.Ir.NK, 1917 



MY good 

 f r i e nds, 

 the pas- 

 sages I have 

 quoted above are 

 being read and 

 considered just 

 now more than 

 ever, pei-haps, 

 since the world 

 began. Mrs. 

 Root often asks 

 the question why 

 it is that God 

 p e r m i ts such 

 foolish destruc- 

 tion of life and 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



OUR HOMES 



A. I. ROOT 



Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars : see 

 that ye be not troubled; for all these things must 

 come to pass, but the end is not yet. . . He that 

 sliall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. 

 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in 

 all the world for a witness unto all nations; and 

 then shall the end come. — Matt. 24:6, 13, 14. 



property to go on and on year after year ; 

 and I presume she is not by any means 

 alone in wondering whj^ a just and righteous 

 God permits this thing to go on. Now, I 

 cannot for a moment think, with my feeble 

 understanding, and perhaps in some meas- 

 ure my feeble faith, that I can fully explain 

 this thing; but I can point out to you, as 

 I pointed out to Mrs. Root, the good that is 

 coming as a consequence or as a result of 

 the war. 



First and foremost, the liquor business 

 has been given a " jolt," since the war 

 started, unlike anything else since the world 

 began. One of the first things that trans- 

 pired after picking men to go to war was to 

 consider the matter of physical health ; and 

 it did not take vei^- long to decide that alco- 

 hol in any form (beer, wine, brandy, or 

 whisky) was not a help to either brain or 

 muscle; and poor heathen Russia, as some 

 of us looked at Russia, was the first to adopt 

 prohibition on a larger scale than the world 

 had ever heard of before. Our own nation, 

 the United States of America, has been 

 blind and stupid ever since our own civil 

 war, in consenting to receive revenue from 

 the liquor-trafFic. It was not very long 

 ago that the great city of Cleveland was in- 

 sisting that they could not provide the 

 monej' to keep up the public schools without 

 the revenue from saloons, in spite of every- 

 thing our churches, our college professors, 

 and the teachers in our common schools 

 could say; and not only the farm papers, 

 but the religious papers, and papers and 

 periodicals of every sort, are urging the 

 conservation, and production of food. Mil- 

 lions of dollars' worth of food have been 

 dumped into the slop-pail every year, so we 

 are told; and not only fai^mers but every- 

 body who has a back yard is enjoined to 

 grow something that will help keep us from 

 stai-ving, and especially keep in good health 

 the soldiers we send out. 



A while ago the brewers, in pleading for 



475 



the continuance 

 of their business, 

 told how many 

 bushels of grain 

 they bought of 

 the farmers, and 

 said that the 

 farmers would 

 not have a mar- 

 ket for their 

 grain i f their 

 b u siness was 

 closed up. 

 of course 

 greatly exagger- 

 ated the state- 

 luent, as they 



Well, 



they 



usually do. I cannot recall the figures, but 

 it is something like this: They claim that 

 they bought of the farmers, and paid cash, 

 to the extent of something like sixty millions 

 of bushels of grain. Somebody said later, 

 nventy million bushels would be nearer the 

 truth. Well, just now we are quite willing 

 and glad to take their own figures. If they 

 have been using sixty millions of bushels 

 of gi-ain that was not only wasted, but a 

 hundred times worse than wasted, why not 

 stop the whole thing and let this enormous 

 amount of grain be used for food and thus 

 help the shortage on food. 



In our last issue I told you how the brew- 

 ers were pleading to have our nation pay 

 them for their losses in case prohibition 

 came; but a great number of distilleries in 

 dry states have already adopted other busi- 

 ness; and even our physicians (and they 

 have only recently come around) say this 

 shameful business has kept on because it 

 was fathered by the United States of Amer- 

 ica. As an illustration, see that little item 

 in our last issue about the missionary who 

 could not get at his stock of bibles until 

 they had unloaded 54,000 packages of 

 liquor — liquore probably sent by the United 

 States to a heathen land in the same ship 

 with a little box of bibles and testaments be- 

 longing to a missionary.* In the Old Testa- 

 ment we are frequently told that the wrath 

 of God waxed so hot at times when his 

 chosen people would not listen that a terri- 

 ble punishment followed to wake them up 



* In connection with the above, see the following 

 which I have .iust clipped from the Sunday School 

 Times of May 5: "On January 7, 1917, a member 

 of the Woman's Mi.ssionary Society told how a cer- 

 tain tobacco company, with a plant in China, have 

 expended 15,000,000 in the past two years to fasten 

 the cigarette habit on every man, woman, and child 

 in China. The Chinese have freed themselves from 

 the opium habit forced upon them bv Great Britain, 

 and now there is this company with its packages dis- 

 tributed gratis. It is said that with every dry- 

 goods purchase made a free package of cigarettes 'is 

 enclosed. Cannot something be done to awaken 

 China to its peril, before the cigarette gets its 

 strangle-hold?" 



