The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1927, Page 9

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER. 9

reason why we had to pay more than we used to
for a half-dozen roses. But flowers are necessary,
of course.

And when it has to be heathen or flowers, — as
compared with a poor, dirty, ignorant heathen, a
beautiful, fragrant spray of flowers may be prefer-
able, although it does cost more to buy such a
spray than it would cost to engage a native Hindu
evangelist for a month to teach his fellow-Hindus
the way to salvation.

As I looked further, I found that our Synod’s
share of the expense of paper flowers last year was
no less than $160,000. “Paper flowers?” you ask,

fumes. I know this will sound almost incredible to
some of my readers. But such are the statistics
of the Government — $50,000,000 worth of per-
fumery used in the country last year, and uniess
we of the Missouri Synod did not use a propor-
tionate share of it, the cost of our share was
$500,000. —

And we discovered another inieresing fact —
that we annually spend $115,000,000 for pictures
of ourselves. Our Missouri Synod’s share of this
would be over a million dollars, twice as much as
spent in a year for all our missions at home and
abroad. In these “hard” times we still must have
ourselves photographed. That is right.
Photographers must have work, and our
friends must have our pictures.

But I have a picture in my mind
of some little Negro children down in
Alabama without shoes in January and
with very little clothing, vainly clamoring
that they be admitted to our overcrowded
mission-schools because we lack the funds
to enlarge our schools, so that all who come
may be taken care of. And I wondered

Starving Hindu Children whom Christian Missionaries Saved from Death.

yes, paper flowers; just paper; no fragrance; no
life; only color. And I thought of the need of
color in the cheeks of the thousands of half-fed
children in India where our missionaries are
working.

However, you say that color is necessary in our
drab lives. —

Further investigation brought to light the
fact that we of the Missouri Synod made up for
what the paper flowers lacked by $500,000 worth
of perfumery. ‘That was the value of the pro-
portionate share of the smelling stuff used within
the bounds of the Missouri Synod last year. But,
of course, perfumery is so very desirable, if not
necessary, in the large city’s congestion of choking

what kind of picture of these children could be
shown in a year’s time by saving a few pictures
of each photographed member of the Missouri
Synod. —

I kept on going through the list of such ne-
cessities as the above and compared them with the
unnecessary Hindus and Chinese and Negroes and
others among whom we are doing mission-work.

I learned that our share of the plumes on our
hats came to no less than $160,000. One large
expense last year, I am glad to say, we had no share
in — the $93,000 spent for regalia and secret
society badges. ‘Thank God for that!

As I once more came back to the first item, that “
of chewing gum, I could not forget the boy I saw