It is the duty of the clergy, not merely to defend large-scale
merchants while they live, but to bury them when they die, and to
place the seal of sanctity upon their careers. Concerning this
aspect of Bootstrap-lifting I quote the opinion of an earnest
hater of shams, William Makepeace Thackeray:
I think the part which pulpits play in the death of kings is the
most ghastly of all the ceremonial: the lying eulogies, the
blinking of disagreeable truths, the sickening flatteries, the
simulated grief, the falsehood and sycophancies--all uttered in
the name of Heaven in our State churches: these monstrous
Threnodies which have been sung from time immemorial over kings
and queens, good, bad, wicked, licentious. The State parson must
bring out his commonplaces; his apparatus of rhetorical
black-hanging......
And this, of course, applies not merely to kings of England, but
to kings of Steel, kings of Coal, kings of Oil, kings of Wall
Street. When a certain king of Western railroads died, a
Methodist clergyman, afterwards Bishop, likened his heir to the
boy Christ; a statement which requires for its appreciation a
mention of the fact that this heir died of syphilis. In the year
1904 there passed from his earthly reward in Pennsylvania a
United States senator who had been throughout his lifetime a
notorious and unblushing corruptionist. Matthew Stanley Quay was
his name, and the New York "Nation", having no clerical
connections, was free to state the facts about him:
He bought the organization, bribed or intimidated the press, got
his grip on the public service, including even the courts;
imposed his will on Congress and Cabinet, and upon the last three
Presidents--making the latter provide for the offal of his
political machine, which even Pennsylvania could no longer
stomach--and all without identifying his name with a single
measure of public good, without making a speech or uttering a
party watchword, without even pretending to be honest, but solely
because, like Judas, he carried the bag and could buy whom he
would.
Such was the lay opinion; and now for the clerical. It was
expressed by a Presbyterian divine, the Reverend Dr. J. S.
Ramsey, who stood over the coffin of "Matt", and without cracking
a smile declared that he had been "a statesman who was always on
the right side of every moral question!"
In that same year of 1904 died the high priest of our political
corruption, Mark Hanna. He had belonged to no church, but had
backed them all, understanding the main thesis of this book as
clearly as the writer of it. In his home city of Cleveland the
eulogy upon him was pronounced by Bishop Leonard, in St. Paul's
Episcopal Church; while in the United States Senate the service
was performed by the Chaplain, the Rev. Edward Everett Hale. This
is a name well-known in American letters, as in American
religious life; it was borne by a benevolent old gentleman, a
Unitarian and a liberal, who organized "Lend-a-Hand Clubs" and
such like amiabilities. "Do You Love This Old Man?" the signs in
the street-cars used to ask when I was a boy; and I promptly
answered "Yes"--for my mother took the "Ladies' Home Journal",
and I swallowed the sentimental dish-water set out for me. But
when I read the Rev. Edward's funeral oration over the Irrev.
Mark, I loved neither of them any longer. "This whole-souled
child of God," cried the Rev. Edward, "who believed in success,
and knew how to succeed by using the infinite powers!" You
perceive that the Chaplain of the Millionaires' Club agrees with
this book, that the "infinite powers" in America are the powers
that prey!