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#