;yhite ^ . church of the social revolution THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES JOHN RANDOLPH HAYNES AND DORA HAYNES FOUNDATION COLLECTION A. MESSAGE TO THE WORLD by- BOUCK WHITE ANTI-WAR EDITION FIFTEEN CENTS TWENTY COPIES OR MORE FIVE CENTS EACH \ FTER the Ludlow massacre, Bouck White, preacher of rA the Church of the Social Revolution, wrote to the pastor of the Rockefeller Baptist Church, suggesting that a joint meeting of the two congregations to discuss the matter from he standpoint of Jesus, might remedy our social afflictions. He tated that he would visit the Rockefeller Church the following 5unday to extend to them this invitation. Receiving no reply, iouck White went to that Church as announced, and at the ime for "notices," he arose to convey the invitation. It was ound then that the congregation was thickly strewn with plain lothes men and police. He said : "As the pastor of a neighbor- ng church, I am come " But he got no further. He was eized by the officers, cast into jail, and sentenced to six months )n Blackwell's Island. Privilege of appeal was denied him. He sent this manuscript out from the prison and had no hance to correct the mutilated passages. Its timeliness will nore than atone for the type errors. CALL OF THE CARPENTER By BOUCK WHITE A Few Passages from the Book *ay your hand in ours, and live. The Revo- lution Church is strong to create immortals. We will cause you to dwell deep; will open unto you "divine releases from the common ways," as Plato would put it. You are called to be great. We will multiply your dangers sevenfold, and your joys sev- enty and sevenfold. Your cup shall run over both with honey and with gall of travail. Lord God will pump his redder blood into your veins. And redeem your life from nonentity. He will give you spunk. So that you may stand for something. We are plotting a kingdom of God upon earth. And the evil tyranny of the powers of this earth will gnash teeth against us. But we are not dismayed. We make our face strong against their face, and our forehead firm against their forehead. It is more excellent to give one's life for freedom, and enter gloriously the congregation of the dead, tlian to prolong one's days in abject and crouching servi- tude. TO THE PROTESTANTS Some three years ago in New York, Father Vaughn on successive Sunday mornings was un- limbering his guns from St. Patrick's cathedral, against Socialism. About that time Bishop Lines 32 Its Message to the World of the Episcopal diocese of Newark addressed a meeting of young Episcopal ministers in New York. And said : Gentlemen, if I were you I wouldn't fight Socialism. If I have any vision of the future, the line of cleavage in days to come will be, Roman- ism and property rights, versus Socialism and human rights. When that line up comes. Protes- tantism will probably find her historic tradition ful- filled by taking sides, not with Romanism and prop- erty rights but with Socialism and human rights. Mammon, O backsliding Protestant pulpit, is not your friend. It is the day of riches. Is it also a day of god? Never before was materialism so insolent. Never before was spirituality so impotent. There is in the people a paralysis of the sense of God. The Lord has forsaken the earth, they de- clare. Life's finer energy is chilled. The inner life is starved. The bright lights of heaven are dimmed. I know. You are going to point me to gifts bestowed through your channels, a dazzling philan- thropy. Eyes that discern are not glamoured by dazzling philanthropy. Freedom is more than alms-giving; and self-respect in the people, than a multitude of charities. With the moneys of the rich you are pauperizing the souls of the poor. Re- 33 The Church of the Social Revolution call to your mind the eras of magnificent decadence — a world externally garnished, but within, all de- livered up to death. I have searched the chambers of my imagery, I have likened this age to a harlot. Though she deck her with ornaments of gold and daub with rouge, yet she is a harlot; under whose fair-seeming surface, decay is festering and much foulness. The hell beneath, so thinly veneered by civilized make-believe, now is bursting through. We wit- ness a world-conflagration. And the white angels of Europe are being destroyed at the cannon's mouth. O, you hang your head down to the ground, now. And you do well. This war is your work. O churches of Christendom. Softly now. I'll put it as tenderly as can be. But the firmament above is uttering its voice. And we may not diminish a word of it. You have taught strife instead of peace as the organizing principle of industry and commerce. Competition is the pleasant sounding word where- with you