Press Reports on Jehovah's Witnesses, 1940–1946
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PEGLER-HE'S AGAINST By JACK ALEXANDER
ARMAGEDDON, INC. By Stanley High
"How's that again?" The officer is having a difficult time telling this Witness she can't distribute literature without a permit.
PHOTO BY DETROIT NEWS
Jehovah's Witnesses Make Hate a Religion
FOR conscientious cussedness on the grand scale, no other aggregation of Americans is a match for Jehovah's Witnesses. Defiance of what others cherish and revere is their daily meat. They hate all religions—and say so from the house-tops. They hate all governments with an enthusiasm that is equally unconcealed. On phonograph records, sound trucks, the radio and in a Noah's flood of literature, they admit, without conscious blasphemy, that they hold a prior lien on the Almighty. On the rest of us—the Great Unwashed—they look down their spiritual noses. We,they say,have got "it"coming to us,and "it"—as they can triumphantly prove by the Scriptures—is due almost any time now.
For being generally offensive, they have been getting their heads cracked, their meetings broken up, their meetinghouses pillaged and themselves thrown into jail. Six thousand of them are in German concentration camps. In Canada, to be one of them is a prison offense. In Australia, a demand for their suppression is growing. Their lawyers' briefs for their run-ins with mobs or the law in the United States during the single month from June fourteenth to July fourteenth cover thirty-nine cases in twenty states. Those are only samples. The grand total would be several times that.
Jehovah's Witnesses look like average Americans—as, in fact, they are. Twenty-five thousand of them came to Detroit in mid-July-after Columbus, Ohio, had banned them. At the same time there were similar, though somewhat smaller, meetings in nineteen other cities, East, South and West.
Before this rising wave of ill will they never retreat. On the contrary—fortified again by the Scriptures—they welcome it. Their chief regret seems to be that their martyrdoms, to date, have been only minor ones. The times, they confidently predict, will yet require some major martyring.
Hall has a flat roof and is not in the shade. The Witnesses rigged up a hospital in a near-by hotel, manned it with their own doctors, and with orthodox ministrations took care of the scores who were felled by the sun. Inside the hall they set up their own kitchen and cafeteria and, through the steam, served boiled beef, boiled potatoes, heat-shriveled peas and wilted lettuce to the shirt-sleeved, cotton-gowned multitude. For four days, the 25,000 milled and sweated, prayed, sang and witnessed and, to the sighing accompaniment of thousands of palm-leaf fans, listened over the public-address system to speakers most of them could not see.
Those in Detroit came on foot, by bus and train, in first-rate automobiles and in jalopies, the like and number of which the motor city had never seen before. Their assorted vehicles, from most of the states in the Union, jammed Detroit's parking lots. The city's third, fourth and fifth rate hotels and rooming houses did a business better than any that had come their way in ten years.
The heat in Detroit's best shade was near a hundred. Convention
The police said they had never seen so large a crowd so orderly. More than 1000 Witness ushers, armed with canes, kept the throngs on the move, with much "brothering" and "sistering." Gently
GLOBE PHOTO
From house to house, the Witnesses carry their message by phonograph, something they say Jehovah has ordained them to do. Below—Baptism in a Detroit swimming pool, concluding the Witnesses' convention.
© DETROIT TIMES
"Judge" Rutherford, center, with his bodyguards. A mighty messenger, he fell heir to the spiritual (and material) empire of Charles Taze (Pastor) Russell.
PHOTO BY DETROIT NEWS
maneuvered canes barred the way to the offices where the men behind the gathering did business. When the canes came down, the reception was all that any reporter could ask for. Even the photographers were welcomed. Judging from all outward appearances, this might have been a midsummer gathering of Kansas Methodists.
But it wasn't. The Witnesses had come to town not merely to meet but to witness. Every morning, near the entrance to the hall, one of the brethren with a good voice and a technique like that of an evangelist turned auctioneer drummed up Witnesses by the dozens of carloads to carry the message to Detroit. They carried it not only block by block to Detroit but to Flint and Pontiac and scores of towns within a fifty-mile radius. They distributed more than 1,000,000 pieces of literature, played their phonographs on thousands of front porches, set up their loud-speaker trucks on hundreds of street corners.
The Biggest Source of Conscientious Objectors
WHEN, on Sunday evening, the last fervent word was spoken in Convention Hall and the first of the dusty motor caravans turned homeward, some hundreds of the Witnesses could boast that they had had minor brushes with the law. Some fifty of them were left behind in its clutches. And the thousands who were still foot-loose undoubtedly went their separate ways confident that treatment of the same sort, or worse, was in store for them. In that, they are probably right.
The Witnesses keep no rolls of membership, the scriptural ground on which such records are eschewed is one of the few of their innumerable Biblical quotations which I failed to note. Some idea of the size of the movement can be gathered from the fact that last year it employed, full and part time, 44,000 workers. That is 10,000 more than there were in the previous year. There are no churches in the usual sense. Groups of followers are called Company Organizations, their meeting places, Kingdom Halls. In 1939, according to the official yearbook, there were 2425 Company Organizations. That is an increase of 639 over 1938. This growth has gone on at so fast a pace that recently, for greater ease of administration, the United States has been divided into six major regions and 153 zones. These sectors, large and small, are looked after by regional and zone servants. A rough idea of the size of the spiritual empire over which these servants preside is indicated by the fact that last year they traveled more than 2,150,000 miles.
Thus, even in the absence of exact figures, it seems likely that the United States harbors no other out-of-step and out-of-sympathy minority of anything like their size and militancy. In the event of war, they are sure to furnish the largest quota of conscientious objectors, and, perhaps, the most troublesome. In this near-war period, no other group so boldly condemns not only the current patriotic trend but patriotism, specifically and in general. No other, for good measure, condemns so many other things by which Americans lay store. In our democratic flesh they are, in short, a thorn of painful proportions—all the more troublesome a thorn because its watering is scriptural and its soil the conscience.
A good deal of mystery surrounds the history and spectacular growth of this amazing movement. A similar cloak covers some of the story of its current operations. The history part is dismissed in the 1940 yearbook with a sketchy paragraph. This recounts that in 1872 "a few Christian persons met together in a little town in Pennsylvania to consider the Scriptures relative to the coming of Christ Jesus and His kingdom." There is very little else save that by 1884 this group had waxed sufficiently to organize a corporation under the name of Zion's Watch Tower Society, later changed to Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. That was in Pennsylvania. When, in New York State, the harvest began to ripen, another corporation was set up to garner it, The People's Pulpit Association. That later metamorphosed into the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society—under which corporate banner it continues to operate. In 1914, in the British vineyard, the
International Bible Students' Association, Inc., was set up.
The purpose of these corporate bodies is simple "to wit: the dissemination of Bible truths by means of publication, in printed form and other lawful means."
This official outline history is the only one extant. It is important chiefly for what it omits. The most important of its omissions is Charles Taze (Pastor) Russell. For him there is not so much as a parenthesis or an obituary. And yet the "few Christian persons" who forgathered in 1872 were chiefly Charles Taze Russell. Whatever revelation descended on that modest assembly was relayed through him. From then until his death—which had not been counted on—in 1916, he continued to do the relaying. The various corporations mentioned above were the material means for the dissemination of his revelations. The body of his beliefs came to be known as Russellism; those who espoused them, as Russellites. That his name is now erased from the tablets of the law does not alter the fact that, but for him, Jehovah's Witnesses would be back, religiously, where they came from.
"Pastor" Russell, in his early career, ran a haberdashery in Pittsburgh. It prospered and he came to own a small chain of such establishments. His religion—such as it was—was Congregationalist.
One day, young Russell, so the story goes, dropped in at a Pittsburgh poolroom. An atheistic hanger-on was in the midst of a denial of heaven and hell. Russell wasn't so sure. But he decided to find out. He bought a Bible and settled down to it. He found out plenty about heaven and hell, and a lot that he had not figured on. The force of what he found out drove him out of the haberdashery business and into the company of the prophets.
He began to preach in 1878. His title of "Pastor" was won, not by the laying on of hands but by leg work. His zeal, so his followers boasted, took him farther than the journeyings of St. Paul and Bishop Asbury combined. His writings were "more extensive than the combined works of St. Paul, St. John, Arius, Waldo, Wycliffe and Martin Luther—the six messengers to the Church who preceded
him." Up to the time of his death, his six major books had had a total distribution of nearly 15,000,- 000 copies.
A Candidate for the Place Next to St. Paul
THE doctrine he preached was millennial. But there was very little millennial about his own earthly interlude. He was frequently involved in lawsuits and controversy. He once declared, with what must have been autobiographical insight, that "many of the Lord's most faithful children live in a matrimonial furnace of affliction." After many years of life in such a furnace, he escaped via a divorce—the court holding, contrariwise, that his attitude of "insistent egotism," "extravagant selfpraise" and "continual domination" were such as to "render the life of any sensitive Christian woman a burden and make her life intolerable."
There were hints of a much shadier sort. But these never shook the faith from his followers. "When the history of the Church of Christ is fully written," said the official panegyric that followed his death, "it will be found that the place next to St. Paul in the gallery of fame as expounder of the Gospel of the Great Master will be occupied by Charles Taze Russell."
Those words were penned in the first flush of grief. They reckoned without the all-too-human certainty that others, who once had been satisfied to touch the hem of Pastor Russell's garment, would aspire to wear it. The one on whose shoulders it finally came to rest was Joseph Franklin Rutherford — "Judge" Rutherford to his following; plain "J. F." by his own signature.
The story of Judge Rutherford's rise to prophetic stature is not part of the literature of the movement. By birth he is a Missourian. He studied law. As a young man, in several small Missouri towns, he practiced it. His judicial handle, like Pastor Russell's ordination, appears to be synthetic. On an occasion or two—so one of his associates told me—he was called to sit in something which approximated a judicial capacity. That was a long time ago, and, (Continued on Page 50) To aid the national defense is the duty and desire of every loyal person and institution.
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diana, for 5,000,000. The Pontiac Body Company was bought and added to Oakland. The Dayton Wright Airplane Company, representing assets of more than1,200,000, was bought. Biggest of all was the trade made for the corporation late in September, 1919, by John J. Raskob and Mr. Durant, with the Fisher brothers. They bought a three-fifths interest in the Fisher Body Corporation, paying ninety-two dollars a share for 300,000 shares of common stock. Eventually, this became a complete merger. There were other commitments that seemed far less appropriate. But earnings in 1919 had been $60,000,000. Optimism had seemed to be fully justified until along in September, 1920, when a change set in almost overnight.
Everything I had in the world was in General Motors. But feeling as I did about the type of organization we had, I was worried. Incidentally, months after Chrysler got out, Durant nego- tiated with him for the purchase of his stock.
Durant, in his loyalty to the institution and his friends, always was trying to hold up and boost the price in the market, sacrificing his own interests characteristically in his efforts to do so. I felt he had about as much chance for success as if he had tried to
ket, even if the stock of the corporation was involved. He looked up.
"What is it?" There was a fleeting smile. He was never too tired to be kind.
"I wish to go away. Not feeling well." This was no exaggeration.
" Certainly," he said. "That will be perfectly all right with me. Get some rest."
I went to Europe. In London I made up my mind. I'd return to New York and resign. Then I could protect my self, and with a clear conscience. So I bought a Rolls Royce car for future delivery. I supposed Mrs. Sloan and I would take a long time seeing Europe. But on the day I got back and walked into the New York office I sensed something unusual.
"Where's W. C.?"
" Gone away. A month's vacation. "
Queer indeed. He'd never done any thing of the sort before. I decided to postpone my resignation. I was a manufacturer, and this could be made the grandest manufacturing enterprise the world had ever seen. I did not want to leave. So I said to myself. "I'll ride along awhile and see what happens."
Editor's Note-This is the fourth of a series of articles by Mr. Sloan and Mr. Sparkes. The fifth will appear next week.
ARMAGEDDON, INC.
(Continued from Page 19)
so I was told, he never uses the title when speaking of himself. Among his multitude, however, he is always Judge Rutherford, or just "the Judge."
Just how or when Judge Rutherford felt the first stirrings toward religious leadership is not very precisely revealed. The accepted story seems to be that a Russellite, armed with literature and scriptural quotations, called one day at his Missouri home. The quotations were delivered, the literature left, and Rutherford looked into them.
He, reputedly, was as astonished by what he found as the inquiring Charles T. Russell had been. He became, as
Russell had, a Bible student and, eventually, a Russellite.
Converts in Rutherford's profession were rare. Moreover, the law courts being what they were, a Russellite with legal talent was needed. As a result, he was singled out for more than ordinary attention. Pastor Russell looked on him with favor. Eventually he turned up in Brooklyn as attorney for the movement.
That was in 1909. Pastor Russell, when he died in 1916, left no word as to his successor. But because of his frequent legal appearances in defense of Russell, and his directive hand in the
(Continued on Page 52)
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business management of the vast Rus sell establishment, Rutherford was all set to move in.
He moved in at about the time that the United States entered the first World War. He did not approve of war. With a forthrightness which seems to characterize many religious leaders only in times of peace, he boldly said so. When troubled young men of his flock sought his advice, he called their attention to the section of the Draft Act which provided exemption on grounds of conscience. When the military authorities besought him to be, if not more co-operative, a little more quiet, he loudly refused. The story of his subsequent hounding—particularly at the hands of blood-thirsty clergymen—makes unpleasant reading. He and seven of his followers were eventually sentenced to the Federal prison in Atlanta.
Rutherford spent nine months in Atlanta. He put the time to good use. By the end of nine months, more than 100 fellow prisoners were enrolled in his Bible class. His eventual release came through the reversal by the United States Court of Appeals of the original decision. Rutherford, however, gives no credit to the court. His followers had been heard from. In his behalf, thousands of letters of protest poured into the Department of Justice. One petition for his release with 700,-000 names on it was presented at Washington.
The general assumption seemed to be that, after Atlanta, Rutherford and his cause would languish. Quite the opposite happened. He had skirted the fringe of martyrdom and, snatched back, he was acclaimed. Today, at seventy, his only rival to the title of the nation's most potent religious leader is Father Coughlin. But Coughlin is a voice. Rutherford is both a voice and a movement.
But it is not likely that the appearance of more than human characteristics would surprise his followers. His words are not accepted as the law and the prophets. They are accepted as more than that. The Witnesses rely on what the Bible says. But they count on Judge Rutherford to tell them what it means by what it says. The latter role is obviously more important.
For such a superprophetic status, the Judge is humanly well equipped. He is more than six feet tall, and portly. He walks with the same measured and solemn dignity that one sees at its best on the floor of the United States Senate. In fact, he looks more like a senator than most senators. He wears stand-up collars of the Champ Clark era, black string bow ties, and a long black ribbon for his glasses. Senatorlike, the glasses are handy props. He uses them for minor gesticulations which go with profound deliverances. His voice is a match for his frame—heavy, rounded and, on occasion, booming.
A Complete Senatorial Bearing
But Judge Rutherford is shielded from the world as no senator ever was. In Detroit he lived incommunicado at an unnamed hotel. During the four days, his 25,000 had two opportunities to see him—at the opening and at the closing sessions. He was scheduled to make one appearance in between. But when the heat passed ninety-nine, it was canceled.
His associates are as loath to talk about him as they are to open the way to his presence. The movement, they say, is not of man but of God, and the less said about personalities the better.
One or two personal items were unearthed. Apparently there is a Mrs. Rutherford. There is also a son. Whether they are Witnesses, no one seemed prepared to say.
A Big-Time Business
In addition to these heavy labors on the creative side, he runs the business. The business of Jehovah's Witnesses is big-time stuff. Its brick-and-mortar headquarters are two modern buildings, seven and eight stories respectively, in Brooklyn. One of them, facing pleasantly on East River, is the office quarters. Here, also, the Judge is housed. Housed with him are the several hundred employees. They, like all full-time Witness workers, are not hirelings. They get their board and keep and ten dollars a month for incidentals. The board part is provided chiefly from two Witness-owned farms.
The second building houses the printing plant and factory. The corporation owns property in other parts of the United States. One of these is a commodious edifice, built in a style that might be called Southern California Moslem, located in San Diego. It is called Beth-Sarim—the House of the Princes. Currently it provides the West Coast quarters for Judge Rutherford and his associates. Its long-time purpose—and it is built to last—is to serve as a habitation for the prophets David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, to name only a few, when they return to earth. To spare them trouble with the courts, the deed is drawn in their names.
There are properties in a number of foreign countries. These include printing establishments of some size in Great Britain, Switzerland and, until the Nazis took over, in Germany.
The collective output is astronomical. Since 1920, according to the official figures, the movement has produced and distributed a grand total of 309,500,000 books and pamphlets. That yearly average of 15,000,000 is being stepped up. The total for 1939
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was 27,000,000.
In addition to English, this literature has been printed in eighty-eight languages and dialects.
During 1939,4,500,000 copies of The Watchtower were printed, 5,000,000 copies of Consolation, another semi-monthly publication, and 2,000,000 copies of Kingdom News.
How fast and in what quantity Judge Rutherford's words are spread abroad can be gathered from the sale of his two latest productions. His most recent book is Salvation. It was published in 1939. Within three months it had sold more than 1,000,000 copies. At present it is rounding the 3,000,000 mark. His latest pamphlet is Judge Rutherford Uncovers the Fifth Column. The "column," when the shades are pulled back, appears to be the Roman Catholic hierarchy. This thirty-two-page nickel pamphlet was printed in late June. By the end of July it had been sown in good or stony ground to the amount of 4,000,000 copies.
The Brooklyn factory produces more than literature. It also produces phonographs. Last year, just short of 10,000 Witness-made phonographs were sold at ten dollars each. With each instrument, like sample blades with a razor, went three Rutherford recordings. In all, more than 30,000 such machines are in current use. In addition, there are probably 1000 Witness sound trucks in the United States. During 1939, the Brooklyn offices shipped out 310,000 records.
This equipment is being constantly improved on, and new gadgets sold. One of the high spots at Detroit was the demonstration of a new phono- graph, Witness-built and streamlined. It was compact and light. Inside, there was space for several records. An addi tional "surprise" compartment con- tained room for a dozen Watchtowers and Consolations, three Rutherford books and an airtight corner big enough for two sandwiches. Only Judge Rutherford received louder ap- plause than the demonstrator of this machine when, a perspiring Jack Horner, he stuck in his thumb and pulled out a sandwich.
On the financial side of this extensive picture, very little is revealed. "For the past few years," says the yearbook, "the detailed statement of the money received and paid out has not been published, for the obvious reason that the enemy would use these facts to further hinder, if possible, the work of the Society." Supporters, if driven by sufficient curiosity, can make their own examination of the books. "But they are not open to the enemy, who work against the Lord and his Kingdom."
A Profitable Outfit
Brooklyn, apparently, keeps well ahead of the sheriff. A writer for the New York Evening Post recently took samples of the Rutherford books and pamphlets to a New York publisher. The publisher reported he could sell the twenty-five-cent books for eleven cents, the pamphlets for two cents, and make a normal profit on both.
There appears to be no shadow on Judge Rutherford's use of this money—secretive though he is about it. Some of it undoubtedly goes to the aid of indigent Witnesses abroad. Some of it goes for promotion. Occasionally, there is a large-scale layout in the interests of high-class drama. In 1938, when the Judge was in England, the Witnesses hired Albert Hall and packed it for his speech. In addition, they hired halls in twenty-three cities in the United States, ten in Canada, ten in Australia and four in New Zealand. All these centers were tied in by wire and wireless through the hired and highly expensive facilities of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and on this improvised world hook-up more than 100,000 Witnesses heard the Judge at his expense. The nineteen cities where meetings were held simultaneously with the convention in Detroit were similarly tied in.
Biblical Arithmetic
Although Judge Rutherford, by virtue of his spiritual status, is the master in this vast material domain, its government, technically, is in the hands of a board of seven directors. A board election is held every three years. Since there is no scroll of membership in the organization, there are likewise no dues. At kingdom meetings no plate is passed. Each Witness, however, gives what he is able to the local work and nationally. In elections to the board of trustees, all Witnesses are eligible to vote whose names are recorded in Brooklyn as having contributed ten dollars or more for the preceding year.
The basic doctrine which Judge Rutherford expounds, on which his growing kingdom rests and in support of which tens of thousands of his followers cheerfully offer their heads to be cracked and their bodies beaten, is that of the Second Coming of Christ.
That idea is not particularly new among the theologians. In forms adapted to the age, it has been preached, off and on, in almost every Christian century since the third or fourth. During the nineteenth century it was one of the moving ideas behind the trek of the Mormons in search of a fit place for their Zion. It was the central dogma of the Adventists. Many so-called fundamentalists in various evangelical churches have preached it. But never has it been more elaborately embroidered than by Messrs. Russell and Rutherford.
Rutherford, however, was the smarter of the two. Russell set definite dates for the "coming." When, on each successive occasion, the event failed to materialize, he was driven back to his pencil and paper to show to his somewhat shaken following that he had miscalculated. Rutherford does not go in for times and seasons. The
To go into the maze of scriptural and expository detail with which, to the satisfaction of their followers, they buttressed this belief would require a high order of imagination and no little mathematical skill. Mathematically, Russell worked by addition, Rutherford by multiplication. The former, by adding together all the available ages of the patriarchs, the reigns of the kings and judges, and two dates from the New Testament, arrived at the conclusion that the advent had actually occurred in 1874. It was an "invisible" advent. Rutherford, by an even more devious system, which he "explained" in a book now out of print, multiplied and got the year 1914.
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WIDE WORLD
Barred from Massachusetts public schools for refusing to salute the flag, these children attend a makeshift Witness school.
INTERNATIONAL
Cars of Witnesses who refused to salute the flag overturned in Litchfield, Illinois.
INTERNATIONAL
GLOBE PHOTO
Martyred by martyrs. Dennis Ryan's head was bashed by Witnesses' canes in a riot at their anti-Catholic rally.
"Gently maneuvered canes" barred the overcurious from the business offices at the Detroit convention. But, if necessary, the canes could be less gentle.
PHOTO BY DETROIT NEWS
"Witnesses look like average Americans-as, in fact, they are." A typical Louisville family of Witnesses.
nearest he comes to the calendar is in such phrases as "soon," "at hand," "not long delayed."
In regard to the year 1914, however he is specific. Up to that year the world was Satan's and he ruled it Everything made by man, from that date back to Noah, was not God's but Satan's handiwork. But 1914 ushered in a new era. Christ in that year returned invisibly to earth. Satan, for the first time since the flood, was challenged. To date, to be sure, he has not
There are two reasons why he has not been routed before this. For one thing, this "transition period" gives an opportunity for those who have apprehended the truth to publish it, so that, at the final cataclysm, no one will have the excuse that he has not been warned. The second reason, earnestly advanced by one of Rutherford's spokesmen, is that "Jehovah is setting the stage to make sure that in the final
been dislodged. But his ousting is "at hand."
conflict His superior powers will be shown to the greatest advantage against the hosts of Satan."
Once these two purposes are accomplished, then at Armageddon (Revelation xvi) the final battle will be fought. Armageddon, it should be pointed out, is Jehovah's battle, not man's. Even those who have heard and witnessed will be on the side lines. But in its wake will come the great dividing (Matthew xxv, 31-34). Those who have not previously repented will be destroyed. The saved will be gathered from the ends of the earth (Matthew xxiv, 31). Jehovah's eternal kingdom will be built upon the ruins (Daniel ii, 44).
The Judge's Theocracy
Around this doctrine of Armageddon, pre and post, Jehovah's Witnesses are organized. Even the small children among them are Armageddon-conscious. "We don't know when it will come," they told me brightly, "but it ought to be mighty soon now."
The reasons the doctrine takes hold are not all scriptural. Some of them are psychological. To many of the Witnesses, the real world is an unrelieved burden; a place of inequalities and frustrations. Armageddon and the Second Coming are the promise that Jehovah will turn the tables for their benefit; that, for them, all things will be made new. The exalted of the earth will be brought low and they, who have been humbled, will, at long last, be exalted.
Deliberately or otherwise, the literature of the movement never misses a chance to emphasize this pot of spiritual gold at the end of the millennial rainbow. That, plus a great deal of Scripture, was behind the slogan: "Millions Now Living
Will Never Die." It accounts for the arrogance with which Judge Rutherford assumes that, in the day of the sheep and the goats, he and his followers will be first, or thereabouts, among the chosen. It explains, also, the Judge's more recent doctrine of Theocracy.
Theocracy is a product of the regrettable necessity that the Witnesses, pending Armageddon, have to get along somehow with real people in a hard world. Most of the people and all of the world are of the devil thanks to the fact that he has reigned
since Noah. That goes for all governments and all their works. From the corner schoolhouse to the Capitol dome, they and their transactions are hellspawned. It goes, also, for all business. It covers organized religion and the churches. With special venom, it covers the Roman Catholic Church.
Such wholesale elimination leaves the Witnesses with very little territory to play around in and none to call their own. Theocracy provides some in the theocratic government. The theocratic government is Jehovah's state, within but apart from the world—the nucleus of the Kingdom whose ultimate supremacy will be established by the Second Coming. The laws for this government come straight from the Scriptures, as interpreted by Judge Rutherford. To it, the Witnesses own not only their first but their sole allegiance. And queer, misled, fanatical though they may be, when they own an allegiance they own it. Their yeas are yea and their nays nay, unmixed with ifs or buts.
Because the only citizenship which they acknowledge is in a heavenly country, they do not vote or hold public office. They do not salute the flag. The Scripture for that is Exodus xx, 4,5: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them."
Man's earthly creations being tee-totally polluted, some of them refuse to send their children to public schools. They transact only such business as is necessary for bodily survival. They will have no part or parcel in the work of the churches.
Soldiers Only of the Lord
Most discommoding of their eschewals—things being in the shape they are—they refuse to fight. That is, they refuse to fight for the powers of this world. In their own spiritual precincts, as Judge Rutherford has recently pointed out, they are no more pacifistic than the Old Testament's Jehovah was. For Jehovah and his people they would fight, as Jehovah did. That is all they would fight for.
Someone recently put to Judge Rutherford the hoary hypothesis as to whether, if his mother were attacked, he would defend her. The Judge had a
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scriptural comeback on his tongue's end: "Who is my mother?'"" he asked. "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven.' The fact,'" said the Judge, "that one has a brother and sister and mother after the flesh, but who are against the Theocracy, does not mean at all that the Christian is under any obligation whatsoever to care for or protect any such opponent of the kingdom."
It is in behalf of these manifold beliefs that the Witnesses do their witnessing. All of them put in time at it. Those who, because of unshakable worldly obligations, can give only their spare time are called Publishers. Fulltime workers are called Pioneers. A Pioneer is expected to put in a minimum of 150 witnessing hours every month. Special Pioneers have a 200-hour minimum.
The usual technique is to map out a city or a rural community and cover it singly or in pairs, porch by porch.
Most active workers carry a phono-graph, which is set up, needle poised, before the doorbell is rung. The householder, before he has had a chance to turn tail, is met with Judge Rutherford's resonant voice and uncanonical phrases. That, plus the element of surprise, is generally better than a foot inside the door. If, hearing the Judge's declamation, the heart of the resident is hardened, then the Witness politely leaves and moves next door. If, however, anything remotely resembling an opening appears, literature is passed out and a few warning words are spoken. If the reception is better than that, the householder is promised another visit and his name goes down in the notebook for a "back call."
The zeal, devotion and downright courage of the Witnesses in this pursuit are very great. It is doubtful if any other Americans, save postmen, pound more pavements. Last year, back calls alone totaled 1,856,382.
No one looking for trouble could find fault with the Witnesses' demeanor. They go about their business quietly and with a good deal of polite ness. It is only when their Scripture-guided consciences are run afoul of that they turn to stone.
That, of late, has been happening with increasing frequency. Their invi tation to trouble is generally due, not to any personal offensiveness, but to what they preach and what they refuse to do. In particular, their attacks on the Catholic Church have been some- thing less than peace-provoking.
With Supreme Court Backing
This, in fact, came to an issue last year in New Haven, Connecticut, and was carried to the United States Supreme Court. Three Witnesses, a father and two sons, were engaged in their witnessing on Cassius Street in that city—a street populated 90 per cent by Roman Catholics. The records played by the three itinerants included one vicious attack on the Catholic Church. Two men, both Catholics, who heard it, advised the Witnesses that, if they wanted to keep their skins intact, they had better move on. The Witnesses took the matter to court.
The case was lost in both the Common Pleas Court in New Haven and the State Supreme Court. The United States Supreme Court, however, reversed these decisions and upheld the Witnesses. Mr. Justice Roberts, who delivered the unanimous opinion, declared that "in the realm of religious faith and in that of political belief
sharp differences arise. In both fields the tenets of one man may seem the rankest error to his neighbor. To persuade others to his point of view, the pleader, as we know, may at times resort to exaggeration, to vilification of men who have been or are prominent in church or state, and even to false statement. But the people of this nation have ordained in the light of history that, in spite of the probability of excesses and abuses, these liberties are, in the long view, essential to enlightened opinion and right conduct on the part of the citizens of a democracy."
The Flag Riots
Another thing which involves the Witnesses in frequent run-ins, legal and otherwise, is their unwillingness to salute the flag. For this shortcoming they have been assaulted by rampant patriots in scores of communities all the way from Del Rio, Texas, to Kennebunk, Maine. This issue they also carried to the Supreme Court. The court, in this case, held that school authorities had the right to enforce the flag salute. Fortified by that decision, gangs of self-styled patriots and self-annoted uprooters of spies, saboteurs and Fifth Columnists have redoubled their houndings of the Witnesses.
The attacks at Del Rio took place two days after the flag decision. Del Rio happens to be located on the Mexican border and, doubtless, is jumpier than many inland communities. At any rate, when Witnesses appeared with pamphlets and phonographs, and set about their visitations, "an angry crowd of 400 persons," according to the United Press version, "escorted three Nazi agents to the city limits . . . and warned them not to return. . . . The three agents had been distributing Nazi literature in this Mexican border town for three days. Police said that yesterday they began forcing housewives to listen to pro-Nazi phonograph recordings and leaving copies of a pamphlet entitled 'The Watchtower' and bearing a swastika on the cover."
Into what a jittery state the countrys nerves had fallen can be judged from the fact that this story was printed by the meticulous New York Times. When the truth, belatedly, was run to earth, both the Times and the U.P. published a correction. The truth was that the "Fascist" literature on which Del Rio pounced was a Witness pamphlet entitled Fascism or Freedom—a document which was only a little less violently anti-Fascist than anti-Catholic. The "swastika" was a small drawing of a ball and chain which was aimed to depict fascist slavery.
Despite these attacks, the Witnesses go steadfastly forward, still witnessing, still not saluting. Asked specifically about the flag question, they quote Exodus and inquire, with some reason, which is greater disrespect to the flag: their failure to salute it or the illegal violence of their enemies?
They do not expect that such a reason, however good, will be listened to. They do not appear particularly to care. The times are out of hand. It is scriptural that they should be. The going is tough. That, too, is scriptural. Armageddon was due to come that way. After that, the glory. Lest there be any uncertainty about that, they take out their pocket Testaments and turn to the well-marked thirty-second verse of the twelfth chapter of St. Luke: "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."
THE A MERICAN MAGAZINE
MAGAZINE
COMPLETE IN THIS ISSUE
A NERO WOLFE MYSTERY NOVEL
J. EDGAR HOOVER · TOM GILL SCATTERGOOD Peddlers OF
Here's the inside story of a zealous band of crusaders Jehovah's witnesses—hooted and stoned by American mobs. An experienced reporter tells why they refuse to salute the flag, attack established religions, build a $75,000 home for ancient prophets, and sell millions of books and pamphlets
Faces in the audience at a recent convention of Jehovah's witnesses
MILLIONS of Americans these days are hearing for the first time about that hardy band of religious zealots known as "Jehovah's witnesses" (with a small w). In various sections of the country recently, they have been attacked by mobs, thrown into jail, hooted and stoned out of town for spreading their propaganda against patriotism and against established religions.
Led by 70-year-old Judge Joseph F. Rutherford, their militant and mysterious leader, the witnesses have been denounced as fifth columnists, fascists, saboteurs. They have been ridiculed as bigoted fanatics. They stolidly refuse to salute the American or any other flag. They campaign against recruiting and military training, despite any national emergency. Shouting, "Religion is a racket," they attack bitterly the beliefs of Protestants, Jews, and Catholics.
Such bellicose tactics arouse violent opposition and have brought the witnesses into the limelight throughout the world. In Germany, Hitler's dread Gestapo interned 6,000 witnesses who wouldn't "heil," and the first conscientious objector executed by the Nazis was a witness. In Canada, where the organization has been outlawed, a magistrate
Mooresville, Ind., shouting, "Salute the flag or you won't leave the hall." The mob blocked the exit until morning, when police rescued the terrified witnesses.
More than 2,000 men set fire to the witnesses' Kingdom Hall in Kennebunk, Maine, dragged members from their beds, and beat them in an effort to teach them patriotism. In Litchfield, Ill., one recent Sunday, 100 witnesses appeared in 21 automobiles, preaching their propaganda against flag-saluting. A mob wrecked 12 of the automobiles and beat
over fifth columnists, said recently: "A religious sect known as Jehovah's witnesses has been repeatedly set upon and beaten. They had committed no crime, but the mob adjudged they had, and meted out punishment. The Attorney General has ordered an immediate investigation of these outrages. There is no cause for mass hysteria, no justification for mob violence."
Nevertheless, the rioting continues.
Just what is behind this strange organization? Who are its members, what
paradise
by Jerome Beatty
recently sentenced two witnesses to serve six months in prison, and added he would recommend they be interned afterward for the duration of the war. Great Britain, however, exempts them from war duty.
In the United States a mob of 300 men besieged a meeting of 50 witnesses in
Judge Joseph F. Rutherford (center), 70-year-old leader of Jehovah's witnesses, with Nathan H. Knorr, business manager (left), and his attorney
Witnesses who descended on Monroe, La., with automobiles that broadcast such messages as "Religions are the instruments of Satan," were chased out of the state. In Rockville, Md., a handful of men carrying an American flag broke into a Jehovah's witnesses meeting. When 25 witnesses refused to salute the flag, the place was promptly wrecked and the witnesses ordered to leave town.
up a number of witnesses, while police and other citizens herded 62 men and women to prison for protection.
So great is the storm of indignation against them that Francis Biddle United States Solicitor General, warning the public against the spread of hysteria
are its purposes, and why is it arousing such resentment? Some weeks ago I set out to find the answers. Since then I have attended numerous meetings of Jehovah's witnesses; I have studied their books, pamphlets, magazines, and talked with dozens of witnesses.
I have found no justification for the accusation that the witnesses are Nazi propagandists. They deny it emphatically, and not a word in any of Judge Rutherford's writings can comfort Hitler. The witnesses abhor all earthly governments and respect only the "Theocratic Government of Jehovah."
The rank-and-file members, I am convinced, sincerely believe that Judge Rutherford is leading them toward a delightful, and exclusive, heaven-on-earth.
The practices which have stirred public demonstrations against them spring from a blind faith in their leader rather than from any subversive conspiracy. Their refusal to salute the flag is an example. To the judge, a flag is a graven image, and a salute distinctly violates the Biblical command, "Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto any graven images." The judge trumpets forth his individual interpretations of the Bible, and none of his followers even questions them.
In San Diego, Calif., the organization has built a magnificent $75,000 Spanish home which King David, Isaac, Samuel, and the other prophets are expected to occupy when, according to Judge Rutherford's oracular prophecy, they return to earth most any day now. The judge thoughtfully has landscaped the grounds with date and palm trees, "So," he says, "these princes of the universe will feel at home." Meanwhile, the judge and his wife are occupying the mansion.
As far as I could find out, there are about 45,000 active witnesses throughout the United States. They have about 200,000 followers, including children, in this country, and probably 1,000,000 more throughout the world. Among these are thousands of natives in South Africa.
DISCOVERED that Jehovah's witnesses have succeeded in developing one of America's biggest and strangest businesses. In Brooklyn, N.Y., they own a 7-story apartment house and an 8-story modern printing plant that turns out tons of pamphlets every year. Together the two establishments are worth more than $1,000,000.
They have baptismal ceremonies but, they say, no membership roll. One becomes a witness simply by agreeing to do the will of God, as interpreted by Judge Rutherford.
Alluring to some may be the belief that witnesses, as conscientious objectors, will not have to fight in any war. But they might go to jail. In 1918 Judge Rutherford and six associates were sentenced to 20 years each in Atlanta Penitentiary for obstructing recruiting. After the judge had served nearly a year, a court of appeals ordered a new trial, the war ended, and the case was dropped.
The judge insists that Jehovah's witnesses have existed on earth as an organization for 5,000 years and cites Biblical mention of them. More conservative accounts, however, record that the society was founded by Pastor Charles T. Rus-
HIGH HAT
CLASS with a capital C—that's what Moe Bernoff was after in the new restaurant he was opening in New York's crowded West Fifties.
"Suppose you open some hole-in-theground," he explained to Enrico, his headwaiter. "You may get customers, but you don't get class. The carriage trade is what you want. Guys who leave folding money for tips."
Enrico nodded solemnly. The two men had worked together ever since Moe opened the first of his chain of fabulously successful cafeterias. Privately, Enrico thought Moe's plan to start a fashionable and expensive restaurant was a bit out of his line, but he was used to keeping his mouth shut.
"This Wentworth house has class written all over it," Moe went on. He looked around admiringly at the huge drawingroom that was already fitted out as a dining-room, with an orchestra platform in one corner and a compact, glittering bar in another.
"I picked it up cheap after old Henry Wentworth died. Those society people will feel at home here. All the big shots used to drop in when the old man was still in the chips, throwing high-class brawls for his daughter."
A waiter stepped up. "A young lady to see you, Mr. Bernoff. Said she had an appointment."
"The doll who wants to sing," Moe said. "Send her in."
She walked over to the two men. Enrico's eyes widened as he took in her soft brown hair, her clear eyes, her trim figure.
She sat down at the piano, and sang one of those dreamy popular ballads. Her voice was warm and ingratiating, but you could tell she hadn't had much training. When she finished, Moe walked over to her.
Moe kept strictly to business: "Okay, babe, let's hear you warble."
"Sorry, kid, but I had something else in mind. Someone with more style and class, maybe."
She took it quietly. "Mind if I look around the place for a little while before I leave?"
"Why not?" Moe grinned proudly. "It isn't everyone that gets a chance to look over the Wentworth mansion."
She turned toward him as she rose from the piano stool. "I guess I didn't tell you," she said quietly, "that my name's Wentworth." . .
The night the restaurant opened, Moe stood in a corner with Enrico, delightedly surveying the crowded dining-room. In front of the orchestra stood the same girl, singing the same dreamy ballad. A storm of applause greeted her at the end of the song.
"Class," Moe murmured reverently. "Anyone can see she's got class in her blood."
