Federation of Catholic Societies" for September, 1915, I find a record
of the ceaseless plotting to bar criticism of the Catholic Church from
the mails. Fitzgerald, a Tammany Catholic congressman, proposes a bill
in Washington; and Judge St. Paul, of New Orleans, a member of the
Federation's "law committee", points out the difficulties in the way
of such legislation. You cannot pass a law against ridiculing
religion, because the Catholics want to ridicule Christian Science,
Mormonism, and the "Holy Ghost and Us" Society! The Judge thinks the
purpose of the Papal plotters will be accomplished if they can slip
into the present law the words "scurrilous and slanderous"; he hopes
that this much can be done without the American people catching on!

You read these things for the first time, perhaps, and you want to
start an American "Kultur-kampf." I make haste, therefore, to restate
the main thesis of this book. It is not the New Inquisition which is
our enemy today; it is hereditary Privilege. It is not Superstition,
but Big Business which makes use of Superstition as a wolf makes use
of sheep's clothing.

You remember how, when Americans first awakened to the universal
corruption of our politics, we used to attribute it to the "ignorant
foreign vote." Turn to Lecky's "Democracy and Liberty" and you will
see how reformers twenty years ago explained our political depravity.
But we probed deeper, and discovered that the purely American
communities, such as Rhode Island, were the most corrupt of all. It
dawned upon us that wherever there was a political boss paying bribes
on election day, there was a captain of industry furnishing the money
for the bribes, and taking some public privilege in return. So we came
to realize that political corruption is merely a by-product of Big
Business.