Golden Age, October 16, 1929
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The Golden Age
A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND. COURAGE
in this issue
MAN AND MACHINE
HORRORS OF MUSTARD GAS
MINING THE HEAVENS
CRIME OF VACCINATION
SEQUOIA, THE BIG TREES
FORM OF GOVERNMENT
eleventh of a series of radio lectures on good government, by Judge Rutherford
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EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY
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Volume XI < No. 263 October 16, 19 2 9
Contents
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| Labor and Economics
I" The Race Between Man and Machine ........... 35
Social and Educational ! Percentages of Illiteracy .
| Ripley’s Life of St. Patrick ..........
! Manufacturing and Mining
Increase in Helium Output ............... 39 | Kentucky’s Black Bock .........
I Cocoon, Most Beautiful of Caskets . . .......... 45
I Finance—Commerce—Transportation
I Progress in America in 28 Years ........... .
g Wall Street Imperils the World
| Logansport’s Cheap Power ............... 42
I Political—Domestic and Foreign
Ontario Makes Its Final Steal .............. 42
North Little Rock’s Strange Mayor ...
The Defeat of Amanullah
The Horrors of Mustard Gas ....
Blasphemous Post Cards ................ 56
Agriculture and Husbandry Nine Thousand Farming Corporations
Mining the Heavens for Fertility of Earth ....
Science and Invention
Million-Volt Lightning Machine
Levulose from Artichokes ......
Semophone Films Shortly Now ....
Home and Health Do “Health Foods’’ Violate the Law?
The Crime of Vaccination
Aluminum Causes Death of Twin a
Buttermilk as a Food
Travel and Miscellany Sequoia, the Big Trees ...
Religion and'Philosobhy Why God’s Interest in the Sabbath Day?
Bible Questions and Answers . .
Making Converts in Syria .
The Form of Government
The Children’s Own Badio Story
Published every other Wednesday at 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A., by. WOODWORTH, KNORR & MARTIN
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Entered as second-class matter at Brooklyn, N, Y., under ths Act of March 3, 1879,
c&e Golden Age
Volume XI Brooklyn, N. Y-, Wednesday, October 16, 1929 Number 263
The Race Between Man and Machine
f^QUPPOSE that civilization has increased the world’s demands to five times what they were fifty years ago (and surely that should be considered a very liberal estimate), how-is it with the supply? All will agree that invention and machinery have increased the supply to more than ten times what it was fifty years ago. A mentally blind man can see that as soon as enough machinery has been constructed to supply the demands, thereafter there must be a race, a competition between man and machinery: because there will not be enough work for all, even if no further additions were made of either men or machines. But more competition is being added; the world’s population is increasing rapidly, and machinery guided by increased skill is creating more and better machinery daily. Who can not see that, under the present selfish system, as soon as the supply exceeds the demand (as soon as we have overproduction) the race between men and machinery must be a short one, and one very disadvantageous to men? Machines in general are slaves of iron, steel and wood, vitalized by steam, electricity, etc. They can do not only more work, but better work, than men can do. And they have no minds to cultivate, no perverse dispositions to control, no wives and families to think of and provide for; they are not ambitious; they do not form unions and send delegates to interfere with the management of the business, nor do they strike; and they are ready to work extra hours without serious complaint or extra pay. As slaves, therefore, machines are far more desirable than either black or white human slaves, and human labor and skill are therefore being dispensed with as far as possible; and those who own the machine slaves are glad that under nresent laws and usages their fellow men are ee and independent, because they are thereby relieved of the responsibility and care on their behalf which their enslavement would necessitate.”
The foregoing reads as if it might have been written yesterday; but it was written thirty-two years ago by Pastor Bussell, and it sizes up accurately a situation which is giving occasion for profound and anxious thought by myriads of people at this time.
A Fixed Permanent Mass of Unemployed
For more than a year now Secretary of Labor Davis has been insisting that the mechanization of industry has brought about a great problem of unemployment, and seems to be building up in America a fixed permanent mass of unemployed, and even the reactionary Literary Digest cautiously admits that “some of the men whose places are taken by a machine are given other jobs in the same concern, but such an absorption can take place only when the firm’s operations are expanding faster than laborsaving devices are being installed”. The National Industrial Conference Board’s figures show that, with the machinery they now have to work with, only sixty-seven men are needed to do the work which required a hundred men only twenty-five years ago.
Every time there is an increase in production of manufactured articles there is a small increase in manufacturing employment; and every time there is a decrease in production of manufactured articles there is a decrease in manufacturing employment; but the lines of production are growing farther and farther apart every year. Production every year is much, very much, greater than manufacturing employment, and meantime the population is steadily increasing. This is interesting, but more than interesting: it is ominous. Unemployed men and their families must eat.
There was a time when Great Britain forbade the American colonies either to manufacture machinery or to import it; with characteristic generosity toward the rest of the world she wanted to do all the manufacturing herself. Just now she seems to be taking lessons, and not very pleasant ones, on how to do the very kind of work in which she once sought a monopoly. America has set the pace.
It used to be thought that a salesman was more sure of his daily food than almost any other kind of person. Now it is open to question. Automatic merchandising machines are making their appearance everywhere, and the latest ones make it unnecessary for the buyer to have the exact coin called for by the purchase ; he may drop a coin of any denomination into the slot and receive his correct change, together with the article purchased. Efficiency experts have figured it out that sixty percent of the time of the average drug store salesman is consumed on automatic functions that a machine could perform just as well; and that inevitably means sixty percent fewer drug clerks to sell the tooth paste, razor blades, soaps, cigarettes, powders and medicines usually dispensed.
Commerce and Finance says grimly (but perhaps does not realize just how grimly): “Automatic merchandising machines have given such a good sales account of themselves that almost any amount of effort looking toward their improvement is justified. As salesmen, they are worth training for bigger results.”
The Machine in the Office
It seems as if there is no end to the detail of office work, does it not? It is a day when every business undertaking rests upon statistics. But those statistics are now gathered so rapidly by machinery that it makes one’s head swim to think about it. Information is punched on cards, and after that data is once punched the cards are assorted and classified at the rate of 20,000 an hour, and any data any of the cards contain can be gleaned from them in a very short time.
There is addition and subtraction, multiplica-. tion and division! It might be more correct to say that there used to be these things. In modern business offices this work is now all done by machinery. Only about twelve percent of office workers are now doing bookkeeping and stenography. Most office work is done by machinery.
Even typewriting, prosaic old typewriting (and the art is only fifty years old), has been all upset by the mechanical invasion. There is a new typewriter which prints twenty-two selected words and syllables, each at a single stroke. The job of typewriting at the branch office has. ceased to be a job at all. One sending machine in the main office, operated by any typist, is connected by wire to any number of motor-driven typewriters located in distant cities or departments, and as the original sender writes, so writes every other machine on the line. One operator does all the work formerly done by scores.
Would you be a linotype operator? You are learning the business just a little too late. Now a reporter comes in and spells the letters of each word direct into a ‘Talkie Typesetter’. By belt transmission the matrices are set, and, if desired, the same type may be set in one hundred other composing rooms throughout the country, by means of the teletypesetter. It is evident that the time is at hand when without the intervention of any linotype operator at all it will be possible to set the same story in type in every city in the country.
Jobs You Will Not Get
Perhaps you aspire to be a telegraph o_perator or a wireless operator. But why aspire? The telegraph and the wireless companies now do not need operators. All they need is persons who know how to do typing on a typewriter; the machinery does all the rest, sending and receiving messages by wire and by wireless accurately and much more rapidly than could be done if the human brain were to intervene. Really, the human brain would be in the way.
Possibly you would like a position as a telephone operator. You may as well forget it. The prediction is made that by 1930 there will not be a telephone girl in Washington, D. C.; and the automatic telephone will soon displace the 20,000 girls that make their living as telephone operators in New York city.
Ah! You would be an engineer, working out abstruse and difficult problems of curves and graphs that take years to learn and months to perform. Sorry, but Dr. Bush, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has designed the Integraph, which makes it unnecessary to employ you. It is an adding machine carried to mathematical heights to which few people can 50, and it does a month’s work in a few minutes and does it accurately.
Maybe you would risk a brush with the police and resort to telling fortunes for a living. You won’t need to. There is a machine that will tell just as good a fortune, even print it on a little card and hand it to you, including the date and your correct weight, all for one cent, and you certainly could not afford to compete with it.
Chimney sweep! That’s the thing. Face streaked with soot, ladders, ropes, brooms, brushes and dirt galore. Too late. The whole thing is done by machinery, and the suction of the forty-horsepower engine used is so strong that one time a live kitten was rudely hauled off the hearth and kited up the chimney into the dirt bag in jig time, whence it was rescued with some difficulty and somewhat the worse for wear.
You could at any rate be a companion for somebody who needs to have a person handy to read to him. But no! The General Electric laboratories have invented a thing that will read aloud, thus relieving the strain on the eyes, and the listener will get the contents three times as fast as if you were reading it to him.
There was a time when you would have liked a job as watchman somewhere; but not now. The big concerns are making robots as fast as they can turn them out, and these mechanical servants have the ability and the gall to call up headquarters and solemnly say , “It is hot” or “It is cold”, and they do other things; which keeps several men off the pay roll. In March of this year England had seven of these mechanical servants in use, and it is predicted that within a few years they ‘will be commonplace sights in all large cities. In response to a challenge Dr. II. D. Baernstein, of the University of Wisconsin physiological chemistry department, has invented a robot which he claims can be taught. The account says: “Dr. Baernstein’s 'thinking’ apparatus consists of numerous switches, wires, and an incandescent light. The mechanism, he said, is so arranged that the bulb may be lighted by one of the switches and that any of the other switches may be 'taught’ to light the bulb. The operation, he claims, is analogous to the presentation of stimuli. The . ffiine is merely a symbol of mechanism of the human body.”
More Production but Fewer Employees
During the last four years there has been a decrease of five percent in the number of employees in the oil refining business, but an increase of eighty-four percent in the amount of oil refined. There has been a decrease of thirteen percent in the number of tobacco factory employees, but an increase of fifty-three percent in the amount of the dirty weed made ready for human pollution. There are nineteen percent - fewer employees in the slaughtering and packing of meat, but there is an output twenty percent greater. The railroads have one percent fewer employees and are handling thirty percent more traffic. And so it goes.
You would be a miner? No, you would not. Coal-mining is fast becoming a factory routine. Already, seventy-one percent of American bituminous coal is mined by machinery. You do not need to hang around the steel works looking for a job; for the steel companies can produce almost three times as much pig iron today as they did in 1904, with the same crew of men. Yes, of course, the country is prosperous. You read it in the paper, did you not? But the prosperity goes to the machine owners.
Where does labor go? It goes to the same place the bent pins go. There has been a decrease of 900,000 factory employees since 1920, and the railroads have cut their force 240,000 in the same time. One man now turns out as many razor blades as sixty-four could make in 1912. In ten years the output has increased 211 percent in rubber manufacture and 102 percent in automobiles. A machine which tests radio tubes accurately takes the place of twenty-five to thirty girls. Trenching machines, gasoline cranes, bucket conveyers and other devices have transformed the building industry into a machine industry.
Let’s get jobs in banks. No, let’s not. The largest banks are rapidly installing ledger-posting and typewriter accounting machines. The new and improved pattern, known as the “business brain”, will do simultaneously the work of a cash register, a bookkeeper and an adding machine, and, from another part of the building, make a complete record of a sale at the time it is made. One of these machines installed in a bank (and it can be operated by a girl) does away with the work of nine-tenths of the employees. A feature of the machine is that it calls attention to an overdraft by automatically locking itself, and prints the amount in red when the lock is released. ..
