Golden Age, November 7, 1934

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Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

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in this issue

THE WINDOWS OF THE SOUL GOLDEN AGE OF BUSINESS CATHOLIC HOCUS-POCUS WHOSE SERVANT?

NEWS NOTES

ANGLO-ISRAEL

VERSUS

ISRAEL OF GOD

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every other WEDNESDAY

five cents a copy one dollar a year Canada & Foreign 1.25

Vol. XVI - No. 395 November 7, 1934

— ----- I ■■ -- ■

CONTENTS

• • O<G) • i' — ■— . • •

LABOR AND ECONOMICS

German Wage-Slave Bondage . . 83 Millions of Homes Needed .... S3 Shooting the Unarmed

in Minneapolis .... . . 83

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

Some Greeks Not Honest . . . .78

Americans versus Foreigners . . . 83

California Becoming Civilized . . . 83

French Plea for More ChiMren . . 84

Newsboys Become Crimin; Is ... 81

Strange Reason for Beating Prisoner 83

Lipsticks Barred from Communion . 88 “Ten More from Somewhere Else” . 88

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

The Golden Age of Business . . 77

Two Girls Mailed to Their Fathers . 83

Have You Had Too Much Mackerel? 84

Japan the Junk Market of the World 84

When Caught in the Sand .... 85

The Barbed-Wire Fences of Verdun 86

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

What the World War Accomplished 86

How Their Fortunes Were Made . . 85

Nervousness of France and Spain . 86

Where Freedom Has Perished . . 86

Sermon on the Mount Seditious . . 86

Roper Wants a Religious NRA . . 87

Archbishop’s Stand on Hitler ... 88 The Modern Torture Chamber:

Shall It Be Abolished? How? . 94

AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY

British Farmers Love to Be Robbed . 85

Possibly Victims of Poison Gas . . 85

SCIENCE AND INVENTION

What and Where Is the Corona? 82

Russian Jumps Five Miles .... 82

HOME AND HEALTH

The Windows of the Soul—and the Land of Darkness .... 67

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY

Chinese Migration into Manchuria . S3 Conditions Now Obtaining in Japan 84 Taxgatherers Worse in China ... 84

Italy's Giant Naval Seaplanes . . . 86

Munitions Makers Getting Results . 86

Dishonors to the Creator .... 87

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

Catholic Hocus-pocus.....79

Stiff Prices for Kerosene ... SO Whose-Servant? (Part 2) . . . .81 The Birth of Methodism.....87

Striving for Church Confederacy . 87 We Wonder About Tommy’s Mama . 88 Ambrose: ‘Light of the World’! . . 88 Laboring in Lord’s (?) Vineyard . 89 The House Pet Racket . . '. . .89 213 Denominations ...... 89 Anglo-Israel versus Israel of God 90

Published every other Wednesday by

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117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. Y„ U. S. A.

Clayton J. Woodworth President Nathan H. Knorr Vice President

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crke Golden Age

Volume XVI Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, November 7, 1934 Number 395

The Windows of the Soul — and the Land of Darkness

IT IS impossible to consider any of the works of the Creator without being lost in wonder, love and praise. Take a look at the letter “i” as made with the typewriter. Notice the white space between the trunk of the “i” and the dot above it; you have discerned something that is not much if any over 5/1000 of an inch across. Now step outdoors and look at the sky; the nearest star is Alpha Centauri, distant 4.3 light years, or about 24,897,041,280,000 miles. Most of the stars you see are many times as far away. The Swan is distant 50,496,000,000,000,000 miles, or 2,000 times as far away. Do you not think it discloses marvelous love and wisdom on the part of the Creator to place two such instruments in your possession as will enable you in a moment to see things so near and things so remote?

The optical arrangement of the human eye is that of a two-lens microscope. At the front is a body shaped like a watch glass, called the cornea, and at a short distance' behind it a double-convex body, called the crystalline lens. These two are transparent and form an image. The wall of the rear, or retina, is composed of the fibers of the optic nerve, vast numbers of pyramids and cones. The image formed by the lenses falls on the retina upside down. The impression is conveyed to the seeing portion of the brain, far in the back of the head, where it is turned right side up and considered. Man is the best judge of shape and distance of any of the creatures.

At sea or over a level plain the human eye, at a height of five feet from the ground, can see an object a foot in diameter 2.9 miles away. A Patagonian can see an ostrich head at a distance of almost a mile. A perfect eye can discern the light of an ordinary candle two miles away through transparent space. Observers on the coast of France sighted lights on Corsican mountains 186 miles away. Mirror flashes on Mount Shasta, California, were sighted on Mount Helena, 192 miles distant.

The eye has so many parts that it makes anybody except an oculist have a headache merely to read the names. Briefly, it is an instrument of i/2-inch radius, combining in one a camera, photometer, colorimeter, kaleidoscope, stereoscope, and range finder, automatically adjustable from infinity to a distance of 3 inches. The eye is self-cleansing; every time we wink we wash our eyes. Store eyewashes are unnecessary, but a few drops of boric acid solution in the eyes now and then is refreshing.

Built to Run Forever

Dr. Charles Sheard, director of physics and biophysical research of the Mayo foundation at Rochester, Minn., in a public lecture in Boston stated that his calculations, which he gave, show that an eye has something of the order of a million years of vision; in othei’ words, it was made to last forever.

The eye can detect 200,000 shades of color. Cotton-seed oil varies much in value according to its color; the only instrument that can rightly measure these differences is the human eye.

Given two persons with eyes of equal clearness of vision, one will merely see that a passing auto is a dark closed car, while the other will tell that it is a four-door blue sedan, by whom and where made, the year of manufacture, and how many persons were in it. In trials of accident cases the lawyers get many times as much information from some observers as from others.

The mind to some extent dominates the eye. A group in Montreal all saw a man sitting on a stool on the top of a flagpole; that is what their eyes and minds told them, but when a telescope was brought to bear the man was plainly seen to be sitting on a stool on the roof of a building beyond the one which supported the pole.

