Golden Age, March 29, 1922
Download: PDF — Golden Age, March 29, 1922
iPp’ipiasiW^
Mar. 29, 1922, Vol. Ill, No. 66
PwSJishcd every other week at 18 Concord Street, Brooklyn, N. y., U. S. A,
Five Cent! a Copy—$1.00 a Year
Canada and Foreign Countries, $1.SQ
VOLUIH 8 WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29, 1922 NtjMMXI fifi
CONTENTS of the GOLDEN AGE
LABOR AND
Obstacles In the Path of
Labor .....................—
How Profiteering Wm Screened
Plans for Enslaving Labor 390
Clergy Fight against Tjftbor
Working an Age-Long Horrible Hoax
ECONOMICS
Clergy Are Their Own
Judges
The Coal Bqueese..
Hard Times Deliberately
Planned ............—
Labor's Overwhelming
Handicap .........-
The Remedies Available 395
Uncle Sam Looks Healthy, But—_____________...407
SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL
Profiteers Purchased the Parental Discipline _____,-,-399
Press ------ ------------389 m Textbooks —
The Drunken Earth
FINANCE—-COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION
Foolish Freight Hates
POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN
Pittsburgh Papers Approve Anarchy ...
Clergy Also Approve Anarchy
World War Gave Them Their Chance
Clergy Guilt for the Wai’ 390
Polideians Always Obey Mammon......,...............393
Hoodwinking the Canadians ............
One of Our Sample Patriots
America’s Political Prisoners
Democracy and the Bonus 401
Use for Dismantled Ships 402
AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY
Profiteering (?) on the Farm..............................-.-404
HOME AND HEALTH
A Word of Protest ..........405 Too Severe os the M. D.*s 405
TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY
?alTl5.f®1 Honting___,___
A Little Brazilian Friend 403
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Sanctified Live Stock _._.4Q3 On the Toboggan ......
HphetsF*rd *"d The E*tnr»
A Study "ta-Bvoiutlon_ “1411 Btndlw In tbe "Han, of The Giant Error of die God"----------
Passing Ago -
feblHied every other Wednesday at 18 Concord Btreet, Brooklyn, N, Y., . U. 8. A.
By WOODWORTH, HUPGINGS and MARTIN CLAYTON J. WOODWORTH.......Editor
ROBERT J. MARTIN .... Buslnna Manager WM. F. BUDGINGS......Sec'y and Treaa.
Copartners and proprietor. Address: 18 Concord Street, Brooklyn, N. Y......II. S. A.
Fivn Cents a Copy — 81.00 a Yeab. forbigm offices : JMtak : 34 Craven Terrace, Lancaster Gate, London W. 2; Canadian: 270 Dundas St. W., Toronto, Ontario : Australasian ' 495 Collins St., Melbourne, Australia. Make remittances to The Calden Age Entered M eacond-elaea mattar it Brooklyn, N. L mar Um Act March 5, lift.
ohe Golden Age
▼•lame III
Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, March 29, 1922
Obstacles in the Path of Labor
AT New Castle, Pennsylvania, fifty miles north of the city of Pittsburgh, in the fall of 1919, when the steel strike was on, the workers in the steel industry in New Castle found that all the lawyers in the city of New Castle had been engaged as deputies and thus there was no possible opportunity for the workers in New Castle to have tile benefit of legal assistance in respect to the outrages that were being perpetrated in that eity at that time. Men and women in the city of New Castle were picked up on the streets, they were taken from their homes, they were beaten and
EDITORIAL NOTE
STENOGRAPHIC report of a lecture by the editor delivered in Carnegie Music Hall, Pittsburgh, Pa., to the labor unions of the city at the request of the National Association of Patternmakers.
' jailed by the hundreds. Homes were broken in-( to, property was damaged and men were robbed and terrorized, but they were promised immedi-' ate freedom if they would return to their work, f Now who are the anarchists under conditions
At Donora, thirty-five miles south of Pittsburgh, negro strike-breakers shot white strikers without provocation.
At Clairton, twenty miles south of Pittsburgh, after permission had been given to hold a union labor meeting, state troopers rode down the assembly; men and women were arrested, beaten up and jailed, and some were beaten while in jail; friends who came to provide bail were also arrested; workers who stopped to read a notice on a bulletin board were attacked by state troopers, who used their clubs, breaking the scalp of one of the workers.
At Woodlawn, nineteen miles west of Pittsburgh, private detectives of the steel company arrested newcomers, beat, kicked, and fined them, and sent them back on the next train. It
U' like that in this land of America ?
K At Monessen at the same time (Monessen is fe' a city about forty miles south of Pittsburgh) old men and women were beaten with clubs and ridden down by horses, women and children B*: were jailed without food, men were locked up . in cellars, homes were searched and the entire E city was terrorized; in the same city of Mones-pT sen, at the same time, the wife of a railway worker was arrested by a constable and released on $50 bail, with instructions to report K in Court the following morning between 8: 30 e- and 9: 30. When she appeared the next morning she was notified that the case against her had been disposed of and the fifty dollars had been forfeited. This woman weighed one hundred and K - eighteen pounds and was charged with having defied the police of Monessen with a club.
happened that the sufferers in this case were two boys who had gone there to visit a cousin. The kicking, punching, and beating was done in the home of the village burgess, answering to the office of mayor.
At McKeesport, fifteen miles east of Pittsburgh, attorneys and stenographers were forbidden to secure affidavits and were ordered from town.
At Duquesne, twelve miles southeast of Pittsburgh, on a Sunday, in the following spring, May 9th, 1920, an attempt was made to test out the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Pennsylvania, both of which provide that the citizens have a right in peaceable manner to assemble for their common good. This attempt was made because the Mayor of Duquesne, who was the chief magistrate of the city and the president of its national bank, had made the boast that “Jesus Christ could not speak in Duquesne under the auspices of the American Federation of Labor”. After four successive notices had been served on the Mayor a week apart by registered mail telling him of the time and place where the test would be made, the six speakers who gathered for the purpose were arrested and jailed before they could finish a sentence apiece. Seven spectators were arrested for disturbing traffic, and a newspaper man was compelled to give up his camera and plates. Another man was arrested for taking a snap shot and one man was ridden down by the state troopers who had been brought to the scene. The magistrate who passed upon the case, Judge Kennedy, imposed a fine of $25 upon each of the speakers, stating in his opinion, “It is not the cause of organized labor to which the mayor objects; it is the discussion of such a subject”.
At Braddock, ten miles southeast of Pittsburgh, while the strike was on, men and women were attacked in church, and school children were ridden down in the school-yard, and a man chopping wood was dragged out of his cellar and arrested without cause, while another man was clubbed for walking slowly while counting the money he had just received from a pay window.
At Homestead, seven miles east of Pittsburgh, homes were invaded, property was destroyed, men and women were dragged out of bed and jailed undressed, and medical aid was refused, ’ because some of the workers in that town were not sufficiently grateful for the twelve-hour day, and other like blessings which Mr. Gary, head of the steel trust, and his friends were anxious to have them retain.
In Pittsburgh itself the Young Women’s Christian Association was throttled by the big financial interests of the city because it dared to teach some economic truths.
Under the circumstances, in this city of Pittsburgh, which is the center of anarchy in the United States, at the hands of those whose duty it is to uphold the laws and protect the workers in their rights, it gives me great pleasure to accept the kind invitation of the Pattern-makers Association to speak for a little time to this intelligent audience of law-abiding but libertyloving men on the subject of Union Labor.
Pittsburgh Papers Approve Anarchy 1
IT IS a matter of history that the Interchureh
World Movement was ruined because it had H a committee which dared to tell the truth on the steel question. That committee furnished the <1 proof that the steel trust maintains the twelve- ■ hour day, and wages below the comfort level, -refuses collective bargaining and administration, and employs detectives, spies and thugs. Moreover, after the “Movement’s” financial • J ruin for telling these truths the men who wrote J the report bravely maintain that they had told 3 the truth—and they did. ?
The report tells some things which make an ® American hang his head in shame that we live .J in a land where such things could be possible. J Among other interesting things the report re- | cords the simple fact that the newspapers of < Pittsburgh during the steel strike made no ef-fort to tell the truth. Without exception they i refused to discuss the causes of the strike or to tell the truth about the number of men on ’ strike. <
The newspapers falsely stated that the miUa were running full time six weeks before they actually were. When there were six hundred men at work in the Cambria mills the headlines of the Pittsburgh Post, Chronicle-Telegraph, Sun and Press reported that between seven and eight thousand men had returned to work. The Chronicle-Telegraph and the Gazette-Times contained stories that the strike was pro-Ger- " man in its origin, which was untrue.
Whenever the state constabulary clubbed, shot, or murdered strikers the Pittsburgh newspapers referred to these outrages unfailingly as -being riots for which the victims were to be blamed. Thus when Nick Gratichini was mun* dered by state cossacks, while sitting in his own dooryard with his baby on his knee, the Pittsburgh Chronicle-Telegraph reported that he was skillfully picked off by troopers while sniping. No doubt the public believed it all.
In another instance in which a woman was hit by a bullet while standing on a street corner, and a male companion standing by her was killed, the Pittsburgh Press printed a story of how ‘ a brave state trooper had killed a striker by 1 firing at the flame of the hidden sniper’s revolver. The man killed was not a sniper, was not hidden, did not shoot and had no revolver from which a flame could come.
g-t-;. — ■
K1 The report shows that the steel-workers were p living in congested and intolerable surround-
Ings, most of them working ten to fourteen hours daily, many with a twenty-four-hour shift t - every two weeks and large numbers working
!>' every day in the week. Always, in every in
s'. stance, the grievances, statements, and testi-mony of the strikers were presented in the news-* papers under such headlines or in such context ; as to convey the impression that what the work-t, ers desired was unreasonable and that their grievances were imaginary. Every one of the £ Pittsburgh papers during the strike used its in-fluence in the support of policies which were
I' against the general public interest.
Clergy Also Approve Anarchy
jT ^THE report proceeds further to show that the t _ attitude of the clergy of Pittsburgh was ex-. actly the same as that of the press; that it did 1 not examine or discuss the causes of the strike, I nor seek to exert a wholesome restraining influ->' ence on public officials who were overriding the =: provisions of the United States Constitution re-
\ garding the right of free speech and public as-aemblage. It did not even attempt to create a public opinion that would demand a discussion of the circumstances under which the Constitu-- tion was violated.
These conditions which we have seen cluster ’ about Pittsburgh have their counterpart to
some extent in every section of the United States.
World War Gave Them Their Chance
? "D CRN in the throes of revolution, the gov-f eminent of the United States rests not up-
t on bayonets, the divine right of politicians,
r- profiteers, or preachers, but upon the will of
? the American people, a will which functions at
5s" the ballot box in obedience to public opinion,
s iWhen the time comes in America that the right
. of free and public discussion of all questions
\' is forbidden, and the politicians, profiteers and
f- preachers get full control, then the American
T, republic as a democracy ceases to exist. Yet
* the United States is hastening in this direction,
and within the past few years has lost more of liberty than it gained in the previous one hun-Hred.
The World War really gave the politicians, & profiteers, and preachers, the opportunity of ? lenturies, and they used it to the last limit. When America entered the war she had almost as much reason to go to war with England as with Germany. Ostensibly neutral, ostensibly protected by treaties which guaranteed equal treatment to both belligerents, the United States supplied unlimited money and munitions to Great Britain, but was forbidden to communicate with Germany, much less to trade with her.
France was ready to quit long before the United States entered the war and would have made peace with Germany. M. Gabriel Hano-teaux, formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of France, in his history of the late war states in effect that France was ready to make peace in the latter part of the year 1914, but was dissuaded from doing so by three Americans, namely, Robert Bacon, of the financial house of J. P. Morgan & Company, fiscal agents for the British government, Myron T. Herrick, and William G. Sharp, and that these men represented to French officials that if France would continue the war these three men would organize a propaganda that would put the United States into the war on the side of the Allies. M. Hanoteaux further stated that the sum of money which was provided to goad the United States into the war was too large even for American comprehension.
