Golden Age, June 11, 1930

Download: PDF — Golden Age, June 11, 1930

cnw Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

THE ULTIMATE BUSINESS

WHEN THE WORLD

WENT MAD

FERRETINGS

THE BACCALAUREATE

SUNDAY CANVASSING

SLANDERING GOD

radio lecture by Judge Rutherford

EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY

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

Volume XI- No. 280

June 11, 193 0

LABOR AND ECONOMICS

Sunday Canvassing . . . . . 606

Low Wages in Cotton Industry 585

High-salaried Men Jobless . . 586

New York’s Old Ase Pension Bill 589

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY

Brazil Is Sowing Wheat . . 585

Droughts in Armenia and South

Africa........585

Ferretings..... 585

China’s New Language . . . 585

The Wall of Ur of the Chaldees 587

Cost of World War to America 589

When the World Went Mad . 591

The Glory that Was the

Baccalaurate......5-96

Young and Old (Poem) . . . 598

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

New York State Milk Producers 586

SCIENCE AND INVENTION

Two-Way Television Telephone 585

Human Nerves as Electric 'Wires 586

The Lindbergh Light . . . 586

Universe in the Making . . . 587

Radio Wave Bore Telephone Message ........607

Heading Toward the Ultimate

Business........579

Canadian National Fastest Train 586

Wanted—An Honest Monetary

Unit ..... 590

The Grip of the House of Morgan 590

HOME AND HEALTH

Aluminum Evidence Piling Up 584

Cigarette Smoking Shortens Life 587

Acrobats and Chiropractic . 588

The A. M. A. Committee on Foods 590

POLITICAI.—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

A Waterfall; Your Servant or

Your Master ......598

Dope Fiends in Prison . . . 600

Why Revivals Are Harmful . 589

A Question and Answer . . . 599

Slandering God......601

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

Copartners and Proprietors Address: 117 Adams Street^ Brooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A, CLAYTON J. WOODWORTH .. Editor ROBERT J. MARTIN .. Business Manager NATHAN II. KNORR.. Secretary and Treasurer

Five Cents a Copy—$1.00 A Year, Make Remittances to THE GOLDEN AGE Notice to Subscribers: We do not, as a rule, send an acknowledgment of a renewal or a new subscription. A renewal blank (carrying notice of expiration) is sent with the Journal one month before the subscription expires. Change of address, when requested, jnay be expected to appear on address label within one month.

The Golden Age is published in six languages: English, Finnish, German, Nois tvegian, Polish, and Swedish. -

Foreign Offices

British ............ . 34 Craven Terraco, London, W. 2, England

Canadian ......_.....40 Irwin Avenue, Toronto 5, Ontario, Canada

Australasian . . 7 Beresford Rd., Strathfield, Sydney, N. S. W., Australia South Africa.......... . 6 Lelie Street, Cape Town, South Africa

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

ffiie Golden. Age

Volume XI Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, June 11, 1930 Number 280

Heading Toward the Ultimate Business

EVERYBODY can see that the world is headed toward the ultimate business, the time when there -will be but one enterprise beneath the sun, and all the people in the world will be working for some one directing head. Just now it looks to many people as if J. P. Morgan would be the directing head, but such will not be the case. The head of the ultimate concern will be Christ.

The word “business” is just another word for the expression of ‘making a living’. A man in the banking business is making a living by loaning out at interest the money of other people. A man in the medical business is making a living by prescribing for the ills of his fellows. A man in the clergy business is making a living by preying on the fears of his neighbors, and so on down the line. Financial remuneration, the chance to make a living, is what keeps every business beneath the sun running.

The early part of the year 1929 was a period of mergers of big business never before equaled in the history of man. This was halted for a time by the stock market collapse in the fall of the year, but is under way again and will logically continue until everything that yields a profit is under one management.

As our civilization becomes more and more complex there are more and more kinds of business listed in the Donnelley Red Book (classified telephone directory). In the last issue there were 4,338 kinds of business listed, an addition of about two hundred in one year. But whatever the business may be, it has to have money to run, and it yields a living for those in it.

The world-wide ups and downs of business are almost as regular as the clock. In the close of the year 1893 business was in bad condition in the United States, England, France, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Australia, India, Japan and China, and good only in South Africa and Rus

sia. Four years later it was in good shape , in all these countries except Brazil, South Africa, Japan, and China. .

There was a like depression and a like recovery every seven years thereafter, the depressions coming at the close of 1900,1907,1914 and 1921. The one due at the close of 1928 was a few months late in coming, but it came also. In the United States business men figure on a little panic all their own every year of a presidential election, but it does not amount to much except when it happens to coincide with one of the seven-year spasms such as that recently had.

Trust-Busting Is Ended

A generation or so ago the people were terrified when they contemplated all the business of the country getting into the hands of one man; but they can get accustomed to anything, and from the time that the government decided that there are good monopolies and bad monopolies, that ended trust-busting. The U. S. government is now confessedly and openly friendly to Big Business. Hence agreements, institutes, associations, trusts and mergers galore.

So certain are the lawyers that the government will not interfere and does not wish to interfere with the tendency of all business to unite under one head that they are even bringing back together what the government once pried apart and are almost guaranteeing that there will be no further trouble.

Proposals have been made, and perhaps by now are enacted, by which business can reassure itself in advance that its proposed mergers will not be interfered with. About all the government asks is that it shall not be in restraint of trade. Mergers are most active when profits are highest.

In the year 1928 the most profitable enterprises, in the order of percentage of net profit after taxes were paid, were transportation and utilities, banking and insurance, stone, clay and glass, chemicals, rubber goods, metal and metal products, printing and publishing, paper pulp; all of these were very high.

At the other end of the scale, the poorest business of all was agriculture; after which, came the retail-wholesale trade, leather and products, food, beverages and tobacco, and textiles. In between were mining, construction, amusements, hotels, professional, lumber and wood.

Business Men Becoming Extinct

The independent business man is becoming extinct. The old-time Yankee who had his own little business will soon be a thing of the past. This is inevitable. It can be seen with the eye and can be demonstrated to anybody who has a thinking mind. The world is automatically headed toward one directing head for its enterprises. Let us see.

