Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

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AMERICAN

RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES

INTOLERANCE IN QUEBEC

RACKETEERING

THE DEVIL’S CIVILIZATION

FRAGMENTS

THE NATURAL

AND THE SPIRITUAL MAN

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Vol. XII - No. 313

September 16, 1931

LABOR AND ECONOMICS

Wyandotte Not Weak and Stupid 810

Crisp County, Georgia .... 813

11,000 Hungry Children Fed

in Chicago.....  . 826

A Glutton for Charity .... 826

Unemployment in Los Angeles . 826

Scott’s Eun, West Virginia . . 826

Satan’s Civilization Admits Defeat ........831

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

American Rights and Liberties at Swoyersville ..... 803

How Far Away Is the Collapse? 814

Fragments ........826

85,000 Tower Visitors a Month . 826

40,000 Federal Prisoners . . . 826

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

Capitalism at the Crossroads . . 814

Ocean Liners Being Taken Off . 825

Federal Radio Commission Dilemma

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

Governor Pinchot and “The Golden Age” .... 810

Relieving the Destitute in Minnesota

Served Ninety Days for Three Murders  

Post Office Department Revises Constitution.....  .

Racketeering—The Devil's Civilization

The Earth in Travail .... 826

SCIENCE AND INVENTION

British Ahead on Television . . 826

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY

Intolerance in Quebec City . . 811

The Presidency a Ticklish Job . 814

Preached 21 Hours.....825

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

The Natural and the Spiritual Man......827

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Volume XII .               Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, September 16, 1931                    Number 313

American Rights and Liberties at Swoyersville

ON MAY 10, 1931, the Roman Catholic priest of Swoyersville, Pa., caused the arrest of

Nicholas Belekon, Mike Wargo, John Wargo and Mike Hubal, charged with selling books without a license. After being in jail four hours, they were brought before a magistrate, where complaints were made and warrants issued.

The original complainants were the Catholic priest, a police officer and three other witnesses, but the charges were drawn only in the name of the officer and two of the witnesses. Judas and Caiaphas disappeared from the scene before Jesus was formally arraigned.

The four were released under bond and ordered to appear the following day for trial, when the burgess, Joseph Cheslick, fined them $5.00 and $2.50 and costs each, or thirty days in jail. They were granted five days to file an appeal from the decision; local counsel was engaged, and on June 11 the case was brought to trial before Judge J. Valentine.

At the trial the county prosecutor was assisted by the Swoyersville borough attorney. Their witnesses were the burgess of the borough, the arresting officer and three other witnesses who testified that they had been canvassed. The priest was not present. How well these birds know when their feathers are in danger!

The evidence was confined to the placement of two booklets for fifteen cents, namely, Prosperity Sure and Our Lord’s Return. One who attended the trial states that the judge’s attitude from the very beginning was that of one who had made a decision before the case was tried.

He and the prosecution held a private confab over certain portions of the Prosperity book. The judge then viciously denounced the author and those connected with the publishers as sedi-tionists and engaged in stirring up strife over the country. When the attorney for* defense attempted to present witness to explain the contents of the books he was admonished that the books speak for themselves, When he attempted to introduce other court decisions, and offered a copy of the Society’s charter in evidence, he received only violent rebuffs.

When he finally insisted on the right to present the side of the defense it was immediately established that no evidence had been submitted against Mike Hubal, and Hubal’s name was dropped. The other three testified that they were giving the message of God’s kingdom to the Russian and Polish people. The judge repeatedly interrupted with these words, “I know all about that message.”

At length the Society’s representative was granted five minutes to explain the work of the Society; that these men are Christians, not Bolsheviks ; that the world is in a terrible condition and no personal offense should be taken because of that statement, for it is freely admitted at Washington, D. C.; that rulers and judges are perplexed at present conditions, but have a wonderful opportunity now because God’s kingdom is at hand. If they will turn to the Lord and go back to the Bible for their authority, and obey His instructions therein, God will no doubt use them for good; that a good government is absolutely essential, but that every present government of earth is ruled over by Satan, the Devil, who is responsible for all the suffering and terrible conditions.

He was reminded that the Catholic priest who had had these four Christians arrested had his counterpart in Jesus’ day. The clergy then, because Jesus told the truth, and exposed the hypocrites, had Him arrested, and brought before the rulers, charged with sedition; that this is the day in which the Lord has promised to destroy Satan’s power and establish His kingdom in all the earth; that these books compare the physical facts of this day w’ith God’s prophecy, proving these things are true, and that God has commanded a testimony of these facts to be given to all nations, and we are giving that witness, and will serve our God regardless.

A colporteur, an ex-marine, was there, and his testimony concerning the fact that he was an ex-marine was very timely. The prosecution had tried to make it appear that we are a bunch of Bolsheviks, and called upon him to prove that he was an ex-marine. When he presented his credentials the prosecution was silent.

The three Russians were at great disadvantage because of their foreign tongue. The trial shows how necessary it is for all truth-lovers to be closely united if the foreign-speaking brethren are to receive justice.

Because this matter is of unusual interest to our readers, we present herewith Judge Valentine’s decision in full. He reversed the decision of the lower court, but as he made certain reflections upon the nature of the literature emanating from Judge Rutherford’s pen, we have great pleasure in publishing Judge Rutherford’s letter to him, a copy of which has come into our hands for the purpose.

JOSEPH F. RUTHERFORD

COUNSELOR

124 Columbia Heights Brooklyn, N. Y«

July 17, 1931. The Honorable J. Valentine,

Judge of the Common Pleas Court

of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

Dear Sir :

A copy of the court’s opinion in the case of Swoyersville Borough vs. John Wargo et al. delivered at the April sessions 1931 of that court is in my possession. I note that you wrote the opinion, hence I am addressing you. It is quite manifest from your expressed opinion that you were laboring under a great misapprehension or else you had an improper desire to please a certain class of men who are not friends of the people. I prefer, of course, to think that the first reason assigned is the correct one; hence I have a desire to call your attention to the facts, that you may see the matter in a proper light. Surely you would not wish to willingly misrepresent anyone after knowing the facts.

I am informed by a gentleman who attended the hearing in your court that you denounced the literature offered in evidence by counsel for the prosecution, that you denounced the author and publishers thereof as seditionists and spreaders of communism. In this you were very wrong. Your published opinion construing the ordinance is judicially sound. As a good lawyer and one who should hold the judicial scales impartially, you should have stopped there. You went entirely outside of your right and duty as a judicial officer in expressing yourself in the following language :“We deplore the distribution of such literature as the evidence showed the defendants had distributed and fully recognize that the passages quoted spread the doctrines of communism and sedition, and that it would be far better for the community as well as for the causes of self government and of religion if magazines or pamphlets like the one offered in evidence were not printed or distributed.”

The defendants are men allied with no political party, but who are wholly devoted to Jehovah God and His kingdom. They are true followers in the footsteps of Christ Jesus. They labor with their hands to earn the bread they eat, and spend their spare time helping the people to gain a knowledge of the truth. A clergyman fearing that the people of his parish would learn the truth caused these young men to be arrested and thrown into jail. The magistrate summarily imposed a fine upon them. They appealed to your court, and it was your sworn duty to decide the question at issue wholly in harmony with the law and the facts. Wholly unsupported by the facts or the law, you denounced the author and publishers as seditionists, and as being engaged in spreading the doctrines of communism and sedition. You attempt to justify your conclusions by quoting excerpts from the booklet Prosperity Sure, which was in evidence in the case. Every quotation from that booklet and which appears in your opinion is the absolute truth. If libelous, then both myself and the publishers are liable to an action for damages, and the courts are always open to the men who are therein mentioned as being derelict. Of course, you know that if they should bring suit for libel they would not have a ghost of a show in your court if the defendants proved the truthfulness of the published statements. That may be the reason why these gentlemen have never brought the matter before the courts in an action that would permit the proof of the truthfulness of the statements published. Manifestly they prefer to hide behind some criminal statute or ordinance and make catspaws of judicial officers to pull their chestnuts out of the fire.

Much that you quote from that booklet was taken from the public press and from magazines, and from the Congressional Record, or other public records. If these statements are true, have not the people the right to hear them ? Is one guilty of sedition who publishes the truth, especially when it involves public interest'? All judicial opinions are supposed to be based upon the truth. Why then did you quote certain truthful statements and then declare such to be seditious? Calm, sober and fair consideration must convince you that something improperly influenced your judicial conclusion.

You must admit that if it is improper to cprote statements made by clergymen or other public men, then it was wrong in the first instance for these clergymen or men to publicly so express themselves. Clergymen are men wflio pose before the people as their spiritual advisers. If they are giving the people wrongful advice, is it not the duty of other honest men to tell the truth to the people? Surely you could not say that the telling of the truth is seditious, and yet you have judicially determined that the author and publishers of that booklet are guilty of sedition and the spreading of communism.

Members of the United States Congress publicly expose some of the unrighteous acts in the government. Able lawyers publish the facts concerning unrighteousness in the courts. For instance, you might have quoted from the same booklet, on page 36, the expressed opinion of Mr. Justice Ford, of New York, who said:

“In ray experience I have found the public service corporations, the street railroads, the telephone, the lighting companies in particular, to be the most prolific source of political corruption in the state. They more directly depend upon governmental favors than any others, and indeed the profits of their business now from the special privileges which they procure and hold from the government, both state and municipal. In my day at Albany these corporations plied their nefarious business of corrupting the people’s representatives so openly that a blind deaf-mute could learn what was going on. Not that legal evidence could be found against them. They were too shrewd for that. But every public man there was morally certain as to what vzas going on, and in private conversation it was freely talked about. These public service corporations pollute the very fountains of public virtue; they debauch our public servants; they subsidize party organizations for their own purposes. All the powers of government are subverted to their base ends; and government of the people, by the people, for the people, is made a mockery.”

And also on page 37 of the same booklet the words of the eminent American lawyer Mr. Samuel Untermyer, w'ho said:

“Nowhere in our social fabric is the discrimination between the rich and the poor so emphasized to the average citizen as at the bar of justice. Nowhere should it be less. . . . Money secures the ablest and most adroit counsel. . , . Evidence can be gathered from every source. The poor must be content to forego all these advantages.”

For even a more caustic arraignment of certain public officials reference could have been made to the 'Wickersham Crime Commission report recently published. If I am guilty of sedition in publishing this booklet, then these distinguished gentlemen are even more guilty. Can it be said that these gentlemen are guilty of sedition or of spreading the doctrines of communism because they exercise their right of free speech in making known to the people that which is of public interest ?

The conclusions expressed in your opinion show that you were laboring under the impression that-1 am advocating communism and sedition and that the publishers of the booklet are doing likewise. In this you are very wrong. In my book Government (published 1928), on page 13 I say:

“Contemporary with the war and thereafter revolutions broke out which really were expressions of the people of a desire for a better and more liberal government. Moved by a selfish desire the revolutionists have usually made the condition of the people worse, rather than better. Bolshevism rules some nations and people, which is especially a protest against the government under which they have heretofore lived. All who calmly and soberly view developments vzell know that bolshevism can never result in a satisfactory government of the people. Bolshevism is doomed to certain and complete failure. The same must be said of communism. Such radical movements for the establishment of a government of the people can never bring peace, prosperity and happiness to the peoples of the nations. Many other nations of the world greatly fear bolshevism, and properly so. Any form of government that denies the rights and privileges of some and shows special favors to others is certain to end in disaster. Monarchies have been, harsh, cruel and oppressive to the people, but bolshevism and communism are even worse. No government can bring happiness to the people unless it is founded upon honesty and administered in righteousness.”

Furthermore, by referring to pages 242 to 257 of the same book, will be found the Scriptural proof based upon the well known facts showing that Jehovah God’s government is a complete remedy for suffering humanity. If God has an adequate remedy for all the ills that afflict the human kind which remedy He has promised to soon put in operation, don’t you think suffering humanity should know the facts relating thereto? How could they understand these facts unless they had a proper understanding of the original cause of such unhappy conditions?

I am not publishing the facts concerning corrupt politics, oppressive big business and the apostate clergy for the purpose of producing strife and dissension amongst the people. My sole purpose is to inform the people why these unhappy conditions exist and to show them that men by resorting to revolution or any other means of force or violence can never remedy⁷ these unhappy conditions; that the only remedy⁷ is God’s kingdom which He is now setting up.

