<#•<> Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

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in this issue

POISONS FORMED BY ALUMINUM COOKING UTENSILS "CAN THESE THINGS BE?”

PAPER

THE GIVING OF GIFTS

WITNESSES IN BURMAH

TRUE OBEDIENCE IS TRUE VALOR

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every other

WEDNESDAY

five cents a copy one dollar a year Canada & Foreign 1.25

Vol. XIV - No. 342

October 26, 1932

CON T E N T S

LABOR AND ECONOMICS

Public-spirited Norway

3,000,000 Families Get Flour  .  .  .

Half of Chicago Jobless

214,000 More Accept Relief  .  .  .

Fn employment Grows

On the Other Hand

Women in Masculine Jobs ....

Mother Explains

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

Electrons

Hoover an Expensive Man . . . .4'1 Order of Woodcraft Chivalry . . 41 Unemployed Citizens League . . . ^J1 Rogers on Battle of Anacostia . . 41 Salaries of Railroad Presidents . . 42 Diversion of Charity Funds ... 43 Press Associations and the Hungry 44 Story of a Little Girl......45

The Giving of Gifts

About Books and Authors . . . 54

MANUFACTURING AND MINING

Iola’s Small Tax Rate

‘25,000 Digging for Gold

Paper

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

Japanese Goods in India .... 39

Palestine in World's Markets . . 39

Hungary's Merchant Fleet .... 40 How Dawes Made Good

Why the Railroads Merge .... 42

Finance Corporation Refuses Loan . 43

Associated Gas and Electric Properties

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

Brotherly Love in Yugoslavia . . 39

United States and League of Nations 40

Crooks in Pennsylvania

Pinchot for Free Speech

Economists Find Old Parties

Bankrupt

“Can These Things Be.’" . . .16

SCIENCE AND INVENTION

Progress on Hoover Dam .... 44

HOME AND HEALTH

Poisons Formed by Aluminum

Cooking Utensils

Osteopathic Treatment ur

Insanity

The Higher Quackery

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY

Rebuilding the Yangtse Dikes . . 40

Progress at the Dead Sea .... 41

Sad Conditions in Virgin Islands . 42 Restlessness in New Zealand . . .43 Chinese Losses at Shanghai .... 43 Items from Soviet Russia . . . .45

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

Jehovah's witnesses in Burmaii . 56

True Obedience Is True Valor . . 59

Published exery other Wednesday at 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.» V. S. A., by WOODWORTH, KNORR & COWARD

Copartners and Proprietors Additss: ill Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. V. S. .1.

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Golden Age

Volume XIV                      Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, October 26, 1932                      Number 342

Poisons Formed by Aluminum Cooking Utensils

By H. J. Force, Ph.G. (Pennsylvania)¹

MANY papers have been published showing that aluminum cooking utensils have formed poisonous products under certain conditions. Papers have also been published trying to show that aluminum is a safe material for general household use.

In the schools of pharmacy and medicine there are standard works on medicine and chemistry, as various Materia Medicas, the United States Dispensatory, etc. These books give the physiological action of most drugs and chemical compounds. Let us turn to the United States Dispensatory, 19th Edition, published in 1907, and based on the United States Pharmacopoeia. The United States Dispensatory will be found in all drug stores, hospitals, physicians’ offices, etc., and is recognized in the courts as an authority on the use and doses of medical substances. Its recommendations have never been questioned. We are going to let the Dispensatory speak for itself on Aluminum, page 112:

Uses. Alum is a powerful astringent, with very decided irritant qualities, owing to which, when taken internally in sufficient quantity, it is emetic and purgative, and may even cause fatal gastro-intestinal inflammation. . . .

Alum is sometimes used to adulterate bread, with the view to increase its whiteness and to conceal the defects of the flour. If the quantity used be sufficient, the alum acts as an irritant to the gastro-intestinal tract, and according to the results of experiments made by Bigelow and Hamilton, it actively checks peptic digestion.

Under Aluminum Sulphate, page 124 of the. Dispensatory, we find:

Uses. The soluble simple salts of aluminum have the property of opposing animal putrefaction, but the sulphate is probably the most powerful and certainly is the most used. . . . Aluminum sulphate in saturated solution has been used for the preservation of dead bodies for dissection.

We now turn to the 21st Edition of the United States Dispensatory, published in 1928, which is the last edition, and shows a number of revisions and changes from the 20th edition. In this edition, we turn to Alum, on page 109, and under Uses, we find the following:

Alum is a powerful astringent with very decided irritant qualities, and when taken internally in sufficient quantities is emetic and purgative, and may even cause gastro-intestinal inflammation. It is widely employed in various conditions in which an astringent or styptic is desired. . . . When small quantities of the soluble salts of aluminum are introduced into the circulation they produce a slow form of poisoning characterized by motor palsies and areas of local anesthesia with fatty degeneration in the kidney and liver. The nervous symptoms have been shown by Doellken to be due to anatomical changes in the nerve centers. There are also often symptoms of gastro-intestinal inflammation which is presumably the result of the effort of the glands of the intestinal tract to eliminate the poisoning. . . .

Under Aluminum Chloride, page 113 of the Dispensatory, we find:

Uses. Externally it is used as an astringent and antiseptic. . . .

On page 1192 of the Dispensatory, under Aluminum Acetate, we find that aluminum acetate is used for water-proofing fabrics, and that it is also used as an embalming fluid. Also used in the manufacture of colors and in dyeing.

(We think it would be very proper to state that aluminum acetate could be the cause of dying, especially if pickles were made in aluminum vessels. Vinegar contains acetic acid, and combines with aluminum to form aluminum acetate. Any preparation to be a satisfactory embalming fluid must be poisonous.)

The combination of aluminum chloride with aluminum acetate would make an ideal disinfectant and embalming fluid. This combination could easily be brought about by adding salt to the pickles when they are preparedin aluminum. Aluminum chloride compounds will be formed when vegetables are cooked in aluminum to which a small quantity of salt (chemically called sodium chloride) has been added. Many natural waters contain quite a little salt. It is evident that when such waters are used when cooking in aluminum, aluminum chloride will be formed.

It has been shown that aluminum compounds precipitate or destroy the pepsin, which is the principal ingredient in digestion. Alum is a compound of aluminum, potash, sulphur and oxygen, together with a small portion of water, and has the chemical formula Al K(S04) 2 + 12II2O. When vegetables are cooked in aluminum vessels, they often contain such compounds as sulphur, potash or soda, which could easily combine with the aluminum, forming small quantities of alum, also aluminum sulphate.

Many drinking waters through the United States are very hard, containing a large portion of sulphur compounds, also potash and soda. In fact, some waters which I have analyzed become alkaline on boiling. As potash and soda very readily dissolve aluminum, forming a compound similar to alum in its composition, it follows that this compound will be formed if aluminum utensils are used for any length of time to cook food products.

Sauerkraut when cooked in aluminum, will produce aluminum chloride, especially if allowed to stand for some tune. Many cases of poisoning have resulted from sauerkraut being cooked in aluminum, and some deaths.

From the preceding statements made in the. Dispensatory, it is evident that indigestion and constipation could he produced, and that the kidneys and liver could be affected with most serious results.

The editors of the Dispensatory are men of experience in medicine, chemistry and pharmacy, and they are considered authorities along these lines. They are as follows: II. C. Wood, M.D., LL.D., professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in the University of Pennsylvania, president of the convention of 1900 for the Revision of the Pharmacopoeia of the United States; and Joseph P. Remington, Ph.M., F.C.S., professor of Theory and Practice of Pharmacy in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, chairman of the Committee of Revision of the Pharmacopoeia of the United States of America; and Samuel P. Sadtler, Ph.D., LL.D., professor of Chemistry in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, member of the Committee of Revision of the Pharmacopieia of the United States of America : and Albert B. Lyons, M.D., member of the Committee of Revision of the Pharmacopoeia; and II. C. Wood. Jr., M.D., demonstrator of the Pharmacodynamics in the University of Pennsylvania.

Here we have the highest authority in the United States telling us of the poisonous effects of aluminum. Alum and the various compounds contain a large percent of aluminum, in most cases in soluble form which can readily be absorbed in the stomach or the intestines, and may seriously affect the kidneys and liver.

Alum or any of its compounds should not be used in bread or general baking. As the Dispensatory points out, it may check the digestive process, due to its coagulating action on the pepsin compounds. Acute indigestion might follow, with the formation of gas which may press on the heart, producing death.

When aluminum cooking utensils are used, there is always some aluminum dissolved. The amount will depend upon the kind of water used. At picnics, church suppers and other places where large numbers are served, the foods are often allowed to stand for some time in aluminum. As a result we often read in the newspapers of numbers of people being stricken ill very soon after eating, becoming poisoned from the aluminum compounds formed, and death often following.

People often say they like aluminum, as foods do not burn when cooked in such utensils. The reason is that some aluminum is always dissolving, forming hydrogen gas, and so pushing the foods away from the aluminum. The same thing applies to an aluminum griddle. Salt and soda are generally used in the batter, and these increase the solubility of the aluminum.

Large doses of aluminum compounds are often fatal. Small quantities may be taken daily with little or no effect. But sooner or later, indigestion, constipation, Bright’s disease, or diabetes may develop as a result of the continued use of aluminum ware, due to its solubility.

Some claims have been made that aluminum is not soluble when used for general cooking purposes. Statements of this kind are absolutely false, and show the gross ignorance of such writers. There is not a single laboratory in the United States that would think of using aluminum vessels for making chemical analysis.

To show the solubility of aluminum, make the following simple test for yourself: Place in a well cleaned and scoured aluminum utensil one quart of water, a good pinch of salt and a pinch of baking soda, and let boil for one hour, adding water to make up the loss. Then remove from the fire and let stand for two or three hours, then pour into a glass jar and notice the milky condition caused by aluminum hydroxide. This will settle out in a day or so, but its presence is proof that aluminum is soluble.

Let us see what textbooks, such as are used in our medical colleges, say about aluminum. Take the Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacology, for example, by Alexander L. Blackwood, A.B., M.D., F.A.C.P., professor of Clinical Medicine and Therapeutics in the Hahnemann Medical College, Chicago, published by Boericke & Tafel, 1923, Philadelphia. On page 111 of this volume, we find under Alum the following statement:

Physiological Action. This agent is actively astringent, coagulating the albumen of the tissues and of the blood, and produces a local constriction of the capillaries. It is mildly escharotic and produces a hardening of the skin and tissues in general. It excites and later diminishes the salivary secretions as well as those of the mucous surfaces; it diminishes the gastric fluid and precipitates pepsin. As a result of its action on the intestinal sections, constipation is produced. Through its irritating properties which may be in excess of its astringent properties gastroenteritis may result.

On page 112 in the same book, under Aluminum Hydroxide, the following statement is made:

Physiological Action. This agent produces profound prostration, with irritation of the mucous membranes, with diminished secretions, and as a result there is constipation and inactivity of the bowels. The nervous system is affected as is indicated by the extreme prostration with numbness of the parts and paralysis of the involuntary muscles.

To make the above clearer, w^Te give the definitions of a few of the words mentioned:

Astringent. A medicine which causes contraction of the tissues and arrests the flow of secretions.

Coagulation. Changing to a curd-like mass; becoming clotted.

Escharotic. A substance which burns and destroys the life of the parts to which it is applied.

You had better read the above over again. Your life may depend on the statements made by Dr. Blackwood, for according to the doctor, you will sooner or later hang out the crape, and have the undertaker back up in front of your house; that is, if you continue to use aluminum ware for cooking purposes.

The coagulating of the albumen of the tissues and the blood is characteristic of most poisons, and would result in death. Such a condition could cause paralysis, insanity, cancer, rheumatism, neuritis, indigestion, ulcers of the stomach and intestines, some forms of skin diseases, etc.

In God’s Holy Word, the Bible, it states:

Deuteronomy 12: 23: “Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the life; and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh.”

Leviticus 17:14: “ . . . for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof. ...”

If your blood is being poisoned, which is your life, this condition is easily accounted for. The Bible is our only authority, and can be depended upon to state the facts.

From the Dispensatory and various Materia Medicas, it is apparent that the nation is being poisoned. There never was so much sickness and complaining, never so much stomach disorder, etc. Cancer has jumped from the tenth place to the second place as the cause of deaths in the last ten years. Yet at the same time we have more knowledge, more doctors, hospitals, radio lectures on health, and newspaper articles on how to keep well, etc., and sickness is still on the increase. There must he a reason.

Aluminum will affect the teeth, as this chemical has an affinity for calcium, and is so stated by dentists who have investigated the action of aluminum on the teeth. It is also possible for the aluminum to affect the calcium in the bones.

Try this test: Put one-half of a can of tomatoes in an aluminum vessel, and the other half in an agate-w’are vessel. Add the same amount of salt and baking soda to each. Cook, and then let stand for 24 hours, then reheat, and note the difference in taste. We would not advise you to eat the tomatoes cooked in the aluminum. Those cooked in the agate will still be good eating

If tomatoes are cooked in a dull-appearing aluminum utensil, the acid in the tomatoes will act upon the aluminum, give the aluminum a very clean appearance. The amount of aluminum removed is of course dissolved into the tomatoes.

To prove to your friends that aluminum ware is poisonous, give them the following dinner: Sauerkraut cooked in aluminum; beef and potatoes seasoned, cooked in aluminum; tomatoes with salt and baking soda, cooked in aluminum; bread baked with alum baking powder; custard pie baked in an aluminum pan; and coffee made in an aluminum percolator. Let all stand 24 hours, and then reheat and serve, but tell your friends what they are eating, and let them read this first. This should prove to anyone who is honest about aluminum that it is poisonous. If people will not believe the best authorities, then they must take the consequences.

People often ask why the doctors do not tell us about aluminum poisoning. Many of them do, and recommend that aluminum ware be not used. Many physicians have paid little or no attention to this, question, and that is just why we are writing this, so as to tell them where to find the information.

We have letters from the following physicians and surgeons, condemning the use of aluminum ware:

• * Dr. George Starr White, Los Angeles, Calif. Dr. M. E. Lecocq, Siloam Springs, Ark.

Dr. AV. W. Fritz, Philadelphia, Pa.

Dr. D. R. Edwards, Montreal, Quebec, Can.

• * Dr. W. F. Koch, Koch Cancer Hospital, Detroit, Mich.

Dr. J. M. Heimbach, Kane, Pa.

Dr. D. H. Roeder, Kansas City, Mo.

Dr. F. C. Schneider, Peru, Ill.

• * Dr. C. R. PerDue, Indianapolis, Ind.

Dr. J. R. Newton, Olathe, Kans.

• * Dr. M. Johnson Work, Brooklyn, N.Y.

• • Dr. S. R. Love, St. Petersburg, Fla.

• • Dr. Chas. T. Betts, Toledo, Ohio.

The above names marked with a star have published circulars on aluminum poisoning. Dr. C. T. Betts has several circulars and books published on aluminum poisoning. Many more names could be given if space permitted.

The Journal of the American Association for Medico-Physical Research, Kansas City, Mo., has published several articles on aluminum poisoning; also the Plain Talk magazine, Washington, D. C. The Golden Aye, of Brooklyn, N.Y., has published many articles on aluminum poisoning and has given much valuable information.

From our investigation, we can recommend: First, iron or steel utensils for general cooking; second, agate or enameled ware, glass or pyrex ware; also monell metal. You will notice that foods taste different when they are not cooked in aluminum. We are in no way interested in any kind of cooking utensils, as to their manufacture or sale.

In view of the facts set forth, especially in our standard works on medicine, we should call on our senators and congressmen to eliminate the use of all aluminum cooking utensils from the army and navy, from all hospitals and public institutions, from hotels, restaurants and all public places. People should not buy foods prepared in aluminum. Manufacturers of food products should stamp all canned goods ‘‘Not prepared in aluminum’’ when such is the case.

We know you will enjoy better health, have fewer colds and better digestion if you eliminate the use of aluminum.

Most vegetables contain a very small amount of aluminum, about one part in a million, but in an entirely different form from that which is dissolved when cooking foods in aluminum. The white powder often seen when cooking potatoes in aluminum is aluminum hydroxide, which is described in the Materia Medica in this paper.

Japanese Goods in India

RITONS complain that the Japanese are pushing their bleached goods into India, with a tendency to increasingly fine cloths, and at prices which the British find it hard to meet.

Dollar Bill Lasts Nine Months

N ITEM is going the rounds that the average life of a dollar bill is nine months. Must be something phoney about that, for no dollar ever survived that long in these times.

Signs of the Tinies in Brooklyn

SIGN in a shop window in Brooklyn, not far from the offices of The Golden Age, is surely a sign of the times. It reads, and who can doubt the sincerity hack of the plea: “Prosperity, come back. All is forgiven.”

Public-spirited Norway

IN NORWAY the railroads, telegraphs and telephones and electric plants are run to serve the people at cost; one hospital with 3,000 beds gives service, including surgical treatment, at 50c per day; and there are no slums.

Brotherly Love in Yugoslavia

IT IS said that the king of Yugoslavia, fearful of his older brother’s popularity, has imprisoned him in a fortress, and that the imprisoned man is in daily fear of being poisoned. Makes you glad it is 4,000 miles away.

3,000,000 Families Get Government Flour

EARLY three million families have received government relief flour, distributed through the agency of the Red Cross. One 24i/>-pound sack lasts a family of five for eleven days. Surely this is a better use for this flour than for it to spoil in the bins of the Farm Board.

Can You Beat This for Meanness?

rederick Bogare, New York printer, was unemployed for a year and a half. Then he got a job. Then he parked his ear in front of his home. Then the garage owners, who wanted his rent money, had him arrested. He had two small children to support. He could not pay his fine, and he was sent to jail for two days. No doubt the garage owners, those generous-hearted men, are contributors to such unemployment relief funds as will get their names in the papers, but if so, why did they not pay Bogare’s fine?

Half of Chicago Jobless

TN MIDSUMMER Mayor Cermak, of Chicago, declared that more than half of the 1,550,000 persons employed during normal times in Chicago were then jobless. In addition, 60 percent of those who were then working in the second largest city in America were on short time.

Palestine in the World’s Markets

ALESTINE grapefruit is coming into market. Early potatoes are being shipped to

France. Eggs are being marketed in England. Last year there were 2,600,000 cases of oranges shipped, and it is expected that by 1936 the shipments will be ten to twelve million cases.

Iola’s Small Tax Rate

TN IOLA, Kansas, the city tax rate for 1933 is 75c per $100 valuation, and it is expected that next year there will be no city taxes at all. The reason? Oh, the reason is the same as it always is in such cases: the city owns and operates its own water, light and gas systems.

10,000 False Fire Alarms Annually

IT SEEMS as if there could not possibly be that many even in the great city of New York, but there are 28 false fire-alarm calls per day, and that figures up 10,000 in a year. The cost of each false fire alarm is set at about $20; a clear waste of $200,000 a year.

214,000 More Accept Poor Relief

WHILE in some respects Britain seems better off since she went off the gold standard, yet in the six months from the end of September, 1931, to the end of March, 1932, the number of persons accepting poor relief rose from 1,005,813 to 1,220,000, an increase of more than 214,000.

Made $175,000 Shining Shoes

Ieradi, Italian boy, landed at the Battery 52 years ago at the age of 14, with just enough money to buy a shoe-shining outfit. In due time he came to have the shoe-shining concession at the Grand Central station, and when he died, recently, he left $175,000, all made in shining shoes. It is said he could stroll into almost any shoe-shining station in New York state and get his shoes shined for nothing, which gave him the edge on visiting kings and even the hero of the charge on Anacostia.

An Honest Man in the Navy

THERE is an honest man in the navy. Government engineers had estimated that it would cost $70,000 to supervise certain work at Taft, California. The honest man, a lieutenant by the name of Kelley, did the work for $2,000 and returned $68,000 to the treasury at Washington.

Rebuilding the Yangtse Dikes

IN THE rebuilding of the Yangtse dikes, just completed, an average of 670,000 men and women were employed. They were paid mostly in food. In the five months in which the work was in progress as much dirt was handled as would build a wall 6^ feet wide and 61k feet high all around the earth at the equator.

United States and League of Nations

Felix Mobley, for two years director of the

Geneva office of the League of Nations Association of the United States, points out that the United States is now represented in the work of more League committees than any regular League member except the five powers with permanent seats in the council.

Unemployment Grows by Leaps and Bounds

THE president of the American Federation of

Labor claims that 1,300,000 Americans lost their jobs from January to May inclusive and that in June the number laid off was more than 600,000. He thinks that the fourth winter under the great food administrator of the World War will show at least 13.000,000 out of work.

Hoover an Expensive Man

WHITE HOUSE expenses under four years of Harding were $1,377,840; under Coolidge they were $1,722,560; under Hoover they are $2,114,217. Coolidge got along with one $7,500 secretary; Hoover has to have four at $10,000 each. Wilson had three automobiles; Hoover has to have eleven. Great man!

Hungary’s Merchant Fleet

TO GET to the seacoast Hungary must go through Austria to the Italian port of Trieste, yet sailing from this port there are now several Hungarian steamship lines, traversing the seven seas. This development is due to the fact that Hungary was once a part of Austria and Austria’s principal port was at Trieste, now in Italy.

On the Other Hand

TN THE year 1928, which was the peak prosperity year, the total wages paid American workers were $650,000,000 more than they were the year previous. On the other hand, the profits and interest paid bond- and stockholders rose from $2,469,000,000 in 1922 to $7,888,000,000 in 1929.

Paris Has Gone Mad

REPORTS from Paris are that it has gone mad. In the effort to be more licentious than New York it is now practicing devil-worship in eleven temples. Three temples to Venus have been opened within a month. Shameless women are everywhere. Dancing has become open lewdness.

Longest Bar in the World

THE longest bar in the world is in the League of Nations building at Geneva, the location of the. "political expression of God’s kingdom on earth”. The Methodist General Conference at Atlantic City has just advocated entrance of the United States into the League of Nations, and is for a bone-dry world.

Improving American Figures

CALLING attention to the fact that in Russia, on account of slimmer rations, fat paunches have almost entirely disappeared, the American Freeman thinks the figures of the American people ought to be greatly improved by the time the 'victor of the siege of Anacostia’ retires, March 4 next.

25_s000 Digging for Gold in California

THE Los Angeles Daily News claims that some 25,000 of the unemployed are reworking the old placer mines of California, their day’s toil sometimes not netting them more than 75c. By the time this is printed the weather will be too cold for outdoor life and these poor unfortunates will have to return to the cities to try to find some way to exist until spring.

The Burra Sahibs of Bombay

JN THE Tune.-; of India the hurra sahibs of

Bombay (the Big Business mon) are being criticized, not for the millions thattheymadedur-ing the World War, but for the way they are now discharging right and left the young men that they hounded into the trenches at that time. It seems as if the hurra sahibs were nearly all alike, wherever you find them.

We Do Not Vouch for This

IT IS said that one of the B.E.F. came from California with a printed slogan on his hack, ‘’Give me a lift or I will vote for Hoover'' and made the trip from the Coast all the way to Washington in five days. We do not guarantee the truthfulness of this report, but it represents fairly well the way the bonus men feel toward the present incumbent of the presidential office.

Plague of Mice in Australia

MILLIONS of mice arc overrunning part of northwestern Victoria, Australia. Factories are working overtime to keep up with the demand for mousetraps. In one instance the mice are said to have become so bold that a number of them attacked a cat and chewed off one of her ears and part of her tail. This story is vouched for by a Melbourne police officer.

The White Caps of New York

IN JUNE, 1932, two young men out of work went to a New York hatter and asked him to make up some white duck caps which they could sell at a profit for 25c each. They took 100 dozen to Coney Island and disposed of the entire lot in six hours. Within two weeks 700 workers were making white duck hats in New York and 2,000 men were, selling them on the street corners.

Order of Woodcraft Chivalry

BRITAIN is organizing an Order of Woodcraft Chivalry for unemployed young men between the ages of 18 and 25. These young men will be assisted to provide largely for their own wants in food, clothing and recreation, the idea being that they will be returned to industry refreshed instead of demoralized. They will surrender their unemployment benefits for the general use of the camp.

Seattle’s Unemployed Citizens League

SEATTLE'S Unemployed Citizens’ League is worrying the statesmen of the Teapot Dome and Jackass parties because it is showing so much common sense. It is operating shoe repair shops, making, remodeling and repairing clothing, giving free shaves and haircuts, cutting firewood, tilling municipal gardens, and doing about everything people need to do or have done in order to live. Just now Seattle has 50,000 men, women and children that are being helped by this organization, and are backing its political ideas.

Progress at the Dead Sea

THE visitor to Jerusalem may now proceed by motor car 26 miles to the Dead sea in the space of 50 minutes. A trip around the Dead sea, which is 10 miles wide and 53 miles long, can be made by motor boat in a few hours. The chemical works now employs 300 hands. Plans are afoot to build a resort for the workers, where there will be a golf course, tennis courts, swimming and yachting, all at a point 1,300 feet below sea level.

How Mr. Dawes Made Good

Tpx-Vice-President Charles G. Dawes made good as president of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. As soon as he made good he resigned. And as soon as he resigned he obtained from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation $80,000,000 whereby he saved his bank, the Central Republic, of Chicago; and that is how he made good. This is the biggest loan so far, and when it is compared with the Battle of Anacostia it does not look so good.

Cardinal Mundelein Could Not Go

Cardinal Mundelein could not go to the eucharistic congress at Dublin. The reason he could not get away was, so he said, “because he deemed it unwise to be absent from Chicago (the holy city) during the Republican and Democratic conventions there.” Also, economic conditions are bad; money is hard to get; people hate to pay mass money for dragging relatives out of fires that do not exist except in the mind of the collector.

Will Rogers on the Battle of Anacostia

TN A LETTER to the New York Times, Will

Rogers gives views on the bonus debacle at Anacostia which we hope reached the eyes of the hero of the Rapidan :

"No matter how you feel about the whole thing, you have got to admire the fine way that body of hungry men acted while they were there. They hold the record for being the best behaved of any fifteen thousand hungry men over assembled anywhere in the world. They were hungry and they were seeing our government wasting thousands and millions before their eyes, and yet they remained fair and sensible. Would 15,000 hungry bankers have done it, 15,000 farmers, 15,000 preachers? It’s easy to be a gentleman when you are well fed, but these boys did it on an empty stomach. So we at least owe them a vote of thanks, and it was too bad their fine record was marred at the finish by somebody blundering. ’ ’

Aftermaths of the Nan-War at Shanghai

EVERYBODY knows there was 'no war’ at Shanghai; it was only “a disturbed condition”, but the conditions that followed were as bad as if a regular war had been fought. Holdups and piracies have become common; 22 wealthy men have been kidnaped. In one instance a government launch armed with four machine guns was captured by the outlaws. China is every bit as bad as Chicago.

