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EDITORIAL PAGE THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Fubhshe<? Every Afternoon Except Sunday By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At 20 East Alabama St, Atlanta, Gb lettered second-class matter at postoffice at Atlanta, under act of March 3, 1879. Absurdity of Half-Cerit Piece in Coinage The vote id the house of representatives for the coinage of one half rent pieces will strike the tier 4 ght fill public as puerile and antiquated It is in response to no demand and is to meet no situation. It is the least intelligent piece of legislation that the house has passed. It is simply the return of a progressive, modern nation to the ridiculous basis of Chinese currency. C hinamen carrv pounds ot copper pieces with a hole in the center, and when they go out to buy five cents worth of rats they hand the seller a long, heavy string of copper coins in payment. Is that what the American congress would bring us tn in this« age and country? Is our progress in currency reform tn he measured by a return to a system which prevails only in China or Egypt or among the beggars of the Orient ? Surely the house must have been napping or without thought -ehcd such a foolish piece of legislation got through AH modern nations have grown out of rather than toward fhp attenuated division of coinage The centime is banished from France and the farthing from England, and the centessime from Italy. The smallest coin in France is the sou. which is five centimes, and the smallest in modern England is the ha penny, which is on® cent Why should America go backward when all other progressive nations are going forward? What a spectacle the average future American will make with’ hi« pockets bulging with copper and haggling with tradesmen over th® matter of one half of a copper cent ! And what an absurdity to suppose that such a farce in coinage could reduce the high cost of living' Would it make things any cheaper that a man has to pay for the minting of two pieces of copper instead of one? The copper penny as it is. is an abomination to the American pocket, but to double the number of copper pieces in the small shopper's purse is simply a slap in the face of financial civilization. Such legislation as this would have been an excellent diversion on some first day of April, but it is worse than a waste of time in serious assemblies. We trust the deliberate senate will promptly sit down upon the house folly. An Indefensible Breach of Contract N> V R (Editorial in Today's Constitution ) Notwithstanding the walk out of the union pressmen of The Atlanta Georgian last Saturday, that paper has suffered little or no inconvenience. It is now issuing regularly, on time and with practically the normal complement of news and features. Rut the pressmen's union hasjtself sustained a severe blow as an organization that may be depended upon to live up to its solemn contractual obligations Its individual members, having violated a binding agreement absolutely without cause or shadow of justification, find themselves regarded everywhere as men whose contractual obligation must always be- regarded with suspicion. In Chicago, even, where the disagreement originated, there was no just ground for the action that temporarily embarrassed all the papers of that city. The details have already been told, and they must sadden eyery Atlantan who sympathizes with the more exalted phases of union labor and its mission In Atlanta the walkout was. and is. wholly indefensible. Ihe pressmen themselves admit that they had. and have now. no cause for complaint against The Georgian. They have been well and promptly paid, the questions of wages and hours, were never in dispute and. above all. they were, collectively a.nd severally, bound by a written legal document to fh.e discharge ot certain specified duties. Out of mistaken sympathy for men who have themselves set aside a contract of their own making. The Geor gian pressmen elected to break also their contract and abandon a charge to which they were sworn at a moment no less inop portune to the public than to the publishers. Their course is shown the more regrettable by the fact that only in two other cities- Chicago itself and San Francisco has their action been confirmed by their confreres. In other cities and even upon the alleged offending Hearst newspapers, the pressmen righteously regarded a legal and deliberate contract hi preference to breaking it in obedience to ill advised orders issued as a palpable attempt at unfair intimidation In this connection, it is refreshing to note the upright and conservative loyalty to con tract of the powerful typographical union, which refused by a heavy vote in Ch.icago and elsewhere to upset tficir pledged word and join in a sympathetic strj'ke Tn any business, in any cause, at any time, and unless abro gated by bad faith on the side of either party, obedience to a writ ten contract is the first and indispensable principle in success and the maintenance of self-respect. Wantonly disregarding this law, the pressmen on The Georgian have brought disrepute upon their order, and alienated the sympathy of th.