Golden Age

Vel. I                   New York City, N.Y., Wednesday, October IS, !919                   No. 2

CURRENT EVENTS—THEIR MEANING

A CUSTOM has long obtained throughout Great Britain of celebrating the first week of August as “bank holidays.'* In the summer of 1914 the Irish question was engaging the attention of England and causing much concern. At the same time there was a great deal of agitation among the laboring elements, and, it was generally understood throughout Great Britain that the beginning of the bank holidays that year (August 1st) would mark the beginning of a great strike, which would not only tie up commerce but would stop every wheel in the United Kingdom— the very thing that has just come to pass. Necessarily the tension was high in Great Britain at that r time and every one was in an attitude of expectancy. But just before the time for calling the strike, the great international war began. The labor agitation ceased and the labor elements joined hands with the other elements of the social order of Great Britain and went out to fight Great Britain's enemies.

But the war did not serve to permanently appease ' the wrath of the discontented of the labor and radical elements. Shortly after the war these elements in the social order began an agitation, and for the past few weeks Great Britain has been in the throes of not only a disturbed labor and financial condition, but what the public press terms a bloodless revolution. A metro* politan paper recently said:

“Great Britain's bloodless revolution is gaining fast and the Lords and Commons in daily session are progressing with proposals designed to equalise opportunities in every phase of life.

“The coal nationalization plan is gaining adherence in high places, despite the vigorous and virile attacks by the plutocratic holders and agents of coal'tracts. It is contended by the government's witnesses and experts that the titles to these . > areas are invalid and have been unjustly and illegally held for - centuries.

* “The government is having its hands full with the unemployment question, and cool heads alone will avert a dash. Americans may have a better idea of conditions when they learn that whereas in the United States, according to Mr. Gorapers, less than fifteen per cent of wage earners are organised, in the British Isles less than fifteen per cent are not In other words, labor is making tremendous efforts to gain entire control of the government Lloyd George has been driven to radical extremes to conciliate labor."

We frequently hear the expression, “History repeats itself.” We are forcibly reminded of the parallelism between conditions prevailing in Great Britain and those which once prevailed in Palestine. For centuries Jehovah dealt with the Jewish people, and Jerusalem was the ecclesiastical center of the world. English scholars have long contended that England occupies a position relative to the world similar to that occupied by Jerusalem in. the closing years of the national history of Israel. The Prophet Jeremiah, who was specially sent to Israel between the years 646 and 606 b. C, describes the enemies of Jerusalem as “the people from the north country," a rash, radical clement. This radical element from the north had come down and laid siege to Jerusalem. When word was brought that the armies of Egypt were marching toward Jerusalem, these peoples of the north, otherwise known as the Chaldeans* withdrew from the siege of Jerusalem to war against the armies of Egypt, and having defeated them, returned and again laid siege to Jerusalem with the well known result recorded both in sacred and profane history.                              ’

The peoples from the north described by the Prophet very fitly picture or represent the labor and radical elements of Great Britain that laid siege to the government of England in 1914; and hearing of the oncoming of the Germans they withdrew and fought the enemy until their defeat, only to return and renew their siege against the government of Great Britain.

In this connection we are reminded that according to Bible chronology the old social order of things reached an end with 1914. In other words, there the period granted to the Gentiles as a lease of undisturbed rulership of the earth ended. When Jesus was asked what would be some of the evidences of the end of the world (the old order) and the beginning of the new, he answered, “Nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom,” and this shall be followed by famine, pestilence and revolution. All of this trouble, he set forth, would immediately precede the inauguration of his reign of righteousness, which would bring in the Golden Age. It is a matter of history that the international war began exactly on time, 1914; and that this war has been followed by the great pestilence of influenza, which claimed more victims by far than fell in the war; and also by revolutions and general food shortage, which might be described as a famine. These evidences indicate that the Golden Age is at hand.

Every sane person who believes in the existence of Jehovah as the all-wise Creator must know that all the events which are transpiring in the world are occurring m harmony with his foreknowledge. The Bible records, "Known unto God are all his ways from the beginning” (Acts 15:18). Jehovah, then, must have foreknown the conditions prevailing in the world, in? eluding all the strikes, labor troubles, revolutions, etc. We have but to refer to the Scriptures to know that he foreknew such. His prophet was directed to record these words: “For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave diem neither root nor branch” (Malachi 4:1). Fire is used in the Scriptures as a symbol of destruction and fitly represents the destruction of the old and unrighteous order to make preparation for the new incoming better order of things.

The public press fully recognizes the disintegration of the present order; that the fire is burning away the old structure, but the reason for it has seemingly been entirely overlooked. The Los Angeles Times recently said: *

^One-half of the world is ablaze, the other half smoldering. The half capable of saving the property already on tire is just now OTcr-occupted checking the spread of the conflagration to Ha own home buildings. A saitvt pent spirit is at present the dominant incentive to most human action.

•For humanity is only just emerging, somewhat fearfully, somewhat recklessly, from the shadow of a great crime. The dawn of peace is obscured in the cloud-rack that follows the wake of the war tempest

•For the time being the tendency of social forces is toward discord and disintegration. Almost every newspaper dispatch, foreign and domestic, affords evidence of this dangerous trend. England, France, ' Germany Redi vivas, the three balance-wheels of Europe, axe running out of true.

“Our people at home are fretting under new laws and new obligations; restless and irritated, they are turning away from the wisdom of the ages. These psychological causes are manifest in violent disturbances. The whole world is mutinous.

*Tn such sporadic outbreaks as the Winnipeg revolt, the Chicago riots, the promiscuous bomb-throwing at leading citizens in the United States, the Saturnalia of fixe dregs of the human race in unpoliced Liverpool, the general strike situation that threatens to paralyze England, we see the economic peril that springs from this general world-spirit of unrest, dissatisfaction and dislikes for all former restraints. As the cost of living goes up the price of human life goes down. The same spirit permeates not only popular tastes, but even popular decencies and morals.

"The horrors of the vilest war ever inflicted on suffering humanity have tried the world's soul to the limit of endnr-anee. The reaction has been violent Human nature to passing through a spasm of protest Hence, riots and extravagance and immodesty and jazz music and shimmie dances are a seething wash of unrest

*Is humanity going on the rocks? It seems to "be—the margin of safety at times appears to be cut down to a recklessly tine line. The ship is passing through stormy eeaa» steering closer than caution warrants to the reefs. And malcontents in the fo’Sslt are trying to unsteady the hand of the pilot,"

Of course the writer of the above does not use "fire" in a literal sense, but uses it symbolically to represent the destructive elements of society, one warring against the other; and this fire that is destroying the present unrighteous order has come because individual and national selfishness has gone to seed, and the time of God’s judgment is upon all such and the fire of his jealousy is burning away all the dross, preparatory for a better order. He foretold this long ago, saying, “Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my .fierce anger; for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy” (Zephaniah 3:8). In harmony with the foreknowledge of Jehovah thus recorded, the secular press of the world is recording the happening of the events. While passing through this fiery time it is not enjoyable to any one, but the one who really appreciates what it means and what shall follow after will take courage and rejoice. It really means the passing away of a system of selfishness and unrighteousness to be followed by a time of blessing.

The Lord’s prophet, after using the above language applicable to the present time of burning, then says, “For then [after this fiery time of distress and trouble ends] will I turn to the people a pure message [a message that they can all understand and appreciate], that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent.” There is real comfort in the thought that all of these troubles will but prepare the world to realize the blessings that God has in store for them. All these experiences are part of the Divine method of instructing mankind that the only feasible way of correcting the difficulties existing is by and through the agency of Messiah’s kingdom, the inauguration of the Golden Age. Before these blessings long hoped for and promised can begin, the present imperfect and unrighteous systems must end. .

Part of the people for centuries have been in an exalted position, while the greater number of them have been far below them. The exalted ones, then, would be represented by the hills or high places, while the valleys would picture those of the lower walks of life. And looking to that blessed time of the Golden Age, the prophet of the Lord says, "Every valley [low place, low people] shall be exalted, and every mountain and Ml [high people] shall be made low; and the crooked [unrighteous, profiteers, etc.] shall be made straight and the rough places [the courses difficult to understand or pass over] shall be made plain." This does not mean that the pcjor will ultimately dominate the rich, nor the rich be brought down to a low condition; but it does mean a general leveling process in which every one will have a fair opportunity for life, liberty and happiness under the righteous reign of the Messiah. It is, therefore, profitable for the people to appreciate the real meaning of this present disturbed condition and to prepare themselves to receive the blessings that must follow.                          •

Among the present or old order of things there are various elements; namely, the rich and the poor elements, the high and the low elements, the radical and conservative elements. The public press daily records the heated expression of these elements one toward another. The strike of the laborers is a protest against the capitalists. They give utterance to heated words and it is not uncommon to speak of affairs between these elements as growing "hot” This trouble is not confined to one part of the world, but is everywhere, in practically every nation. We append some appropriate excerpts from the daily press as evidence of the fervent heat that is prevailing among these various elements. The Philadelphia Public Ledger says:

"What have the people'of Italy been rioting about? High prices. To read the recent cablegrams from that land of long history and magic beauty one would have expected the rioting to be over Fiume or the Adriatic Islands or the - exclusion of Italy from the French alliance. But the source ' •* of the trouble was more commonplace and unsentimental. It * , was simply that the grocer charged too much for ‘eats’ and the tailor for clothes.

“Europe is thinking of its stomach and its back, not its political rights or its national boundaries.

"And Europe has no monopoly on this line of thought. The plain people of America are more interested to-day in the steadily mounting prices of most of the necessities of life and the constant warnings that things will be worse before they are better than they are about ‘Article X* or the true story of Shantung or the status of the Monroe Doctrine in relation to the League covenant This is not selfishness or Insularity, but the same mental process which causes a cinder in a man’s eye to engross more of his attention than does a new moon discovered in the neighborhood of Jupiter."

The London Daily Herald records conditions of unrest existing in France in the following paragraph:

■ • ■

The reactionary papers Hke the Actio* Fronfaiae and the DrmorrsrigiM Nowcllc are, of course, la a condition of hysteria, crying that it is all a Bolshevik polt, a German plot, a plot to ruin victorious France. Leon Daudet, in the Action says he cannot express his disgust and horror. In point of fact, the movement is not organized at all But this makes It perhaps only the more significant, for it is a spontaneous manifestation of the deeo discontent among the whole mass of the workers.

"The main immediate cause is of course 'la mr cAerr/ the high cost of living, which people in England cannot possibly appreciate. But apart from that there is a general sense of disillusionment and disappointment. Victory has turned Into dust and ashes, and the workers of France are realizing that for them four years’ struggle has brought nothing."

From Peris comes the word that the following trades are (or were at the time of the correspondence) on strike: metal workers, tailors, milliners, bootmakers, mechanical modellers, saw-mill workers, printers, plumbers, butchers, carpenters, glove makers, builders, newspaper employees, subway men, transport workers, bronze workers, taxi drivers, electrical workers at Bourget Company, employees of Maison Brassert, Maison Breguet, Maison Dufagel, and aeroplane workers at Courtevoie. In France outside of Paris builders are on strike at Valenciennes, timber, workers at Sainte-Tulle, tramway workers at Caen, gas workers at Nevers, metal workers at Grenoble, electrical workers in Lorraine, miners in Pas-de-Calais.

As further proof of the spirit of discontent and the heat prevailing among the elements, we quote from the Portland Oregon Journal:

"When has there been such a tumult?

"A hundred thousand strikers in the building trades in Chicago I

"A hundred and fifty thousand railroad shopmen on strike fa America!

"A Los Angeles lawyer’s house dynamited and burned because he assisted in prosecuting radicals 1

"Whites and colored fa near civil war fa Chicago!

"Strikes fa full swing or incubating fa many American cities; labor unrest all over the world 1

"A night of riot fa Liverpool described by a newspaper as ‘the most distressing night ever passed in a civilized city' I

“Strikes of policemen, street car workers, railway operatives and mine workers fa various parts of England!

“Where are we headed for?"

The San Fraodeco CaH Pott, referring to similar conditions prevailing in different parts of the earth, speaks of it as ^Ma~general breakdown of civilized re- straints throughout a large part of Central and Eastern Europe.... The devil is let loose in the world and the > hearts of men are full of cruelty.” We quote:

‘'Often of late the atrocities with which the world still echoes seem less like the crimes of individual men than an obscene disease which has seized upon humanity. The course •f. this disease may even be mapped out It began, so far as this generation is concerned, in Armenia, where the Tur la lolled the Christians without provoking the so-called Christian nations to anything more than mild protests. It spread to the Balkans, where the second Balkan war was preceded and accompanied by the most appalling massacres. The official report upon these massacres, in which no one's hands were dean, was a sensation early in 1914

• . "With the outbreak of the war between Servta and Austria the disease biased up with renewed fury, and when the little war became a great one the germs were carried into France • and Belgium on the one side and into Russia on the other. The Germans and Russians committed atrocities upon each other in the east, and in Poland both sides persecuted the Jews.

"The Bolshevist revolution introduced a new element of hatred—envy and desire for revenge on the one hand, fear on the other. The number of killings by the BohhevHd has been exaggerated, but though it is claimed Lcnine has not killed wantonly, it is admitted he Spared no life that stood in the way of his success. On the outskirts of the revolution wavered a barbaric fringe, the offspring of poverty and oppression, who killed like beasts and were in turn killed, even by the revolutionists.

"The enemies of the revolution were from the first as bloodthirsty as the worst of the terrorists. In Finland, Man* nerheim is reported to have killed about nine thousand. Kolchak is known to hold down his 'liberated' districts with a bloody hand and has executed hundreds, including several members of the Constituent Assembly who took refuge with him from the Bolsheviki; the Japanese hold large parts of Siberia under a reign of terror, and Fetlura’s forces are charged with the almost incredible crime of killing or in' ttigating the killing of 84,000 Jews in the Ukraine.          .

"Spontaneous as welt as organized cruelty has been rampant everywhere. The forces of order and of disorder are almost equally savage. What is going on. seems to be a general breakdown of civilized restraints throughout a large part of central and eastern Europe. It is just such a breakdown, apparently, as preceded the destruction of the old Roman ctviliration fifteen hundred years ago. The devil is let loose in thw world, the hearts of men are full of cruelty. Such a -degeneration can drag great masses of men down toward ■ fthe beast just as it can individuals. Conceivably the whole world may be attacked by iL Neither western Europe nor -America is safe. We do not know what tempests may sweep over us.

