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The Golden Age
(SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS TORUM)
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden 59ge Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OPPICES: LOWNDES BUILDING. ATLANTA. GA.
Price: $2.00 a Lear
Ministers $1.50 per Year.
In cases of foreign address fifty cents should be added to cober
additional postage.
Make all remittances payable to The Golden Age Publishing Company.
WILLIS9M D. UPSHS9W, - - - - Editor
A. E. RAMSAITR. - - - Managing Editor
LEM G. VKOUGHTON - - - Pulpit Editor
Entered al the Post Office tn Atlanta, Ga.,
as second-class matter.
<tsa pF^^Foi^F L~>
The Passing of a Great Tian.
In the death of Dr. T. 0. Powell Georgia ’.as
lost a citizen whose place cannot be filled. lie was
indeed a many-sided man, and we shall not se* ms
like again. His modesty kept him in the back
ground, but to those who knew him he was a re
markable man in more than one particular.
He was remarkable as a true type of the ante
bellum Southern gentleman. There was a cor
diality in the grasp of his hand that was delight
ful; there was a kindly beam in his eye, a winning
smile upon his face when you engaged him in con
versation, and a kindliness about his bearing, in
deed, his whole personality was beautifully cour
teous; and about his hospitality, if you have ever
tasted it, as the writer has, there was a flavor that
was born in the olden days of the South when the
man was more to be desired than the money bags,
he had.
Dr. Powell was remarkable as a man of brains,
and he knew how to use them. From the very be
ginning of his connection with the state sanitarium
he grasped the intricate details of that great insti
tution and managed them in such away as to re
flect credit upon himself and the state to which he
belonged. Every part of the work was well in
hand. He took a bird’s-eye view of the institu
tion, and then he went into the particulars of the
management, and was familiar "with every dollar
that came in and vent out, and he could tell you
the particulars of every inmate of the asylum and
just what his condition was.
• Above all things, Dr. Powell was a man with a
heart. It throbbed for those who were near and
dear to him, to all of whom he was the soul of ten
derness; it throbbed for the church to w'hich he be
longed, and be gave his best efforts toward its
upbuilding; it throbbed for the unfortunate people
who had been given into his keeping and in each
one he felt a personal interest. They all looked
upon him as a father, and to him, when he appeared
upon the grounds, they told their troubles, and with
a patience that was beautiful he heard them and
promised to do the best he could for them. He
was eminently fitted for the great work to which
he gave the best years of his life, and nowhere
will he be missed more than among the people to
whom he had ministered for so many years.
Os him it can well be said, “Life’s crown well
won, life’s race well run, life’s work well done;
now, comes rest.”
* *
A Call to Citizenship.
The Editor of The Golden Age is in the new
county of Grady, where he has been speaking at
Cairo, Ga., for a week in a revival meeting. Dur
ing his stay there last week Sheriff Tyus was f.liot
down by a negro whom he was attempting to ar
rest. The daily papers give the following striking
utterance by our editor who was invited to take
part in the funeral exercises:
“By this open grave and this sacred bier, [ feel
impelled to say something unlike anything else, per
haps, which has ever been uttered at a funeral in
Georgia. But I believe Sheriff Tyus would endorse
The Golden Age for September 5, 1907.
it. In my address out yonder at his sorrowing
home I said that I believed that if he could speak
he would call on the young men of his county and
the old men who were his comrades from boyhood
not to neglect the things of God and leave Him out
of their lives. And now, before the casket be low
ered beyond the sight of those who loved him, I
believe that if his lips could speak he would say
another thing. To each of you and all of you, I hear
him saying now: ‘Citizens of Grady county, if
you loved me in life and honor my memory now, 1
beg you to stand for the majesty of the law which
I was trying to uphold when I was shot down. And
if that negro is caught, be sure that you show enough
reverence for my memory to let the law take its
course in his punishment. Do not tear down the
law for which I died by rashly taking that law into
your own hands.’
“I call on you, my new friends in this new
county, to honor the memory of yr-ur brave, honest
sheriff by seeing to it that there is no lynching in
Grady county. You know that if that negro had
killed one of you, ‘Dock’ Tyus would have suffered
his body riddled with bullets before he would have
surrendered his prisoner to a lawless mob. I assure
you that I believe iu the punishment of such a crime.
I need not tell you that I have tried to prove my
faith by subscribing to the fund for the apprehen
sion of the criminal, and you need not fear that if
he is caught, his punishment will not be just and
prompt. Therefore do not let the prophecy of
lynching heard here and there on the streets be
carried out in your midst. Let judgment rather
than passion rule. Let not the escutcheon of Grady
county be stained with the blot of mob-law vio
lence. Gentlemen, yon are just beginning the life
of your county. You are making history now as
you take your place in the great sisterhood of she
counties of Georgia; let it be determined among you
that in the volume of the history of the county
which bears the name of the great Christian patriot
and statesman, Henry W. Grady, there shall not
be one black page to tell of the dethronement of
the law by a lawless mob. Place your hands upon
the bier of your brave sheriff who fell at the post
of duty and pledge yourselves and your children
to stand for Christian citizenship. Let the flag of
Grady county wave ever without a stain.”
