Newspaper Page Text
March 4, 1915
THE FLYING SQUADRON DOING MUCH WORK
HOUGH without precedent in the history of
| temperance reform, the Flying Squadron of
America is no longer an experiment. It has
1 won the confidence and attention of the
j I I
whole country. It has silenced, by unselfish ser
vice, the questionings of the friends and the ridi
cule of the enemies of temperance reform. It h.is
caught the imagination of the people and compelled
the recognition of the press. Not yet have the finan
cially favored come up to its adequate suppoi bur
the men and the women who compose the thn'e
groups of singers and speakers are not dismayed by
that - and with the single exception of one church
official leader who from the first had announced
his duty to return to his field will stand by until
the Squadron has concluded the last of 250 days’
service in Atlantic City, June 4, 1915.
It has been a tremendous task, this traveling al
most every night and speaking from two to five
times every day, and almost without exception to
immense audiences, often overflowing into the second
and sometimes the third auditorium. The Squad
ron’s work and the character of its reception is daily
demonstrating the fact that the American people are
tired of their government’s disgraceful partnership
in grog-shop keeping.
What an itinerary is this, to be sure. Mark the
journey from Peoria, 111., through Missouri, Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, California, Nevada, Ore
gon, Washington, Montana, North and South Dakota,
Minnesota, Nebraska, lowa, Wisconsin, Michigan,
Ohio and on across Pennsylvania and New York,
throughout New England; then back through New
Jersey, Maryland, Washington, D. C., and West Vir
ginia to Cincinnati; stopping en route to speak in
&5 cities in 80 days, and you have some small con
ception of the task the Flying Squadron performed
before the holidays. But to fully appreciate this
task you ‘must go with us on all kinds of trains at
all hours of the day and night, sleeping and eat
ing with perilous irregularity, but working with per
fect regularity and severity, speaking in halls and
theatres and churches, in tents and out of doors:
traveling by trolley or auto; sitting up in day coach
es sometimes practically all night. But nobody com
plained, and delighted audiences were none the wiser
if the speaker’s head cruelly throbbed for want of
rest, or the singer had hard work to keep his voice
awake.
Present Shadows for Heroic Builders of Civilization
President E. C. J. Dickens of First District Agricultural College, Statesboro, Ga., Suffers Breakdown in Health—Beautiful Tribute from “Billy” Sutlive.
It brings a keen sense of pain to the
editor of The Golden Age to come face
to face with the serious breakdown
that has come to our good friend—
everybody's good friend, President E.
C. J. Dickens, of the First District Ag
ricultural College at Statesboro, Geor
gia.
This heroic, unselfish builder in our
Christian civilization has practically
moulded this splendid institution —one
of the very largest and best in Geor
gia’s eleven agricultural schools. He
has laid his health—almost his life
on the altar of the school and lives
of the boys and girls that he loves so
well and the hearts of these anxious
students and their grateful parents go
with their teacher-friend and brother
as he rests at White Springs, Florida,
and they pray with thousands of others
for his restoration to health. Mr. Dick
ens, who is a Baptist minister of splen
did ability, will soon be available, we
hope, for supplying pulpits near White
Springs, and we hope he will be kept
as busy as his returning strength will
allow.
‘‘Billy” Sutlive, the genial and gift
ed managing editor of the Savannah
Press, pays the following tribute to
this valiant worker:
Western Trip Depletes Treasury.
We participated in all of the four state-wide fights
on the coast country, speaking nearly GOO times in
Arizona, California, Oregon and Washington, and
only one of the tsates voted to retain the saloon.
How much we had to do with these victories we
are more than willing to let the people themselves
testify, and only wish we had space to give some
of the endorsements that have come to us from
every section visited.
It was this long and expensive western trip that
depleted our treasury and made it impossible to
pay even moderate salaries. To help in these fine
fights, Gov. Hanly yielded to a strong plea from the
workers there, and, abandoning the successful work
he had been doing to provide funds in advance, he
gathered the Squadron together more than thirty
days sooner than he had planned and started Sep
tember 30th instead of November 6th. But it was
worth it; and though we spent in the West no less
than $20,00'0 more than we received in the battle
ground states, the people in those states, strainc
to the financial limit by their own needs, still help
ed us as generously as we even hoped they could
do, and we came away happy that we had been
able to serve them even so little, so brave and worthy
are they.
Helped the Churches.