Mass production and mass distribution are not coming; they are here. There is a surplus of brick, mortar, machines, equipment and (alas!) of men. To cope with the giants already in the field the small must associate themselves together. The huge cost of selling goods must be cut down by joining selling organizations. One or two men can no longer direct production, sales, merchandising, styles, finance, advertising, etc. Instalment selling has created a new financial world all by itself. The bank wants a hand in everything, and on the least provocation wants the whole thing.

But the best proof that the old-style business man is becoming extinct is that that is just what is happening. Out of 430,072 corporations making returns in 1927, a deficit -was reported by 177,738. These are the small corporations. They can no longer compete with the large ones. They can not sell in large quantities at small profits, and hence can not stay in the game.

There are now in the United States 65,000 fewer business concerns than there were at the turn of the century. Three auto companies now divide eighty percent of the business and another half dozen most of the remainder. Commercial failures during 1928 were 23,930.

The Government Quite Helpless

United States Senator Sackett has pointed out that the government itself is quite helpless to control certain types of mergers that have come about since the World War. These mergers, 'which are purely financial, and not at all operative, practically nullify the Sherman antitrust law.

Today an industrial holding company buys the stock of competing industries sufficiently to become the dominant factor in each one. The one thing that it is after is profit. It has no interest whatever in the employees, and certainly none in the public. It is not operating companies; it is merely playing with profits made by companies. By this method there is nothing whatever to prevent an investment company from really controlling any number of industries in the same line of work or in different lines.

Sensing what is going on, The Literary Digest last summer made the following observation: “On one day last week a reader of the New York morning papers scanning the financial pages found these headlines meeting his eye: ‘New Morgan Food Stock Leads Curb’; ‘Morgan Utilities Spread in South’; ‘Bank Reports Show ■ Effects of Mergers’; - ‘Department of Justice Officials Considering Methods in Regard to Mergers’; ‘Boston and Maine Would Absorb Bangor Road.’ ”

Few Sainted Plutocrats

A favorite argument in behalf of business mergers is that the modern trust is a good trust, while the old trust was crude and brutal. The Literary Digest, patron saint of plutocracy, says ingratiatingly, “Instead of buying out its competitors at fair and sometimes fancy prices, it preferred to knock them out with a club.” We merely add that a competitor that is “out” is “out”.

Then Commerce and Finance says (and we have to laugh): “We are behaving more like human beings in our relations with each other. We must give a. place in our business calculations to a growing sense of a beauty—a fitness —of attitude (which we call ethics), as well as to the growing esthetic sense. Notice the codes of ethics which have been developed and adopted by industry after industry during the past decade.” The man who wrote that probably had his tongue in his cheek as he wrote it.

Of course, Commerce and Finance goes on to talk about the man of long ago. He wTas hard on his employees, he lied in his advertising, he was “for himself and the devil take the hind-

most”, he drove hard bargains, he sold sanded sugar; but now we have outgrown all that. Yes, we have. Teapot Dome!

Then there is E. A. Filene, president of 'William Filene and Sons Company of Boston. He sees mass production and high wages leading to greater leisure for the masses. He forgot to say that about five million of them have that leisure right now, and nothing else worth speaking of. But he evidently thinks there is a vast difference between what he terms the ‘old capitalism’ and the ‘new capitalism’. If that be so, when did this change of heart occur?

And then there is the United States Chamber of Commerce, which has gone on record as denouncing ‘all those who indulge in commercial and political corruption’. That is good. Let’s see. Can we remember hack a little way? Why, yes. There was President Harding’s cabinet. And who were in it? Oh, there was Mr. Daugherty, and Mr. Fall, and Mr. Hughes, and Mr. Coolidge. And outside of it there was Mr. Sinclair, and Mr. Stewart, and Mr. Hays.

Human Nature Not Changed

Human nature has not changed any since the days of Mr. Harding. A writer in the New York Times says that business men have confessed to him that they are brutes in business and get along by bluffing and blustering. The writer names six qualifications for business success without which success can not be had:

(1) Outwitting and overmastering competitors, employees and associates.

(2) Driving shrewd, hard bargains.

(3) Buying low and selling high, involving sharp practices and trickery.

(4) A close-fisted and cruel labor policy.

(5) Ability to sell one’s stock to friends and strangers.

(6) Bluffing and tricking banks into lending money.

If the Times correspondent is correct, then we should find these traits specially predominant in millionaires, and they are not traits that appeal to everybody. The number of millionaires in this country at the end of 1929 is four times what it was in 1922. Probably the men are the same now as they 'were then. Have they changed? We doubt it. If they have dropped the club for the garrote it is because their lawyers have shown them that the garrote is a safer instrument. A dangerous man is a dangerous man anywhere.

Some are alarmed over the mergers. In an Independence Day address Governor Roosevelt of New York said: “Centralized industrial control and big business combines menace the nation. Independence in business is a thing of the past. The influence of these huge trusts, with their almost unlimited resources, will be felt in this country at a not far distant date.”

What About Those Displaced?

Mr. B. C. Forbes is a very intelligent apostle of Big Business and in his magazine he tries to write comfortingly and consolingly about these mergers, but it is a hard job to do. He tries to tell us that adaptation is the life of business, that change is the eternal law, and we should enjoy being on top today and thrown into the discard tomorrow; but he writes unconvincingly when he tries to tell us that it is a good thing to have your business taken away from you so that you will have to go into something else in which to make a living.

The Literary Digest says: “Men must obey the strict rules of the system—rules which they have had no voice in making. Independence exists, but only at the top. However conducive such a scheme may be to industrial efficiency, it has little of the democracy of the system which it is supplanting. Individualism is thus yielding to something closely akin to institutionalism. Ability to forge ahead has become less dependent on personal initiative and more on one’s ability to fit into a certain place in an elaborate machine.”

If writing the foregoing any other author would have used the word “socialism” 'where The Literary Digest says “institutionalism”, but the Digest does not like to come right out and say that the trusts are heading mankind for socialism and already have them a long way into it.

