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The Golden Age
(SUCCISSOH TO KLLIGIOUS PORUM)
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden Uge Publishing
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WILLI SiM D. UPSHfXW. - - - - Editor
A. E. RAMS AUK, - - - Managing Editor
LEH G. ROUGHTON - - - Pulpit Editor
Entered at the Post Office tn Atlanta, Ga.,
as second-class matter.
The cigarettist is becoming a very common insti
tution in this country; so much so that it is just
barely possible that within the next few years the
cigarettists will have attained such strength cf
numbers that they will in sheer disgust overthrow
the non-cigarettists and make of them a derision
and a laughing stock. As it is at present, however,
the non-cigarettists are assuming the right to criti
cise the habits, the appearance and the smell of
the cigarettists. Many very able men have devoted
much attention to the coinage of a suitable descrip
tion of the cigarettist. One that seemed to please
non-cigarettists was this: “The cigarette smoker
is like a cipher with the rim knocked off.” But
how is this: U A Cigarettist: One who is late ev
ery morning and fresh every evening”? For good,
close, practical detail, this description suits us bet
ter than any we have yet seen.
Dr. A. J. ‘Battle.
Full of years and honors and labor’s sweet re
ward, Dr. A. J. Battle, the eminent scholar, preach
er and educator, has passed away.
Connected with other institutions in other States,
but doing his greatest work, perhaps, as president,
first, of Mercer University, and then of Shorter
College, he left the impress of a stainless, cultured,
consecrated life upon hundreds of men and wo
men who will ever shrine his memory in their
hearts and teach their children to call him blessed.
He stood on the golden summit of his more than
fourscore years, breathing the very fragrance of
Beulah Land, as, amid the scenes of his labors for
the consecration of young men at Macon, be sank
to rest at peace with God and all mankind
A. J. Battle lived to bless the world, and the
world walks Godward in the light he left behind.
•ft M
Merritt and Pound.
Educational circles in Georgia have received a
surprise in the resignation of Hon. W. B. Merritt,
the justly popular State School Commissioner. The
public was not dreaming of such a thing. For five
years Mr. Merritt had given the limit of his conse
crated ability to the work of building up Georgia’s
schools, and he had succeeded so splendidly that he
would doubtless have remained at the helm of this
great work many years more if he had so desired.
Frankly, knowing W. B. Merritt as we do, and
having seen the love and the labor he has poured
into the life of the youth of his State, we hardly
see how he can ever be satisfied to be anything but
an educator. But, after all, there is a duty that
a man owes his family, and no man filling an office
of State-wide demands can rear a family and “lay
up anything for a rainy day” when he has a heart
to respond to the needs of humanity that call to
him on every side.
And Mr. Merritt goes to a lucrative position in
the management of a great timber company in
Florida.
Georgia pays her school commissioner too little,
and it is nothing less than heroic for Professor
Jere M. Pound to leave a larger salary as one of
the faculty of the Normal and Industrial School,
The Golden Age for October 10, 1907.
at Milledgeville, to accept the responsibilities of
this high office.
If Mr. Pound’s magnificent past as president of
the famous Gordon Institute, in his home town of
Barnesville, and his work in Florida and at Mil
ledgeville, did not prove his greatness as an edu
cator, his accepting this new call at a sacrifice
would be a prophecy of the consecration which will
characterize his efforts in his larger field of use
fulness.
Jere M. Pound is a man of stalwart strength,
and we predict that his success will be so great
that he will “die in the trenches” —and that, in
life’s far-off evening—if the people of Georgia can
have their way.
In this connection we call on Georgia and all
ether Southern States to pay better salaries to
State superintendents and public school teachers
everywhere—so that they will not be forced to
think of “making a living” when they are more
anxious to live a life.
No State ever had a more faithful, princely man
in the office of State superintendent of education
than W. B. Merritt. We bid him good-bye with
sadness. In many destitute places up among the
mountains and down among the pines he made a
garden of beautiful roses to grow where he found
one wild blossom before, and Commissioner Pound,
we are sure, will wisely cultivate every garden
planted by Merritt and Glenn and Bradwell and
Orr, and will lay tribute upon the treasury of his
genius and his energy to plant a thousand gar
dens more!
* H
Joseph M. ‘Brohm.
The recent suspension of Mr. Joseph M. Brown
from the office of . railroad commissioner in Georgia
will not down. It has broken out afresh in the
daily papers.
Governor Smith would give as his reason for it,
doubtless, that Mr. Brown was not in harmony with
the administration in its views of railroad rate
legislation. And from this standpoint his removal,
it is claimed, is consistent with successful reform
effort.
These columns are not the place to discuss these
commercial details, or party plans. But it is with
in our province to declare our fullest confidence in
the uncompromising honesty of Joseph M. Brown.
The son of Georgia’s famous statesman, Senator
Joseph E. Brown, he inherited a clear head and an
iron will from his distinguished father, and these
qualities of mind and manhood, supported by an
incorruptible character, make all things that per
tain to this cultured author and publicist of more
than State-wide interest.