cover it. But in your heart you know it is but another term for war. Competitive armaments are the outgrowth of competitive merchandizings. When trade rivalries face each other across fron- 34 Its Message to the World tiers, the professional soldier is inevitable. Dis- cern the thing aright, I entreat you ; sweep the cob- webs from the brain. When business is a battle- field, the battlefield will be a business. To such an ordering of the world's business life, you have given your sanctifying consent. So that now — myriad men-at-arms; a tide of horsemen like the swelling of the sea; and guns big and many, sound- ing a devil's tattoo. Radicalism is the accusation you publish against us. We accept the word. Radical means, root- work. We lay the adze at the root of the tree. We take the Carpenter seriously, holding that fel- lowship is practical in the affairs of earth. The red god of Galilee is our leader. We decree broth- erhood. We shall give to the human race one heart. You sneer, O, I know. As we go into the mud- gutter, singing the commonwealth and uttering our voice to the mob, you sit in the assembly of the mockers. Generous enthusiasms are "bad taste" ; all the fine exhuberance and adventure of the soul are placed under your social taboo. O, Respectabil- ity, what crimes are committed in thy name! But we account your scoffings as a thing of naught. We are the only Christians left. Of the Most High 35 The Church of the Social Revolution we are a faithful ambassador. We announce for earth a new dispensation, all vital with the power from above. Long have his mutterings been heard. Now he will be no more dumb. There is shouting in heaven because of us. We are the place where his name and his honor dwell. Brother, you've got to think hard. And you've got to think fast. Your efforts at present to catch up with the modern mind, are as a glacier in a foot- race with an avalanche. So low has spirituality de- clined, that multitudes are saying: God is ahead; force now is the only deity; money is force; there- fore get money. Marriage is penalized. Only the well-to-do can now afford a wife and children — to the abnormalizing of the sex-life in a thousand thousand. Competition's iron law is smashing the business men that are gentle and kindly ; so that the good-hearted are ready to perish from the earth; for in a regime of claws and teeth, only the wolfish possess survival value. Greedy of gain the earth has backslid from love and romance and gracious beauty. The toilers have slumped into a generation of hirelings. Their labors are in the house of a stranger. They go to their work with a slack hand. Therefore they seek the dreamshop where 36 Its Message to the World open to them the floodgates of obHvion; they fol- low after drugs that give dreams in the daylight. The while you motor-ride with rich ones, and stretch your feet under their dining-table. You have never descended into hell with the miserables of earth. How then shall you be their deliverer? Great is the age, and needs a great religion. Christianity in the modern world is a rowboat's rud- der on an ocean liner; the engine is out of all pro- portion to the steering gear. Of the things taught in divinity schools, one-third are untrue, and one- third are irrelevant. It were as easy to rewrite Israel's wilderness journey in terms of the telegraph and vestibuled trains, as to hope to interpret indus- trial democrary in the formulae of the Nicene or Apostle's creed. The clerical mind, in this stupend- ous modernity, give one the impression of the sail- ing master of a fifteenth century caravel who should awake from a five-centuried sleep to find himself on the bridge of a "Vaterland" or "Mau- retania," and be expected to take charge of the vessel. You have brought the world into darkness and not into light. Yes you, O pulpits of a nineteenth- centuried establishment. The darkening sky, and 37 The Church of the Social Revolution a Europe delivered to violence and spoil, testify against you. From you should have gone forth the word restraining the shedders of blood — the shedders of blood in both the business area and the battle area. But the word came not. Thus there has been no collective conscience. The world has been be- reft of moral leadership. Every man's hand is against his brother. This blasphemy you now have made of it, whereby blood is sent into the streets, is because of the sin you have sinned. If we, the red host, had been in control of the earth, and had brought things to such a muddle, right promptly } you would cast it into our teeth. Get under your burden of guilt, then. A burden, the greater, in that you have stayed our hand. When we have pleaded for a world order in place