— —..........

Contents of the Golden Age

Political—Domestic and Foreign

Cuxbent Events....................

Flagrant Profiteers

Miners Here and Abroad

Few Labor Troubles tn America

Queensland Housing Situation

Chastising the Press

Educational Items

Big Business Notes

Unique Coal Storage Plan...... . .

Absorbing the Water Powers.......  ......

Muscle Shoals Project...........’

Prying the Banks Loose . . . . . ..........

Permanent Investments ............  .. .. ..

Valuation of Railroads

New England’s Problem

Courts and Mechanics

The-Harrison Outrages........ . .. ....... . 2t)2

PubBc Ownership in Detroit

Who Will Be President ?

Immigration Problems, Taxes ana-E-..........

War—the One Big Wttsle ....

Roman Catholic Patriotism

Free the PoiiHeal Prisoners

Pay-Roll and Bank Bandits

Travel and Miscellany

Something about Bells

Ring Out, Wild Bells (Poem)

West Texas Saito Stobm»

Doodlb-Buo and Hobbed Toad Detartment

Religion and Philosophy

A Study or the Theoet or Evolution (Part I)

Cabtoon ; "What They Would Do to Chbist Todat"

Reliqion at the Capital

Studies tn “The Hasp or God"

Published every other Wednesday at 18 Coneord Street, Brooklyn, N. X., U. 8. A, by WOODWORTH, HUDGINGS A MARTIN

Oopartnon and Proprietor! Addrau: id Concord Street, Brooklyn. If. T., U. 8. a CLAXTON J. WOODWORTH . . . Editor ROBERT J. MARTIN . Buelnana Manager C. E. STEWART.... Assistant Bdttee WM. F. HOGGINGS . . Sec’y and Tress. Xrva cksts a Corr—*1.00 a Ybab maxs rbmittabcbs to th* GOLDIX igi Foaaian Omcas: BrUith.....34 Craves Terrace, Lancaster Gate, London W. 3

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En.' .ci -.cor I । — lu.. rat .it Breokiyu. X. V.. uuder rb*» A.-t of Mitr.-U 3, 1ST"

Golden Age

Brooklyn. N. T.» Wednesday, January 2, 1924

Events

sion that the Commercial and Financial Chrono ide should run an errata item in their next issue to take care of this; but we do not think that they will do it

Miners Here and Abroad

CONDITIONS in the soft-coal fields of America are always unsatisfactory for the miners. A survey of the year 1921 shows that they averaged to receive but 149 days* work during the year. This is a shade less than half time. As a natural consequence the earnings of the men, while they look large when stated in the financial papers in terms of so much per day, are only half what they appear. Fifty percent of the miners made less than $1,400 per year; forty percent received from $1,400 to $1,900 per year; the remaining ten percent are chiefly contractors, who are required to pay loaders and helpers out of the sums they receive.

Hereafter it is liable to be hard sledding for the United Mine Workers of America and other labor organizations if they can be proven guilty of conspiracy in restraint of interstate trade. Chief Justice Taft of the Supreme Court has, in effect, repealed the exemption from prosecution of unions granted under the Clayton act This puts labor unions on the same basis as any corporation, the same as in England.

At a coal mine in the southern part of Russia (at Donetz Basin in the Ukraine) there is a group of thirty-two American coal miners who have emigrated from the United States to Russia. They admit that at first they were sorry they had made the change, because there was such a shortage of food; but they say that they are now living as well as they did in America, have as comfortable homes and as good food. Their genera] opinion of the Russian people is that they are extremely lazy, working only when they must.

The condition of miners in Britain is deplorable; their present minimum wage is twenty percent above the prewar wage, while their living expense is sixty-nine percent above the prewar figures. Out of £100 available for wages and profits in the British coal-mining industry, £83 goes for wages and £17 for profits. The miners have been making a recent attempt to change this proportion to one more in their favor, but without success.

Getting Fuel to the People

THE United States coal commission, after a thorough study of the mining situation, lias presented a report of what everybody in America knows to be facts; namely, that coal is next to bread as an essential; that the anthracite coal of the country is in the hands of a conscienceless monopoly, from whom this control should be taken and placed in the hands of the Government; that jobbers and wholesalers should be licensed; that coal freight rates should be overhauled; that excessive royalties and profits should be taxed out of existence, and that the United Mine Workers of America should be recognized. The report also says that most of the mining camps and towns are dreary and depressing places in which to live.

Governor Charles W. Bryan of Nebraska has had the courage to show the people of his state just how the American people are being held up and robbed by the fuel companies. Coal was selling at retail throughout Nebraska at $12 to $14 per ton. The Governor bought coal in Illinois and Colorado, shipped it into the state, and sold it at $4 per ton below the current retail price, making a handsome profit besides, which was turned over to the public treasury.

What has been going on in Nebraska has been going on in every state in the union. What Governor Bryan has done in opening municipal coal-yards can be done by other governors. But how many of them will do what it is obviously their plain duty to do!

Governor Bryan says that these coal ventures financed themselves; that no capital was required to start them or to continue them; that the public paid in cash for their coal, and in advance for future delivery, and were glad to do it to avoid being robbed by the usual method of purchase.                               -

tew Labor Troubles in America

THERE have been very few labor troubles in the United States during the past year. The reason is that the workers have received enough wages to live on. The financiers seem to have discovered suddenly that workers must live and that they have a desire to live with reasonable comfort. Just how long this really intelligent idea will linger in the minds of the money-mad is a question; but it has kept America calm for a year, and that is saying much in these days.

There is, however, a kind of labor trouble that is getting more and more pronounced, and that is the obtaining of an adequate supply of capable and experienced domestic help. Most girls today avoid learning housework; at least they do not think well of the idea of working in the home of any other woman, no matter how much she is willing to pay. As a consequence, myriads of women are doing their own work who never expected to do it.

But if a woman is in good health there is no occupation that is more diversified and congenial than housework. And, again, there are many housewives that lack the physical and spiritual strength to wait upon a modern housemaid ; so they do their own work by preference.

Patrolmen in New York city now receive $2,100 per year salary and are agitating for an increase to $2,500, on the ground that the city which they protect by their services is the wealthiest in the world and should pay adequately for the service rendered. Not long ago $3,000,000,000 in cash were transferred from one location to another in New York city, under police protection, and without a hitch.

The city shelters fifty-four percent of all the gold in the country; many of the securities are kept there; the most valuable imports and exports pass through that port; the thieves and gunmen make it a dangerous place for a police official. All these are arguments that are used in favor of granting the request.

Women and Child Workers

IN NEW YORK city progress is being made in the organization of office workers into a union. At the time of the last census the number of women office workers in New York was 263,588, of whom 103,721 were stenographers.

Women workers are becoming more and more a factor everywhere. Ten states of the Union limit them to eight hours work per day, fifteen states to nine hours, eighteen states to ten hours, six states have various limits above ten hours and up to twelve hours, or else have no laws on the subject Night work is prohibited in fifteen states. All but nine states have laws granting pensions to needy mothers; the sums paid range from $9 to $25 for one child, per month.

In the few months that have elapsed since the Supreme Court nullified the Keating child labor law there has been an increase of thirty-eight percent in the number of children employed in various industries in the United States. This increase in child labor has been largest in the New England states, Waterbury, Connecticut, occupying the first place and the worst place on the list. The increase in child labor is higher in cities where the wages of the parents are low.

Working for the Public

WORKING for the public receives a curious kind of reward. The other day the editor of a liberal magazine, one which is always friendly to the workers, went out for a walk in the early morning. It was chilly, and he put on a light overcoat.

Two workers that followed him down the street wore no overcoats; for they were accustomed to outdoor work. But they could not forbear the opportunity to berate the one who did, and who, unknown to them, was trying to help equalize their burdens.

On the way back another worker, gang foreman of a squad of paving workers, called attention to the same coat, accompanied by profanity and abuse toward the wearer. This illustrates very well the present condition of the world, a condition in which every man’s hand is against his neighbor.

Probably none of our labor contemporaries will comment on this paragraph, but it is the truth. It shows that some workers have not the slightest conception of justice, and that these men make it harder for all the rest

The hasty are inclined to say: "Why try to do anything for any of them! They are all alike ungrateful” But that would not be the truth, and it would not change the justice of their cause even if it were.

Queensland Housing Situation ~~

THE workers of Queensland, Australia, are in control of the government of that province, and have taken some remarkable steps forward in the solution of the housing problem. Any worker may have the government build a home for him, which the government will lease to him for a term of twenty-five years.

The price charged is five percent more than the cost of construction. The purchaser must pay down five percent, and the remainder is payable in monthly installments which are less than the rent would be. At the expiration of the twenty-five years the home becomes the property of the worker. He has paid five percent more than its cost, plus five percent interest on the deferred payments.

Chastising the Press

THE New York papers have done many wicked things to the cause of the workers by the ingenious lies they have circulated over the country; but the pressmen squared the account nicely during the last week in September by virtually tying up every newspaper in New York city and thus teaching the people how easily, how very easily, they could get along without what they might have been supposed to consider a daily necessity.

The strike of the pressmen was finally settled, but not until the great New York dailies had, with their combined energies, issued an eightpage newspaper bearing the names of all the principal papers in the city on the title page, and not having so much dignity or news value as a first-class weekly newspaper published in some country town.

How have the mighty fallen! We incline to think that the Lord’s hand is back of this enforced humbling of this mighty instrumentality for maintaining things as they are instead of as they ought to be.

Public and Private Spankings

FROM the spanking of these great newspapers we turn with interest to read of another spanking. This time it is six little boys that get it They had been out on the night of Hallowe’en, stealing radiator caps from automobiles. They were caught and led before the mayor of Lodi, New Jersey; and that worthy officer sentenced them to be spanked by their parents publicly in the city hall on a given date, all of which was no doubt to their profit and possibly to the enjoyment of some of their companions.

For strange as it is, many human beings enjoy seeing other human beings in trouble. The newspapers are filled with stories of people who are in trouble; and the excuse they make for publishing such stories is that this is what the people want. Some Christians find solid comfort when they know that other Christians are finding it hard to walk in the narrow way. Some judges enjoy sending men to prison, and some boys enjoy seeing other boys get whipped.

Two little boys, George and Fred, were brothers of about the same age. George committed some breach of the peace and was chastised. When he came forth to the light of day Fred enjoyed it heartily, asking in tones of mockery, “George, did you fee-ee-el itf" The mother of the two boys then took Fred in, and gave him the same dose. Whoever laughed at those six little urchins for being spanked in public at the city hall of Lodi, we hope that they get spanked themselves before the year is over.

Educational Items

ONE of the New York PubHc Schools, Number 39 in the Bronx, has adopted a new method of instruction. There is a geography room, with a geography teacher, where a boy or a girl may go and study geography all day, if the pupil wishes.

There is a composition room, with a composition teacher, where the pupil may go and write compositions all day. Similarly there is a room for history, one for arithmetic, one for English, and one for penmanship. The pupils may leave one room and go to another when they please.

Curiously enough, the pupils seem to make better progress all around than under the old method; and 48 out of the 50 pupils declare that they like the new system better than the old. This system was first tried out in Dalton, Mass., but is now being tried in a number of schools in England and in several in this country. The results are being closely watched.

Big Business Notes              '

ONCE in a while, when placed in a desperate corner, the pot will call the kettle black.

The Government, convinced that the New York

Coffee and Sugar Exchange is at the bottom of many of the sugar scandals, whereby the people of America have been compelled to pay exorbitant prices for this necessity, sued to prevent the Exchange from making sugar quotations. In its answer the Exchange, after telling of all its good works on behalf of its fellow men, remarked in the language of its lawyer:

“The Exchange, by affording a market for future transactions, under regulations which prevent fraud and unfair dealings, fulfils a great economic function, facilitating the marketing of the sugar crop, keeping the producing and consuming public advised of the trend of world opinion with respect to prices, and thereby preventing the control of prices by a few great refineries, which with their vast capital might otherwise be able largely to dominate prices, as they notoriously have done in the past.”

