Golden Age, December 20, 1933

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Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

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in this issue

LATIN AMERICA

THE CURSE OF INTEREST

TRUTH ABOUT TOBACCO LEAD AND ARSENIC POISONING

FASTING SCIENTIFICALLY NEWS NOTES BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND

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Vol. XV - No. 372 December 20, 1933

CONTENTS

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LABOR AND ECONOMICS

Canada’s Cooperative

Commonwealth......175

Purchasing: Power on Toboggan . 179 Durango Editor Wants to Know . ISO Lansbury Put It Bluntly . . . 1 SI Economic Drift to City and Baek . 181 Republic Hanging in Balance . . 182

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

Screw Worm Invasion in Georgia . 181

What Do You Know About Goats? 181

Corn Most Important Food Crop . 182

Cayenne Pepper for Rats . . . IM

SCIENCE AND INVENTION

"Watson Experiments on Dogs . . 167

Lead and Arsenic Poisoning . . 176

Progress in Human Vivisection . 178

Breezes..........179

Sundry Thoughts by a Fisherman . 167

Rothschilds Give Up Vast Estates . 180

Once Is Enough for America . . 180

HOME AND HEALTH

“The Truth About Tobacco’’ . 170

Fasting Scientifically .... 177

Arsenic on Vegetables .... 181

MANUFACTURING AND MINING

Munition Factories Booming . . 180

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

The Curse of Interest . . 168

Agricultural Credit Corporations . 181

Long Island Duck Racket . . . 181

Britain Dumps Oranges .... 181

Farmers Slow to Receive Benefits . 182

Largest Milk Combine.....182

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

Senator Hatfield on Warpath . . 179

“Lunatics Have Gone Home’’. . 180

Some Rascalities of Machado Gang 180

Catholic News Contradicts Pope . 185

AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY

Said the Plowman to His Mule . 167

The Habits of Rats.....173

New Source of Fertilizer . . 174

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY

Latin America—Question Mark of 20th Century (Part 5) . . 163

50,000 Jews Migrate to Palestine . 175

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

The Radio Witness Work . . 179 “The $ Sign’’—and Balaam’s Ass 183 “Be Ye Warmed and Fed’’ . . 185 Cardinal Wiseman’s Admission . 185 Mass Business Usually Profitable . 185 Pope Lays Idleness to God . . . 188 No Roman Catholic Objectors . . 185 Portion of Jesuit Oath .... 186 Help Mother Out of Bonfire . . 187 20,000 Ministers Nearing Overalls 188 Jonesboro Continues Religious . DS A Step in Right Direction . . . DS The Baek to Church Movement . DS Blind Leaders of the Blind . . 189

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Published every other Wednesday by GOLDEN AGE PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC. 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. 1., U. S. A. Clayton J. Woodworth P> evident Nathan II. Knorr Vice President Robert S. Emery Secretary and Treasurer

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<Ae Golden Age

Volume XV Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, December 20, 1933 Number 372

Latin America—The Question Mark of the 20th Century

In Five Parts—Part 5

Argentina—Land of Promise

WE TREATED this subject in full in No.

333, and so merely touch here a few items which have come to notice during the past year.

By now you have all heard about North America’s famous financiers, the kind that charge you three times what Canada does for electric current, and lend your savings to South Americans —push it on them in fact. Now the latter are sorry they borrowed. The interest charges consume one-third of all Argentina’s annual revenue, and she hates her Yankee creditors.

Buenos Aires, sixth city of the world as regards population, and largest city of any kind south of the equator, has the only subway system in the Southern Hemisphere. Its streets and boulevards are among the broadest, the longest and the finest in the world, and its shops are unsurpassed. The population of Argentina is almost entirely white.

It is generally agreed that the thing which has made Argentina the most progressive country in South America is the influence of one man, Sarmiento, born in the little town of San Juan, in 1811. Sarmiento had unlimited thirst for education, and unlimited ambition that others might have the same. As a direct result of his influence Argentina has today the best school system in Latin America. Iler teachers are better paid than even in the United States. (!) In marked contrast with the United States the schools of Argentina are under the direct control of the government. They have had the effect of turning the people in the direction of Socialism, with the consequent restlessness of labor, and the spread of cooperation.

When Argentina has a strike, everything is tied up tight. In the early part of 1919, when the dock workers’ strike was on, not a ship entered the port of Buenos Aires in three months. The temper of the Argentinians is shown in their independent withdrawal from the League of Nations, because of their belief that the present League is dominated by questions arising out of the World War and is not impartial in its handling of world problems.

“Religion” has lost out in Argentina. The thoughtful and intelligent have turned away from the Roman Catholic church to agnosticism. What that “church” has been doing for four hundred years may be gathered from the fact that a prominent journal of Buenos Aires began printing quotations from the Bible, without giving the source, and subscribers wrote in wanting to know the source from which came the illuminating and helpful ideas.

Argentina is probably the only land in which horses have been cheap enough and distances were great enough that, in a former generation, “beggars did ride” literally. Religious bums went around asking for alms in the name of some “saint” or else to help out the “mother of god”, or his grandmother, Saint Anne, or some other impecunious relative. How the money ever got from the bum to Mary or Anne was never made clear.

There is still a touch of the America of a generation ago in the Gauchos of the western Argentinian plains. A. H. Tschiffely, a Swiss, recently completed a 2^-year horseback ride from Buenos Aires to Washington. He is a teacher of languages, out for a long vacation.

Sheep breeders in the San Julian area of the Argentine recently slaughtered and burned the carcasses of 60,000 sheep for want of a market. Uruguay—“The Purple Land”

That little triangular-shaped country down in the southeastern corner of South America, so small that you can hardly see it, is just a little larger than the combined states of New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

It is called “The Purple Land” because the flor morada, the most conspicuous among flow-

ers, carpets the rich undulating plains everywhere with glowing bands and patches of richest purple. Go where one will, one finds massed banks of this blazing flower growing in such profusion that they extinguish all competitors.