Sad Conditions in the Virgin Islands

A NEWSPAPER received from the Virgin Islands, Uncle Sam's acquisition from Denmark, in the West Indies, contains the little item tucked away in the midst of a paragraph on taxation that handicraftsmen cannot earn $1 a day during six months of the year, and that the children of the island are undernourished. The islands have no wealthy people. They are watered only by the rainfall.

The Pope Has It Right

THE pope is out with a statement that “money in itself is completely devoid of value” and that the right thing to do is to “regard wealth with complete contempt”. How happy this makes us! This shows that it won't be long now before the pope issues orders that no more shall the lowly poor be stung for masses for the dead, no more will they have to pay for bogus relics or religious gewgaws as charms to aid or prevent this or that, and, best of all, no more will they have to build 'churches’ or pay a lot of lazy parasites to rule over them at home and at Vatican City. Attaboy, Ratti!

Why the Railroads Merge

THE railroads merge so that they can get along with fewer employees. Every big merger of banks, railroads, or what not, means so many hundreds or so many thousands thrown out of work, and a big cutting down in the number of customers, and in their buying power. A man who is out of a job is a mighty poor customer of a bank. Thousands of banks have been wrecked because the big men at their head insisted upon mergers. The mergers took place; many persons lost their jobs; they began to live on their savings; they withdrew their money from the banks, and the banks went flat. It is not wise for a hog to try to get all the swill for himself; he may overturn the trough and then nobody will get any.

Many Women in Masculine Jobs

A CCORDING to the 1930 census 3,089 women were employed in the United States as workers in blast furnaces and steel rolling mills, 2,597 held jobs in sawmills, 435 were in car and railroad shops, 289 were steam railroad switchmen and flagmen, 127 were building laborers, 20 were machinists, 19 were molders, 9 were blacksmiths, 5 were sheet metal workers, 3 were sea captains, and 1 was a plumber. There was also one telephone lineman.

Ask Only $5 for a Leap for Life

TP H E regular stunt men employed by the moving picture magnates at Hollywood complain that their field is repeatedly invaded by persons who offer to make thrilling leaps for life from airplanes or to do other hair-raising stunts for as little as $5 a shmt. No doubt, in many instances, the unfortunates who make these leaps are secretly in hopes that each leap may be the last and are choosing an easy way out of the present widespread sorrows.

Salaries of Railroad Presidents

OF THE railroads running out of New York city, the following are the salaries of their presidents: Pennsylvania, $135,000; Baltimore & Ohio, $120,000; New York, New Haven & Hartford, $90,000; Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, $07,500; Erie, $67,500; Central Railroad of New Jersey, $64,800; Delaware & Hudson, $90,000; Lehigh Valley, $72,000; Philadelphia & Reading, $67,500; all together there are 1,104 railway executives that receive $10,000 or more a year.

Crooks in Pennsylvania?

CAN it be possible that there are crooks in the great Keystone State? Governor Pinchot, trying to stir certain politicians to a sense of common honesty, recently wrote to one of them: “The House has 17 sergeants-at-arms. Some of them don’t even report to Harrisburg to get their checks, but have them sent by mail, and so with the House pages and so with committee clerks. And why pass the judiciary by? Maybe you never heard how judges cause deficiencies and double their salaries by sitting in other jurisdictions than their own. As one example, Judge Barnett, of the Juniata-Perry district, collected $15,450 on a salary of $9,000 in one year.”

Exciting Fight for Control of a Plane

TWELVE THOUSAND feet over Chicago a break in the exhaust line of an airplane engine caused the pilot to faint while in full control of the machine. It required forty-five minutes of almost superhuman strength and effort to enable another occupant of the plane to gain control and get the collapsed man out of his seat. What a fight for life that was two miles over Chicago can only be faintly imagined by those who have never been up in a plane.

Finance Corporation Refuses Pennsylvania Loan THE Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which has been so generous to Big Business, as represented by the railroads and the banks, has been rather hard on the great state of which Mr. Pinchot is governor. Despite the fact that Pennsylvania has for years paid one-tenth of the expenses of the federal administration, amounting, on the average, to about $276,000,-000 a year, it was refused a temporary loan of $10,000,000 needed for relief work.

Restlessness in New Zealand

IN NEW ZEALAND the jobless are being herded into prison camps and are not taking their treatment well. On a Thursday night recently the crowd got out of control in Auckland and for two hours the city was at the mercy of a howling mob that looted stores and ended with injuries to 23 policemen and hundreds of citizens, with an estimated damage of $500,000. A few nights later a like mob smashed 150 plate glass windows in Wellington. In view of present conditions the bishop of New Zealand has offered to give up his episcopal residence and to take a cut in his salary. Wise man!

Diversion of Charity Funds in Philadelphia THE Philadelphia Transcript claims that thou--*• sands of dollars painfully collected through the sale of Christmas seals, and intended to he used solely for the benefit of the weak, the lowly and the very poor, with special reference to tuberculosis, were diverted from the poor to the very rich by the Philadelphia Health Council, who paid out $15,522.59 for special services to millionaire factory owners who paid back only $9,455.69. Thus the common people, who bought the Christmas seals, were really held up to the tune of $6,066.90. The more one comes to know of the ways of Big Business, the more he has to hold his nose.

Pinchot Does Not Admire Hoover

Governor Pinchot, of Pennsylvania, apparently does not admire Mr. Hoover. He says that the treatment of the bonus army in Washington was ‘•brutal, stupid and altogether unnecessary" and that "a little forbearance, a little common sense" “would have moved them if they had to be moved, without breaking any bones”. The bonus men have gone back home to snow Hoover under in November. Seems as if it ought not to be a very hard thing to do.

Chinese Losses at Shanghai

IN THE exhibit of a “disturbed condition” which Japan put on at Shanghai the Chinese lost factories worth $21,600,000; wharves which cost $3,262,500; other buildings which were valued at $78,300,000. Ten colleges and universities were closed, 30 secondary schools and 192 primary schools. School property worth $4,500,000 was destroyed; highways were damaged to the amount of $453,600. Railwav losses are put at $5,400,000.

Associated Gas and Electric Properties

A SSOCIATED Gas and Electric Properties, the shoestring arrangement by which two men with an actual investment of $308,318.19 control some sixty operating companies with assets totaling more than $900,000,000, has done much to reconcile intelligent persons to the taking over of all public utilities in the interests of the people. The top company, removed from the operating companies by a succession of five or six holding companies which hold the assets of the one beneath, managed to squeeze out for itself in the year 1929 a modest 265.61 percent of profit.

Death in the Garbage Can

A FOUR-YEAR-OLD boy was killed and his two sisters were made seriously ill by food which was secured from the garbage pails of commission houses and restaurants of Oakland, California. Probably the food which poisoned them had been cooked or stored in aluminum containers, and that cannot be helped so long as aluminum utensil advertising is so profitable, but it does seem a little bit unfortunate that the rugged individualism of the Wall Street Soviet should have led these little American kids into such a peculiar place to get the food they had to have to live.

Upholding the Law in Detroit

IN DETROIT a young father, out of work, penniless, went out to steal milk for his baby girl. Detectives saw him, and the two brave men, realizing fully his awful crime, shot him in the back. If he recovers he will suffer lifelong paralysis. Just how^T it comes that he was not murdered outright for his terrible crime of stealing a bottle of milk for his starving baby is not explained, but no doubt it was the kind-heartedness and manhood of the detectives that kept them from doing such a thing as that.

Reverend Larkey Kept Some for Himself

A GOOD place for a reverend is as chaplain in a prison; he gets a chance to swipe something on the side. Reverend Arthur G. Larkey was on the chaplain’s staff of the Michigan state prison at Jackson. He helped some of the incarcerated war veterans to cash their adjusted compensations, and then, to help himself, being a “reverend”, he kept part of the cash for himself. All of this would seem reasonable enough to a “reverend”, but not to an honest man, and so Reverend Larkey lost his job. Overalls? Yes, sir. Right this way, sir. Alarm clocks, counter number 13.

The Press Associations and the Hungry

HOUSE-TO-HOUSE visitation of the people with the message of God’s kingdom fully verifies the oft-printed reports that there are now 10,000,000 unemployed in the United States, and millions who are hungry. In the face of this fact, and the further revelation that communists are practically never met with, one marvels at the fact that every time an army of the unemployed and the hungry invades some capital or city hall, the press dispatches always refer to them as communists. The thing is so manifestly untrue and unfair that it is tiresome. The press associations are not trying to tell the truth; they are trying desperately to poison the minds of the public against those who have the misfortune to be unemployed and hungry. They even did that against the war veterans. The reason for their flood of propaganda against the hungry is so that when the time comes to use poison gas and machine guns the common, ordinary, every-day, average American bone-head will think that it was quite the right thing to do. The press associations are the worst enemies of the true lovers of justice and righteousness.

Progress on the Hoover Dam

WORK on the Hoover dam is in progress on an eleven-mile front. On both sides of the river there are now well-surfaced highways hewn out of the solid rock. In one instance five tunnels, one of them 450 feet long, had to be bored in the distance of a single mile in order to get the road through. The. largest cement mixing plant in the world is turning out 5,000 cubic yards of cement per day. Four diversion tunnels, each 55 feet in diameter, are in construction. They must be finished before work on the dam proper is begun. Eight locomotives and one hundred rock cars are kept busy. The dam, which will be 730 feet high, will back up the river 115 miles. In one place the shores will be eight miles apart. It will hold the flow of the Colorado for two years. The waters within the dam would cover Connecticut ten feet deep. The power development will be twice that of Niagara Falls. The 226-mile aqueduct to Los Angeles will cost $38,500,000 and will have 155 miles of feeder line.

Governor Pinchot for Free Speech

WRITING to Edwood K. Bean, burgess of Lansdale, Pa., who refused to permit the Hosiery Workers’ Union to meet in that borough, Governor Pinchot told him a few things that one would think would percolate through any bean, no matter how obtuse:

“If the Constitution of the State and the Nation mean what they say, then free speech is a fundamental right of every American citizen, and the denial of free speech is unlawful.

‘ ‘ Both you and I arc sworn to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States and this Commonwealth. I call your attention pointedly to this fact, and to the very fact that obedience to the Constitution is the duty of every American citizen, including yourself.

“Entirely apart from the constitutional right of free speech, it has been demonstrated times beyond number that the policy of denying this right is dangerous and ineffective and has the direct result of advancing instead of repressing the cause against which the denial is made. The surest way to spread any doctrine or to disseminate any set of opinions is to forbid people to mention them in public. Even savages who perpetuate the names of their dead chiefs by forbidding the speaking of their names, have learned this fact.

“To prevent meetings held in support of the right of labor to organize is to deny a right which the Constitution, the laws and the judicial decisions of Pennsylvania specifically recognize. ’ ’

Economists Find Old Parties Bankrupt

rofessor John Dewey, of Columbia University, and five hundred other leading economists have said: “We have at this time no real party government or responsibility because both old parties do the bidding of that invisible government created by the few to serve the interests of the few. The bankruptcy of the old parties is a challenge to the courage and intelligence of every American citizen.” Mr. Dewey and his friends will back the candidacy of Norman Thomas this year.

Paid $1 for a Bum Show

BELOIT councilman went to church and before he heard the sermon he was indiscreet enough to put $1 in the collection plate. He then heard a political talk, but no expounding of the Word of God. Feeling that he had been buncoed he went to the minister and demanded his dollar back. All he got was the air. He became ruffled and sued the minister for extracting one dollar under false pretense. We. do not think he will get his dollar back; he paid it for a bum show, and the show is over and gone, but if the experience has taught him something it will be worth more to him than many dollars. For the price he paid he could have got more information out of four of Judge Rutherford’s books than he could obtain in church in a hundred years. If the Jw's in Beloit let this case go by they are dead slow.

The Story of a Little Girl

IN 1825 the government of the United States made an offer of $1,000 for the most acceptable design to be placed upon the new cent coin soon to be issued.

Some Indian chiefs traveled from the Northwest to Washington to visit the “great father”, and then journeyed to Philadelphia to see the mint, whose chief engraver was James Barton Longacre, who invited them to his house.

The engraver’s daughter, Sarah, aged 10, greatly enjoyed the visit of her father’s guests, and during the evening, to please her, one of the chiefs took off his feathered helmet and war bonnet and placed it on her head. In the company was an artist, who immediately sketched her and handed the picture to her father.

Mr. Longacre, knowing of the competition for a likeness to go upon the cent projected, under the inspiration of the hour, resolved to contend for the prize offered by the government. To his delight the officials accepted it, and the face of his daughter appeared upon the coin, which was circulated about the nation for nearly a century. There were more than a hundred competitors. The cent bearing the face of Sarah Longacre has gone into more hands than any other American coin. Notice the hair projecting below the helmet and hanging down on her neck.

The Deflation of Big Business

EFERRING to the deflation of Big Business, the New York Times says of the man who makes such a perfect picture of the whole Big Business crowd: “If Kreuger did not believe in his own inflated values, he did believe, as so many did, in our illusory prosperity. He misled some of the best informed, including himself, because it was a time when few were not misled. His deceptions were the result of overconfidence in the future, for he counted upon rising profits to cover them up, and it was the relentless advance of deflation that proved his undoing.” To this we merely add that it is now perfectly apparent to the whole world that the Big Business crowd are merely a big collection of Kreugcrs, all cut off the same strip, all without any constructive ideas, and few of them any more honest than Kreuger turned out to be.

