crtf Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

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in this issue

Th IE LAND BELOW THE SEA

AL WAYS SOMETHING NEW

ODE TO THE BANKER

HOW NATURE CURES

JE'DGMLNT OF THE HEATHEN

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every other

WEDNESDAY

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

Vol. XIV - No. 343

November 9, 1932

CONTENTS

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

Cooper's Cartoon of Uncle Sam 74 250,699 Railroad Employees

Discharged in Year

Rapid Increases in Taxes .... 75

Sequestrators in Philadelphia . . 76

Sixty-eight Tax-free Towns ... 77

Justice in Chicago

Satan's Crazy Old World .... 78

Slave Market in Los Angeles . . .79

Uncle Sam Cuts Employees’ Pay . 79

Cause of the Paradox

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

The Birthplace of Liberty—The

The Sardine Day Coach .... 74 Net Incomes of Class I Railroads . 76 2,389,862 Air Passengers Last Year 77 National City’s Anaconda Victims . 78 Rabbi Halpern Is Offended . . .78 St. Lawrence Seaway.....78

Power Trust Skeleton.....78

McFadden on Federal Reserve Banks 79 United States Steel Common . . .80 Common Sense in Wisconsin ... 80 To Keep the Ship Afloat .... 80 Why America Is Broke.....82

Mail Subsidies Cost Money ... 82 Ode to the Banker.....83

Land Below the Sea .... 67

Always Something New .... 75

Iowa Store Forgives Debtors . . .75

Edmonton, Alta., Goes Sane . . .75

Salaries of the Kings.....77

World’s Largest Radio Station . . 81

Where Uncle Sam’s Money Goes . 81

Deflation of the Bankers .... 82

Publicity as Curb to Crooks ... 82

Mayday at Carbondale

Teachers’ College

MANUFACTURING AND MINING

Orleans, Vt., Is Taxless

Immense Iron Deposits in Urals . 75

Painesville, Ohio, Well Managed . 76

Ontario’s Electric Rates .... 78

Man-Hours in Industry

No City Tax Levy in Ponca City . 80

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

America’s Heroic Chief of Staff . 77

Stealing from Taxpayers in Texas . 79

The Republican Platform .... 80

Another Prison Murder in Georgia 80

SCIENCE AND INVENTION

Paper May Be Used Again . . . .75

HOME AND HEALTH

Sterilization in Germany .... 75

Non-Smokers Are Best Students . 76

How Nature Cures......91

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

Judgment of the Heathen ... 93

“Regularly Ordained’’ Jersey Cow 95

Published every other Wednesday at 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A., by WOODWORTH, KNORR & COWARD

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(The Golden Age

Volume XIV                     Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, November 9, 1932                     Number 343

The Birthplace of Liberty—The Land Below the Sea

IT IS hard to intimidate a man that has lived all his life in a place where at almost any time the ocean is liable to come pouring in on top of him and destroy him and all the works of his hands. Soldiers become automatically and mechanically courageous. Their training makes them so. Thus it is with the inhabitants of the Netherlands, miscalled Holland.

The North sea is the most tempestuous body of water imaginable, outside of the waters about Cape Horn. And the Netherlands are in the North sea, and below its level. Look at a general map of Europe and you will notice that the “Netherlands” are, in effect, the delta of the Rhine, and that this delta projects out into the North sea, to the north and to the west.

The Netherlands are rich with soils brought down from the highlands of Europe; the country is rich with the commerce that traverses the Rhine; it is rich with the world trade that passes in and out of the North sea; and richest of all in the peace-loving, industrious, contented, liberty-loving “Dutchmen” that have made themselves a homeland beneath the waters.

In New York and Brooklyn we look up at the skyscrapers because they constitute our horizons. In the Netherlands the people look up from their polders or fields and see above them the masts of canal boats passing along the tops of embankments against the sky. On the other hand, passengers in the canal boats gaze down upon cattle in the meadows and people working in the fields sometimes forty feet below the bottoms of the craft in which they ride.

Since the sixteenth century the Dutch have drained more than ninety lakes the bottoms of which are far below the level of the North sea. The dikes are of great width, and not infrequently from forty to sixty feet high. The railroads of the country are often built on the tops of these dikes; so are some of the canals and many of the highways.

One Inundation After Another

There is record of a great inundation, in the sixth century, in what is now the province of Friesland, and since then there has been one great inundation every seven years. Toward the end of the thirteenth century the sea destroyed a fertile peninsula and swallowed up more than thirty villages.

In the same century an immense chasm opened in northern Holland, forming the great Zuider Zee, now being reclaimed. As the waters rushed in more than eighty thousand persons were drowned. In 1421 a tempest blew the waters of the Meuse over its banks, destroying seventy-two villages and drowning one hundred thousand inhabitants. Hundreds of villages and thousands upon thousands of men, women and children were overwhelmed when dikes burst in 1532, 1570, 1825, 1855 and many intervening dates.

The reason the Netherlands is a country of windmills is that it is a land of high winds where it is necessary that pumps be kept going constantly to lift the surplus waters out of the polders into the canals. The winds furnish cheap power, but steam pumps, because of their greater efficiency, are now being more widely used. Anyway, it is a case of pump, pump, pump or be drowned, and sometimes the drowning takes place in spite of all the pumping.

In some instances great lakes have been drained, not altogether because of desire for the fertile lands which lie beneath, but because in a land where so much is below the sea level it is dangerous to have at hand bodies of water which can be whipped up by the winds and do immense damage.

On November 29, 1836, the Haarlemmermeer, a lake of 42,205 acres, was whipped by a severe westerly storm until the water rose to more than three feet above the normal level and a district of 10,000 acres was inundated. A month later a storm from the east submerged another 19,000 acres. With that, the lake was diked, powerful steam pumps were erected at three different points, and after twelve years of incessant labor the lake disappeared and a peril that had always threatened Amsterdam and Leyden was removed. Moreover, seven square miles of fresh polders were added to the Netherlands area.

Drying Up the Zuider Zee

The drying up of the Zuider Zee is the greatest undertaking of its kind ever projected by man. Imagine trying to drain a lake of 1,350 square miles, a lake through which a great river flows, and a lake the mouth of which, where it opens into the North sea itself, is 19 miles wide.

The dikes for this tremendous project are built in two parts. The first work is the forming of a submerged dam rising from the sea-bed to the level of normal high water. It consists of mattresses of brush massed with sand and topped or faced with broken stones. The main body of the dike, the waterproof part, lies immediately behind the foregoing, and consists of sand on a foundation of brush and stones.

The thickness of the dikes at the bottom of the sea is not less than 336 feet, and the height above the average level of the sea is 24 feet, which is 12 feet above the highest tides anticipated. The dikes are wide enough to carry a double-track railway, a road for cyclists and pedestrians, and one for ordinary traffic.

A new outlet to the North sea will be made for the Yssel river, which now flows out through the Zuider Zee. This outlet will be by a canal with a depth of 49 feet and a width of 3,500 feet, cut straight from Amsterdam to the sea. On this canal will be the largest lock in the world, at Ijmuiden. This lock will be 1,312 feet long by 164 feet wide, able to accommodate the largest ships afloat or ever likely to be built.

The damming of the Zuider Zee will remove all the brackish waters from the interior of the Netherlands, of great benefit to the farming and dairy interests in times of drought. Waters for irrigation, or for the cattle, will always be in abundant supply.

At present two pumping stations are removing 4,500,000 tons of water a day from what was but recently a portion of the Zuider Zee. It is estimated that by 1959 the entire reclamation project will be completed and 867 square miles of new land added to the realm, capable of supporting an additional 3,000,000 people. The present population of the whole of the Netherlands is but 8,006,600.

A Tremendous Undertaking

One of the dams which is being built at the mouth of the Zuider Zee is 17*4 miles long and will cost $35,000,000. The entire expenditure on dikes and drainage is expected to be about $190,000,000, but the value of the fertile soil reclaimed will be at least $210,000,000, so the thrifty burghers will make money on their investment.

The present Zuider Zee, in its greatest length, is 80 miles; and in its greatest breadth, 45 miles. Only about two-thirds of it will be dried up; the remainder, which will be called Lake Yssel, will be a huge fresh water reservoir after 1935.

Experience has shown that it takes six or seven years for the rains to wash all the salt out of the polders and to make them worth their ultimate value of $450 an acre. The Dutch have had so much experience that something like a gold rush is bound to take place as each polder is thrown open for settlement.

The port of Hoorn (for which Cape Horn was named) will be left high and dry, as also the port of Edam, now famous for its Edam cheese, but in these days of automobiles it is no great hardship for a city to be several miles removed from salt water. Look at Los Angeles.

Before the plans were made, at least one thousand borings were completed. By careful study of the data these provide, it is assured that only 8% of the polders recovered will have sand instead of clay soil as their base. Some of these polders will be 24 feet below sea level.

At the northern end of the new Yssel lake, where the Zuider Zee formerly merged into the North sea, there will be two locks through which ships of 2,000 tons may pass, and 25 floodgates, each 40 feet wide, through which the excess of water can be sluiced at ebb into the sea.

The Netherlands Well Named

The Netherlands is well named. One-fourth of its farm lands are below the level of the sea, reclaimed and protected by 1,500 miles of dikes. If the interminable bulwarks of earth, granite and wood were not there to attest their industry and perseverance, it would hardly be believed that the hand of man could accomplish such a work.

The Netherlands has a north and west coast line on the North sea of 470 miles. Its great and

GOLDEN AGE

powerful neighbor on the east is Germany. Belgium is on the south. The greatest length is 196 miles, the width 120 miles; the land area, 12,582 square miles; average height above sea level is but 37 feet.

There are eleven provinces. The names of two of these are North Holland and South Holland, and as they are relatively large and powerful the name Holland is often improperly applied to the Netherlands. Residents of the other nine provinces do not relish this nomenclature. South Holland, with 1,600 people per square mile, is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Land hunger is a chronic trouble in the Netherlands, so much so that in 1927 the Dutch government aided fifty Dutch families to emigrate to France, voting a subvention of 10,000 florins for the purpose.

Not only has the Netherlands had to battle with the North sea, which is a sufficiently great antagonist, but the Rhine, Maas, Schelde, Yssel, Vecht and Hunse rivers have all needed attention. Some of these have had to be channeled and defended at their mouths against the tides; others have had to be bordered by dikes as powerful as those raised against the ocean; others have had to be turned from their courses; the wandering waters have been gathered together; the course of affluents has been regulated and the waters have been carefully divided, so that the enormous mass of liquid could be kept in equilibrium in storm and calm, and kept moving toward its ultimate destination.

During the World War all the fighting nations knew enough to keep away from the Netherlands. On one occasion the present queen told the kaiser his tallest soldiers were two feet too short to enter her country, meaning thereby that rather than submit to invasion dikes would be cut and invaders and their equipment would get what Pharaoh and his crowd got when they tried to cross the Red sea after the fleeing Israelites.

In the Days of the Frisians

A Frisian is a native of Friesland; and if you look on the map you will see that Friesland is the northernmost province of the Netherlands. It abuts on the North sea. In the days of the Frisians of long ago they had a king by the name of Radbod. When the Roman troops that drank communion wine from the skulls of their enemies came through this part of Europe they conquered Friesland and compelled old king Radbod to be “baptized” or be put to death. As he stepped into the baptismal font he demanded of the bishop, Wolf ran, where his ancestors were. Receiving the blunt reply that they were, in hell, with all the other heathen, the pagan warrior stepped grandly out of the font and said, “I will join them there.” Now the Dutch are like that. They want peace if they can have it with liberty, but if not they are willing to go to hell and take the consequences.

Always an intelligent and liberty-loving people, the Netherlanders resisted the Spanish Inquisition at the hands of Charles V with a stubbornness which made it immediately the battleground of Europe and a haven for the thinkers of every land. It is estimated that, in a vain effort to subdue these dwellers of the lowlands, 100,000 were burned, strangled, beheaded or buried alive; and the more there were slain, the more there were ready to take their places.

The son of Charles V, the infamous Philip II, was even more tyrannical than his father. Goaded to desperation, the stubborn and libertyloving Netherlanders gradually armed themselves, and rebellions occurred here and there, culminating in a stand at Alkmaar that for desperate and vicious fighting between armies that truly hated each other was probably never surpassed. The Spanish and the Dutch loathed the sight of each other.

The Stand at Alkmaar

The Spanish butcher, the duke of Alva, his sword dripping with the blood of thousands of peace-loving Protestants in every part of the Netherlands, moved upon Alkmaar with the expressed determination of slitting every throat in the city. The Dutch knew that he was coming, knew that no quarter would be shown, and if they did not give the Spanish cavaliers a warm reception, then no invaders need ever look for one.

Unmoved by the twelve hours’ cannonading, the Dutch waited till the hated Spanish Catholics actually assaulted the city walls. Thereupon the Dutch Protestants let loose upon their attackers boiling water, unslaked lime, molten lead, liquid pitch and scalding oil, and flung around the necks of the climbing soldiers blazing hoops freshly dipped in tar.

