The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-09-05

Garden, New York, he aided McAdoo
defeat. the aspirations of the Tam
manyite, Governor AL. Smith. He also
prevented the convention denouncine
by name that instrument Of a dying
middle class, the ku klux khan. But
he could not prevent the nomination
Of Mr.. John w. Davis, the lawyer of
the House of Morgan. The middle
class support of other years had been
swept into the LaFollette movement
In the summer Of 1924, to be later
terrorized into support of Coolidge
and the republican party.
Bryan's political sun had set. His
place in history was that OF champion
Of the middle class, and as its vitality
ebbed so his political prestige de-
clined.
Bryan and Religion.
As the middle class of this country
turned to religion and mummery after
its political failures, so Bryan turned
his face in the same direction. Even
in the sphere of religion the class con-
fi1ct has its reflex. With the growth
of Imperialism religious concepts
change. Since imperialism deals with
people in all parts of the world and
OF various faiths the religion of i'm
periahsm must be cosmopolitan, not
the provincialism of the middle class.
Hence the rise of modernism in re-
ligion, preaching reconciliation of all
the various beliefs. 1t is stubbornly
resisted by the fundamentaIists. the
orthodox presbyterians, baptists,
methodists and the lower strata Of
this sort of thing, the holy rollers.
Nazarene's, etc.
Bryan, a political fzzle, became tho
foremost champion of the religion of
the middle class Of this country. OF
all the fundamentalists, he had the
audacity to assert that he not only
accepted the bible as a guide to NOR
ality but that he believed it from Gov
er to cover; the fish story, the snake
story, the rib story and all
A follower of John Calvin. his re.
hglon was that of predestination, the
religion of the petty bourgeoisie. Since
members OF this class cannot explain
their financial failures in spite of tho
fact that they practice those capitalist
virtues OF industry, thrift and perso-
verance, they attribute it to the de-
cree of some supreme being who had
foreordained that they shall fail.
In this last fight of his career, BRYAN
stood forth as the Disqualification Of
all the ignorance, the hatred and the
bigotry of a petty capitalist class des-
perately fighting for life and losing
It's struggle. His antics at the eyol,I-
ZIONIST trial at Dayton, where he died.
not merely revealed his own shallow
ness, his astounding ignorance oY
everything that passes for education
among intelligent people, but at the
same time revealed the low state of
mentality OF the obnoxious crew for
which he had spoken for the mast 20
years. His senseless, spread-eagIe
namboyant oratory could only receiva
favorable recognition among members
Oh such a class. He was aDsurdly puri-
tanlcal with all the viciousness of
puritanism. In his scared heart there
surely burned the fires of auotber in
QUESTION, but his followers were NOT
sufficiently numerous to start the
thing.
The Last Ironic Joke.
But his god, the deity Of the petty
Dourgeoisie, played its las, ironic Joke
on this embattled crusader by snatch
ing him from his followers, at a most
inconvenient time and in a most con-
spicuous manner. Surely no one but
2 thoro fundamentalist can explain
the caprice Of god that will remove
from the scene his principal champion
and permit the agents of the devil to
live and gloat over their earthly tri-
umph. About all that is left for the
fundamentalist ministers Of the Cos
pei is to repeat the sombre litany of
predestination and state that their