Golden Age, November 25, 1931
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Vol. XIII. No. 318'
November 25, 1931
LABOR AND ECONOMICS
Trans-Canada. Highway , . . 103
Air Mail Service Twenty
Years Old . .
Million Idle in New York City . 104
Canada’s Pay to the Jobless . 104
New York’s $20,000,000
Relict' Bill
American Legion Surprises Smug 107
SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL
A Study of Man as a Gregarious Animal ...
Don’t Beat Me! , .
The Long and Short of It . . 103
Radio Stations in Canadian
Arctic
Needs of National Defense . . 105
Minister Made $2,500 on Side .
Smoke Screens Not Harmless .
What the Dole Is
Why Truth on Aluminum Makes
Slow Headway
MiSINSTRUCTION OF SCHOOL
Children . . . . . . . 108
Svi’OLT Gets a Job ..... 118
MANUFACTURING AND MINING
Coal in East Greenland . . . 103
FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION
404 Miles an Hour
East Railway Time in Britain . 104
Four Males a Minute .... 195
Railroads Fighting for Life . 106
Barter Between Sweden and Persia
More Depression Relief
; Cooperation
POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN
673 Persons Run League
of Nations
Conducting “Elections” in
Hungary
The Breakdown of Law . . . 109 New Jersey’s State Police . .114
SCIENCE AND INVENTION
New Way to Ship Fruit . . . 103 ' Half-Hour Phonograph Disks . 104
The Silkworm Must Go ... 106
HOME AND HEALTH
Milk as Food for Soldiers . . 103 Slippery, Slippery Elm Bark . 119 “Where Aluminum Does All
the Cooking ......120
Prunes, Raisins and Senna Leaves 120
Potash vs. Common Salt . . . 121
travel and miscellany
Some Facts About China . . . 103 250,000 Drowned in Chu<a . .121
RELIGION and philosophy
On the Nature and Origin of Life 115 The Power of the Creator . . 122 Radio Witness Work .... 126
Severe Church Laws in Memeo 127
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The G olden. e
Volume XHI
Efc’cakiynj N„ Y.? Wednesday's November 25, 1931
Number 318
A Study of Man as a Gregarious Animal
GREGARIOUS animals are those that habitually live or move in flocks or herds. Man is such an animal. It is not natural for men to live habitually solitary or alone. The life of a hermit does not appeal to most people. We involuntarily think there is something wrong with a hermit that he should wish to cut himself off from association with his fellows:
In the times in which we live, men and women, seem as never before bent on banding themselves together for every conceivable object under the sun. The old-style saloon vyas a sort of club of those who were especially fond of libation; but the modern night club, brought into being by the prohibition act. is all of that, and very much more.
It is said that the night clubs of New York offer the only picture in history of bejeweled society women and girls, thugs, blackmailers, demimondaines, college boys and visiting business men on a spree, reveling night after night under the same roof.
The night clubs of New York are really associations of criminals or the criminally minded. These night clubs are regular resorts of criminals who watch for women with jewelry or men with money and follow7 them when they leave and rob them or else blackmail them. As a matter of course, the managers of these night chibs are mostly men who have criminal records.
The high prices, music, dancing and eating and drinking carried on under the camouflage of exclusiveness are intended to draw into the clubs, and do draw into them in large numbers, those who come to New York “to see New York” and leave their morals behind them when they leave the old home towm for the big city.
Some, and perhaps all, of these night clubs have on their payrolls men whose business it is to beat into insensibility anyone who makes the mistake of visiting the club and fails to bring along enough money to pay the outrageous cover charges and assessments for refreshments. The New York papers often contain stories of men who have visited these night clubs and have received such treatment.
Thus a young Harvard student visited one of these places with his brother and wanted to leave at 2:30 in the morning. The two young men found that their total cash was but $16.00, whereas the check they were expected to pay was for $25.55. Offers were made to make up the difference by a check, leaving jewelry as security, but to no avail.
The custom ivhich is usually followed in such cases was followed in this. The soft-spoken manager approached the table and suggested that the young men step into another room so that the matter might be quietly adjusted. Once out of sight of the crowd, the two were so badly beaten by three men. who later disappeared, that one of them could not come into court the next day; but though one of these men did appear in court with his face badly bruised, the court dismissed the charge against the manager of the night club when it was admitted that he had taken no part in the assault.
In Brooklyn, two night clubs were refused certificates of incorporation by the supreme court on the ground that their names, “Wild Cats Social and Athletic Club” and “Midnight Steppers Social Club”, were not suitable names for membership corporations.
Law and Order Clubs
There are not as many clubs of those who have banded together to promote law and order as there are of those who are banded together to flout the law. Nevertheless there are those ■who are interested in seeing that something is done toward upholding the law. At Washington, the Thirty-Two Club, composed of senators, congressmen and other public officials, meets thirty-two times a year for breakfast and a game of golf. Meanwhile its members confer informally on important public questions.
Since 1904 New York city has had a committee of fourteen which has devoted its efforts toward the suppression of commercialized prostitution. This committee finds that the night clubs and speak-easies furnish an overwhelming majority of such cases.
Enfield, Conn., has an association for the detection of thieves and robbers. The Society has been in existence 105 years. When it was organized each member was required to keep a fast horse to give chase to thieves and robbers, and because that was the way thieves were caught a hundred years ago, the by-laws of the society remain the same as they were when it was founded. But now this society is, of course, merely a social institution, not greatly interested in the subject for which it was founded.
Missouri and other states in bygone years have had anti-horse-thief associations. At one time one of these associations had 45,000 members; but it no longer amounts to anything because, in the first place,'nobody has horses to steal; in the second place, nobody would steal them if they had; and in the third place, they would not know what to do with the horses after they stole them, the principal value of horses today being for “dried beef”.
Paris has an illegal association for the supposed rectification of legal sentences which appear to its members to be lax. In 1924, a certain Marquis Clement planned to ambush a Paris jeweler and shut him in a room into which chloroform was to have been pumped. The so-called “Knights of Themus”, who resented this and other robberies and swindles, buried this man Clement alive and placed a quantity of chocolate in the coffin in order to prolong his agonies. It seems incredible that men could do such a devilish tiling.
