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The Golden Age
(SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS EORUIT)
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden Hge Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OFFICES: LOWNDES 'BUILDING, ATLANTA, GA.
Price: $2.00 a 'Pear
WILLIXM D. UPSHAW, .... 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.
My Vision.
By WILLIAM D. UPSHAW.
I sometimes catch a flitting gleam
Os heights I long to reach—
I sometimes feel the swelling stream
Os thoughts beyond my speech;
I sometimes soar on Fancy’s wing,
Or climb on golden staff
To where the silent Muses sing,
And worldly crowns are chaff!
And at such times I cry: “A Voice!—
A voice to speak the spell,
That others, with me, may rejoices
In thoughts too deep to tell!”
The Lasso of the Devil.
By the hands of his faithful emmissaries Satan
begins early to throw his lasso over the young.
No more horrifying illustration of this fact has
come under our eyes of late than that which is re
vealed by the following incident:
One of the brightest women in Georgia (who, by
the way, is a valued contributor to The Golden Age)
has been spending a part of the summer in Atlanta,
having with her her two little sons, the older of
whom has hardly lived in this world of temptation
a dozen years.
Lunching with them one day at a popular fam
ily hotel, this fine little fellow who had come from
his South Georgia home to see the “wonders” of
Atlanta during his vacation, came running up to
give greeting to the Editor who had one time visited
his school. A shining piece of metal was seen hang
ing like a watch fob from the vest of the youthful
Atlanta visitor. And lo! on the front side of this
new-found treasure was engraved the pet phrase
of a large liquor house in Atlanta.
Seized with horror the other side was turned
and there was the brazen name of one of the most
shamefully enterprising advertisers of liquor on the
American continent.
“Where did you get this, my litle man?”
“I got it from little playmate across the street.
He’s wearing one.”
The unsuspecting mother was shown the brazen
head of this advertising serpent, and startled at the
impudent effrontery that was beginning to coil its
devilish self about her boy, told him to make tracks
to his playmate and give him back his property.
And it has come to this! Boys of tender years
are to be caught by their natural fondness for
badges and “charms” and mottoes and banners,
and yielding, at first unconsciously, to the serpen
tine design, they are induced to become walking ad
vertisements of the very brew of hell. They are
given these shining badges doubtless—if they will
come after them!
Thus their scampering little feet are led to ex
plore the office of the wholesale liquor dealer for
the first time. With a show of conscience this deal
er would assure these children, their parents and
even the Recording Angel himself, that he would
not think of having these boys enter the tempting
atmosphere of a barroom—no, no! because it is
against the law. (Yes, and that is the only rea
son.) But meantime these same boys, with twink-
The Golden Age for August 30, 1906.
ling, wondering eyes, are allowed to look at the pret
ty pictures all around and see just a few sample
bottles clad in attractive wrappers that tell of the
contents in letters of shining gold.
And so these happy boys—each one some moth
er’s darling—-scurry away, rich in their new pos
sessions, to scatter the news among the other boys
of the city. And as they leave the office of their
new-found friend who has so generously given them
these pretty badges, each with a furtive look be
hind, says perhaps to himself: “Some day when
I am older I will know about this business. I will
be man enough myself to find out what is in those
sample botles.”
And the enterprising liquor dealer, smiles com
placently as he watches them depart, smacks his
lips in Satanic contemplation and remarks to his
clerks, his bookkeepers, his young lady stenograph
ers and his chuckling confidential secretary:
“Those young Americans will make* good custom
ers after a while.”
And then the demons of hell strike up their glee
ful chant, “He’s coming our way,” in reply to the
mother’s plaintive wail:
“Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight?”. .This
—all this and more, is the meaning of the shining
metal badges being worn by the boys and men
around us—the lasso which the devil is throwing
early around the boys of the present and the men
of the future!
Surely the seared conscience of even the liquor
dealer himself would relent if he could catch a real
vision of the ruin he is seeking and making! If he
will not, or if he will, an outraged public conscience
will arise in its right and in its might and sweep
his horrible business from the face of the earth.
Parents, watch well the kind of badges your boys
are wearing!
Election Aftermath.
We have had an election in Georgia—a nomina
tion, rather, the like of which we never saw before,
and which we devoutly hope we w 7 ill never see again.
Each of the five candidates for Governor has had
friends who, in the excitement of political agita
tion, have said things about the other candidates,
doubtless, which facts did not warrant and even
partisanship could not excuse.
With all of these things The Golden Age has had
nothing to do. Not being a political paper, the
purely political phases have not been touched upon
in these columns and will not be discussed. But
standing for conscientious citizenship and “Purity
in the State” as a part of our motto, we have
dared to have some “home-made” convictions on
a great moral issue involved and we have spoken
these convictions in an impersonal, non-partisan,
honest way.
