Golden Age, June 8, 1921

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June 8, 1921, VoL II, No. 45

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zfte Golden Age

Volume II Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, June 8, 1921 Number 4S

Glancing Backward at “Unrest”

100KING over the literature of the past two years one is astonished to see how much was said on the subject of unrest a year or two ago and liow little is said today. Either there were forces then at work to produce unrest that are not now at work, or reasons then existed for playing this subject up in great headlines that do not now exist. We examine the subject with a view to ascertaining some of the basic facts.

A first glance at the subject reveals the economic situation as the fundamental cause of i all the unrest. The causes assigned for it are insufficient wages, fear of poverty, fear of loss of employment, excessive hours of labor, reluctance to work too hard for fear of working one’s self out of a job, inequitable wage schedules, lack of adequate housing, extortionate rents, profiteering in the necessities of life, high . infant mortality, ignorance, restriction of free speech by those who would complain of any of the foregoing. So much for the workers’ side of the problem.

On the other side of the problem the causes alleged are the lack of contact between employer and employe, the employer’s disregard of human suffering, his mad desire to get rich quickly, his spectacular profits, his love of display*, his bowing down to the demon of speed and his break-down in character structure as respects his relations to the opposite sex. We oannot hope to treat all of these subjects in this article, but will glance at some of them and touch others not yet mentioned.

War and Unrest

IT IS all very- well for people to run around during war time and proclaim it as the greatest of all uplifters, but every person engaged in distributing that kind of information knows in his heart that there is not a word of truth in it. Every great war is followed by a period of social unrest and the greater the war the greater the unrest which follows it.

War dislocates the avenues of production and trade, overturns all industrial habits, upsets all routines, upsets all values, removes all standards of work and living and takes the most efficient and capable workers away from their tasks altogether. 11 , disintegrates families, wrecks the morals of both men and women, glorifies murder and is a school for brutality of thought and conduct.

After a great war the nerves of men and women are worn out and they are more ready than ever before to find fault and to take offense. They are impatient of all restraint, quarrelsome and prone to snap judgment. The disbandment of the armies floods the labor market inmiediately, and inevitably brings on labor troubles.

War is the harvest time of profiteers; it is the time of the ruin of myriads of young men and women; it is a time when marriage vows are not respected; it is a time when men live with other then’s wives and women live with other women's husbands. Family life is broken up for years. During the World War there were thousands of instances where the husbands were away from home for five years and while they were gone the modern dances and the automobiles of those that reveled in the profits at home made ruin out of their domestic relations.

- Do you wish to know why you could not pick up a “ne'ws” paper two years ago without finding the word “Bolshevism" in every column and now you rarely see the word at all! We will tell you. The profiteers had made from the blood and tears of Europe such fortunes as were never before heard of on earth; they wanted to keep these fortunes; the common

people must not use them to pay the eost of the war; they must not itse them to-- lighten the-bnrdens pilefl upon them ami their children.

Bolshevism and Unrest

THE thing to do was to start a great hue and cry against thieves in Russia, so that nobody would dare cry out against the.thieves in-the United States. But just as soon as the Supreme Court decided that the profiteers cnuld keep all they stole during the war, awl that those who had been actually found guilty of violating the Lever Act should have their lines returned to them, there was no necessity to cry' “Bolshevism" longer and the •'news” papers stopped talking about the danger of it in the United States—of which there never has'been the least danger up to this writing. -

Bolshevism cannot come in any land where the masses of the people own property, hut it can come in a laud where the common people are robbed thoroughly enough and persistently enough so that they have, as they think, nothing’ to lose and everything to gain.by attempting’ the impracticable scheme of communism. Communism has lieen tried a good many times in the last one hundred and fifty years ami has never worked and cannot work while human nature is what it now is.

It was tried in the early church, the most likely place in the world for it to succeed, and even the warmth of early Christianity was not sufficient to bring it to perfection. In the Middle Ages it was tried by the Franciscans and the Brothers of the Common Lot; later by the Shakers, Oneida Community and Harmony Society.

In America the Pilgrim fathers tried communism but abandoned it after four years, saying, by way of explanation:

“This i-omnnniitie (so fan- as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much iniployment'that would have lieen to their benefite and eomfoHe. For the youg men that wer not able and fitte for labour and service djd repine that they should spend their time anil streingth to worke for other men’s wives and children, without any recompenee. And for men’s wives to be commanded to doe service for other men, as dressing ffieir meats, washing their cloaths. etc., rhey deputed it a kind of slaverie, neither eotdd many Ipivhands well hrooke it.”

Communism, in the form in which it is practised in. Russia, is not extending into Ronmania, Servia, Bulgaria and Greece, ami there is a

reason for it. Those countries, although they are , i near tn Russia, are mainly agricultural eoun-tries,' ami as the peasants have all the land j they need in order to support their families they have no incentive toward Bolshevism. 3

There is more danger of the spread of it to

Italy, France mid England.

America is a peculiar country in the fact that 1 58 percent of alt the workers in her industries j were born in-other countries. In some instances

rhis is as high as 85 percent. These workers

are segregated into racial groups.and it takes ( ‘ some time before they accumulate property and learn American ways and-customs. It was this J condition that was taken advantage of, after 1 the war. by those who had lieen ami were profi- ’ teering. They spread far ami wide the lielief ■

that these workers were trying to seize tlio j

country; and in the reign of terror which followed,. America was treated to such a spectacle of abuse of innocent foreigners as was never j before witnessed on these shores. ;

Excuses for Unrest -

M LL kinds of excuses were invented to ae mint i for the “unrest” which was laid at the doom ) of these allegofl Bolslievists. Brigadier General ■ Georg*' II. Harries solemnly declared his belief at Atlantic City that the unrest was entirely due ) to German propaganda. Bernard Nolan,, president of a Pressmen's Union, declared it was due- , to anarchists working among the printers, and ) a United States federal judge declared from the J liench that it was partially Imancvd ami man- i aged by the federal government itself.

It was claimed by some that all the “unrest” ’ , among the workers was due to foreign agitators | ami then Arthur Woods-, former- Police Commissioner of New York City, threw some light • : on the situation when he said in an address at | Harvard: “Agitators are thoroughly wholesome . things, and unrest is a thoroughly wholesome state of mind. If we don't have unrest, if we 1 don't agitate for letter things, if there is not .a wholesome discontent, we shall not make prog- .' ress. Discontent is nothing in a. certain senna but another word for ambition, and if we have : not ambition we don't get far.” j

The epithet “Bolshevist” was bandied around | pretty freely a year or two ago by those, who - J wanted to cover up their profiteering or in other | ways- parade a bogus patriotism. In Winnipeg 3 where, during the war, Rev. Gordon distinguish- > ?

ed himself by the teaching that any soldier who died in the World War, dressed in the uniform of King George, was sure of going to heaven, no matter what kind of private life lie ha 1 led, the soldiers who, after the war, were working ten hours a day without any chance for recreation, were called Bolshevists for attempting to improve their condition. The chasm between a dead saint and a living Bolshevist is only such a chasm as can be made by a bullet penetrating a few inches of flesh. If you get the • ■ bullet you are a saint; if not, a Bolshevist. Now then, three cheers— for what’

Prohibition and Unrest

VAST fortunes have been made in America in the liquor business. Many great fortunes in Boston and elsewhere, supposedly made in the “East India Trade ’, were really made by taking cargoes of rum to Africa, with which to debauch the natives, and the return cargo was a -argo of slaves, for the cotton and tobacco fields of the South. And long after the slave traffic was a thing of the past other great for, tunes were made by selling poisonous mixtures the immediate effect of which was to destroy the reason, will and physical health of the men of America and to ruin the happiness of their homes. •

Some attempt has been made by the holders of these fortunes, and their successors, to show that unrest has been due to prohibition. It has been seriously charged that by )\ moving from the brains of the workers that deadener of all the finer faculties, alcohol, they have become thinkers and that it is perilous to “sassiety" for the workers to think. "Theirs not to reason why; theirs but to do and die.”

Others have argued that it has been very evident to the poor that prohibition is prohibition for the poor but not prohibition for the rich, because iiyllionaires have their cellars full of wines and may drink as much as they like,'and that this sense of the inequalities of things has had to do with creating unrest.

Still others, of a more practical turn of mind, avoiding all kheSe superficial reasons tending to show that-prohibition causes unrest, have pointed specifically to the evidence that prohibition has injured the business of the nation for the reason that just at the time when the farmers were praying for cars to save their grain

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it developed that there were sixteeja hundred empty box cars held on sidings at Louisville, Kentucky, awaiting a grand rush of whiskey to market in all corners of the country if the' President had removed the ban from liquur, as it wtts at that time hoped that he would do.

Wage-Earners and Unrest •

rpHERE was a time when it was a statutory offense to increase a workingman’s wages above a certain amount, when a workingman could be put in jail for owing a storekeeper ten cents, and when a good mechanic received but fifty cents a day, and could buy but little more for the fifty cents than he can buy today. Times have changed.

The war acted as a tonic to wage-earners all over the world. They were led to believe that the war was their war, fought in their behalf, at their expense, and with their bodies in the . front line trenches, protecting the civilization that was at stake. They were encouraged to believe that after the war labor would no longer be treated as a commodity, to be engaged as low as possible and worked,as many hours as possible; they were assured that Big Business would see to it that the Golden Rule would be applied to those who had saved their necks.

President Wilson said that after the war, “There must be a genuine democratization- of industry, based on a full recognition of the right of those who work, in whatever rank, to participate in some organic way in every decision which directly affects their welfare or the part they are to play in industry". Of course, nothing was changed; there was no more democracy than before the war; the men have been gradually dropped from the payrolls and their wages reduced.

The steel trust raised wages eight times during the war, in an effort to keep the wages of the men on a par with the ever rising cost of living — a difficult job. The workers in that' Industry made an effort to deal with Mr. Gary, its President, through the medium of a labor leader who viewed the twelve-hour day ami the seven-day week as a thing abhorrent. Judge Gary would have nothing to do with him and was cheered to the echo by fifteen hundred members of the American Iron and Steel Institute when he declared his determination to run his great business in his own way. The inhuman

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hours of work still prevail, but the wages are coming down. Nails are still ten cents a pound, which is twice what they ought to l>e.

There are three hundred thousand men on the steel trust’s payrolls, and these men could easily do in eight hours all the work they do in twelve, if a means could be found to convince them that it would not reduce their earnings or result in their loss of employment As it is there is a well-settled code among them to do about as little as they conveniently can. The same conditions are to I>e found in many other industries.

After the war it was difficult for the soldiers to get back at their old tasks. As business gets better and better, organized workmen find less and less of interest in their work and find the tasks more and more monotonous. Standardizing is essential to enable quantity production at low cost, but it is unpopular with the workers and a fruitful cause of strikes.. The strike may have something else as its pretext, but the chance to get away from a monotonous task for a few days is one that is very agreeable to many workers. The unrest was greatest in the smaller cities.

There were others than factory workers who were dissatisfied. College professors were in the same class. If it were not such a serious matter one would be almost tempted to smile at the information gravely set before the Association of American Colleges by Dr. George L. McIntosh, professor of Wabash College, when he said:

"A great deal of the spirit of unrest and expressions of radicalism through the country might never have existed if people had seen to it that teachers in schools and colleges were given reasonable salaries”.

