January, 1937
THE K I NG ' S BUS I NES S
12
of Seattle for weeks recently is a matter of common knowledge. That same tyranny seeks enthronement at this hour in the strike that now prevents the movements of ships in and out of our harbors. One week after the recent election, the American Guardian, published in Okla homa City, a loudly professed champion of the so-called “ workers,” flung across its front page its interpretation of the polit ical landslide. It declared that “the Amer ican masses,” arrayed against the rich, “ no longer voted with quivering knees, shaking hands, and bloodshot eyes.” Ac cording to the Guardian, “ the American masses” said to Roosevelt “ in a voice of roaring thunder” : “ Go ahead with your testing, trying, groping, experimenting, until you find the right way out. To hell with the money-changers. Kick the golden calf to your heart’s content. Make mince meat of the Supreme Court. Amend the Constitution until nothing remains but the common welfare clause and the Bill of Rights. Today we chased our tormentors, their scribes and pharisees, apologists and gunmen, to the further most tip of the land to nurse their bruises, spleens and black eyes among the pines of Maine, the granite rocks of Vermont, and if they make you any further trouble will drive them clear into the ocean. We know the past. We are done with the past. We are sick unto death with its legalistic clap-trap, state rights’ swindle, its shallow shib boleths and clay feet idols. So for ward—forward! Forward to the un known and untried, if so it be, for there can be no hotter state than the seven years of hell we’ve just passed through.” Need more be quoted to show the spirit of the proletariat that is ascending to power in the greatest nation on earth—a spirit that has little or no regard for men who possess money no matter how honestly acquired, nor for fundamental laws or legal procedure? The voice is not the voice of a group that would be civil to the Deity Himself unless He joined their union. Thus the clash of two opposite systems of government, foreseen by the New Testa ment prophet, is on. It is a fight that will bring just judgment to the rich, many of whom, on the wages of toilers, “ kept back by fraud,” have lived wantonly. It is a fight that, apparently, will throw by vio lence the proletarian masses in many lands into great, but temporary, power • and the masses, knowing not Christ, will become more tyrannical than were their former masters, until their master, the Antichrist, shall come. In such an hour as now is, the prophet has given to those who believe and under stand, one word of tremendous hope. It is this: “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the hus bandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the L ord draweth nigh .”
THE DEATH STRUGGLE OF TWO TYRANNIES [ Continued, from page 10]
It is to be recalled that it was no less an individual than Harry L. Hopkins, into whose hands, more than to any other, President Roosevelt entrusted the task of dispensing prosperity billions, that said: “This is a battle between the haves and the have-nots. W e are with the have - nots .” It was Rexford Guy Tugwell, Un der-Secretary of Agriculture, with whose ideas President Roosevelt was so ardently enamored, that said in a speech before the American Economic Association, in 1932: “Planning will necessarily become a function of the federal government; either that or the planning agency will supersede that government. Business will logically be required to disappear. This is not an overstatement for the sake of emphasis; it is literally meant. . . . The future is becoming visible in Russia. . . . Perhaps our vested inter ests will submit to control without too violent resistance. . . . The new kind of economic machinery we have in prospect cannot function in our present economy.” And, again, in a meeting of Democrats in Olympic Auditorium, Los Angeles, Octo ber 28, 1935, Mr. Tugwell declared: “We have no reason to expect that the disestablishing of our plutocracy will be pleasant. . . . The autocrats must get out of the way along with the moral system which supports them; but it is our duty to prevent that being done with violence. That is why I re gard the coming campaign as so im portant. . . . We shall have to recog nize our enemies, pouring out upon them the indignation we have too much withheld; . . . an enemy we can despise with a lasting and righteous anger. . . . Our best strategy is to surge forward with the workers and the farmers of this nation.” Comment on the above words, and their significance in the light of James’ great prophecy, is unnecessary. T he T yranny of the P roletariat Socialistic and Communistic writers often write as if no tyranny save the tyranny of the rich can exist. However, not all tyrants wear white collars! The writer held an evangelistic cam paign in Akron, Ohio, last spring, during the Goodyear strike. Never have we seen such utter defiance of law and order as came from a group of men calling them selves “ the workers.” They built their camps in the principal thoroughfare of that city, armed themselves with clubs, and challenged courts, sheriffs, police, or any one else to remove them. Hundreds of honest toilers, content with the wage and treatment received, were nevertheless kept from work, and were victims of the tyranny of the strikers whose leaders bore names unpronounceable to an American tongue. The tyranny that gripped the city
miserable existence by slaving in mines and mills. Again, we recall our own experi ence while a young pastor of a Philadel phia church, carrying food, fuel, and cloth ing to poverty-stricken families in zero weather, while the papers told of the $100- a-plate feasts of the rich at the Bellvue- Stratford. Years ago, a wealthy Parisian woman paid $500 a pair for her stockings, while the children of the poor patted the streets of that great city with their cold little feet, rubbing their noses against the windows of the shops. Moreover, she never wore a pair of these richly em broidered stockings twice 1 What a fool, you say? Yes, indeed, a fool! Neverthe less, she got her picture in the rotogravure section of the newspapers all over the world. That, to a rich feminine fool, was worth $500 a day, wasn’t it? These are but illustrations of the world wide follies of the rich that they would like to have men forget in the present world wide “soak-the-rich” campaign. When the rich of the great Russian Empire but sev eral years ago were stood up against the walls and shot to death, we remembered! When in Spain a few days ago, the rich were bound hand and foot and dragged about the streets of Madrid until some kindly coup de grace ended their miseries, we remembered! When, in Mexico, less than a month ago, the lands of the rich were torn from them, without money and without price, and given to the peons, we remembered! When in Germany several weeks ago the new penal code set forth its motto, “The common weal takes precedence over private advantage,” the rich under stood and were not comforted. On the Saturday evening before his election, the President of these great United States, in a radio address to all the peoples of his realm, said: “ During the past four years we have been the match of the rich. Dur ing the next four years we will be their master!” When those words from the great American dictator thundered through the palatial mansions from New York to Los Angeles, a quiver of fear ran through the breasts of all America’s rich, not yet too dumb to understand! Never before has a President of our great nation so spoken. His words struck dismay into the hearts of even his rich friends. They remind the prophetic student that some day a “master” will arise and allow no one to buy or sell without his mark. Some may say that President Roosevelt, himself being a rich man, was only “ play ing to the galleries” before election. That might be the case, but it was dangerous play. Should the hour foretold by James arrive before four more years shall have passed, our President will either go along with the masses that he himself has set against the rich, or they will toss him to one side as the Russian revolutionaries tossed Kerensky aside, and the slaughter of the nabobs of wealth will begin. Amer ica will have her Stalin or her Mussolini even as every other land.
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