Profiteers Purchased the Press
Congressman Calloway, on the floor of Congress, has made the charge that in March, 1915, the J. P. Morgan interests, the Steel, Shipbuilding and Powder interests, got together twelve men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to see that the newspapers of the United States should get the country into the war. These twelve men selected one hundred seventy-nine newspapers and by a process of elimination gradually reduced them to a point where they found it was necessary to purchase only twenty-five of the greatest papers to control the news policies of the nation. Emissaries were sent to purchase the policy of these papers. An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month. An editor was furnished for each paper. It was the business of these editors to see that the United States should enter the war at the proper time. Even eighteen months later the American people were so hostile to the idea of entering the war that they reelected Presi-
dent Wilson because he kept them out of it, although at the very time they reelected him sev-, on Wall street men were working early and late, perfecting the war legislation which was subsequently forced upon the country and which caused a hundred thousand of America’s finest boys to be slaughtered and which created thirty thousand new American millionaires, and placed this country more directly in the control of the Morgan interests than it had ever before been.
Bow Profiteering Was Screened
AS SOON as the war was finished, the first consideration of those who had become millionaires through the harvest of blood and tears was to devise methods (1) to keep their own ill-gotten gains, and (2) to take away from Union Labor and from all labor the gains which it had made during the war period.
Having learned the great lesson of how to sway the people by debauching the press, nothing was easier than to continue the debauch-ment after the war, so that the people might not give any thought to the colossal robberies which had been and still were being perpetrated upon them. Accordingly, the so-called “Red” menace was gotten up; and practically every newspaper in America was filled with scare headlines calculated to terrorize the American people into thinking that in some strange way a handful of individuals whom they did not know and could not find and never heard of personally were in some way going to enslave them overnight. Judge G. W. Anderson, in an address before Harvard Liberal Club in Boston, January, 1920, discussed this subject somewhat at length. Judge Anderson was district attorney in Boston while the scare over German spies was at its height, and therefore had the best'of opportunities to know the facts. He said:
“I assert as my best judgment, grounded on the information that I can get, that more than ninety-nine percent of the advertised and reported pro-German plots never existed. I think it is time that publicity be given to this view. I doubt the Red menace having more basis in fact than the pro-German peril. I assert the significant fact that many of the same persons and newspapers that were faking pro-German plots are now promoting the Red Terror. There are Reds: probably there are dangerous Reds. But they are not half as dangerous as the prating pseudo-patriots who under the guise of Americanism are preaching murder, and shooting at sunrise, and to whom our church parlors and other public forums have hitherto been open.”
Plans for Enslaving Labor
THE second step after covering up their own profiteering by the Red scare was to under- 1 take the destruction of Union Labor, and that work is considered by the representatives of the profiteers to be now practically an accomplished fact, the profiteers looking forward to the happy day when they will be able to maintain the twelve-hour day everywhere as it is so well maintained in Pittsburgh and vicinity, and when they can pay the workers the minimum . required to keep them alive and able to work at all. In this work of destroying Union Labor the newspapers of the country which have been under the control of the profiteers have done just as faithful work as they did in getting the American people into the war and in masquerading or building the “Red” smoke screen in . front of the profiteers immediately afterward.
And the work which was so ably done by the press in getting the country into the war, in hiding the profiteers from view under the camouflage of the “R e d” menace and “Bolshevism” outcries, and which has now succeeded in practically destroying Union Labor, has been ably backed up by the clergy, Catholic and Protestant. I give you the evidence:
Clergy Guilt for the War
LET the clergy themselves say what responsibility they had for getting the United States into the war; we will give a number of citations, so that all may be convinced. First comes Rabbi Wise. Addressing recently the Free Synagogue congregation in Carnegie Hall, New York city, he said:
“Failure of the churches and synagogues to maintain leadership over the people was the cruse of the present war. They have enthroned a war devil in the place of God. The church is muzzled and throttled into submission. It is like a dumb dog, old and toothless, that can no longer bite. Many of us looked to the Socialists to avert such a war as this; but we never looked to the churches, mosques, and synagogues to prevent war. None of us expected such a thing from them, and we know what would happen to any leader in the Church of England who would dare raise his voice against his country^ part in the present strife. And when the nations were preparing for this war they never consulted the churches because they knew that, just as they relied upon their ambulance corps and their commissaries, they could rely upon the churches to uphold them.”
The next witness does not give his name, but
States that he is a clergyman. He writes in The Nation, March 6, 1920:
“The record of the war activities of the churches, while very ample, is simple. Practically every pulpit in the land was a source of patriotic inspiration. Every clergyman labored day and night fostering the morale of the army and the people. At home the clergy preached atrocities, and in the camps they fired the soldiers with a holy zeal to attack and kill the enemy. Briefly, the record shows that both here and abroad each of the ordained spokesmen of Christianity justified and consecrated the action of his own people in resorting to arms. His nation was fighting God’s battle, and all who wished to be friends of God must help to the fullest extent of their powers. Thus a composite photograph, as it were, of all the Christian preachments reveals to us the doctrine of the man in the street, the doctrine of those who believe it to be their highest duty to be ready to die for their country whether right or wrong.”
But how about dying for Robert Bacon, Myron T. Herrick and William G. Sharp?
Another witness is DoctorEdward A. Steiner, a converted Jew, a Congregational minister, occupant of the chair of Applied Christianity in Grinnell College, Iowa. He writes in The Independent of his impressions of Europe, obtained after several months recently spent there:
“All through Europe I found a feeling, freely expressed, that at a critical moment in the world’s history, organized religion failed to fulfill its claims as a bringer of peace. The hopes of mankind placed in it were not realized; for the churches failed to function except as an amen to the reactionary Pagan state. The church gave its all to Caesar; even that which was God’s; the folds of the flag obscured the cross, and the great sacrifice of Calvary seemed in vain. Sermons now are full of assertion that militaristic force is futile in settling quarrels between nations, that besides being un-Christian it is impractical; and not only ministers say it, but also professors, essayists, political economists, sociologists. However, they are saying it between wars, when it is safe to say it. If the church or its ministry were faithful to the spirit and teachings of Jesus during one war; if the state knew that it could not use the church as a recruiting station, and as a laboratory for the culture, of fighting morale, it might be less willing to rush into war. Of course the church would suffer martyrdom; but there is an outspoken demand that Christianity manifest itself in its full power, by accepting the consequences of its teachings, or cease its pretense of being the bride of Christ when it is only the concubine of
Csesar.”
