A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND. COURAGE
MAN AND MACHINE
HORRORS OF MUSTARD GAS
MINING THE HEAVENS
CRIME OF VACCINATION
SEQUOIA, THE BIG TREES
FORM OF GOVERNMENT
eleventh of a series of radio lectures on good government, by Judge Rutherford
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EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY
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Volume XI < No. 263 October 16, 19 2 9
Contents
I r ■: ===-.—-w=w.= ~ 7— :::: rlW
| Labor and Economics
I" The Race Between Man and Machine ........... 35
Social and Educational ! Percentages of Illiteracy .
| Ripley’s Life of St. Patrick ..........
! Manufacturing and Mining
Increase in Helium Output ............... 39 | Kentucky’s Black Bock .........
I Cocoon, Most Beautiful of Caskets . . .......... 45
I Finance—Commerce—Transportation
I Progress in America in 28 Years ........... .
g Wall Street Imperils the World
| Logansport’s Cheap Power ............... 42
I Political—Domestic and Foreign
Ontario Makes Its Pinal Steal .............. 42
North Little Rock’s Strange Mayor ...
The Horrors of Mustard Gas ....
Blasphemous Post Cards ................ 56
Agriculture and Husbandry Nine Thousand Farming Corporations
Mining the Heavens for Fertility of Earth ....
Science and Invention
Million-Volt Lightning Machine
Levulose from Artichokes ......
Semophone Films Shortly Now ....
Home and Health Do “Health Foods’’ Violate the Law?
Aluminum Causes Death of Twin a
Travel and Miscellany Sequoia, the Big Trees ...
Religion and'Philosobhy Why God’s Interest in the Sabbath Day?
Bible Questions and Answers . .
The Children’s Own Badio Story
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Volume XI Brooklyn, N. Y-, Wednesday, October 16, 1929 Number 263
The Race Between Man and Machine
f^QUPPOSE that civilization has increased the world’s demands to five times what they were fifty years ago (and surely that should be considered a very liberal estimate), how-is it with the supply? All will agree that invention and machinery have increased the supply to more than ten times what it was fifty years ago. A mentally blind man can see that as soon as enough machinery has been constructed to supply the demands, thereafter there must be a race, a competition between man and machinery: because there will not be enough work for all, even if no further additions were made of either men or machines. But more competition is being added; the world’s population is increasing rapidly, and machinery guided by increased skill is creating more and better machinery daily. Who can not see that, under the present selfish system, as soon as the supply exceeds the demand (as soon as we have overproduction) the race between men and machinery must be a short one, and one very disadvantageous to men? Machines in general are slaves of iron, steel and wood, vitalized by steam, electricity, etc. They can do not only more work, but better work, than men can do. And they have no minds to cultivate, no perverse dispositions to control, no wives and families to think of and provide for; they are not ambitious; they do not form unions and send delegates to interfere with the management of the business, nor do they strike; and they are ready to work extra hours without serious complaint or extra pay. As slaves, therefore, machines are far more desirable than either black or white human slaves, and human labor and skill are therefore being dispensed with as far as possible; and those who own the machine slaves are glad that under nresent laws and usages their fellow men are ee and independent, because they are thereby relieved of the responsibility and care on their behalf which their enslavement would necessitate.”
The foregoing reads as if it might have been written yesterday; but it was written thirty-two years ago by Pastor Bussell, and it sizes up accurately a situation which is giving occasion for profound and anxious thought by myriads of people at this time.
A Fixed Permanent Mass of Unemployed
For more than a year now Secretary of Labor Davis has been insisting that the mechanization of industry has brought about a great problem of unemployment, and seems to be building up in America a fixed permanent mass of unemployed, and even the reactionary Literary Digest cautiously admits that “some of the men whose places are taken by a machine are given other jobs in the same concern, but such an absorption can take place only when the firm’s operations are expanding faster than laborsaving devices are being installed”. The National Industrial Conference Board’s figures show that, with the machinery they now have to work with, only sixty-seven men are needed to do the work which required a hundred men only twenty-five years ago.
Every time there is an increase in production of manufactured articles there is a small increase in manufacturing employment; and every time there is a decrease in production of manufactured articles there is a decrease in manufacturing employment; but the lines of production are growing farther and farther apart every year. Production every year is much, very much, greater than manufacturing employment, and meantime the population is steadily increasing. This is interesting, but more than interesting: it is ominous. Unemployed men and their families must eat.
There was a time when Great Britain forbade the American colonies either to manufacture machinery or to import it; with characteristic generosity toward the rest of the world she wanted to do all the manufacturing herself. Just now she seems to be taking lessons, and not very pleasant ones, on how to do the very kind of work in which she once sought a monopoly. America has set the pace.
It used to be thought that a salesman was more sure of his daily food than almost any other kind of person. Now it is open to question. Automatic merchandising machines are making their appearance everywhere, and the latest ones make it unnecessary for the buyer to have the exact coin called for by the purchase ; he may drop a coin of any denomination into the slot and receive his correct change, together with the article purchased. Efficiency experts have figured it out that sixty percent of the time of the average drug store salesman is consumed on automatic functions that a machine could perform just as well; and that inevitably means sixty percent fewer drug clerks to sell the tooth paste, razor blades, soaps, cigarettes, powders and medicines usually dispensed.
Commerce and Finance says grimly (but perhaps does not realize just how grimly): “Automatic merchandising machines have given such a good sales account of themselves that almost any amount of effort looking toward their improvement is justified. As salesmen, they are worth training for bigger results.”
It seems as if there is no end to the detail of office work, does it not? It is a day when every business undertaking rests upon statistics. But those statistics are now gathered so rapidly by machinery that it makes one’s head swim to think about it. Information is punched on cards, and after that data is once punched the cards are assorted and classified at the rate of 20,000 an hour, and any data any of the cards contain can be gleaned from them in a very short time.
There is addition and subtraction, multiplica-. tion and division! It might be more correct to say that there used to be these things. In modern business offices this work is now all done by machinery. Only about twelve percent of office workers are now doing bookkeeping and stenography. Most office work is done by machinery.
Even typewriting, prosaic old typewriting (and the art is only fifty years old), has been all upset by the mechanical invasion. There is a new typewriter which prints twenty-two selected words and syllables, each at a single stroke. The job of typewriting at the branch office has. ceased to be a job at all. One sending machine in the main office, operated by any typist, is connected by wire to any number of motor-driven typewriters located in distant cities or departments, and as the original sender writes, so writes every other machine on the line. One operator does all the work formerly done by scores.
Would you be a linotype operator? You are learning the business just a little too late. Now a reporter comes in and spells the letters of each word direct into a ‘Talkie Typesetter’. By belt transmission the matrices are set, and, if desired, the same type may be set in one hundred other composing rooms throughout the country, by means of the teletypesetter. It is evident that the time is at hand when without the intervention of any linotype operator at all it will be possible to set the same story in type in every city in the country.
Perhaps you aspire to be a telegraph o_perator or a wireless operator. But why aspire? The telegraph and the wireless companies now do not need operators. All they need is persons who know how to do typing on a typewriter; the machinery does all the rest, sending and receiving messages by wire and by wireless accurately and much more rapidly than could be done if the human brain were to intervene. Really, the human brain would be in the way.
Possibly you would like a position as a telephone operator. You may as well forget it. The prediction is made that by 1930 there will not be a telephone girl in Washington, D. C.; and the automatic telephone will soon displace the 20,000 girls that make their living as telephone operators in New York city.
Ah! You would be an engineer, working out abstruse and difficult problems of curves and graphs that take years to learn and months to perform. Sorry, but Dr. Bush, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has designed the Integraph, which makes it unnecessary to employ you. It is an adding machine carried to mathematical heights to which few people can 50, and it does a month’s work in a few minutes and does it accurately.
Maybe you would risk a brush with the police and resort to telling fortunes for a living. You won’t need to. There is a machine that will tell just as good a fortune, even print it on a little card and hand it to you, including the date and your correct weight, all for one cent, and you certainly could not afford to compete with it.
Chimney sweep! That’s the thing. Face streaked with soot, ladders, ropes, brooms, brushes and dirt galore. Too late. The whole thing is done by machinery, and the suction of the forty-horsepower engine used is so strong that one time a live kitten was rudely hauled off the hearth and kited up the chimney into the dirt bag in jig time, whence it was rescued with some difficulty and somewhat the worse for wear.
You could at any rate be a companion for somebody who needs to have a person handy to read to him. But no! The General Electric laboratories have invented a thing that will read aloud, thus relieving the strain on the eyes, and the listener will get the contents three times as fast as if you were reading it to him.
There was a time when you would have liked a job as watchman somewhere; but not now. The big concerns are making robots as fast as they can turn them out, and these mechanical servants have the ability and the gall to call up headquarters and solemnly say , “It is hot” or “It is cold”, and they do other things; which keeps several men off the pay roll. In March of this year England had seven of these mechanical servants in use, and it is predicted that within a few years they ‘will be commonplace sights in all large cities. In response to a challenge Dr. II. D. Baernstein, of the University of Wisconsin physiological chemistry department, has invented a robot which he claims can be taught. The account says: “Dr. Baernstein’s 'thinking’ apparatus consists of numerous switches, wires, and an incandescent light. The mechanism, he said, is so arranged that the bulb may be lighted by one of the switches and that any of the other switches may be 'taught’ to light the bulb. The operation, he claims, is analogous to the presentation of stimuli. The . ffiine is merely a symbol of mechanism of the human body.”
More Production but Fewer Employees
During the last four years there has been a decrease of five percent in the number of employees in the oil refining business, but an increase of eighty-four percent in the amount of oil refined. There has been a decrease of thirteen percent in the number of tobacco factory employees, but an increase of fifty-three percent in the amount of the dirty weed made ready for human pollution. There are nineteen percent - fewer employees in the slaughtering and packing of meat, but there is an output twenty percent greater. The railroads have one percent fewer employees and are handling thirty percent more traffic. And so it goes.
You would be a miner? No, you would not. Coal-mining is fast becoming a factory routine. Already, seventy-one percent of American bituminous coal is mined by machinery. You do not need to hang around the steel works looking for a job; for the steel companies can produce almost three times as much pig iron today as they did in 1904, with the same crew of men. Yes, of course, the country is prosperous. You read it in the paper, did you not? But the prosperity goes to the machine owners.
Where does labor go? It goes to the same place the bent pins go. There has been a decrease of 900,000 factory employees since 1920, and the railroads have cut their force 240,000 in the same time. One man now turns out as many razor blades as sixty-four could make in 1912. In ten years the output has increased 211 percent in rubber manufacture and 102 percent in automobiles. A machine which tests radio tubes accurately takes the place of twenty-five to thirty girls. Trenching machines, gasoline cranes, bucket conveyers and other devices have transformed the building industry into a machine industry.
Let’s get jobs in banks. No, let’s not. The largest banks are rapidly installing ledger-posting and typewriter accounting machines. The new and improved pattern, known as the “business brain”, will do simultaneously the work of a cash register, a bookkeeper and an adding machine, and, from another part of the building, make a complete record of a sale at the time it is made. One of these machines installed in a bank (and it can be operated by a girl) does away with the work of nine-tenths of the employees. A feature of the machine is that it calls attention to an overdraft by automatically locking itself, and prints the amount in red when the lock is released. ..
Let’s give up trying to get a high-class job. Better take one as a longshoreman and be done with it. Too late once more! The new motor-driven banana unloader not only saves much labor, but damages the fruit much less than unloading by hand. How about selling soft drinks or gasoline? Nothing doing. Very soon now and all this work will be done by machines operated with quarters or other coins in slots, like the washing machines in the basements of apartment houses. Some of these new selling machines actually give a sepulchral "Thank you’ as the coins fall down into their hollow insides. There is a store at Atlantic City where all the salesmen are robots.
In the city of Washington there are three robots, Adam, Cain and Abel, that furnish daily information on the amount of water in each reservoir. By means of the televox, a load dispatcher of an electric power company or street railway company can call up on any telephone an unattended power plant or substation, receive reports on the status of every machine from the robots in the station, and start or stop machines, open and close switches, and perform other operations at will.
