The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1903-07-23
BY.
H. j. B.

Iffect.a whole nation, either favor
.bly or unfavorably.
In this country, when good
lines" or "hard times" are general,
or rather extensive in scope, poll
ticians give practically all the
credit to, or charge all the bad con-
litions to, the status of politics and
The political party that happens to
be in power. In small measure
this is reasonable, just and natural,
for the state of politics causes men
to have courage, faith, do and dare,
or vice versa. But in reality the
extent to which these conditions
affect q country is small in COM
parison to natural laws, some Of
which are known, tho not generally
recognized and others that the
world has not yet gained knowledge
of; for we of this generation and
of the twentieth century are yet in
our infancy, in. comparative ignor-
ance as regards the higher laws of
nature: A retrospective view of
the commercial and industrial con-
ditions shows us that the hard and
prosperous times alternate in cycles
of seven years. During some
cycles conditions are better than
in other prosperous times and in
some cycles of the off years
times are harder than in other
cycles of the off years; but prob
ably the worst period, or at least
one of the hardest in this country
was that of the cycle beginning
with 1891 and ending with 1897
and the best, or one of the best is
the present cycle, which began
with 1898 and will end with 1904.
Some years ago I reada small
book entitled Benner's Prophesies.
Mr.. Benner is, or was, an Ohio man
and his book showed that it had
been written in either 1872 or
1876. In his book Mr.. Benner
foretold the state of the times to
the close of the nineteenth century,
the year 1900, covering a period of
twenty odd years, three or four
cycles, and events have shown
that he hit the nail squarely on
the head all the way through. He
took up each cycle by itself and in
some cycles dealt with each year
separately. Mr.. Benner used as q
basis for his theories the two COM
modities pig iron and pork. He
went back number of years and
reviewed the history Of supply, de-
mand and prices of these commod-
tiles year by year and undertook
to show the relationship existing
between these prices, supply and
demand and the general conditions
of the entire commercial and in
dustrial world. He explained that
the cycle of 189I-1897 would be
the hardest of the nineteenth GEN.
tury, or at least the hardest since
the civil war and that the century
would go out with boom and the
best times of that century would
be 1898 to 1900, no matter what
political party was in power.
Whether we get mixed up with
superstition, tomfoolery or good
common sense it must be admitted
that many things can be foretold
by knowledge of astronomy and
astrology. There are persons who
are we'll versed in these sciences
| that tell us the industrial condi-
tions, fatalities, ETC., of a COM
munity, place or country are
governed by the actions Of the
celestial bodies and that when the
world becomes educated to the
Ipoint OF understanding the daily
and nightly performance of the
stars, there need be no more bad
4 speculations, failures in business,
poor crops, or i'll health. It is
frua. that finoc ORC -ho.nd 70 Lo q