Newspaper Page Text
March, 1915
THE ATLANTIAN
3
The Atlantian
Box 118, Atlanta, Georgia
THE ATLANTIAN will give free space to all Secret Societies and Labor
Organizations.
On the other hand, wo put everybody on notice when THE ATLANTIAN
makes a statement -■'■leli we believe to be true, and such statement goes
uncontroverted, we shall Insist that it is true.
■OEgjE»i Published Monthly bv The Atlantian Publishing Co. a
Vol. 7. MARCH No. 71.
Our Motto: “Pull for Atlanta, or Pull Out.”
Editorial Etchings
Commission Government
Certain significant rumblings indicate that the time
is not far distant when we shall have to fight over again
the battle as to our form of city government.
One of the pet fallacies of our American people is that
all virtue rests in a given form of government.
The simple truth is that the value and efficiency of gov
ernment are dependent upon the quality of the citizen
ship which makes the government. Latin America has
Republican forms of government. Have these Repub
lican forms given them good government? If not, why?
The people is the answer.
Germany has a compromise between a purely consti
tutional form and an absolute monarchy—the heredi
tary Emperor (or Kaiser) being the king pin of the
system.
Despite this anomalous form it has the most efficient
government on earth.
Great Britain has a purely constitutional monarchy
without a written constitution, and it has proven fairly
efficient and the people seem contented with it.
France is a centralized Republic, and gets results un
der that system.
We have a Federated Republic, with a written consti
tution. In theory we surpass them all. In practice we
are behind nearly a dozen nations of the world in the
results obtained for the people. Germany, Great Brit
ain, France, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Denmark,
Sweden, Norway, Australia and New Zealand can all
give us valuable pointers.
The trouble in Atlanta is not the form of government
so much as it is our inability to pull together for the
common good.
A change in the form will not make over the people,
and we have got to do a lot of making over, each fellow
beginning with himself, before we will get proper results.
Should we change our form of government tomorrow, it
would not necessarily improve conditions. The personal
equation would still remain. Should we replace the
Mayor and every Council Member with new men, it would
not necessarily improve conditions.
Two things must be faced: The first is that our bed is
too big for our blanket. We are trying to make our
money cover too much ground.
The second is the lack of an active, personal and intel
ligent interest on the part of our citizens in the affairs
of the city. We elect a Mayor and Council, consider
our duty done for two years and find vent for our feel
ings when things go wrong in complaints and curses,
instead of action. When the last word is said, the city’s
business is our business.
A change in form of government would not make our
blanket bigger, and would not improve the quality of
our citizenship.
Shall the Women Vote?
Woman suffrage, like prohibition, is with us to stay.
May conservative men will regret this, but in the end
will be forced to take sides.
A most curious fact in connection with the giving of
votes to women is presented by the weakness of the ar
guments against it, although some of the nominally
strong men of the country have aligned themselves with
the opposition.
The weakness of these arguments lies in the fact that
no intelligent man can put his whole conscience in them.
When he begins to investigate he speedily finds that the
justice lies on the women’s side and that he has noth
ing on which to base his argument except the lack of
old precedents, and the fact that the world has muddled
along somehow without women voting.
It would be well for the men who are honest opponents
to the women voting to take a glance backward for,
say, three hundred years. In 1615 the ballot for men
was practically unknown in France, Germany, Spain,
Russia, Austria, Italy and many less important countries.
England alone stood for Constitutional government, but
even there the elections were largely a farce and were
controlled by the privileged classes. With the rise of
democracy precisely the same arguments were used
against manhood suffrage that we now hear against
woman suffrage.
Is there any man now who would question the exten
sion of the suffrage which has been the most impressive
fact in the history of the last hundred years.
Is it not true, viewing the subject from the standpoint
of the general welfare, that these constant extensions
have been beneficial? Is it not equally true that the es
sential principle of democracy is this: The governed
shall also be the governors?
If the governed and the governors are to be the same
people, if all have a right to a voice in the government
under which all must live, under what other plea can
we deny the voting right to women except the ancient
and oriental idea that women are inferior, which idea
is not respectable nonsense.
Capital City Lodge No. 642
F. & A. M.
Next to the church as a moral agency ranks the Ma
sonic Order. Up to this good hour, no man can say defi
nitely when or where it first took shape, but this is cer
tain that under one form or another the tenets of fra
ternity and the principles of right doing for which it
stands have been influencing men for many centuries.
Encircling the globe with its lodges, embracing men of
many nations and varied tongues, holding aloof from all
political alliances; catering to no creed, but firm in its
belief in the one God all powerful and beneficent; never
advertising its work or boasting of its good deeds, hav-