Golden Age, April 2, 1930

Download: PDF — Golden Age, April 2, 1930

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND. COURAGE

lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllt. <11111111111111111

in this issue NATIONAL BROADCAST THE BRIDGE TO PLENTY v ■■ ■

T BILLIONS IN THEFTS MORE ABOUT VACCINATION CAN CANCER BE CURED? EVENTS IN CANADA RESURRECTION OF JESUS radio lecture by Judge Rutherford iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiintjiiiiiiiiim EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY . 5c a copy - $ 1.00 a year - Canada & Foreign $ 1.50

Volume XI - No, 275 April 2, 193 0

Brooklyn, N. Y.t Wednesday, April 2, 1930

Volume XI

I'

Number 275

SSSS|;......■■SX

The Bridge to Plenty

THAT is not the real name of the book. Its true name is The Road to Plenty*, but in our judgment no such road exists, nor can exist,

f until Satan has been bound and his whole crowd • have gone down in ruin in Armageddon; nevertheless this book by William T. Foster and Waddill Catchings would do something to help

matters for a time.

The book is an account of an imaginary conversation between various types of men in the smoking room of a Pullman. They consider at length why it is that “even in Massachusetts a fourth of the old people are making hopeless efforts to live decently and comfortably on less than four hundred dollars a year and such meager aid as they get from relatives and ; charity”.

These men marvel that in a country bursting with riches half of the families in the great city of Philadelphia have no bathtubs at all or share them with other families, while four out of five farmhouses have no bathtubs, and nine out of ten of them have no running water, or electric lights, or motor trucks.

They note that the average annual wage of industrial workers is no more than nineteen hundred dollars, which amount “barely covers the needs of a family for food, clothing, shelter, and ordinary sickness: it leaves nothing for extraordinary hard luck, nothing for vacations, insurance, travel, education, or old age”, and they ponder over the curious fact that with conditions like this confronting them “there are no

pains too great for mankind to take to avoid the trouble of thinking”. One of the oddest things about it all is that the average man bitterly resents the suggestion that he should reason his way down to the foundations of Satan’s rotten empire, economic, religious, or political.

One of the speakers points out that “there is

— 1 1 1■■■■■■ " I — !■■■ — । ■ ■ < '■ —>— i - W*. ■.

•Pollak Foundation for Economic Research, Newton, Mass., ?2.00.

something puzzling about a world in which a bumper cotton crop is regarded as a national calamity”, while another remarks that “nearly everybody wants more of the good things of life: I know thousands that are suffering for want of more even in these prosperous times: and we were never so well equipped to produce more. Yet all along the road today we have seen closed factories: and right now millions of workers are without jobs, or on part time, because they have produced too much”.

The Vicious Spirals

The book, of course, has its hero, the man who understands economics. He points out that there are two vicious spirals. In the vicious spiral of inflation, “People rush into the markets and try to buy more goods than the markets afford. Business booms. So manufacturers pay more wages, make more goods, build more equipment, place orders further ahead, and speculate in commodities, all of which causes a further rise in prices, a further expansion of industry, and so on.”

In the vicious spiral of deflation, 'Goods were piling up on the shelves and prices falling.’ “Things went from bad to worse. The movement did not correct itself, because falling prices usually are so discouraging that business men discharge workers, reduce wages, curtail output, postpone additions to plant, buy only from hand to mouth, and keep down their inventories, all of which causes a further fall in consumer income and a further fall in prices. That leads, naturally, to a further retrenchment of business, a further fall in wages and dividends, a further fall in prices, and so on.”

Certain facts are set forth to which all will agree: that “we have abundant production facilities: there is no lack of savings”: “nearly every industry is oversupplied with savings. In some cases the excess capacity is notorious—•

textiles, coal, tires, iron, steel, shoes, cotton, corn, wheat, fruit,” and nearly all industries are now equipped to increase the output of the very goods which the people want.

As one of the speakers put it, "The war taught us that, after it had thrown industry into confusion and taken four million workers away from their jobs, the workers who were left produced enough to supply all the wealth which was sunk at sea and blown up in battle, enough to supply our own Army and Navy and millions of people abroad, and enough more to enable the people at home to enjoy at least as high a standard of living as before the war.”

The hero sums up the situation as follows: "Machines, materials, men, and money in superabundance: hungry mouths to feed and every means of feeding them: willing hands to work and plenty to work with. Now, the question is, why could no immediate means be found of letting this stupendous wealth of machines, materials, men, and money go on with the world’s work?” "We are wasting our savings, whereas it is only in so far as we use savings that we make progress.”

All hands in the party agree that there is no lack of desire for more of the good things of life and that "even in our prosperous country, most of the people would be much better off if they had more wealth”. Let the one who reads this judge for himself whether he could make good use of a greater revenue. All hands also agreed that "we cannot have a plenty unless we create a plenty”.

Why Production is Restricted

Nobody can deny the self-evident proposition that "the only reason the business world does not produce more is because it can not sell more. Lack of markets is the trouble. We never produce a plenty for fear of producing too much”. Nor can anybody deny that the buying of wageearners increases about as rapidly as their incomes.

"The very fact that we cannot get rid of what we make, even in these prosperous years, without persuading the people to mortgage their incomes further and further into the future, seems to show that the flow of money to people who want to buy goods does not keep pace with the flow of the goods.”

The proposition naturally follows "that we cannot hope to use our capital savings or our

labor continuously at

any approach to capacity,

unless individual incomes, week in and week out, are such that- the people buy all the finished products of home industry, or the equivalent in imports, about as rapidly as they are ready for sale”.

In other words, the standard of living of the . people must be raised, if business is to be prosperous, but if savings are to be made, out of which shall come yet further improvements in the standard of living, for an ever increasing number of people, there must be an increase in the volume of money available to consumers. "The question is not whether a rising standard of living requires a growing volume of money, but how the growth is to be brought about at the right rate.” The Federal Reserve System does this important service for the producers, but thegs is no machinery in existence at present for doing it for the consumers.

