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 h.o.a.rding 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 s.p.a.ce 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 att.i.tude 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 ma.s.s 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 ent.i.tled 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-b.a.l.l.s" 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 _G.o.d_; 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 a.s.s, 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 a.s.sertion 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 h.e.l.l-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 ill.u.s.tration 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, "pa.s.sing" dividends as a means of stock manipulation, acc.u.mulating 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 att.i.tude 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 cla.s.sic ill.u.s.tration 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 endors.e.m.e.nts 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 Sh.e.l.ley
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 ent.i.tled "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 n.o.ble 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 Sh.e.l.ley, 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 nutsh.e.l.l." In short, here we have what Dr. Lyman Abbott means when he glorifies "the great ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s of American wealth". The cynical reader will find amus.e.m.e.nt 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 Sh.e.l.ley, "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 a.s.sume." 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 doc.u.ments, 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 st.u.r.diness 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 ma.s.s 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 ent.i.tled 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 st.u.r.dy conscience must be a comfort to its possessor. The President of the "Outlook" is in the position of a p.a.w.nbroker 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!