Call it the Reformation, or call it what you may, the assault on Alkmaar broke the spirit of the Spanish. Burdened with the superstitions of their devilish religion, they came to the con-elusion that the Devil himself was helping the Protestants, and the next day preferred to be shot down by their own officers rather than again face such terrible foes.

One could hardly say that the Thirty Years’ War was won that day, but it is undeniable that the influence of that fight continues to this day. The Spanish invaders were never the same after that, nor were the Dutch. Liberty-lovers crowded in, French Huguenots, German Calvinists, English Puritans, Spanish and Portuguese Jews, Flemings and Walloons, and brought with them a widespread diffusion of education and culture.

The Dutch republic has been an entity to be reckoned with from that time to this. The present government is really a republic with a hereditary president, a descendant of the William the Silent, or William of Orange, who played such a large part in the stand made by the Dutch against the duke of Alva.

William of Orange

What George Washington is in the history of the United States, William of Orange is in the history of the Netherlands, and of the so-called “Reformation”. His opposition to the Inquisition marked him for death by the Catholic tyrant Philip II, and after six attempts, by as many assassins, the deed was accomplished, but not till Spain’s sun was setting in the West.

William of Orange knew when to flee and when to stand, when to defend and when to attack. He seems to have been merciful and wise and courageous, and even the seizure of his eldest son by the sponsors of the Inquisition could not turn him aside from the path he believed to be right.

His memory is held in such esteem by the Dutch people that in 1922, after the Hohen-zollern scare was over, the Dutch constitution was so changed that no person not a direct descendant of William of Orange may ever sit upon the Dutch throne. He founded the University of Leyden, the country’s oldest seat of learning.

The present titular ruler, Queen Wilhelmina, seems to have some of the spirit of William of Orange. When a labor uprising seemed imminent a few years back, she drove in an open carriage, alone and unguarded, into the very centers of the discontented areas, bowing and smiling this way and that, and accomplishing her objective of restoring peace and order.

Not an Altogether Placid History

While the Netherlands must for ever occupy a place in the front ranks of the countries that have lived by the arts of peace, yet the path has been not altogether easy, and in the days of the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic wars, was a very difficult one.

During the Dutch war of independence the sovereignty of the Netherlands was twice offered to Queen Elizabeth of England, but was declined. However, the English have always felt that this generous offer entitled them to help themselves to anything Dutch that they happened to want, as witness the once Dutch but now British or American possessions of Ceylon, Cape Colony, New York, New Jersey and points north, south, east and west. What taking ways the British do have! They took the Dutch sea trade, too.

In the French Revolution the Netherlands, peace-loving and unwilling to fight against what claimed to be ‘Liberty, Fraternity, Equality’, allowed themselves to be captured without a fight, and paid dearly for it. Soon they found themselves tied to the French chariot wheels, financing Napoleon’s campaigns of murder, and obliged to furnish soldiers for his battlefields.

When the Dutch found they had been deceived by the false cry of ‘Liberty, Fraternity and Equality’, and that they had for the time lost their liberties and their rights of self-government, they came to hate the French oppressors as badly as they had once hated the Spanish, and for much the same reasons.

The French proposed constitution after constitution. The Dutch settled down into opposition to everything French. They would not have anything to do with French governments or with anything French, even though they now found themselves ruled with severity by French rulers. Like William the Silent they bided their time, and when Napoleon’s reverses came they suddenly proclaimed their independence afresh and won out.

After the Napoleonic Wars

After the Napoleonic wars the Dutch found themselves bankrupt, for the French had borrowed all their money, first to finance this, that or the other project, then to pay dividends upon such loans, and then to pay dividends upon loans upon loans, and so on. The French have a wonderful capacity for borrowing and then letting somebody else carry the load.

The reestablished government of the Netherlands included what is now Belgium, but the Protestant Dutch under a descendant of William of Orange could not get along with the French Catholics of their neighbors to the south and it was inevitable that they should separate as they did in 1830.

The Roman Catholic church never forgives or forgets, in which respect it is like its founder and head, the Devil. The bishops of Belgium made so much trouble for William II that he put the boldest of them in jail. The Belgic section of the dual country immediately rebelled, Catholic France backed the rebellion, and the new country of Belgium resulted.

Entire liberty of worship and conscience is guaranteed in the Netherlands. State allowances are made to Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jansenists and Jews. Of Protestants there are 3,658,797; of Roman Catholics, 2,444,583; of Jews, 115,223.

Queen Wilhelmina became queen at 10 years of age, and used to punish her dolls by threatening to make queens of them so they would have nobody to play with. She has reigned for more than forty-one years, and pays close attention to the details of her work. She signs nothing she does not understand. Once a year she rides in a gilded coach, a present from the nation.

She is extremely fond of jewelry. Amsterdam is the center of the world’s diamond industry, and the queen, who is one of the world’s richest women, has an eye to business. She will not wear a dress made in Paris. She is the author of a tract on prayer, issued as a state paper.

Education in the Netherlands

During the Thirty Years’ War, Leyden and Amsterdam became the centers of the publishing and book-selling trades of the world. The devastation of Germany and the freedom of press of the Netherlands automatically led the writers and thinkers of the world to its acknowledged center of liberty.

Education is now obligatory for all persons between the ages of 6 and 13. There are more than 10,000 students in the universities, which is a large showing for so small a country. Recent tests showed that only seventeen one-hundredths of one percent of the people are unable to read.

The Netherlanders are cosmopolitan, learning three or four languages readily, and so situated between England, France and Germany that it is very much to their advantage to do so. The ability to speak Dutch is a linguistic achievement in itself. And, by the way, the word ‘‘Dutch” is a colloquialism for the German word Deutsch; the two languages are closely akin.

Grotius and Christian Huygens, two of the world’s most famous scholars, were Netherlanders. The microscope was the invention of a Dutchman, and so was the drink cocoa, which is used in every home. Rembrandt’s art is the standard of the world.

Dutch boys and girls are in bed by nine o’clock. Children less than eighteen can go nowhere. No theater or restaurant or picture show will admit them. The climate is cheerless, only forty days of sunshine a year, and the kids are glad to go to bed to get out of it. They being fed mostly on bread and milk, and spending long hours beneath the blankets, it is said there is not a thin boy or girl in Holland.

Thrift and Cleanliness

The Dutch have a mania for work. Their land, recovered from the bottom of the sea, is proof, and so is their language. In summer, when the cows are in the field, the stables are scrubbed spotless and muslin curtains are hung at the windows.

The reason wooden shoes are worn is that the fields and the skies are so seldom dry. Wooden shoes are very suitable for use in a muddy country. They keep the feet dry, and may be removed readily at the door. Wooden shoes range in price from 25c per pair for the smallest size up to 65c per pair for the largest, regardless of style or design.

The Netherlanders are deficient in imagination and spiritual aspirations. As a people they are of the earth, earthy. They do not write satire and do not commit suicide. If they lose their’ temper it is behind closed doors. A small nation, surrounded by large and turbulent ones, they detest war and use all their intelligence to avoid it. Silence is their greatest weapon. They sheltered the kaiser when everybody else wanted to murder him.

The country is a country of males. There are no tragic tales of love and passion. All that is said of the women is that they are the wives and mothers of the men. The diversions are books, pictures, music, flowers, furniture, ornaments, keepsakes, ease and creature comforts. Snobbishness is common; but so is kindness to children and animals. It is a country in which democracy and formalism go hand in hand. They enjoy, or think they enjoy, the ringing of carillons ; probably they think it, for it is not music.

Prosperity is widespread. The taxable property is valued at over $5,000,000,000. The number of guilder millionaires (guilders are worth 40c apiece) is over 1,000. At the moment of writing, there are labor troubles. The liner ‘■Rotterdam”, which had got as far as Plymouth on its trip from Rotterdam to New York, had to put back to Rotterdam because 400 of the crew refused to stoke the tires unless given an opportunity to visit their homes in between ocean trips. The captain did not wish them to go ashore, for fear they would join the seamen’s strike. Dutch-like, they resented his tyranny and struck anyway.

Little Farms and Many Flowers

With land at $450 an acre, little farms, intensively cultivated, are the rule. Ninety percent of the holdings are of less than 50 acres, and more than 50-percent are of less than 12 acres. In other words, out of 200,302 officially recognized farmers, 182,011 hold from 2i/₂ to 50 acres each. There are great numbers whose holdings are less than the 2y₂ acres which one must have in order to be counted as a Netherlands farmer.

The heads of livestock just about equal the number of acres given over to agriculture, including gardens, orchards and pastures, a little more than 5,000,000 in each case. There are 615,165 acres of well-cared-for forests. The sugar beet harvest is over 2,000,000 tons a year.

Holland cheeses are famous. Ever hear of Limberg? It is one of the provinces of the Netherlands. Ever hear of Edam, Gouda, Leyden or Cheddar cheeses? The Dutch make cheeses to suit the palate of everybody, and send their wares all over the world.

Market gardening is largely carried on; immense quantities of cauliflower, early potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and Brussels sprouts are eaten at home, and other immense quantities shipped out of the country. Nearly all of these market gardeners own their own little farms.

But it is in flower-raising that Holland excels. Its hothouses could supply the whole of Europe with all the flowers it could use. In summer, in the season, one may see a square mile of tulips in bloom at one time. The bulb fields are in carnival from February to August, from crocus time to late gladioli. As early as the eighteenth century, Haarlem florists had their foreign catalogs printed in English, French and German.

In the season, the city dwellers pour out by the thousands to see the flowers. Swarms of bicyclists and automobilists travel the highways garlanded with flowers. Tourist trains, drawn by tiny engines, puff up and down the flower-filled fields. The fields are always ‘too square’, and the furrows always ‘too straight’, to be as beautiful as they might be; but the Dutch are like that; they want things prim.

The Dutch are great for carnivals, pageants and fireworks, to which the flowers and the canals lend unusual interest. At festival time, bright baskets of flowers are hung suspended above the canals, and their reflections in the still waters beneath constitute a most beautiful sight by day and a still more beautiful one at night.

Industries and Transportation

The Netherlands is not a manufacturing country, yet Dutch pottery, bricks, tiles, and glassware, leather goods and refined sugar are considered the best of their kind. Shipbuilding and diamond cutting are largely carried on. There are 5,200 vessels engaged in fishing. The Russian government at one time, in 1928, placed orders for 500 passenger airplanes with the Fokker works at Amsterdam.

The windmills, used for centuries to keep the polders dry, are giving way to the more dependable steam pumps. It is estimated that since 1923 more than half the windmills of the country have been removed or demolished. A society for the preservation of the Dutch windmills has been formed; but no association of men to keep alive an uneconomic way of doing anything has ever succeeded, and if the steam pump is cheaper and better, then the windmill must go, landscape or no landscape.

The reason the windmill no longer suits is that it occasionally happens that after a great storm which has spilled much water into a polder there follows a long period of calm in which a windmill can do little or no pumping and the cattle ruin their pastures, cutting the soft soil to pieces with their sharp hoofs. The steam pump does the work quickly, before the ground has a chance to get thoroughly saturated.

As there are no hills, everybody in Holland rides a bicycle in the summer; and as the canals are always frozen over, everybody skates in the winter. There are 2,000 miles of canals, 1,500,000 bicycles, and 47,000 motor cycles. The merchant marine is composed of 544 steamships and 19 sailing vessels. Rotterdam is one of the busiest ports in the world, with Amsterdam receiving about one-fourth as great a tonnage.

Some of the Cities

The Hague (Dutch hagc, hedge), population 432,680, 15 miles northwest of Rotterdam, 33 miles southwest of Amsterdam, and 3 miles from the North sea, is the seat of the Court, the residence of the foreign ambassadors, and the site of the Andrew Carnegie $1,500,000 peace palace. The parks, gardens, markets and suburbs are famous for their beauty. The place, originally a hunting lodge, has been an abode of royalty for 700 years.

Amsterdam (formerly Amstelredam), the chief city, has a population of 749,459. Six hundred years ago it was the residence of the lords of Amstel, meaning that they bossed the fishing business at the point where the Amstel river flows into the Zuider Zee. The city was originally built on a peat bog. Today it consists of 90 islands, with all of its buildings resting securely on piles driven 14 to 60 feet through loose sand to the solid stratum of firm clay underneath. It is the diamond market of the world.

Rotterdam, population 582,507, has a tonnage of foreign and inland traffic surpassed only by London among European ports. It has many flourishing mills, iron works and shipbuilding yards.

Utrecht, on the Old Rhine, was old in the days of the Romans, and was called by them Traiect-um ad RJieninn, whence its name. It was here the Dutch provinces declared their independence of Spain. Its population, 153,208; it is an important railway center.

