We have seen the activities of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in many American cities; but because this is a national system, competing with the public schools in every part of the country, it is necessary to consider the general aspects of the parochial school problem. Many Catholics will read this book and write me letters; therefore I will save both my time and their feelings if I explain at the outset that I know there are a great many decent, hard-working Catholics in the United States, and also many earnest and devoted Catholic teachers in the American public schools. My quarrel here is with the Roman hierarchy, which holds the faith of millions of sincere people, and sells it out to the exploiters of the world. This is a book on economics, and its plea is to Catholic working people, to open their eyes to the class struggle, and see how they are being betrayed and plundered in modern capitalist society.

This class struggle is in the Catholic Church, precisely as in other organizations. There are Catholic trust magnates and exploiters of labor, and they give their money to Catholic educational institutions, and then control these institutions in the interest of the open shop and general reaction. I was not well informed about the insides of Catholic affairs, and when I came to investigate I could not keep from laughing, to discover how completely Catholic education reproduces all the features of Protestant education. Here, for example, is James A. Farrell, president of the Steel Trust; he got part of a common school education, and then went to work in a steel mill; in 1922 we find him getting an honorary degree from the Catholic Georgetown University!

Here is Francis P. Garvan, wealthy corporation lawyer, Attorney-General Palmer’s assistant in robbing helpless Germans during the war. He gives generously to Catholic schools and colleges, and gets an honorary degree from Fordham University, and is a trustee in the Catholic University of America. He vigorously carries on the open-shop propaganda in the Catholic world, and bitterly fights the influence of Father Ryan, who sympathizes with labor. Here is Condé B. Pallen, graduate of Georgetown University, a wealthy Catholic propagandist, editor of the “Catholic Encyclopedia,” and head of the “Committee for the Study of Revolutionary Movements of the National Civic Federation.” Mr. Pallen is one of the “Helen Ghouls”; and thereby we discover that in the world of Big Business the gulf between Catholics and Protestants has been bridged. It is my hope that this gulf may be bridged in the world of labor, and that Protestant and Catholic wage-slaves will no longer permit themselves to be divided and conquered by their masters.

Six or seven hundred years ago the Catholic Church had its Golden Age, and at that time it was to some extent a proletarian movement. There are Catholics today who dream of a return of that Golden Age, and see in the modern labor unions something resembling the medieval guilds. These men are fighting vigorously inside the church; they got a group of bishops to support the National Catholic Welfare Council, and the Catholic Church issued an extremely progressive manifesto on social problems. You remember during the war we had quite a wave of enthusiasm for the making over of the world; and there were Catholic idealists, sharing that bright dream.

But now the war is over, and we no longer need to make promises to labor, and the “hard guys” are in the saddle. The open-shop gang goes after the Catholic radicals, and you hear less about the reconstruction program. John D. Ryan, chairman of the Anaconda Copper Company and leading Catholic capitalist, resigns from the board of the Catholic University of America, and Nicholas F. Brady, Catholic traction magnate, declares that this university will get no more funds while Father John A. Ryan, the radical, is on its teaching staff. Father Ryan’s teachings are denounced by the Lusk Committee as “subversive,” and the open-shop intriguers protest to the Apostolic delegate in America. The Catholic bishops turn lukewarm to social reconstruction, and the funds to be devoted to this work are suddenly discovered to be missing. Mr. Condé B. Pallen travels to Rome, and the next thing we hear is that the Papal See has ordered the dissolution of the National Catholic Welfare Council.

The Catholic liberals, of course, do not give up without a struggle, and they have powerful arguments on their side. For a generation the Church has seen with dismay the organized workers drifting away from its authority and taking up with Socialism. And what chance has the Catholic machine to win unless it professes some interest in the cause of social justice? What chance will the Church have with the American Federation of Labor if it sells itself body and soul to the open shop? In Cincinnati a Catholic priest, Father Peter Dietz, started a liberal organization, the American Academy of Christian Democracy; he opened the convention of the American Federation of Labor with a prayer, and was then suspended by the archbishop of the diocese. Thereupon high officials of the Federation addressed a protest to the archbishop; if such protests are not heeded, how can the Church hope to hold the rank and file of organized labor?

The National Catholic Welfare Council appealed to the Pope to reconsider the order for its suspension. It ought to be interesting to American Catholics to know the names of the judges who heard and decided this grave question of American policy; they were Gasparri, Merry del Val, Bisleti, Sbaretti, Van Rossum, and Pompili: four of them Italians, one a Spaniard, and one a Hollander! There are no Americans in the Roman Curia, and American Catholics are excluded from any share in the control of their church. This seems to me something which every American has a right to make note of, and which American Catholics must find embarrassing.

The most active of Catholic propaganda agencies in this country is the Knights of Columbus, and this order has recently resolved to assume its share of the labors of revising our schools and school text-books. “Knight” McSweeney has declared that “half the history text-books should be destroyed.” It is interesting to note that the class struggle is going on inside this organization, precisely as in the National Education Association. There are some Catholics who object to seeing their church used by the political henchmen of Big Business. When District Attorney Pelletier of Boston, a high-up official of the Knights, was prosecuted for selling justice to rich criminals, there were resolutions passed by several state branches to demand his resignation. Pelletier of course raised the cry that he was being persecuted because he was a Catholic; such is the device by which the grafters try to hold on. But Pelletier had to quit.

When I was a boy of sixteen, earning my way through college by writing jokes and sketches, I went to call upon Street and Smith, publishers of the “half-dime novels” of my boyhood; detective and Wild West tales, full of thrilling adventures, and having illustrated covers in brilliant red and green and blue and yellow. The editor in charge of these publications was a gentleman who called himself Enrique H. Lewis; he had lived in South America, and enlisted in the navy. I took him the manuscript of a long novel, and presently began to write for him a series of stories about West Point life. Someone asked him if I had been through West Point, and he answered that I had been through it in three days! The Spanish War came on, and I took to slaughtering the enemy by land and sea—on the land I was Lieutenant Frederick Garrison, and on sea I was Ensign Clark Fitch. My editorial chief used to marvel at the speed with which these manuscripts appeared; there was a year when I was turning out a total of fifty-six thousand words a week. We used to have office consultations, and he was worried about the state of my soul; it didn’t seem natural that a boy of my age should be holding such serious views about human problems. His forebodings proved to be justified—I spoiled myself as a writer of dime novels, and lost my job with Street and Smith!

My former chief took better care of his career, and is now Henry Harrison Lewis, editor of “Industrial Progress,” organ of the “open shop.” I have before me one of his articles, entitled: “The Great Open-Shop Conspiracy.” You might guess this conspiracy to be the effort of the Black Hand to make the American people believe that “open shop” means freedom for labor; but no—this conspiracy is the action of the National Catholic Welfare Council, together with the Protestant churches, in defending the right of workers to form unions if they want to. This article is reprinted in pamphlet form, and copies of it are sent to every Catholic priest and every Protestant clergyman in the United States. Mr. Lewis admits that the cost of this is defrayed “by other persons and organizations”; but he refuses to tell us who these persons and organizations are!