At the Graves of John More and Betty Taylor, His Wife
The Cemetery, Roxbury, New York
August 31, 1920
Cousins of the More Family:
We are here today to honor the memory of our ancestors, John More and Betty Taylor, his wife, who came from Scotland in 1722 and settled in the Catskill Mountains, then a very wild region.
The little speech goes on for three paragraphs, to tell about the virtues of the John Mores; after which, for five paragraphs it[it] proceeds to implore the cousins of the More family not to fall victims to the evil and insidious modern “isms” which are “threatening to carry us on to utter catastrophe unless the Christians of the nation awaken.” Imagine, if you can, this poor, good-hearted, feeble-minded rich lady reading a memorial oration at the graves of her ancestors, and devoting one-fourth of her time to reciting the bugaboo-stories sent out in the begging letters of the National Civic Federation! Hear a sample paragraph:
The forces of autocratic barbarism are not confined to the Socialists, Anarchists and I. W. W.’s, but the cause of Lenine is more actively furthered either frankly or by indirection by radical, pseudo-intellectual writers, editors, professors, teachers and clergymen in our newspapers, magazines, colleges, schools and churches, and in some of these the enemies of democratic government are found to hold the very highest positions.
You will say that this is ridiculous, and you may say that it is negligible; but I assure you that nothing is negligible in America that has money. The wage-slaves of the railroads of the United States furnish millions of dollars every year for Mrs. Shepard to use in circulating such drivel, and subsidizing professional intriguers and character-assassins. I presume that Mrs. Shepard is a tender-hearted woman, who would be incapable of killing a mouse with her own hands. History reports the same thing of Queen Mary; but that did not keep her from causing Protestants to be burned at the stake. Moved by religious terrors and class arrogance Mrs. Shepard considers herself justified in setting in motion machinery for destroying the careers of men whose only offense is that they resent social oppression, and venture here and there to raise a feeble voice against it.
I have before me a letter from one such man, who has been blacklisted by the National Civic Federation, and in consequence has been hounded from college to college throughout the United States; I submit him as an exhibit of Mrs. Shepard’s achievements, a scalp which she wears at her belt. Or perhaps I might call him a series of scalps, since the poor man has lost his job ten times in sixteen years. I refrain from giving his name, at his request; he says: “I am perfectly capable of accumulating enough notoriety for myself without any professional assistance.”
He goes on to tell about his adventures, one after another. He was on the faculty of the Florida State College for Women, and was very successful as a teacher, but it began to be noticed that his students developed Socialist opinions, and the local newspapers took up the case, and the board of trustees fired him, in spite of the protest of the students. Then he went to Lenox College in Iowa, a town which had elected a Socialist mayor. “In the spring the president called me in and told me that he did not want me to think they had decided to drop me, but they made no move toward holding me for another year, so I got another job.” He went to Maryville College in Tennessee, and at the end of the second year “monied people in the East objected to my writings”; so he was dropped. Next he was dropped at Clark University, on account of his opposition to the war. He went to the University of Kentucky, and after a year of teaching was invited to give a lecture on Russia by the college Y. M. C. A. “The head of the department said it would be as much as his job was worth to recommend me for reappointment, and that the same would be true of the dean and the president; so I was not reappointed.” That was the summer of 1919, and he went to DePauw, but before he got started the Chicago “Tribune” got after him, so that he was “out of a job before entering upon it.”