The Melodeon as a Religious Motor

Mark Twain

Harpers/March, 1878

There is no doubt that the hand organ, badly played, is a means of grace, if its discipline be properly applied. But its influence is very different from that of the cabinet organ, as the full-grown melodeon is now called. This latter is strictly a means of evangelization. It is only manufactured for moral purposes; and if any secular person thinks he can buy one for his lager-beer saloon, let him try it. These organs are sold only to persons who can bring a certificate of good moral character and of church membership.

The melodeon is good for nothing to dance by, except among the Shakers and in those strictly church sociables held in the sociable end of the church. It is not used at all for the German, except in Boston, a place where very little reverence is left. There is something in its pathetic drone that takes the life out of the waltz and dismembers the polka redowa, In the soirees dansantes of the metropolis its voice is almost never heard. There is an impression, current especially in the rural districts, that the melodeon is a hilarious, convivial instrument, calculated to make youth giddy and old age frivolous. This is not so, and the notion cannot he too promptly met. The melodeon was built on purpose to promote moral and religious tendencies in the minds of the young, and it is sold only for that use. Any other use of it is an infringement of the patent.

It is one of the wildest notions of this slanderous age (one that we presume was started in circulation by the piano judges at the Centennial) that the melodeon is a source of depravity to youth, and that if you shut a young person in a room where the melodeon is persistently played, he will become exhilarated and profane. Nothing is further from the truth. The melodeon never excites anything except devotional emotions; no other instrument so inspires them, not even the big organ or the harp. We do not go so far as to say that, let us make the melodeons of a people, and we do not care who makes their morals, but we do say that a people brought up on the melodeon will not care much for the accordion or any other sinful instrument like that.

The Woes of a Holy Man

H.L. Mencken

Dothan Eagle/June 28, 1929

All the pother about Monsignor James Cannon, Jr.’s, unfortunate venture into an outhouse of Wall Street seems to be founded upon a misunderstanding of Methodist canon law. It will be admitted by everyone, I take it, that playing the board, even when a sworn ambassador of Christ is the performer, is not prohibited by the ordinary or civil law. A bishop obviously has the same civil rights as any other man, and any other man, under what remains of American freedom, is free to buy and sell stocks as he pleases. That privilege, as we all know, is one of the many thousands Americans have sought and enjoyed during the past few years, and included among them, I have no doubt, have been multitudes who now hold His Grace up to contumely, and hint broadly that he ought to be deconsecrated and unfrocked.

What lies under this demand, when simple dislike of the man is not responsible for it, is apparently a feeling that a bishop is bound by tighter bonds than other men—in other words that he must not only obey the ordinary law with great scrupulosity, but also the canon law of his church, which is assumed to be far more rigorous. The doctrine here is sound, but there is a false assumption in the application of it. That is the assumption that the canon law of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, prohibits trading in the market. It prohibits nothing of the sort. On the contrary, a fair examination of it indicates that it actually encourages such trading, provided only that the successful speculator devotes a reasonable part of his gains to the uses of the church.

Nowhere in the Book of Discipline of the Southern Methodists, the official lawbook of the denomination, is there any prohibition, either direct or indirect, of gambling. The Northern Methodists, to be sure, are forbidden to indulge in “such games of chance as are frequently associated with gambling,” but that is as far as it goes—and Northern Methodists are by no means to be confused with their Confederate brethren. The two churches are quite distinct, and their Books of Discipline differ radically. Many prohibitions in the Northern book are conspicuously missing in the Southern book. One is the prohibition of “buying or selling slaves.” Another is the prohibition of tobacco. Yet another is the prohibition of frequenting “misleading” movie shows, whatever that may mean. And a fourth is the prohibition of gambling.

The Southern Methodist discipline, in fact, is very much less harsh and rigorous than that of the Northern Wesleyans, and even on the awful subject of wine-bibbing it shows a relatively mild and civilized spirit. The Northern Methodists, for example (General Rule, 30), are forbidden to resort to “drunkenness, buying or selling spirituous liquors, or drinking them” save in cases of “extreme necessity,” whereas the Southern faithful are quite free to get drunk in cases of plain necessity, without any qualifications of extremity. Moreover, the Southern discipline lets it go at that, whereas the Northern discipline goes on to ban “all intoxicants,” whether spirituous or not, and adds “cigarettes and tobacco in all other forms” for good measure.

In the Northern church a candidate for holy orders, before he may be licensed to preach, must answer two questions satisfactorily, to wit: “Will you wholly abstain from the use of tobacco?” and “Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in the work of the ministry?” In the Southern church the first question is omitted (Ministers and Church Officers, VI, 168). As a makeweight certain others are added, for example: “Are you going on to perfection?” “Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?” and “Are you groaning after it?” Bishop Cannon, when he was ordained, said yes to all of these questions, but he did not promise to avoid the use of tobacco, and so he is perfectly free to smoke it or chew it today (as many of his brethren of the cloth do), just as he is perfectly free to buy or sell slaves, to go to “misleading” movies, to keep a jug in his house against a possible necessity, and to play the bucket shops until he either goes broke or is rich enough to have himself made an archbishop.

To deny him these diversions upon canonical grounds is absurd. He must, of course, avoid those that are forbidden by the civil law, e.g., trading in slaves, but beyond that he is free to do as he pleases. Even a bishop is yet a man, and even a Methodist may amuse himself within the law. I see no evidence that Monsignor Cannon has ever stepped so much as an inch outside it.

III

Both branches of Methodism are extremely fond of (and hence respectful to) money, and their clergy are business men quite as much as they are priests. Open any Methodist paper at random, and the chances are at least five to one that you will light upon a call for more funds: such calls, many of them couched in peremptory terms, always greatly outnumber the treatises on the saving of souls. The two churches of the church support immense staffs of collectors, and they are hard at work all the time. For a Methodist to attend divine service without being besought to cough up for this or that great cause would be so surprising that it would probably strike him as almost miraculous. He is taught frankly that getting into Heaven costs money, and that his chances run with his liberality.

This attitude of mind naturally makes the well-heeled Babbitt a powerful personage in the church. He is in many parishes the de facto if not the de jure superior of the pastor, and can turn one pastor out and bring another in as he pleases. This is true, in particular, in the South, where the generality of the faithful are poor, and the prosperity of a given church depends upon the generosity of a few rich individuals. In the cotton-mill towns of the Carolinas two-thirds of the churches are supported by the mill magnates, and the clergy are as much their employees as the slaves in their mills. What this control amounted to was shown during the recent strike down there, when the local Methodist papers, otherwise ever eager to horn into “moral” causes, were magnificently about the exploitation and ill usage of the poor morons at the hands of their pious masters. There was plenty of space for denouncing the brutes hired by the mill-owners to put down the strike.

Thus Methodism is anything but Socialistic. On the contrary, it is all for the capitalistic system, and is perhaps the only church existing today which makes a belief in that system a cardinal article of faith. (Southern Book of Discipline, Sec. III, 30; Northern, Division I, 24.) Getting money, by its code, is not only not sinful; it is positively virtuous. The one thing that is forbidden is laying it up. It must be “systematically administered for the kingdom of God,” i.e., for the high uses and occasions of the rev. clergy. Well, Dr. Cannon is himself a clergyman.

There is nothing in either Discipline, or in any other canonical text that I am aware of, which indicates that getting money by speculation is held to be less moral than getting it in any other way. If it were, then some of the most eminent Methodist laymen in the South would be lying under danger of excommunication. I avoid embarrassing the living by pointing to one now safe in Heaven: the late Asa G. Candler, inventor of Coca-Cola. The Hon. Mr. Candler, while he lived, was unquestionably the most eminent Methodist south of the Potomac. The church got millions out of him, and showed its appreciation by making his younger brother a bishop. Was his money all made by simple trading? Hardly. A good deal of it also came out of a speculative rise in the stocks he was interested in, and in the fruits of that rise many another Southern Methodist shared.

I can recall no objection to this being business. On the contrary, Dr. Candler was anointed so lavishly in all the Methodist papers that he ran goose-grease almost like the Hon. Buck Drake, of Durham, N. C., another consecrated man who was lucky in the market, and did not forget the pastors when the money rolled in. Buck made his basic millions out of cigarettes—a fact that explain the absence of a prohibition of them in the Southern Book of Discipline—but he increased his load enormously in Wall Street. When he died he left $60,000,000 to a Methodist “university” at Durham, set up to counteract Darwinian wickedness at the State University at Chapel Hill, and more millions to a fund for underpaid Methodist preachers. He is a saint in Heaven today, though while he lived was a gambler and a wine-bibber. To denounce him at any Methodist camp meeting in the South would be as gross an indecorum as to denounce St. Patrick at an oyster roast of the Knights of Columbus.

For all these reasons—and I could adduce many more—I incline to think that Monsignor Cannon is being badly used. God knows, I am not one of his partisans, but even a bishop deserves justice. To hint that his venture into high-pressure go-getting disqualifies him to bind and loose by the Wesleyan rite is as absurd as to argue that he would be disqualified if he were caught pulling the cat’s tail, lifting jam from the pantry, or telling a lie. Methodist bishops are not so easily busted. So long as they avoid necking, morphine and going to mass they are safe. Even murder is within their prerogative—that is, provided they merely applaud it, and do not undertake it personally.

On Religious Liberty

H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/July 6, 1931

The method of choosing grand juries in Baltimore, it appears, is as follows: When the time comes ’round each of the eleven judges of the Supreme Bench nominates two freemen of the town, along with one, two or three alternates, all of them men of discreet years, chosen for their notorious wisdom and rectitude. The names are canvassed by the whole bench, and if the two nominees of a given judge turn out to be eligible they are appointed forthwith. If not, resort is had to his alternates, or to the alternates of another judge. Thus twenty-two jurors are selected, leaving one more to make the legal twenty-three. This one more, in practice, is always a colored man of high tone, and finding him is delegated to that judge or those judges who happen to be Republicans. In this way the jury is completed.

Some time ago I received a note from one of the judges, a man who has known me for twenty-five years, saying that he was putting me down as one of his nominees. This proof of judicial confidence, I confess, flattered me, and I returned thanks at once. But at the same time my conscience, always delicate, induced me to suggest that I was probably ineligible. Here Is the substance of my letter:

Unless I misunderstand Article 36 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, a grand juror must believe in what is commonly called the moral order of the world. That is, he must believe that there exists an eternal moral law, ascertainable mainly by revelation, and that any person who violates it will be punished inevitably, either in this world or the next. Inasmuch as I have doubts about this moral law, do not believe that violations of it, if it exists, are punished inevitably on this earth, and remain, at the most, of an open mind about a future life, I think I probably fall outside the specification . . . . In fact, so long as the Declaration of Rights remains as it is I seem to be unable to take any hand in any legal process in Maryland, either as witness or as juror.

I requested that this letter be laid before the Supreme Bench. What notion was taken upon it, if any, I do not know, for the learned judges carry on their deliberations in camera, but I observed that when the list of grand jurors was published my name was not on it. Inasmuch as I am unaware of any other ground for my disqualification, I can only conclude that I was disqualified, as I had myself suggested, on a ground purely theological.

No doubt it will surprise many Marylanders to hear that a religious test still exists in the Free State, and, what is worse, that it is actually a part of the Declaration of Rights, the very charter of our freedom. Yet I see no way to view the following passage in Article 36 as anything else:

. . . nor shall any person, otherwise competent, be deemed incompetent as a witness or juror on account of his religious belief provided he believes in the existence of God, and that, under His dispensation, such person will be held morally accountable for his acts, and be rewarded or punished therefor, either in this world or the world to come.

Plainly enough, this provision sets up a double test. In the first place every witness or juror must believe in the existence of God, which bars out all atheists at once, and all agnostics with them. And in the second place, he must believe that divine justice takes precedence of divine grace and mercy, which bars out all Moslems, and great numbers of Christians. It Is not sufficient for him to believe that the wicked may be punished post mortem: he must believe unqualifiedly that they will be punished. If he finds himself unable to believe it, then he cannot sit on any jury in the State of Maryland, or give evidence in any court of law or equity.

That this view of Article 36 is sound is proved by all the pertinent Maryland decisions. In Clare vs. the Slate (39 Md., 164), Stewart J., speaking for the Court of Appeals, held that a man be put on trial for his life only on the indictment of boni et legales homines, good and lawful men, and in The State v. Mercer (101 Md. 535) Schmucker, J., also speaking for the court, held that no disbeliever in “the existence of God and His dispensation of rewards and punishments” could be such a good and lawful man. And in Arnd vs. Amling (53 Md., 192) the court held that no disbeliever could qualify as a witness.

The decisions are quite dear and exactly to the point. They meet it squarely and state the law unequivocably. They are binding upon every judge in Maryland, and have been cited lately, and with approbation, by Owens, J., in Baltimore and by one of the judges in the counties. If any man stands indicted in the State today by a grand jury which included one unbeliever, then his indictment Is null and void. If any man has been convicted by a petit jury which included one, then his conviction is without force or effect. And if there was one unbeliever among the material witnesses against him, then he is still as good as innocent.

III

It will be observed that the definition of an unbeliever set up by Article 36 is very sweeping. The two halves of the test are not joined by or but by and. It Is thus not sufficient to believe “in the existence of God”; it is also necessary to believe that he maintains a complete judicial system for the detection and punishment of sinners, and that any man who escapes it in this world is bound to be laid by the heels In the next. In brief, believing in Hell is quite as essential as believing in God. The precise nature of Hell, of course, is not defined, but there is the thing itself as plain as day. Take it away, and the whole test falls to pieces.

The late Mr. Chief Justice Taft, if he had ever come into Maryland to testify in a lawsuit, might have been challenged and disqualified, for he was a Unitarian, and thus did not believe in Hell; in fact, his disbelief was used against him, especially in the Bible Belt, in the campaigns of 1908 and 1912. Nor is the disqualification of President Hoover at all certain, for he is a Quaker, and if the Quakers believe in Hell then they have surely managed to keep the fact a secret. I refrain, in delicacy, from pointing to any of our own great officers of state. The oath of office prescribed by Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution Includes no religious test, and so they are probably safe in their jobs despite a contradiction (and apparently unconstitutional) provision in the code of 1924. But suppose some of them that I could name were summoned to court as witnesses?

What would happen to most of the faculty of the Johns Hopkins is plain enough: they would be disqualified at once. I know a large number of these learned men, some of them with considerable intimacy, but I can recall none save Dr. Howard A. Kelly who has ever expressed any active and eager belief in Hell. Many of them, it may be, believe in God, but, as I have just shown, belief in God is not enough; it is also necessary to believe that God invariably rewards virtue and as invariably punishes sin. If it be admitted for an instant that any conceivable sinner may escape, then the test becomes mere vanity and nonsense, signifying nothing.

Mr. B.H. Hartogensis, a learned member of the Baltimore bar, has been carrying on a campaign against religious tests, in Maryland and elsewhere, for many years, but his chief attention, naturally enough, has been directed to those which work a hardship on his own people, the Jews. Article 36, so far as I can make out, does not disqualify Jews—that is, if they be orthodox—for they unquestionably believe in the same God that Christians believe in, and they do not categorically deny the existence of Hell. But, it certainly works a dreadful slaughter of many other persons, including not a few of the highest eminence in these parts.

What is to be done about it I don’t know. At several times in the past skeptical legislators from the city have made efforts at Annapolis to submit Article 36 to the voters of the Stale for repeal, but always their resolutions have been killed by the pious county members. There is some question, indeed, whether a referendum would suffice to repeal the article, for it is not in the Constitution proper, but in the Declaration of Rights, and it may be that the Declaration of Rights cannot be molested save by a constitutional convention. We were to have one, but it was shelved at the last session. And even if it had been held, Article 36 might have survived.

In Alabama a somewhat similar test was lately got rid of by judicial interpretation. First the judges of the Court of Appeals decided that the dying declaration of an unbeliever could not be accepted in evidence, and then they granted a rehearing and decided exactly the other way (Haura Wright vs. the State). Perhaps, if a case under Article 36 were taken to our own Court of Appeals it might be induced to repudiate Its judgment in The State vs. Mercer. But that seems unlikely, for The State vs. Mercer was heard as recently as 1905, and Maryland Judges seldom change their minds so quickly. The only way out, I suppose, is to keep on agitating, as Mr. Hartogensis has been agitating for years. When complete religious freedom is established in Maryland at last he will deserve an equestrian statue 100 feet high.

Meanwhile, it should be pleasant for many Baltimoreans to discover that they can escape jury service without expense of becoming an honorary member of the Fifth Regiment or the nuisance of committing a felony or studying for the bar. Let those who are so inclined simply say that they do not believe in Hell, and the Judge on the bench will have to excuse them. If they ever get to Hell they will undoubtedly regret their denial sorely, but while they remain on this earth it will ease and gratify them no end.

Upton Sinclair Calls Marriage Slavery and Ceremony a Farce

Annie Laurie

Oakland Tribune/January 30, 1909

Upton Sinclair says he’s sorry he’s married.

He said it right out loud in a calm, matter-of-fact tone of voice.

I read about the Robins people—the couple who don’t believe in marriage and who have decided to take the world Into their confidence and proclaim that they have never been married at all, and that they never intend to marry at all—not nobody, nowhere, at no time—all because they believe that modern marriage is a hideous mockery, and a horrible sin. So I went down to Mr. Sinclair’s hotel to see what he thought about the Robins and their views of the marriage question.

Hears Amazing Thing

Mr. Slnclair was pleasant enough to invite me to a most delightful vegetarian luncheon and then I sat there and listened, with eyebrows that I did my best to keep vertical, to all kinds of amazing things—mostly about marriage.

“These Rabins must be people of great courage and fine character,” said Mr. Sinclair. “It takes grit to be a pioneer. Of course, they are doing the right thing. I have never believed in marriage. Who could, and know any married people at all? But I wasn’t brave enough to live up to my convictions.

“When my wife and I fell in love with each other, we talked the whole marriage business over very conscientiously. We both of us hated the idea of being tied together by either a religious or a legal ceremony, and we tried to make up our minds to set the right kind of example to the world.

“But we know that Mrs. Sinclair’s father and mother would go raving crazy if we did what our conscience told us was right. So to ease their minds we let some one mumble a few words over us—and made them happy.

Calls Ceremony “Farce”

“l wish now we had done as these Robins people have had the courage and the fortitude to do—lived together without the farce of a foolish and obsolete ceremony.

“The world would have been that much farther ahead on the road to progress.

“We were young and foolish then, and now we have seen the world and know a great many married people—so we are a good deal ashamed of being married ourselves.

“Why am I so prejudiced against marriage?

“Why shouldn’t I be prejudiced against it? You might as well ask me why I am so prejudiced against slavery—or against thievery—or if it comes to that, against murder either.

“Marriage in this day is nothing but legalized slavery; that’s the most polite word to call it, I fancy.

“The average married woman is bought just exactly as much as any horse or any dog is bought.

“She is absolutely dependent upon her husband for her food and clothes, and she marries him just to get the very best food and clothes that she can command in the market.

“What are all these balls and parties—but bargain sales?

“This lovely blonde for half a million, a little shop worn, going at half price.

This gorgeous brunette on the bargain counter today, $20,000 a year will buy her. That’s what it all means—this display and parade and music and feasting and flowers. Every woman with a daughter is a match-maker, and she is looking for bargains, too.

“Talk about a fire sale rush—you just watch a young man with a good income or good prospects of a good income at a party, and you’ll see what the word ‘rush’ means.

“Women will never marry for love and for love alone until they become economically independent.

Independent Women

“A woman wage-earner will not marry for a home, when it gets to be as swell to earn your own living as it is to have some man earn it for you.

“Marriage of today is worse than a farce; it is a hideous tragedy.

“How many happy married people do you know?”

“About one couple in ten thousand.

“There’s So and So, a dissipated, selfish wreck—his wife lives with him rather than to go out and earn her own living.

“I don’t like to have my wife associate with women who do such things. I consider it immoral to encourage such horrible immorality.

“There is Thus and So, a morbid egotist, absorbing his wife’s very vitality and fairly eating up her very soul.

“There is Johnson buying bis wife pretty clothes, dressing her like a doll and making love to every woman he meets.

“She knows it, and she knows that he knows that she knows he knows it—but what’s the difference. A pair of pendant earrings at the right time or a new chinchilla coat—and it’s all right.

“Marriage! Faugh!”

“Marriage—ough! It really isn’t a subject to be discussed at the table.”

“But if all these people you speak of were not married to each other, Mr. Sinclair, only just living together, without a ceremony, do you think they would be happier then?” I ventured.

“They wouldn’t live together,” said Mr. Sinclair. “When they got tired of each other they’d quit.”

“And find some one else?” I queried, timidly.

“Perhaps,” answered Mr. Sinclair, calmly.

“And then?” I breathed in diffident but determined tones.

“And then,” said Mr. Sinclair, firmly, “what then? Nothing matters so long as the human race progresses. It may come through pain and through sorrow and through humiliation and through martyrdom, the progression, but come it must, and before we can climb very high on the stairs of progress we have got to leave the old-fashioned marriage contract at the foot of the steps.”

I found my dazed and somewhat bewildered way down the hill to Market street and down Market street to the little vegetarian restaurant kept and run by the Robins, Mr.—may I call her for this once again?—Mrs. Robins.

Eyes That Dream

Mr. Robins is a pale little man with a high, broad forehead, and a pair of dark eyes that dream, and Mrs. Robins is rather an attractive woman of the Swiss type, with large blue eyes, black lashed, plenty of black hair, a sweet smile and a great deal of fresh and perfectly natural color.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Robins, showing me to a seat at a plain little table at the end of the plain little restaurant, “I am the woman you read about in the papers. We didn’t want it to get into the papers, but since it was in why, we’ll have to make the best of it.

“No, I never married Mr. Robins. Yes, I have been called his wife for five years. I do not believe In marriage.

“It is a cruel and wicked slavery. want to be free; I could not bear to tie myself by any ceremony to any man.”

To Remain Happy

Mr. Robins smiled gently across a somewhat crumpled tablecloth and said very softly, “We are not separating because we are unhappy.

“We are separating because we are happy—and we want to keep happy.”

“Yes,” nodded Mrs. Robins, her large blue eyes afire with what looked like intelligent Interest. “That’s the way to keep happy—to separate.

“We have never quarreled, and we intend to part so that we never will have quarrels.

“Too much companionship is the worst kind of slavery. I want to live my life my own way, and I want this man I have loved for five years and love now to live his life, his own way; that’s all there is to it. There is no mystery—nothing but plain common sense. I despise the average married woman. I look upon her as a poor drudge, bought and paid for by her clothes and board.

Would “Improve World”

“When there are no more such women as she in the world the world will come nearer to being fit for honest, self-respecting women to live in.

“No true woman can be a helpless parasite and keep even a pretense of self-respect. Some day the world will see this, and then there will be no more marriage and no more misery, stunted, half-developed lives.”

How Long Then, Catilene?

Dorothy Thompson

Arizona Daily Star/January 20, 1940

Of course, the reason why the Dies committee never discovered Father Coughlin may be because the priest of the Shrine of the Little Flower has been so shy, invisible and inaudible, hiding his light under a bushel. Maybe they need a new and increased budget and a lot of new investigators in order to discover the editor of “Social Justice,” the Sunday, afternoon radio pleader, and the institutor of a libel suit that he afterward dropped.

The Dies committee found out in considerable detail the rather obscure names of members of the American League for Peace and Democracy and the American Student Union. This was, by and large, all right with me. I think it high time that we should take a look at the organizations which talk about American democracy and mean something else, and a little education on Communist methods of penetration into liberal groups can hurt nobody, unless maybe, the Communists.

The Dies committee also discovered the German-American bund, and revealed what had been published previously in numerous newspapers. But the report does contain a single reference to the “Christian” boys—of the “Christian Front,” or the “Christian Mobilizers”—who see in “Christianity” a war whoop for the persecution of non-gentiles in this country.

I once heard this definition of a detective: He is a man who closes his eyes and paints an eye on the eyelid so that people will think that his eyes are open.

Despite the fact that one has to pick one’s way across or around the members of the Christian Front thrusting copies of Father Coughlin’s “Social Justice” under one’s nose all over Forty-second street in the very heart of New York, and in spite of the animal screams of blood lust that emerge from the patriotic throats of Mr. McWilliam’s Christian Mobilizers which, I understand, are rivals of the good father, thinking that they have discovered in their handsome chief a more likely “Fuehrer of the Future,” our government investigators have not noticed these boys.

The fact that Father Coughlin’s name is enthusiastically cheered at the meetings of the German-American bund; the fact that invitations to the Christian Front meetings and to bund meetings have been handed out synonymously by the same men at the same meetings; the fact that the Christian Front maintained picket lines at WMCA radio station every Sunday for a full year, bearing large placards on which was the picture of Father Coughlin, has escaped the notice of investigators.

Get About More

Last Sunday Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, chief of the G- men, said that he understood that Father Coughlin had no connection with the Christian Front, although its followers sometimes used his name. I am afraid that Mr. Hoover should get around more. One might, for instance, get records of Father Coughlin’s speeches, or read copies of “Social Justice.” It is not a pleasant task, but is, I should think, all in the day’s work.

There was, for instance, that meeting in the Metropolitan opera house in Philadelphia on July 14, 1939, in which Father Coughlin, speaking from Detroit by wire and amplifier, praised the achievements of Mr. John Cassidy, commander of the Christian Front, urging the members of the audience to support and join that organization, and ended by conveying upon Mr. Cassidy the blessings of Almighty God. Mr.

Cassidy is now under arrest with sixteen others, on the ground that they are implicated in a plot to spread a general reign of terror.

Mr. Hoover thinks there is no connection between Father Coughlin and the Christian Front in spite of the fact that Father Coughlin’s paper, “Social Justice,” for perhaps he has nothing to do with “Social Justice,” either, conducted a Christian Front contest for months last year, offering prizes for the best answers to certain political, economic and social questions. It was a cute contest, because each answer was accompanied by 50 cents, and the right answer (prepared by Father Coughlin) got a prize. The proceeds of this educational lottery were to be used for the broadcasting funds with which to help finance Father Coughlin’s radio addresses to the nation.

One question in this contest was: What is America’s strongest safeguard against Communism? The answer was, “A Christian Front.”

In the issue of November 20, 1939, the question was asked, “What is Father Coughlin’s most emphatic advice to the Christian Front?” And the answer was “Meet force with force as a last resort.”

Evidently the Christian Front boys think the time has come for the last resort. But Father Coughlin has nothing to do with it at all!

Privileged Position

Anyhow, and no joke, these “Christian” exciters to violence, and now, it would seem, planners of violence, have enjoyed a peculiarly privileged position among the groups labeled by the Dies committee as subversive, and it would be interesting to know why.

The Dies committee could, I am sure, uncover lot of interesting facts by a little careful investigation into the activities, financing and interlocking relationships between the pastor of the Church of the Little Flower and political activities far beyond Detroit.

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