There are thousands of leagues and clubs of those who are interested in preventing crime at its source, that is, in keeping the boys from going bad. Everybody has heard of the Boy Scouts and other boys' clubs.
It is said that it costs $2,000 to arrest, try and incarcerate a criminal, and after he is incarcerated, it costs $400 a year in taxes to keep him in a jail or reformatory; while a boys’ club, which may keep many youngsters out of trouble, takes care of its members for $15 a year each.
In a district in New York surrounding a boys’ club building at 301 East 52d Street, it was found that in thirteen years the boy delinquency ratio
in this district became the second lowest of Th fifteen areas studied. It is said that of 154 men serving life sentences as habitual criminals, more than half were under twenty-one when. .....
caught and none had ever been members of boys’clubs.
Tn the borough of Manhattan, New York. .' within a five-year period, one-half of all the boys between the ages of ten and fifteen years will be registered on police blotters for some offense against law and order.
Boston has a boys’ club composed exclusively of newsboys. The club was founded by a lawyer, once a newsboy, who desired to help newsboys bridge the great gap that exists between the "
street life of the newsboy and the future responsibilities of a useful man.
Detroit has noticed a marked decrease in de- ~ linquency cases since it organized a boys’ club, w.“ in which attention is given to their teeth and they are provided with recreation and every ... sort of gamQ that boys like. Boys will travel together; and if they do not travel under good leadership they will travel under bad, and eventually get into trouble. Detroit, some years ago. led all the cities of the country in juvenile delinquency, but is now making good progress in the right direction.
Clubs for Mutual Improvement
Girls in Chicago, Philadelphia, Buffalo and other places have organized “slow” clubs as a protest against the speed and recklessness of the jazz age. The girls in these clubs will bo careful when and where and how often they bestow their kisses. It would be good for all the girls in the country to remember this and live up to the rules.
There are nearly a thousand women's clubs in the country that own their own homes, the value of their holdings being nearly, if not ..... quite, $20,000,000.
Liverpool lias a husbands’ club, the 500 mem-hers of which have banded together for the right to stay away from home until 11:00 o’clock in the evening. Jersey City has an.......
Alimony Club, which in the last fifteen years , has paid in more than $166,000 in fees. These '.........
fees, as prescribed by the court, are turned over to the wives of the members. New York has a similar alimony club.
There is an association of American university women formed for the purpose of promot-
ing the welfare and advancement of college women. The Illinois Women’s Athletic Club has a baby check room in which youngsters are _.....cared for while their mothers find rest in ath
letics and such other things as women do in ‘ athletic clubs.
The Garden Club of America, said to have several hundred thousand members of beautyloving women, is crusading against the billboards that will spoil and are spoiling our scenery.
There is a national association for middleaged employees, the object of which is to wipe out the rule against hiring men over forty.
The Kingsley Club of New York and Philadelphia is composed of stammerers. The purpose of the club is to correct stammering. At a recent meeting of the New York club, thirty members made speeches.
Paris has an Association of Kickers, the ob-jeet being that members should put up a vigorous complaint when prices appear to be too high.
The Sanzovay is a club, not of deaf people, but of people who are not deaf, who are interested in helping the deaf.
There is a club in Brooklyn, the Ship Model Makers Club, which boasts a membership of more than 1,000 engaged in that pursuit in many parts of the world.
..... ......Canada has an Amputation Club. This is an organization of men who lost arms and legs in the World War and seek to prevent the world from forgetting them.
It is said that in the United States alone there are 450,000 persons who have joined Jack London clubs to protest against the cruelties connected with animal training. There are also Jack London clubs in Canada, England, Holland, Switzerland and France.
White Bear, Minn., has the Sons of Wild Jackasses Club, with a. charter membership of 200, with the avowed purpose of “braying for the fair treatment of farmers”. The name of this club refers to a speech by Senator Moses of New Hampshire, in which farmers of the Northwest were called by this unusual title.
London has a crime club to which lawyers and detectives belong. There is a Buttons Club, made up of bellhops. The Sick and Sorry Club is for those who do not. feel well and want to tell somebody about it. There is also in London a Sighing Club, which lovers join and in which they can talk as much as they like about the objects of their affection. London also has a Split Farthing Club, which, in fact, is an association of misers.
Health Clubs, etc.
Germany has a Walking club of 85,000 members that has in connection with it 2,300 tourists’ homes where lodging and breakfast can be had for a few cents. Germany also has, in Berlin, a Turnverein, or exercise club, exclusively for babies less than a year old. Here the youngest exercisers in the world range from five months to a year, are laid out on flannel-covered tables and put through setting up exercises with a view to correcting defects of the spine, which have been discovered in about one-fourth of the school children in Germany.
London has a Grandfathers’ Club of fifteen members who spend their annual two weeks’ vacation together. In the last party the oldest was eighty-four and the youngest seventy.
Montgomery County, Penna., has a club of 6,000 people, membership in which is limited to those persons who have dwelt for fifty years or more in that one county.
Coney Island, New York city, has a Polar Bear Club, consisting of robust citizens who bathe in the open in the Atlantic, the year round. Like the Germans of Caesar’s day, the Polar Bears take their morning swims even when they have to break the ice in order to get into the water.
The Cloud Club of New York is an organization of business men who procure their luncheons on the 66th, 67th and 68th floors of the Chrysler Building.
London has a Beefsteak Club, and there are many epicure clubs in all parts of the world. In the South, the colored people have watermelon clubs. The star performer in one of these watermelon clubs is said to have eaten three full-grown melons in six minutes.
There have been some well authenticated cases of suicide clubs of people who have tried to get well and have given up the fight.
Travel Clubs
We do not know what percentage of the owners of the 27,000,000 autos in the country are members of the American Automobile Association, but it would not surprise us if there were several millions. The National Geographic So-
QOLDEN AGE
ciety is really one great association of travelers. We have in New York city the Explorers Club, with a clubhouse on Cathedral Parkway worth $500,000.