Still another witness is Reverend William Austen Smith, editor of the The (Episcopal) Churchman:
“The churches among all the warring nations shared the sins of their governments during the war. We hated as our governments bade us hate. We spread lies about our enemies as those lies were meted out to us in official propaganda. We taught unforgiveness even as our rulers and diplomats inspired us to do.”
The final witness is Reverend John Alfred Faulkner, who gives expression to the following sentiments in The Epworth Herald:
“The church is partly responsible for the great war. She has taught an exaggerated and false patriotism. No war was ever waged but that the clergy have either incited it or praised it when once started. What if between 1871 and 1914 every synod, conference and clergyman in Germany had spoken out against that militarist regime and those militaristic ideals of which the Great War was the logical consequence; what would have been the result? I think the only man who did thus speak out was Liebknecht, the Socialist, and he was in prison for two years. Men who sinned in a similar way in America were sentenced to twenty years, more or less; and what Church has asked for their release?”
Clergy Fight Against Labor
AS THE preachers of the country acted as recruiting agents in the late war, and as they have always done in previous .wars, and as they could be depended upon to do in any future wars, so they cooperated with the profiteers and politicians in holding up before the American people the Red menace so as to hide the profiteers from view, and they are entitled to full credit also for the attack which has since been made upon American Labor.
Abraham Lincoln once said:
“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the highest consideration.”
The normal position of the clergy toward labor was illustrated in Pittsburgh and Buffalo in the fall of 1919, when labor made its bootless effort to gain the eight-hour day and other decent concessions from the billionaire steel trust. At that time the newspapers of these two steel manufacturing centers contained fullpage advertisements given over to advice of clergymen, Roman Catholic and Protestant, urging the workers to forget their grievances and return to work. In one of these announcements, a Roman Catholic dignitary declared that if any Catholics failed to heed its warning, “I should regard them as apostates from the Catholic faith, traitors to their country, and enemies to authority”.
Working an Age-Long Horrible Hoax
BEE building sites for churches and parsonages, and many other favors, have been profitable investments for many of America’s great corporations. At the town of Steelton, Pennsylvania, the site of the great Pennsylvania Steel Company’s plant, it was a standing joke for many years among the clerks in the offices that a strike was an impossibility, because the moment one was brewing, or in fact the moment attempts were made to form a labor union, the local Roman Catholic priest would call all his congregation together and threaten to send them to hell unless they abandoned the attempt. It can be readily understood how such assistance would be appreciated.
It is quite to the point that we should stop a moment to discuss this “hell” question and I am joing to tell you something now that lets the cat out of the bag and is generally not told to common people. And why?—Because there are tricks in all trades, and the greatest trick of all is the trick which is played upon the common people by the clergy. There is only one word in the Old Testament which is translated by the word “hell”. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, and the word of which we speak is sheol. It occurs sixty-five times in the Old Testament and in our common version it is translated thirty-one times by the word “hell”, thirty-one times by the word“grave”,and three times by the word “pit”. But the word simply means the “grave”, the state or condition of death into which all go, good and bad alike, at the time of death.
Let us take the story in the Bible where this word first occurs. You have all read the story of Joseph, who was sold by his brothers to be a slave, and how the boys took his coat and dipped it in blood and carried it to their father and showed it to him and said: “Look and see, is this the coat of your son Joseph!” and Jacob said: 'My son has been slain by a wild beast and I shall go down into sheol unto my son mourning’. What did he mean! I ask you the question. I urge you to use your senses. Where did Jacob expect to go and where did he expect to meet Joseph! Joseph was his favorite son and he believed that what had happened to Joseph would happen to himself. Where did he think Joseph had gone and where did he himself expect to go!
Again in the book of Ecclesiastes, fifth chap- .. ter, ninth and tenth verses, the statement is „ made /Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it ’ with thy might; for there is no work, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, nor device, in sheol whither thou goest”. Do you get it! Everybody goes = there; everybody goes to sheol; they do not go ’ to any other place or condition between death and the resurrection. And if so why urge peo-pie to avoid going to sheol when everybody automatically goes there! And when you have disposed of that question you have disposed o£, ' the whole clergy scheme. The entire clergy business is a fraud from beginning to end.
Clergy Are Their Own Judges
ET the clergy themselves say what has been ' the real attitude of the church, whether
Protestant or Catholic, toward labor. From the pen of a clergyman in a magazine, entitled “The Social Preparation”, we quote: - :
“It is incontestable that the ruling classes have always looked to the church to bolster up the existing regime^ however infamous and oppressive. Gibbons affirms that to a statesman all religions are equally useful. It would certainly look so when in the late war our pastors were asked to sell bonds, and specially prepared sermons were sent out by the Government for use in the churches of the land. The rulers of this world know full well that ■ religion is the prime motive in men’s lives; and so when they wish to further certain measures, they go to the rulers of the church and say: ‘Now we want the people*' to do thus and thus, and we are sure we can count on ■> your influence’. So, now frankly and grossly, now subtly, . the church is enlisted to fight the battles of the state. _ Balak wants Balaam to curse his enemies; and what ig of pathetic moment, Balaam generally does the job. 1316 clergy of Philadelphia were asked to participate in.a Liberty Loan parade, and the Church paper stated that the request came with somewhat the weight of a military command.” '
Reverend Robert Whitaker of Los Gatos, California, in an address quoted by the Boston Globe recently said:
“As crises grow tense ministers grow nervous about ‘queering’ themselves with the controlling powers of out • American industries. Their business is to say nothing and to say it pleasantly. I say with the greatest kindli* ‘ ness that the largest part of preaching the gospel is none ' other than a conscious evasion, through platitudes and f generalities, of questions that vitally interest and <xn>> cem the working people—there is a sort of holy sdbth-ing-syrup offered to keep people quiet, and the preach who tries to wake the people up to the side of righteoua* -ness and justice for the commonplace man is in dangat
r'
of losing his support. The public never bothers itself about the wrongs of the working man till he steps on its corns, and the church is the same. The history of the steel troubles is the blackest chapter in the history of any civilized country; yet the church said nothing until it was forced to speak, and then it said mighty little.”