Haarlem, Leyden and Alkmaar are all important points near the west coast, all close to one another, and all reminiscent of the gallant fight the stubborn and peace-loving Dutch put up to stay the hand of the Spanish Inquisitors. The oldest printing office in Holland is located in Haarlem, for which our own New York Harlem is named. At Leyden, William of Orange relieved the besieged but resolute Dutch Protestants by breaking down the dikes and drowning their Spanish attackers. Later it was an asylum for the Puritans who sailed from there, to America. Of Alkmaar and its repulse of the flower of the Spanish cavaliers we have already written. Today it is the center of the North Holland cheese market.

As Governors and Administrators

As governors and administrators the Dutch have not been a stupendous success, nor a total failure. In their desperate war with Spain, not finally settled until 1648, they gradually grew strong on the sea, and but for the English would have ruled the waves to this day.

The first Dutch vessels to round the Cape of Good Hope easily displaced the Portuguese in the East Indies. Later they had Brazil in their hands, but incapacity to govern cost them the country. They lost New Amsterdam (New York) to the British (traded it for Dutch Guiana) and their possessions in Dutch Guiana have never been a success. In most of these instances a mistaken policy of dividing the lands up into huge estates instead of smaller individual holdings prevented a better record.

The Netherlands has universal suffrage for both sexes over twenty-five years of age, and compulsory voting. There are at least seven political parties, with unemployment insurance in force, and not many unemployed, considering the difficult world-wide conditions now prevailing. Since 1921 a workman whose helpless condition requires continuous nursing and attendance continues to receive full wages from a State insurance bank specially created for the purpose.

In six of the principal cities there is a special body of children’s police. Their duties comprise supervision of children’s street trading and begging, investigation of home conditions, truancy and child delinquencies.

The Dutch East Indies

How it conies about that the British Government, when it was taking New Amsterdam, Ceylon and South Africa from the Dutch, and everything else from anybody that had anything, did not reach out the British paw and take the Dutch East Indies is something we could never understand. We feel sure no compunctions of honesty or conscience have ever interfered with any of its moves toward colonial expansion. Maybe it just concluded that the time was not yet ripe, and the Dutch might as well govern temporarily, until the British got ready to take everything over.

The Dutch East Indies have half the population of the United States and an area half the size of non-Russian Europe. Java alone is four times the area of the Netherlands, and has five times as great a population. Sumatra covers an area as large as the state of California; Dutch Borneo is as large as France.

Java is the most densely populated land mass in the world, with 821 people to the square mile. The island is of enormous natural and annually productive wealth, producing for export vast quantities of sugar, coffee, tea, cocoa, indigo, spices, cinchona, rubber, copra, tin, petroleum and coal. How did the British ever come to overlook all this?

In the fiscal year ended June 30, 1914, imports into the United States from the Dutch East Indies were $5,334,000. Seven years later these imports from the same islands were $141, 064,000.

The abundance of raw materials has encouraged manufacturing, which now includes iron products, vegetable oils, building materials, rope, bristles, paint, chemicals, etc. The Dutch East Indies are considered the most valuable possessions in the Pacific.

By one means or another 170,000 of the Dutch have been able to retain control of the 60,000,000 Mohammedan natives. Sometimes the unarmed people have been mowed down with machine guns. There have been bad housing, prohibition of meetings and associations, and censorship of the press; but things are better now and the Javanese are more kindly treated.

In recent years it has become the custom of the Hollanders to refer to the Javanese as ‘our brown brother’ and to invite his cooperation in various activities and walks of life. Possibly that is done merely for policy’s sake, as the Netherlands has no navy to enforce its demands in case of a great uprising, but, even if that, it is good policy. Why practice cruelty and oppression, as has been done in India, when even the ends of Simon-pure selfishness are better served by kindness and consideration of somebody besides the lordly whites?

Cooper’s Cartoon of Uncle Sam

IN A RECENT number of Collier’s magazine the cartoonist F. G. Cooper has a picture of Uncle Sam wearing black goggles and a huge sign on his shirt front entitled “Pity the Blind”. In his extended hand he has a tin cup. In his hat, which lies on the ground, he has papers reading: “Billions for luxuries; Savings Bank deposits increase since 1929 $1,233,000,000; Total bank savings $29,000,000,000, and Record home ownership.” Out of his pockets he had securities reading: “Funds for travel; Funds for schooling; 5 mechanical horsepower per worker; 40% more stock owners since 1929; Gold stock $4,370,000,000, Britain $588,000,000; Treasury issue nine times oversubscribed; Life insurance $109,000,000,000; Billion-dollar weekly income; Movie attendance 75,000,000 weekly.” It seems quite convincing, but the next clipping we pick up is one from the New York WorldTelegram which tells us that right here in our own city of New York we have 900,000 persons out of work, more than 600,000 of whom are now receiving some kind of help from the city or from organizations; and that seems convincing on the other side. The most that could be said for Mr. Cooper’s cartoon is that it shows our civilization here is most pitifully lopsided.

Suppose we had in America ninety-nine one-hundredths of all the wealth in the world, and that wealth were all in the hands of one man. Would that make America the happiest land in the world?

The Sardine Day Coach

CPHE Pennsylvania Railroad has constructed -L one day coach which we hope will be the last one, wherein comfort will disappear and 120 passengers will be jammed into the space hitherto reserved for 76. This is done by arranging the seats on two levels, one of them a step down from the aisle and the other two steps up.

As persons parade the aisles they can conveniently kick any loose rubbish into the laps of passengers in the bottom row. Those in the top row do not sit exactly in the laps of those in the bottom row; not exactly, but almost. Advantage is taken of the fact that when persons are seated there is normally a little vacant space above their knees. In the sardine type of coach this extra space will be utilized for another row of passengers.

Always Something New

Education in South Carolina                    Edmonton, Alberta, Goes Sane

NEGROES constitute one-half of the popula- T^DMONTON, Alberta, Canada, has gone tion of South Carolina, but receive only J—sane. It has decided to abolish cadet train-one-tenth of the total appropriation for educa- ing in the schools. We need some of that kind tion.                                              of sanity in various parts of the United States.

An Iowa Store Forgives Its Debtors

Me. and Mrs. James Hennum, of Sloan, Iowa, operating a general store, recently forgave all their debtors, a total of about $75,000. The debts ranged from a few cents to $1,000, and some of them had been owed for fourteen years.

Orleans, Vermont, Is Taxless

ORLEANS, Vermont, is the only taxless community in New England. This situation is due to the fact that it has a surplus piled up from the profitable operation of its own water and electric light and power plants.

Paper May Be Used Again

BY A NEW device ink can be removed from printed matter and the paper can be used again. It is estimated that by this new arrangement the cost of w-hite paper can be reduced at least 50 percent.

Frightening Crows Away from Watermelons

CROWS are fond of watermelons; they destroy many by pecking large holes in them. It has been discovered that they can be frightened away by placing a small stone on top of each ripening melon.

Immense Deposits of iron in the Urals

THE Russians have discovered in the Urals, less than seventy miles from a railway, an iron-ore deposit estimated at 600,000,000 tons, of which about one-third is near the surface. It contains an iron content of 40 percent to 60 percent, and may change the whole Russian metallurgical situation.

Sterilization in Germany

Sir Bernard Mallet, of London, advocate of sterilization of the unfit, is quoted as authority for the statement that in Germany there are at least 100,000 women sterilized every year. Let us hope that after a little w’hile the sterilizers will get around to Sir Bernard Mallet, or possibly they have already done it and that accounts for his interest in the subject.

250,699 Railroad Employees Discharged in Year THE shrinkage of business in the United

States is reflected in the discharge of 250,699 railroad employees in one year. In some instances these men have been in the employ of the roads for which they work for twenty years.

One Million Fewer Automobiles

HERE are one million fewer automobiles in operation this year than there were a year-ago, which means that one million more American families are deprived of what was to most of them their greatest means of enjoyment.

Rapid Increases in Taxes

IN THE sixteen years from 1913 to 1929 the combined expenditures of federal, state and local governments increased 347 percent; in other words, expenditures for government increased more than twice as fast as income, and more than ten times as fast as population.

Automobiles in Venice

VENICE, with its 261,000 people, has but 408 automobiles, and they are kept on the mainland, two miles away. A bridge is now being built that will connect the city with the mainland, and the city will have just one garage, with capacity for 1,000 cars.

Music in London Mines

IN AT least one mine in South Yorkshire, England, the miners hew⁷ coal to the strains of music which come to them by radio at the working face. It is believed that these radio installations can be used to good advantage in the case of mine disasters.

Very Few Murderers Suffer Penalty

IN THE United States the ratio of convictions in prosecutions for murder is less than seventeen percent, and not more than two percent of the murderers ever reach the death chamber. Over ten thousand murders are committed every year.

Net Incomes of Class 1 Railroads

IN JUNE, 1931, the net operating income of the Class I railroads was $50,162,000. This last June it was $14,000,000. This leaves them with 27.9 percent of the net income they had a year earlier, but look at all the “rugged individualism'⁵ they have.

Farm Boys Study Gas Engines

A FARM boys’ club near Gibbon, Nebr., has adopted the farm gas engine for study and experiment. The work has proved highly practical, as the club members have learned to repair gas engines, tractors, trucks and automobiles on their home farms.

Non-Smokers Are the Best Students

OF 113 students studied at Washington State

College 60 were smokers; their standings averaged 80.82%. The 53 that were non-smokers had grades averaging 86.45%. In intelligence tests the smokers attained a grade of 5.9% and the non-smokers a grade of 7%.

Destitute Women in New York

THE Salvation Army reports a great change in the type of those seeking shelter. Now they are mostly women who formerly had large incomes, school-teachers, college graduates, highly trained office workers and girls who formerly had every luxury.

Sequestrators in Philadelphia

T) HILADELPHIA has adopted the plan of J- appointing a sequestrator to collect rents from a property on which no taxes have been paid for ten years. This sequestration of rents prevents the recourse to sheriff's sales, and insures monthly payments on the taxes as long as the house is occupied.

Ontario Nearly as Bad as Florida

Z^ANTARIO has not fallen as low as Florida in its treatment of prisoners, and certainly not as low as Nassau county, New York, but it is bad enough. At Grimsby twenty-three men who were out of work (a terrible offense) were jammed into two cells where by close jamming there was just room for them to sit down but not to sleep. After a night of this ‘hospitality’ they were turned out in the rain, in lots of three, at three-minute intervals.

Tax Sales in Chicago

AT THE close of July only half of the. 1930 taxes of property in Chicago had been paid, whereupon a court order issued for the sale for taxes of all the rest of the property in the city, 600,000 parcels out of a total of 1,300,000 that go to make up the second greatest city in the Western world.

Many Bondholders Have a Headache

TV/T ANY bondholders have a headache because in four months of the year $1,864,000,000 in bonds defaulted on their interest. Of these, $354,000,000 were railroad bonds, $473,000,000 were public utilities, $489,000,000 were industrial, and $548,000,000 were real estate mortgages.

Rockefeller City a Free Port

ROCKEFELLER CITY, in the heart of New York, will be a free port for the merchandise of all nations, similar to Hamburg, Copenhagen, Singapore and Hong Kong. Objects sent there for exhibition only can be admitted without duty, and only if sold for delivery in the United States will duty be collected.

Painesville, Ohio, Well Managed

PAINESVILLE, Ohio, is one of the well managed cities that is not sorry it has its own municipal electric lighting plants. Despite several rate reductions it has been piling up for itself a surplus of about $4,000 a month, and further rate reductions are in sight. The rates now are among the lowest in the state of Ohio.

Many Wringer Accidents

SO MANY accidents occur from the operation of power wringers in the home that it may almost be said they should not be permitted there. In the last three years eleven adults and seven children were killed in this manner, while some four thousand were injured, some very seriously.

Fighting Crime in New York City

A HUNDRED THOUSAND sizable posters encourage every honest New Yorker to phone police headquarters quickly if a crime is committed or if danger threatens. Policemen in automobiles will then close in on the suspected area, receiving detailed instructions by radio as they proceed.

Illiteracy in United States Decreasing

IN 1890 illiteracy in the United States was 13.3 percent; in 1900 it was 10.7 percent; in 1910 it was 7.7 percent; in 1920 it was 6 percent, and in 1930 it was 4.3 percent. In the urban population the proportion of illiteracy among those that are 10 to 14 years of age is only three-tenths of one percent.

Open-Air Library on Boston Common

OSTON has distinguished herself by opening on the Boston Common the first free and open-air library for the benefit of the unemployed. The library, which has 1,000 books contributed for the purpose, is housed in a band stand and requires that all books be returned the same day, at dusk.

“No Flowers; Remember the Flower Fund”

WEDEN has a custom whereby funeral notices often contain the words “No flowers;

remember the flower fund”. In such cases the money that would have gone for flowers goes to a fund which is used to provide for the less-well-to-do citizens’ homes more comforts than they would otherwise be able to enjoy.

