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The Golden Age
Published Every Thursday by The Golden Age
Publishing Company {lnc.)
OFFICES: AUSTELL BUILDING, ATLANTA, GA.
WILLIAMD. UPSHAW .... Editor
MRS. WILLIAM D. UPSH4W Associate Editor
MRS. G. B. LINDSEY . . Managing Editor
LEN G. BROUGHTON . . Pulpit Editor
Price: $1.50 a Year
In cases of foreign address fifty cents should be added
to cover additional postage.
Entered in the Postoffice in Atlanta, Ga., as second class matter
<TR ApE PUNCH. > 2
THE PIEDMONT
By SOLON H. BRYAN.
What is possibly the greatest section of
country in the world is that section in which
we live—the Southland. And what is pos
sibly the best part of the South, all things
considered, is the section traversed by the
main line of the Southern Railway. This
road runs from Washington to Atlanta
along the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge and
Alleghany mountains, the average altitude
being one thousand feet above sea level.
Here we have, first of all, an altitude which
is above the malaria level, and consequently
mosquitoes are almost unknown. Or, pos
sibly, I should say that mosquitoes are un
known in this section, and consequently
there is no malaria. Only last week I talked
with a man who had been living farther
South, and he told me that he moved to this
section to get away from chills and fever.
It is also true that the best of water is
obtainable. Given a good climate, such as
the Piedmont section provides, and good,
pure water, and good health is the result.
Yes, the people in this section succumb to
death, but they enjoy life while they live,
which is more than can be said of some sec
tions which I have known. Typhoid fever is
the most malignant and fatal -disease known
to this section, but under proper sanitary
conditions this will pass away—so the men
of science tell us. Os course they occasion
ally change their views, but on the whole
they are pretty wise men. I can remember
when they told us that flies were the great
est of scavengers, and not to kill them.
The Piedmont section is populated with a
fine class of people. They are law-abiding
and conservatively progressive. Many of
them are the direct descendants of the set
tlers of the country, and possess in a marked
degree the sterling qualities of their fathers.
They are interested in any movement which
looks to the actual uplift and advancement
of their section, but they are not of that
class who think that the things away from
home are necessarily the best. The most of
them are from Missouri—they have to be
convinced that a thing is good before they
will accept it.
People from sections where the soil is
more fertile, when they first look upon the
red hills of the Piedmont territory, wonder
how the people manage to live. The soil
is deceiving. It looks poor, and it is poor.
But it responds readily to intelligent culti
vation and fertilization, and now that the
science of farming is being studied, it will
be only a few years until the soil will be pro
ducing up to its full capacity. The country
is undulating and presents an appearance
that is attractive to the eye, and when the
fields are ripe with grain, or covered with
the whiteness of the fleecy staple, presents
a picture of wonderful natural beauty. The
Piedmont section is all right. It is a great
section, peopled by a great people, and will
be heard from during the next quarter of a
century.
The Golden Age for July 20, 1911.
What on earth is a community to do with
a court judge who has no backbone —or who,
if he has one at all, proves that it
has been saturated with whiskey
ized cowardice and liquorized
‘ ‘ conservatism. ’ ’
The cultured capital city of
Tennessee seems to be grievously
afflicted with such a judicial in
vertebrate right now. Os course
And
Liquor
Men
Laugh In
Their
Sleeve
there is nothing personal about this charge—
we do not know the spineless jurist; but judg
ing from the press reports, he is like unto many
more judges in this country who are giving
“ocular demonstration” of that Bible truth:
‘ ‘ When the wicked rule the people mourn. ’ ’
A Judge on the Bench who deliberately dis
misses a grand jury to keep them from dealing
with plain evidence against a thief or a mur
derer is, of course, in sympathy with the crime
of the criminal.
And a Judge on the Bench who deliberately
dismisses a grand jury to keep that body from
going into a mass of evidence which, clean, pa
triotic citizens have fearlessly and faithfully
secured against law-breaking liquor-sellers—
well, we must believe it is because he either
loves the liquor and its henchmen or is a po
litical coward before the demands and influ
ence of the representatives of the breweries
and distilleries.
Listen to the following platitude about good
citizenship from the Nashville Judge, and then
compare it with the shameful deed that fol
lowed:
“Every man should be willing to take time
from his business to be interested in the affairs
of his country. Our courts, our laws, our
branches of government are the product of toil
and suffering and bloodshed of a thousand
years, and yet you would be surprised at the
number of very best citizens who have no time
to take even the smallest interest in matters
that affect their country.”