Road-making is now done by machinery. Concrete pipe is made and laid in position in a continuous line, without any joints. The huge water tunnels hundreds of feet beneath New York city will be dug by robots now being built at Schenectady. In the next war giant tanks will climb hills and plunge through gullies with no human being aboard. Machinery can be made to handle all the situations that the inventor of the machinery can foresee.
You can always get a job on a farm. Or can you? Forty-five thousand harvesting and threshing machines have displaced 130,000 farm workers but recently. The plowing of a field is now done entirely automatically, and if the machine completes its task before morning the power is automatically shut off. The herediscope saves the time and study of livestock breeders figuring out how the Mendelian law will operate in given conditions.
Today there is a typewriter weighing one ounce which fits into the vest pocket, and at the other end of the mechanical world there is a dynamo fifty feet in height which uses up one ton of coal every two minutes, to make light and powder for a part of New York city. There is a machine which exerts 600,000 pounds of pressure to the square inch; there is noiseless machinery, with gears made of compressed fibrous materials, and there is a machine which registers the tiny amounts of moisture in any substance.
How is it all to end? The editor of the Iron Trade Review says that we must have more machinery and ever more, so that more men may be taken into the purely service occupations which new machinery creates. But this does not go to the root of the matter. The American Federation of Labor, sensing the danger, says timidly that “the machine has justified labor’s demand for a five-day week”. It proposes to go over Niagara in a skiff.
Rabbi Goldman, of Cleveland, says that “industry, commerce and the machine are grinding men to pulp”; and that is the truth. Aldous Huxley, the English novelist and critic, sees culture ruined by mass production, democracy on the junk-heap, and the selfish and intelligent minority (owners of the machines) fighting for their lives against those who do not own the machines; and probably that is the truth too.
What does all this mean? Did not the great God who made this world know what the result would be when He gave man an inventive mind 1 Of course He did, and that is what He wants man to use. God made man to be a prince, and not a slave. But when man desired to have his own way, God said to him, ‘All right. Suppose you try it; and while you are trying it, you may do the work yourself. When you find out how much you can do, you may desire to have some help.’ Man is now calling for that help; blindly, it may be, but calling nevertheless.
God is now arranging that man may return to the plane God intended him for in the first place, namely, that of a prince. A prince usually has servants to do his menial work. So God has provided that man may have all the servants necessary to do all the manual labor, while man is to do the “bossing”, namely, run the machines and utilize the powers of nature. This is in preparation that man may have time for selfculture and education. God is also prepari’--to give each man the necessary education . fit him for a position as prince.
Thus what appears to he man’s greatest calamity is really but God’s preparation for his release from slavery, and his greatest blessing. Lift up your heads, ye weary, discouraged workmen ! God has not forgotten ybu, and soon the clouds will break and the glorious day of God’s heavenly kingdom will break through with all its glory.
Increase in Helium Output
THE government will shortly be able to produce twenty million cubic feet of helium gas a year at its plants at Amarillo, Texas. This gas, non-inflammable, is ideal for zeppelins, the day of which is at hand.
Drought Decreases Wheat Crop
THE severe drought in North America has greatly reduced the wheat crop in Canada and in states along the Canadian border. It is claimed that the Canadian wheat crop is not likely to be more than 50 percent of what it was last year.
Frogs in Algeria
THE Bible story of Egypt’s invasion by frogs in the time of Pharaoh is fully sustained by a like happening near Constantine, Algeria, during a storm in July of this year. The frogs covered an area two miles wide, blocked up wells and damaged crops.
Nine Thousand Farming Corporations
IN THE year 1926 there were over nine thousand corporations engaged in farming on a large scale. The gross income of these farms exceeded seven hundred million dollars. An examination of the reports showed great variations in the results from the large farms.
Must Not Mention Poison Gas as Such
IN AN article in Reynolds’ Newspaper, Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., says: “I happen to know that we are manufacturing gas bombs, and that at the time when, at Geneva, we were promising not to use them again, if others would do the same, we were actually issuing orders that gas bombs were not to be referred to as such, and that in • 'eparing. documents of any description relat-„ A to air bombs the word 'gas’ was never to be used.”
Each Thought Other to Blame
ONE of the comical incidents connected with the earthquake in the St. Lawrence basin a few weeks ago was that two Canadian boys, twins, engaged in a fist fight, each accusing the other of shaking the bed repeatedly so that he could not sleep.
Kentucky’s Black Rock
KENTUCKY has a new industry, Kentucky black rock, shortened for business purposes into "Kyrock”. Kyrock, a new asphalt, laid cold, will last indefinitely, and will not roll under traffic, wear out, or break down. The material is already in use in thirty-five states.
The Value of Courts
THE London Daily Express, commenting frankly on the game of bunk known as royalty, says: "Every American girl who is presented at Buckingham Palace is a valuable asset, for she invariably becomes an English propagandist.”
Talked over 13,000 Miles
THE British Postoffice, which controls its wireless transmissions, in the month of August arranged for an anxious mother at an inland town in Britain to talk with the head nurse of a Sydney (Australia) hospital, in which her son was lying seriously ill. This is just halfway around the world.
New York to Grow Own Vegetables
IN ORDER to provide fresh air and wholesome 'work for prison inmates, the governor of New York state proposes to make the experiment of having all food for New York state institutions grown on prison farms. It is believed that this will result in reclaiming many men and reducing the chances of such riots as recently caused the state the loss of $800,000 at Auburn and Clinton.
A WRITER in Labor states succinctly that a child’s chance in life is dependent on the contents of its dad’s pay envelope, and that if father is given enough so that mother can stay home and. take care of the kids it will soon not be necessary to call any more conferences on child welfare.
Widespread Droughts
HP HE summer of 1929 has been marked by -*- terrible droughts, widespread over large portions of the earth. In places on Long Island residences surrounded by acres of farm land have been forced to buy fruit and vegetables for their own tables, the drought having ruined everything.
BRITAIN has just had an international convention of boy scouts. The official name of such a convention of boys is called a jamboree. Among the guests from all over the world were 1,500 American boys. By a nice act of courtesy they were allowed to lead the parade past the reviewing stand.
THE British Postoffice, controlling Britain’s telephone service, will now, for a slight charge, search an entire town for any person who is wanted at the telephone. The afternoon charge for this service is only sixpence, but is two to four times that amount in the morning, depending on distance.
TOURING the war, and since, the American people, the common people, the people upon whom the burdens really rest, loaned France $4,230,000,000. After years of arguing, France has finally agreed to pay 40 percent of this amount during the next sixty-two years. For years the French press, and the European press generally, has been filled with abuse of America because of this hard-heartedness. Most of the money has been spent in making the world more unsafe, and more ready for another greater and more terrible war. Probably Uncle Sam will never receive but a small number of installments on this vast debt. And 60 percent of it is for ever gone where the woodbine twineth.
HRHE entire United States, Canada and Mexi-co are now in telephonic, communication with Europe. Britain has just opened service with Buenos Aires, good for the evening hours only. The rate is 2 pounds 3 shillings for each minute. Subscribers in Buenos Aires will have to speak from a special booth.
ALOS ANGELES man recently returned to Germany to marry a girl to whom he was engaged when he was 26 and she was 25. Now they are ninety-one and ninety years respectively. It took this young man only 65 years to get enough together for a home. We wish him a long and happy wedded life.
TN TWENTY-EIGHT years the national in-J- come of the United States has multiplied itself by seven and one-half; the savings deposits have become eight times as great; the life insurance in force has become eleven times as much; the freight carried by the largest railroads has become six times as much.
FARMING is getting to be more and more a strictly mechanical business. Combined harvester-threshers, tractors and motor trucks have revolutionized wheat-growing on the western plains. Mechanical corn pickers are coming into common use, and mechanical cotton pickers have reduced the cost of harvesting cotton $10 a bale and thrown many out of work.
A Badly-advised Governor
WHEN representatives of the American
Federation of Labor were illegally driven out of a South Carolina town the president of the Federation sent a telegram to the governor of the state demanding that they be protected in their rights. The governor lost his head and denounced this perfectly proper request as impertinent and threatening. Does the governor know that this is an invitation to law-abiding men to cease to be so ? Is that what the American people elect governors for? Some of these men, overawed by the too frequent presence of the representatives of great corporations arour ’ the state offices, seem to forget whom they a. _ working for.
Million-Volt Lightning Machine
HP HE General Electric Company has made a portable lightning generator with which experiments are being made in the forest area of northwestern Michigan. Bolts of lightning with a million volts back of them are hurled at transmission lines, the effects studied, and plans are being made to render the lines as nearly lightning-proof as may be possible.
Canada’s Big Oil-Burners
HE Canadian Pacific will put twenty big oilburning locomotives in service on its heavy grades in the Canadian Rockies. Each engine and tender is ninety-eight feet long and weighs 750,000 pounds. The boilers'are made entirely of nickel steel. The tenders will carry 1,200 gallons of -water and 4,500 gallons of oil. There ■will be five drive-wheels on each side.
Cotton and Wheat Move West
HE production of cotton and wheat have both moved westward. Cotton is a less and less important crop in the Atlantic seaboard states, and a more and more important crop in Oklahoma and Texas'. Wheat is greatly decreasing in acreage in Iowa, Minnesota and states east thereof, while it is being grown on a larger scale in states farther west.
Grand Master of Italian Masons Blinded
FTER being locked up on one of Mussolini’s horrible penal islands for two years for the rather innocent crime of being the leader of the Italian Masons, the grand master of the lodge in that country, Torrigiani, has now gone entirely blind. The odd thing about it is that many great American financiers are Masons and hope for much from the Mussolini form of anarchy.
Keen Memory of an Aged Elephant
ORTY-FOUR years ago the great elephant Jumbo was killed by a railway train, at
St. Thomas, Ontario. The other day his 110-year-old mate, Alice, recognized the fatal spot, suddenly stopped, went down on her knees, stamped, writhed and trumpeted shrilly, plainly showing her memory and her sorrow; surely u, touching manifestation of the genuineness of her affection.
Levulose from Artichokes
EVULOSE, the sweetest of sugars, is now extracted from the artichoke at a cost of $25 to $30 a pound, but it is held possible that great changes in the near future will place this sugar in reach of the people at a price that will compete with sugars made from beets and cane. The artichoke grows wild in'nearly every section of the United States.
Russian Cruelties to Jews
fTHIE annual convention of Zionists, held at
Detroit, has passed resolutions declaring that the Soviet government is now deliberately and maliciously persecuting and suppressing the Zionist movement, hounding Zionists and exiling them to the unspeakable Siberian dungeons with a ruthlessness unparalleled in the darkest days of former pogroms and inquisitions.
Life in Him When He Signed
lizabeth Sohoffen, ex-nun, makes affidavit of an instance where a sick priest with $15,000 willed to his relatives refused, at the instance of the church authorities, to make a new will turning the amount over to the church. Later the abbot of the monastery told her that the church got the money all right. Asked how that was possible, he explained that in the presence of three priests he put a fly in the dead man’s mouth, put a pen in his hand, and signed the new will, and all four of the priests testified on oath that there -was life in him when he made the signature.
Railroads Fight for Passenger Travel
WITH the opening of combined rail and air service from coast to coast all the railroads running between Chicago and the Pacific Coast have cut their schedules on their fast trains from five to seven hours each. This results in the saving of a business day and is evidently done to stave off as long as possible the day of reckoning with aviation which is now at hand.
The new schedules affect 100,000 miles of railway in the United States. The new schedules save fourteen hours between New York and Los Angeles. The new fast train service makes it possible to make the entire trip by rail, New York to San Diego, with only three nights on the train.
CHICAGO has a police dog which when left alone hungry in the house tipped over the telephone and barked into the transmitter. This brought police on the run; they fed the dog, he was delighted, the owner was delighted, the police were delighted, and all the rest of us are delighted.
