Golden Age, April 8, 1925
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It
y.
WRLD DYING
OMINOUS SIGNS
OF UNREST
PANAMA IS A PROFITABLE BUSINESS
~BLOSSOMING
RIO GRANDE
' WHY ARE WE SICK?
THE DAWN OF
A NEW DAY
'5$ a copy — $ 1.00 a Year Canada and Foreign Countries $ 1.50
Vol. VI Bi-Weekly No. 145
April 8, 1925
a Journal of fact
was
^NEV'
VORLD, BEGINNING
Contents of the Golden Age
MSI..................................—
Labor and Economics
World News Digest
Wage Reductions Produce No Boom
Standardization of Office Work
Carpenters and Joiners Raise Own Oranges
Greater Distribution of Wealth
Incredible Meanness to Immigrants
Social and Educational A Mother With a Career
Gulping Down Camels
Is the World Crazy?
Unique Battery Offer
Economies at the White Hou si:
Radio Reports
Radio Easter Program
Finance—Commerce—Transportation
Panama, Uncle Sam’s Most Profitable Business . ... . . 419
How the Canal Was Begun ...
The Republic of Panama . . . .
The Canal Itself .........
Equitable Issuing of Money'
Political—Domestic and Foreign Ominous Signs of Unrest .....
India
Home and Health
A Word About Honey ................. 432
Why are We Sick?
Travel and Miscellany A Blossoming Desert—The Rio Grande Valley ....... 431
Religion and Philosophy
Brother 10 the Chimpanzee (Cartoon)
Thoughts From One of Wesley’s Colleagues ...
Distribution of the Indictment in Switzerland ....... 438
The Dawn of a New Day ................ 442
Studies in the “Harp of God”
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Golden Age
Volume VI Brooklyn, N.Y., Wednesday, April 8, 1925 Number 145
Panama Uncle Sam’s Most Profitable Business
THE Panama Canal is Uncle Sam’s most profitable business. The whole cost of running the canal, including all items of construction, maintenance, operation, fortification, and interest on loans, amounts to about $8,000,000 per year; but the tolls collected from vessels passing through the canal amount to more than twice that sum.
The tonnage which passes through Panama is more than a million tons annually in excess of that passing through the Suez Canal. Indeed, a considerable portion of what once passed through Suez now finds a shorter and better route via Panama.
From the eastern part of the United States there go to the western coast of North and South America and to Australasia, manufactured goods of all kind, coal and cement in vast quantities; while from those regions to the East there comes a steady flow of fuel oil, nitrates, wheat, wool, phosphates, cocoa, coffee and nuts.
It is believed that the canal can ultimately carry four or five times the traffic which is now passing through it, and that the necessary enlargements and deepening can be done out of the tolls. It may sometime be cut down to sea level, which will be eighty-five feet lower than at present. The expense of doing this is roughly estimated at a billion dollars.
A Brief History of Panama
OLUMBUS landed on the isthmus of Panama in 1502; but it was not crossed until
eleven years later, when Balboa planted his flagstaff in the waters of the Pacific and claimed on behalf of Ferdinand and Isabella all the lands that bordered upon its shores, all of North and South America, Asia and Australasia! Spain was stripped of the last of these nds when she lost the Philippines, and some of them she never did get anyway. The city of Panama was colonized before 1520.
In the year 1550 a Portuguese navigator, Antonio Galvao, suggested to the king of Spain that a canal be cut through the isthmus. But the idea was rejected; and in order to make sure that the rejection would be final, the death penalty was prescribed for anybody who should reopen the matter.
Nevertheless, the great explorer and naturalist Humbolt mapped five routes for such a canal, one of them following closely the lines of the present ditch; and Spain had at last determined to begin the work, when the country was snatched from her control in 1821.
Colombia revolted from Spain in 1819; and two years later the province of Panama cast off the yoke, and threw her lot in with the country which had controlled the isthmus up to 1904. From that time onward, history was made rapidly, at least as far as the canal is concerned.
The French had obtained the consent of the Colombian government to build a canal, and work was begun in 1879. But the country was warm, damp and extremely unhealthy; the machinery was inadequate and deteriorated rapidly; the workers died like Ilies; and little progress was made.
Nineteen years later the Spanish-American war was fought; and Spain had such a superior line of cruisers that at the time it was believed necessary to bring the American battleship Oregon all the way around from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast in order to protect American shores. President Roosevelt decided that such an emergency must not happen again, and that America must build a canal across the isthmus.
How the Canal TFas Begun
IN 1904 the United States government paid the French company $40,000,000 for their rights, and was about to proceed with construction when the Colombian government refused tq ratify the French-American transaction. Uncle Sam made proposal after proposal to the Colombian government, -without result.
-.13
Whether or not Mr. Roosevelt actually engineered what followed we may not know; but it seems not unlikely in view of what we now know of the secret agreement which he made with Japan to give them a free hand in the seizure of Korea, provided that they would keep out of the Philippines. .
Anyway, the thing that happened, -whether Mr. Roosevelt planned it or not, is that the province of Panama suddenly revolted from Colombia, declaring itself a republic, and when the Colombian government wanted to send troops to quell the revolt they found United States battleships standing in the way, and were forbidden to make a landing;. The rest was easy.
The Republic of Panama ceded a canal zone to the United States for the sum of $10,000,000 and a further annual payment of $250,000. Work was begun in 1907. All the towns and cities of the zone were provided with first-class sanitation, tropical fevers disappeared, greatly improved machinery was at hand, the work progressed rapidly in spite of landslides and torrential rains and was finished in 1914.
To mollify the feelings of Colombia she has been given $25,000,000, paid in five annual installments of $5,000,000 each, as compensation for the loss of sovereignty over the isthmus. Senator Borah, of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, declares that there is nothing in the record to show that the United Sates was in any way obligated to pay this sum, as it did not participate in, aid or abet the Panama revolution.