“There is no antidote except a clinging to a few old standards which have proven good. We can not tell what of our institutions will survive, or if any will survive unimpaired, but we can be sure that the more tolerant we are, the more kindly, the more willing to stu<^ the other man’s point of view, the more chance we shall have of bolding on to what we most value in civilization. This is no time for the cultivation of hate. It is no time to denounce or vilify even the worst and weakest of mankind. It is a time for understanding. Only that and its fruits can save us—only Christianity."

Capitalists have become convinced that the more they yield to the demands of the labor and radical elements, the more will be demanded of them, and there is a growing antagonism between the two dements. There* is a threat to withdraw capital from public and private enterprises, which, of course, would depress business and financial interests to the detriment of all. With both capital and labor idle, the two elements would disintegrate or melt, . With a constant warfare between the two the result would be the same.

Recently a bill was introduced in Congress that is known as the Plumb plan for thj control and operation of the railroads. Its chief provisions are these: -

• 1. Purchase by the Government of aU the railroad systems on valuations determined finally by the courts.

• 2. Operation by a directorate of fifteen, five to be chosen by the President to represent the public, five to be elected by the operating officials and five by the classified employees.

‘ 3. Equal division of surplus, after paying fixed charges and operating costs between the public and the employees.

• 4. Automatic redaction of rates when the employes' share of the surplus is more than five per cent of the gross operating revenue.                >

• 5. Regional operation of the lines as a unified syr*. tern.

• 6. Building of extensions at expense of the communities benefited, in proportion to the benefit.

• 7. Payment for the roads made through Govern-merit bonds bearing four per cent, interest.

It is claimed there are six million members of labor organizations advocating this bill. The New York World commenting upon the bill says: “The difference between the Wall Street looting system and the Brotherhood looting system is that Wall Street provides the original investment for its operations, while the Brotherhoods insist that the United States must furnish the money."

A labor paper, speaking for the labor element on the same subject, says: “The American labor unions and the national farmers are not going ta permit the return of the railroads to private hands. The robbery of the people by the alleged owners of the railroads has been stopped, and the bandits are not going to be restored to their plunder by any means. Let every one take notice. The unions are out for national ownership of both the railroads and the coal mines. Congress will find out that any attempt to return the roads will precipitate a great conflict which will be won by the unions/'.

Another paper, the mouthpiece of another branch of the radical element, says: “Nothing less than the foundations of private ownership of every public industry are menaced by the Plumb plan bill now in the lists against the old system of railroad control, which has run its course and amply proved its inefficiency and ' worthlessness.** Continuing, this writer points out that "the working class" has in its favor "the menacing unrest due to the soaring cost of living, the ability of the workers to counterbalance capitalist control of Congress by the general strike if aggression should force the use of this weapon, and the plain fact that the Plumb plan is the only workable way out of the railroad impasse, something which no amount of slander , regarding it can disprove.” \

Another great daily, speaking for the financial side of the question and which shows how the two elements are increasing in fervent heat one toward the other, says:

* Financial men do not mince words; they state pointedly they will back employers to the Hmiy win permit every important industry in Chicago and in the Middle West territory te be strike-stricken rather than Submit to an unreasonable wage or unjust conditions. If it must come to a drastic issue between employer and employee, well and good; they, the representatives of capital declare, will not evade the contest; let the thing be settled now and definitely; they are ready to meet and combat it to a final conclusion, is the assertion.*

There is an ecclesiastical element which is described in the Scriptures by the symbolic term "heavens,” and it is well known to all that this element is melting and disintegrating. The Rev. Dr. Graham is reported recently to have said:

'‘World-rocking social upheavals, threatening to destroy all religion, are due to come in the next few years. America, in the meantime, is in peril of becoming drunk with a sense of its power and of being destroyed, therefore, as have other nations in the past”

The Rev. Dr. J. R, Stratton of New York City is reported by the New York .fwuriccH as saying:

;. “We see churches inviting opera ‘stars' to sing at their ' * services and securing 'movie artists' in the frantic effort to . attract the crowd, and very recently we had the announcement in our papers of one pastor who introduced the Jazz band into kis services.

*T believe, my friends, that these new church methods are a shameless surrender to the worst tendencies of the times.

“And the next stage—what shall it be? More pronounced vaudeville features? Tight-rope walking across the heads of the congregation from the gallery to the choir loft? Consecrated cleg dancing and the ‘religious ballet,’ between the preacher's 'stunts'? Are we to have this?*

The condition recorded by the public press as above quoted is not one that has come suddenly upon the world but has crept in gradually as a thief in the night. It is impossible to read this record of present-day events without having in mind the prophetic words recorded nineteen centuries ago by the inspired ajrostle and prophet of the Lord who said: "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. . . . Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” —2 Peter 3:10-12.

It should be remembered that St. Peter was a prophet as well as an apostle; that he, as other prophets, was a mouthpiece of God, to expound or give utterance concerning things that would come to pass. As were other of God’s prophets, he was moved to write of things which, not being due in his time or day and therefore not appreciated then, are now due to be fulfilled and can be appreciated by those who observe the events transpiring in the light of the testimony recorded in Holy Writ.

Throughout the Scriptures"earth”when used symbolically, represents society, or the prevailing social order. "Heavens” used in the symbolical sense means powers of spiritual control or ecclesiastical elements prevailingat a stated time. "Fire” used in a figurative sense, as in the Scriptures quoted above, represents or pictures destruction. With prophetic vision, this apostle, looking to the end of the age, the time through which the world is now passing, refers to the period as "the day of the Lord” and states that it will come upon the world "as a thief in the night,” that is to say, unobserved except by those who are watching; and during that time the heavens (meaning the present powers of spiritual control) shall pass away with a great, hissing, troublesome noise. And so we see the present ecclesiastical elements mixing up with the worldly elements and disregarding the teachings of Jesus and the apostles and melting away or disintegrating. Continuing, the apostle says: “And the elements [clearly meaning the rich and poor elements, the financial and labor elements, the radical and conservative elements, etc.] shall melt with fervent heat;” that is to say, they will become so hot one toward another that the result wilt be a withdrawal of capital and a suspension of labor through strikes, causing the elements to melt or disintegrate.

It would be distressing indeed if the present order should pass into a chaotic condition, and there would be no basis for our hope of a better condition to come. > But the Lord, through his prophetic Witness, the Bible, records a sure basis for our hope of a better condition to follow immediately after the present disturbed conditions. St. Peter further says: “Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13). Those here referred to as "we” of necessity must be the class to which St. Peter himself belonged; and since he was a fully consecrated Christian, following in the footsteps of his Master, Christ Jesus, he must have meant all who come into this covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ and who strive to be obedient to the Lord’s arrangement, who have full faith and confidence in the promises of God and who look for, as well as hope and pray for, the coming of Messiah’s kingdom—that class who have learned to sincerely pray as Jesus taught them to pray: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is done m heaven.” Looking for these things, they confidently expect them, and they base their expectancy or hope upon the sure Word of prophecy.

The Apostle Paul tells us that the god of the present world is Satan (2 Corinthians 4:4), who rules in the hearts of the children of disobedience, and that he has blinded the minds of the people to God’s real purposes. The old order of things is the outgrowth of the best efforts of selfish man; and it is clearly demonstrated that where selfishness prevails and the order of society is directed by selfish agents the best results cannot be attained for the people in general. _b The “promise” mentioned by the Apostle in the above quotation evidently means the great promise which God made to Abraham, assuring him that “in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” St. Paul clearly defines what is meant by this seed, saying, “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one. And to thy seed, which is Christ” (Galatians 3:16). The term Christ means Messiah. For centuries the Jewish people have been looking for the Messiah. The Apostle then describes who shall constitute this Messiah—the Christ, the seed of Abraham—saying, “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

This class, then, relying upon the Scriptural assurances, have confidently looked for the time coming when Messiah would constitute the new, invisible ruling power—the “new heavensand by the establishment of his rule in the earth through his perfect human

agencies would institute the “new earth,” otherwise described as the Lord’s Kingdom, which would fully establish and bring in the Golden Age. In that age righteousness will prevail and blessing will be administered unto all the people who yield themselves in obedience to the righteous government.          * .

St. Paul referred to the suffering of humanity, the distress amongst the people, and the coming blessings when he said, “The whole creation groaneth arttf travaileth in pain together until now. waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19, 22). The word travail here used has application to the spasmodic pains of a woman in child birth and pictures the incoming of the new order. Truly the human race everywhere is groaning and travailing now in a condition of pain. It is longing for deliverance and a better time, but knows not how it is coming. The apostle says men are waiting for “the manifestation of the sons of Godthat is to say, for the kingdom of Messiah, the inauguration of the Golden Age. All this unrest and confusion, therefore, is but a sign, evidence or proof, to the thoughtful and reverent person that we are approaching the day of general blessings.

An unanswerable argument proving that this is God’s due time for the introduction of the new order of things is that he is lifting the vail of ignorance and gradually letting in the light of intelligence and invention upon mankind, exactly as his prophets foretold. (See Daniel 12:1, 4.) Great enlightenment has come gradually to the people. Had knowledge come sooner the trouble would have come sooner; and though society might have reorganized itself after the storm, it would not have been “a new earth [social arrangement], wherein dwelleth righteousness,” but a new earth or arrangement in which sin and vice would have abounded much more than before.

It is the privilege and duty of the Christian at this important hour in the world’s history to aid and comfort his fellow men. The Christian cannot engage in the strife that breeds more discontent. Rather should he strive to point the world to the sure Word of prophecy now in course of fulfilment and to the sure promises that a better day is coming. The poor world groans, not only under its real, but also under its fancied ills, and especially under the discontent, selfishness, pride and ambition which fret and worry men because they cannot fully satisfy themselves or be satisfied. The Christian can see both sides of the question, and it is his privilege and duty to counsel those willing to hear to be content, avoid strife and patiently wait until God’s due time and way for bringing in the blessings so long promised to mankind. •    ** ' ¹ ' '   ■

LABOR and ECONOMICS

TUB CHALLENGE TO STEEL

HE little David of the newly-organized-into-union employes of the steel industry in his challenge to the steel.Goliath makes demands, that are

interesting and typical of the wants of workers affiliated with the trades unions. Whether the reasonableness of the unionmen's position can find its way into the reactionary philosophy, which Goliath has assumed since Andrew Carnegie's-Homestead battle remains to be seen, for the unionized employes are said ' to be few and the employers belittle their, efforts.

In the long-ago the relationship between employer and employe used to be that of a relatively well-to-dp friend to his working friend who was good at carpentering, or something else. As an employer hired more men he knew each man less, and finally he knows the worker not at all, save as a producing unit in a cost record. The human element gradually vanished, and employers cultivated political economists to think out justifying reasons for the unsentimental treatment of workers. The economists devised the theory that labor, that resultant of human effort and emotion often unto death, was a “commodity” to be traded in like hides or copper. This is the accepted economic theory, and the workers in compact groups have adopted it to force from employers the price for their “commodity” that will enable the worker to have a good home for wife and children, with plenty,to eat and wear, and enough education, besides so that the coming generation may get out of the evil conditions forced upon labor and excused by the “commodity” theory. So labor demands the right to turn . the employer’s theory against him and to sell him in one big bargain the labor of all the workers, instead of continuing to give the employers the right to - force undesired prices for labor upon the men individually. Employers do not like this “collective bargaining” for it does away with some of the profits they have secured on under-paid work, but it stabilizes - labor prices, and all hands know what to figure on as . 1^! long as the uniform price scale is in force.

■ No one likes the man that compels another to do something he objects to doing, particularly if it cuts down one’s personal purchasing ability. So the employer does not like to keep in his employ workers that strive to force the employers to pay a price agree* able to the workers for their “commodity.” Such men are marked for future reference, and at a con

venient moment are quietly dropped from the pay rolL The steel trades union seeks to have such men reinstated, so that the workers may be represented by men of adequate ability to cope in bargaining with the employers ; and they ask that such representatives of 4a-» bor as may have been discharged be. paid for the time lost from work since their discharge. '          ,

In the. dawn of the industrial age, when water wheel and steam, engine was first hitched up to a string,of machines, employers hired men on the theory that the longer hours a man worked the greater his aggregate production. Men, women and even little children were worked such long hours that they seldom saw the sunlight outside of factory walls; for seven days a week was none too much for “Christian” employers to exact of workers who were poor and couldn’t wear good clothes and who sometimes swore or lost tfieir tempers, to the scandal ization of refined and “noble" ladies and gentlemen. But by hard battles and the assistance of philanthropic friends-of-humanity in high places, the fourteen and sixteen-hour days were cut to twelve, then to ten, to nine and to eight, and there is considerable unbiased opinion among efficiency men that the hours might drop to six without diminution in production. So the steel workers ask for a universal eight-hour day throughout the industry.

The galley slave chained to the immense oar of an ancient ship, used to work day in and- day out till he dropped* down sick at his post and was neatly dispatched and fed to the-sharks of the deep. In pagan countries men drag themselves to work in a hopeless every-d^y grind. In a revolutionary France, insanely doing away, with everything savoring of a dreadful past, they had one day without work in ten. In America we have what is scientifically conceded to be the most efficient arrangement, viz., one resting day to six working days. But in our steel industry thousands work every day without respite, for what can one man do against Goliath, even though conscience and a' weary body demand the needed ration of rest to work? So labor asks the steel chiefs for “one day’s rest in seven.”

It seems inconceivable that in a day when stores close evenings at five and Wednesday afternoons, and women workers are not permitted to work more than so many hours a week, that there should be straight twenty-four hour shifts of work anywhere in America. Yet there are shifts in the steel industry when

the worker goes on say at five, and afternoon follows morning, and evening to midnight succeeds the <ky, and then the wee small hours ran on to another five A. M. before the worker rests from his labor. Men work like this not because they want to but because an impersonal industry forces them to do so or suffer a dismissal which may keep them from getting work anywhere :n the country such as they are fitted for. Labor is eager to work, but it wants to work like a human being, and so it asks Goliath for the abolition of the twenty-four hour shift.

A man’s wage in the ultimate consists not of money but of the things obtainable through the day’s labor. If anything happens, designedly by the employer, or otherwise, whereby he gets less for his money, he suffers an actual cut in wages. Rising prices are another name for diminishing wages. If the wage before the price raise was scarcely enough for subsistence, the actual wage reduced by the high cost of living places the worker in a plight For America to remain the America that was a good place for the common people, the worker must receive a real wage enough to keep up his health and his family's health, buy good clothing, food and other necessities for all, give the children an education to make life worth while, and lay by for rainy days and old age. Therefore the steel worker asks for “increases in wages sufficient to guarantee American standards of living.”

