BACK TO THE LAND by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Sep 21, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 37.

"BACK TO THE LAND."

By Editor

To Our Friends in Oakland and Elsewhere.

THIS issue of our paper is printed in the thriving little town of Mountain View, about thirty miles, as the crow flies, a little southeast of Oakland, tho the type was set and plates made in our old office in Oakland, where for thirty years this journal has been published. Our printing plant—the Pacific Press—has grown from a small third or fourth class book-making factory to one of the completest west of Chicago.

Tho a religious house, doing a large business of its own, it has also done a large amount of custom work in various ways, and has made many friends, especially in Oakland. These friends are expressing regret at our leaving. We hear it from business men, old customers, social acquaintances; and for all these kindly expressions we are grateful. These friends and kindly wishers can not see why we should leave Oakland at all, where we are so well established, have a good property, and are in no trouble, financial or otherwise.

In the light of these and other queries it may be well for us here to set forth some of the reasons for our leaving Oakland and establishing our plant in Mountain View.

1. Property in the center of a large and growing city like Oakland, in a residence district, is too valuable for factory purposes. Taxes are high, and when more room is needed, it is difficult to enlarge without great expense. In our present location we have five acres, which were donated us by the citizens of Mountain View. While we have never had any trouble with our resident neighbors, one of whom for many years' standing is now California's honored chief magistrate, we, ourselves, have felt that at the best, large manufacturing plants would, for the good of both parties, be better elsewhere. And yet we are glad that our case is not like that of the ancient king in Israel, who "departed without being desired."

2. In Oakland we were at quite a distance from the freight depots. We use large quantities of paper, generally coming in car-load lots. The expense of drayage has been great. In Mountain View we have our own switch from which paper can be loaded direct from the car into our own factory.

3. We have many children and youth among us. Some of these are employed in our work. Others are in process of early education, of which environment forms a great part. The history of past generations has demonstrated that the best place to rear growing boys and girls is not the large cities, with their strenuous life, their numerous questionable attractions, their multi-form pleasurable vices, their indifference toward things pure and sacred, their growing class of hoodlums and street gamins, their manifold temptations to lure from the path of virtue, honor, sobriety, and religion. The city breeds insincerity. Its best side is always out. Not so does nature and the country deal with man. Never does nature hide to deceive. Flower and leaf and tree, sunshine, rain, and soil, treat us honestly. They all have their defects, but the defects are not always leading to disappointment. There is more money to be made in the city generally, but there is more of real heart and soul experience, worth more than shining gold, in the country.

It was Cowper, we believe, who phrased the thought, "God made the country; man made the town." Under God's sun and stars and sky, undimmed by city murk and smoke, breathing God's unpoisoned air; walking the great magnet of God's earth; listening to song of bird and hum of bee, unmarred by discord of the city's din; coming into closer touch with more distant neighbors; finding more time to cultivate the soil and thus learn more of life's primitive, essential lessons, the country offers advantages and opportunities—albeit, not so much surface "culture,"—that the city never knew. And then in the growth and beauty of springtime life and the fulness of the strength of summer,—

"Why, one day in the country, Is worth a month in town."

Mountain View gives us all of the advantages of train service that a town could well ask, with many other town advantages, and yet it gives us the country, not only surrounding, but interweaving and interlacing, the town.

Better, therefore, this country place for the children and youth than the city.

4. The city offers little place for tillage of the soil. The country gives opportunity for almost every family to secure a little home, cultivate a good garden, and eat of the labor of their own hands. Then, too, a day off from regular professional trade, or factory work is not lost; it may oftentimes be spent more profitably at home than in regular work. It was our desire in moving to give our employees these opportunities.

5. Labor Unions are a constant menace of disturbance in our large cities. In their struggle for the betterment of their condition against monopolistic wealth they have our sympathy. We have no objection to their organizations as such, if that is what they desire. But we can not concede to their demand that they shall control all labor irrespective of the rights and wishes of the laboring man. For among the inherent rights of humanity is the right of each man to use his time as he will, when he will, how he will, for what object he will, providing he does not infringe the equal right of his fellow man.