of the present disorder, and have sought to awaken man from the bad dream he is dreaming, you have dragged us to arrest ; have wounded us with the wound of an enemy. The one thing Christendom resents is Christianity. "What then shall we do?" I will tell you what j to do. Transform your churches into churches of the social revolution. This world, inferno-centric, must become deocentric ; fellowship taking the place 38 Its Message to the World of competition in our merchandizings, our indus- trializings, in all the work of our hands and in the devisings of the heart. A right-about-face, that. A chinacteric change, and very convulsing to those who deemed the present ordering settled on everlasting foundations. But the change must be. Topsy-turydom shall be turned right side up, though many the while eat their bread with quaking and drink the water of trembling. TO THE JEW To-day is for Judaism a crucial hour. She is parting with her ancient faith, and has found not the new. Her ghetto days are past. Past likewise, rabbinical lore; the talmud and its mustiness; the wearisome feast; Saturday's Sabbath; the syna- gogue with a moth-eaten ritual. Her oncetime gar- ment has fallen from her. And the new is wanting. Naked is her condition. And all exposed, like a snake that has sloughed off its old skin before a new integument has grown. In these straits some of her children, dead to the Israel inspirations, are letting go their spiritual anchorage, to grow a sheer money-getting set of brains. They are waxing rich, so strong is the racial 39 The Church of the Social Revolution fibre, their inheritance. But they are not waxing noble. A Jew fattening in green pasture is not a majestic spectacle. An Israel sleek and greedy of dividends, is a thing despised of the earth ; and the reproach of men. Judah was not created for riches, but for righteousness. Aspiration is the stuff of which she is compounded. An aspiration, moreover, con- cerned with things industrial. In brickyards of Goshen was her nativity. From which day, a para- dise for the toiler has been her essential truth and hope. The Revolution Church is the blossoming of Israel's long era of obscure seed-sowings. We re- veal her unto herself. We are a twentieth-century version of the Bible, that book of the Hebrew spirit, both whose old and new testaments were written or spoken by a Jew. This Bible, as reinterpreted by critical scholarship, is our text book. And all the world shall be a palestine of the hovering halo. Enter, O Israel, into our fellowship. Here, los- ing your Judaism you shall find it. We are the accomplishment of the vision which you prophets foresaw of old. A spiritualized Socialism shall be 40 I Its Message to the World the Messiah, for whose coming immemorial ages have groaned. TO THE IDEALISTS Seekers after the ideal, the Church of the Revo- lution is what you have been in quest of. To-day your soul is without a home. The accepted churches are stifling to you, and their outworn creeds a de- rision. But the other extreme, the worldling's world, is likewise not for you. The pettiness and soullessness of it revulse you. Its mirth is hollow, as that of one charged up with cocaine. You are a scattered sheep. Idealists require an outer union. The Revolu- tion Church gathers up them that are wandering; to the end that their diverging energies may coalesce in the might of mass action. Fine is the dream you are dreaming; and needs now to incarnate itself. Let idealism be married to action, the womb of time swells big with destiny; and a new era is gestated that shall change the mental map. Always, when religion and economics get together, history dips her pen afresh and writes a thundering chapter. We are spiritually your kith and kin. You are unmagnetized by a religion whose absorbing con- 41 The Church of the Social Revolution cern is harp music in the hereafter. Your intelli- gence craves a here-and-now heaven. The paradise we are preparing has foundations. We are do- dreamers; purposing to live our idealism and not merely talk it. Head and shoulders are in cloud- land. But the feet are flatly on the good brown earth. Hard idealists are we. Our tribe fights not as one that beats the air. We have enemies of a very strong flesh and blood. We are lifters up of the lowly. Wherefore we are gnashed upon by the class that is extortionately heaping up great rev- enues. A spirituality that has no punch to it, is a spiritless thing. We invite you to join yourself to us. But we promise you no easy time. There are battles to fight. We rescue the spoiled from the oppressor. Democracy is a warfare, and demands in its devotees a breed, a disposition stout and most warrior-like. The evils under which