It is said that poets “learn in suffering what they teach in song.” This was the experience of the sweet singer of Israel. Part of his marvelous gamut of poesy we may ascribe to inspiration, but it was nevertheless the revelation of truth which had been transmitted through the crystalline texture of his own soul.
His marvelous shepherd psalm is the outbreathing of a soul that had stood in the solemn hours of night upon some lonely hilltop, and looked out upon the drear world about with its lurking enemies and hidden dangers, and then up to the grand starlit skies, and from the strange experience had drawn comfort for all loneliness, solace for all fear, light amidst the darkness, and courage for the unknown darkness that loomed big before.
That early shepherd life left its deep impress upon his soul, and left its trace on many a line of his psalms.
“Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.”
Suddenly he rose from the quiet, humble life of the shepherd boy to be the companion of the king, the idol of the people, and the champion of the armies of the living God. But his is still the same clean, harmonious, consistently humble character as of old. He loses none of the gracious sweetness of the lowlier and more happy days.
But from the dizzy height he is suddenly plunged to the lowest depths of outlaw and fugitive. More than once he has the power to turn the issue of the conflict; but his holy purpose to harm no hair of the “Lord’s anointed,” holds him steadfastly to an absolute trust in God. Here indeed his life shines out the clearest and the brightest. God needs no aid from him against the power of the tyrannical and God-forsaken king.
Tho he is “hunted like a partridge upon the mountains,” and learns by deep experience the weariness, the loneliness, the homelessness, the coldness, of the exile’s and the alien’s lot, his courage never fails, his spirit never breaks, but waits until the providence of God shall prove to all the kingly heart that beats within his breast.
And when by swift transition he sat upon the throne of Israel, he did not change, “but kept in lofty place the wisdom which adversity had bred.”
It is this man whom the Scriptures declare to be a “man after God’s own heart.” Up to this point in his life he is God’s ideal of a human being. He has lived as God would have humans live.
Then, when life has run out in golden deeds wrought by a kingly soul, he sinks down deep, deep into the deathsome mire. In this he falsifies all his past, ruins forever his peace of heart and the prosperity of his kingdom.
From this time on, both in his conscience and in the turmoils of his kingdom, “his sin is ever before” him. From this time forward, trouble is never far away. Four sons are lost to him in the vengeance of justice that pursues him until he has restored, according to his own pronounced sentence, “fourfold.”
And so the sunlight of the earlier hours of life, gives way to clouds and shadows and the chill of afternoon. The day of life goes out in hope, but amidst the saddening consciousness of what he has done in bringing in the hatred and rebellion and murder and discontent and alienation so rampant in his own family and his own kingdom.
Sad as is the sequel, and plainly as is written in all of it the truth, “The way of the transgressor is hard,” — there are scoffers who turn to the crime of David as a pretext for reviling God and taunting His followers. But God is not mocked. He allowed David to feel the curse of his sins, and to see the consequence of evil, even when confessed and forsaken.
It is also manifest, therefore, that he who holds up the life of David as an excuse for vice and license to wickedness, will reap his own transgression’s reward. For if evil deeds thus burn in the green tree of God’s forgiveness and David’s forsaking of his sin, what shall be the end of that burning of self-abandoned lust and crime that shall at length engulf the wicked as a “lake of fire”?
Do Men Die?
Change of Language Can Not Change Facts
ANYTHING to get away from the solemn, certain facts of life and the teaching of the Old Book. It’s pitiful, and one day will be found to be bitterly disappointing. This for instance from the November issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal:
“Can we not get away from the universal use of the words ‘dead’ and ‘death,’ and even the harsher sounding words ‘die,’ ‘dying,’ and ‘died’? Aside from the harshness of the words themselves, and they are harsh and cruel in their sound, the words no longer express our belief: we are all fast reaching the belief that we do not die: we are not dead. We pass from one stage to another, and so why should we not say what we believe of ourselves and of those dear to us: that we simply pass away? Any usage, any contributing element, no matter how seemingly small, that will help even in the slightest degree to remove the old-fashioned gruesomeness that has so long associated itself with the completion of our work here and the beginning of our work in another stage, is worth adoption.”
Of course “dead” and “death” and “die” and “dying” and “died” are harsh, they represent conditions that are harsh and ugly and evil. Sin is an awful, a terrible fact. The mighty, appalling, multiform curse upon the world of sickness and suffering and avarice and lust and crime and murder and death and every other devilish thing in the category of evil are each and all some form of sin and the results of sin. God would have men know it; know that “sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” James 1:15.
