Golden Age, May 9, 1923
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Contents of the Golden Age
Social /.nd I'dccational
Caro of the Eyes . The Grout 1 'hystcian •■'rom a Hi i ml S il’si’r
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Otliei- t'n.iiist In: erfereiieoc
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Beligion and I’inr.o. oi’iiY
Mot Everybody Uns :i 1'onion . . .
Dem'-ns I’wt-li in the Mini; . . . .
How tlio 1 >■ mens Camo to be Umler.n
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Studios in “The Harp of God'’ . ,
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The Golden Age
Volume IV Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, May 9, 1923 Number 95
The Land
CAN you think of a land of absolute darkness, a land where the sun never shines, where the lights are never lit, where not a color may be seen, not even the somberest gray? There is a land where just such conditions prevail There are one hundred thousand people living in that land, doing the same things that you are doing, doing them cheerfully, and with surprising efficiency, too. The land is all about you. It is the United States of America.
To be sure, the statistics of the 1920 census show that there were only 52,567 blind in the United States, but the experts believe that this is just about half the number. If so, it means that in every village of 1,000 persons there is one who is in this land of darkness. In every city of 10,000 there are ten such persons; in every city of 100,000 there are one hundred; in every city of a million inhabitants there are a thousand.
If the rest of the world is no worse off than the United States, the blind population of the earth is 1,600,000. But it is certain that the United States has a very small proportion of blind, as compared with some countries. In Spain, with a population of only 20,500,000, it is claimed that 25,000 persons go blind every year, due to inattention to cases of smallpox, scarletina, meningitis, and sexual maladies. If these unfortunates live only eight years each after they go blind, this would make ten times as many blind persons in proportion to the population as there are in the United States.
In Syria the conditions are still worse than in Spain; for a Turkish civilization is still worse than a Roman Catholic one. Reports have it that what is left of the Armenian nation, after all the other sorrows which it has experienced, is rapidly going blind. An epidemic of trachoma (granulated lids) has broken out and has become overwhelming, 27,000 persons out of 30,000 persons examined having been discovered to have ' the disease. This disease, readily communicated
of Darkness
by roller towels, causes watering of the eyes and subsequently total blindness. One may have this disease for a time and not know of it. The spread of the epidemic so rapidly in Armenia is due to the lowered resistance of the population. The situation is one of the most serious which has ever confronted a nation. An entire army of doctors would be needed in order to stop the spread of this plague throughout the impoverished areas of western Asia and eastern Europe.
Neonatal Blindness
WHEN one considers the route by which we all come into the world, and the fact that for some little time the eyes of the newly born are exposed to whatever infection may be present in the womb, it is wonderful, in view of the fallen condition of humanity and of the widespread scourges of syphilis and gonorrhea, that half the people in the world were not born blind.
As matters stand it is calculated that in the United States twenty-four percent of all cases of blindness are due to neonatal conditions—the failure of doctors, nurses and midwives to give attention to the child’s eyes immediately after its birth. The modem method requires all doctors to treat the eyes of the newborn with a solution of nitrate of silver. This causes temporary soreness of the eyes of the infant, but is an almost sure preventive of blindness. If it is not done, and the lids become swollen, with a discharge of pus, in a few days the case is hopeless. There are in the United States today something like 25,000 persons who are totally blind because their eyes were neglected during the first few days after birth.
It does not follow that because a child is bora blind either of its parents may have sinned sexually. Physicians state that one-fourth of all persons who contract syphilis do so innocently. It is conveyed by drinking cups and other household utensils. Babies have contract-
ed it from a kiss of an older person. The way in which this disease affects the babies is to cause inflammation of the cornea, the window of the eye, and eventually to destroy it if the disease is not arrested or cured. Data at hand show that, in Scotland, out of every two children in schools for the blind, one is blind as a result of sexual disease inherited from its parents.
Danger to Little Folks "
THERE are plenty of dangers to the little folks, for years to come. Blindness often comes to children as a result of measles or scarlet fever, due to the patient’s room not being sufficiently darkened. The eyes at such a time, and for weeks afterward, should be allowed as nearly absolute rest as possible.
Then there is considerable reason to fear blindness as a result of accidents with forks, scissors, arrows, air rifles, and toy pistols. In not a few instances wild birds and domestic fowls have been known to pick the eyes out of infants and even of children able to run about. No doubt these birds were quite as unconscious of what they were doing as were the children of any danger from being in their vicinity.
Sometimes the little folks have ulcers of the eye, resulting in extreme sensitiveness to the light. The child will do almost anything to protect its eyes from the light. This affection may be due to insufficient ventilation in sleeping quarters, to tea, coffee, poor candy as well as too much candy, cakes, pastry, and bananas.
And then when the little folks get able to attend school they run the danger of conjunctivitis, or pink eye, an inflammation of the inner side of the lids which makes them feel as if there were sand in them. The lids gum together in the morning, and unless medical attention is provided blindness is liable to result. In the early part of the present century the schools in New York city were filled with cases of trachoma, as this disease is called, supposed to have largely come from the great numbers of Russian Jews then coming into the port; but within two years, as a result of close attention by the teachers and medical inspectors, the disease was virtually obliterated.
Another danger to the little folks is crossed eyes. It is a mistaken idea that crossed eyes will correct themselves. The crossed eye finally becomes useless, and is to all intents and purposes blind. Glasses are needed to correct the. error * and, indeed, the eyes should be examined once a year anyway to see whether or not glasses are needed.
