The Golden age. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1906-1915, May 10, 1906, Page 8, Image 8

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8 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,”