Bear with me, please, until I cite in brief wffiat the Scriptures show, and which Scriptural statements are entirely supported by the extraneous facts showing that we are now in the very hour of the fulfilment of prophecy: God made all His creatures perfect; Lucifer, who was made the invisible overlord of man, rebelled against God and turned man into the way of sin and degradation. God changed Lucifer’s name, and since the time of Eden he has been known as ‘Satan that old serpent and dragon the Devil’. God did not deprive him, however, of his opportunity to influence mankind, abiding His own good time to have the matter fully placed before creatures that they might choose the right way if they so desired. God has permitted men to take their own course, and men have organized governments and tried to rule, and doubtless have done the best they could without the aid of the Lord, but instead of following the explicit instructions of God’s Word men have unconsciously yielded to the sinister influence of the unseen enemy Satan the Devil, and for this reason it is written (1 John 5:19, Diaglott) that “the whole world lies in the evil one”, and (2 Cor. 4:3, 4) that ‘the Devil Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the people to the truth, lest the light of the truth should shine into their minds’. It was the solemn duty of the clergymen to keep themselves free and separate from politics and finances, and teach the people the truth as set forth in the Bible. They have, however, fallen away from the Bible and made common cause with political and financial rulers of the world and have therefore become a part of the world and come under the influence of the invisible ruler of the world, Satan, who is God’s enemy and the enemy of mankind. If this is true, then the people should know it, that they might know that such men are not safe guides. What then should the people do? I answer, Their proper course is to go to the Bible, study it and ascertain the truth for themselves. We are merely trying to help them do that very thing.

In the Bible they will see the cause for the great amount of unrighteousness existing amongst men, and they will learn that God promised that in His due time He would redeem mankind from the curse of death, and then set up a righteous government with Christ Jesus as the invisible ruler of the world instead of Satan, that He would then through Christ Jesus’ powerful organization destroy Satan, his organization and his power, fully and completely relieve the people from all oppression and bring about a condition that would enable them to dwell together in peace and enjoy prosperity, and health and happiness, and that that righteous government would continue on this earth and the people would live on earth forever as perfect men and women. No man or company of men or human organization could accomplish such good results to the nations and peoples of the earth. Only Jehovah God can bring about lasting peace, complete relief, blessings and happiness to mankind.

The world is now in a terrible state of distress, and you will readily agree with me that no human remedy has ever been offered that can solve the perplexing problems. I say to you, my dear sir, that the truth as set forth in God’s Word is of the most vital importance to the people, and a public official who denounces the publishing of the truth to the extent of his influence with the people hinders them from gaining a knowledge of the truth. Do you want to take : ” that responsibility before God ?

I am not complaining by reason of being charged by judicial opinion as a seditionist or the spreader of seditious literature, even though the charge is wholly false. The greatest creature ever on earth was .. Christ Jesus. When He stood before Pilate charged-___________

with sedition at the instance of the religionists of that ...........

time, in response to a question propounded by Pilate concerning the truth, He declared that God’s Word, the Bible, is the truth. Furthermore, He said: ‘For this cause was I born, and to this end came I into the world, that I might declare the truth.’ Because He declared the truth and exposed the duplicity of the clergy of that time they caused His arrest upon the charge of sedition, and the court unjustly and without any evidence whatsoever condemned Him. Jesus then plainly pointed out who was the real instigator of His persecution. To the clergymen who were causing His persecution Jesus said (John 8: 43,44,45) : “Why do ye not understand my speech ? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murder-    ”

er from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.”

A short time after His [Jesus’] death Stephen, a faithful follower of Christ Jesus, was arrested and brought before the court on a charge of sedition. The clergymen were back of that. This record is found in Acts 6:8-15, and in Acts the 7th chapter. Witnesses were even hired to swear falsely against Stephen, and although entirely innocent he was condemned and stoned to death. I cite this merely to show that because a clergymen has a man arrested and brought into court that is no evidence that the one thus charged is guilty, especially when that clergymen is moved by..........

some selfish desire to close the mouth of the one who is telling the truth.

As certain as the sun shines, God has made it clear in His Word that He [and not man] is going to completely destroy Satan’s organization and all who willingly support it. The ones who rule the nations of the earth are, to wit: The political, financial, judicial and religious leaders. It is the duty of the religious , ... leaders, to wit, the clergy, to tell everybody the truth, and especially to the rulers of the land. Instead of doing so, they have misled the government officials. The clergy have entered into a conspiracy against those who tell the truth and against Christ and all of His faithful followers, in attempting to keep the truth away from the people, and they have induced public ________

officials in the three primary branches of the government to join them to some extent in the conspiracy. Permit me, if you will and for your own good, to counsel that you take heed to the truth as set forth

in the Word of God, and especially in this connection, the prophetic words of Jehovah which now apply and which are set forth in Psalm 2, to wit:

“Why do the nations rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying: Let us break their bands asunder, and east away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou are my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Be wise now therefore, 0 ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”

If the clergymen would teach the people what is in the Bible, they would be doing a good sendee to mankind. Instead they turn the people away from the Bible and from, Jehovah God. If all men followed their lead, then all would be soon plunged into complete darkness. Those who have a knowledge of the truth of God’s Word are commanded by Him to tell the truth to other people. That is why I am trying to help the people to gain a knowledge of the truth. It is no personal advantage to me directly or indirectly to engage in a controversy with anyone, but I do have an honest and sincere desire and am making an effort to enable the people to gain a knowledge of what is right. It is not my desire to do injury to any man, whether he be a political officer or clergyman. My effort is to help to enlighten the people concerning the truth, that they may take their stand on the side of Jehovah God, receive His care and protection in the great climax of trouble that is rapidly approaching upon all the world, and to be recipients of His blessing when that trouble ends. My responsibility ends when I have told the truth to the people. Those who willingly now oppose the spread of the truth, God will duly recompense.

Please be assured of my kindly feeling toward you as a man. I feel certain that if you saw the facts as they actually exist, your judicial mind and poise ■would lead you to a far different conclusion from that expressed in your opinion in the above case.

I have spent a goodly part of my years in the courts, and I know much of the woes to which the people are subject. Seeing no human remedy I diligently sought to learn if God had a remedy; and learning that His remedy is not only adequate, but is complete and will bring to the people endless blessings, I have chosen to devote all my time to helping them to understand the truth.

If you care to read them I shall be very pleased to present you with all my books, which you will see are not expressions of a man’s opinion, but that merely marshal the facts and cite the Scriptures to prove what is the correct conclusion thereon. If you accept my offer I only request that you give a careful and painstaking consideration to what is therein written, and compare the same faithfully with the Bible, and then reach a just and fair conclusion.

I beg to remain, my dear sir,

Yours very sincerely,

(Signed) J. F. Rutherford.

The following is the judicial decision to which reference is made in the above letter of Judge Rutherford:

Swoyersville Borough

vs.

John Wargo et al.

In the Court of Common Pleas of

Luzerne County

No. 487 ■— April Sessions — 1931 Appeal from Conviction and Sentence of the Burgess.

DECISION

Defendants have appealed from a conviction and sentence for the violation of an ordinance of the borough of Swoyersville, which provides: “That it shall not be lawful for any itinerant person or persons to hawk, peddle or offer for sale, either privately or by public outcry upon the public streets or places within the limits of the Borough, any patent medicines, soaps, nostrums, salves, or any other article or articles, or peddlers’ wares, without a license issued by the Burgess.”

The ordinance further provides: “Any person or persons found selling or offering for sale any article in violation of Sec. 1 of this ordinance, shall forfeit and pay a fine of not less than five dollars or more than ten dollars with costs, for each and every offence. ’ ’

The testimony showed that the defendants had either sold or distributed, “pamphlets or tracts” issued or published by the “'International Bible Students Association” or the “Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society”.

Defendants’ counsel has forcefully urged that the two associations interested in the distribution of the pamphlets are of a religious character, and that the distribution of the pamphlets was the work of charity. Doubtless the two organizations are engaged in what is regarded by their members as religious work, but the controlling question is not as to the general character of the work the organizations arc engaged in, nor the character of books or literature published or distributed by them, other’ than the pamphlets distributed or sold by the defendants.

There is in evidence one pamphlet produced by a witness for the Commonwealth, which pamphlet was eoneededly sold or delivered by the defendant Wargo. We express no opinion as to the character of this magazine or pamphlet; its nature is best shown by the following excerpts therefrom:

“THE CLERGY

“In the first place, the clergymen are not Christians. A Christian is one who believes that God through Christ has provided salvation for mankind. The clergymen as a general rule do not believe that. They pose before the people as preachers, and yet they are diligent in keeping the people away from the Bible. Daily they are becoming bolder in denying the Bible; and instead of referring the people to the remedy God has provided, they are telling the people that big business and the politicians and themselves are their guardians and saviors. The majority of these clergymen call themselves Modernists. That means that they deny the Bible account of creation, of the fall of man, and the redemption through Christ Jesus’ sacrifice. The scheme is to turn the minds of the people away from the Bible and away from God, and turn them to the worship of men or other creatures. ’ ’

“THE WAR

“The clergy as a class claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, and make the people believe that they are. The Scriptures designate Jesus Christ as ‘The Prince of Peace’. When He was on earth He repeatedly declared the law which His followers must obey: ‘ Thou shalt not kill.’ Anyone who is a true follower of Jesus Christ must be obedient to this command. Anyone claiming to be a follower of Christ and who at the same time urges men to kill each other is a hypocrite and party to the crime of the killing. There might be some excuse or extenuating circumstances for men who know nothing about the Bible to engage in war, but there is no excuse or extenuating circumstance in favor of a Christian voluntarily engaging in war or urging others to do so.

“During the World War of 1914 to 1918 the clergymen advocated war, urged young men to go to war to kill their fellow men, used their church buildings for recruiting stations, and denounced and persecuted every one who expressed conscientious scruples against killing. Everybody knows this statement to be true. They went even further than that. Many of the clergymen told young men that if they 'would go to war and die upon the battlefield their blood would be counted in with that of Jesus and their souls would immediately be winged off to glory. They should have known better; because war is murder and no murderer has eternal life. (1 John 3:15) If these men, contrary to the Word of the Lord, advocate the killing of other fellow men and at the same time claim to be Christians, they are both hypocrites and unsafe advisers of the people. The evidence is too voluminous for me to cite all of it; but I give you here some, naming the clergymen who are guilty of duplicity.

“There never was any danger of Germany’s invading America. Every sensible man knew that that was impossible. And yet some of the most zealous advocates of America’s entering the war were the clergymen.

“The Rev. Parkes Cadman, an Englishman who resides in America and who is president of the organization called the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, just before the war and while answering questions before the Bedford Branch of the Y.M.C.A. in Brooklyn passionately exclaimed: ‘Prepare! Prepare! Prepare! for war.’ When he was asked his opinion of students who refused to engage in military training he replied: ‘They are parasites, suckers, and rubbish. The teacher that teaches them they have no right to bear arms for the state should be fired out of his position. ’ Dr. Cadman with others boasted of the fighting rector, Dr. Reiland.

“The Massachusetts Clerical Association was one of the first to vote for America to enter the war, and a delegation of the prominent clergy visited Washington to combat the ‘unchristian influence’ of pacifists. They made it their business to use their church buildings for the preaching of war sermons. When the government enacted the conscription law and inserted a section making it possible for a Christian to decline active military sendee, nearly every clergyman in tho land opposed those who took advantage of this provision of the law. They spoke of such men as ‘poor pussy-foot pacifists’.

“Dr. S. E. Young, of the Presbyterian church, called them cowards and traitors because they ■ expressed their belief in God and in Christ and insisted on obeying God rather than man.

“Bishop Kinsolving, of Texas, declared that ‘such men should be driven not only from the country, but from the earth’.

“The Rev. Howard Ganster, of Waukegan, Ill., ‘advocated the organization of a society for the committing of murder of persons who do not stand up or who leave the building when the “Star Spangled Banner” is played.’           *

“Dr. Henry van Dyke delivered a so-called sermon, and referring to a gentleman who was candidate for mayor in New York, and who was against America’s entering the war, said: ‘I would hang every one, whether or not he be a candidate for mayor, who lifts his voice against America entering the war.’

“Rev. Gillis, a Catholic, said: ‘Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace, but Pontius Pilate was the Prince of Pacifists.’

“Bishop Cooke advocated that those who desire to take advantage of the law for non-combatant service should ‘be deprived ... of all political and social and civil rights’.

“Dr. Eaton was made chairman of the National Service Section of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, and performed the duty of delivering fight-talks in shipyards. He said: ‘When a spy comes sneaking around with a bomb don’t say, “Let us pray,” but take him out there on the marsh and tie him down and place the bomb on his chest. Light it and stand off and watch him blow to his Kaiser, to hell! Be regular he-men.’

“Evidently Eaton’s conscience hurt him so much after the war that he got himself elected to Congress from New Jersey.

“The Rev. W. W. Bustard, John D. Rockefeller’s loyal servant, from his pulpit exclaimed: ‘To hell with the Kaiser. ’

“Dr. Newell D. Hillis, of Brooklyn, pastor of Plymouth Church, was one of the most vehement advocates of America’s entering the war. When the nation did enter the war, the American Bankers ’ Association sent forth Hillis as its missionary to preach war. He prepared the sermons which hundreds of thousands of other pastors delivered, urging young men into the trenches. When the war ended and millions were in sorrow because of what had happened, Dr. Hillis, instead of visiting the widows and orphans as the Scriptures command that a Christian shall do (James 1: 27), still continued to express his vindictiveness and venom against the helpless people of Germany who had been driven into the war by their war machine. ”

“No general, no man in the army, nor any warlord ever gave utterance to such diabolical and wicked words as those written by Hillis. These clergymen are the ones who, ■with pious faces and sanctimonious words, tell the peoples that their organized system of oppression and murder represents Christ on earth and therefore constitutes ‘organized Christianity’, or ‘ Christendom’.

“Rev. Geo. Atwater directly linked the so-called Christian church with the war. ’ ’

“In the House of Representatives at Washington in January, 1918, the Rev. Billy Sunday was invited to deliver the morning prayer. He would make it appear that the Lord is as bloodthirsty as some of the clergymen. He said, ‘Thou knowest, 0 Lord, that no nation so infamous, vile, greedy, sensuous,, bloodthirsty, ever disgraced the pages of history. Make bare Thy mighty arm, 0 Lord, and smite the hungry, wolfish Hun, whose fangs drip with blood, and we will for ever raise our voices in Thy praise.’ The newspapers reported that when Sunday finished his harangue, for the first time in its history the House applauded a prayer.”

“POLITICAL

“There are very few statesmen left on the earth. Most men in public life are professional politicians. Politics is their business. A great number of them are either directly or indirectly in the pay of some big financial institution. High finance sees to it, that all the leading political parties nominate for office men that can be influenced by the corporations. When the election is held, no matter who loses the corporations win and the people pay the bills.”

“Even the courts are corrupted by Big Business. When Big Business is pitted against the common people, the people have no show in the courts.”

“War is declared by the law-making body yielding to the influence of selfish interests apparently supported by the people. The politicians quickly pass emergency laws which compel everyone of a certain age to render military service. The Avar is on, and the people are urged to buy the bonds to carry on the war.

“The clergy are called into action. They become the spellbinders. They use their pulpits to harangue the people and urge them to go to war. When some of these preachers go with an army as spiritual advisers they always manage to remain at a safe distance in the rear. They work hand in glove with their allies, Big Business and Big Politicians. They work up great excitement amongst the people^ and then they are ready to go to any extreme.”

“The purpose is to show that the clergymen are sailing under false colors and misleading the people; to show them that the clergymen are unsafe guides; to show the necessity of a power greater than that of selfish men to bring the people relief and prosperity. Attention is called to the wickedness of Big Finance and Big Politicians not merely to denounce them, and with no hope of reforming them, but to show the class of men with whom the clergymen have entered into an alliance. Men are judged by the company that they keep. The fact that they deny the Bible and join hands with an oppressive class shows that the clergymen are practicing a fraud upon the people, and that so-called organized Christianity is a fraud and a snare.”

Certainly the distribution of such literature is, in no sense, a work of “charity”. We should much prefer to be classified with those condemned by the abovequoted passages than to be associated with the persons responsible for their condemnation.

Is the sale of magazines and pamphlets a violation of the ordinance? The ordinance is designed to prevent hawking and peddling by itinerant persons without the procuring of a license. It makes it unlawful to hawk, peddle, or offer for sale “any patent medicines, soaps, nostrums, salve, or any other article or articles, or peddlers’ wares” cvithout having procured a license as therein provided.

The ordinance is penal and must be strictly construed. 29 Corpus Juris, 228. It is not designed to prohibit the selling of books or magazines, nor does the sale of magazines or pamphlets fall within its prohibition. Magazines and pamphlets are not “peddlers’ wares”. Boys who sell newspapers on the streets are not peddlers and do not require a peddlers’ license. Rex. vs. Prosterman (Sask) 11 West L. R. 141—■ 29 Corpus Juris, 223. If the defendants can properly be convicted for a violation of the ordinance, then by a similar process of reasoning, the conclusion would be reached, that boys selling weekly magazines, such as The Saturday Evening Post, would be guilty of violating its provisions. The only article sold or offered for sale by the defendants were pamphlets or tracts, nothing else was in their possession and nothing else was offered for sale. Tracts, magazines or newspapers cannot be deemed “other articles” within tire meaning of that term as used in the ordinance. “The merchandise included under the term ‘other articles’ must be of a generic character to that previously designated.” Renick vs. Boyd, 99 Pa. 555; Golien vs. Susquehanna Coal Co., 54 Super Ct. 299; Pittsburg vs. Pittsburg Railway Co., 47 Super Ct. 476; Burns vs. Coyne, 294 Pa. 512.

We deplore the distribution of such literature as the evidence showed the defendants had distributed and fully recognize that the passages quoted spread the doctrines of communism and sedition, and that it would be far better for the community as well as for the causes of self government and of religion if magazines or pamphlets, like the one offered in evidence, were not printed or distributed, but the distribution, or even the sale of the same, does not fall within the prohibition of the ordinance appealed from. Therefore, now, June 26, 1931, the judgment of conviction is reversed.

By the Court,

Valentine, J.

Governor Pinchot and The Golden Age By *George W. Woodruff (Pennsylvania')

*Mr. Woodruff is personal adviser to Governor Pinchot on public utility questions.—Ed.

THE governor duly received the copy of The

Golden Age in which there was such a clear and far-reaching discussion as to whether public utilities are treating the consumers lawfully and justly in the matter of charges and rates.

It was splendid for the governor and those who are trying to help him to get such a good resume of this question in hand.

We all feel sure that if the utilities do not cut their rates practically in half, they will certainly bring about almost universal municipal ownership of water, gas and electric plants.

As a pointer, I call your attention to the fact that I have just received upon request from Honorable H. W. Loy, mayor, Chanute, Kansas, some literature showing the astounding fact that they have paid for their electric, gas and water plants, improved the city, built up a large reserve, helped pay the taxes in ever increasing amounts per year, and now, in 1931, are meeting every last cent of the expense of running the city out of the profits on their municipal plants, while they charge only 6, 5 and 4 cents for domestic current, 3y₂ to iy₂ cents for power, 50, 40 and 30 cents for gas, and 25 to 12^ cents for water.

Wyandotte Not Weak and Stupid

THE theory that city governments are always

•weak and stupid seems not to be true at Wyandotte, Michigan. The Powei’ Trust gang would like to have the people think that they alone know how to manage public utilities, and that if, perchance, they should, any of them, be put in trust of civic interests, it would forthwith be demonstrated that they are Judases. So the argument is that the people should turn everything over to them. But Wyandotte is unconvinced. It has a plant which is valued at $800,000. It was offered $2,000,000 for the plant, but by a vote of five to one rejected the offer. In 1930 the people of Wyandotte drew a 10-percent dividend from the surplus earnings of their plant. They agree that it is probably true that no Power Trust man could be found who would manage the properties in the interest of the people as a whole, but they think they can do it themselves, and experience shows that they can. In trying to prove to the people that they are themselves not to be trusted the great minds of the Power Trust have overplayed their hand.

Intolerance in Quebec City By Victor Boire {Canada)

TO THE quaint old city of Quebec, with its massive ramparts and its citadel, the scene of several memorable battles, there still clings the atmosphere of medieval days. Here, on a rocky promontory overlooking the juncture of the Saint Lawrence and Saint Charles rivers, is one of the most peculiar and interesting cities on the American continent, which, because it is the only walled city in North America, has been called “the Gibraltar of America”.

The older part of the city is built along the foot of the cliff on a narrow strip of rocky ground. Many of the old buildings with their walls of cobblestones and mortar and their quaint roofs with dormer windmvs still remain. In some sections the roofs are connected with walks so that the inhabitants may go from house to house on the roofs instead of in the streets, many of which are too narrow to admit of sidewalks. A driveway along the foot of the bluff leads past the steep path up which Wolfe’s soldiers made their famous ascent, though numerous visitors climb the path without finding the task as arduous as it has been described in many accounts of the historic achievement.

In all older parts of the city buildings, shrines and monuments of the past intermingle with modern structures, methods and devices, but the most interesting feature of it all is the overshadowing influence of a past age whose grasp the enlightenment and progress of the present have not been able to weaken.

Primitive customs and ideas have been little affected by the passage of time, and the gross darkness with which the god of this world has surrounded the people has not as yet been pierced to any appreciable extent by the light of the new day. The people for more than a century and a half have preserved to the minutest detail their language, their religion, their social customs and their laws. These have been handed down from one generation to another practically without change, so that today we find, in the French portion of the province of Quebec particularly, a picture of the old Norman customs of a past age.

One transgresses the laws of the Roman Catholic church or the customs of society at his peril, and while the people generally are kindly and humble-minded, they are so thoroughly entrenched in darkness and false ideas that they fear and resent anything, however logical and reasonable, that might tend to disturb them.

It was in this striking example of a medieval French city that it was my privilege several years ago to participate in the distribution of some thousands of copies of a resolution passed by a large assembly of members of the International Bible Students Association in convention, which resolution was in the form of an “Indictment” of the present religious, financial and political order of things, and which, as may rvell be imagined, created no small stir.

And it was here, as recently as December, 1930, that three fellow workers and I encountered an experience which throws an interesting side light on the religious intolerance which is rampant here as well as throughout the province.

We had been engaged for several days in offering the Watch Tower publications to the French people, many of whom received us courteously and accepted the booklets quite readily. On two succeeding Sundays the Roman Catholic priests in all parishes of the city and suburbs had vehemently denounced our work. They had also appointed watchmen at various strategic points to report our movements, but for several days, chiefly because of the fact that we had moved to an “unguarded” district, we encountered no interference.

On the afternoon of December the 12th, as I was coming out of a house where I had been canvassing, I was stopped by a policeman, who asked me to accompany him to the police station across the street. He informed me that Mr. Lavergne, the curate of that parish, had ordered our arrest, that two of my companions were already in custody, and that he had orders to take me to the central police station. There he conducted me in a taxi, and there I found the other two colporteurs, the fourth up to that time not having been found.

As the judge was already there, we three were at once given a preliminary trial. Since we pleaded “Not guilty” to the charge of selling books without a .license from the city, the trial was set for a iveek ahead and we were released on bail. They had fixed the bail at fifty dollars each, and purposed also seizing our entire stock of books and forbidding us to canvass within the jurisdiction of that court, an area of nearly one hundred square miles. We

refused to accept such conditions, but agreed to a bail of five dollars each, and to this they finally agreed.

While canvassing, one of our party had met a French lawyer who appeared to be out of harmony with the clergy and had obtained one or two of our books. Feeling that he would be favorable toward our cause, we secured his services.

He interviewed the city’s attorney, also the clerk of the recorder’s court and the deputy chief of police, all of whom practically admitted to him that they had no right to arrest us and had no hope of winning the case but, being so hard-pressed by the clergy, they were forced to make it as difficult for us as possible, with the hope of breaking down our courage.

On the day of the trial I learned from one of the police heads that delegations from the bishop’s palace had called on them every day since the arrest, charging them with neglecting their duty and pressing them to do something to get rid of us. Their plea was that we were a menace to the Catholic church and should be in prison, or at least out of the city. I also heard indirectly that they had made the statement that we had captured the city of Montreal but would not be allowed to capture Quebec.

Cardinal Rouleau was absent from the city at the time, recuperating at Rhode Island from the effects of an automobile accident which had occurred some months before. No doubt this affair had something to do with hastening his return, as he arrived here a few days after the trial.

All went smoothly at the trial, which lasted over an hour and a half. There were a number of spectators in the gallery, but the clergy did not put in an appearance, preferring to work under cover, as usual, and had the city police department take the responsibility of the case.

The city’s lawyer contended that our books •were anti-religious and that therefore we could not claim the exemption which the law provided for religious and benevolent societies, and he asked the judge to confirm the charge.

Our lawyer, in accordance with instructions, proceeded to prove that we had an office in this province, that we were members of the International Bible Students Association, and that said Association had a charter from the Federal Government, and he produced copies of former judgments in similar cases, which were all in our favor. Among these was the judgment rendered by this same Judge Des Rivieres in 1925.

The decision was to be given a week later. A number of interested persons came to hear it, but were disappointed, not being able to distinguish a word the judge said. He spoke so low that at six feet away I had to strain to catch an occasional word. However, we understood that the case was dismissed.