Accidents to Adults
MONG the accidents to eyes we shall not mention the bloody and brutal business of
war, although thousands upon thousands lost their sight in the World War, but shall discuss merely the ordinary industrial conflict, the cause of one-eighth of the blindness in the United States. Approximately 15,000 persons in America are totally blind today as the result of accidental injury in industrial occupations.
Mechanics lose their sight from flying sparks* splashing metal, ohippings from castings, unprotected emery wheels, acid burns, chemical explosions, bursting gauges, soiled handkerchiefs, soiled hands, and dirty matches and toothpicks in the hands of fellow workmen who are engaged in rendering first aid.
Three men out of one hundred whose eyes are exposed to intense heat and injurious light rays go blind, and these three are always those who refuse to be bothered with goggles or helmets; yet the use of goggles and helmets may make all the difference between a highly-paid skilled workman and a nearly helpless beggar. In one county in Ohio one eye is lost every eleven days in the year. Is it not supposable that the next man who is to lose his eye would be very careful if he knew what would happen!
We cannot say that we have reached the point yet where all accidents are preventable, but that time will come. During the year 1913 the workmen of the United States sustained 25,000 fatal accidents of all kinds, 300,000 serious injuries and 2,000,000 other injuries. Since that time there has been a reduction of about twenty percent in the figures, due to the greater care on the part of all parties interested. Of the total number of accidents, the accidents to the eyes were 200,000, or about one-tenth.
In one of the large steel plants where, in 1900, there were few attempts made to provide against accidents, there were every year 370 accidents to each one thousand workers. In 1913, after accident prevention plans had been developed and put into effect, the number of accidents per thousand workers per year was only 115, showing a seventy percent reduction.
Care of the Eyes
IN SOME large plants an eye magnet is used for taking steel sEvers out of the eye. These magnets cannot be used for penetrations of copper, brass, lead, and many alloys, which are therefore much more dangerous than iron or steel. Injuries must be looked after at once; and even then the injury to one eye may cause the loss of the other, even as late as forty years after the injury, due to sympathetic inflammation.
A good way to remove sand, small insects, or cinders from the eye is to grasp the eyelashes and hold the eyeEd away from the eye. This wiE often allow the tears to wash the foreign body away. For a few cents at almost any good drug store an eyestone can be procured which, kept in the eye over night, performs the same service while one sleeps. Most oeuhsts wiE remove foreign substances from the eye without charge.
Too much Eght or heat of any kind is bad for the eyes. One of the stewards on the steamship Rotterdam lay on his back on a hatch for two hours, with his face upturned, while the heat was very great; and as a result he went blind. It is supposed that the ultra violet rays of the sun caused this, and it is also believed that these same injurious rays are present in the electrio Eght. Indeed, some who have studied the matter say that the electric Lights are driving us aU blind and that we must go back to candles to save our eyes.
When working by lamplight, shade your lamp so that it will throw the Eght on your work and not on your eyes; do not work in a flickering Eght; do not work in mixed daylight and artificial light; have the Eght over your left shoulder, if right-handed, and over your right shoulder, if left-handed; keep the lamps and globes clean, and use white, cream or yeUowish wallpaper. And do not buy wood alcohol, for any purpose whatsoever.
Achievements of the Blind
NUMBER of blind young men and women have been graduated from high schools of
New York, Chicago, and other cities; and some of them are students in colleges and universities. One of these, John W. Young, a University of Pennsylvania student, sixteen years of age, has *o trained his memory that he takes in and
remembers an entire lecture accurately. He plays football, locating the ball by its impact upon the ground, and is able to sense variations in atmospheric pressure so accurately as to avoid running into obstacles. He is a musical prodigy, playing a half dozen musical instruments with much skiU.
Instances are common of blind people whose sense of hearing or of air pressure is so keen that they can detect telephone poles six to ten feet away. Paul Donehoo, a bEnd Atlanta lawyer and musician, is not only able to sense the wafls, posts, and ether obstacles along his path, but can follow the building line along the sidewalk entirely by sound.
In Minneapolis over seventy blind men make their way to work every day. They have adopted the uniform rule of holding the arm straight in front of them when crossing streets, but even then two of them have had nervous breakdowns from the strain of trying to avoid accidents. Most people who cross streets nowadays feel as if they would Eke to have two eyes in front, two in back, two on each side; and even then they would not be sure that an airplane might not fall on them from above or a manhole blow up from underneath.
Rene Leroy, a Paris bEnd man, once, as a test, walked into a strange barber shop, ordered a shave and haircut, expressed his satisfaction with it, got up and walked straight to the cash desk, which he had located by sound, paid his bill, got his change, stepped to the door and into the street, without any one in the shop knowing that he is blind.
Ben Welch, a well-known New York comedian, though totally bEnd continues his work on the stage. France has a blind sculptor of note, Bernard Fedot. In Lincoln, Nebraska, there is a young woman grocer, entirely bEnd, who does all her own work herself, including the operation of a typewriter. She makes change by folding each denomination of bill in a peeuEar way.
In the summer of 1922 a bEnd lawyer of New York, Benjamin Berinstein, one of three executors of a $400,000 estate, was sued by the other two executors on the ground that as a blind man he was not a fit legal guardian for two children whose interests in the estate he was particularly looking after. When the action came up in court he made a dignified and bril- • liant speech, citing the work of some of the world’s great blind men and women, including the poet Milton, ex-Senator Gore of Oklahoma, Helen Keller, and others, and referring modestly to his own attainments, with the result that the presiding surrogate dismissed the case, stating that it should never have been brought into court.
Employments of the Blind
THE blind have found employment in factories in assembling machine parts, running drill presses on small work, foiling mints, packing candy, setting up cartons, wrapping butter blocks, taping coils for armatures and nutting bolts. In one factory a blind man now does all the work formerly done by two girls with perfect vision.