- overwhelming majority of law-abiding and pledge-keeping union men m this country. The Atlanta Georgian A DYING GRIP By HAL COFFMAN. Sfi SKSfil 8 jSH "A’ i '■ — ■ I. sg Jggj - -• '' : d ‘ .gig ; & u k-A. A A N\ '' ' ,1 / DOROTHY DIX WRITES OF Fhe Child as the Unanswerable Argument Against Divorce fTXHE one unanswerable argu- | ment against divorce is the child. We may say that each of us has a right to his or her own happi ness. We may say that an un worthy husband or wife forfeits whatever claim they have upon us. We may say that when we make a mistake in marriage there Is no more reason w'e should be bound forever tn It. than there Is why we should continue to be the victims of any other'error <>f judgment. We may say that to be forced to live with a husband or wife whom we hate, and who brings nut all that Is worst in our natures. Is de moralizing to our characters—that ft condemns us to live tn an atroo® phere in which all that is beautiful and Ideal in life withers and dies as if blown upon bv the blast of a simoon This is true. There is no other siii'li -blighting influence in the world as discord However pa tiently borne, it turns the very soul into an arid desert, and nobody can blame the individual who seeks to escape from this deatb-tn-life. Children Must Always Be Considered First. There Is no answer to the conten tion that we have a right to save ourselves from the purgatory of an unhappy marriage except tlie wall of a child, weeping over the wreck of its borne That is nature’s re lentless reply to the sophistries of philosophy. That Is duty’s stern call to us to stand at our posts, whatever the cost in suffering, and fulfill the obligations we have taken upon ourselves. When w e have chil dren we have given hostages to fortune and are no longer free to seek our ow n happiness. It l« they who are to be considered first The childless may be divorced if it seems best to them, but abn\e the noise of warring couples with children comes the cry of the help less little ones who are left father less or motherless in the breaking un of a home. Listen to this pathetic, curious, unchildish letter that comes to me TUESDAY. MAY 14. 1912. Bv DOROTHY DIN. »■ from a little girl. She writes in a little, round, schoolgirl handwrit ing: Pathetic Letter of a Girl Whose Home Is Threatened. "Dear Miss Dix -I am thirteen years old and 1 read all your ar ticles. Now. I want you to toll me what you think of my case. My home is about to be broken up by a woman. Os course.- she is younger than my mother, but not any bet ter looking nor one-half so good. Tell me. please, is that the way the world is going? Are there no more happy homes? My brothers and sisters and I have made up our minds that we will never get mar ried No one could have been more devoted than my mother has been. She has been a slave to us all. and this is what she gets. Please an swer me soon What do you think of :i thief who robs little children us their father" Poor little girl who at thirteen lias seen al! of the gold rubbed off of < upld's wings, and who has wit nessed so many family spats that she has resolved never to get mar ried! Poor little girl, who at thir teen. judges between mother and father and .contemptuously con demns father! Poor little girl, whose childhood has been darken ed bv the sad and sordid knowl edge of the world, who discusses affinities and broken homes with her baby sisters and brothers, and who bears on her little shoulders the burden of her parents’ weak? ness and sin' < Doesn i the mere thought of h°r • bring stinging tears to your eyes? And don’t you fee! that nothing can justify the parents in the way they are doing? Is it not the plain dutv of tliat father and mother to keep a home together for their children and to make their children happy , and give them the chance in life that only children have who are brought up in the environment of decent family life? Compared to the welfare of these little ones what is the lure of some other woman to the man? How small a matter even the wife s Jeal ousy and righteous indignation* The real victims of divorce are. the children, not alone because they are made half orphans and home less by it, but because it destroys their faith in all that is good and true. How can you teach purity to a girl .whose mother has the slime of the divorce courts on her gar ments? How can you teach honor to the boy who knows of his fath er’s. dishonor? How.can you teach steadfastness to duty to children who