CHAPTER LXXXII

THE HELEN GHOULS

I have reserved for a separate chapter our most active anti-socialist organization, the National Civic Federation, a combination of class-conscious capitalists such as Elbert H. Gary and Alton B. Parker, with high-salaried labor leaders who have sold out their class. Once a year these labor leaders are honored with an elaborate banquet in New York City, where they listen to patriotic speeches from the wholesale corrupters of our public life. This National Civic Federation has a special department, headed by Condé B. Pallen, a Catholic lecturer, the “Committee for the Study of Revolutionary Movements.” It runs an elaborate system of espionage, and is perhaps the greatest single agency for the brow-beating of college professors.

I had special opportunity to observe the workings of this enterprise, because I served for ten years on the executive committee of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which used to receive the special attention of Mr. Ralph M. Easley, secretary of the Federation. This gentleman subscribed for six copies of our little monthly magazine, and used to quote extracts from it as a means of terrifying his backers into

## parting with their cash. He would list the names of the professors and

students whom we mentioned, and would stir up college presidents and trustees and local business men and newspaper editors against them. Some tragedies resulted from this; and often it happened that professors and students lost interest in our work, and offered no explanation.

The most prominent of the backers of this Federation has been Mrs. Finley J. Shepard, née Helen Gould; one of the half dozen children of Jay Gould, the old-time railroad wrecker and Wall Street gambler. His other children turned out wasters and wantons, but Helen was a woman of kind heart, who gave much money to charity, and was the darling of the New York newspapers in the days of my childhood. She married a corporation lawyer, an official in the Gould railroads, and now she has swallowed whole the goblin stories of those who live by scaring rich people into putting up their money for class propaganda.

I do not mean to say that there are not men and women among the “reds” who would be glad to overthrow the American government and abolish the constitution, but I say that such people can only be met and overcome by free discussion, based upon an honest resolve to bring social justice into the world. Also, I say that the peril to our land which these “reds” represent is not one per cent of that represented by the big business criminals who run the National Civic Federation. I say furthermore that the constitution of the United States and the good name and credit of our country will not suffer as much damage from the propaganda of Lenin and Trotsky in a hundred years as they have suffered from the system of corruption and terrorism instituted by Ralph M. Easley and Condé B. Pallen with the money of Helen Gould Shepard.

When I was in New York I met a man who declared that he had been present at a luncheon-party, at which Mrs. Shepard stated that she had pledged her entire fortune to the stamping out of radicalism from our colleges. She was maintaining an organization for the carrying on of “investigations” into the teaching of social questions, and the ousting of those who taught unsound ideas. Within the last year Mrs. Shepard herself had caused the ousting of two such men. I did not want to repeat these statements without giving Mrs. Shepard an opportunity to confirm or deny them, so I wrote her a polite note, asking for an interview. This note was not answered, and a couple of months later I wrote a detailed letter, in which I stated what I had learned from several sources, and asked her to correct the statements if they were false. I pointed out that when persons of great wealth spend their money for propaganda, they enter a field which is of public concern, and the public has a right to be informed as to what they are doing. This letter likewise remained unanswered, so I take it as fair to assume that Mrs. Shepard admits the truth of the statements quoted above.

In these activities she is earnestly supported by her husband, who is a trustee of the University of Jabbergrab, and last spring was serving on a committee appointed by the state superintendent of education to browbeat the school teachers of the city who were suspected of unorthodox ideas. The sessions of this committee were secret, so I was not able to observe Mr. Shepard functioning. I have, however, a pretty good picture of the Shepard family life, in a letter from a well-known Methodist clergyman, who was invited to a dinner-party at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Shepard. Their conversation was devoted almost exclusively to “the intellectuals,” whom Mrs. Shepard “held responsible for the present disturbance in the social order.” She gave her guest the Lusk committee report—six large volumes, in the index of which the author of “The Goose-step” is listed as “a violent literary Socialist.” Also, she gave him two books attacking modern ideas in religion—which books are published and distributed upon her bounty. Said Mr. Shepard: “It is the business of the preacher to preach salvation and let industry alone. When men are converted they will apply the gospel to business. My father was a preacher. What did he know about business?” Mr. Shepard characterized Judge Gary as “the savior of the country”; and Mrs. Shepard declared that “the Union Theological Seminary is the greatest menace to New York City today.” Says the clergyman: “I came away with the idea well driven home, that the social Gospel is Socialism; that Socialism is Bolshevism; that Bolshevism is Atheism; and that nothing but the pure individualistic Gospel can save the nation and the world.”

You may judge from this that it is not a diverting experience to be invited to a dinner-party at the home of the Shepards. I have before me another document, which indicates that it is a still less diverting experience to be invited to a cemetery with Mr. and Mrs. Shepard. This document is a four-page leaflet, containing an address signed, “Helen Gould Shepard,” and headed as follows:

_At the Graves of John More and Betty Taylor, His Wife_ The Cemetery, Roxbury, New York August 31, 1920

Cousins of the More Family:

We are here today to honor the memory of our ancestors, John More and Betty Taylor, his wife, who came from Scotland in 1722 and settled in the Catskill Mountains, then a very wild region.

