A Radical Statement by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 30, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 18.

A Radical Statement

By Editor

(From the Rochester Evening Times of February 15, 1912)

JUDGE E. H. GARY is chairman of the board of the United States Steel Corporation, a position more important than that of President. He is the directing head of this greatest corporation in the world. In a recent speech, Judge Gary made the following remarkable declaration:

Unless capitalists, corporations, rich men, powerful men themselves, take a leading part in trying to improve the conditions of humanity, great changes will come, and they will come mighty quickly, and the mob will bring them.

Judge Gary's statement was part of a speech delivered to the New York Lehigh Club. Judge Gary made it very plain that he thought the people generally are "evincing a readiness to take things into their own hands." He also stated that the "spirit of unrest" was not confined to the United States, but was world-wide.

"Things are being said," he declared, "very similar to things said just before the French Revolution. I tell you that the spark may yet make a flame, and that soon. I have an especial reason for saying this, a reason that affects you and me. Men of great power and influence in the affairs of the country, have all of us done the fair thing? It is imperative that something be done to improve the condition of mankind. Can not we ourselves do something to improve that condition? I say that it is not only good morals, but good policy likewise, to improve those conditions. I appeal to you all in your dealings with men under you to do the square thing."

Had these statements been made by some radical agitator, a cry of indignation would have gone up from certain quarters, that he was trying to array class against class. But Judge Gary certainly is not trying to do anything of that sort. Neither would he make such radical statements lightly. There can be no question that he is impressed with the seriousness of the situation, and that he intended to sound a warning.

A tornado swept over portions of New York and New Jersey on April 7. One person at least is known to have been killed, and over one hundred are reported to have been injured by the twisting storm. Thirty and forty years ago, when these tornadoes first began to make their appearance on the plains of Kansas, Nebraska, and elsewhere in the Middle West, we were told in all seriousness that such storms had always swept those prairies, but there was no one there to report them, and consequently nothing was known about them. It was further stated that they could come only in the intensely hot weather of the summer. We were all assured that they would never appear in the Atlantic country, unless it might be on the rarest occasions, and then only in the very hottest of the summer weather, when intensely heated centers would set these whirlers in motion. But these human theories are not in harmony with the facts. Each year shows an increasing number of these and other storms, and they are even coming in the winter and early spring. The storms that mark the mighty commotions in nature, the war-mad nations, the turbulent conditions of society, the vices and the injustice that are cursing the land, are all pointed out in God's Word as things that are to characterize very strikingly the last generation that shall live on this earth before the second coming of Christ. Watch the events as they pass, and study the prophecies of the Word of God, and see how accurately they come together.

Roman Catholics and Socialists.—In an editorial on the defeat of Socialists in Milwaukee, the Western Watchman (Roman Catholic) says:

Catholics are always found on the side of law and order, and they will have none of Socialism. In Westphalia they abandoned their strike when they saw that Socialists were directing it. In Cologne it was thought that a break would be made in the Catholic ranks at the last Reichstag election. Even the priests were apprehensive. But the vote for the Center was larger than ever before, and Cologne was never more antisocialistic.

But the editor finds a dead fly in the ointment of his law and order Catholics; he is assured that the Catholic "Poles almost unanimously voted the Socialist ticket." And so the editor says: "We are sorry for the Poles. It is a shame that their clergy have them not under better control."

He then advises young priests to let the subject of Socialism alone, and leave its discussion "to old and wise heads," and continues: "It is idle to discuss the question whether a Catholic can be a Socialist; it is enough to say whether he can or not, he should not be." And the editor declares: "There will never be another Socialist administration in Milwaukee. The United States Congress has seen its last Socialist member. They will soon be as thoroly discredited as the Know-nothings and Knights of Labor. The salmon of Columbia River die after their first spawn—Socialists disappear after their first victory."

But our Catholic friends must not be too sure. The two will unite after a while.

The University of California regents are predicting a deficit. They are providing for the education of 5,724 students of the university, a registration exceeded by only one other American university, Columbia. While Columbia has an income of over three millions a year, the University of California income is estimated for the next year at $1,710,695, which must provide for building operations, Lick Observatory, the university farm at Davis, farmers' institutes, and the varied agricultural and scientific work of the university, as well as for the teaching of the thousands of students at Berkeley. It hopes for benefactions of friends.

The Krupp steel works at Essen, Germany, have recently invented steel plates for safes and vaults, of such extraordinary hardness that they are practically drill proof, even to the oxy-acetylene method. It took about four hundred pounds of compressed oxygen and nearly that amount of acetylene gas and over eight hours of time to bore a hole three inches in diameter through a plate one and one half inches thick.

The Bible and Sunday Laws

THE Bible is the Protestant standard of faith and practise. In that Book the Sabbath question is neither obscure nor difficult. The fourth commandment stands in the heart of the Decalogue, and bears the signature of Jehovah as no other one of the commandments does. Christ's teachings and example concerning the Sabbath are plain and unequivocal. They constitute His commandments on the Sabbath question, and He declares that those who love Him will keep His commandments.

Men will not keep the Sabbath, nor any other day as the Sabbath, unless moved by love and guided by conscience. There was never any reason for interference on the part of the civil law, and the results of such interference are increasingly evil. Put the issue on the basis of the Bible, and let the behests of conscience direct, and Sunday laws will die a natural death. Wiser legislation ought to hasten their removal. Let us have protected rights to rest, and not enforced idleness on a specific day, under the false claim that not to remain idle on a particular period of twenty-four hours is a crime. This the evolution of Sunday law now demands.—A. H. Lewis, D.D., LL.D.