In Henry Ford’s great automobile plant he employs four men that are totally blind. One blind man in a Cleveland factory, always clean shaven, always smiling, and always on time, receives $40 a week. The total number of operations performed by the blind in various Cleveland factories is sixty-nine. There are some concerns that employ blind typists, the dictation being by means of the dictaphone.
There are 150 blind news-dealers in New York. One of these news-dealers made the statement that his patrons steal his papers, steal pennies off the stand, give two cents instead of three, pass bad money, take three or four papers and pay for but one. One man selected four magazines, gave a dollar of stage rqpney in payment and accepted twenty cents change from the blind man he had robbed. Many times men and women thrust a nickel into the hand of the blind news-dealer and then insist that they have given him twenty-five or fifty cents.
Helping the Blind
THERE is every reason why those who are not blind should do everything humanly possible to help those who are. In Austria and Portugal the war-blind travel at the expense of the state; in South Africa the war-blind are allowed fifty percent reduction on tickets; in Norway, at certain seasons, blind students and their guides may travel for a total of one and one-half fares. In Belgium, Holland, and France a blind worker, when undertaking a railway journey necessitated by the exercise of his trade or profession, has the right to make the journey, accompanied by his guide, on purchasing only one ticket, which entitles them both to transportation.
The Federal Government appropriates $50,000 a year for the blind. This sum goes exclusively for textbooks for use in the fifty-six existent schools for the blind. Books for the blind are expensive, about $10 each. Thus the Bible consists of twenty volumes, each thirteen and one-half inches square and three inches thick, and weighing five and one-half pounds. In a branch of the New York public library are twelve thousand volumes for the blind, with six ' thousand raised music scores for the study of blind music readers. During the year 1920 the circulation of the books in this library was 35,807. Radio has proven a godsend to the blind, bringing to them all the news of the day, the concert, and the lecture platform.
Dr. Max Herz, a blind Viennese doctor, has invented a device by which dots and dashes, representing letters of the alphabet, when punched in strips of paper, are transferred to phonograph records, and a complete book can be put on one small record. The system has been learned in a day, whereas the finger touch systems sometimes require a year. Dr. Herz has been assisted in this work by the Austrian and Polish governments.
Most wonderful of the helps for the blind is the optaphone, invented by Professor d'Albe, instructor of physics at the University of Birmingham, and c ascribed in Golden Age number 93, page 430. B this device the blind who have been trained to detect the differences in sound of the various letters may read any ordinary printed oook. Passing the instrument over the page converts the visible outlines of the letters into audible sounds.
Recovery of Sight
IT IS rare that one who has been blind recovers sight, but it has sometimes occurred. In the summer of 1922 a girl went blind at Coney Island after a fifteen minute swim; but after she had been taken home, her sight returned in about two hours. A more interesting case was that of Miss Maud Naismith, Joliet, Illinois, blind in one eye for ten years. While going through some gymnastic exercises in her apartments she accidentally bumped her blind eye
'^^on a bar, ’with the extraordinary result that the sight was instantly restored.
More interesting still was the case of a man in Ogdensburg, New York, blind for twenty-five years as a result of a dynamite explosion. He had one eye which was injured and was sightless ; but a local surgeon performed a remarkably successful operation, resulting in the recovery of sight.
A physician in Brooklyn has discovered a serum which has been successfully used in nine cases to strengthen the optic nerve. The injection of the serum was made through the eyeball. The serum arrested atrophy, and so nourished the injured nerves as to give back a close approach to correct vision.
But the best physician of all is the Great Physician, who has promised that in the age that is to come "the eyes of the blind shall be opened.” (Isaiah 35: 5) And as we think of the unfortunates to whom the bright sunlight is darker than the darkest midnight, how our hearts thrill as we read the story of Blind Bartinueusl Nothing can excel the beauty of this story just as it appears on the pages of the Book of books:
“And as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimteus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side, begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee. And he casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.”— Mark 10:46-52.
The Great Physician
THE Bible contains another thrilling story of a blind man’s experiences with Jesus; and because it points such an excellent pathway to the understanding of those scriptures which explain how it is that “the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe z not” (2 Corinthians 4:4), we give it, also. Of the two forms of blindness the one that is most to be dreaded is blindness toward the truth. During the Golden Age both forms of blindness will disappear. Not only will all the physically blind eyes be opened, but the Lord will deal so effectively with the mentally '‘blind people that have eyes” that their mental vision will clear, and they will see things as they are. “In that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the [spiritually] blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness.” (Isaiah 29:18) The account follows:
"And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or uis parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. . . , When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the day, and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which is by interpretation, Sent). He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing. The neighbors therefore, and they which before had seen him that he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged? Some said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he. Therefore said they unto him, How were thins eyes opened? He answered and said, A man that is nulled Jesus made day, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight. Then said they unto him, Where is he? He said, I know not.
“They brought to the Pharisees him that aforetime was blind. And it was the sabbath day when Jesus made the day, and opened his eyes. Then again the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. He said unto them, He put day upon mine eyes, and I washed, and do see. Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among them. They say unto the blind man again, What sayest thou of him, that he hath opened thine eyes ? He said, He is a prophet.
“But the Jews did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind and received his sight, until they called the parents of him that had received his sight. And they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ya say was born blind? How then doth he now see? His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind: but by what means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath opened his eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself. These words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was Ohrist, hft should be put out of the synagogue. Therefore said his parents, He is of age; ask him.