Uruguay is about one-third Protestant. It is now paying much attention to education. State pupils at the normal schools receive pensions of $15 a month as a contribution in assisting them to meet their expenses. In hot weather the municipal council of Montevideo forbids city employees to work more than six hours per day. No one is permitted to work more than forty-eight hours per week. Old age pensions are in effect.

Montevideo (Mountain View) is one of the chief seaports of South America, and one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities. Nearly every language is spoken in its streets. The export trade of Uruguay in 1930 was $97,340,955. The climate is ideal, and healthy. The population, almost entirely white, is 2,036,884. British interests predominate.

The United, States of Brazil

Brazil is larger than the whole United States of North America, and is almost as large as the whole of Europe, including Russia. It occupies a full half of the South American continent. It borders on every country of South America except Chile.

The population is estimated at 41,079,000. About one-third of the population is white. Settlements are confined chiefly to a fringe along the Atlantic coast. To adequately colonize Brazil, subdue it, and put it under high cultivation, would require more people than are now living in the whole world, and what they could then produce would feed several times that number.

Near Rio de Janeiro are mountains 10,340 feet high. Yet Brazil in general is best described as the huge basin of the Amazon, regarding which river see Part 1 of this article, published in Golden Age No. 368. In this issue we can hope to touch but a few items of interest in connection with this greatest of the question marks awaiting mankind in the new world.

Brazil is the coffee center of the world. The total exports of products of all kinds in the year 1929 were $456,723,000. The mineral wealth is vast but undeveloped. There are 40,000 miles of navigable waterways. There are 378 important waterfalls, numbering among them the Iguazu, one of the natural wonders of the world.

The two largest states in Brazil, namely Amazonas and Matto Grosso, are—how large would you say? They are as large as California, Texas, and all that part of the United States east of the Mississippi river put together, have the finest alluvial soil, and their present combined population is less than that of Rhode Island, the smallest state in the North American Union.

And then there is the state of Goyaz, within the confines of which the Brazilians have marked off a federal district of 5,500 square miles within which they hope sometime to have their capital. How large is Goyaz ? Oh, a mere matter of 288,536 square miles; only a little larger than Texas. The capital would be at 8,000 feet above sea level.

Harvesting Brazil Nuts

Para; that is another big state, 443,789 square miles, as large as all of the United States east of the Mississippi river. From Para we get the Brazil nuts, or 'nigger toes’, or Para nuts, as they are sometimes called. The tree on which Brazil nuts grow is a large, straight tree that rises to a height of a hundred feet before branching. The nuts are of the size of a person’s head, weigh several pounds each, and, when ripe, fall with tremendous force, sufficient to kill. Each nut contains eighteen to twenty-four of the threesided, wrinkled kernels known to the market. They are fitted in by nature with such art that, once disturbed, the skill of man cannot replace them. Indians wait until not a breath of air is stirring, when they gather the nuts, break them open, and bring the kernels down stream to market. They do not dare venture under the trees if a breeze is blowing, as it is likely to dislodge the nuts and bring them down upon their heads. These nuts supply the finest watchmakers’ oil. They are highly esteemed as a preventive of constipation and bowel disorders.

Three other states, Bahia, Maranhao and Minas Geraes, are each larger than California. And four other states, Parana, Piauhy, Rio Grande do Sul and Sao Paulo, are each the size of Colorado. In the state of Rio Grande do Sul there are more than 200,000 Germans, and considerably more than that number of Italians. The state of Sao Paulo is the coffee center of the world. Eighty-five percent of the world’s coffee comes from Brazil; 65 percent of it from the one state of Sao Paulo.

Brazil is a producer of rubber, cotton, sugar, dye woods, and other products too numerous to mention. The soil is so rich that plowing is not done; the only agricultural instrument used is the hoe. Corn is planted by making holes in the ground with a sharp stick and dropping the seed into the holes, but, although there is no cultivation of the soil, crops of 25 to 40 bushels to the acre are not uncommon.

In the Amazon Valley

Of the 55 largest rivers in the world thirty-three are wholly or largely in Brazil. Not only is the Amazon the largest river in the world, but it drains an area wider than the Mississippi, Missouri, Danube and Nile combined. Seventeen of its tributaries are from 1,000 to 2,300 miles in length. Its shores are lined with impenetrable primeval forests thronged with monkeys, parrots, sloths, boa constrictors, anacondas and pumas. Its waters teem with turtles, crocodiles, waterfowl, tapirs, and fishes of at least 1,163 varieties. Half a hundred steamers suffice at present for carrying a trade that will some day fill the river with craft. Sunstroke is unknown in the Amazon valley.

The Amazon region has its animal terrors. Scientists have measured anacondas up to thirty feet long, but frontier settlers claim that they grow to be sixty feet and that a full-grown one can lasso itself around a man on horseback and swallow him at one gulp. Hanging motionless from a tree, an anaconda can knock senseless any creature that comes within reach.

The Sao Paulo state government maintains a snake farm, where serums to cure snake bites are prepared and distributed. It is said that the average arrivals of snakes at this farm, from all parts of Brazil, are five hundred a day.

A writer in the New York Times says:

In some of the rivers are the strange piranha, a flesh-eating fish which becomes ravenous when it tastes blood. A wounded animal in the water is quickly stripped to the bone. Plagues of insects in some parts of the Amazon country drive an unprotected person to the verge of madness. Bloodsuckers mingle with others that cause deadly fevers. There are wild bees, hornets, tarantulas, ants almost as big as a man’s thumb, ticks, and ground spiders with a leg spread large enough to cover a soup plate.

But the thing most of all to be dreaded in the Amazon region is the growth of vegetation. Railroads can hardly be kept open. In a little while an idle locomotive had a tree growing out of its smokestack. The plant life overpowers everything. Only billions of industrious and determined men and women will ever subjugate the valley of the Amazon; but it will be done.

Brazil was at one time the leading diamond country of the world. Iron ore is found in great quantities in several of the states. Coal is of poor quality, but not much needed in a land of such abundant potential water power.

One of the projects commanding attention of capitalists is a plan to impound the waters of several rivers in the vicinity of Sao Paulo and Santos and to force them to flow backward over a mountain barrier and plunge 2,500 feet down to the sea.

