Some American Tendecies: Gum or Zulus?
weary flake
be in favor of giving more money to missions. But what are
missions? but sexually satisfied spinsters looking down on us
for wanting to live while spending all their time knitting
sweaters for Zulus. So this seems to be the question, a
seemingly hard one: what choice will it be Americans, gum or
Zulus?]
SOME AMERICAN TENDENCIES
BY REV. E. D. RIEBEL
It is a comparatively easy matter to be an alarmist. There are
always conditions which can be magnified out of their proportion
in order to prove certein preconcieved notions. However, this ought
not to prevent an honest facing of the facts.
While statistics are uninteresting, nevertheless, when properly
analyzed, they are helpful in dignosing actual conditions. A careful
consideration of the following chart cannot help but reveal certain
tendencies in American life of today.
> $ 1,823,279,783 Tobacco
> $ 805,906,990 Confectionary
> $ 541,841,120 Drugs and Patent Medicines
> $ 107,304,100 Perfumes and Cosmetics
> $ 92,232,280 Gum
> $ 44,000,000 Missions
>
> Comparative outlay of the American people in one year. How the
> people value the missionary cause in comparison with certain private
> gratifications
That this chart is far from complete is easily recognized. We have
no mention here of the money that is expended for illicit booze,
gambling, and all attendent vices.
However, there is enough evidence presented in this chart to reveal
the condition that the American people are spending money freely
for many non-essentials. There is no question but what we are
passing through a spending orgy. Recognizing this tendency in
American life, an outstanding football player will forfeit the
privilege of graduation from his university, capitalize his playing
ability, and, if newspaper accounts are reliable, in three weeks
of playing, accumulate the sum of $100,000. While it is but natural
to pass judgement upon the individual player, nevertheless, what
he has been able to do, is because of the response he has received
from an amusement-loving public.
This condition of affairs presents a supreme challenge to the
Christian church. Just how far Christian people are helping to
swell the expenditure of money for non-essentials is for each
individual Christian to answer. In view of the apparent ease with
which the American people are spending money for personal gratification,
it would be a sad commentary upon American life if the various
Christian and philanthropic enterprises should be made to suffer
beacuse of lack of funds. And of all Christian enterprises, the
missionary cause is one that MUST NOT FAIL. (DETROIT, MICH.)
aemeijers
The number of poor will always exceed the resources available to
alleviate their suffering. In the cases of failed countries or
continents, one could direct half the annual GDP at 'aiding' them, and
within 20 years, they would be as bad off as they are now, since the
population in those areas would balloon even more. (See Haiti.) I am
only speaking of aid work that does actual good, not people attempting
to replace the local mythology with a different mythology.
You can't jump a society from barely-above-stone age village/tribal
level subsistence to a modern nation-state with outside aid. Throw aid
at them, and they stop farming at all, and wait for the next handout. If
they were selling crops, aid makes their crops worthless, so why bother?
Rod Speed
How odd that that never happened in the first world.