Golden Age, July 11, 1928

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Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

in this issue

•£

AN OVERPOPULATED

PARADISE

present conditions in Porto Rico

RUMANIA AT BAY

revolt against Bratianu misrule

“ANNALS OF THE POOR” struggles of the working classes in America

THE BIBLE

its origin and purposes, and why now better understood.. By Judge Rutherford

aimBrnmommimofimw’’'

EVERY O

July 11, 1928

FIVE CENTS A C

Volume IX-No. 230 '

Contents

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Labor and Economics

Hebe and There About the Wohb ............ 649 A Tragedy of Unemployment .............. ..649 Big Business and Socialism ......... 651

“The Shout and Simple Annals of the I’ooj:" ....... 657

Social and Educational __

Staten Island Cop a Burglar . . '....... 4 G-jO

Illegal Entry of Homes ................ 652

In Tennessee in the Good Old Days ........... 655

Finance—Commerce—Transportation

King Tut’s Last Cent .................

Political—Domestic and Foreign

The Rumanian Government at Bay ...........

A Study of the Soviet Government ........ . . .

Excerpts from the Manual fob Military Training ...... Mussolini and the Pope at Loggerheads ..........

Home and Health

A Chance fob a Dietician ...............

The Value o| Life ..................

Travel and Miscellany. >

Porto Rico-—An Overpopulated Paradise ..........

Religion and Philosophy

Cadman and Pastor Russell ..............

The Bible and Its Purposes ..............

Bible Questions and Answers ..............

The Children’s Own Radio Story ............

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

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Vohsme IX Brooklyn,- N. Y., Wednesday, July 11, 1928 Number 23d

Porto Rico — An Overpopulated Paradise

ON NOVEMBER 19, 1493, Columbus landed on the western coast of an island which he named San Juan Bautista, but .which we now know as Porto Rico. He found a paradise, an earthly Eden, a land of abundant rainfall, a mild and even climate, pleasant the year around, a land without beasts of prey or wild animals of any kind.

He found a densely-forested island approximately fifty miles wide by seventy miles long, inhabited by about eighty thousand happy, peaceable, lazy, fine-featured, good-natured red men, who called their island Boriquen. In the ensuing twenty-two years the cruelties of Columbus and his successors had put seventy-five thousand of these natives into their graves.

The invaders from the East seized the island, aptly described as the Switzerland of. America, .killed or imprisoned the native chieftains, made slaves of the inhabitants and practised such cruelties that thousands committed suicide or left the island to go anywhere rather than remain subject to such barbarities. These things are not mentioned on “Columbus Day”.

The four thousand who were left gradually blended with the invaders, bringing a touch of hopeless resignation to their posterity. ■ The placer deposits where their ancestors worked under the Spanish lash are long since exhausted. The ancient and musical name of Boriquen is no longer heard. “Rich Port,” “Puerto Rico,” came at last to be the name of the land. San 'Juan, the name applied by Columbus, is still the name of the chief city.

Porto Rico is fourteen hundred miles from New York, one thousand miles from Havana, and somewhat less than a thousand miles from the Isthmus of Panama. Two lines of mountains, with elevations over three thousand feet, traverse the island from east to west, affording large variety of exquisite panorama. The interior is a high table-land.

The Porto Rican mountains are peculiar. Each peak, all the way to the top, is composed of innumerable little peaks. Forty-five streams of considerable size find their way to the various coasts. Several of these are navigable for small boats near their mouths.

A Highly Favored Land

rpH.H hot mineral springs at Coamo are now known to be the “fountain of youth” in the

search for which Ponce de Leon spent his life. So valuable did the natives regard the waters from these springs that they never disclosed their whereabouts to the adventurous Ponce, but sent him on a “wild goose chase” to Florida and the American continent. The most they did was to name after.him the second city on the island.

Both the soils and the climate of the island are specially favorable to vegetation. Palms and tree-ferns grow prodigiously. Oranges, grapefruits and bananas are indigenous. Reforestation is under way, to the extent of a million trees a year. Birds are multitudinous. The rivers are well stocked with fish.

San Juan, the capital, wras founded by Ponce de Leon in 1511, and reveals his cleverness. It is on a small island, connected with the mainland by a bridge. On account of its fine harbor, with its narrow and difficult entrance, it is con- ' siderod one of the most impregnable cities in the world, and history has proven it so to be.

Porto Rico is the land of the motor bus. One hundred eighty-five of these leave San Juan at all hours- of the day and night, for all parts of the island. Named after the sound of their horns these vehicles are known in Porto Rico as GuaGuas. The round-trip fare from San ■ Juan to Ponce, 170 miles, is only $4.20, and the ride is said to be one of the most beautiful and cue of the most crooked in the world. The high- '

643 '

way crosses the mountains at 3,000 feet above sea-level. . .

The religion, what there is of it, is Roman Catholic, but is not taken seriously by anybody except those who have it for a business. Slaves from Africa were brought in within fifty years of the discovery of the island, to take the place of the Indians who had been worked to death or driven away. Slavery wras ' abolished in March, 1873, having become unprofitable.

The Porto Rican Melting-Pot

IN PORTO RICO no one thinks anything unusual of it. if a white woman marries a brown or black man, or if a -white man marries a brown or black woman. But as a matter of fact the black race is as surely passing out as the red, and the last red man’s village has been gone from Porto Rico for two hundred years.

In Porto Rican professional life there is a good mixture of whites, negroes and mulattoes among all the different occupations. The mon seem to get along together all right, and to take it as a matter of course, but the women are less tolerant; so the tendency of the whites is to marry whites, and the tendency of the blacks also is to marry whites or mulattoes.

In 1910 the enumeration showed 65.5 percent of the population as white, 30 percent mulatto and 4.5 percent black. Ten years later the proportions were 73 percent white, 23.2 percent mulatto and 3.8 percent black. At this rate it will not . be long before the blacks will all be gone. And other reasons are operating, too.