The Constitution and the People

The constitution of Brazil is the same as that of the United States of America, but in actual practice the component states exercise more of their state rights, and occasionally ignore and sometimes defy the federal laws. The senate, not the president, is the controlling factor in the government. Road committees in the more thickly settled parts of Brazil are now cooperating with the government in putting a network of automobile roads over the farm sections.

The present civilization of Brazil, especially in Sao Paulo, is highly tinctured with the characteristics and standards of three hundred high-class Portuguese families which the old king of Portugal brought with him to this new land, and of which ancestry the gentleman Brazilian is especially proud. The visitor will be told repeatedly that Brazil, unlike certain other South American republics, was not settled by a lot of adventurers, but that she was favored in having the best blood of Portugal transferred bodily to this country as a foundation of her institutions and civilization.

The old families of Brazil are said to be very exclusive, and one is told it is very difficult for a foreigner to gain access to their homes, and that they live among themselves, intermarry, and form almost a feudal-like society. The son of one of the old Brazilian families married the daughter of an Italian multimillionaire. The young man paid for his independence of spirit by being practically ostracized from his family, his club, and from all social life in Sao Paulo.

History tells us that the Brazilian women of Sao Paulo, in early colonial days, when their husbands returned home after a crushing defeat at the hands of the Indians, scornfully rebuked the vanquished warriors with the command, “Go back and conquer; it is only as victors that we will receive you."

The people of Brazil in general, however, are an unusual people engaged in an unusual experiment. A general fusion of whites, Negroes and Indians is in progress. No color line is drawn, absolutely none, in business, government or socially, with the result that a new race is coming into existence. These people are sober, quiet and serious. They are not drinkers. If it were not for the whites there would not be a bar-room in the country. Most Brazilians think of Americans as a wild, fighting, cursing, illiterate, drunken people; and for this they cannot be blamed.

Brazil is such a large country that it has many distinctly different tribes of Indians. Some of these are much more debased than the North American Indians (one tribe of black dwarfs lives in holes covered over with leaves and sticks); but an explorer, J. G. Culbertson, says of one of the tribes which he visited, the Machigina, that “the South American interior is today the safest place I know; safer than any of our cities. The people are the most honest people I have found in the world. Nowhere in the world is a woman so respected as among these people, and the only danger to the explorers comes through disrespect of the native women”.

Another explorer, Geo. R. White, in the South American Messenger says: “With one honorable exception, all the Roman Catholic priests with whom I came in contact during my journey were immoral, drunken and ignorant; every mission which they had started had utterly failed to accomplish the Christianizing of the Indians, and the tribes who have come under priestly care are decidedly inferior in morals, industry and order to the tribes who refuse to have any intercourse whatever with the whites.”

Brazil was originally called the country of brazilwood by that ubiquitous gentleman, Amerigo Vespucci, who had such a remarkable faculty of naming things and having the names stick. Amerigo thought that the country would be famous for supplying a dye needed in Europe. But Brazil has done more than furnish dyes for man’s exterior adornment. Think of the coffee with which she has decorated his insides.

The Greatest Storehouse and Its Capital

The world’s greatest storehouse of materials is in Brazil. Thus far civilization has done little more than stand upon the threshold and gaze upon a land which will sometime house billions of people, literally. Here is a land larger than the combined area of the United States of America and a goodly portion of western Europe thrown in, traversed from end to end with the greatest system of navigable rivers on the planet, a soil that will produce anything, and a good foundation already laid for the country's development, which will now take place rapidly. Even now its capital and chief city, Rio de Janeiro, with its million population, claims to be the world's most beautiful city, and there seems to be no doubt that in its natural setting the claim is well made.

Brazil has been somewhat delayed in development because its people have felt that Europeans and North Americans could not be trusted, and they have therefore neglected to seek and to use the capital which is needed and is available. They wish to have their country developed, but do not care to see its profits carried elsewhere. They do not wish to see the Brazilian people work for low wages in order that great financiers in Europe and America may have more than heart can wish. They prefer to wait a little and have their own people reap the rewards which are sure to come.

The national capital, Rio de Janeiro, is confidently claimed to have the most beautiful driveways in the world. One of these skirts the shore for miles. On the one side are broad mosaic walks; on the other the waves rushing and roaring and breaking on snow-white sands; in the center are parkw’ays filled with tropical palms and flowers. At the end of the driveway is Sugarloaf Mountain, access to the top of which is gained by an electric basket cable car for twenty passengers. The view from the top is magnificent. At another point Mt. Corcovado, 2,200 feet high, is ascended by a cog railway; and the view is unsurpassed.

Rio de Janeiro’s water supply and sanitation are strictly up to date, and there is an almost total absence of flies and mosquitoes, so much so that no screens are used. The hot months are December, January and February. Winter comes in June, July and August.

The shopping center of Rio de Janeiro, the Rua Ovidor, is unlike any other shopping district in the Western world or perhaps on the globe. The street is barely 25 feet wide, but no wheel traffic of any kind is permitted, and the street proper is paved with glazed tiling, as well as the sidewalks.

The shops have no front walls, but open out directly on the street, and it is confidently claimed that there is nothing anywhere in the world that money can buy that is not to be found in those shops. Moreover, it is characteristic of all shops in Brazil, even in the smallest towns, that the polishing cloth is in constant use, so that the glass is unspecked and the woodwork at all times is absolutely dustless. A writer says:

“It is difficult to explain the seductive charm of Rio de Janeiro. Certain places hold one by a sense of remoteness, others by the spell of natural beauty. Rio is one of these cities which combine the old and the new, in such an atmosphere of tropical splendor and color as to make an unforgettable impression. It is an example of the tropic-clad statuary of nature at her best. I know of no city in the world that is more engaging than Rio, with its one million of inhabitants, resting peacefully in bright sunlight on the ankles of her great hills. There is something quieting and beautifully magic about the sea in Rio bay. Outside of imagination, there is naught elsewhere that approaches its charm, and he who stays long enough to really experience it is like one who dreams. The sea here is of the same color as the soft chiffon-like mist of gray that veils continuously the surrounding hills. It is probably the utter harmony to the eye that comforts one here and induces repose, or it may be the ‘always-afternoon’ softness of the air that breathes about one a quiet peace.”

Said the Plowman to His Mule {Selected)

ID ILL, you are a mule, the son of a jackass, and I am a man made in the image of God.

Yet, here we work, hitched up together, year in and year out. I often wonder if you work for me or if I work for you. Verily, I think it a partnership between a mule and a fool, for surely I work as hard as you, if not harder. Plowing or cultivating we cover the same distance, but you do it on four legs and I on two. I, therefore, do twice as much work per leg as you do.

Soon we’ll be preparing for a corn crop. When the crop is harvested I give one-third to the landlord for being so kind as to let me use this small speck of God’s universe. One-third goes to you, and the balance is mine. You consume all of your portion with the exception of the cobs, while 1 divide mine among seven children, six hens, two ducks and a hanker. If we both need shoes, you get ’em. Bill, you are getting the best of me, and I ask you, is it fair for a mule, a son of a jackass, to swindle a man—a lord of creation—out of his substance?

Why, you only help to plow and cultivate the ground, and I alone must cut, shock and husk the corn, while you look over the pasture fence and heehaw at me.

All fall and most of the family, from Granny to the baby, picks cotton to help raise money to pay taxes and buy a new harness and pay the interest on the mortgage on you. And what do you care about the mortgage? Not a damn! You ornery cuss, I even have to do the worrying about the mortgage on your tough, ungrateful hide.

About the only time I am your better is on election day, for I can vote and you can't. And after election I realize that I was fully as great a jackass as your papa. Verily, I ain prone to wonder if politics were made for men or jackasses of men.

Tell me, Willyum, considering these things, how can you keep a straight face and look so dumb and solemn?

Watson Experiments on Dogs

TT SEEMS that Dr. A. B. Watson, A.M., M.D., hoisted 141 dogs to the coiling, and dropped them upon their backs upon iron bars in such manner as to produce concussion of the spine. When the results of these experiments were published under the title “An Experimental Study of Lesions Arising from Severe Concussions”, the British Medical Journal said of the whole thing: “The present pamphlet calls for our strongest reprobation, as a record of the most wanton and stupidest cruelty we have ever seen chronicled under the guise of scientific experiments. Apart from the utterly useless nature of the observations as far as regards human surgery or pathology, there is a callous indifference shown in the description of the sufferings of the poor brutes which is positively revolting. We cannot but feel ashamed of the work as undertaken by a member of our profession.”

The Curse of Interest By Dr. Hugo R. Fack {Texas)

SIX percent interest means that every hundred dollars of capital doubles itself every sixteen years; and computed at compound interest, in twelve years. A higher rate of interest, 7 or 8 percent, does it in even much shorter time.

Since nothing is produced without payment of interest on the money-capital invested, all products contain a large interest ingredient in their prices. For bread and for clothing, for housing and for coffins, we have to pay interest.

All houses, factories, bridges, structures of all kinds, pavements, etc., are capitalized, i.e., rendered interest-exacting. Thus the whole of accumulated national wealth functions as a debt, requiring interest payment to those that own it. Four hundred billions of dollars of national wealth require, at 6 percent interest, 24 billions of dollars. That is about 40 percent of the proceeds of production of the whole nation. Thus about 40 percent is taken away from producers for interest payment to the owners of the wealth.

Consider! The gigantic wealth of the nation is handed over the counter in form of interest every twelve to sixteen years to those who own the wealth. Four times in a life time, while the producing masses never get it once during their lives. No wonder that, according to statistics compiled during “prosperous” times, 87 percent of the nation possess practically nothing, 10 percent of them a meager 3 percent of the wealth, and the remaining 3 percent of the nation, 97 percent of the so-called “national” wealth. Such was distribution during “prosperous” times in this land of opportunity, in this land of the free. Similar or even worse are the conditions in other nations. They all belong to the brotherhood of poverty.

Money-capital serves only on condition of safe and adequate interest. At the gateway of all production and distribution stands the toll house of usury. No money-capital is available for building a house unless the house can bring the same rate of interest as money.

However, the capacity of commodities, of houses, plants, ships, etc., to exact interest is decreased by continued production of such real capital. The more houses built, the lower the yield. Therefore money-capital always withdraws from production when continued production endangers its power to exact interest tribute. Panic sets in, initiating the general business depression. The decreased demand held by money for all the multifarious products necessary for the construction of real capital makes a so-called “overproduction” appear. Prices begin to fall, leading to disruption of business and trade, to increased unemployment and to general economic and cultural misery. At the same time money gains in value according to the fall of prices. Only when production has been so diminished as to correspond to the little demand held by money, and “surplus production” been consumed, are conditions for interest exaction restored and economic life is again allowed to start on the upward trend, but only to end in the same economic catastrophe.

Thus interest stands in the way of human wants and thwarts their satisfaction. Human action is deflected from the satisfaction of want or desire to the payment of interest. No interest, no money; no money, no production; no production, no employment; no employment, misery, deprivation in a thousand forms, hunger, crime and despair. Such is the answer of present-day money to human diligence and will to create.

Therefore the one great need of our time is the replacement of present-day money, refusing to serve when the interest begins to sink, by a money serving relentlessly regardless of the sinking and finally disappearing interest rate through increasing wealth. The volume of such continually active money to be so regulated by a Federal Currency Board as to maintain the general price level by which money’s true standard as an economic measure of value is assured, which is impossible to accomplish with the hoardable present-day money.

Money rules the world. Money is the real ruler behind capitalistic and communistic governments, behind republics and monarchies, behind democracies and dictatorships.

Man created money, not to rule, but to serve. Money should be solely a medium of exchange for man’s multifarious products and services in this economic order based on division of labor.

Products and services represent the side of supply on the market. On account of the perishable nature of products, and of the cost of upkeep, storage fees, changes of fashion, new inventions, etc., they are presented for exchange with the least delay possible. And man himself would starve to death, in case he had nothing to sell, did he not offer his services. Thus the

supply, products and services, stands under the inherent urge for exchange.

