Awake!, February 8, 1954
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EVOLUTIONISTS "DECEIVING, AND BEING DECEIVED"
Through false evidence the religion of evolution has deceived too many for too long with too little!
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Delinquency’s Roots Uncovered
Knowing what they are will help you to keep your child in the right way
What Causes Inflation?
The banks? the government? the people? or all three?
Christendom’s Pagan Beliefs
Do you accept doctrines that are false?
FEBRUARY 8, 1954 semimonthly
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CONTENTS
Evolutionists “Deceiving,
and Being Deceived*’
Dishonest and Dogmatic Deceivers
Cardiff Giant Sneers
Delinquency’s Roots Uncovered
When Delinquency Begins
What Causes Inflation?
The Government’s Responsibility
The Philippines Elects a President
Religion in Philippine Politics
The Beard’s Checkered History
Flint Tool of Piltdown Man Also Fake 23 “Mammoth” Meetings
Fame Slips from -Swan scorn be Man
“Your Word Is Truth”
Christendom’s Pagan Beliefs
Jehovah's Witnesses Preach
in All the Earth—Israel
Do You Know?
Watching the World
Volume XXXV
Brooklyn, N. Y., February 8, 1954
Number 3
Evolutionists "Deceiving, and Being Deceived”
DO YOU believe evolution? If so, why?
Do you know the arguments used to support it? Can you prove those claims with scientific facts? Rather, is not belief in evolution based on faith in the scientists that preach it? And on what do they base their evolutionary belief? Certainly not on decisive scientific facts- If you read their books carefully you will find them fat with speculations and assertions, but pathetically thin in facts and proofs. Unless supported by faith in scientists, the theory collapses. On the basis of the evidence offered the case for evolution could never stand in an impartial court. Yet it stands in the minds of millions of men on the sole basis of faith in scientists. Is that faith well founded? Is it scientifically supported?
Can science prove its claim that life just happened to start spontaneously some 1,500 million years ago? No, and even the speculated ways are too fantastically improbable to gain any acceptance by scientists generally. Is there a fossil record of life for the 1,500 million years they claim it has existed? No, for they claim fossils only for the past 500 million years. Then how do they know life existed 1,000 million years before that? They do not know. They have no evidence. When the fossil record does start, the first living forms -are revealed as very complex and highly developed, and in great variety, and with great gaps between the various forms. Then where is their evidence of a chain of life slowly evolving upward, link by link? They have no such evidence. The tremendous gaps between different kinds of life they bridge only with speculations and assertions, and not with scientific facts or proofs.
Their alibi is that the fossil record was laid down so long ago that it has been damaged and hence is now incomplete. If that is true, then the nearer the chain of life gets to man the more recent it is and the more connected it should become. But their reasoning must not be true, for the last gap, the one between ape and man, is the greatest of all. The record of this change from ape to man is supposedly the most recent and should be found in the accessible earth layers near the surface; but the search has been as fruitless as it has been frantic. Their desperation is seen in their hastily declaring numerous scraps of bones found to be the missing link long needed to connect ape to man. Instead of cool men of science skeptically weighing each bit of evidence, they smack more of drowning men clutching straws.
The Piltdown Deception
One of such “straws” was the Piltdown man. Over a period of years some bits o£ cranium bones, a jawbone with some teeth in it, and a canine tooth were found in a gravel pit at Piltdown, some forty-five miles south of London. Amateur scientist Charles Dawson took these fragments gathered from different spots to Sir Arthur Woodward, curator of the South Kensington Natural History Museum. Out of his imagination this scientist constructed the Piltdown man’s head. It was hailed as a missing link, one of the oldest men, the dawn man, and became world famous in evolutionary teaching. Launched toward fame by Dawson and Woodward in 1913, forty years later it crashed in disgrace as “a most elaborate and carefully prepared hoax.”
A paper issued November 21 by the British Museum and written by J. S. Weiner. K. P. Oakley and W, E. Le Gros Clark revealed that scientific tests showed that the jaw was no more than fifty years old, the cranium bones were fifty thousand years old, and hence not from the same creature. In fact, the jaw was from an ape and the cranium bones were human.* The teeth had been pared down to look somewhat human, and the jawbone chemically treated to look old. Scientists had always known the cranium looked human and the jaw apish, that they were not found together, that there was no proof they belonged together but every indication they did not; yet, with no grounds to do it and much grounds not to, the scientists forced the two into one skull and hailed it as a missing link that was part ape and part human. They were so right in its being both ape and human, so wrong in its being one skull and a missing link. But their starving theory was so hungry for proof that they would grab anything to feed it and sustain it To no avail; the Piltdown man proved indigestible.
Everyone is aware of the flair for large numbers that scientists have. Many are
* This appeared In the booklet Evolution vereug The A'gw WorZa, pages 10, 11, and released 1950; also Xwote/ April 8, 1951, page ID.
impressed by the fantastic figures; a minority knows how flimsy are the foundations for them. It is interesting to note how the figures have been juggled for the Piltdown man. Formerly its age was given as from a half million to one million years. Quite a broad range; it was usually given as 500,000 years. In 1949 Dr. K. P. Oakley announced to the British Association for the Advancement of Science that fluorine tests showed Piltdown man was not more than 10,000 years old. But that figure gained no popularity, as the scientists always favor using the fantastically high figures. They sound so much more impressive, and fit evolution’s needs far better. When Science News Letter, September 17, 1949, reported Oakley’s reduced figure it also said: “A long controversy over whether the skull and the jawbone were from the same individual seems to have been settled also, as they both have the same fluorine content. Some experts held that the skull was that of a relatively recent man and the jawbone of an ancient anthropoid.” So in 1949 they thought the fluorine tests settled it that both jaw and cranium bones were of the same age and from the same individual and were 10,000 years old. Now these same fluorine tests show the parts are not the same age, not from the same individual, not 10,000 years old, and that the “experts” that thought the skull recent and the jaw ancient had it just backward. The fluorine tests now show the cranium bones to be about 50,000 years old and the jawbone about 50 years old; the former they say is from an ancient man, the latter from a modern ape. If the deceptions were not so pathetic and dangerous, their ridiculousness would be laughable.
Yet in the face of all their folly the evolutionists preserve an outward front of confidence. As their manufactured evidence crumbles they stand in the midst of the ruins and pompously proclaim tneir evolution theory unshaken. Several of the reports disclosing the Piltdown hoax were prefaced by what seemed like a declaration of religious faith instead of a scientific pronouncement. Typical was the one that introduced the embarrassing news to readers of the November 28 Science News Letter: "The grand picture of man’s evolution from a common ancestral line with the apes and monkeys is unshaken by the exposure of the Piltdown man hoax in England.” They sound like the boy that whistles as he passes the graveyard after dark.
MAN
UAW
- MISSING LINK
A few scientists years ago said the Piltdown man was a farce, that the cranium was human and the jaw was from an ape, but they were silenced by the vast majority of evolutionists. But now it is different. It seems that most of the scientists always did suspect it was a fake, to read their statements issued since the hoax has been exposed. Most of them certainly kept their suspicions concealed as they dogmatically taught the Piltdown lie. Typical is the "now it can be told” tale from the American Museum of Natural History in New York city.For years they displayed Piltdown man as a missing link, and at this writing still do; yet we are now told that for the past twenty years those who work on this subject at the museum were almost unanimous that the Piltdownite was false. Then why exhibit it, you ask? The report answers: “They made no public issue of it for ethical reasons.” A form of ‘honor among evolutionists,’ with no concern for unethical deception of the museum's visitors. How many more of the museum’s evolution exhibits are suspected and disbelieved by the exhibiters, but remain on display to deceive the public “for ethical reasons”?
Museum for taking
Incidentally, the scientists that finally discovered the hoax relative to Piltdown man stressed how clever the deception was and hence no scientist should feel too bad about being taken in by it. Others took their cue from this and rushed to-the support of the evolutionists generally, absolving them of gullibility and redeclaring faith in the theory of evolution. In this vein the New York Times, November 24, salvaged from the' Piltdown wreckage a compliment for the scientists, saying editorially: "The scientists have proved that they are good detectives J* But a few days later a Reuters dispatch from London disclosed some plain-spoken ones were in no mood to whitewash the gullible scientists: “Members of Parliament have con.-isj>artly bogus. Six memBere~have put forward a motion in the House, of Com-mons ‘that this House has no confidence in the trustees—because of the tardiness of their discovery that the skull of the Piltdown man is partially a fake.’ ”
More Deceptive “Men*'
The Providence Sunday Journal, November 22, 1953, said concerning the Piltdown fragments: “The Encyclopedia Bri tannica, with reserve as to some discrepancies, has called the relics the second-most important known to science, Beaten only by the Javanese rmissing link* turned up in 1891.” Now that the number two "missing link” is debunked, how trustworthy is number one, known as the Java man? About as little as was Piltdown man.
wgre numerous bones in the xegiop JDubois and geologists . . , simply refuse to believe Ijrought these foiii’ fragrnents together.
*sa icT “werefrointhesame creature, and constituted a missing link between ape and man. Many scientists were skeptical,
As in the Piltdown case, the bits of bones called “Java man” were found at different times and in different places. In 1891 a man named Dubois foimfl^. molar tooth In a riverbank in Java/A month later)and. ^few feet jtway he found the top part of a skull, (gpout a 'year lanTfr and away he found a thigh bone, and a month after "that another tooth. Though Iheye, said there was no proof the fragments belonged to the same individual, and that the skull piece was gibbon or chimpanzee while the thigh bone was human. But the public in igeneraljs_not jold thesethings, about Java man; .he is used as proof of man’s con-necfion with primitive apes in the same dogmatic way as was the Piltdown man. When Java man is discredited the evolutionists can save face by saying they suspected it all the time, as they did in the Piltdown case; but,untiljoroed. toJki this ffle^w^hi^shtneir^spfcigps^and, teflch th^JavjLm^ jie.
Evolutionists expound on other supposed missing links connecting men and apes, such as Peking man. Neanderthal man, Heidelberg man and some South African ape-men. But drying up the flood of assertions and claims that these are stepping-stones from ape to man is the fiery fact that modern-type men have been found in deposits older than those containing these supposed links. If modern-type man existed before them they could hardly be modem man’s ancestors* They might be degraded men descending and degenerating, but hardly could they be evolving apes ascending to manhood. This fact is like gravel in the mouth of evolutionists and many blind themselves to it and few can bring themselves to mention it. Evolutionist Hooton says thisi when evidence does not fit the theory scientists are not above concealing it: “Heretical and non-conforming fossil men were banished to the limbo of dark inushum cupboards, forgotten or even destroyed.” After mentioning the modemtype men that are older than the famous missing links, evolutionist Sir Arthur Keith said: “The majority of anatomists in the authenticity of these discoveries because they run so contrary to our preconceptions." Life magazine, May 21, 1351, reported the find of some of these modemtype men and said: "These bones were amazingly different from those of the subhuman Neanderthal and Piltdown men who lived during this same period* Instead here were modem men, true Homo sapiens who . shared the earth with primitive creatures once thought to be far below them on the evolutionary tree/' Coder's magazine, August 11,1951, commenting on this, said: "This rocks the whole theory of evolution*"
Dishonest and Dogmatic Deceivers
The foregoing shows dishonesty in concealing evidence that is damaging to their theory, but a few more examples of dishonest or dogmatic deceptions will be briefly cited* Ernst Haeckel was a famous evolutionist that used diagrams to prove resemblance between human embryos and animal embryos, and also skeletal resemblances between men and animals* Once a Dr. Brass supplied Haeckel with accurate diagrams for use, but Haeckel doctored them before use to make them better support evolution* He was challenged on it, and confessed: "I begin at once with the contrite confession that a small number of my diagrams are really forgeries in Dr. Brass’ sense* Hundreds of the best zoologists lie under the same charge.”—Mimch-ener Allgemeine Zcitung, January 1909.
