Blue Grass Blade

Answer-You are a great Infidel-atheist and all that—but you failed to send along any money to help this little Infidel paper. You will send your money to a Socialist paper and under the claim of being an Infidel will get me to print an article that encourages your people to take my land, the only property I have and divide it up among you without paying me for it; for if you or the government or the Socialists propose to pay me for my land there is no use for Socialism, for my land and everybody else's land is for sale at what we think it is worth.

You talk just like all other Socialists, and all of you talk just like preachers-that is you string big high sounding words together that make no sense.

You say you are "an Atheist by knowledge and belief and an Agnostic by profession." Those words have not an iota of sense in them.

I have yet to read from any Socialist anything that said plainly and intelligently and intelligibly what Socialists want to do but the general idea that they want to get something for nothing is always in evidence.

I wish you Socialists would vary literary tactics some. You all start out by saying you are Infidels and then when you think you have me gulled you get in your work for Socialism.

If you know anything about Socialism you know that there is not a Socialistic paper in the whole world that advocates Infidelity, and you cannot get the editor of any Socialistic paper in the world to say in his paper that he is an Infidel.

There came in the same mail that brought your letter "The Worker," published in New York City, the largest Socialistic paper in the world. The very first thing in it is headed "A Stirring Speech of Rev. Alexander F. Irvine, in which the Reverend Smart Aleck is boosted to the skies in nearly three columns."

I looked all over the paper and did not find a single word, or hint or insinuation in favor of Infidelity, but under the head "Landlordism in Heaven" there was a piece alluding respectfully to religion and to Bishop Maes.

Your words "We Infidels" don't fool me worth a cent.

Your tirade against "private ownership" is the same old Socialistic twaddle that was started by the primitive Christians as suggested by Jesus Christ who never did any work but lived upon the labor of others.

Those first Socialists murdered Ananias and Sapphira, the only two in the gang that had any money, and then said that the Lord killed them for lying.

My grandfather was a Revolutionary soldier who came to a place in sight of where I now live, when this country was a howling wilderness, not even the Indians claiming to own any of it. He cleared off a little farm and lived on it. My father lived on the same farm, on a part of which I now live. My father making the farm much larger. I inherited a part of his farm and have added some to my inheritance.

I work as a farmer, seven days in the week, never working any horses or mules on Sunday-in fact no one but me and the bees working on Sunday. If you claim the right to come here and take my farm, or any part of it, without paying me my price for it, whether you propose to do this by force, or by Socialistic politics, you are, at heart, just as much of a robber as a burglar or a train robber.

You have no more right to come and take my land than I have to go and take your money.

It is just such fool talk as you are doing that makes many people afraid of Infidelity, and it is natural that they should be so.

You don't have to have access to my land in order that you may live any more than I have to have access to Rockefeller's oil wells, Baer's coal mines or Morgan's bank in order that I may live.

If you will go to work to make your living by honest labor you will not have so much time to think about getting your living by dividing up what somebody else has got.

Your "questions relevant to environment, etc." you have it "etc." by the way- are perfectly irrelevant and have no bearing upon the subject under discussion.

There will always be "millionaires and paupers" just so long as some men are stronger, smarter and more energetic than others, and the paupers will always, of course, be in favor of making the rich men divide out their property with the paupers.

Competition, in all departments, is exactly what is needed, and there can be no material prosperity without it.

There never was a more stupid or inaccurate statement than the hobby of the Socialist that "labor creates all."

The men who have created most for the world were not laborers, but thinkers, inventors, discoverers, writers. Edison was not a laborer and yet he did more for the world than ten thousand mere laborers, and gave pleasant and profitable employment to millions of people.

I am surrounded by three multi-millionaires, and none of them were laborers. Two of them spent years of their time in looking for copper mines and found them and thus did more good for the world than if they had found silver, gold or diamond mines.

The other one found oil as a result of his labor we have the fine oil lamps of our day instead of the "tallow dips" of my boyhood.

These men certainly have as much right to their money that they have gotten for these very valuable considerations, as Socialistic agitators and Socialistic editors have to the money that they get for the wind jamming that is producing strikes all the time.

The declarations of the Socialistic party toward the church is just the same as the declarations of the Democrats and Republicans towards the church-all pandering to the church for its support.

What you say about "gain" is simply unpardonable stupidity in any man of education. There is no sense in doing anything except that we expect to "gain" something by it. Gain is, of course, the only incentive to any activity of mind or body, and no man of common sense, undertakes any kind of enterprise without having first considered what he is likely to gain by it.

Whenever I am reading any Socialistic piece and I come to the words "rent, interest and profit" I always stop and get something else to read.

The mere political vagary that every member of society should own an undivided share of the capital of the nation, any further than any man who is not a criminal or an idiot now does, is not essentially a crime any more than the similar prating of Christians about a Millennium, but when Socialists, or anybody else, propose to get their livings by making rich people divide out their property-which is the plain English of the word Socialism-they become people who are dangerous to the public.