Items from Soviet Russia

ISPATCHES say the Russians are finding it hard to run a Ford auto factory as Ford runs it in America; and this may well be believed. The April production was to have been 1,075 cars, but as only one or two rear axles were produced and an auto without a rear axle leaves something to be desired, the month’s output was not a shining success. However, that will be rectified. There have been railroad accidents. In one case, where several were injured, they were thoughtlessly laid on the other track of a double-track railway and a freight train came along and killed fifty of them. A dispatch from Rumania says that persons on that side of the river witnessed the shooting down by Soviet troops on the Russian side of the river of 100 persons who were participating in nothing worse than some kind of Easter celebration. It is claimed that recently in Moscow 1,500,000 soldiers inarched, as a notice to the world that Soviet Russia will fight to keep every inch of her soil her own.

“Can These Things Be?”

IF YOU doubt the Scripture statement, “The whole world lieth in the wicked one,'’ you should read the illuminative and instructive book bearing^- the above title by George Seldes, published by Brewer, Warren & Putnam, 6 E. 53d St., New York City. There is probably not a man alive who knows more about the terrors of Fascism than George Seldes, veteran European correspondent of the Chicago Tribune. Certainly no observer of the system ever analyzed this hideous substitute for a government better than Mr. Seldes has done in his book.

Imagine a country in which the school children are encouraged to come to school decked out in their fathers’ daggers and guns and to become braggarts and bullies, “a black terror edition of the League of Communist Youth.” The heads of the universities, the professors, and the teachers in the grade schools must all be members of the Fascist party. An official boycott is placed on all men of learning who are not active in Fascist polities. In Italy there is not a single nonFascist newspaper allowed, and therefore there can be no propaganda for liberty, democracy or freedom; yet at the same time Fascism has a fund of 5,000,000 lire to use for buying up newspaper space in other countries.

Americans generally do not know that in Europe it is a common practice for dictators to purchase newspaper space and editorial opinion for propaganda purposes in the principal cities of the continent, indeed, the practice is so general that even the European editions of American newspapers participate. On this point Mr. Seldes says:

Fascist Italy today is doing exactly what the Czar did from 1905 to 1917. The methods are not so crude, perhaps, but some day the Roman archives may show exactly what European and American newspapers have had subsidies of money, who has received decorations and honors, which newspapers and agencies have accepted the bribery of free cable and radio wordage, and just how and where the Fascist money was placed in advertising to buy up newspapers.

The incredible depths of meanness to which Fascism can go and has gone in its persecution of editors is illustrated in Albert Gianninni of the Becco Giallo. He published two photographs, one of an English bulldog and the other of Mussolini. They looked so much alike that a laugh went around the world — and Gianninni had to flee the country. His house was twice entered by Fascists; his entire life’s savings were stolen ; his wife fell ill, and during the long months of her illness two Fascist agents stood by her bedside until she died. Even the smallest of his children are under constant surveillance. They cannot go to lunch or play with other children or even go for a walk without the eyes of these agents of tyranny constantly upon them.

Not a foreign correspondent in Italy can send a dispatch which does not go to the Foreign Office to be copied. If anything displeasing is found the dispatch is delayed and sometimes it is garbled so that when it arrives at its destination it is unintelligible.

Travelers returning from Italy frequently report that the trains run on time, but Mr. Seldes gives a long list of other things which Mussolini has done to make Italy what it is today:

ACHIEVEMENTS OF FASCIST “GOVERNMENT”

Abolition of parliament;

Abolition of the constitutional power of the king;

Abolition of all the non-Fascist press;

Abolition of the right of public association, freemasonry, etc.;

Abolition of free suffrage;

Abolition of freedom of the magistrates;

Abolition of free speech;

Law courts placed under Fascist militia;

Abolition of the inviolability of private homes;

Abolition of the right to choose and exercise a business or a profession;

Abolition of the right of free movement (emigration, or peasants’ going from one part of the country to another) ;

Curtailment of the liberty of conscience and religion ; Abolition of the right to choose nationality;

Annulment of Article 30 of the Statutes guaranteeing no unjust taxation ;

Suppression of all municipal liberties.

And May 26, 1926, Mussolini said:

'It is I who have dictated these measures: recall of all passports; order to shoot without warning anyone trying to cross the frontier secretly; suppression of all anti-Fascist publications; dissolution of all groups, associations suspected of anti-Fascism; creating of a special police in all parts of the country; creation of secret investigation bureaus and special tribunals.’

On the other hand, says Mr. Seldes, there are numerous accidents, but, as under Fascism it is forbidden to report train wrecks or other railroad trouble, the knowledge of these things never gets out of the country or, for that matter, very far away from the locality where the accident happened.

About a thousand banks and credit organizations have gone bankrupt under the dictatorship and in most cases the creditors got only ten to twenty percent. When the stock crash came in 1929 the banks and great industries were required to distribute the same dividends as in the previous year, with the result that in many instances the dividends were paid entirely out of reserves and frequently out of capital.

Of the more, respectable acts of Mr. Mussolini’s “government” there can be set down his annual expenditure of 2,000,000,000 lire for police, gendarmes, city espionage and the six Fascist militias. There can be set down Mussolini’s demand that the families be increased as rapidly as possible so that a huge army can be produced for use in the promised day when Italy is to make the skies of Europe black with planes. As Italo Balbo, Fascist air minister, put the matter,

‘‘A modest aerial army of 300 planes carrying two tons of toxic bombs each, in a single flight can kill 50,000 inhabitants in ten different villages; that means in eight days they could put hors de jeii four million persons in eight places. Imagine the public services disorganized, the terrible anxiety to find out what gas the enemy is using, the anguish of violent lung troubles, and the panic! No anti-aircraft defense can prevent such an invasion. . . . We must give the enemy the precise sensation of our mastery of the air and the possibility of our aviation striking, without pity, the population of the country.”

Another achievement of what might be called the "regular and more legitimate aspects’ of Mr. Mussolini's government is that the maffia of Sicily and Calabria was broken up. Do you know how it was broken up? The larger branch of it was taken over bodily into Fascism. Stated otherwise, the little maffias have ceased to exist. A huge maffia covering the entire country has taken their place.

Treatment of Prisoners

It is in its treatment of prisoners that a government shows its true character. Concerning these Mr. Seldes says in the most matter-of-fact manner:

The tortures are used on political prisoners according to a method prepared in advance and identical in all Italian prisons. Besides the stabbing with sticks filled at the points with powdered lead, besides the fist blows with iron gloves, which are used in all police stations, we have information that the following methods are used upon political prisoners, ‘to make them talk.’

• 1. Blows drawing blood. (Cases of Triests and Mon-facone already denounced in the press)

• 2. The use of boiling water in which the prisoners’ hands are held to extort confessions through physical pain. (Cases of Milan and Brescia)

• 3. Starvation, total darkness and blows used alternately. (This system was first used in Brescia and later was adopted in all Fascist prisons.)

• 4. Injections of chemical substances in order to create a state of madness and obtain “information” from the prisoner during his delirium.

• 5. Pricking the testicles with pins until serious inflammation has begun. (Brescia and Genoa)

• 6. In some instances tying the testicles with chains or ropes, regulating the pain by steadily increasing pressure. (Rome, Naples and Genoa)

• 7. Thrusting pins deep under the nails. (Turin, Genoa, Milan)

• 8. Enemas of a solution of iodine, causing very painful blisters in the intestines. (Perugia)

• 9. Cutting the tongue with knives.

• 10. Pulling out the hair of the pubes. (As in Monfalcone and in Milan with Signorina Lina Morandotti, sent to a clinic insane from the pain)

• 11. Even making use of insects, as in Florence, where to secure “confessions” from political prisoners a black beetle under glass is kept on the victim three and four hours until he “talks”.

If you have read the foregoing a few times and pondered it, you will perhaps not want to know anything more of what is going on in Italy. Yet you must know that at Ustica, one of Mussolini’s penal islands, when a prisoner committed suicide by jumping into the water tank, the other prisoners were compelled to drink the water from the tank while the body was rotting in it. When a second one committed suicide by jumping into the same tank, a request of the prisoners that the tank should then he cleaned and covered was refused. You should also know that in Italy, “on information received,” it matters not how, a man may be seized without warning, taken away, cross-examined for long periods and handcuffed for from 50 to 150 hours, placed in a sealed car, horribly hot in summer and bitterly cold in winter, and taken away. The ablest men in Italy have been sentenced to a living death because of offenses, real or imaginary, against the dictatorship.

You should know that on Lipari the prisoners are beaten, spat upon, and the militiamen make the rounds of the prisoners’ sleeping quarters five times in a night. When the women begged that the rooms where the children were sleeping be exempt the monsters made ten inspection rounds every night so that sleep and rest became impossible. These militiamen even said in the presence of the prisoners that the day is coming when there will be a general massacre of the prisoners.

You should know that in Rome itself a young man named Milosh was “crucified^-’, Mussolini’s militiamen undertaking to pull the arms out of the body, which resulted in the breaking of the aorta. Death relieved the poor man of his agony. You should also know that in Regio Emilia twenty-five anti-Fascist workingmen were massacred.

In addition to blows, clubbing, kicks, and spitting in the face, the Chekah and the regular blackshirt militiamen use sandbags, irons, and an instrument they jokingly call a “nut-craeker”. It is made of two wooden sticks, fastened at one end by a piece of leather. The pain of the men tortured in this ‘nut-cracker’ is beyond human imagination.

Other Interesting Chapters

While it is a survey of Italian Fascism that has particularly attracted our attention, yet there are many other interesting chapters in Mr. Seldes’ book. He thinks the militarization of youth as practiced in Italy and Russia is leading on to another world war in which it will be decided whether Russian or American culture shall prevail. Our subscribers know that we rejoice in the assurance that God has a better way, which He will put into operation by executing in a wholesale manner all young and old murderers of Russia and Italy, as well as of the nations to the west. A reading of Mr. Seldes’ book will convince any honest person that this so-called “civilization” of ours is so rotten that it is falling apart and is really demanding for itself the destruction to which it is entitled and which it will receive at the hands of Almighty God.

Another item or two in passing. Stalin is building in the Urals an industrial center capable of supplying all of Russia with munitions of war, from raw ore to the finished guns and chemicals of the future conflict. Italian and Bulgarian money is spreading Fascism throughout Bulgaria. From the moment he enters the country every American reporter is shadowed, and should he once dare to speak to a politician of any of the five non-Fascist parties, he becomes an object of special suspicion. The police pay the porters at hotels and apartment houses to report on mail received and sent out by journalists, to whom sent, from whom received, the names of visitors, persons he dines with and the itineraries of his trips.

In Mr. Seldes’ book you will see Germany going Fascist as you have seen it of late in the daily press, and you will have it pointed out to you that modern warfare is the liberation of nitrogen from its compounds and that Germany has facilities for ‘fixing’ more than twenty times the amount of nitrogen that all the rest of the world combined can ‘fix’. One of the new German airplanes is described as capable of carrying four small cannon, as well as numerous machine guns. These planes can carry five tons of bombs, keep an altitude of about 20,000 feet, beyond the anti-aircraft range, and make the circuit Madrid, Rome, Paris, Brussels and back without a landing.

One more item will be of considerable interest to many of our readers because sometime ago we had an article on psychoanalysis and more recently one on demonism. On page 418 of his interesting book Mr. Seldes tells what happened to a young married woman who went to one of these psychoanalysis “experts”. It is enough of itself to make us long for God’s kingdom, for which we pray, and it convinces us that there is no other cure for human woes:

He made her take a pad and pencil to her bedside and lay guard on her dreams. In a week he had her dreaming herself into a fantastic repugnance at the very thought of returning to the man who was footing the bills. In another week he had her dreaming of himself as the substitute for the husband. The third week they went to Budapest together, and left the boy alone in a Vienna hotel. The woman was lost in an irresponsible trance of neurotic passion in which all the social and personal obligations that hitherto had governed her were less than shadows. She had developed such a fixation on the psychoanalyst that she speedily bored him, and without making the faintest attempt to transfer her fixation from himself to anyone else, or even back to the husband, he left her. A month later the husband found the shattered wreck of his wife in a sanitarium. She had a maniacal aversion to his mere presence in the same room, and the baffled and agonized man was compelled to leave her there and return to America with the boy, whom she could not bear near her either.

The Friend of God

“Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? . . . and he was called the Friend of God.”—James 2: 22, 23.

Paper By Francis J. Cirves

THE first information we have of the making of paper on which records were kept is from the Egyptians in 4000 B.C. It was produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, a reed that grows wild today along the banks of the Nile. Paper was also produced from the leafy tuft that grew on the tip of the stem, which was about eight feet out of the mud.

In the year 105 B.C. Tsai Lun, a Chinaman, prepared paper from the bark of trees, especially the mulberry; also from hemp, rags and fishnets. Archaeological discoveries relate how the inventor later committed suicide, due to court intrigue. The Chinese also originated the use of lichen and starch for sizing, and gypsum for improving the surface. The Arabians learned the art from Chinese prisoners in Samarkand in A.D. 751.

The writings of the Hebrews were performed by the scribes, who wrote with ink upon parchment rolls and scrolls. Such scrolls were made of smooth sheepskins and goatskins and rolled up from the ends, and were so large and bulky as to require a wheelbarrow to cart several of them.

In the days of the apostles, stationery was considerably in use by those who were able to read and write. These papers were not as thin and smooth as we have today, nevertheless they were suitable for letters, books, official records and documents. In 2 John 12 the apostle states: “Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink/’ Paul mentions “the books” and “the parchments” in 2 Timothy 4:13.

Although printing by movable type was not invented until 1450, by Gutenberg, paper was first made in Germany in Ravensburg, in 1290.

Up to 1800 paper was made everywhere from cotton and linen rags. With the increase of knowledge and of demand for writing and printing facilities the dirth of paper-making fibres was overcome with the introduction of the wood fibre, of which there is a good supply in our forests. Paper-making fibres are also obtained from straw, hemp, jute, sisal, esparto, bamboo, cornstalks, bagasse or sugar cane. Esparto, which is also known as Spanish grass, grows in Spain and in northern Africa. It resembles a stout wire and yields a high-grade book or printing paper. It has found much favor in England and other European countries.

Uses of Wood and Cellulose

The wood or cellulose fibre is not limited to the production of paper, but has widened into a diversity of uses and applications. Allied paper products are wall board, shipping containers, drums, waterproof boxes and cans, cups, towels, handkerchiefs, twine, meshed cord sacks, wicker supplies, floor mats, window shades, etc.

Paper when properly produced and treated is used in the electrical industry for cable insulation, condenser dielectric, panel board and fibre paper, board and tubing.

Woods or specially treated wood pulp high in alpha content or pure cellulose is used in great quantities for the production of rayon or artificial silk or fibre for clothing purposes. Celluloid, a camphor cellulose derivative, is used in many commodities. Cellophane, an air- and moisture-proof paper, is finding many uses, due to its transparency and convenience in the handling and sale of packaged goods. We must not leave out the lacquers and enamels which are cellulose solutions of volatile solvents, together with gums for adhesive purposes, and pigments and dyes for enamel finishes and coloring. Duco auto body finish is such a cellulose product. All this indicates that man is dependent upon the tree for shelter, dress, convenience and usages, as well as the fruits thereof to sustain his being.

Chemical Nature of Cellulose

Although considerable information has been obtained of the nature and chemistry of wood, much is yet to be learned. In order that papermaking can be better understood it is necessary to examine the wood and the cellulose constituents of which it is made. Wood is made up of chemical compounds, which begins with the simplest forms, namely, carbon dioxide that is obtained from the atmosphere, and water that is absorbed from the earth, to form other compounds of increasing complexity of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen until it reaches the end product known as lignin, which is a stable additive form of cellulose. The transition from the lower to the higher compounds is gradual, so that their chemical natures and reactions which distinguish them differ only very slightly. However, microscopic views of wood sections reveal a cellular and fibrous structure, a segregation of component constituents which ultimately form the tree.

By the action of heat and the sun rays the water (II²O) and carbon dioxide (CO²) are synthesized into acids, carbonic and formic (H²CO³ and ILCO²H), which further polymerize into simple sugars, or monosaccharoids and polysac-charoids (C⁶H¹⁽’O⁵ and C¹²H²²O¹⁰). Starches are formed (C¹²H²²O¹⁰)n also, hcmi-celluloscs, celluloses, and lastly ligno-celluloses. The structures of the latter compounds are complex, though many formulas have been suggested. The X-ray has been of assistance in understanding the structure of the cellulose fibre.

The Nature of a Tree

A chemical analysis of coniferous or pine wood will approximate 53% cellulose, 28% lignin, 13% hemi-cellulose, 5% resins and waxes, and 1% proteins, mineral matter and tannin. This does not include the baric, for these are much higher in tannins. Coniferous or evergreen trees contain resins, whereas the deciduous, or the broad-leaved trees, which grow in the summer seasons, are non-resinous. A cross section of a log reveals the bark and rings of spring and summer wood. If the weight of the dry cellulose constituents be doubled, due to approximately 50% moisture contained in green wood, and the volume increased to 15% air space, the tree is made up in bulk and is only slightly lighter than water, so that it may float. In fact, some of our ordinary woods, such as green red oak, black ash, or sugar maple, will not float with the bark removed.

Although wood is made up of 50%-G0%> cellulose, in cooking or releasing the cellulose fibres a yield of 40%-48% is obtained, and is known as wood pulp. Under a microscope a fibre appears like a fine hair, cellular in structure. A jack pine fibre is .025 mm (millimeter) in diameter and 4 mm long (.001 x.15 inch), or .150.200 inch greater in length than in width. The hard woods are short-fibred, being .003 mm in diameter and .03 mm long, or .0012 x .012 inch, which length is ten times the diameter. Closer examination of a fibre will reveal that it is made up of a jacket in which is encased spools of fibriles which play an important part in the process of making a sheet.

In the tree the fibres are placed longwise adjacent to one another and much like bricks are staggered. The cellular- jacket is ingrown with lignin and is encrusted with it, cementing it to the neighboring fibres. It is this encrustant matter, or lignin, that must be removed to free the individual fibres in the pulping or cooking process.

Wood which is to be converted into paper arrives at the paper mill in four-foot and eightfoot bolts. If they are not already stripped of their bark, this is done by a tumbling process, after which it is cut into chips about three-quarters inch thick and one to two inches rectangular, being sheared in such manner so as to open up the grain for ease of penetration of the cooking liquor.

The chemical processes for reducing wood chips to a pulp are the alkaline or the sulphate and the soda processes, the acid or the sulphite process, and the neutral or the Keebra process. There are certain modifications and adaptations of these methods caused by the percentage variations of the active chemicals. Certain advantageous things are obtained by each process, and the pulp produced goes to make up the different kinds of paper.

The Sulphite Process

The sulphite process was discovered by an American chemist, Tilghman, in 1SG6, and is essentially described in his English patent. The Swedish chemist Ekman, who started the first sulphite mill in Sweden, is credited with making the process a success. The pulp is obtained by subjecting wood chips to an acid treatment of sulphurous acid and calcium bisulphite solution. The cooking liquor is prepared in a tall tower packed with lump limestone that is subjected to a gravitational flow of sulphuric acid solution. The pulping process consists of the dissolution of the ligno-celluloses by hydrolysis. The fibre, which is washed and screened, must be subjected further to a hydration process before it passes over the paper machine or Fourdrinier to be formed into a sheet.

A sulphite digester is of riveted plate iron construction lined with acid-resistant brick, although bare chrome steels are reported to be very successful. The digesters are 25 to 75 feet in height and 10 to 17 feet in diameter, holding from five to forty cords of hardwood in the form of chips. The cooking cycle may be as high as twenty-four hours, the temperature being gradually raised to 300°F. The yield of pulp on the bone dry basis is from three to twelve tons per cook, or about 40% of the original green wood.

The sulphite process produces more papei- by far than any of the others. This is because it produces a whiter sheet, which requires only a little bleaching to produce a full white sheet for use as book, stationery and good grades of paper. Sulphite stock is also incorporated with rag, cotton and linen to produce a heavier and stronger sheet for use for documents, bonds, and policies. The best grades of paper may contain very little or no sulphite, the principal ingredients being cotton or linen, or both, from which Bible paper is obtained, as well as chart, drawing, and blotting or absorbent paper. Good bond or stationery, however, may contain considerable amounts of bleached sulphite. Newsprint is made of one to three unbleached sulphite and ground wood. Very often soda pulp is also used with sulphite and ground wood, as in catalogs. Book papers may he of soda, bleached magazine stock with 5%-40% clay.

Soap wrappers and crepe are of unbleached sulphite stock. Manila paper contains 25%-65% ground wood. Paper which has an oily and parchmentined appearance, often referred to as glassine, is of bleached sulphite highly hydrated or gelatinized, which is characteristic of all. parchment.

The Sulphate Process

The sulphate or kraft process is an alkaline cook. It was introduced in Danzig, in 1884, by C. F. Dahl, as a substitute for the more expensive soda process. A higher yield also is obtained. G. F. Enderlein put it on a successful operative basis. The first kraft mill on this continent was placed at East Angus, Quebec, in 1907; whereas one of the first kraft mills in this country was built at Mosinee, Wisconsin, about 1910. The process is well suited to coniferous woods high in resin content, due to the fact that the alkali saponifies or dissolves fatty acids and rosins, which is not possible in an acid or sulphite process. The wood chips are digested in a rotating digester of four to six cords capacity and subjected to a temperature of 330°F. for one to four hours. The caustic soda and sodium sulphide in the cooking liquor attacks and dissolves the lignin, releasing the cellulose fibre. The caustic is converted into alkali carbonates and alkali lignate, which can be recovered by evaporation and burning. The sulphide is replaced by the addition of sodium sulphate (whence the name) in the recovery furnaces with the subsequent reduction to the alkali sulphide. The carbonate is changed to the hydrate by means of hydrated lime in the causticizing process.

The sulphate process yields a pulp that produces a sheet of unusual strength and is referred to as kraft and is generally used for wrapping, being easily distinguishable by its tan color. It is used for toweling (when unsized), filing forms, box liners, catalog covers, for bag paper, magazine wrap and fruit tissue when mixed with sulphite. Considerable kraft is used for business stationery, which is very often lightened somewhat by mild bleaching or dyed to give a golden brown. Kraft, when thoroughly bleached, produces an exceptionally strong and high-grade bond of firmness, durability and good rattle, though the production is curtailed because of the higher cost of bleaching.

Miscellaneous Processes

The soda cook is an alkaline process similar to the sulphate. The omission of sodium sulphate in the recovery process produces a pulping liquor containing only the active hydrate which is more drastic in action, yet it yields a lighter pulp of easy bleaching qualities even though its strength is somewhat impaired. The wood used is poplar, although other woods, such as yellow pine and spruce, are employed. The digesters may be stationary, of welded iron construction, employing a steam pressure of 60-90 pounds per square inch, the cooking time being from three to five hours.

Ground wood or mechanical pulp is produced in large quantities by subjecting four-foot bolts placed in a magazine hopper to pressure sufficient to disintegrate them against a revolving sandstone five feet in diameter. This is a very efficient method of producing pulp, since the conversion is 88%, twice as much as that obtained by chemical processing. The fibres are not released as such, however, but consist of finely divided and shredded wood, which are removed in a water suspension which also serves to cool the grindstone. Ground wood is used in chip boards, card boards, box boards, as well as wall boards. Some papers have been made entirely of ground wood, however, by steaming the logs before grinding, to soften them. Wall boards are made up of laminations of ground wood which are sized with rosin and glued together by means of sodium silicate. Plaster board consists of a top and bottom liner of ground wood with lime plaster between. Cheap wrapping papers are produced by incorporating the finer ground wood particles with chemical fibres during the process of paper-making. Woods used for newsprint purposes are the firs. Spruce, hemlock, tamarack and pine are generally used, as well as poplar, birch and pine as fillers.

Ground wood can often be detected by examination of the sheet for woody shives. An alcoholic, solution of phloroglucinol will color ground wood red, due to the lignin reaction. Sulphite and kraft fibres must be distinguished under the microscope by dye absorption.

The preparation of pulp is only the first step in the production of paper. The processing of the fibres by means of beaters and Jordans to hydrate or partially gelatinize them is another step. To the stock is also incorporated rosin size, and alum together with fillers and ingredients such as talc, clay, casein, starch, dyes, etc. The stock thus prepared is formed into a sheet by passing over the Fourdrinier wire, thence to the dryers, and finally through the calenders, the sheet being reeled as it emerges from the machine. Such Fourdriniers may be upward of 270 feet in length producing a sheet 150 inches in width traveling at a thousand feet a minute. The most recent book paper machine produces a sheet about 28 feet in width, producing an acre of paper in seventy seconds.

The Giving of Gifts (C'onG

FOR every action there is a reaction. For everything given out there must be a corresponding action which satisfies the all-pervading law of .justice, the omnipresent law of recompense. God gave man his perfect home in Eden, and the corresponding price was to be perfect obedience to the will of God. Man failed, and loss of Eden followed as a matter of course.

In the purpose of God it became necessary for a corresponding price to be paid to make up for man's failure: a perfect man must die to atone for Adam’s failure. It was the outworking of God’s purpose for the redemption of man, a purpose in which justice ruled. Justice is the great balance wheel that gives meaning and emphasis to love and power. Without justice God himself would be less than God.

It is no compliment to those who continually give gifts without thought as to whether they are deserved or not, nor to those who continually receive such undeserved gifts. They are not appreciated, and only make for growing selfishness and ingratitude. Rich and doting-parents who shower gifts upon their offspring without thought of common sense need not be surprised if their children grow up without perspective on life, having no idea of the “value of money’’, as they put it, if their children become domineering, selfish and snobbish, overbearing and always demanding the best of everything for the mere asking, and even being incensed when others do not anticipate their desires without their asking.

The infernal system of giving “tips’’ is also of devilish origin, and works for no end of injustice all around. Secretly, it is likely that no one receives a tip without loss of self-respect; for the godlike qualities are not quite dead in the human heart. No doubt Nietzsche had in mind something of the idea of the injustice of reckless giving of gifts when he said that 'we should hate our benefactors; for they have no right to place us under obligation by their charity.’ However, true charity is not mere almsgiving: it aims to help unfortunates to help themselves. It is true that gift-giving only encourages vagrancy.

Christmas, with its crazy gift-giving, works for ill feeling among the gift-givers and for no end of injustice to the poor clerks in the stores at the Christmas season and for weeks before. By continually nullifying this great law of just recompense Satan has brought reproach upon God’s name in many ways.

Getting something for nothing is what motivates the holdup thug, the burglar and all thieves, not to mention those highly “respectable’’ thieves who turned traitor to their government and manipulated Teapot Dome to their own selfish interest. Getting something for nothing is like a canker that eats: eats at all selfrespect and destroys the best in the individual.

Again, we see contemptible persons seeking to injure the reputation that someone has worked for and deserved. Too lazy to deserve anything themselves, they resort to the practice of trying to bring the deserving individual down to their own level through mud-slinging. These persons are not willing to see anyone profit through honest effort. Inspired by the Devil, they hate anyone who pays the price and receives a well-earned recompense.