I made eight visits to the City Hall in an endeavor to secure the judge’s decision in writing, but without success. The judge told me, on one of the occasions when I was able to secure an interview, that, his decision being the same as the one he had rendered previously, he did not see the necessity of repeating it. A French Protestant preacher told me that he had gone purposely to hear the judgment, but was unable to catch a single word. He was in the gallery. He said the judge, fearing the wrath of the clergy, hardly dared give out the decision.

While the three French daily nevcspapers and. the one English daily all gave considerable publicity to the arrest, misrepresenting our work and making it appear obnoxious, not one of them had sufficient courage to publish the court decision, other than to say the case had been dismissed.

The clergy, both Catholic and Protestant, are very angry because we are continuing with our work despite the fact that they have shown contempt for the message, and they have by no means given up the fight because we have proved that we have a right to offer our books.

The Protestant clergy are distributing a small tract entitled “Three Blasphemies of the International Bible Students”, and the priests in the various parishes are making desperate efforts to stop the message from going to the people by threatening them with excommunication and other evils (?) if they read our books or even look at them. They are inciting the people to destroy the literature and to throw us out, though so far few have dared try it. Their evil tongues have wagged to such purpose that some members of their flocks consider it their duty to persecute us at every opportunity.

Twice recently we have been forced to leave certain districts for the present because of mobs gathering and cursing at us. On one of these occasions I accompanied an officer to one of the stations to satisfy the person who had telephoned the police. When the officer got in touch with the deputy chief, mentioning my name, the latter said, “1 know that man. Don’t hold him.”

A Catholic business man whom I canvassed admitted to me that the city was run by the priests. The deputy chief of police confessed that he was never so annoyed by them as when our case was pending. They are everywhere and pry into everything, and evidences of their shameful exploitation of the people can be multiplied.

I long for the day when the poor creatures who for so many centuries have been under their domination will have their minds freed from the power of fear which has held them in bondage and, having full confidence that God himself will remove their blindness, I am glad to continue to witness for Him and await His due time to perform His “strange act”.

While the experience related above took place in the city of Quebec, the clergy have been similarly active against us and our work throughout the entire province. Time and again the police of the City of Montreal, goaded on by the priests, have interfered with the activities of the colporteurs and other workers in that city. Time and again cases were fought in the courts and in each case a victory was gained for the workers.

The persistence of the clergy, however, in forcing the police to continue molesting them, despite the repeated decisions of the court, made it necessary that some drastic action be taken, and the Canadian office of the Association, located at Toronto, determined to issue a writ against the City of Montreal for molesting its members in carrying on their work. This was done, and, after many months of adjourning the case, the City of Montreal recently offered to make settlement out of court, agreeing to pay $75 as damages and $50 towards costs. As the purpose was to teach the authorities a lesson and stop their further interference, this offer was accepted.

Crisp County, Georgia

CRISP COUNTY, Georgia, has the only county-owned po~wer plant in America. It has 1,050 users. The rates are among the lowest in the country. Most of their customers were once customers of the Georgia Power Company, a branch of the Power Trust. Where the Georgia Power charged the Circle Theatre of Cordele $125 a month, the present bill is $45 to $50 for the same service; where Elder’s Service Station formerly paid $40 it now pays $19; where Harris’ Garage formerly paid $90, it now pays $40 to $45. The manager of the county plant says hopefully that:

Ultimately, we believe, we can make an entire elimination of taxation, pay off the cost of the plant by its own earnings, and run our county business from the normal income of this undertaking.

In the effort to prevent the people from getting the truth, the Georgia Power Company is running whole-page advertisements in Georgia papers, trying to prove, as the Power Trust is always trying to prove, that there is not a man in the trust who, if he w⁷ere given the job of running a publicly owned plant, would run it honestly, in the interests of the people. But 'when the point is proved it proves too much. For, granting that a typical Power Trust man would not run a publicly owned plant in the interest of the people, how do we know that these advertisements, paid for by the people, taken out of their pockets, are really in the interest of the people? and how do we know⁷ that there are not some honest men, outside of the Power Trust, of course, who would do for the people just what the Power Trust vociferously claims that it would not do? The Power Trust overplays its hand.

The Power Trust seems to know how to get its stock in the place where it might do the Trust the most good. When Crisp County, Georgia, was putting up its fight to operate its own electric light and power company to take the place of the Georgia Power Company, whose rates were maintained on too high a level, five of the six members of the Supreme Court of Georgia were disqualified from serving because of ownership in their families of stock in the Georgia Power Company.

Relieving the Destitute in Virginia, Minnesota

A SUBSCRIBER in Virginia, Minnesota, tells us that the city has recently been thoroughly worked for a community chest, in the interest of the poor and destitute. Everybody was urged to give as much as possible to a fund which was to be divided among the Boy Scouts, the YMCA, the YWCA, and the Salvation Anny. Of this fund, $5,000 was to go for the relief of the poor next winter.

But the citizens were hard up, and some of them suspicious, and so when the totals were added up the administrators of other people’s money found to their dismay that they were about $6,000 shy. Something would have to be cut out. It would never do to have any of the adjuncts of Big Business go. We must have Boy Scouts to make soldiers, YMCA’s in which to train dispensers of cigarettes and chocolates in time of war, YWCA’s as training schools for nurses in the same hectic times, and Salvation Armies to keep drunken and diseased warriors from worrying about going to hell. So it was very naturally concluded to cut out the $5,000 for the relief of the poor next winter.

The Boy Scouts will get theirs, the YMCA’s will get theirs, the YWCA’s will get theirs, and the Salvation Army will get theirs, now, what there is to be had, and the balance, all that is coming to them, in Armageddon. And the poor will get theirs, where they usually get it, in the neck. When they are hungry next winter they can feed themselves by swallowing their Adam’s apples, and they can warm themselves by looking in through the windows at the cheery fires burning on the hearths of the YMCA, YWCA and Salvation Army. Anyway, they will know the Community Chesters meant to do something for them, if there was anything left over. So they won’t feel entirely neglected. ing his own business and attending to the 'duties of the particular job for which he was elected.

Served Ninety Days for Three Murders "Oayette D. Marble, son of a Pasadena millionaire, was given a ten-year sentence for the death of three persons struck down by his automobile last December. After ninety days in jail Governor Rolph let this man go free. Meantime, he knows, and everybody knows, that Mooney, innocent of the crime for which he was convicted, is under sentence for life, and though he is the one man that can free him, he does nothing. Marble is the son of a millionaire. Mooney has nothing.

Capitalism at the Crossroads

TN AN article in Commerce and Finance entitled “Capitalism at the Crossroads”, Scoville Hamlin says, forcefully:

A system of economy, like a machine, can endure a long time merely by patching and repairing. Ultimately it becomes a question of reconstruction or collapse. Reconstruction is the permanent and only way out of this world-wide business depression. The capitalistic system must be overhauled from the bottom up and the top down. Government and industry must be reorganized with a view to eliminating the weaknesses in the capitalistic system; with a view to stabilizing the flow of income.

Post Office Department Revises Constitution

THE fundamental law of the land provides for freedom of speech and of the press.

Every schoolboy knows that, yet the Post Office Department, without any law, sits in censorship on printed matter and has barred from second-class mailing privileges five radical publications. The last one to be barred was a communistic journal, The Revolutionary Age. The Constitution says that these publishers have a right to tell their story; the Post Office Department says, but they shall not do it. Just who is the lawbreaker here?

How Far Away Is the Collapse?

WHEN Egypt went down, 2 percent of her population owned 79 percent of her wealth. When Babylon went down, 2 percent of her population owned all the wealth. When Persia went down, 1 percent owned the land. When Rome went down, 1800 men owned all the known world. Today, 2 percent of the population of the United States own 60 percent of its wealth. How far away is the collapse?

Racketeering—The

ACKETEERING started in the garden of Eden, and has been going strong ever since. Lucifer induced mother Eve to believe she could obtain advantages by pursuing an illegal course and that he would protect her in it.

In certain of the ancient oracles, as in the oracle of Jupiter at Bodona, the gods were supposed to speak to the people, but the heathen priests made use of hollow statues or other acoustic devices to keep them in fear and bondage so that they would support them in idleness and luxury. These heathen priests pretended to have inside traffic with the gods, and the common people, the poor things, footed the bill.

In the days of Jesus of Nazareth, the scribes and Pharisees, having abandoned the worship of Jehovah God, operated a bogus religion, which is the meanest form of racketeering there is. Jesus said that these men were of their father the Devil, that they had hidden the key of knowledge and would not go in themselves nor allow others to do so.

These men tried on several occasions to kill Jesus. They paid Judas thirty pieces of silver for betraying Him. They tried Him by a “kangaroo” court on a day illegal under the Jewish law. In the effort to convict Him they were guilty of bribing witnesses.

They assaulted the prisoner at the bar and they illegally asked Him to testify against himself. They even took back the bribe money from Judas, but they would not defile the temple by putting it into the temple treasury. Oh no, they were too holy for that, the miserable curs!

When the Russian people overthrew the czarist regime they found that they had been worshiping bogus saints. Their highest priests pretended that the bodies of some of the saints had not decomposed. They were kept under glass as objects of adoration by the common people. When examined, it was found that they were made of cotton; and now some wonder why the Russian people have no use for “religion”. What respect could anybody have for a racketeer?

The “Mass” Racket

A step farther west and we have a system of “religion” that for 1500 years or thereabouts has been collecting money from people under the pretense that it can do something for their loved ones after they are dead. This is a “                              815

counted afterwards it is often found that half of it has stuck to their clothes and that meantime they have treated themselves to swell feeds at the public expense. If this is not racketeering, what is it?

Claiming to teach the truth, these sanctimonious racketeers have 200-odd denominations all teaching different doctrines, and are united in but one thing’, and that is in their hatred of the pure truth. They encourage teachers of both sexes who do not understand the first tenets of Christianity to teach Sunday school classes. They deliberately and wilfully lie to the people about eternal torture, even after overwhelmingproof of the satanic origin of this doctrine has been brought to their attention.

During the World War some of these men not only preached the boys into the trenches, but when they were wounded and had recovered, they “sicked” them back in again. One of them even assured King George’s redcoats that though filled with liquor, with profanity on their lips and murder in their hearts and freshly contracted social diseases in their veins, if they died on the battlefield, God himself could not keep them out of heaven. Some of these roosters even assured such soldiers that they formed part of the vicarious sacrifice of Christ.

The “Church” Racket

Does anybody believe for a moment that any full-grown man in his right mind really thinks that Mary or any other woman is the mother of Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth? Does any sensible man believe that the hundreds of thousands of costly church edifices were really erected to the glory of God, while the poor people were saddled with debt to maintain institutions which have kept them in bondage?

Can anybody have any respect for a man who, while knowing that the Scriptures plainly teach that the wages of sin is death and the dead know not anything, tries to make everybody believe that the dead are not dead and that they really know everything? ^!

How can people have any respect for the racketeers that created the Spanish Inquisition and have soaked the earth in blood, burnt people at the stake, and done every other kind of deviltry under the sun whenever they could get the chance ?

Does anybody with any sense take any stock in an apostolic succession, the representatives of which had each others’ concubines and murdered their own fathers, mothers and children? Jesus and the apostles preached free of charge, but these birds never get enough.

It was the Rev. Dr. John Wesley Hill, chancellor of Lincoln Memorial University, Cumberland Gap, Tenn., who, in a'time when fear and injustice was on every hand for everybody that dared to think truly, made the statement, “Every Bolshevist and radical in the United States should be deported in a ship of stone with sails of lead, the wrath of God for a gale and hell for the nearest port.” What a spiritual asset such a man must be to the youth who look to him for guidance!

It is known that the pirate, Captain Kidd, assisted in the erection of Trinity Church, New York city. What are you thinking about ? Hasn't a man got a right to help his friends? During the Civil War the clergy at Charleston, S. C., assembled in a body and lent their influence to proslavery meetings. Is not that what you would expect?

During the World War, the Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, Brooklyn pastor, prepared the canned sermons breathing hate and destruction to the Germans which were delivered by the clergy throughout the “churches” of America.

The Hohenzollerns and Others

Every country that ever paid tribute to another country was a victim of a racket. Ancient Troy was a racket which levied tribute on the traders of its time. The Greeks had a name for this, seco fantea, which signifies the shaking of a fig tree to bring down the figs hidden in the foliage; hence a racket was a shake-down, and that is exactly what it is. The Germans also have a name for this. They call it Hohenzollern, and there never lived a bigger racketeer than the Kaiser Wilhelm, ambitious to have the whole world paying tribute to him.

The entire feudal system was a racket. Along all the avenues of trade were barons who lived by levying tribute upon the merchants who carried goods through their territories. The merchants paid what they had to and passed the additional cost on to the consumers.

