All formal organized religions through which the promoters and managers thrive are bad, but some are worse than others.  The more superstition a religion has, the worse it is.  Usually religions are made up of morality and superstition.  Pure superstition alone would be revolting—­in our day it would attract nobody—­so the idea is introduced that morality and religion are inseparable.  I am against the men who pretend to believe that ethics without a fetich is vain and useless.

The preachers who preach the beauty of truth, honesty and a useful, helpful life, I am with, head, heart and hand.

The preachers who declare that there can be no such thing as a beautiful life unless it will accept superstition, I am against, tooth, claw, club, tongue and pen.  Down with the Infamy!  I prophesy a day when business and education will be synonymous—­when commerce and college will join hands—­when the preparation for life will be to go to work.

As long as trade was trickery, business barter, commerce finesse, government exploitation, slaughter honorable, and murder a fine art; when religion was ignorant superstition, piety the worship of a fetich and education a clutch for honors, there was small hope for the race.  Under these conditions everything tended towards division, dissipation, disintegration, separation—­darkness, death.

But with the supremacy gained by science, the introduction of the one-price system in business, and the gradually growing conviction that honesty is man’s most valuable asset, we behold light at the end of the tunnel.

It only remains now for the laity to drive conviction home upon the clergy, and prove to them that pretence has its penalty, and to bring to the mourners’ bench that trinity of offenders, somewhat ironically designated as the Three Learned Professions, and mankind will be well out upon the broad highway, the towering domes of the Ideal City in sight.

One-Man Power

Every successful concern is the result of a One-Man Power.  Cooeperation, technically, is an iridescent dream—­things cooeperate because the man makes them.  He cements them by his will.

But find this Man, and get his confidence, and his weary eyes will look into yours and the cry of his heart shall echo in your ears.  “O, for some one to help me bear this burden!”

Then he will tell you of his endless search for Ability, and of his continual disappointments and thwartings in trying to get some one to help himself by helping him.

Ability is the one crying need of the hour.  The banks are bulging with money, and everywhere are men looking for work.  The harvest is ripe.  But the Ability to captain the unemployed and utilize the capital, is lacking—­sadly lacking.  In every city there are many five- and ten-thousand-dollar-a-year positions to be filled, but the only applicants are men who want jobs at fifteen dollars a week.  Your man of Ability has a place already.  Yes, Ability is a rare article.