That may all be; but it can also be said that the United States did nothing to discourage it, and did do a plenty to discourage Colombia from trying to regain control of what was her principal asset. Colombia’s $25,000,000 was not all clear velvet; for it is reported that some of our patriots who were eager to pay it to her have found a way to get some of it back in oil concessions. We have many such.
The Republic of Panama
HpHE Republic of Panama, is an expression -®- that looks well on paper. If there is a bigger farce in the way of a government anywhere on earth, wrn do not know where to look for it, except at the Vatican. The most we can say of either of them is that they are unscrupulous political cliques.
A law is in force in the Republic of Panama which establishes that every citizen must- have a voting certificate before he can exercise the : right to vote. But the law requires that before \ one can have a voting certificate he must have ' an official photograph; and as there are no pho- ■ tographers in the rural districts, a large part : of the citizenry is automatically excluded from participation in the annual $250,000 from. Uncle Sani in which the patriots proper of Panama are specially interested.
Then, if they live in the cities, the common people find, after they have obtained their voting certificates, or after they have obtained the right to them, that the government insists on their custody, for fear these will be lost, and that when election day comes around, the only certificates that can be located are those of the • friends of the party in power, the regular patriots.
The outcome of this arrangement is that in the last presidential elections, although the population of the country is 442,522, the winning candidate received only 20,000 votes; w’hile in one district, which has a population of 6,623, only 14 votes were cast in the entire district. The United States government guarantees the independence of Panama in perpetuity.
The little country of Panama is 480 miles long, with a width of 37 to 110 miles. About half the country is occupied, with a mixture of Indians, Spanish and Negros, and some Americans, Germans and French. Bananas, caoutchouc, coffee, nuts, mahogany, sarsaparilla, ipecac, pearls, and tortoise shells are exported to some extent ; but although the soil is fertile to an unusual degree yet it is rarely tilled at all. The city of Panama has 30,000 population.
The Canal Itself .
THE canal has been often described, but we will repeat a little of what has been said. -.........
The isthmus of Panama is so crooked that the eastern or Atlantic end of the canal is farther west than the western or Pacific end of the canal. This is a case of where east is west and io east. The general direction of the cut from the Atlantic to the Pacific side is to the southeast.
Moving from deep water on the Atlantic side, the canal extends at sea level from its starting point in Limon Bay for a distance of six miles to the Gatun locks. These are three in number, each a thousand feet long, and lift the level of the canal eighty-five feet to the level of the Gatun lake'.
The canal proceeds through the lake and up the valley of the Chagres river about twenty-one miles to the famous Culebra cut, where the real drive through the divide was made. The Culebra cut is seven miles long, 300 feet wide at the bottom, and extends to the Pedro Miguel lock and dam on the Pacific side. A mile farther the Miraflores locks lower the canal to the level of the Pacific. The depth of the canal channel is forty-one feet, its length forty-three miles. The canal is leased for one hundred years, with right of renewal.
All the locks in the canal are double, so that vessels going in one direction do not in any way retard the progress of vessels bound in the opposite course. There are now about fifteen vessels a day passing through the canal. They are at present limited to daylight passage only, so as not to interfere with the dredging operations which are constantly in progress.
4n Interesting Neighbor
A N INTERESTING neighbor of the Panama
Republic is what might not improperly be called the Republic of San Blas. On the maps the San Blas islands, or the Archipelago de las Mulatas, as they are sometimes called, are shown as belonging partly to Colombia and partly to Panama. Actually the people, 30,000, who live on those islands, recognize the sovereignty of nobody but themselves.
Although they live near' one of the world’s greatest highways, the San Blasians refuse to have anything to do with whites, considering, not improperly, that they are a bad lot. Their tribal customs have not changed in four hundred years, since the Spaniards first visited them; and their language is the same now as then, a language void of verbs.
San Blas women wear clothes, and are fond of them; but the rule of the country is that the only way little brother can get any clothes is to earn them. Until then, he wears nothing but his birthday suit. The men and the women of San Blas are noted for their high morals. Transgression of the law of chastity is visited by swift and sudden death.
World News Digest
[Radiocast, with other items, from Watchtower WBBB on a wave length of 272.G meters, by the Editor]
Wage Reductions Produce no Boom
HE Annalist, of New York, calls attention to the fact that the ten-percent wage reductions in the Fall River textile mills have not produced fuller -employment, and sagely remarks that if these reductions spread to Rhode Island and other parts there is no reason to believe that they will increase the purchasing power of the workers. Sounds like horse sense.
The Passing of the Actor
EFORE our very eyes the actor is passingout of existence. Many things have combined to bring him to an end. One important thing was the advent of the movie, but even with that there was still a limited field for him. But the movie and the radio together are too much. The old-time actor and the horse-shder are in the same class, and the old-time preacher and doctor are headed in the same direction.
Carpenters Raise Own Oranges
HE carpenters and joiners are raising their own oranges. The Brotherhood owns and operates a 1700 acre orange grove at Lakeland, Florida, from which there were recently shipped 55,000 boxes of the luscious fruit to carpenters and joiners in all parts of the country. The oranges had a sure market, and were much appreciated. Not a bad idea.
Jazz is Played Out
A7T7 is played out. The broadcasting station WEAF declares that out of 54,000 letters received in January there was abundant evidence that the demand for jazz has passed, and that there is a marked demand for higher class music. This is good to hear. It is impossible to think of jazz as music. The best that can be said of it is that it is immorality, dishonesty, insanity and anarchy in the realm of sound.
Standardization of Office Work
STANDARDIZATION of office work is impending. The United States Chamber of Commerce is working to that end. The warehouse interests have adopted a set of fifteen forms by means of which all their transactions may be handled. When a warehouse clerk has learned the use of these fifteen forms, he can be shifted anywhere. Cost accounting is undergoing a similar standardization. It is bound to spread to every branch of office work.
A Plucky and Successful Woman
TWELVE years ago Mrs. William Laimbeer, of New York, was made a widow by an automobile accident. Her husband had been a reasonably successful stock broker. Mrs. Laimbeer started in business to provide for her three children. In twelve years she worked her way up from one position to another until she has become the manager- of the "Woman’s department of the National City Bank, a position approximately equal to that filled by her husband.