THE London Daily Express declares that the unparalleled speculative mania which has been in progress in Wall Street for the past three years is imperiling the whole structure of world trade. The article, which is written by some one well informed, and buttressed by statistics, makes the solemn declaration that unless something is done soon to induce a gradual decline in the value of stocks to a reasonable level, the crash will be terrific, and the effect will be felt in every corner of the world.
Sir W. Joynson-Hicks, commenting on the decisions of the bishops to go ahead and use their repudiated prayer book, says that instead of using their positions to thus teach the people contempt for British law these bishops should have the courage to come again to parliament and frankly tell the truth as follows: “We want to Romanize the old Church of England; we Want to get free from the shackles of the Elizabethan Reformation. We want to go as we please in matters of ritual, unrestricted by Parliament and the courts of law. Wo want, in effect, to be disestablished.”
TN CINCINNATI a miscreant named Herbert ■*- Powell got the ear of Mrs. Frederica Cas-cioni and separated her from $21, on the ground that he could get masses to that amount offered for some of her relatives at the Santa Maria Institute. Unfortunately he failed to turn in the cash to the institute, and the rule, “High money, high mass; low money, low mass; no money, no mass,” went into effect. And now Mrs. Cascioni must do $21 worth of baking which she had not figured on. Oh, well! When she has scraped together another $21 she will still be a good customer. No wonder that shipments of ivory from Africa are decreasing.
T OGANSPORT, Indiana, has its own electric light and power plant. Rates are forty percent less than in Chicago, owned and controlled by the power trust. Moreover, in eight years the Logansport plant has donated all the street lighting to the city and turned over $1,227,000 in profits besides. No wonder the power trust can afford to throw away millions buying college professors and newspapers.
TpREDERicK L. Collins, writing in Woman’s
Home Companion, declares that of two hundred thousand Protestant churches sixty thousand gained no new members in the past year and forty thousand more gained only one or two members in that time. Seven thousand churches are actually vacant and .deserted. Mr. Collins points out that previous glowing reports of church growth were based upon births into families inactively connected with, the church and upon admission of persons who moved away from one community to another without ever being stricken from the rolls of the original church. Every time they moved they were added once more to the total. This is not merely farcical: it is absolutely crooked.
/^NTARIO has just taken the last 129,320
square miles of territory from the Indians living within her borders. The 12,000 Indians are to get $4 apiece each year; and each chief is to get a flag and a medal, the two together being of less value to him than a bologna sausage. Reduced to plain terms, Ontario has taken over 82,764,800 acres from the Indians and will pay an annual rental of something less than one cent for each twenty acres. Probably there is gold of untenable value on this property. That is why the great financiers who are usually back of moves of this kind are so extremely generous and open-hearted. One can almost hear their tongues stick to the roofs of their mouths for fear the deal will not go through. The Indians are to get their $4 a year “as long as grass grows and rivers flow”, which means that the next time there is a dry summer the Indians will get nothing and thereafter will receive the same amount regularly till the end of time. Lo, the poor Indian!
Butterflies as Pets
UR Dumb Animals gives an interesting story of two butterflies, trained as pets. These would come when their names were called, and delighted in perching on their mistress’ hand and being waved back and forth. She gained their confidence by giving them their first meal of honey and water in the heart of a rose. The same article says that wasps have been trained as pets.
The Giant Shovel of All
ROM time to time we have had items about greater and ever greater steam shovels, but the greatest one has just been shipped to Illinois, where it will be used to do the work of hundreds of miners. It will scoop up twenty tons of earth in one bite and is as tall as an eleven-story building. It took a train of fifty cars to transport the huge shovel to the bituminous coal field where it will be used in stripping operations.
S'emophone Films Shortly Now
USTRIAN inventors have perfected the semophone machine and records which they believe will assuredly take the place of all other systems of talking films and phonograph records. The films are exceedingly inexpensive to make, convenient to handle, and an entire opera which will take forty minutes to play can be put on one film. Moreover, the claim is made that the films are more durable than phonograph records, and that reproduction is perfect. The poor musician is being literally invented out of an existence.
Percentages of Illiteracy
HE percentages of illiteracy in countries where the education of the masses is in the hands of the Roman Catholic hierarchy are as follows: Guatemala 92 percent, Brazil 85 percent, Spain 78 percent, Mexico 75 percent, Portugal 73 percent, Cuba 56 percent, Argentina 54 percent, Chile 49 percent, Italy 48 percent, Hungary 40 percent, Austria 26 percent, Belgium 18 percent, Ireland 17 percent. The percentages of illiteracy in countries where there is a public school system are less than 1 percent each in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden, 3y2 percent in Scotland, 4 percent in Holland, 5% percent in England and 7y2 percent in the United States.
Normal Children May Learn Speech Slowly fpHE United States Public Health Service calls attention to the fact that the popular belief that children who do not talk at the normal age are mentally defective is responsible for much unwarranted anxiety. It says that while it is true that disordered speech may be-' an early symptom of mental defect, yet there are occasions when speech development may be delayed as late as nine years of age in children otherwise perfectly normal.
Yale Professor Refused Citizenship
FOLLOWING the precedent established by the Supreme Court in the case of Mme.
Schwimmer, the Federal Court for Connecticut ' has refused citizenship to Professor Douglas C.
Macintosh, of Yale University, because he is conscientious in the matter of bearing arms. Explaining his position, Professor Macintosh is reported as saying, in part:
I am willing to support my country, even to the extent of bearing arms, if asked to do so by the government in any war which I can regard as morally justified. But I am not willing to purchase American'' citizenship by promising beforehand that I will be ready to bear arms for my country in any and every war in which my country may engage, whether morally justified or not. I will not promise that I would support the government in a war in violation of the so-called Kellogg pact, for instance.
I am ready to give the United States, in return for citizenship, as full allegiance as I have ever given or could give to any country. I am ready to put allegiance to my country above private interest and mere individual preference and second only to my allegiance to what I take to be the will of God. By the •will of God I mean what is reasonable and right, whatever is for the highest well-being of humanity or of everybody concerned.
It may be said that if citizens generally were admitted on this basis it might become impossible for the government to go to war except in cases where the people believed the war to be morally justifiable.
But why should any democratic government want to go to war unless its people, or the great majority of them, can be led to see the justice of such a course 1 And especially when a government, in agreement with practically the whole -world, has renounced war as an instrument of national policy and agreed never to seek the solution of its disputes with other nations except by pacific means. Why should such a government seek to go to war unless it has back of it the moral support of at least the great majority of its thoughtful and conscientious citizens ?
THE time will come when it will be an honor to be called a farmer, a “husbandman”. Zechariah 13:5 says: “But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman.” Here we have the false prophet speaking after he gets into the Millennium. He is ashamed of what he has been prophesying, and when he is addressed by his associates as “prophet”, in derision, he will claim to be of one of the most honorable vocations known to that age, farming. (See Zechariah 13:4: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied”)
Then is when he will claim to be of that honorable and noble class to whom it is promised: ‘Every man shall dwell under his own vine and fig tree where none dare to molest or to make afraid’; “the meek shall inherit the earth”; and ‘the righteous shall feed upon the fat of the land’. Ample evidences here of agricultural prosperity! Just what we might expect under a just rule: “And the Lord shall be king over all the earth; in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one.”—Zech. 14: 9.
Satan is “the prince of this world” now; so acknowledged by Jesus when He was on earth, and he has never allowed the farmer a square deal. On the contrary, he has led him into ‘paths of unrighteousness’ in farm practice.
In our farming today, as well as in our religion, there is little oneness of mind or purpose. Every man has his own ideas and is “prophesying” as if endowed with authority. Thus it has been ever since Satan caused our foreparents to be turned out of the only perfectly farmed area the world has ever known. But when He takes charge “whose right it is”, when the full light of Millennial truth shall shine alike upon all, then our agricultural practice, as well as our moral practice, will be directed strictly by a oneness of purpose and a oneness of practice that will result in a glorious harvest fitting the conditions of that “Golden Age”.
If farmers had all the money accredited to ancient Croesus, and continued their present practice of soil robbery and feed buying, they would soon again be “as poor as Job’s turkey”.
The world has never yet discovered how to obtain and maintain permanent prosperity without an agriculture based on soil building and economic production in a self-sustaining system.
My friends, if I should make the statement that “all farmers are millionaires”, some of you, at least, would reply: “He’s talking nonsense.”
Let me ask you this question: If you had millions of dollars’ worth of gold in the rocks on your farm, would you regard it “nonsense” to be called a millionaire? No. You would feel good over it and proceed at once to mine the gold and realize on your wealth.
Now, I want to announce to you that each man who owns even one acre of land, is a multimillionaire. Let me prove this statement!
Every square inch of the earth’s surface has a column of air resting on it that weighs approximately fifteen pounds. That fifteen pounds is four-fifths nitrogen, and four-fifths of fifteen is twelve; therefore, you have twelve pounds of nitrogen over each square inch of your land, waiting to be mined. Nitrogen is worth an average of about twenty cents a pound; therefore, you have $2.40 worth of it over each square inch of your land.
Now listen: an acre of land contains 6,272,640 square inches, which at $2.40 a square inch would make $15,054,336, the value of the nitrogen over one acre of your land, waiting to be extracted by cooperating with nature in growing and turning legumes, such as vetch, crimson clover, etc. The supply is inexhaustible. You can’t remove it all. You couldn’t use it all if you had it; for plants are like animals: they can eat just so much, and no more, each year.
How Can We Mine This Wealth?
By sowing vetch in the fall and turning it in full bloom the next spring, you can easily get sixty pounds of nitrogen, which is equivalent to 400 pounds of nitrate of soda or 850 pounds of cotton-seed meal, a value approximating $12, plus the value of the humus-making material plowed under, which is easily worth as much more in soil ability.
If you thus treated as much as 100 acres each winter, your fertilizer benefit alone would be $1200 a year and $1200 more in soil ability, making a total increase of $2400 a year in soil fertility and soil ability, to say nothing about the 100-percent increase in the crops gathered for the first few years, at least, under this system.
If you should live to practise this system on the 100 acres for twenty years, the total income in nitrogen alone would be $24,000.
In Richmond County, N. C., from 1920 to 1925, when almost all the counties of both North and South Carolina were losing and lost from five hundred to a thousand farmers a county, Richmond County increased her number of farmers 415 during that time; and it was due to nothing more than the fact that she planted five thousand acres in velvet-beans, about two thousand acres of soybeans, and a carload of vetch seed. In other words, that “God-forsaken” county, consisting of three-fourths deep sand, woke up to the light of soil fertility and economic production through the use of legumes, and was not afraid and its banks vzere not afraid. You know banks do not loan money on uncertainties; you and I wouldn’t. They are “from Missouri”.
Man knows that he can’t build up his body so that it will remain built up. He knows that he must build every day, even three times a day, to keep built up; and he knows also that he can’t build up his body by taking chemicals that stimulate only. He knows that he requires solid foods and bulky rations, additionally, to keep him “fit”.
Strange to say, however, he doesn’t seem to know that his land’s requirements are similar. If he turns one crop of cow-peas or other legumes, he thinks that he has done wonders and his land ought to produce for ever on this one meal of fertility and ability. He doesn’t seem to realize that it must be fed yearly, to Say the least, if he expects it to build up and stay built up. _
He doesn’t seem to realize that God’s laws of nature are such that land will keep built up as long as man will let it alone and not rob it. It grows wild legumes, that take nitrogen from the air and drop it on the ground to enrich it, and deep-rooted weeds and trees bring up mineral plant food from the subsoil and drop it in their leaves on the surface of the land to keep it ‘fit’.
If livestock is fed only non-legumes, such as cottonseed meal, corn, wheat products, oats, grass hays, etc., and the manure returned to the fields that grew the feeds, such land will gradually grow poorer; for all the manure that is in such feeds came from the soil of these fields, and the livestock uses about one-fourth of it and gives back only three-fourths, thus returning to the soil one-fourth loss than was taken from it. This is assuming that such livestock is kept on cement floors, day and night, to preserve every ounce of plant food in the manure. Of course, under our usual method of caring for manure the loss would be far more.