After four hundred years of Spanish rule the percentage of illiteracy in Porto Rico was, in 1899, over 83 percent. This has been reduced to 55 percent, and there are norv 4,238 public elementary schools; yet there are about 300,000 boys and girls between the ages of five and seventeen who do not attend school. There are about twenty high schools, a normal school and a university.

The agricultural laborers, jibaros, as they are s naturally bright, generous, be spit a- ■

’loyal, but their poverty and ignorance are almost measureless. Barefoot, almost nude, living in st raw huts of two rooms, the. jibarp 'iihSW family of perhaps ten children subsist'? cidietably pa one .meal a day of black coffee, polished."rice and beans, with occasionally a little fried codfish. No fruit, no vegetables, no vitamines.

The jibaro’s home has usually a built-in hunk, a shelf and a few boxes. The space beneath the house serves as a shelter for pigs,' goats and chickens. There are no latrines, nor comforts of any kind. The one meal is cooked with charcoal. '

Desperate Poverty of the Jibaro

THE usual wage of the jibaro is fifty cents a day, but may run as high as $1.25, or fall to even thirty cents. On these wages he can not afford more than one meal a day, with the consequence that the return which he can render is meager. He is blamed for being shiftless, and so he is; but when the government tried, feeding the laborers with three good meals a day the result was over one hundred percent increase in efficiency. '

As a result of poor housing and poor food the jibaro is dying off rapidly with tuberculosis, and hookworm and malaria cut into his efficiency; yet his family grows astoundingly, asis often the case in lands where economic conditions make people hopeless. And the jibaro on one meal a day, with fifty cents wages and ten mouths to feed, is a hopeless man, from his point of view.

One wonders why the jibaro does not eat the fruits which grow so readily. The answer is that they do not belong to him, and he could not afford to eat them if they did. They are too valuable for export purposes. But he does eat many bananas and sweet potatoes. Otherwise he could hardly exist. These he raises on the little patch assigned to him by his employer.

Porto Rico is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, having been estimated, as of 1925, to have 407.22 to the square mile. The claim is often made by the shortsighted that there are too many Porto Ricans and that the only solution is for the surplus to emigrate; but they do not seem inclined to do this, and we are sure the Lord will have a bettejy

Sugar c Blessing and a Curse ■

TWENTY-FIVE' years ago.'.Porto BieO-i'lhp several hundred small sugar factories, with an output of 69,000 tons of sugar annually. Now it has about fifty modem factories, turning out ten' times that number of tons. 'TftB looks like astounding'progress, does it not, especially when the profits have been known to exceed 100 % in one year? But there are two sides to it.

The Organic Law of Porto Rico, adopted in the year 1900, provides that no corporation shall own or control more than five hundred acres of land; yet the five hundred largest corporations and individual owners in the island have actual holdings of eight, hundred thousand acres. The sugar interests have not kept the spirit of the law.

The need of Porto Rico is for many and small farms: yet in twenty years the number of small farms has fallen off so greatly that those holding less than ten acres have decreased in number from 31,959 to 15,981. The property is all going into the hands of the big fellows.

Sugar-cane is a bad crop in an island where the population is excessive. It is essentially a Big Business crop, calling for many workers from January to June, few7 from July to September, and very few from October to December. The profits are all sent out of the island, and with the sugar estates elbowing all other agricultural interests out of the island the sugar employes have a hard time to find food in their idle months.

It is estimated that from two-thirds to four-fifths of the wealth produced in Porto Rico goes abroad in the shape of dividends to absentee owners of stock in the sugar and tobacco industries. Is the country prosperous? The answer is Yes, if you mean the trusts; but it is No, if you mean the people.

Anxiety of the People

HYHE Porto Rican people seem to be anxious that the American people should know about their predicament; but they are a thousand miles off shore, they. speak a different language, have a different religion and different customs, and it is hard to awaken a people to-the cries of their fellow men as long as their dividends are coming in regularly.

Up to the present time the corporations that are interested in Porto Rico have succeeded in preventing any investigation of the conditions which hold the very poor down to one meal a day and prevent his getting a start, by fixing the interest and commissions on loans as high as 48%.

It is claimed that the federal income tax law works in such a way that the Big Business eon-the country of three-fourths of its wealth, but' . pay no income nor other taxes, and that the reason no investigation is made is because the rich Porto Ricans, who control 35% of the capital invested in the sugar and other businesses, have an all-powerful voice with the legislature and the courts.

There are on the island 619 industrial establishments, of which 55 are in the sugar and molasses business and 169 are tobacco establishments. Considerable-drawn work is manufactured, but the work is done under such close contracts with the New York employers that none of the lace can be bought in Porto Rico at all.

Politics and More Politics

PORTO RICO has too much politics for its own good. The governor, the auditor and the commissioner of education are appointed by the president of the United States. The senate is composed of nineteen members and the house of representatives of thirty-nine members. The island is represented in the United States congress by a resident commissioner elected every four years. Its citizens are automatically citizens of the United States, except . 277 who have definitely elected to be citizens of no country at all. The legislature meets every other year for a session of ninety days.

There are three political parties : the Unionist, which professes to desire complete independence of the United States; the Republican, which professes a desire that Porto Rico become one of the states of the United States and be governed like the rest of the states; and the Socialist party. The issues between these parties are believed to be, for the most part, insincere and trivial, as in the United States, and are actually used to obtain office, as is true here also.

The cry of the Unionist party for independence is believed to be entirely hypocritical, and put up solely with the object of making the people of the island think that independence would bring better conditions. Actually the Unionists do not wish independence and 'would be alarmed if it were thrust upon them.

The reason for this is that the Unionists are the party of money, power and privilege. Their financial support comes from the sugar and oth-great interests, and. their Job

their interests. is to their interest

their sugar into the United States .free of duty. Otherwise they would have to compete on even terms with Cuba, and this they have not the least wish to do. Independence is. everything they do not want. But they do want the votes of the people, and meanwhile no investigations, please. How simple it all is. The poor people are always stung in the same way by their loudmouthed deliverers and benefactors.

Restraint of Liberties ■ .