The giving of undeserved gifts plays the greatest role in those cases where lewd women live off the bounty of rich men. These creatures demand gifts in every form: fine homes, furs, fine clothes, limousines, servants, etc. There is no end to their selfish and degraded desires. All they give in return is “love” that is not love at all, but simply selfish gratification. This kind of “love” usually brings loathsome disease, suicide, murder, disgrace, and horrible friendless old age.

Beware when you give a gift! It may seem like a good thing; but many things are not what they seem on the surface.

Someone will say that Christ did not have money to give gifts when He was on earth, but that He gave life where death had come, and that He gave health where even leprosy reigned, and then ask if these were not free gifts. Yes, they were gifts; but He always asked if the afflicted believed that He was able to do the thing asked. When answering in the affirmative the afflicted were acknowledging the power of God for benefits received; and this was just what was required of Adam, but through the influence of Eve he was led to acknowledge Satan’s “wisdom”, which was only the beginning of the age-old misery of humanity.

Osteopathic Treatment of Insanity By Arthur D. Hildreth, D. 0. (Mo.)

FROM a booklet entitled Mental Patients in State Hospitals 1928, published in 1931 by the U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, we find, in Tables I and II, that this country’s public and private institutions for the. insane had 267,617 resident patients on January 1, 1923, and only 187,791 on January 1, 1910. Here was an increase of more than forty-two and one-half percent in thirteen years. The figures do not include the insane cared for at home, in alms houses, in prisons, etc. Of the 267,617 resident patients in 1923, 229,664(eighty-five and eight-tenths percent) were in public hospitals. On January 1, 1929, these public institutions had 272,527, a further increase of fourteen and a half percent in six years. In addition there were 31,127 listed patients temporarily absent or on parole, making a total of 303,654 Jisted in public hospitals alone. A prominent psychiatrist states that one out of every twenty-six babies born in the United States is destined to become incapacitated by abnormalities of the mind. Dr. Charles H. Mayo is quoted by How to Live as having said in a recent address, “Every other hospital bed in the United States is for the mentally afflicted, insane, idiotic, feeble-minded or senile persons.” All those facts show the desperate need of a remedy.

Insanity! Think of it! In your state of New York there exists a condition of insanity and its control, or rather lack of control, that is paralleled in only one other state of the Union. I quote the report of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene when I tell you that in 1930 there were 56,496 patients in institutions for the insane in this state. Ten years earlier, in 1920, there were 40,780 such patients; an increase of almost 35 percent. Ten years ago in this state the insane patients were 390 in every 100,000 population. The present proportion is 445 to every 100,000 population. Moreover, in your state institutions the number of insane patients housed exceeded the capacity of those institutions by 35.4 percent. The most appalling condition of overcrowding was in Kings Park Asylum. The certified capacity of that institution is 3,742. In 1930 it housed 5,776, an excess of 2,034 unfortunates, which is 54.4 percent above capacity, these figures again being given by your State Department of Mental Hygiene. If this growth of insanity is to continue, you, as physicians, must shudder when you visualize the insane asylums of 1982.

The object of this article is to emphasize the fact that there is a cure for most types of insanity. The seventeen-year record of one of our osteopathic institutions for the treatment of mental disorders has shown that osteopathy, when given a fair trial, cures more than fifty percent of the insane. Since 1892, when the first school of osteopathy was established by Doctor Andrew Taylor Still, this system of therapy has had to fight against ignorance and prejudice for every inch of its progress. Against organized opposition it has won its way, and the position it occupies today is due to the fact that it has been able to demonstrate its worth in the cure of human disease, including many conditions pronounced incurable by other systems. So it is with insanity; the osteopathic records speak for themselves.

During the past seventeen years more than two thousand insane people have come under osteopathic treatment and care. Of those remaining under treatment a. reasonable length of time recoveries were made by fifty-five percent : a record previously unheard of in the cure of the mentally sick. These cures were, due primarily to osteopathic treatment, which means the correction of all physical maladjustments, whether of bone, muscle or sinew, but especially of the spinal bones, in order to remove sources of nerve irritation and the resulting disturbances of function. Tims osteopathy seeks to cure by removing the cause.

About Books and Authors By Jay Lewis

(An appreciation of Judge Rutherford's book Life) (From Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch)

Mu. Rutherford devotes an entire chapter to Job in his book Life. He covers the entire book of Job from the first chapter to the last and finally in a summary gives the lesson of the book. This lesson is that Jehovah is the only true God, that His power is supreme and that He is the source of all life. That Satan is the embodiment of evil, the enemy of man, and the adversary of God. That Satan has a powerful organization both visible and invisible to man; that on earth there is a class of men and women who have a desire for righteousness but who have been blinded by the efforts and misrepresentations of Satan and his agencies. That God also has an organization, part of which is invisible to human eyes; that shortly God will express His indignation against Satan and his agencies by a demonstration of His power in a time of trouble to be visited upon the world; that following the time of trouble peace will come to the peoples of the earth and all will be brought to a knowledge of the truth and that those who will know and obey God shall be restored to their homes, their friends, their property, and be given even much more than they ever before possessed, and, above all, the obedient will receive life everlasting and dwell together in peace upon earth forever.

This appears to be the doctrine proclaimed by Mr. Rutherford. And there is no great quarrel with it, on the whole. It is not altogether unreasonable.

The opening statement concerning Job by the author of the book Life, however, rather stumped this reviewer for a while. It reads: “Jehovah is the greatest moving picture producer. He permits men to make some pictures and as a result of their efforts they think they are great.”

The first thought was that Author Rutherford was referring to Hollywood, for there is no doubt that they think they are great in that neck of the woods. And it is also true that nature provides the greatest of all motion pictures.

But it seems that Mr. Rutherford also means that Jehovah illustrates His teachings through the life of men and that Job was one of His illustrations : a motion picture by which the triumph of good over evil, through the faith and abiding fortitude of a sturdy, true man, is shown.

And, of course, with that view none may quarrel, for it seems to be eminently right.

The Higher Quackery By Robert Hutchison, M.D., F.R.C.P. (London) (Reprinted from the British Medical Journal)

IT IS commonly said that education is a great safeguard against quackery and faddery. I profoundly disbelieve it. So far as I can see, the higher one goes in the social scale the more does fashion in health matters prevail and the so-called intelligentsia are the most gullible of all, and it would almost seem, indeed, as if everyone has a certain stock of credulity and the more skeptical he is in everything else the more credulous is he in matters medical. It may be replied that this is the result of the wrong kind of education and that what is needed is more teaching of science. Again I disbelieve. If this were so the saying of Matthews Duncan would not be true (as I, for one, believe it to be) that “there are more quacks inside the profession than outside of it”.

Mother Explains

(Bcprinted from the New York Herald Tribune')

To the Milkman:

You see, Sir, I have four children, And children must drink milk.

Last spring I got a report from the school nurse That Bob was anemic and Emily under-weight. “Give them milk three times daily,” read the report.

You see, Sir, it is important that I have good milk to feed them.

My husband will find work soon.

Why, just this morning I read in the paper That the unemployed are to be cared for.

But first they must be counted:

Four, five, six millions.

And it is only a few hours between

Breakfast, dinner and supper.

I will be able to pay the bill soon.

You see, Sir, I have four children.

To the Landlord:

No, Sir, my husband is not at home.

He is out looking for a job.

He spends every day looking for a job.

And some day soon I know he will find it.

My husband is a good mechanic, and good mechanics will be wanted soon.

But right now we have four children.

There was a fine piece in the paper this morning.

There will be nothing to fear this winter.

The “Load of Distress”, I think they called it, Will be lifted.

But before the. load is lifted it must be weighed.

I wonder what sort of scales they use to weigh a “Load of Distress”,

And how many pounds of distress

Equal a ton of coal.

Please, Sir, be patient a little longer.

My four children cannot live in the street.

To the Gas Company Collector:

Yes, Sir, I remember, Sir.

I promised you a week ago and I can't make good.

Not today, but one week from today.

You know my husband is a mechanic.

He used to w’ork for the gas company, and he had a fine record, too.

He must land a job soon.

Perhaps the gas company will take him back.

You saw the piece in this morning’s paper: How all the big corporations are behind the

Government;

How they are counting the jobless and helping to weigh

The “Load of Distress”.

They’ll get around to us any day now.

Please, Sir, don’t turn off the gas, not yet.

The stew meat I get is pretty tough.

It takes a lot of cooking.

To the. Social Investigator:

Husband and four children:

Ages four, six, ten, thirteen.

Husband, a mechanic; out of work since last April.

Resources, you ask?

Five hundred dollars savings in the Bank of United States.

Five hundred dollars saved in 15 years.

We’ll get some of it some day.

Yes, we’ll get along somehow until my husband gets a regular job.

What’s your job?

Checking up on the “Load of Distress” they’re talking about in the papers?

Well, you can count us out.

Just tell your boss that there isn’t a pound of distress here.

Tell your boss that my husband wants a job, that’s all.

I know things are going to be better this winter.

I read it in the papers.

Thank you for calling. Thank you, so much.

To the children:

What, you don’t like bread without butter?

lVhy, that’s the way everybody is eating it these days.

Four, five, six millions of people.

You will like it better that way when you get used to it.

It’s like cake,

And you don’t eat butter on cake.

Let’s pretend we are eating cake;

A load of cake.

Jehovah’s witnesses in Burmah By 8. B. Coote*

WE ARE a company of four way out in Bur-mah, residing in Pyuntaza, a railway center 87 miles up the line from Rangoon. We are small in number but ‘great is the company that publish’ Jehovah’s Word. We work through the Bombay office and I write this direct, as I know that the limited staff we have in our offices are also kept busy the whole day.

Gladly, boldly and hopefully we go about publishing Jchovaifs name, and it surely would interest you to know that, even out in this remote corner, the great God has His purposes. The following incidents are worthy of note and I detail them below by way of information.

Incident No. 1: Joining a ‘sharpshooter’ sister at Toungoo (another railroad center eighty miles farther north) we placed, a few weeks back, 32 booklets and 13 volumes. A good many of these fell into the hands of Roman Catholics. The parish priest heard of this and, a few days later, rushed around collecting the books we had placed. ‘Truthful’ as these Roman Catholics are to their “shepherd”, of the twenty or more books taken by them, only one Kingdom booklet was given up; the other poor innocent truthful sheep had not even ‘heard’ of the books. One, who had taken a supply, answered, “Nothing doing, father’; I will never buy or read religious books outside the catholic church, and I will never change my catholic faith.”

At church service the following Sunday announcement was made to the effect that all Roman Catholics found reading Judge Rutherford's books will be excommunicated; that Mrs. D'Souza (once a prisoner in the Roman Catholic church but now our resident sharpshooter) is responsible for the distribution of the books, and therefore she is soon to be excommunicated. That parson might have saved himself from making the latter part of this announcement, because Mrs. D’Souza had given heed to Jehovah’s warning “Come out of her my people” and, a good while before this, had just ‘jumped out of the mire’. Following this several other announcements were made by the priest, who even went around telling Mrs. D’Souza’s friends not

♦'(From a personal letter to Judge Rutlierfoid; a little too long for The Watchtower, but just long enough for The Golden -Ige. Sometime when ears seem unduly deaf in the field where you strive to uphold the honor of Jehovah’s name, just give a thought to those that are far out on the skirmish lines, far out on the edge of the world, courageously carrying on the fight under conditions far more difficult than any we face at home.—Ed.) to visit her any more as she “will try to convert you to her new religion”.

The writer of this article visited Toungoo some weeks later and a clash with the priest was the result. After a short argument the priest wound up with “That may be as you explain, but the pope is infallible, and if he interprets otherwise, we are bound to follow.” I may mention that that priest showed very little knowledge of the Bible. In course of our conversation he said to me, “Do not be annoyed if I pass my opinion on the Kingdom booklet which I have read.” “Not that your opinions count,” I said, “but carry on.” “My opinion,” he said, “is that it was written by a mad man.” I smiled, I laughed, I jumped for joy, and then replied: “Good; you could not have given a more favorable opinion.” He looked surprised and told me that I ought to burn all the books I have, after having heard a remark of that nature. “Are you familiar with the name Paul?” I asked. “Why sure,” he replied, “did not Paul write a lot of our Bible ?” “Please turn to Acts 26: 24,” I suggested. We found the verse, and the priest read it. “Now tell me,” I said, “just how mad was Paul ?’’ That was too much for him, and he preferred to remain silent. “Thank you. Good night,” I said, and left him pondering.

I left with him nine of your volumes. He is reading them and is also circulating them amongst the clergy there. I wonder if we have ‘insane asylums’ enough to accommodate a million or more of us. The clergy in Toungoo are now declaring that ‘you and all your followers are insane’. I quote from a letter received from this same priest some days later, and this will show just how much these people understand of what they read about. “You are simply favoring the propaganda of Judge Rutherford, a Jew, who hopes against hope to reestablish his nation. My friendly advice to you is to give up the propaganda in favor of a Jew and to resume the faith of your fathers.”

Incident No. 2: One of the clergy of Toungoo, taking a class in Bible study, read out to the children a passage from your book lieconciliation and wanted to know “with what authority does Judge Rutherford write the following [page 100, paragraph 2]: ‘The doctrine of the trinity was first introduced into the Christian church by a clergyman of Antioch named Theophilus.’ ” He further read: “If you ask a clergyman what is meant by the trinity he will say ‘it is a mys-

tery’.” “Now I would like to ask the man who wrote this book,” he said, “how a tiny plant grows into a big tree, and I am sure he will say ‘it is a mystery’; so in the same way the trinity is a mystery.” Then he added: “A few of the millionaires of the U. S. A. invested their money in Palestine in order to rebuild it. Now to recover that money they have written these books and are selling them. They were written by some stupid person, and all those who agree with him are stupid.” Every ‘curse’ is a blessing.

