Golden Age, January 2, 1924
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Contents of the Golden Age
Political—Domestic and Foreign
Cuxbent Events....................
Flagrant Profiteers
Miners Here and Abroad
Few Labor Troubles tn America
Queensland Housing Situation
Chastising the Press
Educational Items
Big Business Notes
Unique Coal Storage Plan...... . .
Absorbing the Water Powers....... ......
Muscle Shoals Project...........’
Prying the Banks Loose . . . . . ..........
Permanent Investments ............ .. .. ..
Valuation of Railroads
New England’s Problem
Courts and Mechanics
The-Harrison Outrages........ . .. ....... . 2t)2
PubBc Ownership in Detroit
Who Will Be President ?
Immigration Problems, Taxes ana-E-..........
War—the One Big Wttsle ....
Roman Catholic Patriotism
Free the PoiiHeal Prisoners
Pay-Roll and Bank Bandits
Travel and Miscellany
Something about Bells
Ring Out, Wild Bells (Poem)
West Texas Saito Stobm»
Doodlb-Buo and Hobbed Toad Detartment
Religion and Philosophy
A Study or the Theoet or Evolution (Part I)
Cabtoon ; "What They Would Do to Chbist Todat"
Reliqion at the Capital
Studies tn “The Hasp or God"
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Golden Age
Volume V
Brooklyn. N. T.» Wednesday, January 2, 1924
Current
Flagrant Profiteers
THE Commercial and Financial Chronicle is J- angry at the coal miners for forcing an increase of ten percent in their wages, and says that they are “the most flagrant body of profiteers.” We wish that statement were true. It would mean that nobody has a net income of more than $28.83 per week, which according to our best information, is the present average net pay of the miners in the anthracite region.
However, we feel quite sure that we know of some people that are making more than $28.83 net per week. They are engaged in the fuel business, too. They have an immense plant on the seaboard; and to this they bring bituminous coal which costs them about $2 per ton at the mines. The freight is about $3 per ton more, so that the coal stands them about $5 per ton delivered at their works.
First, they bake the coal, at small expense, and out of every ton get 11,000 feet of gas, which they sell for more than twice what the coal had cost, delivered at their plant. As a hy-product they get a large quantity of tar, which is valuable for roofing, paving, paints, dyes, and a thousand other usages. As another by-product they get a large quantity of ammonia water, which they mix with lime and sell at $75 to $100 per ton as fertilizer. The coke which remains is sold to the citizens of the community at $13.50 per ton.
We assure you that we believe that the gentlemen back of this proposition receive net incomes in excess of $28.83 per week. They are on intimate terms with the greatest financiers, the most important politicians, and the highest-priced clergymen in their community; and we doubt if they could keep up their Packards and Cadillacs in the style they do and mingle with such a crowd on $28.83 per week. Sad as it is to have to say it, we are forced to the conclu-
1M
Events
sion that the Commercial and Financial Chrono ide should run an errata item in their next issue to take care of this; but we do not think that they will do it
Miners Here and Abroad
CONDITIONS in the soft-coal fields of America are always unsatisfactory for the miners. A survey of the year 1921 shows that they averaged to receive but 149 days* work during the year. This is a shade less than half time. As a natural consequence the earnings of the men, while they look large when stated in the financial papers in terms of so much per day, are only half what they appear. Fifty percent of the miners made less than $1,400 per year; forty percent received from $1,400 to $1,900 per year; the remaining ten percent are chiefly contractors, who are required to pay loaders and helpers out of the sums they receive.
Hereafter it is liable to be hard sledding for the United Mine Workers of America and other labor organizations if they can be proven guilty of conspiracy in restraint of interstate trade. Chief Justice Taft of the Supreme Court has, in effect, repealed the exemption from prosecution of unions granted under the Clayton act This puts labor unions on the same basis as any corporation, the same as in England.
At a coal mine in the southern part of Russia (at Donetz Basin in the Ukraine) there is a group of thirty-two American coal miners who have emigrated from the United States to Russia. They admit that at first they were sorry they had made the change, because there was such a shortage of food; but they say that they are now living as well as they did in America, have as comfortable homes and as good food. Their genera] opinion of the Russian people is that they are extremely lazy, working only when they must.
The condition of miners in Britain is deplorable; their present minimum wage is twenty percent above the prewar wage, while their living expense is sixty-nine percent above the prewar figures. Out of £100 available for wages and profits in the British coal-mining industry, £83 goes for wages and £17 for profits. The miners have been making a recent attempt to change this proportion to one more in their favor, but without success.
Getting Fuel to the People
THE United States coal commission, after a thorough study of the mining situation, lias presented a report of what everybody in America knows to be facts; namely, that coal is next to bread as an essential; that the anthracite coal of the country is in the hands of a conscienceless monopoly, from whom this control should be taken and placed in the hands of the Government; that jobbers and wholesalers should be licensed; that coal freight rates should be overhauled; that excessive royalties and profits should be taxed out of existence, and that the United Mine Workers of America should be recognized. The report also says that most of the mining camps and towns are dreary and depressing places in which to live.
Governor Charles W. Bryan of Nebraska has had the courage to show the people of his state just how the American people are being held up and robbed by the fuel companies. Coal was selling at retail throughout Nebraska at $12 to $14 per ton. The Governor bought coal in Illinois and Colorado, shipped it into the state, and sold it at $4 per ton below the current retail price, making a handsome profit besides, which was turned over to the public treasury.
What has been going on in Nebraska has been going on in every state in the union. What Governor Bryan has done in opening municipal coal-yards can be done by other governors. But how many of them will do what it is obviously their plain duty to do!
