Editor Comment:

This article by Elder C. H. Cayce is informative and pertinent to present day actions by our government and gives us a glimpse of how Primitive Baptists responded in 1937. He speaks of the Social Security system recently put into effect and also of the loss of personal property rights. Elder Cayce states in this article that he does not intend for the paper to become a political sheet but he believes that it is his indispensable duty to raise the alarm against government actions which were destroying the individual freedoms our forefathers fought and died for. I believe it is past time that we in this day also raise the alarm to the socialism replacing our founding form of government. Socialism leads to communism and they both are godless forms of government. To say nothing is to accept godliness such as: Abortion, Sodomite marriages and a host of other sinful practices which were once illegal in this nation. In my younger days I remember the phrases "socialism is next to communism" and "I'd rather be dead than red". Those phrases were used to teach us to resist any move toward a Godless government and to give us liberty or give us death. I fear we have neglected to speak up when we should have. May God have mercy on us and our nation. Editor: Elder Claude McKee

LAND, A TRUST AND MUST BE PRESERVED
April 1, 1937

I don't know whether any of you get the implication carried in the model soil law passed by the Legislature at the request of the president or not. The law passed as a method or means of the state and the farmers of the state participating more fully in the national soil conservation program. But it goes further than that.

The time is not far distant when if a man lives on a piece of land it will be his duty to himself and it will be a duty imposed by the state to follow sound farming practices and methods so as to preserve and build up the fertility of that soil. .

There is as much constitutional authority and legal right to force a man to conserve his soil as there is to force an oil company or a lumber company to preserve and protect those resources. Courts have held in many instances that a state has a right to force people under penalty of law to preserve the oil and timber rights of a state or a community. Civilization existed for centuries without oil or even coal and such resources. The soil is one resource without which no civilization can exist. It seems logical then that the time is not very far off when you as a farmer will be told to terrace your land, you will be told to plant soil building crops and you will do just those things or you will not farm.

That sounds drastic, does it not? Well, read the law we have just passed here in the Legislature and you'll see that the state of Arkansas is just about in position to do that thing right now. We are pretty independent, ourselves. We do not like for folks to tell us we have got to do anything, but the police department of our city can make us clean the ditches in the ravines in front of our house; it can compel us to cut weeds on a vacan't lot which belongs to us. It can do many things that would have been outrageous years ago.

And as I said before, we suspect when we get a farm, and we are going to buy one some of these days, and they go to telling us what we must do on that farm to preserve the soil, we'll kick like a bay steer. On the other hand, when we drive across places in Arkansas and some other states and we see whole sections actually destroyed and desolate just because some fellow insisted on farming the way he wanted to and neglected that soil we are not so sure but what this new way of making us do things we should do is not so bad. At any rate, we're going to see a lot of things new in this farming scheme in the next decade.

The above is an article copied in full from the Arkansas; Farmer of March 15, 1937, under the large heading of "The Editor Speaking." We feel that the obligation rests upon us and it does rest upon us if the Lord has put us in the ministry to sound again the alarm. It may be too late now; but we sounded the alarm before it was too late. If the people did not take warning, then their blood rests upon their own heads and not upon us. If we fail to give the alarm, then the Lord would hold us responsible. Stop right here, please, and give the above article another careful reading before you proceed farther in reading our "little say" in regard to it. Let what it says "soak in" real good. Think about it; ponder it well. Note carefully that the law referred to, the editor says, was passed by our State Legislature at the request of the president.

Just here let us say that we do not intend to make THE PRIMITIVE BAPTIST a political sheet. We do not desire to take stock in politics, especially through the columns of this paper; and we are not going to do so. But when we plainly see a trend in matters of state and the nation toward the destruction and overthrow of our liberties, for which our people have always stood, and for which our ancestors laid down their lives on the bloody battlefields, it is our indispensable duty to raise the alarm. Our ancestors came to this country and founded this government to escape the oppressions and deprivations of the old countries. There many of them were deprived of the privilege of worshiping God according to the dictates of their own conscience. They fled from their native lands on account of religious persecution and the oppressions of their governments. Under God they founded this government upon the principle of freedom, and wrote in the constitution the fundamental law and principle which guarantees this right to every man in the nation-no matter how poor, nor what may be his station or condition in life.

Under this government the church has prospered; and in many places and at times they"have waxed fat, and kicked," as Jeshurun, of old time. In a great measure, and perhaps in different parts of the country, we have sometimes forgotten God. We have grown to feel secure, and to be confident that the privileges which have been ours to enjoy for the past hundred and fifty years (approximately), will not or cannot be taken from us.

