Or take the Rev. James Roscoe Day, D. D., S. T. D., L. L. D., D. C. L., L. H. D., a leading light of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who offers himself as comic relief in our Clerical Vaudeville. Dr. Day is Chancellor of Syracuse University, a branch of the Mental Munitions Department of the Standard Oil Company; his function being to manufacture intellectual weapons and explosives to be used in defense of the Rockefeller fortune. It is generally not expected that the makers of ruling-class munitions should face the dirty and perilous work of the trenches; but ten years ago, during a raid by an active squad of muckrake-men, Chancellor Day astonished the world by rushing to the front with both arms full of star-shells and bombs. He afterwards put the history of this gallant action into a volume, "The Raid on Prosperity"; and if you want the real thrill of the class-war, here is where to get it!
The Chancellor is a quaint and touching figure; an enthusiast and dreamer, idealist and martyr, in whom the ordinary human virtues have been fused, absorbed, transformed and sublimated into a new supreme virtue of loyalty to Exploitation, patriotism for Profiteering. He began life as a working-man, he tells us, in the good old American fashion of hustle for yourself; but he differed from other Americans in that he had an instant, intuitive recognition of the intellectual and moral excellence of Plutocracy. The first time he met a rich man, he quivered with rapture, he burst into a hymn of appreciation. So very quickly he was recognized as a proper person to have charge of a Mental Munition Works; and the ruling classes proceeded to pin medals upon the bosom of his academic robes—D. D., S. T. D., L. L. D., D. C. L., L. H. D.
The Chancellor knows the masters of our Profit System, those "consummate geniuses of manufacture and trade by which the earth has yielded up her infinite treasures." And having been at the same time in intimate daily communion with the Almighty, he can tell us the Almighty's attitude towards these prodigies. "God has made the rich of this world to serve Him.... He has shown them a way to have this world's goods and to be rich towards God.... God wants the rich men....Christ's doctrines have made the world rich, and provide adequate uses for its riches." Also the Chancellor knows our great corporations, and gives us the Almighty's views about them; they mean that "the forces with which God built the universe have been put into the hands of man." Likewise by divine authority we learn that "the sympathy given to Socialism is appalling. It is insanity." We learn that the income tax is "a doctrine suited to the dark ages, only no age ever has been dark enough." Somebody raises the issue of "tainted money", and the Chancellor disposes of this matter also. As a Deputy of Divinity, he settles it by Holy Writ: "Paul permitted meat offered to idols to be eaten in the fear of God." And then, to make assurance doubly sure, he settles it with plain human logic; and you are astonished to see how simple, under his handling, the complex problem becomes—how clear and clean-cut is the distinction he draws for you:
Every boy knows that one cannot take stolen goods without being a partaker with the thief. But the proceeds of recognized business are quite a different thing.
Holy Oil
And here is Billy Sunday, most conspicuous phenomenon of Protestant Christianity at the beginning of the twentieth century. For the benefit of posterity I explain that "Billy" is a baseball player turned Evangelist, who has brought to the cause of God the crowds and uproar of the diamond; also the commercial spirit of America's most popular institution. He travels like a circus, with all the press-agent work and newspaper hurrah; he conducts what are called "revivals", in an enormous "tabernacle" built especially for him in each city. I cannot better describe the Billy Sunday circus than in the words of a certain Sidney C. Tapp, who brought suit against the evangelist for $100,000 damages for the theft of the ideas of a book. Says Mr. Tapp in his complaint:
The so-called religious awakening or "trail-hitting" is produced by an appeal to the emotions and in stirring up the senses by a combination of carrying the United States flag in one hand and the Bible in the other, singing, trumpeting, organ playing, garrulous and acrobatic feats of defendant, by defendant in his talk leaping from the rostrum to the top of the pulpit, lying prone on the floor of the rostrum on his stomach in the presence of the vast audience and from thence into a pit to shake hands with the so-called "trail-hitters" and the vulgar use of plaintiff's thoughts contained in said books. Said harangues and vulgarisms of said defendant and horns, drums, organs and singing by said choir and vast audience which are assembled by means of said newspaper advertisements for the purpose of inducing a habit of free and copious flow of money through religious and patriotic excitement produced by and through the vulgarisms, scurrility, buffoonery, obscenity and profanity of defendant pretending to be in the interest of the cause of religion through what he denominates "hitting the trail", the real object being to induce a religious frenzy and enthusiasm which he announces in advance is to result in large audiences composed of thousands of people generously contributing vast sums of money on the last day and night of the so-called revival which is invariably appropriated by the defendant and through which scheme and device defendant has become enormously wealthy.
As I write, the evangelist is in Los Angeles, and twice each day he holds forth to a crowd of ten or fifteen thousand; in addition the newspapers print literally pages of his utterances. The entire Protestant clergy for a score of miles around has been hitched to his triumphal chariot, and driven captive through the streets. Here in this dignified city of Pasadena, home of millionaire brewers and chewing-gum kings, all the churches have been plastered for weeks with cloth signs: "This Church is Cooperating in the Sunday Campaign." To give a sample of the intellectual level of the performance, here is what Billy has to say about modern thought:
All this blasphemy against God and Jesus Christ, all this sneering, highbrow, rotten, loathesome, higher criticism, wriggling its dirty, filthy, stinking carcass out of a beer-mug in Leipzig or Heidelberg!