If the same .wage is paid in all brandies of an industry for the same kind of work, it places the buyer on a basis where he knows where he stands in his own competitive affairs. With the present varying wage scales, the highly paid employes in one plant may be kept partly idle while work is diverted to plants paying less for the same kind of work, thus increasing the number of low-paid employes at the expense of the high-wage ones, and decreasing the chance of the low-paid workers securing suitable raises in pay. The workers are seeking “standard scales of wages for all crafts and classification of workers."

Any man expects to work a reasonable number of hours. That time is sold to his employer. The rest of the day and of the night is his own, time, as much as the clothes on his back or the watch in his pocket. . ' To devote personal time to an employer’s use is like ' : loaning the employer one’s overcoat or shoes, and for - such service he should receive a return added to the regular wage rate. The question of loyalty to an employer might enter in with an employer who had personal relations with the employe, but where an employer deals with labor as a “commodity” the suggestion of loyalty in connection therewith is a contradiction of terms, for steel, sugar or a typewriter

have no sentiment of loyalty for anyone. Labor is not unreasonable in requesting “double rates of pay for all overtime and for work on Sundays and holidays."                .         '

On the impersonal “commodity” theory of wages the relations of employer and employe are theoretical- . ly like those of two machines handling parts of * product. Labor reasons that in the long past employ* ' ers have compelled labor to do a great many thing* that it did not do willingly, and why should not the employer be compelled to do some things unwillingly himself? Labor finds some difficulty in keeping the union men paying their dues when the pinch of bad conditions is not felt and there is no strike on.

In the interests of efficiency, which signifies the obtaining of the last grain of product per wage unit, employers favor having only the most nearly physically , perfect men working for them. This is bad for the       ‘

men who are a bit old or not very well or very strong,       *

but who are as well qualified as the stronger men to do not an excessive but a good day’s work. The employer can handip the younger men better/ and they work harder for the advancement which several year* ¹ of experience will teach them comes to few, and to         •

obtain which the young men are willing to sacrifice all the rest of the workers on the altar of personal i ambition. So, to take from the employer another instrument giving him undue advantage in bargaining for the great industrial “commodity," the workers demand “abolition of physical examination of applicants for employment."

No matter what concessions labor may obtain from its employer, or vice versa, neither party will be fully satisfied. If the employer* should own the whole thing bodily, including the plants and the workers as slaves, they would possess no real satisfaction, for their good would be at the expense of their fellow men. Men are not a commodity, the economic fiction notwithstanding. And even if labor should reach the extreme of taking over the ownership and management of the plant, there would be no contentment therewith. ^! Both parties are operating from the point of selfinterest, whereas happiness and contentment reside at the other pole of unselfish interest, by each in all and by all in each. At no very distant day all parties will attain that happiness which they seek, and then labor troubles will cease forever. The Golden Age solvent of labor difficulties is the golden rule. Before long the oft-repeated prayer will be answered and God’s will will be done on earth as it is done in heaven. The steel industry will become a vast brotherhood with the union motto realized of “One for all and all for one.”

SOCIAL and INDUSTRIAL

REBUILDING THE WORLD

CCORDING to Lloyd George the world is about to be rebuilt into a world of sunshine for all. Of the old world the British Premier paints

a sombre picture: “What was the old world like? It was a world scarred by slums, disgraced by 'sweating' where unemployment through the vicissitudes of industry brought despair to multitudes of humble homes; a world where, side by side with want, there was waste of the inexhaustible riches of the earth, partly through, ignorance and want of foresight, partly through entrenched selfishness." ■■                '

Lloyd George has lined up with the inevitable, and set his face "against further existence of the order that has “waxed old,” and which by 1914 had begun to pass away. He says, “If we renew the lease of that world, we shall betray the heroic dead. We shall store up retribution for ourselves and for our children.”

Among millions of others the great Welshman sees the futility of seeking to perpetuate that which is worn-out; “If any are inclined to maintain this old world, let them beware, lest. it fall and overwhelm them afld their households in ruin. The old world must and will come to an end. No effort can shore it up much longer."

The Golden Age is coming and Lloyd George may be among the billions to hail its glory and in some little way help to extend its beneficent influence, for he professes willingness to help: “It should be the sublime duty of all without thought of partisanship to assist in building a new world where labor shall have its just reward and indolence alone shall suffer want.**

Much as the great ones of the present order prate about “rebuilding," they will be permitted to play but an insignificant part in that work, for their very contact with present evil methods disqualifies them from constructing the pure edifice for restored humanity. Their stewardship has about come to its end, and into 7 their place will step men whose unswerving loyalty to ’ *God has qualified them to carry out the divine pur-poses for the restoration of a . distracted and crushed world.                    /

Concerning the sequence of coming events the Biblical prediction is, first, concerning this worn-out world: “They shall take away his dominion, to consume and destroy it unto the end." Of the “rebuilding** the Great Book says, “And die kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given' to the people [the truly faithful Jewish and Christian people] of the saints [the prophets and apostles] of the most High, and all dominions [rulers] shall serve and obejZ him. Hitherto is the end of the matter." (Daniel 7:26-28.) In due time even the Lloyd Georges will turn to God alone fpr divine aid in remedying conditions too hard for human wisdom to control.

HOW PROHIBITION WORKS

IN practice, prohibition works better than some thought it would. There were some who looked upon the closing of saloons, breweries, distilleries, malt houses and bottling * works with alarm, lest the • army employed in these' places should be without employment and a considerable burden be added to an -already heavily-burdened people.

Now it appears that the matter is rapidly adjusting itself. The buildings are being turned into factories and salesrooms for the production and distribution of all kinds of things that men and women need and use, and which many are now able to get instead of the liquor that once consumed their surplus earnings.

It is no loss to a community when the money once spent for liquor goes for ice cream, soft drinks, movies and other frivolities; it is a gain, for the worker is enterta’ned, and without his injury. Aad if the mon**y once spent for liquors goes for better food for the family, better clothing, better furnishings, music, books and the thousand and one other things that improve health and comfort of mind and body all" can rejoice in the change, even including those who once had profitable work in the liquor business, but who could never take satisfaction in it because their fellows ' were cursed and cursed only by the work they did. :

The Lord used the war as the deciding factor for bringing the liquor traffic to an end. We do not believe that it is the will of the Lord that the American people should ever have in their midst again a means whereby some can rob others of reason and health and bring misery to their wives and children by pandering to their diseased appetites. Nor do we believe that the American Government would ever wish again to license it.

“Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging." (Prov. 20:1) Before the prohibition era statistics showed that 72 per cent of all criminals were made so by strong drink.

i

PROHIBITION FOR THE POOR

ON the physiological effects of alcohol the school books leave but one answer, for mentally, morally and physically the total abstainer always has the bat of every user of alcohok From a criminal viewpoint the desirability of sobering the southern negro speaks volumes for national prohibition. From an economic point of view efficiency men are quite unanimous in preferring the non-drinker. The voice of science concurs that the drug alcohol should be placed with other habit-forming drugs beyond the pale.

Thoughtful men, however, felt that there might arise from prohibition consequences easily as serious as the continued use of the drug. The prohibition leaders are well meaning persons, but largely men and women of the zealot type, rather narrow-minded, unacquainted with the broader aspects of public or private administration, and particularly inept in the foreseeing and weighing of psychological results which to the sophisticated politician are his hourly stock in trade. The prohibition “fans” either did not understand the psychology of a prohibition forced upon an unwilling population, or they regarded it a negligible factor.

Some would-be managers of other people conceive of the handling of human beings as like the moving of insensate raw materials—just get them in a legal steam shovel and put them somewhere, and there they stay put. But people have minds, while things have not; and if they are to be made to go, they have to go first with their minds, and afterwards they mat-* their bodies go. There is no permanence in an arrangement where bodies are put somewhere first without minds being put there also. Physical force fails; it puts bodies without putting minds. Unless extreme coercion makes the minds think it is wiser to go along * with the bodies, the minds sooner or later try to put bodies back; and then not merely is the trouble for nothing, but perhaps brute force stupidly outrages mind by putting the bodies back again.

It is claimed that the putting of drink away from the people was accomplished without first converting the minds of the people. If the many had been accorded the chance to vote, it is not quite certain that prohibition would have come. Pressure was brought to bear upon a few—the legislators. Legislators are peculiarly susceptible to the methods of the zealot reformer; their political stability depends on the voters* state of mind; and if a moral-reform zealot happened along in war time, when no one dared to be suspected of hindering the Great Crusade, the legislator went docilely along with the reformer rather than have the voters all worked up over him. So war prohibition went through, with little thought about it by the common people as something for peace times also, in the most difficult form to change back again— an amendment to the federal constitution.

The popular mind not having assented to the peace prohibition proposition it is at work to get back where, it started from. All kinds of arguments are being suggested to the people why the prohibition which is, ought not to be. There is dissatisfaction, and there are not lacking powerful finanria! interests to spend money to see that anti-prohibition thoughts get into the disturbed minds of the people.

Thoughts of discontent travel in flocks; and, not' because the people care so much for beer, but because they have a grievance over a sumptuary law, they conjure up the whole family of grievances, real and imaginary.

First is the personal-rights grievance. The man who wants to get tipsy likes to assert his personal right to abuse his health, his mind, his job, his reputation and his wife and family, and is able to build up a plausible argument Covering an extensive field of personal rights versus civil rights.

A curious phenomenon of the war-prohibition situation is that the saloons remain open. In this is an astute psychology. Users of liquor find that taking away drink signifies taking away a method of life. The bar across which the soft drink now finds its way was once a center of good-natured discussion. Now eveiy bar. is a protracted indignation meeting.

Prohibition appeals to a large number as a wrong, because many consider that it was inflicted on them “dishonestly," slipped over when itT was unsafe for one to assert a right, because some one else could vociferate that said assertions might be inimicable to the war.

The news is out through waiters, servants and merchants that the wealthy have stocked their cellars with drinkables and -that there is no prohibition for the man who had a few hundreds or thousands of dollars to invest in liquid refreshments. Most drinkers are poor, and they object that what puts them under the prohibition law and others not under it is the distinction between poverty and wealth. This the brewery interests find no difficulty in magnifying into a national scandal. .

Cultivated discontent is, now a specialty of the liquor interests and may be expected to come to the surface through devious channels. The unclosed saloon becomes the center of strike propaganda. The saloon-keeper is a pastmaster in politics, and he who has been able to control votes can now control currents of discontent. Struggles over wages may be more numerous and show a vicious spirit because of the class propaganda which is quietly going on in comer saloons. And it is easy to imagine that strikes may not be the only methods employed to harrass and annoy those whom they are led to regard as the privileged classes.

There is no human cause better than temperance in general, but it is questionable whether at this particu-a lar critical time the interests of temperance have not been somewhat hindered by what is essentially a wartime measure.

The Good Book says, "Be not among wine-bibbers for the drunkard shall come to poverty” (Proverbs 23 20), and "Who hath woe ? who hath sorrow ? who hath contentions? who hath wounds without cause? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine” (Proverbs 2J:29-30); but it also says, "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence and a time to speak." (Ecclesiastes 3:1-7) In due time under Golden Age conditions the people will be elevated enough not to want any drug stimulation, alcoholic or otherwise.

SIDE ISSUES OF PROHIBITION

THERE is no reform without unexpected minor results. One of the outcrops of prohibition is the effect on the vineyard industry. California is hard ■ hit. Investors have $200,000,000 in the grape-growing industry and some 50,000 men, women and children work in the vineyards and allied interests. The 400,000 ton 1920 crop worth $12,000,000 is at stake; it is too much to be eaten, and is a loss, it is feared, if not crushed and converted into wine.

At great cost of time, labor and money 170,000 acres of practically useless land, some of it almost a desert, has been transformed into vineyards by some 8,000 grape growers. One of the tragedies of prohibition is that hundreds of families, aggregating perhaps 40,000 persons, may lose their all should these wine-grape vineyards lapse back to sagebrush or desert land.

Another by-product of prohibition is the mental exercise it is giving jurists and lexicographers in trying to find a definition for "intoxicating.” The new constitutional amendment forbids "intoxicating” beverages, and it is necessary now to know what this means. There is a grave difference among men and women of high purpose on this point. The brightest minds of the country have applied themselves to supply the definition. It is said that the Honorable Elihu Root took enough of his valuable time to go through numberless judicial decisions and to compile from thirty-five of them the following definitions:

“Intoxicating liquors are those liquors which are intended for use as a beverage and which contain alcohol in such proportion or percent, that when consumed in any quantity that can practically be drunk by an ordinary man, or in any quantity that the human stomach can ordinarily hold, will produce a condition⁴ commonly known <as intoxication or drunkenness.*

This is an ideal definition from a legal viewpoint, because it contains so many words that would require legal construction or interpretation. The words “intended,” “practically,” “ordinary,” “ordinarily,” and “commonly” are sufficiently indefinite to give employment to courts and lawyers for a total of many months or even years. Of course, lawyers must live.

The other learned definition is: "Drunkenness or intoxication is a materially abnormal mental or physical condition manifesting itself in the low of the ordinary control of the mental faculties or bodily functions to a substantial extent.” This definition also contains four good words for the courts to wrangle over, namely, materially, abnormal, ordinary and substantial.

If many states follow.New York State, another byproduct of prohibition may be laws impinging somewhat on personal liberty. Home brewed root beer with "any trace of alcohol” may incur liability to a fine of $100, $500 or $1,000 and imprisonment for six months. The ailing person who needs wine “for his stomach’s sake” is under the same liability, except when protected by a physician^rs prescription. The farmer's cider is a menace to his pocketbook and liberty, unless made unfit to drink or de-alcoholized. The man who never would "snitch” at school will have to find new principles of honor, for he can be compelled to tell where he got his liquor or be jailed in contempt of court. The great question of the old English common law will probably come again to the front on account of armies of professional and amateur spies bent on tracing down the scent of alcohol and incidentally turning up anything else. That old question was "whose home is safe ?”

TENS OF MILLIONS FOR COLLEGES

HE cause of "higher” education receives a distinct advancement in the twenty million dollars

recently given to Yale University. This sum will be expended for a memorial building and for fellowships, professorships, scholarships and prizes.

