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Vol.31 OCTOBER, 1928 No. 12
Irrigation
PROF. LEVI EDGAR YOUNG
Speed and the Spirit
JOSEPH J. CANNON
Native Plants
DR. J. H. PAUL
OCTOBER IN SOUTHERN UTAH
KENNETH S. BENNION
TURNING THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT INSIDE OUT
ROBERT SPARKS WALKER
STORY OF RICE CULTURE
JOHN Q. ADAMS gffiM*W ' • •' '■' ••'•'•' •'»• •'••'■' ■' •••'.!. '.•••'•*••••• : • ' • ■' ■ ■ •• ••• •• ■ --V>M^
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Captains of Industry
The NEW MANUAL
ONE of the courses of study for the Adult Department of the Mutual the coming season, is this new manual, "Captains of Industry," a sequel to "Heroes of Science" (1926-27), and "Champions of Liberty" (1927-28).
This new manual presents, in a most interesting, entertaining and instruc- tive manner, the life history of men who, by their industry, frugality, and perseverance, have achieved world-wide eminence in various lines of the world's work. You will find their biographies an inspiration to press on and on to ever greater accomplishments. You will like this manual, as you did the other two of the series; and whether or not it is selected as the course of study in your particular ward, be sure to get a copy for your home library, and give the members of your family the advantage of becoming familiar with these outstand- ing characters. The price of this manual is 25c.
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Mastodon Bones Found in Payson. A short time ago bones of a large prehistoric animal was found in Payson, Utah, by Isaac Hansen, when loading gravel in a pit belonging to Robert L. Wilson, a contractor. The first specimen found was embedded in a stratum of clay, covered by ten feet of gravel and overlying a bed of quicksand. This bone proved to be a joint and measured fourteen inches in di- ameter. After further digging, two other bones, the femur and tibia, were uncov- ered and measured eight and a half feet in length. Dr. Hansen of the B. Y. Uni- versity, Provo, is of the opinion the bones are those of a mastodon, an animal which lived 20,000 years ago.
Mission President named. Elder Clarence H. Tingey, 1424 Stratford Ave., Salt Lake City, was appointed, Aug. 28, 1928, by the First Presidency to succeed Pres. Charles H. Hyde in the presidency of the Australian mission. He labored in that mission some years ago — 1917 to 1920 — and is, there- fore, well acquainted with its conditions and requirements. Pres. Hyde will be honorably released, as soon as his suc- cessor arrives in the field.
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IMPROVEMENT ERA
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OCTOBER. 1928
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CONTENTS
HIGHWAY IN ZlON'S PARK ------ Frontispiece
HARVEST. A POEM Grace Ingles Frost 985
IRRIGATION Levi Edgar Young 98 7
LISTEN. A POEM Weston N. Nordgren 1000
Speed and the Spirit. A Story - - Joseph J. Cannon 1 001 THE TEST. A POEM Unice Petersen 1007
The Realms of Science and Religion - Dr. Joseph F. Merrill 1008
Warning Against Losing Old Faiths - - Sir Oliver Lodge 1014
October in Southern Utah. Illustrated - Kenneth S. Bennion 1015
My Homeland. A Poem R. C. Savage 1024
Turning the Washington Monument Inside Out
Robert Sparks Walker 1025
The Common Walks of Life. A Poem Bertha A. Kleinman 1033
Native Plants as Friends and Foes - ./. H. Paul 1034
Moonlight and Silver Stars. A Poem - 1040
A Short Story of Rice Culture John Q. Adams 1 04 1
Appreciation. A Story - Wm. A. Morton 1 04 3
AS A MAN THINKETH. A POEM Helen Kimball Orgill 104 3
Messages from the Missions. Illustrated - 1044
Editor's Table — A Forgotten VdlcE - - 105 5
Priesthood Quorums - - 105 7
Change in the Y. m. M. I. A. Office 1059
Mutual Work - ....... 1060
Passing Events -------- - 1070
Entered at the Post Office. Salt Luke City. Utah, at second-class matter. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in section 1103, Act of October. 1917 . tuthorized on July 2, 1918.
Manuscripts submitted without the statement. "At usual rates," are considered free con- tributions. Photographs, unless their return is especially requested, will be destroyed.
Published monthly at Salt Lake City: S2 per annum. Address: Room 406 Church
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
How Parents Can Educate Themselves, an article which appeared in the Septem- ber issue of the Era, consisted of a talk given by Dr. B. L. Richards of the Utah Agricultural College, at the National Council of Parental Education at Detroit, Michigan, in October, 1926, parts of which were published by the Children's Magazine, October, 1926. Acknowledg- ment is here made to this magazine for allowing the publication of the article.
Prof. Levi Edgar Young's article, "Ir- rigation," found in this issue, treats an important phase of the early history of Utah from a new angle. As can be readily seen, its preparation required much pains- taking research, and it will prove a valu- able contribution to our literature on this subject.
Speed and the Spirit, a story of ideals, literally true in every detail, by Joseph J. Cannon, is a thrilling one which will be eagerly read, we feel certain, by both young and old. The pulses of all will quicken as they peruse it. Our young people, particularly, will be interested in this article, and it will not only stir their feelings deeply, but will leave them with nobler ideals and a strong and impelling desire to be true to their conceived stand- ards of right and wrong. Parents whose sons and daughters are not in the habit of reading the Era will do well to call this story to their attention.
Native Plants as Friends and Foes, by Dr. J. H. Paul, is continued in this num- ber. Another article of this same series is promised for November. With these ar- ticles their author is sure that any person of average intelligence can go into our mountains or upon the hillsides and identi- fy any plant or shrub that comes under his observation. Dr. Paul has spent more than twenty years in accumulating the informa- tion which he presents to our readers, and heretofore nothing like it has been at- tempted west of the Mississippi river. A careful study of this series will richly re- pay the effort, because of the joy which comes with acquired knowledge. In ad-
dition this knowledge will materially in- crease the pleasure of canyon trips.
An Eastern writer, Robert Sparks Walker, furnishes for this number a unique and interesting article, "Turning the Wash- ington Monument Inside Out." Many Era readers have no doubt visited this fa- mous monument, but it is probable that very few of them have climbed to its top and seen what this author describes.
The last installment of Dr. Joseph F. Merrill's article, "The Realms of Science and Religion," is presented to our readers in this issue. Like the first part, this de- serves a thoughtful reading.
The Story of an Old Playhouse, a book written by George D. Pyper, is just off the press and is reviewed in this number of the Era by Dr. Adam S. Bennion. Both the book and the review are classics and should not be overlooked. The Salt Lake Theatre, which is the subject of this volume, is the oldest legitimate playhouse in America. It has recently passed into other hands and preparations are already under way to raze it. The fact that the historic building will soon be nothing but a memory and that the book was written by one who has managed the playhouse longer than the combined service of all the other managers will add interest to the subject.
An official notice concerning the Gen- ealogical class, issued by the general authorities of the Mutuals, is to be found in this number. It should be read by all officers of the M. I. A. And in this connection, it may be well to sug- gest that officers of Priesthood quorums, as well as leaders in the Y. M. M. I. A., should make it a practice to scan the pages of the Era carefully. It is their official organ and will contain notices, rulings and instructions without which the leader is sure to become involved in embarrassing difficulties, which are easily avoidable through timely preparation.
Volume 3 1 of the Era comes to a close with this issue. Subscribers who desire to have their magazines bound can obtain a printed index from this office, free of charge, by making application.
Harvest
The fields are sweet with fragrance
From hills of new-mown hay; The grape-vine droops with purple fruit;
From dawn 'til turn of day, The husbandman is busy,
Close binding golden sheaves; Caresses of an autumn sun
Have caused the maple leaves To blush an ardent crimson;
And, oh! the singing wind Has in its voice a note I love —
A tone in which I find A balm for hurt, a calm for storm,
Heartsease when toil is done, A promise that for life well spent,
A harvest will be won.
Prom, Utah GRACE INGLES FROST
Improvement Era
Vol. XXXI
OCTOBER, 1928
No. 12
Irrigation
By Levi Edgar Young, of the First Council of Seventy
"O Maker of the material world, thou holy one! Who is it that rejoices the earth with greatest joy? Ahura Mazda answered: 'It is he who sows most corn, grass, and fruit: Who waters ground that is dry, or drains ground that is wet.'
"He Who Sows Corn, Sows Righteousness" The Zend-Avesta
Behold! Our Mother Earth is lying here, Behold! She giveth of her fruitfulness. Truly, her power gives she us. Give thanks to Mother Earth who lieth here!
Behold on Mother Earth the growing fields!
Behold the promise of her fruitfulness!
Truly, her power gives she us. Give thanks to Mother Earth who lieth here.
Behold on Mother Earth the spreading trees!
Behold the promise of her fruitfulness!
Truly, her power gives she us. Give thanksi to Mother Earth who lieth here!
Behold on Mother Earth the running streams!
Behold the promise of her fruitfulness!
Truly, her power gives she us. Our thanks to Mother Earth who lieth here!
— From a Pawnee Song of the Earth.
A treasured relic in the Dcseret Museum at Salt Lake City bears this inscription:
THIS PLOUGH WAS USED BY ELDER WILLIAM CARTER TO PLOUGH THE FIRST HALF ACRE IN SALT LAKE VALLEY, JULY, 1847. ALSO THE FIRST FURROW IN ST. GEORGE CITY, FEB., 1862.
THE plow which turned the first furrows in the valley of the Great Salt Lake inaugurated a system of agriculture in Amer- ica that today is practiced in most of the states west of the Mississippi river. An half acre of land was plowed on that July morning, and a small ditch was made which led the waters of City Creek on to the soil. A great task was undertaken, and it is a lesson in physical and moral fortitude to know in what spirit that task was conceived. The "Mormon" pioneers were moving into
988 IMPROVEMENT ERA
the Great Basin, a country practically unknown at that time; at least no one as yet had formed any conception of the possibilities of the sage-brush soil. It was what the French writer, Febvre, says was the ground soil of which the State carved its domain. The people who began the conquest of the elements in those early days of Utah were deeply religious and they had the power of adapting their religion to practical purposes. They were new comers into a fixed environment, and their economic growth was the result of an immediate adaptation to their new surroundings.
The Indians of the southwest were the first irrigators of the soil in America. As far back as we are able to trace the history of the Navajos, Piutes, Zunis, and other tribes, we find that they raised corn, pumpkins, beans and squash by watering the seed they had planted. In Arizona, New Mexico, and southern Utah, prehistoric canals and reservoirs are found which show that the natives brought irrigation to a rather high state of development. In the Salt and Gila valleys of Arizona, an immense network of ancient canals has been discovered. Coronado, the Spaniard, came to the Seven Cities of Cibola (Zuni) in 1542, where he found the Indians till- ing the soil, and this could only be done by irrigating it, for it was an arid country and water was necessary for the raising of crops. Canals used by the Indians of ancient days were ten miles in length, and even twenty-five mile canals have been traced. These canals were seven feet deep and four feet wide, with the sides sloping gradu- ally. Remains of wooden headgates have been found in the excava- tions. "Several old canals have been utilized for miles by modern ditch builders, and in one instance, a saving of from $20,000 to $25,000 was effected by the "Mormon" settlement at Mesa, Arizona. In the Chaco canyon of Northwestern New Mexico, large ditches were made and the retaining walls were constructed of stone. The Indians say that in some parts of the mountains where reservoirs were constructed, large snowballs were rolled into them during the winter, which provided water in the spring. Throughout the box canyons of the Southwest, the natives used the "water pools." These were natural reservoirs which collected the waters of spring and con- served them during the summer months. When the Spaniards estab- lished the missions in Arizona, New Mexico, and California, they carried on irrigation and many of the old missions bear record of the extensive agricultural pursuits of the Spanish people who settled the present confines of the United States as early as the seventeenth century.
In the early history of the Indians of the upper Missouri river, we have some interesting references on irrigation. One time, Sak- wi-ah-ki, or EARTH WOMAN, and Is-sap-ah-ki, or CROW
IRRIGATION 989
WOMAN, and Crow Woman's little daughter lived together in one of the old camps of the Mandan Indians. After the buffalo had been exterminated, and they had settled down at old Fort Conrad, the old women and their daughters planted a garden by the river each season, and laboriously watered the hills of corn, beans, and squash with buckets which they carried up the steep banks. Beside the garden, they would sit in their tepee, and watch the growing crops. While they worked and irrigated they did beautifully colored por- cupine-quill embroidery work on buffalo leather and buffalo robes. Such work often required many summers to complete.
The state of Utah is in the very heart of the arid West. It lies in the Great Basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada Mountains and is the country that has less rainfall than any other part of America. There are some parts where at times there are only four inches a year. The Great Basin was explored by trap- pers and adventurers from the early part of the eighteenth century to 1847, but no one seemed to appreciate the many natural resources nor did anyone ever write or leave any statement as to the possibilities of the soil. It was looked upon as desert waste. Sagebrush and greasewood grew everywhere and the portion around the Great Salt Lake was bleak and sterile and seemed to have an influence on the entire country. There were prairie dogs, rattlesnakes, coyotes, wolves and, in the early part of the century, there were buffalo.
The "Mormon" pioneers settled in this arid country. They were accustomed to more humid conditions, where corn, wheat, vegetables and fruits grew without irrigation, and where the land needed only to be cleared, plowed and planted, and kept free from weeds. In their former homes, in Missouri and Illinois, the "Mor- mons" had become good farmers, and they always understood the science of agriculture. They could adapt themselves to all condi- tions of climate and kinds of work, and it was the careful reason- ing from conditions that made them know the results that would accrue from watering the soil of this extremely arid land.
Combination of geographic factors made irrigation possible. The Wasatch mountains robbed the westerly winds of their moisture, storing it in the form of snow in the higher altitudes. The canyons afforded water courses, the rivers cutting their way into the alluvial plains of the valleys, and easily transforming them into reservoirs. These are the main factors in the task of catching the waters. To conduct the waters, canals were often dug along mountain sides for miles to some valley or vale far below. Agriculture was the first industry, and it was a work common to all the people and com- munities. The land was used to the best advantage by the farmers of that day. The Bible speaks of "marrying the land," and the
990 IMPROVEMENT ERA
farmer of early-day Utah looked upon the land as "holy," using the expression of Prof. L. H. Baily of Cornell University. The farmer was characterized by initial utility. He cleared the land of the sage- brush and greasewood, he then tilled it, for he sought the first values of a virgin soil. In time the policies of government were dominated by the farming element of the new territory.
On July 22, 1847, an advance company of the pioneers under Orson Pratt entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake and camped on Canyon Creek. On the 23rd, the company descended the hill and camped on City Creek at a spot where the City and County Build- ing now stands. The leader of this vanguard, Orson Pratt, called a meeting of all the men and "dedicated the land to God." He asked for the blessings on the seeds they were about to plant, and invoked divine protection of the people that their work in the valley might be successful. The camp was organized for work. Says Orson Pratt in his Journal:
"This afternoon, we commenced planting our potatoes; after which we turned the water upon them and gave the ground quite a soaking." !
It is evident that, from the first, those colonizers had faith in the sagebrush soil. Their plowing and planting on those memorable days, July 23 and 24, 1847, marked the beginning of a system "that has made the produce of the Western farm a competing force in the world's market." Plowing and planting were continued during the summer, and in the autumn hundreds of acres of land were cleared and made ready for the coming spring. Sagebrush grew profusely, and the farmer was compelled to drag it from the soil. Fortunately, this was not a difficult thing to do, for the roots of the brush yield readily to pick and harrow.
The Journal of Lorenzo D. Young and his wife, Harriet, both of whom were in the pioneer company, is one of the most interesting diaries we have on the migration of the "Mormons" to Utah. A great deal is given about the general life in the community during the first season, and in one part of the Journal is a sentence that tells of an important event. Writing on October 19, 1847, Mr. Young says: "I sowed the first acre of wheat that was sowed in the valley. Two weeks after, I sowed another acre; two weeks after I sowed another acre and dragged it in." On January 19, Mr. Young writes: "This day I finished sowing winter wheat. The weather is warm and pleasant, and the grass is growing finely." During the summer of 1847, eighty acres of land were planted with corn, potatoes, beans, buckwheat, turnips and a variety of "garden sauce." By November between 200 and 300 acres of fall wheat were sown, and just before the snow began to fall, a company of men went to San
IRRIGATION 991
Francisco to procure wheat for the spring sowing. During the winter, which was mild, over 2000 acres of wheat were sown. As the colonists spread out, wheat was planted, and it soon became one of the staple products of the soil. The people were taught to conserve a certain amount of their grain every year in little granaries. This was done to prepare for shortages through loss of crops, by drought and otherwise. It was a wise thing to do, for in those early days the wheat put awayfor use in time of famine saved many people from starving.
Farming in the valley was pursued by all the people. Plowing and planting were continued through the first winter, for the season was a mild one. By the summer of 1848, over 6000 acres of land were brought under cultivation and, notwithstanding the destruction wrought by the crickets in the spring of that year, the crops were fairly good. Parley P. Pratt, in a letter of September, 1848. to his brother Orson, then in England, says: "Early in March the ground opened and we commenced plowing our spring crops. I plowed and planted about twenty acres of Indian corn, beans, melons, etc. My corn planting was completed on the 15th of May; most of it has done extremely well. We have now had ears to boil for nearly a month, and my large Missouri corn is in roasting ear. I had a good harvest of wheat and rye without irrigation, though not a full crop. Those who irrigated their wheat raised double the quantity on the same amount of land. Winter and spring wheat have both done well. Some ten thousand bushels have been raised in the valley this season. Oats do extremely well, yielding sixty bushels for one sowing; barley does well. Also all kinds of garden vegetables; we had lettuce on the 4th of May and radishes by the middle of May. We have raised a great quantity of beets, peas, beans, onions, cucumbers, melons, squash and almost all kinds of vegetables, as well as some 200 bushels of Indian corn. * * * There will probably be raised in the valley this season from two to twenty thousand bushels of grain over and above what will be con- sumed by the present inhabitants."
The people began planting their gardens and plowing the land beyond the city limits. The head of every family had a tract of land, which became an industrial and economic unit. There was little money in circulation and the people bartered whatever they had in surplus. There were other companies on the plains when the pioneers arrived in July, and by the end of the first year at least four thousand "Mormon" immigrants had settled in the valley. Within two years colonies had been sent out from Salt Lake to the south and north. Ogden was founded; Lehi, American Fork, and
992 IMPROVEMENT ERA
Provo became thriving centers and within a few months colonizers had gone into Sanpete county, made a treaty of peace with the Sanpitch Indians and obtained that beautiful valley. It was not long before the valleys of the Wasatch and the Colorado watersheds were colonized by "Mormon" pioneers. Beautiful towns and cities were laid out, and wheat fields and farms came to dot the great wastes of these mountain climes. Brigham Young directed the colonizing and in this one activity alone he showed remarkable genius. Professor Charles A. Bear says in his Rise of American Civilization:
"The entire outcome of the adventure was due to the economic system directed by Brigham Young. Tested by the widespread prosperity which it eventually produced, in spite of all the diffi- culties, that system was in most respects superior in results to the methods adopted in any other American settlement organized on communal principles. In the early days of the experiment, specu- lators and commercial profiteers were both restrained by an iron hand. Land was not sold at first to settlers outright; but each family was allotted a share — proportioned to its needs — to till for private profit as long as it was thrifty and industrious. None was allowed to accumulate a large estate, and the industrious poor were given advantages in competition with their richer neighbors. The purchase of supplies and the sale of produce were carried on through a common store, while irrigation works to provide water for the arid soil were built by community action and service rights granted to all families on equitable terms. Iron, woolen, printing, and mining industries were managed also on the cooperative principle, fair wages being paid and the profits going into the common chest for the promotion of fresh undertakings."
The "Mormon" colonies were always well organized religious and civic communities. Wherever they settled they constituted a body of free persons united for the common benefit, to enjoy peace- ably what is their own, and to do justice to others. The celebrated French economist, DeMarns, says that "A state is a certain number of men and of families who, being united and having a fixed home, associate themselves and submit themselves to a common leader, with the intention of living together for the good and safety of all." John Fiske in his Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, gives us a paragraph which applies to the social methods of the "Mormon" pioneers. He says, "The ability to forego present enjoyment in order to avoid the risk of future disaster is what we call prudence or providence. The superior prudence of the civilized man is due in great part to his superior power of self-restraint." Fiske also gives another splendid thought which is applicable to the early-day history of Utah. Says he, "The power of economizing in harvest time or in youth in order
IRRIGATION 993
i to retain something upon which to live comfortably in wealth in our old age is dependent upon the vividness with which distant circum- stances can be pictured in the imagination."
The first economic problem of the pioneers arose with the ques- tion of the division of the water of the streams on which the colonists located. The work of reclaiming the soil and the digging of ditches and canals was difficult. There was much severe labor, combined with hardship and exposure, and yet the redeeming of the land was made pleasurable because of the ideal of religion and home which the people always sacredly held. A wider division of labor came in due time, and brought about a greater abundance of material goods. Roads and bridges were built, and eventually the people asked Con- gress to build a railroad to their new Territory.
Variety of work brings love of freedom, and democratization of society. This raised labor to dignity and self-respect, and brought happiness and the spirit of altruism. A sense of novelty and freedom developed in early Utah, for the economic and social life of the people was founded pretty much on general ownership of land, and every man owned his home. The economic wisdom of their leader, Brigham Young, is seen in his words to his people, December 18, 1848. Said he: "The immense labor of irrigating alone, to say nothing of the scarcity of water that exists in nearly every settlement during mid-summer, at the very time that water is most needed, should be an incentive to the farmer to exert himself by more thorough culture and liberal application of every species of fertilization, to raise his sustenance from a smaller quantity of land."
The economic success of the "Mormon" migrations is attested by the fact that every company brought seeds and trees, oxen, mules, horses, poultry, sheep, hogs, etc., safely into the valley. When Captain Howard Stansbury was returning with his command to the East after having spent the winter of 1849-50 in Salt Lake City, he met a caravan of ninety-five wagons each drawn by from three to five yoke of oxen in fine condition. "The wagons swarmed with women and children. * * * I estimated the train at one thousand head of cattle, one hundred head of sheep, and five hundred human souls." A few days later on his journey on the upper Platte, Stansbury met crowds of emigrant wagons wending their way to the "Mormon" valley, with droves of cattle and sheep. (Expedition to the Great Salt Lake, pp. 130-1.) Catherine Coman has rightly char- acterized the "Mormon" migration as "all in all, the most successful example of regulated immigration in American history."
In the early days of the State, before the introduction of capital, irrigation meant more than a mere investment. It meant the very material to keep people's bodies and souls together. If the irri-
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gation water failed, the settlers might be destitute; if sure, the settlers were able to build comfortable homes and live in peace and plenty. When a community met with repeated trouble or had difficulty in finishing a project, people from neighboring towns came and helped, and thus aided in removing a burden which would other- wise have been crushing. Persistence has borne fruit, until now there are over a million acres of fertile land in the State under irriga- tion systems, and the acreage is rapidly increasing.
Institutions in Utah show distinctly the influence of irrigation farming. The cities and towns are located on streams, and the farm- ers live in villages rather than on their farms as in the East and Middle West. Irrigation has given a rather intensive system of agriculture and it has also made it possible to produce a greater diversity of vege- tables and cereals. These facts, in their turn, have an influence on the entire economic condition of the commonwealth, making it more stable and giving it a better balance. They also have contributed to the educational progress of the state. The schools have always been better than they would have been if the people had lived farther apart. The accomplishments of irrigation in the past in- clude the making possible of establishing a permanent, prosperous commonwealth in the midst of a desert, thousands of miles from civilization; the development of a sturdy manhood and womanhood and the grouping of the tillers of the soil into communities, which have excellent social and economic advantages.
Farming in bygone days was, however, a toil beyond imagina- tion. The land had to be cleared of sage and greasewood. Heavy drags were made of tree trunks and poles, and the brush was burned. The plows were made of wood and the shares of iron. Often the land was hard and dry, and water for the season might be late, or the sources of the streams dried up. Rains might not come, and drought would prevent the preparation of the soil. "Still there was some- thing about the soil that gripped the farmer. He was farm-minded, and never ceased to look forward for the ushering in of a Golden Age the following spring. It might have been too wet or too dry ; or the grasshoppers might have eaten up the crops; or the worms taken their substance. But next year the farmer prospered and all was well; for he dealt not with prosaic known things, but with the sunny future; and he left events in the hands of God. He loved the great out-of-doors. He found joy in the fields; and he was happy to see the corn dancing in the breeze."
The story of irrigation in the West is a dramatic and tragic one. Not always would the crops mature, and sometimes if it were not a drought it was a flood, which would overrun the land and carry away the seed and potato fields. Not until reservoirs were made
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and the water conserved in the different parts of the State were the farmers sure of having enough water for their crops. At first irriga- tion was practiced by the individual family; but where a tract of land was settled by a group of families all united their efforts and dug large canals and ditches from the mountain streams and rivers. Not only would they build their canals and ditches together, but groups of men who lived as neighbors would unite in building cabins. One group would go to the canyon and get out the logs, another would haul them to the farm site, while a third group had prepared the ground for the building. With their united efforts it was not long before substantial log cabins made up the settlements. These together with the old adobe and rock house made the early Utah dwellings places of good homes and substantial farms. The "Mormon" colonizers had not only a knowledge of agriculture and other useful arts, but well defined ideas of government and the ad- ministration of justice. They naturally turned to the establishment of American civic and political life in their communities. They soon acquired a new type of colony and a new incentive to labor more assiduously and to adopt rules for making their labor more effectual. They established markets for surplus agricultural produce, and markets brought about the building of roads and bridges. The colonists of Utah realized that a country will seldom have potenti- ality of agriculture unless it has a large town population, or, in other words, a population non-agricultural. Towns make it possible for markets and wherever there are communities composed of a non- agricultural population the people naturally pursue other lines of activity which make for a dynamic society. To understand the early history of Utah one must know the larger elements of economic life and the forces that gave rise to civilized communities. Freedom of spirit, and the diffusion of education are necessary for the dis- covering of those people who possess unusual gifts. There must, therefore, be a general diffusion of education in all social groups. Taussig has pointed out that the effectiveness of industry depends not alone upon material equipment, but also on what we may call immaterial equipment; not only on accumulated surplus, but moral qualities, abundance of industry, truthfulness, honesty, sobriety, and consideration for others.
Originally every settlement in the Great Basin was of small population. Land and water were free to all. All had plenty; but naturally sooner or later community action was necessary to procure water. Water then became an "economic good" because effort was needed to obtain it. Therefore, the first great problem of any "Mor- mon" community in early days was the problem of securing enough water for land, for the people were totally dependent upon irriga-
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tion and as population increased in any community the problem of water and land increased.
There was an economic foundation in the development of Utah that is very striking. Economists have told us that the more things a community has in the nature of wealth, the less prosperity there is. In communities where it is hard to get a living and where obstacles have to be overcome, the people gain in resources which lead eventually to greater prosperity. So it is with individuals. He who has abundant means at his command often lacks spirit and in the end is surpassed in happiness as well as in resources by him who had to face hardships from the start. Taussig has pointed out in his Principles of Economics, that "Wealth is the result of effort." It is the scarcity that lies at the base of economic life, and scarcity of materials supplied by nature must be adapted to man's use by labor.
In the "Mormon" communities in early days there was another type of work besides reclaiming the land. Out of a study of seventy-two towns and cities in Utah, we find that everyone of them had a meeting house and school within a very short time, and substantial public buildings were erected by all the people working together. In Salt Lake City there was a civic building put up as early as 1850, and in the building of the "Mormon" Tabernacle and Temple the builders and craftsmen enjoyed their work for they had what Ruskin has pointed out, "the joy of beauty and character." In this spirit of mutual helpfulness a democracy of society sprang up which raised labor to dignity and self-respect. There was an equalization of conditions, and this brought about happiness and the spirit of altruism.
Wherever the "Mormons" settled they acquired property and in some instances considerable tracts of land, and the love of prop- erty to a certain degree is indispensable to sound morals. Naturally as the pioneers acquired land they sold their first farms in time at an enhanced price. The possession of this money awakened an interest again in life and work. The possession of property de- manded naturally the hedge of laws. The "Mormon" pioneer was easily reconciled to government and his impatience to realize certain hopes impelled him to a life of sobriety and perseverance. It was not hard for the Utah pioneer to join his neighbors in building schools and to do everything to secure teachers. He easily built a church and had a regard for his own character and the character and felicity of his family. He always attended to the worship of God on Sundays for he was naturally a religious man.
When the pioneers inaugurated the system of irrigation in
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the middle of the nineteenth century, they inaugurated a creative epoch. America was fast entering the age of great internal improve- ments. There was a larger change in the industrial history of the world between the years 1830 and 1850 than in all the rest of the ages of the world together. During that period, the reaper, the mowing machine, the modern plow, the sewing machine were all invented, and these changed the economic and social life of all America, and made it possible for the Western pioneer to bring the land almost immediately into subjection. In 1878, Major John W. Powell wrote a report on the IRRIGATION LANDS OF THE WEST. Powell in his report shows two advantages of irrigation: 1. That crops thus cultivated are not subject to the vicissitudes of rain-fall. 2. The water for irrigation generally comes down from the mountains and plateaus freighted or charged with fertiliz- ing materials gathered from the decaying vegetable matter and soil of the higher regions. He saw that only the government could accomplish the great feat of conserving the waters and reclaiming the millions of acres of arid land of the West. He explained many of the gigantic engineering problems involved in the storage of waters; the erection of stupendous dams capable of sustaining the never-ceasing pressure of such large volumes of water as would be needed to make irrigation of large areas constant. Powell's report is one of the most remarkable works ever written on the West, and for the first time in our history the attention of the government was called to the importance of the lands of the irrigated regions. Powell's survey of the land stimulated a new interest in the West, and a series of national irrigation congresses were held in various cities of the West from year to year, the first of which was held in Salt Lake City, September 15, 1891. Another was held in Los Angeles, California, in 1893, and the third in Denver, Colorado, in 1894. These conventions, with subsequent ones, all advocated the reclamation of the lands of the West, and at the ninth Irrigation Congress, held in Chicago in 1900, resolutions were adopted in favor of a comprehensive system for the storage of waters and the reclama- tion of our Western lands.
In December, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt outlined his ideas for a system of national reclamation and irrigation in his message to Congress. In words that precipitated a wave of great interest in the question of reclamation, he said: "The pioneer settlers on the arid public domain chose their homes along streams from which they could themselves divert the water to reclaim their hold- ings. Such opportunities are practically gone. There remain, how- ever, vast areas of public lands which can be made available for homestead settlement, but only by reservoirs and main-line canals
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impracticable for private enterprise. These irrigation works should be built by the national government."
As a result of President Roosevelt's statement Senator New- lands of Nevada introduced his bill which became our national irrigation law. It provides that "the entire receipts from the sale of public lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming, Ne- braska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Oregon, be set aside and appropriated as a special fund in the Treasury to be used for the construction and maintenance of irriga- tion works for the storage of and development of waters for the reclamation of the arid lands of the West." The law makes it possible for a man to take up from forty to 160 acres of land and to pay the government $1.25 an acre. As a result of this bill, great irrigation projects have been constructed in the far West, and hundreds of young men have gone on to the farm.
Within a few years, twenty-five great projects were under way, and with their completion nearly four million acres of land will be reclaimed. In Utah alone the irrigated land has been doubled by the building of the reclamation projects, which include the Straw- berry valley reservoir and the Utah Lake reservoir. With the completion of the government reservoirs in the West, an area as large as France and Germany will be brought under cultivation. The most outstanding piece of work in reclamation is that of the Roosevelt Dam in the Salt River valley of Arizona. Its height is 286 feet, it is 800 feet long, and has made the largest artificial lake in the world, being twenty-five miles in length, and two miles wide. In its construction many Indians were employed, and the total cost was $6,500,000.00. This reservoir is located in a country where ages ago the native races had their canals and reser- voirs. Along the Gila and Salt River valleys are many remains of irrigation canals and ditches. The old city of Los Muertos was composed of thirty-six large communal structures. It was supplied with water by a large canal seven feet deep, four feet wide at the bottom, and thirty feet wide at the top. The walls had been ce- mented and from it were constructed many smaller canals for the distribution of water over the fields. Old posts for the gates for the regulation of the flow have been found at the head of the laterals, and Dr. Hodge has reported that at least 200,000 acres of land were irrigated by the ancient people in the Salt River valley alone.
Among the most important government projects that have been completed are the following:
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Salt River, Arizona Truckee-Carson, Nevada Belle Fourche,
Yuma, Calif. — Arizona Lower Yellowstone South Dakota
Uncompahgre, Colorado Montana— North Dakota Strawberry Valley,
Minidoka, Idaho Utah
Milk River. Montana Klamath, Oregon Tieton ^^
North Platte, Nebraska California Sunnyside, Wash.
Wyoming Umatilla, Oregon Shoshone, Wyo.
The project at American Falls in Idaho has just been completed, and it takes its place as one of the most important pieces of work in the history of reclamation.
Today on the old Oregon trail, where, a generation ago, thou- sands of pilgrims treked their way to Oregon and California, there are large farms of alfalfa, sugar beets, oats, potatoes, and corn. Bungalows, barns, and feeding corrals dot the country side; and beautiful towns and villages have replaced the Indian tepees. The pilgrim is no longer going "where rolls the Oregon." He is settling on the land to redeem it; not to fight the Indians as of yore, but to fight the gophers and grasshoppers. The old trail east of the Rockies runs through an irrigated country that produces as fine crops as any country in the world. The trail has become the Lin- coln highway, on each side of which is a vast empire of fields and gardens.
The work of the Reclamation Service is founded deep in democracy and the needs of the common people, for it gives the lowliest, poorest, and humblest the opportunities to have homes and the comforts of life for themselves and their children. The reclamation work, as fostered by the government, is the first example in the history of the world where irrigation works of gigantic magni- tude have been built for the benefit and profit of the people. The people are to own and maintain them. Land is not to be the prop- erty of the few, but of all the people. Herein is American democracy expressing itself as never before in history.
Well may. we sing the Irrigation Ode composed by Mrs. Gil- bert McClurg:
Oh! desert land! The land of the smiting sun-glare, deep-blue of the star-pierced night, Of rcck-piled heights and chasms, awe-fraught to the dizzying sight, Where the shadow ever chases the light of the blinding day With purple and pink and crimson, opalescent and far away! The candlesticks of the cactus flame-torches here up-hold; Sunflower disks and feath'ry mustard spread fields of the cloth of gold. The polished cups of amole are girded with spears of thorn — When the desert wind arises,- — and they fade as they are born! The rainbow-colored spaces, wan and withered in a breath; — Bones of man and beast lie together, under mirage-mock of death!
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Chorus:
Life of sky and sand awaking to prey when all is done; Land of the desolate people, born of sirocco and sun! Oh! desert land!
Oh! glorious land! The land of homes for the homeless; of shepherded flocks and herds; The land where the green-walled thickets are choral with songs of birds; Where, over the ancient furrows, silver streamlets are re-drawn; Where slopes, once arid, lie teeming with wealth of the vine and corn; The land of sunny spaces, the land of the leafy glades; Of the faith that sees in the desert the promise of verdant blades, Where fruits, purple, crimson and golden, roll from Plenty's horn, Where souls of noble fealty, of diviner mood are born; Where, on glimmering heights of future, gleam fair regenerate years. Read in crystal chrism of water, the transparent globe of seers!
Chorus:
In the garden grows the Tree of Life where Eden's rivers run, Land of the world-dowered people, nurtured by water and sun! Oh! glorious land!
Listen
Listen! The woods now are calling!
The mountains are casting their spell — A call has come out from the highlands.
Where the creatures of nature dwell.
Oh hark! The light winds are telling
Of wonderful things they have seen. They're asking you to explore them —
The hills and the valleys so green!
Listen! The murmuring brooklet
Glides on, to a much larger stream; The twittering song of the warblers,
In beauty surpasses your dream.
And listen! neighbor, the outdoors
Is better, as autumn draws nigh; The heat of summer is over,
And the soft, cooling breezes sigh!
Come then, be joyful and merry,
Enjoy life while your autumn lasts; For seasons come, and seasons go,
But the die of life isn't cast!
Weston N. Nordgren
Speed and the Spirit
By Joseph J. Cannon
[This story was read to Dr. Haymond in order to assure accuracy of details. He objected to the suggestion of the heroic, but we agree with the author that as long as he refrained from the slightest exaggeration, adhering strictly to the facts, the story should stand as it is. — £d/fors.]
I LIKE Springville. The town has character. The people there seem a little more subject to enthusiasms than most. Years
ago when state prohibition was a faint hope, national a dream. Springville refused to license saloons. Revenues were scarce and bars elsewhere invited her sons, but Springville had ideals.
I am wondering which influence more greatly stirred the genius of Cyrus Dallin in his youth, the beauty of the close mountains, that startling range from Timpanogos to Nebo, or the appreciative friend- ship of his neighbors in Springville. I know he loves those neighbors now with a great love. I am sure the sensitive soul of John Hafen felt deeply there the harmony of his human surroundings. His gentle, artistic mood was affected by them as much as by the evening light across the lake or the autumn hues on the mountainside. Art galler- ies like the noted one at the Springville high school are not accidents. They grow out of the soul of a people.
About a score of years ago I was guest at a home there. The large lot was half city, half country, lawn in front, garden and stables behind, typical "Mormon" settlement home, part of a farm but away from it, built before the time of autombiles and good roads, when Indians and isolation induced the farmers to live in town and raise their field crops at a distance. Milk cows came from the pasture at night and lay down at peace in a corral. In the stable were a number of horses, among them a Shire stallion.
Out on the lawn under the high apple trees I visited much with two children whom I loved, a black-haired boy and a golden-haired girl, twins, Creed like his mother, Elma like her father. They seemed so typical of the little town, those two, of its best traditions, high- minded, enthusiastic, charming. They interested me greatly, those sprightly youngsters, well born, both as to parents and to commu- nity. I drew from them many things. They had ideals; they said their prayers; they had never tasted tea or coffee. That suggested something. In that shady garden we three entered into a contract. We would never use tobacco, tea or coffee, or liquor, until we all sat down and had these things together. I did not consider it a very serious contract — for the twins.
Years passed. Creed interested himself in athletics and played basketball in high school. Then he entered the University of Utah and made the track team. Soon he became known as the Utah flash.
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"The 'Mormon' speed demon," his competitors on other teams called him. Sportsmen said he ran like a million dollars — whatever that may mean. The professional work he wished to do could not be prepared for here, so he went East, to the University of Pennsylvania.
Several years ago I saw on the wall of his office the photograph of the finish of a race. It interested me. He mentioned that there was a story connected with it. Part he told me then. At different times since I have drawn most of it from him, little by little, and learned some details from others.
It was the end of May, 1919, at the Harvard stadium, the an- nual meet of the Inter-Collegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America — the I. C. 4 A's. To Cambridge the great American col- leges had sent their best men, seventeen hundred in all, to compete. Creed Haymond was captain of the Pennsylvania team. The night before the meet Coach Lawson Robertson came to the room. He was in good spirits. In the try-outs Penn had qualified seventeen men. Cornell, her most feared rival that year, had only ten. As the scoring for the five first places in each event was five, four, three, two, one, naturally the number of men a team had in the finals greatly influ- enced its chances.
"Creed," Robertson said, "if we do our best tomorrow we will run away with it."
"We're going to do our best, Robby."
The coach hesitated. "Creed, I'm having the boys take a little sherry wine tonight. I want you to have some, just a little of course."
"I won't do it, Coach."
"But, Creed, I'm not trying to get you to drink. I know what you 'Mormons' believe. I'm giving you this as a tonic, just to put you all on your metal."
"It wouldn't do me any good, Robby; I can't take it."
"Remember, Creed, you're captain of the team and our best point winner, fourteen thousand students are looking to you per- sonally to win this meet. If you fail us we'll lose. I ought to know what is good for you."
Creed Haymond believed he had the best coach in the world, and with reason, for Lawson Robertson has since been chosen head coach for the Olympic teams of 1920, 1924, and 1928. Creed knew too, that other coaches felt a little wine to be useful when men have trained muscle and nerve almost to the snapping point. He also knew that his team needed his best efforts. He intensely wished to give them, but there is something of steely moral courage in Creed Haymond and he looked Robertson in the eye and said, "I won't take it, Coach."
SPEED AND THE SPIRIT
1003
Robertson smiled a little, not a gay smile it is true. On his grim Scotch face there was a curious expression. "You're a funny fellow, Creed. You won't take tea at the training table. You have ideas of your own. Well, I'm going to let you do as you please."
He went away and left the captain of his team in a state of extreme anxiety. Supposing, Creed thought, he made a poor showing tomorrow; what could he say to Robertson? He was to go against the fastest men in the world. Nothing less than his best would do. This stubbornness of his might lose the meet for Penn. His team- mates were doing as they were told. They believed in their coach.
Creed Haymond (second from right) at the Harvard Stadium. Johnson of Michigan at his left. Two of the six runners have been cut off the picture, so that its size need not be too greatly reduced.
What right had he to disobey? Only one right, one reason, this thing he had been following and believing all his life — this Word of Wisdom. But what is it anyway, something Joseph Smith thought up or really a revealed message to us from God? It was a critica! hour of the young man's life and, with all the spiritual forces of his nature suffusing him, he kneeled down and earnestly, very earnestly,
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asked the Lord to give him a testimony as to the source of the revela- tion he had believed and obeyed. Then he went to bed and slept the sound slumber of healthy youth.
Next morning Coach Robertson came into the room and asked anxiously, "How are you feeling, Creed?"
"Fine," the captain answered cheerfully.
"The other fellows are vomiting. I don't know what's the matter with them," he said seriously.
"Maybe it's the tonic you gave them. Coach," Creed volun- teered.
"Maybe so," Robertson answered shortly.
I heard Jack Dempsey tell once of the strange feelings he had during the hours preceding a fight. While amateur events evoke less cruel determination to win than where one's job in life is involved, every athlete who is about to meet the supreme test before a great crowd has the tenseness, fright, exhilaration, the feeling of glory that makes the occasion memorable. On that almost perfect day in late May the Penn team entered the great Harvard stadium entitled to full measure of confidence. The dope sheets of the coaches and others, where every man was listed and graded from past perform- ance, gave Penn a margin over the best of the other teams. Gathered there was the flower of American athletics. Every man was known. Of the seventeen entrants Pennsylvania had qualified the day before, she counted on seven to win the meet and on others to pile up points.
Two o'clock found twenty thousand spectators in their seats- — the same sport-loving crowd that has watched bull fights in Spain, jousts in France and England, gladiators in Rome and the fair ath- letes of Greece — waiting, that crowd, to see conflict, joyous, excited, partizan, every contest on track or field giving rise to an emotional battle among the spectators, but multiplied many thousand times as the tense occupants of the bleachers in divided sympathy made their feeling vocal; generous, though, that crowd, ready to cheer the best man, victor though he might be over the friends of most of them.
As the events got under way, it became plain that something was wrong with the wonderful Penn team. In that beautiful race, the quarter mile, the grinding test of speed and endurance, Pennsyl- vania's man was figured to take second place and win four precious points. The startled Penn supporters watched the field run away from him; he came in last. In the half-mile event the inter-collegiate champion of the year before was Penn's entrant. Coach Robertson's dope sheet gave him first in that event with five points. He finished fifth with one point. Two men were entered in the pole vault. They were considered the classiest men in America in that picturesque event. They were expected to take first and second places and win
SPEED AND THE SPIRIT 1005
nine points. At a height below their own records they tied for third place and won between them five points. The man entered fot high jump, confidently counted on as a point winner, did not place. The one who should have taken third in the low hurdles was too sick to run.
The hundred-yard dash, the classic of track events was an- nounced. The six fastest men in the colleges of America took their places. This and the two hundred twenty yards to be run later were Creed Haymond's races. Penn desperately needed him to win them. Would the jinx that had been pursuing his team get the captain? In the toss up Haymond had drawn the second lane. At his side in the first lane was Johnson of Michigan, six feet two inches tall.
"Ready!" The six sprinters crouched. Each put his fingers on the ground at the line and his right foot into the hole he had kicked for the start.
"Set!" Every nerve and muscle strained.
The pistol shot — and every man sprang forward into the air and touched earth at a run — that is, all except one — Creed Hay- mond, captain of the Pennsylvania team. The tall Johnson had used that second lane in the semi-finals and with greater spread had kicked a hole for his toe an inch or two behind the spot Haymond had just chosen for his. Under the tremendous thrust Creed gave, the narrow wedge of earth broke through, and he came down on his knee behind the line.
Probably most sprinters would have let the others go. No coach or crowd would expect a man to get up and make a pitiful spectacle of himself running behind. Creed Haymond, I said, has moral courage. His physical courage matches it. He got up and ran behind, but, man, how he did run! His brain on fire — the school — the team — Robby — desperate, but not hopeless — at sixty yards, the last in the race — then seeming to fly — passing the fifth man — the fourth — the third — the second — only the tall Johnson ahead — and close to the tape — lips away from teeth — face drawn in agony — heart bursting with the strain — sweeping in that climax of whirlwind swiftness past Johnson to victory. The timers caught the flash as he crossed the tape and called it ten seconds flat; — but no man could know the actual speed of that running.
Through some mistake in arrangement, the semi-finals of the 220 yards were not completed until almost time to close the meet. With the same bad break that had followed the Penn team all day, Creed Haymond was placed in the last heat. Five minutes after winning it he was called to start in the final of the two-twenty, the last event of the day. One of the other men who had run in an earlier heat rushed up to him.
1006 IMPROVEMENT ERA
"Tell the starter, Haymond, you demand a rest before running again. You're entitled to it under the rules. I've hardly caught my breath yet and I ran in the heat before yours."
Creed went panting to the starter and begged for more time. The official said he would give ten minutes. Just then the telephone rang and the starter was ordered to begin the race, as the crowd was clamoring. Regretfully he called the men to their marks. Under ordinary conditions Creed would have had no fear for this race. He was probably the fastest man in the world at this distance, but he had already run three races during the afternoon, one the heart-breaking hundred yards, and only five minutes before the 220 semi-finals.
At a high point in the grand stand Coach Lawson Robertson, of Pennsylvania, and Coach Tom Keene, of Syracuse, sat with their stop watches in hand. It had been announced that Haymond would try to break the world's record. The two coaches had chosen this place as the best possible one from which to get the correct time of the race. From it they could see perfectly the smoke from the re- volver and were above the runners at the tape. During their pro- fessional careers they had timed from different positions thousands of sprinters. They knew their game.
With surprise they saw the starter order the breathless men to their marks, and standing behind them raise his pistol; then the white puff of smoke. That explosion gave sudden movement to those still, crouched forms. They rose from the ground like a flock of frightened birds. This time the Penn captain literally shot from his marks. Robertson's heart bounded with his man. What a sweet sight as almost arm to arm the runners started down the straight away. Haymond was emerging from the crowd and definitely tak- ing the lead. Would he have the stamina to hold the pace after the strain of the other run? The two coaches noted his magnificent stride — legs extended like a hurdler's — he was sprinting away from the field. They sensed the superlative swiftness and held their breath. Running his race alone, unpressed by competition, the little Penn captain drove himself to the tape in a burst of speed, eight yards ahead of his nearest man. As he crossed it, both coaches, di- rectly above him, snapped their stop-watches; then looked at them; then looked at each other almost with awe. Both watches registered twenty-one flat.
Something of the glory of that achievement tempered Coach Robertson's disappointment. Penn had lost the meet. Davis, her other sprinter, had run sixth instead of second, as his records entitled him to do, both in the hundred and the two-twenty, following in al- most fatalistic sequence the failures of his team-mates that day. To everybody's amazement, Pennsylvania, out of seventeen entrants.
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had only one inter-collegiate champion, Captain Creed Haymond.
The two coaches hurried down to consult the timers. To their astonishment and disgust, they found that the officials had caught differing time on the wonderful race. Robertson laid his hand on the shoulder of the captain of his team. There was a touch of sad- ness in his voice. "Boy," he said, "they're not going to give you your true time. We can't help that, but it may comfort you to know that you just ran the two hundred and twenty yards in the fastest time it has ever been run by any human being."
At the end of that strange day, as Creed Haymond was going to bed, there suddenly came to memory his question of the night before regarding the divinity of the Word of Wisdom. The pro- cession of that peculiar series of events then passed before his mind, — his team-mates taking the wine and failing — his own abstinence and victories, victories that were amazing to himself. Had Daniel and his three continent companions as startling reason for testimony? He had asked the favor of some witnesses from the Lord. What relation did all those things have to his prayer? In the sports of track and field, does God teach his purposes?
For hours, sleepless, he lay in contemplation. And to the clean heart of this young man of sweet, simple faith came the assurance he had sought.
"This Word of Wisdom which has been supposed to have become stale, and not in force, is like all the counsels of God, in force as much today as it ever was. There is life, everlasting life, in it — the life which now is and the life which is to come.
"The travels and labors of the elders about to go on missions will throw them into positions which will cause them to seek unto the Lord. They need to live their religion, to go forth with pure hearts and clean hands, and then preach the Gospel by the power of God sent down from heaven. They should touch not and taste not of sin, and when they return they should come pure and clean, ready to meet the Saints with open countenances."- — Brigham Young.
The Test
It's easy to praise and keep the faith
In the midst of clear evidence;
It's natural to turn to God in need,
And be blessed by his providence.
But with his powers unmanifest,
Do you have the strength to stand the test?
Each new-born day with hope is prized;
But night leaves hope unrealized.
Can you keep your confident glow the same,
When your own weak heart must kindle the flame?
Endure with patience? Trust and pray?
That is the test we face today.
Fielding. Utah EUNICE PETERSEN
The Realms of Science and Religion
By Dr. Joseph F. Merrill, Commissioner of Education L. D. S. Church
(Conclusion)
I SAID that modern science has had a profound influence on the religious ideas of our time. Science has demonstrated that we live in a world of law and order. In fact, all experimentation with nature is based upon this view — that under the same conditions nature always acts in the same way. This is called the orderliness of nature. So science shows God is not a whimsical being, nor is he a statical being. Change is found everywhere in nature. Dr. Millikin surmises that we are on the verge of discovering how suns are created and obliterated. Another thing the science of this gen- eration has done is to reveal to us a world and a universe more extensive, more mysterious, and more wonderful than man ever imagined before. The new physics has revealed a new wonder world.
But what has all this to do with a sermon? Many of you are doubtless asking this question. As one reply, may I answer that, judged by modern practice, it would be very difficult to define a sermon other than as some kind of discourse given on Sunday. And this is Sunday.
But seriously, I have a purpose in talking about these problems in science. Some students sometimes assume an unfriendly attitude toward religion and religious doctrines and assume that in the field of science there is definiteness and certainty, in contrast to the vague uncertainty and mere belief wh'ch they say are characteristic of the religious realm. Furthermore, these students are sometimes able to show wherein teachers of religion have changed their views and no longer stand for things once taught. Also they say religious teachers indulge in dogmatic assertions about things that are not true. Well, what about the scientists? In these matters can "pot call kettle black?" On these grounds does our irreligious student have any more cause to rail against teachers of religions than of science?
But this line of talk is not constructive. I said once before, both scientists and religionists are probably more open-minded and more tolerant than they used to be. I think we will all admit there is need they should be.
After all, man is finding out that he doesn't know very much. The more he delves into nature the more wonderful and mysterious be finds the situation. So the truly tolerant man and the man who is true to the real spirit of science must also be a very humble man.
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He does not have to delve very far before coming against the un- known and apparently unknowable. Suppose we find matter is made up of electricity. That docs not solve the riddle of electricity. The earth behaves as if it were a great magnet. But why this magnet- ism is as much a mystery today as ever. We know how to generate electric currents. But no man can explain why they are generated. So we find mystery and the unknown in every direction and on every hand. But so far as we go. so far as we know, there is a won- derful beauty and order in it all. Whether we look with unaided eyes, or with a microscope, or a telescope, we see the same matchless harmony everywhere. The "music of the spheres" is not mere poetic license, it is a fact of nature.
But our young scientist wants to deal with certainties: matters of faith have no interest for him. Friends, I have briefly outlined a theory of atomic structure. I remarked that no one had ever seen an atom. The human mind finds it impossible to conceive of the minuteness of an atom, much less the minuteness of an electron, a constituent of an atom. Yet we speak of atoms and electrons as if we see them every day and know all about them. Is there any faith involved in all this? The wave theory of light says the sensation of yellow light is due to transverse waves in the ether, analogous in form to the waves that would travel along a clothes line if one end were fastened and the other moved rapidly up and down, except that the train of light waves would be infinitely more rapid moving up and down more than five hundred trillion times a second. Does it require any imagination to see these waves? But there is more yet. This train of waves is said to be transverse, that is, the wave travels longitudinally, while the wave-movement is up and down. Now a wave of this character, having the speed of light requires an ex tremely solid medium for its propagation. The luminiferous ether, filling all space, is said to be this solid medium. But the earth, the stars and all the heavenly bodies move through this medium without being slowed up in speed, without opposition. This requires that the medium shall be a perfect fluid. Now do you have any difficulty in picturing a medium that is at one and the same instant a perfect solid and a perfect fluid? Does science make any demands upon your credulity?
A story runs that Sir Isaac Newton observed a falling apple and was thereby led to the discovery of the laws of gravitation. And gravitation explains the motion of the moon, earth, planets and other heavenly bodies in their course. But what explains gravitation? We know how the earth moves in its orbit around the sun, but do we know why it moves? The force existing between the sun and the earth that accounts for the orbital motion of the earth is enor-
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mous, there is a tremendous pull between them. Is the earth tied to the sun? Can a pull be executed through a fluid medium, such as the ether must be, in order that the earth shall move through it without resistance? My friends, the reason why an apple falls is a profound enigma. Perhaps there is nothing more mysterious in all the world. Explain? What can science explain? We answer little, but very little of the ultimate nature of things. But the more science has to teach, the more wonderful, the more inexplicable we find na- ture to be. Does religion tax your faith and imagination? Science taxes mine every whit as much as does religion. And, as I see, the greatest tax of all on the imagination, the greatest possible demand on credulity, is the assumption that there is no God, to me a perfectly impossible assumption. Even had I no faith in Deity in my boy- hood, as I think of it, I must believe that the little study of science that I have since made would have driven me irresistibly to a be- lief in God.
But let us turn now to another phase of our theme. We speak of certainties in science. Are there no corresponding certitudes in religion? Is religion a field of belief only? The discussion of this phase of the theme is so well done by Professor Dinsmore of Yale University in his little book entitled Religious Certitudes in an Age of Science that I offer no apology for quoting and paraphras- ing very freely from the last chapter in this book. Discussing "what we know and what we believe," Professor Dinsmore says: "In the day of her bigotry the church asserted infallible knowledge in many departments of interest, discrediting science as a black art, the craft of the Devil."
But human nature is the same in the laboratory as in the pulpit, and many scientists today are as bigoted as was ever a medieval monk. With many of them what they do not know is not knowledge. So prevalent is the tendency of affirm that life in all its multitudinous activities — its moral ideals, its poetry, its soul-hunger — can be ex- plained by a materialistic philosophy that Sir Oliver Lodge a few years ago, in a presidential address delivered before the British Asso- ciation, thought fit to say to his fellow-scientists:
"It is my function to remind you and myself that our studies do not exhaust the universe, and if we dogmatize in the opposite direction and say that we can reduce everything to physics and chemistry, we gibbet ourselves as ludicrously narrow pedants, and are falling short of the richness of our human birthright. Scientists, not a few, have still to learn that the faculties and the methods they employ are not the only road to genuine knowledge. * * * 'Humbug is humbug,' wrote William James, 'even though it bear a scientific name.' Yet many men, both in science and out of it, who
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are neither narrow-minded nor materialistic, are inclined to con- fine the word 'knowledge' to the sphere of the sciences. * * *
"We claim that the difference between the results of scientific experimentation and religious experience is but the difference be- tween two different kinds of knowledge, each resting on faith, each established on experimentation after its own kind. Science uses the perceptive and the distinctively intellectual faculties in her opera- tions; religion assumes that the heart has reasons as well as the in- tellect, that conscience is a doorway into reality, that the imagina- tion and the will are also pathways to truth. Religion employs a larger portion of human nature in the discovery of truth than does science, and she believes that she touches a wider environment. * * *
"Knowledge is to have assurance upon proper evidence that one's mental apprehensions agree with reality. Subjectively there is certainty, objectively there is reality; the connecting link is proper evidence that the thought tallies with the thing.
"The conviction we are seeking to establish is that religious experience creates a joyous certitude in the breasts of the faithful, the certitude of the individual is repeated in a countless multitude and issues in characters which have all the credentials of truth.
"These multiplied experiences, these substantial and radiant characters, constitute proper evidence that the inner conviction is not entirely alien to the outer reality. Therefore the saints as well as the scientists are able to say: 'We know.'
"Let us ask to what degree science has knowledge. She begins with an act of faith, faith in the general trustworthiness of the sense perceptions, faith in those mental powers which go beyond sense ob- servation into the region where things are intellectually discerned, faith in an external world that is dependable and capable of inter- pretation. By precise observation, experiment, and careful deduc- tion she builds up a body of fact and truth which she calls knowl- edge, and rightly so. But it is knowledge of a limited kind, knowledge of phenomena and of modes of behavior, not of meanings, not of ultimate realities. She uses only those aspects of reality which she needs in her work. The laws of nature, as science de- scribes them, represent, but are not identical with, the laws of nature as they really are. She takes only those serviceable features of phenomena which she can employ for her purposes. But her results are substantial enough, and constitute a body of facts and laws suf- ficiently valid to sustain our houses, our factories, our civilization.
"But the scientist does not cover the whole of life with his method, or with his knowledge. The poet, the musician, the prophet have other fields of interest; they live in a world as real as his, a world with its actualities perceived by faculties which he does not
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use, but which they are confident yield valid knowledge. They deal not so much with facts as with values and forces, which are spiritually discerned, which are established in confidence, not by experiment, but by experience. We are all aware of this world which is above sense phenomena. We are as certain of the value of poetry as we are of Ford cars. The sighs of love have shaken men as perceptibly as the winds of heaven. * * * A transforming power issues from the holiness of Jesus which is as indisputable as a volt of electricity. We are as sure of this realm of spiritual values and forces as of the earth beneath our feet. The power of character is as much a part of the nature of things as dynamite and can be equally verified. Buddha, Confucius, Christ founded world civil- izations, and the spiritual and moral energies they released are as truly a part of the world order as the Mississippi or the Amazon.
"Spontaneously and habitually we use the word knowledge in connection with these aesthetic and ethical experiences. * *■ *
"Most men cannot be persuaded that man can know so much about material things and so little regarding the things which con- cern him most. They cannot believe that this infinitely rich uni- verse has such abundant satisfaction for their physical needs, and nothing for their deepest spiritual necessities. Therefore, with the yearning of a pilgrim for his distant home, they turn to the mystery from which they emerged, and whose awful shadow encloses their lives, to find a refuge in the day of trouble, explanation of the mean- ing of life, and re-enforcement to meet the difficulties of the journey.
"Men need God, they trust him, they seek to learn his will and obey him. The steps one takes in solving his religious problems are much the same as those he takes in solving his scientific problems. In science we trust our sense perceptions and the conclusions of our intellect. In religion we trust our spiritual intuitions and the validity of the claims of our moral and emotional natures. Religious faith is our reason for acting bravely in the presence of life's gravest problems. It is a valor of soul which makes us commit the highest in ourselves to what we believe is the Highest in the universe.
"Now this faith upon which our religion is founded is as bold, as rational, and as comprehensive as any scientific generalization. Will it stand the test of experience? Can this faith prove its truth by its effects upon life?
"If one man tries it out and finds that it will work, he will have an inner certitude of its truth. He will say, 'I believe.' If he finds that his experience has been repeated in ten thousand lives which have followed the same procedure then he will exclaim, 'We know!' Know, not all about God, but know God to the extent that He comes into human experience, know Him as a reality be*
THE REALMS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION 1013
cause He produces real effects. For surely virtues of highest worth are not nurtured on what is entirely illusion.
"But religious faith sweeps farther and higher than such expe- riences. It postulates a divine benignity which cares for the indivi- dual, and works with boundless grace even through the wrath and error of the world. Men in vast numbers have actually ventured everything on the hypothesis that in living a life of love they were reproducing in a measure the divine nature, and they have not been put to confusion. If their faith were vain, then when they took the leap they would have fallen into vacuity, but their concurrent testi- mony has been that they found a Rock beneath their feet. If this faith in a Divine Providence were a delusion, then the men who came under its baleful influence would have deformed and brittle char- acters. On the contrary theirs are the most firm-fibered and lustrous characters the world has produced. Those who have sent the roots of their being down most deeply into the faith of a divine love have been the most revered men in history.
