page_title: Henry M. Tichenor
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Henry M. Tichenor / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait photo of Henry M. Tichenor, occasional writer for the National Rip-Saw monthly magazine and editor of the monthly The Melting Pot. Taken circa 1914.
context_page_description: Henry Milford Tichenor was a writer and magazine editor prominent in the socialist and freethinking movements during the Progressive Era and the Golden Age of Freethought of American history. His writings frequently condemned organized religion, Christianity in particular, as a tool used by the upper classes to maintain control over the working class. In the realm of opposition to religion, he has been ranked beside Clarence Darrow and Madalyn Murray O'Hair as a leading American freethinker of the twentieth century.
context_section_description: Tichenor was born on October 23, 1858 in Orange, New Jersey. Stephen Tichenor, the author's father, was a financially successful businessman and politician who was twice the mayor of Orange and served as a judge.  Henry was educated by private tutors and at Adams and Prescott Military Academy in Orange. In 1878, at age 20, he launched a career in journalism as a reporter for the Chicago Daily Tribune.  In 1894, he helped to establish the Omaha Evening News and in 1895 became assistant editor and later editor of the Springfield Leader-Democrat in Missouri.
  In early life, Tichenor was strongly influenced by reading The Age of Reason, the condemnation of organized religion authored by Thomas Paine, the pamphleteer whose Common Sense helped to inspire the American Revolution.  In December 1900, Tichenor began the publication of a magazine called The New Dispensation but the magazine had only a brief existence.  Tichenor then worked for several years in the commercial world as a salesman.
  Around 1911, he began contributing occasional poems to The National Rip-Saw, “America’s Greatest Socialist Monthly,” edited by Phil Wagner and based in St. Louis, Missouri. By the end of 1912 Tichenor had also published under Wagner at least five pamphlets including; "A Wave of Horror," "The Evils of Capitalism," "The Rip-Saw Mother Goose," "Woman Under Capitalism," and "Rip-Saw Socialism Songs."
  In January 1913, while continuing to write for the Rip-Saw, Tichenor joined forces with Wagner's publishing company to launch his own socialist journal, The Melting Pot, a publication whose mission proclaimed in the inaugural issue was to subject to fiery scrutiny society's lies of class, privilege, war and most especially organized religion.  The cover of the magazine carried an illustration of a metal worker with the tools of his trade and the motto, “If it won’t stand the heat of the Melting Pot, its no good.”  Tichenor served as its editor until it ceased publication with his retirement in 1920.
  In January 1914 Wagner and Tichenor visited Socialist party leader and former U.S. presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs and persuaded him to write editorials and to speak for The National Rip-Saw.  Later that same year, the Rip-Saw issued a collection of Tichenor's poems titled “Rhymes of the Revolution,” including an introduction by Debs in which the prominent socialist heaped breathless praise upon the author:  “He hates with a hate that is holy the brazen shams and superstitions inculcated by a mamonized church in the name of religion and scourges without mercy the pious perverts who under the cloak of the Carpenter betray their followers into bondage.”
  Another publication to which Tichenor contributed for The National Rip-Saw in 1914 was a series of articles later republished as a 63-page pamphlet titled “Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism.”  The publication included a handful of editorial-style cartoons. One of them depicted an evil, dark-faced Christian minister standing at a dollar-sign pulpit and exhorting a pious yet poor working-class family with “Slaves, be obedient to your masters!” as a fat, rich member of the “master class” looks on smugly.
  Under Tichenor's editorship, The Melting Pot established itself as a scathing forum especially for attacking organized religion.  The magazine soon set its sights on Billy Sunday, perhaps the most prominent evangelist in America at the time and one particularly notable for his lavish lifestyle.  The front page of the August, 1914 issue of the Melting Pot featured a cartoon of Sunday, pockets bulging with money, again using a pulpit with a dollar sign, and preaching to a bloated character labeled “Big Biz.”  In 2006, the Bank of Wisdom began selling a compact disc containing the first four years of The Melting Pot; issues published from 1913 to 1917.
  The Melting Pot was only one of Tichenor's outlets.  From 1913 until his death in 1922, Tichenor produced at least six books and twenty-eight pamphlets of social and religious commentary.
  The tone and pace was set early with the August 1913 publication of
caption: Henry M. Tichenor, 1914
exif: {}