Roger W. Babson, statistician and general adviser for Big Business, while not a clergyman, nevertheless understands very well what the churches, Catholic and Protestant, have been used for in the past and what they are used for now. In one of his letters of advice to capitalists he says:
- “The value of our investments depends not on the strength of our banks, but rather upon the strength of our churches. The underpaid preachers of the nation are the men upon whom we are really depending rather ' than the well-paid lawyers, bankers and brokers. The religion of the community is really the bulwark of our investments. And when we consider that only fifteen percent of the people hold securities of any kind, and • that less than three percent hold enough to pay an income tax, the importance of the churches becomes even more evident. For our own sakes, for our children’s sakes, for the nation’s sake, let us business men get behind the churches and their preachers! Never mind if they are not perfect, never mind if their theology is out of date. The safety of all we have is due to the churches, even in their present inefficient and inactive state. By all that we hold dear, let us from this day give more time, money, and thought to the churches of our city, for upon these the value of all we own ultimately depends.”
The same gentleman on another occasion un' burdened himself as follows:
“Take the labor situation. I beg the pardon of clients for talking so much about labor conditions. I would not do so except that I am convinced it will be the labor situation which will ultimately bring to an end our present period of prosperity, and throw the nation ultimately into chaos. The solving of the labor situation is wholly a question of religion. The wage worker will never be satisfied with higher wages and shorter hours, any more than you and I are satisfied with more profits and a bigger house.”
Bishop Gore, at the Anglo-Catholic Congress in London, also said:
“The whole economic and industrial system of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was allowed to grow up as part of our national institutions, as if religion and the church had got no words to say to it; yet from end to end it trampled on the root of principles of brotherhood; it was associated with a legal system which Bet an infinitely higher store on property than on person, and it quite forgot the root meaning of justice.”
Politicians Always Obey Mammon
WE DO not need to call attention to the fact • that the politician is forever and always “double-crossing” the worker. The politicians persuaded the American people to vote for Mr. Wilson because he kept us out of war, and at that very time the plans were being perfected to get us into the war. Likewise the people were persuaded to vote for Mr. Harding because he would keep u? out of the League of Nations, and all thoughtful men knew that Mr. Harding would not be in power a year before the United States would be in the League, and the Conference at Washington was nothing more than the League of Nations under a new name. Indeed, Lloyd George himself has cynically referred to it as the same old gang that was at Paris. As the politicians helped to get America into the war, so they helped to cover the tracks of the profiteers after the war was over. It was the politicians who were responsible for such injustices as happened to laboring men in western Pennsylvania in the fall of 1919, and it was the politicians who covered up the stealings of the thousands of millions of dollars engulfed in the airoplane, shipbuilding, cantonment construction, and other war expeditures.
My hearers will remember that very same Lever Act which, it was agreed on the floor of Congress, should never be invoked against the workers, was invoked against them at Indianapolis, and it looked for a time as though a hundred or more labor leaders in the coal industry would have to go to prison on account of that Act. The Act was ostensibly to catch the profiteers. A hundred or so profiteers were caught under the Act, but at the critical moment the Supreme Court handed down a decision that the Act was unconstitutional, which meant that all the loot recovered from the profiteers was returned to them; and recently the three-year limit under which prosecutions could be made expired, with the net result that the greatest stealings of history are now absolutely safe and cannot be touched.
Hoodwinking the Canadians
A SIMILAR situation prevails in Canada, where the Canadian government authorized the establishment of a Board of Commerce * which was to look into the fabulous profits made by the profiteers of Canada during the war, and it was quietly understood at the time the board was formed that the board would never do one single thing. It was merely gotten up in the first place as a blind to deceive the people and prevent them from doing anything, for much the same reason that the Bolshevist and Red menaces were gotten up in the United States.
James Murdock, Secretary of Labor of Canada, speaking on the subject of the Board of Commerce and his connection with it, said:
“After we had discovered that members of the textile industry made from 300 to 510 percent profit, we asked that the whole industry present statements of profits to the Board. A deputation of the industry was at once on its way to Ottawa to demand that an Order in Council be signed, relieving them of the necessity of giving us the information we asked. We tried to investigate the cement trust and the canneries trust, but it was useless. We were blocked at every tu. n.M
The Coal Squeeze
AS A sample of how completely the American people are at the mercy of the profiteer crowd through the latter’s control of the press, take the coal squeeze which was pulled off in the latter part of 1920. In the summer of that year the bottom fell out of the coal market for lack of demand, and straightway through the Cleveland office of the Associated Press and other avenues of propaganda there was widely spread the information that a great coal shortage was facing the American people. All the newspapers of the country took up the hue and cry, and in six months the great financiers back of this movement put five hundred million dollars excess profits into their pockets, which, had it not been for this progaganda, would have been more widely distributed and would have been greatly to the advantage of the American people as a whole.
Hard Times Deliberately Planned
THE hard times of the latter part of 1920 and the whole of 1921, and to date in 1922, were deliberately brought upon the country by the seven men who control the Federal Reserve Bank. John Skelton Williams, ex-Comptroller of the Currency and at one time a director in the Federal Reserve System, has exposed the whole scheme by which the Federal Reserve System, despising the banks of the rest of the country, threw the bulk of its re**’orces toward New York, Chicago, and St. Irais.