This assurance that the Sugar Exchange is all that stands between the public and the American Sugar Refining Company makes one wonder where the Exchange was when the last two raw deals were pulled off. The first one is only two years away, and this last one is still with us. It pays to hire a good lawyer; for that paragraph as it stands is a gem.

As goes steel so goes the country; and the Steel Trust has just declared an extra dividend. Mr. Charles M. Schwab of the Bethlehem Steel Company is optimistic, saying, “I think it will make little difference in America how affairs go in Europe. We are a self-supporting, selfcontained and independent people. We need no help to realize our full destiny.”

Unique Coal Storage flan

OUR present scheme of civilization calls for immense quantities of fuel. Most manufacturing plants require large supplies of coaL Much of the freight carried by rail and water is coat Hitherto most manufacturing establishments have contented themselves with carrying small stocks and replenishing these only as needed. This has made it hard for the miners, because the moment industrial conditions be-, came depressed the mines were without orders for their product.

One of the principal reasons why manufacturers have hesitated to lay in large stocks of coal is that so many disastrous fires start in coal piles, due to spontaneous combustion. Experience has shown that there are fewer such fires when loads are dropped on the pile in checker-board fashion rather than all on one apex. The reason for this is that by the latter method of piling there are numerous air spaces about the base of the pile. These air spaces become smothered, and gases form which are combustible.

At Philo, Ohio, the Ohio Power Company has solved the problem of how to keep a large stock of coal on hand. It secured control of a section of one of the many canals built by the state of Ohio and now disused. This section, a mile and a quarter long, has been dredged to a depth of thirty feet and is being concreted. Into this great bin enormous quantities will be placed and kept there under water.

In coal thus stored not only is there no waste, but experiments show that the value of the coal for steam purposes is actually increased. Where coal is stored in piles exposed to the air, there is considerable loss as a result of heavy rains washing the finer particles away, and a still greater loss due to the gases of the coal passing off into the air.

Contrary to all expectations, there has been such a vast increase in petroleum production within the past two years as to cause a surplus of oil, with a consequent reduction of price. It is expected that present low prices will continue until far into 1924; and that then prices will go up and stay up unless new fields, not now located, suddenly produce another great flood of oil such as has come from California and Texas in the recent past

With almost every family owning an automobile, and many families owning several of them, it was supposed two years ago that the peak of oil production had been passed, and that sure markets at a large price awaited every new gusher; but such has not been the case.

Absorbing the Water Powers

ONE who uses the railways much, or who travels widely by automobile, can hardly fail to notice how the valuable water power sites are being rapidly absorbed. In the United States this absorption is all in the hands of the Wall Street monarchy; in Canada it is all in the hands of the people.

The province of Ontario now has twenty water powers and thirty hydraulic generating Slants. The Hydro-Electric Commission, as it i called, is supplying electric light and power to 350 Canadian cities and towns, these comprising practically all the municipalities in the province.

In its mammoth plant at Queenstown, below Niagara Falls, it gets advantage of the full height of Niagara’s falls and rapids, every cubic foot of water used earning nearly twice as much revenue as any of the privately owned plants in the vicinity.

In the United States such an example of common sense and efficiency would not be tolerated for an instant The entire press would be thundering against it constantly. Just now America is helpless¹ in the hands of a Wall Street fuel conspiracy, and is waiting to be tied hand and foot just as soon as the same interests can get full control of the water power sites.

If it were not for the coming of the I/ord's kingdom soon, the American people would not stand any chance. Their newspapers are their worst enemies. They could help to curb the money masters and give the people a chance, if they would; but the money masters own the papers, and use them against the very ones who look to them for instruction and advice.

Even in Austria, which Americans are accustomed to look down upon, the new government, deprived of coal, turned to water power as a substitute, and is today supplying the larger cities with light and power. The importation of foodstuffs has been reduced by one-half; important reforms in agriculture have taken place; cooperation has been introduced; water power has proven a boon to the people.

Muscle Shoals Project

AMERICA does have one great public water power project. During the war search was made for its most ideal water power site, so that there might be manufactured from the air, by water power, the immense quantities of nitric acid which are used in the creation of high explosives. This same acid is one of the most important ingredients of modern fertilizers.

The place selected as the site for the manufacture of this nitric arid is, next to Niagara River, the best site on the continent It is at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where the Tennessee River flows through a canyon of solid limestone in which there is a fall of 134 feet in 35 miles.

At the lower end of the canyon the United States is building a dam which when completed will be the largest monolithic structure in existence It is 121 feet high, 4,426 feet long, 160 feet wide at the bottom, with a roadway 46 feet wide at the top. When completed and in full operation it will develop 624,000 electric horsepower, or about one and one-half times the total horsepower used in the city of Detroit.

If the United States had not been at war, the fifty multi-millionaire families that control the coal industry of the United States would have fought the Muscle Shoals project tooth and nail; and as soon as the war was over they did try to kill it, but the inherent virtues of the ■ site are so great that Congress insisted that the work must go on. The War Department tried to sell it to some of the great interests, but none of them would bid.

Henry Ford's Proposition

TOREN Henry Ford offered to lease the plant for a hundred years, to manufacture a complete odorless fertilizer, ready for the farmer to use, and to sell it to the farmer direct at cost (plus eight percent, to take care-of maintenance and depreciation charges); and at the end of the hundred years the plant was to revert to the government.

Immediately the coal and fertilizer interests that had wanted the plant junked, so that the people could not profit either by cheap power or cheap fertilizers, became excited; and the result has been what Senator Ladd of North Dakota characterized as “the greatest fight on the floors of Congress between special interests and the public welfare.”

Mr. Ford has not yet obtained control of the plant; but if he will operate it as he promises to do, in the interest of all the people, he ought surely to be given the chance. Why not make him president, and give him a chance to do some other things along the same line! Henry does not like the Jews, and he does not like the Bible Students. No man can be right in everything, but his heart is in the right place.

Envy Among Stock-Jobbers

WALL STREET stock-jobbers, who have trimmed millions of Americans of their ‘=urplus dollars, are casting envious glances at the success which Philadelphia is making along the same lines. “While New York grafters are at work Philadelphians should keep out,” seems to be the motto.

The Magazine of Wall Street is out with a special article in which it roasts Philadelphia for harboring about a dozen shady stock concerns, which it names. It wants us to circulate the good news, probably in the hope that New York’s past, recent and present sins in this direction will be overlooked.

But why should we quote a New Yorker’s libel of “Philadelphia, the source from which springeth every conceivable kind of stock-selling scheme from speculations to downright swindles,” when there are hosts of Philadelphians who could honestly and would gladly just cross out the word “Philadelphia” in the libel and insert "New York” and feel that they were only doing their duty!

Prying the Banks Loose

SENATOR Magnus Johnson, of Minnesota, would like to have the management of the Federal Reserve Board taken out of the hands of the bankers and put into the hands of anybody else that is honest and just, if such persons can be found.

Senator Johnson is quite correct; it is out of all reason to expect the great financial interests to operate the most important institution of the country for the benefit of any other class than its own dear self. But Senator Johnson has about as much chance of getting that prize of all prizes away from those financiers as we have.

Come to think of it, unless Magnus is looking for and working for a place in the Lord’s kingdom, he does not stand so good a chance as wd do; for that is the only thing that will ever make them let go.

We shudder to think of the legal verbiage that would be let loose if an angry public should even seem to succeed in prying out of their hands the fat wallet wherein rests the public’s wealth. How they would yell, “Stop thief!” It would be like a kidnapper crying out against a mother that had taken her own child from him.

Permanent Investments

ONLY eight percent of American products are used abroad, and people who are worrying about America’s foreign market are wasting their nervous energy. When the newspapers contain columns and columns about European business conditions, the crux of the matter lies not so much in the desire for a restoration of markets as it does in the desire for the recovery of hard cash loaned during the war.

But that cash will mostly stay where it is; it has been permanently invested. There are two kinds of permanent investments, those that pay and those that cannot be made to pay; and Uncle Sam’s investments in Europe, aside from Britain, are of the latter variety.

Of course the European situation does affect the whole country somewhat, and especially affects the producers of tobacco, copper, cotton, wheat, and pork, these being among the principal American exports in point of quantity and value. The fanners are the principal sufferers.

Valuation of Railroads

IN RESPONSE to the demand of the people that they be not left helpless in the hands of the railroads, to be plucked too frequently and too thoroughly, and with the hope of sometime inaugurating a real government ownership of the roads, to take the place of the farce carried out during the war, the Interstate Commerce Commission, in obedience to the wishes of Congress, has completed a valuation of all the railroads in the country.

The first result is a threat by the New York Trust Company that “there are more than two hundred Class I railroads in the country, the majority of which will seek judicial opinion on the subject This in itself is indicative of the legal and social intricacies with which the whole problem of railroad valuation is surrounded.”

It is as if to say to the rest of the people of the United States: "Here is a property, for which you gave the franchises, and for which you have paid the full value over and over again, but which now belongs to us bankers and to our heirs and assigns forever; and it is so immensely valuable that you could not possibly have the intelligence to even estimate how much it is actually worth.”

Railroad Centennial

MERICAN railroads are planning for a centennial in 1928. It was one hundred years previous to that time that Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, Maryland, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, drove the first spike in what is now the 5,154-mile Baltimore and Ohio railway system.

The total American trackage, aside from switches and terminal lines, is now 376,992 miles. The freight cars, stretched out in a single line, would belt the earth at the equator and go part way around again. The engines end to end would reach almost from New York to Chicago; the passenger cars a like distance.

From the operating viewpoint Chicago has finally come to be the acknowledged center of railway activities in America, and much of our information as to what is going on in railway circles comes out with a Chicago date line attached.

Now we have data from the Association of Railway Electrical Engineers there that in the near future they expect to have it so that persons traveling by rail can maintain uninterrupted telephone service with their homes or businesses, no matter where the train is or what may be its speed.

It is forecasted that this use of radio will be of immense value, not only to passengers but to railway operators. In the event of a delay or an accident of any kind full information can be lodged immediately with the controlling offices.

New England'• Problem .

VER since the Morgan-Mellon crowd drained the life-blood of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, New England railways have been in a bad way. They are doing an immense business, with not a reason in the world for its not being a profitable business except that bankers have robbed the system; and it is calculated that at least $76,000,000 of water must be drained out of the New Haven stock before real progress can be made.

In desperation and in anger at the dirty car:-, the delays and the slovenly service, the Governors of the New England States have met and proposed to meet the pressing financial obligations of the hard-pressed New England roads i f they would consolidate into a single system, squeeze the water out of their stocks, now misnamed “bonds,” raise new cash to the extent of $15,000,000 by selling some actual stock; and finally, and most important of all, they have invited the present managers to step down and out, as a partial reward for their mismanagement, while they, the Governors, get back their money, which they feel sure they could do in ten years.                     *

The Governors have made a sensible proposition, but it is one which the banks will never accept The banks will accept the people's money to help out in the emergency confronting these roads; but as for letting the people know where, when, and how it is to be spent, and for their seeing to it that it is all paid back at the earliest moment, Nix. That is not good banking ; and, besides, it would set a bad precedent

Steps are being slowly taken by the Government toward consolidation of the unprofitable American roads with the profitable ones; and this is right. It is quite proper that sections of the country where traffic is light should have adequate service, and that the richer sections should do somewhat to help.

At present, if any railroad earns in excess of six percent on the value of its individual property, one-half of the excess goes into a transportation fund which is expended by the Interstate Commerce Commission in the interest of transportation as a whole. The other half is retained by the railroad showing the excess earnings.

Courts and Mechanic!

COURT injunctions cannot make or unmake mechanics; and the railways are still worrying over their shop troubles, even though they do have the courts with them. The Lehigh Valley and the Delaware and Hudson have finally given up the fight, and after almost a year and a half the old men have returned to work.

The Bureau of Locomotive Inspection of the Interstate Commerce Commission has been making it pretty hard sledding for what are called the "hard-boiled'* railroads, pointing out in its reports instance after instance where lives have been lost and property has been destroyed because the repairs have not, since the strike, been made so well as they were made before.

