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The Golden Age
(SDCCP.SSOH TO KPLIGIOUS 1OKUJ1)
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden Sigs Publishing
Company (Inc,)
OniCZS: LOWNDZ.S BUILDING. ATLANTA, GA.
WILLISfM D. UPSHHW, .... Editor
A. E. PA MS A UR, - - - Managing Editor
LEH G. BROUGHTON - - - Pulpit Editor
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Atlanta, Ga.
We Commend the Governor.
That was a thoughtful and salutary deed on the
part of Governor Hoke Smith of Georgia the other
day when he declined an invitation to attend a cer
tain society function in Atlanta because champagne
sparkled in the menu.
Georgia’s Governor may think her prohibition
laws are a fraction stringent, but as long as he be
lieves it against the law to “give a drink’’ he does
not propose to lend the sanction of his personal or
official presence to the least infraction of the law
which he has sworn to enforce.
Nobody has ever doubted that Governor Smith
meant what he said when he declared that he would
enforce the last jot and tittle of the prohibition law.
We commend the Governor’s absence from the ban
quet.
Trying to Be Respectable.
Did you hear, gentle reader, about that convention
of furniture dealers who recently met in Louisville,
Ky., for the purpose of devising ways and means
by which the furniture business can be made re
spectable? Didn't hear about it? Oh, no! Was it
a company, then, of grocery and dry goods mer
chants who were trying to make respectable their
business of supplying food and clothing for the
body ?
Didn’t hear about that? Os course not —and you
never will!
But the papers do tell us of a convention of
“lawyers, educators, clergymen (?), political econ
omists and —liquor dealers” who met in the name
of “The Model License League” to try, in the
“multitude of their wisdom” to make the liquor
business respectable enough to live!
The thing we would like to know is this—why on
earth should any municipality, state or nation li
cense a business so vile that it becomes more vile
and yet more vile until, in its desperation to live
(not in its penitence for evil doing), it cries aloud;
“Spare me! and I will make more gilded my open
shame!” It is too late to repent —the Judgment is
at hand!
The Golden Age for February 6, 1908,
One Vielv of Georgia Prohibition.
We give here a clipping sent to The Golden Age
by a friend in Rochester, N. Y., asking if it presents
a true picture of things in Georgia, and conveying
also the information that the writer of the letter
is the rector of one of the Episcopal churches of
that city, and a Doctor of Divinity. His letter
to the Rochester paper follows:
To the Editor of the Democrat and Chronicle:
Sir: After a visit of two weeks in Georgia, ming
ling with all kinds of people, having the entree to
both the most prominent clubs of Savannah, at
tending the sessions of the city court, and spending
several hours at the jail in that city, after a con
versation with clergymen, a United States Senator
and policemen, 1 have come to the conclusion that
111 Savannah at least it is as easy to obtain a drink
of whiskey as a cup of cocoa.
The police court has almost its usual grist of
business. The negroes to be sure have no low
down joints openly held out before them where
they can loaf and carouse, but in the negro quarters
I saw the girls running as usual to the corner
grocery to get their pails of beer. This is a new
kind of beer. They call it “Prohibition,” but it
seems to give the desired relief. In days gone by
men were not in the habit of stopping friends and
visitors on the street and inviting them, yes urging
them, to take a drink at any time “on my card;”
But now that is the common talk.
You see the prohibition movement in Georgia
was brought about by the votes of the poor whites
living in country districts who do just what an
ignorant clergy tell them is right, together with the
votes of men who hire negro labor. Men are drink
ing just as much in Georgia today as ever, only
some people can’t see it. The sentiment of the
cities is for local option, not state option. It will
come to this everywhere. We can’t enforce laws
relating either to Sunday amusements or drinking
unless the public sentiment of our community in
large degree is behind it.
GEORGE CHALMERS RICHMOND.
Rochester, Jan. 29, 1908.
In regard to this letter we have to say that
Savannah is a very small part of Georgia. If the
things he states to be facts are really true of
Savannah, there is going on there a systematic
violation of the law which will get somebody into
trouble. If that beverage called “Prohibition” is
an alcoholic drink, capable of producing intoxica
tion, it will be prohibited as soon as the courts get
to it.
The complete and perennial answer to all such
arguments is that: “The jug trade has taken the
place of the barrel trade.” The railroads have
quit hauling barrels: the express company handles
only jugs. The difference is about one to forty.
