Editor Boston Herald:
Sir: --
I have been a long time answering your request of June 1st, 1926, for chapter, verse and date, verifying my hasty remark of May 31st, previous, that Miss Jane Addams "stands for everything Bolshevist, except perhaps murder and robbery." It has been a long task to dig up her long record.
I now enclose some 115 carefully verified citations from Miss Addams' open record, classified for convenience into 10 Exhibits and 1 Diagram, which seem to me conclusively to sustain that remark -- except in the matter of Bolshevist abolition of God and religion, marriage and the family.
Miss Addams is a Quaker by open profession; and though Hull House does not concern itself with God and religion she is known occasionally to conduct Quaker worship there. Evidently she does not reject either; and I gladly withdraw or disown any such possible implication. Indeed that phase of Bolshevism never entered my mind when making my sweeping remark.
Nor does her record, though not quite so clear, stand for Bolshevist abolition of the bond of matrimony and family obligation. Here too I had no thought of any such implication.
Miss Addams, as all the world knows, is a lady, of large and winning personality; one of the most conspicuous women of our time, whose long and successful devotion of life and fortune to an unequalled Settlement-Work has earned the admiration and affection of many thousands of the very highest and lowest of her fellow men and women. All honor to her therefore! All regret for what follows!
In her political activities, which have been increasingly numerous for the last twenty years, she has unfortunately not shown the wisdom, the loyalty, or the hatred of duplicity to round out in all mens minds your editorial acclamation of her. She is preeminently one of the many thousands of educated and sincere American idealists of our day who seem to feel that the Creator, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the U.S. have blundered in implanting in the American heart the instinct to fight for individual and national liberty and right; and in ordaining that those who do great service to their fellows shall receive great reward -- while those that put but little into this world shall get but little out of it. She is one of those curious Pacifists who would disarm every nation, including her own, except the only one that plots violence against all the rest. She is one of those strange economists who would better the conditions of working-folk by thrusting them, bound hand and foot, into the throttling grip of the trade-unionist and the politician, in the name of "Social Justice."
So far, this is a free country. Every idealist may gaily tackle the many-thousand-century job of changing human-nature. Every radical has the constitutional right to agitate in any lawful way to convert the American state and constitution to his left-handed ends. But to us who believe that our traditional individual liberty and property right are the very foundation of our unparalleled material prosperity, and are of the essence of our moral progress, it is both right and our bounden duty to turn on every agitator, even on Miss Addams, her acts, her associates, and their ultimate purposes, the fiercest search-light of ↑publicity, in order that her fellow citizens may intelligently disentangle her charity from her↓ politics; her Settlement from her unsettlement work. Her very eminence demands this. She made her record. I am sure that the Herald would not suppress it. Let it be cited courteously, accurately and fully. Let the public judge it. [page 2]
As you editorially quoted and contradicted, but did not print, my former letter, will you not now print this one (which has cost much labor and is not too long) that my [motive] in writing may be clear. I retain copies of the Exhibits, which are voluminous, open to all who care to study them.
Faithfully yours,
C. N. FAY
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