However, demaud, represented by money in this economic order, does not stand under such inherent compulsion. Only about 20 percent of all the money issued is directly used to satisfy immediate vital human wants. The remaining 80 percent can be withheld or hoarded without loss to the holder, because money costs nothing to store.

"When prices and wages have fallen because of money’s withdrawal from the market, thus reducing the purchasing power of the masses; when values have been shattered, savings consumed or lost in the resultant business and bank failures; when the possessions of the debtor class have been shifted over to the creditor class; when bankruptcies have done their havoc all over the country; then the conditions for “rentability” become gradually restored: prices fall no more. Then money-capital knows that a new period of harvesting is about to start, and that the sooner it comes out of its hiding places the more favorable its terms for investment, the bigger the profits in the new boom period.

And, after all, money-capital did not fare badly whilst in hiding. It increased in value 30, 40, 50 percent, and was thus amply compensated for loss of interest. And what a harvest money garnered during the depression! But now the harvesting goes in the other direction. The arrest in the price fall is the signal of the turn of the tide. Money comes out and forces prices to rise. This accelerates circulation and exchange, and produces a period of prosperity lasting until the continued production of real wealth again menaces interest rates. Then money again goes on strike. Panic and depression set in. This is followed by another period of production, but of shorter duration. The increasing output capacity of modern machinery completes the business cycle of boom and depression in less and less time.

It is the strike of money that throws the nation into economic depression, into social and cultural turmoil and disintegration. The money strike is the one and universal cause of all economic crises of the past and present. Idle money creates idle men. Set money to work and man will be allowed to work.

Therefore the circulation of money is a matter of life and death for all nations. But as all efforts to talking money into circulation have been fruitless, money must be put under inherent compulsion to circulate. This will deprive it of its pernicious power to interrupt service and drag industry and trade down from one crisis to another.

Let us therefore impose on money such a hoarding penalty as will compel it to circulate unconditionally, just as the railroads penalize with a demurrage fee those who delay freight car traffic. Money is but a carrier of goods and services. The hoarding and withholding of money should therefore be heavily fined.

To keep money in regular circulation, an antihoarding tax should be levied. The holders of money bills should be required to place stamps at regular intervals in specially provided spaces. The antihoarding tax should be heavy enough to absorb the interest rate. A 12-percent antihoarding tax annually, for example, would require a one-percent stamp monthly, or a y^~ percent stamp semimonthly.

Such money will create active demand up to its full amount. The volume of such money issued will represent effective demand on the market. Increased issue will mean increased demand. Decreased issue will mean decreased demand. Therefore, by regulation of the money issue the ratio between supply and demand can be maintained and the general price level stabilized. The value of money is then safeguarded for all times. Money agreements can never again be falsified by a fluctuating money “value”. Deflations and panics will belong to the past. The relentless circulation of money, and its volume regulation, will create a permanent period of prosperity.

Nobody will be able to hoard such service money. Self-interest will impel everybody to dispose of it as soon as possible. Everyone will accelerate his purchases or pay his obligations, or invest his spare in credit accounts of all kinds. The last unemployed man will be called from the street, and production will go on without interruption as long as man has unsatisfied desires for material necessities, for comforts, refinement and beauty. There is no need for technocracy. The more machines, the better for man. There will be shortage of labor instead of shortage of jobs. Production will unfold to an extent the world has never seen before, and the increase of wealth will drown the interest rate. Working incomes will increase many times, savings multiply ten- or twentyfold.

“The Truth About Tobacco”

(Reprinted from Golden Age No. 109, by request.

UNDER the above title the Macfadden Publications, Ine., of New York city published a book of 183 pages by the health expert Ber-narr Macfadden, which is bristling with facts that all should know regarding the tobacco habit. Some of these facts are concealed from the public, because so many physicians use tobacco themselves, and because there are men whose constitutions are so strong that they can be subjected to almost any abuse. Additionally, there is a great difference between the mild injuries wrought by merely passing smoke through the buccal and nasal cavities and the serious injuries caused by inhaling the smoke into the lungs. We select some items.

The National Disjoensatory is a volume which is in constant use by physicians and druggists. It contains the sum of their knowledge as to the effects of various drugs upon the human system. In its fifth edition, page 1576, it has the following to say regarding tobacco and nicotine:

‘ ‘ The cases of serious illness produced by the emanations of tobacco, and by its application to the unbroken skin, are innumerable, and many instances of fatal poisoning by tobacco are recorded ; some of them being due to its having been swallowed purposely or accidentally, some to its use medicinally in an enema, and some to its application to eruptions on the skin. Nicotine stands next to prussic acid in the rapidity and energy of its poisonous action.”

The comparison of nicotine with prussic acid is good. One drop of prussic acid placed on the tongue of a human kills like a stroke of lightning. One drop of nicotine on the unbroken skin of a rabbit has caused its death. If injected hypodermically, there is sufficient nicotine in a single cigarette to cause the death of a human that has never used tobacco.

Nicotine is not the only evil thing in tobacco. When the tobacco is burned, seventy percent of the nicotine is turned into pyridin and collidin; the remaining thirty percent of nicotine is inhaled. Pyridin is so poisonous that it is one of the agents used for denaturing alcohol; that is, it is used for making the deadly alcohol even less fit for drink than it ordinarily would be.

How It Ruins the Blood

When tobacco is burned another of the poisons which is produced is carbon monoxide. In discussing the effect of this poison upon the blood, Dr. D. H. Kress says that it is almost as

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deadly as nicotine, being the poison found in marsh and illuminating gas. He then proceeds to show that tobacco smokers are committing slow’ suicide, w’hether they know7 it or not, w’hen he says of carbon monoxide:

“Many of the suicides committed in America are due to this poison. It is quite common to read of the gas jet being turned on at night before retiring. Death in these cases is due to asphyxiation from carbon monoxide. The blood naturally takes up all poisons conveyed to it by inhalation. Most of the gases present in the air are fortunately given off by the blood about as readily as they are taken on. With carbon monoxide it is quite different. It enters into, or forms a staple or fixed compound with the hemoglobin or coloring matter of the red blood cells. The blood readily takes it up, but lacks the ability to give it off. It accumulates and ultimately destroys the red blood cells and the function of the blood in conveying oxygen to the tissues.”