Another institution of higher education is combing the nation for a ten million dollar increase in its endowment fund. Before the drive was a day old four million dollars were subscribed by a donor who had already given seven million dollars to the institute. Whoever it is that has put up this eleven million dollars he is a fairy godfather, for no one knows what his name is.

The high cost of living has invaded college precincts and among the low-paid workers of the nation are college professors, and particularly the instructors who do most of the direct teaching.

The same high cost has struck a . hard blow to the college man. The tuition fee at New England's greatest technical institution has been raised from $250 to $300. While this is a large sum to a poor young man, it does not represent nearly all of the cost of the education of the students.' The actual expense to the in-sitution of one of its courses in technology approaches $800 or $900. When the student has paid his $300, he is the beneficiary of charity to the extent of $500 or $600 more. The average college student rather prides himself on his independence; yet he is as much an object of charity as the inmate of an almshouse.

The cost of supplying education in the colleges has gone up with the general cost of living, and every educational institution which has not received a liberal increase in interest-bearing donations is ‘'hard up.'*

EFERZBOPr JAS4JVE/

HAT everyone else has a screw loose except ourselves is a truism. George Bernard Shaw says that “the longer I live, the more I am'inclined to the belief that this earth is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum.” A “scientist” has calculated the number'of years until, at the present rate of increase, the entire population will be “off” enough under alienist standards to be fit for the asylum.

Some figures are available for estimating this, if American standards are representative of world conditions. In the fourteen years from 1890 to 1904 the percentage of the United States population in insane institutions rose from 0.17 per cent to 0.183 per cent The populace then had not begun to go to movies and r, were not living at the present dizzy rate, but in the six years from 1904 to 1910 the rate rose to 0.2042 * per cent, and in the seven years to 1917 to 0.2276 per cent. Statistics are not available for the war year of 1918 and the high-cost-Iiving year of 1919, but institutions for the insane must be increasing their borders.

The relation between industrialism and insanity appears by grouping the states which are largely industrial, in which group the percentage of insane is 0.2715 per cent. The group next worse off is the Pacific Coast states, which are the mecca of the ambitious, idle and restless, and which show a percentage of 0.2695 per cent. The northern central group, devoted largely to farming, has 0-2202 per cent, insane. The western mountain group is said to have the most representatively American population, with quite a low proportion of foreign born, and they rank low in insanity, with 0.1506 per cent. The colored people are not so subject to insanity as the white race, as the southern group of states comes lowest with but 0.14595 per cent insane. Religion may have a bearing, for the groups having a predominant Roman Catholic population are high in insanity, and the Pacific Coast group with a considerable population devoted to theosophy and other forms of spiritism shows a strain of insanity, while the south, the stronghold of Protestantism, Is lowest in proportion of the insane. Romanism ind spiritism play upon the emotions, cultivate superstition and demand the absolute surrender of the will to the religion, without fortifying the mind with knowledge and building up a strong character based upon reason and faith combined.

In the last score of years it has been found easy to get rid of relatives by medical affidavits as to their sanity, and it is considered that there is a considerable number of persons incarcerated in insane institutions who are as sane as anyone outside. A periodic investigation of the inmates of all such institutions is recommended in order to stop this abuse and give liberty to thousands wrongfully shut up in these “gilded hells,” and that in such instances the parties to this worse4han-murder crime should Jx liable to exemplary punishment

’ A further large proportion of inmates of these institutions are the victims of spiritism—persons that have dabbled with demons until “obsessed” and finally periodically “possessed" by them. It was to this class that Jesus brought relief in the many instances where he “cast out devils" or, as described in Biblical language, “He went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed [through spiritism] of the devil.” (Acts 10:38.) These unfortunate insane need not keepers and straightjackets, but the power of One stronger than man to break the hold acquired by devils through the surrender of the will in superstition and spiritism. Such a power is about to be manifested and under the, healing influences of the Golden Age “the whole creation, which groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption (physical, religious, moral and mental degeneration) into the glorious liberty

MANUFACTURING and MINING

STRENGTH OF PLYWOOD

IT has been discovered that a piece of wood cut by a machine into thin panels and glued together in such a manner that the grain of one panel runs at right angles to the grain of the two adjacent panels is stronger, weight for weight, than a steel bar. This wood, called plywood because of the way it is built up, layer by layer, has been found of great value in the airplane industry. Ribs made of plywood are more than two and one-half times as strong as those made of other woods, and work has now begun on making the wings themselves of this material, thus eliminating the flap of the cloth entirely.

A serious difficulty which has been overcome in the use of plywood for airplanes construction was the making from blood of a glue that will stand any quantity of moisture without letting go. An equally satisfactory one has been made from casein, obtained from milk. These new glues will be a valuable ad-■ dition to cabinet makers and builders. Furniture made with them will not come apart, nor veneers warp or peel. Plywood can be made from the finest walnut at a total cost of less than 3c. per square foot, can be put on over ordinary wall paper, and will last a life time.                ¹            .

In this plywood, stronger than steel, we have an illustration of how the Lord can take characters, weak in themselves, and surround them with such influences and so fortify them by his promises as to make them “mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds” of error and sin.—2 Cor. 10:4.

MANUFACTURE OF WINDOW GLASS

WINDOW GLASS is made by two methods.

Plate glass i^ made by a process similar to the ' rolling out of dough, but window glass in general Is made by blowing glass into the form of cylinders, either by hand-blowing or machine-blowing, A machine-blower is an apparatus which automatically dips ' a big pipe into a kettle of molten glass, and then gradually raises it, pulling all the molten glass upward =- as the pipe rises. A constant stream of air kept flowing in through the pipe causes the glass to assume the form of a cylinder. Hand-blowing is substantially the same in principle r.s machine-biowing, except that the glass which is partially blown must be redipped four cr five times into the molten glass to procure more and yet more material, to make the cylinder of the required size, and require reheating of the hardened lower end to make the cylinder of proper length and thickness. The ends of the cylinders are cut square by first running a hot thread of glass about the proposed line of cleavage, following it with the passage of a bar of cold iron over the same place.

Experience has shown that the best way to store the glass in quantities is to let it remain in the cylindrical form until about the time for shipment. Hence, in glass warehouses, the storage space is filled, with these cylinders, each six or more feet tall ?md about two feet in diameter. The tubes are cut by running a hot iron over the desired line of cleavage, following it Vf-with a cold iron, when the big roll breaks open as easily as if it were cut with a diamond. The roll is then heated sufficiently to permit it to be flattened and is ready for the market.

Apparently, in Bible times, the art of making transparent glass had not been perfected. The apostle said, .‘‘Now we see through a glass darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12) as though to imply that glass in those days was more or less opaque. How thankful we ought to be, living at the dawn of the Golden Age when even the poorest homes have plenty of windows and clear glass in all of them. It is not so long ago, in England, since the lords of some of the old castles had their windows taken out and stored during the winter, time to protect them from possible damage by the elements. Glass was a very, precious thing then. S’qw it is cheap and seen everywhere.

PRACTICAL HELPFULNESS IN BUSINESS

AT the New York Edison Company last summer there was an exhibit of practical helpfulness for the workers, designed however, not for altruistic purposes, but to teach employes the uses of electric current so that they might talk it up among their neighbors. Any employe might bring in his beans or blackberries, with the jars and sugar, and have his canning done free of charge, so that when, the man brought home those jars all done the wife might tell her friends how it was all done in an electric fireless cooker. Last spring employes brought in their fine curtains and had them done in an electric washing machine. The boyscout flags and caps were washed in the same machine, and the boys talked about it everywhere. Someday the heads of industries will do things for employes and probably others from a genuine desire to “do good to all.”

The day is long past when an employer might curse his employes with impunity. Now the idea is for an executive, to give his men the same treatment he wants them to pass on to the public. The average customer, on account of the experience of somebody has heard of, imagines that an electric light company, for example, is always trying to “put something over” on him. Too little attention has been paid. to the way public service employes, excepting street railway men and telephone operators, treat the public, but now that is being changed for the better, not however because it is right but because it pays.

CREATIVE POWER IS SCARCE

THE man with great natural gifts is the one who is always needed in the occupation where such gifts count. For example, no one is more useful to human society than the research man. SjSeak-in_C of his characteristics the London Electrician says: “He is born, not made.. He has the creative gift, the faculty of seeing new combinations and possibilities where the most accomplished technician without the gifts sees only known ones. He retains so incurable an interest in experimenting that he is willing to sacrifice to it the joys and emoluments of managerial power. A man of proved creative power is sought after, you might almost say courted.” Such men are scarce enough now, but the day is not far distant in the better age when there will be thousands of creative minds better able to work out the world's problems than any one yet seen.

COMMERCIAL CANNIBALISM

A WRITER on industrial topics, Philip Cabot, in

. Electrical Warld, speaks thus of business conditions prior to the war: “We had not competition but industrial war. The unsuccessful competitor was killed and eaten by his adversary.” The World comments: “The weakness of competition lay in the fact that there was not—and there is not J yet—any proper criminal code against this murder ’ ' and cannibalism. Until a corporation can be ruth-- lessly extinguished for industrial murder, through receivership and a complete ousting of the criminals forever, competition will remain practically nonexistent” Many business men are evidently doing a little forward-looking toward the approaching better day when a man will not have to be a crook to be in big business.

CANADA’S GREAT WATER POWER SYSTEM

ONE of the greatest engineering feats of history is now being carried out by Canada. She needs at least three hundred thousand horsepower a second in order to supply Ontario with light, heat and power, and in order to get it she is widening and deepening the Welland river and forcing it to flow the wrong way; building a great mill-race from the river to a point near Queenstown; erecting a* that point a great power-house through which' ten thousand cubic feet of water will rush, evefy second.

Just before the water reaches the power house it will drop through the air a distance of three hundred feet. The immense quantity and the speed at which it comes will easily generate the power required. The artificial 300-foot fall combines the 150-foot fall of Niagara with the rapids above and below the falls. The mill-race is really a great canal.

The canal will be eight and a half miles long and involves the digging of fifteen million cubic yards of rock and earth. The earth sections of the canal will have sloping sides, the bottom being thirty-four feet wide and the top one hundred and sixty-two feet wide. The rock sections will have vertical sides forty-eight feet wide and thirty-five feet deep.

The electric shovels used in digging up the dirt are the largest in the world. They pick up eight cubic yards of dirt, carry it to a dump car eighty feet above, and go back for another load, all in less than a minute. Each shovel .weighs three hundred and seventy-five tons.

The channelling machines are the most powerful made; they cut to a depth of twenty feet. For drilling, hollow drills are used, the advantage being that the cuttings are blown out of the hole as rapidly as they are made. The holes are made 12 feet deep and 7 feet apart and at times as many as a thousand _v of these holes are shot at once, breaking fifty thousand tons of rock to fragments. Much of this rock is afterward broken up for use in making concrete for the bridges which cross the canal.

There are 1500 men at work on the job and it is hoped to finish it by 1921, at a cost of approximately $25,000,000.

What a blessing the Lord has stored up for mankind in the rivers and streams that ceaselessly pour their torrents from the higher to the lower levels of the land, and to the bosom of the sea! No doubt the time will come when the water powers of the world will do a major part of its work. How gracious the arrangement of God by which he “sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust”—Matthew 5:45.

FINANCE, COMMERCE and TRANSPORTATION

PARCEL POST AND THE EXPORT TRADE

ARCEL post is the quickest and most economical method of transporting light weight merchandise between the nations of North, Central and South

America. At present there are four different limits of weight, depending on the country of destination, 11, 20 and 22 lbs-, to most countries. Cuba is the exception with a limit of 4 lbs. 6 oz. Shippers must learn the limit of weight of the country to which they make shipment so as to avoid unnecessary division of goods.

It is surprising how goods can be divided into great numbers of packages and yet arrive safely at destination when sent by parcel post A Chicago mail order house sent 300 11-lb. packages to a small town in the eastern part of Bolivia, thousands of miles over water routes and mountain trails, and the goods arrived in perfect condition, not an item missing or damaged.

Ordinarily the customs duty is collected according to the weight and valuation shown on the tag attached to the parcel, but consular invoices are necessary to certain countries when the value of the shipment is above a certain amount.

The English arrangement with reference to parcel post is to charge one rate of postage for packages less than 3 lbs. in weight, another for packages from 3 to 7 lbs. in weight, another for packages over 7 lbs. The heavier the package, the less the rate of postage. This is an incentive to buyers to increase the size of their parcels and orders.

There are some barriers to the full use of the parcel post that should be removed. The limit of weight to each country should be the same, 22 lbs. It should be allowable in all countries, as is the case in some, to pack all kinds of mailable articles in the one package, instead of requiring articles of different customs classifications to be packed and shipped separately. Arrangements should be perfected for sending parcels C. O. D. Customs should be levied in all countries on the net weight, so as not to encourage the shipment of parcels insufficiently wrapped.

In countries where duty is collected on the gross weight of packages the exporter is at a loss to know what to do. His customer demands that the goods shall be so packed as to reach him safely, but wishes to pav duty on the least amount possible. This often results in a dissatisfied customer and a skeptical exporter.

We sometimes wonder how Daniel and his three fellow-Presidents managed to control the 120 provinces of the then known world, when there was neither telegraph, telephone, railway, steamship, automobile nor bicycle. The courier seemed to be the fastest thing known in those days. What would Daniel have thought of a courier service which could handle 300 11-lb. packages from Chicago to the interior of Bolivia and think nothing of it!

SCIENTIFIC DESTRUCTION OF RAILROADS

UCH complete destruction of railroad property was never before known as was visited upon the railroads of Western.. Belgium and Northeastern France during-the Great War. During the American Civil War the bridges were burned and the tracks tom up. The rails were heated in the middle and then wrapped around tree trunks, defying all efforts to dislodge them, or a great pile of ties and other edmbust-ibles were set afire and the rails for a distance were piled criss-cross on the top of the pile and allowed to all melt together in the center. But these achievements of the American War pale beside what the Germans did in France during their retreat.

A V-shaped device drawn by a locomotive first ripped the rails from the ties; the joints were torpedoed ; embankments were blown away, clear down to the. natural soil; cuts were^blown in from the sides; tunnels were blown up with such lavishness as to pulverize the soil clear to the surface above the arch; culverts, abutments, piers, and the earthworks leading to them were blown to atoms; bridges, telegraph lines, signals, stations, switchtowers, cranes, nothing was spared. At bridge sites mines were planted with delayed action fuses calculated to explode a dozen days later, after temporary bridges had been put in position, and secondary mines were also placed calculated to explode months later, after the permanent bridges had been put in place.          .

