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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 Year
WILLIHMD. UPSHfXW, .... Editor
A. E. RAITSAUR, - - - 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.
We ■congratulate ourselves and our readers that
The Golden Age has just about the prettiest corner
at the big State Fair, running Oct. 10-20 in Atlanta.
The booth is in the Woman’s Building, and is pro
vided with piano and chairs for the entertainment
and comfort of our friends, new and old, who wish
to drop in and rest.
We are “at home’’ to our friends. Come.
“R. S. V. P.”
Remember October 15.
The Editor is indulging the hope that every
reader of The Golden Age will remember that next
Monday, October 15th, will be his birthday. Send
“back dues,” send your renewal, send a new sub
scriber !
Read the remarkable combination offer on anoth
er page, saving you “lots” of money, and you and
your nearest neighbor select your reading for the
coming year.
And remember that the Editor will never have
another birthday during the first year of The
Golden Age, for the first year will soon be gone.
Remember October 15.
The Battle is On.
The recent race riot and the tragedies of various
kinds which occurred in Atlanta have caused all
thinking men and all loyal citizens to turn their
minds and hearts to the searching out and remov
ing of the causes which operated to overthrow law
and order and create reckless and brutal destruc
tion of human life. Every mind has turned to the
saloons as being responsible, indirectly in one sense,
directly in another, for the tragedies which all
good men deplore. The enemies of the saloon and
the friends of temperance all over the land are
watching the efforts of the Anti-Saloon League and
the ministers of the city, to see what effort they will
make for the removal of the saloons entirely from
the city. After careful and prayerful considera
tion it has been decided best to defer for a short
time the holding of an election on this question.
At a recent citizens’ meeting held under the aus
pices of the Anti-Saloon League, Dr. M. J. Cofer
introduced a sane but ringing resolution which
was enthusiastically agreed upon by the meeting,
that an election be held in the early spring—this
time having been decided upon owing to the fact
that licenses already issued by the city will not ex
pire before June.
That election must be carried in the right way.
It is a battle to the death. All friends of right:
all lovers of virtue and truth: all who value the
home and the family; every friend to righteousness
and good citizenship should gird their loins for the
fray and make their battle word, “For God and
Home,” and spare no effort to see that right pre
vails. The battle will not cease this time until
something good is accomplished. And our readers
at a distance can watch the battle from afar, for
The Golden Age will give echoes from the con
flict. It will be a battle on which the friends
of temperance all over the nation will look with
increasing interest from week to week.
The Golden Age for October 11, 1906.
While the recent race riots in Atlanta and other
Southern communities have been unspeakably sad
in their details, they are having, to some extent,
their compensations.
The best people of the South are waking to the
fact that, as a whole, we have never done our
Christian duty to the negroes at our own door.
These awakened leaders of Southern religious
thought and life are not inclined right now to
bandy words with those who would inject sectional
thrusts at such an hour. They get no comfort
or wisdom by remembering Pana, 111., and Spring
field, Ohio, and thus reminding our brethren of the
North that they themselves have proven that the
whole question is not one of geographical lines but
of racial prejudice—a prejudice that thrives in both
races by the power of SIN, and that is intensified
at times by the unspeakable crimes of some negroes
who receive no sympathy from the best of their
own race. What then? It is nothing but this—
SIN made more active by the presence of race
prejudice—or race prejudice ridden down by the
Black Horse of Sin! This takes the question out
of the hands of the law or even those who make
and enforce the law—except as they invest all that
they do in the spirit of real Christianity. It puts
the solution of the question in the hands of those
who point all men alike to the Great Remedy for
sin and carry in their hearts, on their lips and in
their lives the Balm of Gilead.
The following letter received by the Editor of
this paper during the recent riot points briefly
but truly to both the cause and the remedy. It
■comes from a young woman of rare culture and
Christian consecration and should be a trumpet
call to every Christian man and woman who reads
her sad but faithful words:
Dear Mr. Upshaw:
I am not writing to you in your official capacity
as Editor of The Golden Age, though if some ideas
of mine can help to better some deplorable condi
tions and right some awful wrongs, I am more
than willing to have them used.
The terrible riots now going on in Atlanta make
me sick at heart especially when I realize that we
Christian people are largely, perhaps wholly, to
blame for them. We have neglected our duties,
we have not taught and prayed for these ignorant
negroes, but we have often, if not shown, then
countenanced violence when we should have used
Christian charity.