our liberties groan are not by accident. The world is wrong- side-up-with-care. Great lords with selfishness aforethought have barricaded the road that leads to freedom. And will not be moved save by a force stronger than they. Our flag of red is the symbol of the world's 42 Its Message to the World wrath against barbarism — the new barbarism of the power of money. Our unfolding power fortifies faith, and makes ideahsm once more credible. Ex- cept under us, to what flag will you rally ? Protest- antism is a spent force. Romanism is a stiffest- necked reactionary; avowedly an institution for organizing the world's inertia. That we of the Revolution Church go from strength to strength is the hope of the world. We alone have kept the faith. For we preach deliverance to the slaves, and plead the causes of the poor. With your strength joined to ours, we shall multiply as the bud of the field, and prosper into an everlasting center of light, TO THE SINGLE TAXER You seek to alter the basis of land ownership. And therein you seek wisely. In land titles, much iniquity is imbedded. To purge the injustice would lift a grievous load from the backs of men. Yes, the social reformers of all schools, have values of worth in their programs. We shout a cheer to you. We greet you. We god-speed you. But do you not discern what is keeping your ef- forts from fruitage. You have a splendid engine; but not much boiler power. Except the people be 43 The Church of the Social Revolution vitalized into citizenship, with their civic responsi- biHties alert, the best conceived programs will go abortive. The multitudes are asleep. That is the commanding crime of the ages. Before it all cam- paigns of betterment go down in dismal defeat. Invent new forms of taxation ; the direct primary ; the intiative, referendum, recall. What you will. Until the people have been stirred out of slumber, your devisings will come to naught. Herein our Church is your coadjutor. Revolu- tion is the one mightiest folk awakener. The alarum bell of it may be of iron ; and of an intona- tion hoarsely uncivil. But it causes the sleeper to sit up, and with both fists to rub slumber from his eyelids. No ear so thick, but the sound waves penetrate. No brain so case-hardened, but the reverberation beat through. Like old soil caked beyond what plough can loosen, and needing to be blasted before it will open to seed-sowing; so are the minds of the multitude. Revolution breaks up their brain surface, time-incrusted and packed by the tramp of immemorial oppressions. The up- heaval lets in the sun and air; brings the subsoil into play ; unseals fertility theretofore unthought of. 'Tis true, the concussion may break a few windows. 44 Its Message to the World But window breakage is a bargain price to pay, for fields reclaimed from fallowness and added to the tillable acreage. Revolution is the soul's restorative. It is the fountain of the world's youth, where life forever rejuvenesces. Cases are authentically established where its saving strength has plucked humanity's feet from hell. Revolution is in the kingdom of the economic what romance is in the kingdom of sex — the replenisher of idealisms, kindler of faith, revealer of God to man. Our Church is the angel of the resurrection to soul's that are dead in comfort and civic negligence. We are coupling a fervor veritably evangelistic, with the most modern social idealism. Herein you, O single taxer, are of like spirit with us. "Prog- ress and Poverty" was more a contribution to the life spiritual than to the life economic. It was a great book because greatly religious. We justify a fanatical state of intensity in the soul. And then we hitch this restive and pawing enthusiasm onto the lumbering vehicle of social reform. The sancti- fication of the civic is the task to which we have engaged our heart. The Church of the Social Revo- lution invites you, O deviser of beneficent reforms. 45 The Church of the Social Revolution In recompense she will bring to pass the purpose your mind has conceived and unto which your spirit is so singly and so signally intent. TO THE IDLER To the Socialist our Church has uttered its voice; to the Trade-unionist likewise; the I. W. W. ; the Protestant ; the middleclass ; the Jew ; the ideal- ist; and the social reformer. With one other group we speak — the idler class. What manner of words shall we address to you, indolent one, sitting in the sun? Kindly words? But you are living off the labors of another. How shall one speak in kindly words with such. You are on another's back whose one pair of legs must carry his weight and yours. You ask: "Wherein am I on another's back?" In that you consume without producing. That is the iniquity of your sin, and the great transgression. Whatsoever you eat, whatsoever you use, is of the sweat of somebody's brow. You neither toil nor spin. Yet you feed delicately. And are clothed as Solomon never was. You suck the arterial blood of the poor. The per- sons of men are your merchandise. You eat our harvest. You spend up the toil of our hands. 