew the stately prelate who presided over this
Corporation of Corruption. I imagine how he would have shivered and
turned pale had some angel whispered to him what devilish utterances
were some day to proceed from the lips of the little cherub with
shining face and shining robes who acted as the bishop's attendant in
the stately ceremonials of the Church! Truly, even into the goodly
company of the elect, even to the most holy places of the temple,
Satan makes his treacherous way! Even under the consecrated hands of
the bishop! For while the bishop was blessing me and taking me into
the company of the sanctified, I was thinking about what the papers
had reported, that the bishop's wife had been robbed of fifty thousand
dollars worth of jewels! It did not seem quite in accordance with the
doctrine of Jesus that a bishop's wife should possess fifty thousand
dollars worth of jewels, or that she should be setting the bloodhounds
of the police on the train of a human being. I asked my clergyman
friend about it, and remember his patient explanation--that the bishop
had to know all classes and conditions of men: his wife had to go
among the rich as well as the poor, and must be able to dress so that
she would not be embarrassed. The Bishop at this time was making it
his life-work to raise a million dollars for the beginning of a great
Episcopal cathedral; and this of course compelled him to spend much
time among the rich!
The explanation satisfied me; for of course I thought there had to be
cathedrals--despite the fact that both St. Stephen and St. Paul had
declared that "the Lord dwelleth not in temples made with hands." In
the twenty-five years which have passed since that time the good
Bishop has passed to his eternal reward, but the mighty structure
which is a monument to his visitations among the rich towers over the
city from its vantage-point on Morningside Heights. It is called the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine; and knowing what I know about the
men who contributed its funds, and about the general functions of the
churches of the Metropolis of Mammon, it would not seem to me less
holy if it were built, like the monuments of ancient ravagers, out of
the skulls of human beings.
#Spiritual Interpretation#
There remains to say a few words as to the intellectual functions of
the Fifth Avenue clergy. Let us realize at the outset that they do
their preaching in the name of a proletarian rebel, who was crucified
as a common criminal because, as they said, "He stirreth up the
people." An embarrassing "Savior" for the church of Good Society, you
might imagine; but they manage to fix him up and make him respectable.
I remember something analogous in my own boyhood. All day Saturday I
ran about with the little street rowdies, I stole potatoes and roasted
them in vacant lots, I threw mud from the roofs of apartment-houses;
but on Saturday night I went into a tub and was lathered and scrubbed,
and on Sunday I came forth in a newly brushed suit, a clean white
collar and a shining tie and a slick derby hat and a pair of tight
gloves which made me impotent for mischief. Thus I was taken and
paraded up Fifth Avenue, doing my part of the duties of Good Society.
And all church-members go through this same performance; the oldest
and most venerable of them steal potatoes and throw mud all week--and
then take a hot bath of repentance and put on the clean clothing of
piety. In this same way their ministers of religion are occupied to
scrub and clean and dress up their disreputable Founder--to turn him
from a proletarian rebel into a stained-glass-window divinity.
The man who really lived, the carpenter's son, they take out and
crucify all over again. As a young poet has phrased it, they nail him
to a jeweled cross with cruel nails of gold. Come with me to the New
Golgotha and witness this crucifixion; take the nails of gold in your
hands, try the weight of the jeweled sledges! Here is a sledge, in the
form of a dignified and scholarly volume, published by the exclusive
house of Scribner, and written by the Bishop of my boyhood, the Bishop
whose train I carried in the stately ceremonials: "The Citizen in His
Relation to the Industrial Situation," by the Right Reverend Henry
Codman Potter, D.D., L.L.D., D.C.L.--a course of lectures delivered
before the sons of our predatory classes at Yale University, under the
endowment of a millionaire mining king, founder of the Phelps-Dodge
corporation, which the other day carried out the deportation from
their homes of a thousand striking miners at Bisbee, Arizona. Says my
Bishop:
Christ did not denounce wealth any more than he denounced
pauperism. He did not abhor money; he used it. He did not
abhor the company of rich men; he sought it. He did not
invariably scorn or even resent a certain profuseness of
expenditure.
And do you think that the late Bishop of J.P. Morgan and Company
stands alone as an utterer of scholarly blasphemy, a driver of golden
nails? In the course of this book there will march before us a long
line of the clerical retainers of Privilege, on their way to the New
Golgotha to crucify the carpenter's son: the Rector of the Money
Trust, the Preacher of the Coal Trust, the Priest of the Traction
Trust, the Archbishop of Tammany, the Chaplain of the Millionaires'
Club, the Pastor of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Religious Editor of
the New Haven, the Sunday-school Superintendent of Standard Oil. We
shall try the weight of their jewelled sledges--books, sermons,
newspaper-interviews, after-dinner speeches--wherewith they pound
their golden nails of sophistry into the bleeding hands and feet of
the proletarian Christ.
Here, for example, is Rev. F.G. Peabody, Professor of Christian Morals
at Harvard University. Prof. Peabody has written several books on the
social teachings of Jesus; he quotes the most rabid of the carpenter's
denunciations of the rich, and says:
Is it possible that so obvious and so limited a message as
this, a teaching so slightly distinguished from the
curbstone rhetoric of a modern agitator, can be an adequate
reproduction of the scope and power of the teaching of
Jesus?
The question answers itself: Of course not! For Jesus was a gentleman;
he is the head of a church attended by gentlemen, of universities
where gentlemen are educated. So the Professor of Christian Morals
proceeds to make a subtle analysis of Jesus' actions; demonstrating
therefrom that there are three proper uses to be made of great wealth:
first, for almsgiving--"The poor ye have always with you!"; second,
for beauty and culture--buying wine for wedding-feasts, and
ointment-boxes and other #objets de vertu#; and third, "stewardship,"
"trusteeship"--which in plain English is "Big Business."
I have used the illustration of soap and hot water; one can imagine he
is actually watching the scrubbing process, seeing the proletarian
Founder emerging all new and respectable under the brush of this
capitalist professor. The professor has a rule all his own for reading
the scriptures; he tells us that when there are two conflicting
sayings, the rule of interpretation is that "the more spiritual is to
be preferred." Thus, one gospel makes Jesus say: "Blessed are ye
poor." Another puts it: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." The first
one is crude and literal; obviously the second must be what Jesus
meant! In other words, the professor and his church have made for
their economic masters a treacherous imitation virtue to be taught to
wage-slaves, a quality of submissiveness, impotence and futility,
which they call by the name of "spirituality". This virtue they exalt
above all others, and in its name they cut from the record of Jesus
everything which has relation to the realities of life!
So here is our Professor Peabody, sitting in the Plummer chair at
Harvard, writing on "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," and
explaining:
The fallacy of the Socialist program is not in its
radicalism, but in its externalism. It proposes to
accomplish by economic change what can be attained by
nothing less than spiritual regeneration.
And here is "The Churchman," organ of the Episcopalians of New York,
warning us:
It is necessary to remember that something more than
material and temporal considerations are involved. There are
things of more importance to the purposes of God and to the
welfare of humanity than economic readjustments and social
amelioration.
And again:
Without doubt there is a strong temptation today, bearing
upon clergy and laity alike, to address their religious
energies too exclusively to those tasks whereby human life
may be made more abundant and wholesome materially.... We
need constantly to be reminded that spiritual things come
first.
There come before my mental eye the elegant ladies and gentlemen for
whom these comfortable sayings are prepared: the vestrymen and pillars
of the Church, with black frock coats and black kid gloves and shiny
tophats; the ladies of Good Society with their Easter costumes in
pastel shades, their gracious smiles and their sweet intoxicating
odors. I picture them as I have seen them at St. George's, where that
aged wild boar, Pierpont Morgan, the elder, used to pass the
collection plate; at Holy Trinity, where they drove downtown in
old-fashioned carriages with grooms and footmen sitting like twin
statues of insolence; at St. Thomas', where you might see all the
"Four Hundred" on exhibition at once; at St. Mary the Virgin's, where
the choir paraded through the aisles, swinging costly incense into my
childish nostrils, the stout clergyman walking alone with nose
upturned, carrying on his back a jewelled robe for which some adoring
female had paid sixty thousand dollars. "Spiritual things come first?"
Ah, yes! "Seek first the kingdom of God, and the jewelled robes shall
be added unto you!" And it is so dreadful about the French and German
Socialists, who, as the "Churchman" reports, "make a creed out of
materialism." But then, what is this I find in one issue of the organ
of the "Church of Good Society"?
Business men contribute to the Y.M.C.A. because they realize
that if their employes are well cared for and religiously
influenced, they can be of greater service in business!
Who let that material cat out of the spiritual bag?
* * * * *
#BOOK THREE#
#The Church of the Servant-girls#
Was it for this--that prayers like these
Should spend themselves about thy feet,
And with hard, overlabored knees
Kneeling, these slaves of men should beat
Bosoms too lean to suckle sons
And fruitless as their orisons?
Was it for this--that men should make
Thy name a fetter on men's necks,
Poor men made poorer for thy sake,
And women withered out of sex?
Was it for this--that slaves should be--
Thy word was passed to set men free?
Swinburne.
* * * * *
#Charity#
As everyone knows, the "society lady" is not an independent and
self-sustaining phenomenon. For every one of these exquisite,
sweet-smelling creatures that you meet on Fifth Avenue, there must be
at home a large number of other women who live sterile and empty
lives, and devote themselves to cleaning up after their luckier
sisters. But these "domestics" also are human beings; they have
emotions--or, in religious parlance, "souls;" it is necessary to
provide a discipline to keep them from appropriating the property of
their mistresses, also to keep them from becoming #enceinte.# So it
comes about that there are two cathedrals in New York: one, St. John
the Divine, for the society ladies, and the other, St. Patrick's, for
the servant-girls. The latter is located on Fifth Avenue, where its
towering white spires divide with the homes of the Vanderbilts the
interest of the crowds of sight-seers. Now, early every Sunday
morning, before "Good Society" has opened its eyes, you may see the
devotees of the Irish snake-charmer hurrying to their orisons, each
with a little black prayer-book in her hand. What is it they do
inside? What are they taught about life? This is the question to which
we have next to give attention.
Some years ago Mr. Thomas F. Ryan, traction and insurance magnate of
New York, favored me with his justification of his own career and
activities. He mentioned his charities, and, speaking as one man of
the world to another, he said: "The reason I put them into the hands
of Catholics is not religious, but because I find they are efficient
in such matters. They don't ask questions, they do what you want them
to do, and do it economically."
I made no comment; I was absorbed in the implications of the
remark--like Agassiz when some one gave him a fossil bone, and his
mind set to work to reconstruct the creature.
When a man is drunk, the Catholics do not ask if it was long hours and
improper working-conditions which drove him to desperation; they do
not ask if police and politicians are getting a rake-off from the
saloon, or if traction magnates are using it as an agency for the
controlling of votes; they do not plunge into prohibition movements or
good government campaigns--they simply take the man in, at a standard
price, and the patient slave-sisters and attendants get him sober, and
then turn him out for society to make him drunk again. That is
"charity," and it is the special industry of Roman Catholicism. They
have been at it for a thousand years, cleaning up loathsome and
unsightly messes--"plague, pestilence and famine, battle and murder
and sudden death." Yet--puzzling as it would seem to anyone not
religious--there were never so many messes, never so many different
kinds of messes, as now at the end of the thousand years of charitable
activity!
But the Catholics go on and on; like the patient spider, building and
rebuilding his web across a door-way; like soldiers under the command
of a ruling class with a "muddling through" tradition--
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
And so of course all magnates and managers of industry who have messes
to be cleaned up, human garbage-heaps to be carted away quickly and
without fuss, turn to the Catholic Church for this service, no matter
what their personal religious beliefs or lack of beliefs may be.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of every steel-mill, every coal-mine or
other place of industrial danger, you will find a Catholic hospital,
with its slave-sisters and attendants. Once when I was "muck-raking"
near Pittsburgh, I went to one of these places to ask information as
to the frequency of industrial accidents and the fate of the victims.
The "Mother Superior" received me with a look of polite dismay. "These
concerns pay us!" she said. "You must see that as a matter of business
it would not do for us to talk about them."
Obey and keep silence: that is the Catholic law. And precisely as it
is with the work of nursing and almsgiving, so it is with the work of
vote-getting, the elaborate system of policemen and saloon-keepers and
ward-heelers which the Catholic machine controls. This industry of
vote-getting is a comparatively new one; but the Church has been
handling the masses for so many centuries that she quickly learned
this new way of "democracy," and has established her supremacy over
all rivals. She has the schools for training the children, the
confessional for controlling the women; she has the intellectual
machinery, the purgatory and the code of slave-ethics. She has the
supreme advantage that the rank and file of her mighty host really
believe what she teaches; they do not have to listen to table-rappings
and flounder through swamps of automatic writings in order to bolster
their hope of the survival of personality after death!
So it comes about that our captains of industry and finance have been
driven to a more or less reluctant alliance with the Papacy. The
Church is here, and her followers are here, before the war several
hundred thousand of them pouring into the country every year. It is no
longer possible to do without Catholics in America; not merely
do ditches have to be dug, roads graded, coal mined, and dishes
washed, but franchises have to be granted, tariff-schedules
adjusted, juries and courts manipulated, police trained and
strikes crushed. Under our native political system, for these
purposes millions of votes are needed; and these votes belong to
people of a score of nationalities--Irish and German and Italian
and French-Canadian and Bohemian and Mexican and Portuguese and
Polish and Hungarian. Who but the Catholic Church can handle
these polyglot hordes? Who can furnish teachers and editors and
politicians familiar with all these languages?
Considering how complex is the service, the price is extremely
moderate--the mere actual expenses of the campaign, the cost of red
fire and torch-lights, of liquor and newspaper advertisements. The
rest may come out of the public till, in the form of exemption from
taxation of church buildings and lands, a share of the public funds
for charities and schools, the control of the police for
saloon-keepers and district leaders, the control of police-courts and
magistrates, of municipal administrations and boards of education, of
legislatures and governors; with a few higher offices now and then, to
flatter our sacred self-esteem, a senator or a justice on the Supreme
Court Bench; and on state occasions, to keep up our necessary
prestige, some cabinet-members and legislators and justices to attend
High Mass, and be blessed in public by Catholic prelates and
dignitaries.
You think this is empty rhetoric--you comfortable, easy-going,
ultra-cultured Americans? You professors in your classic
shades, absorbed in "the passionless pursuit of passionless
intelligence"--while the world about you slides down into the pit! You
ladies of Good Society, practicing your "sweet little charities,"
pursuing your "dear little ideals," raising your families of one or
two lovely children--while Irish and French-Canadians and Italians and
Portuguese and Hungarians are breeding their dozens and scores, and
preparing to turn you out of your country!
#God's Armor#
You remember "Bishop Blougram's Apology," Browning's study of the
psychology of a modern Catholic ecclesiastic. He is not unaware of
modern thought, this bishop; he is a man of culture, who wants to have
beauty about him, to be a "cabin passenger":
There's power in me and will to dominate
Which I must exercise, they hurt me else;
In many ways I need mankind's respect,
Obedience, and the love that's born of fear.
He wishes that he had faith--faith in anything; he understands that
faith is all-important--
Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat.
But you cannot get faith just by wishing for it--
But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn!
He tries to imagine himself going on a crusade for truth, but he asks
what there would be in it for him--
State the facts,
Read the text right, emancipate the world--
The emancipated world enjoys itself
With scarce a thank-you. Blougram told it first
It could not owe a farthing,--not to him
More than St. Paul!
So the bishop goes on with his role, but uneasily conscious of the
contempt of intellectual people.
I pine among my million imbeciles
(You think) aware some dozen men of sense
Eye me and know me, whether I believe
In the last winking virgin as I vow,
And am a fool, or disbelieve in her,
And am a knave.
But, as he says, you have to keep a tight hold upon the chain of
faith, that is what
Gives all the advantage, makes the difference,
With the rough, purblind mass we seek to rule.
We are their lords, or they are free of us,
Just as we tighten or relax that hold.
So he continues, but not with entire satisfaction, in his role of
shepherd to those whom he calls "King Bomba's lazzaroni," and
"ragamuffin saints."
I wander into a Catholic bookstore and look to see what Bishop
Blougram is doing with his lazzaroni and his ragamuffin saints here in
this new country of the far West. It is easy to acquire the
information, for the saleswoman is polite and the prices fit my purse.
America is going to war, and Catholic boys are being drafted to be
trained for battle; so for ten cents I obtain a firmly bound little
pamphlet called "God's Armor, a Prayer Book for Soldiers." It is
marked "Copyright by the G.R.C. Central-Verein," and bears the "Nihil
Obstat" of the "Censor Theolog." and the "Imprimatur" of "Johannes
Josephus, Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici"--which last you may at first
fail to recognize as a well-known city on the Mississippi River. Do
you not feel the spell of ancient things, the magic of the past
creeping over you, as you read those Latin trade-marks? Such is the
Dead Hand, and its cunning, which can make even St. Louis sound
mysterious!
In this booklet I get no information as to the commercial causes of
war, nor about the part which the clerical vote may have played
throughout Europe in supporting military systems. I do not even find
anything about the sacred cause of democracy, the resolve of a
self-governing people to put an end to feudal rule. Instead I discover
a soldier-boy who obeys and keeps silent, and who, in his inmost
heart, is in the grip of terrors both of body and soul. Poor, pitiful
soldier-boy, marking yourself with crosses, performing genuflexions,
mumbling magic formulas in the trenches--how many billions of you have
been led out to slaughter by the greeds and ambitions of your
religious masters, since first this accursed Antichrist got its grip
upon the hearts of men!
I quote from this little book:
Start this day well by lifting up your heart to God. Offer
yourself to Him, and beg grace to spend the day without sin.
Make the sign of the cross. Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost, behold me in Thy Divine Presence. I adore
Thee and give Thee thanks. Grant that all I do this day be
for Thy Glory, and for the salvation of my immortal soul.
During the day lift your heart frequently to God. Your
prayers need not be long nor read from a book. Learn a few
of these short ejaculations by heart and frequently repeat
them. They will serve to recall God to your heart and will
strengthen you and comfort you.
You remember a while back about the prayer-wheels of the Thibetans.
The Catholic religion was founded before the Thibetan, and is less
progressive; it does not welcome mechanical devices for saving labor.
You have to use your own vocal apparatus to keep yourself from hell;
but the process has been made as economical as possible by kindly
dispensations of the Pope. Thus, each time that you say "My God and my
all," you get fifty days indulgence; the same for "My Jesus, mercy,"
and the same for "Jesus, my God, I love Thee above all things." For
"Jesus, Mary, Joseph," you get three hundred days--which would seem by
all odds the best investment of your spare breath.
And then come prayers for all occasions: "Prayer before Battle";
"Prayer for a Happy Death"; "Prayer in Temptation"; "Prayer before and
after Meals"; "Prayer when on Guard"; "Prayer before a long March";
"Prayer of Resignation to Death"; "Prayer for Those in their Agony"--I
cannot bear to read them, hardly to list them. I remember standing in
a cathedral "somewhere in France" during the celebration of some
special Big Magic. There was brilliant white light, and a suffocating
strange odor, and the thunder of a huge organ, and a clamor of voices,
high, clear voices of young boys mounting to heaven, like the hands of
men in a pit reaching up, trying to climb over the top of one another.
It sent a shudder into the depths of my soul. There is nothing left in
the modern world which can carry the mind so far back into the ancient
nightmare of anguish and terror which was once the mental life of
mankind, as these Roman Catholic incantations with their frantic and
ceaseless importunity. They have even brought in the sex-spell; and
the poor, frightened soldier-boy, who has perhaps spent the night with
a prostitute, now prostrates himself before a holy Woman-being who is
lifted high above the shames of the flesh, and who stirs the thrills
of awe and affection which his mother brought to him in early
childhood. Read over the phrases of this "Litany of the Blessed
Virgin":
Holy Mary, Pray for us. Holy Mother of God. Holy Virgin of
Virgins. Mother of Christ. Mother of divine grace. Mother
most pure. Mother most chaste. Mother inviolate. Mother
undefiled. Mother most amiable. Mother most admirable.
Mother of good counsel. Mother of our Creator. Mother of our
Savior. Virgin most prudent. Virgin most venerable. Virgin
most renowned. Virgin most powerful. Virgin most merciful.
Virgin most faithful. Mirror of justice. Seat of wisdom.
Cause of our joy. Spiritual vessel. Vessel of honor.
Singular vessel of devotion. Mystical rose. Tower of David.
Tower of ivory. House of gold. Ark of the covenant. Gate of
heaven. Morning Star. Health of the sick. Refuge of sinners.
Comforter of the afflicted. Help of Christians. Queen of
Angels. Queen of Patriarchs. Queen of Prophets. Queen of
Apostles. Queen of Martyrs. Queen of Confessors. Queen of
Virgins. Queen of all Saints. Queen conceived without
original sin. Queen of the most holy Rosary. Queen of Peace,
Pray for us.
#Thanksgivings#
For another five cents--how cheaply a man of insight can obtain
thrills in this fantastic world!--I purchase a copy of the "Messenger
of the Sacred Heart", a magazine published in New York, the issue for
October, 1917. There are pages of advertisements of schools and
colleges with strange titles: "Immaculata Seminary", "Holy Cross
Academy", "Holy Ghost Institute", "Ladycliff", "Academy of Holy Child
Jesus". The leading article is by a Jesuit, on "The Spread of the
Apostleship of Prayer among the Young"; and then "Sister Clarissa"
writes a poem telling us "What are Sorrows"; and then we are given a
story called "Prayer for Daddy"; and then another Jesuit father tells
us about "The Hills that Jesus Loved". A third father tells us about
the "Eucharistic Propaganda"; and we learn that in July, 1917, it
distributed 11,699 beads, and caused the expenditure of 57,714 hours
of adoration; and then the faithful are given a form of letter which
they are to write to the Honorable Baker, Secretary of War, imploring
him to intimate to the French government that France should withdraw
from one of her advances in civilization, and join with mediaeval
America in exempting priests from being drafted to fight for their
country. And then there is a "Question Box"--just like the Hearst
newspapers, only instead of asking whether she should allow him to
kiss her before he has told her that he loves her, the reader asks
what is the Pauline Privilege, and what is the heroic Act, and is
Robert a saint's name, and if food remains in the teeth from the night
before, would it break the fast to swallow it before Holy Communion.
(No, I am not inventing this.)
I quoted the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and pointed out how
deftly the Church has managed to slip in a prayer for worldly
prosperity. But the Catholic Church does not show any squeamishness in
dealing with its "million imbeciles", its "rough, purblind mass".
There is a department of the little magazine entitled "Thanksgiving",
and a statement at the top that "the total number of Thanksgivings for
the month is 2,143,911." I am suspicious of that, as of German reports
of prisoners taken; but I give the statement as it stands, not going
through the list and picking out the crudest, but taking them as they
come, classified by states:
GENERAL FAVORS: For many of these favors Mass and
publication were promised, for others the Badge of
Promoter's Cross was used, for others the prayers of the
Associates had been asked.
Alabama--Jewelry found, relief from pain, protection during
storm.
Alaska--Safe return, goods found.
Arizona--Two recoveries, suitable boarding place, illness
averted, safe delivery.
British Honduras--Successful operation.
California--Seventeen recoveries, six situations, two
successful examinations, house rented, stocks sold, raise in
salary, return to religious duties, sight regained, medal
won, Baptism, preservation from disease, contract obtained,
success in business, hearing restored, Easter duty made,
happy death, automobile sold, mind restored, house found,
house rented, successful journey, business sold, quarrel
averted, return of friends, two successful operations.
And for all these miraculous performances the Catholic machine is
harvesting the price day by day--harvesting with that ancient fervor
which the Latin poet described as "auri sacra fames". As Christopher
Columbus wrote from Jamaica in 1503: "Gold is a wonderful thing. By
means of gold we can even get souls into Paradise."
#The Holy Roman Empire#
The system thus self-revealed you admit is appalling in its squalor;
but you say that at least it is milder and less perilous than the
Church which burned Giordano Bruno and John Huss. But the very essence
of the Catholic Church is that it does not change; #semper eadem# is
its motto: the same yesterday, today and forever--the same in
Washington as in Rome or Madrid--the same in a modern democracy as in
the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church is not primarily a religious
organization; it is a political organization, and proclaims the fact,
and defies those who would shut it up in the religious field. The Rev.
S.B. Smith, a Catholic doctor of divinity, explains in his "Elements
of Ecclesiastical Law":
Protestants contend that the entire power of the Church
consists in the right to teach and exhort, but not in the
right to command, rule, or govern; whence they infer that
she is not a perfect society or sovereign state. This theory
is false; for the Church, as was seen, is vested #Jure
divino# with power, (1) to make laws; (2) to define and
apply them #(potestas judicialis)#; (3) to punish those who
violate her laws #(potestas coercitiva)#.
And this is not one scholar's theory, but the formal and repeated
proclamation of infallible popes. Here is the "Syllabus of Errors",
issued by Pope Pius IX, Dec. 8th, 1864, declaring in substance that
The state has not the right to leave every man free to
profess and embrace whatever religion he shall deem true.
It has not the right to enact that the ecclesiastical power
shall require the permission of the civil power in order to
the exercise of its authority.
Then in the same Syllabus the rights and powers of the Church are
affirmed in substance:
She has the right to require the state not to leave every
man free to profess his own religion.
She has the right to exercise her power without the
permission or consent of the state.
She has the right of perpetuating the union of church and
state.
She has the right to require that the Catholic religion
shall be the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of
all others.
She has the right to prevent the state from granting the
public exercise of their own worship to persons immigrating
from it.
She has the power of requiring the state not to permit free
expression of opinion.
You see, the Holy Office is unrepentant and unchastened. You, who
think that liberty of conscience is the basis of civilization, ought
at least to know what the Catholic Church has to say about the matter.
Here is Mgr. Segur, in his "Plain Talk About Protestantism of Today",
a book published in Boston and extensively circulated by American
Catholics:
Freedom of thought is the soul of Protestantism; it is
likewise the soul of modern rationalism and philosophy. It
is one of those impossibilities which only the levity of a
superficial reason can regard as admissable. But a sound
mind, that does not feed on empty words, looks upon this
freedom of thought only as simply absurd, and, what is more,
as sinful.
You take the liberty of thinking, nevertheless; you feel safe because
the Law will protect you. But do you imagine that this "Law" applies
to your Catholic neighbors? Do you imagine that they are bound by the
restraints that bind #you#? Here is Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical
of 1890--and please remember that Leo XIII was the #beau ideal# of our
capitalist statesmen and editors, as wise and kind and gentle-souled a
pope as ever roasted a heretic. He says:
If the laws of the state are openly at variance with the
laws of God--if they inflict injury upon the Church--or set
at naught the authority of Jesus Christ which is vested in
the Supreme Pontiff, then indeed it becomes a duty to resist
them, a sin to render obedience.
And consider how many fields there are in which the laws of a
democratic state do and forever must contravene the "laws of God" as
interpreted by the Catholic Church. Consider for example, that the
Pope, in his decree #Ne Temere#, has declared that Catholics who are
married by civil authorities or by Protestant clergymen will be living
in "filthy concubinage"! Consider, in the same way, the problems of
education, burial, prison discipline, blasphemy, poor relief,
incorporation, mortmain, religious endowments, vows of celibacy. To
the above list, as given by Gladstone, one might add many issues, such
as birth control, which have arisen since his time.
What the Church means is to rule. Her literature is full of
expressions of that intention, set forth in the boldest and haughtiest
and most uncompromising manner. For example, Cardinal Manning, in the
Pro-Cathedral at Kensington, speaking in the name of the Pope:
I acknowledge no civil power; I am the subject of no prince;
I claim more than this--I claim to be the supreme judge and
director of the consciences of men--of the peasant that
tills the field, and of the prince that sits upon the
throne; of the household of privacy, and the legislator that
makes laws for kingdoms; I am the sole, last supreme judge
of what is right and wrong.
#Temporal Power#
What this means is, that here in our American democracy the Catholic
Church is a rebel; a prisoner of war who bides his time, watching for
the moment to rise in revolt, and meantime making no secret of his
intentions. The pious Leo XIII, addressing all true believers in
America, instructed them as to their attitude in captivity:
The Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and
government of your nation, fettered by no hostile
legislation, protected against violence by the common laws
and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and
act without hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it
would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in
America is to be sought the type of the most desirable
status of the church, or that it would be universally lawful
or expedient for state and church to be, as in America,
dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you
is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous
growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity
with which God has endowed His Church--But she would bring
forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she
enjoyed the favor of the laws and patronage of the public
authority.
Accordingly, here is Father Phelan of St. Louis, addressing his flock
in the "Western Watchman", June 27,1913:
Tell us we are Catholics first and Americans or Englishmen
afterwards; of course we are. Tell us, in the conflict
between the church and the civil government we take the side
of the church; of course we do. Why, if the government of
the United States were at war with the church, we would say
tomorrow, To hell with the government of the United States;
and if the church and all the governments of the world were
at war, we would say, To hell with all the governments of
the world....Why is it that in this country, where we have
only seven per cent of the population, the Catholic church
is so much feared? She is loved by all her children and
feared by everybody. Why is it that the Pope has such
tremendous power? Why, the Pope is the ruler of the world.
All the emperors, all the kings, all the princes, all the
presidents of the world, are as these altar boys of mine.
The Pope is the ruler of the world.
You recall what I said at the outset about Power; the ability to
control the lives of other men, to give laws and moral codes, to shape
fashions and tastes, to be revered and regarded. Here is a man swollen
to bursting with this Power. Dressed in his holy robes, with his holy
incense in his nostrils, and the faces of the faithful gazing up at
him awe-stricken, hear him proclaim:
The Church gives no bonds for her good behavior. She is the
judge of her own rights and duties, and of the rights and
duties of the state.
And lest you think that an extreme example of ultramontanist
arrogance, listen to the Boston "Pilot", April 6, 1912, speaking for
Cardinal O'Connell, whose official organ it is:
It must be borne in mind that even though Cardinals Farley,
O'Connell and Gibbons are at heart patriotic Americans and
members of an American hierarchy, yet they are as cardinals
foreign princes of the blood, to whom the United States, as
one of the great powers of the world, is under an obligation
to concede the same honors that they receive abroad.
Thus, were Cardinal Farley to visit an American man-of-war,
he would be entitled to the salutes and to naval honors
reserved for a foreign royal personage, and at any official
entertainment at Washington the Cardinal will outrank not
merely every cabinet officer, the speaker of the house and
the vice-president, but also the foreign ambassadors, coming
immediately next to the chief magistrate himself.
Incidentally, it may be mentioned that when a royal
personage not of sovereign rank visits New York it is his
duty to make the first call on Cardinal Farley.
#Knights of Slavery#
Such is the worldly station of these apostles of the lowly Jesus. And
what is their attitude towards their brothers in God, the rank and
file of the membership, whose pennies grease the wheels of the
ecclesiastical machine? His Holiness, the Pope, sent over a delegate
to represent him in America, and at a convention of the Federation of
Catholic Societies held in New Orleans in November, 1910, this
gentleman, Diomede Falconio, delivered himself on the subject of
Capital and Labor. We have heard the slave-code of the Anglican
disciples of Jesus, the revolutionary carpenter; now let us hear the
slave-code of his Roman disciples:
Human society has its origin from God and is constituted of
two classes of people, the rich and the poor, which
respectively represent Capital and Labor.
Hence it follows that according to the ordinance of God,
human society is composed of superiors and subjects, masters
and servants, learned and unlettered, rich and poor, nobles
and plebeians.
And lest this should not be clear enough, the Pope sent a second
representative, Mgr. John Bonzano, who, speaking at a general meeting
of the German Catholic Central-Verein, St. Louis, 1917, declared:
One of the worst evils that may grow out of the European war
is the spreading of the doctrine of Socialism, and the
Catholic Church must be ready to counteract such doctrines.
We must be ready to prevent the spread of Socialism and to
work against it. As I understand, you have a society of
wealthy people in St. Louis ready for such a campaign. You
have experienced leaders who are masters in their kind of
work. They are always insistent to show that this wealth was
and is in close touch with the Church, and therefore it will
not fail.
This, you perceive, is the complete thesis of the present book, which
therefore no doubt will be entitled to the "Nihil Obstat" of the
"Censor Theolog.", and the "Imprimatur" of "Johannes Josephus,
Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici." No wonder that the "experienced
leaders" of America, our captains of industry and exploiters of labor,
are forced, whatever their own faith may be, to make use of this
system of subjection. A few years ago we read in our papers how a
Jewish millionaire of Baltimore was presenting a fortune to the
Catholic Church, to be used in its war upon Socialism. The late Mark
Hanna, the shrewdest and most far-seeing man that Big Business ever
brought into power, said that in twenty years there would be two
parties in America, a capitalist and a socialist; and that it would be
the Catholic church that would save the country from Socialism. That
prophecy was widely quoted, and sank into the souls of our steel and
railway and money magnates; from which time you might see, if you
watched political events, a new tone of deference to the Roman
Hierarchy on the part of our ruling classes. Today you cannot get an
expression of opinion hostile to Catholicism into any newspaper of
importance. The Associated Press does not handle news unfavorable to
the Church, and from top to bottom, the politician takes off his hat
when the Sacred Host goes by. Said Archbishop Quigley, speaking before
the children of the Mary Sodality:
I'd like to see the politician who would try to rule against
the church in Chicago. His reign would be short indeed.
#Priests and Police#
And how is it in our national capital, the palladium of our liberties?
As a means of demonstrating the power of the church and the
subservience of our politicians, the Catholics have invented what they
call the "Cardinal's Day Mass": An elaborate procession of high
ecclesiastics, dressed in gorgeous robes and jewels, through the
streets of Washington, accompanied by a small army of policemen, paid
by non-Catholic taxpayers. The Cardinal seats himself upon a throne,
and our political rulers make obeisance before him. On Sunday, January
14, 1917, there were present at this political mass the following
personages: Four cabinet members and their wives; the speaker of the
House; a large group of senators and representatives; a general of the
army and his wife; an admiral of the navy and his wife; the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court and his wife, and another Justice of the
Supreme Court and his wife.
And understand that the church makes no secret of its purpose in
conducting such public exhibitions. Here is the pious Pope Leo XIII
again, in his Encyclical of Nov. 1, 1885:
All Catholics must make themselves felt as active elements
in daily political life in the countries where they live.
They must penetrate, wherever possible, in the
administration of civil affairs; must constantly exert the
utmost vigilance and energy to prevent the usages of liberty
from going beyond the limits fixed by God's law. All
Catholics should do all in their power to cause the
constitutions of states and legislation to be modeled on the
principles of the true Church.
And following these instructions, the Catholics are organized for
political work. There are the various Catholic Societies, such as the
Knights of Columbus, secret, oath-bound organizations, the military
arm of the Papal Power. These societies boast some three million
members, and control not less than that many votes. The one thing that
you can be certain about these votes is that on every public question,
of whatever nature, they will be cast on the side of ignorance and
reaction. Thus, it was the influence of the Catholic Societies which
put upon our national statute books the infamous law providing five
years imprisonment and five thousand dollars fine for the sending
through the mail of information about the prevention of conception. It
is their influence which keeps upon the statute-books of New York
state the infamous law which permits divorce only for infidelity, and
makes it "collusion" if both parties desire the divorce. It is these
societies which, in every city and town in America, are pushing and
plotting to get Catholics upon library boards, so that the public may
not have a chance to read scientific books; to get Catholics into the
public schools and on school-boards, so that children may not hear
about Galileo, Bruno, and Ferrer; to have Catholics in control of
police and on magistrates benches, so that priests who are caught in
brothels may not be exposed or punished.