It is the accursed lie of the long ages that men do not die. It is the old lie of the serpent, whispered into the ear of our first parents, “Ye shall not surely die; . . . ye shall be as God.” Gen. 3:4, 5. Upon that falsehood has been built every heathen system, the theories of purgatory, of an endless hell, of saint worship, of Spiritism, of transmigration of soul, of Buddhism, Brahmanism, Mormonism, and the self-salvation ideas of New Thought, Christian Science, and numerous other cults.
If men do not die, why should Christ die to save them? What need of the resurrection or the second advent? The entire Bible stands or falls with the Bible teaching of Sin and Death, Righteousness and Life.
Standing on the old lie, there is no settled hope of life beyond the grave save that furnished by baseless human hope. Standing on the Word of God we see the awful facts of sin and death; but beyond the black record of sin, out of its miry depths, beyond the suffering, the dying, the gloom of the grave and the awful horrors of death, rises the Sun of Righteousness and Life, with healing in His beams. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Death, the fact to sinful man, is an awful and horrible thing; life forevermore, which God in Christ makes possible to every sinful soul, is a blessed and glorious thing. Change of terms will not change the horrors of death and dying. Let them be as ugly as they are. Let faith bridge their awful terrors and grasp the life beyond.
Do Not Parley
IN the matter of temptation, the only safety lies in immediately and with all the soul resisting the enemy. He who pauses to parley will nearly, if not always, yield. The devil is not wise, but he is exceedingly crafty, with the cunning of all the practise of the centuries. Truly it would seem that man from his own reason would know that he had no shrewdness of his own to meet the prince of craft. The only thing which will meet his wiles is wisdom — such wisdom as is based on the fear of God. And having the fear of God, no one will stop to parley with evil.
Acceptable Obedience
THERE is but one way in which it is possible to render to God acceptable obedience, and that is by unqualifiedly submitting to God’s will. We can not do God’s will in our way. It is impossible to obey Him in a spirit of rebellion. A man might refrain from work on the seventh day out of pride or spite, but it would not be obedience to the command, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” True obedience relates to motive as well as act, and the motive power is love; but love always obeys.
Does California Need a Sunday Law?
THE Los Angeles Times, October 24, reports a sermon by Dr. Chas. Edward Locke preached at the First Methodist Episcopal Church October 23 from the text "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." Ex. 20:8. Dr. Locke is Mr. Crafts's lieutenant in California. In connection with the question, "Does California need a Sunday law?" is discussed the one, "Should theaters be permitted to be opened on Sunday?" He gives us three reasons why theaters should be closed on Sunday.
1. Because the actors and other workers around the theaters "prefer not to work on Sunday." "Decent people, out of sheer sympathy for a great number of men and women who are being cruelly sacrificed to greed and frivolity, should boycott the Sunday theater."
2. "The theater should be closed because of the degenerating influence upon the theater-goer." "In ninety times out of a hundred, the themes of the Sunday stage are not only profitless, but perniciously defiling, and debilitating."
3. "The Sunday theater does not belong to the Sunday, and has no more right to be open than the department store, or the butcher shop. It is a secular pursuit."
4. Mr. Locke says: "Sunday frivolity not only breaks down the ideals of the nation, but it ruthlessly destroys the character of the individual citizen. It breaks down Sunday as a worship day. Nations decline when there is no worship or reverence. . . . Sabbath worship establishes a standard of morals."
We are glad that in his presentation of the Sunday case, Dr. Locke takes his stand upon the eternal, immutable law of God, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." This we will refer to a little later, but we wish the readers to keep it in mind. We comment upon the quotations above from the report of his discourse; they give the points and substance of his sermon.
1. If the actors in the theater and the workers around the theater desire to rest on Sunday they have the privilege of doing so. Involuntary servitude is abolished in America. No employer, be he theater manager or trust magnate, has any power to compel a single soul to work on Sunday if that soul refuses so to do. And if the actors are so anxious about this, as Dr. Locke seems to indicate that they are, they have it all their own way; they can refuse to work that day. He shows that this can be done, in his reference to work on the Los Angeles aqueduct on which the contractors proposed to have Sunday work. Dr. Locke says, "The steam-shovel men have peremptorily refused to work except in emergencies;" and they will not be discharged for it either, and theater people could do the same thing. There are thousands upon thousands of men in all kinds of employment throughout the United States who could work if they would, but will not work, tho they are asked.
The appeal to decent people to boycott the theater on Sunday is all right; let them do so. No one compels any one to go to the theater. It is not necessary that it be closed by law. If people stay away it will be closed; but if there are those who desire to go, they have the same right to go, so far as man is concerned, as others have the right to listen to Dr. Locke; and many doubtless would prefer to attend the theater than to listen to Dr. Locke's sermons, altho they may be much more edifying than what the stage presents.
2. It is no argument against a theater on SUNDAY that it is degenerating, profitless, pernicious, defiling, and debilitating. That argument holds against it every day in the week. An immoral play is no more immoral because it is presented on Sunday than it is if presented on Monday, Tuesday, or any other day of the week. It is just as easy to defile a mind with lewd suggestions on Wednesday as it is on Sunday; and therefore if the theater ought to be closed on Sunday because of its pernicious influence it ought to be closed on every day of the week.
3. The statement of Dr. Locke that the theater does not belong to the Sunday and has no more right to be opened than the department store and butcher shop, is purely gratuitous and arbitrary. The whole thing rests on the presumption that Sunday is sacred; but Dr. Locke nor any of his coworkers can give us a scintilla of evidence from the Book to which he appeals or the Book where the law is found, that Sunday is sacred. The law declares in the language of Dr. Locke's text, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy."
Man can only KEEP holy that which God has MADE holy. By no act that sinful, mortal man can do can he make anything HOLY. God only can MAKE HOLY, and God asks that man shall KEEP holy what He MAKES holy.
Again, MAN can not KEEP holy that which God makes holy, unless the man himself becomes a HOLY MAN; that is, holy in the Christian sense, set apart to God and to His service. He can only make believe unless Christ lives in his heart; and therefore every attempt to make worldly man keep the Sabbath in the light of the eternal law, is simply to coerce him into acting a hypocrite.
Again, the text is, "Remember THE Sabbath day." It carries us to the very reasons why it was made and how it was made. The law itself tells us this, and refers to the very origin of the Sabbath itself found in Gen. 2: 2, 3. The origin of the Sabbath is founded in the Creator's REST upon that day, by the Creator's BLESSING upon that day, by the Creator's SANCTIFYING, or setting apart, that DAY, that DAY upon which He rested, the last day of the great septenary cycle which has made the week for all mankind. That day, according to the Book, comes just before the first day of the week (Matt. 28: 1; Mark 16: 1, 2), as confirmed by all history, and the universal testimony of ancient and modern languages, so far as these languages speak of the week or the day commonly called Saturday. This day, known to the Jews, to Seventh-day Baptists, and Seventh-day Adventists, is the Sabbath, which begins with the setting of the sun Friday and closes by the setting of the sun twenty-four hours later. This is the day which God commands to be kept holy; that is the day embosomed within God's great sacred moral code, the Decalogue. The attempted change of that Sabbath by foisting Sunday in its place is high-handed treason against God. We do not mean by this that millions of those who have kept Sunday are traitors to God's government; they have not known this; they have not studied it; they have accepted the spurious bill, the almost universal counterfeit, as the genuine; but the genuine is genuine forever, and the counterfeit is counterfeit forever. God's law still demands obedience to that Sabbath day; and for man to profess to be obeying that Sabbath day on the one day of the week which could not be by any possible logic a Sabbath day, is to hold out before the people a broken standard of morals, an utterly inconsistent demand which it does not take the keenest logic to perceive. In the light of blazing Sinai, men have as much right to open the theater on Sunday as on Monday or Tuesday; as much right to open department stores and butcher shops as they have on any other day of the week.11
Once more: We have been told that the workers for a Sunday law are not after a religious day, they are not demanding the religious Sunday; but the argument of Dr. Locke is that "Sunday as a worship day" must not be broken down. We are told that "nations decline when there is no worship or reverence," and "the Sabbath day establishes a standard of morals;" and that is true. But how is Dr. Locke or the Sunday-law people to enforce worship? True worship is obedience given from the heart. How clearly this is taught in the words of Jesus our Lord to the arch-tempter. Satan said, "All these things will I give thee, if Thou wilt fall down and WORSHIP me." Jesus replied, and in that reply gives us the definition of the truest, strongest, holiest worship: "Thou shalt WORSHIP the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou SERVE." Matt. 4:10. But to worship God is not to substitute our way for His way; it is not to set aside what He has said implicitly and explicitly in His Word and put the spurious man-made thing in its place.
