“WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?”
The old burden of Dumah is still on. The calls still come from a turbulent world, “Watchman, what of the night?” The outlook, however smooth the story of oily-tongued politicians, is dark. The much-vaunted prosperity is like a burst of lurid sunshine heralding the coming of the tempest of night. Thoughtful minds are looking beyond the immediate present to the present’s fruitage. Many of them have seen the seed-sowing in part. They are noting the ripening. They tremble for the baleful harvest which lies just ahead. The present prosperity is not real prosperity. (We are not discussing this from a political view point. As between the great political parties we see little difference.) When the prosperity is largely with the rich, the great corporations, the trusts, when the common people have to face life in conditions where the cost of living is increasing more rapidly than rates of wages, where discontent increasingly grows from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf, surely it is not a “prosperity” of which to be proud. It presents a foundation too insecure for public confidence to build upon. Strikes are prevalent. The consciousness that they are not sharing in the “prosperity” of inflated values make laboring men restless and turbulent. Too, they have tasted of power in some quarters, and it is teaching them their strength, whether they have wisdom to use its power aright or not. It is almost as certain as can be that they will be ruled by demagogues as unscrupulous—if less open—as the trust magnate. In the East an awful calamity has fallen. Thousands of mills, factories, shops, and business places are dependent upon anthracite coal. Many thousands of families have houses, furnaces, stoves, fitted for its use alone. They have been hoping that the great coal strike would end in time to obtain their winter supply. But they are doomed to disappointment. If the strike were settled to-day, coal could not be supplied the needy in time. Some of the mines are filled with water; in some the timbers are down; 30,000 of the miners on strike have left the anthracite fields for the bituminous region or elsewhere. Bituminous coal can not be obtained even at the price of $7.50 a ton, instead of $2.50 a ton as when the strike began. Even now schools are closing because of a lack of fuel, and manufactories are shutting down. What it will be one month, two months, three months from now, no one can tell. The situation is awful, and many of the worst sufferers will be those having nothing to do with the strike. The mine-owners are also the railway owners. They are violators, the Springfield Republican points out, of the federal law in combining to regulate prices, of the interstate commerce law in charging unreasonable prices for the carriage of coal, and are violating the State law in adding to the business of common carrier that of coal mining. Yet neither the Federal nor the State government has instituted proceedings against the coal trust. Both governments seem to be paralyzed before the power of wealth and influence which the coal trust sways. Such conditions will inevitably lead to paternalism in government, a calamity to be much deplored. But when a few men say that the mines of God-given fuel “are ours, to do with as we see fit,” the people are ready to adopt any expedient which seems to offer relief. Think of a man, owning the only fresh water spring or well in a large section of country, shutting off all access to it by the people dying of thirst, and saying, “The spring is mine to do with as I see best.” Would not the people be justified in seizing the water source and distributing it among the needy? No one could deny it for a moment. Would not the same principle apply to the coal supply? The financial outlook is far from assuring. Vast sums are invested in speculative enterprises. The Secretary of the Treasury has taken certain steps (“illegal” it is directly charged) to release some of the gold held and accumulating in the United States treasury. But this can give only temporary relief; and many business men look to the near future with foreboding. They will be happily disappointed if a great financial collapse does not sweep the country in which thousands will be ruined and crushed. The great religious world with the exception of the Roman Catholic Church, is in confusion. That church is quietly plodding on her way, planning for nothing less than the conquest of America. Protestantism is at sea. It has measurably cut loose from the Bible, regarding it in the light of tradition, has partially embraced the hypotheses of science; and the Protestant vane is veering according to the wind between tradition and science, and resting nowhere. Never was there a greater time of peril. Scoff at it as you will, infidels, skeptics, half-hearted believers, it is a time of peril, and the only safe guide out of it is the “more sure word of prophecy,” which shines as a light in a dark place till the day dawn. 2 Peter 1:19. God has foretold these days and these things. He alone can lead the way to safety.