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The Golden Age
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden Age Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OFFICES: AUS'! ELL BUILDING, ATLANTA, GA.
WILLIAM D. UPSHAW .... Editor
MRS. WILLIAM D. UPSHAW - Associate Editor
MRS G. S. LINDSEY - - Managing Editor
LEN G. BROUGHTON - . - Pulpit Editor
Price: $2 a Year
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In cases of foreign address fifty cents should be added to cober
additional postate
Entered in the Post Office in Atlanta, Ga.
as second-class matter
Victorious "Bolvdon!
Ambitious, progressive communities everywhere
can learn a lesson of inspiration and encouragement
Plucky College
Town Gets Rail
road “At Last.”
citizenship by the tenacious loy
alty with which Bowdon College has been sustain
ed. Far away from the railroad in its early days, and
a dozen miles distant for the last generation, Bowdon
College has lived and signally blessed the world,
supported only by the endowment of the people’s love
and loyalty.
But those good people naturally wanted a railroad.
Time and again they would try, but something would
always “happen.” Never mind who made it “hap
pen,” but Tantalus himself seemed to preside over
the railroad prospects of the eager, anxious town.
Finally two stalwart, big-hearted, public-spirited cit
izens, Dr. G. W. Lovvorn, President of the Bank, and
William H. Barrow, a prominent merchant, put their
heads, hearts and purses together and determined to
have a railroad at Bowdon or “bust.” All the other
citizens, inspired by their optimism, rallied to their
call and “stripped themselves for battle.” Congress
man W. C. Adamson, an alumnus of Bowdon College,
got out and “shook the bushes.” Ex-Governor Joe
Terrell now United States Senator became valiantly
enlisted in the fight—all hands made a grand “center
rush” and the deed was done.
The entrance of the first train was celebrated by a
big barbecue last week.
Hurrah for plucky, “final-perseverance,” victorious
Bowdon!
a? M
Don 9 t 'Elect "Handshakers.”
Os course, he is not against handshaking per se. It
is a beautiful art, which some men know how to use
most effectively for the good of others
Barrett
Draws
Lesson
From
Downfall
Os Farmers’
Alliance.
You can generally tell. The right kind has the ring
of the genuine coin, while the wrong kind has the
metallic ring of the counterfeit dollar.
President Charles S. Barrett, of the National Farm
ers’ Union, has evidently come in contact with the
“revenue handshake”. There is so much of common
sense for universal application in President Barrett’s
recent advice concerning the election of officers for
the Farmers’ Union, local, State and national, that
we reproduce it here “for the good of the order”, and
all other orders:
“In the first place, it is well to take warning by
the great farmers’ organization that preceded ours —
the Farmers’ Alliance. The Alliance went to pieces
largely because of its officers. They were elected
too quickly, without the proper analysis, and more
for their handshaking ability and their capacity for
jollying than for their qualities of leadership.
“A great many of the Alliance officials were those
who went in solely to use the order for their own
frpm the historic old college town
of Bowdon, Georgia. For more
than fifty years the community of
Bow r don has shown a high order of
as well as for the good of themselves.
There may be good cheer and hope
a,nd even the winsome, wooing power
of the everlasting Gospel in a “hand
shake” when the heart-beat is in it.
But there is the professional “hand
shaker”, the political “handshaker”,
the “handshaker for revenue only”.
The Golden Age for December 8, 1910.
SWA YEO KINGS TROM PEASANTS HUT
Tolstoi! And kings uncover their heads at the
mention of his name. Tolstoi! And the masses of
Russia mourn, while the weeping
“Tolstoi's
Heart Burst
With Love
for the
People.”
“Tolstoi’s heart literally burst with
love for the people!” they cry—they who knew him
best and loved him most.
And the THOUGHT of the onlooking, saddened
world pays pilgrimage and homage to a new Mecca
of heroism —returning to the sender across conti
nents and oceans freighted with the fragrance of
Abou Ben Adhem and stirring with all the lofty in
spiration' of that individual greatness that made “a
king without a crown”.
Leo Tolstoi was not, perhaps, an unmixed blessing
to his day and generation. He would have been a
paragon indeed if such a towering intellect —such a
prolific pen —had given only good to the world. But,
counting the imperial setting in which he found him
self —the blighting atmosphere of absolute mon
archy and spiritual thraldom which sickened his free
spirit and drove him into an attitude of exposure
and defiance, Tolstoi’s influence, upon the whole,
made for peace in a nation of war, for spiritual free
dom amid an oligarchy of coercion, and for the san
est, broadest, deepest humanity in a land where king
craft and militarism has for centuries crushed the
spirit and life out of men.