You are shocked at this, you think it a vulgar jest, perhaps; but
during a period of "vice raids" in New York I was told by a captain of
police, himself a Catholic, that it was a common thing for them to get
priests in their net. "Of course," the official added, good-naturedly,
"we let them slip out." I understood that he had to do that; for the
Pope, in his "Motu Proprio" decree, has forbidden Catholics to bring a
priest into court for any civil crime whatsoever; he has forbidden
Catholic policemen to arrest, Catholic judges to try, and Catholic
law-makers to make laws affecting any priest of the Church of Rome.
And of course we know, upon the authority of a cardinal, that the Pope
is "the sole, last, supreme judge of what is right and wrong." He has
held that position for a thousand years and more; and wherever you
consult the police records throughout the thousand years, you find the
same entries concerning Catholic ecclesiastics. I turn to Riley's
"Illustrations of London Life from Original Documents," and I find in
the year 1385 a certain chaplain, whose name is considerately
suppressed, had a breviary stolen from him by a loose woman, because
he has not given her any money, either on that night or the one
previous. In 1320 John de Sloghtre, a priest, is put in the tower "for
being found wandering about the city against the peace", and Richard
Heyring, a priest, is indicted in the ward of Farringdon and in the
ward of Crepelgate "as being a bruiser and nightwalker." That this has
been going on for six hundred years is due, not to any special
corruption of the Catholic heart, but to the practice of clerical
celibacy, which is contrary to nature, a transgression of fundamental
instinct. It should be noted that the purpose of this transgression,
which pretends to be spiritual, is really economic; it was the means
whereby the church machine built up its power through the Middle Ages.
The priests had children then, as they have them today; but these
children not being recognized, the church machine remained the sole
heir of the property of its clergy.
#The Church Militant#
Knowing what we know today, we marvel that it was possible for Germany
to prepare through so many years for her assault on civilization, and
for England to have slept through it all. In exactly the same way, the
historian of a generation from now will marvel that America should
have slept, while the New Inquisition was planning to strangle her.
For we are told with the utmost explicitness precisely what is to be
done. We are to see wiped out these gains of civilization for which
our race has bled and agonized for many centuries; the very gains are
to serve as the means of their own destruction! Have we not heard Pope
Leo tell his faithful how to take advantage of what they find in
America--our easy-going trust, our quiet certainty of liberty, our
open-handed and open-homed and hail-fellow-well-met democracy?
We see the army being organized and drilled under our eyes; and we can
read upon its banners its purpose proclaimed. Just as the Prussian
military caste had its slogan "Deutschland ueber Alles!" so the
Knights of Slavery have their slogan: "Make America Catholic!"
Their attitude to democratic institutions is attested by the fact that
none of their conventions ever fails in its resolutions to "deeply
deplore the loss of the temporal power of Our Father, the Pope." Their
subjection to priestly domination is indicated by such resolutions as
this, bearing date of May 13th, 1914:
The Knights of Columbus of Texas in annual convention
assembled, prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness, present
filial regards with assurances of loyalty and obedience to
the Holy See and request the Papal blessing.
On June 10th, 1912, one T.J. Carey of Palestine, Texas, wrote to
Archbishop Bonzano, the Apostolic Delegate: "Must I, as a Catholic,
surrender my political freedom to the Church? And by this I mean the
right to vote for the Democratic, Socialist, or Republican parties
when and where I please?" The answer was: "You should submit to the
decisions of the Church, even at the cost of sacrificing political
principles." And to the same effect Mgr. Preston, in New York City,
Jan, 1, 1888: "The man who says, 'I will take my faith from Peter, but
I will not take my politics from Peter,' is not a true Catholic."
Such is the Papal machine; and not a day passes that it does not
discover some new scheme to advance the Papal glory; a "Catholic
battle-ship" in the United States navy; Catholic chaplains on all
ships of the navy; Catholic holidays--such as Columbus Day--to be
celebrated by all Protestants in America; thirty million dollars worth
of church property exempted from taxation in New York City; mission
bells to be set up at the expense of the state of California; state
support for parish schools--or, if this cannot be had, exemption of
Catholics from taxation for school purposes. So on through the list
which might continue for pages.
More than anything else, of course, the Papal machine is concerned
with education, or rather, with the preventing of education. It was in
its childish days that the race fell under the spell of the Priestly
Lie; it is in his childish days that the individual can be most safely
snared. Suffer little children to come unto the Catholic priest, and
he will make upon their sensitive minds an impression which nothing in
after life can eradicate. So the mainstay of the New Inquisition is
the parish-school, and its deadliest enemy is the American school
system. Listen to the Rev. James Conway, of the Society of Jesus, in
his book, "The Rights of Our Little Ones":
Catholic parents cannot, in conscience, send their children
to American public schools, except for very grave reasons
approved by the ecclesiastical authorities.
While state education removes illiteracy and puts a limited amount of
knowledge within the reach of all, it cannot be said to have a
beneficial influence on civilization in general.
The state cannot justly enforce compulsory education, even in case of
utter illiteracy, so long as the essential physical and moral
education are sufficiently provided for.
And so, at all times and in all places, the Catholic Church is
fighting the public school. Eternal vigilance is necessary; as
"America", the organ of the Jesuits, explains:
Sometimes it is a new building code, or an attempt at taxing
the school buildings, which creates hardships to the
parochial and other private schools. Now it is the free text
book law that puts a double burden on the Catholics. Then
again it is the unwise extension of the compulsory school
age that forces children to be in school until they are 16
to 18 years old.
And if you wish to know the purpose of the Catholic schools, hear
Archbishop Quigley of Chicago, speaking before the children of the
Mary Sodality in the Holy Name Parish-School:
Within twenty years this country is going to rule the world.
Kings and emperors will pass away, and the democracy of the
United States will take their place. The West will dominate
the country, and what I have seen of the Western parochial
schools has proved that the generation which follows us will
be exclusively Catholic. When the United States rules the
world the Catholic Church will rule the world.
#The Church Triumphant#
The question may be asked, What of it? What if the Church were to
rule? There are not a few Americans who believe that there have to be
rich and poor, and that rule by Roman Catholics might be preferable to
rule by Socialists. Before you decide, at least do not fail to
consider what history has to tell about priestly government. We do not
have to use our imaginations in the matter, for there was once a
Golden Age such as Archbishop Quigley dreams of, when the power of the
church was complete, when emperors and princes paid homage to her, and
the civil authority made haste to carry out her commands. What was the
condition of the people in those times? We are told by Lea, in his
"History of the Inquisition" that:
The moral condition of the laity was unutterably depraved.
Uniformity of faith had been enforced by the Inquisition and
its methods, and so long as faith was preserved, crime and
sin was comparatively unimportant except as a source of
revenue to those who sold absolution. As Theodoric Vrie
tersely puts it, hell and purgatory would be emptied if
enough money could be found. The artificial standard thus
created is seen in a revelation of the Virgin to St.
Birgitta, that a Pope who was free from heresy, no matter
how polluted by sin and vice, is not so wicked but that he
has the absolute power to bind and loose souls. There are
many wicked popes plunged in hell, but all their lawful acts
on earth are accepted and confirmed by God, and all priests
who are not heretics administer true sacraments, no matter
how depraved they may be. Correctness of belief was thus the
sole essential; virtue was a wholly subordinate
consideration. How completely under such a system religion
and morals came to be dissociated is seen in the remarks of
Pius II, that the Franciscans were excellent theologians,
but cared nothing about virtue.
This, in fact, was the direct result of the system of
persecution embodied in the Inquisition. Heretics who were
admitted to be patterns of virtue were ruthlessly
exterminated in the name of Christ, while in the same holy
name the orthodox could purchase absolution for the vilest
of crimes for a few coins. When the only unpardonable
offence was persistence in some trifling error of belief,
such as the poverty of Christ; when men had before them the
example of their spiritual guides as leaders in vice and
debauchery and contempt of sacred things, all the sanctions
of morality were destroyed and the confusion between right
and wrong became hopeless. The world has probably never seen
a society more vile than that of Europe in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. The brilliant pages of Froissart
fascinate us with their pictures of the artificial
courtesies of chivalry; the mystic reveries of Rysbroek and
of Tauler show us that spiritual life survived in some rare
souls, but the mass of the population was plunged into the
depths of sensuality and the most brutal oblivion of the
moral law. For this Alvaro Pelayo tells us that the
priesthood were accountable, and that, in comparison with
them, the laity were holy. What was that state of
comparative holiness he proceeds to describe, blushing as he
writes, for the benefit of confessors, giving a terrible
sketch of universal immorality which nothing could purify
but fire and brimstone from heaven. The chroniclers do not
often pause in their narrations to dwell on the moral
aspects of the times, but Meyer, in his annals of Flanders,
under date of 1379, tells us that it would be impossible to
describe the prevalence everywhere of perjuries,
blasphemies, adulteries, hatreds, quarrels, brawls, murder,
rapine, thievery, robbery, gambling, whoredom, debauchery,
avarice, oppression of the poor, rape, drunkenness, and
similar vices, and he illustrates his statement with the
fact that in the territory of Ghent, within the space of ten
months, there occurred no less than fourteen hundred murders
committed in the bagnios, brothels, gambling-houses,
taverns, and other similar places. When, in 1396, Jean sans
Peur led his Crusaders to destruction at Micopolis, their
crimes and cynical debauchery scandalized even the Turks,
and led to the stern rebuke of Bajazet himself, who as the
monk of St. Denis admits was much better than his Christian
foes. The same writer, moralizing over the disaster at
Agincourt, attributes it to the general corruption of the
nation. Sexual relations, he says, were an alternation of
disorderly lust and of incest; commerce was nought but fraud
and treachery; avarice withheld from the Church her tithes,
and ordinary conversation was a succession of blasphemies.
The Church, set up by God as a model and protector of the
people, was false to all its obligations. The bishops,
through the basest and most criminal of motives, were
habitual accepters of persons; they annointed themselves
with the last essence extracted from their flocks, and there
was in them nothing of holy, of pure, of wise, or even of
decent.
#God in the Schools#
But that, you may say, was a long time ago. If so, let us take a
modern country in which the Catholic Church has worked its will. Until
recently, Spain was such a country. Now the people are turning against
the clerical machine; and if you ask why, turn to Rafael Shaw's "Spain
From Within":
On every side the people see the baleful hand of the Church,
interfering or trying to interfere in their domestic life,
ordering the conditions of employment, draining them of
their hard-won livelihood by trusts and monopolies
established and maintained in the interest of the Religious
Orders, placing obstacles in the way of their children's
education, hindering them in the exercise of their
constitutional rights, and deliberately ruining those of
them who are bold enough to run counter to priestly
dictation. Riots suddenly break out in Barcelona; they are
instigated by the Jesuits. The country goes to war in
Morocco; it is dragged into it solely in defense of the
mines owned, actually, if not ostensibly, by the Jesuits.
The consumes cannot be abolished because the Jesuits are
financially interested in their continuance.
* * * * *
We have read the statement of a Jesuit father, that "the state cannot
justly enforce compulsory education, even in case of utter
illiteracy." How has that doctrine worked out in Spain? There was an
official investigation of school conditions, the report appearing in
the "Heraldo de Madrid" for November, 1909. In 1857 there had been
passed a law requiring a certain number of schools in each of the 79
provinces: this requirement being below the very low standards
prevailing at that time in other European countries. Yet in 1909 it
was found that only four provinces had the required number of
elementary schools, and at the rate of increase then prevailing it
would have taken 150 years to catch up. Seventy-five per cent of the
population were wholly illiterate, and 30,000 towns and villages had
no government schools at all. The government owed nearly a million and
a half dollars in unpaid salaries to the teachers. The private schools
were nearly all "nuns' schools", which taught only needle-work and
catechism; the punishments prevailing in them were "cruel and
disgusting."
As to the location of the schools, a report of the Minister of
Education to the Cortes, the Parliament of Spain, sets forth as
follows:
More than 10,000 schools are on hired premises, and many of
these are absolutely destitute of hygienic conditions. There
are schools mixed up with hospitals, with cemeteries, with
slaughter houses, with stables. One school forms the
entrance to a cemetery, and the corpses are placed on the
master's table while the last responses are being said.
There is a school into which the children cannot enter until
the animals have been sent out to pasture. Some are so small
that as soon as the warm weather begins the boys faint for
want of air and ventilation. One school is a manure-heap in
process of fermentation, and one of the local authorities
has said that in this way the children are warmer in winter.
One school in Cataluna adjoins the prison. Another, in
Andalusia, is turned into an enclosure for the bulls when
there is a bull-fight in the town.
These conditions excited the indignation of a Spanish educator by the
name of Francesco Ferrer. He founded what he called a "modern school",
in which the pupils should be taught science and common sense. He
drew, of course, the bitter hatred of the Catholic hierarchy, which
saw in the spread of his principles the end of their mastery of the
people. When the Barcelona insurrection took place, they had Ferrer
seized upon a charge of having been its instigator; they had him tried
in secret before a military tribunal, convicted upon forged documents,
and shot beneath the walls of the fortress of Montjuich. The case was
thoroughly investigated by William Archer, one of England's leading
critics, a man of scrupulous rectitude of mind. His conclusion is that
Ferrer was absolutely innocent of the charges against him, and that
his execution was the result of a clerical plot. Of Ferrer's character
Archer writes:
Fragmentary though they be, the utterances which I have
quoted form a pretty complete revelation. From first to last
we see in him an ardent, uncompromising, incorruptible
idealist. His ideals are narrow, and his devotion to them
fanatical; but it is devoid, if not of egoism, at any rate
of self-interest and self-seeking. As he shrank from
applying the money entrusted him to ends of personal luxury,
so also he shrank from making his ideas and convictions
subserve any personal ambition or vanity.
#The Menace#
There are, of course, many people in America who will not rest idle
while their country falls into the condition of Spain. There are
anti-Catholic propaganda societies, which send out lecturers to
discuss the Church and its records; and this is exasperating to devout
believers, who regard the Church as holy, and any criticism of it as
blasphemy. So we have opportunity to observe the working out of the
doctrine that the Church is superior to the civil law.
On June 12th, 1913, there came to the little town of Oelwein, Iowa, a
former priest of the Catholic Church, named Jeremiah J. Crowley, to
deliver a lecture exposing the Papal propaganda. The Catholics of the
town made efforts to intimidate the owner of the place in which the
lecture was to be given; the priest of the town, Father O'Connor,
preached a sermon furiously denouncing the lecturer; and after the
lecture the unfortunate Crowley was surrounded by a mob of men, women
and boys, and although he was six feet three in size, he was beaten
almost to death. At the trial which followed it developed that Father
O'Connor and also his brother, a judge on the Superior Bench, were
accessories before the fact.
Nor is this a solitary instance. The Catholic military societies, with
their uniforms and their armories, are not maintained for nothing. As
Archbishop Quigley declared before the German Catholic Central Verein:
We have well ordered and efficient organizations, all at the
beck and nod of the hierarchy and ready to do what the
church authorities tell them to do. With these bodies of
loyal Catholics ready to step into the breach at any time
and present an unbroken front to the enemy we may feel
secure.
And so, on the evening of April 15th, 1914, a group of Catholics
entered the Pierce Hotel in Denver, Colorado, overpowered a police
guard and seized the Rev. Otis L. Spurgeon, an anti-Catholic lecturer.
They bound and gagged him, took him to a lonely woods, and beat him to
insensibility. The same thing happened to the Rev. Augustus Barnett,
at Buffalo; the Rev. William Black was killed at Marshall, Texas. In
each case the assailants avowed themselves Knights of Columbus, and
efforts to punish them failed, because no jury can be got to convict a
Catholic, fighting for his Pope against a godless state. The most
pious Leo XIII has laid down:
It is an impious deed to break the laws of Jesus Christ for
the purpose of obeying the magistrates, or to transgress the
law of the Church under the pretext of observing the civil
law.
There are papers published to warn Americans against the plotting of
this political Church. One of them, "The Menace," has a circulation of
more than a million; and naturally the Knights of Slavery do not enjoy
reading it. Year after year they have marshalled their power to have
this paper barred from the mails--so far, in vain. They caused an
obscenity prosecution, which failed; so finally the press rooms of the
paper were blown up with dynamite. At the present time there is a
"Catholic Truth Society" with a publication called "Truth", to oppose
the anti-Catholic campaign; and that is all right, of course--except
when the agents who collect the two-dollar subscriptions to this
publication make use of Untruth in their labors--promising absolution
and salvation to the families, dead and living, of those who "come
across" with subscriptions. In the "Bulletin of the American
Federation of Catholic Societies" for September, 1915, I find a record
of the ceaseless plotting to bar criticism of the Catholic Church from
the mails. Fitzgerald, a Tammany Catholic congressman, proposes a bill
in Washington; and Judge St. Paul, of New Orleans, a member of the
Federation's "law committee", points out the difficulties in the way
of such legislation. You cannot pass a law against ridiculing
religion, because the Catholics want to ridicule Christian Science,
Mormonism, and the "Holy Ghost and Us" Society! The Judge thinks the
purpose of the Papal plotters will be accomplished if they can slip
into the present law the words "scurrilous and slanderous"; he hopes
that this much can be done without the American people catching on!
You read these things for the first time, perhaps, and you want to
start an American "Kultur-kampf." I make haste, therefore, to restate
the main thesis of this book. It is not the New Inquisition which is
our enemy today; it is hereditary Privilege. It is not Superstition,
but Big Business which makes use of Superstition as a wolf makes use
of sheep's clothing.
You remember how, when Americans first awakened to the universal
corruption of our politics, we used to attribute it to the "ignorant
foreign vote." Turn to Lecky's "Democracy and Liberty" and you will
see how reformers twenty years ago explained our political depravity.
But we probed deeper, and discovered that the purely American
communities, such as Rhode Island, were the most corrupt of all. It
dawned upon us that wherever there was a political boss paying bribes
on election day, there was a captain of industry furnishing the money
for the bribes, and taking some public privilege in return. So we came
to realize that political corruption is merely a by-product of Big
Business.
And when we come to probe this problem of the spread of Superstition in
America, this amazing renascence of Romanism in a democracy, we find
precisely the same phenomenon. It is not the poor foreigner who
troubles us. Our human magic would win him--our easy-going trust, our
quiet certainty of liberty, our open-handed and open-homed and
hail-fellow-well-met democracy. We should break down the Catholic
machine, and not all the priests in the hierarchy could stop us--were
it not for the Steel Trust and the Coal Trust and the Beef Trust, the
Liquor Trust and the Traction Trust and the Money Trust--those masters
of America who do not want citizens, free and intelligent and
self-governing, but who want the slave-hordes as they come, ignorant,
inert, physically, mentally and morally helpless!
No, do not let yourself be lured into a Kultur-kampf. It is not the
pennies of the servant-girls which build the towering cathedrals; it
is not the two-dollar contributions for the salvation of souls which
support the Catholic Truth Society and the Knights of Columbus and the
Holy Name Society and the Mary Sodality and the National Shrine of the
Immaculate Conception and all the rest of the machinery of the Papal
propaganda. These help, of course; but the main sources of growth are,
first, the subsidies of industrial exploiters, the majority of whom
are non-Catholic, and second, the privilege of public plunder granted
as payment for votes by politicians who are creatures and puppets of
Big Business.
#King Coal#
The proof of these statements is written all over the industrial life
of America. I will stop long enough to present an account of one
industry, asking the reader to accept my statement that if space
permitted I could present the same sort of proof for a dozen other
industries which I have studied--the steel-mills of Western
Pennsylvania, the meat-factories of Chicago, the glass-works of
Southern Jersey, the silk-mills of Paterson, the cotton-mills of North
Carolina, the woolen-mills of Massachusetts, the lumber-camps of
Louisiana, the copper-mines of Michigan, the sweat-shops of New York.
In a lonely part of the Rocky Mountains lies a group of enormously
valuable coal-mines owned by the Rockefellers and other Protestant
exploiters. The men who work these mines, some twelve or fifteen
thousand in number, come from all the nations of Europe and Asia, and
their fate is that of the average wage-slave. I do not ask anyone to
take my word, but present sworn testimony, taken by the United States
Commission on Industrial Relations in 1914. Here is the way the
Italian miners live, as described in a doctor's report:
Houses up the canyon, so-called, of which eight are
habitable, and forty-six simply awful; they are disreputably
disgraceful. I have had to remove a mother in labor from one
part of the shack to another to keep dry.
And here is the testimony of the Rev. Eugene S. Gaddis, former
superintendent of the Sociological Department of the Colorado Fuel and
Iron Company:
The C.F. & I. Company now own and rent hovels, shacks and
dug-outs that are unfit for the habitation of human beings
and are little removed from the pig-sty make of dwellings.
And the people in them live on the very level of a pig-sty.
Frequently the population is so congested that whole
families are crowded into one room; eight persons in one
small room was reported during the year.
And here is what this same clergyman has to say about the bosses whom
the Rockefellers employ:
The camp superintendents as a whole impressed me as most
uncouth, ignorant, immoral, and in many instances, the most
brutal set of men that I have ever met. Blasphemous bullies.
Sometimes the miner grows tired of being robbed of his weights, and
applies for the protection which the law of the state allows him. What
happens then?
"When a man asked for a checkweighman, in the language of
the super he was getting too smart." "And he got what?" "He
got it in the neck, generally."
And when these wage-slaves, goaded beyond endurance, went on strike,
in the words of the Commission's report:
Five strikers, one boy, and thirteen women and children in
the strikers' tent colony were shot to death by militiamen
and guards employed by the coal companies, or suffocated and
burned to death when these militiamen and guards set fire to
the tents in which they made their homes.
And now, what is the position of education in such camps? The Rev.
James McDonald, a Methodist preacher, testified that the school
building was dilapidated and unfit. One year there were four teachers,
the next three, and the next only two. The teacher of the primary
grade had a hundred and twenty children en-rolled, ninety per cent of
whom could not speak a word of English.
Every little bench was seated with two or three. It was
over-crowded entirely, and she could hardly get walking room
around there.
And as to the political use made of this deliberately cultivated
ignorance, former United States Senator Patterson testified that the
companies controlled all elections and all nominations:
Election returns from the two or three counties in which the
large companies operate show that in the precincts in which
the mining camps are located the returns are nearly
unanimous in favor of the men or measures approved by the
companies, regardless of party.
And now comes the all-important question. What of the Catholic Church
and these evils? The majority of these mine-slaves are Catholics, it
is this Church which is charged with their protection. There are
priests in every town, and in nearly every camp. And do we find them
lifting their voices in behalf of the miners, protesting against the
starving and torturing of thirty or forty thousand human beings? Do we
find Catholic papers printing accounts of the Ludlow massacre? Do we
find Catholic journalists on the scene reporting it, Catholic lawyers
defending the strikers, Catholic novelists writing books about their
troubles? We do not!
Through the long agony of the fourteen months strike, I know of just
one Catholic priest, Father Le Fevre, who had a word to say for the
strikers. One of the first stories I heard when I reached the
strike-field was of a priest who had preached on the text that
"Idleness is the root of all evil," and had been reported as a "scab"
and made to shut up. "Who made him?" I asked, naively, thinking of
his, church superiors. My informant, a union miner, laughed. "#We#
made him!" he said.
I talked with another priest who was prudently saving souls and could
not be interested in questions of worldly greed. Max Eastman,
reporting the strike in the "Masses", tells of an interview with a
Catholic sister.
"Has the Church done anything to try to help these people,
or to bring about peace?" we asked. "I consider it the most
useless thing in the world to attempt it," she replied.
The investigating committee of Congress came to the scene, and several
clergymen of the Protestant Church appeared and bore testimony to the
outrages which were being committed against the strikers; but of all
the Catholic priests in the district not one appeared--not one!
Several Protestant clergymen testified that they had been driven from
the coal-camps--not because they favored the unions, but because the
companies objected to having their workers educated at all; but no one
ever heard of the Catholic Church having trouble with the operators.
To make sure on this point I wrote to a former clergyman of Trinidad
who watched the whole strike, and is now a first lieutenant in the
First New Mexico Infantry. He answered:
The Catholic Church seemed to get along with the companies
very cordially. The Church was permitted in all the camps.
The impression was abroad that this was due to favoritism. I
honor what good the Church does, but I know of no instance,
during the Colorado coal-strike or at any other time or
place, when the Catholic Church has taken any special
interest in the cause of the laboring men. Many Catholics,
especially the men, quit the church during the coal-strike.
#The Unholy Alliance#
Everywhere throughout America today the ultimate source of all power,
political, social, and religious, is economic exploitation. To all
other powers and all other organizations it speaks in these words:
"Help us, and you will thrive; oppose us, and you will be destroyed."
It has spoken to the Catholic Church, for sixteen hundred years the
friend and servant of every ruling class; and the Church has hastened
to fit itself into the situation, continuing its pastoral role as
shepherd to the wage-slave vote.
In New York and Boston and Chicago the Church is "Democratic"; so in
the Elaine campaign it was possible for a Republican clergyman to
describe the issue as "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion." But the Holy
Office was shrewd and socially ambitious, and the Grand Old Party was
desperately in need of votes, so under the regime of Mark Hanna, the
President-Maker, there began a rapprochement between Big Business and
the New Inquisition. Under Hanna the Catholic Church got
representation in the Cabinet; under him the Cardinal's Mass became a
government institution, a Catholic College came to the fore in
Washington, and Catholic prelates were introduced in the role of
eminent publicists, their reactionary opinions on important questions
being quoted with grave solemnity by a prostitute press. It was Mark
Hanna himself who founded the National Civic Federation, upon whose
executive committee Catholic cardinals and archbishops might work hand
in glove with Catholic labor-leaders for the chloroforming of the
American working-class. Hanna's biographer naively calls attention to
the President-maker's popularity among Catholics, high and low, and
the support they gave him. "Archbishop Ireland was in frequent
correspondence with him, and used his influence in Mr. Hanna's
behalf."
And this tradition, begun under Hanna, was continued under Roosevelt,
and reached its finest flower in the days of Taft, the most pliant
tool of the forces of evil who has occupied the White House since the
days of the Slave Power. President Taft was himself a Unitarian; yet
it was under his administration that the Catholic Church achieved one
of its dearest ambitions, and broke into the Supreme Court. Why not?
We can imagine the powers of the time in conference. It is desired to
pack the Court against the possibility of progress; it is desired to
find men who will stand like a rock against change--and who better
than those who have been trained from childhood in the idea of a
divine sanction for doctrine and morals? After all, what is it that
Hereditary Privilege wants in America? A Roman Catholic code of
property rights, with a supreme tribunal to play the part of an
infallible Pope!
Under this Taft administration the country was governed by the
strangest legislative alliance our history ever saw; a combination of
the Old Guard of the Republican Party with the leaders of the Tammany
Democracy of New York. "Bloody shirt" Foraker, senator from Ohio,
voting with the sons of those Irish Catholic mob-leaders whom the
Federal troops shot down in the draft-riots! By this unholy
combination a pledge to reduce the tariff was carried out by a bill
which greatly increased its burdens; by this combination the public
lands and resources of the country were fed to a gang of vultures by a
thievish Secretary of the Interior. And of course under such an
administration the cause of "Religion" made tremendous strides.
Catholic officials were appointed to public office, Catholic
ecclesiastics were accorded public honors, and Catholic favor became a
means to political advancement. You might see a hard-swearing old
political pirate like "Uncle Joe" Cannon, taking his cigar out of the
corner of his blasphemous mouth and betaking himself to the
"Cardinal's Day Mass", to bend his stiff knees and bow his hoary
unrepentant head before a jeweled prelate on a throne. You might see
an emissary of the United States government proceeding to Rome,
prostrating himself before the Pope, and paying over seven million
dollars of our taxes for lands which the filthy and sensual friars of
the Philippine Islands had filched from the wretched serfs of that
country and which the wretched serfs had won back by their blood in a
revolution.
#Secret Service#
This Taft administration, urged on by the Catholic intrigue, made the
most determined efforts to prevent the spread of radical thought.
Because the popular magazines were opposing the plundering of the
country, a bill was introduced into Congress to put them out of
business by a prohibitive postal tax; the President himself devoted
all his power to forcing the passage of this bill. At the same time
the Socialist press was handicapped by every sort of persecution. I
was at that time in intimate touch with the "Appeal to Reason", and I
know that scarcely a month passed that the Post Office Department did
not invent some new "regulation" especially designed to limit its
circulation. I recall one occasion when I met the editor on his way to
Washington with a trunkful of letters from subscribers who complained
that their postmasters refused to deliver the paper to them; and later
on this same editor was prosecuted by a Catholic Attorney General and
sentenced to prison for seeking to awaken the people concerning the
Moyer-Haywood case.
From my personal knowledge I can say that under the administration of
President Taft t the Roman Catholic Church and the Secret Service of
the Federal Government worked hand in hand for the undermining of the
radical movement in America. Catholic lecturers toured the country,
pouring into the ears of the public vile slanders about the private
morality of Socialists; while at the same time government detectives,
paid out of public funds, spent their time seeking evidence for these
Catholic lecturers to use. I know one man, a radical labor-leader,
whose morals happened to approach those of the average capitalist
politician, and who was prevented by threats of exposure and scandal
from accepting the Socialist nomination for President. I know a dozen
others who were shadowed and spied upon; I know one case--myself--a
man who was asking a divorce from his wife, and whose mail was opened
for months.
This subject is one on which I naturally speak with extreme
reluctance. I will only say that my opponent in the suit made no
charge of misconduct against me; but those in control of our political
police evidently thought it likely that a man who was not living with
his wife might have something to hide; so for months my every move was
watched and all my mail intercepted. In such a case one might at first
suspect one's private opponent; but it soon became evident that this
net was cast too wide for any private agency. Not merely was my own
mail opened, but the mail of all my relatives and friends--people
residing in places as far apart as California and Florida. I recall
the bland smile of a government official to whom I complained about
this matter: "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear."
My answer was that a study of many labor cases had taught me the
methods of the agent provocateur. He is quite willing to take real
evidence if he can find it; but if not, he has familiarized himself
with the affairs of his victim, and can make evidence which will be
convincing when exploited by the yellow press. In my own case, the
matter was not brought to a test, for I went abroad to live; when I
made my next attack on Big Business, the Taft administration had been
repudiated at the polls, and the Secret Service of the government was
no longer at the disposal of the Catholic machine.
#Tax Exemption#
Today the Catholic Church is firmly established and everywhere
recognized as one of the main pillars of American capitalism. It has
some fifteen thousand churches, fourteen million communicants, and
property valued at half a billion dollars. Upon this property it pays
no taxes, municipal, state or national; which means, quite obviously,
that you and I, who do not go to church, but who do pay taxes, furnish
the public costs of Catholicism. We pay to have streets paved and
lighted and cleaned in front of Catholic churches; we pay to have
thieves kept away from them, fires put out in them, records preserved
for them--all the services of civilization given to them gratis, and
this in a land whose constitution provides that Congress (which
includes all state and municipal legislative bodies) "shall make no
law respecting an establishment of religion." When war is declared,
and our sons are drafted to defend the country, all Catholic monks and
friars, priests and dignitaries are exempted. They are "ministers of
religion"; whereas we Socialists may not even have the status of
"conscientious objectors." We do not teach "religion"; we only teach
justice and humanity, decency and truth.
In defense of this tax-exemption graft, the stock answer is that the
property is being used for purposes of "education" or "charity". It is
a school, in which children are being taught that "liberty of
conscience is a most pestiferous error, from which arises revolution,
corruption, contempt of sacred things, holy institutions, and laws."
(Pius IX). It is a "House of Refuge", to which wayward girls are
committed by Catholic magistrates, and in which they are worked twelve
hours a day in a laundry or a clothing sweat-shop. Or it is a
"parish-house", in which a celibate priest lives under the care of an
attractive young "house-keeper". Or it is a nunnery, in which young
girls are held against their will and fed upon the scraps from their
sisters' plates to teach them humility, and taught to lie before the
altar, prostrate in the form of a cross, while their "Superiors" walk
upon their bodies to impress the religious virtues. "I was a teacher
in the Catholic schools up to a very recent period," writes the woman
friend who tells me of these customs, "and I know about the whole
awful system which endeavors to throttle every genuine impulse of the
human will."
Concerning a large part of this church property, the claim of
"religious" use has not even the shadow of justification. In every
large city of America you will find acres of land owned by the
Catholic machine, and supposed to be the future site of some
institution; but as time goes on and property values increase, the
church decides to build on a cheaper site, and proceeds to cash in the
profits of its investment, precisely as does any other real estate
speculator. Everywhere you turn in the history of Romanism you find it
at this same game, doing business under the cloak of philanthropy and
in the holy name of Christ. Read the letter which the Catholic Bishop
of Mexico sent to the Pope in 1647, complaining of the Jesuit fathers
and their boundless graft. In McCabe's "Candid History of the Jesuits"
appears a summary:
A remarkable account is given of the worldly property of the
fathers. They hold, it seems, the greater part of the wealth
of Mexico. Two of their colleges own 300,000 sheep, besides
cattle and other property. They own six large sugar
refineries, worth from half a million to a million crowns
each, and making an annual profit of 100,000 crowns each,
while all the other monks and clergy of Mexico together own
only three small refineries. They have immense farms, rich
silver mines, large shops and butcheries, and do a vast
trade. Yet they continually intrigue for legacies--a woman
has recently left them 70,000 crowns--and they refuse to pay
the appointed tithe on them. It is piquant to add to this
authoritative description that the Jesuit congregation at
Rome were still periodically forbidding the fathers to
engage in commerce, and Jesuit writers still gravely
maintain that the society never engaged in commerce. It
should be added that the missionaries were still heavily
subsidized by the King of Spain, that there were (the Bishop
says) only five or six Jesuits to each of their
establishments, and that they conducted only ten colleges.
#"Holy History"#
And if you think this tax-exemption privilege should be taken away
from the church grafters, let me suggest a course of procedure. Write
a letter about it to your daily newspaper; and if the letter is not
published, go and see the editor and ask why; so you will learn
something about the partnership between Superstition and Big Business!
It is not too much to say that today no daily newspaper in any large
American city dares to attack the emoluments of the Catholic Church,
or to advocate restrictions upon the ecclesiastical machine. As I
write, they are making a new Catholic bishop in Los Angeles, and all
the newspapers of that graft-ridden city herald it as an important
social event. Each paper has the picture of the new prelate, with his
shepherd's crook upraised, his empty face crowned with a rhomboidal
fool's cap, and enough upholstery on him to outfit a grand opera
company. The Los Angeles "Examiner", the only paper in the city with a
pretense to radicalism, turns loose its star-writer--one of those
journalist virtuosos who will describe you a Wild West "rodeo" one
day, and a society elopement the next, and a G.O.P. convention the
next; and always with his picture, one inch square, at the head of his
effusion. He takes in the Catholic festivity; and does it phaze him?
It does not! He is a newspaper man, and if his city editor sent him to
hell, he would take the assignment and write like the devil. To read
him now you might think he had been reared in a convent; his soul is
uplifted, and he bursts forth in pure spontaneous ecstacy:
Solemnly magnificent, every brilliant detail symbolically
picturing the holy history of the Roman Catholic Church in
the inexorable progress of its immense structure, which
rises from the rock of Peter, with its beacons of faith and
devotion piercing the fog of doubt and fear which surround
the world and the worldly, was the ceremony yesterday at the
Cathedral of St. Vibiana, whereby Bishop John J. Cantwell
was installed in his diocese of Monterey and Los Angeles.
And then, a month later, conies another occasion of state--the
twenty-third Annual Banquet. the Merchants' and Manufacturers'
Association of Los Angeles. I should have to write a little essay to
make clear the sociological significance of that function; explaining
first, a nation-wide organization which has been proven by
congressional investigation and by the publication of its secret
documents to be a machine for the corruption of our political life;
and then exhibiting our "City of the Angels", from which all Angels
have long since fled; a city in the first crude stage of land
speculation, without order, dignity or charm; a city of real estate
agents, who exist by selling climate to new arrivals from the East; a
city whose intellectual life is "boosting", whose standards of truth
are those of the horse-trade. Its newspapers publish a table of
temperatures, showing the daily contrast between Southern California
and the East. This device is effective in the winter-time; but last
June, when for five days the temperature went to over 110, and several
times 114--the Los Angeles space was left empty!
