April 1932
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
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A Statistician Speaks Business depressions are caused by dissipation, dishonesty, and disobed ience to God’s will, resulting in a collapse, of moral character. They are cured by a moral awakening, a spiritual revival, and the rehabilita tion o f righteousness. — R oger B abson . DEPRESSION By JOSEPH T. LARSEN Minneapolis, Minn.
T he prophets of old had a remedy for times of oppres sion, depression, and desolation. There are several kinds o f depression: physical, Rental, political, economic, finan cial, and spiritual. ll these traits seem to be combined in the present depression. People are worn out physically, depressed mentally, oppressed politically, discouraged economically, and lacking in financial aid; and worse than all else, the souls of men have been spiritually depressed until, in 1930, 20,000 people in this country committed suicide, and 80,000 more attempted suicide but did not succeed. T he C ause of D epression When Israel forsook the Lord and His ways, depres sion, war, famine, and pestilence- became their curse. It was their own idolatry and wickedness that brought the chastening hand of God upon them. Likewise, God has permitted many factors to lead up to the present depres sion. The nation has “ gone on a spree,” and many have spent everything, saved nothing, and borrowed ail they were able, not realizing that days of prosperity might not last forever. Salesmen used high pressure methods in mil lions of homes, causing people to buy beyond their incomes. Credit was extended too freely. Then values decreased in land, real estate, and products. Tariffs were set up in other nations, making it difficult to ship to foreign nations the amount o f produce formerly shipped. Factories were overstocked with manufactured goods, and raw materials wasted on every hand. The result was that factories closed, the buying power became limited because many people were out of work—until now it is reported that there are over 5,000,000 people out o f work in the United States. In the last three years, $50,000,000,000 has been lost on the stock markets, according to a New York report show ing the difference on balances since 1929. The war cost the nation more than $25,000,000,000 in money, not to men tion the fifty thousands killed and the many thousands in jured. This has been a heavy drain on state, federal, and property taxes. There have been crop failures in Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Montana, and other states. The drought is re ported to have affected twenty states during 1930. Then came the grasshopper plague in South Dakota, Nebraska, and other states, during 1931, when entire counties were stripped of their crops. In some sections, there were hail, cut worms, and killing frosts. And all these are the same curses that God promised Israel if they departed from Him.
e boast of being a Christian nation, when 70,000,000 of our people are still outside the churches, millions of them living in luxury, vice, and sin of all kinds. Amer ica is leading the world in divorce, drugs, crime, and mur der ! There are fifty times as many murders in the United States as there are in England. Laws are being flaunted, prohibition is despised, and God and the Bible have small place among any of the people outside the churches, while higher criticism and worldliness have gained a large place within the churches themselves. Commercialized vices and pleasures are taking people’s money, time, virtue; they are lowering moral standards generally ; and as a result, the people are becoming de pleted physically, socially, morally, financially, and spirit ually. Insanity has increased threefold in the last twenty years, and prisons are crowded. One cannot blame this upon prohibition, or upon sound laws. It is caused by the violation of laws established by God and man. This may be a dark picture, but the half may not yet have been told. T he C urse of D epression Economic depression is bad, mental depression is worse, but the spiritual lack, which is the cause of much depression, is a far greater problem than either of the former. People are blaming this depression upon Presi dent Hoover, but that cannot be where the blame lies. The President is not responsible for every foolish move in mis management that individual citizens have made. The curse lies in the lack of work, lack of food, lack of homes, and lack of clothing in millions of cases. The curse lies in the fact that multimillionaires are hoarding their “ frozen assets” and have not the charitable attitude that a time like this demands. merica holds $5,000,000,000 of the world’s gold. She has more of it than any other nation. The wealth of the country is reported to be about $361,000,000,000 in spite of losses on the stock markets for the past three years. President Hoover’s report of banking in 1930 showed a five per cent increase over banking conditions of 1928, proving that there is plenty of money. But the common people who are in need of the bare necessities of life do not possess it.. * The curse, then, lies in the fact that men with millions know that poverty, suffering, sickness, and death lie on every hand, yet they seem to be without the sympathetic concern that would move them to alleviate the condition. [Continued on page 160]
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