1914.05.09: DR. WHITE TO SEEK DEBATE IN CHURCH

May 9, 1914

DR. WHITE TO SEEK DEBATE IN CHURCH

Social Revolution Pastor Plans to Interrupt Services.

RADICAL MOVEMENT FALLING TO PIECES

Even Marie Ganz Is Now Ready to Give Rockefeller Credit for Doing His Best.

Bouck White will lead a «core or more members of the Church of the Social Revolution into the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church tomorrow morning and attempt to debate with Dr Woelfkin, the pastor, the question of whether or not Jesus taught the "Immorality of being rich." This, at least, is his intention, but the police express doubt as to his daring to carry it out.

There was much debate over the advisability of invading Rockefeller’s church at last night's meeting of Dr. White's congregation, many of the members declaring that it would prejudice decent opinion against their organization. The majority, however, stood fast for the original plan by which Dr. White will get up in the morning service and ask Dr. Woelfkin to make plain his position.

The radical movement meanwhile seems to be dropping to pieces. The Social Union, New York local, has refused Sinclair its support, and will “no co-operate in any way or even sympathize with the mourning picket demonstration.” Sinclair will have nothing to do with the I.W.W., and then Church of the Social Revolution will recognize no radicals but itself.

Anarchy, like a ball game, waits on the weather, and yesterday’s drizzle proved too much for Max Appell and Nat Messman, the I.W.W.’s who patrol 26 Broadway. They stuck it out almost as long as the bystanders, and then concluded that the general strike which they will shortly declare for the rest of the country might as well begin then and there, whereupon they tacked for the nearest bar.

The fall of the pickets was preceded by the even more notable fall of Marie Ganz, who underwent a softening of the heart toward John D. Rockefeller yesterday. Marie told Becky Edelson, who was in court when her companion’s writ of habeas corpus was heard before Justine Lehman, that John D. was trying to do his best to better things, but that other capitalists were making him a scapegoat.

The court was not sufficiently affected to release Marie, however, and sent her back to Blackwell’s Island pending examination of briefs, which will be submitted by her lawyers this morning. As the matter stood, said the justice, he was inclined to dismiss the writ. Such an outcome would hardly deprive Marie of her customary amusements, however, as Becky Edelson gave her a red-covered “Revolutionary Almanac” and the mourners plan to send her “Satan’sReception to John D.,” a fifty-page booklet with a picture of the devil in one corner.

Despite Mrs. Sinclair’s letter to the mourners urging them to make their motto “Grim Persistence,” neither she nor her husband appeared on the picket line. Sinclair’s start for Colorado, which was to have been made yesterday, was put off till this afternoon, but he made up for lost time by issuing a statement.

In this, after declaring that the Rockefeller interests have been “guilty of flagrant, systematic and wholesale murder,” he says that “the foreigner is the hope of the country. Americans will stand for anything these days, but the foreigner came here to secure liberty, and he will fight for it.”

Today, “Sweet Marie” Ganz will be put to work peeling potatoes, scrubbing floors and doing laundry work about the Queens County jail, in Long Island City.