IT IS small wonder that a people whose desperate poverty limits them to one meal a 'day, and who at the same time are full-fledged citizens, each with just as much right to vote as if he were a millionaire, should wish to do something to change such intolerable conditions. Moreover, it is inevitable that somebody will rise up sooner or later to call attention to the conditions and suggest that they be changed.

This is the case with regard to Porto Rico. The American Federation of Labor of the United States knows of the conditions there and is agitating for a better state of affairs. Their spokesman and representative is Senor Santiago Iglesias, a Cuban by birth, president of the Free Federation of Workers of Porto Rico, and also, incidentally, head of the Socialist party. It is hard to see how Socialism could help spreading in Porto Rico under such circumstances.

Like most Porto Ricans, Senor Iglesias is the father of a large family; and this endears him to the people. Five of the daughters of his family of eleven children are named with the Spanish equivalents of the words liberty, equality, fraternity, America and justice. He is considered an exceedingly well-informed'; intelligent and sagacious man.

When he first undertook the cause of the Federation of Labor in Porto Rico the authorities clapped him into jail; but clapping people into jail for thinking or using their vocal organs seems not to be as popular or successful as it once was, and the Federation of Labor cabled - - $5/)00 to secure his release on bail. Since then the Socialist party has grown by leaps and bounds, showing that his imprisonment was a very indiscreet thing.

• Senor Iglesias charged that at the elections in 1924 government officials afforded no protection of the workers, who were clubbed by the police, driven from the polling places, and in some instances were held on the plantations so that they could not vote. He claimed that thousands of other. hungry, bare-footed peasants walked two or three hours from the country so that they might vote, but were held in line until the polls were closed. He claimed also that votes were not counted when cast; that observers for the workers’ candidates were not permitted to function; and that in many in-, stances when they first presented themselves at the polls they were told: “You have already voted.”

The c-hargc was also made that, contrary to law, the ballots were opened by election officers before being put into the ballot box, so that bribes could be intelligently paid. Also, that at the time of recounting enough ballots were declared null by election officers to change the results. In one town of 2,237 voters, 400 labor votes were thus declared mill.

At Christmas time in the year .1924, the Porto Rican Elections Protest Committee sent the following message to the American congress at Washington: ■

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the people of Porto Hico. The Porto Rican elections, held November 4,1924, are the greatest outrage upon American citizenship ever committed.: Fraud, violence, corruption, wholesale robbery! When the time comes and all the facts are laid before you, please help to right this wrong.

The President’s Attitude

OFFSETTING these charges, the government claimed that there was no intimidation of voters, and that the large percentage of illiteracy made it inevitable that many ballots should be rejected. In his refusal to authorize an investigation of Porto Rican affairs. President Coolidge made the following statement:

Wo foun4 tb.a people of Porto Rico poor and distrest, without hope for the future, ignorant, poverty-stricken, and diseased, not knowing what constituted a free and democratic government. We have progressed in the relief of poverty and distress, in the eradication of disease, and have attempted, with some success, to inculcate in the inhabitants the basic ideas of a free, democratic government. Perhaps no territory in the world has received such considerate treatment in the past thirty years as has Porto Rico, and perhaps nowhere else has progress been so marked and so apparent as in Porto Rico. ....... : .......

There is, no doubt, a great deal of truth in what President Coolidge has said, and there is no possible question that the large and rapidly growing population of the island creates problems which are not easy of solution; but if it be true that three-fourths of what is produced in the island goes to absentee owners and stockholders, and if it be true that the people in general are held down to one meal a day and their landholdings are being rapidly gobbled up by the sugar interests: then it would seem to be high time that an investigation be made, and the American people should face the facts as they exist and do something to remedy conditions.

The Rumanian Government at Bay

OF ALL the evil governments in the world the Rumanian government is generally conceded to be the vilest. Times without number the central ruling powers have encouraged local authorities to begin or participate in or condone violence against Jews and other inoffensive persons.

- Rumania is under the complete control of Big Business. It has a firm grip on all the treasures of the country, including rich oil fields, coal mines, forests, fisheries, foundries, factories, granaries, water powers, transportation, banks, etc. It is a replica of what Big Business would like the United States to become.

In Rumania Big Business is married to the Eastern Orthodox Church; and there is no mistake about the union, either. All citizens are required to contribute to its gigantic building program and to its support. A man who refused to make such contributions had his taxes tripled. That was engineered through the political end of the Big Swindle.

A short time ago two representatives of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Ilerrn Balzereit and Dollinger, visited Rumania to look after the Society’s interests there. They were promptly arrested without cause, and thrown into prison with fifteen others “of this way”, where they received much unkind treatment before they were released. «

The Lord seems to be taking notice of these things, for since the above incident strange things have happened in Rumania. The Balkans have been shaken with many and serious earthquakes, volcanoes have been stirred into activity and the soot thrown into the upper air has fallen in the form of Alack rain, terrorizing the inhabitants. An Associated Press dispatch on the subject says:

Populace in Panic as Skies Are Darkened

CERNAUTI. Rumania, April 26 (AP).— The whole, population was panic-stricken this afternoon when a heavy, slimy rain converted the day into black night. People knelt in the slime-covered streets to pray for mercy.

The phenomenon was attributed to lava dust from the Balkan regions, which have been repeatedly shaken by earthquakes during the past week. The dust was believed to have been precipitated by mixing with rain. Similar occurrences have been reported from Bessarabia.

To the forces of nature have been added the terrors of two hundred fifty thousand peasants marching to their ancient capital of Alba Julia and demanding a change of government. Orderly and quiet they came, but in overwhelming numbers, and with overwhelming determination that there must be a radical change or there will be trouble of a very real kind.

The crafty Rumanian government played a despicable trick on the peasant at the close of the World War. To gratify his reasonable longings they gave him land, breaking up the great estates of the accursed Rumanian aristocracy. But when he needed money these same aristocrats charged him 30, 40 or 50% interest and economically he was worse off than when they owned the land.