The experience of all the past teaches us that man can through fear, coercion, punishment, be made to conform outwardly to religious observances; he may be made to bow the head as the procession of the "host" passes by; he may be made to attend church on Sunday; he may be made to cease his work, close up his place of business, and seem to keep Sunday; but the very coercion and compulsion to the soul who would be free arouses the bitterest opposition in his heart, which sometimes breaks bounds, and the result is seen in the French Revolution.
We do not believe in the theater; we have no use for it on any day. We honor the man who follows his conscience in observing the Sunday. We will do all we can to enlighten his conscience and teach him the better way, but would not compel him by so much as the weight of a feather to seem even to observe the Sabbath of God's commandment against his choice; and those who observe that Sabbath to the extent of 150,000 in various countries of this world contrary to the customs of neighbors, and friends, and communities in which they live, need no law nor do they ask any law from human government to help them to obey God.
Sunday is kept in California as well as it is anywhere. California needs no Sunday law.
Let her not take one single backward step toward the Dark Ages, which began by as mild a Sunday law as Dr. Locke and others would foist upon the people now. Let those who would plead for the sacredness of Sunday, use moral suasion in appealing to conscience. If they have the true moral standard they can do it; if they have not the true moral standard, let them take that which was spoken by Jehovah from Sinai, which was confirmed by the life and death of Jesus Christ. They will favor a standard then which needs no apology; they will have a worship then that needs no outside help to enforce. They can say with the psalmist of old, "O how love I Thy law; it is my meditation all the day."
CONSTITUTION OF CALIFORNIA: "Section 3. The State of California is an inseparable part of the American Union, and the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land. "Section 4. The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be guaranteed in this state."
CONSTITUTION OF CALIFORNIA
"Section 3. The State of California is an inseparable part of the American Union, and the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land."
"Section 4. The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be guaranteed in this state."
Presbytery of Hanover, Va
PRESBYTERY OF HANOVER, VA.: "The duty that we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can only be directed by reason and conviction, and is nowhere cognizable but at the tribunal of the universal Judge. To judge for ourselves, and to engage in the exercise of religion agreeably to THE DICTATES OF OUR OWN CONSCIENCE, is an inalienable right, which can never be transferred to another." — Declaration of 1776.
U. S. GRANT: "Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contribution. Keep the state and the church forever separate." — Address to the Army of the Tennessee, Des Moines, Iowa, September, 1875.
THOMAS JEFFERSON: "Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political."
Religious Liberty Testimony
GEORGE WASHINGTON. "Every man who conducts himself as a good citizen, is accountable alone to God for his religious faith, and should be protected in worshiping God according to the dictates of his own conscience." — To the Ephrata Community.
JAMES MADISON: "The free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, is something which every man may demand as a right, not something for which he must ask as a privilege."
"There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation."
U. S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES REPORT, 1830: "Every religious sect, however meek in its origin, commenced the work of persecution as soon as it acquired political power."
The Farmer — an Undeveloped Force
By Editor
If we read signs aright, the farmer as an economic and political power must be recognized in this country; and if he has his way, as he seems destined to have, there will not be much of a drop in prices governing the commodities and necessities of life, unless a few thousand or million middlemen who fatten on producer and consumer are left out of the barter and trade between the two important classes. For the indications: November 15 we were, through the courtesy of Messrs. Currier and Lammers, officers of the county organization, a guest of the California state meeting of the Farmers' Educational and Co-operative Union of America, held in Odd Fellows' Hall in San Jose. The hall was literally packed with a fine class of men and women, mostly the former. The principal speaker of the occasion was Senator T. J. Brooks of Tennessee, the president of the National organization, who gave an exceedingly impressive, convincing, and powerful address on the rise and necessity of the organization. Its purposes were threefold: (1) To teach the farmer scientific agriculture; (2) to teach scientific marketing; (3) to make the farmer a compact moral force in public life. He stated that12
The Farmer
(Continued from page 11)
when this Government was established the farmer owned 90 per cent of the wealth; now he owns 20 per cent; that of the farmers in the country now only 4 per cent were prospering; the 96 per cent were merely holding their own or running behind; that 82 per cent of the wealth of this country at this hour was controlled by the corporations; that every class of trade and manufacture and service in the United States set its own price on its product or service, and the farmer paid it or went without, while he alone, upon whom all depended, asked, “What will you give?” He must come together, or perish. The Union began its work in the South eight years ago, or practically five years ago. Then 70 per cent of the farms were under mortgage. Now only 35 per cent are. The great burden of those five years, preached everywhere, was to discourage the credit system and lift the mortgage. It is a movement, it seems to us, which will make itself felt, and in which, too, there is blessing if held to its original purpose. We regret that we could not stay all through.