The little speech goes on for three paragraphs, to tell about the virtues of the John Mores; after which, for five paragraphs it proceeds to implore the cousins of the More family not to fall victims to the evil and insidious modern “isms” which are “threatening to carry us on to utter catastrophe unless the Christians of the nation awaken.” Imagine, if you can, this poor, good-hearted, feeble-minded rich lady reading a memorial oration at the graves of her ancestors, and devoting one-fourth of her time to reciting the bugaboo-stories sent out in the begging letters of the National Civic Federation! Hear a sample paragraph:

The forces of autocratic barbarism are not confined to the Socialists, Anarchists and I. W. W.’s, but the cause of Lenine is more actively furthered either frankly or by indirection by radical, pseudo-intellectual writers, editors, professors, teachers and clergymen in our newspapers, magazines, colleges, schools and churches, and in some of these the enemies of democratic government are found to hold the very highest positions.

You will say that this is ridiculous, and you may say that it is negligible; but I assure you that nothing is negligible in America that has money. The wage-slaves of the railroads of the United States furnish millions of dollars every year for Mrs. Shepard to use in circulating such drivel, and subsidizing professional intriguers and character-assassins. I presume that Mrs. Shepard is a tender-hearted woman, who would be incapable of killing a mouse with her own hands. History reports the same thing of Queen Mary; but that did not keep her from causing Protestants to be burned at the stake. Moved by religious terrors and class arrogance Mrs. Shepard considers herself justified in setting in motion machinery for destroying the careers of men whose only offense is that they resent social oppression, and venture here and there to raise a feeble voice against it.

I have before me a letter from one such man, who has been blacklisted by the National Civic Federation, and in consequence has been hounded from college to college throughout the United States; I submit him as an exhibit of Mrs. Shepard’s achievements, a scalp which she wears at her belt. Or perhaps I might call him a series of scalps, since the poor man has lost his job ten times in sixteen years. I refrain from giving his name, at his request; he says: “I am perfectly capable of accumulating enough notoriety for myself without any professional assistance.”

He goes on to tell about his adventures, one after another. He was on the faculty of the Florida State College for Women, and was very successful as a teacher, but it began to be noticed that his students developed Socialist opinions, and the local newspapers took up the case, and the board of trustees fired him, in spite of the protest of the students. Then he went to Lenox College in Iowa, a town which had elected a Socialist mayor. “In the spring the president called me in and told me that he did not want me to think they had decided to drop me, but they made no move toward holding me for another year, so I got another job.” He went to Maryville College in Tennessee, and at the end of the second year “monied people in the East objected to my writings”; so he was dropped. Next he was dropped at Clark University, on account of his opposition to the war. He went to the University of Kentucky, and after a year of teaching was invited to give a lecture on Russia by the college Y. M. C. A. “The head of the department said it would be as much as his job was worth to recommend me for reappointment, and that the same would be true of the dean and the president; so I was not reappointed.” That was the summer of 1919, and he went to DePauw, but before he got started the Chicago “Tribune” got after him, so that he was “out of a job before entering upon it.”

The curious thing about all these experiences is how little the professor himself realized the significance of them. He wrote me: “My record does not seem to occasion special suspicion!” Again he said: “There is no organized system of control by privilege over American education!” As it happens, I was behind the scenes in New York, and heard some mention of this same professor’s name. Some day we shall have a government in this country which will indict the heads of the National Civic Federation for criminal conspiracy, and then we may take a turn at looking into their papers, and this professor may learn why it was that the heads of so many colleges suddenly discovered that it would be as much as their jobs were worth to recommend him for promotion!

P. S.—It is interesting to note that only three months later this young professor had grown wiser. He wrote to me again, as follows:

I have been thinking that I might have to revise my letter to you in one point. I said I had never encountered anything like a black-list. Now I am not so sure. I had to hunt another job this year (just why I am not perfectly sure), but failed in my efforts to land anything suitable. A certain proportion of the institutions to which I applied answered in such a way as aroused no suspicion of anything ulterior. A good many did not answer at all, or else merely returned my material. I have a notion that some of them have me spotted. In one case where I was asked to apply in person, the case was closed in a dubious way, etc.

We have one supremely successful organization for standardizing the thoughts and morals of America, the Ku Klux Klan. The reason for its success is that its members dress themselves in night-gowns and white hoods, and its leaders call themselves Grand Goblins and Imperial Kleagles. These symbols and names of terror have proven so effective, that I wonder the idea is not taken up by the secret agents and scandal-hounds of the National Civic Federation’s “Committee for Study of Revolutionary Movements.” I offer the suggestion for what it is worth; let them name themselves the Helen Ghouls, and let Mr. Condé B. Pallen be known as the Shepard’s Watch-dog, and Mr. Ralph M. Easley as the Shepard’s Crook! I must not suggest this latter name without definite reason, so I set aside the next chapter to show you by what devious devices Mr. Easley does his work of destroying the reputation of educators who fail to recognize his plutocratic authority.

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