46 J Its Message to the World With the wares of our making your house filled. You are of gentle carriage. But in the person of your rent collector and agents you do after the manner of all the destroyers that ever afflicted and cumbered the earth. For an able-bodied man or woman to live with- out work, is an ignobility for whose reproof some form of pillory or stocks or ducking stool will have to be devised. Such a one disgraces the mother who bore him, the father that bred him, and the social system that tolerates him. If you are of such, my brother, and are of set mind to remain such, then on you the Revolution Church opens war. The thoughts that we think towards you are thoughts of menace and not of amity. We teach rebellion against you. Your anger will be kindled. But we have purposed it, and will not turn back from it. Our bearing toward you is super-altruism — the lov- ing kindness of a surgeon who cuts a wen from your neck with a knife very strong and sharp. Despite your clean linen, your person so tubbed and groomed and faultless, there is about you a squint of the cannibal. The marrow of men is your food. And their sweat is the wine you drink. Therefore between us and you we build a wall of demarcation. 47 The Church of the Social Revolution We put enmity between a slave and his master. Time out of mind, the attempt has been to persuade rich men from their riches. The ancient authors are full of it. With sincerity, and ofttimes an excellent eloquence, they preach the deceit of riches, the inquietudes that go with much gold, the hallowness of the satisfaction afforded by it. It has been the theme of poets. The discourse of philosophers. Topic perrenial of platform oratory. Yet it is doubtful if it ever made a single convert, or deterred one man from the gilded path. The idler will not of his own volition get off the toiler's back. The toiler must shake him off. A business, moreover, salutary to both the shaker and the shaked. You have passed the time appointed, brother. In array against you are the stars in their courses, the Church of the Social Revolution, and God the Eternal. We of the fellowship host already are not few. Like a flood we are coming up. We shall cover the earth. Your silver and your gold shall not be able to deliver you. In a work-universe you are workless. You are dainty; are very exacting of life. You teach the infernal code that women and children must walk the treadmill, that you may live 48 Its Message to the World at ease. Therefore we set against you from every side. As the noise of a host we are gathering our- selves. We shall mar your pride. And bid you come down from your glory. Be advised. The one thing a swollen fortune may righteously do, is to dedicate itself to revolu- tionary propaganda, in order that swollen fortunes thereafter may be impossible. The Revolution Church offers its hand, to lead you in the more ex- cellent way. With us, earning what you consume, you shall eat the bread of self-respect ; and it shall be as honey for sweetness. Taste and see that com- radeship is above rubies. So shall you be pure from extortion, that brutalizes the soul. You shall see that hand joined in equal hand rejoices the soul more than men-servants; and neighborliness, than the pomp of a rich house. A WORLD BLEEDING TO DEATH While the above has been writing the world war has been progressing. Most of my time has been in manual labor, leaving only snatched moments of daylight in my cell for pen work. So that to pen these sheets has taken me more than a month. During which time the crisis for civiliza- 49 The Church of the Social Revolution Hon has progressively darkened. And is glooming now into a climax of horror. This present order of society is bleeding to death. Killing by machin- ery is doing its proper work. Yes, has already done it. The mortal wound has been dealt. Whether peace comes soon, now is an indifferent thing. The veins have been opened. And are pouring out life's liquor beyond surgery to staunch. Reports come in to the prison here, that humanitarian souls are organizing peace parades. And concerted prayers. But the armies clash ever more bloodily. Rival navies, too, unloose their fearful blood-lettings; so that there is sorrow on the sea. It cannot be quiet. As though the devils of war could be exercised by sentimentalisms howsoever pious. War is not a