Conditions Bad Enough as Respects Crime
CONDITIONS in the United States are bad enough when the annual cost of the crimes committed is more than the total cost of running the national government. And yet that is the claim now made. Six billion dollars annually to stock swindlers, two and one-half billion dollars taken in holdups, and one hundred million dollars in forgeries are among the items.
Hurrah for Warden Smith!
WARDEN Frank J. Smith, of San Quentin Prison, California, has instituted in the prison a regular four-year high-school course, including all the subjects usually taught in high schools. Prisoners who complete this course will be awarded diplomas, and on leaving the prison may enter- the University of California without entrance examinations.
Now That Christmas is Past
WITH rare courage the North Westchester
Times says that the business of giving gifts to people whom you suspect of a purpose to give something to you, has gone so far in perfunctory and generally unwilling barter and exchange that the original sentiment of Christmas giving has been almost extinguished, and it really looks as if the only way to redeem Christmas is to make it a day when everybody shall give to somebody who can not possibly make a return gift.
A Mere Electric-Light Bulb -
QOME of the things which go to make up a mere electric-light bulb are copper, mica, wool, cotton, resin, alcohol, marble dust, arsenic, soda, calcium lime, lead, nitre, cobalt, nickle, molybdenum, cryolite, bismuth, sodium carbonate, tungsten, tin, shellac, cork, pyrites, manganese, potash and feldspar. These things come . from every one of the six continents of the globe, and from every climate from Greenland tc Chile inclusive.
Greater Distribution of Wealth
HPHE common people of America are investing more and more heavily in the industries of the nation; and this is not a bad sign. It shows that the wealth is being more generally distributed. Since the opening of the twentieth century, the total number of stockholders ia all industries has increased from four and one-half millions to fourteen and one-half millions, while the average holdings per stockholder are only about one-third as much.
17,740,000 Automobiles in America
THERE is now an automobile for every seven persons in the United States. The automobiles in other lands are negligible by comparison. Four-fifths of the world’s output are in use on our own highways. It is no wonder, under the circumstances, that constantly greater efforts are being made to insure some way against the frightful toll of deaths which they exact.
Pelicans in Nevada
SINCE time immemorial a large colony of white pelicans has nested on Anaho Island, Pyramid Lake, Nevada. The colony of these ungainly birds now numbers about 10,000. An investigation of the habits of these most expert of fishers reveals the fact that they live almost exclusively upon coarse and common fishes not used as food by man, and hence they do no damage.
America’s Gasoline Extravagance
BRING twenty-one days of the month of August, 1924, the automobiles of the United States consumed as much gasoline as was con
sumed by all the automobiles of Great Britain during the entire year of 1924. There is no fuel debauch in history which can equal the way in which America has been wasting her su~ ly of hydrocarbons.
Eord’s Rapidly Increasing Fortune
ORD’S fortune is increasing rapidly because nothing goes to waste around the Ford
ing up the power house for thirty minutes just as the people of Greater New York were starting for work. It was about half a day before the traffic situation of the great city became normal.
Florida Content; 'feting a Ship Canal
LORIDA is contemplating a ship canal. The location is not decided, and the canal itself
plants. The slag from his furnaces is turned into Portland cement. The waste from his hard woods U turned into pitch, creosote, wood alcohol, acetate of lime, and charcoal. The broken pieces of plate glass go to the mirror companies. The metal junk brings large returns. The bigger his business gets, the more fortunes he makes from the by-products.
Ford’s Railroad Paying for Itself
IN JULY, 1920, Henry Ford bought the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad for $5,000,000. Turing the past two years his net profits from the railroad exceeded $4,000,000. For thirty years previous the road had been continuously in the hands of receivers. In four years the traffic over the road has almost trebled. The traffic consists largely of Ford coal and Ford machines and parts.
Double Tricks in the South
NTIL the traffic reaches a certain point, a single track line of railway can get along
has not been agreed upon, but enough is known to show that there are no serious difficulties in the way. There is a string of lakes and rivers between Tampa and Jacksonville, and the building of such a canal would save almost 1500 miles on the vessels to and from all that part of the United States lying along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.
Houston by the Sea
VERYBQDY knows that Galveston is by the sea. They remember the time when the
waters of the Gulf of Mexico were blown over the city and the town was devastated, with many thousands dead. But it will surprise some to know that Houston, fifty miles inland, is connected by river with the sea; and that the river has been dredged until it is navigable. Houstonians have recently brought this to the attention of the world by announcing that the ship Lafayette, the largest passenger steamer ever put into Gulf waters will now make Houston its home port.
Incredible Meanness to Emigrants
EW YORK city harbors some of the meanest people alive. Knowing that most
very well, but doubling the tracks enables a system to operate four times as many trains. ‘The Atlantic Coast Line has now reached the point of saturation, and will at once doubletrack its main line the whole length from Richmond to Jacksonville.
Rat Ties up Million People
THE most expensive rat in history went up in vapor the other morning, as a result of chewing the insulation on one of the generators in the Interborough Railway Company’s main power house. All he got for his trouble was a charge of 120,000 kilowatts; but he was the means of short-circuiting the generator and ty-
aliens who have accumulated a little m o n e y must pass through New York on their way back to Europe, these villains gather here and by every conceivable method of chicanery persuade or frighten or force returning aliens to give them all or part of their savings. This is largely done through pretended legal or official connections or methods. The Department of Labor maintains a Division whose business it is to run down these frauds.
Cruelty to a Dog Teaches a Lesson
OR cruelty to a dog a Niagara Judge fined four men $200 each and sentenced them to
180 days in the county jail. The chances are that
this judge does not believe, and could not believe, that any being having the power to do so would ever be cruel to men for ever and ever without any mercy or any let-up. The unscrip-tural doctrine of eternal torment is a dead one.