Boiler fines have been hastily put in place with only friction to hold them, whereas they should always be prossered (enlarged), and patches have been put in place which show that the seams were not properly welded. It stands to reason that inexperienced men cannot make difficult and heavy repairs as well as men who have done such work for years.

In one of the instances last mentioned, locomotive 409 of the New York, New Haven and

Hartford blew up while crossing a bridge at Walpole, Mass. The boiler soared a hundred feet into the air and three hundred feet horizontally, killing the engineer and injuring the fireman. Curiously enough, the wheels of the locomotive remained on the track, as did all the passenger coaches attached; and the train coasted five hundred feet after the boiler of its locomotive had parted company with its frame.

The 60,000 striking shopment of the Pennsylvania Railroad have brought suit against that system for $15,000,000 for their failure to abide by the rules of the United States Railroad Labor Board. Our guess is that after this case has gone through all the courts the men will be lucky if they get any amount over and above fifteen cents. What is your guess f

But it will embarrass the Government to have to declare that a law which is binding upon the men is not binding upon the masters, and it will be convenient for many people if this case is tabled or pigeon-holed; and that may be the way out. Anyway, the men will never get the $15,000,000.

Persons who desire to become employes of the Union Pacific railway shops are obliged to sign application papers which compel them to join the company’s own union and to submit to a checkoff of union dues for three months in advance. The application provides for implicit obedience to such working conditions and wages as may be arranged by this imaginary union; and it also provides that if the employ^ joins any other real union his application for employment becomes his resignation, to be accepted ox not when and as the railway chooses.

The Harrison Outrages               .

THIS cause of the workers makes slow prog

ress toward the light In the month of January, 1923, a railroad with headquarters in Harrison, Arkansas, insolvent and hampered by shopmen’s strikes, threatened to quit operation after suffering from wrecks and burned bridges.

A mob gathered and hanged E. C. Gregor, charging him with burning a bridge. Others were whipped and driven out of town. Two were sent to prison, and are still there. All the sufferers protested their complete innocence.

Now the files of the Bureau of Locomotive Inspection at Washington show that the en« gines were in such condition that they could hardly fail to start fires; and it is the belief of those who have given the matter careful study that every one of the sufferers was innocent, and that the fires were due to extreme dryness of trestle timbers, rank growth of dry weeds and grasses, and the imperfect condition of the locomotive ash-pans.

Efforts are being made to get the Governor of Arkansas to release the innocent men who are still in prison, but nothing can atone for the murder of Gregor or the many other injustices done by the mob.

Public Ownership in Detroit

WITH all due respect to the Wall Street Journal and other like-minded newspapers which have sought in vain to discredit it, the city of Detroit is making a great success of its municipally owned street-car system. It bought the system in 1922 for $19,000,000.

In the year in which the system has been in its possession the wages of the men have been raised, seventy miles of new track have been laid, the service has been vastly improved, $4,000,000 were set aside as a sinking fund, $1,200,000 were set aside as payment on the original purchase price, and after taxes and paving charges were deducted there was left a profit of $1,000,000. The fare has been five cents, with one cent extra for transfers; but lines have purposely been so arranged as to eliminate all transfers possible.

It will now be in order for the press of the country either to keep silent about this victory for the people, or else to try to find some flaw in a method which works perfectly in England in scores of cities, and could be made to work thus here, with infinite advantage to the people, if it were not for the newspapers which work for and are controlled by the great monied interests. By any method of figuring which even the Wall Street Journal can devise, the municipal administration of the street railways of Detroit has been a huge success.

Who Will Be President?

AMERICANS are beginning to wonder who will be their next President. Many of our readers are not especially interested in this subject; for they believe the Lord’s kingdom is at the doors and will be a visible reality in the earth some time during the term of the next presidential administration. But we have many readers of all kinds; and even one who holds the above views should have some interest in the personality of the man who will be on the job of trying to govern 110,000,000 people at the time when earth's new King takes over the government of the world.

The death of President Harding has made President Coolidge the most probable Republican candidate. The interests that put Mr. Harding to the fore for the presidency, overlooking the wishes of millions of Americans for a progressive like Senator LaFollette, Senator Hiram Johnson or Governor Pinchot, can probably do about as they wish; and it seems quite unlikely to us that any progressive Republican can be nominated.                 *

The press and the politicians will do a large amount of preliminary surface boosting of the progressives; but when the Old Guard gets word from the corner of Broad and Wall Streets what to do, it will probably be as obedient as ever. The friends of President Cook, idge, and they are many at this writing, are hoping that he may bring about a reduction of railroad rates, or do some other thing in behalf of the people, in the short time before March 4th, which will make him seem acceptable to the progressives.

Every successful politician has some financial backer; and it is understood that Mr. Coolidge’s backer until now has been Mr. F. W. Stearns, owner of a Boston department store.

Senator Robert M. LaFollette, of Wisconsin, is the gifted, courageous and progressive leader that would be our choice among the Republicans. At sixty-seven years of age Mr. LaFollette is still a poor man, but has a record of integrity, industry, zeal, ability and faithful devotion to the people unequaled by any other man in public life in America today.

At present he virtually controls the balance of power in both houses of Congress, and has risen to this high position in the face of nationwide, persistent, malicious abuse by almost all the great newspapers of the ^ountry.

He would make a wonderful President. But the Old Guard would by no means ever let "Battling Bob" LaFollette have any more power than he now has. From their point of view he has too much power already. He is always pre-

Beating facts, facts, and more facts that make him a foe to be dreaded.

Democratic Candidates

OF DEMOCRATIC candidates there is Senator Underwood, a man of ability, but counted as a conservative. He has recently declared war on the Ku Klux Klan, and the Klan has taken up the cudgel against him. This makes his political pathway a thorny one.

William G. McAdoo is an extremely popular and capable man. He would make as good a President as any one could expect, and he may get the Democratic nomination. If he does get it, he will probably be elected, as the Klan has declared in his favor.

There is Governor Smith, of New York; but Governor Smith is a Roman Catholic, and no Roman Catholic can hope to be President of the United States. Mr. Bryan is still alive and vigorous as ever, but has no more chances of being nominated than has Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Ford is spoken of, and millions would like to see him made President; but he does not covet the job and can probably do more for the country as a private citizen than he could as President. Mr. Ford has declared for Coolidge “if he will enforce the prohibition law.” The Klan, important factor in Democratic politics, is said to be against Mr. Ford because he recently presented a specially built Lincoln automobile to an archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church.

Gossip about the Klan

WE DO not know much about the Klan, except that it is sweeping the West and Middle West, besides gaining some foothold in the East. It is very strong in the South and the Southwest. Strenuous efforts have been made to discredit it and put it out of business in the Boman Catholic state of Louisiana, but the discredit seems to have found as much of a resting place on the Catholic officials as on the Klan. Two bodies, obtained from a dissecting room and thrown into a lake, were alleged to have been the bodies of two men slain by the Klan.

The two men themselves, at the time their supposed bodies were found, were alive and well, and were seen in the custody of Catholic officials subsequently, so we are told. Their present whereabouts is unknown; they are supposed to have been murdered by the officials who had them in charge, and who feared to have their duplicity uncovered.

The newspapers tell us in one breath that the Klan is in full control of the state of Oklahoma, and in the next that the legislature will pass laws against it. Believe whichever statement seems the more reasonable, but please do not believe both; for both cannot be true.

Two facts are clear: One is that the Oklahoma Senate removed Governor Walton from office by a vote of 41 to 0, and the other is that Governor Walton is of Roman Catholic tendencies and is anti-Klan. The Governor is alleged to have used his office for his own personal gain. He has appealed to the federal authorities. In New York State the federal authorities refused to restrain the Hearst publications from using letters said to have been stolen from the Klan and bought for the sum of $3,000.

Immigration Problems

THERE is a natural desire on the part of myriads of the war-oppressed peoples of Europe to abandon their native lands and cast in their lot with America, especially in these prosperous times. Not long ago there were in the port of New York eight thousand immigrants detained on vessels in the North River because the quotas from thtfir countries had been filled. These immigrants were subsequently admitted on parole. The present law fines the steamship company $200 for each immigrant brought.over in excess of the quota, and allows the Secretary of Labor to require also that the immigrant's passage money be returned to him. Among the throng seeking admission to America were Russians, some of whom had made as many as three futile attempts to gain entrance.

The Ku Klux Klan has announced that its policy is to stop all immigration, except that of separated families, and then to institute a thorough governmental investigation into every phase of alienism, with a view of obtaining exact and scientific information upon which to base a permanent immigration policy.

Reducing Taxes and Expenses

CONSIDERABLE effort is being made to convey the impression that a reduction should be made in the income taxes; but there is no excuse for it. Those that have the greatest incomes should bear the heaviest share of maintaining the governments that have made such incomes possible.

From the point of view of the bankers a really wealthy man, with a great income, ought not to pay any taxes at all; and some of them, as a result of their own schemes, do actually pay very little.

There is reason enough for economy. In the American Declaration of Independence King George was accused of having "erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat their substance.”

Today King George, if living, could call our attention to the fact that the total salary list of the federal government now amounts to $10 for every man, woman and child in the country; that the office-holding class has increased forty percent while the population was increasing ten percent; and that out of every forty-seven males old enough to work, one is now feeding at the public crib.

Verily, we do love to be governed, managed, bossed, and lucked around; and the more they kick us around, the meaner they seem to act when they do it. A person who now goes, hat in hand, and pays just ten times the taxes he paid thirty years ago on the same property is frequently made to feel that he is a beggar or else belongs in some way to the 'Tower clawses.”

The new budget system of controlling government expenditures is working excellently. The last fiscal year of the national government closed with a surplus of $300,000,000 where a deficit of $800,000,000 had been expected. Secretary of the Treasury Mellon has had much to do with the accumulation of this surplus by the wise methods he has used in discharging the duties of his office. He is believed by some to be one of the very best treasury officials the government has ever had. Others denounce him as lawless.

War—the One Big Waste

IF WE may be permitted to suggest one good way of cutting down government expenditures we advise in two words, "Hlegalize war.” If this government were to let it be known that it places war in the same category as murder, subject to the same laws, it would help.

It would also help if a Constitutional Amendment were to be passed conscripting all property of every kind during the duration of a war, if one should start, and for five years after the war, so that no one could take any profit. The Portland, Oregon, Journal, says:

"Why not? If in war young men must expose their bodies to shell fire and the bayonet thrust, if we conscript every young man of military age for the shambles, if we take all that a young man is or hopes to be and make him a living breastwork against the armed advance of the foe, if we compel wives, sisters and mothers to give up their loved ones to go out and fight in national defense, why not also conscript property, all property, for military service? If we do not, we place the office buildings, the bank vaults, the industrial plants above the man. We make the dollar a slacker, and the man a conscript We pay dearly for all the property we use in war. Property in the late war made of its owners twenty odd thousand millionaires. Property got prices and profits almost beyond the dreams of avarice. Property made so much money out of the late war, almost over night at that, that many of its owners cannot find ways enough to spend it. Why this difference in war between the man and the money? Why confiscate the man, but license the money to profiteer? Why lay on the man the iron hand of power, but give property license to become the hawk and buzzard of the battlefield?”

Enlistments in the army at this time are very few, partly due to the high wages paid in industry and partly due to unwillingness or inability to answer satisfactorily all the questions now asked of applicants, especially one respecting the applicant’s having reached twenty-one years of age.

Roman Catholic Patriotism

ABOUT everybody has had his attention called to the skillful way in which some Boman Catholic employes in the Bureau of Engraving set forth during the Tumulty administration that this was soon to be a Roman Catholic country in fact as well as in name. On the face of the $1 bill, series of 1917, in the upper left-hand corner, they have seen the picture of the Pope,*with the kneeling figure looking straight to it for inspiration; in the same corner vi Knight-Columbus whose sword handle spells “Leo”; in the lower left corner a bleeding heart with three drops of blood; in the lower right-hand corner they have seen the head and neck of the serpent, fit emblem of the Jesuit; on the back, looped about the large cross, they have seen the rosary of which are visible thirty-two beads; and in two places on the back, one in the upper right and one in the extreme lower right corner they have seen how skillfully the middle bar of the letter E in the word onb has been transformed into a cross. It is persistently claimed in Washington that several men were dismissed and one sent to prison for a long term of years for this job.

