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The Golden Age
(SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS TORUN)
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden Hge Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OFFICES: LOWNDES BUILDING, ATLANTA. GA.
Price: $2.00 a Year
WILLIAM D. UPSHfZW, - Editor
A. E. RAMSAUR. - - - Managing Editor
LEM G. BROUGHTON - - - Pulpit 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.
A Beautiful Use of Money.
That was a striking, inspiring piece of news re
cently given on our College Campus page: George
Foster Peabody has sent to Chancellor Barrow
450 copies of 11 Words of the Christ,” to be pre
sented to the students of the University of Geor
gia. What wisdom!
Other men, with far more money than this wise,
golden-hearted man, are spending their surplus
thousands, even millions, on every thinkable form
of selfish extravagance—sailing yachts, toy palaces
and imperial parks from which depleted villages
and suffering peasants are driven with iron hand.
That is one way to spend money.
But George Foster Peabody—beloved son of
Georgia—has learned the better way. Whether
housing in marble the Y. M. C. A. in his own city,
reaching the hand of encouragement to a strug
gling school in the mountains, enlarging with
buildings and grounds the usefulness of a great
college, or sowing in the hearts of its hundreds
of students the saving truths of the Redeemer of
men, this stainless Christian citizen and philanthro
pist is teaching men and women with fortunes large
or small the beautiful use of money.
Light On the Sky.
Some of our hearts have been hungering for it a
long time, and now it is coming at last.
Strong men, prominent men, plain men, are com
ing together with inspiring unanimity and hearti
ness in an effort to soften the asperities and elim
inate the dangers of the race problem.
It means something that fifteen hundred men in
Atlanta have joined the wholesome movement of
the Civic League, pledging themselves to do every
thing in their power to prevent friction between the
races and to settle with Christian kindness and con
sideration any differences that may arise..
Mr. Charles T. Hopkins, of Atlanta, has given
himself—thought, time and energy—in inspiring
unselfishness to the promotion of this noble and far
reaching movement. And ex-Gov. Wm. J. Northen,
Georgia’s ideal Christian citizen, who is President
of the Business Men’s Gospel Union, has not only
been a leader of the movement in Atlanta, but is
pushing the work in the leading communities in the
state. He declares that while his own heart had
long felt the need of such a movement he was in
spired to go forward with it by an editorial in the
Atlanta Constitution, asking: ‘‘Who will Blaze
the Trail?”
This editorial in The Constitution was sane and
powerful, declaring the radiant and optimistic con
viction that Christianity put into practice would
settle every possible problem between man and man,
and calling on all men—preachers and laymen—to
make a great final heroic effort to apply the religion
of Christ “every day and Sunday too” in every
attitude, private and public, on the part of the
white man toward the negro. Time was when this
attitude was well-nigh universal; but outside in
terference by honest but misguided people sowed
seeds of suspicion from which estrangement has wid
ened through the years, But the Southern white
man—brave, royal, cavalier and Anglo-Saxon to the
core—has allowed the mistakes of others to cause
him to make another and perhaps a greater mistake
■—the mistake of neglecting the spiritual and mor
al life of the negro who formerly belonged to the
same church with his white master and who heard
there the same saving gospel that gave us the “old
time negro” with his piety and devotion—a type
so sadly disappearing now. In the spirit that made
Stonewall Jackson love and teach a negro Sunday
school in his community, in the spirit that invites the
servants of the home to come in at the hour of fam
ily prayer, in the spirit that says “God bless you”
to all who are tryinf to lift themselves, and above
all things sympathy and prayers for those who need
them most, let every man and woman who reads
these words determine that: “Whatever others do,
I, for myself, will try to reach every negro whose
life I touch with the saving, restraining influence of
the gospel of Christ—the gospel that makes good
citizens of both white and black wherever it is
lived before them and received by them.”
All honor to the Atlanta Civic League and the
Business Men’s Gospel Union, and Godspeed to
Wm. J. Northen and Charles T. Hopkins and all
good men and women who will hold up their hands
in their glorious work. The Light is on the sky!
Pathos in the Mayor’s Veto.
