Occult America_ The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation - Mitch Horowitz [46]
It is not clear that Trine ever wrote such a book, but something very close appeared under his byline in 1910: Land of Living Men. While Trine’s In Tune with the Infinite had assumed a gentle, folksy tone emphasizing gratitude and generosity, Land of Living Men showed surprisingly different colors. In it, the New Thought pioneer called for “a great people’s movement to bring back to the people the immense belongings that have been taken away from them.” Trine advocated busting up monopolies, striking for higher wages, and placing essential utilities and industries into public hands. This was one book that Henry Ford didn’t give to his friends. Indeed, Land of Living Men seemed to make little impact at all on Trine’s followers. By 1928, Trine was an honored guest in Ford’s office, where he engaged in an almost fawning interview with the automaker. Their conversation was turned into a popular book, Power that Wins, which ranged from Ford’s love for avocados to his belief in reincarnation. Whatever Trine’s innermost commitments, he would never again be seen—nor succeed as—a political Jeremiah. But Wattles went in the opposite direction and became ever more public about his political passions.
“We Were Robbed”
In 1911, in what was to be Wattles’s last book, The Science of Being Great, he offered tribute—probably the only one in all of motivational literature—to the Socialist Party of America leader Eugene V. Debs, a fellow Hoosier who later went to federal prison for opposing U.S. entry into World War I. “Debs loves men,” Wattles explained. “It is a great thing to love men so and it is only achieved by thought.” Taking inspiration from Debs’s presidential campaigns, Wattles embarked on a journey almost unheard of in New Thought circles: He made upstart bids for public office, each time on the Socialist Party ticket. In his home state of Indiana, he first campaigned for Congress in 1908, and, after losing, he ran the next year for mayor of the town of Elwood. During his 1909 mayoral campaign, the delicate-framed man stood before 1,300 striking workers during a heated showdown at a local tin mill and pledged them his support. Though he made only a token showing in the congressional race, he ran a surprisingly close second for mayor.
Wattles’s daughter, Florence, a budding socialist orator in her own right, insisted that the mayoral vote was rigged and the election had been stolen. “They voted not only the dead men in the cemeteries, but vacant lots as well,” twenty-three-year-old Florence said in her 1911 address to a socialist convention in Kokomo, Indiana. “We were robbed of the election, but in 1912 we will carry the election. Mark that. And we’ll get the offices too. We mean to do it through a thorough and completely effective organization.”
On the stump, Florence exuded the same sense of biblical justice as her father—the man who told of the social gospel and the metaphysical powers of the mind. With Florence at his side, her spirits fresh and ready for a fight, anything seemed possible. Yet within a week of Florence’s speech, Wattles was dead. Though his writings had extolled the curative powers of the mind, he had always been physically frail. His health collapsed on February 7, 1911, when he died of tuberculosis at age fifty while traveling to Tennessee.
The Fort Wayne Sentinel, knowing the local author and organizer mostly as a political figure, noted “he was one of the best known socialists in Indiana.” And, almost as an afterthought, “He also wrote several books on scientific subjects.”
The Reluctant Organizer
Though Wattles and his contemporaries never succeeded in joining metaphysics to social protest,