“Then again called they the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner. He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. Then said they to him again, What did he to thee? how opened he thine eyes? He answered them, I have told you already, and ye did not hear: wherefore would ye hear it again? Will ye also be his disciples? Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses’ disciples. We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not whence he is. The man answered and said unto them, Why herein is a marvelous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes. Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshiper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth. Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this man were not of God he could do nothing. They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out.
"Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God ? He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen b m, and it is he that talketh with thee. And he said, uord, I believe. And he worshiped him. And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might b made blind. And some of the Pharisees which were ■ ith him heard these words, and said unto him, Are w blinc also?”—John 8:1-3; 6-40.
From.a Blind Subscriber
FROM a blind subscriber to The Golden
Age we have received a letter somewhat along the lines of the last part of the above story. This subscriber, S. Kalil, a Syrian by birth, writes in the allegorical style so much used by oriental writers; and as it is one of the first stories from an oriental to appear in The Golden Age, we believe it will be enjoyed by our readers. Mr. Kalil entitled his letter, or article, “Taking Stock.” It follows:
“There was a young man who inherited from his father a storehouse, full of plenty of clothe ■ ±o wear and food to eat. The son did not know his father, although he was very proud of his inheritance. Later he found himself to be almost naked, weak and sick; for the clothes he was wearing were ragged and the food was poisonous. Some one advised him to make a change, to buy new food and clothes in the market. This he did.
After he grew a little in knowledge and experience, he found the change to have been from bad to worse. Discouraged and disgusted he thought to get along without them altogether. For a while he traveled about in the world like the Wandering Jew. At last he found a new storehouse, not well patronized by the majority of the people, but nevertheless a place where good ware* and wholesome food is obtainable.
“The young man is myself. The new storehouse is the storehouse of truth. It taught me to figure up or to take stock of my inheritance. I found it to be nothing but human creeds, superstition, traditions, serpents, and stones. My father had not been Jehovah God as I had thought, but Satan himself. The change from bad to worse that occurred later in my life was from Catholicism to Protestantism, and led to my becoming like the Wandering Jew, by turning infidel.
“Merchants generally take stock of their goods at the beginning of a new year. If they have been unsuccessful they either change the line of their trade or discontinue it, but if they were successful they continue it. I now desire to give The Golden Age readers a little sample of my stock-taking.
’'Before I knew the truth I was blind, but now I can see. Worldly people would say that I am still blind, not only physically but mentally, also. The truth, however, taught me not to mind them, nor to take stock in what they say, but to mind the Lord and not the opinions of men. When the Lord says in his Word that I have spiritual sight, that in itself is more than sufficient for me. I refuse to exchange the spiritual sight for natural sight and all the wealth of the world. At one time I could not tell the difference between one and three; but now I know the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Father.
"In those former dark bygone days I inherited blindness from my earthly father, and he from his fathers aa far back as Adam. (Adam was overreached by Satan, who became blind himself when his heart, full of greed, conspired to be like the Most High.) I was then a son of Satan ; now I am a son of God. I was naked, without faith or religion; now I am clothed with the Lord’s robe of righteousness and protected by His wing. Then I was poor, destitute, because I did not know God; now I am rich, not in pocket, but in faith. And what is more, if I continue in this course I shall inherit something of more value than the entire world’s wealth, something even beyond the human mind’s comprehension.”
• » • • *
The International Bible Students Association is publishing some of its books for the blind, and once per month issues The Watch Tower for the blind. The Golden Age will be pleased to aid any of the bhnd who are interested in Bible study to avail themselves of the benefit of this literature.
Impressions of Britain—In Ten Parts (Part IX)
IT IS enough honor for any one city to have been the birthplace of such a man as Joseph Chamberlain; but Birmingham, with all the other variety of products it has given the world, gave it also Joseph Priestly, the discoverer of oxygen, one of the founders of modern chemistry. Mr. Priestly sympathized with the Americans during the Revolutionary War and, with his family, moved to Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where he ended his days.
James Watt, a native of Scotland, one time instrument maker for the University of Glasgow, invented the steam engine, moved to Birmingham in 1774, and was the means of building up the most noted engine works in the world. He had much to do with the early development of the city and was a widely read, active, progressive man. The unit of electrical activity is named in his honor.
On the road to Hull, thirty-five miles from Birmingham, the train passes through Repton, once the capital of the kingdom of Mercia. From 1172 until Henry VIII chased them out of England Repton was the seat of a priory of Austin friars. Part of the old priory buildings are incorporated in what is now one of the best known English public schools, Repton Grammar School. Beside the River Trent, near Repton, is Anchor Church, a structure hollowed out in the form of a cave from the adjacent sandstone bluff.
Sheffield is the first stop on the way to Hull. It is the chief center of the heavy steel and cutlery trade of the world. Millions of dollars have been expended in widening and straightening the streets and in erecting modern homes for the workers. The honesty and efficiency with which the parks, water supply, lighting, schools, etc., are managed would be a revelation to the graft-ridden, papacy-oppressed municipalities of America if there were any way that the news could be gotten to its citizens.
Every boy’s heart, and every girl’s heart, has been stirred by Walter Scott’s story, “Ivanhoe”; and at Doncaster, on the road to Hull, are the ruins of Coni sborough Castle, the stronghold of . Athelstan, which castle is made the central picture in the story. Scott was a prolific writer, and there is not a dull line in the fifty-odd volumes of prose and poetry that came from his pen. In his declining years he struggled gamely and successfully to repay a debt of $600,000 incurred by the unwisdom of the publishers with whom he was associated. The reading of fiction from the pen of a good man may instill some good thoughts into the mind; the reading of fiction from the pen of a bad man will certainly instill evil thoughts; the reading of the truth from the pen of a good man is better than either.