They also gave him the ballot; but he has found from experience that his vote is not counted or else is counted opposite to the way it was given. No matter how strongly the peasants come out the Bratianu government always wins, because it polices the polls and the police of Rumania are mere tools to do what they are told by the higher-ups.

Conditions in Rumania are so vile, speaking from the standpoint of good government, that when Henry Ford was placing factories 'all over the world, and wished to place a factory in Rumania, and the people wished it placed-there, he did net dare to take the risk, for there is no justice there at all. :

■ % Now ■ th|t ||ihst fit s: arit-the|||iigbiii

illegally elected, that it is incompetent, tyrannical and not. representative of the will of the people. Not within the present generation has there, been such a demand of the common people for better government as was shown in Rumania on May 6. .

The peasants came for two hundred miles, using every known form of vehicle from wooden-wheeled ox-carts, gigs and surreys to automobiles. They slept in the open, shivering in the cold rain; and ate fried corn mush, which is all the peasants of Rumania can afford to eat. Every road leading to Alba Julia was crowded with thousands of pilgrims, quiet, orderly, determined.

Arrived at their destination the peasants by uplifted hands took the following oath: “We swear to the great and good God to fight a righteous fight against the government, which is a plague to the country, and which was nominated by a decree wrung from King Ferdinand on his death-bed. We swear that a new’ Rumania shall be created which shall stand for freedom and justice to all of Rumania's brave sons.”

The assembly made solemn declaration that they are not revolutionists nor Bolsheviki but that they want an honest government. .They modestly begged the outside world not to identify the present corrupt regime with the people of Rumania. They declared that the government by its illegal seizure of power is ruining their country.

They solemnly accused the government of being domestic enemies who have tyrannized the country with unconstitutional government for ten years and who have treated the people as if they were subjects of some colonial possession; and they demanded the immediate removal of the prime minister and the inauguration in his place of a man of their choice.

They also notified the government that if all peaceful means to dislodge the government fail they will surely adopt active resistance and that as they represent the whole Rumanian people there can be but one outcome.

At last accounts the government maintained its sullen attitude of unconcern as to what the people want. They had ten thousand troops on hand at Alba Julia, but the troops had nothing to do. One thing ought to be very plain to them, however, and that is that ‘the hand is already writing on the wall’. The end of the old order is in plain sight, and it seems to us to be the judgment of Almighty God against an evil and abominable rule. ’

A Study of the Soviet Government

^T>USSI.A After Ten Years” is the title of JA a study of the Soviet government made during the summer of 1927 by the American Trade Union Delegation to the Soviet Union. It is a crisp and lucid account, giving a good general view of all sides of the situation.

The twenty-four members of the delegation, a majority of whom were college-educated men, went where they wanted to go and saw’ what they wanted to see in all parts of the country. Everything was open to them. They talked not only with those friendly to the Soviet government but with those bitterly hostile to it. They are of the opinion that Russia is unconquerable by external force of arms.

They found it difficult to judge Russia honestly because the East is so unlike the West, such a mixture of poverty and gaudy splendor. Many of the things they saw have been accurately re? ported in the press from time to tiipe. The report paid special attention to trtife unions, wage scales, conditions of employment and so.--eial insurance. We quote a paragraph:

One must conclude that the Russian system of labor legislation affords the fullest protection, within the standard of living permitted by the productivity of industry, of any country in. the world. The workers are in practice protected against unduly long hours, injuries, bad conditions of employment, and losses resulting from accidents, illness, old age, unemployment, and the death of wage earners, which menace the lives of workers in other lands. In no other country of which we know is there s-uch a systematic protection for mothers and children and for tired and ill workers.'

As to the condition of the peasantry the report states:

Statistics of food consumption show that the peasant is eating about the same amount of bread, brt of better quality. 15 percent more meat. 13 percent, more milk, the same amount of butter, and 28 percent more eggs. Although figures are lacking, we have reason to believe that tho peasant is eating more vegetables ai,cl fruit. Ho is as yet securing less furniture, clothes and. otter manufactured goods than were available to him in 1913, but he is enabled to use more of his own products.

There is no political liberty in Russia. Active opponents of the soviet system of government are not allowed to address public meetings. There is bo liberty of press, the excuse being made that in capitalist countries there is also no freedom of the press. A poor excuse. •

The position regarding pacifists is the same as in America and England. Pacifists must render non-combatant service in time of war or go to prison. Persons accused of being antagonistic to the government can not be represented at, the trial by their own lawyers, nor can they exercise the free right to call witnesses in their own behalf. The court is at once the accuser and the judge, a truly diabolical judicial system. Many thousands of persons tried in these "courts” are in exile in Siberia and Turkestan.

Referring to the refusal of the United States government to recognize the Soviet system even ten years after its establishment, the report mentions the loan of $193,000,000 made to the so-called Bakhmetiev government and says:

Most of this money was used by Bakhmetiev after the fall in November, 1917, of the Kerensky government, which he represented in the United States. Mr. Bakhmetiev subsequently remained in Washington for several years, being recognized during this time by the State Department as the official representative of the Russian government, although his government was nonexistent. The major portion of these funds was used, with the knowledge of our government, to purchase military supplies for the armies of Admiral Kolchak and other counter-revolutionists, who invaded Russia and attempted to overthrow the Soviet government. It is obviously the height of unfairness for our government to insist upon collecting from the Russian government the cost of the munitions which were used in an attempt to crush it.

Here and There About the World

3-S0 Miles Hour

Majob Mabio de Berxakdi, of Venice, Italy, . now holds the world’s speed record, having attained the astonishing speed of 350 miles an hour in a specially designed hydro-airplane. This is a speed of 514 feet a second.

Air Service in Alaska

IR service has been maintained in Alaska for the past three years. Passengers are taken anywhere they wish to go at a rate of $1 a mile, which is approximately the cost of travel by dog sled. Conditions are good for flying, as there is good visibility and little fog or sleet. Journeys that formerly required six to eight weeks are now made in seven and one-half hours.

Blind May Now Read Any Book

Y A new invention called the Visagraph it is now possible for the blind to read any

book. The machine is a combination of the principles of radio, the televisor and the selenium cell. The reader analyzes one letter at a time, partly by sound, and partly by a feeler operated '■ onethe ■ principle of the pantograph. What a wonderful day when lili-opened :by the “ RBipetof■ ; ? i < .........;;■■■■■■■

England Fighting Leprosy

NGLAND is raising a huge fund to fight leprosy, It is claimed that there are not less than a million lepers in India, and about fifty in England itself. The disease is now considered curable.

Walls of Oxford Crumbling

HE rumbling of motor trucks is causing the historic buildings of Oxford University to crumble. The best thing to do with those historic old buildings is to take careful photographs of them and then tear them down and replace them with modern buildings. Nothing else has done England so much harm as trying to live in the past. It can not be done. The time to live is now.

4 Tragedy of Unemployment

TN BALTIMORE, the last of March, a fine-A looking young man, possessor of three medals of honor gained in the Belgian army during the World War, unable to find work and unwilling to be a burden upon his mother, deliberately staged a ten-cent holdup with an empty gun for the purpose of getting arrested. Technically guilty of robbery he is held under $10,000 bail, with a possibility of a. twenty-yagg ■ sentence.

Transcontinental Bus Service

'GOLDEN AGE

France-Brazil Air Mail Service

TRANSCONTINENTAL: .bus service,’ with' A IRmail service has been opened between through trips from coast to coast in six France and Brazil, but the gap between the

'days, is now7 projected. If the plan materializes two busses will leave New York for Los Angeles every day, with rates one-half the railroad fare.

Era of Corporation Farms

THE era of corporation farms which has been discernible in the offing for many years has already arrived in several parts of the country. The multiplying of chain stores has brought this era much nearer. Large sections of the best land in California are now under control of some of these stores.

The Average Store

THE average independent store is reckoned as taking in about $65 a day, which is not so much as it seems, when all the expenses of the establishment, rent, heat, light, clerk hire, losses, stealage, insurance, and many other items have to come out of the profits represented in these sales.

Chain Stores in Eight Cities

IN EIGHT cities, Chicago, Baltimore, Providence, Kansas City, Seattle, Denver, Atlanta and Syracuse, the chain stores last year did slightly more than 30% of all the business, showing that the chains “will soon be doing it all, as is indeed the natural thing to expect, the w7ay things are now moving.

Staten Island Cop a Burglar

A STATEN ISLAND cop has made himself famous by robbing forty houses on his beat. Among the things stolen were a furnace and complete heating outfit and a three-hundred-pound hair-drier. His undoing came when he stole a valuable lamp and clock from a fellow7' policeman. ■

International Bridge at Detroit

TWO thousand men are now7 hard at work building at Detroit what will, when completed, be the longest suspension bridge in the world. Excellent progress is also reported on . the Hudson River bridge at New York city, which will, when completed, have a span twice liltOBilili across- the . Delaware! River at

Philadelplda, now the longest span.

African and Brazilian coast is spanned by swift steamer service instead of by airplane. All the rest of the journey is by air.

Transatlantic Dirigible Fare $4&0

THE transatlantic dirigible fare between

England and the United States has been fixed at $400 for a berth in a four-berth cabin and at $600 for a single-berth cabin. The R-100, the first dirigible for the service, is expected to make its trial flights in July.

Costes and Lebrix Across Asia

NOTHING in the history of aviation has ever surpassed the flight of the Frenchmen Costes and Lebrix across Asia. These men, who have literally flown all over the world, were in Tokio on Sunday, Calcutta on Tuesday, Aleppo on Thursday and Paris on Saturday, a most extraordinary achievement.

Mechanically Controlled Parachute

A SWEDISH inventor has designed a mechanically controlled parachute which makes it possible for an airplane to deliver mail enroute without the sacks being blown from their destination as has often hitherto been the case. The parachute does not open until near the ground.

Another New Radio Wonder

ANOTHER new7 radio wonder has been invented. A tube two feet long and five inches in diameter furnishes very short radio waves at very high power. It lights electric bulbs without connecting wires, breaks Instruments, runs meters wild and kills rats in the vicinity. It is not yet known what uses this form of power may have-. It may be an aid in cookery.

German-Irish Airplane Landing .

THANKS to the courtesy of the New7 York

Times, Station WBBR -was the first radio station in the vicinity of Nev7 York to give the correct announcement to the public that the “Bremen” had safely landed on GregplysIslilO off the coast of Labrador. Twenty-eight minutes after the WBBR announcement another radio station gave the- same information.

Radio Changing the Weather

attain Parker of the Steamer Homeric is said to be of the opinion that the unstable .weather conditions of the world are due to the development of the1 radio, which is sending forth a veritable network of conflicting forces moving in every direction.

■What the Machinery Will Do

ecretary of Labob Davis is authority for the statement that now all the steel the country needs in a year can be produced in. eight months, all the boots and shoes can. be produced in six months, all the glass that is needed can be blown in twenty-seven weeks and all the textiles needed can be made in the same time.

Domestic Electric Rates

WHILE large.users of electricity get favorable rates, domestic rates for electricity have been and are from five to ten times as great as wholesale power rates. In 1923 the small users paid 4.8 times as much as the large users; now they pay 5.7 times as much. The ordinary citizen is helping to pay for the power used to run the factories.

Grapes as a Cancer Cure

TT IS claimed that a diet of grapes exclusively for a period of two months will cure a cancer. While the cure is in progress there may be excessive weakness, loss of weight, fever, vomiting, headaches and eruptions on the skin. The meals are taken every two hours. In cases of extreme weakness pure grape juice is administered every fifteen minutes.

Big Business and Socialism -

THOUGHTFUL writer in the New7 York

American, noting the steady trend toward mergers of Big Business, with the dismissal of all workers over thirty-eight years of age, raises the following significant question: “'Can no one in Big Business foresee that the more they consolidate, the easier, simpler and more logical it will be for the government to take over all their mergers, if the voting class from thirty-eight to seventy finally get starved into activity?’' It thus appears that Big Business is determined to drive America into Socialism, the very thing they profess to hold in utmost

Misrule in British Guiana .

INCREDIBLE as it may seem, the native laborers in British Guiana, big strapping fellows used in the building of the Panama canal, receive but twenty-five cents a day as their wages. Nothing but misgovernment could explain so wretched a state of affairs.

Aid For Destitute Mothers

LL but five states of the United States have provisions foi’ aiding destitute mothers.

Investigators find that this practice works out well. They express the opinion that “home made children, cared for by their own mothers, have the best chance of becoming healthy, normal citizens”. All of which is as it should be.

Abolition of Poverty Imminent

ean Dexter S. Kimball of Cornell University, addressing the Society of Mechanical Engineers, declared that “for the first time since the world began we are in touch with the abolition of poverty through the tremendous output of our products”. That is only another way of saying that the Millennium is at the door, and the best of it is that it is all true.

Moving Pictures of the War

CTUAL moving pictures of the World War, taken by official cameras, have been shown in Paris and Berlin. In each instance it was declared that the pictures are too horrible to be shown to the public. For just that reason they ought to be shown to every person in the world so that all may see the Devil’s organization just as it is and decide to have no more of it.

Protests Against Espionage

WELL-DEFINED movement is on foot in the United States, backed principally by a

lot of old ladies who should spend their time doing fancy-work, which aims to prevent men and women of America who have ideas which they wish to present to the American people from having any chance whatever to express themselves. Needless to say, these people are not true Americans, whatever their claims. The joke of it is that some are on their blacklist who were foremost in their demands for public legislation of the same sort during the World War, and who are now thoroughly angry that their liberties are being interfered with. .....2

France’s Prison Ship x

ON TUESDAY, April 3, 1928, the French prison ship sailed .from Rochelle, France, with 680 French convicts for Devil’s Island, the worst of all possible penal settlements, off the coast of South America. There were four tiers of cells below deck and an elaborate system of pipes so that convicts can be flooded with scalding steam at the whim of the commandant. The ship is the only one of the kind in the 'world. Thank God for that.

The Great Shannon Scheme ■

THE development of the River Shannon, Ireland, hydro-electric power is the biggest thing of the kind in the British Isles. It is expected that current will be available by the middle of 1929, and 'that more than twice as much poiver will be developed as is now used in the entire Irish Free State. The installation of the plant is costing $25,000,000. In the construction of .the plant the River Shannon was carried twelve miles in an artificial bed. The work was don Aby German engineers.

' Nothing Wasted in China

NOTHING is wasted in China. Truck gardens are planted on rafts which are anchored in the rivers. Fields are i*eclaimed from the ocean, and hillsides are terraced where great walls have to be reared on three sides. The utmost care is taken to conserve all manure of every kind. Small boys carefully collect the droppings from passing caravans. In some provinces every acre of land maintains six persons and their farm animals. A traveler in China says that the Chinese farmer is always smiling, polite, apparently contented, and blessed with great physical endurance.

Illegal Entry of Homes

IN THE city of Philadelphia a policeman and a Lithuanian priest forcibly entered the home of Charles Pleda, Lithuanian of Philadelphia, broke up a class of twenty-five or thirty being taught by Anthony Laurinavich, a naturalized Lithuanian, and roughly treated the latter’s wife. When asked to show a warrant the policeman had sense enough to leave the house. The priest, as usual in such cases, considered himself above all law and free to commit any act of anarchy he might desire to perform.

Cleveland’s New Union Station

"EpOR a generation Cleveland has had a union ■*- station that has been the butt of ridicule of the entire country. Now it is to have a new one that will attract as much praise as the old one did ridicule. Over the entrance to the concourse of the new station is a magnificent building forty stories high, including a department store and a hotel. The new station will be located on the public square, in the heart of the city, and will be used by all the railroads, with the possible exception of the Pennsylvania,

Lubowsky the Magnificent ’ '

Alexander Lubowsky, looking for work, returned immediately a package of $52,000 which he found in the street, and earned the undying respect of millions who have come in contact with power-trust magnates, coal operators and Teapot Dome statesmen, pnd who needed just such an object lesson to prove that there are still some honest, and therefore decent, people in the world. Lubowsky’s most cherished reward was a gift of $1.50 sent to him by the children of the Sherman School, of East Mill Creek, Utah.

What Denmark has Shown

Cadman and Pastor Russell

■reDeric C. Howe, in his work “Denmark, A adman advises all mankind to. ignore the Cooperative Commonwealth”, states as fol- Ad books of Pastor Russell because he shows

lows: “Denmark shows that the state can control the distribution of wealth and increase its production as well. It can destroy monoply and privileges of all kinds. It can put an end to poverty. It can make it possible for all people to live easily and comfortably.” Sounds like the ’Millennium and makes us wonder if we could swap a few of our Teapot Dome statesmen for the horny-handed farmers that are just now running Denmark.

up the preachers for what they are, unbelievers in the Bible and contradictors of its teachings. At the same time Cadman expresses-his great admiration for Chauncey M. Depew, who confessed on the witness stand that his only reason for accepting a yearly payment of $20,000 from the funds of one of the great life insurance companies was because of his general standing in the community. Like as was said of Chauncey we can say of Cadman, “He yillihaQO -hi

Fellowship of Great Multitude

The QOLDEN AQE

Cigarettes in England

C THE Pilgrim Congregational Church, A WRITER in the New York Times says that Duluth, Minnesota, when new members are “the cigarette habit has spread beyond the

admitted into the church the entire congregation rises and in well chosen words welcomes the newcomers “to the fellowship of that great multitude which no man can number”, Be it noted that these newcomers are not invited or accepted into what the Scriptures designate as th.e “'little flock”, or “remnant” class, of which there is abundant evidence that there are but few on earth.

Chinese Dogs Go Savage

AS A result of the terrible famine which lias depopulated seven counties in Shantung province, the dogs of that part of China have gone wild 'and. are overrunning the country, making it. unsafe for human beings to dwell in. This has frequently happened in Chinese history, and was a prominent feature of the Boxer troubles in the year? 1900. The natural ferocity of the Chinese, dog has been increased by interbreeding with German police dogs. wildest expectations of the tobacco manufacturers : young women and girls smoke all day long. They puff their cigarettes in. offices in which their male predecessors never dared indulge in F a pipe until the business of the day was over. Employers assert that the women will not work for them unless they are permitted to smoke.”

Women Cigarette Smokers

A STARTLING evidence of the increased speed with which American women are ruining their own and subsequent generations by cigarette smoking is found in the fact that in ‘ the first nine months of 1927 there was an increase of over seventeen million dollars in the cigarette taxes of North Carolina alone. In the same period there was a five-million-dollar in- ' crease in the same taxes in. Virginia. Some of the best artists in the country are prostituting their talents to glorifying one of the nation’s greatest curses.

Galapagos Tortoises for America

Women All Over Asia

ONE hundred of the giant tortoises of the TXTOMEN all over Asia are discarding their G alapagos islands have been imported into W veils, bobbing -their hair, wearing Western

the United States with the hope of colonizing them in California, Texas, Arizona and Florida. The tortoises propagate rapidly and grow quickly, and the meat is excellent ; and it is believed that this may ultimately become a valuable addition to the food supply.

Americans and Englishmen

Count Kessekling, philosopher, who has recently made a tour of the United States, following one made here sixteen years ago, declares that Americans and Englishmen are psychologically more different than any other two nations. Americans lack reserve; Englishmen cultivate it. Americans seek publicity; Englishmen avoid it. Americans lack political sense; Englishmen are past masters of politics. Americans are developing society as a whole; Englishmen are seeking development of individuals. Americans believe in democracy; Englishmen are advocates of hierarchy. Count Keyserling claims that there is an. almost complete lack of any essential likeness between the two peoples.

hats and going to the “movies”. The World War is supposed to be the direct cause of this sudden change, due to the fact that so many men were involved in hostilities that women necessarily took their places in business and thus became in a measure emancipated. Moreover. it is claimed that Ford cars are common now in all the deserts and remote spots of the whole wide world. Silk stockings are all the go among the women of Afghanistan, the same as in Europe and America.

United States Being Sovietized

Theodore Dreiser, noted American author, after eleven weeks in Russia, is of the opinion that it is but a step from a nation of chain stores, chain railways, chain hotels, chain newspapers and chain industrial and mercantile establishments of every description to a chain soviet system. If this be so, the most ardent foes of the soviet system seem to lie Ilie very ones that are creating it and extending it; fof? if it comes in America what can prevent it irolg spreading to the ends of the earth? ,g|

Overalls man Iowa Church

AN IOWA pastor will wear overalls in the pulpit to induce those to attend his church who have nothing else they can wear. Now if he will wear the overalls outside and use them in honest toil, and persuade all the other ecclesiastics to do the same thing, he will help inaugurate the Millennium.

A Fuelless Motor

THE Chicgao Tribune publishes a dispatch from Detroit, to the effect that a now motor has been tried out at the Selfridge landing field which has demonstrated its ability to run for 2,000 hours without fuel. The only information obtained is that the driving power is electromagnetic and that the magnet centers have to be recharged after the motor has run between 2,000 and 3,000 hours. Col. Charles A. Lindbergh is said to have been present at the test of the motor, the tryout of which exceeded the hopes of the inventor.

Corporate Disaster in Wales

AT THE present time there are mining sections in Wales in which the whole community, everybody in it, as well as the townships themselves, is virtually bankrupt. There is no work for anybody, and no likelihood of future work. People are living entirely on their own past savings, insurance benefits, public relief and charity. Nobody can pay taxes, for nobody has any income to pay with. The wages of British miners are today $200,000,000 a year less than in 1924. Conditions in the mining industry are fully as bad as for fifty years back.

Mussolini ami the Tyrol

REFERRING to the brutal oppression of the

German people in the Tyrol, The London Daily News and Westminster Gazette says: “So far as we are aware, no foreign minister of a single member-state (of the League of Nations) has had the spirit to utter one protest in tire public interest, or to say one word for a stricken people. The Fascist dictator rides roughshod over all the international decencies, and intimidates the statesmen of all the leading powers. British ministers, like Mr. Churchill and Sir Austen Chamberlain, bestow bouquets in public upon the man whose megalomania is the gravest menace to European peace since the palmiest days of the German Kaiser.”

Whaler Filled in Three Weeks

THE filling of her tanks with 48,000 barrels of whale oil in three rveeks was the astonishing record of the Norwegian whaler “Sir James Clark Ross” off the Antartic continent early in February. The cargo is valued at $2,500,000 and means handsome compensation to every one of the 160 men on board. In several instances more than a dozen whales were killed and turned into oil in a single day.

Blasphemy in Washington

A T THE First Congregational Church of Washington, on March 25, Lieutenant Commander W. M. Witherspoon, navy chaplain, speaking of the work of marines in Nicaragua in slaying their fellow men, compared it to the work of Christ, in the following words: “The men of the marine corps walk in the way first laid out by Christ. They are two-fisted fighting men, as he was. They have courage, as he did. They serve their fellow men, as he did.” Who can imagine Christ in Nicaragua, gun in hand, fighting on behalf of Seligman Brothers and the Pope?

The Holy Whisker of St. Charles

HpilE Literary Digest gives a fine picture of a priest of the Episcopal Church, at St.

Andrews, Tennessee, marching in solemn procession, carrying on a satin-covered pillow a beautiful gold box in which reposes one lone solitary sacred and holy whisker of Charles I, King of England, otherwise known as St Charles. All mankind aw’aits with a hush the important news as to whether he made home plate with the holy whisker or was touched out enroute.