The falling off in the dockets of the criminal and
police courts, and the corresponding increase of
business in other lines is about the same ratio. The
phlegmatic tardiness of Savannah must not be
allowed for one moment to serve as a. sample of
other parts of Georgia.
I he sneer launched at the good people of Georgia
i.: put in along with the rest, because it is good as
a measure of the ignorance of Dr. 1 Richmond in
regard to the subject he is trying to enlighten his
neighbors about. .
h n
"The Change of 'Religion.”
As times change, so do all other customs and
forms; and there is much room for argument both
pro and con upon the question as to whether our
people, as a whole, are as sincere and devout in the
daily practice and observance of their religious
duties as in former years. The hopeful man has
much upon which to found his faith that the world
is growing better. In the essentials, in the more
fundamtntal manifestation's of our Christianity as
a people, we can point to many evidences that we
are a better people today than ever before. In this
connection we are glad to reproduce an editorial
from a contemporary upon the subject quoted
above:
“A distinguished churchman finds a distinct
decline of religion from the place it had in our
national life fifty or sixty years ago, and thinks it
due to the present lack of religious training in our
schools. Among the signs of its waning he notes
the neglect of our orators and statesmen to em
bellish their speeches with quotations from the
Scriptures, as used to be the habit of the great
Webster and his distinguished contemporaries of
half a century ago. According to the clergyman,
this neglect does not speak well for their familiar
ity with Holy Writ, nor for a spirit of recogni
tion by the whole people of God.
“If it indeed be old fashioned, we are still old
fashioned enough to admit the absolute need of
reverence for God and obedience to His w’ill on
the part of any nation calling itself Christian. But
as times change and fashions change, so do forms
change. We do not express our reverence as a
people, nor our knowledge of the Bible, in the
same forms that our fathers used. The old forms
of worship, as well as the old forms of oratory,
have passed off the scene. Simplicity is the gar
ment of our eloquence now 7 and subvocal the man
ner of our worship. Although our great orators no
longer embellish their thoughts with quotations
from Scripture nor beautify their phrases with
whole passages from Shakespeare or Milton, there
is no doubt that they speak as earnestly, as sincere
ly, and as forcefully as ever their flute-tuned fore
bears did. Every sentence is packed with meaning.
It is possible that the analogy carries to our ex
pression of the religious faith that is in us.
“It is true that we have abolished sectarian
teaching from the schools. It is true, and perhaps
regrettably true, that the old custom of family
worship is no longer quite as common in American
homes as it once was. But these things were but
the outward signs of an inward spirit which did
not ahvays, in the old days, lie so very far inward.
Perhaps the real spirit of religion has sunk deeper
in us now, and there is not so much of it left on
the surface. Certainly during the past fifty years
our national life, our policy at home and to the
nations abroad, has been more largely directed
toward universal peace and the common brother
hood of man than it ever was before. We used to
have a chip on our shoulders constantly. We let
internal politics stir our hatred into a fratricidal
war. We advocated the duello for the settlement
of every dispute, national or individual, and
measured a man largely by his prowess in combat.
But how 7 different is our modern ideal! In our
treatment of China and the Philippines and Cuba;
in our attitude toward humiliated Spain and the
Boxer indemnities; in the peace negotiations and
the arbitration movements which we have instituted,
we have shown a humanitarianism surpassing that
of any nation, perhaps, since the world began.
“These are the fruits of a deep religious feeling
that has pervaded the whole body of Americans.
It is that very love of one’s neighbors of which the
Master spoke when He gave His disciples a new
commandment to replace the decalogue of laws and
the forms that characterized religion under the old
dispensation. It is by its fruits, not by its
phrases, that our religion is made known today.”
Mississippi's Neto Gobernor.
Mississippi has reason to be proud of hep new
governor, Hon. E. F. Noel. Supplementing his un
questioned ability, he brings to the executive chair
a spotless character and an uncringing manhood.
During his campaign for governor he did not
simply say: “If you will bring me a state prohi
bit ion bill I will sign it,” but he led the glorious
light, and urged that such a bill be presented to
him by the legislature. And at the great prohibi
tion rally in the capitol last week, he told the au
dit nee that it the matter had not been settled before
bis inauguration he would send a message asking
for such a bill.
Governor Vardaman spoke in ringing tones for
prohibition in his farewell message. Mississippi’s
governors are “agin’ licker” in precept and in
practice.