Advance Payments to Consumers

When wages are paid out to the workers who build factories, railroads and machines, to those who supply tools and materials, and to those who do the transporting, insuring and financing, most of it is paid out and spent by consumers before the facilities under construction are ready to supply the markets with goods. These wages are advance payments, and "these advance payments, paid in anticipation of the sale of goods which have not yet been produced, add to the demand for goods without for the time being adding to the supply of goods”.

It thus follows that "as long as the building of new factories, railroads, telephone lines, and so on, brings about a sufficient expansion of money in circulation, the markets for the products of the old capital facilities are brisk enough to keep business prosperous”. “In order to enable the people to buy the output of our present facilities, we have to build new ones: and then, in order that the people may buy the output of the new ones, we have to build more new ones.”

An illustration of this truth is seen in the development and use of the automobile. "A single industry, non-existent a generation ago, now pays people enough money to enable them to buy the country’s total output of bread and, in addition, the total output of woolen, worsted, and silk goods.” Because of this new industry billions have been invested in automobile plants, and other billions in iron, steel, plate glass, lumber, copper, paint, oil, tires, garages, filling stations, automobile freight cars; and this has helped things all around.

Now comes the point of the book, and that is that when the government spends money for public works it adds to the income of consumers and thus helps where help is most needed. What the government should therefore do is to put “more money into consumers’ hands when business is falling off, and less money when inflation is under way”. The government would thus, by its acts, in paying off government debts, building public works, etc., check both of the vicious spirals of inflation and deflation, and keep things running more smoothly. “A decline of business, however initiated, cannot develop into a depression if consumer income is sufficiently sustained.” “If the new policy succeeded, it would necessitate constant increases in the volume of money in circulation: but the time would come when no further increases would be possible, without abandoning either the gold standard or the present gold reserve ratio.”

The plan proposed in The Road to Plenty “calls for a separate Federal Board, which shall itself gather and measure the data best adapted to show the adequacy of the flow of consumer income, using, however, for its own purposes, the wealth of data gathered by other agencies. Having thus collected the needed information, the Board shall advise thg Government how to use it as a guide in all fiscal matters. The Board itself, guided in the same way, shall determine when certain expenditures are to be made, which already have been provided for by Congress, under a policy of long-range planning of public works. Thus the Board, both through its own acts and its published reason for its acts, will provide private business with the needed leadership”. “Public works built in that way might actually cost the country nothing: for if they were not built, the country might lose more than the cost, through the idleness of men and of capital savings.” “When production is far below capacity, and many workers are unemployed because demand for their products is insufficient, it is far better for the Gov-ernment to spend money on public works than to use the money to pay debts*”

men of tender hearts, and that they are really in earnegt in trying to find a way out of the present economic impasse, is very plain from the following touching soliloquy, which we quote in full. It may be added that others have been touched by this book, and that some of its suggestions seem to have come to the favorable attention of President Hoover. References to the opinions of Foster and Catchings are now quite common in the metropolitan press.

Through the dusty window, the Little Gray Man saw a line of trudging workers, stretching from the factory gates all the way down the ugly street. Another day’s work done, he thought, and tomorrow there will be another, and the next day another. And beyond that, what? Endless anxiety, even for most of those who, by a special good fortune which they dare not hope for, actually do hold their jobs. How many of them, he wondered, if they had the choice to make tonight, would care to live over a day like the one now ending ? How many of them, if they knew what the coming days had in store for them, would have the heart to go on ?

Through the city the train flew: past row upon row of dreary factory dwellings: and on and on into the country.

Down through a field, toward a dilapidated barn and a still more dilapidated house, came a farmer, leading a pair of horses. *'The plowman homeward plods his weary way,” thought the Gray Man.

Yes, and truly "leaves the world to darkness and to me.”

For some time, clouds had been piling up in the west.. Now the Gray Man observed the sky was as murky as the factory dwellings, as murky, almost, as his own spirit.

Soon the rain began to beat on the windows. He watched the drops as they gathered in little streams, wavered their way down the dirty panes, and were shaken off into space. Like himself—appearing suddenly out of the unknown, following for a moment an aimless course, buffeted hither and thither, and then, suddenly, off again into the unknown. What was it all about? What did it all matter? What did anything matter?

Useless, he thought, for me to allow myself to be crushed under the burdens of thousands upon thousands. The task is far beyond my poor powers. What I cannot help, I must forget.

So he stood up, summoned his old-time good cheer, threw back his head and shook himself, as if to cast off the burdens which bore him down. "Yes,” he decided firmly, "I will comfort myself at least a

A Touching Soliloquy

That the authors of The Road to Plenty are little, as others do, for they are right: I have set my life upon a hopeless quest. ’ ’

But then, of a sudden, right before him appeared the eyes of Mary Marden, lustrous, perplexed, pleading eyes, just.as that very morning they had followed him about the dingy chamber where she lay, with scarcely strength enough to turn her head.

At once, he knew that it was no use. He dropped back, limp, upon the seat. Thousands and thousands of sufferers, massed in a table of statistics—that he might forget. But one penniless, widowed mother, her new-born babe at her side, bereft, beseeching—that he could not forget.

Hard as he had tried to pull himself together, in the culmination of a life of disappointments, one frail human being, her eyes appealing straight to his heart,

, now overwhelmed him. His throat choking, his spirit quite, quite broken, he looked out across the wide meadows.

And it was more than rain that blurred the distant lights.

What a blessing the justice and truth and righteousness and mercy of God’s kingdom ig bound to be to men who can write like that, and can write it because they really feel it in their hearts! The only books worth reading are visionary books, and The Road to Plenty is such a book.

* World Distress : Cause : Remedy

rpiMELY indeed are those words as a title for the address of a speaker whom the radio audience of America delights to hear. And it is a pleasure to announce that such is the subject chosen by Judge Rutherford, president of the International Bible Students Association, for Sunday morning, April 27.

On that day he will speak at Oakland, California, over two hookups, one for the East and one for the West.

