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VERGING ON DANGER

THE following from the Censor shows how the people, as represented by their spokesmen, are thinking. Our admonition to our readers is, “Seek ye first the Kingdom”! “Be content with such things as ye have”! While seeing the strife and trouble coming on the world take no part in it. “Wait ye upon me, saith the Lord”! In his own time and way our God will right every wrong and Messiah’s Kingdom shall bless all the nations of the earth. We quote:—

“While it is a pitiful confession of their own abject weakness, when the people do without food as the only means of protecting themselves from robber monopolies, a vast amount of good may flow from the present food strike, nevertheless. While to do without meat can be nothing more than a temporary expedient, for the Beef Trust, as one paper says, can save until next month the meat you refuse to eat this month, at which time it can restore old prices, with a little something by way of interest, the movement, as a most forcible agitation, is bound to result in something, although we may feel sure that the ‘passes’ now being made by politicians in office will never result in much.

“Surely this general blind uprising of the people should carry a warning to Pierpont Morgan and those under him at Washington and elsewhere. The strike is a mild but distinct danger sign, and if Mr. Morgan had ever had time to read history a little bit he would see it. The extortionate price of food is not Hunger, but it verges on Hunger. Our masters should know that it is dangerous to fool with the popular stomach. So undeveloped is the average man, that the stomach is still lord of life. To get food is still the main incident of existence. Our masters, if they are wise, would know that it is possible to oppress the people to any extent that pleases them, so that they but have the sense to stop short of hunger. The average American can be deluded, abused and robbed to an extent that is amazing, just as long as those who spoil him leave him enough to eat to keep him from starvation. He has no ambition, to speak of, beyond filling his stomach, and he will tolerate conditions that give him less than that. Leave him enough to eat to keep him from positive starvation, and he will do little more than murmur. But don’t go beyond that point. That tyrants, oppressors and robbers have occasionally overstepped that limit has caused results which have made history. They will tell you that the French Revolution was a great protest against

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feudalism and a great uprising for democracy. Stuff! The French Revolution was a hunger strike pure and simple. “How long present conditions persist in this country, depends on how soon our masters force us to the hunger point. Revolutions and reforms are not results of reasoning of the popular brain, but of feeling of the popular stomach. The people in the mass have small power of reason, and have never had much. Our degree of progress is the amount of increased nervous sensitiveness in the human stomach. Until we reach the hunger point there will be no reform in this country. The plunderers of privilege will continue to ride our necks until the insistent call of our stomachs forces us to assert our torpid manhood.

“The food strike is a thing the Censor foresaw years ago. Who knows but it is the beginning of that revolution which we must have to restore our liberties? For it is a matter of history that all oppressors are blinded by their own success and keep going until they go too far—past the danger point of hunger. Thus I feel certain that while there may be breaks in the system of despoiling the people, seasons of temporary relief, this matter may be considered as merely in its incipiency. The present discrepancy between wages and prices is not a new thing; it is not of today or yesterday or last year. This conspiracy is nearly fifty years old. Ever since the Civil War the conspirators have been toiling to secure control of the government, and organize their little game. It is within the last five years only that they have perfected the vast scheme of plundering the people through monopoly of all sources of distribution. Will they quit now or be satisfied? It is not to be expected.”

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— March 15, 1910 —