Hull, officially Kingston-upon-Hull, is situated in the eastern central portion of England, at the junction of the Hull with the Humber river, twenty-two miles from the North Sea. It is the principal seaport for shipping the manufactures of the great English Midland district to northern Europe, and is a large port for the entry of grain from various countries, timber from Scandinavia, and fish and butter from Denmark. In the museum here is a prehistoric boat dug out of a solid oak trunk, measuring forty-eight and one-half feet long by five feet broad. Hull (place of blessed memories!) was the birthplace of William Wilberforce, who introduced the first bills against slavery into the English Parliament and who lived to see slavery forbidden in every part of the world owning allegiance to the British flag. Wilberforce University, Xenia, Ohio, is named in his honor.
Midlands and Lancashire
FROM Hull the route was west through the Midlands, the heart of industrial England.
With Manchester as the hub and with Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford, Preston and Liverpool about it in a circle, there lies within an area of forty miles radius probably the greatest center of industry, thrift, culture, mining, agriculture, and manufacturing anywhere to be found. The people who live in this district boldly claim themselves the superiors of those who live elsewhere in England.
The claim is made for the Lancashire mill girls that, knowing their husbands’ earnings in the mills will be too small to support the family, they rise every morning at five, go to the mills and work for several hours, return to the house and prepare breakfast for the little ones, go back to the mill and work all the forenoon, return to the house, prepare a hasty bite for the family, return to the mill and work until six o’clock in the evening. They then go home, and do in the evening hours the multifarious duties that fall to the lot of the housewife, and do these with a cheeriness and good will that are contagious.
The claim is further made that the Lancashire housewives pay cash or go without. When tradesmen from elsewhere establish themselves in the Lancashire district they seek for customers who will buy on credit, but find them not. If these things be so, young man; and if thou wish to marry, hie thee to the Lancashire mill district, and look not to the right or to the left on the way lest some fair dame bewitch thee too soon. "If this be treason make the most of it.”
On the way through the midlands a stop was made at Bradford, the center of the woolen and worsted trade; and another stop, one long to be remembered, at Thelwall, which as the old sign on the public house declares was “A cyty founded in 923 by King Edward the Elder.” It is not much of a "cyty” now, perhaps not over twenty houses all told; but it lies in one of the most beautiful scenes in England. And its inhabitants pro tern not only may claim for themselves the heritage of being Lancashiremen, with all that this implies, but might even find a North American savage ready and willing to concede the claim. The majestic Manchester ship canal passes through Thelwall. The heavily laden vessels passing up and down on their own steam have the singular appearance of immense buildings gliding noiselessly through the fields.
Manchester, the center of the world’s cotton trade, and the distributing center of foodstuffs for the most densely populated part of England, is noted as having the oldest free public library in Europe, a thing itself sufficient to make any city famous. Its town hall is considered one of the most creditable buildings in Europe. As usual with the cities in this part of England, the municipality owns its own lighting plant, street railways, sewage precipitation and filtration works, artisans’ dwellings, markets, parks, public baths, etc. Manchester was one of the stations during the Roman occupation; its cathedral was built in 1422.
Southward Bound
ROCEEDING southward once more, a stop is made at Buxton, famous for its medicinal springs and known to the Romans, who had baths here. The town is situated in a deep valley. Nearby is a gas-lit stalactite cavern a mile long. Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned here while the ease against her was in process of preparation. Sometimes when officials of a government wish to murder a person it takes quite a little time for the proper tools to scrape together enough data to give a semblance of reason for malting the initial attack.
A case in point, observed by the writer, was where a prison guard , shot a negro convict in the back; and it took two hours and fifty minutes to "discover” a broken shear blade alleged to have been thrown from the litter of the dying man while on his way to the hospital. The brave guard was complimented by his superior officers for so promptly and successfully defending himself. No notice was taken of the fact that the holes shot in the prisoner’s clothing were all in the back.
Latest advices are that the brave guard is now about to be tried for smuggling dope into the prison, with a fair chance of getting five years. The poor negro died in a few days. His real offense was that he kicked at his brutal guard for clubbing him over the head. Then he started to run; and as he ran the angry guard pulled the gun, which, according to law, he had no right to have with him, and shot and murdered the negro.
Lutterworth, famous as the home of Wycliffe, and the scene of his death, was passed on the way south. Wycliffe committed an unpardonable crime against the Roman Catholic church. He translated the Bible into the language of the common people. For doing this, thirty years after his death, the Council of Constance had his bones dug up and burned and thrown into the Avon. A writer of the day said truly:
“The Avon to the Severn rung^ The Severn to the sea;
And Wycliffe’s dust shall spread abroad Wide as the waters be.”
Wycliffe was the "angel of the church of Sardis,” as Pastor Russell was the "angel of the church of Laodicea.” Both were lovers of
the common people; both resisted the unscrip-tural and tyrannical encroachments of the clergy; both turned to the Lord and to the Scriptures as the source of their strength.
Wycliffe served the Lord before the days of the printing press, but his work of rendering the Bible into English was a great service for the cause of truth and was largely used in making the English language a settled tongue. The following was Wycliffe’s translation of Mark 1:7:
“And prechide, seyinge: A strengere than I schal Come aftir me, of whom I knelinge am not worthi for to vndo, or vnbynde, the thwong of his schoon.”
En Route to Liverpool
WEEDON, seventy miles from London, came near being a great place at one time, but missed it. In the days of Napoleon’s ascendancy, when England was supposed to be in imminent danger of invasion, it was proposed that in case of a successful landing by the French, the court should abandon London and settle here, in the center of England. With that end in view immense barracks were constructed in Weedon, and are still in use.
