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The Georgian’s Weekly News Briefs Section
The Atlanta Georgian
AND NEWS
Being the News of Each Day of the Week in Condensed Form Specially For the Bitsy Man and the Farmer
ATLANTA, GA. WEEK OP OCT. 29-NOV. 4, 1910.
MISREPRESENTATION INDEED!
The Local Option and High License Campaign committee
of 403 CuUerton building, Oklahoma City, Okla., is a very in
dustrious committee and is waging a very industrious cam
paign. It is opposing prohibition in Oklahoma, and judging
from its name it wants local option where local option can’t be
prevented and high license saloons wherever possible. C
As a part of its campaign industry, it is circulating a
handbill, or circular, or dodger, most likely the latter, in
which it sets forth the horrible results of prohibition in a long
list of “dry” cities as a warning to other cities never under
any circumstances to become “dry,” and it holds up Atlanta
as one of the most horrible examples of “dryness."
It heads its artful dodger, “Repudiated Rottenness,” and
the beginning paragraph is aa follows: “The anti-saloonists
do not hesitate to misrepresent and continue now to-use state
ments of how prohibition is entirely satisfactory to towns and
cities that have thrown off tho vice-producing yoke.”
And then further on it remarks: “Let us look over some
other figures that expose the reason for the refusal of good cit
izens to longer indorse the policy of the anti-saloonists,” and
these reasons are then set forth in a list, of cities mostly
“dry,” and opposite each is given Vhat is claimed to be the
population, the total arrests for drunk or drunk and disorder
ly crfscs, and the proportion of such arrests to the population.
It sets Atlanta down as follows:
“Atlanta, Ga. (Dry.) Population, 135,000. Total arrests
for drunk or drunk and disorderly, 13,816. Proportion of ar
rests to population, 1 to 10.”
This is really important, if TRUE. But right here if the
trouble. This active committee, which so greatly abhors mis
representation, allowed its importance—to them—to overshad
ow its truth, because it is FALSE, four times FALSE.
In the first place, Atlanta’s population, the census being
taken in.the early part of 1910, is in round numbers 154,000;
and in tho second place, all arrests made during'the year 1909,
to which the circular evidently refers, in which drunkenness
was even remotely connected, totaled only 3,741. Therefore,
Atlanta’s proportion of arrests for drunkenness during 1909
was 1 to'41. The figures on which this is based were recently
compiled by Recorder Pro Tern W. II. Preston and published
in The Georgian. They are official and can not be questioned.
The arrests for disorderly conduct during 1909 amounted to
10,079. These do not include the number for drunkenness,
and drunkenness and drinking played NO PART IN THEM
WHATEVER. .
Therefore, this* lively committee, which deems itself
shocked to the core by MISREPRESENTATION, has itself given
circulation to a quadruple-plated MISREPRESENTATION.
As a matter of fact, here is the effect that prohibition has
had on drunkenness in Atlanta, as taken from Mr. Preston’s
figures: In 1907, the last wet year, the arrests for drunken
ness were 6,5.08; in 1908, the first year of prohibition, 2,650;
.in 1909, the second year of prohibition, 3,741; and fur the first
nine months of 1910, the third year of prohibition, 1,120, or
only 2,820 for the entire year at that rate.
A marked decline in drunkenness for the entire period
since the prohibition law went into effect is thus disclosed.
And yet the enterprising Oklahoma committee, holds At
lanta up as a shining example of what other citierf should
| strive to avoid. Misrepresentation indeed (
THE FARMER AND THE TARIFF
In a recent speech Senator Benjamin
F. Shively. Democrat, of Indiana, made
some telling remarks on tho tariff as it
relates to the former. As tho national
elections for the next congress will
take place November 8, his remarks
are of particular interest just now:
“In these closing days of the cam
paign Republican leaders tiro making
frantic appeals to the farmers to come
'to the assistance of tho Republican
ticket against the rising tido of revolt
in the cities. Why should the farmer
vote to vindicate tho Payne-Aldrich
tariff? Or why should he give coun
tenance to that cunning difference-in*
cost, plus-a-proflt evangel In which
panic-stricken statesmen are seeking
shelter? Government has no fund out
of which to guarantee profits. It can
legislate profit to one man only as It
legislates losses to another. American
agriculture is a nonprotected and non-
protectable Industry. Tho gealps of
man can not devise a system of import
duties that could protect tho fanner.
Every year millions of bushels of his
wheat and corn and millions of pounds
of his hogs, cattle and cotton go out to
the great surplus markets of western
Europe. Would * single bushel or
pound go there but for tho fact that it
brings a higher price there than at
home?
