Reader, let us always open wide our souls to every man and to every influence great enough to make us socially wholesomer. Sincerely, I admire every great Priest, every great Rabbi, and every great Preacher of our time who is too fine, too proud, too nobly social and international to rent his eloquent voice to the captains of industry for the blood-spilling business of conquering the markets of the world with sword and cannon and for the equally brutal business of benevolently stealing large sections of the earth to be swinishly exploited by money-greedy capitalists. These men are masculine—unafraid. Let us salute them: “Good cheer, noble friends!” Boldly these greater Priests refuse to toady to industrial and political masters and thus refuse to scream for war. Defiantly these greater Rabbis refuse to inflame the tiger lurking in every human breast and thus refuse to prepare men for war. Nobly these greater Preachers refuse Caesar and Shylock, and thus they stand by the Man of Peace and abhor war. But, unfortunately, these grand bold souls are in helpless minority—at present. And thus again we find the following question burning for an answer: Which way shall the working class turn for deliverance from the curse of war? Who will rescue the working class from these cyclones of lead and steel? The Church? The Clergy? Let us study this matter. Long ago when the deluded soldiers of an “established” church “patriotically” murdered the Great Carpenter, the “established” church of his locality hypocritically stood by the pagan Roman government, lending assistance to the pagan government and urging the pagan soldiers to slay Jesus Christ. And today the Christian church flatters the soldiers, “stands by the government,”—any and all “Christian” governments,—in any and all wars, and thus refuses to protect the working class from the sword and cannon; refuses to draw the bayonet from the breast of the humble working man; refuses to defend the working class woman from the blood and tears of war; refuses to shield the faces of the little children of the working class from the steel-shod hoofs of the galloping war horse. This Chapter is a discussion of one of mankind’s _misfortunes_, to show the despotism of the dollar,—TO SHOW THE TYRANNY OF THE ECONOMIC ELEMENT OF HUMAN LIFE; and let me here give most sincere assurance that this Chapter is written with not even the slightest degree of malice toward the Church. However, the Church taught me: “_Speak the truth_.” Well, here is a truth, a truth to be stripped naked and expressed because it is so vitally important to hundreds of millions who toil:—