When legumes, such as pea hay, soybean hay, vetch or clover hay, etc., are fed and the manure returned to the fields that grew them, such fields gradually increase in fertility; for two-thirds of the nitrogen in the legumes is taken from the air; and, when fed to livestock, one-fourth of this two-thirds is used by them, and the remaining three-fourths of this two-thirds, or one-half the nitrogen in the legumes, is “brand new” nitrogen from the air that goes to increase soil fertility.
The writer has recently been in correspondence with our American Consulate at Jerusalem and has learned that the historic “plain of Jezreel”, Palestine, which, until 1920, lay for centuries a barren waste, has been settled by Jewish immigrants who have fulfilled prophecy by making the “desert blossom as a rose”.
They not only have purchased this vast waste of 51 square miles, but have improved thousands of acres of land and established twenty villages, all within about five years, 1921-1926.
These villages are chiefly cooperative farming centers which practise diversification and rotation of crops, utilizing poultry and the dairy cow as a part of their system; and it is distinctly stated that the chief sustenance of these cows is “vetch and clover”.
This country is known as “Emek Jezreel”, which means, “Here sows God”; we are told that He sows “vetch and clover”.
A few writers, like Calumella, Varro, Cato, and others, recognized such virtue in legumes in their day; but few farmers adopted their advice in practice. .
Prof. W. F. Massey lived more than eighty years, and forty years of his life were devoted to preaching the cow-pea as a soil-saver and a crop-doubler. Yet his principal reward was to be dubbed “Cow-pea Massey”. The last twenty or more years of his life were devoted as faithfully to crimson clover; yet that plant is as scarce in southern agriculture as the proverbial “hen’s teeth”.
The writer has spent the last twenty years of his life, in season and out of season, preaching winter and summer legumes as the key to soilsalvation and economic production in the South, and he has never failed to secure a large local acreage where he has worked; yet “the blamed thing don’t stay put”. Just as soon as the first three to five years of "protracted meeting” are over, farmers proceed to backslide into the old well-beaten paths on which they again attempt to “climb up some other way”.
Doctor Norman, of Bentonville, recently related to me the following strange experience. He and his party were arrested by the mayor of North Little Rock, Arkansas, as they were en route to a chiropractic convention. The mayor was drunk, swearing, and very intent on securing “bond money”, after which he would allow his prisoners’ release. When refused “bond money”, the mayor even threatened to shoot down the party as they stood.
Finally the doctor and his party were rescued from the mayor and allowed to proceed on their otherwise peaceful journey. A city aiderman secured the sworn testimony concerning the truth of the affair from the doctor and friends; the mayor resigned to avoid impeachment; the above-mentioned aiderman was found dead with a bullet in his head, the reason for which was unknown. All this within a few days.
MOST beautiful of all caskets is the cocoon, the lovely shroud which the silkworm weaves for itself in the last three or four days of its life. So delicate is the tiny thread that issues from the spinneret in the silkworm’s upper lip that five of them must be united to produce a thread strong enough to stand handling, and sixty to produce a stocking thread.
One silkworm, during its feeding season, will eat its weight of mulberry leaves every day, and in a little over a month grows to be about two and a half inches long, loaded down with sacks full of the gmn of which the silk thread is subsequently spun into a two-strand thread carefully covered with gum.
A single worm will produce as high as ten thousand feet of silk filament, or up to two hundred feet of first-class stocking thread. This thread is woven in figure-eight fashion, evidently designed by the Creator to be removed and used for just the purpose for which it is now employed.
The removal of the thread is a delicate job.
The surface of the cocoons must be cleaned and five of them uncoiled at one time, when together they are passed through the tiny guide which forms them into a miniature thread. The only way they can be handled at this stage is in trays of warm water, and constant resort to water is an element in all silk manufacture and use.
If the thread of the cocoon is not removed in ten or fifteen days, a beautiful moth emerges, destroying the cocoon in the process. This moth lives but a few days, and its only food is water. Nevertheless, during its brief period of life this moth lays its eggs, another supply of young silkworms, and the process begins all over again.
The name “silk” is derived from the name of the little Chinese lady, Si-Ling-Shi, who first made silk fabric. For centuries the secret of how silk is made was carefully guarded in the Orient, but finally two spies sent out by Emperor Justinian succeeded in bringing a quantity of silkworm eggs back to Europe in the staves which they used on their journey.
Ripley, the cartoonist, stated that St. Patrick We looked it up and, sure enough, the state-was neither a Catholic, a saint, nor an ments all appear to be correct. He was of Brit-Irishman, and that his name wTas not Patrick, ish ancestry, and his name was Sucat.
AN ARTICLE in The Nation explains the downfall of Amanullah, the enlightened ruler of Afghanistan who sought, perhaps too soon, to establish reforms in hi;s country similar to those which have been put into effect in Turkey. He had gone a considerable distance with his program of modern roads, European dress, and universal education for boys and girls alike, when a sudden revolt of five thousand men led by a brigand armed to the teeth with British-made arms and ammunition necessitated his retirement. Now Afghanistan is right back where it was, a helpless, benighted country used by Britain as a buffer state. It is claimed that, outwardly, Britain’s attitude toward Afghanistan has been entirely correct, but on the inside a group of British men have wilfully plunged Afghanistan back into barbarism so that England may keep a firmer hold on India. What a shame I
(By Dr. G. R. Clements, Editor of How to Live Magazine)
UNDER the heading, “Health Foods Hit by
Ruling of U. S.,” the hand of the medical trust is again seen at work. The article appears in the press of May 26, and begins:
The public has been warned by the food division of the Department of Agriculture against using highly advertised “health foods” which claim curative or health-giving properties.
In a statement made public today, it is said that the department believes the use of the word “health” in connection with foods constitutes a misbranding under the food and drug act. The use of the word implies, it is said, that the products have health-giving or curative properties, when they merely possess some of the nutritive qualities to be expected in any wholesome food products.
If the medical trust advertises that vaccination and inoculation protect one’s “health” by making one immune to disease, not one word is said against it by the Department of Agriculture.
If the medical trust kills and cripples scores of soldiers and school children by the deadly practice of vaccination and inoculation, not one word is said against it by any department of the government. But when health-building doctors, using only natural, hygienic measures, speak, about “health foods”, they are violating the law.
The article continues:
The label-claims on these products are such that the consumer is led to believe that our ordinary diet is sorely deficient in such vital substances as vitamins and minerals, and that these so-called “health foods” are absolutely necessary to conserve life and health.
Ask the German sailors of the June issue of How To Live For Health and Strength whether or not “our ordinary diet is sorely deficient in such vital substances as vitamins and minerals”. Just 255 days on “our ordinary diet” put many of them in the hospital, and the rest of them on the verge of collapse.
When the surgeon of their ship put them on a diet of “health foods”, recommended by Alfred McCann, the men soon recovered from their disorders, after everything known to medical science had been done, and done in vain. Here is proof that “health foods” are absolutely necessary to conserve life and health.
Quoting further from the article :
The department does not object to calling these products “wholesome”, it is said, provided they are wholesome; but the effort to give the impression that we all need something added to our every-day diet if we are to avoid nutritional disaster is a misrepresentation which the food-law-enforcing authorities aim to combat.
Not only would the medical trust force vaccination, inoculation, medication, and surgical operations upon the race, but now, with the aid of the government, the trust would compel humanity to adhere to “our every-day diet”. For it “is a misrepresentation which the food-law-enforeing authorities aim to combat” if any one shall claim “that we all need something added to our every-day diet if we are to avoid nutritional disaster”.
At the Texas State Medical Society convention, held during May, 1929, it was decided, among other things, to launch during the coming year-
Active campaigns throughout; Texas for the election of more (medical) doctors to the legislature, and more intensive efforts to obtain medical legislation....
The legislative program demands that each state hospital be provided with a building for the treatment of acute infectious and contagious diseases; that provisions be made for the immunization against smallpox and typhoid fever in the hospitals.
Why does the medical trust find it expedient to put medical doctors into political places ? To ■write the very articles from which we have quoted above regarding “health foods”. No one but medical doctors holding political offices write such articles, and they are published as coming from the “Department of ’Agriculture”, all of which constrains the unthinking mass to place much faith in information issued by the government. But the information is the product of a medical trust doctor, holding political office.
The medical and serum trust is always working : planning, planning, planning to grasp greater control of the field of health and disease. The time is not far off when national medical compulsion will be a reality, unless the people see the handwriting on the wall and defeat at the polls every medical doctor running for office and every politician who is influenced by the medical and serum trust.
THE author will relate this case, as one that started him in his investigation and study on the subject. June 15, 1889, the author was spending his vacation on the ranch of a wealthy farmer in the northern part of the state of California, fifteen miles from the nearest town, a farm of 10,000 acres, and no immediate neighbors. The farmer had a wife and seven children. The foreman, a negro, had a wife and five children. None had ever been vaccinated. Six of them were selected and vaccinated by the author.
The farmer’s wife, age 43 years.
The farmer’s daughter, age 6 years.
The farmer’s son, age 8 years.
The farmer’s son, age 25 years.
The negro foreman, age 46 years.
His son, age 12 years.
All the rest were left out and were not afterwards vaccinated. On August 1, 1890 (13% months later), the farmer, his wife and five children went to the mountain ranch forty miles away, taking with them the foreman, his wife and five children. There had been no diphtheria in the town nor any in their neighborhood. The mountain ranch was an uninhabited virgin pine forest district with pure water, where they took up their camp.
On August 24 an epidemic of sore throat and canker sores developed among the children. Farmer’s daughter, seven years old; son, nine years old, and the foreman’s son, thirteen years old, developed very serious throat and constitutional symptoms and were taken to the home ranch, where a doctor was sent for. Diphtheria ■was the diagnosis. The farmer’s wife also developed diphtheria. All the rest who had not been vaccinated cured rapidly of their sore throats. The farmer’s daughter, seven years old, died. The farmer’s son, nine years old, did not recuperate for one year. The farmer’s wife, 44 years old, had paralysis and sequela;, -which lasted over one year. The foreman’s son, thirteen years old, became very weak and did not return to normal health.
In 1893 (4 years after being vaccinated) the farmer’s son, 29 years old, died in Los Angeles, Calif., of tubercular intestinal trouble; in 1900 (11 years after vaccination) the foreman, at 57 years of age, died of tubercle or cancer of larynx; in 1902 (13 years after vaccination) the foreman’s son, 25 years old, died of tuberculosis; in 1909 (20 years after vaccination) the farmer’s wife, 63 years old, died of cancer; in 1911 (22 years after vaccination) the farmer’s son, 30 years old, died of tubercular meningitis.
The farmer died of old age. All the rest are living and in perfect health, nor have they ever been vaccinated. No tuberculosis has shown in any of those living, nor is there any family history of tuberculosis. All who were vaccinated in 1889 are now dead.
STARTING from Fresno, a 75,000-population city of surpassing beauty in central-eastern California, towards the southeast, one passes through the towns and hamlets of Sanger, Reedley, Dinuba and Orosi, on the fine national highway. Thence, more nearly eastward, we headed directly for the high Sierra Nevada range of mountains on a well-graded roadway in the early morning of a beautiful October day, when the air was balmy, and the fall foliage was at its best. The autumn flowers nodded in obedience to gentle zephyrs, meanwhile emitting their lingering aromas to cheer us on our 110-mile jaunt to the section of biggest trees in the Vvorld, a whole forest of sequoias covering thousands of mountain acres.
Presidents and princes have gone over the road ahead. Artists and writers have thrilled over the rich anticipation of witnessing the scenes on this trip of wonders. The ozone-laden air is exhilarating as one listens to the low hum of his motor and skims over the level plain of farmland and orchardry tovzards the Sierra foothills overtopped by the higher range of mountains just beyond.