Occasionally nature plays a prank. Alva Mason, 25, an electrician of Minot, Maine, has eyes so focused that within a distance of eight inches they magnify more than 100 times their actual proportions. He is able to distinguish features of phonograph records by the difference in the impression made in the disk. Thus, removing his glasses, he can pick out with unfailing accuracy the anvil strokes in the “Anvil Chorus”.

Dorken, a German organist, blind from the age of thirteen, sees each tone of the musical scale as a very vivid color. Each human voice, each odor, and every other human sensation, produces in his mind a color, pleasant or otherwise. Even a sneeze has color, for him. All this seems odd to the rest of us.

Differences Much Exaggerated

A critical study of 840 Chinese and Japanese by Dr. H. Gifford discloses that the notion of a special “Mongolian eye” is incorrect. Many of these have a fold extending from the skin of the upper lid obliquely downward and inward to the bridge of the nose, but the eye itself is like that of the rest of us.

Careful studies of a pair of eyes here in the office under all the various types of glances (eight of them) seem to indicate that the so-called “expressions of the eyes” are mainly the expressions of the lids and other muscles around them. There is, however, the element of accommodation, which does somewhat change the shape of the eye itself. At twelve a child can read as easily at three inches from the eye as at arm’s length, but in later life this power diminishes and the actual changes in our eyes themselves are slowly made.

Blue eyes are really colorless, there being an absence of pigment in the outer layer of the iris; they are characteristic of northern Europe. Dark eyes of brown pigment protect the retina against too much light from the sun, and are more commonly found among southern races. Blue-eyed parents transmit blue eyes to their offspring; a blue-eyed and brown-eyed couple may have all brown-eyed children, but three-fourths of the grandchildren will be brown-eyed and one-fourth blue-eyed, according to genetical tables.

It has been widely observed that dark-eyed women know better what is going on around them than light-eyed ones. The tired brown eyes of the natives of India are the most melancholy in the world, so it is said, but here again it seems clear that it is mainly the eyelids and other muscles about the eye that create the expression.

We see one thing at a time. Looking at a word we see the letters successively, not simultaneously. The mental images are built up one after the other, each requiring about three two-thousandths of a second. A modern machine proved conclusively the correctness of Aristotle's conclusions as to how it is we see. The old idea of teaching a child an alphabet was a correct idea. In some persons the mental images are much slower than in others, requiring one-seventh of a second in a stationary position before an impression is made.

All Blind for Three Weeks

The fibers of the optic nerve which carry the consciousness of light to the brain are not completed until three weeks after birth, so that, as a matter of fact, babies do not see anything until they are three weeks old. Brilliant objects gradually awaken the interest and curiosity; through the eyes a pathway is made into the mind.

A physicist explains how we see in colors. He says: “What light does is to perform a photochemical process on the light-sensitive substance in the cornea, from which result four nerve excitants—the sources of our color sensations, yellow and blue, red and green. All the rest of the perceptible color tones are composed of dual color blends of these four.”

Many persons can recognize blues and yellows to whom all reds and greens appear gray, but a person who is blind to yellow and blue is also blind to green and red, that is, totally color-blind. In persons totally color-blind there are rods in the retina, but no cones.

The pupil is merely a hole in the iris, and looks black because there is no light inside; it is through this hole, by means of the ophthalmoscope, that an oculist is able to determine the condition of the retina.

The cornea, which covers the iris and pupil, is highly polished, transparent, and in the perfect eye is symmetrically curved; if not so curved, astigmatism exists, requiring correction.

The jelly-like substance which fills the back of the eye is transparent. When placed in water it can be felt, but cannot be seen.

The eye is controlled by six sets of very delicate muscles that act like rubber bands, one pulling and the opposite one stretching every time the eye is moved.

Cataracts are never formed on the outside of the eye, but are due to the lenses’ becoming hard, cloudy and opaque. This will be touched upon later.

Eyebrows change their position with age. Permanent new eyelashes can be had by surgical transplanting of hair from the scalp, but forever afterward the experimenter has to have them trimmed by the barber, as if they grew on the top of the head. A blond may have dark eyelashes naturally.

As there are different colors of eyes, classified as blue, gray, green, hazel or black, and sometimes a person may have one eye of one color and one of another, so there are styles of eyebrows, nine of them; the prince of Wales is distinguished by having two of these types, making his features quite different on the two sides.

Excessive use of the eyes causes them to become heated by the exercise; it is the heat generated that makes them tired.

Care of the Eyes

One of the best ways to care for the eyes is not to overwork them. If the work is all close work, rest the eyes at frequent intervals by closing them or glancing off at some far-away object for a moment.

Gentle massage of the eye with the finger tips wet with cold water, practiced for five minutes twice daily, is recommended.

A nasal douche helpful to the eyes is a glass of warm water into which is dissolved the juice of half a lemon. This to be sniffed into the nose gently, night and morning, and blown out vigorously.

Bathing the eyes with cool water or diluted witch-hazel and resting in a reclining position for half an hour a day helps.

Rats deprived of Vitamin G developed cataracts. The best sources of Vitamin G are milk, eggs, fresh beef, the germ of wheat (excluded from white flour), fresh yeast, vine-ripened tomatoes and fresh vegetables. Spinach, lettuce, yellow corn, and green (unbleached) celery are good to supply elements needed in the perfect development and operation of the eye. The less the greens and vegetables are cooked, the more valuable they are. Drink water freely, ten glasses a day, with a little lemon juice dissolved in each. Discontinue the use of pies, cake and pastry.

Keep away from fog, dust, steam, smoke, fumes and vitiated air. Avoid anger, jealousy, fear and worry. Be hopeful and cheerful. Give the skin a daily friction rub. Walk three miles a day. Avoid stimulants and drugs.

Avoid sudden changes from dark to light. Avoid reading when lying down or when physically or mentally exhausted. Avoid much reading by artificial light. Avoid late hours.