America’s Heroic Chief of Staff

EFERRING to the way in which General Douglas MacArthur chased the veterans out of Washington, the Baltimore Sun describes him caustically: “That gentleman, who sent all the way to Fort Myer for a uniform, so that he could be properly garbed for a military operation which could have been carried out by a colonel and a few men armed with tear bombs, is unburdening himself of military romanticism undefiled, bare of the tiniest alloy of common sense.”

Dill Disgusted with Stock Exchange

Senator C. C. Dill, of Washington, is disgusted with the New York Stock Exchange. He says of it: “It is a gambling institution where insiders use marked cards and loaded dice. The story of what has happened there shocks every man and woman who has any sense of decency in business relationships. Every time we do anything in Congress to which the administration is opposed, stocks go down and we are told that it is because we did not follow the president’s leadership or did not do what they wanted in New York.”

2,389,862 Air Passengers Last Year

AST year in America there were 2,389,862 air passengers, of whom 522,345 were on the scheduled air lines. The average length of ride was only 90 miles, which seems rather surprising in view of the excellent service now provided for trips by air to any part of the continent.

Sixty-eight Tax-free Towns

IXTY-EIGIIT towns in the United States have no local taxes, because of revenue from municipally owned utilities. These towns are Orleans, Vt., Skaneateles, N. Y., South River, N. J., Clinton, Mich., Spooner and New Glarus, Wis., Russell, Minn., Chanute and Colby, Kans., Torrington, Wyo., Waterville, Wash., and fiftyseven towns and cities in Oklahoma.

Salaries of the Kings

ing George receives a salary of about $1,700,000 a year; King Victor Emmanuel, of Italy, about $950,000 a year; King Gustave, of Sweden, about $150,000 a year; the president of France about $117,000 a year, which is $42,-000 more than that of the president of the United States. President Hoover recently cut his own salary by $15,000 a year.

A New Use for a Dentist

rpwO men in the Bronx inveigled a third man -L who owed them $50 to enter a dentist’s office on the promise that they would there help him get a job. Then with the help of still another man they held him while the dentist pulled two gold bridges out of his mouth. Looks as if we were coming to a time when people with gold bridges will have to learn to keep their mouths shut, or else learn to keep out of debt.

Demons Making Fools of the Hindus

OME of the ways in which the demons make fools of the Hindus is to get them to stand on their hands alone, with legs and feet curled up and resting on their wrists; to stand on the head and hands, either with the body vertical or at an angle; to stand on one foot with the rest of the body tied in a knot; and to lie on one side with one foot curled around the back of the neck. It is claimed that those who perform these God-dishonoring stunts receive the assistance of the devils that are all about us; and no doubt the claim is correct. But at what a price 1

National City’s Anaconda Victims

TpOR skinning them out of $158,000,000 the investors in Anaconda Copper stocks are thanking the National City Company, affiliate of the National City Bank. The stock which by skillful manipulation was boomed to $133 a share has dropped to $4.50 a share. The National City got rid of their large holdings and let their customers hold the bag.

Steamboats in Kansas City

STEAMBOATS drawing six feet of water can now ply between Kansas City and New Orleans, and are of about as much use to the American people as a line of carrier pigeons between here and the planet Neptune. The navigation of the Missouri has its proper place in popular song and joke books about the congressional pork barrel, and that is as far as it goes.

Fox Bit the Hands That Fed Him

William Fox, president of the Fox Theaters Corporation, is charged with the peculiarly small-souled act of taking part in a pool to sell short the shares of his own company and thus take advantage of every stockholder who had trusted him. He made $322,960 by the deal. Raskob and Chrysler were partners with him and share in his shame.

Justice in Chicago

CHICAGO cannot pay its bills. It owed James D. O'Reilly $850 in unpaid salary. O’Reilly had worked for the city for 25 years. O’Reilly owed the city of Chicago $34 in taxes, which he could not pay because the city did not pay him his salary. Thereupon the city auctioned his home off for the unpaid taxes. And thus endeth justice in Chicago.

Rabbi Halpern Is Offended

MENTIONING by name the Guggenheims, the Ryans, Chrysler, Rockefeller, Schwab and Raskob, Rabbi Halpern of St. Louis recently said: “Al Capone is an angel compared with this gang. He was from the underworld and we all knew it. We didn’t invest our savings with him. We turned to the financiers of our country for counsel, and they gave us a worse deal than the biggest gangster of the underworld could hope to give. If Al Capone should get ten years in prison, they should get life.”

St. Lawrence Seaway

(CONSTRUCTION of the St. Lawrence Sea-way will give the Great Lakes a channel 27 feet deep all the way to the ocean and will cost about a billion dollars. The job is expected to keep 20,000 men busy for seven years. Two million horsepower will be developed and divided equally between the United States and Canada.

Ontario’s Electrical Rates

TV/TORE than 86 percent of the domestic users of electricity in 721 municipalities of Ontario receive a rate of 1.9 cents per kilowatt hour, inclusive of all charges. Compare these rates with your electric bill with its theft or service charge, and its additional high rate per kilowatt hour, and you can realize why Canada today is proud of its hydroelectric system.

Power Trust Skeleton

THE Power Trust skeleton consists of ten top companies controlling ninety-one subsidiaries operating in 12,487 communities with a total population exceeding 42,000,000. The Federal Power Commission has recommended public control over the holding companies and supervision of all the contracts between them and the operating companies.

Racketeering in Dyeing Industry

ONE method by which racketeering is carried on in the cleaning and dyeing business was brought out when it was disclosed that three fires occurred in one establishment in one day because phosphorus had been placed between the seams in dresses sent in for cleaning. The object was to force the cleaner into joining the racket for higher prices.

Satan’s Crazy Old World

Clarence Darrow, famous criminal lawyer, recently said: “It’s a crazy old world. Think of it. The human race need work but an hour a day to supply its needs. There’s no real human labor left. Everything is being done by machinery. There's plenty of wealth, but a rotten distribution of it. There’s a tremendous surplus of food everywhere and yet people are going hungry for want of food. There’s no democracy left any more. Indeed, it is difficult to find a real democrat. It’s all a big bughouse. I’ll be glad to leave it.”

Man-Hours in Industry

Uncle Sam Cuts Pay of Employees

.45 man-hour. In 1904 it required 1,291 manhours to build a car; in 1929, only 92 man-hours. In 1900 it required 70 man-hours to produce a ton of steel; in 1929 it required 13 man-hours. The maximum of employment was reached in 1918; since then it has declined.

Artificial Leg Business

A WASHINGTON manufacturer of artificial

legs employs forty-five salesmen. A condition of employment is that each applicant for work must have lost a leg. In the factories many of the workmen are also men that have lost their legs. The artificial legs are made of duraluminum, and since the World War more than 100,000 of them have been made.

Slave Market in Los Angeles

A LABOR slave market has been opened in

Los Angeles by Col. Louis Byrens, who conducted a similar auction years ago in Boston for returned soldiers, immediately after the World War. Eight persons were placed on the block, and their services sold to the highest bidders. One man who had been out of work four years obtained employment at 50c per hour.

Minister Will Teach Without Pay

IN A DISTRICT in Alabama where the people were so poor they could not afford both a church and a school, the minister and five other men and women in the community have volunteered their sendees as teachers. They will keep the school open and serve without pay. Here is a suggestion of what may be done with some of the surplus preachers no longer of any use as such.

Unemployment Wages Must Be Paid

Marriner S. Eccles, president of the First

National Bank of Ogden, says, “The depression will end when the unemployed are given jobs. If jobs are not available, unemployment wages must be paid, and I will not be in the least disturbed if such wages are called doles.” Eccles, with rare common sense, says that in ignoring the fact that the end of production is consumption, political and financial leaders are trying to apply a theory of economics as obsolete as the ark.

have been suspended. Husband or wife is discharged where both work for the government. Pay for overtime is stopped. No vacancies are to be filled. Workers reaching retirement age are forced to withdraw. Heads of departments are given authority to retire workers for indefinite periods.

Stealing from Taxpayers in Texas

NOW you would not think that in a highly religious commonwealth like Texas anybody would steal from the people as a whole, would you? But in the Dallas detention home the grand jury discovered that bread was charged at 60c a loaf, potatoes at $6 a bushel, green onions at 60c a bunch, and other foodstuffs to suit; and now you know why the Dallas taxpayers are sore.

An Impolite and Unfriendly Thief

CHINA has served notice upon Japan that if the latter recognizes the new state of Man-chukuo she will consider such action unfriendly. The next time some person meets you on a dark street late at night, knocks about half your teeth down your throat and then pokes a gun into your ribs and insists that you hand over your wallet, be sure to tell him just as he is leaving you that if he goes off with your wallet you will consider such action on his part unfriendly.

McFadden on the Federal Reserve Banks

T ouis A. McFadden, twenty years in the na" tional House of Representatives, and nominated for reelection by all political parties, recently handed the Federal Reserve banks the following diploma: “The depredations and iniquities of the Federal Reserve banks have cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people, has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted the government. It has done this through evasions of the law which officials countenanced and condoned and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.” Now isn’t that a nice way to talk about the private concern that has its name printed on most of our money?

The Republican Platform

qiHE WORLD TOMORROW, which is for

Norman Thomas for president, as the only possible choice of the three that are offered, says of the Republican platform: “No one expects political platforms to be models of sincerity. But we doubt whether any of them ever exceeded the Republican platform of 1932 in buncombe, evasion, duplicity, and insincerity. It is in a sense a perfect document: it is a symbol of the character of our political life.”

United States Steel Common

UNITED STATES Steel Common is almost back where it started, which is nothing. It will be remembered that when the Steel Trust was started bonds were issued to the full value of all the properties included in it. The common stock was so much pure blue sky. This blue sky, which had a paper value of $2,115,000,000 in 1929, was recently worth not quite $185,000,000. In other words 91.2 percent of the value had vanished into thin air.

Common Sense in Wisconsin

THE Public Service Commission of Wisconsin in a common-sense ruling has decided that the Wisconsin Telephone Company must reduce its rates 12^ percent of the increased purchasing value of the dollar. It has also decided, in view of the milking of operating companies by holding companies, that the seven major utility companies in the state must suspend dividend payments on common stock, pending an investigation.

First Fruits of Disarmament Conference

THE Disarmament Conference struggled manfully and womanfully at Geneva, for six months, to prove to one another that all armament is peace armament. They had hardly finished when Brazil showed that their arguments and conclusions were not in vain, and announced its determination to embark on a twelve-year peace program which includes twenty-five new vessels of what before the Disarmament Conference would have been called vessels of war, but now are called vessels of peace. Included among the twenty-five vessels of peace are two peace cruisers, eight peace torpedo destroyers and five peace submarines. These will be used to distribute sermons and hymns up and down the Brazilian coast.

To Keep the Ship Afloat

rpO KEEP the ship afloat as long as possible, -L banks are now allowed to report all government, state, county and city bonds at face value no matter how far below par such bonds may have fallen, provided there has been no default iu payment of interest so far. In other words, a state bond selling today at 80 may be reported by the banks holding the same as worth 100. This kids everybody along until the bank has to close, when the real truth comes to light.

No City Tax Levy in Ponca City

PONCA CITY^T, Oklahoma, will have no city tax levy next year, and is now in the same class with the taxless cities of Chanute, Colby, Beloit and Augusta in the adjoining state of Kansas. The reason is the same in every case. These towns have their own municipal electric light and power plants and water services. The Power Trust college professors that should have lectured in those towns did not get there quick enough.

France Will Probably Repudiate

Stephane Lauzanne, editor of Le Matin, Paris, believes that France will repudiate hex' debt to the United States, and has written at length to the New York Times why he thinks it will be done. And now that the world has been made safe for hypocrisy, the American taxpayer, who was so free with his money in 1917 and 1918 in paying an imaginary debt to Lafayette, can stagger along under his crushing load and figure out just how big a fool he was to help bust America for a bunch of ingrates.

Another Prison Murder in Georgia

DETERMINED not to be outdone by Florida,

Georgia has also disgraced the name of civilization by another prison murder. A Negro convict was whipped to death. The warden who did the whipping tells two stories, one that the Negro died of sunstroke, and the other that, to escape the rigors of the camp, he butted his head against a truck until he fell unconscious, and died before medical help could arrive. Brooklyn is in the competition. One of its police grabbed a man by the throat. It happened that he had a weak throat, having been operated upon six months previously for swollen glands, and as a result he died at a hospital a few days later.

World’s Largest Radio Station

Norman Baker, whose powerful station

KTNT, Muscatine, Iowa, was forced off the air after he announced that cancer is curable, is now building at Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, the most powerful radio station in the world. It will be of 150,000 watts and should be easily heard in every part of the United States. Looks as if the Medical Trust might be sick of their bargain by the time Baker gets through with them.