The blue haze of recent forest fires and of distance makes them appear to be much farther away than they really are. The car has been going thirty miles an hour for the past hour, and still those mountains seem just as far away. Distances in California are often very deceptive. Sometimes an object seems three or four times as near as it is by actual measurement. And then again it may appear to be twice as far away, all depending upon the existing atmospheric conditions.
The trip takes one through orchards and grain-culture fields, past cozy little country homes, mostly of bungalow architecture, in groves of evergreen trees, some of them live oak and eucalyptus or pepper tree variety. There are no big barns on the farms as on the farms of most eastern states. During winter months the cattle run at large. In summer many people sleep out of doors. The summer days may be hot, but the nights are always delightfully cool. It is now October, and as yet no frost, and none expected in this locality for perhaps another month.
No state can boast of better auto roads than has California. The speed limit is thirty-five miles an hour, but so long as you do not crash into any one you can run up to fifty. Perhaps a few years hence speed cops will arrest the “slowpoke”. On the state highway one should keep pace with the general traffic or get off the roadway. There is no dimming of lights in night travel here. One would be snapping them on and off constantly, the traffic is so dense.
There is hardly a chance to swerve out of line to pass a slow driver and get back into line again in front of an onrushing car. Hence the necessity of keeping the line at regulation speed.
The fast driver is usually safe on the highway. The slow driver is in everybody’s way but his own. This is the Californian’s view of the matter. “Hey there! Step on it or get off the road!” “What’s the matter with you? Are you asleep?” etc., etc., rings on the air if you poke along on the state road.
In California there are six groves of big trees besides the Redwoods: Calaveras, Yosemite, Wawona, General Grant, Sequoia and Santa Cruz. During 1926, to a given date 26,503 autos entered Sequoia Park, carrying 89,404 visitors, as against 12,869 cars to the same date in 1925, carrying 50,597 visitors. The auto charge is now $1.00. Last year the charge was $2.50. Total revenue, $12,650, as against $10,965.
The first five big-tree groves mentioned are all in the Sierra Nevada mountains; the sixth mentioned is on the Pacific coast line. The car entrance fee to General Grant Park is fifty cents. This park is one-tenth the size of Sequoia Park, and the trees are not so large, but it is a nicer place.
In the foothills near the park entrance is the little town of Three Rivers. Along the road we saw a flock of wild passenger pigeons (a species now nearly extinct), in a tree top close by. Fifty years ago these birds could be seen in flocks of thousands, if not millions.
The cement roadway follows the middle branch of the Kaweah river in a winding course a mile or two beyond Three Rivers where the hard surface road ends and a good gravel road begins, and one quite level several miles. There the road becomes serpentine, still following the little stream called a river. Wild deer crossed the roadway about seventy-five feet ahead of us.
Higher and higher we climbed, skirting the
steep mountainsides, until looking down into the narrow valley from the dizzy height caused us to involuntarily shrink away from the outer edge of the road. We crossed and recrossed the line view below us repeatedly. The scene is one of America’s best. Moro Dome towered above us several thousand feet. Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the West, stood majestically grand just to the eastward, an inspiring sight, saw-toothed and apparently impossible of ascent.
We had paid our $1.00 entrance fee and were getting our money’s worth, and more. Then very suddenly at a turn in the roadway we were in the grove of Sequoia big trees, the largest in all the world. The elevation is about 7,000 feet.
A few miles’ drive brings us to Government Camp, or “headquarters”, as it is called. Here is the post office, and various rustic buildings. But we make a pause here only long enough to be directed to the Sherman tree, the largest in the park. It is two miles farther on. The way is lined with giant Sequoia. We halt and step around one of them, twenty-nine long paces.
There are others still larger, until finally we arrive at the Sherman tree, with a row of logs laid on the ground all the way around it, and there is a sign bidding us keep outside. Well, we don’t see that sign or can’t read it until Ave have paced close around its base, thirty-nine long steps, approximately as many feet in diameter.
Were a tunnel cut through that tree two street cars could easily stand in it side by side and enough wood be left on each side to sustain the tree. We could not see its top. That tree would supply lumber enough to build a town; it is the oldest a,nd largest living thing on earth.
Among the larger trees might be mentioned Washington, President McKinley, Pershing and Lincoln. The Fallen Monarch may have existed when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt into Canaan. All of them were in existence in the time of Christ. Mention might be made of the Hollow tree, the Window tree, the Keyhole tree, the Nursery tree, the Stricken tree, the Overgrown Stump, the Cloister, the Congress group, the Black Causeway, the Pillar of Hercules, the Chimney tree, and many others.
A big buck deer came and took food out of our hands. The bears would not come near, but gave us a look from afar.
The Sequoia Park season is from May 25 to September 15, and at any time for motorists carrying their own camp equipment. A one-day stay should include the Sherman tree, Moro Rock, Profile View, Parker Group and Crescent Meadows. A two-day stay should include additionally the McKinley tree, Congress Group, Circle Meadows to the Washington Tree. A three-day stay should take in also Lodge Pole Camp, Topopa Valley, Sugar Pine trail to Ka-Aveah Vista and Tharp Cabin. And in a four-day stay one can visit all the other attractions, including Twin Lakes, Admiration Point, Marble Falls, Mt. Silliman, Emerald Lakes, Meadows, Peaks, etc., too numerous to mention.
The exact dimensions of the Sherman tree, in feet, are as follows: Height, 280; base circumference, 103; base diameter, 35; circumference 6 feet above ground, 86; diameter 100 feet above ground, 18. In all the world there is no larger tree than the Sherman in Sequoia Park.
We made the trip from Fresno, 110 miles, easily in less than four hours, and returned in less than three hours. So it was not at all a hard trip. There were five of us in the party.
In Sequoia Park there are scores of big trees almost as large as the General Sherman, and hundreds over ten feet in diameter. The summer population is about 1,500. There are about 400 camp sites for park visitors. All signs in the park are official. No advertising signs are allowed. No smoking is allowed during the fire season on roads or trails in the park, but is permitted at stations or in camps.
Sequoia Park in scenic value does not compare with Yosemite Valley, but in forestry greatly surpasses it. The big trees of Sequoia must ever remain the supreme attraction of this extensive park of 161,597 acres. These trees are not to be confused ■with the Redwood trees found only in the Coast Range. The Sequoia are about four times as large. The wood is similar in color and texture, but the foliage is distinct. The bark of the big tree is much thicker, of a rich red color, instead of a dull brown. The big tree is produced only from the seed. The Redwood when cut down sprouts from the stump.
The Abe Lincoln tree is 270 feet high and 31 feet in base diameter. The William McKinley tree is 290 feet high and 28 feet in diameter. The Warren Harding tree is 280 feet high and 27 feet in diameter. There are many large trees not yet given a name.
The trip to Sequoia National Park is through sections of the finest orange groves and vineyards of California. The oranges were still green on the trees, but boxes were being hauled and distributed in the orchards pursuant to orange-picking within the next ten days for eastern shipment.
Grapes were for the most part already gathered, as were also the figs and other small fruits, olives, nuts, etc. There were large fields of mown alfalfa here and there along the way. Palm trees lined the roadway in places on both sides. The district is generally under irrigation.
The trip was a most enjoyable one. The day was perfect and balmy from first to last, and we had no mishap, although one careless driver nearly ran us into the roadside ditch. We should have gotten his number and had him arrested and fined.
FROM time to time one meets those people who declare that we are evolving nearer and nearer to the summit of perfection, that all our present systems of government, etc., are growing more humanitarian and standing more for the interests of peace and the enlightenment of the people, until eventually we shall dwell in a peaceful world, the dream of poets and philosophers.
But while this is the thought of some, what are the facts? In 1926 it was thought necessary by the command of the Army Council to publish a manual on the medical aspects of modern warfare. This cam be obtained by the public at a small cost. It shows clearly the horrors of warfare in these days, and the dreadful effects of various poisonous gases on the organisms of those who become victims of these gases.
Some have suggested that the publishing of this book widely would end all war, while others declare that it would create panic and trouble would result that way, because the picture of horror is so clearly brought before the mind.
Space is given to mustard gas: what it is and how it affects those who come in contact with it; and how to relieve those suffering as a result of it. It says: “In the crude state mustard gas is an oily liquid resembling brown sherry. The liquid is almost insoluble in water, is slightly soluble in paraffin or vaseline, but freely soluble in animal and vegetable fats and oils, also in alcohol, ether, chloroform and in benzine and petrol. It vaporizes very slowly at ordinary temperatures, so that ground splashed by the liquid at the burst of a shell is a source of danger for a time, depending on conditions of weather and terrain, and men may unwittingly carry the liquid on their boots and clothing with them into dugouts and other shelters where it vaporizes in the warmer atmosphere. It is slowly hydrolyzed in water, but is rapidly destroyed by dry bleaching powder. It has a characteristic mustard-like odor, which, however, is neither quickly detected nor offensive. In an area heavily shelled with gas, the odor may be readily perceptible on first entering the area, but the sense of smell rapidly becomes dulled and within ten minutes it will cease to be appreciated. This is of serious importance, as troops are only too likely to underestimate the danger in the absence of the warning afforded by strong odor or any immediate irritant effect on the sensory nerves.”
The manual goes on to say: “On exposure to a vapor on a finely atomized spray of the substance, nothing is noticed at first save the faint though characteristic smell. After about two hours symptoms begin to appear and subsequently develop with some rapidity. The eyes begin to smart and water. The nose also runs as from a severe cold in the head, and sneezing is frequent. Nausea, retching and vomiting associated with epigastric pain commence at the same time as the pain in the eyes and they recur at frequent intervals for several hours.”
Then, still continuing, the manual says, “Inflammation of the skin now shows itself in a dusky red erythema of the face and neck, which look as though they had been scorched, other parts of the body are similarly affected, and should any part of the clothing have been actually splashed by the liquid, the underlying skin would be profoundly irritated. In this stage the patient suffers from the most intense itching, especially if he gets hot, which interferes with rest and sleep and is most wearing. Later, small vesicles appear, which quickly coalesce into large blisters.
“At the end of twenty-four hours the typical appearance is presented. The main distress is caused by the pain in the eyes, which may be very great. The patient lies virtually blinded, with tears oozing between bulging eyelids over his reddened and slightly blistered face, while there is a constant nasal discharge and a harsh cough.” Added to these things “there may also be a frontal headache”, says the manual, as though the poor unfortunates who should be gassed have not sufficient to bear with all the foregoing agonies.
To give further comfort (?) it says, “death rarely takes place during the first twenty-four hours; it sometimes occurs on the third or fourth day, but it has been known for cases to linger on until the third or fourth week before getting relief in death. With well-protected troops the death rate is low, but with badly protected troops it may be very high.”
Let those who dream that we are evolving to a more humane state read “The Medical Aspect of Modern Warfare”, and they will clearly see, if they are honest with themselves, that the world is heading fast to destruction, and the ways used to destroy human life in this, our day, must have been inspired by none other than the Devil himself.
The Word of God declares that life is a sacred thing, and in this day He has set His anointed King on His throne to deliver mankind from the great destroyer of life. Soon His kingdom will be fully established, and then will the promise be fulfilled, “I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir” (Isa. 13:12), and nothing will then be allowed to hurt or destroy throughout the whole earth.
LAST year I told The Golden Age readers how I cooked rolled oats in aluminum, fed it to young goats and made them sick (with bowel trouble). This year we had a larger supply of milk, so did not need to substitute oats. I wanted to experiment more with the feeding; so I fed one pair of twins the milk warmed in aluminum, and the other pair the same kind of milk wanned in a graniteware pan.
All were healthy, strong youngsters. The smaller of the aluminum pair was very greedy, got a little more than her share; grew faster; at four weeks refused milk at all; lingered for a couple of weeks more by taking a few nibbles of hay, and then died. Her mate quit the milk a week later, and died a week later. The two fed from granite have not missed a meal, and are growing fine. This test some may think a little severe on the kids; but it may be the means of saving kiddies more precious.
