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8
7he Golden Age
(SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS lORUN)
Mliihid Ebery Thursday by the Golden 59ge Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OniCES: LOWNDES BUILDING, ATLANTA, GA.
WILLIAM V. UPSHfXW, - - * - Editor
A. E. RAMS AUK, - - - Managing Editor
LEK G. BROUGHTON - - - Pulpit Editor
Price: $2.00 a Year
Ministers $1.50 per Year.
li case* es foreign address fifty cents should be added te eober
additional postage.
Enured at the Test Office in Atlanta, Ga.,
as second-class uniter.
AOES fey) CQUNctu>
A Great Big Black One.
The trouble with the leaders of the saloon forces,
that is, the trouble for them, is the fact that they
have never learned the art of
Yes, adroit falsifying! They tell such
Several big ones when they do start out
of the that they fall by their own weight
Things. and 11 writhing in pain, die amid
their worshippers.”
The Label Secretary of a Chicago cigar makers’
union “stopped off” in Asheville, N. C., the other
day and 11 being asked to give his views on prohi
bition” spoke with the first breath as follows:
11 Prohibition not only destroys our industries,
but it deprives all workingmen of their personal
liberty. The industries it would destroy over the
country employ a million working men, who with
their families, represent 5,000,000 souls. These
trades are brewery workmen, cigarmakers, bottle
blowers, box makers, masons, woodworkers and
carpenters (who make all the bar fixtures, interior
work, billiard and pool tables), wagon makers,
printers, pressmen, lithographers, bartenders, steam
fitters, coopers, machinists, plumbers, harness
makers, railway trainmen, and, in fact every in
dustry will feel the blighting effect of Prohibition
if it is successful.
“In Alabama Georgia and Tennessee whole unions
have been destroyed by prohibition, thousands
thrown out of work and their members forced to
leave their homes and families in fruitless effort
to find employment, school hours have been reduced,
kindergartens and studies eliminated, teachers’,
principals’ and public employes’ wages reduced and
unpaid taxes increased and a tax levied upon any
working man for each child he rvants to send to
the high school.”
All of which we say, for absence of a more
expressive term, is an unmitigated, unadulterated,
unfumigated lie!
The first paragraph is so preposterously palpable
that it needs not the recognition of an answer. As
if anybody doesn’t know that all that army of work
ing men and dependent women now linked to the
liquor business, making bar fixtures and the like,
w’ould be in a better business if all the millions
spent for liquor were turned into the proper chan
nels of trade!
But that reference to Georgia and Alabama,
charging their new-made prohibition laws with being
responsible for depleted schools and workshops, is
absolutely without foundation. Grand Rapids,
Michigan, and Dallas, Texas, have saloons on almost
every corner and they have suffered from the money
panic as much as if not more than Atlanta and
Birmingham. Everybody knows this, except
Satan’s fool who has neither brain nor moral per
ception to take it in. Atlanta’s retail trade is
better than for the same time last year and crime
has decreased nearly 100 per cent. Mr. Saloon Man,
don’t tell such a big black one next time!
A scientist has announced that the next genera
tion of people living on this earth will find their
greatest problem in trying to keep from freezing.
But don’t worry; when the next generation is
figuring out that problem we will have it all settled,
beyond any doubt.
The Golden Age for May 28, 1908.
"PETTICOATS AND POLITICS”
Up in the “Old North State” whose battle
against the whiskey shop will have been fought and
won before this issue reaches our
A North
Carolina
Editor
Becomes
Unduly
Frightened.
the voters. The frightened editor of the Waxhaw
Enterprise quoth as follows:
“We notice a statement in the papers to the
effect that the ladies of a certain neighboring town
expect to go to the polls next Tuesday and work
in behalf of prohibition. We have also heard
it hinted that some of the ladies of Waxhaw might
take the same course. But we sincerely hope that
there is to be no such misguided zeal in this
community. If there should be, those ladies who
may thus so far forget where their real sphere of
influence is, need not be surprised to find themselves
the objects of unpleasant criticism and ridicule
even among some of the very best friends of the
prohibition cause. Every true woman must know
that her proper sphere of influence is the home, and
that she would be entirely out of place while
prancing around the ballot box. We hope that we
are altogether misinformed in this case and that
no such scenes are to be witnessed hereabout, not
even now nor in the years to come. We hope that
civilization has not so far advanced in this commun
ity that the men cannot be depended upon to do
their full duty by the cause of prohibition without
being attended at the ballot box by the rustle of
petticoats and the chatter of female voices. But
if any man doubts himself, then let him bring his
wife along with him.”
Concerning these conclusions of our brother
editor in the land of tar and manhood we are
compelled to “let a little laugh.”
His graphic picture of a woman “prancing around
the ballot box” shows at least a frenzied vision,
while his “hope that our civilization has not so
far advanced that the men cannot be depended
on to do their full duty without being attended
• at the ballot box by the rustle of petticoats and the
chatter of female voices” is an ungracious perver
sion of the modest, winsome conduct of that modest,
winsome southern womanhood that has added grace
and refinement to the scenes around a thousand
ballot boxes in the south.
