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The Golden Age
(SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS FORUM)
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden 9lge Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OFFICES: LOWNDES “BUILDING, {ATLANTA, GA.
Price: $2.00 a Year
WILLIHM D. UPSHfXW, .... Editor
A. E. RAJTSAUR, - - - Associate Editor
Entered at the Post Office tn {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.
It is gettting to be a hard world to find one’s
way about in. A news item recently told of a wo
man having her husband arrested and carried before
the recorder because he omitted to kiss her when
he reached home after an absence of some days.
This incident seemed to point the way to proper
conduct on the husband’s part, but it was not more
than a week before a New Jersey man dropped
dead instantly upon kissing his wife. What can
a poor man do? The bachelors seem to be the only
safe ones, but, then, they are all held in utter con
tempt in the community.
Dr. Broughton Abroad.
We publish in this week’s Golden Age the ser
mon delivered by Dr. Broughton, Sabbath before
last in Dudley St. Church, Boston. After a short
stay in Boston, he will sail for England, arriving
there on the 27th inst. During the summer he
will be very busy preaching in Dr. Campbell Mor
gan’s church and elsewhere. He will fill Dr. Mor
gan’s pulpit six Sundays. He will also conduct
his Friday night Bible Class of 1,500 people. Dur
ing October Dr. Broughton will conduct evangelis
tic services in some of the churches of London, and
will preach and lecture for Dr. Samuel Chadwick.
These seimons will be published in the Golden Age
shortly after their delivery abroad. Dr. Broughton
is very popular abroad and his work there two years
ago, when he visitied England with a number of
other ministers, is still fresh in the hearts of those
who heard him. His sermons and his books are
doing much to bind closer together the bodies of
his denomination which are divided by the Atlantic
ocean.
Hon. B. S. Willingham.
One of the prominent men before the people of
Georgia now is Hon. B. S. Willingham, of Forsyth.
He has announced himself for a place on the bench
in the Court of Appeals to be established by the
present Legislature, and while The Golden Ag®
is not a political paper and is intended to be a ser
vant, especially, of the whole South, we count it
wholly within the province of this publication to
commend in Georgia and everywhere else any man
for any position, political or otherwise, when that
man has such a record for moral bravery and Chris
tian statesmanship as Bartow r S. Willingham has
made both in private life and public endeavor.
.As author of the famous Willingham Bill—one of
the strongest temperance measures ever offered to
the people of Georgia—he won not only a state
wide, but almost a national, reputation. His able
advocacy of that bill proved that he was a man
of superior strength and uncringing courage.. An
astute lawyer, with a rare equipoise of mind and a
refreshingly regnant conscience, he blends the judi
cial qualities as few men do.
We do not know how many good men are going
to offer for the Court of Appeals, but we believe
that one of the three places ought to be filled, and
will be filled by Hon. Bartow S. Willingham; for
the whole State recognizes the fact that he would
meet the demands of this highly responsible position
with distinction to himself, honor to the judiciary
and inspiring the public good.
The Golden Age for August 16, 1906.
Justice Tempered By Mercy.
A few remarks made by Judge Wofford, of Kan
sas City, the other day, prefatory to his sentence
upon a negro convicted of murder, have attracted
a great deal of comment by the press. The negro
killed another who had a reputation as a “bad
man,” and upon trial, having no money or friends,
was promptly convicted by a jury. In pronouncing
sentence Judge Wofford said:
“Well, you are guilty of murder, all right, but
you’re a poor, ignorant black man, and I don’t
want to hang you. You have no friends. You have
no one to plead that you were insane when you killed
this man. If I sentence you to hang you will hang
just as sure as there’s a God in heaven. There will
not be a whole lot of women circulating petitions
to save your neck. There will not be a lot of fool
men writing letters to the governor to save you.
No one will send you flowers. You’ll just be for
gotten until the day set for your hanging, and then
they’ll hang you. I’ll sentence you to thirty years
in the penitentiary.”
It cannot be denied that wealth and influence have
a great deal to do with the tilting of the scales of
justice; and that the poor and unfriendless are of
ten made to suffer more in the courts for their
small and insignificant misdemeanors, than wealthy
criminals are for grave and terrible wrongs. But
public sentiment is working against this order of
things, and the sense of justice and the feeling of
sympathy in every human breast for the helpdess
ones, -wrong-doers though they may be, is operating
to make all men equal before the courts. The re
cent insurance investigations, the punishment meted
out to the guilty, even if it was only moral pun
ishment, goes to show that the public conscience
is awake and sensitive. It is a glad sign of the
times that no man can buy with money immunity
from censure for wrong-doing. Not many years
ago, the statesman who could show a clear public
record was excused for all manner of private im
morality. Now, he who asks public approval must
bear close scrutiny of his personal character and
his private life. If he rings sound and true in little
hidden things, he is made keeper over large ones,
and it is well that this should be so.
Victory Is Coming.
The growth of sentiment against the liquor traffic
is gratifying indeed to those who have battled for
years against the combined forces of evil. All the
world know y s how the sane but valiant work of the
Anti-Saloon League rebuked barroom domination
and Sabbath desecration in Ohio last year—elect
ing Governor Pattison, not because he was a Dem
ocrat, but because the Republican party refused
to put up a man with a clean record, a pure life and
a lofty ideal in government. Everybody knows how
under the leadership of such men as J. W. Bailey
in North Carolina and Edgar Folk in Tennessee,
hundreds of saloons have been closed because the
people—the people have been aroused and ambi
tions legislators have seen the handwriting on the
wall, even if they have not felt the swaying pas
sion in their hearts.
And here in Georgia, thank Heaven, the temper
ance forces are rising and shaking their locks, while
the walls built with shame and cemented with
blood are beginning to totter and fall on the tremb
ling devotees of the saloon.
One of the greatest victories during the present
legislature has been the defeat of the dispensary
in that fair and generous town, Ocilla, and with it
the placing of a prohibitory license of twenty thou
sand dollars in Irwin county, safeguarding that
good old county from saloons in the future, and
likewise protecting the new county of Ben Hill,
whose capital is the growing city of Fitzgerald.
Leading in this glorious fight has been the slen
der, but stalwart form of Hon. B. E. Wilcox
(“Ras” Wilcox they love to call him), stainless
and intrepid representative from Irwin, and over
in the Senate his royal cousin, Hon. George Wilcox,
has wisely and vigorously carried through the mea
sure there. And both of these brave men deserve
a monument. They already have one in the hearts
of a grateful people.
While the battle in n county has been l< a«l
in its application, it has been state wide in inter
est, likewise state wide in effect; for the reform
forces all over Georgia have felt the thrill of en
couragement which such a victory brings.
If in Irwin county, why not every rum-cursed
county in Georgia? Now, if in Georgia, why not
every county and at last in every other state?
“Blow, bugle blow!”
Set the wild echoes flying!
*' Tell our 'brothers far and near—
The whiskey dens are dying!
The Dispensary Losing Ground.
Whatever may be said as to the merits or demer
its of the dispensary or the barroom, when com
pared with each other, this undeniable fact remains
—dispensary liquor makes people drunk just the
same and turns many a Southern town, every day
and Saturday, too, into a drinking mess and a ca
rousing hell. ,
One dispensary may possibly be better in some
communities than a dozen barrooms, but the people
are finding out every day and everywhere whenever
they face the question, that one dispensary is too
much for the peace and sobriety of any community
that is cursed with one of these legalized and “re
spectableized” makers of mischief and misery.
South Carolina is rising in her indignation and
might and driving the dispensary from one county
after another. And listen: No longer is it a ques
tion of dispensary or barroom—it is a question of
liquor or no liquor!
Judge Arthur Powell, of Blakely, one of the
brightest young men in the States, drafted a wise
bill which has been passed by the Georgia Legis
lature, allowing counties that now have dispensa
ries to vote them out without exposing themselves
afterward to the possible return of saloons.
One by one the counties in Georgia that have been
coquetting with the palpable sophistries of both the
moral and commercial phases of the dispensary,
are learning the folly of it all, and the blended
voices of the awakened and disgusted people are
blending, we believe, with the voice of God.
Yes, and more and more brave and thoughtful
men, who formerly argued “better have dispensa
ries than so many blind tigers,” are waking to the
fact that any community that can vote barrooms
out can keep “blind tigers” out, if they will try!
And they will do it, unless they are laggards and
cowards! If a law and order league can keep
“blind tigers” out of one community, such a league
of brave, vigilant men can keep these law-breakers
out of any community.
We rejoice in the widespread awakening to these
incontestible facts—and that is why the dispensary
is losing ground.
Room For One More.
Kosciusko, Miss., August 2, 1906.
Mr. W. D. Upshaw, Atlanta, Ga.
Dear Sir:—Recently I have been solicited to sub
scribe for the Golden Age. I declined for the rea
son that I thought I had all the papers I needed.
I was handed, this morning, the number of June
21st, and asked to read your editorial, “A Citizen’s
Protest.” I have just read it; my mind has been
changed. I need another paper, one whose editor
has the moral courage to stand for the right, though
the heavens fall. May the Lord multiply your sort.
I will give my name to a friend of mine who is so
liciting for your paper the first time I see him.
Yours very truly,
J. P. Brown.
In Indiana a movement has been started by both
political parties that must result in a real and prac
tical suspension of the present methods of illicit
and illegal elections. In five counties the leaders
have signed agreements that they will in no in
stance purchase votes, and further, that no man
known to be open to money considerations will be
employed about the polling places. Both parties
have also agreed to pay the same wages to their
workers and to employ no man whose character is
pbjsctionable.