THE strike of the street railroad carmen in San Francisco came to a sudden and unexpected end on the 5th inst., after a tie-up of eleven days. The surprising feature of the case was that the carmen's union yielded. From the first the president of the railroad company took the stand that he would not make any terms, or consider demands, unless the men returned to work; then he would be willing to arbitrate. He even agreed to give the wages asked ($3.00 per day) and then arbitrate the question of an eight-hour day. This was decidedly refused by the carmen. They were backed by all the union element of the strongest union city in the United States, whose entire administration was chosen by the unions and the saloons. The mayor and the Building Trades Council made strenuous efforts to bring about a settlement, but with evident bias in favor of the carmen; altho the mayor admitted that the strike was hasty and ill-advised at the time. This had to be admitted because the strike was in open violation of the carmen's contract with their employers.
The railroad company had imported several hundred men, and had announced the day on which their cars would be again started. A thousand men arrived on a river steamer from Benicia the night before, and marched quietly through the streets before dawn to their respective quarters in the various car-houses. Just how well they would have succeeded in running the cars will not be known, for on the same day the strikers accepted the terms proposed by the company—to return to work, and then submit their claims to arbitration. Now, however, all questions, wages, hours, and other points are to be arbitrated.
The settlement of the strike was brought about by appeal to the president of the Amalgamated Street Railway Employees of America, who directed that the men return to work. It was certainly a good piece of generalship on the part of President Calhoun, of the street railroad company, to win the day against two thousand strikers in a city ruled in the interest of unionism, and that, too, by carrying his case to the highest authority recognized by the union men themselves. He won his original point—return to work first, then arbitrate.
But is it not a pitiable sight in a so-called free country, to behold so many hundred laboring men so bound up, body and soul, that they must quit work at the behest of, two or three men who have no interest whatever in the enterprise for which the men labor; and that, too, when many of the workers knew the order to be hasty and unwise? And is not that pitiable condition emphasized when another man of a little higher rank can order them back to work? In other words, they must have the permission of disinterested bosses before they can go to work for the man who pays for their services. To go to work independently would mean ostracism and persecution by one's fellow laborers. Such is the boasted interest that unionism has in the laborer, other than "union" laborers. Men who thus place themselves at the mercy of uninterested masters have but limited appreciation of the boon of liberty. Surely they are, altho unwittingly, lending their energies to the building of a despotism of which they themselves will be the bondmen. They are persistently forging their own fetters, and do not know it. G.
BISHOP CHARLES H. COLTON, BUFFALO, N. Y.
PRESENT-DAY DEITIES.
PRESIDENT WHEELER, of the University of California, in a recent address at Berkeley, set before us the present age religion in the following:
Any one who is a candidate for active membership in this present world had better learn right at the start that this present world, here at the junction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is distinctly a world of work. This present age has developed indeed the cult of work and equipped it with a theology. Energy is the god who is worshiped therein, rather than being; the creed has no faith but that begotten of works; and the plan proposed for the saving of souls sets the hygiene of exercise above the medicine of theory and the nursing of culture. Passivity is the great sin; letting things take their course is the supreme heresy. Men of affairs constitute the priesthood, and the fanatic extremists, found in every cult, are here represented by the dervishes, both howling and whirling, who compose the glorious order of the hustlers.
So far as the energy demanded is concerned, we are sure there is none too much of this expended, but when we make human energy the all in all, and leave God out of the question, we will find that the doing of men is a ''deadly doing'' in most cases, and that the structures which they build rest upon foundations of sand. The best characters, and the characters which have moulded the world for good, have not been formed by constant, restless energy alone, but they have contained the elements of deep thinking and earnest consideration of the great questions of life. More than this, the men who have possessed this are those who have entered into the ''secret place'' of God, who have learned of the great I AM, who have seen man's utter incompetency and nothingness apart from God, and who have brought the divine life into their own.
Nowadays much is said which is little less than the deifying of the human; trite apothegms, sprightly proverbs, trite sayings, expressing truth in a bright, strong way, are very common, and many seem to feel that they are born of this day and generation, when they are as old as the ages. Dr. Wheeler has truly said that the present age has developed the ''cult of work and equipped it with theology,'' but it is not a truth of the age which men need, but the religion which is born of Jesus Christ; and no outward form of works of any sort or kind will compensate for the great truth uttered by Jesus, ''Ye must be born again.'' Life must come in from God and flow outward from the heart. It can not be worked out, and it can only be acquired by living faith in Him who is the Source of it all.
Unrecorded Divorce Decrees
News comes from New York that the examination of the records of the expired Court of Common Pleas shows that hundreds of cases in which the judges gave decisions allowing decrees of separation of persons in the marital relation had never been submitted to the court by counsel for the successful parties, and numbers of these divorces have not been entered upon the records. In many cases these persons have married again, believing that the judicial pronouncement was all that was required, but prominent lawyers say that the second marriage is absolutely illegal and void.