It is to be hoped that Mr. Brown will new fol
low his literary pursuits more closely, and that an
other “Atalantis” will soon come from the cloister
of the scholar. When Robert Burns was follow
ing his duties as “Exciseman” Scotland missed
the music and wisdom of his songs, and literature
will now be richer if Joseph M. Brown will turn
leisure into labor by giving forth the treasures of
his heart and pen.
* I?
The Man in Jail.
Recently we had something to say about the
reformatory movements throughout our country,
with a suggestion that if reformatories are good
for the youth, a similar method of treatment for
the older people who violate the law —especially
their first violation —might be better for the State
and the man than our present method of jailing
him, and ofttimes putting him to hard work.
At a recent meeting of The National Prison
Association in Chicago, this subject was discussed
at length, and, believing that our readers will be
interested in what they had to say, we take pleas
ure in giving some excerpts from their addresses
as reproduced in “The Sandard”:
The National Prison Association, meeting in
Chicago last week, discussed conditions in a class
of public institutions where science, politics, indus
trialism and humanity are jointly striving in the
main for the suppression of crime, the reform of
offenders and hence for the promotion of civiliza
tion. On such occasions public thought is con-
centrated upon one of society’s great problems,
and the testimony of experts indicates the drift of
theory and practice. Tht* discussions of the con
gress brought forth testimony on lines of reform
now in vogue worth the consideration of good citi
tens at large. Said the custodian of a great city’s
jail: “Cold stone walls and prison bars will not
reform criminals. I hope to see the day when pris
ons will be unnecessary as far as the youth is con
cerned, and at present it is the youth who makes
up the majority of the men in our prisons. lam a
firm believer in preventive measures, namely, juve
nile courts and their affiliating organizations, the
small parks with their swimming pools and play
grounds, which develop the young minds away
from wicked environment.” Said a jurist whose
field of justice embraces the youth training for
crime: “A farm school with the cottage system and
industrial teaching is better than a prison house
with school features. There is no home life and
touch with the earth there. The children of the
public schools should have medical inspectors and
nurses. An unperceived adenoid growth in a child
may make a criminal. The child becomes fretful,
the teacher fretful, and the restless young creature
whom our system does not give us means to under
stand finds more diversion in robbing freight cars. ’ ’
In a plea for probation for the older man con
victed of his first crime an attorney said: “The
older man deserves more at the hands of society,
for he has waged a battle against evil for a longer
time. The man who commits a crime at the thresh
old of life is apt to have a criminal mind, while
the man who commits one at the age of forty-five
is likely to be a noncriminal. The old criminal is
the more remorseful.” Said a distinguished clergy
man: “I know a young man who was placed in a
dungeon for ten days, fed on a crust of bread and
water, and then taken back to his cell handcuffed,
for thirty-two days because he rebelled against a
task which a certain physical defect disabled him
from doing. These poor souls come out of prison
ordinarily worse than they go in. They are not ex
pected to reform. They are crying for compassion
and love.” Said a representative of that large
group in trade unionism, the United Garment Work
ers of America: “Prison-made garments and cloth
ing are driving bread and butter from the mouths
and homes of millions of people in the United
States. To have garments made by convicts, and
perhaps by negroes, and then placed in the free
market to be worn by free men at prices that pre
vent legitimate competition, is bad enough, but to
do this is robbing men, women and children of
work. The pcorly paid sweatshop worker, even, is
prevented from work.” Attorney-General Bona
parte was a prominent member of the congress.
Advocating greater use of the death penalty he said:
“I would not have men hanged to-day for a trifling
theft, nor our prison deps of filth and hotbeds of
disease, but I would have modern society cease to
nourish and shelter its proved and inveterate ene
mies. Some years ago I suggested that an attempt
to commit a capital crime ought to be made itself
capital when this should seem proper to the trial
judge, and also that when a man has been thrice
convicted of major crimes, upon his conviction for
his fourth offense of the like grade, he should be
liable, again in the discretion of the court, to the
death penalty.” A Chicago judge is experimenting
with a system of leniency somewhat his own, about
which he made these interesting remarks: “Nine
tenths of the crime is committed under influence
of liquor. I have found that self-made reformation
is more valuable than prison-made. The punish
ment of men with families is hardest for the fami
lies. I have placed 724 persons on probation in the
last ten months, most of them for drunkenness or
crimes committed while under the- influence of
liquor. Twenty violated their parole, were sent to
the house of correction, and, having been given a
second chance upon their release, are doing well.
Seven ran away and fifty-six broke their parole and
were given maximum sentences in the house of cor
rection. Six hundred and forty-six kept their
promises and now are industrious, sober men.” And
this is the age of the criminal: Before twenty, 14,-
000 persons are committed to prison, 685 being un
der fifteen. Between twenty and twenty-nine
there are more than 50,000,