As they face the ruins of their once beautiful land we can imagine that the French people may well feel like Jeremiah of old when he said, “Thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled?' (Jer. 4:19, 20) We are glad for the French people, and for the world, that the era in which such destruction is possible, is near an end.

THE VEGETABLE OIL SITUATION

HE VEGETABLE OILS have become an important item in the food supply of mankind. They come into direct competition with butter, lard and lard substitutes. The vegetable oils are substitutes for cotton seed oil and that in its turn is a substitute for lard. Lard and other animal fats come into competition with butter in the manufacture of butter substitutes. Thus the supply of vegetable oils has a direct effect upon the market price of all the edible fats.

Prominent among the vegetable oils is that of the soy-bean, which comes mainly from Manchuria. The port of Dairen alone, during the calendar year of 1918, shipped direct to the United States more than 128,000 tons of this oil. The customary milling ratio of soy-beans to beancake is 24 to 23, so that the vegetable oil shipment from this one port to the United States in one year represents a crop of 3,072,000 tons of soy-beans.

The great packers, who make most of the butter Substitutes, are now developing a trade in tinned milk with the Orient and with South America. They will naturally wish to bring back the vegetable oils of these countries as it means cheaper raw products for butterines and eventually lower prices for milk through the fall in price of butter.

The soap and paint manufacturing concerns, and the consuming public that is on the hunt for lower living costs, will be interested in the importation of these vegetable oils, as well as the packers, while the dairy interests will wish to see their importation stopped at once.

This illustrates the marked difference between the commerce of to-day and commerce of Bible times.. In those ancient days international trade consisted almost entirely of highly valuable silks, spices, and metals, and necesasrily so because of the meager means of transportation; but to-day the whcle world is ransacked for the every-day food of mankind,

HJGTDFX K MOTOR TRANSPORT         '

AILROAD managers complain that their business is being cut into by truck transportation.

The new system serves the people satisfactorily and the business is yet in small enough units not to dominate the communities it works for. Highway transport between Chicago and Milwaukee has become an established fact by the United Motor Transport Lines which connect various warehouses and terminals in each city with those in the other. Similar transport lines are in successful operation in the East, as between New York and Boston.

ANOTHER BURDEN FOR THE TROLLEYS

HE country's street railways have been having a hard time, and the automobile has added to their burden. If those who have automobiles—and

their friends—prefer them to trolley cars, or if small shippers prefer trucks for cost and convenience, to interurban express, it will seem that the trolley men should find ways and means of improving their service to meet modem competition. The trolley men have long had their own way in utter disregard of the common people, and the man on the street cannot be blamed if he feels a little secret satisfaction at seeing rural transportation shaping up a little toward the coming ideal when the people will wisely control all such service.             ₍

ELECTRICITY IN TRANSPORTATION

ACCORDING to C. Townley, the business experience of the electrical men has been the retarding cause of the slower extension of electricity in practical transportation. They have not known enough about either the science or the art of railroading. Their professional pride, their belief in and zeal for the electrical profession, has led the electrical experts to overestimate their claims of what they could do, and underestimate the cost of doing it. '

INDU RUBBER FIGURES

IMPORTS of India rubber are larger than ever before, the figures in millions of pounds being in 1919, 398; 1918, 389; 1917, 333; 1916, 267; and 1914, 131. .The cost per pound dropped from 52 cents in 1918 to 39 cents in 1919, owing to slackening of war demand.

AUTOMOBILE ITEMS

$2,000,000 land purchase in Detroit, by the makers of the Dodge automobile, is an index of current progress in the automobile industry.

Automobile prices are following the general upward trend of prices, with a dozen or so manufacturers announcing advances.

The “ship-by-truck” movement recently ran a caravan of eighteen trucks across country to demonstrate their value to Middle West farmers.

AERO INSURANCE

ERO enthusiasts should have aeroplane insurance. The Automobile Insurance Company has decided to insure aircraft. “Many shall fly to and fro.*

POLITICAL, DOMESTIC and FOREIGN

JF2TO IS TO RULE THE WORLD!

HE British Empire dominated the League of Nations, and she will continue to dominate it. Several paits of the Empire, each with a popula

tion less than that of New York City, have as great " a representation in certain matters as the whole United

States.

Before the war Britain held about one-fourth of the habitable area of the world and governed one-fourth of the world’s population. Now, as a result of taking over the German colonies, Persia and Mesopotamia, it has about one-third of the world and its inhabitants under its control, and with the passing of Germany from the stage it is in effect and in fact the mistress of the world. Between 1871 and 1914 there was added to the British Empire over 4,000,000 square miles of territory, and a population of more than 60,000,000.

The British bankers have found the spread of the Empire valuable to them. The held for their investments has widened, and they have always realized „ that the British navy was back of their bonds. And they have been none too generous to the natives of the conquered lands.               '

In Egypt a labor day lasts 12- to 15 hours and the wages are equivalent to 25c. per day for adults, and 12c. per day for children. The difference between these wages and the wages that must be paid in Great Britain represents profit for the banker and therefore British money naturally seeks investment abroad. But some of the bankers so manage things that they get back, in one form or another, a good part of even the pittance that the native laborer receives. An illustration of this occurred in connection with the present Khedive.

He was loaned 82,000,000 pounds at 7% with 1% for amortization. The bankers gave him, however, only 20,700,000 pounds in cash, and 9,000,000 pounds in his own notes at par. which they had bought at 65% of their face value. The remaining 52,000,000 pounds ■_ they kept as security for the amount actually loaned, \ f». but the Khedive is to pay the interest on the whole 82,- ■ 000,000. At this rate the Khedive will pay 31% for ’ his money, besides losing over 3,000,000 pounds the first year on the 9,000,000 pounds of his own notes. The Khedive, of course, gets the money to pay this interest and to refund the principal by taxing heavily his 25c. per day subjects. The sad part of it is that even under this thinly-disguised slavery the lot of the common people is better than under native rulers who are not in some sense responsible to the British crown.

The Egyptian people, feeling the burden, were led by some to hope and believe that the deliberations at Paris would give them self-determination, the right of self-government, but although the British Government has officially stated several times in past years that it has no right in Egypt, it nevertheless does not let go its hold, because Egypt is the key to the Suez canal, and the Suez canal is the key to the Far East It cannot be denied that the British have greatly improved the condition of the people of Egypt. They have given them honest courts and clean government, which is something they never had before and would not have if left to themselves.* Yet the Egyptian people are not satisfied and want to govern themselves in their own way, possibly in hope that they can keep for their own use a larger part of that daily wage of 25c.

It is not at all likely that the Egyptian people will get greater liberties by any movement of their own. They tried it by starting an insurrection, and before it was quelled eight hundred of them were killed, sixteen hundred wounded, thirty-nine sentenced to death, twenty-seven to imprisonment for life and two thousand to other terms in prison. Sixty British soldiers and civilians were also killed and one hundred and forty-nine wounded. We regret that in quelling the Egyptian insurrection the British bombed the villages of the natives, thus killing innocent women and children and noncombatants.

If the Egyptian people, and all the other African and Asiatic peoples under British rule, gain greater liberties they are likely to get it first by an old force now manifesting itself in a new way. Some seven hundred years ago, in 1215 A.D., the British people took away from King John his right to manage the British Government. In 1911 they shelved the House of Lords. Now the papers are full of stories of what the great labor unions of England have in view. Practically all the workers of the British Isles are in these unions, and since the war they are interesting themselves actively in the domestic and foreign policies of the Empire in a way they never did before. It is not clear how any political party can resist the demands of these laborites and remain in power, and if they get what they demand they will be the real masters of the greatest Empire that ever dominated the world. How long will it be before they get it?

_% The real right to the rulership of the world, however, rests in the One who bought it with his own precious blood. It is of this One, the Lord Jesus, that the prophet exultingly says, "'The government shall be upon his shoulder'¹ and “Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end." (Isa. 9:6, 7) It is for that long-promised rule, now near at hand, that we pray when we say, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven."—Matthew 6:10.

GAMBLING IN BERLIN

Almost everybody in Berlin is gambling. The crowds around the baccarat tables never diminish and the money changes hands in large sums, 20,000 and 30,000 marks at a turn of the hand. The constant round of gaming, eating and drinking goes on all night. Scarcely anyone thinks of leaving before dawn, and many remain for breakfast. The people admit that the war was a great gamble, a game in which everything was staked and lost

Along with the gambling and eating and drinking in these clubs a craze for dancing has broken out, and thousands of young girls are there nightly in gowns which would cause their arrest in New York. During the March riots when blood flowed in the streets the bands jazzed in the halls and the girls screamed with laughter as they whirled around the may pole. The sacrifices of the war have given way to a disregard of all conventionalities.

The course of the German people since they started in the great war and until now reminds one of that of the prodigal son, who wasted his patrimony in riotous living. Many of those now feverishly gambling with one another are liable to discover that “the riches of wickedness profit nothing," and that the Lord "casteth away the substance of the wicked.”—Proverbs 10: 1-3.

THE FINNISH REPUBLIC

ANEW republic has been born, Finland. It has taken a long time for the Finnish people to decide what form of government they will have. For seventeen months they have been independent of Russia, and during all that time the debate has gone on furiously as to whether the country should be a republic or a monarchy. The decision was finally made. The new Finland will be governed by a president elected for six years, on the first occasion by the existing one-chamber legislature, which remains unchanged, but ever afterward by a special Elective Assembly of 300 members, chosen by the people. No bill which the president vetoes will become a law until it is approved by a newly-elected Riksdag, as the legislature is called.

All over the world a trumpet message is sounding forth. It is the same that was cast upon the Liberty Bell of 1776k Finland is one of the latest to respond to the divine call uttered thousands of yean ago: “Proclaim liberty throughout all. the land unto all the inhabitants thereof/’—Leviticus 25:10>

“THE KINGS HAVE HAD THEIR DAT" ■ WHERE kings arc best known and have the longest time to popularize their beneficence, they are the least wanted. While America is welcoming the scions of royalty, scraping and.bowing before them, and the “best people” are vieing with one another as prince's messenger boys and packhorses, the kings and princes are being chased out of European countries and are meeting with demonstrations on the other side of the ledger.

The soldiery who should be the direct beneficiaries of a plundering nobility and kingdom, are reported in Austria as with one voice protesting against recent alleged efforts to establish a monarchy. The entire armed force of the nation are reported active in the protest.

With all its defects the republican form of government is best liked by the people because it gives the would-be kings the least chance to meddle with the people and affords the common people the largest opportunity to look after their own affairs. At any rate the Austrian soldiers, representing the common people, showed that “the kings have had their day,” by urging in a demonstration before the Parliament building that the republican form of government be retained. Similar demonstrations were reported from the country districts of Austria.

Humanity is drawing near the ideal social order long promised in the Word of God. In the better world about to take form upon the earth the divine principle will be established that it is not designed that most men should be autocratically ruled by a few men, or that man should, without full and free consent and cooperation, exercise authority over man. Man was given dominion over the earth and over the lower order of creatures to be their beneficent autocrat, but the relationship of man to man will ultimately be that of a regal brotherhood, the full realization of that republicanism in which each man is the kingly equal of all other men and each woman a beautiful queen in a world of equals.

The Austrian soldiery dimly sense the future order and are reaching out for the things of Messiah’s Kingdom,

AGRICULTURE and HUSBANDRY

. THE farmer and the motor truck

HE farmer is independent of the rest of the world, but the world is not independent of him. . He is nearest to the food supply and can find food for

himself and family with less difficulty than others. Supplies of clothing are at his hand also; wool, hides, flax, cotton, etc., requiring only his industry, and that of his family. He can make his own shelter, of logs if necessary.

- If transportation facilities are poor he can get along with almost no assistance from the outside world. There are men now living in certain districts of the United States who can remember when the annual store bill of the family was less than two dollars. A little salt and a little iron was all that was purchased, and the man and his family did the rest.

But the farmer wants more than food, clothing and shelter, and his wife and family want more. They want education; teachers, books, stationery and school supplies. They want information; mail facilities, tele-». phones, telegraph, wireless. They want music; pianos, ■" organs, phonographs, records. They want amusement; games, toys, novelties. They want furnishings; carpets, furniture, draperies. They want conveniences; kitchen utensils, tinware, crockery. They want sani-^k tation; plumbing, heating, ventilation. They want art; pictures, wall paper, statues. They want hardware; locks, hinges, cutlery. The farmer wants all these and more. He wants implements of all kinds to help him in his work; reapers, threshers, mowers, plows, cultivators, seeders, tools of all kinds. He wants harness, fertilizers, seed. His wants are legion.

' It is these and a thousand other natural and proper wants of the farmer that have made the complex thing we call civilization, with all its factories, warehouses, stores, banks and trade and transportation facilities. We all live on the things produced on the farm.

It follows then that transportation to and from the farm is the thing we all need, and need badly. And . > this thing is here at last. The ox team was a step, the ' < dirt road was a step, the canal was a step, the farm - wagon was a step, the railroad was a step and a great one, but the automobile was the thing that brought results. Since the advent of the automobile there has been more agitation for good roads, and with better results, than in all the years that preceded its advent. Everybody wants good roads now because everybody has an automobile and wants to go everywhere in com

fort and with speed. Good roads are spreading in every direction and in some sections the horse has practically disappeared.                      ’

Many fanners now have passenger cars for personal* travel, tractors for farm work and motor trucks for hauling produce to market. This is all moving in the right direction, in the line of better roads, and the bringing of the food producer nearer to the consumer, nearer to the man who supplies the farmer with the things he must have if he is to do the great work of feeding and clothing the swarming millions who depend upon his fields for a livelihood.

The ebb tide of the sale of tractors to farmers is passed, and the trend toward a large volume of sales has set in. The farm tractor has not yet been the popular thing with the farmer who could not yet see the use of investing the price of several horses in a machine that in a recent degree of development racked itself to pieces in a couple of yean. Intelligent experience is being built into the tractor now, and the implement has been developed more nearly to do its work.

The Great War did much for the development of motor trucks. Hundreds of trucks, bearing the U.SjA stamp on engines and radiator*, went through heavy shell Are that shot tops and bodies away, the trucks continuing to run, and hauling loads over open fields and tom, muddy roads near the front

The capacity of any truck can be increased by the use of a trailer. It is better to get a small truck and buy a trailer later if you must. There is danger of loading motor trucks too heavily. Sometimes the platform scales that will be used to weigh the load were installed before the day of motor trucks, and have insufficient capacity to weigh very large trucks heavily loaded.