Enrico nodded solemnly. Since he was used to keeping his mouth shut, he didn't think it necessary to tell Moe what the girl had told him: That her father was Mike Wentworth, of Winnetka, Illinois, a retired policeman. W.A.H.BIRNIE
sell, of Pittsburgh, Pa., about 1876 as the International Bible Students Association. He inherited a chain of clothing stores from his father, but, after giving several hundred thousand dollars to the cause, he was said to have only $200 when he died in 1916. In 1910 he predicted that Christ would return in 1914 and end the rule of imperfect men. Witnesses have twisted his prophecy and say he foresaw the World War.
Taking charge of the organization, Judge Rutherford declared that Christ had come to earth, as predicted, but that he was invisible and that Russell meant that in 1914 the Kingdom of God would begin to assume control. In 1920 Rutherford predicted that Abraham, Isaac, and other prophets would return in 1925. Now he gives no dates but says that Judgment Day is coming "very soon."
Judge Rutherford avoids personal publicity and appears publicly only when trying a case before the Supreme Court or addressing conventions of witnesses. He is 6 feet tall, paunchy, devoted to wing collars and black bow ties. He is not in Who's Who in America. His organization gives out no facts except his age, that he is married and has a son in California who helps him in his work. His health is not good and recently he spent much time in a private sanitarium, the location of which was a closely guarded secret. This mystery with which he surrounds his private life helps to make his followers think of him as a ghostly spirit, not quite of this world. And keeps away hecklers.
IS parents were farmers, near Versailles, Mo. Rutherford read law in an office in Jefferson City, Mo., and practiced in Boonville. Some of his opponents say he adopted the title "Judge" after serving as a temporary judge for four days in the Cooper County, Mo., Circuit Court. Converted by Pastor Russell's sermons, he joined Russell's legal staff in 1909, at the age of forty. If he wasn't a good lawyer then, his successful appearances before the U. S. Supreme Court indicate that he has developed into one. Undoubtedly he is a first-class organizer and an appealing orator. Even his opponents do not believe the charges that he has made a fortune out of the sale of his publications; they are convinced that he is not out for personal profit.
Upon Russell's death many members deserted the society, some because they didn't like Rutherford others who lost faith because Russell's millennium had not arrived. Rutherford (Continued on page 69) Peddlers OF paradise
(Continued from page 54)
managed to keep the concern going even through the dark and disappointing days of 1925, when Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob failed to return to set up their kingdom.
About 1927 the society began to show real strength and to collect substantial contributions Meanwhile, Rutherford had stopped selling Russell's books and had dropped from the publications any mention of the founder, whom he once described as "The greatest man that has lived since the Apostle Paul." All the literature was Judge Rutherford's, and he changed the name from "International Bible Students" to "Jehovah's witnesses."
THE 150 persons who work in the Brooklyn publishing house for $10 a month and "found," are witnesses and live in the apartment building, where they rise at 6:30 A.M. and retire at 10:30 P.M. There, too, lives Judge Rutherford, when he is in Brooklyn, and his office aides. They eat silently in a common dining-room. A man who dined there not long ago told me that a microphone was placed in front of Judge Rutherford, so the witnesses could hear every word he uttered, even "Please pass the salt."
In the printing plant a tall, starry-eyed elevator man took me to the top floor to see Nathan H. Knorr, the small, earnest business manager, who showed me the linotypes, 5 huge rotary presses, and a book-binding plant that can turn out daily 20,000 bound books and 150,000 booklets. An assembly plant turns out portable phonographs and sound-car equipment; immense storerooms are piled high with books, magazines, phonograph records. A busy shipping-room sends out publications in about 80 languages.
The door-to-door distributors of the literature are called "publishers" and all over the world they "exchange for a contribution" about 11,000,000 booklets and about 1,500,000 books a year—5 cents for a pamphlet, 25 cents for a book, and $1 for a yearly subscription to The Watchtower. They also sell Bibles and calendars. The witnesses claim they have printed and distributed to date at least 300,000,000 books and pamphlets.
The portable phonographs are 10 each, including 3 records, and loud-speaker equipment for cars, with a turntable inside the car and horns on the roof, is 140. Brother Knorr said they had 1,000 sound cars and
He sleepy like anyt ing. He stumble out to blind. I leave him in boat. Pretty soon plenty duck come, fly around, sit on water beside blind. By gar, this feller no shoot! I wait one hour, two hour...still he no shoot!
I go see what wrong. This feller sound asleep! Duck all gone...no more chance for shoot that day. "Too bad," say rich feller. "I cannot stay awake!" Then he tell me how he drink the coffee on train last night.
Caffein in coffee keep rich feller tossin'an' turnin' all night. By gar, he get no rest at all! "I fix!" I announce. "Today you try rest. Tonight I make good Sanka Coffee. She 97% caffein-free, an' no can keep you awake!"
1 show words on tin:"Council on Foods of American Medical Association says: 'Sanka Coffee is free from caffein effect and can be used when other coffee has been forbidden'." (I no read this good, but rich feller can.)
He drink the Sanka Coffee. One cup, two cup. He smack lips. He sleep like bear in winter time. Next mornin' he bag limit ver' soon. "Baptiste," he say, "you smart feller! I buy this lodge an' make you manager at good salary!"
The price of Sanka Coffee goes down again! Both "regular" and the popular, new "drip" grind are now selling at the lowest price in history!
PIPES STOPPED UP? USE DRANO
"I'm sorry, dear, you'll have to hold your kitchen party at Nancy's tonight. The pipes are stopped up again!"
"Oh, mother, I can fix that in a sec. I'll get some Drano. That's what we use in the lab sink at school. Be right back."
Look! Drano's specially made to put the heat on down where the drain's stopped. Its churning, chemical boiling action melts, frees grease, dirt, grounds.
"Am I good or am I good? Now mom's going to use a teaspoonful of Drano every night after the dishes are done to keep the pipes from stopping up."
Drano
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