For Eastern and Central Territory

Direct from Oakland through the following stations regularly associated in the WATCH

TOWER network: Bangor, Maine ..................WLBZ

Boston, Massachusetts ..........WLOE

Providence, Rhode Island........WLSI

New York, New York .......... WBBR

New York, New York .......... WMCA

Poughkeepsie, New’ York........WOKO

Syracuse, New York............WFBL

Paterson, New Jersey ..........WODA

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania ........ WHP

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania........WIP

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ........ KQV

Scranton, Pennsylvania..........WGBI

Washington, District of Columbia WMAL Norfolk, Virginia .............. WTAR

Petersburg, Virginia ............WLBG

Charlotte, North Carolina........WBT

Raleigh, North Carolina........WPTF

Hamilton, Ontario ........... CKOC

Cleveland, Ohio ................ WHK

•Every reader of The Golden Age is cordially invited to join in giving the widest possible publicity to this unique opportunity to hear Judge Rutherford. —Editor.

Columbus, Ohio ................ WCATT

Youngstown, Ohio..............WKBN

Wheeling, West Virginia ...... WWVA

Fort Wayne, Indiana .......... WO WO

Indianapolis, Indiana .......... WKBF

Evansville, Indiana ............ WGBF

Hopkinsville, Kentucky ..........WFIW

Chicago, Illinois................WCFL

Chicago, Illinois................WORD

St. Louis, Missouri ............ KMOX

St. Joseph, Missouri............ KFEQ

Muscatine, Iowa................ KTNT

Lincoln, Nebraska .............. KF AB

Sioux Falls, South Dakota ...... KSOO

Over any of the above stations the sixtyminute program, including the address of Judge Rutherford, will be heard according to the following time schedule:

Eastern Daylight Saving Time 10 to 11 AM

Eastern Standard Time......9 to 10 AM

Central Daylight Saving Time 9 to 10 AM

Central Standard Time ...... 8 to 9 AM

For Pacific Coast and Mountain Territory

A second presentation of the same sixtyminute program will be broadcast direct from Oakland through Station KFWM (Oakland) and a special network including stations along the coast from San Diego to Vancouver, also at Salt Lake City and Denver. This second presentation will be audible according to the following schedule:

Pacific Standard Time......10 to 11 AM

Mountain Standard Time .... 11 to 12 AM

It is expected that the full list of stations for the Pacific coast and Mountain territory can be announced in our next issue.

Pot Shots

Huge Bricks for Paving

S A result of experiments made at Pennsylvania State College it is likely that, before long, paving bricks will be made which will be '' twenty feet long, five feet wide, and thick ! enough that they can be laid for pavement at once.

Plain Speech by Louisville “Tinies”

N AN editorial the Louisville Times says with great plainness of speech: “Civilization has been for a long time a gun-muzzle civilization, Christianity nominal, bloodshed and despoilment part of the routine of history making.” That being true, and it is true, then what about the birds that have the nerve to call the whole aggregation ‘Christ’s kingdom’? r i

Four Bottles of Beer

N A home in California prohibition officers found four bottles of beer. The matron of the home, a young woman about to become a mother, was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison. Her child was born in a cell, and when it was born it was dead. If this is civilization, what is next?

Why Youths Commit Crime

WRITER in the New York Times points out that twenty-five million clerks, bookkeepers, factory hands, mechanics and day laborers average $25 a week, and that while this is a subsistence wage it precludes marriage. Four-fifths of the crimes in the United States are committed by youths between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, because of dissatisfaction with the conditions in which they find themselves.

Scranton’s Crooked Rulers

COURAGEOUS grand jury at Scranton has indicted the sheriff of the county, four chiefs of police, two ex-chiefs of police, a former civil service commissioner, a man who was twice mayor of the city, and sixty-nine others of like honor and integrity, for conspiracy in connection with a slot machine ring. We present on this page a photograph of the officials in Scranton and vicinity who are now open to suspicion of things that are even worse.

Voting in Kenya Colony

HE Hindus and Negroes in the British colony of Kenya, East Africa, are asking that, when they have met the education and property tests which may be fixed by law, they shall have the same rights to vote in Kenya as are now enjoyed by the whites. Could they, in simple justice, ask for less?

Russia’s New Calendar

USSIA’S new calendar, expected to be put in operation soon, will date from Novem

ber 7, 1917, the date of the Bolshevist revolution, and will have six weeks of five davs each in every month. Saturdays and Sundays will be eliminated. The private practice of law in Russia has been eliminated.

New York City’s Waning Forests

HE last saw mill that will ever operate in Queens Borough, New York city, is now

engaged in cutting up one of the few remaining forests within the city limits. There are still some good forests on Staten Island, in one of the principal ones of which is the site of radio station WBBR.

Australia’s Wild Camels

USTRALIA, thinking it wTould be fun to shoot them, introduced rabbits, years ago.

They multiplied so fast as to become a pest, and now they have to be shot to keep them down. More recently camels were introduced, and then turned loose when automobiles took their place. Now the camels too are multiplying with great rapidity, and as they have gone wild it has become necessary to organize squads to shoot them also.

A Funny One on the Scientists

‘DINOSAUR’S skeleton’ was discovered near

Tetuan, Morocco, and a group of Spanish scientists solemnly descended upon it and began to make the usual calculations as to how many hundreds of thousands of years ago it had lived. They got along very well with the identification of the various parts until they finally discovered that it was a haymaking machine made in Chicago which a Spanish farmer had abandoned during the Riff war and which had later been covered by a landslide caused by heavy rains.

Colorings of Lobsters

ERHAPS due to their differing foods, lobsters have been found which have been of the following colorings: pure white, jet black, dark green, bright blue, gray, red, reddish-yellow, and cream. There are also spotted (or calico) lobsters, exhibiting a variety of colorings, in patterns.

Persecution of Jews in Russia

OT only have many synagogues been taken away from Jews in Russia and converted

into Communist clubs and workmen’s dwellings, but burial grounds have been seized, rabbis have been imprisoned and exiled, the teaching of Hebrew has been forbidden, and the teaching of even two children to say their prayers may result in imprisonment for whoever does it.

