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About Vernonia eagle. (Vernonia, Or.) 1922-1974 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 2, 1943)
4 Thursday, December 2, 1943 Vernonia Eagle Comments of The IVeeTc THE POCKETBOOK of KNOWLEDGE A Good Man Departs Columbia county and Ver nonia especially has lost one of it’s most esteemed citizens in the person of J. B. Wilkerson. That loss is one that cannot be replaced for he was a true friend to all who knew him and en joyed the privilege of his acquaintance. Mr. Wilkerson was well known throughout the coun ty, having served in the schools at both St. Helens and Rainier in addition to the years spent here. Then, the position of county judge further increased his leng thy years of public service for the people of the county. There are those who serve merely as servants of the public and then there are Events in Oregon ABSENTEEISM IS FACTOR HERE PRINEIVILLE — Absenteeism has become a problem in the high school here, as well as in some war industries, Principal Dallas W. Norton said last week in announcing stricter enforce ment of rules against unexcused absence from high school. While the high schools of Oregon do not operate on a compulsory at tendance basis, as is the case in the elementary schools, Mr. Norton points out that regula tions for the state recognize on ly three valid excuses for ab sence—death in the family, ill ness, or necessary work in food production. The number of absences has Increased alarmingly in the past few weeks, probably as the re sult of the potato harvest season when so many students were ex cused to work in the fields. HILLSBORO MAY BE ON AN AIR ROUTE HILLSBORO — Oregon Motor Stages, which serves this com munity is the second transpor tation company to apply to the civil aeronautics board for heli copter routes, specifying various routes from Portland to coast points, it was announced last week. One route follows the Wolf Creek highway through Hillsboro and Forest Grove, an other down the Columbia to Astoria and a third would trav el south to Corvallis and to Newport on ¿he coast. The applications have been made now with a hopeful eye to the future, executives said in order that legal proceedings may be in order and the helicopter lines ready to go when produc tion for civilian uses is resumed at the close of the war. CLUB CALVES BEING RECEIVED FOR FEEDING MORO — LeRoy Wright came home with five Angus calves from the Muddy ranch last week as the first outside calves to be brought in for 4-H club work for next year. In addition to this bunch of calves about 12 Herefords will be brought in from other counties and about a dozen calves from local breed ers will be used to bring the total up to near 30 which will be the number of calves fed for 1944 show rings by local club boys and girls. The Vernonia Eagle Marvin Kamholz Editor and Publisher Entered as second class mail matter, August 4, 1922, at the post office in Vernonia, Ore gon, under the *ct of March 3, 1879.________________________ Official Newspaper of Vernonia, Oregon those few, such as Mr. Wil kerson, who do the job in such a manner as endear them to all with whom they contact. Among all those people who valued his acquaint ance, there is probably one group who will remember him better than any. That group is composed of those people who' attended school during his time of teaching. He attempted to and suc ceeded in helping them to solve their problems so that they have grown to be bet ter citizens for having known him. That, in itself, is a tribute worthy of the man who has made his life beneficial to all. SEASIDE POLICEMAN GETS THE BIRD SEASIDE — If it is not one thing it is another, according to Sid Smith, Seaside patiolman. This time it whs a woodpecker which gave the police a job. # Neighbors residing near a home in the vicinity of the Prom thought at first that a prowler had entered the buld- ing, but an investigation proved that it was a woodpecker. Not being able to enter the structure, they called the police. Smith got a key to the home and tried to get the woodpecker out. It was not easy but finally the bird got the idea and when he did helost no time about it. “He was really in bad shape,” Smith said. There was nothing to eat in the house but a can of dog food and two bottles of beer. He was sorta hungry.” Washington Snapshots Immediate consideration by congress of legislation to streng then wartime labor laws is sought by industry members of the war labor board. The WLB’s policy having been injured by the presiden’t by-pas sing of it to give John ,L. Lew is and his United Mine workers a victory, these members feel that the board’s only recourse is to the nation’s lawmakers. Mounting pressure to breach the “Little Steel” formula and the uniting demands of labor for general wage increases urge the necessity of congressional action. Attacks on the adminis tration’s “hold the line” policy are coming from every union quarter. Congressional amendment of existing laws, “in order to re quire responsibility of unions and to provide additional protection of workers, employers, and the public against those who misuse the power presently permitted,” is the announced aim of the WLB’s industry members. Three Of the four representa tives of the public on the WLB echo these sentiments. They de clare that "legislative sanctions more thorough than now exist may be required unless organized labor itself demonstrates from now on its determination to ac cept the bitter with the sweet, and to comply with the orderly processe sof government which have been set up to cope with wartime conditions.” WLB Chairman Davis declares he does not intend to surrender any part of the wage stabilization program, adding: “As chairman of the board I am bound to ad here to and apply that policy. As a citizen I believe it is essential to the American worker.” But there are not a few in Washington who believe that Mrs. Roosevelt heralded the demise of the “Little Steel” formula when she said at her press conference that "we can’t expect the Little Steel formula to hold if the cost of living does not also hold.” Considered of significance is the president’s official silence during this growing uproar .He has said only that the cost of living depends largely on “our wives, our stomachs and places of abode.” It is apparent the president Burning An Empire .. . Stewart Holbrook’s new book needs to be read twice to harvest all of the good stuff in its pages. No man can read Burning an Empire for the first time without being swept up by the narratives of death and disaster — tale-telling that heaves, surges and rolls like one of the great crown fires of the forest. It needs a second reading for the factual record of the appalling ruin wrought on our land by the forest fire to teach its lesson. The telling is powerful because Holbrook himself has lived the hell of forest-f.ie days and nights. In his stories of the Miramichi, Peshtigo, Hinckley, and other great forest fires of the old days, Holbrook makes the material of r; arch and interview into far more than the stuff of reporting. He collects facts by hard digging, and organizes them in the way of an engineer, then recreates them from the substance of life as he has lived it. Burning an Empire begins with a chapter called “One Man’s Forest Fire”: ‘Tor more than a week we had be»n speculating on the sky that appeared above the mountain across the inlet from camp. Varying in hue irom a deep gray in early morning tc a feverish red at night, it got grayer and redder as the week passed. Old timers didn’t like the look qf it. They said she was a dirty sky. and >ur log scaler, an ancient man of e woods, said it was as dirty a . _y as he had seen in fifty years.” Second Reading . . . You read the book the first time for Holbrook’s own forest fire story, and for the stories o' others. Then, If the forests mean anything in y. a' life at all. you remember a charter entitled “Smoke in the Clearing,” and you recall that you sk::nrre.l its pages to get on to another ’trrv. Y >u turn back and read the charter v 1th due attention. As its ‘acts and conclusions sink in. you remember that they follow through every story of tbc book, and at the end form a considers that the key to the wages-cost of living subsidy pro gram is his newly-created com mittee to determine the true cost of living. If it finds the current bureau of labor statis tics cost of living index does not reflect the actual rise in prices since Jan. 1, 1941—the "Little Stieel” base date—the committee can revise that form ula. The Forum THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE Part XVIII THE UNIVERSE AN INVENTION No stream can rise higher than it's fountain; from nothing, nothing comes. Dead parents cannot produce living children. A man born blind could not in vent an eye nor could a man who had never heard a sound produce or contrive a musical instrument. A man who had nev- er seen a ray of light could not paint a rainbow, nor could a man ignorant of simple addition construct a machine that would solve the most abstruse problems in mathematics. It requires skid to construct; it requires a still highed type of intelligence to invent. Conception and inven tion go before delineation and design that must be applied to the use of all American forest land if it is to be kept fertile and productive. In effect, you get a solid grasp on the fact that forest fires do not sim ply burn trees' but that they also burn the power of the forest soil to grow trees. The gigantic conflagra tions of Peshtigo and Hinckley, and the tens of thousands of smaller fires that ravaged the piney earth of the Lake States year after year for fifty years, destroyed the seed sources of nature's forests and the tree food that nature had stored in the soil for centuries. We have got to amend our think ing on the forest fire problem from "Save the forests” to "Save the for est soil”—this is the moral of Burn ing an Empire. The “fem fires” of spring, which may kill thousands of little tree seedlings on a single acre, the fires in small second growth, which we still miscall “brush fires” —these are pictured in the full measure of their destructiveness in Holbrook’s pages and in the Fore- V'ord by Col. W. B. Greeley. Think of the Forests as Tree Farms . . . The spectacular Midwest dust storms of recent years did not do their worst in the ruining of par ticular crops, or even tn the destruc tion of homes and farm buildings. The great loss, the tragedy, was in the blowing away of top soil from thousands of farms, the robbing of fertility from the land by the wind storms and drouths. The forest is a farm. Timber is a crop. In the long view the harvest of a crop of timber is work as good as the harvesting of a crop of wheat, if sources for new growth are pro vided. Drouth and fire are the de stroyers of the forest lands, as drouth and wind are the destroyers of 'he wheat lands. Holbrook writes and works on the forest fire problem to make you feel, to make you see, to make you think. He believes we have laws enough and government authority enough on the forests. The main need, he says, is just simply more fire consciousness among the people. construction. The architect sees the house complete before a stone is laid or a timber hewn. The mind must contrive before the hand can combine. The idea of a thing must precede its existence; the plan must be conceived before the edifice can be erected. The universe around us is in itself an invention and it is also filled with inventions, contriv ances and adaptations, and com plicated yet orderly arrange ments, which are not only be yond the constructive power of blind, unreasoning force and changeless law, but are fraught with such mysterious evidences of intelligent design and purpose that man himself studies them for ages before he can compre hend their utility; and only through the accumulated re searches and observations of suc cessive generations does he learn by slow degrees to recognize “the manifold wisdom” of the Creator, and say with the de vout astronomer, “O God, I think thy thoughts after Thee.” A GREAT AND WONDERFUL MACHINE The visible framework of cre ation may be viewed as a great and wonderful machine. Wheth er with the telescope man ex plores the mighty depths of the blue abyss of heaven, or with a microscope discovers a mimic universe in a water drop, in all things great and small he sees the tokens of creative power and wisdom—the handiwork of an omnipotent Creator. Who in vented such a world? Who plan ned it, constructed it, established it. adorned it, and still sustains it, and guides it in its wondrous course? Who is the great in ventor, this unseen one, the pro ducer of the universe? There can be but one such Being, for the matchless har monies of universal nature dis close the orderly arrangements of a single mind, without the endless contradictions and col lisions which must result from opposing wills. It is true that there are in this world evidences of irregularities, disorder, confu sion, disturbance, and interfer ence with the beneficent law; but these instances while indi cating the resistance of inferior wills or powers, do not effect the obvious conclusion that over all presides some high and mighty one who on the larger scale, and in the longer run, overrules, controls and governs all. This Being must be omnipresent for His working is seen in every place. H must be invisible, for an omnipresent being, if visible, would render everything else in visible. From Him. throughout the whole vast universe, stream the mighty tides of moral, ment al, and vegetative force. THE WONDROUS WORKSHOP OF GOD The universe is the wondrous workshop where he displays His wisdom and manifests His might. Without His perpetual support all things would sink in to confusion and dissolution. He clothes the grass of the field, He paints the lil'lies of the valley. He feeds the ravens, watches the falling sparrows, numbers the hairs of our heads and manifests through all His vast Creation tokens of supreme wisdom, almighty power, and everlasting love. The wisdom which invents, and plans and calculates, and con trives and constructs, must be greater than the wisdom which merely perceives and compre hends the utility of the work when it is accomplished and ex hibited. Man in his three-score years and ten slowly spells out a few sentences in the great book of nature, but God has written all its ample pages with His own right hand. And if in looking closely at the world around us, we discern countless tokens of the wisdom and inge nuity of One wh ohas wrought unnoticed and whose wondrous skill we have been too blind to discern and too careless to com prehend; if we find in the very plants and trees, and in the whole natural world indications of a marvelous sagacity, working upon the highest mathematical principles by methods