Avoid too much light and too little light, and avoid too much heat. A man who slept two hours with his face upturned to the hot sun went blind.

When working by lamplight, shade your lamp so that it will throw the light on your work and not on your eyes; do not work in a flickering light; do not work in mixed daylight and artificial light; have the light over your left shoulder, if right-handed, and over your right shoulder, if left-handed; keep the lamps and globes clean, and use white, cream or yellowish wallpaper. And do not buy wood alcohol, for any purpose whatsoever. The fumes from it have blinded many.

All surfaces should be of flat finish, ceilings, side walls, desks and furniture. Glares are never good. Small yellow globes near the book are better than the bright unshaded ceiling lights of a generation ago. When sewing, get your light close to your work. Red paint, red wall paper, red hangings and red decorations generally (including cheeks, lips and finger nails) are abominations to the eyes.

When at work where flying metallic particles are possible, by all means wear some sort of spectacles to keep them out of the eyes. Do not permit anybody to use pocketknife or nail file or other crude metal instrument to remove metal slivers. In some large plants an eye magnet is used for taking steel slivers out of the eye. These magnets cannot be used for penetrations of copper, brass, lead, and many alloys, which are therefore much more dangerous than iron or steel. Injuries must be looked after at once; and even then the injury to one eye may cause the loss of the other, even as late as forty years after the injury, due to sympathetic inflammation.

A good way to remove sand, small insects, or cinders from the eye is to grasp the eyelashes and hold the eyelid away from the eye. This will often allow the tears to wash the foreign body away. For a few cents at almost any good drug store an eyestone can be procured which, kept in the eye over night, performs the same service while one sleeps. Most oculists will remove foreign substances from the eye without charge.

Yellow papers are the most restful to the eyes, especially if unglazed. Black ink on blue paper is the most irritating color combination. There is less fatigue to the eye from yellow than from red, blue or green. It is estimated that eighty percent of headaches are due to eyestrain. Movies, if properly made, do not injure the eyes, as they see in a succession of jerks, anyway.

In Newfoundland, where the winter regimen includes salt pork, some potatoes, cabbages and turnips (which often run out), night-blindness is common. The most popular remedy is bird’s liver. Oddly enough, the cod liver, which supplies the same deficiency, is not much used by the people who principally produce it for the rest of the world.

We have to say a good word for the Kromyer rays, generated by an electrical apparatus manufactured by the Hanovia Chemical and Manufacturing Company, of Newark, N. J. In every important city there is now some up-to-date physician who has this apparatus. The physician at the Bethel, Brooklyn, has one. One of the workers suffered with exquisite pains in one eye. A three-minute treatment of one nostril completely stopped the pain and brought the eye back to normal. The treatments are painless, being merely rays of healing light such as constantly pour forth from the sun. They are projected into the interior of the head through the nostrils, being too powerful to be gazed upon. The patient wears colored glasses, and the treatments are but about three minutes long.

Are Spectacles Necessary?

That headline looks peculiar to a man who has had glasses on his nose every waking moment for fifty years; but there are several health lecturers going up and down the land, seemingly honest men, who claim that by the use of the methods hereinafter described thousands have been able to lay aside glasses they have worn for years and regain perfect vision. It seems too good to be true, and too nearly impossible.

Dr. Robert K. Williams, one of these “no spectacles” enthusiasts, says:

Sit or stand; hold the head rigid. Look to the left as far as possible, then to the right. Without moving the head, look up, then down, as far as possible. Put a strain on the muscles slightly. Roll the eyes from left to right and from right to left, slightly straining the muscles. This quickly clears the eyes of redness and gives them a sense of strength. Now cross the eyes by looking at the tip of the nose, then at the spot between the ejxs; then look forward.

Do these exercises as many times as, in your judgment, is needed. It won’t be long until you will feel better in the eyeballs, and doubtless the vision will be improved.

Tightly closing the eyes three or four times will almost immediately improve the sight, for the time being. When objects become blurred try this easy exercise.

Massaging the eyeballs lightly with the tips of the fingers helps the eyes and prevents ptosis, or dropping of the lids. In fact, massage assists the eye in several ways.

Blinking into the early morning and evening sun often proves very beneficial. Many people have recovered vision by doing this. A friend of ours, with offices on the 40th floor of the Metropolitan tower, New York, totally blind in one eye, brought vision back to that eye, so that he could read the finest print, by daily peering into the bright sun, from one of the lofty windows.

The ruins of Nineveh yielded a piece of transparent glass some 2,600 years old. Nero was shortsighted; he was wont to gaze on gladiatorial fights through a glass cut from a huge emerald. The first reading glasses, made to be held in the hand, were produced by Roger Bacon, in A.D. 1280. Benjamin Franklin was the inventor of bifocal spectacles; they were called “spectacles” from the Latin name spectaculum, something to be seen or looked at, a pageant, a spectacle.

The Fight About Rims

The fight about rims is still on. The ultrarimless, in England, after using monocles for a generation, have at last developed “contact glasses” which are worn under the lids, in contact with the eyeball, and cannot be distinguished. They are rather uncomfortable at first. By this device women with pale gray or blue eyes can have them darkened to any desired shade. These lenses, made in layers, do not break when hit with a hammer, boiled up to 500 degrees, baked in an oven, or frozen in a refrigerator. The device is said to permit of a range of accurate vision at all angles.

In America horn-rimmed spectacles appeared twenty years ago and were sold to everybody. Then the spectacle makers discovered, to their sorrow, that the pyralin frames were unbreakable, preventing practically all breakage of lenses, and now they are discouraging their use.

Metal rims bend on slight provocation; people who wear them must make occasional trips to the optician for correction. There is usually no charge for this. In cleaning eyeglasses optometrists advise grasping the glasses, and not the nosepiece, so as to avoid loosening the screws in the nosepiece.

