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The Haverhill Riot

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 27, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 21.

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The Haverhill Riot

By F. M. W.

Abridging the Liberty of Speech

The scene enacted in Haverhill, Mass., several days ago furnishes a strange and striking commentary upon the growth of religious intolerance in the United States of America. It illustrates the great need of the propaganda in favor of free speech and free press for which this paper and many other journals throughout the country have long been contending.
Haverhill is a town of about forty-five thousand inhabitants, some thirty miles from Boston. One Thomas E. Leyden, the representative of no organized propaganda, so far as it appears, but lecturing on his own responsibility, applied for the use of the city hall, to discuss the question of the appropriation of public money for the maintenance of parochial schools. The mayor of the city refused the use of the hall. Some of the members of the Ministerial Association of Haverhill interested themselves in the matter, and entered a protest against the mayor’s action. Appeal was taken to the city council, and the action of the mayor was overruled, the use of the hall thereby being granted Mr. Leyden.
His first lecture, in which he apparently made quite a severe arraignment of the Catholic Church for its use of public funds, aroused considerable antagonism, and the meeting broke up in disturbance. He announced his intention of speaking on the same subject again on April 4. This was a signal for a serious uprising on the part of a large number who were opposed to the positions taken by the lecturer.
On the night of his second lecture a mob of eight or ten thousand people surrounded the city hall, demanding admission, with the evident design of meting out summary punishment to the speaker of the evening. Several hundred entered the building. Knowing the temper of the people, some went to Mr. Leyden and advised him not to appear on the platform. This, however, he did, and it proved the signal for a wild outburst on the part of those in the hall, which was taken up by others in the street. A large force of police was unable to hold the mob in check, the people demanding that Leyden be delivered to them. Seeing that they could not command the situation, the police sent a call for the State militia, which responded promptly. At the point of the bayonet the crowd was pushed back, but not until they had showered the building with stones, breaking many windows.
Hearing that Mr. Leyden had returned to his rooming-house, the mob sought it, and were restrained from wrecking the place only on the positive assurance of one of the officers that Mr. Leyden was not in the building. The mob then visited the house of one of the aldermen who had favored opening the city hall.riddling it with stones. They did the same to the home of a dentist, one of the local supporters of the lecturer. Meanwhile Mr. Leyden was taken to another part of the city hall, and kept under guard in the aldermen’s room until the police were able to spirit him away to safety. It was after midnight when the mob finally dispersed, and quiet was restored.
It is charged that strong directing spirits were in control of the mob; that entrances to the city hall were controlled and guarded by appointed leaders; and that the demonstration was the result of a well-laid plan to break up the proposed lecture. Regarding this, Rev. J. Franklin Babb says, in the Boston Journal of April 5:—
“The work of the mob was not that of a disunited body, each individual following the dictates of his own mind. For example, each of the four exits from the hall was guarded by a detail of men who obeyed the commands of a leader, with almost military precision. The gangs that marched up to the residential district here and hurled stones, bricks, and pieces of coal through the windows of the houses of myself and Mr. van der Pyl, as well as of Alderman Hoyt and Dr. Herbert E. Wales, were organized and under definite leaders.
“Furthermore, I know positively that a party of 150 members of the Lawrence Council of the Knights of Columbus came to this city last night and took a prominent part in the rioting.”
Following this outburst, the Boston Journal of April 6 opened its columns to a frank and candid discussion of the principles involved. In doing so the editor made the following statement:—
“The Haverhill riot, no matter how disgraceful and needless, no matter how deserving of punishment and public execution are the perpetrators, is, however, less indecent than the secret, poisonous bitterness that occasioned it. If a Protestant Baptist is denied the vent of free speech, that is bad; if he is silenced by a riotous mob of Catholic sympathizers, that is worse. But the worst of all—the real shame to our State—is the presence of such bitter religious intolerance as made possible so terrible a climax.
“Courageous public men, both Protestant and Catholic, must face this problem—they must do their patriotic utmost to define the issue and to settle it by frank, fair, open, sane, and temperate discussion; the question is more important than party politics, because it goes to the very inner fabric of our national life; to ignore it now, to smooth it over, to seek to forget,—that is to place our community welfare in pawn to the future dangers of a deep-reaching religious feud.”
In response to this invitation on the part of the Journal, a number of leading citizens expressed themselves with reference to the question at issue. Hon. J. A. Brackett, former governor of Massachusetts, expressed himself as follows in that paper of April 6:—
“I agree with the statement in the Journal’s editorial upon ‘An Issue of Religion,’ that ‘there must be some way out of all this bitterness and hatred,’ and all good citizens should unite in the effort to find that way and to banish race and religious prejudices.
“Our citizens, with those of most other countries, are of various races and religious faiths. We should aim to prevent the division of the people into warring factions on account of these differences. A man is not responsible for happening to belong to any one of these races, and should not be discredited therefor, but should be judged solely by his conduct.
“Every man is entitled to the religious belief which his judgment approves, and should not be placed under any ban on account of it. To blend and harmonize various elements of which our citizenship is composed, remembering that wherever we were born, whatever our ancestry, whatever our religion, we are all unhyphenated Americans, each in duty bound to extend to all others the same rights he claims for himself, is one of the paramount duties of American patriotism today.”
