An Arson Trust by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 4, 1913

An Arson Trust.

By Editor

A “firebug” in New York City who had been sent to Sing Sing is brought back to confess. He declares that firing buildings was a recreation for him; he enjoyed it; and tells how 300 fires were set, those fires netting $300,000. It involves not only the men who did the immediate crime, but twelve insurance adjusters and insurance agents, a sort of arson trust, men who were joined together to fire buildings for profit. We see but very little difference between this and the dynamiting organization. In fact, we are inclined to look upon the dynamiters as less criminal, because with them there was revenge. They feel that they are doing their work for the good of a cause, utterly unjustifiable as such things are. But the arson trust is doing it for purely selfish purposes. The destruction of property, and possibly of life, is involved in it, as in the dynamite conspiracy. Truly God’s Word, in referring to this time, foretold the moral condition of things,—“Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.”