All religious titles and titles of royalty are rackets, plans to get something out of the people without giving anything whatever in return. In feudal times the peasant paid liberally in wool and vegetables and grain and in addition undertook to fight his lord’s battles when necessity arose, in exchange for protection from marauders. The Mafia was a racket, and so is Mr. Mussolini’s so-called system of government.

Racketeers in America

It isn’t so long since the business methods of some of the largest businesses in the United States were on a par with the methods of the racketeers, and indeed some of them are that way yet. Business men did not hesitate to bribe freight clerks to give them the names and addresses of the concerns to whom their competitors shipped goods.

They did not hesitate to ruin their competitors by selling goods in their territory or to their customers for less than the cost of production. They did not hesitate to seek and receive from the railroads rebates on freight, thus, in effect, demanding special rates from public carriers who had received their charter from the public and were supposed to serve all the public alike.

In instances they prevented their competitors from getting freight cars, and in other instances too numerous to mention, they were responsible for driving their competitors to the wall through their control of credit.

There was a time when the Five Points and the Bowery was New York’s civic center of pickpockets, burglars, river pirates and footpads. Their weapons were blackjacks, iron bars and brass knuckles. Now they have moved farther downtown, have built skyscrapers from twenty stories upward and use lawyers and bookkeepers to accomplish much more than was done by the older but more heroic methods.

When a man comes toward you to hit you with an iron bar, you instinctively reach for one yourself; but if he comes to you backed by the legislature and the press and charges you for your electric current thirty times what it costs him to make it, you cannot reach for an iron bar; you can do but one thing, and that is to pay what he asks, or be without modern comforts of life.

There are places in Africa and Asia where a merchant is safe as long as he pays the fixed tax levied upon him, but is in danger of robbery the moment he fails to do so.

Racketeering Defined

The word 'racketeer’ first appeared in Chicago during 1923 and 1924. It may be that the term originated in New York back in the ’90’s, when the social affairs of young hoodlums and petty sneak thieves, all of whom were potential if not actual gangsters, were called rackets.

A racket may be defined as any scheme or exploit by which criminal conspirators levy tribute upon the legal or illegal industry of others, maintaining their hold by intimidation, terrorism or political favoritism.

In The Ladies Home Journal racketeering is defined as “a distinct and separate government which promulgates its own laws and levies in the most effective manner; a system of taxation which reaches into every pocketbook”. The grand jury investigating racketeering in New York found one instance in which 750 persons were thrown out of -work because the demands of the racketeers drove the concern out of town.

It is supposed that the hold which the racketeer has gained in Chicago is due to the fact that the city is not dominated by any one huge political machine like Tammany Hall in New York.

The State Crime Commission has made the estimate that racketeering is costing the nation some $12,000,000,000 to $18,000,000,000 a year, and that a single racket in Nev/ York state alone, that of fake securities, is known to approximate $400,000,000 a year. In Chicago, in 1929, there were ninety-four different rackets operating with legitimate business as their prey at an estimated cost to the tradespeople of $136,000,000. This cost passed on to the people approximated $45 per capita.

In other words, in Chicago the average head of a family of five persons spends $4.50 of his weekly income to support these illegal rackets, to say nothing as to what is expected of him in the support of the legal ones, such as “religion”, “medicine,” etc.

The leader of New⁷ York’s rackets, Guiseppe Masseria, better known as Joe the Boss, was said to be the leader in practically every racket in New York city. He was slain in an Italian restaurant at Coney Island. The friends of gangsters are very particular about their funerals. Joe the Boss lay in state in a coffin gaudily painted with silver paint.

A Typical Gang of Gangsters

The New Republic tells us that the typical gang of gangsters consists of three or four quiet, well-behaved men and a woman. Some have families with whom they live in apparent respectability in a good neighborhood. One such woman, well dressed, bombed a building which was surrounded by a cordon of police. She walked unassumingly into a nearby building, went up some stairs, took the bomb out of her handbag, threw it with precision from an open window, and walked out again. No one not already familiar with her face would have dreamed of connecting her with the outrage.

The criminal gangs of New York carry a prosperous front. Their leaders spend their evening's at the night clubs in the theatrical district. It is said that Al Capone hires nothing but gentlemen. They must be well dressed at all times: they must have cultured accents; and they must say, Yes, sir, or, No, sir, to Capone when he addresses them. He is said to hire his men with great care and to take pains that they are of his own type in dress and conduct.

Racketeers kill with the machine gun, so as to never give the victim a chance to fight back. It is said that in Chicago the racketeer in his own district is often liked as well as feared. Sometimes he steals from those who have and bestows gifts upon those who have not. Sometimes when a racketeer disappears, the leader lias simply shifted his activities to another racket.

Al Capone—Chicago’s Crime King

Ordinarily we would not feel like wasting very much space in The Golden Age to say anything about a criminal, but the subject rises to considerable importance when a man comes to be the dictator of a city of more than 3,000,000 people and even presumes to try to dicker with the government.

The Outlook tells us that "Alphonse Capone began his career as a ‘watch boy’ in a bawdyhouse. His duties were to watch through the peek-hole at times when the police administration was undergoing reform, to seek patrons along’ the sidewalk' when the police were complacent and to run errands for the inmates . . . By the time he was old enough to vote ... he had been advanced to management of the red-light syndicate’s most profitable brothel”.

To this The Railsplitter adds the interesting information that Capone is a devout Roman Catholic. He would seem therefore to be peculiarly well fitted for his “duties”. No doubt before long he will do something worth while for the church and then somebody will puncture him, and, after a little bit, there will be another bead added to the string, and before the racketeer goes out to perforate somebody he will offer up prayers to Saint Scarface Al Capone.

Unless they have lied about it, Capone has been responsible for sending many of his fellow saints on before him. In a little more than eleven years in Chicago there have been 581 gang killings. These are always done on the open street in broad daylight. Capone has been often arrested, but always released. His early training stands him in good stead.

During the hard times of the winter of 1930-31 he is said to have fed about 3,000 hungry men daily in a soup kitchen in Chicago, and to have financed the project at a cost of about $2,100 a week. It is stated that in 1927 his profits 'were $30,000,000.

Forgot About Income Taxes

At the moment this is written Capone is under arrest for making false income tax returns. He got into trouble when detectives raided his hotel and emerged with two safes full of records linking police, politicians and public officials with his crimes. The same crowd of government officials that put Capone and his gangsters in prison in Chicago are now at work in New York.

It is said that the gangsters can offer no defense for making false income tax returns. They dare not, under penalty of death, disclose the names of the political bosses to whom the bulk of the money goes. It is estimated that in New York during 1930 the income tax division of the government was cheated of $3,500,000 by racketeers and grafters.

Before his arrest, Capone is said to have attended a conference of gangsters in New York and to have urged that the racketeering business should be henceforth carried on with less bloodshed; indeed, that there shall be no more killings. Things are getting to a pretty pass, aren’t they, when you cannot kill a man when you Avant to without having somebody criticize you for it and advise you not to do it?

The reason why Chicago’s gang wars are the worst the world has ever seen is said to be that there are great numbers of Sicilians and Irish in the city who have received early training similar to that which gave Al Capone his start toward saintship.

When New Yorkers commiserate Chicago, saying that it is not essentially a city of criminals but a city of easy marks in which the Capone gang has, by its methods, gained more prestige even among legitimate business men than some of the corporations and institutions properly organized under the laws of society; and when they claim, as they do, that Capone does not have an even moderate standard of business ability and could not make a living in an honest grocery, Chicago spiritedly replies that it still has vitality enough to holler when it is robbed, while New Yorkers take their crime as a matter of course.

The New York Times thinks that Chicago has “the largest number of suckers per thousand of population to be found anywhere in the Western Hemisphere”. The Times gives Chicago a boost with one hand and a cuff w^Tith the other, describing it as “Chicago, the city of extremes, which sinks more deeply into the mud and climbs more desperately toward the stars than do its more stable neighbors. In either case it is histrionic”.

The Liquor Racket

The liquor traffic is mostly all profit, and directly or indirectly has always supplied Americans a good share of the funds used in fighting political battles. Both parties have been beneficiaries; the democratic party openly; the republican party secretly.

As early as 1926 it was estimated that Capone’s men in Chicago were making profits of $70,000,000 a year. The kind of beer that is sold in Chicago costs less than $2.00 a barrel to make. With a gross intake of $3,000,000 a week from their liquor business, and a million dollars a week from illegal gambling devices, it is no wonder that Chicago has gang wars.

The Chicago Daily News estimates 600 percent profit on beer and 350 percent profit on whisky for the bootlegger before protection is paid. The Nation estimates that 2,000 gangsters in Chicago have an average salary of $20,000 a year each; that 10,000 policemen are given pocket money at $20 a week each; and that $86,000,000 is left to be divided among the lawyers, politicians, judges and prohibition officers who constitute, shall -we say, the bulwarks of our civilization.

A Chicago attorney with knowledge of how things are done, estimated that he could make $50,000 profit on alcohol in thirty days from a 1,000-gallon still by paying $25,000 for construction, $25,000 for materials, and $50,000 for protection.

The first law in America is that if any business, be it straight or crooked, is making money it must be protected, and as the liquor business makes lots of money and cannot, in the nature of things, be protected by the police, it is protected by gangsters; and as the gangsters are not all under one management, it is inevitable that there will be clashes, and when there are clashes among gangsters there are funerals.

New York Is More Righteous

New York is more righteous than Chicago, in the same way that Sodom and Samaria were more righteous than Israel. (Ezek. 16:48-52) To be sure, it is said that New York has some 40,000 to 60,000 speakeasies; but they are all under one political management and therefore there is relatively less discord.

Chicago has no Tammany Hall to act as its clearing house for crime. Chicago has not yet learned how to handle its illicit liquor business in the efficient way in which it is handled in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, St. Louis and Los Angeles.

The New York Times tells us of the easy path for the young criminal in New York who is trying to get ahead. In a few years he shifts from the pool rooms of the dock streets to the councils of the downtown criminal haunts. From there to Harlem’s hangouts, whence he finally graduates to Broadway.

It isn’t long until a clever boy from the slums is the owner of a night club and has “a country estate, an ex-Follies sweetheart, and plenty of friends in the theatrical crow⁷d and perhaps even in the social set. Virtue at $12 to $15 a week is not an alluring alternative”.

It is a matter of fact, a matter of history, and a matter of common sense that racketeering on a large scale is a direct result of national prohibition. It is a matter of common knowledge that in almost every city the police know all about the local liquor business and are tolerant, if not friendly. In many instances they are regular, welcome, guests in the speakeasies.

The Wall Street Racket

Although we mentioned the religious racket first because it was the oldest, and the liquor racket next because it is, so to speak, our nursery of crime, yet the Wall Street racket is as great an enemy of the people as either of the foregoing, and in some respects is even worse.

What kind of racket could be more contemptible than one which, manufacturing electric current, a necessity of modern life, at three-tenths of one cent a kilowatt hour, and demanding from the customers from thirty to fifty times that amount, deliberately, by means of so-called service charges or room charges, exacts more from the poor than from the rich?

The various Wall Street gangs which, by their manipulation of stocks and bonds, accumulate to themselves wealth, luxury and power without giving back in return any useful labor, are every bit as dangerous to civilization as the gangsters with their sawed-off shotguns and machine guns.

The Prohibition Training School

There is probably no school in which our criminals could be trained to better advantage than in that efficient institution miscalled “prohibition”, which was sired by the Anti-Saloon League, with headquarters at Westerville, Ohio (who have about as much real interest in prohibition as we have in the ice on Greenland’s icy mountains), and had as its dam the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

The prisons make a very good school for crime, but they lack the finesse which one gets in the Westerville-WCTU seminary. Since 1922 not one single racketeer murderer (graduate of the Westerville-WCTU school) has been hanged.

Murders in Chicago are said to usually cost from $50 up, but it is also said that they may be had as low as $10. In 1928 there were in Chicago 116 bombings and 399 murders, not all of them, however, due to racketeering. In 1929 the Chicago gang murders averaged one a day; in 1930, nearly two per day.

The racketeer does not kill the people he exploits. They are the geese that lay the golden eggs. It is the competing or treacherous gangsters who are murdered. The racketeer lives by rendering what he considers a service.

His business is to remove competitors either by threats or by violence, and it makes no difference to him vffiether these competitors are engaged in a legitimate business or, like himself, they are engaged in an illegal one.

As the liquor business requires gangsters for its protection, so does the slot machine, with the odds set mechanically against the player. Gangsters are also used to protect drug and jewel smugglers and are engaged in the running of aliens over the border.

It is said that a 25c slot machine in a good location will net its proprietor anywhere from $10 to $50 a day. Like many of the operations of the power trust and of other financiers in the Wall Street district, the operation of the slot machine is illegal and indefensible.