Joseph F. O’Connell, at one time a member of Congress from Massachusetts, himself a Catholic, felt that it would be well to discuss the principles involved, but believed that before this could be done satisfactorily there must be secured common standing ground on the part of both Protestants and Catholics. In the Journal of April 7 he said:—
“I imagine that the greatest difficulty in the laudable aim which the Journal seeks to achieve will be found in a mass of historical inaccuracies which are so generally accepted as gospel truth by anti-Catholic controversialists. If there could be some judge who could first establish the facts for those who would argue, it would not be very difficult to bring about a complete understanding. I have never yet met a Catholic, priest or layman, who believed in fighting against a fact.”
These two comments are perhaps fairly representative of the many opinions expressed on the two sides of the question.
The week following the riot several addresses were delivered by leading clergymen regarding the principles underlying the outrage. Rev. William H. van Allen, rector of the Church of the Advent, expressed himself in an address entitled “The American Spirit and the Haverhill Riot.” He said, as quoted in the Boston Journal of April 6,—
“This outrage in Haverhill, like those of similar cause, was a reaction into barbarism, disgracing our country, State, and age. The animating spirit was antagonism to free speech, which is an essential part of American democracy and American freedom. I do not need to be reminded that free speech is liable to abuse, but he who accepts the privilege of free speech must hold himself responsible for what he says.
“If he who speaks freely, slanders, libels, or blasphemes, he can be punished. He who is abused is bound in honor to take his case into the courts, and there demand damages and redress. “But to suppress free speech by mob terrorism is absolutely intolerable, and such cannot be accomplished by any race, cult, or sect without a revolution which will overturn the American Republic.
“The question of the attitude of the Roman Catholic hierarchy toward public schools is a matter for legitimate public discussion. The fact of that hostility is not to be questioned. The Roman Catholics have established parochial schools, and are to be admired for their courage. They have supported them with a generosity to be emulated. But many Roman Catholic leaders are demanding that the virtue of this sacrifice on their part be vitiated by having the State support the schools.
“I stand for an American spirit when I say that the governor of this commonwealth would be justified in using every soldier to line the streets to obtain for this man his rights. Lives of criminal rioters are not sacred as is the right of free speech.
“I hope such an outrage will not occur again, and that the religious leaders of Massachusetts, both Catholic and Protestant, will unite in condemning mob spirit.”
The Sunday following, April 9, a number of the pastors of Haverhill discussed from their pulpits the principles involved. The remarks made by Dr. Nicholas van der Pyl, pastor of the Central Congregational Church, as given in the Boston Journal of April 10, are fairly representative of the position taken by the Protestant clergymen of Haverhill. Taking for the subject of his address “The Atonement of the City,” he said, in part:—
“I do not question the wisdom of any other man’s belief. The Roman Catholic Church has a right to its masses, its confessional, its ceremonies,—that is church business; and so long as a man makes his religion a matter between himself and God, he is not to be criticized. But when any man trenches on the public domain, he comes within the range of public criticism.
“The Catholic has a Constitutional right to demand public money for his parochial schools. He has not the right to object if I exercise my Constitutional right to oppose the use of public money for such purposes.
“A great public demonstration in which reputable citizens of all races and creeds may take part should be made to let the world know that this city will not tolerate again the disgraceful spectacle that has blotted the fair name of Haverhill.”
It would be gratifying if we could believe that an uprising like this was an impulsive move on the part of the people, and that it sprang not from religious antagonism and prejudice so deep seated as to resort to violence as its legitimate fruit. We feel, however, that outbursts of this character spring from the latter motive, and this is the view taken of the Haverhill riot by some of the citizens of that town.
Nor would the situation appear so serious if such demonstrations as this were confined to the commonwealth ofMassachusetts, even though we think of that as one of the early colonies, made up of men who fled from religious intolerance in the Old World. But manifestations of a mob spirit of this sort are becoming altogether too common in different parts of the United States.
We do not pose as an apologist for Mr. Leyden. We never heard of the gentleman previously to this incident. We are not informed as to the spirit actuating his work, nor the manner in which he deals with the question of Catholic use of appropriations. His manner of treating this question may be offensive in the extreme. He may make unfounded charges against the Church of Rome, hold up to scorn her dogmas and doctrines, her customs and practices, and the moral delinquencies of her priesthood. With this manner of attack upon the Church of Rome we have no sympathy. We deprecate the spirit which has characterized many of the publications which have been carrying on an anti-Catholic campaign. The spirit they manifest many times and the billingsgate they employ are quite as reprehensible as the evil they attack. But we contend that even if Mr. Leyden was guilty of this discourtesy and used these unwise methods, there was proper redress for the religious body which he attacked. That redress was not mob law, but an appeal to the courts of justice.
While the courts of the United States accord to every citizen the liberty of free speech, they also make him wholly responsible for his utterances, and he can be called to account at any time for misrepresentation, slander, or vilification of any of his fellow citizens. And it is a sad but striking tribute to the times upon which we have entered to consider that men in enlightened countries will hark back to the methods of barbarianism rather than make appeal to reason and to the recourse which is granted them by the laws which they themselves, or their representatives, have helped to frame.
Every American citizen needs to give heed to the safeguarding of his guaranteed rights and liberties. Our fellows need to be awakened to the dangers which threaten them. They need to be educated anew in the vital issues around which these controversies center. Let us by the material which has been provided in our religious liberty literature seek to place before them the truth regarding these questions, so that they shall not be misled in the future over the issues which may arise. F. M. W.