"Christmas is a fib, Christmas is a fraud, Christmas is a crime wanted and continued by the powerful to delude their servants and to make them believe that there is really happiness, justice and love on this earth.... There is no everlasting joy. How long, O poor and exhausted workingmen of the world, will the shameful comedy continue? When will you finally perceive that not from a false and unexisting God, not from a mystical and epileptic crucified man, who died without rebellion and without protest, will come your redemption? When will you open your eyes to the truth of Socialism, and realize that finally upon you alone depends your salvation?"
In the same edition of "Il Proletario" there is a detailed list of 170 books and pamphlets that are advertised as being on sale at the book-store of the Italian Socialist Federation. The first part of the list, under the heading "Anti-religious Pamphlets," includes 22 works, whose prices range from 5 cents to 30 cents. Among them are to be found:
/P "The Religious Pest--5 cents. The Crimes of God--5 cents. The Sins of My Lady Penitents--8 cents. The Last Religious Lie--5 cents. Neither God Nor Soul--15 cents." P/
Near the end of the detailed list 22 more works are advertised as anti-clerical novels.
On May 1, 1912, while its editor, Arturo M. Giovannitti, was in prison at Lawrence, Massachusetts, "Il Proletario" published an article under the caption, "The Priest":
"Now at last the nations have understood that God is a monstrous fable, and that hell, heaven, immortality, and all the other devilish things are states created by rascals to despoil and oppress the people."