local sore on the body human. It is a disease of the tissues and nerves and brain and circulatory fluid. It will not yield except by an alterative that shall change the system totally. There needs a new temper in the world's work. We behold an unevangelized commerce; an unevan- gelized statecraft. It is the organized ethics of barbarism. In themselves, these have a harmless look. But in the end they bite with a serpent's bite and sting like an adder. Many have been deceived 50 Its Message to the World by the seedling whilst it was young and tender-look- ing. Now, however, it has come to its bloom in the red blossoms of battle. And the most unimaginative perceives it a plant poisonous and dripping with bane. The wise men of the nations meet in peace con- gresses. To heal the sick earth, they use many medicines. And marvel at their want of success. War is a boil on the world's body. And indicates that the blood is sick. The more boils, the more sickness of the blood. At this moment the world is boils from the crown of its head to the sole of its feet. Cure this thing with peace parades ? One might as well try to cure fever sores with ham rine. And the patient is going to get sicker. The bad to-day will give place to a worse to-morrow. World war is competition's combination. This teeth-and-toe-nails civilization is one continuing warfare. A military clash is but the long commer- cial clash come to a head. Christendom has fol- lowed after the gods of economic greed. She has sown thistles and briers. And now, as the crop, a forest of bayonets, and lances pricking the land- scape. And will be. War is growing ever more fiend- Si The Church of the Social Revolution ish. Almost may "civilization" be defined as a heightened warfare over the dull combats of sav- agery. Christendom displays its superiority over the uncivilized portions of the globe, by a war such as Mohammedans or Hindoos could never have ex- hibited. Murder machines are the crowning dis- covery of the age. With vast pains, melinite and lyddite have been invented, and slaughter weapons skilful to destroy. The devil has learned of late to deal destruction from the sky. In the heavens, in the earth, and in the waters under the earth, man has contrived against himself ingenious damnation. It almost seems as if "civilization" had a subcon- scious feeling of her unworthiness to continue — a feeling implanted by the Overruler? Who shall say? — and therefore has devised wonderful con- trivances of self-destruction. America thinks to be spared a visit of the destroying angel. Sundered from the war area by an ocean's width, she laughs Aha. And merrily annexes the trade territories of them that are now at combat. But let her not think to escape. Aggres- sion into the markets of men, unchains the martial madness of men. If America waxes rich, and Europe poor, a flame will there kindle against her. 52 Its Message to the World Europe, now split, will be welded in the heat of a common indignation, and a common fear. Navies will converge on her from many parts, and America will also become a land whose first and principle business is warfare. The Atlantic now is shrunk to what the North Sea was in the ante-steamship era. The North Sea in that day permitted the flames of war easily to overleap it. Let America continue her idolatry of the dollar, she will very soon have need of guns on her sea wall, as pickets on a fence for multitude. She will not say Aha, in that day when militarism has saddled a soldier on her every workingman's back. She too will drink of the cup; the cup large and deep. It holds much. CHURCH OF THE REVOLUTION, THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD We look forth on a rocking world; destruction upon destruction; so that the earth mourns and the heavens above are black. Is there then no hope? Yes. The Church of the Social Revolution has come up in the fulness of time. Earth is a gam- bler's wheel, and in the circle of the years has spun around at last to the right number. In bitterness 53 The Church of the Social Revolution and blood, the old order wherein man has lived until now, consumes a way. Its days are fulfilled. Its end has come. Our Church is a foreordination. In this black and dark night we are fashioning a world-order to take the place of this world-chaos. We are creating a new thing in the earth, a race that shall rejoice in fellowship as misers in their gold, as a drunkard in his cups. Imposible to change human nature? To achieve the impossible, has the Revolution Church been born. In our singing you will detect a joyousness to tingle the ears of the eternal. Oft- times, impoverished, yet we are rewarded with a more pleasant and precious riches. Obscurity, houndings, imprisonment, find us to be comrades knit for adversity. A corpus christi are we, to get the hell out of this earth and let a little of heaven in. We are girding a belt of brotherhood around the world; for our goings forth are to the ends of the earth. Nevertheless we attack not the principle of nationality. We decree a world of nations dwelling securely without armament; frontiers unfortified, yet inviolate. Man shall not be alien from man, as now. We are making him a new heart and a new spirit. 