What a Radio Fan Did
A RADIO fan in Pittsburg made the mistake, accidentally no doubt, of connecting his receiving set to a water pipe to which a telephone wire had also been grounded. The astonishing result followed that when one of the telephone subscribers went to use her phone the other day, in came the radio concert assuring her, “It aint gonna rain no mo.” Other subscribers in the same district reported the same trouble.
The Electrical Horse
THE old-time flesh and blood horse is nearly gone. Once in a great while one may be seen, looking quite out of place on a highway crowded with automobiles. The old-time horse was useful as an exerciser. But now for about $700 a man can get an electrical horse, fitted with trot, gallop, canter and other movements, and take his horseback ride indoors, all for the expenditure of a few cents a day for current. The President has such a horse.
Poor Lights are Expensive
THE Eye-sight Conservation Council has made an analysis of 91,000 accidents, and finds as a result that about 100,000 workmen are lost to industry each year because of inadequate or improper lighting. These men thus lose about 30,000,000 days of work; and industry as a whole is set back about $300,000,000, which must be borne by those who do work.
Tetrophan Cures Locomotor Ataxia
ANEW drug, tetrophan, discovered by a German scientist, is claimed to effect the cure of locomotor ataxia. Professor Oscar Foerster of the Univesity of Breslau, Germany, reports that in every instance where this drug has been given by him to these sufferers they have completely recovered the use of their limbs.
When Vaccinations do not Take
A HEALTHY body in normal function can not show manifestations of disease; and when vaccine is deposited into such a body, it is eliminated the same as any other poison or waste thing. But by repeated efforts so much poison can finally be thrown into the blood stream that the blood is unable to neutralize it: and then the vaccination will take.
Reverend Dr. Norris Slams the Clergy
TN AN address to the Baptist Bible Union of -®- America Rev. Frank Norris, of Fort 'Worth, whose congregation is said to number 8,000, declared that the average young preacher of today has “a smattering knowledge of every- t. thing in the world except the one book he is to V teach and preach. A hungry, sinning, suffering ! world comes to church and asks for bread and ' receives a stone, the latest researches of science, the findings of modern scholarship.” Rererend ' Norris ought to know. If he could not tell, who could?
Cathedral Causes Heartburnings
THE drive for $15,000,000 to complete the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine, being built in New York city by the Protestant Episcopal Church, is causing some odd situations. Charles M. Schwab, a Catholic, is head of & committee raising funds in the iron and steel trades. Mayor Hylan, also a Catholic, gave $100 toward the fund. The Jesuit paper America accuses them of what it styles “'Heresy, ever the ape of God.” One of the contributors to the fund is John D. Rockefeller, Jr., a Baptist, who gave $500,000, with the understanding that $75,000 should be applied to the oil division of the cathedral drive. Wouldn’t there be room for Messrs. Sinclair, Doheny, and Fall to get into the oil division?
A Mother With a Career By a Farmers Wife
mHE following article was clipped from “CapA pen’s AVeekly” of August 9, 1924:
“A career and marriage may be combined to a certain extent. I am married, the mother of four small children; yet I have returned to teaching. Money is scarce, and housework is hard for me. I have hired a woman, who cares for the children and does the housework. It gives me more time for my family, and I am not so tired. I have time, also, to keep myself looking attractive. When I was doing the housework, I was too tired to care how I looked; and I never had any time for my family.
“I earn $125 per month, and pay the woman $1 per day. She is a good housekeeper, and is a mother to my children. I now have money for things I could scarcely dream of before. Besides, I have more liberty, as the woman cares for the children while I go out with my husband or call on my friends. We have so many good times together that neither my husband nor my children object to my career.”
This teacher is admittedly doing work which is much easier and pleasanter than that of the woman who cares for her home. She works from six to eight hours per day. Her housekeeper puts in from ten to fourteen hours daily. She gets $6.25 for her day’s work. Iler housekeeper gets $1 per day and board. Doubtless she would plead superior training and intelligence as the reason why she should be thus favored. But did it not take years of training and considerable mental ability to make of the other woman so successful a homekeepcr and mother for four young Americans not her own ?
We are not censuring the teacher. We would feel the same about these things had we had the same training; but she has bared a stern fact. Either the teachers, in our rural schools especially, are getting too much, or else the men and women who slave to make the homes what they should be and to keep these schools going, are not getting enough.
This teacher is one of a union of teachers who, puffed up by a mistaken estimate of their own importance, are setting the prices the public must pay. The teachers are not alone, however, in seating themselves in the upper seats. We look for a great shifting of positions when the Master of Earth takes full control and when this great social structure which is built upon the sands of selfishness'and which even now is tottering, falls.
Gulping Down Camels By k. l. b.
( ^'V' E BLIND guides! which strain at a gnat, J*- and swallow a camel.”—Matthew 23: 24.
The ancients drank their vane from open bowls, and it was often, necessary to strain the wine through a cloth to remove the gnats which got into the liquid. The literal rendering of our text is: “Ye filter out a gnat, and gulp down a camel.” ■
The scribes and Pharisees, painstaking as they were in regard to some trivial details of religion, could gulp down camels, hump and all; and the camel, remember, was pronounced by the Levitical law as unclean for food.—Lev. 11:14.
The gnat-strainers and camel-swallowers are by no means an extinct tribe. We have religious leaders today who strain out the supernatural from the Bible because the miracles are contrary to human reason. Yet they can turn around and swallow the camel of Darwinism without choking to death.
Here are some samples of what is taught in our school books, statements which some of our broad-minded brethren swallow with relish, as doing less violence to reason than the teachings of the Word. Prof. D. AV. LaRue, in his “Psychology for Teachers” says:
“We are all descended from a simple, wormlike creature. The segments of our backbone are memorials of the segments of its body.”
Equally interesting is the statement from page 97 of Simmons’ “Practical Psychology”:
“At one stage of evolution, the duck’s foot was not webbed; but several thousand years back he decided to live in the water. Whereupon he began to desire and eventually evolved a foot adapted to swimming. The crane got his long legs because he wished to wade. The beaver developed his broad trowel-like tail because he wished to erect a dam. Man got his hand because he wished to become a builder, and Iris frontal brain development because he wished to become a thinker.”
