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Ex-Gobernor Wm. J. Northen and Prohibition
OR many years Ex-Governor Northen
has been a prominent figure in Georgia.
He is the same courtly, elegant gen
tleman today as he was a quarter of
a century ago. Indeed the splendid
instincts of a gentleman were born in
this man. Both as governor and pri
vate citizen he has made illustrious
his native state with the finest qualities
F
of head and heart.
He is a consecrated, humble Christian, and a
broad-minded patriot. He is loving and braAe,
kind and true, good and great —living and sacri
ficing for the moral uplift of his fellow-man.
Georgia will miss this distinguished citizen some
day; but not till he sleeps with his fathers will
she realize fully his purity and his power—the real
merit of his beautiful life.
He has the faith of a little child, the gentleness
of a woman, the courage of a lion—and in all,
stands out in the limelight of God —every inch
a man.
Now, think of this Christian patriot at the age
of seventy, single-handed and alone, stumping this
great state in the interest of “law and order.”
Think of this man speaking from day to day, from
one and a half to two hours with all the fires of
his youth and the consecration of his great soul.
See the glow of his face, and hear his impassioned
oratory, as he pleads for his people!
For a Jong time he considered the haste and hot
unrest of Geoigians; saw their lawlessness and
crimes; beheld the rape on the one hand and the
rope on the other; sorrowfully looked on the mob
and riot —looked, waited, suffered until, his very
soul aflame with hate for the wrong and love
for the right, he plunged into the fight, that he
might bring order out of chaos, and lift her majes
ty, the Law, all outraged and bleeding, back to the
throne, admired, reverenced, crowned again.
He saw, too, the alienation of the races —the
growing antipathy between them. He saw the
gulf deepening and broadening. He saw the low
ering clouds everywhere. H e looked on the dark
pictures till his soul chafed and shuddered. He
longed to restore the broken peace, to bridge the
chasm, to bring healing to the racial wounds. So
thoroughly aroused, and so determined to bless
his fellow countrymen, Governor Northen stands
a marvel of energy, devotion and strength—hav
ing already spoken in nearly one hundred counties
in the state. Honor and praise to this noble,
courageous servant of God. He lias convictions,
and he is loyal to them.
But having said this much I will say more. I
say it kindly —I say it very softly: 1 doubt the
wisdom of his methods —some of them at least.
He would restore law and order —he would bring
peace to his disrupted people. His aims are high
and holy. His zeal and energy and devotion we
commend; but we feel he has missed the mark.
He has not touched the gangrenous wound. The
eating cancer is still playing havoc with the body
politic. If you want peace and good fellowship,
if you would uphold the law, if you would lift
the standard of civilization, if you would bring a
better feeling between -the races, if you would
stop crime, then put your finger on the sore spot.
Strike at the root of the matter. Remove the
cause. Wipe out the whiskey curse. Down with
the saloon, and the race problem will practically
be settled.
Certainly seventy-five per cent of the crimes of
this country are chargeable to the liquor traffic,
and ninety per cent in many communities.
Why, sirs, the saloon is not only the center of
crime, but it is the very hot-bed of immorality.
It is estimated that ninety-one per cent of the lewd
houses of the country are stimulated and supported
by—yea, the very outcome of —the liquor traffic.
The brothel lives close by the bar. Indeed the
brothel is an unlicensed saloon.
About fifty per cent of the inmates of our mad
houses are there directly and indirectly on account
of whiskey.
The Golden Age for April 11, 1907.
About fifty-four per cent of the feeble-minded
persons in the United States are the products of
the liquor curse. There are 400,000 of them, and
we are culpable.
Besides all this, 100,000 drunkards are going to
hell every year.
Easily seventy-five per cent of the paupers that
walk this American continent have met their down
fall directly and indirectly in the saloon, and so
the catalogue of crime and poverty and insanity
and disease and death goes on.
I tell you the-Jiquor traffic is playing the mischief
with our nation. Now, how is Governor Northen,
with all of his prestige and power and wisdom,
going to give us law and order as long as these
infernal liquor dens are tolerated in our midst?
You can’t cure a disease as long as it is honey
combed. Remove the cause and the patient will
get well.
Yet the governor says he never refers to the
liquor question. -May the good Lord help us. Next
to Christianity, the liquor problem is the biggest
question in this nation.
Would Georgia have smaller mad houses and
have a pity for her citizens? Then destroy the
saloon. Would she reduce her pauper homes and
save a large element of her subjects from want?
