demain that it has ever been my fortune to encounter in my
readings in the literatures of some thirty centuries and seven
different languages.

And I will also add that I respectfully challenge Dr. Abbott to
publish this letter. And I announce to him in advance that if he
refuses to publish it, I will cause it to be published upon the first
page of the "Appeal to Reason", where it will be read by some five
hundred thousand Socialists, and by them set before several million
followers of Jesus Christ, the world's first and greatest
revolutionist, whom Dr. Lyman Abbott has traduced and betrayed by the
most amazing piece of theological knavery that it has ever been my
fortune to encounter.

#The Octopus#

Dr. Lyman Abbott published this letter! In his editorial comment
thereon he said that he did not know which of two biblical injunctions
to follow: "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be
thought like unto him"; or "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest
he be wise in his own conceit". I replied by pointing out a third text
which the Reverend Doctor had possibly overlooked: "He that calleth
his neighbor a fool shall be in danger of hell-fire." But the Reverend
Doctor took refuge in his dignity, and I bided my time and waited for
that revenge which comes sooner or later to us muck-rakers. In this
case it came speedily. The story is such a perfect illustration of the
functions of religion as oil to the machinery of graft that I ask the
reader's permission to recite it at length.

For a couple of decades the political and financial life of New
England has been dominated by a gigantic aggregation of capital, the
New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. It is a "Morgan" concern;
its popular name, "The New Haven", stands for all the railroads of
six states, nearly all the trolley-lines and steamship-lines, and
a group of the most powerful banks of Boston and New York. It is
controlled by a little group of insiders, who followed the custom of
rail-road-wrecking familiar to students of American industrial life:
buying up new lines, capitalizing them at fabulous sums, and unloading
them on the investing public; paying dividends out of capital,
"passing" dividends as a means of stock manipulation, accumulating
surpluses and cutting "melons" for the insiders, while at the same
time crushing labor unions, squeezing wages, and permitting
rolling-stock and equipment to go to wreck.

All these facts were perfe