The unrest has been as great or greater in England than in America. Few can estimate the terrible blow that England received during the war. Tin1 workers are better organized and more^determined there than anywhere else in the world. For a year past the workers in Great Britain have been limiting output, believing it the only way that loss of employment could be staved ^1T, and, the manufacturers have been friendly to the idea because it seemed to them the only^way that they could maintain prices. Lord Leverhulme, one of England's self-made men, and a truly great mhn, has proposed higher speeds at the factory, and more hours of

leisure for the workers, as a cure for unrest. In his own great soap business he has demon- ? strafed tliat six hours is sufficient for a day’s wort .

It is less than a year since the French govern?- ! inent made a practice of closing all the hotels and restaurants early in the evening, by curfew law, so that the workers would not be greeted with the spectaele of the new rich going home • i in their automobiles at the same hour that the workers were rising to go about their daily toil.

Profiteers and Unrest ' . * i

PROFITEERS always fatten in time of war, and when war is over it is always their wish , that scarcity and high prices shall continue evermore. When it was seen that the United States would surely enter the war a band of earnest and honest men in New York besought the i President to have a law passed strictly limiting the profits in all lines of business to ftie legal rate of interest.

None of the patriots who had inunitions of I war to sell would agree to anything of the kind and the matter received virtually no publicity, but it would have saved hundreds of millions- i of dollars and endless discontent, for there is no doubt that the unbridled greed and ba-efaced robbery of the war time was the greatest of all 3 real causes of unrest. %

At the same time that girls in Quebec cotton factories were working ten hours a day, the owners of the factories were being paid in an- . I nual dividends one and one-half times the total cost of their entire plants. One Lancashire cotton factory that made $40,000 a year in | profits before the war cleared fifty times as much in the year 1919. ,

America is blessed with food pirates that delight in publishing books telling how small ’ their profits are on sales, but the books do not contain the self-evident information that if you . can turn yonr money over at two percent profit every ten days you can clear seventy-three per- , cent a year on your investment; nor do they go ,,4 into details about the quantities of food con- -4 signed to incinerators rather than reduce the price to the people. They do- not dilate on the cargoes of fish, the carloads of onions and train- J loads of other foods which are destroyed rather than give the people cheap food.

When a merchant or a manufacturer makes more than a fair percentage of profit the excess •: is deducted from the earnings of workers and the buying power of the workers is necessarily’ lowered, along with their standard of living. All the excess profits of the profiteers and prodigals must be paid for in hard work by the real producers. The Kaiser is not the only culprit that was guilty of bringing on the war, or of encouraging it, that is living on the fat of the Lind. Among the profiteers is many a Kaiser.

The war has been the opportunity for Big .business to crush little business. Big Business ■, as kept measurably independent of labor •anions in the United States; hence the labor unions have made their greatest exactions from the smaller businesses, the ones that were least fitted to bear the strain. The smaller businesses and the labor unions are going down together, and the banks are greasing the toboggan for their exit. The slogan of the banks now is, “No money to loan to any concern that employs exclusively union labor”.

Henri Barbusse, the great French writer, in an article in The World Tomorrow writes of ‘‘the leaders and the profiteers of the multitudes , they divide, men whom an almost supernatural prestige has permitted until now to do evil on the grand scale, crushing out the life of the people in excessive hours of labor and in secret . misery, driving them a‘ the last to early and sacrificial death by battle and blockade”. If Henri had said such things as this in America during the reign of the late emperor he would have been deported as an undesirable alien, sure.

. Vice President Coolidge has offered six items of advice on how to cure unrest. The first and most important of these touches the vital spot. He urges America and the world to “abandon the mad scramble for money and get back to the Plymouth rock standard of believing that ‘to do something for some one else’ is better than to accumulate wealth".

One cause of excessive prices is that during the why goods were bought from the United States by foreign buyers without thought of price, and were sold without any regard as to whether or not supplies were left in America. This created a real shortage and the law of supply and demand operated to bring about a reign of extremely high prices. But there have been, here and there, splendid examples of men unwilling to take advantage of their fellow men to seize all the profits within their reach; splendid men, these.

The world never has more than about two .

yrears supply of goods on hand and. for five ■< years it was the business of the greatest pro-

during nations of earth to destroy instead of -

to produce. This diverted trade out of its . ■ accustomed channels to such an extent that America was almost drained of supplies to fill s the gap. ' ‘ . •

Thus, America’s trade with Japan in the year

after the war was nine times the trade in the s

year before the war; with China four and one- , half times as much, with India seven times as much, with Hongkong twice as much, with the Philippines three times as much, with the

Straits Settlements four times as much and « with the Dutch East Indies twelve times as

much. As matters now stand the only way that America can hold even a portion of this new ’ business is to meet competition.

In other words, in the determined opinion of American Big Business, the American work-

ingman must come down to the European level of living, except in so far as superior machinery and larger output per man may enable a higher standard to be maintained. If not, America’s shops will remain idle, or partly idle. Hence ,

the determined effort at deflation. Meantime the employers are not at all averse to having a few unemployed workmen standing about.

Financiers and Unrest

INANUIEBS are not necessarily profiteers.

Finaiic. under present conditions, is just

as legitimate and praiseworthy an occupation as plowing or blacksmithing. Not infrequently ’ the days are as long and the fatigue is as great and sometimes, but not often, the rewards are .

not commensurate with the effort put forth. '

Financiers are proverbially cautious, timid, fearful. Ralph Waldo Emerson voiced the reason for that fear in language that is calculated to make men think and shudder. He said:

“Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all -revolutions. One thing he always teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears. He is a carrion . crow, and though you see not well what he hovers for, there is death somewhere. Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our cultivated classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded and mowed and gibbered over government and property. That obscene bird is not there for nothing. He indicates great wrongs which must be revised.”

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It was over a year ago that the great financiers of America decided that the time had coine to pirt an end to all the high hopes that had been created in the minds of the workers. The farm-era were to he tlmroughly deflated first, because they were not organized and could lie reached direetiy by the lianks. The labor* unions were .to come, next: and the boding and mowing and gi.hl>eriug of tire mouth pieces of tlvese financiers . Iiegan at once, ere the plans for destroying the unions could be got under way.

In its issue of April 28, 1920*, the New York Time* said:

"ft is going to be a hard campaign to sav«’~Anierican institutions from the enemy within. There should be no discharge in this war which is to l>e won by ideas, not lv brute force. The Chinniter of Commerce of the United States will put into the field the first line troops nd reserves of !.:►<»<> trade and commercial organizations. They will Ite well supplied with ammunition in r.:e form of facts, logic and the lessons of experience. They will attack the strongholds of ignorance and fanaticism everywhere. Fundamental economies are to he talked from thousands of platforms. The American system of government is to Ite explained and illustrated in such a way as to silence detainers. The trail of the demagogue is to Ite followed anti his lies are to Ite nailed. Enemies of the government will Ite confronted ami e.x-jstsed wherever encountered. No rascal will Ite allowed to escape from public condemnation ami contempt.”

The history of the movement above outlined shows that its real object was to destroy the labor unions, nothing else, and that it had not the remotest intention of bringing to light the rascality manifested during the war. So far from bringing public condemnation ami contempt upon the thieves that robbed the people of the United States of billions of dollars in the construction of ships, the mismanagement of railroads, the supplying of rotten salmon, the destroying of needed food, and a thousand and one other things of equally atrocious nature, the men. that have done these things are in high bono^as industrial brigadiers and financial major generals in "the first line troops and reserves” whose business it is to explain to the misguided individuals who believed in the four-t«-en points’\vhat is the real "American system of government”. Stating it otherwise, the youth of the laird are to be instructed in honesty and good citizenship by the knights of the blackjack and the jimmy.

Hal H. Smith, Director of the Union Trust Company, Detroit, Michigan, in an address before the American Bankers’ Association, held at St. Louis, commenting on the same plan as discussed in the New York Times said:

"This is not the time for the old conservative liauker who earned that name by sacrificing everything to his profit and loss account. This is the time for a new anil audacious l'auker who looks beyond the daily lialance sheet to the fundamentals of life; who is prepared for sacrifice ns are the employers and manufacturers wlvo may lose their industrial existence in defense of the principle of free employment. It was heartrending to read Mr. Morgan’s message to Judge Gary demonstrating that one house, at least, approved his stand. How much mon* heartening it would be if other luniks could recognize that the strike at the Steel Corporation is a blow at every bank, and could pledge to it their support and could declare that wherever they saw the profiosal for the closed shop appearing they would immediately attempt to destroy it.”

lu other words, here is a proposition that the concern that falls in liue with the new program is to lie granted loans in time of need, with the evident suggestion that the concern that <loes not cooperate shall be led to the chopping block.

Occasionally a great financier has the courage — to see things as they are and to state them as they are. It is with not ajittle surprise and satisfaction that one reads in times like these such words as the following, from the pen of Rudolph Spreckels, millionaire president of the First National Bank of California:

■‘Congress is coutimially asked to protect capital and its methods of high finance. Protection and opportunity to i-or.tinue win nings upon their wati'rod securities while human beings starve, are demanded by men who know not hunger or want. Let not the spark of human kindness die'in America. We must not tolerate a continuation of commercial greed and the placing of dollars above human rights and needs. Etiro[>e is demonstrating today the inevitable result the policy of commercial greed leads to. The toll in money and in human life now being paid ar the altar of governmental submission to the demands of capitalism should lie a warning that no intelligent American can afford to ignore.”

It is too bad that the Federal Reserve Bank, that was organized to give the public a square deal, did not have some of the breadth of vision of Mr. Spreekels. Its action in boosting the interest rate to meinlter banks from four to six percent was the occasion for the maddest scramble for usury that the financiers of America have ever engaged in. It amounted in effect to a repudiation of a portion of the United Slates bonds, and. placed the Federal Reserve hi a conspicuous position among first-rank profiteers.

The argument is advanced that the possession of wealth has nothing to do with unrest, because thirty pereent of the world’s wealth is in the United States (a country which occupies only seven percent of the earth's surface and has but t-ix percent of its population) and yet there' is more restlessness and discontent here than in airy other country. This argument is only half stated. The wealthy here are too wealthy and the poor are too poor. •

Not a capital in Europe ran equal such luxury ns is to be found in the hotels and ball rooms of New York City and nowlrrre in the world is there to be seen swh a display of wealth as one ' may see on any line day on Riverside Drive, r’or five cents one can go from these scenes to habitations owned by the millionaire Trinity Church corporation where thousands of humah beings are huddled in quarters that are only tit for swine to occupy.'

i - Government and Unrest

ex at Barbvs.se, in the article to which we have already alluded on page 519, said:

“Up till today the human race has lived according to laws which have embodied in many different forms _ the principle of the slavery of the crowd. Never has

' the simple right pf every human being to life and

happiness been truly respected. The ordinary man is no better off in these modern times than he was in the days of antiquity or in the Middle Ages. The multitudes, in pence time or in war. are only a herd of social nonentities. Their real interests have never been con-• idered. Rendered helpless by the forces opposed to

them and by their own ignorance, dazzled or fooled by the ruling powers, the common people in all countries hnyc had no part, and still have no part in the shaping anxb settling of great historic questions, though they themselves may have provided the means of settlement.

. The whole series of tragic events which we call history is for fins. most part a spectacle of a vast injustice and a vast absurdity. Nothing real is changed by merely t changing words. Only verbally have slavery and servi-Hide been abolished, and the privileges of birth. The life of the world is ceaselessly exploited and sacrificed by an oligaVehy V’hich seeks only its own narrow selfish i interests. This is the basis on which our present social order is built, a system which is an organized and continuous assault upon all truth and goodness.”

