[From an Editorial in The New Republic]

A credulous, impatient, or infirm public opinion can convert a reasonably successful conference into a failure by misinterpreting the behavior of the conferees. An alert, patient, well-informed, and convinced public opinion can convert a largely unsuccessful conference into a comparative success by placing a truthful interpretation upon the work of the conferees—by discriminating, that is, between the success and the failure, by enabling the success to live and by insisting on the recognition and repudiation of the failure. A false interpretation may pervert and neutralize the more successful work of the conference. A truthful interpretation may redeem the less successful work of the unsuccessful conference by preparing the way at the next assembly for a more illuminating deliberation and a more statesmanlike action.

["Where Is the Old 'Making Work' Brigade?"—An Editorial in The Boston Herald]

When we were children, we supposed that the burning of Smith's carpet and furniture emporium in our village was a blessing, because it would keep so many more people employed in knitting new carpets and making new furniture, and would entail no loss on Mr. Smith, because the insurance would cover his losses. When we grew a little older, we perceived that the tax on us, known as insurance, varied with the total of our losses from fire—always greatly exceeding them—and that since the destruction of his property was our loss, we would better have had a lower insurance rate, and used the money we saved in buying carpets and furniture for our own use and enjoyment. But the fallacy involved in our childish reckoning is one of the most persisting of all human errors. Blackstone's Commentaries tell, without the twinkling of an eye, how the legislation of Great Britain required that every dead person should be laid out in a woolen shroud, to make work for the weavers. His orphan children might go cold during the winter weather. For them the weavers ought to have been making woolen garments and not for the dead. For, in the long run, the pay of the weavers came out of the same sources. The family of the deceased had so much less to spend on its living children, by reason of the absurd requirements for the laying out of the dead.

The principle of all these things is the same. We, the everybody, pay for all the articles which the community wastefully consumes. We have the product of our own labor with which to pay for them. We can use that product in buying things for ourselves, or in buying things for the navy to consume, or for fires to burn up. Some of us would like the things ourselves, and more of them, instead of diverting so large a part of popular energy to unproductive channels. We have been agreeably surprised at the reception which the Hughes proposal has received. Relatively few people have raised the "making work" argument, and that at a time when there is considerable unemployment. Experiences in the last few years have considerably dampened the ardor of those who would make work for work's own sake. If there are builders, for example, they ought to be building houses for the American people, instead of building battleships. And of course the two kinds of labor are more or less interchangeable.

The human race will have made a distinct advance in civilization when it perceives that we do not want work for work's sake, but for the product's sake. The total of employment—or of unemployment—would not be affected. We have so much of the product of our own labor—call it money if you please—with which to buy other people's labor. We can either hire them to labor for us in the making of talking machines and automobiles and pneumatic cleaners, or we can set them to work for the state in making battleships and coast defenses and long range guns. We have to pay for the latter; we should pay for the former. It is only a question of what we want to exchange the product of our labor for. That community is best off which is able to have and to enjoy the things that contribute to health and culture and advancement, to the freedom of children from exacting conditions of labor, to the liberation of old age from want—which can have, in fine, the largest measure of the product of its own toil. We do not want to give any larger percentage of our product to the fire fiend than we have to. We do not want to give more than we need toward being governed. We do not want to pay more than we ought to for locks and bolts and bars and jails. We prefer to have the administration of our law as simple and inexpensive as possible, the operations of our government as straightforward and methodical as we can.

The intricacies of our system of taxation often disguise these great truths. People tend to think that the rich would pay, through income taxes, for the cost of a battleship, which would give employment to the workingmen. But it is not so simple as that. The rich can pass on their taxes. They certainly can do so as long as the world needs their money, and bids for the privilege of its use in business and in industry. The people who do the bidding for the money of the rich are the same people who would get the employment on a battleship. Its cost might not come out of them in taxes; but it would in the high cost of living. One translates itself very readily into the other.

[From The Watchman-Examiner]

It is the limit of folly to inveigh against the learning that rejects certain passages of the Bible on what are called scientific grounds if the Sermon on the Mount ... is to be rejected for "prudential reasons." As if God could not be trusted in national affairs. Neither learning nor ignorance and fear can change the truth of God.

[From "Light in Darkness," by T. Rhondda Williams in The Congregationalist]

The story of the temptation of Jesus is fruitful in regard to his method of conquest. The devil asked him to make stones into bread. He immediately thinks about the larger need of a man's life, and says: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." When the devil asked him to cast himself down from the pinnacle of th temple in order to demonstrate that he was the Son of God, his mind immediately turned to contemplate the nature of a true trust in God, and he never debated at all the proposal made to him. Similarly, when the devil invites him to worship him, Jesus immediately turns to think about God. When a false object of worship is presented he turns his whole being toward the true object.

["Newspapers to Work for Truthfulness," from The Christian Science Monitor]

The Pan-Pacific Press Conference has decided to seek the cooperation of all permanent news-gathering agencies for more complete dissemination of uncolored, truthful news through Pacific lands, on a theory of more cordial relations being established if one country is fully informed as to what is going on in the others.

["American Prohibition at its Worst"—From The Pioneer]

William E. (Pussyfoot) Johnson, writing in the Alliance News under the above caption, says: In order to gather official information on the effect of prohibition on drunkenness and crime in America, I recently sent out a questionnaire to the chiefs of police of eighty American cities that did not go dry of their own volition, but which were compelled to go dry by the adoption of the national prohibition amendment followed by the enactment of the Volstead Enforcement Act by Congress. In such cities, the sentiment against the traffic being the weakest, the difficulties of proper enforcement have been naturally the most serious. In these cities, therefore, the worst possible results must be looked for. The questionnaire called for the number of arrests for drunkenness in these cities for the years 1917, 1918, 1919, and 1920. The total arrests for all causes for the same years were asked for.

From the eighty inquiries sent out, returns were received from fifty-four police chiefs. These returns are tabulated herewith. In considering the tabulations, it should be recalled that war-time national prohibition went into effect on July 1, 1919, and constitutional prohibition became effective on January 16, 1920. The totals are as follows:

Police Arrests in Fifty-Four American Cities

Arrests for Total

Year Drunkenness Arrests

1917....372,497....1,109,561

1918....294,006....1,049,953

1919....205,391....956,215

1920....141,071....935,318

This is the very worst showing that can be made about the effect of prohibition on drunkenness and crime in American cities. Arrests for drunkenness in the most unfavorable cities have decreased by nearly two-thirds, whilst arrests for all causes in the same cities have fallen off by 186,335 in the three years. The decrease is becoming still more marked from month to month as the machinery for the enforcement of the dry laws becomes more and more effective. Inasmuch as the arrests for drunkenness and crime were yearly increasing by leaps and bounds under the old license system, the remarkable decrease under prohibition is exceedingly gratifying to the friends of prohibition, and equally disconcerting to those who would exploit the vices of the people for the benefit of their own pockets.