Evolutionists used to teach that animals acquired characteristics due to environment, which is true, and that they passed, these on to their offspring, which is now known to be untrue. In the 1920’s a Dr. Kammerer of Vienna claimed to have a specimen that acquired a characteristic from environment and passed the characteristic on to its ^offspring. Note the outcome of the case: “The climax of Kammerer’s case came recently when a certain American scientist journeyed to Vienna to investigate his claims first hand. Upon examination of one of the specimens which has, it was claimed, developed new Structures, the visitor found that Kammerer had injected India ink under the skin to produce a swelling. Upon being confronted with the fake, Kammerer picked up a revolver and shot himself.”—Back to Creationism, 1929.
Time magazine recently said that some evolutionists “jump to conclusions as quickly as a monkey jumps on a banana.” In their haste to find proof to bolster their baseless theory, evolutionists are inclined to speak first and think later. If not dishonest, many of them are dogmatic even before careful investigation, and they deceive others, in their dogmatism. In 1922 a tooth was found in Nebraska. It was the tooth e£ an ancient man *iM in viVn the theory of evolution, scientists said. In 1925 the American Museum of Natural History declared: “Every suggestion made by scientific skeptics was weighed and found wanting.” Alas! in 1928 the muSl'um admitted it was only a pig’s tooth; Yet books printed years afterward were still using the tooth as proof of man’s evolution. This is a very common practice? this continuing use of “proof” that has been completely discredited. It is not Wwafc", it is deceptive.
When frequent hasty claims are made pride prevents a later acknowledgment of error; many evolutionists will guard their reputations even at the expense of truth. Yet enough exposures develop to discredit them as authorities whose pronouncements should be gullibly swallowed, though many still gobble down everything the evolutionists dish out. Here are two examples that expose the fallacy of their fantastic age figures, to 'bulwark the example already given of this in the case of the Piltdown man. A fossilized shoe sole was discovered some years ago in rock classified as Triassic, approximately 10,000,000 years old! The little row of holes was around the edge where it was sewed, and even the twist of the thread could be measured. It was an embarrassingly early period for shoes to exist. The second instance is where scientists found a skeleton in the Mississippi valley in the United States., and.said.it was. 50,000 years old. Digging deeper, they found a flatboat. Someone remembered a flatboat had been wrecked and a man drowned during a flood, and the 50,000 was changed to 50.
A Deceptive Religion
Actually, evolution is a religion. Its clergy are the scientists; its laity are the gullible believers; its oracles are the evolutionary pronouncements swallowed in VfiivA faVCn anh vrnf) of proof. One scientist says at the opening of his book: “When a white-robed scientist, momentarily looking away from his microscope or his cyclotron, makes some pronouncement for the general public, he may not be understood, but at least he is certain to be believed. No one ever doubts what is said by a scientist. Statesmen, industrialists, ministers of religion, civic leaders, philosophers, all are questioned and criticized, but scientists— weNW. StveriVaVi, Wings xriio
stand at the very topmost pinnacle of popular prestige, for they have the monopoly of the formula ‘It has been scientifically proved ... * which appears to rule out all possibility of disagreement. Thus the world is divided into Scientists, who practice the art of infallibility, and non-scientiste, sometimes contemptuously called ‘laymen/ who are taken in by it.” —Science Is a Sacred Cow.
To show the blinding prejudice and religious faith infiltrating evolution the following is quoted: “Then why do the majority of the men of science accept evolution? It is their faith; they stoop to many means to convert others, and they view the Bible as their competitor. Sir Arthur Keith said: 'Evolution is unproved and un-provable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.’ Professor Watson of London University said: ‘Evolution itself is accepted by zoologists, not because it has been observed to occur or . . . can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.’ Dr. Caiman of the British Museum said scientists profess to accept it ‘as a convenient weapon with which to meet the fundamentalists.’ Professor Bateson stated: ‘Though we must hold to our faith in the evolution of species there is little evidence as to how it came about, and no clear proof that the process is continuing in any considerable degree at the present time.’ Professor D. H. Scott contended: ‘Yet evolution remains— we cannot get away from it, even if we hold it only as an act of faith, for there is no alternative.’ Sir J. W. Dawson, professor of geology, said that to believe was ‘an act of faith, not that kind which is based on testimony or evidence, however slight, but of that unreasoning kind which we usually stigmatize as mere credulity and superstition.’ And finally, Professor T. L. More, University of Cincinnati: ‘The more one studies palaeontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which it is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion.”’—"Let God Be True”, second edition, pages 85, 86.
It is wrong, however, for the evolutionists to say faith in the Bible is like faith in evolution, without foundation. Study of the Bible, not the creeds of the apostate religions of Christendom, discloses its wisdom and fulfilled prophecies that prove it true and give foundation for Bible faith. It also foretells the peril and deceptions of the last days, which in a general way embrace such ridiculers as evolutionists. Blinded by prejudice, desperate for proof, anxious evolutionists are driven to gullibility and become easy victims to deceptions. They believe their theory because they want to believe, not because of any proof. Deceived by themselves and by others, they then deceive millions, and make themselves a part of the sign of the last days: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be ... deceiving, and being deceived.” —2 Timothy 3:1, 2, 13.