Buttermilk as a Food By W. H. Barton, County Agent
THERE is 13 percent of food elements in 4-percent milk. Of this amount, 4 percent is fat and 9 percent protein, carbohydrates and valuable mineral elements. Thus it is seen that approximately three times the food value of cow’s milk lies in “buttermilk” after the fat has been removed.
Listen to what Authority says, about “buttermilk”.
Buttermilk is a real food as well as a refreshing drink; for it contains a very fine quality of protein, valuable mineral salts, sugar, and a lactic ferment which gives its satisfying sharp taste.
The people of Biblical times associated buttermilk with long life. Nations of today whose people drink buttermilk are strong physically and long-lived.
Doctors recommend buttermilk as a healthful drink, because it stimulates digestion, acts as a tonic to the body, and helps to correct constipation and other disorders of the digestive tract.
The U. S. Government says, “Buttermilk is an excellent food, good alike for young and old. For health and pleasure, few drinks excel pure, fresh, cold buttermilk. ’ ’
Buttermilk and a sandwich or salad make a nutritious, healthful luncheon, popular with business men. In your interest, drink more buttermilk.
SUBSCRIBER writes us as follows:
“As a reader of The Golden Age for two or three years, and having enjoyed and agreed with many real Bible truths in your paper, simple and clear as crystal, I am sometimes pained to note some comments and contents in your otherwise good magazine. At present I am much put out at the article in which the good people of Atlanta, Georgia, are reflected upon because they have an ordinance which prohibits the use of golf courses and ball grounds on the Sabbath day. You say that the ordinance was passed by people who did little of any useful work on six days of the week; also that the city ordinance was founded on a law that was given to the Jews, and never to the Gentiles, from which I take it that you mean the whole ten commandments. Why, what in the name of all good and holy Scripture would we do without the ten commandments ? - And upon what are all the civil laws based, if not upon the ten commandments? So, is it not just as wrong today to break any or all of these ten commandments as it was 1,929 or 4,000 years ago? All murder, theft, idolatry and every one of the rest are punishable by our civil law as well as by God’s laws. It is careless, abominable, reckless and devilish to wilfully break the Sabbath day. As to the laboring people, I am one myself, and I believe they should have one day in the week for recreation. Saturday would be proper, I believe. Please answer in your columns and print as much of this letter as you see fit.”
From the time of the fall of our first parents in the Garden of Eden God purposed to lift them up and restore them during the seventh thousand-year day of earth’s history. Never for a moment has He lost sight of this, and He designs that man shall never' forget the great act of loving-kindness on His part which makes their restoration to their lost estate a reality. It is for this.reason that, from the very first, God sanctified the Sabbath day.
But the supposition that He is particularly concerned about the typical commemoration of a thing when the reality is at hand will not bear consideration. God’s offering of His only Son on Calvary was a part, and a very essential part, of the reality. Without the Redeemer there would never be a restoration of man. But, now that He has paid the wages for Adam’s disobedience, the restoration is sure, for as many as will.
During Jesus’ ministry He performed most of His works of healing on the Sabbath day and gradually prepared His followers and all who should come after Him to see that He was merely showing forth beforehand His coming glory, soon to make the whole earth glad.
At no time during His ministry did Jesus fall in line with the ideas of the religionists of His time regarding the Sabbath. Whenever He referred to the subject it was in such a way as to point their attention to the fact that “the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath”, or that “the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath”.
We do not question at all that one day of rest in seven is good for man. Just now the labor papers are insisting that he must have two, because the machines which he has invented do so much of his work that he can not keep busy six days out of seven. But the Sabbath was not made for man merely to give him rest one day in seven. It was given him so that in the Millennium, the seventh thousand-year day of man upon the earth, he might get the real rest of heart which can come only from restoration of fellowship with God, a fellowship possible only through the One that is Lord also of the Sabbath.
As to a superficial regard for one day in seven, we have some millions of Jews and Seventh-day Adventists in the United States, who are more or less punctilious (mostly less) as to what they do between sundown Friday night and sundown Saturday night, and then we have many more millions who are not at all particular what they do between midnight Saturday night and midnight Sunday night, but who nevertheless pass under the general sobriquet of “Christians”.
There are some 22,000,000 automobiles in the United States, and, though we have not counted them, it seems that about 21,999,999 are going somewhere every Sunday. We do not know if there are that many Sunday newspapers (the “American’s Bible”, and the only one with which he is at all familiar), but almost every family has one of them, printed on the Sabbath of the Jews and sold on the Sabbath of the Gentiles.
We have examined the time-tables of the railroads, and we notice that all the principal trains go chugging along day and night in every direction. Neither Saturday nor Sunday looks like anything to the director of a railroad; and Uncle Sam, custodian of what morals some people have, seems fairly well content to have it so and uses all these trains to carry his mails, and some years ago was proud of it and in the Post Office Department at Washington had a tablet or memorial setting forth the fact that it was a relatively pious thing in his judgment to keep the mails moving on the Sabbath day.
We know of some gentlemen who make a living by rattling collection baskets, and without exception they do all their work on Sunday, though they do not wish any competition and are very desirous that something should be done so that everybody would have to listen to them on Sunday, and do nothing else.
Practically all of these men are unbelievers in the Bible, and nobody takes their agitation for Sunday observance as anything more than a clamor for such part of the family income of the laboring people as cam be gotten away from them by cajolery or superstition. The idea that they wish to magnify God’s name in the earth is proven false by their eagerness to hinder or stop those who are engaged in that very work.
As to the suggestion that Uncle Sam is guided by the ten commandments in all his practices, we can judge fairly well of the facts when we consider the record of the Harding administration. If there are any of the ten commandments that the Ohio gang failed to break, they are revisions written into the code since we last saw it.
As to murder, who was responsible for the death of 100,000 young men in France, to make Morgan’s investment in French bonds safe? As to adultery, better read “The President’s Daughter”. As to bearing false witness, probably George Creel’s explanation of the government propaganda bureau during the World War would be illuminating. As to stealing, we have the Teapot Dome and ten thousand times ten thousand other steals. Probably the record on covetousness is 100-percent perfect; and when it comes to graven images, none will deny that all America bows down before the dollar mark and has none other gods besides. Do we need earth’s sabbath, the real sabbath? We do.
0UESTI0N: Is it possible for a person to live a Christian life and be pleasing to God, and yet not be a member of any of the presentday churches?
Answer: Our answer is, most emphatically, Yes. One can be a true Christian without joining any of the various sects or denominations now in existence. Jesus established the one true church on the day of Pentecost. Jesus is the Head of that church, and the names of its members are written in heaven, in the Lamb’s book of life. We are told that only the Lord knows them that are His. Over five hundred years after Jesus founded this true church, the Catholic church came into existence. About a thousand years later the Lutheran church was organized; and just a few years later, the Church of England. Then followed the Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist and others, until it is claimed that there are 160 different denominations or sects of Christian people, none of which is the true church. The word “church”, as used today, refers either to a building or to a sect of people who adhere to a specified creed. In the Bible the word “church” refers to the little classes of Bible students who met in private homes for Bible study. In Romans 16:3-5, Paul wrote to the church at Rome and used these words: “Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my helpers in Christ Jesus; . . . likewise greet the church that is in their house.” There is no thought of a creed or of sectarianism or of a powerful religious system in these words of the apostle. The Greek word for church is ecclesia, and means “called out ones”, and refers only to those who have been called out of the world, those who have heard the call and have separated themselves from the world, from its politics, its shams and hypocrisies. If one has to join one of these denominations to be a Christian, then Jesus and the apostles were not Christian in any sense; for they were not members of any of them, for the reason that none of these denominations were in existence in their day.
Question: Why is it that the Bible Students never offer prayer over the radio, either at the beginning or at the conclusion of a lecture”?
Ansiver: For the reason that Jesus never used prayer when addressing the public, the multitudes of unregenerate ones. The privilege of prayer is only for those who have renounced this present evil world and entered into a covenant to do the will of the Lord. Only such can address God as their Father, and only such does He recognize as sons. In Romans 8: 9 we read: “If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” It is written, again, that he can not serve God and mammon, that there are only two masters. It is entirely unreasonable, as well as unscriptural, to think that the children of disobedience, who are serving Satan, can come to God in prayer and ask Him for favors and receive His blessings. The psalmist (Ps. 50:16,17) states the matter in positive language, saying: “Unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do, to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? seeing thou hatest instruction, and easiest my words behind thee.”
Prayer is the privilege extended to God’s saints, God’s sons, those who have entered into a covenant with Him; and it would be just as inappropriate to offer a prayer in the presence of the unconsecrated as it would be to offer a prayer to the true God in the presence of heathen people who refuse to acknowledge any God but Baal. Jesus never prayed in public. Another reason why Bible Students do not pray in public is that Jesus roundly denounced such prayers and in most emphatic words tells us how to pray. (Matt. 6: 5, 6) Jesus said: “When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. . . . But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” In not offering prayer to God in the presence of the unconsecrated, Bible Students are following Jesus’ words and example.
A FEW days ago I went into a little cafe in
Long Beach, Miss., to endeavor to place the good news of the Kingdom in the hands of the proprietor. Ilaving learned who he was I ■went to him and introduced myself and began to state my mission, but I had said scarcely a dozen words before he interrupted me and told me he had nothing for me and did not want to hear any more. I took him to be one of the pious hypocrites one meets so often (the more pious they look, the more they seem to hate the Lord’s message) and kept right on talking. His attitude soon changed, and he invited me to sit down and have a cup of coffee as he wished to apologize and explain why he had been so rude. This is what he told me:
“When you first began to talk to me I thought you were going to ask me for money to send to some foreign missionary, and that is why I began to get mad.
“I was born and raised in Beirut, Syria. That is one of the towns where the Americans send missionaries, and as a boy I used to see them fat and lazy, lolling on a shady porch of a nice residence, enjoying the money that was sent them from America. The people of Beirut did not need them and did not want them. We had our own churches and knew that we loved the Lord more and were much better Christians than the missionaries, but we had to tolerate them. They didn’t bother us much, and we got along with them by ignoring them as much as possible. This made them have to resort to all sorts of schemes to have something to report on their work in order to keep the money coming from America.
remember one instance in particular: A neighbor of ours had five small children and, being poor, they were unable to dress them as well as some of the other children in the neighborhood whose parents had more means, but the children’s clothing was always comfortable and neat. One morning the missionary called at this home and asked the mother’s permission to measure the children. This was granted, and in a few days the missionary returned with a nice new suit for each of them, stating that all that he asked in return was that the children be sent to his place to Sunday school the following Sunday. The mother agreed to this, but when the father came home and learned of the arrangement he was displeased, as the children were already attending Sunday school regularly, only at a different church. However, they decided to send them the one Sunday.
“Sunday came and the children went to the missionary’s house as agreed. There their names and ages were taken and duly recorded on the church book and the report was sent back to America: ‘Converted five this morning.’ “This is how the reports are made of the work done by your foreign missionaries and is why I felt like throwing you out when I thought you were another one begging money for them.
“I will take the two of your books and read them, and if times were better I would gladly take them all.”
TEN years after the World War was ended we have been sent from Britain some of the blasphemous post cards which were in general circulation there during that time.
The first one, designated “Onward, Christian Soldiers (1)”, has at the top of the card the words,
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the Royal Master, leads against the foe, Forward into battle, see His banners go!
.Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Below these words is a picture of Christ beckoning the troops onward. Next below that is the “Cross of Jesus”, the Union Jack of the British Empire, two of them, with the cross feature of the flag emphasized to make sure the point would not be overlooked, and finally, at the bottom of the card, the ranks of the “Christian soldiers” themselves, many of them, no doubt, fresh from the brothel, some of them probably half-drunk, others chewing tobacco and cursing, but all of them fully armed and en route to the killing of their fellow men.
The second one is entitled “The White Comrade” and is intended to show that Christ Jesus, the same One that said, “Put up thy sword into its sheath,” was the silent partner of every British soldier during the World War. On this card a soldier is helping a wounded comrade to the rear while Jesus, still crowned with thorns, and dressed in white shadowy garments, is guiding the two to the rear and saying, “Lo, I am with you alway.”
