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The Golden Age
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden Age Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OFFICES: AUS'IELL ‘BUILDING, ATLANTA, GA.
WILLIAM V. UPSHAW - - - - Editor
MRS. WILLIAM D. UPSHAW - Associate Editor
MRS G. R. LINDSEY - - Managing Editor
LENG RROUGtiTON - - Pulpit Editor
Pt ice: $2 a Year
Ministers $1.50 per Year
In cases of foreign add-ess fifty cents should be added to cober
additional postage
Entered in the Post Office in Atlanta, Ga.
as second-class matter
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A Duel With Conscience.
We are moved with pity when we see a great man
—we mean a near-great man —having a hard time
with his conscience. The truly
The Memphis great man speedily ends the
Commercial Appeal debate by putting conscience
Has a Hard "Old” on the throne and casting all
Time. things questionable into outer
darkness. It is much the
same with a newspaper. The big, prosperous dailies
are divided among the great and the near-great;
now there is The Commercial Appeal. From the
standpoint of an enterprising newspaper and a lead
er of social and commercial enterprises it has few
equals and not a superior in the South. From that
viewpoint alone The Commercial Appeal is a great
paper. But from an editorial standpoint it is only
near-great.
We are sorry for that editor. Intellectually he is
brilliant, and some of his editorials are nothing less
than epics. If he had a fair chance he would be
great, but he is “sorter like” the Irishman who, on
joining the Methodist church, was asked: “Will you
renounce the Devil and all his works, the vain pomp
and glory of this world,” etc.?
And pat replied: “Yis, as far as the Divil will
let me.”
Our gifted Memphis editor writes prose poems
and moral philosophy about “respect for law” and
all th?t sort of thing, and we think that, deep down
in his heart he would like to turn a personal broad
side against the vice and villainy of saloons in Mem
phis and everywhere, but the “Divil” won’t let him.
The moment he is about to make the Appeal of
Judgment and Conscience the Commercial looks that
way with glaring, threatening eyes and conscience,
“wounded, writhes in pain and dies” so far as bless
ing the world is concerned. Listen to this splendid
paragraph from a non-committal editorial on Gov
ernor Patterson’s pardoning of the convicted mur
derer of Senator Carmack:
“There is nothing in this case nor in the result
that will increase the respect of men for law, and
the lack of respect that men have for the law was at
the foundation of this tragedy and in many others
whose story is daily told in Southern newspapers.”
And yet —and yet- f.nd YET The Commercial Ap
peal stands sponsor every day over a defiant carni
val of lawlessness, with no effort on earth to enforce
the prohibition law —a carnival of reeking crime on
which the Governor smiles his benediction when he
is “at home” and in which the mayor and council
blatantly declare themselves the “escort of honor.”
If The Commercial Appeal were great enough and
brave enough it would start a crusade that would
wipe out this horrible disregard for law —a disre
gard in which drunkards, gamblers, murderers
the pardoners of murderers are born; but it has sold
out, body and soul. Maybe it didn’t mean to do it,
but the effect is just the same. It has sold the
white space of its virtue to advertise liquor and the
shame of its prostitution makes it common to the
lust of every liquor dealer in America. How glo
rious it would be to see a great newspaper like The
Commercial Appeal be great enough in character to
shake off its liquorized shackles and give its con
science a chance!
The Golden Age for April 21, 1910.
FAIR TENNESSEE’S DISGRACE
Pattersonism is pillaging the peace and good name
of Tenuessee. It is a shameful travesty on the
meaning of the executive office
She Deserves in any state in this land of pop-
Better Than Pat- ular government that everybody
terson’s Pitiful says—friend and foe alike: The
Partisanship. expected has happened” when
they comment on Governor
Patterson’s immediate pardoning of Duncan B. Coop
er, sentenced to twenty years in the penitentiary for
killing Senator Edward W. Carmack.
And to give the shame an added crimson Governor
Patterson did not wait for one moment’s expiation
of the bloody crime which two courts-—the highest
tribunals in Tennessee —had affirmed.
While the Supreme Justice was yet reading the
decision which affirmed the murderer’s sentence the
“Governor” of a great state rushed to his desk and
issued a pardon which no man had requested and
fur the ground of which no evidence had been sub
mitted.
This act of what has been well styled “indecent
haste” threw every element of THE GOVERNOR out
of the window and revealed there on his oath-clad
throne the very incarnation of the pitiful partisan
and the debt-paying politician.
We do not believe that ever before in America
has any governor of any state committed such an
unblushing outrage against her courts of justice and
her helpless people.