"Religious faith would have vanished from the world long ago, if it had put one out of joint with the nature of things. If no help had ever come from the unseen, the impulse to pray would long ago have died out. The saints may be confused and confusing in their speech about religion, but with unanimity they report the same experience. Christians sing in twentieth century America psalms which were written in Asia three thousand years ago. Catholics and Protestants use the same prayers and the same hymns. Their creeds differ, but they touch the same reality, and experience the same peace and spiritual liberty.
"What I wish to claim is this: Science does not have knowl- edge, and religion simply faith. The lover, the artist, the musician, know; so does the saint. Religion has always used the word 'knowl- edge' freely and always will, because no lesser term expresses her experiences. Both science and religion begin with an act of faith. Both reach results. Those of science are sufficiently verified for a man to base his actions and his civilization upon them. Those of religion are so tested that one can build his whole life upon them with ever increasing satisfaction both to his mind and to his soul.
"But scientific knowledge is independent of the personal equa- tion. A murderer can perform a chemical experiment as well as a saint. Religion on the other hand, is more personal. Its knowledge is conditional on character. Only the pure in heart can see God; only the unselfish and obedient can realize His love. * * *
"But religious knowledge is superior to scientific. Science deals with the world out there beyond us. It knows only symbols of reality which ar? interpreted to the consciousness through the senses.
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But when we deal with what takes place in our own inner nature, we send the shaft down deeper into reality. There, if anywhere, we surprise reality unveiled. 'By being religious,' says Professor James, 'we establish ourselves in the possession of ultimate reality at the only point at which reality has been given us to guard.'
"Knowledge is religion's normal word. Without it her Scrip- tures are tame, her teachings ineffectual, and her promises pallid. 'If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teachers;' 'Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.' 'This is life eternal to know thee, the only living and true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.' 'Every one therefore which heareth these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man which built his house upon the rock.' Religion is indeed con- ceived in faith, but, 'The steps of faith fall on a seeming void, and find the rock beneath.'
And now in conclusion may I be pardoned a word of personal testimony? I am persuaded to give it only because it fits so aptly with what I have just read. Away back in early adulthood, as a boy of nineteen, I had a blessed experience that I never can forget as long as memory and reason shall last. Between ten and eleven o'clock one August night I was engaged in most earnest and devout prayer, when suddenly in reply there came to me a wonderful spiritual mani- festation. From that moment until this, I too have always been able to say truthfully, "I know."
Warning Against Losing Old Faiths
"The immensity of possible discovery contrasts with our feebleness in putting it into words. For that reason never throw away hastily any old faith or traditions because of some dogma of science: do not run foul of conventions merely because you do not see the good of them.
"The problems do not get easier as the world grows older. The extraordinary multiplicity of plants and animals is astounding. What an imagination the Creator must have had! Our growth of knowledge of the planetary system shows that every- thing is governed by one system of law.
"Real existence is a much wider thing than terrestrial existence. We are mistaken in believing that life can exist only for material bodies. It can exist, perhaps better, with immaterial things.
"There are many persons who formerly lived on this planet and who still hover close to us. They retain many of the attributes that they once had here. The dead are not dead, but alive. They have bodies, but not of matter, what I may call spiritual bodies. They are clothed, but not with material clothing.
"Mankind came on to the earth very recently, so its corporate blunders are the mistakes of infancy. Our squabbles are like those of children in a nursery but they are deadly and I hope we will have no more of them. They tend to destroy civiliza- tion."— Sir Oliver Lodge.
October in Southern Utah
By Kenneth S. Bennion
NE would think, to watch cars along the highway, that just about everybody spends the summer touring. Of course, some of us have to stay home and work to sup- port the vacationists, burglarize their houses, haul away the watermelon rinds on Monday morning, keep the home fires burning under the copper kettles, and the wheels of industry moving generally. But we all admit that sitting under a steering wheel and watching the road unwind is just about the ideal life — for awhile, at least. None of us would think of turning down an opportunity to "take a trip," any time, anywhere, for any reason whatsoever. If the road is fair, the weather dry enough so that one can change tires without getting wet, and if the car "percolates" all right, the trip is the best ever, and the scenery just grand.
But of all the trips a person may take, one of the most inviting is that leading down the Arrowhead Trail from Salt Lake City to Utah's Dixie, in the sunny, hazy days of October. There is some- thing unusually charming in this mid-autumn season. The valleys are brimming with rich harvests of the year, the trees are still in full foliage, and the mountains are gloriously decorated in the gayest of colors. At this transition point between summer and winter, the weather is most delightful, and the out-of-doors most appealing.
Recently a neighbor of mine decided to celebrate his ninth wedding anniversary (he called it his paper plate wedding) by taking a belated honeymoon. I was invited to go along as official tire changer, and, after looking over the big, comfortable sedan with its five good balloons, I accepted. His wife sat in the back seat where she could take full and complete charge of the youngsters, — two small boys, — offer bits of advice as to how the driving should not have been done, and where she could prepare and pass forward sand-
Watching the road unwind.
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wiches, cake, chocolates, etc., from time to time as the occasion, or one of us, demanded. A most happy arrangement, indeed!
As the town slid away behind us and we neared the south end of the valley, the mountains on our left drew toward us, their rugged slopes clothed in brilliant autumn colors, and their summits lipped with snow. The bare, jagged walls of Lone Peak were softened somewhat by the Indian summer haze. In Utah valley we passed by the base of Timpanogos. The whole mountain was white to the foothills, its summit shining in the sunlight above a thin cloud mantle.
Along the highway here, we met bands of sheep, coming down from the higher summer ranges, headed for the desert. The old ewes in lead remembered the salt sages of the winter range, and were leading the herds at a half trot.
In Provo, a boy on a bicycle suddenly swung across directly in front of the car. Thanks to four-wheel brakes he passed on, unhurt. He flung us a scared smile over his shoulder and hurried away.
The fine, paved highway winds through miles of productive farms and gardens; then it climbs a low divide and drops down into Juab valley, to the little town of Mona, at the foot of Mt. Nebo. This mountain is one of the highest in the Wasatch range. Its triple peaks rise abruptly out of the valley to a height of about 12,000 feet above sea level. On this day its western face presented a wilder- ness of slide rock above the timber-line, and a riot of autumn colors below. A few weeks later I passed it again. It was white as marble from top to bottom, with occasional crags jutting through the snow- mantle, like the tusks of ancient monsters. A wild wind swept across its peaks, and plumes of drifting snow streamed far out from its knife-like ridges.
Just south of Nebo, in Salt Creek canyon, the Wasatch Range really comes to an end. From there on is a new formation, with reddish-colored rocks. These rocks have colored a bright red the fertile farming lands of the valley. At the mouth of the canyon lies the beautiful town of Nephi, surrounded by some of the richest dry-farming lands of Utah.
At Nephi we secured a road map and a sandwich, and then turned southwestward, across the valley, following very closely the plainly visible road of the pioneer settlers of southern Utah. A few miles out we had our first flat tire. While we were putting on the spare, one of the small boys got the tire pump and began vigorously pumping up a dust in the road.
"Hey there, Tony!" called the other, "quit wasting all that good air!"
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At the Uba dam on the Sevier river we rested the car and stretched our legs. The water in the reservoir, which earlier in the season is backed up for twenty miles, was very low, and the river was unusually small.
Scipio, the next point of interest, is a farming and stockraising town, lying in a peculiar, circular valley that has no drainage outlet. The town was settled early in Utah's history, and many of the fine old pioneer homes, two-story brick and adobe structures, are still in use, picturesque monuments to the skill and industry of those early settlers. Beyond the town, the old road is very plainly marked, as it winds over a steep pass out of the valley. Now a wonderful high- way carries the car easily up an even grade, over the summit, and down the long road to Holden, in the Pahvant valley.
This is one of the largest valleys in Utah. The mountains on the farther side almost fade from sight in the blue haze of the desert. The Indian name signifies "vanished waters," and refers to the shore lines and sand bars of Lake Bonneville, and to the dried- up bed of the Sevier river, which once flowed through the valley into Salt Lake. The great farming district of Delta, including half a dozen towns, occupies but a small fraction of the valley. Holden, Fillmore, Meadow, and Kanosh lie along the foot of the eastern mountains.
From these towns on the country somehow begins to have the "feel" of southern Utah. It becomes a little more picturesque, a little more romantic. After a half-hour's drive along a splendid highway through the cedar-covered hills at the south end of the valley, we rounded a point and came into view of Cove Fort. This interesting landmark was built by the early settlers as the half-way camping place between the Pahvant settlements and Beaver. Oxen could not make the whole trip in one day, and in that country there were then a great many rather unfriendly Indians. The high stone walls of the fort are very thick. A row of narrow loop-holes ex- tends around the four sides, up near the top. There is a wide en- trance in the east side, through which wagons could be driven into the enclosed courtyard. A small, narrow exit was provided in the west wall, in case the Indians should break through the great wooden doors of the main entrance. Rooms were built along the north, south, and part of the west sides. A well was dug in the center of the court. The whole arrangement reminded me of an old fort of Napoleon's at Brest. The latter was an improvised delousing plant when I was an inmate.
Cove Fort has recently been purchased by some Eastern people, and converted into a "dude ranch" for tourists. Perhaps, some day
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the state will take steps to preserve it as a monument to the early settlers.
We left the fort and hurried on southward, through the cedars. The sun was hanging low above Mineral range and we had a long way yet to go. At the south end of this valley, the road was lined with clumps of brilliantly colored maples, with dark-green oaks and cedars between. On a little knoll by the side of the road, a band of sheep was bedding down for the night. A thin thread of gray smoke rose from the camp wagon, and horses tied to the wheels of the commissary munched in their feed-bags. The whole scene called up poignant memories of canned tomatoes, mutton chops, red-hot sourdough biscuits and syrup.
We pulled into Beaver just at dusk and stopped at a restaurant for supper. As we ate, we listened to the clever banter of a party of tourists at the next table. There had been tire trouble on the
Granite rock carved out by the drifting desert sand from Pahvant Valley
way, and they had had to get a new tire. A sympathetic fellow- traveler contributed a dollar toward the cause, and offered to take up a collection from everyone in the room. At this critical point a party of Mexicans came in and became the focus of attention. One of them looked like Villa himself, and we wondered whether that famous bandit had really been killed, or whether the job had yet to be done.
At eight o'clock we were on the road again, and after a few miles of winding over cedar-lined curves and dugways, we rolled
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down a long hollow, around a point, and into a wide valley. The lights of Paragoonah and of Parowan flickered in the distance. Parowan has installed a new street-lighting system, and has reason to feel proud of herself. We drove through the town, passing with reluctance the road leading to beautiful Parowan canyon and Cedar Breaks. At ten o'clock we pulled into Cedar City, everybody, in- cluding the driver, about ninety per cent asleep. "El Escalante" surely looked like home.
At 7:30 the next morning we breakfasted on hot cakes and casawbas. A young fellow across the room unconsciously created quite a flutter among the waitresses. He looked like a college foot- ball player, a movie star, and a bashful country boy, all rolled into one. He possessed thick, black hair, a shirt of many colors, and a cool, quiet manner. We saw him later, leaving for parts unknown in a big, new roadster.
We tanked up with gas, oil, water, and pine nuts, and left the main-traveled roads, heading westward, toward the Escalante desert. The road led for many miles through rolling hills, heavily timbered with cedars and pinion pines. Then we reached a more arid country. The timber gave way to brush and grass, and the hills fell away to open valleys and low, desert ranges. Along the way, the driver told us the story of a lost gold mine that had really never been found. The story runs somewhat like this:
A few winters ago, one of the prominent sheepmen of Cedar City hired a young fellow to herd one of his bands of sheep out among these very desert hills through which we were passing. The boy was gone all winter, and when he returned in the spring and received his wages, went north to work in Wyoming. Just before leaving, he pulled a few pieces of rock from his pocket and gave them to his employer, saying that he had found them out on one of the mountains during the winter. He said they probably weren't any good, but that they looked rather interesting. The sheepman shoved them out of his way and out of his mind. Some months later he happened to come across them again and gave them a careful examination. Immediately he sent them to an assayer, and in a few days received the returns, showing that the samples carried gold worth some $65,000 a ton! At once he began a frantic search for the young sheepherder, and for the ledge from which the samples were taken. To date, neither has been found.
We resolved to bring a camp outfit here and comb the country from end to end in an attempt to find the gold — "some day."
We crossed a low divide, passed through the little town of New- castle, and skirted the southeastern edge of Escalante valley to
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Hamblin creek. There we wandered over the alfalfa and potato fields of a large ranch that was for sale and then drove into Enter- prise. This town was a pleasant surprise in such a great, dry coun- try. It is situated among fertile fields, and boasts electric lights, telephone, waterworks, modern homes, and a fine new school house.
From here we turned south, climbing through rolling hills to the divide, a few miles from the town. This divide marks the southern rim of the Great Basin, in Utah. Water falling on the north side of the rim runs into the desert, where it evaporates or sinks, but that on the south side finds its way into the Colorado. We met a picturesque old-timer in the dugway here. His buck- board, mules, and whole make-up suggested the "early days." His outfit would have looked far more appropriate on the old road of the emigrants, still deeply carved in the canyon below us, than on the smooth, graded highway that connects southwestern Utah with the railroad.
The road crosses a little valley, climbs another divide, and drops down to the little, scattered farming community of Central. The hills are heavily wooded with cedars, pines, quaking aspens, cottonwoods, and willows. Off to the eastward rises the massive bulk of Pine Valley Mountain, recently dedicated as a national monument. Pine valley, in the heart of the mountain, is one of the State's most attractive summer resorts.
Beyond Central the road drops down to a narrow, wilder part of the valley and crosses the Santa Clara. A fine steel bridge spans the gorge that is cut deep down through the black lava. A great pine tree growing in the edge of the plunging, boiling torrent below reaches just under the level of the bridge. From here the road climbs a narrow dugway, cut out of solid lava, and then rounds the shoulder of a hill and comes out onto a plateau — the top of the world!
No wonder the early settlers remember always the "forbidding aspects of the country!" As far as the eye can see, east, south and west, the whole region is a wild jumble of mountains and canyons. Black lava is everywhere. Volcanic cones rise above the plateau so black and perfect that one looks expectantly for smoke and ashes to burst forth from them. The plateau drops away abruptly to the southward, down to the valley of the Virgin river, far below. Beyond this river rise great colored mesas, and toward the southwest the river passes through still wilder country on its way to join the Colorado. How the pioneers ever traveled through this region be- fore the days of steel and dynamite is a mystery. But they did make their way, and down in the fertile, semi-tropical valleys, below
OCTOBER IN SOUTHERN UTAH
1021
<*f
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One of the Blue Pyramids, no man's land, south of Bryce Canyon.
the barren lava beds with their all-but-impassable gorges, they founded a paradise of farms and gardens, cities and towns. Now a beautiful highway winds over the mountains, spans the gorges, and elbows down the plateau. Over this road we rolled along, down over a bluff and into St. George, sleeping under the warm, after- noon sun. We had left a land of snowy mountains and falling leaves, but here it was still mid-summer.
St. George is a garden spot in the heart of a terrible land. It seems that here nature tries to atone for the great stretches of waste land, dry plateaus, barren mesas, and rock-walled canyons of the surrounding region, and every foot of ground yields abundantly. The great, snow-white temple rises impressively from among dark- green, semi-tropical trees. The wide, shady streets are lined with comfortable, well-kept houses. Pioneer homes of rock and adobe stand side by side with modern bungalows. Lawns are bordered with pomegranate trees, giant tamaracks, and other trees, vines, and shrubbery, most of which do not grow on the north side of the "Rim of the Basin," a few miles distant. Incidentally, the people there, who are nearly all pioneers or their immediate descendants, are as interesting as the city itself.
At dusk, just as the lights were beginning to gleam among the trees, we left St. George, once more on the Arrowhead Trail, but
1022 IMPROVEMENT ERA
this time headed northeast. Almost immediately we left the river valley and began climbing innumerable dugways. The lights of the car showed a white roadway with a wall on one side and a black void on the other. As we raced along, the driver recounted a wild shooting tale of the days when Silver Reef was one of the West's most famous mining camps. The tale concerned the sudden, com- plete, and well-merited demise of the town's most notorious citizen.
Leaving the mountains and the "ghost town," we passed through some small valleys, each with its scattered ranches and communities. Then presently we took to dugways again. These wound around so much that all sense of direction was lost. The driver, who had been silent for a long time, very sleepily informed us that over the edge of the road and somewhere down below was the Virgin river. Comforting thought, with a sleepy driver! He became a little alarmed at one point, when the car showed a tendency to dive off into space, and he began to sing to keep awake. He sang all the songs he knew, and some he didn't. He made a speech, told jokes, and then burst into song again. He said it was quite a strain to drive when he was so sleepy, but it was as much of a strain for me to sit mile after mile in tense anticipation of the moment when I would have to grab the wheel and jerk the car back from the edge of the dugway.
Meanwhile the skyline began to rise on both sides of us, until only a narrow band of stars shone overhead, and then the road dropped down from the dugway to the canyon floor. Finally, just after midnight, we rolled up to the Zion Park Lodge, at the foot of an immense cloud of rock, "El Sentinel," and called it a day.
The next morning we were up in time to see the sunlight strike the tops of the canyon wall, and we drove up to the end of the road at the Narrows. I tried to write something descriptive of the canyon, but gave it up. We took a few snapshots, but even this seemed rather futile. For immensity, grandeur, and majesty of workmanship, the mighty-walled canyon is beyond anything that has yet been said of it, or any picture that has attempted to portray it. Reluctantly we turned back down the highway over which we had traveled so nervously the night before. Our road led down the Virgin river, then over the hills to the main highway, and north- ward to Cedar City.
At Cedar we replenished the commissary, gave the car a fresh supply of oil, and started up the canyon toward Cedar Breaks. Cedar canyon itself is very picturesque. Great rocks rise hundreds of feet above the stream bed, and in some cases they completely overhang the highway. The road is good, but steep, rising from 5000 feet above sea level in the valley to 10,400 feet at the rim of the Breaks, twenty
OCTOBER IN SOUTHERN UTAH 1023
miles away. The canyon was gorgeously colored with autumn leaves, and as we approached the summit we saw occasional patches of fresh snow. A blue haze rested over the hills and softened down the rugged outlines of the peaks.
The road climbs out of Cedar canyon and circles the south side of a high mountain. For a few miles here it crosses the headwaters of the Virgin. Far down through the haze, some thirty miles away, we could see where the river cuts through the rocks in Zion Park, and could even make out the Narrows and the Great White Throne. Far away in the southwest Pine Valley Mountain stood out boldly on the horizon. We took a last look and then drove on through endless groves of white-boled quaking aspen the leaves of which had nearly all fallen. The mountain seemed deserted. There was practic- ally no traffic on the road, we saw no animals, and everything was still. Snow patches increased as we climbed, though the highway was still quite dry and hard.
The road swings around to the northward through beautiful park-like meadows and groves, enters a thick clump of pine trees and then without warning emerges on the very rim of the Breaks. The thrill of that first breath-taking view seems to increase with each visit there. Cedar Breaks is a mighty amphitheatre of brilliant colors and grotesque forms set in one of the most beautiful forests of Utah. It is a region of mystery and romance utterly beyond description. The sun was sinking low in the west, casting weird shadows among the castles, caves, and images of the canyon. We still had far to go so we turned eastward over the "Angels' Highway," where forests, meadows, lakes, streams, and canyons provide a paradise of scenery.
At ten o'clock we reached Bryce Canyon Lodge, hungry, tired, and sleepy. It was the last night of the season there and nearly everything was closed. Therefore we had to turn in without supper.
The next morning we took a most chilly visit to the rim of the canyon to watch the "Silent City" at sunrise. The sight was worth the chill. I climbed down the Navajo Trail and got plenty of thrills prowling among the red gorges, gloomy passageways and grotesque monuments. I found a registry book down in the canyon and signed my name next that of T. Watson of Belfast, Ireland. While I was getting a picture of a great, cathedral-like aisle, my feet went out from under me and I ripped an eighth-inch hole in one trouser leg before I brought up against a jutting rock down the slope. The canyon appears to be carved out of soft, red clay; but it isn't.
By nine o'clock we remembered that we had had no supper the night before, so we left the canyon and headed for Panguitch and breakfast, twenty-six miles away. At ten-thirty, feeling much better, we pulled out for Salt Lake City, two hundred and seventy-five
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miles to the northward. At the Piute Dam we picked up a tack. At Richfield we could get no ice cream, so we drove hurriedly on to Salina. Here we saw a small group of people seated in chairs on the sidewalk listening to a radio sermon. On the other side of the street a much larger crowd was following the progress of a World's Series game. We patronized each place for a few minutes.
An inventory of our combined financial resources showed a credit balance of fifty cents. We debated as to whether we should buy gasoline or ice cream. The affirmative, upheld by two small boys, won unanimously. From there on the trip was without incident, except that just a hundred yards south of the first service station in Salt Lake valley the car ran out of gas. An obliging station attendant came running and helped push us in. He filled the tank, recklessly accepted a check, and our four-day trip in the golden days of autumn was over.
My Homeland
Oh, take me back to Utah
Where I can in peace abide, Away from strife, and quakes, and storms,
And angry rushing tides. Let me see again the canyons grand
Where the "purest streamlets" flow, And taste the waters, clear and sweet,
Just off the glistening snow. Let me see again my mountain home
And camp beside the streams, And live again the olden times.
As were pictured in my dreams. I want to stroll on hillsides there
Where the purest breezes blow, And gather again the mountain flowers
Where the sego lillies grow. And with the splendor of setting sun.
Will my eyes again be blest, *\s it sinks beneath the inland sea
In a halo of perfect rest. Then, when I take my last, long stroll,
To my final place of rest, Let it be upon the hillside there,
To be numbered with the blest.
R. C. SAVAGE
Turning the Washington Monument Inside Out
By Robert Sparks Walker
LANDING at the base of the Washington Monument on a hot morning in Aug- ust, I thought my visit was surely ruined upon learning that the elevator was temporarily out of business, and that to reach the top I would have to go on foot. However, being accustomed to hiking on level ground, also to climbing mountains, I set out on this task with kodak and coat under my arm. But misfortunes nearly always have their com- pensations. I knew that at each landing were memorial stones, presented by various states and organizations, for I had on pre- vious trips curiously peeped from the moving elevator, and caught sight of them here and there as we moved slowly up or down. But they meant little to me, because I had had no oppor- tunity of reading and studying them carefully.
Before reaching the thirtieth-foot landing, I saw that this monument was like a well filled nut, and that the tens of thou- sands of people who visit it annually are passing the kernels by unnoticed; and I made up my mind to turn this huge structure inside out as a penalty for being forced to ascend it on foot on a very hot summer day.
On the 30th-foot landing are seven memorial stones. The first, inscribed "Maine," I thought is very fitting, since Maine is our remotest northeastern state. Delaware comes second with this inscription, "First to Adopt. Will Be the Last to Desert the Con- stitution, 1849." Arkansas claims the third, and the fourth is a contribution from the Little Falls Quarry of D. C. The fifth was
The Washington Monument
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presented by the Franklin Fire Co., of Washington, D. C, with this slogan inscribed, "We strive to save." A good motto for every American! The sixth was presented by the National Greys, of Washington, D. C, while the seventh says: "Presented by George Watterston, Secretary Washington National Monument Society, as a testimonial of His Gratitude and Veneration, A. D. 1849."
By this time, I was deeply interested, for, while enjoying the great outdoors we find sermons in running brooks, in trees and stones, here were sermons literally carved in stone by the hands of men.
At the 40th landing, stone No. 1 is inscribed, "Nashville, Tennessee." That stone attracted my attention, for it came from the capital of my home state. No. 2 is credited to the state of Louisiana with this declaration, "Ever faithful to the Constitution and the Union." No. 3, from Alabama, says, "A Union of Equality Adjusted by the Constitution." No. 4 was presented by the Ger- man Benevolent Society of Washington, D. C, with this tribute, "As a memento of the veneration of its members for the 'Father of his country.' " No. 5, from the Association of Journeymen Stone Cutters of Philadelphia, "United We Stand." No. 6 was presented by the Columbia Typographical Society, "As a memento of the veneration of its members for the 'Father of his country.' '
On the 50th-foot landing: No. 1, from Indiana, says, "Knows No North, No South, Nothing but the Union." No. 2, "State of Georgia. The Union as it was. The Constitution as it is." No. 3, from Illinois, declares, "State Sovereignity, National Union." No. 4 is from the Washington Naval Lodge, No. 5 from the Grand Lodge of Masons, D. C, "Our Brother George Washington." No. 6 represents the Washington Light Infantry.
The 60th-foot landing has a stone from South Carolina, one from New Hampshire, one from Florida, and one from West- moreland county, Virginia, inscribed, "The Birth Place of Wash- ington." The fifth stone, from the I. O. O. F. Grand Lodge of the Odd Fellows of the state of N. J., has this inspiring motto, "We command you to visit the sick, relieve the distressed, bury the dead, and educate the orphans." The sixth stone is inscribed, "Presented by Anacostia Tribe, No. 3, I. O. R. M., D. C, on the 3rd Sun of the 3 x 7 Suns Worm Moon G. S. 5610."
The 70th-foot landing has a stone from New Jersey, one from Massachussetts, one from Connecticut, one from "Grand Di- vision, S. T., North Carolina. Love, Purity, Fidelity," one from the "United Sons of America, Pennsylvania," and a stone
TURNING THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT INSIDE OUT 1027
from the Grand Divisions, Sons of Temperance, State of Virginia, ] 850, "Hand in hand. Union."
No. 1 on the 80th-foot landing says, "Virginia Who Gave Washington to America Gives this Granite for His Monument." No. 2, "The City of Washington to Its Founder." No. 3, "Mary- land. The Memorial of Her Regard for the Father of His Country and of Her Cordial, Habitual and Immovable Attachment to the American Union." The fourth stone is from the Invincible Fire Co., Cincinnati, O., the fifth from "R. W. Grand Lodge of I. O. O. F., Indiana. In God We Trust, Constitutional Liberty, F. L. T. The Earth for Its Domain and Eternity for Its Duration." The sixth stone says, "To George Washington by the Maryland Pilgrims As- sociation. Organized, Balto, 1847."
On the 90th-foot landing, the first stone I read bore this in- scription: "The Tribute of Missouri to the Memory of Washington and a Pledge of Her Fidelity to the Union of the States." Another stone says, "The State of Ohio. The Memory of Washington and the Union of the States. Sunte Perpetua." A third one reads, "The State of Mississippi to the Father of His Country, A. D. 1850." The fourth stone is from Little Rock. Arkansas. The fifth from the Odd Fellows of Ohio, and the sixth is from the Mechanics of Raleigh, N. C.
On the lOOth-foot landing, Wisconsin claims the first stone met, while North Carolina has one inscribed, "Declaration of In- dependence. Mecklenburg, May, 1775. 'Constitution.' " The third says, " 'Hope, Rhode Island.' ' The Grand Lodge, I. O. O. F. of Virginia has one, and the fifth one is inscribed, "From the home of Knox by citizens of Thomaston, Maine," while the sixth stone is inscribed, "To the Father of His Country. Presented by the Inde- pendent Order of United Brothers of the State of Maryland, A. D. 1851."
On the HOth-foot landing the first stone reads, "Nov. 12, 1 852. From the Postmasters and Assistant Postmasters of the State of Indiana. Dedicated to the Washington Monument, Washington. May His Principles be Distributed Broadcast Over the Land." Iowa certainly had a Psalmist, for the second stone is inscribed, "Iowa. Her Affections, Like the Rivers of Her Borders, flow to an Inseparable Union." The Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of New York is credited with a stone, and the fourth one reads, "By the Grand Lodge of Kentucky to the Memory of Washington, the Christian Mason." No. 5 simply says, "Peter Force." The sixth stone is from the Grand Lodge of Ohio.
On the 120th-foot landing the first stone encountered reads,
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"From the City of Frederick, Md." The next, from California, makes pleasing reading: "California, Youngest Sister of the Union, Brings Her Golden Tribute to the Memory of Its Father." The third stone is from "The City of Roxbury, Mass. The birthplace of Gen. Joseph Warren." The fourth is from "S. of T. R. I.," whatever that means. The fifth stone is from various I. O. of O. F. Lodges, Ger- mantown, Pa., and the sixth stone is from "Patmos Lodge No. 20, iMasons, Ellicott Mills, Md."
The 130th-foot landing has first stone credited to "I. O. O. F., Mass." The second stone, "American Whig Society, College of N. J., Princeton. A tribute to Washington." The third stone, "Corpora- tion of the City of New York, 1852." The fourth stone is from "American Institute of the City of New York," the fifth, "Union Society, Hillsborough, N. C," the sixth from the Sons of Temper- ance, State of Connecticut. The seventh stone reads, "From the Alumni of Washington College, at Lexington, Va. The Only College Endowed by the Father of His Country." Another stone is inscribed, "Oakland College, Miss., 1851." The ninth stone is from the Masons of Maryland, the tenth from Washington Lodge, of the City of New York. Another bears the inscription, "Durham, New Hampshire." The twelfth stone is from "Mount Lebanon Lodge No. 226, A. Y. M., Lebanon, Pa."
The first stone on the 140th-foot landing is from D. O. Hitner's Quarry, Norristown, Pa., the second from the Grand Lodge of Masons of the State of Alabama. No. 3 may be regarded as a prayer by the City of Baltimore: "May Heaven To This Union Continue Its Benificence; May brotherly affection with union be perpetual; May the Free Constitution which is the work of our an- cestors be sacredly maintained, and its administration be stamped with wisdom and with virtue." The next stone is engraved, "Prosunt Omnibus. Grand Lodge of Georgia." Number 5 is from New York, presented by Masterton and Smith, of Westchester county. The sixth stone is from "Masonic Grand Lodge, of 111., 1853." Number 7 is inscribed, "From Fort Greene, Battle Ground of Long Island. A Tribute from the Ft. Greene Guard of Brooklyn, 1854." Number 8 reads, "From Otter's Summit, Virginia's loft- iest peak, to crown a monument to Virginia's noblest son." Num- ber 9 is from Co. I, 4th Regiment Infantry, U. S. A. Number 10 contains the names of seven men of the Engineers 2nd Division, James River and Kano Canal.
The first stone on the 160-foot landing is from the Lafayette Lodge, F. A. M., New York City; the next stone, "Warren, R. I. Hope." Number 3 is from the Athenian Lodge, I. O. O. F., Troy, N. Y., the next from Newark, N. J., while number 5 is simply en-
TURNING THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT INSIDE OUT 1029
graved, "New York, 'Excelsior.' ' Number 6 was presented by the Eureka Lodge, I. O. O. F., City of New York.
Washington Lodge, of F. and A. M., Roxbury, Mass., claims the first memorial stone on the 170th-foot landing; New Bedford, Mass., the next; while number 3 reads, "Charlestown. The Bunker Hill Battle Ground." The next is from Salem, Mass. Number 5, reads, "Sicut Patribus Sit Deus Nobis. Civitatis Regimine Donata A. D. 1822. Bostonia. Condita. A. D. 1630." Vermont claims the last, emphasizing "Freedom and Unity."
The first stone on the 180th-foot landing, from the I. O. of O. F., of the city and county of Philadelphia, closes with, "in Com- memoration of the Devoted Patriotism, the exalted virtue and the illustrious deeds of him whose memory is an adamantine link in the National Union." Stone 2 says, "The Surest safeguard of the liberty of our country is total abstinence from all that intoxicates. Sons of Temperance of Pennsylvania." The 3rd stone is from the Grand Lodge of Penn., A. Y. M. Number 4 is inscribed, "Declara- tion of Independence, Philadelphia, July 4th, 1776. Corporation of the City of Philadelphia." The fifth stone is thus voiced: " 'Liberty, Independence, Virtue,' Pennsylvania. Founded 1681. By Deeds of Peace."
Foreign admirers of George Washington took possession of the 190th-foot landing as follows: "Presented by the Governor and Commune of the Islands of Paros and Naxos, Grecian Archipelago, Aug. 13th, 1855." The second stone is carved, "Turkey;" No. 3, "Bremen;" No. 4, "Brazil, 1878;" 5. "Siam;" 6. "Greece;" 7, "To the Memory of Washington. The Free Swiss Confedera- tion. MDCCCLII."
West Virginia donated the first stone with this inscription for the 200th-foot landing: "Tuum Nos Sumus Monumentum;" Rich- mond, Virginia the second, and the St. John's Lodge, F. A. M., Rich- mond, Va., the third. No. 4 from theG. L. of the U. S., 1852, gives a command about visiting the sick, burying the dead, etc. No. 5 is from the Grand Lodge of Md., I. O. O. F., and No. 6 is from the Masonic Lodge of Virginia, closing with, "Lo! she gave to this Republic the chief corner stone." The givers of number 7, were they alive today, would soon find themselves in the toils of the law if they violated the pledge they made on their gift; viz: "From the Templars of Honor and Temperance. Organized Dec. 5, 1845. 'Truth, Love, Purity, and Fidelity.' Our Pledge: 'We will not make, buy, sell or use as a beverage any spiritous or malt liquors, wine, cider, or any other alcoholic liquor, and will discountenance their manufacture, traffic and use, and this pledge we will maintain
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IMPROVEMENT ERA
unto the end of life. Supreme Council of the Templars of Honor and Temperance, 1846."
The West and South own the 210th-foot landing memorial stones. The first one encountered heralds, "Kansas. Kansas Ter- ritory. Organized May 30, 1851. State admitted January 29, 1861." The Grand Lodge of Ancient Free Masons of the State of Arkansas give number 2, and number 3 was donated by the Grand Lodge of the State of Miss. Number 4 is from "I. O. O. F. Grand on behalf of the Sons of Temperance of Illinois, Jan. 1, 1855," while the Grand Division of Ohio Sons of Temperance contributed the next stone. No. 7 is inscribed, "Michigan. An emblem of her trust in the Union." The last stone, number 8. is from the Grand Lodge, A. F. and A. M., of Iowa, 1876.
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The Potomac river, the Lincoln Memorial and the reflecting Pool, as seen from the top of the Washington Monument
Having been born in the old Cherokee country in the South and in a wooden building whose logs were hewn out by Cherokees, I paid considerable attention to the first stone on the 220th-foot landing; viz: "Cherokee Nation, 1850." Wonderful, that a na- tion of savage Indians had advanced in so short a time that they appreciated the character and patriotism of George Washington. The next stone came from the State of Oregon. No. 3 states, "Montana. 'Oro y Plata.' ''' Minnesota gave the next, and the fifth is inscribed, "Holiness to the Lord. Deseret. (Utah)." The next stone says, "Tribute from Wyoming Territory. To the Memory of Him Who By Universal Consent Was Chief Among the Founders of the Re-
TURNING THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT INSIDE OUT 1 CHI
public." The next is a Japanese Memorial Stone, and the eighth is a Chinese Memorial Stone, while Nebraska claims the next, adding, "Equality Before the Law." Number 10 reads, "All for our coun- try. Nevada, 1881."
At the 230th-foot landing I made two rich discoveries, and here I rested for a long time. The first stone came from my native state and is engraved, "Tennessee. The Federal Union, it must be pre- served." The next stone came from the Grand Lodge of the State of Florida, and memorial stone number 3 from Hawkins county, Tenn. Number 4 is inscribed, "Georgia Convention, 1850, 'Wisdom, Jus- tice, Moderation.' " The next stone is patriotic in its declaration: "Under the auspices of Heaven and the Precepts of Washington, Kentucky will be the last to give up the Union. 'United we stand, Divided we fall.' M. Pruden, 1851." The sixth stone, from the Grand Lodge of I. O. O. F., of Kentucky, says, "In Union There is Strength."
The first stone my eyes met on the 240th-foot landing was inscribed, "Presented by the United American Mechanics, Pa." The next stone has this inscription, "Presented by the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of the District of Columbia, July 4th, 1 870." Stone number 3 reads. "Wales. Fy Iatth, Fy Negivlad, Fy nghenedl. Cyrnry am byth." The next stone from Braddock's Field bore an inscription far more easily understood than the one that preceded it. Stone number 5 is from the Battle Ground, Long Island, and the next one is from the Improved Order of Red Men, of D. C. The next stone has this inscription, "The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in session in Washington City, May, 1852." The 8th and last stone on this floor says, "American Medical Association. Instituted MDCCC- XLVII. Vincit Amor Patriae." *""""—
The 250th-foot landing starts out with this inscribed stone: "The Young Men's Mercantile Library Association of Cincinnati. Organized A. D. 1805. A. D. 1853. 2,400 members. Proud to honor Washington, Contributes its humble quota to the swelling tide of National Gratitude. Ohio — First born of the ordinance of '87. Every pulsation of the heart beats high, beats strong, for liberty and the Union." The next stone is a tribute from the teachers of the Buffalo public schools, and the third stone is from the women of Lowell, Mass. The next stone was presented by the proprietors of the Cincinnati Commercial, 1850. The fifth stone was a gift from the citizens of Stockton, Calif., while the sixth came from the citizens of the United States of America who were at that time residing in Foo Chow Foo, China. The next stone lists the names of the Engine, Hose, and Hook-and-Ladder Companies of Phila-
1032 IMPROVEMENT ERA
delphia, and stone number 8 is from the Fire Department of Phila- delphia, 1854. Number 9 is also a gift from a Fire and Hose Com- pany. The tenth stone has this inscription: "Washington, N. C, Thalian Association."
The first memorial stone on the 260th-foot landing stares at you with this inscription: "Cincinnati Company. Our War is With the Elements." The pupils of the public schools of the city of Baltimore contributed stone number 2, while the third discloses this fact: "Washington Erina Guard, Newark, N. J." Number 4 came from a Sunday School and bears this information: "From the Sabbath School Children of the Methodist E. Church in the city and districts of Philadelphia. 4th July, 1853. A preached Gospel. A Free Press. Washington — We revere his memory. Search the Scriptures. Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not for of such is the Kingdom of God. — Luke xviii: 16. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. — Prov. xxii:6-5." The next stone is from the Fire Department of the City of New York, and number 6 tells its own story: "The memory of the Just is Blessed. — Prov. 10:7. Presented by the children of the Sunday Schools of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the City of New York, Feb. 22, 1855." The seventh stone came from the sons of New England living in Canada.
The Jefferson Society of the University of Virginia donated the first stone on the 270th-foot landing. The next stone is in- scribed: "From the Home of Stark. By the ladies of Manchester, N. H." The next stone came from the employees of R. Norris & Son, Locomotive Works, Philadelphia. No. 4 came from the Con- tinental Guard of New Orleans, La., giving names of 163 persons, and stating that the Guard was organized Feb. 22, 1855. The next stone came from the Cliosophic Society, Nassau Hall, N. J., and the last stone "from the Alexandrian Library in Egypt, brought to this country by G. C. Baker."
Action and inaction are suggested by the first stone on the 280th-foot landing as follows: " 'All that live must die.' A tribute of respect from the Ladies and Gentlemen of the Dramatic Pro- fession of America, 1853!" The next stone came as a gift from the Class of 1853-54 of the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia. Stone number 3 is inscribed: "From the Citizens of Alexandria, Va. The Descendants of the Friends and Neighbors of Washington. 1851." The next stone came from the Hibernian Society of Balti- more, and lists its officers and committee. The fifth stone reads, "To Washington, An Humble Tribute from Two Disciples of Daguerre." The next stone was a gift of the First Regiment of Light Infantry, Mass., Vol. Militia, Boston. The seventh stone came
TURNING THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT INSIDE OUT 1033
from Honesdale, Pa., and the eighth is inscribed, "To the Father of His Country. The Addison Literary Society of the West- ern Military Institute, Brennon, Kentucky. Non nobis solum, sed patriae et amicis."
Three states contributed three stones on the 290th-foot land- ing, as follows: Oklahoma, 1907; Colorado, 1876; Texas, 1845. While on the 300th-foot landing South Dakota has her name en- graved in a stone, and the State of Washington on the 310th-foot landing. On the 320th, Arizona is mentioned, and the 330th an- nounces "Top of Statue on Capitol," meaning that this lettering is at the same height as the top of the statue on the national Capitol building.