The big mergers are finding it hard to keep down the individuality of their employees, and the men themselves are finding it just as hard. The man that used to be at the head of a small business enterprise is now a salaried employee of a huge corporation, and he does not like his job. He rebels at discipline and would far rather be independent, but he cannot be. He soon becomes a target for the young men just out of college and falls lower or out altogether. All mergers have more men than they know what to do with, and when a man gets sore out he goes.

The Trustification of Europe

The trustification of business is spreading from America all over the world. Britain complains that America is buying up British industry at the rate of millions of pounds every month. 'We can well believe this to be true. Some of the most prominent British motor concerns are now merely subsidiaries of American companies.

In Europe a trust is called a cartel. A production cartel aims at the joint control of production; a selling cartel handles the output of all the plants; a price cartel is what its name implies. The cartel is hampered by tariff walls, but manages to keep the business in the hands of the big fellows and to crush out the little ones, the object of all trusts.

The principal cartels in Europe are:

Aluminum

Linoleum

Borax

Mouth organs

Bottles

Plate glass

Carbide of calcium

Potash

Chemicals

Rayon

Copper

Screws

Cuckoo clocks

Steel

Enamel ware

Steel rails

Glue

Wire

Incandescent lamps Iron tubes

Zinc

The United States is interested in the aluminum, borax, electric lamp, steel rail, and zinc cartels. In rayon, though it is the world’s largest producer, more than half its product is produced by a subsidiary of a British Company. The European rayon cartel is a world monopoly. Germany is a member of every cartel of importance. The German cartel court is now seven years old, formed for the protection of the public. In France it is no offense to maintain prices, but it is an offense to raise them. Italy had 150 mergers of corporations in 1928. South America is trying to keep down trustification by prohibiting the use of loose-leaf systems of accounting. Some South American countries require that every sheet of every ledger be stamped by a government official before the book can be legally used for entries.

The Supreme Court of the United States has decided, in the case of the Mexican sisal monopoly, that a foreign trust can be controlled in its dealings in an essential raw material. It held that, even though domiciled abroad, it was in restraint of trade, and hence its activities here were forbidden.

Trusts in the United States

When it comes to trusts in the United States, there are so many of them, and they are forming so rapidly, that one feels confused to know where to start even the naming of them. What will you have first, shellacs and gums, paper boxes, paint, chinaware, hotels, shoe polish, refining sugar, typewriters, cleaning powders, tobacco, cigars, safety razors? Their name is legion.

The wave of bank mergers that swept over the United States in 1928 and 1929 alarmed some of the most intelligent men in the country. But there is no need to be frightened. Nothing can stop this. The G-uaranty Trust Company and the National Bank of Commerce were both colossal banks; now they are one, with resources of about $2,000,000,000. If the merged banks take over the Equitable Trust Company, as now planned, the resources will be more than $2,700,000,000, making it incomparably the biggest bank in the world. The Chase National Bank and the National Park Bank were merged, giving them the largest capital funds and ranking second in resources. The Chemical National and the United States Mortgage Company macle a $400,000,000 merger. The Farmers Loan and Trust Company went in with the National City Bank, the Hanover National Bank with the Central Union Trust Company, and Blair & Company with the Bank of America National Association.

These things sound like empty words to most of us, but they are far from it. They mean that thousands of men lose their positions or are degraded. in rank, and that the grip on other industries is tightened by the few who hold the reins. There were more than a hundred banking mergers in the United States in the first quarter of 1929.

"When the smaller bank is absorbed by the larger one the small business man who was an important customer of the small bank is nothing at all in the big one. The favors he could previously ask and expect to receive may not be his. The man he used to know is in an inferior and uninfluential job. The big merger is the friend of the big business that will take in him and his business as its next meal. Credit is the life of business.

The Giants Fight One Another '

In their fights to take over everything worth having, the giants frequently become embattled with one another. One of the most recent fights is over the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company. At last accounts it was a three-cornered fight. The Tube Company wished to retain its independence, but was in imminent danger of being swallowed either by the Bethlehem Steel Company or the Republic Iron and Steel group. Whichever way it goes, the Tube Company will make its ally the second in power in the steel business in the United States, and the one that does not get it will be third. The Steel Trust (United States Steel Corporation) would still retain first place. The Du Pont Powder Corporation is linked up with the General Motors Corporation and with the Steel Trust.

The Standard Oil Company, once supposed to be such a very, very bad trust, is now one of the very, very good ones, it seems. In fact, it feels so sure of its present piety and ability to take care of itself at Washington that the Standard Oil Company of New York and the Vacuum Oil Company, forcibly separated by the government a generation ago, have now once more fallen on each other's neck and in each other’s lap, kissed and made up, and become one. A similar thing happened out West, where the Standard Oil Company of Indiana (once fined $29,000,000 for being such a bad trust, which fine it never paid) was united in marriage to the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company.

The seventeen steamship companies on the Great Lakes have been or soon will be gobbled up by one huge company. The National Tire Dealers Association is expected to take over a great chain of retail tire stores. The Radio Corporation of America has swallowed up two theater circuits, Keith and Orpheuin.

Public Utilities and Education

That makes a good headline. The two things seem naturally to go together. The Public Utilities have been feeding the American people with the idea that they will be ruined and destroyed as a people if they jointly own anything at all. The better way is to let the Power Trust have it all. Then a few men can look after it, charge what they like, and the public can be blessed—Vanderbilt-wise.

It was only recently that the public stirred uneasily in their sleep when they discovered that a branch of the Power Trust was buying-up newspapers right and left, and in addition to supplying college professors was furnishing textbooks to students which carefully twisted the minds of youth so that when they reached maturity they would be unable to reason sanely.

The Power Trust has practically completed its job of buying up the electrical industries of the world. The motion picture business was until recently largely in the hands of William Fox. The churches are coming together and the church and drama association is working on a scheme to make every church a playhouse and to do away with the clergy altogether by putting-on traveling speaking and singing entertainments called church services. These birds had better have paid attention years ago when we first began talking to them about stocking up with alarm clocks and overalls and working up callouses on their hands. They are likely to need all these at any moment now.

Consolidations of Stores

The United Stores Corporation has taken over the United Cigar Stores Company, the Union Tobacco Company, and the Tobacco Products Corporation. We remember, years ago, when they were expressly forbidden by the courts to do anything of the sort. But anything goes now.

