wery
accent, and gave communications from relatives and friends of the
various confederates. "Jesus is with us", said Dr. Holmes. "The spirit
of Jesus bids you to study spiritualism." And then came the voice of a
child: "Mamma! Mamma!" "It is little Georgie!" cried Dr. Holmes; and
one of the society ladies started, and answered, and presently burst
into tears. A marvelous piece of evidence--especially when you recall
that the story of this mother's bereavement had been published in all
the papers a couple of months before!

And this kind of swindling is going on every night in every city of
America. It goes on wholesale for months every summer at Lily Dale, in
New York State, where the spiritualists hold their combination of
Chautauqua and Coney Island. And the same thing is going on in the
field of mental healing, and of all other "occult" forces and powers,
whether real or imaginary. It is going on with new spiritual fervors,
new moral idealisms, new poetry, new music, new painting, new
sculpture. The faker, the charlatan is everywhere--using the mental
and moral and artistic forces of life as a means of delivering himself
from economic servitude. Everywhere I turn I see it--credulity being
exploited, and men of practical judgment, watching the game and seeing
through it, made hard in their attitude of materialism. How many men I
know who sit by in sullen protest while their wives drift from one new
quackery to another, wasting their income seeking health and happiness
in futile emotionalism! How many kind and sensitive spirits I
know--both men and women--who pour their treasures of faith and
admiration into the laps of hierophants who began by fooling all
mankind and ended by fooling themselves!

In each one of the cults of what I have called the "Church of the
Quacks", there are thousands, perhaps millions of entirely sincere,
self-sacrificing people. They will read this book--if anyone can
persuade them to read it--with pain and anger; thinking that I am
mocking at their faith, and have no appreciation of their devotion.
All that I can say is that I am trying to show them how they are being
trapped, how their fine and generous qualities are being used by
exploiters of one sort or another; and how this must continue, world
without end, until there is order in the material affairs of the race,
until justice has been established as the law of man's dealing with
his fellows.

* * * *