Optometrist Propaganda

At the annual convention of the American Optometric Association held in San Antonio, Texas, in 1931, it was agreed to spend $6,000,000 in the next four years “in newspapers, magazines and other mediums to stimulate interest in the problems of defective vision”.

It does not seem any more heinous for the oculists and optometrists to go in wholesale for propaganda than it does for the allopaths to do it, and yet the whole business of making money out of human defects seems shocking. Thomas J. Barrett, North Dakota, after noting that glasses are merely eye crutches, and that they have been generally worn but about twenty-five years, says:

About twenty-five years ago certain commercial interests grasped the possibilities of exploiting the eyes of the people in a purely commercial manner. Since that time untold millions have been spent in educating and crystallizing in the minds of the people the theory that the eye must inevitably fail early in life and that all people should adopt glasses by time they reach middle life or much earlier.

Some of the propaganda now in hand, and to which, no doubt, Dr. Barrett would object, reads as follows: “Seven out of every ten persons in the United States are in need of glasses”; “Six out of every ten of us have reduced visual perception”; “Within the next fifty years, if not sooner, eight people out of every ten will be wearing spectacles”; “People with ordinary sight, but engaged in fine work, benefit considerably from wearing glasses especially designed for their particular occupations.” These statements may all be true, but sound suspiciously like the propaganda used to boost the serums.

The New York Times, referring to a convention of the New York State Optometric Association, has the following, which certainly has a familiar ring:

“ Professor Barstow quoted figures of a 750,000 population area, showing that 24 percent wear glasses and the average price is $16.85 per pair. If multiple pairs were sold to one-third of that population, the optometrists’ business would be increased $1,053,125, he said.”

A California optician who examined many fine specimens of black manhood, of the Wa-kamba and Masai tribes of Africa, who had never strained their eyes over printing, microscopes, test-tubes or machines, was surprised to find not one perfect eye among them, and admitted that “a really perfect eye, even among children, is as rare as a purple elephant”. Man has his limitations.

Plenty of Mechanical Aids

What with bifocal spectacles separately fitted to each eye, telescopes to see distant objects, microscopes to see little objects, stroboscopes to slow up the motion of objects moving too swiftly for the eye to see, oscilloscopes to catch the movement of objects too vibrant, spectroscopes to sort out the mixed radiation of white light, pyrometers to record things too radiant for the eye to gaze upon, radiometers to detect the invisible infra-red or heat waves, spectrophotometers to perform feats of color analysis, X-rays to reveal things through opaque materials, and photo-cells to ensnare the unseen ultraviolet radiations, man cannot complain of lack of progress in the optic arts.

The Feinbloom telescopic spectacles (three lenses before each eye instead of one) widely publicized two years ago, have benefited some, but many were sadly disappointed. Trifocals and quadrifocals, announced early this year, are probably on the market by now. A Hungarian oculist has invented a form of protective spectacles in which a sheet of transparent metal foil a millionth of a millimeter thick is placed between two sheets of glass; the effect is to keep heat rays out of the eyes. The kratometer, which works by manipulating prisms, is used to correct cross-eyes.

By a new method of sending powerful beams of light into the side of the eye, the interior of the eye may now be examined through a microscope. For automobile drivers there are now to be had very wide-rimmed glasses, on the outside edges of which are small mirrors, so that the wearer can see the road behind him. The reflectors do not interfere with the vision ahead. The Nordenson camera enables the taking of pictures of the retina. There is no truth to the oft-repeated statements that photographs of murderers are ever found on the retinas of victims. Eyeshades, once in favor, then discarded, are now advised where workers are compelled to work where lights are inferior.

The Land of Darkness

Can you think of a land of absolute darkness, a land where the sun never shines, where the lights are never lit, where not a color may be seen, not even the somberest gray? There is a land where just such conditions prevail. There are one hundred thousand people living in that land, doing the same things that you are doing, doing them cheerfully, and with surprising efficiency, too. The land is all about you. It is the United States of America. It is estimated that there are 6,000,000 sightless in the world, and that at least 100,000 of these are in the United States. If that be true it means that in every village of 1,000 persons there is one who is in this land of darkness; in every city of 10,000 there are ten such persons; in every city of 100,000 there are one hundred; in every city of a million inhabitants there are a thousand.

In England there are 2,307 blind under sixteen years of age, and there has been an increase in the blind population of 35,000 within fourteen years. In Spain, with a population of only 20,500,000, it is claimed that 25,000 persons go blind every year, due to inattention to cases of smallpox, scarlatina, meningitis, and sexual maladies. If these unfortunates live only eight years each after they go blind, this would make ten times as many blind persons in proportion to the population as there are in the United States. In Syria the conditions are still worse than in Spain; for a Turkish civilization is still worse than a Boman Catholic one.

Neonatal Blindness

When one considers the route by which we all come into the world, and the fact that for some little time the eyes of the newly born are exposed to whatever infection may he present in the womb, it is wonderful, in view of the fallen condition of humanity and of the widespread scourges of syphilis and gonorrhea, that half the people in the world were not born blind.

As matters stand it is calculated that in the United States twenty-four percent of all cases of blindness are due to neonatal conditions— the failure of doctors, nurses and midwives to give attention to the child’s eyes immediately after its birth. The modern method requires all doctors to treat the eyes of the newborn with a solution of nitrate of silver. This causes temporary soreness of the eyes of the infant, but is an almost sure preventive of blindness. If it is not done, and the lids become swollen, with a discharge of pus, in a few days the case is hopeless. There are in the United States today something like 25,000 persons who are totally blind because their eyes were neglected during the first few’ days after birth.

It does not follow that because a child is born blind either of its parents may have sinned sexually. Physicians state that one-fourth of all persons who contract syphilis do so innocently. It is conveyed by drinking cups and other household utensils. Babies have contracted it from a kiss of an older person. The way in which this disease affects the babies is to cause inflammation of the cornea, the window of the eye, and eventually to destroy it if the disease is not arrested or cured. Data at hand show that, in Scotland, out of every two children in schools for the blind, one is blind as a result of sexual disease inherited from its parents.