The third one is entitled “Stand up for Jesus (3)”, and has at the top of the card the familiar words,
Stand up!—stand up for Jesus!
Stand in His strength alone.
The arm of flesh will fail you, Ye dare not trust your own.
Put on the gospel armor,
Each piece put on with prayers When duty calls, or danger, .
Be never wanting there!
Below these words appear the serried ranks of the soldiers, not marching this time, but “standing up for Jesus”, standing at attention, and fully clad with their “gospel armor”, the knapsacks and other military accoutrements being conspicuously in evidence.
The fourth one has the following words at the bottom of the card:
Stand up!—stand up for Jesus’
The strife will not be long: This day the noise of battle, The next the victor’s song.
To him that overcometh,
A crown of life shall be: He with the King of Glory Shall reign eternally.
Above these words a wounded soldier lies in a hospital tent, with a nurse sitting at his bedside, reading to him. The flap of the tent is open, and outside can be seen “the noise of battle”; while overhead appear the shadowy forms of the King of Glory and accompanying angels, ready to receive the victor into jointheirship and to give him the crown of life on the morrow.
Could presumption go further?
[Broadcast from Station WBBR, New Xork, by Judge Rutherford.]
IT IS my pleasure this morning to greet every one who has a desire to see a government of equity established on earth for the benefit of man. For some weeks consideration has been given to God’s preparation for such government which He long ago promised man he should enjoy in due time. Now we come to the consideration of the form of that government.
Jehovah has been compassionate, mercifully gracious, and long-suffering with man. Such is characteristic of Him. He has permitted man to have a long period of time in which to put forth his best endeavors to build for himself a desirable government. In that period of many centuries not only has man tried one form of government, but he has tried many forms. The history of each form of government has been recorded. No people can read that history with real satisfaction. Disappointment has marked every period of man’s experience with these various forms of government. It is God’s purpose that through such experiences man might learn valuable lessons. The time has now come for thoughtful persons to calmly consider the history of the nations during the past twenty-five centuries in particular and learn therefrom lessons of great benefit.
Amidst , all the dreadful experiences of time the reverential mind can discern the gracious hand of God holding before man the truth, that he might have opportunity to learn and profit therefrom. For centuries there has been placed before the peoples of so-called “Christendom” the great truth: “Blessed is the nation whose God is Jehovah.” (Ps. 33:12, A. R. V.) Even when all these nations have disregarded that great truth, God has continued to manifest His loving-kindness and long-suffering toward them, abiding His own good time when He will lift the people out of the mire. When the course of the people has been such as to warrant their destruction the great Jehovah God has shown compassion and mercy toward them. Now it is manifest that His due time has come when His purposes, shall be more plainly put before the people, that they may understand how a righteous government is to be erected on the earth for them.
There are three primary classes into which may be divided all the governments which man has attempted to establish. Where the supreme political control is in the hand of a single individual, that form of government is called a monarchy. Where the supreme political power is vested in a few, that government is called an aristocracy. Where the supreme power of control is in the hands of a populace, that government is called a democracy. When a monarchy is corrupt, it is called a tyranny. When aristocracy is corrupt, that government is called an oligarchy. Where a democracy is corrupt, the government is designated as a mobocracy. Monarchies are either absolute or limited. The power of an absolute monarchy is vested in and exercised by one supreme ruler. A limited monarchy usually has a fundamental law or constitution which limits the power and authority of the chief ruler and grants a portion thereof to the citizens. A monarchy is either one of heredity or an elective government. A democracy is either direct or indirect. Where the people elect their representatives who form the governing power, such government is designated an indirect democracy or a republic. A direct democracy is a government in which all the people have some voice in the enactment and enforcement of the law’s. Man has tried all these forms.
Looking over the history of the nations whose governments have been that of monarchy, aristocracy or democracy, not one has been found to be entirely satisfactory to the people. The history of every nation shows that it has been a struggle betw’een the classes. It has been a few7 against the many. It has been a contest between the exploiting and the exploited. As a general rule, the class smaller in number has ruled and oppressed the class greater in number. These struggles have resulted in many revolutions, great suffering, and much bloodshed. Out of these struggles have developed the various theories or forms of government called radical, including communism, socialism, the soviet and bolshevism. The birth of these has been due to the struggles of the oppressed.
Communism advocates a sharing of all things in common, aiming at the abolition of private ovmership of property and at holding of all property for the benefit of the community.
Socialism holds that the means of production and distribution of the wealth of the nations are the collective properties of the workers, who by
their efforts produce that property, while the goods which are to he consumed become the private property of the individual workers. Such government would do away with the aristocratic class.
Out of the World War was born the soviet government of Russia. Peoples of that nation had long suffered under a monarchy that boi’-dered closely on a tyranny. The war furnished the opportunity to overthrow the monarchy. “Soviet” really means council or harmony. The soviet government, however, has been anything but harmonious. The government is made up of councils of working men and soldiers called deputies. There are various councils and one supreme council. The soviet rule is called an organized form of dictatorship of the proletariat, but this government denies the right of suffrage to certain classes. The soviet government has not been a success, and never can be, and is far from being satisfactory to the people who have tried it. lake all other forms of government where the people are supposed to have a voice, the demagogues and party men dominate the various councils and therefore the government has presented no advantages over any other government. In fact, bolshevism has resulted in great suffering of the people, and it is feared by many of the other nations and governments of the earth.
Every form of government man has tried, whether that be monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, republic or socialism, has been unsatisfactory. In all these forms of government there have been many men who have endeavored to establish a just and equitable rule, but have failed. Suppose the World War had made it possible to establish democracy in all the nations. Would that democracy have succeeded and been satisfactory to the people? It would have been impossible for it to succeed and be entirely satisfactory. The demagogue and the professional politicians would have done as they have always done: put party interests and private interests above the common welfare. No stronger proof is needed to support that conclusion than the present-day conditions prevailing in the government of the United States of America. That government is more nearly an ideal democracy than any other nation that has ever existed on earth; and yet it is plainly stated by many who are high in authority, and
it is well known by the people in general, that selfish men dominate and control. The general welfare of all the people is secondary, while selfish and favored interests are given chief advantage. The United States of America has been the most favored, and has existed under the most favorable conditions, of any nation under the sun. Within the period of its existence there have been many really noble men who have given their best efforts to establish a desirable government. After more than one hundred and fifty years’ experience that government is found to be entirely unsatisfactory to the rank and file of the people. •
Let it be conceded that honest men in every nation have done their best to erect a satisfactory government. It must also be admitted that they have failed. If, after twenty-five centuries of honest endeavor’ and strenuous effort on the part of the Gentile nations to establish a desirable government, dissatisfaction and failure are the result, is it not time for sober-minded persons to calmly and dispassionately seek to know the real reason why? Why are there discontent, distress and perplexity in every nation? Why has no people been able to establish an ideal and satisfactory government?
There are two reasons: (1) The invisible ruler of all the nations of the world is evil, and his influence over the visible rulers has been and is evil. (2) Man himself is imperfect and therefore susceptible to evil influences. Imperfect men under such conditions could not possibly establish a righteous government.
It follows, therefore, that before a righteous and ideal government can exist the supreme and unlimited power must be vested in and exercised by one who is just, wise, and wholly unselfish, and that that power must be exercised for the general welfare of all and for the special interests of no class. This principle can not be successfully gainsaid by any honest man. Such a government is what the people have desired for centuries. Such a righteous government is exactly the Mnd of government that God long ago promised to establish for man and which He is now beginning to establish foi’ the benefit of man. He will remove all power from the invisible evil ruler so that evil can not any more influence man while he is striving to reach an ideal condition. Both the invisible and the visible influence of God’s government upon man will be for good.
What form of government will then control the peoples of earth? That government will be a pure theocracy. For centuries the whole creation has groaned and suffered in pain, waiting for the manifestation of that government. (Bom. 8:19) Now the time has come for its establishment, and both the rulers and the ruled of the earth should learn the truth and rejoice. What is said here against the various forms of government is not said with a view to provoking revolution, of course, but is said that thoughtful men and women might consider the only way that leads to a condition of righteousness, peace and happiness. Such a desirable condition of righteousness, peace and happiness could never have been enjoyed under a monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, communism, socialism, or sovietism, or any like form of government. The desire of the people can come only in God’s provided way. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth even for ever.”—Isa. 9: 6, 7.
A theocracy is a, government of which the chief ruler is Jehovah God. He is the Maker and Executor of its laws through His duly constituted agencies. While it is true that supreme power has always resided in Jehovah, with the overthrow of Israel’s last king He has permitted man to take his own course and has not interfered until His time has come to set upon His throne Him “whose right it is”. He it is whom God has appointed and anointed to rule under and in harmony with Jehovah. The prophecies uttered by the holy men whom God appointed to speak must come to pass some time; and now the time has come when the followingprophecies are being fulfilled.
Jehovah King
It was in 1914 that God began to exercise His authority over the affairs of the world through His beloved Son whom He then placed upon His holy throne. There began the fulfilment of the prophecy: “Say among the nations, Jehovah hath become King. Surely he hath fixed the world. It shall not be shaken, he will judge the peoples with equityPs. 96:10, Rotherham.
“God hath become king over the nations, God hath taken his seat upon his holy throne.”—Ps. 47:8, Rotherham.
“Jehovah hath become king. Let the earth exult, let the multitude of coastlands rejoice. Clouds and thick darkness are round about him, righteousness and justice are the establishing of his throne. Fire before him proceedeth, that it may consume round about his adversaries. His lightnings have illumined the world, the earth hath seen and hath trembled.”—Ps. 97 :l-4, Rotherham.
Zion is the name given to God’s organization. Jerusalem is also a name applied thereto, and the two names are often used to mean the same thing. The people of Israel organized by Jehovah constituted typical Zion. That government, as long as the people remained in harmony with God, was a theocracy. It failed, not because of the Lord Jehovah, but because of the imperfection of man and because of the evil influence exercised over man by Satan, which influence -will not be permitted when God’s righteous government is in full swrny. God withdrew His favor from typical Zion in 606 B.C. His prophets foretold a time when He would set up real Zion, and thereby they represented the Lord as returning to Zion. This undoubtedly takes place at the time God places His Anointed Son upon His throne. (Ps. 2:6) “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I was jealous for Zion -with great jealousy, and I was jealous for her with great fury. Thus saith the Lord, I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and Jerusalem shall be called, A city of truth; and the mountain of the Lord of hosts, The holy mountain.” (Zech. 8:2,3) “The Lord shall reign for ever, even thy God, 0 Zion, unto all generations. Praise ye the Lord.”—Ps. 146:10.
The great theocracy, when seen and appreciated by the people, will be the joy of the whole earth. It will be Zion, God’s organization, exercising power and authority over man for his good. “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.” (Ps. 48:1, 2) “For the Lord is a great God [in Zion], and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also.”—Ps. 95: 3,4.
In Jehovah is vested all original power, to which there is no limitation. His name Almighty God means that there is no power above Him. (Gen. 17:1) In His hand the nations of the earth are no more than the small dust of the balance or the drop of a bucket. (Isa. 40:15-22) He has complete and absolute power over all things. (Rom. 9: 21) He may delegate that power to whomsoever He will.
Jehovah God is all wise. He knew the end from the beginning. (Acts 15:18) His counsel stands for ever. (Ps. 33:11) “The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens. By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew.”—Prov. 3:19, 20.
Jehovah is just. “Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne; mercy and truth shall go before thy face.”—Ps. 89:14.
He is no respecter of persons or classes. (1 Pet. 1:17; Jas. 3:17) He is unchangeable. (Mal. 3:6) “Righteous art thou, O Lord, and upright are thy judgments.” (Ps. 119:137) “Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep; 0 Lord, thou preserves! man and beast.”—Ps. 36: 6.
Jehovah God is love. (1 John 4:16) That means that He is entirely unselfish and that His pow’er is administered not for selfish benefit but for the benefit of all His creatures who obey Him. “How excellent is thy lovingkindness, 0 God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.”—Ps. 36:7; 63:3.