He showed how, while the banks outside of the reserve and central reserve cities received accommodations in the shape of rediscounts and bills payable for only 10 percent of their total loans and rediscounts, the banks of three big . cities, New York, Chicago and St. Louis, re- , ceived accommodations to the extent of 24per- ' cent of their total loans and rediscounts. '
In September and October, 1920, when great : pressure was brought to bear by the suffering . businesses of the country to induce the Federal Reserve Board to change its policy of attempting to ruin Union Labor and the smaller business men of the country, Mr. Williams made an-earnest effort to get the Board to change its policy. Yet between then and April 29, 1921, at ' which time the Board reported the complete success of its policy of deflation and contraction, . it was brought to light that the actual contraction since October 15, 1920, was $925,000,000. What was the reason the Federal Reserve Bank, was so anxious to carry through this policy ofi " deflation? It was to carry out the prearranged plan of crushing Union Labor. It is to the Federal Reserve Bank that the country is in-' debted for the policy which made the Liberty Bonds of the United States government worth ■ less than their face value. From the great profits which have been wrenched from the people by the Federal Reserve Bank, arrangements have been made for the construction ol a new bank building in New York that will cost more than the total cost of the White Houses the Treasury Building, and a half dozen of our state capitols, while salaries of the officers alone have been increased from $93,000 in 1916 to $400,000 in 1920. The salaries paid by the New -York Reserve Bank to two dozen of its officers aggregate more than the aggregate salaries paid by the government of the United States to all the senators (fifty-two in number) from all the states east of the Mississippi river. Most of these officers never got over $1,500 to $2,000. until they got in touch with the public moneys,' and now their salaries are two to ten times what they ever before earned.
The men back of the great financial interests that control the Federal Reserve Bank openly boasted early in the year 1921 that they were going to put five million men out of work because a hungry man is an obedient man, and that if this did not succeed, by the first ofl< January, 1922, they would have twenty million
GOLDEN AGE
men out of work. These men believe that Union Labor is whipped and do not hesitate to say so in their publications. They recently have been favored with a ruling of the Supreme Court that no picketing hereafter may be accompanied by importuning, or following of men.
■- One of Our Sample Patriots
A S AN illustration of how profiteers and poli: XX ticians contrive to play horse with the
American public, take the case of Mr. Newberry, ' now representing the great state of Michigan ~ in the American Senate. The Newberry gang
£ paid $5,700 for a film showing him as standing
- on the bridge of a battleship receiving the honors of a procession of American battleships, g This film was shown during the 1918 campaign in Michigan at about two hundred theaters, and of course was a fake from beginning to end. ' The posing was all done on an imitation wooden battleship, and it required two weeks of a highly paid publicity agent to splice and fit it into a v' regular film showing a review of the navy. One f cannot but wonder what would happen to any
£ Labor Union that would resort to such a con
temptible piece of knavery. Would its members be favored with seats in the United States . Senate? — or seats in a prison cell?
*. Labor’s Overwhelming Handicap
"ITTE NOW have the question fairly before us: V Y What are the obstacles in the path of
■* Union Labor? We find the great financial in’ terests of the country definitely leagued against * • - Labor—which they regard as their greatest foe.
We see that they have the ability to win public c opinion upon their side by subverting the Press, t'. and that they have done so. We see that they •' ' have the power to restrict employment, and f right while the employment is being restricted, i to raise the price of the necessities of life, such
; . as coal, by artificial means. We see that the
,■ politician stands ready to use all the instruments of government which lie within his grasp f to throttle with iron hand any attempt on the part of labor to share in those gains or even to jfr retain the advantages already secured. And third we see the clergy class, Catholic and Profc- testant, the ready and willing tools of the profiteers and politicians, ostensibly preaching the gospel, but really continuing their part of the \ conspiracy which was entered into between the
Emperor Constantine and the Christian bishops in the year A. D. 325, when the early Christian church, which was the laboring man’s church and in which no acceptable member could be either a soldier or a magistrate, passed out of existence, having been swallowed up by the Roman system. It is an interesting fact that this same Constantine who pulled off this clever stunt called this council of bishops in the same year in which he murdered his own son, and at this council he, Constantine, an unbaptized, pagan emperor, invented and forced upon the unfaithful Christian church the doctrine of the trinity, which is not a Bible doctrine, but which has been held by the unfaithful church from that time to this, especially by the clergy.
Dr. T. Morey Hodgman, former President of Macalaster College, has said on this subject:
“Since the fatal bargain was made by Constantine in the fourth century between the leaders of the church and his own political ambitions, the Christian church has been a coward and a traitor to the crucified Christ. Since that unholy bargain, when the church lead.’’ surrendered their convictions as to war and the internationality of Christianity and surrendered their sons to the bloody unnecessary wars of the succeeding centuries in return for power and riches and authority, the Christian church has ceased to capture the minds and hearts of intelligent men, has concerned itself with sectarian bickerings and servility to political parties and has become a coward and a hypocrite.”
The Remedies Available
TT IS to this group of imperial and ecclesias--*• tical politicians that we owe the present conspiracy against Union Labor, which is the representative of all labor. The Scriptures designate this association of profiteers, politicians and preachers by the word Babylon. What are those to do who have been despoiled by this system? Such remedies as lie at their hands are the study of cooperation in all its forms — cooperation political, as illustrated by the Nonpartisan movement, which has accomplished so much for the farmers of the northwest; cooperation financial, as in the organization of the peoples’ banks established by the thousand in Europe and to a very limited extent in this country; the establishment and support of their own press and the support of the press which is openly and pronouncedly in sympathy with the workers’ cause; and cooperation in the reestablishment in the earth of the early church, which had no popes, no cardinals, no archbishops, no bishops, no priests, and no clergy of any kind, but in which every believer was a member of the royal priesthood, glad to do what he could to lighten the burden of his fellow man and to proclaim the coming kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, which will fully solve in the Golden Age the problems of Union Labor, and, indeed, of all the families of the earth.