Danger to Little Folks

There are plenty of dangers to the little folks, for years to come. Blindness often comes to children as a result of measles or scarlet fever, due to the patient’s room's not being sufficiently darkened. The eyes at such a time, and for weeks afterward, should be allowed as nearly absolute rest as possible.

Then there is considerable reason to fear blindness as a result of accidents with forks, scissors, arrows, air rilles, exploding golf balls, and toy pistols. In not a few instances wild birds and domestic fowls have been known to pick the eyes out of infants and even of children able to run about. No doubt these birds were quite as unconscious of what they were doing as were the children of any danger from being in their vicinity.

Sometimes the little folks have ulcers of the eye, resulting in extreme sensitiveness to the light. The child will do almost anything to protect its eyes from the light. This affection may be due to insufficient ventilation in sleeping quarters, to tea, coffee, poor candy as well as too much candy, cakes, pastry, and bananas.

And then when the little folks become able to attend school they run the danger of conjunctivitis, or pink eye, an inflammation of the inner side of the lids which makes them feel as if there were sand in them. The lids gum together in the morning, and unless medical attention is provided blindness is liable to result. In the early part of the present century the schools in New York city were filled with cases of trachoma, as this disease is called, supposed to have largely come from the great numbers of Russian Jews then coming into the port; but within two years, as a result of close attention by the teachers and medical inspectors, the disease was virtually obliterated.

The eyes of humans do not reach maturity until eight years of age; therefore it is quite wrong to send children to school earlier. Parents should pay close attention to the lights by which the children study, as they become tired or sleepy very quickly when trying to work in a poor light. A youngster who is inclined to headaches and digestive disturbances may be suspected of having need of glasses or having his diet better looked after, or both. Of 2,000 children studied forty-five percent were found needing glasses, or correction of diet, or both.

In the Montpelier district in the south of France, out of ten generations of 2.121 persons, 135 were night-blind. These children could not help this. There are occasional cases of congenital total color-blindness, where everything is seen in gray. The children cannot help that either. The children cannot help crossed eyes, and it is a mistake to suppose that they correct themselves. The parents have to give them attention.

Though there are known to be 50,000 school children in the United States suffering from defective vision, special educational facilities are provided for only 4,000 of them. Lewis H. Carris, of the National Society for the Prevention of Blindness, in an address on “Education of Exceptional Children”, says:

“The books used in sight-saving classes are usually in very large type. Much of the work is done on the blackboard, to relieve eye-strain. Adjustable seats and desks are used, and particular care is exercised in regard to the lighting arrangement in the classroom. Every child is taught the touch system on the typewriter as soon as possible, so that the eye-strain of handwriting may be avoided.”

‘ ‘ The per capita cost of educating children in sightsaving classes is usually from $200 to $250; it ranges from $132 to $331 per year. The per capita cost of educating other groups shows an equally wide variation: in regular grades, from $47 to $124; in classes for the deaf, from $226 to $431; in orthopedic classes, from $S8 to $378.”

Accidents to Adults

It is only about a thousand years since a victorious commander put out both eyes of 15,000 men defeated in battle and sent them home over the mountains in companies of 100 each, with a leader deprived of only one eye. In the World War many more than 15,000 were blinded.

In the United States 15,000 are totally blind as the result of accidental injury in industrial occupations, and 2,000 workers lose the sight of one or both eyes each year.

Mechanics lose their sight from flying sparks, splashing metal, chippings from castings, unprotected emery wheels, acid burns, chemical explosions, bursting gauges, soiled handkerchiefs, soiled hands, and dirty matches and toothpicks in the hands of fellow workmen who are engaged in rendering first aid.

Three men out of one hundred whose eyes are exposed to intense heat and injurious light rays go blind, and these three are always those who refuse to be bothered with goggles or helmets; yet the use of goggles and helmets may make all the difference between a highly-paid skilled workman and a nearly helpless beggar. In one county in Ohio one eye is lost every eleven days in the year. Is it not supposable that the next man who is to lose his eye would be very careful if he knew what would happen ?

Miners and train dispatchers suffer from a peculiar form of eye dancing called nystagmus. Snow-blindness is really sunburn on the eyes. Many women have blinded themselves by painting their eyelashes with aniline derivatives and preparations containing silver nitrate. Scores were blinded by bootleg liquor in the “prohibition” days. Eight citizens in Calgary alone were partially blinded as a result of watching an eclipse of the sun without the aid of darkened glasses. A drop of nitric or sulphuric acid is sufficient to destroy the sight of an eye. Tear gas is blinding in its effects. Home life is dangerous. Many an eye has been lost in using a table fork to untie a badly knotted shoe lace, or in trying to remove a bottle cap with a knife, fork or ice pick.

Achievements of the Blind

A number of blind young men and women have been graduated from high schools of New York, Chicago, and other cities; and some of them are students in colleges and universities.

Instances are common of blind people whose sense of hearing or of air pressure is so keen that they can detect telephone poles six to ten feet away. Paul Donehoo, a blind Atlanta lawyer and musician, not only is able to sense the walls, posts, and other obstacles along his path, but can follow the building line along the sidewalk entirely by sound.

Rene Leroy, a Paris blind man, once, as a test, walked into a strange barber shop, ordered a shave and haircut, expressed his satisfaction with it, got up and walked straight to the cash desk, which he had located by sound, paid his bill, got his change, stepped to the door and into the street, without anyone in the shop knowing that he was blind.

A blind lawyer of New York, Benjamin Berin-stein, one of three executors of a $400,000 estate, was sued by the other two executors on the ground that as a blind man he was not a fit legal guardian for two children whose interests in the estate he was particularly looking after. When the action came up in court he made a dignified and brilliant speech, citing the work of some of the world’s great blind men and women, including the poet Milton, ex-Senator Gore of Oklahoma, Helen Keller, and others, and referring modestly to his own attainments, with the result that the presiding surrogate dismissed the case, stating that it should never have been brought into court.