Governor Bryan says that these coal ventures financed themselves; that no capital was required to start them or to continue them; that the public paid in cash for their coal, and in advance for future delivery, and were glad to do it to avoid being robbed by the usual method of purchase. -
tew Labor Troubles in America
THERE have been very few labor troubles in the United States during the past year. The reason is that the workers have received enough wages to live on. The financiers seem to have discovered suddenly that workers must live and that they have a desire to live with reasonable comfort. Just how long this really intelligent idea will linger in the minds of the money-mad is a question; but it has kept America calm for a year, and that is saying much in these days.
There is, however, a kind of labor trouble that is getting more and more pronounced, and that is the obtaining of an adequate supply of capable and experienced domestic help. Most girls today avoid learning housework; at least they do not think well of the idea of working in the home of any other woman, no matter how much she is willing to pay. As a consequence, myriads of women are doing their own work who never expected to do it.
But if a woman is in good health there is no occupation that is more diversified and congenial than housework. And, again, there are many housewives that lack the physical and spiritual strength to wait upon a modern housemaid ; so they do their own work by preference.
Patrolmen in New York city now receive $2,100 per year salary and are agitating for an increase to $2,500, on the ground that the city which they protect by their services is the wealthiest in the world and should pay adequately for the service rendered. Not long ago $3,000,000,000 in cash were transferred from one location to another in New York city, under police protection, and without a hitch.
The city shelters fifty-four percent of all the gold in the country; many of the securities are kept there; the most valuable imports and exports pass through that port; the thieves and gunmen make it a dangerous place for a police official. All these are arguments that are used in favor of granting the request.
Women and Child Workers
IN NEW YORK city progress is being made in the organization of office workers into a union. At the time of the last census the number of women office workers in New York was 263,588, of whom 103,721 were stenographers.
Women workers are becoming more and more a factor everywhere. Ten states of the Union limit them to eight hours work per day, fifteen states to nine hours, eighteen states to ten hours, six states have various limits above ten hours and up to twelve hours, or else have no laws on the subject Night work is prohibited in fifteen states. All but nine states have laws granting pensions to needy mothers; the sums paid range from $9 to $25 for one child, per month.
In the few months that have elapsed since the Supreme Court nullified the Keating child labor law there has been an increase of thirty-eight percent in the number of children employed in various industries in the United States. This increase in child labor has been largest in the New England states, Waterbury, Connecticut, occupying the first place and the worst place on the list. The increase in child labor is higher in cities where the wages of the parents are low.
Working for the Public
WORKING for the public receives a curious kind of reward. The other day the editor of a liberal magazine, one which is always friendly to the workers, went out for a walk in the early morning. It was chilly, and he put on a light overcoat.
Two workers that followed him down the street wore no overcoats; for they were accustomed to outdoor work. But they could not forbear the opportunity to berate the one who did, and who, unknown to them, was trying to help equalize their burdens.
On the way back another worker, gang foreman of a squad of paving workers, called attention to the same coat, accompanied by profanity and abuse toward the wearer. This illustrates very well the present condition of the world, a condition in which every man’s hand is against his neighbor.
Probably none of our labor contemporaries will comment on this paragraph, but it is the truth. It shows that some workers have not the slightest conception of justice, and that these men make it harder for all the rest
The hasty are inclined to say: "Why try to do anything for any of them! They are all alike ungrateful” But that would not be the truth, and it would not change the justice of their cause even if it were.
Queensland Housing Situation ~~
THE workers of Queensland, Australia, are in control of the government of that province, and have taken some remarkable steps forward in the solution of the housing problem. Any worker may have the government build a home for him, which the government will lease to him for a term of twenty-five years.
The price charged is five percent more than the cost of construction. The purchaser must pay down five percent, and the remainder is payable in monthly installments which are less than the rent would be. At the expiration of the twenty-five years the home becomes the property of the worker. He has paid five percent more than its cost, plus five percent interest on the deferred payments.
Chastising the Press
THE New York papers have done many wicked things to the cause of the workers by the ingenious lies they have circulated over the country; but the pressmen squared the account nicely during the last week in September by virtually tying up every newspaper in New York city and thus teaching the people how easily, how very easily, they could get along without what they might have been supposed to consider a daily necessity.
The strike of the pressmen was finally settled, but not until the great New York dailies had, with their combined energies, issued an eightpage newspaper bearing the names of all the principal papers in the city on the title page, and not having so much dignity or news value as a first-class weekly newspaper published in some country town.
How have the mighty fallen! We incline to think that the Lord’s hand is back of this enforced humbling of this mighty instrumentality for maintaining things as they are instead of as they ought to be.
Public and Private Spankings
FROM the spanking of these great newspapers we turn with interest to read of another spanking. This time it is six little boys that get it They had been out on the night of Hallowe’en, stealing radiator caps from automobiles. They were caught and led before the mayor of Lodi, New Jersey; and that worthy officer sentenced them to be spanked by their parents publicly in the city hall on a given date, all of which was no doubt to their profit and possibly to the enjoyment of some of their companions.
For strange as it is, many human beings enjoy seeing other human beings in trouble. The newspapers are filled with stories of people who are in trouble; and the excuse they make for publishing such stories is that this is what the people want. Some Christians find solid comfort when they know that other Christians are finding it hard to walk in the narrow way. Some judges enjoy sending men to prison, and some boys enjoy seeing other boys get whipped.
Two little boys, George and Fred, were brothers of about the same age. George committed some breach of the peace and was chastised. When he came forth to the light of day Fred enjoyed it heartily, asking in tones of mockery, “George, did you fee-ee-el itf" The mother of the two boys then took Fred in, and gave him the same dose. Whoever laughed at those six little urchins for being spanked in public at the city hall of Lodi, we hope that they get spanked themselves before the year is over.
Educational Items
ONE of the New York PubHc Schools, Number 39 in the Bronx, has adopted a new method of instruction. There is a geography room, with a geography teacher, where a boy or a girl may go and study geography all day, if the pupil wishes.
