In the winter of 1898 I attended a much advertised lecture by George D. Herron, then Professor of Applied Christianity in one of the largest colleges west of the Mississippi. The lecture was given in the largest church of Des Moines, on a Sunday evening, and most of the other churches adjourned their services that they might hear this “remarkable man.” Several of the leading pastors occupied the pulpit with him and the pastor of the second largest church in the city introduced the lecturer, I remember, as “a Man with a Mission.” He spoke at length and his utterances were applauded by a good percent of the congregation, and by several of the pastors. Of course the vile life he was living, and the viler social belief which he then and now entertains, were unknown, but his far more dangerous teachings were well known to all and approved by many. The burden of his “mission” was denunciation of what he called the “Divine Right of Property,” which he compared to the “Divine Right of Kings” and predicted that as the latter had been overthrown by revolution, the former must be. It was indeed a “theory pickled in the preserving juices of pulpit eloquence and laid by against a day of reckoning.” I speak of this not to criticise the good people who approved his utterances, many of whom did not comprehend what was involved, but to show the prevalence of bolshevist teachings twenty years ago. Unless he has changed he should prove very satisfactory to the bolshevists of Russia, where at this writing he is supposed to be at the request of the President. Quite recently the professor of political economy in one of the state universities of the Middle West, in the course of his daily denunciations of the policy of internal improvement as pursued by this government, and his condemnations of wealth and the possessors thereof, referred to the grant of land to the Northern Pacific Railroad and characterized it as a “gigantic steal.” A member of his class who had had rare privileges interrupted to ask: “If the lands in this grant were so valuable how do you explain the fact that Jay Cooke, after financing the Civil War, went broke in selling Northern Pacific Railroad Bonds, secured by both the road and the lands, at 85 per cent of par?” The professor inquired where the young man had obtained his information and was told: “From the memoirs of Jay Cooke.” “Well,” said the professor, “that is a subject to be considered.” But the next day he continued sowing seeds of anarchy.