This is not the only w7ay in wffiich the smoking of tobacco tends to ruin the blood. The place where the blood goes to be cleansed of its impurities is in the tw’o thousand square feet of surface of the lungs. There the air is taken in; but if smoke is inhaled with the air, the cleansing process is impeded. Prof. Jay Seaver, of Yale University, reports a decidedly impaired lung capacity on the part of habitual smokers.

The blood is ruined in a third way by the smoking of tobacco. The heart becomes so impaired that it cannot feed a fresh supply of the life-giving fluid to all parts of the body as it was wont to do. Because the system is filled with worn-out cells which it cannot remove, the heart automatically pumps harder in the effort to effect a cleansing, until at length it weakens, skipping an occasional beat; and finally the serious state knowm as smokers' heart makes its appearance.

How It Ruins the Nerves

Nicotine at first slow’s the heart and increases the blood pressure; subsequently the blood pressure is lowered and the heart action becomes rapid. The effect on the brain is essentially narcotic, or depressing. Now7 it happens that the brain is the center of the nervous system; and when it is adversely affected, all the nervous system is deranged.

There are many who say that they smoke to quiet their nerves. Tobacco does quiet the nerves at first; but like any other narcotic, it

becomes necessary to use more and more to produce the quieting effect, until at length the victim becomes a slave.

Moreover, although tobacco quiets the nerves up to a certain point, yet when that point is passed and the smoker takes one cigar too many, or one cigarette too many, the nerves go in the opposite direction, and the smoker is almost sure to seek relief in strong drink. Smoking is an ideal path to lead to liquor indulgence. The two habits naturally go together. One who uses both liquor and tobacco can hardly stop drinking unless he first gives up smoking.

Another of the poisons that are manufactured when one smokes tobacco is furfurol. It is the furfurol in cigarette smoke that causes the characteristic twitching and tremor that distinguishes the cigarette addict, and betrays even to unprofessional eyes the unstable condition of his nervous system. The smoke of one cigarette may contain as much furfurol as two ounces of bad whisky, and it is the furfurol that constitutes the source of danger in improperly aged whisky. Whisky and cigarettes are cousins.

During the World War thousands of young men who never even knew the taste of tobacco were shamed into the use of the weed. Many of these boys have become confirmed addicts of one of the most deplorable nerve-corrupting habits that it is possible for a human to acquire, and one of the most difficult to overcome, unless sufficient remains of the moral stamina to aid in a fight that is all too often a losing venture. (This must make hard reading to the Y. M. C. A., champion cigarette salesmen of the war period.)

How It Ruins the Brain

Tobacco dulls the memory, and interferes with association of ideas. In fifty years no inveterate user of tobacco has ever carried off the first prize at Harvard. Dr. George L. Maylan, of Columbia University, found that the ratio of failures of smokers as compared with nonsmokers was ten to four.

But how about the brilliant men who claim that their thoughts flow more readily under the use of tobacco? The answer is at hand. They are simply in the same case with any other drug habitue, whose thoughts cannot flow readily except under the accustomed indulgence. These brilliant men would be as brilliant all the time, if they did not smoke, as they are now only when they do smoke.

Cigarettes destroy the precision of the brain and its accuracy for both thought and work, as well as desire for thought and work. Many judges have pointed out that almost without exception the gunmen, gangsters, criminals and professional prostitutes are addicted to the excessive use of cigarettes.

The volume presents the testimony of five physicians that tobacco causes insanity. One of these, Doctor Bancroft, of the New Hampshire Asylum, at Concord, declares that he has known several cases of insanity that were unquestionably produced by the use of tobacco without any other complicating causes. Dr. Woodward, of the Massachusetts Insane Asylum, quite agrees.

Dr. Forbes Winslow, a leading English psychiatrist, declares that the true causes for insanity are the vices, not the worries, of civilization. Of the three leading causes he puts drink first, cigarette smoking second, and heredity third.

The New York World has made a study of this matter; and its statistics go to show that in nine cases out of eleven, where insanity has resulted from excessive drinking, the primary cause of the condition was smoking. Dr. Winslow agrees with this, making the interesting observation that much of the degeneracy formerly attributed to alcohol is due to alcohol 2)lus tobacco.

How It Ruins the Boys

Ceisne, a French physician, examined thirtyeight boy cigarette smokers between nine and fifteen years of age. Twenty-two had marked circulatory disturbances and heart palpitation; thirteen had intermittent pulse; eight had decided anemia; four had ulcerated mouths; one had consumption; several suffered from nosebleed, insomnia and nightmare—all as a result of tobacco addiction. Tobacco stunts the growth of boys mentally and physically.

A small piece of tobacco placed on the tongue of a boy who has never used tobacco will cause nausea, vomiting, and serious disturbance of the heart and circulatory system. Man is the only fool among the animals that will make friends a second time with any such plant.

Thomas A. Edison refused to employ anyone addicted to the habit of smoking cigarettes, asserting that the acrolein, which is still another poison generated in smoking, <rhas a violent action on the nerve centers, producing degeneracy of the brain, which is quite rapid among boys. Unlike most narcotics, this degeneration is permanent and uncontrollable.”

Judge Gemmill, of the Court of Domestic Relations of Chicago, asserts that without exception, every boy appearing before him who had lost the faculty of blushing was a cigarette fiend. The judges in general have a poor opinion of the boys who use cigarettes. They say of them that their ideas of property rights, of the value of telling the truth, and often of common decency, are distorted; that they are prone to lie, steal, and become addicted to liquor; that they become gangsters, and that almost every youthful criminal who goes to the electric chair goes there smoking a cigarette. (Y. M. C. A., please take note.)

On April 1, 1900, the Japanese Government forbade the sale of cigarettes and tobacco in any form to young men under twenty years of age, on the ground that tobacco, like opium, contains narcotic poisons which benumb the nervous system and weaken the mental power of children addicted to smoking, and thus give a death-blow to the vitality of the nation.