Occasionally the evidence comes to light showing how nearly America came to becoming a Roman Catholic paradise, through the army’s getting almost wholly under papal control. The latest story shows how “surplus" materials were sold from the Perryville, Maryland, depot.

It seems that brand-new sheets and towels in carload lots were sold by Boman Catholic army officials to Roman Catholic department stores at one-fifth the price at which the Government was at the very time buying the same articles. The majors and colonels and commanders involved include such familiar names as McDonald, John Doyle Carmody, and O'Leary. The principal beneficiary was Thompson & Kelley, Inc., of Boston, the home town of the most holy reverend father cardinal O'Connell.

Sheets, Pajamas, and Towel*

AT THE very time that the Government was buying new unbleached sheets at $1.27, the Thompson & Kelley Company was buying them from the Government at twenty-five cents each. It pays to be religious when you can buy sheets in carload lots from the Government for twenty-five cents each, and then sell them right back to the party from whom you bought them, and in carload lots, for a nice little profit of $1.02 per sheet. We don't know that the Thompson & Kelley Company sold any of these same sheets back, but they could easily have done so; for the Government was in the market

And then the Government purchased 43,008 new bleached sheets from the Navy at a special bargain of eighty-four cents per sheet And at the same time the Thompson & Kelley Company was getting them from the Government at sixteen cents per sheet It surely does pay to have such friends; and it surely does pay the Roman Catholics to stick together and to stick ths Protestants.

And then, through this same benevolent Perryville depot, we learn that “98,995 winter pajamas, furnished by the Red Cross, were sold to the Boston firm at thirty cents a pair, although pajamas of this kind would be sorely needed [by the soldiers] at Perryville this winter.”

Thus we are shown how, by the proper handling of funds, wise contributions to charity may finally help “religion” to gain a firm standing in our midst And “religion”! Just see what a grand thing it is; see how profitable it is!

Among other items brought out at the hearing conducted by a high army official, Mr. O’Ryan, it was revealed that “Matthew O'Brien, the architect for the Livermore, Cal, hospital, claimed in June last only $13,000 as the balance due him, although in October the controller general of the United States ordered an alleged claim for $36,000 paid over the protest of Director Hines of the bureau,” and that “a contract for floor wax and a cleaning fluid at eightyseven cents a gallon that could have been made for between one and two cents was let to the Continental Chemical Company.”

Coming back to the sheets: It seems that the Government ordered 2,622 sheets sold; but when the Thompson & Kelley Company came to buy, they were given 84,920 on that order. Moreover, they managed to purchase for three cents apiece 1,169,008 towels for which the Government had paid nineteen cents apiece.

Four carloads of these new goods were shipped to the Boston concern after President Harding had learned of this game of graft and had suspended further sales. What a grand country this will be when the Papacy is in full control! But how beggarly are these mean pickings of a few hundred thousand dollars compared with what Prince Ryan and others of his crowd did to us during the war!

Executive Clemency

WHY does not President Coolidge grant freedom to all political prisoners}* Is he fearful that the influence of the real trespassers, the real thieves, the big ones, will be used against him next year? Better a thousand times, Mr. Coolidge, to lose the presidency of the United States than to let those poor fellows rot in the Leavenworth penitentiary another day. Will Ryan, McDonald, Carmody, O’Leary, Thompson, or Kelley be sent to Leavenworth? They will not.

And while President Coolidge is pardoning the remaining thirty-two political prisoners he

•[All freed since above was written.—Ed.] should also pardon the fifty-four members of the 24th United States Infantry (Negro) for their share in the Houston riots in 1917.

These men have been in Leavenworth a long time; white men participate in riots with almost complete immunity. The Government has never made any arrests in the case of the one hundred-odd acts of violence against unoffending Bible Students, cited in dur issue of September 27, 1920.

And then President Coolidge should make an effort to see that Vanzetti, the fish peddler, originally arrested by the Department of Justice as one of those famous "Reds,” and subsequently held as a bandit, is released. No smoke screen that the detectives of the Department of Justice can ever spread over this case can hide the fact that this man proved by forty witnesses that he was selling fish all day far away from the scene of the crime, nor that •several who claimed to identify him as the bandit have acknowledged since that they committed perjury. Send fifteen cents to the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, Boston, Mass.; and read Vanzetti’s own story.

No doubt President Coolidge has enough influence in Massachusetts to free this innocent man of the framed-up bandit charge. Vanzetti is now under sentence of death. In his book, in which he explains how he came to incur the enmity of the Department of Justice, he says:

“I earned my bread by the honest sweat of my brow. I have not a drop of blood on my bands, nor on my conscience. I wanted a roof for every family, bread for every mouth, education for every heart, the light for every intellect. I am convinced that human history has not yet begun; that we find ourselves in the last period of the pre-historic. I see with the eyes of my soul how the sky is diffused with the rays of the new millennium.”

How Dare a Foreigner Think?

THERE is a prodigious amount of effort made in this country to incite hatred against any foreign-born citizen who shows either a tendency to think in un-American ways or an un-American tendency to think at alL Notice the reported language of Mr. S. Stanwood Menken, President of the National Security League, in an address before our cigarette friends, the Y. M. C. A. The Communists of whom he speaks may have wrong ideas, and we think they do have wrong ideas; but we do not altogether like the inflammatory, nature of Mr. Menken’s address to these budding Christians:

"We have 600,000 Communists meeting weekly, publishing fifty papers, attacking your country, your Government, your right to prosper, to bring up your own children as you will, to enjoy the advantages of this country as we know it and our forefathers planned it. To fight them more of us must get on the job and help take care of the U. S. A.”

We remind Mr. Menken that this is supposed to be a free country where any man may believe, if he chooses, that the moon is made of green cheese; and that if he can get 600,000 other persons to believe it, he is a regular cheese expert. If Mr. Menken believes Communism is wrong (and it is) let him bring forth his arguments.

Communism is inadequate; it would be several laps behind a system by which a needy crowd of hungry profiteers could buy sheets in carload lots for twenty-five cents each and sell them right back to the original owners at a nice little profit of $1.02 per sheet. How would Mr. Menken take care of the needy by any better plan than that? Speak up, man!

Pay-Roll and Bank Bandits                .

PAY-ROLL and bank bandits are getting

bolder and bolder. Almost every week brings an account of men driving up in automobiles, murdering bank messengers or pay-roll guards, and making off, never to be heard of again. In November sixteen men invaded the sizable city of Spencer, Indiana, at three o’clock in the morning, cut all telephone and telegraph wires leading into the town, blew up the vaults of both banks with nitroglycerin, seized the funds and escaped.

No doubt very many learnad the art of using firearms and explosives in the nation-wide training school established for that purpose in 1917-1918. On the same day of the Spencer raid three robbers held up a bank at Groton, S. D.

However, the banks show that they lose more to forgers than they de to holdup men. Of 363 meh arrested for bank robberies within a given time recently two hundred and sixty-six were accused of forgeries and eighty-one of holdup*. The losses through forgeries and alterations of checks the past year amounted in America to fifty million dollars.

Something about Bells By Frederick Lardent (London, Eng.) ment of the massacre of those French Protestants commonly known as the Huguenots, to the number, it is said, of 100,000.

This valiant work was performed by Chbis-tians, who were such by name only. The real Christian, however, has constantly ringing in his heart and mind the words of Jesus: “Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.” So shall your reward be great in the kingdom of heaven.

Concerning Their Manufacture

THE process of casting bells is much the same J- today as it was centuries ago. A core of bricks is built up and covered with soft clay to the shape of the inside of the proposed belL Then an outer mould or “cope” of clay is made, shaped to the outer surface of the belL This forms a bell-shaped hollow to the thickness of the metal desired. When the molten metal is poured in, it is left to harden, a process which takes several weeks in bells of large size.

While bells may be made of various metals, yet from earliest times, as far back as the days of Nineveh, the metal mostly favored was an alloy of copper and tin, in select proportions to bring about the various sounds.

The quality of the bell depends not only on the method of casting and the fineness of the mixture of the metals, but on the due proportion of metal to the calibre of the bell.

A good bell, when struck, yields one note termed the consonant; and this is said to be true when a musician can quite easily define its tone.

Some Notable Belle

UCIAN, ISO A. D., mentions an instrument which rang a bell as the water Sowed, to

measure time. Several old bells are extant in Great Britain; the oldest are quadrangular, made of thin iron plates riveted together.

One such, St Patrick's Bell, in Belfast, dates from the sixth century. It is beautifully adorned with gems and with gold and silver filagree work. It measures six high, five broad, four deep—in inches, not in feet So in those old days bells were small!

The most brilliant tones and longest vibrations came when bells were cast into one solid

piece of metaL In the eleventh century a bell was presented to the church at Orleans, weighing about a ton. This giant astonished the world.

The centuries have rolled on since then, bringing in their train the golden age of bells, of which more anon.

The bell "Jacqueline de Paris,” cast in 1400 A.D., weighs seven tons; while the one in the oathedral of Notre Dame, Montreal, Canada, weighs fourteen and one-half tons.

The largest bell in Great Britain is known as •Great Paul” and weighs seventeen tons. It is situated in the famous St. Paul’s cathedral, London. The bell outrivals its near though majestic neighbor, “Big Ben,” which hangs in the clocktower of London’s Houses of Parliament. “Big Ben" weighs thirteen and one-half tons; and when it strikes, it is heard, under favorable atmospheric conditions, at an immense distance.

Still larger bells are found in Eastern dimes. At Peking there is one weighing fifty-three tons; and in Upper Burma, one weighing eighty-seven tons. The largest bell in the world in use is at Moscow; it weighs one hundred and twenty tons. Even this giant is only half the weight of one cast in the same city in 1773 A. D. Some say that this huge bell was never actually rung, having been cracked in the furnace. To give some idea of its immensity, contrast this with St. Patrick’s bell, already mentioned. This is nineteen high, twenty-two in diameter, and in circumference sixty—not inches, but feet! So this bell is large, so large indeed that it is at present used as a chapel, the upper part admirably forming the dome!

The Campanile

BELLS became factors of increasing importance as they increased in size; for it was soon found necessary to erect high towers so that the sounds could be heard at a distance.

Sometimes these belfry towers were built as a part of a church edifice, and sometimes as quite separate structures. Italy is renowned for such; for there the bell-towers or campaniles (from the Latin word meaning bell) developed into edifioes of extraordinary beauty.

•ne of the finest campaniles in the world is that of St Mark's at Venice, although in beauty Giotto Boadone's campanile exceeds all others extant This is at Florence. Begun in 1334 A.D., it was finished in 1350. It is 275 feet high, has five stories, and is encased in Hack and white marble. It is decorated with reliefs; and above these may be seen niches in which are placed statues of patriarchs and prophets.

Giotto did not see its completion; for he died three years after the structure was commenced. Still, there it stands to this day as an illustrious monument to be admired by all lovers of sculpture and art

For sightseers, the famous campanile known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa possesses even stronger attractions. From the platform at the summit to the ground the height is one hundred and fifty feet, and the inclination from the perpendicular is as much as thirteen feet.

The tower, which is about fifty-one feet in diameter, was begun in the year 1174 by Bonanno, and completed by a German architect, Wilhelm of Innsbruck.

Some have attributed its inclination to the subsidence of the earth at its foundation. Others that it was the original purpose of the designer. We shall know of this matter in due course.— 1 Corinthians 15:22.

It is interesting to note that this leaning belfry was one time used by Galileo in the seventeenth century. It assisted him to deduce the principles of the gravitation of the earth.

By the way, this same Galileo was one time summoned to Borne before the ecclesiastics, and obliged to recant the doctrine that the earth moved around the sun, and not the then usual theory that the sun moved around the earth. These gentle followers of the Lamb of God even threatened to torture the old gentleman if he did not recant People are more enlightened now, and the light will yet increase!—Isa. 30:26.