One third of the retailers in all lines are now standing with their backs to the wTall and will be the next to go. The facts show that they are taking in an average of less than $8 a day; and they can not get enough out of that to keep going. Moreover, canvassing among these storekeepers, they admit that they are at the end of the rope.

The consolidation of the Sears Roebuck Company, with its 300 stores and immense mail order business, with the J. C. Penney Company,;' with its 1200 stores, brings into the merchandising field a concern that has an outlet of $625,- ■ 000,000 a year. How can a small merchant buy in competition with such a colossus ? There are 328 chain drug organizations in the country, operating 2,725 stores. A department store merger in New York, with branches in Brooklyn, Boston and Columbus, has annual sales of $106,000,000.

A Food Combine Coming

The time is at the door when there will be- a food combine. Many see it coming. One grocery chain, the A & P, has over 15,000 stores. New York city has already had a delicatessen trust of 226 stores. The old-time independent grocer is passing. His average business life now is only four years.

A step toward the food combine was the merger of the Hershey, Kraft-Phenix and Colgate companies, with assets of $125,000,000. Another is the Standard Brands, Ine., which controls Fleischmann Co., Royal Baking Powder and the E. W. Gillett Company, Limited, of Canada.

The Postum Company has absorbed the Jello Company, Iglehart Brothers, the Minute Tapioca Co., Walter Baker & Company, the Franklin. Baker Company, the Log Cabin Products Company, Richard Hellmann, the Cheek-Neal Coffee Company, La France Mfg. Company, the Calumet Baking Powder Company and the Certo Company. This combination covers a very wide range of table necessities and luxuries.

Britain has been going through a similar combination of food interests. Lever Brothers, Ltd., and the Margarine Union, Ltd., have combined, and the Home and Colonial Stores, Ltd., has taken over 1,500 stores and entered into a management agreement with the Meadow Dairy Co., Liptons, Ltd., Pearks Dairies, Boughs, Ltd., Sherry’s Dairy Co. and Neales Tea Stores. In the United States there is serious discussion of a national union of wholesale grocers into one great food combine.

Babson, the statistician, who so clearly forecast the panic of 1929, declares that henceforth farming must be done in large units, and that his advice to the small farmer, if he can not get a large holding and go into the business in a large way, is that he should leave and go to work for some big business, because his present business and his market will soon be taken away from. him.

The other day one of our subscribers called attention to the fact that the A & P are now numbering their-stores. He thought that signified the time might come, and come soon, when one cannot eat unless he has the number of this name. And, surely, the A & P is an important part of Babylon the Great.

Aluminum Evidence Pilling Up

By A. J. H-urt'uise (B. O'.)

MY ATTENTION having been recently drawn to the poisoning of a number of people by drinking’ coffee at noon that was left in an aluminum percolator from the morning, I feel that I should let you know of it and of some other cases which, have recently come to my knowledge.

Last fall I stayed ten days with a friend twenty miles south, on the shores of a beautiful little lake, fishing and hunting. This friend is a chicken breeder, who reads poultry magazines from all English-speaking countries of the world. While reading the women’s page in an Australian magazine, he noted an appeal made to the government to ban all aluminum kitchen, utensils, and a number of cases of aluminum poisoning were cited. The article caused him to consider the unaccountable fifteen-day sickness he had had, and he was forced to lay the blame on the eating of chowchow which had stood in an aluminum dish. He then stopped eating the chowchow, and recovered in a few days.

The same gentleman looks after the summer home of a town merchant. On returning to town the family left their cat, as it could not be found, and asked the caretaker to have it taken to town on the first opportunity. But the cat could not be caught until it was very thin and sick. The lady had left food in an aluminum pan for the cat. This is the only thing accountable for the cat’s sickness.

I had a saddle horse that would not eat the grain that I had'scalded and let soak over night in an aluminum pail.

Aluminum will cause children to feel faint and weak. It will also deaden one’s nature. I trust that this information will be of some good to the users of aluminum ware.

Low Wages in Cotton Industry

TN THE year 1928 the average full-time week-x ly earning’s of 38,000 workers in cotton mills were but $15.66.

Blind News Dealers

IN THE city of New York alone there are two hundred blind news dealers; and of the forty-two news stands in the city of Toronto, twenty-nine are cared for by the blind.

China’s New Language

JN THE hope to overcome the confusion caused by the hundred or more spoken dialects the authorities of China have settled upon one dialect, which is to be made compulsory. The written language is the same in all provinces.

Unemployment Among Negroes

A RECENT survey showed that 29.2 percent of the negroes in Philadelphia are out of work and that many of them are begging southern farmers to give them employment. All they ask is for rations until a crop can be made.

Brazil Is Sowing Wheat

UNABLE to sell her surplus coffee Brazil is turning many of her coffee plantations into wheat farms. At the present time no part of Brazil grows enough wheat to supply its own demands.

Droughts in Armenia and South Africa

TERRIBLE droughts prevail in Armenia and in the southern portion of Southwest Africa. It is claimed that in a certain district in Armenia there has been no rain for three years, while in Southwest Africa there has been no rain for five years and farmers and their families are on the edge of starvation.

Two-Way Television Telephone

THE two-way television telephone is now a reality, and a person in San Francisco will no doubt shortly be able to see the facial expression of the person in New York with, whom he converses, and vice versa. While the device is not yet available in a commercial way, all the engineering problems in the way have been solved. The images are about a foot square and very clear. Special booths are necessary, and at first this kind of telephony will no doubt be very expensive.

French Building Longest Boat

npHE French are building at St. Nazaire, France, what will be the longest ship ever built. It will be the first ship to exceed 1,000 feet, being IjOlO1/^ feet over all. Her designer expects her to be 2^ knots an hour faster than the fastest boats now operating.

Fatigued School Children

A SURVEY of New York city school children shows that many of them come to school in a condition of fatigue, where they are then not able to do good work on their lessons. Some children are allowed quite regularly to remain up until eleven or twelve at night.

Horrible Conditions in Kansu

TN KANSU, China, this past winter, where millions of people died from starvation and exposure, the respect of the dogs for humankind completely broke down and open war between dogs and men took place, as well as the killing and eating of each by the other.

