Golden Age, January 8, 1930
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Golden Age
A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND. COURAGE
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“WATCHTOWER
FRAUDS .
FRUGIVOROUS MAN
VACCINATION IN ENGLAND
CONTROL OF THE AIR
THE CONTROVERSY
THE ARGUMENTS two radio lectures by Judge Rutherford
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EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY 5c a copy - $1.00 a year - Canada & Foreign $1.50
Volume XI <= No. 269 Jaiiuary 8, 193 0
Contents
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Social and Educational
"WATCHTOWER — WBBR” .............. 227
Some Ebatos—-Past and Present .......
A Lift of the Lid .
Radio Instruction in Mexico .....
Freedom of Speech by Radio ............... 243
Finance—Commerce—Transportation
Lights on Traffic Policemen ..............
Townless Highways Coming .
Winnipeg’s Electric Rate
Political—Domestic and Foreign
Britain’s Conscientious Objectors
Chile’s New Penal Code
Has Cuba a Reign of Terror?
Wall Street’s October Panic . .
Science and Invention
Helps to Reading the Palimpsests
Teletype in Los Angeles
The Liberty Bridge ......
Home and Health
Frugivorous Man
Vaccination and tub Law in England ...
A Letter to Doctor Betts ...
Travel and Miscellany
China’s Pitiable Millions .........
Religion and Philosophy
Christianity and War .....
Bible Questions and Answers ........
The Controversy .................. 245
The Arguments .................. 249
Robbing the Dairyman ................. 254
The Children’s Own Radio Story ............. 255
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, N. Y., U. B. A.
CLAYTON J. WOODWORTH.. Editor ROBERT .1. MARTIN.. Business Manages NATHAN H. KNORR .. Secretary and Treasurer
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Entered as second-class matter at Brooklyn, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879<
^he Golden Age
Volume XI Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, January 8, 1930 Number 269
u WATCHTOWER — W B B R ”
Brooklyn Has the World’s Most Beautiful Broadcasting Studio.
WHEN it comes to mere bigness, Chicago has the largest broadcasting studio, 75 feet by 51 feet; when it comes to the largest number of artists employed about a studio, New York has one with a staff of 700 persons; but when it comes to sheer loveliness, Brooklyn has a studio that has it all over either one of the two big cities with which it contends in point of population. And the Brooklyn studio is not so small either. The main broadcasting salon is 45 by 23 feet, with a ceiling 17, feet 6 inches above the floor.
This beautiful salon is merely one part of the Brooklyn city installation of the WATCHTOWER Network, broadcasting the Sunday morning lectures of Judge J. F. Rutherford on Bible topics, sent out over thirty-one stations scattered over the area between Maine, South Dakota, Kentucky and North Carolina. Occasionally the WATCHTOWER Network goes through to the Pacific Coast, and on three occasions Judge Rutherford has had the honor of the greatest radio hook-ups in history.
The ‘WATCHTOWER—WBBR” programs, 'daily except Saturday, also go out from this salon, which we shall now attempt to describe; but it is a hard job to depict loveliness. A gentleman familiar with several of the largest broadcasting studios said immediately on entering it, “Station ------[mentioning one of the
best known studios in New York], compared with this, is like a barn.'’ Another gentleman, who has been in all parts of the world, looked at the grand salon long and thoughtfully, and said: “The impression is ethereal. I can find no other word to adequately express it.”
The walls and ceilings of the salon are nile green, that is to say, they would be nile green if it were not for the beautiful panels of soft-toned variously tinted acoustical materials that were let into them. As it is, there are five
shades of color in each wall and on the ceiling, for the great beams around the top of the room and pilasters at each end are pure white.
Those pilasters are something to talk about. One in each corner of the room, of course, but three in each corner of that end of the room where the artists enter and leave. The grouping of these six pilasters last named gives an air of dignity and purity and beauty hard to be described.
Now try to imagine a ceiling supported by eight beautiful wfliite pilasters and carrying giant white ceiling beams around the edges. Next these beams is a narrow strip of the ceiling proper, done in nile green, but the whole vast interior portion of the ceiling is made up of a panel of acoustical material, some of the strips in golden yellow, others in light and dark ochre, all most artistically placed with respect to one another.
The side walls are, if anything, still more interesting. The illusion that they are of nile green is carried out throughout, but each end wall is broken by two panels of the acoustical materials in three colors above named, and each side wall is broken by four such panels. The whole is a dream.
Perhaps the first thing a visitor will note on coming into the studio is the chandeliers, of which there are eight. These chandeliers are strictly modernistic. The lights which they carry are soft and the chandeliers throw no shadows. Each chandelier is enclosed in a nine-pointed casket of cream-colored glass, swelling out in four offsets, in straight lines, with each line edged with black.
The black edges of the cream-colored chandeliers suggest a line of decoration which runs around the studio breast-high from the floor. Below that narrow black line the walls of the studio are of beige tint. The floor is of cork in 227
n* GOLDEN AGE
228 two colors, foot-square sections, with burnt sienna edges.
Furniture in the main broadcasting salon is of the practical sort for the purpose for which it is used. The piano is a Mason & Hamlin. The microphones and other accessories for the use of artists are the latest and best. There are no outside windows. Heating and ventilation are indirect and perfect. The air in the studio is changed completely every four and one-half minutes. A velour drape at one end offsets the beautiful stairway rising from the other end. There is an exit from one of the side walls, for the convenience of artists who reside in the building, 124 Columbia Heights.
At the stairway end of the main salon, raised some ten feet above its floor, there are, on the one side, the waiting room for artists, and, on the other, the smaller broadcasting salon, and the control room. The latter is so located that the operator can view both studios 'without leaving his seat. The transmitter is on Staten Island. The windows between the control room and the studios, and those between the studios and the artists’ waiting room, are double, and set in rubber.
