Note and Comment by L. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Nov 26, 1903

Note and Comment

By L. A. S.

The report comes from the Philippines that the friars who were to be gotten rid of there by the purchase of their lands have recently reduced their price for the lands to $12,000,000. The United States government, which is to buy the lands, offers $8,000,000. There is talk in Rome that a compromise on $10,000,000 would be acceptable. The money for the lands will be used to advance the church of Rome in the Philippines.

Last year there were seven hundred and seventy-two suicides in the city of Greater New York. This is about twenty-two suicides for each one hundred thousand of the population. Ten years ago, in 1892, the proportion was only about eleven for each one hundred thousand of the people. The death rate from suicide in New York City has doubled in the last ten years. And New York City does not lead the cities in this respect. There are four other cities in the United States where the suicide rate is even greater. “These figures in themselves,” comments a New York journal, “are enough to awaken the thought that every possible means should be taken to stem the tide of self-destruction which is coming over our people, and which, instead of being lessened by prosperity, has actually increased at a time when the country generally has been in the midst of good times.”

The Washington Post thinks it is not strange that the “good government” administration in New York City was overthrown, in view of the fact that according to official figures in that city for the months of April, May, and June last, there were 35,844 arrests made, of which number 23,304 were cases of “drunks,” “disorderlies,” “suspicious persons,” violators of ordinances, and offenders against the excise laws; while of the 12,540 remaining cases, “not one rose above the dignity of policy, card and pool playing, rushing growlers on Sunday, or slapping somebody on the wrist. Every arrest in this whole array,” the Post continues, “represents a purely conventional misdemeanor. . . . Not a single murderer, homicide, burglar, or really important malefactor was overtaken. The reform government concentrated its energies on artificial things, and really important crimes received no attention whatever.” This statement throws light upon the practicability of securing righteousness in a community by civil government. Set the police to supervising the conduct of the people in matters pertaining to questions of morals and religion, such for example as the observance of the Sabbath, and if they attempt to carry out the task thus imposed upon them, they have little time or energy to give to anything else, and the most serious business of the department of government which they represent, that of the protection of life and property, is certain to be neglected. Experience has more than once demonstrated this to be true. It is not practicable for a civil government to do more through its courts and police than to protect the people in the enjoyments of their natural, inalienable rights. When it attempts to do more than this, it only succeeds in doing less.

There are beginning to be signs of the coming together of the church and organized labor. Recently we published a significant statement by a clergyman on this subject, and now we note the following words by a prominent labor leader. At a mass meeting in New Haven, Conn., of local union labor, November 8, President Thomas J. Shaffer, of the Amalgamated Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers’ Union, said: “I am hopeful of better things. In the church we hear of the good work in behalf of the laboring classes by Bishop Potter and Archbishop Ireland. In public life we have that money man, Hanna, and President Roosevelt. A union of interests between the nation, the church, and organized labor will accomplish much for the American people.” It is but a comparatively short time since organized labor declared that the non-union laborer must not be given employment, and what attitude a church union would take toward members of a church not in the union is not a question over which there need be much conjecture. A union of interests between organized labor, and the church will necessarily involve a union of churches as well as a union of working men. What then will be the lot of the individual who is outside of both organized labor and the church union, when a “union of interests” between organized labor, the church, and the nation, is effected? Will he not be counted out of the nation, too, and treated as a criminal? The thing is coming, as surely as the sure word of prophecy is to be fulfilled.

L. A. S.