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Newspaper Page Text
t s THE7 PULPIT'S OPPORTUNITY TO WIN ITS WAY BACK INTO THE AFFECTIONS OF THE PEOPLE BY N. D. COCHRAN -Fwonder how many Chicago preachers will have the courage to follow Dean Sumner's lead and boldly denounce Chicago's merchant princes and slave-driving manufacturers as they ought to be denounced? . Not many, I fear. And right here those preachers who have been com plaining about empty pews 'and the people falling away from the churph, 'may find the answer, if they look for it. Instead of looking for the fault in the people let these preachers who can't draw much of a crowd on Sunday look to themselves. t I There was a time when the pulpit was all-powerful. Then the news paper took its place in the affections of the people- But now the news paper has degenerated and has become a mere money-making device, with the editor a white-slave of the business manager, the business manager the mere agent of a -money-mad. owner, and the owner a boot-licking servant of the-advertisers. iind. the people are finding out how they have been betrayed by kept newspapers, and are becoming generally suspicious of newspapers. Now is the opportunity for the pulpit to work -its way back into the affections of the people: but we find too many of the preachers kept by the tsame greedy influences that have fettered the editors. At various'' times when the vey existence of the working classes were involved, in fights by Big Business to crush unionism, I have looked over the Monday papers to see what the preachers were talking about in their- Sun-, dax. sermons: and I have vet to find one topic that would tempt" me. out. of a . comfortable bed, or away from something good to read in order to listen to a preacner. it an seems so iar away irom toaay s me. . .. When the Chicago Vice Commission, under the leadership of Dean Suaner, made its remarkable report, showing the, intimate connection -between vice, crime, poverty and low wages, the newspapers suppressed that report. Of coureb! They were afraid to help the low-wage victims for fear they would offend theirjadvertisers. v So the Chicago newspapers were muzzled, and. muzzled by money. They shut their eyes while slave-driving employers went through the. pockets ' of their clerks-because the newspapers got their share of. the ill-gotten gains. There was the pulpit's opportunity. Had the eminent clergymen on that vice commission begun a fight in their pulpits for a living wage for the low-wage-victims when the press was too cowardly to make the fight the pulpit could have preached to crowded pews- and won the fight " But the pulpit either didn't-see the opportunity, or was as badly muz zled as theipress was. When the Hearst papers locked put the union pressmen a. year ago, and jyere followed up by the other trust newspapers, the government of Chicago was turned aver to the newspaper trust and used to fight. the' pressmen, stereotypers, drivers, newsboys 'and carriers. fix-convicts, thugs and gunmen were sworn in as deputy sheriffs and special policemen to fight for' the newspaper trust against the locked-out. ad striking" union workers. Gross outrages, were committed .both by-the policemen and. tfiesjhired despejradpes ,o tjie' new8pajer&$fl Da& aiHojsana