At Rugby, ten miles farther on, is the site of one of the most famous boys schools in the world. The school was founded in 1567, rose to great prominence a century ago, was the school home of some of England’s greatest men, and was popularized the world over by Thomas Hughes’ well-known classic for boys, entitled “Tom Brown at Rugby.”
Tamworth, 110 miles from London, founded in 770 A. D. by Saint Offa "The Terrible,” was for long the residence of the Saxon kings. A castle built in the seventeenth century occupies the great mound where Saint Offa’s fortress once stood.
Liverpool, 192 miles from London and 3,106 miles from New York, was founded in 1207, but 'did not attain any prominence until a century or so ago. It owed its rise to the slave trade, of which it was the world’s acknowledged center. The slavers took out cloths and beads and trinkets to West Africa, exchanged them for slaves, and took the slaves to America and the West Indies, where they were traded for cotton and molasses and hides. There were 185 Liverpool ships in the slave trade in the year 1807, in which year they carried 43,755 slaves from Africa to,America.
One of the remarkable features of Liverpool is the great landing stage, 2,463 feet long by 80 feet wide, which rises and falls from thirteen to thirty feet with the tides. There are eight miles of locked docks at Liverpool; the ships can leave these docks only when the tide permits. In New York there are practically no tides. The greatest ocean liners lie calmly at their piers in all weathers, and can leave for the open sea at any time.
Britain’8 Financial Plight
O ONE pretends to deny the fact that British finances were jeopardized, if not ruined, by the World War. Long before the war was finished, the Government was in desperate financial straits. Mr. Walter H. Page, American ambassador to Great Britain during the war, in a recent book explains that at the end of 1916 Britain was practically hors du combat financially, and was allowed to overdraw her account with J. P. Morgan & Company to the extent of $400,000,000 in anticipation of America’s entrance into the war as soon as Wilson should be reelected. This $400,000,000 was subsequently paid by the United States Government out of the Liberty Loans, which were in effect forced upon the .American people as soon as the New Freedom got’well under way.
Since the war it has been hard sledding, with resort to every plan that seemed to offer hope of postponing the crash. Sir Eric Geddes, one of Britain’s financial overlords, said in November, 1921, that unless the expense of running the British Government could be reduced by at least £150,000 per year, bankruptcy would certainly follow, as trade could not revive until taxation should.be reduced.
By the spring of 1922 the statement was freely made by those engaged in manufacturing enterprises that bankruptcy was at hand; and it appears that by the fall of 1922 these bankruptcies were an accomplished fact, as far as many British industries were concerned. But the facts were withheld from the public, because it was not considered safe to let them be known.
The Children’s Newspaper, London, a really valuable paper for grown-ups, in its issue of August 26, 1922, had an article from a special correspondent connected with one of the great manufacturing enterprises in the north of England in which the statement was made that bankruptcies are occurring every day, but are being hushed up. He said:
,rWho hushes them up? Tne banks. The banka of this country are carrying some of the greatest businesses in the country. There is a state of almost general bankruptcy. All of us are living on overdrafts at the banks. We pay our wages, our rates, and our crushing taxes by overdrafts. What does it mean when we read in the paper that income tax for the year remains unpaid to the tune of £65,000,000? It means that we are only carrying on business by a fiction. The Government dare not sue for this money. The banks dare not press for repayment of their, loans. If one firm goes, all may go. The real peril of this country, one which may yet involve the whole world in ruin, is not so much a commercial crisis as a financial crisis. This is the truth which has not yet begun to affect statesmanship."
Some Financial Problems
THE population of Great Britain and Ireland in 1914 was 46,089,249; or, since Ireland may as well be eliminated from all calculations on account of prevailing political. conditions, the population of Britain proper is set at 42,767,530. Qf this amount about 5,000,000 is Scotland’s quota. One of the legacies of the war is that in this population there are now 1,720,802 more females than males, and the proper placement of these surplus females is in itself a great problem. They are denied the home life which every normal woman properly craves; the industries are overcrowded; the women must be supported.
Myriads of Britain’s finest youth were killed off in the war or rendered helpless for life. The grand total of British, British Dominion and Colonial troops at home, in colonies, and in all theaters of the war, in November, 1918, including marine contingents, was 5,764,559. Five years were taken out of the life of most of these men, and the best years of their lives at that, the most productive years. During all this time they were engaged in wasting life and property instead of conserving it, and they wasted so much that now it can hardly be recovered.
During the World War Britain’s debt increased from $2,800,000,000 to more than $32,-000,000,000; or, stating it in pounds sterling, the debt is £7,573,000,000, and the current annual expenses are £1,000,000,000, almost six times what they were before the war. Aside from small sums owed to Sweden and Canada, the only foreign debt of Great Britain is that of £969,000,000 to the United States. European countries owe Britain about twice what she owes America. Britain offered to forgive all her European debtors if America would do the same; but America refused.
There is a reason vital to England why she would like to see the whole of Europe rejuvenated financially. She is basically a nation of merchants and manufacturers, living on food imported by sea. Markets are a necessity. If the markets are permanently cut off, about 20,000,000 of the people must find homes elsewhere, or find them in the grave.
When any country is impoverished, Britain feels it at once; for it means a diminished market for her wares. Thus, the Manchester cotton yarn and textile trade is largely dependent upon the India and China demand. As these markets become restricted, we find the government openly advocating migration of large numbers to Australia and other colonies of the empire.
Efforts to Solve Problems
THE British are plucky and are doing everything humanly possible to save the day.