How It Ruins the Men

Drs. George Fisher and Elmer Berry, both prominently connected with the Y. M. C. A, subjected to experiments a number of ball players between twenty-one and twenty-five years of age. First each man had ten throws at a target, and the results were registered. After a half hour’s rest he had ten more throws; and there was an increase in accuracy of 9 percent. Then he smoked one cigar and rested another half hour; and there was a decrease from the original accuracy amounting to 12 percent. Then he smoked two cigars and rested one hour; and there was a decrease from the original accuracy amounting to 14)4 percent. See what the cigars did.

Dr. Frederick J. Pack, another physician interested in athletics, kept a record of the results obtained by 210 men who contested for athletic honors, and found that the non-smokers surpassed the smokers with a difference of 32 percent. In other words, the average man who smokes is only two-thirds the man he would be if he did not smoke.

The smoking of tobacco hardens the arteries. The lower animals, when subjected to the fumes, develop hardening of the arteries quickly. Man is a tougher animal. Designed by the Creator to live everlastingly he must needs put forth more effort to destroy himself; but he succeeds in time.

The smoking of tobacco causes the tissues to lose their elasticity; it causes Bright’s disease and apoplexy, degeneration of the heart, weakness of vision, and in some cases total blindness. Lip cancer and cancer of the tongue and throat have been traced to the irritation of the pipe stem, the hot smoke and the ammonia “bite”.

Among the concerns that either refuse to hire new men who use tobacco or that put restrictions of some kind regarding its use are the following: The If. J. Heinz Company, Pennsylvania Railroad, Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad, National Cash Register Company, Cadillac Company, Fifth Avenue Bank, Larkin Company, Burroughs Adding Machine Company, Marshall Field’s, John Wanamaker, Morgan & Wright Tire Company, and Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. This is doubtless a very incomplete list.

How It Ruins the Nation

Most nations that we know anything about are composed of people; and the use of tobacco tends to keep them from coming on the scene at all. Statistics prove that women who are addicted to the habit of smoking have a smaller number of children, pro rata, than do nonsmoking women, and that the health of these children is far more unstable than that of children of non-smoking women. Breast-fed babies imbibe nicotine directly from their mothers.

Dr. D. H. Kress, previously quoted as showing how tobacco ruins the blood, asserts:

“The cigarette causes glandular degeneracy, and naturally the sexual glands degenerate with the other glands of the body. The products of tobacco smoke, which destroy insects exposed to it, are also highly injurious to the delicate cell from which the child is developed. In countries where cigarette using has become common among women, the decline in birth rate is most rapid.’’

The annual fire loss in the United States caused by smoking, and properly chargeable to this cause, is $50,000,000. Besides this, the smokers annually murder hundreds of innocent people by burning them to death. Moreover, the odor that arises from a confirmed smoker is exceedingly distasteful to many, especially to those of refined taste and cleanly habits.

The number of cigarettes sold in America increased from 2,000,000,000 in 1900 to 100,000,-000,000 in 1928. This number end to end would girdle the globe one hundred and twenty-five times. Fifty percent of the boys over twelve years of age smoke cigarettes. Myriads of young men are reaching for them, and reaching for premature death. Tobacco workers have the highest death rate from tuberculosis, excepting only the stone and marble cutters.

The amount spent on tobacco in the United States is more than the value of all the metals, iron, copper, gold, silver, etc., mined in the country in the same period; it is more than the total cost of education from the kindergarten to the university inclusive; it is almost double the value of all the anthracite and bituminous coal mined; it puts to the basest use 1,446,600 acres of the very finest lands in these United States.

The smoking of tobacco had its origin among the savages of North America in a religious ceremony allied to devil worship. The savages burned the tobacco in the belief that the fumes would have a tendency to pacify their angry and avenging deities. The medicine men, in direct touch with the demons, and under their influence, were the first users. The habit traces directly back to the Devil. It is part of his empire. It will have to go. In Messiah’s kingdom there will be no use for tobacco except, perhaps, to kill vermin. It is said to be very good for that purpose.

The Habits of Rats

IN COLD weather rats live in colonies of twenty-five to sixty; in summer the colonies are less. The individuals change their positions constantly, so as to give each rat some opportunity to enjoy the warmest place at the bottom of the pile.

When well fed they are peaceable, but when hunger comes they turn cannibals, fathers and mothers eating their own children, and rats eating one another. The father rats are the worst; the mothers protect their young from destruction as long as they can, even going to the limit of killing their young ones rather than have them slain by others.

'When the young rats get to a certain age the mothers lose all interest in them; they must fight for themselves. All feeble rats in the colony are exterminated by the robust ones. No mercy is shown. If a group of rats is confined in a cage and not fed, they will eat one another until but one rat remains.

Hats begin to breed at six months of age, the female breeding eight times a year and having as many as fourteen at a litter. In three years’ time a single pair of New York rats living in good circumstances, it is estimated, will have 650,000 descendants. When well cooked, rat meat is said to have a fine flavor.

'When roused to fury by having its tail cut off and its hair burned a rat has been known to entirely rid premises of its own kind. Such a rat will attack anything. Rats have been known to attack horses, babies, and even grown persons who were invalids. There is nothing they will not eat, and they do not hesitate to try cutting their way through brick or even granite to make an opening large enough for admission into a house.

The fondness of the rat for good music has often been noted. The music of a harmonica, if soft, mild and pathetic, will actually cause tears to course down its cheeks; but if the music be harsh, shrill and discordant, as from a brass instrument in the hands of a beginner, every rat will leave the premises.

The rat’s nest is always in an out-of-the-way place, in the dark and gloom. As a natural result its vision is extremely poor. In the daytime, in a bright light, it can see next to nothing; in the darkness it can see better, its greatest natural enemy is the ferret, which can be trained to go in and clean out an entire colony, sucking the blood and eating out the brains of all.

