news – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

An excerpt from “The Bread Problem,” an editorial in the February 17, 1921, issue of The Christian Century, written anonymously by Lloyd C. Douglas.

In recent months I’ve been sharing with you the essays Lloyd Douglas published in The Christian Century from the summer of 1920 to the early months of 1921. In the February 17, 1921, issue, there is an uncredited editorial that was clearly written by Douglas. It not only has his style and vocabulary, but he later emphasized its thesis in a number of his books, both fiction and non-fiction.

He begins by talking about world conditions in the aftermath of the Great War (which they, poor souls, did not yet realize was merely the First World War of the twentieth century). He writes:

“If we are to believe the cries that proceed now from all quarters, the problem of this world is hunger – actual, physical, death-bent hunger! There are some complications to the problem – but at root it is a simple demand for bread. We stand aghast at the figures which announce the state of wretchedness in China where ten thousand daily die of starvation. We read with horror of living conditions in Russia where even those long inured to such poverty as we Americans could not possibly understand, much less endure, cry out that they can go no further. We are appalled at cablegrams from the war-devastated countries of Europe where fully thirty million little children are barely kept alive through the generosity of strangers in foreign lands. And always a large block of India is in a state of slow starvation: the only reason we do not observe her plight at this moment is because these European dead, closer to us by common ties and miles and racial stock, emit a phosphorescent glow that obscures India’s suffering. How to find bread to eat – this is the problem.

“Little good can come of spending our time in an attempted analysis of this condition to determine its exact causes. Some of them are patent. It is beyond thought that the greater nations of the world could spend four years firing off high explosives, all of which contained the potentiality of food, and could take out of the normal walks of life millions of men habitually productive of such supplies, without inviting the disaster now so pitifully paraded before the eyes of all the world. This cause is obvious enough.

“Neither need any mystery be made of the fact that organized greed has capitalized this emergency of war for all that the traffic would bear. Not one government on earth has had the facilities to deal with this menace, so strongly entrenched was it, and so skillfully operated. Our own nation, very much better situated to handle the problem than any of the others, has registered the most spectacular failure of them all. So rampant and inclusive has greed become, and so triumphant, that those who have been going through the motions of checking it feel ridiculous and ineffective when they lay hands upon any single individual and say, ‘You are guilty.’

“There have been other causes, but these two will suffice to explain the world’s present predicament. The world is hungry! The problem of the moment is bread! This is an economic consideration. Everybody is thinking, talking, writing economics! We must produce more food; plough more deeply; sow more grain; develop a larger arable acreage through fertilization, irrigation, and other reclamation activities; increase the merchant marine, build more gondola-cars; and entice young men into the open country. Food! Bread! That is our need!”

[Douglas will continue his editorial in my next post…]

by Ronald R Johnson

Excerpt from Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted—A Congregation, Second Phase—Preacher and Newspaper,” Christian Century, August 19, 1920.

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. He is talking about a minister who was contacted by the local newspaper and asked for an abstract of ]

“Very much in earnest over this matter, Mr. Blue proceeds to do what he ought to have done back in 1905 when he lived in Robinsonville. He subscribes for several periodicals published in the interest of writers and pores over their contents with zealous industry. He is surprised and delighted to learn that he may have easy access to a voluminous literature on the subject of composition. He is heartened to find that the rules for newspaper writing are very simple. For example: he discovers that the newspaper reporter tells his story in the first paragraph – just the bare fact that John Smith robbed William Brown’s hen-coop and was assessed a fine of $50 and thirty days in the workhouse. If the reader is consumed with curiosity to learn all the thrilling details of this event – Smith’s former record, Brown’s attitude toward his bereavement, the fate of the fowls, together with such facts and fancies as the reporter may see fit to make public – is it not written in the story, further down the page? Mr. Blue discovers that this is a hard-and-fast rule in newspaper writing, that the reporter must throw down all his salient facts in the first three or four lines.

“Judging his feeble efforts in composing ‘sermon abstracts’ for the Monday papers on rare occasions by this inviolable rule indicated above, Blue smiles wryly over the remembrance of the stuff he had submitted. If it was never read by anybody – small wonder. He can easily understand now why he is so seldom asked for reports of his sermons. He recalls the day when he had preached a really remarkable sermon on the general subject of the danger of losing a national ideal. Very few had heard it. He had announced it in the Saturday column of ‘church notices’ under the title, ‘The Golden Calf.’ Blue never had known how to compose a sermon theme, though one scarcely needs be told that. ‘The Golden Calf’ is sufficient to explain Blue’s ignorance on this subject. But it was a good sermon; and if it had been given a fair chance, it might have drawn a better audience.

“It was so strong, indeed, that a discerning auditor had called upon the editor of The Morning Star, requesting him to print an excerpt. The editor had telephoned Blue, asking for about five hundred words. Blue had consented, somewhat gingerly, to furnish the required copy.”

[But all did not go well for Blue, as Douglas will reveal in my next post…]

Tag: news

The Bread Problem, Part 1

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2e: Better Late Than Never