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The Golden Age
(SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS FORUN)
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden Hge Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OFFICES: LOWNDES 'BUILDING, [ATLANTA, GA.
Price: $2.00 a 'Pear
WILLIfXMD. UPSHfXW, .... Editor
A. E. RAJIS A UR, - - - 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.
Mr. Charles N. Crittenden.
A visitor in Atlanta at the present who com
mands more than usual interest is Mr. Charles N.
Crittendon, the “millionaire-evangelist” and
philanthropist. Mr. Crittenden would, perhaps, be
averse to just these titles, but the world has seen
enough of his valuable work, and we know enough
of his splendid life to feel justified in the use of
these terms.
Although not converted until past middle life Mr.
Crittenden is today a most ardent Christian, and
one of the most successful evangelists in the coun
try. Some years ago he lost his little 5-year-old
daughter, Florence, and during the time of trial
he became convinced of the truth and beauty of
Christianity and yielded his heart and life to Christ.
Being a practical, as well as a thoroughly earnest
man, he decided to use his fortune for the practical
good of humanity, and he turned his attention to
founding rescue homes for young women. These
homes he named in honor of his little daughter, and
today there is scarcely a city in the country where
there is not a “Florence Crittenden Home” for
young women. Mr. Crittenden is at present ad
dressing large audiences at the First Methodist
Church in Atlanta, and is welcomed by all good
people. We hope soon to have a full story of his
great work appear in The Golden Age.
A Beautiful Tribute.
At the recent dedicatory services of the Ponce
de Leon Avenue Baptist Church, a resolution was
passed by the members which was a touching trib
ute to the memory of the only one of the large
congregation who had passed into the Great Beyond
since the organization of the church. This member
was Mr. Joseph Brown Whitehead, a man univer
sally beloved and deservedly honored by his fellow
church members, as well as by the entire commun
ity of Atlanta, where he was well known. The
memorial decided on by the Ponce de Leon Avenue
Baptist Church is to take the form of a handsome
stained glass window, to be erected in the beautiful
little chapel of the Georgia Baptist Orphans’ home.
Mr. Whitehead had been a strong friend of this in
stitution, and as he was most actively interested
in all philanthropic work, this memorial was es
pecially fitting.
A Presbyterian Pastor.
Mr. William D. Upshaw, Atlanta, Ga.:
My Dear Sir.—l have just read “The Moral
Grandeur of William J. Bryan” as copied in The
Constitution from The Golden Age, and hope it
may have wide circulation. I have been wanting
to say something of the kind myself, but you have
said it better than I could. Thank you for it. And
may God help you to write many other such arti
cles. Very sincerely yours,
N. B. MATHES,
Pastor Presbyterian Church, Euharlee, Ga.
“What you do not want done to yourself do not
do to others,”
The Golden Age for September 27, 1906.
Atlanta’s Sorrow.
Atlanta’s horror has been Atlanta’s sorrow. Our
hearts are too heavy to discuss it now, either as to
primal cause or its ultimate effect. It is enough to
say to our friends at a distance who have read the
news of the race riot in the daily press—be patient;
do not forget the brutal outrages that preceded it,
and do not hold the whole city or section responsi
ble for what the few have done.
Eleven reported outrages on our sisters, daugh
ters, wives and mothers in the last few weeks!
This would have stirred to frenzy any community
North as well as South. Four such reports Satur
day afternoon—and when the last sensational “ex
tra” announced the fourth crime in one afternoon,
the match was touched to the powder magazine
and the explosion shook the city and startled the
nation. Without warning a mob was upon the city
and pandemonium broke loose. Mobs never stop
to think, whether shooting down negroes for want
ing to work at Pana, Illinois, or chasing and beat
ing negroes in New York because a policeman has
been maltreated by one of the race—and so here in
Atlanta innocent negroes were beaten and killed
and faithful officers of the law lost their lives
in trying to put down the disturbance.
Os course the great mass of the best citizens of
Atlanta knew nothing of the riot until a few law
less, whiskey-filled wretches had led a mob of ex
cited youths into the perpetration of violent deeds.
The spirit of the real heart of our great city is
voiced in the following ringing call, printed in large
letters across the first page of The Atlanta Geor
gian :
IN A TIME LIKE THlS—it is the duty of
every man to defend our city and our state
against the disgrace that has come to us. Al
though the crimes that have been committed by
negroes are unbearable, let every true citizen
show that he does not approve of the suffering
and death of the innocent victims of mobs.
Men, keep cool—God and the world are looking
on and demanding that we punish the guilty—
not the innocent.