It should lie understood that this is the view of a Frenchman, and even if we eould not endorse all of his expressions no one can deny that there is much tpith in what he says and that his views are shared by an increasing number of bis fellow men. In itself it is an impeachment of ail governments of the earth as instruments of deceit and craelty. This would not mean that governments have no good in them, hut that they are not as good as1 they pretend to be and their real motives are not the motives they proclaim loudest.

During the time of the war the United States government passed the Lever Act, to keep profiteers in cheek. It was distinctly understood and agreed at the time of the passage of this act that it would not be used against the workers, but it was used against them, and that was the only effective use that ever was made of the act.

Among the war measures was one which forbade trading with the enemy, and yet, while the country was technically at war with Germany the Government's own Shipping Board was dealing with German shipping companies for the taking over of former German trade routes, docks and harbor facilities. Many have the impression that in matters of this kind the government is an exception and can do what it will. Such is not the case. The government is obligated to abide by the laws which the people have passed for their own protection, and when the government does not abide by those laws it is teaching anarchy in the most effective way in its power. Throughout the war the laws of the country, and particularly its highest law, the Constitution of the United States, was disregarded and held in contempt by the very highest officers of the land. This was a real cause of.unrest and this unrest is quieting down now that some of these officers have been displaced by saner and more law-abiding men.

"While the lawlessness at Washington was at its height, Edward T. Devine issued an address -to the president imploring him to return to law and order, in the following language, and it is a remarkable thing that such words should have received so little notice from those self-advertised “Palladiums of American Liberty'”, the "news" papers. ’

“Let all those who have grievances be openly invited to voice them. lx?t President Wilson and every governor and every mayor designate great public meeting places — in halls anti in public parks—where the freely chosen repri>»ei!t:itiveH of every group may express their views. Let the H’cre.t service men attend, not to find victims. for prosecution, but to catch the faintest whisper of a just complaint. Let legislative assemblies give patient hearing to delegates who edme to them from such assemblies. Let grand juries weigh their complaints, whether against individuals or against any existing abuse which mightAe remedied. Let the industries be represented by their detectives, not to spot agitators to discharge them, but to make careful note of any bad praetic' s which might«be reformed. Let radical journals lie published freely and let courts, prosecutors, legislators and. executives study them anxiously to see what evidence they may possibly present of crimes which they may have overlooked. Let ns make it the greatest offense against morals and manners to refuse respectful hearing to those who speak in the name of a more perfect justice, in the name of a better social order/’

■ It is well known that the great war in Europe would not have happened at all if it had not been for the governments. The people did not want the war and could hardly have been driven into it ut less their passions had been artificially roused and educated by governmental propaganda that was carefully prepared by experts in the art of lying. .

Governments, since the war, have been able to accomplish hut a small fraction of the things promised in the way of better housing and decrease of living expenses and it is hard to see how they can do so. It was the governments that inflated the currency so that all values have become upset. To be sure, they had to do it in order to pay their bills.

One of the things that brought unrest in the United States was the spectacle of the ease with which a United States senator could buy his way into that august body and the ease with which the whole matter could lie glossed over and hushed up. It is on a par with the government of Great Britain taking into the cabinet a man who had openly armed a great body of men and threatened a civil war unless he could have his own way regarding affairs in the North of Ireland. Such acts teach lessons in lawlessness to millions.

Since, the war there seems to have been a great movement of governments toward the extremes of imperialism on the one hand or Bolshevism5',on the other, leaving the common man in-much the same frame of mind as a fire victim on the roof of a huge wooden hotel. The flames are all around him. Escape is cut off. He must take a choice between a ten-story jump to the granite paving stones of imperialism, or take a chance on riding to safety when the seething volcano of Bolshevism comes down to earth. Call tire hotel Civilization and we have the picture.

Since the war, in Hungary, under the League of Nation s imperialistic regime, five thousand Socialists were murdered in cold blood and forty -six thousand men and women were thrown info prison and internment camps. Pogroms were inaugurated against the Jews and flogging was set up as a common punishment for petty offenses. This was all done to establish again au imperialistic regime in that war-ridden land. If living in Hungary would you choose to line up with the ones engaged iu the flogging of women (we did some of that in the United States, in prisons iu the southern states within the past five years) or would you rather be flogged? There is small chance of a choice. Liberty and justice are anathema where imperialism lifts its head.

It would seem as though there are some ‘drugs thr.t the government could still do for the w< Ifate of the common people. For example, it could take over a few railroads that are not paying and run them in competition with all other railroads. It could take over a few mines and a few factories and a number of farms and it might learn something of advantage to the common people. Such things have heen done elsewhere and have assisted in keeping the feet of profiteers on solid ground. •

Religion and Unrest

odeut Blatchl-oud, in the London Clarion, uttered a great truth when he said:

"We’ shall never reach the happiness the king desires for us until we have civilized our religious leaders. Roman Catholics and Protestants both profess to be Christians, but they have hated each other and persecuted each other in a most un-Christian way for centuries." _

Mr. Blatchford’s statement would have been more accurate had he said, KWe shall never read’ll the happiness the king desires for us until we have converted our religious leaders and made Christians out of them”. The world is filled with so-called religion which is not religion at all, not Christianity at all; it is merely organized hypocrisy.

During the war the so-called religious teachers vied with one another in teaching multitudes the antithesis of Christian principle and did it

in the name of God. Men were taught to kill who, before then, even if criminals, abhorred the idea of killing. Criminals were released from prison upon their promise that they would go forth to kill, and men of Christian principle who refused to kill under any circumstances were put into the cells they vacated, and all in the name of religion.