The Menace of Drugs
ALCOHOL is not the only foe the true temperance reformer has to fight. It is a great one, it is true — one of the greatest; but it is only one of an ever increasing band of robbers and assassins of health, wealth, morals, character, life.
Great battles have been fought in politics against intoxicating liquors, and decided victories have been won in many states and communities; but it is a sad fact that the consumption of alcohol has been increasing in the civilized lands of earth. And it is a question, a serious question whether, if the manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks, of distilled and malt liquors, were absolutely prohibited in this country, a far greater battle would not lie before the men and women who would save their fellows from physical, mental, and moral enslavement. First among the enemies which face us is the narcotic, opium, and its derivatives, morphin and laudanum. Its use is increasing. Prohibited tho it may be, seized tho many of the illegal shipments are, much of it gets through the customs by the cunning of the devotees of the drug or of those who fatten on its sale.
It is smuggled into the country in Bibles hollowed out, in baled hay, in seat cushions, in mattresses on which apparently lay a groaning, dying Chinaman, in the carcass of a hammerhead shark, in cabbage heads scooped out, in the sand of a flowerpot, in cavities in the oars of a row boat, in a dozen or a hundred other ways not yet discovered. Dr. P. Harvey Middleton is authority for the statement (Good Health, November, 1910) that on "a conservative estimate there are to-day from 3,000 to 5,000 Americans — male and female — who are incurably addicted to the smoking of opium." Apart from smoking opium, which is smuggled in, the use of the drug has doubled in this country in the last forty years.
Some Alluring Forms of "Dope"
(Photograph by the Bureau of Chemistry, U. S. Department of Agriculture)
Catarrh Cures Which Contain Cocain
(Photograph by the Bureau of Chemistry, U. S. Department of Agriculture)
But he tells us that "this is only one item in a startling list, for irrefutable statistics prove that from New York to San Francisco, and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, there is a steady increase also in the consumption of acetanilid, acetphenetidin, antipyrin, phenacetin, caffein, codein, dionin, and heroin."
Another of the destructive narcotics, which "wrecks its victim more swiftly and surely than even opium," is cocaine, and of which "there is an enormous quantity used in this country." "It is estimated that over 50,000 ounces go to wreck the bodies, minds, and souls of its unhappy victims," while 125,000 ounces are used in legitimate ways. Its use as an intoxicant has spread alarmingly, and especially among Negroes, we are told. Dr. Middleton declares, "No home is safe, no business secure, against the ravages of some unsuspected cocaine fiend, whose irresponsibilities may be all unknown." In New Jersey it was discovered that wretched reprobates were selling it to school children, who were bribed by candy or coerced by threats to inhale the drug, and thus some of the children became cocaine fiends.
Five hundred dollars a day, we are told, is spent along Seventh Avenue, New York, for the destroying drug, despite the united effort of legislature, Board of Health, and police force. Its curse is over all grades of society.
"Headache powders" contain acetanilid, a dangerous drug; others, chloral hydrate, still more dangerous. A case is noted of a young woman, "a shining light in the temperance cause," who would not for a moment permit a drop of intoxicating liquor in her home, who was discovered frequently intoxicated from the use of a patent medicine "tonic" which she used to brace her up. Her cellar was replete with the empty tonic bottles.
Children are made neurotics or killed by poisonous drugs in soothing sirups, containing heroin and morphin. Some contain cocaine. Anodynes, "colic cures," "infants' friends," teething concoctions, etc., contain opium, heroin, codein, morphin, chloroform, cocaine, cannabis indica, chloral hydrate, or some other powerful, habit-forming drug, notwithstanding the lie, "Contains nothing injurious to the youngest babe."
