public office, Catholic
ecclesiastics were accorded public honors, and Catholic favor became a
means to political advancement. You might see a hard-swearing old
political pirate like "Uncle Joe" Cannon, taking his cigar out of the
corner of his blasphemous mouth and betaking himself to the
"Cardinal's Day Mass", to bend his stiff knees and bow his hoary
unrepentant head before a jeweled prelate on a throne. You might see
an emissary of the United States government proceeding to Rome,
prostrating himself before the Pope, and paying over seven million
dollars of our taxes for lands which the filthy and sensual friars of
the Philippine Islands had filched from the wretched serfs of that
country and which the wretched serfs had won back by their blood in a
revolution.

#Secret Service#

This Taft administration, urged on by the Catholic intrigue, made the
most determined efforts to prevent the spread of radical thought.
Because the popular magazines were opposing the plundering of the
country, a bill was introduced into Congress to put them out of
business by a prohibitive postal tax; the President himself devoted
all his power to forcing the passage of this bill. At the same time
the Socialist press was handicapped by every sort of persecution. I
was at that time in intimate touch with the "Appeal to Reason", and I
know that scarcely a month passed that the Post Office Department did
not invent some new "regulation" especially designed to limit its
circulation. I recall one occasion when I met the editor on his way to
Washington with a trunkful of letters from subscribers who complained
that their postmasters refused to deliver the paper to them; and later
on this same editor was prosecuted by a Catholic Attorney General and
sentenced to prison for seeking to awaken the people concerning the
Moyer-Haywood case.

From my personal knowledge I can say that under the administration of
President Taft t the Roman Catholic Church and the Secret Service of
the Federal Government worked hand in hand for the undermining of the
radical movement in America. Catholic lecturers toured the country,
pouring into the ears of the public vile slanders about the private
morality of Socialists; while at the same time government detectives,
paid out of public funds, spent their time seeking evidence for these
Catholic lecturers to use. I know one man, a radical labor-leader,
whose morals happened to approach those of the average capitalist