It seems like an anomaly to say it, but there is
positive humor in the pathos of Mayor Woodward’s
veto of the high license liquor ordinance sent to him
by the weak-kneed council of Atlanta. Os course
everybody knows that the city council of the Gate
City of the South is like the city council in almost
every other city of the South—largely, ignobly and
hopelessly under the influence of the saloon ele
ment. There were some “brave men and tine” in
the council who have always stood four square
against the encroachments of the saloon. But this is
not the point in this editorial—it is the humorous
pathos of Mayor Woodward’s consistent message in
which he exercised his veto power. He is consist
ent because he stands by his friends of the olden
times. He has a perfect right to do this under the
law of our country; but we must hurry on to the
pathos. Atlanta’s famous chief executive pleads
almost in tears for the “little dealer far removed
from the center of the city.” He does not wish to
discriminate against him, and he says that the rich
saloon keeper with his gilded front, his glittering
chandeliers and all of the trappings of high class
bacchanalian revelry, can easily pay the two thous
and dollars a year, but the little dealer on the out
skirts will be shut out from making an honest liv
ing for his family, alas, and be forced perhaps to
the almshouse or to starvation! Sic transit! We
think the mayor is exactly right. It is a lowdown
piece of high toned selfishness for the subsidized
council and the liquorized sons of wealth to want to
reserve to themselves the privilege of a “bacchanal
ian revel” and deny to “pore white trash and nig
gers” the right of a “common drunk” just because
they live on Decatur street, or are forced by poverty
to reside in the outskirts of a great and wealthy
city. That’s right, Mr. Mayor, stand by you?-
friends! They elected you to office; they have
cheered to the echo the very mention of your name,
and it would be ungrateful in you just as you are
leaving office to turn your friends into outer dark
ness. If you had done so with your latest official
breath, one thing goes without saying—there would
have been weeping and gnashing of teeth. Os
course everybody knows that the whiskey element
in council, frightened by public opinion, did not
want to pass that high license measure and they
are “tickled to death” because the mayor vetoed
it. And we wish to submit here and now to this
brave and consistent mayor and to the council whom
he has pleased by his fearless stand—that the An
ti-Saloon League is also “tickled to death” by his
pathetic veto. The council’s somersault only re
veals the claws in the cloven foot. Many good men
who have been inclined to trust council and be con
servative now see what w r e have known all along—
that the real friends of the saloon cannot be trusted
to Jo anything—but sell all the liquor they can to
Editor
The Golden Age for December 27, 1906.
all the people they can at all the times they can
and at all the places they can. We don’t wonder
at it, because a man who stands behind the counter
and dishes out whiskey to staggering humanity just
because of the money that’s in it—well, it is
enough for us to utter what has been the motto of
The Golden Age from the first issue— love for the
saloon keeper, but death to the saloon!
Our conservative brethren are awake—they
see there is but one thing to do and that is for the
good people of Atlanta to do what the good people
of every city ought to do—rise up and sweep high
license and low license and all license of the liquor
traffic into tire bottom of the sea!
A Little Sunbeam.
A pretty little book has just been issued from
the press of the Franklin-Turner Printing Co. which
we would be glad to see in the homes of all of our
readers. It is called “A Little Sunbeam,” and is
given to the world by Miss Mary Ellen Willis, a
very remarkable character. She is nearly forty
years old and weighs less than fifty pounds. She
has never walked a step in her life nor spent a day
in .school. But on her bed or in her chair she has
learned to read and write and expresses herself
with clearness and tells a story with engaging in
terest. The book is not all original, but is largely
a compilation of delightful poems and sketches
which have especially spoken to her own heart and
cheered her life during her long and trying “shut
in” years. A Little Sunbeam has been greatly
enlarged from the first edition and has now about
two hundred pages. The cloth binding is neat and
attractive and sells for sl. The paper binding is
fifty cents. Write to the author, R. F. D. No. 2,
Yatesville, Ga., and send her the price as a New
Year’s present. You, your friend or your children
will be helped and blessed by the bright pages of
“A Little Sunbeam.”
It Was Her Fault.
There is a sort of moral principle involved in the
following incident: The writer was crossing the
street in a certain Georgia town when a prominent
attorney met him, saying: “I have a ‘blessing out’
for you.”
“What upon earths”
“Well,” said he, “my stenographer, a fine, hard
working girl, subscribed for your paper several
months ago, has received only one or two copies
of it!” Whereupon this answer was made: “Well,
I am as innocent as George Washington. Mistakes
occur in all busy newspaper offices. Why didn’t
she write a postal to the office when she missed her
first paper r The bookkeeper would gladly have in
vestigated the matter and the young lady would
have been enjoying her paper all these months. I
am very sorry, but the editor of a paper cannot be
held responsible for mistakes that occur in the cler
ical or mailing departments—unless he is informed
about them, so he can have them corrected.”
And “thereby hangs a tale”—a principle, rath
er, which the reading public needs to learn. It is
nothing less than a moral wrong for a person to
subscribe for a paper and then get “fighting mad”
with the unconscious Editor and call him all sorts
of names because the mailing’ clerk—usually sever
al blocks away—makes a mistake. Plain, ordinaiy,
common sense should teach every subscriber that
it is to the interest of the editor always to have the
paper go regularly to every subscriber. That is
av hat the paper is published for. It is wrong
actually wrong—for a subscriber to let the paper
miss even one time without informing the office.
In the office of a large daily the other day an old
college friend was found standing before the clerk’s
desk. “I take this paper,” he said, “and it is a
good one, but I have just come to get after them
for not sending it regularly.” And so it goes.
Whenever human agency touches daily details the
element of uncertainty enters in, whether in the
small matter of getting a paper to a subscriber or
in guaiding the life of a great railroad president.
The paper sometimes fails to reach its destination,
and although carefully guarded, the railroad pres
ident sometimes lows his life on his own road.