Catarrh remedies are another channel through which these accursed agencies of the devil are spread abroad. The dreaded asthma sufferers are gulled in the same way. Dr. Middleton says: "America is the home of millions of drug victims. No man will ever know the exact extent of the evil, for the secret of most of the habitués dies with them, and the most common cases, that is, those using cocaine, morphin, and opium, are short-lived, most of them dying within ten years after they have contracted the habit."
"Mail order treatments" to the number of a score and a half are on the market to-day, most of them containing the very drug or drugs for which they are advertised as antidotes. "Some of them Dr. L. F. Kebler, a high authority, states contain sufficient poison to kill a dozen men."
Temperance reform should take on a broader basis. It ought to include every habit-forming drug, compound, decoction, weed, plant, etc., in the whole long list of stimulants and narcotics, from tea and tobacco to alcohol, absinthe, and cocaine.
Panama Canal Gates
It is said that the largest gates in the world are in process of construction in Pittsburg for the Panama Canal. Each of the ninety-two gates will be about as high as a six-story building, sixty-five feet wide, and seven feet thick. The structural steel that will go into them will weigh 60,000 tons. These mighty portals designed to admit a world's commerce from ocean to ocean, must withstand an immense pressure of water and possible convulsions of earth. It will take three years to complete the work, and the cost is estimated at five and a half millions.
Spirit Detectives and Human Violence
By Editor
Delvers in the spirit realms, clairvoyants, seers, psychics, message readers, and visionists in every section of the country have offered their services in the quest of the dynamiters of the Times plant in Los Angeles. It is said that some have described the dynamiters, their traits, temperaments, and mannerisms. Their haunts have been told by others, and their friends, relatives, and associations. Their every-day lives have been depicted so true to type that the detectives, who through material routes had previously gained the same information, were moved to wonder and amazement. We would not be surprised if these “spirit detectives” should lead to the very lair of these criminals be they hiding, and be able to expose in detail the plan and plot which led to the explosion of the bomb in the Times office. But we do seriously question whether such “revelation” would come from a divine source; not that God is disinterested in the awful crime that has been committed and the conviction of its cowardly perpetrators; but He permits the outworking of human motives which are in rebellion to His holy law, to show what such rebellion will lead to in the violence, and crime, and bloodshed that are witnessed throughout the whole earth.
Trouble which has grown out of the lynching and burning at the stake of Antonio Rodriguez, a Mexican who murdered the wife of an American ranchman, is demonstrated in outbreaks of violence toward Americans, and insults to the American flag, in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and elsewhere. Many of the United States citizens, becoming alarmed, have fled across the border. Two have been killed in mob outbreaks; and altho the Mexican government is preserving order in the metropolis, reports of mob violence from rural towns come in.
A pathetic sight is that caused by the garment workers’ strike in Chicago when more than 2,000 men, women, and children stood in a long line at the office of the treasurer of the local union awaiting the weekly sum allowed during the lock-out. Hundreds of strikers crowded every approach of the building, awaiting a chance to get into line, while crying children clung to their mothers’ dresses.
Eight Christians have been killed in a native outbreak against foreigners on the west coast of Gulf Davao, South Bolton, according to cable despatches received at the War Department from Major-General Pershing, commanding the military forces in the Philippines. Military protection has been asked, and it is thought now that the situation is not serious.
At Saginaw, Michigan, twenty have died of a most virulent form of smallpox within a month, and forty-five other victims are lying at the point of death. The mayor has issued a proclamation closing all theaters, schools, churches, and other public meeting places, in an effort to check the spread of the disease.
Secretary of War Jacob M. Dickinson, following his return from a tour of the world, announced that while in Europe he had purchased fifty aeroplanes for the use of the United States Government in the event of war.
The representatives of thirty-seven nations at the International Prison Congress recently held in Washington announce their unanimous opinion that the probation system in dealing with criminals is right and wise.
United States Senator Alexander Stephens Clay died suddenly of heart disease November 13, at Atlanta, Georgia. Governor Hoke Smith may be chosen for the seat made vacant by Senator Clay’s death.
Imperial Valley in this state is yielding a great cotton crop, many tracts producing one and one half to two bales to the acre. The cotton is of fine fiber, and brings top price. Six gins are at work.
Sixteen lives are reported lost November 3, in a cyclone which raged along the coast of Italy, north of Naples, as far as the Gulf of Genoa.
