VOLUME LIX. NUMBER 45.
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All communications, whether for publica
tion or pertaining to matters o» business,
should be sent to the Editor, J. 0. Atkinson,
Elon College, N. C.
EDITORIAL COMMENT.
Reason, Rates and Railroads.
Upon the word of our honor this railroad
rate business, and the present railroad situa
tion generally, leads us into the mist and
leaves us there. Things will not reconcile
and we cannot make the ends of our think
ing tally with the times.
For instance, according to a bulletin of
the inter-State Commerce Commission just
issued, the injured and the killed on our
railways during the year ending June 30th,
tell a tale of tragedy startling and awful.
T1 e killed number 5,000, an increase of
775 over the record of the year before. The
injured, many of them for life, number
76,286, an increase of 9,577 over the terrible
record of the previous year. This is certainly
slaughtering the innocent at a rat6 that ore
shudders to think of.
Now unless one accuse the railroads of
wilful murder and wholesale slaughter, which
it is presumed no one will do, one is driven
to the only other alternative that the roads
are trying to carry too many folks with too
small, or too poor, equipment.
The question then that leads us into the
mist is, why is our law taking such firm
hold on railroad rates and having hands off
in railroad service and equipment? If our
law can regulate rates, why can it not have
a voice in service and equipment?
For our own part we would rather pay
three cents a mile and feel comfortably safe
on a railroad journey than to pay two cents a
mile and reasonably expect to be hopelessly
wrecked or helplessly maimed. For one, I am
more interested in the mortality rate
than I am n the money rate. And what is
strange to us is why the people and the
papers do so little and say so little about the
mortality rate and fill this earth with lamen
tations about the money rate.
If you argue that the roads would make
more money if they would carry passengers
for less, the reply is that the roads are
already carrying more passengers than are
safe on the trains and more trains than are
safe on the tracks.
To our mind the discussion and talk and
rant are one-sided. Economists and legal
experts may know that we should have
reduced railroad rates. But all this great
mass of us who travel do well know that we
? need better railroad facilities, better trains,
better tracks and better equipment. And if
low rates are to give us no better service
we have purchased those rates in terms of
life and limb and blood.
If the law shall say how cheap a passenger.
* must be carried, it seems to us high time
it were saying also as to how safe he shall
be while in the carrying.
Politicians and Preachers.—If you have
heard a politician make a speech this year, or
in any year when there was no election pend
ing( you discovered how hard put to he was
for a text and a theme. He beat the bushes,
covered the earth and scraped the skies.
To this performance he added a few jokes
grown hoary with age and made an apology
for not having a speech better suited to the
place and people. A political speech in an
“off” year is a' dreary number. The people
are interested in deeper themes than this.
Here is a theme the masses of humanity
never tire of, the theme of Calvary and the
Cross. There are no off years of Christianity
ftud the gospel. For over eighteen centuries
now faithful men have been telling the story
of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, and
the world is more eager to hear it today than
ever before. When a man comes from com
munion with God, with a heart aglow and
his mind afire,and speakes to the people the
evangel of hope and life and liberty, men
stop and listen and give heed, and go forth
with better heart to their daily task and toil.
The gospel of the Cross is that which never
wears or wearies.
*A DESTRUCTIVE CRITIC OF 2907.
(To the Reader of 1907.
Dear Brother: Although interested in the
able writings of the higher critics of 1907,
especially in their assumption of having dis
covered something valuable, as if the ‘‘his
torical method” were new in studying the
Bible, I confess 1 became somewhat drowsy
under their monotonous efforts to make the
sacred writings seem to abound in misstate
ments. But 1 gradually absorbed their
genius and spirit, and seemed to become a
destructive critic, though calling myself a
higher critic.
While in this state of mind, sleepy though
I was, I seemed to live rapidly through the
centuries, century after century, until I
found myself moving among scholars who
dated their letters with the numerals, 2, 9, 0,
7.
On seeming to be roused from a semi-con
sciousness, and supposing that a thousand
years had passed from the time I fell asleep
under the dreary chanting about the mistakes
of the Bible, I seemed to be walking among
the fancied alcoves of my library, now in
creased by the additions of a thousand years,
and coming across the following correspond
ence 1 give you the letters, believing that it
may be interesting to the reader to observe,
how the reasoning of the future destructive
critic (writing in 2907 of our times in the
spirit in which the destructive critic of 1907
writes of Bible times) will make the condi
tions of our generation to appear.
if we of the year 1907 know something of
the conclusions of the learned gentleman of
2907 to be false, whose letters 1 now reveal,
or if his modes of reasoning are absurd, or if
he lays stress on insufficient data in his logic,
or, especially, if he is ludicrously given to
denying the statements of eye-witnesses to
the facts which we of our time know to be
true, these faults must not be attributed to
me: for 1 copy the letters and publish them
exactly as 1 found them a thousand years
before they were written.
J. J. Summerbell.)
Dayton, Ohio. - ih?I
FOURTEENTH LETTER.
Kinkade, New Zealand,
30,1, 2908.
My Dear Grandson:—It is possible that
in my descriptions of the conditions pre
vailing in America in 1907, I may unin
tentionally have done some injustice, by
making you believe that the people of that
unfortunate country had, through their
own natural materialistic disposition re
lapsed from a former state of Christian
spirituality. If you have this idea, you
may not have sufficient charity for the peo
ple of 1907. The true scholar must weigh
all the facts. Fortunately we have many
and can arrive at practically definite con
clusions, because of our skill in the use
of the “historical method”,
sources of information at our command,
Your own studies have made you know
that America was discovered in 1492.
Some regions of the land were at that time
densely populated; especially Mexico and
Central America. At one time it was
generally supposed by our learned men
that the territory later occupied by the
republic of which I have already written
you, the United States, was less thickly
settled. But later researches have dis
closed to us tremendous public works in
the territory later occupied by the United
States, that could only have been con
structed by vast multitudes of laborers
under well organized government. For
want of a better name we have called
them the Mound Builders. Many of their
public works remain to this day, 2908, not
withstanding the destructive ravages of
the year 1957.
How numerous those Mound Builders
were will appear when I inform you that
on one battle field in a province of the
republic called Kansas, there were buried
(it has been carefully estimated) more
than 60,000 corpses. The skulls found
indicate that the weapons used were toma
hawks, arrows, etc.; firearms evidently not
yet having been adopted by the great
armies engaged. We know nothing about
the cause of this war; but the number of
deaths in this one battle indicates great
hosts engaged. Consequently there must
grasp the
It is conceded by most higher critics
that the civilization of the United States
was to‘some extent influenced by a body
of men called the Pilgrim Fathers, who
were undoubtedly of Christian stock and
spiritually minded.
It is also established that the Pilgrim
Fathers, who came to this country in 1620,
numbered only 101 people. There seems
to have been a settlement somewhere in
the south, made in the year 1607. But
there was a great war waged between the
two sections of the republic, as nearly as
we can determine, sometime between 1850
and 1870. The northern tribes were vic
torious. You know well that barbarians
always exterminate or enslave the con
quered people. Consequently we have a
right to believe that the descendants of the
people of the southern settlement, some
where in a province called Virginia, were
exterminated; since we do not find any
traces of slavery after the great war. The
southerners were not enslaved, but killed.
This compels us to the conclusion that
the Pilgrim Fathers were the only Chris
tian influence that permanently continued
in the country called the United States.
Now when you come to consider their
few numbers in theyear 1620, as compared
with the vast numbers of the Mound
Builders, who were undoubtedly savages,
and the warlike character of the Mound
Builders, it is necessary to believe that the
Pilgrim Fathers, must have been practi
cally^ swallowed up by the natives.
It,also follows that by the inter-marri
ages with the Mound Builders the Pilgrim
Fathers would lose their European purity
of religion, their institutions of civiliza
tion, and probably even their affection
for what they had left on the eastern conti
nent. This crosssing of the Pilgrim
Fathers with the aborigines of America
must not be charged against them as a
fault; for it was almost inevitable. When
the ten tribes of Israel were carried away
captive, you remember that they disap
peared in the blood of the nations wither
they were taken. When the Normans
entered England, though they were the
victorious people, they were gradually
swallowed up by the Anglo-Saxons. When
the Goths invaded the Roman territory
they untimately accepted the institutions
of the Romans. You know the course of
history.