Incident No. 3: This exposes these “bellygods”. The leading priest of Burmah, who has charge of the Roman Catholic cathedral in Rangoon, escorted six nuns of the order of The Poor Clairs, to Nyaunglebin, a station five miles north of Pyuntaza. This was for the purpose of visiting the shrine of ‘Our Lady of Lourdes’. The priest in charge of the Nyaunglebin church accompanied them on their return to Rangoon. When passing through Pyuntaza I noticed that two of the nuns were traveling in a first-class compartment with the two priests, while the other four nuns were in the second-class compartment. The ticket checker neglected the check of this compartment. I ordered it (I am the station master of Pyuntaza, by the way). The priests held first-class privilege passes; the nuns, only second-class tickets. The clergy around here are swell-headed enough to think nothing of breaching rules in this way and appropriating to themselves privileges which they are not entitled to.

The Roman Catholics and even other employees of the railway fear these clergy to the extent of overlooking such faults to the neglect of their duties. However, it was not one of their own Babylonian prisoners they had to contend with on this occasion, but one of the true witnesses of Jehovah. ‘’Levy excess fare, and if not willing to pay difference of fare for onward travel, ask the nuns to please move into the second-class,” were the orders I issued to the ticket checker. The orders were very reluctantly conveyed to the clergy. There was a great ado; the priest said it was all rubbish and nonsense: the station master was to be called at once. I walked up. “What is this man talking rubbish?” said the Rangoon priest to me, meaning the ticket examiner, “it is only ladies after all, and surely it can be overlooked.” “No rubbish at all,” I replied ; “rules are rules and must be abided by.”

He never in the least expected such a rebut; it is most unusual for them to meet with such opposition out here, where they are treated like gods. Quite taken aback and annoyed, “It is nothing but a shame for you to behave like this,” he said. The nuns did not wait to be told a second time. They were up and getting out of the compartment. If looks could kill, this narrative could not have been related by me. I held my poise and was very courteous, performing my duties as I ought to. Again the priest cried shame on me. “Thank you,” I said; “this is the first tune I learn that it is a shame for one to be honest in one’s duties.”

While my clerk was preparing the Excess Fare Receipt, several rude remarks were passed between the two priests, such as, “This station master is going to get a promotion because he is excessing priests,” etc., etc. I remained silent. When handing over the receipt, for the third time I was told that I ought to be ashamed of myself for the way in which I behaved. This was too much to bear and I could not help but reply, “You preach honesty but encourage dishonesty.”

I may mention that this piece of honest work on my part has brought me into the bad books of my superior, whose mind has been biased against me by the Nyaunglebin priest and other Roman Catholics who have laden him with false and exaggerated tales about our witness work out here. Imagine being told by a superior that I should restrict my actions towards the clergy.

Incident No. 4: The railway chaplain (Anglican church) used to hold monthly services at this station. The other three witnesses here, and I, were members. Owing to the poor outlook ahead, there was a proposal to dispense with the services of the chaplain. He spoke to me to try to keep up the collections he got from here, as he would not like to be sent away. We kept on for about two months. Jehovah through His servant. Judge Rutherford, did ‘lighten our darkness’. We did not any more feel like hearing about the “immortal soul” or like singing “God in three persons, blessed trinity”. The Bible held out to us a widely different story, and a far better one at that.

We stepped out of Babylon boldly, with the usual threats, of course, that we would not be buried by a priest, that our children would not be christened, etc., etc. Attendance at service usually amounted to about 12. That dwindled to a couple, and, finally, to the parson’s having to preach to himself. The folks around preferred an armchair in a snug corner of their homes with Deliverance or The Harp of God or other interesting books which they had taken from us, to the usual “gospel” meeting wherein they were, told more about collections for this and for that than about the Bible. The bomb did its work. In the chaplain’s tour program, Pyun-taza is now omitted. The same thing may happen at one or two more stations. The poor chaplain must be biting his nails. Will he have to sail soon?

Let me tell you that there is a stir in Burmah now about the truth as there never before was. The clergy are up in arms against us, urging the authorities to harm us, but the witness work is going boldly onward. The railway officials want to know why all this depression has come about and when it will end. When they are told to read all about it in your books and in the Bible they scoff at the idea. “The Bible has nothing at all to do with it,” they say; “religion is a lot of rubbish.” The clergy give the people hopes that “good times” are just around the corner. Lately some of us were threatened with arrest if w^Te did not stop witnessing, but each one says, “That’s the ‘spur which pricks the sides of my intent’.” This is what a recent convert has to say: “There is no doubt that there is but one true God, Jehovah. It is only after reading some of the books and receiving explanations from Jehovah’s witnesses that I understand the Bible. All this while our priests have been teaching us a religion to suit their own pockets.” This is from the pen of a once very staunch Roman Catholic who, at the commencement, called us ‘antichrists’.

We. have about twelve brethren in Rangoon; and three others, with their families, I am informed, joined our ranks a few days ago.

I sent a typewritten copy of your ‘Challenge’ to a Roman Catholic relative of mine in Maymyo, pointing out that if the Roman Catholics were anywhere near the truth they would accept it. He in turn sent it on to the Catholic Truth Society, India, asking them to accept it. “It is all rubbish. Pray to the Savior and our lady and you will be all right,” was the reply he got.

The company at Pyuntaza is composed of Brother Dickens and myself, with our wives, making four.

At Toungoo is Sister D’Souza, and last week, Mr. D’Souza and Miss D’Souza were added. Mr. D’Souza, I may mention, is a Goan, and was a very staunch Roman Catholic. His example will bear weight. He was deeply impressed with the account of the Goans in East Africa, given in The Golden Age.

At Maymyo, a hill station at the other end of the line, is Sister Adjie, who has been a faithful witness for the past four years.

Brother Tsatos, of Rangoon, lately introduced into the truth a young Burman graduate, who has turned out a keen witness. This happened just at the time when we were wanting the Kingdom booklet translated into Burmese, and our young Burmese friend has very kindly undertaken to do this for us. This proves how wonderfully Jehovah God accomplishes His purposes.

There are several others who are deeply interested and who are considering active service. It appears to me that this is God's “due time” to stir Burmah, and that makes me realize the nearness of Armageddon.

And how strange! The revelation of Ezekiel’s prophecy concerning Gog and Magog comes to us at this particular time; a time when the physical facts fit in so minutely with the words of the prophecy. I quote from paragraph 18 of The Watchtower of June 15,1932. “The witness work of the people of God, taking on a wider scope, and being done with an ever increasing enthusiasm, comes to the attention even of Me-shech and Tubal, over which Gog is the prince or the immediate ruler.” This is what is happening in Burmah today. How good and gracious and accurate Jehovah is, that he should bring to us this message of hope at the right time, just when some feel the need of encouragement. How’ lovingly does our Lord now greet and cheer ps with the words of Isaiah 54:17: “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord ; and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.”

All warm Christian wishes go to you from us, and we unite in a prayer that the Almighty may strengthen you in your efforts to lead us on in this greatest of battles. All praise goes to Jehovah.

Blessed

“Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.”—Rev. 14:13.

WE FEEL, somehow, that if a person is valorous for the right, when he knows what is right, he is worthy of life, but if he is not valorous for the right, then it is at least open to argument as to whether he is worth the room he takes up. And that is about the view that the Scriptures present. Obedience to God, that is, obedience to what is right, is a requirement of all who will ever have eternal life.

The conditions surrounding eternal life may be summarized as follows: One must give God the first place in his heart; obey God's commandments to the best of his ability; get a knowledge of Jesus Christ, God's Son; accept Jesus as the bread from heaven; hear and listen to His voice; become one of His sheep; do the work Jesus gives him to do; give earthly possessions a secondary place in his heart; and show love and mercy toward all.

Jehovah God can take a man that is an arrant coward in himself, and if he will be obedient He can make of him a mighty man, a man of valor. We have such a case in the career of Gideon, and it helps us to get a true perspective on this subject of courage. We are helped to see that when we get to the place where the doing of God's will is the most important thing in life we automatically arrive at true valor and true happiness.

It was not long after the death of Joshua before the people of Israel were in trouble. The trouble in every instance was due to the same cause: deflection from God, going away after other gods and being permitted to go the way of their choice until they got into difliculties from which the true God alone could extricate them.

Midianites in Full Control

One such instance we have brought to our attention in the sixth chapter of the book of Judges. The Midianites had come into the land, and Jehovah had permitted them to have an easy victory over His professed people. For seven long years they had been the absolute, uncontested rulers. They had even taken over the Jewish homes, so that multitudes of the Jews had been compelled to make their abode in dens and caves and strongholds in the mountains.— Judges G: 1-4.

When the Jews sowed their fields the Midianites and the Amalekites undertook to look after the reaping, and they did such a good job, or rather such a bad job, that from one end of the land to the other, from the extreme east to Gaza at the extreme southwest, they ‘‘destroyed the increase of the earth” “and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass”.—■ Judges G: 4.

Apparently they were not content with merely taking what they wanted for their own comfort, but laid the entire land waste, devastated it. “For they came up with their cattle, and their tents, and they came as grasshoppers for multitude; for both they and their camels were without number: and they entered into the land to destroy it.”—Judges G:5.

The natural result was that the Jews became greatly impoverished, and, finding that their new gods, the gods of the Amorites, afforded them no comfort or help, they cried to the God of their fathers, the true God, Jehovah, and He heard their cry and answered their prayer.

Why Israel ff'as in Trouble

The first thing Jehovah God did for them was to tell them why they were in trouble. He sent them one of His prophets, reminding them that it was He who had brought Israel forth from Egypt, out of the house of bondage, and who had driven out all their enemies from the land of Canaan and made them to possess it. The concluding words of the prophet were: “And I said unto you, I am Jehovah your God; fear not the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but ve have not obeved mv voice."—Judges 6: 6-10.*                     ’       *

Whatever effect that sermon of the prophet may have had on others, it is certain that it awakened in the mind of one young man a desire to know and to do God’s will. Gideon is mentioned in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews as one of God's men of faith. Without a doubt he heard that sermon of the prophet and without a doubt he believed what he heard and wished that he had some way in which he could act upon his information. No other conclusion is possible in view of what immediately followed the prophet's message.

The account goes on to say that an angel of Jehovah God came, manifestly in human form, and seated himself under an oak near where Gideon was threshing wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the oppressors, the Midianites. Very evidently the sitting posture was adopted so as to avoid startling Gideon ;the angel wanted to put him entirely at his ease.

A Mighty (Timid) Man of Valor

Looking ahead to the things that he knew Jehovah had provided for him to do, and ignoring entirely everything about Gideon except his desire to obey God, to do His will, the angel said to him, in the most matter-of-fact way, “Jehovah is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.” (Verse 12) The context shows that the only reason he was a mighty man of valor was that he was obedient to the King of the universe, and could be used by Him to do His will. He needed to have his backbone stiffened over and over again before he could do anything, and the angel was there to do the stiffening work.

Gideon’s first response was an argument with the angel. The angel had said, “Jehovah is with thee, thou mighty man of valour,” and evidently intended the message to be taken by him personally, but Gideon, with becoming modesty, and in complete self-forgetfulness, thought only of Israel as a whole when he replied: “Oh my Lord, if Jehovah be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not Jehovah bring us up from Egypt? but now Jehovah hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.”—Verse 13.

We can be pretty well assured that the angel of Jehovah suppressed a smile when he looked benevolently on him after that speech and kept right on with the stiffening process, saying, “Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee?” (Verse 14) Gideon’s might was in the fact that Jehovah God had sent him to do something; it was certainly not in anything else, least of all in himself, and we must give him credit for recognizing that fact.

Realizing at last that this spokesman for Jehovah was talking to him personally, and being deeply conscious of his own littleness and weakness, Gideon made reply: “Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.”—Verse 15.

Stiffening Gideon’s Backbone

The angel went right on with the stiffening process, and, speaking for Jehovah, said, “Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man.” (Judges 6:16) That was a large order, but Gideon believed, and to one who believes God all things are possible.

“And he said unto him [the angel], If now I have found grace in thy sight, then shew me a sign that thou talkest with me. Depart not hence, I pray thee, until I come unto thee, and bring forth my present, and set it before thee. And he [the angel] said, I will tarry until thou come again.”—Judges 6:17,18.

Gideon went into the house and prepared food, and brought it out. “And the angel of God said unto him, Take the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and lay them upon this rock, and pour out the broth. And he did so. Then the angel of Jehovah put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes; and there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes. Then the angel of Jehovah departed out of his sight.”—Verses 20 and 21.

Quite likely the angel went up in the smoke associated with the fire, as happened on another somewhat similar occasion. (Judges 13:20) At any rate, Gideon realized that the messenger was an angel, and Gideon was in fear, thinking it portended his death. The Lord comforted him and permitted him to build that day a memorial altar to his name.

Wrecking the Devil’s Religion

That night the angel of Jehovah decided that the time had come to use Gideon to make a wreck of the works of the Devil, and, properly enough, his first point of attack was the Devil’s religion. He told Gideon to throw down his father’s altar of Baal, and cut down the grove adjoining it, then to build an altar to Jehovah God and to sacrifice one of his father’s bullocks as a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the grove. Now, that was quite an undertaking. His father was an idolater, and the times were hard. There was bound to be a family row, and the whole neighborhood would be stirred up, which was just what the angel wanted.

