Upton Sinclair - The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition

U >> Upton Sinclair >> The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition

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"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy
neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox,
nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's." I read this
paragraph over for the first time in quite a while, and I came with a
jolt to its last words. I had been intending to point out that it said
nothing about a neighbor's automobile, nor a neighbor's oil wells,
sugar trusts, insurance companies and savings banks. The last words,
however, stop one of-abruptly. One is almost tempted to imagine that
the Divine Intelligence must have foreseen Dr. Abbott's ingenious
method of interpretation, and taken this precaution against him. And
this was a great surprise to me--for, truly, I had not supposed it
possible that such an interpretation could have been foreseen, even by
Omniscience itself. I will conclude this communication by venturing
the assertion that it could not have been foreseen by any other person
or thing, in the heavens above, on the earth beneath, or the waters
under the earth. Dr. Abbott may accept my congratulations upon having
achieved the most ingenious and masterful exhibition of casuistical
legerdemain that it has ever been my fortune to encounter in my
readings in the literatures of some thirty centuries and seven
different languages.

And I will also add that I respectfully challenge Dr. Abbott to
publish this letter. And I announce to him in advance that if he
refuses to publish it, I will cause it to be published upon the first
page of the "Appeal to Reason", where it will be read by some five
hundred thousand Socialists, and by them set before several million
followers of Jesus Christ, the world's first and greatest
revolutionist, whom Dr. Lyman Abbott has traduced and betrayed by the
most amazing piece of theological knavery that it has ever been my
fortune to encounter.

#The Octopus#

Dr. Lyman Abbott published this letter! In his editorial comment
thereon he said that he did not know which of two biblical injunctions
to follow: "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be
thought like unto him"; or "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest
he be wise in his own conceit". I replied by pointing out a third text
which the Reverend Doctor had possibly overlooked: "He that calleth
his neighbor a fool shall be in danger of hell-fire." But the Reverend
Doctor took refuge in his dignity, and I bided my time and waited for
that revenge which comes sooner or later to us muck-rakers. In this
case it came speedily. The story is such a perfect illustration of the
functions of religion as oil to the machinery of graft that I ask the
reader's permission to recite it at length.

For a couple of decades the political and financial life of New
England has been dominated by a gigantic aggregation of capital, the
New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. It is a "Morgan" concern;
its popular name, "The New Haven", stands for all the railroads of
six states, nearly all the trolley-lines and steamship-lines, and
a group of the most powerful banks of Boston and New York. It is
controlled by a little group of insiders, who followed the custom of
rail-road-wrecking familiar to students of American industrial life:
buying up new lines, capitalizing them at fabulous sums, and unloading
them on the investing public; paying dividends out of capital,
"passing" dividends as a means of stock manipulation, accumulating
surpluses and cutting "melons" for the insiders, while at the same
time crushing labor unions, squeezing wages, and permitting
rolling-stock and equipment to go to wreck.

All these facts were perfectly well known in Wall Street, and could
not have escaped the knowledge of any magazine editor dealing with
current events. In eight years the "New Haven" had increased its
capitalization 1501 per cent; and what that meant, any office boy in
"the Street" could have told. What attitude should a magazine editor
take to the matter?

At that time there were still two or three free magazines in America.
One of them was Hampton's, and the story of its wrecking by the New
Haven criminals will some day serve in school text-books as the
classic illustration of that financial piracy which brought on the
American social revolution. Ben Hampton had bought the old derelict
"Broadway Magazine", with twelve thousand subscribers, and in four
years, by the simple process of straight truth-telling, had built up
for it a circulation of 440,000. In two years more he would have had a
million; but in May, 1911, he announced a series of articles dealing
with the New Haven management.

The articles, written by Charles Edward Russell, were so exact that
they read today like the reports of the Interstate Commerce
Commission, dated three years later. A representative of the New Haven
called upon the editor of Hampton's with a proof of the first
article--obtained from the printer by bribery--and was invited to
specify the statements to which he took exception; in the presence of
witnesses he went over the article line by line, and specified two
minor errors, which were at once corrected. At the end of the
conference he announced that if the articles were published, Hampton's
Magazine would be "on the rocks in ninety days."

Which threat was carried out to the letter. First came a campaign
among the advertisers of the magazine, which lost an income of
thousands of dollars a month, almost over night. And then came a
campaign among the banks--the magazine could not get credit. Anyone
familiar with the publishing business will understand that a magazine
which is growing rapidly has to have advances to meet each month's
business. Hampton undertook to raise the money by selling stock;
whereupon a spy was introduced into his office as bookkeeper, his list
of subscribers was stolen, and a campaign was begun to destroy their
confidence.

It happened that I was in Hampton's office in the summer of 1911, when
the crisis came. Money had to be had to pay for a huge new edition;
and upon a property worth two millions of dollars, with endorsements
worth as much again, it was impossible to borrow thirty thousand
dollars in the city of New York. Bankers, personal friends of the
publisher, stated quite openly that word had gone out that any one who
loaned money to him would be "broken". I myself sent telegrams to
everyone I knew who might by any chance be able to help; but there was
no help, and Hampton retired without a dollar to his name, and the
magazine was sold under the hammer to a concern which immediately
wrecked it and discontinued publication.

#The Industrial Shelley#

Such was the fate of an editor who opposed the "New Haven". And now,
what of those editors who supported it? Turn to "The Outlook, a Weekly
Journal of Current Events," edited by Lyman Abbott--the issue of Dec.
25th, nineteen hundred and nine years after Christ came down to bring
peace on earth and good-will toward Wall Street. You will there find
an article by Sylvester Baxter entitled "The Upbuilding of a Great
Railroad." It is the familiar "slush" article which we professional
writers learn to know at a glance. "Prodigious", Mr. Baxter tells us,
has been the progress of the New Haven; this was "a masterstroke",
that was "characteristically sagacious". The road had made "prodigious
expenditures", and to a noble end: "Transportation efficiency
epitomizes the broad aim that animated these expenditures and other
constructive activities." There are photographs of bridges and
stations--"vast terminal improvements", "a masterpiece of modern
engineering", "the highest, greatest and most architectural of
bridges". Of the official under whom these miracles were being
wrought--President Mellen--we read: "Nervously organized, of delicate
sensibility, impulsive in utterance, yet with an extraordinarily
convincing power for vividly logical presentation." An industrial
Shelley, or a Milton, you perceive; and all this prodigious genius
poured out for the general welfare! "To study out the sort of
transportation service best adapted to these ends, and then to provide
it in the most efficient form possible, that is the life-task that
President Mellen has set himself."

There was no less than sixteen pages of these raptures--quite a
section of a small magazine like the "Outlook". "The New Haven
ramifies to every spot where industry flourishes, where business
thrives." "As a purveyor of transportation it supplies the public with
just the sort desired." "Here we have the new efficiency in a
nutshell." In short, here we have what Dr. Lyman Abbott means when he
glorifies "the great mass of American wealth". "It is serving the
community; it is building a railway to open a new country to
settlement by the homeless; it is operating a railway to carry grain
from the harvests of the West to the unfed millions of the East," etc.
The unfed millions--my typewriter started to write "underfed
millions"--are humbly grateful for these services, and hasten to buy
copies of the pious weekly which tells about them.

The "Outlook" runs a column of "current events" in which it tells what
is happening in the world; and sometimes it is compelled to tell of
happenings against the interests of "the great mass of American
wealth". The cynical reader will find amusement in following its
narrative of the affairs of the New Haven during the five years
subsequent to the publication of the Baxter article.

First came the collapse of the road's service; a series of accidents
so frightful that they roused even clergymen and chambers of commerce
to protest. A number of the "Outlook's" subscribers are New Haven
"commuters", and the magazine could not fail to refer to their
troubles. In the issue of Jan. 4th, 1913, three years and ten days
after the Baxter rhapsody, we read:

The most numerous accidents on a single road since the last
fiscal year have been, we believe, those on the New Haven.
In the opinion of the Connecticut Commission, the Westport
wreck would not have occurred if the railway company had
followed the recommendation of the Chief Inspector of Safety
Appliances of the Interstate Commerce Commission in its
report on a similar accident at Bridgeport a year ago.

And by June 28th, matters had gone farther yet; we find the "Outlook"
reporting:

Within a few hours of the collision at Stamford, the wrecked
Pullman car was taken away and burned. Is this criminal
destruction of evidence?

This collapse of the railroad service started a clamor for
investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which of course
brought terror to the bosoms of the plunderers. On Dec. 20,1913, we
find the "Outlook" "putting the soft pedal" on the public indignation.
"It must not be forgotten that such a road as the New Haven is, in
fact if not in terms, a National possession, and as it goes down or
up, public interests go down or up with it." But in spite of all pious
admonitions, the Interstate Commerce Commission yielded to the public
clamor, and an investigation was made--revealing such conditions of
rottenness as to shock even the clerical retainers of Privilege.
"Securities were inflated, debt was heaped upon debt", reports the
horrified "Outlook"; and when its hero, Mr. Mellen--its industrial
Shelley, "nervously organized, of delicate sensibility"--admitted that
he had no authority as to the finances of the road and no
understanding of them, but had taken all his orders from Morgan, the
"Outlook" remarks, deeply wounded: "A pitiable position for the
president of a great railway to assume." A little later, when things
got hotter yet, we read:

In the search for truth the Commissioners had to overcome
many obstacles, such as the burning of books, letters and
documents, and the obstinacy of witnesses, who declined to
testify until criminal proceedings were begun. The New Haven
system has more than three hundred subsidiary corporations
in a web of entangling alliances, many of which were
seemingly planned, created and manipulated by lawyers
expressly retained for the purpose of concealment or
deception.

