Page:Jay Fox - Amalgamation (1923).pdf/8

6 which might lead the students to suspect that the present industrial system is less than perfect. The teacher who dares to hint at any social heresy knows his fate. Nothing but the approved brand of canned learning is taught and the student who emerges after three or four years of cramming is generally a full fledged plutocrat and snob, despising working people as lowbrow servers.

Nor do the children of the working people escape the polluting influence of plutocracy. The school books are published by the book trust. The state makes the rules governing the schools. In the country districts we are permitted to elect the school boards, but they have nothing to do with the education of the children except to hire the teachers and do the janitor work. In the cities there are no working men on the school boards. Bankers and business men oversee the education of the worker's children. As a result it often happens that children learn to despise the proletarian ideas of their parents.

Even the church not Immune to the poison of capitalism. Nowhere do we hear it raising its heavenly voice against the rapacity of the money power. On the contrary, it almost universally looks upon criticism of capitalism as heresy; and the clergyman who has the temerity to espouse the cause of Labor will soon find himself without a pulpit. If the founder of Christianity were to come amongst us today and preach a sermon such as he delivered when in the flesh, he would be arrested under the criminal syndicalist law and sent to prison for a term of years. Like all other institutions the church is subject to its source of income. It has its function to fulfill in the system, and the exploiters Of the people furnish the funds to pervert it from its normal course. To capitalism nothing is sacred but itself. Its motto is: "Only the Servers Shall Survive."

But of all the institutions that have come under the sway of capitalism, the press is by far the worst enemy of the people. This is because it is the great avenue for the distribution of news. It comes into daily contact with the people and subtly poisons their minds against all ideas Of change. It thus tends to keep them in perpetual bondage to the plutocracy. It is the moulder of public opinion and the chief avenue of propaganda for the powers that be—it is the mouthpiece of money. In return for this servility it receives the advertising patronage of big business, without which it could not exist. Obviously the press has full liberty to wield its scurrilous pen to the limit in attacking working people who refuse to accept the capitalist system as heaven-sent, and it is common knowledge that it takes full advantage of every strike and other expression of