Some states demand exceptionally large fees for heavy trucks, because of the damage they do the roads; only $50 is charged for a five-ton truck, but anything heavier calls for a license fee of $250 to $500.

For a ton truck the cost will average 10c per mile. If the truck replaces horses the principal saving will be in feed, harness, shoeing and veterinary service, less care, less space, saving of driver's time, wider radius of marketing, less shrinkage in hauling live stock, better market condition of perishable products, livery charges and safety without hitching. Double-decked motor-truck bodies are desirable where two or more classes of products arc handled, such as live poultry and eggs.

God's Word is full of promises respecting the glorious epoch, the Golden Age, when “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord" (Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14); when "every man shall sit under Aw vine and under Air fig tree; and none shall make them afraid" (Micah 4:4); when “they shall not build and another inhabit," but when home ownership shall be general (Isa. 65 : 21-23). Thus a time is anticipated when every man in the summer season will be interested in the production of the things that come to his own table. And this is the natural inclination of healthy, normal men. This does not mean, however, that there will not always be great fields for the production of the world's staple crops. The farmer will long continue to be a great factor in feeding the world, and the motor truck will enable him to deliver that food when and where it will be most needed.

TEE VALUE OF TEE MULCH

HIRTY years ago it was solemnly and officially declared that the Great Plains country would

never be of any value agriculturally except as a sparse grazing country, but the mulch system of dry farming has made it one vast wheat field, furnishing food for millions of people.                    .

Soil that does not have a mulch will crack when it gets dry, and these cracks are the lines on which clods form. A mulch on the surface will prevent clod formation, and the labor of seed-bed preparation after plowing is less. Land that has a good surface mulch before it is plowed is mellow and loose, and it is easy to prepare the field in ideal shape to receive the seed.

To see how capillary attraction works in pumping water out of the soil, take a cube of sugar and dip a comer of it in your coffee and see how quickly the liquid climbs up. It is being moved by capillary attraction. Put some loose sugar on top and you will see that the liquid does not climb through it so rapidly.. The reason is that the grains are so far apart that capillarity has been destroyed. This is the philosophy of the mulch. In soil which has been thoroughly mulched the evaporation of the much-needed soil moisture is checked.

When one considers the great amount of moisture necessary to mature a crop properly, it is easy to understand the great need for conserving the supply. It takes more than 500 lbs. of water to make every pound of dry matter found in the oats plant, and it takes about 400 lbs. with wheat. Corn will do with a little less. Unless great attention is given to storing the rainfall in the soil, and putting the land in condition So that it is not lost by capillary attraction, there is apt to be a deficiency at just the time it is most needed. "

What a lesson the Lord taught in His story about the seed that “As soon as it was sprung up, it with-• ered away, because it lacked moisture" (Luke 8:6). How like the human heart is to soil, as the Lord compared it, and how needful for it, under present conditions, to be continually plowed and harrowed to keep it Irom becoming hard and selfish and unsuited to the character growths the Lord desires.

TEE SNAKE AN UNWELCOME VISITOR *

ONE of the greatest friends of the farmer is the' toad, which makes a living on the insects which are so injurious to crops. The toad's worst enemy is the snake, and for this reason the snake is a poor addition to the farmer's live stock. Besides killing toads the snake kills young birds, which also live on insects, and destroys eggs not only of the small birds but of hens as well There seems to be an instinctive dislike to snakes on the part of the human family, which leads the average person to kill them on sight This aversion seems to be proper enough.

The story is an old one, and a sad one, of how Satan in deceiving Mother Eve acted through a serpent which he had obsessed for the purpose, and how, because of this use of the serpent against one created in God's likeness, the serpent was “Cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field."—Genesis 3:14.

ELECTRICALLY REVIVED PLANTS

HE EFFECT of electrical currents upon plant life has been long known and is gradually being utilized more and more. A Connecticut florist now utilizes it for reviving almost lifeless plants which have been shipped to him from long distances and arrive in an almost dead condition. Two or more cells are connected up with fine copper wire, the positive pole being connected to a nail placed in the soil of the flower pot, while the negative pole is secured delicately around an upper branch. In a week or two the plant is fully revived and growing in a flourishing fashion. In some sections market gardeners have been caught stealing electricity from power wires or third rails which pass their premises.

How little we know about the invisible forces which God has made for the controlling of his universe. Here is an unsrnn force which has an almost miraculous power ovtf life. And what is life? It also is an unseen force, and, in the words of one of the greatest of earth's philosophers, “life is incomprehensible." The Prophet Ezekiel says of dead nations and dead human beings, “I will put rhy spirit [breath] within you, and ye shall live.”—Ezekiel 37*

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SCIENCE and INVENTION

TWO THOUSAND MILES IN A NIGHT

APTAIN ALCOCK'S great flight from Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland; 1990 miles in 16 hours, was made under conditions calculated to strike

terror to the stoutest heart. The cold was so extreme that ice had to be chipped from the gages and instruments and the air-speed indicator was so clogged with ice that it refused to work at all. During the last four hours of the flight the radiator shutters and thermometers were almost completely incrusted with ice.

On account of fog the sense of vertically was destroyed, and for part of the trip the aviator was flying upside down, but had no knowledge of the fact until he came down within fifty feet of the water. Not until he saw the mountainous billows ready to engulf him did he realize his predicament and shoot up again.

The speed of 124 miles per hour was made up partly of the actual machine speed of 90 miles per hour and partly of the breeze that always blows from West to East at the high altitudes of one to two miles in which the greater part of the flight occurred. .

The landing was nose down in a bog which crumpled up the forward end of the airplane like a sheet of paper and left it a complete wreck. It is hard to see in Captain Alcock’s achievement anything that will tend to make ocean travel by airplane popular with those who have found this world a pretty good place in which to live.

There is an interesting harmony of thought, however, between these wonderful flights of human beings and the statement of the prophet regarding those that wait upon the Lord. It is true of both that “They shall mount up with wings as eagles*’ (Isa. 40:31). In the one case the wings are literal wings, even though made of wood and canvas. In the other case the wings are the Old and New Testaments of the sacred Scriptures.

THE MAGNIFYING OF SOUNDS

IT WAS THE MAGNIFYING of sounds that beat the U-boat. During the last years of the war the ■ U-boats and destroyers kept almost perfect track of * one another's whereabouts. Every move was closely * checked up, all by means of the microphones mounted in the vessels. At first the advantage was with the U-boats, which could detect the merchantman one to two hours’ sail away. Later the Allies had the better microphones and the U-boat was doomed. Its every move was known and the dropping of a depth bomb at the right time and place finished it Toward the last the U-boats could be trailed just as accurately as if they had been maneuvering on the surface of the sea.

Attacks by aeroplane were also frustrated by the magnifying of sounds. Great reflectors were employed to catch the sound of approaching hostile aircraft at night. When the approximate location of the approaching aircraft was determined by this sound-wave catcher, then powerful searchlights were suddenly flashed on, and their beams pointed in the direction previously indicated by the sound detector. The antiaircraft guns and the Allied aeroplanes did the rest.

A man's voice can now be magnified until it can be heard twenty miles. The ticking of'a watch can be amplified until it can be heard above the roar of a crowd. A wireless station recently received a telephone message from Europe and, through its amplifier, startled hunters in the marshes eight miles away. It is quite possible that by means of this apparatus a means will yet be found for persons to converse with one another between any points on the face of the globe.

With miracles such this transpiring before our eyes, what will the critics of God’s Word say who have ridiculed the thought that "the Father seeth [and heareth] in secret” the prayers of his saints, uttered in the privacy of their closets?—Matthew ₆.< <

JOINT USES OF AIRPLANES AND WIRELESS

WONDERFUL supervision over certain earthly affairs is possible through the combined use of two great inventions, the airplane and wireless telephone. The latter invention has now reached a stage where practically any one can be instructed in handling the talking and receiving apparatus.

At Hardin, Mont., an aviator has been engaged to carry the manager of a 100,000 acre wheat ranch from one part of the field to another, and by the wireless telephone he is able to report back to the ranch headquarters or give local orders to gang or section foremen while in flight.

The same principle is made use of in California. There, in the dry season, forest fires frequently do great damage. The Government has now laid out four airplane routes of 150 miles each over forest areas; these routes to be covered every day, and experience has shown that forest fires are easily detected anywhere within the areas covered. For this purpose the aviator flies at an elevation of from 6,000 to 10,000 feet.

Wonderful as are these things that men can do, and are now prepared to do on a vaster scale than ever before, in viewing the landscape o'er with a view to its better administration, how much more wonderful is our God, of whom it is written, “The eyes of the Lord are * in every place, beholding the evil and the good” ( Prov. /15:3), and “Neither is there any creature that is not ‘ manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do!”—Hebrews 4:13.

OUR PLANETS AND THE FIXED STARS

THE only planets which can be seen from the earth are those that belong to our own sun. Venus is a near neighbor. At times it comes within 26,000,000 Wies of Us, while Neptune is 100 times as far away. Venus and Jupiter shine with a brilliancy surpassing that of the brightest fixed stars, but unlike the fixed stars they have no light or heat of their own but borrow it.all from the sun.

Venus shines with a clear sparkling white because it has a cloudy atmosphere. Jupiter glows with a yellowish tinge, because it is in a gaseous condition. Mars glows with a deep red tinge, due to his snow-covered surface, while Saturn is a dull lead color. Mercury is so hear the horizon, i. e., so near the sun, that he can be seen only in spring or fall, and then only at twilight. Neptune is so far away that it cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Because they are so close to us, the planets appear to wander through the sky from day to day. The nearer the planet is to the earth the greater the rate at which it appears to move through the sky. Once Saturn is located it is easier to keep track of him than other planets, as it takes him 30 years to make his trip around the sun.

« The fixed stars are all suns, emitting light and heat of their own. The nearest one of these is 10,000 times as far distant as Neptune, or 26,000,000,000 miles away. There are very few railway trains that can make 712 miles in 24 hours, and keep it up, but a train that could do that could make the journey in aif even ¹ 100,000,000years, provided the fuel lasted, and nothing ! wore out, and the train crew and passengers did not get ! tired in the meantime.

। ’‘When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fin-, gers, the moon, and the stars, which thou hast or-■ dained; what is man; that thou art mindful of him! and » the son of man, that thou visitest him [plannest for his | recovery of perfect human life and earthly dominion in ^? The Golden Age] ?“—Psa. 8:4, 5«

DISTRIBUTION OF INSANE

THE distribution of the insane is interesting.

Of course, the location of the sanest of the country must be the capital city, but the District of Columbia leads in the number of insane, with a percentage of 0.8406 per cent., over twice that of the next competitor, which is Roman Catholic Massachusetts with 0.3761 per cent. The Federal Hospital for the insane is at Washington, but no such excuse can be offered for Massachusetts. What foreign birth and religion may have to do with this may appear from the fact that the percentage of insane in Wyoming is 0.1207 per cent. Massachusetts has between three and four times the best of Wyoming both In insane and in foreign born.

NEW SOURCE OF POWER

LEADERS in the electrical industry see possibility

J of the discovery and development of other and better sources of power than any yet known. In discussing the slow development of water powers, Mr. L. C. Reynolds of Geneva, N. Y., says that “Contrary to the general belief the depletion of the . world's coal supply to date is but a small nick out of the immense deposits still untouched. Long before such deposits are exhausted power from some ₄ undeveloped source, possibly direct from the sun, will be available.** Evidently there will be plenty of power even for a world population ten times that of to-day.                      .        .    .

ULTRA-VIOLET FOR CONSUMPTIVES

AN inventor in Germany has devised an electric treatment for consumptives in a room where the patient can walk around. Quartz electric bulbs are suspended from the c«hing and the walls are covered with a material which reflects the healing ultra-violet rays in which the patient is completely bathed.

POWDERED COAL

IN England progress is being made in the complete combustion of coal, by pulverizing it so that it can be blown into the furnace. The advantages are higher temperature, smokeless combustion and no loss of heat units via the ash pile.

CHEAP WIRELESS PHONES COMING

GOVERNMENT red-tape permitting, the Marconi wireless experts expect in a very few years, at most, to see wireless telephone systems making long-distance conversation' possible to any part of the world at nominal cost.

HOUSEWIFERY and HYGIENE

UNDERNOURISHMENT INVITES PESTILENCE

OOD food is a builder of strength and a preventive. But some light is thrown oh the likelihood of the common people being able to obtain more nourishing food this year than in 1918, by some information from the New York Department of Health. The high cost of living has a bearing on the "flu” pestilence, by diminishing vital powers as follows: Sickness has been increased by the cost of food ; families which never appealed for charity are now doing so; women are being driven into industry; children under sixteen are giving up education to enter factories as unskilled labor; meat, eggs, sugar and milk are no longer seen on many tables; the birth rate is decreasing; infant mortality is increasing; malnutrition is prevalent among 'adults as well as children; in 1918 21 per cent, were undernourished, against 33 per cent, now; New York has already had 100 more infant deaths than by this time last year; out of over 2,000 families investigated 51 per cent, had annual earnings of less than $900, and 28 per cent, less than $1,200; 21 per cent, earned under $600; cheap coffees and teas are replacing milk; 18 per cent, are in debt to food dealers and landlords; 37 per, cent have no meat; 54 per cent are using much less than formerly; 33 per cent use no eggs; 30 per cent no butter and 10 per cent, no sugar. In most of these families the economic balance, which used to be precariously maintained, may be overthrown by the slightest change in living conditions. Wage losses cause illness, which in turn decreases income, and tilings grow more hopeless.

If some of the people get the "flu,” they spread infection, and all may contract it. The disease finds a fertile soil in the undernourished bodies of the poor. It is too much to expect that all will yet make the health of each the concern of all, but the sickness of one is of vital importance to many, for death steals indiscriminately into the windows of all, rich and poor, when malnutrition in a tenement affords a nest for the black plague.

FOOD AND HEALTH

A PROPERLY nutritious diet produces a natural immunity to disease, especially to those diseases propagated by germs. A properly nourished body is much more resistant to the attacks of disease-bearing germs than an improperly nourished body. Overfeeding is as dangerous as underfeeding; those who are overfed become fat and lazy, and the liver arid kidneys become overworked and break down.