They are the cleverest traders in the world; clever because the goods which they make are always of the same high quality, and clever because their word can at all times be relied upon. They are clever for other reasons, too, and are gradually adopting the American tactics of organizing trusts wherewith to control the earth and all things therein. Thus a group of British capitalists have just effected a combine of all the shipping on the Danube river; and hereafter they will control the trade of that great artery which traverses 1,740 miles of the best business sections of South Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Jugoslavia, Roumania, and Bulgaria.
Some of the colonies, especially those which have large stores of raw materials, are great helps to the mother country at this time. Thus the whole of Nigeria is self-supporting, and its railroads and wharves are being developed with Nigerian money. At Lagos, Nigeria, are 1,800 feet of concrete wharves, and a railway system. 600 miles in length is approaching completion.
There are great possibilities for many "whites in Nigeria, but it would be a hard experience at the outset.
As trading and the carriage of goods by the sea are two of Britain’s principal means of livelihood, so the manufacture of ships is another. And Britain has learned with sorrow that the clause in the peace treaty which requires Germany to turn over to Britain each year up to 200,000 tons of shipping built in German yards has worked out to British disadvantage. Not only has it meant a decreased demand for British ships and British employment, but the effect of it has been to cause an enormous reduction in the prices at which ships could be sold.
The Germans have been making a desperate effort to regain their place in the world. They have been cutting the freight rates to South American points to twenty-five percent below the British level, and have been taking over large supplies of raw wool and the largest stocks of raw furs, with evident expectation of invading markets hitherto largely British controlled.
Wealth and Unemployment
RITAIN manifests the same symptoms of economic disease which we find so common
in the United States—great accumulations of wealth in the hands of some, while others are without the means to earn their daily bread. The Isles are enormously wealthy in raw materials. They produce nearly one million tons of fish per year, 250,000,000 tons of coal, and 15,000,000 tons of iron ore. The output of pig iron is about 9,000,000 tons per year.
The accumulated wealth of the country altogether is £30,000,000,000, and the annual income of the country is approximately £3,000,000,000 in rent, interest, profit, salaries, and wages. This is about £300, or $1,500, per family of five per year; yet eight-ninths of the people receive just a little less than half of this income, ninety-nine percent of the people are without land, and ninety-five percent are without capital.
The members of the House of Lords own one-third of all the land; twelve families own one-quarter of the land of Scotland.. Many of these large estates cannot be sold because the present , holders cannot show any better title to the ■ property thafi that it came into their possession as a result of theft or murder on the part of their ancestors. But others of the large estates have been broken up because rents could not be increased to keep up with the demands for revenue by the government. A large part of the ancestral lands of Scotland changed hands during the war; about twenty of the nobility of England sold their ancestral lands, and a great number of the large town houses passed out of their hereditary owners’ hands.
Conditions in the coal-producing districts are deplorable, and with no chance of improvement that we can see. Not only is the continental demand for coal greatly reduced, but America has been occupying markets hitherto English; and the British navy is turning over to oil fuel, still further reducing the demand.
Soldiers can no longer be depended upon to kill workers who are trying to keep from starvation, as was once possible. During the recent coal strike in South Wales a battalion of the Royal Fleet Reserve, which had been doing guard duty on the edge of the affected district, at Newport, refused to recognize orders; and when questioned informed their superior officers that ninety percent of the men were trades unionists and would lay down arms if called on to use them against their fellow men.
The number of unemployed has been reduced from what it was in 1920, but is still a million and a half, and that is a million and a half too many to augur well for the country. In November 2,000 of these unemployed fought with the police in an effort to force an entrance into the residence of the premier, and were kept out with great difficulty.
The number of new concerns in England in 1921 was only 6,928 as against 11,011 the previous year; and the amount of nominal capital in these organizations was reduced from £593,189,032 to £108,000,000, thus showing the gradual shutting down of avenues for employment.
Repudiation or Communism
THERE is gradually coming into the financial papers a half acknowledgment that partial repudiation or confiscation of some sort may be necessary before long. Discussing England’s predicament the Wall Street magazine of "Commerce and Finance” says:
“The truth is that a general return to the gold standard will in all lands enormously increase the burden of all obligations, public and private, and correspondingly enrich the holders of obligations payable in gold. This would be right for those antedating the war, but not for those born of the war and its inflations. A judicious application of the index number treatment to all obligations might not be a bad thing?'
Another method of partial repudiation or confiscation is already in vogue in England. This is a system of death duties ranging from one percent on an estate of.£100 up to forty percent on an estate of £2,000,000. Gifts made by the deceased during his life for public or charitable purposes are charged unless made more than twelve months before his death; other gifts are charged unless made more than three years before his death. These duties may be paid in instalments over a term of eight years, with three percent interest on payments deferred beyond one year.
Mr. H. G. Wells, the writer, has urged a capital levy to wipe out the whole British debt. This is repudiation or confiscation with a vengeance. Mr. Wells was one of the Labor candidates in the recent election. In one of his speeches he called attention to the fact that during the past year the British Government had expended £5,000,000 on housing, £8,000,000 on public health, £51,000,000 on education, £98,000,000 on war pensions, £207,000,000 on war preparations for a war about which nobody knows, and £345,000,000 in interest on the national debt.
Mr. Lloyd George sees the storm coming, and on November 7th in the Li erpool Echo said:
“A short time ago I bought a place down in Surrey— a little cottage, not large, a place in fact so small that when the revolution comes, no revolutionary commissary will think it worth while to confiscate it. So therefore I feel tolerably safe, whatever the case may be; and as I saw there was bad weather coming I thought I would like to have a little shelter somewhere near London, and that is where I am now."