The Literary Digest comes out tvith a proposition that ministers of the gospel should work for a living during the week the same as other people, and the idea is a good one. More particularly it is a good one because, according to Dr. W. E. Biederwolf, of Chicago, in an address before the world’s sunday school congress at Tokio, in October last, twenty-five percent of the ministers of America have gotten so far away from real religion that they do not now maintain family worship in their own- homes. And if they no longer know how to worship God in their own homes, how can they hope to teach others to worship Him in any other place 1

Dr. Len G. Broughton, in an address at the Atlanta Baptist Tabernacle, has given voice to the -thought that the time has now come for professed ministers of Christ to speak right out in meeting and tell the truth. They should have been doing that all along, and not wait for the Bible students to drive them into it. But hear Dr. Broughton:

“We went in to save our necks. We couldn't keep out of it. But this should not blind us to the fact that this war, like all wars, was the result of commercial greed. And we wore not innocent of this sin. Look at the war. What nation is now better off than it was before the war? The world is worse off than before. When they stuck us preachers up on dry goods boxes to sell Liberty Bonds and Red Cross we should have told the truth. We and the church have sinned.”

Dr. Broughton is too late. The world at large knows that the professed ministers of the gospel are always on the side of the Devil in time of war and it has caused millions of people to lose all confidence in them. Emil Vandevelde, Chairman of the International Socialist Bureau, writing on this point says:

“Slowly but surely with the irresistible movement of a geological, subsidence, faith is waning among the international ^or'nks and even among peasants. One may safely assert^that about twenty years ago nearly every one held to some religious creed. Today the workmen who follow no particular creed number millions, and as their hopes of a heavenly kingdom dissolve, other hopes assert themselves with a growing intensity.”

Leslie's Weekly made a valuable contribution _ to this subject when it said:

“All previous civilizations have perished because they " -were built entirely on materialism, and the people of '

those bygone days were not blameworthy because they ?•

had not our light and knowledge. Our civilisation is in * . danger, because notwithstanding our 1900 years of. the ' « Christian faith, despite the fact that every intelligent . •'$ man knows that in the practical application of Christian ethics is the only solvent for the ills of humanity, we ■" have blundered along in our brutal individualism, in ‘ our detestable selfishness, and insisted op maintaining 1

the same basis as all the ideal dead civilizations which have preceded ours.” -

Education and Unrest

Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of

Columbia University, in au address U Philadelphia, a year ago, attributed the unrest then so much discussed as due to education. This statement is the more remarkable when we recall that only a few years ago a question- » naire of the advanced 'students of Columbia • . University revealed the fact that only about * five percent of them, as'we recall it, were at that time willing to confess their belief in a ■ ■ * personal God. The Apostle tells us that such $ a belief is the beginning of all knowledge. “He that cometh unto God must believe that he is ¥

and that he is a rewarder of them that dili-

gently seek him.” We quote a few scattered sentences only of Dr. Butler's address:

“For between two hundred and three hundred years

the modern world has been in a state of intellectual upheaval. This upheaval has been constantly more widespread and more severe. The forces that lie behind it have profoundly affected the religious life and the ?

religious faith of the great masses of men, have shaken their confidence in age-old principles of private morals and of public policy and have left them blindly groping for guiding principles to take the place of those that have lost their hold. The fool who says in his heart, j

‘There is no God’, really means that there is no God

but himself. His supreme .egotism, his colossal vanity, have placed him at the centre of the universe, which is

thereafter to be measured and dealt with in terms of -

his personal satisfaction. So it has come to pass that

after nearly two thousand years much of the world

resembles the Athens of St. Paul's time, in that it is

wholly given to idolatry; but in the modern case there

are as many idols as idol worshipers, and every such

idol worshiper finds his idol in his looking glass. These millions of man-made gods, these mvriads of personal

idols, must be broken up and destroyed, and the heart

and the mind of man brought back to a comprehension,

through faith, of the existence and the working of the divine spirit as revealed in Jesus ChriT.’TA b.nzv ending of a good sentence]

Judaism and Unrest

F ALL the ridiculous reasons that have been assigned as causes for the world’s unrest, nothing has been quite as ridiculous as the propaganda P.’-nnced by Henry Ford which makes the Jev. ■ of the world, responsible for the French Revolution and everything that has happened since in Socialism, Bolshevism, Freemasonry and Sinn Feinism.

The American Jewish Committee has answered these charges in a little pamphlet from which we extract the following items:

“During the war. by ,eervt agencies, a document variously called ‘The Procotols of the Elders of Zion’, "The Protocols of the Alec-tings of the Zionist Men of Wisdom,’ and 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion,’ was clandestinely circulated, in typewritten form, among public officials and carefully selected civilians, for the purpose of giving rise to the belief that the Jews, in conjunction with Freemasons, had been for centuries engaged in a conspiracy to produce revolution and anarchy by means of which they hoped to attain the control of the world by the establishment of some sort of desi>ctic rule.’’

"(1) The Protocols are a base forgery. There has never been an organization of Jews known as The Elders of Zion, or The Zionist Alen of Wisdom, or The Wise Alen of Zion, or bearing any other similar name. Thore has never existed a secret or other Jewish body organized for any puri>o.«* such as that implied in The Protocols. The Jewi.-h people have never dreamed of a Jewish dictatorship, of a destruction of religion, of an interference with industrial prosperity, or of an overthrow of civilization. The Jews have never conspired with the Freemasons, or with any other Ixjdy. for any purpose.”