54 Its Message to the World There shall be no folk of the common sort. Our God has grace enough to make every man a nobleman, and every woman beautiful. The ofif- scouring and the refuse shall have inheritance with us. Bad are the pains of poverty. Bad, the ennui of riches. Both shall be done away. We exalt the laborer, and abase the leisurist. The producer shall not as now bring his neck under the yoke of an own- ing class. In gladness shall he create, and seek his immortality in that which his hands have wrought. The toiler shall eat and be satisfied. But idler, be they in rags, be they in tags, be they in velvet gowns, shall have hunger of bread. The craftsman shall be in great praise. Honor and majesty shall be laid upon him. Man shall not labor to be rich. Man shall labor to be creative. And earth shall be quick- ened to a rebirth in beauty. Beyond all conjecture is the sumptuousness that is laid up for earth, when man shall have dilated to the dimensions of an in- dustrial democrat. So shall the world go wealthy. The fool says, Wealth is commodities. But I say, the only wealth is beauty. A land may have things in all profusion ; it may be moral as Cato or Aristides ; and populous as the seashore sand. Lacking beauty it is a pauper 55 The Church of the Social Revolution land; whose name shall rot; commonplaceness shall name them for its own. Taste and grace, and harmony, sweet serenities of line, a refined and col- orful handiwork, vision for the eye, and melody for the ear; in a word, all that makes for art and that brings it home into the folk life — these are more to be desired than gold. They are the true riches. Beauty is the crown and excellency of life, for which all else is raw material, and without which, possessions are a perishable nothingness. With a plea for beauty, then, this message takes leave of you. It has brought you by now to see that the Church of the Social Revolution is not a disin- tegrator. We are pathmakers preparing a way for mankind when, from its orgy of blood, it awakes in a bewildering tomorrow. With one hand we tear down and pluck up. For the religion of dogma, we give the religion of democracy. For superstition, we give science. For the creeds, we give Carpenter, cornerstone of romance and divine adventure. For war, we give the pure, the gracious, the plentiful arts of peace. And God, Friend of Freedom, shall be prince forever. BOUCK WHITE. 56 I A Book Charged With the Noblest Power "The Call of the Carpenter" is the first and only book which gives a true inter- pretation of Jesus and his monumenial service to humanity. Bouck White has cleared away the rubbish with ruthless hand, removing the theological disguise, and re- vealing to us in palpitant flesh and blood the grand Galilean proletaire who was foully murdered by the Roman Empire twenty centuries ago. In a symposium to "Life" recently, to which I was asked to contribute, I named Bouck White's "Call of the Carpenter" as the greatest book I had read since "Les Miserables." I had a copy of it sent to George D. Herron, who is now in Italy^ I have just received a letter from, him giving his estimate of the work: "I cannot thank you enough for sending me "The Call of the Carpenter.' It is difficult to speak of the book with- out beginning at once with superlatives. It is the most dynamic and efficient interpretation of Jesus that has ever been written. It is a book that will as assuredly be one of the makers of history as was Rousseau's 'Social Contract.' Get it as widely as possible into the middle-class reading public. The book is a tremendous ally. It is charged, with the deepest and noblest revolutionary power and efficiency. It is the product of immense brooding and vast study. Its writer must have been charged with the true heartache of the world." Jesus belongs to the working class. I have always felt that he was my friend and comrade, and now since reading Bouck White's book I know it. The Roman Empire stole the Carpenter, after it crucified him. Bouck White has tracked, the robbers step by step. He has restored Christ to the world's proletariat in which he was born, and whom he loved and served without the shadow of turning until their