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8 The Golden Age (SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS TORUM} Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden Hge Publishing Company (Inc.) OFFICES: LOWNDES “BUILDING, ATLANTA, GA. Price: $2.00 a Year WILLIAM V. UPSHfXW, - ■ - - Editor A. E. RA/fSAUR, - - . Associate Editor LEK G. ‘BROUGHTON - - - Pulpit Editor Entered at the Post Office in 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. Students of the fashions may have decided that with the winter would come some change in the styles; but an advertisement of “shirt-waists one third off” -would indicate that the styles -will be the same as during last summer. Young Mr. Pulitzer insists that he recently struck Mr. Hearst a blow in the stomach in a business ofiice in St. Louis. Mr. Hearst says there is no foundation to the story whatever; that he was not struck by Mr. Pulitzer. Under ordinary con ditions we would believe Mr. Hearst, but it is possible that a man who has had a terrific blow in the neck may not be able to notice a little touch on the stomach. Mrs. Sage’s Problem. Mrs. Russell Sage is trying to give away in the proper manner the immense fortune which Mr. Sage left her. She wishes do bestow it more upon individuals than upon institutions. She is very.much perplexed and is having some difficul ty in choosing beneficiaries. She has had some few suggestions as to the bestowal of the money, but she needs a few more. If ever there was a path of duty, this is an open one. The situation must appeal to every reader of The Golden Age. It is a fearful responsibility, a big undertaking to give away this much money. It is more money than many of us ever saw. It is more than most of us will ever own. In silver dollars placed side by side it would reach a great distance; no telling how far; and there are other interesting facts connected with this great fortune; but that is not what concerns you, reader, and the writer of these lines. The real issue is the proper bestowal of it. Here the path of duty is plain. Write to Mrs. Sage; give her your suggestions. Let her know that you are interested; offer her any assistance in your power. If you feel that you are willing to assume the responsibility of taking some of the money yourself, speak out and say so. The troub le with this world is that we are not willing enough to make sacrifices for the sake of others. The Passing of Kipling. A great number of people are abusing Mr. Rud yard Kipling because he is not writing better mat ter now. They have a positive picnic knocking his “Stalky & Co.” and some later works. It is true that Mr. Kipling’s hooks since the “Soldiers Three” and similar stories of Indian and army life, have not had the movement and grip and ring that these books had; and it is undoubtedly true that his popularity has waned. In the field in which he at first achieved success he is and will ever be without an equal. He immortalized Tom my Atkins and he created a poetry with a jin gle and clank to it that is in a class by itself. He became a fad; and, like all fads, has passed. He has turned his hands to other tools and his workmanship is not as attractive and as accurate ly finished as formerly. But, granting all this, it is no rpason for his being so coarsely abused pS bp wap jecently by 4 Yale professor, who said The Golden Age for November 22, 1906. it was a pity Mr. Kipling did not die during an illness he suffered some time ago. His soldier stories and Bai rack Room Ballads are a distinct gift and ornament to the books of the time; they probably will not endure as literature, but the Recessional will. Think of the men whose names are household words now who are remembered by but one effort. Robert Gray wrote a number of po ems—but not more than one man out of every ten well educated men knows of anything he wrote besides the Elegy. John Howard Payne wrote and did many things, but who knows of anything besides “Home, Sweet Home”? As present day instances, take away the Girl from Gibson, and there would be nothing left; Rem ington could not successfully enter any field ex cept that in which he is pre-eminent—the portray al of the Western man and horse, the round-up, the gun fighter and the army man. If Mr. Kipling writes no more, he has already given us much. He has struck a broken zone and is hunting for iihe main lead; when he finds it he may open a richer mine than any he has yet developed. Our New Cabinet Minister. The recent appointment by President Roosevelt of Oscar Strauss, of New York City, to the cabinet, is one that has caused universal comment through out the country. The fact that Mr. Strauss is a merchant of high standing gives him peculiar fitness for the portfolio of commerce and labor and apart from all other considerations it is safe to predict that this man will fill the high office given him with credit to himself and profit to the administration. It is well known that Mr. Strauss has been the real head of the great retail business house of “R. H. Macy & C 0.,” the largest department store in New York City, and a pioneer in its peculiar line. The wise and efficient management of Mr. Strauss and his two brothers, who compose the chief mem bers of this firm, has, however, been but an inci dent in the varied phases of his career. During the administration of Grover Cleveland, Mr. Strauss held the posi'ion of minister to Turkey and he has always been regarded as a desirable represen tative of our government. His grasp of affairs is good, and his high sense of personal honor is bet ter. Apart from his business or political career, he has won quiet distinction also, as a philanthropist, one of the notable