Helen Keller, blind, deaf, and dumb, and without sense of smell since she was nineteen months of age, converses with anybody. With her highly trained fingers she reads the lips of the one talking to her, and then with those same highly trained fingers replies by the touch system in the palm of the hand of her secretary, who translates her words into speech. She is a college graduate, and the author of several books. Her first advent into the world of knowledge was when her teacher patiently and persistently drew the letter “w” with water in the palm of her hand and she finally grasped the thought that “w” stood for water. Recently, when the Pictorial Review Company awarded her its annual prize of $5,000 she turned it over to the American Foundation for the Blind, and said in part: “I wonder if this is not the day for which I became deaf and blind—so that the sun may rise in the minds of others who are covered with a double darkness.”

John Dwyer, of Thuries, Irish Free State, blind from early youth, devoted a lifetime to the repairing of watches and clocks.

Miss Ivie M. Mead, of Middletown, Connecticut, took the first prize in needlework at the county fair. She entered a crocheted slumber robe, attractively striped.

In New Britain, Connecticut, Arthur Sullivan, blind newspaper reporter, saved the life of his blind wife, whose clothing had ignited at a gas range. He dragged her into an adjoining room and smothered the flames with a rug. Subsequently he underwent a skin-grafting operation in a further effort to save her life from the burns inflicted.

The blind learn to write readily. Hygeia magazine explains:

A rubber band is passed around a pad where the writing should begin. Two other light bands are passed vertically around the pad at about half an inch from each edge of the paper. As each line is completed the horizontal band is slipped down an inch. By keeping the finger on the band an even and legible writing can be produced with little practice.

Recovery of Sight

Here are ten instances of persons entirely blind for many years, all but two of whom recovered their sight within the past seven years:

Mrs. Carrie Sillery, 76, of Roachdale, Ind., blind for thirty years, awoke from an afternoon nap, February 18, 1928, able to see as well as ever. Prior to the restoration of her sight she had severe eye pains.

David Finkelstein, 25 years old, lawyer, of Sea Gate, N. Y., was blind for five months, losing his sight suddenly while reading a book. His physician performed two operations for sinus infection. After the second one, and while on the way home from the doctor’s office, sight suddenly returned.

J. F. Fish, president Northwestern Business College, Chicago, was suddenly blinded on his wedding trip, in 1899, when a tree fell on him. In June, 1930, his wife was reading to him, when, suddenly, his sight returned.

Joan Getaz, Lincoln, Nebr., was born blind but suddenly gained her sight when 18 years of age. She was surprised that all people do not look alike. She tried to step over a sunbeam. She took pink and white pigs for persons. She thought trees were like humans; she had no conception of their height. She thought a boy with a mustache had a diseased face. She still shuts her eyes when she wants to dress in a hurry. She got her sight in 1928.

Earl Musselman, 22, of Allentown, Pa., born without pupils in his eyes, gained sight by an operation in the early part of 1931. Human faces puzzled him. He could not understand why a full-face view should differ from a profile. He distinguished pictures of men from those of ■women by the fact that the men wear ties. When he first started to read print he had to translate the printed letters into the raised dots of the Braille alphabet before he could figure out the words.

Jacob Lieberman, 87, blind for twenty years in the Home of the New York Guild for Jewish Blind, recovered his sight by an operation in June, 1932.

Frank Rentz, Madison, Wis., was born blind, but at two years of age the corneas of an animal's eyes were grafted upon his own and the operation was a complete success. It was three years after the operation before sight was normal. The young man, now twenty-four, recently graduated with honors from the Wisconsin University Law School.

Sylvester Flynn, Pittsburgh, Pa., now 25 years of age, was blind eighteen years. An operation in August, 1932, helped him to recover his sight.

In London, England, H. H. Watson, 29 years of age, blind for twenty-five years, regained his sight through corneas grafted on his eyes. This took place this year.

Gertrude Musier, of Flushing, N. Y., 19 years of age, blind from infantile paralysis for fifteen years, gradually regained her sight in April of this year without any operation.

In six of the ten cases above cited, physicians helped in the recovery.

But the best physician of all is the Great Physician. And as we think of the unfortunates to whom the bright sunlight is darker than the darkest midnight, how our hearts thrill as we read the story of blind Bartimteus! Nothing can excel the beauty of this story just as it appears on the pages of the Book of books:

And as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartinueus, the son of T imams, sat by the highway side, begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he callelh thee. And he easting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy frith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.—Mark 10: 46-52.

Employments of the Blind

In Japan almost all masseurs are blind; so much is it the custom for them to adopt this profession that the words in Japanese for ‘blind man’ and ‘masseur’ are the same. In China the traditional employment of the blind is fortunetelling. In England 100 blind soldiers are telephone operators.

At Atlanta, Georgia, there is a blind student who pays his way through law school by calling the class roll of 200 members purely from memory. He identifies each voice immediately. Blind persons do not hear better than others, but simply seem to because they listen harder.

The blind have found employment in factories in assembling machine parts, running drill presses on small work, foiling mints, packing candy, setting up cartons, wrapping butter blocks, taping coils for armatures, and nutting bolts. In one factory a blind man now does all the work formerly done by two girls with perfect vision.

In Henry Ford’s great automobile plant he employs four men who are totally blind. One blind man in a Cleveland factory, always clean shaven, always smiling, and always on time, receives $40 a week. The total number of operations performed by the blind in various Cleveland factories is 69. There are some concerns that employ blind typists, the dictation being by means of the dictaphone.

There are 150 blind news-dealers in New York. One of these news-dealers made the statement that his patrons steal his papers, steal pennies off the stand, give two cents instead of three, pass bad money, take three or four papers and pay for but one. One man selected four magazines, gave a dollar of stage money in payment and accepted twenty cents change from the blind man he had robbed. Many times men and women thrust a nickel into the hand of the blind news-dealer and then insist that they have given him twenty-five or fifty cents.