A relatively new⁷ enterprise for gangsters is the kidnaping of business men. In one year nine persons in the St. Louis district were kidnaped and held for ransom, the ransoms paid totaling $142,000. In one day, two St. Louis business men were billed for $20,000 each as dues to the Lav⁷ Breakers Protective Association of Chicago. The letters explained that the organization has a $2,000,000 budget, is being extended to all the principal cities, and that recipients must comply with demands or face elimination.

Harper’s magazine states that there are tailor shops in New⁷ York city, Chicago, and perhaps elsewhere, which specialize in making clothes for gunmen with leather-lined holster pockets to conceal weapons.

The machine gun has made it possible to cut down the size of gangs. The profits of crime are proportionately larger when the proceeds of the job are divided among twenty persons than when they are divided among 200.

The gangsters have little or no fear of being-brought into court. What they are afraid of is being “put on the spot”. A case in court means considerable expense for a lawyer. It may even mean a few⁷ months in prison, but to be “put on the spot” means certain death.

New York has the Baumes law, under which fourth offenders go to prison for life, but one of our leading Westerville-WCTU graduates, Jack (Legs) Diamond, has been arrested twenty-one times on such charges as homicide, grand larceny, felonious assault, robbery, burglary, dealing in narcotics, etc.

At present he is in some trouble with the courts; but apparently he is in much worse trouble because he seems to have been “put on the spot” and when he appears in public he is shot down. For some reason or other, those who have “put him on the spot” shoot him in the legs instead of shooting to kill.

Labor Union Rackets

In these days, when wages are still relatively high but jobs are scarce, many men would be glad to underbid their fellows. The employers know this, but the labor unions know it too, and sometimes there is work for gangsters on both sides.

If a gangster is employed by a labor union he soon gets to feel that the dynamiting and slugging which he does is the most important factor in the affairs of the union. By and by it ..... occurs to him that the fees he gets are not sufficient, so he proposes to furnish the union steady protection at so much per month. If the officials of the union agree, all right; if they do not . agree, the gangsters throw them out and take ........their jobs.

It is said that in a period of two years racketeering in Chicago took $100,000 out of the treasury of a union of coal hikers and yardmen. The wages of these men were $5.50 a day. Each man in this union had to pay 50c a day to supply the looted funds.

The other day we saw a racketeer collecting dues from a poor street car motorman. Under his breath, the poor motorman protested that he and his family could hardly live on what he made, even as it -was; but the racketeer was obdurate, and the man knew that he had to pay .........or another man would get his job, or he would lose his life.

Sometimes a labor union becomes involved in racketeering, when, to start with, it had no intention of doing so. One union was approached and threatened by two different crowds of gangsters almost at the same time. Each washed to provide it “protection”. The officials of the labor union, not knowing what to do, went to a third gang chief and asked for protection, not only against the employers’ anti-union activities, but against both of the crowds of gangsters that had been bothering them.

It is generally believed that Al Capone was drawn into the “protection” of labor unions unintentionally, but that his henchmen put the gang into other rackets than the liquor racket and he was finally drawm into protecting legitimate business establishments against other gangsters because the police were unable to provide that protection, or were afraid to do it.

Many of our readers will recall the spectacular riddling to death in Chicago of three gangsters who sought to extort $10,000 tribute from the president of the Tire and Rubber Workers’ Union. When they came for the money, they were killed on sight by detectives hidden behind the scene. This was manifestly the only wav these men could be tried, convicted and punished.

They died squealing that they did not have a fair break, which means that if they had had a few seconds to spare, they would have turned the tables and riddled the president of the Tire and Rubber Workers’ Union, as well as the detectives who shot them from ambush.

The Outlook says, “It is just one step from blackmailing a liquor industry which is outside the law to blackmailing a laundry industry, a building trade, a labor union, or a department store which is within the law. The gangsters have taken that step and the full result of prohibition is upon us. With one hand the country feeds the industry upon vffiich the gangster feeds. With the other it attempts to crush the same gangsters it has nurtured.”

The Cleaning and Dyeing “Association”

Some years ago, so the story goes, Chicago had a cleaning and dyeing racket. An individual cleaner' named John Becker thought the insiders wrnre making too much money. He took the matter into the courts, with no results; so he went to Al Capone, and, in May 1928, Capone and his friends incorporated the Sanitary Cleaning Shops and went into business.

Before long, drivers for other trucks w^rere beaten to a pulp, pieces of dynamite were sewn into the seams of clothing, the price of getting suits cleaned and pressed dropped from $1.75 to $1.25, and then to $1. Norv the shopkeepers pay dues of $2 per month plus a general fee of $10 per year amounting to $340,000 annually for the “protection” of the business controlled by the association.

The 'New Republic tells of a racketeer who boasted to a friend of having wrecked a certain tailor shop on the first floor of a building without causing the slightest damage to the families overhead. This tailor’s shop was bombed because he was undercutting prices, and the racketeer thought, the lesson he received would teach him that undercutting is unprofitable.

Brooklyn laundry owners who fell under the “protection” of racketeers and were being mulcted out of $250,000 a year reorganized and selected a woman dictator in the effort to get rid of their “protectors”. We do not know how they made out. At the time they rebelled they were paying up to $50 a week each in “dues” and were threatened with plant destruction and personal violence if they failed to pay.

New York has a window cleaners’ racket. There are about 600 window cleaning firms in the greater city. It is a dangerous occupation, and the safety of the numerous employees seems to depend on payments of money to persons who have to do with the way in which the hooks and fastenings are held in place in the walls of the buildings. A fall from a skyscraper is as sure death as a volley from a machine gun.

The New York Times says on this point:

Where the cleaning is done on buildings of great height, the safety of the men depends on the character of the help supplied them and the way in which the hooks and fastenings in the walls of the buildings are held in place. If the fastenings give way or the belt breaks, the window cleaner is likely to meet with injury or be killed by a fall. Suspicions have been entertained that sometimes those engaged in interfering with others in this work have gone to the extent of tampering with the belts and fastenings.

One of the most curious rackets developed in New York was the employment of boys to steal thoroughbred dogs. These dogs were given beauty parlor treatment to change their appearance and were then resold to pet shops, until the business was exposed.

Glasgow has several gangs of boys which make shopkeepers pay tribute weekly on threat of wrecking their establishments. If a shopkeeper fails to pay his assessment of 50c a week, a brick is dropped through his window. This is racketeering, pure and simple.

Social and Educational Rackets

Thirty persons were indicted in Boston for art racketeering. Collaborating with artists in Spain and France, the art racketeers planted counterfeits of the old masters in colonial mansions as bait for unwary collectors. These pictures were so cleverly given the semblance of age that the collectors usually believed them authentic when seen in the atmosphere of colonial America. Until this fraud was uncovered, the racketeers are estimated to have made about $3,000,000 in plunder.

Several musical rackets have been brought to light. In one instance musicians were required to pay $1 per week tribute, under the threat of loss of employment and the destruction of their musical instruments. This racket was broken up.

A more serious musical racket is said to so hem a young singer about as to make the cost more than $3,500, and three years of study, to obtain a debut. One of the charges is that for one appearance at a concert a young singer must pay $2,500, and receives none of the proceeds.

Conrad Bercovici, novelist and musician, who makes the charges, declares that singing teachers maintain a minimum fee of $25 for twenty minutes instruction, and that 50,000 vocal students are being mulcted by the teachers engaged in the racket.

A less serious musical racket is that of some boys who found from experience that they can enter the court of an apartment house, fill it with song, such as it is, and carry away some nickels and dimes even if they do carry some abuse with them.

New York actors and actresses are afraid to visit Chicago now, since gangsters have exacted tribute from a number who have visited the windy city. When actors demurred, it was suggested that they might be “taken for a ride”. The actress Mae West is said to have paid them $3,000 for “protection”.

Racketeering a Movie                  .

In Brooklyn the proprietor of a movie theater was obliged to take in the gangsters of the neighborhood after they started dropping stink-bombs in his house, during performances, to drive out customers. Today he does an immense business, for the racketeers protect him, and have driven his rivals completely out of business by the stink-bomb method.

In Washington there is a group of lawyers who regularly make synopses of all unproduced plays copyrighted. These synopses are then forwarded to New York, where another group of men watch all openings for the purpose of detecting similarities. The result is that the owners of any piece known to have picture possibilities must expect to pay “protection” to these lawyers.

This racket is said to collect from as many as 40 percent of the plays whose success has carried them through 200 or more performances, and there is scarcely a writer of standing in America who has not been haled into court to prove his innocence.

Some of the Chicago newspapers seem to be deeply involved in racketeering. The reporter Lingle was known as the unofficial chief of police of the city; another reporter is called the unofficial mayor of Chicago; another reporter collects 5c on every sack of cement sold in the city; another reporter was a guest of Al Capone in Florida and at Havana; another reporter is said to control the bond-signing racket ; and another has made a fortune by workingin collusion with the ambulance-chasing racket.

There is or was a stenographic racket. Agents of the company asked distinguished persons attending Washington’s conventions to sign papers entitling them to transcriptions of the proceedings. Later the signers received bills for as much as $483.00, 35c a page for this work.

A dry goods store in Chicago was bombed because it had boys distributing handbills instead of the men regularly in the racket.

In some cities miniature golf courses must pay dues to an association or be wrecked.

In some cities the racketeers have taken over boxing. A boxer must split his earnings with the gang or throw a fight when ordered to do so, otherwise he gets no more fights or suffers painful and dangerous accidents.

Building and Transportation Rackets

The Ladies Home Journal says that to put up an office building in any large city costs from $100,000 to $200,000 in racket fees, and that a plumbing racket in Detroit adds about $400 to the cost of a dwelling. In Chicago, for years, “umbrella Mike” Boyle kept out all electrical fixtures except those certified by him. In the borough of Bronx it is estimated that the extra levies and burnings of the work of “unapproved” contractors amounts to $35,000,000 a year.

One of the first rackets in New York dates from 1885. It is associated with the Teamsters Union organized at that time by two Chicagoans. New York still has its unloading fees which must be paid in addition to labor fees. Only the men employed by the racket may unload, and only the racket teamsters may remove goods from wharves or platforms.

In certain parts of New York city undertakers must pay tribute to racketeers or have their coaches damaged.

Twenty-five hundred barge captains have complained to the police that they are victims of a reign of terror which they ascribe to racketeers. These racketeers have been raiding the cabins of the barges, beating and robbing the crews, and committing other outrages. There is one gang of racketeers who have descended to levying a tribute of 25c from the poor who come to pick coal along the docks.

Food and Home Rackets

Of the 250 active rackets in New York, many are in foods, and practically every kind of food is involved. The milk gang is alleged to levy an excess of 6c a quart on 2,750,000 quarts daily. This puts this gang of racketeers ahead about $1,155,000 a week. These gangsters even go into the country and direct the farmers where they shall sell their milk and at what price.

Practically all the perishable fruits and vegetables are governed by racketeers. Poultry, eggs and fish are involved. Retailers are compelled to buy from certain sources and sell at prices dictated or they are beaten and robbed, or both.                             ■

In Chicago several hundred ice cream saloons have been gathered together and “protected”. The big firm which supplies these “clients” with their ice cream pays a handsome commission to the gangsters who got them the business.

In 1911 the New York poultry trust employed gangsters to run independent merchants out of business. The gangsters did that, and were soon in control of the employers and the industry.

The employment agency racket has been widely exposed in the newspapers. You pay a large part of your first week’s wages to get a job, and straightway find yourself again in the street, so that the racketeer can sell the same job to somebody else.

New York has an artichoke king. Nobody can eat artichokes without paying a commission to him. If a dealer’ tries to avoid it, he is likely to be thumped on the head with a lead pipe and to have his valuables and cash removed.

There are times when eggs are forbidden to enter the city lest they break the market, and trucks with produce are held up and compelled to pay before they can enter the city.

Many concerns on their last legs have joined the racketeers because it seemed the only way they could survive. The racketeer "protects” the business man by keeping his prices up and driving out competitors.

Hotel men complain that porters and cab drivers are in what they call a “hotel plugging racket”, by which visitors to the city are diverted from the larger hotels, involving losses to them amounting to approximately $2,000,000 annually.

The landlady racket is one of the meanest. A woman makes her livelihood renting' furnished rooms. A stool-pigeon rents a room for a week and brings his “wife” into it. A few minutes later a detective arrives. The stool-pigeon lies, saying that he rented the room for an hour only, and the detective drags the landlady off to court, where it may cost her $500 to clear her name.

Similar rackets have been worked upon nurses in doctors’ offices. There have been instances in which a perfectly innocent girl has had to pay a thousand dollars to have her name cleared.