Now, that is the w'ay to build civilization. While
other evening papers were issuing flaming and in
flaming extras announcing the first, second, third
and fourth assault upon white women, some of
which were groundless, Frederick L. Seely, the wise
Christian proprietor of The Georgian, issued no
“extra,” and when the 12 o’clock edition of his
paper came out Monday, the above noble call to
sanity, humanity and Christianity was the first
voice of his great paper to the excited populace of
a troubled and sorrowing city.
No nobler gathering of brave hearted men ever
assembled in our city than the several hundred cit
izens who met in the court house last Tuesday aft
ernoon. Gray haired pioneers Who had builded At
lanta spoke in tears and stalwart young men who
are catching their falling mantles spoke in loyalty
and in love. Resolutions condemning the outrages
of criminal negroes and likewise the outrages of
the murderous mob were passed, and an offering of
over three thousand dollars was made for the fam
ilies of the victims, both white and black.
This act of caring for the families of innocent
men who have perished tells to the outside world
that the true heart of Atlanta has spoken.
The mayor and council have closed all saloons in
the city until the excitement is over and there is
a growing sentiment that they ought to remain
closed forever. This is a star in the sky of night.
Even as the God of nations brought blessing to
America through the scourge of war, so the God
of our Christian civilization can and will overrule
Atlanta’s reign of horror and sorrow for the ulti
mate good of our people who are bravely wrestling
with the greatest problem which any nation ever
faced,
Pictures That Dishonor Women.
The present crusade in Atlanta against the low
dives of the: city is timely and vigorous. It has
been too long delayed. The recent outrages by de
praved negroes on the waves and daughters of some
of our best homes have been tile immediate cause
of this crusade.
In trying to trace the sources of such a horrible
avalanche of the “unmentionable crime,” it has
been learned that these wretches were loungers
about Decatur street dives and in some cases were
last seen there before the crime was committed.
What then? The character of these dives must be
minutely investigated by the students of criminology
and their “dangerous tendencies” suppressed by the
officers of the law.
And what did they find? Besides the liquor
which “respectable citizens” in Atlanta allow these
dives to sell, the investigating officers and students
of crime found the nude pictures of women decor
ating the walls. And the plain theory is given
that after these depraved wretches drink and ca
rouse and look on these pictures for a time, then
they rush out to perpetrate the rapidly multiplying
crimes that stagger society, enrage our manhood
and menace our civilization.
And the deductions of these practical sociologists
are plainly true.
But has it ever occurred to these same gentlemen
that the half-nude picture of a woman is more than
half as productive of moral crime as a full-nude
picture is?
And yet in our business offices, on the walls of
our banks, and—shameful to allow or look at—in
our barber shops galore, the half-nude pictures of
women abound.
“Call again, sir,” says the smiling barber to the
writer on patronizing some new shop. And the an
swer is given: “When you take that shameful pic
ture down I will—and not before.”
Such pictures hung where young men gather not
only have the “povrer of suggestion” so far as evil
thoughts and evil deeds are concerned, but then and
there these shameful pictures are productive of
shameful conversation which the sisters, wives and
sweethearts of these men could not hear. No de
cent man will continue to patronize such a shop.
And whenever an advertising man tries to hang
such pictures in an office to preach their devilish
suggestions to all men—and women who enter there
—he ought to be shown the door; and if he is slow
about finding it he ought to have prompt assist
ance, and if necessary to stop him in his blighting
career respectable citizens ought to “ride him on a
rail” out of town.
And listen, fair women, you—many of you—are
unconscious contributors to this fund of evil sug
gestion. Whenever a woman goes to a photographer
and has her picture made showing all of her person
that the law will allow, and suffers that artist to
display that picture in his gallery or in his show
window on the street, that very woman begins, with
her half-nude picture, the wretched influence that
ends in a full-nude picture in a saloon!
And whenever a woman makes herself common
to all men by dressing decollette or pretending to
cover with gauze the person that should be sacred,
she begins the sensual influence which leads not
only to pictures of shame, but sometimes alas, to
deeds of horror!
Let every woman who reads these words deter
mine that no consideration will ever induce her to
have such a picture made again. And let the women
of Atlanta, of Georgia, of the South—of America—
start a holy crusade that will tear every such pic
ture from office, shop and dwelling and make it
both a social and a legal crime for such dresses
to be worn or such pictures to be made and dis
played !
Call this suggestion extreme and drastic if you
will, but everybody knows that such a crusade would
be holier than Coeur de Leon ever led—everybody
knows that we would then have purer manhood and
purer womanhood, purer homes and purer civiliza
tion.