Dangers of Trying to Keep Thin

NATURE intended women to be plump. The effort to keep thin, by smoking, keeping late hours, and eating insufficient or inadequate food, has raised the death rate of girls very rapidly in recent years, according to the National Tuberculosis Association.

America’s Changing Diet

A STUDY of carload shipments of food in the United States shows that at the present time the American people are eating twice as great a quantity of fruits and vegetables as ten years ago. They are eating much less wheat and corn, quite a little less of beef and veal, and more of pork, than formerly.

China's Need of Education

A ONE-YEAR-OLD boy baby' in China had convulsions while cutting his first teeth. The uninstructed mother called in a “needle doctor”, who stuck a needle in him a thousand times to let the devil out. When he got worse he was thrown into the street to be eaten by the dogs. A missionary rescued the child, took care of him until his teeth were cut, and returned him to his mother "well and happy. The mother renamed her child “Brought Back to Life”.

Canadian National Fastest Train

THE Canadian National on April 27 put on the fastest train on the American continent, for the distance covered. It cut four hours out of the running time between Montreal and Chicago and now makes the trip of 849 miles in eighteen hours and fifteen minutes

Trade in Bodies Was Too Brisk

HAVING built up a large trade in dead bodies, shipped abroad to medical laboratories in all parts of the world, a Britisher in Turkestan, after some fifteen hundred had been exported, was compelled to give up his business because some of the natives took to killing each other and selling the bodies of the slain.

The World’s Unemployed

THE London Daily News puts the unemployed of the world at 16,000,000, of whom onefourth are in the United States. Germany has 2,800,000, Britain 1,621,800, Russia 1,500,000, Japan 1,000,000, and South America 1,000,000. Italy has 800,000, Austria 250,000, and France practically none.

Peonage in Louisiana

A WEALTHY man in Louisiana admitted to

a judge of the Federal court that he often chained negroes to trees when they tried to escape from his plantation. The judge gave him eighteen months in the Atlanta penitentiary to think it over, whether or not that is the best way to do.

Germany Conquers Atlantic

IT IS rather remarkable that only twelve years after the World War stripped Germany of everything she owned on the seas the Bremen and Europa, both German boats, have shown themselves the swiftest boats on the Atlantic. True, the Europa beat the Bremen’s time by only eighteen minutes, but this was in rough weather and over the longer winter course, and it is predicted that in the warm weather ahead the time 'will be reduced many hours. The best time of the Mauretania was beaten by nine hours and twenty-eight minutes, the Europa having crossed in 4 days, 17 hours, 6 minutes. For several hours on her maiden trip the Europa made 35 statute miles an hour. The boat rode very steadily.

Human Nerves as Electric Wires

rp WO Viennese electrical engineers have invented a device by which sound may be transmitted direct from an electric wire to the brain without the intervention of a telephone receiver. This invention seems in its operation to prove that the transmission of sensation by the nerves is a form of electrical phenomenon.

The Big Black Devil in Papua

A DISPATCH from Australia says that the lieutenant governor of Papua told the chiefs a big black devil was coming to destroy them unless they had the government charm branded on their arms. The natives flocked to be vaccinated. Now just why should the lieutenantgovernor refer to the vaccinating fraternity as a big black devil? We wonder.

High-salaried Men Jobless

THE combination of an unprecedented number of mergers, together with the stock market spasm last fall, has caused many high-salaried men to lose their jobs, and New York is today being patrolled by men whose living expenses are large and who are trying to fit into jobs that pay a half or a quarter of what they have been accustomed to receive.

The Lindbergh Light

OpHE two-billion-candle-power Lindbergh light, to be erected six hundred feet above Michigan Avenue, Chicago, will enable aviators to . read their charts at a distance of fifty miles.

The light is powerful enough to be seen at a distance of five hundred miles, but on account i of the curvature of the earth will be invisible to aviators at more than three hundred miles unless they are flying very high.

D. A. R. Not Patriotic?

A NEWSPAPER correspondent reporting a meeting of the D.A.R. at Washington said that he noted that “not a word was said about standing behind the government in its renunciation of war and its program for reduction of armament. All one heard was the old cry of more and more preparation for war, bigger and better defense”. It seems hard to see these old ladies getting more and more unpatriotic. It was only a little while ago they were accused of aiming at suppression of free speech, and mothering a black list.

Speeding Up the Workers

O'ward Patterson,, professor at the Wharton

School of the University of Pennsylvania, recently said: “In canneries and biscuit factories, automatic conveyors cam be geared deliberately to that rate of speed which corresponds to the fastest laborers. Workers, new or old, who cannot maintain the ‘pace that kills’ are forced to quit. And this is true of practically every industry today.”

New York State Milk Producers

EW YORK state milk producers complain that cream is gathered from small farms in Western states at starvation prices for the Western farmers, and is then shipped, into New York state at a good profit to the dealer to create a surplus and break down the price to New York farmers. The result is that the producers at both ends of the line get starvation prices and all the profits go to the dealers.

Telephone Service to South America

OR $36, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., one may now converse for three

minutes by telephone between New York and Buenos Aires. For $1.20 more he may talk for three minutes between New York and Montevideo, and for $39 he may talk between New York and Santiago, Chile. For small additional sums one may talk from any point in the United States to any point in Argentina, Uruguay or Chile. * '

Cigarette Smoking Shortens Life

STUDY of the records of the Dartmouth

College class of 1868 shows that of the students who smoked the average age at death was forty-nine years and nine months, while the non-smoking students died at the average age of fifty-nine years and four months. It looks from this as if, if one wishes to shorten his life span about ten years, he can do it by taking up cigarette smoking.

The makers of cigarettes are not averse to shortening human life. Last year each man and woman student in the University of Illinois received a carton of “Old Gold” cigarettes. Many young women at the university admit that they took their first puff from the cigarettes received, declaring that they were packed, so nicely that they hated to throw them away.

Industry in a Strong Position

THE National City Bank Bulletin for March says, “The year 1929 as a whole established a new high record for earnings and closed with industry in a strong balance sheet position”. On the thirteenth of the same month there were six thousand men in the bread line of Miss Marion Spore at the Bowery Y.M.C.A., New York city. The bank outlook and the bread line outlook seem to need adjustment to each other.

The Wall of Ur of the Chaldees

VIDENCE accumulates that when Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees he left a city of great importance. Recent archeological discoveries show that the city was surrounded by a wall twenty feet high and eighty feet wide, made of bricks, and that it was almost entirely surrounded by the waters of the river Euphrates. A canal was dug right through the middle of the town.

Universe in the Making

roeessoe Robert A. Millikan, famed discoverer of the Millikan rays, in a recent address in New York, stressed again the importance of the discovery that the universe is still in the making and the fact that all elements are exact multiples of the weight of hydrogen, and evidently produced from it. He modestly sums up ten great scientific truths to show, as he expressed it, that the Creator is continually on the job.

People Must Own Nettling

IT IS the official position of the Chamber of

Commerce of the United States “that our government should scrupulously refrain from entering any of the fields of transportation, communication, industry, and commerce, or any phase of business, when it can be successfully undertaken and conducted by private enterprise”. This is merely another way of saying that Big Business is determined to keep everything in its own hands. It wants the government to act as its clerk, do what it is told and keep its mouth shut while all the revenues of the country flow into its hands. It is the consistent attitude of Big Business that the people as a whole must be reduced to beggary. No doubt the thought is that they can thus be more easily handled. This remains to be seen.

The Vicar's Correction

THE London Bystander reports a vicar as announcing from the pulpit, “The collection this morning will be taken in aid of the Arch Fund, and not as erroneously printed in the parish magazine, in aid of the Arch Fiend.” Well, if the vicar is a believer in war and in the eternal torture theory he could just as well have let it stand as it was printed. Why bother to change it ?

The Costs of Unemployment

TF SIX million men are unemployed in the

United States, think what these men could accomplish in beautifying the country, making it a better place to live in, if they could only be put to work. How manifestly foolish is a policy that advocates placing all enterprises of the country in the hands of selfish men whose ambition is to make their schemes ever more and more profitable financially by employing fewer and fewer of their fellow men.

The Wonders of Justice

IN ELYRIA, Ohio, a man stole ten cents, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to the penitentiary for ten years, one year for each cent. In Illinois a smooth-tongued president of a steel company is being sued for making the best part of thirty-five million dollars out of the patents of a poor inventor who is left out in the cold, jobless, by the sale of the business to another company. All who think the inventor will got any of the thirty-five millions, signify it in the usual way. The noes have it.

Acrobats and Chiropractic

Tack Wilbur, president of the Federated

Novelty Acts, head of a world’s association of circus and vaudeville acrobats, declares that where a score of years ago the acrobat was all through at thirty-five, the men of fifty-five and sixty are now still as active as ever, and his explanation is that by actual experience they have learned that chiropractic adjustments are the best possible relief for twisted tendons and wrenched muscles. In his article on “Physical Perfection”, printed in the Chiropractic News, he cites reason after reason why acrobats can not get along without this newer form of relief. Shame on the M.D.’s for locking up men who can do wTork they themselves cannot even begin to do.

The Great American Jury

THE Great American Jury convicted exSenator Fall of accepting a bribe from Edward L. Doheny, many times millionaire. After a few months Mr. Doheny came to trial and another Great American Jury found Mr. Doheny innocent of his end of the same crime. The Great American public are thus helped to see that it is all right for a wealthy man to bribe a public official, but very wrong for the official to accept the bribe and get caught at it.

Commissioner Whalen's Motive

WE CONFESS a mild interest in the act of Police Commissioner Whalen of New

York city in furnishing employers with a list of three hundred communists vffio, according to his ideas, and according to the ideas of the New York Chamber of Commerce, should, be dismissed from their. employment. If his idea is carried out these communists now employed will at once become unemployed. Will this make them love the government more? What line of business will they take up?

U. S. Heading Toward Socialism

TN 1928 the United States had hventy-eight men whose incomes exceeded five million dollars a year. This is only three less than the number who had an income of one million dollars a year in 1921. Now the number that have an annual income of one million dollars is 496. So rapidly do we multiply millionaires, en route to socialism. The only thing that can prevent this country’s going straight into socialism is God’s kingdom; but the millionaires want neither one nor the other.

Hard Times in Buffalo

HP WO boys in Buffalo, one of them married, tried for four months to get work, but without result. The money of the trio gave out, there was no way to pay rent, pay instalments on the furniture, or to buy food, and the charity organization said they had more cases than they could take care of. The third day without food caused the wife of the married brother to faint. Early the next morning her gallant young brother-in-law went out determined to bring back some food. He stole a loaf of bread from in front of a chain grocery. A police officer saw the theft and shot him dead

Cost of World War to America

HE United States government has figured up the cost of America’s participation in the World War and finds that it is $51,400,000,000. That figures out about $2,000 a family. In return America asked for the island of Yap in the Pacific ocean, an island as small as its name. The request was declined with thanks. That seems to be about all the common people got out of it. But they did get, in control of everything, the most sordid and selfish bunch of billionaires the world has ever seen.

New York's GM Age Pension BUI

"j^TEW YORK state has finally passed an old -i- 'fi age pension bill, providing pensions averaging about $242 a year for the needy who are 70 years old or more. The cost, which will eventually be about $12,500,000 annually, will be divided between the state and the counties. This is a start in the right direction. Succeeding steps, and they should come soon, would be unemployment insurance, shorter working days, limitation of profits, and the public ownership of Big Business.

Unbroken injustice in North Carolina

WTORTH CAROLINA has succeeded in estab-

7 fishing an unbroken record for injustice in connection with all the disorders in the textile district. The five men who were tried for killing Ella May Wiggins, unarmed, riding along a public road in broad daylight, have been acquitted, as was to be expected in a state which is evidently completely under the domination of its capitalists. No doubt Mrs. Wiggins’ five children will miss her; but the jury did what was expected of them: a cowardly and unjust verdict.

