#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: