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Voi.t'UxZ WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1921 Xunan 35

COMEM'S of the GOLDEN AGE

LABOR AND ECONOMICS

Something About Hard Thaos 213

British Dapreaawn

Depretitlou Abroad;

The Part of the Prostitute Press........

Hard Ttuoea at Hosoe

Working for an Huarat

Dar* Work

A a Annual Depreudon

Many Remedies

Wbm Did It Start!

A Conspiracy of FlaaneTu MS I'tnaadar sad Worker

Sothlag Morii Wreng-1—2M

SOCIAL. EDUCATIONAL AND POLITICAL

Llbmty and Program--257 Progress Ur SaoiSee___288

Temptation to Speculate^. 251 Inaiden Rann In Inside____JSt

The Fastest Schedule-----255

Easy Money lor Pens!__-253

Board ad Trade Gamblers 253

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN Notes on Liberty...........253 Jeffersonian Dtisioii my—2M

AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY Rebuilding Palestine's Forests--------------2(3

Radium, Earth's Most Valuable Substance

Its Um la Treating Cancers _____

Customers for Radium

Where Radium Comes From

Other Cam of Radium

Wireiees Telegraphy

Wireless Telephony__' 2ltl

Wireless Photography

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY Color and Sex_________243 Coming Baek

In Foreign Landa—Palestine

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

Advanced Studies la the Divine Flan_________________

Juvenile Bible study._________________________________

The Ancient Ways__________________________ gre

Golden Age

Voltune n                         New York, Wednesday, February 2, 1921                         Number

Something About Hard Times

THAT the people of the United States have been having a hard time cannot be doubted, and that this constitutes hard times is beyond question. A million or more men out of work, an unknown number of women and child workers on the street, and millions more on short time or reduced wages constitute part of the phenomena characteristic of an industrial depression.                 -

There have been hard times in other parts of the world. The first nation to suffer was Japan, which inaugurated its depression with a spectac-nlar panic, of the orthodox money-and-credit • variety. Japan had a panic because it possessed an old-fashioned, hide-bound system of banking and currency, which was neither able to contract credits and money when less was needed, nor to expand them when more was urgently demanded by perilous business conditions.

The specific cause of the Japanese money panic was that the country's money and the credit based upon the money became insufficient to hold up the fast-expanding business structure. It was called a mushroom structure, and this was because it was built of no stronger material than the Japanese credit system permitted; for with a properly elastic system of money and credit Japan might today be in a condition of moderate prosperity. But there came a sudden and most urgent need for credit that could not be supplied; business men took fright; all credit—which is merely confidence in payment of debt—withered, and then disappeared ; an<$ the nation collapsed into a slough of business^ uncertainty, from which it can emerge with’difficulty and through the exercise of the saving graces of production, thrift and conservatism.

Owing to the war Japan enjoyed an unprecedented economic and industrial boom. Wages went up and enriched the workers. Prices went higher and created daily new millionaires. For three years this continued, and all were confident that prosperity had come to stay. To meet the demand for goods for the suddenly prosperous workers, office men, employes and capitalists, and to provide materials for use in manufacture, the importers overstocked hugely with merchandise from abroad, having the reasonable expectation of ability to sell everything in hand and on the way. Old businesses were enlarged to meet the great demand; new enterprises without limit were started for the endless growth in sight—steel corporations, silk businesses, cotton mills, ship-building concerns, banks and countless other enterprises. Speculation became unbridled in promotions in Manchuria, Korea, China and Formosa. Stocks rose in price, and prices of commodities were’ foisted to a high figure, to be paid for by the enriched workers.

Suddenly, however, a bank failed, creating a dreadful fear of the stability of the credits based on a slender money basijj. More banks went down, and after them in wild ruin practically the businesses of the Empire found themselves unable either to collect from their debtors or to pay their creditors. Thecontributingcauses . were an unexpected boycott of Japanese goods in China as reprisal for the loot of Shantung, reduction of the Indian trade, the disappearance of real money in private hoards cutting the bottom from under the financial and credit system, the enormous cost of the government and of the armies in Siberia and Shantung, and of the huge navy. Workmen were discharged by tens of thousands, unemployment prevailed, clerks and efficient workmen were in bread lines, most of the railroad workers were discharged, freight traffic was almost discontinued for want of merchandise to transport, millionaires became poor over night, farmers recently rich on a high-price basis became poverty stricken of. the ruinously low prices, and the banks becm.'.e afraid to loan even 20 percent of the market value of good securities. Labor was suddenly awakened with a jolt, and started to think, to agitate and to fight for their rights against the capitalists whose greed and imprudence brought on the crisis; the socialist and labor-fanner movement gained in strength to champion the cause of labor, and the vote multiplied for anti - government and anti - rich leaders. These have been the incidents and effects of the money-panic in Japan, outlined here at some length as an example of a typical business depression inaugurated by a money panic.

Depression Abroad

OTHER countries are experiencing a postwar depression, thus far without the far-reaching effects of a money-panic. France, which before the war was on the verge of prostration owing to bad financial conditions, is having a depression in retail business, due to the refusal of people to buy things at the very • high prices. A quarter of the store-workers are out of work, sales amount to nothing, goods lie on the shelves, and everyone not absolutely compelled to purchase is holding off until prices go down.

The Teutonic nations are in the abyss of a depression, from which they are beginning to raise themselves by hard work, increased production and thrift—h goodly part of which, however, they are expected to turn over to other countries under the reparation claims. On Germany’s payments hangs the economic well-being of France; for during the war the pressure of war expense was staved off by not taxing the French people. The descent of unparalleled hard tirftes upon the unfortunate French hangs on the German reparations.

• Conditions in South America—in Peru, Chile, Argentina and Brazil — exemplify those of other countries There has been and is an actual shortage of skilled men, wages have been up and working hours down, and production only three-quarters of pre-war times, doubling pro- ductions costs, and there is a housing shortage.

Yet men are out of work, depression and unemployment prevail, and things will get worse, until the authorities having the depression in . charge decide that an approach to "normalcy” J has been made, and the common people can be ^! trusted with work and wages again.

In Spain, so say the Spanish employers, it is imperative for workers to increase production, work harder, and toil for lower wages, or a most serious crisis, like that of Japan, will be ^! reached. The high cost of labor is responsible : for the throwing out of work of nearly 300,000-workers—so say the Spanish bankers. But they say nothing about the high cost of profiteers who have bled Spain white. The Spanish people resent American dumping of products; for American manufacturers, owing to inability of the American people to buy at high prices, have increased stocks on hand which they are selling in Spanish markets with prompt delivery. This hits Spanish industries and increases the severity of the hard times.                .

British Depression

GREAT BRITAIN has a rapidly growing.

problem which bids fair to rival the Irish question. Inability to buy high-priced goods and the expectation of much lower prices have \ driven buyers out of the market, factories have ; closed, and unemployment has broadened in the industrial districts. The hard times are particularly acute in engineering, ship-building, weaving, woolens, linen, lace, leather and shoes, the principal industries outside of coal and transportation. The rubber tire industry has had an unusually bad depression, owing to the dumping of American tires to an extent that ; has threatened the existence of the industry in ; Great Britain. Unemployment has been widespread, which on account of the power of laho~ has taken some serious aspects. Great demonstrations of the out-of-works have been made, and deputations of officials have gone to the government, received promises and returned -home, with no particular result. The men in authority do not seem to know what to do.

Demands have been made on the government that it provide money to furnish employment or to pension unemployed people. Firms employing women have been forced to discharge them and hire men. But that course does not help the women, who have to eat the same as men. The

unemployed have demanded that the huge sums lying idle in the Prince-of-Wales Fund, the King’s Fund and the United-Service Fund be utilized at once in giving employment to the people. Ex-service men disabled by war and being taught skilled work, ask: What is the use of training more skilled men when the men who are skilled cannot get work! For quite a while the attitude of some of the mayors and other officials was exemplified, when in a momentous conference on ways and means some of the mayors laughed and joked, while others were serious. The net result of this conference, as might have been expected, was “just talk”. Some of the mayors declare that if nothing is done trouble will follow, for the unemployed are being driven to desperation. •              _

Hard Times at Home

IN THE United States the depression has assumed large proportions. In Philadelphia the number estimated out of work was about a third of the workers, the same as in Detroit, St. Louis, and other cities—a suggestively uniform proportion. A great part of those remaining at work have been obliged to speed up and to work on half time or less. Wherever possible employers have cut wages down. In many places men have been, discharged and promptly hired back at half or two-thirds their recent wages. The wage loss to workers has run into billions of dollars—so much that most workers are glad to get work at reduced wages rather than go hungry. To the farmers the losses have been almost unbelievable; the loss on the 1920 crops, estimated by comparison of the prices obtainable in July and the early winter is believed to run to several billion dollars.

This started with acts of the Department of Justice months ago, when its agents 'vent about t# reduce the cost of living; they did reduce it in food products—at the cost of the farmers. Wheat, c'ton and cotton alone dropped from a figure affording the farmer a reasonable profit to a loss of twenty cents a pound on cotton, thirty cents a bushel on corn and thirty-five cents a bushel op wheat, the three great money crops of the^country. Yet the prices of commodities the farmer has to buy have not dropped proportionally—something for which the American farmer wants to know the reason. Compared with a year ago, clothing and feods have shown heavy decreases, while there long remained advances in retail prices of fuel and lighting materials, building materials, house furnishings and other goods not produced by the farmer.

The public press—rather the private press— as usual prostituted to the low uses of its New York owners, had a great deal to say about the depression both before “and during”. About New Year’s, 1920, the newspapers amenable to “regular” influences began to discuss possible and probable depression. The volume of depression and panic talk gradually increased and reached its peak about May, 1920, at which time something was “pulled off’ which will be mentioned later; for in that month there were three times as much anti-panic talk as in any other month. The thought was to get the people’s minds inoculated with the idea that economic trouble was brewing, with apprehension of panic and depression, so that when the big thing intended was done, the people would attribute what was done to the causes previously mentioned “in the papers”, and not to the actual cause.

The Part of the Prostitute Press

THE press brought out the orthodox old-line theories about panics and depressions. A period of depression in the six, eight, or twelve year business cycle was over a year overdue; it must come noon; the nation was facing a crisis, a depression is always preceded by an orgy of spending—by working girls and young men, of course, who never had anything to spend before. Just before a great depression there are always high interest rates, inflation of credits, and much labor trouble -with labor inefficiency.

Panics, said the press, did not cause depressions, but resulted from sudden fright over an impending depression. In February, 1920, the newspapers were helping to get the people ready for something by telling them that the United States was facing the worst financial panic in its history. Then a little later the papers said that the country was panic-proof as long as it had the Federal Reserve Bank system —praising up the new-fangled system and throwing suspicion away from it. Then in April they said—to scare labor—that when the crisis comes, which no Federal Reserve system can stop, thousands will be out of work—getting the

greatly increased, the next few years would see the worst financial panic yet, because without an increase in carrying capacity equal to that of manufactures, the increased products could not be hauled to market, and intense business stagnation would ensue. Two or more billion dollars should be invested annually in the rail* roads; and the fear of panic was a potent argument in forcing through the $1,500,000,000 "raise” for the railroads. The panic of 1873, it was related, was due to overinvestment in roads and underinvestment in industries, and the opposite condition prevailing would produce exactly the same effect as its opposite. The burden of private conversations among the bankers and manufacturers, however, was that the one big problem was what to do with labors and the talk of the press owned by the bankers was the camouflage under whose concealment it wac determined to make trouble for labor so serious that labor would cheerfully “eat out of their hands” in order to get work and enough fa eat and wear.

Working for “An Honest Day’s Work”

THE line of attack plotted by the financiers— one of whose number had said a few years ago that God had entrusted the care of the riches of the world to them—was afterward seen to be to "reawaken the individual worker to his duty to render an honest day's work and to introduce machinery wherever possible to replace men”. Nothing was said about the financier's duty, likewise, to render an honest day’s work and to return to the people the money stolen through profiteering and the stealings from the United States Shipping Board and through army and other war "business”.

For public consumption the financiers published that it was absolutely necessary to reduce the price of commodities. Among themselves they said that the most expensive “commodity” was labor and that all efforts must be centered on wages. One of the reasons, however, for the campaign inaugurated, after labor had cast its vote for the Wall Street candidates and the election was safely by, was the employers’ zeal to "get back at labor” in reprisal for the (to the employer) many unpleasant experiences with labor during the last few years, when prices were rising faster than wages, and labor was

suffering from “over-prosperity"’. On the employer side have been heard many brotherly utterances, such as “Speed up, or get out”, “Work or starve”, and so on, demonstrating the brotherhood of employer and employe. Leaders in the manufacturers’ associations favored the importation of coolie labor from China and India, to furnish plenty of common labor at bedrock wages. This was only a few months ago, when it was widely published that the United States was short 2,000,000 laborers.

, Since this immense shortage has never yet been supplied, some of the simple-minded are wondering why with such a shortage, there is not work for every person in the country willing to work, without bringing a lot of serfs into the country.

The accusation is made that while a slight depression was due in the United States, the great financiers have taken advantage of that condition willfully to precipitate one of the worst periods of hard times yet, force labor to accept a much lower wage scale, and give the workers a good taste of depression with star- vation trimmings, and thus gently and tactfully ' “teach labor its place”, so as to be in the proper frame of mind to boost the “Big Brother” movement sponsored by Wall Street and all the churches. Labor says that the depression is needlessly severe, has been carried to an entirely uncalled-for extent, that wealth is reckless with the interests of the common people— and winds up with the expressed determination “to teach wealth its place”; that labor with the farmer constitutes 90 percent of the population, and, as the overwhelming majority, it is labor’s place in a republic to run the country, and that it is determined to teach the 1 percent known as “bankers” that their function is to take care of money and credits and not to run everything in sight. But labor finds itself actually checkmated because it cannot interfere—by striking —with tfib’ manufacturers’ closing down of their plants, this being the great unsolved problem of the.e labor leaders.

An ArtiRcitfl Oppression

NOT all the bankers speak as though on the inside. According to the well known Charles H. Sabin, president of the Guaranty Trust Company, of New York, “Conditions are so funda-mently sound that one wonders what was the necessity of a depression and*of the hard times, unless there were some ulterior motive, such as the forced liquidation of labor, for,” says he, “the crops are large, transportation congestion is relieved by governmental operation, the railroad system is on a sound financial and operating basis, four years of commercially sound government are assured,, the banking system is on a sound and workable basis, the accumulated surplus of five years’ corporation prosperity is available, foreign trade demands our products, we have a merchant marine to carry the trade in, and the country has not been overextended or overbuilt in any underlying activity; in a word, the United States is in the soundest financial, industrial and political condition of any important nation in the world.”

Were the hard times unavoidable? An outstanding feature of the current depression, differentiating it from any previous periods, and clearly marking it as artificial and needless, is the suddenness with which it came on, with few of the marked premonitory symptoms of a genuine depression. First are the sound conditions mentioned by Mr. Sabin. Second, unfilled orders for steel remained high up to the very last moment, indeed after the “depression” was on; whereas in previous genuine depressions salesmen have been thrown out and eveiy possible inducement offered to the trade to keep orders coming in, none of which preventive steps were taken this time. When depression has impended, prices have always been lowered months beforehand that orders may be secured; but this time, according to Judge Gary, Chairman of the Board of the United States Steel Corporation, “Steel prices will stand. The present base selling prices of all [steel] commodities are to remain in force.” Accordingly the prices of steel billets at Pittsburgh, the basic figure of the steel industry, were $55 a ton in April, 1920, $55 in May, $55 in August, $55 in’ September and $55 in November. Pig iron, too, has been quite well maintained in price, the prices per ton. at Chicago having been $36.60 in November, 1919, $43.60 in January, 1920, $45.60 in May, and $40.00 in November, a drop of $5.60, or only 12 percent, whereas in the last previous depression, in 1914, the price fell from $46 down to $24.75, a drop of $21.25, or 46 percent

Under normal conditions, however; where the

The Golden Age for February 2,' 1921

market is not a-controlled one, the universal experience has been that the price of pig iron collapses several months before the depression gets under way. The absence of the normal premonitory symptoms leads to the conclusion that the present exaggerated depression, with its suffering, anxiety and starvation for millions in varying degrees, is dearly not one forced upon business men and financiers by actual business conditions, but one which they have forced upon the people of the United States, needlessly, without good cause, and even if inevitable to some extent, certainly not with the severity employed.

Labor and the farmer, of course, bear the brunt of the trouble. The wage earner suffers. Women and children pay. Dealers and manufacturers lose more or less ordinarily; but in this affair, according to State Fair-Price Commissioner Frank B. McClain of Philadelphia, where 200,000 men are out of work, ‘Investigation discloses that many retailers of essential commodities, such as wearing apparel and footwear, are trying to maintain the peak prices of October and Nevember, 1919, and hoping that they can bluff the thing through and unload their high-cost stuff on the public at a profit, or at best at no loss”. Even when prices drop, wages drop still more, taking into account part time as well as actual reductions and lay-offs, and the wage earners are that much worse off. In some instances, as in the flour industry, the prices of the farmer’s wheat dropped so much that, after the millers had reduced their flour several dollars a barrel, the profit was greater than before. The farmer pays! The profiteer still profits, though it is a satisfaction to the people to realize that many a profiteer stayed in the market too long and lost practically everything. Most of them, however, through the confidential advance information circulated by Boards of Trade took time by the forelock and ware able to limit their losses in advance, by passing them on to others less well informed.

Many Remedies

IN THE face of these monstrous conditions the press, instead of telling the true situation, has since-parly in 1920 been urging upon the people the cultivation of the patriotic habits most helpful in adversity and depression. 'Save money, instead of spending it,” they counseled.

“It helps depression because money in bank iB never idle, and increases the amount of loanable capital, which is the principal thing to pull business out of depression, giving them funds to buy materials with and pay wages with, which the workers in turn use to buy the goods manufactured. Thrift builds buildings, plants, improves roads, builds and maintains railroads, makes machinery, develops ‘water power, gives work and wages to millions, and creates demand for goods on the shelves of merchants, thus furnishing the outlet for the products of farm,, mine and mill.” The crisis, it was advised in January, 1920, might be softened by increased production and decreased consumption, by concentrated buying through cooperative markets, by saving money, laying up goods, reducing expenses and increasing earnings. One of the ' remedies is proposed by Our Sunday Visitor, which tells why the labor and economic condition in certain parts of Canada is better than anywhere else in Europe or North America:

“This enviable position of affaire, as English-speaking residents of this Province know perfectly well, is to the church authority, who not only uphold an enlightened authority in these matters but, aa many employer realize, have an aptness for negotiation and smoothing over labor difficulties, which under other circumstances might eventually result in disastrous strikes. This position of affairs has in the past few years meant much to the Province, and we believe that as the facta become more widely known, it will be an increasingly valuable asset.”

However, the recent Shipping Board investigation does not bear out this idea, nor does the general condition of the well-Romanized municipal affairs of the chief American cities. Clergymen far and wide have been handing out to trusting flocks good advice on thrift and other virtues, thus helping Big Business in this depression operation, instead of coming out like all the Hebrew prophets of Bible days with ringing exposures of "the oppressors”.

For some time before the election it was common talk among financiers that after the election there would be a general shut-down of factories, laying workers off entirely or putting them on part time, for about three or four months. It was stated that the railroads intended, as soon as the time became opportune, to lay off hundreds of thousands o^’ men, in which direction considerable progress has been

made on the great roads of the country. The purpose was to reduce prices, increase per capita production, enhance efiiciency and “reduce” or “liquidate” labor. By the time the anti-worker campaign is over, no doubt, the country will have been made safe for Big Business, Big Politics and the Big Clergy. Seemingly in the estimation of these classes the American house has been infested with rats— speculative rats, political and religious rats and labor rats, and the financiers and their friends _ have set the house on fire in order to get rid of the rats—bad business and stupid.

Where Did It Start?

WHERE did this unpatriotic and criminal conspiracy against the common people originate 1

In the early summer of 1920 the people, impoverished by a long period of high prices, were delighted when in all parts of the country bargain sales were announced in clothing and department stores and in other lines, offering mercliandise at retail at a reduction of 20 to 25 percent. It was welcomed as the beginning of a period of lower prices. But the mystery was, Why did it occur? Thoughtful people soon noticed that it was countrywide, which suggested a common origin of the motive to sell goods at low prices.

Soon it leaked out through financial journals that the banks had required merchants and manufacturers to pay up a part of the loans they had secured from the banks. Different concerns were called on for from 20 to 40 percent of their loans, the average being 30 percent Merchants who had bought part of their goods with money borrowed from the banks, were obliged to get enough money at once to pay up. The banks simultaneously ’ and everywhere . called for their money.

Manufacturers that were willing, anxious and financially able to continue operation at full time, began to find their work crippled: Not only were they held down in credits at the bank, but they were unable to obtain raw materials, which a month before had .been in ample supply. The railroads professed to be unable to supply cars—the fact being that their banker owners had crippled the operation of the roads so that tens of thousands of cars were held up on sidings, terminals and transfer points. In every conceivable way manufacturing operations began to be restricted, seemingly by design of invisible but all-powerful agents. Was it part of a gigantic conspiracy to lower output, lower prices, lower wages, and incidentally throw millions out of work, with the beneficent purpose of ultimately increasing industrial effici- • ency and bringing back the good old days of the despotic supremacy of the boss and the banker?

A Conspiracy of Financiers

FROM January, 1920, on, occasional protests appeared in small-city papers to the effect that the Federal Reserve Board should have been able to check the conditions ensuing from infiation, and that the‘Board was responsible and had failed miserably. The metropolitan press was discreetly silent; being eo-conspira-tors with the bankers. In April it was advanced—the suggestions being made step by step in orderly, well-calculated psychological sequence—that bankers throughout the country should stop further financing except for essentials, especially railroads, public utilities and telephones, etc.—should stop theaters^novies, automobiles, fine fabrics, petroleum and luxuries generally. In March, it was stated that the ordinary bankers were alarmed at the Federal Reserve Bank plan of defiation; there were gloomy forebodings over the policy of the Federal Reserve Board, through the local banks, to reduce credits 25 percent, manufacturers and merchants alike being greatly concerned when told that early that they must reduce their borrowings 25 percent.

The campaign had been launched as early as December, 1919, when one of the Federal Reserve banks officially said: “Our present task is to proceed with the defiation of credits as rapidly and systematically as possible; we repeat, that credit must be reduced?. On May 11, 1920, the same Federal Reserve Bank announced, as a broad hint to local banks: "We are carefully calculating the basic amount [of credit] for each member bank. You would like to be advised with reference to the basic amount of your bank, and to see how that amount compares with the present column of your loans and rediscounts with ns.” On June 1 came a still stronger urge for “all banks in this district earnestly and conscientiously to endeavor to limit credits”. Again oa September

23: “It is in eur opinion more important than ever that great conservatism should be used in granting of credit”.

Thus is established the fact that the great financiers used the Federal Reserve system to restrict commerce and manufacturing throughout the United States. Even in the island dependencies the sinister hand of Big Business was felt repressing the activities of the people. There the restriction of businfess was accomplished—much as in New York—by the raising of the interest rate at the banks, and the increased difficulty of obtaining banking accommodations. Manila business men “were puzzled that money should be so tightly held in the face of a favorable trade balance . . . But the chief concern,” continued the cable dispatches, “is the high interest rate on loans, the rate being set by a committee of the Associated Banks of Manila, an organization which is said to be in contravention of the anti-trust act. The possibility of criminal prosecution is hinted at . . . another alternative being the forfeiture of the charters of the banks involved in the Association.”

Why this unanimity throughout widely separated places? It was because the hard times prevailing throughout the world had their origin in the command of the Wilson League of Nations. The connection of the League with the hard times came out in Bulletin No. 2 of the First Federal Foreign Banking Association, of 40 Wall Street, New York. On September 27, 1920, this Bulletin said, “Under authority of the League a propaganda of international deflation has been launched. This was in advance of an international conference on finance, but the League seems to be already committed to the policy of drastic credit restriction through existing central banking institutions. England IS OFFICIALLY FORCING UP THE COST OF CREDITS and financing." Thus is uncovered the astounding and all-important fact that the hard times from which the American people have suffered, originated in the League of .Nations, and that back of the League’s action is ooc-n the cruel and minister hand of the British International financiers.

Financier and Worker             .

AVE the bankers fared ill ”i h? ruin * t farmers aad the working oeop.?: In tbis struggle of the titans the hard workers—farmer and labor—hear the financiers’ smug satisfaction over their own unparallelled prosperity. The Comptroller of the Currency speaks for the bankers: “The shrinkage in the value of our principal commodities and articles of production during the fiscal year is the greatest in commercial history not only in amount but in the proportion of the decline to former values. It amounts to many billions of dollars [loss to the common people]. But the national banking system of the United States has not only endured unshaken the phenomenal changes, but ' has prospered and grown steadily in the midst of them.” The same official had just charged the New York banks with extortion and proved the charge. The national banks showed net earnings of 24 percent on their capital, or 13 percent on capital and surplus. The Federal Reserve Banks, which are supposed to operate as near cost as possible, showed net earnings of 150 percent on their capital.

Do these men, rich and comfortable beyond dreams of avarice, able with power and means to help the helpless beyond measure, lend a sympathetic ear to the cry of the oppressed? When, as related in the Manufacturers’ Record, the representatives of the ruined farmers presented their case to Governor W. P. G. Harding of the Federal Reserve Board, that great official answered:

“Nothing new has been brought out. I do not see why you are coming here so often with complaints we already kuow. This is the most inopportune time you could come here to take up our time, telling us things we already know, while this other important meeting is going on.”

This represented the attitude of the Reserve Bank rulers to the farmers and the common people who had had them appointed to office. What the people object to is that the national bank system, headed by the Federal Reserve system, under government auspices, has been run, apparently, in the interests of the financiers of Great Britain and the United States, and not of the tens of millions of common people, for the greatest good of all. It certainly has not been for the good of the people that the System, at the behest of the League of Nations, ■ has deliberately precipitated one of the worst periods of bard times for ordinary people within memory.

Temptation to Speculate

PLENTY of evidence can be brought forward tending to show that it pays to speculate, and promoters who are always trying to get the ' money of the wage earners away from them are loaded with facts which apparently prove all they claim. For example, they point out what you could have done with $100 invested in almost any year from 1900 to 1917 inclusive if you had put the money into the right place; and the evidence is most convincing. Here it is. The table shows what $100 invested in the stock named in the year specified, would have yielded in dividends up to 1919 and what it would then be worth.

What You Could Have Doxe With $100 1919 rut        STOCK                   DIVIDENDS VALUES

1900 American Car and Foundry_____________$431.00 *1,341.00

1902  Crucible Steel Company.____________________ 155.00   8,352.00

1908 Republic Iron A Steel Co_________________  274.00  2,656.00

1008 American Can Company....................... ?     2,740.00

1904  United States Steel Co., Com............. 905.65   1,329.00

1904  International Marine, Preferred-...... 924.00   4,266.00

1904 International Marine, Common__________   ?    10.956.00

~ 1906 American Hide & Leather Co, Com... 1     1,724.00

' 1906 American Hide & Leather, Pref_______ 315.00   1.425.00

1907 American Beet Sugar, Common_______ 564.00   1.224.00

1907 Bethlehem Steel Company.................. ?     8.750.00

1908 Central Leather. Common................. 288.00    932.00

1909 General Asphalt Company.................   ?     5.280.00

1909  Atlantic, Gulf & W.I.S.S. Lines.......... 957.00   5,582.00

1912 General Motor Company...................... ’    16,000.00

1912 Cuban American Sugar Company...... 862.00  1.200.00

1913  Studebaker Brothers........................... ‘*7.i>0   2.616.00

1914 American Woolen Company................ 459.00  1.204.00

1916 American International Corp............. 100.90  1,104.00

1917 American Sumatra Tobacco Co........ 270.00    863.00

Gentle reader, we do not wish to be inquisitive, but which one of you is there that would not have put $100 into General Motor Company stock in 1912 if you had been perfectly sure that it would bring you $16,000 in the fall of 1919! But there was no one to tell you, and you could not have believed them if they had told you; and, most surprising of all, it would have been to your injury if they had told you and if you had believed them.

If you had made $16,000 in seven years on the investments $100, it is greatly to be feared that you would lave been misled thereby into thinking that you could always thereafter make what is called “easy money”. But you would have been mistaken, and would have lost your $16,000, and much more with it.

It is a well known principle of New York’s leading gambling district that most people have the speculative instinct, that most people who have a little money are much more inclined to speculate with it than they are to invest it, and that when they do start to speculate they never know when to quit and in the end are sure to lose. It is the knowledge of these facts that * keeps the gambling district running. Without their lists of gullible speculators half of the Wall Street sharks would go out of business in a day.

If you have money to invest, do not attempt to judge for yourself what stocks to put it in. It is the business of your local banker to advise you. He may not be an honest man, and he may not advise you right, but your chances are far better in his hands than in any other. It is his business to know something of the permanent value of stocks, based upon the physical value of the properties;.and he has a local interest at stake in steering you in the right direction.

Your banker knows that, if you have but a little money to invest, the safest and best place for it is in bonds that have demonstrated their value; and he will never encourage you to speculate with it, i. e., to attempt to guess what the future value of some unproven stock may be. He knows very well that money is as difficult to keep as it is to make, .and he might help you to keep what otherwise you stand a splendid chance of losing.

Stock should always be bought outright, if at all, and placed in a safe deposit box. If it has been earning dividends over a term of years no concern need be felt when its market price fluctuates, although, if it increases greatly in price, it might conceivably be good judgment to sell the stock at the high figure and reinvest again in short-term notes or bonds. Even then, it might be as well to hang on to it. Outsiders cannot tell.

Insiders Remain Inside

THE man who has a little money to invest is handicapped by the fact that he is an outsider and must remain an outsider, no matter what kind of proposition is made to him, or what kind of fairy story is told for his entertainment. Take for example the mining business.

i-

. i

It is a common practice for mining engineers to supplement their official report, the report that is given to the public, with a private report to the directors, giving them inside information such as bad news affecting the life and productivity of the enterprise, or good news of discoveries likely to eause a rise in prices.

This gives the real insiders, the directors and the engineer, plenty of time -to unload their stocks on the buying public, or quietly to increase their holdings, as the case may be, thus taking advantage of the public, that can only act on the official reports and after the cream of the market has already been removed.

The same thing is true in the oil business. We have before us the prospectus of a Kansas City company which seeks investments in its properties in Texas. We know nothing of its properties, or of the company, other than that there a.re thousands of such companies in the United States and that the American people are wasting millions of dollars upon them every year. The literature is convincingly gotten up.

It tells all about people that a year ago bought ten-acre oil leases at $10 per acre (only $100 altogether, is the hint) and have since sold those leases in an undeveloped state at $110,000 per acre. Almost anybody would like to make $109,900 in a year on an investment of $100; and so the literature urges the reader to go to the savings bank, draw out his money and put it into oil-wells.

The letter-writer tells that the concern itself is holding 10,000 acres for itself, and has the full hope of getting $1,000 to $50,000 for every acre. Thus, by their own estimates, the concern has almost within its grasp a fortune ranging anywhere between $10,000,000 and $500,000,000 for its own private purse, besides all it hopes to do for those who will send on the $10 per acre which they are seemingly so anxious to get. Of course, the one who gets the letter cannot help but wohder why people who have so much ready money almost within sight should be willing to accept even $10 an acre from anybody, much less ask for it. The real reason is that they want the\$ltt to pay their rent and to buy their groceries^ If there is any left over after their salaries arc paid, it may go for development work. Ir cii is found it will be on their properties and not on yours.

They say, in query form; “Is there any other

way in which you can invest say $300 to $500,    ►

with such a very sound likelihood of getting back . • from $100,000 to half a million J” And then, for the cautious, is the gentler suggestion, also in I query form, “Don’t you realize that if you buy ; several ten-acre tracts you are practically sure    I

of a profit of at least $5 to $10 no matter where    i

they are located on our acreage ?”                  I

The teller goes on to tell that "Col. Green and j his-friends are drilling on every side of our leases”. It is well known that Col. Green was the only son of Hetty Green, the richest woman in the world; and of course it is judged that we must be impressed at the thought of practically being in the same business with the Colonel. J

Reading further in the letter, it appears that ! shallow oil has been struck, which obviously j means gushers as soon as the wells are deep

enough, and clippings are enclosed which tell

about the great gushers in the neighborhood,

and the fortunes they have made. Maps' are

enclosed, and blanks to be filled out; and it all ! looks so comforting and convincing that you almost feel that if you did have a few hundred dollars here is where you could retrieve all of ; your past mistakes.                                '

But here is where you would be wrong, ninety- L nine chances to one; for if you invested you would almost certainly lose every cent you put | in. Oil wells cost $20,000 to $60,000 or $100,000 apiece, whether oil is found or not. To bny : stocks on the prospect of finding oil is like     i

betting that you can find a bottle tossing in    |

mid-ocean.                                            !

It is often claimed that as much money is j spent in seeking after mineral resources as the ; resources are worth after they are developed.

This is not strictly true, but there is so much truth in it that the man of small means had far better stay out of the game entirely.

Easy Money for Ponzi

Charles Ponzi, late of Boston, recently took several million dollars away from American savings-bank depositors. He had an original ; scheme, in which there was apparently no flaw on the surface. His plan was to take an Ameri-    f

can dollar, buy with it a dollar’s worth of Italian    J

exchange, have the Italian funds used in Italy to i buy international reply coupons, bring the reply coupons into the United States, Switzerland, > Norway, or some other country where the rate f

of exchange is very high, turn the coupons into stamps and the stamps into money. In this way , a dollar could, theoretically, he turned into three dollars, owing to the fact that Italian lire, normally exchanging at five for an American dollar, are now exchanging at eighteen for a dollar.

If r. Ponzi issued agreements guaranteeing to give investors 50 percent profit in ninety days, and he actually paid this profit to the first investors in his scheme. In a short time he had thousands of investors and a bank account running into the millions. Federal agents became suspicions that he was insincere, and a statement was published that he was insolvent.

There was a run upon his office; and in three days he paid out over a million dollars, satisfying all the creditors who then appeared. But when his.bank balances had been reduced to less than $250,000 it was discovered that he was paying off depositors with money but recently taken in, and that he did not have in Europe the fund of $8,000,000 which he had claimed. It developed that few if any international reply coupons had ever been purchased or sold, that he had less than $25,000 in Europe, and that he would eventually have come to grief anyway. He made a confession and was imprisoned. But this does not help the poor victims who swallowed the old bait of “something for nothing’’, and parted with their savings for good.

Board of Trade Gamblers

IN THE Hennepin County, Minnesota, district court, in February, 1920, the Qninn-Shepherdson Company, members of the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce and the Chicago Board of Trade, shamelessly admitted in open court that the buying and selling of grain for .future, delivery (in which the transactions of both bodies largely consist) is gambling, pure and simple, and therefore illegal.

This admission, or claim, was made so as to nullify the suit of one of the Quinn-Sbepherdson customers, who claimed that lie had been forced to accept $285- as his share, whereas his profits on a- certain gamble really amounted to $1440. This admission is an extremely interesting one, and has an important bearing upon this matter of speculation. The judge accepted the statement as a truthful one, saying, “The courts all over the country censure sueh transactions. They are immoral. A man gets something for nothing if he wins.” He stated that he could do nothing to help the man who had been mulcted of the $1155, but intimated that he thought the Quinn-Shepherdson Company’s fellow gamblers in Minneapolis ought to do something to clear the atmosphere. But it is doubtful that they will. Their way of making a living is much easier in their eyes than plowing, drilling, harvesting, threshing, hauling and marketing wheat; and they have scant sympathy for the farmers who are supporting their useless lives.

Every little while some new method of high-toned gambling shows up. In August the Interstate Commerce commissioners found that in order to create an artificial price for coal in New York city empty cars were being used for storage purposes, and loaded cars held for long periods in demurrage, so that they could not be used for bringing in coal.

In the long run it will be found that the plain, honest people who work for a living are the real nobility of the country. They may not handle as much money, but they are worth far more to the country in the end than the so-called financiers that are resorting to such a variety of contemptible ways to induce or force others to maintain them in luxury.

Notes on Liberty

ECLARATION of Pope Gregory VII at Roman Synod:

“We desire to show the world that we can give or take away at our will kingdoms, duchies, earldoms— in a word, the possessions of all men; far we can bind and loose.”

“No more cunning plot was ever divulged against the intelligence, the freedom, the happiness and virtue of mankind, than Romanism.”—William E. Gladstone.

“If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the convention when I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it; and if I could now conceive that the general government might be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny and every species of religious persecution.”—George Washington.

Jeffersonian Democracy

MANY good people wonder why everything that Mr. Wilson stood for was completely annihilated in the last election. Let them compare Mr. Wilson’s savage autocracy, his many laws for suppressing human thought, and his use of unprincipled and usually Roman Catholic officials for accomplishing his ends, with the following statements of Thomas Jefferson, Third President of the United States; and they will understand the landslide which buried in a well-deserved oblivion Mr. Wilson and his unAmerican policy of catering to a foreign monarch.

“I consider tha government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from, meddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, disciplines, or exercises.”

“Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.”

“I doubt whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three months’ imprisonment for not comprehending the mysteries of the Trinity. But is the spirit of the people infallible—a permanent reliance? Is is government? .Is this the kind of protection we receive in return for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may alter —will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and better men become his victims.”

“I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offense against religion that the question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? And are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? ts a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read and what we must believe ? If is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings jor not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If M. de Becourfs book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God’s sake, let us freely hear both sides.”

Under President Wilson in 1918 the sale of a religious book, “The Finished Mystery,” was • “carried before civil magistrates”, and America saw “a censor [the Attorney General of the United States] whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold”. Priests and parsons became our inquisitors, and Christian citizens were imprisoned for the sole offense of having published a religious book.

It seems quite appropriate that we quote here from a little 25c booklet published by The Statesman Press, 164 East 37th Street, New York City, entitled “The Book of the Prophet Wudro and the Fifth Book of the Kings of Eng” (Page 42):

“And he chose one Thomas, a man of Texas, and he was a Gregorian, and placed him oyer the lawyers of Amer, who made a man an offender for a word: and laid a snare for him that reproveth at the gate; and turned aside the just for a thing of naught; and caused many, to stumble at the law.

“Now at that time there were men in Amer of two sorts, one sort that was prudent and one that was simple, for the prudent man foreseeth the evil and hideth himself, but the simple pass on and are punished.”           ~

Nothing Much Wrong

THERE is nothing much wrong, nothing except the inside and the outside, the top, the bottom and the middle, the front and back and sides, the center, the corners and in between; nothing serious, except that the foundation is on the sand, and the stones are hollow and laid criss-cross any old way without mortar, and a big storm is coming.

At the same time that the cotton farmers of the South are going bankrupt, the cotton mills are making profits as high as 100 percent, and the people are being charged eighteen times the amount the farmer received for his cotton. The . Amoskeag Cotton Mfg. Company and the Belton cotton mills are among the 100 percent profit Americans. But they are not the only ones. During the war the American people paid for their coal mines, steel mills and textile factories and packing plants more than their entire net worth in the excessive profits awarded to them for their patriotism. Senator Capper is authority for this statement.

In one year of the war the gross income of American corporations rose from 35| billions to .

Rebuilding Palestine’s Forests

ALESTINE’S population capacity could easily be greatly increased by improving the lands now unsuitable for colonization, according to Prof. E. Kern, noted Russian forestry expert, in a statement prepared in Petrograd and issued by the Zionist Organization of America.

Prof. Kern points out that if Palestine's population of 600,000 were doubled, the present density of population of 13 per square kilometre would then only equal that of European Russia and would be almost 10 times less than the density of population of Belgium.

"By cheeking the sandy hills on the coast, draining the swamps, fixing the shifting ravines, regulating the mountain streams, reestablishing the destroyed terraces and building up new ones, the present untenantable lands may be transformed into very valuable estates,” he declared. ,"The carrying out of the above works will both improve hygienic conditions and help to restore a regular water supply, in addition to increasing vastly the population capacity of the country.”

Prof. Kern, who achieved an international reputation by his sylvi-cultural work for the old Russian government by whom he was frequently sent to other countries, advocates a complete afforestation program for Palestine, not only to improve the land, but to establish the basket-making and paper industries, both of which he claims have great possibilities in the Holy Land.

"Nurseries of willows suitable for basket-makingi should be laid out and planted at once,” Prof. Kern said. “Basket-making will prove to be a profitable home industry, as willow baskets are better than anything else to ship fruit in and Palestine will have a large fruit industry. It is very essential therefore that a school of basket-making be started at once.”

He also urges the cultivation of the Algerian “Alfa” grass for the fixation of the drifting sands and also as a raw material in the papermaking industry.

Prof. Kern expects the afforestation program to be put into effect in a short while through the $10,000,000 Palestine Restoration Fund, which the Zionist Organization has been raising in non-sectarian campaigns throughout

the United States. Because of the urgency of the work of preparing Palestine as soon as possible to absorb the vast mass-migration which will come to it as soon as the British mandate is established, he advised the immediate establishment of a School of Forestry, with a one year’s eourse, to prepare expert foresters to aid in carrying out the proposed work.

“The cedar trees which still stand on the slopes of Lebanon must be preserved as a natural treasure,” he concluded, "for in all the reconstruction work planned in the Holy Land, the spots made sacred by their historical and religious connections will not be touched."

For centuries the land of the Jews has lain desolate and bare under the withering hand of the Turk, fields uncultivated, forests gone. Now the bare plates are to be covered again with

waving grain, with gardens, with green forests. It is a time when the Jew may well be glad; for it marks the time of the complete restoration to divine favor and blessing of a nation that has suffered untold things at the hands of religionists that professed much and lived little. But now the tables are about to be completely turned, as it is written: “O Jacob and Israel; thou are my servant: I have formed thee; thou art my servant; O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of me. I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, aa a cloud, thy sins; return unto me; for I have redeemed thee. Sing, 0 ye heavens; for the Lord hath done it: shout ye lower parts of the earth: break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein; for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and glorified himself in Israel!”—Isa. 44:21-23.

The Fastest Schedule

THE acompanying time table, taken from the December, 1920, number of the Official Railway Guide is figured out in The Golden Age office as the fastest schedule for traversing the United States, entering some part of every state in the Union on one trip.

We offer, free, a year’s subscription to The Golden Age to any person who sends in a faster schedule, starting at any point, and accurate according to the railway guide for any month past, present or future. Schedule must show return to original starting point.

For convenience the schedule begins on a Friday afternoon at Monroe, Michigan, and terminates at the same place two weeks from the Saturday following, in fifteen days, three hours and eighteen minutes. It could be successfully begun on any day of the week except Saturday, as all the trains shown run daily except those marked B&M.

By taking sixteen days for the schedule it couldlie begun successfully at any of the points named.

Fourteen trains are used enroute to California and six trains returning to destination, all provided\with magnificent sleeping and dining cars except lor the short runs to and from Monroe arid North Berwick, where they are not needed.

The trip would include much beautiful scenery, and many important cities would be passed through, including the State capitals of New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Kansas, Utah and Minnesota, and the national capital at Washington. Six hours would be provided at the latter point, two hours each at New York and Boston and an hour each at New Orleans and Chicago.

It would require an experienced traveler to make such a trip, although it could be done without a hitch. The itinerary is published merely as a curiosity, showing the excellent transportation conditions that exist, and what could be done in a two-weeks vacation, if one cared to undertake it.

The trip totals 10,831.2 miles, and from start to finish, including all stops, maintains a speed of 29.8 miles per hour. The railway fares for the trip would be about $440, at present rates, not allowing anything for berths or meals.

Without adding anything to the time required to return to destination, 46.2 miles could be added by going from Washington to Atlanta via Richmond, 48.8 miles could be added by going from Memphis to Brinkley instead of Forrest City and 44 miles could be added by changing trains at Brule instead of Julesburg. If this mileage is added the total is 10,970.2, and the speed per hour, including all stops, would be 30.2 miles—truly a remarkable efficiency, and one appreciated by the public.

Mlles Leave              State Via CENT. TIME

Friday — Monroe  ...............................Michigan  NYC 3.47 p.m,

23.0 Toledo (Ar.) —...................  Ohio               4.3<j

----Toledo .................................................... 5.15 EAST. TIMB

113.0 Cleveland .............................................. 3.35 p.m.

Saturday

560.0 Aibauy (Ar.) ........................New York              6.27 a.na.

------- Albany .................................................... BAM 7.01

44.0 Powuai ........................  Vermont

151.4 Boston (Ar.)..................Maasachuseiu              3.45

---- Boston

77.6 North Berwick (Ar.)...... —..Maine

• —— Neeth Berwick.................-

• 17.5 Portsmouth ..... .......New Hampshire

• 56.9 Boston (Ar.).......................-

---Boaton .............................................. NYNH4H 11.00 Sunday 43.8 Providence ....................Shade Island             12.09 a.m.

113.0 New Haven —......—............Connecticut

• 73.3 New York (Ar.)

__New York.........-.............................. BAB 7.50 11.5 Nawj<rte,^-_r .........................New Jersey

• 31.6 Philadelphia ______________Pennsylvania

• 35.0 Wilmington   .......................Delaware

• 70.0 Baltimore ............-......... Maryland             12.30 p.m.

93US Harper*s Ferry (Ar.)....West Virginia

• . Harper's Ferry .-..........-....................—

55JJ Washington..............District Columbia

-...... Washington ...........................................    So.Ry. 10.45

Monday

174J2 Lynchburg .................. Virginia              4.05 a.m.

207.3 Charlotte.......-.............North Carolina

75.7 Spartanburg..................Sooth Carolina               1.00 p.m.

CENT. TIMS

181.7 Atlanta ....................................Georgi*              0.10 p-m.

175.0 Montgomery       ____________Alabama

Tuesday 119.0 Flomaton (Ar.).............-_____Florida*              3.00 a.m.

Flomaton .......-------------

00.0 Mobile ......................................

139.0 New Orleans (Ar.)..............Louisiana

______ New Orleans...................................____ IC 12.30 p.m. 183.1 Jackson ......-........................Mississippi

210.7 Memphis (Ar.).........-...........Tennessee

— Memphis ................................................ CRI&P 10.JS

Wednesday 44.2 Forrest City (Ar.)................Arkansas             12.13 a.m.

------ Forrest City

44.2 .Memphis (Ar.)

•Station is in Alabama but Florida line Is only two minutes walk from the train.

Mlles	Leave                State	Via CENT. TIME
	Memphis ...........................................	Wednesday IC -     6.40 *
122.4	Fulton ......   Kentucky	10.15
404.3	Chicago (An.)—_......  Illinois	10.00 p.m.
........	Chicago... _...............................	AT&SV 10.30
232.9	Fort Madisma —.............................Iowa	Thursday 4.29 a.m.
21x2	Kannai City.........................Missouri	10.55
65.8	Topeka...  Kanbun	1.20 p.m.
277.0	Alva ........ Oklahoma	10.44
226.3	Amarillo..   Texas	MONT. TIME Friday 5.25 a.m.
489.4	Gallup..._____________________New Mexico	10.10 pju. Saturday 4.25 r-uu
220.9	Williams....... Arizona
368.6	Barstow (Ar_i_.......__.........California	PAC. TIME 3.25 djb.
—	Bun tow...................................	LAASL 3.45
134.8	fVegas. .................. Nevada	9.35 MONT. TIME Sunday 1.00 p.m.
449.5	Salt Lake City............. Utah
664.0	J ulesburg »Ar.) .....    Colorado	Moaday 9.10 a.m.
_____	Julesburg.. _...............	UP     10.37 tn.
42.0	Sidney.. Nebraska	11.35
103.0	Cheyenne....   Wyoming	3.25 p.m.
051.0	Pocatello ........ Idaho	PAC. TIMS Tuwday 7.45 a-m.
5OOJ5	Pendleton (Ax.) —.....................Oregon	Wedi>«Bdar 1.13 «.m.
	Pendleton       .....-................ *	8.00
241.1	Spokane (Ar_)_.........-......Washington	_         7.15 p.m.
____	Spokane...... -..............-.....	CMAStP 0.10
357.8	Butte.. -.............Montana	MONT. TIMM Thursday 10.45 a.m.
527.4	Marmarth .... -...North Dakota	Friday 3.45 n.m.
2S8.3	Aberdeen.... South Dakota	CENT. TIMH 1.50 p.m.
285.6	Minneapolis..... Minnesota	10.35
421.5	Milwaukee ............_.............Wisconsin	Saturday 9.35 a.m.
35.0	Chicago (Ar.J________________________________	11.45
	Chicago ...    ... .............................	NYC     12.40 pjn. 2.45
101.0	Elkhart_________—.............Indiana
143.0	Toledo _......................................	5.15
____	Toledo .    —___...............	6.25
2X6	Bionroe —____________________-...............-	7.05

ACCEPT a word of appreciation for the many good tilings appearing in The Golden Age. Each issue seems to lie better than the last. The issue of September 29th is surely God’s justice expressed regarding the unfaithful clergy and God’s love for the common people.

Your issue of October 13th is replete with good things. The article, “Why America Lost Her Liberties,” is deserving of special commendation. The quotations from the various lovers of litferty, contrasted with quotations of the enemies of truth and liberty, bring a great truth clearly to the front.

I’         I regard the quotations of America’s ancient

lovers of\liberty as in a sense bringing forward ’ the teachings of the New Testament. They 1 breathe the spirit and doctrines of the Philadelphian age of the church. The spirit of brotherly love manifest in the religious and political toleration of modern times had its origin in the Reformation. Justification by

By N. E. Nelson

Faith was the doctrinal keynote of the Reformation, ai:d this is a version of the spirit of Liberty. Luther well said; "The very essence of faith is liberty”.

Liberty was a favorite theme of the reformers that followed Luther. Roger Williams was the first to raise in America a voice for free speech- His adopted State, Rhode Island, into the constirution of which his teachings were incorporated, became the foundation of the American Republic. Your quotations from American statesmen have their origin in the gospel of the Reformation.

We are now living in the Laodicean period of the church. The name means and the term implies, “Justice- for the People”. Your mission is evidently in part, to liberate the people from the Nicolaitan-s tthe term means “Vanquishers of the People”', -who today are represented in the clergy. Tur Golden Age is surely promoting “Justice for the People”.

Radium—Earth’s Most Valuable Substance

IF SOMEBODY should come to you with a twenty dollar gold-piece in one hand and in the other hand an equal weight of a worthless-looking white powder and ask you which you would rather have, and you should reach out and take the twenty dollar gold-piece, you might lose just $3,611,980.00 by the transaction. That is to say, you might lose that amount if the little pile of white powder happened to be a salt of the metal Radium, but you probably will not need to worry; for they do not carry Radium around in that careless way.

They do not sell Radium by the pound. One reason is that there is not a pound of it in the world. Another reason is that there are not so many people in the world, even since the World War made this new grist of millionaires, that could afford to buy a pound; for a pound of Radium would be worth around $50,000,000.

Radium is sold by the ounce; the last quotation at hand is $3,360,000. Platinum, famed for its scarcity and value, is $150 an ounce. Radium is 200 times more valuable than the most valuable diamonds; it is 2,240 times as valuable as platinum; it is 180,600 times as valuable as gold. A cubic foot of it would be worth $7,000,-000,000.

Yes, Radium is sold by the ounce; but as the total amount of refined Radium in the world is only a trifle over three and one-half ounces, no sale of an ounce at a time has ever been made. The actual basis of sale is the gram, which is about the thirtieth part of an ounce. One gram of Radium would make a small-sized thimbleful and would be worth over $100,000.

There are 480 grains in an ounce; and at $3,360,000 per ounce, a single grain of Radium would cost just $7,000, and this is probably the basis upon which the Radium manufacturers figure their costs and prices. A grain is the supposed average weight of a medium-sized grain of wheat, and there are about sixteen of these in a gram. There are 1.10 grams of Radium . in existence, of which about 70 percent was produced in the Ignited States.

Why Radium Is Valuable

Radium is so valuable because it is the nearest thing known to perpetual heat. It is an element; but instead of being quiescent like other elements, it is in perpetual motion. It has been eonipared to a volcano constantly shooting forth stones and ashes. Scientists have calculated that out of every thirty millions of atoms of Radium one atom goes off from the mass each hour with a speed estimated at twelve thousand miles per second.

The discharge of these Radium missiles generates so much heat that a gram of Radium (a small thimbleful) generates in twenty-six days enough heat to raise a pint of water from freezing to boiling. And this is done continuously, day and night, without ceasing. It is estimated that seventeen hundred years would be required for a given quantity of Radium to lose half its potency, so that, to all intents and purposes, as far as we human beings are concerned, it may be said that it is indestructible and lasts forever.

Radium in its natural state is a metal, if ahy substance can be said to have a natural state that behaves so peculiarly; but it can be hammered into powder, covered with lead, dissolved in acid, heated, frozen or melted, and gives out the same quantity of heat constantly, regardless of what happens to it With the heat it also gives out a faint light'

Its Use in Treating Cancers

THE use of Radium in the cure of cancers and other malignant growths is still in its exper-imental stages. Its effectiveness depends upon the kind of cancer, the situation of the cancer, and the promptness with which the cancer is discovered and brought under the radioactive influences. But it has been found helpful and a number of cases have been cured by it.

The unfortunate thing about cancer is that most people do not know they are afflicted until, it is too late. This terrible malady, it is claimed, finds as victims one woman in eight and one man in fourteen who pass the age of forty. There are eight thousand deaths a year from this cause in New York alone. It now equals tuberculosis in importance as a cause of death. Moreover, cancer as a cause of death is rapidly increasing, while tuberculosis is gradually declining.

A single Radium preparation may be used in the treatment of thousands of cases. Rays of varying intensity emanate from the metal.

These rays are concentrated to a focus upon diseased areas and the healthy tissues are protected from the burning rays.

In using the Radium in the treatment of cancer the Radium itself is enclosed in a glass tube, which may in turn be enclosed in a gold tube or a silyer tube and the latter enclosed in a brass tube. The heat-rays penetrate through the walls of these metals to the surrounding tissues. Sheets of lead are used to cover ad-■ jacent parts so that they will not be burned.

In a hospital in which Radium is used, the ' custom is to apply it for about three hours each week; and while it is applied the patient is constantly under guard, and not allowed to leave the building. This is because he may be wearing upon him several thousand dollars worth of the metal. Even then losses occur.

In one hospital a patient suffering with the heat of the rays, and probably in ignorance of •the great value of the appliance he was wearing, threw several thousand dollars worth of Radium down a drain pipe. It was recovered with great difficulty.

-> j In Chicago a $12,000 tube of Radium became unfastened in a bathtub and disappeared. In . Philadelphia a tiny gold tube containing $6,000 worth of Radium disappeared between two operations that closely followed one another; It was said to have been the only tube not insured against such loss.

Customers for Radium

OF COURSE every doctor in the country would like to have a gram of Radium, so that he might use it in the softening of scar tissues, the treatment of malignant growths, inoperable cases of goiter, and such forms of cancer as can be treated by it; but not many physicians have the means to make such a large investment.

The Mayo Brothers, Rochester, Minnesota, famous surgeons, have one gram, this being the largest private collection; but their institution is so large and so important that it can hardly be classed^as & private one.

A company of physicians in Scranton, Pennsylvania, has purchased, for $6,200 three-fourths of a grain of Radium. This amount came enclosed in a glass tube about the size of the lead in a lead pencil, and a quarter of an inch long. The glass tube was enclosed in a silver tube, the silver tube in a brass tube, and the brass tube was tightly sealed in a lead bottle. On account of the great activity of the metal it is necessary to keep it thus enclosed. The package is kept for safe keeping in a safe deposit box.

Realizing that the cost of Radium makes it beyond the reach of even the well-to-do physician, the State of New York has purchased two and one-quarter grams of Radium, at a cost of $225,000, which will be used for the treatment of sufferers from malignant diseases at the State Institution for the Study of Malignant Diseases at Buffalo. Any citizen of the United States will be treated free of charge at Buffalo, but preference will be given to citizens of New York State. Wisconsin has followed the example, of New York State and purchased the fifth part of a gram of Radium to be used in the same way. This purchase cost the State $24,000. Like amounts have been sold to Australia and to Japan.

Where Radium Comes From

BEFORE the war almost all the Radium in the world was obtained from the pitchblende of Austria, and it was the gift of a ton of this ore by the Austrian emperor, to Madame Curie, the Polish scientist, that enabled her to isolate the element.

Commercially speaking, the headquarters of the Radium business is in New York city, in the hands of two concerns; and six-sevenths of the Radium in the world has been produced by one of these concerns. The smaller of the two concerns is the one that supplied New York State with its Radium, and has its reduction plant at Orange, N. J. The larger plant is located at Canonsburg, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

At the smaller plant, it required 625 tons of carnotite ore, brought across the continent in twenty-one cars, and an equal bulk of coal and chemicals, to extract the 2} grams of Radium which constituted New York’s purchase. The larger plant uses a low-grade ore, mined in the-desert region near where the four states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona join one another, the only place in the United States, by the way, where four states meet. The ores are carried on mule-back sixty miles to the nearest railroad.

IT WAS but a little while ago that the first report of the possibility of communicating by wireless means was scouted as ridiculous. Now the |Jnited Radio Telegraphers* Association has fpur thousand members scattered all over the globe; and when they wish to discuss the affairs of their organization they transmit their messages from ship to ship, wherever they chance to be. In July last, when there was talk of a strike for higher wages, they handled the matter in this way.

The General Electric Company, of Schenectady, New York, is back of a new twenty million dollar company which has taken over the Marconi interests and will inaugurate commercial wireless service covering North, and South America, Western Europe and Eastern Asia. In order to gain a footing it will make its rates

one-third less than are the existing cable rates. „ Until recently the speed of wireless transmission was necessarily held down to about ten words per minute. Now a machine that costs about $"'0,000 speeds up this transmission to thirty or forty times the normal speed of an operator, and the message is received at the other end of the line by another machine which photographs the air waves on a tape. All the receiving operator has to do is to read the tape and transmit the message by typewriter or otherwise as required.

FFirei’ess Telephony

IN THE month of February, 1920, with a neve type of transmitter requiring only one-third kilowat of input energy, the De Forest lai:oratories carried on wireless telephone conversations between Ossining, a city close to New York city, and Chicago, nine hundred miles distant.

In this experiment the same wave length as that permitted for amateur operators—namely, 375-meters—was need; and in the course of sev-, eral evenings wireless amateurs who happened ( to be at their instruments in St. Marys and Salem, Ohio,Columbia City, Indiana, Gaffney, South Carolina, and other places, were surprised beyond measure when they suddenly heard voices calling out from New York city.

Wireless conversations have now been held between far distant points in various quarters of the globe. Wireless telephony will soon bo making inroads in the business of wireless telegraphy and cable telegraphy.

A wireless telephone "outfit, suitable for wireless telephony within ten to twenty miles and wireloss telc^aphy up to about one hundred miles, is now ready for the market. It gets its power from the ordinary house current, and may be screwed into any alternating current socket! ,_tThe change from transmitting to receiving is made with a push button.

Wireless Photography

OUR headline seems a misnomer; for in the ordinary sepse of the word wires are never used in phonography. But experiments which have recently been made suggest the possibility that a way may be worked out by which games, pageants and other spectacles of general interest may be reproduced on screens, anywhere within reasonable distance of the events, and at the very time they occur.

In February last, mysterious repetitions of the letter “G” were picket I up by wireless stations in Australia and many other parts of the world, on a wave length from four to six times the wave length of any other wireless messages transmitted on earth, so far as known. Because of the regularity with which these messages came, they are believed to have emanated from some intelligent source; and it has been imagined that they may be the first efforts of supposed dwellers on Mars in attempts to communicate with the earth.

Somewhere in the universe, we have reason to believe, there are one hundred planes of intelligent beings. Our Lord seems to refer to these when lie speaks of “the ninety and nine” which went not astray and therefore “need no repentance”. (Luke 15:3-7; Matthew 18; 12, 13) One thing is sure: “All we like sheep have gone astray” (Isaiah 53:6) and all have need of the redemption obtained through the death of “the Good Shepherd [that] giveth his life for the sheep”. (John 10:11) Therefore, the ninety and nine sheep that never sinned are not to lie found on this planet. They must be found elsewhere, if at all; and since we humans are all compared to the one sheep that went astray it is imagined that there may be Martians (dwellers on Mars), as its long canals and rows of vegetation seem to indicate, and that they may wish to communicate with us.

In the Golden Age the Lord will no doubt permit communication lietween some of the planes of. intelligence; and if it is done, it may be done by the wireless method, for no other means seems more probable. Meantime, communication with the demons that infest our atmosphere is strictly forbidden in the Scriptures; and Ouija boards, planchettes, spirit mediums and any and all attempts at communication with these unseen ‘lying spirits” should be shunned by all who wjsh to keep reason upon its throne. In due time, and shortly, we think, the Lord has promised to dispose of these demons forever. It is these that are responsible for the “doctrines of devils” that have filled the world with fear and horror and hate of an infinitely wise and loving Creator. In due time this matter will be made plain to all.

@JP(? £ CHARACTER®

Color and Sex

GOD is the author and source of every principle in creation; and every principle in creation must inhere in Him, either actively or . passively. “He that made the eye; shall he not see: he that made the ear; shall he not heart” Likewise He that made man in His own image and afterward separated him into two sexes, or sections, must Himself have all the qualities which He gave them, either jointly or severally. His fatherly love exceeds that of the fondest parent, and His motherly care is in no wise equalled by the tenderest nurturer of babes.

Adam and Eve, before their transgression, were each perfect parts of a complete microcosm, whose aggregate qualities were in the same relation to each other as those in God. The separation left the masculine virtues of justice and power largely predominant in man, while the feminine graces of wisdom and love were much more pronounced in woman.

Masculinity is marked by straight lines; femininity abounds in curves. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points, and the direct line is the masculine way of going about things. It is no attempt at facetiousness to say that a curved line is one that changes its direction at every point. The feminine way of doing things is by tact, a deft fitting of self to the circumstances, a bending of self around the sharp masculine corners. True, there are tactful men and hopelessly direct women; but it will be found that one or the other feminine trait is ascendant in such men, or that justice and power lead in such women.

As wisdom and love are the feminine qualities, so yellow and red are feminine colors. Golden hdir and rosy cheeks are certainly emblematic of maidenhood; black hair and blue eyes symbolic of virile youth, as black and blue are analogous to power and justice.

The diagrammatic depiction of the sexes shown above is of course abstract and theoretic. It represents the balance which would exist between a perfect couple. Needless to observe, the character outlines of most pairs would be notably divergent from this. If masculinity predominated in both man and woman, they might understand one another well (perhaps too well); but there would be small complementary association. .

' If perchance wisdom and justice prevail in one person and love and power in the other, the character of the first will be marked by reason and that of the second by emotion—not a bad combination for business purposes, but rather unsatisfactory in marriage.

Coming Back

Mr. Editor: May I suggest that in your item on sexless children you seem to have overlooked one feature of the problem 1 We know that among the countless millions that have passed away from earth, there are multitudes of children who have been asleep in death many years, some of them many centuries. Will not the redeemed of earth find joy and blessedness in preparing for the return of these little ones and in the training them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? Surely, when we consider this, we will say that although natural births will cease, the little ones of the Everlasting Father will be here nearly, if not quite, through the Millennial Age to cheer and bless humanity. I myself have three little ones sleeping for over thirty years. When the natural births have ceased, the time will be near at hand for the sleeping "kiddies” to return; and there will be plenty ready to welcome them. Let us find abundant consolation in these comforting thoughts; for "they shall [surely] come again from the land of the enemy”.—Jer. 31:16,17.

Progress by Sacrifice                       •

Mr. Editor: I have just been reading your issue of September 29th, and it is certainly an eye-opener. As it always has been of old, so now, it seems that every step of progress must be attended by sacrifices to satisfy tile wrath of the clergy and moldy ecclesiasticism. Truly history is repeating itself, but it is sad to a freedom-loving heart to see that such crimes are committed under the cloak of religion and by the representatives of a pretended Christianity.

THE war made it next to impossible for civilians to travel in the war-stricken zones, and although nearly two years have elapsed since the signing of the armistice the difficulties of travel have not been all removed, by any means. Merely a passport does not admit one into a country, .but the passport must be examined, reexamined, viseed and reviseed every time one makes a visit to a country. To enter Egypt and Palestine a special permit must first be obtained, application for which is made to the British Government. Knowing this, our party made application at London as soon as we arrived. After waiting two or three weeks it began to look as though we might not be permitted to go to Palestine. The aid of the American Embassy was asked, and after some efforts and negotiations one of our party received the following letter:

“Embassy of the United States of America

London, September 7, 1920. “Sir:

In reply to your letter of the 3rd instant relative to the proposed journey of Judge Rutherford to Egypt and Palestine, I am directed by the Charge d’Affaires ad interim to inform you that a note has been received from the Foreign Office today in which Mr. Wright is apprised that His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs addressed on September 6th, 1920, a request to the British High Commissioners at Cairo and Jerusalem to extend to Judge Rutherford and his companions all the necessary facilities for the accomplishment of their purposes. I am, Sir,

“Your obedient servant, John F. Mabtin

. Secretary of Embassy.”

We had letters of introduction to other men in authority, and armed with all the documents obtainable we proceeded to Egypt and Palestine.

A military railway has been constructed from the Border of Egypt to the city of Jerusalem. Arriving at Kantara, the border town, we remained in the train, which stood overnight on a siding at that point. Evidently there is some military'iregulation which prevents trains from operating a?ter night over this road. Next morning we resumed our journey and were soon in the home of the ancient Pliilistines—a land once very productive, and even yet fertile and productive if properly cultivated. As it is,

By J. F. Rutherford

the land produces much food and vegetation. Even the sandy portions produce.

The railway runs along the border of the Mediterranean Sea for some distance. We noticed nearby finely woven nets strung along the shore for a considerable distance, and on inquiry learned that these were stretched for the purpose of trapping quail. Great flocks of these birds fly across the Mediterranean from the islands to the north and from Europe. By the time they reach the shores of Palestine they are flying very low because tired of wing; on this account their heads strike this net and they are at once entrapped. Great numbers of them are taken in this manner. These nets are not far from the land where the Lord so miraculously fed the children of Israel with quail, and it is very reasonable to conclude that the flocks of quail have been flying across this sea for centuries, year by year. And it was probably during one of these regular migrations that the Lord caused great flocks of them to alight among the Israelites, who used them for food.

On every side were evidences of the war. Trenches are still there. Houses and villages showed that they had been subjected to heavy gunfire; and in the cemeteries are marked the resting places of many soldiers. After a day and part of a night’s journey our train pulled into Jerusalem and we were in the midst of a howling, screeching crowd of Arabs, scrambling to get our baggage and make a little bakshish. One of the station exits is reserved for officers and another for the “common herd”. Our party was ushered out through the latter. We were glad to stand away from the crowd in silence for a moment and contemplate this wonderful city—the sacred spot where Melchisedec met Abraham; where Abraham offered Isaac; the home of David the king; the place where Solomon reigned in all his glory, foreshadowing the glorious reign of the Messiah; the habitation of many of the prophets; the place where Jeremiah was imprisoned, during which time he prophesied so boldly to the Israelites in power concerning what would be the destiny of that nation and people, all of which has peculiar interest now, seeing that the things foreshadowed by Jeremiah are being fulfilled; but above all, the city so favored by Jehovah—where

Jesus taught the message of the coming king. dom; where He cleansed the house of the Lord;

where He celebrated the last passover and instituted the memorial; where He was unjustly accused and underwent before the supreme tribunal of that land a trial which was a farce in every particular; where He was condemned and crucified in order that man might be saved and that the church might have life more abundantly and be associated with Him.

It is thrilling to the heart of a Christian to stand in this wonderful place in the earth and contemplate the great things that God here caused to be done. Indeed, we might say that Palestine is the place where Jehovah has staged the greater part of His plan relating to mankind—the place where He caused His people for centuries to make pictures, acting them out in living manner to foretell the future and foreshadow the unfolding of His plan on a grander scale. .

We retired in quietness in our rooms at the hotel and gave thanks to God that He had so graciously guided our footsteps through many difficult conditions and brought us safely to this city made famous in sacred poetry and prose, and destined to be even more famous in the future—the glory and joy of the whole earth.

The British now exercise the controlling power in Jerusalem and, in fact, throughout all of Palestine. On every hand is to he seen the uniform of the British soldier. The British armies are encamped round about Jerusalem. There is an encampment just south of the city; another east of the city toward the Jordan; another on the north side; and still another division encamped on the plains in the west. Soldiers are constantly passing through the city and everything has a decidedly military aspect.

Palestine is ruled by the British Government through a High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, who exercises both legislative and ex-ecutive-ajjthority. An order issued by the High Commissioner is the law of the land and all the army of occupation in Palestine is subject to his control.' He is, in fact, the military governor of Palestine in absolute authority.' Hence we can properly say that Great Britain is exercising in Palestine’absolute ruling power. It is interesting here to note the words of Jesus:

“When ye therefore shall see the abomination

. be children of fie Christ during the Millennium.

But this religious system alone and of itself aould never have exercised the devastating power that has been exercised and that seems dearly to be implied in this text. The eeclesi' •Mieal system formed an alliance with the civil powers of Rome and was long designated as the Holy Roman Empire. The power and influence exercised by this combination tended to make desolate the teachings of the truth concerning Messiah's kingdom, because an earth-made, —... man-made kingdom was substituted for God’s ‘ kingdom.

The words of the prophet Daniel seem clearly to indicate that this devastating condition would continue until the complete ending of the ‘ old order, which is now in process of disintegration. The fact that Jesus referred to it in answer to the question of the disciples as to how they might know when the end of the world was reached shows that it would have a special ap-pfieation and would be due to be clearly understood at the end of the world. The world did . net begin to end until 1914. It should be ex-\ pected, then, that since that time the Lord ’ would be pleased to give a clearer understanding of this "abomination that maketh desolate”.

Jesus began His ministry by teaching the coming kingdom of God. The apostles held the same thought prominently before the minds of Bible students; and throughout the gospel age Christians have been looking with hope and praying for the coining of God’s kingdom, when His will shall be done on earth as in heaven. Satan has attempted a counterfeit of everything in the divine arrangement. A man-made arrange-meat, dictated by Satan and spreading over the earth, would have a tendency to destroy faith in Messiah’s kingdom and necessarily would be abominable in God’s sight.

Tha.book of Revelation (chapters 13 and 17) describes three beasts: One which came np out Off the sea, another which came up out of the earth, and a third which reappeared from the pit. Through the columns, of The Golden Age we have heretofore shown that a beast symbolises a ruling power, viz., a rule by violence. Detailed proof as to how" these beasts are fiermed is set forth in the January 1.1921, issue ■ cf The VCaich Tower. Here we speak of the Blatter in a more general way.