•‘From the time of the de.-truction of the Temple at Jerusalem by Titus, the Jews have had no political state. For centuries they were forced to wander from land to land, to flee for refuge wherever they might find it against bitter persecution. They were pent up in gli'ltios, were deprived of even the shadow of civil or political rights, and were made the objects of every possible form of discrimination. It is little more than fifty years since the Jews of Western Europe became politically emancipated. Until the outbreak of the World WAr the Jews of Eastern Europe, con.-tituting a majority-<tf all the Jews of the world, were not even permitted to exercise the rights of citizenship in lands where they and their ancestors had dwelt for generations. The great mass of the Jews were hampered in every way in their efforts to earn a livelihood. Far from de-iring to govern the world, they were content with the opportunity to live. Numerically they constitute less than one percent of the population of the earth ; ami more than one-half of them are on the verge of starvation. The suggestion that, in their feebleness, they have been planning in secret conclave to seize absolute power and to dominate the ninety-nine ]>er-cent of non-Jews upon th<* globe is a ridiculous-invention than which even madness can conjure nothing more preposterous.

‘"Where is the habitat of these so-called Elders of Zion, by whatever name they may be called? Who are these hidden sages? Whence do they come? What is the nature of their organization? The distributors of The Protocols arc silent on that subject. Whence come these pretended Protocols? TIurre have been various' versions. One Serge Nilus. of whose identity little is known, a Russian mystic and an ardent supporter of Czarism, claims to have received them in Bussin, in 1901, in manuscript form, from a Russian office-holder, who stated that the manuseript had been originally obtained by a lady, whose name is not given, and who, he said, obtained them in a mysterious way. In what language they were written is not stated. Where that manuscript now is does not appear.”

"The Protocols as published bear no signatures. The identity of the Zionist representatives by whom they are claimed to have been signed is left untold. The location of the main Zionist office and of the secret vaults from which The Protocols were secretly removed remains a secret. It is, however, a matter of history that the first Zionist Congress was publicly-held by the Jews who came from various parts of Europe for the purpose of considering the misery of their brethren in Eastern Europe and of enabling them to find shelter in' the Holy Land. Theodor Herzl was a distinguished journalist, a man of true nobility of character. He presided at the Congress, all of whose deliberations were held in the light of day. The insinuation that there was a thirty-third, or any other degree, of initiation in this organization is merely a malicious effort to bring the Jews into parallelism with the Freemasons and thus to subject them to all the fanciful and fantastic charges that have front time to time been laid nt the door of Freemasonry, oblivious of the fact that fifteen Presidents of the United States, including Washington, and many of the leading statesmen of Europe and America, have been members of that order.

•‘Nilus and his associates belonged to the Russian bureaucracy. In 1905, through the Black Hundreds, that body sought in every way to erush the Jews and to prevent the liberalization of the government. The time was propitious for the perpetration of a political forgery bv a government that habitually resorted to the employment of ai/ent* provocateurs, a government which only a few years later, against the protest of the enlightened clergy of the world, ineffectually sought to convict Mendel Beilin on the charge of ritual mu r tier. It is significant that one of his prosecutors has been active m distributing manuscript copies of The Protocols throughout the United States.

“Irrespective of this history, bristling with suspicion, an analysis of The Protocols shows that on their face they are a fabrication and that they must have emanated from the bitter opponents of democracy. They are replete with cynical references to the French Revolution. and to the conceptions of liberty. etpiality and fraternity. They uphold privilege and autocracy. They belittle etluearion. TJiey condemn religious liberty. They assert that political freedom is an idea and not a fact, ami that the doctrine that a government is nothing but a steward of the |»*op1c is a mere phrase. These are the very doctrines that one would expect from the protagonists of autocracy. Nothing can be more foreign to Jewish thought and aspiration than these brutal theories of reaction. That the Jews, whose verv life frsis been a prayer for the blessings of lilierty .ami equality, should hold, them in contempt is unthinkable.”

“(?) The contention that the genuineness of The Protocols is established by the outbreak of Bolshevism in Russia twelve years after their publication, and that Bolshevism is a Jewish movement, is absurd in theory anti absolutely tintrue in fact. As well might it Is? said that a forged deed is genuine because twenty years after its date a relative of the person whose name is forged Is falsely charged with being a disturber of the peace.

“To say that the Jews are responsible for Bolshevism is a deliberate falsehood. The originators of Bolshevism were exclusively non-Jews. While it is true that there are Jews among the Bolshevists, notably Trotsky, they represent a small ‘fraction of the Jews and of the followers of Bolshevism. Leniue. who belonged to the Russian aristocracy ami has not a drop of Jewish Mood in his veins, was the creator as lie has been the motive power of the Soviets. T< hicberin. who has conducted their foreign affairs. Bucharin. Krassin and Kalinin, all 11011-Jews, are, with la-nine, the brains of the Coni-nu.nist Party.”

“The leading anti-Bolshevist newspapers, which of necc-ssijv are published outside of Russia, have Jews upon their editorial staffs. An overwhelming majority of Russian Jews have been mined by the coercive measures of the Soviets. They have submitted to the confiscation' of their property and are undergoing un-speakahle^hardships. The Orthodox Jews, whose numbers preponderate, remaining loyal to the faith of their fathers, regard the Bolsheviks as the enemies of all religion, and therefore, hold the doctrines of Bolshevism in abhorrence. With comparatively few exceptions the Jews are looked upon by the Bolsheviks as belonging to the hated bourgeaisc and as favoring capitalism. The Zionists, who constitute a numerous and important element of the Jews of Rnsera, have been denounced by the Soviets as counter-revolutionary, and many of them have been east into prison and. threatened with death—Zionists, we repeat, who are the followers of Herzl.

“If the Jews are to be condemned because of a Troitsky, who has never in the slightest degree concerned himself with Judaism or the welfare of the Jews, then flu-re is not a people that has ever lived that might not with equal right be condemned because in -its membership there were men who are alleged to have advocated hateful doctrines. The Jew has traditionally stood for religion, law. order, the family, and the right of property. It is. rherefore, the height of cruelty to charge him with responsibility for Bolshevism, when its doctrines, should they prevail, would inevitably lead to the destruction of Judaism. It is especially a brutal charge when one considers till that the Jew has suffered from the oppressive nnd discriminatory laws of Russian autocracy." • .