The Chimee

IT HAS long been the custom to hang several bells of differing pitch together, which are made to sound one after another and thus play simple tunes. Each bell was rung by pulling a separate rope; and as the number of bells increased, bell-ringing assumed a fine art requiring much talent

The notes of a peal of eight bells are arranged on a diatonic scale, the tenor or largest supplying the key-note and the treble or smallest the octave. The other bells are known as the second, third, and so on, counting from the treble to the tenor.                        .

When bells are rung in their regular order they are said to be rung in "rounds.” When that order is varied, and they exchange places, they are rung in "changes.” The number of separate changes which can be rung by the use of a number of bells seems incredible. It is, however, defined by a well-known and easy mathematical law, and is the continued product of all the numbers employed.

While two bells permit of only two changes (1x2=2), three bells will give six changes (Ix2x3=6). Four bells will render 24 changes (1x2x3x4=24). Five bells yield as many as 120 changes (1x2x3x4x5=120).

In this order of multiplying we can easily see that six bells will give 720 changes, and seven bells 5,040 changes, and eight bells 40,320.

In the same way eight different objects, as for instance the letters of the alphabet—g,m, d, h, a, i, k, /—may be changed in their order of position 40,320 times, no order being repeated.

Should there be 9,10,11,12 or more bells the number of possible changes becomes phenomenally great '

Three Hundred Years Bell-Ringing

THE author of “Moses and Geology,” who in his book aimed so admirably to establish the fact that the fifteen ordered acts of divine creation recorded in Genesis are corroborated by geological science in their identical order (thereby furnishing an additional evidence that Moses was inspired of God), wrote as follows:

"When I was collecting information upon this subject I had the good fortune to visit the charming village <rf Hornchurch, in Essex, where I found an old bellringer, Joseph Wright, some eighty years of age, who gave me much interesting information on the matter. He had formerly been one of the ringers of the splendid peal of bells, twelve in number, in St. Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, London; and on his cottage walls was hanging an account of a special achievement, which came oft on the 13th day of December, 1841, when 6,136 changes, termed an ‘Oxford treble bob maximus,’ was rung in three hours and fifty-three minutes by him and his company. Now, as the number of possible changes on twelve bells amounts to 479,001,600, suppose twelve men for 300 days in every year were to repeat this performance, it would take 300 years to complete all the 479,001,600 different changes.”

Bell-ringing became a fascinating art in the seventeenth century. Societies were formed, and wonderful feats of accuracy and endurance were the outcome. The patterns or tunes were worked out by experts and given many queer names, such as "Kent treble bob major,” “Grandsire triples,” "Treble bob royal,” etc.

In some countries, particularly in Holland and Belgium, the chiming is accomplished by mechanical contrivances. Sometimes as many as sixty or seventy bells are thus played by means of a lever or keyboard, so that an infinite variety of tunes may be produced, with results that are very beautiful and charming.

The Curfew

THE oldtime custom of tolling a bell as a signal for the inhabitants of a town to extinguish their fires and lights and retire to rest, is known as the curfew (from couvir, to cover; ■feu, fire).

. This was the common practice throughout the various countries of Europe during the Middle Ages, especially in cities taken in war. The curfew is supposed to have been introduced into England by William the Conqueror, who ordained, under severe penalties, that at the ringing of the curfew bell at eight o’clock in the evening, all lights and fires must be extinguished. Some suggested that William had political reasons in tins stern measure, to guard against night-time plottings, etc.

It is probable, however, that the ruler enforced an existing police regulation as a precaution against fires at a period when wooden houses were so prevalent. The precaution was excellent. Besides this, people were obliged to keep within doors, so preventing nocturnal brawls in the streets.

There are still traces of the curfew today, especially in smaller towns and rural districts, for the same purpose as the original curfew.

Some Uses of Bells

WHILE some uses of bells have gone, some have come in. The five o’clock postman, whose bell-signal indicated his olfiee to collect one’s letters, belongs to the distant past. The town crier's bell used in conjunction with his cry, “O yes! O yez!” when he would dispense the latest news has now gone.

The house-bells, with their rather pronounced system of wires, are now passing away, to give place to the ingenious electric push-bells. The old expression to "curse with the book, bell, and

n™.T2,i»M               n. Golden AQE                    *ⁿ

candle” alludes to an old form of exorcism said to scare away the deviL But knowledge is increasing.—Daniel 12:4.

One interesting use of a bell may here be mentioned. In the town of Bath, England, a forty-year-old carp used to ring a bell which was attached to a float in the water. The oscillation of the bell caused some ants’ eggs to fall; other fish were thus attracted to their dinner.

It is plain that life is set to bell music in one shape or another—the dinner bell, yard bell, school bell, factory bell, jail bell, engine bell, door bell, fire bell, church bell, clock bell, cycle bell, ambulance bell, telephone bell; and we must not forget the little bell rattles seen in the nursery—relic, no doubt, of the bells on the fool’s cap and wand.

The Language of Belle

WONDERFUL is the effect of some kinds of bells as they strike upon the human ears. They cause one to pause in reverie and to reflect over the stories they seem to tell. At the news of Nelson’s simultaneous triumph and death at Trafalgar, the bells of Chester, England, rang out merry peals, alternating now and then with silence and then one deep toll, thereby telling that in spite of victory, Britain had lost one of her bravest sons.

During the Great War most of the large bells of Europe's warring nations were silent, as though too grief-stricken for language. Howbeit, when the armistice was signed thousands of bells rang out again in glad relief. Some of those bells are so ancient that they have, so far as Britain is concerned, been used to celebrate every notable event in history, from the signing of Magna Cbarta in 1215; and in solemn tones they have tolled for every ruler since the death of King John.

At certain seasons, especially at Christmas time, the bells take on a joyous tone. Some listen to these with glad and blissful glee. With others, the tears start as memories of bygone days arise; while still others shiver and moan,

and would fain silence those sounds which seem to treat lightly their keen distress I         _x

Bible Belle .

THE Bible makes special reference to small J- bells which ornamented the robes of “glory and beauty" of Israel’s high priest, who was a type or picture of Jesus Christ There is an important meaning attached to everything associated with that which God has arranged. In regard to the significance of these bells one cannot do better than read what Pastor Russell said about them: •

“The ‘upper robef of Nue represented his faithful* neaa. The fringe of it was made of golden bells (presumably shaped like lilies) and pomegranates. The pomegranate, being a choice fruit, showed that the faithful performance of the Redeemer’! work of sacrifice had borne rich fruit—the redemption of the forfeited lift of the human race. The golden bells signified that when our High Priest appears in glory and beauty, the fruit of the sacrificial work will be manifested to all—proclaimed to all the world, as in the type the bells proclaimed it to all Israel. This is indicated by the dose proximity: the bells drawing attention to the fruit" (See Exodus 28: 31-35; "Tabernacle Shadows," p. 30.)

Another important reference to bells, one which points to God’s kingdom when it is fully established in the earth, is found in Zechariah 14:20: “In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord."

Horses represent teachings or doctrines which may be either true or false. The passage in question shows that when God’s kingdom is established all false doctrines which misrepresent Jehovah’s character, such as the “trinity," the “immortality of the human soul," the “eternal torment" theory, and such like, which have wrought such confusion to humanity, will have gone, and instead every doctrine will, like the pure tones of a bell, proclaim the benign dispositions of the Almighty.

No wonder we read in another place: “Every creature . . . heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and "power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.”—Revelation 5:13.

“The Christmas bells have rung again Their 'Peace bn earth, goodwill to men I’ But many a lip will curl, and fay, ‘Peace and goodwill have had their day, And gone afar, beyond our ken 1’

"Yet o’er the ‘strife of tongues,' that shrills Te voice the wrath of warring wills, The bells ring on I No earthborn sound, Or loud, or harsh, the whole world round, Their music or their message stills I"

Ring Out, Wild Bells

7 ' yfitt,

"Bing out, wild bella, to the wild sky, The flying clouds, the frosty light; The year is dying in the night;

Bing out, wild bells, and let him die!

“Bing out the old, ring in the new;

Bing, happy bells, across the snow; The year is going—let him go;

Bing out the false, ring in the true I

“Bing out the slowly dying cause, And ancient forms ofzparty strife; Bing in the nobler modes of life With sweeter manners, purer laws!

“Bing out the want, the care, the sin: The faithless coldness of the times. Bing out, ring out my mournful rhymes. But ring the fuller minstrel in!

“Bing out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite;

Bing in the love of truth and right, Bing in the common love of good!

“Bing out old shapes of foul disease, Bing out the narrowing lust of gold; Bing .out the thousand wars of old, Bing in the thousand years of peace.

“Bing in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Bing out the darkness of the land, Bing in ths Chbist that is to m!”

West Texas Sand Storms By J. a. Bohnet

WATCHING the lowering clouds rolling together in Texas from several directions rapidly intensifying, one wonders if it will be an electric storm, cyclone, or dust cloud, or hail, or all these combined. We have not long to wait; within five or six minutes the questions are decided. Suddenly the air becomes luridly red with flying dust a thousand feet high. The cloud increases in denseness, and the wind assumes the velocity of a gale. The storm rages with hurricane fury, bending the mesquite trees to the earth. Such a sight! Sand, dust, and gravel rush past in swirls like the rapids of a river. What earth elements are in the air stay right there and are constantly added to by the fierce wind that whips up whatever else of earth is loose and sends the earth stream onward through space at an astonishing rate. Windmills in gear grind through the rapidly passing elements with a buzz like the rip of the saw in a sawmill. Nothing is visible beyond thirty feet but the dust stream that beats against the dwellings with a terrifying roar, causing the buildings to quiver and rock on their foundations, every gust threatening to overthrow them.

From the shelter of a safe retreat it is an awe-inspiring sight. No wonder people go hurriedly into their storm cellars, or "fraid holes* as a tender-foot Northerner calls them.

Immediately following the dust storm comes the deluge of water and hail. Hailstones are sometimes the size of a man's fist, but more frequently the size of a walnut, although some are only as large as a marble. When the storm has subsided the ground is covered with ice from half an inch to three or four inches in depth. The cotton plants are stripped of every leaf, and the field resembles a desert with lead pencil-like stubs sticking up in three-feet-apart rows all over the desolate waste.- The crop is ruined. The corn stalks are stripped bare of fodder and beaten flat to earth by the hail Trees are stripped of their leaves and thousands of poultry are drowned in the flood of waters. Streams are over their banks and the farmer is heartsick as he views the devastation wrought by that storm.

The storm here referred to demolished hundreds of homes along its path and washed out culverts and bridges.

How gratifying is the Bible assurance that in the Millennium, now so near at hand, nothing shall hurt or destroy.

sis

Doodle-Bug and Horned Toad Department

(For Ono larae Only)

The Doodle-Bug By B. R. Kent

IN THE September 26th issue of The Golden Age, page 830, is an item of interest by J. A. Bohnet, relative to the doodle-bug of Texas. He states that it is not known why the doodle-bug makes funnel-shaped holes in the dust. The truth concerning the habits of this interesting bug is easily ascertained, and thus Texas is exonerated.

The doodle-bug, like the spider, lives on smaller and less fortunate insects than itself. The spider's web furnishes not only a home for its owner but a means of livelihood as well; and woe to the moth, fly or other insect which flies or walks into the spider’s parlor uninvited or otherwise! The insect’s struggles to free itself, of course, send a quiver throughout the entire web; and Mr. Spider takes notice, rushes out and gets his breakfast, dinner or supper, as the case may be.                -

In habits, at least, the doodle-bug is kin to the spider. Its home, the funnel-shaped hole in the sand or dust, is also a death-trap to the hapless little ant, or small insect of similar kind, which falls down this inclined plane. It might as well die “instanter” and not exert itself to send out any S. O. S. calls for help; for the doodle-bug is always on the watch, and the fall of the small ant into the trap attracts his undivided attention. He must eat to live, like the spider; and immediately he sets to work to undermine the foothold of his unhappy victim as it vainly strives to escape by attempting to climb to the top. This he does by quick jerks of his head, which send up little showers of sand, and which seem to confuse the ant, at the same time causing that insect to slip back into the jaws of the doodle-bug. Directly, quick as a wink, our doodle-bug has the ant in a loving (!) embrace, and loses no time in dragging it under the soft sand or dust for the next meal.

