Causes for Unrest

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 7, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 35.

Causes for Unrest

A LEADING financial organ published in New York City said recently: “The skilled artisans are persuaded that these profits [the profits on manufacturing war supplies] are very great, and this explains why so many of them are now making demands for largely increased wages.”

Another dispatch at about the same time told the story of a wealthy New York matron and society leader who was paying $2.00 a steak for her dog.

The profits on the manufacturing of war materials, it would seem from unquestioned sources, are indeed quite enormous, and the facts concerning them are published broadcast to the world. The fact is also published in regard to the New York woman paying $2.00 a steak for her dog. She may or may not have done this, but the story is told just the same; and one of the leaders of a proposed strike in New York, according to this same dispatch, is making a very strong point out of the wanton extravagance manifested in such expensive care of a mere dog. He is urging that a dog is not worthy of such attentions when human beings by the thousand are working beyond human endurance in order to maintain a mere existence.

No more certain are the workings of the law of gravitation than that such discussions are bound to produce dissatisfaction and deep-seated discontent. And who can make a reasonable logical argument that would meet the situation? And because the wealthy are more and more grasping, and because they are continually making wanton and profligate displays of their wealth, the man or the woman who is struggling for a bare existence is bound to be discontented.

The apostle, through the prophetic gift bestowed upon him by the divine Father, has informed us that selfish greed would make the last days perilous; and the hands of greed that are grasping the wealth of the world are creating perilous problems not merely in this nation but throughout the world. Arguments over the right or the wrong of what these people are doing will never be able to save us. There is but one hope, and that is the second coming of Christ.