p. 10 | Not an Optimistic View by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 28, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 47.

Not an Optimistic View

By Editor

THE World’s Work is putting forth splendid, strong effort to help its readers and to help the country. It made certain inquiries of representative men a few months ago regarding conditions in the world, and the remedies for these conditions. It asked several questions to this effect:

First, what effect did the congressional investigations into corporations and their business have on the business and financial outlook and situation?

What effect tariff discussions are having.

What effect the Supreme Court decisions on the oil and tobacco cases, and the effect on business of the anti-trust law.

Is credit too much concentrated in the great financial centers, to the detriment of legitimate business men and business uses?

But the greatest and strongest question of all was: “What would you suggest as the best help now toward permanent, stable, and good business conditions? What constructive policy, or plan?”

There were various opinions and questions. Men were found on all sides of these questions; but the editor tells us that “the deepest impression left on the mind, after reading in detail these hundred or more letters, many of them written at considerable length and with great earnestness, is the profound distrust that they express of men in public life.” “Jaw-smiths,” “demagogs,” “disturbers,” “miserable office-seekers,” “fools in Congress,” “self-seeking men,” “men of no business experience,”—such terms of reproach recur again and again. This distrust is profound. So far as these letters reveal the mind of the business world, it is disgusted with the lawmakers, and some are disgusted even with the judges, and some also, the editor tells us, express similar distrust of the newspapers.

There are not partisan replies. It is difficult for any letter to show to what party a man belongs. But almost none of them offer any adequate remedy, or any constructive policy for the future. Yet in all these letters there is little of discouragement. But business conditions are not satisfactory. The journal itself feels that there should be legislation which would help business, and that this is needed in the matter of monetary reform more than anywhere else. One paragraph speaks volumes: It says:

“The business world of the United States is utterly discouraged. Not only is it beset by all the difficulties inherent in business pursuits; it is wholly without what the coastwise mariner calls ‘sailing lights.’ Worse even than that, it is trying to navigate in a legal fog, and in addition, instead of having the aid and comfort of an efficient banking and currency system, it has to get along as best it may with the crudest monetary contrivance now existent among civilized nations.”

These are strong words; but will they, can they, be corrected by any political party which may be formed? We have nothing to advocate politically. We know of no human remedy which will meet all these ills and all this distress. We know the great fact that our Lord tells us that just such conditions as these will prevail before His second coming. There will be “distress of nations, with perplexity.” There is distress in some nations, a tremendous amount of it; there is perplexity, and that is universal. The divine Word tells us that when this and other things which are equally prevalent are seen, then is Christ’s coming near—the setting up of that kingdom which shall know none of the inequalities that ever exist here, but in which peace and justice shall reign forever. We entreat our readers to seek God’s remedy. It is personal, individual, applicable, potent, and if fully received and applied, everlasting.