Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship. This disk, its printout, or copi

Go to Human Rights activist Keith Henson

Skeptic Tank!

Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship. This disk, its printout, or copies of either are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold. This computerized book may be used for serious research as the line breaks, paragraphs, page breaks and page numbers in the text of this copy correspond to the original book, except for the header page, dedications, copyright page etc., that are separated by eight stars, thus; **** **** to conserve paper in printouts. Fine Print -- always takes away what the big print gives. Therefore we assume no responsibility for errors, omissions, goofs, etc. that may have crept in in spite of the careful manner we do our work. Some obvious typesetting and spelling errors are corrected. Also, in electronic files, the files may be corrupted by anyone whose hands they pass through. Entered into computer format 1994 by Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201 669 page printout. **** **** Fifty Years of Freethought BEING THE STORY OF THE TRUTH SEEKER, WITH THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ITS THIRD EDITOR BY GEORGE E. MACDONALD VOLUME II Foreword by CLARENCE DARROW NEW YORK: THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY 1931 **** **** Copyrighted by George E. Macdonald, 1931. Printed in the U. S. A. **** **** To THE READERS OF THE TRUTH SEEKER **** **** "Of what we give up, let us not try to fill the place with figments." -- GOLDWIN SMITH. **** **** FOREWORD THIS book, in which Mr. Macdonald tells of the struggle in America against superstition for the past fifty years, will be interesting to many men and women. It contains the story of constant progress in the realm of human thought. The Author has been connected with The Truth Seeker, a consistent Freethought paper, for more than fifty years, most of the time as an editorial writer. The book is a work, of two volumes, which tells in a straightforward, simple manner the story of Freethought, mainly in the United States. Many of the struggles for religious freedom in Amer- ica, especially of the early days, are exceedingly interesting, and the friends of Freethought are fortunate that a man like Mr. Macdonald has been willing to spend the time and care in writing the story. From very humble beginnings the movement in this country, as well as the world at large, has had an enormous growth. Within the memory of many living men the story of creation as told by the Bible was not even doubted. The Old Testament and the New was the literal work of the Almighty. God wrote it with his own hand. The punctuation marks were about the only portions subject to doubt. Every part of the holy book was of equal worth. Not only was the whole story inspired but the transla- tion as well. There was no difficulty about believ- ing every miracle. All the evil in the world came from Adam and Eve's eating of the Tree of Knowl- vi FOREWORD edge in the Garden of Eden. Few doubted that all the women of the earth who suffered the pains of childbirth were tortured because Eve handed the apple to Adam. The serpent and Balaam's ass talked with human beings. The only question raised was as to whether they spoke in Hebrew. The story of the flood was true. Joshua made the sun stand still while he finished the carnival of slaugh- ter. Jesus had no human father; he cured the ill by driving the devils out of the afflicted and into hogs. Jesus fed the multitude with the five loaves and two fishes. When he was born a star led the camels and their riders across the desert and stopped over a stable. The author, of course, thought that the stars were sticking in the firmament just above the earth. Now we know that they are billions of miles away and that if one should come near the earth our planet would be instantly converted into vapor. These stories were taught in nearly all homes and practically all the churches. Heaven and Hell were both fixed places for the abode of the dead, who were not separated according to their deserts but according to their beliefs. Today few of the churches talk about Hell, and not many have much to say about Heaven. If either abode is mentioned, no information is given about these mythical realms. Many of the churches are now liberal and aggres- sive, In every city and even in the smaller towns, there are churches that have maintained their names but are the headquarters for doubt and the interpre- ters of scientific thought. Many of them openly deny miracles, but some "liberal preachers" have FOREWORD vii tears in their voice when they speak of Jesus. It is only seventy years since Charles Darwin published his first book. It was everywhere met with ridicule and abuse. No one then questioned but that it took away the foundations of Religion. In that short length of time the whole scientific world has accepted his conclusion, and his theory of evolution is taught in every school worthy of the name. Amongst the intelligent people of the world it is almost as well established as the once heretical doctrine that the earth is round. It is well to take a look at the story of privation and suffering of the early apostles of freedom and sci- ence who at great risk and through dire privations went up and down the world seeking to emancipate the human mind. Some of the men and women of whom Mr. Macdonald writes are: Susan B. Anthony, Horace Greeley, Harry Elmer Barnes, Thomas W. Higginson, Edward Bellamy, Gov. Geo. Hoadley, Heywood Broun, Elbert Hubbard, Luther Burbank, Rupert Hughes, Samuel L. Clemens J.P. Mendum, (Mark Twain), Courtlandt Palmer, Moncure D. Conway,. Samuel P. Putnam, Ernest Crosby, John Emerson Roberts, Eugene V. Debs, Margaret Sanger, David and R.G. Eccles, Carl Schurtz, Thomas A. Edison, Horace Seaver, Geo. Burman Foster, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, O.B. Frothingham, Charles P. Steinmetz, Helen Gardener, Henry W. Thomas, viii FOREWORD Hon. W.J. Gaynor, B.F. Underwood, Thos. B. Gregory, Andrew D. White. It is well for us to remember these men and women who have made it safe to think. The world owes an enormous debt to the fighters for human freedom, and we cannot suffer their names to be forgotten now that we are reaping the fruits of their intelligence and devotion. The Author, Mr. George E. Macdonald, is not a college man, but he is an educated man. He has read good books all his life. He has read them without fear and with a full understanding. And as a writer he has always been loyal to the truth as he understood it. He has clung to this ideal in spite of all handicaps, disapproval and danger. He has been a valiant soldier for human liberty. He tells the story well. I want especially to commend his literary style. It is simple and direct. It is never obscure nor clouded. He writes to be understood. No words was wasted or used only to adorn. His history is absorbing through- out, and everyone who reads it will realize that he is reading the words of an honest man who be- lieves that loyalty to truth is the highest aim. The possibility of quibbling or lying never enters his head. It is a plain and interesting story told by a man who has lived a plain life and has writ- ten for the sake of telling the truth and nothing else. I commend this rare production to all who want to know something about the struggle for truth and freedom in America, and the devoted men who made it. CLARENCE DARROW. Chicago, April 15, 1931. PREFACE THIS history ends with 1925. It began with 1875 and professes to cover but fifty years of my participation in the Freethought move- ment, though those years now number fifty-six. Occasionally, for the purpose of terminating a sub- ject, I have alluded to events occurring later than the end of the century's first quarter. These could hardly be ignored by one writing in 1928-1930. I will cite for an example the necessity for changing my answer to the inquiry whether there are any towns in this country that have no churches, The disappearance of the rural church began to be re- marked upon after a survey made in 1916. That whole communities were left altogether churchless did not so plainly appear. One of the few towns I have been able to mention as destitute of religious privileges is in Bergen county, New Jersey. Churches were barred "by original deed and con- tract." Reports say that the ban is lifted and this borough, once godless, now has a church in the form of a community center with a pastor. Some writers, not sensing the need of facts upon which to base their statements, have denied the possibility that any community can live without a church, and have asked one and all to picture, if they can, the sunken condition of the churchless town. But this town, founded in 1848, was so for more than a half century, and no evil was reported as coming out of it. We may now set aside the New Jersey hamlet as negligible, for the 1931 report of the Home x PREFACE Mission Council of North America made public the fact that "there are 10,000 villages in America with- out churches of any kind," and three times as many "without resident pastors of any faith." Theoreti- cally, as per the writers who prescribe religion as a preventive, those towns of unknown name should be engulfed in a wave of crime. No one foresees that this will happen, but rather that religions cen- ters will continue to be the most criminal. The Truth Seeker changed its class while print- ing "Fifty Years of Freethought" serially. A weekly for more than half a century, it for good reasons has been issued as a monthly since January, 1930. My first volume is inscribed to its readers. I feel like dedicating this one to their memory and to that of writers whose work The Truth Seeker has published; for many of these whom, when writing, I could describe as still surviving, have gone the way of all souls. Lemuel K. Washburn, mentioned early in Volume I as a heretical Unitarian minister, and in 1925 a contributing editor to the The Truth Seeker, died in 1927 at the age of 81 years. His death was the most important single loss to the cause since the death of E.M. Macdonald. A year earlier died Luther Burbank, whose answers to the Questionnaire fill some pages of this volume. I am not writing their obituaries; but because they are characters in this work, and outlived the period it covers, I will name, as no longer with us, David Eccles, an old contributor; Thomas B. Gregory, Garrett P. Serviss, James A. Hennesy, William Cannolly ("The Spectator"), George B. Wheeler, Channing Severance, William M. van der Weyde. PREFACE xi And with the record of Edwin C. Walker left out these annals would be considerably shortened, but Walker died in his 82d year, in February, 1931. Inscribed to the living, let "Fifty Years of Free- thought" be a memorial to the dead who were of its family. I bequeath the rest to the historian of the ensuing fifty years of Freethought (1925-'75). Volume I, largely descriptive and autobiographi- cal, and bringing the reader to the year 1891, has been criticised as conceived in too light a vein, too "intimate." The author's years of youth and adoles- cence, with the part which the opposite sex had in them, are described. Why he should have re- hearsed those passages so indiscreetly he is now wholly unable to explain. There is none to expose, or "debunk," his youthful courses were they to be pictured as more staid than he recalls them to, have been. For the man in middle life, conscious that he might have done better and wondering if he ever will, there is stimulating medicine in one of Hux- ley's letters where he says: "Kicked into the world a boy without guide or training, or with worse than none, I confess to my shame that few men have drunk deeper of all kinds of sin that I." What Huxley was moved to "confess to my shame," as he says, fell under my eye in the '90s; but despite my inability to say no when a distinguished lady asked me at 18 to go for a pitcher of beer; despite my early addiction to a pipe; despite those domestic experiences told all too frankly in Volume 1; de- spite the admission in verses forty-five years old that -- xii PREFACE "I'm out some nights with the other boys, And come in, like Solomon, filled with dew," a confession like Huxley's I could not truthfully make, I at least had never smoked cigarettes. Look- ing at the eminence to which Huxley had risen, see- ing how he had climbed back, and only a few slips withal, hope triumphed, and I now project my vision backward over a vista where there is nothing to tell that might paint a blush on the reviewer's cheek. Another taking up the recording of events in line with those this book recounts, will not overlook, I trust, that singular one of 1928 in the history of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I allude to the occasion when the president of the Association appealed to the clergy to. "relieve the public mind concerning the possibility of any antagonism between science and religion." The author of that appeal is to be reminded that if there had been no conflict between religion and science, the Association of which he was president might never have been called into existence. In preparing the Index for these volumes I dis- cover omissions not now to be supplied in the text. Philadelphian readers may miss the name of the late George Longford, secretary of the Friendship Liberal League for a generation, and that also of its president Hugh Munro. Space or opportunity was not found to mention the organizer of the De- troit, Michigan, Freethought society, Mr. Ed- mund Marshall; nor Mr. William Brenner of New York, always in years past the reliable secretary of one society after another, including the Thomas PREFACE xiii Paine Historical Association (1918-1924). As early as 1921 Mr. Irving Levy began Collecting ma- terial for the Freethought section of the New York Public Library, and his work being well seconded by Mr. K.D. Metcalf, chief of the Reference De- partment, that library may now be regarded as complete in this respect. As I stated in a Note (Truth Seeker Nov. 24, 1928), the persistent Mr. Levy (a frequent caller) urged upon me the writ- ing of "Fifty Years" until resistance was overcome, and I began and completed it with the result which the reader sees. Born at Exeter, N.H., in 1842, Mr. Edward Tuck, in years the oldest American resident of Paris, the one member of the Dartmouth Class of '62 who subscribed himself a Freethinker, is the "without whomer" as related to the publication of this volume, Biography of the undistinguished or unpopular is not the kind of book on which the publisher makes money, but may lose more than he can afford. From the liberal impulses of Mr. Tuck, science, art and philanthropy have benefitted, while a timely gift determines the fate of "Fifty Years.," Vol. II. A further evidence of his gen- erosity is permission to make a frontispiece of his picture, forwarding which he says: "The rav- ages of time have not disfigured me greatly. I am neither deaf nor blind, nor rheumatic nor gone bughouse. In fact I am a lucky dog all 'round." Freely construing the word "bughouse," I take it to mean that Mr. Tuck has prepared no recanta- tion of his cosmic theories for immediate release upon his demise. xiv PREFACE New Castle, in Pennsylvania, has a hospital to the founding of which one of her citizens, Mr. David Jameson, gave the better part of a million. His townsmen call it the Jameson Memorial. The name of Mr. Jameson, who has died since these memoirs closed, is to be read among those asso- ciated with liberal donations for the maintenance of The Truth Seeker through dull times. The drawings in both volumes are by Myer Kanin. Although I lived through, witnessed, or "assisted at" the happenings herein revived and reviewed, many had passed from my memory and reappeared as a surprise when the veil was lifted. They will be an astonishment to younger spirits. The record of the Freethinkers is honorable. While they have never sought by force of law to deprive any person of his right to the pursuit of happiness, their oppo- nents, the forgers of gyves in the shape of dogmas and ordinances against the freedom of thought, speech and press, have perpetually wrought hand- cuffs for the wrists of Liberty. A discriminating future may know whom to honor. I make no pre- dictions as to that, but in hope and trust submit the names of a few of the deserving. April 11, 1931. G. E. M. CONTENTS CHAPTERS I-II -- City Editor of The Eye, Sno- homish, Wash. (1891-3) ............................. p.I CHAPTER Ill (1892) -- Sunday Closing of the World's Fair -- Madrid Congress -- Freethought Federa- tion Organized ...................................... 59 CHAPTER IV (1893) -- Short History of Sunday -- I Return to New York ................................ 71 CHAPTER V (1894) -- Value of Church Property in U.S. -- Kentucky Blasphemy Case -- Wise-Bible Case... 79 CHAPTER VI (1895) -- Mount Ingersoll -- Blasphemy Law Invoked in New Jersey -- Truth Seeker Prohibited in Canada ........................................... 93 CHAPTER VII (1896) -- Influence of W.A. Croffut -- I am "Office" Editor of The Truth Seeker -- Liberal University Project -- Watts and Foote in America -- Death of S.P. Putnam ............................... 113 CHAPTER VIII (1897) -- Dr. Abbott and Jonah -- The Brann Iconoclast -- Girard's Will Attacked -- Anar- chist -- Communist Arrests ......................... 137 CHAPTER IX (1898) -- The Methodist Steal South -- Government Lands Alienated to Churches -- Spanish American War ....................................... 153 CHAPTER X (1899) -- Roosevelt and Paine -- Death of Ingersoll -- West Point Chapel Steal -- Edison Char- acterizes Christianity ............................. 175 CHAPTER XI (1900) -- Congress excludes a Polyg- amist -- Skeetside -- The Regicide Philosophy -- Bootleg- ging Religion into Schools ......................... 189 CHAPTER XII (1901) -- Mark Twain and the Mis- sionaries -- The McKinley Assassination Not by an Anarchist .......................................... 203 CHAPTER XIII (1902) -- Herbert Spencer's Religion -- Martyrdom of Ida Craddock -- Drama of the Cruci- fixion -- Martinique Holocaust ..................... 215 xvi CONTENTS CHAPTER XIV (1903) -- The Anarchist Scare -- "Re- ligious Associations" Laws of France -- Stuart Robson and the Ministers ................................... 229 CHAPTER XV (1904) -- Soul Snatchers Struggle for Herbert Spencer -- Carnegie, Atheist -- The offspring of Freethinkers - International Congress - Haeckel's Propo- sitions ............................................. 241 CHAPTER XVI (1905) -- A Catholic Steal West -- The Professional Parasites and Their Press Censor- ship -- The Truth Seeker's Removal to Vesey Street -- The Sex of Angels -- New Rochelle Accepts Paine Monument ............................................ 258 CHAPTER XVII (1906) -- The Crapsey Heresy Charges -- The Fake Franklin-Paine Letter -- Short His- tory of the Inquisition -- The Christian Country Dictum -- Exclusion of Mark Twain from a Library -- San Fran- cisco Disaster and the Almighty ..................... 271 CHAPTER XVIII (1907) -- "In God We Trust" Re- moved from Coins by Roosevelt and Restored by Con- gress -- The infidel Town Myth -- The Valley Forgery. 292 CHAPTER XIX (1908) -- An Atheist Mayor of Rome -- Acts of Comstockery -- W.J. Bryan Wars on Evo- lotion -- Ripe Ages of Freethinkers ..................307 CHAPTER XX (1909) -- Death of E.M. Macdonald -- Paine Centenary -- Military Assassination of Ferrer -- Colleges Accused of Teaching Infidelity -- Paine Recan- tation Story Told of Herbert Spencer .................323 CHAPTER XXI (1910) -- The Ingersoll Recantation Affidavit -- A Freethinker for Mayor of Topeka -- Drews' Christ Myth -- Roosevelt and the Pope -- Bible Excluded from Illinois Schools ............................... 346 CHAPTER XXII (1911) -- Edison Disturbs the Clergy -- The Monistic Congress in Hamburg -- Ingersoll Statue Unveiled in Peoria -- Death of My Mother ..... 366 CHAPTER XXIII (1912) -- The Incompetence of the Clergy -- Haeckel's Church Departure -- An Ingersoll Ora- tion Stolen by an Evangelist ........................ 386 CONTENTS xvii CHAPTER XXIV (1913) -- Mr. Morton Character- izes a Priest and I am Summoned for Libel -- Crimes of Preachers -- Where the Day Begins .................. 402 CHAPTER XXV (1914) -- The World War and its Religious Side Shows -- Catholics Trusted in the Kai- ser -- The Mexican Zapatistas and the Nuns -- The Church Protests Mayor Nathan as a Commissioner to this Country ............................................ 420 CHAPTER XXVI (1915) -- The Lusitania Affair -- God Seen to Be on the Side of the Central Powers -- The Bill to Curb Criticism of Religion -- Many Free- thinkers Arrested -- Revolution in Portugal and a Free- thinker Made Provisional President -- Death of G.W. Foote ............................................... 437 CHAPTER XXVII (1916) -- Continued Activity of the Arresters -- Mockus Blasphemy Trial -- The Kaiser Invokes Jesus -- Darwin and Huxley Myths -- Haeckel's "Eternity ........................................... 451 CHAPTER XXVIII (1917) -- Free Speech Suppres- sion -- Freethought Books for Soldiers -- A Pest of Army Chaplains and Testaments -- Compulsory Church Atten- dance -- Herndon Memorial ........................... 466 CHAPTER XXIX (1918) -- Exclusion of The Truth Seeker from the Mails -- Its Triumphant Vindication -- The Y.M.C.A. in Disgrace -- The Patriotic Activity of Freethinkers -- Mark Twain Fellowship ............ 484 CHAPTER XXX (1919) -- An Epidemic Among Small Newspapers from Legislative and Economic Causes -- The Boys Come Home -- Ernst Haeckel Dies .. 504 CHAPTER XXXI (1920) -- A Preamble on Suckers -- post-War Grafts -- The Cross Officially Above the Flag -- The Questionnaire ........................... 518 CHAPTER XXXII (1921) -- The Truth Seeker Moves -- Ingersoll Birthplace Dedicated as a Memorial -- Bishop Brown's Book .............................. 530 CHAPTER XXXIII (1922) -- The Advent of Funda- mentalism - Indifferent Reaction of Men of Science -- Re- sponse of Luther Burbank to the Questionnaire -- Towns Without Churches .................................... 548 xviii CONTENT'S CHAPTER XXXIV (1923) -- Our Golden Jubilee -- Progress of Fundamentalism -- The Millikan-water Irenicon - Tablet to Paine - Death of Mrs. Ingersoll..570 CHAPTER XXXV (1924) -- Bishop Brown Heresy Trial -- Crime, Evolution, and Religion -- American Rationalist Association ............................. 587 CHAPTER XXXVI (1925) -- Tennessee Anti-Evolu- tion Law Passed -- Scopes Conviction -- Tablet on Site of Ingersoll Home -- Ground Broken by Edison for Paine Memorial Building -- Week Day Church School Decision -- Conclusion ....................................... 605 PICTURES IN VOLUME 1. Andrews, Stephen Pearl. 405 Macdonald, E.M..239, 349 Bennett, D.M ....... 142, 194 Macdonald, G.E...85, 454 Bennett Monument ........ 325 Palmer, Courtlandt.. 462 Bennett, Mrs. Mary ...... 333 Parton, James ..... 539 Bradlaugh, Charles ...... 536 Seaver, Horace ..... 494 Britton's Ferry ......... 136 Somerby, Charles ... 349 Freethought Office ...... 497 Truth Seeker Office in Leland, Grace L. ... 452, 453 Clinton Place .... 321 Leland, Lillian ......... 506 Tucker, Benj. R .... 270 Leland, Theron C ........ 384 Walker, Edwin C .... 424 Lick, James ............. 183 Wright, Elizur ..... 384 PICTURES IN VOLUME II Bradley, J.D. ........... 442 Macdonald, Mrs. Grace Bryan, William J. ....... 611 L. .................. 633 Burroughs, John ......... 545 Mark-Twain ...... 362, 498 Conway, Moncure D. ...... 304 Muzzey, David Saville. 614 Darrow, Clarence ........ 608 Packard, C.H. ......... 3 Darwin, Charles ......... 248 Paine Monument ....... 269 Edison, Thomas A. .. 367, 614 Pentecost, H.O. ...... 301 Ferrer, Francisco ...... 331 Purdy, G.H. .......... 166 Foote, Edward Bond ...... 399 Putnam, S.P. ......... 133 Foote, G.W. ............. 449 Remsburg, J.E. ....... 516 Galois, Marguerite ...... 413 Ricker, Marina M. .... 528 Gauvin, Marshall L. ..... 597 Robertson, Morgan ..... 88 Greeley, Horace ......... 379 Schroeder, Theodore .. 461 Griffith, J.I. ........... 33 Seibel, George ....... 434 Haeckel, Ernst, with Skeetside ............ 195 group, Jena, 370; in Steiner, Franklin ..... 69 church departure car- Stevens, Col. E.A. ....482 toon ................. 395 Thomas, Norman ....... 614 Holyoake, G.J. .......... 281 Tree in Snohomish ..... 49 Huxley, T.H. ............ 112 Wakeman, T.B. ........ 418 Ingersoll, Eva A. ....... 584 Wait,, C.D. .......... 340 Ingersoll, R.G., at New Walker, Ryan ......... 223 Rochelle, 86; 181; fam- War Cartoon, Ryan ily at statue, 377; Walker .............. 440 Birthplace at Dresden. 536 Ward, Lester F. at Macdonald, E.M., 324; Haeckel Home, Jena, monument ............. 328 Germany ....... 371; 417 Macdonald, G.E. Males Watts, Charles, with of Family, 473; with group ......... 226; 284 former Editors, 624; Wheless, Joseph ...... 616 Family in 1825, 629; Wooden Ships and Iron Residence ............ 631 Men ............. 166-167 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT CHAPTER I. JOURNALISM IN THE FAR NORTHWEST. IN JUNE, 1891, Clayton H. Packard of the thriving city of Snohomish, State of Washing- ton, sent me an invitation to come and be his partner in the publication of The Eye, weekly and tri-weekly. I knew of The Eye from the exchange ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ (Masthead of the EYE) ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ OFFICIAL PAPER OF THE CITY. AND OLDEST PAPER IN THE COUNTY. ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ISSUED EVERY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY FRIDAY AND SATURDAY -BY- C.H. PACKARD & GEO. E. MAGDONALD ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ lists of The Truth Seeker, and of Freethought, our San Francisco paper, and saw evidence of the use of the mind in its production. I had never been a small-town editor, and knew nothing of the routine 1 2 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT duties of one following that profession. I therefore accepted the invitation of Mr. Packard. This might be the life. My wife Grace's attachment to San Francisco had been weakened by her mother's death, and she was easily lured aboard a steamer bound for Seattle with such of our goods as we cared to take along, which included the baby. San Francisco and Seattle, viewed from the East, without laying a yard-stick on the map, appear to be neighboring cities, or no farther apart than New York and Port- land, Maine. But a thousand miles of water stretches between them, going by boat -- a four day's trip. After leaving America you go ashore first at Victoria, B.C., hard by Esquimault Bay, if you are tired of walking a ship's deck, which was my feel- ing. And there, I took notice, we had arrived where the days were long. It was evening when we docked, and I sat on the pier and read a book while the crew discharged freight. When the passengers were piped on board again, I closed my book and looked at my watch. It was near ten o'clock, and dusk coming on. In the middle of the summer, in those latitudes, there was no all-seeling hand of night till the hour after twelve. Unless a citizen got home before one o'clock, his all-hours return could be seen and reported by the neighbors. Beyond Victoria there is another ocean to sail, one that is called a strait -- San Juan de Fuca. You sail till morning and then all day, and stop in Seattle overnight. We stopped over a night and a day and went to a ball game with C.B. Reynolds, then a resident and a fan. Passengers went from Seattle to Snohomish, thirty-five miles off, by rail, and sent FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 3 their goods up the Snohomish river by boat, the charges therefor being more than they had been on the same freight from San Francisco to Seattle. Snohomish in 1891 was not to be classed as a quiet hamlet. It Was full of people, all moving. A desperado with a hotel hack seized us at the station, outside the business belt, and set us down in the center of population. While we gave admiring attention to a rider who managed his "loping" horse with a single line around the animal's lower jaw, Packard rushed up and named us. In him I saw a man of forty per cent smaller build than myself, about two years younger, and more prone to rush. If he was not always in a hurry, then his gait betrayed him and his speed was decep- tive. He had selected a room for us at the Maple House, a hotel over- hanging the river, and to C.H. PACKARD, the Maple House we "The Eye Mail." went. Main street, Sno- homish, is closely companioned for a little distance by the Snohomish river. I felt at first that if I should step off the sidewalk with the wrong foot I would step into the river. An old subscriber to The Truth Seeker, J.S. Martin, lived on that river in a stationary houseboat fastened by hoops to cedar piles that rose eighteen feet out of the water at low 4 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT tide. I have seen the hoops go to the top of the piles when the river was up and the tide high. Having been introduced to the printers in the office on the following morning, and not knowing what next, I inquired which type was dead and "threw in a case." It lay before me to learn what was news in that town and where to look for it, and then to divide my time between gathering it and putting it to press. Mr. Packard wrote a paragraph for The Eye introducing me as the new City Editor. He did not forget to name certain well-known pub- lications, Puck, Judge, and so forth, to which I had contributed. The City Editor, when city editing, went to the justice's court, or to the superior court, or to a meeting of the city council, or to the opening of a new store or cafe, or he might absorb an item from observation or interview, and returned with the proceeds to the office. He there turned his notes into copy, and helped to put them into type; he proved the galley with a towel wrapped about a planer, read and corrected proof, transferred the matter to the forms and locked them up, put the forms on the press, and perhaps took a turn at feed- ing. Before I became accustomed to press-work, I spoiled a set of rollers by starting the press when they were lifted at one end. The sentiments that Packard managed to contain regarding a man, drunk or sober, who would start a press without looking at the rollers, did him honor. The first event of importance that took place (a country editor would change that to "transpired") in Snohomish after I went into local journalism was FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 5 the presenting a coat of tar and feathers to the priest of the parish, the Rev. Father Francis Xavier Guay. I received no invitation to the party, nor notice that it was about to take place. Anyhow I should not have attended. If Catholics will have priests, let them take what comes to them, or lay their troubles before the bishop, and not call upon the secular public to avenge their grievances. Packard as a notary public gathered a sheaf of affidavits based on the attitude the priest had taken toward penitents, male and female, children and youth. Catholic mothers were ready to furnish the feathers for the occasion, but a heathen saved their beds by getting the feathers at a furniture store; and then Catholic men rolled the priest in them after tarring him. Father Guay observed silence for two or three days; then he wrote in a letter to The Eye, that he had suffered distress of mind from accusations circu- lated to his prejudice, and from the harsh treatment undergone at the hands of men not known to him. He then migrated, but appears to have been retained in the priesthood, as somebody from Southern Cali- fornia brought to Snohomish the news that the priest with whom we had parted was serving a congregation there. There was in our city another paper, the Daily Sun, upon which Packard looked with disfavor. The picture of its editor formed in the mind from the way Packard spoke his name fitted the man himself pretty well when one came to see him. He must have met with disappointments in life that had disil- lusioned him, for he had a saturnine countenance, a harsh laugh, and the morose outlook of a cynic. He 6 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT was thought, in The Eye office, to be fit for treason, stratagems and spoils, and suspected of being on the outlook for opportunities to practice them. Before I had ever laid eyes on the individual, Packard one day said to me: "Here, Mac, is something on Frank Mussetter that I want you to write up. I have to go out and do some collecting." I asked: "What infamy has Mussetter been up to now?" and Packard replied: "Why, God damn it" -- and then outlined in expletives the character of Mussetter, and went forth on his collecting mission. Our con- temporary, it appears, had suppressed or misstated facts of public interest in order, as it was our place to allege, to curry favor with a certain low element and put The Eye in wrong. Hence I wrote the article, unconsciously using fighting language, and our afternoon edition gave it circulation. The consequences were set forth in the next number of our publication, in an editorial which read: "A fierce-looking individual, loaded with several inches of adulterated Hydrant water and a big revolver, which he said he had borrowed especially for the present crisis, awaited the senior Eye man's return from breakfast last Saturday morning. The distinguishing features of the combination were those of Frank Mussetter, editor and reputed owner of our at times luminous contemporary. Mussetter was evidently riled. He reads The Eye and thus keeps thoroughly posted on local and domestic affairs, although the scarcity of news and original editorials in his own paper might lead subscribers to doubt it. As we said before, Mussetter was riled. It might have been The Eye's scoop in exposing the priest and The Sun's sup- posed connection with the affair, but he didn't say so di- rectly. Placing his good right hand on his pistol pocket, he inquired in a fierce, double-leaded voice fortified with FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 7 beer if The Eye had a gun. Being informed that the chief engineer of this great moulder of public opinion (for our subscription rates see card at head of editorial column) was not in the habit of having such dangerous things in his possession when inside the city limits (vide ordinance No. 4), Mussetter cautioned us to procure a weapon. He said he had come to shoot us; that he had borrowed a gun from Charlie Cyphers with that object in view, and he proposed to use it. He was informed that he would prob- ably never find a better time and opportunity than now presented themselves; also that he was making a damfool of himself. The Eye man explained that he was not a shootist, but would try to accommodate him with all the satisfaction he wanted in any other way. Mussetter averred that both he and his paper had been greatly hurt (we don't doubt it) by The Eye's articles, the truthful- ness of which he did not deny; and that he would be sat- isfied with nothing short of shooting us. However, he graciously concluded to postpone the killing, and grace- fully withdrew, remarking in a four-to-pica tone of voice, that he would surely open fire the next time he met us, and that we had better he prepared to meet our God, or words to that effect." As the conscious author of the strictures on the worth, abilities, and good faith of Mr. Mussetter, I expected to be included in his graveyard list, and felt keenly the slight implied by his partiality for my senior, and his want of recognition of my merits and claims. A joker told me that Mussetter had left me to the mercy of his City Editor, whose name was Immanuel Joseph, and that I should keep an eye lifted for a fellow wearing an ulster and a He- braic cast of countenance. Then a sincere friend who once lived in Virginia City, Nevada, where shooting had been popular, offered to lend me his gun, a short one that could be detonated from the 8 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT pocket. He thoroughly explained the method of taking aim with the "gun" so masked. It consisted of laying the forefinger alongside the barrel and "pointing same," as one could do automatically and without sighting the weapon. But already I knew but feared not Joseph. He was more likely to bor- row money of me than to pick a quarrel. I gave Joseph credit for having some sense. But Mussetter's state of mind meanwhile must have been wholly unenviable. By warning Packard that he should shoot him on sight, he had conferred upon his adversary the right to do the same to him And if he were to make good his threat to shoot a man who had not menaced him, he could be hanged for it; whereas, according to the code, Packard might kill him with impunity and without warning wherever encountered. Mr. Mussetter may or may not have been handy enough with firearms to hold a gun on a man and fire it; but Packard was some- thing of a mountaineer, a prospector accustomed to handling weapons, and while packing no gun for social purposes, yet when outside the city limits, on one of his trips into the wilds of the Cascades, where catamounts abode and wild goats offered themselves for targets, he wore strapped to his side a "shooting-iron" which, in its scabbard that pro- jected a foot below the tail of his coat, looked to be twenty inches long. If so minded the senior editor of The Eye could have drilled his contemporary a block away. But instead of making Mussetter bite the dust Packard chose to hector the editor of The Sun, "our luminous contemporary," in the columns of The Eye. He did it well, too. Claiming as the FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 9 challenged party the right to a choice of weapons, he advanced various absurd propositions calculated to make Mussetter look ridiculous, such as repair- ing to the Bon Ton restaurant and heaving 45-cali- ber fishballs at each other, or seeking the headwa- ters of the Stillaguamish river, with no doctors or priests -- medical and spiritual advisers sternly ex- cluded; and there exchanging double-leaded tariff editorials until one or both combatants received and acknowledged a mortal wound. "If either shoots his mouth off," said Packard, in naming the condi- tions, "before the proper signal is given, it shall be the privilege of the other, before the fight proceeds, to draw on the offending party for drinks enough to irrigate all readers of both papers for a period of three months next ensuing." "Our luminous contemporary" came out daily, pushed by the faithful Joseph, with its usual scant measure of local news and a good political article on the editorial page clipped from some mid-western exchange; but although I pursued my diurnal can- vass of Front street looking for subjects to write about, I never once saw Mussetter. At the end of a week the office telephone rang, and the bartender of the Penobscot, speaking, said: "Well, the enemies have met." Myself at the receiver: "And what hap- pened?" Penobscot House: "Why, Mussetter rushed at Packard with one hand up and the other stretched out a yard in front of him to shake. And now he's trying to buy Packard a drink, but Clayt is a teetotaler and is taking a pocketful of cigars. And he don't smoke, neither. You'll fall heir to them cigars. Mussetter is happier than Clayt is." 10 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT Early in October (this was in 1891) my former San Francisco partner, S.P. Putnam, sent me word he was in the far Northwest and would like to speak in Snohomish. I telegraphed him to come a-run- ning. Then I interviewed the known Freethinkers, took up a subscription, got out posters, advertised the meeting in The Eye, and hired Odd Fellows Hall. The house was full beyond capacity. Putnam had been there before, and had then been introduced to the audience by the mayor. But that was before the churches came in so strong. Now that there were four or five of them, representing considerable piety, the mayor hung back, with the consequence that Putnam had to introduce himself, which wasn't so bad an introduction. He spoke on the philosophy of camp meetings and revivals, drawing a strong contrast between Christianity and Freethought, to the disadvantage of religion. The audience took it with applause, except a real estate dealer named Sweeney, who interjected "No, that's not so," a few times, causing Putnam to pause in his discourse, and inquire whether, in commenting upon the funda- mental truths of religion, he had misrepresented Christianity. Sweeney voted Aye, and was invited to take the platform at the close of the lecture. Thus Sweeney did, and it was the unwisest course he could have chosen. He announced himself as "a sort of a Christian," who believed that the story of Jonah's living three days inside the whale, and thereby becoming an authentic sign of the resurrec- tion of Christ, was literally true. He charged Putnam with garbling the words of Jesus and mis- representing Christianity. Pointing the finger of FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 11 accusation, he declared that Putnam had quoted Christ as saying "blessed are the poor," when what the son of man really said was "blessed are the poor in spirit." Putnam grinned, as Sweeney went on to affirm his belief that God halted the progress of the sun while Joshua in safety crossed the Red Sea! Having thus innocently confounded the army of Joshua with the children of Israel, Mr. Sweeney was bewildered by the immoderate laughter of the audience. When Putnam replied, a good time was had by all except Sweeney, who as "a sort of a Christian," Putnam said, was not the kind of a Christian he had been describing. It was the "sort of a Christian," and not he, who misrepresented Christianity and always would because he didn't know his own faith. Putnam then picked up his Testament, turned to Luke vi, 20, and asked him to read it. Sweeney did so, and was humiliated to discover the words were "Blessed be ye poor," with no "in spirit" anywhere near them. My report of Sweeney's speech, with his Joshua crossing the Snohomish river while the moon stood Still on Pillchuck and the paralyzed sun forgot to set over the Olympics, was unsatisfactory to him, and he Wrote a reply. I have no file of The Eye for 1891; and when a writer quotes with no check but memory, it is his own fault if the events are not described as they ought to have happened. Siwashes (the name for Indians on that part of the Pacific coast) lived in wickyups along the banks 12 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT of the Snohomish river, and paddled up and down the stream in dugout canoes. "Canoe" brings to mind a kind of small and light craft, generally em- ployed for idle uses, like taking a girl out on the Charles river. I have seen a Siwash canoe probably eighteen feet long and of four foot beam, that carried the load of a moving-van, including the family. These aborigines were known as Snohomish Indians after the river. The Indian bands in those regions carried with them the names of the streams whose borders they inhabited. The student will see in siwash a form of the French word sauvage. The Siwashes were savage as to their mode of life, but peaceable and friendly toward their fellow man. I made no study of them, as to how they subsisted. So far as I could make out, they had solved the problem of living without labor. With so many salmon in the stream they did not have to work; they went fishing. Nevertheless, civilization was in the process of absorbing them. Younger men went out as farmhands; the old men and the womankind were most numerous in the wickyups. A govern- ment reservation at Tulalip where Indians who dis- liked tribal life could go drew many away from the streams. Early settlers, who, according to ancient history, were deserters from British men-of-war had found their way up the rivers from the Sound and lived with the Siwashes, squatting on the land or buying it of the natives. The white men bought their Indian wives of fathers, brothers, or perhaps of husbands. The sale of a girl by her father to a man who said he wanted her for a wife was upheld by the courts as legal in that country, which in 1891 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 13 had been a state for only two years. A young man settling there on a farm seventy years ago could make no better investment of his money or spare stock than to buy a wife with it, for the Indian women were good helpers about a place, and the children also could be worked as they grew up. How many wives some of them bought I am not interested to know. The federal law that was passed for the abolition of polygamy in Utah in the '80s did away with the plural wife system among these old settlers in Washington, who were expected to acknowledge the wife they had taken first and discontinue the others. They obeyed the law in the matter of estab- lishing the senior spouse as wife. As regards the rest, it was said that to avoid inflicting hardships on them they were retained in the family as maids. None of the so-called squaw-men lived inside the city limits; they were ranchers. One of them, when his elder wife died, moved into town and married white. But he kept his ranch, and how large a popu- lation of secondary wives and their children the ranch maintained you could only judge from appear- ances. The man kept a general store in town. I saw one day a troop of mounted Indians galloping through the streets, and inquired of an older resident whether this was probably a massacre. He said no, it was only So-and-so's family going to his store for an outfit. In the East we hear of no prejudice against Indian blood; in Snohomish any reference to the fact that a person had a trace of it in him or in his family was forbidden as "ancient history." Some of the best-looking girls in town were half or quarter Indian. The red cheeks got from the white 14 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT parent showing through the dusky coloring from the other side of the family produced a beauty that be- longed to neither of the races unmixed. And yet one was not allowed to mention it. While I was yet new to my surroundings, an old and respected settler named Charles Short died and was buried from the Methodist church, where his family as chief mourners occupied the front pews. They were of much interest to me, both from their numbers and from their parentage, which was half Indian. The funeral sermon was preached by a young minister from Arkansas named Feese, who looked like a cow- boy and had as dark a Complexion as any white American I had ever met. Surviving contemporaries of Mr. Short had related his history to me, speaking very highly of him. In reporting the funeral for The Eye, after sketching Mr. Short, I made reference to the picturesque group in the front pews, and remarked with refer- ence to the general color scheme, that the swarthy preacher in the pulpit might well have passed for a member of the family. When the report of the funeral had been read, one person after another stopped me on the street to inquire why I had given that dig at Short. All I could think of to apologize for was the implying that the follow. in the pulpit bore some resemblance to Mr. Short's. family, and I admitted I ought perhaps to have left that out. But that was not the point. One man squared himself in front of me and implored that I reveal to him what I had against Charlie Short -- what old Charlie Short had ever done to me that I should slur him after he was dead. FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 15 That was the way they felt. I had violated the tabu on a squaw man's family and had opened the tomb of ancient history. The fuss was silly to me then and still has that appearance. Likely enough the present generation of the Shorts, if they have fared East a thousand miles, are putting on dog about their Indian ancestry. The first year was the hardest, for The Eye was a Republican paper, and took sides in politics. I had been voting the Republican ticket every four years since 1880 but saying why I did so was something else, and when it came to writing a party editorial I simply didn't know how. The title of a book in The Eye library showed that the work professed to be a History of the Republican Party. That book was the source of all I wrote in defense of the Grand Old Party. By good luck the need for these difficult editorial labors was shortly relieved, for Packard espoused the cause of Populism and wrote with such zeal that The Eye thereafter was never short of timely political matter. The Eye was a good paper too. We brought it out as a tri-weekly, filled with local and county news, and every issue had a real editorial; and all that had been in the tri-weekly went into the weekly edition, where the accumulated editorials made a full page, as in the best city papers. It was the paper the old residents took and swore by; and it deserved their confidence. No man in the county had a better repu- tation for honesty and squareness than Packard. His probity was unimpeachable. The press is said to be for sale. I never heard of 16 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT any schemer trying to buy the opinion of our paper, and I was myself corrupted but once. That was when a man just starting a game down the street and mistakenly supposing that I was going to make an outcry over it, took me aside and said that as The Eye had always used him well, he would like to show his appreciation. He was opening a little place to give the boys a chance to get action on their money; and while it was not the kind of proposition that competed for advertising space, still the press ought to be supported by all good citizens. Then to my surprise he passed me a twenty-dollar piece. As the first proffer of a bribe in my newspaper experience it produced in me a reaction hitherto unknown. On the spur of the moment one was not sure what he ought to do with the money or to the base wretch offering it. While I mulled over the situation he invited me inside and showed me his roulette layout. And now my course became clear. I changed the twenty into iron men and, picking number 27, told the man who turned the wheel to let it spin. He complied and announced "little 2-0." The other plays which I then tried were like that one, and in half an hour I walked virtuously forth, carrying with me none of the wages of corruption. Tempta- tion no further assailed me until a few years ago, when a minister offered me fifteen dollars to print an article I had decided was unavailable for The Truth Seeker. For another new experience I was once asked by the county medical superintendent to be his assistant while he reduced the dislocated shoulder of a man in FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 17 jail. The patient, a two- hundred pound Swede, out of the logging-camp, whose misfortune had come from a fall while intoxicated, lay on a mattress, on the floor. He appeared dead to the world, but for safety the doctor chloroformed him. The doctor then directed me to remove a shoe, to sit on the mat- tress beside the patient, facing him; to put my stockinged foot under the arm of the Scandinavian, and then, grasping his wrist with both hands, to give a strong and steady pull. Meanwhile the doctor squatted by the fellow's big blond head and slipped the bones back into place. Being City Editor contributes to a liberal education. As impinging on "ancient history," that is, al- luding to the circulation of aboriginal blood in the veins of persons who preferred not to have it men- tioned, I committed another serious error when re- porting a ball game. The game was played at Tualco, on the Skykomish river, ten miles away, and I had to go horseback to the grounds. The horse that carried me had a forward-and-back motion like the bed of a Campbell press, and an up-and-down one like a milk-shaker. I returned very sore, but I heard the next day that the Tualco players were sore in a different place, because I had christened their team "the Chinooks." 18 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT Now, there visited those parts at times a balmy wind called the chinook -- an agreeable condition or movement of the atmosphere sometimes said to presage snowslides in the mountains. Our team bore the name of "the Cyclones"; the Tualcos' want of a name I supplied by calling them the "Chi- nooks," having reference to the aforesaid breeze, so that I could subhead my report: "Cyclones and Chinooks Play a Whirlwind Game." Thus, while Chinook is the common name for the Indian jargon of the Northwest, or for those to whom it is the native vernacular, I thought that in apposition with the Cyclones, and with whirlwind added, making a very neat collocation, its technical and ethnological JIMICUM FIELDS THE BALL. ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ use might be overlooked. But not by the Tualcans, never! They made war talk and sent word that if they ever found the reporter again on the Sky- FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 19 komish they were likely to get his scalp. They had no eye for the literary quality of the heading I had written on the story of their game. But I came near doing worse than that, for I received the im- pression, and was tempted to say so, that the chase after a fly ball had a tendency to bring out the prim- itive qualities of the redman. Because: At one point in the play, a pop fly was settling near where I sat keeping score, and a Tualco buck named Jimi- cum came running to field it. 'His cap was off, his hair was long, and his face flushed, and with every bound he emitted a deep "How!" If I had not known that his objective was the ball I should either have fled or placed myself in an attitude of defense. When the two teams next played I re- ported that the Cyclones had run into a Blizzard. The Salvation Army came to Snohomish in '92 and made such a blare with its trumpets that it got a hallful of spectators at ten cents. Moreover, it took permanent quarters and having enlisted a few recruits, left one of its warriors in command. My reports of the meetings were so irreverent that the officer in charge of the invasion wrote to The War Cry that the work was difficult here on account of there being a Satan in the place. The one that re- mained, who bore the name of Happy Bill, alleged in the same publication that Snohomish was a "tough" town. He meant, as he later was at pains to say, in assuagement of public criticism, that the town was "tough" in the sense of being hard to pull apart, like deer-hide, and the editor of The War Cry had imported another meaning into his words. He never was forgiven, for Snohomish held itself to 20 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT be an orderly city, as indeed it was, and pointed with pride to its freedom from lawlessness. Besides the Salvation Army organizers there came Joseph Murphy, said to be the son of Francis, the great temperance apostle. He made a strong religious plea, based ostensibly on the Bible, which gave me an opportunity to unfold some Scriptures on the subject. Mr. Murphy dropped in at the office to propose an armistice and to leave an order for job printing. Our "luminous contemporary," The Sun, now no longer conducted by the truculent Mus- setter, but in the hands of W.M. Sanger, an alto- gether decent sort of chap, boldly championed Murphy, gospel temperance, prohibition, and the Good Templars. The town cared little for either, but liked the debate. Before this date my rival City Editor, Immanuel Joseph, had left the employ of The Sun and had started on a career of swindling, was after a while put in prison for tak- ing human life, and finally locked himself in for good by killing a guard in an attempt to escape. The frontier is no place for an isolated Jew of Jo- seph's class. I imagine it was the new and gun- toting country that made him turn to deeds of vio- lence. Joseph with sardonic humor once handed in my name along with his own, as an applicant for admis- sion to the Good Templar Lodge. Since member- ship with the Good Templars merely implied but did not guarantee abstinence, I was pained after- wards to learn that I had been blackballed by Wal- ter Thornton. The more so because I held I had recently done Walter a favor. To relate the cir- FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 21 cumstances, Mr. Thornton, being out late one evening, was passing on the other side of the street from John Gillis's place, when he heard, issuing through the hospitably opened front door of that house of cheer, the sound of bagpipes played by a man in kilts who stood before the bar. Walter, staying his steps, plucked a large apple from a tree overhead, and threw it at the performer. The apple missed the musician by a foot and then went through a window in the rear of the saloon. The hurler was unseen, but John Gillis did some figuring. The facts showed that the apple, starting thirty feet from his door, had entered his premises at an elevation not above seven feet, and that on nearly the same level it had traveled the length of his saloon, at least forty feet, and had passed through the rear win- dow some four feet from the floor. Gillis knew that no one in town but Thornton could make a throw like that. He therefore took counsel of the city marshal, who straightway found Walter and sum- moned him for malicious mischief. And now, while the incident was legitimate "news," and the pinching of our star pitcher a sure sensation if known (and it appears that Marshal Brown spoke to no one but myself about it), The Eye never mentioned the af- fair. Surely, I thought, my reticence deserved other recognition than a blackball. I last saw Thornton in 1900, when he was pitch- ing for the Chicago Nationals and his team played in New York. He called on me at 28 Lafayette place. He told me then, or previously had told somebody else, that he never would have blackballed me as an applicant for admission to the Snohomish Lodge 22 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT of Good Templars if that night he had not happened to be a little full. In 1927 a reader of The Truth Seeker in Southern California sent in a newspaper clipping containing part of a sermon by the Rev. Walter Thornton, who had used selections from Ingersoll. Walter, I remembered, had Inger- soll's pamphlet, "How to Reform Mankind." In May, 1892, I read in the Congressional Record a speech that had just been delivered in the House of Representatives by a young fellow named Bryan, from Nebraska, on a day when members of Con- gress were filling the pork barrel -- that is to say, were discussing the Rivers and Harbors bill and making appropriations of money to carry out its pro- visions. Bryan -- it was William J. -- introduced an amendment to include the rivers of his state, more particularly the Platte, the bed of which stream, he declared, plainly showed that it must once have had water in it, as it might again were the necessary moisture to be supplied by artisan wells. Bryan went on to tell his colleagues how the Platte so improved, and situated midway between the two great oceans and equidistant between our northern and southern frontiers, would be unsurpassed as a harbor of refuge, "where, Mr. Chairman, our navy might float in absolute security in time of war." That speech remained to Bryan's credit in my mind when he delivered the one that brought him the nomination for the Presidency; and I was for him. And why not? He was on The Truth Seeker's list of book buyers and had ordered the works of Paine. I could hardly be expected to fore- see that he would read them without profit. FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 23 The Eye of July 7, 1892, published a card from the Presbyterian minister addressed to the editor. "DEAR SIR: I wish, through the columns of your paper, to publicly express my righteous indignation and solemn protest against the act of certain of my fellow towns- men, in erecting a flagpole, on the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday, in front of a house of public worship in the city of Snohomish, at the hour of regular service, thereby disturbing the officiating minister and the congregation in the exercise of their civil and religious liberty, and as I interpret it was a menace upon the life of both the civil and religious institutions of the United States of America. Yours respectfully, J.W. DORRANCE." The first day of the week, commonly called Sunday, was in 1892 the day before the Fourth of July, when the E.W. Young camp, Sons of Veterans, had promised the town a flag-raising that would knock its eye out. The corner of Second street and Avenue A had been assigned by the city council as the place to plant the mast, and it was no fault of the Sons that the place selected was in front of a house of worship. The Presbyterian church stood on the opposite corner of Avenue A. Really that flag-raising was the job of the Grand Army of the Republic, which had planned it for Memorial Day, but for want of funds or enthusiasm had let the project fall through. However, a Grand Army man who owned timber had hauled to the spot a mainmast seventy-five feet long, and a topmast at least fifty. Councilman Knapp, the Tubal Cain of the combination, had hammered out a huge iron stirrup for the topmast, and if the two sticks had stood erect, one on top of the other, why, there would have been a flagpole one hundred and twenty- 24 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT five feet over all. But two pieces of timber lying in the gutter of Second street were just two spars, and not a flagpole, although representing the substance. A week before the Fourth there was not even a hole for a pole to crawl into. As captain of the camp we had a Blethen from Maine, a tall fellow who could march the boys up the street in good order and shift them to the sidewalk with the com- mand, "Left oblike," but he was no specialist on flagpoles. He held the office of jailer at the county lockup, which furnished him with an alibi, and left me, as first lieutenant, in full command of the Sons, who gathered around me looking wistful, and in- quiring what was to be done about raising that pole. The answer was the formation of a pick and shovel brigade, headed by myself, to dig the hole, which had to be ten or twelve feet deep. We began thirty feet from the site selected, sank a shaft, and into it rolled the mainmast, which at my expense had been dressed and painted. The foot lay twelve feet below the surface and the top slanted into the air seventy feet away. Without derrick or "gin pole" we were thus far and no farther when the com- manding officer and a detail of his subalterns in uni- form marched in good order to the office of the electric light company and asked for the use of its derricks and tackle. The company readily made the donation; the mayor granted the use of the city team. I assumed responsibility for the wages of linemen, who had to do the work on overtime. Saturday afternoon proved too short; only the main- mast was in place at quitting time. I quote from The Eye: "The writer of this FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 25 account, taking the initiative in the absence of a more competent person, requested the men to resume work Sunday morning in order that the program for the Fourth might be carried out." I took the time to call on the Rev. Mr. Dorrance and let him know that we should work Sunday morning. He replied that the act could not be excused on the ground of either mercy or necessity, and I rejoined that the same could be said of Presbyterian preach- ing, which was never necessary and seldom merci- ful; and yet inasmuch as the liberty pole was to be presented to the city, which was destitute of such an ornament, I held that the erection of one and its presentation to the municipality would be a work of charity. To quote again: "The next morning some twenty young men were on the ground, and at about 9 o'clock the writer was shoveling gravel in a way that excited the commiseration of all beholders, when the Rev. Mr. Dorrance appeared. The gentle- man planted himself upon the sidewalk, removed his hat, and, in the name of God and the Christian religion, commanded the boys to desist." The boys looked at me expectantly. I replied to the clergyman with some heat that the flag which the pole would support aloft was designed for the protection of Mr. Dorrance in his religious worship, and that the Grand Army, the Sons of Veterans, and American citizens at large would claim under that flag the same right which they guaranteed to him. Therefore, if he demanded religious sanction, then in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Conti- nental Congress, the work would proceed. Dropping his argument from the gospel, the 26 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT minister withdrew and appealed to the authorities. He visited the home of the county's prosecuting attorney and called for an injunction against Sabbath-breakers. The attorney, Heffner by name, declined to act. He was just getting ready, he said, to go fishing, and was late at that. Mr. Dorrance saw the sheriff, Jimmy Burton, who shrugged his shoulders and grinned. Burton was a Freethinker, and, anyhow, it was outside of the sheriff's line of duty. The man of God went to the city attorney, who told him the town marshal might do as he liked about it. Marshal Brown appeared, and while avoid- ing my eye and gazing at a new moon making itself visible in the sky, said the work would have to be stopped. It stopped. I asked him to take cogni- zance of the fact, and having done so not to look our way again. he walked back to his post and was seen no more, but he must have heard my order to resume firing. The pole went up, and it was a stick to be proud of, towering one hundred and twenty feet or so in the air; and before nightfall we had rehearsed the next day's raising by sending up a banner with a twenty by sixty foot spread, the largest in the state. Our Fourth of July literary program was much to my liking, for I had arranged it myself, and it included neither prayer, invocation, benediction, nor doxology. No minister had been invited to participate. When next I met Mr. Dorrance he halted, re- moved his hat, and astonished me by saying: "I have an apology to offer. On my way home from the city attorney's office last Sunday I saw a deacon FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 27 of my church extirpating weeds in his garden; and it came to me that my work lay in my own congrega- tion, not with those who make no professions of respect for the sanctity of the Sabbath." I then and there also expressed regret if in my comments on the incident lately closed, I had said anything that might be construed as personally disparaging to himself. ** TO GEO. E. MACDONALD. From The Eye. Good-bye. And though we should not meet again, And though your future leads you among men Of, more productive brain, and should your pen Bring forth truth and legends which will stem The tide of contradiction, and nobly stand Forth on the pages of freedom's history. Grand, Fearless, though alone, forget not our little band Of fellow thinkers, Here, take my hand; You've earned respect which will not die. Once more farewell -- farewell -- Good bye. -- GEO. JONES. CHAPTER II. ATLASES of late date locate the City of Ocosta on the Washington coast where the' Pacific is joined by that estuary of the Chehalis river known as Gray's Harbor. During my City Editorship of The Eye I made an excursion to that point, or to the branch named in prospectuses as Ocosta-by-the-Sea was an experience. people do not make mistakes; they have experiences. The trip to Ocosta-by-the-Sea was an experience. The attractive name the projected resort then bore was the gift of Tacoma realtors interested in adja- cent lands. The promoters organized a committee to entertain the gentlemen of the press on the beach and at a hotel in Hoquiam. By error, invitations were sent to the newspapers of Snohomish and Seattle, promising transportation, hotel accommoda- tion, and entertainment to editors and their wives "free as air." The City Editor of The Eye and Mr. Sanger of The Sun answered the invitation by letter, saying they would be glad to meet with their fellow press men of the great State of Washington. The committee in rejoinder gave them to understand that railroad trains were waiting for them to hop aboard. But conductors must have come from some other part of the state than Tacoma or Ocosta-by- 28 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 29 the-Sea, since they declined to pass the editors and their wives on the strength of the committee's promises. So each of the editors paid $30.20 for carfare. The further "hospitality" of the commit- tee was enjoyed at an average cost of $15 per editor and wife. Ocosta, when reached, we observed to be a marsh, with raised wooden walks, to which the appearance of being lined with trees had been given by spiking evergreens, or small saplings, to the stringpieces of the walks every ten or fifteen feet. The editors stopped, looked, and gave judgment. Said Mr. Sanger: "We have walked into the jaws of a big fake." The committee had made provisions for fifty guests, and six hundred strangers were present. The committee compromised by selecting for its hospitality the newspaper men who came from Tacoma and points south. This did not include the Seattle and Snohomish editors. An enterprising gentleman from Westport, which resort was per- haps a rival of Ocosta-by-the-Sea, engaged all the teams and rigs at Gray's Harbor to give the women, at least, a drive on the beach. Being one of the left after the party had gone, I was strolling along a sort of wilderness road when I observed an unusu- ally handsome lady sitting upon a wayside log in utter loneliness, looking like Misery waiting for the company which she is said to crave. I looked twice and lifted my hat. The lady began conver- sation. She asked me: "Do you know anything about this dreadful place?" I denied knowledge of it, saying, "Who would be here if he did?" "That," she replied, "is what I think; but I do wish I had 30 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT acquaintance enough with the locality to find a drink of water." Said I: "I can guide you to a spot where there is beer. It can be seen through the trees." She arose, and we went and got the beer. Said the lady: "This is the first place I have been with my husband where we were regarded as out- siders." I guessed that they had come from the Queen City, as Seattle was surnamed. She said: "Yes, my husband is the Senator," and told me the rest of it. We walked to the beach. Years before that day a sailing vessel had been cast ashore there, and was imbedded in the sand, keel upward. The senator's wife sat down on the sand nearby. I pointed to the wreck and recited: "It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea." Said the lady: "Was that the name of this poor vessel? Ah, well! Women who know Longfellow are more plentiful than those with the personal gifts of that amiable one who, though the wife of a senator, was not superior to enjoying a glass of beer and a walk on the beach with a City Editor from the sticks. I never went back to see how Ocosta-by-the-Sea came on. After what I said of the place in The Eye I couldn't look for an invitation to return, except to explain myself. Nearer home, I witnessed the transformation of a wilderness into a city. Downstream a few miles from Snohomish there used to be a landing-place called The Portage. Between the Snohomish river FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 31 and the waters of Puget Sound lies a peninsula like the one formed by the Hudson on one side and Long Island Sound and the East river on the other, which is called Manhattan island. Mud and sand flats at the mouth of the Snohomish River interfere with navigation. For that reason, at this place a few miles downstream from Snohomish city, freight and passengers formerly were taken overland to deep water on the sound side, which was Port Gardener. The Portage and Port Gardener are no more. When I reached those regions a land com- pany had bought the peninsula to start a city on. The ground had to be cleared of stumps by uproot- ing or burning, and the first time I saw the place it was smoking. A few weeks later a wide planked thoroughfare a mile and a half long bearing the name of an avenue ran lengthwise the neck of land, and there being no buildings as yet, merchants car- ried on business in tents. They christened the place Everett, after a future New Jersey politician named Colby, whose father was chief promoter. Word went out that the Great Northern railroad, then under construction by Jim Hill, would have its western terminal at Everett. They built a wharf and advertised that whaleback ships from Duluth or Superior, in Wisconsin, would make port there. It was going to be the first city of the sound, with Seattle second. Everett never fulfilled ten per cent of the predictions and ballyhoo. Nevertheless in a remarkably short time it had a resident, maybe, for every stump that had been pulled, or a population of 7,000, twice that of Snohomish, while the Everett 32 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT Land Company controlled county politics and patronage. Living two years in Snohomish, I knew all the residents by sight, and spoke to most of them, with- out seeking close acquaintance with more than a limited number. The pastor of the Congregational church, the Rev. Mr. Merritt, showed a friendly disposition. He had been a missionary in the Sand- wich Islands; he could give first-hand information about the natives, and he rejoiced in the revolution that occurred there early in 1893, when the islands came under the protection of the United States. While holding the Snohomish pastorate this minister was called to another county to conduct the funeral of an old Indian chief who had professed Christianity and led his tribe into the church. Mr. Merritt said he thought he was making out a good case for the deceased chieftain, and wafting his spirit to the happy hunting-grounds with the ap- proval of the surviving Siwashes, when one of their own medicine men set up a lament according to the Indian custom, and the minister and his choir had no further part in the proceedings. The grief- stricken congregation turned pagan in a jiffy and gave their dead hyas tyee a pagan funeral then and there. Thus it was in Hawaii, said the returned missionary; the conversion of heathen must be re- garded as highly superficial. And there was a local justice of the peace named J.I. Griffith, with whom I came near to being intel- lectually chummy. I went daily to Griffith's court to report police cases, some of them funny ones. He FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 33 suspected me of making a joke of his court. Once as I was leaving it he asked me to drop in for a talk when he was at leisure. Judge Griffith had a bald head, but wore the best growth of sidewhiskers I had ever seen. There had been a heavy wind, and I wrote an account of what it did. After telling of the disturb- ance the breeze kicked up in the Siwash wicky- ups, how it unroofed a shack, tore down a sign, blew away somebody's back porch, and raised J.I. GRIFFITH, J.P. an embarrassing situa- tion for several ladies on the street, I added: "It violently oscillated the whiskers of the handsomest justice of the peace in Snohomish county." When I met the Justice alone he said he had been watching my work on The Eye, and liked it. We had in that county one of the most solemn and serious of school superintendents. In company with Griffith I heard him open an address to the teachers at an annual institute with the words: "Another year has rolled into the dim vista of the past," and I glanced at the justice to see how he was receiving that schoolgirly sentiment. He smoothed out his visage with his hand, turned to whisper "dim vista," and shook in his seat. I re- turned, "dear dead days beyond recall." The 34 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT superintendent's rolling year and dim vista were an addition to our vocabularies. I believe the justice found it difficult to keep them out of his remarks from the bench (the said bench being a flat-top desk with a chair behind it). In Snohomish they "regulated" vice by bringing the housekeeper to court annually and imposing a fine. The city marshal arraigned her before Griffith one day, myself being present, and when she had taken a chair beside the desk she affably greeted the court: "Well, judge, another year" -- and paused. I supplied the remainder -- "has rolled into the dim vista of the past." The Justice averted his face. "The marshal," he said, "will see that bystanders do not harnass the court." The housekeeper paid and was escorted outside by the officer, while the court made dire threats of getting even with the reporter who had no respect for its dignity. Never- theless the Justice and the reporter continued to be the best of tillicums, often tightening the bonds of friendship by wetting them. Justice Griffith contributed special articles to The Eye, and expressed surprise to see them printed exactly as he wrote them. From experience with the country press he supposed perfection in proof reading impossible. He had been a school teacher in the middle West, and had a headful of knowl- edge. Although a just man, learned in law, and quite a pioneer in the county, the new influence in politics defeated him for reelection as a justice of the peace -- a thing he found it hard to accept, and in desperation he went to Kokomo, Indiana, and FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 35 got married. Not long before his departure, when I called in the morning to ask if anything was doing that day, Justice Griffith said he hoped I would tame my muse, and instead of composing rhymed adver- tisements and putting ridiculous things and trivial incidents into verse, would produce something serious and "elemental." He challenged me to write sober verse on any but a funereal theme. "Why not," he said, "celebrate our noble river down at the foot of the street?" When I left him I stood a few minutes on the bridge, looking up- stream, and then went to the office, and, sitting at my table in the corner of the composing room, while work and conversation went on about me, com- mitted the following to paper: THE RIVER AND THE RHYMER. Majestic river, that drains the hills And moistens the valley of fertile lands, That, leaps from the mountains down and spills Its crystal flood o'er the western sands, Forever your waters go sweeping by, Forever they picture the bending sky; They turn the wheels of the mighty mills Of the gods, unguided by human hands. The ages knew you ere foot of man Had touched the banks that you wind between; Your waters sparkled and slept or ran Ere lips had tasted or eyes had seen. Like serpent gliding through field or wood, In voiceless and soundless solitude, The same wide river our bridges span Rolled on 'twixt borders of living green 36 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT You are mine today; I see the gleam Of currents and eddies, tides and whirls, Where sunlight glitters upon the stream As on a necklace of endless pearls. My mind falls back from the ungrasped thought Of untold ages when men were not But placid river and angry swirls Flung to the heavens the self-same beam. O friendly River, so clear and cold, By snows and springs of the mountains fed, Flow through my life with your stream of gold And leave it white as your fountainhead. You bear away from the homes of men The dross, and you make them clean again; I would that your waves, as they pass, enfold Each unjust act or a word ill said. A[t] 3 o'clock I carried the Justice a copy of the paper containing the poem he had ordered. Packard had mining partners whom he grub- staked while they prospected or did assessment work on claims. One of them, a quiet and likable man named James Lillis, was killed in August, 1893, by falling rocks. He stood high in the estimation of other prospectors and miners, who thought him worthy of more than a formal obituary notice. Therefore one of them, whose name, except that the first part of it was Charlie, I do not remember, brought in a piece that he had written about Jim. Having mentioned Lillis's characteristics, which were those of the ideal man and miner, the piece closed with this paragraph: "It is sad that as he was about to realize on the hopes justly built on years of toil, he should so suddenly be called to the unknown country. He prospected Life's FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 37 mountains and gulches; he located his claim on honor's vein; his location notice was plainly written; his corner stakes were plainly marked; he has driven the tunnel of life and driven it well; he has timbered it substantially, with timbers that will stand as an everlasting monument to his memory; he has fired his last shot; his assessment work on earth is well done, and he has gone over the range into the unprospected country from which none return; but so long as the rugged hills of Snohomish county shall know the sound of the miner's blast, the ring of the pros- sector's pick, or the tread of the fortune-hunter's feet, his memory will live in the hearts of his fellowmen as a beautiful picture framed by his deeds of kindness as last- ing as the gold that poor Jim sought." The author doubted its quality, and submitted his offering with diffidence, not being a writing fellow. I had no doubt of its being as fine a tribute as any man ever had, no matter what his life or station. I said at the beginning of this section of my journalistic experience that The Eye was a good paper. Rereading the crumbling fragments of its various numbers that are preserved confirms that opinion. More than merely passable, too, was the report- ing. In writing today about life in Snohomish county my progress is delayed by taking the time to go over the stories of daily happenings there, either incidents on the street, or cases with unusual features that came into court. These stories, then, have a permanent interest which must inhere in their quality, since the now forgotten characters are becoming as unreal as those in fiction. I have in mind a report of a political meeting, or convention, on which Packard and I collaborated, that raised the price of the paper containing it to a dollar per copy. 38 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT That could happen but once in a paper's lifetime. The following police court case is a specimen of the daily pabulum: CHARGED WITH MAYHEM. A peculiar case came down from the Tualco hop fields yesterday and landed in Justice Burton's court. The indict- ment charged one John Ward with malicious mayhem, in that, on the 26th of September, in the county of Snoho- mish, he did then and there bite off the ear of the affiant. Frank Lewis, against the peace of the people of the state of Washington and their dignity. The scene of conflict was the bunk-house on Johnson's hop ranch in Tualco. The complaining witness, Frank Lewis, came into court with five other witnesses, and with John W. Frame as his chosen vindicator of the law. Ward had also a cloud of witnesses, and was represented by Oliver Thornton as attorney. The case had been set for examination at 10 o'clock in the morning, but as Colonel Thornton desired to associate Colonel T.V. Eddy with him as counsel in the case, he asked for a continuance until afternoon, and his request was granted. When Lewis came to tell his story, it appeared that on the day of the alleged crime he was in Snohonish with his girl. Ward was also in town, and being offered fourteen watermelons for a dollar he surrendered to the temptation, bought the melons and got Lewis to carry them to Tualco, promising him half of them for his trouble. On the way home Lewis and his girl ate one melon and gave one away. Others were broken in transportation and thrown out, so that he reached the bunkhouse with only nine, which he stored under his bed. That night Lewis went to a dance, and when he returned, remembering that there were two more melons coming to him as his share, he asked John Ward's brother George to give him one. It appears that on a bop ranch the pickers lodge in a bunkhouse, which is how it happened that the parties concerned in this case were domiciled together. George Ward refused to give Lewis the fruit, and Lewis said that when he carted any FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 39 more melons for Ward the latter would know it. There- upon John Ward, who was playing cards, jumped up, jerked off his coat and said, "If you want to fight, come on." Then he slugged Lewis, clinched with him and bit off his right ear. Lewis threw Ward and thumped him until he acknowledged he had had enough, and then let him up. The account was corroborated by other witnesses, includ- ing Miss Louisa Sherman, who testified that when hostil- ities began she climbed to an elevated place in order not to be hit in the fracas. The theory of the defense, as disclosed by the cross-ex- amination, was that Lewis had knocked his ear off against a trunk in the room, but testimony did not support it; and when the state rested, Colonel Eddy said the defense would waive examination and give bonds to appear for simple mayhem. This being perfectly satisfactory to all concerned, Justice Burton placed the bonds at $250. The bitten-off ear was not introduced in evidence; but a young man named Sherman testified that on the morning following the "scrap" he picked up the sundered member and upon examining it saw that it bore the imprint of teeth. He showed it to James Betts, who threw it over the fence. Later Mr. Betts picked it up and laid it on a rail, where it has since remained for aught Mr. Betts knows to the contrary. Lewis's ear, as it appeared in court, looked exactly as if a mouthful had been bitten out of it, Mr. Lewis did not say how it felt to be here in Snohomish while his ear was lying on a rail out on Johnson's hop ranch in Tualco. It was only courtesy to invest any man practicing law with the title of Colonel. Hence Colonel Thornton, a brother of the National League pitcher, Southpaw Thornton, gets the title, although until he took this case he was a clerk. One of our con- temporaries, editor of a local paper, was William B. Shay, of whom I must say more later. I 40 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT breveted him colonel also, and he appeared in The Eye as Colonel W. Bill Shay. The Indians had learned to look for justice to the Boston man's courts. I reported a hearing in a justice's court where plaintiff and defendants were aborigines. A serious crime had been committed -- that of robbing a grave. The report contains some account of Indian burial customs which I had for- gotten until I read it over. The reader may be interested. Summarized, the story ran: The examination of the four Indians charged with ex- huming and robbing the dead body of Lincoln Pliney, held before Justice Smith last Saturday, was pronounced by the bystanders to be one of the most interesting trials that they had ever attended. John Pliney, father of Lincoln Pliney, whose grave was violated, is an old and well-fixed Indian rancher living near Haller City, in this county. He kept his boy out of the company of other Indians and sent him to school, and the lad became so fond of his books that when he died the old man Put them with him in his coffin so that he might continue his studies in the happy hunting-ground in case he should find no library there. It appears to be the theory of the Indians that death is the beginning of a journey for which the deceased needs to be accoutred as though about to migrate from one country to another. As dangers might be encountered, John Pliney provided his son with a pistol and winchester rifle. In former days, before the Indians had become acquainted with cars and steamboats, they covered the grave with a canoe or killed a horse over it; but of late years, it would appear, the more civilized of them find traveling by rail and steamer much less laborious than by horseback or canoe, and so, as John Pliney desired that in the great hereafter his son should travel in the style he had been accustomed to on earth, he put fifteen dollars in his pocket for expenses. The Indians do not have almanacs and calendars, and FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 41 their chronology is quite primitive. Those who knew Lin- coln Pliney say that he died just before the big snowstorm. Even the religious announcements in The Eye were not without pomp, as for example: "The Eye is able to announce a new feature shortly to be added to its other attractions. Hereafter, with the cooperation of Lieutenant Brown, we shall publish regular notice of Sunday services at the Salvation Army barracks. We don't like to brag, but The Eye keeps up with the procession, and everybody reads it, ads. and all. Meetings of all churches were advertised under the heading: "The Means of Grace." A man afterwards to be a United States senator from Illinois and celebrated for his "pink whiskers," canvassed Snohomish county for votes in 1892 and practiced law in the county court the year follow- ing. The hostile camp knew him as J. Ham Lewis. Of course he was a colonel. This item mentions him, with the implication that Mr. Lewis did not hate himself: "While Colonel Lewis was examining J.B. Carothers in the Robinson trial the other day, it became necessary to send for some of the surveyor's instruments, and H. Perry Niles was asked to bring them. As Mr. Niles arose to do the bidding of the court, Colonel Lewis caught sight of his beautiful red whiskers, and mistaking the counte- nance of the ex-surveyor for his own, reflected in a glass, he made it a profound bow." Making a good figure on horseback, Colonel Lewis was not averse to posing that way for the admiration of beholders. His political promises were not good. He sent to The Eye a clipping 42 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT about himself from another paper, indorsed: "Run this in The Eye and there is a cigar in it for you." The clipping appeared: the cigar did not. He was ungrateful. A few years later, when he was in Congress and I in New York, I wrote him to ask if he would send me a copy of The Congressional Record. He never replied. An item about the town's single Chinaman has ethnological interest: "Sing Sing Henry is regarded with much curiosity by the Siwash, who, it is said, have set him down as a no- good Indian." A legal document published as issuing from the Skagit county superior court is important as law and inveigling as literature. I clip it from The Eye (April 13, 1892): Judge henry McBride of the superior court of the state of Washington for Skagit county, has written what is probably the most readable and entertaining legal docu- ment in the world. The document alluded to, now on file in the clerk's office, sets forth the findings of fact from the evidence in a case wherein "Kitty," the Indian widow of a Skagit rancher named Wilbur, applies to Judge McBride for the appointment of some administrator other than the surviving white wife of the deceased. A good deal of testimony was heard with a view to establish- ing the Indian woman's claim as the original widow of Wilbur, and when he had heard it all, Judge McBride found as follows: "One day in the early summer of the year aforesaid [1867), the said Wilbur, while presumably in search of clams -- although the evidence is strangely silent upon this point -- espied sporting upon a sandspit near Utsalady, a dusky maiden of the forest, whose supple limbs had been molded by the heat of thirteen summers, and whose cheeks FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 43 were uncaressed by aught save the gentle [chinook] zephyrs. Deeply impressed by her [very] visible charms of person, and being besides of a bold and venturesome spirit, he then and there resolved to claim her for his own, He made a liberal offer, but she -- modest maiden -- not con- sidering it a good plan to yield too readily, rejected with seeming disdain his amorous attentions. He returned to his lonely ranch on the Skagit, there to devise stratagems new to encompass his end. He heard her sweetly guttural accents in the sighing of the wind, and in the floating mist he even beheld her voluptuous form. Later on, with a retinue consisting of two noble red men from the Snehosh -- oh. the music of these Indian names! he set out to visit his sable [why not ruddy?] enchantress at her home upon the fir-clad hillside of the Swinomish reservation, near the banks of the murmuring slough of the same name. Ar- riving there, without incident worthy of relating, he raised his former offer, now tendering to her parents the princely sum of fifty dollars. But they looked coldly upon this suit, and the dutiful Kitty would not surrender herself to his ardent embrace, unaccompanied by the paternal blessing. The date cannot be determined from the evidence, but Kitty, who ought to know, says it was just when the salmon were beginning to run. Desiring to be exact in all things, it occurred, to the court that it might be well to continue the hearing of this case for a few years while studying the habits of the salmon, but the litigants, anxious for the, spoils, objected. An attorney, when a fee is in sight, seems to care but little for scientific observation. "Once again he returned to his lonely ranch. There, in the solitude of his cabin, with no one to spread his blanket, no one to weave him mats, he brooded over his state of single unblessedness, until at length he determined to make one last despairing effort. This time he would go in state. So he consulted 'Chip' Brown, who had taken unto him- self as a wife a child of the stream and the forest, and it was arranged. "One day as Kitty sat upon the bank, viewing her own charms as reflected in the waters of the Swinomish, she was startled by the approach of a canoe containing her amorous 44 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT swain, 'Chip' Brown, Mrs. Brown, and a large number of Indians from a neighbor- ing tribe hired for the oc- casion. On one side were (picture of nude girl ranged Kitty, her father, sitting on a bank with mother, relations and friends, her feet in the water) and Joseph, their tribal [Don't you wish I chief. On the other, Wil- could include the bur, 'Chip' Brown, Mrs. pictures?] 'Chip,' and his mercenary train; and the prize con- tended for was none other than Kitty herself. Mrs. 'Chip' being retained to act as interpreter, advanced to KITTY. the center, and the battle of words which was to decide the fate of the dusky maiden began. The interpreter, the court is grieved to say -- peace to her ashes! -- abused her position of trust to des- cant upon the charms and graces of Wilbur, and inasmuch as she herself had tasted the delights of wedded life with a paleface, her words had great weight. 'Twas long doubt- ful to which side victory would incline, but at an opportune moment, Wilbur himself advancing with sixty dollars in his outstretched palm, the battle was won. Chief Joseph thought the sale a good one, and her father was satisfied with the price, so the money was divided between her male relations; and Kitty, according to the laws of her tribe, was a wife." In 1874, after Kitty had borne him three children, Wil- bur took a white wife. In 1883 Wilbur died. The heirs of the Indian woman claim a $10,000 ranch, the property of Wilbur, and the white wife claims it also. Judge McBride says: "In conclusion, the court finds that Kitty is still alive and well, although somewhat tanned by exposure to the elements, and that all parties to this action want the ranch." We have omitted a good many of the judge's philo- FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 45 sophical remarks about the case, and have given only the statement of historical facts, to which it should be added that when Wilbur discarded Kitty she married an Indian. The findings should be extensively published for the in- struction of other judges and lawyers. The style in which they are written gives them a literary finish that most legal documents lack. Every case at law has a story, which, by being well told, might make lawyers' briefs salable and thus repay the cost of printing them. One number of The Eye during 1893 speaks of a debate before the local camp of Sons of Veterans, "for the good of the order," between the Hon. Christopher T. Roscoe and Capt. Geo. E. Macdon- ald on the question "Resolved, That Grant was a greater general than Napoleon." I had the affirma- tive, and proved that Grant must have been the greater general because he got the final results, that is, victory, which Napoleon missed. Neither Roscoe nor I knew enough about military generalship to say which planned his campaigns and handled his troops best; we could judge only by the outcome -- the presidency for Grant, and death in exile for Napoleon. Our baseball team, known as the Jays, having Thornton for pitcher, won most of its games, and when it didn't win the game it won a report in The Eye that plausibly accounted for its defeat. Of all the days in baseball annals, that was the greatest when the Jays beat the crack Y.M.C.A. team of Seattle, which would not play on Sunday and pulled our boys away from their work for a Saturday's game. That victory deserved a hymn, and got it. The town was fundamentally democratic. When the mayor, the Hon. E.C. Ferguson, walked down 46 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT the street, the ditch digger looked up from his labor and said: "Hullo, Ferg," and went on with his digging. At the ball the mayor's lady danced with Andy the bartender. When I recorded the death of one of the frail sisterhood I placed after her name the words "a public woman." I would not do that now and would not then if I had stopped to think a moment. Her favors were for sale, it is true, but there were public men in the place, office holders, who appar- ently were also for sale in whatever way anyone would pay for them, and maybe the purchaser got less for his money at that. A rival editor, already mentioned, Mr. Sanger, was a confirmed churchman and out of harmony with local customs. When he stated in his paper that he had had "a thousand invitations to drink, to one invitation to attend church," and a Seattle paper quoted him to that effect, I made the comment that this as the first thing Sanger had ever said or the Seattle paper reprinted that would make people want to come to Snohomish. George Morrill, another young fellow, functioned at Haller City as commissioner of deeds and pub- lished the Haller City Times. Morrill was indiffer- ently called Judge and Attorney-General. We dis- tinguished his weekly paper as The Whoop in Haller. We often entertained at our house William B. Shay, a youth of twenty-three, from Roxbury, Mass., who like so many others had come to the far northwest to go into journalism. He was rather ex- ceptional in being equipped with a college education FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 47 and knowing how to write. Called upon to compose his obituary, for he died during the smallpox epi- demic, I said: "He was a quiet young man, who talked but little, yet was possessed of a certain energy that kept him always at the front in the enterprises which he undertook. His gentlemanly manners, his genial presence, his broad information, his cultivated thought, his ready wit, rendered him wonderfully companionable and equal to all occa- sions." As "Colonel W. Bill Shay" he figured in the reports of the meetings of the Omega Whist Club that attracted the earnest players to my resi- dence. There was a sort of society whist club called the Alpha that got dull reports of its meetings into one of the other papers; the Omega achieved publicity through The Eye. My wife has preserved the score book and a framed copy of "The Irish Jubilee, as sung by Colonel W. Bill Shay." Our members were quite distinguished -- a county com- missioner, a justice of the peace, a county school superintendent, all the male teachers, and the news- paper men. The enthusiasm called Populism seized the people of the Sound country in 1892, and every farmer and artisan became an orator and a politician. Puget Sound Populism meant currency revision and the free coinage of silver, which made it endemic in that region where there were silver prospects. To be a Populist was immediately to become wise to the tricks of government. The story of the pup- pies that got their eyes open was told again and again. The Populist speaker would state the pre- tensions of the old parties, what they deceitfully 48 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT promised the people; and then he would relate that one about how a certain alumnus came back to the scenes of his college days and asked to see again the room where he had spent his evenings and nights. The boy tenant, as the story went, admitted the visi- tor, and when he had exclaimed, "The same old bed," "The same old chair," and "The same old bookshelves," he spied a door in the corner and re- peated, "The same old closet" -- opened it and found a girl therein. "Ah," said he, "the same old trick"; but the boy said, "This, sir, is my sister," and the visitor added, "The same old lie." That one never missed fire. The orator, recalled to the seriousness of the situation, went for the oligarchy, the autocracy, the bureaucracy. He as- sailed the plutocracy that threatened the liberties and the prosperity of the people. He gave it to the shylocks and denounced the rule of Wall street. He would recover the republic of the fathers from the keeping of caste and class. He attacked pat- ronage and privilege. He pointed to the shameless and brazen carnival of corruption at Washington, yea, in the very capitol that had housed Washing- ton, Adams and Jefferson He would restore the government to the people who built it by their sacri- fices and cemented it with their blood. In times like these, God give us men. Give us an elastic currency. A crisis in the affairs of the nation now exists. Put Americans on guard. He who dallies is a dastard, he who doubts is damned. The key- noters who said the same thing at the last national convention were echoing the Populists of forty FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 49 years ago, with the difference that the Pops did not then know it was hokum. Snohomish real estate was solid stuff in 1892, (Regardless what is said below, there are ten people standing on the stump of a huge tree.) LARGE TREES WERE THE RULE. This big cedar had been sawed down before I reached the spot. To preserve its memory the stump was turned into a dancing pavilion and the four couples in the picture used it for that purpose. The tree once stood on the main street a few minutes' walk from the office of The Eye. Not far outside the city limits were others approaching it in size, and the locality where they grew was referred to as "the bush." ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ when I bought a lot and built a house in a sightly place three minutes' walk from the main street, whence I could view Mount Ranier, the Olympics, the Coast range, the Cascades, and Mount Pillchuck, all white-peaked and tinted by the most glorious sunsets. At that slight elevation there were neither flies nor mosquitoes, nor fleas or other personal in- sects, nor were there parasites upon the fruit trees. Vegetation flourished in tropical luxuriance. The 50 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT ground yielded a good quality of native grass that would outgrow anything else. Before I occupied the lot and fenced it, cows that browsed along the roadside intruded and fed the grass down short, giving thistles, which cows avoided, a chance to grow six feet high. When I built a front fence to keep out the cows, the grass sprang up and killed the thistles. Watermelons reached the size of pumpkins, and pumpkins were as big as flourbarrels. A man brought to the office a vegetable larger than any pineapple and inquired if I recognized it. He cut it in halves, showing an interior as white and solid as that of a potato, and then told me it was a radish! I saw a man on horseback ride through a field of oats so tall that only his hat showed above the grain. When grass was cut and rolled into tumbles, the carter drove around them, there not being space to drive between. Salmon populated the river in season, and salmon trout the small streams. An Indian might capture a big salmon and hooking a finger in its gills walk along the street offering it for sale. He was satisfied to get twenty-five cents for the fish. Beef sold at two pounds for a quarter, flat, and you could have Del- monico steaks if you preferred them to chuck. Until the city of Everett was built up, a few miles away, Snohomish had been the county seat and the center of traffic for that region. Now busi- ness departed. The hotels emptied, houses became vacant, the merchants lost their trade, labor was idle. The election went against The Eye, which without the city printing must take in its sign as official city paper. Advertisements disappeared FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 51 from its pages or were run free to economize on composition and boiler plate. Lawyers and lodges, moving away, withdrew their cards. The character of the population changed and fewer knew or cared for The Eye as the historic county paper. Two other journals survived: The Democrat, which fed on public pap, and The Tribune, which had been "purchased" by a couple of enterprising young men who knew what sort of a paper such a town as Sno- homish was destined to become, a village of fami- lies, would read. In past times, if I said to Justice Griffith: "Have any items of news come under your judicial cognizance today?" he was likely to reply, "You may say that out-of-town relations named Farnum bummed a Sunday dinner off our local so- ciety leader, Mrs. Barnum, yesterday." That was the kind of news Packard and I overlooked, and it was the sort, less cynically worded, that the young fellows of The Tribune featured. A woman could not go for a horseback ride on the Pillchuck road without getting her name in The Tribune. Con- ducting The Eye was a two-man business no longer and likely to become less so. I communicated with my brother in New York, who said The Truth Seeker stood in need of my services at the time. I then let Packard know that I was leaving. He fain would have condoled with me over the outcome of my venture in country journalism, but I wouldn't dole. I felt like repeating to Snohomish and its re- maining people the formula of the departing guest: "I have enjoyed my visit very much, and it was so kind of you to have me." Packard sat down and wrote and signed the 52 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT kindest editorial "Farewell" that cold type could express. I was captain of the camp of Sons of Veterans, and since I was leaving them the Sons called for a farewell reception. The hundred persons who as- sembled at Burton's Hall to help make the parting a success included two ministers, both of whom did as well as the circumstances and their con- sciences would permit in the little speeches they made. Professor Sinclair, then county superin- tendent of schools (not he of the "dim vista"), in a few remarks he had craved liberty to make, begged leave to count the guest of the evening as an important adjunct to the educational privileges of the community, and therefore to say that his departure was to the community a loss. But I will say right here that my contributions to the educa- tion of the community were but slight, fortuitous, and varied. It is true that the professor and I had held disputes and high discourse over the proper pronunciation of certain words, and I regretted he had lost a substantial wager on his contention that "combating" contained two t's and should be ac- cented on the second syllable. To add another in- stance or two, The Eye had invited the early re- traction of a brother journalist who scornfully re- pudiated "cag," seen on the price tag of a small cask of nails, as an allowable spelling of keg. The City Editor had won the gratitude of sign-painters by not allowing them mistakenly to put wrong let- ters into their work, and he was flattered by their coming to him for verification of their spelling and FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 53 punctuation, lest some damned error be immortal- ized by their art. Better, he placed the Dictionary at their disposal. He, the said City Editor, had likewise unfolded scriptures, in The Eye, that were withheld by the pulpit, and he had guided lodge members in the preparation of resolutions of sor- row or regret. And once The Eye sent the law- yers of the place to their books with an item that ran about like this: "The Presbyterian minister, now giving his church a fresh coat of paint, is using the fire department's ladder, borrowed from Chief Knapp. Such devotion of the public ladder temporarily to sacerdotal uses involves a moral hazard; for if the minister should accidentally fall off and break a leg, he could claim the piece of city property, forfeit to the church as deodand." "Now, who the devil," said the county attorney, "ever heard of deodand as a term in law?" The superior judge reminded him it was his business to know, but left him to find out for himself. Meanwhile his honor consulted his own dictionary. The captaincy of the Sons of Veterans had made me the custodian of the camp sword and belt, which I wore when on parade. In resigning I surrendered the accoutrements to First Lieutenant Dick Pad- don, who thereby automatically became the cap- tain, enjoining him to employ the utensil merci- fully and with discretion. Dick, instead of strap- ping the sword to his side, bore it to an engraver, to have inscribed on the guard this legend: "Camp 13, to Capt. Geo. E. Macdonald, '93"; and when, at this farewell reception, our past captain, the Hon. Christopher C. Roscoe, had made a speech 54 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT containing quotations of poetry both from my own works and from those of Lord Byron, he sum- moned me to the platform and gave me the sword for keeps. It was my turn then to make an accept- ance speech, like a candidate. What followed was reported by Packard, who wrote: "The response was typical of 'Mac' and was fre- quently interrupted by laughter. He is not a pol- ished orator, and will probably never be as success- ful in wielding his tongue as he has been in wield- ing his pen. He has that classic, awe-inspiring style of delivery and gesture which is so notice- able in a bashful schoolboy. With a preliminary blush and stammer he said" -- It was an extempore speech, yet not wholly un- premeditated. Before coming to the hall I had taken out of stock in the printing office a dozen or more blank cards and written it upon them. These cards I placed in my trousers pocket and tightly gripped them in my left hand, thrust there for that purpose. This may have cramped my style but it fortified my spirit. If the words I had written had not came out of my pocket faster than I could re- peat them I should have drawn forth the pack, made the pass to the place I wanted and refreshed my memory. This is the substance of the speech that Packard so lightly characterized. CAPTAIN ROSCOE, BROTHERS, COMRADES, FRIENDS, LADIES GENTLEMEN: I never was the subject of a reception and presentation before, but I have been to funerals, and the solemnities of this occasion remind me of a funeral. a few days ago I read in The Eye quite a flattering obitu- FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 55 ary notice of myself. It was written by my friend Mr. Packard, and spoke so highly of the deceased that I ex- pected to find at the end of it those lines which were ad- dressed by Fitzgreene Halleck to Joseph Rodman Drake: "Green he the turf above thee, Friend of my better days! None knew thee but to love thee, None named thee but to praise." And then tonight when I heard the first note of the organ. I should not have been surprised if the choir had arisen and sung: "How blest the righteous when he dies, How sinks the weary soul to rest; How calmly beam the closing eyes, How gently heaves the expiring breast." I see, though, this difference: At a well-conducted funeral the corpse is not expected to respond. On this occasion, I might as well be stricken with the dumbness incident to complete demise if I could not express my appreciation of the kindness shown me and the honor bestowed by this gathering. I might tell you that this presentation was wholly unexpected, but such language could be held only with the intent to deceive. Though I am something of a liar, there is a limit to my strength as such. There are moments when one might as well tell the truth. The boys told me they would give me this sword, and in accepting the token I would express the hope that I may never be called upon to give it warmth and color by sheathing it in the system of an adversary. Also that no enemy of mine nor foe of my country's will ever deem it necessary to take the chill and glitter off a similar weapon by insert- ing it between the ribs of your retiring captain. I shall keep the sword as a memento and souvenir. I can never look at it without remembering the boys with whom I have been associated for the past two years in this camp. When I see it I shall recall the members of the Grand Army of the Republic who have honored us with their presence. It 56 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT will bring to my mind some of the most prized associa- tions. I shall see friends who still walk these streets; others who have gone east of the mountains, and yet others who have passed beyond the "purple twilight" of those hills that separate us from the place "where the in numerable dwell." On week days I shall think of the people here as I have known them at their ordinary avoca- tions, in stores and offices. On Sundays I shall remember the ball players, putting up games of League ball and hu- miliating the pride of Seattle. On the Fourth of July, I shall see the great flag floating from the top of the liberty pole on Second street; I shall see it floating and catch the rippling of its folds in the loyal winds from off these hills. The recollections will be peasant to me. They will re- mind me of a community in which I have been welcomed, entertained and amused. And this evening's long-to-be- remembered reception, given without stint -- this night's farewell, unaccompanied, I trust, with inordinate regrets on the part of my entertainers -- is one of the happiest Oc- casions I expect ever to enjoy. With best wishes I say good-by, and gratefully I thank you. A number of my prized contemporaries were at the farewell reception. One of them, Mr. Gor- ham of The Tribune, made a speech. A choir and an organ led the congregational singing of Civil War songs, in which "When Johnny Comes March- ing Home" recurred. The Sons had a bright col- ored member named Vey Stewart, whose family were all singers. Walter Thornton sang every- thing, including the dance tunes. As one will learn from Mr. Packard's report: "A military lunch of hardtack, coffee and beans followed, after which some of the younger folks became tangled for a short time in the giddy mazes of the waltz and a few new round dances." Mr. Gorham had thus moralized in his Tribune: "Geo. E. Macdonald, editor of The Eye, will leave next FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 57 week for New York. Mr. Macdonald has been a resi- dent of Snohomish for over two years, during which time he has had the editorial management of The Eye. He is well known among the fraternity of the state and is recog- nized as one of the best journalists on the coast. Although he has advocated, both orally, and through the columns of his paper, ideas on religion and politics of the most radical kind, antagonistic to the established social condition of mankind, and opposed by the great majority of the people, Mr. Macdonald has made many personal friends in this section among those who have the most bitterly and public- ly condemned his teachings. A man who will sacrifice un- usual ability, the means with which to make wealth -- which seems to be the one object among all classes these degen- erate days -- for the sake of principle, is ever to be com- mended, although not always applauded." The intimation regarding my departure for the East was verified. On the 8th of November, the third birthday of my son Eugene, the train bear- ing in that direction the City Editor of The Eye and family moved out of town in the early morn- ing, while "a number of their personal friends,' to quote Mr. Packard once more, "were at the sta- tion to bid them farewell." And a guard of the Sons of Veterans, in full uniform and with the camp colors displayed, stood at salute. Packard from force of habit kept on getting out The Eye. He owned the building in which it was published, a two-story structure on the main street, with a store to let on the street level and rooms upstairs, a small office building to one side, and a rear extension for the presses and printers. He owned city lots as valuable as any and had an in- terest in mining properties said to be promising. 58 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT I have a suspicion that hopes for prosperity through the development of mining industries in that region were largely illusive. The silver-bear- ing ore was of low grade and inaccessible. Pack- ard's mines never produced. Indications were just strong enough to keep up interest. One town in the county took the name of Silverton, one of Goldbar. and there was a postoffice called Galena. The cause of free silver, an issue in the next na- tional political campaign, may have reanimated The Eye and strengthened Packard's determination to keep it going. And then there befell the most des- perate county seat fight known to history, Sno- homish battling for the retention of the courthouse as for its life. Snohomish citizens stood un- der arms, guarding the county records against re- moval. The matter came to a vote and the elec- tion into the superior court. There the judge threw out enough Snohomish votes to give Everett the county seat. The Eye, begun in 1882, sus- pended publication in 1897. Packard took ship for Alaska, and nearly lost his life on a "windjam- mer" that was blown ashore, leaving him a cast- away among the Indians. Finding no gold in pay- ing quantities, he returned to journalism and to his trade as a printer in the Sound country. After- ward he visited the East and read proof for the concern that prints The Truth Seeker. Having in his later adventures in the Far Northwest met with an accident that permanently paralyzed one of his legs and his right arm, he in his seventies is an in- mate of the Home for Union Printers in Colorado Springs. CHAPTER III. THE Freethought part of this history for 1891 was completed with Volume I, be- fore I went back to July of that year and started the intercallated story of life in Snoho- mish, state of Washington. Now, having closed that. experience, I resume the history of Free- thought where it was discontinued, and write as of 1892. The Chicago World's Fair having been decreed, the kind of church people who adopt meddling as a means of grace saw that now was their day of salvation. Hitherto, with their fussy restrictions on Sunday work and amusements, they had been obliged to function merely as local nuisances. Now they would close the World's Fair on Sunday and make themselves felt as pests by all nations. They succeeded to that extent, if they did not make quite so complete a desert of the fairgrounds as they hoped. The stay-at-homes who could not get to the show were with them. So were the Chicago ministers and saloon keepers. Both the spiritual and spirituous could see more trade moving their way with the World Fair's entrances blocked. The meddlers resolved to memorialize Congress to pay no money, make no appropriations in behalf of the 59 60 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1892 Fair, save on the promise that the key should be turned on the exhibits every Saturday night, with no relief until Monday morning. They circulated petitions to this effect, and did such a business in collecting names that in some places they claimed more signatures than there were people. A Michi- gan paper, The Industrial News of Jackson, in- dulged in adverse reflections on the petition-cir- culating industry, saying: "It begins to look as though people who are clamoring to have the gates closed on Sunday are stuffing the ballot boxes. It is considered some- what peculiar that a number of petitions from sev- eral states exceed the total population as shown by the census of 1890. The states in which the petitions seem to have been padded out of all rea- son are Ohio and Michigan. The tally sheets in Secretary Dickinsons office [Col. John T. Dickin- son was secretary of the National Commission] show that 4,053,425 citizens of Ohio have signed petitions. The census of 1890 gives Ohio a popu- lation of 3,673,316. On the face of the returns it therefore appears that if every man, woman and child in that state had signed the Sunday-closing petitions, the population of Ohio must have been swelled by the advent of nearly four hundred thou- sand souls. The returns from Michigan are even worse than those from Ohio. Mr. [Census Di- rector] Porter's census takers found 2,093,899 peo- ple in the state, yet the petitions contain 4,050,518 names. This is a sad commentary upon closing the Fair on account of morality when Christian people will resort to such measures." 1892] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 61 On the strength of these fraudulent petitions and for other considerations no more creditable to an honest and intelligent body of men, the United States Senate, having apportioned five millions for the Fair, made the payment contingent upon Sun- day closing. The counter movement of the Free- thinkers had in its favor the opinion of nearly all the more important newspapers. The Freethink- ers also circulated petitions emanating from The Truth Seeker office; but what could honest workers do against competitors who presented the fraudu- lent signatures from Ohio and Michigan? The anti-openers so far had their way, as regards the closing of certain exhibits and concessions, that even with the gates open there was nothing to be seen worth the price of admission. The annals that mention the early Christians of Rome and tell of the troubles they brought upon themselves, explain that they were punished not so much for their crimes as for their hatred of mankind. Having in mind the snouty Christians of our time, it is easy to imagine their first pred- ecessors as fanatical persons who went about de- nouncing people who liked to enjoy life on the Lord's Day. So if the Roman public lost patience, and made it sultry for the most vociferous yam- merers among them, what else could one expect? Two Liberal enterprises that sounded good in the prospectus were heralded in 1892, both in New York. The first was "a movement looking to free thought, free religion, and social reform, under the management of Henry Frank," to be started at a meeting held, January 10 at Hardman Hall, Fifth 62 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1892 avenue and Nineteenth street. The invitation printed in The Truth Seeker bore the signatures of Ingersoll, Mrs. Stanton, Samuel Gompers, Ed- gar Fawcett, Eugene M. Macdonald, Helen Gar- dener, Dr. E.B. Foote, Charles Broadway Rouss, Hudor Genone, and other representative persons and celebrities, including, for an oddity, the name of C.H. Ingersoll, not elsewhere, to my knowl- edge, associated with Liberal movements. Although the initial meetings had been "greatly successful in attendance and practical support," there was doubt in the editor's mind as to the per- manence of the Society of Human Progress. Mr. Frank conducted it in connection with The Twen- tieth Century, the weekly established by Hugh O. Pentecost, who had withdrawn from the paper, as well as from the lecture platform, to enter the practice of the law as better calculated to furnish support for himself and family. In May The Truth Seeker records that Mr. Frank's attempt has failed after costing its generous backer, "supposed to be Miss Helen Weston," a good many thousands of dollars. The second Liberal enterprise of this year looked even better. Says The Truth Seeker of Septem- ber 17, 1892: "It was one of the dreams of the Freethinkers of this city a few years ago, when Science Hall was leased and used as a Liberal head- quarters, to have a theater where science and mo- rality should be taught through stage representa- tions. The dream is to be partially realized through the labors of Garrett P. Serviss, for many years night editor of The Sun, and known as one 1892] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 63 of the most accomplished astronomers of the coun- try. The daily papers announce his retirement from journalism to devote his time to the develop- ment of the Urania Scientific Theater." When the editor adds that "Mr. Serviss has made arrangements to take hold of the work, and soon the theater will be allied to the Liberal press in disseminating scientific facts," the dreamers of a close alliance of Freethought and scientific rep- resentation by way of the theater must have been considerably cheered. Professor Serviss no more than Mr. Frank was an out-and-out Freethinker of The Truth Seeker school. Mr. Frank retained a sort of theism, was metaphysical and probably socialistic -- inclined to dismiss Freethought as destructive; or if he was fully in sympathy with The Truth Seeker himself, the character of his discourses then and for many years afterward showed that he appealed to au- diences who were not. His late writings, however, would convict him before any ecclesiastical court as a hopeless Infidel. Dr. Serviss, still making contributions to popu- lar knowledge of astronomy, died in 1929. Correspondents of The Truth Seeker alluded to the American Secular Union in 1892 as a defunct organization. Judge Charles B. Waite was presi- dent, Mrs. M.A. Freeman secretary, the office in Chicago. This organization, formerly as the Na- tional Liberal League reporting nearly three hun- dred auxiliaries and pledged to the Nine Demands, was showing little present animation and but a lax adhesion to its original aims. 64 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1892 The Union held its sixteenth annual congress in the Old Forum, Washington boulevard and Sangamon street, Chicago, October 23-25. The city had been crowded by hundreds of thousands of visitors to attend the dedicatory exercises ot the World's Fair. Mrs. Freeman reported that some twenty-five Freethinkers remained to attend the Congress of the Union. Ten of them, mem- bers and delegates entitled to vote, reelected Judge Waite president, Mrs. M.A. Freeman secretary, and Otto Wettstein treasurer. While the Secular Union functioned to this lim- ited extent, Samuel P. Putnam called for a meet- ing of all liberals to organize as a political and voting force under the name of "The Freethought Federation of America." The meeting and organ- ization took place in Chicago, September 4, when the delegates elected for president Samuel P. Put- nam; for secretary John R. Charlesworth; treas- urer, George L. Robertson of Chicago. Said Mr. Charlesworth in his report: "Together with those who signed the constitution at this meeting, and those who had sent their names by mail, over one thousand have already been enrolled." Mr. Putnam said in his keynote speech that the Federation was for political action, to supplement the legal and legislative work of the Secular Union. "We must take our position," he said, "and fling our banner upon the political field." Mr. Putnam was as hopeful of organizing Freethinkers into a political party as though the attempt had not been made in 1879 with Ingersoll as leader. Yet what he said had reason in it. "The Farmers' Alliance," 1892] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 65 he argued, "would never have voted unanimously in favor of closing the World's Fair on Sunday if Liberalism had been organized as a voting power." The California State Liberal Union, of which Putnam continued to be president, called and held a convention in San Francisco on January 30 and 31, 1892, preceded by a Paine celebration with an attendance of one thousand under the auspices of the San Francisco Freethought Society. The State Union reelected Putnam as its president. He was now registering as S.P. Putnam of California. The New York Paine celebration for '92 took place under the management of the Manhattan Liberal Club, Dr. E.B. Foote, Jr., being president, and en- gaging Chickering Hall for the occasion. The speakers were Robert G. Ingersoll and Moncure D. Conway. Ezra H. Heywood, editor of The Word, was The Truth Seeker's imprisoned correspondent in '92, and wrote from the State Prison at Charleston, Mass., where he was serving a two years' term under a Comstock conviction. The National Defense Asso- ciation labored diligently to obtain a pardon for Heywood, but there was no chance. President Harrison, hopelessly pious and puritanical, from whom the pardon must come, never overlooked the religious aspect of anything. He took the narrow Presbyterian view, and even favored for the District of Columbia a law that would prevent a mechanic from collecting pay for work done on Sunday. He was a hypocrite, of course, for he worked the gov- ernment printing-office one Sunday to put in type his message to Congress on the Chilean difficulty. He 66 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1892 issued a proclamation on the observance of October 21, 1892, as the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, and in it instructed the people to go to church and "express their gratitude to di- vine providence for the devout faith of the dis- coverer and for the divine care and guidance which has directed our history and so abundantly blessed our people." Quite consistently he refused to shorten the radical Heywood's stretch, which lasted six hundred and fifty-eight days." This was one of Ingersoll's busiest years. The controversy started by his 1891 Christmas Sermon in The Evening 'Telegram continued far into 1892. Besides lecturing constantly, he prosecuted a suit for libel against the Rev. A.C. Dixon, who had publicly accused him of "representing publishers of impure literature, paid to pollute the minds of chil- dren of this generation." The Massachusetts supreme court rendered a not- able decision on the status of "companionate" mar- riage. In 1877 Mrs. H.S. lake, a noted Spiritualist and Liberal lecturer, entered with Prof. W.S. Peck into a "copartnership on the basis of the true mar- riage relation," agreeing "to continue the copartner- ship so long as mutual affection shall exist." Now it appeared that Mrs. Lake desired a legal separa- tion, and the Massachusetts court declared that a mutual agreement marriage, when limited by the clause "so long as mutual love shall exist," is not a legal marriage, and therefore requires no divorce proceedings to terminate the relation. During the year the Catholic church procured the passage of its "Freedom of Worship" bill by the 1892] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 67 New York legislature. It provided, as outlined in The Truth Seeker, "that the Catholics can set up their religious plants in state charitable and penal institutions by furnishing the capital themselves. It is but a partial victory for them, but better than nothing, they think; though if Tammany Hall con- tinues its ascendancy they will unquestionably make a strike for all that they desire, which is that the state shall compel convicts to attend Catholic wor- ship and also pay the priests who conduct it." That prediction was fulfilled long ago. Part of the history of 1892 has since repeated it- self. The Canadian customs held up and refused to deliver to R.M. Morrison of Quamichan, B.C., a copy of "Stories of the Old Testament" (illus- trated), from The Truth Seeker office. The same reasonless action was taken by the Canadian cus- toms in 1928. The Truth Seeker of June 4 (1892) said: "This Sunday deviltry has been greatly helped along by the decision of Judge Brewer of the United States Supreme Court in the case of the Church of the Holy Trinity. The church had been found guilty by a lower court of violating the law against im- ported contract labor by hiring the Rev. E. Walpole Warren from London. Judge Brewer reversed the decision, writing also an opinion which has cheered the Sabbatarians greatly." Brewer's opinion af- firmed that this is a religious people and the United States a Christian nation. The Truth Seeker in April commented editorially on the fall of the Rev. Dr. Charles Parkhurst, Re- former, who organized the Society for the Preven- 68 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1892 tion of Crime. In a suit brought to dispossess a woman who was keeping a disorderly house, Dr. Parkhurst, appearing as a witness, testified that he and a young male member of his congregation visited the premises in dispute, had three rounds of beer, and paid five nude girls fifteen dollars to per- form an indecent dance, or do a "circus" turn as he described the act, which lasted half an hour. The Truth Seeker deplored the fact that Dr. Parkhurst, of whom better things were expected, had fallen to the level of Anthony Comstock. The trial of Moses Harman in Kansas, when means and methods of defense were exhausted, terminated in his going to the penitentiary at Lan- sing on two convictions, one carrying a sentence of five years and the other one year. Mrs. Lois Wais- brooker of Antioch, California, took charge of his paper, Lucifer. In November Charles P. Somerby retired from The Truth Seeker Company and ceased thereafter to have any connection with the paper or business. Mr. Somerby filled, in his way, the position of Busi- ness Manager after the Company purchased the paper from Mrs. Bennett in 1883. He understood the technical part of book and newspaper produc- tion, being a practical printer. His management, I understand, was not so good. His health lacked something of being robust. As a Positivist and So- cialist he had other intellectual interests than those The truth Seeker sought to advance. After leav- ing the company he occupied himself with the publi- cation of The Commonwealth, a magazinelet. He died in 1915. 1892] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 69 In 1890 Franklin Steiner delivered his first Free- thought lecture, became an occasional correspondent of The Truth Seeker, and took the field. Steiner, raised in the church, had risen in it, being at one time secretary of the Sunday-school. Now he was just approaching his majority, and having heard Ingersoll lecture and done some reading and thinking for him- self, he cast his fortunes with Freethought. A likely-looking lad with a good voice, his appear- ance on the platform satisfied the eye and ear. No one could deny his energy, earnestness, or FRANKLIN STEINER, '93 sincerity. But as it hap- pened the demand for Freethought lecturers at that period was not on the increase. The speakers in the field were Ramsburg, Putnam, Bell, Mrs. Krekel, and Charlesworth. That Steiner lasted but a few years is not evidence he was not a success at lecturing; rather that lectur- ing was not the road to success. The International Federation of Freethinkers that assembled at Madrid in October was dispersed by order of the Spanish government before it had finished its program. Adhesions of societies and individuals were received from about twenty coun- tries, according to the official report in La Raison. The Truth Seeker was first on the list; the Free- 70 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1892 thought Federation next. Gen. Porfirio Diaz, presi- dent of the United States of Mexico, headed the adhesions from our sister republic. Portugal was honorably represented by Dr. Theophilo Braga, pro- fessor at the University of Lisbon, who was to be the provisional president of the Portuguese repub- lic, 1910. Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, who worked with Eliza- beth Cady Stanton to inaugurate the Women's Rights movement in the United States about the middle of the nineteenth century, died at Brighton, England, Aug. 4, 1892, aged 82. She was the author of a "Defense of Atheism" that was one of the Freethought pamphlets in circulation in the early times of The Truth Seeker. J.M. Wheeler of the London Freethinker wrote that only six weeks be- fore her death she presented him with a copy of that work and said she had nothing to alter. Her birthplace was Peterkov, Poland. The Liberal societies publishing notices of their meetings at the end of 1892 were the Manhattan Liberal Club, New York; the Ingersoll Secular So- ciety, Paine Hall, Boston; the Ohio Liberal Society, Cincinnati; the Chicago Secular Union; the Liberal League, Philadelphia; the Philosophical Associa- tion, Brooklyn; the Liberal League, Newark, N.J. and the Secular Union, Tacoma, Wash. The Canadian Secular Union, Capt. Robert C. Adams, president, held its annual convention at Toronto, September 10. The Toronto Secular Society held regular meetings. C.B. Reynolds, secretary of the Washington State Secular Union; accepted an en- gagement as lecturer for the Tacoma Secular Union. CHAPTER IV. THE division of this work which undertakes to tell the story of Freethought in 1893 ought to give first place to the historic Sun- day fraud, with animadversions thereon. Fraud being a characteristic of things religious, the sin- gling out of this one might be invidious except that this year it happened to be the great cause of war between Protestant church forces and Secularism. It is not out of place, then, for a Secularist to say that Christians keep Sunday under false pretenses. As a sabbath, Sunday has not a biblical leg, line, precept, or event to stand upon. They tell an idle tale about Jesus, crucified, dead and buried, hav- ing arisen from the tomb on the first day of the week, making the first day of the week holy. The Bible does not say that. The Bible says the body of Jesus was placed in the sepulcher Friday night, and that when late on the Sabbath day (Saturday) a couple of Marys came to see the sepulcher they found it vacant and an angel on guard who told them: "He is not here; for he is risen." The day or the hour of his rising is held back. It might have been any time Friday night, or during the following day. The text (Matt. xxviii, 1-6) makes it certain, if the Revision is accurate, that "late" on 71 72 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1893 Saturday the body had disappeared; and with it disappears the ground for pretending that Jesus hallowed the first day of the week by arising from the dead. And a truthful historian of Sunday as the Protestant Christian Sabbath would point out that the first emperor of note to die a Christian had proclaimed the first Sunday law, describing Sunday, not as the day of the resurrection nor making any reference to the risen Lord, but as "the venerable day of the Sun" -- and that is where it got its name, being dedicated to the sun god Apollo. And if it may be inferred that the pagans were already keep- ing Sunday, then why is it not reasonable to suppose that Constantine's purpose in issuing the edict was to bring into line the Christians who were not ob- serving the day? The Christian church that later assumed the style and title of Catholic took its Sun- day law from the pagan emperor, and to give it a Christian character called it the day of the resurrec- tion of Jesus. The Catholic church, claiming authority in all matters of religion, thus coolly changed the "Sabbath" from the seventh to the first day of the week. Protestants, then, against all scripture, keep and enforce a pagan day preserved for them by a church they repudiate. Liberals devoted the year 1893 to agitating against extending the Sunday law of Constantine to close the World's Fair at Chicago on Sunday, and Samuel P. Putnam, president of the newly or- genized Freethought Federation of America, took up his station at Washington in January to help push a joint resolution that if adopted by Congress would leave the matter of Sunday observance "en- 18931 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 73 tirely within the power of the regularly constituted authorities of the World's Columbian Exposition." They did worse in Tennessee, for in Chicago there were no prosecutions for Sabbath-breaking. But in a circular issued by the National Liberty Association, under "The Chain Gang for Con- science' Sake," this story was told: "July 18, in the year of our Lord 1892, witnessed a sight that revives the memories of religious persecution in the Dark Ages. At Paris, Tenn., four Christian men had been lying in jail since June 3, 1892, for the crime of fol- lowing their common vocations on Sunday by working on the farm, plowing, hoeing, etc. The term of one having expired, the other three, after lying in jail forty-four days, were Monday, July 18, marched through the streets in company with some colored criminals and put to work shoveling on the common highway. All three were men of family, one 55, another 62 years of age." And all this because in the year of grace 325 or thereabouts a pagan emperor issued an edict for the observance of the venerable day of the sun. The International Congress and Congress of the Freethought Federation of America at Chicago are reported in the Truth Seeker of October 7, 14, and 21, 1893. The gatherings were held in the hall at 517 West Madison street because President Bon- ney of the World's Fair Congress Auxiliary was hostile and refused the use of the Art Institute. Judge C.B. Waite presided at the sessions of the International Congress. The American Free- thought Federation Congress followed the Interna- tional one. The officers elected were Samuel P. Putnam, president; John R. Charlesworth, secre- tary, and E.C. Reichwald, treasurer. Reichwald 74 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1893 was a newcomer, but he stayed with the organiza- tion until his death. Ezra H. Heywood of Princeton, Mass., editor of The Word, died at his home on May 22, 1893, from a cold contracted while attending a Land Reform meeting in New York, at the age of 63. His life had been devoted to labor and social radicalism, and he paid the penalty by undergoing prosecutions and imprisonments, at the instance of Anthony Com- stock, for several years following his first arrest in 1878, each of which has been mentioned in these memoirs. Heywood was related to United States Senator George Frisbie Hoar, and was born Hoar, not Heywood. Other members of the family thought the name was altogether too suggestive, and changed it against his protest. His wife was Angela Tilton, whose characteristics and advocacy have been dwelt upon heretofore in the account of my earlier New England days. They had children whose names are unknown to the annals of reform. Mr. Heywood was the author of the book, "Cupid's Yokes, the selling of which cost D.M. Bennett a sentence of thirteen months in the penitentiary. The American Labor Reform League held its twenty-second annual convention at Science Hall, 141 Eighth street, with Col. Henry Beeny of New Jersey in the chair, May 7-8. We have met Colonel Beeny before. Evidently he is one of the last sur- vivors of the group, composed of Ingalls, Rowe, Evans, and himself, who in the '70s met at his store in Fourth avenue to discuss Land Reform. The names of the speakers and officers are new, but to- day the only one of them represented by the living 1893] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 75 is that of Clarence L. Swartz of California, who in recent years has written an interpretation of the philosophy of B.R. Tucker. Beeny was elected president and E.H. Heywood, secretary. The Rev. Charles A. Briggs, a higher critic, whom the New York Presbytery had acquitted of heresy in 1892, was put on trial before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church in 1893 and suspended from the ministry. A few years later he joined the ministers of the Episcopal church. The Rev. Dr. McGlynn, the excommunicated Single Taxer who had declared himself a Secularist and attended the congress of the American Secular Union of Philadelphia, was restored to the priest- hood after going to Rome. The important book, "The Dynamic Theory of Life and Mind," by J.B. Alexander of Minneap- olis, came out early in the year and was reviewed in The Truth Seeker by Albert Leubuscher, Janu- ary 21. In 1893 Moses Harman, who for some years had either been going to prison for his plain speaking, or just coming out, was "liberated" (March) from his second term of imprisonment. Dr. Titus Voelkel, on a conviction of "blas- phemy," went to a German prison for thirteen months. Samos Parsons of San Jose, Cal., "one of the most generously persistent supporters of Free- thought in the country, giving largely of his means each year, and bestowing good advice with fatherly freedom," died about June 1, 1893, in his 90th year. I met Mr. Parsons in San Francisco. He 76 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1893 gave more than a tithe of his income to the cause, apparently having no favorites among the workers and the publications, for, as he said, he "sprinkled" his gifts over them all. Matilda Joslyn Gage's book, "Woman, Church and State," was warmly welcomed this year by the Freethinkers. Later The Truth Seeker acquired proprietorship of the work and published a new and corrected edition. Its typography as brought out by a Chicago firm was terrible, and "would have been terrible if printed twice as well." I read it for correction and found a thousand errors. The publishers had promised the author so large a royalty that The Truth Seeker could not afford to keep it in print. It was threatened but never prose- cuted by Anthony Comstock. The Freethinkers of Oregon organized the First Secular church of Portland and appointed Katie Kehm Smith lecturer. Mrs. Smith had long been secretary of the Oregon State Secular Union, and was thoroughly devoted to the work. In June Governor Altgeld of Illinois pardoned the anarchists Schwab, Fielden, and Neebe, who had spent several years in jail on conviction of complicity in the Haymarket tragedy in 1886. The National Reformer, London, England, the editorship of which on the death of Bradlaugh had been undertaken by John M. Robertson, suspended on October 1. The Freethought events of 1892 and 1893 took place without my participation or observation, since I was at the time engaged in local journalism in the Far Northwest. 1893] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 77 With a hearty "Welcome Home" by the editor, and a reprint of the Snohomish send-off, with letters from correspondents, including Peter Eckler, who agreed that I should not have gone away in the first place, I landed back in The Truth Seeker office with a satisfactory splash. Putnam would have called the return providential if that word had been in his vocabulary, for he was projecting a big book entitled "Four Hundred Years of Free- thought" to celebrate the four hundredth anniver- sary of the discovery of America, and there were occasions where I could be of assistance to him. So once more I was foreman of The Truth Seeker's composing-room, sharing the proof-read- ing with Walker, and giving Putnam the benefit of what I knew about preparing manuscript for a book. "Four Hundred Years of Freethought" is a work of 874 large pages, mainly biographical, con- taining sketches of Freethinkers from Columbus to the author's Contemporaries of 1894. During my absence in the West, the editor's assistant had been William L. Colby, a competent printer and proof-reader, something of a student, and an accurate writer. He had a side interest, perhaps a central one, in Socialism. Succeeded as assistant editor by E.C. Walker (October 1), Colby found his work in demand at other publishing houses. As a proof-reader he was the next thing to infallible. But Walker was of course his su- perior by far in an understanding of Freethought principles and in the art of expressing them. At the compositor's case was a printer I had not left there when I went West, namely, Herbert Bird 78 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1893 of Washington Courthouse, Ohio. He is still to be met in The Truth Seeker office. Prof. John Tyndall, at the age of 73 years, died at his home in Haselmere, county of Surrey, Eng- land, December 3, 1893. One of the old Californian Freethinkers, Owen Thomas Davies, of Brighton, died on November 28, after 73 years of life. Davies was a Welshman who came to America at 30 on a ship that brought Mormon immigrants and he went with them to Salt Lake City. His leaving the Latter Day Saints a few years later was an escape, which he shared with another Freethinker named Thomas Jones, who settled in Inyo county. A generation later they met by chance in the office of Freethought and told thrilling tales of their adventures in getting away from Utah with the Saints on the lookout to stop them. The ex-Mormons were usually very good Freethinkers. One of them in San Francisco named George Thurston, a man of 60, had been an elder and once was sent on a mission. He had a faculty for relieving pain by "touch," and while a Mormon attributed it to his faith. He found that it worked with equal efficiency when his faith de- parted and he had become a Thomas Paine Infidel. The Truth Seeker in December, 1893, announced a lecture in New York by Dr. J.H. Duren Ward. The Truth Seeker current as I write these notes, August 18, 1928, reports a lecture by Dr. J.H. Duren Ward. CHAPTER V. MY elder brother, E.M. Macdonald, directed the policy of The Truth Seeker one year after another, and wrote leaders, but the work of E.C. Walker, 1894-5, with the special arti- cles which he prepared, strengthened the editorial department and lent variety to the rest of the paper. He started two new departments, viz., "Freethought Progress" and "Churchly Purpose," one to be pointed to with pride and the other to be viewed with alarm. He also collected matter every week for 4 column of "Not for Parsons," the same being items running from humorous to blasphemous. He compiled from census reports the important series of articles entitled "Church Property: Should It Be Exempt from just and Impartial Taxation?" The value of church property in the United States in 1890 was $679,694,439, according to the census returns. The analysis and compilation and tabulation of the figures through the industry of Walker, with his argument from history and jus- tice, brought forth material for the best pamphlet on the subject of exemption ever prepared and pub- lished. No one has since attempted to duplicate the performance. In fact, the government appears to have discontinued the gathering of the statistics of 79 80 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1894 ecclesiastical wealth. In 1931 the American Re- search Foundation issued a statement from which it could he deduced that in 1930 the value of all such wealth would not fall far below six billions. There were two prosecutions in 1894 to be de- fended by Freethinkers. In Lexington, Kentucky, Charles C. Moore, who had been a preacher, but now described himself as "a durned old Infidel," began The Blue Grass Blade, a weekly paper in which "I" took the place of the editorial "We." It espoused Prohibition. In April a local preacher, the Rev. E.L. South- gate, served notice upon Moore that suit would be filed against him in the civil court for blasphemy. Two indictments followed, one for "blasphemy" and the other for "nuisance and annoyance." The one was based on language in his paper of March 18, 1894: "When I say Jesus Christ was a man exactly like I am and had a human father and mother exactly like I had, some of the pious call it blas- phemy. When they say that Jesus Christ was born as the result of a Breckinridge-Pollard hyphenation between God and a Jew woman, I call it blasphemy; so you see there is a stand-off." Moore's case came up on July 2, on demurrer, in the circuit court at Lexington, Judge Parker pre- siding. In a decision that was a model of secular argument, the court sustained the demurrer, quashed the indictment and the bail bond, and dis- missed the defendant without day. The Truth Seeker printed the decision in full, July 21, 1894, and it is in The Truth Seeker Annual for 1895. "Blasphemy," said the judge, "is a crime grown 1894] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 81 from the same parent stem as apostasy and heresy. it is one of the class of offenses designed for the same general purpose, the fostering and protecting of a religion accepted by the state as the true relig- ion, whose precepts and tenets it was thought all good subjects should observe. In the code of laws of a country enjoying absolute religious freedom there is no place for the common law crime of blas- phemy. Unsuited to the spirit of the age, its en- forcement would be in contravention to the consti- tution of this state, and this crime must be con- sidered as a stranger to the laws of Kentucky." One "blasphemy" of Moore consisted, according to his accusers, in his likening the generation of Christ to the "Breckinridge-Pollard hyphenation." To explain the allusion: A notable breach-of- promise case was on trial in Washington, a woman named Pollard having sued Congressman W.C.P. Breckinridge of Kentucky on that complaint. The unfortunate statesman had already exposed himself as a legitimate target for the scoffers at the notion of any relation between religion and morality by fathering a Sunday law for the District of Colum- bia, well known as the Breckinridge bill, and by de- manding the closing of the World's Fair on the first day of the week. Furthermore, he was a pillar of the Young Men's Christian Association and its "silver-tonguedest orator," and had been counsel for the prosecution of the Rev. C.A. Briggs for heresy. On his trial Breckinridge acknowledged his fall, but laid it to the woman, whose character he im- peached. He was convicted of adultery and perjury 82 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1894 and then went back to his constituents, likening himself to the biblical David, and nearly persuading them to return him to Congress. At about the time the Kentucky blasphemy case had been disposed of, another involving the arrest of an "Infidel" occurred in Kansas. Mr. J.B. Wise, an aged citizen of Clay Center, engaged in correspondence with a minister, the Rev. H.B. Vennum, over the inspiration of the Bible. They were shooting texts at each other by post, when Mr. Wise indiscreetly copied Isaiah xxxvi, 12, on a postal card and mailed it to the clergyman. The latter then abandoned argument and appealed to law, causing the arrest of Wise on a charge of mis- using the postoffice. For weeks the old man lay in jail at Leavenworth as a United States prisoner in default of $300 bail. He was even held there for some weeks after bail had been furnished. The National Defense Association, E.B. Foote, Jr., secretary, took charge of the defense and pro- vided counsel for Wise, Truth Seeker readers pay- ing the expense by subscription as usual. The prosecution was characterized as "the Christian on- slaught on the Bible." The case went over into 1895. The cause of the People's Party lured numbers of Freethinkers into politics. At Yonkers on the Fourth of July the party nominated Dr. E.B. Foote, Sr., for Congress, and Thaddeus B. Wake- man allowed his name to go on the state ticket for judge of the Court of Appeals. Hugh O. Pentecost, once publisher of The Twen- 1894] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 83 tieth Century, and the disillusioned advocate of labor, joined Tammany Hall, and did such good work for the organization that Richard Croker in- structed District-Attorney-elect Fellows to appoint him as assistant. Colonel Fellows did so, and then reconsidered his act. The opposition was too sharp. The affiliation of Freethinkers with people's and populist parties was never enduring. Every repre- sentative of Populism in Congress voted to close the World's Fair on Sunday; its senators, like Kyle of South Dakota, were champions of Sunday laws, and it incorporated "divine sovereignty" as a plank In its party platform. Senator Frye of Mairie introduced in the Sen- ate (Jan. 25, '94), and Representative Morse of Massachusetts on the same day in the House, the National Reform Association's God-in-the-Consti- tution amendment. The amendment proposed to put into the preamble of the Constitution the words: "Acknowledging the supreme authority and just government of Almighty God in all the affairs of men and nations; grateful to him for our civil and religious liberty, and encouraged by the assurance of his Word to invoke his guidance, as a Christian nation, according to his appointed way, through Jesus Christ." That is the notorious "Christian amendment," and it was the battleground of the secular and theo- cratic forces during the first part of the year, when President Putnam made his headquarters in Wash- ington ready to appear before the House Judiciary Committee, to which the amendment was referred. 84 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1894 The National Reform Association is still bringing to Washington every year or so this amendment which was not reported out of committee in 1894. There is a tradition that once, when sponsored by Blair of New Hampshire, it came within one vote of passing the Senate. Senator Gallinger intro- duced a District of Columbia Sunday bill that went to the Senate Committee on Education and Labor. That does not appear ever to have come to a vote. Recording the bills and pious amendments intro- duced in Congress year after year will at length become a monotony. As long ago as 1894 the Sabbatarians, led by whatever professional parasite it may have been who preceded the Rev. Harry Bowlby as secretary of a Lord's Day Alliance, began presenting peti- tions to Congress to abolish Sunday carrying and distribution of mails. Mails are still carried, but no one can get his mail on Sunday unless he has a postoffice box, and not then unless the local post- master chooses to open up. The District Sunday bill that Populist Kyle championed in the Senate had been framed, as the District Women's Chris- tian Temperance Union interpreted it, "to stop the Sunday evening lectures of Ingersoll." The Fifth Avenue Theater, New York, an- nounced a four-weeks' engagement of a company to present "Hannele," a play translated from the German. Commodore Gerry, at the head of an organization called in derision the ""Society for the Prevention of the Intellectual Development of Children," declared the piece to be blasphemous. A little girl (Alice M. Pierce, aged 15) in the title 1894] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 85 role supposedly died and was brought to life by Christ, who appeared in person. Thomas J. Gilroy, at that time mayor of New York, agreed with Gerry that a stage miracle might have a tendency to de- stroy the girl's belief in the biblical ones, and so weaken her morals. The play, then, was forbidden on that and the additional ground that the represen- tation of Jesus on the stage would be blasphemy under common law. Not long afterwards the New York legislature passed a law prohibiting the rep- resentation of the "divine person" on the stage. (Penal Law, Section 2074, 1911.) When officers of the American Secular Union called the eighteenth annual congress, to be held in Chicago, October 26-28, 1894, they invited the Free- thought Federation of America to unite with them. Attendance was good, the addresses able, and a set of resolutions rightly called "ringing" was adopted. A number of Spiritualists arrived early, bringing a cordial greeting from their National As- sociation. The A.S.U. by acclamation elected Putnam president and Mrs. M.A. Freeman secre- tary. The subsequent proceedings were those of the Freethought Federation, which also elected Put- nam for president and Mrs. Freeman secretary. The two organizations differentiated as to treasur- ers, Otto Wettstein serving for the old society and E.C. Reichwald for the new. In the spring of 1894 the Brooklyn Philosophical Association undertook to renovate and beautify the monument of Thomas Paine at New Rochelle, which had been neglected, it appeared, since 1881. A meeting was held there on Decoration Day. To INGERSOLL AT NEW ROCHELLE. The platform was near the monument of Thomas Paine; the address delivered Memorial Day, 1894. As a photograph of Ingersoll speaking to an outdoor audi- ence, the picture is probably unique. 1894] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 87 render the occasion perfect Colonel Ingersoll came and brought his family. A report of the event is in The Truth Seeker for June 9, 1894. That was the first of the Memorial Day gatherings at Paine's monument, and the only one at which Ingersoll spoke. Charles Watts was sending The Truth Seeker a weekly contribution of "Freethought and Secular Notes from England." As a writer and speaker Mr. Watts was the most serious of men; in congenial company, the jolliest. During one of the seasons he spent in America, there also reached New York, playing with Henry Irving's company, an actor whom he called Old Tom Mead. Mr. Mead was full of stories. Mr. Watts's contribution to the entertainment of a group was less of anecdote and more of witty com- ment. Between them they banished dull moments. All of Mr. Watts's letters to the editor bore post- scripts making reference to the "funny brother." In Mr. Watts's July "Notes" he reported: "On Monday, June 25, the Bradlaugh statue was un- veiled at Northampton in the presence of a vast crowd of over twenty thousand admirers of the late great English Freethought leader." In 1894 Morgan Robertson, writer of famous stories of the sea, began his literary career by con- tributing poetry to The Truth Seeker, his first of- fering being "Church Bells" (August 11). He soon brought out his "Tale of a Halo," with The Truth Seeker imprint. This was the diverting story, told 88 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1894 in rhyme, of a visit by Beelzebub to heaven. His "Extracts from Noah's Log" came as a contribu- tion for May 18 in the following year. Besides knowing all about ships, from his years afloat, Robertson was a fine mechanic. Receiving more or less help from E.M. Macdonald, in- cluding the gift of a typewriter, Morgan in return made for the edi- tor a fine nautical watch- chain in the form of block and tackle, all shipshape, even to the seizing. It is a curios- MORGAN ROBERTSON. ity and a keepsake, but not a practical watchchain, on account of its ten- dency to become tangled or "fouled." The editor's namesake, Eugene L. Macdonald, has it. Robert- son lived and wrote just before the era of highly paid "topnotchers," or he might have died wealthy. His writings passed the test of permanency and were gathered into a "set." Pennsylvania's eminent war governor, Andrew G. Curtin, died in 1894 and at once became a char- acter in the Ingersoll mythology. In an article in the New York World was the following: "Mr. Curtin had no patience with anyone who did not believe in the Bible. Once when personally requested by Colonel Ingersoll to sit on the stage during one of the 1894] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 89 Colonel's lectures he flatly refused to even attend the lec- ture." Declaring that the World's statement contained not the slightest truth, Colonel Ingersoll wrote: "I never requested Governor Curtin to sit on the stage during one of my lectures. I never invited him to attend one of my lectures. I never spoke to him about one of my lectures. I never invited a human being to attend one of my lectures." Governor Curtin sometimes figures in a well- known fabrication as the man who accused Inger- soll of taking away the crutches of a cripple. James Russell Lowell had died in 1891. In 1894 the following passage gained circulation: "Some gentlemen tell us very complacently that they have no need of religion; they can get along well enough without it. Let me tell you, my friends, that the worst kind of religion is no religion at all. All these men who live in ease and luxury, indulging themselves in the amuse- ment of going without religion, may be thankful they live in lands where the gospel they have neglected has tamed the beastliness and ferocity of the men who, but for Chris- tianity, might long ago have eaten their bodies like the South Sea Islanders, or cut off their heads like the mon- sters of the French revolution." -- James Russell Lowell. And there was another like unto it: "When the microscopic search of skepticism, which has hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a creator, has turned its attention to human society, and has found a place on the planet ten miles square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating his children un- spoiled and unpolluted; a place where age is reverenced, infancy respected, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard -- when the skeptic can find such a place on this globe where the gospel of Christ has not gone 90 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1894 and cleared the way, and laid the foundations and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the skeptical literate to move thither, and there ventilate their views." (Etc.) -- James Russell Lowell. Since Lowell never claimed the title of Free- thinker, he will not be invested with it by me, but he uttered unorthodox sentiment enough to clear him from the guilt of having written these passages. It is doubtful that Lowell called himself a Chris- tian, or was one. The Freethinkers of fifty years ago found much in his writings that they could quote. As to the fraudulency of the foregoing quota- tions, I condensed the evidence from The Chris- tian Advocate completely disposing of them. James Russell Lowell never wrote or spoke as quoted. With a fine exhibition of nerve, the coin- ers shoved their counterfeit on the public before his death and he repudiated it in his grand manner by saying he was not accustomed to discuss relig- ious questions in that tone. On December 28, the Manhattan Liberal Club, then probably the oldest Liberal organization in the United States, celebrated its twenty-fifth anni- versary. No original member was there; but Mr. T.B. Wakeman had with him and displayed his certificate of membership signed by Horace Gree- ley, the second president. The club had met regu- larly in German Masonic Temple for seventeen years. In 1894 the place now held by the Ku Klux Klan so far as it is anticlerical was occupied by the "A. P.A." (American Protective Association). The 1894] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 91 Truth Seeker took the position that such an organ- ization would justify its existence to the extent that it curbed the church and its stealings from the state. John Burns, Labor member of the British Par- liament, came to New York in 1894, and out of curiosity to see what a British legislator is like I went to Cooper Union and heard as well as saw him. His appearance was not striking, but when he called his audiences "fellow citizens" and then said that was right -- they were his fellow citizens because the world was his country and to do good his religion -- it became apparent he was an excep- tional character. He further justified that view by proclaiming: "The day of the Labor agitator is past. It is time, also, to quit dreaming. When a man with a sudden rush of brains to the head wants to give you a plan whereby all social difficulties may be adjusted at once, don't waste your time listen- ing to him." Mr. Burns, a trades-unionist, left a good impression. And, I think, that cannot be said of Keir Hardie, the Socialist member who came the next year. Personally Hardie was common- place, intellectually he was about the same. Just then, under the police commissionership of Roose- velt, New York suffered from the Sunday-enforce- ment terror; and Hardie's first "crack" was to ap- plaud the official terrorists and to express the hope that the assault on Sabbath-breakers by the New York police was "the beginning of a fight that is to extend all over the country." He committed the absurdity of saying that "Socialism is Christian- ity," and that he had the same faith in Christianity 92 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1894 as a system of economics that he reposed in it as a way of salvation. After my appraisal of Mr. Burns appeared, Ben- jamin R. Tucker, editor of Liberty, reminded me that while I had condemned Lady Somerset for her crusade against the concert gardens of London, I had spoken highly of Burns, who was her assistant in the matter. Burns was not a plumbliner, but some of the labor radicals were corkscrews. Charles Robinson, the first governor of Kansas and a helper in the first Freethought organization in that state, died August 17, at the age of 76 years. He had a long record in pioneering and in politics; had been a doctor practicing medicine in his native state of Massachusetts; had served in the California legislature, and was one of the found- ers of the Kansas State University. **** **** Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship. This disk, its printout, or copies of either are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold. Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201 **** **** CHAPTER VI. FEW lecturers were in the field at the open- ing of 1895. Ingersoll was, of course, and the man who fixed his route said that were it possible to answer all calls, the Colonel would have his work laid out for him twenty-five years ahead. The speakers who sent their engage- ments to The Truth Seeker for publication were John E. Remsburg and Franklin Steiner. L.K. Washburn, who had been editing the Boston In- vestigator since the death of Horace Seaver in 1889, now also announced himself as in the field. A meeting of Catholic priests, bishops, archbish- ops, and cardinals in New York excommunicated all members of Masonic lodges, together with Odd- fellows, Knights of Pythias, and Sons of Temper- ance. The organizations thus banned are said to have had a membership of two millions. All of that number who have died in the past thirty years -- and we can scarce hope that half of them still live -- have gone to hell, according to the logic of Roman Catholic theology. If you are not an obe- dient Catholic the church will see that you are kept out of heaven; but she will libel you as "prejudiced" 93 94 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1895 and worse if because you don't like a Catholic's re- ligion, you vote to retain him in private life. Pope Leo XIII issued an encyclical to his bishops in America setting out principles regarding the re- lations of church and state that American Catholics would be glad to obliterate. His holiness in the following manner felicitated the reverend brethren whom he ostensibly was addressing: "The church among you unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile leg- islation, protected against violence by the common laws and impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hindrance." That would look like an ideal situation for any church that could be satisfied with an even break. "Fettered by no hostile legislation, protected by the impartiality of tribunals," and "free to live and act without hindrance" -- if religion would show the liberality that the pope then professed to ad- mire, Freethinkers might relax their vigilance. The pope, who was an exceedingly dull writer and therefore such hard reading that he expected no one but his bishops to smoke him out, went on: "It would be very dangerous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the church, or that it would be universally law- ful or expedient for state and church to be, as in Amer- ica, dissevered and divorced." No; freedom, protection and impartiality do not glut the appetite of the pope for what America has to offer. He asks that his church, "IN ADDITION TO LIBERTY," shall enjoy "THE FAVOR OF THE LAWS AND THE PATRONAGE OF 1895] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 95 THE PUBLIC AUTHORITY." That is to say, Pope Leo XIII wanted Roman Catholicism estab- lished as the official religion of the United States. No representative of the church ever called for a square deal. In February, J.N. Locke of Quiniault, Wash- ington, reported the naming of a mountain for In- gersoll. According to Mr. Locke, Mount Ingersoll is the highest peak in that spur of the Olympics between the Quiniault and Humptulips rivers, and is situated in Chehalis county. Mr. Locke stated that the elevation is best known as "Colonel Bob." A few weeks later I added this note: "Mt. Ingersoll in Chehalis county, Washington state, is not the only mountain on the Pacific coast that bears the name of the loftiest of men. In the year 1890 a party of prospectors in the untrodden portions of Fresno county, California, outlying the mining camps of Grub Gulch and Fresno Flats, ascended one of the high peaks of a spur of the Sierra Ne- vadas, and, formally erecting a monument thereon, gave to it the name of Mount Bob. And not less graceful was the further act of these hardy climbers in selecting the highest eminence contiguous thereto and bestowing upon it the name and distinction of Putnam's Butte." And again "your mountains build their monu- ments though you destroy their dust." Looking forward to 1910, here is another: "From our sur- veying friend, William F. DeVoe, some of the time of Victoria, B.C., a man of many adventures by flood and field, as well as by woods and hills, 96 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1895 comes word that a mountain has been named after the editor of The Truth Seeker-Mount Macdon- ald. Mr. DeVoe has lately returned from above the Skeena river, where, finding a peak some six thousand feet high, at the head of the Schulbuck- hand creek, Lakeke lake -- an eminence having no better cognomen than Old Baldy -- he rechristened it as above." A correspondent of The Conservator, Horace Traubel's paper, communicated the fact, as appears in The Truth Seeker of January 8, 1898, that the handsomest group of big trees in the Santa Cruz mountains, California, is known as "Ingersoll's Cathedral." By quoting the blasphemy law and appealing to the chief of police, the ministers of Hoboken, N.J., attempted to prevent Ingersoll from delivering his lecture on "The Holy Bible." As a result the lec- ture, which the chief of police confessed himself unable to forbid, contained new matter devoted to the Hoboken clergy. Ingersoll said: "In this state of New Jersey, more than one hundred years ago, when the people were pious savages, there was enacted a law that allowed no discussion of some questions -- on one side. "That statute sleeps in its grave until it is invoked by some narrow-minded gentlemen who should have lived and died three hundred years ago. Some of these good men have so little confidence in their God that they feel he ought to be protected from ridicule. They feel their infinite God cannot write a book that does not need pro- tection. It has never occurred to anyone that the works of Shakespeare, Shelley, Burns, and other great writers should have any assistance that it was in the power of 1895] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 97 legislators to give. One can hardly imagine that the In- finite should be under such deep obligation to the legisla- tors of the state. "Some clergymen are intelligent and educated. I don't refer to the clergymen of Hoboken, but there are some such. Most of them are not. They have a very narrow horizon and are not at all broad. Most of them feel that they are called to the ministry because they have not the constitution to be wicked, They go to the sectarian col- lege, which is the storm center of ignorance, and, after they are graduated, they are like the lands along a part of the Potomac, as described by a writer: 'Almost worth- less by nature, and rendered entirely so by cultivation.'" Strong religious demonstrations took place. The Christian Endeavorers of the United States and Canada, the Salvation Army, and other bodies of religions enthusiasts appointed days and seasons of prayer for the conversion of Ingersoll. When they failed at that, a woman writing to a daily paper sug- gested that they should ask the Supreme Power to make them, if it was his will, "as noble in character and as useful to the world as the Colonel had shown them how to be." That also failed. The Rev. Dr. Ward, editor of The Independent, explained the non-conversion of Ingersoll by saying that "when God omits to grant our petitions, he shows not that he has failed to answer them but that he has responded in the negative." One purpose for which "Fifty Years of Free- thought" has been attempted is that of supplying writers in this field with a certain amount of data. I have seen new recruits proceed as though the cause had no past. To illustrate I will quote the man, C. C. Moore, who ran a paper in Lexington, Ky., in the 98 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1895 '90s. Moore was once unjustly incarcerated for a term by his religious enemies, and while in prison wrote a book. Referring to this book, he stated in his paper that, apart from "Fleta," a work on law, and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," his was the only volume composed when the author was in prison. Moore here evinced ignorance of the fact that Paine wrote Part II of his "Age of Reason" in the Luxembourg prison; that in Oakham jail Rob- ert Taylor produced his "Diegesis" and "Syntagma" and that D.M. Bennett in the Albany penitentiary gave his leisure to a series of letters entitled "Be- hind the Bars," and to writing the two-volume oc- tavo, "The Gods and Religions of Ancient and Mod- ern Times." This is but one instance showing the Freethought writer's need for a background of Freethought history. A more recent writer, pro- ceeding independently of history, has said that only one Freethinker of his time, namely, George Jacob Holyoake, enjoyed the friendship and esteem of Ingersoll. The truth is that Ingersoll fraternized with all of the leaders and workers, spoke and wrote in their praise, had them at his house, encouraged and entertained them. To emphasize: If you go back to the '80s of the past century, you will look in vain for me in the front ranks and conspicuous places. Ingersoll discovered me nevertheless, wrote a cordial letter, sent me one of his books, auto- graphed -- all without my ever having communicated with him or sought to obtain his notice -- and in- vited me to visit him and his family at their seaside 1895] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 99 hotel. In addition to that, answering questions pre- pared by me, he wrote an interview of half a dozen columns, his first contribution to The Truth Seeker. Would he have done that and ignored the Free- thinkers who were known? He did not. He showed his friendship in commendatory letters and in the hospitality he extended to them. The statements which these few lines are written to refute are without the shadow of a foundation in historical truth. Ingersoll's tributes to American Freethink- ers -- Courtlandt Palmer, Elizur Wright, and Horace Seaver -- in the standard edition of his works, dis- prove them. The Christian Statesman, organ of the God-in- the-Constitution party, opened a campaign of whoops for the suppression of The Truth Seeker by the civil power. From the 1928 appearance of The Christian Statesman, formerly a fat monthly but now reduced to less than half the size of The Truth Seeker, some power greater than the civil is pursuing to suppress it. The week following our reply to The Statesman's frantic outburst, The Truth Seeker came out with the three-column streamer: "PROHIBITED IN CAN- ADA." A Truth Seeker subscriber, Robert Mitchell of Guelpb, Ontario, having failed to receive his paper, made inquiry of the Canadian postoffice inspector. That official replied to him under date of August 24 that "this paper is prohibited transportation by mail in Canada." Along with a copy of the inspec- tor's letter Mr. Mitchell sent one of his own con- 100 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1895 taining the information that "our Postmaster-Gen- eral Adolph Caron is a French Canadian papist of the densest ignorance and full of superstition, who gets his instructions through Cardinal Taschereau." The great minds of Canada were once more re- vealing the thickness of the bony process in which they are encased. The authorities there were deaf to the criticism of their own press and that of the United States. The brightest man in Canada, Gold- win Smith, wrote to the editor of The Truth Seek- er: "There is much to which believers in Christianity would object, as they would to the utterances of my late friends, Professors Huxley and Tyndall. But there is nothing, so far as I can see, to justify or excuse the exclusion of your journal from circula- tion." Charles A. Dana of The Sun gave an editorial to the case. "We hold to liberty," said Mr. Dana, "and we revolt at the arbitrary act of the Canadian postmaster-general." Mr. Dana declared that The Truth Seeker was "undoubtedly an honest and can- did paper," "not adapted to suit a pious Catholic like M. Caron, or a pious Protestant either," but not given to "scurrility and blackguardism." The order to keep out The Truth Seeker has never been changed, but we mailed the paper to Canadian subscribers every week, and they appeared to get it. Some years later, the postmaster at New York informed The Truth Seeker Company that publications prohibited in Canada would not be re- ceived for transmission here. On that the editor 1895] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 101 appealed to the postmaster-general at Washington and got a favorable ruling. The postmaster-gen- eral was Winne, a Roman Catholic. A few years ago The Truth Seeker learned that by a ruling from the Department at Washington it would no longer be received at the New York postoffice for distribu- tion through the Canadian mails. Here no appeal remained, for the postoffice refused to take the weekly bundle marked for Canada; orders had come from higher up. A fresh clerk at the New York office once said to the messenger proffering copies for dispatch: "You have a noive to publish a paper like that. It ought to be suppressed in this country." The order of Sir Adolph Caron prevented many Canadian subscribers from renewing, but I am of the opinion that those who stood by continued to get their paper. Postal clerks and carriers could hardly examine each piece of mail matter as it came to their hands. Perchance if the knowledge that The Truth Seeker is "Prohibited in Canada" ever per- colated down to the men in Canadian postoffices they have by this time forgotten it. The residue of meanness abides in the Canadian customs, which will not pass a bundle of papers; which throws back "Bible Stories Comically Illustrated," and has been known to seize and destroy copies of Paine's "Age of Reason." In due time and place I shall quote from an editorial article which I had the malicious joy to write entitled "A Knight's Night Out." It celebrated the event of Sir Adolph Caron's visiting New York and being picked up by the police while drunk and unable to take care of himself. 102 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1895 The, government excluded Mrs. Elizabeth Gran- nis's paper, The Church Union, from the mails for running a lottery. Mrs. Grannis, a purity reform- er, had recently rushed a crusade against "living pictures" and low-necked dresses. The Rev. Dr. Isaac K. Funk conducted in the last decade of the nineteenth century a paper called The Voice, with two major fads -- one the prohibi- tion of the manufacture of alcoholic beverages, the other the sterilizing of men who violate the mar- riage vow. The Voice was the organ of the Pro- hibition Party, which put planks in its platform in- dorsing the Christian religion. Unable to approve of the principles of Mr. Funk, I showed from the Bible that had the manufacture of liquor been pro- hibited and the sterilizing of adulterers enforced in Bible times, there never would have been any Christian religion, for Jesus would have been with- out ancestors. That is to say, Jesus descended from Solomon, whose father was David; and had David suffered the penalty prescribed for adulterers, he being one, Solomon would not have been born. To go back from David, he was the descendant of Moab, and Moab's birth was the consequence of Lot's becoming intoxicated and in that condition generating a son with his own daughter, which he would not have done when sober. This unavoid- able conclusion hangs upon the statement of the first verse of the New Testament that such is "the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David." The trial of J.B. Wise of Clay Center, Kansas, for letting the light of scripture shine from a postal 1895] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 103 card on which he had copied Isaiah xxxvi, 12, was announced in March as "approaching." The Truth Seeker raised a fund for Wise's defense. On the 11th of April, in the United States District Court for the Eastern Division of Kansas, the attorney for The Truth Seeker, Adolph Bierck, appeared on behalf of the defendant. Mr. Bierck thought it an appropriate time to relate this anecdote: "The poet Goethe was once invited to attend a conference of ministers at Kiel, called for the purpose of sup- pressing obscene literature. Goethe suggested that they begin with the Bible, and the conference ad- journed." But, Mr. Bierck added, the work pre- maturely abandoned by that conference has been taken up by an evangelical clergyman of Industry, Kansas, and he now, through the medium of this prosecution, invokes the jurisdiction of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern Division of Kansas to sustain him in his contention that this particular verse of the scriptures is obscene and indecent." Thus the Rev. Mr. Vennum had adopted the suggestion of Goethe to "begin with the Bible." The case went to the Court of Appeals. Editor Brann of The Iconoclast, Waco, Texas, began this year the assault on Baylor Baptist Uni- versity that led on to what his partisans spoke of admiringly as his hot finish. A young girl, Antonia Teixeira, had been brought from Brazil to be edu- cated in the university, and then returned to her people as a missionary for their conversion and baptism. The girl became a mother. President Burleson of the university laid the paternity to "a 104 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1895 negro servant," but the scoffer Brann asked how then it had been possible that the child should be a Caucasian with the "blue eye and wooden face" of the president of the faculty. I chided Mr. Brann for his hasty conclusion, arguing that a man (Dr. Burleson) good enough to be the president of a Baptist theological seminary would of necessity im- press his personality upon all who came within the sphere of his influence and who shared the light of his countenance; and Editor Brann, even though immured in Texas, could not be so unfamiliar with the laws of heredity and prenatal influence as never to have heard how much environment had to do with determining the features and complexion, the blue eye and wooden face, in such instances as this. I shall relate the sequel when I come to it. "An exceptional Universalist minister" is named in The Truth Seeker, June 1, to wit, the Rev. Thomas B. Gregory of Halifax, N.S., who was preaching "trial sermons" in the Church of the Re- deemer, Chicago, and bade fair to cinch the job. Mr. Gregory's name soon was seen as one of the edi- tors of The Freethinkers' Magazine. He is that facile writer whose syndicated articles have been favorites with Freethinkers from that day to this. He is no reconciler and, what is exceptional among popular rejectors of orthodoxy who do syndicate work, he never compromises his Freethought prin- ciples by talking about evolution as "God's Way." At least I have not detected him in that offense and hope he hasn't committed it when I was looking the other way. (Mr. Gregory died in 1929.) Samuel P. Putnam made a voyage to England, 1895] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 105 lecturing in London and the provinces to very cor- dial audiences, writing his "News and Notes" week- ly to The Truth Seeker, and returning in Septem- ber. On his leaving Albion, seen to the Waterloo station by Charles Watts, Editor G.W. Foote of the London Freethinker wrote: "Thus ends a most interesting episode in the recent history of the Free- thought movement in England. Mr. Putnam has returned to the land of his birth, but he has made an indelible impression upon the Freethinkers of England. They like his eloquence and they love his personality. He carries with him their unanimous good wishes. They hope he will live long to lead the army of Freethought in America, and they also hope he will come over again to old England. When- ever be comes he will find a host of eager hands stretched out in glad welcome." The Arena published an "Age of Protection for Girls" symposium -- relevant here because the Free- thinker, Helen Gardener, took a leading part in it. Miss Gardener was the only one of the disputants who assumed an attitude toward the question other than theological. I took a position which was this: "It will be conceded so far as I am concerned, that when the age indicated by nature is expunged and the attempt is made to introduce another age arbitrarily, one's opinion as to what that age should be is as valuable as anybody's else; but each should be supported, when practical, by something be- sides hysterical whoops." By a strange oversight, I thought, nobody con- sulted the opinion of the girls, and they must have 106 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1895 thought it odd to be the excluded subjects of a dis- cussion by people who could not know so much about the facts as they did. A professional friend looking over my shoulder says: "Girls of 12 or under should not be consulted." But how about girls from 18 to 21? If not they, then whom? I asked my wife at what age a woman was able to make a judicious decision, and she said: "Never." The agitation led to the correction of abuses in some of the states where there were no laws to pro- tect female children of twelve years. It would be difficult now to reproduce the state of the public mind on the question. Not all of the discussion was without humor, inappropriate as humor may be to such a theme. I quote a paragraph in my Observa- tions: "I suppose that few Kansas people know how much they are indebted to the Boston Arena for its successful agitation in favor of raising the age of protection for the girls of their state. The follow- ing anecdote bearing on the matter is told in Wash- ington city by Representative Mercer of Nebraska: An old Kansas couple who had a son living in Cali- fornia wrote to him requesting that he should re- turn and take up his abode with them during the remainder of their declining years. The son was dutiful, but he preferred California for ranching, even if he had to bring the old folks thither; and so he wrote: 'I am surprised at your asking me to re- turn. I own a ranch here and am happy. If any- thing is lacking, it is having you with me. I would dearly love to be with you again, but, as said be- fore, I am surprised that you should ask me to re- 1895] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 107 turn to a state where they raised nothing at all last year except the age of consent.' A committee of women in '95 brought out Part I of "The Woman's Bible," the revising committee being headed by Mrs. Stanton, who had twenty as- sistants, including Mrs. Robert G. Ingersoll. The Morning Journal's symposium on the book in No- vember would have been a totally hostile work ex- cept for an appreciative contribution by Mrs. Anna H. Shaw. "The Woman's Bible" showed that the Bible is not a woman's book. Of the suffrage move- ment at that time there were two divisions. One demanded suffrage in the name of right and justice, regardless of consequences. This division was led by Freethinkers like Mrs. Stanton. The other di- vision demanded suffrage in the name of Christ in order that God might be voted into the Constitu- tion, the Bible into the schools, and Christian doc- trine generally into civil law. The second division was led by the churches, Anthony Comstock, and Dr. Isaac K. Funk, and women like Mrs. Grannis, Mrs. Livermore, and Miss Willard, W.C.T.U. The annual congress of the Freethought Federa- tion and American Secular Union was held the 25th, 26th and 27th of October in Hardman Hall, Nine- teenth street and Fifth avenue, New York. On paper, as described, it appeared to be the biggest congress the national organization had held in years, probably because it happened in New York where I could attend and report the proceedings at length. My account was as long as those of for- mer congresses that T.C. Leland used to turn in. 108 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1895 The hall seated about eight hundred, and the audi- ence that filled all the chairs looked like a million on the evening Putnam put me up to read a lecture on The Judicial Oath. Since my essay on New England and the People Up There, in 1879, I had done no public speaking. I guarded against a break- down by writing my lecture out in full, but had it fairly well committed to memory, and besides I brought some notes of extraneous matter calculated to relieve the monotony of too much argument. As to the necessity of raising my voice, I had the ad- monition of young Dr. Foote to gauge it by the auditor nearest the door in the rear, and in another matter the counsel of Ingersoll to discover some appreciative listener and talk to him. Capt. Silas B. Latham, proprietor of a fishing-smack, with whom I had made voyages of a week at a time, down to the banks off Atlantic City, sat halfway up the aisle, with his head listed to port, regarding me quiz- zically. So the lecture went over. The extraneous matter suited the Captain. Some verses I had writ- ten on "Putnam at Sacramento," part of it quoted in my reminiscences of the San Francisco experi- ence fixed the attention of L.K. Washburn, who applauded before I had really made a good start, and I let him have that part with what force, I could put behind it. I never had any voice, either for strength or durability; so I am not an orator like other men. On that evening John McDonald sang a song I had written; M. Florence Johnson recited my poem on Bruno; Libby Culbertson Macdonald made a speech and included another of my rhymed- performances; and that was the situation when I 1895] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 109 came on the boards and observed that if this was an election the Macdonalds would be accused of re- peating. A Committee on Amendments -- E.B. Foote, Jr., Franklin Steiner, and Henry Bird -- reported a new name for the organization, "The American Secular Union and Freethought Federation," and an amend- ed and abbreviated constitution. Officers elected were President, Samuel P. Putnam; secretary, E.C. Reichwald; treasurer, Otto Wettstein. The report is in The Truth Seeker of Nov. 2 and 9, 1895. Dayton, Tennessee, had put itself on the scroll of fame before it ever tried John Scopes for vio- lating the anti-evolution law. The town won dis- tinction in '95 by prosecuting five Seventh-Day Ad- ventists for working on Sunday. The acquittal of the accused failed to vindicate the right of any per- son to do Sunday labor. They got off because the judge, whose name was Parks, intimated in his charge that "the cases were trumped up on ques- tionable testimony procured at the instigation of witness-fee speculators and fee-grabbing officers." Did any one ever hear of a Sunday prosecution actuated by any more respectable motives than these? St. Patrick's Day in '95 fell on Sunday, putting the celebration over to Monday, but for the faithful it was a two days' fiesta. The Irish from Ireland, of whom there were plenty, put on high hats and green sashes and marched in parade along the line where most hospitality was dispensed. A New York Irishman in court on Tuesday morning, with a "d. and d." against his name, received from the 110 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1895 judge a reprimand for not confining his celebration to the appointed day. The defendant replied: "May- be I was wrong, but someone told me St. Patrick had two birthdays because he was twins." Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton celebrated her 80th birthday Nov. 12, '95. That was perhaps the last meeting of the three pioneer, suffragists, Mrs. Stan- ton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Miss Anthony read a list of "pioneers either pres- ent or sending greetings, and also of those whom death had taken from the ranks." Of the living she mentioned, paying tribute to each: Parker Pills- bury, Amy Post, Lucy N. Colman, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Mrs. Olive H. Fraser Ingalls (wife of J.K. Ingalls), who was at the first woman suffrage meeting held in the state of New York, and C.B. Waite, who had fifty years previously published the Liberty Banner at Rock Island, Ill. These were Freethinkers already named in my story. William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., was there and read a poem. A daughter of William Lloyd Garrison, Mrs. Vil- lard, died in 1928, and was spoken of as liberal and progressive. I never heard of her until she died. An item dated June 8 bore the news: "United States Judge John F. Phillips of the Western Dis- trict of Missouri has just resentenced Moses Har- man, editor, of Lucifer, Topeka, Kan., to one year's imprisonment at hard labor." That was another stage of the prosecution of Harman for publishing the "Markland letter," a protest against a husband's assault on his wife. I read the letter. The writer said the right thing in what the court thought was 1895] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 111 the wrong way -- an instance of questionable dic- tion. As old Peter Bayle maintained, it is no more than a question of grammar. The convention of the New York Populists at Syracuse nominated, August 30, the philosopher Thaddeus B. Wakeman for secretary of state. New York city gave him 625 votes. If anybody remembers it, an absurd French scien- tist, M. Ferdinand Brunetiere, professor at the Sor- bonne, announced in 1895 the "bankruptcy" of science, and the phrase won popularity with the piety-enders. Science has accomplished so much since then, that if Brunetiere were to come again on earth it would take him quite a while to learn the latest terms necessary to describe the new busi- ness of the "bankrupt" concern -- its progress and discovery. The editor and his constituency waged the fight of the year to expel the Bible and religious exer- cises from public schools in states where they were unlawful and unconstitutional. The history of that fight alone would make a book. There were favor- able decisions by courts, but the bootlegging went on, and the victory in certain states was later thwarted by the legislatures enacting laws, as in Pennsylvania, making Bible reading compulsory. The Kansas Freethought Association held its annual convention in Forest Park, Ottawa, August 6-11. Mrs, Etta Semple gave the address of wel- come, and was elected president. Mrs. Semple took an active part in Freethought affairs and began the publishing of a paper. 112 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1895 The first death of '95 to stir Freethinkers was Prof. Thomas Henry Huxley's, June 29. The cere- monies at the funeral according to the ritual of the (This is the famous picture of Huxley holding a skull.) THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY. Church of England were resented as a mockery and an insult to the memory of the dead Agnostic and to the Agnostics among the mourners. A pious in- scription is written upon his tombstone. Huxley 1895] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 113 was born May 4, 1825, at Ealing, England. He once "stood" for a professorship in Natural His- tory at the University of Toronto, Canada, and was rejected for want of a reputation for sanctity. He and John Tyndall, who had also applied for a professorship, were "charged with no religious con- victions," and the chairs denied them. The great minds of Canada are permanently encased in im- penetrable bone. The applications of these men, which were rejected, conferred more distinction on the Canadian college than all the applications that have been accepted. A man who seemed to belong to another century died in Vineland, N.J., August 31, at the age of 94. In the '40s he started a Liberal paper in Port- land, Maine (the state of his birth), and ran it for sixteen years. Through his labors he secured the passage of a law "to give every landless man in Maine, who would settle on it, one hundred and sixty acres of land at fifty cents an acre, to be paid in work on the roads." Among the contemporaries of my parents his name was a household word. The destitution of his last days was relieved by funds raised through The Truth Seeker. This was Jere- miah Hacker. His paper was The Pleasure Boat. And we lost, in the bloom of her young woman- hood, Katie Kehm Smith, who gave Freethought lectures throughout Oregon, and organized in '93 the First Secular Church in Portland, where she gathered a congregation of hundreds, as large as that of any orthodox church in the city, with a flourishing Sunday school attached. She was born in 1868 in Warsaw, Illinois, and at 17 took up 114 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1895 teaching, then lecturing, then organizing. Katie served for years as secretary of the Oregon State Secular Union and industriously reported to The Truth Seeker the progress of the movement. She was the wife of the Hon. D.W. Smith of Portland, who fully approved of her work, and was proud of her. After the death of Mrs, Smith the First Secular Church of Portland and its Sunday school were conducted by Mrs. Nettie A. Olds. The conven- tion of the Oregon State Secular Union was held at Portland in September; president, W.W. Jesse; secretary, Pearl Geer, who thereafter reported prog- ress; treasurer, C.B. Reynolds. Lulie Monroe Power, daughter of J.R. Monroe, founder of the Ironclad Age, Indianapolis, who had continued the paper after her father's death, died in April, '95, age 45 years. In December, The Age ceased publication. Victor Emanuel Lennstrand, whom G.W. Foote of the London Freethinker termed "one of the founders and martyrs of Freethought in Sweden," died in the fall of '95, in his thirty-fifth year. He published in 1889 Fritankaren, a journal of Free- thought, and was subjected to eight prosecutions for blasphemy. Not of strong constitution, he was broken down by the prosecutions and his life ruined and shortened by his nine months' imprisonment. N.D. Goodell, the California pioneer-architect of Sacramento, died at 81, in December. The re- port of his funeral said: "Mr. Goodell was honored by all the people of whatsoever belief." He gave liberally to the paper Freethought on the coast. CHAPTER VII. WHEN the year 1896 began President Cleveland and Congress had come near involving the United States in war with England. Beyond saying that whatever could be done to avert such a war should be done at once, The Truth Seeker avoided comment on the situa- tion. Its fight was with traitors at home, not a "traditional enemy" abroad. The Christian or God-in-the-Constitution amendment had been intro- duced into Congress by Representative Morse of Massachusetts and Senator Frye of Maine. Our paper asked for funds to put Putnam on guard in Washington, where he could oppose the measure when it should come before the committee it had been referred to. Putnam took up his residence at the capital and on March 11 made a great speech before the Joint Judiciary Committee of the House. The bill perished, and The Christian Statesman and The Christian Reformer, its newspaper sponsors, discovered that the measure had been killed by "Infidels or even Atheists, Spiritualists, Freethink- ers, and Agnostics." 115 116 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1896 To head off a few score of the lies that were in circulation about the chief exponent of Freethought in America, E.M. Macdonald prepared and pub- lished the book "Ingersoll as He Is." In April Ingersoll wrote him this acknowledgment: "My DEAR MR. MACDONALD: I write simply to thank you from my heart for your generous defense. "I have never felt like answering these slanders, and yet I know that my silence would, by many, be misunder- stood. "There are some things that one can scarcely deny with- out the denial itself leaving almost a stain. Now and then I have answered some slander, but for the most part I have made no reply. "Your splendid defense will make it unnecessary for me to say anything. Nothing need be added to what you have so generously said. Again and again I thank you, and I remain, as ever, "Yours always, R.G. INGERSOLL." It came out in one of the religious papers that "on Sunday, December 15, 1895, Grover Cleveland, President of the United States, returning from a duck-shooting cruise, and arriving at Washington at 2 P.M., made his way through the streets of the capital, accompanied by his fellow-sportsmen, laden with the ducks he had shot." And The Christian Statesman exclaimed: "What an object lesson to the young men of America does this Sabbath- breaking President present 1" Mr. Cleveland was an indifferent Sabbatarian and an inconsistent Christian. Nevertheless I considered it no more than his due to cite the following precedent from The Columbian Centinel of December, 1789, to wit: 1896] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 117 "The President on his return to New York from his late tour through Connecticut, having missed his way on Saturday, was obliged to ride a few miles on Sunday morning in order to gain the town at which he had proposed to have attended divine service. Before he arrived, however, he was met by a Tything man, who commanding him to stop, demanded the occasion of his riding; and it was not until the President had informed him of every circumstance and promised to go no further than the town intended that the Tything man would permit him to proceed on his journey." This particular Sabbath-breaking President of 1789, the occasion of whose riding was demanded by the Connecticut Tything man, was George Washington. George, it must be remembered, could not tell a lie; but his declaring before the Tything man that he "proposed to attend divine service" at the next town, instead of confessing his intent to get a good swig of hard "cyder," was a noble attempt to ac- complish the impossible. From time to time ministers were quitting the pulpit, turning liberals, and saying they would never preach again. One of these in '96 was the Rev. J. Ira Maltsbarger, Baptist, of Turner, Kan- sas, and significant were his remarks thereon. We hear much of the joy felt by those who are con- verted to Christianity, but Mr. Maltsbarger, on becoming, as he said, "an out-and-out Infidel," de- clared: "I feel as though a yoke had been cast from my neck. I am now a free man; can think as I 118 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1896 like and can work conscientiously. I never was happier in my life." It was during the years '95-'96 that Dr. W.A. Croffut emerged as a leading Freethinker in Wash- ington, D.C., which event to me had the same like- ness to a resurrection as my meeting with Dr. Dio Lewis at the Liberal Club when I had reached my majority after having been made familiar with his name at about the age of six. For many years I had lamented Dr. Croffut as one who had passed- away. Croffut exerted considerable influence in mold- ing my youthful mind, When as a writer on the editorial staff of The Graphic in the '70s, he pro- duced squibs and puns in poetry and prose, I recog- nized him as great, and bought the paper. I was a promising Labor radical until I listened to him be- fore the Liberal Club in Science Hall, 141 Eighth street, on the problem of wages and strikes. It agi- tated me greatly, for nothing so disturbs one as an adverse argument which cannot be refuted. As an admirer of his poetry, I tagged him about to Memo- rial Day celebrations and other public affairs where he read it, though I did not regard him as at his best when he was exhausting along metrical lines. In 1874 or 1875 I perused this verse of his while visit- ing in a section of Westmoreland, N.H., known as Poocham: "Said a great Congregational preacher To a hen, 'You're a beautiful creature.' The fowl, just for that Laid an egg in his hat, And thus did the Hen-reward Beecher." 1896] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 119 Poocham critics condemned the lines as "ridicu- lous." Croffut was versatile. He wrote essays on farm- ing, a military history of Connecticut, a novel about the Mormons, and works on political economy. He experimented in hypnotism and recorded his obser- vations, and he guided parties of Americans, of the Innocents Abroad variety, who went prospect- ing over Europe and Asia. After his 1895 voyage he wrote for The Truth Seeker on "The Holy Sepulcher a Historical Humbug." The School Board of Kansas City, Mo., in March '96 refused the petition of the A.P.A. and the Protestant ministers to reintroduce Bible read- ing into the public schools. Having chronicled this as "Right on the Throne for Once," The Truth Seeker said: "There is hope for Kansas City, for besides hav- ing a school board that rejects the Bible as a text book, it has a prominent clergyman who rejects the doctrine of the fall of man and the atonement which the Bible is alleged to teach. The clergyman is the Rev. J.E. Roberts of All Souls Church." Mr. Roberts had just put forth a volume of extremely heretical sermons, saying therein: "With the fall of man, which never occurred, must go the doctrine of the atonement, which was never needed; and with that doctrine goes the greatest moral enormity that ever gained currency among enlightened men." Not many years later, as we shall see, Dr. Roberts established his Church of This World, Rationalist, of which he still is minister. Said an item in the News of the Week, March 120 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1896 28, '96: "The Rev. William T. Brown of the Con- gregational church, Madison, Conn., is to be tried for heresy." One charge against Mr. Brown was that he had said some parts of the Bible were not "fully inspired," and another that he used the Re- vised version of the Bible instead of retaining the old version "just as God wrote it." The next week's item appertaining to Mr. Brown stated that he had been acquitted "as an indorsement of the advanced theology of the most radical thinkers in the Congregational church." A third mention of the Rev. Mr. Brown declared his acquittal a white- wash, for it was admitted that he had said that "if God called upon Christ to sacrifice himself for man- kind, he was a devil," and that "the birth of Christ was the same and no different from that of any other child." This was the William Thurston Brown who in 1913 lectured weekly for the New York Freethought Society. The number of The Truth Seeker for March 21, 1896, was the last to be printed from movable types, and all the compositors but one went elsewhere. We retained T.R. Stevens, who as an employee dated from 1875, when the composing-room was at No. 8 North William street, to make up the forms with the metal delivered from a machine shop. With my small family I had lived on the upper floor of the building in the rear of 28 Lafayette place, the printing-office being on the floor below, ever since my return from the West. The typesetting machine shops were in many instances only com- posing-rooms. They set, corrected, and delivered for 35 or 40 cents per thousand ems. The paper 1896] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 121 then ran some sixteen columns of advertising per week, with much of the reading part, as in the days of Bennett, devoted to good words for books pub- lished by the Company. Weekly bills were about thirty per cent what they are now, and naturally all this advertising allowed by the postoffice in papers mailed at the minimum rate brought trade. In '96 Mr. Walker left us and the editorial work became mine. I was sorry to displace Mr. Walker and held the thought that if the opportunity ever came I would proffer him the job again. That opportunity came in 1909, when he declined it. Be- ing a practical printer, a keen and prolific writer, with many years of experience in the liberal field, Walker brought to the work more than could be expected of any other man, The Evangelist, a religious paper, published the statement that the late O.B. Frothingham had dis- continued the preaching of Freethought because he had come to the conclusion that truth was to be found in the church. In New Unity, Chicago, Mr. Charles de B. Mills of Syracuse, New York, an old friend of Frothingham, wrote upon his death: "It is grateful to know that the light that had illumined his path continued still to shine. He had not wan- dered from home, now in age seeking to retrace his steps and get back into the comfortable beliefs of an indolent and artificial religion; he had ad- vanced much beyond the Ultima-Thule of the an- cestors that had gone before, and never again could be taken with what the old and outgrown faiths had to offer." Mr. Mills confirmed the statement of the Rev. Minot J. Savage that Frothingham "never 122 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1896 retracted any of his opinions. He has grown more radical from day to day the longer he has lived." He may, indeed, have grown too radical for the congregation he addressed. One explanation of his ceasing to maintain a radical pulpit was that he had inherited money and no longer needed to strug- gle. No radical preacher ever made it pay. In February, 1896, Ingersoll lectured in ten of the larger cities of Texas, drawing so well that his manager declared that should he go there again he would have a "four-acre tent." In due time a letter came to The Truth Seeker from Mrs. Anna M. Brooks of Howe, in that state, who told of attend- ing the lecture in Sherman. "I must not forget to tell you," wrote Mrs. Brooks, "that I made the acquaintance of R.G. Ingersoll and his wife, and heard him deliver his lecture on 'Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child' to a densely packed house. I was invited to their room at the hotel and visited with them three hours. Oh, was not that a glorious opportunity -- so unex- pected by me! ... I went directly to the hotel where I knew they would take dinner. I waited in the sitting room until they came back from dinner, and then, when Mrs. Ingersoll came in, I introduced myself, telling her I was one of her husband's numerous admirers. She laughingly said: 'Come right to our room.' We went in, and she said: 'Robert, here is one of your sweethearts.' We shook hands, and when I told him how far I rode through the mud to see and hear him he said he would give me a pass to the lecture. I thanked him, 1896] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 123 but told him I thought myself fortunate that I had already bought my seat in a good place. He said he was sorry I had been in such a hurry to pay out my money. Oh, we had a delightful time -- so many of the city celebrities came to interview them, and I was introduced to them all." As printed in The Truth Seeker there was an editorial elision in the letter. The editor had scratched out a line; and taking advantage of my knowledge of the fact, I wrote an Observation as follows: In looking over some copy for the printers I observe a letter from a Texas woman who paid Colonel Ingersoll and his family a call when they were in her state, and I see that the Editor's pencil has been drawn through this line: "I gave Mrs. Ingersoll my recipe far biscuit." At first the words may appear to be incongruous or mere gossip, but the more you look at them the more significant they become. Colonel Ingersoll and his family have had a good deal of mouth praise, much of which they are obliged to be grateful for when they know it is formal, perfunctory, and not straight from the liver. We can vision the honest Texas woman, living on a ranch, per- haps traveling miles on horseback and by rail to meet them; knowing that they were surrounded by people who would give them more flattery than they would enjoy, in language and with flourishes which she could not command; feeling that words were cheap, and that everything costing money was at their disposal; and yet, wishing in some signal way to attest her friendship and admiration, she bestows -- not for what it is worth to them but for what it is valued at by herself -- a formula the surrendering of which destroys at once and forever her preeminence among housekeepers and makes another woman her equal. It was not flattery or patronage. It was a tribute, beside which the widow's 124 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1896 mite is without moral value. In the creation legend to be read in Genesis the gods drove man out of the garden lest through eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge he should become as one of them. Christ imparted to none the secret of his remarkable power. Christian women carry cakes or biscuits to their pastor's donation party, but did they give his wife directions for making them? These are the models of devotion held up for us to ad- mire; but, after all, it has been left for the unbelieving woman of the Lone Star State to perform an act of self- sacrifice which should illustrate the real meaning of re- nunciation. She gave Mrs. Ingersoll her receipt for biscuit! Mrs. Nettie A. Olds of McMinnville, Oregon, reported in a letter published January 11: "We feel especially thankful to those who have made it possi- ble and are so energetically erecting the First Secu- lar Church and Science Hall of McMinnville (70 x 40 feet, with gallery, large stage, full set of elegant scenery, and kitchen with all modern improvements, and sitting rooms), soon to be dedicated to the service of humanity." On April 13, at Topeka, Kansas, J.B. Wise of Industry, under bond for having written a verse of the Book of Isaiah and mailed it to a minister, was found guilty by a jury and fined $50 by Judge Fos- ter. Wise's counsel gave notice of appeal to the United States Supreme Court; but the case never was carried up. The Supreme Court of California, in a decision full of sound sense, quoted in The Truth Seeker of May 9, declared unconstitutional a law forbidding the opening of barber shops on Sunday. Said the editor: "There is one sentence in the opinion de- livered by the California judges which should be 1896] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 125 conspicuously engraved where all the labor agita- tors, the legislators who pass labor laws, and the courts that affirm their constitutionality can see it daily. It is this: 'It is a curious law for the protec- tion of labor which punishes the laborer for working.' Mr. J.E. Hosmer of Portland, Oregon, state superintendent of Secular Sunday schools, reported the receipt of contributions for the creation of a Liberal University at Silverton, in that state.- Cyrus W. Coolridge, a capable young Russian Jew, had come to The Truth Seeker to learn type- setting. He soon began to write. His name was not Coolridge, nor Cyrus, and the W. stood for nothing in particular. Joseph Dana Miller contributed articles in 1896. He was distinguished as an advocate of the Single Tax. This was a presidential year, a year of Bryan's candidacy, and the issue between "sound money" and free silver. Freethinkers were divided. Both sides wrote letters, which became rather acrimo- nious after Ingersoll had written one to the editor condemning free silver coinage at 16 to 1. The Secular Union and Freethought Federation congress in Chicago, November 13 to 15, had a larger attendance than any previous one. An au- dience of two thousand gathered to hear Foote and Watts in Central Music Hall. Mr. Pearl Geer, the young secretary of the Oregon State Secular Union, reported upon the work that was being done in his state. The Liberals there were publishing their paper, The Torch of Reason, conducting Secular 126 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1896 Sunday schools, and were going to establish a Lib- eral University. On the morning of Sunday, the 15th, the attendants at the Congress, out of courtesy to the Spiritualist contingent, adjourned to Schil- ler's Theater and heard a discourse by Mrs. Cora L.V. Richmond. Putnam was reelected president, and E.C. Reichwald, secretary. Two distinguished visitors from England, George William Foote, editor of the London Freethinker, and Charles Watts, reached our shores on October 22, and the Freethinkers of New York gave them a cordial reception at Chickering Hall on the Sun- day night following their arrival. The addresses by Henry Rowley, who presided, and of Putnam, Watts, Foote, Ingersoll, and T.B. Wakeman were stenographically reported in The Truth Seeker of October 31. Watts and Foote were entertained by the Drs. Foote in this city and at Larchmont Manor and by the Ingersolls at Dobbs Ferry. They went to Toronto for the convention of the Canadian Se- cular Union, to Chicago to attend the congress of the A.S.U. and Freethought Federation, and spoke at the Liberal Club and the Brooklyn Philosophical Association, besides Washington, Philadelphia and other places. Mr. Watts had previously spent years in America; it was Mr. Foote's first visit. I quote my impressions of the editor of The Freethinker as written down at the time: Mr. G.W. Foote, president of the National Secular Society of Great Britain, has been looking over New York for several days previous to this writing, and New Yorkers have looked over Mr. Foote during that time. He has not told how our "institutions" impress him, but if they stand the scrutiny as well as he does their perma- 1896] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 127 nence is in no danger. The word "imperturbable" de- scribes him fairly. other Englishmen, I have observed, are at times impatient. They are choleric or jolly as the occasion may dispose. Foote is bland and humorous. We were on the way to New Rochelle, N.Y., by rail to visit the Paine monument. The weather should have been pleasant but was not. As the train passed gloomily through the land of melancholy days, somebody apologized for the rain. Foote paid interested attention and re- plied: "Well, you can't help it, you know," and then composed himself for forty winks. You see, he might have said "beastly," but he scored a point by not offering that criticism. But although oblivious or indifferent to what can't be helped, and while he would not ostentatiously defy mete- orology, Mr. Foote is obviously alert and curious. He observes and inquires, and before he had said so at the Chickering Hall reception, I had received the impression that he would be more grateful for a fact imparted than for a detailed expression of thought. He is quite candid. His criticism of American ideas is that they are super- ficial, and he has a right to that opinion, for America has no thinker like Spencer, nor any observer like Darwin. We don't encourage the domestic culture of that kind of people on this continent, although we sometimes take them "second-hand," as Wakeman says, from elsewhere, If one of these "first-hard souls" should venture to be born here, he would starve, or be stunted, or winter-killed on his native soil. Our religions population has seen to it faithfully that no Bradlaugh ever represented a con- stituency in the national Congress. Personally, Mr. Foote is handsomer than he looks -- that is, than he looks in any of his pictures. He would be taken for a doctor, or at least a professor, for he has the manner of the learned. He is cosmopolitan, and might be a German or an American except for his speech, which is United States with only occasional lapses into English. He brought the necessary number of h's with him and uses them in their appropriate connections. His 128 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1896 dress is not peculiar. He is a man above nationality, so far as I can judge. On all topics of interest he is radical to the verge of reasonableness, and his thought is trammeled only by obstructive facts. Wherever he may go he will not attract attention as a "stranger in these parts." I heard Mr. Foote before the Manhattan Liberal Club on "The Irreligion of Shakespeare." Mr. Foote met Ingersoll and pronounced his personality commensurate with his genius. The Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage had been called from Brooklyn to Washington, D.C. He took his pulpit falsehoods with him and retold them. They included the myth of Ethan Allen's advising his daughter: "You had better take your mother's religion." Dr. W.A. Croffut temporarily disposed of that yarn by writing Talmage a reply, printed by the newspapers, in which the following paragraphs occur: "Around me as I write are trunks full of the literary remains of Major-General Hitchcock, a distinguished grandson of Ethan Allen, and in his written diary I find this alleged incident repeated, with the following words added: "'I had often heard my mother speak of the death of that sister, and remember having heard her say that she attended her in her last moments, I desired to know whether there was any foundation for the story. My mother told me on two occasions that there was none what- ever. I regard the story, therefore, as pure invention in behalf of certain opinions to which my grandfather was supposed to be unfriendly.'" Talmage was a pulpit liar of more than common versatility. 1896] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 129 In the summer, for a week's vacation, I went on a fishing cruise with Capt. Silas Latham of Noank, Conn., and wrote the story of the voyage for The Truth Seeker. The Coast Seamen's Journal of San Francisco, whose editor, Mr. McArthur, afterwards went to Congress, reprinted the account and invited me to become a contributor to his paper. Having all the engagements I could handle, I turned the in- vitation over to Morgan Robertson, who as we all know had been a seaman. At that time, Robertson had published no sea stories, but now he wrote one and offered it to Editor McArthur in exchange for a modest advertisement of his rhymed skit, "A Tale of a Halo." The proposition not being accepted, and Mr. Robertson having a story on his hands, he submitted it to the editor of McClure's Magazine, who gave him $200 for it and a commission to write others. The Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore an- nounced the publication in the fall of a "recon- structed" Bible under the direction of Prof. Paul Haupt, who had been working on the scheme for six years with groups of scholars in Europe and America. The reconstructed Bible was to be at the same time a new English translation embodying the latest scholarship. The projectors outlined their plan: "The attempt will be made to show at a glance the net results of modern criticism upon every line of every book of the Old Testament. This will be done by printing the text in different colored back- grounds; and the interpolations, additions, notes, and comments and various changes that are believed to have been made subsequently, will each be print- 130 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1896 ed upon a background of a different color. It is from this that the new translation gains its name of the Polychrome Bible." Dodd, Mead & Com- pany were selected as the publishers, and much was expected of the new version. I became interested and asked for Genesis, but that book had not ap- peared in polychrome form. I doubt whether it ever did appear. The first to come out was Eccle- siastes, translated by Professor Haupt in 1896; the next, Professor Cheyne's Isaiah. I waited until 1898 for Judges, by the Rev. G.F. Moore of An- dover Theological Seminary, and another year for Joshua, by the Rev. W.H. Bennett, London. The production of the books must have been expensive, for on some pages the variety of sources required nearly all of the seven colors used, and in addition to these italics, fullface, ecclesiastical, superior fig- ures, and Greek letters were employed. Introduc- tory and explanatory remarks and notes filled twice as many pages as the text of Judges, and there were maps and numerous illustrations. Limited sales and want of popular interest in the scriptures prevented the completion of the Old Testament canon. Dr. Haupt found the public so ignorant and dumb that in his haste he declared that the state should make the study of the Bible compulsory -- in which The Truth Seeker did not agree with him, and said so. One of the prominent Liberals who died during the year 1896 was C.B. Reynolds, the veteran lec- turer, at his home in Seattle, Wash., July 3. His 1896] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 131 death was caused by a fall from a swing in which he was sitting while in McMinnville, Oregon, whither he had been called to deliver the funeral address of an old-time Liberal. Concussion of the brain resulted fatally about a week after he reached his home. Mr. Reynolds was born in New York in 1832. In 1868 he be- came an Adventist preacher. In the ear- ly '80s he began de- livering Freethought C. B. REYNOLDS. lectures, having been "converted" by reading the Boston Investigator and The Truth Seeker. His career for the next few years, including his prosecution in New Jersey for blasphemy, has appeared in these pages. He lec- tured eight months of 1889 in Walla Walla, Wash. In 1892 he lectured for the Tacoma Secular Union. Afterward, till the time of his death, he was speak- er for the Secular Church of Portland, Oregon. Reynolds was a man of character and courage and culture, with an uncanny knowledge of scriptural texts and ability to locate them; an always ready speaker, a good friend and companion, an honest, worthy, and sincere Freethinker. Allen Pringle of Selby, Ont., president of the Canadian Secular Union, died on the 22d of July 132 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1896 at the age or 55 years. Mr. Pringle was a native of the town of Richmond, born April 1, 1841. He studied medicine but abandoned it for farming and bee-keeping, and became the leading apiarian of On- tario. Freethinkers attending the World's Fair at Chicago in 1893 found him there in charge of the honey exhibit for the Canadian government. He was a student and a contributor to numerous news- papers and magazines. On December 11 came the tragedy of the year, the death of Putnam by accident while in Boston. He died poisoned by illuminating gas at 47 St. Bar- tolph street. He had just returned from the Chi- cago congress to fill lecture engagements in the vicinity of Boston. His presence there coincided with that of Miss May Collins, the Kentucky young woman who had recently come into prominence as a writer and speaker, and now had decided to try lecturing in the North. Putnam that day visited his sister Caroline in Boston; and took dinner, or supper, with friends in Stoneham, one of the friends being Moses Hull. Just after his 7 P.M. arrival at No. 47 St. Bartolph street, the janitor of the building traced an odor of gas to the rooms where Putnam awaited Miss Collins's readiness to accompany him to the theater. The bodies of both, dressed for the street, were found on the floor. The funeral of Putnam was held in Boston on the 15th, L.K. Washburn pronouncing the eulogy. They bore the body then to Forest Hill crematory. Miss Collins was buried in her native state, Ken- tucky. Mr. Charles Moore of the Blue Glass 1896] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 133 SAMUEL PORTER PUTNAM (1838-1896). 134 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1896 Blade, who attended the funeral, said that the ad- dress of Moses Kaufman, a Freethinker and friend of the family, was beautiful; that "the beautiful chapel of the most beautiful cemetery was comfort- ably filled with representatives of our best society." Miss Collins was but twenty years old, having been born in Midway, Kentucky,, in 1876. She was intel- lectually precocious and her writings were mature. As the place where Putnam lodged while in Boston was never discovered, the personal effects he carried there were lost. His satchel contained a collection of his poems that he was revising for publication in a volume with my own. The Truth Seeker had announced "The Poetry of Free- thought," or Selected Poems of Putnam and Mac- donald, and had booked columns of orders for the work. But no one knows what became of Put- nam's selections. His death caused the plan to be abandoned. We were collaborating at the same time on what we had determined should be the great Freethought novel. The life of Putnam was a perpetual protest against puritanism. I never heard criticism of him on any other score. He was a man of scholarship, ability, eloquence, sensibility, honor; a tremendous and tireless worker. As a lecturer he traveled more than one hundred thousand miles and spoke in all but four states of the Union. The names of the leading Freethinkers living during the twenty years of his labors will be found in the reports of his work that he communicated to Freethought and The Truth Seeker. He was 58 years old when he died. ... 1896] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 135 The farewell dinner to G.W. Foote and Charles Watts, at the end of their stay in America, took place at the Hotel Marlborough, New York, on the evening of December 15. Dr. E.B. Foote presided. The guests numbered sixty. The Liberals, owing to Putnam's death, were not inclined to anything festive. It was a funeral. Young Dr. Foote, re- sponding to a toast to "The American Secular Union," whose president (Putnam) had just died, nearly broke down. L.G. Reed spoke on "Decay- ing Dogmas," Watts on "Waning Orthodoxy," Wakeman on "The New Religion," Henry Rowley on "Our Departing Guests." I made my theme "The Departed Guest" and talked of Putnam, the partner and "pard," the 'poet, the orator, the man of intellectual gifts, the comrade, my friend "Sam." And I read a poem I had composed entitled "The Spot Where He Made One." I had written it with a feeling of resentment that some of Putnam's friends, suffering from the timidity complex, were saying, "Let us wait for all the facts, before ren- dering judgment." The presumption of them, I thought, to judge Putnam! In one of my stanzas I acquitted him of any such righteousness as that: Too well I know you for my heart to hold One doubt that had your sudden fate been mine, Though hatred, malice, circumstance combine With voice of forsworn friendship to malign; If I, as you, lay in obstruction cold, Then would one thought, one pen and voice ring true In memory of this friend who mourns for you. Disclaiming the ability to add a leaf to his laurels, I said in other stanzas: 136 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1896 Since each of all the immemorial dead Hath found his eulogist, an advocate To plead the virtues common to the great, How shall I now some tribute fresh create -- What paean is unsung, what word unsaid? I can but echo oft-renewed acclaim, Ancient as death, and evermore the same. Yet let me wish that those hid hands which guide The way we tread on -- which do leave or take, Which do this life reject, or that one make Rich in great actions for the whole world's sake -- Might deem mine worthy to be so applied That it abound with service to mankind, And like your own leave fruitful deeds behind. And so close the Memoirs for the year 1896. **** **** Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship. This disk, its printout, or copies of either are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold. Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201 **** **** CHAPTER VIII. FOR many weeks in 1897 The Truth Seeker was an In Memoriam for S.P. Putnam. Countless letters came, with many poems, some of them good. I remember how one by Anna Pritchard, which George Long illustrated with an impressive mourning group, and another by Shar- lot Hall, surprised me by their excellence. I had not before heard of either writer. Sharlot Hall kept Putnam's death in mind for many a year and sent other poems for the anniversaries of it. Evi- dently Miss Hall was not without honor in her own country, since she was afterwards chosen to be poet laureate for one of the Western states. The Free- thought societies held memorial meetings and the demand for a Memorial Volume to Putnam, as well as to Miss Collins, who had "added the name of a Kentuckian to the roll of the thinkers of the world," was general. I prepared the volume with the help of the Collins family and Putnam's sister Caroline. Putnam's life after the year 1879 has made a part of this story. He was born July 23, 1838, in Chichester, N.H., his father being a minister. Af- ter attending common schools and the Academy in Pembroke, he entered Dartmouth in 1858. In 1861 137 138 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1897 he enlisted as a private in the Fourth New York Heavy Artillery. In 1863 he took rank as captain of Company K, Twentieth United States Colored Infantry. The next year he had a call to preach the gospel and resigned. He then took three years in the theological seminary in Chicago; was married in 1867 to Miss Louise Howell. After preaching in two orthodox pulpits, at DeKalb and Malta, Illinois, he joined the Unitarians, occupying pulpits at Toledo, Ohio; North Platte and Omaha, Neb., and at Northfield, Mass. In 1885, upon her application, and in default of his appearance to oppose, a divorce was granted Mrs. Putnam. Two children, Henry Howell and Grace, remained in the care of the mother. For a half dozen years he had been writing and speaking for Freethought, and in 1884 was made secretary of the National Liberal League when Ingersoll was elected president. His subse- quent history has been told. A discussion, part serious but mainly funny, fol- lowed a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott, the successor of Henry Ward Beecher in the Plymouth pulpit, Brooklyn, in which the preacher moved his congregation to laughter by preaching on Jonah and the whale. He gave what looked like a critical commentary on the myth by saying that the book of Jonah "was written as a piece of satirical fiction, to satirize the narrowness of certain Jewish prophets." As The Sun had pronounced Dr. Abbott an Infidel for rejecting the Jonah story, so unmistakably vouched for by Jesus Christ (Matthew xii, 39), it printed a letter from myself stating that Dr. Abbott was an Infidel to the same degree as Paine, whose 1897] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 139 words he appeared to have borrowed, since Paine had said of the Jonah book: "It is more probable ... that it has been written as a fable, to expose the nonsense and satirize the vicious and malignant character of a Bible prophet or a predicting priest." The Sun deigned or feigned to take the matter seriously. In an editorial Mr. Dana gravely said: 'Our correspondents who discuss the case of Dr. Abbott have no conception of the tremendous revo- lution in sentiment of which it is a symptom. All the Infidelity of past periods has been of no conse- quence as compared with the present Infidelity, of which, for the moment, he has made himself the ex- ample. It is an Infidelity which strikes at the super- natural basis on which Christianity rests, and there- fore relegates the religion of Christendom to the position of mere mythology and fallible human philosophy." The Times-Herald (publication place not identi- fied) made the following metrical remark: "The Reverend Lyman Abbott says of Jonah and the whale That he's looked the fish all over, and be can't indorse the tale." The discussion, which became widespread, was dismissed from The Truth Seeker with a quotation from Dr. Abbott a few years earlier when he had declared: "Christ gave his personal sanction to the account of this miracle, which, more than any other in the Old Testament, has been subjected to criti- cism and even ridicule. We must either accept the Old Testament history of this miracle, or believe that Jesus was a deceiver or was himself deceived." President McKinley called a certain Judge Mc- 140 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1897 Kenna from California to a place in his cabinet as attorney-general, thereby causing severe criticism to be leveled at him by the Protestants of his party. I note the remark in The Truth Seeker that the objectors appear to be oblivious to the weighty prin- ciple that "when an archbishop of the Catholic church consents to throw his influence to the side of a candidate, he does not do it without some assur- ance that the claims of his church will be recognized in the event of the candidate's election." The arch- bishop alluded to was Ireland, who delivered the goods. Daniel Lamont, secretary of war in Cleveland's cabinet, had given the Catholic church permission to erect a cathedral on the West Point military reser- vation. His successor, General Alger, confirmed the gift, and then to the surprise and consternation of Tom Watson, who was running an A.P.A. paper, the Roman Catholic Attorney-General, Judge Mc- Kenna, nipped the scheme at this stage by pronounc- ing the grant unconstitutional, although it had been extended to provide building sites for churches of all denominations. Later President McKinley nominated Attorney-General McKenna to be an as- sociate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Though some of the judge's colleagues of the California bench protested that his legal attain- ments did not fit him for the place, he was confirmed by the Senate and took his seat in 1898. While the public debated the proposed church grab at West Point, Senator Gallinger of New Hampshire introduced a measure described as an "amendment," as follows: 1897] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 141 "Article XVI. -- Neither Congress nor any state shall pass any law respecting an establishing of religion, or prohibit- ing the free exercise thereof, or use the property or credit of the United States, or of any state, or any money raised by taxation, or authorize either to be used, for the purpose of founding, maintaining, or aiding, by appropriation, pay- ment of services, expense, or otherwise, any church, re- ligious denomination or religious society, or any institu- tion, society, or undertaking, which is wholly or in part under sectarian or ecclesiastical control." The amendment got as far as the Senate Commit- tee on Judiciary. Later, we shall see, the substance of it was enacted as a United States statute, March 3, 1897, to the provisions of which not the slightest attention has since been paid either by Congress or state legislatures. Concerning Brann's Iconoclast, Waco, Texas, The Truth Seeker said editorially: "We have never regarded anything that Brann might say, on any subject whatever, as worthy a moment's notice." Brann (if I may anticipate history) came to a bad end on the first day of April, 1898, being shot and mortally wounded by Tom E. Davis of Waco, a business man who had said he should be driven from town for his attack on the Baptist University. It was a street fight and Davis was also slain. Alleged rightful heirs of Stephen Girard gave notice that a move would be made for the restora- tion to them of property which Girard, dying in 1831, had bequeathed to Philadelphia for the estab- lishment of a college from which religion and preachers should be excluded. At the time of his death, Gerard's heirs tried to break his will because it was unchristian. Now they were attacking the 142 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1897 college trustees for not carrying out the will in the unchristian way prescribed by the testator. They had a strong case, if hopeless, for the systematic perversion of Gerard's gift to the uses of religion by those who have had the management of the college is a scandal. In May, 1897, the city of Philadelphia unveiled a statue to Gerard's memory. United States District-Attorney James M. Beck, the orator of the day, said of Girard: "What his religious con- victions were no one will ever know." The fact of Girard's having been a Freethinker is never men- tioned in the college. The pupils are taught re- ligion, but the religion of the founder is concealed from them. The case of J.B. Wise of Kansas, who had been in the meshes of the law for two years, reached its quietus in The Truth Seeker of January 30, 1897. Wise had used a postal card to convey to the Rev. Mr. Vennum of Clay city the twelfth verse of the thirty-sixth chapter of Isaiah. The scripture was adjudged to be obscene and Wise on conviction fined fifty dollars, which, with the costs of his defense, was paid by Truth Seeker readers. From Florida the Mental Scientist, Helen Wil- mans, spread her philosophy through a publication she called "Freedom." Mrs. Wilmans ultimately was charged with false pretenses and her business broken up. For a time she was a promising rival of Mrs. Eddy, who chose the word Christian instead of Mental to qualify her science. The present editor of the London Freethinker, Mr. C. Cohen, first was introduced to the readers of The Truth Seeker as one of the National Secular 1897] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 143 Society's speakers who had been warned off Chatham Lines because of a disturbance raised by "a handful of ill-bred Christians." Governor Bradley of Kentucky vetoed the ap- pointment of a chaplain by the legislature -- an iso- lated example, too ideally honorable to be emulated by other governors. The presidential chair of Leland Stanford Uni- versity came near being taken from under its occu- pant, David Starr Jordan, following his remarks before the Unitarian Society of Berkeley, where he said: "Stimulants produce temporary insanity. Whiskey, co- caine, and alcohol bring temporary insanity, and so does a revival of religion, one of those religious revivals in which men lose all their reason and self-control. This is simply a form of drunkenness not more worthy of respect than the drunkenness which lies in the gutters." The ministers of California united in a demand upon the Methodist Mrs. Stanford, widow of the founder of the University, for the removal of Dr. Jordan. Rumors were about that he would be fired, but they died down and he stayed. The ministers of Washington, D.C., procured the adoption of police rules prohibiting newsboys from selling papers on the street on Sunday. The Washington Secular League, of which D. Webster Groh, Dr. W.A. Croffut and Gen. William Birney were active members, took the part of the boys and provided them with counsel and bail when arrested. The boys became attendants at the meetings of the League, fifty of them being present to hear Dr. Croffut's lecture for their benefit. Ingersoll's lectures in 1897 drew record crowds. 144 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1897 In both Boston and New York he packed houses as they had never been packed before. Representative Keliher of Massachusetts placed before the legisla- ture a bill "to stop Bob Ingersoll from lecturing Sun- day evenings if possible." Elijah A. Morse of that state, and of Rising Sun Stove-Polish fame, who when in Congress championed the God-in-the-Con- stitution amendment, wrote an article for the Chi- cago Christian Citizen proposing that the sale of Ingersoll's books be prohibited by law. "There can be no such thing as personal liberty in civilized society," said True Reform, a Prohibition paper. The editor was a prophet. Destruction of the personal liberty delusion preceded the adoption of the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution, the establishment of collectivism in Russia, and the election of Mussolini to be dictator in Italy. Henry Addis, a son of discontent, published in Portland, Oregon, his paper called The Firebrand. With him were associated Abner J. Pope and Abe Isaak. All three were arrested in October, '97, for alleged violation of the postal statutes, the charge being indecency and literary incendiarism. Pope, a man 74 years old, a Quaker and Spiritualist, wel- comed the martyrdom. Offered his liberty if he would agree to appear for trial, he refused to treat with his captors. Addis and Isaak gave bail. The Firebrand was anarchist-communist in sentiment. The list of Liberal papers of 1997 included The Freethought Ideal of Kansas. The officers of the Kansas State Freethought Association for 1897 were Mrs. Etta Semple, President, and Miss Laura Knox, secretary-treasurer. 1897] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 145 The Freethinkers of Salt Lake City, Utah, organ- ized as The Free Lance Society, with Alexander Rogers as president and a constitution embracing the Nine Demands. Plans were laid to establish a Church of This World with Dr. N.F. Ravlin of California as minister. Ravlin was a Spiritualist and Rationalist who had renounced the Baptist pulpit. The cartoons by Watson Heston, with which The Truth Seeker had been illustrated for some years, were discontinued in February. With Mr. Hes- ton's salary added, the illustrations were burden- some at a time when The Truth Seeker was raising a Sustaining Fund for itself under the head of "The Helping Hand." Probably half of the read- ers, with whom the pictures had never been popu- lar, were satisfied to see them dropped out, while others lamented. Percy Fitzhugh, a writer of stories for boys, who jumped into popularity with "Mohawk Trail," got some practice by writing articles for The Truth Seeker. Six of them appeared in 1897. The Freethought societies announcing regular meetings at the close of 1897 were the Manhattan Liberal Club, the Brooklyn Philosophical Associa- tion, the Friendship Liberal Club (Philadelphia), the Chicago Liberal League (Mrs. Zela Stevens, lecturer), the Washington (D.C.) Secular League, the Ohio Liberal Society (Cincinnati), the Free- thinkers' Association of Manchester, N.H., and Liberal Associations at Springfield and Lowell, Mass. Ingersoll and Remsburg were publishing lecture engagements, and Steiner was in the field 146 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1897 looking for dates. Mrs. Mattie P. Krekel also of - fered her services to Liberal societies. Atrocity stories that began coming from Cuba early in the year were unsuspiciously printed. They prepared the public mind for the war with Spain and the occupation of Cuba. The season for the annual congress of the American Secular Union and Freethought Federa- tion having arrived, and there being only the mem- ory of Putnam instead of his living voice for an inspiration, and none to take the lead in making the arrangements, the editor of The Truth Seeker assumed the responsibility and hired Harriman Hall, New York, for the meetings (Nov. 19-21). Judge C.B. White of Chicago, acting president, issued the call. Liberals came from far away, and those of New York got together. The women trimmed the stage with bunting, flowers and ban- ners, the American colors predominating, while the Freethinkers of a dozen European countries were represented by their flags. On an easel in the midst stood a large portrait of Putnam. Prof. Daniel T. Ames, editor of The Penman's Journal, took the chair. I note among those pres- ent "Putnam Foote Macdonald and parents." That was our second son, and as he was born on the 17th of February of the then current year, it was his first attendance at a congress. We named him for Samuel P. Putnam and our good friend, Dr. E.B. Foote, Senior. Moncure Daniel Conway, the biographer of Paine, spoke at this congress. So did W.A. Crof- 1897] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 147 fut of Washington, and numbers of the regulars, for the Manhattan Liberal Club met with us. Mr. James F. Morton, who talked about Massachusetts Sunday laws, may be singled out as the survivor of those who addressed the assemblage. It was at this congress that John Hutchinson, last of the famous Hutchinson family of singers, appeared. He gave a brief address, and then, accompanying himself on the piano, sang "One Hundred Years Hence." There I met for the first and only time Charles Chilton Moore, editor of The Blue Grass Blade, Lexington, Kentucky. The officers elected for the ensuing year were: President, John E. Remsburg; vice-presidents, W.A. Croffutt, T.B. Wakeman, Franklin Steiner, and Susan H. Wixon; secretary, E.C. Reichwald; treasurer Otto Wettstein. The report is given in The Truth Seeker for Novem- ber 27, 1897. Charles Anderson Dana, editor of The Sun, died October 18. Mr. Dana, born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, August 8, 1819, was 78 years old. Be- sides reaching the top of the editorial profession, he made himself acquainted with most phases of social, industrial, and religious reforms, and had been as many kinds of a "crank" as any other man. While something of a cynic, after his various disillusion- ments, he still appeared to have retained a certain sympathy for reformers of the unpopular kind. The Truth Seeker, on the occasion of his death, acknowledged that, in its more or less rocky career, it assuredly had been indebted to Mr. Dana for "brave words spoken at the right time." He kept his columns open to the expression of radical 148 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1897 thought and to defense of the liberty of the press. I do not remember who passed to me the following observation on Mr. Dana; it might have been Ste- phen Pearl Andrews, who also was from Hinsdale, and knew Mr. Dana long and well (as an antago- nist). I quote: "They say that many years ago (it must have been before the Civil War), when the Hon. Elizur Wright, several times president of the National Liberal League, was running an orthodox paper called The Chronotype, in Boston, he em- ployed Dana as his assistant editor, and that dur- ing Mr. Wright's temporary absence Dana wrote an editorial treating of hell as a myth, thus provok- ing Mr. Wright to wrath and securing Mr. Dana his walking-papers." Henry George was but 58 when he sustained an attack of apoplexy, as the papers reported, and passed away at the Union Square Hotel, New York, on the morning of October 29. He had delivered an address on the previous evening. The Truth Seeker quoted several eulogies of George, includ- ing that of Dr. McGlynn, who said the world would love and revere his name when the names of Presi- dents were only historic allusions. As I like best my own eulogy of Mr. George, I will quote from it: "When hereafter I shall recall Henry George to mind, I prefer to remember him by his last speech, made the night before his death, when be said: "'I am opposed to all things which conflict with the liberty of this people. I believe in freedom of thought and speech and trade. I believe in the freedom of men and the affairs of men as far as one man does not overstep the rights of another.' "On that rock [I wrote] mankind, emancipated from 1897] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 149 religious and political superstition, will some day stand with Henry George; and it will furnish the material for his enduring monument." Three lines announcing the death of James G. Clark, poet and singer, were utilized as a "filler" at the foot of a column in the paper for October 16. Mr. Clark died in Pasadena, California, the 18th of September. I presume that nowhere will be found so much of an obituary as I made up for him later, and published October 30. I had known of him all my life, and then about 1892 I saw him in Washington state where rolls the Snohomish. He must have been past 80. W.J. Freeman, of Stockton, California, pioneer and one of the old Guard of the Pacific Coast, died June 21. The light that was Henry Morehouse Taber, Freethinker and author, went out on December 24. Mr. Taber died at his home in New York at the age of 72. His book, "Faith or Fact," had ap- peared earlier in the year. It comprised articles he had contributed to the Liberal periodicals. My oldest boy, Eugene, born in San Francisco in 1890, was now of school age. I recorded his progress from time to time. This is the December report: "As I have mentioned before, a small scion of my family is attending the public school. He has received some instruction at home, and I am not going to say he has forgotten any of it; neverthe- less, when I endeavor to ascertain what he has ad- ded to the original stock, my research is unreward- 150 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1897 ed, as I view results. His 'vaccinate' (compulsory) he took with him as a condition of admittance to the mysteries of learning. In a few days he had a morning hymn at the end of his tongue, which he sings at home because his parents have disapproved of his singing it in school. I may here say that his experience as a pupil of the city has had a surpris- ing effect upon his conduct. Obliged as he is to be in order five hours per diem, he refuses to restrain himself at other times. Having brought home each day a Good Boy ticket, with a big blue blanket-ticket every Friday night to cover the whole week, he de- posits these certificates of behavior and abandons himself to making things hum. Reproof is met with the argument that a boy must be bad some of the time. To his repertory of hymns he has subjoined "America" and a fugitive piece setting forth that all things that are wonderful, likewise things which are great, or even small, the Lord has made them. Add to these the Lord's prayer, in his version of which 'deliver us from evil' comes out as 'vivvers ferneevers,' while another familiar part is rendered 'furvivers our lets as we forget our letters.' I have not corrected him -- his rendering is authentic as any. "So much he has acquired of a literary nature. His latest catch is the measles, contracted at school, to which he may not return until January, 1898. Here, then, is the record for nine weeks: One bad case of vaccination; three hymns; a corrupted ver- sion of the Lord's Prayer, and a case of the measles. He blandly informs his mother that he is learning to swear." 1897] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 151 If the parents could have looked forward to what was to happen to the boys twenty years later they might have been worried. Eugene passed his ex- aminations with A marks through grammar and high schools, got his ribbon and his letter in ath- letics, edited a department of the Bulletin, was a "math shark" and president of the "math" section, was class historian, was recommended by his teachers to the high school Alumni, who staked him for entrance to the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology, where he won a scholarship and a degree, and remained a year after graduation as assistant instructor; enlisted three years later as private in the Eleventh Engineers, A.E.F., saw fighting in France, participated in several major operations, was promoted to be captain, was sent into occupied territory to superintend public service in a German town, acquired a speaking acquaintance with two languages, and on his return home unscathed, fell upon the field of matrimony, August, 1919. Since then several conspicuous bridges have been con- structed in part according to marks that he has made on paper. His vision of the future, I believe, is a competency won by hard work, and then teach- ing in the later years. The boy Putnam, who took his parents to the Liberal Congress held the year of his birth, enlisted in the navy before he was of age, served on ships in the Suicide Lane between Cardiff and Brest, where few vessels won through because of the Kaiser's submarines, was prostrated with the "flu" at the latter port, and came home a skeleton, after long hospitalization, deaf in one ear from gunfire, with a case of established tubercu- 152 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1897 losis, now happily arrested. Electricity is his line. Married? An idle question. If the boys sprouted no wings, they sow no wild oats. for all the sins wherewith the face of their sire is illuminated when he remembers and laments them, they never took to liquor or tobacco, wine or beer, or even tea and coffee till they went overseas where water is worse. Their estate is that of the natural man, negative to piety, and their moral code is as religionless as the pagan puritan- ism of Mark Twain. I never asked why ministers, whose business is the selling of religion, should in- sist on the necessity of it in the education of the young. The public men and educators who write uncompensated testimonials to its efficacy are more of a puzzle. If it pays them, how do they collect? **** **** Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship. This disk, its printout, or copies of either are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold. Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201 **** **** CHAPTER IX. TWO major church-government scandals came into the record for 1898 -- the Methodist Steal South and the alienation of govern- ment land to the churches. The Methodist Book Concern of Nashville, Ten- nessee, presented a claim of $288,000 for damage to its property through occupation by Union troops during the Civil War. The concern was Southern in sympathy. No one denied its disloyalty to the Union. Despite this, Congress allowed its ficti- tious claim for damages and voted to pay the Methodist Church South the whole of the sum de- manded. The steal met with opposition in the Senate, which had once referred it to the Court of Claims, and the Court of Claims turned it down. The Truth Seeker called on Liberals to make their protest to the Senate, saying: "The grounds on which the robbery is to be opposed are that the Methodist Church South was a disloyal body; that its claim to indemnity is no stronger than that of any private citizen of the South in sympathy with the Confederacy; and that payment will open the way for sim- ilar demands now on file, which, according to a statement made in the House, aggregate more than nineteen millions of dollars." 153 154 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1898 The Senate passed the bill, McKinley signed it, and then came a rehearing. The public learned now that the revival of the measure was the work of an attorney, a Tennessee claim agent named E.B. Stahlman, who had undertaken to see it through for a commission of $100,800. Stahlman had re- ceived his commission as soon as the claim was paid by the government. Methodism became a synonym for falsification. The lies told worked injury to the survivors of the wrecked battleship Maine. Congress was debating an indemnity for these men, when Mr. Boutelle pro- posed that each of them should present his claim. This followed: "The debate on Mr. Boutelle's bill gave an opening for Mr. Steele of Indiana to deliver an awful jab at the Methodist church, though it was a shameful reflection on Uncle Sam's tars. Mr. Cannon of Illinois had prudently suggested that to allow the survivors of the Maine to state the amount of their loss might tempt the men to overvalue their outfits, whereupon Mr. Sims of Tennessee desired to know if the crew were to be charged with dishonesty in advance; and it was then that Mr. Steele ventured to re- mark: 'They are no purer than the Methodist Book Concern.'" The College of Bishops of the Methodist Epis- copal Church South issued a statement saying that "as the bill was passed, in the latest judgment if Congress, on misleading statements and recommen- dations, the Methodist Book Concern would refund the whole amount appropriated by Congress." That only added another lie. Half of the amount had passed into the hands of Stahlman and the crooks associated with him, including, it was believed, one 18981 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 155 or two of the senators. Instead of returning the money, or recommending that it be returned, a com- mittee of ministers "vindicated" the good name of the Book Concern's agents. The Truth Seeker was virtually alone in pointing out the progress of this piece of rascality step by step. I got the facts from The Congressional Rec- ord, received daily through the courtesy of Repre- senatative William Sulzer,. of New York, who, I observed, voted for the steal. The church-government steal I have referred to as the second one in the record of 1898 was the giving of property of the United States to the Catholic and other denominations for chapels. Attorney-General McKenna having declared uncon- stitutional the attempted alienation, by Secretaries of War Lamont and Alger, of a building site for a Catholic chapel at West Point, a Catholic mem- ber of Congress introduced a special bill for that purpose, and it was carried. Of course the law was equally as unconstitutional as the gift without warrant of law, but it went through and became effective. When other sects complained of favor- itism shown the Church of Rome, Secretary Alger, on the strength of the new legislation, threw open the reservation at West Point to all denominations and invited them to erect their chapels there in the name of "freedom of worship." The government also began the expenditure of large sums for the erection of chapels and churches at the homes for old soldiers, placing them under ecclesiastical con- trol. 156 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1898 These proceedings involved the same violation of the Constitution and the United States statute that the drys might complain of were the govern- ment to grant some corporation the privilege of erecting and maintaining a liquor saloon on one or many of the reservations. The first amendment to the Constitution denies to Congress or government the power to establish any religion. A United States statute designed to give force to this amendment even as the Volstead act puts teeth into the eighteenth, was enacted, I believe, in 1897. It runs: "And it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Gov- ernment of the United States to make no appropriation of money or property for the purpose of founding, maintain- ing, or aiding by payment for services, expenses, or other- wise, any church or religious denomination, or any insti- tution or society which is under sectarian or ecclesiastical control; and it is hereby enacted that after the 30th day of June, 1898, no money appropriated for charitable pur- poses in the District of Columbia shall be paid to any church or religious denomination, or to any institution or society which is under sectarian or ecclesiastical control." The statute has been as ineffective in stopping ecclesiastical raiders as the amendment it enforces had been without it. The law and the amendment have been flouted by Congress and the courts, and the ecclesiastical bootlegging continues. At 2 o'clock in the morning, May 25, 1898, a drunken man in New York fell against an iron fence and cut his face so that from the station house, where the police brought him, he was taken to Roosevelt Hospital. The doctor wrote him down: "Lacerated wound in cheek; acute alcohol- 1898] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 157 ism. He had been booked as Adolph Karol, and allowed to go to sleep when the laceration had been attended to. On waking be asked that reporters be excluded while he told his right name; but he was too late. The reporters had been there and recognized him as Sir Joseph Philippe Adolphe Rene Caror;, M.P., P.C., Q.C., Knight Commander of Michael and St. George, Lord of the Ionian Isles, ex-Minister of Militia and Defense, ex- Minister of Railways, and ex-Postmaster-General, Ottawa, P.Q. That is to say, this "casual," picked up from the street in New York and booked as a common drunk, was the Sir Adolphe Caron, Canadian Postmaster-General, who had excluded The Truth Seeker from the mails of his country. The account appeared in The Truth Seeker under the head of "A Knight's Night Out." He had come to New York to celebrate the queen's birth- day. I wondered whether, if we could have caught him at the right moment, we might not have got the excluding order rescinded by appealing from Philippe sober to Philippe drunk. During the year I edited, with Introduction and Notes, a Presentation Edition of Paine's "Age of Reason," Part I being based on a unique Paris edi- tion of 1794, a copy of which had come into my hands in a pleasant way. This copy, outwardly stained and defaced, had been the property of a certain James J. Jordan, who kept a saloon at Sev- enth street and Hall place, adjacent to the meat store where I purchased my family supplies. Mr. Jordan bought it at a book stand, and having pe- 158 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1898 rused it, recommended it to me as something worth my notice. When I saw the imprint, "Paris, printed for Barrois, senior," ... "second year of the French Republic, one and indivisible," I agreed with him that it was worth noticing, and at a later time,, in lieu of accepting a Bottle with the com- pliments of the season, I inquired whether he would not consider giving me his "Age of Rea- son" for Christmas. He appeared relieved, and hastily withdrawing the proffered gift handed me the book. I was persuaded that this was the correct edi- tion of the "Age of Reason"; the proof, perhaps, had been read by Paine himself; and thereupon various other editions were diligently compared and revised by me, including Moncure D. Con- way's, published by the Putnams. At his request I showed him the errors and departures that had taken place between 1794 and the year his was published. Few were serious, but the least of then) troubled him. He magnanimously complimented the Presentation Edition as the best that had ever been printed. From Paris, Dec. 27, 1898, he wrote: "DEAR SIR: I have received the new edition of the 'Age of Rea- son' which I ordered, and consider it not only the most artistic book by Paine ever manufactured, ex- ternally, but intrinsically an invaluable contribution to Paine literature." The letter gave me a sense of considerable importance and great pleasure; and if I have made too much of it, I can only inquire again what there is better than that a man should rejoice in his own works. 1898] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 159 The authorities on purity pronounced unmailable "The Old and the New Ideal," a book by Emil F. Ruedebusch, of Maysville, Wisconsin, and held the author, under a two-thousand-dollar bond. Later Mr. Ruedebusch paid a fine of $1,200 and served a day in jail. It was a harmless book, decently and correctly written. I wrote of it then: "I would rather see my boy reading it than smoking cigarets or drinking beer. I should say the same if the hopeful were a girl, adding that it were better for both to be convinced by it than to join the Chris- tian Endeavorers. If this son of mine would agree to forgo Fourth of July firecrackers on condition that he might peruse the pages of 'The Old and the New Ideal,' I should close the bargain with him at once." I am not a believer in "private" reading for man, woman, or child. The Bible has always been ac- cessible to my boys; so has every other book in my library. They have had my consent to read any- thing they chose provided that, avoiding secrecy, they would bring it to the common reading table and under the family lamp. In London, England, there flourished at this date a Legitimation League which had bestowed the honor of its presidency on Lillian Harman of America. In the spring of 1898 Capt. Robert C. Adams, American by residence, in an address before the League told how many victims the delusion known as comstockery found in this country, and his British listeners were horrified, as they well might be. Sarcastic comments were offered about our boasted liberty, and allusion made to the sinis- 160 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1898 ter significance of the stripes upon our flag as du- plicated by the stripes on citizens in the penitentiary for exercising the freedom of the press. The Legitimists asked Captain Adams to tell his coun- trymen, on his return, how much more liberty was enjoyed by a British subject than by an American sovereign; and in other language they rubbed it into Captain Adams pretty hard. But they did not fool Lillian Harman, who soon thereafter wrote from London: "There is more liberty in the United States than here, though that is saying very little." And Lillian was right, for just after the Legitimists had reviled us American sovereigns through Captain Adams, their own secretary, George Bedborough, was arrested for selling a book by Havelock Ellis that American comstockery has never molested! There are people in England still, including George Bernard Shaw, who imagine that the thing called comstockery originated in this country and has not operated over there. The contrary is the fact. It began there with the suppression of Paine's "Age of Reason," never prosecuted here. We got our Puritans from England, but some stayed home and are still active. I think their record worse in Eng- land than in America. 1898] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 161 "As always, it will be inquired whether, on the whole, polygamy is a more serious offense against moral sanity than the celibacy, miscalled chastity, prac- ticed by the Catholic clergy; and attention will be called to the domestic wrecks strewing the trail of the Protestant clergy from one end of the country to the other. Some will say, as they have said before, that they would as soon see their daughter in the home of a polygamist as in a nunnery or a house of assignation. There are more mis- tresses in New York than plural wives in Utah, more mistresses here than there would be plural wives if polyg- amy were one of our state institutions; and they are supported by Christians." (In The Truth Seeker, probably of 1897, I came upon a statement by a pious lady reformer who was starting a new society to improve morals, to the effect that fifty per cent of the churchmen in New York, who were wealthy enough to afford to do so, were keeping secondary wives and paying their rent.) Congressman-elect Roberts from Utah had not prepared himself in advance to meet the opposition to his taking his seat among the good and virtuous members of Congress, and was therefore chucked out. The Mormons came back later with Reed Smoot, who was fortified by preliminary researches among senators to ask why a Mormon should be ex- cluded for having more than one woman. He was never called upon to expand his argument. An author so disposed might write an entertain- ing and informative book on the phenomena taking place this year of 1898 in the Spanish-American War. Secretary of War Alger continued to mani- fest the concern characteristic of him that the churches and ministers should get theirs. As an 162 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1898 administrator he was simply rotten, and his mis- management of detention camps cost twice as many lives as the fighting. The Catholic priests of all foreign nations were inimical to the United States. This included the pope, who was obliged to stand idly by while one of the last of the officially Catholic countries of the first class got licked. Our Archbishop Corrigan at the time was expecting soon to wear the red hat of a cardinal, but never got it. The priests of Mexico inflamed their followers against the United States. When Spain sent troops to Cuba, the pope "like a new Moses," as the Archbishop of Damascus phrased it, "had raised his hand toward heaven and was praying that the angel of victory might accom- pany the Spanish army." Our warship the Maine, lying at anchor in Ha- vana Harbor, had been blown up on the night of February 15, and on March 8 Congress appropriated fifty millions for national defense.* ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ *Feeling against Spain for her treatment of Cuba had run high for many years, particularly during the Ten Years War, 1868-78. Midway in this, viz., in '73 the Virginius massacre which cost the lives of American citi- zens, intensified the anger. The Cuban War for Inde- pendence, 1895-98, added fresh fuel. The treatment of the Cubans in the concentration camps, with pictures of the starved "reconcentrados" made Spain's name anathema. The Maine was lying in Havana Harbor on a "friendly call." That was the official explanation. Really, trouble was brewing and she was there to keep order. Cuba and Spain were at war, but Spain and the United States were officially at peace, though the United States had made suggestion. -- B.R. 1898] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 163 President McKinley suggested to Spain that she get out of Cuba, but received no answer, and the United States declared war. Dewey took Manila, capital of the Philippines, Sunday, May 1, and fighting lasted all summer. Many Truth Seeker readers bore a part, most conspicuously G.H. Purdy of Dewey's flagship Olympia -- an old man- o'-war-man, a survivor of the days of wooden ships and iron men. The newspapers reported that as Dewey's ships entered the harbor and the guns were pointed, a stentorian voice shouted: "Remember the Maine!" That was Purdy's. "Remember the Maine" was the slogan of the war. The attack on Manila had been set for May 3, but Purdy, who was captain of the hold, an old-timer and a privileged character, said to Dewey: "Commodore, don't let's wait till the 3d of May; the last fight I was in on that date the side I was on got licked." He alluded to the battle at Chancellorsville, Va., in 1863, when the Confederates won but lost their leader, Stone- wall Jackson. At the Manila fight Purdy dropped also another remark that was to be historic. Dewey's ships had made their first evolution in the attack on the Spaniards and were retiring to overhaul their ammunition, which had been reported short. The Spanish commander took occasion to cable Madrid that the fire of his forts had been so fierce and fatal that the Yankee pigs were hauling off to bury their dead. (Dewey lost but one man, and he a non- combatant.) Gossip got forward that the fighting would be suspended that the men might eat their breakfast, the war right along having been conducted 164 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1898 somewhat like a social function, with reporters present to take down notable remarks and to reduce deeds of heroism on the part of the officers to im- perishable print. The New York Herald had a representative aboard the Olympia. He shared the delusion as to the cause of suspended hostilities, and had made a note highly complimenting Dewey on his thoughtfulness for the inner men behind the guns. As the newspaperman edged along (probably to windward) toward the forward deck to get a snapshot of the Commodore on the bridge, he en- countered Purdy and craved his opinion of the maneuver. Said Mr. Purdy: "To hell with break- fast! Let's finish the fight." The reporter sent the answer to his paper, where it furnished forth a good headline. Purdy was widely read of books, and so good at talking that navy men called him "The Chaplain," the sobriquet "Holy Joe" being reserved for the in- dividual appointed chaplain by the President. His reputation as a doubter inspired a yarn which ap- peared in the Evening Post of Charleston, S.C., October 6, 1899. The story ran that while his ship was passing through the Red Sea "Chaplain" Purdy was observed to be very busy with his spyglass, al- though nothing was in sight. His solemn study of the scene attracted the attention of his shipmates, one of whom went up to him and asked: "What are you looking at?" And Purdy replied: "Why, I am trying to find the place where Moses and the chil- dren of Israel forded this pond, and I be damned if can see a thing of it." The account of the South 1898] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 165 Carolina paper added that there was "much laughter," which reached the ears of Admiral Dewey, and he sent an orderly to ascertain the cause of the tumult. On being told, the admiral, "going to his cabin, immediately sent for Purdy, and, after chat- ting pleasantly with him, gave him a good drink." When Mr. Purdy came to The Truth Seeker office to renew the acquaintance begun in San Francisco in the '80s, he told me of the incidents of the Manila fight; but as to the story in the Charleston Post, he said that editors who rushed that sort of thing into print for solid fact were a queer lot, as he was not a drinking man. (Wooden Ships and Iron Men*.) Purdy liked the Commodore, which was Dewey's rank before the war, but not the praying Captain Philip of the Oregon, whom he called a murderer for his harsh treatment of his men. He had collided with Philip himself. As a student of religious phe- nomena he had procured from The Truth Seeker office a copy of the Book of Mormon, which he found exceedingly dull reading. One day as he conned its pages, his literary sense was so offended by the repetitious "And it came to pass" with which ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ *The picture, according to the superscription placed up- it by Mr. Purdy, was "photo'd aboard U.S.S. Mohican in July, 1888, by Dr. Whitecar; appeared in Frank Leslie's Christmas Number of '88. Mohican on passage from Hon- olulu to San Francisco." Mr. Purdy brought the original to The Truth Seeker office at the close of the Spanish- American war, autographed it, and wrote in the names of his mates on the Mohican. Army and navy papers have printed it as a relic of the days of wooden ships and iron men. pages 166 and 167 are pictures of Mr. Purdy aboard ship. 168 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1898 so many of the verses began, that he expressed aloud his opinion of such writings. A Roman Cath- olic overhearing him ran to Philip and had him called up for making fun of his religion, and Philip threatened Purdy with the brig and stopped his liberty. This Captain Philip was a truly religious man, who fell upon his knees whenever a gun went off. As soon as the fighting was over at the San- tiago engagement he called his men to prayers, and when ashore preached to church congregations from the pulpit. President McKinley, who ought to have been an ecclesiastic instead of a politician, went to excess in playing the religious game; and his intercessions with the invisibles were so diasastrous that in De- cember The Truth Seeker besought him to issue no more proclamations. "If," said the editor, "there is any connection between President McKinley's thanksgiving proclamations and the events which follow them, our chief executive will do his country- men a good turn by not issuing any more. Readers will remember his call to prayers dated shortly after the American victories at Santiago; and also that from that time onward all possible disasters over- took our troops. They were not defeated by the enemy, to be sure, for the enemy had been annihi- lated; but disease then began its deadly work. Up to that time, unassisted by official prayers, our casu- alties had not exceeded five hundred, though all the battles had been fought and the fortunes of war de- cided. Since then the deaths have reached two thou- sand. Such was the effect of a proclamation re- garding the war. And a Thanksgiving proclamation 1898] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 169 issued in accordance with 'immemorial custom,' or on general principles, had a no less deplorable re- sult. Thanksgiving day in New York was signalized by a blizzard, resulting in unspeakable suffering, to say nothing of incomputable pecuniary loss, to thou- sands. The whole Atlantic coast was torn up. With- in three days, a steamer between Boston and Port- land, having one hundred and sixty souls on board, went down in a storm and every person perished. For a week we heard nothing but tales of disaster on sea and land. More than two hundred vessels, large and small, were lost; and all this immediately following the observance of a day officially set apart to thank God for his tender mercies, and especially for his mild seasons!" In addition to McKinley's extra thanksgiving day, a great "peace jubilee" was called in Chicago to ex- press the general gratitude to God that the war which he permitted to begin he had now permitted to end. The crowds that gathered for the jubilee were as thoroughly soaked by a sudden and tempest- uous rain as was the great priestly procession at the Eucharistic Congress in 1926. Regarding Mc- Kinley's prayer day, Colonel Ingersoll, speaking a little later in New York, uttered words that shocked the then religious Dr. A. Wakefield Slaten. Said the Colonel: "Suppose somebody had done some- thing for which you were grateful, and you went to thank him. What would you think of such a per- son if he turned the hose on you?" Liberal lecturers announcing themselves in the field and open to engagements in 1898 were James 170 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1898 F. Morton, Jr., of Boston, who had recently been graduated from Harvard with the highest literary honors; Mrs. M. Florence Johnson, Franklin Steiner, and of course Colonel Ingersoll. Two additional organizations held meetings -- the Dallas, Texas, Freethinkers' Association, O. Paget, president, and the People's Church of Spring Val- ley, Minn., Dr. P.M. Harmon, minister. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton published her remi- niscences (1815-1897) "Eighty Years and More." March 18 Mahatma Virchand Raghavji Gandhi, B.A., M.R.A.S., J.S., of Bombay, India, addressed the Manhattan Liberal Club on the subject of phi- losophy and religion. Twenty years later Dr. Gandhi made trouble for the British rulers in India. The Truth Seeker issued its Quarter-Centenary number the first week in September, 1898. Colonel Ingersoll contributed the principal article. We pub- lished the names of eight subscribers who had begun with the first number. The American Secular Union and Freethought Federation held its well-attended twenty-first an- nual congress in Washington Hall, Chicago, Novem- ber 18-20. Remsburg as president had delivered a hundred lectures, held many debates, distributed quantities of literature, organized several societies, and increased the circulation of the liberal papers. He was reelected president; E.C. Reichwald, secre- tary, Otto Wettstein, treasurer. L.K. Washburn, after a period in the lecture field, resumed in January his editorial connection with the Boston Investigator, "which like all other 1898] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 171 Freethought papers -- as well as about all of any kind -- is feeling the bad effects of the hard times" (Ed. T.S.). Notwithstanding the ability of Mr. Washburn as editor and R.W. Chainey as business manager, the hoped-for restoration of prosperity to The Investigator came not. Ephraim F,. Hitchcock, the virtual owner of The Truth Seeker since 1883 and president of the Com- pany, died at his home in New York, Jan. 13. His name had not appeared in the paper. His frequent contributions to Liberal work were anonymous. He had paid Mrs. Bennett $10,000 for the business, and dying bequeathed his interest to E.M. Mac- donald. He was born in Westfield, Vt., Sept. 2, 1822. For many years he was head of Hitchcock, Dermody & Co., manufacturers of hatters' fur, New York. The founder of the first Freethought society in Philadelphia, and a charter member of the National Liberal League, 1876, died during January in San Francisco 79 years old. His name, Thomas Curtis, has appeared in these records. Poet, engraver and author, William James Lin- ton, born in London, 1812, died at the close of 1897 in New Haven, Conn. He was said to be the last of the great wood engravers. Mr. Linton as "Editor of The National," wrote a Life of Thomas Paine. On March 18 Matilda Joslyn Gage, author of "Woman, Church and State," died in Chicago, aged 72. She belonged to the group of Freethought wo- man suffragists which included Elizabeth Cady Staton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, and Lucy N. Colman. 172 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1898 Edward F. Underhill, who had been for thirty years official stenographer in the Surrogate's Court, New York, and still longer an associate of the Liberals of New York, died in June, at 68. When Parker Pillsbury closed his days at Con- cord, N.H., July 7, his contemporary, Lucy Colman, wrote to The Truth Seeker: "Mr. Pillsbury, I think, was one of the very last of the old-time reformers. There might be surviving one or two who sometimes spoke for freedom, but Mr. Pillsbury gave his whole time to it." Ralph Waldo Emerson declared him to be the strongest man intellectually of the early Abolitionists, abler than Garrison, Phillips, or Foster. Popularly he was known as the Abolition- ists' sledgehammer. James Russell Lowell wrote: "Beyond, a crater in each eye, Sways brown, broad-shouldered Pillsbury, Who tears up words, like trees, by roots -- A Theseus in stout cowhide boots." Mr. Pillsbury was 89 years old. I had heard him at the New York Liberal Club in other days and handled his communications to The Truth Seeker. The death of Mrs. Mary Wicks Bennett, widow of the founder of The Truth Seeker, took place at the home of the editor in Glen Ridge, N.J., July 31, in her 76th year. It was she who gave The Truth Seeker its name. Reporting a funeral for The Truth Seeker of August 6, 1898, Cyrus Coolridge wrote: "'The Old Guard,' who with courage and hope planned and fought the battles of Liberalism a quarter century ago, are a thin and straggling few now, as they press on to their final rest under the weight of years, sor- 1898] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 173 rows and cares; but none will be more kindly re- membered than the one who for years made Science Hall the home of the Liberal Club and The Truth Seeker." That was Hugh Byron Brown, whose dust was on that day, July 14, 1898, laid to rest in a cemetery near his home at Bay Shore, Long Island. Mr. Brown came early into these memoirs as the partner of G.L. Henderson in the establishment of Science Hall at 141 Eighth street in 1875-6, and as one of the first contributors to the defense fund of D.M. Bennett. Mr. Coolridge in an aside said that "Henderson sits on the shores of the Pacific at Chula Vista, in the extreme southern part of California, watching his lemon grove and feeling the rising pulse of the great world, while his own pulse is gradually growing less and less." The San Francisco part of my story tells that I accepted the privilege of reviewing Judge James G. Maguire's pamphlet, "Ireland and the Pope," from the press of James H. Barr 'v, editor of The Star. In 1898 the friends of the author and the publisher placed them in nomination for office, Maguire for governor of California and Barry for member of the fifty-fifth Congress. "Ireland and the Pope" proved the undoing of both candidates. The Rev. Peter C. Yorke, Roman Catholic chancellor of the archdiocese of San Francisco and editor of the San Francisco Monitor, the recognized newspaper organ of the Roman Catholic church in California, took the stump against Judge Maguire, and with "malice, envy, spite and lies," proceeded to desecrate his name. The judge estimated that the Catholic op- 174 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1898 position cost him 10,000 votes, and Barry was his fellow sufferer. Both men were of Catholic ante- cedents. Barry had indulged in a great deal of praise of his "spiritual" mother, her convents and sister- hoods, and of the Rev. Father Yorke, at the same time attacking the "A.P.A." in a manner violent and virulent. And Maguire in Congress had voted for a bill to give the Catholic church ground for a chapel at West Point. But there was "Ireland and the Pope" against them, and Yorke was out, like those organized boycotters, the Catholic Truth So- ciety, to show everybody that it does not pay "to in- sult the Catholic church." Times have changed a little. The priest in politics has given way to the Protestant parson. **** **** Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship. This disk, its printout, or copies of either are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold. Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201 **** **** CHAPTER X. THE TRUTH SEEKER of January 28, be- ing a Paine number, contained much of in- terest to Paine students. This was the year the Painites discovered Roosevelt's characterization of Paine, by way of his Life of Gouverneur Morris, in the "American Statesman" series, as a "filthy little Atheist." Had all who said something snatched a hair from Roosevelt's scalp, he would have died baldheaded. Moncure D. Conway wrote as follows in the New York Times: "In his unique collection of blunders described as a 'Life of Gouv- erneur Morris,' Governor Roosevelt says: 'So the filthy little Atheist had to stay in prison, "where he amused himself by publishing a pamphlet against Jesus Christ."' This sentence, long ago denounced by myself and others without eliciting any retrac- tion, must now remain as a salient survival of the vulgar Paine mythology, and as the most ingenious combination of mistakes ever committed in so small a space in any work professing to be historical." Through The Century Magazine Paul Leicester Ford, as detected by Dr. J.J. Shirley, then of Wash- ington, D.C., gave his mite to the collected misin- formation regarding Paine. When writing on "The 175 176 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1899 Many-Sided Franklin," Ford told The Century's readers that the "Age of Reason" had been written in 1786 and submitted to Franklin, who suggested changes in it and advised against its publication! Had Roosevelt looked at the "Age of Reason" he would have known that Paine was a deist, and in that work wrote only respectfully of Jesus Christ. Had Ford ever seen the book, he would have known that Paine began it in France, "under the shadow of the guillotine," 1793, three years after Franklin's death. And Franklin's opinion of Christianity was substantially that of Paine. William Cobbett wrote in May, 1796: "A person to whom the parties were well known has assured me that poor Paine imbibed his first principles of Deism from Dr. Franklin." The Truth Seeker for June 3, 1899, is another number valuable to Paine students. It contains a history of the Paine monument at New Rochelle down to the day it was surmounted by the "colossal bronze bust" executed by Wilson Macdonald. One of the "Finest," that is to say, Mr. Victor White, a New York police officer, called at The Truth Seeker office in November "to display a portrait of Thomas Paine which he had picked up in his rounds and caused to be nicely framed." Of a facsimile of the portrait in the Presentation Edition of the "Age of Reason" George Jacob Holyoake said: "That ... is the only engraving Paine is known to have seen and approved. I have the one he gave to Clio Rick- man. It bears an inscription in Paine's handwriting: 'Thomas Paine to his friend Clio Rickman."' The member of the Finest, now retired, who discovered 1899] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 177 this authentic print, is still a visitor to The Truth Seeker office. Ingersoll occupies much of the 1899 record. His health, apparently, did not warrant him in making numerous lecture engagements. Early in the year he gave an interview for publication in which, re- viewing a century's progress, he said: "The laurel of the nineteenth century is on Darwin's brow." It did not escape notice that the Rev. Archibald D. Bradshaw, chaplain of the Seventy-first New York, in eulogizing the regiment's dead, lifted without credit and adapted without scruple the language of Ingersoll at his brother's grave; also that President Guggenheimer of the New York City council, in welcoming the men of the cruiser Raleigh at a smoker, assured them that the American people had "tears for the dead and cheers for the living." Neither of the plagiaries mentioned Ingersoll or quoted him correctly. From the card index I have kept for nearly a third of a century I might quote scores of such instances, one of the offenders being Theodore Roosevelt. For the benefit of the Paine bust fund he spoke on May 14 at the Academy of Music, to what "was perhaps the largest gathering of Freethinkers that ever assembled in New York city." On June 2 he gave an address entitled "What Is Religion?" before the thirty-second annual convention of the Free Re- ligious Association in the Hollis Street Theater, Boston. That was his last public address. At his summer home, Dobbs Ferry on the Hudson River highlands, at noon on Friday July 21, death came 178 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1899 to him with hardly a moment's warning. The im- mediate cause was angina pectoris. Three men -- Prof. John Clark Ridpath, the historian, Major Or- lando J. Smith, and Dr. John L. Elliot of the Society for Ethical Culture -- conducted the services, July 25. Mr. Ridpath read the poem, "Declaration of the Free," which Ingersoll had contributed to The Truth Seeker on June 3. The closing stanza was as follows: "Is there beyond the silent night An endless day? Is death a door that leads to light? We cannot say. The tongueless secret, locked in fate, We do not know. We hope and wait." Major Smith read from Ingersoll's writings, "My Religion": "To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to pity the suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and remember benefits -- to love the truth, to be sincere, to utter honest words, to love liberty, to wage relentless warfare against slavery in all its forms, to love wife and child and friend, to make a happy home, to love the beautiful in art, in nature, to cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that genius has ex- pressed, the noble deeds of all the world; to cultivate courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill life with the splendor of generous acts, the warmth of loving words; to discard error, to destroy prejudice, to receive new truths with gladness, to cultivate hope, to see the calm beyond the storm, the dawn beyond the night; to do the best that can be done, and then be resigned -- this is the religion of reason, the creed of science. This satis- fies the brain and heart." The service, which did not occupy more than twenty minutes, was concluded with the reading, by 1899] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 179 Dr. Elliot, of the words spoken by Ingersoll at his brother's bier. The body was cremated July 27, at Fresh Pond, Long Island, and the ashes gathered into an urn of bronze and porphyry with the inscription: "L'Urne Guarde la Poussiere; le Coeur le Souvenir" -- the urn guards the ashes; the heart, the memory. To imitate one Of Ingersoll's own figures, if all the tributes to his worth had been blossoms, he would have had a monument of flowers. The secu- lar press was fair; the pulpit could not afford to be. As to the malignant ministers, The Sun made them the best answer. Said the editor of that New York paper, probably Mr. Edward P. Mitchell: "We observe that some clergymen have been assuming to exercise a divine function by passing sentence of eter- nal condemnation on the dead orator. That is an awful assumption of omnipotent authority by a human being. No man conscious of his own powerlessness before the Almighty would dare thus to arrogate to himself the judgment that belongs to God alone. Let men rather dwell on the virtues of Robert Ingersoll -- his superb courage, his beautiful family life, his justice, his loving kindness. Death silenced in him a voice whose eloquence was sweet as music and a heart filled with humanity -- with that sentiment which the founder of Christianity himself has extolled as the chief of virtues; which the believer, seeing in him, the Infidel, may be the more impelled to imitate as he proceeds to work out his own salvation with fear and trembling." There was, however, in places, a "tolerant pulpit," which The Truth Seeker was able to quote to the extent of a dozen or more charitable opinions. Ingersoll's detractors disagreed. Prof. Harry Peck endeavored to prove him heartless by saying: 180 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1899 "Ingersoll knew that the vast majority of enlight- ened men and women cherished the very faith that he attacked." Dr. Lyman Abbott would have belit- tled him by averring: "The principles that Ingersoll inveighed against have long since ceased to be held by any except the most rude and crude intellects." Where groups of Freethinkers existed, here or abroad, memorial meetings were held and resolu- tions of sorrow and respect were adopted. Far back in this record I quoted the story of the astronomer, the Infidel, and the globe. It was a plain Sunday school lesson. In the fall of 1899 the narrative flowed from the lips of the Rev. Dr. Park- hurst in the following version: "The late Robert Ingersoll, while in Mr. Beecher's study at one time, saw a large globe standing on his table -- a globe that showed in elegant outlines the contour of the earth's continents and seas. "'That is a fine globe you have there, Mr. Beecher. Who made it?' was Mr. Ingersoll's inquiry. "'Oh, nobody,' answered Mr. Beecher." Ingersoll's daughter Maud wrote to the Rev. Mr. Parkhurst: "Will you have the goodness to inform me of your authority for the inclosed?" referring to the anecdote, which she had clipped from The Jour- nal. "My father never visited Mr. Beecher, and no such conversation ever took place." Dr. Parkhurst made the feeble plea that when the matter was brought to him he judged it to be amply authenti- cated. Of course! And no doubt the story is older than Parkhurst, and was quoted for the first Atheist. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL (1833-1899). 182 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1899 The Catholic figure in the politics of 1899 was Archbishop Ireland of St. Paul. In a cartoon by Heston, January 14, Ireland on the seat of the gov- ernment wagon pushes Uncle Sam to one side, and, with McKinley as a small boy seated beside him, takes the reins. The wagon is loaded with the pope's baggage. The President named Ireland as delegate to the czar's peace congress at The Hague, on which one of the approving papers said: "Ever since his induction into office the President has been anxious to testify his appreciation of Archbishop Ireland's Republicanism, which took the form of strong interviews and speeches made during the campaign of 1896." February 4 The Truth Seeker inquired: "Is there anything else within the gift of this administration that Archbishop Ireland would accept? By the decision of the Interior Department the title to twenty thousand acres of land in Minne- sota is to be taken from the settlers and given to him. This ecclesiastic has only to express a wish and the government, executive or judiciary, does the rest." A history of the West Point chapel steal occupies page 292 of the 1899 volume of The Truth Seeker. In October the Marquette Club of Chicago held a banquet at which Ireland and McKinley were the guests of honor. Ireland sat at McKinley's right hand, the juxtaposition being so arranged to impress upon the minds of Catholics the fact that the Presi- dent was carrying out the policies of the church. By fall the heading "Ireland Sees McKinley" had ap- peared in the newspapers above thirty times, and im- mediately after each "seeing," the church received 1899] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 183 some favor from the government, or some Catholic ecclesiastic government preferment. The hook-up of church and government ran over into the admin- istrations of Roosevelt and Taft. In the '90s the legislature of the State of New York passed a bill absurdly entitled the "Freedom of Worship" act, providing that at their own expense the priests of the Roman Catholic church might enter and conduct religious services in certain public and penal institutions for the benefit of Catholic con- victs. The bill provided that "nothing herein con- tamed shall be construed to authorize any additional expenditure on the part of the state." The framers and advocates of the measure staked their word, which was about as trustworthy as that of Messrs. Barbee and Smith of the Methodist Steal South, that the people of the state should not be asked to pay for the religious services held in the reform- atory or punitive institutions. Nevertheless in Octo- ber, 1899, the state comptroller, W.J. Morgan, made public the fact that a Roman Catholic chaplain of the State Industrial School, holding that position under the provisions of the Freedom of Worship act, was collecting $1,200 a year for his services, and that sisters of charity, number not stated, were drawing $5 a month each for carfare when visiting the same institution. It is safe to assume that the graft has not diminished in the years that have since passed. March 6, 1899, saw the departure from orthodoxy of the Rev. S. Parkes Cadman. He was the princi- pal speaker at a meeting of Methodist ministers in New York, where he advanced the proposition that 184 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1899 "the inerrancy and the infallibility of the Bible are no longer possible of belief among reasoning men." The newspapers which uniformly quoted him as saying "inherency," not inerrancy, said also that "he was applauded by the other ministers, who voted him an extension of time in order that he might fully develop his thought." The Old Testament stories designated as those which he held open to doubt or total disbelief numbered eighteen. Charles Watts, the English Freethought lecturer, paid America a short visit in the early part of the year. He suffered a nervous breakdown, and re- turned to England in April. Isadora Duncan, billed to appear at the Lyceum Theater, New York, March 14, sent tickets to The Truth Seeker office. The editor chose myself to cover the assignment. The ticket read: "Verses from the Rubaiyat done into dance by Isadora Dun- can." Miss Duncan, my report said, might pose for Omar's "cypress slender" maid, being tall and lis- some. Her dress, much like the exiguous apparel of the average girl of today, just a short frock or smock in which she danced modestly, evoked criti- cism in that decade when women wore a semi-train on the street. The newspaper reporter who said next day that the dance did more to illustrate the lines of Miss Duncan than the lines of the poet could not have had his mind on the poetry. When I heard of Miss Duncan's tragic death in 1927 and then read the story of her life, I was glad that she had sent us the tickets to her dance. "But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine," Sang Khayyam, as with cup in hand he sat; 1899] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 185 Poured down the sparkling jewel of the wine -- And that's where Omar got his Ruby at. -G.E.M. in Puck, 1899. I penned occasional verses and jokes, at this time, and tried them on other papers than The Truth Seeker. Puck nor judge ever sent anything back. By seeing them reproduced in The Times I first learned that Puck had accepted the foregoing lines, which had quite a circulation in those Omar days. A court in Lexington, Kentucky, convicted Charles C. Moore, editor of The Blue Grass Blade, of sending Freelove thoughts through the mails. There is nothing indecent in what he wrote. Wal- ter Hurt, editor of The Gatling Gun, Cincinnati, went to jail on the charge of circulating obscene literature. In Montreal, Canada, Norman Murray was put under bonds not to repeat a similar offense. Secular Thought, J. Spencer Ellis, editor, was sup- pressed for printing a blasphemous Christmas poem, but later released on probation. The American Secular Union accepted the invi- tation of the Boston Liberals to hold its '99 congress in Paine Hall, Friday, Nov. 17. The necessary time was given to the business of the Union, and the old board of officers reelected -- Remsburg president, Reichwald secretary, Wettstein treasurer -- and the rest was a memorial to Ingersoll. The Spiritualists sent a delegation. Si Slokum, who had written for The Truth Seeker ten years earlier, was in '99 committed to the workhouse at his own request. Once a rival of Ned Buntline, Buffalo Bill, and Old Sleuth, he had 186 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1899 outlived his vogue. Why, being a veteran of the Civil War, and having served in the Second Massa- chusetts Battery, he chose the workhouse to a sol- diers' home, remains unexplained. The name under which they committed him to the workhouse was H.P. Cheever. Dr.R. B. Westbrook, who had been three times elected president of the American Secular Union (1888, '89, '90), died at his summer home, Pacoag, R.I., August 21, 1899, aged 80 years. He was a man of much learning, had been a clergyman and a judge, and was of irreproachable character. Some- thing of his life was told at the date of his election as president of the Secular Union. The Hon. A.B. Bradford of Enon Valley, Pa., who wrote the article upon which Anthony Com- stock based his first arrest of D.M. Bennett, died at an advanced age in 1899. He was a graduate at Princeton in 1830 and was for many years a fre- quent contributor to The Truth Seeker. The aged reformer, Edward Truelove, died April 21, in London, aged 90 years. His eulogist, G.W. Foote, said: "He belonged to the past -- the past of storm and peril, when the soldiers of Freedom rose almost every week to meet a fresh difficulty or a new danger. He lived right through the heroic age of English liberty. He had seen William Cob- bett; he knew Richard Owen; he stood beside Wat- son, Southwell, Hetherington, and the rest, in their fight for a free press; he loved the unsubduable Richard Carlile; he had some intimacy with John Stuart Mill; he was a friend of George Jacob Hol- 1899] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 187 yoake in his fighting days; Karl Marx held meetings at his house; the Positivists were indebted to him for hospitality, and he was a staunch supporter of the great Charles Bradlaugh." He had been prose- cuted for his publications. Mr. Truelove might have written Seventy Years of Freethought. Dr. Ludvig Buchner, famous author of "Force and Matter" (born March 28, 1824), died on May 1 of this year. In the '70s of the past century a man named John H, Keyser mingled with the New York radicals and reformers. I saw him many times and was informed that he had been a member of the Tammany Hall Tweed Ring; that is to say, he was a manufacturer of stoves and furnaces and got the city contracts. But Keyser was a philanthropist. What he took in as "honest graft" he gave back to the needy of New York. According to his obituary notice when he died in East Norwalk, Conn., in 1899, at an ad- vanced age, he must have devoted something like a quarter of a million in free relief for the destitute, He looked like a benevolent old chap when I saw him. It was said that he had given all his money away and was poor. Those acquainted with his past overlooked his connection with Tammany Hall in view of his philanthropies, a list of which the in- terested may find in The Truth Seeker of Septem- ber 4, 1899. He was the only Tammany grafter of the Tweed regime with whom I ever came in con- tact, and I observed him with much curiosity. In September Mr. Thaddeus B. Wakeman hav- ing resolved to begin life anew as president of the 188 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1899 Liberal University of Oregon and editor of its pa- per, The Torch of Reason, was on the evening of the 15th of that month banqueted at the Marlbor- ough Hotel by the Liberal friends to whom he and his family were saying good-by. Pearl Geer of Silverton, Oregon, the seat of the university where Mr. Wakeman proposed to teach, came east to raise funds for the support of the In- stitution. While he visited at East Orange, N.J., with his cousin, Homer Davenport, the cartoonist, Thomas A. Edison of the same town sent word that he would like to see him. Geer found Edison seated before a long table with many jars of chem- icals before him. When the wizard had shaken hands with the young man, he remarked, with refer- ence to his chemicals, "Well, I'm reading my Bible." Geer replied: "The Bible of nature is a splendid book if one understands how to read it." "The best damn Bible in the world," said Edison with enthusiasm. "Its laws are perfect, and grand, and all the prayers in the world can't change them. There is intelligence and law in this world, and there may be supreme intelligence and law; but so far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is all a damned fake." CHAPTER XI. AT THE end of the nineteenth century Truth Seeker controvertists were gravely and judicially considering the motion before Congress to deprive of his seat, on account of the polygamous nature of his domestic life, Brigham H. Roberts, a duly elected gentleman from Utah. Mr. Roberts, who had theretofore enjoyed the re- ligious privilege of having three wives, abjured two when Utah was admitted to the Union. But the law which enjoined the putting away of plural wives provided that the man who had herded them to the altar must continue caring for them and the question was publicly debated whether "caring for" meant sleeping with them. Meanwhile the right of Roberts to his seat was strongly defended by Liberals, including Moncure D. Conway, who wrote us from Paris: "Impossible as it is for me at present, and at this dis- tance, to engage in any polemics in America, I feel it my duty to warn Freethinkers who are trying to deprive polygamists of political rights that they are hounding on a mob of pious lynchers; also that it is precisely the same mob that is already virtually lynching Freethought. Po- lygamy is odious to Freethinkers, but Freethought is equally odious to the orthodox millions. ... Some of us remember that the appointment of Ingersoll by President 189 190 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1900 Hayes to a foreign ministry excited a hue and cry as loud as that concerning Roberts. Ingersoll was generous enough to relieve the President by declining. It was none the less a virtual exclusion from national office, and it was but the continuation of an ostracism long going on. Had Ingersoll been orthodox he would have been President." Said Dr. Conway: "A man's liberty can be justly forfeited only by crime, not by immorality. A man has as much right to his morality as to his religion, or his irreligion. The law against bigamy was not based on its immorality but upon the criminality of deceiving the second wife. The laws concerning rape, adultery, and seduction were based on in- juries to the unconsenting woman, the husband, the father; but there is no law against immorality per se in states of social civilization. In these I do not in- clude those in which there are Levitical survivals." A vote of 268 to 50, January 25, ejected Roberts from his seat and deprived Utah of a representa- tive. The family of Ingersoll found among his papers an unpublished manuscript of seventy pages bear- ing the title, "A Few Reasons for Doubting the In- spiration of the Bible," and tendered it to The Truth Seeker for publication. It came out June 30 and July 7, and then as a pamphlet. Ingersoll had quoted eighty-odd passages from the Bible, with- out reference to chapter and verse. I spent many hours searching the Concordance for these, and when found appended them as footnotes. This perchance brought me the commission to prepare Contents and Index to the twelve-volume Dresden 1900] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 191 edition of Ingersoll's Works, then on the press of Peter Eckler. That was no drowsy pastime for a summer's day. The work occupied many summer nights. INGERSOLL. Your stream of life majestic flowed, Ingersoll, brave Ingersoll; Your genius with pure lustre glowed, Ingersoll, brave Ingersoll. Your thoughts in words of light impearled, Or in the tones of thunder hurled, Have stirred the pulses of the world, Ingersoll, brave Ingersoll. The hand of want, the lips of pain, Ingersoll, brave Ingersoll, To you could not appeal in vain, Ingersoll, brave Ingersoll. Quick to relieve, strong to defend, In sun and storm the loyal friend, That e'en in. death could comfort lend, Ingersoll, brave Ingersoll. The warmest clasp hand ever knew; Ingersoll, brave Ingersoll; The kindliest voice that e'er rang true, Ingersoll, brave Ingersoll. To you the cup of love we drain, To you we raise our song again, And linger on that fond refrain, Ingersoll, our Ingersoll, 192 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1900 These verses, written about this time as a hymn with words set to the tune of "Maryland," have been sung, I hear, on many Ingersoll occasions. Once on invitation I attended a Unitarian church in New York. The tune was emanating from the organ as I entered, and the congregation sang "In- gersoll, Our Ingersoll." The Truth Seeker took Col. T.W. Higginson to task for implying, in his work entitled "Con- temporaries," when paying a deserved tribute to Charles Bradlaugh, that Ingersoll sought "mere sensationalism or the pursuit of antagonism for its own sake." Colonel Higginson was a member of the Free Religious Society of Boston, at whose convention in June, 1899 -- the year Higginson published his "Contemporaries" -- Ingersoll gave by invitation his last public address on "What Is Re- ligion?" The address, which in behalf of women advocated birth control, was too advanced for the Free Religionists, and, according to The Truth Seeker, they greeted the speaker "much as he might have expected to be received by an assemblage of backwoods preachers." The offending words of Ingersoll were: "Science must make woman the owner, the mistress of herself. Science, the only possible savior of mankind, must put it in the power of woman to decide for herself whether she will or will not become a mother." Dr. St. George Mivart, the English zoologist (1827-1900), an opponent of Darwin and Huxley as regards the doctrine of natural selection, and a 1900] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 193 professed creative or "directive" evolutionist, whose writings on "Happiness and Hell" the pope had put on the Index, was excommunicated by Cardinal Vaughan in January, 1900, after refusing to make such a retraction as the church had extorted from Galileo centuries earlier. He continued his attacks on the church and its doctrines. Concerning the Virgin Birth, which he questioned, Dr. Mivart made the curious observation that the deity, if he chose, could incarnate himself in an onion. In one of the articles that brought him under the ban he testified that he enjoyed the acquaintance of many pious Catholics who denied the perpetual virginity of the mother of God; that these believed Joseph to have been the natural father of Christ, and that they went to the Brompton Oratory merely to worship the Madonna as the only available representative of Venus! Mivart died on April 1, 1900, a heretic. The church refused to take part in the funeral of England's only Catholic scientist of note, or to allow him to be buried in consecrated ground. The Presbyterians of America got set for a heresy trial this year, the defendant being one of their most learned ministers, the Rev. Arthur C. McGiffert, who rested under charges because he had denied the full inspiration of the scriptures, the sacramental nature of the Lord's supper, and some other things no duly informed person could believe. He "cheated the sheriff" by resigning from the Presbyterian church. The Truth Seeker for October 13, 1900, had none of my work. There is reason for suspecting 194 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1900 that the busy editor called upon Mr. E.C. Walker for contributions. Walker with less effort pro- duced articles twice as long as those which I was in the habit of writing. And my hand is not visi- ble in the next number, either. Was I "in a jour- ney" as Elijah asked about Baal when that god was not on hand to start a fire? On the third week a letter gives the clue. I was by the sea waves watch- ing and waiting for the death or recovery of a very sick wife. She got over it but we never came back to the city to live. Since our return from the West in '93 we had kept house in rooms over the printing-office, an ideal arrangement for a proof- reader who would have his wife for a copy-holder; and also favorable to long hours, none of them wasted in travel by rail or street car. Now we took a house, which I christened Skeetside, in the south end of Montclair, N.J., and thus I became one with the children of nature known as commuters. She was, I guess, the first woman with bobbed hair in this town. Pernicious malaria had begun the work of stealing her long tresses, and I completed it with the shears. The adventure into illness at a summer resort out of season, when a hotel must be kept in com- mission on account of a single guest, was expen- sive. The Hon. W.S. Andrews, with whose wife the patient (her sister) was visiting when stricken, satisfied the landlady. The doctor lightly penned a bill for $412, and there were incidentals. But C. P. Farrell, Ingersoll's publisher, paid me gener- ously for my work on the volumes, and for mak- 1900] FIFTY YFARS OF FREETHOUGHT 195 (Picture of MacDonald residence 119 Willowdale Ave. Montclair, N.J.) 196 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1900 ing the Index, which I regret to say went into print during My absence, without my seeing the proofs. My old friend, Capt. Silas Latham, of Noank, Conn., who had taken me on fishing voyages, made the blunder, as he feared, of inquiring whether a loan of $150 would suit me better than a kick in the britches and no breakfast (that was his way of cov- ering the timely proffer), and Mrs. Flora Burtis, of Michigan, chose the same time for sending me and my brother also, a bit of money that was earn- ing her nothing (thus she excused the gift). Hence instead of being long sunk in debt I found myself in a condition of financial buoyancy. A small sum was enough then to make a first payment on a house, and I bought the New Jersey one we were living in, which I had named Skeetside. On July 27 a propagandist by deed named An- gelo Bresci shot and killed King Humbert of Italy at a summer resort near Milan. While the assassin professed to be a liberator and tyrannicide, The Truth Seeker denounced him as a "homicidal fool." As I then wrote: "The propaganda by deed -- where it includes the removal of any living person -- is plain murder, made neither more nor less criminal or abhorrent by giv- ing it another name. And the killing of heads of governments to be immediately replaced by other heads, sure to be used as an excuse for more tyrannical laws, is a stupid crime against liberty. "Ideal anarchy -- meaning the decay of govern- ment by reason of every individual's so controlling himself that government will have no excuse for existing -- is the most attractive of all unimaginable 1900] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 197 things; but the anarchy of the Bresci brand is the one imaginable thing that is worse than any known form of despotism. For while it is true that the business of the best and worst governments is to filch, one after another, the citizen's liberties, and to multiply restrictions as they grow older and stronger, they at least leave him his life so long as he does not forfeit it by killing somebody else. But Bresci anarchy, which elevates manslaughter to a political principle, inaugurates itself with an as- sassination. That is the only function of govern- ment it knows. "The monarchical or republican state arrests, prosecutes, imprisons, and in the end inflicts the death penalty. Propaganda by deed begins with the execution. The anarchist of this variety an- nounces himself a murderer by conviction, and he proves the sincerity of his professions with con- siderable frequency. In view of the facts, he could not in consistency complain at being hanged in ad- vance of any overt act he may or may not have it in mind to commit. "Men called kings feel as much concern for their own lives, and possess the same instinct of self- preservation, as other men; and that they have the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- piness as their fellows seems to be perfectly clear. And I know of no authority by which anarchists can establish an exclusive claim to the method of propaganda by deed. Whence it appears to fol- low, since the king and the anarchist look each upon the other as an enemy of mankind, that it is as legitimate for the man on the throne to strangle 198 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1900 his adversary offhand with a rope as for the latter to shatter the monarch to bits with a bomb." A district-attorney at Louisville, Kentucky, charged that C.C. Moore, editor of The Blue Grass Blade, under suspended sentence for advocating social freedom in 1899, had violated his parole by printing more objectionable matter. Moore was presented to the federal court, which late in the year dismissed the case. The matter complained of had been contributed to The Blade by M. Grier Kidder, a writer of sententious paragraphs. He proffered similar matter to The Truth Seeker, and then complained that his articles had been cut. The editor was a better judge than he of what could be mailed without inviting prosecution. The United States had trouble on its hands, with war and insurrection threatened in three places over missionaries and on religious grounds. In Turkey and China the missionaries were demand- ing indemnity for lost lives and goods; in the Philippines the question was that of expelling the licentious friars and restoring the friar lands to the people. Russia and Germany talked of in- vading China. Turkey denied responsibility and laid Armenian massacres to the Kurds. In China demonstrations occurred known as the Boxer up- rising. F.D. Cununings of Portland, Maine, author of a Rationalistic work, "Religion and the Bible," took the platform against the teaching of religion in the schools of his city. He not only appeared 1900] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 199 before the school board and common council, but hired a hall and addressed his fellow citizens. He then had his speech printed and circulated. Years later Mr. Cummings, being elected to the legisla- ture, continued with good effect his work for the separation of church and state. The school board of Piermont, near Nyack, N. Y., expelled Catholic children for refusing to par- ticipate in Protestant religious services conducted in the school. The attention of State Superin- tendent Charles E. Skinner having been called to the case, that official said: "It is a violation of the school law to compel children to attend religious services after the hour of school open- ing, and the reading of the Bible in the public schools is also prohibited." This prohibition caused recourse to the bootleg- ging of religion into the schools. In Nebraska Daniel Freeman of Beatrice insti- tuted a mandamus suit to compel the school board to stop the holding of religious services in the schools. The school committee of Holyoke, Mass., at the demand of a Catholic priest, dismissed from the high school faculty Miss Anna B. Hasbrouck, his- tory teacher, for informing her pupils that Jesus Christ was one of a numerous family of children. The texts on this subject are Matt. xiii, 56, and Mark vi, 3. The Liberal Club made the mistake of electing as president a half-liberal, Henry Nichols, who was out of touch with Freethought. The club per- mitted him to resign, electing E.C. Walker as his 200 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1900 successor. The members held summer meetings at the residence of Dr. E.B. Foote. The Mail of Kirksville, Mo., published a report that the Rev. George Gibson, pastor of a San Fran- cisco church, the scene of the murder of two girls, for which Theodore Durrant paid the penalty of being hanged, had lately died after confessing him- self the criminal. A Truth Seeker reader in San Francisco looked up the facts and found the Rev. Mr. Gibson alive and preaching in the same place. Boston saw the strange spectacle of a former prize-fighter turned Freethought evangelist and making speeches on the Common. He was known as Billy Frazier. The police suppressed him. The Marquis of Queensbury, it appeared on his death in London, January 31, was an Agnostic -- a supporter of "Saladin" (W. Stewart Ross) and his Agnostic Journal. In his will, probated in Edinburgh, directing that his body be cremated, the marquis wrote: "I particularly request that no Christian mumiueries or tomfooleries be performed at the grave, but that I be buried as an Agnostic. If it should be a comfort to anyone, there is a plenty of friends who would come to say a few words of common sense over the spot where my ashes may lie." He is said to have been a high- minded and courageous gentleman. The will of the Rev. "Father" Charles Pascal Chiniquy -- author of another sort of "Fifty Years'! -- was filed in Illinois in January. It con- tained a blast at the church of Rome, which he re- nounced "more than ever." Chiniquy was an ex- 1900] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 201 communicated Canadian priest, born in 1809, who turned Presbyterian. He died in 1899. William McDonnell, author of "Exeter Hall" and other works, died June 20 at Lindsay, Ont., 87 years old. He was honored by the community and at his funeral eulogized by J. Spencer Ellis, editor of Secular Thought. Stephen R. Thorne, the life- long "Painite," died in New York, June 26. He took pride in the fact that he was born in the year of Paine's death, 1809. A photograph of the Paine monument at New Rochelle, published by The Truth Seeker Jan. 29, 1898, showed Mr. Thorne inside the inclosure. John Clark Ridpath, the historian, died July 31, at the age of 59. His religious sympathies were unknown to the public until he officiated at the funeral of Ingersoll. The philosopher Friederich Wilhelm Nietzsche, having attained the age of 56, died in Weimar, Germany, August 25. His attacks on the Christian system were of unparalleled ferocity. J.B. Beattie in January communicated to The Truth Seeker from Chicago that the Freethinkers had got together again and organized the Liberal Society; Harry Stannard president, Frederick Mains secretary. Apparently it was a belated an- nouncement, for in September Dr. Thomas B. Gregory, mentioned as the organizer, gave notice that the thriving society would celebrate its first anniversary on October 7. The New Hampshire Freethinkers held their an- nual meeting in Manchester on August 11, the sixty-seventh Ingersoll anniversary. Mrs. Marilla 202 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1900 M. Ricker, one of the first woman lawyers admitted to practice in the United States Supreme Court, was among the speakers. Mrs. Ricker, a remark- ably forceful writer, soon got into touch with The Truth Seeker and contributed freely to its columns. When the Dresden Edition of Ingersoll's Works came out, she offered a set to any library in New Hampshire that would accept them. Since the discovery a few years previous of Roosevelt's reference to Paine, in his Life of Mor- ris, as a "filthy little Atheist," those three words had tailed themselves on to scores of allusions to "Teddy." October 13, The Truth Seeker said: "Of late there have been so many inquiries as to the exact nature of Mr. Roosevelt's offense, when and where committed, that we have deemed it ad- visable to publish a resume of the discussion." Six and a half columns of history follow, every line strengthening the charge that Roosevelt had writ- ten in ignorance and bad faith. I believe that W.M. van der Weyde, president of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association, had in his possession a letter signed by Roosevelt shortly be- fore his death in which he admitted: "Of course, Paine was a Deist." But the "filthy little Atheist" stood in the last edition of the Morris Life, printed after the truth had come into the author's posses- sion. "Of course," a believer in God could not gracefully say "the filthy little Deist." CHAPTER XII. THE war* in China, provoked by missionaries who were taking to the natives the mes- sage of the Prince of Peace, was all over but the looting, and the missionaries had more than shared the plunder. They organized and ex- ploited it to the glory of God. Earl Li Hung Chang, the Chinese viceroy, said that the heads of the American Missionary Board and of the Pres- byterian Society "have vast quantities of loot in the shape of silver, valuable furs, jade, etc., and have held frequent auction sales here in Pekin and realized enormous sums of money from the sales." That was after the capture of Pekin by the invad- ing Christian armies. Said the Hong Kong Daily Mail: "The private looting that took place was most successfully ex- ploited by the missionaries. They took possession of big Chinese houses, where they carried on sales of everything they could seize, engaging their con- verts to bring in fresh articles stolen from private houses as purchases depleted their stock." That is, the missionaries had their converts do the stealing, while they acted as fences and dis- ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ *Boxer uprising. 203 204 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1901 posed of the goods. The Congregational mission- aries moved into a prince's palace and sold off his "pieces of red lacquer, porcelain, and silks and fur- lined robes." Mark Twain published in The North American Review an article on the conduct of the Christian nations which at the behest of the mis- sionaries, having reduced the people of China to starvation and plundered them of their property, had levied an indemnity in order to extort the ex- penses of the robbery. Speaking of the Rev. Mr. Ament, the most successful of the looting mission- aries, who demanded an indemnity in addition to his loot, Mark Twain wrote: "By happy luck we get all these glad tidings on Christmas eve -- just in time to enable us to celebrate the day with proper gayety and enthusiasm. Our spirits soar, and we find we can even make jokes: Tails I win; beads you lose." The guilty ministers straightway charged Twain to retract and apologize; he did not, but, having accumulated additional facts and arguments, re- turned to the pages of The Review with an answer more blistering than his attack. Major Edwin H. Conger, U.S., minister to China, coming to the defense of the missionaries, declared that they looted no more than some others. Mark Twain overlooked not a single thought or implication in the missionaries' plea that in helping to loot Pekin they merely followed local custom, nor in Conger's that there were some laymen who equaled the mis- sionaries as looters if not in the hypocritical and "blasphemous" excuse that the plunder of the heathen would be "used for the propagation of the gospel." He asked whether the missionaries 1901] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 205 had left at home the civilization and the Christian morality they were supposed to be taking to the heathen. The French bishop of Pekin, one Favier, "stole goods to the value of about one million dollars." In the Central Synod of the Dutch Reformed church at New Brunswick, N.J., the Rev. Edward P. Johnson, instituted a comparison between Mark Twain and the devil, and decided that "the latter deserved the most honor." Moncure D. Conway teamed up with Twain and did his share in expos- ing the shameful history of Christian invasion and conquest of the Orient. For half of the year 1901 newspaper correspondents were sending home re- ports confirming the worst that had preceded them. The Truth Seeker and its constituency were pre- occupied throughout half the year with measures it was hoped would induce the directors of the Pan- American Exposition at Buffalo, N.Y., to open the gates on Sunday. That seemed to be a good year for promoting fairs. There was this all- American one at Buffalo; St. Louis was also get- ting ready for a blowout in 1903 to celebrate the Louisiana Purchase, and Charleston, S.C., was looking forward to big things in December. As a preliminary in each case the promoters went to Congress for an appropriation -- $5,000,000 for St. Louis; $250,000 for Charleston; and Senators Teller of Colorado and Tillman of South Carolina, moved and instigated thereto by the clergy, intro- duced identical resolutions providing that a condi- tion precedent to the paying of the money should 206 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1901 be the closing of the gates to visitors on Sundays "during the whole duration of the Fair." The framing, wording, and offering of the resolutions gives to us and to posterity the measure of those two senatorial humbugs. Liberals concentrated on the Buffalo exposition. The Truth Seeker circu- lated petitions, and obtained from the Board of Directors a hearing for Moncure D. Conway and Clarence Darrow, which was had during the last week in April, in favor of the Sunday opening. The New York Journal prematurely reported: "The managers of the Buffalo Fair have decided that the Pan-American Exposition shall remain open on Sundays. We congratulate John N. Scatcherd, John Milburn, and the other directing minds on their sound common sense." The ad- dresses of Conway and Darrow were printed in The Truth Seeker of May 4, 1901. Then the Board of Directors, having agreed to open on Sundays, revised their decision in part and closed the amusement places. A Sabbatarian citizen of Buffalo took action against the police commissioner for neglect of duty in not shutting the gates en- tirely. His suit was dismissed by the courts. Thereafter the Protestant clergy organized a boy- cott and the Catholic priests, for a wonder, sided with them. In this way the clergy at home looted the people of their liberty and of their rights as citizens and taxpayers in the Pan-American ex- position, even as their brethren abroad had looted the heathen of their property "for the propagation of the gospel." Sunday opening or Sunday observance argu- 1901] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 207 ments were tossed back and forth between the Lib- erals and the Sabbatarians. Senator McMillan of Michigan, with the approval of Herbert Putnam, librarian, offered a measure to admit people to the Library of Congress from 2 to 10 o'clock Sunday afternoon and evening. The labor unions were persecuting non-union barbers for working the first day of the week, and butchers for selling meat. At Walla Walla, in the state of Washington, certain Seventh-day Adventists having been prosecuted for Sunday labor, Judge Brent (July 31, 1901) de- clared the Sunday closing law unconstitutional. "Business," said the court, "cannot be stopped for the purpose of enforcing religious views." The Liberal University at Silverton, Oregon, passed from the direction of J.E. Hosmer, who had been the leader in establishing it. He lacked the breadth of mind necessary to the president of a Liberal institution. The Liberal University opened September 30, 1901. Helen Gardener lost her husband in the death, January 11, of Col. C. Selden Smart, a native of Ohio and a lifelong Agnostic -- "a genial whole- souled gentleman, an outspoken Freethinker, a good friend and a bad foe, big in body and heart, and a worshiper of his wife." Colonel Smart was a native of Ohio, many years his wife's senior, and had sunk considerable money as publisher of The Arena magazine, which for a time Helen Gardener edited. Richard C. Burtis, dying at Watrousville, 208 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1901 Mich., January 17, aged 77, assigned ten shares of bank stock, value not specified, to The Truth Seeker company. Mr. Burtis and his wife Flora were generous donors to the cause. Mrs. Burtis survived him several years, remembering The Truth Seeker in the disposition of her estate. An- other of the helpers, John C. Loomiller, died near Hazleton, Indiana, from being shot through the head, probably for purposes of robbery, February 12. He was about 50 years old, and had been blind since the age of 14, notwithstanding which infirm- ity he accumulated a considerable fortune. The death of Ephraim Hitchcock, president of The Truth Seeker Company, having left the company with liabilities of $1,500, Mr. Loomiller settled the debt. He was survived by a wife wholly devoted to him and sharing his views. The "Ungodly Woman of the Nineteenth Century," Ella E. Gib- son, author of "Godly Women of the Bible," died on March 5 at Barre, Mass., having lived nearly eighty years. She had been school teacher, lec- turer and preacher, and army chaplain, her ap- pointment being approved by President Lincoln, November 10, 1964. She served without the formal- ity of being mustered in, and did not recover her salary until 1876, when, as D.M. Bennett revealed in his "World's Sages," "a considerable portion of the money which she obtained from the govern- ment for her services in the war she generously placed in the hands of the writer of these pages to aid him in his purpose." John S. Hittell, the old newspaperman and writer of California, died March 8, aged 76. His works were "Evidences 1901] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 209 Against Christianity," "A Code of Morals," and a "History of Morals." his son Theodore H. is the author of a standard History of California. Mrs. M.A. Freeman, for twelve years identified with the Chicago Secular Union, and for two terms corresponding secretary of the national or- ganization, died in Chicago September 7. In De- cember John Swinton, newspaperman and for years (beginning in 1883) publisher of John Swinton's paper (Labor), a Scotsman 71 years old, died at his home in Brooklyn. Also there died in 1901, if anybody is interested, Judge Charles L. Benedict, 76, before whom Comstock never lost a case and who sentenced D.M. Bennett; and, in a lunatic asylum, Joseph, Joe, or Jo Cook, who as a Chris- tian minister matched Benedict as a Christian judge. The Chicago Liberals organized around the name of Ingersoll. Said a notice in The Truth Seeker of June 29, 1901: "A meeting of the Ingersoll Memorial Association will be held at Parlor L 38, Great Northern Hotel, Chicago, on July 6, at 8 o'clock P.M., for a public presentation of the plans and purposes of the organization. Hon. Charles B. Waite, Hon. Thos. Cratty, H.L. Green, William H. Maple, E.C. Reichwald, Patrick J. O'Shea, and R.N. Reeves are expected to deliver short addresses. All ad- mirers of Colonel Ingersoll are invited to be present. -- Frederick Mains, General Secretary." Except for the address of Judge Waite delivered at the meeting, when he was elected president, the activities of the Association were not further re- ported to The Truth Seeker in 1901. Mr. W.H. 210 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1901 Maple, a member, issued a small periodical named The Ingersoll Beacon. John E. Remsburg, having declined reelection to the presidency of the American Secular Union, re- Entered the lecture field, with engagements in Kan- sas and Oklahoma and Indian Territories. In June the New York University dedicated its Hall of Fame, a present from Helen Gould. The press was quick to notice that among the twenty- nine names thought worthy of a place, a dispropor- tionate number were borne by Unitarians or non- church members. The same is to be said of those that have since been added thereto. The Madrid organ of the Freethinkers, Las Dominicales, suppressed in 1900 by the clerical politicians and its editor jailed, resumed publication early in 1901, the editor having served out his sen- tence. Mrs. Etta Semple continued her publication, The Ideal, in Kansas; The Progressive Thinker (Lib- eral Spiritualist) appeared in Chicago; Charles F. Eldredge began in Kansas City the publication of The Philosopher, a monthly. Mr. Eldredge had furnished The Truth Seeker with stenographic re- ports of the lectures of Dr. J.E. Roberts. J.D. Shaw of Waco, Texas, had changed the name of his Independent Pulpit to The Searchlight. The orthodox church of Russia pronounced sen- tence of excommunication on Count Leo Tolstoy for rebelling "against God and his Christ" by de- nying the church's authority to tell him what he ought to believe. But Tolstoy was no Infidel, He retained superstitions enough to save him. 1901] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 211 The former secretary of the American Secular Union, Miss Ida C. Craddock, who had now turned instructress on the finer points of married life, dis- tributed documents at the capital setting forth her ideas. Judge Scott, before whom the lady was arraigned, expressed the opinion that the contents of her letters dealt with matters that should be discussed only in private if at all. He released Miss Craddock on condition that she should leave Washington. That was the beginning of a persecu- tion by the unwholesome Anthony Comstock that drove this estimable woman to suicide. Far in the past one of the Presidents of the United States inaugurated the custom of making a grand tour of the country with considerable pomp and circumstance. His progress was called "swing- ing around the circle." The swing of President McKinley, so planned as to land him at the Pan- American Exposition in Buffalo about the first of September, aroused the resentment of The Evening Times, Cumberland, Md., whose acting editor, Daniel Webster Snyder, a local preacher, said: "This Republic is not a kingdom or an empire. God will not be mocked. There is no demand or need of a travel- ling menagerie from the Capitol, and, as I said, someone will have to die to check this foolishness. Mark this." I find that quoted in The Truth Seeker, and the next mention of McKinley is the following: "President McKinley was shot twice by an assassin as he stood in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Ex- position in Buffalo, N.Y., at 4 o'clock on the afternoon of September 6. The assassin was immediately seized. He 212 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1901 had concealed a pistol in a handkerchief, and approached Mr. McKinley under the pretense of shaking hands. He is alleged to have made a confession in which he says his name is Leon F. Czolgosz, that he is an anarchist, and that in shooting the President he did his duty... The assassin is reported as saying that the speeches and writ- ings of Emma Goldman moved him to commit the deed." President McKinley, who was elected in 1896 and reelected in 1900, died on September 14. A number of arrests, which did not include that of the Cumberland minister, immediately followed the shooting. The first victims were Abe Isaacs and several persons associated with him in publishing Free Society, Chicago, a communist-anarchist peri- odical. Emma Goldman, in Chicago at the time, was likewise held. The police of New York grabbed John Most, communist-anarchist, for an article written fifty years before by Carl Heinzen of Boston, but brought up to date and stuck into his paper by Most without credit, and as an editorial. As stated, the minister who a short time pre- viously had said someone would have to die to check McKinley's foolishness, escaped notice by the police; yet Morrison I. Swift of California, who in 1899 had written a book censuring McKin- ley, now found himself in jail on the charge of "slandering the memory" of the deceased. While the authorities were in a mood for arrest- ing everybody to whom the word "anarchist" might or might not stick as a term of reproach, they grabbed three members of the Home Colony, in the State of Washington, charging misuse of the mails by circulating obscene literature in the colony's paper, edited by James F. Morton. The report of 1901] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 213 the arrests in the New York dailies contained the statement: "It is known that the action is taken with the object of breaking up the Home Colony." That paper, Discontent, came regularly to The Truth Seeker office. In content it was wholly in- offensive; its "anarchy" was of the kind described by Huxley, and some of its contributors were non- resistants. The motive of Czolgosz in assassinating Presi- dent McKinley never came to light. On the day of his sentence, the district-attorney of Buffalo took his record, or so-called "pedigree," which was as follows: "Age -- Twenty-eight years. Nativity -- Detroit. Resi- dence -- Broadway, Nowaks, Buffalo. Occupation -- Laborer. Married or single -- Single. Degree of education -- Com- mon school and parochial. Religious instruction -- Catho- lic. Parents, living or dead -- Father living, mother dead. Temperate or intemperate -- Temperate. Former convic- tion of crime -- None." The word "common" should be German, accord- ing to some of the Buffalo reporters who heard and reported his answers placed in the record. He at- tended German parochial schools, not common schools. Without waiting for the facts to emerge, the priests had been declaring that not only must Anarchy be fought to the death, but our godless public schools must be turned into moral engines by combining religious with secular instruction. Of these false alarms the New York Times of Sep- tember 28 said: "Those hasty clergymen, of more than one denomina- tion, who made the crime of the man Czolgosz the basis for vehement denunciation of public schools and the whole 214 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1901 system of unsectarian education, may be moved to miti- gate the violence of their remarks if their attention is called to certain facts which were called out by the questions put to Czolgosz just before he was sentenced." Dr. J.B. Wilson, who had been elected president of the American Secular Union in 1900, resigned from that office after holding it about six months. Dr. Wilson found himself, he said, unable to work harmoniously with the other officers. His resig- nation made a president of Mrs. Josephine K. Henry, first vice-president, of Versailles, Ken- tucky; but as Mrs. Henry deemed herself unequal to the duties of the office, she declined it. The po- sition was filled by E.M. Macdonald, whom the coming Congress in Buffalo, N.Y., October 4-6, elected president, with E.C. Reichwald as secre- tary. CHAPTER XIII. HERBERT SPENCER put forth a book un- derstood to be the closing volume of his life. It had the non-portentous title of Facts and Comments" and contained thirty-nine articles or essays, but the number was fortuitous and privileged no one to infer that Mr. Spencer, now 82, had formulated a creed in imitation of the Church of England. The aged philosopher could grant no more to the Christian religion as a moral force than The Truth Seeker does. "It needs but to glance over the world and to contemplate the do- ings of Christians everywhere," he said, "to be amazed at the ineffectiveness of current theology. Or it needs only to look back over past centuries and the iniquities alike of populace, nobles, kings, and popes, to perceive an almost incomprehensible futility of the beliefs everywhere held and perpet- ually insisted upon." Religion was not now a de- terrent to iniquity, and in the opinion of Mr. Spen- cer, never had been. The verdict of his intellect he rendered in a paragraph which is so strong and ample a warrant for Freethought advocacy that I have quoted it forty times and am reluctant to send a number of The Truth Seeker to press without it. I quote it again: 215 216 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1902 "Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view. ... It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, and as- pirations, and beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of the time. He must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future; and that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. ... Not adventitious therefore will the wise man regard the faith that is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world -- knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at -- well: if not -- well also; though not so well." "The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter." There is no better or sounder sentiment. Suppose it was written forty years in advance of the "prospect of heaven" passage, its substance was reaffirmed by its author in his autobiography which he left to be published after his death. "If it is asked," he said, "why, thinking thus, I have per- sisted in setting forth views at variance with cur- rent creeds, my reply is the one elsewhere made. It is for each to utter that which he sincerely be- lieves to be true, and, adding his unit of influence to all other units, leave the results to work them- selves out." A postoffice inspector ordered the holding up of the newspaper, Discontent, published by the Home Colonists in the State of Washington. The paper contained nothing to warrant that action; the com- plaint against the publication was dismissed, and 1902] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 217 at once the Department at Washington resorted to executive action and by a high-handed outrage upon justice abolished the Home postoffice. And then Anthony Comstock pursued the gentle Ida Crad- dock to her death. Mrs. Craddock's coeducational hobby was the purification of the marriage relation, which, being something of a mystic, she regarded as a communion with God. She was tried the 14th of March find on the 17th sent to the Work House on Blackwell's Island. The defense was a difficult one, as in order properly to present her thought to the intelligent reader, it would be necessary to re- produce what Mrs. Craddock said, and that would again stir up that mass of muck known as An- thony Comstock. However, the following state- ments passed the censor: "Three judges have lately stamped as filthy a piece of writing which they know to be as clean as anything ever written. I say they know the writing is clean because I know it to be so, and I do not assume to be wiser than the judges. They brand it as blasphemous, but at the same time they are aware that it is not. Obscenity and blasphemy in this case are legal fictions. The judges con- demned the writer for the same reason that thousands silently acquiesce in their verdict, because they are too pusillanimous to vindicate the truth by declaring for an acquittal. Men of the world, including judges, are likely to look with disfavor upon such teaching as that of Mrs. Craddock for the reason that they are condemned by it." Mrs. Craddock served her three months' term at the work house, whose inmates found her a "min- istering angel," and then exposed in writing the horrible conditions she discovered there. Continu- ing the distribution of her educative writings, she fell into Comstock's filthy hands again. He ar- 218 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1902 rested her on the 10th of October; she was admitted to bail, and on the 16th she committed suicide by cutting the veins of her wrists and turning on the gas in her room. By placing her in a position to which death was preferable, her judges had com- mitted a murder. In her last letter to her mother she wrote: "I maintain my right to die as I have lived, a free woman, not cowed into silence by any other human being." Personally Mrs. Craddock was a surprisingly lovely woman. She and Comstock were the Beauty and the Beast. After her Blackwell's Island experience I had a short conversation with her at The Truth Seeker office, and asked her if she did not regard herself as eligible to the veteran corps. Speaking jocosely, I told her I regretted to see youth and beauty sacrificed to the vice-hunt- ing ogre. She replied that, although she enjoyed living, she would that her life might be turned to water and poured out for cleansing the lives of others. She was every inch a martyr. If the millions did not rise up to thank her, that was not her fault, but her judges'. She gave her life and her message -- and the swine got to them first. An announcement conceived as follows appeared under the editorial card of The Truth Seeker of March 22, 1902: "Our readers have, regretfully we know, missed Obser- vations' from these columns for some time. Mr. George Macdonald, who compiles these interesting remarks, has been immured in a secluded spot in the wilderness for more than forty days writing the text around the pictures 1902] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 219 for our forthcoming work, 'New Testament Stories Comic- ally Illustrated,'" Writing the text around the pictures for the Illustrated New Testament took me through the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles more carefully than I had traveled the ground before. This "New Testa- ment Comically Illustrated" (now scarce if not rare as a separate volume) contains, as the owner of one will observe, above one hundred and sixty chapters. The editor found the 400-word limit irk- some, and so wrote along until he had done about forty of the two hundred pages which were to be written. It was at this point that I took the pic- tures and other material and retired to Skeetside, where I pursued my aim at the rate of a half- dozen pages a day. There was current talk of putting the "Passion Play" on the stage in New York, and the Presby- terian ministers were protesting against the piece as "sacrilegious in the sight of God." Where they got the assurance that God so viewed the production they didn't say. But mulling over the story to pick out material for a page of matter where I could find it, I couldn't have missed the drama if I had been looking for something else, or if the Rt. Hon. John M. Robertson had never pointed it out. As the prelude to the "betrayal," the curtain was to be seen by the mind's eye going up on Jesus and his twelve disciples sitting around the dish that held their supper. You observe them reaching for food. As the dish goes down he tells the com- pany, "One of you shall betray me." This shows he has a way of knowing things. The scene is pro- 220 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1902 tracted by giving them each a line. "Is it I?" they ask, one after another. To Judas, when his turn comes, the leading man of the play (who is Jesus) answers, "Thou hast said." In real life some one would have asked Jesus to explain himself; but this was a mystery. The serious charge against one of their number apparently is accepted as part of the program; they sing a hymn, giving the quartet op- portunity to introduce song specialties. They walk off, and when they come on again it is the Garden of Gethsemane. The disciples sleep. As they have taken no precaution to prevent Judas from carry- ing out his design, he steals away unperceived by all except the audience. Although there is no one awake to make a historical note of the circum- stance, we are told that Jesus withdraws and offers up a prayer. Only the dramatist and the fictionist are licensed to state incidents that have no wit- nesses. The praying of Washington at Valley Forge, out in the woods away from his staff (a legend per- petuated in 1928 by the issue of the Washington postage stamp that The Truth Seeker named "the Valley Forgery") was undoubtedly suggested to the pious mind of its original narrator by the fictionist who wrote that Jesus "was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed." In May, 1902, the population of the Island of Martinique, one of the Lesser Antilles, was wiped out by an explosion of the volcanic Mt. Pelee, which utterly destroyed St. Pierre, the island's largest city, and the shipping in the harbor. Forty thousand 1902] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 221 persons lost their lives when overwhelmed by the fall of hot ashes and lava blown into the air. The population of Martinique was Catholic. Deploring the extinction of life, The Truth Seeker said: "The death of 30,000 good Catholics is not taken as proof that Providence was neglectful, but the finding of a wafer unconsumed in the ruins of the Cathedral demonstrates to the mind of faith that God was at his old trick of working worthless miracles." Re- ports said. that when the explosion came three thousand had gathered into the Cathedral to wor- ship, and none survived. I quote an observation: "The eruption whereby Mt. Pelee benevolently assimilated the inhabitants of St. Pierre, in the Island of Martinique, left but one man to tell about it; and he was in jail! He regards his escape as Providential. About the same thing happened when the cities of the plain were destroyed, a good while ago, for although Lot, the gentleman who escaped, was not an inmate of the jail, he certainly ought to have been. A report from the scene of the late disaster mentions the death of three thousand who had gathered in a cathedral to worship. Was there not in that devout bunch some individual as worthy to be saved as the fellow in the cooler? The event forces the melancholy conclusion that there was not. 'True and righteous,' it has been re- marked, 'are thy judgments, Lord God Almighty,' and who am I that I should review the decision?" The holocaust visited the island on the religious holiday called the Feast of the Ascension. "The interior of the cathedral," wrote a correspondent just after the visitation, "spelled destruction more eloquently than any other part of St. Pierre. At one end the facade, and the great bell, with the gnarled, distorted framework of the bell tower; at the other the shattered marble and the scorched 222 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1902 discolorful fittings of the altar. At one's feet lay pictured biblical carvings, the beautiful doors of the sanctuary wrested from their hinges, and the candel- abra broken like pipestems. The walls and roof buried all these in an immense mass of debris. The great Christ that had stood midway between the towers, seeming from the sea against the back- ground of green as if the statue were erected high up on the hills, was nowhere to be seen." The de- vastation was more complete than in the temple of the Philistine god Dagon, for Dagon, though pros- trate, was still to be seen. Herr Johann Most, with his cry of "Nieder mit der Tyrannei," exhausted the resources of the law which he contemned, and getting no relief, went to the penitentiary for a year. William McQueen, editor of an anarchist paper in New York called Liberty, using the language made famous in 1912 by the Rev. Father Phelan of St. Louis, served a term in a New Jersey prison for saying: "To hell with government." Other sufferers from the cen- sorship were Lois Waisbrooker and Mattie Pen- hallow. The two innocent old ladies were indicted in Tacoma, Washington, for an article printed in Mrs. Waisbrooker's paper "Clothed with the Sun." The jury acquitted Mattie, while Lois was convicted and fined $100. It was a penalty on opinion, the language used being above reproach. Truth Seeker readers contributed the funds for her defense and fine. Two cases growing out of religious exercises in the public schools were pending in 1902. A son 1902] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 223 of Mr. J.B. Billard of North Topeka, Kansas, was expelled for refusing to participate, and Mr. Billard appealed to the courts. In Beatrice, Ne- braska, Daniel Freeman advised his son Ray to absent himself during the offering of prayer, sing- ing of hymns, and reading of the Bible. The American Secular Union engaged counsel and fought the case out. Commissioner Ames ren- dered the opinion that observance in the public schools of customs and usages of sectarian churches or religions organizations was forbidden by the constitution of the state. Ryan Walker, the car- toonist, coming to New York from the West early in the year, began to illustrate The Truth Seeker. He had no other engagements and, working rapidly, filled columns and pages with his pictures, which RYAN WALKER. were good ones. Theodore Roosevelt, being President, and the Philppines troubles (which were religious ones) not having been ad- justed, he sent William Howard Taft to Rome for a confab with the pope. The expelling of the friars and the opening up of the islands to Protestant missionaries were offenses against the holy see that only a money payment could atone for. Ryan Walker caricatured the situation with 224 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1902 a picture of Uncle Sam kissing the pope's toe and apologizing for his awkwardness, since this was the first time he had lowered himself to the performance of that act. In the war of this country with Spain the pope had sided with the Catholic country, as had also the German kaiser whom his holiness regarded as a "son"; and for that reason such deference to the Vatican as the mission of Taft denoted was adversely commented upon by non-Catholics. The Truth Seeker an- nounced that Uncle Sam had gone to Canossa. The editor in a paragraph as of April 26 ap- plauds Mr. Roosevelt. "It gives us all the more pleasure," the piece reads, "to record an instance where Mr. Roosevelt has shown independence and fairness of mind towards an Agnostic. He re- cently appointed to office a man of national repu- tation who for twenty years has been a subscriber to The Truth Seeker and a Freethinker who has done what he could to show the fallacy of Chris- tianity." The appointee is not named. It was Mr. Pat Garrett of Texas, who held the post of collector of customs at El Paso until he committed the social error of introducing to the President, and perhaps to Mrs. Roosevelt and Alice, his friend Tom Powers. When Roosevelt learned that Mr. Powers was a noted gambler, the story went, he made an end of Billy the Kid's captor as collector of customs. A number of ministers in Denver tried without success to banish, Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" from the public library on the score of im- morality. Mark, in a letter to the Denver Post, 1902] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 225 expressed the fear that God had dealt unkindly with the ministers in the matter of wisdom. "There is nobody for me to attack in this matter," he wrote, "even with soft and gentle ridicule -- and I should not think of using a grown-up weapon in this kind of a nursery. Above all, I couldn't venture to attack the clergymen whom you men- tion, for I have their habits and live in the same glass house which they are occupying. I am al- ways reading immoral books on the sly and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from hav- ing the same wicked good time." In the way of a social event, Helen Gardener married Lieut. Seldon Allen Day of the United States Army and went to reside in Washington. A few members of the American Secular Union who withdrew in 1901 when J.B. Wilson resigned the presidency met in convention at Cincinnati un- der the name of the National Liberal Party. A Swedish Freethought fortnightly paper, "For- skaren" (The Investigator), flourished in Minne- apolis. The "Philosopher," published in Kansas City by C.F. Eldredge, and carrying the name of Dr. J.E. Roberts as one of the editors, ended its career by merging with The Truth Seeker at the end of 1902. The Boston Investigator, L.K. Washburn, proprietor, was not prospering. Mr. Washburn said that he allowed himself a salary of ninety-seven cents per day, and often rashly drew half of it. Liberal societies met regularly in Boston (J.P. Bland resident speaker), Cincinnati, Washington, 226 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1902 (A picture of many people, it is almost impossible to match the person with the names listed below.) THESE WERE TOGETHER ONCE. This gem of a picture, as I regard it, is a belated dis- covery, more timely now, however, than hereafter, for it dates back almost to what The Times, reviewing "Fifty Years," Vol. 1, called "the late lamented century." The place is the entrance to the Long Island Business College, South Eighth street, between Bedford and Driggs avenues, where the Brooklyn Philosophical Association held its meetings; the occasion, a congress of the Ameri- can Secular Union in 1902, More faces than names come to mind. At the upper left-hand corner is Mr. Winham, who grew old as secretary of the B.P.A. A few faces to the reader's right are the author of these memoirs and his better element; next, in the background, probably, George Gillen, with Mrs. Gillen in front of him a step down and forward. Over near the lady in the um- 1902] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 227 brella hat, who might be Mrs. Loomiller, we suspect the presence of M. Goldsmith, who long sat at the door of the Manhattan Liberal Club. From the left again, that might be Mr. Slensby in the hard hat. The adjacent lady next was known to all who went to Liberal meetings forty years ago; Mrs. Robinson, I think. The central figure is either E.C. Reichwald or Henry Rowley, whose pictures resemble each other; then Mrs. Gillen, as aforesaid, and over beneath the outer brim of the Gainsborough hat, Susan H. Wixon, editor of our Children's Corner. The bald man of the triangle is Joseph Warwick. Florence Johnson's young daughters, Bertha and Pearl, are partly concealed by the couple in front (who will doubtless say I ought to remember them). Pearl always captured our boy Putnam, when present, so that would be the future Gob at her elbow. Back of him, Eugene, sometime captain Eleventh Engineers, A.E.F. And so we come to Libby Culbertson Macdonald, not wearing a large birthday cake, frosted on top and down the sides, for a lid, but a hat of the period. The female wearer of the black hat nearby, with a white center, might pass for Miss Levin, the Broadway photographer, whose name in that era was on the pictures of so many of the Liberals and "radicals." Diagonally across the picture from Mr. Winham, E.M. Macdonald, for twenty-six years editor of The Truth Seeker, is standing. Beside him Charles Watts completes the group, which would have been incomplete without him. Other figures, unknown to me, are in the original photo-. graph, to the right and left of those included. ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ D.C., Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, and Brooklyn; and Hugh O. Pentecost spoke every Sunday morning at Mott Memorial Hall, New York. The American Secular Union held its twenty- sixth annual Congress in the Long Island Business College Hall, Brooklyn, November 15 and 16. The announced speakers were Edwin C. Walker, 228 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1902 Charles Watts, Susan H. Wixon, Moncure D. Conway, Herbert N. Casson, Hugh O. Pentecost, and Henry Rowley. The Congress elected E.M. Macdonald president, E.C. Reichwald secretary, and Dr. Foote treasurer. The attendance was good, and the quality of the addresses is guaran- teed by the names of the speakers who gave them. That of Charles Watts was the last he ever deliv- ered in America. Able writers contributed to The Truth Seeker in 1902. The more widely known were Dr. J.E. Roberts of Kansas City, John E. Remsburg of Atchison (Kan.), Judge C.B. White of Chicago, Dr. W.A. Croffut, William Henry Burr, Gen. William Birney, David Eccles of Washington (D. C.), Hugh O. Pentecost and Bolton Hall of New York, Mrs. Elizabeth M. Evans of Munich (Ba- varia), Ida Craddock of Philadelphia, and Marilla M. Ricker of Dover (N.H.). Besides Ida Craddock, the necrology for this year includes Capt. Robert C. Adams, president of the Montreal Freethought Club, and past presi- dent of the Canadian Secular Union, who was born in Boston December 11, 1839, and died in Sedgwick, Maine, 1902. A comprehensive sketch of his useful and eventful life is given in Putnam's "Four Hundred Years." CHAPTER XIV. THROUGH an oversight on the part of my friends, relatives, and the public, I had never been the guest of a birthday party until the year 1903; so it was a novelty if not a surprise that on the 11th day of April a consider- able company assembled at Skeetside in time to greet me with a series of pleasantries which they must have thought of in advance, when I came home from my day's work at the office. My clear- est recollection of the occasion is that none of the visitors treated the affair seriously, but thought it best to recall my past with joke and jest. The ministers of Montclair, N.J., where I have lived since 1900, issued in 1903 an appeal for better observance of Sunday. "We, the undersigned," they said, "have viewed with anxiety many signs of a growing laxity in regard to Sunday observ- ance." The editor of The Truth Seeker, living in Glenridge, was at a loss to know what could be doing at the commuters' paradise so to excite the parsons. I supplied the information, which, hav- ing appeared in The Truth Seeker, was copied into a paper circulated in Montclair: "People living near Skeetside, which is within the limits of 229 230 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1903 Montclair -- southeast corner, next to the woods -- could give the editor information on that subject, or he could have got it first-hand by dropping around there on the Sunday that the appeal was read in the churches. A busy scene, of an agricultural mature, was then presented to view. A horse that once galloped before the hosecart of the volunteer fire department, but had now got over his hurry, drew a plow through the soil of my garden and chewed stolen mouthfuls of grapevine. A neighbor, who owns the horse, followed the plow and chewed tobacco. At one side stood the neighbor's wife holding a baby, which chewed its thumb. Strung on the wire fence were a number of small children, chewing the last pieces of their breakfast, Soon, not far away, God's hired men would stand in their pulpits, chewing the rag of Sabbatarian controversy. "It was a clear case of Sunday law violation, and a con- stable happening along would have caught the gang with the goods on. But I had my defense prepared. The work was one of necessity and charity: the garden needed plow- ing, and the man who plowed it needed the money. I doubt if the ministers could have put up as strong an argument as that for plowing the atmosphere with their voices." The case for Sunday observance in Montclair is hopeless. The law might as easily stop automo- biling as the work which householders from neces- sity must do about their premises. on the first day of the week. Under the provisions of a law passed in the craze for exterminating "anarchists" that followed the assassination of McKinley (although the complic- ity of any anarchist in the crime was never estab- lished), Secretary Cortelyou of the Department of Commerce and Labor caused the arrest of John Turner, an English labor agitator and organizer. Cortelyou said that Turner would be deported. In 1903] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 231 the interest of free speech The Truth Seeker took up Turner's defense, being joined therein by Man- hattan Liberal Club members and the Free Speech League. Immediate action followed by Hugh O. Pentecost as attorney, with habeas corpus proceed- ings. It appeared from the arguments made before Judge Lacombe on a motion to dismiss the writ of habeas corpus that the demand for Turner's ex- pulsion was based on the theory that labor unions are a menace to the republic. Bail was refused. The Defense Committee met at the residence of Dr. E.B. Foote, head of the Free Speech League, which was the predecessor of the present Civil Lib- erties Union. The League appointed a mass meet- ing at Cooper Union, to be addressed by Ernest Crosby, John DeWitt Warner, Henry Frank, and Congressman Robert Baker. John S. Crosby, the Single Tax leader, presided. In the list of vice- presidents there were, among others, Dr. Felix Adler, Henry George, Jr., Franklin H. Gaddings (the Columbia University professor), and Oswald Garrison Villard, now editor of The Nation. William Lloyd Garrison wrote a letter. This Turner case ran over into the next year, and the more it was discussed the more absurd it appeared. Turner was in a sense an Anarchist; that is, an idealist. He admitted that he disbe- lieved in organized government, but he was not one of the kind contemplated by the statute who ad- vocated the overturning of government by force and the removal of heads of government by assas- sination. He just didn't believe in organized gov- 232 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1903 ernment, and even the conservative newspapers saw the humor of prosecuting or deporting anybody for what he did not believe in. It was a queer feature of this Turner case that the bondsmen did not have to produce him or for- feit the bond, and he was under no compulsion to remain within the jurisdiction of the court. He had committed no offense in the United States for which he could be held. His crime was think- ing the way he did before he came here, and for that he could only be chased back. If he chose to chase himself, the court was agreeable. And that is what he did. When he had stayed here as long as he wanted to, he went home to England. A de- cision in his favor would have done him no good. It was The Truth Seeker and the Free Speech League that wanted the favorable decision. Miss Voltairine de Cleyre, an accomplished writer in poetry and prose, and also an eloquent speaker on radical topics, drew a pistol shot from a fellow named Helcher, which severely wounded her; but Miss de Cleyre declined to prosecute him at law for the assault, or even to identify him in court as her assailant. The Truth Seeker said of Miss de Cleyre's refusal to prosecute: "It is left to an Atheist to exemplify in this century the forbearance which his followers say Jesus taught two thousand years ago." The Curtis Library of Meriden, Conn., accepted the offer made by Mr. Franklin T. Ives of a thou- sand-dollar gift on condition that the works of Voltaire and Paine should be placed on the library shelves for general use. 1903] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 233 Judge Hazen of the Shawnee county court at Topeka, Kan., decided, Jan. 12, that compulsory at- tendance on prayers and Bible reading in the public schools does not violate constitutional rights. This was adverse to the plaintiff, J.B. Billard of North Topeka, whose son Philip had been expelled from school for not giving his attention to the religious instruction that preceded school exercises, and who sought the boy's reinstatement by the court. Mr. Billard took the case to the supreme court of the state to have the opinion confirmed. When former Mayor Abram S. Hewitt died, Jan. 18, it was recalled that he was the only recent mayor of New York who "had the independence to refuse to raise a foreign flag on the City Hall" -- to wit, the Irish flag on St. Patrick's day. United Societies of Illinois in Favor of Taxing Church Property held conventions in Chicago. Sec- retary E.C. Reichwald of the American Secular Union was an officer. The united societies were Turnerbunds and workmen's unions. A deputation carried lists of untaxed property to the capital, con- sulted with the legislators, and reported to The Truth Seeker of March 14, 1903. The year fol- lowing Mr. Reichwald wrote that "a large amount of property which previously had been exempted was added to the assessment roll." The Bible having been excluded from the schools of Chicago, the ministers and pious women's or- ganizations tried to get it back in the form of "selections." The American Secular Union, which had been instrumental in banishing the Bible, suc- 234 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1903 cessfully opposed the readings, and they were re- jected by the school trustees. An independent party invited Clarence S. Dar- row, then a member of the Illinois legislature, to be a candidate for mayor of Chicago. Mr. Darrow before accepting warned his proponents that if elected he would be unable to fulfill their expecta- tions. However, he appears to have placed himself in the hands of his friends. Mr. Darrow was not elected mayor of Chicago. On the other hand, he took to wife Miss Ruby Hammerstein of Gales- burg, Ill., a newspaper contributor of the pen name of Ruby Stanleigh. Of this The Truth Seeker approved. The new "religious associations" laws of France were being put into operation. They required the associations to register and give a list of their in- mates and property, while the religious schools were brought under supervision. Orders and schools not complying with the law were suppressed. Many of them went to other countries, one at least to take refuge in New York, but conditions exist- ing prior to the adoption of the law have since re- turned through politics following the World War. The German kaiser visited in state the Pope at Rome with the hope to assume the protectorate over Catholics theretofore exercised by France. The pope not being ready to offend France denied the Kaiser's application. The Church is still hopeful of bringing her eldest daughter to repentance. Were I writing a work on special providences, I should include the following newspaper dispatch: "Reynolds's Bridge, Conn., June 23. -- During a 1903] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 235 thunderstorm George Norton's house was struck. The bolt seriously damaged an old Bible, but dodged a copy of Paine's 'Age of Reason'." The Doukhobors (Spirit Wrestlers), called also Tolstoy Quakers, made an unusual religious demon- stration in Manitoba when they removed their clothing and took to the road as a protest against the breaking up of a pilgrimage they had previous- ly inaugurated. It is one of the mysteries of re- ligion why some women in their practice of it should wear the all-concealing garb of a nun, while others wear none at all. Societies meeting were the Boston Freethought Society, the Washington Secular League, the Lib- eral Club, the Progressive Club, and Free Speech League of Los Angeles, the Friendship Liberal League in Philadelphia, the Manhattan Liberal Club, and the Brooklyn Philosophical Association. Pentecost lectured every week at Lyric Hall and Henry Frank at the Carnegie Lyceum. Newark, N.J. had a Truth Seeker Club, meeting at 17 Park Street. Jewish Freethinkers in New York organ- ized the Liberal Arts Society in the image of the Manhattan Liberal Club. In November The Truth Seeker reported: "The Liberal meetings in New York these days are crowded." The American Secular Union held no congress in 1903. Stuart Robson, the actor, a friend of Ingersoll's and a Freethinker, as his son told me, assigned to himself the part of challenger of the clergy when any of them alleged the morals of stage people to be low. In order to answer in kind Mr. Robson compiled a scrapbook, which in time grew to the 236 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1903 size of the largest dictionary, composed entirely of pieces clipped from newspapers, on the crimes and misdemeanors of the ministers. With this ma- terial ready to be quoted, he offered to prove to the incautious preacher that he had libeled a profession producing fewer criminals than his own. Mr. Rob- son died in May, 1903 When Eliza Boardman Burnz, for seventeen years teacher of phonography in Cooper Union, went from Walters Park, Pa., June 9, 1903, to where the good Freethinking women go, the editor of The Truth Seeker paid his tribute of admira- tion to her "as a defender of the right and a zeal- ous advocate of reform." Her advocacy ran along with that of this paper in its adhesion to freedom of the press, and her reform was the simplified spell- ing she induced D.M. Bennett to adopt. When she began teaching in New York, there were not half a dozen woman stenographers in the city. She introduced girls to the profession and "earned the proud title of Mother of the Young Woman Sten- ographer." She lived 80 years. For many years New Hampshire's best known Freethinker was William C. Sturoc of Sunapee, who about 1900, being of sound and disposing mind and getting old, sent me a set of the poems of Peter Pindar (John Wolcott, 1738-1819), and the bound volumes of "Porcupine's Works" (Cobbett). Mr. Sturoc, Scotch by birth, practiced law in New Hampshire and served in the state legislature. His writings for The Truth Seeker were scholarly and precise. He died May 31, 1903, at the age of 80 years. 1903] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 237 Mrs. Ingersoll's mother, Harriet E. Parker, died July 27 at Walston, Dobbs Ferry, New York. Mrs. Parker, nee Lyon, Newton Lower Falls, Mass. in 1816, and her husband, Benjamin Weld Parker of Boston, were both of Bunker Hill ancestry. They moved west to Tazewell county, Illinois, where they raised Eva, whom Ingersoll married. They were a family of Agnostics, and Mrs. Parker could name Abraham Lincoln as one of the guests at her home. One day in September, Capt. Silas Latham of the fishing schooner Ester and Anita, lying at anchor at Five Fathom Banks off Atlantic City, came on deck in oilskins and jackboots, to take the wheel while the men made sail, when a wall of water, mast-high, swept over the starboard bow, carrying away the foremast on which sail had been hoisted, and clearing the deck of everything movable, includ- ing the boats. The men forward, who had seen the wave coming and made themselves fast, climbed into the rigging and looked astern. The captain and two sailors were far away making a brave fight for life by swimming. Another great wave went over them and they were seen no more. Captain Latham, master and owner, was one of the most successful men in the fishing fleet that went out of New York. During the war he was a pilot of Union vessels in the South. On the subscription list of The Truth Seeker he was marked "Forever," and put his name down on all subscriptions. Once every season, in vacation time, he gave me a week afloat in his schooner. The fatal storm was a hurricane that wrecked many craft and drowned many men. The founder of the New York State Freethink- 238 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1903 ers' Association in the early days of The Truth Seeker, H.L. Green, publisher of the Freethinkers' Magazine, died October 30 in Chicago. In his 75 years, begun at Virgil, N.Y., 1828, he had been farmer, log rafter, school teacher, lawyer, office holder, justice of the peace, and anti-slavery speaker. At his death T.B. Wakeman and Pearl Geer combined the magazine with their Torch of Reason and called the result The Liberal Review. Under that name it passed to Mr. M. M. Manga- sarian and became an independent religious period- ical, not long-lived. An address on "The Life and Work of Herbert Spencer," before the Liberal Club, by Franklin H. Giddings, professor of sociology at Columbia, ap- peared in two sections in The Truth Seeker of No- vember 7 and 14, 1903. Professor Giddings said: "Mr. Spencer rather than Mr. Darwin had given to the world the complete philosophy of evolution, of development. Mr. Darwin showed the evolution- ary process of one particular sphere of natural phenomena, that of living beings, and he showed the working of one particular process in this mighty change, the process of natural selection, as it is called. Mr. Spencer has shown that the process of evolution is universal; that it pertains to the great starry systems of the skies from the nebula of gaseous matter; that it pertains to the long, slow development of the crust of the earth through geo- logic time; that it pertains also to the rise of social institutions and the development of man's mind, his laws, his customs, his governments, his morality, and his art." 1903] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 239 Mr. Spencer died at Brighton, England, on the morning of December 5, 1903, in his eighty-fourth year. The Liberal University of Silverton, Oregon, moved the first of the year 1903 to Kansas City, Mo., where it planned to reopen in October. The Northwest Business and Normal College of Salem took over the Silverton buildings and land. These facts, with the additional one that The Torch of Reason would thereafter be published in Kansas City, were communicated to The Truth Seeker by Mr. T.J. Tanner, then and now (1929) a Kansas City resident. At the same time Mr. D. Priestly of Newburg, Ore., wrote disparagingly of the institu- tion, saying the Liberal University never had been so much as a good high school since the Hosmers were displaced, Mr. T.B. Wakeman now being the whole thing; and it sounded funny to Mr. Priestly, he averred, to call one man a University. Mr. Priestly resented Mr. Wakeman's circulating a peti- tion against the seating of Reed Smoot, the Mor- mon senator from Utah. He was for years a con- tinuous correspondent of The Truth Seeker, and when his letters ceased coming the editor wrote him to ask why. He replied that he was getting along in years, and had lapsed into silence with the idea that it was as well for a man to be forgotten for a little while before death as immediately afterwards. My final Observation for the year appears to be the following: "At this season the public school teachers take upon themselves without extra pay the burden of familiarizing young minds with the story of the babe in the manger, illustrated by cuts. In 240 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1903 a school near Skeetside, which is in New Jersey, the teacher showed a small boy an idealized pic- ture of the holy infant, with the accessories of radiant star and effulgent nimbus. The boy looked at the display, and then asked if the child was really born on Christmas Day. The surprised in- structress replied yes, of course, and inquired the reason for so strange a question. "Because," said the boy, "with an eye on the coruscating symbols, "I thought from the fireworks they are setting off he must have been born on the Fourth of July." The desultory religious education given to the boys I have brought up left them free to form un- biased conclusions. **** **** Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship. This disk, its printout, or copies of either are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold. Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201 **** **** CHAPTER XV. OFTEN The Truth Seeker has been admon- ished that its influence would be enhanced and its circulation widened if it would broaden its field. Naturally the admonition comes from persons who want it to broaden in the direc- tion of the particular advocacy in which they are most interested; but since the paper does not so expand itself by thinning the original mixture, they remain cold. Should the broadening take place in some other way than theirs, they would denounce the editor for not sticking to his subject. Long since the editor of The Truth Seeker dis- covered that he must carefully watch his step; that while he might not give his adhesion to all of the reforms proposed by radicals, he at the same time could slight none of them without hurting the feel- ings of a subscriber. Trial and error taught him that this principle held good as regards, for ex- ample, vegetarianism, prohibition, anti-vivisection, anti-vaccination, dress reform, woman suffrage. One section of his readers he might offend by writ- ing down Socialism, another by aiming at Anar- chism or the Single Tax. Expressed incredulity as regards the facts of Spiritualism invariably brings a rebuke conceived more in pity than in 241 242 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1904 anger. The same of Buddhism. Finding that all reforms are at one against orthodoxy and con- servatism, the editor arrived at his generalization -- "the oneness of heterodoxies and the pervasiveness of Freethought in all reforms." They are all one, and Freethought is the constant factor. Early in life Herbert Spencer went so far in re- form as to take up vegetarianism -- then regarded as a subtle form of Atheism -- and although he later abandoned the error, which he held responsible for failing mental vigor, it had implanted the seeds of disbelief, and he died an Atheist to the gods of his generation. Some one will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that every species of reform or fad, polit- ical or social, industrial or religious, has on one occasion or another swum into The Truth Seeker's ken and been remarked upon -- unless it be medical reform which ought to be fortified with something more than opinion. Whether the editor's theory of the "oneness of reform" be verified or not, it still accounts for the wide circle of Freethought interests, of which those I have mentioned are in no wise a complete list. The circle includes many branches of science, evolution, eugenics, marriage and divorce, dietetics, family limitation, feminism, and so on. The Truth Seeker had been prohibited in Can- ada since 1895, when in January, 1904, Postmaster Van Cott of New York, having thrice held up our Canadian mail, replied to the Editor's inquiry by saying that since the paper was undeliverable in 1904] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 243 Canada, he could accept for transmission no copies addressed to that country. When the editor re- joined that the exclusion from Canada was based on religious grounds not recognized in the United States, Mr. Van Cott wrote that the matter would be referred to the Hon. First Assistant Postmaster- General at Washington for an opinion. The func- tionary named, being R.J. Wynne, a Roman Cath- olic, and the excluding officials of Canada being Catholics likewise, the Editor's hopes fell. "Fat chance for favorable action there," he said. But Mr. Wynne promised he would refer the corre- spondence to N.M. Brooks, general superintendent of the foreign mail service. That he so referred it is doubtful, since in a short time Postmaster Van Cott of New York wrote again: "I beg to in- form you that the Hon. First Assistant Postmaster- General (Wynne) directs this office to advise you that the appeal made in your letter has been deter- mined in your favor. Copies may be presented for mailing as second-class matter at your conven- ience"! And Wynne a Roman Catholic I The Editor learned that the appeal never left the office of Mr. Wynne, and that the Hon. First Assistant himself took the responsibility of making the favorable determination. The Canadian prohibition has never been re- scinded, but Mr. Wynne's successors have shown themselves poorer Americans than he was by con- senting to it and ordering copies of The Truth Seeker bearing Canadian addresses to be stopped at the New York postoffice. 244 FIFTY YEAR'S OF FREETHOUGHT [1904 Herbert Spencer was recently dead, and between the powers of light and darkness there went on a struggle for the possession of his soul. The min- isters paid Spencer posthumous honors as a near- Christian. But I quote from my Observation col- umn: "The struggle of the theologians to demonstrate that Herbert Spencer was really a promoter of religious faith is the most ineffectual form of pious endeavor that I have noted. The doctors of divinity have seldom started on any course where it was so easy to head them off. The Syntactic Philosophy is no religion. Any belief that is enough like religion to warrant passing the contribution box in its behalf must have a deity or a god who hears and understands when he is addressed in language. There has to be a god between whom and the worshiper it is possible that some sort of intelligible relations can be set up. Spencer claims no knowledge of anything like that. I doubt that there is the least excuse for thinking of religion when Spencer's philosophy is under notice, except to note that the philosophy contradicts religion, or for speaking of gods when his 'unknowable' is mentioned, farther than to remark that it is no deity. The Unknowable is not a He but an It, which cannot be worshiped or even blas- phemed. John Fiske believed, or said he did, that Spencer was a friend of religion; but he was so only to the ex- tent that one may do another a friendly act by showing him that he is a liar. Not long ago Mr. Goldwin Smith maintained, in a discussion with Dr. Moncure D. Con- way, that Spencer was a religious man because he believed that veneration and gratitude are due to 'the ultimate essence of things.' Dr. Conway denied that Spencer ever expressed such a belief, but be bowed to the memory of Mr. Smith, who asserted that he recalled reading it in Spencer's writings. Nevertheless Dr. Conway was right. What Mr. Smith evidently had in mind was a passage in Spencer's discussion with Frederic Harrison, the Positivist. Harrison urged that veneration and gratitude are due the 1904] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 245 Great Being, Humanity. Spencer acknowledged no such debt as owing in any direction, but said the obvious answer was that 'if veneration and gratitude are due at all, they are due to the Ultimate Cause from which Humanity, individually and as a whole, in common with all other things, has proceeded.' Mr. Smith, thinking that religion needed the indorsement of Mr. Spencer, ignored the sub- juctiveness of the clause and forgave him the 'if.' Har- rison did the same thing, but Spencer protested: 'I have nowhere "proposed" any "object of religion." I have nowhere suggested that anyone should "worship the Un- knowable." No line of mine gives grounds for inquiring how the Unknowable is to be sought "in a devout way," or for asking what are "the religious exercises"; nor have I suggested that anyone may find "consolation there- in."' "What the friends of Spencer, who are also friends of religion, should do is to dilate on the philosopher's service to the truth, and then, in a subsquent discourse, they may adduce proof, if any exists, that religion and truth are either identical or bear any relation to each other. And they will find that the thing is not so simple as it looks." One reason why Spencer apparently quit trying to correct men's erroneous beliefs about religion was that he realized it would be effort wasted. "In my earlier days," he said, "I constantly made the foolish assumption that conclusive proofs would change beliefs, but experience has long since dis- sipated my faith in men's rationality." Again: "If it be asked why, thinking thus, I have persevered in setting forth views at variance with current creeds, my reply is the one elsewhere made: It is better for each to utter that which he sincerely be- lieves to be true, and, adding his unit of influence to all other units, leave the results to work them- selves out." 246 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1904 One of Philadelphia's most prominent educators told a representative of the Philadelphia North American, May 2, 1904: "Andrew Carnegie is an Infidel." "I don't believe in God," said Carnegie to a man who went to see him seeking financial aid for "God's work." But the ironmaster's disbelief, like Mark Twain's, took the form of irreverence. He perpetrated in that year 1904 a practical joke on Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., a Methodist in- stitution. The college had lately lost one of its buildings by fire, and the mind of its president, Dr. George E. Reed, turned to Carnegie as the pos- sible source of a contribution to erect a new one. Dickinson chanced to be the institution that in 1852 had bestowed the prefix reverend on Carnegie's ad- mired friend, Moncure D. Conway; and so, not- withstanding Dr. Conway had dropped the minis- terial title, turned Infidel, and was at the time in Rome as a delegate to the International Freethought Congress, Mr. Carnegie told the man who solicited his money in behalf of the Methodist seat of learn- ing that he would subscribe fifty thousand dollars toward a new building if they would call it Con- way Hall. The trustees consenting, the hall was built and named accordingly. The Truth Seeker chortled with unholy joy to see an institution founded in Calvinism in 1783 by John Dickinson, and taken over by the Methodists one hundred and twenty years later, pay this distinguished honor to a living Freethinker. During 1904 Steven T. Byington, a scholar who 1904] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 247 is now writing occasionally to the New York Na- tion, but then best known as a contributor to Ben- jamin R. Tucker's Liberty (being in general agree- ment with the opinions therein expressed), sent to The Truth Seeker, in a letter of considerable length, "A Challenge to Freethinkers." In the first part of it he made the declaration: "I suppose it to be a fact that irreligious children of irreligious par- ents are likely not to be worth much"; and "I do not seem to remember any case where one of irre- ligious parentage and education has amounted to enough to be a credit to his opinions." Mr. Bying- ton named Pownall, Vermont, as an irreligious town, or one where no church had ever thrived, nor had intelligence or education developed much, while it had been the scene of two whitecappings within a short time. He evinced the purpose of holding Freethought responsible for the low sta- tus of Pownall. Now not a soul in the town was known to The Truth Seeker subscription list, nor as a correspondent or purchaser of books; and Pownall had no liberal society. There was no Freethought community concerned here. Pownall was to The Truth Seeker as Nineveh and Tyre. But as to the offspring of Freethinkers, well, I begged Mr. Byington to accept of one who amounted to a plenty. To quote: "There was a person once who challenged Colonel Ingersoll to name an inventor of the last century who was not a professor of the Christian faith. Ingersoll might have mentioned more, but contended himself with one -- that profound Agnostic, as he called him, John Ericsson, who thought out the Monitor and invented a hundred patentable devices while building her. 248 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1904 "Now Mr. Byington craves the name of an irreligious man of irreligious parentage who amounts to anything. I shall follow the example of Colonel Ingersoll and offer him but one -- CHARLES DARWIN. Darwin's father, Dr. R.W. Darwin, F.R.S. was a Freethinker, and Charles, a man of the first rank, an Agnostic, virtually an Atheist, who bestowed his name upon the century in which he lived -- The Century of Darwin. CHARLES DARWIN. 1904] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 249 "For personal cause," so my Observation ran, "I speak upon this topic with modesty and reserve, for my mother, the parent I take after, is totally irreligious, and if my father had religious convictions, which I doubt, his op- portunity to impart them to me was spoiled by the Civil War, which took him when I was an infant. And irrelig- ious parents reared the angelic Being who condescended to marry me, so I and mine are in a position to be observed, if not counted." Mr. Byington acknowledged that the parentage of my brother and myself tended to invalidate his theory, but that was all; he wouldn't have it that Darwin was the son of an irreligious man. Thus he compelled me to cite the bald facts. The truth behind my cataloging of Darwin as the offspring of a Freethinker was that in the year 1872 Mr. Francis Galton addressed a number of questions to scientific men on their nurture and nature. The questions related also to the nurture of the fathers of the persons addressed. In replying, Mr. Dar- win described his father as a "Freethinker in re- ligious matters." Those were the words Mr. Dar- win chose. Question and answer are on page 357 of Vol. II, "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin." And Darwin, himself a Freethinker, reared two sons, distinguished but showing no signs of sprout- ing any wings. Mr. Byington forgot perhaps the daughters of Ingersoll. And then let him consider the Huxleys. Thomas Henry and his son Leonard and grandson Aldous, are the same class of evidence against the Byington theory. So is my contemporary Charles A. Watts, son of Charles. For that matter I can put two sons of my own on the stand. They bring 250 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1904 no discredit to the opinions of their parents, and they are paying taxes that are doubtless split to salary the courts that put the products of religious education into our penal institutions. If religion- teaching parents would stock the earth for a gen- eration or two with such men, then might be real- ized Mr. Byington's Tolstoyan ideal of the state- less life. He is, by the way, the only philosophical Anarchist I know of who retains faith in the Chris- tian religion. The great body of Christians are archistic and are persuaded that in order that they may have eternal life, they must be their brother's jailer. When this discussion arose, Clarence Darrow had not published his book of boyhood reminis- cences, "Farmington." In that book Darrow re- vealed that he had inherited his religious views from his father; and his father, a subscriber to The Truth Seeker, was the village Infidel. So I brought Darrow forward for Mr. Byington to con- template, and while on the subject gave him also Arthur Brisbane, whose father, Albert, was a radi- cal, a close friend of Theron C. Leland, and their children playmates. Extending the inquiry, I found that the irreligious John Stuart Mill was the son of an irreligious father. Dr. Conway fortified me further, as below I wrote: "I have now a new name, that of Francis William Newman, who was eminent enough to he classical leader in Bristol College and Latin professor at London Uni- versity. He gave up Christianity in 1850, and wrote nu- merous anti-Christian books to explain why. One of these was 'Religion not History,' published when I was a youth by The Truth Seeker. Professor Newman inherited his 1904] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 251 unbelief, as is now for the first time made known to the world by Dr. Conway in his 'Autobiography, Memories, and Experiences,' which is a very valuable work on account of the extent to which it exposes the heresies of the great. In a letter to Conway, Newman said: 'I learned at last, as I came to be about seventeen, that my father was an entire Freethinker, as much as I am now.' The elder Newman was in fact an old follower of Thomas Paine." On The Truth Seeker list are the names of wor- thy descendants of men who took the paper in their day and generation. American Freethinkers had observed the birth- day of Thomas Paine for more than half a cen- tury when the English Freethinkers held their first Paine celebration in 1904. A representative gath- ering met at Lewes in Sussex, June 8, to commemo- rate the 167th anniversary of his birth and the 95th of his death. (Lewes was Paine's place of residence from 1768 to 1774, when he came to America.) George Jacob Holyoake, Charles Watts, and Dr. Clair J. Grece were there to speak. The 1904 International Congress held in Rome September 20-22 drew a large and distinguished attendance. America sent Dr. Moncure D. Con- way as a delegate. Haeckel represented Germany; Lombroso, Italy; Berthelot, France; Maudsley, England; Hector Denis, Belgium; Bjornson, Nor- way; Novikov, Russia; Salmeron (ex-president), Spain. Haeckel and several of the others named were present; all were appointed honorary vice- presidents. More than five thousand delegates at- tended. The pope pronounced the congress "sa- tanic" and shut up the Vatican while it was in ses- 252 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1904 sion. He also decreed a "solemn function of atonement for the outrage to Divine Majesty and for the vindication of the honor and good name of the city." William Heaford and Joseph McCabe reported the event for The Literary Guide; Dr. Conway for The Truth Seeker. Prof. Ernst Haeckel commu- nicated to the congress a plan for a universal Free- thinkers' Alliance. George William Foote, president of the National Secular Society of Great Britain, and editor of The Freethinker, returned to London to report that the gathering was a magnificent affair; yet it was not a Congress; it was a Demonstration. The condition of the Freethought papers in 1904 showed a falling away. The Boston Investigator, established in 1831 by Abner Kneeland, and now being issued at a loss by L.K. Washburn, sus- pended publication on July 30 and turned over its subscription list to The Truth Seeker, Mr. Wash- burn signing up as contributing editor. Secular Thought, Toronto, Canada, hitherto for twenty years a weekly, now issued as a monthly, J. Spen- cer Ellis, successor to Charles Watts, continuing the editorship. The postoffice authorities revoked the second-class mailing privilege of Lucifer, the radical paper conducted by Mrs. Lillian Harman in Chicago, and ordered stamps on every copy; but the discrimination was short-lived. Joseph Symes, for two decades publisher of The Liberator, Mel- bourne, Australia, was compelled to discontinue. He gave as the reason, lack of support, the result 1904] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 253 of bad times brought on by "mad legislation, whole- sale sport, gambling, and Socialism in its most in- sane form." The Searchlight, successor to The Independent Pulpit, survived at Waco, Texas, J. D. Shaw publisher. Free Society, anarchist-com- munist, Chicago, announced its permanent suspen- sion. On August 13 The Truth Seeker abandoned the use of movable type, except for advertisements, and shortly went "on the machines" of the Le- couver Press, where it has remained ever since. Citizen George Francis Train, in whom the ele- ments were so mixed as to make him an eccen- tric genius, died the 19th of January in his 75th year. Mr. Train, who was a non-Christian, spoke many times from the Liberal Club platform and had spells of writing for The Truth Seeker. On the irrational side, he believed himself destined to immortality of the flesh, and fancied he possessed a force which he called "psycho" whereby he could control the actions of others and exercise powers over life and death. As a promoter of great schemes in railways and shipping, he made a for- tune and lost it. The distinguished English Agnostic, Sir Leslie Stephen, an associate of the Rationalist Press, died in London, February 22, at 72. Since Senator George F. Hoar of Massachu- setts had contributed occasional articles to The Truth Seeker, he may be mentioned as one of its correspondents lost by death. He passed away September 30, in his 79th year. He was one of the great senators of his generation. 254 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1904 The American Secular Union and Freethought Federation called the 27th congress of the society to meet at St. Louis, October 18, in connection with the International Freethought Congress, for a five days' session. Of this gathering The Truth Seeker says editorially: "The International Congress for Progressive and Lib- eral Thought, in conjunction with the annual congress of the American Secular Union and Freethought Federation, held in St. Louis, Mo., from October 15 to October 20, was not, as was the Rome congress to some extent, rendered unwieldy by its size, nor hampered in its deliberations by confusion of tongues. Although, as was to be expected of an international congress, especially one held under the auspices of the Freie Gemeinde, there were present many to whom English is not native, all the proceedings were had in that language. The business and deliberative sessions were held in the pleasant Freie Gemeinde Hall. The 'propaganda mass meeting' took place in the Olympic Theater. The attendance was large and representative, the deliberations were wise, the addresses able, the speak- ers eloquent, the hearers enthusiastic. "The event of the Congress was, of course, the receipt of Professor Haeckel's proposal for a Monistic Alliance, which he had caused to be rendered into English for pres- entation before the St. Louis gathering. It will be found on the second and third pages of this number of The Truth Seeker" (Oct. 29, 1904). The allies of the Secular Union at this meeting were of German antecedents, as their names indi- cated. The Committee on Organization was com- posed of Leopold Saltiel, Ad. Falbisaner, Prof. Geo. Kral; on credentials; George Fritz, Selmar Pabst, Henry Heider. The Congress elected as officers for the ensuing year: E.M. Macdonald, president; E.C. Reich- 1904] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 255 wald, secretary; E.B. Foote, treasurer. The edi- tor said: "The Congress was a success as regards attendance, enthusiasm, and those other features which have made previous congresses successful. Professor Haeckel's contribution has made it mem- orable." The proposition of Haeckel related to a Univer- sal Monistic Alliance -- that is, an alliance of all freethinking societies as Monists. "The Philoso- pher of Jena, the Darwin of Germany, is the most eminent man," remarked the editor, "who has ever offered 'a thesis of organization' for the guidance of Freethinkers." The fundamental principle of Monism, based on experience, reason, and science, is the unity of the world. It contradicts the theory of two worlds, the material world or nature, and a spiritual or su- pernatural world, as inconsistent with modern science. The body and soul (psyche) have the same origin and are the products of evolution as we know them. The opposite theory is founded on defective knowledge of reality, confused think- ing, and mystical tradition. Organization on this thesis was mainly confined to Germany, where it became a considerable cult, with the adhesion of many educators and men of science. For the first time in history, a Sunday ball game between professionals was played in New York on April 17. Freethinkers hailed the event as prom- ising, being "the widest breach yet made in the sabbatarian walls." The Sundayites hastened to close it, and succeeded, with the aid of timid poli- ticians, in reducing the breach to the playing of 256 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1904 games to which no admission fee was charged. In The Truth Seeker of May 28, 1904, first ap- pears the name of Edward Tuck as a contributor to the paper's sustaining fund. He is credited with $100. Mr. Tuck is still giving. Within a week of the time I am writing this, the public has been disturbed by a great marine dis- aster, the sinking of the steamship Vestris with the loss of upwards of one hundred lives. One day in June, 1904, the excursion steamer General Slocum burned in the East River above Hell Gate and more than a thousand perished. "Where man is powerless, heaven cannot save." That was an appropriate quotation regarding the tragedy, be- cause this was a Sunday-school picnic under the auspices of St. Mark's Lutheran church in Sixth street, Manhattan. About fifteen hundred persons went aboard; the bodies recovered, mostly of wo- men and children, with those that were missing, numbered 1,040. The following Observation from The Truth Seeker of October 15, 1904, has historical interest because it concerns a man who later became a good Freethinker: "I am invited by the Rev. J.R. Slattery of Baltimore, Md., to send him the names of my departed relatives and friends, inclosing twenty-five cents, and in return for the same, as I grasp the proposition, he undertakes that two 'novenas of masses' shall be said or done for the repose of their souls. As a kind of feeler he forwards a small envelope containing five thin aluminum 'medals' which, as I learn from the printing outside, are 'blessed.' John R. Slattery was at that time a priest at the 1904] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 257 head of a Catholic institution in Baltimore. A few years later he began reading The Truth Seeker, and in 1910 was a contributor. Slattery as a priest was an amateur; that is, he played the game because he liked it, supposing it to be square. An educated woman lent him Herbert Spencer; he read "Ecclesiastical Institutions," saw that the church was a system for exploiting everybody but the higher clergy, and not being dependent on the church for a living he got out of it -- all as simple, he said, as taking off the clerical collar. He turned Rationalist, not an anti-clerical, who is often only an inverted Catholic. He knew the church from the inside -- was familiar with the system, knew some of the bishops' mistresses; knew the habits of the priests, and allowed them to be neither bet- ter nor worse than other men with their limita- tions and opportunities. He thought many of them would jump the job if they could better them- selves. It was like going into politics. The priests were as good as the politicians, he supposed, and the calling of one was as "sacred" as the other. To regard the nunneries as "brothels" he held was ab- surd. The women who went into them had gener- ally "missed their man" because they were unat- tractive -- had no lure and maybe no desire. The boss women among them might have their favorite priests; but priests had the run of the parish; the good-looking ones enjoyed themselves, and perhaps needed more address to avoid intrigues than to get one going. Lively ladies made a lark of their con- fessions and put ideas into the head of their con- fessor. CHAPTER XVI. FREETHOUGHT to an important extent takes the form of protest against various sorts of stealing and of dishonesty practiced in the name of religion. I have told of the "Methodist Steal South" -- a huge appropriation procured from Congress, by false pretenses and plain lying, for the Methodist Book Concern in Tennessee. The Truth Seeker of 1905 chronicles a Catholic Steal West. It was during the Roosevelt administration, when before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, January 31, Senator Bard of California disclosed that, by direction of the Presi- dent, funds appropriated by Congress for Indian schools had been diverted to Catholic and other sectarian institutions in violation of the law. The sum involved was upwards of one hundred thousand dollars. Roosevelt at once denied that he "directed" the misappropriation, though admitting he approved it. That the proceeding was in violation of the law, as Senator Bard declared, no one took the trouble to deny. The Catholic church then had in Wash- ington an agent, or lobbyist, one Dr. E.L. Scharf. The senator from California stated that he had been approached by Dr. Scharf with the proposal that if the Republicans would agree to bring about the 258 1905] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 259 legislation permitting the diversion of Indian trust funds to the Catholic schools on reservations, the Catholics would see that twenty congressional dis- tricts in which the Republicans were weak were carried for the party. Senator Bard would not as- sent to the deal, but it caught Roosevelt and was passed to his credit as a politician. The United States attorney-general had pronounced the appro- priation illegal. Roosevelt was obliged to explain his approval of the steal, which robbed the Indians of their funds and gave them to the church. His explanations did not explain. The law against the misappropriation was unmistakable, but the church kept the money. It soon became apparent that Roosevelt had adopted the policy of patronizing the Catholics. A list of his appointments of them to government positions would fill a page. A two- column article in The Truth Seeker for August 19, 1905, sets forth the facts, then publicly known, now ancient history, which were dwelt upon in later is- sues as further evidences of Roosevelt's truck- ling to the Catholic element accumulated. The press paid no attention to the religious complexion of the appointees, but in many instances exposed their in- competency. The worst sufferer from press censorship in 1905 was, as usual, Moses Harman. Exclusion from the Canadian mails came first, and then arrest on a charge of depositing prohibited matter in the mails of the United States. The Free Speech League of New York took up the defense. Lucifer printed es- says on sex reform, which the editor of The Truth Seeker said were "mostly tommyrot and hogwash," 260 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1905 but had no obscene words in them. The articles were "physiologically puerile and sociologically impos- sible," yet powerless to injure the morals of any- body. lt was an infamous injustice, the editor de- clared, to "imprison a man like Moses Harman for printing some foolish stuff from writers who mean well even if they do not know much." A grand jury indicted Harman and at the same time found a true bill against Dr. Alice B. Stockham, a public speaker, a writer on medical themes, and author of "Tokology," "Karezza," and other works on the marriage relation. The courts convicted in both cases, and both appealed. Meanwhile Lucifer was suppressed or censored. The Truth Seeker printed the judge's charge in the Stockham case as "in- teresting in its moral stupidity." Clarence Darrow appeared for the defendants, who were fined $500. George Bernard Shaw came out nobly in Har- man's defense, condemning comstockery in Ameri- ca and priding himself that he lived in "a com- paratively free country." That was Mr. Shaw's de- lusion, for every instance of triumphant moralism in America can be paralleled in England. London had just suppressed Maeterlinck's latest play, de- stroyed an edition of Balzac, and sent a translator of Zola to jail. The tragedy of Ida Craddock in America was duplicated by that of Miss Allonby in England. That country had prosecuted the sellers of Havelock Ellis's works and so set a precedent for banning them in the United States. The magazine called The Adult suffered over there the same as Lucifer here. England once prohibited Paine's 1905] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 261 works, and a century later sent G.W. Foote to jail for blasphemy. And there have been later instances, so that on the whole England and the United States are about equally afflicted with church-bred moral- ism. We probably got one lap ahead of England when, in 1905, the New York police forced Arnold Daly to withdraw Shaw's play, "Mrs. Warren's Profes- sion," from the boards of the Garrick Theater as "socialistic," and the public library put all of Shaw's books on the restricted list. Dr. Felix Adler of the Society for Ethical Culture, arguing that there is much going on that we can afford not to know, approved the stopping of the Shaw plays. Dr. Adler always was nervous in a moral crisis. Mrs. Helen Wilmans Post, the "mental science" practitioner of Sea Breeze, Fla., convicted of us- ing the mails for fraudulent purposes in the conduct of her business as a long distance healer, was sen- tenced to a year and a day in prison, but appealed her case and won out in a higher court. Mrs. Wil- mans deemed it an instance of religious persecution, she being a known Agnostic and her prosecutors orthodox Christians. The Free Speech League had in Washington a scout, Dr. Pfeiffer, who reported occasionally to The Truth Seeker. The Freethinkers were backing E.C. Reichwald, secretary of the American Secu- lar Union, in suits he had brought to enjoin the use of school buildings as places of worship and of school children for congregations. The foregoing show what I mean when I say that the job of Freethought forces is mostly oppos- 262 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1905 ing various sorts of thefts and similar practices in the name of religion. In Los Angeles a serious attempt made by Single- ton W. Davis to establish a magazine of Rational- ism resulted in The Humanitarian Review, begun in May, 1904. Mr. Davis was his own editor and compositor. He conducted The Humanitarian Re- view for about eight years, until overtaken by the infirmities of age and obliged to suspend. But that was not a prosperous era for journals of opinion. The Banner of Light, aforetime Liberal Spiritualist, had turned more or less religious. Three lectureships were announced in New York at the beginning of 1905. Hugh O. Pentecost spoke every morning in Lyric Hall (now, I believe, called Bryant Hall) and Henry Frank at Berkeley Lyceum. On Tuesday evenings, James F. Morton, Jr., lec- tured at Clinton Hall. Pentecost's lectures were regularly reported for The Truth Seeker. Dr. E.A. Wood of Syracuse reported the organization of a local Secular Society with fifty members. In August Mrs. Marilla M. Ricker, one of the first woman lawyers to be admitted to practice in the United States Supreme Court, called a convention of the New Hampshire Secular Union to meet in Dover, the city of her residence, for an Ingersoll's birthday anniversary celebration. Another lawyer, Anson G. Osgood of Manchester, president of the society, Lemuel K. Washburn of The Truth Seeker, Carl Burell, noted botanist, Frank W. Coburn of New Durham, and Mrs. Ricker were the speakers. The International Freethought Congress was held this 19051 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 263 year in Paris, September 4-7. Very largely attended -- for three thousand delegates from nearly every country in Europe were there -- it resembled the con- gress of the previous year at Rome in being badly managed and thrown into disorder by the quarrels which socialists and anarchists had brought there to be settled. One feature of the meeting was a great success. That was the organization of a parade past the statue of Chevalier de la Barre, a young man of 19 who was brutally tortured and killed in the days of Voltaire for not saluting a religious procession. There were one hundred thousand persons in this parade. America sent no delegate. The reports of Bradlaugh's daughter Hypatia and Editor G.W. Foote of the London Freethinker were copied in The Truth Seeker of October 7. In this, the fifth season of M.M. Mangasarian's Independent Relig- ious Society of Chicago, his congregations had out- grown the Grand Opera House and necessitated re- moval to the new Theodore Thomas Orchestra Hall, with a capacity of 2,500 persons. The Truth Seeker for 1905 contains, I think, the first contributions by John D. Bradley -- a column of Sunday Enforcement News. I understood from the editor that these reports were compiled for the Seventh-Day Adventist press and exchanged with The Truth Seeker for certain books. It is also understood that these books so obtained by Mr. Bradley had something to do with his ceasing to be a Seventh-Day Adventist. John G. Palmer of Pennsylvania wrote that he was recently turned down and refused a school, as teacher, because his 264 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1905 views were not orthodox. Mr. Palmer, nearly a quarter of a century later, still occasionally writes to The Truth Seeker. You cannot keep a good man down. He holds a judicial office. There is a let- ter, September 23, from Chas. C. DeRudio, Major U.S. Army, retired. Major DeRudio, a constant reader for years, had a career as thrilling as that of any soldier of fortune. The Saturday Evening Post published it a few years ago. An Ohio man named Cyrus Sears communicated with the paper a long time before we found out he was a Civil War hero, cited and promoted for valor. On May 1, 1905, the office of The Truth Seeker, ending 18 years' tenancy of 28 Lafayette Place, removed to 62 Vesey street, up one flight, and so within a few doors of the Lecouver Press at No. 51, where the paper already was printed. The floor at No. 62 had lately been occupied as a pool room and prepared with "refrigerator" doors in expect- ancy of raids by the police. The reputation of the loft was revealed when the editor made application for a telephone. That must aforetime have been a sporting locality. Our office was discovered by Christopher Morley of the Evening Post (No. 20 Vesey street), who commented facetiously on the truth being so accessible -- only one flight up. The rent, begun at $50 per month, kept climbing until it reached $150, when it was cheaper to move. Morgan Robertson, the nautical story writer whose literary career began with the Log of Noah's Ark in The Truth Seeker, invented in 1905 a de- vice that he called an "invisible searchlight." This 1905] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 265 was the periscope used on submarines. The Hol- land Submarine Boat Company took up the inven- tion. Robertson applied for a patent, seeing a for- tune ahead, and bade farewell to literature. But the patent never came out, the office in Washing- ton having discovered that Jules Verne had men- tioned some contraption whereby the crew of a sub- merged vessel were able to look about them above water. It was ridiculous that another story teller, who invented nothing but tales of impossible voy- ages, should have dashed the fortunes of a real inventor, but the wise men of the Patent Office al- lowed it to happen, and Robertson, disappointed, re- turned to the spinning of yarns. There occurred this year a wordy discussion of the sex of angels. The Episcopals building their Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Morningside Heights employed sculptor Gutzon Borglum to cre- ate some angels for the Belmont memorial chapel, and he produced two beings which the Episcopal building committee declared to be females and as such unauthorized by holy writ. One of the beings had been conceived to represent the Angel of the Annunciation, commonly called Gabriel. In defense of his non-masculine piece of work, Mr. Borglum said he could scarce imagine that a male person who was not a family doctor would be sent to tell Mary of her condition and to discuss how it had happened; hence he had omitted sexual characters, whiskers and so on, as far as possible. He also left out the female curves. Yet they detected femininity in the plaster cast and said it would never do. Mr. Bor- 266 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1905 glum yielded and smashed the models, but main- tained that the idea that God sent a man to tell Mary she should bear Jesus was too gross for him, and anyway he was astounded, absolutely, that any clergyman could stand in the presence of images of a purely religious and spiritual character and see nothing in them but sex. Perhaps he had not done much work for ministers. The ministers were scripturally sound. Biblical angels are men antagonistic to race suicide. It might be "gross," as Mr. Borglum said, to send a man on so delicate a mission as that of the Angel Gabriel to Mary. Yet such was the custom. One came to notify Sarah, mother of Isaac, and likewise to her who was to bear Samson, one of the predecessors of Jesus as a messiah. Those doubtless were angels who were called sons of God in the sixth of Genesis; they had the angelic habit of seeing the daughters of men. Following their appearance, units were added to the population of Judea. I wrote a three- column article on angels, evidencing a knowledge of the subject which I do not now possess. The climax of all Paine celebrations that had been held since the beginning marked Saturday, October 14, 1905. That was the occasion of the rededication and assignment to the care and custody of New Rochelle of the Thomas Paine Monument on North street, erected in 1839 by Gilbert Vale and other Freethinkers and since kept in repair and supplied with a bronze bust of Paine by the liberals of New York and the country at large. For upwards of sixty years the monument had stood in a small in- closure at the southeast corner of North street and 1905] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 267 the lane that led therefrom to the Paine residence or farmhouse, a little way back. The art of sculptor Wilson MacDonald had sup- plied a fine bronze bust of Paine to surmount the shaft. Now the town of New Rochelle had brought the monument out of its obscurity and placed it al- most on the curb of the main avenue (North street) and rounded the corners of the lane so as to make a small "park" with roads on three sides of it. To quote from a description written at the time: "The monument itself is much better situated than for- merly. In the middle of Paine avenue (for so the lane is called), it is on more elevated ground, has a raised and curbed walk about it, and is immedi- ately surrounded by a yet more elevated base and an iron fence." The city council of New Rochelle which had prepared the new site, expressed a readi- ness to take title to the monument and care for it in the future. The Freethinkers organized a Soci- ety with Moncure D. Conway as president to hand it over. There were present at this day of celebra- tion representatives of the Army and the National Guard and the Sons of the American Revolution. The army post at Ft. Slocum sent a band and a bat- talion; the National Guard a battery of five guns, which unlimbered in an adjacent field and roared a salute. The town turned out, and a parade led by Minute Men and Continentals, and including the school children, came up North avenue between residences displaying the American flag on staffs or at their windows. Then music by the band, singing by the school children, a speech by the Mayor, and addresses by the chairman, Dr. E.B. Foote, Theo- 268 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1905 dore Schroeder, and T.B. Wakeman. I quote an- other paragraph: "The addresses had been inter- spersed with music by the Fort Slocum Band. The children had sung 'America,' 'Columbia the Gem of the Ocean,' and had begun the last number but one on the program, which was 'The Star Spangled Banner.' Hats were off now, and before they could be got on again, one of the cannon over in the field spoke its word for Paine and the hills were rever- berating. It was a salute of thirteen guns, one for each of the original states." That was a great occasion, like a Fourth of July new risen or Independence Day. The Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, who for long had canvassed the country as a promoter of blue Sunday laws, established in Washington, D.C., an Inter- national Reform Bureau, otherwise known as "The First Christian Lobby." His tools in Congress were Senator Gallinger of New Hampshire and Represen- tative Gillett of Massachusetts who let him use their franking privilege to mail his literature of Reform. The Washington correspondent of the New York Herald (July 17, 1905) smoked out the scheme and exposed the scandal of it, The correspondent esti- mated that Mr. Crafts' business by mail had amount- ed to thirty-five tons of matter, transported at a public cost of $6,300, the reverend reformer being that much to the good through the use of the con- gressional frank. It was not so bad as that, accord- ing to letters that Crafts sent to The Truth Seeker, but the fact remained, that he had been working both the Government Printing Office and free mail- ing privileges to distribute his documents. 1905] FIFTY YFARS OF FREETHOUGHT 269 The New Ro- chelle Memorial to Thomas Paine. (picture of the Thomas Paine Monument.) 270 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1905 The exposure did the First Christian Lobby seri- ous harm. Since the death of Crafts the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals has functioned in his place. In the fall the Rev. Dr. Algernon S. Crapsey, an Episcopalian minister of Rochester, N.Y., having gone beyond the requirements of his ordination vow by telling the truth about the Bible, was accused by a broths clergyman of preaching "erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's word." Thus began a famous heresy case which ended in the conviction of Dr. Crapsey. The bill for the separation of church and state in France, passed by the Chamber of Deputies in July, was adopted in the French Senate on Decem- ber 6 and became a law. It did away with a con- cordat which for more than a century had regulated the relations of the civil power to religion in France and reduced the public worship budget by about eight million dollars. The French law so seriously curtailed the privi- leges of the church that there was a considerable exodus of the sisterhoods, many of them establish- ing themselves in the United States, where their surviving members exercise the franchise. The death list of well-known American Liberals in 1905 contains the name of Watson Heston, who, beginning in 1886, made pictures for The Truth Seeker, with a short interruption, for twelve years. He was a native of Ohio, and 59 years old when he died in Carthage, Mo., Jan. 17, 1905. There was no congress of the American Secular Union in 1905. CHAPTER XVII. THE TRUTH SEEKER in 1906 published weekly a column of lecture and meeting announcements. Five or six of the meet- ings held were in New York. Elbert Hubbard was touring in season, discoursing on such mordacious themes as "Respectability: Its Rise and Rem- edy," and running a list of his engagements in the column. Jack London also was speaking. The advocacy carried on by the "social science" and "liberator" groups, who supplied the paper with their notices, had little to do with Freethought and Secularism. In a national way, organized Freethought was quiescent; the American Secular Union not functioning beyond the publication of the "Report of the International Congress for Progressive Thought and of the Twenty-seventh Annual Congress of the America Secular Union and Freethought Federation" (1904). This work contained Haeckel's Letter to the Congress; his Theses for Organization; addresses by John E. Remsburg, Judge C.B. Waite, Moncure D. Con- way and others. Freethought organization was marking time. Of such work as the American Secular Union had done under the presidency of Putnam and with E.A. Stevens for secretary, there was nothing to 271 272 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1906 report. Nevertheless Volume XXXIII of The Truth Seeker preserves some of the most inter- esting history in our annals. There was a notable heresy trial. The standing committee of the Dio- cese of Western New York brought formal charges against the Rev. Dr. Algernon Sidney Crapsey, alleging that Dr. Crapsey denied and impugned the doctrine that Jesus Christ is God; or was begot- ten by a ghost or born of a virgin who knew not a man, or rose from the dead after suffering death by capital punishment and then being buried. The trial came off at Batavia before an ecclesiastical court that followed the procedure of Judge Bene- dict in Comstock cases, ruling out the testimony of experts prepared to testify that Crapsey's opin- ions were not heretical as compared with those they held themselves. Convicted and suspended, Dr. Crapsey appealed to the Court of Review, and that tribunal, sitting at the Clergy House across Lafayette place from The Truth Seeker office, con- firmed the verdict and gave the doctor thirty days to repent. To gain the distinction of a convicted heretic this was the worst that Crapsey could say: "Jesus did not succeed because he was born of a vir- gin or because he was reported to have risen bodily from the dead. These legends concerning him are the result, not the cause, of the marvelous success of the man. These stories were told of him only because the simple folk could in no other way adequately express their concep- tion of the greatness of Jesus. Only a virgin-born could be as pure as Jesus. Only a life more powerful than death could have the strength of Jesus. The creeds of Christendom are of value not as historical statements, for primitive and medieval Christians had no historical sense 1906] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 273 Looking for another heresy action, the Baptists made public demand for the dismissal of Prof. George B. Foster, an instructor in Chicago Uni- versity, who had written a book on "The Finality of the Christian Religion." The trustees failed to act in the matter and Dr. Foster carried on. The law for the separation of church and state in France now going into effect, the pope cried "Persecution." The law provided that the clergy and the members of a given parish might organ- ize themselves into an "association" and lease from government the property belonging thereto. Such a transaction required that an inventory be made, which the church refused to permit. The priests, charging the faithful that it would be sacrilege to "number" church property, rallied the strong- arms, the toughs, the fanatics, and the enemies of the republic who called themselves royalists, to re- sist the officers of the state. They said: "Who is going to put a renting price on the host and the sacraments?" Catholics have a quick conscience when asked to carry out a civil law or any order at the expense of things consecrated. At about that time there was in Chicago an organization of the building trades that detailed members to dynamite structures erected with "scab" labor. The McNamara brothers belonged to this union, and it fell to one of them to blow up a Catholic church that had employed non-union hands. But the Mc- Namaras were Catholics. The delegate insisted on knowing first whether the church had been con- secrated, and when he found that mummery had 274 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1906 been performed he asked to be excused. Con- sciences like that defeated the Associations law in France, as they have made the separation laws of Mexico hard to enforce. Moses Harman, editor of Lucifer, Chicago, went to Joliet, March 1, to begin serving a year's sen- tence for printing something unorthodox in his pa- per. A long petition for his pardon went to Presi- dent Roosevelt, who by denying it missed his chance to say: "That which I am about to do is a better thing than I have ever done." He missed the chance to dignify a life that on the whole was a footless splurge, with one generous act for the fu- ture to applaud. The Christian Advocate published a letter ascribed to Benjamin Franklin, as written "To Thomas Paine." The Truth Seeker showed why the letter couldn't be anything of the kind; that it might not have been written by Franklin and cer- tainly not meant for Paine. Thereupon Editor Buckley of The Christian Advocate dispatched a "commission" to Washington to examine the origi- nal manuscript on file in the Department of State. What the commission reported added no strength to the contention that Franklin wrote the letter to the author of the "Age of Reason." In the contro- versy that ensued, Dr. Moncure D. Conway took part; and that all readers might judge for them- selves whether the letter justified the "To Thomas Paine" title, reproduced it as it was alleged to have come from Franklin's hand: "Phila., July, 1786,(1 "Dear Sir: I have read your Manuscript with some 1906] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 275 Attention. By the Arguments it Contains against the Doctrine of a particular Providence, tho' you allow a general Providence, you strike at the Foundation of all Religion: For without the Belief of a Providence' that takes cognizance of, guards and guides & may favour par- ticular Persons, there is no Motive to Worship a Deity, to fear its Displeasure, or to pray for its Protection. I will not enter into any Discussion of your Principles(2 tho' you seem to desire it; At present I shall only give my Opinion, that tho' your Reasonings are subtle, and may prevail with some Readers, you will not succeed so as to change the general Sentiments of Mankind on that Subject, and the Consequences of printing this Piece will be a great deal of Odium drawn upon yourself, mischief to you, & no Benefit to others. He that spits against the wind, spits in his own Face. But were you to succeed, do you imagine any Good would be done by it? You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous Life without the Assistance afforded by Religion, you having a clear Perception of the Advantages of Virtue & the Disadvan- tages of Vice, and possessing a Strength of Resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common Temptations. But think how great a Proportion of Mankind consists of weak & ignorant Men & Women, and of inexperienced & inconsiderate Youth of both Sexes who have need of the Motives of Religion to restrain them from Vice, to support their Virtue, & retain them in the Practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great Point for its security. And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is to your Religious Education, for the Habits of Virtue upon which you now justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent Talents of reason on a less hazardous Subject, and thereby obtain Rank with our most distinguished Authors.(3 For among us, it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a Youth(4 to be received into the Company of Men, should prove his Manhood by beating his Mother. I would advise you therefore not to attempt unchaining the Tyger, but to burn this Piece before it is seen by any other Person 276 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1906 whereby you will save yourself a great deal of Mortifica- tion from the Enemies it may raise against you, and per- haps a good deal of Regret & Repentance. If Men are so wicked as we now see them with Religion,' what would they be without it? I intend this Letter itself as a Proof of my Friendship & therefore add no Professions of it; but subscribe simply Yours, B. F......." Notes on the Letter 1. July, 1786. -- The date is given on the author- ity of Henry Stevens of Vermont, an antiquarian, who collected Franklin papers. It is uncertain, the writing in the original being obscure. At that time Paine and Franklin were meeting daily and were therefore under no necessity to communicate by letter. In his fourth "Letters to American Citi- zens" Paine said: "In my publications I follow the rule I began with in 'Common Sense,' that is, to consult nobody, nor to let anybody see what I write till it appears publicly." He began the writ- ing of his "Age of Reason" in Paris, 1793. Frank- lin had died in 1790, three years earlier. 2. This is poor literary criticism. Paine's ar- guments are against the Bible and the Christian system, not Providence, general or particular, which is not brought up in the "Age of Reason." 3. Already there was not a more distinguished author in America than Paine. Franklin writing to Paine might conceivably warn him against risk- ing the loss of the rank he had won, but he could not ignore it. 4.' Paine was no "youth" in 1786, being 40 years old; 5. Franklin's religion. if he had one. was not 1906] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 277 the Christianity that Paine argued against. The discarding of that Christianity could not be re- garded by Franklin as a parting with all religion. The view persisted in by the Christian misedu- cators, that Franklin rebuked Paine for writing the "Age of Reason" seven years before Paine be- gan on the work -- is contrary to Franklin's own habits of thought, as shown by a bit of biblical criticism in which he indulged. Franklin observed that the commandment "Increase and multiply" was in the Old Testament, and so preceded that other injunction: "Love one another," and he held that the precept which was last in order in the scripture should come first in practice. During the summer of the year now under review my old Californian friend John Beaumont wrote the editor inquiring: "Where is G.E.M. now?" He had seen no Observations in the paper for quite a while. The editor replied: "G.E.M. at the present moment is hibernating at Skeetside put- ting the finishing touches on A Short History of the Inquisition, which we are to issue this fall." It was a book of above six hundred pages which the editor had held in mind for some years, and E. C. Walker had made a stack of copy for it. But Mr. Walker had written little about the Inquisi- tion. He had done three hundred pages on Protes- tant Persecutions, the Warfare of Religion and Science, and the Attitude of the Church Toward Slavery -- very valuable matter, but not Inquisition. In the spring of 1906 the Editor suggested that I should get together the necessary "bibliography" 278 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1906 express the authorities and reference books to Skeetside, and stay with them until the history was done. I did so, and in the course of the season produced a quantity of manuscript equal to the con- tribution of Walker, which is to say enough for another three hundred pages. For imparting information, neither the reading nor studying of history can compare with trying to write it. My "history" of the Inquisition unveiled to the writer, myself, some curious facts and led to unforeseen conclusions. For instance. The school histories teach that the good and pious Queen Isabella of Spain, having hypothecated her personal jewelry, gave Christopher Columbus the proceeds and said to him: "Take this, my all, and go and discover America." It may be rude to give a lady away after she is dead (so I wrote in 1906), but the, records of the, Inquisition show that while Isa- bella may have slipped the money to the great navi- gator, she had previously drawn an order on a Jewish gentleman for the coin. The fact is that when either Isabella or her husband Ferdinand needed funds, they had only to mention the circum- stance to a Jew who possessed the amount required, and, as the phrase is, he came through with the mazuma. He knew there was no use in his saying he hadn't got it, nor any idea where to look for so much money, for if he made that excuse their royal majesties would reply: "We will see if the In- quisition cannot help you find it"; and following that the Jew would wake up some morning in the donjon of the nearest Robbers' Castle provided by the inquisitors for the entertainment of their guests. 1906] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 279 On the morrow his property would be confiscated and in due time sold to the speculators in real and personal estates, and the money from the sale cov- ered into the royal treasury minus as much as had stuck to the hands of the chief inquisitor and his subordinates, all of whom were thieves. Later on, maybe, he would get some sort of a trial before the Board of Conviction called a tribunal, but the in- quisitors attended to the liquidation of his property first. The charge of heresy was enough to war- rant the confiscation of his goods. Often their majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella, preferred to deal directly with the wealthy Jewish subject, as they had found there was an appreciable percentage of waste when the estate of a heretic was adminis- tered upon by the functionaries of the Holy Office. Luis Santangel, a man of Jewish lineage and antecedents who financed Columbus in the discov- ery of America got it "coming and going," for af- ter Isabella had borrowed his ducats the Inquisition penanced him and took what he had left. In 1905 Judge Brewer of the United States Su- preme Court published a book to substantiate his dictum in a case brought under the Alien Contract Labor law, that the United States is a Christian country. The judge based his argument on the ground that the discoverers of America were Chris- tians. He did not know, and it would not have af- fected his conclusion if he had known, that a heret- ical Jew paid the bills. In March the English Princess Ena, on the point of marrying the king of Spain, went into the Ro- 280 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1906 man Endowment House at San Sebastian a mem- ber of the Church of England and came out a Catholic, having in the process recorded her belief that the other Battenbergs and the rest of the royal family would be damned. At the marriage of the Princess to Alfonso in Madrid, a crazy Anarchist named Morral threw a bomb into the wedding procession with fatal re- sults, although it missed the newly-weds. The au- thorities discovered that Morral had once written to Francisco Ferrer asking for a place as librarian in the Modern School that Ferrer, with the aid of a wealthy lady, had established in Spain. There was no other basis for the action of the Spanish authorities, instigated by the church, in arresting Ferrer, closing his Modern Schools, and robbing him of all the funds at his command. Except for protests from scholars and humanitarians the world over, Ferrer would have been courtmartialed and shot. It was only a three years' reprieve. They got him in 1909. "'The long and useful life of George Jacob Holy- oake, the Father of Secularism and pioneer in many important political and industrial movements, reached its close at Brighton, England, on January 22. He died at the age of 89 years, full of honors, beloved by thousands, and respected by the world." The "Secularism" which Mr. Holyoake fathered (about 1846) consisted of a system of ethical and social principles not dependent for their sanction or in any other way upon religion. The word "Secular" gives a name to the national society of 1906] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 281 GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE Mr. Holyoake was known to his contemporaries as the Father of Secularism. 282 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1906 Freethinkers in England that Charles Bradlaugh headed a dozen years after Holyoake introduced the idea. At his maturity, Mr. Holyoake, a mili- tant Freethinker in his younger days and a pris- oner for Atheism, took up economics in the form of cooperative trade. But The Truth Seeker says that he "died the same radical and agitator that he had been through more than two generations." Almost as full of years as Holyoake and equally deserving of public honors, Mrs. Lucy N. Col- man died at her home in Syracuse, N.Y., on the 18th of January. Her age was 88. Mrs. Colman left the New England church she had been born into, and all other churches, because of their "complicity with slavery," and she was a fellow- worker with the abolitionists. She joined with The Truth Seeker in its endeavors toward the abolition of Anthony Comstock, whom she heartily despised, and kept in touch with the paper for a quarter of a century as a reader and contributor. Editor Charles C. Moore of the Blue Grass Blade, previously known to these memoirs, departed this life at Lexington, Ky., February 7, in his sev- enty-second year. Moore had been a Camp- bellite preacher. He served one term in jail for libeling a church, one for fighting, and one for ad- vocating "free love." He narrowly escaped an- other for violating the obscenity statutes, and a fifth for blasphemy. These annals must chronicle the fact that Charles Watts of England, of whom I have said so much of an appreciative nature, died on the 1906] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 283 night of the 16th of February, 1906. Having been born at Bristol on February the 27th, 1836, he was almost seventy years old. His first lecture, deliv- ered at the age of 14, was entitled "The Curse of the Nation and Its Remedy." It was an attack on the demon Rum. At about the same period he grew to be a favorite amateur actor, and never lost his interest in histrionics. At that era also he heard a lecture by George Jacob Holyoake and went into Secularism for life. There are said to have been years when he averaged more than a lecture a day. He was with Bradlaugh on the National Reformer, with Holyoake and W. Stewart Ross on The Secular Review, with Foote on the Free- thinker more or less, and with J. Spencer Ellis on Secular Thought in Canada. Although Bradlaugh preceded him on a visit to the United States, his mission was political and Watts was the first Eng- lish Freethinker "to cross the Atlantic and mount the American Freethought platform." Mr. Watts was equally fortunate in his son Charles Albert, with whom also there was "no one like Dad," and who by founding the Rationalist Press Association effectively continues his father's work. The colaborer and eulogist of Mr. Watts, W. Stewart Ross, who took the pen name of "Sala- din," failed to live out the year, and died Novem- ber 30. This writer of force and fire was a Scot, born in Galloway in the year 1844. "With the death of Miss Susan B. Anthony de- parts the last of the trio of great women who brought the woman suffrage cause to the front- 284 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1906 CHARLES WATTS. Mr. Watts, a great lecturer and debater in his day, was the father of Charles A. Watts, founder of the Rationalist Press Association. 1906] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 285 Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage." To the mention of this trio The Truth Seeker of March 24, 1906, adds the re- flection: "There are no other women engaged in the work who at all approach them in ability." Su- san's departure took place from Rochester, N.Y., March 13. The three able women were Agnostics. When Peter Eckler, printer of Ingersoll's works, died in Brooklyn, May 1, in his eighty-fourth year, he had been associated with New York Freethink- ers for six decades-ever since 1845. He knew Gilbert Vale, who erected the Paine monument in New Rochelle about 1840. I have heard that he published a paper called The Age of Reason. The pioneer Liberal lecturer of the Pacific coast, Dr. James L. York, "passed to a higher life," as his fellow Spiritualists believed, from San Fran- cisco on July 12. He had lived 76 years and de- voted at least thirty of them to lecturing. I never heard him speak. Samos Parsons of San Jose told me that Dr. York was a Son of Thunder. As though the necrology list for 1906 were not long enough already, we must add the death of Dr. E.B. Foote, the "grand old man" who for a quarter of a century and more had been sought as protector of all unchampioned victims of the Com- stock censorship. He had lived to be 79 years old, and might have exceeded that age but for a sun- stroke suffered while attending a medical meeting in the West. He had survived nearly all of the New York Old Guard who worked with him in the nineteenth century. One -- T.B. Wakeman -- 286 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1906 was left to give the funeral discourse, but except Lillie Devereux Blake and David Hoyle there was none in the gathering that listened to it. An ample biography of Dr. Foote is in Putnam's "Four Hun- dred Years of Freethought." His son, "Dr. Ned," printed a Memorial pamphlet, in which I remin- isced at some length about his worthy senior. He was fortunate in having a son after his own heart to follow him in the field of free speech. I have already, somewhere, set down the regrettable fact that the name of Foote as borne by the grand old Doctor is extinct; no one living bears it as his descendant. The administrators upon his affairs, and those of Dr. Ned, appear to have regarded me as in some way the repository of his memory, since they sent me his large terra cotta bust to keep it present to my own. My name, I reflect, will share the fate of Dr. Foote's, for the grandchildren are all girls. However, there is no bust to be rolled in mats and consigned to an alien attic. The Belgian (by birth) Dr. Felix Leopold Os- wald, a graduate from the Brussels University in 1865, an author of numerous health books and two Freethought works, "Secret of the East" and "Bi- ble of Nature," stepped by inadvertence in front of a train at Syracuse, N.Y., on September 29, and was killed. He had reached the age of 60 years. I shall not have so many deaths of the Free- thought captains to report in 1907. There are not so many left. The public library of Brooklyn placed Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" 1906] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 287 on the restricted list of books accessible only to "patrons who have attained a certain degree of maturity." This drew from Mark the well-known sentiments he held on the Bible. One of the libra- rians, Don Dickinson, who had voted against the decree, wrote him soliciting something in favor of the proscribed books and got the following reply: "The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experi- ence, and to this day I cherish an unappeasable bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpur- gated Bible through before I was fifteen years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean, sweet breath again this side of the grave. "Most honestly do I wish that I could say a saving word or two in defense of Huck's character, since you wish it, but really in my opinion, it is better than those of Solomon, David, and the rest of the sacred brother- hood. "If there is an unexpurgated Bible in the children's department, won't you please help that young woman remove Tom and Huck from that questionable companion, ship?" The San Francisco earthquake, followed by a disastrous fire, was an event of 1906. All the Al- manacs say the disaster took place on April 15 at 5:14 o'clock in the morning, that three hundred lives were lost in the city and neighboring towns, and that this was the worst earthquake shock ever felt in the United States. Some of the phenomena were remarkable, as for instance this: that "the monument to James Lick, Freethinker, in front of the City Hall, was unscathed by fire or quake, while all about it was in ruins." Again, the destroying 288 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1906 elements left scarcely a "house of God" standing, while sixty barrels of whiskey belonging to a whole- sale liquor dealer named Hotaling, although in the midst of the burned district, came 'through without starting a bung. A member of the Bohemian Club perpetuated the miracle in deathless verse: "Now if the good Lord spanked the town For being over frisky, Why did he knock the churches down And save Hotaling's whiskey?" The idea of trial marriage had its birth in the year of grace 1906. Mrs. Elsie Clews Parsons, daughter of the banker Henry Clews and wife of Congressman Herbert Parsons, wrote a work on "The Family" with a passage running: "It would therefore seem well, from this point of view, to encourage early trial marriage, the relation to be entered into with a view to permanence, but with the privilege of breaking it if it proved unsuccess- ful," and so on. The bright idea helped to sell an otherwise unstimulating book. Hugh O. Pentecost, counsel and defender in free speech cases and lecturer for the Unity Society, was his own client when he went one Sunday to Schenectady and, while in the midst of an address on "Our Dangerous Classes," was placed under arrest by a local peeler for doing business on Sun- day. Held in $50 bonds for appearance on the following day, he defended himself in the magis- trate's court so successfully that the judge let him off. At the same time the court fined J. Franz, who had brought Pentecost to Schenectady, $10. 1906] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 289 The Rev. Charles T. Russell, founder of the In- ternational Bible Students and Russellite sect, in 1906 fixed the date of the millennium, or the sec- ond coming, otherwise a new dispensation, as the year 1914, and was drawing large numbers after him, when Mrs. Russell exploded a scandal by su- ing him for divorce in the courts of Alleghany, Pa. Mrs. Russell named two corespondents, a girl appearing in the record as "Rose" and another as "Emily." Newspapers gave wide currency to a remark attributed to Dr. Russell by his wife. It ran: "I am like a jellyfish; I float around, and touch this one and that one, and if they respond I embrace them." The accused Rev. Russell con- ducted his defense in Zion's Watch Tower, print- ing a double number to bring out all the facts. It required considerable space to explain away Rose and Emily, to vindicate himself in the light of 1 Cor. vii, 1, and to show that his actions had been misconstrued. The same year that other prophet, Alexander Dowie, founder of Voliva's Zion City, Illinois, blun- dered into similar complications and others. Alas for prophets! Dowie's fate was a girl he picked up somewhere and christened his "Little Lump of Gold." There was an observant Freethinker in Detroit in 1906 named E.G. Weber, who was alert for news to send The Truth Seeker. One of his best contributions concerned that year's pilgrimage of Detroit Catholics to the historic miracle joint known as the shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre at Quebec, in quest of health. A Detroit priest, the 290 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1906 Rev. Father Van Antwerp, had in past seasons acted as local press agent for the shrine as well as organizer and personal conductor of the pilgrim- ages. This year also he headed a large party of the faithful who set out hopefully for the joint. But just before they reached Quebec the Rev. Van Antwerp complained of not feeling well, was in fact taken sick with some ailment not specified, and instead of keeping on to the shrine, where the cure to which he was guiding his flock awaited him, he hastily returned to Detroit and placed himself in the hands of a doctor, who was quite likely to have been an Atheist scoffer at the bone of St. Anne. That genius of the drama, Henry E. Dixey, heard that the Young Men's Christian Association of Pittsburgh, Pa., had refused membership to an actor on the ground that one of the "profession" could not be a moral person. Mr. Dixey thereupon offered to give a thousand dollars to charity if, by showing there were more of them in the peniten- tiary, it could be proved that actors were less moral than ministers; and he ventured another thousand that there was no state in the Union without its preacher in jail. A newspaper polled the prisons to test Mr. Dixey's judgment. The returns, which indicated that he would have lost had anybody taken him up on his second proposition, were high- ly unreliable; for while they gave 43 ministers in jail to 13 actors, they revealed "no clergymen" in a number of states where ministers had lately been sent to jail for serious offenses. Still the Pitts- burgh Y.M.C.A. never called upon Dixey to de- posit the money. 1906] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 291 The Rev. Mr. Torrey, an evangelist of some rep- utation, took on an assistant liar for his spring re- vival in Philadelphia. Known as the Rev. Dr. K. W. Kumm, F.R.G.S., and professing to have been "formerly a pupil of the great philosopher, Ernst Haeckel," the recruit described a recent call upon Haeckel at his home in Jena, when the aged scien- tist made confession that about many things he had changed his mind and would have to change many statements in his books. The Rev. Kumm ex- pected Haeckel openly to confess Christ and come to Jesus publicly as he had privately. Haeckel's exposure of the Kumm person fol- lowed at once. From Jena, April 9, he wrote: "The curious story of my Christian conversion, told by Dr. Karl Kumm, in the meeting of the Torrey-Atex- ander mission, and quoted in the newspapers the 27th of March, is a pure invention of Dr. Kumm. I do not re- member the visit (two years ago), and certainly I never said to him that I had given up my monistic conviction. That has always remained the same since fifty years ago. I am quite convinced that I shall never be converted to Christianity. "I am not eighty-five but seventy-two years of age, and have today the same monistic philosophy which you know from my books. The false report that I have com- pletely changed my monistic conviction arose from the falsifications of a Jesuit reporter. He telegraphed on the occasion of my first Berlin lecture, April 14, 1905, to London and New York that I recognized the error (instead, the truth) of Darwinism, etc. ... "You will find the whole story of my personal develop, ment and my scientific activity in the new book, just pub- ished by T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1906, 'Haeckel, His Life and Work.' ERNST HAECKEL" CHAPTER XVIII. THE noisiest individual in the United States was President Roosevelt. About June, in Everybody's Magazine, he raised a disturb- ance over the animal-story writers, the "nature- fakers," as he called them. He mentioned by name Jack London, C.G.D. Roberts, Ernest Thompson Seton, and the Rev. William J. Long. To give their books to children, said he -- why, it is an outrage. "If these stories were written as fables, published as fables, and put into the chil- dren's hands as fables, all would be well and good. There is no more reason why the children of the country should be taught a false natural history than why they should be taught a false physical geography." He had incorporated an Ananias Club, and London and the rest were elected by ac- clamation. Some fellow at the Socialist headquarters in San Francisco quoted: "And I saw a beast rise up out of the sea having seven heads and ten horns," and asked Roosevelt how John the Revela- tor compared with the Rev. Dr. Long as an expert in natural history. He rejected as ridiculous some author's fancy about a wolf guiding lost children home, and I asked him to consider this: "And 292 1907] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 293 Elijah the Tishbite ... went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, and the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening." Was it any more improbable that children should get out of the woods by following a wolf than that crows should bring meat sand- wiches twice a day to a preacher? On the nature-fakers Colonel Roosevelt never acknowledged enlightenment, but he soon offended the clergy and had to reverse himself. Under his directions the late Augustus St. Gaudens had pro- duced a design for new coins, leaving off the words "In God We Trust." When a specimen appeared from the mint the ministers made a loud clamor, accusing the President of "an unchristian act." He made a long defense on religious grounds. Said he: "Everybody must remember the innumerable cartoons and articles based on phrases like 'In God We Trust -- for the other eight cents,' 'In God We Trust -- for the short weight,' 'In God We Trust -- for the 37 cents we do not pay,' and so forth and so on. Surely I am well within the bounds when I say that a use of this phrase which invites constant levity of this type is most undesirable." However, he invited Congress to direct him to replace the motto, which Congress immediately did. A history of the inscription, how it happened to be on the coin in the first place, is given at length in The Truth Seeker of November 30, 1907. Roose- velt's reason for removing the motto was whimsical and could not stand against the opposed whim of the clamant ministers. Dr. Rufus K. Noyes published a fine large book; there were 800 pages in it, printed on costly paper with gilt edges, entitled "Views of Re- 294 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1907 ligion." The views, given in above six thousand. quotations, were all liberal ones; it must have taken the doctor years to collect them. L.K. Washburn published it at $5. On the 17th of February, anniversary of the burning of Giordano Bruno by order of the In- quisition, a procession made up of 10,000 persons marched through the streets of Rome, and halted in the Campo del Fiori to deposit wreaths on the Bruno monument. That was before the days of Mussolini, one of whose first acts was to break up the Giordano Bruno society. Robert Blatchford, publisher of The Clarion, So- sialist, began printing Freethought articles. He knew nothing of Freethought history or trade-. tions, not even apparently, that it had other advo- cates than himself. When Mr. Blatchford had withdrawn the support of Freethinkers from their established press, he went over to God and Spirit- ualism. Under the head of "A Vindication of Religious Equality," The Truth Seeker reported that by about a three-fifths majority the United States Senate voted, February 20, to retain in his seat Senator Reed Smoot of Utah, whose expulsion had been demanded on the ground that he was a Mormon. The fight against Smoot had lasted since his elec- tion in 1903. One of the yarns that make up the sermons of evangelists came to the hearing of a Mr. C.J. Fer- guson, a Freethinker of La Crosse, Wisconsin, by way of W.E. Biederwolf, who conducted a re- 1907] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 295 vival in that town. The story ran that Infidels once founded a town in Minnesota, providing in the charter that the name of Jesus Christ was not to be mentioned within its limits except in blasphemy or vulgarity. The rest of the story ran: "The town was burned down; It was rebuilt. It again burned down. It was again rebuilt; Then it suffered from an Indian massacre. It again flourished and was once more destroyed by fire, Then the inhabitants sent in great haste to the East for a missionary to come and preach to them the gospel of Jesus Christ. Today the place is prosperous and happy; the spires of the churches of God point heavenward," etc. Evangelist Biederwolf bragged that if in La- Crosse there was an unbeliever who 'doubted the truth of what he had related, he would take him to the place, paying his carfare, and prove to him that every word he had said was true. Mr. Fer- guson wrote to the evangelist, inquiring the name of the Infidel town and accepting the invitation to visit on the terms stated. Biederwolf delayed his reply until he was ready to leave La Crosse for Chicago. He omitted to name the Infidel town, but being further pressed revealed that it was New Ulm, Minn.""settled in 1854 by Freethinkers. How- ever, investigation conducted by Mr. Ferguson showed that it had not been burned down; that there had been an attack by Indians and after- wards a devastating cyclone. But the name of Jesus, had never been excluded, nor had his fol- lowers. The people never sent for a missionary. In fact, religious people came early, of their own accord, and erected churches which the cyclone either destroyed or seriously damaged. Bieder- 296 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1907 wolf's account was to all intents and purposes a manufactured lie. A.M. Roos of Lamberton, Minn., submitted the following facts: in 1881 New Ulm was visited by a cyclone, which destroyed a large part of the town and killed thirteen people. One of the peculiar features of this storm was that it razed every church in the town, while Turner Hall, known as the temple of Freethought, was practically unhurt. Of the thirteen killed, not one was a Freethinker. "Shortly after the cyclone, a preacher at Grin- nell, Iowa, in a sermon, told how New Ulm was destroyed by the wrath of God; how Infidels were killed and their properties destroyed, while the churches and the properties of the faithful were saved. A few years later a cyclone struck the town of Grinnell, when the Congregational church was destroyed and the pastor who made the above state- ment was killed." New Ulm is the publication place of Der Frei- denker, begun in 1870. One looking for a record of organized activity in 1907 will find little of it. In April the Ameri- can Secular Union addressed the Illinois legisla- ture to protest against the tax exemption of cler- ical residences. Secretary Reichwald and his vol- untary coworker, Mr. E.P. Peacock, had kept up an agitation against the Bible in the schools. A December paper recorded that Reichwald had won, defeating the efforts of the Women's Edu- cational Union, and that "neither the Bible nor any other book of a religious character would be in- 1907] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 297 troduced as a text book in the Chicago public schools." Except for a fine large congress of Bo- hemian Freethinkers held in Chicago the 13th to 15th of June, there was no foregathering of Secu- larists. Francisco Ferrer, founder of the Modem School in Spain, who with no scrap of evidence against him had been arrested in 1906 for complicity in the bomb outrage at the king's nuptials, was so ably defended that at his trial the next June three "hand-picked" judges were obliged to acknowledge his innocence, give a verdict in favor of his acquit- tal, with costs, and recommend the removal of the embargo on his property. For years a decoration on the wall of The Truth Seeker office was a photograph of Mr. J.F.W. Copenheaver, a Pennsylvania subscriber, with wife and children. There was one wife and sixteen children, all of them born since Mr. Copenheaver began taking The Truth Seeker. An old school teacher, he left that profession for want of the reputation for piety required in Pennsylvania. He became so atheistic as not to believe in vaccination, and rather than subject his children to innocula- tion he withdrew them from school, organized them in classes, and taught all grades himself. They made a good-sized school for a country place. Not all the rural schools of the day had an attendance of sixteen. About 1875 a subscriber named John Hart of North Troy, N.Y., began to mention his age when renewing his annual subscription. He loved to 298 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1907 recall that as long ago as 1840 he attended meet- ings at Broadway and Grand street, New York, and heard addresses by Benjamin Omen, Ernestine L. Rose, and Robert Dale Owen. The Freethought papers of his younger days were The Regenerator, published by Orson S. Murray; Abner Kneeland's Investigator; Robert Dale Owen's 'Free Inquirer; and 'Gilbert Vale's Beacon. Men appeared to be able to live to a great age and defeat race suicide without embracing the Christian system. The rela- tives of John Hart did not notify us of his death, and The Truth Seeker had no record of him after he was 104. A list of forgotten Liberal papers would include "Here and Now, a Journal of Freethought," a monthly begun by Dr. J.E. Roberts at Kansas City. The following named "magazinelets" came to The Truth Seeker office: The Papyrus, Michael Mona- han, editor, East Orange, N.J.; The Swastika, New Thought, by Dr. Alexander J. McIvor-Tyn- dall, Denver, Col.; Reason, Spiritualist, B.F. Aus- tin, Rochester, N.Y.; The Live-Forever Magazine, Harry Gaze, Boston. To these add The Philistine, Elbert Hubbard, East Aurora, N.Y., the most famous of the list. A religious caricature of George. Washington in the form of a placque and representing the Father of His Country kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge was stuck on the front of the Sub-Treasury Build- ing in Wall street through the connivance of the Y.M.C.A. and Secretary Edwards of the Treas- ury Department. 1907] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 299 The Army and Navy Journal called, the thing "a ridiculous fiction in the trappings of a pious fraud." If ridicule could have any effect on enduring bronze, the placque would have been laughed off the front of the Sub-Treasury. But it had stuck there for twenty years when the absurd Post- office Department at Washington transferred an engraving of it to a two-cent postage stamp known while it lasted as the Valley Forgery. The sort of liberal religious writers and preach- ers known as Modernists appeared at about the time of which I am writing. The Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition had issued an encyclical giv- ing a syllabus of the truths which were to be anathematized (T.S., August 17, 1907). The pro- gressive Catholic scholars who declined to be com- mitted to the pope's position published a pamphlet entitled "The Program of the Modernists," and his holiness replied with a decree forbidding the faithful to read it and excommunicated its anony- mous authors. So the original Modernists were Catholics. Helen Wilmans Post, who had seen trouble with the postal authorities on account of her absent treatment by mail, discontinued in December the publication of her persecuted magazine devoted to the conquest of death. Mrs. Post held that only those need die who lack the will to live. The Cooper Union addresses of Prof. Franklin H. Gaddings of Columbia University were reported in The Truth Seeker. His last for the year was on "The Jew in America." The professor said it was because of the scientific interest of the Jews 300 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1907 that America was opened to the European world. "It is part of the record, it is part of the traditional teaching anent the voyage of Columbus," he stated, "that the first individual of his party actually to land on American soil was a Jew." Tradition gives the name of the particular individual who came first ashore as Luis de Torres. In Austin Bierbower of Chicago The Truth Seeker had an occasional contributor, the philoso- phy and humor of whose writings in these days should have brought him a lasting fame which I am afraid he missed. The Chicago and Zion prophet, John Alexander Dowie, died in 1907 in such circumstances that none was there left to do him reverence or pre- serve his memory. He had lately made a tour of the world, and while in India had predicted the end of Mohammedanism and of the reign of its prophet, whom he called the prince of impostors. But in Qadian, Gurdaspur, in the Punjab, a suc- cessor to Mohammed had arisen known as Mirzah Ghulam Ahmad. This chap, who had a consider- able following, as in fact he has to the present day, challenged Dowie to a prayer contest, each to pray for the downfall of the other, and the one who died first should be regarded as the loser. "Pray to God," he said, "that of us two whoever is the liar may perish first," and of Dowie he said: "He shall leave the world before my eyes with great sorrow and torment." When Dowie died, Mirzah triumphantly claimed the decision. He died a few months later. 1907] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 301 HUGH O. PENTECOST (1847-1907). On the death of Ernest Howard Crosby, Janu- ary 3, a New York woman said: "Ernest Crosby is dead, and there are one hundred and fifty-five thousand two hundred and three preachers left alive!" Ernest was the heretical son of a bigoted Presbyterian preacher and had a record as a radical social reformer. The woman who spoke as above looked to the editor for a comment on this dispen- sation. He explained that "when it came to pick- ing out the fellows to go, the Lord didn't seem to 302 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1907 know his business." Mr. Crosby died at 50 years. Death came to Hugh 0. Pentecost on February 2, when he was 60 years old. Hugh had a brother who was a widely known evangelist, and a New Thought wife, and they gave him a funeral from which his Liberal associates were excluded. The brother, George F. Pentecost, officiated. The mourners sang "Nearer, My God, to Thee." Dur- ing his brief illness the household sent word to his Lyric (later Bryant) Hall congregation that no visitors or messages would be received, and a ru- mor gained currency that in the end he had "caught another glimpse of the eternal verities." Nobody believed a word of it. Pentecost's real funeral, at- tended by a thousand, took place in the hall where his meetings had been held. Pentecost in his lifetime preached all things to all men, from Calvinism to Atheism, and from So- cialism to Anarchy. As a speaker in Lyric Hall to the congregation gathered by Pentecost, John Russell Coryell con- tinued the meetings. He was as radical as Pente- cost, but more of a writer than a speaker. He and W.J. Terwilliger, calling themselves the Corwill Co., issued a weekly that contained his Sunday talks. It was known as "The Wide Way." M. Marcelin Berthelot, the French scientist and Freethinker; Karl Blind, German republican and Freethinker; Walter Richard Cassels, Englishman, author of "Supernatural Religion"; Gerald Massey of London, poet, archeologist, Freethinker, and po- litical reformer -- all these closed lives of honor and 1907] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 303 usefulness in 1907. And just as the year was going out it took by the hand Lewis G. Reed, an old con- tributor to The Truth Seeker, and so led him from sight. Mr. Reed was 92. He and his family were people of Surry, N.H. Some of them were the town's benefactors, founding a library there not far from fifty years ago. His granddaughter wrote: "There could not have been a more beautiful end to anyone's life than his. He was perfectly happy and ready to go, and lay there waiting for the end. Although he knew he was dying, he was still the same as he had been all his life. It was a great pleasure to receive from The Truth Seeker a little poem of his which was handed to him on his death- bed." He had written his own funeral song. When I had finished the necrology of 1906, I said in my haste that the list would not be dupli- cated, but death has a way of making forecasts and promises vain. On August 14, in Washington, D. C., died Gen. William Birney at the age of 88, and on August 17 all the members of the Washington Secular League, with his fellow Freemasons, rep- resentatives of the school board, and his colleagues of the Bar, came to bury him. General Birney was born at Huntsville, Alabama, May 28, 1819. His father, James G. Birney, the abolitionist, was twice the Free Soil nominee for the presidency of the United States (1840 and 1844). William Birney, for many years a member, was more than once president of the Secular League. Dr. J.J. Shir- ley and Hyland C. Kirk were his funeral eulogists. The general spent years in France, and what he observed there qualified him to write the series of 304 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1907 articles he contributed to The Truth Seeker while the excitement was on over the abolition of the concordat with the pope and the separation of church and state. During our Civil War, when MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY (1832-1907). 1907] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 305 the government assigned him to the duty of enlist- ing and organizing colored regiments, and he re- cruited from the slave pens of Baltimore, Secretary of War Stanton called him to Washington to ex- plain his activities in setting black men free. Un- fortunately the general wrote no autobiography. The death of Dr. Moncure D. Conway took away a member of The Truth Seeker family. It befell him in Paris, November 25, 1907, just after he had written the editor he was returning to America. Dr. Conway was 75 years old (born March 17, 1832, in Stafford county, Va.), and the physicians attributed his death while asleep to the weakness of old age. Conway was the first Christian minis- ter to preach a laudatory sermon on Thomas Paine -- the result of his attending a Paine anniversary meeting. of Cincinnati Freethinkers about 1860. Thirty years later he wrote the standard Life of Paine, and in 1894 edited and published Paine's Complete Works. I made his personal acquaintance a few years later by discovering a copy of the "Age of Reason," of which he said in the London Athe- naeum, August 27, 1898: "If there are or were other copies it appears unaccountable that none of Paine's contemporary editors and biographers, such as his friend Rickman in London and Fellows in New York, should have known nothing of these ad- ditions and facts, and that I myself should never have discovered the existence of such a work while searching in the chief libraries and archives of Paris, London, and America." After I had owned this unique copy of the "Age of Reason" for some 306 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1907 months, I, one week, being short of material for the Letters of Friends column, used the unique mat- ter for a filler. Conway saw it in the paper, and called to see the book and its owner. After that his connection with The Truth Seeker was close. Dr. Conway's life is well documented with his "Earthward Pilgrimage," his "Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East," his "Memories and Ex- periences," and so on. He was a good observer, who wrote with a flawless diction. **** **** Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship. This disk, its printout, or copies of either are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold. Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201 **** **** CHAPTER XIX. THE religious confidence-people in 1908 made their fight to have restored to the coins of the nation the motto "In God We Trust"' which President Roosevelt had removed out of re- spect for God, because it was a joke. The battle fiercely raged. In their desperation the pro deos circulated the report that a conscientious minister in Pennsylvania had spurned a gift of one hun- dred dollars in gold from his congregation because the coins did not bear the motto. Freethinkers refused to credit the report, alleging, that the age of miracles was past -- if there ever was an age so miraculous that a preacher would refuse money. The minister himself vindicated their skepticism by denying that his congregation had even offered him the gold. In Congress Representative Mor- ris Sheppard of Texas made a speech that filled three columns of The Congressional Record, most- ly a reply to The Truth Seeker's reminder that acknowledging the deity on the coin of commerce was a defiance of the injunction of the savior that "ye cannot serve God and Mammon." Mark Twain ridiculed the pious motto by saying that ever since it was dropped the country had been obliged to de- 307 308 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1908 pend on J.P. Morgan. Representative Knowlton of California urged irreverently upon the congres- sional committee having the matter in charge that clearing house certificates and notes of hand ought to be engraved: "I know that my redeemer liv- eth." Representative Moore of Pennsylvania, sus- taining the agitated Sheppard of Texas, read into the record a piece from The Truth Seeker where it was said that there are a lot of people who do not trust God in financial matters; that they know nobody else does who is sane, and therefore they do not see why every coin issuing from our mints should carry forth to the world this official lie. That was all a year's protest by The Truth Seeker accomplished -- to get a part of one of its editorials into The Congressional Record; and Representa- tive Moore didn't even have the fairness to name the paper he was quoting from. Congress passed the restoration act, the President signed it, and the incident was closed. God, if such was Christ, had declared to them in advance that the proceeding was unlawful, but Congress and the President didn't trust him. While things took this turn in the United States, they went the other way in Italy. I quote from an article published January 25 to this effect: If at the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century somebody had told us that the generation then ap- pearing would live to see an Atheist elected mayor of Rome, we should have disregarded him and set down his prediction as an extravagance into which he had been be- trayed by his ignorance of history. But he would have been right. Ernests Nathan, whom an aldermanic vote 1908] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 309 of 60 to 12 has just made mayor of the pope's city, is an Atheist. More than that, while his mother was an Englishwoman, his father was a Jew! The Catholic press, with a strange want of that tolerance which it recommended as a high virtue in America twenty years later when a Catholic was standing for President of this secular Republic, denounced the election as "absurd, monstrous, anomalous, incredible." The Truth Seeker remarked that times appeared to have changed since the days when Jews from various parts of Europe were making pilgrimages to Rome to beg at the feet of the pope, and to purchase with the remnants of their fortunes a dispensation which they mistakenly supposed would protect them from persecution by Catholics. Acts of comstockery were committed while the year was yet young. Some Boston perverts, either denied or forsaking natural uses, turned in their lusts toward the agent of Duffield & Co., publish- ers, and had him indicted for selling Elinor Glyn's "Three Weeks." Then, on the score of sacrilege, Comstock arrested Charles Vanni, newsdealer at 248 West Broadway, for importing anticlerical pa- pers from Italy. The expensive defense made by Vanni to vindicate the principle that the pope should not be allowed to censor literature in Amer- ica did him no good. Searching his premises, the prosecution discovered a French "comic," upon which it convicted Vanni and fined him $150. The Truth Seeker inquired with heat if we were going to allow the pope to say what literature should be 310 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1908 sold in the United States. The prosecution an- swered the question in the affirmative. Our gov- ernment cheerfully did the pope's dirty work and does it still for his confederates. This govern- ment of the United States will not receive at its postoffice copies of The Truth Seeker addressed to pope-ruled Canada. In 1929 this government, which seems eager to soil its; hands with that sort of work, barred the anti-Fascist Il Martello from the mails. To continue the 1908 record; without due process the government had confiscated the published issues of Moses Harman's Journal of Eugenics. Harman went from Chicago to Los An- geles to prospect a new field, hoping to revive the magazine on the coast. In the City of the Angels, Mrs. Dorothy Johns, wife of an author who was associated with Jack London, observing that the preachers were talking upon the streets, began an open-air advocacy of her views. With three other women she was ar- rested and made prisoner in the city jail. At the same time the authorities shut up or placed in the chain gang thirty-five men for street speaking. One of these was E.A. Cantrell, then a minister, but later to become a well-known Rationalist. The prisoners refused bail. Such a state of affairs, said The Truth Seeker, involving as it does discrimina- tion against Socialists and in favor of religious howlers, would not long be tolerated. Brought to trial, the prisoners were all acquitted; and Chin- ning Severance wrote: "The Socialists and Free- thinkers of Los Angeles have won a notable vic- 1908] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 311 tory for free speech -- that is, the right to speak unmolested on the street -- and religious ranters no longer enjoy a monopoly given them by pin- headed officials afflicted with the idea that only be- lievers in the Christian superstition have any rights under a secular government." I believe that the right of Freethinkers, then won, to do open-air speaking is still enjoyed in Los Angeles. The religion in the school fracas of 1908 was the set-to of Mr. Arthur Watts of River Edge, New Jersey, with the local board. Mr. Watts pro- tested against his children's being held under com- pulsion while religious exercises were conducted. The Hackensack Liberal Club, F.C. Stevens presi- dent, did the fighting for Mr. Watts, and won after a three months' contest. The Department of Edu- cation of New Jersey, at Trenton, made a ruling that "the attendance of pupils at religious exercises in public schools must be entirely voluntary." The Spiritualists reported a fifty per cent de- crease in their numbers. President George Warne of the National Association made the announce- ment when vainly attempting to organize a Spirit- ualist "church" in Pittsburgh, Pa. Channing Severance wrote that organizing Spiritualists into churches, with worship conducted by "reverends," had sent the philosophy down the skidway with a rush. C. Fannie Allyn, another this-world Spirit- ualist, agreed with him. But the "church" ten- dency was too strong. The lecturers of the cult are now reverends. The public was scandalized in 1908 by the appearance of cigarer-smoking girls at the Sunrise Club. I deprecated the habit as detri- 312 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1908 mental to the charm of the young girl, but my point was overflowed by James F. Morton's defense of the equality of the sexes, which I had not denied; And smoking by girls prevailed. "The killing of a Roman Catholic priest in Den- ver by a miserable Sicilian murderer has been the signal for the discovery of anarchist societies bent on the total destruction of the Catholic church by the simple process of killing off all the priests." When this appeared in The Truth Seeker the Rev. Father Heinrichs had lately been killed by a Ro- man Catholic from Sicily. Nothing came out to connect the killer, whose name was Alia, with any organization, anarchist, anti-clerical, or Socialist. When asked if he were an anarchist, he inquired what that might be. But the feverish politicians accused all three groups. Police Commissioner Bingham of New York asked for an appropriation of $100,000 to "hunt down anarchists." The board of aldermen, who probably knew that there was not an anarchist in the city who could not be found in his home or at work by any policeman at an hour's notice, re- jected the application by a vote of 36 to 12. Presi- dent Roosevelt, in a message to Congress in April, declared that "when compared with the suppres- sion of anarchy, every other question sinks into insignificance"! The Denver papers reported the imprisoned Sicilian to be a devout observer of the religious re- quirements of his church. The Truth Seeker, quoting the Denver Weekly Post, said: "A good 1908] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 313 Catholic will go to his reward when Alia, the slayer of Father Leo Heinrichs, mounts the gallows." The Post described the genuflexions of the pris- oner, and said: "This gives strength to the suppo- sition that Alia's sentiments were not anti-Catholic, but anti-clerical; that his grievance was not against the Catholic church, but against her ministers." According to Alia's friends he was "against" this particular minister, who had injured him as a hus- band or father, and locating him in Denver had gone thither from Chicago and taken a Sicilian's revenge by killing him. Daniel Henry Chamberlain, a former governor (1874-7) of South Carolina, dying in 1907 at the age of 72, left a paper in which he had set down his conclusions on the subject of religion. They were those of a Freethinker, excluding "the idea of a presiding or controlling Deity who continually watches over the universe, exercising the function either of keeping the machinery of the universe in working order or putting it in order on occasions." Governor Chamberlain rejected "such ideas as sin, redemption, conversion, salvation, atonement, the person, office and the work of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, in a word, the whole circle and array of dogmas and beliefs which make up the Christian religion." Being "much more than an Atheist," Governor Chamberlain chose a Freethinker as "the truly de- scriptive phrase" denoting the position at which he had arrived, and said: "I know of no earthly in- ducement which could lead me to go back to what 314 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1908 now seems to me the darkness and unrest of for- mer days and beliefs." William Jennings Bryan early in the year erected his presidential lightning rod in the hope that it would be hit; began his crusade against the doc- trine of evolution, and talked interminably. The reaction of William Howard Taft, his prospective opponent, was deplorable" for Taft also began to preach. "Christianity and the spirit of Christian- ity," said Mr. Taft, addressing a religious meeting and talking what he knew to be buncombe, "are the hope of the world and the only hope of popular self-government." It was awful. Bryan had been set back amongst the Methodists by a remark of Bishop Fowler, which the death of the bishop in this crisis recalled, that is: "Before I would vote for Bryan I would go to sea in a boat of stone, with sails of lead, oars of iron, the wrath of God for a gale, and hell for a port." The national election of 1908 in its religious fea- tures resembled that of 1928. William Jennings Bryan, twice defeated candidate for president, had put himself up again for the office, and the Demo- cratic convention at Denver ratified the nomini- tion. Justice Gaynor of Brooklyn had been slated for vice-president on the Bryan ticket, and would have got there but for the exposure of the fact that he belonged to the Christian Brothers, a Catholic order, and had withdrawn. The Catholics fought his nomination and the convention dropped him, choosing instead Mr. John Worth Kern of Indiana. Meanwhile the Republicans nominated William Howard Taft, whom the orthodox Protestants at 19081 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 315 once attacked as a denier of Jesus Christ, Taft be- ing a Unitarian; and the tail of the ticket was James Schoolcraft Sherman, reputed to be of Cath- olic sympathies and association. As President Roosevelt chose Mr. Taft he had to champion him, and did so in a letter addressed to a man who said he had heard that Taft was an Infidel. It was a coincidence that before writing the letter Mr. Roosevelt took counsel of Cardinal Gibbons, as twenty years later Al Smith consulted Father Duffy before expressing himself. The British courts convicted a blasphemer named Harry Boulter, a street lecturer; notwithstanding which medieval proceedings, said The Truth Seeker, "this is the twentieth century of the era of Christian love, charity, and forgiveness, as may be verified by reference to the Almanac." The court withheld sentence, but placed Boulter under promise thereafter to modify his language, which had been indicted as impious. Mr. Joseph Mc- Cabe, then a comparatively new accession to the ranks of Rationalism, caused a controversy among the English Freethinkers by contending that the only liberty denied Boulter was the liberty to ex- press himself in scurrilous language. Having been educated as a Catholic brother, Mr. McCabe had not quite grasped the principle of free speech, as enunciated by George Jacob Holyoake, that a man has the right to say what he chooses in his own words; and so, instead of waiting for such light as Mr. G.W. Foote, Mrs. Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner, and Mr. F.J. Gould were prepared to pour 316 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1908 in upon him, he made the mistake of discussing the affair from the point of view of the police and the complaining witnesses. In June, 1909, Mr. Boulter having again ven- tured to express his thoughts, was rearrested and sentenced to one month's imprisonment. If nothing else happens, there are always deaths to set down. Each year I feel a hope that the next list will be lighter; but look at 1908! And the de- cedents are those of the Old Guard without whom we might once have thought the cause could not go on or the paper be sustained. First went Prof. Henry Martyn Parkhurst of Brooklyn, on January 21, aged 82. Dr. Parkhurst, son of a preacher and cousin to another of that name, had been news- paper man, court stenographer, professor in astron- omy. His death left W.H. Burr the last of the pioneer group of stenographers who were Free- thinkers, which included Stephen Pearl Andrews, Theron C. Leland, and Edward F. Underhill. And Burr soon followed him. William Henry Burr of Washington died in his 90th year, February 27. After graduation (1838) in Union College he learned stenography, was official reporter in the United States Senate and on the Congressional Globe, now Congressional Record. He compiled "One Hundred and Forty-four Contradictions of the Bible," was the author of "Revelations of Anti- christ" and other revelatory writings -- was the man whom Ingersoll called the "greatest literary detec- tive." Particulars of his life occupy two columns in The Truth Seeker of March 14. Aunt Elmina 1908] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 317 Slenker, the good Quaker lady and industrious worker for Freethought, died just past 80 at her home in Snowville, Va. Aunt Elmina wrote a hand that caused compositors to blaspheme, and could do no public speaking because of a hare- lip. She placed her name on the scroll, however, despite the difficulty of deciphering her signature. Edward Chamberlain, New York lawyer and in- veterate enemy of Comstockism, nearly thirty years a subscriber to The Truth Seeker, laid life aside at 65, in January. His religious family, for his funeral, engaged an Episcopal priest, who con- ducted the services according to the book. One could imagine a smile coming to the face of the man in the coffin when they perfunctorily buried him "in the sure and certain hope." Mr. Cham- berlain was a very serious man, as one must be, perhaps, effectively to contend with folly and fraud. I recall the evening at the Liberal Club when he announced a solemn duty he felt he had to perform in behalf of woman. He then read the vaseline and acid formula for birth-control which had been given circulation by President Colgate of the So- ciety for the Suppression of Vice, and surprised his audience by castigating the author and dis- tributor of such information. Let every woman beware, he warned, of this nefarious cabal. "Why," he exclaimed, "the recipe has no efficacy whatever, and many a poor girl who trusted in its treacher- ous promise has been lost." The "millionaire lumberman," Delos A. Blod- gett, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, was an Agnostic 318. FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1908 to the day of his death in November, 1908. He had lived 83 years. Blodgett, a captain of indus- try, did Liberal work handsomely. Our lecturers were sure of profitable engagements in Grand Rapids, because he made the arrangements and paid the expenses. His charities were large. The Children's Home which he gave to Grand Rapids was building at the time of his death. He im- pressed me as a great man when I met him on his visits to the coast while I was there. The ripe ages reached by these Freethinkers are extraordinary. The last time that William Henry Burr was in New York he remarked that a few old fellows like himself, standing one beside the other, could reach back to the beginning of the Christian era and shake hands with Jesus Christ (whom, of course, he regarded as a myth). Canadian Freethinkers revived the Pioneer Freethought Club of Montreal, and Herald Rosario Holmes reported its meetings. The Toronto Secu- lar Society also manifested new life. The Liberal Club of Hackensack, N.J., under Dr. F.C Ste- vens and F.W. Emmer was a live organization. Notice was given that on May 6 it would listen to James F. Morton, Jr., and sing the hymn "Amer- ica" in honor of his grandfather, the Rev. S.F. Smith, who wrote it. At the Independent Re- ligious Society of Chicago, M.M. Mangasarian debated with the Rev. Dr. A.S. Crapsey, lately deposed for heresy, the proposition: "Resolved, That the Jesus of the New Testament is a his- torical Personage." Mangasarian took the nega- 1908] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 319 tive and published the debate. The New York Bohemians, as reported by Jaroslaw V. Nigrin, held a convention to organize a Freethought Edu- cational Federation, April 5. The Friendship Lib- eral League, Philadelphia, celebrated the twenty- fifth anniversary of George Longford's service as secretary. The Buckeye Secular Union, George O. Roberts president, held a state convention at Canal Dover, Ohio, September 6. The former Rev. J.P. Bland, resident speaker, addressed the Boston Freethought Society every Sunday in Paine Memorial Hall. The Manhattan Liberal Club was meeting in Mott Memorial Hall, 64 Madison Ave- nue, New York. Familiar names appeared on the program of the Washington Secular League: Prof. Charles W. Paflow, Dr. J.J. Shirley, Prof. David Eccles, Mr. J.A. Hennesy, Mr. J.W. Nigh. Eudorus C. Kenney was treasurer. At a meet- ing in December the League took up a collection amounting to $20 and on motion of Dr. Shirley sent the money to the Editor of The Truth Seeker, who received it with emotions of great pleasure, and made this response: "The Truth Seeker grate- fully accepts this assistance, this sympathy, but our friends must remember that we have only a fount of ink and white paper wherewith to express our thanks; and how can these record the jumps of the heart, the liquefaction about the eyes, and those other reactions to kindness which are felt but must remain unspoken?" Alexander S. Irvine had suc- ceeded John R. Coryell in the attempt to keep the Pentecost society together at Lyric Hall. 320 FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT [1908 The contributors of articles to The Truth Seeker in 1908 were those whose names are familiar to readers of these pages, and some who wrote once and were heard from no more. Others began then and have stood by ever since, among these Fran- cois Thane, with his Sojourner's Note Book. And look who is here! Woolsey Teller, by all that is good and great! He has just discovered The Truth Seeker and near the beginning of the year and in the kindness of his teens writes to the edi- tor: "Allow me to tender my earnest appreciation of your well conducted journal." Two stanzas of verse by Walter ("Southpaw") Thornton are to be seen. Walt, when pitching for the Chicago Nationals, read Ingersoll instead of playing poker for a pastime; and subsequently, em- ploying figures recognizably taken from frontier life in Snohomish, wrote this: TO COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL "You left behind Creed's settlement, With rifle true on shoulder thrown, To follow-through the trail of Truth -- On frontier peak you stood alone. As true of you, in praise I'll sing Your words when Ebon 'crossed the bar': 'In night of death Hope sees a star; Love hears the rustle of a wing."' At last accounts, Walt was preaching, but he quoted Ingersoll in his sermons. June 27 the editor, E.M. Macdonald, in a signed article, released the fact, which he long had been 1908] FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT 321