Rumania—Pariah Among Nations

IN THE House of Representatives on March 22, 1928, Hon. Emanuel Celler, of New York, denounced Rumania as a pariah among nations, condemned before the world as a country that has never kept a promise or a treaty and that has been and is guilty of unbelievable atrocities against the Jews. Mr. Celler is using his influence to prevent a loan of sixty million dollars to a country that is unworthy of recognition, much less assistance, and points out that the United States government has.in the; past closed American money markets to France, Italy and Belgium and now has them dosed against Russia. .

Excerpts from the Manual for Military Training

THE following is taken from the 1925 edition of “Manual of Military Training”, by Colonel James A. Moss, U. S. A., and Major John W. Lang, U. S. A. This section is from Chapter 27, Bayonet Drill. This manual of the lieserve Officers’ Training Corps has attained a circulation of more than 300,000 since the termination of the World War. It is a standard college text book. . ’

Vulnerable parts of the Body. The point of the bayonet should be directed against the opponent’s throat, especially in hand-to-hand fighting, so that the point will enter easily and make a fatal wound on penetrating a few inches. Other vulnerable and frequently exposed parts are the face, chest, lower abdomen, thighs, mid. when the back is turned, the kidneys. The arm pit, which may be reached with a jab, if the throat is protected, is vulnerable. because it contains large blood vessels and a nerve center.

Description of the parries? From the position of guard the body is forced forward to the full extent of the reach. . . . The barrel (of the gun) is kept up, the point threatening the opponent’s body, preferably his throat. If the parry right is properly made, it is easy to kill the opponent with the thrust which immediately follows. In fact, the opponent will usually impale himself on the point. . . . Parry left is followed up at once either with a thrust or a butt stroke to the ribs- or jaw.

French or vertical butt strokes, (a) Butt stroke No. 1. Swing up the Inrtt at the opponent’s- crotch, ribs, forearm or any exposed part of the body, using a half arm blow, advancing with the rear foot.

(b) Butt stroke No. 2. If the opponent jumps back so that the first butt stroke misses, the rifle will come into a horizontal position over the left shoulder, bntf leading. The attacker will then jump in and dash the butt into the opponent’s face.

(cj Slash. If the opponent retires still farther out of range, the attacker again closes up and slashes his bayonet down on the opponent's head, or the neck if the opponent is wearing a steel helmet. . . .

Open ground or horizontal butt strokes, (a) Butt stroke No. 1. With a half arm blow, swing the butt up at opponent’s jaw, advancing the rear foot.

(b) Butt stroke No. 2. The butt can now be dashed into the opponent's face as described under vertical butt stroke No. 2 above.

Fend off opponent’s thrust with the left hand. Step in and kick him in the crotch or on the shin. Grasp the rifle just below the bayonet with the right hand, back of hand down, and swing it upward and over to the left: force the point of the bayonet to the ground, and, stepping in, back-heel the opponeira

Im Tennessee in the Good Old Days

THE Tennesseean, of Nashville, Tenn., contains a report of an interview with an aged ex-slave named Anderson. We copy a portion of the report:

Afki-il of slave times, Anderson said “dey was hard times”, and told several hair-raising tales of treatment as slaves. They had to have permits to get off their masters’ land, and if caught off without one, they were severely flogged. They were buckled over a barrel and lioalen with a lash. ’The lash resembled a lion’s tail, being about two feet long and split in five prongs at the whipping end. It was kept soaked in oil so as to be heavy and also pliable. Food was not cooked in separate pots or served in separate dishes, but beans, potatoes and corn were all stewed together in one pot and poured out in long troughs from which the slaves ate w'thout knives, forks or spoons.

If any order was disobeyed or punishment resisted, a hundred strokes more than usual wore added. The negro was then taken to the sale barn, where for several days he was fed on good food, then sold to the highest bidder “jes like er mule, boss, jes like er mule”, Anderson says.

A Chance for a Dietician

By Mrs. Maude, H. Carder

T HAVE been using aluminum vessels exclu-.1 s5vely for twenty years, in which time my health has gradually declined, until this winter things came to a crisis and my physicians said I must undergo an EXPLORATORY major operation AT ONCE.

Just'before the time set for the operation, Mr. Held’s article was published and came to iny attention. He diagnosed my case so fully that I immediately discarded all aluminum vessels and have since been slowly gaining both in strength and in red blood corpuscles.

Since my physicians claim to know nothing of such poisoning, I ask you to put me in touch with some one who can advise me as to diet, as I am convinced that is all the aid that I need to fully recover.

Mussolini and Pope at Loggerheads

Mussolini and the Pope were supposed to be on the verge of kissing each other when the Pope started something by declaring that the educational principles 6f the Catholic Church and the Fascist government were too much at variance for him to take part in the proceedings. Mussolini retaliated by suppressing all youth organizations in Italy except his own. Now the Pope says he was only joking and assures everybody that he only meant to say that he wanted a share in teaching the youth. Will the •‘charming consistency” of his explanation be appreciated? Maybe this will pacify Mussolini, and maybe it will not. We wait to see. When two tyrants start for each other somebody is liable to get hurt.

A Trifle Raw, But—

A COMMUNICATION from subscribers in

Greece states that they have positive proof that in Kabbala, Neapolis, under the presidency and protection of the bishop of the city, one Chrysostomos, there has been organized a Comitadji., or association of assassins, which has in view and has received a commission to accomplish the assassination of all Bible Students.

This would be a perfectly regular thing for a bishop. To some of our readers who are not familiar with the duties of a bishop, this might seem a triflic raw; but the most important thing, to a bishop, is to keep his job, no matter what happens to a Bible Student. And the Bible Students are making the jobs of all bishops unpleasant and unsafe.

As to the proposed assassinations themselves, the Lord will have something to say about that when the time comes.

What Reverend Caldwell Would Do

A. BIBLE Student in North Carolina asked a number of pointed questions of the Reverend R. R. Caldwell, bearing upon man’s destiny at death, the resurrection of the dead, the origin of hell, the soul of man, and the nature of Christ Jesus, the Savior of men. The Reverend seemed to think that the kindly-put questions were in the nature of a reflection on his theology, and in order to make his attitude perfectly clear he opened his replies to the questions with the following interesting statement:

…