NAVAL DISPLAY ON "LABOR DAY."
By G.
NO GREATER anomaly could be devised than a gorgeous military or naval display on Labor Day. Labor, in a true, moral sense signifies peaceful occupation, the production of things necessary to the sustenance and happiness of human beings. How labor can be properly or consistently represented by that which stands for the extreme opposite of peace and its products is a mystery. It would seem that not merely "judgment is turned away backward" (Isa. 59:14) in these last days, but that even the ordinary sense of propriety is lost sight of in the increasing mania for sensational display.
What the laboring classes could have seen in the largest display of war-vessels ever seen in the western hemisphere, had they been awake to a sense of the spirit of our time, would have been a hole into which a large sum of the people's money is thrown every year. And they would have noted that the spirit of war is being encouraged to a far greater extent than the spirit of peace and useful labor. All this notwithstanding the pretentious clamor for peace. These "piping times" are times of much peace talk, but the preparation of war implements and war materials bode anything but peace. A great army passing through a country is a scourge, a destroyer, and consumer of the products of labor; and what do the people of a seaport dread more than a blockade by a naval force?
The two extremes of principle were represented in the great naval review on Long Island Sound on Labor Day. The occasion was the celebration of labor, the peaceful producer of necessary commodities, but there was the strange spectacle of the votaries of labor making a god of the great organized destroyer—one of the great world-leeches on the products of labor. Possibly the growing political machine named "organized labor" expects to utilize the military and naval forces some day in the furtherance of "the cause." G.
Office Notes and Announcements
We send no papers from this office to individuals without pay in advance. When persons receive copies without ordering them, they are sent by other parties, and we can give no information in regard to them. Persons thus receiving copies of the Signs, are not indebted to the office, and will not be called upon to pay for them. Please read the papers you may receive, and hand them to your friends to read.
Are you an Israelite or a Gentile? Read the article bearing on this subject next week.
We have a second linotype in, and we have two sets of hands busy, running the machines from eighteen to twenty hours a day.
We print in this issue another instalment of donations. If the name of any one is wrongly credited, kindly inform us.
Next week we will begin a prophetic study of the Papacy. This will be of special interest in connection with present developments.
God is greatly blessing in our work. Nearly all are working overtime freely, and donating the overtime work. We have months and months of work in sight.
Many other expressions of sympathy have come to us. We can not publish them all, and we are sure that they were not sent for publication, but to hearten the workers in the trouble. And we thank them for the words of good cheer. They are evidence of the oneness of God's work.
A riot in the city of Tokyo, Japan, occurred on the night of the 5th inst., caused by the agitation against the fares charged on the street-cars, which, it is claimed, are too high. Excitement spread throughout the city and several street-car stations were destroyed. Many policemen and passengers were injured, and ninety-two persons were arrested. Thus Japan is becoming "civilized," "Westernized," and some people say "Christianized."
Various Versions.—The SIGNS OF THE TIMES uses the common, or King James, Version, but it uses also the American Standard Revised Version, published by Thomas Nelson & Sons, New York. The editor frankly confesses and gladly proclaims that he prefers it to any other English version. The older versions were translated from inaccurate texts. That is, the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Old and New Testaments were not original copies, nor copies of the original copies. There are, so far as men are aware, no original copies of the writers of the Sacred Record extant. But in the last century especially there have been copies discovered in various places very much earlier, very much nearer the fountainhead, than any possessed by the translators of our Common Version. As skeptics within and without the church were casting doubt upon the Bible, God's providence has brought to light through earnest students, sometimes seemingly by accident, many manuscripts, and much earlier manuscripts. These earlier manuscripts are not copies of one earlier copy, but have come down to us through entirely independent channels, each one confirming and making clearer the others. The American Standard Revised Version is translated from and revised by these earlier, better copies of the Sacred Scriptures.
The men who have translated it were not authorized to do so by a tradition-bound king. The American Committee was composed of the greatest scholars of the nation, representing great educational institutions and many denominations. These scholars, that they might give to the world the very best translation of God's story to men, spent nearly thirty years of devout study and research that the very best might be given. The King James Version was completed in one-fifth of that time. These learned men have given their scholarship, their experience, their time, without compensation. Their work is acknowledged by other scholars to be of the best. For the reasons above we greatly respect the American Standard Revised Version. Other reasons will be given in our next.
