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About The independent. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1902-1907 | View Entire Issue (April 25, 1907)
fa fa A AM IP A WEEKLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO Twentieth Year. ARBOR DAY ABROAD An article in -the French periodical. La; Nature, gives a glowing, descrip tion of the growing popularity of Arbor day in Europe. The writer of the article says the holiday originated in Nebras ka, U. S. A., as the result of the pro posal of "a certain Sterling Morton" in the year 1S72 to set apart a day for tree planting. Continuing," the -"author nays that "In Italy the 'annual school arbor festival' became in 1902 a state ' institution. In Spain the 'association of friends of the arbor festival,' which was formed in the same year, cele brates, annually very successful fetes, and a decree of 1904 instituted the ar bor festival throughout the kingdom, Belgium held its first arbor day festi val quite recently. In Russia, Sweden, Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, Portu gal, Japaneverywhere the necessity of reforestation has been recognized children are interested in trees by sim ilar methods. ' ' "Fr'anee has.- not been behindhand, and, while considerable efforts toward reforestation are being made by th; government, attempts have been made Jn various directions to associate chil dren in the movement by establishing arbor day festivals. In the spring, uh der the leadership and direction of teachers, the school children go to the open fields to plant trees that shall be future forests. These festivals encourage the establishment of forest associations among students and grad uates,' whose number is constantly in creasing and some of which are very active. "The French 'forest society of friends of trees,' whose president is Senator Calvert, has given a strong impulse to reforestation and to all institutions in its aid, and has actively encouraged the establishment of forest societies among pupils of the .schools. "Arbor day celebrations are to be held in France still more widely after the present year. The society just men tioned will organize meetings in im portant centers with the aid of rectors, prefects and the forest administration; festivals of this kind have already been ftrrariged at Toulouse, Nice, Clermont Fcrrand and Bordeau." THE MOUMONS. No more remarkable religious devel opmer.t is recorded in modern times than the rise and persistence of the sect who call themselves "Latter Day Saints, and are indiscriminately cata loged by the rest of the world as "Mor mons." It is now becoming more clear ly known to the popular mind that there arc two branches of the Latter Day Saints. The Hrst h is its eeclchlns tio.il ln-uthUiU'tern in Salt L.tke City it nd Is fusurlaU'd with tht' practice of polygamy and with n long continued htrug!Tl' half pullll.-itl, half religious, with the "gentile" fioj-ultitlon of Utah, Idaho inl in Inhibiting Mitten. Tho ith r brunch .f the Latter Day Saints has lis hi u.l.iu tttt im ,t Lutnonl, Iowa, hi. it lut' Jmi h.l.l tho past wk lu lit t dim tit annual wotld'x ( onfi-r- t. ,., TI.U etmfi reneo in nt tended: by hundred uf t nthufht! I" ;r, inl m of I lie hurt It iti.d plan wt;r mado for th tutitlmiid an !Uatlm of tho xmii M t j UmIi' doctrine, Tti: fort; t hit' I I.attif Day Faint church, fit It tyl It- if. h:ist nt ut t' irij th-u ..nd iitcn lett hi i! v I'tih l ;' it . as HOME LIFE, AGRICULTURE AND LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, APRIL 25, 1907. against over one hundred and fifty thousand members of the Salt Lake City branch. The reorganized church has Its greatest strength in Iowa and Missouri several thousand adherents in each state. Its membership in Ne braska fls between, one and two thous and. The reorganized Latter Day Saints accept three books as having divine origin-the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Covenant. They be- lieve in "special revelations." made by God from time to time to the elders of the church. Joseph Smith, son of the original Joseph Smith, is the head of the' reorganized church. lie is now past sev?nty-five - years old and has been the medium through whom the revela- tiom of God have been made to the reorganized saints. As is well known, this branch of the Mormon church re pudiates polygamy and is composed of industrious, law abiding people, prin cipally farmers, who have no trouble with their neighbors of other religious complexion. They are, however, like nearly all other small denominations, intense believers in the religious truth they profess and most persistent prose- tyters. They have over three hundred missionaries at work in different parts of the world. Here in Nebraska, though few in numbers, they are very active, and Mormon meetings and distribution of tracts advocating their doctrine is one of the familiar phases of religious life in many parts of this state. What i3 there back of the Latter Day Saint doctrine which gives it vitality and continuance? This question 13 a deeply interesting one to the student ot comparative religion. Here is a new faith, born within the lifetime of men now living, claiming the most remark able credentials of its miraculous reve lation, implicitly believed and sacri ficingly propagated by a considerable body of people living in an age and country of enlightenment. On the one hand its revelations are pronounced the rankest kmd of fraud and its sacred writings the most palpable imitations and forgeries. On the other hand they are believed and read with the most devout faith, Is the test of religious truth the number of its converts, the social and industrial virtues they prac- tice, or the scientific and critical rules of logic and philosophy? These ques tions strike deep root into the think ing conscience of the time. Meantime the phenomenon continues of a small but growing denomination, having for its saint and martyr a man who is generally esteemed by other re- ligonists of the time and place where he lives as an ignorant pretender; hav ing for its Hatred book a volume which moat people outside the faith cannot read with patience, imd yet flUwl with tho fire of upo.stolle missionary enter prise and going forth by the hundreds to convert tho world. Surprise Is expreP!ed by a reader of The Journal that ball ehould bo denied to a man thurged with murder un 1 tin ii i ranted after ho has been con- ted of tho iritii" nnd hunt begun to M tve out hl.H wntem In the peniten tiary. ThU apparent lni-oni.tf ncy of Iho law U only Miperflclal. In tho cane f KtnnlMfin, which neema to prnvuk tho Inqulty, tho churK wiih immhT In tho llmt degrreo. n unbailable o.TVnat Hut li was tonvieted of murder In ho ncond d. un nnd under th N. intf-ka ulatute.i tan bo rrleiiaed on boit I after cimr.ylnar with et rtain f run liftUtfsiotory to th i-ourt. THE CHINESE FAMINE Over seven hundred dollars tele graphed from Lincoln is now feeding starving Chinese ten thousand miles away. This Is a wonderful triumph, both of human love and human scl- ence The yellow-skinned Mongolian feare(j and hateJ by the American workStlr man caricatured by American artlstg shunned and avoided by' middle i,,. Aj , A. -' MM 1V1UIUI V 1IW U VAJ today bv the hundred thousand in cen- tral Chink. And the American dollars are dropping into the relief fund for him all over the land. A dollar will save a human being-a yellow China- man-nerha a hiini. rhn-wm starvation until the first fruits of an- other crop can be gathered In June. So the dollars fall thick as April snow Into the relief treasury today. Tonight they are telegraphed to China4 Tomor row they are transformed Into rice and flour and are feeding hungry Chines lips. Into this broadened world stale of today, of which every human being is a citizen there should come the widened world-knowledge to accompany the widened world-sympathy. Since we are fellow citizens, with the Chinaman and thy Hindoo we need to know them bet ter. No time so opportune to study Chiiese lessons as when our dollars are going to China.. Take a map of China. The two great rivers, whoso names we learned in our childhood geography, are tho Yiangtsekiang and Hoang-ho. They flow eastward almost parallel with each other for the last 700 miles of their courses and empty into the Yellow sea about 500 miles apart at their mouths. Between the lower courses of these two rivers lies the famine district. It bor ders the Yellow sea for 200 miles north ward from the mouth of the Ylang- tse-Kiang and extends back into the country about 20 miles more. It has, therefore, about 40,000 square miles, a Ul"e more inAn ndIt ine area OI braska- And uPon tlwt m miles are huddled between 15,000,000 and 20,000,000 Chinese. In the province of Kianssu, where the famine is most severe, there Is a population of 362 to