Instruction for the Isolated

PRAISEWORTHY step taken by the Office of Education of the Department of the

Interior is to provide education by correspondence for such children as are now too remote from any school to be able to attend. These will include children in lighthouses and on islands remote from the mainland, as well as those that are disabled.

Hurrah for Konetsky!

OU may not know who Konefsky is. He is a blind boy, fifteen years of age, who entered America less than four years ago, not knowing any English at the time. He has just completed an eight-year course in three years and four months and now speaks English so pure that he was chosen to make the valedictory address of his class, most of whom have their sight.

Russellville's Astonishing Bootlegger

T RUSSELLVILLE, Arkansas, just before Christmas, a number of citizens were approached with the question, “Say, how would you like to buy a quart of corn?” A justice of the peace and several church members thought they would appreciate such an investment, and when they got home found that they had purchased corn, shelled corn at that, not even ground into meal, and had paid $2 a quart for it. The purchasers are still looking for the alleged bootlegger. They wish to explain some things to him.

Ancient Wall of Jericho Found

N ANCIENT wall, twenty feet high, said to be the most magnificent yet discovered in Palestine, has recently been uncovered at Jericho and is believed by some to be part of the wall miraculously overthrown in the days of Joshua. About 165 feet of the wall has been unearthed.

Peter Better Fixed Now

HE fact that a Roman Catholic archbishop in the Philippines was able to pay $1,500,000

for the property of the Mindoro Sugar Company suggests that times have improved somewhat for Peter since he said to the poor cripple, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee.”

Britain's Sunday Schools

N THE last twenty years the Anglican church in England has suffered a decrease of 1,133,

766 Sunday scholars; the Wesleyans have lost 177,797, the Baptists have lost 68,096, and the Congregationalists, 174,615. Dr. Douglas Brown, president of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland, has declared that at the present rate the church would be as dead as the dodo • in another ten years.

The Reformation of Krupps

RUPPS, which at one time filled the world with terror, is now giving close attention to market gardening and building acres of glass houses with the idea of supplying the whole of industrial Germany with flowers, fruit and vegetables, and every kind of industrial instrument, including sewing machines and gramophone needles. Germany has learned that war does not pay.

The Use of Antitoxin

HE Army Medical Journal, May 15, 1923, said: “Medical opinion generally is rapidly

coming over to the side of believing it advisable to eliminate the prophylactic use of antitoxin.” In view of the deaths at Bundaberg and Dallas this seems reasonable, and yet we find that the Health Department of New York city has large and expensive posters about the city pleading with parents to have the doctors do, not without remuneration, what the Army Medical Journal thinks inadvisable. And the public pays for the posters.

QOLDEN AQE

April 2, 1930 ■

L i-t I

Harvard Discharges Scrub Women

N THE twenty-first of last December, four days before the day popularly called Christ

mas, twenty scrub women, some of whom had been over thirty years on the job, were summarily discharged because the State Minimum Wage Commission had ruled that their wages thereafter must be increased from $10.50 a week to $11.10 a week. Harvard is the recipient of gifts of millions of dollars every year.

The Cost of Poorhouses

HE average cost of caring for each of the 85,889 persons now in poorhouses in the

United States is $334.64. A bill has been introduced in Congress which would provide federal aid on a 50-50 basis to any state enacting old age pension legislation. At present the United States and China are the only large nations that do not have some form of national old age pension legislation. Wonder if the supreme court of China would declare old age pension legislation unconstitutional.

The Dentifrice Racket

NDER this name The New Republic publishes an article giving Ora-Noid, Semafor, Orphos, Pepsodent, Pebeco, Listerine, Mu-Sol-Dent, X-It, Miracle Pyorrhea Powder, Mucol, Ipana, Tartaroff and Forhan’s a free advertisement which they will remember but probably not appreciate. Most dentifrices claiming to cure pyorrhea consist of baking soda and borax, sold under fancy names for prices ample to pay for the advertising and profits therefrom.

Chicago’s Tax Problems

T SEEMS that the Big Business men of

Chicago succeeded by some hook or crook in

getting $400,000,000 in valuations cut out of the assessments on property in the Loop. The mayor did not think that was fair, so he vetoed the city budget. The taxpayers on the outskirts did not think it was fair either, and are in an angry mood, but Big Business has had its way, for the present, and another intolerable burden has been piled on the backs of those least able to bear it. Chicago is at present virtually in the hands of anarchists masquerading under the high-toned name of “Citizens’ Committee”, self-appointed. The banks, instead of standing by the city in its plight, are refusing funds and standing by the anarchists.

Louisville’s Hard-boiled Magistrate

GUIS VILLE’S hard-boiled magistrate, Albert Nisbet, has been up for trial for embezzling the church’s funds. He is now blind. His daughter claims that the pastor of the church knew of the embezzlements and that both he and the church profited while there were profits to divide. Meantime, the pastor adroitly says that Mr. Nisbet was not “authorized” to abstract the church’s funds. Probably not. Permission and authorization are different words.

Paid a Dead Man Six Years

MAN in Somerville, N. J., was on the pension pay roll of New York city at the time of his death, in April, 1920; but he forgot to notify the bookkeeper or somebody else that he had passed out, so his monthly check came along regularly for the next six years. A man by the name of Ahern found the checks perfectly good, and now, after getting $4,054 in that way, he has the embarrassment of having to explain why he forgot to say something about it.

Chiropractors in New York State

TXTHEN the World War was over, the United ’ ’ States government sent 328 ex-service men to Davenport, Iowa, to train for a profession wherein they could make a livelihood, and now if one of those men undertakes to practice in New York state something which is perfectly legal elsewhere, and which should be legal everywhere, he is in danger of being imprisoned as a felon. Looks like medical liberty with a minus sign before it.

Famine Conditions in China

WO million have already starved to death in Shensi province, China, and two million

more will starve before June. In some instances the survivors continue to live by eating the bodies of their fellows who have already starved or frozen to death. In places nothing is left of houses but one room, the rest having been used for firewood because of the bitter weather, the worst in forty years. Coal is $118 a ton; charcoal $190 a ton. In one village of 800 inhabitants where the starving people had had no grain food for three months, the soldiery distributed some small loaves. The sight of real food drove the people insane, and the soldiers were forced to beat them off with whips before any distribution of the food was possible.

