Los Angeles herald., 1909-10-16
SAYS FERRER WAS MARTYR
TO APATHY OF NEWS BUREAUS

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 13.-[Editor
Herald: Anyone reading today's As
sociated Press reports of the execution
of the Spanish professor, Francisco
Ferrer (and the local press has not,
so far as l know, published any pre-
vious reference thereto) would get but
an imperfect and misleading impress
sion. The report is so loaded down
with repetitions of the word "revolu-
ZIONIST" and alleged revolutionary
activities etc, that, despite the use
once or twice of the word educator" 3"
the reader having no other knowledge
of this man and his work would in
evitably go away with the impression
of a flrebrand and a stirrer-up of po-
litical trouble. OF course this is all
true in an indirect and ultimate sense
of the man who founds schools of
rationistic thought and publishes in
cheap form such works as Reclus'
Man and the Earth" and Paine's age
of Reason" and a hundred others of
like character, devoting his life's la
bors and his wealth to undermining the
superstitions of priestcraft as well as
statecraft And this is what Fran
cisco Ferrer was doing. But it. was as
a scholar a scientist and a publicist
and not as a political intriguer that
Prof. Ferrer worked until his "Escuela
Moderna" had become a menace and a
thorn in the side to priestly obscurant-
ist and monarchical bureaucrat alike.
He founded his schools, he published
pedagogic reviews in Italian and
French, as well as in Spanish, turning
out a constant stream of educational
treatises and primers and awakening
new centers of intellectual life not
only in Catalonia and kindred prov
Of Gnain h11t in the different
Spanish republics.
1t is absurd then for the Associated
Press report to talk as though (but
for the Fastening of his eXecution)
the pope might have requested his
pardon. 1t was at priestcraft more di-
rectly even than at the state that
Ferrer's propaganda was hurled, and
the hue and cry which led to his arrest
was started by a religious journal,
and it was at the request of the clergy
that over one hundred of Ferrer' S
schools were closed by the government
and his printing plant and stores of
books and other property confiscated.
Such was the great soul that has
been quenched by the bastard hand of
priestly reactionism, and though his
prosecution and imprisonment have
been going on for months 1t is only
when the vile deed of death is accom-
plished and an international row is
threatened-perhaps civil war and re-
bellion in Spain-that the Associated
Press deigns to notice it. This man
and his Escuala Moderna Cor modern
school movement mattered to the
whole world, yet the public press of
America takes no notice till too -e.
I repeat: Ferrer mattered to the
whole world movement of progress,
and had his case been ventilated as it
deserved his life might have been
saved by public opinion, as was Maxim
Gorky's and as is Leo Tolstoy's.
Ferrer's propaganda was educational
solely. He was the last man in the
world (both by education and temper
ament) to expect to achieve anything
bv violence. The spreading of knowl-
edge was his great, his only dynamic.
Yet it is only when his death prom
ises "newsy' copy by way of riot and
rebellion that his case gets post NOR
tenn publicity VAL SIONE'