A learned professor taught the young folks of Philadelphia:
“Evidence that early men climbed trees with their feet lies in the way we wear the heels on our shoes—• more at the outside. A baby can wiggle its big toe without wiggling its other toes, an indication that it [sic] once used its big too in climbing trees. We often dream of falling. Those who fell out of the trees some fifty thousand years ago and were killed, of course, had no descendants. Those who fell and were not hurt, of course, lived; and so we are never hurt in our dream? of falling.”
Our children come home from school, says Mr.
Bryan, and tell us that there was a time when eyes were unknown. They just happened. A freckle appeared upon the skin of an animal that had no eyes. This freckle converged the rays of the sun upon that spot; and when the little animal felt the heat on that spot, it turned the spot to the sun to get more heat. This increased heat irritated the skin, and a nerve came there, and out of the nerve came the eye! But th s only accounts for one eye; there must have bee.' another freckle soon afterward, and just in tin right place in order to give the animal two eyes.
Furthermore, there was a time when animals had no legs, and so the leg came by accident. A little animal without legs was wiggling along on its belly one day, when it discovered a wart. It just happened so. The -wart was in the right place to be used to aid in locomotion; the animal came to depend upon the wart, and use finally developed it into a leg. Then another wart; and another leg, at the proper time—by accident— and accidently in the proper place.
Come, come, gentlemen. Don’t you occasionally have little choking spells trying to swallow this? How come you to make such a fuss about Jonah being swallowed by a sea monster?
Is the World Crazy? By a. m. Merrill, n. c.
SOME sincere writers on sociological questions approach remarkably close to the sore spot of the world’s problem. They recognize selfishness to be this sore spot, a selfishness that is intensified by the increasing stress and competition of our day. But having gone this far they start back appalled at the magnitude and the irremediable nature of the problem, as if they had come to a precipice and could see no bottom. They go to the jumping-off place, and then fail to jump. They instinctively realize that the solution of the problem lies without the scope of human power; and since they know nothing of the impending Divine intervention, they turn way from the subject and discuss lighter matters.
Is the world insane? There are strong evidences that it is. The worship of an unholy trinity of gods—Mammon, Jazz, and Evolution —surely indicates insanity. True, there are many great activities that are being conducted in a wonderfully efficient way. But experience teaches us that many insane persons are uncannily shrewd on some one subject. Is not insanity chiefly manifested in the deification of Darling I? Note that the chief incentive to Mammon worship is self-glorification.
Observe the pabulum upon which the minds of the people are being fed night after night in the moving-picture houses. One would naturally presume that the scenarios were prepared for the entertainment of feeble-minded children and sexual neurasthenics.. Tawdry melodrama is the chief factor. Mellow drama is right; for it is mellow even unto rottenness. The inevitable amorous clinch of the hero and heroine, an in
decent exhibition of affection even between a married couple, crowns the evening’s entertainment ! ‘
When I was a student at a Chiropractic college, we occasionally had a lurid assortment of lecturers. I recall one who presented a philosophy which has an increasing number o f adherents. This lecturer urged us to cultivate the power of controlling others. According to his theory, others could with equal facility learn to control us. Of course, in an age of Mammon, Jazz, and self-deification, it would be absurd to suggest that each one sought to control himself!
Some time ago the Legislature of Oklahoma enacted a law forbidding the teaching of evolution in any public school of the State. The Legislature was assailed by the daily press as fanatics who had returned to the methods >>f the dark ages. The writer made an effort to defend the Legislature, but had no luck trying to break into the daily press, although he has spent the greater part of his active life in the newspaper game. The evolutionists, having taken up their abode in glass houses, proceeded recklessly to throw stones. I know of at least one high school in which the facufty ignore this law; and only one member of the student body, a young Bible Student, undertakes to refute the ridiculous theory. I have reason to believe that the law is generally disregarded. These wise leaders of education are of course horrified by the disposition of many of the common herd to ignore certain laws which have the approval of our “very best people”.
Ominous Signs of Unrest By d. h. Copeland.
THERE are hvo things that stand always in way of man’s progress: Reaction and indifference. Of the two, indifference is the harder to overcome. Just as it takes more power to start a heavy train, to overcome the inertia of the mass, than it does to run the train once started, so it takes tremendous effort to arouse the interest of the indifferent and to gain their intelligent support to measures designed for their benefit, though the interest once aroused is sufficient to carry the matter to a triumphant and successful conclusion.
Many of us are familiar with Millet’s famous painting, “The Man with the Hoe,” a picture of the bowed figure of a peasant wielding a hoe in the field, but bearing on his face that mixture of expression that comes from ages of oppression, sullen acceptance of the lot of a serf, with an undertone of suppressed rage waiting to be unleashed. Men have gazed at that face, and have speculated if indeed it conveyed a message to this our day; if sometime the ability to carry the tremendous load of repression and servitude would be taxed beyond endurance, and a terror be unloosed upon the world that would destroy for all time the tyranny and overlordship of the few over the mass.
Mr. Lloyd George, in a speech in Scotland, said:
“Political economy is not such an intricate science as its professors would have us believe. It is all summed up in one inspired phrase, ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ The world sowed destruction, slaughter and havoc; and it must reap poverty, privation, sorrow and suffering.”
Everyone knows that these four conditions are the breeding-ground of what we are pleased to term Bolshevism, the anarchistic spirit of hatred of all existing forms of repression with violently expressed demands for redress of age-old wrongs.
A knowledge of the same situation moved Gustav Le-Bon to write a book which he called “The World in Revolt”, and in which he declared that the world is passing through an “era of dissociation and hatred of all kinds of authority or control”.
Dr. G. Stanley Hall writing in the “Century” says:
“Not since the fall of the Roman empire, or at least since the Thirty Years’ War, which swept away one-third of the population of Europe, has the western
world faced so many troubles or had so many prophets of disaster as at present. Besides the loss of ten millions of her best men slain in the war, twenty millions wounded, and the suffering and death of many others at home which this entailed, there have been incalculable property losses, enormous debts (some of which can never be repaid), paper currencies depreciated beyond redemption, and widespread disintegration of industry and trade. . . . There is also a new spirit of independence in India, Ireland, Egypt, Poland, and a dozen more nations down to poor Armenia, with a new race consciousness in the American Negro.”
