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Views From The Watch Tower
RICH MAN PROPHESIES PANIC
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A
MULTI-MILLIONAIRE sugar manufacturer of California,
Mr. Rudolph Spreckels, recently returned from a European trip. In New York City he was
interviewed by a newspaper reporter and is quoted as having made the statements
below. Without endorsing his conclusions, we state them. His large wealth gives
him opportunity for information respecting monetary affairs, which would not be
open to ordinary men of small capital and lesser influence. We quote the
interview from the Springfield Union of July 31st, as follows:--
TERRIBLE
TIMES BEFORE US
"The
financial control of the country is today centered in the hands of two great
interests. When the two men in control of these interests engage in battle with
each other for the supremacy a revolution, the most destructive the world has
ever seen, will follow--a revolution that will not only paralyze or wreck many
of our great industries and overthrow unnumbered financial institutions, but
will imperil the safety of the Government itself. The only force that can
prevent such a disaster is the people themselves, whose good sense and
patriotism on many occasions heretofore have rescued the country from
threatened destruction.
"I
have been engaged in business since I was 17, and have noticed year by year a
gradual reduction in the number of firms handling large industries or engaged
in banking, until today the reduction must excite alarm. It is a significant
commentary on business conditions that two men have it in their power to embarrass
the United States Government. The concentration of wealth is the great evil of
modern times, for it places in a few hands the power to precipitate panics and
control legislation.
"Each
time one of these panics has occurred certain interests have come forward to
relieve the situation by the releasing of large amounts of money. If men can
break a panic by bringing forward their hoarded millions, it is evident they
can cause a panic by withdrawing from circulation a few hundred millions of
dollars. From observations made in the last few months I am convinced that
certain great financial interests now are perfecting plans for the
precipitation of one of these business upheavals this fall.
"The
panic of 1907 was 'organized,' if I may use the term, for the purpose of
discrediting Theodore Roosevelt and his administration. The panic of 1910 is
being hatched to furnish material for the approaching political campaigns. Those
who are engineering it do not care how many enterprises may be wrecked, how
many men may be thrown out of employment, or how many suicides may follow, so
long as they succeed in their purposes. If stocks are hammered down to the
bottom, they stand ready to make millions out of the necessities of those who
are driven to sacrifice their holdings."
Spreckels
announced that he proposed to devote the rest of his life to the reform of
"conditions that already are intolerable," in order to head off, if
possible, the impending revolution. Asked as to the remedy for the evils
complained of, he said:--
"The
elimination of dishonesty in corporate matters, the quickening of business
conscience, the banishment of graft, the readjustment of capitalization by the
squeezing out of water and the adoption of the Golden Rule as a fundamental
principle of business. How these reforms can be effected is the important
question of the times. What is needed today is a quickening of the conscience
of the great wealth holders. One trouble with the trusts is that the men whose
capital is invested in them are not sufficiently concerned to take an active
interest in their management. So long as they continue to receive large
dividends they wink at practises in a corporation that they would not
countenance in their own personal business."
Without
endorsing Mr. Spreckels' prophecy we can say that it is well-known amongst
financial institutions of the country that all our banking interests are
practically in the hands of a very few wealthy men. It is not, however,
generally believed that the interests of these men would be better served by
panics. On the contrary, the general estimation of business people is that
these capitalists are conservative and that in seeking to guard their own
interests against catastrophe they are really protecting others from financial
disaster. Some of these very people have boasted of late that their hold upon
the financial situation is so strong that panics will henceforth be impossible.
[R4671 : page 276]
Nevertheless
selfishness and ambition are the foundation of the present structure of
society. And Mr. Spreckels may be right in his assumption of a great financial
duel between our financial potentates. It was just such a duel that produced
our last panic. One combination of capitalists attempted to take by the throat
another combination, but failed and was crushed. The public was not made to
suffer more than was necessary in the matter; but, so powerful were the
antagonists, that the entire financial world received a shock which brought
loss to many far removed from the principals and the scene of their conflict.
But
aside from Mr. Spreckels' prophecy respecting a panic this year our readers
know from the STUDIES IN THE SCRIPTURES to expect ere long the fulfillment of
the great Redeemer's words, "There shall be a time of trouble such as
never was since there was a nation--no, nor ever shall be after." (Dan. 12:1;
Matt. 24:21.) That awful trouble, however, we do not expect
before October, 1914. Whatever may come in the interim will be but the
rumblings preceding the great climacteric shock, before which will fall all
earthly institutions; as St. Paul declares, Everything that can be shaken will
be shaken. And the only thing that cannot be shaken will be the Kingdom which
God's faithful ones will receive about that time.-- Heb.
12:27,28.
Meantime
we advise that no attempt be made by any of our readers to alarm the world.
Humanity will be alarmed enough in due time. Rather it should be our aim to
console, to comfort, to bind up the broken-hearted, to pour in the oil and the
wine, to show the good things which God has in reservation for the saints and
the restitution blessings which then will begin to be dispensed to Israel and to all the families of the earth through
Israel.
Mr.
Spreckels is to be admired for his courage. He fully demonstrated it some years
ago in his attack upon financial corruption and graft in the politics of San Francisco. The above
interview shows the man's fearless courage as he looks into the future. He
hopes to be able to stem the tide of political and financial corruption. He
hopes for the establishment of the Golden Rule in business and in politics. We
admire his courage and hopefulness, even while we know that his expectations
will all fail. The world is not getting nearer to the Golden Rule. Our great
institutions of learning are turning out infidels by the thousands--turning
them into influential and predominant strata and currents of life--financial,
political and religious. They fear neither God nor the devil. They scorn the
Bible and its precepts as "old wives' fables." They have a standing
of honor and a business integrity, but it is not of the Golden Rule kind. It is
of the kind that merely keeps within the lines of legal requirement, and not
always that, as was evidenced by the court exposures of illegalities in
connection with some of the great insurance companies a few years ago and
railroad mismanagement and land frauds and bribery by bankers, etc.
Nor
should we be harsh in our judgment of millionaires as a whole, nor even of
those who have been convicted of financial briberies. Rather our moderation
should be known to all men. As peacemakers we should sympathetically point out
on proper occasions that much of the difficulty arises from the fact that
individual responsibility is overwhelmed by corporation associations--by the
seeming necessity of an unlawful act to accomplish an end believed to be wise,
benevolent or just. In other words, we are living in the day controlled by systems,
of which individuals are merely atoms, even when they occupy influential
positions in the systems.
How
glad we are that, as Bible Students, we are obtaining from the Divine Word
"meat in due season," which not only nourishes us, but makes us strong
in the Lord to know and to do his will and to be assistful to all with whom we
are in contact. Let us not forget that if we belong to the Lord we are of the
"royal priesthood" and that now is the time, in the dawning of the
great antitypical Jubilee, when all the priests are to blow upon the silver
trumpets, making known to the world the riches of God's grace about to be
revealed in Messiah's Kingdom, for which still we pray, "Thy Kingdom come;
thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven."
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SECRETARY
KNOX SEES MILLENNIUM
P.
C. Knox, Secretary of State in President Taft's Cabinet, in concluding a
stirring address before the graduating students of the University of Pennsylvania,
speaks as follows:
"We
have reached a point where it is evident that the future holds in store a time
when wars shall cease; when the nations of the world shall realize a federation
as real and vital as that now subsisting between the component parts of a
single state; when by deliberate international conjunction the strong shall
universally help the weak, and when the corporate righteousness of the world
shall compel unrighteousness to disappear and shall destroy the habitations of
cruelty still lingering in the dark places of [R4672 :
page 276] the earth. This is 'the spirit of the wide world brooding on
things to come.' That day will be the Millennium, of course; but in some sense
and degree it will surely be realized in this dispensation of mortal
time."
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JEWISH
PERSECUTION
Shocking
reports are coming from Russia
about the expulsion of the Jews in masses. As lightning out of a clear sky,
thousands of Jewish families are being turned unexpectedly out of their homes,
and as often brought to the beggar's staff. From a suburb of Kiev there have been banished Jews who have
lived there for decades. This, however, does not hinder a part of the Jewish
"upper-crust" from holding its hand over Russian bonds with a view of
protecting themselves. If all the rich Jewish financiers in Germany and France possessed
enough feeling of honor to oppose this Jewish persecution in Russia by a
campaign against Russian stocks, then the Barbaric vassals of the Czar would
soon be brought to fear in this, their "religious fervor." By this it
is not intended to be said that every respectable person has not a duty to
boycott Russian bonds, until Russia
has adapted herself to the ways of civilization. But we do mean to say that
Jewish capitalists should be in the lead with their good example. They are
certainly, in the end, the closest to the situation.--From the German Press.
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NEED
FOR THE KINGDOM
Doctor
MacGillvary, Professor of Etymology in Cornell University,
lecturing recently, said, "Insects at the moment have an enormous
influence on the life and health of mankind. The number of species of insects
which are known to science at the present time is estimated at one hundred
millions. Knowledge of the place of insects in disease is of recent
acquisition. Not until 1880 was it known that malaria was produced by a parasite.
Not until fifteen years later was the part which mosquitos play in its spread
discovered. Not until 1890 was yellow fever known to be an insect-carried
disease."
W.T. R-4671 a : page 275 – 1910 r.