Cardiff Giant Sneers
Cooperstown, N. Y., Nov. 21.—Folks visiting the Farmer's Museum here swore today that the Cardiff Giant sneered when word got around that Britain’s Piltdown Man is a phony. Back in 1869 the 10-foot, 4-inch Giant was dug up on Stubb Newell’s farm near Cardiff, N. Y. It wasn’t until months later, alter the Cardiff Giant was exhibited in many parts of the country, that Newell’s brother-in-law admitted the “ancient man" actually was born in a Chicago sculptor's garage—at the cost of a barrel of beer.—New York Sunday News, November 22, 1953.
3$ DELINQUENCY’S ROOTS UNCOVERED
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ONE can scarcely read a newspaper these days without an item on child crime or an announcement of some new committee appointed to investigate juvenile delinquency. Like a swollen, spreading sore delinquency grows. Law-enforcement agencies now fear the greatest outbreak of delinquency in all the annals of history. Already they say it has mushroomed into “the crisis stage in America.” The United States Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Mrs. Oveta Culp Hobby, disclosed that in the short period 1948-1952 the average nationwide growth was an apall-ing 29 per cent. Not only that but latest surveys show that the age of child criminals is steadily decreasing. And all the while their crimes grow more numerous and more deadly. Newest and fastest-growing crime trend today: the “pre-teen” delinquents between 5 and 12 years old. Delinquency grows at a faster rate than the child population! What are the roots for a crime growth as revolting and hideous as this? What is the remedy?
To dig to delinquency’s roots we must find out where this cancerous crime growth develops. Is it just in big cities? Far from it! No longer a phenomenon peculiar to city slums, juvenile crime has spread tn the suburbs and to the rural sections this spread been limited to certain classes? No! Delinquency’s sinister has taken root at all social levels. and poverty can no longer receive blame, for child crime also flourish---: -r: well-to-do levels. Said an architect TiiliirrT • r -for a Harrison, New York, con-struction firm (that-had a $40,000 house burned to the ground by youthful vandals): “I’m beginning to think that the wealthier a kid is,
the less rein his parents have on him.” He explained: “It’s the wealthier kids whd have raised the most trouble with new houses.” Is this child crime trend that afflicts all social classes just a national problem? No, it is international. But since the United States is regarded as one of the more civilized nations, its rate of delinquency will furnish us with information to help uncover the sinister roots that give life to world-wide child crime.
Investigators Try to Find Roots
The United States Children’s Bureau disclosed that in 1952 more than 1,000,000 children ran afoul of the law. With “hidden delinquents,” those who escape the eyes of the law, estimated at 30 per cent above those known, we begin to visualize the tremendous magnitude of child crime. No wonder the United States Senate authorized an investigation into child delinquency! Result? “Federal, state and local authorities told Senate investigators today that juvenile delinquency was too big a problem to be met by the local community alone.” (New York Times, November 20, 1953) Child crime too big for local law-enforcement agencies! That is delin-
quency! But in spite of its $44,000 appropriation the Senate investigators did not dig to the roots. Reason: the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare said that the roots were hard to find.
These deep-lying roots, who can uncover them? Hundreds of committees turn to the learned child psychiatrists to expose the roots. What do these brilliant scholars come up with? The roots? Let us see. At the impressive Senate investigation of delinquency a noted child psychiatrist and director of a big-city child guidance clinic concluded that too many people “go off the deep end” in blaming parents for delinquency. The New York Times quotes his exact words to the Senate investigators: “For my money, the parents of America are doing an excellent job.” What a classic example of the wisdom of the thinking of child psychiatrists!
When Delinquency Begins
Praising today’s children and parents as ‘fine and excellent’ when, at the same time, federal, state and local authorities declare that child delinquency is too big a problem for local communities to handle alone is no way to uncover delinquency’s roots. To do that, would it not be logical to ascertain when delinquency begins? A United States government study of a group of delinquents revealed: “Almost a half of the group were giving noticeable signs of becoming delinquents at the age of eight or younger. Delinquency begins early.” Another authority revealed: “A potentially dangerous delinquent can usually be discovered at about 8, his behavior becomes obviously delinquent at about 11.”—Newsweek, November 9, 1953.
That delinquency definitely does begin early is borne out by everyday reading of newspapers. At Anchorage, Alaska, a 9-year-old boy stabbed a 5-year-old girl to death; the body had more than 100 stab wounds. In New Orleans, capture of an 8-year-old led to discovery of a “dub” dedicated to Adolf Hitler; children “qualified” by throwing rocks at street lights. The F.B.I.’s observation on auto theft arrests: more than half were children under 17! Brooklyn police in July, 1953, broke up a threatened pitched battle between rival gangs of girl warriors fighting over affections of a boy. About 30 teen-age girls had formed battle lines when police intervened. Their weapons: switchblade knives, butcher knives, pen-knives and ice picks. Of eight girls arrested by police, one was 13, another 14, and two 15. Remarked the assistant district attorney: “We expect the girls to restrain the boys from gang fights. If these girls, the mothers of tomorrow, start gang-fighting themselves, what will the future hold?”
In Arkansas two young boys, aged 7 and 9, slipped out of bed and looted a gasoline station while the parents were out night-clubbing. In Utah, a 14-year-old gun moll, after exchanging shots with policemen, complained: “I hate cops; I wish I had got me one.” At Miami, Florida, police, following the trail of stolen hypodermic needles, flushed out four juvenile gang members. Smallest: a redheaded 12-year-old with head buried ostrichlike in the sand. Hauled out, he screamed: “Why didn’t you shoot? I’ve had cops shooting at me before.”
At White Plains, New York, a 9-year-old boy told police that he was the leader of a gang of juvenile thieves responsible for 26 burglaries. The 9-year-old leader opened safes by touch. At police headquarters, while detectives were busy, the youth opened the police safe. Utterly amazed and still disbelieving, the detectives locked the safe and defied the boy to open it again— which he did. The boy-leader’s accomplices in the burglaries: youths 8, 9 and 11 years old!