The small studio, twenty feet long by fourteen feet wide, is for the use of speakers, duos, and trios. Like the main salon, it has specially prepared acoustical materials on ceiling and , walls, and a cork floor, above several thicknesses of felt and cork. Like the main salon, the trim of the hexagonal chandelier in this salon is carried out in the oak trim of the room. This room is equipped with loud-speaker and signs of contact when microphone is on.
The waiting room for artists, where they linger until time for them to go on the air, is a neatly furnished hall thirty-eight feet long by nine feet wide, the most interesting feature of which is a “Watch Tower” the light in which flashes intermittently to tell the artists that they are in the studio of that name. The walls of all these rooms are lined with sound-deadeners. All the ceilings are insulated, so that there is always a uniform temperature. This room has a beam ceiling. The room for telegraph operators of the WATCHTOWER Network is near by.
Convenient to the artists’ waiting room, and at one side of a hall six feet wide by twenty feet long, is a ladies’ rest room an interesting feature of which is an elegant black china drinking fountain of newest design. Elaborate toilet rooms are adjacent, finished in white enamel.
Connecting with the hall last named is a hall at right angles to it, twenty-five feet long. On one side of this hall, at one end, is a men’s lobby, with drinking fountain, and adjoining it a spacious, well-equipped toilet room, having two shower baths as one of the features of which artists may avail themselves if they come early enough. A neat little sign in this room says, “No smoking on the premises”; and means what it says.
At the other end of this hall, on the same side, is the radio manager’s room and program manager’s room, an apartment twelve feet wide by nineteen feet long. The floors of all these halls and rooms are laid with a particularly beauti- .......
ful pattern of inlaid linoleum which extends to them in an unbroken pattern from the artists’ reception, audition and practice room, adjacent to the main entrance to the building, on the opposite side of the hall last named. This room, nineteen feet wide by twenty-four feet long, is fitted with piano, settee and a half dozen pieces of fine furniture. The lighting arrangement is : of the same general pattern as in the main broadcasting salon. The brown trim of the chandeliers in this room furnishes the key to the scheme of its decoration. The velour drapes of the room are of old rose color. The light green stripe on the library table is found in all the furniture in this room, and on its wall. The wall is finished in stipple.
Stairways, where they occur, are of terrazzo, laid in cement. Suitable signs direct the artists where to go. The whole studio is a credit to ■ Brooklyn, to Greater New York, and to the country as a whole. No doubt it is one of the most beautiful conceptions ever carried out. WBBR is to be congratulated.
Lights on Traffic Policemen
THE traffic policemen of London, for their own protection, will hereafter wear electric lights, strapped to the small of the back. This is almost necessary in London on account of the dense fogs that at times prevail. These officers also wear white armlets.
Some Frauds—Past and Present
HE greatest of all frauds, and the father of them all, is the- same one that told the first lie, the Devil. His statement to mother Eve, "Ye shall not surely die,” has been proven false at every funeral from Eve’s time until now; and yet Satan has today in the earth far more people who believe his lie that the dead are not dead than there are persons willing to believe the Bible and every one of the five senses, all of which are in agreement that the dead are dead and remain so until the resurrection.
The next fraud was in the days of Enos when men first began to hypocritically call themselves by the name of the Lord, when the facts show that in reality they were servants of the Devil and should properly have called themselves by his name, as being their head, their father, their master.
Historically, then, we are obliged to give religious frauds the first place. A fraud is an act of deliberate deception practised with the object of securing something to the prejudice of another. One who practises such deception is also called a fraud.
When Satan lied to mother Eve he was seeking to estrange the human family from their Creator. It is impossible for God to lie; and Satan knows it, but he did not hesitate to insinuate falsehood against the pure and perfect Giver of every good and perfect gift, so that he himself might take the Creator’s place in the minds of his victims.
There is still a much greater market for Satan’s lie than for the truth. The truth that when men die they are dead, and. would be dead for ever unless God in His mercy should waken them from that sleep, is so repulsive to the natural man that neither reason nor Scripture have any Aveight with him. He prefers to believe what he has been taught, despite the fact that it is 'wholly without foundation.
The doctrines of purgatory and hell fire, with all their attendant miseries for the minds of millions now living in the earth, are merely restatements of the lie originally told to mother Eve. Every cent and every dollar that has ever been paid for masses for the dead is money that has been obtained by fraud. God is not in partnership with robbers of widows and orphans.
The Power-Trust Fraud
The Power Trust can not claim to be as "ancient and honorable” as the religious end of the world of frauds. In fact, its history of the last few years proves that it is neither ancient nor honorable. But in smallness of soul, and thoroughness and meanness and contemptibility, it has no equal.
There are none too helpless mentally for it to debauch, no family so poor that it does not aspire to rob them of at least a little. It is the special darling of the great banks, of the stock exchange, of the newspapers, of the colleges, and of the government. To the full extent of its ability it has subverted them all.
Why any intelligent stick-up man should remain at his dangerous work when there are millions to be had in the peculiar methods of "finance” of the Power Trust must ever be a mystery. It is far easier to rob millions than to rob individuals, and the results are sure and safe.
Every month, as regular as the calendar, the average family must pay around ten cents a kilowatt hour for electric current that costs less than fc a kilowatt hour. They must do it every month this year, every month next year, and every month as far as men can see into the future, and at least three quarters of it is sheer robbery, simon-pure fraud.
It is on this huge difference between costs and selling prices that the New York stock exchange and all the other stock exchanges are built up. It is on these profits that the great "bull” markets are built up, which are periodically dropped to the bottom of the elevator shaft to shake out the little fellows, so that all the profits may remain with the "great financiers”, who direct the component parts of the Trust.
It is no wonder that the common people, when they read about the billions which have been made by padding their bills for public utilities, and using their life insurance money to swing the market this way or that, are driven into a frenzy of buying or a frenzy of selling stocks, in the mistaken notion that somehow or other they will be able to get back a part of what they feel is properly their own.
The Sucker Lists
The rush of millions of buyers into the stock market when stocks are on the upward swing, and their subsequent cleaning out when the right time has arrived, has 'developed in New York a list of stock buyers that is locally known as ‘the sucker list’. Copies of the list command a high price.
Experience shows that the person who has once been bitten by the mania to obtain money in the stock market seldom recovers sanity. He comes again and, again into the market, and in seven years, so runs the estimate, he is well and permanently relieved of all his assets, and an-othei' crop is ready.
People work all their lives and accumulate money by hard work and put their money into stock schemes which they fondly hope will eventuate as do the schemes of the Power Trust. They are trying to imitate, but they do not have behind them the franchises and the financial backing, and the newspapers and politicians, that are necessary to win. The women are as foolish as the men.
A Dignified Bank Robbery
The efforts to obtain a certain crude kind of justice result in many minor frauds, often aimed at the largest banks in the big cities. One of the most peculiar cases of the kind was that of Charles D. Waggoner, president of a bank in Telluride, Colorado.
Mr. Waggoner claims that New York financiers ruined Telluride by buying three of the largest mines and closing them down, throwing most of the inhabitants of the town out of work. Through code telegrams, ostensibly signed by Denver banks, he obtained from New York institutions certified checks for half a million dollars, most of which he placed to the credit of his own bank. He claims that he did this so that Telluride people who had been, unfairly treated by the New York financiers might get their money back, and that he is perfectly satisfied to take the prison term he is sure to get.
Two men named "Weller lived for about ten years in New York, making their living by means of checks which they had printed on nonexistent banks, and which they falsely certified. They deposited these checks here and there over the country and drew against them quickly, thus stealing, it is estimated, about $150,000. They got ten years in prison, which was right.
The great banks are supposed to know how to take care of themselves, and they do know it pretty well; yet on one occasion the Bank of England parted with $500,000 for forged bills
of exchange, and forged letters of credit have induced European banks to part with more than ; that amount within the past two years. L
New York police a year ago picked up a dignified, charming lady dressed in black who managed to collect $50 to $75 in cash from many of the most important stores in New York -city. She did it by ordering valuable merchan- ; dise sent to a prominent hotel. Then she gave a i check for $50 or $75 more than the amount of the merchandise and received her change. She made $15,000 in this way before she finally was r... caught. Needless to say she drew worthless i checks and did not live at the hotel named. The purchase of the goods was what deceived the storekeepers. The goods always came back all ; right, but they were out their change. ....
A Few Political Frauds
A complete history of political frauds would ■ be the most complete history of mankind that has ever been written; and the people no quick- : er get deceived once than they are ready to fall down and do homage to another who promises them the same things, and give him the votes . that enable him to put his various deals into action.
Recently the world has been treated to the ; sordid spectacle of a United States senator ; from Connecticut having in his employ, and paid by the United States government, a man who at the same time was in the employ and on : the payroll of a manufacturers’ association in his home state. When advice was wanted as to ■ how to write a new tariff law, this man was ready to tell the American people just what to ■..
do. And as soon as he got any inside infonna- L
tion he was equally ready to tip his Connecticut employers off, so that they could formulate new j demands. It worked fine, like the colored man’s : coon trap. And the most shameless part of the , whole matter is that fellow senators of the man from Connecticut, some of them, publicly defended his course, saw nothing wrong with it, -
It seems that in China when a man can not be persuaded to go straight they make a soldier--------
out of him, and thereafter he can do all his.......-
deeds of banditry in uniform. Something like : this system is in process of development in : America. A year ago, in Philadelphia, it looked. for a time as if the preliminary installation exercises had been held.
A police captain and twenty-three of his subordinates were arrested at one time. The trail of graft, extortion, bribery, bootlegging and racketeering ran all over the city and down to Washington, whence issm the permits to manufacture the “perfumery” kept in decanters on the sideboards of Philadelphia’s most exclusive homes. In Philadelphia, at that time, it was considered better etiquette to have a policeman for a bootlegger than to have an ordinary citizen.
Minor Political Swindles
In the vicinity of New York the political boss of a district is its patron saint. Picnics among the supporters of a candidate are common. In Jersey City, rascals, during the 1928 campaign for president, sold Republican outing tickets at $2 apiece, and Democratic tickets at $2.50, to hundreds of persons. In the one case the outings were to be at Lake Hopatcong, and in the other at Keansburg, N. J. The only thing certain is that many men, poor laborers too, dressed in their best clothing and gathered at _ the appointed rendezvous at the time set, but found no one ■waiting to take them to the places to which they had paid to go.
New Jersey must be rich, when it can afford to pay $18 apiece for serving papers; yet that is what the taxpayers of Hudson county have had to pay in salaries to get the w’ork done. One man found his work for one of the city governments in that county did not interfere with his hiring out to work for a newspaper during the same hours. One man was paid $1,700 a year for the onerous task of gathering up, for a distance of two blocks, the crates of vegetables jolted from trucks in passing!
The graft in New York is the despair of Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago, and the wonder of the world. On its Jamaica sewer system the city was forced to pay from four to eight times the market value of the sewei’ pipe used, the graft alone running to at least $8,000,000.
In the street cleaning department of the Bronx alone seven hundred names of men carried on the payrolls were of those who had been ________employed for brief periods as emergency men __ .....and thereafter were carried for periods of
which they had no knowledge, or "were those of : men who had never at any time worked in the ’ department, or were names of men who never “"’existed anywhere at any time but somehow managed to be on hand on pay day.
One of the meanest and smallest forms of graft has been in connection with the demanding of licenses from pushcart and other street peddlers. Up to $500 graft has been levied on preferred locations. Peddlers have made applications for licenses and waited for months for their permits in vain, while those who paid the necessary graft obtained licenses readily.
The Racketeering Industry
The racketeering industry is nothing more nor less than a revival of tribute-taking, and no industry is exempt. This particular addition to our twentieth century civilization came from Chicago, but its machine-gun division was evidently trained for service during the World War.
A canvasser for the “protection association” comes along with a suggestion that for a stipulated sum, perhaps $1,000, the business will be “protected” from racketeers for a year. If the money is paid, the protection is provided. If it is withheld, things happen quickly.
Almost anything may happen. Trucks full of goods disappear: the goods are stolen and the trucks destroyed. The owner of a laundry will find that his place has been entered and acid sprayed on his clothes. The poultry trust division is estimated to have had an income of $600,000 a year. Independent merchants were driven out of business.
In the Bronx, in September, 1929, one hundred and twenty policemen -were on guard day and night over unfinished apartment houses where racketeers had destroyed about $3,000,000 worth of new property because the builders 'did not promptly pay their “dues”. All this makes it harder for the honest citizen, because he must in one way or another repay the builders.
Ta the Bronx it was found that some builders had paid as much as $25,000 in graft to the racketeers. If they did not pay, their men were called off the job, and in some instances the ’buildings were burned. In three months eleven such fires caused damage running into the millions.
The racketeer gangs, of which it is estimated that at least 250 are operating in New York, reach down to the wage earner. Workers are terrorized into each giving up a small amount. Witnesses dare not testify, for fear of reprisals. The other day a poor motorman was overheard bitterly reproaching a large, prosperous-looking, well-dressed citizen for “shaking me down”, as the motorman put it.
Referring to police connivance in the industry, the New York Times says: “When crooks and criminals see that the very officials entrusted with the enforcement and administration of the law are themselves racketeering, it is not surprising that they become bold and organize and operate on a wholesale scale.”
Fraudulent Use of the Mails
Uncle Sam has at all times thousands of boarders who have been tried and convicted for misuse of the mails, and thousands more who are equally guilty, but clever enough to escape being caught. In New York, in a single month, over a hundred cases of fraud were prosecuted, thirty-six for misuse of the mails, and sixty-five for fraudulent bankruptcy.
The schemes devised to collect money through the mails without rendering any service in return are simply legion. All kinds of glittering promises are made. Possibly employment is offered. A substantial payment is made for “samples” or materials or what not, and the collector is that much ahead. No honest attempt to fulfil promises is made.
In New York city a brilliant student of human nature, William Goldsmith, reflected that the bereaved are always sensitive about contracts made by their loved ones who have passed away. He picked out the names and addresses from obituary columns, sent the family a clock which cost $2.20, and with it a bill for $7.50. He did a nice business, but finally stubbed his toe w’hen he sent a clock to the family of a man who had been in a hospital for six months and unable to speak.
In 1927, in New York, a dignified swindler was locked up who was a walking post office on his own account. By filling in stolen money orders, canceling stamps on letters, etc., he managed to collect about $1,400 from the best hotels in New York city, until he cashed one order too many.
Every now and then some simple-minded but crooked-hearted individual gets the brilliant idea of using the United States mails as a basis of collecting a ransom from somebody. In Hazleton, Pa., on one occasion, one such man even rented a post office box and demanded that the money be sent to that box. The rest was easy! When he went for his mail he was taken in and made one of the family.
Insurance and Transportation Frauds
When the ferryboat Peralta made her nose dive in San Francisco Bay, which drowned five passengers, a Mrs. Huffman reported her daughter missing and sued the ferry company for $50,000. She did not know that insurance companies have big books filled with case after case where survivors have tried to collect insurance under similar instances. It was a great disappointment to her when detectives found her daughter, working in a strange locality, under an assumed name, and proved that mother and daughter were in collusion. They went to prison together, as a result.
There used to be a great deal of fraud practised upon railway companies, mostly by dishonest conductors, who, for a small sum, would carry their friends considerable distances; but the heavy penalties now imposed, as to fines and imprisonment, have probably stopped most of that.
Charges for excess baggage have often been collected in bygone years and the money retained by the one who collected it. France is just wrestling with this problem, having discovered that baggagemen have been falsifying weights and splitting the profits with passengers who have large quantities of baggage.
The toll bridge is essentially a fraud in this day. One such bridge made 185 percent on its cost in a single year. Every passenger over the New York Central Lines between Albany and New York pays a small sum to the Vanderbilt family, a sum which mounts prodigiously with the years.
Religious and Publication Frauds
No field of fraud is more systematically and persistently plowed, sown, cultivated and reaped than the religious one. The purgatory swindle alone has garnered billions. The humble collection box has extorted willing and unwilling contributions that have accomplished no heavenly or earthly end except to keep the shakers thereof in food and raiment.
The South is grieving over the fact that one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta, treasurer of the home mission board of the Southern Baptist Convention, helped himself to over $1,000,000 of the funds in his care, representing the lifetime donations of many members of his denomination. Brother Carnes got pinched in the stock market.
Arkansas has recently been visited by-some well-dressed religious men who have persuaded the people to part with $10 to $17.75 for a Bible which was to cost $25; a very fine Bible indeed, which probably cost about $7 to make, possibly much less. The sad part is that the religious men got the advanced payments all right but neglected to send in the money to the publishers. As a consequence the buyers got nothing but the experience.
Every community has been blessed by the crowd of canvassers that come in and get pictures of all the great and near-great men of the town and county. These are published in the book at $10 per, plus a copy of the book for another nice sum, a tribute to vanity. Two men who used to be in this business were recently arrested in New York for trying to get $185 out of an architect. They posed as biographical writers for newspapers in London and Paris. They had to go back to jail.
Among the most amusing frauds of recent years was that practised by the French farm laborer, sole author and patentee of the Glozel ■'finds’, which set the whole so-called scientific world by the ears. He made them all look foolish. Their proofs of evolution turned out to be the work of an uneducated man with a little knowledge picked up at museums, and a nail.
Social Frauds
There is nothing that some people will not do to break into ‘sassiety’. And when they get in, for the most part, they find that there is nothing there; nothing but a mad scramble to see who shall make the biggest splurge, not infrequently winding up with a scandal.
'Princess Bizzimo’ had all Berlin at her feet. Elegantly dressed and perfumed she lived for several weeks at one of the best hotels, all on her dazzling smile. Then she left and went to another hotel, without paying her bill or leaving any baggage worth while. At the second hotel she succeeded in getting a check cashed with which she paid her first hotel bill, and was getting along pretty well until finally she had too many checks out and somebody reported her to the police. She even had the judge won over, until finally a detective happened to remember that he had seen her before; and that was the end of her Berlin triumph.
A young soldier, back from Panama on a vacation, nearly got himself into a permanent home in New Jersey by posing as the kidnaped son of a woman living in the community. Her son had disappeared when he was six years of age, and the young man of seventeen wanted a home. Unfortunately for him, his stories did not hang together and he had to go back to the army. He admitted that he had lied in order to get a home.
When Lindbergh flew from New York to Paris, a bright young New York man made himself up into a committee, got some letterheads printed, and sent out 1,500 invitations to a banquet in Lindbergh’s honor, $10 a plate. He gathered in $7,600 just before Lindbergh returned, and went off somewhere to have a good time with the $7,600. There was no banquet, at least not of his providing.
Real Estate Booms
No one can ever say with certainty that a real estate boom is a fraud. Some of the most valuable real estate in the world was first sold when it was under water and looked as if it was worth nothing. Dredges and piling made from it beautiful water fronts, a delight to the eye.
Yet occasionally there is something that comes so near being barefaced robbery that it is hard to call it by any other name. Lands have been sold for irrigation in the vicinity of Boulder Dam which lay higher than the waters will reach. A man who knows how to read maps noticed that tracts were being sold marked fEl. 1200’, meaning elevation 1,200 feet, and asked the salesman what it meant. Back came the reply instantly, intended to cut off further inquiry, “It means electricity 1,200 volts,” a most ingenious lie.
A fertile source of revenue is the nursing of real estate claims to estates of persons who died a hundred or more years ago. In the meantime the farms or other properties which they once owned have been sold and resold and covered with buildings, and the heirs of the original owners stand about as much chance of getting anything back as do the North American Indians of regaining their happy hunting grounds.
The Employment Agency Swindle
The most cruel and heartless of all swindles is that of the private employment agency which operates along dishonest lines. There have been and perhaps still are agencies 'that work in collusion with head waiters whereby the worker is discharged soon after earning enough to pay his employment agency fee. The fee is split between the agency and the head waiter, and the more new employees there are, the more money to divide. If anybody can think of a more diabolical swindle than this, name it.
One agency manager obtained the power of attorney from unsuspecting workers, collected $150,000 from their employers, and never turned the money over to those who had earned it. When some of these poor men and women tried to collect their wages they were beaten and thrown out penniless after working an entire season, in summer hotels.
Some agencies make a practice of sending a 'dozen applicants to one job. When the unsuccessful applicants return and demand their money back they are thrown out. One building superintendent, in collusion with an employment agency, was in the custom of discharging one-third of his force every day and then hiring others through the same agency.
The Alice Foote MacDougall Coffee Shops, very aristocratic, were in the limelight a year ago for requiring their waitresses to pay $10 a week for their jobs, expecting them to make their wages out of the tips they received and pay the concern $10 besides.
The Confidence Man
The confidence man is a student of philosophy who is using his talents in the wrong direction. New York had one such man, a well-to-do cotton broker, who did not do it because he needed the money, but took his recreation defrauding attorneys, banks, and hotels. He dressed well, talked well, and did it just because he liked to try his skill. He finally did it once too often, and got caught.
Confidence men make a specialty of luring poor widows into parting with their life insurance money or other property. What a miserable way to obtain an existence, preying upon the weakness and inexperience of others! It is like taking money for masses for the repose of the soul.
A confidence man in New York offered to sell a woman a small box containing $7,000 of the late Czar’s diamonds for $1,800. She-went to the bank and gave him $1,000, all she had, only to find that she had purchased a quantity of highly polished pieces of plate glass.
The offer of stupendous profits has misled millions of people. The Ponzi case in Boston was one example. There was recently another one in Iowa, and in Wisconsin. It paid 26% dividends regularly to those who wished them. Thousands of preachers, farmers, merchants and clerks put in their last dollar. Finally the bubble burst and the entire crowd was broke flat. New York had a similar experience a year ago with a French financial paper. It left mourners to the extent of $3,910,000.
The Two-Man Confidence Game
The two-man confidence game is a great improvement (?) on the one-man game. We cite three instances. The first was in Birmingham, ’Ala. Two men accidentally met a real estate broker on the street. They talked of a business deal and agreed to meet in the afternoon at a hotel to discuss it further. The broker tells what happened. He says: 'We talked business and finally the two men bet me $100 I could not raise $5,000 in several minutes. I went down to the bank to prove it to them. I got the money and was back in the room in less than ten minutes. Well! You win,’ said one of the men. 'Now you ought to buy the cigars.’ 'Sure, I’ll buy a whole box,’ said I, jumped up, left the $5,000 on the table and ran for the smokes. When I got back my two friends were gone, and so was my $5,000.”
A man claiming to be ill entered the shop of a hard-working New York shoemaker, stating that he had just arrived from Detroit. He asked the shoemaker to keep $15,000 for him for a short time, all the while complaining of his pains. As they were talking a second man entered the shop and offered to share some of the responsibility, saying he would post $3,000 as a guaranty of his own honesty if the shoemaker would also give a guaranty. The latter went to the bank and drew $1,000, all he had, and turned it over to the first man, along with the $3,000 already given him by the second man. The pains of the first man got worse and he asked the shoemaker to run across the street to a drug store and get some medicine for him. When he got back both the men and all the money were gone.
A somewhat similar two-man job was done at
Coney Island two years ago.'A stranger strolled up to an Italian plasterer and told him of his desire to go to Italy and secure the vast fortune which was awaiting him there for an invention which he described. While they were talking a second stranger came up, pulled out a roll of bills with a $5,000 bill on the outside and offered to pay the first man’s passage to Europe. The suggestion was then made that the plasterer get in on the invention, which he did by drawing all his money from the bank and putting it in the inventor’s hands. The inventor suddenly became ill. The man with the $5,000 bill hurried away for aspirin. When he came back the sick inventor accused him of trying to poison him. The plasterer was then induced to go to a drug store for more aspirin, which he did, with the usual results. The two men and all the money were missing.
It seems as though we are now living at a time of less real honesty than at any other time in earth’s history. Thank God Messiah’s kingdom will put an end to all this. Justice shall be laid to the line and righteousness to the plummet, and it shall come to pass that every soul that will not obey earth’s new ruler, with his whole heart, mind, soul and strength, shall be destroyed from among the people.
A Lift of the Lid
Radio Instruction in Mexico
THE Department of Public Education in
Mexico is now radiocasting instructions to teachers in five Mexican states. Rural teachers are thus given guidance in their vocations without the necessity of leaving home.
And Now the Robot Aviator
NEW German invention automatically stabilizes an airplane while in flight, enabling the pilot to give his attention to other matters.
The automatic control is intended to take the strain off the pilot’s nerves and give him more time to devote to the art of navigation.
Courtesy to an Earthquake
IT IS said that nothing is more unsettling to the human mind and nervous system than an earthquake shock. When Massachusetts had a quite heavy shock recently a group of the highly trained students of Massachusetts Institute of Technology involuntarily rose to their feet, the first step in flight.
Mean Chan Chun Hung
WHEN Chan Chun Hung, of Amherstburg, Ontario, was found with four bottles of whisky in his room and was brought into court to explain how he came to have it, and when he was asked if he was a Christian, he was mean enough to say, ‘No, I am a Presbyterian.’ This is rather a severe rebuke to the gentleman who burned Servetus at the stake.
Radio in South Dakota Schools
WITHIN the next two years radio receiving sets will be installed in each of South Dakota’s 5,000 public schools, and a comprehensive plan of semi-weekly broadcasts of an educational nature will be inaugurated.
Pulverized Fuel on the Ocean
THE United States Shipping Board steamer
West Alsek is the first vessel to cross the Atlantic ocean on pulverized fuel. The tests thus far made show increase of speed of 9 percent and a saving in fuel as high as 15 percent, and indicate a wider use of this fuel.
Bahamas in Distress
HE summer hurricane of 1929 about finished the Bahamas. A dispatch from Nassau states that some of the islanders on the out islands are starving, and. the schools have been closed, because the people are too poor to maintain them. No hope is seen except in direct help from the government itself.
November 12 at Princeton
OVEMBER 12 at Princeton hundreds of students of the University hurled rocks at each other, damaged the car of the governor of the state, tore down street signs, broke electric lamps, stopped automobiles, and altogether caused property damage estimated at $5,000. Princeton University is a place famous for training missionaries for heathen lands.
Britain’s Conscientious Objectors
OF BRITAIN’S 16,000 conscientious objectors during the World War, 6,261 were sent to prison, and nine hundred were kept there for two years or more. Ten of them died in prison, heroes of the better day. The Kellogg Pact says that war is a crime, and so it is, and it was as much so in 1918' as it is now.
Salads Popular in Britain
IN THE last few years the importations of fruit into Britain have increased to a point where they are now more than double what they were only recently. At the same time the importations of meat have fallen off until they are only about two-thirds what they were. The British people are evidently eating less meat and more salads.
Helps to Reading the Palimpsests
A PALIMPSEST manuscript is one which has been used twice, the original writing having been wholly or partly removed to make room for a later writing. A Viennese scientist has now invented a method of photography which brings the original writing clearly to view while screening out the later writings. This will be a tremendous aid to scholars in deciphering ancient documents.
Teletype in Los Angeles
IN LOS ANGELES the teletype system which has just been installed enables the sheriff and the head of the motor patrol to keep in touch all day with each of the sixty-one motorcycle officers engaged in patrolling the county roads. Previously they were out of contact from the time they left the office in the morning until they reported back at night. A girl operates the teletype.
Christianity and War
Rev. T. Rhondda Williams, president of the
Congregational Union of England, says: “It is impossible to pray for success in war in a Christian way. To pray for victory means asking God to bless our use of poison gas, and boiling oil, and incendiary bombs, and treachery, and lying, and bayonets. There can not be a just war. The war that is fought for the finest cause is in itself atrociously unjust. Any country that would ask its citizens to support it by such deviltry ought to be destroyed.”
Chile’s New Penal Code
UNDER Chile’s new penal code the death penalty for murder is done away with, and after twenty years in prison a person adjudged guilty of murder may be released provided he has unqualifiedly proved his right to live once more among his fellow men of the outside world.
Prison Sentences Too Severe
THE National Society of Penal Information, seeking the explanation of the numerous prison riots, attributes them to too great severity, to overcrowding, and to inadequate food and inadequate opportunities for employment. Prison sentences have been made too long, and opportunity to obtain parole has been too limited. These, in effect, are some of the findings.
Has Cuba a Reign of Terror?
Octavio Seigle, a Cuban refugee in Washington, claims that since 1925 there has been neither free speech nor free press in Cuba, that at least 118 union labor men have been assassinated because of their organization activities, and that two of these, Claudio Bruson and another named Yabob, were at first imprisoned in Morro Castle and subsequently tossed out to the sharks.
Photographing the Mississippi
THE Mississippi River is in process of being photographed. In the past ninety days an area larger than the state of Massachusetts has been photographed from airplanes flying back and forth between Cairo and Memphis, and now a like area south of Memphis will also be photographed. These maps are being studied critically to enable the engineers to decide on the best methods of future flood prevention.
A Wonderful Swiss Mother
WrHEN a young Swiss, one of twenty-two who had refused to undertake military service, was brought into the Geneva district court to be sentenced to prison, his mother stood up in court and said: “I rejoice in the.....
action of my son. His crime gives me the greatest possible satisfaction as a mother. It is I who led him astray. I brought him up in love for and trust in God. Today my hope is fulfilled. It is I who should be judged by you, not my son.
I am the guilty one, his mother.”
Shell-Shocked Veterans
Paul V. McNutt, former national commander of the American Legion, asserts that over 52,000 World War veterans are now receiving compensation for having their nerves shattered and that the peak of the psychiatric load will not be reached until 1947. Meantime 20,378 of the above are in such condition that they have had to be placed in hospitals. Over a third of these were placed in state, county, city and private institutions.
The British Soldier’s New World
Lloyd George assured mankind that when the World War was over the British soldiers should have a new world, etc., etc. One of them just appeared in a police court in Birmingham to ask mercy for his wife for attempting suicide. He said by way of extenuation that for fifteen years he and his wife and three children have been eating and sleeping in one room and that his wife was worried because they had been given notice to leave and could not find a house. If this is his new world, what could the old one have been like ?
Cause of the Stock Crash
A STUDENT of stock crashes states that it came about as follows: The public bought one billion dollars of investment trust stock in August. The investment trust companies loaned it to brokers. When the stocks had reached the bottom the investment trusts took their pay in stocks bought at a fraction of their previous price. The expert says simply, “A substantial part of the floating’ supply of stocks now has been transferred from the hands of weak amateur speculators to those of strong professionals.” The public got it in the neck.
Wall Street’s October Panic ■
HpHE total market value of all the stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange on October 1 was $87,073,630,423. The total decline in the value of these stocks during the month of October is estimated at very close to $50,000,000,000. Thus more than half the paper values were wiped out in a single month. We have reached the days when "fear is on every side” and nobody has much confidence in anything or anybody. On the edge of winter all the lambs have been sheared down to the hide, and it will take some time to entice them back for another cutting.
The Liberty Bridge
THE Liberty Bridge, proposed to be built J- across the Narrows leading into New York harbor, will have towers 800 feet high, a clear span of 4,500 feet, and a clear height of 235 feet above high water. The main cables will be 48 inches in diameter, each containing 48,000 wires. The cost will be $60,000,000. This bridge will have a span 1,000 feet greater than the Hudson River Bridge, now building, which bridge, in its turn, is twice the span of any other.
Townless Highways Coming
HHHE highways of the future will be townless -®- highways, connecting the great cities of the country by routes which will be as direct and. scenic as possible and which will make a positive effort to dodge all the big and little towns enroute. Every one wants that kind of roads. The automobiles want them because they can make better time and with less danger, and the towns have found that through automobile traffic does nothing for a town except reduce property values and make living less safe and pleasant.
All Fabrics Made Fireproof
A LIVERPOOL inventor has evolved a chemical process by means of which every material in a home, whether made of canvass, cotton, wood, silk, or w’hat not, can be rendered at once fireproof, waterproof, acidproof and heatproof, all at a cost that is practically negligible. Articles thus treated do not burn even when held in a blow-pipe flame or when drenched with gasoline. Looks as if the fire insurance companies will be out of business soon if all this is true. The inventor is a young man named Hood, and is but twenty-four years of age.
A Rental of Air Rights
LOWER New York is now so solidly built up with skyscrapers that the owners of the new Harriman Building are paying a neighbor $22,500 a year for a period of thirty-three years for not running his building up any higher than the fifth floor, to which it now extends. This gives the Harriman Building light and air on thirty-three floors which might otherwise be dark. A movement is under way to secure lower taxes for the little buildings that are now perpetually in the shadows, since the skyscrapers are monopolizing so much of the light and air about them.
AS A1 law-abiding Israelite our Lord Jesus doubtless ate of the. paschal lamb at least once a year during each of the thirty-three years of His human life, and if He ate it thirty-three times there is a fair presumption that He ate it several more than thirty-three times. People who could afford to enjoy roast lamb once a year could probably get it oftener. He also ate broiled fish, and selected fishermen as His disciples.
The heavenly Father went to the trouble of giving the Jews a list of flesh foods which they might eat. When He fed Elijah in the wilderness a part of Elijah’s diet was flesh. The Jewish priests were given roast beef as part of their priestly compensation. In our Lord’s prehuman estate He ate roast veal for Abraham. The apostle tells us that brute beasts are created to be destroyed.
The foregoing evidence is convincing that it is all right for man to eat meat, or at least has been all right up to the present time; and most of us still do so, yet there are some very excellent and very intelligent people in the world, and Bible Students too, and readers and subscribers for The Golden Age, who think that the time will come when man will return to his diet in the garden of Eden, fruits, and maybe they are right.
Anyway, whether they are right or not, they have to be heard. Out of a number of replies to a recent article on “Man the Omnivorous” we select some paragraphs from the pen of Dr. W. G. Wright (Michigan) which we are sure will be read with interest. We can not publish all that Dr. Wright has written, for we are publishing a magazine, not starting a war. The doctor writes wittiiy ly, caustically, and somewhat savagely. No doubt he may have had a steak for dinner when he wrote the following:
In the first place man is not the genus Homo, but only a part thereof because the genus also includes the anthropoid apes, also non-earnivorous by nature. It is very true that degenerate man is omnivorous. He eats birds’ nests and snails. His omnivorous propensities he generously shares with the hog, the chicken, and the hyena. He is undoubtedly the most rapacious, cruel, and ferocious creature that crawls on the face of the earth, as was clearly shown in an article that appeared in The Golden Age under the caption “The Sons of Japheth”.
The Bible is not a guide to diet, nor was it ever intended as such. People who look upon the Bible as
the last word in dietetics would probably feed athletes on beans, multitudes on fish and bread, and recommend for exercise a little walk “on the water”. They would give wine for gastro-intestinal disorders, and when they were on a picnic “out in the wilderness” would likely eat honey and locusts.
The dietetic restrictions and advice given in the Mosaic law to the JEWS ONLY do not apply, for a great many good and sufficient reasons, to present-day man. It is a fact, well authenticated, that Jews who live on the Kosher diet are more subject to diabetes than any other people on earth, and that non-orthodox Jews who occasionally eat pork are far less subject to this very serious malady.
I realize that this does not PROVE much one way or the other, but I merely mention it to show that even those who live according to the law of Moses in this age encounter some very serious troubles that can be greatly ameliorated by corrective diet.
I myself do not pretend or try to be a vegetarian even in the broad sense of the word, but I fully realize that, with a few, very few exceptions, the lacto-vege-tarian diet is a sine qua non for the sick man. Whatever one may think of this as a continuous mode of living, no up-to-date physician of ANY school will deny the value of the lacto-vegetarian diet as the diet of choice for the sick. ......... ■
C. J. W., Jr., says that many of his letters in reply to his former article came from “tender-hearted' souls” who could not stand the thought of the shambles in “the golden age”. Well, if there were more of these same tender-hearted people in the world this would be a happier and for that matter a healthier world. In order to discuss diet intelligently, a knowledge of organic chemistry and physiology is prerequisite. And this is just what some of these self-constituted authorities, “professors,” etc., do not possess. Animals slaughtered in abattoirs are often most cruelly killed, according to eyewitnesses. Sheep are stabbed, and then scalped while still alive. Butchers, on account of the bloody calling they pursue, are not permitted to act as jurymen in some parts of the world. -
But the piece de resistance of the whole article is the quotation from the words of Paul. The apostle was speaking of those who fell away from the faith, gave heed to seducing spirits, spoke lies, forbade others to marry and others to eat meat. Now if this doesn’t certainly apply to religious sects that have fallen away from the simplicity of the primitive church, encouraged and taught the hypothetical celibacy of the clergy class and instituted Lent and other fast days when people eat fish instead of other meats, and not to doctors who prescribe and advocate sensible diets for sick people—well, it is so plain and obvious that this does apply to these apostate church
gyStems> an(j not |0 physicians, that there is simply no argument.
And as for “total vegetarianism”, no one ever did advocate that, or at least if it ever was proposed it was by some insignificant cult that died of its own inanition. The term “vegeterianism” is really a misnomer, because nobody tries to live exclusively on vegetables. The rational biologic diet includes, not only vegtables, but dairy products, cereals, fruits, and nuts as well. Even the most enthusiastic writers on the mixed diet will agree that a high standard of health can be maintained on the so-called lacto-vege-_ tarian diet.
C. J. W., Jr., craves BIBLICAL proof that man will some day revert to his original diet. He also wants proof that man will cease to use milk, cream, cheese, eggs and leather. These latter come under the head of dairy products and will in all probability be 2 used throughout the millennium; leather, of course, being excepted, because men do not ordinarily eat leather except when they are shipwrecked or are fooled by restaurateurs who palm off leather under the guise of beefsteak.
The record in Genesis is very clear on the point that man in his Edenic home was frugivorous, and __ _ not till after the flood did he receive permission to __ slay the animals for food. This point, if thoroughly ” .....gone into, would require more space than an article
of this kind would permit. However, we, according to His Word, are looking for TIMES OF RESTITUTION, when the great Captain will restore “that which was lost”. What more proof is required?
Furthermore, not only will savage, omnivorous man return to his original diet, but carnivorous animals will also become frugivorous. “The lion shall eat straw like the ox.” When man -was given the privilege of eating animals the animals were also given the privilege of eating men. (Gen. 9:5) Wouldn’t that be nice too in “the golden age”? You eat beefsteaks and then some dear little lion comes along and chews a meal off you.
We pour oil on the troubled waters at this point by remarking that the reference to leather in the article in question was evidently designed to suggest to vegetarians that they look at their shoes before they get too enthusiastic about the abolition of abattoirs. No doubt the Lord Himself wore leather sandals.
L. D. Barnes (Oklahoma) writes that he expects that with the perfect conditions now approaching there will be such changes as will result in the destruction of pests, "their breeding conditions abolished, and that other animals might become extinct, as the Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, and so on, ceased to exist after the flood. He continues!
While father Adam was given dominion over fish, fowl, and animal life, and Noah was given beast and creeping thing for food, yet these might serve their purpose, and be folded away with the ages that gave them birth and necessity. The restrictions placed on the Jews as to clean and unclean animals might be a hint in that direction. If all things are to be made new, a continuation of the butcher business would surely get old, as it is now to many, in the ages of perfection and beauty to come.
Like C. J. W., Jr.,. I believe it is unsafe to follow any man’s fad or theory. If one is sick with a complication of symptoms, he may shorten his life by so doing. If T.B. is there, but dormant, to avoid the use of proteins may release the great plague that is most certain to end in much suffering and death. “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder,” said of the marriage union, may be said also of man and his age-ordained food. When the time comes, the great Giver of all good will make the change: when the old has served its purpose, the new will follow.
In my small opinion, eternal life on earth for man will not in any way depend upon the flesh of dead animals, but upon the whole-hearted devotion to the Life-giver. Thickly populated by the resurrected millions, there would be little room left for the vast herds and flocks that would be required to supply them with meat. There would be no room for them, it seems, ‘under the vine and fig tree,’ and no pleasure in keeping them there.
Apparently, Mrs. J. B. Johnson (Nebraska) has found that she gets along better without meat than with it, for she says:
Where would be the spirit of a sound mind for me to eat meat if it made me sick? When any one has proven that a food (meat or anything else) does not agree with him, surely if he has any brains he would let it alone. Many people can chew and smoke that weed called “tobacco” and get by with it, because their eliminating organs are able to throw it off; but let one try the poison whose eliminating organs are not in good condition, and see how quickly his heart fails.
Don F. White (Indiana) writes plainly and convincingly:
The Bible makes it pretty plain that perfect man was strictly a fruitarian. I am afraid that the odors that come from many modern kitchens would be extremely obnoxious to the nostrils of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. When we look over all the concoctions on the market today, in the way of foods, we do not find it so hard to understand why there are so many prosperous doctors and undertakers.
The Bible shows that after Adam was driven from Eden he was told to eat grains and herbs of the field (vegetables)', in addition, no doubt, to the fruits he was used to eating. The Bible also shows that it was not until after the Deluge, with man well started on the down grade, that the flesh of dead animals was used for human food.
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