Machines for All Kinds of Work
Let’s give up trying to get a high-class job. Better take one as a longshoreman and be done with it. Too late once more! The new motor-driven banana unloader not only saves much labor, but damages the fruit much less than unloading by hand. How about selling soft drinks or gasoline? Nothing doing. Very soon now and all this work will be done by machines operated with quarters or other coins in slots, like the washing machines in the basements of apartment houses. Some of these new selling machines actually give a sepulchral "Thank you’ as the coins fall down into their hollow insides. There is a store at Atlantic City where all the salesmen are robots.
In the city of Washington there are three robots, Adam, Cain and Abel, that furnish daily information on the amount of water in each reservoir. By means of the televox, a load dispatcher of an electric power company or street railway company can call up on any telephone an unattended power plant or substation, receive reports on the status of every machine from the robots in the station, and start or stop machines, open and close switches, and perform other operations at will.
Road-making is now done by machinery. Concrete pipe is made and laid in position in a continuous line, without any joints. The huge water tunnels hundreds of feet beneath New York city will be dug by robots now being built at Schenectady. In the next war giant tanks will climb hills and plunge through gullies with no human being aboard. Machinery can be made to handle all the situations that the inventor of the machinery can foresee.
You can always get a job on a farm. Or can you? Forty-five thousand harvesting and threshing machines have displaced 130,000 farm workers but recently. The plowing of a field is now done entirely automatically, and if the machine completes its task before morning the power is automatically shut off. The herediscope saves the time and study of livestock breeders figuring out how the Mendelian law will operate in given conditions.
Today there is a typewriter weighing one ounce which fits into the vest pocket, and at the other end of the mechanical world there is a dynamo fifty feet in height which uses up one ton of coal every two minutes, to make light and powder for a part of New York city. There is a machine which exerts 600,000 pounds of pressure to the square inch; there is noiseless machinery, with gears made of compressed fibrous materials, and there is a machine which registers the tiny amounts of moisture in any substance.
How is it all to end? The editor of the Iron Trade Review says that we must have more machinery and ever more, so that more men may be taken into the purely service occupations which new machinery creates. But this does not go to the root of the matter. The American Federation of Labor, sensing the danger, says timidly that “the machine has justified labor’s demand for a five-day week”. It proposes to go over Niagara in a skiff.
Rabbi Goldman, of Cleveland, says that “industry, commerce and the machine are grinding men to pulp”; and that is the truth. Aldous Huxley, the English novelist and critic, sees culture ruined by mass production, democracy on the junk-heap, and the selfish and intelligent minority (owners of the machines) fighting for their lives against those who do not own the machines; and probably that is the truth too.
What does all this mean? Did not the great God who made this world know what the result would be when He gave man an inventive mind 1 Of course He did, and that is what He wants man to use. God made man to be a prince, and not a slave. But when man desired to have his own way, God said to him, ‘All right. Suppose you try it; and while you are trying it, you may do the work yourself. When you find out how much you can do, you may desire to have some help.’ Man is now calling for that help; blindly, it may be, but calling nevertheless.
God is now arranging that man may return to the plane God intended him for in the first place, namely, that of a prince. A prince usually has servants to do his menial work. So God has provided that man may have all the servants necessary to do all the manual labor, while man is to do the “bossing”, namely, run the machines and utilize the powers of nature. This is in preparation that man may have time for selfculture and education. God is also prepari’--to give each man the necessary education . fit him for a position as prince.
Thus what appears to he man’s greatest calamity is really but God’s preparation for his release from slavery, and his greatest blessing. Lift up your heads, ye weary, discouraged workmen ! God has not forgotten ybu, and soon the clouds will break and the glorious day of God’s heavenly kingdom will break through with all its glory.
Canister
Increase in Helium Output
THE government will shortly be able to produce twenty million cubic feet of helium gas a year at its plants at Amarillo, Texas. This gas, non-inflammable, is ideal for zeppelins, the day of which is at hand.
Drought Decreases Wheat Crop
THE severe drought in North America has greatly reduced the wheat crop in Canada and in states along the Canadian border. It is claimed that the Canadian wheat crop is not likely to be more than 50 percent of what it was last year.
Frogs in Algeria
THE Bible story of Egypt’s invasion by frogs in the time of Pharaoh is fully sustained by a like happening near Constantine, Algeria, during a storm in July of this year. The frogs covered an area two miles wide, blocked up wells and damaged crops.
Nine Thousand Farming Corporations
IN THE year 1926 there were over nine thousand corporations engaged in farming on a large scale. The gross income of these farms exceeded seven hundred million dollars. An examination of the reports showed great variations in the results from the large farms.
Must Not Mention Poison Gas as Such
IN AN article in Reynolds’ Newspaper, Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., says: “I happen to know that we are manufacturing gas bombs, and that at the time when, at Geneva, we were promising not to use them again, if others would do the same, we were actually issuing orders that gas bombs were not to be referred to as such, and that in • 'eparing. documents of any description relat-„ A to air bombs the word 'gas’ was never to be used.”
Each Thought Other to Blame
ONE of the comical incidents connected with the earthquake in the St. Lawrence basin a few weeks ago was that two Canadian boys, twins, engaged in a fist fight, each accusing the other of shaking the bed repeatedly so that he could not sleep.
Kentucky’s Black Rock
KENTUCKY has a new industry, Kentucky black rock, shortened for business purposes into "Kyrock”. Kyrock, a new asphalt, laid cold, will last indefinitely, and will not roll under traffic, wear out, or break down. The material is already in use in thirty-five states.
The Value of Courts
THE London Daily Express, commenting frankly on the game of bunk known as royalty, says: "Every American girl who is presented at Buckingham Palace is a valuable asset, for she invariably becomes an English propagandist.”
Talked over 13,000 Miles
THE British Postoffice, which controls its wireless transmissions, in the month of August arranged for an anxious mother at an inland town in Britain to talk with the head nurse of a Sydney (Australia) hospital, in which her son was lying seriously ill. This is just halfway around the world.
New York to Grow Own Vegetables
IN ORDER to provide fresh air and wholesome 'work for prison inmates, the governor of New York state proposes to make the experiment of having all food for New York state institutions grown on prison farms. It is believed that this will result in reclaiming many men and reducing the chances of such riots as recently caused the state the loss of $800,000 at Auburn and Clinton.
Conferences on Child Welfare
A WRITER in Labor states succinctly that a child’s chance in life is dependent on the contents of its dad’s pay envelope, and that if father is given enough so that mother can stay home and. take care of the kids it will soon not be necessary to call any more conferences on child welfare.
Widespread Droughts
HP HE summer of 1929 has been marked by -*- terrible droughts, widespread over large portions of the earth. In places on Long Island residences surrounded by acres of farm land have been forced to buy fruit and vegetables for their own tables, the drought having ruined everything.
International Convention of Boy Scouts
BRITAIN has just had an international convention of boy scouts. The official name of such a convention of boys is called a jamboree. Among the guests from all over the world were 1,500 American boys. By a nice act of courtesy they were allowed to lead the parade past the reviewing stand.
To Search for Patrons
THE British Postoffice, controlling Britain’s telephone service, will now, for a slight charge, search an entire town for any person who is wanted at the telephone. The afternoon charge for this service is only sixpence, but is two to four times that amount in the morning, depending on distance.
Hard-hearted Uncle Sam
TOURING the war, and since, the American people, the common people, the people upon whom the burdens really rest, loaned France $4,230,000,000. After years of arguing, France has finally agreed to pay 40 percent of this amount during the next sixty-two years. For years the French press, and the European press generally, has been filled with abuse of America because of this hard-heartedness. Most of the money has been spent in making the world more unsafe, and more ready for another greater and more terrible war. Probably Uncle Sam will never receive but a small number of installments on this vast debt. And 60 percent of it is for ever gone where the woodbine twineth.
Increased World Telephone Service
HRHE entire United States, Canada and Mexi-co are now in telephonic, communication with Europe. Britain has just opened service with Buenos Aires, good for the evening hours only. The rate is 2 pounds 3 shillings for each minute. Subscribers in Buenos Aires will have to speak from a special booth.
Took Him Only 65 Years
ALOS ANGELES man recently returned to Germany to marry a girl to whom he was engaged when he was 26 and she was 25. Now they are ninety-one and ninety years respectively. It took this young man only 65 years to get enough together for a home. We wish him a long and happy wedded life.
Progress in America in 28 Years
TN TWENTY-EIGHT years the national in-J- come of the United States has multiplied itself by seven and one-half; the savings deposits have become eight times as great; the life insurance in force has become eleven times as much; the freight carried by the largest railroads has become six times as much.
Farming a Mechanical Business
FARMING is getting to be more and more a strictly mechanical business. Combined harvester-threshers, tractors and motor trucks have revolutionized wheat-growing on the western plains. Mechanical corn pickers are coming into common use, and mechanical cotton pickers have reduced the cost of harvesting cotton $10 a bale and thrown many out of work.
A Badly-advised Governor
WHEN representatives of the American
Federation of Labor were illegally driven out of a South Carolina town the president of the Federation sent a telegram to the governor of the state demanding that they be protected in their rights. The governor lost his head and denounced this perfectly proper request as impertinent and threatening. Does the governor know that this is an invitation to law-abiding men to cease to be so ? Is that what the American people elect governors for? Some of these men, overawed by the too frequent presence of the representatives of great corporations arour ’ the state offices, seem to forget whom they a. _ working for.
Million-Volt Lightning Machine
HP HE General Electric Company has made a portable lightning generator with which experiments are being made in the forest area of northwestern Michigan. Bolts of lightning with a million volts back of them are hurled at transmission lines, the effects studied, and plans are being made to render the lines as nearly lightning-proof as may be possible.
Canada’s Big Oil-Burners
HE Canadian Pacific will put twenty big oilburning locomotives in service on its heavy grades in the Canadian Rockies. Each engine and tender is ninety-eight feet long and weighs 750,000 pounds. The boilers'are made entirely of nickel steel. The tenders will carry 1,200 gallons of -water and 4,500 gallons of oil. There ■will be five drive-wheels on each side.
Cotton and Wheat Move West
HE production of cotton and wheat have both moved westward. Cotton is a less and less important crop in the Atlantic seaboard states, and a more and more important crop in Oklahoma and Texas'. Wheat is greatly decreasing in acreage in Iowa, Minnesota and states east thereof, while it is being grown on a larger scale in states farther west.
Grand Master of Italian Masons Blinded
FTER being locked up on one of Mussolini’s horrible penal islands for two years for the rather innocent crime of being the leader of the Italian Masons, the grand master of the lodge in that country, Torrigiani, has now gone entirely blind. The odd thing about it is that many great American financiers are Masons and hope for much from the Mussolini form of anarchy.
Keen Memory of an Aged Elephant
ORTY-FOUR years ago the great elephant Jumbo was killed by a railway train, at
St. Thomas, Ontario. The other day his 110-year-old mate, Alice, recognized the fatal spot, suddenly stopped, went down on her knees, stamped, writhed and trumpeted shrilly, plainly showing her memory and her sorrow; surely u, touching manifestation of the genuineness of her affection.
Levulose from Artichokes
EVULOSE, the sweetest of sugars, is now extracted from the artichoke at a cost of $25 to $30 a pound, but it is held possible that great changes in the near future will place this sugar in reach of the people at a price that will compete with sugars made from beets and cane. The artichoke grows wild in'nearly every section of the United States.
Russian Cruelties to Jews
fTHIE annual convention of Zionists, held at
Detroit, has passed resolutions declaring that the Soviet government is now deliberately and maliciously persecuting and suppressing the Zionist movement, hounding Zionists and exiling them to the unspeakable Siberian dungeons with a ruthlessness unparalleled in the darkest days of former pogroms and inquisitions.
Life in Him When He Signed
lizabeth Sohoffen, ex-nun, makes affidavit of an instance where a sick priest with $15,000 willed to his relatives refused, at the instance of the church authorities, to make a new will turning the amount over to the church. Later the abbot of the monastery told her that the church got the money all right. Asked how that was possible, he explained that in the presence of three priests he put a fly in the dead man’s mouth, put a pen in his hand, and signed the new will, and all four of the priests testified on oath that there -was life in him when he made the signature.
Railroads Fight for Passenger Travel
WITH the opening of combined rail and air service from coast to coast all the railroads running between Chicago and the Pacific Coast have cut their schedules on their fast trains from five to seven hours each. This results in the saving of a business day and is evidently done to stave off as long as possible the day of reckoning with aviation which is now at hand.
The new schedules affect 100,000 miles of railway in the United States. The new schedules save fourteen hours between New York and Los Angeles. The new fast train service makes it possible to make the entire trip by rail, New York to San Diego, with only three nights on the train.
A Smart Police Dog
CHICAGO has a police dog which when left alone hungry in the house tipped over the telephone and barked into the transmitter. This brought police on the run; they fed the dog, he was delighted, the owner was delighted, the police were delighted, and all the rest of us are delighted.
Wall Street Imperils the World
THE London Daily Express declares that the unparalleled speculative mania which has been in progress in Wall Street for the past three years is imperiling the whole structure of world trade. The article, which is written by some one well informed, and buttressed by statistics, makes the solemn declaration that unless something is done soon to induce a gradual decline in the value of stocks to a reasonable level, the crash will be terrific, and the effect will be felt in every corner of the world.
British Bishops Disregard Law
Sir W. Joynson-Hicks, commenting on the decisions of the bishops to go ahead and use their repudiated prayer book, says that instead of using their positions to thus teach the people contempt for British law these bishops should have the courage to come again to parliament and frankly tell the truth as follows: “We want to Romanize the old Church of England; we Want to get free from the shackles of the Elizabethan Reformation. We want to go as we please in matters of ritual, unrestricted by Parliament and the courts of law. Wo want, in effect, to be disestablished.”
Must Do $21 Worth of Baking
TN CINCINNATI a miscreant named Herbert ■*- Powell got the ear of Mrs. Frederica Cas-cioni and separated her from $21, on the ground that he could get masses to that amount offered for some of her relatives at the Santa Maria Institute. Unfortunately he failed to turn in the cash to the institute, and the rule, “High money, high mass; low money, low mass; no money, no mass,” went into effect. And now Mrs. Cascioni must do $21 worth of baking which she had not figured on. Oh, well! When she has scraped together another $21 she will still be a good customer. No wonder that shipments of ivory from Africa are decreasing.
Logansport’s Cheap Power
T OGANSPORT, Indiana, has its own electric light and power plant. Rates are forty percent less than in Chicago, owned and controlled by the power trust. Moreover, in eight years the Logansport plant has donated all the street lighting to the city and turned over $1,227,000 in profits besides. No wonder the power trust can afford to throw away millions buying college professors and newspapers.
One-Third of the Churches Dead
TpREDERicK L. Collins, writing in Woman’s
Home Companion, declares that of two hundred thousand Protestant churches sixty thousand gained no new members in the past year and forty thousand more gained only one or two members in that time. Seven thousand churches are actually vacant and .deserted. Mr. Collins points out that previous glowing reports of church growth were based upon births into families inactively connected with, the church and upon admission of persons who moved away from one community to another without ever being stricken from the rolls of the original church. Every time they moved they were added once more to the total. This is not merely farcical: it is absolutely crooked.
Ontario Makes Its Final Steal
/^NTARIO has just taken the last 129,320
square miles of territory from the Indians living within her borders. The 12,000 Indians are to get $4 apiece each year; and each chief is to get a flag and a medal, the two together being of less value to him than a bologna sausage. Reduced to plain terms, Ontario has taken over 82,764,800 acres from the Indians and will pay an annual rental of something less than one cent for each twenty acres. Probably there is gold of untenable value on this property. That is why the great financiers who are usually back of moves of this kind are so extremely generous and open-hearted. One can almost hear their tongues stick to the roofs of their mouths for fear the deal will not go through. The Indians are to get their $4 a year “as long as grass grows and rivers flow”, which means that the next time there is a dry summer the Indians will get nothing and thereafter will receive the same amount regularly till the end of time. Lo, the poor Indian!
Butterflies as Pets
UR Dumb Animals gives an interesting story of two butterflies, trained as pets. These would come when their names were called, and delighted in perching on their mistress’ hand and being waved back and forth. She gained their confidence by giving them their first meal of honey and water in the heart of a rose. The same article says that wasps have been trained as pets.
The Giant Shovel of All
ROM time to time we have had items about greater and ever greater steam shovels, but the greatest one has just been shipped to Illinois, where it will be used to do the work of hundreds of miners. It will scoop up twenty tons of earth in one bite and is as tall as an eleven-story building. It took a train of fifty cars to transport the huge shovel to the bituminous coal field where it will be used in stripping operations.
S'emophone Films Shortly Now
AUSTRIAN inventors have perfected the semophone machine and records which they believe will assuredly take the place of all other systems of talking films and phonograph records. The films are exceedingly inexpensive to make, convenient to handle, and an entire opera which will take forty minutes to play can be put on one film. Moreover, the claim is made that the films are more durable than phonograph records, and that reproduction is perfect. The poor musician is being literally invented out of an existence.
Percentages of Illiteracy
HE percentages of illiteracy in countries where the education of the masses is in the hands of the Roman Catholic hierarchy are as follows: Guatemala 92 percent, Brazil 85 percent, Spain 78 percent, Mexico 75 percent, Portugal 73 percent, Cuba 56 percent, Argentina 54 percent, Chile 49 percent, Italy 48 percent, Hungary 40 percent, Austria 26 percent, Belgium 18 percent, Ireland 17 percent. The percentages of illiteracy in countries where there is a public school system are less than 1 percent each in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden, 3y2 percent in Scotland, 4 percent in Holland, 5% percent in England and 7y2 percent in the United States.
Normal Children May Learn Speech Slowly fpHE United States Public Health Service calls attention to the fact that the popular belief that children who do not talk at the normal age are mentally defective is responsible for much unwarranted anxiety. It says that while it is true that disordered speech may be-' an early symptom of mental defect, yet there are occasions when speech development may be delayed as late as nine years of age in children otherwise perfectly normal.
Yale Professor Refused Citizenship
FOLLOWING the precedent established by the Supreme Court in the case of Mme.
Schwimmer, the Federal Court for Connecticut ' has refused citizenship to Professor Douglas C.
Macintosh, of Yale University, because he is conscientious in the matter of bearing arms. Explaining his position, Professor Macintosh is reported as saying, in part:
I am willing to support my country, even to the extent of bearing arms, if asked to do so by the government in any war which I can regard as morally justified. But I am not willing to purchase American'' citizenship by promising beforehand that I will be ready to bear arms for my country in any and every war in which my country may engage, whether morally justified or not. I will not promise that I would support the government in a war in violation of the so-called Kellogg pact, for instance.
I am ready to give the United States, in return for citizenship, as full allegiance as I have ever given or could give to any country. I am ready to put allegiance to my country above private interest and mere individual preference and second only to my allegiance to what I take to be the will of God. By the •will of God I mean what is reasonable and right, whatever is for the highest well-being of humanity or of everybody concerned.
It may be said that if citizens generally were admitted on this basis it might become impossible for the government to go to war except in cases where the people believed the war to be morally justifiable.
But why should any democratic government want to go to war unless its people, or the great majority of them, can be led to see the justice of such a course 1 And especially when a government, in agreement with practically the whole -world, has renounced war as an instrument of national policy and agreed never to seek the solution of its disputes with other nations except by pacific means. Why should such a government seek to go to war unless it has back of it the moral support of at least the great majority of its thoughtful and conscientious citizens ?
Mining the Heavens for Fertility of Earth By W, H. Barton
THE time will come when it will be an honor to be called a farmer, a “husbandman”. Zechariah 13:5 says: “But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman.” Here we have the false prophet speaking after he gets into the Millennium. He is ashamed of what he has been prophesying, and when he is addressed by his associates as “prophet”, in derision, he will claim to be of one of the most honorable vocations known to that age, farming. (See Zechariah 13:4: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied”)
Then is when he will claim to be of that honorable and noble class to whom it is promised: ‘Every man shall dwell under his own vine and fig tree where none dare to molest or to make afraid’; “the meek shall inherit the earth”; and ‘the righteous shall feed upon the fat of the land’. Ample evidences here of agricultural prosperity! Just what we might expect under a just rule: “And the Lord shall be king over all the earth; in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one.”—Zech. 14: 9.
Satan is “the prince of this world” now; so acknowledged by Jesus when He was on earth, and he has never allowed the farmer a square deal. On the contrary, he has led him into ‘paths of unrighteousness’ in farm practice.
In our farming today, as well as in our religion, there is little oneness of mind or purpose. Every man has his own ideas and is “prophesying” as if endowed with authority. Thus it has been ever since Satan caused our foreparents to be turned out of the only perfectly farmed area the world has ever known. But when He takes charge “whose right it is”, when the full light of Millennial truth shall shine alike upon all, then our agricultural practice, as well as our moral practice, will be directed strictly by a oneness of purpose and a oneness of practice that will result in a glorious harvest fitting the conditions of that “Golden Age”.
If farmers had all the money accredited to ancient Croesus, and continued their present practice of soil robbery and feed buying, they would soon again be “as poor as Job’s turkey”.
The world has never yet discovered how to obtain and maintain permanent prosperity without an agriculture based on soil building and economic production in a self-sustaining system.
My friends, if I should make the statement that “all farmers are millionaires”, some of you, at least, would reply: “He’s talking nonsense.”
Let me ask you this question: If you had millions of dollars’ worth of gold in the rocks on your farm, would you regard it “nonsense” to be called a millionaire? No. You would feel good over it and proceed at once to mine the gold and realize on your wealth.
Now, I want to announce to you that each man who owns even one acre of land, is a multimillionaire. Let me prove this statement!
Every square inch of the earth’s surface has a column of air resting on it that weighs approximately fifteen pounds. That fifteen pounds is four-fifths nitrogen, and four-fifths of fifteen is twelve; therefore, you have twelve pounds of nitrogen over each square inch of your land, waiting to be mined. Nitrogen is worth an average of about twenty cents a pound; therefore, you have $2.40 worth of it over each square inch of your land.
Now listen: an acre of land contains 6,272,640 square inches, which at $2.40 a square inch would make $15,054,336, the value of the nitrogen over one acre of your land, waiting to be extracted by cooperating with nature in growing and turning legumes, such as vetch, crimson clover, etc. The supply is inexhaustible. You can’t remove it all. You couldn’t use it all if you had it; for plants are like animals: they can eat just so much, and no more, each year.
How Can We Mine This Wealth?
By sowing vetch in the fall and turning it in full bloom the next spring, you can easily get sixty pounds of nitrogen, which is equivalent to 400 pounds of nitrate of soda or 850 pounds of cotton-seed meal, a value approximating $12, plus the value of the humus-making material plowed under, which is easily worth as much more in soil ability.
If you thus treated as much as 100 acres each winter, your fertilizer benefit alone would be $1200 a year and $1200 more in soil ability, making a total increase of $2400 a year in soil fertility and soil ability, to say nothing about the 100-percent increase in the crops gathered for the first few years, at least, under this system.
If you should live to practise this system on the 100 acres for twenty years, the total income in nitrogen alone would be $24,000.
In Richmond County, N. C., from 1920 to 1925, when almost all the counties of both North and South Carolina were losing and lost from five hundred to a thousand farmers a county, Richmond County increased her number of farmers 415 during that time; and it was due to nothing more than the fact that she planted five thousand acres in velvet-beans, about two thousand acres of soybeans, and a carload of vetch seed. In other words, that “God-forsaken” county, consisting of three-fourths deep sand, woke up to the light of soil fertility and economic production through the use of legumes, and was not afraid and its banks vzere not afraid. You know banks do not loan money on uncertainties; you and I wouldn’t. They are “from Missouri”.
Man knows that he can’t build up his body so that it will remain built up. He knows that he must build every day, even three times a day, to keep built up; and he knows also that he can’t build up his body by taking chemicals that stimulate only. He knows that he requires solid foods and bulky rations, additionally, to keep him “fit”.
Strange to say, however, he doesn’t seem to know that his land’s requirements are similar. If he turns one crop of cow-peas or other legumes, he thinks that he has done wonders and his land ought to produce for ever on this one meal of fertility and ability. He doesn’t seem to realize that it must be fed yearly, to Say the least, if he expects it to build up and stay built up. _
He doesn’t seem to realize that God’s laws of nature are such that land will keep built up as long as man will let it alone and not rob it. It grows wild legumes, that take nitrogen from the air and drop it on the ground to enrich it, and deep-rooted weeds and trees bring up mineral plant food from the subsoil and drop it in their leaves on the surface of the land to keep it ‘fit’.
If livestock is fed only non-legumes, such as cottonseed meal, corn, wheat products, oats, grass hays, etc., and the manure returned to the fields that grew the feeds, such land will gradually grow poorer; for all the manure that is in such feeds came from the soil of these fields, and the livestock uses about one-fourth of it and gives back only three-fourths, thus returning to the soil one-fourth loss than was taken from it. This is assuming that such livestock is kept on cement floors, day and night, to preserve every ounce of plant food in the manure. Of course, under our usual method of caring for manure the loss would be far more.
When legumes, such as pea hay, soybean hay, vetch or clover hay, etc., are fed and the manure returned to the fields that grew them, such fields gradually increase in fertility; for two-thirds of the nitrogen in the legumes is taken from the air; and, when fed to livestock, one-fourth of this two-thirds is used by them, and the remaining three-fourths of this two-thirds, or one-half the nitrogen in the legumes, is “brand new” nitrogen from the air that goes to increase soil fertility.
The writer has recently been in correspondence with our American Consulate at Jerusalem and has learned that the historic “plain of Jezreel”, Palestine, which, until 1920, lay for centuries a barren waste, has been settled by Jewish immigrants who have fulfilled prophecy by making the “desert blossom as a rose”.
They not only have purchased this vast waste of 51 square miles, but have improved thousands of acres of land and established twenty villages, all within about five years, 1921-1926.
These villages are chiefly cooperative farming centers which practise diversification and rotation of crops, utilizing poultry and the dairy cow as a part of their system; and it is distinctly stated that the chief sustenance of these cows is “vetch and clover”.
This country is known as “Emek Jezreel”, which means, “Here sows God”; we are told that He sows “vetch and clover”.
A few writers, like Calumella, Varro, Cato, and others, recognized such virtue in legumes in their day; but few farmers adopted their advice in practice. .
Prof. W. F. Massey lived more than eighty years, and forty years of his life were devoted to preaching the cow-pea as a soil-saver and a crop-doubler. Yet his principal reward was to be dubbed “Cow-pea Massey”. The last twenty or more years of his life were devoted as faithfully to crimson clover; yet that plant is as scarce in southern agriculture as the proverbial “hen’s teeth”.
The writer has spent the last twenty years of his life, in season and out of season, preaching winter and summer legumes as the key to soilsalvation and economic production in the South, and he has never failed to secure a large local acreage where he has worked; yet “the blamed thing don’t stay put”. Just as soon as the first three to five years of "protracted meeting” are over, farmers proceed to backslide into the old well-beaten paths on which they again attempt to “climb up some other way”.
North Little Rock’s Strange Mayor By Jimmie Cornett
Doctor Norman, of Bentonville, recently related to me the following strange experience. He and his party were arrested by the mayor of North Little Rock, Arkansas, as they were en route to a chiropractic convention. The mayor was drunk, swearing, and very intent on securing “bond money”, after which he would allow his prisoners’ release. When refused “bond money”, the mayor even threatened to shoot down the party as they stood.
Finally the doctor and his party were rescued from the mayor and allowed to proceed on their otherwise peaceful journey. A city aiderman secured the sworn testimony concerning the truth of the affair from the doctor and friends; the mayor resigned to avoid impeachment; the above-mentioned aiderman was found dead with a bullet in his head, the reason for which was unknown. All this within a few days.
Cocoon, Most Beautiful of Caskets
MOST beautiful of all caskets is the cocoon, the lovely shroud which the silkworm weaves for itself in the last three or four days of its life. So delicate is the tiny thread that issues from the spinneret in the silkworm’s upper lip that five of them must be united to produce a thread strong enough to stand handling, and sixty to produce a stocking thread.
One silkworm, during its feeding season, will eat its weight of mulberry leaves every day, and in a little over a month grows to be about two and a half inches long, loaded down with sacks full of the gmn of which the silk thread is subsequently spun into a two-strand thread carefully covered with gum.
A single worm will produce as high as ten thousand feet of silk filament, or up to two hundred feet of first-class stocking thread. This thread is woven in figure-eight fashion, evidently designed by the Creator to be removed and used for just the purpose for which it is now employed.
The removal of the thread is a delicate job.
The surface of the cocoons must be cleaned and five of them uncoiled at one time, when together they are passed through the tiny guide which forms them into a miniature thread. The only way they can be handled at this stage is in trays of warm water, and constant resort to water is an element in all silk manufacture and use.
If the thread of the cocoon is not removed in ten or fifteen days, a beautiful moth emerges, destroying the cocoon in the process. This moth lives but a few days, and its only food is water. Nevertheless, during its brief period of life this moth lays its eggs, another supply of young silkworms, and the process begins all over again.
The name “silk” is derived from the name of the little Chinese lady, Si-Ling-Shi, who first made silk fabric. For centuries the secret of how silk is made was carefully guarded in the Orient, but finally two spies sent out by Emperor Justinian succeeded in bringing a quantity of silkworm eggs back to Europe in the staves which they used on their journey.
Ripley’s Life of St. Patrick
Ripley, the cartoonist, stated that St. Patrick We looked it up and, sure enough, the state-was neither a Catholic, a saint, nor an ments all appear to be correct. He was of Brit-Irishman, and that his name wTas not Patrick, ish ancestry, and his name was Sucat.
The Defeat of Amanullah
AN ARTICLE in The Nation explains the downfall of Amanullah, the enlightened ruler of Afghanistan who sought, perhaps too soon, to establish reforms in hi;s country similar to those which have been put into effect in Turkey. He had gone a considerable distance with his program of modern roads, European dress, and universal education for boys and girls alike, when a sudden revolt of five thousand men led by a brigand armed to the teeth with British-made arms and ammunition necessitated his retirement. Now Afghanistan is right back where it was, a helpless, benighted country used by Britain as a buffer state. It is claimed that, outwardly, Britain’s attitude toward Afghanistan has been entirely correct, but on the inside a group of British men have wilfully plunged Afghanistan back into barbarism so that England may keep a firmer hold on India. What a shame I
Do “Health Foods” Violate the Law?
(By Dr. G. R. Clements, Editor of How to Live Magazine)
UNDER the heading, “Health Foods Hit by
Ruling of U. S.,” the hand of the medical trust is again seen at work. The article appears in the press of May 26, and begins:
The public has been warned by the food division of the Department of Agriculture against using highly advertised “health foods” which claim curative or health-giving properties.
In a statement made public today, it is said that the department believes the use of the word “health” in connection with foods constitutes a misbranding under the food and drug act. The use of the word implies, it is said, that the products have health-giving or curative properties, when they merely possess some of the nutritive qualities to be expected in any wholesome food products.
If the medical trust advertises that vaccination and inoculation protect one’s “health” by making one immune to disease, not one word is said against it by the Department of Agriculture.
If the medical trust kills and cripples scores of soldiers and school children by the deadly practice of vaccination and inoculation, not one word is said against it by any department of the government. But when health-building doctors, using only natural, hygienic measures, speak, about “health foods”, they are violating the law.
The article continues:
The label-claims on these products are such that the consumer is led to believe that our ordinary diet is sorely deficient in such vital substances as vitamins and minerals, and that these so-called “health foods” are absolutely necessary to conserve life and health.
Ask the German sailors of the June issue of How To Live For Health and Strength whether or not “our ordinary diet is sorely deficient in such vital substances as vitamins and minerals”. Just 255 days on “our ordinary diet” put many of them in the hospital, and the rest of them on the verge of collapse.
When the surgeon of their ship put them on a diet of “health foods”, recommended by Alfred McCann, the men soon recovered from their disorders, after everything known to medical science had been done, and done in vain. Here is proof that “health foods” are absolutely necessary to conserve life and health.
Quoting further from the article :
The department does not object to calling these products “wholesome”, it is said, provided they are wholesome; but the effort to give the impression that we all need something added to our every-day diet if we are to avoid nutritional disaster is a misrepresentation which the food-law-enforcing authorities aim to combat.
Not only would the medical trust force vaccination, inoculation, medication, and surgical operations upon the race, but now, with the aid of the government, the trust would compel humanity to adhere to “our every-day diet”. For it “is a misrepresentation which the food-law-enforcing authorities aim to combat” if any one shall claim “that we all need something added to our every-day diet if we are to avoid nutritional disaster”.
At the Texas State Medical Society convention, held during May, 1929, it was decided, among other things, to launch during the coming year-
Active campaigns throughout; Texas for the election of more (medical) doctors to the legislature, and more intensive efforts to obtain medical legislation....
The legislative program demands that each state hospital be provided with a building for the treatment of acute infectious and contagious diseases; that provisions be made for the immunization against smallpox and typhoid fever in the hospitals.
Why does the medical trust find it expedient to put medical doctors into political places ? To ■write the very articles from which we have quoted above regarding “health foods”. No one but medical doctors holding political offices write such articles, and they are published as coming from the “Department of ’Agriculture”, all of which constrains the unthinking mass to place much faith in information issued by the government. But the information is the product of a medical trust doctor, holding political office.
The medical and serum trust is always working : planning, planning, planning to grasp greater control of the field of health and disease. The time is not far off when national medical compulsion will be a reality, unless the people see the handwriting on the wall and defeat at the polls every medical doctor running for office and every politician who is influenced by the medical and serum trust.
The Crime of Vaccination 1 By Tenison Deane, M. D.
THE author will relate this case, as one that started him in his investigation and study on the subject. June 15, 1889, the author was spending his vacation on the ranch of a wealthy farmer in the northern part of the state of California, fifteen miles from the nearest town, a farm of 10,000 acres, and no immediate neighbors. The farmer had a wife and seven children. The foreman, a negro, had a wife and five children. None had ever been vaccinated. Six of them were selected and vaccinated by the author.
The farmer’s wife, age 43 years.
The farmer’s daughter, age 6 years.
The farmer’s son, age 8 years.
The farmer’s son, age 25 years.
The negro foreman, age 46 years.
His son, age 12 years.
All the rest were left out and were not afterwards vaccinated. On August 1, 1890 (13% months later), the farmer, his wife and five children went to the mountain ranch forty miles away, taking with them the foreman, his wife and five children. There had been no diphtheria in the town nor any in their neighborhood. The mountain ranch was an uninhabited virgin pine forest district with pure water, where they took up their camp.
On August 24 an epidemic of sore throat and canker sores developed among the children. Farmer’s daughter, seven years old; son, nine years old, and the foreman’s son, thirteen years old, developed very serious throat and constitutional symptoms and were taken to the home ranch, where a doctor was sent for. Diphtheria ■was the diagnosis. The farmer’s wife also developed diphtheria. All the rest who had not been vaccinated cured rapidly of their sore throats. The farmer’s daughter, seven years old, died. The farmer’s son, nine years old, did not recuperate for one year. The farmer’s wife, 44 years old, had paralysis and sequela;, -which lasted over one year. The foreman’s son, thirteen years old, became very weak and did not return to normal health.
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