The Reason and The Remedy

TT WILL be conceded by all that there never has been such a time of trouble and unrest on earth a* now. Contributing to tins unrest are,namely, the World War, Bolshevism, prohilt- . ition, employing class and profiteers versus wage earners, disturbed condition of finance, unwholesome, unrighteous and selfish political conditions, organized apostate ecclesiasticism operating under the name of Christian religion hut in fact a faithless religion, the education of the masses. Judaism, etc. Yet there is a reason why these things have all come at the same time. .

Nearly nineteen hundred years ago Jesus of Nazareth was asked the ijnestion what would he the evidence of the end of the world and the approach of His kingdom. Had His answer been written yesterday it could not have been more . appropriate to the conditions. He said that at that time there would be “upon the earth distress of nations, wifh perplexity; the sea [masses of humanity] and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coining upon the earth: for the powers of heaven shall he shaken. And tlien shall they see tire Son of man coining in a eloud with power and great glory.”

The real reason why this general unrest in earth is so manifest is la-cause we have reached the end of the world. The old order is dead and is rapidly disintegrating. The prophet of Jehovah under inspiration wrote of this time, saying:

"There is a noise of tumult on the mountains [kingdoms, nations], like as of a great people; a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together; the Lord of hosts mustereth the host of the battle. Wail ye; for the day of Jehovah is at hand: it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore, all hands shall lieeome weak, and every mortal’s heart shall melt: and they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall have throes, as a woman that travaileth: they shall wonder every man at his neighbor; . . . . . and I will visit on the world its evil, and on the wicked their iniquity; and I will, cause the ar-roganey of the proud to cease, and the haughtiness of the tyrants will I humble. I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall be removed ont of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, in the dav of his fierce anger.”— Isaiah 13:1-13.

The Lord’s Prayer

"The day of vengeance is in mine heart, and rpiiE Lords prayer was given twice: once in J- Matthew 6:9, in the sermon on the mount; and once in Luke 11:2, when asked by His disciples, "Lord, teach us to pray”.

It appears to be a model or pattern for all other prayers as it is said: “After this manner pray ye”: and also a form to be used—“Whenever ye pray, say,” etc. As a model it is short (Ecclesiastes 5:2), simple, and condensed. It takes the ground of confidence. (1 John 4:14) It glorifies God. (Leviticus 10:3; John 14:13) It puts God’s glory before man’s needs.

There are seven petitions, the first three being marked by the word “thy” and the last four by the word “us”.

The difficulty with translating is that the more literal the less intelligible it becomes to the person^unfamiliar with the original, because of the peculiarities of the sentence structure and of word usage. Without going into extensive explanatory notes we offer the following as believed to convey the thought of the original with as slight a departure as possible from the familiar wording— which familiar wording, by

the year of my redeemed is come.” “It is the day of the Lord’s vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion.”— Isaiah 63: 4; 34:8. ' -

That great and wise Christian, Pastor Russel’, many years ago, in his notable work, “Thu Battle of Armageddon,” foreshadowed th* present condition of unrest, set forth its cause and what would be the result.

Remedy

HERE is no human remedy that is in anywise sufficient or adequate. The only certain remedy and the one that will correct the present evils is the great kingdom of Messiah. Abour this the prophets prophesied four thousand years ago, and for nineteen hundred years Christians have been praying for its coming.

It is for this that ignorantly the whole creation has Idng been groaning and waiting— waiting for the manifestation of the sons o'f God, waiting for the kingdom which will crush out evil and which will bless and heal “all the families of the earth”.

the way, is not traceable to the Bible but to Anglicanlectionaries or formularies long in use when the Common Version was first issued:

Our Father In the heavens :

(I) Hallowed be thy name.

( 2) Thy kingdom come. -

(3) Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on arth.

This day

(4) Give us our manna* bread; “

(5) and forgive us our debts, as even we have forgiven our debtors;

(6) and bring us not into temptation r;

(7) but deliver us from the evil.

♦ Literally, “down coming” or “descending” bread. The allusion seems to be plainly to the ancient giving of the manna, the heaven-sent bread, or “bread from heaven”.

t The reference here is evidently to the “great tribulation” when the forces of the evil one will be particularly active and powerful.

British Housing Problems * j. k«.> (E-^nd)

THE housing of the worker in thi« eomituy will- have much to do with this country’s attitude towards the Avar question of the future. Without giving the cost adequate consideration, both government and people are committed to scores of schemes- that can only be called fantastic. Calculations of the need name a total-6f 800;0W homes. If a competent building company could be found to undertake the country's requirements, the building alone would average $4,000 for every small house. But as the contracts will be distributed, the cost will be a great deal more, while to this- will have to he added the cost of the land. Front time to time estimates are accepted from $4,000 to $0,000; When these houses are let,, if they are to fulfill their philanthropic purpose, not more than a hundred dollars a year can be charged. This will mean that the cost will never be repaid. All the money raised will cost 6 percent.—This will mean a charge on each house, exclusive of repairs aud taxes, of about $280 per annum. If the scheme is generally adopted, the loans will run to $4,000,000,000.

Turn to tl« stock lists, and you see the old “Goschens’’ that once stood at 100 now marked at 44 or 45. Is it any wonder, when vast sums can be invested in guaranteed stocks at high interest? European statesmen are made aware, by this condition of things, that the providing of the vitals of war <-au easier be supplied by eloquent politicians, fortified with whiskey, than by more prudent supporters having nothing save cheque books. Interviews with chequebook custodians will giv<- responsible politicians an extraordinary interest in peace. Let us hope that a faithful press will soon glow with their appeals. If the London County Council has been a long tim" in raising a portion of a housing loan„at a high interest, war-makers will ask themselves how long a thousand millions sterling. at a high rate of interest also, would require. -

…