Heath Fires in England

IN THE midst of the driest spell ever observed in England, early in September, heath fires broke out, destroying the vegetation on thousands of acres. Flames at times forty feet high leaped the main road between London and Southampton. Motorists rescued the occupants of cottages in the path of the flames. Some districts were forced to restrict the use of water to a few hours per day. At Middleton, Suffolk, the only supply of water was at the rectory, and the rector would give water only to those who attended his church.

DURING- this time of great depression it is a boon to the farmers to have a method discovered whereby they can fertilize the ground without much extra expense.

While in North Dakota I came in contact with some farmers who were once Catholics. They left their religious convictions and became Watch Tower publication readers. The priest of the parish to which they formerly belonged came to one of the farmers and said:

'•'Paul, you must give father $200.”

Paul said: “I will give father nothing. Why should I give you $200?”

The priest answered, “You were once a Catholic” ; to which Paul replied, “We are not Catholics now.”

“That makes no difference; you must give father $200 or else I will curse your farm.”

To this Paul replied, “Go ahead and curse all you want to1”

At this the priest got into his car and cursed the farm from the north, east, south and west corners, saying: “Cursed be this farm, cursed be the cattle, cursed be the crops, cursed be this man, cursed be this woman.” He continued until he had cursed the whole business.

In due time the cursed crop grew, and grew, and when it was harvested Paul had a bumper crop. After the harvest he met the priest on the street and said to him: “Say, father, you certainly did a good job of cursing my farm.” To this the priest said vehemently: “Yes, your farm is cursed!”

Paul said: “Could you do the same job again? If you could, I will give you $200 from the next crop, because your words had more effect than twenty-five tons of fertilizer.”

In view of the fact that preachers and priests are having a hard time to make ends meet, and if their words have such “nitrogenous” powers that they can fertilize the ground, what is the use of putting tons and tons of manure on the ground in order to grow good crops? It would be a simple matter to have clergymen do the job and charge so much per acre therefor. I am sure they would not charge much just to say a few curses annually. It would be a great saving to the poor farmers who are undergoing this terrible time of depression.

Possibly a letter could be sent to Mr. Ratti, •who is the head of the clergy outfit, and suggest to him that instructions be given the bishops, archbishops, cardinals and priests to start this new job of fertilizing the entire country and thereby do their share in bringing back the lost prosperity.

The reason I am sending this to The Golden Age is that heretofore this publication has always mentioned the blessings of the clergy that ended in catastrophes to those blessed. We have enjoyed every number of The Golden Age, but I would like to see you be fair to the clergy of “Christendom” and not only mention the blessings and the resulting catastrophes thereof, but also the blessed effect their curses have upon the soil.

By the way, while we are on the subject of fertilization, I would like to call your attention to the words of God’s prophet Jeremiah in the twenty-fifth chapter and thirty-third verse. This describes the final battle impending. The prophet says: “And the slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung upon the ground.” This is Jehovah’s program of world-wide fertilization.

In the same chapter and thirty-fourth verse we are shown the material to be used for the purpose of fertilization, that is, the “shepherds”, or pastors, meaning the religious teachers of “organized Christianity” and the principal of the flock, meaning those mighty men of finance and politics who join the church and run the same for their own self-aggrandizement. Their bodies will be used for the purpose of enriching the soil.

Then, the prophet continues: “Howl, ye shepherds, and cry; and wallow yourselves in the ashes, ye principal of the flock: for the days of your slaughter and of your dispersions are accomplished; and ye shall fall like a pleasant vessel. And the shepherds shall have no way to flee, nor the principal of the flock to escape. A voice of the cry of the shepherds, and an howling of the principal of the flock, shall be heard: for the Lord hath spoiled their pasture.”

Religious, political and financial deceivers being cleared out of the way, the people of good will shall grow up like “calves of the stall”. Then they shall build houses and inhabit them, and plant trees and eat the fruit of them. There will be no oppressors to molest them, and all those who love Jehovah God shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

Canada’s Cooperative Commonwealth

THE Canadian member of parliament, J. S.

"Woodsworth, of Winnipeg, started something when he formally proposed in parliament that “the government should immediately take measures looking to the setting up of a cooperative commonwealth in which all natural resources and the socially necessary machinery of production will he used in the interests of the people and not for the benefit of the few-’. There was opposition, of course, but the organization of the commonwealth proceeds and its organizers explain:

“We do not stand for a division of property, but the public ownership of certain kinds of property. We do publicly own the streets, highways, schools, post office system, and in some places the electric light and water systems. We have not divided the post office, neither could we if we wanted to. We could not divide what is called the machinery of production and distribution, such as the shops, factories, mines and railroads. These industries are not operated by private individuals now, but by groups of capitalists. The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation proposes to transfer the title of property now operated by the financiers to the people of Canada. The only thing we have ever thought of dividing is the chance to work in the great public enterprises which under Cooperative Commonwealth Federation will be open to both men and women. In other words, we propose to divide the jobs, give everyone a chance to work, and make it so that ‘he who will not work shall not eat’. More than 80 percent of the working people live in rented houses. Their private possessions are few and almost worthless. Their wages are all used up in cost of living, leaving no chance to collect private property. The capitalists sooner or later get the wealth created by labor. When the ownership of the industries on which profits are filched from labor passes to the people, then the useful workers will get, not only what they now receive, but also that part of their earnings which go to the private owners as profit. It will then be possible for the working people to own their own homes and such other property as is needed for private use. The home under capitalism is assailed by terrible enemies, such as poverty, disease and ignorance. These are home-breakers, every one of which has an economic cause for existence. It has been said that the plan will not work. My dear doubting Thomas, your father said that about every piece of machinery ever invented. He said of the first railroad that the noise of the engine would dry up the cows and scare the chickens out of the summer crop of eggs. Of the first steamboat, that the boiler would blow up and the ship couldn’t carry enough coal to make a trip across the sea. A group of farmers stood about the first self-binder ever put on the platform of your dealer and with a knowing look they said: ‘Too much machinery, too complex, never will work.’ When the first cream separator came out they laughed at the idea of a machine getting the cream out of the milk. How our fathers laughed at the first automobile. You don't laugh at these things any more." The worst that can happen to Canada is to go on as it is.

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