Certain foods are almost specifics for certain symptoms of disease. In diabetes, the principal symptom is sugar in the urine, and benefit is obtained at once by excluding from the diet articles which contain an excess of sugar and starch. There can be no great amount of sugar excreted through the kidneys if there is none entering the blood.

Because it is. an ideal heat former, the fat stored naturally in the body in time of health becomes the first base of supply in case of sickness, and that is the reason why people get thin when they get sick. Foods which have no value in keeping up the heat supply of the body have no value in sickness, and for that reason meat broths, tea, alcohol; delicacies, cakes, ices and confections are useless or worse than useless as a diet in time of sickness. Milk, which is a necessity in childhood, and a wholesome food for adults, is a necessity in illness.

The Prophet Job’s description of a sick man is brief and to the point. He says: “He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain: so that his soul abhorreth bread, and his soul dainty meat. His flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be seen; and his bones that were not seen stick out. Yea, his soul draweth neaP unto the grave, and his life to the destroyers. If there be a messenger with hinrfif the Messenger of the Covenant, the Lord at his second advent, who has come to establish his kingdom on earth], an interpreter, one among a thousand, to show man his [the Messenger’s} uprightness: then he is gracious unto him. and saith. Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom. His flesh shall be fresher than a child’s: he shall return to the days of his youth” (Job 33:19-25). When the incoming Golden Age is fully established, “The inhabitant shall not s^y I am sick” (Isa. 33-24). Death came originally’' because the first pair were excluded from the trees of life tn Eden. Their food since then has been imperfect; in the new age perfection of diet is reassured, in the Lord’s due time and way. Meantime let us eat as ‘ wisely as we can.          -                          j

USEFUL RECIPES

HE following recipes will be of interest to every housewife; . i • r • • -

Cottage Cheese

1 gallon skimmed milk, 1 cup buttermilk or thick, •our milk, J4 junket tablet dissolved in 2 tablespoonfuls water. Stir thoroughly together. Warm to 75 degrees by placing the pail in a vessel of warm water. Set aside over night. In the morning, without heating, pour the curd, without breaking it, upon a piece of heavy muslin. Drain until dry. Season with Cream and salt

Cottage Cheese Sauce

Dissolve J4 ^to level teaspoon of soda in a little milk or hot water to each cup of cottage cheese to neutralize the acid flavor. Use the soda carefully, as too much is as bad as too little. For a thin sauce use 1 cup milk, JrJ tablespoonful butter, % tablespoonful flour, y$ teaspoonful salt, dash pepper, % cup cheese. For thicker sauces add more flour, up to 2 tablespoonfuls for the thickest sauce. Cook the milk, butter, flour, salt and pepper thoroughly and cool it slightly before adding to the cheese. Stir the sauce gradually into the cheese till well blended, then reheat carefully. After adding the cheese avoid boiling the sauce, for it toughens the cheese. Use the sauce for creaming potatoes, eggs, toa^t, and leftover vegetables.

Scrambled Eggs With Cottage Cheese

For each egg use % teaspoon salt, plenty of pepper, 1 heaping tablespoonful of cheese, the acid of which has been neutralized by soda as above, and fat to grease the pan. Stir the cheese directly into the beaten egg and scramble.

Cottage Cheese Cutlets "

1 cup cottage cheese, 1 cup dry bread crumbs, 2 tablespoons dripping, Ji cup coarsely chopped peanut meats, '/I teaspoon powdered sage, y± teaspoon thyme, 1 tablespoon milk, 1 teaspoon salt, J4 teaspoon pepper, % teaspoon soda, 1 to 2 tablespoons finely chopped onion. Cook the onion in the drippings until tender but not brown. * Dissolve the seda in the milk and work in the cheese. Mix all other dry ingredients thoroughly with the bread crumbs. Blend peanut butter and onion u^xith the cheese and ,mix the bread crumbs with them. Form into flat cakes, dust with bread crumbs, or corn meal, and fry a delicate brown in. a little fat in a hot frying pan.

Cottage Cheese Loaf With Beans

* ; I cup cottage cheese, J4 teaspoon soda to neutralize '-acid, 2 cups cooked and mashed beans or peas, 1 cup boiled rice (dry), 1 cup dry bread crumbs, 2 tablespoons chopped onion, 2 tablespoons drippings, chopped celery or celery salt. Mix beanM, cheese, bread crumbs and seasoning together well and form into a roll. The roll should be mixed very stiff, as the cheese softens when heated. Bake in a moderate oven, basting occasionally with a well-flavored fat.

Hashed Brown Potatoes With Cottage Cheese

Chop cold boiled potatoes fine and season them well with salt, pepper and onion juice. Turn upon a hot frying pan lightly greased with drippings, and cook the potatoes slowly without stirring till they are browned next the pan. Meanwhile soften a generotn quantity of cottage cheese with cream or milk dll it will spread easily. Mix with it any desired seasoning, such as chopped parsely or pimentos, a little leftover ham or bacon, chili sauce or picalilli, and spread it over the potatoes; Let the mixture stand long enough to warm and soften the cheese; then fold over the potatoes like an omelet, turn it upon a hot platter, and serve at once. Many persons enjoy the slight acid flavor of the cheese with this dish. If desired, however, the acid of the cheese may be neutralized by adding Ji teaspoon or more of soda for each cup of cheese.

Cottage Cheese Pudding

2 slices stale bread, 2 eggs, J4 teaspoon salt, 1 cup milk, 1 cup cottage cheese, Ji teaspoon soda, J4 cup sugar, Ji cup seeded raisins, J4 teaspoon allspice, J4 teaspoon mace, Ji teaspoon cloves. Cut the bread into cubes and place in a buttered baking dish. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately^ Blend with yolks the milk, salt and sugar, and cheese, to which the soda has been added. Add the spice and chopped raisins and lastly fold in the stiffly beaten whites. Pour this mixture over the cubes of bread and bake like a custard in a moderate oven. If desired, the white of 1 egg may be beaten separately, sweetened with 1 tablespoon of sugar, and spread over the top of the pudding just before removing it from the oven.

Cottage Cheese Pic

1 cup cottage cheese, J4 cup sugar, J<j cup milk into which one tablespoon cornstarch has been smoothly stirred, 2 beaten egg yolks, 1 tablespoon melted fat, y teaspoon vanilla. Mix the ingredients in the order given. Bake the pie in one crust. Cool it slightly and cover with meringue made by adding 2 tablespoons sugar and y_A teaspoon vanilla to the whites of 2 eggs and brown in a slow oven.

Cottage Cheese Cake

1 cup cottage cheese, cup sugar, y cup milk, 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons cornstarch, I tablespoon melted fat, salt, Ji teaspoon lemon juice. Mix the ingredients in the order given. Mace or nutmeg may be used for flavoring. Bake 25 minutes in a moderate oven until brown. This makes a very firm custard.

TRAVEL and MISCELLANY

SARAJEVO-WORLD STORM CENTER

HE city of Sarajevo, where the Servian student Princep killed the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and started the world war, is about one-third /^Mohammedan. It has ninety mosques. A familiar sight in the streets are the Mohammedan men gorgeously attired in richly embroidered jackets of bright cloth or velvet, striped shirts, many-colored sashes and dark blue trousers. The-married men 'wear turbans, the boys and bachelors wear the red fez. The Mohammedan women, if aristocrats, appear in the streets clothed with a full-length cloak, a long veil and two muslin masks. .The middle class ' Mohammedan woman conceals herself in an outside garment gathered in at the waist-line and is permitted,to use only a single mask veil.

The Orthodox Gryeek Bosnian women dress in white skirts and fancy striped aprons, their belts attached with huge silver buckles. They wear embroidered sieveless jackets and all the jewelry ob- * j- tainable, -with a red cap or bright handkerchief draped over the hair. The Bosnian men wear short coats decorated with solid silver bars, long trousers and white shirts, with the bottom of the trousers and the collar and sleeves of the shirts often edged with narrow hand-made lace.

Every year on Easter Monday in the courtyard of the Greek Orthodox church in Sarajevo is held what is known as the marriage market All the marriageable youths and maidens of the Greek Orthodox families dressed in their Sunday best meet together and marriage engagements result

Mohammedans are forbidden to drink wine and find a substitute in lime water which is sold from pigskin casks by travelling venders at less than a cent a glass. A faithful Moslem must say his prayers at sunrise, noon, sunset and in the middle of the forenoon and afternoon. The Islamite prayers never vary. So many prostrations touching the forehead ; ftp the flopr, so many times rising to a sitting pos--- ^ture with closed eyes and hands on the knees while "repeating verses of the Koran, so many times standing and murmuring so many prayers. Not a prayer or position can be omitted. Women and girls are nevef* seen at the services. Their salvation must be provided in some other way.

Each Mohammedan is allowed four wives, but the Bosnian rarely has more than two; the women of the harems are not' educated. In the surrounding fields the women work in the fields with the men and dress like them. In the Mohammedan cemcn tery the stones are pointed at the top for the graves of women, round for men and turban-capped for men of' rank. The bodies of women are put in coffins but those of men are swathed in cloth and borne through the streets on the shoulders of friends.

About seven thousand of the population of Sarajevo descended from those who fled from Spain during the Inquisition: They continue the Spanish language and customs and are superior in looks and manner to other European Jews.

The remainder of the population consists of Slavs, some of whom converted to Catholicism by missionaries from Rome, prefer to be called Croats. The Slavs who remain loyal to the Greek Catholic church prefer to be called Serbs. The family quarrel is deep and bitter, but the mutual hatred of the Austrian has drawn them somewhat together.

How strange it will seem when the words of the Prophet are fulfilled, “I will turn to the people a pure language (unadulterated truth), that they may all call upon the name of the Lord to serve him with one consent” (Zephaniah 3:9). How strange It will be when Mohammedans, Croats, Serbs, and all mankind are of one heart and ^on$ mind toward the Lord, and when "they shall all know rue [the Lord] from the least of them- unto the greatest of them.”—Jeremiah 31:34.

GRAND CANYON-NA TIONAL PARK

HE Grand Canyon is the most tremendous gash in earth's surface. It is 217 miles in length, over a mile in depth and in places is fifteen miles from rim to rim. In its hidden depths there flows the treacherous and little known Colorado river. The Canyon can not be portrayed by pictures. It must be seen to be appreciated. The government has just included its area, with portions of its rim on either side, in a new National Park. The Grand Canyon is the geologist's paradise, for here the strata of thousands of years Hes open before him. Most stupendous of all our natural wonders, this grandest canyon of canyons is yet practically unknown in many of its finest sections. The northern rim is as yet reached with only the greatest diffi-

cutty, and from this rim many of the finest views of its temples, buttes, canyons and mountains are to be obtained.

The Prpphet speaks of a time when "there shall be a very great valley: and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south” (Zechariah 14:4). This great val-i«y. elsewhere designated in the Scriptures as the Valley of Blessings, is God*s kingdom, the Golden Age. Beautiful and wonderful as is the Grand Canyon, it is as nothing compared to the glories God will reveal to an eager world with the inauguration of the promised kingdom of life, peace, and divine blessing.

ANDREW CARNEGIE—MONEY MAKER

NDREW CARNEGIE, just deceased at the age of 84 bezan business in Pittsburgh as a bobbin

boy at $1.20 a week. This was at the age of 12. At 13 he was running the steam engine of a small factory. At 14 he was a telegraph boy at $3 per week. At 15 he was an operator and shortly afterward entered the employ of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, rising rapidly to an important position. He saved his money and trebled it by wise investments.» At an early age he started the Keystone Bridge Company for the manufacture of iron bridges, realizing that these would soon take the place of the wooden ones then generally in use. This was successful from the start and led to the erection of rail mills, the purchase of vast tracts of ore in the shores of the Great Lakes, and the purchase of a fleet of steamers to bring the ore to the dock of his own railway* from Lake Erie to Pittsburgh.

He retired from business with the purchase of his holdings by the United States Steel Corporation at a price which staggered the world. It was claimed at the time that the price which he asked for his properties was four times their value, but that Morgan paid it rather than have Carnegie disrupt the railroad business by building a new double track line from Pittsburgh to New York as he had threatened to do.

During his lifetime Carnegie gave away $300,- *000,000, of which sum $70,000,000 went to the found-’Jting of free libraries and the balance to the great ‘Carnegie Foundation at Pittsburgh, Washington and New York, devoted to education, peace, the rewarding of heroes, etc. His fortune at the time of his death was still huge.                        .

Andrew Carnegie was not a Jew, and we may not assume that he was blessed in basket and in store for that reason (Deuteronomy 28:5). Indeed, we may not assume that even the Jews themselves are, since the days of Christ, especially the recipient of God’s blessing, and yet it has been marvelously true of them as was prophesied: “Thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.”—Deu. 28:12.

PRISON FARM Na 2

HE four officers in charge of Prison Farm No. 2 in France, where American soldiers were imprisoned who had been guilty of being absent without leave, have established a reputation for cruelty that will linger long. These men were found guilty of kicking, striking and slapping prisoners, using abusive language to prisoners, making provoking speeches against enlisted men under their charge, fraudulently converting money and private property of prisoners under their charge, threatening prisoners, taking the private property of prisoners and failing tp return the same, ordering the burning of private property of prisoners, gross neglect in furnishing food to prisoners, being drunk and disorderly in uniform, and perjury. '

It was brought out that prisoners were rolled in the mud for smiling, were knocked down for looking around, were knocked down and had their teeth knocked out for refusing to surrender their money belts, ate dirty potato peelings and even ate from the swill-barrel in order to get enough to keep alive, were punched in the face for being slightly out of line, were knocked down and beaten upon the slightest provocation, while one man for crying out against these outrages had his throat cut.                         -

Four men were beaten with blackjacks until blood was streaming from their faces, and when one of them became weak and lagged.behind he was hit from the back and kicked into line. The prisoners were drilled in front of the muzzles of machine guns, and while these things were going on they were cut off from the outside world and not allowed to communicate with home, friends or their superior officers. Mai were forced to sleep on cobblestones, and one man was put down a twenty-five-foot hole thirteen days on one can of corned beef and a box of hard tack. On the fourteenth day he died.

Qur Lord said of John the Baptist that among all the prophets there had not arisen a greater than he. This great mouthpiece of the Lord when approached by soldiers with the demand that he tell them what their proper duties were said to them, "Do violence to no man.” (Luke 3:14) Surely, if these officers who had their helpless fellow-soldiers under their care had heard and heeded these words they could never have visited upon them such terrible cruelties.