In the same way, there is a rule that our earth-quake shocks are never
mentioned, unless they destroy whole towns. On the afternoon of Jan.
26th, 1918, a cyclone hit Pasadena, of violence sufficient to lift a
barn over a church-steeple and deposit it in the pastor's front yard.
That evening a friend of mine in Los Angeles called up the office of
the "Times" to make inquiry; and although they are only thirteen miles
away, and have a branch office and a special correspondent in
Pasadena, the answer was that they had heard nothing about the
cyclone! And next morning I made a careful, search of their columns.
On the front page I read: "Fourth Blizzard of Season Raging in East";
also: "Another Earthquake in Guatemala". But not a line about the
Pasadena cyclone. That there was plenty of space in that issue, you
may judge from the fact that there were twenty headlines like the
following--many of them representing full page and half page
illustrated "write-ups":
Where Spring is January; Wealth Waits in California; The
Bright Side of Sunshine Land; Come to California:
Southland's Arms Outstretched in Cordial Invitation to the
East; Flower Stands Make Gay City Streets; Southland Climate
Big Manufacturing Factor; Joy of Life Demonstrated in Los
Angeles' Beautiful Homes; Nymphs Knit and Bathe at Ocean's
Sunny Beach; etc.
Now we are in the War and our business is booming, we are making money
hand over fist. It is all the more delightful, because we are putting
our souls into it, we are lending our money to the government and
saving the world for Democracy! Our labor unionists have been driven
to other cities, and our Mexican agitators and I.W.W.'s are in jail;
so, in the gilt ball-room of our palatial six-dollar-a-day hotel the
four hundred masters of our prosperity meet to pat themselves on the
back, and they invite the new Catholic bishop to come and confer the
grace of God upon their eating.
The Bishop comes; and I take up the "Times"--the labor-hating,
labor-baiting, fire-and-slaughter-breathing "Times"--and here is the
episcopal picture on the front page, the arms stretched four columns
wide in oratorical beneficence. How the shepherd of Jesus does love
the Merchants and Manufacturers! How his eloquence is poured out upon
them! "You represent, gentlemen, the largest and the most civilizing
secular body in the country. You are the pioneers of American
civilization.... I am glad to be among you; glad that my lines have
fallen in this glorious land by the sunset sea, and honored to meet in
intimate acquaintance the big men who have raised here in a few years
a city of metropolitan proportions."
And then, bearing in mind his responsibilities as guardian of
Exploitation, the Bishop goes on to tell them about the coming
class-war. "On the one side a statesman preaching patience and respect
for vested rights, strict observance of public faith; on the other a
demagog speaking about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers." And
then, of course, the inevitable religious tag: "How will men obey you,
if they believe not in God, who is the author of all authority?" At
which, according to the "Times", "prolonged applause and cheers" from
the Merchants and Manufacturers! The editor of the "Times" goes back
to his office, and inspired by this episcopal eloquence writes a
"leader" with the statement that: "#We have no proletariat in
America!#"
#Das Centrum#
In order to see clearly the ultimate purpose of this Unholy Alliance,
this union of Superstition and the Merchants' and Manufacturers'
Association, we have to go to Europe, where the arrangement has been
working for a thousand years. In Europe to-day we see the whole world
in conflict with a band of criminals who have been able to master the
minds and lives of a hundred million highly civilized people. As I
write, the Junker aristocracy is at bay, and soon to have its throat
cut; but there comes a Holy Father to its rescue, with the cross of
Jesus uplifted, and a series of pleas for mercy, written in Vienna,
edited in Berlin, and sent out from Rome. The Holy Father loves all
mankind with a tender and touching love; his heart bleeds at the sight
of bloodshed and suffering, and he pleads the sacred cause of peace on
earth and good-will toward men.
But what was the Holy Father doing through the forty-three years that
the Potsdam gang were preparing for their assault on the world? How
was the Holy Father manifesting his love of peace and good will? He
is, you understand, the "sole, last, supreme judge of what is right
and wrong," and his followers obey him with the utmost promptness and
devotion--they express themselves as "prostrate at his feet." And when
the masters of Prussia came to him and said: "Give us the power to
turn this nation into the world's greatest military empire"--what did
the Roman Church answer? Did it speak boldly for the gentle Jesus, and
the cause of peace on earth and good-will towards men? No, it did not.
To Bismarck in Germany it said, precisely as it said to Mark Hanna in
America: "Give us honors and prestige; give us power over the minds of
the young, so that we may plunder the poor and build our cathedrals
and feed fat our greed; and in return we will furnish you with votes,
so that you may rule the state and do what you will."
You think there is exaggeration in that statement? Why, we know the
very names of the prelates with whom the master-cynic of the
Junkerthum made his "deal." He had tried the method of the
Kultur-kampf, and had failed; but before he repealed the anti-Catholic
laws, he made sure that the Church had learned its lesson, and would
nevermore oppose the Prussian ruling caste. We know how this bargain
was carried out; we have the record of the Centrum, the Catholic party
of Germany, whose hundred deputies were the solid rock upon which the
military regime of Prussia was erected. Not a battle-ship nor a
Zeppelin was built for which the Black Terror did not vote the funds;
not a school-child was beaten in Posen or Alsace that the New
Inquisition did not shout its "Hoch!" The writer sat in the visitors'
gallery of the Reichstag when the Socialists were protesting against
the torturing of miserable Herreros in Africa, and he heard the
deputies of the Holy Father's political party screaming their rage
like jaguars in a jungle night. All over Europe the Catholic Church
organized fake labor unions, the "yellows," as they were called, to
scab upon the workers and undermine the revolutionary movement. The
Holy Father himself issued precise instructions for the management of
these agencies of betrayal. Hear the most pious and benevolent Leo
XIII:
"They must pay special and principal attention to piety and
morality, and their internal discipline must be directed
precisely by these considerations; otherwise they entirely
lose their special character, and come to be very little
better than those societies which take no account of
Religion at all."
It is so hard, you see, to keep a man thinking about piety and
morality while he is starving! I am quoting from the Encyclical Letter
on "The Condition of Labor," issued in 1891, and addressed "to our
Venerable Brethren, all Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops and Bishops
of the Catholic World in Grace and Communion with the Apostolic See."
The purpose of the letter is "to refute false teaching," and the
substance of its message is:
This great labor question cannot be solved except by
assuming as a principle that private property must be held
sacred and inviolable.
And again, the purpose of churches proclaimed in language as frank as
any used in the present book:
The chief thing to be secured is the safe-guarding, by legal
enactment and policy, of private property. Most of all it is
essential in these times of covetous greed, to keep the
multitude within the line of duty; for if all may justly
strive to benefit their condition, yet neither justice nor
the common good allows any one to seize that which belongs
to another, or, under the pretext of futile and ridiculous
equality, to lay hands on other peoples' fortunes.
And this, you understand, in lands where rapine and conquest,
class-tyranny and priestly domination have been the custom since the
dawn of history; in which no property-right can possibly trace back to
any other basis than force. In Austria, for example--Austria, the
leader and guardian of the Holy Alliance--Austria, which had no
Reformation, no Revolution, no Kultur-kampf--Austria, in which the
income of the Catholic Primate is $625,000 a year! In other words,
Austria is still to a large extent a "Priestly Empire;" and it was
Austria which began the war--began it in a religious quarrel, with a
Slav people which does not acknowledge the Holy Father as the ruler of
the world, but persists in adhering to the Eastern Church. So of
course to-day, when Austria is learning the bitter lesson that they
who draw the sword shall perish by the sword, the heart of the Holy
Father is wrung with grief, and he sends out these eloquent
peace-notes, written in Vienna and edited in Berlin. And at the same
time his private chaplain is convicted and sentenced to prison for
life as Austria's Master-Spy in Rome!
It is a curious thing to observe--the natural instinct which, all over
the world, draws Superstition and Exploitation together. This war,
which is hailed as a war against autocracy, might almost as accurately
be described as a war against the clerical system. Wherever in the
world you find the Papal power strong, there you find sympathy with
the Prussian infamy and there you find German intrigue. In Spain, for
example; in Ireland and Quebec, and in the Argentine. The treatment of
Belgium was a little too raw--too many priests were shot at the
outset, and so Cardinal Mercier denounces the Germans; but you notice
that he pleads in vain with the Vatican, which stands firm by its
beloved Austria, and against the godless kingdom of Italy. The Kaiser
allows the hope of restoration of the temporal power at the peace
settlement; and meantime the law forbidding the presence of the
Jesuits in Germany has been repealed, and all over the world the
propagandists of this order are working for the Kaiser. Sir Roger
Casement was raised a Catholic, and so also "Jim" Larkin, the Irish
labor-leader who _is_ touring America denouncing the Allies. The
Catholic Bishop of Melbourne opposed and beat conscription in
Australia, and it was Catholic propaganda of treachery among the
ignorant peasant-soldiers from Sicily which caused the breaking of the
Italian line at Tolmino. So deeply has this instinct worked that, in
the fall of 1917 while the Socialist party in New York was campaigning
for immediate peace, the Catholic Irish suddenly forgot their ancient
horrors. The Catholic "Freeman's Journal" published nine articles
favoring Socialism in a single issue; while even "The Tablet," the
diocesan paper, began to discover that the Socialists were not such
bad fellows after all. The same "Tablet" which a few years ago allowed
Father Belford to declare that Socialists were mad dogs who should be
"stopped with a bullet"!
P. S. The reader will be interested to know that for the
statements on page 155, Upton Sinclair was described as a
"scoundrel" by a former prime minister of the Austrian
Empire, and brought suit against the gentleman, and after a
court trial was awarded damages of 500,000 crowns--about $7
in American money.
* * * * *
#BOOK FOUR#
#The Church of the Slavers#
Bee, underneath the Crown of Thorn,
The eye-balls fierce, the features grim!
And merrily from night to morn
We chaunt his praise and worship him--
Great Christus-Jingo, at whose feet
Christian and Jew and Atheist meet!
A wondrous god! most fit for those
Who cheat on 'Change, then creep to prayer;
Blood on his heavenly altar flows,
Hell's burning incense fills the air,
And Death attests in street and lane
The hideous glory of his reign.
--Buchanan
* * * * *
#Face of Caesar#
The thesis of this book is the effect of fixed dogma in producing
mental paralysis, and the use of this mental paralysis by Economic
Exploitation. From that standpoint the various Protestant sects are
better than the Catholic, but not much better. The Catholics stand
upon Tradition, the Protestants upon an Inspired Word; but since this
Word is the entire literary product, history and biography, science
and legislation, poetry, drama and fiction of a whole people for
something like a thousand years, it is possible by judicious selection
of texts to prove anything you wish to prove and to justify anything
you wish to do. The "Holy Book" being full of polygamy, slavery, rape
and wholesale murder, committed by priests and rulers under the direct
orders of God, it was a very simple matter for the Protestant Slavers
to construct a Bible defense of their system.
They get poor Jesus because he was given to irony, that most dangerous
form of utterance. If he could come back to life, and see what men
have done with his little joke about the face of Caesar on the Roman
coin, I think he would drop dead. As for Paul, he was a Roman
bureaucrat, with no nonsense in his make-up; when he ordered,
"Servants obey your masters," he meant exactly what he said. The Roman
official stamp which he put upon the gospel of Jesus has been the
salvation of the Slavers from the Reformation on.
In the time of Martin Luther, the peasants of Germany were suffering
the most atrocious and awful misery; Luther himself knew about it, he
had denounced the princely robbers and the priestly land-exploiters
with that picturesque violence of which he was a master. But nothing
had been done about it, nothing ever is done about it--until at last
the miserable peasants attempted to organize and win their own rights.
Their demands do not seem to us so very criminal as we read them
today; the privilege of electing their own pastors, the abolition of
villeinage, the right to hunt and fish and cut wood in the forest, the
reduction of exorbitant rents, extra payment for extra labor,
and--that universal cry of peasant communes whether in Russia,
England, Mexico or sixteenth century Germany--the restoration to the
village of lands taken by fraud. But Luther would hear nothing of
slaves asserting their own rights, and took refuge in the Pauline
sociology: If they really wished to follow Christ, they would drop the
sword and resort to prayer; the gospel has to do with spiritual, not
temporal, affairs; earthly society cannot exist without inequalities,
etc.
And when the peasants went on in spite of this, he turned upon them
and denounced them to the princes; he issued proclamations which might
have been the instructions of Mr. John Wanamaker to the police-force
of his "City of Brotherly Love": "One cannot answer a rebel with
reason, but the best answer is to hit him with the fist until blood
flows from the nose." He issued a letter: "Against the Murderous and
Thieving Mob of Peasants," which might have come from the Reverend
Woelfkin, Fifth Avenue Pastor of Standard Oil: "The ass needs to be
beaten, and the populace needs to be controlled with a strong hand.
God knew this well, and therefore he gave the rulers, not a fox's
tail, but a sword." He implored these rulers, after the fashion of
Methodist Chancellor Day of the University of Syracuse: "Do not be
troubled about the severity of their repression, for it will save many
souls." With such pious exhortations in their ears the princes set to
work, and slaughtered a hundred thousand of the miserable wretches;
they completely aborted the social hopes of the Reformation, and cast
humanity into the pit of wage-slavery and militarism for four
centuries. As a church scholar, Prof. Rauschenbusch, puts it:
The glorious years of the Lutheran Reformation were from
1517 to 1525, when the whole nation was in commotion, and a
great revolutionary tidal wave seemed to be sweeping every
class and every higher interest one step nearer to its ideal
of life.... The Lutheran Reformation had been most truly
religious and creative when it embraced the whole of human
life and enlisted the enthusiasm of all ideal men and
movements. When it became "religious" in the narrow sense,
it grew scholastic and spiny, quarrelsome, and impotent to
awaken high enthusiasm and noble life.
#Deutschland ueber Alles#
As a result of Luther's treason to humanity, his church became the
state church of Prussia, and Bible-worship and Devil-terror played
their part, along with the Mass and the Confessional, in building up
the Junker dream. A court official--the Oberhofprediger--was set up,
and from that time on the Hohenzollerns were the most pious criminals
in Europe. Frederick the Great, the ancestral genius, was an atheist
and a scoffer, but he believed devoutly in religion for his subjects.
He said: "If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one would remain
in the ranks." And Carlyle, instinctive friend of autocrats, tells
with jocular approval how he kept them from thinking:
He recognizes the uses of Religion; takes a good deal of
pains with his Preaching Clergy; will suggest texts to them;
and for the rest expects to be obeyed by them, as by his
Sergeants and Corporals. Indeed, the reverend men feel
themselves to be a body of Spiritual Sergeants, Corporals,
and Captains, to whom obedience is the rule, and discontent
a thing not to be indulged in by any means.
So the soldiers stayed in the ranks, and Frederick raided Silesia and
Poland. His successors ordered all the Protestant sects into one, so
that they might be more easily controlled; from which time the
Lutheran Church has been a department of the Prussian state, in some
cases a branch of the municipal authority.
In 1848, when the people of various German states demanded their
liberty, it was an ultra-pious king of Prussia who sent his troops and
shot them down--precisely as Luther had advised to shoot down the
peasants. At this time the future maker of the German Empire rose in
the Landtag and made his bow before the world; a young Prussian
land-magnate, Otto von Bismarck by name, he shook his fist in the face
of the new German liberalism, and incidentally of the new German
infidelity:
Christianity is the solid basis of Prussia; and no state
erected upon any other foundation can permanently exist.
The present Hohenzollern has diligently maintained this tradition of
his line. It was his custom to tour the Empire in a train of blue and
white cars, carrying as many costumes as any stage favorite, most of
them military; with him on the train went the Prussian god, and there
was scarcely a performance at which this god did not appear, also in
military costume. After the failure of the "Kultur-kampf," the
official Lutheran religion was ordered to make friends with its
ancient enemy, the Catholic Church. Said the Kaiser:
I make no difference between the adherents of the Catholic
and Protestant creeds. Let them both stand upon the
foundation of Christianity, and they are both bound to be
true citizens and obedient subjects. Then the German people
will be the rock of granite upon which our Lord God can
build and complete his work of Kultur in the world.
And here is the oath required of the Catholic clergy, upon their
admission to equality of trustworthiness with their Protestant
confreres:
I will be submissive, faithful and obedient to his Royal
Majesty,--and his lawful successors in the government,--as
my most gracious King and Sovereign; promote his welfare
according to my ability; prevent injury and detriment to
him; and particularly endeavor carefully to cultivate in the
minds of the people under my care a sense of reverence and
fidelity towards the King, love for the Fatherland,
obedience to the laws, and all those virtues which in a
Christian denote a good citizen; and I will not suffer any
man to teach or act in a contrary spirit. In particular I
vow that I will not support any society or association,
either at home or abroad, which might endanger the public
security, and will inform His Majesty of any proposal made,
either in my diocese or elsewhere, which might prove
injurious to the State.
And later on this heaven-guided ruler conceived the scheme of a
Berlin-Bagdad railway, for which he needed one religion more; he paid
a visit to Constantinople, and made another debut and produced another
god--with the result that millions of Turks are fighting under the
belief that the Kaiser is a convert to the faith of Mohammed!
#Der Tag.#
All this was, of course, in preparation for the great event to which
all good Germans looked forward--to which all German officers drank
their toasts at banquets--the Day.
This glorious day came, and the field-gray armies marched forth, and
the Pauline-Lutheran God marched with them. The Kaiser, as usual,
acted as spokesman:
Remember that the German people are the chosen of God. On
me, the German emperor, the spirit of God has descended. I
am His sword, His weapon and His viceregent. Woe to the
disobedient and death to cowards and unbelievers.
As to the Prussian state religion, its attitude to the war is set
forth in a little book written by a high clerical personage, the Herr
Consistorialrat Dietrich Vorwerk, containing prayers and hymns for the
soldiers, and for the congregations at home. Here is an appeal to the
Lord God of Battles:
Though the warrior's bread be scanty, do Thou work daily
death and tenfold woe unto the enemy. Forgive in merciful
long-suffering each bullet and each blow which misses its
mark. Lead us not into the temptation of letting our wrath
be too tame in carrying out Thy divine judgment. Deliver us
and our ally from the Infernal Enemy and his servants on
earth. Thine is the kingdom, the German land; may we, by the
aid of Thy steel-clad hand, achieve the fame and the glory.
It is this Herr Consistorialrat who has perpetrated the great
masterpiece of humor of the war--the hymn in which he appeals to that
God who keeps guard over Cherubim, Seraphim, and Zeppelins. You have
to say over the German form of these words in order to get the effect
of their delicious melody--"Cherubinen, Seraphinen, Zeppelinen!" And
lest you think that this too-musical clergyman is a rara avis, turn to
the little book which has been published in English under the same
title as Herr Vorwerk's "Hurrah and Hallelujah." Here is the Reverend
S. Lehmann:
Germany is the center of God's plans for the world.
Germany's fight against the whole world is in reality the
battle of the spirit against the whole world's infamy,
falsehood and devilish cunning.
And here is Pastor K. Koenig:
It was God's will that we should will the war.
And Pastor J. Rump:
Our defeat would mean the defeat of His Son in humanity. We
fight for the cause of Jesus within mankind.
And here is an eminent theological professor:
The deepest and most thought-inspiring result of the war is
the German God. Not the national God such as the lower
nations worship, but "our God," who is not ashamed of
belonging to us, the peculiar acquirement of our heart.
#King Cotton#
It is a cheap way to gain applause in these days, to denounce the
Prussian system; my only purpose is to show that Bible-worship,
precisely as saint-worship or totem-worship, delivers the worshipper
up to the Slavers. This truth has held in America, precisely as in
Prussia. During the middle of the last century there was fought out a
mighty issue in our free republic; and what was the part played in
this struggle by the Bible-cults? Hear the testimony of William Lloyd
Garrison: "American Christianity is the main pillar of American
slavery." Hear Parker Pillsbury: "We had almost to abolish the Church
before we could reach the dreadful institution at all."
In the year 1818 the Presbyterian General Assembly, which represented
the churches of the South as well as of the North, passed by a
#unanimous# vote a resolution to the effect that "Slavery is utterly
inconsistent with the law of God, which requires us to love our
neighbor as ourselves." But in a generation the views of the entire
South, including the Presbyterian Church, had changed entirely. What
was the reason? Had the "law of God" been altered? Had some new
"revelation" been handed down? Nothing of the kind; it was merely that
a Yankee by the name of Eli Whitney had perfected a machine to take
the seeds out of short staple cotton. The cotton crop of the South
increased from four thousand bales in 1791 to four hundred and fifty
thousand in 1820 and five million, four hundred thousand in 1860.
There was a new monarch, King Cotton, and his empire depended upon
slaves. According to the custom of monarchs since the dawn of history,
he hired the ministers of God to teach that what he wanted was right
and holy. From one end of the South to the other the pulpits rang with
the text: "Cursed be Canaan; a servant to servants shall he be to his
brethren." The learned Bishop Hopkins, in his "Bible View of Slavery",
gave the standard interpretation of this text:
The Almighty, forseeing the total degredation of the Negro
race, ordained them to servitude or slavery under the
descendants of Shem and Japheth, doubtless because he judged
it to be their fittest condition.
I might fill the balance of this volume with citations from defenses
of the "peculiar institution" in the name of Jesus Christ--and not
only from the South, but from the North. For it must be understood
that leading families of Massachusetts and New York owed their power
to Slavery; their fathers had brought molasses from New Orleans and
made it into rum, and taken it to the coast of Africa to be exchanged
for slaves for the Southern planters. And after this trade was
outlawed, the slave-grown cotton had still to be shipped to the North
and spun; so the traders of the North must have divine sanction for
the Fugitive Slave law. Here is the Bishop of Vermont declaring: "The
slavery of the negro race appears to me to be fully authorized both in
the Old and New Testaments." Here in the "True Presbyterian", of New
York, giving the decision of a clerical man of the world: "There is no
debasement in it. It might have existed in Paradise, and it may
continue through the Millenium."
And when the slave-holding oligarchy of the South rose in arms against
those who presumed to interfere with this divine institution, the men
of God of the South called down blessings upon their armies in words
which, with the proper change of names, might have been spoken in
Berlin in August, 1914. Thus Dr. Thornwell, one of the leading
Presbyterian divines of the South: "The triumph of Lincoln's
principles is the death-knell of slavery.... Let us crush the serpent
in the egg." And the Reverend Dr. Smythe of Charleston: "The war is a
war against slavery, and is therefore treasonable rebellion against
the Word, Providence and Government of God." I read in the papers, as
I am writing, how the clergy of Germany are thundering against
President Wilson's declaration that that country must become
democratic. Here is a manifesto of the German Evangelical League, made
public on the four hundredth anniversary of the Reformation:
We especially warn against the heresy, promulgated from
America, that Christianity enjoins democratic institutions,
and that they are an essential condition of the kingdom of
God on earth.
In exactly the same way the religious bodies of the entire South
united in an address to Christians throughout the world, early in the
year 1863:
The recent proclamation of the President of the United
States, seeking the emancipation of the slaves of the South,
is in our judgment occasion of solemn protest on the part of
the people of God.
#Witches and Women#
To whatever part of the world you travel, to whatever page of history
you turn, you find the endowed and established clergy using the word
of God in defense of whatever form of slave-driving may then be
popular and profitable. Two or three hundred years ago it was the
custom of Protestant divines in England and America to hang poor old
women as witches; only a hundred and fifty years ago we find John
Wesley, founder of Methodism, declaring that "the giving up of
witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the Bible." And if you
investigate this witch-burning, you will find that it is only one
aspect of a blot upon civilization, the Christian Mysogyny. You see,
there were two Hebrew legends--one that woman was made out of a man's
rib, and the other that she ate an apple; therefore in modern England
a wife must be content with a legal status lower than a domestic
servant.
Perhaps the most comical of the clerical claims is this--that
Christianity has promoted chivalry and respect for womanhood. In
ancient Greece and Rome the woman was the equal and helpmate of man;
we read in Tacitus about the splendid women of the Germans, who took
part in public councils, and even fought in battles. Two thousand
years before the Christian era we are told by Maspero that the
Egyptian woman was the mistress of her house; she could inherit
equally with her brothers, and had full control of her property. We
are told by Paturet that she was "juridically the equal of man, having
the same rights and being treated in the same fashion." But in
present-day England, under the common law, woman can hold no office of
trust or power, and her husband has the sole custody of her person,
and of her children while minors. He can steal her children, rob her
of her clothing, and beat her with a stick provided it is no thicker
than his thumb. While I was in London the highest court handed down a
decision on the law which does not permit a woman to divorce her
husband for infidelity, unless it has been accompanied by cruelty; a
man had brought his mistress into his home and compelled his wife to
work for and wait upon her, and the decision was that this was not
cruelty in the meaning of the law!
And if you say that this enslavement of Woman has nothing to do with
religion--that ancient Hebrew fables do not control modern English
customs--then listen to the Vicar of Crantock, preaching at St.
Crantock's, London, Aug. 27th, 1905, and explaining why women must
cover their heads in church:
(1) Man's priority of creation. Adam was first formed, then
Eve.
(2) The manner of creation. The man is not of the woman, but
the woman of the man.
(3) The purport of creation. The man was not created for the
woman, but the woman for the man.
(4) Results in creation. The man is the image of the glory
of God, but woman is the glory of man.
(5) Woman's priority in the fall. Adam was not deceived; but
the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression.
(6) The marriage relation. As the Church is subject to
Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands.
(7) The headship of man and woman. The head of every man is
Christ, but the head of the woman is man.
I say there is no modern evil which cannot be justified by these
ancient texts; and there is nowhere in Christendom a clergy which
cannot be persuaded to cite them at the demand of ruling classes. In
the city where I write, three clergymen are being sent to jail for six
months for protesting against the use of the name of Jesus in the
wholesale slaughter of men. Now, I am backing this war. I know that it
has to be fought, and I want to see it fought as hard as possible; but
I want to leave Jesus out of it, for I know that Jesus did not believe
in war, and never could have been brought to support a war. I object
to clerical cant on the subject; and I note that an eminent
theological authority, "Billy" Sunday, appears to agree with me; for I
find him on the front page of my morning paper, assailing the three
pacifist clergymen, and making his appeal not to Jesus, but to the
blood-thirsty tribal diety of the ancient Hebrews:
I suppose they think they know more than God Almighty, who
commanded the sun to stand still while Joshua won the battle
for the Lord; more than the God who made Samson strong so he
could slay thousands of his nation's enemies in a righteous
cause.
Right you are, Billy! And if the capitalist system continues to
develop unchecked, we shall some day see it dawn upon the masters of
the world how wasteful it is to permit the superannuated workers to
perish by slow starvation. So much more sensible to make use of them!
So we shall have a Bible defense of cannibalism; we shall hear our
evangelists quoting Leviticus: "#They shall eat the flesh of their own
sons and daughters.#" Or perhaps some of our leisure-class ladies
might make the discovery that the flesh of working-class babies is
relished by pomeranians and poodles. If so, the Billy Sundays of the
twenty-first century may discover the text: "#Happy shall be he that
taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.#"
#Moth and Rust#
It is especially interesting to notice what happens when the Bible
texts work against the interests of the Slavers and their clerical
retainers. Then they are null and void--and no matter how precise and
explicit and unmistakable they may be! Take for example the Sabbath
injunction: "Six days shalt thou labor and do all that thou hast to
do." Karl Marx records of the pious England of his time that
Occasionally in rural districts a day-labourer is condemned
to imprisonment for desecrating the Sabbath by working in
his front garden. The same labourer is punished for breach
of contract if he remains away from his metal, paper or
glass works on the Sunday, even if it be from a religious
whim. The orthodox Parliament will hear nothing of
Sabbath-breaking if it occurs in the process of expanding
capital.
Or consider the attitude of the Church in the matter of usury.
Throughout ancient Hebrew history the money-lender was an outcast;
both the law and the prophets denounced him without mercy, and it was
made perfectly clear that what was meant was, not the taking of high
interest, but the taking of any interest whatsoever. The early church
fathers were explicit, and the Catholic Church for a thousand years
consigned money-lenders unhesitatingly to hell. But then came the
modern commercial system, and the money-lenders became the masters of
the world! There is no more amusing illustration of the perversion of
human thought than the efforts of the Jesuit casuists to escape from
the dilemma into which their Heavenly Guides had trapped them.
Here, for example is Alphonso Ligouri, a Spanish Jesuit of the
eighteenth century, a doctor of the Church, now worshipped as St.
Alphonsus, presenting a long and elaborate theory of "mental usury";
concluding that, if the borrower pay interest of his own free will,
the lender may keep it. In answer to the question whether the lender
may keep what the borrower pays, not out of gratitude, but out of fear
that otherwise loans will be refused to him in future, Ligouri says
that "to be usury, it must be paid by reason of a contract, or as
justly due; payment by reason of such a fear does not cause interest
to be paid as an actual price." Again the great saint and doctor tells
us that "it is not usury to exact something in return for the danger
and expense of regaining the principal!" Could the house of J. P.
Morgan and Company ask more of their ecclesiastical department?
The reader may think that such sophistications are now out of date;
but he will find precisely the same knavery in the efforts of
present-day Slavers to fit Jesus Christ into the system of competitive
commercialism. Jesus, as we have pointed out, was a carpenter's son, a
thoroughly class-conscious proletarian. He denounced the exploiters of
his own time with ferocious bitterness, he drove the money-changers
out of the temple with whips, and he finally died the death of a
common criminal. If he had forseen the whole modern cycle of
capitalism and wage-slavery, he could hardly have been more precise in
his exortations to his followers to stand apart from it. But did all
this avail him? Not in the least!
I place upon the witness-stand an exponent of Bible-Christianity whom
all readers of our newspapers know well: a scholar of learning, a
publicist of renown; once pastor of the most famous church in
Brooklyn; now editor of our most influential religious weekly; a
liberal both in theology and politics; a modernist, an advocate of
what he calls industrial democracy. His name is Lyman Abbott, and he
is writing under his own signature in his own magazine, his subject
being "The Ethical Teachings of Jesus". Several times I have tried to
persuade people that the words I am about to quote were actually
written and published by this eminent doctor of divinity, and people
have almost refused to believe me. Therefore I specify that the
article may be found in the "Outlook", the bound volumes of which are
in all large libraries: volume 94, page 576. The words are as follows,
the bold face being Dr. Abbott's, not mine:
My radical friend declares that the teachings of Jesus are
not practicable, that we cannot carry them out in life, and
that we do not pretend to do so. Jesus, he reminds us, said,
'Lay not up for yourself treasures upon earth;' and
Christians do universally lay up for themselves treasures
upon earth; every man that owns a house and lot, or a share
of stock in a corporation, or a life insurance policy, or
money in a savings bank, has laid up for himself treasure
upon earth. But Jesus did not say, "Lay not up for
yourselves treasures upon earth." He said, "Lay not up for
yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth
corrupt and where thieves break through and steal." And no
sensible American does. Moth and rust do not get at Mr.
Rockefeller's oil wells, nor at the Sugar Trust's sugar, and
thieves do not often break through and steal a railway or an
insurance company or a savings bank. What Jesus condemned
was hoarding wealth.
Strange as it may sound to some of the readers of this book, I count
myself among the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. His example has meant
more to me than that of any other man, and all the experiences of my
revolutionary life have brought me nearer to him. Living in the great
Metropolis of Mammon, I have felt the power of Privilege, its scourge
upon my back, its crown of thorns upon my head. When I read that
article in the "Outlook", I felt just as Jesus himself would have
felt; and I sat down and wrote a letter--
#To Lyman Abbott#
This discovery of a new method of interpreting the Bible is one of
such very great interest and importance that I cannot forbear to ask
space to comment upon it. May I suggest that Dr. Abbott elaborate this
exceedingly fruitful lea, and write us another article upon the extent
to which the teachings of the Inspired Word are modified by modern
conditions, by the progress of invention and the scientific arts? The
point of view which Dr. Abbott takes is one which had never occurred
to me before, and I had therefore been completely mistaken as to the
attitude of Jesus on the question. Also I have, like Dr. Abbott, many
radical friends who are still laboring under error.
Jesus goes on to bid his hearers: "Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." What an apt
simile is this for the "great mass of American wealth," in Dr.
Abbott's portrayal of it! "It is serving the community," he tells us;
"it is building a railway to open a new country to settlement by the
homeless; it is operating a railway to carry grain from the harvests
of the West to the unfed millions of the East," etc. Incidentally, it
is piling up dividends for its pious owners; and so everybody is
happy--and Jesus, if he should come back to earth, could never know
that he had left the abodes of bliss above.
Truly, there should be a new school of Bible interpretation founded
upon this brilliant idea. Jesus says, "Therefore when thou doest thine
alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the
synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men."
Verily not; for of what avail are trumpets, compared with the millions
of copies of newspapers which daily go forth to tell of Mr.
Rockefeller's benefactions? How transitory are they, compared with the
graven marble or granite which Mr. Carnegie sets upon the front of
each of his libraries!
There is the paragraph, "Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because
thou canst not make one hair white or black." I have several among my
friends who are Quakers; presumably Dr. Abbott has also; and he should
not fail to point out to them the changes which scientific discovery
has wrought in the significance of this command against swearing. We
can now make our hair either white or black, or a combination of both.
We can make it a brilliant peroxide golden; we could, if pushed to an
extreme, make it purple or green. So we are clearly entitled to swear
all we please by our head.
Nor should we forget to examine other portions of the Bible according
to this method. "Look not upon the wine when it is red," we are told.
Thanks to the activities of that Capitalism which Dr. Abbott praises
so eloquently, we now make our beverages in the chemical laboratory,
and their color is a matter of choice. Also, it should be pointed out
that we have a number of pleasant drinks which are not wine at
all--"high-balls" and "gin rickeys" and "peppered punches"; also
#vermouthe and creme de menthe and absinthe#, which I believe, are
green in hue, and therefore entirely safe.
Then there are the Ten Commandments. "Thou shalt not make unto thee
any graven image." See how completely our understanding of this
command is changed, so soon as we realize that we are free to make
images of molten metal! And that we may with impunity bow down to them
and worship them and serve them--even, for instance, a Golden Calf!
"The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy _God_; in it thou
shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy
manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that
is within thy gates." This, again, it will be noted, is open to new
interpretations. It specifies maidservants, but does not prevent one's
employing as many married women as he pleases. It also says nothing
about the various kinds of labor-saving machinery which we have now
taught to work for us--sail-boats, naptha launches, yachts,
automobiles, and private cars--all of which may be busily occupied
during the seventh day of the week. The men who run these
machines--the guides, boatmen, stokers, pilots, chauffeurs, and
engineers--would all indignantly resent being regarded as-"servants",
and so they do not come under the prohibition any more than the
machines.
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy
neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox,
nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's." I read this
paragraph over for the first time in quite a while, and I came with a
jolt to its last words. I had been intending to point out that it said
nothing about a neighbor's automobile, nor a neighbor's oil wells,
sugar trusts, insurance companies and savings banks. The last words,
however, stop one of-abruptly. One is almost tempted to imagine that
the Divine Intelligence must have foreseen Dr. Abbott's ingenious
method of interpretation, and taken this precaution against him. And
this was a great surprise to me--for, truly, I had not supposed it
possible that such an interpretation could have been foreseen, even by
Omniscience itself. I will conclude this communication by venturing
the assertion that it could not have been foreseen by any other person
or thing, in the heavens above, on the earth beneath, or the waters
under the earth. Dr. Abbott may accept my congratulations upon having
achieved the most ingenious and masterful exhibition of casuistical
legerdemain that it has ever been my fortune to encounter in my
readings in the literatures of some thirty centuries and seven
different languages.