Do we need more evidence that delinquency begins early? Note this case history of a New York boy. Five years old: He stole a bicycle, though just given one by well-to-do parents. Six years old: He set fire to two cars. Seven years old: He broke into an office building and stole $30. Eight years old: He broke into neighbors’ homes seeking money; when he found none he set them afire. Nine years old: He assaulted a 3-year-old boy; beat to point of death a 14-year-old girl. Ten years old: Today no institution will touch him. He is “too tough to handle.” Thus delinquency begins early. Reported the director of Philadelphia’s Youth Study Center: 8- to 12-year-olds are now moving in on graver crimes (burglary, holdups, assaults) once the sole territory of youths 15 and up. One youth who had been robbing since the age of four told a policeman: "You don’t scare me, copper—you can’t turn me in. I’m not 7 yet!”
“Most Important Cause”
Armed with the fact that delinquency begins early we begin to question the “wisdom” of the psychiatrists and psychologists who tell us that today’s parents are doing excellent jobs, that the Bible is old-fashioned and that modern children should be allowed to develop according to their own inclinations. The child psychiatrists tell us in effect: ‘Train up a child in the way he wants to go.’ Does it make sense? Is it logical? What way does a child naturally want to go? Is it not the delinquent way? Almighty God inspired a man wiser than psychiatrists to write: "Folly is bound to the mind of a child; the rod of correction will remove it far from him.” So, then, how should a child be trained? God’s Word advises: "Train up a child in the way he should go; and even when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:15, 6, An Amer. Trans.) Note that the emphasis is on the way a child should go, not on the way he wants to go. And who is responsible to "train up” a child in the way he should go? None other than the parents!
Thus it is that in discussing the causes of child crime, the head of the F.B.I., J. Edgar Hoover, declared: “The most important cause is what should be called parental delinquency.” (New York Herald Tribune, March 9, 1952) Uncovered is one of the main roots of delinquency’s malignant growth—parental delinquency! Do not children leam quickest by imitating someone? Parents are the logical ones to imitate. And yet these adults are figuring in the greatest moral breakdown in all history. Can we expect their tots and toddlers to be unaffected? The adults need discipline themselves. No wonder they are delinquent in disciplining their children! Then the parents that want to discipline their children are advised by the psychiatrists to spare the rod. As a result the trend is “pre-teen” gangsters! How foolish, then, to reject the Bible as old-fashioned when it is the book that diagnoses the cause of delinquency! Since God’s Word assures us that delinquency or folly is the outcome of a child’s unrestrained actions, it recommends the "rod of correction.”
Is this rod literal? Modern educators maintain that the rod is not literal. Yet the Bible is clear: “Withhold not correction from the child; for if thou beat him with the rod, he will not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from Sheol.” (Proverbs 23:13,14, Am. Stan. Ver.) To say that the rod is not literal is to water down the force of this scripture. Obviously what the Bible writer basically meant was a literal rod! This administration of pain is not going to kill the child. Rather, it will drive folly from the child’s mind. A child by its folly brings pain to the parents mentally. To prevent childish folly and parental pain the child must suffer pain, for its training and future welfare. Parents, therefore, are Scrip-turally admonished to .take a literal rod and administer pain to correct a child. But the rod by itself is not enough. There must be the rod and correction. That is,/ the parent must give his child, together with the administration of pain, some explanation as to why he is being disciplined.
The rod need not invariably.be a literal one. Correction is often given effectively by word of mouth, the lips being used with rodlike effect. Rodlike discipline can also be administered by depriving a child of some cherished privilege, specially something that has a causal connection with the offense committed. Thus the parents that do not abdicate their parental authority, that are not afraid to stand up to an angry and often contemptuous youngster and that discipline their children with practical wisdom in a loving way are striking at the very roots of juvenile delinquency.
Four Sinister Roots
Committees will continue to come up with what they believe to be the causes of child crime, such as crime-comic books, "sexy” literature, entertainment glorifying crime, idleness, bad associations and inefficient courts. But these are not the roots, for all these factors can be reasonably controlled by the parents. They are the ones responsible for knowing with whom their children associate. They are the ones responsible for supervising their children’s time and activities. They are the ones responsible for judiciously selecting their children’s reading matter and entertainment. When the courts get a child, whether they be efficient or not, delinquency has already taken root: parental training has been neglected.
So let the child psychiatrists boast about the wisdom of their methods. The fact remains that their modern methods have backfired. They now have delinquency so great that local authorities cannot handle it alone. For being “modern” this world now must spend thousands of dollars on committees to Investigate child crime, and while they feebly search for the roots, delinquency increases. How they could save time and money by accepting counsel from the Bible, the book that goes right to the roots of delinquency! But this they reject. Is this wisdom? It is really foolishness. Their wisdom Is foolishness to God. “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” “They have rejected the word of Jehovah; and what manner of wisdom is in them?”—1 Corinthians 3:19, New World Trans.; Jeremiah 8:9, Am. Stan. Ver.
The Bible uncovers delinquency’s roots. There are four; (1) parental delinquency, or a failure of parents to discipline their children and train them up in the way they should go; (2) a modem age that refuses to live by that standard of true wisdom, the Bible; (3) responsible citizens and leaders of the world are delinquents themselves; and (4) the superhuman ruler of this world is also a delinquent! Yes, the Bible clearly shows that the “god of this world” is Satan the Devil! (2 Corinthians 4:4) But the sign of his world’s “last days” is now visible: “In the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, self-assuming, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, without gratitude, with no loving-kindnessj having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control.” —2 Timothy 3:1-3, New World Trans.
