be as great. Of course, this does not mean that the labor-record in this country is one in which we can justly take pride. To the contrary, it has its dark pages-its horrible chapters-that shame us as we read them, and, what is still more deplorable, many of these evils have not yet been corrected. Conditions Grow Better. Humiliating as we may find it to make this admission, there is no reason why we should be blind to the fact that the years of the nineteenth century recorded. almost as many great advancements in the United States as they did in England -that here, as in England, the condition of the worker has constantly grown brighter the evils and abuses from which he suffered have steadily been eliminated-with the result that today he is further from the realization of the prophesy of Marx than he has been at any time since the "Communist Manifesto" was written. This we shall show in the next article. English legislation has concerned itself with (1) the age of occupation; (2) the hours of work; (3) the protection from dangerous machinery and processes of manufacture deleterious to health; (4) workmen's compensation, old age pensions, etc. In the United States much progress has been made, although the legislative action has been to some degree retarded by the fact that we have so many States-each an independent law-making body—yet, at the same time public opinion shapes itself so rapidly in this country that the significant reform movements become popular much more quickly than abroad. Trade Unions at Work. Organized labor here, too, as in Engand, is heading the forces for the betterment of the lot of the worker. The public now finds its program for the good of the working men, women and children made out and ready for action. The children's place-it is now almost everywhere admitted-is the school, the playground, or the home, and never the shop or factory, mill or mine. Because of its significance, and especially because of the bitter complaints so often brought against the existing industrial system as one in which all the evils and abuses are of recent growth, it has been deemed best to devote another chapter chiefly to the American phase of this question. The New Morality. "It is not surprising that most clear-headed and logical Socialists have not failed to perceive that Christianity and Socialism are essentially antagonistic. 'Foreseeing,' writes Robert Blatchford, the editor of the Clarion, 'that a conflict between Socialism and religion (so-called) was inevitable, I attacked the Christian religion.' Still more to the point is the testimony of Professor Karl Pearson, one of the leading authorities on Socialism. 'The difference,' he writes, 'between Socialism and Christianity lies in the fact that the new policy is based upon a conception of morality differing in toto from the current Christian ideal, which it does not hesitate to call anti-social and immoral.' "—Anti-Socialist Union tract, "Christianity and Socialism." The Most Blasphemous Catechism WHIL HILE practically all the catechisms and text books used by Socialists in their educational work among children are most antagonistic to Christian principles, few of these works are more blasphemous, or more directly contrary to the tenets of religion and morality than "The Little Catechism," published by Geringer of Chicago, expressly for the Bohemian-American socialistic and anarchistic schools. A brief review of this catechism, which appears in the original book, asserts that "there is no god, no saints, no angels, no devil, no heaven, no hell, no virtue in prayer-all these things are mere deceptions of the preachers. Christianity has no truth in it, being only a deception, and founded by fanatics. Our age is the age of reason and progress, and only an ignorainus or a fool will still adhere to religion. When all people become enlightened then will disappear the false hope of any after life, which is only a delusion." "The Little Catechism" has been translated by the New York City Mission and Tract Society, and excerpts were published in the Society's monthly, June, 1909. While the part reproduced represents but a small portion of the questions and answers contained in the book, much of the matter is so vilely blasphemous and suggestive that we question the wisdom of reprinting it. The following excerpts, however, will give the reader a very clear idea of the character of this work-a book which, according to the estimate of the City Mission Monthly, is being used as a text book by more than twelve thousand children. Apparently the Bohemians are more frank in their attitude toward religion than their English-speaking confreres. Q. What is God? A. God is a word used to designate an imaginary being which people of themselves have devised. Q. Is it true that God has never been revealed? A. As there is no God he could not reveal himself. Q. What is heaven? A. Heaven is an imaginary place which churches have devised as a charm to entice their believers. Q. How did man originate? A. Just as did all animals; by evolu-. tion from their lower kinds. Q. Has man an immortal soul as Christianity teaches? A. Man has no soul; it is only an imagination. Q. Who is Jesus Christ? A. Jesus Christ was the son of a Jewish girl called Mary. Q. Is he the son of God? A. There is no God, and therefore there can be no God's son. Q. What do we know of the birth of Christ? (The