Helping the Blind

There is every reason why those who are not blind should do everything humanly possible to help those who are. In Austria and Portugal the war-blind travel at the expense of the state; in South Africa the war-blind are allowed fifty percent reduction on tickets; in Norway, at certain seasons, blind students and their guides may travel for a total of one and one-half fares. In Berlin blind people are allowed to travel free on all street cars. In Belgium, Holland, and France a blind worker, when undertaking a railway journey necessitated by the exercise of his trade or profession, has the right to make the journey accompanied by his guide, on purchasing only one ticket, which entitles them both to transportation.

Skilled surgeons now remove cataracts, slicing the eyeball almost in two. A glass lens is fitted in place of nature’s own lens which has become opaque. Details of the operation performed on Merwin Jenkins, 25 years of age, Lansing, Michigan, born blind, say that for the rest of his life he must remove his lens every twelve hours, apply a special mucilage, and return it to the eye socket. Jenkins is a radio entertainer, married, and has a two-year-old daughter. King Prajadhipok came all the way from Siam to have a similar operation.

By means of a local anesthetic the cataract is removed without pain. Most cases of cataract have back of them twenty to twenty-five years of constipation or other evidences of imperfect elimination. Get your blood full of dirt, and keep it full of dirt, and eventually some of the dirt will settle somewhere, and where inconvenient.

The education of the blind began in 1784. In 1829 came the important invention of Louis Braille, a group of six dots in which the vertical line consists of three dots and the horizontal of two. Sixty-three combinations of these six dots may be used.

The New York library contains about 12,000 books in Braille, with some 3,000,000 printed in ink. It also has 6,000 raised music scores for the study of blind music readers. There are said to be 900 certified workers serving to produce fresh reading material for the blind, using the Braille system. The Searchlight quarterly, printed in Braille, is read by children in France, Italy, Abyssinia, Egypt, India, Scotland, China, Japan, Australia and Canada. Diaries for the blind are published in Braille. Books printed in Braille cost from $12.50 to $30 per volume. The federal government has granted an annual appropriation of $100,000 for books for blind adults.

Dr. Max Herz, a blind Viennese doctor, has invented a device by which dots and dashes, representing letters of the alphabet, when punched in strips of paper, are transferred to phonograph records, and a complete book can be put on one small record. The system has been learned in a day, whereas the finger touch systems sometimes require a year. Dr. Herz has been assisted in this work by the Austrian and Polish governments.

Rotary clubs in Great Britain, California, and probably elsewhere, have adopted the supplying of white canes for blind pedestrians. None but the blind may have white canes. Autoists are expected to be on the lookout for them.

Other Helps to the Blind

One of the most remarkable of all the helps for the blind is the visagraph, invention of Robert E. Naumburg, of Cambridge, Mass. When a book is inserted in this machine, an electric eye, in a rolling carriage of brass, roams back and forth across the printed page. What this “eye” sees is reproduced in embossed letters upon a roll of aluminum foil, which the blind readily learn to read. The foil may be preserved for future reading, or run through a pair of rollers and used over again. The height of the visagraph letters is always the same, regardless of the size of printed letters in the book.

The photo-electrograph, a French invention, seems to embody some of the principles of the visagraph, or the “printing visagraph”, as Mr. Naumburg prefers to call his invention. The optaphone, invented by Professor d’Albe, instructor in physics at the University of Birmingham, is a similar device which aims to help the blind by converting the visible outlines of the letters into audible sounds.

The father of Lord Sanderson, Labor peer of Britain, helped him by steadfastly pursuing the peculiar course of refusing to admit that his son’s total blindness from birth was anything more than shortsightedness. He refused to allow any to help him up or down stairs or over difficult pieces of road. In some blind institutions there are signs warning all visitors to refrain from any expressions whatever of pity, as these expressions do harm instead of good.

The New York Association for the Blind teaches roller-skating to blind children, finding it helps to create the confidence they so much need. A London doctor has made an invention whereby the blind can do crossword puzzles and acrostics. The system by which dogs are trained to care for the blind was explained in our issue of July 18, 1934. There are now sixty such dogs in use in America.

The Most Wonderful Help of All

The most wonderful help that can come to anybody is something that will lift the darkness from the mind. Read the following letter, from J. H. Baughy, of Alabama, addressed to Judge Rutherford, and see the grand opportunity now open to Jehovah’s witnesses:

I am sorry to take up your valuable time with this letter, but feel I must express my gratitude and thankfulness to Jehovah God for His great truth. I wish to let you and all the Golden Age readers know how well I appreciated hearing your twelve lectures on phonograph records, which one of Jehovah’s witnesses here made it possible for me to hear.

She and other friends meet here at our house to study the Tower each Wednesday night. As I am eighty-four years old, blind and partly deaf, it is a great joy to have them meet here. Each evening we spend together is wonderful, but on this particular evening, most wonderful of all, when she brought her portable phonograph along, she had me sit down at the table and told me to listen, as she had a great surprise for me.

When I heard your voice, so clear and distinct, I could hardly express the great thrill, the great joy I received. It was a glorious surprise for me, and the greatest evening we have ever spent. I am sure those records will be a great help in spreading the Kingdom message. My wife enjoyed them so much, and joins me in sending our love and best wishes to you and all the fellow workers everywhere.

The International Bible Students Association is publishing some of its books for the blind, and once per month issues The Watchtower for the blind. The Golden Age will be pleased to aid any of the blind who are interested in Bible study to avail themselves of the benefit of this literature.

The Golden Age of Business By Dr. Hugo B. Fach (Texas)

THE archbishop AVickmann of Magdeburg (1150-1192) gave the starting signal. In order to get a new revenue he ordered all coins to be withdrawn twice a year and to be recoined against a minting fee of about 30 percent yearly. Other clerical and secular princes, having at that time the right to mint coins for their districts, were only too -willing to imitate this new example of filling their chronically empty treasury. To simplify the process of reminting, these coins, of -which there existed only one kind, were made of thin silver plate, and called thin pennies, dinares. Small change was made by simply breaking them, for which purpose dividing lines -were indicated on them. In general, the recoining fee -was fixed at 20 to 25 percent per year. One of the princes is reported to have renewed the coins during a 32 years’ rule about 100 times, that is, three times a year. In Poland one ruler went even so far as to withdraw the coins four times a year, “at every fair” (market).