Occasionally there is to be found a person of wealth who does'not wish to retain possession of what he feels he has never done anything to earn. Such persons are rare, but an unusual incident of this kind arose recently. The youngest daughter of one of the founders of the cocoa firm of Cadbury Brothers, Ltd., of Birmingham, asked the men’s and women’s councils in the works tn administer the income of 28,000 of her 33,700 shares of stock in the concern for their mutual social, international, and philanthropic purposes. Expressing the belief that the private holding of capital lies at the root of nearly all the social and economic troubles of the world today, she thanked the workers “for the many privileges that the unearned income resulting from your united work, both mental and physical, has enabled me to enjoy”; and after explaining that the shares had come to her by inheritance she said: ‘Tor some years now both my husband and I have felt increasingly uncomfortable as we have thought about this condition of affairs. We therefore now feel it to be our duty voluntarily to surrender the privilege we have enjoyed for such a long time.”
The Religioiu Situation
THE religious situation in England revolves around the League of Nations, which is still professed to be the only panacea for human ills. Here is the way of it:
(1) Lloyd George says that the only hope of civilization Hes in the League of Nations;
(2) The Archbishop of Canterbury says that the only hope of the League of Nations is in the churches; and
(3) The Archbishop of York says that the churches are dead. '
To which may be added the statement of Bonar Law, the new premier:
(4) “We don’t know where we are going.”
This is generally true of any corpus that is on the way to its long home. We give the details of the statements of the two archbishops :
At Geneva, Switzerland, September 3rd, 1922, the Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking from Calvin’s old pulpit, eulogized the League of Nations as follows: (Eulogy is the right word; for we eulogize things that have passed away and are merely awaiting the funeral exercises.)
“In enjoining among the peoples of earth the Covenant of the League of Nations, we are simply applying the Christian Faith to international life. Its aims, its possibilities, its resolves, lie compact in the words: ‘The kingdom of God and His righteousness.’ It is nothing less than that. How do we Christians regard the obligation of a state or a group of states towards our Lord’s
Mat 0, 1*93
words, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God’ ? How do the words bear upon the League of Nations? Just thus, I think • The League of Nations is now a living body among ns. We want to ensure for it a living soul. For that we must see that it is in touch not only with practical politics, but with the very highest and deepest things.”
As the Archbishop of Canterbury is the most important religious prelate in England, so his confrere, the Archbishop of York, is the next. When there is a royal procession these two archbishops, with the Canterbury man ahead of the York man, precede in honor and in place the British prime minister. Well, the Archbishop of York, the Reverend Cosmo Gordon Lang, has some sense; and in an address before the bishops of the Church of England at Sheffield, October 11, 1922, gave expression to some important truths. He said:
"Men want a true religion as never before; that is their hope. They do not find it in the church; that is their trouble. To put the matter bluntly, religion attracts, the church repels. Let us face the fact honestly. That it is a fact can any one doubt? Who knows what is passing through the minds of the men and women, especially the younger men and women, who eagerly desire a spiritual religion and yet stand apart from the church? To them the church is not a witness to the truth of its Gospels, but it is in its divisions, its dullness, its unreality, an obstacle, a stone of stumbling, an offense. If therefore the church is to preach the eternal Gospel to this generation, not in word but in power, it must evangelize itself.”
The Reverend Guy Rogers, vicar of West Ham, near London, recently made the statement that for most people outside of the Roman communion the hell of Dante is as extinct as the dodo. This also showed some sense. If the preachers had talked this way forty years ago, when Pastor Russell was hammering at them, trying to get them to tell the people the truth on the hell question and kindred subjects, civilization would not now be lying in its box with the candles at its head and its murderous arms folded across its breast.
It has for long been the custom in England to make festival gifts to the parsons, such as apples, grain, berries, flowers, and fruits. But the vicar of a church at Hampstead apparently pines for something different; for he recently • recommended to his flock that appropriate and - acceptable harvest gifts would be wine, spirits, cigarettes, and theater tickets. Give the good man the holy things which his refined and spiritual nature craves!
In South Derbyshire, in the latter part of October, a band of thirteen Salvation Army cadets styled the “Hallelujah Firebrands” were engaged in playing leap-frog and boxing in public in order to hold crowds at their evangelistic entertainments. During the first week 150 "converts” were obtained. The accounts of doings such as these seem to have been omitted from the record in the "Acts of the Apostles.”
The ancient Britons had four gods: Ti, Woden, Thunor, and Frigg, whose names have come down to us in the words Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Later, Britain had a season of real Christianity, when the early evangelists made their way to the corners of the earth. Later still, it had a long experience, nearly a thousand years, of cathedral building, while the Papacy dominated Europe. All the old cathedrals were built by Roman Catholics. They are in the form of a cross, with the priest occupying the most conspicuous part of the cross. More recently Britain has had four centuries of reformation by sects, with a great deal of unfeigned reverence for the Lord in the hearts of many in all these organizations.
The British are more reverential in demeanor than are the Americans. The audiences always rise when they sing, and do so without being asked, and sing the whole hymn while standing. In America there is a lazy custom of sitting. The audience seems not to wish to rise at all or, if at all, merely while the last verse is being sung. The British do not consider the American people musical, not admiring their taste in selections of tunes.
In almost any place where a company of Britons are gathered together for tea the assemblage, if it is a Christian assemblage, is accustomed to invoke a blessing in the following words, sung to the tune of Old Hundred. This is a very pretty custom which might well be imitated elsewhere, as it gives all present a share in the little act of worship:
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