What an apt description of the moral breakdown afflicting the modem age! Does it mean anything to you? It should. Keep awake then by following the counsel of God’s Word and by living for the time, now so near, when all delinquents will be forever uprooted by God at Armageddon.
down. Its value is not, as many people like
to think, fixed or unaltering. Its value changes. Since one of money’s purposes is the storing up of purchasing power for the future, it would seem that money should be something definite and constant, like a pound or gallon, but it is not. There is no certainty as to what a given amount of money will buy at any given future time.
Money, the thing you get for your daily labors and use to buy the things you need for your daily life, can be stored up to protect against unforeseen emergencies, but as the two previous articles in this series have shown, it cannot be really trusted as being firm or secure. Actually, the fluctuation of money's value within just the past century has made thousands destitute and has impoverished millions. How so?
The amount of money in existence is not stable. It changes. When its supply is increased, at first almost everyone is pleased, but if this goes too far there is actually a danger of there being too much money. Victor S. Clark, consultant in economics at the U. S. Library of Congress,
k, What Is Money?
page 74: "If the supply of money passes the saturation point, it ceases to act normally. It resembles water that in proper quantities fertilizes fields, turns the wheels of factories, and transports products, but in case of a flood bursts dams, reservoirs, levees, sweeps away canals and ditches. of thrift and labor.”
The point is that if more money becomes available than there arc things for people to buy, the result will merely be that prices will go up, and the extra money you have will enable you to buy no more things than when you had less money but prices were lower.
Obviously money’s value depends on what it will buy. If it buys more, its value has increased; if it buys less, its value has diminished. The changes in money's value are. therefore, registered in the genera, price level. Economists have long been concerned with the Instability of the value of almost every form of money that has ever been used. One writer called the monetary policy “simply a universal means of juggling with the standards of weight and measurement.” Changing the amount of money it takes to buy a pound of coal or pint of beer, he says, is the same as changing the weight of the pound or the amount of liquid in the pint.”
Yet the amount of money it takes to buy various things does continue to change. It changes when the quantity of money is increased, cither by the banks, the government or the counterfeiter. If there is more the people to buy, the people will be more anxious to buy, and manufacturers and
washes the fertile soil from farms, and
* The Rokr of Mowy, by Frederick Soddy, pege 31
storekeepers can raise prices and still move their stocks. Inflation is not high prices, but it is the increase in the amount of money people have to spend, without a corresponding increase in the things they can buy. This produces high prices, but the increasing prices are the symptom, not the disease.
Though government policies are frequently involved, inflation can be caused in many ways: a war, the end of a war, a series of strikes, severe government spending, an increase in bank loans, or just everyone spending his money quicker.
The Banks Can Cause It
The banks can increase the amount of money in circulation, and thereby prompt inflation. The increase of 228 per cent in the volume of money (including bank credit) in the United States between 1939 and 1950 was not through the government’s producing more bills and coins, but through the “creation” of billions of dollars of additional bank deposits.1
The way banks can do this was explained in “Banks—a Sound Depository?” the previous article in this series. Briefly, it is based on the fact that for every dollar a bank actually has, it can loan out five or more dollars, either as bank notes (paper money issued by banks) or in a bheck-ing account, keeping its original dollar for the few who will demand actual money in payment.! Since loans are their chief money earners, the banks naturally try to increase these when they can, and by inducing customers to borrow they thus have some power to start an expansion of credit. When this newly loaned “bank money” is spent, it raises prices. This means greater profits, conditions favorable for enterprise. Manufacturers and dealers want loans to expand their businesses. There is a greater borrowing of money to finance this expansion. Production is stimulated, trade is swollen. Everyone has more money to spend and prices continue to rise. But the borrowing stays ahead of the production of new items to buy, and very subtly a severe inflation may have gotten under way.
Thus it is that the Encyclopaedia Britannica (volume 15, page 694) warns: “In a community with a highly developed banking system what requires to be considered is, not so much an addition to the supply of money, as an addition to the supply of bank credit.”
While banks must now maintain an adequate reserve and “sound” practices, a nation’s government-appointed Central Bank (in the United States the Federal Reserve Banks) exercises control over that nation’s money and can cause its value to go up or down. One of its duties is to see that bank-produced inflations, as described above, do not occur. Professor W. A. L. Coulbom of Oglethorpe University says in A Discussion of Money, page 162: “A Central Bank is unlikely deliberately to engineer inflation, except in time of war, and then it will be doing only what the Government orders. . . . its duty is to control the monetary system to the best advantage of the whole country.” Nevertheless, its ability to do this depends on its judgment, and on page 163 he points out that the Central Bank can expand credit and later contract it. If an expanded credit is contracted severely, “would-be borrowers are therefore unable to do the business they intended .. . prices fall . . . bankruptcy to some . . . new loans cannot be got: there is a crisis, perhaps hopeless panic: everyone trying to sell, no. one wanting to buy; prices falling headlong; even the oldest and soundest firms suspected of being insolvent; if there are many small banks [as there are in many lands] , numbers of them will collapse. But if the Member Banks are few and wealthy, like the British ones, even a serious crisis is unlikely to cause a run on them.”
AWAKE!
In 1937 some accused the U. S. Federal Reserve board of being responsible for that year’s fair-sized depression. “The Board came to the sad conclusion,” said Kemmerer, “that it was easier to start a depression than to reverse one once it had begun.”2 Thus it is possible for a nation’s banking system, if only through misjudgment, to cause inflation, a depression or perhaps even a panic.
The Government’s
Responsibility
Governments in need of ready cash during wartime or in other emergencies can also have a big hand in inflation. “The exigency of war has been the commonest cause of inflationary action by the State,” said
Coulborn, on page 160 of A Discussion of Money. During the American Revolution so much paper money was issued by the Continental Congress that by January, 1781, one hundred dollars in Continental paper money was worth only one dollar in silver. A historian of the time said this currency, “like an aged man, expiring by the decays of nature without a sigh or groan, . . . gently fell asleep in the hands of its last possessors.” The collapse of this money has been memorialized in the popular American expression: “Not worth a continental.”
