And here is Billy Sunday, most conspicuous phenomenon of
Protestant Christianity at the beginning of the twentieth
century. For the benefit of posterity I explain that "Billy" is a
baseball player turned Evangelist, who has brought to the cause
of God the crowds and uproar of the diamond; also the commercial
spirit of America's most popular institution. He travels like a
circus, with all the press-agent work and newspaper hurrah; he
conducts what are called "revivals", in an enormous "tabernacle"
built especially for him in each city. I cannot better describe
the Billy Sunday circus than in the words of a certain Sidney C.
Tapp, who brought suit against the evangelist for $100,000
damages for the theft of the ideas of a book. Says Mr. Tapp in
his complaint:
The so-called religious awakening or "trail-hitting" is produced
by an appeal to the emotions and in stirring up the senses by a
combination of carrying the United States flag in one hand and
the Bible in the other, singing, trumpeting, organ playing,
garrulous and acrobatic feats of defendant, by defendant in his
talk leaping from the rostrum to the top of the pulpit, lying
prone on the floor of the rostrum on his stomach in the presence
of the vast audience and from thence into a pit to shake hands
with the so-called "trail-hitters" and the vulgar use of
plaintiff's thoughts contained in said books. Said harangues and
vulgarisms of said defendant and horns, drums, organs and singing
by said choir and vast audience which are assembled by means of
said newspaper advertisements for the purpose of inducing a habit
of free and copious flow of money through religious and patriotic
excitement produced by and through the vulgarisms, scurrility,
buffoonery, obscenity and profanity of defendant pretending to be
in the interest of the cause of religion through what he
denominates "hitting the trail", the real object being to induce
a religious frenzy and enthusiasm which he announces in advance
is to result in large audiences composed of thousands of people
generously contributing vast sums of money on the last day and
night of the so-called revival which is invariably appropriated
by the defendant and through which scheme and device defendant
has become enormously wealthy.
As I write, the evangelist is in Los Angeles, and twice each day
he holds forth to a crowd of ten or fifteen thousand; in addition
the newspapers print literally pages of his utterances. The
entire Protestant clergy for a score of miles around has been
hitched to his triumphal chariot, and driven captive through the
streets. Here in this dignified city of Pasadena, home of
millionaire brewers and chewing-gum kings, all the churches have
been plastered for weeks with cloth signs: "This Church is
Cooperating in the Sunday Campaign." To give a sample of the
intellectual level of the performance, here is what Billy has to
say about modern thought:
All this blasphemy against God and Jesus Christ, all this
sneering, highbrow, rotten, loathesome, higher criticism,
wriggling its dirty, filthy, stinking carcass out of a beer-mug
in Leipzig or Heidelberg!
Whether willingly or reluctantly, the preachers sit upon the
platform and smile while Billy thus slangs the devil; and being
themselves, poor fellows, at their wits end to draw the crowd,
they watch and see how he does it, and then return to their own
churches and try the same stunt; so the manners of the baseball
diamond spread like a contagion. I open my morning paper, and
find a picture of an intense-looking clerical gentleman, the Rev.
J. Whitcomb Brougher, pastor of the Baptist Temple. He is
discussing certain slanderous rumors which he has heard about
Billy Sunday, and he offers ten thousand dollars reward to anyone
who can prove these things; though, as he says,
The dirty, low-down, contemptible, weazen-brained,
impure-hearted, shrivelled-souled, gossipping devils do not
deserve to be noticed..... Scandal-mongers, gossip-lovers,
reputation-destroyers, hypocritical, black-hearted, green-eyed
slanderers..... Corrupt, devil-possessed, vile debauches.....
Immoral, sin-loving, vice-practicing, underhanded sneaks.....
Carrion-loving buzzards and foul-smelling skunks.
You will be prepared after this to hear that when the Socialists
were near to carrying Los Angeles, this clergyman preached a
sermon in support of the candidate of "Booze, Gas and Railroads".
In so far as Billy Sunday is trying to keep the neglected youth
of our streets from drinking, gambling and whoring, no one could
wish him anything but success; but his besotted ignorance, his
childish crudity of mind, make it impossible that he could have
any success except of a delusive nature. He is utterly devoid of
a social sense; utterly unaware of the existence of the forces of
capitalism which are causing depravity ten times as fast as all
the evangelists in creation can remedy it. So he is precisely
like the Catholics with their "charity", cleaning up loathsome
and unsightly messes for a thousand years, and never stopping to
ask why such messes continue to come into existence.
More than that, I question whether the spirit of commercialism
which he fosters does not help the development of evil more than
his preaching hinders it. The newspapers always report the cost
of the tabernacle, of the "free-will offering", which amounts to
hundreds of thousands of dollars in each "campaign", In each city
the expenses are guaranteed by men who are generally the most
sinister exploiting forces of the community; they welcome and
fete him, and he visits their homes, and is in every way one of
the crowd. After the big strike in Paterson, N. J., the
employers, Jews and Catholics included, all subscribed a fund to
bring Billy Sunday to that city; and it was freely proclaimed
that the purpose was to undermine the radical union movement.
This was never denied by Sunday himself, and his whole campaign
was conducted on that basis.
Later Billy came to New York, where he met a certain rich young
man, perhaps a thousand times as rich as any that lived in
Palestine. This young man came to Billy and said: "What shall I
do to inherit eternal life?" And Billy told him to keep the
commandments--"Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal,
Do not bear false witness, Honor thy father and thy mother." The
young man answered; "All these have I kept from my youth up." And
Billy said: "Yet lackest thou one thing; sell all that thou hast
and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in
heaven; and come follow me." And when he heard this he was very
sorrowful, for he was very rich.
--No, I have got the story mixed up. That is what happened in
Palestine. What happened in New York is that Billy said, "I am
delighted to meet you, Mr. Rockefeller." And Mr. Rockefeller
said, "Come be my guest at my palace in the Pocantico Hills; and
then we will go together and you may preach submission to my
wage-slaves in the oil-factories at Bayonne and elsewhere." And
Billy went to the palace, and went and preached to the
wage-slaves, telling them to beware the "stinking Socialists",
and to concentrate their attention on the saving of their souls;
so the rich young man was delighted, and he sent for all the
newspaper reporters to come to his office at 26 Broadway, and
told them what a great and useful man Billy Sunday is. As the New
York "Times" tells about it:
Mr. Rockefeller seldom gives interviews and certainly he has
never been charged with having an excess of verbally expressed
enthusiasm on any subject. But he talked for an hour and a half
about the evangelist. He was full of the subject of Billy Sunday.
"Billy did New York a lot of good," he said. He went on to tell
of 187 meetings held in 100 different factories, attended by
50,000 men. "That's good work." And he expressed his satisfaction
with Sunday's theology: "He believes the Bible from cover to
cover and that is good enough for me." The Sunday campaign had
cost $200,000, and "If it had stopped here, if it was not kept
up, it would be poor business; a poor dividend on the $200,000
and the work invested. But we expect to get dividends in the next
year."
Again you note the symbolism of the counting-house!