About this matter of bishops so that when you read the Bible you can understand it, the bishop in the New Testament is simply the man selected by the vote of the congregation to lead the meeting. For example, if we were gathered here as a band of Christian men and women and and you wanted a chairman you would elect some person by the raising of the right hand to serve either for one meeting or for a dozen meetings or for a year, the person thus elected would be your bishop; and that is all a bishop is. That method of electing bishops is all right; any other method is all wrong, unreasonable and false and is used to obtain money from the people under false pretense.
God himself is the outspoken Friend of the worker. He has declared, “If a man will not work, neither shall he eat”. The Lord Jesus says of Him, “My Father worketh hitherto, and ’ I work”. Jesus said of Himself, “I must work the works of him that sent me”. The Apostle said, “We are co-workers together with God”. The Bible from first to last holds out the dignity of work. The very first chapter of the book contains a call to Union Labor. It reads: “Let them [all mankind] have dominion”. They were to have this dominion over the earth and earthly things by subduing the earth, but they could not do this without labor; nor without labor in unison. The foe of the workers is not our Heavenly Father nor our Lord Jesus nor their blessed Word; but the real foe is Satan, the great being that has organized the politicians, the profiteers, and the preachers of the world into the great system, Babylon,he uses for keeping the workers under control. The workers of America owe it to themselves to have nothing to do with any religious system which has associated with it either a pope, cardinal, archbishop, bishop, priest or clergyman. Every one of these systems is of the devil and tends to the enslavement and impoverishment of those who are carrying the burdens of civilization upon their shoulders.
After all,my dear friends, the real solution of the problem is a little beyond our ability. There is but the one remedy. Something can be done by cooperative means to alleviate the present situation of the laboring man, but his real / remedy is the long-promised kingdom of the ' Lord, even now at the door. Earth’s new ruler is promised as one who shall “deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, . and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and J precious shall their blood be in his sight.”
In the days of this new and perfect sovereign < we are told that man, not money, will be the ’ most admired, most loved, most sought after. “I will make a man more precious than the golden wedge of Ophir.” From the men of that ~ happy era not only will poverty be removed, but sickness also. “The inhabitant shall not say, I am sick.” And best of all, death shall be no more; for in the happy days of Christ’s king- * dom, for which we all have prayed so long, we '' are told that “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more tears, for the former things are passed away”. A
These happy days are at the door. Not only is death to cease for millions of the living generations, but all the dead shall return to their former estate here on earth. Can we doubt that the Lord knows where they are! He said, } ‘All that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man and shall come forth’. The f4 angel that spoke to Daniel knew also. He said to Daniel, “Many that sleep in the dust of the ■ earth shall awake”. The angel did not think heaven was such a disorderly place that people went there to go to sleep and in the dust at that; -
he did not think they were in purgatory, for he did not know anything about such a place; Pope J Gregory had not yet invented it; and he did not ' f think they were in eternal torment. And if they had been, and if it were possible to get to sleep in such a place, why would the angel or anybody else who had a heart take any satisfaction in wanting to wake them up? We have all been fooled. The clergy business is all a great Jj? swindle from beginning to end, but God’s Word is true and His coming kingdom is certain. And it is the desire of every labor union man, and of every man; it is the desire of all nations, living and dead, and the desire will be fulfilled,
America’s Political Prisoners By John m. Foss
CHRISTMAS greetings—from a prison cell.
My friend who has subscribed for me requested that I write you a few lines and at the same time advise you that The Golden Age has arrived. You couldn’t imagine a person having a golden age in a prison cell. Well, we are not. I want you to know I like some of the material and I am sure it is reaching the right sources.
I came here in September, 1918, the first time along with one hundred more. I was released on bond after one year; but I had to return after a short rest of eighteen months outside. .We lost our appeal.
To begin with, we were on trial five long months in the Landis Court at Chicago. Our jury listened to our case all that time. They convicted one hundred of us in forty-five minutes ; that is, they found two men guilty in each minute. War scare and hysteria and lack of all moral courage on the part of our jury gave us from five to twenty years in the Leavenworth Federal Prison. We were charged in five counts of an indictment with ten thousand crimes committed all over the country. They said we tried to steal the country like Morgan and Rockefeller. We were suddenly undesirable when war was declared, although we were legal twelve years previously. We were confined in the Chicago Cook County Jail six months or more, awaiting trial. We were gathered from all four corners of the country—after they raided all our union halls, homes, offices, etc. They stole all our private property, such as any labor organization needs to do business with, and what they didn’t burn and smash they hauled to Chicago and used as evidence in trying to prove a conspiracy, in which they failed. But we didn’t believe in war; so that was enough.
The jury which we secured to begin with was discharged and another secured that suited the prosecution better. You see, one must have a good jury to prove ten thousand crimes. The real charge was that we only wanted more of the wealth that we, the workers, create, for social use. So th°y said: No; you go to prison for five years. This was my lot for believing in Karl Marx instead of John D. Rockefeller. When the case was given to the jury one count of the indictment was ordered stricken from the case, which left four counts to decide. We appealed to the higher court, and they threw out two more counts — against the jury’s verdict. We are now held on the two remaining counts
J of the Espionage Law, making us only political ' prisoners the same as Debs and others.
You know the Espionage Law was made to = catch foreign spies against the Government, ‘ but it was used against American citizens — Union men, I. W. W.’s, of which organization : we here are all members. What spies they did get have been released long ago, but we still j remain away from our homes and loved ones. J
For your information will state that I have
lived in this country all my life. I served six
years in the United States Army. I fought for
this country from 1898 to 1905 in two enlist- ’■' J ments. I served in the Philippines four years, J and took part in many engagements, coming
out of that service with good discharges. So
you see I am not a foreigner who is all the time . stirring up strife, as the war profiteers do. I J also fought for my class—the workers—so I get five years. This is all supposed to be very 1 lawful; that is, they make it lawful anyway. I was tried by a jury of my peers, and I’ve been , peering through the bars ever since. The above has all been done in the name of Humanity and ■?
Democracy — as all things in the past four '
years have.
