Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

2 in the purchase of this little home. And smiles of gladness glistened through tears of gratitude when the bereft wfidow and fatherless children were led to a home of their own. “Way Down Upon the Suwanee River.” Live Oak is the capital of Suwanee county, and blossoms in all her thrift and beauty near the bank of the picturesque Suwanee River, so famed in song and story. Professor J. L. Edwards, the scholarly, and for a prosperous decade, the beloved superintendent of the Live Oak Public Schools, believes in instilling in his pupils “love of home and country,” and un to this end he has his several hundred boys and girls sing often and merrily “Way Down Upon the Suwanee River,” and all Live Oak herself seems to have caught the minstrelsy of music and poetry in the threnody of her progress. Open Letter to Atlanta Journal. Editor Journal: No stronger, more sensible edi torial has appeared in the Journal in many years than your leader of the 24th inst., “OBEY THE LAW AND GET BACK TO BUSINESS.” But you went further than the discussion of that in junction. You told how to secure the peace and keep it. All the ills of Atlanta and the big, round earth are not “bunged up in a wdiiskey barrel,” but officers of the law, the recorder of our courts, and the superintendents of our asylums will prove by actual statistics that more devilment, horror and sorrow come from the sale and drinking of liquor than any other one cause which the law can touch and prevent. You rightly argue, then: “CLOSE UP THE NEGRO DIVES ON DECATUR AND PETERS STREETS, AND KEEP THEM CLOSED FOREVER.” And now, in your issue of yesterday, you and that brainy, brilliant young statesman from Moultrie, Judge W. A. Covington, go a wise step further and argue that even as the guar dianship of the government will not allow whiskey sold to its ward, the Indian, because that “fire w T ater” makes the Indian a fool and a demon, so, then, the guardianship of our own government, state and municipal, should make it a crime to sell whiskey to the negro on the self-same ground. Whiskey excites the natural evil, makes him lose his head and become a brute. And this is why you wisely say it should not be sold to him. Mr. Editor, are there not “others”? You know, and every other sane man know 7 s, that while not, perhaps, in the same degree, w’hiskey also excites the natural evil in a white man and makes him become a brute. Many of the mob w’ho shot down the defenseless and unoffending negroes in the riot that has stabbed Atlanta’s heart and given our fair and famous city an everlasting crown of sorrow—these highway murderers had filled up on whiskey which they did not buy from a negro dive. The records of crime in Atlanta alone will reveal hundreds of cases where white men—some of them educated and once refin ed—bought liquor from “respectable (?) saloons” and, under its hellish influence, stabbed their best friends to death or went home to shoot down their pleading wives and children or beat them as a brute would beat a dog. Ask Recorder Broyles for these countless records of brutality and shame. The “Irresistible Logic.” Whcjre does the irresistibjle logic carry you? In heaven’s name, by what kind of argument should we stop the sale of “hell-raising liquor,” as you call it, to negroes because it excites them to crime and CONTINUE its sale to white men who rush from the “respectable saloon” to the brothel, to murder and hell? The man who begins the argument and stops half way is inevitably caught between Scylla and Charybdis—or “the devil and the deep blue sea.” Let us be consistent—let us be brave and go all the way! I know Judge Covington will not stop short of this sane and inevitable conclusion. And I believe the heart of the man who wrote that ring ing editorial will do the same. Cutting Off the “Luxuries.” And, again, why discriminate ? Why shut off our The Golden Age for October 4, 1906. fellow citizens who live on Peters street and De catur street from these bar room “luxuries” (they certainly cannot be called “necessities”*), and leave these same “luxuries” to the people of Mitchell, Broad, Marietta and Peachtree? Most of the li quor that intensified that Saturday night riot was bought and imbibed on one of these four streets. Mayor Woodward has done nobly during these dark days of trial and tension. The members of the city council, some of whom had before made the best people of Atlanta sick at heart, have redeemed themselves like men with an awakened conscience, and they are determined, I believe, to do their duty to the suffering present and the threatening future. Then all saloons, thank God and these councilmen, are closed until October Ist, and Aiderman McEach ern, in his great heart, is wishing that there would never be another opportunity to enforce his wise ordinance clearing all drinking places of tables and chairs and thus stopping the rendezvous feature of idleness and dissipation. “I would be in favor of prohibition if it would really prohibit,” declares almost every man who makes any claim to respectability. Hear, again, the crushing argument of Judge Covington: “IF PROHIBITION DOES NOT