In thinking over these tragedies in the insect world, I could not but make a comparison. There are death-traps for human beings, made by our great adversary, the devil; and many are they who fall and are put out of the way for a time. But thanks be to the power of our great and benevolent Creator, which will bo exercised in behalf of suffering humanity during the Golden Age now dawning, these human death-traps and pitfalls—“the snares of the fowler”—will be destroyed, together with the “fowler,” him "who has the power of death, that is, the devil!”

More about the Doodle-Bug By Jette C. Hayti

I SEE a notice in The Golden Age to the effect that Texas has a doodle-bug. This bug lives in most of the Southern states, or in all of them, for that matter. His entomological title is ant-lion, owing to his method of obtaining his food. The lion does not dig pitfalls, as does Mr. Ant-Lion, but keeps himself well hidden until ready to leap upon his prey.

Mr. Ant-Lion, alias Doodle-Bug, digs his pitfalls in the loosest sand to be found in a shady place, that being where his mother places the egg from which he is hatched. There he waits neatly hidden at the bottom until any insect such as an ant, spider, beetle, etc., comes along and stumbles or slides down through the loose sand to the bottom of the pit, when Mr. AntLion takes him into his caliper-like mandibles and crushes him to death and pulls his carcass under the sand to suck the substance out of it. It is almost impossible for any insect to get away; for the funnel-shaped hole is made in the loose sand which rolls from under the victim as he tries to climb out. Furthermore, he is met with a shower of sand that Mr. Doodle throws on him from the bottom of his pit, and is forced back to the bottom, where he is devoured.

After the substance has all been sucked from the victim’s body, Mr. Doodle poises the shell on his head, and with a quick jerk throws it out of the pit. Then the funnel or pitfall is set in order for the next victim.

When Mr. Doodle is old enough he encloses himself in a concrete chrysalis, made of silk and sand and hardened by a secretion from his body. In time he comes forth a peaceful and perfectly harmless four-winged fly called the ant-lion fly. The fly floats on the air as gracefully as it is possible for anything to float, without a care to disturb its peaceful mind, except that the female fly may consider the laying of more eggs in the sand, or that memories of the betties fought in pre-aerial days may intrude.

Doodle-Bugs and Horned Toads

-                  By H. A. Seklemian

IN OUR present imperfect condition it is next to impossible to write anything or, for that matter, to say or do anything that is entirely without error. (Always excepting, of course, The Associated Press, which never alters a despatch and never makes a mistake. It says so itself!)

The Golden Age is certainly setting a shining example in the field of journalism by its entire readiness to correct the remarkably few slips that appear on its pages. It takes genuine love of truth for its own sake to exhibit the word "Errata” and to list incorrect statements which probably not one in a thousand of its readers have so much as noticed.

Among the most enjoyable contributors to The Golden Age is J. A. Bohnet, whose refreshing comments on things he notes during his travels are always a treat. So it is with the sincerest appreciation of his abilities that I • point out two slight slips of the pen in his contributions appearing on pages 818 and 830 of Golden Age No. 105, of September 26, 1923.

First, referring to the article on the "DoodleBug.” Mr. Bohnet admirably describes the smooth little volcano-crater this little creature creates in the dust, with the top of the crater level with the surface of the ground. But from his article it appears that "no one seems to know what is the bug’s object in making these funnels.”

He writes from Texas. It may be that no one in that state knows the secrets of doodle-bug life; but we Californians (we are bound to go the rest of the world one better, you know— why, we even claim to have larger mosquitoes here than they can produce in all New Jersey, while our real-estate men have held the world championship in the Ananias Club for over fifty years), we Californians know the doodle-bug.

Come! Let us be boys and girls once more and run out under the orange trees in the back yard. Look beneath this tree! The whole surface of the ground is literally covered with doodle-bug holes, varying in width across the top from one-quarter to three inches, and each one tapering down with exquisite smoothness to a point but little below the ground level. But where are the doodle-bugs! Ah! Watch!

Here come a couple of little red ants. They seem to be discussing the crop situation, or the coming presidential primaries, or the League of Nations or something; for they are quarreling most fiercely. One of them is an Argentine Ant; so of course the other one is knocked out of the ring. Look out, Mr. Dempsey Ant, you are slipping right into one of the doodle-bug craters! The unfortunate ant knows full well the meaning of that bee-you-tiful cornucopia in the dust, and struggles convulsively up the crumbly smooth sides which send him slipping down again and again. He will regain the top regardless, but suddenly—Vesuvius in miniature ! There is a quick movement in the bottom of the hole, and up comes spurt after spurt of dust and sand! Mr. Doodle-Bug is on his job. He spends his days buried in dust at the bottom of his hole for that very purpose. The poor little ant is swept to the base of the death-trap by the falling eruptions, and is seized in the hungry jaws of the wicked bug, who proceeds to treat him & la spider and the fly. In fact, "Will you walk into my parlor 1 said the Doodle to the Ant," would be more apt than to call Mr. Spider’s webby creation a “parlor.”

The Defetue of the Homed Toad

OR are the inmates of this state to be outdone in respect to the homed toad or any other lovely pet of that nature. It was one of the impish delights of us boys in the long ago to send the female members of the family into shrieking hysterics by marching into the house with a bull-frog protruding from each pocket, a horned toad clinging to the shirt-front, and a gleaming, fork-tongued, but quite harmless water-snake wrapped neatly around each wrist.

Mr. Bohnet, comparing the water dog of Texas with the horned toad, says concerning the latter: "A full-grown homed toad emits jets of blood from its horn ends when rushed too hard or teased too much.” Since when have the enterprising Texans equipped their homed toads with new patent horns drilled to serve as squirt-guns? In these parts we are a bit old-fashioned, and have not as yet improved on the Equid pistol nature has given these creatures.

Let us wander into the sunny vineyards and pick up the first horny pet we come to. Here is a big one. No use waddling away so fast, Mr. Horny, we have you. Afraid of him! Not at all. Appearances are deceitful, as usual. Although Mr. Horned Toad resembles somewhat the traditional picture of his majesty the devil, his dusty gray back and head a mass of sharp scales and horns, his beadlike little eyes bearing a most malevolent aspect, and his fierce-looking mouth opening on us as though with dire portent, he is not only harmless, but immensely beneficial in reducing the insect pests that are the curse of vegetation. It seems a shame to bother him, even for a minute or two; but we want to learn just how nature’s God has equipped this little creature with ability to protect himself and “to eat, but not be eaten.”

The horned toad is an unappetizing-looking morsel at the best, to be sure, but now watch while I stroke his horny back and wiggle those wicked horns. The horns, you will note, are quite solid and sharp and not at all like gunbarrels. But the eyes! Do you see how they are closing and puffing out all around like the "black eye" we used to give each other in boyhood fights!

The mingled fear, anger, and indignation Mr. Horned Toad justifiably feels at such rough handling cause the blood-vessel that encircles each eye to become gorged with blood. Watch out now! There it comes! The vein has burst, and out shoots a jet of real red blood, right out of this eye! All over my new Sunday suit, too 1 Serves me right I drop Mr. Toad in a hurry; and he scampers away underneath a tall grape vine, probably on his way to tell Mrs. Horny all about the rude giant that disturbed his peaceful day.

More about Doodle-Bugs and Ladybugs By. H. H. D.

IT WAS a little surprise to me at first to note that such lowly creatures as the ladybug and the doodle-bug had been given consideration in so valuable a journal as The Golden Age. But I recalled that the wise King Solomon was able to draw some valuable lessons, moral and otherwise, from the habits of some lowly creatures. So I concluded that possibly the great Designer of the universe intended that wo should learn a lesson from these lowly creatures, the doodle-bug and the ladybug, and that this mention of them in The Golden Age was intended as a mere introduction.

These tiny creatures are found in various Southern states all the way from Virginia and Tennessee southward. Their habits and manner of life are just as different as can be. They are unsightly in appearance, wear scant and very homely clothing—only a light, thin, scattering coat of hair. It is on this account that the doodle-bug seems to be of the color of the earth in which it works, the finer particles of dust lodging in the hairy coat In reality it is of a dull flesh color. It is a diligent worker, and its habit is to go round and round continually. This bug is not difficult to locate when one knows how to do it May not these lowly creatures well represent the great mass of the common people, whose life is one continual round of toil and hardships; who move, as it were, in a never-ending circle of lowly experience, and who enjoy but a small portion of the good things which the world affords!

The ladybug does not work. It wears a beautiful shiny coat of black and red, and continually sits perched high upon some weed or flower, as if asleep or in a deep meditation. May not the ladybug well represent the middlemen, a class of non-producers who get in between the producer and consumer, who do nothing but study out schemes and methods of securing for themselves a large proportion of the good things which labor produces!

Now for an interesting fact concerning each of these creatures which probably none know except those who, when children, found amusement in studying the habits of the various creatures with which they came in contact. It is written in connection with our Lord's proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom that "the -common people heard him gladly.” It is as distinctly recorded that the scribes and Pharisees refused to hear Him. Many prophecies foreshadowed that it would be the same at this end of the age. The gospel is sweet music. The lowly doodle-bug, though very industrious and having little time for the higher, finer things, is a lover of melody. It is never too busy to stop its work to hear a melody. When a child we used to find great amusement in humming a tune over doodle-bug holes and watch them come to the surface; but the ladybug hates music as the purse-proud hate the gospel.

A Study of the Theory of Evolution, in Two Parts (Part I)

By Herbert M. Shelton, D. P., N. D.

THE war over evolution continues. Here in

Texas the effort to prohibit its teaching in the public schools is still being carried on. The daily press appears to be in favor of the theory, although hiding behind what they call freedom of thought, speech, and press. But these same papers oppose another form of freedom of thought, speech, and press by opposing the teaching of religion in the public schools.

Hearst’s International, March, 1923, contains the following bit of editorial matter:

“While we are getting ready some important articles on modern religion, we notice that a famous quotation is applied by Francis Greenleaf Peabody to William Jennings Bryan and others who are attacking science in the name of religion. Bishop Wilberforce had been talking for half an hour at a meeting of the Royal Society. As he closed, he turned toward Huxley and asked him whether it was on his mother’s or his father’s aide that he claimed descent from the monkeys. Huxley was no fool debater. He arose slowly, stated quietly that it was no disgrace to be descended from an ape, and then delivered this:

“If there were an ancestor whom I should feel ashamed in recalling, it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obsenre them with an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skillful appeals to religious prejudices.’

“Huxley fought in the days when the question was open. Today it is a mere fitful oddity. People who can think today know that Science can tell us nothing about the essentials of religious truth, and that on the other hand the churches can tell us nothing about science.’’

And such answers as this are about all one gets from those who uphold evolution. They assume that evolution is science, that the question is closed, is no longer open to debate; and that only the ignorant and those who cannot think will attack the doctrine of evolution.

I have heard Bryan's lecture; but I have yet to read or to hear a single reply to it that was anything other than an effort to discredit his scholarship and his ability to think. Take the above quotation from Huxley which has been applied by Francis Peabody to Mr. Bryan. Is this an answer to his arguments! It is not. It is only an evasion of the issue. The truth is that these people are afraid to try to meet their opponents on the fields of fact and logic. They well know that they have not a fact to stand on.

The idea that an attack upon evolution is an attack upon science is absurd. Evolution is not science. This fact is admitted by all true scientists. From its very beginning it has been a speculative philosophy based more upon hypothesis than fact.

Aristotle (384-322 B. C.) is regarded as the father of the theory of descent, although he is admitted to have been preceded by Empedocles, who taught, though vaguely, a gradual succession of life forms from the less to the more perfect. Empedocles, however, did not claim any genetic relationship for the various species, but believed them to have been separately created. Aristotle conceived of a great genetie chain of organic beings from polyps to man. He was probably influenced by Hindu philosophy, which seems always to have had some kind of evolution at its base.

Following Aristotle came Leibnitz (Germany, 1646-1716) and Buffon (France, 1707-1788); next came Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin. These men all taught evolution in some form and advanced many theories to explain it The father of modern evolution, however, was Lamark (1744-1829). He was the leading zoologist between Linneus and Cuvier. He defended all the theories advanced by Darwin, except that of natural selection.

In fact, almost all the methods by which evolution is said to have taken place except that of natural selection were advanced before Darwin. Heredity, atavism, and the hereditary transmission of mutilations were advanced by Aristotle. Buffon is said to have affirmed, and as frequently denied, the mutability of species. Erasmus Darwin first proposed the supposed law of sexual selection, stated the principle of the law of battle, fully explained the idea of protective mimicry and vaguely taught the theory of use inheritance. Lamark presented the struggle for existence and the law of geometrical increase in animals, held identical views with Malthus on population, referred to the effects of swamping and isolation as a factor in evolution, and taught that acquired characters and defects were transmitted to offspring, provided that they were not swamped by breeding.

Charles Darwin first enunciated the doctrine of Natural Selection in 1858. At this time also the same doctrine was presented, independent of Darwin, by A. R. Wallace.

Evolution doctrines made little progress until after Hutton and Lyell had advanced unifor-mantarian views in geology. In fact it is stated that Laznarfs theories were, owing to the great naturalist Cuvier, ignored and wellnigh forgotten except to be called up at times and ridiculed. Uniformantarian geology had prepared the way for the acceptance of evolution when Darwin and Wallace came on the scene.

The Predicament of Scientists

TODAY the very foundations of uniforman-tarianism are crumbling, but those who boast of their great learning and intelligence are still clinging with all their might to a doctrine, or rather to an hypothesis, that cannot exist if uniformantarianism is false. And there is no longer any reason to doubt that it is false. On the side of the self-styled intellectuals are to be found many religious people who make a vain effort to hang on to the Bible with one hand and evolution with the other.

On May 17, 1922, Dr. Richard S. Lull, Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology at Yale, startled the delegates to the annual Episcopalian Convention, which was held at Hartford, Conn., when he declared that he had proven the theory of organic evolution to his own satisfaction. The newspaper report says:

“Taking one of the strong arguments of the anti-evolutionista that the theory puts God to lax away as to make Him no longer a personal factor in life, Professor Lull said that this is not so.

“ ‘The evolutionist’s god is an imminent god, and as such, a much more continuous and potent factor in out lives than the occasional wonder-working god of the older theology,’ he said.”

Speaking of "the age-old warfare between science and theology,” Professor Lull said:

"The past few months have witnessed a recrudescence of it, partly due perhaps to the emotionalism brought on by the war and partly due to uncertainty as to causes ot evolution. Among the leaders in the attack on evolution is W. J. Bryan, who is a formidable opponent, not from the point of view of knowledge, but from that of influence over non-intellectual classes.”

On the very same day Dr. Cleland Boyd McAfee, speaking at a conference of presidents of fifty-seven Presbyterian universities and colleges which was held in Des Moines, Iowa, in advance of the opening of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, which opened the following day, upheld the theory of evolution "from a theological viewpoint because our religion is broad enough to encompass all the discoveries of science.”

In these quotations from Prof. Lull and Dr. McAfee the following points are very clear:

• (1) The god of evolution is a more potent factor in life than the God of the Bible.

• (2) The God of the Bible is sneeringly referred to as being merely an occasional "wonder-worker.”

• (3) It is admitted in effect that the "wonderworking” creation taught by the Bible and the blind chance origin of things taught by what has been miscalled evolution are antagonistic doctrines.

• (4) There is also the a priori assumption that those who oppose evolution are either ignorant or unbalanced ("emotional” as Prof. Lull politely terms it). These belong to the nonintellectual classes. All evolutionists belong to the intellectual crowd. (Tins assumption is characteristic of the modern evolutionist)

• (5) That the Presbyterian religion is broad enough to encompass all the theories and hypotheses of pseudoscience. (Dr. McAfee call* them "discoveries of science.”)

How men can hold to these ideas and still hold to the Bible, remain in a church, and call themselves Christians is beyond our comprehension unless, of course, we adopt the characteristic attitude of the evolutionists toward those who differ from them and say of them, as they do of us, that such are ignorant and lacking in intelligence. Not being evolutionists, however, we are not forced to such ungentlemanlike ways of meeting an opponent.

These men have drawn the line sharply between the theory of creation as taught in the Bible and that taught by evolution and have admitted that the two theories are antagonistic to each other. Let us look for a moment at a few facts and see, if possible, which teaching squares with these facts.

Science Does Not Recognize Creative Power THE only method known to science by which A a new being can come into existence is through one or more parent organisms. So long as there is no necessary break in this method of production we are forced to accept it as the exclusive one. Looking backward into the past, we come to a time when the earth was devoid of life. There were no parent organisms to give rise to the first living forms.

So here at the very beginning of life we have a necessary break in the method of production. How shall we account for the origin of that first living form! There are two theories: (1) That of creation, as taught in the Bible; and (2) that of spontaneous generation, as taught by some evolutionists.

Neither of these theories is new. Each has existed and has warred with the other for thousands of years. The older theory of spontaneous generation, however, did not stop with the germ, but generated a full-grown animat Aristotle, for instance, thought that fieas, worms, mice, frogs, and other lower forms of animal life sprang up spontaneously from the moist earth. "All dry bodies," he wrote, “which become damp, and all damp bodies which are dried, engender animal life." Virgil thought that bees were produced from the putrifying entrails of a bult

Van Helmont, a renowned alchemist physician who lived during the reign of Louis XIV, wrote : “The smells which arise from the bottom of morasses produce frogs, slugs, leeches, grasses and other things.” Again, he says:

“Scoop out a hole in a brick; put into it lome «weet basil, crushed; lay a second brick upon the first so that the hole may be completely covered. Expose the bricks to the sun, and at the end of a few days the smell at the sweet basil, acting as a ferment, will change the herb into real scorpions.”

Van Helmont also gave full directions for producing a pot of mice. It is very simple, and we do not doubt that he got the mice. All one had to do was to fill a vessel partly with corn, and then plug up the mouth of the vessel with an old dirty shirt It requires about twenty-one days for the ferment arising from the dirty shirt reacting with the odor from the corn, to transmute the corn into mice. The doctor, after solemnly assuring us that he himself has witnessed this faot, says: "The mice are born full-grown; there are both males and females. To reproduce the species it suffices to pair them.”

When Sir Thomas Browne expressed doubts about the breeding of mice by putrefaction he was replied to by another scientist of that day in these words:

“So may he doubt whether in oheece and timber worms are generated; or if beetles and wasps in cows’ dung; or if butterflies, locusts, grasshoppers, shell-fish, snails, eels, and such like, be procreated of putrid matter, which is apt to receive the form of that creature to which it is by formative power disposed. To question this is to question reason, sense, and experience. If he doubts this, let him go to Egypt; and there he wOl find the fields swarming with begot of the mud of Nylus, to the great calamity of the inhabitants.”

In one of the early volumes of the Royal Society of London is contained an illustrated account of the natural history of the famous "barnacle-geese.” Buds of a certain tree growing at the sea’s edge were said to produce barnacles. These, when they fell into the water, were transmuted into geese.

This doctrine of spontaneous generation, a pagan doctrine, is taught today in a modified form by men who pass as scientists. True, they admit that it is not going on now; but they insist that it did take place in the past and that it originated life on this globe. They do not, however, get their living beings from decaying organic matter, but from inorganic matter.

In 1668 the Italian, Bedi, observed that flies are always present around decomposing meat before the maggots appeared. He devised a means of keeping the flies away from the meat, which putrified as always, but produced no maggots. The same kind of meat placed in open jars so that the flies could come in contact with it literally swarmed with maggots. Next he put meat into a jar over the top of which he placed a wire gauze. The flies which were attracted to the meat could not reach it; so they laid their eggs upon the gauze. These hatched in due time; but no maggots appeared in the meat.

From this time on until the invention of the microscope, it came to be understood that Harvey’s dictum, "All life is from preexistent life,” was true, at least, of all the higher animals. But when the microscope revealed the existence of bacteria (1683) which no screen nor stoppers could hold out, the old controversy was renewed. They no longer questioned that the higher animals arise only by procreation, but they insisted that these microscopic organisms proved the existence of a "perpetual abiogenic fount” from which under suitable conditions the "evolution of living beings" continued to take place.

Spontaneous Generation Worries Evolutionists

VEN Professor Huxley, who declared: “The properties of living matter distinguish it absolutely from all other kinds of things; and the present state of our knowledge furnishes us with no link between the living and the not living,” once discovered a slimy substance which he supposed existed in great masses at the bottom of the seas, and which he contended was composed of undifferentiated protoplasm and constituted an exhaustless fountain of life. He called this substance Bathybius Haekeli. It was not long, however, before the ship Challenger, Dr. Lionel Beale, and Dr. Carpenter supplied the proof that his great discovery was a great mistake. Bathybius is now known to be merely a precipitate of gypsum thrown down from sea water by alcohol.

What Bedi had done for the larger forms of life, Tyndall and Pasteur did for the protozoa and bacteria. Tyndall performed almost a thousand experiments.

In his article on Biology in the “Encyclopedia Brittanica,” edition of 1876, Huxley says: “At the present moment there is not a shadow of trustworthy direct evidence that abiogenesis (or spontaneous generation) does take place, or has taken place, within the period during which the existence of the globe is recorded.” Professor Huxley says that there is no “direct evidence.” He no doubt wanted to believe that spontaneous generation had occurred; but he realized that he had to rely upon indirect evidence, although he had none of that either.

Haeckel seems never to have abandoned the idea of spontaneous generation; and many others still believe that it did occur in the past, when the conditions of the earth were different. However, most of the scientists of today reject the theory entirely. This can be seen from the following quotation from a "Textbook of His- -tology” by Frederick B. Bailey, A. M., M. D. He says: “The overthrow of the long-held biological fallacy of spontaneous generation was soon followed by the downfall of a similar theory regarding cells.”

Every living thing, whether plant or animal, is made up of a highly complex compound called protoplasm. Protoplasm is composed of a few simple elements found in the earth’s surfaces, in the “dust of the earth.” There is, however, a vast difference between any chemical compound

and chemical basis. The cells of the gastric glands and those of the salivary glands receive the same blood, but manufacture different products which perform different functions—the first producing an acid product which aids in the digestion of proteids, the second producing an alkaline substance which aids' in the digestion of starches.

In the blood are a few elements not used in the production of the saliva and gastric juices. But the salivary and gastric glands do not make a mistake and take the wrong elements. They select the needed elements, and reject the rest.

The same blood that supplies the gastric and the salivary glands also supplies the muscles, nerves, bones, etc. The same food elements that go to the muscles are sent to the bones. Yet the muscles do not make bones, nor do the bones make nerves or muscles. Each cell takes from the blood the element or elements needed in building and maintaining its own peculiar structure or in carrying on its own particular functions, and rejects the rest

This same selective power is seen in operation in the healing of a cut or a wound. There is a skillful and orderly reunion of the tissues and cells on each side of the cut. The circulatory channels are skilfully repaired, the nerves are reunited, muscles and connective tissues unite •with their brothers on the other side. There are no mistakes made. Muscles do not unite with nerves or connective tissue, nor nerves with blood vessels; but each tissue connects with its own kind.

An Alberta peach is grafted into the stub of a common peach. The roots of that stub supply the graft with the same' sap they would have supplied to the original branches, had they not

Bwoitn, X. X.

been cut off; but we get Alberta and not scrub ^: peaches. The plant cells exercise the same selective powers and these are not explainable by ; any known laws of chemistry.