There is a composition room, with a composition teacher, where the pupil may go and write compositions all day. Similarly there is a room for history, one for arithmetic, one for English, and one for penmanship. The pupils may leave one room and go to another when they please.
Curiously enough, the pupils seem to make better progress all around than under the old method; and 48 out of the 50 pupils declare that they like the new system better than the old. This system was first tried out in Dalton, Mass., but is now being tried in a number of schools in England and in several in this country. The results are being closely watched.
Big Business Notes '
ONCE in a while, when placed in a desperate corner, the pot will call the kettle black.
The Government, convinced that the New York
Coffee and Sugar Exchange is at the bottom of many of the sugar scandals, whereby the people of America have been compelled to pay exorbitant prices for this necessity, sued to prevent the Exchange from making sugar quotations. In its answer the Exchange, after telling of all its good works on behalf of its fellow men, remarked in the language of its lawyer:
“The Exchange, by affording a market for future transactions, under regulations which prevent fraud and unfair dealings, fulfils a great economic function, facilitating the marketing of the sugar crop, keeping the producing and consuming public advised of the trend of world opinion with respect to prices, and thereby preventing the control of prices by a few great refineries, which with their vast capital might otherwise be able largely to dominate prices, as they notoriously have done in the past.”
This assurance that the Sugar Exchange is all that stands between the public and the American Sugar Refining Company makes one wonder where the Exchange was when the last two raw deals were pulled off. The first one is only two years away, and this last one is still with us. It pays to hire a good lawyer; for that paragraph as it stands is a gem.
As goes steel so goes the country; and the Steel Trust has just declared an extra dividend. Mr. Charles M. Schwab of the Bethlehem Steel Company is optimistic, saying, “I think it will make little difference in America how affairs go in Europe. We are a self-supporting, selfcontained and independent people. We need no help to realize our full destiny.”
Unique Coal Storage flan
OUR present scheme of civilization calls for immense quantities of fuel. Most manufacturing plants require large supplies of coaL Much of the freight carried by rail and water is coat Hitherto most manufacturing establishments have contented themselves with carrying small stocks and replenishing these only as needed. This has made it hard for the miners, because the moment industrial conditions be-, came depressed the mines were without orders for their product.
One of the principal reasons why manufacturers have hesitated to lay in large stocks of coal is that so many disastrous fires start in coal piles, due to spontaneous combustion. Experience has shown that there are fewer such fires when loads are dropped on the pile in checker-board fashion rather than all on one apex. The reason for this is that by the latter method of piling there are numerous air spaces about the base of the pile. These air spaces become smothered, and gases form which are combustible.
At Philo, Ohio, the Ohio Power Company has solved the problem of how to keep a large stock of coal on hand. It secured control of a section of one of the many canals built by the state of Ohio and now disused. This section, a mile and a quarter long, has been dredged to a depth of thirty feet and is being concreted. Into this great bin enormous quantities will be placed and kept there under water.
In coal thus stored not only is there no waste, but experiments show that the value of the coal for steam purposes is actually increased. Where coal is stored in piles exposed to the air, there is considerable loss as a result of heavy rains washing the finer particles away, and a still greater loss due to the gases of the coal passing off into the air.
Contrary to all expectations, there has been such a vast increase in petroleum production within the past two years as to cause a surplus of oil, with a consequent reduction of price. It is expected that present low prices will continue until far into 1924; and that then prices will go up and stay up unless new fields, not now located, suddenly produce another great flood of oil such as has come from California and Texas in the recent past
With almost every family owning an automobile, and many families owning several of them, it was supposed two years ago that the peak of oil production had been passed, and that sure markets at a large price awaited every new gusher; but such has not been the case.
Absorbing the Water Powers
ONE who uses the railways much, or who travels widely by automobile, can hardly fail to notice how the valuable water power sites are being rapidly absorbed. In the United States this absorption is all in the hands of the Wall Street monarchy; in Canada it is all in the hands of the people.
The province of Ontario now has twenty water powers and thirty hydraulic generating Slants. The Hydro-Electric Commission, as it i called, is supplying electric light and power to 350 Canadian cities and towns, these comprising practically all the municipalities in the province.
In its mammoth plant at Queenstown, below Niagara Falls, it gets advantage of the full height of Niagara’s falls and rapids, every cubic foot of water used earning nearly twice as much revenue as any of the privately owned plants in the vicinity.
In the United States such an example of common sense and efficiency would not be tolerated for an instant The entire press would be thundering against it constantly. Just now America is helpless1 in the hands of a Wall Street fuel conspiracy, and is waiting to be tied hand and foot just as soon as the same interests can get full control of the water power sites.
If it were not for the coming of the I/ord's kingdom soon, the American people would not stand any chance. Their newspapers are their worst enemies. They could help to curb the money masters and give the people a chance, if they would; but the money masters own the papers, and use them against the very ones who look to them for instruction and advice.
Even in Austria, which Americans are accustomed to look down upon, the new government, deprived of coal, turned to water power as a substitute, and is today supplying the larger cities with light and power. The importation of foodstuffs has been reduced by one-half; important reforms in agriculture have taken place; cooperation has been introduced; water power has proven a boon to the people.
Muscle Shoals Project
AMERICA does have one great public water power project. During the war search was made for its most ideal water power site, so that there might be manufactured from the air, by water power, the immense quantities of nitric acid which are used in the creation of high explosives. This same acid is one of the most important ingredients of modern fertilizers.
The place selected as the site for the manufacture of this nitric arid is, next to Niagara River, the best site on the continent It is at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where the Tennessee River flows through a canyon of solid limestone in which there is a fall of 134 feet in 35 miles.