And I will also add that I respectfully challenge Dr. Abbott to
publish this letter. And I announce to him in advance that if he
refuses to publish it, I will cause it to be published upon the first
page of the "Appeal to Reason", where it will be read by some five
hundred thousand Socialists, and by them set before several million
followers of Jesus Christ, the world's first and greatest
revolutionist, whom Dr. Lyman Abbott has traduced and betrayed by the
most amazing piece of theological knavery that it has ever been my
fortune to encounter.
#The Octopus#
Dr. Lyman Abbott published this letter! In his editorial comment
thereon he said that he did not know which of two biblical injunctions
to follow: "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be
thought like unto him"; or "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest
he be wise in his own conceit". I replied by pointing out a third text
which the Reverend Doctor had possibly overlooked: "He that calleth
his neighbor a fool shall be in danger of hell-fire." But the Reverend
Doctor took refuge in his dignity, and I bided my time and waited for
that revenge which comes sooner or later to us muck-rakers. In this
case it came speedily. The story is such a perfect illustration of the
functions of religion as oil to the machinery of graft that I ask the
reader's permission to recite it at length.
For a couple of decades the political and financial life of New
England has been dominated by a gigantic aggregation of capital, the
New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. It is a "Morgan" concern;
its popular name, "The New Haven", stands for all the railroads of
six states, nearly all the trolley-lines and steamship-lines, and
a group of the most powerful banks of Boston and New York. It is
controlled by a little group of insiders, who followed the custom of
rail-road-wrecking familiar to students of American industrial life:
buying up new lines, capitalizing them at fabulous sums, and unloading
them on the investing public; paying dividends out of capital,
"passing" dividends as a means of stock manipulation, accumulating
surpluses and cutting "melons" for the insiders, while at the same
time crushing labor unions, squeezing wages, and permitting
rolling-stock and equipment to go to wreck.
All these facts were perfectly well known in Wall Street, and could
not have escaped the knowledge of any magazine editor dealing with
current events. In eight years the "New Haven" had increased its
capitalization 1501 per cent; and what that meant, any office boy in
"the Street" could have told. What attitude should a magazine editor
take to the matter?
At that time there were still two or three free magazines in America.
One of them was Hampton's, and the story of its wrecking by the New
Haven criminals will some day serve in school text-books as the
classic illustration of that financial piracy which brought on the
American social revolution. Ben Hampton had bought the old derelict
"Broadway Magazine", with twelve thousand subscribers, and in four
years, by the simple process of straight truth-telling, had built up
for it a circulation of 440,000. In two years more he would have had a
million; but in May, 1911, he announced a series of articles dealing
with the New Haven management.
The articles, written by Charles Edward Russell, were so exact that
they read today like the reports of the Interstate Commerce
Commission, dated three years later. A representative of the New Haven
called upon the editor of Hampton's with a proof of the first
article--obtained from the printer by bribery--and was invited to
specify the statements to which he took exception; in the presence of
witnesses he went over the article line by line, and specified two
minor errors, which were at once corrected. At the end of the
conference he announced that if the articles were published, Hampton's
Magazine would be "on the rocks in ninety days."
Which threat was carried out to the letter. First came a campaign
among the advertisers of the magazine, which lost an income of
thousands of dollars a month, almost over night. And then came a
campaign among the banks--the magazine could not get credit. Anyone
familiar with the publishing business will understand that a magazine
which is growing rapidly has to have advances to meet each month's
business. Hampton undertook to raise the money by selling stock;
whereupon a spy was introduced into his office as bookkeeper, his list
of subscribers was stolen, and a campaign was begun to destroy their
confidence.
It happened that I was in Hampton's office in the summer of 1911, when
the crisis came. Money had to be had to pay for a huge new edition;
and upon a property worth two millions of dollars, with endorsements
worth as much again, it was impossible to borrow thirty thousand
dollars in the city of New York. Bankers, personal friends of the
publisher, stated quite openly that word had gone out that any one who
loaned money to him would be "broken". I myself sent telegrams to
everyone I knew who might by any chance be able to help; but there was
no help, and Hampton retired without a dollar to his name, and the
magazine was sold under the hammer to a concern which immediately
wrecked it and discontinued publication.
#The Industrial Shelley#
Such was the fate of an editor who opposed the "New Haven". And now,
what of those editors who supported it? Turn to "The Outlook, a Weekly
Journal of Current Events," edited by Lyman Abbott--the issue of Dec.
25th, nineteen hundred and nine years after Christ came down to bring
peace on earth and good-will toward Wall Street. You will there find
an article by Sylvester Baxter entitled "The Upbuilding of a Great
Railroad." It is the familiar "slush" article which we professional
writers learn to know at a glance. "Prodigious", Mr. Baxter tells us,
has been the progress of the New Haven; this was "a masterstroke",
that was "characteristically sagacious". The road had made "prodigious
expenditures", and to a noble end: "Transportation efficiency
epitomizes the broad aim that animated these expenditures and other
constructive activities." There are photographs of bridges and
stations--"vast terminal improvements", "a masterpiece of modern
engineering", "the highest, greatest and most architectural of
bridges". Of the official under whom these miracles were being
wrought--President Mellen--we read: "Nervously organized, of delicate
sensibility, impulsive in utterance, yet with an extraordinarily
convincing power for vividly logical presentation." An industrial
Shelley, or a Milton, you perceive; and all this prodigious genius
poured out for the general welfare! "To study out the sort of
transportation service best adapted to these ends, and then to provide
it in the most efficient form possible, that is the life-task that
President Mellen has set himself."
There was no less than sixteen pages of these raptures--quite a
section of a small magazine like the "Outlook". "The New Haven
ramifies to every spot where industry flourishes, where business
thrives." "As a purveyor of transportation it supplies the public with
just the sort desired." "Here we have the new efficiency in a
nutshell." In short, here we have what Dr. Lyman Abbott means when he
glorifies "the great mass of American wealth". "It is serving the
community; it is building a railway to open a new country to
settlement by the homeless; it is operating a railway to carry grain
from the harvests of the West to the unfed millions of the East," etc.
The unfed millions--my typewriter started to write "underfed
millions"--are humbly grateful for these services, and hasten to buy
copies of the pious weekly which tells about them.
The "Outlook" runs a column of "current events" in which it tells what
is happening in the world; and sometimes it is compelled to tell of
happenings against the interests of "the great mass of American
wealth". The cynical reader will find amusement in following its
narrative of the affairs of the New Haven during the five years
subsequent to the publication of the Baxter article.
First came the collapse of the road's service; a series of accidents
so frightful that they roused even clergymen and chambers of commerce
to protest. A number of the "Outlook's" subscribers are New Haven
"commuters", and the magazine could not fail to refer to their
troubles. In the issue of Jan. 4th, 1913, three years and ten days
after the Baxter rhapsody, we read:
The most numerous accidents on a single road since the last
fiscal year have been, we believe, those on the New Haven.
In the opinion of the Connecticut Commission, the Westport
wreck would not have occurred if the railway company had
followed the recommendation of the Chief Inspector of Safety
Appliances of the Interstate Commerce Commission in its
report on a similar accident at Bridgeport a year ago.
And by June 28th, matters had gone farther yet; we find the "Outlook"
reporting:
Within a few hours of the collision at Stamford, the wrecked
Pullman car was taken away and burned. Is this criminal
destruction of evidence?
This collapse of the railroad service started a clamor for
investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which of course
brought terror to the bosoms of the plunderers. On Dec. 20,1913, we
find the "Outlook" "putting the soft pedal" on the public indignation.
"It must not be forgotten that such a road as the New Haven is, in
fact if not in terms, a National possession, and as it goes down or
up, public interests go down or up with it." But in spite of all pious
admonitions, the Interstate Commerce Commission yielded to the public
clamor, and an investigation was made--revealing such conditions of
rottenness as to shock even the clerical retainers of Privilege.
"Securities were inflated, debt was heaped upon debt", reports the
horrified "Outlook"; and when its hero, Mr. Mellen--its industrial
Shelley, "nervously organized, of delicate sensibility"--admitted that
he had no authority as to the finances of the road and no
understanding of them, but had taken all his orders from Morgan, the
"Outlook" remarks, deeply wounded: "A pitiable position for the
president of a great railway to assume." A little later, when things
got hotter yet, we read:
In the search for truth the Commissioners had to overcome
many obstacles, such as the burning of books, letters and
documents, and the obstinacy of witnesses, who declined to
testify until criminal proceedings were begun. The New Haven
system has more than three hundred subsidiary corporations
in a web of entangling alliances, many of which were
seemingly planned, created and manipulated by lawyers
expressly retained for the purpose of concealment or
deception.
But do you imagine even that would sicken the pious jackals of their
offal? If so, you do not know the sturdiness of the pious stomach. A
compromise was patched up between the government and the thieves who
were too big to be prosecuted; this bargain was not kept by the
thieves, and President Wilson declared in a public statement that the
New Haven administration had "broken an agreement deliberately and
solemnly entered into," in a manner to the President "inexplicable and
entirely without justification." Which, of course, seemed to the
"Outlook" dreadfully impolite language to be used concerning a
"National possession"; it hastened to rebuke President Wilson, whose
statement was "too severe and drastic."
A new compromise was made between the government and the thieves who
were too big to be prosecuted, and the stealing went on. Now, as I
work over this book, the President takes the railroads for war use,
and reads to Congress a message proposing that the securities based
upon the New Haven swindles, together with all the mass of other
railroad swindles, shall be sanctified and secured by dividends paid
out of the public purse. New Haven securities take a big jump; and the
"Outlook", needless to say, is enthusiastic for the President's
policy. Here is a chance for the big thieves to baptize themselves--or
shall we say to have the water in their stocks made "holy"? Says our
pious editor, for the government to take property without full
compensation "would be contrary to the whole spirit of America."
#The Outlook for Graft#
Anyone familiar with the magazine world will understand that such
crooked work as this, continued over a long period, is not done for
nothing. Any magazine writer would know, the instant he saw the Baxter
article, that Baxter was paid by the New Haven, and that the "Outlook"
also was paid by the New Haven. Generally he has no way of proving
such facts, and has to sit in silence; but when his board bill falls
due and his landlady is persistent, he experiences a direct and
earnest hatred of the crooks of journalism who thrive at his expense.
If he is a Socialist, he looks forward to the day when he may sit on a
Publications' Graft Commission, with access to all magazine books
which have not yet been burned!
In the case of the New Haven, we know a part of the price--thanks to
the labors of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Needless to say, you
will not find the facts recorded in the columns of the Outlook; you
might have read it line by line from the palmy days of Mellen to our
own, and you would have got no hint of what the Commission revealed
about magazine and newspaper graft. Nor would you have got much more
from the great metropolitan dailies, which systematically "played
down" the expose, omitting all the really damaging details. You would
have to go to the reports of the Commission--or to the files of
"Pearson's Magazine", which is out of print and not found in
libraries!
According to the New Haven's books, and by the admission of its own
officials, the road was spending more than four hundred thousand
dollars a year to influence newspapers and magazines in favor of its
policies. (President Mellen stated that this was relatively less than
any other railroad in the country was spending). There was a professor
of the Harvard Law School, going about lecturing to boards of trade,
urging in the name of economic science the repeal of laws against
railroad monopolies--and being paid for his speeches out of railroad
funds! There was a swarm of newspaper reporters, writing on railroad
affairs for the leading papers of New England, and getting twenty-five
dollars weekly, or two or three hundred on special occasions. Sums had
been paid directly to more than a thousand newspapers--$3,000 to the
Boston "Republic", and when the question was asked "Why?" the answer
was, "That is Mayor Fitzgerald's paper." Even the ultra-respectable
"Evening Transcript", organ of the Brahmins of culture, was down for
$144 for typing, mimeographing and sending out "dope" to the country
press. There was an item of $381 for 15,000 "Prayers"; and when asked
about that President Mellen explained that it referred to a pamphlet
called "Prayers from the Hills", embodying the yearnings of the
back-country people for trolley-franchises to be issued to the New
Haven. Asked why the pamphlet was called "Prayers", Mr. Mellen
explained that "there was lots of biblical language in it."
And now we come to the "Outlook"; after five years of waiting, we
catch our pious editors with the goods on them! There appears on the
pay-roll of the New Haven, as one of its regular press-agents, getting
sums like $500 now and then--would you think it possible?--Sylvester
Baxter! And worse yet, there appears an item of $938.64 to the
"Outlook", for a total of 9,716 copies of its issue of Dec. 25th,
nineteen hundred and nine years after Christ came to bring peace on
earth and good will towards Wall Street!
The writer makes a specialty of fair play, even when dealing with
those who have never practiced it towards him. He wrote a letter to
the editor of the "Outlook", asking what the magazine might have to
say upon this matter. The reply, signed by Lawrence F. Abbott,
President of the "Outlook" Company, was that the "Outlook" did not
know that Mr. Baxter had any salaried connection with the New Haven,
and that they had paid him for the article at the usual rates. Against
this statement must be set one made under oath by the official of the
New Haven who had the disbursing of the corruption fund--that the
various papers which used the railroad material paid nothing for it,
and "they all knew where it came from." Mr. Lawrence Abbott states
that "the New Haven Railroad bought copies of the 'Outlook' without
any previous understanding or arrangement as anybody is entitled to
buy copies of the 'Outlook'." I might point out that this does not
really say as much as it seems to; for the President of every magazine
company in America knows without any previous understanding or
arrangement that any time he cares to print an article such as Mr.
Baxter's, dealing with the affairs of a great corporation, he can sell
ten thousand copies to that corporation. The late unlamented Elbert
Hubbard wrote a defense of the Rockefeller slaughter of coal-miners,
published it in "The Fra," and came down to New York and unloaded
several tons at 26 Broadway; he did the same thing in the case of the
copper strike in Michigan, and again in the case of "The Jungle"--and
all this without the slightest claim to divine inspiration or
authority!
Mr. Abbott answers another question: "We certainly did not return the
amount to the railroad company." Well, a sturdy conscience must be a
comfort to its possessor. The President of the "Outlook" is in the
position of a pawnbroker caught with stolen goods in his
establishment. He had no idea they were stolen; and we might believe
it, if the thief were obscure. But when the thief is the most
notorious in the city--when his picture has been in the paper a
thousand times? And when the thief swears that the broker knew him?
And when the broker's shop is full of other suspicious goods? Why did
the "Outlook" practically take back Mr. Spahr's revelations concerning
the Powder barony of Delaware? Why did it support so vigorously the
Standard Oil ticket for the control of the Mutual Life Insurance
Company--and with James Stillman, one of the heads of Standard Oil,
president of Standard Oil's big bank in New York, secretly one of its
biggest stockholders!
Also, why does the magazine refuse to give its readers a chance to
judge its conduct? Why is it that a search of its columns reveals no
mention of the revelations concerning Mr. Baxter--not even any mention
of the $400,000 slush fund of its paragon of transportation virtues? I
asked that question in my letter, and the president of the "Outlook"
Company for some reason failed to notice it. I wrote a second time,
courteously reminding him of the omission; and also of another,
equally significant--he had not informed me whether any of the editors
of the "Outlook", or the officers or directors of the Company, were
stockholders in the New Haven. His final reply was that the questions
seem to him "wholly unimportant"; he does not know whether the
"Outlook" published anything about the Baxter revelations, nor does he
know whether any of the editors or officers or directors of the
"Outlook" Company are or ever have been stockholders of the New York,
New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company. The fact "would not in the
slightest degree affect either favorably or unfavorably our editorial
treatment of that corporation." Caesar's wife, it appears is above
suspicion--even when she is caught in a brothel!
#Clerical Camouflage#
I have seen a photograph from "Somewhere in France", showing a wayside
shrine with a statue of the Virgin Mary, innocent and loving, with her
babe in her arms. If you were a hostile aviator, you might sail over
and take pictures to your heart's content, and you would see nothing
but a saintly image; you would have to be on the enemy's side, and
behind the lines, to make the discovery that under the image had been
dug a hole for a machine-gun. When I saw that picture, I thought to
myself--#there# is capitalist Religion!
You see, if cannon and machine-guns are out in the open, they are
almost instantly spotted and put out of action; and so with magazines
like "Leslie's Weekly", or "Munsey's", or the "North American Review",
which are frankly and wholly in the interest of Big Business. If an
editor wishes really to be effective in holding back progress, he must
protect himself with a camouflage of piety and philanthropy, he must
have at his tongue's end the phrases of brotherhood and justice, he
must be liberal and progressive, going a certain cautious distance
with the reformers, indulging in carefully measured fair play--giving
a dime with one hand, while taking back a dollar with the other!
Let us have an illustration of this clerical camouflage. Here are the
wives and children of the Colorado coal-miners being shot and burned
in their beds by Rockefeller gun-men, and the press of the entire
country in a conspiracy of silence concerning the matter. In the
effort to break down this conspiracy, Bouck White, Congregational
clergyman, author of "The Call of the Carpenter", goes to the Fifth
Avenue Church of Standard Oil and makes a protest in the name of
Jesus. I do not wish to make extreme statements, but I have read
history pretty thoroughly, and I really do not know where in nineteen
hundred years you can find an action more completely in the spirit and
manner of Jesus than that of Bouck White. The only difference was that
whereas Jesus took a real whip and lashed the money-changers, White
politely asked the pastor to discuss with him the question whether or
not Jesus condemned the holding of wealth. He even took the precaution
to write a letter to the clergyman announcing in advance what he
intended to do! And how did the clergyman prepare for him? With the
sword of truth and the armor of the spirit? No--but with two or three
dozen strong-arm men, who flung themselves upon the Socialist author
and hurled him out of the church. So violent were they that several of
White's friends, also one or two casual spectators, were moved to
protest; what happened then, let us read in the New York "Sun", the
most bitterly hostile to radicalism of all the metropolitan
newspapers. Says the "Sun's" report:
A police billy came crunching against the bones of Lopez's
legs. It struck him as hard as a man could swing it eight
times. A fist planted on Lopez's jaw knocked out two teeth.
His lip was torn open. A blow in the eye made it swell and
blacken instantly. A minute later Lopez was leaning against
the church with blood running to the doorsill.
And now, what has the clerical camouflage to say on this proceeding?
Does it approve it? Oh no! It was "a mistake", the "Outlook" protests;
it intensifies the hatred which these extremists feel for the church.
The proper course would have been to turn the disturber aside with a
soft answer; to give him some place, say in a park, where he could
talk his head off to people of his own sort, while good and decent
Christians continued to worship by themselves in peace, and to have
the children of their mine-slaves shot and burned in their beds. Says
our pious editor:
The true way to repress cranks is not to suppress them; it
is to give them an opportunity to air their theories before
any who wish to learn, while forbidding them to compel those
to listen who do not wish to do so.
Or take another case. Twelve years ago the writer made an effort to
interest the American people in the conditions of labor in their
packing-plants. It happened that incidentally I gave some facts about
the bedevilment of the public's meat-supply, and the public really did
care about that. As I phrased it at the time, I aimed at the public's
heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach. There was a terrible
clamor, and Congress was forced to pass a bill to remedy the evils. As
a matter of fact this bill was a farce, but the public was satisfied,
and soon forgot the matter entirely. The point to be noted here is
that so far as concerned the atrocious miseries of the working-people,
it was not necessary even to pretend to do anything. The slaves of
Packingtown went on living and working as they were described as doing
in "The Jungle", and nobody gave a further thought to them. Only the
other day I read in my paper--while we are all making sacrifices in a
"War for Democracy"--that Armour and Company had paid a dividend of
twenty-one per cent, and Swift and Company a dividend of thirty-five
per cent.
This prosperity they owe in good part to their clerical camouflage.
Listen to our pious "Outlook", engaged in countermining "The Jungle".
The "Outlook" has no doubt that there are genuine evils in the
packing-plants; the conditions of the workers ought of course to be
improved; BUT--
To disgust the reader by dragging him through every
conceivable horror, physical and moral, to depict with lurid
excitement and with offensive minuteness the life in jail
and brothel--all this is to overreach the object.... Even
things actually terrible may become distorted when a writer
screams them out in a sensational way and in a high pitched
key.... More convincing if it were less hysterical.
Don't you see what these clerical crooks are for?
#The Jungle#
A four years' war was fought in America, a million men were killed and
half a continent was devastated, in order to abolish chattel slavery
and put wage slavery in its place. I have made a thorough study of
both these industrial systems, and I freely admit that there is one
respect in which the lot of the wage slave is better than that of the
chattel slave. The wage slave is free to think; and by squeezing a few
drops of blood from his starving body, he may possess himself of
machinery for the distribution of his ideas. Taking his chances of the
policeman's club and the jail, he may found revolutionary
organizations, and so he has the candle of hope to light him to his
death-bed. But excepting this consideration, and taking the
circumstances of the wage slave from the material point of view alone,
I hold it beyond question that the average lot of the chattel slave of
1860 was preferable to that of the modern slave of the Beef Trust, the
Steel Trust, or the Coal Trust. It was the Southern master's real
concern, his business interest, that the chattel slave should be kept
physically sound; but it is nobody's business to care anything about
the wage slave. The children of the chattel slave were valuable
property, and so they got plenty to eat, and a happy outdoor life, and
medical attention if they fell ill. But the children of the sweat-shop
or the cotton-mill or the canning-factory are raised in a city slum,
and never know what it is to have enough to eat, never know a feeling
of security or rest--
We are weary in our cradles
From our mother's toil untold;
We are born to hoarded weariness
As some to hoarded gold.
The system of competitive commercialism, of large-scale capitalist
industry in its final flowering! I quote from "The Jungle":
Here in this city tonight, ten thousand women are shut up in
foul pens, and driven by hunger to sell their bodies to
live. Tonight in Chicago there are ten thousand men,
homeless and wretched, willing to work and begging for a
chance, yet starving, and fronting with terror the awful
winter cold! Tonight in Chicago there are a hundred thousand
children wearing out their strength and blasting their lives
in the effort to earn their bread! There are a hundred
thousand mothers who are living in misery and squalor,
struggling to earn enough to feed their little ones! There
are a hundred thousand old people, cast off and helpless,
waiting for death to take them from their torments! There
are a million people, men and women and children, who share
the curse of the wage-slave; who toil every hour they can
stand and see, for just enough to keep them alive; who are
condemned till the end of their days to monotony and
weariness, to hunger and misery, to heat and cold, to dirt
and disease, to ignorance and drunkenness and vice! And then
turn over the page with me, and gaze upon the other side of
the picture. There are a thousand--ten thousand, maybe--who
are the masters of these slaves, who own their toil. They do
nothing to earn what they receive, they do not even have to
ask for it--it comes to them of itself, their only care is
to dispose of it. They live in palaces, they riot in luxury
and extravagance--such as no words can describe, as makes
the imagination reel and stagger, makes the soul grow sick
and faint. They spend hundreds of dollars for a pair of
shoes, a handkerchief, a garter; they spend millions for
horses and automobiles and yachts, for palaces and banquets,
for little shiny stones with which to deck their bodies.
Their life is a contest among themselves for supremacy in
ostentation and recklessness, in the destroying of useful
and necessary things, in the wasting of the labor and the
lives of their fellow-creatures, the toil and anguish of the
nations, the sweat and tears and blood of the human race! It
is all theirs--it comes to them; just as all the springs
pour into streamlets, and the streamlets into rivers, and
the rivers into the ocean--so, automatically and inevitably,
all the wealth of society comes to them. The farmer tills
the soil, the miner digs in the earth, the weaver tends the
loom, the mason carves the stone; the clever man invents,
the shrewd man directs, the wise man studies, the inspired
man sings--and all the results, the products of the labor of
brain and muscle, are gathered into one stupendous stream
and poured into their laps!
This is the system. It is the crown and culmination of all the wrongs
of the ages; and in proportion to the magnitude of its exploitation,
is the hypocrisy and knavery of the clerical camouflage which has been
organized in its behalf. Beyond all question, the supreme irony of
history is the use which has been made of Jesus of Nazareth as the
Head God of this blood-thirsty system; it is a cruelty beyond all
language, a blasphemy beyond the power of art to express. Read
the man's words, furious as those of any modern agitator that
I have heard in twenty years of revolutionary experience: "Lay
not up for yourselves treasures on earth!--Sell that ye have
and give alms!--Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of
Heaven!--Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your
consolation!--Verily, I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly
enter into the kingdom of Heaven!--Woe unto you also, you lawyers!--Ye
serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of
hell?"
"And this man"--I quote from "The Jungle" again--"they have made into
the high-priest of property and smug respectability, a divine sanction
of all the horrors and abominations of modern commercial civilization!
Jewelled images are made of him, sensual priests burn insense to him,
and modern pirates of industry bring their dollars, wrung from the
toil of helpless women and children, and build temples to him, and sit
in cushioned seats and listen to his teachings expounded by doctors of
dusty divinity!"
* * * * *
#BOOK FIVE#
#The Church of the Merchants#
Mammon led them on--
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
In vision beatific.... Let none admire
That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane.
Milton.
* * * * *
#The Head Merchant#
Ours is the era of commerce, as its propagandists never weary of
telling us. Business is the basis of our material lives, and
consequently of our culture. Business men control our politics and
dictate our laws; business men own our newspapers and direct their
policy; business men sit on our school boards, and endow and manage
our universities. The Reformation was a revolt of the newly-developing
merchant classes against the tyrannies and abuses of feudal
clericalism: so in all Protestant Christianity one finds the spirit,
ideals, and language of Trade. We have shown how the symbolism of the
Anglican Church is of the palace and the throne; in the same way that
of the non-conformist sects may be shown to be of the counting-house.
In the view of the middle-class Britisher, the nexus between man and
man is cent per cent; and so in their Sunday services the worshippers
sing such hymns as this:
Whatever, Lord, we lend to Thee,
Repaid a thousand fold shall be;
Then gladly will we give to Thee,
Who givest all.
The first duty of every man under the competitive system is to secure
the survival of his own business; So on the Sabbath, when he comes to
deal with eternity, he is practical and explicit:
Nothing is worth a thought beneath
But how I may escape the death
That never, never dies;
How make mine own election sure,
And when I fail on earth secure
A mansion in the skies.
Just as the priest of the aristocratic caste figures God as a mighty
Conqueror--
Marching as to war
With the cross of Jesus
Going on before--
so the preacher to the trader figures the divinity as a glorified
Merchant keeping books. This Head Merchant has a monopoly in His line;
He knows all His rivals' secrets, so there is no getting ahead of Him,
and nothing to do but obey His Word, as revealed through His clerical
staff. The system is oily with protestations of divine love; but when
you read the comments of Luther upon Calvin and of Calvin upon Luther,
you understand that this love is confined to the inside of each
denomination. And even so restricted, there is not always enough to go
around. Recently I met a Presbyterian clergyman, to whom I remarked,
"I see by the papers that you have just finished a church building."
"Yes," he answered; "and I have had three offers of a new church." I
did not see the connection, and asked, "Because you were so successful
with this one?" The reply was, "They always take it for granted that
you want to change when you've finished a new building, because you
make so many enemies!"
The business man puts up the money to build the church, he puts up the
money to keep it going; and the first rule of a business man is that
when he puts up the money for a thing he "runs" that thing. Of course
he sees that it spreads his own views of life, it helps to maintain
his tradition. In the days of Anu and Baal we heard the proclamation
of the divine right of Kings; in these days of Mammon we hear the
proclamation of the divine right of Merchants. Some fifteen years ago
the head of our Coal Trust announced during a great strike that the
question would be settled "by the Christian men to whom God in His
Infinite Wisdom has given control of the property interests of this
country". And on that declaration all pious merchants stand; whatever
their denominations, Catholic, Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist,
Presbyterian or Hebrew, their Sabbath doctrines are alike, as their
week-day practices are alike; whether it is Rockefeller shooting his
Bayonne oil-workers and burning alive the little children of his
miners; or smooth John Wanamaker, paying starvation wages to
department-store girls and driving them to the streets; or that
clergyman who, at a gathering of society ladies, members of the "Law
and Order League" of Denver, declared in my hearing that if he could
have his way he would blow up the home of every coal-striker with
dynamite; or the Rev. R.A. Torrey, Dean of the Bible institute of Los
Angeles, who refused to employ union labor on the million dollar
building of the Institute, declaring that "the Church cannot afford to
have any dealings with a band of fire-bugs and murderers!"
#"Herr Beeble"#
The business of the Clerical Department of the Merchants' and
Manufacturers' Association is to justify the processes of trade, and
to preach to clerks and employees the slave-virtues of frugality,
humility, and loyalty to the profit system. The depths of sociological
depravity to which some of the agents of this Association have sunk is
difficult of belief. Twelve years ago I was invited to address the
book-sellers of New York, in company with a well-known clergyman of
the city, the Reverend Madison C. Peters. This gentleman's address
made such an impression upon me that I recall it even at this
distance: a string of jokes spoken with an effect of rapid-fire
smartness, and simply reeking with commercialism. I could not describe
it better than to say that it was on the ethical level of the "Letters
of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son". Again, I attended a debate on
Socialism, in which the capitalist end was taken by another famous
clergyman, pastor of the Metropolitan Temple, the Rev. J. Wesley Hill.
He was so ignorant that when he wished to prove that Socialism means
free love, he quoted a writer by the name of "Herr Beeble"; he was so
dishonest that he garbled the writings of this "Herr Beeble", making
him say something quite different from what he had meant to say. I
could name several clergymen of various denominations who have stooped
to that device against the Socialists; including the Catholic Father
Belford, who says that we are mad dogs and should be stopped with
bullets.
Or consider the Reverend Thomas Dixon. This gentleman's pulpit-slang
used to be the talk of New York when I was a boy; and when I grew up,
and came into the Socialist movement--behold, here he was, chief
inquisitor of the capitalist Holy Office. I had a friend, a man who
saved my life at a time when I was practically starving, and to whom
therefore I owe my survival as a writer; this friend had been a
clergyman in a Middle Western state, and had preached Jesus as he
really was, and so was hated and feared like Jesus. It happened that
he was unhappily married, and permitted his wife to divorce him so
that he might marry the woman he loved; for which unheard of crime the
organized hypocrisy of America fell upon him like a thousand devils
with poisoned whips. The Reverend Dixon's holy rage was fired; he
applied his imagination to my friend's story, producing a novel under
the title of "The One Woman"; and it is as if you were reading the
story of Jesus and the Magdalen transmitted through the personality of
a he-goat. Of late years this clerical author has turned his energies
to negrophobia and militarism, making millions out of motion-picture
incitements to hatred and terror. The pictures were made here in
Southern California, and friends in the business have described to me
the pious propagandist in the position of St. Anthony surrounded by
swarms of cute and playful little movie-girls.
Or take the Rev. James Roscoe Day, D.D., S.T.D., LL.D., D.C.L.,
L.H.D., a leading light of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who offers
himself as comic relief in our Clerical Vaudeville. Dr. Day is
Chancellor of Syracuse University, a branch of the Mental Munitions
Department of the Standard Oil Company; his function being to
manufacture intellectual weapons and explosives to be used in defense
of the Rockefeller fortune. It is generally not expected that the
makers of ruling-class munitions should face the dirty and perilous
work of the trenches; but ten years ago, during a raid by an active
squad of muckrake-men, Chancellor Day astonished the world by rushing
to the front with both arms full of star-shells and bombs. He
afterwards put the history of this gallant action into a volume, "The
Raid on Prosperity"; and if you want the real thrill of the class-war,
here is where to get it!
The Chancellor is a quaint and touching figure; an enthusiast and
dreamer, idealist and martyr, in whom the ordinary human virtues have
been fused, absorbed, transformed and sublimated into a new supreme
virtue of loyalty to Exploitation, patriotism for Profiteering. He
began life as a working-man, he tells us, in the good old American
fashion of hustle for yourself; but he differed from other Americans
in that he had an instant, intuitive recognition of the intellectual
and moral excellence of Plutocracy. The first time he met a rich man,
he quivered with rapture, he burst into a hymn of appreciation. So
very quickly he was recognized as a proper person to have charge of a
Mental Munition Works; and the ruling classes proceeded to pin medals
upon the bosom of his academic robes--D.D., S.T.D., L.L.D., D.C.L.,
L.H.D.
The Chancellor knows the masters of our Profit System, those
"consummate geniuses of manufacture and trade by which the earth has
yielded up her infinite treasures." And having been at the same time
in intimate daily communion with the Almighty, he can tell us the
Almighty's attitude towards these prodigies. "God has made the rich of
this world to serve Him.... He has shown them a way to have this
world's goods and to be rich towards God....God wants the rich men....
Christ's doctrines have made the world rich, and provide adequate uses
for its riches." Also the Chancellor knows our great corporations, and
gives us the Almighty's views about them; they mean that "the forces
with which God built the universe have been put into the hands of
man." Likewise by divine authority we learn that "the sympathy given
to Socialism is appalling. It is insanity." We learn that the income
tax is "a doctrine suited to the dark ages, only no age ever has been
dark enough." Somebody raises the issue of "tainted money", and the
Chancellor disposes of this matter also. As a Deputy of Divinity, he
settles it by Holy Writ: "Paul permitted meat offered to idols to be
eaten in the fear of God." And then, to make assurance doubly sure, he
settles it with plain human logic; and you are astonished to see how
simple, under his handling, the complex problem becomes--how clear and
clean-cut is the distinction he draws for you:
Every boy knows that one cannot take stolen goods without
being a partaker with the thief. But the proceeds of
recognized business are quite a different thing.
#Holy Oil#
And here is Billy Sunday, most conspicuous phenomenon of Protestant
Christianity at the beginning of the twentieth century. For the
benefit of posterity I explain that "Billy" is a baseball player
turned Evangelist, who has brought to the cause of God the crowds and
uproar of the diamond; also the commercial spirit of America's most
popular institution. He travels like a circus, with all the
press-agent work and newspaper hurrah; he conducts what are called
"revivals", in an enormous "tabernacle" built especially for him in
each city. I cannot better describe the Billy Sunday circus than in
the words of a certain Sidney C. Tapp, who brought suit against the
evangelist for $100,000 damages for the theft of the ideas of a book.
Says Mr. Tapp in his complaint:
The so-called religious awakening or "trail-hitting" is
produced by an appeal to the emotions and in stirring up the
senses by a combination of carrying the United States flag
in one hand and the Bible in the other, singing, trumpeting,
organ playing, garrulous and acrobatic feats of defendant,
by defendant in his talk leaping from the rostrum to the top
of the pulpit, lying prone on the floor of the rostrum on
his stomach in the presence of the vast audience and from
thence into a pit to shake hands with the so-called
"trail-hitters" and the vulgar use of plaintiff's thoughts
contained in said books. Said harangues and vulgarisms of
said defendant and horns, drums, organs and singing by said
choir and vast audience which are assembled by means of said
newspaper advertisements for the purpose of inducing a habit
of free and copious flow of money through religious and
patriotic excitement produced by and through the vulgarisms,
scurrility, buffoonery, obscenity and profanity of defendant
pretending to be in the interest of the cause of religion
through what he denominates "hitting the trail", the real
object being to induce a religious frenzy and enthusiasm
which he announces in advance is to result in large
audiences composed of thousands of people generously
contributing vast sums of money on the last day and night of
the so-called revival which is invariably appropriated by
the defendant and through which scheme and device defendant
has become enormously wealthy.
As I write, the evangelist is in Los Angeles, and twice each day he
holds forth to a crowd of ten or fifteen thousand; in addition the
newspapers print literally pages of his utterances. The entire
Protestant clergy for a score of miles around has been hitched to his
triumphal chariot, and driven captive through the streets. Here in
this dignified city of Pasadena, home of millionaire brewers and
chewing-gum kings, all the churches have been plastered for weeks with
cloth signs: "This Church is Cooperating in the Sunday Campaign." To
give a sample of the intellectual level of the performance, here is
what Billy has to say about modern thought:
All this blasphemy against God and Jesus Christ, all this
sneering, highbrow, rotten, loathesome, higher criticism,
wriggling its dirty, filthy, stinking carcass out of a
beer-mug in Leipzig or Heidelberg!