1,255 Suicides in New York Last Year

LAST year New York had 1,255 suicides, about half of whom died by gas. The figures show that the women are more than three times as apt to leap to death and more than twice as apt to poison themselves as the men. On the other hand, the men are three times as apt to hang themselves, eight times as apt to shoot themselves and four times as apt to cut themselves to death as the women. When it comes to drowning, they are of the same mind.

Sewage Odors in House of Parliament

IN BRITAIN they are disturbed because on a hot day recently some persons opened windows in the House of Lords and let into the chamber sewage odors from the Thames river, which is hard by. England was not so much disturbed over the lords’ getting a whiff of the odoriferous breezes blowing in over the Thames as it was at the idea of having a long-standing custom or superstition upset. In Britain custom is everything. If you want any change from what always has been you are no true Briton.

The Ineptness of a Hero

SEVERAL hundred Confederate veterans, every one of them past 80, wanted to parade in Washington and to have the ‘Hero of the Battle of Anacostia’ review them, but Mr. Hoover dodged the issue and suddenly pulled out for his camp on the Rapidan, leaving the old veterans entirely in the lurch. One wonders if the president has some undefined fear of veterans, regardless of age, if merely once they were veterans. Pray, what damage could he think might have come to him from those old men? Or, for that matter, what damage could have come to him from the hungry men who were waiting for their bonus money on the flats of Anacostia?

Where Uncle Sam’s Money Goes

TpOR the fiscal year 1932-1933 Uncle Sam’s J- money will be paid out in the following manner:

Public Works           $392,873,000

Principal on Debt        496,803,400

Interest on Debt         640,000,000

National Defense         694,805,800

Miscellaneous             816,363,223

Veterans’ Relief         1,072,064,527

$4,112,909,950

Only One More Thing to Do

X BRITISH rector, Rev. T. G. Stewart, Quinton, North Hampshire, has opened a Sunday tea room on the grounds of his palace, and personally helps to wait on customers. Another near-by rector, Rev. G. B. Ashwin, Syresham, has the added attraction of bowling. Now here is something the clergy can do, about all they can do. They are no good at preaching; that much is sure. It is to be hoped that these reverends, having gone into the honest businesses of serving meals and operating a bowling alley, will have acquired such honesty that they will not wish to return to the pulpits they have hitherto occupied. The only sensible thing for these men to do is to break off their pulpit habits and stick to these new lines that seem likely to make men of them.

Generosity at Okeechobee

ON THE sacks in which the government has been giving flour to the starving is plainly printed, “Not to be sold.” In Okeechobee, Fla., somebody did not sell it, but did the next worse thing by ordering the hungry to work 7 hours a day (at 101 in the shade) at whatever they chose to set them at, part work or otherwise. The pitiful part of it is that some of these were really too weak to work, and when they got their flour, having no baking powder, salt or grease to cook it with, in at least one home of a white family they had no way to cook it except by mixing with water and letting it simmer slowly till it was done. No doubt the boys in that family, if there are any, will have a sense of undying gratitude toward their generous Uncle Sam, and the next time Morgan's crowd wants to collect on a big lot of European bonds they will rush to the front to make the world safe for whatever it is to be saved for the next time it is saved.

Liberal Writers Do Not Admire Hoover

AV1NG been refused audience with the president when they sought to protest against the treatment of the bonus marchers, the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners issued a statement in which they said of President Hoover: “He has made it clear that whenever American workers, although destitute and hungry, make demands that are unwelcome to the government they shall be met with guns and gas. He has signally and openly expressed his contempt for the American writers who, as a class, represent the cause of free thought and free speech in the American nation.”

Why America Is Broke

HE reason America is broke is that she loaned $12,000,000,000 to the biggest bunch of thieves and ingrates and murderers that ever lived: to the governments of Europe. As Senator Howell of Nebraska well says: “Do you wonder a deficit has overtaken our treasury? These twelve billions of debts, plus interest deficits accrued, are equivalent to an empire approximating the assessed valuation of Minnesota and twelve additional states west of the Missouri river.” It is Europe that is the Shylock, selfish, shameless, ungrateful and impudent beyond the power of words to express.

Mail Subsidies Cost Money

IN THESE days when the costs of everything are being inquired into, it is being brought out that steamship mail subsidies are expensive. Thus, for carrying the mails one year from Baltimore to Hamburg Archie Roosevelt’s steamship company was paid by the Government $807,246 for service which would have been rendered by other steamship lines for $28,242. Thus, to keep Mr. Roosevelt’s line afloat the Government really made him a present of $779,004. Mr. Roosevelt, one of Teddy's sons, is very much opposed to paying the veterans their bonus, as he figures it might interfere with the subsidy being paid to his unprofitable steamship line. The most astonishing thing about these sons of great men is, not their greatness, but their littleness. Roosevelt’s crowd is not the only one getting subsidies. The Mississippi Shipping Company and the South Atlantic Steamship Company were paid $970,000 for carrying 231 pounds of mail for which, at standard rates, their compensation would have been but $128. Other heavily subsidized lines are The American Line Steamship Company, West African Line, Dollar Line, Grace Line, and Export Line.

Denation of the Bankers

HE Austin Labor Journal inquires: “Who is it that is demanding cuts in wages of hard-working men and women, while taking all the dividends they can get? The bankers. And who is it that has been hoarding $1,500,000,000 in cash which might have been the basis of $15,000,000,000 in credits in circulation? The bankers. Who sold to widows and orphans the rotten bonds of the foreign governments, taking their fat commissions, and getting out from under on the show-down? The bankers. Are they wiser than others? No! Are they more far-seeing for the public good? No! Are they more honest? No!”^-

After the Wabash, the Nickel Plate

OHN and Mary, meaning by that the common people that own the United States government, haven’t actually got the Wabash yet, but they are in a fair way to get it, because they are paying the bills that the Wabash cannot pay. The next railroad John and Mary will get will probably be the Nickel Plate, for the same reason. The roads that can now afford to pay salaries to their presidents up to $135,000 a year will be the last ones that John and Mary will get. Let us assume that the last name of John and Mary is Lemmon. Well, the lemons will go to the Lemmons, while the melons will continue to go to the Mellons. Is that clear?

Publicity as a Curb to Crooks

r. William Z. Ripley, Harvard economist, the gentleman that the Radio Trust choked off the air because he wanted to tell some unpalatable truths about stock manipulations, wants a law passed that will prevent the officer of a corporation from unloading his holdings when he knows in advance that adverse reports are coming out or, at least, will make it obligatory for him to give public notice of what he is doing. As Mr. Ripley puts it: “I would like to see some requirement that would stop such a thing as an officer of a company taking to a lifeboat and guiding the ship by wireless while he still is inviting everybody else to go aboard the ship.”

Ode to the Banker

(By the author of “Ode to the Milkman”, “Ode to the Lawyer,” etc.)

PROBABLY, until Einstein enounced his celebrated theory of Relativity, we did not realize that our eyes did not really see what existed behind the vision of what we appeared to see.

The common people, or some of them, now begin to guess that the vision of a dollar bill is not a true vision of what lies behind our familiar greenback.

We appear to see a standard, stable piece of value, solid as the planet, whose equivalent is to be found in a large bag of wheat, a few pieces of lumber or a hundred all-day suckers. But, the more you look, the more you see; but again, the more you see, the less you know!

The dollar bill has no actual, inherent value, and a million of them are worth only twice as much; saving and excepting that the institution which issues them may be able, when asked, to substitute for them something of value.

If that institution is a grocer’s shop the dollar bill will be redeemed in jelly powders and corn flakes worth a dollar (if you think it worth while paying all the profits imposed on those corn flakes since they left the farm as whole corn).

If the institution is a government it will probably break its promise to give you a dollar in gold for your dollar bill.

If a preacher issued it, he would offer you in exchange the highest seat in the synagogue, relief from the pains of an imaginary purgatory (and, therefore, imaginary pains), eternal membership in his church, a piece of parishioner’s pie ('value’ 10c), three shies at a dummy (25c), your fortune told (15c), and an osculatory thrill from one of his most beautiful but dumb captives (2 Tim. 3:6) (‘value’ 50c). Total ’em up for yourself and see if they are worth a dollar

[The writer of the foregoing, well posted in all that is going on in Canada, was requested by us to give our readers some information about its good banking system. We do not mean to say that the banking system of the United States is absolutely the worst in the world. Possibly some other countries have systems equally bad, but we believe it demonstrated that America’s is one of the very worst, and possibly the worst. It is doubtful whether there has ever been an instrumentality for wholesale robbery of the common people that can compare with the Federal Reserve system, which its proponents asserted would forever prevent such a panic in the United States as they now enjoy.—Ed.] a carload (especially when just outside the church circus there are probably lots of maidens willing, ready and anxious to ‘bootleg’ kisses free in the moonlight for the pure love of the thing).

A banker will exchange his dollar bill for another dollar bill, sometimes as good as the first one.

And a farmer would give you half a bushel of wheat (porridge for a month), three cabbages, a bunch each of carrots, turnips, radishes and lettuce, potatoes for a week, your weight in pumpkins (probably bed and breakfast as well), and his everlasting good will.

(If this article goes far enough we will eventually discuss Banking in Canada.)

The Unstable Dollar

Anyway, that shows what an unstable thing a dollar is, w’hen it may be cashed in terms of a blonde or a brunette, 16 or 60, at a church circus. And the business of banking is built on this “instability” ; and HOW ?

In European countries the institution of banking is aged and hoary. The systems of banking have worked themselves out to what they now are. Not so in America. Being new countries the American colonies in the course of their development came to a time when they had to institute a banking system. And, though they had the benefit of European experience, opinions differed. These differences came to a head in Canada and the United States in the Canadian Bank Act and the United States National Bank Act; the former providing for a branchbanking system, and the latter for the unit-type of banking system. The former provided for the issue of notes secured by the banks’ assets (paid-up capital) and the latter (U.S.) for the issue of notes secured or guaranteed by government bonds.

Under Section 91 of the British North America Act, legislative control of banks in Canada was vested in the Dominion Government. And, it is noticeable that the two great banking systems follow closely the lines of the two governments. Canada has a Dominion head, with provinces having lesser authority. Our southern friends have a group of states, federated, but maintaining each its own original authority.

Canada has Dominion-chartered banks each operating in several provinces. The United States banks operate under separate State charters with central and Federal Reserve banks.

Startint) a Bank in Canada

Starting a bank in Canada resembles the Chinaman’s recipe for rabbit pie, i.e., first get the rabbit. First get $250,000. Deposit that sum with the Treasury Board (a group of cabinet ministers so designated). That amount will be paid-up capital, and the authorized capital will not be less than $500,000 and it carries double liability in case of failure. Bank presidents say that capitalists won’t buy their stock, because of this double liability, but still they don’t give up the business themselves.

Now we can get our bank notes printed, in five-dollar notes or multiples. A five-dollar note is a bank’s cheque, beautifully engraved to make it look like money, and which, if required, they will cash in gold (maybe!). These cheques (or five-dollar bills) we can now ‘rent’ to the people. That is, we have received from the Government the special privilege of putting a halo around our cheques, thus making them better than anyone else’s and worth 5% to 12% interest per year.

Of our annual profits we can pay only 8% in dividends until a surplus account of 30% of our paid-up capital account has been accumulated. The surplus, or reserve funds, of Canadian banks today usually equal their capital account, which, in the cases of the Bank of Montreal and the Royal Bank^-, are each over $29,000,000.

On the basis of a capital and a surplus account of that sum a business is transacted in which liabilities (balanced by assets in excess of them, of course) exceed $700,000,000, i.e., a working capital in banking handles 13 times its own volume in revenue-producing credit. Banks try to hold 10% of the amount of their liabilities in cash, though this is not always done, and the ratio of reserves to liabilities in 1930 was 7.0% in cash, 3.7% due from outside banks, 6.8% in call and short loans, and 17% securities; a total of 35.1% total reserves to liabilities which could be liquidated in a short time in case of a ‘run’ on the bank.

Money Created Every Fall

Canada needs money in the fall when the gigantic wheat crop is thrown on the market. At this time the banks may issue more bills or notes up to an amount equal to 15% of their paid-up capital. This is really ‘created’ money. It has no security behind it, but carries with it a penalty of 5% interest payable to the Government.

In 1913 a provision was inserted in the Bank Act permitting the banks to issue bank notes beyond the amount of their paid-up capital, provided it was secured by current gold coin or Dominion notes deposited in the Central Gold Reserve.

It has been asserted that the vision of a dollar is not a vision of the reality behind it. Years ago, during the government of Canada by the French, dollar bills as a medium of exchange did not exist; beads and trinkets bought Indian furs. To the ignorant Indian the bead counter of F. W. Woolworth's would have been worth all the furs in the country.

Later, playing cards were stamped with a value and, when the ships arrived from France, these cards were redeemed on receipt of bills of exchange from Paris. When Canada was ceded by France to England some 80,000,000 livres of this and other kinds of paper money were lost to their holders. This demonstrates that the paper greenbacks, of themselves, are not valuable. Value is in what lies behind them.