At the lower end of the canyon the United States is building a dam which when completed will be the largest monolithic structure in existence It is 121 feet high, 4,426 feet long, 160 feet wide at the bottom, with a roadway 46 feet wide at the top. When completed and in full operation it will develop 624,000 electric horsepower, or about one and one-half times the total horsepower used in the city of Detroit.
If the United States had not been at war, the fifty multi-millionaire families that control the coal industry of the United States would have fought the Muscle Shoals project tooth and nail; and as soon as the war was over they did try to kill it, but the inherent virtues of the ■ site are so great that Congress insisted that the work must go on. The War Department tried to sell it to some of the great interests, but none of them would bid.
Henry Ford's Proposition
TOREN Henry Ford offered to lease the plant for a hundred years, to manufacture a complete odorless fertilizer, ready for the farmer to use, and to sell it to the farmer direct at cost (plus eight percent, to take care-of maintenance and depreciation charges); and at the end of the hundred years the plant was to revert to the government.
Immediately the coal and fertilizer interests that had wanted the plant junked, so that the people could not profit either by cheap power or cheap fertilizers, became excited; and the result has been what Senator Ladd of North Dakota characterized as “the greatest fight on the floors of Congress between special interests and the public welfare.”
Mr. Ford has not yet obtained control of the plant; but if he will operate it as he promises to do, in the interest of all the people, he ought surely to be given the chance. Why not make him president, and give him a chance to do some other things along the same line! Henry does not like the Jews, and he does not like the Bible Students. No man can be right in everything, but his heart is in the right place.
Envy Among Stock-Jobbers
WALL STREET stock-jobbers, who have trimmed millions of Americans of their ‘=urplus dollars, are casting envious glances at the success which Philadelphia is making along the same lines. “While New York grafters are at work Philadelphians should keep out,” seems to be the motto.
The Magazine of Wall Street is out with a special article in which it roasts Philadelphia for harboring about a dozen shady stock concerns, which it names. It wants us to circulate the good news, probably in the hope that New York’s past, recent and present sins in this direction will be overlooked.
But why should we quote a New Yorker’s libel of “Philadelphia, the source from which springeth every conceivable kind of stock-selling scheme from speculations to downright swindles,” when there are hosts of Philadelphians who could honestly and would gladly just cross out the word “Philadelphia” in the libel and insert "New York” and feel that they were only doing their duty!
Prying the Banks Loose
SENATOR Magnus Johnson, of Minnesota, would like to have the management of the Federal Reserve Board taken out of the hands of the bankers and put into the hands of anybody else that is honest and just, if such persons can be found.
Senator Johnson is quite correct; it is out of all reason to expect the great financial interests to operate the most important institution of the country for the benefit of any other class than its own dear self. But Senator Johnson has about as much chance of getting that prize of all prizes away from those financiers as we have.
Come to think of it, unless Magnus is looking for and working for a place in the Lord’s kingdom, he does not stand so good a chance as wd do; for that is the only thing that will ever make them let go.
We shudder to think of the legal verbiage that would be let loose if an angry public should even seem to succeed in prying out of their hands the fat wallet wherein rests the public’s wealth. How they would yell, “Stop thief!” It would be like a kidnapper crying out against a mother that had taken her own child from him.
Permanent Investments
ONLY eight percent of American products are used abroad, and people who are worrying about America’s foreign market are wasting their nervous energy. When the newspapers contain columns and columns about European business conditions, the crux of the matter lies not so much in the desire for a restoration of markets as it does in the desire for the recovery of hard cash loaned during the war.
But that cash will mostly stay where it is; it has been permanently invested. There are two kinds of permanent investments, those that pay and those that cannot be made to pay; and Uncle Sam’s investments in Europe, aside from Britain, are of the latter variety.
Of course the European situation does affect the whole country somewhat, and especially affects the producers of tobacco, copper, cotton, wheat, and pork, these being among the principal American exports in point of quantity and value. The fanners are the principal sufferers.
Valuation of Railroads
IN RESPONSE to the demand of the people that they be not left helpless in the hands of the railroads, to be plucked too frequently and too thoroughly, and with the hope of sometime inaugurating a real government ownership of the roads, to take the place of the farce carried out during the war, the Interstate Commerce Commission, in obedience to the wishes of Congress, has completed a valuation of all the railroads in the country.
The first result is a threat by the New York Trust Company that “there are more than two hundred Class I railroads in the country, the majority of which will seek judicial opinion on the subject This in itself is indicative of the legal and social intricacies with which the whole problem of railroad valuation is surrounded.”
It is as if to say to the rest of the people of the United States: "Here is a property, for which you gave the franchises, and for which you have paid the full value over and over again, but which now belongs to us bankers and to our heirs and assigns forever; and it is so immensely valuable that you could not possibly have the intelligence to even estimate how much it is actually worth.”
Railroad Centennial
MERICAN railroads are planning for a centennial in 1928. It was one hundred years previous to that time that Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, Maryland, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, drove the first spike in what is now the 5,154-mile Baltimore and Ohio railway system.
The total American trackage, aside from switches and terminal lines, is now 376,992 miles. The freight cars, stretched out in a single line, would belt the earth at the equator and go part way around again. The engines end to end would reach almost from New York to Chicago; the passenger cars a like distance.
From the operating viewpoint Chicago has finally come to be the acknowledged center of railway activities in America, and much of our information as to what is going on in railway circles comes out with a Chicago date line attached.
Now we have data from the Association of Railway Electrical Engineers there that in the near future they expect to have it so that persons traveling by rail can maintain uninterrupted telephone service with their homes or businesses, no matter where the train is or what may be its speed.
It is forecasted that this use of radio will be of immense value, not only to passengers but to railway operators. In the event of a delay or an accident of any kind full information can be lodged immediately with the controlling offices.
New England'• Problem .
