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The Golden Age
(SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS FORUM)
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden Hge Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OFFICES: LOWNDES 'BUILDING, ATLANTA, GA.
Price: $2.00 a Year
WILLIAM D. UPS HMW, .... Editor
A. E. RAMSAUR, ... Associate Editor
W. F. UPSHA W, - - - - Business Manager
H. R. BERNARD, - . . Sec’y and Treas
Entered at the Post Office in Atlanta, Ga.,
as second-class matter.
To the Public: The advertising columns of The
Golden Age will have an editorial conscience. No
advertisement will be accepted which we believe
would be hurtful to either the person or the purse of
our readers.
Two Educational Anniversaries.
Spellman Seminary and Tuskegee Institute, two
widely-known institutions for the practical training
of negroes, have just celebrated respectively, the
twenty-fifth anniversary of their founding.
It was a remarkable coincidence that these two
schools, the former in Georgia’s capital, and the
latter in the suburbs of the cultured little town of
Tuskegee, Alabama, should be launched under dif
ferent auspices about the same time. Each begin
ning humbly and wisely but soon attracting the at
tention and patronage of consecrated wealth from
the North has grown to national fame and wide
spread usefulness.
Twenty-five years ago Miss Giles and Miss Pack
ard, two noble women from New England, began
their work in the basement of Friendship Baptist
Church, of which Rev. E. R. Carter, one of the
worthiest and safest negro leaders, is pastor.
These women, imbued with the honest conviction
that the negroes so recently released from slavery,
needed practical education under vital Christian in
fluences, determined to lay their lives on the altar
of this work. Many good people without unkind
intention, looked on with suspicion. But these
Christian women were wise in their work. They
deported themselves in such away as to win the
confidence, then the admiration, then the love, of
the white people of Atlanta. The Home Mission
Society, through the special benefactions of Mr.
John D. Rockefeller, took vigorously hold of the
work.
With the increasing demand there have come in
creasing gifts, and now Spellman Seminary, train
ing hundreds of negro girls every year, in domestic
science, as well as letters-fitting them specially for
the life that is before them, is one of the best
equipped institutions in all the South. It is no
time for someone to quibble about the education of
the negro and argue against its tendencies. Some
kind of education will doubtless hurt the negro,
but not the kind that Spellman Seminary is giv
ing.
Miss Packard, who labored side by side with Miss
Giles for years, fell at last amid the noble eviden
ces that she had not labored in vain, and in the
spacious auditorium of Spellman Seminary, a fit
ting memorial seeks to tell of her self-sacrificing
work.
Miss Giles, the consecrated President of Spell
man, has done a work in bringing real Christianity,
common sense and refinement to the negro women
of Georgia and the South, whose saving influence
eternity alone can reveal.
About twenty-five of the trustees of Spellman
Seminary have been in Atlanta this week attend
ing the anniversary exercises. They are godly men
and women, and we bid them God-speed in all their
unselfish efforts.
And thus humbly also began the work of Booker
T. Washington, near Tuskegee. Hundreds of negro
teachers started schools in different communities of
the South twenty-five years ago and have never
been heard from outside of their communities—and
many of them are forgotten, save for an unworthy
The Golden Age for April 12, 1906,
memory of unworthy living. But Booker Wash
ington is known today not only all over America,
but well nigh all over the world. From the cross
roads schoolhouse where he began in obscurity, he
has moved out with more than a thousand students
every year into an institution of marvelous equip
ment and millions of endowment. Again we de
clare it is no time for somebody to arise and re
mark that many of the Tuskegee graduates have
not made useful members of society. We grant
that the proportion of unworthy ones is regret
fully large; but hundreds of these negro men and
women have gone out into the world as artisans,
mechanics, teachers, and producers, who are now
owning homes of their own, teaching economy and
stability to their race, and making two grass blades
grow where barely one was found before.
There is but one answer: Booker T. Washington,
as Mr. Carnegie said of him, has been a Moses un
der God to lead his people out into a higher plane
of useful citizenship. The white people around
Tuskegee tell us that his influence for goood over
his race in that section of the “black belt,” is
wholesome and uplifting indeed.
Dr. J. L. M. Curry, the great Southern Christian
statesman, uttered a great truth when he declared
“ignorance is no remedy for anything.” If there
had been less of such one sided education as many
people of the North brought to the negro imme
diately after the war, and more of the kind which
Tuskegee and Spellman are giving the present and
future of the negro in the South would be brighter
and more prophetic of the best possible solution
of the problem of the races. Practical, Christian
education for both races is the duty of the present
and the hope of the future.
In the Role of Avarice.
To the unfettered soul, the devil perhaps appears
in his most loathsome form when clad in the robes
of avarice. A generous spirit is in sympathy with
the spirit of God; a selfish spirit is in tune with the
devil.
Whatever else may be his faults and foibles, a
man of generous deeds is always loved, for his soul
has caught some bright beams of celestial splendor.