The Chaplain an Able Assistant

JN The United States Daily Rev. Edmund P. x Easterbrook explains that an army chaplain ‘•'is an able assistant to the military authorities in conserving among the troops the highest standards of morality, citizenship and patriotism” and that he is useful in helping to ‘’strengthen the morale and refreshen spirits and bodies wearied in the progress of war”. All of which moves The World Tomorrow to say: "He is one of the military authorities’ ablest assistants in war, and always has been, Will he continue to be, forever?”

New York’s Fiftydive Bad Boys

UT of the two million school children in

New York city it turns out that there were fifty-five who wanted to see the fun when the communists tried to stage their unemployment parade. Eleven of the parents were sentenced to pay a fine or go to jail, and the police commissioner wanted the boys dismissed from school permanently. Just how this punishment of parents for the delinquencies of their children, and this deprivation of education, would work out for the benefit of the state remains unexplained. New York is to be congratulated that it has so few bad boys.

Why Revivals Are Harmful

WRITER in the Oneonta (N.Y.) Star objects to revivals, saying, “These revivals are harmful because they are mentally unhealthy. Appeal is not made to the higher, .finer phases of human nature, but always to the lower and weaker. An untenable doctrine of Hell is preached: and the fear of death and what comes after death is reiterated ad nauseam. The claim is boldly made that the whole business of religion is an insurance business and as one listens thinkingly he can not help but see that the business is crooked. There are no assets. It is based on pure assumption, on unreality, on magic.”

Baker Dismissed the Meeting Improperly

UT at the Sacred Heart Catholic church at

La Porte, Indiana, one Mr. Ryan spoke aloud and somewhat too feelingly about the “church”, and a baker in the neighborhood overheard the sound of what he thought was a conflict. Hastily grabbing a good-sized handful of wet dough he entered the church and picking out the man that he thought was responsible for the trouble promptly filled his face full of the wet dough. This was effective in stopping the mouth of the gentleman at whom it was aimed, but unfortunately it was not Mr. Ryan whose face stopped the dough. It can be stated that the baker dismissed the meeting, but he is to be reproved for missing Mr. Ryan, and stopping the mouth of some other good man who was probably as much entitled to have his say as Ryan was to have his. When the case came up in court nobody appeared against Mr. Ryan, and that is the end of the story.

The A. M. A. Committee on Foods

CROWDED harder and harder by the drugless healers, dieticians, chiropractors, osteopaths, naturopaths, etc., the medical doctors have now arranged for an advertising campaign at the expense of food manufacturers. Foods which they approve will bear a conspicuous shield emblem of the association bearing the words, “Accepted by the Committee on Foods of the American Medical Association.” If the doctors wish to go a step further they might add to the label, “Not cooked in aluminum,” and still another, “Do not warm or let stand in aluminum.” But we do not think there is any danger of their adding these two lines, though they really should.

Wanted—An Honest Monetary Unit By W. E. Brolcaw

ON PAGE 367, issue of March 5, you say:

“In the year 1927 the aggregate income of 11,112 persons was approximately three billion dollars, but the wages of 868,581, wage earners was less than nine hundred million dollars. The huge incomes of the superrich and the meager incomes of the common people show that the tax burdens are not equitably distributed.” To one who looks beneath the surface they show a far more sinister inequity. There could be no such difference between incomes if our monetary unit did not put a price on what is not human work. The incomes of the “superrich” are incomes from owning, not from working. They are made possible by a monetary unit (the dollar) which puts a price on what is not human work, thus compelling the workers to pay that price with their work. If we had a dollar which represented an hour of adult human work (and nothing else), the price of everything would be exactly the duration of the human work that produced it. Things like land, not produced by humans, would have no price. There could then be no incomes from mere owning. This truth needs to be rubbed into the minds of “the common people” until they see it clearly. It is not enough to show up the vast difference between the incomes from mere ownership and the incomes from working. The cause of it must be shown if we are to have any remedy. The cause is our price-fixing unit. When we fix prices by the duration of the work of production, there will be no incomes from owning.

The Grip of the House of Morgan

THE citizens of the Lackawanna valley are having hard times these late years. The hard coal business is in bad shape; many of the citizens have little work, and multitudes have none. Thousands of young couples are losing their homes and losing heart. These young couples buy their electric current from the house of Morgan, not directly, of course, but through the chain which terminates at Scranton in the Scranton Electric Company. No electric company in America is in better shape to make electric current cheaply than the Scranton Electric Company. If it costs more than % of a cent at the switchboard, then the company is grossly mismanaged. The young couples that are losing their homes because they can not pay their bills are paying 9 cents a kilowatt hour.

That is an approximate profit of 8)4 cents. Is it fair? If you ask the house of Morgan, or the Electric Bond and Share Company, or the American Gas and Electric Company, or any of the other intermediate brats of the Power Trust, they will tell you that is just right; and if you go to their clerks, the Public Service Commission at Harrisburg, you will get the same reply. On March 1, 1928, to cover up its colossal profits, the Scranton Electric Company just added $3,571,000 to the value of its common stock. Nothing was added to the assets; nothing whatever. The couples that are losing their homes are expected to pay handsome returns on that $3,571,000 to the house of Morgan and everything that lies in between.

When the World Wes I Mad

A Thrilling Story of the Late War, Told in the Language of the Trenches

Copyright, 1930, by Daniel E. Morgan (Continued)

THE next morning we entered Belleau Woods proper, a rocky jungle protected by hundreds of machine guns, and considered by the Germans as impregnable. Wave after wave of our men were shot down as they sought to clear the woods, and finally, with the loss of many men. we gained the objective. I might say at this point that not once during the World War did the marines fail to gain their objective or to hold what they were bidden to hold.

While we were holding the objective, the enemy concentrated all their artillery, in a determination to forever crush the American army which had now entered the war. They shelled Belleau "Woods almost continuously for thirty-six hours.

In the effort to live, and to save my machine guns, I dug a hole just outside .of the wood and set up branches of trees, as camouflage. The woods were literally torn to pieces. Many of the reinforcements sent in were killed before we ever got their names. I thought I should go mad. The gases, the high-explosive smoke, the noise, the shrieks of the wounded, and the lack of both food and water made a situation dreadful beyond words.