It will be observed that in each instance there are three component parts or elements of society that go to make up the beast; viz., ecclesiastical, financial and political. These operating together first coerce the conscience of man to render allegiance and devotion to the order arranged: and failing in that, compel allegiance and devotion by a resort to violence.

The first beast consisted of the Roman Empire, which was organized of these three component elements, and which for a long while exercised dominion over the peoples of earth. This is the beast that came up out of the sea— the sea symbolizing the ungodly, disorganized elements of the earth. Pagan Rome held sway until what is known generally as the Holy Roman Empire was organized. (The real name should be the un-Holy Roman Empire.) This combination taught the people the divine right of kings to rule and the divine right of the clergy to rule the people in religious matters.

The purpose of a government symbolized by a beast is to rule the people without regard to the rights and liberties of the governed.

This first beast, then, was wounded and lost its power about 1799 A.D., when Napoleon made the great stroke against the divine right of kings and the divine right of the clergy; and when the American independence was declared and. the government of the United States established. Liberty-loving men have always insisted that there could be no just government without the consent of the governed. This is diametrically opposed to the policy of a beastly order. The British Empire was exercising oppressive power over its American colonies when the stroke for liberty was made and gained.

The Revelator then describes another beast, which came up out of the earth, having two horns like a lamb, and which spake like a dragon. The word earth as here used symbolizes organized society. -The British Empire rose out of an organized condition of society. The dragon is a symbol of civil power. The horns of this beast are likened unto those of a lamb. The two horns symbolize a dual power. It is to be noted that these horns are like a lamb's. A lamb’s horns are just beginning to sprout; they are not very much in evidence*. This would seem to suggest that the power exercised by the British Empire would be exer-

cised in an apparently innocent way. A lamb is an inoffensive beastie. It is well known that She British are pastmasters at diplomacy. They Jare suave and exercise their power in a diplomatic manner. In other words, this “beast” has tremendous forces at work, silently exercising influence where few suspect it is active. The Re vela tor says that this “beast” spake as a dragon. A dragon symbolizes a civil power. The main purpose of Great Britain is to control the world financially and politically. But she is quietly and secretly using all the ecclesiastical power she can to accomplish this one purpose. As the horns of a lamb are scarcely discernible, sb does Britain exercise her power so adroitly that it is hardly discernible that she is attempting to control both from an ecclesiastical and a political viewpoint. When she speaks it is always as a dragon; i. e., as though strictly a political or civil power.

The beast that ascends out of the pit we designate as the third; and according to Revelation 13:15 this beast is given power by beast No. 2. It is also designated as an image of the beast

An image, of course, would be a likeness of the original beast. This image of the beast is made up of the combined elements embraced within-the League of Nations. Whatever may be said about Mr. Wilson’s effort at the Peace Conference, beyond all peradventure of doubt the Leagu? of Nations originated in the fertile brains of British diplomats and was born as an offspring of British diplomacy ;and the other nations of earth formed the League at the dictation of Great Britain, while she stood by as a little lamb, apparently inoffensive, yet with great power, and caused Mr. Wilson and other tools to proclaim loudly the virtues of a League of Nations, which League was hailed by the combined elements of ecclesiastisicm as “the political expression of God’s kingdom on earth”. ^“Like wise diplomats, Britain’s representatives were willing for Mr. Wilson to have all the outward honor and to be the first President of the League of Nations; but it will be noticed that in her lamblike exercise of power it was so arranged that Britain would have a majority of theVotes in that League of Nations.

The Revelator continues: “And he [the other beast, Great Britain] had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed”. In other words, Great Britain, in a lamblike manner, exercised her power to give life to the unholy alliance, the League of Nations—the combined elements of financiers, politicians, and unfaithful clergy— and in a beastly manner to cause all who would not conform to its dictates to be rendered hors . de combat—made useless, without ability to exercise power.

Diplomacy is another name for smart politics. Satan is the pastmaster at the political game. He is the god of this world. He has used the keenness of mind of British politicians to carry out his design and has followed his time-honored custom of deceiving the people to accomplish his end.

It is well known that during the war the British Empire maintained in the United States a large force of secret service men, not only working in the interest of Great Britain, but engineering the prosecution and punishment of any one who expressed views against the war. Its operations, however, were secret.

This coercive or beastly power was exercised not only in the United States, but in Canada and many other parts of the world; but through it all Great Britain stood with an innocent, lamblike face, her horns hidden, and claimed to be exercising all power, together with Mr. Wilson and others, to make the world “safe for democracy”.

All this power has been supported by ecclesi-asticism, Catholic and Protestant; and the beastly rule that has been carried on in the name and under the cloak of Christianity surely comes within the definition of the prophet Daniel as the abomination that makes desolate. It sets itself up in opposition to the kingdom of God; and while willing that the people should call upon the Lord with their mouths, yet with their hearts and hands and money they are required to serve the earthly power—saying in effect: ‘The earth is. ours and the fulness thereof. Let God keep His hands off— thereby attempting to cause and causing both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to worship (do homage to) the beast, arrogating to these earthly powers that. homage, devotion and obedience to which only the Lord Jehovah is justly and properly entitled. They cause the peoples of earth to receive the mark of the beast in their hands (to exercise their energies in behalf of the selfish and unrighteous systems) and in their foreheads—to give full assent to and to sympathize with the beastly order. Can any one doubt that this is the abomination spoken of by Daniel the prophet which makes desolate and which is continuing unto the very end!

Again referring to the Master's answer to the question concerning the proof of the end of the world, we note: “When ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not [to stand]" —in other words, when we see this beastly power exercised in the land that God has designated His land, then surely it is standing where it onght not to stand.

In connection with the law governing the jubilee Jehovah declared: “The land shall not be sold for a permanence unto the purchaser, for the land is mine**- When we remember that the Gentile times have ended and that since the spring of 1918 God's favor has particularly "ome to the Jews and that this return marked the beginning of the time for their restoration to the land, and since the land belongs to Jehovah, it follows that the beasts in question have no authority to exercise a controlling power.over the land of Palestine; and their man-made thing, the League of Nations (under the authority of which the British Empire holds a mandate over Palestine), is an abomination unto the Lord. This abomination, therefore, is standing where it ought not to stand. We are of the opinion that the British Government is not holding Palestine with a sincere desire to benefit the Jew, but for a selfish purpose which will come to naught.

Mark, then, the further corroborative evidence that we have reached the end of the world; viz., the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not to stand—“standing in the holy place”, the Holy Land, God’s own land;,and seeing Jerusalem “compassed with armieV*—the armies of the other beast; —let him who is able to read understand and know that we have reached the end of the world. Let them which are in Judea (the truly consecrated Christians in Christendom) flee to the kingdom, give their loyalty, their love, their support and devotion to the King of kings who is now present inaugurating His kingdom of righteousness.

The British Empire occupies a unique position. By reason of the covenant of the League of Nations she is given a mandate over Palestine and rules it In the eyes of many the purpose of this rule is to make it possible for the Jews to build a homeland. But Great Britain is not so much interested in the Jews that she would maintain a great army in this small space of territory. Her armies guard every avenue of entrance to Palestine. The evident reason is that the loss of Palestine now might lead to the loss of the Suez Canal, to the loss of Egypt, and to the loss of dominion in India.

The holding of Palestine is much more important to the British Empire than many people really think. The formation of the League of Nations was really for the purpose of aiding the British Empire in carrying out her schemes. It was an easy matter to inveigle the financiers of other nations into the formation of this League on the theory that such an association was and is necessary to make it possible for the financiers to collect their bonds issued and floated because of the war. Professional politicians of the lesser order fell ready victims to this scheme and joined hands with it because they know that money is power and that the financiers exercise the power. . It is reprehensible for the financiers and the politicians to engage in the formation of such a combine for a selfish purpose; but since these do not make a profession of following the Lord is could not be said that such a combination would be an abomination in God’s sight until something else took place—the support by ecclesiasticism.

Ecclesiastical leaders have stood as the teachers of Christianity. The commission of every Christian is to proclaim the message of Messiah's kingdom, which will Hess all the families of the earth. When the League of Nations was formed, the Federated Council of Churches not only hailed it as the greatest thing that had transpired since the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem, but designated it as “the political expression of the kingdom of God on earth”. In other words they said. ‘‘iVe have abandoned the idea of the fulfillment of the Lord's prayer; and now we willingly join hands with Big Business and professional politicians in the formation of a League of Nations which will dominate the earth, and which we will recognize as instead of Messiah’s kingdom". For this reason the whole arrangement becomes an abomination in the sight of God; and by forcibly taking possession of Palestine under any pretext, or through any of its branches, this manmade combination brings itself within the scope of the meaning of Daniel’s words.—Daniel 9:27.

We may yet expect great things to transpire in Palestine in the next few years, in which many of the greedy nations and selfish people will be involved and will combine against the Jew. But the Jew, as we will show in subsequent articles, is absolutely certain to possess Palestine ultimately as his homeland, to build it up and to live there in peace and happiness.

Advanced Studies in the Divine Plan of the Ages (oslttlas the* qa*rafi>)

The popularity of the Juvenile Bible Studies, among out numerous subscriber*, has led us to believe Advanced Studies for the adults would also be appreciated.—Editors

• 136. What dees the greatness of this mystery, so long kept secret, suggest respecting the work to follow its completion?

The plan will then cease to be a mystery, because there will be no further object in perpetuating its secrecy. The greatness of the mystery, so long kept secret, and hidden in promises, types and figures, and the wonderful grace bestowed on those called to fellowship in this mystery (Ephesians 3:9) suggest to us that the work to follow its completion, for which for six thousand years Jehovah has kept mankind in expectation and hope, must be an immense work, a grand work, worthy of such great preparations. What may we not expect in blessings upon the world when the veil of mystery is withdrawn and the showers of blessing descend! It is this for which the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now, waiting for the completion of this mystery — for the manifestation of the sons of God, the promised “seed”, in whom they shall all be blessed. — Bomans 8:19, 21, 22.

• 136. Upon what Scriptures is based the church’s hope of her Lord?3 second personal coming f

That, our Lord intended His disciples to Understand, that for some purpose, in some manner, and at some time, He would come again, is, we presume, admitted and believed by all familiar with the Scriptures. True, Jesus said: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the age” ’(Matthew 28:20); and by His spirit and by^His Word He has been with the church continually, guiding, directing, comforting and sustaining His saints, and cheering them in the midst of all their afflictions. But though the church has been blessedly conscious of the Lord’s knowledge of all her ways and of His constant care and love, yet she longs for His promised personal return; for when He said: “If I go, I will come again” (John 14:3), He certainly referred to a second personal coming.

• 137. What is the Scriptural proof that the outpouring of the holy spirit at Pentecost, or the destruction of Jerusalem, was not the fulfillment of Christ’s promised return?

Some think He referred to the descent of the holy spirit at Pentecost; others, to the destrue--tion of Jerusalem, etc.; but these apparently overlook the fact that in the last book of the Bible, written some sixty years after Pentecost, and twenty-six years after Jerusalem’s destruction, He that was dead and is alive speaks of the event as yet future, saying, “Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me”. And the inspired John replies, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus”.—Revelation 22:12, 20.                  .

• 138. How do the Scriptures contradict the popular thought that the conversion of sinners is a part of the . second coming of the Lord?

Quite a number think that when sinners are converted that forms a part of the coming of Christ, and that so He will continue coming until all the world is converted. Then, say they, He will have fully eome.

These evidently forget the testimony of the Scriptures on the subject, which declares the reverse of their expectation; that at the time of our Lord’s second coming the world will be far from converted to God; that “in the last days perilous times shall come, for men shall be lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:1-4); that "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived”.—Verse 13.