Capital Punishment.—There is quite an agitation throughout the East, and especially in Massachusetts, over the matter of capital punishment. The Secretary of the Civic Committee in Boston, Mr. Eben Bumstead, has sent out to the press of the country an article on capital punishment, answering objections. This seems to have the support of the President of the Civic Committee, who accompanies the address with a letter. The article makes comparison between those states which have abolished the death penalty and those which make life imprisonment the penalty for the crime of murder. Michigan, for instance, has had two generations of life imprisonment, but her proportion of criminals is greater than that where capital punishment has prevailed. For instance, Pennsylvania has never repealed capital punishment, and her proportion of murderers is one to 186,212. The proportion of murderers in Michigan is one to 25,183. The argument is made that where mere imprisonment is the penalty it does not make the distinction between the lesser and the greater crime as it should, that in justice to those who commit the lesser crimes, murder should be punished with death. Doubtless there are many good people who believe that capital punishment should be abolished, and yet Mr. Bumstead declares that the theory has always received the adherence of revolutionary demagogues, and he quotes a historian as saying of the very worst period of the French Revolution: "This very government that had shed such an ocean of human blood signalizes its memorable career by bringing in an edict for the abolition of capital punishment after a certain period." Mr. Bumstead feels that it has a Bible basis, and therefore can not be said to be an incentive to murder, "without leading to the gross conclusion that God gave an incentive to murder to the Hebrew people." The law of capital punishment has come down to us through the most civilized nations of the world, and where justly administered has had the strongest deterrent effect of any punishment upon those criminally inclined. If any one desires to obtain Mr. Bumstead's address, send to the Massachusetts Civic Committee, 161 Milk St., Boston.
After the Assyrians had conquered Israel and taken all the people away as captives, the land was settled by people sent in from the countries of the East. These people, in time, were greatly troubled by lions, and thought it was because they were not acquainted with the God of the country. So they appealed to their king, who sent one of the captive priests of Israel to live in Samaria and teach the people "how they should fear the Lord." The teaching was evidently very superficial, for the people continued to worship their own gods also. "So they feared the Lord, and served their own gods." The same principle is in vogue in our own day, as is indicated by the following bit of news taken from the New York Press:
On week days the fashionable woman in Newport must have her hand-bag and all little accessories match her costume, and now fashion decrees that on Sunday her prayer-book must likewise be a match. In Trinity Church recently many lovely ones were seen, Mrs. William Watts Sherman carrying one with covers of lavender leather, which matched her hat, dress, and parasol. Her daughter, Miss Irene Sherman, carried one of pale pink leather, which matched her costume of pink, while the other Miss Sherman, who was all in white, carried a beautiful one of white. An elderly woman dressed in the deepest mourning had the covers of her prayer-book covered with heavy black crape and the edges bound with gun metal.
Thus the popular fad is to fear the Lord and worship the god of fashion.
Pledging candidates for office to the support of special measures is deplored by one of our religious exchanges. Stress is laid upon the evil of this custom as practised by friends of the liquor traffic, and of other sinister enterprises in quest of official favor. We concede the point as far as our contemporary goes, and are of the opinion that the candidate who makes unqualified pledges is no better than those who exact them. But we would also submit that the practise of pledging men to vote for a Sunday law, with its penalties, is of the same ilk. Any human law exacting religious practise is a compulsion of conscience to those who have conscience in the matter, and compels hypocritical action on the part of the millions who have no conscientious regard for the doctrine which the law prescribes.
"The Sick Man of the East."—Referring to the condition around the Bosporus, the Catholic World of August says: "Christians are, as usual, their own worst enemy. Were it not for their culpable selfishness that stronghold of lust and enmity, the Turkish Empire, would long ago have been destroyed. But so far from being destroyed, there seems reason to think that its power is growing. . . . The attitude of Europe to the hosts of Mohammed has too often been a pitiful spectacle, and is no less so in our own days than in the past." Of course no Christian power or powers have the right to destroy any power. If the people of professed Christian powers would live their Christianity, its indirect influence might have changed Turkey. Evidently the Turkish power is hardly a "sick man." Russia just now seems to be the troubled one.
A request comes to us from a lady in the far East asking for two things with which we can not possibly comply. The first is to "stop the SIGNS OF THE TIMES," and we can not do it. This office was established to publish the SIGNS OF THE TIMES and the paper is still going on. Of course if she means by it to stop her copy, we will do that when her time is out, but we can not stop the paper. Until its work is done the SIGNS OF THE TIMES will be published. Her second request is that she doesn't want it longer, and we can not make it longer if we wanted to, because the press can only take it the size that it is. But we expect to continue to publish it in the same proportionate size as at present, and continue until the last great message shall close.
Books Wanted.—There may be some of our readers who have an Encyclopedia Britannica for which they do not especially care, and which they would be willing to donate to our office, or to sell for a small sum. We would be glad to hear of such. Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography is another work which would help us, as would also histories of various countries. Please give edition, binding, condition, and price.
Both the Republican and Democratic parties of Arizona have put this plank in their platforms: "We are unalterably opposed to joint statehood between Arizona and New Mexico, and would prefer to remain a territory forever than to have a joint state with New Mexico."
Our weak places of character may become our strong ones if we will but let the repair be thorough and deep. Christ must heal, but He can only heal and strengthen as we co-operate with Divine Power. He will make the healing complete.
Do not forget to read the report, on pages 14, 15, of the American Federation of Catholic Societies. This is of tremendous interest.