PROHIBIT, THEN WHY CLOSE UP THE SALOONS DURING THIS TIME OF EXCITEMENT AND DANGER?” There is no answer! THERE CAN BE NONE! And you, Mr. Editor, speak truly in your editorial of yesterday when you declare: “IN THE PRES ENT TEMPER OF OUR PEOPLE ANY RESIS TANCE ON THE PART OF THE LIQUOR DEAL ERS TO THIS SCHEME WILL BE MET WITH THE VOTING OUT OF THE SALOONS ALTO GETHER.” mi A■ . . • _ -i ..... ■ ■ , •s' . ■ ■ . I ELLS r " WFwr t A Widow’s Home —Gift of Citizens of Live Oak, Fla. Now, the Journal is talking in the good old way. I believe that there are not a dozen men in Atlanta, saloon keepers included, who would not declare to day that if an election were held tomorrow every saloon would be hurled by the votes of outraged freemen, white and colored, from its bloody throne of power and crime. And when will the “present temper” of our people cool? JUST AS SOON AS THE SOPHIS TRY OF “PERSONAL LIBERTY” AND THE BLIGHT OF COMMERCIALISM CAN HAVE TIME TO TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER THE PARAMOUNT CONSIDERATION OF LAW AND ORDER AND THE SANCTITY OF OUR HOMES. If Luther Rosser, singlehanded and alone, can con quer a mob when weakling policemen fail—if Low ry Arnold can turn back a band of hoodlums by one fearless stand and one crushing blow, then every man knows that THE COMBINED MAN HOOD OF ATLANTA AND EVERY SALOON CURSED CITY, CAN RUN OUT BARROOMS AND KEEP OUT “BLIND TIGERS,” IP THEY CON TINUE IN THE PRESENT BRAND OF HEROIC BRAVERY AND ETERNAL VIGILANCE! In good old days the Atlanta Journal used to be counted the actual enemy of the saloon. In these latter days the Journal has proven its ability to lead a campaign of reform. NOW, LEAD AN OTHER REFORM. Follow out your able argu ment. Roll up your sleeves, unsheathe your good sword, sound the tocsin and rally your clans, and the first sun of the year of grace, 1907, will rise on Atlanta redeemed. William D. Upshaw. Atlanta, Ga., Sept. 28th. Items of General Interest. More than one-fifth of the land surface of the globe is under English rule. It is a dull market day in New York City when 5,000,000 eggs and 500,000 pounds of butter are not received. American shoes are so popular in Germany that many manufacturers in that country sell their goods as “American made.” Sir Andrew Fraser, governor of Bengal, virtual ruler of 80,000,000 people, is the active president of the Calcutta Y. M. C. A. The richest orchestra in the world will be the Warsaw Philharmonic, which has just received a legacy of $1,000,000 from a music-loving Pole. Chinese laborers in Samoa get only $2.50 a month, besides board, lodging and medical attendance. They want $5, but the planters say that that would make farming unprofitable. According to a calculation made by a Broadway shoe dealer, who has a fondness for figures, there are twenty-two pairs of shoes worn out in New York City each minute. John Jacob Astor is the largest private owner of automobiles in this country. They number twen ty-four, the average cost of each is about $5,000, making a total of $120,000 invested in his ma chines. The largest and costliest building thus far under taken in New York, the city of immense structures, is the magnificent $10,000,000 Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, now being erected on Morn ingside Heights. This will be the greatest sacred edifice in America and the fourth in importance m the world. One point in the Queen of Spain’s future life seems to have escaped general notice. She will have to live under the same roof as her mother-in law, her sister-in-law, her aunt-in-law, her hus band’s brother-in-law and the three children of the king’s dead sister, the eldest of them being heir to the throne. It has often been claimed that “men dig their graves with their teeth,” or, in other words, that the average man eats too much; but a recent demon stration of the value of abstemious eating is given by Mr. Asbel W. Riley, in the office of the War De partment, who lives on twelve cents a day and has done so for years. Mr. Riley is seventy-four years old, looks ten years younger and maintains that his good health is due to his diet of fruit, eggs and bread, and but small quantities of these. According to a recent utterance of Frederick Pe terson, M.D., President of the New York Neurologi cal Society, and one of the greatest nerve special ists in the world, insanity is the result of nerve friction and this friction is greater in New York City than anywhere else in the country. In sup port. of this theory cases of insanity are rapidly on the increase in New York, and Dr. Ludwig G. Hoff man of Berlin during a recent visit to New York prophesied that this ill would probably eventually destroy the population of the city. Now that the New York Central Railroad is to use electric engines exclusively on all its trains enter ing New York City, attention is being called to the magnificent new terminal station being erected for use of this company. The building is to cost several million dollais when completed and will cover six city blocks from Forty-second to Forty-Fifth street for a frontage and three blocks in depth. The build ing u as begun in 1903 but will not be completed un til 1910.