f their fellow-creatures, the toil and anguish of the
nations, the sweat and tears and blood of the human race! It
is all theirs--it comes to them; just as all the springs
pour into streamlets, and the streamlets into rivers, and
the rivers into the ocean--so, automatically and inevitably,
all the wealth of society comes to them. The farmer tills
the soil, the miner digs in the earth, the weaver tends the
loom, the mason carves the stone; the clever man invents,
the shrewd man directs, the wise man studies, the inspired
man sings--and all the results, the products of the labor of
brain and muscle, are gathered into one stupendous stream
and poured into their laps!

This is the system. It is the crown and culmination of all the wrongs
of the ages; and in proportion to the magnitude of its exploitation,
is the hypocrisy and knavery of the clerical camouflage which has been
organized in its behalf. Beyond all question, the supreme irony of
history is the use which has been made of Jesus of Nazareth as the
Head God of this blood-thirsty system; it is a cruelty beyond all
language, a blasphemy beyond the power of art to express. Read
the man's words, furious as those of any modern agitator that
I have heard in twenty years of revolutionary experience: "Lay
not up for yourselves treasures on earth!--Sell that ye have
and give alms!--Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of
Heaven!--Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your
consolation!--Verily, I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly
enter into the kingdom of Heaven!--Woe unto you also, you lawyers!--Ye
serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of
hell?"

"And this man"--I quote from "The Jungle" again--"they have made into
the high-priest of property and smug respectability, a divine sanction
of all the horrors and abominations of modern commercial civilization!
Jewelled images are made of him, sensual priests burn insense to him,
and modern pirates of industry bring their dollars, wrung from the
toil of helpless women and children, and build temples to him, and sit
in cushioned seats and listen to his teachings expounded by doctors of
dusty divinity!"

* * * * *

#BOOK FIVE#

#The Church of the Merchants#

Mammon led them on--
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and