But do you imagine even that would sicken the pious jackals of their
offal? If so, you do not know the sturdiness of the pious stomach. A
compromise was patched up between the government and the thieves who
were too big to be prosecuted; this bargain was not kept by the
thieves, and President Wilson declared in a public statement that the
New Haven administration had "broken an agreement deliberately and
solemnly entered into," in a manner to the President "inexplicable and
entirely without justification." Which, of course, seemed to the
"Outlook" dreadfully impolite language to be used concerning a
"National possession"; it hastened to rebuke President Wilson, whose
statement was "too severe and drastic."

A new compromise was made between the government and the thieves who
were too big to be prosecuted, and the stealing went on. Now, as I
work over this book, the President takes the railroads for war use,
and reads to Congress a message proposing that the securities based
upon the New Haven swindles, together with all the mass of other
railroad swindles, shall be sanctified and secured by dividends paid
out of the public purse. New Haven securities take a big jump; and the
"Outlook", needless to say, is enthusiastic for the President's
policy. Here is a chance for the big thieves to baptize themselves--or
shall we say to have the water in their stocks made "holy"? Says our
pious editor, for the government to take property without full
compensation "would be contrary to the whole spirit of America."

#The Outlook for Graft#

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 entitled 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 sturdy conscience must be a
comfort to its possessor. The President of the "Outlook" is in the
position of a pawnbroker 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!

You see, if cannon and machine-guns are out in the open, they are
almost instantly spotted and put out of action; and so with magazines
like "Leslie's Weekly", or "Munsey's", or the "North American Review",
which are frankly and wholly in the interest of Big Business. If an
editor wishes really to be effective in holding back progress, he must
protect himself with a camouflage of piety and philanthropy, he must
have at his tongue's end the phrases of brotherhood and justice, he
must be liberal and progressive, going a certain cautious distance
with the reformers, indulging in carefully measured fair play--giving
a dime with one hand, while taking back a dollar with the other!

Let us have an illustration of this clerical camouflage. Here are the
wives and children of the Colorado coal-miners being shot and burned
in their beds by Rockefeller gun-men, and the press of the entire
country in a conspiracy of silence concerning the matter. In the
effort to break down this conspiracy, Bouck White, Congregational
clergyman, author of "The Call of the Carpenter", goes to the Fifth
Avenue Church of Standard Oil and makes a protest in the name of
Jesus. I do not wish to make extreme statements, but I have read
history pretty thoroughly, and I really do not know where in nineteen
hundred years you can find an action more completely in the spirit and
manner of Jesus than that of Bouck White. The only difference was that
whereas Jesus took a real whip and lashed the money-changers, White
politely asked the pastor to discuss with him the question whether or
not Jesus condemned the holding of wealth. He even took the precaution
to write a letter to the clergyman announcing in advance what he
intended to do! And how did the clergyman prepare for him? With the
sword of truth and the armor of the spirit? No--but with two or three
dozen strong-arm men, who flung themselves upon the Socialist author
and hurled him out of the church. So violent were they that several of
White's friends, also one or two casual spectators, were moved to
protest; what happened then, let us read in the New York "Sun", the
most bitterly hostile to radicalism of all the metropolitan
newspapers. Says the "Sun's" report:

A police billy came crunching against the bones of Lopez's
legs. It struck him as hard as a man could swing it eight
times. A fist planted on Lopez's jaw knocked out two teeth.
His lip was torn open. A blow in the eye made it swell and
blacken instantly. A minute later Lopez was leaning against
the church with blood running to the doorsill.

And now, what has the clerical camouflage to say on this proceeding?
Does it approve it? Oh no! It was "a mistake", the "Outlook" protests;
it intensifies the hatred which these extremists feel for the church.
The proper course would have been to turn the disturber aside with a
soft answer; to give him some place, say in a park, where he could
talk his head off to people of his own sort, while good and decent
Christians continued to worship by themselves in peace, and to have
the children of their mine-slaves shot and burned in their beds. Says
our pious editor:

The true way to repress cranks is not to suppress them; it
is to give them an opportunity to air their theories before
any who wish to learn, while forbidding them to compel those
to listen who do not wish to do so.

Or take another case. Twelve years ago the writer made an effort to
interest the American people in the conditions of labor in their
packing-plants. It happened that incidentally I gave some facts about
the bedevilment of the public's meat-supply, and the public really did
care about that. As I phrased it at the time, I aimed at the public's
heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach. There was a terrible
clamor, and Congress was forced to pass a bill to remedy the evils. As
a matter of fact this bill was a farce, but the public was satisfied,
and soon forgot the matter entirely. The point to be noted here is
that so far as concerned the atrocious miseries of the working-people,
it was not necessary even to pretend to do anything. The slaves of
Packingtown went on living and working as they were described as doing
in "The Jungle", and nobody gave a further thought to them. Only the
other day I read in my paper--while we are all making sacrifices in a
"War for Democracy"--that Armour and Company had paid a dividend of
twenty-one per cent, and Swift and Company a dividend of thirty-five
per cent.

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