Now that the battle of ballots and the bitterness
of partisan contention are over, let this thing be
clearly said: Hon. Hoke Smith, who has just won
the most remarkable victory which any candidate
for Governor has won in Georgia in two generations,
began this campaign on the “inside track” so far
as our personal admiration was concerned. A mem
ber of President Cleveland’s cabinet and serving
there with a conspicuous ability in which all Geor
gians felt an honest pride—prominent in religious
conventions, state, national and international, and
keeping, we believed, his great heart on the right
side of every moral question, we counted—let us
say it with due deference to all other great men in
the state—we counted Hon. Hoke Smith the fore
most citizen of Georgia. An intellectual giant, an
orator of surpassing eloquence, and clad in Uje
spotless vestmnts of stalwart and aggressive Chris
tian manhood, we verily believed that America con
tained no greater, grander man.
We say this that people may see how painful it
was to ns to see our ideal in Christian statesman
ship yielding a point—a vital point—an awful
point on the liquor question. There is something
inspiring, commanding, sweeping, overwhelming- in
a victory which has carried one hundred and twen
ty-two out of one hundred and forty-five counties
in Georgia, and humanly speaking, it would be
“mighty pleasant” to be on the side of those who
Editor
are shouting only the chorus of praise and the peans
of victory. It hurts us to sound a discordant note.
But we say now—and we expect to say to our dy
ing day—that no man ought to use a powerful per
sonality and the rising tide of popular political
measures, however just, to carry into the White
House of Georgia the staggering stigma and the
blighting example of being an original owner and
an actual sharer in the blood-stained profits of a
saloon.
And we dare to deal Mr. Smith the justice, and
the people of Georgia the justice likewise, to say
that if that saloon had been down on Decatur street
instead of in a handsome hotel on Peachtree, lie
would not have submitted to “minority” owner
ship in it—and if he had, the people of Georgia
would never have elected him Governor. But where
is the difference? Hold on, reader! Don’t make
the charge of partisanship. Remember that several
weeks before a word was said in these columns
about “one of the candidates for governor and his
interest in a barroom,” we had spoken in the strong
est terms which we could command against the prac
tice of advertising liquor—con dem lining the course
of two other candidates for governor. And we only
refrained from further expression before the election
because we learned that an honest moral intention
was being misunderstood.
Now that a partisan imputation is impossible, we
renew the call in which thousands who voted for
the successful candidate will join. We have heard
the expressions already. They voted for Mr.
Smith because they believed him “the strongest
man in the race,” and because he stood for other
things they believed in. But they do not want their
Governor to be mixed up in any way with a bar
room.
The insidious sophistry that “a first class hotel
must have a saloon” has blinded the eyes and
blunted the moral sense of many a good man who,
at heart, would shun to do wrong.
We believe Mr. Smith wishes in his heart that he
had never had any connection with the Piedmont
Bar. He has said so—and we believe him. But he
could not get out “under fire” without being mis
understood. Now it is different. Now he has the
greatest opportunity to do a brave, far-reaching
moral deed which any man in America has faced
in years. Let him wash his hands of the whole sa
loon business before he sits down in the Governor’s
chair! Then he will teach the world that he be
lieves there is no difference betwen the actual rav
ages of a saloon, whether surrounded by the “pat
and dance” of a low down dive or the glitter and
glare of gilded sin. We have stood in the arcade
of the beautiful Piedmont Hotel, and we have seen
the “educated” son of wealth come up from his
contact with that “necessary” (?) accompaniment
to a first class hotel. His face was red, his eyes
were bleared and sickening gibberish fell from his
wagging tongue.
No, good people of Georgia, we do not want our
great reform Governor to have any connection with
a saloon that debauches men like that.
God grant that the brilliant, brainy Governor
elect may see his DUTY and his OPPORTUNITY, •
and seeing, dare to do!
A Bouquet From Mississippi.
We take your paper in our home and I can say
there is no other paper that I enjoy reading so
much as I do The Golden Age.
AA hen you were at Blue Mountain College last
spring you completely won the hearts of four hun
dred college girls. I know it must be hard for
a busy editor to bear all this burden, but I just
must tell you.
You remember you said then that all the girls
might consider The Golden Age every week a sort
of “love letter” from you. Well, at my age, I
have received very few “love letters,” of course,
but I must say if they were all as good as yours
have been, I don’t care how many I receive in the
future. Everywhere I have been I have talked
The Golden Age, and shall continue to do so.
Do come back to Blue Mountain next term. Your
visit and lectures were an inspiration to us all.
Your Blue Mountain Friend, Ora Miley.