Many soldiers who served in France are here > with lifetime sentences, through the over zealousness of officers very suddenly given power in a new army. Their cases are just as bad as ours, or worse. Hundreds of soldiers are victims of the same policy that war produces. To- ■ day ten year men and one four-year man (members of my organization) were released on the Christmas Order of the President, to appease ' the growing demand for the release of all. To- ; day there are still ninety-eight of us left in prison, three years after the war has terminated. All foreign countries have released their war-time offenders long ago. The freest coun- , try in the world still holds hers behind the bars, while peace on earth and good will to men are thrown to the winds. r
Liberty-loving people do not believe in hold- * ing workers in prisons because they have honest ; opinions. The Washington Conference was sup- ■ posed to be at work to prevent any more wars. :
That’s just what we were charged with. The i
papers at the time of our trial (and at the time • of similar trials all over the country) stated we ' were any thing except what we were in truth and in fact. Juries in war times are afraid to / free defendants charged with war-time offenses.
That’s the real reason for my present situation.
I have been a Union man all my life, and will always be. I know the kind of organization that is needed and much respected by workers. That also is one of the real reasons for my position. Debs didn’t get ten years so much for what he said as for what he did for Labor in the past— and reflects now. The point is, Why wait twelve years to give me five years now for ten thousand crimes? and, according to the charges, I would have committed very nearly a thousand crimes each year since twelve years ago. O Liberty, what things are done in thy name!
What are the chances of all of us getting out again, dear folks? You, the people, must say so. The release of all is only justice—not only to citizens—workers—but to the soldiers also. I ask, as a former soldier who knows a soldier and as a political prisoner also, for justice and freedom.
The Drunken Earth
THE earth is utterly broken down, the earth .> -*■ is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceed
ingly. The earth shall reel to and fro like a r ’drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage;
and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it: and it shall fall, and not rise again.
( And it shall come to pass in that day, that the
i Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that
j are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the
■- earth.”—Isaiah 24:19-21.
' No one believes that the globe, composed of
land and water, will thus reel and fall down into
; the lap of space and rise no more. The physical ■; earth, made not in vain, abides as man’s home d and as God’s footstool will be made glorious.
R The drunken, reeling experiences of the earth
; are matters of daily record. The earth reels to ’ and fro in vain endeavors to right itself. Like a drunken man crazed with strong drink, dazed k and blear-eyed society reels, vainly clutching at ; its hair and at straws—leagues and combines— ; for support. Thus the Scriptures liken the earth
; to a drunken man.
■ In Jeremiah 51:7 mention is made of a cup
;■ that made all the earth drunken. In Revelation
J , 17:2 it is spoken of as the cup that made all
p nations drunk. The decoction is called the wine
h of wrath, and the wine of fornication. The in-
p toxicating ingredient is false doctrine. The
y ’drunken condition gives a feeling of self-suffi-
” ciency, a sense of fullness, satisfaction. The
i- ’drunken subject is satiated or glutted with a
p robust opinion of himself. He says: I am rich
P . and have need of nothing. My wines and my
o fine linen, my finances and my real estate, my
P abundance of delicacies, my pew rents and my
K'. patrimonies are all-sufficient. My armies and
P my navies make these secure.
k;
U_______—-----——---
By L. D. Barnes
The “woman” in the case representing the church element is spoken of as being drunken with the blood of saints and of martyrs. The woman mixed the stuff, and being herself intoxicated she lost her reason; and together > church and world became maudlin, and together they have staggered in their vomit of war and affiliation, and together shall fall and not rise. ' J
This drunken debauch is a frightful picture. The poison brew has caused even the priest and the prophet—the clergymen—to err in vision. ‘ They are all out of the way through strong . ; drink, so that filthiness and vomit — rejected . doctrine — is everywhere seen. They are drunk P but not with wine — not with alcohol but with . false teachings. The contending doctrines of over one hundred and fifty creeds—false standards of religion of both church and state — blending with false patriotism, divine right of kings and clergy, heathen and Christian, has : produced a decoction so deadly in its effects ’. * that the earth can never right itself, but is destined to fall and not rise again. •
The reeling to and fro of earth is pitiful.From -one extreme to another, bedraggled in the froth and foam of falsehood, and cowering in the ' mire of politics, the earth—church and world, . r mistress and paramour—has become a joke and ■ scorn. In 1914 the earth reeled to the war limit. " Every member nation of any consequence was . carried bodily by the war mania. Wild-eyed and * j gesticulating, the extreme of the war delirium was reached. In 1921 reaction set in. The extreme of peace became the goal. The same drunken nations, excited and bloody-handed, ,.p assembled in a peace confab vainly endeavoring , to emit the war decoction and get a breathing spell. But they shall fall and not rise. The de- .
bauched war-mind is not capable of grasping the principles of sober peace.
This reeling to and fro is seen variously. In 1920 the American earth reeled to the support of Mr. Harding. Mr. Wilson had been elected on a peace platform. He proved untrue to the highest standards, and was about to entangle the country in a League of Nations, when the drunken man reeled backward and elected Mr. Harding almost unanimously on a no-league ticket. But poor inebriate! The disappointment is as great as ever. Now only revenge is thought of and there are signs of reeling back to the democratic extreme. And so the poor earth rocks to and fro, extremes of sympathy first for labor and then for capital. And so the reeler reels as the pendulum of favor or disfavor swings. Today it is one extreme in dress, tomorrow it is the opposite—from hoop-skirts to hobbles and from furs in winter to furs in summer.
Evidently the earth has “snakes in its boots”. It is poisoned to death on mixed drinks. The clergy have forced this stuff down the necks of the people. “Open your mouth and shut your eyes,” ask no questions. They themselves have drunk and have served the kings of the earth the divine-right cup which inflames the mind, deadens the conscience and rouses an uncontrollable thirst for human blood. The eternal torment draft for disobedience, and the heaven- f ly rewards for murder, are some of the deadly poisons forced into the minds of men. As a re- 3 suit of these poisonous decoctions it is recorded that seventy million people were slain in the religious wars of the darker ages. The toll in the late war reached far toward this number. Compare Jeremiah 25:15-26.
…