With England, France and Spain all interested in the New World their coinage systems clashed, and, peculiarly, the Spanish dollar eventually eliminated the English shilling as a standard of currency, probably hastened by the exchange of trade with the United States.

The first proposed bank in Canada was the Canadian Banking Company, but war between France and England frustrated its development. In 1817 the Bank of Montreal was established and, today, it is one of Canada’s two strongest banks. At Confederation, in 1867, Canada had 28 banks. Seventy or eighty have come and gone and, today, twelve remain.

Bank Failures Are Few

While bank failures have been few, individually they have been failures of large institutions, with large losses. Nevertheless the per capita liabilities of failed banks in Canada from 1900 to 1920 (8 banks) was only one-third that of the United States banks (4,939 failures) for the same period. The failures of Canadian individual branch-banks are absorbed in the profits of the entire bank.

To protect the public, various safety measures have been instituted, chief among which is the Note Circulation Redemption Fund. This was

established in 1891. It is a fund to which each bank must yearly contribute 5% of its average circulation less such amount as is secured by its deposits in the Central Gold Reserve. In the event of a bank failure these monies are used to ensure redemption of the notes of the failed bank at par. The notes of any Canadian bank are, therefore, as good almost as the credit of all the banks united. If, through a bank failure, the Redemption Fund is depleted, it must be restored by the remaining banks. On this Circulation Redemption Fund the Dominion Government pays to the contributing banks 3% interest on their respective shares. Just why? It is not quite apparent.

Another safety measure is the independent audit carried out by shareholders. Then, the banks must report monthly to the Government their true condition and, for this purpose, an inspector general of banks is provided by the Government. C. S. Tompkins presently fills that office. The creation of that office was the outcome of the failure of the Home Bank of Canada in 1924.

Canadian Bankers’ Association

In the evolution of the Canadian Bank Act, the tendency has been toward greater governmental control. In 1900 the Canadian Bankers’ Association was incorporated and, instead of being a mere association of after-dinner orators, it is a business institution with a recognized office, probably the only one of its kind in the world.

That Association supervises the printing and destruction of bank notes, appoints a curator to look after the affairs of an insolvent bank, inspects the circulation accounts of member banks, manages the Central Gold Reserve and imposes penalties for the violation of Association rules. We suspect, however, that it keeps its corpulent children on diet to keep the people’s doctor away. It is there to guard the interests of the banks. Surely it watches court decisions, scrutinizes legislation and “lobbies” for the moneyed interests generally.

The clearing houses are established by the Association and supervised by it.

Its attitude generally is decidedly conservative and may be summed up in “Don’t touch!” However, through the resulting solidarity of member banks, embracing thousands of branch offices, it succeeds in maintaining the confidence of the nation in those institutions. In fact, it is almost suggested now that a bank cannot fail.

Sir Thomas White, formerly minister of finance, was quite emphatic on the point that the minister of finance had the moral (if not the legal) power to compel the existing banks to take over a bank approaching insolvency. He said,

If I had believed that the Home Bank at that time was in danger of failing, closing its doors, was insolvent, I should have gone to the Canadian Bankers’ Association and told them to take over that bank . . . (Royal Commission on the Home Bank, p. 359) And, actually, the existing banks have taken over failing institutions and probably will continue to do so in the future.

Diagonally opposed to this attitude, however, is the Government’s expressed unfavorable attitude towards unnecessary mergers. But mergers sometimes become necessary to prevent failures, and it will be apparent that, when a bank’s management see it is slipping, rather than advertise an approaching bankruptcy, they will seek to merge and, if the clamorous public resist it, they will clamor all the louder if they lose their deposits; so that mergers are a questionable evil and a doubtful blessing.

The Bank of Montreal and the Canadian Bank of Commerce have each absorbed seven other banks, the Royal five, Nova Scotia four, the Imperial one, and the Banque d’Hochelaga one.

Cancer in Some Banking Systems

A cancer in some banking systems has been to create subsidiary companies with interlocking directorates. If not controlled, a bank might lend its customers’ deposits to one of its directors who, probably as a contractor, or real estate man, could erect a building and lease it to the bank as bank premises at an exorbitant rental. In prosperous times this effectively hides corpulent profits, but in harder times it is one of the elements which, eating like a cancer, devours its creator.

A similar evil is found in the small bank whose directors are business heads of a variety of industries. These men loan their depositors’ funds to themselves as individuals, determining their own credit according to their egotism. For instance, a contractor-director takes a loan on a contract to erect a meat-packing plant of which another director is president. The packing plant fails, the contractor loses his money, the bank breaks, and widows and orphans lose everything. This practice probably accounts for as many losses in branchless banks as any other.

But these practices appear to be effectively controlled in Canada. Banks are required to report all loans to directors and to firms of which directors are partners or guarantors. This monthly return, provided for by Section 54 of the Bank Act, reveals to the minister of finance a veritable mine of information: the amount of non-current loans, shares of controlled companies, greatest amount of bank notes in circulation, etc., etc. It is a fact, however, that some Canadian banks are interlocked with other directorates, the Bank of Montreal and The Royal Trust Co., and the Royal Bank and the Montreal Trust Co. and the Globe Realty Co., for example.

Bank directors may not engineer their customers’ funds without involving their own. That is, they must actually own a substantial portion of paid-up, rather than subscribed, stock. They may not advance more than $10,000 to any one officer of a bank.

Why Canada Requires Many Banks

Sound banking, too, depends on each branch's serving the largest number of clients. And yet, because Canada is so widespread, it must have more banks than more densely populated countries. England averages one bank to every 4,600 people; the United States, one to 3,900; Canada, one to 2,450. Australian banks serve only 2,108 people each. Canada is ‘overbanked’, though, were the banks to reduce their branches, by agreement, it is probable that the cry of “monopoly operations” would be heard.

The Royal Bank of Canada has 923 branches; the Bank of Montreal, 617. All told, there are slightly in excess of 4,000 branches to the 12 Canadian banks, only one of which is at all local in its operations, the smallest, the Weyburn Security Bank, which has 26 branches in Saskatchewan.

The Royal Bank leads in expansion. It has 5 branch offices in Newfoundland, 1 each in Great Britain, France, Spain and the United States, 92 in the West Indies, and 25 in Central America and South America. Other Canadian banks have 74 foreign branches.

Common People Notoriously Honest

When bank failures are so widely discussed as they are today, it is interesting to note that failures in Canada are not chargeable to the common people or to the branch banks. True, there are bad debts, but, on the whole, the common people are an honest bunch and bad debts may be averaged from year to year and covered in a percentage of operating expenses. True, also, that a succession of bad crops sometimes “freezes” loans to the farmers solid for two or three years, but the honesty of the common people is a positive quantity and dependable. Failures are due to head office investment in ‘high finance’. This occurred in the Home Bank debacle of 1924.

Branch loans of such nation-wide institutions now follow standard grooves on stereotyped conditions followed by an almost mechanized management, and this has created a practice in banking more sure than could legislation. However, it is here that the unit-type of bank is probably more sympathetic to local needs and more genuinely enterprising, though the rapid expansion of western Canada would not have been accomplished had it not been for branch-banking which established its outposts six or seven years before they became paying propositions. Branchbank managers are controlled by the head office and frequently betray the fact that their corporations are soulless and cold, unsympathetic to local needs. Influencing credit, the bank manager influences farming methods, and not always for the best, though his experience usually is wide enough to make his advice helpful.

Generally speaking, bank managers are allowed to pass on loans, according to their experience, varying from $1,000 to $15,000. The Canadian Bank of Commerce divides the country into six districts, and a superintendent in each district will pass on loans up to $75,000. For larger amounts the general manager is consulted, but his decision may be given in 24 to 48 hours.

C. E. Neill, general manager of the Royal Bank, stated at one time that his bank had 65,000 borrowers, averaging $4,080 per loan; and, typical of small-town business, cites a Saskatchewan countryside bank as having 200 borrowers, $122,000 on loan, averaging $610 per loan. A Nova Scotian village averaged $1,190 per loan.

Loans Four Times the Deposits

Unit-type banks operating in a sparsely-settled country as is western Canada would probably encounter difficulties successfully met by the branch bank. Frequently loans there exceed deposits and everything depends on the success or failure of the yearly wheat crop. Herein lies the strength of the Canadian bank system which ties up its risk on western wheat with eastern factories, financing the western farmer in midsummer and transferring those funds when repaid to lumber camps in the fall, all handled by the same bank. In one case, the deposits of a branch bank were $150,000 and its loans $600,000. As the district developed, only a few years elapsed before its deposits were $600,000 and its loans $150,000.

In Canada, banking profits are associated with easterners and their source with westerners. This is not a whole truth. It is a fact that many western branches loan more money than they receive in deposits. In the east the interest rate is 7% or less. In the west it is anything up to 10%, with a fair average of 8%. Ginger-ite M.P.’s secured legislation limiting the rate to 7% but the Bankers’ Association strongly and successfully opposed a penalty clause, so now they violate the law; but, as there is no penalty attached, they keep right on violatin’. Farmers complain of usury, but the banks say the west wants a bank in every little town and they must pay for it. They say these branches lose money for the first three years and it takes the next three or four to wipe out those initial losses, and, if they cannot charge the higher rate they will have to withdraw their branches.

Again, they allege usury in that interest is deducted in advance, which tends to higher rates, and that, by issuing short-term loans when they know the farmer must have the money for a longer period of time, they are enabled to compound the interest.

Farmers Are Practically Helpless

Occasionally, farmers allege discrimination by the bank manager. Probably this occurs, but the bank manager is practically monarch of all he surveys, including the farmers, and they can’t talk back—successfully. Nevertheless, a Bank of Commerce official did suggest that if they thought they had grounds for complaint they might establish local boards which could examine the credit rights of applicants and thereby check up the managers. And an economist suggested a credit commissioner might make a ‘court of appeal’ from the bank manager.

Once in a while hard times stir up agitation amongst the farmers to right their grievances. At such a time they make a superhuman effort. Usually they succeed in turning over in their sleep and drowsing off again. And this is the best that can be said of farm loan boards established in every province, except Prince Edward Island, to provide long-term loans to the farmers. In their tremendous efforts to achieve Utopia they are granted a shingle with that name inscribed on it by paternalistic politicians and they hang it over an office door from behind which they snore again.

There is a need of long-term loans. Banks do not supply them. Amortized loans over a period of years would withstand the siege of crop failures. In 1926 a bill to create a Canadian Farm Loan Board for this purpose seemed well on its way, but failed to pass Parliament.

And the Maritime provinces complain. It is all too apparent that they are now being treated as “dead ends”, behind the progressive west. There, unit-type banks probably would arouse and maintain enterprise, but, like the old village which dies as it gives birth to the modern city, it is all too evident that the eastern provinces are slacking in the race for existence. And the glassy eye of the bank manager kills enthusiasm or chance or luck. He wants security.

The Public Always Hold the Bag

Talk was rampant for a while of seeking banking privileges for the Canadian Wheat Pool. Bankers opposed it, of course. Nothing came of it, except education for the farmers who begin to realize that the Bank Act is as much their legislation as the Canada Grain Act. Such men as Henry E. Spencer, M.P., and J. S. Woods-worth, M.P., and others, have done much to stir up the people in this connection. They are ardent advocates of monetary and banking reform, and had they an intelligent and vigorous following much might be accomplished. But, those who are strong in the head are weak in the pocket, and those who are strong in the pocket are in the banking business.

Aaron Sapiro, the wheat pool wizard, engineered the Canadian Wheat Pool, the largest institution of its kind in the world. The Pool was financed by the Royal Bank of Canada. It has since encountered difficulties. Is the Bank in danger? Well, capitalists have a way of convincing governments that if their institutions fail the credit of the country is ruined. Therefore the provinces and the Dominion must guarantee the Bank’s advances to the farmers. It is in this way that capitalists believe in public ownership, i.e., by public purchase of bankrupt utilities. If there is any profit to be made the capitalist makes it; if a loss, the public hold the bag.

Of course, bank managers come in for criticism ; it seems that the strain of banking petrifies the eyes and hermetically seals the ears, at least to most of us, and sooner or later hardening of the heart sets in, so that Pharaoh should be, if he isn't, the patron saint of the banking fraternity. They should be estopped from complaining of hard times, on the principle that "people that live in stone houses should not throw glass’.

In recent strenuous years suicides amongst bank managers have increased. Handling money they are tempted to dabble in stocks with the bank’s money. The road has two forks: wealth and self-destruction. An Ottawa (Canada) manager who recently suicided is reputed to have lost almost quarter of a million dollars for his bank and left a bundle of promissory notes of little value two inches in thickness.

A farmer in Wainwright, Alta., disgusted ■with the bank’s pressure, and being forced to deliver his wheat to repay his loan, dumped a wagonload of it on the sidewalk at the bank’s door. The manager didn’t appreciate such literal delivery, and his customer was fined for it.