Whether willingly or reluctantly, the preachers sit upon the platform
and smile while Billy thus slangs the devil; and being themselves,
poor fellows, at their wits end to draw the crowd, they watch and see
how he does it, and then return to their own churches and try the same
stunt; so the manners of the baseball diamond spread like a contagion.
I open my morning paper, and find a picture of an intense-looking
clerical gentleman, the Rev. J. Whitcomb Brougher, pastor of the
Baptist Temple. He is discussing certain slanderous rumors which he
has heard about Billy Sunday, and he offers ten thousand dollars
reward to anyone who can prove these things; though, as he says,
The dirty, low-down, contemptible, weazen-brained,
impure-hearted, shrivelled-souled, gossipping devils do not
deserve to be noticed.... Scandal-mongers, gossip-lovers,
reputation-destroyers, hypocritical, black-hearted,
green-eyed slanderers.... Corrupt, devil-possessed, vile
debauches.... Immoral, sin-loving, vice-practicing,
underhanded sneaks.... Carrion-loving buzzards and
foul-smelling skunks.
You will be prepared after this to hear that when the Socialists were
near to carrying Los Angeles, this clergyman preached a sermon in
support of the candidate of "Booze, Gas and Railroads".
In so far as Billy Sunday is trying to keep the neglected youth of our
streets from drinking, gambling and whoring, no one could wish him
anything but success; but his besotted ignorance, his childish crudity
of mind, make it impossible that he could have any success except of a
delusive nature. He is utterly devoid of a social sense; utterly
unaware of the existence of the forces of capitalism which are causing
depravity ten times as fast as all the evangelists in creation can
remedy it. So he is precisely like the Catholics with their "charity",
cleaning up loathsome and unsightly messes for a thousand years, and
never stopping to ask why such messes continue to come into existence.
More than that, I question whether the spirit of commercialism which
he fosters does not help the development of evil more than his
preaching hinders it. The newspapers always report the cost of the
tabernacle, and of the "free-will offering", which amounts to hundreds
of thousands of dollars in each "campaign". In each city the expenses
are guaranteed by men who are generally the most sinister exploiting
forces of the community; they welcome and fete him, and he visits
their homes, and is in every way one of the crowd. After the big silk
strike in Paterson, N.J., the employers, Jews and Catholics included,
all subscribed a fund to bring Billy Sunday to that city; and it was
freely proclaimed that the purpose was to undermine the radical union
movement. This was never denied by Sunday himself, and his whole
campaign was conducted on that basis.
Later Billy came to New York, where he met a certain rich young man,
perhaps a thousand times as rich as any that lived in Palestine. This
young man came to Billy and said: "What shall I do to inherit eternal
life?" And Billy told him to keep the commandments--"Do not commit
adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor
thy father and thy mother." The young man answered; "All these have I
kept from my youth up." And Billy said: "Yet lackest thou one thing;
sell all that thou hast and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt
have treasure in heaven; and come follow me." And when he heard this
he was very sorrowful, for he was very rich.
--No, I have got the story mixed up. That is what happened in
Palestine. What happened in New York is that Billy said, "I am
delighted to meet you, Mr. Rockefeller." And Mr. Rockefeller said,
"Come be my guest at my palace in the Pocantico Hills; and then we
will go together and you may preach submission to my wage-slaves in
the oil-factories at Bayonne and elsewhere." And Billy went to the
palace, and went and preached to the wage-slaves, telling them to
beware the "stinking Socialists", and to concentrate their attention
on the saving of their souls; so the rich young man was delighted, and
he sent for all the newspaper reporters to come to his office at 26
Broadway, and told them what a great and useful man Billy Sunday is.
As the New York "Times" tells about it:
Mr. Rockefeller seldom gives interviews and certainly he has
never been charged with having an excess of verbally
expressed enthusiasm on any subject. But he talked for an
hour and a half about the evangelist. He was full of the
subject of Billy Sunday. "Billy did New York a lot of good,"
he said. He went on to tell of 187 meetings held in 100
different factories, attended by 50,000 men. "That's good
work." And he expressed his satisfaction with Sunday's
theology: "He believes the Bible from cover to cover and
that is good enough for me." The Sunday campaign had cost
$200,000, and "If it had stopped here, if it was not kept
up, it would be poor business; a poor dividend on the
$200,000 and the work invested. But we expect to get
dividends in the next year."
Again you note the symbolism of the counting-house!
#Rhetorical Black-hanging#
It is the duty of the clergy, not merely to defend large-scale
merchants while they live, but to bury them when they die, and to
place the seal of sanctity upon their careers. Concerning this aspect
of Bootstrap-lifting I quote the opinion of an earnest hater of shams,
William Makepeace Thackeray:
I think the part which pulpits play in the death of kings is
the most ghastly of all the ceremonial: the lying eulogies,
the blinking of disagreeable truths, the sickening
flatteries, the simulated grief, the falsehood and
sycophancies--all uttered in the name of Heaven in our State
churches: these monstrous Threnodies which have been sung
from time immemorial over kings and queens, good, bad,
wicked, licentious. The State parson must bring out his
commonplaces; his apparatus of rhetorical black-hanging....
And this, of course, applies not merely to kings of England, but to
kings of Steel, kings of Coal, kings of Oil, kings of Wall Street.
Leland Stanford, son of a great king of Western railroads, died; and
standing over his coffin, a Methodist clergyman, afterwards Bishop,
preached a sermon of fulsome flattery, wherein he likened young Leland
to the boy Christ. In the year 1904 there passed from his earthly
reward in Pennsylvania a United States senator who had been throughout
his lifetime a notorious and unblushing corruptionist. Matthew Stanley
Quay was his name, and the New York "Nation", having no clerical
connections, was free to state the facts about him:
He bought the organization, bribed or intimidated the press,
got his grip on the public service, including even the
courts; imposed his will on Congress and Cabinet, and upon
the last three Presidents--making the latter provide for the
offal of his political machine, which even Pennsylvania
could no longer stomach--and all without identifying his
name with a single measure of public good, without making a
speech or uttering a party watchword, without even
pretending to be honest, but solely because, like Judas, he
carried the bag and could buy whom he would.
Such was the lay opinion; and now for the clerical. It was expressed
by a Presbyterian divine, the Reverend Dr. J.S. Ramsey, who stood over
the coffin of "Matt", and without cracking a smile declared that he
had been "a statesman who was always on the right side of every moral
question!"
In that same year of 1904 died the high priest of our political
corruption, Mark Hanna. He had belonged to no church, but had backed
them all, understanding the main thesis of this book as clearly as the
writer of it. In his home city of Cleveland the eulogy upon him was
pronounced by Bishop Leonard, in St. Paul's Episcopal Church; while in
the United States Senate the service was performed by the Chaplain,
the Rev. Edward Everett Hale. This is a name well-known in American
letters, as in American religious life; it was borne by a benevolent
old gentleman, a Unitarian and a liberal, who organized "Lend-a-Hand
Clubs" and such like amiabilities. "Do You Love This Old Man?" the
signs in the street-cars used to ask when I was a boy; and I promptly
answered "Yes"--for my mother took the "Ladies' Home Journal", and I
swallowed the sentimental dish-water set out for me. But when I read
the Rev. Edward's funeral oration over the Irrev. Mark, I loved
neither of them any longer. "This whole-souled child of God," cried
the Rev. Edward, "who believed in success, and knew how to succeed by
using the infinite powers!" You perceive that the Chaplain of the
Millionaires' Club agrees with this book, that the "infinite powers"
in America are the powers that prey!
#The Great American Fraud#
Among the most loathesome products of our native commercial greed is
the patent medicine industry, "The Great American Fraud," as its
historian has called it. In 1907 this historian wrote:
Gullible America will spend this year some seventy-five
millions of dollars in the purchase of patent medicines. In
consideration of this sum it will swallow huge quantities of
alcohol, an appalling amount of opiates and narcotics, a
wide assortment of varied drugs ranging from powerful and
dangerous heart depressants to insidious liver stimulants;
and, far in excess of all other ingredients, undiluted
fraud. For fraud, exploited by the skillfullest of
advertising bunco men, is the basis of the trade.
One by one Mr. Adams tells about these medical fakes: habit-forming
laxatives, head-ache powders full of acetanilid, soothing-syrups and
catarrh-cures full of opium and cocaine, cock-tails subtly disguised
as "bitters", "sarsaparillas", and "tonics". He shows how the fake
testimonials are made up and exploited; how the confidential letters,
telling the secret troubles of men and women, are collected by tens
and hundreds of thousands and advertised and sold--so that the victim,
as he begins to lose faith in one fake, finds another at hand, fully
informed as to his weakness. He quotes the amazing "Red Clause" in the
contracts which the patent-medicine makers have with thousands of
daily and weekly papers, whereby the makers are able to control the
press of the country and prevent legislation against the "Great
American Fraud."
There are a thousand religious papers in America, weekly and monthly;
and what is their attitude on this question? Mr. Adams tells us:
Whether because church-going people are more trusting, and
therefore more easily befooled than others, or from some
more obscure reason, many of the religious papers fairly
reek with patent medicine fakes.
He gives us many pages of specific instances:
Dr. Smith belongs to the brood of cancer vampires. He is a
patron and prop of religious journalism. It is his theory
that the easiest prey is to be found among readers of church
papers. Moreover he has learned from his father-in-law (who
built a small church out of blood-money) to capitalize his
own sectarian associations, and when confronted recently
with a formal accusation he replied, with an air of injured
innocence, that he was a regular attendant at church, and
could produce an endorsement from his minister.
And here is the "Church Advocate", of Harrisburg, Pa., which publishes
quack advertisements disguised as editorials. One of them Mr. Adams
paraphrases:
As Dr. Smith is, on the face of his own statements, a
self-branded swindler and rascal, you run no risk in
assuming that the Rev. C.H. Forney, D.D., L.L.D., in acting
as his journalistic supporter for pay, is just such another
as himself!
And again:
Will the editor of the "Baptist Watchman" of Boston explain
by what phenomenon of logic or elasticity of ethics he
accepts the lucubrations of Dr. Bye, of Oren Oneal, of
Liquozone, of Actina, that marvelous two-ended mechanical
appliance which "cures" deafness at one terminus and
blindness at the other, and all with a little oil of
mustard?
And again:
The "Christian Observer" of Louisville replied to a
protesting subscriber, suggesting that the "Collier"
articles were written in a spirit of revenge, because
"Collier's" could not get patent medicine advertising. When
I asked the Rev. F. Bartlett Converse for his foundation for
the charge, he said that one of the typewriters must have
written the letter! Doubtless also the same highly
responsible typewriter imitated the signature with startling
fidelity to Dr. Converse's handwriting!
And here is--would you think it possible?--our "Church of Good
Society"! It has an organ in Chicago called the "Living Church", most
dignified and decorous. You have to study quite a while to ascertain
what denomination it belongs to; it will not tell you directly, for
the Anglician pose is that it is #the# church
Elect from every nation,
Yet one o'er all the earth,
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one Faith, one Birth;
One holy name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And toward one Hope she presses,
With every grace endued.
And this one holy institution was found setting at its peak the black
flag of the trader, the "Jolly Roger" of the modern commercial
pirate--"Caveat emptor!" To quote the precise words:
The editors and publishers of the "Living Church" assume no
responsibility for the assertions of advertisers.
And so it threw open its columns to the claims of America's champion
labor-baiter, the late C.W. Post, that his "Grapenuts" would prevent
appendicitis, and obviate the need of operations in such cases!
And here is the "Christian Endeavor World", organ of one of the most
powerful non-sectarian religious bodies in the country. Some one wrote
complaining of its medical advertising, and the answer was:
To the best of our knowledge and belief, we are not
publishing any fraudulent or unworthy medical
advertising.... Trusting that you will be able to understand
that we are acting according to our best and sincerest
judgment, I remain, yours very truly, The Golden Rule
Company, George W. Coleman, Business Manager.
Whereupon the historian of "The Great American Fraud" remarks:
Assuming that the business management of the "Christian
Endeavor World" represents normal intelligence, I would like
to ask whether it accepts the statement that a pair of
"magic foot drafts" applied to the soles of the feet will
cure any and every kind of rheumatism in any part of the
body? Further, if the advertising department is genuinely
interested in declining "fraudulent and unworthy" copy, I
would call their attention to the ridiculous claims of Dr.
Shoop's medicines, which "cure" almost every disease; to two
hair removers, one an "Indian Secret", the other an
"accidental discovery", both either fakes or dangerous; to
the lying claims of Hall's Catarrh Cure, that it is "a
positive cure for catarrh", in all its stages; to "Syrup of
Figs", which is not a fig syrup, but a preparation of senna;
to Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root, of which the principal medical
constituent is alcohol; and, finally, to Dr. Bye's Oil Cure
for cancer, a particularly cruel swindle on unfortunates
suffering from an incurable malady. All of these, with other
matter, which for the sake of decency I do not care to
detail in these columns, appear in recent issues of the
"Christian Endeavor World".
#Riches in Glory#
There came recently to Los Angeles a "world-famous evangelist", known
as "Gipsy" Smith. There was a shirt-waist strike at the time, and the
girls were starving, and they sent a delegation to this evangelist to
ask for help. They told him how they were mistreated, exposed to
insults, driven to sell their virtue because their wage would not
support life; and to their plea he made answer: "Get Jesus in your
hearts, and these questions will take care of themselves!"
So we see the most important of the many services which the churches
perform for the merchants--taking the revolutionary hope of Jesus, for
a kingdom of heaven upon earth, and perverting it into a dream of a
golden harp in an uncertain future. To appreciate the fullness of this
betrayal, take the prayer which Jesus dictated--so simple, direct and
practical: "Give us this day our daily bread", and put it beside the
hymns which the slave-congregations are trained to sing. In my
neighborhood is a one-roomed building with a plate glass front, upon
which I observe a painter inscribing in red, white and blue letters
the sign "#Glory Mission.#" I approach him, and he drops his work and
welcomes me with eager cordiality. Am I "living in grace"? I answer
that I am. I have to shout the good tidings into his ear, as he is
very deaf. He presents me with his card, which shows that he bears the
title of "Reverend", also the sobriquet of "Mountain Missionary". I
ask him to permit me to examine the hymn-book which he uses in his
work, and with touching eagerness he presses upon me a well-worn
volume bearing the title "Waves of Glory". I seat myself and note down
a few of the baits it sets out for hungry wage-slaves:
O, there's a plenty, O, there's a plenty,
There's a plenty in my Father's bank above!
Riches in glory, riches in glory,
Royal supply our wants exceed!
Feasting, I'm feasting,
I'm feasting with my Lord!
Beautiful robes, beautiful robes,
Beautiful robes we then shall wear!
Jerusalem the golden,
With milk and honey blest!
Yes, I'll meet you in the city of the New Jerusalem,
I'll be there, I'll be there!
Blest Canaan land, bright Canaan land,
I love to be in Canaan land!
Oh, Beulah land, sweet Beulah land,
As on the highest mount I stand,
I look away across the sea,
Where mansions are prepared for me!
In the sweet bye and bye
We shall meet on that beautiful shore--
I stopped there, being reminded of Joe Hill, poet of the I.W.W. who
was executed a few years ago in Utah, and who used this tune in his
little red book of revolutionary chants:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In the glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die!
#Captivating Ideals#
In one of the writer's earlier novels, "Prince Hagen", the hero is a
Nibelung out of Wagner's "Rheingold", who leaves his diggings in the
bowels of the earth, and comes up to look into our superior
civilization. The thing that impresses him most is what he calls "the
immortality idea". The person who got that up was a world-genius, he
exclaims. "If you can once get a man to believing in immortality,
there is no more left for you to desire; you can take everything he
owns--you can skin him alive if it pleases you--and he will bear it
all with perfect good humor."
And is that merely the spiritual deficiency of a Nibelung--or the
effort of a young author to be smart? Would you like to hear that view
of the most vital of Christian doctrines set forth in the language of
scholarship and culture? Would you like to know how an ecclesiastical
authority, equipped with every tool of modern learning, would set
about voicing the idea that the function of the teaching of Heaven is
to chloroform the poor, so that the rich may continue to rob them in
security?
Here under my hand is a volume in the newest dress of scholarship,
dated 1912, and written by Professor Georges Chatterton-Hill, of the
University of Geneva. Its title is "The Sociological Value of
Christianity", and from cover to cover it is a warning to the rich of
the danger they run in giving up their religion and ceasing to support
its priests. It explains how "the genius of Christianity has succeeded
in making the individual suffering, the individual sacrifices, which
are indispensible for the welfare of the collectivity, appear as
indispensible for the individual welfare." The learned professor makes
plain just what he means by "individual suffering, individual
sacrifices"; he means all the horrors of capitalism; and the advantage
of Christianity is that it makes you think that by submitting to these
horrors, you are profiting your own soul. "By making individual
salvation depend on the acceptance of suffering, on the voluntary
sacrifice of egotistical interests, Christianity adapts the individual
to society".
And this, as the professor explains, is not an easy thing to do, in a
world in which so many people are thinking for themselves. "The only
means of causing the rationalized individual to consent to the
sacrifice ... is to captivate him with a sufficiently powerful ideal"
And the professor shows how beautifully Jesus can be used for this
purpose. "Jesus, the so-called humanitarian, never ceased to insist on
the necessity of suffering, the desirableness of suffering--of that
suffering which a weak and sickly humanitarianism would fain suppress
if it could."
You get this, you "blanket-stiff", you "husky", or "wop", or whatever
you are--you disinherited of the earth, you proletarians who have only
your labor-power to sell, you weak and sickly ones who are condemned
to elimination? There has come, let us say, a period of
"overproduction"; you have raised too much food, and therefore you are
starving, you have woven too much cloth, and therefore you are naked,
you have finished the world for your masters, and it is time for you
to move out of the way. As the sociologist from Geneva phrases it,
"Your suppression imposes itself as an imperious necessity." And the
function of the Christian religion is to make you enjoy the process,
by "captivating you with a sufficiently powerful ideal"! The priest
will fill your nostrils with incense, your eyes with candle-lights and
images, your ears with sweet music and soothing words; and so you will
perish without raising a finger! "Here," reflects the professor, "we
see how magnificently the teaching of Jesus applies to all classes of
society!"
Somebody has evidently put up to our Christian sociologist the
embarrassing fact that so many of those who survive under the
capitalist system are godless scoundrels. But do you think that
troubles him? Not for long. Like all religious thinkers, he carries
with his scholar's equipment a pair of metaphysical wings, wherewith
at any moment he may soar into the empyrean, out of reach of vulgar
materialists, like you and me. "Inequality signifies inequality of
capacity," he explains; but the standard whereby we judge this
capacity "cannot be the standard of the moral law."
The laws which govern the biological evolution of man are
known, but those which govern his moral nature cannot be
known; the moral nature appertains to the Absolute, and
hence is not subject to the law of inequality!
As an exhibition of metaphysical wing-power, that is almost as
wonderful as the flight of Cardinal Newman when confronted with the
fact that his divinely guided church had burned men for teaching the
Copernican view of the universe; that infallible popes had again and
again condemned this heresy #ex cathedra#. Said the eloquent cardinal:
Scripture says that the sun moves and the earth is
stationary, and science that the earth moves and the sun is
comparatively at rest. How can we determine which of these
opposite statements is the very truth #till we know what
motion is#?
#Spook Hunting#
Do not imagine that it is only in Geneva that Christian professors
realize this peril from the loss of faith. It is never far from the
thoughts of any of them--for, of course, no man can look at the
present system and not wonder how the poor stand it, and more
especially #why# they stand it. There have been many thinking men who
have given up the miracle-business quite cheerfully, but have stood
appalled at the idea of letting the lower classes find out the truth.
You note that idea continually in the writings of Professor Goldwin
Smith, who was a free-thinker, but also a #bourgeois# publicist, with
a deep sense of responsibility to the money-masters of the world. He
was about as honest a man as the capitalist system can produce; he was
the #beau ideal# of the New York "Evening Post", which indicates his
point of view. He wrote:
It can hardly be doubted that hope of compensation in a
future state, for a short measure of happiness here, has
materially helped to reconcile the less favored members of
the community to the inequalities of the existing order of
things.
When I was a student in Columbia University, I took a course called
"Practical Ethics", under a professor by the name of Hyslop. The
course differed from most of the forty that I tried, in that it gave
evidence that the professor was accustomed to read the morning paper.
He had learned that American politics were rotten; his idea of
"Practical Ethics" was to outline in elaborate detail a complete
scheme of constitutional changes which would make it impossible for
the "boss" to control the government. I think I must have been born
with a charm against #bourgeois# thought, for the good professor never
fooled me an instant; I remember I used to smile at the idea of how
quickly the "boss" would brush through his constitutional cobwebs. The
reforms required an elaborate campaign of publicity--and of course
long before they could be put into practice, the politicians would be
ready with devices to make them of no effect.
Soon after this, my ethical professor resigned and went to hunting
spooks. I don't want to be unfair to him; I know that he is a
determined and courageous man, and it seems possible that he may
really have bagged some spooks. All I wish to point out here is the
method he uses in seeking to persuade the heedless rich to support the
spook-hunting industry. The very same argument as we got from the
University of Geneva and the University of Toronto! Says our head
spook-hunter:
There has been no belief that exercised so much power upon
the poor as that in a future life. The politicians, men of
the world, have known this so well as to postpone the day of
political judgment by it for many years.
And again:
The Church, having lost all its battles with science, and
having abandoned a strenuous intellectual defense of its
fundamental beliefs, has lost its power over the poor and
the laboring classes.... The spiritual ideal of life has
gone out of the masses as well as the classes, and nothing
is left but a venture on a struggle with wealth.
And again, more menacingly yet:
The rich will learn in the dangers of a social revolution
that the poor will not sacrifice both wealth and
immortality.
What is to be done about this? The question answers itself: Step up,
ladies and gentlemen, and empty your purses into the Psychical
Research hat! So that we may accumulate statistics as to the cost of
milk and honey in Jerusalem the Golden!
You read what I had to say about Bootstrap-lifters, and the Wholesale
Pickpockets' Association making use of their incantations. You admired
my ability to sling language, but not my taste; and you certainly did
not think that I would back my rhetoric with facts. But what do these
quotations mean, unless they mean what I have said? Are not these
three professors men of culture? Are they not as "spiritual" as any
men of learning you can find in our present-day society?
And now stop for a moment and put yourself in the position of the
young student of the working-class, who goes to these books and
discovers that truth is not truth, but only a bait for a snare. Who
discovers that professors of ethics, practical or impractical, are not
interested in justice among men, but only in collecting funds for
their specialty; that in order to get funds, they are willing to teach
the rich how to paralyze the minds of the poor! Do you wonder that
such young students conclude that #bourgeois# thinkers do not know
what honesty is, but are prostitutes, retainers and lackeys, to be
kicked out of the temple of truth?
#Running the Rapids#
And now, can you form to yourselves a clear concept of what it means
to society that practically all its moral teaching should be in the
hands of men who are incapable of clean, straight thinking? That all
the intellectual prestige of the Church should be lent to the support
of vagueness, futility, and deliberate evasion? Here we are, all of
us, caught in the most terrific social crisis of history; I search for
a metaphor to picture our position, and I recall a canoe-trip in the
wilds of Ontario, hundreds of miles down a long swift river. You sit
in the bow of the canoe, your partner in the stern, watching ahead;
and there comes a slide of smooth green water, and you go over it, and
into a torrent of foaming white, which seizes you and rushes you along
with the speed of a race-horse.
With every sense alert, you watch for the rocks, and when you see one,
you dip your paddle on one side or the other and with a quick motion
draw the canoe clear of the danger. If by any chance you fail to do
it, over you go, and your partner with you, and all your belongings go
down-stream, and maybe you are sucked into a whirlpool, and not seen
for several hours afterwards. Precisely like this is the voyage of
life, for the whole of society and for every individual. The paddle
which would save us from the rocks is experimental science; but in
most of our canoes we put a man who has no paddle, but a Holy Book;
and he casts up his eyes and murmurs words in ancient Greek and
Hebrew, and now and then, when he sees an especially formidable
obstruction--a war, or the gonococcus, or the I.W.W.--he casts a holy
wafer upon the foaming torrent.
* * * * *
And mind you, it isn't as if I could save myself and you could save
yourself; we are all in the same canoe, and we all go overboard
together. You, perhaps, have a son who is drafted into the trenches in
winter-time, and drowned in blood and mud, because in Europe the
Catholic party supported militarism, and kept aristocratic criminals
in control of states. Or you find yourself involved in a marital
tragedy, and in order to free yourself from unendurable misery, you
are obliged to go to law-courts dominated by the tradition of Paul,
the Roman bureaucrat, who despised women, and regarded marriage as a
means of gratifying an unclean animal desire. "It is better to marry
than to burn," he said, with unmatchable brutality; and so of course
those who think him a voice of God can form no conception of the
dignity and grace of love, and if you want sound and wholesome
sex-conventions, you will be as apt to find them among the Ashantees
or the Kamchadals as among the followers of the Apostle to the
Gentiles.
You go to a so-called "divorce-court," which is dominated by this
Christian taboo, and exists for the purpose of barring you from a
second chance at the gratification of your unclean animal desire. You
are not permitted to tell your own story, for that would be
"collusion;" you listen while your intimate friends recite the pitiful
and shameful details of your domestic misfortune, under the
cross-questioning of lawyers who have suppressed for the time whatever
decent instincts they may possess, and follow blindly the details of a
prescribed procedure, at the cost of all sincerity, humanity and
truth. The next morning you find that the privacy guaranteed you by
law has been taken from you by corrupt court officials, who have sold
copies of the testimony to the newspapers, so that all the intimate
details of where you slept and where your wife slept and what you saw
your wife doing have been thrown out to journalistic jackals, who
scream with glee as they rend the carcass of your dead love. And in
the end, perhaps, you find that you have gone through this horror for
nothing--the august court with its Roman Catholic judge throws out
your petition, its suspicions having been excited by the fact that
when you discovered your domestic tragedy, you sought to behave like a
civilized person, with pity and self-restraint, instead of like a
sultan in Turkey, or a basso in an Italian grand opera.
#Birth Control#
I assert that the control of our thinking on ethical questions by
minds enslaved to tradition and priestcraft is an unmitigated curse to
the race. The armory of science is full of weapons which might be used
to slay the monsters of disease and vice--but these weapons are not
allowed to be employed, sometimes not even to be mentioned. Consider
the misery which is piling itself up in the slums of our great
cities--the degenerate, the defective, the insane, who are multiplying
as never before in history. There exists a perfectly harmless and
painless method of sterilizing the hopelessly unfit, so that they can
not reproduce their hopeless unfitness; but religion objects to this
operation, and so the law does not make use of this knowledge. There
exists a simple, entirely harmless, and practically costless method of
preventing conception, which would enable us to check the blind and
futile fecundity of Nature, and to multiply as gods instead of as
animals. Consider the festering mass of misery in the slums of our
great cities; consider the millions of terrified, poverty-hounded
women, bearing one half-nurtured infant after another, struggling
desperately to feed and care for them, and seeing them drop into the
grave as fast as they are born--until finally the mother, worn out
with the Sisyphean labor, gives up and follows her misbegotten
offspring. Consider how many women, in their agony and despair,
make use of the methods of the primitive savage, to escape from
Nature's curse of fecundity. Dr. Wm. J. Robinson has estimated
that in the United States alone there are a million abortions
every year; and consider that all this hideous mass of suffering--a
bloody European war going on continually, unheeded by any newspaper
correspondent--might be avoided by the use of a simple sterilizing
formula, which we are not permitted to give! The Federation of
Catholic Societies have placed a law upon the statute-books of the
nation, and of all the states as well; the whole power of police and
courts and jails is at the service of religious bigots, and a young
girl is sent to prison and forcibly fed with a tube through the nose
for telling poverty-ridden slum-women how to keep from becoming
pregnant!
And go among the sleek, cynical men of the world, the judges and
district attorneys, the commissioners of correction and doctors who
perpetrated this infamy under, a so-called "reform" administration in
New York City--and what do you find? The first thing you find is that
they themselves, one and all, practice birth-control with their wives
or their mistresses. The second thing you find is that the
statute-books are crowded with other laws which they make no pretense
of enforcing; for example, the law which forbids the saloons to be
open on Sunday--which law they take the liberty of understanding to
mean that the saloons shall not have their front doors open on Sunday.
You will find that they are not at all afraid of the religious taboos;
they are afraid of the religious vote--and even more they are afraid
of the campaign contributions of sweat-shop manufacturers and
landlords, who cannot see what would become of prosperity if the women
of the slums were to cease to breed. So once more we discover the wolf
in sheep's clothing, the trader, making use of Tradition-worship;
hiding behind the skirts of devout old maiden aunts and grandmothers,
who repeat the instructions which God gave to Adam and Eve, "Be
fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth." As if God were as
blind as a Fifth Avenue preacher, and could see no difference between
the Garden of Eden, full of all fruits that grow and all creatures
that run and fly and swim, and a modern East Side tenement-room, with
an oil stove and no windows and no water-closet, and the price of
cabbage seven cents a pound!
#Sheep#
There are more than a hundred thousand Protestant churches in America.
They own more than a billion dollars' worth of property, and in the
West and South they dominate the intellectual life of the country. I
do not wish to be unfair in what I say of them. They are far more
democratic than the Catholic Church; they fight valiantly against the
liquor traffic and those forms of graft which are obvious, or directly
derived from vice. There are among their clergy many men who are
honestly seeking light, and trying to make their institutions a factor
for progress. But they are caught in the spirit of Lutheran
scholasticism, narrow and ignorant, dogmatic and jealous; and they
cannot help it, because they are pledged by their creeds and
foundations to Tradition-worship; they have to believe certain things
because their ancestors believed them, they have to act in certain
ways, because of certain facts which existed in the world three
thousand years ago, but which now are known only to historians.
You are familiar with the habit of a herd of sheep to follow the
example of their leader; if this leader leaps over a stick, all the
rest will leap when they come to that spot, even though the stick may
have been taken away in the meantime. The scientist explains this
seeming-foolishness by the fact that sheep once lived in high
mountains, and fled from their enemies in swiftly rushing herds; when
the leader leaped across an abyss, the others had to leap, without
waiting to see in the dust and confusion. Now there are no mountains
and no enemies, but the sheep still jump. And in exactly the same way
the tailor still sews buttons at the back of your dress-coat, because
a couple of hundred years age all gentlemen wore swords; in the same
way our railroad builders make cars narrow and uncomfortable and
liable to overturn, because a hundred years ago all cars were hauled
by mules. In the same way the Orthodox Hebrew will eat no pork, in
spite of the fact that the microscope affords him complete protection
against disease; the orthodox Catholic will not eat meat on Friday,
because he thinks Jesus was crucified on that day; the orthodox
Anglican will not marry his deceased wife's sister, because of
something he reads in Leviticus; the orthodox Baptist requires total
immersion in a climate quite different from that of Palestine; the
orthodox Methodist refuses to enjoy fresh air and exercise on the
Sabbath.
In ancient Judea, you see, the people lived an open-air life, tending
sheep and working the fields; so it was an excellent thing for them to
rest from labor one day of the week, and to gather in temples to hear
the reading of the best literature of their time. But nowadays the
city slave spends his week-days shut up in an office, poring over a
ledger, or in a sweat-shop, chained to a sewing-machine. Obviously,
therefore, the thing to do on the seventh day is to lure him into the
open air, and persuade him to run and play. But do we do that, we
human sheep? We write ancient Hebrew laws upon our modern
statute-books, and if the city slave goes into a vacant lot and tries
to play base-ball, we send a policeman and take him to jail, and next
morning he is fined five dollars, and probably loses his job.
In the city where I live, a city supposed to be free and enlightened,
but in reality heavily burdened with churches, there are tennis courts
built and paid for out of public funds, my own included; yet I cannot
use these tennis courts on Sunday, because of the ancient Hebrew
taboo. My mail is not delivered to me, the swimming pool in the park
is closed to me, the library is closed nearly all day. If I enquire
about it, I am told that it is desirable that city employees should
have one day's rest a week; but when I ask why it might not be
possible to relay the employees, so that they might all have one, or
even two days' rest a week, and still give the public their rights on
Sunday, there is no answer. But I know the answer, having probed our
politics of hypocrisy. There is a "church vote" at which all
politicians tremble; there are clergymen, humanly jealous when their
peculiar graft is threatened, and hoping that if the law enforces a
general boredom, the public may be more disposed to endure the boredom
of sermons.
In New York City the theaters are closed on Sunday; but moving
pictures having come into being since the days of Puritan rule, the
picture-shows are free to keep open. The law permits "sacred
concerts"--which, under the benevolent sway of Tammany, has come to
mean any sort of vaudeville; so what we have is a free rein to the
imbecilities of "Mutt & Jeff" and the obscenities of Anna Held and
Gaby Deslys--while we bar the greatest moralists of our times, such as
Ibsen and Brieux.
I speak with some crossness of this Sabbath taboo, because of an
experience which once befell me. In the second decade of this century
of enlightenment and progress, in our free American democracy, whose
constitution proclaims religious toleration, and forbids the
establishment by the state of any form of worship, I was made to serve
a sentence of eighteen hours in the state prison of Delaware for
playing a game of tennis on the Sabbath. I was duly arrested upon a
warrant, duly sentenced by a magistrate, duly clad in a prison
costume, duly set to work upon a stone-pile, duly locked up over night
in a steel-barred cell full of vermin--in a building housing some five
hundred wretches, black and white, thirty of them serving life-terms
under circumstances which never permitted them a breath of fresh air
nor a glimpse of the sunshine or the sky. They had no exercise court
to their prison, and the inmates were not permitted to speak to one
another, but ate their meals in dead silence, and walked back to their
cells with folded arms, and had their only occupation working for a
sweat-shop contractor; this on the outskirts of the pious city of
Wilmington, with no less than ninety-one churches! The writer was
informed that he would return to this institution regularly every week
unless he abandoned his godless habit of playing tennis on a private
club court on Sunday; he only escaped the painful punishment by making
the discovery that at the Wilmington Country Club it was the custom of
the leading officials of the city and state to play golf every Sunday,
and by threatening to employ detectives and have these mighty ones
arrested and sent to their own prison. Which shows again the
importance of understanding this relationship of Superstition and Big
Business!
* * * * *
#BOOK SIX#
#The Church of the Quacks#
They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,
And how one ought never to think of one's self,
And how pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking--
My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
How pleasant it is to have money.
Clough.
* * * * *
#Tabula Rasa#
Nature has given us a virgin continent, a clean slate upon which to
write what we will. And what are we writing? What is our intellectual
life? I came to the far West, which I had been taught by novelists and
poets to think of as a place of freedom. I came, because I like
freedom; I am staying because I like the climate. I find that what
freedom means in the West is the ability of ignorant and fanatical
persons to start some new, fantastical quirk of scriptural
interpretation, to build a new cult around it, and earn a living out
of it.
My first contact with that sort of thing was when I went to the Battle
Creek Sanitarium to investigate hydrotherapy, and found myself in a
nest of Seventh-day Adventists. Three generations or so ago some odd
character hit upon the discovery that the Christian churches had let
the devil snare them into resting on the first day of the week,
whereas the Bible states distinctly that the Lord "rested on the
seventh day". So here is a million dollar establishment, with a
thousand or two patients and employees, and on Friday at sundown the
silence of death settles upon the place, and stays settled until
sundown of Saturday, when everything comes suddenly to life again, and
there is a little celebration, like Easter or New Year's, with what I
used to call "sterilized dancing"--the men pairing with men and the
women with women.