Again quoting from Lloyd George’s Scotland speech:
“The world is poor; that’s the trouble. You have spent fifty-five billion dollars on the war, and the whole world is poor. You must remember that it is the world that buys, as well as sells. It is no use saying that the need is greater than ever. If you judge a customer that way, then a tramp will be a much better customer for Sauchiehall Street [a busy shopping district in Glasgow, where this speech was made] than our chairman. The need is greater, but the means are less. The world is in rags, and it has got to travel many weary, weary miles before it gets back to where it ■was before the war.”
This all goes to make the picture gloomy, hut doesn’t present much of a solution of the difficult problem.
Decadence of Superstitious Worship
OR many years, centuries in fact, the waters of truth have been percolating down through
the masses of the people; education, once the most despised and neglected of benefits for the common herd, has taken a tremendously important place in our national life, until today in the vast domains of the British Empire, in the United States of America, and in most of the world that we call Christendom the working classes generally can at least read and write. The to-be-expected result has been that a good deal of the idolatry that characterized past centuries—the worship of kings and of church dignitaries, the wealthy and those in power—has passed away in the beginning of this twentieth century. Stripped of the trappings of war, the soldier is a common man, with all the impulses, desires and aspirations of a man. Thus he is kin to the farmer or the mechanic. As Kipling says: “The officer’s lady and Judy O’Grady are sisters under the skin.”
It was the recognition of this simple fact that caused the undoing of the old Russian regime.
Soldier, peasant, and artizan formed a common union; and the deed was done. Without an obedient army the bureaucrat found it impossible to enforce his demands; the recognition of brotherhood under the uniform and the overall worked a miracle, and old Russia ceased to exist. Imperialism, once on the run, disclosed its naked weakness; it was merely a superstition, a mockery, a mask, hollow as a bubble, maintaining its hold upon the people through their ignorant veneration for it as something that had always been and therefore always would be. And this happened in a country only three percent literate! When this same miracle happens in other countries what tremendous results will follow!
It is this peculiar form of veneration that still permits the fossil thought of our churches to linger, that keeps the church’s life-blood, money pouring into her coffers; although from all accounts this stream is rapidly drying up. Yet day by day the more honest of the denominational ministers are exposing, in bursts of frankness, the deplorable condition of the church nominal.
The Archbishop of York some time ago went on record as saying that the greatest stumbling block to religion is the modern church, truly an illuminating statement from a great churchman.
More detailed and explicit is the statement of the writer in the “Presbyterian” on the cause of the decadence of the church of our day:
“The rationalistic seminaries have destroyed the faith of their students in Christ and the Bible, and have left them without a divine message, and turned them over to every wind of the doctrines of men. They have wrong thoughts of God, and some of them have become atheists. When they enter the Evangelical pulpits, they find themselves in conflict with the people in faith; and they call this conflict the lack of freedom in the pulpit, when indeed it is the lack of faith in the preacher and his intruding upon the people teaching which they have intelligently repudiated.
“The change of emphasis in religion is the same thing; it simply means a change from the authority of the Bible to that of philosophy and religious consciousness. The Inter-Church Movement was due to the same intrusive, presumptive and reckless spirit, without authority and without principle. It diverted attention from the power of the Gospel, to the power of organization. . . . They have robbed the present preachers of their message and sent them for occupation into the field of worldliness.”
Glenn Frank, editor of the “Century Mag
azine”, wants to know why five thousand Prot- ■ estant pulpits are empty, and answers the ' question partially thus: \
“The danger lies in those pew-holders who want the world of devotion and the world of divi, ends kept safely distinct in air-tight compartment,. And whether it be noble or ignoble, religious or irreligious, the able young man of today is not interested in the exclusive task of labeling men and women for transportation to a realm unknown, and sedulously avoiding straightforward consideration of that reconstruction of human society which Jesus of Nazareth had in mind, when He talked of the kingdom of God coming on earth.”
Theological Ship Going Aground
WE ARE glad to note that it is admitted that to the “able young man”, presumably a minister, the future state of the dead is a “realm unknown”. Too many supposedly able young ministers, and old ones too, have thought that they knew all about what happens after their clients have started on the long journey, with the lamentable result that millions of so-called Christians have gone into the tomb thoroughly misinformed on this important point. No doubt, when they come back in the resurrection, they will have something to say about it to the human signboards which, like the one in the fairy tale, swing round with the wind and point down any road at which they happen to stop.
It is obvious then, if the staunch supporters of the church, or those that should be this, are busy kicking the rusty plates of a foundering ship so that the holes in the hull can be enlarged and the ship sink the faster, that laymen have some reason for doubting the church’s ability as a leader of the thought of the masses.
Rev. II. J. Hamilton, Presbyterian, of Rochester, Mich., has said:
“It is time for the Protestant churches to clean house and banish every modernist minister from his pulpit. Our churches have become hotbeds of infidelity, higher criticism, and evolution. The monkey gospel is today predominant in the Protestant Church. The Bible has been reduced to a classic. The blood atonement is called a slaughter-house religion and a religion of gore.”
The echoes of Christendom’s failures and perplexities have gone far afield.. All heathendom today scoffs more or less openly at the efforts of the foreign missionary to foist upon them a futile religion that solemnly affirms one thing on the one hand, and as quickly denies it on the other, in order, so. they think, and rightly so, to get them into the same condition that Christendom is in.
