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The Golden Age
(SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS FORUN)
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden fZge Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OFFICES: LOWNDES ‘BUILDING- ATLANTA. GA.
Price: $2.00 a Year
WILLUXMD. UPSHfAW. --- - Editor
A. E. RAMS A UR, - - - Associate Editor
W. F. UPS HA W, - - - - "Business Manager
H. R. BERNARD, - - - Sec’y and Treas
Entered at the Post Office in 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.
The Chatham Artillery of Savannah, Ga., is to
receive from the government four nitro-glycerine
guns.
If the artillery punch keeps pace with the new
nitro glycerine guns, there will be something doing
when it goes into action.
A Chicago man dropped dead recently while lift
ing a stove for his wife. This should be a warn
ing to all wives in this broad land, but how few will
heed it! They will go on in the same old way,
making their husbands lift stoves, hang pictures
and tend the furnace, until the list of casualties
will be something fierce. A Husband’s Union, or
a S. P. C. H. is what we need.
Mr. Harry Stillwell Edwards has suggested that
the name of the mocking-bird be changed to “la
nier” in memory of Sydney Lanier. Almost every
one except the bird and ourselves has expressed
an opinion on the suggestion. Personally it mat
ters little if the name was changed, for he would
be mocking-bird to us as long as we live. The change
would exist only in the dictionaries and the bird
would go on mocking his feathered contemporaries
just as before, and no trouble would result. The
precedent is what we have to dread. If this pro
posed change is made some one will soon insist
on changing crane to “ longfellow, ” and hawk to
“rockefeller.” In a short time the woods would
be full of “jones’es” and “smiths” and “Carne
gies.” When the birds were exhausted the reform
ers would begin on the insects. Some genius stand
ing upon occasion watching the bumble-bee boring
his way into wood, would have an inspiration, born
of the boring, to name him “tnpp.”
Russell Sage, faintly related to us through our
wife’s family, has quit Wall Street forever. He
has attended to his business in the Street for forty
three years without a vacation, his only visible dis
sipation being linen dusters. It is said that during
all his business life he found his chief enjoyment
in planning where and when to buy his next duster
often spending ail his leisure moments during a
period of as many as eight months in determining
whether his next one should be single or double
breasted, long or short. In this way he has ac
cumulated quite an interesting collection. Still, Mr.
Sage very rarely wore more than one duster at.
a time. The career of this wonderfully modest
and economical man may well serve as an example
to the aspiring youth of our country. Many of our
self -styled up-to-date young men, had they possess
ed as many dusters as Mr. Sage, would have gone
to extremes and worn four or possibly as many
as six at once.
As a further evidence of Mr. Sage’s prudence,
it may be proper to stale that he kept on his desk
a little savings bank into which he dropped from
time to time such pennies and dimes as he could
spare from his business, and he thus accumulated
quite a snug little sum for his old age,
The Golden Age for May 10, 1906.
The People's Ultimatum lo The Liquor Dailies.
The hour lias come and now is—the word must
be spoken, the thing must be done!
There is no other way.
The conviction has been growing for a long time
that every consistent enemy of the saloon should
practice the “exclusion act” toward every paper
that advertises liquor.
During the last session of the Georgia Baptist
Convention, Pastor L. E. Barton, of Quitman, made
a powerful speech on the temperance report in
which he declared that the liquor traffic can never
be effectually fought as long as Baptist conventions,
Methodist conferences and Presbyterian Synods
pass annual resolutions against the sale of liquor
and continue as individual members to welcome into
their homes the daily papers that are deluged with
liquor advertisements; and commenting on the birth
of The Atlanta Georgian, with its announced policy
to exclude liquor advertisements from its columns,
Oliver J. Copeland, the brilliant and fearless young
pastor of Jackson Hill church, Atlanta, said on a
recent Sunday:
“Every five years the whiskey bill of this country
equals the national debt incurred by the civil war,
and also buries more victims than the men killed
during that struggle. It is the mother of vice and
crime. It is an Itasca out of which flows a Missis
sippi of sorrow, misery and ruin.
The whiskey dealer is an enemy of the home,
and a menace to society. Every man who votes a
whisky ticket is as guilty as the barkeeper, and at
the Bar of God will answer for its crimes—more
than that, every man who stands idly by, and al
lows the whiskey gang to foist its wretched business
upon any community without a protest and an hon
est effort to prevent the outrage, will also stand
at the Great White Throne, with millions of ruined
homes and lives pointing accusing fingers toward
his guilty face, for having negatively been a party
to their ruin.
I am sick and tired of the newspaper that poses
as the friend of the home and fills its columns with
whiskey advertisements, paid for with dirty, blood
stained dollars—such a paper is an enemy to the
home, and should be barred from its sacred circle.
I am going to stop my subscription to every paper
that advertises the infernal traffic.”
And now comes the Evangelical Conference of
ministers taking note of The Georgian’s high posi
tion and passing strong resolutions of endorsement.
We are glad the Ministers’ Conference said this
much, but frankly, we believe it would have been
far more effective if they had gone one step further.
Suppose all the preachers of all denominations
should call on all their people in all their churches
to exclude from their homes all papers that adver
tise liquor in any form!
What an awakening it would be!
But would it win? Just as surely as the preach
ers of London, led by F. B. Meyer, stopped Sunday
papers in the world’s metropolis.
Let it be said with emphasis that there is nothing
personal in this call for exclusion. It is the begin
ning of a battle for principle which The Golden Age
intends to wage with truceless fidelity as long as life
and the saloon shall last.
The editor of this paper has grateful reason for
thanking the daily press of Georgia, especially, for
every helpful kindness shown him and the educa
tional work to which he has given much of his life,
and he cherishes some of these editors among his
warmest personal friends. But that is not the ques
tion. Good men often make mistakes, and these
men have lived so long in the awful error that their
“space is for sale, as a business proposition,” that
they fail to see themselves hand in glove with the
liquor power.
“We deny it!” they answer. “We are not hand
in glove with the saloon.” But, dear sirs, you are
helping it on by advertising it.
Then you deliberately sell for money the right to
do wrong.
You had not thought about it that way? But
your space is to your paper what your heart blood
is to your life—what your virtue is to your charac
ter, and you bargain for gain the red blood of your
being—you barter for gold the white purity of
your virtue!
tr
Space for sale indeed! All right. Then sell it
to a lewd house. ?s you allow a bright man of
letters to ingeniously place the “attractive quali
ties” of a certain brand of liquor before our young
men, heeding not that it leads them to debauchery,
death and hell—so then, sell a page of your sacred
space where harlots may hold high carnival in plac
ing their blandishments before your sons.
All th s and more if your space is for sale!
Your space for sale? Then sell it to the gamb
ling den. Let the owners of American Monte
Carlos, large or small, depict for the unwary on the
page they buy from you the “thrill” and “excite
ment” and “possibilities” around their gaming
tables—but hide, oh, hide the horror and the hell
they bring!
Your space for sale? If you may advertise one
iniquity you may advertise them all. And you
know that the saloon is an acknowledged and an
unmitigated iiii<{iiity. It is the cause of debauchery,
the helper of murder, the trysting place of anarchy,
the hot-bed of crime, the breeder of infidelity, the
companion of the brothel—the gateway of hell!
And yet, Brother Editor, you help it on by advertis
ing it in your paper while you put deep down in
your pockets the money that is stained with human
blood and drenched with the tears of human sor
row !
You know that your course cannot be defended.
There is no standard of moral ethics that will ex
cuse you. There is no Rule of Right by which you
are not condemned.
Then think— in God’s name, think! Let Con
science do her perfect work and you will never print
a liquor advertisement again!
Neither will you talk in favor of “local option”
and at the same time help on the jug trade which
largely nullifies the doctrine that you preach.
And—let us put into italics what we said a few
weeks ago—think, God help you to think!—and
you will no longer write practical platitudes about
the making and meaning of citizenship while you
carry in the same columns the bought dagger of the
enemy which strikes down that citizenship in the
sacred temple of its own building.
Then call an immediate conference betwen your
Conscience and your Judgment and walk out in the
open of God’s clear sunlight with a paper clean
and pure. Stand before the glass then, and your
image will approve you. Try it, and the Good and
True will crown you!
The News-Scimitar, of Memphis, did it a year ago
and now lives and thrives and rejoices. That paper
was battling for the enforcement of Sunday laws.
The liquor men protested and threatened. Where
upon, The News-Scimitar annulled all whiskey ad
vertisements and, leaving itself untrammelled,
fought its winning battle with untied hands and
an unfettered pen.
Me cite The Atlanta Georgian in this instance, not
simply as a newspaper (although it is first class
from every viewpoint) but as a living practical and
refreshing exemplification of what a daily paper can
be without the fumes of liquor upon its vital breath.
Many country weeklies in Georgia and the South
are pursuing the same brave course. And the very
day that some other daily paper lifts the White
Banner above its head we will crown it as gladly as
we crown The Georgian now.
Hear again the declaration of the New York
Tribune:
“The Saloon has No Rights!”
No right to live by our ballots—no right to rent
our property—no right to space in our papers!
1 hen it has come to this: Let every man who
loves his children and his home say to the paper
to which he has doubtless long been attached:
“I say it sorrowfully but I say it definitely—
unless you exclude liquor advertisements from your
columns I will exclude you from my home,”