They are decent and kindly people, and you learn to put up with their
eccentricities; it is really convenient in some ways, because, as not
all the city shares their delusions, there are some stores open every
day of the week. But then you discover that the Sanitarium is training
"medical missionaries" to send to Africa, and is teaching these
supposed-to-be-scientists that evolution is a doctrine of the devil,
and not proven anyhow!
You get the shrewd little doctor who is running this establishment
alone in his office, and he will smile and admit that of course it is
not necessary to take all Bible phrases literally; but you know how it
is--there are different levels of intelligence, and so on. Yes, I know
how it is. You have an institution founded upon a certain dogma, and
run by means of that dogma, and it is hard to change without smashing
things. It is especially convenient when servants and nurses have a
religious upbringing, and do not steal the pocket-books of the
patients. People will come from all over the country, and pay high
prices to stay in such a sanitarium; you can make vegetarians of them,
which you think more important than teaching abstract notions about
their being descended from monkeys. Also you can manufacture
vegetarian foods for them, and build up an enormous business--so
obtaining that Power which is the thing desired of men.
This is but one illustration of a sort of thing of which I could cite
a hundred. The city in which I live is headquarters of another sect,
the "Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene"; primitive Methodists,
Bible-worshippers not content with the King James version, but going
back to the Sinaitic MS. They have a "University", located in one of
the most beautiful spots that Nature ever made; an institution with
seventy-five students. A couple of years ago I happened to meet the
"president," who was a preacher with grease on the ample expanse of
his black broadcloth waistcoat, and a speech full of the commonest
grammatical errors, such as "you was" and "I seen". The past year
witnessed a split, and the founding of a brand new church and
"University"--because one of the preachers insisted upon preaching so
much that the students got no chance to study; also because he sent
home a rich man's daughter whose shirt-waists revealed too much of her
fleshly nature.
And there is an even stranger phenomenon in the locality, taking you
back to the Libyan desert and the time of Thais. A lady friend of
mine, generously blessed with this world's goods, asks me have I seen
the hermit. "Hermit?" I say, and she replies, "Didn't you know there
was a hermit? He lives on a mountain, in a cave, and never has
anything to do with the world. He has no books; he contemplates
spiritually." I picture my friend with her large limousine, a rolling
palace full of ladies, drawing up at the door of this hermit's cave.
"He received you?" I ask. "Yes, he was quite polite." "And what was
your impression of him?" "Oh, how he stank!" I answer that this is the
odor of sanctity, and my friend thinks that I am enormously witty; I
have to explain to her that I am not jesting, but that there are
definite physiological phenomena incidental to the ecstatic life.
#The Book of Mormon#
Or let us take a trip to Salt Lake City, the headquarters of a still
stranger cult.
On the morning of the 22nd of September, 1827, the Angel of the Lord
delivered unto Joseph Smith, Jr., an ignorant farmer-youth in a
"backwoods" part of New York State, some plates which had "the
appearance of gold". As we know from the scriptures, it is the habit
of the Angel of the Lord to appear in unexpected places and to make
miraculous revelations to men in humble walks of life; so, as devout
believers, we hold ourselves in readiness. In this case the plates
were written in "reformed Egyptian"; but the Angel thoughtfully
provided Joseph Smith, Jr., with Urim and Thummim, two magic stones
with which to read the records. They proved to deal with a mystery
which has haunted the minds of Bible students for centuries--the fate
of the "lost ten tribes of Israel", who were now revealed to have been
the ancestors of the American Indians. The Angel told Smith to found a
new religion, and gave him prophecies concerning things in general;
so, on the 6th of April, 1830, in the town of Manchester, N.Y., there
was formally launched the "Church of the Latter Day Saints." Smith
turned over to his followers his translation of the miraculous plates,
called "The Book of Mormon"; obviously genuine, for it read precisely
like the books which we already know are the revealed word of God.
But, on chance that this might not be sufficient, we were offered in
the preface two documents, the "Testimony of Three Witnesses", and the
"Further Testimony of Eight Witnesses". The latter being the shorter,
may be quoted:
Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues and people,
unto whom this work shall come: That Joseph Smith Jr., the
translator of this work, has shewn unto us the plates of
which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold;
and as many of the leaves as the said Smith hath translated,
we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings
there-on, all of which has the appearance of ancient work
and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record with
words of soberness, that the said Smith has shewn unto us,
for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the
said Smith hath got the plates of which we have spoken. And
we give our names unto the world, to witness that which we
have seen, and we lie not, God bearing witness of it.
Christian Whitmer
Jacob Whitmer
Peter Whitmer, Jr.
John Whitmer
Hiram Page
Joseph Smith, Sr.
Hyrum Smith
Saml. H. Smith
The subsequent career of the Church of the Latter Day Saints bore out
the Angel's prophesies and proved conclusively its divine origin; it
was persecuted as the saints of old were persecuted, and its followers
proceeded to massacre the nearby unbelieving populations, just as the
divinely guided Hebrews had done. Driven from place to place, they
built at Nauvoo, Ill., a beautiful temple, according to plans revealed
in a vision, exactly like Solomon. Finally they settled in Utah, where
they have a magnificent marble tabernacle, and some 300,000 followers.
The United States government, not being entirely Biblical, objected to
their practice of allowing the patriarchs of the tribe to have as many
wives as they could support; the government confiscated the church's
property, and forced it to conceal the practice of polygamy, as is
done by elderly church members in other parts of the country. Recently
the head of the church, who bears the title of "Prophet, Seer and
Revelator", was persuaded to permit an examination of one of its
secret plates, the "Book of Abraham", by egyptologists, who found that
it was ordinary Egyptian hieroglyphics, not "reformed", but containing
prayers to the sun-god. But this will of course make no difference to
the devout followers of Joseph--any more than it has made to devout
Catholics and Episcopalians that German scholars have proven that the
Bible legends and ritual have come from the Babylonians, and that the
four gospels date from the second and third centuries after Christ.
#Holy Rolling#
All over America you will find these weird Bible-cults, some of them
pathetic, some of them dangerous, some of them merely grotesque. Thus,
for example, there was John Alexander Dowie, who founded the
"Christian Catholic Church in Zion" and dressed himself up in scarlet
and purple robes with stars on. Through his Zion City Bank and Zion
City Realty Company he became enormously wealthy; he finally announced
himself as "Elijah the Restorer." I remember as a boy how he brought
his gospel to New York, and P.T. Barnum with Tom Thumb and the white
elephant never made such a sensation. The ridicule of the metropolis
overwhelmed the old prophet, and he died and passed on his robes and
his tabernacle and his bank to his son; straightway, according to the
rule of all religions, the followers fell to quarrelling and splitting
up, and suing one another in the law-courts.
Also there are the "Holy Rollers" and "Holy Jumpers", ghastly sects
which cultivate the religious hysterias, and have spread like a plague
among the women of our lonely prairie farms and desert ranches. The
"Holy Rollers", who call themselves the "Apostolic Church", have a
meeting place here in Pasadena, and any Sunday evening at nine o'clock
you may see the Spirit of the Lord taking possession of the
worshippers, causing moans and shrieks and convulsions; you may see a
woman holding her hands aloft for seventeen minutes by the watch,
making chattering sounds like an ape. This is called "talking in
tongues" and is a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit. If you come
back at eleven in the evening, you will find the entire congregation,
men and women, prostrate on the floor, or hanging over the benches;
and maybe a child moaning in terror, having a devil cast out.
You may be interested, perhaps, to know how to throw yourself into
these convulsions. Here is a paper called "Trust", which is "published
Monthly (D.V.) in the interests of Elim Faith Work and Bible Training
School." Elizabeth Sisson writes on "The Pentecostal Baptism", and
tells the story of her experiences. She "camped on the Word of God,"
she declares.
I went up to Calgary in Canada, and the leader of the
mission told me, "You can go down to the mission and stay
there all day. There is plenty of wood, and you can stay
there all night." I went down, and there was plenty of "let
go" in me. I cried, and prayed all I knew, and got
wonderfully loosed....
Then the Lord said to me, "Now, no more praying!" God told
me it was mine. What was there left for me to pray about. He
spoiled my praying and I took up praising. I praised God
that He who worked in the Upper Room was working the same in
me. I praised, and I praised, and I praised. The devil said
to me, "That's mechanical." I said, "I'll praise You Lord,
and if You want real praise, You'll have to put the wind in
the sails."
That's the way I came through. One morning I was just
getting out of bed, "this gibberish, this jargon" as the
enemy likes to call it, began to come. The Lord said, "Let
it babble!" I let. The babble increased, and by night I was
up to my neck. I let. I still let. That's all. Someone else
does the work, and it does not tire you.
And here is another paper. "Meat in Due Season: published monthly, or
as often as the Lord leads." The editor quotes the Bible, "Call upon
the name of the Lord," and explains that "Call means #call#." The word
appears to have a special meaning to these pentecostal persons--it
means working yourself into a frenzy of agitation; as the editor puts
it, "you must #lay# hold of the #horns# of the #altar#." He goes on to
exhort--the bold face being his:
Pray as if your very life depended upon it! The first few
minutes seemingly all the powers of hell will contend every
word, the next few, relief in a measure will come, more
liberty in calling. In a very little while you will be #dead
to the room, dead to the chair#, dead to everyone around
you, dead to all and tremendously alive to your desperate
need and emptyness; this conviction will grow as you
increase calling upon Him. It maybe you'll weep, it maybe
you'll perspire, it maybe your clothing will be deranged, it
maybe your throat will get sore. Never for a moment let your
mind rest on the condition of your person. Open your mouth
and God has promised to fill it. Ask persistently until the
very floor seems to sink beneath you and the fountains of
the deep, of your heart let loose. Like David, "pour out
your soul" like one would pour water out of a bucket. I have
seen hundreds get through right at this point. When
#self-thought, reticence, decorum, reserve, propriety and
dignity# had all been thrown to the four winds of heaven.
Self was then obliterated and consciousness of person gone.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you saith the
scripture, but you must draw near to Him first.
These enthusiasts derive their practices from the Shakers, a sect
which originated in England, but was driven by persecution to the New
World. The Shakers call themselves the "United Society of True
Believers in Christ's Second Coming," and were founded by Ann Lee, who
variously termed herself the "Female Christ", the "Holy Comforter",
and the "God-anointed Woman". They might be termed the suffragettes of
religion, for they pray always to "Our Father and Mother, which are in
heaven." They were taught the convenient doctrine that their Founder
had "spiritual illumination", so that any evidence of the senses used
against her might deceive. She governed through terror, holding that
by her mental powers she could inflict torment upon any of her
followers. Fortunately she taught absolute celibacy, and so there are
now only about a thousand of her disciples.
Bible Prophecy
This far western country swarms with those fanatics who await the
return of Christ, and find in Bible chronology positive evidence that
he is coming on a specified day. Seldom do I give a lecture on
Socialism that some eager old lady does not come up to me and point
out how futile are my hopes, because the Millenium will come before
the Revolution. Several times I have come on an item in the
newspapers, telling of a group of people, sometimes whole villages,
selling their goods and going out into the fields to shout and sing
and pray, expecting the vision of the Lord and His Angels in the
skies. I have in my hand a pamphlet entitled "Shekineh: The Glory of
God in Israel, Facts Mathematically Foretold, of the Soon Coming of
Our Blessed Lord." It is earnestly, yearningly written, in that spirit
of feeble-minded affectionateness which the Bible-sects seem to
encourage:
Now dear reader you see that these problems tell a wonderful
story which I know are the Eternal Truths of God. Jesus is
soon coming. I believe that from now on we can say, next;
week perhaps our blessed Lord will return. Yet the time may
not end till the close of the A.M. year, which will be March
20th, 1897. But let us take up the sickle of God, etc. Oh,
my Christian friends, live near the Blessed Christ, and gain
eternal life through Jesus Our Lord!
In the public library I find another pamphlet, entitled "The Our
Race," which proves that the "lost ten tribes of Israel" are not the
American Indians, but the Irish! And here is a publication of the
"Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society," declaring:
The great pyramid in Egypt is a witness to all the events of
the ages and of our day. The pyramid's downward passage
under "a Draconis" symbolizes the course of Sin. Its first
ascending passage symbolizes the Jewish Age. Its Grand
Gallery symbolizes the Gospel Age. Its upper step symbolizes
the approaching period of tribulation and anarchy,
"Judgment" upon Christendom.
It is a Sunday morning, and I sit in the California sunshine revising
this manuscript, when a decorous-looking young man approaches, having
a sack over his shoulder. "From the Bible-students," he says politely,
and hands me a little paper, "The Bible Students' Monthly: an
Independent, Unsectarian Religious Newspaper, Specially devoted to the
Forwarding of the Lay-men's Home Missionary Movement for the Glory of
God and Good of Humanity." The leading article is headed "The Fall of
Babylon: Ancient Babylon a Type--Mystic Babylon the Antitype: Why
Christendom must Suffer--the Final Outcome." A note explains:
The following article is extracted from Pastor Russell's
posthumous volume entitled "The Finished Mystery," the 7th
in the series of his Studies in the Scriptures and published
subsequent to his death. Pastor Russell held the distinction
of being the most fearless and powerful writer of modern
times on ecclesiastical subjects. In this posthumous volume,
which is called "his last legacy to the Christians on
earth," is found a thorough exposition of every verse in the
entire book of Revelation and also an elucidation of the
obscure prophecy of Ezekiel. The book contains 608 pages,
handsomely bound in embossed cloth.
Pastor Russell used to publish a two-column sermon in some
hundreds of Sunday newspapers, together with a presentment of his
features--solemn, stiff, white-whiskered, set off with a "choker" and
a black broadcloth coat. There are five million such faces in America,
but if you have an impulse to despair for your country, remember that
it produced Mark Twain and Artemus Ward, as well as Pastor Russell and
the Moody and Sankey hymn-book. I quote one passage from "The Finished
Mystery", in order that the reader may know what it means to "hold the
distinction of being the most fearless and powerful writer of modern
times on ecclesiastical subjects." Pastor Russell does not approve of
the Methodists, and he quotes twelve verses of Revelation, line by
line and phrase by phrase, showing how the evil course and downfall of
the Wesleyan system were divinely foretold. Thus:
"But that they should be tormented five months."--In
symbolic time, 150 years--5x30=150. (Ezek. 4:6.) Wesley
became the first Methodist in 1728. (Rev. 9: 1.) When the
Methodist denomination, with all the others, was cast off
from favor in 1878 (Rev. 3:14) its powers to torment men by
preaching what Presbyterians describe as "Conscious misery,
eternal in duration" came to an end legally, and to a large
extent actually.--Rev. 9:10.
P.S. A few months pass, and while this book is going to press, "The
Finished Mystery" is suppressed by the government and several score
"Bible Students" are landed in jail for sedition.
#Koreshanity#
Such are the beliefs built on the Bible. But there are other ancient
writings with strange nomenclature and ritual and symbolism,
calculated to impress the unlettered; also our prophets have
imaginations of their own, and can invent nomenclature and ritual and
symbolism never seen in heaven nor on earth before. Thus there is Dr.
Newo Newi New, who called himself "Archbishop of the Newthot Church,"
and gathered about him a harem of devoted females in San Francisco,
and was landed in jail for using the mails to defraud. Or there is
"Oahspe, the Cosmic Bible," a work of brand-new revelation with a
brand-new view of the universe and all things therein:
The reader soon discovers that he must radically revise not
only his ideas of celestial Cosmogony, but the order and
significance of names and titles commonly applied to the
Transcendental Brethren. The great provinces of Etheria are
presided over by chiefs, chosen for their superior
development in wisdom and love. For our solar system to
cross one of these provinces requires about 3,000 years, and
between them are belts of high Etherian light which take
several years to pass over. The passage of each province is
a cycle of earthly history, and the crossings are called
Dawns of Dan.
And here is Koreshanity, a revelation vouchsafed by the Lord to Dr.
C.R. Teed of Chicago in the year 1889. This new seer took the name of
Koresh, which is Hebrew for Cyrus, "the Shepherd from Joseph, the
Stone of Israel, the Sun-Man; the illuminating center of the Son of
man", and went out on the streets of the city to preach that the earth
is a hollow sphere with the stars inside. The street urchins of the
pork-packing metropolis threw stones at him, and the irreverent
newspapers took up his adventures, with the result that followers
gathered, and now there is a flourishing colony in Florida, with a
dignified magazine called "The Flaming Sword", and a collection of
propaganda volumes: "The Cellular Cosmogony, an Exposition of Koreshan
Universology and the New Geodesy"; "The Immortal Manhood, the Laws and
Processes of its Attainment in the Flesh"; "The Great Red Dragon, by
Lord Chester"; "The Coming of the Shepherd from Joseph, The Standing
of the Great Ensign, by Koresh." The "Religio-science" of this Chicago
revelator is based, first upon some precise measurements of the earth
which prove that its surface is concave; and second upon some
philological discoveries very much resembling puns. Thus the "cross of
Christ" is explained in a sense of the word more common among
horse-breeders than among theologians:
The highest characteristic of the alchemical law is the
cross of Christ with sensual man. The cross means that the
Lord God, in order to perpetuate his own being, descends
into the race of sensuality.
And again, when someone asks about meteors:
The word Heaven means things heaved up, that is, heaved up
from their material basis, the earth; thus, the meteors
which fall to the earth are composed of metallic, mineral,
and geological substances, being materialized or actually
created in the atmosphere by an alchemico-organic process
from zones or belts periodically open, which precipitate
their contents in the form or shape of meteors."
And perhaps I ought also to quote the "Indicia of Human Progress", by
"Berthaldine, Matrona". I don't know what a "Matrona" is--unless it is
a female matron. This female matron tells me that now is the "Time of
Restitution", and explains that "the prolification of the human race
has reached a fruition of the adultery of the truth and good of the
Lord with the fallacies and evils of the mortal hells" ...We have
come, it seems, to the "age of Pisces", which is "one of the greatest
radical prolification"; and what we now need is the "power of
polarization", so that we may join the "White Horse Army of the Most
High", which is the organization of the "Aquarian age", proclaimed by
Koresh on January 15th, 1891.
#Mazdaznan#
And here is another and even more startling revelation from Chicago,
given to a seer by the name of Dr. Otoman Prince of Adusht Ha'nish,
prophet of the Sun God, Prince of Peace, Manthra Magi of Temple El
Katman, Kalantar of Zoroastrian Breathing and Envoy of Mazdaznan
living, Viceroy-Elect and International Head of Master-Thot. If you
had happened to live near the town of Mendota, Illinois, and had known
the German grocer-boy named Otto Hanisch, you might at first have
trouble in recognizing him through this transmogrification. I have
traced his career in the files of the Chicago newspapers, and find him
herding sheep, setting type, preaching prestidigitation, mesmerism,
and fake spiritualism, joining the Mormon Church, then the "Christian
Catholic Church in Zion", and then the cult of Brighouse, who claimed
to be Christ returned.
Finally he sets himself up in Chicago as a Persian Magus, teaching
Yogi breathing exercises and occult sex-lore to the elegant society
ladies of the pork-packing metropolis. The Sun God, worshipped for two
score centuries in India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, has a new shrine on
Lake Park Avenue, and the prophet gives tea-parties at which his
disciples are fed on lilac-blossoms--"the white and pinkish for males,
the blue-tinted for females". He wears a long flowing robe of pale
grey cashmere, faced with white, and flexible white kid shoes, and he
sells his lady adorers a book called "Inner Studies", price five
dollars per volume, with information on such subjects as:
The Immaculate Conception and its Repetition; The Secrets of
Lovers Unveiled; Our Ideals and Soul Mates; Magnetic
Attraction and Electric Mating.
A Grand Jury intervenes, and the Prophet goes to jail for six months;
but that does not harm his cult, which now has a temple in Chicago,
presided over by a lady called Kalantress and Evangelist; also a
"Northern Stronghold" in Montreal, an "Embassy" in London, an
"International Aryana" in Switzerland, and "Centers" all over America.
At the moment of going to press, the prophet himself is in flight,
pursued by a warrant charging him with improper conduct with a number
of young boys in a Los Angeles hotel.
I have dipped into Ha'nish's revelations, which are a farrago of every
kind of ancient mysticism--paper and binding from the Bible,
illustrations from the Egyptian, names from the Zoroastrian, health
rules from the Hindoos, laws from the Confucians--price ten dollars
per volume. Would you like to discover your seventeen senses, to
develop them according to the Ga-Llama principle, and to share the
"expansion of the magnetic circles"? Here is the way to do it:
Inhale through nostrils for four seconds, and upon one
exhalation, speak slowly:
Open, O thou world-sustaining Sun, the entrance unto Truth
hidden by the vase of dazzling light.
Again inhale for four seconds, and breathe out the following
sentence upon one exhalation as before:
Soften the radiation of Thy Illuminating Splendor, that I
may behold Thy True Being.
I have a clipping from a Los Angeles newspaper telling of the
prophet's arriving there. He takes the front page with the captivating
headline: "Women Didn't Think Till They Put On Corsets". The interview
tells about his mysteriousness, his aloofness, his bird-like-diet, and
his personal beauty. "Despite his seventy-three years, Ha'nish
evidences no sign of age. His keen blue eyes showed no sign of
wavering. There were no wrinkles on his face, and his walk was that of
a man of forty." The humor of this becomes apparent when we mention
that at Ha'nish's trial, three or four years ago, he was proven to be
thirty-five years old!
Being thus warned as to the accuracy of American journalism, we shall
not be taken in by the repeated statements that the Mazdaznan prophet
is a millionaire. But there is no doubt that he is wealthy; and as all
Americans wish to be wealthy, I will quote his formula of prosperity,
his method of accomplishing what might be called the Individual
Revolution:
When hungry and you do not know where to get your next piece
of bread, do not despair. Thy Father, all-loving, has
provided, you with everything that will meet all cases of
emergency.
Place your teeth tightly together, with tongue pressing
against the lower teeth and lips parted. Breathe in, close
lips immediately, exhaling through the nostrils. Breathe
again; if saliva forms in your mouth, hold your breath so
you can swallow it first before you exhale. You thus take
out of the air the metal-substance contained therein; you
can even taste the iron which you convert into substance
required for making the blood. Should you feel that,
although you have sufficient iron in the blood, there is a
lack of copper and zinc and silver, place upper teeth over
lower, keep lower lip tightly to lower teeth, now breathe
and you can even taste the metals named. Then should you
feel you need more gold element for your brain functions,
place your back teeth together just as if you were to grind
the back teeth, taking short breaths only. You will then
learn to know that there is gold and silver all around us.
That our bodies are filled with quite a quantity of gold.
#Black Magic#
What all this means is that we have a continent, with a hundred
million half-educated people, materially prosperous, but spiritually
starving; so any man who possesses personality, who looks in any way
strange and impressive, or has hunted up old books in a library, and
can pronounce mysterious words in a thrilling voice--such a man can
find followers. Anybody can do it with any doctrine, from anywhere,
Persia or Patagonia, Pekin or Pompei. I would be willing to wager that
if I cared to come out and announce that I had had a visit from _God_
last night, and to devote such literary and emotional power as I
possess to communicating a new revelation, I could have a temple, a
university, and a million dollars within five years at the outside.
And if at the end of five years I were to announce that I had played a
joke on the world, some one of my followers would convince the
faithful that I had been an agent of God without knowing it, and that
the leadership had now been turned over to him.
I would not be understood as believing that all our cults are
undiluted fakery, for that would be doing injustice to some earnest
people. There are, in this country, many followers of the Persian
reformer, Abbas Effendi, who call themselves Babists, and who have
what I am inclined to think is the purest and most dignified religion
in existence. There was a man named Jacob Beilhardt, who founded a
cult in Illinois with the painful name of "Spirit Fruit Colony", who
nevertheless was a man of spiritual insight, a true mystic; he was
honest, and so he failed, and died of a broken heart. Also there are
the Christian Scientists and the Theosophists, so exasperating that
one would like to throw them onto the rubbish-heap, who yet compel us
to sift over their mountains of chaff for the grains of truth which
will bear fruit in future.
While we western races have been exploring the natural world and
perfecting the mechanical arts, the Hindoo students have been
exploring the subconscious and its strange powers. What Myers and
Lodge and Janet and Charcot and Freud and Jung are telling us today
they had hints of a long time ago; and doubtless they have hints of
other things, upon which our scientists have not yet come. I have
friends, perfectly sane and competent people, who tell me that they
can see auras, and use this ability as a means of judging character.
Shall I say that there are no auras, simply because I do not happen to
have this gift of seeing them? In the same way, having read Gurney's
"Phantasms of the Living," I am not ready to ridicule the claim of the
Yogi adepts, that they are able to project some kind of astral body,
and to communicate with one another from distant places. But granting
such occult powers in a world of economic strife, what follows? Simply
new floods of charlatanism, elaborate and complicated systems of
ritual and metaphysic for the deluding and plundering of the
credulous.
I have seen the thing working itself out in one case known to me. A
young man had a gift of mental healing; I know, because I saw it work;
but it did not always work, and that was annoying. He was penniless
and had a taste for power, and to eke out his erratic endowment he got
himself books of Eastern lore, and day by day as I watched him I could
see him becoming more and more impressive, mysterious and forbidding.
Today he is a full-fledged wonder-worker, with the language of a dozen
mystic cults at his tongue's end, and the reverent regard of many
wealthy ladies. I have never tried to break through his guard, but I
feel certain that he is a deliberate charlatan.
This is an economic process, automatic and irresistible. Just as the
manufacturer of honest foods is driven out by the adulterator, so the
worker of miracles drives out the sincere investigator. As a result we
have here in America a plague of Eastern cults, with "swamis" using
soft yellow robes and soft brown eyes to win the souls of idle society
ladies. These teachers of ancient Hindoo lore despise us as a race of
barbarians; but they stay--whether because of love of man or woman, I
do not pretend to say.
There are the Theosophists of many brands, with schools and institutes
and temples and colonies, and a doctrine as complex and detailed and
fantastic as that of the Roman Catholics. I have already referred to
the writings of Madame Blavatsky, a runaway Russian army officer's
daughter, whose career reads like a tale out of the Arabian Nights.
And there is Annie Besant, who was once an ardent worker in the
Social-democratic Federation; H.M. Hyndman tells of his dismay when
she went to India and walked in a procession between two white bulls!
Here in California is Madame Tingley, with a colony and a host of
followers in a minature paradise. Men work at money-lending or
manufacturing sporting-goods, and when they get old and tired they
make the thrilling discovery that they have souls; the theosophists
cultivate these souls and they leave their money to the soul-cause,
and there are lawsuits and exposés in the newspapers. For, you see,
there is ferocious rivalry in the game of cultivating millionaire
souls; there are slanders and feuds, just as in soulless affairs.
"Don't have anything to do with Madame Tingley," whispers a
Theosophist lady to my Wife; and when my wife in all innocence
inquires, "Why not?" the awe-stricken answer comes, "She practices
black magic!"
Let me add that I do not say that she practices black magic. I do not
believe that she #could# practice it, even if she wanted to--I do not
believe in black magic. My purpose is merely to show how theosophists
quarrel: going back to the days of Anu and Baal and the bronze Image
of the Babylonian fire-god:
Let them die, but let me live!
Let them be put under a ban, but let me prosper!
Let them perish, but let me increase!
Let them become weak, but let me wax strong!
#Mental Malpractice#
This is the other side of the fair shield of religious faith. Why, if
there be a power which loves and can be persuaded to aid us, may there
not also be a power which hates, and can be persuaded to destroy? No
religion has ever been able to answer this, and therefore none has
ever been able to escape from devil-terrors. Even Jesus was pursued by
Satan, and the Holy Catholic Church has its ceremonies for the
exorcising of demons, and a most frightful formula for cursing. And
here are our friends the Christian Scientists, proclaiming the
unreality of all evil, their ability to banish disease by convincing
themselves that they are perfect in God--yet tormented by a squalid
phobia called "Mental Malpractice", or "Malicious Animal Magnetism".
Christian Science is the most characteristic of American religious
contributions. Just as Billy Sunday is the price we pay for failing to
educate our base-ball players, so Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy is
the price we pay for failing to educate our farmer's daughters.
That she had a power to cure disease I do not doubt, because I have a
little of it myself. At first my opinion was that her "Science" made
its way by curing the imaginary ailments of the idle rich. If a person
has nothing to do but think that he is sick, you can work easy
miracles by persuading him to think that he is well; and if he has
nothing to do but think that he is well, he will help you to build
marble churches and maintain propaganda societies. But recently I have
experimented with mental healing--enough to satisfy myself that the
subconscious mind which controls our physical functions can be
powerfully influenced by the will.
I told the story of some of these experiments in Hearst's Magazine for
April, 1914. Suffice it here to say that if you will lay your hands
upon a sick person, forming a vivid mental picture of the bodily
changes you desire, and concentrating the power of your will upon
them, you may be surprised by the results, especially if you possess
anything in the way of psychic gifts. You do not have to adopt any
theories, you do not have to do it in the name of any divinity,
ancient or modern; the only bearing of such ideas is that they serve
to persuade people to make the experiment, and to make it with
persistence and intensity. So it has come about that "miracles" of
healing are associated with "faith"; and so it comes about that
scientists are apt to flout the subject. But read of the work of Janet
and Charcot and their followers at the Salpetriere; they have proven
that all kinds of seeming-organic ailments may be entirely hysterical
in nature, and may be cured by the simplest form of suggestion.
Understanding this, you may find it more easy to credit the fact that
cripples do sometimes throw away their crutches in the grotto of
Lourdes. For my part, I can believe that Jesus performed all the
miracles of healing attributed to him--including the raising up of
people pronounced to be dead by the ignorance of that time. I am
convinced that in the new science of psycho-analysis we have a
universe as vast as the universe of the atom or of the stars.
The Christian Scientists have got hold of this power; they have mixed
it up with metaphysic and divinity, and built some four or five
hundred churches, and printed the Mother Church alone knows how many
million pamphlets and books. I once invested three of my hard-earned
dollars for a copy of the Eddy Bible, and let myself be stunned and
blinded by the flapping of metaphysical wings. It is unadulterated
moonshine--as the Platonist and Berkeleyan and Hegelian and other
orthodox collegiate metaphysical magi can prove to you in one minute.
What interests me about the phenomenon is not the slinging of
tremendous words, but the strictly Yankee use which is made of them.
There is no nonsense about saving your soul in Christian Science; what
it is for is to remove your wen, to nail down your floating kidney,
and to enable you to hustle and make money. We saw in our politics the
growth of a Party of the Full Dinner-Pail; contemporaneous therewith,
and corresponding thereto, we see in our religious life the
development of a Church of the Full Pocket-Book.
It is a strict religion--strictly cash. The heads of the cult do not
issue cheap editions of "Science and Health, With Key to the
Scriptures", to relieve the suffering of the proletariat; no--the work
is copyrighted, in all its varying and contradictory editions, and the
price is from three to seven-fifty, according to binding. Treatments
cost from three dollars to ten, whether you come and get them or take
them over the telephone. And we have no nonsense about charity, we
don't worry about the poor who fester in our city slums; because
poverty is a product of Mortal Mind, and we offer to all men a way to
get rich right off the bat. You may; come to our marble churches and
hear people testify how through the power of Divine Mind they were
enabled to anticipate a rise in the stock-market. If you don't avail
yourself of the opportunity, the fault is yours, and yours also the
punishment.
As to the management of the Church, the Roman Catholic hierarchy is a
Bolshevik democracy in comparison. The Church is controlled by an
absolutely irresponsible self-perpetuating body of five men, who alone
dictate its policy. I have in my hand a letter from a Christian
Science healer who was listed as an "authorized practitioner", and who
withdrew from the Church because of its attitude on public questions.
He sends me a copy of his correspondence with the editors of the
"Christian Science Monitor", containing a detailed analysis of the
position of that paper on such issues as the Ballinger land-frauds. He
writes:
I am thoroughly convinced now that the policy of the Church
is consciously plutocratic. The only recommendation I have
heard of the latest appointee to the Board of Directors is
that he is one of the richest men in the movement.
After the Titanic disaster, Senator La Follette brought in a carefully
drawn bill to compel steamship companies to provide life-boats and
trained crews. The "Christian Science Monitor" opposed this bill; and
when my correspondent cited the fact, he brought out a quaint bit of
metaphysical logic, as follows:
One would prefer to travel on a vessel without a single
boat, rather than on some other vessels which were loaded
down with life-boats, where the government of Mind was not
understood!
#Science and Wealth#
The truth is that the brand of Mammon was on our Yankee religion from
the day of its birth. In the first edition of her new Bible "Mother"
Eddy dropped the hint to her readers: "Men of business have said this
science was of great advantage from a secular point of view." And in
her advertisements she threw aside all pretense, declaring that her
work "Affords an opportunity to acquire a profession by which one can
accumulate a fortune." When her pupils did accumulate, she boasted of
their success; nor did she neglect her own accumulating.
It has been a dozen years since I looked into this cult; in order to
be sure that it has not been purified in the interim, I proceed to a
street corner in my home city, where is a stand with a sign:
"Christian Science Literature." I take four sample copies of a
magazine, the "Christian Science Sentinel", published by the Mother
Church in Boston, and turn to the "Testimonials of Healing". In the
issue of August 11, 1917, Mary C. Richards of St. Margarets-on-Thames,
England, testifies: "Through a number of circumstances unnecessary to
relate, but proving conclusively that the result came not from man but
from God, employment was found." In the issue of December 2, 1916,
Frances Tuttle of Jersey City, N.J., testifies how her sister was
successfully treated for unemployment by a scientist practitioner.
"Every condition was beautifully met." In the same issue Fred D.
Miller of Los Angeles, Cal., testifies: "Soon after this wonderful
truth came to me, Divine Love led me to a new position with a
responsible firm. The work was new to me, but I have given entire
satisfaction, and my salary has been advanced twice in less than a
year." In the issue of January 27, 1917, Eliza Fryant of Agricola,
Miss., testifies how she cured her little dog of snake-bite and
removed two painful corns from her own foot. In the issue of August 4,
1917, Marcia E. Gaier, of Everett, Wash., testifies how it suddenly
occurred to her that because God is All, she would drop her planning
and outlining in regard to real estate properties, "upon which for
nine months all available material methods were tried to no effect."
The result was a triumph of "Principle".
While working in the yard one morning and gratefully
communing with God, the only power, I suddenly felt that I
should stop working and prepare for visitors on their way to
look at the property. I obeyed this very distinct command,
and in about an hour I greeted two people who had searched
almost the entire city for just what we had to offer. They
had been directed to our place by what to material sense
would seem an accident, but we know it was the divine law of
harmony in its universal operation.
After this no one will wonder that John M. Tutt, in a Christian
Science lecture at Kansas City, Mo., should proclaim:
My friends, do you know that since the world began Christian
Science is the only system which has intelligently related
religion to business? Christian Science shows that since all
ideas belong to Mind, God, therefore all real business
belongs to Him.
As I said, these people have the new-old power of mental healing. They
blunder along with it blindly, absurdly, sometimes with tragic
consequences; but meantime the rank and file of the pill-doctors know
nothing about this power, and regard it with contempt mingled with
fear; so of course the hosts of sufferers whom the pill-doctors cannot
help flock to the healers of the "Church of Christ, Scientist".
According to the custom of those who are healed by "faith", they
swallow line, hook, and sinker, creed, ritual, metaphysic and
divinity. So we see in twentieth-century America precisely what we saw
in B.C. twentieth-century Assyria--a host of worshippers; giving their
worldly goods without stint, and a priesthood, made partly of fanatics
and partly of charlatans, conducting a vast enterprise of graft, and
harvesting that thing desired of all men, power over the lives and
destinies of others.
