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Editor's Table: The Church Celebrates the First Vision

Improvement Era, vol. 23, no. 7, May 1920, p. 659

Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations

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EDITORS' TABLE 659

Vernon, John N. Davis, H. B. Calder, Joseph Bodily, Archie S. Richardson, Ray Paulson, manager. We have also received letters from firms suggesting that it is time enough for them to quit selling tobacco and fall in line when the leading merchants quit its sale. This is an individual matter and the leading merchant in a righteous cause is the one who adopts that righteous cause. It is better to be right and for that reason to lose money, than to be wrong and thereby make gains. Our fight is against the use of tobacco, that we may thereby accomplish the salvation of our boys and girls. We are confident that boys and girls who use tobacco are on the road that leads away from the Church and its organizations, to the society of the indifferent, the profane, the vulgar, the immoral and the shiftless. The sacramental meeting, the Sunday School and the Mutual, and the splendid character-building principles they stand for, are too tame for tobacco-using boys. They must have more sensa- tional things than these offer, in order to arouse them from the shiftless, sleepy, careless, condition that tobacco induces. The Church and first class citizenship are lost to them, be- cause their physical, mental and moral development are stunted and dwarfed. What then is the duty of Church members as to the ex- ample they should set before the young people? Every Church member should keep himself free from the use of tobacco, should avoid holding out any temptation for its use by others, and be a leader in advocating the complete abolishment of to- bacco. Remember the word of the Lord to us: "Tobacco is not for the body * * * and is not good for man." A.

Thrift and Economy

The Era will have more to present, and more to say, about the splendid testimonies and sane and safe counsel given at the late annual conference, but must now refer to one import- ant subject advanced by President Heber J. Grant. Speaking of visiting the Sacred Grove with a choir, to render "The Vision," he said the Church is in harmony with the Govern- ment on the subject of thrift and economy, and in view of the great cost, the idea of taking any large number of people east for this purpose had therefore been abandoned. It is well for our young people to remember that millions of dollars are being withdrawn weekly from general circula- tion, and that it is only a matter of a comparatively short time until money will be hard to get. It is no time now to pur- chase costly things and to go into debt; but it is the best time