VER since the Morgan-Mellon crowd drained the life-blood of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, New England railways have been in a bad way. They are doing an immense business, with not a reason in the world for its not being a profitable business except that bankers have robbed the system; and it is calculated that at least $76,000,000 of water must be drained out of the New Haven stock before real progress can be made.
In desperation and in anger at the dirty car:-, the delays and the slovenly service, the Governors of the New England States have met and proposed to meet the pressing financial obligations of the hard-pressed New England roads i f they would consolidate into a single system, squeeze the water out of their stocks, now misnamed “bonds,” raise new cash to the extent of $15,000,000 by selling some actual stock; and finally, and most important of all, they have invited the present managers to step down and out, as a partial reward for their mismanagement, while they, the Governors, get back their money, which they feel sure they could do in ten years. *
The Governors have made a sensible proposition, but it is one which the banks will never accept The banks will accept the people's money to help out in the emergency confronting these roads; but as for letting the people know where, when, and how it is to be spent, and for their seeing to it that it is all paid back at the earliest moment, Nix. That is not good banking ; and, besides, it would set a bad precedent
Steps are being slowly taken by the Government toward consolidation of the unprofitable American roads with the profitable ones; and this is right. It is quite proper that sections of the country where traffic is light should have adequate service, and that the richer sections should do somewhat to help.
At present, if any railroad earns in excess of six percent on the value of its individual property, one-half of the excess goes into a transportation fund which is expended by the Interstate Commerce Commission in the interest of transportation as a whole. The other half is retained by the railroad showing the excess earnings.
Courts and Mechanic!
COURT injunctions cannot make or unmake mechanics; and the railways are still worrying over their shop troubles, even though they do have the courts with them. The Lehigh Valley and the Delaware and Hudson have finally given up the fight, and after almost a year and a half the old men have returned to work.
The Bureau of Locomotive Inspection of the Interstate Commerce Commission has been making it pretty hard sledding for what are called the "hard-boiled'* railroads, pointing out in its reports instance after instance where lives have been lost and property has been destroyed because the repairs have not, since the strike, been made so well as they were made before.
Boiler fines have been hastily put in place with only friction to hold them, whereas they should always be prossered (enlarged), and patches have been put in place which show that the seams were not properly welded. It stands to reason that inexperienced men cannot make difficult and heavy repairs as well as men who have done such work for years.
In one of the instances last mentioned, locomotive 409 of the New York, New Haven and
Hartford blew up while crossing a bridge at Walpole, Mass. The boiler soared a hundred feet into the air and three hundred feet horizontally, killing the engineer and injuring the fireman. Curiously enough, the wheels of the locomotive remained on the track, as did all the passenger coaches attached; and the train coasted five hundred feet after the boiler of its locomotive had parted company with its frame.
The 60,000 striking shopment of the Pennsylvania Railroad have brought suit against that system for $15,000,000 for their failure to abide by the rules of the United States Railroad Labor Board. Our guess is that after this case has gone through all the courts the men will be lucky if they get any amount over and above fifteen cents. What is your guess f
But it will embarrass the Government to have to declare that a law which is binding upon the men is not binding upon the masters, and it will be convenient for many people if this case is tabled or pigeon-holed; and that may be the way out. Anyway, the men will never get the $15,000,000.
Persons who desire to become employes of the Union Pacific railway shops are obliged to sign application papers which compel them to join the company’s own union and to submit to a checkoff of union dues for three months in advance. The application provides for implicit obedience to such working conditions and wages as may be arranged by this imaginary union; and it also provides that if the employ^ joins any other real union his application for employment becomes his resignation, to be accepted ox not when and as the railway chooses.
The Harrison Outrages .
THIS cause of the workers makes slow prog
ress toward the light In the month of January, 1923, a railroad with headquarters in Harrison, Arkansas, insolvent and hampered by shopmen’s strikes, threatened to quit operation after suffering from wrecks and burned bridges.
A mob gathered and hanged E. C. Gregor, charging him with burning a bridge. Others were whipped and driven out of town. Two were sent to prison, and are still there. All the sufferers protested their complete innocence.
Now the files of the Bureau of Locomotive Inspection at Washington show that the en« gines were in such condition that they could hardly fail to start fires; and it is the belief of those who have given the matter careful study that every one of the sufferers was innocent, and that the fires were due to extreme dryness of trestle timbers, rank growth of dry weeds and grasses, and the imperfect condition of the locomotive ash-pans.
Efforts are being made to get the Governor of Arkansas to release the innocent men who are still in prison, but nothing can atone for the murder of Gregor or the many other injustices done by the mob.
Public Ownership in Detroit
WITH all due respect to the Wall Street Journal and other like-minded newspapers which have sought in vain to discredit it, the city of Detroit is making a great success of its municipally owned street-car system. It bought the system in 1922 for $19,000,000.
In the year in which the system has been in its possession the wages of the men have been raised, seventy miles of new track have been laid, the service has been vastly improved, $4,000,000 were set aside as a sinking fund, $1,200,000 were set aside as payment on the original purchase price, and after taxes and paving charges were deducted there was left a profit of $1,000,000. The fare has been five cents, with one cent extra for transfers; but lines have purposely been so arranged as to eliminate all transfers possible.
It will now be in order for the press of the country either to keep silent about this victory for the people, or else to try to find some flaw in a method which works perfectly in England in scores of cities, and could be made to work thus here, with infinite advantage to the people, if it were not for the newspapers which work for and are controlled by the great monied interests. By any method of figuring which even the Wall Street Journal can devise, the municipal administration of the street railways of Detroit has been a huge success.
Who Will Be President?
AMERICANS are beginning to wonder who will be their next President. Many of our readers are not especially interested in this subject; for they believe the Lord’s kingdom is at the doors and will be a visible reality in the earth some time during the term of the next presidential administration. But we have many readers of all kinds; and even one who holds the above views should have some interest in the personality of the man who will be on the job of trying to govern 110,000,000 people at the time when earth's new King takes over the government of the world.
