p. 8 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 35, No. 13. (10/28/1908)

Wanted — a Book.

By Editor

Have any of our readers a book or pamphlet on the Lord's coming by Josiah Litch, published in 1838? If so, will they kindly let us know? We should like to negotiate for the loan or purchase of the volume. Address the editor of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, Mountain View, Cal.

The trades unions have not been so prosperous as might have been desired during the last quarter in England. Receipts from all sources aggregate about $50,000 while expenditures exceed $125,000. The membership is nearing the million mark.

The Ubiquitous Oyster.

The English papers are aroused over a Birmingham tabulated report of a scientific investigation by Dr. Geo. F. Buchan, a medical health officer, covering four years' time: Seventy-four cases of typhoid fever have been notified in Birmingham, in which the patients partook of oysters within four weeks of the appearance of the symptoms. And at an inquest held at Leeds, August 19, it was found that the deceased had died of ptomaine poisoning caused by eating mussels (oysters or clams) purchased in Leeds market. These "delicious" bivalves fatten upon the offal of the seas and the sewage of the cities.

Extremes of Wealth and Poverty.

India is noted for its inherited, indigenous, and chronic poverty. It is as persistent as the plague. Great Britain has done wonderful things for India. She might have done much more, if we are to believe the critics. Doubtless she has made many mistakes, but we greatly doubt if any other nation would have done so well, in such a country with its multitudes of different peoples, its many native governments, and its curse of caste, and soul-destroying beliefs. Yet in this poverty-stricken, plague-infested and famine-fated land, Sir Ernest Cable, in a letter to the London Times, of August 17, quotes the late Mr. Dunning Macleod as declaring that "persons of the highest authority" estimate the hidden hoards of India at £300,000,000, or in round numbers, $1,500,000,000, and this in gold alone. Others have put the amount, as the Times states, "at a considerably higher figure." Lord Rothschild states that the smooth bars of gold sent to India never come back. Then, too, it is declared that much wealth is hoarded in silver rupees, or in jewelry and trinkets. But the suffering continues, and millions die every year for the want of what a little money would purchase.

The race question

— it is important enough to be written with initial capitals — is becoming more than local to the Southern States of America. Recent demonstrations show us that Republican Illinois can furnish us a madder and a more unreasonable mob than the South, where race hatred is chronic. Canada has her race trouble. California has hers; South Africa and Australasia, theirs. The London Times points out that while there are European national hatreds and jealousies, yet "in the long run, the races are miscible. They intermarry and blend." But this the Times thinks can never be done with the Oriental and Western races. The blend, where it occurs, is rarely good from the point of view of greater races, and closer intercourse tends to accentuate rather than to soften the fundamental irreconcilability.

"East and West may still be friends while each keeps to its own sphere, but the secret of successful amalgamation has yet to be discovered. To the Englishman at home, nurtured in beautiful, abstract ideas about human equality and brotherhood, this fact is not always obvious. He would discover it in a week if his sentiments were put to the practical test which is always with our countrymen across the seas."

Of course, Christianity on the part of the dominant race would help to settle it, and on the part of all races would settle it; but that is too much to be hoped for. One of the reasons why Australia welcomed the American fleet in so hearty a manner is because of the desire for unity in the matter of the great Oriental race question. And so the English journals regard it. It may be safely stated that the race question will not be settled till Jesus Christ our Lord shall take to Himself His great power and reign. Then there will be but the one race, the one King, the one language, the one color; all are One in Him, reformed after His image.

Increasing Insanity.

There has recently been issued in England the sixty-second annual report of the Commissions in Lunacy, as a Government Blue Book. The number of certified insane people known to be under charge in England and Wales is 126,084, an increase of 2,026 over last year. In fifty years the number of insane had increased at the rate of less than eighty per cent. During the last ten years the increase of population was a little over twelve per cent, while the increase in certified insane was nearly twenty-four per cent. The number in England and Wales now amounts to one to 280, or more than thirty-five to the thousand. There is no reason to suppose that there is more insanity in England than elsewhere. Some physicians are declaring that it can be fixed almost to a certainty when the entire human race would be insane. Some of the great reasons for this awful condition may be found in the increased and increasing use of poisons in alcoholic drinks, tobacco in its various forms, nerve stimulants and narcotics, like tea and coffee, and the thousand-and-one other drugs and "nervines" on the market, each and all tending to unnatural excitement and excess, unbalanced circulation, nerve disease and waste, aberration of mind, and insanity. Consequent upon the use of these toxics is the stimulation and indulgence of baser passions, with consequent marital troubles, incurable diseases, misery, and insanity. It is an appalling condition. Added to this is the saddest thought of all that faith in Jesus Christ as a personal Saviour, Friend, and Helper in every trouble, is becoming more and more rare. Contemplating these things, how easy it is to conclude with God's word, that the hope of the world is His second coming.

Increasing Wealth and What It Means.

However glowing and pride-elevating may be the increasing wealth of our great cities, the fact indicates an exceedingly unhealthy condition and is full of awful menace for the future. For instance, Greater New York has recently completed its assessment roll of real estate. It totals the enormous sum of $6,140,000,000, a sum nearly incomprehensible if counted in units. This is exclusive of special franchises and corporation realty. The increase over last year was $435,000,000; and that increase alone exceeds the assessed valuations of the entire states of Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Wyoming. When the blood becomes congested in the heart, lungs, brain, and other vital organs in the human body, disease is sure to supervene. When the individual becomes too fat, fatty degeneration of the vital organs takes place, and the person becomes hopelessly diseased. It is as true of the body politic. When the circulating medium of the country is hoarded largely in the great centers, when the large increase of wealth is manifest there, an unhealthy, unsafe condition must exist. America is beginning to suffer seriously from congestion of the lungs, and fatty degeneration of the heart and liver and kidneys. The extremities suffer from bloodlessness and cold. Money is found in plenty in the great cities; the banks, the trusts, the great corporations, find money in plenty, money for speculation, money for hoarding; the small dealer, the farmer, the laborer, is bound to suffer. And then in the cities the wealth is in the hands of a few, as pointed out elsewhere. The poor — and their number is increasing daily — find conditions of living, or barely existing, more and more difficult. Agitators in plenty, anarchistic and otherwise, develop rapidly; become rabid and revolutionary, and receive more encouragement from the masses. How long will it be before the words of God's prophet shall be fulfilled, and the "miseries" which the selfishly rich have invited shall come upon them in overwhelming measure?

New Gold Outputs.

It looked a few years ago as tho "the System," or what John Clark Ridpath denominated the "Invisible Empire," would corner and control the money of the world. Gold was seemingly becoming scarce, and yet the influence of the "Invisible Empire" put the commerce of the world on a gold basis. Thanks to a kind Providence, new gold-fields were opened in the Klondike and elsewhere, and the supply is still kept up. Southern Rhodesia, in South Africa, furnished her record output in July, of $1,140,000; for the first seven months of the year, $7,382,000. Other gold-fields have produced abundantly. The sad thing is that most of this wealth goes to the few.