That the process is no mere matter of chemistry is easily seen if we begin at the beginning of the development of the individual animal. A its beginning every animal consists of one cell, microscopic in size, known as a fertilized ovum. Under proper conditions this cell begins to divide and re-divide until there are millions of them. The one becomes two, the two become four, the four are divided into eight, and so on. •At first these cells are all alike; that is, they are identical in form, structure, and function.

That the similarity of these cells is not merely superficial as is the similarity of the ovum of one species with that of another is obvious from the following. Take the little sea-urchin while he is developing, when there is only a little cluster of sixteen cells and put it into sea water from which the lime has been removed. They fall apart and we have sixteen separate units. Put back the lime and each of the sixteen cells will begin the development of a perfect sea-urchin on its own account so that sixteen little animals result

Religion at the Capital

A FRIEND at Washington has sent us a copy of the Post containing the announcements for Sunday’s services. These announcements show that religious enthusiasm in Washington is at a high pitch. Or at least, they show desperate efforts to start something. For instance, there is the Rev. E. Hez Swem. At the Centennial Baptist Church he promised to aid in the salvation of his fellow men by preaching on “Why He Wanted to Blow Me Up.” Now listen to us, Hez: The fact that you would advertise- such a topic for a Sunday sermon shows that you really deserved it, and the way you should have advertised was, “Why on Earth Did He Fail to Blow Me Up!" We answer: The chances are that he has not been to church for several years, and therefore is too much of a Christian to resort to the 1917-1918 brand of religion.

Then there is the Rev. Dr. J. E. Byers. At the Luther Place Memorial Church he was to have sundry and divers people "Join the Reformation Procession around the Luther Monument.” Very good. The Reformation Movement is dead. We admit it. It should have a monument. It does have one. Those who mourn its departure should parade around the monument to show their grief. We have no complaint to make about this highly spiritual procession.

Harry, Clarence, Clifton, and Herbert

THEN there is the Reverend Harry Dawson Mitchell, D.D., of the National Methodist Church. He was going to tell all about "The Recovery of Lost Spirituality in Public Affairs.” Harry, we can tell you just what ails you. When you were howling for war, war, and more war you were a great man. You were putting a vast quantity of “lost spirituality” into public affairs. We know just how you could have another chance. Start another war! It is the only way churchianity will ever get another chance; and it is now or never.

At the McKendree Methodist Episcopal church Dr. Clarence True Wilson was to preach in the morning on "National and International Imprecations of the Eighteenth Amendment”; and in the same church in the evening Reverend Clifton K. Ray was to preach on “The Busy Man." Now, Clarence, where do you find that stuff in the Bible! And CEfton, your topic does not look like a Bible topic, either.

And then there is Herbert. At the Foundry Church (gruesome name for a church) Herbert F. Randolph, D. D., was to preach on "David Lloyd George.” Herbert, we are surprised at you. Do you ever remember St. Paul preaching on “Titus” or “Vespasian” or any of the other great men of his time! Did he not rather say that he was determined to know nothing among his highly intelligent audience other than “Jesus Christ and him crucified”! But maybe you think you have something on St Paul when it comes to real preaching.

Freeley, and the Trombones

ND at the MetropoHtan Presbyterian Church, in the morning the Reverend

Freeley Rohrer was to preach on “Personality," and in the evening on "Emblems of Fellowship.” That’s right, Freeley. "Freely ye have received, freely give." But it might not do your congregation any real harm if you were to sandwich in a Bible topic once in a while. And then again it might We don't know your congregation. Maybe none of them want anything at all out of the Bible. And if they got it unexpectedly it might make them ill, or cause the collections to fall off terribly, or some other dreadful thing might happen. So go ahead and Rohrer t

It seems that there is a number of MetropoHtan churches in Washington. At the one managed by the Reverend John Compton Ball it was the "last opportunity to hear the trombone evangeffsts." How that reminds us of St. Paul, of that sublime moment when he stood up on the AcropoEs and said: "Ye men of Athens, Esten to this,” and then puffed out his old trombone from its bag and gave them the “wonder-fullest” trombone serenade they ever heard.

Making Religion Easy

THEN the Calvary Baptist Church was to have a sermon on “Making Religion Easy." That is the dope I That is what the public wants. If Jesus and the apostles had only been posted on that, how much they could have been spared. Jesus would not have needed to be crucified, and neither Peter nor any of the other apostles would have suffered martyrdom. There would have been no martyrs during the dark ages; for there would have been no saints to martyr. Conditions in the churches would have been modern, just as they are now.

Among the advertisements Karl Gooseman has one in which he says: “Go ye to the streets and lanes of the city and compel them to come in.” Don't be a goose, man! The word rendered "compel” should be rendered "constrain" or "urge." The Lord never commissioned anybody to do more than place a kindly extended invitation before the sheep. The goats, wolves, dogs, and swine were to be allowed to go their way.

Cloois, and John B.

ND then we see that Clovis G. Chappell, D. D., of the Mount Vernon Place M. E.

Church South, was to preach on “Visiting the City.” You did not say what city you had in mind, Clovis; but if it is New York you had better take up a good big collection before you come. And you had better keep off from Broadway, Clovis, and keep out of the cabarets; for you might have the bad luck to run into some of your flock in some of these places, and it would be hard all around to make explanations that would exactly fit the facts.

In the First Presbyterian Church the Reverend Dr. John B. Clark was to speak on the subject, "I am I, not You." This is remarkable; this is fascinating; this is the truth. Now suppose the topic had been "I am You, not I”; that would have been remarkable, and it might have been fascinating, but would it- have been the truth! Or suppose he had advertised the topic as “Am I Ami, or am I not Ami! If I am not Ami, who am I!”

The Beet Foot Forward

OH, Yes, about other religious exercises at the capital. Well! The same paper advertised sermons by Mabel somebody on “Americanization"; some mother’s boy by the name of Rev. Maurice was going to talk on "The Boy of Winander"; Jason, another good boy that had gone wrong, was going to preach on “Thrills at Springfield," and there were other sermons on “Scandinavian Music,” "The Railway of Life,” "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” and other equally important Bible topics.

But then, it was “Navy Day” at the Capital; and all these churches were going to pray for the navy, the same as Christ and the apostles offered up prayers for the Roman navy! and so it was important that they should put their best foot forward. What their worst foot would have been, on an off day, only heaven in its wisdom could know.

Columbus Heard From

SINCE writing the foregoing we have heard from Columbus, Ohio, and list without comment the spiritual pabulum which the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Congregational, and United Brethren churches of that city planned to spread before the spiritually hungry in that city as their feast for a single Sunday:

Safety First; Disappointed; Uncle Sam and the Foreigner; How to be Happy Though Married; Movie Star Salaries; Can a Woman Come Back!; The Branded Man; Sermons in Laces; High Living; He Makes a God from a Tree; Self-Preservation; Growing Pains; Attractive Personality; Upper or Lower Berth; "Les Mis-erables”; The Puritan or Cleopatra,—Which Type Shall Survive in America!; Putting the Shine on; Modern Slime-Pits of Society; The Job of Being a Father; Good Literature; Our Boys in War and Peace.

IN DISTRESS, and in hope that something can be done to alleviate their condition, the farmers of Minnesota have elected one of their number, Magnus Johnson, to the post of United States Senator from that state. Right or wrong, the farmers of the West feel that there is something wrong in the piling up of uncounted wealth in the cities of the East, where it is squande d with a lavish hand, while those that produce the food of the nation work early and late and barely earn enough to keep alive. We doubt if Magnus will be able to do much.

The gypsy moth, which now does considerable damage in America, was imported into this country by a scientist. He was experimenting on the subject of silk culture, when the door of the cage was unfortunately opened and the moths escaped. The United States Department of Agriculture warns that there are three thousand distinct insect pests in other lands that ; would flourish here if we were so unfortunate -as to introduce them.

STUDIES IN THE "HARP OF GOD’

»\Vlth issue Number 00 we began running Judge Rutherford’s new book, fj~| “The Harp of God”, with accompanying questions, taking the place of both Advanced and Juvenile bible Studies which have been hitherto published.

“‘The morning following was the first day of the week; and early that morning, before it became very light, Mary Magdalene and other good women who had followed Jesus from Galilee and ministered unto Him, hastened to | the Savior’s tomb. When they reached there the ¹ angel of the Lord appeared unto them, saying, * “Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you. And they departed _: quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great ^! joy, and did run to bring his disciples word.” (Matthew 28:5-8) This news to these faithful women sounded too good to be true. They were dazed and bewildered; yet with joy they hurried away to deliver the message to others who loved the Lord.

“’Here we have the proof that the resurrection of Jesus is one of the strings upon the harp of God, yielding great joy to those who hear its blessed sound. The first human being who heard of the resurrection rejoiced. How much more joy there must have been in heaven at that hour!

“•Angel means messenger; that is, one who is sent on a mission as a representative or deputy, or messenger of God. These holy messengers or angels always have access to the Father, Jehovah. (Matthew 18:10) We should expect, of course, that these holy ones of the heavenly host would sing praise and give utterance to joy before the Lord at every progressive step of His plan. These angels inhabit the heavens, the high place. And so the Psalmist writes of them: “Praise ye the Lord. Praise ye the Lord from the heavens: praise him in the heights. Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts.” (Psalm 148:1,2) The Bible abounds with many instances wherein God has used these holy angels as messengers. He communicated with Abraham by His angels (Genesis 22:15); also with Jacob. (Genesis 81:

11) God appeared unto Moses by His angel. (Exodus 3:2) He also delivered a message to Elijah by His angel. (1 Kings 19:5) These holy messengers of God guarded the interests of Jesus at all times, from the moment He left the heavenly courts to become the man Jesus for the purpose of redeeming the world of mankind. (Zechariah 3:1-7) The angel of the Lord announced to .Mary that she was to be the mother of the babe Jesus. (Luke 1:31) When she gave birth to this wonderful child, the angel of the Lord brought the message to the faithful shepherds, and the great multitude of the heavenly hosts joined together with that angel in praising God.—Luke 2:9-11.

A child o’er the creatures shall then have dominion; The lion shall yield at his word of command;

The crocodile’s den shall be his pavilion;

And the wild mountain deer shall feed from his hand.

QUESTIONS ON THE HARP OF GOD”

What was done by Mary and others on the morning of the first day of the week after Jesus’ crucifixion? fl 254.

Who appeared unto them at the tomb? and what did the messenger say ? fl 254.

What effect did this message from the angel have upon these women? and what did they do? fl 254.

What proof have we here that the resurrection of Jesus is one of the strings upon the harp of God ? fl 255.

What effect was produced upon the first human being who heard of the resurrection of the Lord ? fl 255.

How must this news have been received in heaven? J255.

What is the meaning of the word angel? fl 256.

Do these angels have access to Jehovah? Give the Scriptural proof, fl 256.

Is there Scriptural proof that these holy messengers sing praises in heaven? fl 256.

What Scriptural proof have we that God uses angels for messengers ? Give several instances, fl 256.

Is there any Scriptural evidence that these holy angels guarded the interests of Jesus while here on earth? fl 256.

Cite Scriptural proof as to what else the angels did with reference to Jesus the Labe, fl 256.

sss

A new year dawns with ominous and threatening consequences certain to follow in the wake of nine years of strife.

Our attitude is one of hopefulness; but our feelings are distraught with the forebodings that mark every change: It may prove for the best, it is likely to be otherwise.

That ultimately everything will work for good is the feeling of the carefree; it is the prophecy of all .

To be assured that such is the future, and that earth’s time of greatest blessing is in the making through present distress, is to possess a foresight superhuman.

The broad general events of 1924 are foretold, just as the war in 1914 was prophesied, and the revolutions from 1918 onward.

The Bible foretells the drifting course of events. The Hasp Bible Study Course has assembled these prophecies for your guidance. Weekly reading assignments and self-quiz cards provide a course of reading (an hour a week) that can be completed in thirteen weeks.

Studies in tub Scriptures, a library of topically arranged Scripturally indexed books, in ordinary not theological language, provide a reference work for a full and more detailed explanation of specific prophecies.