It was Tuesday, December 30, 1902, a quiet winter evening in Battle Creek. No snow was on the ground. Most of the 300 employees of the Review and Herald publishing house had left their machines and editorial offices for the day. A few workers had come in for the night shift. A. G. Daniells, the newly elected leader of the General Conference, was still in his office on the second floor of the West Building, just across North Washington Street. A little after 6:00 I. H. Evans, president and general manager of the Review and Herald Publishing Company, and E. R. Palmer had met with him to look over some new tracts in preparation. At 7:20 Palmer left, and Daniells and Evans were chatting.
It had been a good year for the Review and Herald--one of the most prosperous. There were bright prospects for a busy 1903 also (Review and Herald Supplement, April 28, 1903).
The tabernacle bell rang, summoning the faithful to prayer meeting. Then the electric lights went out. Daniells stepped over to the window and saw flames coming from the publishing house.
A few minutes before, all had been normal in the big building. The night watchman had just made his rounds through the engine room. Then the few employees at work detected the smell of smoke. Immediately the lights throughout the plant went out, leaving everything in total darkness. The dense oily smoke that filled the building with incredible speed forced everyone to leave hastily; even now some found the stairways cut off and took to the fire escapes. All the workers got out, but one just barely made it, crawling through smoke-filled rooms to safety. The fire alarm had been turned on at the first detection of the emergency.
When Elders Daniells and Evans reached the street, the whole pressroom was in flames. A minute or two later fire engines from the city fire department arrived and soon were pouring water onto the blaze. The whole building seemed engulfed. At no place could any firefighter enter it. Attempts to check the fire were futile. All could see that the flames were beyond control. Brother Robert of the art department saved a few pieces of furniture and some precious art materials, but nothing could be saved from the editorial offices or library.
It was now a little past 7:30; the firefighters directed their efforts toward saving the two-story West Building across the street, and the stores on the east side of the Review plant. Fortunately, the breeze was from the southwest, and the smoke and flames were blown across Main Street into McCamly Park. At
8:00 the roof of the plant fell in, and the machinery on the upper floors began to tumble. By 8:30 the brick-veneer walls were collapsing.
Although there were a number of employees at work throughout the building, none had seen the fire start. It was generally agreed, however, that the fire had begun in the basement in the original engine room, under the dynamo room. The first published report of the fire said:
The very day on which it occurred the chief of the city fire department, in company with the office electrician, made a tour of inspection throughout the building, examining the wiring for the lights and other possible sources of danger, and pronounced everything in satisfactory condition (The Review and Herald, January 6, 1903).
This had been done in consideration of the renewal of the insurance policy on January 1. Fire Chief Weeks, who had directed the fighting of a number of big fires in Battle Creek, was later to declare that he had tried to extinguish every one of the Adventist fires and his score was zero."There is something strange," he said, "about your SDA fires, with the water poured on acting more like gasoline" (B. P. Fairchild to Arthur L. White, December 4, 1965).
The Review and Herald publishing plant had grown to be one of the largest and best-equipped publishing establishments in the state of Michigan. Now it was just a pile of rubble. Why?
As some of the board members stood and watched the flames, there must have come to their minds one sentence in a letter from Ellen White, written from California and addressed to the manager of the Review and Herald. It had been read to the board 13 months earlier: "I have been almost afraid to open the Review, fearing to see that God has cleansed the publishing house by fire" (Testimonies for the Church, 8:91).
The Word Reaches Ellen White
That Tuesday night Ellen White at her Elmshaven home had slept but little. In vision she had agonized over conditions in Battle Creek. As she came down for breakfast on Wednesday morning, Sara McEnterfer told her that the Review and Herald publishing plant had burned the night before; C. H. Jones had telephoned the news. It came as no surprise to Ellen White. Only a few days before, with pen in hand, she lost consciousness of her surroundings and again saw a sword of fire over Battle Creek, "turning first in one direction and then in another," with disaster following disaster (Letter 37, 1903).
The sanitarium had burned in February; now the Review was gone. Picking up her pen, she wrote to Edson:
Oh, I am feeling so sad, because ... the Lord has permitted this, because His people would not hear His warnings and repent, and be converted, that He should heal them. Many have despised the words of warning. Oh, how sad it is. How large the loss is of books and furniture and facilities.... May the Lord have mercy upon us is my prayer (Letter 214, 1902).