They forget the Master's special warning to His little flock—“Take heed to yourselves lest that day come upon you unawares, for as a snare shall it come on all them [not taking heed] that dwell on the face of the whole earth”. (Luke 21:34, 35) Again, we may rest assured that when it is said, “All kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him”, when they see Him coming (Revelation 1:7), no reference is made to the conversion of sinners. Do all men wail because of the conversion of sinners! On the contrary, if this passage refers, as almost all admit, to Christ's presence on earth, it teaches that all on earth will not love His appearing, as they certainly would do if all were converted.

CHRIST coins BEFORE CONVERSION OF WORLD AND REIGNS FOR PURPOSE OF THEIR CONVERSION

• 139. TFJtat is the claim of the post-millennialists regarding the time and conditions of the second advent?

Some expect an actual coming and presence of the Lord, but set the time of the event a long ♦way off, claiming that through the efforts of the church in its present condition the world must be converted, and thus the Millennial age be introduced. They claim that when the world has been converted, Satan bound, and the knowledge of the Lord caused to fill the whole earth, and when the nations learn war no more, then the work of the church in her present condition will be ended; and that when she has accomplished this great and difficult task, the Lord will come to wind up earthly affairs, reward believers and condemn sinners.

• 140. Do the Scriptures favor this view, or the opposite one, vis., that Christ must come before the conversion of the world?

Some scriptures, taken disconnectedly, seem to favor this view; but when God's Word and plan a>e viewed as a whole, these will all be found to favor the opposite view, viz., that Christ comes before the conversion of the world, and reigns for the purpose of converting the world; tljat the church is now being tried, and that the rgward promised the overcomers is that after being glorified they shall share with the Lord Jesus in that reign, which is God’s appointed means of blessing the world and causing the knowledge of the Lord to come to every creature. Such are the Lord’s special promises:

“To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne”. (Revelation 3:21) "And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” —Revelation 20:4,

GOSPEL MESSAGE TO SERVE MJRRKLY AS A WITNESS IN THIS AON

• 141. Quote one of the texts chiefly relied upon by post-millennialists, and show why this text does not support their claim.

There are two texts chiefly relied upon by those who claim that the Lord will not come until after the Millennium, to which we would here call attention. One is, "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come”. (Matthew 24:14) They claim this as having reference to the conversion of the world before the end of the gospel age. But witnessing to the world does not imply the conversion of the world. The text says nothing about how the testimony will be received. This witness has already been given. In 1861 the reports of the Bible societies showed that the gospel had been published in every language of earth, though not all of earth's millions* had received it. No, not one-half of the sixteen hundred millions living have ever heard the name of Jesus. Yet the condition of the text is fulfilled —the gospel has been preached in all the world for a witness—to every nation.

• 142. JFAai is the main abject of the gospel age?

The Apostle (Acts 15:14) tells that the main object of the gospel in the present age is “to take out a people” for Christ’s name—the overcoming church which, at His second advent, will be united to Him and receive His name. The witnessing to the world during this age is a secondary object.

• 143. What is the other text specially quoted by post-millennialists in support of their theory? What is the proper interpretation of this text?

The other text is, “Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool”. (Psalm 110:1) The vague, indefinite idea regarding this text seems to be that Christ sits on a material throne somewhere in the heavens until the work of subduing all things is accomplished for Him through the church, and that then He comes to reign. This is a misconception. The throne of God referred to is not a material one, but means His supreme authority and rulership; and the Lord Jesus has been exalted to a share in that rulership.

Paul declares: “God hath highly exalted him [Jesus] and given him a name above every name” He hath given Him authority above every other, next to the Father. If Christ sits upon a material throne until His enemies are made His footstool [all subdued], then, of course, He cannot come until all things are subdued. But if “right hand” in this text refers not to a fixed locality and bench, but as we claim, to power, authority, rulership, it follows that the text under consideration would in no wise conflict with the other scripture which teaches that He comes to “subdue all things unto himself" (Philippians 3:21), by virtue of the power vested in Him.

To illustrate: Emperor William was on the throne of Germany, we say, yet we do not refer to the royal bench, and, as a matter of fact, he seldom occupied it. When we say that he was on the throne, we mean that he ruled Germany. Kight hand signifies the chief place, position of excellence or favor, next to the chief ruler. Thus Prince Bismarck was exalted or seated at the right hand of power, by the German Emperor; and Joseph was at the right hand of Pharaoh in the kingdom of Egypt— not literally, but after the customary figure of speech. Jesus’ words to Caiaphas agree with this thought—“Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven”. (Matt. 26:64) He will be on the right hand when coming, and will remain on the right hand during the Millennial age, and forever.

• 144. TT'Atri is the object of the first and second advents, respectively, and how are they logically related to the divine plan?

A further examination of God’s revealed plans will give a broader view of the object of both first and second advents; and we should remember that both events stand related as parts of one plan. The specific work of the first advent was to redeem men; and that of the second is to restore, and bless, and liberate the redeemed. Having given His life a ransom fox ail, our Savior ascended to present that sacrifice to the Father, thus making reconciliation for man’s iniquity. He tarries and permits “the prince' of %his world” to continue the rule of evil, until after the selection of “the bride, the Lamb’s wife,” who, to be accounted worthy of such honsr, must overcome the influences of the present ovil world. Then the work of giving to the world of mankind the great blessings secured to them by His sacrifice will be due to commence, and He will come forth to bless all the families of the earth.

• 145. Could not the restoration and blessing of the world have immediately followed the giving of the ransom-price ?

True, the restoring and blessing could have commenced at once, when the ransom-price was provided by the Redeemer, and then the coming of Messiah would have been but one event; the reign and blessing beginning at once, as the apostles at first expected. (Acts 1:6) But God had provided “some better thing for us”— the Christian church (Hebrews 11:40); hence it is in our interest that the reign of Christ is separated from the sufferings of the Head by these nineteen centuries.

• 146. What is the object of the long period intervening between the first and second advents? Had not Jehovah purposed the selection of the church, at what time would the first advent have occurred?

This period between the first and second advents, between the ransom provided for all and the blessing of all, is for the trial and selection of the church, the body of Christ. Otherwise there would have been only the 0^ advent, and the work which will be done durin_o the period of His second presence, in the Mil- ■ lennium, would have followed the resurrection of Jesus. Or, instead of saying that the work of the second advent would have followed at once the work of the first, let us say rather that had Jehovah not purposed the selection of the “little flock", “the body of Christ,” the first advent would not have taken place when it did, but would have’ occurred at the time of the second advent, and there would have been but the one. For God has evidently designed the permission of evil.for six thousand years, as well as that the cleansing and restitution of all, shall be accomplished during the seventh tho£..’ sand.

Thus seen, the coming of Jesus, as the sacrifice and ransom for sinners, was just long enough in advance of the blessing and restoring time to allow for the selection of His “little flock” of “joint-heirs”. This will account to some for the apparent delay on God’s part, in giving the blessings promised, and provided for, in the ransom. The blessings will come in due time, as at first planned, though, for a glorious purpose, the price was provided longer beforehand than men would have expected.

• 1. What does "restitution” {Acts 3:19-21) mean#

Answer: The bringing back of what was lost or taken away.

• 2. What have tee learned was lost by Adam’s disobedience#

Answer. Perfect life, perfect food, a perfectly beautiful home and power, over all the lower animals. See Genesis 1: 31: 2:8, 9; 1:26.

• 3. If God is to bring/ back all that teas lost {Acts 3:19-21) then what will happen to Adam and all the human race#

. Answer; They must be awakened from their sleep in death.

• 4. If the perfect food and the beazitiful plants, trees and flowers in the Garden of Eden were taken from Adam, will they also be restored#

Answer: Yes; it will be "the restitution of oil things”. See Acta 3:19 - 21.

. ^{r r}f God restores to mankind the perfect life a..^ .ne perfect food lost by disobedience, how long, if obedient, would man live#

Answer: He would live forever.

6. Does the Bible say there would come a i time when spine of the living ones would not have to go “down to the pit”; that is, would not have to die#

Answer: Yes. See Job 33: 24.

i 7. What will be necessary for them to do so as not to go "down to the pit#’?

Answer: To find “a ransom”. Job 33: 24, last part.

8. Did Jesus give "himself a ransom for all”# Ansnet: Yes. See 1 Timothy 2:5, 6.

. 9. What does it mean then, "I have found a ransom^#

Answer'?'! have found that Jesus gave Himself a ransom for me; and I believe in Him and accept Him as my Savior and Redeemer.

• 10. What is said about this matter in Hosea 13:14#   \  \

Answer:    will ransom them [bring them back]

from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death.” Consequently the living ones, when the due time comes, will not have to go into death.

• 11. Besides being delivered from going into “the pit”, the grave, what else will happen to those who find a ransom—accept Jesus—in that day#

Answer: See Job 33 : 24, 25.

• 12. If their flesh becomes "fresher than a child’s'' and “they return to the days of their youth," would that be "restitution” for the living ones#

Answer: Yes; for life in its fullness is what was lost in Eden.

• 13. Are we near the time when some of the dead will be raised to life, and for that reason it will no longer be necessary for the living ones to die#

Answer: Yes; very near; for it is to begin when "Michael [Jesus] stands up” (Daniel 12:1,3), takes His power and begins His reign. See Revelation 11:17,18.

• 14. How do we know that this time is very near at hand?

Answer: Because we are in the midst of "the great time of trouble” (Daniel 12:1), and immediately following it shall "many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth awake”. See Daniel 12:1, 2.

THE ANCIENT WAYS

Do we moan the passing of the ancient ways, Aad shake our heads and speak of “Good Old TUnee”?

Weil, God has granted us a taste of oMea days: 3arage win, end lust, and loot, ud brutal eritnes.

We bow our beads before the holy shrines.

View with awe some vast cathedral's lefty height: We thrill with ecstasy at sound of solemn ralmes. And say, Such bounty could only spring fre« Right, But alas! When, unadorned, the Truth appears, We see the multitudes who toiled the while, Throughout unnumbered, cruel, hopeless yean. To cement with sweat and blood that mighty pile.

When we case on yon old historic castle. We conjure scenes of Its departed glory: Of love and laughter, aauslc. wioev and wassail: Such things as are embalmed in song and story. We forget the dark background, the crimson stains,.

The foal, dank, reeking dungeons far below, Where human beings rotted alive in chains. Or, witless, howled like wild beasts in their woe. Behold the wretched Undo doomed, by their birth. To life-long labor for the manor's lord I And, while he spent his days In idle mirth. They bowed to what they thought the will of God.

For so taught lying priests the Ignorant herd. To kiss the foot that stamped them in the mire: Serve hateful tyrants according to their word. Or become asbestos fuel for hell-flre.

Thus was Jehovah mocked. His Name blasphemed, While wolves disguised as sheep devoured the dock; And He whose precious blood mankind redeemed Was not revealed as hope’s founds tian Rock.

Nay, Earth's glorious Dey, blessed, happy time.

Is not recorded yet on history’s page: But. lust ahead, the prophet’s theme sublime. Our eager eyes behold the Golden Age.

Josiah H. Moffatt

’       .           *bo thtct t&fngs appeal to yottf Unending liumonlift

perpetual health; (acting and satisfying political adjustments; comprehensive economic arrangements; no more fear of the landlord, the doctor, the shen> iff, the employer, of evil men and angels, of vicious animals, of dependent old age; no more blindness, lameness, deafness, dumbness; no more bald heads, glass eyes, false teeth, or wooden legs; no more sickness, disease, or pesti> lence; no more ignorance or superstition; no more sorrow; no more tears!

Va, mp art not triflingt these things and more are ab> solutely sure, because promised by the Vord of tjod. The world has already ended, in the Bible and only proper sense of that term; and the antitypical Jubilee, earth’r times of restitution, its springtime, begins to couqt in 1996. '"IMtn Aattime corner, all the above blessings will not come instantaneously, but will come speedily on those who live through (he nerd five or six years of trouble. Suppose nine of every ton people now living on earth should die of famine, pestilence, customary disease,and violence during the next five years (surely a much too CTrfreme estimate), there would still be liv* ind 160,000,000 people to be the first human beneficiaries of the promise of Jesuft ’Whosoever liveth and believeth on me,

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