Therefore we have the right, by the
“historical method”, to believe that, by
the inevitable crossing of the Pilgrims
with the savages of America, the savage
customs and religions were perpetuated
and grafted upon Christianity and Eu
ropean civilization. So that the corruption
and heathenism of the Americans in 1907
were only the necessary incident of their
evolution from the barbarism and savagery
of tbe Mound Builders.
I trust this explanation will cause you
to have some charity for the Americans
of 1907. Now that they have disappeared
from the earth, we should speak as gently
of them as possible in harmony with truth.
I have been somewhat annoyed by un
learned men of our time, who do not
iccept the reasoning I have given you.
They say that the population of the terri
tory later occupied by the United States,
when the Pilgrims arrived, was veryj
small. But in their ignorance they are.
so unwise as to trust the records of the
17th century, following the date when the
Pilgrims arrived. Those records all seem
to represent the natives not as being the
multitudinous Mound Builders, but as
being a scanty population of Indians, and
the vast territory later occupied by the
United States as being a comparatively
uninhabited wilderness. But to trust such
records evinces a lack of the critical spirit.
For the writers of that time must have
had much incentive to misrepresent the
facts. They were personally prejudiced,
and in many respects were not worthy of
confidence. For instance, they believed
in witches; and therefore were as untrust
worthy as Martin Luther, who once threw
his inkstand at the devil. We cannot
arrive at the truth by believing the testi
mony of such witnesses. The true critic
must discard the direct evidence of the
cotemporaries and eye witnesses; and
depend on the indirect proofs from the
monuments, whose meaning we must inter
pret in the light of experience—our
experience.
Also, these writings which my oppon
ents quote, to prove the scanty population
of the United States in 1620, though sup
posed to have been written in the Seven
teenth century, are really of uncertain
date. There is strong reason to believe
that they were not written by the men
whose names they bear, or to whom they
are attributed. The styles, the literary
styles, of the same supposed authors, carry
so much that the books are evidently com
pilations gathered by literary hacks of a
later time. I have no definite proof that
this is the fact, except my own judgment
after inspection. But that is of far more
value than the traditions handing down
the manuscripts. In fact, most of the
original manuscripts are now lost, and
the copies of these records, while har
monizing in the general statements, yet
differ in some minor particulars; and
these discrepancies, sometimes occurring
in the same author, make me regard their
statements as to be rejected, except when
corroborated by my own judgment as
probaibie. We must reject everything that
is not probable. And it is not probable
that a great territory like that of the
United Stated would be occupied by only
a few hundred thousand people, while
Europe was crowded.
After a thorough investigation of the
subject I am of the firm opinion that the
Americans of 1907 were a cross between
the Pilgrim Fathers and the Mound Build
ers ; and that the Mound Builders were the
more influential race in determining the
conditions, religion, institutions ana civili
zation in general, of the people of 1907.
The people of41907 were certainly great
builders; and the serpentine windings of
their lines of travel (if they were lines
of travel, as some histories state) suggest
to the mind some of the great serpents,
acknowledged by all to have been con
structed by the Mound Builders; and a
critic has only to notice the evidences of
the vast multitudes that musj have been
engaged on the monuments of the Mound
Builders and the railroads of the Ameri
cans, to discern the incontestible evidences
of the command of a great population
combined with the dense ignorance of the
forces of nature. The civilization of the
Americans was unquestionably that of the
Higher Critic.
Affectionately, your grandfather,
Mound Builders.
Volume I. No. 1. of the Elonian made
its appearance last week. It is to appear
monthly hereafter during the college year.
It is the organ and exponent of the student
social and literary life of Elon College. The
first number sets a high standard and if it
is to improve with age it will certainly rank,
early in its eareer, wth the best of college
magazines. The volume is dedicated to Rev.
W. S. Long, D. D„ carries an excellent cut
of him and a helpful article from his pen.
The contributed articles as well as the edi
torials, are of a high order. The price is
$1.00 per year.
Charles T. Barney, deposed head of the
Knickerbocker Trust Co., New York, which
went to the wall when the money panic began
recently, committed suicide November 14th.
His estate is said to be valued at $2,500,000,
though previous to the bank’s failure he
was supposed to be worth $9,000,000.