Crasus Comes Down to Earth

The writer once dreamed of get-quick riches. He deposited $2.00 in cash and, later, 21c, then left it to pile up with interest. Having read of J. P. Morgan and Mr. Rockefeller, why shouldn’t he become a Croesus? On his approaching the banker five years later, when, presumably, the pile would be up in the thousands anyway, that gentleman regretfully informed him that the $2.21 had been put into a ‘"current” account instead of a “savings” account and, therefore, carried no interest. (Since then the writer has had to work for a living.)

Banking and the Monetary System are twins, and one can hardly discuss one without treading on the other’s pedal extremities. And for those people with convexed noses and arithmetically-curled eyebrows and other phrenological dispositions towards figures we plunge into the following sea of mathematics which involves banking but touches on the monetary system:

The Dominion Government assumes some banking facilities of its own when it issues notes, some interest-bearing and some non-interestbearing. Henry E. Spencer, M.P., wants to know w’hy the Government does not issue them all without interest. He knows the answer as well as we do. The banks are a “Dr. Jenkins and Mrs. Hyde” (is that right?) arrangement, almost a common treasury; what goes in the Government puts in, and what goes out the bankers take out. Henry Ford suggested that the Government could issue notes on its own credit and discontinue paying interest to any corporations. And they can. The mayor of Milwaukee evidently plans to try it. Success to him!

Promises Impossible to Keep

By the Dominion Notes Act of 1914 the Government issued $50,000,000 in notes against a gold reserve of only one-quarter of that amount, i.e., against $12,500,000.

By Chapter 4 of the Acts of 1915 it undertook to issue $26,000,000 in notes, $16,000,000 of which was secured by Government railway securities.

And, in excess of this $76,000,000 notes, it provided that notes could be issued against an equal amount of gold held. All this means that there are several million dollar bills issued by the Government which, if all presented at once, it could not (as it says it will do) cash for a dollar each in gold. At Sunday school they told us that was telling lies. Wonderful how the times change!

In 1913 the specie reserve against notes was 81%. That is, a dollar could be cashed in gold for 81c. And there were sufficient Dominion notes in circulation to provide $15.45 for every person in Canada. In 1915, as a result of the new note issues it decreased to 59%, and now (like the paternal interview behind the woodshed, "this is going to pain me more than it will hurt you’) glance over the following figures:

CIRCULATION OF MONEY PER PERSON IN CANADA

for the year 1930

Dominion Notes $1, 2, 4, 5s Dominion Notes $50 to $5000s

Dominion Notes $50,000s

Silver

Nickel

Bronze

Bank Notes

Average circulation per person

Dominion Notes $1, 2, 4, 5s

Dominion Notes $50 to $5000s            $14.11

Dominion Notes $50,000s                ..........

Silver

Nickel

Bronze

Bank Notes                           $16.05

On the egotistical judgment that you had no more money during 1930 than I had, I say you had none of that $14.11, i.e., you had no fiftydollar or fifty-thousand-dollar bills. If you had, let me know how you got them! Mr. Average Canadian, therefore, had in circulation, in 1930, $6.68 in Dominion notes and $16.05 in interestbearing bank notes.

38c on the Dollar

Of the $3.43 and $14.11 Dominion notes in your and the banks’ hands, 38% only could be cashed in gold by the Government. So that, for $17.54 Dominion notes, you would probably get in exchange $6.64 in gold, some shares in the. Canadian National Railways (value ???), and some other odds and ends in securities.

In 1913 you would have received twice as much gold, though you would have held fewer bills, $15.45 instead of $17.54. That shows that the vision of what one appeared to see, e.g., $17.54, had behind it only $6.64 in solid, substantial value, i.e., in gold.

Some more figures:

Bank liabilities in 1930 were:

To shareholders (capital)

Reserve funds

Notes in circulation

Deposits

(This total is $300,000,000 less than in 1929, the banks being called upon to liquidate that amount to the public.)

A logical question from this statement is, How could the public deposit $2,516,611,587 in the banks when there was only $159,341,085 in bank notes and, say, with Dominion notes, about $370,000,000 of money to be deposited, or otherwise handled, all together? See if this fits!

The Credit Merry-Go-Round

A. deposits $1,000 in a savings account in cash. The bank loans it to B. B. is a farmer who owes it to an implement company. Actually he never takes the $1,000 out of the bank, because the implement company owes the bank a pile of money and it is placed to their credit. B. pays interest on it though he never sees the money. The implement company C. never see it except that their account is reduced by that amount. The bank, therefore, still has it. It loans it to D. a grocer, who never sees it, because he owes it to E. the wholesaler. E. the wholesaler never sees it, because he owes it to a manufacturer who owes it to the bank. So far, nobody has seen that $1,000 except the bank manager and A. the depositor. You can add as many more letters of the alphabet as you want and lend it to each one of them, and let them each pay interest, and they still don’t need to see the money, though they get the benefit of it. What is the explanation?

Let B. the farmer go to the bank and ask for $5 to pay the blacksmith’s bill for shoeing his horse. The banker declines. The farmer offers his horse as security. On the strength of it the banker gives him a five-dollar bank cheque (not the gold) and, though it is only paper, the blacksmith can use it to pay for his groceries. It is, therefore, acceptable to everyone. Three months later the farmer repays the $5 with interest, though, in the meantime, the grocer turned in the same $5 bill and it is used over and over again.

The thing loaned in each case was credit, not money. The pity of it is that the farmer could not give the horse to the blacksmith as security together with his own cheque for $5, without interest, payable three months’ hence. If he was an honest farmer, and his credit was good, his cheque would be good tender.

Bank loans for 1930 were $2,064,597,746; bank assets, $3,237,073,853.

There is a weakness revealed in the banking institution here, and that is in the unhealthy ratio of paid-up capital and surplus to liabilities. In the year 1900 the ratio was 20 to 100. In 1930, the Royal Bank and the Bank of Montreal, each with approximately $60,000,000 in capital and surplus, wielded liabilities of over $770,000,000; i.e., their working money was only 7.8% of their revenue-producing credit. Maybe to a banker that looks all right, but to a student of the times it is top-heavy, yet withal probably characteristic of banking institutions the world over.

For 1930 banking profits net were $26,715,583, from which the usual dividends of 12 and 1% or 12 and 2% were paid. The Bank of Nova Scotia paid its usual 16%. The Bank of Montreal, the Royal, and the Bank of Commerce each take about six million of the total. Besides this, contributions to the surplus fund (if any) would be profits, and their present surplus funds are the accumulation of part of past profits.

An Industry Founded on Dishonesty

When these profits are examined in the light of the fact that the only commodity banks produce is bookkeeping, and that part of that is of the conjurer’s variety, it can hardly be regarded other than an instrument of society whose foundation in existence is the lack of honesty of men and the lack of man’s opportunity to work to earn to buy the surplus food, clothing and shelter which their fellow men produce. And this parasite yearly adds 13% to itself, so that, contributing nothing to society, it must eventually kill itself for lack of more funds to gobble up after it has cleaned up the entire pasture.

The intelligentsia here urge that because the people own their own natural resources, and from these they get their wealth, they should pledge this wealth as security and issue their own notes as credit against it. This would reduce interest on loans to the people by the Government to less than 2% and still be profitable.

The estimated wealth of Canada is $28,940,000,000 (the value of land, buildings, machinery, produce, ships, etc.), or $2,996.49 per person. Surely against such a wealth the Government could issue a loan of $2,000,000,000, which presently is handled by the banks, at 12 and 2.

Finally (just hold still for another minute, and it will come out), money in present industrial society is only the “small change of commerce”.

The Wobbling Pyramid of Credit

Daily, in the large cities (30 or more) representatives of the banks meet in “clearing houses”. Here they return the notes of other banks and get their own back. In 1929 Toronto cleared under eight billion dollars, and Montreal ovei’ eight billion. In 1930 the figures were a billion lower. To show actual business transacted it would be necessary to add to these figures the amounts of cheques written by bank customers and cashed at their own banks. For Canada, in 1928, all such transactions totaled $43,476,959,100; in 1929, $46,670,481,838; and in 1930, $37,491,301,766. The amount of these cheques in a year is 50% greater than the country’s national wealth. That is, the equivalent of Canada’s national wealth is handled in cheques every eight months.

From this, it will appear that about 94% of the nation’s business is done by cheque. The remaining 6% ($2,064,597,746) consists of a miscellaneous collection. One-third of it (2% of the whole) is in specie, Dominion notes, Dominion, provincial, municipal securities in Canada and public securities elsewhere; of this, only one-quarter of one percent (one-eighth of one-third of 6% of the whole nation’s business), viz., one four-hundredth of the whole, is in specje and Dominion notes. And, behind the Dominion notes in 1930 there was only 38% (i.e., 38% of one-eighth of one-third of 6% of the nation’s business) in gold. How much do you see behind a dollar bill now?

But, how powerful is that small amount of gold!

Is there a bank monopoly in Canada? There is uniformity of practice and interest rates!

What is a monopoly? Control of an entire industry by one. One what? One individual? one corporation? or one group? About sixty men could be named, and these sixty are the directors of the interlocking directorates of almost every bank, manufacturing, newsprint, railroad, factory, or trust corporation, etc., etc., in Canada. They have a common purpose. They are agreed to let each other’s business interests alone (until there is no more carcass left to pick; after that they may be expected to start picking each other). They virtually monopolize both banking and industry.

The story of a dollar invested years ago, drawing annually compounded interest, until it requires a gold ball the size of the earth to repay the loan, is an old one. But its truth becomes more potent and apparent each day.

Compound Interest to Whom and for What?

Today, in Canada, as in every other country, an issue is before the Government: Shall the taxes of the people be used to pay ever-increasing, compounding interest to people who cannot use it; or shall they be used to keep the unemployed alive ? The incentive of profits is a driving one, and the cries of the starving grow⁷ weaker as their strength lessens. But soon the ill-accumulated gold and silver wrill be thrown into the streets to quell the clamor of the starving. It will be too late. It is too late now. Prosperity’s corner is an oasis in the distant past.

Treasures have been heaped up for the last days. For the loss of these stacks of ever-increasing lucre, and the consequent necessitated renovation of the world, some of the blame which rests on profiteers generally, will be

Ode to the Bankers.

How Nature Cures

(From a book written in 1892.

^IXTHAT is health? What is disease? What ’ » is the law of cure?

“All growth, development, repair, and maintenance of tissue, as also development and maintenance of vital power, are the result of nutrition. Elementary physiology teaches that a primary cell enlarges, divides into two or more cells; these in turn divide and multiply until there is produced an aggregation of cells, and the first beginnings of tissue growth. Soon there are seen to be cells of different qualities having specific and characteristic functions; these related cells are seen to unite and cooperate in the formation of nerve, muscular, and connective tissue, of cartilage, of bone, and of the network of tissue seen in animal life. From the very beginning of this development and differentiation, the chief requisite for healthy growth, after the required temperature, light and air, is nutrition. When the animal has attained to its full development and growth there remains only the work of keeping up the temperature and of repairing the waste of tissue consequent upon exercise and activity; there is need only of nutrition in the form of air, water, and food.

“This is a universal law in organic life, as applicable to a grass-plot or a tree as to the organism of an animal. If a grass-plot has sunshine, warmth, moisture, and fertility (or food), there is health and growth. If food or moisture or warmth be taken away, there is sickness; and if continued, there is death. No medicine is needed to secure a restoration of health and vigor to the plant that has thus been made ill; all that is necessary is to supply any or all of the lacking elements of nutrition: light, warmth, moisture, or food.

“It is a universal law of organic life, be it vegetable or animal, that all tendencies are toward health. It is as natural to be well as to be born.

“Note the grass-plot before instanced. It may be ever so brown from the summer sun and drought or scarcity of fertility; if disorganization be not already set in, if there yet be life, all that is needed to restore the beautiful green color and vigorous growth to the grass is to supply it with whatever elements of nutrition it has been deprived of, sunshine, warmth, rain, or fertility and it at once begins to mend; in a few weeks green blades have taken the place of

seared ones, and in a short time there is often no trace of previous lack of vigor.

“If the bone of a man or any animal be broken, and the parts replaced, the presiding and guiding force of the animal economy, call it nature or what you will, at once deposits a liquid substance over the entire surface of the bone a short distance in opposite directions from the fracture. This liquid soon hardens into a bonelike substance and becomes a ring firmly attached to each section of the broken bone, and for a time affords the chief support whereby the damaged limb can be used. In due time the ends of the bone, which, perhaps, had been entirely severed, become united; nature establishes a circulation through its parts, whereby each part is again nourished; and the limb, having its broken bone reunited, is able to support the weight of the body without calling upon the strength of the bone ring which had been temporarily built around the fractured bone. What happens? Nature, finding no doubt that all needless supports are a damage, proceeds to soften and absorb this bone ring until it is all removed except a slight portion for an eighth or a quarter of an inch about the point of fracture.