* * *
But when the “pinch came,” listen to the
following sickening disclosure from a brave
editorial in that great liquorless, decent, dar
ing daily, The Nashville Tennesseean:
“Feeling assured that the Judge would aid in
suppressing the prevailing lawlessness when
While it would have been a fitting and de
served compliment to Senator Joseph M. Ter-
rell for him to have been returned
to the United States Senate, it
must be said in justice to him
and to his friends that the equa
tion of his impaired health enter
ed largely into the result. He did
A Golden
Heart
and a
Stainless
Name
not poll his full strength because
many believed his health was not robust
enough to endure the heavy draft on his vi
tality which his arduous senatorial duties
would make.
And then, it just so occurred (although the
senatorial issue did not enter into the State
campaign) that there were more men in the
Georgia Legislature who belonged to Governor
Hoke Smith’s school of political faith than
there were of the opposition, and despite the
fact that some of Governor Smith’s former
loyal supporters left his standard because they
believed he ought to redeem his pre-election
pledges as Governor, the desire was so strong
to see Hoke Smith in the Senate that the com
bined opposition, with a notable array of stal
wart, stainless men as candidates, could not
forestall that desire.
We earnestly hope that Senator Terrell’s
JUDGES WITHOUT BACKBONES
JOSEPH M. TERRELL
furnished ample evidence, a large number of
citizens visited saloons, cases and hotels in the
city and purchased liquors for the purpose of
bringing direct evidence before the jury, but
for some reason the Judge dismissed the jury
before this evidence could be heard, with the
consoling assurance that the subsequent jury
would hear it.
The evidence referred to, which was collect
ed and offered to the jury at the January term
and deferred by the Judge to the subsequent
term, we are informed, did not find its way to
the last jury, which was dismissed Saturday.
“Witnesses had been summoned to appear
before the jury on Monday, and when they ap
plied for admission at the grand jury room
they were told that the jury had been dismiss
ed —and there were no indictments.
“A judge must be a very strong personality
who can with becoming dignity gracefully bear
the responsibility of defeating the plain man
dates of the law, and if Judge Neil has been
in the least measure a deterrent in the free
course of the law, and if he is chargeable with
its evident paralysis in Nashville, we imagine
he will seize upon the first opportunity to
again speak out and again tell the people how
‘Our courts, our laws, our branches of govern
ment, are the product of toil and suffering
and bloodshed of a thousand years,’ and yet,
while all that kind of stuff might make our
blood tingle with patriotic emotions to our
very finger ends, the cold, pitiless fact remains
that there is not so much in what a Judge says
when speaking to ‘buncombe’ as there is in
what he does in the performance of his duty.”
Jfc JZ. JA.
W W W
Judges for “revenue only”—and Judges for
justice and honor!
If Judge Fite, of Cartersville, Georgia, were
presiding in Nashville, Tenn., or Atlanta or
Savannah, Georgia, there would not be a single
beer saloon or a defiant liquor dive in any of
these places. Why? He would just close up
every place as a nuisance—for any place fla
grantly violating the law and causing idleness,
lounging and drunkenness is a nuisance. If
Judge Tom Parker, of Way cross, were “on the
job” he would manage somehow to put the
rascals in the chaingang. May the Lord and
the fearless citizens deliver us from Judges
without backbones!
health will be sufficiently restored for him to
re-enter public life in Georgia, but if he does
not, he can carry through life’s mellow even
ing the priceless memory that he leaves the
political arena without a cloud upon his hon
ored name. Many years as representative, five
terms as Attorney General, two terms as Gov
ernor and an interim term in the highest body
of the nation —all this in this age of graft and
suspicion, with his personal character untouch
ed and his Christian manhood untarnished in
the eyes of the world.
It is a vital lesson for other public men that
Rev. John E. Briggs, his pastor in Washington,
writes in a private letter to a friend: “Unlike
so many political leaders when they come to
Washington, Senator Terrell took his stand
here as a faithful Church attendant and a
forceful, Christian statesman.”
And when he knew his political fortunes
were endangered by it he went to the polls and
worked like a hero to drive saloons out of
Meriwether county.
The township, the State and the nation need
more such men in public life.
*
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