Carnegie and Rockefeller Too Active
By Editor
THE National Education Association, in its last meeting, passed this resolution: "We view with alarm the activity of Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations, agencies not in any way responsible to the people, in their efforts to control the policies of our state educational institutions; to fashion after their conception and to standardize our courses of study; and to surround the institutions with conditions which menace true academic freedom and defeat the primary purpose of democracy as heretofore preserved inviolable in our common schools, normal schools, and universities." To commercialize our educational system, and to make it serve the purposes of the big business combines, has been charged for many years against the great leaders in the financial world. There have been evidences cropping out here and there in many places, which have indicated that "big business" was carrying on an educational campaign that would advance the interests of its commercial arrangements. This action of the nation's great educational association is certainly quite significant. It shows, at least, that the educators of the country have reached the point where they are not afraid to speak their mind openly to the financial kings. And it has a still broader significance. It shows that the barriers that have been surrounding these great men of business are being broken down, and they may expect more and more to be visited by the furies that the outraged feelings of the populace have been storing up. We are not speaking of what ought to be the condition of the times, but are merely calling attention to that which is. Nearly two thousand years ago, the prophet told of the rich men being called to weep and howl in the last days, because of the miseries that are coming upon them. And this is preparatory to the final scene of casting their hoarded wealth to the moles and to the bats, as they "go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His majesty, when He ariseth to shake terribly the earth." Isa. 2:20, 21. Scenes in this direction that beggar description, lie just before us. And again we desire to emphasize the fact that we are not talking about what should be, but are calling attention to the conditions which now surround us, and which are so emphatically fulfilling the prophetic Word. "The great day of the Lord is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers. And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord's wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy: for He shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land." Zeph. 1:14-18. A PHYSICIAN in Massachusetts claims to have weighed the soul of a man. He puts a dying consumptive on delicately adjusted scales, and asserts that the difference in weight at the moment of death and instantly after was three fourths of an ounce. It is curiously interesting to think of men who have made scientific research, and who, in a general way, are quite sane, engaging in such nonsense. The idea that a man has an invisible, intangible, incomprehensible, immortal soul that escapes from his body at death is not founded upon any basis that is scientific, or any evidence either human or divine. It comes solely from the superstitions of idolatrous men who have wholly departed from God, and who are seeking for some theory by which perpetual existence could be maintained and accounted for.