WARNING WORDS | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA · Jan 9, 1907

WARNING WORDS.

In a recent speech at New Rochelle, N. Y., Justice Brewer, of the United States Supreme Court, spoke of the great size of America, and declared that Americans are in the habit of speaking of the big, material things—our crops, and railroads, and mines, and steel industries, and trusts, and navy, etc., and continued:

'These signs indicate a habit of extravagance. We are taking a course of running into debt. The nation, after the Civil War, owed about $3,000,000,000. At the beginning of the Spanish War that debt was about $1,000,000,000. Since then it has not been diminished. Most of our States are heavily in debt. The debt of New York City is an enormous one. Cities all over the country are deeply burdened with obligations. I do not rejoice to see this.

'Contrast the little red schoolhouse of the earlier days with the magnificent public buildings—city halls, schools, and so on—built by our enterprising cities of this time. If they were paid for it would be all right. They would attest the marvelous growth of our land. But they are built with borrowed money, and they are a mortgage upon the future.

'We cry, 'Peace, peace!' but we are all the time preparing for war. We have a navy fourth in power among the nations of the world. Two Congresses have paid more for our navy than the estimated cost of the Panama Canal. We played a neighborly, altruistic part in Cuba, but we rode roughshod over Colombia to gain the canal zone. We glory in the struggles of our fathers to free us from the evils of a colonial system, but we seize the Philippines.'

Mr. J. D. Rockefeller, who, however oil consumers may regard his grasping proclivities, must certainly be given credit for good judgment, and long and large experience, declared in a recent interview:

'We are spending too much money.' We are going entirely too fast. We are too prodigal of our money.' 'Don't you think we are going to be compelled to pay for all this?'

And the Kansas City "Star" quotes Secretary of State, Leslie M. Shaw, as saying in his speech at the dinner of the automobile manufacturers, in a Washington despatch of December 14:

'This country has grown as no country in the world has ever grown. It is advancing by leaps and bounds. I don't want to worry you with statistical data. Within the last ten years, however, the country has jumped to an appalling stature. I don't know what is going to become of us.

'It is all right to boast of our greatness, to herald our wonderful productive capacity to the world and set ourselves up on an eminence, but, gentlemen, we are going too fast. We have outgrown our swaddling clothes without preparing for ourselves a new wardrobe. Only complete disaster can follow a continuation of this unparalleled prosperity.

'Speaker Cannon has said that this country is 'a hell of a success' and well has he spoken. But do you gentlemen ever ponder and stop to think what success may lead to?

'Those of you who pray, get down on your knees to-night and pray God that there will be an abatement or no one can tell what will become of us—I am sure I can not.'

He is elsewhere quoted as saying:

'To those of you who pray, I say, Get down on your knees to-night and pray God to save this country from its prosperity.'

The history of all the nations has demonstrated the need of these notes of warning. It is an old and trite saying: 'Wise men learn by the experience of others; fools, from their own.' We may read the fate of the course we are pursuing in the ruin of the nations of old. We may read it also in the 'more sure word of prophecy.'