R R
Governor Smith and "Lobbying. ”
A great many things, wise and unwise, are being
said in the papers about the doings of the recent
Georgia Legislature. The conservatives —whatever
that may mean—the anti-prohibitionists, at least,
are declaring that it was a wild set of wilder men
who did the wildest thing that the state has ever
seen. But the same, though desperately earnest,
prohibitionists smile with that peculiar triumph
which is described in the dear old song:
“Then I can smile at Satan’s rage
And face a frowning world.”
And then, there is the administration advocate
who declares that many more good things besides
disfranchisement and railroad legislation would
have been passed if there had not been so many of
the “old gang” to contend with in Georgia’s re
form legislature. But, to c-ur thinking, the most
groundless and foolish thing that has been said is
the charge that Governor Hoke Smith, in his zeal
for the passage of certain measures, was as guilty
of lobbying as any railroad attorneys have ever
been. Perhaps so. But that is just a good way of
saying, we honestly believe, that the high-minded
gentlemen whose talents have won for them the
high position of railroad attorneys, have never been
guilty of criminal lobbying. But, any how. the charge
against Governor Smith was intended to mean that
he had gone beyond the bounds of the proprieties
in a governor to make such efforts as he has mule
to secure the passage of his pet measures. Very
frankly, we have not indorsed some things for which
Governor Smith has stood; but, as The Golden Age
is not a political paper, we have not discussed any
of these measures, except the one of state prohi
bition. He, with many others of our avowed pro-
hibitionists, had declared himself for “local option,”
and many of his staunchest supporters grieved that
he could not see his way clear to become the ar
dent advocate of so righteous a measure as a stale
prohibition bill. But this is not the question on
which the charge of lobbying was openly made. It
is enough for us now, that Governor Smith signed
the state prohibition bill and we believe that he is
going to use his powerful hand to enforce the law.
But the thing that seems to us such folly is the
charge that in seeking through every possible ar
gument to secure the passage of promised railroad
legislation, Governor Smith became a lobbyist in
the offensive sense of that term. What are we
coming to? How on earth can there be any harm —■
anything improper—for a governor who has pledged
certain measures from every platform in the cam
paign, to seek by new argument or a repetition cf
the argument which he has used before, to influence
the votes of legislators on these self-same meas
ures? In what other way can he be expected to
carry out the reforms to which he is pledged? He
sat in his office in the dignity of a governor and
received legislators, whether in delegations, large
or small —sometimes, we suppose, one at a time
and sought to help them see the wisdom and ne
cessity of the measures which he had promised the
people. Less than this, it seems to us, would have
been both weakness and cowardice on the part of
a reform governor who knew that the only way to
secure these reforms was through the individual
votes of the law-makers.
We commend the vigor and success with which
Governor Smith pushed his measures through the
legislature. It is not ours here to discuss the wis
dom or unwisdom of any of these, with some of
which we do not agree. But in the name of all
that is fair, let us grant to our governor the priv
ilege of citizenship. We believe he has done noth
ing that a governor-elect should not do.
The truth is, there has been too much flippant
talk about lobbying, anyhow. If this thing keeps
up, it will be counted a crime pretty soon for a man
to sign a petition to his legislator asking that he
vote for a certain measure. They may pass all
the drastic anti-lobbying bills they please, making
it a “high crime and misdemeanor” for an honest
citizen and voter to pat the man on the shoulder
for whom he voted and ask him to vote for this or
that —but in the mind of sane, honest people, noth
ing will ever be real lobbying except the use cf
money, or lhe undue use of power and patronage
to influence a legislator’s vote. What is a legis
lator for if he is not to represent his constituents?
And in the case of new measures that arise during
every session of the legislature, how is the repre
sentative to know the will of his people unless they
write to him or come to the capitol and talk with
him about it? Yes, indeed, it is “the people’s
lobby.” The people own the capitol, and they
ought to own the legislature. And what we say
of Georgia we say oi every state in the union—the
people own the capitols, and they ought to' own
their respective legislatures.
R R
We have been reading a great deal of criticism
of the Pittsburg man who had a two-year-old child
arrested for tearing up his lawn. The papers all
say that he is the very meanest, lowest down, orner
iest man in the world. And he surely must be.
Any man who would deprive a sweet cherub of the
pleasure of digging up the grass and carting it away
into the street or elsewhere, has no heart, he has no
principle and he must be one of the kind “who is
not moved by concourse of sweet sounds.” He
should be driven from his community in disgrace
and degradation. Some of the sweetest moments
we have ever enjoyed have been those spent in
watching three or four little children ranging in age
from three to six, digging industriously in our
neighbor’s lawn and flower-beds and bearing away
the earth and vegetation to build certain important
structures planned by themselves. How sweet it
is to reflect that while there may be repairs need
ed by the lawn, the dear child has been given much
needed exercise! Nothing is so helpful to chil
dren as digging.