Helpless? Yea, but not for long. Evidence of the
fact that the best of Tennessee’s manhood, irrespect
ive of faction and former affiliation, will rise in its
conscience and its might and hurl such a partisan
usurper from his dangerous power is found in the
following notable editorial in The Chattanooga
Times, a really great paper that supported Patter
son in his race for governor:
“With unwarranted not to say indecent haste Gov
ernor Patterson reverses the decree of the supreme
court, the highest and most august judicial author
ity the people acknowledge, and before the ink on
their opinion is hardly dry he turns loose by the
exercise of executive clemency the man on whom
two courts had fixed the seal of blood guilt.
“This act will not reinsure the people that we
are to have an era of law enforcement under further
administration, and will go largely to emphasize the
correctness of the charges made against him by his
political and personal enemies, that he is a dan
gerous man in the executive office and a selfish pol
itician bent solely on promoting his own ends and
those of his political friends and supporters, that
this action of the governor has been expected and
that renders it all the more dangerous. The predic
tion was based on the facts —
“(1) That the fatal quarrel between Col. Cooper
and Senator Carmack grew out of the former’s ad
vocacy of and close re’ation to the candidacy of
Governor Patterson.
“(2) That Col. Cooper is and has been a warm
personal friend of the governor, and
“(3) That the latter would be forced on these ac
counts to issue a pardon.
Spelman ’s Nrlv President.
It was a good day for Spelman Seminary when
Miss Lucy Hale Tapley was recently elected as the
successor to the great and be-
The Mantle of loved Miss Giles. As President of
Harriet Giles this splendid, practical institution
Falls on Worthy for’ the Christian education of
Shoulders. Negro girls Harriet Giles worked
cii till the day of her lamented
death trying, under God, to prepare Negro women
in heart and life for time and eternity.
Right by her side for many faithful years Miss
Tapley stood, first as Superintendent of the Teach
ers’ Department, and then as Dean of the Seminary.
She is in the work because she loves it —because
she loves Him who called her to the work, and those
for whom she works.
None waft Spelman’s new President a heartier
“None of these reasons is good in moral or offi
cial ethics. The pardoning power is not vested in
the individual, Mr. Patterson, for the rewarding of
friends or personal supporters or for revenging him
self upon his political or personal enemies. It is
vested in the governor of the state for the protec
tion of the people, and it was intended that it should
be exercised only when the right of an individual
had been violated. Undue penalties imposed in
cases where the courts had been misled by false
testimony and where, through the exigencies of
penal servitude the convict may be reasonably de
clared to have suffered enough for his crime before
the full penalty had been paid. No governor has a
right to pardon criminals simply because they were
his friends, had supported him and counseled with
him, and especially is it a monstrous doctrine to
hold that he is justified in pardoning them because
they committed their crimes as a result of their
allegiance to him.”
Amen! A thousand loud “amens!”
There is hope for fair, bedraggled Tennessee when
such a ringing note is sounded by such a paper as
The Chattanooga Times. Surely it will be caught
up by every vigilant, fearless guardian of the state’s
good name and future and rung into the conscience
and character, the needs and deeds of the militant
people from the mountains of the east to the shores
of the Mississippi.
The position of Tennessee’s Governor presents
nothing less than a horrible picture to every man
who loves pure government and good citizenship.
It is not a legal crime for any man to be an anti
prohibitionist in sentiment, and from the viewpoint
of many honest men who blindly think there is a
better way of handling the whiskey question it is
not a moral crime, perhaps; but to see an official
leader of a great, free people whose position in
office ought always to be judicial as well as execu
tive, throw his private and administrative arms of
protection and encouragement around the liquor
business with all of its intrigue, corruption and red
handed murderers —to see a man filling the office of
Governor doing a thing like this, staggers the heart
and makes the head of every true citizen grow dizzy
with apprehension for the safety of society and the
future of the state.
To what are we coming? Although the Supreme
Court of Tennessee reversed the verdict of Robin
Cooper, who actually shot Senator Carmack, and re
manded him to a new trial, a sympathetic paper
brazenly announces: “It is freely predicted that
Robin Cooper will never come to trial.”
Why not? In the name of Tennessee —in the name
of the God of Justice why should not this gilded son
of wealth he tried as surely, as promptly and as
impartially, as some dry goods clerk or day laborer
who has deliberately stained his hands with human
blood?
Oh! Tennessee, Fair Tennessee, let your citizens
act as fearless freemen and the sun of your next
election day will go down on the old “Volunteer
State” from Pattersonism redeemed!
gggj
“God-speed” than the thoughtful white people of
Georgia and the South who have seen with their own
eyes the wholesome influence that Spelman wields
upon the lives of all Negro girls who come under
its uplifting and transforming power.
Look at your label, and if
you are in arrears, send in your
renewal. You will feel better
and so will we. DO IT TO
DAY.