Then destroy the saloon. If she would put her
hands on the boys and girls of this country and
save them from prison walls and the gallows and
houses of shame, then destroy the saloon. If she
would curb the mobs and practically put an end to
riots, then destroy the saloon. If Georgia would
lift this midnight .shadow which hangs as a hor
rible nightmare over our fair, but almost defence
less, women —if she would stop the hellish crime,
then destroy the saloon.
If Governor Northen would make his mission
tell for God and man, if he would usher in a
new reign of law and order, if he would keep his
name and deeds green in the memory of a grateful
people, and so go down in a cloudless sunset, let
him hear the cry of the agitator: “Carthage
must fall!” and make this his slogan till the
victory comes: “The saloon must fall!” Then,
and not till then, will this distinguished citizen
realize the fulfillment of his fondest dream,
*
The Texas Gambling Lalv.
By J. L. D. Hillyer.
A few weeks since, a conscientious prosecuting
attorney at Fort Worth, Texas, raided a gambling
den over a saloon and brought to light the bad
business of the gamblers. A few days later the
proprietor of that den met the attorney and shot
him dead on the street. He then shot down the
deputy sheriff and was himself mortally wounded
by the police a little later. At last accounts the
wounded deputy sheriff was not expected to re
cover.
The shock and indignation that was felt through
out the state caused the legislature to pass a law
to stop gambling. Fines and jail penalties have
■been found to be entirely inadequate. The result
is the legislature has made gambling a felony.
The owning of a house used for gambling is pun
ished by imprisonment in jail, and ten days’ im
prisonment imposed on all who play for prizes in
private houses.
Texas had great trouble for years with the of
fence of fence-cutting. That is, people who wanted
their cattle to pasture on another’s land cut his
fence and let the cattle in. The penalty was fine,
and the county jail. Fence-cutting went on until
a law was passed making it a penitentiary offense
and then fence-cutting stopped. Men will risk a
fine and jail sentence when they would not a pen
itentiary penalty.
Judge Emory Speer, ruling on the Valdosta case
the other day, held unequivocally that the city
council in Georgia had the unquestionable right to
refuse to issue saloon license.
J. C. Solomon
Jim ‘Bludso.
By John Hay.
(“Jim Bludso,” together with “Little
Breeches,” were two poems written by the late
John Hay a number of years ago, and gave him,
in a sense, the beginning of his literary fame.
It is a characteristic bit of the verse written, much
of it anonymously, in the newspapers of three
decades ago.)
Wall no! I can’t tell where he lives
Because he don’t live, you see;
Leastwise he’s got out of the habit
Os livin’ like you and me.
Whar have you been for the last three years,
That you haven’t heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the Prairie Belle?
He wern’t no saint —them engineers
Is all pretty much alike—
One wife in Natchez-Under-the-Hill
And another here in Pike;
A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward man in a row,
But he never flunked and he never lied—-
I reckon he never knowed how.
And this was all the religion he had—
To treat his engine well;
Never be passed on the river;
To mind the pilot’s bell;
And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire —•
A thousand times he swore
He’d hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last soul got ashore.
All boats has their day on the Mississipp,
And her day come at last —
The Movastar was a better boat,
But the Belle she wouldn’t be passed;
And so she come tearin’ along that night—
The oldest craft on the line —•
With a. nigger squat on her safety-valve
And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.
The fire bust out as she cleared the bar,
And burnt a hole in the night,
And as quick as a flash she turned, and made
For that wilier bank on the right.
There was runnin’ and cursin’, but Jim yelled
out,
Over all the infernal roar,
“I’ll hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last galoot’s ashore.”
Through the hot, black breath of the burnin ’
boat
Jim Bludso’s voice was heard,
And they all had trust in his cussedness,
And know’d he would keep his word,
And, sure’s you’re born they all got off
Afore the smokestacks fell—
And Bludso’s ghost went up alone
In the smoke of the Prairie Belle.
He weren’t no saint —but at judgment
I’d run my chance with Jim,
’Longside of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn’t shook hands with him.
He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing—
And went for it thar and then;
And Christ ain’t a-going to be too hard
On a man that died for men.
»5 I?
Little Johnnie, having in his possession a couple
of bantam hens, which laid very small eggs, sudden
ly hit on a plan. Going the next morning to the
fowl-run, Johnnie’s father was surprised to find
an ostrich egg tied to one of the beams, and above
it a card with tbe words:
“Keep your eye on this and do your best.”
Tit-Bits.