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