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8 The Golden Age (SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS FORUM) Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden fAge Publishing Company (Inc.) OFFICES: LOWNDES “BUILDING, ATLANTA, GA. Price: $2.00 a Year WILLIAM D. UPSHAW. - - - - Editor A. E. RAMSAUR, - - - 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. Dr. H. M. Hamil, Superintendent of training work of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, who recently conducted the superintendents’ rally in Atlanta, Ga., a mention of which appears else where in our columns, in the course of a recent talk quoted an old Greek svaying which he said approach ed as nearly to divine philosophy as any pagan at tempt he had ever known: “The perfect man— brutes follow him, children love him, old age con fides in him.” Chicago’s Black Blue Book. The negroes of Chicago have organized a “400” and have published a Blue Book. As any one could foresee, the Pullman porters’ names lead all the rest—then icome the “massagers, ” the Barbers and Butlers, the “Bo’dinhouse keepers”; then the various grades of washerwomen and so on. All who have no local habitation are excluded from The Book. Up there the negroes are very far from being anxious for equality with the whites. They have something of their own which they like just as well. The Ku Klux Klan. Under the stress of the great popular indignation aroused by the recent outrages committed by ne groes in the vicinity of Atlanta, it is but natural that many extreme measures should be advocated for the suppresson and prevention of this class of crimes. The Atlanta papers have properly begun a crusade against the dives and low drinking places in certain quarters of the city and are insisting upon a more vigorous enforcement of the vagran cy laws as one step toward the desired end. The movement to secure an enlargement of the county police force is also a good one. But beyond this, some very unwise plans have been advocated. It would not be amiss for ladies to learn to handle fire arms and that a weapon be kept in every house; but it is not probable that any considerable num ber of women will ever so far overcome their fear of fire arms as to be able to be more dangerous to an assailant than to themselves when it becomes necessary to discharge them. The most radical and deplorable suggestion has been one to estab lish aku klux klan to safeguard the homes. This organization in its very nature is illegal and would inevitably evolve into a terror and scourge to the innocent blacks whose presence is needed in our midst as laborers. Probably this organization would cause the re moval of the better class of negroes from our midst and a race war between the whites and the worse element of blacks. In no sense can such a plan be greatly advocated or endorsed. There should be no more discussion with this purpose in view. The problem is one that demands wise and ear nest consideration. Laws are now in existence mak ing the crime of assault a capital one. They have in many instances been enforced. In other instances capital punishment has been meted out by mobs, and the number of crimes does not grow less. The most conservative thinkers on the situation believe that the solution of the problem will come from within the negro race itself. The better class of The Golden Age for September 13, 1906. negroes are opposed to the commission of the nameless crime by members of their race and are willing to do all in their power to aid the whites. They will do what they can if away is pointed out to them. It should be put up to the better class of negroes to drive out the element that furnishes the criminals. They will become more active in their efforts when they realize that upon the proper set tlement of this question depends their residence among the whites and their very citizenship and protection under the law in the South. A Negro’s Sensible Words. Among the gratifying results of an unpleasant state of affairs in regard to recent crimes from negro outlaws, have been some of the words and deeds of the best element of our negro leaders. These multiplying outrages of the “unmentiona ble crime” have caused a meeting of strong pro test on the part of the negro ministers of Atlanta, and in our daily papers some brave, sensible'words have been written by the leaders of the race. Here is an extract from a letter from G. A. Bal lard, a negro teacher, of Jacksonville, Fla., who is visiting in Atlanta. It appeared in the Atlanta Constitution, and is the kind of utterance which will commend itself to the readers of The Golden Age, both North and South: “I believe that the law-abiding white man is going to stick by and protect the faithful and law abiding negro. He has done so in the past; I believe he will do so in the future. Let us trust him. “I am not posing as a race leader. lam only a humble teacher. I am a graduate of Clark Uni versity of Atlanta, a school which I attended for ten years. While there I was under the instruction of both white and colored teachers and not one of them ever taught me social equality or race dom ination. They taught me righteous principles; they taught me that honesty is the best policy and igno rance and crime are a reproach to any people. These principles I have been trying to impress upon the hearts and minds of all the negro children who come under me for instruction, and I shall continue as long as I remain in the school room, so help me God. “But that class of brutes who are assaulting wo men are that class who never go to church, who never attend school for any length of time, who ; never read the newspapers, who have never heard such a sermon as Rev. Proctor preached last Sunday night, W’ho have never heard such advice as Booker Washington