When I had finished reading the inscriptions, I had forgotten heat and perspiration, and rejoiced that the elevator was out of commission, for its lameness forced me to do that which haste might otherwise have caused me to ignore.
Doubtless if the Father of His Country could visit this great structure the feature which he would find most interesting would be the inscriptions on the memorial stones which comparatively few visitors ever see.
The Common Walks of Life
Few souls who would not scale the height
For Love's eternal sake, And few who would not die for right
Where honor is at stake.
For flag and countrymen will bleed
And drain the dregs of shame, The zealot for his frenzied creed
Will wade through tongues of flame.
But in the common walks of life,
Where common things assail, Mid homely tasks and petty strife —
Tis there where mortals fail.
Who curbs his wrath and guards his tongue,
Has more than legions tamed — Is zealot, patriot unsung,
And a victor unacclaimed!
Mesa, Arizona BERTHA A. Kl.EINMAN
Native Plants as Friends and Foes
(Second Article)
By J. H. Paul, Professor of Natural Science at the University of Utah
IT is reasonable to suppose that the semi-arid West has an unusual number and variety of both medicinal and poisonous plants. This may be due to the fact that the prevailing juice or secre- tion of any plant is more concentrated from evaporation in the West than in the moist regions. Plants breathe through their leaves and also transpire moisture from them. The small leaf surface of desert plants is the method nature takes of lessening evaporation. According to the use that may be made of it, a plant may be re- garded as either a medicine or a poisonous species. The following list comprises our best known and most common plants that are known to be poisonous. Western scouts should be able to find at least ten of them for this remarkable plant project.
VIII. Find, collect, and present any ten of the following:
Name
Poison Ivy. Rhus Rydbergii. Poison Hemlock. Cicuta occidentalis.
Stinging Nettle.
Urtica dioica.
Twinberry Honeysuckle.
Lonicera involucrata.
Baneberry.
Actaea arguta-White;
Actaea rubra-Red.
Larkspurs.
Delphinium.
Silky Lupine.
Lupinus.
sVoolly Loco.
Astragalus
Death Camass.
Zygadenus elegans.
Poison Sego.
Zygadenus paniculatus.
Water Parsnip.
Western Poisonous Plants Identification Marks
Low shrub; large leaves in 3's; red in autumn.
Tall: by streams; stems pur- plish: leaves compound, fls. in clusters. Like tall catnip; no blossoms.
Canyon shrub; black berries in red bracts.
Canyon herb; elegant, large compound leaves; red or white berries in upright clusters. Blue fls. with one spur; deep- ly cut leaves.
Blue or white pea fls. ; leaves digitate.
Low, silky herb; bluish pea flower; finger-like lvs. Long, grass-like leaves; small whitish lilies.
Stout leaves in fountain form; greenish fls.; bulb. Tall; leaves compound; fls., in
How Poisonous
To touch. Low canyons. Root if eaten. In marshes.
To touch.
Everywhere.
Berries.
Canyons.
Fruit.
Canyons, in shade.
To sheep.
Hills, mountains.
To sheep.
Mountains.
To sheep.
Mountains, plains.
To sheep.
High mountains.
Bulb if eaten.
Hills.
Roots if eaten.
NATIVE PLANTS AS FRIENDS AND FOES
1035
Name
Sium cicutaefolium. Wild Parsnip. Pastinaca sativa. Western Coneflower. Rudbeckia occidentalis. Saw-toothed Sneezeweed. Senecio serra. Throughout our mts. Lobe-leaf Sneezeweeds. Senecio Species. Unarmed Ragweed. Arbrosia artemaesifolia.
Armed Ragweed. Amb. psylostachya.
Identification Marks
white umbels.
Like cultivated parsnip.
Large ovate leaves: f Is. in black cones; no ray fls. Tall; many fls.. in heads like small sunfls. Leaves with saw- toothed edges.
Smaller; leaves rounded, upper lobed or parted. Low herb; leaves much cut, hairy; fls, a spike of small, in- verted helmets.
Less hairy, less leafy; stems dark green, contain red dye.
How Poisonous
In marshes, rivers. Roots, if eaten.
To breathe the pollen gives hay fever. Man and beast get hay fever from breathing pol- len of Senecio. Pollen causes hay fever.
Perhaps the worst hay fever weed; common in valleys; "bitterweed." Hay fever. The fruits arc burs.
Golden-rod, Helenium. and other Compositae. such as the common sunflower, many of the grasses, also elms and other trees that are wind pollinated, roses and other fragrant flowers, have been known to cause or to aggravate hay fever; the heat and dust of towns, trains, and unpaved roads may induce or intensify the malady. The remedy is to get rid of ragweeds, avoid the others, and go into cool places, preferably the mountains, in summer.
Campers' and Hikers' Plagues
Every long-established campsite now used by hikers, scouts, or outing parties is today infested by from five to ten terrific plant nuisances — some ten kinds of prickly, bristly, irritating torments, which should immediately be gotten rid of. There is no way of avoiding these exasperating prickly weeds except by keeping one's feet within the beaten trail, which is often dusty, worn, rocky, and uneven. Step outside of that dusty streak, and you must meet the torture of grassy needles, burs, prickles, stings, and hay-fever dust, which severally and collectively mar the exhilaration of a tramp among the hills. About certain camps the native covering of herbs and grasses has been well-nigh exterminated. From careless fires, clearings, travel, bedding places of stock, and other forms of destruc- tion, the ground has been cleared and thorns and thistles have come in. Nature, which dislikes bare ground, proceeds to cover the naked earth with whatever she has at hand — mostly with weeds from all nearby places. This hasty covering preserves the soil from being swept away by rain, wind, and melting snow.
Cocklebur, Burdock, and Sandbur
Three of the worst species, too well known, are burdock, cockle- bur, and sandbur. Little description need be given of them. The two latter are native, but burdock was imported in pioneer days as a
1036 IMPROVEMENT ERA
blood-purifier. None of them is of the slightest value today, and all three should be ruthlessly destroyed. Besides being nuisances, these weeds inflict heavy losses on flockmasters, the burs clinging to the wool of sheep and lowering the price of the product. Cows' tails are often completely clotted by them; and, to the annoyance and suffering of these animals, the hair of woolly dogs and even the manes of horses collect the wretched burs in quantity. By catching in the stockings and other clothing, all such pests lower the enjoy- ment of out-door rambles.
Stickseed and Brome Grass
On a plant with rather tall, branching stems pretty blue forget- me-nots in spring adorn the hillsides near most Rocky Mountain towns. As the plants go to seed, little burs replace the numerous blossoms, and stand ready to catch upon whatever brushes against them. A later-blooming form in the higher mountains grows to three or four feet on stems slightly branched because of the compe- tition there of other forms of vegetation. Then there is a many- stemmed form (Lappula subecumbens) that lies partly on the ground. All these, easily learned at sight and long remembered from the annoyance they cause, are easy to pull up, being shallow-rooted. The writer is accustomed to clear off these weeds each stopping place during a hike. As the weeds are pulled, they are laid in straight piles; the flowers or prickles pointing one way, so that, even if the weeds are not finally burned, they cling together in a mass and are not likely to spread their burs.
Small brome grass, usually mis-called June grass here, is a drooping, one-sided grass about a foot high, one kind purplish at first, with long bristles on seeds that ripen in early summer. This dry tinder affords any spark a chance to start a fire. Small brome is in some respects our worst weed; it is extending everywhere, is of only slight use as forage, while it spreads and multiplies forest fires. It has long, spiny stickers, which get into one's stockings. Brome grasses, however, seem especially liable to infestation by ergot — a black, powdery mass of fungus that grows about grass seeds. Small brome, in the mountains, seems most subject to this smut — a fact that may save us from many a forest fire.
Horehound, Thistle, and Stinging Nettle
Horehound, cousin to the catnip, is one of the most usual signs of over-grazing. It is a grayish, woolly herb of the mint family, with oval, saw-toothed leaves, opposite on rounded stems. Just above each leaf is a cluster of small whitish flowers, which soon become prickly burs — the prongs of the dry calyx. In recent years, the spread of two pests, stinging nettle and tall thistle, is noteworthy,
NATIVE PLANTS AS FRIENDS AND FOES 1037
being due to fires or over-grazing. Extending along trails to many of the mountain tops, these two causes of tribulation greatly mar the pleasure of mountain-climbing. Nettle is tall, straight, about four feet high; leaves lance-shaped, three to five inches long, whitish below, with stems lined or grooved. The plant is covered with short bristly hairs that penetrate and sting the skin, producing blisters. An interesting feature is the explosion of the anther shortly after sunrise The stamens hang in little curls; and the pollen dust, resembling little puffs of smoke, shoots out as the plants are warmed in the morning sun.
Thistles need little description. The worst thistle, the Ca- nadian, is rare; it has many very small heads — Yi inch — and many spines. The pasture and the mountain species, with large heads, are everywhere proceeding to cover unoccupied land. They are stout herbs from 3 to 6 feet high, with sessile leaves having prickly teeth and tips, and 2-inch heads of purplish to white flowers. There are also small species, a few with yellow flowers.
In high mountain parks, over-grazing or fire is likely to be fol- lowed by the large Frazer's gentians, plants four to five feet high, stout, and resembling fields of small corn. These spring up in moist places only, and are not necessarily indications of denuded land.
In high places also, the rosin leaf, or Wyethia, is likely to cover bare land. Wyethias of several species are often mis-called docks, which are plants of a different family. Wyethias are liked by horses and other stock, and so do not represent an entire waste as do the usual plants that follow over-grazing.
CONEFLOWER, RAGWEEDS, KNOTWEEDS, DOCKS
Western cone-flower, "niggerhead," spreads quickly over bare mountain land. Its black heads of small massed flowers are not accompanied by rays of the sun-flower sort in our common species. It has leaves ovate, pointed, four to eight inches long, mostly smooth and entire, but some roughish and slightly toothed. In moist land from Montana to Arizona, a species with all the leaves cut or di- vided occurs; eastward is another, about three feet high, like our common species, but mostly with yellow ray flowers, and with rough, bristly, and hairy leaves. Its pollen may produce hay fever.
Ragweeds often follow over-grazing on hills and plains of mod- erate altitudes. They are rough-hairy plants, their fruiting flowers hidden singly among the leaves; the stamen-bearing flowers in long, slender, pointed clusters at the tips of branches. The stamen cups have the form of tiny helmets or inverted coal scuttles. These, inverted to shed the rain, are filled with pollen dust — a yellow powder in great quantity. The leaves are lobed and cut into ragged
1038 IMPROVEMENT ERA
divisions. One kind has unarmed, smooth little nutlets and rather thick leaves; the other kind is armed with prickly burs and has leaves of thinner texture; it is called armed ragweed. Both are notorious as hay-fever weeds.
Small erect knotweeds thickly cover bare land. They grow from six to eight inches high, have oblong leaves, and stems covered with papery sheaths at the joints, similar to the knotweed that lies flat and covers garden paths in the valleys.
Sour docks are plants that resemble and are related to the culti- vated rhubarb. They have large leaves, jointed stems, covered with papery sheaths, and masses of brown triangular seeds at the top, sometimes called Indian tobacco.
Wild Lettuce, Squirrel-Tail, Sand-Bur
Prickly lettuce often comes up in great abundance on bare land. It is wild lettuce, the compass plant, which, in growth, contrives finally to turn its leaves to north and south. It has a milky juice and soft spines on the mid-rib.
Squirrel-tail grass is likely to be one of the most frequent new tenants of land in the valleys left vacant. Its long, penetrating needles, forming the squirrel-tail clusters of flowers and seeds, are probably known to nearly everyone.
Bur grass, or sandbur, is a creeping grass of warm and mostly sandy soils. Its spikelets of one to three grass flowers are inclosed in a spiny bur that forms the involucre. The burs readily drop from the stem, thus making it one of the most troublesome plants we have. Its scientific name, Cenchrus tribuloides, indicates its nature as a special tormenter of bare-footed children.
What Can We Do About It?
Unless the area is in the mountains, the presence of any of the plants that indicate over-grazing is not proof that the land has been fire-swept or over-grazed; but their abundance in the moun- tains is clear evidence of over-grazing or other abuse of the land. People in the valley below can hardly maintain that they have not abused, or permitted the abuse of, the land that is covered by plants that indicate over-grazing or fire. In the valleys the abandonment of any land that has been cultivated is sure to be followed by a crop of thorns and thistles; yet there may not have been either over-graz- ing or fires. But wherever these plant signs of over-grazing occur in the mountains, the people in the valley below can hardly maintain that their mountain land has not been abused.
What can we do with these pests? Simply destroy them. Net- tles can be crushed and laid low by stepping upon them near the base. Thistles must be cut off, preferably below the soil. Brome
NATIVE PLANTS AS FRIENDS AND FOES
1039
grass, squirrel-tail, and sandbur grass may be burned. Ragweeds, stickseeds, horehound, coneflower, may be pulled up by hand. Prickly lettuce should be cut down. If campers would co-operate, each doing his bit, mountain camps and trails would soon be restored to their former natural conditions, freed from prickly and stinging weeds, and covered with the interesting vegetation of the region. IX. Present specimens of any ten of the following:
Camper's Plagues and Signs of Over-grazing or Fire
Name
Sticksced Forget-me- not. Ascending Sticksced. Western Coneflower. Sand bur Grass Small Brome Grass. Squirrel-tail Grass. Bull Thistle.
Canadian Thistle. Other Thistles.
How to Eradicate Pull up; burn.
Pull up; burn. Pull up; burn. Hoe up; burn. Hoe up; burn. Hoe up; burn. Chop off below
soil. Cut, bury, burn. Hoe up; mow
Name
Stinging Nettle. Prickly Lettuce. Sweet Cicely. Horehound. Armed Ragweed. Unarmed Ragweed Cocklebur. Burdock. Mallow. Torch Weed. Erect Knotweed.
How to Eradicate
Tread down. Cut; hoc. Cut; hoe. Pull up; burn. Pull up; burn. Pull up; burn. Pull up; burn. Chop root; burn. Chop root; burn. Pull up; burn. Pull up; burn.
Each of the foregoing weeds, either well known or described herein, is a sign of nature's effort to clothe her nakedness — to re cover over-grazed, or fire-swept, or flood-swept land. Any of these will soon re-cover lands that have been denuded by snowslide, flood, over-grazing, or fire.
Fine Species That Cover Bare Land
False Hellebore, a tall, straight, heavy-stemmed plant with alternate, parallel-veined leaves in the form of boats or cups that hold water next to the stem, and with a mass of greenish-white flowers at the top, is also a sign of over-grazing, but need not be exterminated. It may grow in close formation, resembling Indian corn, elegant and imposing — just an interesting giant lily.
Horse Dock (Wyethia), a low herb with large, shining, deep- green, entire or finely toothed leaves lance-shape in outline, and with stems 12 to 18 inches high bearing large sunflower blossoms two or three inches across — is also a sign of over-grazing. It need not be exterminated, horses like it, and it is handsome. I prefer to call it Rosin Leaf because of its gummy content. It is distinguished from the similar, earlier-flowering Balsam Roots ( Balsamorrhiza ) by the densely white, silky covering of the leaves of the latter. Both are ornamental, deserving a place in gardens.
1040 IMPROVEMENT ERA
Tall Iva, the velvet-leaf, (Iva xanthifolia) is a sort of blos- somless sunflower, two to four feet high, with large ovate leaves very smooth above; it has minute greenish curls for flowers, which, filled with pollen, induce hay fever. It sometimes follows over- grazing and is common in the valleys.
Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron ramosus) an erect, slender weed one to two feet high, branching at the top like a tree, and with minute, daisy-like, whitish flowers and much silky pappus, follows over- grazing and probably induces hay fever; it is more common in fallow fields.
Torch Weed (see the author's Farm Friends and Spring Flow- ers) is a foot high, with thread-like branches and little yellow star flowers. It is of unusual interest and unique in elegance.
Moonlight and Silver Stars
Moonlight and silver stars, O'er head the summer sky. Branches like phantom bars, Softly the night winds sigh. On the deep river's breast, Ruffled by current swift. Welcome, thou heavenly guest; Ripples by moonbeams kissed.
Sweetly the night-bird trills Sharp on the quiv'ring air, With gladsome lightness fills All the creation, fair. Night is the dearest time, Naught her perfection mars; Bright shine, in ev'ry clime. Moonlight and silver stars.
Sen Jose, Calif. ALICE MAUDE SCHUTTE
A Short Story of Rice Culture
By John Q. Adams
As we leave the city of Honolulu be- hind, and traverse the beautiful Nuuanu valley, we come within a half dozen miles to an elevation of coolness1 and wonderful scenery, culminating at the famous Pali. a high, narrow mountain pass where old warrior Kamehameha more than a hundred years ago met an opposing force, fought a grim battle at the edge of a tremendous cliff, and cast enough of his opponents down this to insure peace overtures' from the remainder. From this vantage point, one may gaze at the most entrancing sea and land view to be had. Clinging peril- ously to the frowning face of the sheer cliff, a winding road takes you to the low- lands on Oahu's windward shore, and for miles one winds along among banana plants, taro "lois." rice fields and other and varied Garden of Eden plots. As our subject is rice, we shall pass up all else, and hold to our topic.
At Kaneohe village, a quaint cluster of Oriental huts, we emerge upon a lovely setting which is very striking to the new- comer. We see tiny squares of bog-land sustaining a luxurious growth of what we take to be grain, which it closely resembles. From each separate tiny stock develops a head of white kernels, the aggregate wher- ever rice is grown forming the staff of life for more than half the inhabitants of the earth. Just now it has turned brown and stands ready for the reaper (sickle) . Twice each year is the process of planting and garnering repeated in Hawaii — truly a fruitful land and crop.
We of the States think of grain, gang plows, drills and combined harvesters as associated together in natural sequence. Here the rice is grown without any of these assistants. We see employed the pa- tient, plodding hand-methods in vogue from biblical days until now.
A dun-hued carabao, rolling-fat, with horns widely sweeping towards its shoul- ders, can now and then be seen demurely
drawing a flimsy wooden pronged stick through deep, quivering mud, for rice thrives best in a slough habitation. The scantily-clad owner is jerked from side to side as he succeeds in extricating in turn each foot from the slimy quagmire. Often- times he is mud-plastered to the waist. Sometimes the plowing is done with several inches of water covering the mud, and then we wonder at the plowman's ability to follow the last scratch made. Possibly he and the carabao have sufficiently de- veloped the sense of touch not to be under the necessity of depending upon that of sight, only. But the silt retains its rich- ness.
Then the planting! The seed has previously been sprouted in a bed to a height of about six inches. This is lifted out by the handful, the tops clipped, and each separate stalk stuck in the mud and spaced exactly as our grain is sown — rows just wide enough to admit the small Ori ental foot betwixt, and the stalks an inch or so apart. The rows are kept trim and straight, but the progress of transplanting. as may be surmised, is painfully slow, but perfectly efficient. Within a few weeks the slough is a solid field of waving green, and for a couple or three months now the lot of the planter is an easy one.
With the appearance of the heads, how- ever, he leads a hectic life. He is distracted by the coming of flocks of the diminutive rice-bird, as well as the depredations of the omnipresent sparrow. These proceed to make it a dawn-to-dusk battle of wits as to who shall do the harvesting. Some times honors are about equally shared, but generally the more intelligent mind of the man 'insures his triumph. Both are fight- ing for bread, and the owner brings strategy into play. In the center of his field he erects a small platform, say five feet in height, over which he stretches a piece of canvas against sun and rain. From this crude central radiate a number of wires
1042
IMPROVEMENT ERA
to all parts of the field, on the end of each a bell or kerosene can containing a few rocks. From his vantage point on the platform he watches all day, and, at the appearance of birds in any part of his domain, he simply jerks the wire leading to the invaded sector, and a great noise fright- ens the puzzled birds! He also sets up, all over the field, some of the most hideous scarecrows imaginable, and, as these mon- sters flutter and wriggle and signal and gesture, small wonder it is that the feath- ered vandals view the menace from far-off trees. Or, as is more frequently the custom, the owner, shouldering an ancient muzzle- loader, walks about his field all day as a sentinel upon the dikes, and time after time we have watched him level his noisy but harmless musket, seen the puff of white, heard the sharp report, and away with a whirr has gone the flock of rice-birds. He carries his powder flask, and full set of re-loading apparatus along, so in a moment is going again, ready for the next sortie. Eternal vigilance is the price of rice, as well as liberty; so the man wins.
As the straw takes on the dull brown, betokening maturity, along comes the sickle brigade of two or three neighbors working conveniently together, and the bunches are bound by hand with a few straws, as our ancestors used to do it. It is not left long in the shock, as there is too much rain here, and the field is too wet, so it is carried by hand generally, to the threshing floor. Many of these are by the side of the main highway of Oahu, so one can watch the proceedings from the car as one drives along. A cement floor about thirty feet square, with its sides raised a few inches, receives possibly 100 bundles. Over this horses are driven in a circle as in horse-power days. Just now thresh- ing is going on all over, and we saw this
week in one place four scraggy ponies tied together with a rope, stepping warily over uneven bundles, as one Chinese stood in the center holding the rope, and another cracked a whip over the backs of the horses, and two more Chinese were stirring up the straw with two-pronged forks. In the friendly trade-wind the chaff is cleared away, and then the rice is said to be in the "paddy." It is a golden brown in its last husk, which is not further molested until it gets to the mill later on.
It is now scraped into small ridges on the cement floor, and sunned and dried, being churned about constantly to make the drying thorough. Suppose at this stage a dark cloud appears to windward. The man in charge always has his eye on the weather, and with the first indication of an apporachnig shower, he sounds the alarm, and several men rush to his aid By shovel, hoe or a board used as a scraper and horse-drawn, the layer is quickly heaped into a golden pyramid, and covered with a big tarpaulin. It may be only a passing dash of Hawaii's "liquid sunshine." or it may be a prolonged heavy fall of rain but no chance is taken, for frequent soaking would spoil the grain. And, as this drying process goes on, chickens wan- der on the scene, quite overcome at man's generosity in laying out such a banquet for them. They are suddenly bidden to beat a hasty retreat by a long whip crack- ing sharply overhead. Some of the fowls get too accustomed to this to be bluffed, so are pushed away.
Finally, the patient rice grower, having fought his way through all these obstacles, sees the few dollars which are his compen- sation, and we inquisitive Occidentals see a most interesting bit of life transplanted from the Orient. — Laie, Oahu, T. H.
Take care of your habits and your health will take care of itself. Cheerfulness is the bravery born of wisdom.
Persons with narrow minds are not responsible for the words they utter in fits of anger. Broad-minded people seldom give way to anger.
The person with a dwarfed brain should never be censured — it is a case for pity
— Dorothy C. Retsloff.
Appreciation
By Wm. A. Morton
This story was told me by a young married woman one evening as we sat in the depot at Cache Junction, waiting for our train.
After we had talked for some time about different things, the young woman said to mc: "There is one man in this world that I shall never forget."
"And who might he be?" I asked.
"President Joseph F. Smith." was the answer. Then she went on: "He helped me once, and every time I think of his kind act — which I do often — I feel very grateful to him."
"Would you mind telling me about it?" I asked — "about the kind act which you have remembered so long, and for which you feel so thankful?"
Then she told me the story, little think- ing that some day, it would be told to about fifty thousand Religion Class chil- dren, in order to teach them the lesson of Gratitude.
"When I was a girl," said the lady. "I decided to go to Salt Lake City, in order to find employment, so that I might be able to buy my own clothes, and other things that I needed, and thus help my parents, who were not very well off.
"In Salt Lake I got work as a maid in a hotel; but I did not like the place, and after staying there a short time I decided to leave. The morning I left the hotel
I had only twenty-five cents. I was a stranger in the city, and did not know what to do nor where to go. I walked up the street until I came to the Eagle Gate. I stopped there, and stood looking at the people going to their work How happy they all seemed! And Oh, how miserable I felt! No one spoke to me; in fact, no one seemed to notice me. How long I stood there I do not know.
"I was almosit ready to cry. when the door of the Beehive House opened and President Smith came out. I knew him, but he did not know me. I had never spoken to him. He looked at me as he passed. He had gone but a few steps when he stopped, came back, and looking down into my face said, 'What is the matter, my girl? You seem to be in trouble?'
"He listened to me like my own father while I told him my story. Then he said. 'Well, daughter, come with me.' He took me to his home, and presenting me to his wife said, 'Here is a poor, friendless girl. Take care of her till she gets a good place to work.'
"I was taken into the house of the President, and was treated with much kindness. In a short time I found a good situation."
Just then the train whistled, and as the good woman picked up her baby she said. "No. I shall never forget President Jo- seph F. Smith."
Raymond, Canada
As a Man Thinketh
You must stand soldier-like at the door of your mind.
There are thoughts that must not enter in; Envy and malice and hatred and greed.
Many more that are deadly, are sin.
When the seed of deep hate in the mind is once sown.
Few flowers> of pure love will then grow. For thoughts are real things and you will soon find.
That the harvest will be as you sow.
Ah. beware, lest they find you asleep at your post,
Like a thief they slip in unawares, Rob you of treasures more precious than gold:
God will help you. will answer your prayers.
Helen Kimball Orgill
Messages from the Missions
The Growth of the South African Mission
By President Samuel Martin
This is a subject which lies very near to my heart, as it was in this country that I heard the name "Mormon" for the first time.
Missionary activities in South Africa were commenced when Elders Jesse Haven, Leonard I. Smith and William H. Walker arrived on April 19, 1853.
By June 15, Elder Leonard I. Smith baptized Henry Stringer and within six months the elders had bap- tized forty-five per- sons, organized two branches, and blessed a number of chil- dren.
February, 1854, a branch was organ- ized at Beaufort by William H. Walker. Later a branch was organized at Port Elizabeth under the direction of Elder Leonard I. Smith.
I n November, 1855, two of the members, Charles Roper and John Stock, purchased the ship Unity, in order to furnish a number of emigrants with steerage accommodation for Zion.
In 185 7, Elder Ebenezer C. Richard- son, accompanied by Elder James Brooks, was sent from the British mission to pre- side over the "Cape of Good Hope mis- sion."
In March. 1859, thirty Saints, in
President Samuel Martin
charge of Elder Joseph R. Humphreys, emigrated to Zion from Port Elizabeth on the ship Alacrity.
In March, 1863, a company of fifteen emigrating Saints left Port Elizabeth bound for Zion. A few days later a company of thirty left by the barque. Henry Ellis, in charge of Elders Robert Grand and John Stock, local elders.
Elders Fothcring- ham, Dixon and Talbot remained in Cape Colony until the spring of 1864. achieving consider- able success.
In 1866, the last of the elders sailed for Zion, leaving the mission in charge of the local brethren.
It was on July 25, 1903. nearly forty years later, when Elders Warren H. Lyons. Wm. R. Smith. Thomas L. Griffith and George A. Simpkins arrived to re-open the mis- sion and to their great joy found a few members still living and bearing faithful testimony.
Elder George Buck, the local brother who had been left in charge of the Mow- bray branch, was its sole survivor, nearly ninety years of age, but full of zeal and testimony of the truth of the restored plan, One year and three months later it was my privilege to be the first to apply for
MESSAGES FROM THE MISSIONS
1045
baptism; and with Thomas Sawyer of Claremont, I was baptized in Table Bay and confirmed a member in the Church of Jesus Christ by Elder Warren H. Lyons. The following month I was ordained to the office of a priest and encouraged to take an active part with the elders.
Our membership increased very con- siderably the following year, and the elders were able to rent a hall and organize a Sunday School, giving us all great oppor- tunities for development and growth.
Since that time many have emigrated to Zion, among whom were the author of these lines and his family, in 1916. We settled in Ogden, where I was called to preside over the Y. M. M. I. A. of the Sixth ward. Later the Thirteenth ward was organized with J. H. Jenkins as bishop and I was called to be his first counselor, in which capacity I served for eight and a half __years. after which I was called to work on the high council in the Ogden stake until April, 1926, when I, accompanied by my wife and three young- est sons, was honored with a call to re- turn to South Africa as successor to Presi- dent James Wyley Sessions.
The work has continued to grow under the supervision of the successive mission
presidents, namely: Warren H. Lyons, Ralph A. Badger, Henry L. Steed, Brig- ham H. Hendricks, Frank J. Hewlett. Nicholas G. Smith, and James Wyley Sessions.
In 1919, the South African Government decided to forbid elders of the Church of Jesus Christ to do missionary work in the Union of South Africa; therefore, during the latter part of President Nicholas G. Smith's mission and at the beginning of President J. Wyley Sessions' term South Africa was without elders; and for nearly two years the branch presidents were the ever faithful stand-bys, conducting and carrying on the work at Mowbray, Kim- berley, Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, and Port Elizabeth, while the mission presi- dent visited the several districts.
President Nicholas G. Smith, together with his wife and three sons, spent nearly seven and a half years as president of the South African mission. During his presi- dency the Mowbray property was pur- chased by the Church as a mission home. to which was added a small meeting house to accommodate about one hundred, and named "Cumorah."
In March, 1921, President Nicholas G. Smith was succeeded by President
"Cumorah." Mowbray — Mission Headquarters
1046
IMPROVEMENT ERA
James Wyley Sessions.
President Sessions soon set to work to gain the ear of the South African Govern- ment and successfully negotiated the re- newal of Christian ministers' rights to preach the Gospel. In granting these rights, however, the Latter-day Saints were limited to a quota of twenty-five mission- aries. He also obtained ministerial con- cessions on the government railways.
During the presidency of James Wyley Sessions the Church purchased a property in Johannesburg and built a very pleasant meeting house with a seating capacity for one hundred and fifty, and accommoda- tions for four elders.
Since my arrival, on June 22, 1926,
growth in membership during the past twenty-four years, our active membership is not large, owing to so many having left for Zion whenever their financial condi- tions permitted. Others have removed from the branches to outlying districts and become lost to the elders, and being shut off from the Church activities I fear many found an unsympathetic world too much for their faith.
I am persuaded that the South African mission comprises a larger territory than any other single mission of the Church. When we combine Northern and Southern Rhodesia, and Southwest Africa to the Union of South Africa, we have an area of over one million square miles and we
'Ramah," L. D S. chapel at Johannesburg
I am grateful to report a very steady and pleasing growth.
In June, 1927, with the very able assistance of Mission Secretary Leo R. Jenson, I commenced the publication of the Cumorah Monthly Bulletin, which has been a source of great help and bless- ing to Saints and friends; resuscitating quite a lively interest among many who were out of touch with the mission.
Much prejudice seems to have been re- moved and the public press has1 been very fair and kind in publishing interviews from time to time, besides requesting certain articles from the elders and myself.
Although there has been a constant
have members scattered throughout.
I visited Kabrib, Southwest Africa, in April, 1927, and ordained Brother Law- rence C. Ratcliff to the office of an elder and encouraged him to invite his friends and hold cottage meetings in his home. Since that time he has baptized three souls.
At the same time I ordained Brother Ratcliff, I ordained his step-son, Bertram J. Glynn, to the office of an elder and set him apart for missionary labors with our elders in the South African Union. He is doing splendid work.
Last March I took a trip up into South- ern Rhodesia, accompanied by District President Marion L. Allred. We baptized
MESSAGES FROM THE MISSIONS
1047
the two sons of Brother Walter Taylor Jubber; these brethren had not seen an elder for years.
South Africa is a very beautiful coun- try. The people are hospitable and gladly extend kindnesses to the traveling elders. In the Union of South Africa we have an area of 472.347 square miles, and a white population of (about) 1,300,000; about 600,000 colored, besides nearly 4,000,000 of the negro races.
Southwest Africa has a white popula- tion of about 15,000; Southern Rhodesia has a white population of nearly 50.000. many of whom are centered in Bulawayo and Salisbury, where we could use six elders.
Owing to the small number of elders in the South African mission, and dis- tances being so great, we are unable to open up more than seven districts, namely: Mowbray. Kimberly, Bloemfontein. Johan- nesburg. Natal. East London, and Port Elizabeth.
We have two elders in Mowbray district for a white population of 200.000; two elders in Kimberly district for a white population of 19,000; two elders in the Bloemfontein district for a white popula- tion of 20.000; four elders in the Johan- nesburg district for a white population of 200,000; two elders in Durban, Natal, district for a white population of 55,000: two elders in East London district for a white population of 22.000: and two elders in Port Elizabeth district for a white population of 30,000.
We could use with success six elders in Southwest Africa, six elders in Southern Rhodesia, and fifty in the Union of South Africa, whereas we have nineteen includ- ing Sister Martin.
South Africa has many towns of several
thousand inhabitants which have only been casually tracted by elders passing through.
We have very few local brethren who are financially able to support a son In the mission field; however, we have a: the present time two elders. Bertram J. Glynn, previously mentioned, and Albert Ed'.vard Hughes, son of Sister and Mr. Donald Hughes of Johannesburg. Both these young men are doing a splendid work and giving great joy to their parents.
Our missionary labors for 1927, with an average of twenty elders, was produc- tive of much good. Our records show that we visited (not tracting) 15.5 74 families of investigators; we held 17,420 gospel conversations; sold 332 Books of Mormon and 298 standard works ind other books; 6,742 pamphlets (over six- teen pages) were distributed; 3 9,241 tracts were distributed: we held 2.74 1 meetings; baptized thirty-four converts and blessed twenty-one children.
This year we have already sold more Books of Mormon and have baptized more people than all of last year.
Our elders are working with a zeal and determination to prove that the South African mission is worth all that it costs the people of Zion to send missionaries to this far-off land.
That it is a mission worth the sacrifice it calls for is manifested by the earnest endeavors of our elders, and we earnestly pray that the time is not far distant when we may extend our activities to the many towns where only passing visits have been made, that South Africa from Cape Town to the Zambezi may rejoice in the liberal knowledge of our glorious message, and for this purpose we humbly pray God to send us more laborers to this great con- tinent.
Dr. F. W. Gunsaulus. former president of the Armour Institute. Chicago, as an educator, made this statement: "I do not believe there is an agency more destructive of soul, mind and body, or more subversive of good morals than the cigarette. The fight against the cigarette is a fight for civilization."
1048
IMPROVEMENT ERA
The Armenian Mission
By President Joseph W. Booth
Among the twenty-seven missions of the Church, the Armenian mission is the paradoxical conundrum of them all.
What is there so peculiar about it? Stop, look, and listen! Eighty-seven years ago, Oct. 24, 1841, that almost match- less prayer of Apos- tle Orson Hyde was offered on the Mount of Olives. That might be counted as the con- ception of our mis- sion work in the Orient. Since then we have had seven apostles in our midst, about forty missionaries, and some twenty visitors, in all averaging less than one person a year from Zion.
We have now only one branch and, I think, fewer members than any other mission in the world; yet we have almost as many square miles in our unbounded territory as all the other mis- sions put together. Of course you will demand some proof for such a statement.
Well, on the west, our nearest neigh- bors in the ministry are the French mis- sion and the German-Austrian mission, and to them we must concede most of the eastern part of Europe, although Greece has been ours for a long time. Inasmuch as there are no missions to the north of us our boundary in that direction lies in boreal beds of ice, and hence includes all Asiatic Russia. And if the Armenian mis-
President Joseph W. Booth
Who has spent seventeen years in the mission field.
sion is bounded by the South African mission in that far-away field, then we can claim all of Eastern Africa north of the equator. Again, on our southeast, we have the Australian mission meeting us far beyond the borders of Arabia and India; and now that the Japanese Mission is closed we must hark away to Sa- moa, Hawaii, and Alaska to find our eastern boundary. So there falls to this little mission more than twenty-one million square miles of field work. Granting us, now, these mentioned boundaries we have more than one-half the population of the world to look after, and were we, the two present mis- sionaries, to take an airship today, and fly, day and night, over this vast field and cover every square mile at the rate of 100 miles an hour, throwing down 70 printed messages every minute, that each per- son might get a single tract, it would take us twenty-four years to make that one big visit.
Our past and present status may be briefly told by counting up to ten; thu9: One lady missionary, two workers in the field today, three cities have served as our headquarters, four elders have died in the field, five nationalities have been baptized, six languages are needed to teach them,
MESSAGES FROM THE MISSIONS
1049
seven apostles have been here, eight cties now claim one or more of our members, and nine out of ten are in poverty.
We are known as the Armenian mis- sion, and here again, the paradox. The name is too big, and too little. If we are to reach all the Armenian race we must likely trespass upon the field of every other mission in the world, for the Ar- menians, like the Jews, are scattered among all nations, and yet they do not form a tenth part of the population of even our present scenes of activity in Syria and Palestine. Although 95 r; of our recorded membership in all these years are Arme- nians, yet the name is not altogethci ap- propriate for the best interest of the mis- sion.
Most of my readers will remember the world-round mission visits of Elder David O. McKay and Elder Hugh J. Can- non in 1920-21. They had been travel- ing for nearly a year and had visited the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, China, India, Egypt, and were on their homeward journey toward Europe and America. The writer had left Utah in September, 1921, and was not informed as to the itinerary of these elders1, except that they had been instructed to visit the twelve-year-shepherdless flock in Syria. Where were these brethren ? On this point I was as ignorant as they were of my whereabouts. Fervent prayers were offered daily to the Lord, in whose service we were, that somehow, in his infinite wisdom, we all might meet; and of course Palestine was the most de- sirable place in all the world for that meet- ing, but how unlikely amid a million chances!
I had met with a prolonged delay in Italy, and then after a brief call to visit the Saints in Athens. Greece, I proceeded to Alexandria, and thence by rail across the Delta, to the bridge at Kantara, where I made a midnight change of trains, and then passed on toward the Holy Land. I shall not soon forget that morning of November 4. Let my diary of that date tell its own story:
"Soon after midnight I was gliding
over the sands in quiet, peaceful sleep, along the way where 'Joseph and Mary and the young Child' went on their jour- ney from Egypt 'into the Land of Israel.' The night was a most beautiful one as I started, and again just before the dawn of day, as I looked out of the train win- dow, the eastern sky was a scene of transcendent beauty.
"All the planets, except Uranus, wen. morning stars. Neptune was invisible, Mercury but a tiny twinkler, Saturn and Mars only ordinary objects among the thousands of worlds of the universe, but Jupiter and Venus were brilliant as diamonds on the blue robes of a royal bride. Sirius, Orion, and the Pleiades were farther along in their western march, but did their best to embellish that scene of night as the entrancing picture arched over the stillness of the Holy Land, where only forty hours ago a scene of blood and riot occurred in ignorant protest against the coming of the Jews.
"We passed on through Gaza early, and then on up through the plains and fields of the old Philistines, and by 9 a. m. we were in Ludd, the junction of the Jaffa-Jerusalem road. My ticket was direct for Haifa, and, as I was anxious to get on my way, I had no special desire this time to visit the Holy City. The train waited for a half hour, during which time I looked for, and longed to meet Elders David O. McKay and Hugh J. Can- non, who have been traveling around the world visiting the missions and the schools of the L. D. S. Church, but I was disappointed in not meeting them there.
"On the train went, and I still looked out of the windows studying the land of Palestine and talking to a little Jewish girl who came and sat with me and told me a lot of her troubles. She was on her way to Haifa in search of work. About 12:30, the train stopped. I carried my satchels into the baggage room and left them there a moment while I looked around to inquire whether a ship was in the harbor bound for Beirut, and turning about, lo! I was face to face with the very men whom I have hoped and prayed and
1050
IMPROVEMENT ERA
longed to meet — Brothers McKay and Cannon. They came on the same train from Ludd, passed within a few feet of me there, but we did not see each other. We were each just ready to leave for different hotels, and two minutes time would likely have separated us altogether. We all thanked the Lord for that pleas- ant meeting."
That afternoon and night we made an auto ride to Beirut. The next night we had crossed the Lebanon mountains, and feasted, enroute, on the luscious clusters from the vineyards of the Valley of Leontes, and slept at Baalbek, where the grand ruins of those ancient temples jre still defying the penman to tell their com- plete story. Another day's ride, November 6, brought us to the City of Aleppo, in Northern Syria.
That was the beginning of work in the third epoch in the history of this mission.
It was closed the first time about 1895, and the elders called away on account of that terrible massacre of 50,000 Armenians at that time. Prominent among the workers of the first period were: F. F. Hintze, Jacob Spori, J. M. Tanner, F. M. Lyman, Jr., James Clove, E. S. Robinson, Adolf Haag, Don C. Musser, John A. Clark, Edgar D. Simmons (the three last named died in the field), and Elders Diterli, Christiansen, and Fred Huish. I have not the records at hand so the list may be incomplete.