The Early Birds is an association of aviators limited to those who participated in flights prior to 1916. The Caterpillar Club consists of more than 800 men who have jumped from airplanes in an emergency. This number is constantly growing. Another club of parachute jumpers is the Rip Cord Club.
The Pedestrians Association of London, with a membership in excess of 3,000, aims to reduce the motor risks of pedestrians by sponsoring bills for driving tests, speed limits, etc. The Stay Alive Club of America aims to lessen deaths and injuries by promoting safe and careful driving and walking on public streets and highways.
The Seven O'Clockers Club is composed of 200 Philadelphians who work in New York city. These men cover 180 miles a day. One of them has been making the trip from Philadelphia to New York daily for twenty-two years.
The Travelers Aid Societies are travel clubs, which last year looked after‘5,374 youthful runaways in the United States.
Clubs and More Clubs ■ •
The Army and Navy Club, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Rotarians, the Lions, Kiwanis and Elles are only a start. It is estimated that the number of members in American fraternal orders exceeds 23,000,000. Among the orders are those of Bears, Beavers, Blue Geese, Buffalo, Bucks, Camels, Cooties, Deer, Eagles (Red and Golden), Fleas, Goats, Larks, Monkeys, Moose, Mules, Orioles, Owls, Red Roosters, Reindeer, Serpents, Stags, Shrimps, White Rabbits, and White Rats.
The Blizzard men of 1888 have a club. These commemorate, once a year, the great storm of March 12 that completely tied up the business in New York city for three days.
There is a club in Hawaii of those who have driven a golf ball into the pit of Kilauea. .......i
Brooklyn has a Matrimonial Club; Bronx a Cartoonists Club. Harlem has the Civitas, " which provides for the advancement of the colored people.
New York has an exclusive club of the “Old Nineteen Waiters”. There are clubs named ..........
after nearly all the great men living and dead, writers’ clubs, chess clubs and music clubs.
Evanston, Ill., has a First Club. To be eligible, one must have been first in something or be descended from somebody who was first in something. The number of country clubs, athletic clubs, political and social service clubs is beyond computation.. All the churches are “Go .....A
to Heaven” clubs. All the financial institutions are financial clubs. All the governments arc..............
government clubs, and all the schools and colleges are educational clubs.
Perhaps the most exclusive club in the world is the Carlton Club of London. One who was otherwise eligible sometimes had to wait twenty.___________
years before he could obtain membership. However, the club is not as exclusive as it used to be. All these are finding it much harder to keep up their expenses than was formerly the case.
The biggest club of all, and one in which .......
everybody will be required to take out a life membership if he is going to have the blessing of everlasting life, is God’s Kingdom, and then the full operation of that kingdom will take the ...........
place of all or nearly all these other aggregations of humanity. In order to gain membership in that club, one not only must covenant to give all that he lias, but must give it, and in return he will get everything that is worth having.
Don’t Beat Me!
^TNON'T beat me! Don’t beat me!” a prison-.
AM er in a jail at Washington, D. C., heard a fellow prisoner scream out as so-called “officers of the law" came to his cell and took him out for the third degree. The prisoner was gone an hour and a half. When he left he was sound in body. 'While he was gone thumping sounds
Don’t Beat Me!
were heard which were accompanied by screams. When he was brought back his left eye was practically closed, and there was blood all over the front of his shirt. This was at the capital of the country, and one of many cases where prisoners have been beaten there, in the effort to force confessions. All this is entirely illegal.
The Long and Short of It
25fiG0s000 Workless This Winter
IT IS estimated that the world total of unemployed will reach 25,000,000 during this coming winter. Of this number, 10,000,000 will be in the United States and 7,000,000 in Germany.
Carrying a Hull in Tennessee
TOTr.. H. E. Man, of Tennessee, every day car* -L’JL rjcs one hundred feet a bull calf -which is now one year old. He began carrying the calf the day it was born, and has never missed a day since. The calf now -weighs 800 pounds,
Some Facts About China
TN PEKING, in 1929, 91,000 women out of J- 518,000 had their feet bound. Children work in Chinese silk factories at the age of five. With a quarter of the world’s population, there are still only 7,000 miles of railway in China.
Milk as Food for Soldiers
SWITZERLAND has been trying out milk as a food for soldiers, and with the best of results. It was found that those who drank it were not ill, as was often the case when lemonade, beer or water were drunk.
404 Mites an Hour '
IN THE recent Schneider Trophy race Lieutenant G. H. Stainforth attained a speed of 404 miles an hour. This is about 600 feet a second, and is only about 200 feet a second short of the speed of a .45-calibre bullet fired from a Colt automatic pistol.
New Way to Ship Fruit
TTALIAN engineers have found a new way to ship ripe fruit. The cars, instead of being iced, are hermetically sealed and sprayed with a special carbon gas. It is claimed that this gas keeps the fruit fresh and preserves the perfume of costly flowers during long-distance shipment.
Pennsylvania One-Fourth Idle
HpHE Pennsylvania Planning Commission estimates that one-fourth of the workers of
Pennsylvania are without Jobs, that there are 900,000 unemployed in the state, and that almost, half of the 67 counties in the state are in distress. Many school districts have empty treasuries.
Hungary Near Bankruptcy
T> H. Posters, formerly of the Bank of England, after an examination of Hungary’s finances, declares that the only way out is for Budapest to declare a complete moratorium, which is merely another name for bankruptcy.
Trans- Canada Highway
HpHE trans-Canada highway will endeavor to absorb a large number of Canada’s unemployed. The workers will be housed in camps. They will be paid 30c an hour for an eight-hour day, from which will be deducted 80c a day for board and 50c a month for medical service.
Air Mail Service Twenty Years Old
IT SEEMS hard to believe that the first air mail service in the United States occurred twenty years ago; yet it is true that the first sack of mail was carried on September 23, 1911. It was only a five-mile ride, too. The mail was dropped from a plane instead of being brought down and deposited.
Air Transport Forging Ahead
IT IS noted in Europe that while the railway and passenger steamship business is seriously depressed, air transport is forging ahead. There is a growing confidence in the safety, comfort and convenience of air travel. Practically every convert to flying becomes a permanent user of the air lines.