“Inflation,” said Clark, on page 77 of What Is Money? “is the last recourse of a government in financial distress.” During the distress of the Civil War the U. S. government printed “greenbacks” to such an extent that within two years the paper dollar lost almost two thirds of its value. It was not until after the war when confidence was restored in the government that greenbacks regained their value.
Although governments rarely resort to literal “printing press” money today, China did so since 1934, with disastrous results, and other governments still resort to a type of borrowing that has similar dangers.
When, during World War II, U. S. banks bought Treasury bonds to finance the war, they did not pay for the bonds outright. They simply created an account (which banks call a “deposit”) granting the government the right to draw a certain amount in checks. These cheeks could be spent just as if they were money, and the receivers of the checks deposited them in their own banks. Thus, the imaginary supply of nonexistent money was increased. To the banks that received the checks, they were money, and on the principle by which banks make loans they could loan out several dollars more for every $1 the government thus borrowed.
Confusing? It was to columnist Frederick C. Othman, whose column in the New
York World Telegram, December 3, 1949,
FEBRUARY 8, 1951,
said: “The more [the government] spends which it hasn’t got, the more there is for the rest of us to spend. That’s inflation and, white it doesn’t make sense to me . . . that’s the way bank credit works.”
When a government spends more than its income, it has three choices: raise taxes, borrow, print money. Printing money or borrowing from banks will prompt inflation, but the political factor is against raising taxes. Taxation is blamed on the government, while inflation’s blame is often cast on the storekeepers who raise their prices because of the money’s decreasing value.
Governmental officials hold the reins over the two extremes of inflation and recession. They can argue for higher or lower money, as certain U. S, Congressmen did in Washington last June 2, and they can take action to raise or lower it. Yet if their knowledge is faulty and their decision is wrong, the value of your savings can continue to wither away, as they have done in recent years throughout most of the world. But are not these men economic experts? To listen to each political side in almost every nation, it sounds as though they think the other side would ruin the country. Too often, as the next article in this series will show in detail, they have almost done so.
Velocity of Circulation
The speed with which money circulates (the “velocity” of circulation) likewise affects its value. How many times the same piece of money is used to buy something is equally as important as how much money there is. For example, suppose each piece of money in a certain locality is used once each week, each person who receives it keeping it a week before spending it. Now, if suddenly each piece of money is spent twice a week, much more money will pass through each person’s hands. With actually no more money added to circulation, the storekeepers will get the same pieces of money twice as often, and their total receipts will be twice as great as when the same amount of money was circulating slower. Therefore, an increase in velocity will have the same effect on prices as an increase in the quantity of money. The faster the supply of money moves, the higher prices will rise.
So, although modern inflations have been pumped into existence through the printing of extra paper money, or the increase of bank loans, yet even if a monetary system consisted entirely of gold pieces, inflation could occur. If people had been saving their money for some time, slowing down its velocity, "and they were suddenly prompted to spend this hoarded money, the velocity of circulation would increase. There would be a greater demand for the things for sale in the stores, and prices would rise.
Thus, many factors come into play to keep the value of your hard-earned cash unstable, but the causes of Inflation are basically three: political juggling for votes, the banks’ anxiety to make additional loans, and the speed with which the available money is spent. The first two increase the quantity of money in existence, the third the amount of work it does. All three produce inflation. The demand for goods increases, and the value of all savings diminishes in proportion to the rise in prices. The change may be a small one, or it may be great. It may even reach the runaway proportions described by one writer in this manner: “All savings have been destroyed. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred are penniless. A few speculators have made their fortunes; bankers, by and large, have managed to survive; but the great mass of the population have nothing left but their ability to start life over again. And if they
are too old for that, God help them?’
Amazingly, that picture is not overdrawn. The disaster of runaway inflation can be, and has, even within the last decade, been just as serious as that! It has happened time and time again; yet the people want either to forget that it happens, or to try to convince themselves that this time it will be different. But there is little reason to think that it will. The amazing extent of such inflations, particularly since World War I, will be the subject of “Why Not to Trust in Mammon” in Awake’s! next issue.
iiTyTE WILL win with the people.” So W said presidential candidate Ramon
a blacksmith, a guerrilla leader during the
Magsaysay in his election day message to the people of the Philippine Republic. What the people expected to win, according to Mr. Magsaysay, was not just an election. He expected them to win freedom. “The people will decide whether they and their children will walk as free men, or will crawl as slaves. The substance of freedom is the right to choose one’s own government. Against the mighty will and determination of twenty million Filipinos, a handful of madly ambitious men will try to violate and subvert this right. I expect the saboteurs to fail, and the people’s will to prevail.”
With missionary zeal Mr. Magsaysay stumped the Philippines from end to end. *‘Clean out the grafters!” was his campaign cry. No polished product of high society was this crusader for clean and honest government. He was a man of the people, a man wbo was unabashed when shaking the grubby hands of the rice farmers, the greasy hands of the mechanics or the gnarled hands of those “toilers of the sea,” the humble Filipino fishermen. The son of
Japan es e occupation and a renowned Huk fighter, he knew his way around among the common people, whose votes could put him in the president’s palace for four years. So off he went to visit them, working like a human experiment in perpetual motion. Thousands of people packed the town squares to greet him. But the lonely barrios were not forgotten either. Magsaysay found his way into those too, riding his sound truck, or even walking when compelled to do so. No other political aspirant had ever covered so much territory.
When General Carlos P. Romulo abandoned his attempt to run for the presidency and merged his newly formed Democratic party with the Nacionalista party, Magsaysay’s campaign received a considerable boost and President Quirino’s hope to face a divided opposition was shattered. The Nacionalista standard bearer made the most of this advantage and soon built up a tremendous amount of public opinion in his favor.