6. Our readers will also note this: We are a religious publishing house. Our publications, especially this journal, stand for a definite work, a message of God to this generation. Of that message of a soon-coming Saviour and the necessary preparation therefor, we need not here speak. Those who know us will concede to us honesty of opinion and conviction if they do not accept the evidence on which our convictions are based, of which evidence most are really ignorant. The giving of this message demands sacrifice. Its reception and living demands sacrifice. It is our duty, so far as we can, to assist those first who sacrifice for the Lord's sake; and, therefore, we could not place the management of our plant under the control of a non-religious union whose members have no sympathy with our work. As well might the minister of the Gospel invite a worldling to lead and teach his flock. It would be the denial of our faith to yield in this respect. We are glad to know that there are even among union men those who can see, and do see, the inconsistency of the demand, which for years has been made that this office be unionized. Consistently, they know we could not do this. But tho we have been upon the blacklist of the Typographical Union for years, it has never seriously affected us. Most of our customers, even those sympathizing with the union, knew that we could not yield control of our plant, or compromise with any outside organization, and be consistent with that Gospel we proclaim. Going out of this great center into the country, will remove us from an antagonism which we have not created.

7. Again: We believe that we are living in the last days. To us the prophecies of God's Word are distinct and clear upon this point. While there is greater profession, there is a constant increase of wickedness, lawlessness, dishonesty, irreverence, disregard of all things sacred and divine, which sooner or later in themselves will bring the twofold harvest of cumulative evil and the judgment of infinite justice, the harvest plagues of the last days, for which no many are now sowing. This sowing of lawlessness, the unconscious leaders of which are those religious teachers, professedly Christian, who are making the word and the law of God of none effect either through hoary, human tradition or vain seductive philosophy, will be more and more manifest in crime of every sort, in mob violence, in all lack of self-control. Already do we see whole communities, nominally Christian, that can not leave the execution of justice upon some supposed criminal either to the courts or to God, but take brutal, mob vengeance in their own hands. The majority of the mob know nothing of the criminal, save what they have heard, and the supposedly guilty, tho actually innocent, person has been put to death as summarily, as cruelly, as has the most guilty.

We shall see more and more of this in the great centers of population—the cities—as the years rush by. Having the warning in "the more sure word of prophecy," seeing its fulfilling constantly before our eyes, we believe that it is the part of prudent men to establish our plant in some quiet country place "far from the madding crowd," where our work can be wrought for God and humanity in quiet and peace, so far as may be.

Says an apostle:—

"But know this, that in the last days grievous times [perilous times] shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof." 2 Tim. 3:1-5.

We see all this now, even among the professed people of God. Jesus declares that the days of His coming will be as were the days of Noah. Matt. 24:37. But as in those days the earth was "filled with violence" (Gen. 6:11), so will the conditions of the last days fill the earth with violence, and so bring the grievous "perilous times." With their crude, undigested, uncontrolled masses of restless humanity, ready for any magnetic leader, evil tho he may be, the cities will lead in time and degree of violence. And again we say that, as we see these things, it behooves us to establish our center of work, if possible, in the quiet of the country.

This has been another reason why we have left a city that we love, where are friends and acquaintances that we highly esteem, to establish our plant in the quiet, growing borough of Mountain View.

But we shall not feel wholly separated from our friends in Oakland. A branch office will be maintained, and we shall expect to meet old friends many times in a business way as well as social.

To the people in Mountain View we would say that we wish to help them in every way and in all ways which make for the exaltation of Christ's cause and the true upbuilding of our little town and our homes. We are all very human among humans; and we wish to be human among you, in the very best sense of the over-used word. We are far from our own ideal, tho we aim to serve the perfect Master. And, therefore, with you, sowing for righteousness, building for righteousness in all that pertains to this life, we hope, with you, to reap happiness and prosperity in this life as incidents, and eternal reward in the life to come, through Christ Jesus as the object of all the truest hopes of humanity.