“Duties of 8100 per bushel or 810 per
pound could not help the farmer to the
extent of a single penny. He stands
between two markets, neither of which
he controls. He makes his sales at
prices fixed by others. He makes his
purchases at prices fixed by others. Ho
sells his staples at prices fixed by
world-wide competition and then buys
the things he needs for self and family,
under what conditions? Under the
sarao conditions on which he sells his
products? No. He buys in a market
from which foreign competition is
barred by prohibitive tariff schedules,
and from which domestic competition
is removed by domestic combinations
organized under the shelter of such
schedules. A protective tariff protects
the woolen and cotton goods the farm
er must buy. but can not protect the
corn and wheat which h«f has to sell. It
protects tho farm machinery, tho fur
niture, the ironware, woodenware, glass
and glassware, carpets, paints and
dozens of other things which he must
buy, but can not protect the oats, ryo.
| cattle or hogs he lias to sell. It pro
tects the things he must buy by en
abling the trusts controlling them to
I write up artificial prices on them. Thus
I the farmer bells at normal, competing
prices and buys lit highly abnormal and
i fictitious prices written up by greed
without reference to cost. situated,
the farmer for 40 years has been the
special victim of the system. All this
time he has been exchanging a part of
his annual output for watered prices
instead of for goods.
“For 40 years the farmers have been
making millionaires by the thousands.
But how many on the farm? By tile
medium of watered prices the locusts
of monopoly have eaten away the natu
ral rewards of agriculture and fattened
into enormous wealth the interests thus
pensioned on this oldest occupation of
history. The Payne-Aldrich act, as
have all kindred acts before It, help3
the farmer ^ust os does the fly in his
wheat, the smut in his corn, the rust in
his oats and the bots in his horses;
wave only that it loses him more than
all these combined. The duties on his
farm products are worthless to him.
They are purely political duties which
can not protect and were intended only
to hoodwink, deceive and cajole him
into voting for other duties that rob
him on all he brings on to the farm or
into the home. No, the farmer is the
choice victim of the system and always
has been. At every turn he has been
handed tho redhot end of the tariff
poker. His 8 1-2-cent hog never be
comes 35-cent bacon until after it
leaves the farm.
“I confess to not a little feeling and
sentiment on whatever affects tho farm.
The farm was my birthplace, and all
my years to my majority were spent on
the farm. I know the conditions that
attend agriculture. The father, moth
er, sons and daughters all work, and
usually on the eight-hour plan—eight
hours before noon and eight hours aft
er. What, with flood and drouth and
frost and pest, the struggle and the
sacrifice are sufficient without, com
pulsory contribution to the fat bene
ficiaries of tariff schedules. The farm
home has ever been the nursery of pa
triotism, the school of rugged sense and
solid virtues, a pledge to the reign of
the law. an anchor to the peace and or
der of society in times of stress and
storm. It rests with the man on the
farm to say whether the burden of tar
iff confiscations shall be lifted from
the farm and the old farm home re
stored to its rightfully commanding po
sition In the structure of society.**
T
Growth and Progress of the New South
• Friday, Oct. 28.—*The industrial story of the two states—Georgia and
Alabama—for the past week is one of good cheer,” says The Georgia and
Alabama Industrial Index. “The now corporations of the week are 22 in'
number, with minimum capital stock of 8771.500.’*
Saturday, Oct. 29.—The total amount of capital invested in new in
dustries in the South during the week ending October 26, aggregated 83,-
500^)00, according to reports to The Chattanooga Tradesman.
Monday, Oct. 31.—Shipments of apples from Virginia will double last
year’s, when 47,737 barrels were handled from Piedmont and 49,049 from
stations in the Shenandoah. In many cases Virginia apple growers arc
making from 8200 to 8200 per acre annually, resulting in a great increase
in the value of fruit lands;
Tuesday, Nov. 1.—The value of Alabama's cotton, seed is estimated at
.312,500,000 annually.’on an estimated yield of 1.000,000 boles, with the seed
selling at 825 per ton.
Wednesday, Nov. 2.—“Georgia and Alabama lands continue a magnet
for outside capital, 850.0C0 having been Invested for the past week,” and
“municipalities continue their march of progress,” says The Georgia
and Alabama Industrial Index. New corporations of the week In* the
two states total eighteen, with minimum capital of 8235,300.
Thursday, Nov. 3*—'“The merchants, farmers, bankers and working
people in South Carolina were never In better condition financially than
now/' says The Columbia State, “and indications point to one of the most
prosperous years In tho history of the stale.”