Air Service Between Milwaukee and Detroit
A FINE illustration of what air service can accomplish is in the schedule of the Kohler line, which connects Milwaukee and Detroit in the flying time of 2 hours 40 minutes, whereas the fastest trains require 10 hours 40 minutes to make the trip, even when they have immediate connections at Chicago,
Coal in East Greenland
COAL has been discovered in East Greenland. It is in the territory recently occupied, by the Norwegians, but was discovered by a Dame. It is said to be of good quality. It is one more of the many proofs that prior to the Flood the entire earth was in a hothouse condition. For a full explanation of this see Judge Rutherford’s book Creation.
Human Baby as a Bear’s Cub
PARENTS in Thrace, near Istanbul, have just had restored to them a baby boy that for the past four years has been the captive of a mother bear. The baby was kidnaped by the bear while the mother was gathering firewood in a forest. When found, it was quite savage; but it is now back in its home.
Fast Hallway Time in Britain
THE Great Western Railway recently drew a train of six coaches, weighing 200 tons loaded, from Swindon to London, 77(4 niiles, in 59y2 minutes, or at an average speed of nearly 78 miles an hour. The regular running time of this train from Swindon to London is 67 minutes, or 69.3 miles an hour.
What a Few Men Could Do
IN THE year 1929 there were 504 individuals with incomes equal to the combined values of the nation’s entire wheat and cotton crops, and today there are four or five men any one of whom could buy every farm in the state of Wisconsin. In Washington’s day there was not a millionaire in the country.
Nearly a Million Idle in New York City
A RGUING- that the United States Census X.JL Bureau figures of unemployment in New York city are far beneath the facts, Edward C. Rybicki, director of the City Free Employment Agency, has macle a statement over the radio that the number is nearer a million, and how multitudes of these families exist at all is a mystery.
Papa Taylor Scolds Chattanooga
"D apa Taylor and Charlie Taylor are in the evangelist business and have been putting on a show at Chattanooga. It must have been a bad show, or else the times are hard, or something, because they, had expected to mop up about $1,000 a week and the people came across with onlj7 $100. Papa scolded something dreadful. He predicted that some of his audience would be in the bread line this winter and would find out what real suffering is; and then he added that if they would prosper and do well, they should give to the Lord and his work, meaning himself and Charlie, and they would be blessed tenfold.
Paris Gives Up Street Cars
A FTER much discussion and agitation Paris has finally decided to give up its street cars and depend for civic transportation entirely upon buses. Of the city’s nearly two hundred ' car lines thirty-four have been condemned, and the tracks of eleven are being removed and the streets repaved. The street car’s inability to dodge has made it no longer able to compete,.....-
Canada’s Pay to the Jobless
British Columbia’s rate of pay for the jobless is $2 a day, plus 85 cents a day for............
board, plus 80 cents a day for every man who has a family. Slightly higher allowances are paid to skilled workers and foremen. These allowances are not considered as wages, but as subsistence allowances to carry the unemployed through the emergency.
Estopping Gambling at Washington ......
THE courts made an effort to stop gambling......
at Washington. While they were engaged in this praiseworthy enterprise a church carnival was in full swing, with wheels of chance and.........
lotteries going and police on the ground to guarantee protection. Thou seest, brother, the________________
uses of the police in religion. Theirs is to do the . dirty work while the saints pocket the money. '
Costs of Worship at Garden Grove
THE Santa Ana (Calif.) Register has an......................
advertisement of the “'Church of the Foursquare Big Opening” at the new church home. It invites the public to come and hear a lady evangelist, and adds thoughtfully, “Sunday ........
School, 9. 45; morning worship, $10.45; Dedi-_______
cation Service, 7.30.” Just why the morning worship is so expensive as compared with the -other services is not stated. .....
Half-Hour Phonograph Disks
THE RCA-Victor Company has brought out .....
-4- a new phonograph disk which plays for half an hour, requiring manual attention only at the fifteen-minute mark. The speed of the turntable is slowed down from seventy-eight to thirty-three and one-third revolutions per minute and the number of grooves on the playing surface of the disk is almost doubled. It is anticipated that this new invention will give the phonograph business a new lease of life.
Tropical Valley in Canadian Northwest rpjIE oft-reported tropical valley of the Cana--L dian Northwest lias been definitely located, near the junction of the Racing and Toad rivers, about 400 miles northwest of Fort St. John. The valley is three quarters of a mile in length and is honeycombed with hot springs. The ground is so heated that during a temperature of 50° below zero water does not freeze in the valley.
Radio Stations in the Canadian Arctic
TIE Canadian Arctic is becoming dotted with radio stations. A string of them reaches all the way from Winnipeg to the head of Great Slave Lake, and another string all the way from Ottawa to Resolution Island at the Atlantic entrance to the Hudson Straits. In British Columbia all the principal canning, lumbering and mining industries have radio communication with their offices in Vancouver.
Four Miles a Minute
ajor James H. Doolittle, in a specially built plane, crossed the United States from coast to coast in 11 hours 1G minutes 10 seconds, and then returned from Newark to Cleveland in one hour and forty-six minutes. He left Burbank, California, at 5:35 a.m. and, after his trip across the continent, was back again in Cleveland at 7:35 p.m. In his flight across the continent he clipped 1 hour 8 minutes 53 seconds from the cross-continent record.
The Needs of National Defense
II /T/Cready Sykes, in Commerce and Finance, itJl gayS; “For national defense the United States needs an army and navy about as much as a householder in the suburbs needs an armored car. As a matter of fact, the private citizen in New York or Chicago is in far greater danger of physical violence at the hands of an aggressor than is the United States. For more than a century we have lived securely with. three thousand miles of undefended frontier between us and one of the dominions of one of the richest and most powerful empires in the world, between which and ourselves there have as a sober fact of history been more differences and conflicts of view than with any other country. Yet no one but a moron has lost any sleep because of the danger from our unguarded frontier,''
Causes of the Floods
THE great floods which have occurred this X year in China, India, the Philippines and throughout Africa are laid to unusual accumulations of ice in the Antarctic, which ice is now breaking up and driving the warmer waters before it. The waters off California this year are five degrees warmer than ever before known. It is anticipated that these conditions will bring about a great drought in Russia next year.