The death of President Harding has made President Coolidge the most probable Republican candidate. The interests that put Mr. Harding to the fore for the presidency, overlooking the wishes of millions of Americans for a progressive like Senator LaFollette, Senator Hiram Johnson or Governor Pinchot, can probably do about as they wish; and it seems quite unlikely to us that any progressive Republican can be nominated. *
The press and the politicians will do a large amount of preliminary surface boosting of the progressives; but when the Old Guard gets word from the corner of Broad and Wall Streets what to do, it will probably be as obedient as ever. The friends of President Cook, idge, and they are many at this writing, are hoping that he may bring about a reduction of railroad rates, or do some other thing in behalf of the people, in the short time before March 4th, which will make him seem acceptable to the progressives.
Every successful politician has some financial backer; and it is understood that Mr. Coolidge’s backer until now has been Mr. F. W. Stearns, owner of a Boston department store.
Senator Robert M. LaFollette, of Wisconsin, is the gifted, courageous and progressive leader that would be our choice among the Republicans. At sixty-seven years of age Mr. LaFollette is still a poor man, but has a record of integrity, industry, zeal, ability and faithful devotion to the people unequaled by any other man in public life in America today.
At present he virtually controls the balance of power in both houses of Congress, and has risen to this high position in the face of nationwide, persistent, malicious abuse by almost all the great newspapers of the ^ountry.
He would make a wonderful President. But the Old Guard would by no means ever let "Battling Bob" LaFollette have any more power than he now has. From their point of view he has too much power already. He is always pre-
Beating facts, facts, and more facts that make him a foe to be dreaded.
Democratic Candidates
OF DEMOCRATIC candidates there is Senator Underwood, a man of ability, but counted as a conservative. He has recently declared war on the Ku Klux Klan, and the Klan has taken up the cudgel against him. This makes his political pathway a thorny one.
William G. McAdoo is an extremely popular and capable man. He would make as good a President as any one could expect, and he may get the Democratic nomination. If he does get it, he will probably be elected, as the Klan has declared in his favor.
There is Governor Smith, of New York; but Governor Smith is a Roman Catholic, and no Roman Catholic can hope to be President of the United States. Mr. Bryan is still alive and vigorous as ever, but has no more chances of being nominated than has Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Ford is spoken of, and millions would like to see him made President; but he does not covet the job and can probably do more for the country as a private citizen than he could as President. Mr. Ford has declared for Coolidge “if he will enforce the prohibition law.” The Klan, important factor in Democratic politics, is said to be against Mr. Ford because he recently presented a specially built Lincoln automobile to an archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church.
Gossip about the Klan
WE DO not know much about the Klan, except that it is sweeping the West and Middle West, besides gaining some foothold in the East. It is very strong in the South and the Southwest. Strenuous efforts have been made to discredit it and put it out of business in the Boman Catholic state of Louisiana, but the discredit seems to have found as much of a resting place on the Catholic officials as on the Klan. Two bodies, obtained from a dissecting room and thrown into a lake, were alleged to have been the bodies of two men slain by the Klan.
The two men themselves, at the time their supposed bodies were found, were alive and well, and were seen in the custody of Catholic officials subsequently, so we are told. Their present whereabouts is unknown; they are supposed to have been murdered by the officials who had them in charge, and who feared to have their duplicity uncovered.
The newspapers tell us in one breath that the Klan is in full control of the state of Oklahoma, and in the next that the legislature will pass laws against it. Believe whichever statement seems the more reasonable, but please do not believe both; for both cannot be true.
Two facts are clear: One is that the Oklahoma Senate removed Governor Walton from office by a vote of 41 to 0, and the other is that Governor Walton is of Roman Catholic tendencies and is anti-Klan. The Governor is alleged to have used his office for his own personal gain. He has appealed to the federal authorities. In New York State the federal authorities refused to restrain the Hearst publications from using letters said to have been stolen from the Klan and bought for the sum of $3,000.
Immigration Problems
THERE is a natural desire on the part of myriads of the war-oppressed peoples of Europe to abandon their native lands and cast in their lot with America, especially in these prosperous times. Not long ago there were in the port of New York eight thousand immigrants detained on vessels in the North River because the quotas from thtfir countries had been filled. These immigrants were subsequently admitted on parole. The present law fines the steamship company $200 for each immigrant brought.over in excess of the quota, and allows the Secretary of Labor to require also that the immigrant's passage money be returned to him. Among the throng seeking admission to America were Russians, some of whom had made as many as three futile attempts to gain entrance.
The Ku Klux Klan has announced that its policy is to stop all immigration, except that of separated families, and then to institute a thorough governmental investigation into every phase of alienism, with a view of obtaining exact and scientific information upon which to base a permanent immigration policy.
Reducing Taxes and Expenses
CONSIDERABLE effort is being made to convey the impression that a reduction should be made in the income taxes; but there is no excuse for it. Those that have the greatest incomes should bear the heaviest share of maintaining the governments that have made such incomes possible.
From the point of view of the bankers a really wealthy man, with a great income, ought not to pay any taxes at all; and some of them, as a result of their own schemes, do actually pay very little.
There is reason enough for economy. In the American Declaration of Independence King George was accused of having "erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat their substance.”
Today King George, if living, could call our attention to the fact that the total salary list of the federal government now amounts to $10 for every man, woman and child in the country; that the office-holding class has increased forty percent while the population was increasing ten percent; and that out of every forty-seven males old enough to work, one is now feeding at the public crib.
Verily, we do love to be governed, managed, bossed, and lucked around; and the more they kick us around, the meaner they seem to act when they do it. A person who now goes, hat in hand, and pays just ten times the taxes he paid thirty years ago on the same property is frequently made to feel that he is a beggar or else belongs in some way to the 'Tower clawses.”
