p. 15 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 24. (6/23/1914)

Earlier text: An Interesting Island Group

THE THREE BEST WAYS

BETWEEN California and the East

The CENTRAL ROUTE Less than three days to Chicago

The SOUTHERN ROUTE All rail or via the palatial Southern Pacific steamers between New Orleans and New York

The SHASTA ROUTE Via Portland or the North

The best of equipment and service Protected throughout by auto-matic block signals

INQUIRE OF ANY AGENT, OR MR. C. S. FEE General Passenger Agent San Francisco, California

SOUTHERN PACIFIC

A Prayer for Alertness and Wisdom

“TEACH me to be alert and wise in all responsibilities without hurry and without neglect. Tame Thou and rule my tongue, that I may not transgress Thy law of love. When others censure, may I seek Thine image in each fellow man, judging with charity as one who shall be judged.”

Shall We Compel Rest?

By J. O. C.

STRONG sentiments of sympathy in the interest of the overworked laboring man are now expressed in various quarters. This is as it should be; and every laborer, confined as he is from week to week in the effort to support a dependent family, should have one day in every seven for rest and recuperation. Could this be universally so, the laborer and his family would doubtless be made happier, and his employer would reap larger and more satisfactory results from his labors.

But how ought such a condition to be provided? Should a religious law be placed on the statutes, which would require everybody to rest on a given day, whether agreeable to him or not, and thus some be deprived of the God-given right to employ their time as they think fit, when by so doing the rights of others are not infringed? This seems to be the decision reached by some, especially those who religiously rest on Sunday, and desire to have everybody else do the same as their own religiously trained consciences dictate.

But is such a course wisest and best? Some say that there appears no other way open to secure to the working man his right to a weekly day of rest; but would this reach the root of the matter?

Sunday laws are on the statute-books of most of the states, but they do not minimize Sunday labor. The one thing they have done, so far, is to open the way for the persecution of those who conscientiously observe another day.

The only way that laboring men get a day of rest is to demand it, and assert their God-given manhood and take it. In this way the laborer secures his own rights, and does not endanger the rights of others. J. O. C.

The Rights of the Non-Smoker

THE city council of Chicago has under consideration an ordinance to prohibit smoking on street-cars and in crowded public places. Concerning this proposed action, the Christian Evangelist has the following very pertinent things to say:

"This is a salutary reform. A man may have a right to fill his own lungs and saturate his own clothing with tobacco smoke, but he has no right to impose his polluted smoke upon people who do not smoke and who do not like the fumes of the nicotinized weed. It is high time to protest the rights of the non-smoker. Heretofore, all the rights have been given the smoker. He is given the right to smoke in public places, council meetings, at banquets, and on street-cars.

"Let him either consume his own smoke or be compelled to put out his pipe when with people who do not care for it. Men who are otherwise gentlemen will in the most nonchalant manner blow tobacco fumes into the faces of strange ladies, and pollute halls for all who do not indulge. It is time to protest the rights of the non-smoker."

The Wine Trust and the "Producer"

By Editor

SOME of the big San Francisco dailies that ought to know better are giving extended space to statements concerning the great proportions of the wine industries of the state of California. One of these reports tells us that the vineyards of California during this season "will bring to the producers more than twenty-six million dollars," and that "all of this money will go through San Francisco, contributing to its commerce and its banking resources."

A mistake is made in saying that the California vineyards will give twenty-six millions to "the producers." Were it not for the forces of temperance, California might possibly, during this year, give twenty-six millions to the big wine trust.

Not only the people of this state, but the people of all the states, should learn to discriminate between the "producers" and the whisky and wine trust. The "producers" get but very little from this organization.

The whisky and wine trust is one of the most grasping and greedy of all the trusts that have ever been organized. And being in a business that is not conducive to morality, it is naturally making a great uproar over the immense money loss that will be incurred if prohibition should carry.

But the question is not one of money. It is one of morality and decency. The question is not, Shall California permit the wine trust to gather in this twenty-six million dollars? but it is whether we will permit this same trust to continue to debauch our boys and our girls, to fill our penitentiaries with criminals, and our asylums with imbeciles.

Let the issue be fairly drawn. Let every one understand that the money side of this problem is of no consequence whatever when placed in the balance over against the immorality, the suffering, and the criminality of this awful business that is trying to have us place a few dollars so close to our eyes that we can not behold its criminality and degenerating works.

Has It Been Accepted?

By M. C. Wilcox

DR. CHARLES R. BURGER, of Los Angeles, state chairman of the Prohibition Party of California, issued in the California Voice of April 23 a challenge addressed to Mr. Frank Niggins, secretary of the board of directors of the Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles. Referring to statements sent abroad by that body to the effect that prohibition would result in serious loss to the wine grape growers, Mr. Burger says:

"Believing that such statements are not true, and that they do not correctly represent the views of a large portion of your membership, who are entitled to know the facts, I am authorized by the Hon. Eugene W. Chafin to challenge any officer or member of your organization or any accredited representative to a series of from one to ten public discussions of the following question: 'Resolved, That the best interests of the state financially demand the passage of the prohibition constitutional amendment.' "Mr. Chafin will speak affirmatively. If this suggestion should meet your approval, committees can be selected to arrange the necessary details."

Have you heard of the acceptance of this challenge? We have not. Why? Is it not fair? There are able men connected with the Los Angeles Board of Commerce. Why are they not willing to defend their attitude, their statements? Is it not because the whole liquor traffic is absolutely indefensible? M. C. WILCOX.

Panama-Pacific Exposition

TWO HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX great congresses and conventions, some of them with membership running as high as a hundred thousand persons, have voted to make San Francisco their headquarters in 1915, so as to avail themselves of the privilege, at the same time, of attending the world's fair. This will make an average of four conventions running daily throughout the life of the exposition.

Fully three thousand other conventions, many of them made up of organizations whose membership is scattered in a dozen foreign nations, are in correspondence with Mr. James A. Barr, chief of the Exposition Bureau of Conventions and Societies, and hence many other conventions will doubtless decide to come to the exposition city next year.

In planning for the many conventions and congresses that are expecting to meet in San Francisco during the exposition next year, the management has deemed it expedient to have societies that are doing related work grouped in the same month. For instance, April will be devoted to congresses and conventions having to do with public health; May to social science, religion, and ethics; July is the educational month; and September will be devoted to engineering, electrical and other technical congresses; and October to the world's insurance organizations. Other groups are yet to be assigned.

Many of these congresses will have vast exhibits and working models, which may be seen all the time during the exposition.

Labor, Strikes, and Crime

By Editor

It has not been very long since the discontented armies of the unemployed, reaching up into the thousands, were disturbing Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and other cities of the nation. At the present time, the three great states of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri are advertising for an aggregate of one hundred ten thousand men. Kansas needs forty thousand, Oklahoma forty thousand, and Missouri thirty thousand. The wages will run from two dollars to three and a half a day and board. Men who actually desire to work will have no difficulty in finding employment, at least until after the harvest season is past. And if those who labor would save their money instead of spending it, as so many do, for drink, they might avoid being driven into the army of the unemployed.

THOSE who have been keeping account of the cost of the Colorado strike, find that thus far sixty-six persons have been killed, forty-eight wounded, and that the expense to the strikers, the mine operators, and the state has already aggregated twelve million dollars. The sufferings and the tortures that have grown out of this thing can not be computed in dollars and cents, and is not fully measured by the number of lives lost or of individuals wounded. If such scenes and conditions as have prevailed in Colorado represented isolated cases, it would not be so bad; but the whole world is threatened with similar scenes of strife and anarchy—only they will be intensified.

ON May 15, two masked men held up the "Oriental Limited," on the Great Northern Railway. The combination mail and baggage car was detached from the train, and run some four miles away, where it was rifled. Train robberies are becoming more and more common. Even mere boys are engaging in the business of holding up city street-cars, as well as regular trains. Lawlessness and daring desperadoes are on the increase, and that regardless of the fact that to control this sort of thing, some of the strongest men are exerting the mightiest efforts the world has ever known. The mere study of these facts ought to create very sober reflections.

NEW YORK's legislature is expected to pass a bill that will submit to the people, through the referendum, the question of authorizing an expenditure of some thirty million dollars in the development of the state's charitable institutions. There are said to be thirty-two thousand feeble-minded people in the state, while the institutions designed for them can accommodate only about forty-nine hundred of these, and about forty-five hundred are in institutions not properly fitted for their care. This leaves over twenty-two thousand of these unfortunate defective and feeble-minded people at large. Statistics show that this class is increasing more rapidly than normal beings.

THE town council of Montclair, New Jersey, has introduced an ordinance that provides against the sale of impure, adulterated, or misbranded liquor; against the use of glasses not thoroughly cleaned after being used; and it empowers any member or authorized agent of the board of health, or any two residents of the town, to file a complaint. The liquor dealers of the country ought to be able to see that the strongest and best element of society is determined to put that so-called "business" under the ban.

CADET F. BOWLES was recently killed at Annapolis, Maryland, by a band of "hazing" fellow students. Why is it that our civilization can not outlaw all such barbarous things? Why should any school permit anything in the nature of hazing? There is nothing manly or educative connected with it, and of all places, the school should be the very last to tolerate it.

ON June 8, the ocean-going ship, the Alliance, of four thousand tons displacement, belonging to the Panama Railroad Company, successfully passed through the Gatun Locks into Gatun Lake in the Panama Canal, and returned to her dock at Cristobal, without a hitch to mar the great event.

Missionary Journey Through North Africa

By Editor

A CARD just received from Elder L. R. Conradi, the president of our European Division Conference, tells us, in a few words, of his missionary journey through northern Africa. He speaks of visiting old Carthage, and riding about there on electric trains. "All North Africa is developing wonderfully," is his statement. He will send us something on the subject for the SIGNS very soon.