According to the “Western Christian Advocate'-’, a Methodist publication:
“The native faiths are filling the Far East with a description of Western Christianity as a war-loving and war-promoting organization. They are claiming that Christianity, a cannon-ball, a submarine, a gasbomb and a battleship all go together. [They might have included rum, immorality and the drug traffic also.] They hurl into our teeth the accusation that Christ is the Prince of Peace, and the Christian Church the instrument for making that doctrine effective throughout the world; but that the cold fact is that thus far Christ’s teaching has not produced that result even in nations where it has held a preponderance of the people under its control. It passes peace resolutions with armies in training in the field. It proclaims the-coining of the day of world peace with the navies at target practice in sequestered harbors. These are but part of the many accusations now being made against Christianity which threaten the ultimate success of our missionary program. We have anticipated the hour when pagan religions would come face to face with the claims of Christianity as a world religion. That day has arrived.”
foreign. Missions in Disrepute
URTHER proof of the utter failure of the foreign missionary efforts of the modern church is given by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, which sent a special representative to India to study the progress of Christianity amongst those millions of heathen. The report was illuminating but scarcely edifying to the church:
“You can no longer preach Christianity,” reports this specialist, “because to the Indian mind Christianity is synonymous with machine guns, submarines, bombs and poison gas. You can preach Christ [presumably as a teacher of a moral code comparable with that of Buddha, but not in competition with it], but not Christianity.”
This is substantially the same as the report of the “Western Christian Advocate”, which seems to show that whether the church can get union of denominations or not, it can achieve unity of thought when registering failure.
The record of achievement is no better in China. All China today laughs at the Christian doctrine of peace and brotherhood, and points derisively to the Chinese general who, being a converted Christian and commanding troops all converts to Christianity, made a splendid record as a killer, they being the most effective murder machine on Chinese soil. Western civilization’s gift to China, through the missionaries, was a new power to kill and destroy in the name of Christ, the Prince of Peace 1
The pagan has good grounds for believing that Christianity (the modern brand) is the “'greatest hypocrisy ever practiced on an unsuspecting world”, and that it is synonymous with war and other forms of legalized murder.
Human Laws Will Never Christianize .
WITH more money than ever before at its command (at least up to the past three or four years this was true), the net result of the Christianizing of Christendom calls out these remarks from the Albany Knickerbocker Press:
“It can hardly be disputed that the present age has not the same regard for God and religion as was possessed by its predecessors. Indeed, we are told, there has never been a time, in this country at least, when there was so much cynicism, contempt for law, disregard of authority, and determination to have pleasure at any cost as are the commonplaces now of American life.”
In Canada, where “blue laws” are “popular” and well enforced by the Lord’s Day Alliance in the interests of church collections, on the theory that if the people have no place else to go they might go to church, it would be an interesting experiment to throw open the picture shows, theaters and ball parks for a while to see how permanent is the Christianizing effect of such laws. The result no doubt would be the almost complete desertion of the church by its younger element, possibly to practise new pool and billiard shots learned in the church parlors and Y. M. C. A. or to indulge in the various activities encouraged by the church apart from Christianity.
Again to quote Mr. Lloyd George on the question of the collapse of the state, in the same speech before mentioned:
“You can not leap into prosperity. I know perfectly well that no measure that the state can devise can wipe out unemployment, bring prosperity to trade and provide customers in every market. ... As I came up to Scotland, crossing the Cheviots, I saw in the hills as the train ran through, rather a fierce blizzard, and said: 'Winter is coming, and 1,300,000 are out of work? There was no use in pulling down the blinds to shut out that blizzard.”
True, there was no use. Just as that storm made Mr. Lloyd George think of the million and a quarter men facing a desperate winter, workless, and many of them hopeless, so it was a symbol of the whole of society facing the storm of hatred and passion which the masses are brewing, and which must soon break and sweep irresistibly before it the last shreds of a decadent state and an apostate church system which has failed to meet the needs of the people.
Politicians and the small fry in the church organizations continue to bully and bluster, to bluff or cozen, as their nature is; but the statesmen and thinkers in the churches have seen that the end is near. Many, like a brave captain on a sinking ship, will go down in the rising-tide of rebellion and anarchy engulfing the world, true to the last to their mistakes and blunders. Others will desperately endeavor to escape and will not be able. Others again will catch the vision of the New Age dawning and, as the old ship plunges to the depths for ever, will cry triumphantly witli Peter the Apostle: But “we look for NEW heavens and a NEW earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness!”—2 Peter 3:13.
Equitable Issuing of Money
IT SEEMS that the Federal Reserve System is profiting immensely through legislation that has been passed for the benefit of the country at large. The primary object of the monetary laws by which it was organized and is maintained was to give an equitable distribution of money, to make money easy to obtain in order to head off panics, to conserve the country in its industrial and agricultural interests with the least waste and expense to the tax payers, and to insure as near as possible perpetual prosperity.
The propaganda in favor of the law making the Federal Reserve System a possibility so that there would be scarcely any opposition to the passage of the measure seems to have been sponsored wholly b> the financial interests; for the law was converted into a veritable gold mine in which the control of our currency has passed into the hands of the few for the enslavement of the many.
Mr. John G. Zook of Lititz, Pa., has written a letter to the Honorable Mr. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury, asking the issuance of some legal tender money, purporting to be on the same basis as the Federal Reserve System has money issued to it. It is a plan by which each municipality may have legal tender money issued to it by the government up to ten percent of its assessed valuation. Would this be a feasible plan to work out without partiality and without discrimination? If not, is not the Federal Reserve System getting the lion’s share of favors? It would seem that if our government is “of the people, for the people, and by the people,” if one group of individuals is entitled to such consideration, then each political unit is entitled to the same. If so, where would such demands end?
Mr. Zook says:
“In 1919, when the question of housing people became acute and Lititz was up against the problem, I went before the Boro council and presented the above; but no action was taken. I did not then know that any one else advocated the same plan. A. E. Clark, who organized the First Credit Union of Texas, in Houston, sent me a circular in which is stated that House Bill 4576 provides that any political subdivision that will deposit its 25-year non-interest-bearing bonds with the Secretary of the Treasury, will have issued to it a like amount of legal tender money, to be returned to said Secretary in twenty-five equal annual payments of four per-cent each, when the canceled bonds would be returned. This is a dual purpose bill, and would remove the two most vital and rapacious tribute-collecting toll gates.