For 10 years Ellen White had been noting the developments in the management of the Review and Herald publishing house, and the agony of soul she had suffered reached an almost unbearable level during the weeks before the fire. Managers had lost their sense of justice and responsibility. Employees had lost much of their unselfish dedication and consecration. Boards had lost their power to control in right lines. It was a gradual process that was frowned upon by Heaven, and warning after warning had been sounded by God's messenger. But these were for the most part ignored or scorned.
Primarily this was because of two situations: (1) injustice to authors by the instigation of policies that would deny them their just rewards for their literary work, and (2) inequity in dealing with publishing house personnel. Managers argued that it was because of the skill and ability of those in management that the work prospered, so the men in positions of responsibility should receive double the pay of the skilled workmen in the plant.
Added to this were the pressures being brought by men in the publishing house to put the Review office in control of all publishing work in North America. The Pacific Press in Oakland, California, would be but a branch of the Review and Herald, with all decisions made in Battle Creek. Steps that virtually would bring about the consolidation of the publishing work were introduced as early as 1889 at the General Conference session, and developed in 1891. In fact, propositions along this line had been made before James White's death in 1881.
From Australia Ellen White wrote in 1896:
The Lord has presented matters before me that cause me to tremble for the institutions at Battle Creek....
The scheme for consolidation is detrimental to the cause of present truth. Battle Creek has all the power she should have. Some in that place have advanced selfish plans, and if any branch of the work promised a measure of success, they have not exercised the spirit which lets well enough alone, but have made an effort to attach these interests to the great whole. They have striven to embrace altogether too much, and yet they are eager to get more (Letter 81, 1896).
Most distressing of all was the general deterioration of the spiritual experience of the Review management and workers and the eroding of a sense of right, which allowed for the commercial work to bring demoralizing publications into the manufacturing plant. Taking the stance that they were printers and not censors, management authorized the printing of publications that came far short of Adventist moral standards. There were no restraints established that regulated the type of literature that would be published. Presses poured forth fiction, Wild West stories, books promulgating Roman Catholic doctrines, sex literature, and books on hypnosis. The managers looked upon the publishing house as a commercial enterprise whose first obligation was to make money.
Last-Minute Warnings
On July 8, 1901, Ellen White wrote to the manager of the Review and Herald:
Unjust, unholy actions have brought the frown of God upon the Review and Herald office. Evil work has brought the cause of God into disrepute, and has kept the backslider from obeying His holy law (Letter 74, 1901).
Conditions worsened during 1901, in spite of the many messages of warning. Frank Belden charged that the foreman was "brutal," and that he sometimes required employees to clean his bicycle on office time. One man still living in 1970 recalled his days in the Review pressroom where he began work at the age of 14 in 1896. He was still working there when the fire struck, and he left the building just minutes before the flames swept through it. He recalled a book on witchcraft being printed there, and a pressman printing copies of Bible Readings while spitting tobacco juice onto the press. This young man was ridiculed by other workers when he decided to be baptized. The terror engendered by the harsh manner of his superiors led him to wish that the next day would never come. There were young women workers who read proof on books that were filled with skepticism about religion and who then brought this skepticism into their talk around the office.
"We have no permission from the Lord," wrote Ellen White, "to engage either in the printing or in the sale of such publications, for they are the means of destroying many souls. I know of what I am writing, for this matter has been opened before me. Let not those who believe the message for this time engage in such work, thinking to make money" (Testimonies for the Church, 7:166). About this time she made a most interesting observation, one that shows an insight God gave to her:
Even the men who are endeavoring to exalt their own sentiments as wonderful science are astonished that men in positions of responsibility in our office of publication--a printing office set for the defense of the truth of God--have consented to print their books (Manuscript 124, 1901).
In her distress and in a desperate attempt to halt the satanic work, Ellen White called for a virtual boycott on the part of the employees in the publishing house. After depicting the demoralizing effects of the literature being printed on the Review and Herald presses--including love stores and books setting forth crimes, atrocities, and licentious practices--she pointed out that the position taken by the managers (that they carried no responsibility for the type of books coming from their presses and that the employees had no responsibility in the choice of the nature of the materials that passed through the publishing house) was wrong. She declared:
In these matters a responsibility rests not only upon the managers but upon the employees.... Let typesetters refuse to set a sentence of such matter. Let proofreaders refuse to read, pressmen to print, and binders to bind it (Ibid., 7:167, 168).
Somehow those who managed the work had become hardened against the messages that God had sent. Now on Wednesday morning, December 31, 1902, all that was left of the great Review and Herald publishing plant, except for the West Building book depository, were warm embers, collapsed brick walls, and twisted machinery. Nothing of any value was left.
The sword of fire over Battle Creek had fallen, and all knew that God had spoken.