Liberty in Indianapolis

HE non-union Real Silk Hosiery mills of Indianapolis discharged seventeen workers for their union activities. The workers then organized a dance and sold tickets. The Real Silk Hosiery mills posted signs at the mills stating that the dance would be called off. After the sign was posted the police of Indianapolis banned the dance. Persons familiar with the facts are wondering at just what point of time Indianapolis made its escape from the land of the free and the home of the brave, and disengaged itself from the provisions of the Constitution regarding freedom of assemblage.

Shortridge Would Know

USINESS of investigating lobbying in Washington. Sugar lobby up for study, especially W. H. Baldwin, who gets $2,500 a month, part of it from a New York sugar broker, H. H. Pike. Mr. Pike’s files are examined and disclose a memorandum saying, “Shortridge, Cal. Not influential. C. & H. (California and Hawaiian Sugar Company) will certainly tell Shortridge what to do.” If that information is correct, how would it do to let Shortridge out and openly elect the California and Hawaiian Sugar Company to represent the great state of California in the Senate ? At the very least, we would then know who are governing, and who to blame for things.

Splitting Georgia Plantations

olonel J. L. Evans, Ashburn, Ga., has split his five-thousand-acre farm into twenty farms, each equipped with modem machinery and started out with a good supply of farm animals of all kinds. Mr. Evans says of this plan: “Whore once these farmers lay by when the cotton was picked, they are now handling the poultry, the livestock and farm products. When the cotton and other crops come on the produce season is over.” Mr. Evans is hopeful to encourage other plantation owners to divide their lands and create a class of farm owners in the South that can become buyers of the nation’s wares instead of being, as they have been, half-idle and hopeless tenants, living from hand to mouth. He thinks the old tenant plantation system has had its day.

No More Shaves in Byers

BYERS (Kansas) Methodist pastor asks the men of the town to stop getting shaved and to place their barber costs in the missionary funds. Good idea! A still better one is to get their religion over the radio, and then the preacher can go into the barber business, which by that time will have been vacated. The only unsolved problem remaining is, What shall we do with the poor barber that first loses his job under the “no shave” deal? The chances are he would make a better preacher than the other one, so we put him back in the dominie’s job, and the problem is solved.

Los Angeles Getting Religious

N ADVERTISEMENT in the Los Angeles Times shows that in St. Paul’s Presbyterian

church of that city the Rev. Dr. G. A. Briegleb has been preaching on “Jack Horner’s Christmas Pie”; “Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall”; ‘‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”; “Old King Cole,” and other subjects which he thought would be up to the level of his audience and not beyond his own powers. It is wonderful how religious Los Angeles is getting to be. As George Kendall is alleged to have said at the convention in Allegheny, “Isn’t it wonderful? We are right back here where we were forty years ago.” Yea, verily!

Household Economics in St. Louis

UNDER the head of “Household Economics” the St. Louis Post Dispatch says: “When stewing tomatoes, rhubarb, apricots, or onions, look around the kitchen for the aluminum saucepan that needs brightening and use it to cook any one of these articles. All work and effort on your part towards a shiny kettle will be over.” The Post Dispatch forgot to add that if every time you cook such foods you thus stew the discolorations off your pots and subsequently eat them, not only will you shortly cease all work and effort to get shiny kettles, but you will at length cease all work and effort of every kind. What remains to be done will be done first by the doctor, who will not know what to do, and then by the undertaker, who will. And thus the aluminum returns to the earth as it was.

Some Facts About Vaccination

The facts In this article are taken from The Facts Against Compulsory Vaccination ($1.00), by H. B. Anderson, pub-llshed by Citizens Medical Reference Bureau, 1860 Broadway, New York, N. Y.

rpHEBE are no compulsory vaccination laws in Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, Florida,

Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee,

Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, or in any of the states west of the Mississippi river, excepting only New Mexico and Oregon, and in the latter state the requirement is optional with

I the local authorities. The states of Maine, North i Dakota, Arizona and California, which were once 1 . * z

in the vaccination column, have stepped out of it. Massachusetts has abolished the compulsory vaccination of infants.

England and Australia have repudiated compulsory vaccination, and Holland has suspended it for a year on account of the prevalence of cases of encephalitis following it. Dr. William Brady, syndicate writer on health, says that he should vote a positive “No” on any proposition of compulsory vaccination for any group of people or even for all the people.

American Medicine, in an editorial, March, 1914, speaking about the reluctance to vaccination, said:

This attitude is not confined to laymen but is taken by those leading men in the medical profession who postpone vaccination of their own kith and kin until the last moment. Two world renowned men have confessed to us that they have had their children vaccinated only in obedience to public opinion in and out of the profession.

The London Lancet, in an editorial, January, 1927, made the following statement:

Vaccination at the age of six months inflicts an infectious disease on the child at a time when its digestive mechanism is being rapidly modified, and many reasonable people, although convinced that vaccination will prevent smallpox, think that the advantages of immunity do not outweigh the disadvantages of its production.

The Journal of the Michigan State Medical Society, August, 1928, under the head of “The Economic Side of Immunization or Treatment” had the following highly interesting paragraph:

When the 100,000 people born every year in Michigan are vaccinated against smallpox at birth, the income to the physicians would approximate $200,000. The 500 cases of smallpox that occur every year, treated at an average of $50.00 per case, bring physicians $25,000. Thus the physicians, by adopting the practice of vaccination at birth, would increase their income by nearly $200,000.

The Journal of the American Medical Asso-

ciation, November, 1922, contains a declaration by Dr. W. S. Rankin, while secretary of the North Carolina state board of health, in which he unburdened himself of the following:

Last year we inoculated 70,000 persons against typhoid fever, and 1,000 children between 6 and 12 years of age against diphtheria. The county commissioner paid the local practitioners 25 cents for each complete inoculation and that was $20,000 which went to the profession last year which otherwise would not have been received. The work of the medical profession with the state board of health does not stop when that $20,000 is paid. It goes on. In the dispensaries which were conducted in Union County, North Carolina, with 35,000 people, the physicians vaccinated 10,000 people in a campaign of five weeks. That was $2,500 paid to twenty physicians—only $125 each, but think of the effect on the business of the profession in keeping up that work. It goes on.