The home-work racket is another unspeakably small, contemptible scheme. This scheme preys upon the unemployed, cripples, widows and shut-ins. The scheme is to sell an outfit, a course of instructions or a machine, with the representation that the “home worker” will be given home employment and enabled to make good money addressing envelopes, embroidering handkerchiefs and towels, making pajamas, knitting socks, painting lampshades, etc. This swindle is said to have taken thousands of dollars out of the public.

The Political Racket

Militarism, i.e., the preservation of “civilization” by machine guns, flame throwers, poison gas, etc., is as much a racket as are any of those we have discussed, and is so admitted by the Kellogg Peace Pact, which declares that war is a crime; and so it is. We do not need to mention that Tammany Hall is a racket. From its inception it has been in constant contact with the organized underworld.

When the Ohio gang was at Washington, it was getting Harding to sign anything and everything that was presented to him by holding over his head their knowledge of his escapades, and then the cZe facto United States Government was in effect nothing but a gang of racketeers. There was no crime that was not committed by the Ohio gang.

Teapot Dome, the alien custodian thefts, Mr. Fall stooping to pick up his black satchel containing $100,000 in bills, the defalcations and frauds in the Veterans Bureau, and the thousand and one other things that happened in Washington in the days of Harding, Daugherty, Fall, Doheny, McLean and Jess Smith were as definitely and unmistakably racketeering as anything that ever happened in Chicago. Indeed, it is well known that the rulers and protectors of many American citizens are as lawless as the criminals they are supposed to control.

The slot machine racket in the Lackawanna and Wyoming Valley was found to include the mayors and chiefs of police, as well as the subordinates in all the most important towns up and down the valley.

Last year Chicago established a racket court; It seemed that it might as well recognize what everybody plainly knows exists.

The New Republic quotes a bootlegger as saying that the tariff bill is a racket pure and simple, the only difference between it and the smaller rackets being that the tariff is a billion-dollar proposition. This racketeer went on to explain that his own business was a perfectly legitimate one, that he supplied liquor to those who wanted it, and that the goods he handled went into the homes of judges and other public men.

The Ladies Home Journal complains that in every large city in the United States we have a dual system of government. The real police of the real government are the gangsters, but besides them there is a show-window government which has other police who take all the public odium, and act dumb under all circumstances.

Before Chicago had its last election, Al Capone was visited in Florida to ascertain if he would allow this city of 3,500,000 people to have an honest election. He is said to have agreed that he would; and it is also admitted that he delivered the goods, and that Chicago has never in its history had an election as free from interference by hoodlums as was the last one. What a state of affairs we have come to when 3,500,000 people have to go to an arch-criminal to ask him if they may have an honest election!

Many business men, despairing of obtaining real protection from the police, are today paying racketeers tribute as the easiest way out.

Every dollar paid to racketeers increases their number and their strength, and to deal with them at all is as treasonable as to trade with an enemy in war-time, but merchants become discouraged and seek the easiest way out.

The statement has even been made, perhaps in fun, but possibly in earnest, that Chicago’s only chance of redemption is to elect Al Capone mayor of the city. When they get in trouble, Chicago’s racketeers always command the best legal talent in the city. Not long since, a present member of Congress represented Al Capone before a certain court.

The New York Times has said that without political backing racketeering could not last twenty-four hours. It also admits how thin is the ice on which we are skating, when it says that "one of the grim realities that the sophisticated student of politics knows is the fact that law, order, security—the whole fabric of political civilization—is thin stuff”.

Collusion Between Racketeers and Government

There is often collusion between the city government and a racketeer or other corporation that amounts in effect to a racket (and the public service companies are rackets, virtually every one of them). We know of an instance in which several buses of one of the great public service corporations went raging through the streets at night at the rate of sixty miles an hour on their way to a broadcasting station. Each one of these buses had a policeman aboard. The policeman was there really to give sanction to something which was as much illegal with him aboard as it would have been if Al Capone had been in his place.

A merchant can be made or unmade through the routing of street cars or buses; his delivery trucks are subject to police control. He may wish to use the sidewalks or the street for the receiving or shipping of his goods. If he transgresses the letter of the law in any of these things, he is, in effect, a racketeer.

A friend mentions that he is a member of a civic organization, and that it stands him in good stead, because if he is involved in a traffic violation he gets off with a reprimand or a nominal fine as soon as his affiliations are known. This is racketeering.

We know of a city where the mayor gives out to his friends cards which entitle the holders to the "courtesies” of the city. The mayor has no right whatever to allow any of his friends to do an illegal act. The issuance of those cards is a form of racketeering.

A Brooklyn racketeer, Frankie Yale, required that practically every cigar dealer in his district should buy a certain number of his cigars every week whether they sold them or not. Those who did not buy were held up and robbed, and their plate glass windows were smashed.

Kansas passed a law offering to pay $2 each for coyote scalps. The racketeers found out about the law and brought in 50,000 coyote scalps from New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas; and Kansas paid the bill.

In New York one McCarthy, a young man, was found engaged in threatening the aged that he would have their old age pensions stopped unless they paid over to him their last few dollars.

When the veterans of the World War sought their adjusted compensation loans they were confronted by racketeers who required them to pay 50c each for the applications which are in themselves free and are supplied to them by the government without expense.

In Chicago, eleven officers of disabled veterans of the World War were indicted on charges of racketeering on the receipts of “forget-me-not day”.

The data which is briefly and in fragmentary form summed up in the foregoing article ought to convince every intelligent person that our civilization is hopelessly in the mire, and that deliverance can come about only through God’s kingdom set up in the earth; by infinite wisdom operating with infinite love and justice, and backed by infinite power.

Preached 21 Hours

A LOS ANGELES clergyman, Rev. L. S.

Kenworthy, preached twenty-one hours and claims a non-stop record. That is nothing.

A certain geyser at Yellowstone Park has been vomiting hot water and yellow mud for thousands of years, and accomplished just as much.

' Fragments

Plenty of Potatoes Yet to Come

THERE is no need to worry about running out of varieties of potatoes. On the shores of Lake Titicaca, South America, there are one hundred and fifty varieties of white potatoes that have never yet been introduced to the rest of the world.

85,000 Tower Visitors a Month

!N THE month of May 85,000 people paid $1 each to see New York city and surroundingdistricts, including the Atlantic Ocean, from the 86th and 102d floor levels of the Empire State building. The building can be seen from one day’s sail out to sea.

Ocean Liners Being Taken Off

AS A RESULT of the slump in tourist travel, due to the depression, many ships have been taken off from the steamship lines plying between North America and Europe. When a large liner is only partly filled the loss on a round trip amounts to as much as $100,000.

11,000 Hungry Children Fed in Chicago

A CHECK-UP of Chicago city schools revealed the fact that 11,000 hungry school children in Chicago were being fed by the teachers. The pathos of the situation is increased by the fact that the teachers are behind in their pay, on account of the desperate condition of the city’s finances.

A Glutton for Charity

A RECENT investigation disclosed one woman living in Hollywood whose rent, $70 a month, was paid for by her brother. Then she received $70 a month as state aid, and, in addition, $76 a month from county funds. Without a doubt there are much more deserving people in Hollywood that can get not a cent of aid from any source.

Unemployment in Los Angeles

MONTHLY appropriations for county charities in Los Angeles county, California, jumped from $200,000 in January, 1930, to $425,000 in April, 1931. It is claimed that in the recent depression Los Angeles was the only major city of the world without bread lines. Ten thousand hungry school children received hot lunches throughout the past year in Los Angeles.

British Ahead on Television

THE British claim to be Evo years ahead of

America on television, and apparently their claim is true. It is claimed that thousands of Britons, sitting in the privacy of their own homes, witnessed the Irish Sweepstakes from start to finish and that the results were in every way satisfactory.

40,000 Federal Prisoners

AT THE end of May if Uncle Sam had only had seven more lawbreakers in his paternal care they would have numbered an even forty thousand. One-fourth of these were in federal prisons, one-fourth were on probation, and the remaining one-half were distributed in reformatories, road camps, county jails and state institutions.

Scott’s Run, West Virginia

THERE is no miner’s union to upset the peace and contentment of Scott’s Run, West Virginia. When the miners work, their wages av- .. erage $1.50 a day. When these men went on strike, in the effort to obtain living wages, the Morgantown Post said: “Nobody can blame the .... miners for protesting against wages that are not wages at all.”

The Earth in Travail

LAPSING into a Biblical figure of speech,

Senator Robert F. Wagner, in a speech at Saratoga, said: “If we would conserve this civilization we must take the initiative. We cannot wait until others who see in it nothing of value tear it up by the roots. The next move is ours. The spirit of unrest is at large. Winds of discontent have blown up a storm of revolutions. The whole earth seems to be in travail.”

Federal Radio Commission Dilemma

THE Radio Act of 1927 calls for refusal of license to stations or firms found guilty of monopoly in sale of radio apparatus. The Radio Corporation has been found guilty of this very thing, and the Federal Radio Commission is now confronted with the problem of what to do with the stations owned or controlled by the Radio Corporation. The National Broadcasting Company may be put off the air; and if it is, the only ones that would be the losers are the monopolists that hog everything that can be hogged.

TO THE majority of people the Bible is a book of mystery, which they cannot understand. To them it appears to be foolish, unreasonable and contradictory in its statements. The result is that the majority of people pay little attention to the Book, and when they do refer to it, they either sneer at or belittle it. In the matter of understanding the Bible the educated seem to have no advantage over the uneducated. This is apparent because it is the educated who deny its inspiration, criticize and condemn its teachings, and claim that it is full of contradictions. The majority of the university- and college-bred regard it as unreasonable, visionary and foolish.

From cover to cover the Bible deals with subjects of the most vital interest to the human family; such subjects as creation, the cause of sin and death, the penalty for sins, the condition of the dead, the necessity for the death of Jesus, the second coming of the Lord, the judgment day, the kingdom of God, the end of the world, everlasting life, eternal salvation, ransom, restitution, high calling, resurrection, second death, and many other equally interesting and important subjects.

Notwithstanding the importance of these subjects and their relationship to man’s eternal destiny, they are quite generally ignored by the great religious leaders, while a few of the “moral precepts” of the Bible are considered the all-important things. The people are told that if they refrain from lying, swearing, stealing, drunkenness, gambling, adultery and other vices, it is all that is necessary or required. The people are taught that it is unnecessary to study or discuss the doctrinal features of the Bible, for the reason that ‘God does not want them to pry into His secrets’. Hence the people are told to “be good”, “do right” and “be honest”, and they will go to heaven.

The real reason why the religious leaders discourage the study of the Bible doctrines is that they do not understand them themselves, and they instinctively realize that if the people did study, this ignorance would be exposed. The easy way to parry an unwelcome question is to make the questioner believe that God is displeased with his honest inquiry and effort to learn the truth. The Bible repeatedly urges to “search the scriptures”, to “study to shew thyself approved unto God”, and to “prove all things [and] hold fast that wdiich is good”.

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The question before us then is this: Why is it that the great and learned men of earth, as well as the masses of mankind, do not understand the Bible,, and do not discern its beauty and harmony, nor the purposes of God as revealed therein? The answer to this question is found in the Bible itself. It reveals the fact that the race is divided into two classes, called “the natural man” and the “spiritual man” and tells us that the natural man cannot understand the Bible, while the spiritual man can. In 1 Corinthians 2:14,15, Paul says: “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual [discerneth] all things.”

In view of this text, the reason why people do not understand the Bible is that they are “natural” and not “spiritual” men. But how humiliating it would be, if, when asked a question on some Bible doctrine which they cannot answer, the great religious leaders would say: T am sorry to say that I cannot answer your question, and the reason is that I am only a “natural man”.’ What a reproach such a confession would cast upon their college and theological education and training, upon their human ordination and upon their profession! Of course it would not do to make such a confession, and hence the prudent thing to do is to make the questioner “feel like two cents” by telling him that he is prying into God’s secrets, and that God is displeased with his efforts to know the things written in the Book, and which He commands His people to study if they desire to please Him and have His approval.

If, then, a “natural man” cannot understand the Bible and a “spiritual man” can, it is very important that we get an answer to the questions, What is meant by a “natural man”? and What is meant by a “spiritual man”? The Bible answers these questions; but. before investigating what the Bible has to say on the subject, let us consider some of the generally accepted yet false ideas of what constitutes a “natural” and a “spiritual” man.

The great religious leaders teach and the people generally believe that a “natural man” is one who is wucked, who is a liar, a thief, a drunkard or an immoral man. While it is true that some “natural men” lie, steal, drink, and commit other sins, yet this is not what the word “natural” means. The word “natural” is the English translation of the Greek word ■psychilcos, which literally means “animal”. This is in full harmony with what we learn in physiology, namely, that man belongs to the “animal kingdom”. Science correctly tells us that man is an animal, while the clergy tell us that man is “part God”.

