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8 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.