The new budget system of controlling government expenditures is working excellently. The last fiscal year of the national government closed with a surplus of $300,000,000 where a deficit of $800,000,000 had been expected. Secretary of the Treasury Mellon has had much to do with the accumulation of this surplus by the wise methods he has used in discharging the duties of his office. He is believed by some to be one of the very best treasury officials the government has ever had. Others denounce him as lawless.
War—the One Big Waste
IF WE may be permitted to suggest one good way of cutting down government expenditures we advise in two words, "Hlegalize war.” If this government were to let it be known that it places war in the same category as murder, subject to the same laws, it would help.
It would also help if a Constitutional Amendment were to be passed conscripting all property of every kind during the duration of a war, if one should start, and for five years after the war, so that no one could take any profit. The Portland, Oregon, Journal, says:
"Why not? If in war young men must expose their bodies to shell fire and the bayonet thrust, if we conscript every young man of military age for the shambles, if we take all that a young man is or hopes to be and make him a living breastwork against the armed advance of the foe, if we compel wives, sisters and mothers to give up their loved ones to go out and fight in national defense, why not also conscript property, all property, for military service? If we do not, we place the office buildings, the bank vaults, the industrial plants above the man. We make the dollar a slacker, and the man a conscript We pay dearly for all the property we use in war. Property in the late war made of its owners twenty odd thousand millionaires. Property got prices and profits almost beyond the dreams of avarice. Property made so much money out of the late war, almost over night at that, that many of its owners cannot find ways enough to spend it. Why this difference in war between the man and the money? Why confiscate the man, but license the money to profiteer? Why lay on the man the iron hand of power, but give property license to become the hawk and buzzard of the battlefield?”
Enlistments in the army at this time are very few, partly due to the high wages paid in industry and partly due to unwillingness or inability to answer satisfactorily all the questions now asked of applicants, especially one respecting the applicant’s having reached twenty-one years of age.
Roman Catholic Patriotism
ABOUT everybody has had his attention called to the skillful way in which some Boman Catholic employes in the Bureau of Engraving set forth during the Tumulty administration that this was soon to be a Roman Catholic country in fact as well as in name. On the face of the $1 bill, series of 1917, in the upper left-hand corner, they have seen the picture of the Pope,*with the kneeling figure looking straight to it for inspiration; in the same corner vi Knight-Columbus whose sword handle spells “Leo”; in the lower left corner a bleeding heart with three drops of blood; in the lower right-hand corner they have seen the head and neck of the serpent, fit emblem of the Jesuit; on the back, looped about the large cross, they have seen the rosary of which are visible thirty-two beads; and in two places on the back, one in the upper right and one in the extreme lower right corner they have seen how skillfully the middle bar of the letter E in the word onb has been transformed into a cross. It is persistently claimed in Washington that several men were dismissed and one sent to prison for a long term of years for this job.
Occasionally the evidence comes to light showing how nearly America came to becoming a Roman Catholic paradise, through the army’s getting almost wholly under papal control. The latest story shows how “surplus" materials were sold from the Perryville, Maryland, depot.
It seems that brand-new sheets and towels in carload lots were sold by Boman Catholic army officials to Roman Catholic department stores at one-fifth the price at which the Government was at the very time buying the same articles. The majors and colonels and commanders involved include such familiar names as McDonald, John Doyle Carmody, and O'Leary. The principal beneficiary was Thompson & Kelley, Inc., of Boston, the home town of the most holy reverend father cardinal O'Connell.
Sheets, Pajamas, and Towel*
AT THE very time that the Government was buying new unbleached sheets at $1.27, the Thompson & Kelley Company was buying them from the Government at twenty-five cents each. It pays to be religious when you can buy sheets in carload lots from the Government for twenty-five cents each, and then sell them right back to the party from whom you bought them, and in carload lots, for a nice little profit of $1.02 per sheet. We don't know that the Thompson & Kelley Company sold any of these same sheets back, but they could easily have done so; for the Government was in the market
And then the Government purchased 43,008 new bleached sheets from the Navy at a special bargain of eighty-four cents per sheet And at the same time the Thompson & Kelley Company was getting them from the Government at sixteen cents per sheet It surely does pay to have such friends; and it surely does pay the Roman Catholics to stick together and to stick ths Protestants.
And then, through this same benevolent Perryville depot, we learn that “98,995 winter pajamas, furnished by the Red Cross, were sold to the Boston firm at thirty cents a pair, although pajamas of this kind would be sorely needed [by the soldiers] at Perryville this winter.”
Thus we are shown how, by the proper handling of funds, wise contributions to charity may finally help “religion” to gain a firm standing in our midst And “religion”! Just see what a grand thing it is; see how profitable it is!
Among other items brought out at the hearing conducted by a high army official, Mr. O’Ryan, it was revealed that “Matthew O'Brien, the architect for the Livermore, Cal, hospital, claimed in June last only $13,000 as the balance due him, although in October the controller general of the United States ordered an alleged claim for $36,000 paid over the protest of Director Hines of the bureau,” and that “a contract for floor wax and a cleaning fluid at eightyseven cents a gallon that could have been made for between one and two cents was let to the Continental Chemical Company.”
Coming back to the sheets: It seems that the Government ordered 2,622 sheets sold; but when the Thompson & Kelley Company came to buy, they were given 84,920 on that order. Moreover, they managed to purchase for three cents apiece 1,169,008 towels for which the Government had paid nineteen cents apiece.
Four carloads of these new goods were shipped to the Boston concern after President Harding had learned of this game of graft and had suspended further sales. What a grand country this will be when the Papacy is in full control! But how beggarly are these mean pickings of a few hundred thousand dollars compared with what Prince Ryan and others of his crowd did to us during the war!