enemies spiked him to the cross. I thank Bouck White with all my heart for giving this great book to the world. — Eugene V. Debs in "The Coming Nation," Chicago. Christianity Took Its Rise in An Economic Upheaval Bouck White's "Call of the Carpenter" will give a new presentation of the Divine Man. The spirit of this book holds a reverent attitude towards Jesus. We are told that "He belonged to what is now known as the tin-dinner-pail crowd,." The idea here is the simple truth. Bouck White sees in Jesus the man of the calloused hands; a man who came to destroy the civilization that makes the millions the slaves of the few — came to establish a kingdom that should be the brotherhood of humanity. But this brought him into conflict with the system. And this system put him forth- with to death. That system consisted chiefly of Roman Capitalists. Rome was a gigantic parasite; a hundred million were in penury in order that two hundred thousand might revel in lust and luxury. This volume shows that Jesus is rising more and more clearly into the world's consciousness, and that we must look to him for our light and leading in the grim life problems that confront us. — Edwin Markhatn in New York American. The Most Interesting Person in History This is a book which everyone interested in the religion of Christ should read in order to get a correct idea of the gospel. It aims to make Jesus the most in- teresting person in history, in which it is a great success. A new interpretation of the life of Jesus, an interpretation reverent, yet most daring and revolutionary. It is a trumpet call to the leaders of ChristianitX' to study anew the life of the Car- penter of Nazareth. — Atlanta Constitution. Based on Sound Scholarship "The Carpenter and the Rich Man," with which Bouck White has followed his much talked of "Call of the Carpenter," is likely to attract as much attention as the earlier book. His interesting and forceful argument is that Christ was far more vigorous and militant in his attitude toward wealth than he has been repre- sented by the long-accepted version of the Bible and by the orthodox expounding of it. He pictures a Christ less meek. T'he interest and importance of this repre- sentation depends upon the fact that Bouck White has been an actual studerit of the higher criticism of the Bible at Union Theological Seminary from whiA he g^raduated,; and that he holds the theological schools of the country, and those pro- fessors and ministers who teach the higher criticism, to be doing more than any other group to advance the social revolution. — Springfield Republican. i:i)e Cfjurcf) of ti)e Social Eebolution desires missionaries to represent it and sell its literature. Si ment is expressing itself in many communities for this religio valor and social idealism. A clear call for devotees to orga the folk upheaval and turn the times to fellowship. Books by Bouck White, preacher of the Gospel of the Transfiguration of Labor: CALL OF THE CARPENTER. Cloth, $1.20; paper "Bouck White makes this study of Jesus according to the nu^t and from the standpoint now commonly used in the study oi other of the great figures of the world. That is to say, he p Jesus in the geographic, historic land of Galilee, rather than in a g of Galilean clouds. He sets him in the midst of the economic political and social forces of Galilee under the rule of Rome, n than in an exclusive mystic haze of miracle and religious rap He shows the workings of these external agencies upon the Jesus, as they may be shown to affect all men. He traces the of this workingman of Galilee to be the leader of workingmen, oi the same qualities that make for leadership in the present, effect of this study is electrifying. Jesus emerges from the shat of a falling church into the radiant daylight. He becomes a again, a workingman, the great prototype of the proletariat U one whose manner of protest against tyranny of every sort i wise and efficacious today as it was in the days of Tiberius and H the Tetrarch.''— ff'a.y/n'»(7/ou Star. THE CARPENTER AND THE RICH MAN THE MIXING Tale of a Town that Found, Itself. Socialism .\pplied to the Country District. BOOK OF DANIEL DREW A Study in the Psychology of Wall Street. LETTERS FROM PRISON. Cloth, 50c; paper Socialism a Spiritual Sunrise. MESSAGE TO THE WORLD Twenty copies for SONGS OF THE FELLOWSHIP (words and music) IMMORALITY OF BEING RICH IMBECILITY OF BEING A MILLIONAIRE THE MEEK PREPARING TO INHERIT THE EARTH.. . . cAddress Church of the Social Revoluti 165 WEST 23d STREET NEW YORK C POSTPAID THE LiBKAi OJOVERSITr OF CA-:i ukNJ>» LOS ANGELES rx ,.hite - Church of the "ocial Revoluti- UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 001 105 378 2