The land of Canaan belonged to the Jews-God's chosen people. God gave that land to Abraham and to his seed after him "for an everlasting possession." They lived in and enjoyed the land as long as they remembered and obeyed the Lord. But on account of their unbelief and rebellion they were driven out of the land, and have been deprived of its blessings and comforts for about nineteen hundred years. Does it not seem like this should be a lesson for us? May we not well remember these things' 'were written for our learning," and that "all these things happened unto them for ensamples to us?"

The trend of affairs in this government of ours for a number of years has been toward depriving the common people of their rights and privileges which are and were vouchsafed to us in the constitution. Take the history of every nation under the sun that has gone down and been destroyed; read and study their history and you will see clearly and plainly that as their rights were gradually encroached upon, and laws enacted dictating to them what they might or might not do, or what they must or must not do, with their own personal property which they had acquired by hard labor under that government, so surely were those things followed by the establishment of laws governing and controlling their religious activities. Religious persecution has always followed. This has been a universal end. There is not an instance on record where the matter did not terminate that way.

Take Russia, Germany, Italy, and Spain today. First they told their subjects what they could and could not do regarding their own property. Then they by law put an end to their religious privileges. You could not erect an Old Baptist meeting house and hold services in it in Russia today; nor in either of the other countries mentioned, we are sure. Consider how the Jews were persecuted and driven out of Germany. Consider now the churches were burned in Spain; and now consider the bloody rebellion that is in progress in that country. Do you want that to occur in this country of ours? Just as sure as matters go on for a few more years the way they are going now, and as sure as God reigns in glory just that sure these matters will end with Jut such a rebellion and great bloodshed in this land. It is fast coming. But few of our people, few of our countrymen, realize or seem to comprehend the trend of the times. The storm will break in all of its terrible fury over their heads before they are awake to the approaching danger.

We do not dread it so much for our self. If it comes in our lifetime, which it will likely do if we live just a little while longer, it will soon all be over with us anyway. We know we do not have many more days to stay in this old world of trouble, anyway. Our race is nearly run. Our battles to fight are nearly all ended already. But our poor heart does bleed for our children, and for your children, if you are growing old, and for you if you are young and not far past middle life. May the good Lord look down upon us and our poor children in pity and compassion, is our humble prayer. .

Now consider the law above mentioned. It gives those in authority under the law the right and authority to tell you what you must or must not plant on your little spot of ground. Thus the government absolutely will control and does control you, if you are a farmer, in all you do. You can do, and must do, what they say, or else not farm. The government now requires us to collect one cent out of every dollar we pay our employees to get this paper out, and then to remit that to the collectors who are appointed by the government. Later the amount we are to collect from them will be increased. Then when we remit, each month, to the collector what we have collected from the employees, we must remit a like amount out of our own pocket. Thus, if we collect two dollars from the employees, we must also pay two dollars. This is claimed to be for the purpose of providing an old age pension when the worker reaches the age of sixty-five. Here we are, already past age sixty five, and never will be eligible for the pension; we are getting old; our health is broken, and we cannot stand the hardships we once did. But no matter about that; we must take our hard earnings and send it to the tax collector for the benefit of fat-salaried office holders, and to pension somebody in the far distant future, when perhaps they have been as able to work, and will be as able to work, as we have been all along. Where are our rights'? Where is there the slightest semblance of justice in any such procedure as this '?

If the government has a right to tell you what you shall or shall not plant and grow on that little spot of land of yours, they have a right to tell us that the doctrine we promulgate in our little paper is detrimental to society and to the country; and that we must not wear out the steel, and lead, and iron, and the antimony, and must not use the paper we use, which depletes our forests, because the forests are destroyed to make the paper. They have the same right to stop us, for the purpose of conserving the resources of the country, and for the good of society and the nation. Already bills have been introduced in legislative halls curbing the freedom of press and speech. But, thank God, they have not passed and become laws yet. But, look out!

Yes, it is as the editor of the Arkansas Farmer says, we are going to see a lot of changes and things new, not only in this farming scheme, but in many other things in the next decade. We are right now face to face with the hardest trials and the hardest things to endure that any man now living in this nation has ever had to pass through. The time is close at hand when the two witnesses will be killed and their dead bodies will be seen lying in the street for three days and a half. The time of the worst persecution on account of religion that the world has ever known is right now close upon us. Lord, help us, and give us grace for our day and trial.

We have not said a thing in this article with malice in our heart for any person on earth, living or dead. What we have said has been said with love for the truth and for the Lord's humble poor, and we have written with tears in our eyes, and because we felt that the time is near for us to lay our armor by, and we do not wish to come to that hour with a feeling that we have shunned to do what the Lord requires of us. May He bless, sustain, keep, and preserve each reader, is our humble prayer. C. H. C.