which we have hitherto failed to notice, and which only the most careful observers have perceived and pointed out; and if we thus see throughout the realm of nature marks of a hidden wisdom su perior to all the wisdom of this world, shall we not thus learn to recognize the power and might of an unseen Creator, the vastness of whose works gives some faint indication of His eternal power and majesty, and the abundance of whose beauties tsetifies ta us of His kindness, tenderness and love for the creatures He has made? Nature is but the garment of Deity. Reason untwists a fringe, puzzles over a pattern, and in vestigates the frayed border of this royal robe and slowly dis covers some marks of wisdom and design in its wondrous texture; but faith looks up and adores the God who wove the whole magnificent fabric, spangled with the starry splendors of the skies, embroidered with auroras and rainbows and emeralds and adorned with gems that gleam in the silent depths, unseen by human eyes. THE REIGN OF LAW We recognize in this universe the reign of law. But law is not an intelligence, law is not a be ing, law is not a power; law never made itself, law never can secure its own execution. Law is but the expression of the in tellect which framed it, of the will which promulgates it, and of the force which energizes and executes it; and in the reign of natural law we cannot fail to discern the indications of a supreme intellect, an omnipresent Deity. Leaving then for the present the countless evidences of power, ingenuity, and adaptation mani fested in the construction of the visible universe. let us glance at some of the underlying princi ples which govern the world in which we live. The alws according to which this world is constructed and rul ed are mathematical laws. The stability, order and perpetuity of the universe are secured in accordance with the principles of mathematical science. Men may not know or admit this fact, but this is because they are uninformed and unobservant. For ages men did not know that an ordinary person walks this earth under an atmosphere pressure of sixteen tons; men did not know that the viewless air rests with a weight of twenty-six million tons on every acre of land. Men have moved for ages in the midst of marvels unseen and un recognized, and there are still more things in heaven and earth than ever have been dreamed of in their philosophy. Submitted by G. F. Brown V No Birth Control Here Under birth control, John Wesley wolud never have been born for he was the sixteenth child. He would never have seen the light of day and Methodism, wit hits great record would nev er have had him as its founder. From all eternity this man of great heart and mind was in the plan of God. To this end God used his parents and bles sed them. But, you say, these days one cannot support more than two or three youngsters. How about it? Cannot God be trusted to keep his pledge to his blood bought sons and daughters^ Will not God provide daily bread? Maybe not horses and chariots but enough for the day. Better a little with God’s blessing than m ich outside his will. —“I have been young and now am old but I have never see nthe righteous foresaken, nor his seed begging bread.” Psalm 37th, Lincoln’s favorite. No mat ter how far away you may be, cry to God for mercy and— “There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek, for the same God over all is rich toward all them that call upon him. BIBLE—Romans 10:12. Here is another proved by thousands—“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine ow nunderstanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6. A SCENE IN HEAVEN—The mighty angels bow to God’s holy will.—“Bless the Lord, ye angels that excell in strength, that do his commandments, harkening to the voice of his word. Ps. 103. SCENE ON EARTH—In the fullness of time Christ left His abode in heaven to come among us and round out God’s holy will which we had set aside—“I seek not mine own will but the will of My Father which sent Me,” said He. In thought, word and dee, He was right with His Father. “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” May God say the same of you. ONE—Count yourself cleared by Christ’s death for your sins. —“God commendeth His love to ward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. TWO—Christ who did God’s will, now seeks to work out his will through you. Yield yourself over to Him and live by Power From On High. This space paid for by an Oregon business man. BRAZIL’S SILK INDUSTRY GROWS Growth of Brazil’s silk indus try has been stimulated by the loss of silk imports from Japan. Production of silk worm eggs this year in the state of Sao Paulo, where about 95 per c^nt of Brazil’s production is con centrated, is estimated at 2,350 pounds. A pound contains about 500.000 to 700,000 eggs. Mul berry trees, source of food for the silk worm have increased from 10 millio nunder cultivation in 1940 to more than 30 million f A