answer is so foul we will not print it but we can furnish it privately to those who desire to make proper use of it.) Q. Did Christ rise from the dead as Christianity teaches? Q. Is there communion of saints? A. No, because there is no God, no saints, no soul, and therefore our prayers are wholly useless, and only a waste A. The report about Christ rising of time, which should been spent in more sensible things. from the dead is a fable. Q. Is it true that after Christ's death the apostles received the Holy Ghost? A. It is not; the apostles had imbibed too freely of wine, and their dizzy heads imagined all sorts of queer things. Q. Did Christ ascend into Heaven? A. He did not; what the Church teaches is a nonsensical fable, because there is no heaven, and there was no place to ascend to. Q. Will Christ come again to the earth? A. He will not, because no dead person can ever come back. Q. Will Christ return on judgment day? A. There will be no judgment day; that is all a fable, so that preachers could scare people and hold them in their grasp. Man has no soul, neither had Christ any soul. All these things have been invented by the Churches. Q. What is the Holy Spirit? A. The Holy Spirit is an imagination existing only in the minds of crazy religious people. Q. Is Christianity desirable? Christianity is not advantageous to us, but is harmful, because it makes of us spiritual cripples. By its teachings of bliss after death it deceives the people. Christianity is the greatest obstacle to the progress of mankind, therefore it is the duty of every citizen to help wipe out Christianity. All churches are impudent humbugs. Q. What is our duty when we have learned that there is no God? A. We should teach this knowledge to others. Q. Do we owe a duty to God? A. There is no God, and therefore we owe Him no duty. Q. Should we take the name of God in vain? A. Yes; because the name of God has no meaning. Q. Is adultery a sin? A. It is not a sin, because intercourse with the opposite sex is natural to every person. But it is undignified that it should be performed like the beasts. People who think of nothing else, talk of nothing else, are morally at fault. Man must do everything with reason and moderation. Young, immature, ought not to give themselves to adultery, because it retards their physical and mental development. Q. Does Christianity stand for right? A. No; it stands for and supports all that is wrong. Q. Should we pray? A. We should not. By prayer we only waste time, as there is no God. If we are given to prayer, we gradually become imbeciles. Q. But preachers say that prayer helps us, what of that? A. That is a contemptible humbug. IT The Philosophy of Green Apples A Plain Talk with Allen L. Benson By Bird S. Coler T is never a grateful or a gracious thing to kill hope. Beyond any doubt, Socialism has stirred a hope in hearts sick with distress. That is why it seems brutal to show how false it is. So many men have hungered for light of any kind that even the phosphorescent glow of a corrupt philosophy easily lures them. from the straight and narrow way. One who realizes this-who feels for a misery not his own-must shrink from the regretable task of quenching even that sickly glow. Sentimentally he almost wishes that the thing were true, and not what it is, a will-o'-the-wisp leading humanity back into Cimmerian shadows. Common Ownership Impracticable. If common ownership of productive machinery were practicable and human misery eradicable in a decade, or a generation even; if the slow processes of civilization were capable of a sudden, violent acceleration, and society could be made just before its component units became just, human nature would be other than it is. No wonder the Socialist promise gathers so many under its red banner. It is its pledge of near fulfillment that draws men's hearts. It has all the flash and the lure. But truth, sober of garb and speech, has nothing to offer impatient men but its eternal and irrevocable precepts. Truth says life is hard; hard for the individual and hard for the race. Truth says this thing of glittering spangles is a gause thinner than cobwebs: it will not clothe you. Truth says progress is slow and the mark of it in the individual soul is the measure of it in the race. Society cannot be honest while you are dishonest. Society cannot be moral while you are immoral. The bar of iron becomes the bar of steel when each of its molecules has become a steel molecule, and not before. You cannot reform a State by statute; you can reform it only by the slow process of reforming human integers which altogether are the State. Socialism's New Apologists. Mr. Allen L. Benson is the author of an article on Socialism in the April number of Pearson's Magazine. It is a good example of Socialist apologetics. Some who read it may be deceived by its specious arguments and may be induced in consequence to attend Socialist meetings, where they will learn to hate God or hate Socialism, to hate American institutions and the American flag, or to hate the unpatriotic thing called Individualism. They will learn that there are things in Socialism not mentioned in Mr. Benson's article. Indeed they will see strange things: Christian clergymen scoffing at the truths of Christianity, American citizens sneering at the American flag, license applauded above freedom and free love above matrimony. |