And of course among themselves they quarrel; they murder one another's
Mortal Minds, they drive one another out, they snarl over the spoils
like a pack of hungry animals. Listen to the Mother, denouncing one of
her students--a perfectly amiable and harmless youth whose only
offense was that he had gone his own way and was healing the sick for
the benefit of his own pocket-book:
Behold! thou criminal mental marauder, that would blot out
the sunshine of earth, that would sever friends, destroy
virtue, put out Truth, and murder in secret the innocent,
befouling thy track with the trophies of thy guilt--I say,
Behold the "cloud" no bigger than a man's hand already
rising on the horizon of Truth, to pour down upon thy guilty
head the hailstones of doom.
And again:
The Nero of today, regaling himself through a mental method
with the torture of individuals, is repeating history, and
will fall upon his own sword, and it shall pierce him
through. Let him remember this when, in the dark recesses of
thought, he is robbing, committing adultery and killing.
When he is attempting to turn friend away from friend,
ruthlessly stabbing the quivering heart; when he is clipping
the thread of life and giving to the grave youth and its
rainbow hues; when he is turning back the reviving sufferer
to his bed of pain, clouding his first morning after years
of night; and the Nemesis of that hour shall point to the
tyrant's fate, who falls at length upon the sword of
justice.
#New Nonsense#
In a certain city of America is a large building given up entirely to
the whims of pretty ladies. Its floors are not floors but
"Promenades", and have walls of glass, behind which, as you stroll,
you see bonnets from Paris and opera cloaks from London, furs from
Alaska and blankets from Arizona, diamonds from South Africa and beads
from the Philippines, grapes from Spain and cherries from Japan,
fortune-tellers from Arabia and dancing-masters from Petrograd and
"naturopaths" from Vienna. There are seventy-three shops, by actual
count, containing everything that could be imagined or desired by a
pretty lady, whether for her body, or for that vague stream of emotion
she calls her "soul". One of the seventy-three shops is a
"Metaphysical Library", having broad windows, and walls in pastel
tints, and pretty vases with pink flowers, and pretty gray wicker
chairs in which the reader will please to be seated, while we probe
the mysteries of an activity widely spread throughout America, called
"New Thought."
We begin with a shelf of magazines having mystical titles: Azoth;
Master Mind; Aletheian; Words of Power; Qabalah; Comforter; Adept;
Nautilus; True Word; Astrological Bulletin; Unity; Uplift; Now. And
then come shelves of pretty pamphlets, alluring to the eye and the
purse; also shelves of imposing-looking volumes containing the lore
and magic of a score of races and two score of centuries--together
with the very newest manifestations of Yankee hustle and graft.
As in the case of Christian Science, these New Thoughters have a
fundamental truth, which I would by no means wish to depreciate. It is
a fact that the mysterious Source of our being is infinite, and that
we are only at the beginning of our thinking about it. It is a fact
that by appeal to it we can perform seeming miracles of mental and
moral regeneration; we can stimulate the flow of nervous energy and of
the blood, thus furthering the processes of bodily healing. But the
fact that God is Infinite and Omnipotent does not bar the fact that He
has certain ways of working, which He does not vary; and that it is
our business to explore and understand these ways, instead of setting
our fancies to work imagining other ways more agreeable to our
sentimentality.
Thus, for example, if we want bread, it is God's decree that we shall
plant wheat and harvest it, and grind and bake and distribute it.
Under conditions prevailing at the moment, it appears to be His decree
that we shall store the wheat in elevators, and ship it in freight
cars, and buy it through a grain exchange, with capital borrowed from
a national bank; in other words, that our daily bread shall be the
plaything of exploiters and speculators, until such a time as we have
the intelligence to form an effective political party and establish
Industrial Democracy. But when you come to study the ways of God in
the literature of the New Thought, do you find anything about the
Millers' Trust and the Bakers' Trust and how to expropriate these
agencies of starvation? You do not!
What you find is Bootstrap-lifting; you find gentlemen and lady
practitioners shutting their eyes and lifting their hands and
pronouncing Incantations in awe-inspiring voices--or in Capital
Letters and LARGE TYPE: "God is infinite, God is All-Loving, #GOD WILL
PROVIDE.# Bread is coming to you! #Bread is coming to you!! BREAD IS
COMING TO YOU!!!"
You think this is exaggeration? If so, it is because you have
never entered the building of the pretty ladies, and sat in the
gray wicker chairs of the metaphysical library. One of the highest
high-priestesses of the cults of New Nonsense is a lady named
Elizabeth Towne, editor of "The Nautilus"; and Priestess Elizabeth
tells you:
I believe the idea that money wants you will help you to the
right mental condition. Be a pot of honey and let it come.
I look over this Priestess' magazine, and find it full of testimonials
and advertisements for the conjuring of prosperity. "Are you in the
success sphere?" asks one exhorter; the next tells you "How to enter
the silence. How to manifest what you desire. The secret of
advancement." Another tells: "How a Failure at Sixty Won Sudden
Success; From Poverty to $40,000 a year--a Lesson for Old and Young
Alike." The lesson, it appears, is to pay $3.00 for a book called
"Power of Will." And here is another book:
Master Key: Which can unlock the Secret Chamber of Success,
can throw wide the doors which seem to bar men from the
Treasure House of Nature, and bids those enter and partake
who are Wise enough to Understand and broad enough to Weigh
the Evidence, firm enough to Follow their Own Judgment and
Strong enough to Make the Sacrifice Exacted.
#"Dollars Want Me"#
I turn to the shelves of pamphlets. Here is a pretty one called "All
Sufficiency in All Things," published by the "Unity School of
Christianity", in Kansas City; it explains that God is God, not merely
of the Soul, but also of the Kansas City stockyards.
This divine Substance is ever abiding within us, and stands
ready to manifest itself in whatever form you and I need or
wish, just as it did in Elisha's time. It is the same
yesterday, today and forever. Abundant Supply by the
manifestation of the Father within us, from within outward,
is as much a legitimate outcome of the Christ life or
spiritual understanding as is bodily healing.... "Know that
I am God--all of God, Good, all of Good. I am Life. I am
Health. I am Supply. I am the Substance."
And here is W.W. Atkinson of Chicago, author of a work called "Mind
Power". Would you like to be an Impressive Personality? Mr. Atkinson
will tell you exactly how to do it; he will give you the secret of the
Magnetic Handclasp, of the Intense, Straight-in-the-eye Look; he will
tell you what to say, he will write out for you Incantations which you
may pronounce to yourself, to convince yourself that you have #Power#,
that the INDWELLING PRESENCE with all its #MIGHT# is yours. Mr.
Atkinson rebukes mildly the tendency of some of his fellow
Bootstrap-lifters to employ these arts for money-making; but you
notice that his magazine, "Advanced Thought", does not decline the
advertisements of such too-practical practitioners.
Next comes a gentleman with the musical name of Wallace Wattles, who
tells in one pamphlet "How to Be a Genius", and in another pamphlet
"How to Get What you Want". The thing for you to do is--
Saturate your mentality through and through with the
knowledge that YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.... Look upon
the peanut-stand merely as the beginning of the department
store, and make it grow; you can.
And Mr. Wattles wattles on, in an ecstasy of acquisitiveness:
Hold this consciousness and say with deep, earnest feeling:
I CAN succeed! All that is possible to any one is possible
to me. I AM success. I do succeed, for I am full of the
Power of Success.
Imagine, if you please, a poor devil chained in the treadmill of the
capitalist system--a "soda-jerker", a "counter-jumper", a book-keeper
for the Steel Trust. His chances of rising in life are one in ten
thousand; but he comes to the Metaphysical Library, and pays the price
of his dinner for a pamphlet by Henry Harrison Brown, who was first a
Unitarian clergyman, and then an extra-high Bootstrap-lifter in San
Francisco, an Honorary Vice-President of the International New
Nonsense Alliance. Mr. Brown will tell our soda-jerker or
counter-jumper exactly how to elevate himself by mental machinery. All
calculations of probabilities are delusions of the senses; if you have
faith, you can move, not merely mountains, but Riker-Hegeman's,
Macy's, or the Steel Trust. "How to Promote Yourself" is the title of
one of Mr. Brown's pamphlets, in which he explains that--
Your wants are impressed on the Divine Mind only by your
faith. A doubt cuts the connection.
A second pamphlet, which we are told is now in its thirtieth edition,
bears the thrilling title of "#Dollars Want Me#!" In it Mr. Brown lays
claim to being a pioneer:
I believe that this little monograph is the first utterance
of the thought that each individual has the ability so to
radiate his mental forces that he can cause the Dollars to
feel him, love him, seek him, and thus draw at will all
things needed for his unfoldment from the universal supply.
"What are Dollars?" asks our author; and answers:
Dollars are manifestations of the One Infinite Substance as
you are, but, unlike you, they are not Self-Conscious. They
have no power till you give them power. Make them feel this
through your thought-vibrations as you feel the importance
of your work. They will then come to you to be used.
"What is Poverty?" Mr. Brown asks, and answers himself:
Poverty is a mental condition. It can be cured only by the
Affirmation of Power to cure: I am a part of the One, and,
in the One, I possess all! Affirm this and patiently wait
for the manifestation. You have sown the thought seed.
And our author goes on to hand out packages of these
thought-seeds--"Affirmations" as they are called, in the jargon of the
New Conjuring:
I desire a deep consciousness of financial freedom.
I desire that the flow of prosperity become equalized.
I desire a greater consciousness of my power to attract the dollar.
The Indwelling Power cares for my purse.
I own whatever I desire.
I can afford to use dollars for my happiness.
I always have a good bank account. I actually see it.
My one idea of the law is to use, use, USE.
#Spiritual Financiering#
If the symbolism of the Episcopal Church is of the palace, and that of
the non-conformist sects of the counting-house, that of the
International New Nonsense Alliance is of Wall Street and the
"ticker". "What is your rating in the Spiritual Bradstreet?" asks
William Morris Nichols in the publication of the "'Now' Folk", San
Francisco:
Is it low or high? Is your credit with the Bank of the
Universe good or poor? If you draw a spiritual draft are you
sure of its being honored?
If you can answer that last question affirmatively, you are
on the road to become a Master in Spiritual Financiering.
Have you an account with the First (and only) Bank of
Spirit? If not, then you should at once open one therewith.
For no one can afford to keep less than a large deposit of
spiritual funds with that Bank.
And how do you proceed to open your account? It is very simple:
Intend the mind in the direction indicated by your desire.
Seek for the Light and Guidance by which you may open up the
way for your Spiritual Substance, which governs material
supply, to reach you and make you as rich as you ought to
be, in freedom and happiness. All this you can, and when in
earnest, will do.
I turn over the advertisements of this publication of the "'Now'
Folk". One offers "The Business Side of New Thought." Another offers
"The Books Without an If", with your money back IF you are not
satisfied!
Another offers land in Bolivia for two dollars an acre. Another quotes
Shakespeare: "Tis the mind that makes the body rich." Another offers
two copies of the "Phrenological Era" for ten cents.
There is apparently no delusion of any age or clime which cannot find
dupes among the readers of this New Nonsense. One notice commands:
Stop! A Revelation! A Book has been written entitled
"Strands of Gold" or "from Darkness into Light!"
Another announces:
The Most Wonderful Book of the Ages: The Acquarian Gospel of
Jesus the Christ, Transcribed from the Book of God's
Remembrance, the Akashic Records.
And here is an advertisement published in Mr. Atkinson's paper:
Numerology: the Universal Adjuster! Do you know: What you
appear to be to others? What you really are? What you want
to be? What would overcome your present and future
difficulties? Write to x, Philosopher. You will receive full
particulars of his personal work which is dedicated to your
service. No problem is too big or too small for Numerology.
Understanding awaits you.
And looking in the body of the magazine, you find this Philosopher
imparting some of this Understanding. Would you like, for example, to
understand why America entered the War? Nothing easier. The vowels of
the Words United States of America are uieaeoaeia, which are numbered
2951561591, which added make 45, or 4 plus 5 equals 9. You might not
at first see what that has to do with the War--until the Philosopher
points out that "9 is the number of completion, indicating the end of
a cosmic cycle." That, of course, explains everything.
And here is a work on what you perhaps thought to be a dead science,
Astrology. It is called "Lucky Hours for Everybody: A True System of
Planetary Hours--by Prof. John B. Early. Price One Dollar." It teaches
you things like this:
Saturn's negative hours are especially good for all matters
relating to gold-mining.... The Sun negative rules the
emerald, the musical note D sharp, and the number four. The
lunar hours are a good time to deal in public commodities,
and to hire servants of both sexes....
A recent lady visitor informed me that she had made several
vain attempts to transact important business in the hours
ruled by Jupiter, usually held to be fortunate, while she
was nearly always fortunate in what she began in the hours
ruled by Saturn. Upon investigation I found her name was
ruled by the Sun negative, and that she had Capricorn with
Saturn therein as her ascendant at birth, which explains.
And finally, here is a London "scientist", reported in the "Weekly
Unity" of Kansas City, who proves his mental power over two-horse
power oil engines which fail to act. "Going a little apart, he came
back in a few minutes and said: 'The engine is all right now and will
work satisfactorily.' and without any further difficulty it did." We
are told how Dr. Rawson gave a demonstration of his method to a
newspaper reporter the other day. Fixing his gaze as though looking
into space, he apparently became absorbed in deep contemplation and
said aloud: "There is no danger; man is surrounded by divine love;
there is no matter; all is spirit and manifestation of spirit."
You might at first find difficulty in believing what can be
accomplished by "demonstrations" such as this; not merely are
two-horse power oil engines made to work, but the whole gigantic
machine of Prussian militarism is prevented from working. You may
recall how Arthur Machen's magazine story of the Angels of Mons was
taken up and made into a Catholic legend over-night; now here is a
New-Nonsense legend, complete and perfect, going the rounds of our
Nonsense magazines:
London, Dec. 14.--Shell-proof and bullet-proof soldiers have
been discovered on the European battle-fronts. Heroes with
"charmed lives" are being made every day, according to
Frederick L. Rawson, a London scientist, who insists he has
found the miraculous way by which they are developed. He
calls it "audible treatment". "Practical utilization of the
powers of God by right thinking," is the agency through
which Dr. Rawson declares he can so treat a man that he will
not be harmed when hundreds of men are being shot dead
beside him. This amazing treatment includes a new type of
prayer. It is being administered to hundreds of men audibly,
and to hundreds more by letter. Nothing since the war began
has aroused so much talk of modern miracles as have many of
the statements of Dr. Rawson....
At the taking of a wood there were five hundred yards of "No
Man's Land" to be crossed. Our troops could not get across.
Then Capt.----, who practices this method of prayer, treated
them for an hour before they started, and not a man was
knocked out. He was the only officer left out of eighty in
his brigade. He simply held onto the fact that man is
spiritual and perfect and could not be touched. A bullet
fired from a revolver only five yards away hit him over the
chest, tore his shirt and went out at the shoulder. But it
never penetrated his chest. He was frequently in a hail of
shells and bullets which did not touch him.
#The Graft of Grace#
All this is grotesque; but it is what happens to religions in a world
of commercial competition. It happens not merely to Christian Science
and New Thought religions, Mazdaznan and Zionist, Holy Roller and
Mormon religions, but to Catholic and Episcopalian, Presbyterian and
Methodist and Baptist religions. For you see, when you are with the
wolves you must howl with them; when you are competing with fakirs you
must fake. The ordinary Christian will read the claims of the New
Thought fakers with contempt; but have I not shown the Catholic Church
publishing long lists of money-miracles? Have I not shown the Church
of Good Society, our exclusive and aristocratic Protestant Episcopal
communion, pretending to call rain and to banish pestilence, to
protect crops and win wars and heal those who are "sick in
estate"--that is, who are in business trouble?
The reader will say that I am a cynic, despising my fellows; but that
is not so. I am an economic scientist, analyzing the forces which
operate in human societies. I blame the prophets and priests and
healers for their fall from idealism; but I blame still more the
competitive wage-system, which presents them with the alternative to
swindle or to starve.
For, you see, the prophet has to have food. He has frequently got
along with almost none, and with only a rag for clothing; in Palestine
and India, where the climate is warm, a sincere faith has been
possible for short periods. But the modern prophet who expects to
influence the minds of men has to have books and newspapers; he will
find a telephone and a typewriter and postage-stamps hardly to be
dispensed with, also in Europe and America some sort of a roof over
his meeting place. So the prophet is caught, like all the rest of us,
in the net of the speculator and the landlord. He has to get money,
and in order to get it he has to impress those who already have
it--people whose minds and souls have been deformed by the system of
parasitism and exploitation.
So the prophet becomes a charlatan; or, if he refuses, he becomes a
martyr, and founds a church which becomes a church of charlatans. I
care not how sincere, how passionately proletarian a religious prophet
may be, that is the fate which sooner or later befalls him in a
competitive society--to be the founder of an organization of fools,
conducted by knaves, for the benefit of wolves. That fate befell
Buddha and Jesus, it befell Ignatius Loyola and Francis of Assisi,
John Fox and John Calvin and John Wesley.
A friend of mine who has made a study of "Spiritualism" describes to
me the conditions in that field. The mediums are people, mostly women,
with a peculiar gift; whether we believe in the survival of
personality, or whether we call it telepathy, does not alter the fact
that they have a rare and special sensitiveness, a new faculty which
science must investigate. They come, poor people mostly--for the
well-to-do will seldom give their time to exacting and wearisome
experiments. They come, wearing frayed and thin clothing, shivering
with cold, obviously undernourished; and their survival depends upon
their producing "phenomena"--which phenomena are capricious, and will
not come at call. So, what more natural than that mediums should
resort to faking? That the whole field should be reeking with fraud,
and science should be held back from understanding an extraordinary
power of the subconscious mind?
Ever since we came to Pasadena, various ladies have been telling us
about the wondrous powers of a mulatto-woman, a manicurist at the
city's most fashionable hotel. The other day, out of curiosity, my
wife and I went; the moment the "medium" opened her mouth my wife
recognized her as the person who has been trying for several months to
get me on the telephone to tell me how the spirit of Jack London is
seeking to communicate with me! The #séance# was a public one, a
gathering composed, half of wealthy and cultured society-women, and
half of confederates, people with the dialect and manners of a
vaudeville troupe. A megaphone was set in the middle of the floor, the
room was made dark, a couple of hymns were sung, and then the spirit
of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke through the megaphone with a Bowery
accent, and gave communications from relatives and friends of the
various confederates. "Jesus is with us", said Dr. Holmes. "The spirit
of Jesus bids you to study spiritualism." And then came the voice of a
child: "Mamma! Mamma!" "It is little Georgie!" cried Dr. Holmes; and
one of the society ladies started, and answered, and presently burst
into tears. A marvelous piece of evidence--especially when you recall
that the story of this mother's bereavement had been published in all
the papers a couple of months before!
And this kind of swindling is going on every night in every city of
America. It goes on wholesale for months every summer at Lily Dale, in
New York State, where the spiritualists hold their combination of
Chautauqua and Coney Island. And the same thing is going on in the
field of mental healing, and of all other "occult" forces and powers,
whether real or imaginary. It is going on with new spiritual fervors,
new moral idealisms, new poetry, new music, new painting, new
sculpture. The faker, the charlatan is everywhere--using the mental
and moral and artistic forces of life as a means of delivering himself
from economic servitude. Everywhere I turn I see it--credulity being
exploited, and men of practical judgment, watching the game and seeing
through it, made hard in their attitude of materialism. How many men I
know who sit by in sullen protest while their wives drift from one new
quackery to another, wasting their income seeking health and happiness
in futile emotionalism! How many kind and sensitive spirits I
know--both men and women--who pour their treasures of faith and
admiration into the laps of hierophants who began by fooling all
mankind and ended by fooling themselves!
In each one of the cults of what I have called the "Church of the
Quacks", there are thousands, perhaps millions of entirely sincere,
self-sacrificing people. They will read this book--if anyone can
persuade them to read it--with pain and anger; thinking that I am
mocking at their faith, and have no appreciation of their devotion.
All that I can say is that I am trying to show them how they are being
trapped, how their fine and generous qualities are being used by
exploiters of one sort or another; and how this must continue, world
without end, until there is order in the material affairs of the race,
until justice has been established as the law of man's dealing with
his fellows.
* * * * *
#BOOK SEVEN#
#The Church of the Social Revolution#
They have taken the tomb of our Comrade Christ--
Infidel hordes that believe not in man;
Stable and stall for his birth sufficed,
But his tomb is built on a kingly plan.
They have hedged him round with pomp and parade,
They have buried him deep under steel and stone--
But we come leading the great Crusade
To give our Comrade back to his own.
Waddell.
* * * * *
#Christ and Caesar#
In the most deeply significant of the legends concerning Jesus, we are
told how the devil took him up into a high mountain and showed him all
the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and the devil said unto
him: "All this power will I give unto thee, and the glory of them, for
that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If
thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine." Jesus, as we
know, answered and said "Get thee behind me, Satan!" And he really
meant it; he would have nothing to do with worldly glory, with
"temporal power;" he chose the career of a revolutionary agitator, and
died the death of a disturber of the peace. And for two or three
centuries his church followed in his footsteps, cherishing his
proletarian gospel. The early Christians had "all things in common,
except women;" they lived as social outcasts, hiding in deserted
catacombs, and being thrown to lions and boiled in oil.
But the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one defeat, for
he knows human nature, and the strength of the forces which battle for
him. He failed to get Jesus, but he came again, to get Jesus' church.
He came when, through the power of the new revolutionary idea, the
Church had won a position of tremendous power in the decaying Roman
Empire; and the subtle worm assumed the guise or no less a person than
the Emperor himself, suggesting that he should become a convert to the
new faith, so that the Church and he might work together for the
greater glory of God. The bishops and fathers of the Church, ambitious
for their organization, fell for this scheme, and Satan went off
laughing to himself. He had got everything he had asked from Jesus
three hundred years before; he had got the world's greatest religion.
How complete and swift was his success you may judge from the fact
that fifty years later we find the Emperor Valentinian compelled to
pass an edict limiting the donations of emotional females to the
church in Rome!
From that time on Christianity has been what I have shown in this
book, the chief of the enemies of social progress. From the days of
Constantine to the days of Bismarck and Mark Hanna, Christ and Caesar
have been one, and the Church has been the shield and armor of
predatory economic might. With only one qualification to be noted:
that the Church has never been able to suppress entirely the memory of
her proletarian Founder. She has done her best, of course; we have
seen how her scholars twist his words out of their sense, and the
Catholic Church even goes so far as to keep to the use of a dead
language, so that her victims may not hear the words of Jesus in a
form they can understand.
'Tis well that such seditious songs are sung Only by
priests, and in the Latin tongue!
But in spite of this, the history of the Church has been one incessant
struggle with upstarts and rebels who have filled themselves with the
spirit of the Magnificat and the Sermon on the Mount, and of that
bitterly class-conscious proletarian, James, the brother of Jesus.
And here is the thing to be noted, that the factor which has given
life to Christianity, which enables it to keep its hold on the hearts
of men today, is precisely this new wine of faith and fervor which has
been poured into it by generation after generation of poor men who
live like Jesus as outcasts, and die like Jesus as criminals, and are
revered like Jesus as founders and saints. The greatest of the early
Church fathers were bitterly fought by the Church authorities of their
own time. St. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, was turned out of
office, exiled and practically martyred; St. Basil was persecuted by
the Emperor Valens; St. Ambrose excommunicated the tyrannical Emperor
Theodosius; St. Cyprian gave all his wealth to the poor, and was
exiled and finally martyred. In the same way, most of the heretics
whom the Holy Inquisition tortured and burned were proletarian rebels;
the saints whom the Church reveres, the founders of the orders which
gave it life for century after century, were men who sought to return
to the example of the carpenter's son. Let us hear a Christian scholar
on this point, Prof. Rauschenbusch:
The movement of Francis of Assisi, of the Waldenses, of the
Humiliati and Bons Hommes, were all inspired by democratic
and communistic ideals. Wiclif was by far the greatest
doctrinal reformer before the reformation; but his eyes,
too, were first opened to the doctrinal errors of the Roman
Church by joining in a great national and patriotic movement
against the alien domination and extortion of the Church.
The Bohemian revolt, made famous by the name of John Huss,
was quite as much political and social as religious.
Savonarola was a great democrat as well as a religious
prophet. In his famous interview with the dying Lorenzo de
Medici he made three demands as a condition for granting
absolution. Of the man he demanded a living faith in God's
mercy. Of the millionaire he demanded restitution of his
ill-gotten wealth. Of the political usurper he demanded the
restoration of the liberties of the people of Florence. It
is significant that the dying sinner found it easy to assent
to the first, hard to assent to the second, and impossible
to concede the last.
#Locusts and Wild Honey#
This proletarian strain in Christianity goes back to a time long
before Jesus; it seems to have been inherent in the religious
character of the Jews--that stubborn independence, that stiff-necked
insistence on the right of a man to interview God for himself and to
find out what God wants him to do; also the inclination to find that
God wants him to oppose earthly rulers and their plundering of the
poor. What is it that gives to the Bible the vitality it has today?
Its literary style? To say that is to display the ignorance of the
cultured; for elevation of style is a by-product of passionate
conviction; it is what the Jewish writers had to say, and not the way
they said it, that has given them their hold upon mankind. Was it
their insistence upon conscience, their fear of God as the beginning
of wisdom? But that same element appears in the Babylonian psalms,
which are as eloquent and as sincere as those of the Hebrews, yet are
read only by scholars. Was it their sense of the awful presence of
divinity, of the soul immortal in its keeping? The Egyptians had that
far more than the Hebrews, and yet we do not cherish their religious
books. Or was it the love of man for all things living, the lesson of
charity upon which the Catholics lay such stress? The gentle Buddha
had that, and had it long before Christ; also his priests had
metaphysical subtlety, greater than that of John the Apostle or Thomas
Aquinas.
No, there is one thing and one only which distinguishes the Hebrew
sacred writings from all others, and that is their insistent note of
proletarian revolt, their furious denunciations of exploiters, and of
luxury and wantonness, the vices of the rich. Of that note the
Assyrian and Chaldean and Babylonian writing contain not a trace, and
the Egyptian hardly enough to mention. The Hindoos had a trace of it;
but the true, natural-born rebels of all time were the Hebrews. They
were rebels against oppression in ancient Judea, as they are today in
Petrograd and New York; the spirit of equality and brotherhood which
spoke through Ezekiel and Amos and Isaiah, through John the Baptist
and Jesus and James, spoke in the last century through Marx and
Lassalle and Jaures, and speaks today through Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky and Israel Zangwill and Morris Hillquit and
Abraham Cahan and Emma Goldman and the Joseph Fels endowment.
The legal rate of interest throughout the Babylonian Empire was 20%;
the laws of Manu permitted 24%, while the laws of the Egyptians only
stepped in to prevent more than 100%. But listen to this Hebrew law:
If thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee,
then thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a stranger or
a sojourner, that he may live with thee: Take thou no
interest of him, or increase; but fear thy God that thy
brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him any
money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.
And so on, forbidding that Hebrews be sold as bond servants, and
commanding that at the end of fifty years all debtors shall have their
debts forgiven and their lands returned to them. And note that this is
not the raving of agitators, the demand of a minority party; it is the
law of the Hebrew land.
There has been of late a great deal of new discovery concerning the
early Jews. Conrad Noel summarizes the results as follows:
The land-mark law, which sternly forbids encroachment upon
peasant rights; consideration for the foreigner; additional
sanitary and food laws; tithe regulations on behalf of
widows, orphans, foreigners, etc.; that those who have no
economic independence should eat and be satisfied; that
loans should be given cheerfully, not only without any
interest, but even at the risk of losing the principal. To
withhold a loan because the year of release is at hand in
which the principal is no longer recoverable, is described
as a grave sin. When you are compelled to free your slaves,
you must give them sufficient capital to embark upon some
industry which shall prevent their falling back into
slavery. A number of holidays are insisted upon. There must
be no more crushing of the poor out of existence, for God
cares for these people who have been driven to poverty, and
they shall never cease out of the land. Howbeit there shall
be no poor with you, for the Lord will bless you, if you
will obey these laws.
But then prosperity came, and culture, which meant contact with the
capitalist ideas of the heathen empires. The Jews fell from the stern
justice of their fathers; and so came the prophets, wild-eyed men of
the people, clad in camel's hair and living upon locusts and wild
honey, breaking in upon priests and kings and capitalists with their
furious denunciations. And always they incited to class war and social
disturbance. I quote Conrad Noel again:
Nathan and Gad had been David's political advisers, Abijah
had stirred Jeroboam to revolt, Elijah had resisted Ahab,
Elisha had fanned the rebellion of Jehu, Amos thunders
against the misrule of the king of Israel, Isaiah denounces
the landlords and the usurers, Micah charges them with
blood-guiltiness; Jeremiah and the latter prophets, though
they strike a more intimate note of personal repentance,
strike it as the prelude to that national restoration for
which they hunger as exiles.
The first chapters of Isaiah are typical of the Old
Testament point of view. Just as the prophets of the
nineteenth century thundered against the "Christian"
employers of Lancashire, and told them their houses were
cemented with the blood of little children, so Isaiah cries
against his generation: "Your governing classes companion
with thieves; behold you build up Sion with blood." Their
ceremonial and their Sabbath keeping are an abomination to
God. "When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes
from you. Your hands are full of blood." The poor man is
robbed. The rich exact usury. "Woe unto you that lay house
to house and field to field, that ye may dwell alone in the
midst of the land." "Wash you, make you clean, put away the
evil of your doing from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed,
judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, let us
reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be
blood-colored, they shall be as white as snow; though they
be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing
and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. But if ye
refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured by the sword.
#Mother Earth#
And nowadays we have the Socialist and Anarchist agitators, following
the same tradition, possessed by the same dream as the ancient Hebrew
prophets. I have mentioned Emma Goldman; it may be that the reader is
not familiar with her writings, and does not realize how very Biblical
she is, both in point of view and style. Let me quote a few sentences
from a recent issue of her paper, "Mother Earth", on the subject of
our ruling classes and their social responsibility:
Yes, you idle rich, you may howl about what we mean to do to you!
Your riches are rotten and your fine clothes are falling from your
backs. Your stocks and bonds are so tainted that the ink on them
should turn to acid and eat holes in your pockets and your skins. You
have piled up your dirty millions, but what wages have you paid to the
poor devils of farm hands you have robbed? And do you imagine they
won't remember it when the revolution comes? You loll on soft couches
and amuse yourselves with your mistresses; you think you are "it" and
the world is yours. You send militiamen and shoot down our organizers,
and we are helpless. But wait, comrades, our time is coming.
Doubtless the reader is well satisfied that the author of this tirade
is now in jail, where she can no longer defy the laws of good taste.
They always put the ancient prophets in jail; that is the way to know
a prophet when you meet him. Let me quote another prophet who is now
behind bars--Alexander Berkman, in his "Prison Memoirs of an
Anarchist", discussing the same subject of plutocratic pretension:
Tell me, you four hundred, where did you get it? Who gave it
to you? Your grandfather, you say? Your father? Can you go
all the way back and show there is no flaw anywhere in your
title? I tell you that the beginning and the root of your
wealth is necessarily in injustice. And why? Because Nature
did not make this man rich and that man poor from the start.
Nature does not intend for one man to have capital and
another to be a wage-slave. Nature made the earth to be
cultivated by all. The idea we Anarchists have of the rich
is of highwaymen, standing in the street and robbing every
one that passes.
Or take "Big Bill" Haywood, chief of the I.W.W. Hear what he has to
say in a pamphlet addressed to the harvest-hands he is seeking to
organize:
How much farther do you plutes expect to go with your
grabbing? Do you want to be the only people left on earth?
Why else do you drive out the workers from all share in
Nature, and claim everything for yourselves? The earth was
made for all, rich and poor alike; where do you get your
title deeds to it? Nature gave everything for all men to use
alike; it is only your robbery which makes your so-called
"ownership". Capital has no rights. The land belongs to
Nature, and we are all Nature's sons.
Or take Eugene V. Debs, three times candidate of the Socialist Party
for President. I quote from one of his pamphlets:
The propertied classes are like people who go into a public
theatre and refuse to let anyone else come in, treating as
private property what is meant for social use. If each man
would take only what he needs, and leave the balance to
those who have nothing, there would be no rich and no poor.
The rich man is a thief.
I might go on citing such quotations for many pages; but I know that
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and Bill Haywood and Gene Debs may
read this book, and I don't want them to close it in the middle and
throw it at me. Therefore let me hasten to explain my poor joke; the
sentiments I have been quoting are not those of our modern agitators,
but of another group of ancient ones. The first is not from Emma
Goldman, nor did I find it in "Mother Earth". I found it in the
Epistle of James, believed by orthodox authorities to have been James,
the brother of Jesus. It is exactly what he wrote--save that I have
put it into modern phrases, and changed the swing of the sentences, in
order that those familiar with the Bible might read it without
suspicion. The second passage is not in the writings of Alexander
Berkman, but in those of St. John Chrysostom, most famous of the early
fathers, who lived 374-407. The third is not from the pen of "Big
Bill" but from that of St. Ambrose, a father of the Latin Church,
340-397, and the fourth is not by Comrade Debs, but by St. Basil of
the Greek Church, 329-379. And if the reader objects to my having
fooled him for a minute or two, what will he say to the Christian
Church, which has been fooling him for sixteen hundred years?
#The Soap Box#
This book will be denounced from one end of Christendom to the other
as the work of a blasphemous infidel. Yet it stands in the direct line
of the Christian tradition: written by a man who was brought up in the
Church, and loved it with all his heart and soul, and was driven out
by the formalists and hypocrites in high places; a man who thinks of
Jesus more frequently and with more devotion than he thinks of any
other man that lives or has ever lived on earth; and who has but one
purpose in all that he says and does, to bring into reality the dream
that Jesus dreamed of peace on earth and good will toward men.
I will go farther yet and say that not merely is this book written for
the cause of Jesus, but it is written in the manner of Jesus. We read
his bitter railings at the Pharisees, and miss the point entirely,
because the word Pharisee has become to us a word of reproach. But
this is due solely to Jesus; in his time the word was a holy word, it
meant the most orthodox and respectable, the ultra high-church
devotees of Jerusalem. The way to get the spirit of the tirades of
Jesus is to do with him what we did with the early church
fathers--translate him into American. This time, since the reader
shares the secret, it will not be necessary to disguise the Bible
style, and we may follow the text exactly. Let me try the twenty-third
chapter of Matthew, omitting seven verses which refer to subtleties of
Hebrew casuistry, for which we should have to go to Lyman Abbott or
St. Alphonsus to find a parallel:
Then Jesus mounted upon a soap-box, and began a speech,
saying, The doctors of divinity and Episcopalians fill the
Fifth Avenue churches; and it would be all right if you were
to listen to what they preach, and do that; but don't follow
their actions, for they never practice what they preach.
They load the backs of the working-classes with crushing
burdens, but they themselves never move a finger to carry a
burden, and everything they do is for show. They wear
frock-coats and silk hats on Sundays, and they sit at the
speakers' table at the banquets of the Civic Federation, and
they occupy the best pews in the churches, and their doings
are reported in all the papers; they are called leading
citizens and pillars of the church. But don't you be called
leading citizens, for the only useful man is the man who
produces. (Applause). And whoever exalts himself shall be
abased, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.
Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and Catholics, hypocrites!
for you shut up the kingdom of Heaven against men; you don't
go in yourself and you don't let others go in. Woe unto you,
doctors of divinity and Presbyterians, hypocrites! for you
foreclose mortgages on widows' houses, and for a pretense
you make long prayers. For this you will receive the greater
damnation! Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and Methodists,
hypocrites! for you send missionaries to Africa to make one
convert, and when you have made him, he is twice as much a
child of hell as yourselves. (Applause). Woe unto you, blind
guides, with your subtleties of doctrine, your
transubstantiation and consubstantiation and all the rest of
it; you fools and blind! Woe unto you, doctors of divinity
and Episcopalians, hypocrites! for you drop your checks into
the collection-plate and you pay no heed to the really
important things in the Bible, which are justice and mercy
and faith in goodness. You blind guides, who strain at a
gnat and swallow a camel! (Laughter). Woe unto you, doctors
of divinity and Anglicans, hypocrites! for you bathe
yourselves and dress in immaculate clothing but within you
are full of extortion and excess. You blind high churchmen,
clean first your hearts, so that the clothes you wear may
represent you. Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and
Baptists, hypocrites! for you are like marble tombs which
appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead
men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so you appear
righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and
iniquity. (Applause). Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and
Unitarians, hypocrites! because you erect statues to dead
reformers, and put wreathes upon the tombs of old-time
martyrs. You say, if we had been alive in those days, we
would not have helped to kill those good men. That ought to
show you how to treat us at present. (Laughter). But you are
the children of those who killed the good men; so go ahead
and kill us too! You serpents, you generation of vipers, how
can you escape the damnation of hell?
At this point, according to the report published in the Jerusalem
"Times", a police sergeant stepped up to the orator and notified him
that he was under arrest; he submitted quietly, but one of his
followers attempted to use a knife, and was severely clubbed. Jesus
was taken to the station-house followed by a riotous throng, and held
upon a charge of disorderly conduct. Next morning the Rev. Dr.
Caiaphas of Old Trinity appeared against him, and Magistrate Pilate
sentenced him to six months on Blackwell's Island, remarking that from
this time on he proposed to make an example of those soap-box orators
who persist in using threatening and abusive language. Just as the
prisoner was being led away, a detective appeared with a requisition
from the Governor, ordering that Jesus be taken to San Francisco,
where he is under indictment for murder in the first degree, it being
charged that his teachings helped to incite the Preparedness Day
explosion.
#The Church Machine#
The Catholics of His time came to Jesus and said, "Master, we would
have a sign of Thee"--meaning that they wanted him to do some magic,
to prove to their vulgar minds that his power came from God. He
answered by calling them an evil and adulterous generation--which is
exactly what I have said about the Papal machine. The Baptists and
Methodists and Presbyterians and other book-worshippers of his time
accused him of violating the sacred commands so definitely set down in
their ancient texts, and to them he answered that the Sabbath was made
for man and not man for the Sabbath; he called them hypocrites, and
quoted Karl Marx at them--"This people honoreth me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me." Because he despised the company of
the respectables, and went among the humble and human folk of his own
class in the places where they gathered--the public houses--the
churchly scandal-mongers called him "a man gluttonous and a
wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners"--precisely as in the
old days they used to sneer at the Socialists for having their
meetings in the backrooms of saloons, and precisely as they still
denounce us as free-lovers and atheists.
But the longing for justice between man and man, which is the Kingdom
of Heaven on earth, is the deepest instinct of the human heart, and
the voice of the carpenter cannot be confined within the thickest
church-walls, nor drowned by all the pealing organs in Christendom.
Even in these days, when the power of Mammon is more widespread, more
concentrated and more systematized than ever before in history--even
in these days of Morgan and Rockefeller, there are Christian clergymen
who dare to preach as Jesus preached. One by one they are cast out of
the Church--Father McGlynn, George D. Herron, Alexander Irvine, J.
Stitt Wilson, Austin Adams, Algernon Crapsey, Bouck White; but their
voices are not silenced, they are like the leaven, to which Jesus
compared the kingdom of God--a woman took it and hid it in three
measures of meal till the whole was leavened. The young theological
students read, and some of them understand; I know three brothers in
one family who have just gone into the Church, and are preaching
straight social revolution--and the scribes and the pharisees have not
yet dared to cast them out.
In this book I have portrayed the Christian Church as the servant and
henchman of Big Business, a part of the system of Mammon. Every church
is necessarily a money machine, holding and administering property.
And it is not alone the Catholic Church which is in politics, seeking
favors from the state--the exemption of church property from taxation,
exemption of ministers from military service, free transportation for
them and their families on the railroads, the control of charity and
education, laws to deprive people of amusements on Sunday--so on
through a long list. As the churches have to be built with money, you
find that in them the rich possess the control and demand the
deference, while the poor are humble, and in their secret hearts
jealous and bitter; in other words, the class struggle is in the
churches, as everywhere else in the world, and the social revolution
is coming in the churches, just as it is coming in industry.
It is a fact of deep significance that the majority of ministers are
proletarians, eking out their existence upon a miserable salary, and
beholden in all their comings and goings to the wealthy holders of
privilege. Even in the Roman Catholic Church that is true. The
ordinary priest is a man of the working class, and knows what working
people suffer and feel. So in the Catholic Church there are
proletarian rebellions; there is many a priest who does not carry out
the political orders of his superiors, but goes to the polls and votes
for his class instead of for his pope. In Ireland, as I write, the
young priests are defying their bishops and joining the Sinn Fein, a
non-religious movement for an Irish Republic.
What is it that keeps the average workingman in subjection to the
exploiter? Simply terror, the terror of losing his job. And if you
could get into the inmost soul of Christian ministers, you would find
that precisely the same force is keeping many of them slaves to
Tradition. They are educated men, and thousands of them must resent
the dilemma which compels them to be either fools or hypocrites. They
have caught enough of the spirit of their time not to enjoy having to
pose as miracle-mongers, rain-makers and witch-doctors; they would
like to say frankly that they do not believe that Jonah ever swallowed
the whale, and even that they are dubious about Hercules and Achilles
and other demigods. But they are part of a machine, and the old men
and the rich men who run the machine have laid down the law. Those who
find themselves tempted to think, remember suddenly that they have
wives and children; they have only one profession, they have been
unfitted for any other by a life-time of study of dead things, as well
as by the practice of altruism.
But now the Social Revolution is coming; coming upon swift wings--it
may be here before this book sees the light. And who knows but then we
may see in America that wonderful sight which we saw in Russia, when
Christian monks assembled and burned their holy books, and petitioned
the state to take them in as citizens and human beings? It is my
belief that when the power of exploitation is broken, we shall see the
Dead Hand crumble into dust, as a mummy crumbles when it is exposed to
the air. All those men who stay in the Church and pretend to believe
nonsense, because it affords an easy way to earn a living, will
suddenly realize that it is possible to earn a living outside; that
any man can go into a factory, clean and well-ventilated and humanly
run, and by four hours work can earn the purchasing power of ten or
fifteen dollars. Do you not think that there may be some who will
choose freedom and self-respect on those terms?
And what of those thousands and tens of thousands who join the church
because it is a part of the regime of respectability, a way to make
the acquaintance of the rich, to curry favor and obtain promotion, to
get customers if you are a tradesman, to extend your practice if you
are a professional man? And what about the millions who go to church
because they are poor, and because life is a desperate struggle, and
this is one way to keep the favor of the boss, to get a little better
chance for the children, to get charity if you fall into need; in
short, to acquire influence with the well-to-do and powerful, who
stand together, and like to see the poor humble and reverent,
contented in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call
them?
#The Church Redeemed#
Do I mean that I expect to see the Church--all churches--perish and
pass away? I do not, for I believe that the Church answers one of the
fundamental needs of man. The Social Revolution will abolish poverty
and parasitism, it will make temptations fewer, and the soul's path
through life much easier; but it will not remove the necessity of
struggle for individual virtue, it will only clear the way for the
discovery of newer and higher types of virtue. Men will gather more
than ever in beautiful places to voice their love of life and of one
another; but the places in which they gather will be places swept
clean of superstition and tyranny. As the Reformation compelled the
Catholic Church to cleanse itself and abolish the grossest of its
abuses, so the Social Revolution will compel it to repudiate its
defense of parasitism and exploitation. I will record the prophecy
that by the year 1950 all Catholic authorities will be denying that
the Church ever opposed Socialism--true Socialism; just as today they
deny that the Church ever tortured Galileo, ever burned men for
teaching that the earth moves around the sun, ever sold the right to
commit crime, ever gave away the New World to Spain and Portugal, ever
buried newly-born infants in the cellars of nunneries.
The Social Revolution will compel all churches, Christian, Hebrew,
Buddhist, Confucian, or what you will, to drive out their formalists
and traditionalists. If there is any church that refuses so to adapt
itself, the swift progress of enlightenment and freedom will leave it
without followers. But in the great religions, which have a soul of
goodness and sincerity, we may be sure that reformers will arise,
prophets and saints who, as of old, will preach the living word of
God. In many churches today we can see the beginning of that new
Counter-Reformation. Even in the Catholic Church there is a
"modernist" rebellion; read the books of the "Sillon", and Fogazzaro's
trilogy of novels, "The Saint", and you will see a genuine and vital
protest against the economic corruption of the Church. In America, the
"Knights of Slavery" have been forced by public pressure to support a
"War for Democracy", and even to compete with the Y.M.C.A. in the
training camps. They are doing good work, I am told.
This gradual conquest of the old religiosity by the spirit of modern
common sense is shown most interestingly in the Salvation Army.
William Booth was a man with a great heart, who took his life into his
hands and went out with a bass-drum to save the lost souls of the
slums. He was stoned and jailed, but he persisted, and brought his
captives to Jesus---
Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath,
Unwashed legions with the ways of death.
Incidentally the "General" learned to know his slum population. He had
not wanted to engage in charity and material activities; he feared
hypocrisy and corruption. But in his writings he lets us see how
utterly impossible it is for a man of real heart to do anything for
the souls of the slum-dwellers without at the same time helping their
diseased and hunger-racked bodies. So the Salvation army was forced
into useful work--old clothes depots, nights lodgings, Christmas
dinners, farm colonies--until today the bare list of the various kinds
of enterprises it carries on fills three printed pages. It is all done
with the money of the rich, and is tainted by subservience to
authority, but no one can deny that it is better than "Gibson's
Preservative", and the fox-hunting parsons filling themselves with
port.
And in Protestant Churches the advance has been even greater. Here and
there you will find a real rebel, hanging onto his job and preaching
the proletarian Jesus; while even the great Fifth Avenue churches are
making attempts at "missions" and "settlements" in the slums. The more
vital churches are gradually turning themselves into societies for the
practical betterment of their members. Their clergy are running boys
clubs and sewing-schools for girls, food conservation lectures for
mothers, social study clubs for men. You get prayer-meetings and
psalm-singing along with this; but here is the fact that hangs always
before the clergyman's face--that with prayer-meetings and
psalm-singing alone he has a hard time, while with clubs and
educational societies and social reforms he thrives.
And now the War has broken upon the world, and caught the churches,
like everything else, in its mighty current; the clergy and the
congregations are confronted by pressing national needs, they are
forced to take notice of a thousand new problems, to engage in a
thousand practical activities. No one can see the end of this--any
more than he can see the end of the vast upheaval in politics and
industry. But we who are trained in revolutionary thought can see the
main outlines of the future. We see that in these new church
activities the clergy are inspired by things read, not in ancient
Hebrew texts, but in the daily newspapers. They are responding to the
actual, instant needs of their boys in the trenches and the camps; and
this is bound to have an effect upon their psychology. Just as we can
say that an English girl who leaves the narrow circle of her old life,
and goes into a munition factory and joins a union and takes part in
its debates, will never after be a docile home-slave; so we can say
that the clergyman who helps in Y.M.C.A. work in France, or in Red
Cross organization in America, will be less the bigot and formalist
forever after. He will have learned, in spite of himself, to adjust
means to ends; he will have learned co-operation and social solidarity
by the method which modern educators most favor--by doing. Also he
will have absorbed a mass of ideas in news despatches from over the
world. He is forced to read these despatches carefully, because the
fate of his own boys is involved; and we Socialists will see to it
that the despatches are well filled with propaganda!
#The Desire of Nations#
So the churches, like all the rest of the world, are caught in the
great revolutionary current, and swept on towards a goal which they do
not forsee, and from which they would shrink in dismay: the Church of
the future, the Church redeemed by the spirit of Brotherhood, the
Church which we Socialists will join. They call us materialists, and
say that we think about nothing but the belly--and that is true, in a
way; because we are the representatives of a starving class, which
thinks about its belly precisely as does any individual who is
ravening with hunger. But give us what that arrant materialist, James,
the brother of Jesus, calls "those things which are needful to the
body," and then we will use our minds, and even discover that we have
souls; whereas at present we are led to despise the very word
"spiritual", which has become the stock-in-trade of parasites and
poseurs.
We have children, whom we love, and whose future is precious to us. We
would be glad to have them trained in ways of decency and
self-control, of dignity and grace. It would make us happy if there
were in the world institutions conducted by men and women of
consecrated life who would specialize in teaching a true morality to
the young. But it must be a morality of freedom, not of slavery; a
morality founded upon reason, not upon superstition. The men who teach
it must be men who know what truth is, and the passionate loyalty
which the search for truth inspires. They cannot be the pitiful
shufflers and compromisers we see in the churches today, the Jowetts
who say they used to believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy
Ghost. Rather than trust our children to such shameless cynics, we
will make shift to train them ourselves--we amateurs, not knowing much
about children, and absorbed in the desperate struggle against
organized wrong.
It is a statement which many revolutionists would resent, yet it is a
fact nevertheless, that we need a new religion, need it just as badly
as any of the rest of our pitifully groping race. That we need it is
proven by the rivalries and quarrels in our midst--the schisms which
waste the greater part of our activities, and which are often the
result of personal jealousies and petty vanities. To lift men above
such weakness, to make them really brothers in a great cause--that is
the work of "personal religion" in the true and vital sense of the
words.
We pioneers and propagandists may not live to see the birth of the new
Church of Humanity; but our children will see it, and the dream of it
is in our hearts; our poets have sung of it with fervor and
conviction. Read these lines from "The Desire of Nations," by Edwin
Markham, in which he tells of the new Redeemer who is at hand:
And when he comes into the world gone wrong,
He will rebuild her beauty with a song.
To every heart he will its own dream be:
One moon has many phantoms in the sea.
Out of the North the norns will cry to men:
"Baldur the Beautiful has come again!"
The flutes of Greece will whisper from the dead:
"Apollo has unveiled his sunbright head!"
The stones of Thebes and Memphis will find voice:
"Osiris comes: Oh tribes of Time, rejoice!"
And social architects who build the State,
Serving the Dream at citadel and gate,
Will hail Him coming through the labor-hum.
And glad quick cries will go from man to man:
"Lo, He has come, our Christ the artisan,
The King who loved the lilies, He has come!"
#The Knowable#
The new religion will base itself upon the facts of life, as
demonstrated by experience and reason; for to the modern thinker the
basis of all interest is truth, and the wonders of the microscope and
the telescope, of the new psychology and the new sociology are more
wonderful than all the magic recorded in ancient Mythologies. And even
if this were not so, the business of the thinker is to follow the
facts. The history of all philosophy might be summed up in this
simile: The infant opens his eyes and sees the moon, and stretches out
his hands and cries for it; but those in charge do not give it to him,
and so after a while the infant tires of crying, and turns to his
mother's breast and takes a drink of milk.
Man demands to know the origin of life; it is intolerable for him to
be here, and not know how, or whence, or why. He demands the knowledge
immediately and finally, and invents innumerable systems and creeds.
He makes himself believe them, with fire and torture makes other men
believe them; until finally, in the confusion of a million theories,
it occurs to him to investigate his instruments, and he makes the
discovery that his tools are inadequate, and all their products
worthless. His mind is finite, while the thing he seeks is infinite;
his knowledge is relative, while the First Cause is absolute.
This realization we owe to Immanuel Kant, the father of modern
philosophy. In his famous "antinomies", he proved four propositions:
first, that the universe is limitless in time and space; second, that
matter is composed of simple, indivisible elements; third, that free
will is impossible; and fourth, that there must be an absolute or
first cause. And having proven these things, he turned round and
proved their opposites, with arguments exactly as unanswerable. Any
one who follows these demonstrations and understands them, takes all
his metaphysical learning and lays it on the shelf with his astrology
and magic.
It is a fact, which every one who wishes to think must get clear, that
when you are dealing with absolutes and ultimates, you can prove
whatever you want to prove. Metaphysics is like the fourth dimension;
you fly into it and come back upside down, hindside foremost, inside
out; and when you get tired of this condition, you take another
flight, and come back the way you were before. So metaphysical
thinking serves the purpose of Catholic cheats like Cardinal Newman
and Professor Chatterton-Hill; it serves hysterical women like
"Mother" Eddy; it serves the New-thoughters, who wish to fill their
bellies with wind; it serves the charlatans and mystagogs who wish to
befuddle the wits of the populace. Real thinkers avoid it as they
would a bottomless swamp; they avoid, not merely the idealism of
Platonists and Hegelians, but the monism of Haeckel, and the
materialism of Buechner and Jacques Loeb. The simple fact is that it
is as impossible to prove the priority of origin and the ultimate
nature of matter as it is of mind; so that the scientist who lays down
a materialist dogma is exactly as credulous as a Christian.
How then are we to proceed? Shall we erect the mystery into an
Unknowable, like Spencer, and call ourselves Agnostics with a capital
letter, like Huxley? Shall we follow Frederic Harrison, making an
inadequate divinity out of our impotence? I have read the books of the
"Positivists", and attended their imitation church in London, but I
did not get any satisfaction from them. In the midst of their dogmatic
pronouncements I found myself remembering how the egg falls apart and
reveals a chicken, how the worm suddenly discovers itself a butterfly.
The spirit of man is a breaker of barriers, and it seems a futile
occupation to set limits upon the future. Our business is not to say
what men will know ten thousand years from now, but to content
ourselves with the simple statement of what men know #now#. What we
know is a procession of phenomena called an environment; our life
being an act of adjustment to its changes, and our faith being the
conviction that this adjustment is possible and worth while.
In the beginning the guide is instinct, and the act of trust is
automatic. But with the dawn of reason the thinker has to justify his
faith; to convince himself that life is sincere, that there is
worth-whileness in being, or in seeking to be; that there is order in
creation, laws which can be discovered, processes which can be
applied. Just as the babe trusts life when it gropes for its mother's
breast, so the most skeptical of scientists trusts it when he declares
that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, and sets
it down for a certainty that this will always be so--that he is not
being played with by some sportive demon, who will today cause H20 to
behave like water, and tomorrow like benzine.
#Nature's Insurgent Son#
Life has laws, which it is possible to ascertain; and with each bit of
knowledge acquired, the environment is changed, the life becomes a new
thing. Consider, for example, what a different place the world became
to the man who discovered that the force which laid the forest in
ashes could be tamed and made to warm a cave and make wild grains
nutritious! In other words, man can create life, he can make the world
and himself into that which his reason decides it ought to be, The
means by which he does this is the most magical of all the tools he
has invented since his arboreal ancestor made the first club; the tool
of experimental science--and when one considers that this weapon has
been understood and deliberately employed for but two or three
centuries, he realizes that we are indeed only at the beginning of
human evolution.
To take command of life, to replace instincts by reasoned and
deliberate acts, to make the world a conscious and ordered
product--that is the task of man. Sir Ray Lankester has set this forth
with beautiful precision in his book, "The Kingdom of Man". We are, at
this time, in an uncomfortable and dangerous transition stage, as a
child playing with explosives. This child has found out how to alter
his environment in many startling ways, but he does not yet know why
he wishes to alter it, nor to what purpose. He finds that certain
things are uncomfortable, and these he proceeds immediately to change.
Discovering that grain fermented dispels boredom, he creates a race of
drunkards; discovering that foods can be produced in profusion, and
prepared in alluring combinations, he makes himself so many diseases
that it takes an encyclopedia to tell about them. Discovering that
captives taken in war can be made to work, he makes a procession of
empires, which are eaten through with luxury and corruption, and fall
into ruins again.
This is Nature's way; she produces without limit, groping blindly,
experimenting ceaselessly, eliminating ruthlessly. It takes a million
eggs to produce one salmon; it has taken a million million men to
produce one idea--algebra, or the bow and arrow, or democracy.
Nature's present impulse appears as a rebellion against her own
methods; man, her creature, will emancipate himself from her law, will
save himself from her blindness and her ruthlessness. He is "Nature's
insurgent son"; but, being the child of his mother, goes at the task
in her old blundering way. Some men are scheduled to elimination
because of defective eyesight; they are furnished with glasses, and
the breeding of defective eyes begins. The sickly or imbecile child
would perish at once in the course of Nature; it is saved in the name
of charity, and a new line of degenerates is started.
What shall we do? Return to the method of the Spartans, exposing our
sickly infants? We do not have to do anything so wasteful, because we
can replace the killing of the unfit by a scientific breeding which
will prevent the unfit from getting a chance at life. We can replace
instinct by self-discipline. We can substitute for the regime of
"Nature red in tooth and claw with ravin" the regime of man the
creator, knowing what he wishes to be and how to set about to be it.
Whether this can happen, whether the thing which we call civilization
is to be the great triumph of the ages, or whether the human race is
to go back into the melting pot, is a question being determined by an
infinitude of contests between enlightenment and ignorance: precisely
such a contest as occurs now, when you, the reader, encounter a man
who has thought his way out to the light, and comes to urge you to
perform the act of self-emancipation, to take up the marvellous new
tools of science, and to make yourself, by means of exact knowledge,
the creator of your own life and in part of the life of the race.
#The New Morality#
Life is a process of expansion, of the unfoldment of new powers;
driven by that inner impulse which the philosophers of Pragmatism call
the #élan vital#. Whenever this impulse has its way, there is an
emotion of joy; whenever it is balked, there is one of distress. So
pleasure and pain are the guides of life, and the final goal is a
condition of free and constantly accelerating growth, in which joy is
enduring.
That man will ever reach such a state is more than we can say. It is a
perfectly conceivable thing that tomorrow a comet may fall upon the
earth and wipe out all man's labor's. But on the other hand, it is a
conceivable thing that man may some day learn to control the movements
of comets, and even of starry systems. It seems certain that if he is
given time, he will make himself master of the forces of his immediate
environment---
The untamed giants of nature shall bow down---
The tides, the tempest and the lightning cease
From mockery and destruction, and be turned
Unto the making of the soul of man.
It is a conceivable thing that man may learn to create his food from
the elements without the slow processes of agriculture; it is
conceivable that he may master the bacteria which at present prey upon
his body, and so put an end to death. It is certain that he will
ascertain the laws of heredity, and create human qualities as he has
created the spurs of the fighting-cock and the legs of the greyhound.
He will find out what genius is, and the laws of its being, and the
tests whereby it may be recognized. In the new science of
psycho-analysis he has already begun the work of bringing an infinity
of subconsciousness into the light of day; it may be that in the
evidence of telepathy which the psychic researchers are accumulating,
he is beginning to grope his way into a universal consciousness, which
may come to include the joys and griefs of the inhabitants of Mars,
and of the dark stars which the spectroscope and the telescope are
disclosing.
All these are fascinating possibilities. What stands in the way of
their realization? Ignorance and superstition, fear and submission,
the old habits of rapine and hatred which man has brought with him
from his animal past. These make him a slave, a victim of himself and
of others; to root them out of the garden of the soul is the task of
the modern thinker.
The new morality is thus a morality of freedom. It teaches that man is
the master, or shall become so; that there is no law, save the law of
his own being, no check upon his will save that which he himself
imposes.
The new morality is a morality of joy. It teaches that true pleasure
is the end of being, and the test of all righteousness.
The new morality is a morality of reason. It teaches that there is no
authority above reason; no possibility of such authority, because if
such were to appear, reason would have to judge it, and accept or
reject it.
The new morality is a morality of development. It teaches that there
can no more be an immutable law of conduct, than there can be an
immutable position for the steering-wheel of an aeroplane. The
business of the pilot of an aeroplane is to keep his machine aloft
amid shifting currents of wind. The business of a moralist is to
adjust life to a constantly changing environment. An action which was
suicide yesterday becomes heroism today, and futility or hypocrisy
tomorrow.
This new morality, like all things in a world of strife, is fighting
for existence, using its own weapons, which are reason and love.
Obviously it can use no others, without self-destruction; yet it has
to meet enemies who fight with the old weapons of force and fraud.
Whether it will prevail is more than any prophet can say. Perhaps it
is too much to ask that it should succeed--this insolent effort of the
pigmy man to leap upon the back of his master and fit a bridle into
his mouth. Perhaps it is nothing but a dream in the minds of a few,
the scientists and poets and inventors, the dreamers of the race.
Perhaps the nerve of the pigmy will fail him at the critical moment,
and he will fall from the back of his master, and under his master's
hoofs.
The hour of the decision is now; for this we can see plainly, and as
scientists we can proclaim it--the human race is in a swift current of
degeneration, which a new morality alone can check. The struggle is at
its height in our time; if it fails, if the fibre of the race
continues to deteriorate, the soul of the race to be eaten out by
poverty and luxury, by insanity and disease, by prostitution, crime
and war--then mankind will slip back into the abyss, the untamed
giants of Nature will resume their ancient sway, and the tides, the
tempest and the lightning will sweep the earth clean again. I do not
believe that this calamity will befall us. I know that in the diseased
social body the forces of resistance are gathering--the Socialist
movement, in the broad sense--the activities of all who believe in the
possibility of reconstructing society upon a basis of reason, justice
and love. To such people this book goes out: to the truly religious
people, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness here and now,
who believe in brotherhood as a reality, and are willing to bear pain
and ridicule and privation for the sake of its ultimate achievement.
From discord and defeat,
From doubt and lame division,
We pluck the fruit and eat;
And the mouth finds it bitter, and the spirit sweet....
O sorrowing hearts of slaves,
We heard you beat from far!
We bring the light that saves,
We bring the morning star;
Freedom's good things we bring you, whence all good things are....
#Envoi#
I have come to the end of my task; but one question troubles me. I
think of the "young men and maidens meek" who will read this book, and
I wonder what they will make of it. We have had a lark together; we
have gone romping down the vista of the ages, swatting every venerable
head that showed itself, beating the dust out of ancient delusions.
You would like all your life to be that kind of lark; but you may not
find it so, and perhaps you will suffer disillusionment and vexation.
I have known hundreds of young radicals in my life; they have nearly
all been gallant and honest, but they have not all been wise, and
therefore not so happy as they might have been. In the course of time
I have formulated to myself the peril to which young radicals are
exposed. We see so much that is wrong in ancient things, it gets to be
a habit with us to reject them. We have only to know that a thing is
old to feel an impulse of impatient scorn; on the other hand, we are
tempted to welcome anything which can prove itself to be
unprecedented. There is a common type of radical whose aim in life is
to be several jumps ahead of mankind; whose criterion of conduct is
that it shocks the bourgeois. If you do not know that type, you may
find him--and her--in the newest of the Bohemian cafes, drinking the
newest red chemicals, smoking the newest brand of cigarettes, and
discussing the newest form of #psycopathia sexualis#. After you have
watched them a while, you realize that these ultra-new people have
fallen victim to the oldest form of logical fallacy, the non sequitur,
and likewise to the oldest form of slavery, which is self-indulgence.
If it is true that much in the old moral codes is based upon
ignorance, and cultivated by greed, it is also true that much in the
old moral codes is based upon facts which will not change so long as
man is what he is--a creature of impulses, good and bad, wise and
foolish, selfish and generous, and compelled to make choice between
these impulses; so long as he is a material body and a personal
consciousness, obliged to live in society and adjust himself to the
rights of others. What I would like to say to young radicals--if there
is any way to say it without seeming a prig--is that in choosing their
own path through life, they will need not merely enthusiasm and
radical fervor, but wisdom and judgment and hard study.
It is our fundamental demand that society shall cease to repeat over
and over the blunders of the past, the blunders of tyranny and
slavery, of luxury and poverty, which wrecked the ancient societies;
and surely it is a poor way to begin by repeating in our own persons
the most ancient blunders of the moral life. To light the fires of
lust in our hearts, and let them smoulder there, and imagine we are
trying new experiments in psychology! Who does not know the radical
woman who demonstrates her emancipation from convention by destroying
her nerves with nicotine? Who does not know the genius of revolt who
demonstrates his repudiation of private property by permitting his
lady loves to support him? Who does not know the man who finds in the
phrases of revolution the most effective devices for the seducing of
young girls?
You will have read this book to ill purpose if you draw the conclusion
that there is anything in it to spare you the duty of getting yourself
moral standards and holding yourself to them. On the contrary, because
your task is the highest and hardest that man has yet undertaken--for
this reason you will need standards the most exacting ever formulated.
Let me quote some words from a teacher you will not accuse of holding
to the slave-moralities:
Free dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thoughts will I
hear, and not that thou hast escaped a yoke.
Art thou such a one that can escape a yoke? Free from what?
What is that to Zarathustra! Clear shall your eye tell me:
free to what?
Canst thou give to thyself thy good and thine evil, and hang
thy will above thee as thy law? Canst thou be thine own
judge, and avenger of thy law?
Fearful it is to be alone with the judge and the avenger of
thy law. So is a stone flung out into empty space and into
the icy breath of isolation.
Out of the pit of ignorance and despair we emerge into the sunlight of
knowledge, to take control of a world, and to make it over, not
according to the will of any gods, but according to the law in our own
hearts. For that task we have need of all the resources of our being;
of courage and high devotion, of faith in ourselves and our comrades,
of clean, straight thinking, of discipline both of body and mind. We
go to this task with a knowledge as old as the first moral impulse of
mankind--the knowledge that our actions determine the future of life,
not merely for ourselves but for all the race. For this is one of the
laws of the ancient Hebrews which modern science has not repealed, but
on the contrary has reinforced with a thousand confirmations--that the
sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and
fourth generations.
I get letters from the readers of my books; nearly always they are
young people, so I feel like the father of a large family. I gather
them now about my knee, and pronounce upon them a benediction in the
ancient patriarchal style. Children and grandchildren of my hopes, for
ages men suffered and fought, so that the world might be turned over
to you. Now the day is coming, the glad, new day which blinds us with
the shining of its wings; it is coming so swiftly that I am afraid of
it. I thought we should have more time to get ready for the taking
over of the world! But the old managers of it went insane, they took
to tearing each other's eyes out, and now they lie dead about us. So,
whether we will or not, we have to take charge of the world; we have
to decide what to do with it, even while we are doing it. Let us not
fail, young comrades; let us not write on the scroll of history that
mankind had to go through yet new generations of wars and tumults and
enslavements, because the youth of the international revolution could
not lift themselves above those ancient personal vices which wrecked
the fair hopes of their fathers--bigotry and intolerance,
vindictiveness and vanity, envy, hatred and malice and all
uncharitableness!
* * * * *
INDEX
A
Abbott, Lyman 175-191
Abbott, L.F. 189
Adams 214
Adventists 237
Amberley 52
Anglican Church 47-88
Appeal to Reason 144
Archer 133
Assyria 32
Atkinson 267
Austria 155
Aztecs 32
B
Babists 254
Babylonia 26, 32, 50
Baxter 183
Beilhardt 254
Berkman 288
Besant 250
Bible-students 246
Bismarck 153
Black Magic 253
Blavatsky 23, 256
Blougram 109
Bonzano 121, 126
Booth 298
Bootstrap-lifting 11, 266
Brougher 209
Brown 268
Buchanan 68, 159
Buckle 41
Burns 75
C
Cæsar 161
Cannon 143
Carlyle 163
Carnegie 177
Catholic Church 27, 105-157, 295
Catholic Encyclopedia 67
Centrum 152
Charcot 258
Chatterton-Hill 220
Chinese 74
Christian Endeavor World 216
Christian Science 254-264
Churchman 101, 102
Clark 23
Clough 235
Columbus 115
Conway 127
Curates 71
D
Darwin 56
Day 205
Debs 289
Dixon 204, 205
Dowie 242
Durham 80
E
Eastman 140
Eddy 257, 261
Education 81
England 49, 73, 75
England, Church of 47-88
Episcopal Church 89-102
Eucharist 59
F
Ferrer 51, 133
Fish 65
Flint 78, 79
Fogazzaro 298
Foraker 143
Frederick 163
G
Galileo 51
Gallipoli 61
Garrison 167
Gladstone 57, 58, 81
Goldman 287
Goode 59, 61
Green 63
Gurney 254
H
Hagen 219
Hale 213
Hammurabi 85
Hampton 181
Ha'nish 250
Hanna 122, 142, 153, 213
Harris 72
Harrison 304
Haywood 288
Hebrew 36, 173, 284, 285
Henry the Eighth 66, 67
Hill, Joe 219
Hill, Rev. J.W. 204
Holmes 276
Holy Rollers 242, 243
Hubbard 190
Huss 38, 41
Huxley 56, 58
Hyndman 256
Hyslop 223
I
Inquisition 39, 51
Ireland 43
Isaiah 287
J
Janet 258
Jastrow 32
Jehovah 35, 36
Jesuits 148
Jesus 74, 100, 101, 161,
172, 174, 175, 176, 197, 221,
258, 281, 282, 290, 291, 292
Jews 284, 286
Job 25, 26, 55
Joshua 37
Jowett 54
Jungle 190, 194, 197
Junker 152
K
Kaiser 164-166
Kant 303
Kemp 19
King Coal 137
Kingsley 34
Knights of Columbus 123
Koreshanity 248
L
La Follette 260
Landor 34
Lankester 306
Lea 39
Leeky 136
Leo XIII 119, 123
Ligouri 174
Li Hung Chang 75
London 276
Los Angeles 149, 150, 208, 209, 217
L.A. Examiner 149
L.A. Times 44, 151
Lourdes 258
Luther 161, 163
M
MacGill 42
Machen 273
Mallock 77
Malthus 77
Manning 118
Manu 285
Markham 302
Marx 71, 173
Massey 55
Mazdaznan 250
McCabe 148
McDonald 139
Mellen 185
Menace 135
Milton 199
Morality 308
More 85
Morgan 99, 101
Mormon 239, 240
Moses 36, 37
N
Nazarite 29
New Haven 180, 181
New Thought 264
N.Y. Evening Post 223
N.Y. Sun 193
N.Y. Times 211
Nichols 270
Noel 83, 286
Northcliffe 72
Numerology 271
O
Oahspe 248
O'Connell 120
Opium 74
Outlook 175-198
P
Paine 87
Paley 87
Pasadena 150, 208, 276
Patent Medicine 214
Patterson 139
Paul 56, 161, 207
Peabody 99
Peters 204
Phelan 119
Pillsbury 167
Pius IX 116
Plowman 64
Pope 67, 121, 143
Positivists 304
Post 216
Potter 98
Prescott 32
Preston 127
Protestant 201
Prussia 153, 163
Q
Quakers 177
Quay 212
Quigley 129
R
Rauschenbusch 163, 283
Rawson 272
Reformation 163, 201
Religion 16, 17
Rig-Veda 30
Robinson 228
Rockefeller 138, 177, 190, 192, 211
Roosevelt 142
Russell, C.E. 95, 181
Russell, G. 82
Russell, Pastor 247
Ryan 105
S
Sacred Heart 113
Salpetriere 238
Salvation Army 298
Sanday 78
Segur 117
Shaftesbury 74, 82
Shakers 244, 245
Shelley 87, 183
Siam 34
Sinn Fein 295
Smith, Gipsy 217
Smith, Goldwin 223
Soap Box 290
Socialist Movement 311
Spain 131
Spiritualism 275
Stalker 78
Sterling 45
Sunday 207, 210
Swinburne 103
Syracuse 205
T
Tablet 157
Tacitus 170
Taft 142-144
Tammany 93, 143
Thackery 68, 212
Theosophists 254, 255
Thirty-nine Articles 54
Tingley 256
Torrey 203
Tractarian 55
Trinity 94
Trinity Corporation 95
Trowbridge 29
V
Vedder 76
Voltaire 53
W
Waddell 279
Wagner 219
Wall Street 181
Wanamaker 203
Ward 55
Wattles 268
Wesley 170
Westcott 79
White, A.D. 52
White, Bouck 192
Wilberforce 56, 88
William 63
Wilson 169, 186
Y
Yogi 255
York 76
* * * * *
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