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8 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.