It was not only the common people that took a strong liking to the Nacionalista
candidate. His popularity was well established among the young businessmen of the islands, often referred to as “the Jaycee crowd.” Most of these are members of the Junior Chamber of Commerce who admired the young presidential candidate for his personal honesty, relentless industry and administrative ability* His remarkable record as secretary of national defense under the Liberal Party government was still fresh in their minds. They wanted a change in the person occupying the president’s office,
American Interests
It was quite obvious that the Filipinos were not the only ones who took a fancy to Magsaysay. Americans in the islands felt the same way about him and did little to conceal their favor. Loud cries of “American intervention” coming from President Quirino and his Liberal Party colleagues did not seem to disturb the American community in the least. And Mr, Magsaysay became even more vocal in asserting his friendship for the Americans. Their military advisers had been his closest friends and constant companions in the days when he was fighting the Huks as secretary of national defense* He was not going to turn his back on the Americans. He was still glad to have their friendship and advice* In the midst of all these windy political blasts, the United States ambassador to the Philippines maintained a precise and proper position of neutrality, refusing to be prodded into making any public statement that would involve him in the current local controversy*
It cannot be denied that the Americans have a stake in the Philippine Islands. They once governed this country. Then they gave independence to the Philippines on July 4, 1946. They fought side by side with the Filipinos against the Japanese in Bataan and on Corregidor* They suffered
IS
with them in the horrible “Death March” of Bataan and died with them in the filthy prison camps. After the war the American government poured $2,000,000,000 into the Philippines in the form of grants to rebuild the country’s economy. Various agencies were set up to aid in the rehabilitation of the islands, the latest being the Foreign Operations Administration (FOA). The Americans are vitally interested in seeing that this country’remains a “show window of democracy” in the Far East*
It is precisely this interest in the survival of democracy in the Philippines that got the people so worked up over the last elections. This is the reason why Mr. Magsaysay made the statement that “we will win with the people.” The people wanted the assurance that democracy still existed in the Philippines* They remembered too well the 1949 presidential elections, when it was reported that even the birds and the bees voted and flowers were registered as voters under their botanical names. Fraud, terrorism and murder sabotaged the elections, frustrated the people’s will and put in power what Mr. Magsaysay called “a handful of madly ambitious men.”
Everybody wondered if it was going to happen again. Grim predictions were made of the possible mass arrest of the Naciona-lista Party candidates, of the possible assassination of Magsaysay, of wholesale election frauds and possible revolution* The political pot was boiling hot, and what was popping out with each lift of the lid was well described by Compton Pakenham, Newsweek's Tokyo Bureau Chief, as “violent, vicious, poisonous,”
President Quirino was the standard bearer for the Liberal party* An old-school politician, he is as polished and eloquent as a Spanish aristocrat. His political party administration has repeatedly been under fire of charges of corruption. Surplus war property scandals, immigration quota rackets. Import Control Office manipulation by 10 percenters, illegal beer sales by a former senator and wholesale terrorism by political bosses with private armies called "special police” have plagued Quirino and his party. Deeper and deeper the party machine became embedded in swampy wastes of corruption. In a last desperate attempt to get it pulled out of the mud Quirino raised the cry of "American intervention.” The people must close ranks around Quirino and fight off this alleged threat to national sovereignty. But the people rallied around Magsaysay instead and left the Qulfmo party to sadly salvage what it could from its shattered election hopes. Magsaysay won by a landslide vote.
At the Polls
Election day was not nearly as exciting as anticipated* In fact, for the Philippines, it was rather quiet. Foreign correspondents fanned out through the country with particular interest in the trouble spots. Negros Occidental and Cavite were sure to provide plenty of uproar, so it was said. But the province of Cavite stole the show for real live action.
On November 6 Governor Camerino had addressed a crowd on the campus of the Cavite city high school. Surrounding the crowd were the governor’s "special police,” armed with air-cooled machine guns, carbines, rifles and sidearms. The governor waxed eloquent and indignant against his Nacionalista opponent, Senator Montano. Waving in each hand an automatic carbine, the governor shouted a warning to those who were planning to leave their homes on election day to vote the Nacionalista ticket not to leave home or they would get hurt.
But it was four Liberal Party men who had the life blasted out of them about noon on November 10, election day. Their bullet-ridden bodies in the streets of Bacoor, Cavite, were a shocking reminder that political maturity has not been reached, at least in Cavite, So with the young man who stopped several bullets accidentally when he was caught in the gun fire that ripped through his house and the Nacionalista Party leader of Bacoor who was taken by force from his home to be liquidated nearby in retaliation for the four men who had died earlier in the day*
These incidents were symbols of democracy gone mad* Others died too, by gun fire and cold steel, but the casualties were far less than expected. The Philippine Constabulary and army troops guarding the polling places and a special rapid system of communication seemed to scare the advocates of fraud and terrorism. The popular will seemed to have been expressed and the people had won for themselves their democracy and their election. Magsaysay and his party had won with the people.
Religion in Philippine Politics
After the voting was over and victory for Magsaysay and his coalition party was assured, people began to take stock of the outstanding events of the campaign. Prominently mixed up in the whole affair was the Roman Catholic Church, the largest religious body in the country. A pastoral letter of September 12, 1953, signed by its archbishops and bishops in the Philippines, disclaimed any favoritism for one political party over another. This position was emphasized again by Archbishop Rufino Santos in a radio broadcast, his long statement being published in the Manila Times the day before the election. It is one thing for archbishops to issue public statements that the church favors no political party* It is another thing for the priests to pay attention to the statements. Evidently a lot of priests paid no attention to the supposed political neutrality of the church*
…