So disgusted was he with the trappings of “nobil
ity”, the regalia of kings and the unspiritual display
of sacerdotal formalities that he left the gilded splen
dor where his majestic powers would have enabled
him to reign, and went and lived and wrought, with
purposes. Pretending to be Moses, fit to lead the
farmers out of the wilderness, they played upon their
passions, arrayed class against class, rode into office
and then left the organization disrupted and on the
rocks.
* * * *
“These men are to have in their keeping the pow
er for advancement or retrogression of the Farmers’
Union in your community. Don’t elect the hand
shaker; select those who are able and faithful. After
you do it, give them a fair and square deal. Forgive
their small mistakes, if they are not serious injuries
to the organization. When you balance up, don’t
forget to watch the debit as well as the credit side
of their ledgers of character and accomplishment.
Don’t believe every nasty or malicious story you hear
about them, but investigate to see if it’s true, and if
it is not, pay no more attention to the man who
started it. Your officials must live in comfort to give
you good service. Don’t grudge a few pennies on
their salaries.
“It is by the observance of these principles that
we are entering upon the greatest era in the history
of any farmers’ organization. Only as they are in
creasingly enforced will the Farmers’ Union accom
plish its mission.
“CHARLES S. BARRETT.”
Aside from Mr. Barrett’s wholesome advice about
the light-weight politician who can “shake hands and
jolly”, but who is wanting in ability and character,
we heartily commend also his safe and sane words
A BEAUTIFUL CHRISTMAS PRESENT.
Get ready now to give your daughter, son, husband, wife, or friend
that charming book, “Esther Ferrall’s Experiment”, or a copy of “The
Mission Girl”, as a Christmas present. Two of the most thrilling books
ever written by Odessa Strickland Payne, and exquisitely bound in fancy
cloth, with letters of gold. You just can’t beat it for a Christmas present.
Send One Dollar and Ten Cents now to THE GOLDEN AGE, Atlanta,
Ga., and it will hasten to you prepaid.
peasants around his home —the peas
ants of whom he of noble strain had
made himself a part —burst into tears
afresh as they pass in review by his
bier.
his family, among the poor and lowly, clothing his
regal form in a peasant’s garb and living the doc
trines he preached —humility before God, and love
and fellowship for His creatures, the suffering chil
dren of men.
Tolstoi’s philosophy and his measures of civic and
religious reform found their tap-root largely in the
Bible, and though he died excommunicated and anath
ematized, naturally, by the Greek Catholic Church,
he was brave enough and true enough to fight off all
priestly overtures for his return to the national
church, and rested his case alone with God.
We believe Leo Tolstoi was true to the teachings
of God and His Word as he saw them, and his stal
wart independence, his uncringing loyalty to princi
ple, and the spotless purity of his fearless life made
darkened Russia a brighter, freer land, and the world
a happier, better world.
We know of no more splendid picture of the reg
nant power of a lofty character than that presented
by Tolstoi when the Czar “of all the Russias” stopped
his train at the village of Yasnaya Poliana and asked
the Peasant Philosopher at the depot what he thought
of his promulgated scheme for a World’s Universal
Peace Congress.
“I would think much more of it, and the world
would, too, if you would stop building warships and
mobilizing troops.”
How magnificent! how peerless! how fearless the
uncringing soul of the MAN before the MONARCH—
the absolute Monarch, who, in those dangerous days
before the birth of the Douma, could have banished
him —if he had dared —to the wilds of Siberia!
O Peasant’s Hut at Yasnaya Poliana, the majesty
of thy uncrowned master made thee a greater throne
of power than the Thames or the Tiber, than Berlin
or St. Petersburg!
about being ready to believe every evil report that is
so often spread by jealous hearts and forked tongues.
A man who is quick to believe an evil report about a
man with a hitherto good reputation shows that he is
evil himself.
"Sage-Like” Wisdom.
The sanity of Mrs. Russell Sage’s philanthropy is
most refreshing. While her name “spells Santa
Claus” to all sorts of worthy
Wife Os Famous
Financier Builds
Unique Memorial.
expression of “Sage-like” wisdom is Forest Hills Gar
den —a tract of 140 acres on Long Island, dedicated
to the building of a clean, model town —a town where
homes of economy, beauty and comfort can be bought
by worthy families on easy monthly payments, and
where proven character must be the “open sesame”
to accepted citizenship.
This will prove, we believe, the solution of a vex
ing problem in congested centers, and Mrs. Sage’s
experiment—no longer an experiment but a guaran
teed success—will inspire many other philanthropists,
we are sure, “to go and do likewise.” Most “model
community” colonies fail because they are the con
crete expression of a fanciful fad. But Mrs. Sage’s
colony is simply the “fad” of common isense and
every-day living for humanity.
charities and educational insti
tutions, she and her advisers
are striking deep into social and
civic needs. Her last delightful