Whatever else may be his grace, however pure his
private life, the sordid man is cordially hated deep
down in the souls of all his follow men. Natuarlly
so, for he is a property of the devil, and his danger
is palpable.
(Some avaricious men have some excellent traits
to their credit, but still they cannot be esteemed. In
a certain Georgia city there lives a man whose
word is as good as his bond, who is kind and fair
spoken to everybody, generous and indulgent to his
family—but to them only. He is a moral man, does
not know the taste of liquor nor tobacco, has prob
ably never used an oath; jn fact his private life is
thoroughly wholesome. Starting life with no capi
tal, he has amassed a fortune, and honestly. But he
never has been known to do a public spirited act.
His townspeople know that it were as fruitless to
ask him to contribute to a charity or a benevolence,
as to seek Ao’s of the proverbial thistle. In the
town where he has lived for his more than fifty
years, dispassionate men speaking calmly have
been beard to say that when he died no one would
care save his family. None would regret his pass
ing. As living he is valueless to his community, his
death would entail no loss.
But there are examples of avarice beside which
this one pales into a paragon of virtue. A few
days ago a lady from Arkansas submitted to this
publication some verses and sketches expressing the
hope that we might pay her something for them if
available. “I regret to say it,” she wrote, “but I
have no other way now of getting the means to
dress decently, or make a contribution to my
church. I used to get along pretty well by sewing
but my strength has failed. I have to drudge and
toi 1 all day, year in and year out, with never a kind
word from my husband. He never gives me any
thing. I used to think it was because we were poor,
but now he owns thousands of broad and fertile
acres. If you can not use the articles do not re-
turn them, do not write me anything, for it would
only bring down upon my head his ridicule and
abuse. ’ ’
In Atlanta there is a bookkeepeer who is paid a
salary of one hundred and twenty-five dollars per
month. He owns several houses which bring him a
good rental. He saves all his salary and rental
income every month and buys more property with
the money. He compels his wife to make the liv
ing expenses for the family and her own money by
peddling laces, medicines, or whatever merchandise
she can. Recently one of their children fell ill. The
mother plead for a physician. The father would
not consent to call one until he wrung from his wife
the promise that she would work harder and make
the money to pay the bill. The child died.
They owned no lot in the cemetery. Then the
ghoul threatened to bury the little corpse in a pine
coffin in the potter’s field, and consented to decent
arrangements only when he had crushed from the
heart-broken mother a promise that she would work
still harder on the streets and earn the money to
repay him the cost of the coffin, the funeral, and the
cemetery lot.
Verily, I know my Savior is the Son of God, for
He is the opposite of these!
Happy Childhood.
On the car last evening were three children, the
oldest a girl of about fourteen, the others being
a boy and girl, aged about ten and eleven respect
ively. An earnest argument wag in progress on
some subject. As the car stopped to receive a pass
enger the voice of the fourteen year old girl could
be heard in positivee tones: “When it comes to
comparison, there just isn’t any comparison. Ev
erybody knows that Mendelssohn was nothing like
as great an artist as Schubert.” This settled the
question finally and closed the argument. That
child knew—knew absolutely and was entirely un
vexed of doubt. There you have in a word the
chief beauty of childhood. There is no doubt or
worry or hesitation about anything. Conclusions
are reached without friction or delay and they are
always the correct ones. Everything is just what
it seems, and there is one, only one drawback to that
happy time. We cannot realize our perfect joy
until it passes. We often think of it now; our
dreams go oftener backward than forward and most
men and women would gladly return and tread
those golden ways with childish feet again. To
quote from Jas. A. Hall’s “Valley of Childhood”:
“0 happy, silent valley
* Your sky is ever blue;
And from life’s barren hill-tops,
We all look back to you.”
The Fascination of Type.
Phineas T. Barnum, who made some reputation
during his life as a showman, said that the public
wanted to be humbugged.
M e would not presume to question Mr. Bar
num’s opportunities to judge of human nature in
this connection, but we cannot personally agree
that his statement is literally true. There is nothing*
that so pains us as to be humbugged—and all our
friends whom we have interviewed unhesitatingly
declare that they prefer that things come up to
specifications, and they be spared the mortification
of being easy marks. The most universal method of
humbugging the public is through advertising. A
showman could not induce the public to come into
his show through personal statements that his tent
contained certain marvels—he can have a picture
of them made, and print glowing show-bills, and they
do the trick. No doctor could, by merely talking,
convince us that some one had an immediate cure
for consumption—that cancer, asthma and catarrh
could be cured while we wait, or that a bean-pole
figure could be made over into a replica of Juno
by the application of a pleasing and highly perfum
ed ointment—but see these things in print, and we
separate from our coin promptly—trusting implic
itly. What does it? It’s the type. Put anything
into print and it’s gospel truth. There is a fascE
nation about type. It cannot be escaped.