“The bill was put to sleep in committee, as are many other measures intended for the commonweal; and it was accidentally discovered by some one going over the Congressional Record.
“I shall be pleased to have some of the able financial writers whose contributions have appeared in The Golden Age pass criticism on the above plan, and the probable effect should a universal demand be made on the Washington authorities.”
Mr. Zook’s letter to Mr. Mellon follows: “Hon. A. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury, Washington, D. C.
“Dear Sir:
“The assessed valuation of the Boro of Lititz is over two million dollars.
The GOLDEN AGE
“We ask that you issue to the Boro $200,000 in legal tender money, retaining one-half of one percent to cover the cost of issue, which is the amount the Federal Reserve is supposed to pay for that issued in its behalf. Take the Boro’s bond or mortgage therefor, and permit it to repay the loan in semi-annual or annual instalments until the full amount is repaid, granting the further privilege to repay the government in full at any time.
“The money is to be used to pay off all bonds or other indebtedness of the Boro and to make improvements.
Chief among the improvements will be the erection of model homes on a wholesale scale to be sold to citizens for either cash or on the instalment plan at cost. The money will represent wealth created by work, and part yet to be produced by work and natural resources.
“We ask this as a political unit of citizens of the United States on the assumption that under the Constitution all citizens are on an equality; and that it is constitutional that money, which has been made a universal necessity, should be issued to all subjects with as little discrimination as is used in the issuing of postage stamps.”
A Blossoming Desert—The Rio Grande Valley By Mrs. B. Kennedy
THAT the desert shall bloom has been held forth as one of the triumphs of the kingdom of Christ on earth, and this is truly coming to pass. Of course, there is nothing spectacular about it. The whole thing lies in the use of irrigation, and many regions now are bearing witness of the Christ present.
Much has been heard of the reclaiming of the West, and much has been said concerning it; but little publicity has been given to a strip of land along the coast of southern Texas. This is known as the Rio Grande Valley.
Not many years ago this great tract was a part of a Spanish grant, sublet to ranchers for cattle ranges, and considered valuable for nothing else. This state of affairs existed until about ten years ago, when its possibilities were discovered. Up to that time, much of the soil had been of little value because of its alkalinity. But by the use of irrigation, the water level changed; the salt either- leached out or went far beneath the surface, and the whole region profited thereby.
The result has been a stupendous one. An almost unheard-of growth has taken place; for instead of a land of mesquite and cactus of a few years ago, there now exists one of the most fertile areas in the United States.
Laboring under the natural handicaps of past and of youth, the valley is very little heard of. However, the enthusiasm of its' people is doing much to bring it before the mind of the public; and, in spite of its youth, it even now rivals the much advertised lands of California and Florida.
Already its grapefruit has been proclaimed the best in the United States; and its oranges are of equal fame, being of the navel variety, though, unlike those of California, large, thinskinned, and at the same time sweet. The valley grows most of the fruits of the tropics, such as citrus fruits of all kinds, and figs, dates, pomegranates, huge papayas, and bananas, as well as most of the vegetables of the North, which yearly are being shipped to early northern markets.
Of course, this development could never have taken place without an interested people—pioneers who had brought new life and new ideas. This growth is shown in the towns;.for places which ten years ago were little more than crossroad stations are now important centers. For instance, San Benito is at present a town of 5,000. And these people have brought with them their ideals of education, which have resulted in excellent schools, equipment, and instruction. These are maintained because of general public interest, a thing not so easily obtained in certain northern states.
The roads also are good; and the majority of the counties are endeavoring to have all the principal highways paved, an endeavor which will soon produce a paved road the full length of the valley. At the same time, the streets of the towns are paved, and are lined with low, substantial brick buildings, unlike the ramshackle ones so commonly found in northern towns. Also, modern conveniences—electricity, tractors, cars—are at the hand of these people, and with them, they are truly making the desert to bloom.
A Word About Honey Byj.Feicei
NO SUBSTITUTE has ever been Mund for honey as made by the bees. The metar is gathered from the flowers and carried to the hives by the busy little insects. In the hive a wonderful change takes place whereby the thin watery liquid is changed to a rich and sweet product flavored by the flowers from which it originally came.
Honey varies greatly, depending upon the kind of flowers from which the nectar was gathered. Honey from buckwheat is dark and of very pronounced flavor. On the other hand honey from orange or clover, or alfalfa, is light in color and mild in flavor. Some folk like one flavor, while others prefer another. There are hundreds of sources of pure honey with all shades of color, from water-white to extremely dark, and of different flavors.
Dr. C. C. Miller, an Illinois physician who lived to the age of eighty-nine years, said that he ate honey instead of sugar because he wanted to live as long as he could and to be as well as he could while he did live. He wrote as follows:
“It would be greatly for the health of the present generation if honey could be at least partially restored to its former place as a common article of diet. The almost universal craving for sweets of some kind shows a real need of the system in that direction, but the excessive use of sugar brings in its train a long list of ills. Stored in the wonderful laboratory of the beehive there is found a sweet that needs no further digestion, having been fully prepared by those wonderful little chemists, the bees, for prompt assimilation without taxing
■ the stomach or kidneys.”
Iii the old days no better way of securing the honey was known than by killing the bees and mashing up the combs and straining the honey through a cloth. It thus came to be known as strained honey. The invention of the extractor made it possible to remove the honey from the combs without breaking them. With a hot knife the cappings are cut from the combs, which are then placed in wire baskets inside the extractor. These baskets revolve so fast that they throw all the honey out of the cells. The honey is then drawn into cans, and the combs returned to the hives to be filled again by the bees.
Honey should be kept in a warm and dry place. Most honey will granulate or crystallize in cold weather. To restore it to the liquid condition, set the pail or jar containing it into a dish of hot water and leave until it is entirely liquefied. Be careful not to let the water boil. When honey is overheated, the quality is changed and much of the fine flavor is lost. Many persons prefer honey in the crystallized state; and in some markets it is sold under the name of “'honey butter”.
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