THE HELEN GHOULS
I have reserved for a separate chapter our most active anti-socialist
organization, the National Civic Federation, a combination of
class-conscious capitalists such as Elbert H. Gary and Alton B. Parker,
with high-salaried labor leaders who have sold out their class. Once a
year these labor leaders are honored with an elaborate banquet in New
York City, where they listen to patriotic speeches from the wholesale
corrupters of our public life. This National Civic Federation has a
special department, headed by Condé B. Pallen, a Catholic lecturer, the
“Committee for the Study of Revolutionary Movements.” It runs an
elaborate system of espionage, and is perhaps the greatest single agency
for the brow-beating of college professors.
I had special opportunity to observe the workings of this enterprise,
because I served for ten years on the executive committee of the
Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which used to receive the special
attention of Mr. Ralph M. Easley, secretary of the Federation. This
gentleman subscribed for six copies of our little monthly magazine, and
used to quote extracts from it as a means of terrifying his backers into
parting with their cash. He would list the names of the professors and
students whom we mentioned, and would stir up college presidents and
trustees and local business men and newspaper editors against them. Some
tragedies resulted from this; and often it happened that professors and
students lost interest in our work, and offered no explanation.
The most prominent of the backers of this Federation has been Mrs.
Finley J. Shepard, née Helen Gould; one of the half dozen children of
Jay Gould, the old-time railroad wrecker and Wall Street gambler. His
other children turned out wasters and wantons, but Helen was a woman of
kind heart, who gave much money to charity, and was the darling of the
New York newspapers in the days of my childhood. She married a
corporation lawyer, an official in the Gould railroads, and now she has
swallowed whole the goblin stories of those who live by scaring rich
people into putting up their money for class propaganda.
I do not mean to say that there are not men and women among the “reds”
who would be glad to overthrow the American government and abolish the
constitution, but I say that such people can only be met and overcome by
free discussion, based upon an honest resolve to bring social justice
into the world. Also, I say that the peril to our land which these
“reds” represent is not one per cent of that represented by the big
business criminals who run the National Civic Federation. I say
furthermore that the constitution of the United States and the good name
and credit of our country will not suffer as much damage from the
propaganda of Lenin and Trotsky in a hundred years as they have suffered
from the system of corruption and terrorism instituted by Ralph M.
Easley and Condé B. Pallen with the money of Helen Gould Shepard.
When I was in New York I met a man who declared that he had been present
at a luncheon-party, at which Mrs. Shepard stated that she had pledged
her entire fortune to the stamping out of radicalism from our colleges.
She was maintaining an organization for the carrying on of
“investigations” into the teaching of social questions, and the ousting
of those who taught unsound ideas. Within the last year Mrs. Shepard
herself had caused the ousting of two such men. I did not want to repeat
these statements without giving Mrs. Shepard an opportunity to confirm
or deny them, so I wrote her a polite note, asking for an interview.
This note was not answered, and a couple of months later I wrote a
detailed letter, in which I stated what I had learned from several
sources, and asked her to correct the statements if they were false. I
pointed out that when persons of great wealth spend their money for
propaganda, they enter a field which is of public concern, and the
public has a right to be informed as to what they are doing. This letter
likewise remained unanswered, so I take it as fair to assume that Mrs.
Shepard admits the truth of the statements quoted above.
In these activities she is earnestly supported by her husband, who is a
trustee of the University of Jabbergrab, and last spring was serving on
a committee appointed by the state superintendent of education to
browbeat the school teachers of the city who were suspected of
unorthodox ideas. The sessions of this committee were secret, so I was
not able to observe Mr. Shepard functioning. I have, however, a pretty
good picture of the Shepard family life, in a letter from a well-known
Methodist clergyman, who was invited to a dinner-party at the home of
Mr. and Mrs. Shepard. Their conversation was devoted almost exclusively
to “the intellectuals,” whom Mrs. Shepard “held responsible for the
present disturbance in the social order.” She gave her guest the Lusk
committee report—six large volumes, in the index of which the author of
“The Goose-step” is listed as “a violent literary Socialist.” Also, she
gave him two books attacking modern ideas in religion—which books are
published and distributed upon her bounty. Said Mr. Shepard: “It is the
business of the preacher to preach salvation and let industry alone.
When men are converted they will apply the gospel to business. My father
was a preacher. What did he know about business?” Mr. Shepard
characterized Judge Gary as “the savior of the country”; and Mrs.
Shepard declared that “the Union Theological Seminary is the greatest
menace to New York City today.” Says the clergyman: “I came away with
the idea well driven home, that the social Gospel is Socialism; that
Socialism is Bolshevism; that Bolshevism is Atheism; and that nothing
but the pure individualistic Gospel can save the nation and the world.”
You may judge from this that it is not a diverting experience to be
invited to a dinner-party at the home of the Shepards. I have before me
another document, which indicates that it is a still less diverting
experience to be invited to a cemetery with Mr. and Mrs. Shepard. This
document is a four-page leaflet, containing an address signed, “Helen
Gould Shepard,” and headed as follows:
_At the Graves of John More and Betty Taylor, His Wife_
The Cemetery, Roxbury, New York
August 31, 1920
Cousins of the More Family:
We are here today to honor the memory of our ancestors, John More and
Betty Taylor, his wife, who came from Scotland in 1722 and settled in
the Catskill Mountains, then a very wild region.