673 Persons Run League of Nations
HE personnel of the League of Nations is 673, all but 310 of whom are employed in the International Labor Office. There is a publicity department with 54 employees and a combined salary of $235,000. About $800,000 a year is expended for pamphlets, reports and other printing. The expenses of the forthcoming disarmament conference are estimated at $1,000,-000.
New York’s $20,000,000 Relief Bill
EVv YORK state has boosted personal income taxes 50 percent and put through .a $20,000,000 relief bill. Half of this amount is set aside for home relief and will be used entirely for food, shelter and clothing for the unemployed. Governor Roosevelt estimates from reports that have reached him that the number that will require help this corning winter will be about double the number of last winter.
Georgia Minister Made $2,500 on Side
GEORGIA minister made $2,500 on the side and now he is in trouble. It seems that he had a son, a sailor, whose life was insured in his favor. For once he had a brilliant idea. He obtained a leave of absence for the boy on the ground that his sister was dangerously ill, but she wasn’t. Then the boy was found slain with bullets which fit into the Reverend’s gun, and the dominie collected the $2,500. And now the police want to know why it is that the automobile tracks near the lad’s body are similar to tracks left by the minister’s automobile. The Reverend was just on the way to preach a sermon when he was arrested. The dominie business is certainly getting to be a hard business, and when one of them does make a few extra dollars there are so many curious people 'wanting to know all about how he got it.
The Silkworm Must Go
THE E. I. duPont de Nemours Company, of
Wilmington, announce that after much experimentation they have discovered a way to produce fibers that can be woven into goods, which fibers, they claim, have every quality that makes silk precious. Most important of all, this new process is wholly synthetic. Just now it is in the experimental stage, but if the claims made for it are true it marks the finish of the silkworm, and the end of the silk trade with the Orient. The silkworm must go; the chemist has made it impossible for him to live.
Smoke Screens Not Harmless
SEPTEMBER 30, in plain view7 of the office of The Golden Age, an airplane in the employ of a motion picture concern laid a smoke screen around the U. S. Navy dirigible Los Angeles. It was a beautiful sight to behold. The plane’s driver was told to keep far enough away from the dirigible that none of the particles of hydrochloric acid would drip on it. Somebody miscalculated what the acid would do farther down, as scores of automobile tops and hundreds of suits and dresses were ruined, holes being cut through them as with a knife.
Uncle Sain’s Divorced Wife ..............
XPx-Senatob Heelin of Alabama went to speak in Fresno, California, but the Catholic and
Protestant voodoo men of the city, terrorized at the possibility that somebody might learn something, prevailed upon the authorities to bar him from the high school auditorium. Heflin had to go over into the Japanese section of the city to get a hearing, and now somebody in Fresno, some mean man with a sense of humor, writes to us and wants to know if the Statue of Liberty is Uncle Sam’s divorced wife. How should we know? Why pick on us?
Barter Between Sweden and Persia \
THE breakdown of the gold standard is disclosed not only by its being deserted by nation after nation, but by the cases of barter on a large scale that are coining up. Not only has America bartered with Brazil, exchanging ivheat for coffee on a colossal scale, but Sweden has now entered into barter with Persia. Swedish engineers and Swedish rolling mills will ..........
build the Persian railway from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, and Sweden will take its pay in Persian goods, mostly staples, but with some rugs and pearls and silver included, no doubt.
Railroads Fighting Hard for Life
THE following is an extract from a filled-in form letter sent out June 16 over the signature of the president of the Lackawanna &, Wyoming Valley Railroad Company, P. J. Murphy. We do not blame Mr. Murphy a bit for this letter; every word that he says is true; but it is interesting also as showing how hard pressed the railroads are in their efforts to keep open the arteries of travel on which most of us at times depend.
We are advised by cheek made, that car [automobile] bearing Pennsylvania license 5841J1 picked up 2 prospective passengers waiting at our River Street station, Wilkes-Barre at 11:00 PM on June 14, 1931, This is a rather bad practice; it is injurious to the company and to the people who patronize the road, because if other automobilists do the same thing there would be a decrease in revenue to such an extent that service might be discontinued; then the public who are compelled to use the railroad at times when automobiles are not around would be injured very materially. Furthermore, automobile drivers who pick up people become liable for any accident that might occur while people are traveling with them. In all, the practice is very bad and should be discontinued.
Conducting “Elections” in Hungary
IN THE United States one may freely vote for either of the two capitalistic parties, but in Hungary there is but one such party. It is the government party itself, and if you do not vote for it you are out of luck. Those voting against the government must vote in blocks of twenty. Those who have received government assistance within the year may not vote at all. While on the march from their meeting place to the voting place the police may arrest one or many of the marchers. That breaks up the voting block and the rest must return to their meeting place until they have another block of twenty. Arrived at the place of voting the opposition voters are shouted at like so many cattle. Whenever they feel like it the government officials close the polls, and they generally dose them after the government vote is all in, and while the opposition parties are still trying to get together their blocks of twenty. At every polling place the government forces always win. If there is no other way to win, the figures are “adjusted” until they suit. These items are taken from a current article in The Nation,
What the Dole Is
BRITISH worker, when employed, must contribute 14c a week to the unemployment fund, his employer must put in 16c, and the state puts in 15c. The worker, when unemployed, receives $4.25 per week for himself, $2.25 for his wife, and 50c for each child. The dole is the only thing that stands between 2,714,359 English men and women and starvation, and one British statesman said of it last winter that “if it were not for the dole, half the financiers in the ‘city’ would have been hanging from the lamp posts before this.”
Electromagnetic Preservation of Food
obert Pape, of Soest, Holland, has discovered that within a radius of 20 meters from
: an apparatus which generates short waves in
the region of 25 centimeters to one meter an ■ electromagnetic field is set up within which food does not decay in any atmosphere or tempera-w' ture. New potatoes, eggs, milk, pears and ■ " shrimps a year old are perfectly preserved. This food-preserving field of 30,000 cubic meters ■ . uses up only as much electricity as an ordinary
200-candle-power electric bulb. The invention will completely transform the cold storage business. The preserving action penetrates every. thing, stone walls, iron, wood, glass, indoors and out,'within a20-meter radius of the machine.