Speaking of the tendency of the unscrupulous to foist anything upon the public in the way of medicine (or vaccines) that the public can be made to pay for, American Medicine said editorially :

Official positions in medical bodies are sought and at other times are appropriated by not too nice strategy. Medical journals are subsidized and new ones are published. A number of makers pay a regular stipend secretly to complaisant doctors here and there over the country, who, in return, are expected to read “useful” papers and at every possible turn to uphold the wares of the benefactor. Thus it comes that therapeutics has reached its present low estate.

Dr. Frederick R. Green, former secretary, Council on Health and Public Instruction, American Medical Association, in an address before the Utah State Medical Association, September 30,1914, is quoted as saying:

Another error into which we have fallen as a profession is the tendency to regard the medical profession as a divinely authorized class, whose sacred and distinctive function is the protection of the people either with or without their consent. It is difficult to understand on what rational basis such a belief can rest in a scientific profession like ours.

The inconsistencies in some states and localities, where one set of laws interferes with another, were brought out by a Doctor Godfrey at a conference of health officers at Lansing, Michigan, December 12, 1923. Doctor Godfrey was reported as having said: '

In our city unvaccinated children, even though they are not exposed to contagious disease, can not come to

«■ X

school until they are vaccinated. Unvaccinated children are turned over to the school board, and excluded from school, and then as soon as the records show they are not in attendance at school they are arrested for non-attendance. In other words, we get them going and coming.

On April 22,1926, 130 members of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce canceled their trips to Mexico rather than submit to vaccination; but the same dispatch that revealed this fact revealed another one still more interesting, reading as follows:

Nearly 100 American medical men who were expected in Mexico at the end of April after a conference in Dallas have fared better than the commerce body. Arrangements have been made for allowing them to enter the republic without vaccination.

Dr. John P. Koehler, commissioner of health, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in an article in the Wisconsin Medical Journal, November, 1925, outlines how a campaign in favor of vaccination is worked up. He said:

Since people can not be vaccinated against their will, the biggest job of a health department has always been, and always will be, to persuade the unprotected people to get vaccinated. This we attempted to do in three ways: first, by education; second, by fright; and third, by pressure. We dislike very much to mention fright and pressure, yet they accomplish more than education because they work faster than education, which is normally a slow process.

In England smallpox mortality has greatly declined. In the ten years from 1872 to 1881, inclusive, 85.5 percent of the people of England were vaccinated and the number of deaths from smallpox was 37,082; but in the last ten years for which records are available, namely, 1912 to 1921, only 43.4 percent of the people were vaccinated and the total deaths from smallpox were only 122. In the United States, which is largely unvaccinated, the average number of deaths per year from smallpox for the past twenty years is only 313, which, in a population of 120,000,000, is as near to nothing as could reasonably be expected.

Japan has had compulsory vaccination since 1874, and yet in ten plague years since that time has had 77,500 deaths from smallpox. Italy has been vaccinated and revaccinated repeatedly, yet in 1919 it had 18,213 fatalities from smallpox, as against 358 smallpox fatalities the same year in the generally unvaccinated United States of America. In the Philippine Islands, in the ten years from 1911 to 1920, inclusive, there were 24,436,889 vaccinations and a total of '

XX

75,339 deaths from smallpox. In Australia, where only 30 percent of the people are vaccinated, there were only six deaths from smallpox in the fifteen years from 1909 to 1923, inclusive. These figures ought to show, and do show, that improved sanitation is what helps the smallpox record.

It seems that the real facts about smallpox are covered up by the advice given to physicians to report as smallpox all cases of so-called Cuban itch, Philippine itch, alastrim and seven other diseases of various names. In making diagnosis it is common for physicians to give some other name to the malady if it is found that the patient has been vaccinated. This is done so that vaccination will not get a bad name.

The department of health of New York city has for sale nineteen kinds of vaccines and serums. The Massachusetts department of health has only nine of these, but can get the others when they are wanted. A surgeon of the United States public health service proposed a schedule of seventeen trips to a doctor’s office to provide immunization against four diseases. Several hundred trips would be necessary to immunize against all diseases now known or which it is hoped to find. A trip every day, as long as able to make it, is in the offing.

People have been inoculated with extracts of newspapers, dandruff, blonde hair, brunette hair and house dust. You can get almost anything in the way of a serum shot into you if you are willing to pay for it and do not particularly care what happens. Horse dung extract and a serum made from Le Page’s liquid glue were considered by a learned committee of doctors, but “in consideration of their indefinite composition” they were declared "unacceptable for new and non-official remedies”; and so say we all.

Doctor Charles Armstrong, in a work published in 1927, refers to 98 cases of lockjaw following vaccination "over a period of several years”. There have been such deaths in recent years in Wilkes-Barre, York, Allentown, and Peekskill, ten cases in Pittsburgh, and fifty cases in New York state in 1914. Lethargic encephalitis (sleeping sickness) has become a new problem in the world, and the number of cases of encephalitis traceable to vaccination is on the increase. Physicians admit that vaccination may light up or transmit various diseases, including leprosy, and foot-and-mouth disease. No physician can be absolutely certain that any batch of vaccine virus is free from impurities, and no physician can guarantee that vaccination will bring immunity from smallpox.

Events in Canada By Our Canadian Correspondent

NE by one the provinces of Canada are adopting an Old Age Pension Act on the basis that the expenditure in connection therewith will be shared equally by the Dominion government and the province concerned. There are now 13,394 old age pensioners in Canada, and $3,389,089 has been spent on pensions since the passing of the federal act two years ago.

It is instructive to look back on criticism of the measure heard when it was laid before parliament. Some contended it would never work “because the provinces would refuse to cooperate’. It was “inadequate because no one could Eve on $20 a month’. Finally, it was “anti-social because it would discourage thrift and pauperize the aged’. These were the principal arguments, and they were used.