The Flying Squadron recognizes its co-operative
relationship to all existing temperance movements
and to the churches as an evangelistic and popular
educational agency; and it is more than willing to
confine its energies as it has done right through, to
arousing and informing and influencing the people,
leaving the organized temperance societies inside and
outside the churches, to gather up and use the abun
dant results. In spite of this “one-thing-I-do” pur
pose, however, the people have often not been con
tent to await the coming of another agency and
have gone immediately to work. Two or more state
Flying Squadrons and many local ones have been
organized, but all in the same spirit shown by the
national movement —to go to the people with the
facts and the appeal the facts make. In more than
one city the joints have been closed, and organiza
tions effected to bring in a reform administration.
Fights for state-wide prohibition will come earlier
and win more surely in several states.
As now constituted, the Squadron is in the field
E. C. J. Dickens.
The resignation of Mr. E. C. J. Dick
ens as the head of the First Congres
sional District Agricultural School at
Statesboro will cause a great deal of
regret because of the fact that ill
health has forced him to take this ac
tion. Mr. Dickens has done great work
at Statesboro. He took charge.of the
school when it was far from succeed
ing and he has during the time he has
been in control of it built it up to one
of the representative institutions of
its kind in the state. In fact, the
First district school has often been
looked upon as a model for others like
it to follow after.
Mu-li of the success of the institu
tion has been brought about by the
efforts of the human dynamo that had
its affairs in hand. Those who know
Mr. Dickens will appreciate this com
parison. He was a strong, enthusias
tic and alert agency for that which
was nearest his heart and he worked
with a will and with a vim that was
bound to .spell success. And now
that he has placed the school in the
position in which we lind it today it
seems hard that fate should have de
creed that he retire. He has given
the school many of the best years of
THE GOLDEN AGE
his life and the graduates that have
gone out under his direction will al
ways hicaor and esteem him for the
service he gave to them and to their
alma mater ungrudgingly and cheer
fully.
Mr. Dickens is one of those kind
of men who cannot be idle. He has
filled the pulpits in several Baptist
churches most acceptably. He at one
time ran one of the best weekly pa
pers in the state and when he gave
up the calling of the ministry and
the editorial chair to accept that of
the pedagogue he found a work that
strongly appealed to him and of which
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THE BIGGS SANITARIUM, Asheville, N. C.
to stay to the end. There may be additions to
the force —there will be no permanent substractions.
Every member of the Squadron, both before and
since the holidays, has received, under its joint stock
agreement from whatever funds came in, barely
enough, much of the time, to pay traveling expenses,
and never enough to pay one-third of an adequate
salary.
But this work is so eminently worth doing, and
worih doing right now—the first really opportune
year in which it could have been done —that every
body is determined to complete it. This campaign
could not have been carried out a year ago—a year
hence might be too late.
GENEROUS WORDS FROM “THE FUTURE
CITIZEN.”
The memory of a delightful visit to the Boys’ Re
form school at Milledgeville, Ga., presided over by
that great friend of God and man, Prof. J. E. Lov
vorn, is stirred afresh in the heart of the editor of
The Golden Age by the following beautiful editorial
in their splendid and inspiring weekly paper, ‘‘The
Future Citizen” (and by the way, everybody interest
ed in the brave efforts of struggling boys ought to
send a dollar and keep up every week with the
doings of these fine young fellows :
“The Golden Age, published! in Atlanta by Mr.
W. D. Upshaw, the “Georgia Cyclone on Crutches,”
is one of the brightest and most helpful exchanges
that comes to our sanctum; and we are glad to give
this expression of our appreciation along with other
educational and inspirational journals. This great
paper is always interesting and leaves us feeling
stronger and full of hope after reading it. No copy
is ever destroyed or thrown into the waste basket,
but is simply worn out with reading and re-reading.
It seems like the fates are kind enough to just make
some big thing happen for a few papers to play
up in every issue, and we have a suspicion that
The Golden Age must be in the trust that gets these
special privileges, because it always has some strong
feature that marks it as different. After a careful
and impartial reading of The Golden Age for sev
eral years we have a well grounded suspicion that
our friend Upshaw is “agin licker,” and that makes
us appreciate The Golden Age the more.”
he made a success until his health
failed.
We trust a short rest will fit him
again for the useful active life that
appeals so strongly to him and for
which he is so splendidly equipped in
every way.
*
THE NEW WOMAN.
“She is an extraordinary woman,
you know. She paints, plays, rides
horseback, boxes, plays football, golf,
and is an aviator. It is too bad if I
knew how to darn my own socks I
should marry her.” —Le Pele-Mele.
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