' American Legion Surprises ike Smug
...........]Qobeiit Whitaker, in The American Guardian, says: “It is a time of economic twilight now, and the chickens which were hatched out in the incubators of the war hysteria are eom-fug home to roost. Big Business stands aghast that the war veterans are not content with compliments, but want jobs, and want bonus payments, and are organized on a big enough scale to get what they want, even though Big Business holds up holy hands of horror that the fine patriotism which carried the boys into the trenches, and left a lot of them there, will not feed and clothe and house those that have returned and the relatives and dependents of ■ those who made the supreme sacrifice. And the preachers and church peoples who have joined the legionnaires in the anti-radical hysterias promoted by the predatory interests throughout '• the post-war period, with the assistance of these professionally pious ones, are scandalized that the legionnaires are fighting prohibition.”
Noncombatants in the Next War
r. Cadman, Rabbi Wise and forty-six other prominent churchmen who are too old to be drafted have sent word to our Quaker president, and to the United States Congress, that they will not perform any kind of combatant service in the next war. In the first place, they would not be asked to do it, because they are all too old to be of any good as soldiers; and, in the second place, there will be plenty of less dangerous work similar to what they did before, such as recruiting, Red Cross, Y.M.C.A. base duty, etc., into which jobs they will fit as easily as a duck’s foot fits in the mud.
Why Truth on Aluminum Makes Slow Headway
OME have wondered why the truth about aluminum cooking utensils, as it has been repeatedly published in our columns, seems to make such relatively slow progress in convincing the rest of the world. Here is an item that helps to clear it up. It is reprinted from the Prairie Press Farmer:
THE ALUMINUM GRAFT
Some time ago a “news release” was sent out from the North Dakota Agricultural College, stating that aluminum cooking utensils were perfectly safe and that there was no danger of poison. This release was published in the small-town weeklies throughout the state. .
Investigation has shown that the big trusts are deluging the press with “news releases” and “canned editorials” and boasts of the amount of free space for the trusts. One of their agents declared that country editors are “God’s fools”.
Every week there comes to our desk one of these “news releases” from a news distributing service, run by E. M. Hofer & Sons, Portland, Oregon, and, as usual, boosting the big power trusts and knocking public ownership.
In the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation it was found that the power corporations had been secretly giving $84,000 a year to the above-mentioned E. M, Hofer & Sons.
The Hofer service, distributed free to 14,000 newspapers throughout the country, is a disgraceful fraud and cheat perpetrated upon the editors and newspaper readers of the country, and the recent case of the North Dakota Agricultural College, denying that aluminum cooking utensils are poisonous, shows that they arc not without dirty hands; but what does a life mean to some college professors as long as they can fill their coffers?
More Depression Relief Cooperation By Dr, B. H. Jones (Pennsylvania)
WILL some mathematician explain just what is the difference in principle between the utilities company’s service charges against the small users of gas, water, and electric current, and the $1 monthly service charge of the National Bankers Association against the small depositor whose monthly balance is less than $100? ‘
To be sure, "infant industries” always had to be favored, and now that banks and railroads are in the infant business class they should be protected against departmental loss even if the man with less than $100 must donate 12 percent to 24 percent of his all to those who have nine-tenths of the nation’s cash outside of government vaults.
Government, municipal, state, national, and other full-grown enterprises transfer funds from one department to another to provide and care for just such deficiencies. However, doubtless the banks need the few extra dollars of the small depositor, to stack up in their already over-filled vaults, to save the crumbling banking and financial system of the country’ from total collapse.
Senator Couzens’ suggestion, that "capitalism ought to clean its house”, is well supplemented in “The Soliloquy of a Wyoming Banker”, as we read in The Golden Age of June 24. And these tw’o bring to mind and fairly clinch what Henry Ford wrote, for the Forum magazine, about two years ago. In substance, he said: “Anything not on a sound basis must fall.” And, in the same paragraph, but several sentences after, “Our financial system is not on a sound foundation.” Will the White House Engineer succeed in clearing the way? for rebuilding? Will he lead the way, forgive and forget, by? rescinding, and cause the rescinding of all war debts, and lay a sound foundation for all countries ?
Misinstrnction of School Children
use of vaccines and their value may? be illustrated in connection with smallpox. Dr. Edward Jenner, an English physician, in 1799 found that persons who were vaccinated did not take smallpox.
The Taxpayers and Voters League of Chicago has made an attempt to bring the Chicago Board of Education to its senses, and to prevent the American Medical Association in its headlong course of forcing its stuff into the heads and into the bodies of all the young regardless of whether or not there is a particle of truth in their claims or a particle of justice in their methods.
On the very same page in which this ill-concealed fake advertising for the doctors appears is a sample advertisement of a quack doctor, and beneath it comes up for air the statement, "A reputable doctor does not advertise in this way; his reputation spreads through his service to mankind!”
Dr. Werner, chiropractor, of Brooklyn, who broadcasts regularly over WBBR ’when he is not in jail, is just out after six months’ free board for allegedly practicing medicine without a license. It is these high-minded men who do not advertise that locked up this useful man because he tells the truth and because he really helps ailing people to get well.
IT IS too bad that taxpayers have to pay? for the printing of textbooks that teach things that are not true, and then have to pay? teachers to teach the untrue things the books contain, and, on top of that, have to pay for the vaccines advertised, and pay for the rest of their lives in the lessened vitality of their children.