Time has shown how pointless they all were. The pensions law is working smoothly. It has been accepted by five of the nine provinces, the five having two-thirds of the country’s population. The pension of $20 a month, while not a munificent income, has brightened the lives of thousands of aged citizens, and relieved them of dependence on grudging charity. And no one complains now that the prospect of getting $20 a month from the state at the age of seventy will make people idle or improvident.

The pensions law is a credit to Canada, and will in due course have effect in all the provinces. Stupid objections to it are already forgotten, and are worth recalling only as an example of the sort of nonsense reactionary people talk whenever any faintly radical economic measure is proposed.

Smashed Stocks and Unemployment

The recent collapse of the New York stock market, together with the fact that this year’s crop in Western Canada will be but half of last year’s, is being felt in this country in no uncertain way, and is particularly reflected in the large increase of unemployment through the closing down of many factories. A conference of financial, industrial and labor leaders is being urged to deal with the situation, and in this connection the following news item appeared in the Mail and Empire, of Toronto:

A letter to Premier Mackenzie King urging that he call a conference of financial, industrial and labor leaders to consider “the serious unemployment condition throughout Canada,’’ has been sent by A. R. Mosher, president of the all-Canadian Congress of Labor and the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employes. In a statement,issued to-night Mr. Mosher referred to a conference held in Winnipeg between representatives of provincial and municipal governments and of organized labor for the purpose of dealing with the unemployment situation.

Mr. Mosher stated that in his letter to Premier King he called attention to the fact that, from the time it was ascertained that the wlleat crop would be a partial failure, the railways had made immense reductions in staff, and their example was being followed by other industries which were similarly affected, with the result that buying power had been considerably diminished. A widespread business depression was threatened. Seasonal unemployment had appeared at an unusually early period, and the stock market collapse had, in his opinion, exerted an adverse effect fully as great in proportion to population in Canada as in the United States.

It was of the utmost importance, Mr. Mosher’s letter stated, that public confidence should be restored by a survey of business conditions and that plans be drawn up for the provision of employment by both public and private agencies. Actual unemployment and the fear that it would spread to great proportions had curtailed public expenditures, creating a vicious circle which might work extreme havoc in Canadian industry.

The Winnipeg conference brought out the fact, Mr. Mosher contended, that unemployment in the west was greater than at any period in the previous five years, and regretted the attitude of the federal government, which apparently considered that unemployment was a matter for provincial and municipal authorities to deal with. Mr. Mosher took the ground that, in a time of crisis, technicalities of jurisdiction should not prevent the rallying of the constructive forces of the country, and that the federal government alone could give the leadership which the situation demands.

Pending the holding of the conference which it proposed, Mr. Mosher’s letter suggested to the prime minister that the railways be asked by the government to carry on as much construction work as possible, with a view to providing employment, and retaining the maximum number of employes in the service.

Mr. Mosher’s statement added that the prime minister has taken up his letter with the minister of finance and the minister of labor, and had assured him that his representations would receive every consideration.

Why Wheat Is Held Back

The wheat pool head reveals that the world import requirements of wheat are 770,000,000 bushels and that the export surplus is only 708,000,000, and gives this fact as the reason for the pool's confidence in holding its wheat for higher prices.

In the Family Herald and Weekly Star appears the following editorial concerning the situation :

General business would be making a mistake if it took seriously the hue and cry being raised by some of the shipping interests against the wheat pool, because grain is not being rushed overseas, to suit the convenience of transportation companies.

It is perfectly true that many stockholders may be trembling over the possibility of deferred or reduced dividends, because vessels or freight-cars are not operating to their full capacity, but there may be more important interests than theirs to serve.

The whole is greater than its part, and that the

Dominion at large should be made to prosper by the receipt and subsequent expenditure of large sums of money is more important than that the fortunate peo-

pie, who live wholly or in part upon the profits their investments, should have rather less money spend, just at the moment. -

of to

of

Last year produced a wonderful record crop wheat the marketing of which gave financial prosperity to the whole Dominion.

This year there Has been a world crop failure. Forecasts are somewhat speculative with regard to the Argentine and Australian harvests, but it is expected that Australia will garner little more than half of last year’s crop, while the Argentine will be short of its splendid crop of last year by at least 100,000,000 bushels. Canada expects her crop will amount to little more than half of her great crop of 1928.

Last year’s crop brought us

Can any sensible business man claim that the management of the wheat pool is acting short-sightedly in holding large stocks for the present?

The August shipments of wheat and flour made up a total of 13,000,000 bushels, which is some 2,000,000 bushels more than the usual average, although it is quite true that in 1928 under an abnormal pressure of overplus grain 30,000,000 bushels were sold.

No doubt eager buyers, banking upon the small supplies everywhere, would gladly have taken 30,000,000 bushels last August—at last year’s prices of from a dollar to a dollar-ten per bushel!

The prices actually realized for what was sold ranged from around $1.50 to $1.60 per bushel.

There could be no sound reason for selling our wheat in adiurry at this juncture for what it would bring, and thus losing the country the incoming and circulation of from $60,000,000 to $100,000,000.

In times like the present, such a sum might make the difference between prosperity and anxiety to the general trade of the country. There can be no controverting the statement of the General Manager of the Wheat Pool, that the world situation justifies a higher rate than that which rules at present.

Why should Canadian farmers fail to profit by the existing situation, as would men engaged in any other line of business if facing similar conditions?

Law and Order in Nicaragua

General Smedley D. Butler, of the Marine

Corps, is alleged by Pittsburgh papers to have given the following account of the manner in which an election in Nicaragua was conducted under his supervision. The speech was given at a dinner of the Pittsburgh Builders'

Exchange.

The fellow we had in there nobody liked. But he was a useful fellow—to us. So we had to keep him in.