“A similar and more familiar phenomenon is seen whenever the skin is broken: at once there is an exudation of blood; this coagulates upon exposure to the air, and forms an excellent airtight protection (a scab) to the injured part, which remains for a longer or shorter period, as may be needed; and when nature has formed a new skin underneath, and the scab is no longer required, nature proceeds to undermine and separate it; and while as long as it was needed it was firmly attached, as soon as no longer required it falls off of its own weight.

“A sliver becomes imbedded in the flesh, a frequent accident. If a surgeon is at hand and removes it, well and good: nature soon repairs the damage; if the sliver is permitted to remain, nature at once sets about a bit of engineering. First there is pain and inflammation; then follows a formation of pus; this in due time breaks down the tissues immediately surrounding the sliver, especially toward the surface of the limb; the pus increases, breaks through, runs out, and sooner or later carries the sliver with it.

“These everyday occurrences are as familiar to the layman as to the physician; but the

strange part of it is the fact that almost no one, layman or physician, seems to understand that these and like processes of nature are all the healing force there is. It matters not what the trouble may be, sliver in the flesh, or a lodgment in the organism of the poison germs of typhoid fever, no medicine is required or will benefit; all that is needed is that the conditions demanded by nature be supplied, and the same mysterious force which we call life, which builds bone ring support whenever and wherever it is needed, and at once places a most admirable protection in the shape of a scab wherever there is an abrasion of the skin, will prove itself as well able successfully to handle an attack of typhoid fever as a broken bone or an abrased skin.”

This is the way nature cures, and every honest physician who understands biology and the physiological processes of the human body must admit this.

The Cause of the Paradox By Upton Sinclair (California)

THE obvious cause of this paradox of starvation in the midst of plenty is that those who do the work and produce the goods do not get the money to buy the goods. At least they get only part of the money, and so can buy only part of the goods; they do not get all the money, so they cannot buy all the goods. The means of creating wealth increase faster than the market for that wealth; so the surplus wealth and the power of producing it is stored up, while those who would like to have the goods are powerless to buy them, and have to be turned out of work until the surplus has been consumed.

Throughout our industrial history these crises have come every few years. The machinery slows down until the surplus is used, and then the machinery starts again, and we have good times. Such is the “business cycle”, and our economists are compiling figures, and preparing charts, and predicting the customary revival. Six months ago I was talking with a New Yorker temporarily sojourning in Hollywood. Wall Street had “cleaned him out” in the recent panic, and now, he was saying, if only he had some money to buy U. S. Steel, which was so certain to go up! I said to him: “Where is this revival coming from? It means that we have to find customers for our goods; and who is going to buy them? Will it be the Germans, with money W’e loan them? Will it be the Russians, with money we won’t loan them? Will it be England, with her permanent hard times? Will it be the revolting Hindus, or the starving Chinese ?” My friend took a thought-journey over the world, and in the end admitted that he didn’t know where it was coming from.

Mayday at the Carbondale Teachers’ College By G. C. Hall (Illinois)

ALL freshman year students of the Southern Illinois State Teachers’ College of Carbondale, Ill., are compelled to take gymnasium, and at the end of the spring semester all freshmen girls are compelled to participate in the Mayday festival held on the campus the last week of school. This year certain sections were dressed as rats in “The Pied Piper”, others as calico cats and gingham dogs. The costumes worn were made of the very cheapest grade of gingham and calico, designed in close coverall suits, with tails stuffed, and ears sewed to the headpiece. This material was purchased by the school at a reduced rate and resold to the students at a dollar per costume, containing four yards of material. After a lot of protest they were promised a refund. When this was received it amounted to ten cents each costume. The difference in cost and selling price was turned over to the “Women’s Athletic Association”, and very few freshmen belonged to it.

Of course the Women’s Athletic Association had a banquet for the members at the close of the school year, and all that the rest of the freshmen got was the honor of footing the bill and making their own costumes.

Judgment of the Heathen

THE poor heathen! so we think and speak of them. Many an honest man and woman has been turned away from God's Word in disgust because they have been taught that God will eternally torment the billions of heathen because they have never in this life come to a knowledge of Christ and accepted Him as their Savior. But however that may be, we ask: Can the day of judgment hold anything good in store for the heathen? It is certain that God has been misrepresented in this matter of His day of judgment. Do thinking people imagine that they would stand less show before the bar of God than the poor, downtrodden people stand before the imperfect courts of the earth now? If so, then they think wrong! Psalm one hundred and three, verse fourteen, says of God: “For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.” And of Jesus, whom God raised up to represent Him on the bench as Judge, it is prophesied: “He shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: . . . and righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.”

Surely the righteous God will not be unreasonable about this matter of judgment. Addressing those whose sinfulness was of a dark dye He graciously says: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: Though your sins be as scarlet [rather deep color, isn’t it?], they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.” (Isa. 1:18,19) Examining these words closely, we discover that they are addressed, not to the heathen, but to those who have been brought to a knowledge of God and into relationship with Him, and have backslid-den. Now, then, if there is a generous opportunity open for such backsliders, there must be a reasonable opportunity for the poor heathen who lives in utter ignorance of the true God and His Christ or who has died in such gross ignorance. There is nothing that settles our nerves better than to get a correct knowledge of the will and purposes of God as contained in the Bible.

The heathen are usually thought to be, not the people who live in civilized communities or countries, but the swarming colored races who have not been reached by missionaries and made members of some church denomination of so-called “Christendom”. However, that is not what the Bible means by “the heathen”. In both the Old and the New Testament the word “heathen” means “nations”, that is, the nations who are outside of God’s chosen people. Sometimes the original Bible word for “heathen” is correctly translated “nations”, and also sometimes “gentiles”, which is really the Latin equivalent for “nations”. Before the death and resurrection of Jesus the Jews were God’s chosen people, and all other peoples were “the nations”, or gentiles, or heathen. Since the day of Jesus all those who, no matter of what nationality, have come to God through Christ and have become His children by adoption, have become God’s people, and all other peoples (even the Jew’s) are now “the nations”, or “gentiles”, or heathen. Civilization does not make anyone the less a heathen. Those, particularly, who are true Christians and faithfully living up to their privileges and obligations are God’s chosen people and nation. The Apostle Peter, addressing these, writes: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar [or, purchased, margin'] people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; which in time past w^yere not a people, but are now the people of God.” (1 Pet. 2:9,10) That these, if faithful unto death, will be rewarded with a glorious place with Christ in heaven, no Bible reader will dispute.

Nor w’ill anyone be able to prove that those who remain heathen now will ever get to heaven. What then? Will they be handed over to devils at judgment day to be dragged down to a hell of everliving torment? No! I remind you that God has no place in His universe for eternal torment; but that everybody, Christian and heathen alike, even Jesus Christ himself, who has died, has descended into hell, for the word “hell” in the Bible means the unseen abode of the dead, that is, the death state, or the grave. And the Bible w’ord for “hell” is translated as many times “grave” as it is “hell” in the Authorized Version Bible. Hence, when Jesus w^ras raised from the dead. He came forth from hell, where He had been for three days; and when Jesus says: “The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth” (John 5: 28, 29), it means that all the dead Christians and Jews and heathen shall come forth from hell. In fact the book of The Revelation, chapter twenty, verse thirteen, picturing a future day, states: “And death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.” Therefore, all the heathen, who have died and gone to the hell of the Bible’s description, will come back and have their feet placed once again on top of our green earth, and will enter into judgment before Christ Jesus as Jehovah God’s judicial representative.

Many times when the Bible speaks of the heathen or nations it means their national organizations or their systems and institutions of rulership and government rather than the people in general. For governmental organizations of men God’s Word holds out no hope, but tells only of fearful things in store. It is because the simple-minded people have been made to believe that these terrible prophecies of doom apply to the peoples ruled by these governments that they have been filled with fright respecting God’s judgment day. Concerning the nations as being oppressive Idngdoms and governments under the control of the Devil and operated by his human servants, God says to Christ Jesus, in Psalm two, verses eight and nine: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen [that is, the nations] for thine inheritance . . . Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

In the now approaching battle of Armageddon, which will be fought by God’s heavenly organization against Satan and his wicked organization in heaven and earth, Christ Jesus will thus dash the nations to shivers so that their selfish organizations will nevermore be found again. In verse six of this second Psalm the Lord God says: “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.” This statement proves that it is when Jesus begins His thousand-year reign or rule over the earth that He will crush the nations to powder and thus begin putting His earthly enemies under His feet. While this destructive work is proceeding and the battle of Armageddon is thus being fought it will indeed be a terrifying time for the people, and multitudes upon multitudes will lose their lives. (Ps. 110: 5, 6) Jesus declared that except God should shorten those days of “great tribulation” no human flesh should be spared alive. (Matt. 24: 21, 22) But God's hand wounds in order to heal. After the dire trouble is over, happy will the people be to realize that God has overthrown man’s enemies and oppressors, and that the glorious kingdom of God is in undisputed charge and control of the earth, and that through Christ Jesus their King and Mediator they may seek reconciliation with God and obtain the blessing of everlasting life in perfect happiness on this earth.

Referring to the peoples of the nations (but not to the governmental systems) God’s Word says: “Behold my servant [Christ], whom I uphold, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles [that is, the nations, the heathen, all non-Christian peoples of earth]. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law.” (Isa. 42:1,4) Judgment, according to these verses, does not mean condemnation upon the heathen. For Jesus, God’s elect servant, himself said: “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:17) Therefore, judgment means the opportunity to be saved; the first real opportunity for the heathen to be saved: saved, not to go to heaven, but saved from the death that Adam’s misstep in the garden of Eden brought upon all our race. And the day of judgment will be the entire period of the thousand years of Jesus’ rule as King over mankind. (2 Pet. 3: 8) Accordingly, all the heathen dead will be brought back from hell, the tomb, and share in the opportunity for salvation that Christ’s government will extend to all the human race. All will be brought to a thorough knowledge of divine truth, and if they live in harmony therewith and leave off from former sins, which Christ’s strong arm and grace will help them to overcome, they will gradually be lifted to perfection as human creatures. Of such perfect ones Proverbs two, verse twenty-one, says: “For the upright shall dwell in the land [not in heaven], and the perfect shall remain in it [not go to heaven].”

The next verse says: “But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.” God’s judgment will be against those wicked ones, that is, those who, on coming to a knowledge of God’s truth or who are given the opportunity to do so, then turn against it and refuse to seek reconciliation with God through Christ Jesus who “tasted death for every man”. Such will be destroyed for ever, together with Satan and his base angels. Earth will be a surpassingly beautiful Paradise then, and all the perfect and obedient of mankind will inhabit it for ever. Seeing that God's kingdom will execute these righteous judgments in the earth, no wonder God’s prophet David was inspired to pray for God to enthrone His only-begotten Son as earth's King, saying: ‘‘Give the king thy judgments, 0 God, and thy righteousness unto the king’s son. He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment. He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed be his glorious name for ever: and let the whole earth be filled with his glory.”—Ps. 72:1, 2,4,18,19.

A “Regularly Ordained” Jersey Cow By B. E. Hendrix (Texas)

LAST week I wrote you that the people in Fort Worth must have become tired of the crowing of the “roosters” that Judge Rutherford tells us about, for they had made a change at the first Baptist church there and had announced that a registered Jersey cow would attend the church and bring the message. I did not hear their announcement yesterday, but am reliably informed that they announced that last night they would have a cow and a goat there, and someone to milk them.

I have heard of fleecing the goats, and knew the people were the goats when they go to such places, but that was the first time I ever heard of milking them. Isn't it funny that people will fall for such things. They do not go just for the show, for it costs them more than a real good show would cost in town.

In GOLDEN AGE No. 344

THE GOLDEN AGE, 117 Adams St., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Enclosed find money order for $1.00 (Canada and foreign, $1.25), for which send me The Golden Age for one year, beginning with No. 344.

Namo .............................................................................................................................................-.....................................................

Address ................     -.............................-................................................

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We take pleasure in announcing

PRESERVATION

Written by Judge Rutherford

This book is an explanation of two divinely directed prophetic dramas recorded in the Biblical books of Esther and Ruth and which disclose Jehovah’s provision for the protection and preservation of those who love Him, and also shows the vindication of His word and name.

The autographed edition of PRESERVATION is now ready. This edition contains, on the first page of the book, a letter written by Judge Rutherford. This will be a limited edition, and if you want a copy you Had better place your order early. The autographed edition is offered at 50 cents a copy, and will be mailed postage prepaid anywhere. -For your convenience, below we provide a coupon.

©WATCH TOWER.

WATCH TOWER BIBLE & TRACT SOCIETY

117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Find enclosed a money order for 50c, for which please send me a copy of the autographed edition of Judge Rutherford's latest book, called PRESERVATION.

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