746 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Dec. 1 



Our Homes 



By a. I. Root. 



There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.— MATT. 

 13 : 50. 



My talk this morning, or at least my start- 

 out, was suggested by a sermon preached by 

 our Congregational pastor, J. E. Kirbye, D. 

 D., on Nov. 7. The speaker said in his ser- 

 mon that when he was a child he got hold of 

 the idea, more or less common at that time, 

 that at some time in the great future all man- 

 kind, from the beginning of the world up, 

 were to be called up from their graves and 

 form a great procession; and this procession 

 was to march past a great white throne where 

 God sat in judgment and judged this throng 

 of humanity. A part were to be assigned to 

 heaven, and the other part to eternal torment. 

 I think he added that there is nothing in the 

 whole Bible to furnish ground for such be- 

 lief. 



I had to smile while he was speaking about 

 it, because it agreed so exactly with my early 

 ideas and early teachings; and my childhood 

 dates quite a good many years prior to that 

 of my pastor. Well, as that particular belief 

 has been gradually dropped by at least a good 

 many Christian people, I rather think man- 

 kind in general has been coming to the con- 

 clusion that we do not need to wait until 

 death, or, say, a long time after death, before 

 we can experience the joys of heaven. The 

 real, earnest, hard-working Christian finds 

 heaven here on earth. If you do not find it 

 as a reward after your faithful and energetic 

 work, there is something wrong somewhere. 



Now, my convictions have been growing 

 stronger and stronger as I grow older, that 

 heaven commences here on earth; and I be- 

 lieve that that is the experience of most of 

 those who are working unselfishly for the 

 good of humanity. 



Now, Dr. Kirbye did not exactly say so, but 

 I gathered from his talk that he believed that 

 one might find hell as well as heaven here 

 on earth. On page 686, Nov. 1st issue, friend 

 Gault furnished us a bright suggestion to the 

 effect that those who deliberately choose hell, 

 instead of heaven, "carry their own brim- 

 stone along with them;" and the more I think 

 of it the more I am convinced that there is a 

 great truth right there. Men suffer the tor- 

 ments of hell here on earth because of their 

 evil deeds; and these torments are often so 

 great that they commit suicide in the effort 

 to escape such torments. Whether they do 

 escape any thinghy suicide is a question that, 

 perhaps, we can not solve. The man who, 

 in a fit of anger, shoots his wife and children, 

 and (as soon as he begins to recognize his 

 awful crime) turns his revolver upon him- 

 self, illustrates the truth of what I have been 

 saying. 



Dr. Kirbye called our attention to the fact 

 that the "wailing and gnashing of teeth " is 

 going on all around us, but perhaps we have 

 not noticed it. He said that when mankind 

 had gradually risen up to the "higher 



ground," where they decided that human 

 slavery was a sin against God as well as 

 against humanity, there was wailing and 

 gnashing of teeth before men would give up 

 their slaves. When the general government 

 decided that lotteries were also a sin against 

 God and mankind, and attempted to put a 

 stop to it by righteous laws, there was more 

 wailing and gnashing of teeth. And just 

 think what we had, and for that matter are 

 still having, to keep the demon away from 

 our shores. Just now there is wailing and 

 gnashing of teeth among the liquor forces be- 

 cause their whole crew, like the slaveholders 

 and the Louisiana Lottery people, are to be 

 crowded off the face of the earth. See what 

 comes from one of the liquor periodicals on 

 page 7i9. 



Well, friends, I am now coming to the point 

 of this Home paper — the banishing of the sa- 

 loon. It has resulted in unearthing some- 

 thing more terrible-, if possible, than intem- 

 perance and every thing else that follows 

 along in its wake. What I allude to is the 

 white-slave trade. Something happened a 

 few months ago in our nearby city of Cleve- 

 land that seems to have started the war; and 

 the general government of this nation has 

 appointed Edwin W. Sims, U. S. District At- 

 torney, to investigate. From a little pamphlet 

 just sent me I clip the following: 



SMASHING THE WHITE-SLAVE TRADE. 



You know that throughout the United States a 

 "white-slave traffic" of appalling proportions was re- 

 cently unearthed. 



It is widespread, even international. It proved so 

 appalling, and the public was so unaware of the exis- 

 tence of the predatory monster, that the Woman 's 

 World told its 2,000,000 readers, in two tremendous ar- 

 ticles by United States District Attorney Sims, of Chi- 

 cago, the facts— warned them, so that they and the 

 country in general might be forearmed. 



Thus was it revealed to the people that there is a 

 white-slave traffic. 



The disgraceful facts are these : 



Some 65,000 daughters of American homes, and 15,000 

 alien girls, are the prey each year of procurers in this 

 traffic, according to authoritative estimates. Even mar- 

 riage is used as one of the diabolical methods of cap- 

 turing girlhood and young womanhood and "breaking 

 them in" to a life of shame. 



They are hunted, trapped in a thousand ways; trap- 

 ped, wing-broken, sold— sold for less than hogs ! — and 

 held in white slavery worse than death. 



The daughters of all of us, our sisters, even our 

 wives, are looked upon as prey for the white-slave 

 traffic. 



In the March number of the Woman 's World was 

 published the article which marked the beginning 

 throughout the United States of an actual war of exter- 

 mination. It was by Assistant United States District 

 Attorney Harry A. Parkin. "Practical Means of Pro- 

 tecting Our Girls." 



The pamphlet from v/hich the above was 

 taken goes on to tell how the different States 

 of our Union are taking hold of the matter 

 and pushing it forward. Attorney Sims gives 

 quite a number of illustrations in the pam- 

 phlet I have mentioned, of what he has un- 

 earthed in regard to this awful traffic; and I 

 have selected the following from among them 

 as just one illustration: 



Whether these hunters of the innocent ply their 

 awful calling at home or abroad, their methods are 

 much the same — with the exception that the foreign 

 girl is more hopelessly at their mercy. Let me take 

 the case of a little Italian peasant girl who helped her 

 father till the soil in the vineyards and fields near 

 Naples. Like most of the others taken in the raids, 