features of his work along this line being his distribution of free ice to the poor of New York City and his campaign for pure milk at a merely nominal cost. He has accomplished more toward the latter lefoim than any other one individual. Mr. Strauss is a Jew. In a recent interview when this fact was mentioned to him in connection with his appointment to the cabinet, he said that while he was the first of his race to hold such a position, it was of value merely as a proof, not that his race was at last receiving political recognition, but that an individual could receive recognit : on regardless of his race or creed. The practical demonstration of this fact in the ease of Mr. Strauss’ appointment certainly reflects credit on the present administra tion and would seem to mark a decided advance in the direction of appreciation for the personal quali fications of the man, regardless of any unusual con ditions surrounding him. Such a just and generous attitude on the part of Mr. Roosevelt cannot fail to win our approval and commendation. J. Walter Bennett. The daily press announces the death of Hon. J. Walter Bennett, city attorney of Waycross, and we feel constrained to say that in the untimely going of this stalwart Christian lawyer Georgia has lost one of her most splendid illustrations of noble citizenship. The Editor of this paper feels a deep sense of personal loss. He can never forget the generous speech of rythmic beauty which the young lawyer employed to introduce the young lect urer to his first Waycross audience more than a de cade ago. Since then we have watched Walter Bennett’s course with the pride of a treasured friendship, re joicing so see him become not only a leader at the bar, but more than all, an acknowledged power in exemplifying and directing the forces of Christ ian citizenship in a rare community whose very name has become a synonym of civic righteousness. The world needs more Christian lawyers and lead ers like J. Walter Bennett. May his princely man tle fall on many ambitious young men who will be as ready as he was to lay the twin powers of genius and eloquence on the altar of unselfish de votion to the cause of God and humanity. Two Great Gatherings. This week will hold within its compass the most intense interest on the part of the majority of the people of Georgia, because of the meeting of the North Georgia Conference at Milledgeville and the Georgia Baptist Convention at Cartersville. The M. E. Conference, about five hundred strong, will mingle amid the classic and historic shades of Georgia’s foinner capital. Bishop Ward will pre side and a time of great and blessed fellowship is anticipated by the preachers who come from the mountain paths of Rabun to the great city churches of Atlanta, Augusta and Macon to recount the story of their year’s trials and triumphs in the name of their Master. The Baptist Convention which car ries with it a constituency covering the whole state is expected to call together something like a thou sand messengers and visitors who, in the strength ening of fellowship and the “multitude -of counsel,” are expected to plan for greater achievements the coming year. It is devoutly hoped that both of these militant bodies of Christian men will take high ground on the liquor traffic, urging our governor-elect to recommend in his message, and the Christian citizenship of the state to demand in the next Democratic platform some practical and sweeping anti-saloon legislation. Such action would be entirely in consonance of course with the spirit of these gatherings and certainly within the prov ince of any body of Christian men who stand for the building-of our Christian civilization. Commercial Temperance. We think of no other name to fit it—we mean that friendship for temperance which says: “I am opposed to the saloon—l hate the liquor traffic, but I am opposed to an election now.” That is the kind of argument with which the friends of the saloon sow down every community that contemplates a prohibition election, and there fore it is the brand of argument that we are hearing on all sides in Atlanta these days. And the sad part of it is that many of the real friends of temper ance—men of hitherto heroic mold and stalwart stand are suffering themselves to be inoculated with that argument. There are no nobler men living than some of the ministers and laymen who took the position in the recent meeting of the Anti- Saloon League that the prohibition election which was decided on soon after the riot in Atlanta should be indefinitely postponed because of the apathy of many of the leading church members in Atlanta. Alas, Alas’ If we must wait to pitch the battle against saloons until these conservative, commer cialized “prohibitionists” lead in the fight, there will never be a prohibition battle in Atlanta be tween now and the blasts of Gabriel’s horn. Verily the battle must be fought and won by the rank and file of the plain people. Valdosta was as much under the rule and ruin of saloons according to population as Atlanta is today, and because four brave pastors determined that the saloon should go and sounded the bugle note which rallied the real friends of temperance in that fair little city, the victory was won without one drop of blood. True, their concerted action made an election unnecessary. But such concert of action on the part of Atlanta’s preachers (absolutely uninfluenced by their wealthy, conservative mem bers') would make the mayor and council of Atlanta tremble in their boots, and, election or no election, the saloons would have to go. What brave men can .do in one community, they can do in another— if they only mean business with their conscience and their votes.