Gideon was afraid to do this job by day, because he feared his father’s household and the men of the city; so he got ten of his servants together and decided to rip things to pieces the next night, and, scared or not scared, they did the business. The fact that he had ten servants of his own shows that he was quite an executive, and could get things done when he once got started. God knew all that when He picked him out.

The next morning the town was in an uproar. The Devil’s church had been wrecked. Baal’s altar had been thrown down and his grove cut up and used for firewood. Gideon was the guilty man. The men of the town came to Joash, his father, and demanded that his son be put to death.

The old man turned out to have some sense, after all, in spite of the fact that he had been a worshiper of Baal. He suddenly put the shoe on the other foot by demanding that anybody that would plead the cause of Baal should himself be put to death while it was yet morning. He claimed, and with reason, that if Baal was a god he ought to be able to fight his own battles.

With that, he called Baal a bad name, Jerub-besheth, which means ‘‘Let the shameful thing plead". It made a hit with the crowd, especially those who had been crying to Jehovah, the God of their fathers, for help, and from that moment all were on the side of Gideon. His father, rather proudly, it seems, gave him a nickname, Jerub-baal, which means ‘‘Let Baal plead’’.

If we may be pardoned for using some of the language we occasionally see in the newspapers, ‘‘Baal took it on the chin right there, and went down for the count.” In other newspaper parlance, "His stock went away below par, with nothing bid and no takers.”

It Was a Big Advertisement

It did not take long for the news to get around. The very next verse says, “Then [as soon as the news reached the Devil's worshipers] all the Midianites and the Amalckites and the children of the east were gathered together, and went over, and pitched in the valley of Jezreel.” (Verse 33) A fresh campaign for the subjugation of the Israelites was seen to be necessary. They reasoned properly that a revolt against their gods would be quickly followed by a revolt against themselves; and that was what took place.

The next verse tells us that the spirit of Jehovah came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet (formally declared war against Israel’s oppressors) and sent messengers over the northern part of Palestine calling for volunteers. The response was prompt and satisfactory. Israel was now definitely ranged on his side, the side of Jehovah God. But despite the good start that had been made, Gideon was still timid.

Obediently, Gideon had already thrown down the Devil’s religion, but now he was about to face the Devil’s military organization, and it looked so formidable that he felt the need of renewed assurance that he was to go right ahead with the program already begun.

Thereupon he asked two more manifestations of divine approval. He would put a piece of wool fleece on the floor. The first night he prayed there might be dew on the fleece only and all around be dry; the second night, that the fleece might be dry and all around be wet. Both prayers were answered affirmatively. The first night the fleece was so wet that Gideon wrung a bowlful of water out of it; and the next night it was as dry as it had been wet the night before.

By this time Gideon had a fair-sized army gathered together, some 32,000 men, all told. Not a great army, as armies go, and certainly nothing as compared with the great army encamped against Israel, of which army the account says, ‘‘And the Midianites, and the Amalek-ites, and all the children of the east, lay along in the valley like grasshoppers for multitude; and their camels were without number, as the sand bv the sea side for multitude.’’—Judges 7:12. ’

And then Jehovah God, through His angel, did several things that are like God, but not at all like man. He whittled down the force to almost nothing. There were too many people in Gideon’s army; if they should have a victory they would certainly take the credit of it to themselves. The real truth that Jehovah himself is the Protector of His people would be hid from view. The blessing of the whole experience would be lost.

Whittling Down the Army

The first act was to invite all the fearful to leave the battlefield, and 22,000 packed up and went and were glad to go. They were on Jehovah's side, oh, yes, if there was anything to be gained by it, but not if there was any chance of ‘■being arrested and thrown into jail, and maybe killed".                                            *

And now here was a good chance to quit honorably. God himself had said that if they were scared they could go home, and they were scared; there was no doubt about that. Therefore common sense said to them that the best thing they could do was to quit while the quitting was good, and away they went.

There was still an army of 10,000 men, and it was still too many. By the method by which they drank at the brook, God selected the 300 men that He would use in the coming victory. It would not be a battle; it would just simply be a victory for Jehovah God. But He would use a handful of honest, zealous, faithful men as coworkers with himself.

By this time Gideon was in a frame of mind where he needed to have his backbone stiffened once more, and again the angel of Jehovah resorted to rare and effective measures to perform the stiffening work.

Gideon was told to go down to the edge of the Midianite camp and listen; and that if he feared, he should take a servant with him, and this he did. He made the trip, probably at night, and when he got there he overheard one man telling another about a dream. He heard his own name mentioned. He heard the dream interpreted, and the interpretation of the dream was that into the hand of Gideon, the son of Joash, God had delivered Midian and all his host.

Gideon Finally and Fully Convinced

That was enough for Gideon. Right where he stood he worshiped the great God that never fails His true people in time of need and that in due time will vindicate His name before all creation. Next he returned to the camp, aroused the three hundred, and told them the good news that Jehovah God had delivered into their hands the host of Midian.

He divided the three hundred into three companies, and put a trumpet in every man’s hand, thus making every man a captain in the army. There were no privates. Everybody on the payroll was a full commissioned officer. Gideon was the general. Jehovah God was the Commanderin-Chief. The heavy artillery consisted of empty pitchers and lamps within the pitchers.

That was good enough. It was so much better than Big Berthas, and howitzers, and machine guns, and rapid-fire rifles, and hand grenades, and poison gas, and liquid fire, that there was no comparison. For the overwhelming victory that was just ahead, the rattle of broken crockery, the flashing of candle lights in the midst of darkness that was as dark as a stack of black cats, and the weird sound of bugle calls from every direction, would be just the thing.

And the arrangement worked! Of course it worked. And the reason it worked was that the wisdom of Jehovah God, and the power of Jehovah God, were back of it. In the middle of the night the three hundred men surrounded the camp of the Midianites, blew their trumpets, broke their pitchers, and held their lights aloft. After that it was all over but the shouting.

The Midianites heard the broken crockery falling on the rocks, and it got on their nerves, for it sounded like a bull in a china shop, not at all particular where he went, and wreaking havoc in every direction at every plunge. They did not know there wore only three hundred pitchers. In the still of the night it sounded like a big-six fire alarm, when all the apparatus in the city comes out.

Panic in the Camp of the Enemy

Jumping from their cots, wide-eyed with alarm, the Midianites heard the crockery still breaking on the rocks and were dazzled by the hundreds of lights shining upon them from every direction. They did not have electric lights in those days, and the gleam of those candle lights in the still air looked like Broadway appears to a countryman in the height of the theater season.

As they pulled their swords from the scabbards the lights were reflected this way and that from every piece of metal in their equipment. The whole camp seemed ablaze with those lights. And then there were the terrifying blasts on the bugles. There were hundreds of them. That meant, to them, that a great army of thousands upon thousands must be right on top of them.

That was enough. Here they were, right on top of him. Off goes the head of the man next to him. He does not see in the darkness that he has disposed of one of the enemies of Jehovah God, one of his own comrades. The next to go down is himself, slain by the sword of his own tent mate.

In a moment the camp of the Midianites was in a panic, and in a panic reason leaves its throne. What had been at twilight an orderly military encampment was at midnight a thoroughly frightened mob, without a semblance of order, in which every man was striking blindly this way and that, intent only on saving his own life, or at least selling it as dearly as possible.

An Overwhelming Victory

We draw the curtain. In the fight, and in the skirmishes that followed, there fell 120,000 men that drew the sword. Most of these men slew one another. The number that were put to death by Gideon and his band were relatively few, though they stayed in the fight till the finish, and until the others of Israel had risen up and taken part in the conflict.

After it was all over, and Israel had rest from her enemies, the men of Israel wanted to make Gideon their king, but Gideon said to them, “I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: Jehovah shall rule over you.” The experiences he had passed through had deeply impressed upon his mind how little he had really had to do with the gaining of the great victory that had been wrought.

He was one of those who had suffered at the hands of the iMidianites; we know that because he tells us of it, and because he was trying to thresh out a little grain in a place where his work would be hidden from the eyes of his exactors. And we may be sure that he was one of those who had cried to Jehovah God to come to the relief of His people. It may have been specially his cry that came to the ears of Jehovah God; likely so.

lu this lesson, however, we are considering merely the subject of obedience in the case of the man Gideon. We see that as a man Gideon was naturally a timid man, and a modest man, but he was an obedient man, and therefore a man that God could use. And he was a man of faith.

A Timid but Always Obedient Man

Gideon has come down to us as ^ca mighty man of valor’, and so he was. It took a valorous man to wreck the Devil's religion at a time when the Devil had apparently the whole land under his control, and it took a valorous man to tackle an army of 200,000 with a total force of 300 men, and to chase the fugitive armies even after they were completely whipped and in full flight.

But it is apparent that Gideon's valor lay entirely in his obedience; and that is where it lies with all the rest of us, if we have it. If we are obedient and submissive to God's will, and zealous to perform that which is entrusted to our care, then we are valorous, for the fight is a fight with the Devil and with his great organization that overshadows the whole world, and has filled it with blood and tears. But if not obedient, then all is lost, for there is no strength in the arm of clay wherewith to fight the great enemy encamped against the remnant of the people of God.

Wbat is ZTrutb?

This is the title of a booklet containing seven of Judge Rutherford's pithy and interesting talks on subjects of vital importance to every one. THE GOLDEN AGE, in its efforts to further the cause of the truth, offers this booklet free with a year’s subscription.

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WHO is GOD?

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His Name

King of Eternity The Unselfish

Know Jehovah is God

WHAT is TRUTH?

The Bible

Jesus

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The End of the World

Messengers of Peace

Christ’s Second Coming

Redemption of Man: Why Necessary

CAUSE of DEATH

Man

The Trinity Unveiled

Presumptuous Sins

Sheep and Goats

Permission of Evil

Hypocrisy

Jerusalem, Ancient and Modern

HEREAFTER

Is Hell Hot?

Sinners in Purgatory

Heaven

Rich Man in Hell

Thief in Heaven

Where are the Dead?

Funerals

GOOD NEWS

Signs in Heaven

Divine Prophecy

Jehovah’s Great Prophet

Prophets Foretell Redemption

Resurrection

Resurrection of Jesus

World’s Hope, The Kingdom

THE FINAL WAR

Satan’s Organization

Jehovah’s Organization

The Terrible Image (Part I) The Terrible Image (Part II) Preparing for War (Part I) Preparing for War (Part II) Executioners

LIBERTY

Civilization Doomed Prisoners

Whose Prayers Are Answered?

A Model Prayer

Whom Do You Honor?

Armageddon

Liberty

WHAT YOU NEED

Earth’s New Rulers

The People’s Greatest Need The Kingdom Comfort

In the Resurrection, Where Will You Be?

Jehovah’s Requirements Prosperity

HEALTH and LIFE

The Standard

First Resurrection

Millions Now Living Will Never Die Health and Life for the People Judgment of the People Judgment of the Nations Judgment of Christians

HOME and HAPPINESS

Reconstruction

Peace and Prosperity for the People Earth Made Glorious Jehovah’s Glory

Marriage The Feast Understanding the Bible

WHERE are the DEAD?

Adam Joy Killed

Where are the Dead?

Who is Immortal? Why do Men Die? Ransom Provided Inhabiters of the Earth Restoration

KEYS of HEAVEN

Act of God Oppression Keys of Heaven The Rock Location of the Kingdom The Sabbath The Flood

THE KINGDOM, THE HOPE of the World

The Kingdom, The Hope of the World Warning from Jehovah

A New Name

Governors

God’s Kingdom Among You

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¹

Note.—The stand maintained for the past five years by The Golden Age is scientifically proven by this article to be absolutely correct. Mr. Force was for thirteen years a pharmaceutical chemist in New York city and was thereafter chief chemist for the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad for twenty-two years. His statements of fact cannot be denied, and the conclusion is inescapable. Aluminum cooking utensils are a curse to humanity, and their manufacture and use should be forbidden by law.

In what a sorry light this article puts the Federal Trade Commission, which, with full knowledge of these facts, twice tried to intimidate The Golden Age, so that it might withdraw from its campaign in the interest of the welfare of the people. The only excuse offered for its intrusion into our affairs was that the aluminum trust was being injured by our activities.

What a miserable showing is also made by the American Medical Association, which, with every facility at its hands to know the truth, took its stand on the opposite side of this important question. Medical doctors have found space in newspapers and magazines in every corner of the land, wherein they have betrayed their willful ignorance or dishonesty or both. In some of these instances their articles bOosting uluiuinuui cooking utensils have been published alongside advertisements for the same wares. The aluminum trust has all the funds neee-.sar.v to pay well for services rendered.

As to the Scientific American and The Literal y Diiicxt, which joined in the general parade of ignorance on this subject, let them now come forth and answer these statements of scientific evidence and literary fact or else admit that they are neither scientific nor literary nor honest.

It is time now for the United States Government to shako off its fear of Andrew Mellon and give some attention to the needs of the people. Without being so told, it knows, of course, that the findings of the so-called ’Mellon Institute’ on this subject would have no value except to the aluminum trust. As for the American Medical Association, the Scientific American, The Literary Diyest, and all the other publications which have sided in with the aluminum trust, we now invite them to answer this article, and to set fact against fact, or else for ever keep still.

In other words, on this aluminum cooking utensil question, the Government, and Mr. Mellon's crowd, and the medical doctors, and the papers and magazines that have trailed in their wake, can ’’either put up or shut up". Their bluff is permanently called.—L'd.