The little speech goes on for three paragraphs, to tell about the
virtues of the John Mores; after which, for five paragraphs it proceeds
to implore the cousins of the More family not to fall victims to the
evil and insidious modern “isms” which are “threatening to carry us on
to utter catastrophe unless the Christians of the nation awaken.”
Imagine, if you can, this poor, good-hearted, feeble-minded rich lady
reading a memorial oration at the graves of her ancestors, and devoting
one-fourth of her time to reciting the bugaboo-stories sent out in the
begging letters of the National Civic Federation! Hear a sample
paragraph:
The forces of autocratic barbarism are not confined to the Socialists,
Anarchists and I. W. W.’s, but the cause of Lenine is more actively
furthered either frankly or by indirection by radical,
pseudo-intellectual writers, editors, professors, teachers and
clergymen in our newspapers, magazines, colleges, schools and
churches, and in some of these the enemies of democratic government
are found to hold the very highest positions.
You will say that this is ridiculous, and you may say that it is
negligible; but I assure you that nothing is negligible in America that
has money. The wage-slaves of the railroads of the United States furnish
millions of dollars every year for Mrs. Shepard to use in circulating
such drivel, and subsidizing professional intriguers and
character-assassins. I presume that Mrs. Shepard is a tender-hearted
woman, who would be incapable of killing a mouse with her own hands.
History reports the same thing of Queen Mary; but that did not keep her
from causing Protestants to be burned at the stake. Moved by religious
terrors and class arrogance Mrs. Shepard considers herself justified in
setting in motion machinery for destroying the careers of men whose only
offense is that they resent social oppression, and venture here and
there to raise a feeble voice against it.
I have before me a letter from one such man, who has been blacklisted by
the National Civic Federation, and in consequence has been hounded from
college to college throughout the United States; I submit him as an
exhibit of Mrs. Shepard’s achievements, a scalp which she wears at her
belt. Or perhaps I might call him a series of scalps, since the poor man
has lost his job ten times in sixteen years. I refrain from giving his
name, at his request; he says: “I am perfectly capable of accumulating
enough notoriety for myself without any professional assistance.”
He goes on to tell about his adventures, one after another. He was on
the faculty of the Florida State College for Women, and was very
successful as a teacher, but it began to be noticed that his students
developed Socialist opinions, and the local newspapers took up the case,
and the board of trustees fired him, in spite of the protest of the
students. Then he went to Lenox College in Iowa, a town which had
elected a Socialist mayor. “In the spring the president called me in and
told me that he did not want me to think they had decided to drop me,
but they made no move toward holding me for another year, so I got
another job.” He went to Maryville College in Tennessee, and at the end
of the second year “monied people in the East objected to my writings”;
so he was dropped. Next he was dropped at Clark University, on account
of his opposition to the war. He went to the University of Kentucky, and
after a year of teaching was invited to give a lecture on Russia by the
college Y. M. C. A. “The head of the department said it would be as much
as his job was worth to recommend me for reappointment, and that the
same would be true of the dean and the president; so I was not
reappointed.” That was the summer of 1919, and he went to DePauw, but
before he got started the Chicago “Tribune” got after him, so that he
was “out of a job before entering upon it.”
The curious thing about all these experiences is how little the
professor himself realized the significance of them. He wrote me: “My
record does not seem to occasion special suspicion!” Again he said:
“There is no organized system of control by privilege over American
education!” As it happens, I was behind the scenes in New York, and
heard some mention of this same professor’s name. Some day we shall have
a government in this country which will indict the heads of the National
Civic Federation for criminal conspiracy, and then we may take a turn at
looking into their papers, and this professor may learn why it was that
the heads of so many colleges suddenly discovered that it would be as
much as their jobs were worth to recommend him for promotion!
P. S.—It is interesting to note that only three months later this young
professor had grown wiser. He wrote to me again, as follows:
I have been thinking that I might have to revise my letter to you in
one point. I said I had never encountered anything like a black-list.
Now I am not so sure. I had to hunt another job this year (just why I
am not perfectly sure), but failed in my efforts to land anything
suitable. A certain proportion of the institutions to which I applied
answered in such a way as aroused no suspicion of anything ulterior. A
good many did not answer at all, or else merely returned my material.
I have a notion that some of them have me spotted. In one case where I
was asked to apply in person, the case was closed in a dubious way,
etc.
We have one supremely successful organization for standardizing the
thoughts and morals of America, the Ku Klux Klan. The reason for its
success is that its members dress themselves in night-gowns and white
hoods, and its leaders call themselves Grand Goblins and Imperial
Kleagles. These symbols and names of terror have proven so effective,
that I wonder the idea is not taken up by the secret agents and
scandal-hounds of the National Civic Federation’s “Committee for Study
of Revolutionary Movements.” I offer the suggestion for what it is
worth; let them name themselves the Helen Ghouls, and let Mr. Condé B.
Pallen be known as the Shepard’s Watch-dog, and Mr. Ralph M. Easley as
the Shepard’s Crook! I must not suggest this latter name without
definite reason, so I set aside the next chapter to show you by what
devious devices Mr. Easley does his work of destroying the reputation of
educators who fail to recognize his plutocratic authority.