How to keep him was the problem election laws and found that the polls had to be open (a sufficient length of time). At least that’s the way we translated it—and that a voter had to register to be eligible to vote. The district was then canvassed, and 400 were found who would vote for the proper candidate. Notice was given of opening the polls five

hi

We looked up the

Inutes beforehand, the 400 voters were assembled in a line, and when they had voted, in about two hours, the polls were closed. The other citizens had not registered and therefore were ineligible to vote.

“Three Billion Dollar Thefts Predicted for 1930 Boys and Girls Steal Vast Amount”

HE above is the sub j ect of an article appearing in Lookout, called a "magazine of Christian education’-’, and published December -29, 1929, by The Standard Publishing Co., of Cincinnati, Ohio, and distributed by the Christian Church to their Sunday school pupils throughout the United States (so I am told). • One of them was handed to me by a man whom I was canvassing a day or two ago, with the thought, I suppose, that it would be a help to me in the proclaiming of the Kingdom message; and it surely did serve me, and is continuing to serve me, in proving by their own lips (Luke 19: 22) just what the Bible Students have been telling them for a long time, that is, that the churches have proved a failure as a teacher of morals, and that the time has now come for the world to know it.

Among the interesting statements made is one to the effect that in a school of forty-six pupils every one was found to be dishonest in an examination at the beginning of the school term, and that after spending 200 hours during the term in teaching morality again a test was given and the forty-six pupils “proved one-hundred-percent honest, showing that morality can be taught and will prove effective in producing an honest law-abiding young citizenry. The article states that the above vast amount will be stolen by the boys and girls of America during 1930, and almost all of them under twenty-five years of age. Then it asks, “Who is to blame for this great juvenile delinquency? Who has failed? The home? Yes. The state? Yes. But the major blame for the present crime wave must be borne by the church. [We knew it long ago.] The church assumed the responsibility for the spiritual and moral training of the children of this country when religion was removed from the curriculum of the public schools, but the church has failed as a moral teacher. Why has it failed? The answer is clear. The church has never taken its educational work seriously.” And then the author goes on to state a number of facts, as follows:

1. “Millions of children unreached by the educational program of any church.

2. “A low level of ethical ideas in selected samples of American youth.

3. “A high susceptibility to immoral conduct among typical groups of American youth.

By C. D. Ebie {Indiana)

4. “A rapid increase in juvenile delinquency.

5. “A rapidly spreading emphasis on agnostic and materialistic views of reality which tend to eliminate a personal God from the life of the rising generation.

6. “An army of untrained unsupervised voluntary religious teachers attempting to teach morality.

7. “Commercialized amusements and the influence of vividly portrayed criminal conduct in the daily press and the movie screens.”

And then, after again accepting the blame for the low state of morality in our American youth, the author summarizes by asking, “When will the crime wave end, and how long will it last?” He answers, “Until society builds a system of moral and religious schools to match the public schools of our land”; and again, in making his New Year resolutions, the author states, “I dedicate my intellect and my heart, my time and my talents, to the teaching service of my church, knowing that the kingdom of heaven can only be ushered in by teaching our boys and girls to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly before God.”

You will note that this D. D. still thinks that it will be possible for them to clothe the earth with their moral achievements and then the Kingdom wilb be permitted to come. What audacity, after admitting such tremendous failure, still expecting another chance! They (the D. D.’s) should not say anything about ‘Pastor Russell’s teaching a second chance’ (which he did not) when they have had 1900 years of chance and now admit a complete failure. They will soon know that the Lord has taken the Kingdom privilege away from them. And this also shows why they oppose the Kingdom message; for they know they have been weighed in the balance and been found wanting and it is about to be taken away from them.

« * ’ * *

The reason for the total failure above mentioned is lack of common, ordinary, everyday honesty on the part of the religious leaders. They fear to come right out and tell the common people that they have lied to them about the meaning of the words sheol, hades, gehenna, and tartaroo, and that the doctrine of 6 4 eternal torture” is a lie from beginning to end. They fear it will injure business to tell the truth now, so late in the day.—Editor.

Where Are the Deadfr

THREE items of recent news are of interest as touching on this subject. The first is an alleged admission by Doctor Cadman, when asked this question. He is said to have replied, “I do not know: Judge Rutherford is the best authority on that subject.” This over the radio.

The second item refers to the death of George H. Austin, 46, an employee of the Eastman Kodak Company. Smitten suddenly with a heart attack, Austin passed away. The account says:

Dr. Benjamin Slater, chief of the company’s medical service, tried the usual resuscitation methods for two minutes without results, as it was too late. All respiration and heart action had stopped, reflexes of the pupils had ceased and the face had taken on an ashen color, sure signs of death. An injection of adrenalin then was tried, 8 drops being administered directly to the heart through a needle. The first heart beats were hardly perceptible but there was action. The man was rushed to a hospital and there regained full consciousness. “The sensation was the same as if I had fainted and had been revived,” Austin said afterward.

Those who read this item may say that Austin did not die; but it is manifest from the account that if the adrenalin had not been injected into his heart there would have been no change in his condition from the time he seemed to die until his resurrection, except that his body would have gone on into complete decay and dissolution. The man had ceased lo be, but the machinery was there and in such condition that it could be set in motion again.

As far as the man is concerned it will be noted that Austin did not come back with any fairy tales about having been in heaven or in hell or in ‘purgatory* or in ‘limbo’ or in the atmosphere or in any other place. He merely knew that he had “fainted” and been revived, and when, by the Lord’s power, the dead are awakened, that will be all there will be to it. The Devil’s theology that the dead are not dead will have no market in those days; and in order to help the poor fellows who are in that business we are doing all possible to encourage them to buy alarm clocks and overalls and work up callouses on their hands in preparation for the better day, for it is nigh, even at the doors.

The third item is much like the second one, except that the symptoms of death were even more pronounced. The dispatch, which is from Little Rock, Arkansas, reads as follows:

Juda Campbell, 15, whose heart stopped for thirteen minutes, while she was under an anesthetic for a tonsil removal, was alive and well Monday as the result of a new discovery in resuscitation.

The little negro girl was revived after all animation had been suspended when Dr. S. F. Hoge injected oxygen directly into her blood. Previously it had been believed that such an injection would cause instant death, r"

…