We are not asking' for woman suffrage now and
ninety-nine hundredths of the noble women who
have gone to the polls to inspire the men—
cheering the strong and guiding the weak —do not
want the ballot for themselves. What harm, pray
tell us, can come from the presence near the bal
lot box of the best women in town, standing
among their husbands, their sons,' their sweethearts,
seeking by their very presence to win victory for
a great moral question affecting the happiness of
home and the sacredness of human life? “You’d
better not let your ladies go to the polls, they may
be insulted,” said a dispensary man to a prohibi
tion leader in Aiken, South Carolina. “Who will
insult them?” replied the preacher of righteousness,
“Our men certainly will not, and surely yours are
gentlemen enough not to do so!” “Oh! I see!”
said the whiskey man, gulping down his embarrass
ment. And the ladies went to the polls, serving
refreshments, singing their- songs, cheering their
heroes of the White Ribbon as they voted for the
Right, restraining those who might otherwise have
been vicious and throwing over the whole day a
halo of beauty and sacred inspiration which none
but fopls could mock or decry. ,
Yonder comes a young man, a beardless stripling
with noble face and fearless eye who just has arriv
ed at his majority. With manly tread he files into
line to cast his first ballot, proud, stirring, sacred
hour to every thoughtful American youth! The
saloons have tempted hinp The hounds of hell
readers, the atmosphere is positive
ly electrical with contending ideas.
All whiskey men and even a few
“conservative” prohibitionists are
taking the position that ladies
ought not to go to the polls and
seek by their presence to influence
have barked at his heels. The sirens of darkness
have sung to him their bacchanalian songs. But
like the traveler to the City Celestial, “he stopped
his ears and ran.” And girding up his loins for
the great Olympian game of American citizenship
he takes his place under the Spotless Banner that
is held aloft by the fair white hands of the women
who are looking on. He casts his first vote, thank
God, against the saloon that is “the despoiler of
men and the terror of women”! .
A “shout of victory” rings out on the morning
air! Like the Spartan women of old, these hand
maidens of God crown this young hero-citizen
with a chaplet of cheers and ia shower of grateful
tears. Grayhaired mothers and grandmothers,
seeing with vision keen the barrels and bottles of
wreck and ruin in which so many men have lost
head, heart and conscience in the stinking stream
of putrid politics, are not ashamed of lips that
tremble with gladness nor of these happy tears that
make their watching eyes grow dim. And maidens
young and beautiful, designed by Heaven to love
and bless men of heroic mold, beam their faces and
clap their hands in a perfect pean of enthusiasm
as our voter-youth (now forever a man) goes in to
have fellowship with the Ark of Liberty and
emerges from this baptism of patriotism with light
upon his hero-face.
Verily, as was said of the “Polish Boy” “this
hour hath made the boy a man.”
And over there with a motley crowd of whiskey
ites stands another youth holding a liquor ballot in
his hand. It has been placed there by some design
ing emissary of the saloon. This poor fellow
whose twenty-first birthday came only a fortnight
ago has fallen into the wrong crowd. He is breath
ing the wrong atmosphere. His moral sensibilities
have been poisoned and are becoming atrophied
too soon. He sees our hero-voter cheered by fair
women and brave men, whose faces of purity and
manhood speak to him with wondrous power. His
better self demands a hearing. His conscience
begins to awake and shake off the gathering sleep of
untimely death. After all, he longs to keep com
pany with the pure and the good, the true and the
brave! A sweet mother-face approaches him with
a little white ribbon and a clean ballot in her hand:
“My boy, will you not wear this ribbon and vote
this ticket for your young manhood’s sake and the
sake of your mother, whether living or dead?”
The young fellow is touched, he is won! He
throws down the liquor ticket, takes the ballot for
Home, for Purity, for Manhood, for Womanhood
and walks with a new grace in his step and a new
thrill in his soul and casts his first vote for the
Right against the Wrong!
Another shout rends the air, for a citizen is
nobly born!
We have witnessed scenes like this taking place
on election day in Georgia and South Carolina, yea,
they have taken place wherever brave, true women
have gone to the polls and have wrought with
womanly tact and modest bravery, and they will
take place all over North Carolina on the great
new Day of Independence when the- women who,
like the vestal virgins, have kept the fires of Prohi
hibition burning on the Altar all these laggard years,
will lead manhood to coronation in the votes of
Carolina’s sons.
Enclosed you will find $2.00. I can’t afford for
the paper to stop, for it is the best one that comes
to my home. I hope that the paper may live long
and stand for the right in the future as it has in
the past. W. D. Alford.
Minden, La.
’ * *
Enclosed find $2.00 for which renew my sub
scription to The Golden Age. It is useless for me
to mention the good qualities of the paper and the
benefits I have derived from reading same. I will
only say I wish you every possible success in this
good work. B. M. Dorrity.
Mangham, La.