Executive Clemency
WHY does not President Coolidge grant freedom to all political prisoners}* Is he fearful that the influence of the real trespassers, the real thieves, the big ones, will be used against him next year? Better a thousand times, Mr. Coolidge, to lose the presidency of the United States than to let those poor fellows rot in the Leavenworth penitentiary another day. Will Ryan, McDonald, Carmody, O’Leary, Thompson, or Kelley be sent to Leavenworth? They will not.
And while President Coolidge is pardoning the remaining thirty-two political prisoners he
•[All freed since above was written.—Ed.] should also pardon the fifty-four members of the 24th United States Infantry (Negro) for their share in the Houston riots in 1917.
These men have been in Leavenworth a long time; white men participate in riots with almost complete immunity. The Government has never made any arrests in the case of the one hundred-odd acts of violence against unoffending Bible Students, cited in dur issue of September 27, 1920.
And then President Coolidge should make an effort to see that Vanzetti, the fish peddler, originally arrested by the Department of Justice as one of those famous "Reds,” and subsequently held as a bandit, is released. No smoke screen that the detectives of the Department of Justice can ever spread over this case can hide the fact that this man proved by forty witnesses that he was selling fish all day far away from the scene of the crime, nor that •several who claimed to identify him as the bandit have acknowledged since that they committed perjury. Send fifteen cents to the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, Boston, Mass.; and read Vanzetti’s own story.
No doubt President Coolidge has enough influence in Massachusetts to free this innocent man of the framed-up bandit charge. Vanzetti is now under sentence of death. In his book, in which he explains how he came to incur the enmity of the Department of Justice, he says:
“I earned my bread by the honest sweat of my brow. I have not a drop of blood on my bands, nor on my conscience. I wanted a roof for every family, bread for every mouth, education for every heart, the light for every intellect. I am convinced that human history has not yet begun; that we find ourselves in the last period of the pre-historic. I see with the eyes of my soul how the sky is diffused with the rays of the new millennium.”
How Dare a Foreigner Think?
THERE is a prodigious amount of effort made in this country to incite hatred against any foreign-born citizen who shows either a tendency to think in un-American ways or an un-American tendency to think at alL Notice the reported language of Mr. S. Stanwood Menken, President of the National Security League, in an address before our cigarette friends, the Y. M. C. A. The Communists of whom he speaks may have wrong ideas, and we think they do have wrong ideas; but we do not altogether like the inflammatory, nature of Mr. Menken’s address to these budding Christians:
"We have 600,000 Communists meeting weekly, publishing fifty papers, attacking your country, your Government, your right to prosper, to bring up your own children as you will, to enjoy the advantages of this country as we know it and our forefathers planned it. To fight them more of us must get on the job and help take care of the U. S. A.”
We remind Mr. Menken that this is supposed to be a free country where any man may believe, if he chooses, that the moon is made of green cheese; and that if he can get 600,000 other persons to believe it, he is a regular cheese expert. If Mr. Menken believes Communism is wrong (and it is) let him bring forth his arguments.
Communism is inadequate; it would be several laps behind a system by which a needy crowd of hungry profiteers could buy sheets in carload lots for twenty-five cents each and sell them right back to the original owners at a nice little profit of $1.02 per sheet. How would Mr. Menken take care of the needy by any better plan than that? Speak up, man!
Pay-Roll and Bank Bandits .
PAY-ROLL and bank bandits are getting
bolder and bolder. Almost every week brings an account of men driving up in automobiles, murdering bank messengers or pay-roll guards, and making off, never to be heard of again. In November sixteen men invaded the sizable city of Spencer, Indiana, at three o’clock in the morning, cut all telephone and telegraph wires leading into the town, blew up the vaults of both banks with nitroglycerin, seized the funds and escaped.
No doubt very many learnad the art of using firearms and explosives in the nation-wide training school established for that purpose in 1917-1918. On the same day of the Spencer raid three robbers held up a bank at Groton, S. D.
However, the banks show that they lose more to forgers than they de to holdup men. Of 363 meh arrested for bank robberies within a given time recently two hundred and sixty-six were accused of forgeries and eighty-one of holdup*. The losses through forgeries and alterations of checks the past year amounted in America to fifty million dollars.
"E^EOM early centuries the ringing of bells has been used to mark divisions of time, to summon people to worship and prayer, and to announce tidings of joy and sorrow. With a delightful jingle they have betokened periods of peace and prosperity:
“Hear the sledges with the belle, Silver bells I
What a world of merriment their melody foretells 1
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night, While the stare that oversprinkle : All the heavens seem to twinkle
; . With a crystalline delight I”
Then there are other bells:
“Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells I
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! How it swells!
How it dwells on the future!
How it tells of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing of the bells I”
In loud vibrating tones bells have declared the outbreak of fire:
“Hear the loud alarum bells,
Brazen bells I ,
What a tale of terror now their turbulence foretells I
In the startled air of night How they scream out their affright, In their clamorous appeal to the mercy of the fire I”
Like aching heart-throbs, bells have joined the weeping of mourners:
“Hear the tolling of the bells, Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats
> Is a groan.”
Many a bloody chapter in history has been rung in and out by bells.
In Sicily, at Eastertide in the year 1282 A. D., the ringing of the vesper bells was the dread signal for one of the most terrible tragedies on record, when nearly every Frenchman in the Island was put to death.
Worse still was what occurred on St Bartholomew’s day, August 24, 1547. The ringing of the church bells signalised the commence-
Something about Bells By Frederick Lardent (London, Eng.) ment of the massacre of those French Protestants commonly known as the Huguenots, to the number, it is said, of 100,000.
This valiant work was performed by Chbis-tians, who were such by name only. The real Christian, however, has constantly ringing in his heart and mind the words of Jesus: “Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.” So shall your reward be great in the kingdom of heaven.
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