The second term began with the call of Elder A. H. Lund, F. F. Hintze, Philip S. Maycock and A. L. Larson, to open up the mission again in 189 7-8, and with unabated zeal the work continued until, following another sanguinary attack on the helpless Christians in 1909, the Church again saw fit to close the mission and leave the work with local elders. Dur- ing that twelve-year period, in addition to the four men just named, were the following missionaries: Joseph W. Booth and wife, Mary R. Booth; J. Alma Hold- away, Thomas P. Page, Albert Herman, Lester W. Mangum, Reno W. Vance, John T. Woodbury, S. Burton Newman, Mischa Markow, Joseph Shepherd ■ Tuesher,
Charles Tuesher, Henry Tuesher, Loy Woods, Joseph F. Thorup, William A. Budge, I. Owen Horsfall, John D. Stephenson, Joseph O. Phelps, Emil J. Huber (died in the field), Don C. Love- land, R. L. Dunkley, and Elders Clayton and McAllister. This list also is from memory of twenty years ago, and apology is offered for incompleteness.
From October 1, 1909, until Novem- ber 6, 1921, there were no elders from Zion, and the local Saints were put to a test of their faith and endurance while the horrors of war and of deportation mad* havoc of the Armenian people in general. Up to this last-named date we were under the name of the Turkish mission, but out of the respect to the disrespect we had for tyranny, the name wa9 changed to the present one.
The story of how the surviving mem- bers of the old Turkish mission were rescued from their frightful conditions in Aintab, in December, 1921, is ever fresh in the minds of the Saints here today, for they still celebrate yearly, the days of their marvelous deliverance. The Church records, the prize stories, and the printed articles of that event are ever-ready wit- nesses of the manifestation of God's power and goodness to us on that occasion.
June 1, 1922, was a memorable day fot the Armenian mission. Elder Owen W. Woodruff was our guest at Aleppo, and a baptismal service was held at the Jenge Gardens, when seventy-three souls were immersed in water. On July 4 some twenty-five more were baptized, and since then, on various occasions nearly one hun- dred additional members have accepted the Gospel ordinances. Our last official ad- ditions of record, the blessing of two children at Aleppo, last Fast day, made the grand total of 238, but with deaths, excommunications, etc., we number today about 190.
Your humble servant has had the pleas- ure and honor of seventeen years total in the mission field. The task at times has been a difficult one — almost like trying to tear away old Timpanogos with a tooth brush while a man with a team and scraper endeavors to pile it up again.
MESSAGES FROM THE MISSIONS
105
Elder Earl B. Sncll came to the rescue during 1923, and valiantly assisted in the work from April until December. Then in January, 1924, President David O. Mc- Kay and wife, of the European mission, came and presented this lonely missionary with a help-meet in the person of his equally lonely wife, Sister Mary R. Booth, and she is with us unto this day.
In the last seven years we have had only four adult deaths, but the infant mortality has been higher. Our birth rate during the past eighteen months has
Ghazarian, the very touching drama. "Moroni," or "Where is the Truth?" de picting the angel delivering the plates to the Prophet Joseph Smith, was presented three nights to large audiences.
The Relief Society, the Sunday School and the M. I. A., have all made great strides forward, but with it all some indi- vidual members have made lamentable backslips. We challenge the world to pro- duce a more patient and excellent set of peace-makers than our members here. They excel simply because they have such un-
RAILWAY STATION IN HAIFA. PALESTINE, AT THE BACE OF MT. CARMEL. WHERE PRESIDENT BOOTH MET ELDER DAVID O. MCKAY. OF THE COUNCIL OF THE TWELVE
been phenomenal — 70 to the year for 1000; and without controversy we claim the prize for pulchritude among these little children. They get more kisses and more cuffs to the square hour than "kiddies" really need.
Our little colony has made some won- derful "hits" in drama work. The or- iginal play. "Nephi," drew a crowd of 1000 people the first night, and was re- peated twice thereafter. Later, with the able assistance of Professor Antreas der
limited opportunities for practice among this quarrelsome people.
Parents here want to marry their girls off while they are yet children — from 12 to 15 years old; but they count it a great shame for a man to kiss his own wife at or after marriage. Is that a par- adox? Recently a ten-year-old Jewess was sold here for thirty pounds to a Mohammedan, who married her before the government officials could reach the place to stop it.
1052
IMPROVEMENT ERA
Our mission headquarters are now in Haifa, Palestine. We hope to have a branch organized in Damascus soon, and one in Beirut also.
The Book of Mormon, in limited num- bers, is with us in English, Turkish, French and German, and the same volume in manuscript form is translated and awaiting publication in Armenian, Os- manli, Greek and Hebrew. There is an urgent need for some of these right now, as well as in Arabic, into which the Book of Mormon has not yet been trans- lated.
Now just a word in closing. Besides Sister Booth and Elder Snell, the writer, since he left London, October 2, 1921, has seen on an average only one face from
Zion in 202 days, so you may be sure of a warm welcome if you come to do mis- sionary work. Our few visitors at head- quarters have been, besides those already named: Wm. E. Allen. Senator Wm. H. King, Sterling B. Taylor, R. F. Beames, James M. Armstrong, Dr. F. S. Harris and President James E. Talmage.
Last October the latter sent a cable- gram from Haifa to Salt Lake City, which read: "Six missionaries for Palestine," and we have just received this consoling reply, "You may think we have forgotten you, but we have not." And so with such assurance, I paraphrase the exclama- tion of a loyal soldier: "In heaven's name who would not proselyte for such cause, where the harvest is so great and the laborers are so few?"
The South American Mission
By President Reinhold Stoof
It has seldom been easy to introduce the Gospel into a new country. Most of the usual and many unusual difficulties confronted Melvin J. Ballard, of the Coun- cil of the Twelve. Rulon S. Wells and Rey L. Pratt, of the First Council of Seventy, upon their arrival as mission- aries in Buenos Aires, December 6, 1925. Two German breth- ren, Wilhelm Fried- richs and Emil Hoppe. together with their good wives, had worked diligently to spread the truth in their adopted country and had succeeded in gaining a few friends. Their ap- peal, sent from the shores of the La Plata river, "Come over and help us," was heard by the authorities in Utah, and the three named brethren were sent officially to open the South American
mission. A few days after their arrival they had the privilege of baptizing six friends, who were converted to the re- stored Gospel by the labors of the German brethren and sisters. All these converts were of German descent.
On Christmas day, 1925, after a solemn service in the Park 3 de Febrero, Elder Melvin J. Ballard dedicated the great South American con- tinent for the preach- ing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
A serious sickness caused Elder Rulon S. Wells to leave for Utah on the 14th of January, 1926, but Brothers Ballard and Pratt worked many months in hard labor and in the midst of great discouragements, and saw at the end of their missionary activities, on the 23rd of July, 1926, — the day of their depart-
MlSSIONARIES OF SOUTH AMERICA
MESSAGES FROM THE MISSIONS
1053
ure for Zion — a well established work: therefore, the new missionaries from head- quarters, who arrived in June, 1926, found a good beginning for their labors.
Hard labor in a new soil! Many, very many weeds in it! But, fortunately, weeds serve a good purpose. They keep the gardener's back lithe and will not allow him the luxury of resting too much. There are plenty of weeds to remove in this field before our gardeners can reach good soil. One finds but little prejudice against our Church; but ignorance of the Bible and indifference in religious matters are the main obstacles which must be overcome. Neither must one forget that 32% of the population are illiterates in Argentina and that a Bibie is very seldom found in a house.
But the missionaries were soon to dis- cover that among the Latin people as many good and honest souls are to be found as among the peoples of Europe. We can be and are proud of our members here, both Latin and European; they ful- fil their obligations' faithfully.
Because of the obstacles already men- tioned we cannot expect to make rapid progress in the South American mission: but we do believe that here. too. every faithful missionary will reap the fruits of his diligent labors and will richly enjoy the blessings of our Heavenly Father in his work.
There were six members here before the mission in South America was opened. Since that time, including the six converts who were found through the efforts of the two German members, and who were baptized immediately after the arrival of Elder Ballard, we have had thirty- nine baptisms. Nearly half of this num- ber were baptized during the last five months. Considering the hard soil in which we labor, we believe this to be good progress.
The whole mission consists now of sixty-five members; five of whom live in Southern Brazil, and one in the Chaco, an Argentine province. Thirteen blest chil- dren are included in the membership. Thirty-one are of German, twenty of
Argentine, seven of Italian, five of Span- ish, one of Irish, and one of Yugoslavian nationality.
We have a small group of fine-spirited missionaries. Not only their work, but also their personality has paved and will pave the way for many an honest soul to come into the Church. We extend a hearty welcome to all missionaries who will join us in our labors. We need them. There is so much work before us that it often- times frightens: us. First we want to build up here in the Argentine capital a strong and flourishing organization. In the near future we want to establish a mission among the big German colonies in South- ern Brazil. And, then, we have another very important duty to fulfil.
I am not sending my picture, as re- quested. Instead I am sending a picture of our faithful missionaries, in whose hearts the Lord has planted a burning de- sire to work for the salvation of their fellow-men. They followed willingly the call into the new and unknown land, the newest field of labor in the Lord's great vineyard. In the power and authority of Him who called them into His service they are striving to build a solid founda- tion for a flourishing mission.
All hail to them who help our mis- sionaries to perform their important duties. Our hearts are filled with gratitude for them. We all feel with our fellow-mis- sionary, Elder Heber Milton Clegg. who expressed his gratitude in the following poem:
WE
The work done in the mission field will
bring a large reward, Assistance rendered one poor soul is noticed
by our Lord; A missionary's recompense is joy on
heaven's side, And then because he did his share that
joy is justified.
And what about the mother, with her
mission, far away. Who reared that boy for God's great call,
inspiring him each day;
1054
IMPROVEMENT ERA
MERLIN STOOF. YOUNGEST SOUTH AMERICAN MISSIONARY
Who now prepares her younger sons that
they, too, might fulfil The chance that's sure to come to preach,
from house-top and from hill?
And what about the father, who much
more than does his share, Who works and makes a sacrifice to keep
his son out there; Who tries to spare him anything that
might discomfort give, And helps him with advice and love a
better life to live?
His brothers and his sisters go without
what they have had. It means more patches, fewer shows; yet
they are all so glad To do their bes>t to help the work out
where their brother is That ne'er a hint of cares at home are
spoken of as "his."
We can't all tract and talk and preach — there're other things to do,
The mission is abroad and home, each does his part, is true.
O mother, father, sister, brother, sweet- heart, and friends too,
The recompense is not for one — you must say "we," not "you."
Brother Ballard implored in his prayer of dedication the blessings of the Almighty God upon the descendants of Lehi, the Indians of this continent. Millions of them live here, downtrodden, in a state of semi-slavery. The Gospel of Jesus Christ will redeem them from much of their misery. We are anxiously looking forward for that day when this great work will begin. This labor will truly be, in every respect, a Savior's work. Youth of Zion, here is something that should ap- peal to you! Come with all your talents and power, where the hardest problems are to be solved, right here in SOUTH AMERICA!
"When you read the revelations, or when you hear the will of the Lord concerning you, for your own sakes never receive that with a doubtful heart."- — Brigham Young.
DITO
A Forgotten Voice
Barely four score years have passed since Samuel F. B. Morse sent over the telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore the now historic message, "What hath God wrought." To be exact, this was on May 24. 1844, thirty-four days before the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Prior thereto, messages, no matter what their urgency, were sent by mail or by spe- cial messengers.
Steamships and steam locomotives were invented, or at least came into practical commercial use. some years before the tele- graph. Robert Fulton built his first steam- boat model in 1802. and his first large boat was given a trial on the Seine, in France, two years later, but proved too slow and unwieldy. On August 7, 1807, less than two years after the Prophet's birth, Fulton's Clermont ran successfully on the Hudson. George Stephenson drove his first locomotive in 1814 at the Killing- worth colliery, in England. Naturally it was imperfect. In the contest between lo- comotives on the Liverpool-Manchester line in 1829, his engine, "Rocket," was an easy victor, attaining the. at that time, phenomenal speed of thirty-two miles an hour.
Intervening years have brought marvel- ous changes. Now scientists are proclaim- ing that an exact reproduction of the sender's penmanship — delivering a facsimile of the original telegram — is al- most an accomplished fact; and all are familiar with the improvements in steam- ships and in railway trains since they en- tered the fields of transportation.
Within the memory of men still in their prime, telephones, automobiles and airplanes have come into existence. These men will remember when such things were considered chimerical dreams, viewed as less likely of fulfillment than the oft-re- peated suggestion that we shall shortly be
able to communicate with the inhabitants of Mars. Now a telephone is found in al- most every home and one can speak across the continent, even across the ocean, and it is possible at the same time to see the per son to whom one is talking. Telephones not only transmit messages, but they are now used to send pictures. Automobiles are so common as seriously to menace the lives of pedestrians. The airplane, whirring noisily overhead, no longer attracts a curious upward glance. Between dawn and dusk one of our own Utah boys has flown from New York to San Francisco, and now men and even women fly in heavier-than-air machines from America to Europe.
Children, still young, have watched the development of the motion picture and the radio. We not only see the actors on the silver screen, but we also hear them speak. A man in Salt Lake delivered a sermon over the radio which his son in Los Angeles distinctly heard. Within the last few days, newspapers have estimated that forty mil- lion people listened to the acceptance speeches of the two presidential nominees. They were heard as far away as New Zea- land, and those in that remote land who tuned in heard the speakers' words a frac- tion of a second before the people on the extreme edge of the crowd who were ac- tually in their presence.
That we may soon tune in for motion pictures in our own homes as we now do for the concerts and lectures which come over the air is now almost an accomplished fact. Recent experiments by the Westing- house Electric Company indicate that this has passed the imaginary and almost the experimental stage and is now being done. It prompts the prediction that a far-away tourist will soon be able to project a motion picture of himself into his own home.
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IMPROVEMENT ERA
No vision of man's power to achieve is too fanciful to seem beyond belief. Ap- parently there are no limits to his possi- bilities.
Many people feel that an unreasonable demand is being put upon their credulity when they are asked to believe that the Almighty has spoken to man, that prayers are answered, or that the sick are healed. They cannot believe that through a divine whisper or by other means the Lord can give to a humble supplicant a positive knowledge of certain unseen things.
Joseph Smith claimed that in the spring of 1820, he saw and spoke with the Father and the Son, but because this declaration contradicted their own experiences most people felt it could not be true. That man can project his voice or his vision around the world they do not doubt, though they themselves, perhaps, have never done it.
Toward the middle of the seventeenth century, the French government imprisoned as a madman Salomon de Caus, the first man, as far as we now know, to suggest the use of steam to propel a vessel. To- ward the middle of the nineteenth century, a mob in the United States killed Joseph Smith, the first man in this dispensation to say that the Almighty is willing and able to communicate with his children. There is a close relationship between the impelling spirit in the commission of both these crimes.
According to the ideas of an appallingly large number of present-day people, there is but one Being in the universe who is
limited; that Being is God, called, by these same people, the Almighty. Man, the Creator's mortal handiwork, can speak or fly or see across a continent or an ocean; he can perform miracles undreamed of a generation ago; he can overcome nearly all the formerly accepted laws of nature; but, according to men's notions, his immortal Creator sits, majestic and glorious but im- potent, surrounded by barriers beyond which he cannot pass.
The venerable Sir Oliver Lodge declared in a recent address that "science, with all its great work, has not eliminated the ac- cumulated witness of the ages."
The Latter-day Saints rejoice in the comforting assurance that the God of heaven and earth is still mightier than frail mortals. They refuse to ignore or mini- mize his divine power. If man's voice can be heard around the world, the Lord can speak from heaven; if Lindbergh can fly across the Atlantic and appear in Paris, our Heavenly Father can manifest himself to his servants; if a man in London can see the person with whom he is talking in New York, the Creator can see and under- stand the hearts of his children. God is still what the word ALMIGHTY denotes, all-powerful, omnipotent, and it would be a most wholesome thing for the world if it would cultivate the same grateful spirit of acknowledgment as that embodied in the first telegraphic message, "What hath God wrought." In this age of unbelief it is as the voice of one crying in the wilder- ness.— C.
Benjamin Disraeli wound up his maiden speech, which was a dismal failure, in the House of Commons as follows: "Now, Mr. Speaker, we see the philosophical pre- judices of Man. (Laughter and cheers.) I respect cheers, even when they come from the mouth of a political opponent. (Renewed laughter.) I think, sir, (Hear! Hear! and repeated cries of Question!) I am not at all surprised, sir, at the reception 1 have met with. (Continued laughter.) I have begun several things many times (laughter), and I have always succeeded at last. (Question!) Aye, sir, and though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me."
PRIES
All matters pertaining to the Aaronic Priesthood in this department are prepared under the direction of the Presiding Bishopric.
Letters to Ward Bishoprics
The following letters, sent to bishoprics of wards throughout the Church by the Presiding Bishopric, under date of Septem- ber 1 and September 13, respectively, are self-explanatory:
Dear Brethren:
It has been expected that the weekly meetings of the Aaronic Priesthood, at least, would be held regularly during the entire year. However, in view of the fact that in some of the wards and stakes such meetings have not been held regularly dur- ing the past summer, we desire to call your attention to the importance of the work to be done during the remainder of this year.
As you are aware, the meetings of the Priesthood and the M. I. A. are now co- ordinated so as to be held on the same evening. The plans already outlined for the Aaronic Priesthood for this year are given in the booklet issued by the Presiding Bishopric at the beginning of the year, en- titled "Instructions Relative to Weekly Ward Meetings of Acting Ward Teachers and all members of the Aaronic Priest- hood," andjor the Melchizcdek Priesthood in the booklet issued by the Council of the Twelve, March 20, 1928, entitled "Sug- gestions for Quorums of Priesthood and M. I. A."
If there has been any slackening of the work and activity of the Aaronic Priest- hood during the summer, it is very greatly desired that this work should now be taken up with renewed energy and system in order to carry forward vigorously during the fall and winter season. In order that there may be clear understanding on the part of everyone associated with the Aaronic Priesthood as to the plan of pro- cedure for the meetings, instructions and activities thereof, we are reiterating here the instructions previously given. Will
you therefore kindly follow these instruc- tions and also transmit this information to the supervisors of the Aaronic Priesthood in your ward. If you do not have suf- ficient copies of the "Instructions" men- tioned, if you will kindly advise us, we shall be glad to furnish you with additional copies for the use of the Bishopric and the supervisors of your ward. We would sug- gest that you hold a meeting at once with your supervisors, for the thorough con- sideration of Aaronic Priesthood work.
It is expected that the weekly meetings of the Priesthood and M. I. A. will be held on Tuesday evenings. They will consist of an officers' meeting to be held at
7 p. m., as given in the instructions, and the regular meeting of all the members of the Priesthood and Y. L. M. I. A. at 7:30 p. m. After the opening exercises of the regular Priesthood-M. I. A. meeting (7:30 to 7:45 p. m.) , the Priesthood will separate for class or quorum work. At that time the order of business for the Aaronic Priesthood quorums or classes should be carried out as indicated on page
8 of "Instructions." However, the time allowed for the quorum or class exercises will permit of more discussion than is in- dicated in those "Instructions." It is very desirable, therefore, that after the indi- vidual activities of the quorum members have been checked and the social and fraternal interest of the quorum considered, as there indicated, the time allowed for the discussion of the topic assigned for that particular meeting should be most effec- tively used.
The topics to be covered during each month of this year are given in that same book of "Instructions." If these topics have not been discussed systematically thus far this year, we would urge that two or three topics in order be given each week during the remainder of the year, because
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we feel that every member of the Priest- hood should, if possible, be familiar with these matters. If, however, topics have al- ready been presented in their order thus far this year, then it will be necessary to ex- pand the remainder of the lessons in order to occupy effectively the time allowed. In a separate statement, therefore, which is hereto attached, we have indicated how a topic might be enlarged upon. Where, therefore, the remaining topics only are to be given from now until the end of this year, we would suggest either that the bishopric assign this matter of developing the lessons in advance to a committee, or else that the matter be referred to the Stake Presidency and Stake Aaronic Priest- hood Committee, with a request that they outline the lessons