Jesus taught His followers to always pray to God: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Because Jehovah God is the great King above all, the government is therefore spoken of in the Scriptures as God’s kingdom, which it is.
His Anointed
Jehovah God has anointed His beloved Son and delegated to Him the power to be ruler over all the world. God anointed Lucifer for a certain work, and Lucifer abused the power that was delegated to him. God gave His Son Jesus a higher anointing and He has been faithful thereto.—Ezek. 28:14; Num. 24: 7.
In the year 1914 A.D. the end of the period of waiting came, and at that time the great prophecy came true that God caused to be written: “Yet have I set my king [anointed One] upon my holy hill of Zion.” (Ps. 2: 6) The kingdom is therefore God’s kingdom and Christ’s kingdom because Christ acts by reason of the power and authority delegated to Him by Jehovah His Father. (John 5: 22-26; Matt. 28:18) It was in that year, 1914, that the following prophecy began to be fulfilled. “And the seventh angel sounded; and there followed great voices in heaven, and they said, The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ: and he shall reign for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders, who sit before God on their thrones, fell upon their faces and worshipped God, saying, We give thee thanks, 0 Lord God, the Almighty, -who art and who wast; because thou hast taken thy great power, and didst reign.”—Rev. 11:15-17, R.V.
Lucifer, who has long been the invisible ruler of the peoples of earth, loved wickedness. Jesus the beloved Son of God has always loved righteousness and hated iniquity. “Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips; therefore God hath blessed thee for ever. Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.”—Ps. 45: 2, 7; Heb. 1: 9.
It is by divine wisdom that Christ Jesus becomes the ruler. (Prov. 8:1,15) By the authority conferred by Jehovah upon Jesus Christ the responsibility of the righteous government rests upon His shoulder. (Isa. 9: 6) Christ Jesus is that One “whose right it is”, to whom God has promised and has given the kingdom. (Ezek. 21:27) Having placed Him upon the throne and given Him the right to rule, Jehovah says to Christ: “Thy throne, 0 God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre.”—Ps. 45: 6.
He is the One whom Jehovah has sent forth to rule in the midst of His enemies. (Ps. 110: 2) It is the mighty Son of God, or Priest “after the order of Melchizedek”, whom God will use to make all things new. (Rev. 21:5) Concerning Him Jehovah God says: “His enemies will I clothe with shame: but upon himself shall his crown flourish.” (Ps. 132:18) He is “the firstborn of every creature”. (Col. 1:15) “I also will make him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. My lovingkindness will I keep for him for evermore; and my covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established for ever as the moon.”—Ps. 89: 27, 28, 36, 37, R.V.
In the Scriptures “the stone” is used to symbolize God’s Anointed King. All governmentbuilders, including the clergy both of the Jews and of so-called “Christendom”, have rejected Him. “The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. This is 'the Lord’s doing; it is marvellous in our eyes.” (Ps. 118: 22, 23) This mighty Stone has become the great King, and His kingdom is one that can never be wrongfully influenced or moved out of the way.—IIeb. 12: 28.
God used Moses as a type to foreshadow Jesus Christ. Moses might have become the king of Egypt; but he refused, preferring to serve Jehovah. (Heb. 11: 25) Likewise Jesus refused Satan’s offer to Him of the rulership of the world. (Matt. 4:8-10) Moses did not seek to exalt himself as king over Israel. He knew that the scepter could never “depart from Judah”. Likewise Jesus did not seek earthly kingship over Israel, but withdrew when the people would by force make Him king. (John 6:15) Him who was abased Jehovah God has exalted above all others, and in due time all others shall bow before Him to the glory of Jehovah God.—Phil. 2:5-11.
Jesus Christ, earth’s new and rightful Governor, is the “express image” of Jehovah God and acts in exact harmony with Jehovah. In Him is therefore found the complete expression of justice, wisdom, power and love; and such is a guarantee that as ruler over all the peoples all His power and authority shall be exercised unselfishly for the benefit of the people. (Heb. 1:3) Jehovah God has made Him, Christ Jesus, “a leader and commander of the people.” (Isa. 55:4) His leadership and rule over the people will be in exact accord with Jehovah’s will. “The [anointed] king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord [Jehovah], as the rivers of water; he [Jehovah] turneth it [the King’s heart] whithersoever he will.” (Prov. 21:1) His thoughts are so lofty, good and righteous, and so far above those of man, that they are unsearchable. (Prov. 25:2,3) “An oracle [God’s Word] is on the lips of a king [Christ]: . . . his mouth must not be unfaithful.” (Prov. 16:10, Rotherham) “Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand [unlimited power], and his arm [His anointed King] shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.” (Isa. 40:10) That Jehovah God has prepared Him and made Him the ruler over all the world is testified to by the prophet: “Who raised up the righteous man from the east, called him to his foot, gave the nations before him, and made him rule over kings? he gave them as the dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to his bow.”—Isa. 41: 2.
Associates
In the great government of Jehovah God there will be no one clothed with power and authority save those who receive it from Jehovah and who act exactly in accord with His will. Many who have supposed that God has been trying to get them into heaven will be disappointed. God has taken out “a people for his name” and has put these through a course of training and is yet training “the remnant” on earth to fit in some place in His kingdom. Jesus covenanted to take into His kingdom only those who have followed the course similar to that which He led, that is to say, those who have been with Him and like Him in His trials and who have remained absolutely loyal to God through them all. (Luke 22:28-30) To that class He said: “The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” (John 15:20) As Jesus came to the world to be a witness and was reproached because of His faithfulness as a witness, even so those who shall be associated with Him in His kingdom must be faithful and true witnesses to all and suffer reproach because of that faithfulness. (John 18:36,37; Isa. 43: 10-12) To such the Lord said: “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down vntli my Father in his throne.”-Rev. 3: 21.
No Others
Jehovah God through His prophet plainly states that His official government shall have none as a part thereof aside from His anointed, because “the kingdom shall not be left to other people”. (Dan. 2:44) This for ever precludes the profiteers, the politicians, and the clergymen and all other selfish ones from being of that government. “The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and givetK it to whomsoever he will.” (Dan. 4:32) It is certain that God would give no one a part therein save those who are completely in harmony with Him and who have successfully stood the test of loyalty to Him. Jehovah God, through His prophet, pictures the falling of the forces of earth, which have been controlled by Satan, and then describes those who shall have a part in the glorious theocratic government for the blessing of humankind.
“I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. But the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever. And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.”—Dan. 7: 9,13,14,18, 27.
The statement that it "shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High” is conclusive proof that the government will be for the benefit of the people. “Saints” means those made pure through the merit of Christ Jesus’ shed blood and who then prove themselves loyal under the greatest test. Christ Jesus is the Head of all saints. “The people of the saints” are those who have been brought to a knowledge of the truth and who gladly obey the law of Christ and walk in the way of righteousness. The servants of the kingdom, the method of administration of the government, and the boundless benefits that shall result to the people, I hope to treat in subsequent lectures from this station, pointing- out the method by which the people will become the recipients of the richest blessings under that government.
It is about this government of righteousness that the small number of Bible Students are now telling the people. Satan the Devil is endeavoring to keep the people in ignorance of these great truths. To this end he blinds the political, judicial and ecclesiastical powers of the land. Under one pretext or another these cause the arrest and punishment of men and women who at the expense of much energy, time and money are carrying the message of truth to the people. A sample of this persecution has recently been experienced in Bergenfield, New Jersey.
A religious element of that community, which suffered an ignominious defeat in the late American election, has now sought to vent its spleen upon the Bible Students. This is a sample of what would result if such men controlled the government. These efforts, however, will in no way stop the preaching of the message of God’s kingdom. Let the people use their radios and tune in on this station, and get the Bible literature that will help them to study their Bible, and study their Bibles at home and learn of the Lord.
The righteous government now being set up is and ever will be a pure theocracy. In the Scriptures it is called God’s kingdom because Jehovah God is the Ruler above all. It is called Christ’s kingdom because the Anointed One of God rules in accord with and under the supervision of Jehovah. It is called “the kingdom of heaven” because the Ruler and Controller will be invisible to human eyes and will at all times exercise a beneficent power and influence over men.
The privilege of carrying to suffering humanity the message of good news concerning God’s righteous government that shall deliver and relieve them of all oppression is the greatest privilege that has ever been granted to man. Let those who are engaged therein take courage and rejoice that they are counted worthy to bear the burden and suffer at the hands of those that oppose. This is the time above all times to give the witness to Jehovah’s name, and blessed is he or she who has part-therein. Let every one who loves righteousness and truth take his stand on the side of the Lord and continue to increase in the knowledge of the Lord and be the recipient of His blessings.
Story Thirty-nine
A S JESUS was walking one day through the streets of Jerusalem, He cast a glance toward the portals of a house and beheld a beggar sitting upon the doorstep.
This man had lived by begging all his life, for he could do no work, and no one would take care of him. He was born blind, and had never seen the light of the sun, nor the myriad stars of heaven at night.
Some of Jesus' disciples, who were walking with Him, said, as they saw the Master stop and gaze pityingly upon this poor blind man, “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind ?”
And Jesus made answer, and said, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents,” and then told them that here was another opportunity for the works of God to be shown to all.
The disciples wondered at this speech until they saw what Jesus was about to do for the . blind man. Going up to the poor creature, the Lord spat upon the ground and, taking the moistened clay in His hands, rubbed it upon the sightless eyes of the beggar. Then He said to the man, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.”
The pool of Siloam was a famous cistern or watering-place of Jerusalem, not far from the steps on which the poor blind man was sitting. The man arose, and, guiding himself with his stick, groped his way to the pool of Siloam to obey the command of Jesus.
At the pool the blind man washed his eyes, as Jesus had commanded, and straightway sight was bestowed upon him, and the dense blackness in which he had lived all his life was gone.
You may be sure it did not take the man, whose sight was thus given to him, very long to run from the pool of Siloam and present himself to those who had known him when he was a poor, blind beggar.
Many people who had passed his doorstep every da;/ could not believe it was he, and asked one another in amazement, “Is not this he that sat and begged 1” And others said, 'Surely, he is like him?’ But the man, overhearing them, said joyfully, “I AM he.”
Then the people gathered around and asked the man, “How were thine eyes opened?” And the man could tell them no more than this: “A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of
Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight.”
And the people were curious to know more about this man Jesus, and they asked him who had been given sight, “Where is he?” But the man answered, “I know not.”
Now the Pharisees, when they heard of this latest act of Jesus, were exceedingly angry, because Jesus had performed the deed upon the Sabbath day. They caused the man who had received his sight to be brought before them as they sat in pomp and state in the synagogue, and questioned him concerning Jesus.
They said to the man, speaking of Jesus, “We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is!” Now when the preachers and priests, the Pharisees, spoke of Jesus as “this fellow” it made him who had been cured of blindness very angry, for the man was a good man, and felt deeply grateful to the Lord, although he really did not know yet who Jesus was.
So this man stood before the stiffnecked and silken-robed Pharisees and replied to their accusations of Jesus: “Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes. Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God and doeth his will, him he heareth. Since the world began was. it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this man were not of God, he could do nothing.”
And, of course, the Pharisees were too “good” to be impressed by this man’s beautiful faith in God, so they said: “Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us?” The same words the Pharisees of today use when the Bible Students tell them that Jesus is the Son of God.
Then the leader of the Pharisees arose and cast the man out of the synagogue. Jesus heard of it, and when He met the man He said to him, “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?”
And the man said, “Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?” And Jesus made answer: “Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee.”
And the man lifted up his eyes in adoration to the face of Jesus and said, “Lord, I believe,” and fell at Jesus’ feet in worship.
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We give an extract from the work of this famous San Francisco doctor and surgeon, in which he points to the almost absolute certainty that vaccination is the cause of diphtheria. It is known that this disease first appeared after vaccination appeared and began its pollution of the blood and lowering of the vitality of the people.—Editor,