RELIGION and PHILOSOPHY

WHY BE A. SPIRITIST?

HE people's proclivity for being fooled and liking it, made success both for P. T. Barnum's ' dress and for modern spiritism. To the ’’spirits” it

must be a ’’arcus” to see people paying to be fooled in the ring and side shows of the mystic delusion of occultism. Not that the people do not see, hear and feel things uncanny, but that the uncanny amounts to little or is fit consumption for mental defectives.

For years back the “spirits” communicated with the * gullible in brief utterances through ouija boards, slate writings, rapping and mediums. The communications were so unintelligible they were called "mystic,” but - common people would have called them plain foolishness. To-day a more intelligent class is taken in by the new mysticism by interesting and fascinating magazine articles which are alleged to come from invisible spirit authors.

The "noted novelist," Basil King, has a series of articles in the Cosmopolitan, which according to the headline is made up of “interesting messages which have come to him from the dead.” He says, "In writing these articles' I am little more than an amanuensis, and I am at liberty to take a detached and appraising ’ view of a great topic for the sheer reason that the presentation is not mine." Mr. King has been led to think that the articles come from the “spirits of dead people.” He was never more mistaken, for according to the Bible, which some real Christians still believe to be the Word of God, “The dead know not anything” (Ecclesiastes 9:5), and when a man dies, “in that very * day his thoughts perish” (Psalms 146:4). If dead , people “know nothing” and “have no thoughts," the . communications of which Basil King Is the “amanuensis” originate from some one else—from some spirit, according to Paul “a seducing spirit” (1 Timothy 4:1), in plain words, a demon, a devil, one of the fallen angels confined since the Flood to the atmosphere of -the earth.—2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6.

- This author receives his messages, not direct, but > ’ through a female spirit medium. It will be recalled - how often good women have been utilized by evil spirits in this way—Ann Lee of spiritualist Shakerism, Mrs. Eddy of Christian Science, Mrs. White of Adventism and innumerable common mediums, not to forget Mother Eve whose following the suggestions of the devil Biblically brought disaster to her children.

It may not disturb some “Christians,” but if they are to become spirits they must drop from the Bible things held for ages as essential to Christianity; for, Biblically, being a Christian is based upon wholehearted belief in basic doctrines. The spiritist has "outgrown” clear-cut teaching, and prefers to have his mind smothered in a fog of generalities. If the mind can be filled with vague and conflicting ideas, the problem is solved for the demons of how to "obsess” and finally “possess” the personality. The power of thought is sapped, and the mentally spineless person becomes easy prey for whatever follows.

Basil King's “spirit” teaches only a partial survival of personality; good persists, evil disappears: “no evil endures, because it has not life; whatever a man brings over with him is good.” This sounds nice, but the would-be spiritist must discard those parts of the Bible about future accountability, such as, “Be not deceived (by spiritism or otherwise];. God is not mocked [fooled]; for whatsoever a man soweth [in this life], that shall he also reap [in the life to come].”—Galatians 6:7.

But a spiritist does not mind giving up unpleasant Bible truths when Mr. Demon promises that “here is a system that takes every man at his best, however much or little that best may include, making his own achievement (and not the merit of Christ, which to the spiritist is anathema) the measure of Jus reward." _zIn other words, every man his own saviour!

One of Basil King's devils calls himself "Henry Talbot” and modestly asumes a function Biblically reserved for Jesus Christ and the members of "his body, the church.” “My special function,” says this devil, “is to regenerate the world”; he and the others of his kin “are eager to give us knowledge, while speaking with hesitation and sometimes with reluctance of circumstances closest to us." How tactfull How refined, for a thug to cut one’s throat, to do it with a gold-plated razor!

According to the spiritist, one need not rely particularly on Jesus Christ or on God. No more praying to “Our Father,” for are not evil spirits ever ready to come to one’s succor? As “Henry Talbot” puts it, “We can always reach you, if you need and are willing to listen. Some of us [devils] can penetrate your problems more easily than can others; but there is always some one here [in devildom] to help you in your troubles.”

These are accommodating evil spirits, for they are . prepared to pitch in and help, "whether or not you ask for counsel, or are aware of it after it has been given.” And how holy these devils are I for “we cannot perceive evil, and are conscious only of blanks when it is present.” And so ready with “helpful” " wisdom like "the serpent” in Eden assisting Mother Eve "to make one wise”; as "Henry” says, "We see 30 clearly the road of safety and wisdom, on which no evil can be met with.” This is bait to get a suggestible person to surrender the citadel, of his will, and unresistingly heed suggestions of the demons: "Cultivation of the spiritual ear [the faculty of receiving audible demonic suggestions] is of utmost importance, for through this organ [the 'inner^, ear] you can apprehend the words of life.” Rather, the words of death! St Paul says, “The works of the flesh are manifest, witchcraft, strife, murders and such like; of which I have also told you that they which do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.”

God Biblically declares uncompromising hostility to demons; but to catch the unwary, untutored, honest and simple, how close, forsooth, do these spiritual outlaws represent themselves to be to the great Judge: “Your interest in us must never be allowed to stand between you and your consciousness of God. We are expressions of him (!) but do not forget that it is he who speaks through us (!!) and that we [devils] are the reflection of his glory.” (!!!) But faithful St. Paul warns: “I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils; ye cannot drink [participate in] the cup [of doctrines, teachings and fellowship tn the life] of the Lord, and the cup [of doctrines, teachings and fellowship] of devils.”—1 Corinthians 10:20-21.

"Surrender the will,” is the plea of demonism; become limp, pliable, putty-like in the hands of devils; this is their victory, for the battle is won or lost in the mind. So "Henry” wants to entice you to give in to him: "I like to help in everything I can. Ask and I will tell you all I can. You use your mind too actively in your effort to hear, and I cannot overcome your thoughts [the impassable barier of the will] at times. Relax, and lay your head on my shoulder. Give me your hands, and I will lead you on.” Of course. - |. "Henry” will lead you on; but who wants to be led J* on by a devil?

Mr. Demon, alias “Henry” claims intimacy with the Deity, who on Biblical authority expelled him from heaven ages ago. Through “Henry's” cooperation a spiritist becomes qualified to say, *T reexpress the Father, who expresses himseff in me. Things get their value, not because they are mine alone, but because they are both mine and his. His is the first creative force, and mine the secondary.” A spiritist knows for sure this is so, for has not “Henry” told him, "We are the prismatic color* of his glory,” and “each prismatic color gives back the rays of light with its special refraction.” And when the spiritist geta the proper slant, he “falls” for all sorts of aesthetic gush such as "Beauty is infinite, or it would not be beauty; beauty can never be exhausted,” which !s all right, because "these are among our teacher^ [the devil’s, "Henry’s”] favorite thoughts.”

When Jesus was alive, the “spirits” trembled at his rebuke; they dreaded him? but now, according to “Henry,” they and Jesus are on excellent terms: “We [devils] who are speaking to you now are trying to express in modem terms and to meet in modem conditions the same fundamental truths Jesus taught.” However, they shy at the doctrines of Christianity: “We generally avoid direct reference to Christian teachings and influence.” But they cannot escape belief in the truths of the Bible, for they belong to the class mentioned by the martyr James, "The devils believe and tremble” (James 2:29). It is at the doctrines of Christ the Judge that they tremble; nothing is more natural than that they should “avoid direct reference to Christian teachings.”

Evidently the same sinister influences which recently made the peacemaker anathema, now purpose to lead men to an opposite extreme and to substitute the iqnis fatuus of “mundaism,” or “world-ism” for nationalism. Does not "Henry" make this plain in prudently guarded words? “The purpose of nationality is the same as that of individuals. There is fundamentally no more reason for wars between nations than for combats between men of one gift and men of another. It is as. ludicrous an exhibition of coordinate egotism for race to fight race as for all musicians to join in a war against all painters.” Fortunately, “Henry” is in the spirit world and cannot be landed in jail for talking like this.

The lure of demonism, alias spiritism, is one of the strongest and subtlest enticements to take Christians away from Christ. Spiritism is a reality. The phenomena are actualities, and the source is evil beyond description. It is folly to deny the reality of the proven occurrences of spiritism when their actuality is attested by scientists under rigid tests. The evil is a real one. It is here in growing power, and the safe plan is to follow the tested Biblical recipe, "Resist tfie devil, and he will flee from thee-” (James 4 :7) A good course is to determine to resist everything that savors of the occult as being of evil. In the twentieth century this may seem old-fashioned, but it pays to be old-fashioned in matters where caution U the way of safety.

THE MESSIAH- WHO IS HE?

OR twenty-five hundred years or more Freemasons have waited for the returning of one Hiram Abiff, the great Master Mason. They claim he died a violent death because of his loyalty to the divine secrets typified id Solomon’s temple; that he must reappear in order that that great antitypical temple may be completed and its grand service be accomplished.

The Mohammedans, are also expecting a gr^e*t messenger, a prophet, through whom they and all people will be blessed. For many centuries they have waited his coming. They believe his kingdom is near at hand.

For thirty-five hundred years or more Jews have waited for the coming of the great prophet who was typified by Moses and whom Moses foretold, and who was also foreshadowed by Kings David and Solomon and by the glorious priest, Melchizedek. They expect him to establish his kingdom and restore Israel in Palestine, and with this hope thousands of Jew's arc now hurrying to Palestine, believing the time of Messiah’s appearance is at hand.

Christians of every shade who are conversant wnth the Bible look for th<e coming of the Messiah, and they believe that His appearing is near at hand.

In fadt, "the whole creation groaneth and tra-vaileth in pain,” waiting for they know not what, but desiring some relief that will bring to them peace and happiness and life.

Who is this great and mighty one expected? Th$ Scriptures answer he is the great Messiah, the King of Glory, the one who will bring the desire of all nations. More than four thousand years ago Jehovah promised zXbraham, saying, “In thy seed v shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 22:18). And thus he assured all that his prom-• isc would be fulfilled. The same inspired witness ' plainly states that this long promised one, the "seed,” is the Christ. The word Christ translated from the Greek has the same meaning as the Hebrew word Messiah, both terms meaning the - "anointed one,” the one given authority to rule.

■ > Jehovah organized Israel into a sample nation- or '. government. He gave to them a code of perfect laws. He dealt with them for upwards of eighteen hundred years, and used that nation to make pictures or types of the cpming Messiah, through whom he would bring blessings to all mankind.

Thereafter Jehovah permitted the Gentiles to attempt to establish an ideal government in the earth, and granted to them a period of 2,520 years

in which to make an effort. Zedckiah was overthrown in 606 B. C. The 2,520 yeari of the Gentile period ended in the autumn of 1914.                .

The^jssion of the Messiah is to fulfil God’s promise to bless all the nations of earth—to give to all the opportunity of life. He said, "I am come that they [the people] might have life and have ft more abundantly.” He will establish on earth the will of God for which he taught his followers to pray. "And the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselled The mighty God, the Everlasting' Father [lifegiver], The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever.”—Isaiah 9:6, 7.

All peoples, nations, kindreds and tongues desire life and happiness. “There Js none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The Messiah will save the people from their sins and give them the blessings of life, but this must be immediately preceded by a great time of trouble, such as the world is now experiencing. "I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come” (Haggai 2:7). Freemason, Mohammedan, Jew, or Christian, all must look to the Messiah as the only hope for the blessings of mankind. Under his beneficent reign the influence will be uplifting, and the result will , be glorious and God’s will shall be done on earth as completely as it is done in heaven. "All the wicked will God destroy” (Psalm 145:20). “He must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (I Corinthians 15:25, 26). “And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write, for these words are true and faithful” (Revelation 21:4, 5). He will make the earth a fit habitation for man. All the desert ■ and waste places shall become habitable (Isaiah 35). “And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of alt that passed by. And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden.”—Ezek. 36:34, 35.

The reign of the Messiah is the Golden Age, for which all peoples have longed, hoped, prayed and waited. Behold, it is at the door!                 ,

GOLDEN AGE CALENDAR

‘         October 15 to 28

* ■ ■!■■■■■ ...........

‘ YEA*— 1919 A. D.:     ii®ct Great tern; 74TM Bysanttoe Em;

K» Jewiah Bra; 2672 of Rone: 396 of Greek 01*m-piad Era; ST* Japanese Era; 133* Mohammedan Era.

BTA*&— Morutag. Venua, Mara, Jupiter* Saturn; Evening, ,'            Mercury.

October fb—Sub rises 6:16 a. m.: sets S:S p. to.; moon rises 10:31 '     . ■ a. m.; twilight begins 4:33 a. m., ends 6:57 p. m.l

high tide 12:1* a. m. and 12:46 p. ra. (New York); Asantnptioa Dav, Belgium. 181*—Carlyle, an En~Hsh publisher. tried for treason for publishing Tom Paine’s "Age of Reason.’*

October 1^-^r*»st nf Eighth Day C22nd day of Jewith m^nth "■*».            Tiari); 1913, Tidal wave and earthquake in Porto Rico.

October 17—Rejoicin’* with the Law (23rd dsv of Jewish m*nth Tian); K»n-*iame-»ai (Harvest Thanksgiving Day), Japan; 1777, Battle of Saratoga; 1*1R Metorleas Suh* day order rescinded; ordered that no theater, school* hotel, horpital or church be built in New York City during the war. .

October 16—Alaska Day, Alaska; 191R. Onrr*sa passes DeBciency Appropriation Bill of |8*3<3,755,666.

October 1^-DitvawaIi Festival, India: 1781* Battle of Yorktown; 1911* Fourth Liberty Loan Drive ends.

October 21—1916. U. S. Food Administration issues 13 rules for . public eating places. ■

October 1^1 «t day. of French Revolution. Month Brumaire (Foggy).

' October M—End of Buddhist Lent; 1918, Wilson appeals to people < to elect a Democratic Congress.

Octet sr 9-1st dav of Jewish Month Hesran; DivaU Day* India; 1413, Battle of Agincourt.

October 9—Clocks turned back one hour at 1 a. tn.; Fraternal Day, Alabama; 1st day of Mohammedan Mouth Saphar; Dtvali Day* India.

October 2>—Thanksgiving Day* Canada: Fiesta de Minerva Day, * _          Guatemala; DivaU Day. India; Labor Day* New

Zealand.

October 2b—Fiesta de M'ner^a Day. Guatemala; Bolivar Day* .            Venezuela; 1776, Battle of White Plains; 196* Status

of Liberty unveiled. New York.