Trying to Keep Alive

On one occasion, near Bauresches, I became entrapped by the German machine gun fire and was unable to return to Belleau Woods for a period of several hours. My eyes sunk with a headache. Almost famished for food, one of the boys suggested that I try bacon. That was the beginning of the time where raw bacon was added to my menu. It was not choice food.

Not many days later I was forced to reach the levels of the alley rat, which goes out among the rubbish and corpses to collect morsels of food wherewith to keep alive. I went from one corpse to another, taking from them pieces of bread, slabs of bacon, or any other items of food.

"When I got back to our hole in the ground the boys turned up their noses at the food that I had brought. It smelled like dead men. "We hung it on the branch of a tree for a few hours and then ate it. At the next lull in the battle I went around gathering up canteens from- the dead Germans, and we drank the stale beer. It might be of interest to note that while in Belleau Woods we drank the water from machine guns, ditches or any other place where there was a drop of moisture, and that for twenty-seven days I was without any water whatever to wash my hands or face.

The tide of battle made it necessary for us to occasionally shift our positions. This meant digging a fresh hole. On one occasion, in our haste to get protection, we dug through a dead man. There was no time to select a more appropriate place. For over a week we lived in that hole, with the dead maids legs dangling in the edges of it.

For weeks we lived among the rotten bodies of the dead, with absolutely no sanitary arrangements. In quiet sectors, and in the trenches, there was time to dig holes for depositing the waste of the body. Here there was no time for that. Many times it was a case of ducking into your hole with your job half done.

Feeding the Heroes

At this juncture, when we were starved for anything in the way of food, and our bodies were crying out for sugar, a gallon can of molasses reached us. It may be all right to eat molasses that has come in contact with the filthy hands that are a part of your own body, but what man will eat molasses contaminated with the scum of another man’s paws?

We scraped away the twigs and topsoil of the earth and washed our hands in the somewhat cleaner strata of dirt that lay beneath. We cracked open the can with one of the bayonets, and what a feast we had!

After almost a month without a shave, my beard was very long. The molasses caked around, my mouth in a circle. Every time I wanted something sweet I could stick out my tongue like a cow and take a lick. An invention worthy of a patent.

It was pleasant for a day or two, but there was no way of keeping out the dirt. At the end of that time I had a hardened cake of mud and molasses around my mouth and under my nose

G0

PRODUCTIVE

AU. I WAHT 1$ THE RIGHT TO WORSHIP GOJ> TRULY-,— THE Right to live at Peace with all men;— A JUST RETURN. WITH A

CHURCH tss

The Administrators

SHARE OF

EFFORT *

PomTicS

like a plaster cast. We carried needles, thread and scissors in our packs, so operations were the order of the day: cutting away from our faces the hardened molasses mixed with mud and whiskers. .

A day or two later another can of chow (food) reached us. This time it was beans. Along the way the can of beans 'was sampled by many filthy hands, and by the time it reached us in the front lines it had become swill. The beans had turned sour and we could not eat them. There was cold coffee. It tasted like poison, but we drank it for the sake of the moisture it contained.

A half-crazed boy crawled out of his hole crying for help. There were many such holes, dug under the rocks, where the boys crawled for protection. He was wringing his hand and the blood was squirting from it. The poor fellow knew that the only way back to the rear was to be wounded, and so, half mad by the nerve-racking scenes, the horrors, the tragedies, the constant and terrifying roar of the guns, heavy and light, and of their hissing missiles, and with the contour of the earth changing from the bursting shells, he could stand it no longer and shot himself.

ORDERS TO SUICIDE

TT SEEMED as though the gods of misery •L and torture were running the war. For no apparent reason at all, and to no advantage at all, we were always getting fool orders from the higher command, from those who, in bombproof dugouts, heartlessly planned for the slaughter of the poor innc

After gaining our objective, and digging in to remain quiet until rested, or concealed to stop a counter-attack, we had camouflaged our position, when the fool orders, the suicide commands, started pouring in. A runner out of breath would come rushing up with a piece of paper, and on it were orders to the machine guns to fire on certain points foi’ fifteen minutes of every hour all night.

Oe a G'

We called the Dumb Doras in command all the names we could think of. They had to do something to earn their money, and were trafficking in theblood of the poor “Devil Dogs” (marines), who by now were almost insane and were desperately in need of quietness, food and

To the officers in their bomb-proof dugouts, with, their staffs of orderlies, together with good food and a chef, war was like playing a game of chess in which they ordered about tin soldiers in the face of death. How could they thus order us ? •

Could it bo that their beings were in bondage to the invisible forces, great, powerful, heartless, merciless forces, the gods of war and murder? Human beings could not order other human beings into untimely deaths that way. On the other hand, our minds were not our own. We moved, we had our beings, but were subject to orders, be they what they might. We

had sworn to be obedient to the last spark of life. Fool orders! Why must we obey them? We are mental prisoners to the unseen gods, and obey we must.

To fire on certain points fifteen minutes out of every hour is like telling the enemy where every machine gun nest is located, and it would just be a matter of time until their artillery would locate us and blow us off the map.

Many were the tricks we used to obey the orders and yet keep our positions concealed, thereby keeping alive. We tuned down the rate of fire so that a machine gun would fire so slow-

King

ly that it would sound like a French automatic rifle, and not like a machine gun. We set up coats or bags that were moist or damp and shot through them in order to conceal the flashes. We trotted off through the woods, set up our guns and fired like blazes, and then returned to our own positions, thereby deceiving the enemy as to our true positions.

Amid Thousands

of the Dead

It was in July, and the sun was very hot. Up until this time we had not buried any of our dead. They lay like flies

everywhere. You may get a glimpse or a mental picture of the situation when you reflect upon the losses. As an item in point I quote from the New. York 'American^ August 2, 1919:

Welcome! Second Division: Famed Heroes Home

Today. Men who stopped Germans at Chatcau-Thierry: triumphed at Soissons and in the Champagne, and then marched across Rhino, to be City’s honored guests. On July 9 the division was relieved. It had been in the lines forty days. In that time they had faced ten German divisions, from which they had captured 1,680 prisoners. Not only had they stopped the German drive on Paris, but they advanced to an average depth of two kilometers on a front of eight, kilometers. [The next line tells the tale.] Their losses up to July 9, totaled 9,131.

…