"The first and largest of these is the Christian Socialist Fellowship, an interdenominational organization with offices in Chicago. It was organized in Louisville, Kentucky, in June, 1906. From the beginning its general secretary has been Rev. Edward Ellis Car, Ph.D. It publishes a weekly and monthly paper called 'The Christian Socialist,' with offices in Chicago. It has over fifty branches and a large proportion of its members are allied with the Socialist movement and party. It holds annual and frequent district conferences. Through its general offices and local centers, Socialist sermons and lectures have been delivered in thousands of churches. Millions of copies of the official paper of the Fellowship have been circulated to preachers, teachers and social workers. Churches, Y. M. C. A.'s and colleges are opened to the message of Socialism as put forth by the Fellowship. "In 1911 the Church Socialist League in America was organized by a few clergy and lay people of the Episcopal Church. For some years there had been a strong and very pronounced Socialist league in England. The organization of an American Church Socialist League was fortunate, as the pulpits of the Episcopal Church are not generally open to clergy of different denominations. As the influence of the Episcopal Church is greater throughout the country than in proportion to its members, so is it with the league. Its influence within the Episcopal Church is not at all measured by its numerical strength. In spite of the conservatism of the Episcopal Church and of its members, yet that Church has officially adopted radical and even revolutionary resolutions, and the influence of the Church Socialist League is discernible as giving color to them. A considerable share of the clergy are tinctured with Socialism. With but 6,000 clergy, several hundred are avowed Socialists and nearly one hundred are members of the Socialist Party. The league is able to present the parallel demands of militant Socialism to this communion as no other society can. Rev. A. L. ByronCurtiss is the national secretary, and the official organ is a quarterly, The Social Preparation,' the official address of both being Utica, N. Y. Officers and executive committee embrace the following well known names: "President: Rt. Rev. Paul Jones, D. D.; Vice Presidents: Rev. William A. Guerry, D. D., Rt. Rev. Benjamin Brewster, D. D.. Rev. Eliot White; Executive Committee: Rev. G. Israel Browne, Rev. William H. Tomlins, Very Rev. Ber- "A. L. B.-C.” That this report of the Rev. Byron-Curtiss is not an exaggerated statement has been shown by the three triennial reports of the Joint Commission on Social Service of the Protestant Episcopal Church, presented to the general conventions of the Church at the close of 1913, 1916 and 1919. The last of these reports has suggested an inquiry by Mr. Ralph M. Easley in the "National Civic Federation Review," in which attention is called to the revolutionary Socialist utterances of Rev. J. H. Melish, secretary; Rev. F. M. Crouch, field secretary; Rev. B. Iddings-Bell, member of the commission, as well as president of St. Stephens College, who were also leaders in the Church Socialist League. The official organ of the League, the "Social Preparation," asserts: "We are not reformers trying to patch up an outworn garment, but revolutionists." This is not an isolated statement. The Rev. Mr. Crouch, at a conference in October, 1919, of the Inter-Church movement, advocated the overthrow of our present social system, when he said: "The system of industrialism which we still largely know, working out the exploitation of fellowmen by fellowmen, cannot endure in the face of justice." In the first report of the Social Service Commission in 1913, the Rev. Franklin S. Spaulding, in an address on "Christianity and Democracy" (p. 12), declared himself as opposed to privace property and opposed to nationalism. He said: "I believe that all value is created by the application of labor to land." He takes as his great authority Prof. Scott Nearing. He accepts Karl Marx as his prophet. In an address by the Rev. J. H. Melish (p. 68), " The Church's Relation to Workingmen's Organizations," is an apology for the "wobblies: " 66 Syndicalism, as every investigation has shown, finds a field only in our industrial centers where immigrants are herded, etc." In a third paper, "The Ethics of the Wage System," Helen S. Dudley (p. 74) pleads for the abolishment of the wage system. These Socialist tendencies are emphasized in more systematic and propagandist form in the second report of 1916 under the headings (p. 8): "The Study of Social and Industrial Conditions," and (p. 16) "The Encouragement of Sympathetic Relations between Capital and Labor." In discussing the attitude of union labor in the open and closed shop question, the liberty of the open shop is ridiculed and the claim of the unions to the closed shop is supported, denying the right of the employer to employ non-union labor (p. 23). "The plea of the employer that denial of the right of freedom and contract is un-American, as the new case of the now notorious recent issue in Colorado is either specious or due to an entire misconception of the real situation." In its discussion of Socialism and syndicalism the statement is made that syndicalism "would not have developed in this country had organized capital on the one hand and organized labor on the other been disposed to give the 'man farthest down' a fair chance. It is precisely because the lowest grade of labor - the least skilled and least literate voters, recruited as they are now largely from our newer Americans - have been exploited by manufacturers and comparatively neglected by trade unions that syndicalism has developed. Now, it is obvious that these three (union labor, Socialism, syndicalism) relate to divers movements, represent legitimate aspirations and hopes of the various groups from which they are respectively recruited. . . . To take advantage of their lack of present co-operation and unity is unworthy either of the self-respecting employer or the Church of which he is a member." The so-called welfare work initiated by many employers of labor is described as but "a means of giving with one hand while continuing to take with the other." Other schemes, such as bonuses, profit-sharing, scientific management, are also discredited. It is concluded that: "Despite, therefore, the attempts of capital to meet demands of labor, while still retaining their essential control of industry, labor today is, perhaps even more bitter than formerly toward the employing class. This the Church must frankly recognize. Some members of the commission there are, indeed, who feel that the most effective method of discharging this part of the responsibility laid upon them by the general convention is to encourage the gradual assumption by government-Federal, State, local of the whole system of production and distribution of life's necessities, or, as an alternative, democratization of our industrial order; though it is true that there are members who favor less radical measures. The challenge, however, of industrial democracy cannot be evaded. What the workers of today want is not only a living wage, reasonable hours, and decent conditions of toil, but some effective participation in the management and control of the enterprise in which they are engaged. In the modern 'co-operative movement' they have made a beginning in this direction. To allege, as is so commonly done, that labor as we know it today lacks present or potential capacity to handle its own affairs, and that there must be always a more favored class at the top in direction of industrial enterprises is to fly in the face of history." The commission recommends in closing its report that the Church should help along the coming of the fundamental change in the economic structure which is involved in the term "Industrial Democracy." The commission states that is will embark on a wide campaign of social propaganda, not only through meetings and the work of the field secretaries throughout the country, but through the publication of numerous pamphlets. One of its purposes was to train a large number of men for intelligent social service with a clear viewpoint. The third triennial report of the Social Service Commission, submitted in October, 1919, to the Convention of the Episcopal Church at Detroit, attempts to give a scientific survey of the entire social and industrial field with a characterization of all the different groups and theories now current, and the criticism and evaluation of every one. The report states that there has been recently a significant change in the temper of American labor which has caught much of the aggressiveness of the British workers who, on the other hand, had given new and signal proof of their determination to secure hearing by launching a general railroad strike which may ultimately involve the other members of the English triple industrial alliance-miners and dockers. Labor throughout the world, indeed, is clamoring for its own, and can scarcely be balked with impunity. If the Church would help it must be by counselling, not repression, but sympathetic consideration of the workers' needs. The report, again, discussing the various plans that are being carried out on the basis of a continuation of the present system, largely based on the various demands of and arrangements with trade unionism, includes such rather radical movements as those of the shop stewards and the shop committees, the district and national councils and conferences, including the British Whitley plan. But it concludes (p. 59) that, to the radical group of workers, "the whole plan just considered looks like another concordat between mutually hostile parties: those who have a sense of humor would liken it to a mutual agreement between slaves and slaveholders, which would, at the same time, not abrogate the institutions." The report then studies the revolutionary program of Socialism, Communism, syndicalism, industrial unionism, Guild Socialism, the co-operative movement, etc. It shows considerably more sympathy with all these revolutionary movements than it had shown with the previously discussed revisionist movements. It supports Marxism, saying of Marx that the modern leader "is compelled to recognize that the central position for which he stood is not only tenable but is really impregnable" (page 65), namely: "the principles of pristine Socialism evolved by the central fact, since Marx's time increasingly apparent to many, that there is and must be under present conditions exploitation of the workers by those who are in a position to profit by their labor." In speaking of syndicalism in the United States it states that in the United States it has been "in large measure deliberately or unconsciously misconstrued by the great body of American public. . . . There is in the syndicalist movement, if we can for the moment leave out of consideration its violent tactics, a possibility of social and even ultimately of religious value which neither the church nor the state can afford to ignore or condemn until it has given the movement a fair hearing." Some doubt is cast on the genuineness of the opposition of many American citizens and christians, "professedly" good citizens to syndicalism and Bolshevism which they "profess" to abhor. The commission enjoins the Church from opposing syndicalism and I. W. W.'ism and quotes the words of Gamaliel: "Refrain from these men and let them alone; for if this council or this |