/P "Voltaire. Confessions of a Nun. Merry Tales of the Monks. Secrets of Black Nunnery." P/
Surely such books as these would not be extensively advertised in the "Review" and in the Socialist papers, nor would money be spent in this way by their publishers, unless the atheistic and anti-religious works found many purchasers among those who inserted a plank in their party platform stating that the Socialist movement was primarily an economic one and was not concerned with matters of religious belief.
The following is part of an editorial taken from the "Comrade," New York, January, 1904, on the death of Herbert Spencer:
"Dying at 84 years of age, Herbert Spencer leaves behind him an enduring monument such as few men have been able to build for themselves. He helped to rid the world of superstition and to destroy priestcraft; he put the idea of a God-direction of the world, and its counterpart, the eternal subjection and the dependence of man, into the waste paper basket of history. He cleared the way for the feet of the army of progress."
In the propagation of atheism, the German Socialist papers of the United States are worthy imitators of those that are published in English. The "New Yorker Volkszeitung," October 9, 1901, thus acknowledges the atheistic and anti-religious attitude of the revolutionary movement: