Golden Age, January 22, 1930
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<Jhe Golden Age
A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND’ COURAGE
isiEmmmiiimimmmmmnmmmmsmeimmmmEim
in this issue
SOMETHING ABOUT HOMES WALL STREET RUMBLINGS SOME HINTS ON SAFETY ON ISLAND OF CORSICA ERROR VERSUS TRUTH
radio lecture by Judge Rutherford
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Volume XI-No. 270 January 22, 193 0
Contents
Labor and Economics
Telephone Employment Passing Out ....
Pensioning Aged in Delaware..... .
Social and Educational
A Little Bit About Homes.........
One Thing After Another.........
All E.accs of One Blood..........
Sanhedrin to Review Jesus’ Trial......
Deceiving Sets Multiply Eapidly.......
Finance— Comm ekch—Transportation
Wall Street Rumblings . . Those Flint Bank Employees
Political—Domestic and Foiieion
Federal Eadio Espionage . . The Pahy Dinner at Washington
Poland Hard on
Asks for Palestine the Bookkeeper .
Agriculture and IIu
Oregon
Grain in Russia . Methods in Britain
An Elephant’s Prodigious Memory
Science and Invention
Safety in the Electrically Equipped Home .
Home and Heai
Walnut Leaves and Anemia . . .. . Gravy a la Cenotaph ......
The Knife Versus the Hand . . . Soap and Water Safer than Calomel It Makes a Difference.....
Religion and Philosophy
I.B.S.A. Colporteur Meets His Waterloo on Island of Coksica • Protestantism Near Its End.............
Satan in the Seminaries...............
Error Versus Truth ...............
Bible Questions and Answers ..............
The Children’s Own Eadio Story...........
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The Golden Age
Volume XI Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, January 2.2, 1S30 Number 270
A Little Bit About Homes
AS LONG- as we have human beings on the earth they will be interested in homes, though the home of the future will probably be quite different from the one to which we are accustomed today. Indeed, the old-style individual home is passing away before our eyes.
The World War, with all the bricklayers, masons, carpenters, plumbers, etc., engaged for four years in killing other bricklayers, masons, carpenters and plumbers, left a great shortage of homes. The Avar brides had war babies and had to live in with the old folks until room could be made.
As soon as the Avar was over, great efforts were made to correct the situation, the building mechanics who Avere spared returned to their usual labors, tremendous strides Avere made in the adaptation of machinery to the work of building, and shortages are already mostly a thing of the past.
Since the Avar England has rehoused a tenth of her population, and Holland about one-fifth of hers. Philadelphia claims to be tAVO years overbuilt. Berlin, at last accounts, was still short in homes for her people. London has erected ten thousand houses a year.
The British Viscountess Byng of Vimy has been building four-room cottages at $750 each, and renting them at a profit of $1.10 a week. New York has had many ambitious rehousing Avorks under Avay, especially the Lavanburg model tenements, which rent at $6 a month per room. It will surprise some of our readers to know that New York hoav claims to have better housing for its workers as a Avhole than any other city in the world. Yet Avith all this it has some areas that can only be viewed with shame and regret. Ncav Zealand housing conditions are very superior.
In England, Holland, Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden and Norway the federal and municipal governments have not hesitated to courageously tackle the problems of housingdesign and housing shortage, and to solve the problems involved. After all, what greater good can a government accomplish than to help everybody into a comfortable and sanitary home?
The Drift to Apartments
A survey of NeAV York building permits shoAVS that the general drift of neAV construction is away from the individual home and toward the apartment, away from all-frame types to nonframe types. This is generally true also, though there are still many new individual homes being built in Baltimore, Los Angeles, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. The strongholds of apartment houses are Boston, New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
The day of the skyscraper apartment house may now be said to have arrived. New Yorkers like to live near their work. They can not be blamed for that. Hence it is no surprise to learn that $50,000,000 worth of residential skyscrapers will be built forthwith in doAvntoAvn New York, within a feAV blocks of the heart of the financial district.
A realty company in Chicago is planning a skyscraper apartment in the middle of a fiftyacre suburban tract. This elaborate plan calls for collective ownership of apartments, golf course, tennis courts, bridle path, swimming pool, recreation fields, drug store, delicatessen, barber shop, beauty parlor, medical and dental offices, a city in itself.
Noav York has carried the reduction of space for an apartment to what would seem to be the last extreme. One room answers all purposes. Corner alcoves and cupboards house all that the home contains. Only an occasional meal is eaten at home, and that can be bought at a delicatessen, cooked and ready to serve, or may be cooked in a central kitchen in the building itself, for a small sum.
The only porch that many New Yorkers know anything about is the fire escape. With a board across the opening, and possibly a quilt spread over, the board, the little folks play safely far up above the street levels. Company must not come to many New York homes. If they do come they will have to go to a hotel. The sick must go to a hospital.
Of late years many New Yorkers, accustomed to city life in the winter, and preferring it, have small homes in the suburbs in which they live during the pleasant summer months. The newer apartment houses are equipped with wireless aerials, lead-ins and grounding switches, with the conviction that radio is here to stay.
Good and Bad Landlords
Landlords are only a temporary expedient. The Scripture statement, “They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,” with none to molest or make him afraid, puts the landlord out of the picture; but he is in it now, nevertheless.
The good landlord is Matt. M. Dinan, of South Bend, Indiana. When a tenant has paid him rent for twenty-one years the tenant gets a paid-up lease on the house he occupies, the lease to run until the tenant dies, or until he moves out of his own accord.
Another good landlord, almost too good, some would say, is the city of Vienna, -which has virtually taken possession of all the rentable property in the city, and rents it out for what it thinks the renters can afford to pay, and that is next to nothing; the landlords are not getting anything out of their properties except the privilege of paying the taxes.
In Russia rooms are rented by the yard and paid for on the basis of the tenant’s weekly wage. In Genoa, Italy, in the properties of Alessandro Ganasso, any family that has a new arrival in the family gets one month’s free rent for each child born.
Coming to the other side of the landlord matter we hear of districts in England in which it is a common practice for landlords to charge extra rent for houses on the sunny side of the street, on the theory that less fuel is needed to heat the house. The extra rent is supposed to equalize the tenants’ saving in fuel bills.
Probably he can afford to pay it, but the tenant who occupies the three top floors of the new thirty-two story Hotel Delmonico, at Park Avenue and Fifty-ninth street, New York city, pays $45,000 a year for the privilege. The rental of another . Park Avenue apartment is $36,000 a year.
A New York landlord insists that all his tenants must be vegetarians like himself. He can not bear the odor of cooking meat. His properties stand empty most of the time. The top floors of walk-up apartments in New York are no longer popular. Elevators are in common use. '
New York landlords of apartment houses are required to furnish 68 degrees of heat between six o’clock in the morning and ten o’clock at night, whenever the temperature on the street is 55 degrees or lower. This rule of the City Board of Health is of only recent enactment. The need of such a rule has been evident for years.'
Moving Day and Movers .
Once a year Chicago sees almost one-half of its population move, and New York is not far behind. October 1 is the day when the great exodus takes place, and all efforts of the real estate men to distribute the burden over other dates seem in vain.
The moving day is chaos all over the city. Moving men charge double the rates asked on other days. Workers for the various public service companies have to work sixteen to twenty hours to make the various connections demanded. Family life for the day is wrecked.
Thore is another great class of movers in New York: the homeless men that are ever on the go and yet have no place to which they can go. The number of these men has been increasing steadily for the last ten years. As fewer and fewer men are required in manufacturing, owing to the great increase in industrial efficiency, more and more men become destitute and are deprived of the privilege of making a home or even living in one.
An odd feature about moving is that many of the families that move out of certain quarters, looking for better accommodations, or better landlords, or what not, find themselves less suited in the new locations than in the old ones and, after a year away, move back into their old quarters.
The annual moving bill is set at about $107,000,000 for the 7,000,000 people who move. The landlords are supposed to be set back $15,000,-
000 for alterations, $30,000,000 goes to the moving companies, $65,000,000 for new furniture, and $12,000,000 goes to plumbers, carpenters, painters, laundrymen, charwomen and others who have a hand in the work.
As to Building a Home
The safety of every large fortune in the country depends upon the number of people who are permitted to own their own homes, yet it seems sometimes as if the present possessors of those fortunes are trying to see how few people may have that privilege.
It takes money to build homes and equip them, and that means that good wages must be paid, and opportunities be afforded to participate in the profits of the nation’s business. Some years ago 54.4 percent of the homes of the United States were rented, and only 28.2 percent were owned by their occupants, free of incumbrance.
The principal items of expense in home building are set at 36 percent for the foundation, 29 percent for carpentry, 10 percent for plumbing, 9 percent for heating, 8 percent for hardware, 6 percent for painting and 2 percent for lighting. For an average brick structure, out of each dollar of the total cost 26% cents goes to labor. Bungalows, sold in South Brooklyn for $5,600 to $5,800 each, cost 57 percent of that amount, the remaining- 43 percent going for promotion and financing. ,
America has still some distance to go before the blessings of this civilization will be uniformly distributed. Thousands of homes, even in supposedly progressive cities, are still without running water in the kitchen sinks. At least onefourth of the housekeepers in Atlanta, Ga., Wilmington, Del., New Haven, Conn., and Springfield, Mass., still fill and clean kerosene lamps. The Power Trust could change this if it would.
The gambling orgy in New York has made it hard for some builders and home owners. The funds that should have been kept at home for legitimate development of the community, and at a modest rate of interest, were sent to New York to engage in the highest form of gambling known to man.
Poor as conditions are in spots in the United States, they are nothing as compared with European conditions. In a Budapest (Hungary) paper, not long ago, an advertisement appeared, “Half a bed to let by decent family: inspection invited.” An investigation showed that the entire bed was for rent, but on a half-time basis.
Old Homes and New
Germany has a house at Winkel, in the Rhine district, that is known to be eleven centuries old. The rooms on the ground floor are a little below the ground, and divided by a full-length wall. Light comes through small slits in the outside walls.
The oldest residence in Great Britain is Dun-vegan Castle, in the Isle of Skye. Part of it dates from the ninth century, or two hundred years before the Norman conquest.
At East Tibury, England, there are remains of huts at least a thousand years old. These huts, all circular in shape, vary in diameter from eleven and one-half to twenty feet. The poet Chaucer described these early dwellings as Teapot hall, all roof, no wall’; and the description could hardly be improved upon.
The Whitfield mansion, at Guilford, Conn., built in 1639, is still in use. Built of stone only nineteen years after the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, it has walls two feet thick, with a main chimney sixteen feet across. As the house was originally built, a team of horses drove through the front door and out the rear, dragging huge logs behind them which, when in position, were rolled into the fire with crowbars.
The old-fashioned grate was the cheeriest kind of a fire, though not an economical heating arrangement. Nevertheless, it would be fine if every home could have a good usable fireplace. There are times when nothing, else in the home can be as attractive as an open fire in the grate.
New York state has plenty of farmhouses over two hundred years old that are still in constant use. They are roomy, wTarm, and comfortable,' and built by men who knew how to build well. There are still many old and beautiful homes in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Virginia and other of the eastern seaboard states.
At Clark’s Green, near Scranton, Pa., there is a fine old mansion which contains a bedroom that can be reached only through the ceiling by taking up the loose floor boards of the attic floor. This home was, one of the “underground” stations of slavery days in which runaway slaves were kept during the day time. At night they were spirited on their way to Canada and liberty.
Tn the newer single homes now being built in the vicinity of New York more attention is being paid to closets than ever before. There are plenty of them that house disappearing beds and other articles of furniture that are used only at dressing time. One woman told her builder that her closet must have room for 200 pairs of shoes!
Decay and Repair '
Dry wood does not decay, and a house that has been properly built will be dry. Decay in wood is caused by low forms of plant life, fungi, which destroy wood for their food; but the fungi themselves must have moisture in order to live. The reason that roofs and porches decay first is that they are most exposed to moisture.
There is a great deal of building done by men who take no pride in their work, and who put in lumber that has not been properly seasoned, and make no provision for its ventilation, nor even for it ever to get fully dry. It is no wonder that such houses are badly in need of repairs in twelve years, and can not be expected to last over fifty years.
The British Isles still have many thatched roofs. Reeds are plentiful, and the danger from fires is not so great as it would be in America’s drier climate. A thatched roof is warmer in winter and cooler in summer than any other kind of roofing. A good thatched roof is . over a foot thick and in the wettest kind of weather does not get wet more than an inch down from the top. The high winds that we have in America make thatched roofs impracticable here.
The old-style shingle, an inch thick at the butt and half an inch thick at the thin edge, was a good roof cover, but such shingles can be had no more. The modern ones are hardly three-eighths of an inch thick at the butt, and are almost paper thickness at the thin edge. They have killed themselves, and asphalt shingles are taking their place.
Steel construction is coming, slowly but surely. The steel men insist that a house with a steel frame is indestructible; will not shrink, warp, swell or rot; will not harbor vermin; can be insulated against heat, cold or sound, and can be made lightning-proof, tornado-proof and earthquake-proof.
Odd Types of Houses .
Mud houses ought not to be as rare as they are. Every building lot has the material, if mixed with straw and properly molded, for a good house right on the lot where it is to be built. A subscriber for The Golden Age has expended a fortune in trying to interest his fellow men in this inexpensive building material, lying all about us, but all to no purpose.
At the eastern end of Lake Ontario, on Amherst Island, there is a mud house over 100 years old. The walls are eleven feet high and four feet thick, molded in one piece. They were evidently built in a form. The clay, mixed with straw, was tamped into place with saplings imbedded about six inches apart. Originally, the outside of the house was plastered, but it is now protected by clapboards. Otherwise no changes have been made.
There are many sod houses still in use in western Kansas, eastern Colorado, northern Texas and western Oklahoma. The early settlers were far from sources of lumber, so they erected their homes from the virgin sod, cutting and piling it after the fashion of the modern cement blocks. These houses are cool in summer and warm in winter, but not too beautiful.
Dugout dwellings are the only kind that soldiers in the front-line trenches know. It is a case of dig or be killed. The best digger stands the best chance of surviving the terrible onslaughts of his fellow “Christians”. Let us hope that the poor' heathen never get converted, at least not to the machine-gun poison-gas type of Christian.
Two ex-soldiers in San Francisco made a hit recently. They squatted on a $100,000 building lot in the heart of the city, and as they had no home and little money they built themselves a dugout after the manner of 1914-1918, charged admission, and now have a flower garden, beautiful shrubbery, radio, telephone service and all the comforts of home.
Concrete and Steel Homes
Concrete homes, or steel homes, or homes which are part concrete and part steel are sure to be more widely built, with the passing years. Large numbers of steel homes have been built in the British Isles. One of them was erected in three hours in Europe recently, to demonstrate what can be done. A can of standard-size bolts is all that is needed to put the house together.
Germany has a firm which makes at its factory complete houses ready for tenancy. They can be put up in two days. The side walls are
Tfce Golden Age
of cement slabs ten feet square. Floors and roofs are of the same material. Doors and windows are cast in special sections, and can be placed as desired. The builder casts his piers in the ground, lays light iron beams upon them, and upon these beams erects his cement structure. After fastening all the sections firmly together he calks up the cracks with fresh cement, which hardens in a few hours, and the house is done. It seems to us that this is a sensible way to build inexpensive, durable homes.
Hollywood, California, has a rectangular house with massive concrete walls on the outside, and no outside windows. The rooms are arranged about an interior court and receive light through glass ceilings. This would not appeal to us. It is too much like a convent or monastery or jail.
In Berlin a gigantic water tower of solid brick construction 'was transformed into an apartment house accommodating 100 persons. French architects have designed an octagonal house of seven rooms and bath which is mounted on a turntable, so that any of its eight sides may be swung to face the sun or the breeze.
Detroit has a $50,000 house which is reserved exclusively for guests of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick M. Alger, whenever they have a house party. At Jamaica Bay a fisherman has his family in a dwelling wdiich is perched on piles above the ever-changing tides. Such homes were once very common in Europe, and are still to be found in parts of France and elsewhere.
Unhomelike Homes
The most unhomelike home in the world is probably the home at 43d St. and Broadway, New York, in the basement. For fifty cents a month you may register as a guest and receive your mail or other communications. You may ■write letters and send telephone or telegraph messages at standard rates. A locker may be rented by the day, week, month or year. A razor can be rented for ten cents, or an umbrella for a small sum. You can get your shoes shined or* repaired, or your suit pressed. There is a barber shop, news stand, drug store, theatrical ticket office, and haberdashery. But if you wish to stay over night you must go somewhere else!
In 1859 somebody wrote that “The home is fast disappearing. Our young ladies have no longer the ideals of their mothers”. Sounds as if it 'were, written seventy years later. Now many American homes are merely places to sleep. One-sixth of the marriages are failures.
Between 1900 and 1920 the number of restaurants increased four times as fast as the number of families. Between 1914 and 1925 bakery production increased four times as fast as the number of families. Between 1910 and 1920 the number of delicatessens grew three times as fast as the population. These figures show that mother is doing something besides cooking.
London has 250,000 basement rooms. This cellar city is next to the Thames and within a stone’s throw of Westminster Abbey and the houses of Parliament. In high water the residents of these cellar rooms are liable to drown, and many of them have so drowned. In any ■weather the poor inhabitants fade and die from ■want of air and light; but they are too poor to move elsewhere, and these apartments are always cro-wded. Brooklyn has many apartments below the street level.
Housekeeping in Borneo has its disadvantages. Eight or ten or even a hundred families live in a single community house. The houses are constructed on piles, with ladders leading to the outer uncovered veranda, which runs the entire length of the house.
In the Philippines the native huts are exceedingly diminutive in size, and when the children grow to be any size they are placed in community homes. Trial marriage is a Philippine custom, lately adopted, in modified form, in the United States. Particulars can be had at Hollywood and Reno.
A young couple in Breslau, Germany, ejected from their home by a court order, moved their worldly effects to the city hall steps, chalked off their Rooms’ and prepared to camp out. This produced the desired results, and new quarters were found for them forthwith.
The Kiddie Proposition
“What is home 'without a mother?” has its natural corollary in “What is home without a bunch of kiddies?” If -what people want is rest and quiet and peace, then the cemetery is always handy; but until we get there we must expect to mingle -with live ones, and the kiddies are the livest things there are in the 'world today. .
The kids are always interesting from 0 to 100. By that time they are in their second childhood, and interesting all over again. There is no telling what a human being will do or say under stress; and that is what makes living such an exciting pastime.
An eleven-year-old youngster startled his Sunday school teacher by saying, “I am tired of this Jesus business. Let’s have a livelier kind of stories.” Another one of these modern productions that needed guidance made the startling remark: “I’ve discovered Dad is Santa Claus, and the stork, and now I’m going to look into this Jesus Christ affair.” It is to such children that the future must look for its men and women. Shall they be told the truth, or will the old Santa Claus, hell fire, trinity and immortality lies be ladled out to them as heretofore? In any event, it may be set down as certain that they will not accept them.
Children are still appreciated in most homes. Many adults unwilling to have children of their own are 'willing to adopt those of others. The Child-Placing Department of the New York State Charities Aid Association reports in recent years a great increase in the supply of foster-parents. The preference for adoption runs to girls, and especially to infants. It is hard to find homes for boys over six years of age.
While some girls are paying more attention than ever before to learning how to care for a home, with all its problems of cooking, sewing, mending, rearing children, nursing, and trimming the household budget to fit a small income, yet not all girls are that way inclined. When a real estate agent made the suggestion to one girl that she should buy a home and settle down she is alleged to have made the reply: “What do I need of a home ? I was born in a hospital, educated in a college, courted in an auto and married in a church: I live out of the delicatessen and paper bags: I spend my mornings on the golf course, my afternoons at the bridge table, and my evenings at the movies. When I die I am going to be buried at the undertakers. All I need is a garage.”
One Thing After Another
Bears in Pennsylvania
EARS are getting too plentiful in western Pennsylvania, They are too fond of sheep and honey to suit the farmers; and it is not pleasant to have four-hundred-pound bears wandering around the premises, anyway. One farmer has killed five of the mammoth creatures.
Telephone Employment Passing Out
THE great army which has been in the telephone business while it was in process of development is now rapidly passing out, and it is estimated that as soon as the automatic systems are fully installed ninety-five percent of those now in the business will be jobless.
Turkey in Bad Shape
TpURKEY is in bad shape, owing to a wet -®- season wThich so damaged raisins and figs as to practically stop business in these important Turkish products. Costs of living are now fourteen times what they were in 1914. Fuel is twelve times as high, and house rent sixteen times as high, with other things in proportion.
Kaiser Wilhelm a Spiritist
S HITHERTO suspected, it now transpires that ex-Kai'ser Wilhelm is a spiritist, He recently submitted questions, a photograph, samples of handwriting and pieces of clothing to a spiritist, and was reported to be greatly enraged vuth the replies to his questions.
The Millionaire Income Class
TWO generations ago, in a farming community, a man who wras worth $1,000 was the Croesus of the community. A year ago there were in the United States 228 persons with an anmial income of over $1,000,000. This year the number of persons having such stupendous incomes has increased to 290.
Brazil Overloaded with Coffee
IN THE effort to keep coffee prices, at a high level Brazil has been buying all coffee offered by her growers and storing it in ■warehouses. Nowt the warehouses are full to overflowing, there is no more money to pay the planters, and a fall in the price of coffee is almost sure to follow quickly.
The Negro’s Unequal Battle
IN THE city of New York the average head of a negro family receives $85 a month, out of which $40 must go for rent. Although the income of the negro family is 17 percent lower than that of the typical family of the city, yet it must pay almost three dollars more per room per month.
Anti-Semitic Riots in Europe
THE students of Central Europe continue their riots against fellow students of Jewish birth. In several places the Jews have been attacked most savagely, surgical instruments, chair legs and cudgels being used as weapons. Much property has been wrecked at Vienna and Prague.
Pennsy’s New Electric Locomotives '
THE Pennsylvania Railroad Company’s new electric locomotives will be built to operate at speeds of one hundred miles an hour and are expected to cut the time between New York and Washington to four hours or less. The electrification of the line from New York to Philadelphia is expected to be completed within the next two years.
As to Unordered Merchandise -
AS A discouragement to the practice of sending unordered merchandise and subsequently attempting to collect for the same, the better Business Bureau advises not to use it, to take reasonable care of it, and to surrender it on demand, on the payment of reasonable storage charges. However, legally, the receiver is in no way obligated to pay for the merchandise.
Selling Religion a Tough Game
ALONG ISLAND pastor is reported to have said that selling religion is a tough game, that ministers have to produce their own goods and then sell the people something they do not like. He thinks every seminary ought to teach golf, polo and bridge, and send the new recruits out to sell goods for two years before turning them loose in the pulpit. Somehow there did not seem to be any Scripture citations in the report which we saw of the talk. But come to think of it, selling religion and teaching the Bible are two entirely different things, as different as night is from day. Perhaps he was right after all.
Helena (Arkansas) Torture Chair
Circuit Judge W. F. Davenport, of Arkansas, has ordered the destruction of the electric torture chair hitherto used by the sheriffs of Phillips County, Arkansas. When the torture chair was brought in before him Judge Davenport made the statement that if prisoners were going to be mobbed before they were brought into court, there is no use in having a court.
Ferguson’s Figures on Sects
TN AN American magazine Charles W. Fergu-*• son claims that there are nine kinds of Presbyterians, seventeen kinds of Mennonites, eighteen kinds of Baptists, nineteen kinds of Methodists, and twenty-two kinds of Lutherans, besides seven divisions of Eastern Orthodox churches. Altogether he lists 216 different sects as operating in the United States today.
Mennonites Making Good
TpRIENDS of the Mennonites will be glad to know that they are making good in their new home in Paraguay, whither they emigrated from Canada because of unfair, unchristian treatment during and after the World War. They are seeking a land where they can be let alone in war time and not be ordered out to murder their fellow Christians.
A New Grain in Russia
RUSSIA reports the discovery of a now grain, combining the resistance to cold of rye with the richness of wheat. Experiments have shown that with this grain, without artificial fertilization, the land produces three times the weight of food usually obtained. Russia is transferring its prisoners to farms in order to increase the food production of the nation.
Episcopdl-Presbyterian Mix-up
ST. GEORGE’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, New
York city, was to have had a communion service presided over by Dr. Coffin, president of Union Theological Seminary, and a Presbyterian. Bishop Manning heard of it and reproved the pastor of St. George’s for daring to invite a person not duly licensed and ordained to hold such a service. Dr. Coffin countered by inviting his Episcopal brethren to come to the Union Theological Seminary chapel to hold the same service, and now everybody is laughing except Doctor Manning.
All Races of One Blood
XPERIMENTS of Dr. Noguchi, famous biologist, with sun rays, ultra-violet rays, special diets and glandular treatments are said by him to demonstrate that racial characteristics are the result of a combination of glandular secretions and physical environment and that negroes can be made white, or any other desired racial changes may be made, by judicious use of the means named.
Russia to Have Cement Plants
A CHICAGO engineering company has secured the order to build for Russia a series of huge cement manufacturing plants, flour mills and grain elevators, aggregating $110,000,000 in value. Russia will supply the capital, material, and labor. The Chicago firm will engineer these undertakings and train Russians to build and operate similar plants. The fees to be paid by Russia -will be huge.
The Continental Jugendherbergen
THE Continental Jugendherbergen are boys’ and girls’ hotels scattered all over the central part of Europe where vacationists can sleep in excellent beds for seven cents a night, three rolls can be had for two cents, and a cup of coffee for three cents. Young people on walking or cycling tours are sure of good treatment and good care in these hotels, each of which is under a manager known as the father of the Herberge.
The Moral Police of North Carolina
Dr. Wm. B. Spofford, of the Episcopal League for Industrial Democracy, declares that the churches in the textile regions of North Carolina are owned and controlled by the mill owners and that the clergy are the moral police for the industrial lords; that the houses of the workers are mere shacks unfit for human habitation; that in instances their water supply is pumped from levels below their sanitary facilities; that the workers work in temperatures of 90 to 100 degrees without ventilation and that the recent killings of v/orkers were cold-blooded, deliberate murder. He also states that he has personally investigated conditions and knows that the workers are keen, honest-to-goodness, 100-percent American types, and that the cry that they are agitators and radicals is absolute rubbish.
Christ’s Seamless Robe
HD HE only clothing that Christ had which was J- any special value was a close-fitting garment, woven in one piece. Even that was taken from Him when He died. On the other hand, the most expensive wardrobe in the world is that at the Vatican. The finest silks and laces, bespangled with the finest gems, are part of the papal wardrobe, as well as woolen garments the wool for which is obtained from a special herd of sheep.
Oregon Methods in Britain
A FRUIT grower with seventeen years’ experience in Oregon is finding it profitable to grow fruit in County Kent, England, near the London market. He thins his fruit when they are of the size of walnuts, keeps them six to ten inches apart, and digs the ground around the trees and keeps water flowing to them. In a year when most British fruit has been too small to be salable he has done well.
Air-cooled Trains in France
FRANCE has adopted for summer travel a new device for supplying passengers with cooled and filtered air similar to that used in America in picture shows. In the hottest weather the windows are kept shut, but the passengers are at all times in comfort, and cinderless. This innovation has been found entirely practicable in France, and is bound to spread all over America, because the railroads here are now trying desperately to find some way to keep their passenger business. Here is a way that has not been tried, and a good way too.
Federal Radio Espionage
WE ARE advised that a new system of federal radio espionage has been inaugurated, and ambitious plans are in progress for a considerable enlargement of the staff that will be devoted to this class of work. The report which comes to us says:
An individual file has been started at the Commission for each station. Whenever anybody writes in to the Commission complaining about the station for any reason, the letter goes into that station’s file. Likewise are letters of praise included.
Whenever, from the letters, it appears that something is wrong, a secret investigation will be made of the station.
If the investigation shows that there is sufficient ground, recommendation will be made to the Commission that the station be denied a renewal of license.
SZ.tW Deserters from the Army .
TT IS claimed that there are 67,000 deserters ■*« from the United States army now wandering about, enjoying their freedom. The average number of deserters each year runs about 7,000. After a deserter remains uncaptured for three years he can get a deserter’s discharge, which thereafter prevents him from being locked up. Most desertions are laid to unsatisfactory rations.
The Long and Scalloped Skirts
FTER dressing sensibly for years many New York women are now falling in with, the whims of Parisian dressmakers and buying dresses which are long and scalloped and are unsanitary and dangerous and make them look twenty years older. Shame on the fashion makers 1 They are moving backwards and now trying to undo all the good they really did for womankind in recent years.
Sanhedrin to Review Jesus’ Trial
URING the past ten years a movement has been on foot to reconstitute the G~reat
Sanhedrin at Jerusalem and to review in an official manner the trial of Jesus held 1894 years ago. The plans have now progressed so far that it lias been virtually decided that the Sanhedrin shall be composed of twenty-three rabbis, twenty-four scientists and scholars, and twenty-four practical, hard-headed business men of analytical mind, all to be well knov.m among the Jewish people as men of honor and integrity.
The Fahy Dinner in Washington
T THE Fahy dinner in Washington, in 1926, according to Senator Brookhart, United
States senators were invited to help themselves to hip flasks, and Mr. E. E. Loomis, of the Morgan Banking Company, did so, and it smelled alcoholic. But the interesting thing about the dinner is that Otto Kahn engaged Mr. Brookhart in conversation regarding his expressed hope of squeezing some of the $7,060,000,000 out of the railroad valuations, and a few minutes later Mr. Loomis opened up the same subject. This suggests that the real object of the hip pocket dinner was not so much to give them a taste of forbidden liquors as it was to stop, if possible, the honest revaluation of the railroads.
Demons Attack British Dogs
roeessor Frederick Hobday, principal of the British Royal Veterinary College, in an address at Ayr, Scotland, made the statement that in numerous instances in Britain packs of dogs behave as though they had seen a ghost; the malady might affect a single dog or cause a group to run howling for miles, perhaps being killed by rushing into an obstruction or into ■water.
Victims of Mergers
NE can not pick up a newspaper without reading of some new merger. The next time you read of such a merger take a moment to reflect that it means ruin to many innocent men, and there seems no way out of it Today in New York there are plenty of former executives, men of real ability, glad to take jobs as doormen, messengers, or anything they can get, and at any price.
Pensioning Aged in Delaware
ENSIONING the aged in Delaware has been begun by one man, Alfred I. du Pont, paying the bill. This is surely a move in the right direction, and one that can not fail to bring down blessings upon Mr. du Pont’s head. It is expected that the state will take up the work shortly. Institutions are so expensive that many •well-informed persons believe any state in the union could do what Mr. du Pont is doing, help people in their own homes, to the extent of their necessities, and actually save money over present methods of herding them all in unhomelike institutions.
Poland Asks for Palestine
PARIS dispatch, published in the London
Daily Express, states that Poland is ready and anxious to take over the mandate for governing Palestine when, the question of revision of mandates comes up before the League of Nations two years hence. Poland’s reasons are twofold: First, her claim is that she has the largest Jewish population in Europe; second, she is a Boman Catholic country, and the pope is knovm to be exceedingly anxious to obtain control of the Holy Land. It would be strange indeed if the Jews, after such great efforts to escape from their Polish tormentors, should again find themselves under their control even in their ancient dwelling-place.
'Wickmann the Good Samaritan
IN THE last four years Charles T. Wichmann, retired merchant tailor, has mended, free of charge, the clothing of thirty thousand.homeless men and boys at the Salvation Army Memorial Hotel, 225 Bowery, New York. “Dadd/’ Wichmann, as he was affectionately called, has passed beyond, and we may feel sure that the Lord will have a good place for him somewhere in His kingdom.
Millbury’s Dog Fireman
MILLBURY, Massachusetts, has a dog fireman of which it is justly proud. The other morning the house of its master took fire. The mistress of the home rushed out of the house, carrying two of her children to safety. When she rushed back to get her ten months’ old baby she met Rex carrying the baby down the stairs, the proudest and happiest moment of the dog's life.
Anarchists in North Carolina
IN THE year 1929, in North Carolina, anarchists in uniform wrecked a building occupied by workers, clubbed their street parade, used bayonets, revolvers and clubs, kidnaped and flogged several men, murdered Ella May Wiggins, and shot 23 men in the back and are now haling workers before the courts to do anything that has been left undone. A preacher helped some by putting 100 of the workers out of his church. They did not know it at the time, but this was one of the best things that ever happened to them.
The Gastonia Solicitor
IT IS claimed that the Gastonia solicitor who successfully pleaded for the conviction of the seven labor leaders rolled on the floor, shouted, knelt in “prayer”, denounced the defendants as “foreign communists” and “devils with hoofs and horns” and screamed at the jury, demanding, “Do you believe in the flag? Do you believe in North Carolina?” All we have to say is that if that is what it means to believe in the flag and believe in North Carolina every man in the box should^ have jumped to his feet and shouted “NO” in tones that would have raised the roof. To send seven men to prison for five to twenty years after that kind of court-room farce is a disgrace to humanity.
Ministers on the Pay Rolls
WHEN one hundred members of the Baptist church at East Marion, N. C., were dropped from the membership because they wanted decent hours of work and decent wages, and had gone on strike to get them, it was discovered that the pastor of the church, and the deacons too, were on the pay roll of the mills. And now thou knowest what the pastor in a mill town is for.
Treason, Rebellion, and Conspiracy THE six unarmed workers at Marion, N. C,, -S- who on October 1 -were shot in the back and killed are still dead, and the sheriff has been exonerated. Of the workers not shot in the back, and still living, five have been arrested and are being tried for treason, rebellion, and conspiracy. The industries of Marion consist of two mills, the employees average to work 67% hours a week for a wage of $11. These wages are only two-thirds the wages paid in Massachusetts. It seems to be treason in North Carolina to want better wages.
Dollars Make All Da Alike
A COMMISSION of the Georgia Baptist Convention, assembled at Gainesville, Ga., has made the following resolution: “A few years ago we Southerners were bitterly denouncing New England cotton mills for the way they treated their labor. Now that some of these mills are coming South, we find some of our Southern statesmen angrily defending these same practices in the South. Then they denounced high protective tariff of New England industries: now they are clamoring for that same protection for Southern mills. Surely dollars make us all do alike.”
The Gastonia Grand Jury
fPHE same grand jury which indicted the strike leaders at Gastonia for defending themselves from attack by a mob, which indictment has resulted in the conviction of seven of them for murder, flatly refused to indict any of the nine men, composed of bosses and employees of textile mills, who shot and killed Ella May Wiggins, and also refused to indict any members of the mob charged with kidnaping three union organizers. This grand jury is doing all in its power to wreck America, and deserves to be indicted itself.
Dull Life of a Folder
NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD Vassar student worked six weeks in a bindery to find out what are the actual conditions under which factory women work. She found that work as a folder provided such fatigue and such low wages that no other pleasures or relaxations were possible except eating and sleeping, and she has announced that when she is twenty-one she intends to be a radical.
Big Business Out of Hand
sited States Senator Sackett, in a speech at Louisville, admits what everybody knows to be the fact, namely, that holding companies have really put an end to all antitrust laws and legislation designed to control railroads and public utilities. These holding companies actually control all kinds of competing businesses; but Congress can have no authority over them, because they are not engaged in interstate commerce.
State vs. Private Insurance
IN AUSTRALIA insurance is a state matter.
The people as a whole sell their own life protection, and sell at cost. The United States lias done differently. It has turned the life insurance business over to private companies. These have sold policies aggregating $100,000,000,000. About 30c of every dollar of insurance thus bought eventually finds its way back to the policy-holders. The balance is used for profit, for office expenses, and for swinging the stock market this way or that, as the big financiers find convenient.
Soap, Cheese, and Chocolates
ONE of the latest mergers is Colgate soaps and perfumes, Kraft-Phenix cheeses, and Hershey chocolates and cocoas. Well, all of these are good. Hereafter we shall wash with the aid of Colgate soap, brush our teeth with Colgate dentifrice, shave with Colgate cream, put a drop of Colgate perfume on our handkerchiefs, take a drink of Colgate cocoa, sweetened with Colgate sugar, nibble at Colgate cheese, eat some Colgate ice cream, and wind up by eating Colgate chocolate almond bars; and all the profits will go to the one $125,000,000 concern which the National City company has formed to handle these products.
Unemployment in Vancouver
CLIPPING from The Daily Province, of Vancouver, British Columbia, shows that unemployment conditions are so bad that men have been asking to go to jail, as they have no means of support. It is a great civilization; isn’t it? These men can not get jobs, and so they automatically become criminals, and are classed as such, absolutely without any fault of their own.
Damodar KetkaPs “Poltergeist”
awodar Ketkar is the name of a Hindu boy now in London, and Poltergeist is the -word used to describe the unruly spirit demon or devil which in the presence of such a sufferer hurls about glasses, plates, bottles, or anything else movable, and yet without doing bodily harm worth mentioning. The only explanation of Ketkar’s experiences is that it is the work of demons. The London Daily News referred to the matter under the headline “Boy with an Unruly Spirit”, a very good description.
The Machines and the Jobs
IN THE recent tariff discussion Senator Smith of South Carolina inquired why it is that the American people allow themselves to be in bondage to a system that denies them the privilege of enjoying the marvelously cheapening processes of machine production. He said further, “We employ one man now where we used to employ 50 at $2.50 a day. Now we give the one man $10 a day and give the 49 nothing. We have just substituted for the 50 at a living wage one man at a little increased wage and turned the others out to graze where they can find nothing.”
Sixty Thousand Jewish Christian Scientists
IT SEEMS incredible that there could be sixty thousand Jewish Christian Scientists, yet the
Hebrew Christian Alliance Quarterly claims that there are more than that number in New York city alone. The Quarterly says of these: Their connection with that cult hardly raises a ripple in Jewry. They are not ostracised, maligned or persecuted by the Synagogue. But let half a dozen Jews openly confess the saving name of Jesus, and identify themselves with His cross and shame, and there is nothing too vile which the Jewish people and press will say of them.
Dead Bandits and Dead Bankers
REFERRING- to the action of the South Dakota bankers’ association in favor of offering a reward for dead bandits, the dean of Dakota Wesleyan University thinks this should be offset by a public reward for dead bankers who, in recent years, have cost the people of the Dakotas much more than have the bandits. The dean seems to think that theft is theft, whether done by a bandit or a banker. In fact, says the dean, “The burglar gives his victims a little more of a sporting chance.”
What Panama Indians Think of America
THREE San Blas (Panama) Indians, educated in the United States, are admirers of American surgery, sanitation, business ability and generosity, but greatly disappointed with what they saw of American morals. The San Blas Indians do not allow visitors in their villages after nightfall; and prohibit marriage outside of their own tribe, by the enforcement of the death penalty. They refuse to allow their gold mines to be worked, believing it would be the beginning of the end of their race.
Baby Brides of India
THE London Daily Express contains a dispatch from Allahabad, India, reciting that in India more than 25,000,000 girls under the age of sixteen are married. Of this number, 2,000,000 are under ten years of age, and 218,000 under five years of age. Even girls of three and four years are married in a mass system. Births take place when the child mother is thirteen, and would take place sooner did not natural laws intervene. It is hoped to raise the marriage age to 14.
Georges Clemenceau on Death
WHETHER Georges Clemenceau entertained the Bible hope of a resurrection of the dead or not we do not know; but he did hold the Bible position that death is death, a dreamless sleep, a negative state of unconsciousness. In one of his books Clemenceau asks, “When we have completed our daily tasks, do we not seek to recuperate in sleep? Death is no more and no less than sleep. In the evenings every one looks forward to the approaching hours of unconsciousness. Insomnia is considered an unsurpassed evil.”
Dangers of Window Cleaners
rpiIE tremendous towers that are now shoot-ing skyward in New York city, some of them higher than the Eiffel Tower, are calling for peculiar courage in the window-cleaning business. With all the care that is used, two percent of New York window cleaners fall to their death every year. The insurance rate paid for window cleaners is $1.35 a day a man, the highest in any business.
We’ll Be Eating Sawdust Soon
npiIAT we shall all be eating sawdust soon seems borne out by experiments of the professor of chemistry in Long Island University, Dr. Dwight L. Scoles. Dr. Scoles claims to have made molasses out of a mixture of sawdust and sulphuric acid, and a meat substitute out of sawdust and air. A butter was made out of sawdust syrup, glycerin, paraffin and fungus. If these statements are correct there need never be another famine in the world.
Blessing the Dogs at Chantilly
VITE KNEW that they have been blessing the ’ ’ dogs at Chantilly, France, every year for a thousand years past. Last year the dogs had good luck. They chased a beautiful stag into the river where he could be killed in the most fashionable style. But we just learned something this year that makes us sad. We have learned that only the three oldest dogs are brought to the altar and blessed. What have the rest of them done not to get in on this? The dogs at Chantilly, that is, the common dogs, do certainly lead a dog’s life.
Mooney Still Innocent
HPHE trial judge, the police officers, and all -a- but one of the living jurors have united emphatically in asserting their belief that Tom Mooney who has been thirteen years in jail in California wras sent there on perjured testimony for a crime which he never committed. Nowt a ■woman in Ohio has made affidavit that her brother, who died seven years ago, confessed on his deathbed that it was he, and not Mooney, that thre^v the bomb which killed the nine marchers in San Francisco’s Preparedness Day parade. Mooney is still in prison and is still innocent, but as long as the Power Trust rules California he will probably stay where he is.
Walnut Leaves and Anemia By W. Davis Haenger
MANY issues back you published a simple article on a, relief from anemia. In fact it was so plain that I am sure many of the readers overlooked it completely.
Permit me to write my appreciation, of the article, and may this letter become a spur to some suffering from lack of blood. Knowing a little lady who was very weak and frail, I suggested that, as stated in the article, she secure from a druggist a quantity of dried black walnut leaves. This she did. Then she made a tea of them. The tea was made exactly as regular tea. Before a week was past she felt better and stronger, and had gained a good appetite. Now after several weeks she looks much better and is gaining weight; her health is improved, and she is an ardent pursuer of Golden Age health hints. Keep it up I
An Elephant’s Prodigious Memory
A SUBSCRIBER writes us that in his neighboring city of Corsicana, Texas, an elephant suddenly dashed from the ranks in which he was parading through the streets with the rest of the herd, rushed to the sidewalk, seized a woman in his trunk and whipped her to death before he could be checked.
It transpired, subsequently that it was this same woman, who, seven years before, had given employment to the elephant’s keeper, and thus had been a means of separating the two. After he had agreed to a change of employers, and when he came to hid the elephant good bye, the woman was along. The elephant remembered her, identified the city, saw her in the crowd, and murdered her for taking his keeper away from. him.
When an elephant goes bad it is customary to kill it; the death sentence was passed upon Black Diamond. Three elephants led him forth from his car in chains, and he seemed instinctively to know that he was to be executed, for he refused food offered to him, which food contained poisons, and went to his death hungry. He was chained to two trees, meantime trumpeting shrilly. Several volleys from machine guns were needed to end his career. The carcass weighed nine tons.
Gravy a la Cenotaph. By Ida Herron
HAVING been so greatly helped by your articles on aluminum poison, I 'wish to tell my experience, in the hope that it will be of help to some one else.
At the time I first paid much attention to your article on aluminum poison I was having an awful time with my legs. They were almost twice their normal size, and the pain and cramps in them would awaken me almost every morning around 3: 30 a.m.
About four months ago I quit using my aluminum dishes for cooking, or even to let cold food stand in them; and though my ankles are not quite normal, yet they are very much better. My eyes do not have the yellow look they had; and I am stronger, and rest well at night.
Some might say, cOh, you are off your feet more,’ or something like that; but that is not so, as I have had a busy time with the regular weekly drives for the books, and housecleaning and general farm work has been one continual round of walking and hard work; but I am so much stronger, and thankful to be able to do it.
I don’t even use an ahmiinum cover on a dish while boiling. I had a real bad time for almost three days as a result of using my only aluminum cover two Aveeks ago when cooking porridge. Even after the first day, when the worst of the vomiting ceased, I had awful pains for the next two days.
I am positive it was nothing else but the steam from the lid dropping all the time. I had felt so fine before breakfast that morning that I remember hoping our service director would give me lots to do; and then before noon they had to rush me home.
I have thought since how we often used to remark that fresh roast of either beef or pork had no ill effects until two or three days later. And I had a little aluminum dish I usually used to keep my left-over gravy in, as we were always told they were so safe. _ ■ .
Wall Street Rumblings By F. W. O’Neill
The Uplift—
SLIGHT tremors, with the greatest monetary shock ever recorded in the history of Wall Street, struck that famous financial center during the last week of October and shook some of the excessive froth from financial and speculating pocketbooks.
Not only were small investors slaughtered, but so rapid and violent was the fall of prices that many, if not all, of the oldest and most experienced brokers and speculators had to sit tight and watch their holdings suffer severe losses because of the falling avalanche.
Stockholders who did not speculate on margin, but who had bought their stocks outright, saw their peak prices melt in most instances to less than half through the scared selling by minority shareholders. A certain auto company’s shares, for instance, sold for $514 a share on September 18. On October 29 those shares brought only $120 on the market; a loss of approximately 77 percent.
So unsound and unjust is the manipulation, and policy of this financial machine that a minority of shareholders or speculators can, by frantically selling their small lots of shares for what they will bring, establish on the stock exchange prices which affect the balance or majority of shares, and which may total into the hundreds of millions. Ridiculous? Of course.
It is true that many of these high peaks or prices were affected by the same small minority, or manipulated by pools of speculators to a price out of all proportion to the investment and earnings of the companies invo
Nevertheless, those peak prices represented money, and even though termed 'paper profits’ they were redeemable in cash to those selling their stocks at these high prices. And even though they were speculative profits, they had to be paid for out of the productive labor of the people. For where all contribute in labor to the wealth of the community or country, that wealth, by manipulation into the hands of the few, can not but affect each and every contributor comprising a part of society.
Of Civil
There are a few features involved in this .latest financial crash which are worthy of note. During the first shock on T li u r s day, October . 24, when almost 13,000,000 shares were dumped on the market, with net losses estimated at approximately $5,000,000,000, a conference of famous bankers was held in Wall Street’s largest financial institution.
Assurances were made that the banking interests would support the falling market. The secretary of the treasury in Washington conferred with the Federal Reserve Bank, also with President Hoover; and one and all took particular pains to assert their faith in the sound financial security of the country, that there was nothing to fear, that the business structure of the country ivas running smoothly and soundly.
In spite of such assurances, the following Monday found stocks continuing their downward rush, until Tuesday completely crashed the bottom out of the market with an avalanche of over 16,000,000 shares1
Conferences still continued; statements were still issued, for what they were worth; but nothing could stop the debacle. So much for assurances 1
Now it has always been, and still is the policy of the moneyed class, that is, those with an aptitude for financial profit, to buy low, and sell high. Your shrewd local trader will buy cows cheap in the fall, when necessity compels many
.Tiosr—
seriously affect
a farmer to sell rather than carry them through the winter, and the trader will sell them at greatly advanced prices in the spring.
So with financial kingpins.
W h e n s t o c k s ha d reached such a low level that the carefully observing ones were convinced there were splendid opportunities for profit, they bought,andboughtbig. The world’s richest oil magnate and his son bought at bargains and will reap returns which will greatly increase their already overloaded treasury.
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