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 win 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 burn 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 idea, 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 maid-servant, 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 off 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-fivedollars 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: