than good by their advocacy of all manner of quack systems of amelioration, instead of going to the root of the matter. Many of these are profoundly religious. Many "strangers within our gates" who do not know our American life are utterly ignorant of the enormous social service that seemingly very absurd, narrow and ignorant forms of Christianity are rendering. Nor do they realize the profound affection and devotion these thousands cherish to various forms of organized Christianity. To abuse their religious experience, to really misrepresent in the name of Socialism, as Mr. Ladoff does, their deepest life is hopelessly to shut out from them the message. of Karl Marx which they so much need.

The other difficulty is that Mr. Ladoff and his friends do not know "historical Christianity." I do not blame them. It is a department of science with its own documents and needs time and patience. But historic Christianity is a fact. And it is a mighty fact, with most tremendous lessons. One of those lessons is that centralized party despotism and traditional dogmatism are deadly foes. It has been my business to go with some care through all the principal Christian documents from Jesus to the present day, and the forces that changed and distorted historical Christianity from a religious, proletarian, democratic movement to a strong, centralized aristocratic imperialism exist today, and lurk in wait for Social Democracy in case it should prove strong enough to "make it worth while."

Did these men know Christian history as some Christian Marxian Socialists know it, they would see how terrible are the dangers that confront the party. And those dangers are not "mysticism" but stupid dogmatism, and unwillingness actually to weigh evidence and consider facts.

Historical Christianity has been grossly misused by imperial and utterly irreligious ambitions. The only remedy has been religious awakening. And only religious awakening has brought liberty. The "rationalism" of Erasmus would never have set the torch to Europe and lit the fires of the Reformation (also a religious proletarian movement) had not Luther done it. It is an historical mistake to represent the Reformation as a purely middle-class movement. It became that through the force of circumstances. Calvinism was a middle-class movement, and proved the only force strong enough to politically organize the Reformation. But in the beginning it was not So. And the success of Calvinism made the Reformation predominantly "middle class" even in Lutheran countries. The peace of Westphalia was therefore esentially dictated by middle class interests.

But one reason why religion has been thus abused is because

of its tremendous power over men. It has been worth while to capture the religious forces for all sorts of purposes. What is needed now is not the misrepresentation and abuse of religion but honest understanding of what it means, and the capture of it for the purposes of social reorganization. There has been no other such power in history as religion. It organized the whole Mohammedan world. It has organized Europe. It can reorganize life anew. There is no objection to stripping religion of every element that is not sane and rational. If there is any element in my Christian faith that is not sane and rational I am ready to surrender it. But I am not ready to surrender my faith, and I am glad to believe that there are millions like me. And it is a cruel alternative, and a brutally unnecessary alternative, to put to a devout believer in the Kingdom of God as Jesus taught it, to say he must give up what he has found strength and help from in time of darkest doubt and despair, or be refused a place as coworker with other men of good will, who like himself stand for a new social order, in which loveless competition will be no more, and parasitic classes will no longer infect and destroy God's beautiful world.

It should never be forgotten that Karl Marx had a wife who prayed. And although he rejected her faith, he never was coarse in his attacks upon it. Mr. Ladoff would render a real service if he could persuade some of his friends, who think it "orthodox" to forget good manners and talk of "intellectual dishonesty" and "priestly exploitation" as the essence of religion, that such utterances bar the way for thousands who otherwise might listen to Socialist arguments, and that they are really as harmful and narrow as religious fanatics. There can be no objection to any man maintaining his particular view of the world, and although the materialism of Feuerbach seems now. in the light of modern psychology, profoundly unsatisfactory, yet if any Socialist chooses to ignore the work of Wundt, Lotze, Fechner, Höffding and Wm. James, this is a relatively free country, and one can only feel sorry. But to insist that a particular type of materialism pass as the only scientific mode of thought, and to try and tie up a great world movement to a once useful but now antiquated phase of thought is a folly only equaled by the infallible Vatican in its attitude toward Thomas Acquinas. We hope sincerely this will not be the attitude of organized Socialism, for if it is it means a long educational process before we can even hope to get to work on socialism. Nothing is now more out of place than wanton and ignorant attacks by religious teachers on Socialism, or by Socialism upon religious teachers.

The really scientific mind seeks to understand facts. No scientific Marxian socialist denies that religion has functioned hitherto in the organization of society, and its forms have been a necessary outcome of the economic situation. Why, then, are we so sure that it will not function still farther, and that in new phases and under other forms will function even more effectively under the new coming economic conditions?

To contrast religion and science is to the really scientific theologician, trained in the methods of the laboratory and of historical research, entirely false. Modern theology aims at scientific completeness as much as medicine or biology. It knows the methods in both spheres. It also knows the methods of historical and philosophical research. It has no fear of either and seeks to make these methods its own.

What Mr. Ladoff is really opposed to is scholastic theology, against which modern theology protests as earnestly and more intelligently than he, because it knows the ground better. But Mr. Ladoff and his friends greatly increase the difficulty of effective protest against this scholasticism, and confuse the issue by indiscriminate, and Mr. Ladoff must excuse me if I say somewhat uninstructed, attack upon all religion.

I. PRELIMINARY

FORMER writer, in touching upon these subjects has said that is almost impossible to keep cool and write about them in a normal way. This is no doubt true. The conditions that prevail in our police, judicial and penitentiary departments are enough to make "every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead." The true facts that prevail are not well known, except to the underworld, amongst the ones that administer the so-called justice and those who observe for themselves.

The Los Angeles Times, a capitalist organ, freely admits that our system of penology is a disgrace to civilization. Brand Whitlock asks plaintively, "What good does it do?" Lincoln Steffens and Charles Erskine Scott Wood level wholesale denunciation at the heads of our police departments. Charles Edward Russell exposes, and effectively, too, the contract convict lease system of Georgia. Robert G. Ingersoll of the past and Clarence S. Darrow of today attack the present system and with a host of others unite in denouncing the fiendishness displayed by those in power. Nevertheless, the true facts are not well known. It is almost impossible to get anything into the capitalistic press about these subjects. Formerly, the police and the judges were content to prey upon help

less humanity, and acquiring considerable proficiency in this line they have extended the field of their operations until now it includes all of the unemployed and a considerable portion of the wage-workers and of those others who have less than a couple of thousand dollars.

The police power has grown with the growth of capitalism, until now, the ordinary citizen's life and liberty are in danger from the police, with the tacit consent of the judges. Our peace-loving and law-abiding citizens need look well to themselves for the jails, penitentiaries, chaingangs and what-not are too often kept filled to their full capacity in order that fat positions may be maintained and created.

It has been a source of much astonishment among the government authorities that the army and navy are sadly in need of men, and, this too, at a time when there are millions vainly ransacking the continent for employment.

In searching about for the causes of these conditions the authorities have overlooked one of the greatest. A man who is out of a job and is punished by the policeman with his club for it, or sentenced by a judge for it to a work-house, bridewell, chain-gang or penitentiary, is not going to rush with patriotic impulse into the service of a government which punished him so severely for being unemployed.

On the whole, it must seem rather odd to an unprejudiced, thinking man that a government that refuses employment to its own citizens should expect those same citizens, after having been punished with long terms in prison, to give up their lives in its service.

Evidently, Senator Dick took this view of the matter when he introduced his now celebrated Militia Bill. And this law is but one of thousands that confronts the citizen today. For over a hundred years-though especially active in the last twenty, have the legislatures of the various states and territories, the different departments of legislation, pressed thousands upon thousands of laws upon the statute books, two-thirds of which are enough to make Washington and Jefferson turn in their very graves, and to be denounced and repudiated by every former American patriot from Patrick Henry to Davy Crockett. Hampered and harassed upon every side, the ordinary citizen can scarcely move without breaking some ordinance—some law, that up to the moment of his arrest he never heard of. The suppression of free speech is only an incident in the despotic power of today. A full expose of these conditions would take volumes, consequently I can but touch lightly on most of them.

II. MARSHALS, CONSTABLES, JUSTICES OF THE PEACE

A brief reference to these subjects will be all that is necessary. After