Everyday Problems in Science, written by Pieper and Beauchamp, and published by Scott, Foresman & Co., of New York and Chicago, is a school textbook used in the first year of high school. On page 222 this textbook contains the following misinformation:
You should realize, also, the value of depending on the doctor and the dentist even when you are well. By regular examinations these trained experts may? save you days of suffering’. How the doctor determines ■what help the body? needs in case of sickness, and what medicine, if any, should be given, is too difficult for us to understand at, this time. Immunity is aided by? vaccines and antitoxins. Rest, good air, exercise, proper diet and medicines are not, the only means of helping the body? fight disease germs. There are two other important way?s -which may be used to assist the white corpuscles and the chemical substances vzithin the body? in their fight against germs. Thus, certain vaccines and antitoxic sera may be injected into the body? to strengthen or reinforce the army of disease fighters and to make the body? immune. The ’ 108
The tM-eakdown of Law By Dr. Edward M.. Perdue (Missouri}
[Reprinted from Journal of the American
OUR nation is facing a serious crisis. Great numbers of our best people do not seem to realize this. Many others, men of conservative .....:......thought and well-balanced insight, speak of it with bated breath. They say that the time of : revolution will not be postponed long. Never
' in the history of our country has there been such a surfeit of politicians and such a dearth .......of statesmen. .
■ The physicians of our country have the confi-: dence of their people. The practice of medicine
f is hard hit by conditions. The great mass of our .....■.....profession pay very little attention to politics and submit with fortitude and patience to eco-....... uomic stress. But we have a responsibility.
• Our people are out of work. There is poverty
and want in the midst of plenty. Business is v stagnant. Capital dares not engage in business.
" The millions stored in banks cannot be used.
• Wliy? .
.... Organized graft and racketeering, legalized graft and racketeering, graft enforced by forms ■....... of law, the cooperation of the officials of gov-
id eminent with the grafters and racketeers, have - made the overhead so great that business is paralyzed. Our oppressed people are cowed and
; humiliated. Every attempt at relief through ' constituted authority is crushed by rebuff and . added burden. Among the most arrogant and i grinding in this oppression is a national or: ganization within our own profession.
Unless there is relief, and that speedily, our country will be swept by revolution. Let us hope and pray that this revolution be only ■ political. But such are the conditions that a
' powerful leader can sweep this country with
'i..... fire and sword, with shot and shell. Deliver us
: from such a cataclysm.
: Fifty years ago we were taught in high school
■ and college that the Government of the United
1 States was a republic founded upon the prin-
: ciples of democracy. Instructors, lawyers and
i judges spoke with respect and reverence of the j Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights t and the Constitution of the United States. The : addresses of Patrick Henry, of Daniel Webster
: and of Abraham Lincoln were printed in our
; school readers. The opinions of John Marshall were quoted as fundamental law. We were ' taught respect for law. We grew up patriotic and loved our country.
In those now almost forgotten days the citi-
Association for Medico-Pliysical Pesearch}
zen of the United States was entitled to the equal protection of the law. Freedom of speech and of the press were guaranteed. No man could be arrested without a warrant. No home or place of business could be invaded by police or sheriff without a search warrant under bond. The citizen could not be deprived of life, liberty or property without “due process of law”. This meant trial by jury before a court of competent jurisdiction, with power to summon witnesses, to compel their testimony, and to punish for contempt.
Today all these matters are obsolete. Our government has deteriorated into an administrative despotism, the most despotic, criminal and corrupt of all the governments of the so-called civilized world. Our governments both state and national are administered strictly upon the principles of graft. The individual or the business which does not or cannot “pay off” loses in any proceeding. The “Bill of Rights” is a joke. The Constitution of the United States is a “scrap of paper”.
In order to facilitate the collection of graft and to give it a legal status, the Congress of the United States has passed laws creating various boards, commissions and bureaus, granting them great powers with no legal restraint or accountability and with no trial by jury. Among these laws are the Pure Food and Drugs Act, the Volstead Act, the creation of the Federal Trade Commission, the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Radio Commission, the Farm Board, and many others. The state legislatures have created highway commissions, school commissions, health boards, employees’ compensation commissions, public utilities commissions, and many others. All these commissions have been created for the purpose of facilitating the collection of graft and avoiding trial by jury. Appeals from their decisions are by certiorari and do not grant a trial de novo.
These various boards and commissions are in close affiliation with certain private or extra-governmental organizations which cooperate with them in the collection of graft. These organizations enjoy the favor of the public press and through the press conduct that other menace to American law and liberty, that is, government by propaganda and not by law. Two conspicuous extra-governmental organizations in our country, organized, conducted and financed by graft, are the Better Business bureaus and the American Medical Association.
The National Better Business Bureau has its headquarters in New York city, with branches in all the larger cities of the United States. Its graft has become so burdensome that the business houses of New York have organized a protective association to counteract its racketeering.
The American Medical Association has its headquarters in Chicago, with subsidiaries in every state and in a vast majority of the counties in the United States. It is credited with being the best organized and most powerful extra-governmental grafting organization in the United States. In its graft it is directly affiliated with the national government. It controls the United States Public Health Service, the health departments of the army and navy, the narcotic division, the bureau of chemistry, and the fraud order office of the Post Office Department. In the states it controls medical education, medical licensure, school inspection, and all public hospitals. In large measure it is affiliated with the Federal Radio Commission in the exacting of graft.
The very sources of justice have been corrupted. Did you ever visit a district court of the United States? To persons accustomed to the decencies and amenities of life, a visit to the district court of the United States will be a shock. But if he will visit the Moulin Rouge, Le Chat Noir, and the haunts of the Apaches in Paris, and then go with Kipling to Suez, Port Said, Aden and Singapore, then come back and attend the night court in the Lower Bast Side in New’ Y7ork, make a tour of Chinatown in San Francisco and of the West Side in Chicago, he will be prepared in a measure for the further descent into the District Court of the United States. Facilis descensus Averno.
The officials, including the judge, the frequenters and the audience, smoke cigarettes until the atmosphere of the court room is a cloudy haze. The court room, halls and corridors are filled ’with bootleggers, racketeers, hijackers, deputy marshals, come-on men, snoopers, procurers, under-cover men, inspectors, assistant district attorneys, stool pigeons, perjurers, decoys, demimondaines, and all that ruck of the underworld that are supposed to add dignity to our federal courts. In this court the most serious offense is to be a law-abiding citizen of the United States.