the square mile. In the province of Anhuei, part of which suffers equally with Kiangsu, there Is a population of 432 to the square mile. These are farm ing populations for the most part. They arcs not manufacturing districts like Holland and Belgium. Four hun dred people, living upon the land, and supporting as part of the product of an old civilization, leisure and cultured classes In their midst. And this upon an allowance of an ncro and a half of surface oll for each Individual, from which must bo subtracted all that la u.t"d for streets and roads and bulhi- Ings and private grounds before they actually arrlv nt tho slzo of the place of land from whose dirt the Individual must dig ltl daily bread. Hero I IN? cait of Chinese starva tion today exptvsMd hi the lmlent terriiN if political ,viiiottiy-ovcrpop'4 latlon. No out-pourlr,tf of western ym- pathy and western lol.ni, glorioti, kiM an hide of l nevoli'iu j and sympathy can ae ot r-crowdt d China an Indln I frm ;i recurrence of famine. ThU funliu district of China In watered If Uto au .il uinal aad by nurmroui lakes and ther. It In fact, tho over, POLITICS Subscription $1.00 flow of these waters which .destroyed the crops last year and left the people destitute. The country is a splendid garden when in cultivation as every traveler upon the grand canal testlflt. But no cultivation, however painstak ing, can save a people from suffering and death who live from hand to mouth is and'multlply without forethought. This ls a Phaso ot homely truth which many writers upon India and China do not d,scuss- But u ,s Jusl- susceptible of proof from the facts in China n la lt I analogue by any Nebraska farmer who wlu P,ant a handful of corn In a hill Instead of threo or four grains The bcst book written upon China la "VMngo Life in China," by Dr. Arthur H' Sn,ith a Congregational clergyman. His descriptions of the conditions of the common people are vivid and disclose the scientific eye of the sociol ogist as well as the heart of the gospe' missionary. Dr. Smith has the courage to state the main cause of Chinese mis ery in a few words, and these words were written eight years ago. He says' "Over-population. The whole Chinese race is and always has been given up with a single devotion to the task of raising up a posterity, to do for the fathers what the fathers have done for the grandfathers. In this particular line, they have realized Wesley'a con ception of the ideal church In its line, where, as he remarked, the members are 'all at it, and always at It.' War, famine, pestilence, sweep off millions of tho population, but a few decades of peace seem to repair the ravages of the past, which are lost to sight, like bat tle fields covered with wide areas of waving grain. However much we may admire tho recuperative power c the Chinese as a whole and individually, it Is difficult not to feel righteous indignation toward a system which violates those benefi cent laws of nature which would mer cifully put an end to many branches of families when such ,brn fltted to survlv It' ,mrint(Hih,0 tn contemplate with equanimity the dellb- erate, persistent and uniform propaga- tion of poverty, disease and crime which 0 ht th t b flrrm.nJ wIth every restrlctlon to prevent Us multiplication, and to see this nrnn. gation of evil and misery done, too with an air of virtue, as If this were of itself a kind of religion, often, In deed, the only form of religion in whit h the Chinese take any vital Interest 'It Is this system which loads down tho rising generation with the respon sibility for feeding and clothing tenso' thousands of human beings who ought never to have boon born, and whose existence can never be other than a burden to themselves, a period of Inces sant Btrugglo without rosplto and with out hop. To the Intelligent fort;n.r, the most prominent fuct In China is the poverty of Its people. There are too many villages to the nqtiaro mile, too many families to the village, too many 'mouths' to th family. Wherever onj !?oo, Jt is the mimo weary tale with Inti ntilmbl.t r lteiatlon. Poverty, p..v rty, poverty, ahvuy and cvrrnmm Hvt rty." THIS I'IKir WMVI KMKV. On. ye.ir Thuiday beginning at thirteen mlnutf pu.t five o'clock In the ino'Siing, en e.irthquako caused widespread damttza In tha l.av rtn of California, and Wt an Krant Leo at the mircy of fire by brtakln th water main. Vnr it. .-...- .. ----- - iiti i vj ia s n iir rt
