sion and the evening session with most of the members of the
platform committee, and I have reached an agreement with them which
I am sure the convention would be glad to hear, and it will dispose
of this question, I think, amicably to all concerned.... I consider
myself and every other delegate on this floor as being present at
this convention for the sole purpose of promoting the best
interests of the Socialist Party. I am willing to waive any
personal views of mine, and I believe the members of the platform
committee are in the same position, to promote those interests....
While it may not harmonize with my personal opinion to have this
plank remain in the platform, I am willing to sink those personal
opinions rather than put the Socialist movement in America in a
false position and lay it open to the attacks of our enemies."

Victor Berger of Wisconsin mentioned expediency as his reason for
favoring the adoption of a religious plank and argued:

"In the first place, a plank of this kind you will find in every
platform or program of every other civilized nation in the world.
Yet in no country do they have as much reason for it as in this
country. There is not a race in the world that is as thoroughly
religious as the Anglo-Saxon race. If you want a party made up of
free-thinkers only, then I can tell you right now how many you are
going to have. If you want to wait with our co-operative
commonwealth, until you have made a majority of the people into
free-thinkers, I am afraid we will have to wait a long while. I say
this, although I am known, not only in Milwaukee, but wherever our
papers are read, as a pronounced agnostic.... You can hardly find a
paper in which we are not denounced as men who want to abolish all
religion and abolish God. Something must be done in order to enable
us to show that Socialism, being an economic theory--or rather the
name for an epoch of civilization--has nothing to do with religion
either way, neither pro nor con."

What reader, who elsewhere in this book has followed the evidence
linking together the cunning craft of Morris Hillquit and Victor L.
Berger in committing their party and followers to deceit and hypocrisy
to obtain votes under false pretenses, will be surprised to find them
thus also in the 1908 convention uniting the tongues of two old