I wonder how many people have prayed earnest
ly over the present distressing situation.
Os course it will take years to lift the negroes
as a people out of their depraved condition, even
by the most constant, most faithful and earnest
Christian teaching; but it does seem that Chris
tian people should do some immediate work to
quell the bad white element, to bring about gen
uine, beautiful peace and harmony. Let us all pray
for wisdom and strength and the constant remem
brance that these negroes are creatures of God as
we are, and that Christ died for them also. L. K.
Truth, Lord—and many of us have been trying
to tell it. but SIN, SIN, SIN has kept so many men
and women from applying this vital Truth in all
its aggressive and saving power.
The Atlanta Constitution has been preaching
with awakening eloquence along this line forth?
past week. A strong letter from Mrs. M. L. 11. of
Bibb county told The Constitution of a large plan
tation before the war where the owner and his
daughter taught the eager negroes the Bible from
Sunday to Sunday, and then, as on countless other
plantations in the South, there was no race prob
lem.
The Constitution says:
“Therein lies the problem and the great oppor
tunity for the churchmen of the South. The send
ing of missionaries to Africa is a nohle work. But
there are eleven million people in this country,
with minds and souls in a half-plastic state, waiting
for the ministrations of the white mon they know’
and trust. Mental education? Yes, it is an ex-
Only Remedy.
cellent thing* We hear it offered, numerously, as
a panacea. Have we not tried it? Are not the
white people of Georgia now contributing their
money in this cause? Are not northern millions
enlisted in the same cause? Have these combined
efforts mitigated the problem? WE KNOW THEY
HAVE NOT!
“For the simple reason that education without
religion, is nothing more nor less than galvanizing
into life a race of Frankensteins. A sense of moral
responsibility must be there to balance the educa
tion—or we have an anomalous creature, capable
of infinite mischief. Moral responsibility comes on
ly with the development of real spirituality. Our
Southern legislatures and Northern philanthropists
may spend millions in cultivating the mind of the
negro. Unless the white churchmen of the South—
the only men who know the negro and whom the
negro trusts—are willing to develop his soul—
money and energy invested otherwise is a waste—
it may be a dangerous weapon of the future.”
And now Ridgway’s, the stirring new weekly,
says:
“Yes, it is all right for The Constitution to
preach religion as a remedy but we think the doc
trine of hard work is a good and necessary ac
companiment.” Yes, Mr. Ohl, you are right—and
yet—
The right kind of religion will produce the right
kind of work in both white and black. The Editor
of this paper has tried to teach this truth for years,
and he makes it a rule never to ride across town
with a negro hackman without talking to him about
his soul. And alas, that appreciative hackman oft
en says: “Thank you, sir—thank you, sir!
Mighty few white men I haul ever talk to me like
you have done today.”
Hear it, men and women everywhere—Christ
in the heart is THE ONLY REMEDY for the prob
lem of the races!
Encouraging Words.
Editor The Golden Age:—
I-have several times thought I would write and
express my high appreciation of your paper, but
neglected it through so much other corresponding,
until your last week’s paper came out and so many
good and timely things said to women, that I can
no longer keep silent. Your paper stands true to its
motto, and is filling a place no other paper can.
As much as I love Monroe College, I told my husband
I believed you had done the right thing to broaden
your work there by editing such a paper as yours.
I want to dp all I can to spread its circulation.
The Golden Age and Georgian aire fearlessly
diving into dens of vice that no others have the
nerve to do and such high standards can not fail to
accomplish great results for good.
Dr. Broughton’s sermon to women was fine; your
editorial on the buttons and advertising of whiskey,
also the editorial on nude pictures should be
read and followed by every one; and women, true
women, can do more than any one else in revolu
tionizing the whole world. For many years I have
refused to let calendars and advertising pictures,
such as you describe, come into my home and deco
rate my walls. With best wishes for your success,
and the spreading influence of your paper,
Respectfully, Mrs. A. IT. Strickland.
Bowersville, Ga.
A New Story.
Next week we will begin a beautiful new story
in four numbers, “How East End Was Redeemed,”
by Odessa Strickland Payne. Mrs. Payne is the
author of that charming story, “Psyche,” and tells
an inspiring story with a graphic power equaled by
few writers in the South.
We direct special attention to the address of
Mrs. E. C. Cronk in this issue. The language is
graphic, the argument is cogent—it is a spiritual
classic.