The fact that man is called an “animal” has no reference to the fact that animals are ferocious and vicious; neither does it refer to the degraded tendencies in fallen, sinful man. This is proven by the fact that the first man Adam, who was created in the image of God, is called an animal.

In 1 Corinthians 15:44-48 the apostle is contrasting the first Adam with the second Adam who is declared to be the resurrected Jesus. In verse 46 the first Adam is called a “natural” man, and in the Greek the word means “animal”. Thus we see that Adam, when created perfect, and in God’s image, was a natural man, an animal. Adam was declared to be of the earth, earthy. A “natural man”, then, means a human creature made of the dust of the earth, having five senses, all of which are perfectly adapted to earthly conditions. A natural man cannot appreciate anything beyond what he can discern through his five senses, touch, taste, sight, smell and hearing. It would be perfectly natural for a man to use these five senses in ways that would bring him the highest degree of comfort, health, peace, rest and happiness.

When a man uses these “natural” endowments in sinful ways, he is called a “carnal” man. The word “carnal” literally means “fleshly”. It is applied to a man who yields to his fleshly appetites and lusts. A man who is selfish and seeks and desires only his own selfish gratification is carnal. Carnality and selfishness are synonymous. Adam was created a “natural” but not a “carnal” man. Later he became selfish and thus “carnal”. Thereafter Adam was both a natural and a carnal man. All his posterity have been by inheritance both natural and carnal. They have been carnal to the extent that they have yielded to the fallen tendencies of their flesh.

God made man natural; that is, He made him so that it was natural for him to eat and drink those things that were pleasant to the taste and which would promote health, and unnatural to do otherwise; it was natural to delight to gratify all other senses in proper and enjoyable ways, and unnatural to do otherwise. When the Bible refers to a natural man it does not mean a sinner, but it means one that uses his natural powers in ways that God designed that he should. The natural man is adapted to earth and does not want to die and go to heaven. Man was made for this earth. The popular idea that a natural man is one who uses his powmrs in selfish, wicked and perverted ways is wrong. Such persons are carnal.

It is natural for persons to seek health and avoid sickness; it is natural for them to be happy and avoid unhappiness; to love the beautiful scenery of earth and to love the best of music; to have many friends and enjoy them; to have comfortable homes and to get all proper enjoyment out of them; to desire the esteem of neighbors and friends; to avoid discomfort, unhappiness, and loss of good name and friends.

A natural man is one who is so controlled by the desire to get the best out of earth, and so captivated with the good things of earth, that he cannot conceive of anything better and does not want anything better. There are a very feiv exceptions to this statement, however, as we shall see. As a rule, the natural man is of the earth, earthy, and loves, admires, esteems and desires earthly things.

The Scriptures reveal the fact that the majority of people will live forever on the earth, and that all in the graves will be brought up out of the graves and be given an opportunity to prove themselves worthy of eternal life on earth. This is why the Scriptures in so many places tell us that “the righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein forever”. (Ps. 37: 29; Isa. 60: T) When the earth is full of a happy, contented, healthy, peaceful race, enjoying everlasting life, that will be the fulfilment of the prophecy of Micah 4: 4, which reads as follows: “They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.” It will also fulfil the prayer which Jesus taught His followers, saying: Why kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.’ These will be natural men, enjoying the natural earthly things that God provided for them to enjoy.

But now, who are meant by the term “spiritual” men? The word “spiritual” is from the Greek wmrd pneuma, which means air or wind. We get our -word “pneumatic” from this Greek word, and everyone is familiar with a pneumatic tire, which means a tire inflated with air.

The blue-vaulted dome called “the heavens”, which surrounds this earth, is filled with an invisible power. Just so there is a great invisible realm called “heaven”, which is filled with invisible, powerful creatures. It is the realm in 'which Jehovah God exists. Likewise His Son Jesus, the angels and the cherubim live there. Everybody is Avell aware of the fact that the air surrounds this earth. Just so everybody who is intelligent is aware of the fact that there are intelligent creatures who live in a realm invisible to men. It is only the “fool” who says in his heart, “There is no God.”

Among natural men who live on the earth are some, a few, who, when they look into the heavens and behold their marvelous beauty and quiet order, and also note the grandeur of the earthly handiwork of Jehovah God, realize that there must be some great first cause, some Creator. They behold God’s visible realm controlled by wonderful laws, which indicate that the Creator is boundless in His wisdom, justice, love and power. Impressed with these thoughts, such persons desire to know more about this Creator, in order that they might engage in whatever work He has for them to do.

They learn that the Bible tells about Him and His work, and reverently and with honest heart they go to the Book to get the coveted information. To such honest, reverent ones God purposes to reveal some heavenly or spiritual things. These things are not for the selfish and wicked, and through His prophet God has said: “None of the wicked shall understand.” (Dan. 12:10) By another prophet God stated as follows : “But 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.”-—Ps. 50:16,17.

These constitute the exceptions among natural men. They being honest and reverent, God bestows upon them His holy spirit, which makes them spiritual men. By the aid of the holy spirit, and the help of others who have that spirit, they are enabled to understand the things 'written in the Bible. To their surprise and joy God reveals to them the things that pertain to His heavenly, invisible or spiritual realm. He also reveals to them His purpose and His work, and invites them to participate. These do not assume to criticize the Bible, nor to be wiser than God. They are humble and teachable students of the Word, and do not try to teach God as do many others who read the Bible. Their chief purpose is to ascertain the truth, and they do not intend to let their preconceived ideas or teachings, or the opinions of parents or teachers or of other men, keep them from getting the truth.

Not only are they humble-minded, but they are honest. God loves such people, and His Word is full of instruction for them. They soon learn more about God; about the invisible realm which is His home. They learn about the great work He is doing. They soon learn that He has invited 144,000 persons from among the natural people of earth to go into training, to come under a course of discipline and instructions, to comply with certain requirements and to prove faithful and loyal under certain tests, and that He purposes to grant to these the great favor of living eternally in His invisible realm, as the “bride” and ‘joint-heir’ of Jesus. They learn that, if faithful, they are to come up in the first resurrection and reign with Jesus and share in His work.                                  .

This revelation appeals to them. To be on the Lord’s side and to share in His work, which is the vindication of Jehovah’s name, becomes their one, great all-consuming desire. The Bible becomes to them the one best book on earth. They cannot find time to study it as much as they would like; new beauties open up before them every day. They become lost in wonder, love, and praise.

Earthly things, proper, desirable and sinless, gradually fade into insignificance when compared to these heavenly and invisible things. Earthly home, earthly friends, earthly hopes and ambitions and earthly life cease to be the most valuable and desirable things to them. They have set their affections on things above. Their citizenship is in heaven, and they will not be satisfied until they awake in the likeness of the Lord. Such are referred to when the Bible mentions the “spiritual man”.

But why are they called “spiritual”? The an-srver is, Because they love and appreciate and desire the invisible and spiritual things more than the natural or visible. They live on a higher plane than do others. They meditate on higher and grander subjects; the Kingdom and its work is their one topic of conversation and study; they are constantly telling others about it, and occasionally find one who, like themselves, appreciates, accepts and enters into the same joy and blessings which they possess. More often, however, as they tell the good new’s, their message falls on dull, unappreciative ears, because the listener is thoroughly satisfied with earthly things. He does not want to investigate anything higher.

Many people have the mistaken thought that a “spiritual” person is one who assumes an attitude of pious sanctimony, or claims to have received special revelations from the Lord aside from what is revealed through a study of His Word. Others think that a “spiritual” person is one who can perform some special feat, like talking in unknown tongues, or being able to go into a trance or to heal someone who is ill or crippled. None of these things, however, are evidences of spirituality.

A spiritual person is one who has been begotten of God’s spirit and who loves, appreciates and studies the higher, heavenly or invisible things, and who, when he ascertains what the will of God is, will do that will even if it involves the loss of the natural things, which the natural man appreciates so highly. A spiritual person will do the Lord’s will even if it costs him everything that a natural man holds dear: the loss of friends, home, health, good name and fortune. A natural man, especially if he be carnal, will not give up any of these for some unseen, and to him visionary, heavenly prospects.

The heavenly hopes can be realized only by renouncing the earthly, even to the extent that it is written of those who aspire to the heavenly, that ‘if any man love father or mother or son or daughter more than me, he is not worthy of me’. These are Jesus’ words, and He also said that he who would follow in His footsteps must ‘deny self, take up his cross and follow Him’.

Jesus said that those who w^rould win the heavenly prize ‘must suffer -with Him if they would reign with Him’. The Apostle Paul said the same thing. It is not natural for people to give up father or mother, deny themselves, or to follow a course which will bring hatred or suffering upon them, but some natural men will do it at God’s invitation. These are the exceptions.

It is written of Jesus that He “learned obedience by the things which he suffered”. He learned to submit to the divine requirements, knowing that these would work out for Him a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Suffering, trials and persecutions work out patience and obedience for the spiritual man, but to the carnal man they work out impatience, fault-finding, condemnation of God, criticism of His work, and general irritability. The carnal man cannot understand why suffering is necessary, and it seems foolish to him; hence he will not submit himself to let God work in him to ■will and to do His own good pleasure.

The Bible mentions “spiritual gifts”. These gifts consist of a knowledge of heavenly things; a knowledge of why suffering with Christ is necessary; an understanding of why Christ had to die for our sins; a knowledge of the fact that the “spiritual man”, if faithful, will come up in the first resurrection and will reign with Christ a thousand years. These spiritual gifts are not given to the natural man who is carnally minded.

The Bible also mentions spiritual songs. These are songs that relate to the heavenly hopes, and are descriptive of heavenly conditions and work. The carnal man cares little for these songs. He loves those songs that satisfy his natural desires for pleasure, fun, amusement, or entertainment, or that are beautiful and make him happy and elated.

The Bible also mentions “spiritual blessings in heavenly places”. This refers to the joys and blessings that come to those who study the Bible, and day by day come to a better understanding of it, and thus are enabled to see more and more clearly the things that God has prepared for them that love Him. These “spiritual gifts”, “spiritual songs,” and “spiritual blessings” are only for the spiritual man.

Speaking of the “spiritual” ones on earth, the apostle says: “Ye are built up a spiritual house.” This means that God is now preparing, training, testing, proving and fitting a class of people who will constitute a “spiritual” or invisible household, when the first resurrection brings them together in the Kingdom. He has a very special work for them; hence the special training and fitting.

The “spiritual man” now living on earth is continually talking about these heavenly spiritual things. In 1 Corinthians 2:13 the apostle mentions this fact in these wrnrds: “Which things we speak, not in words taught in human wisdom [which comes from the natural man], but by the teachings of the spirit; unfolding spiritual things to spiritual persons.”—Diaglott.

The one aspiring to the heavenly hopes has a great battle on his hands, and that fight consists in a struggle, not only against the carnal inclinations of the flesh and the desire for worldly comforts, pleasures, home, good name, health and prosperity, but also against the deceptions of Satan and his organization. If such win the Kingdom, it will be because they love God and His kingdom more than they love the natural things.

The spiritual man appreciates the unseen things of the spiritual realm so much that he counts all the natural things as loss and dross in comparison. He will not be satisfied with life on earth. He will be satisfied only when he awakes in the likeness of his God, as a spirit creature with a spirit body on the divine plane.

Satan’s Civilization Admits Defeat

IF ANY man is competent to speak for our civilization, one would think that Robert

Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, would be well able to do so. Here is what he said to a group of college men:

We cannot tell who or what is responsible for anything. The machinery we have invented produces results we did not foresee and can not avoid. The industrial organization that has developed carries us along we do not know whither: we do not know why. We have more money, more food, more things and more power than at any time in history. We are poorer, hungrier, more helpless and more confused than ever before.

In the Next Issue of The Golden Age

The World’s Largest Airship

A fascinating account of the construction of the giant airship at Akron, and the immense structure in which it is to be housed, together with some interesting side lights on airships in general.

Events in Canada

Our Canadian correspondent gives us some illuminating items on Canada which will be of general interest.

Germane Questions

A doubting Thomas raises some objections to the hypothesis that germs have nothing to do with disease and asks some questions germane to the subject of germs.

Vivisection of Humans

Actually Under Way!

An account of “behaviorist” experiments on innocent and defenseless babes, together with some pertinent observations by one who still retains some common sense.

What Is Man’s Chief Concern?

Report of a radio lecture which should be a source of inspiration and enlightenment to those who arc seeking for what is best.

AND

Kingdom Work in Fiji—-By Two Colporteurs More About the Corn Sugar Dictum Ain’t Science Wonderful?

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