Golden Age, February 6, 1929

Download: PDF — Golden Age, February 6, 1929

Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE ANDI COURAGE

insimiimmminmiimimmmmimmiiimimimmnm

in this issue

THE CITY OF NEW YORK

bird’s-eye view of our metropolis

ELECTRIC GARDENING

IF THE PEOPLE WAKE UP

vaccination battle progresses

HERBS FOR MAN’S SERVICE

harmless and effective remedies

THE NEW COVENANT

Jehovah’s arrangement for blessing all mankind; lecture broadcast by Judge Rutherford

EVERY O T HER WEDNESDAY

5c a copy-$1.00 a year~Canada &. Foreign $1.50

Volume X - No. 245 February 6, 192 9

Contents

Social and Educational

The City of New York News of the Day ,

Finance—Commerce—Transportation

Airplane Freight Service in Texas .......

Interest Pump Now Works Splendidly .......... 2')8

Reasons fox* Electrifying Pennsy ............ 298

Hard Coal Picking Up

Political—Domestic and Foreign

Supreme Court Backs Inventor Houghton’s Sensible Suggestion

The Reliance upon Force ............... 208

La Guardia and Free Speech ............. 223

Lloyd George on the Peace Conferences .......... 2!)S

Ireland’s New Coins ........... 2i>i)

Agriculture and Husbandry

Well-Nigh Magical Effect of Electricty upon Plants .... 300

Home and Health

If the People Ever Wake Up . A Cemetery Dinner and the Press Herbal Article Appreciated . . Herbs fob the Service of Man

Travel and Miscellany

Items from Scotland

Beligion and Philosophy

Heathenism in York County

“Nun Marvels at Outer Would-’

Where Are the Dead?

The New Covenant ..........

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

The Children’s Qwn Radio Story ....... ....

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

Copartners and Proprietors Address: 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, A. T.., U. (?. A.

CLAYTON J. WOODWORTH.. Editor ROBERT J. MARTIN .. Business Manager

Five Cents a Copy—?1.00 A Year

NATHAN H. KNORR.. Secretary and 5

Maks Remittak.

SBS to THE GOLDEN AGE

Notice to Subscribers: We do not, as a rule, send an acknowleoginent or a renewal or a new subscription. A renewal blank (carrying notice of expiration) is sent with the journal one month before the subscription expires. Change of address, when requested, may be expected to appear on address label within one inoigh.

Foreign Offices

British . . . s » , . 34 Craven Terrace, London, W. 2, England Canadian ..... 40 Irwin Avenue, Toronto 5, Ontario, Canada Australasian ..... 495 Collins Street, Melbourne, Australia

South African.....6 Lelie Street, Cape Town, South Africa

Entered as second-class matter at Brooklyn, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879.

ahe Golden Age

Volume X

Brooklyn, ,N. Y., Wednesday, February 6, 1929

Number 245

The City of New York

AT THE mouth of a great river, and built mainly on three islands, the city of New

York has unusual water trading facilities. Its harbor is one of the finest in the world. One hundred fifty miles of its waterfront are occupied by docks.

The bedrock of Manhattan Island, known to geologists as the Manhattan schist, is one of the oldest rocks of the North American continent, and is well suited to bear the weight of the giant skyscrapers which have made New York city the Babylon of the Twentieth Century.

Most of the city lies to the east of the Hudson River; but Staten Island is on its western shore, or rather on the southern shore of the harbor into which the Hudson flows. East River, which is merely a strait between the harbor and Long Island Sound, cuts the city in half.

Elaborate plans for the filling up of the East River have often been promulgated, but it is doubtful if the War Department would permit it to be done. At present it is crossed by five wonderful bridges and four pairs of tunnels, with another pair now in construction.

“Little Old New 'York” .

“Little Old New York,” as it is sometimes called, is not so very little and not so very old. Damascus, built by the great-grandson of Noah, is about 4,000 years old and was a city in Abra-' ham's time. Jerusalem (Jebus Salem) was also a city in Abraham’s time. Rome is 2,670 years old; London, 1,950; Paris, 1,560; Berlin, 620; New York, 310.

Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian, and Diego Gomez, a Portuguese, entered New York harbor in 1524, seeking a new way to the East Indies. Eighty-five years later, in April, 1609, Henry Hudson, an Englishman, employed by the Dutch East Indies Company, sailed up the Hudson to Albany; and his stories of what he saw led to the colonization of Manhattan Island in 1623.

Of the thirty families which came in 1623, only a few settled on Manhattan Island. Peter Minuit, the first governor, was not installed in office until 1626, at which time he purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians for the modest sum of $24, considerably less than some individuals now’ pay for a single meal on the same site.

While the first thirty families came under the protection of the Dutch East Indies Company, they were mostly Walloons from one of the provinces of Belgium. Many of the Flemish and Walloon colonists of New York were domiciled in Holland before they came to America.

Always liberty lovers, and defenders of freedom of speech and of the press, the Dutch founders of New Amsterdam made it a haven for colonists of every faith, Waldenses, Huguenots, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Moravians, Anabaptists and Jewrs. By 1650 eighteen languages were spoken in the city.

On the ground that the entire continent of America belonged to them by right of Cabot’s discoveries, the British seized New Amsterdam in 1664, and renamed the city New York; and although the city remained Dutch in language, customs and feeling for half a century, it finally became what it is today, the English-speaking metropolis of the Western world.

Some words of Dutch Qrigin still survive in New York city and throughout America: boss, boom, boodle, sled, skate, stove, yacht and stoop. The words cookie, spook and hookey are also of Dutch origin. The Schenck-Crook house in Flatlands, still standing, was built before the English seized the city. The Van Pelt manor house in New .Utrecht, at 80th Street and 19th

Avenue, If Weved to have been built the year the government changed hands.

Influences of Bolland Still Scon

Always in danger of floods in their home country, the natives of the Netherlands, accustomed to build the main floor of their homes several feet above the ground, followed that habit in New York. This accounts for the great number of brownstone fronts with high stoops still lingering in the midst of apartment houses, hotels, theaters and even skyscrapers, but more especially to be found on the more or less quiet side streets.

With the lapse of time the little village of Breukelen has become the great city of Brooklyn. Boswijk, transformed into Bushwick, has long since been absorbed by its greater neighbor. The districts of Flatlands, Flatbush and New Utrecht may still be located by the curious. Gowanus, a part of Brooklyn, was named after an Indian, Gowane. .

New York makes no effort to preserve its landmarks. Every seventy-five years there is a complete new city, with here and there a very few fine old residences left over. The Dyckman house at Broadway and 204th Street, was erected in 1783; the Van Cortlandt mansion, in Van Cortlandt Park, in 1748; the Jumel mansion, in 1765; and the Schenck house, in Canarsie Park, was built in 1770. These are the principal old buildings remaining. At 421 East Sixty-first Street is an old colonial home, the country residence of an aid-de-camp to General Washington.

Slaves were brought into New York almost with the first settlers. In the year 1746 twenty percent of the population of the city were slaves. In 1741 the charges of a depraved and abandoned girl led to a panic in which four white men were condemned and put to death, fourteen negroes were burned at the stake, eighteen were hanged and seventy-one were exiled. This led to a revulsion of feeling in favor of. the negroes; and in 1758 slavery was abolished by the declaration that from that time forth all children born of slave parents should be free.

New York has grown somewhat and has improved somewhat. In 1803 the north side of the marble-faced city hall was faced with red sandstone, because it was believed so few citizens would ever reside on that side of it. Seventy-five years ago New York had 10,000 vagrant children, now called bezprizorni in Russia; and fifty years ago it was not safe for a woman to appear on some of the streets after dark. Gambling, drunkenness and street fighting were common occurrences. It is bad enough even yet, but better than formerly.

How Big Is New York?

Within the metropolitan and police unit of Greater London there is a population of 7,476,168 persons. This includes the territory within a radius of fifteen miles. Within the police unit of Greater New York there is a population of only 5,620,048. But the National Geographic Society claims that a Greater New York, modeled on the Greater London lines, taking in all suburban cities within a fifteenmile radius from the city center, with New Jersey towns included, would pass London’s population within a like area.

The claim is further made regarding New York that it is the largest commuting city in the world; and that if the territory from which the commuters come to work is included, namely, the New York state counties of Rockland, Westchester and Suffolk, the Connecticut county of Fairfield, and the New Jersey counties of Monmouth, Middlesex, Somerset, Morris and Passaic, with all the intervening metropolitan districts, the total is ten millions.

Within the area last described live enough people to repopulate Canada to its present density, or to more than repopulate Australia, Austria, Belgium, Holland or Sweden. Or, the combined population of this area could repopulate to its present density the combined cities of Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis and Boston. New York is big, too big.

In the year 1653 New York had a population of 1,120. The records of the time show that there was a traffic problem, so many cattle, goats and hogs cluttering the thoroughfares that it was hard to get around. Now they tell us that in seventy more years New York will have a population of 29,000,000, and that is altogether too many.

The heart of New York has grown so dense that the population is getting less. How is that? Every skyscraper that is built demolishes some buildings where human beings have been housed,Large areas have been cleared for bridge and tunnel approaches. Other buildings

' have been sliced off in street widenings. As a consequence, Manhattan Island, solidly built up in 1919, is now steadily but slowly decreasing in population.

■What Do So Many People Do?

The average New Yorker is secretive. He 'does not like to have you ask what he does for a livelihood. But Uncle Sam is not so squeamish • so we find that 863,000 people are employed in factories, 455,000 in clerical work, 442,000 in merchandising, 347,000 as servants, 272,000 in transportation, 212,000 in the building trades, 190,000 in the professions and 68,000 in public service, and that is all that any of us do.

The assessed value of realty in New York city was, in 1920, $8,626,000,000, or far in excess ' of the total value of all farm buildings in the Union. On the face of it, that shows a wrong condition of things. No other city has so great a control of wealth, buys or sells so great a value of commodities, handles so large a volume of foreign commerce, or manufactures an equal value of commercial articles.

There are more Jews in New York city than in any other entire nation in the world, and more than in the whole of Asia. There are more Irishmen than in Dublin, more Italians than in Genoa, and more Negroes than in any other city in the world.

Every day the New York post office handles 12,000,000 to 20,000,000 letters and cards. Every day 350,000 pieces are misdirected, and 80,000 are without street address. Every year the undeliverable parcels bring $50,000 at auction.

It requires the unremitting toil of half a million farmers to keep New Yorkers fed. Annually they consume 50,000 carloads of fresh fruits and vegetables; 1,000,000,000 pounds of meat; 640,000,000 pounds of butter, cheese and poultry ; 6,800,000 cases of eggs, and 1,400,000 quarts of milk.

At last accounts there were still 565 farms in Queens, 121 in Richmond, 55 in the Bronx, 54 in Brooklyn and 5 in Manhattan. A prize pumpkin for the White House table, a 185-pounder, was grown on Staten Island.

Skyscrapers and Winds

.New York is a place of skyscrapers and yinds, and the two together make an interesting combination. The development of the sky-sciaper was due to the immense demand for office room in the limited area and crooked streets of lower Manhattan. The value of the land per square foot is so great that only a very tall building can return a profitable income from the investment.

Reckoned from the standpoint of floor space, the Equitable Building, at Broadway and Pine Street, New York, is at present the most spacious building in the world. It is of thirty-seven stories and reaches a height of 485 feet six inches above the sidewalk. Nearby is the Singer Building, of forty-one stories. Its tower attains an elevation of 612 feet.

The Woolworth Building, fifty-one stories, its tower reaching 792. feet, is, with the exception of the Eiffel Tower of Paris, the tallest structure in the world. When New York has a high wind, it is difficult to walk within a block of the building; and not infrequently persons of light weight and small stature have been lifted off their feet and hurled to the sidewalk when passing it.

The Weather Bureau records show that New York is windier than Chicago, Buffalo, Duluth or Cleveland. Its average wind velocity for the year is around seventeen miles an hour, mostly from the northwest; and the gales which sweep its business canyons are sources of real danger.

Two of the windiest places in the city are the areas near the Whitehall Building, at the Battery, and the Municipal Building. It is sometimes necessary to stretch a rope along Battery Place from Greenwich Street to the steps of the Whitehall Building, so that pedestrians can cling to it and make their way to and from the building.

It is claimed by city employes that in front of the Municipal Building, when high winds have prevailed, they have seen the wind blow a taxicab to a standstill there. We do not vouch for this; but that is the way the story comes to us, and it may be true. Where winds are so high, there is constant danger that pedestrians will be blown in front of autos, or be blinded by the dust and unable to see their approach.

Broadway, Wall Street, Maiden Lane

New York’s most popular street, Broadway, sixteen miles long, and said to be the longest continuous street in any city in the world, was once the western border of civilization. The original settlement was far down on the lower East Side. Everything west of Broadway belonged to the king, and was called the King’s Farm. The Broad Way in front of his premises is a legacy of the long ago.

As the settlement grew and dangers of a raid from the Indians were in the minds of the settlers, they built a barricade of oak posts and heavy planks to keep intruders out. This barricade was called a wall, and the area in front of it at length came to be called Wall Street. We still have it with us; or, putting it the other way around, Wall Street still has the rest of us.

North of Wall Street was a little stream running down to the river. The maidens of those early days used to like to go outside the barricade in the gloaming and wander down the bank of the little stream, listening to the things maidens have been listening to since the first pair walked together in the leafy bowers of Eden.

The bank of the little stream where those colonial dames once w’alked, finally came to be Maiden Lane; and as streams have a habit of running in curves, the lines of the little stream may even yet be seen more or less faithfully in what was, until, recently, the center of the jewelry trade of America. Much of this jewelry trade has now moved uptown.

In 1712 the slaves of New York city, many of them, met in an orchard near Maiden Lane and formed a wild plan to kill all the whites. They did kill a dozen men. In the reprisals which followed twenty-one Negroes were shot, hanged or burned at the stake. It was this experience which lay at the bottom of the so-called Great Negro Plot of 1741, already described elsewhere in this article.

Down in the financial center are still a dozen Streets named after British royalty: Nassau, William, Ann, etc. And around the edges of the world’s greatest financial center ten thousand caretakers still live in homes that are none too beautiful or comfortable. These spend their lives scrubbing floors, washing dishes, dusting desks, clearing sidewalks of snow, and in many other ways making their fellows comfortable.

Fora seaboard city, New York lies quite high. Fort Washington, on Manhattan, is 268 feet above the sea. Brooklyn’s highest elevation has an altitude of 210 feet. Todt Hill, on Staten Island, is the highest natural elevation along the Atlantic coast south of Maine. It is 430 feet high.

Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village lies to the north of what was once the King’s Farm. In modern parlance, it is below Fourteenth Street, on the West Side. The streets are so crooked that at one place Tenth Street crosses Fourth Street at right angles.

Greenwich Village, with its tea rooms, artists’ studios, Italian restaurants, and places where one may buy all kinds of curious wares from very fine people, was once considered one of : the best health resorts on Manhattan Island. It was originally founded by sturdy Dutch farmers.

Within recent years real estate men have rediscovered Greenwich Village. They have noticed how near it is to every important part of the city, and how readily its old houses can be made over into charming apartments. Business is crowding it hard, but it still houses a vast army of people.

Columbia Heights is for Brooklyn what Greenwich Village is for New York. It is residential and yet is very central to all important places, more so than Greenwich Village itself. On the Heights the streets are laid out regularly, and the old buildings are among the finest in Brooklyn.

Chinatown and the Bowery

The residents of what was once Chinatown claim that there is now less crime in that area than in any other area of equal population in the entire city. Nevertheless, the yap wagons still tour the districts, pointing out to awed tourists the horrors which they have conjured up in their own minds. The Chinese of New York city are now mostly prosperous business men, either operating hand laundries or managing what are conceded to be the cleanest and : best restaurants in the city. Chinatown has lost all its old inhabitants.

The Bowery is in much the same situation. Originally the Bouwerie Lane was the road to Governor Peter Stuyvesant’s great Bouwerie, or farm, occupying the heart of what is now the great East Side. For two centuries it was a place where anything might happen. Now it is, and has been for years, a staid business street, of order and of good repute.

East of the Bowery, in 1916, lived 542,061 persons; but in 1924 the number had fallen to 416,108, and now it is estimated to be about

300,000. As tenants move out, apartments are being renovated and new white porcelain bath tubs are changing the ghetto into a good place to live.

Hell’s Kitchen is the block of tenement houses on West Thirty-ninth Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. A few years ago it was a recognized center of drunkenness and crime on the West Side, but is now quite orderly. It was in the New York stockyards district. Its bad actors were butchers.

The Harlem Black Belt has its center at One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street and Lenox Avenue. It is a well-built, handsome quarter of the city, some twenty-three blocks long, but of narrow width. This Negro city of 200,000 people is the Mecca of the Negro race, one of the few places in the world where the Negro has a fair chance.

The City Government ■

The city government of New York is in the hands of Tammany Hall; and that is all any New Yorkei’ would wish to know. The sewer scandal in Queens, where the ring has stolen some $30,000,000, and robbed many people of their homes, was a typical Tammany job. The man who engineered the transaction got only a year in prison, and probably will not serve half of that.

The municipal debt of New York city is now twice as large as the total interest-bearing debt of the United States government itself as recently as 1916. Its debt is proportionately much greater than that of any other American city of the first rank. Its streets and parks are dirty, only 2,710 miles of its 4,618 miles of streets are paved at all, and the way it handles its sewage problem is a disgrace to humanity.

The water is excellent, coming all the way ~rom the Catskills; but a shortage is imminent. With a safe minimum yield of 1,100,000,000 gallons a day, New York is now using 850,000,000 gallons a day, with an annual rate of increase of 31,000,000 gallons a day.

As the principal port of entry of the United States, New York is let in for many expensive welcomes to illustrious Visitors, much to the de-ight of those who have the execution of the entertainment contracts. Lindbergh’s welcome cost the city $50,000. In ten years there have been 202 chances for the Mayor’s Committee on Receptions to Distinguished Guests to run up bills for Father Knickerbocker to pay.

On the average bright day the clouds of smoke particles which hang over New York deprive the city of thirty-seven percent of its sunlight in the early morning and fourteen percent at high noon. At night the city makes up for it. In its twenty thousand odd electric signs there are nearly one and one-half million lamps.

One of the most interesting lights in the city is the light in the torch of the Statue of Liberty. On the night that Judge Rutherford and his friends were sentenced to Atlanta for being Christians, it was considered significant that the lights in that statue were extinguished for the first time. It was feared that the Germans were about to bomb the city. .

Many odd laws are still on New York city’s statute books. Sleeping in the bathroom is a crime, and so is hopping a ride on the back of a truck. Hunters and trappers may not seek game in the parks; not even a reptile may be captured or hurt. Tents may not be pitched. Dueling is taboo, and so are even bean-shooters. Hazing, keeping slot-machines and throwing knives in vaudeville acts are also forbidden.

New York Transportation

It was the building of the Erie Canal that gave New York its great start. Now there is hardly anybody in New York who^knows there is such a thing. Canals in America have had their day, and it was a short one. America is in too much of a hurry to wait to move things around by water.

Just now New York is particularly interested in bridges and tunnels, of which it has some of the finest in the world, with more under way. The distance between the piers of the great Hudson River Bridge will be 3,500 feet, about double the span of the great Philadelphia-Camden Bridge. Its cost will be around $50,000,000. It will be ready in 1934.

Practically every avenue of New York city has street cars, several of them have elevated lines (built in 1880), and several have subway lines. Most of the lines run all night and are well patronized at all hours. Fifth Avenue is served with double-decked motor buses.

Although the tubes have drawn much traffic away from the ferries, the ferries continue to carry large numbers, and they have a monopoly of the river transit ’from the northern part of Manhattan. The ferry to St. George, Staten 1st land, four and five-eighths miles, is one of the. important ferries of the city.

The New York Park System

New York could have had some of the finest । parks in the world, for there is much of beauty ' about the great harbor and rivers; but misman- agement and lack of foresight have cut the peo-pie off from the waterfront at all but a few places, and the only way most of them can ever 77 get to a breathing place is through miles of stifling subway tubes, and jammed in like sardines. '

When Ramsay MacDonald and his family recently visited America, Miss MacDonald said that the thing which most impressed her about New York is its lack of trees and parks. Nevertheless, the city is not without some fine parks. Central Park, 843 acres, cost the city $15,000,000. Prospect Park, Brooklyn, 526 acres, has some really fine scenery. Forest Park, in - Queens, 536 acres, is a fine piece of natural woodland, all in a wild state.

. _ . Some of the so-called parks in New York city, Washington, Union and Madison Squares, were at one time potter’s fields and came into existence merely because some unfortunates, even in death, had no place to lie. The total park area of Greater New York is 7,819 acres, mostly in the newer parts.

‘ What Is New York?

~ .....New York is a city of strangers, one of the

^hardest cities in the world in which to get ac-7 quainted and make any real friends that are worth while. It is too big to be hospitable. Like a g rea i pulse, hundreds of thousands come into the city every, day and hundreds of thousands Ygq, - and an individual is lost to view in the shuffle.

Thu high finance of New York settles the fate of nal ion5. It is the lair of the Beast, in dead earnest. Its stores contain the best of all earth’s products. It gathers brains and talent from the ends of the earth; for it has the money to pay, and money talks in New York.

New York is a foreign city, necessarily, because all the immigrant s land there and many of them stay there. There are only about 1,164,834 natives in the city; all the rest are foreigners or children of foreigners. It is a noisy city, said to be the noisiest of all, because the busiest.

New York is a fine city to visit, and a poor place to live in. Two hundred thousand persons change their home bases May 1 and October 1 each year, and some of them move back to the quarters they left a year previous. A change of environment is not always a change for the better. 7

New York has some of the finest hotels in the world, and some of the worst. In one of the lodging-houses on Hester Street there is a sign, “Gents will please remove their clothes before going to bed.” New York is not a place of homes: it is a place of kitchenettes. .

There are people who admire New York. The view south from Park Avenue at Fiftieth Street is said to be like the nave of a great cathedral, the most impressive avenue of buildings in the world. The Woolworth Building, and scores of others, are monuments to the enterprise of man, beautiful in design and execution, unparalleled on earth.

New Yorkers ride to their work, and as a consequence are said by chiropodists to have the smallest and most poorly-shaped feet in the country; but no one can deny that they work when they arrive. New York city produces seventy-seven percent of the women’s clothing manufactured in America, eighty-live percent of the feathers and plumes, seventy-six percent of the fur goods, seventy-five percent of the hair work, seventy-one percent of the pocketbooks, purses and card cases, sixty-five percent of the artificial flowers and plants, sixty-two percent of the millinery and lace goods; and it has the finest print shop in the world, the plant of the International Bible Students Association, 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.

An Englishman who had. enjoyed New York r waxed eloquent in a goodbye published in the London Nation:

Goodbye to heaven-piled offices, so clean, so warm, where lovely stenographers with silk stockings and powdered faces sit leisurely at work or converse in charming case! Goodbye, New York! I am going home. I am going to an ancient city of mean and smoldering streets, of ignoble convents for mankind, extended monotonously over many miles; of grimy smoke clinging closer than a blanket; of smudgy typists who know little of silk or powder, and less of leisure and charming ease. Goodbye, New York! I

ygBBUABT

oing home. Goodbye to beautiful “apartments” nd‘‘homes”! Goodbye to windows looking far over +he city from a mountain peak! Goodbye to central

heating and radiators, fit symbols of the hearts they warm! Goodbye to frequent and well-appointed bath rooms, glory of the plumber’s art!

News of the Day

The Reward of Lionel Licorish

iokel Licorish, the brave little black man who saved sixteen to twenty persons after the sinking of the steamer Vestris, may receive a medal frorn Congress and is also likely to receive a fund of $20,000 now in process of being made up.

Supreme Court Backs Inventor '

HE United States Supreme Court has decided in favor of a poor inventor, a deci-

sion which will enable him to collect $20,000,000 from great copper companies who stole from him what is now a universal process. Once in a while justice does do the right thing by an inventor.

; An Opening for the Pulpiteers

IT IS claimed that a first-class flopper, fit-thrower, high-heeler or throw-out beggar in — Now York can make from $15 to $500 a day, working seldom more than three or four hours a day. Now that pulpiteering is getting to be so unpopular and unprofitable a business, it looks as if here is a place where this kind of talent could make a hit.

Houghton’s Sensible Suggestion

-eausok B. Houghtox, America’s ambassa-dor to Great Britain, thinks the Constitution should be amended to take from Congress the power to declare war and lodge it directly whh the people. He says: “It is the one power which of all powers a self-governing people . would logically reserve to itself, since it puts in jeopardy their collective lives and property.”

Use of Hot Springs in Iceland

T CELAND will attempt to make wide use of her hot springs, heretofore unused. The hot water will be piped to the capital twenty-five miles distant from a group of these springs, and used for cooking and heating. It is believed that the pipes, if laid underground and properly insulated, will deliver the water sufficiently hot to accomplish these results.

Airplane Freight Service in Texas

IRPLANES are now regularly engaged in transporting fish from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to the nearest refrigerator cars,

thus saving more than a day’s exposure to the hot sun and insuring arrival at northern markets in first-class condition.

Tire Factories for Brazil

ESTEY Ford has announced his intention to build the tires for his cars in Brazil, some

where near the place where the rubber for the tires will be grown. He believes that this is Brazil’s just due, and most people will agree with him. No doubt the factory will be a great success.

Eight Hundred Airplanes a Month

T THE present time American airplane factories are turning out eight hundred

airplanes per month. This is triple the number produced last year at this time and six times the number turned out two years ago. The new mail planes are so built that they can carry six machine guns each. They can shoot in every direction except straight down.

Britain’s Proposed Tidal Power Plant

RITISII financiers propose to construct an immense tidal power plant, involving a

wall twenty-two miles long and five and one-half miles out at sea. They state that if not interfered with by the government they will put four thousand men at work at once, and guarantee that they will supply the cheapest power in the world.

Heathenism in York County

ESIDENTS of the United States were shocked to find that in the populous and ex

ceedingly rich county of York, Pennsylvania, demonism is so rampant that a murder has recently taken place on the ground that one man had invoked the power of evil spirits against another one. Physicians in the county say that demonism is very common.

Interest Pump Now Works Splendidly

HOW well the interest pump works is illustrated in the fact that last year there were two hundred and thirty-one Americans who had an income of more than a million dollars a year, while this year there are two hundred and eighty-three. The inevitable effect of the interest system is that these vast fortunes will now increase very rapidly, and only the intervention of the Almighty could prevent the complete wrecking of civilization.

The Reliance upon Force

THE president of the Chamber of Commerce of the city of New York, Leonor F. Loree, has the following to say about the grand condition into which this country has come as a result of making the world safe for hypocrisy. He says: “The government rests always upon the element of force: we hold our lives, our properties and our religion itself through the policeman, the jail and the gallows.-” What an excellent definition of the Devil’s own way of doing things!

The Sacco-Vanzetti Murder

Sacco and Vanzetti are still dead, but proof accumulates every day that they were murdered by the State of Massachusetts for a crime they did not commit. Twenty persons bought eels from Vanzetti the day of the crime for which he was convicted, and thirty miles away from the scene. After his conviction the express company produced proof that it had delivered these eels to him on the day of the crime.

La Guardia and Free Speech

Congressman La Guardia, in a speech in Philadelphia, said, “If the future of our republic depends upon the suppression of free speech, there is no future. The right to criticize public officials is not only wholesome, but necessary in a republic. It is possible by brute force to suppress opinion, but such forces can not survive. Nowhere has government succeeded when brute force has been used against the right of free speech.”

Reasons for Electrifying Pennsy

THE reasons for electrifying the Pennsylvania Bailroad between New York and Wilmington are that by operating electrically the number of freight trains can be cut down fifty percent and the speed can be increased to any desired schedule. This enables the same equipment to do double duty. In the case of passenger trains second sections can be avoided, there will be quicker and easier starting, all making _ for greater comfort and better service, as well as increased capacity of the line.

New Types of Groceries

- T OIJISVILLE has an automobile market, operated cafeteria style, where housewives, - -without giving any attention to their cars, may select and pay for their purchases without the necessity of so much as opening the automobile .d.oj3x.-„A-nother type of store, in other localities, has .a fixed base from which traveling grocery cars carry direct to the doors of customers ynthirtyjgggiahles.. fifty drug sundries, six hundred groceries and a complete meat market, one man operates each car, and nine women can enter the car at a time.

Lloyd George on the Peace Conferences g

T loyd George, speaking of the numerous s peace conferences in Europe, said: “You 1 hear inside the conference chamber the soft „ notes of friendship and good-will. But outside, ■ if you listen you hear the rasping note of the ; sharpening of steel. Every time we decide to -make peace it gets worse, and as long as we gc on with huge armaments in the teeth of our ; pledged word, the Covenant of the League, Lo- i carno, and the Kellogg Pact are a mockery and t sham.” 1

Blunder of a Great Chemist I

THE Secretary of the British Association of “

Chemists has expressed the belief that ; chemists would yet make a synthetic man, and thereby showed how foolish a great man can be- t come. The human ear has a harp of 2,700 strings, the most exquisite instrument known : to man. If all the chemists that ever lived had eternity before them they could never make the auditory apparatus of one ear of a single babe. It is blunders like this that cause the common people to hold so many alleged scientists in a contempt which they richly deserve. .

rl cross Ute Conlvnent

OICES and features of the speakers broadcast from WGY, Schenectady, have been . heard and seen in Los Angeles. The features were discernible, although considerably interfered with by static.

Hard Coal Picking Up '

USINESS is improving somewhat in the anthracite coal fields. Shipments are run

ning sixteen percent heavier than in 1927; and they need to unless business in those regions is ~ to be absolutely rained. Other fuels have taken away much of the anthracite markets.

' Depriving Earth of Its Wild Life

THE earth is being rapidly deprived of its wild ducks, geese and shore birds. Eepeat-ing shotguns, destruction of feeding and breeding places, liberation of oil, extensive utilization of eggs, shooting over lights at night, nets and general disregard of laws are some of the reasons assigned.

Doctor Clendening Against Health Audits

r. Logan Clendening, author of “The Hu

man Body”, and associate professor in the University of Kansas, is against the oft-advertised self-submission to doctors for examination as to health. He says, in summary of his findings on this subject: “The conclusion to which I have come after examining the evidence for health audits is that it has the same ; general character as that submitted to Ponce de Leon.”

Ireland’s New Coins

I BELAND has a complete new set of coins, the obverse of each of the coins showing a harp, while the reverses show respectively some tilings of distinctly Irish interest: a hunter, a salmon, a bull, a wolf hound, a hare, a hen with chicks, a sow with litter, and a woodcock. The 1 coins were all the design of a young English ! artist, and it was not known until after the selections were made that they are the work of one man. .

Items from Scotland By Peter Dunn

IF YOU hearken to the wise seers of Babylon for a moment, you 'will find they are at their old tricks of awe-inspiring their listeners. Now here is your future. “The time will come when the earth will stop spinning, and the moon will i crash down upon us.” So says Sir Oliver Lodge in a lecture that he gave in London recently on : “The Birth of the Moon”. It would be millions ' and billions of years yet, he assured them. The speed at which the earth rotates is gradually .....slowing down, owing to the friction of the tides, each day being a 240-millionth part of a second . longer than the day before, he says.

. Now, dear reader, if you believe in the Bible’s being the inspired Word of God you will, as . Sir Oliver’s opinion will show, belong to the class called “stupid people”. Sir Oliver added, . “Even at the present day take that great poem, .j-Ahe first chapter of Genesis, and interpret it literally, as if it were a statement of fact. There ■was a sort of disturbance when science found out that the whole universe was not brought into existence in a great hurry, in a .....period of one hundred forty-four hours.”

We are of the opinion that Mr. Lodge will require to dislodge a great many things from his mind ere he will be able to understand the very elementary truths as contained in the Scriptures, and there will be a bigger disturbance in scientists’ heads when they find that the period mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis is not one hundred forty-four hours, but is, in our opinion, a period of 42,000 years, each day mentioned being 7,000 years long. After God made man, he rested on the seventh day, and from the creation of man till this present year is recognized as 6056, proving that the seventh day is a period of 7,000 years and so were all the days of creation; but the shape of some people’s heads will require to be altered to allow of this simple truth to enter their brain.

Tramp Hero on the Railway

A man was walking from Manchester to Sheffield, alongside the railway. When near Hyde (Cheshire) he heard a boy’s screams coming from the metals [rails]. Scrambling down the embankment, he found that the boy had his foot fast in the rail and was struggling desperately to get it out. He tried to release the

lad, but could not, and he unlaced his boot, but still the boy could not take his foot out. The man then searched along the line a bit for something with which to lever the boot clear. He could find nothing, and he hurried back to the boy. .

At that moment the man heard the whistle of an express train. There was no time to stop it, so he twisted the boy’s foot and pulled him flat by the rails. He then lay down by his side, a second before the train dashed over them. The boy, Herbert Knowles, of Mottram, near Hyde, fainted with pain and fear, and it was some time before he could be released.

He was a modest hero, the tramp, and would not give his name; but we take our hats off to this gentleman, who is honestly seeking for work, and who was walking a distance of forty miles in search for it. Quick-minded and cool, he saved the boy's life at grave personal risk. Greater and nobler deeds of heroism are done in every-day life than are done by an army of conscripted soldiers on a battle-field.

The Prayer Book

The prayer book of the Church of England seems to be a terrible worry to the archbishops and bishops of that denomination. They have worried over it and quarreled over it like a lot of old fogies. Their interest is not in the Bible nor in preaching the truth contained therein; rather, they have torn the Bible out and have nothing left but the batters and the prayer book within. No wonder there is a famine today for the Word of God.

The Prayer Book Measure, 1928, drafted by the bishops in consequence of the rejection of last year’s proposals by the House of Commons, has just been published, and here are some of the changes, if you care to be interested.

The clause giving power to the archbishops and bishops to make rules under rubrics of the deposited book does not appear. The Declaration of Assent, it is explicitly provided, is to the Book of Common Prayer of 1662.

Prayers for the King (George V) must have a place in both morning and evening services. The Black Rubric is to be printed a second time at the end of the Alternative Communion Service.

Then there is a long article on what is precluded, but to one who is thirsty for truth it is ■ as dry as Sahara and as empty as a large soap bubble. The Church of England is being propped and stayed up to stand a short time, but its ■whole scaffolding is about to collapse completely. After all, the Church of England has or is a religion;, and to belong to a certain religion you can use prayer books or beads to worship that religion and its creed. To worship the true God it will not be necessary to have acts of parliament; for those who worship the true God must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

The Well-Nigh Magical Effect of Electricity upon Plant-growing

[From the German Edition of The Golden Age]

FOR the last few years one may observe gardens near Berlin and other German cities, which produce gigantic fruits and vegetables of dimensions never before attained. These innovators in the art of gardening are pupils of a great master, a Frenchman, Dr. M. Justin Christofleau, living in La Queue-les-Yvelines, a small village in Normandy. He is the discoverer of an eletro-magnetic apparatus to capture earth’s electricity.

His method is being followed with great success throughout the world. Briefly stated, it consists of storing the natural electricity of the earth, and using it to serve the growing of plants. Dr. M. Christofleau is a decided opponent of any kind of fertilizer, natural or artificial. He holds that the plant-world receives all its food out of the air, to which the earth, of course, must have contributed a part of the necessary elements.

What we call life is in reality but natural electricity, says M. Christofleau. His fields are laid out in parallel furrows about three meters apart, drawn from north to south. Lengthwise into these furrows he puts a galvanized iron wire. The wire to the north is sunk into the earth, while to the south it is led up a 15- or 30-foot pole, and ends at the top in an antenna.

The antenna receives the atmospheric (positive) electricity, and conducts it into the ground along the wire in the furrows. There it unites with the negative electricity, collected there by a network of wires, and thus forms the natural animating force which now can act directly

,nABI 0. 1029

on the roots. It may be thus said that the «nts take an electric footbath, which has an _ nse fertilizing effect. .

geat, or other energy, also is carried to the lants 1 by catching the sun rays with great Mirrors of copper and zinc and conveying them to the plantroots in the same wmy as the atmospheric electricity. If used merely to crop kinds of grapevines, berries, dwarf-fruits, tomatoes and clinging vines, the wires leading from north to south do not need to be covered with earth.

However it may be explained, it is an estab-d fact that by this method the productiveness of the soil is at least doubled. Moreover it should be specially noted that most fruits treated in this way develop to unusually large ^izes, and are richer in flavor. The soil will also be totally free from vermin, which can not bear the electric current. But, what is most important, the electricity makes fertilizers of all kinds superfluous. Every farmer and gardener knows what a great saving this means.

Inquiries among gardeners and farmers who have tried out this new method show astounding results. Tomatoes, for instance, ripened at a station near Berlin in two-thirds of the usual time. “Electrified” apple trees, which before bore only inferior grades of apples, now grow fruits reaching a diameter of twelve centimeters. Potatoes grew very quickly to an enormous size, even though the plants shot up a meter high. Most favorable are the reports about the recovery of the health of diseased fruit trees which had been treated with electricity according to the Christofleau method.

If the People Ever Wake Up

TP THE people ever wake up and come to the J- conclusion that the true way to health is by the route of proper food, fresh air, pure water, healthful exercise, honest occupation, correct thinking and, above all, a knowledge and reverence of Jehovah, and not by the route of drugs and serums, it is surely going to bring some , needed lessons to many persons now in the ' medical business.

Whether the doctors like it or not, there are now some millions of people in the United States ' who arc as sick of this serum idea as they ever need to be; the next thing the people will do is to get good and mad, and then come the lessons aforementioned.

Down in the Hillsborough County (New Hampshire) jail is a fine man, Albert W. Peacock. of Milford, serving a sentence of 236 days

rather than have his twelve-year-old son, Roy, submit to vaccination. Moreover, Peacock, who is fighting the battle of all anti-vaccinationists, declares that the boy will never be vaccinated as long as he lives.

One look at Peacock’s noble features, and all the honesty and love of liberty of a true American cries out against such a misuse of power. It may help to sell vaccines for the present, but again the scaffold is swaying the future, and e doctors are the ones who are rocking, not t reac°ck. Just now the M. D.’s are drunk with

power, drunk and swaying.

The Peacock boy is a fine-looking lad, and the mother a fine type of woman. The child is sent to school regularly every morning and every noon and is as regularly sent back home because he is unvaccinated. The fight has now been going on for .five years. Meantime the child is receiving instruction at home at the hands of a tutor.

In Detroit the public are agitated because, after “educating” the school children to the point where they believe they must be vaccinated for diphtheria by the injection of toxin antitoxin, the Board of Health has now ordered the parents of something like 100,000 children to go to their own doctors and pay from $2 to $5 each for the three inoculations supposed to be necessary.

Formerly these children could have been inoculated free at clinics maintained at schools. The new system, by which the doctors of Detroit will clean up something like $250,000 among them, was ordered by the Board of Health, a board composed of doctors, at the initiation of the Wayne County Medical Society, a society also composed of doctors.

The Board of Health is horrified at the idea that the public should think that the doctors are laying their hands on this $250,000 because they want the money, and cites by way of an offset that the average income of doctors in New York is only $6,000 a year.

A Cemetery Dinner and the Press By I. E. W. (Farmer)

THE following instance, which happened in Ottawa, Kansas, is here brought to light in order that others might have a clearer understanding of why the people are not informed through the newspapers of the different cases of poisoning caused through the use of aluminum cooking utensils.

Before Memorial Day, 1928, the ladies of the cemetery association of Bennington, Kansas, announced through the local papers that on Memorial Day they would serve dinner’ in the basement of the Presbyterian Church to raise money to help the upkeep of the Bennington Cemetery, and asked that everybody eat their 'dinner that day. As it happened, a record crowd turned out to eat what was termed by the papers, “one of those famous dinners” served by the ladies of the cemetery association.

The next morning the report started that from ten to fifteen persons had been poisoned by the dinner. Having been thoroughly convinced of the probable cause by articles in The Golden Age and by my own experiences with aluminum, I decided to investigate this cause.

As usual, as soon as it was learned that some had been poisoned the story started of rotten chicken being the cause. The food served had been donated by different ones, as nearly every one in the vicinity had been asked for donations for the dinner. I next learned from some who had helped prepare and serve the dinner that the kitchen of the church had been newly decorated and freshly supplied with some new aluminum cooking utensils.

The “rotten chicken” story was by this time being replaced by one that the chicken had been steamed too long. The number of the poisoned was increasing daily, and by this time the number reached the high mark of thirty.

The first numbers of the weekly Ottawa County Democrat, published before this investigation was finished, had a nice report about the dinner which stated that the “famous” dinner was enjoyed by all and that everybody expected and looked forward to another one Eke it next year.

Asking several if there was anything wrong with the food served, they answered by a firm, “No. Not as far as I could see.”

One lady who was poisoned very badly and

who also helped serve the dinner was asked, “What do you think caused the poisoning?”

“I do not know, but I believe they let the food stand too long in the cooking utensils,” she replied.

“What kind of utensils were used for cooking and warming the food ?”

“Nearly all aluminum. Most of it was new,” she said.

I found there was no basis for the theory of the chicken’s being the cause of the poisoning, because of those questioned who were poisoned some had eaten of chicken and some had not. And many who were not poisoned had eaten heartily of the chicken. By this time over seven- । ty-five persons were known to have been poisoned.

I then prepared this report, which was also sanctioned by others, for the Ottawa County j Democrat, a Bennington paper, and The Mes- j s eng er, a Minneapolis paper. In this report I -d stated all.these facts found through this investi- I gation and stated that the cause was most prob- I ably due to aluminum poisoning, and cited in- I stances like it that had appeared in other places I which were said to be due to this cause. I

After reading the report, the editor turned to I me and said, “I can’t print this; it is dangerous.” |

I, asked why it was dangerous. |

“Because there are too many aluminum com- | panies represented through the country that ( might take offense.” I

“I have never noticed anything in your paper about this poisoning,” I said.

“Why is it necessary to print it?”

“Isn’t that news ? Why do you print anything that happens throughout the country? Is it not so that the people who read your paper may know?” I answered.

The report was next taken to the Bennington paper’s editor, who said he was glad to learn of it and that he would print it, and also said he had eaten his share of the chicken and had not been poisoned.

Both editors stated that they did not deny the possibility of aluminum’s being the cause, but failed and refused to print a word about it. Why? Because the press is controlled by big business; and the people are left in darkness, suffering as a result.

Herbal Article Appreciated

A SUBSCRIBER in New Zealand writes regarding the article “Herbs for the Service of Man”:

“We have used the herbal remedies in the home and found them of great value in improving our health, so that we can meet the trials of each day and, when occasion affords, go forth with more energy with the kingdom message.

“I must mention a rather miraculous cure in this connection. when a lady friend used the herbs and received practically instant relief after being sent to her home from hospital in a hopeless state. She is continuing to use the herbs and is rejoicing in the fact that she is alive, while a few weeks ago she knew no hope. Needless to say she is ready for more Golden 'Age advice. If I might make a suggestion, I would say, Reprint the article for the benefit of new subscribers and those who have neglected to keep the old issue.”

We try to avoid reprints, so that our subscribers may always have new and interesting material laid before them, but occasionally yield to a request such as this.

Herbs for the Service of Man

[Reprinted, by request, from

ONE of the Biblical prophets wrote: “He [Jehovah] causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herbs for the service of man.” (Ps. 104:14) In this article we shall consider the value of herbs.

There is, or should be, but one idea, but one main object in medical practice,, and that is the improvement of the quality and circulation of the blood; for the blood is the life. By this process all growth is accomplished and all repairs must be made. Therefore remedial measures are valuable only as they act upon the blood and circulation, removing impurities therefrom and restoring the correct chemical balance of the former and insuring its efficient distribution throughout the system.

Nutrition is the physical basis of life, and the disturbance of this function, such as expressed in the words “malnutrition” and “malassimila-tion”, must of necessity be regarded as potent factors in the host of ailments to which mankind is subject. The state of nutrition in any organism, whether it be plant or animal, determines the state of health of that organism.

Man seems ever to be at variance with natural law, and in no way does he violate nature more than in his indulgence in eating and drinking. The body can assimilate only a certain amount of nourishment each day, and all food taken in excess of the quantity assimilated becomes waste matter; and if this is not speedily eliminated from the system, auto-intoxication (selfpoisoning) results. Ill health is bound to follow sooner or late:, and man becomes the poor victim of a thousand ill-considered efforts to

By Eric F. Powell, Herbalist, England

The Golden Age No. 172]

restore health by the means of poisonous drugs and stimulants which only add to the trouble and eventually leave him a physical and mental wreck.

When the normal condition of the digestive, assimilative, and circulatory organs is interfered with in any way," defective circulation is the result; hence the importance of correct eating and drinking. Wrong feeding means poor blood, chemical unbalance. A clogged body is the outcome of such a condition. In proportion as the body is diseased, in that proportion functional activity is suspended. The vital organs slow down, and until normal function is restored health is an impossibility. Nature sometimes makes an effort at elimination. That is, the body makes an effort to overcome the clogged condition and eliminate the cause of the trouble. Hence the colds, fevers and inflammations to which we are subject; fever is nature’s effort literally to burn up toxins and thus help restore the normal condition.

No machine will work properly if clogged and dirty, and it is exactly the same with the human mechanism. Health is amatterof purity of body and mind, and it is the writer’s object in this brief article to give some simple but powerfully effective information for the purification of the body.

Much has been said in The Golden Age on the vital question of diet, and your readers are no doubt fully acquainted with the fact that commercialized foods are little better than useless ; the natural produce of the earth being the ideal food for man, supplying the essential

804 n. GOLDEN AGE

mineral salts an3 vitamins In which “faked” food

is almost entirely deficient.

A most important point to impress, however, is that many of our cultivated foods are far from being perfect. Wrong and excessive manuring of the soil has most disastrous effects upon the health of vegetation and in some cases actually renders it unfit for human consumption. Also plants raised year after year on the same soil upon which no other crops have been grown are known to be deficient in organic mineral elements, the continual production of the one species without change having exhausted the soil of these elements. We are just beginning to learn something about correct fertilization; and a little while along the stream of time, when adverse influence has been withdrawn from the atmosphere of our planet and when it is fully under the control of a divine government, then and not until then will the earth yield her increase and produce perfect food suitable for a race of beings destined to live for ever if in entire harmony with the laws of the new government.

We find that wild herbs are rich in the vital elements so essential to life. All down through the ages herbs have been successfully used for the elimination of disease and the promotion of health. Herbs, noted for their virtues in certain disorders, have come down to us today, having withstood the acid test of time; and many of them stand unrivaled as specifics in certain diseases. What ancient herbalists learned from experience and observation modern science has enlarged upon.

Herbs that have been of value in diseases marked by a deficiency in one or more mineral elements have been found to be rich in the very element required, thus supplying nature with the thing she needed. Moreover, nearly all herbs have a powerful eliminative action, and morbid material is speedily eliminated through the system’s appointed channels. By clearing out the waste matter, supplying the essential chemical elements, and supplying nourishment at the same time, herbs come first in the ranks of therapeutical agents calculated to be harmless and effective in combating disease.

Many years’ experience in various branches of healing has confirmed the above statements, and the writer would pin his faith to simple herbal remedies, combined with reconstructive

Bbooklts, n. 7,

diet, before any other known system. Herbs assist in eliminating the root cause underlying the symptoms produced. Most drugs are entirely foreign to the system and tend to suppress nature’s healing effects; they interfere with all the vital functions and only add evil to evil. You can not cast out the devil by Beelzebub.

Massage, spinal adjustments, hydrotherapy and other natural methods can be employed in conjunction with the herbs if desired and, of course, attention should be paid to diet in all cases.

The fact must also be impressed upon the reader that one of the most evident causes of both physical and mental degeneration is wrong thinking. Morbid thoughts produce disease and poisons within the body, just the same as wrong feeding. Mind governs matter, and if one is ' suffering from a clogged brain that organ can , not function normally, and the body suffers. All the success ever accomplished in this imperfect < world seems to have been accompanied by a i certain amount of sacrifice and self-restraint. It is so with those who are seeking health. Appetite must be curbed; physical desires and impulses subdued; thoughts must be pure: one ; must be pure all through in order to enjoy a measure of goodly health.

…