gave to his people last night. They are the unreached. Let every law-abiding person do his duty in seeing that they are reached; that the young be given proper instructions, and the harden ed criminals be put where they will not affect hu man society.” The Advertising Question. Since the first issue of The Golden Age a notice has been printed at the head of the editorial page that no harmful advertisements would be admitted to its advertising columns. During the first part of the present year The Golden Age Publishing Co. purchased the good will of an established publica tion and assumed its contracts of all kinds. Some of the contracts assumed have just begun to ex pire, and still others have some time yet to run before their expiration. The publication of cer tain of these advertisements has moved a num ber of our friends to write us criticising the char acter of the commodities advertised. As stated above, in some instances we had assumed contracts which we were forced to carry to their expiration, and were not free to exercise such discrimination in the choice of these advertisements as we would probably have done had they been offered to us as original contracts. Those interested have doubtless noted the ab sence from our last issue of certain advertisements which for a time have had position in our adver tising columns. It is our purpose to refuse the re newal of certain other contracts which expire in the near future, and after that time we will hope to publish only such matter as will be beyond the criticism of all fair-minded readers. We do not hope to secure the approval of every one. We may be fully convinced of the reliability, for instance, of a remedy, and some of our readers will have what they consider just and valid reason for considering it a fake, pure and simple. Ob viously we cannot personally test all of the medi cines advertised in our columns. We pass on them in the light of every-day common sense, and if the indi cations are that the remedy is good and its promoters honest, we accept their advertisement. It goes without saying that we would not accept an ad vertisement of a medicine which was known to con tain alcohol in so large a per cent, that it was used as a beverage, nor would we advertise a remedy which was known to contain a dangerous per cent, of “dope” in some form. However, the difficulty of discrimination comes among the other class of remedies. A man may have decided that he had dyspepsia, and had been moved, therefore, to try a dyspepsia remedy. If his trouble happened to be other than dyspepsia and the remedy failed to cause improvement, instead of blaming his diagno sis, he condemns the remedy and its makers. We must be allowed to be the judges of acceptable advertisements, and we promise to make all reason able effort to ascertain the reliability of the goods ■we advertise. It is probable that we will be criticised from time to time, however much we expurgate the ad vertising section. As an illustration, we may men tion that we have recently received one letter criti cising us for publishing a ginger ale advertisement. This criticism was based upon two grounds, first, that the ginger ale contained some alcohol, and, second, because there was a picture of a pint bot tle of ale in the upper left-hand corner of the advertisement. Another reader criticised a phono graph advertisement, terming the phonograph “a device of the devil,” because, at times, it was used to reproduce operatic and vaudeville music. The fact that our critics are subscribers to The Golden Age is an evidence that they are our friends, and their taking time to write us showed that they are striving in the right direction, and we accept their criticism in that light. But we do feel that the two friends referred to carried their objections too far. So we are doing our best to live up to our an nouncement. We are willing to bear the financial loss that this policy will entail, believing that such . policy is in keeping with the purpose of The Golden Age, and with our own ideals. We ere obliged to publish advertisements, and being human, we will probably err in some instances, but we mean well. The Cost of Conversion. A New York newspaper recently published some statistics purporting to be a reasonably accurate statement of the amount of money expended by churches and other religious organizations in their efforts to secure conversions. The Salvation Army, it is said, is indirectly responsible for the statement that the amount of money expended averages for each individual conversion recorded as follows: In Cincinnati, $9.75; in Buffalo, $7.54; in Indianapolis, only $1.50. In New York the outlay for turning one sinner to better ways is $25; while in Chicago the estimate ranges from $5 to $1,500. The lowest estimate made is Atlanta, Georgia, which is placed at twenty-five cents. There is no very satisfactory method of arriving at the accuracy of these statistics, though it is prob able that in the main they are correct. It is but natural that an Atlanta paper should desire to take advantage of the low rate of expenditure required in Atlanta, to say something good about the city, and to get a little more inflation into its “Atlanta spirit”; but a gloomy suggestion creeps in that this may be accounted for on the general basis of supply and demand. In other words, the unconvert ed must exist in teeming abundance in order that the expense of the individual conversion should come so low. It is true that there is a business side to the establishment and maintenance of a church; to the sending of missionaries and to the conducting of a revival; all these cost money and perhaps it is not wrong to figure results at so much per; but this point of view can be carried to a point where the real source of conversions is ignored.