Three of these great grafting institutions keep a special watch upon the business of the country, the Better Business bureau, the American Medical Association and the Federal Trade Commission. When a business seems to be successful and prosperous and able to pay off, it is approached by the Better Business bureau. If it refuses to pay off, the Better Business bureau issues a printed pamphlet denouncing the business as a fraud and sends this pamphlet to affiliated Better Business bureaus in all the large cities of the United States and to the press. Letters are sent to the newspapers and magazines warning them not to accept the advertising of the proscribed business. Often libelous pretended biographies of the officers and representatives of these business concerns are added to the propaganda. If this pressure does not succeed in compelling the proscribed business to pay off to the Better Business bureau, the matter is turned over to the Federal Trade Commission.
The Federal Trade Commission issues a citation to the business organization to come to Washington to show cause why an order to “cease and desist” business should not be issued by the Commission. This is merely a suggestion to pay off. The Commission suggests that the'matter can be arranged “by stipulation”. They may even send a copy of their last annual report, calling attention to the hundreds of cases settled by “stipulation”. But they never state how much, or how they divided the swag, or how much, if any, they turned into the treasury of the United States.
If the prospective victim decides to settle “by stipulation” and sends in $25,000, a very satisfactory stipulation can be written. There are five commissioners. If one or two hundred cases are settled “by stipulation” in a year, this nets quite a tidy sum. The racketeering practices of the Better Business bureau are enforced by a form of law.
If the business cited is refractory and insists on a hearing, there is no amount of evidence that wall avail anything. The most complete and sweeping proof that a business is honest, fair and wholly lawful amounts to nothing lie-fore the Commission in default of the “pay off”. The record is useful only on appeal to the court above. Property is confiscated and the business
ruined without a trial by jury and without compensation.
If a pharmaceutical manufacturer, a great drug firm, an organization of physicians, a hospital, or any other organization having a medical tendency or purpose, fails to get permission to operate from the American Medical Association, that is, does not “pay off” to North Dearborn Street, Chicago, the matter is turned over to the Federal Trade Commission. The same procedure follows. Citation, pay off, or trial with the inevitable adverse decision.
• The above statements are mild. For real vigorous language in the statement of the case, we quote the opinion of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, No. 5429, filed June 28, 1930, entitled “The Marmola Case”. '
The record here shows, without dispute or by implication which would hardly be denied, that the American Medical Association is engaged in a campaign against those proprietary remedies which it believes ought to be used by the public cither not at all or only under supervision. It lias a bureau for that and other purposes, and the bureau employs a director. When it is thought that a particular advertisement should be stopped, this director takes the matter up with the Commission and with the association of “Better Business Bureaus” which are scattered over the country. Thereupon, the Commission, if it approves, files a complaint and eventually, if it is convinced of the truth of its complaint, makes the order to desist and refrain. The Better Business bureaus explain to their local newspapers and to the general periodicals, that it would be wise to refuse this advertising. The chairman of the Commission, iu public addresses, and in correspondence, advises die newspapers that they will be subject to prosecution by the Commission as defendants, to be joined with the advertisers, if they do not desist from such publications; and the newspapers may suspect that if they do not comply with the advice of the Better Business bureaus, their general advertising patronage from the membership of these bureaus will fall off. It appears that these methods of influence, carried on in this case before this cross suit for enforcement was commenced and while it has been pending, have destroyed a large part of petitioner’s business through refusal to accept this advertisement, and only the injunction of this court is needed to make the elimination complete. ■
It will be noted that tins most nefarious, most vicious and far-reaching combination is against the practices of medicine and pharmacy. We, as physicians, are vitally concerned and largely responsible, for we have permitted this octopus to grow in our midst until it threatens to strangle our very life. It is up to us to clean house in our own profession. The condition has become so rotten and so vile that the house-cleaning devolves upon us. The rest of the world has abandoned us to our fate and turned to other sources of relief. Heaven revolts at the corruption. We must do the work. Our prayers are not answered, for the gates of Heaven are closed to keep out the stench of Fishbrine.
It is much easier and safer to frame some inoffensive, unoffending, law-abiding citizen than it is to apprehend and prosecute a gangarmed with machine guns. So when business is dull and publicity is lacking, and it seems necessary to get on the front page, the United States district attorney calls in two assistants, a half dozen inspectors and a gang of stool pigeons, procurers, decoys and perjurers and proceeds to frame some law-abiding citizen. The higher the standing and character of the accused, the greater the publicity. Pictures in the papers, long accounts of the trial and sensational but false accusations furnish the necessary thrill. A law-abiding citizen of the United States is convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary to the scandal of the community, while gangsters run wild, bootleggers and racketeers flourish and murder and rapine go unpunished.
The last few years furnish many concrete examples of the utter break-down of law in our country. Of late we read much about the Fall case. Several years ago Fall and Doheny were indicted about a $100,000 bribe. Doheny was accused of giving the bribe, and Fall of accepting it. On trial Doheny was acquitted by a jury. Now the acceptance of a bribe is dependent upon a bribe’s being given. If a bribe is not given, it cannot be accepted. To any judge or lawyer with any judicial acumen and with sufficient horse sense to come in out of the rain, the acquittal of Doheny should have worked an automatic dismissal of the charge against Fall. Yet Fall was tried by politics rather than by law, was convicted of receiving a bribe that was not given, and has been sent to the penitentiary. Is it any wonder that our boasted United States is the-joke of the civilized world? ,
For ten years Al Capone and his organization have been shipping alcohol and other intoxicating liquors by the carload throughout the length and breadth of the United States. Federal agents have ridden these trains, followed this liquor to its destination, supervised its distribution and collected their divide of the profits. Recently it was decided that Capone was to be prosecuted. Popular clamor was so great that it had to be done. With all this information, he was only sued for his income tax! Recent reports indicate that the Federal authorities are unable to locate the Capone millions and cannot collect the income tax. While Capone was supposed to be in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, he and one hundred of his friends, the gentlemen in Tuxedos and the ladies in evening gowns, invaded the banquet hall in a hotel in Benton Harbor, Michigan, where some sorority was holding a banquet, took possession of the hall, crowded out the sorority and forced them to seek smaller quarters.
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