These thin plates (“Bracteats”) were the only money in Europe from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, report the historians.

Hoarding money thus became impossible. He who would have withheld his money would have lost it after a year. Every money owner was placed in the same position as the owner of wares. He wanted to get rid of his money as much as the owner of goods that also deteriorate with the time. Consequently, in order to avoid the minting fee when due, he tried to exchange his money for wares which he could make use of, or he loaned it to somebody, or paid debts or wages. Thus he escaped the depreciation of receiving only 12 for every 16 pennies he gave.

Interesting is the fact that debts were not affected by this depreciation. He who incurred debts of, say 100 pounds, had to pay this debt back in the agreed amount and value of at the day when it was granted. And by the semiannual or annual withdrawal of the coins the new coins suffered a depreciation from date of issue so that the depreciation got evenly distributed all over the year on all money owners. What cost 12 pennies at the beginning of the year, would cost 13 pennies three months later, 14 pennies after 6 months, 15 after 9 months, 16 after a year, when 16 pennies were turned in for 12 new pennies. In this way the purchasing power of money was maintained at the same level all the time and without money’s being hoarded.

The depreciation, putting money into circulation, although received with curses, became unexpected blessing which the people had never fully understood as to its origin.

Money had become the genuine medium of exchange which it had never been before or after. This money no more ruled, exploited, tyrannized, ruined. It only served the purpose of exchanging goods and services. Speedily it hurried from hand to hand. It was spent in order to receive, and by continued selling and buying, production and distribution went on without interruption. The exchange of goods and money was taking place on an even level. Both, money and wares, were standing under compulsion to enter the market, because of deterioration. ‘Without interruption, production and exchange could go on incessantly, to the limit of human abilities to produce and the intensity of human wants to be satisfied. Within a generation a change had taken place from poverty to wealth, from cultural darkness to light. All available money was without much delay turned into useful and life-easing and beautifying goods, and every producer knew that his products would be sold or that he could turn to the production of goods in demand.

The historians agree that that era was an age of plenty, that poverty was unknown, that general prosperity had spread to all who worked, that the workmen found as much work as they wanted to perform, that wages were unbelievably high, measured by their purchasing power, that the satisfaction of material wants gradually led to voluntarily working less, that the workers decided on a four-day week, that almost everything was paid in cash, that long indebtedness disappeared, that more and more quality goods were made, that the finest quality and most durable clothes were worn, that the homes were richly equipped with beautiful furniture and precious pottery, that peasants, considered the lowest class, were wearing gold or silver buttons, in double line mostly, on vest and coat, that shoes were worn with big silver buckles and ornaments, and that social differences between high and low, between nobleman and peasant, had almost been done away with.

Johannes Butzbach, one of the chroniclers of that period, records that the low people, the workers, had rarely less than four courses at the meals, that food was something negligible, that workers, boarding with their masters, as often was the case in those days, were legally protected by city or county ordinances as to quality, quantity and kind of food they were entitled to besides their wages.

The world, under such conditions, was big enough for a far larger population. No idea of birth control worried them, and the population increased rapidly. Hundreds of now important towns and cities, such as Berlin, Bern, Fribourg in Switzerland, Riga, etc., were founded, wide areas of the East settled, beautiful castles built at selected beauty spots of the landscape, and visions of those marvels of edifices realized at which we gaze today in awe and admiration. Simple trades were gradually turned into craftsmanship, finally developed into art, to satisfy the eternal craving for more beauty.

Some Greeks Not Honest

IT WAS a great surprise the other day to find out that there are some Greeks that are not honest. It is not so around Brooklyn. Around here they are all models, but it seems that in Athens they have developed a technique at getting the best of telephone, electric light and gas companies that has caused those benefactors of human society some anxiety. Telephone companies are beaten by the discovery by Athens natives that after they have telephoned they can get their money back by dialing “0”; electric light companies are worsted by running the meters backward by a little shift in the wiring; and the gas companies are mourning because the Athenians blow down their gas pipes and put the gas meters out of commission. Alas, Diogenes!

Catholic Hocus-pocus

IN ORDER that there may be no misunderstanding of the issues involved in the subject that follows, the following questions and answers are taken from a booklet entitled “A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, abridged from the Catechism prepared and enjoined by order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore”. Just why the doctrine should be labeled ‘‘Christian” I don't know, unless it is for the purpose of deceiving the ignorant, the unwary and the gullible, because most of the teachings in the booklet are contrary to the Word of God, making it void and of none effect. That, no doubt, is one of the reasons why no Scriptures are cited as authority for the various statements that are made.

The following questions and answers are taken from ‘‘Lesson Twenty-Second, on the Holy Eucharist”:

Q. What is the Holy Eucharist?

A. The Holy Eucharist is the Sacrament which contains the body and blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ under the appearances of bread and wine.

Q. Is Jesus Christ whole and entire both under the form of bread and under the form of wine?

A. Jesus Christ is whole and entire both under the form of bread and under the form of wine.

Q. Did anything remain of the bread and wine after their substance had been changed into the substance of the body and blood of our Lord?

A. After the substance of the bread and wine had been changed into the substance of the body and blood of our Lord there remained only the appearances of bread and wine.

Q. What do you mean by the appearances of bread and wine?

A. By the appearances of bread and wine I mean the figure, the color, the taste, and whatever appears to the senses.

Q. What is this change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of our Lord called?

A. This change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of our Lord is called Transubstantiation.

From “Lesson Twenty-Fourth, on the Sacrifice of the Mass”:

Q. When and where are the bread and wine changed into the body and blood of Christ?

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