have seen their parents turn cowardly’ away from a hard situa tion? How can the weak breed strength into she little ones? Os course it will bp said that when a father and mother can not agree, and life is perpetual discord with each other, the children are better off with either one than with both; that no home at all is better than a home divided against Itself. To this argument one can only say that parents have no- right to make such a home. No matter how deep they may feel, in their own breasts that they have gotten the wrong life partners, and that some other man and woman are the leal mates, they are bound by every law of decency to hide this from their children, and to keep the doors of their skeleton cioset fast locked against •inquisitive’lit tie eyes. To be tempted is the lot of all. To yl'eld to temptation Is the act of the craven Duty of Parents to Protect Children From Themselves. It is the paramount dutv of pa rents to protect their children even from themselves, and for fathers and mothers to drag their children IritoTheir squabbles is a~. bad as if they threw the helpless little crea tures into the midst of a battle w here they w ould be trampled upon and mangled For a father and mother to let their children become cognizant of their amours is worse than taking them into a leprosy camp it defiles the little minds bey ond the power of cleansing As for the woman who would lend herself to the breaking up of a home in which there are children, the curse of God is upon her Truly ft were better for her that she should tie a millstone about her neck and cast herself into the sea. than that she should offend one of these Uttle ones. THE HOME PAPER Dr. Parkhurst’s Article on zggsjjfc The Audacity of Prof. Kf® Arthur Drews ... a n(U-- It How Severity Is Some- times a Kindness Written For The Georgian By the Rev. Dr. C. H. Parkhurst ON entering, some years ago. the city of Stratford-on- Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare, almost the first object that arrested my attention was a volume exposed in a shop window and bearing the title. ''Bacon Was the Author of Shakespeare." Although there are five points in the life of the dramatist, stated, by so good an authority as Tennyson, to be absolutely trustworthy his torically. yet there is a east of mind that finds a peculiar and cranky ilnd of delight in arraying itself against the combined and estab lished opinions of the age and in discrediting conclusions that have been long and confidently cherished by men who have been most con servative and judicious in their proccesses of judgment. Since the time when, according to the Bible story. Adam presumed to raise a query as to whether It was, after all. obligatory upon him to obey the command of the Lord, there have never been wanting peo ple who. either out of conceit or out of distrust of human intelligence and belief that eve.-y mind but their own was a lying mind, have taken absurd and mischievous comfort in wantonly seeking to cut the ground out from under convictions that have been impregnably established in the general mind and that have borne the test and secured the in dorsement of many long and thoughtful centuries. Professor Who Tries to Prove Jesus Did Not Exist. A late example of this is afforded bv the recently published work of \rthur Drews, professor of theolo gy in the technical Hochschule at Karlsruhe. Germany, who, in a vol ume of 300 pages, sets himself to what Is to him. evidently, the very congenial task of proving that there has never been such a person as Jesus Christ. Now, there is a kind of impudent audacity in the undertaking that is almost fitted to fascinate us by its immensity. Commonplace presumption we simply resent with quiet contempt, but arrogance that is so colossal and cyclopean as that of the pro fessor is staggering by the very fact of its monstrous proportions. To stand up serenely in the face of twenty centuries of Christian in telligence. Christian scholarship and Christian experience and to challenge that whole mass of wind as being the collective dupe of a bodiless idea and a silly delusion Involves on the part of our author a degree of intellectual immodesty and impertinence that should se cure for him the title of psycho logical freak rather than that of theological professor. That a building as vast in its proportions and as immense in its pressure as Christianity can stand the tempests and the quaking of twenty centuries is all the proof that a reasonable man either needs or wants to persuade him that un derneath there Is foundation com mensurate in breadth and solidity with the structure that it upholds. * ♦ » Severity Is Often Necessary, to Maintain Dignity. ANY person possessed of a gen erous and sympathetic spirit shrinks from the exercise of severity, and yet severity is very often necessary in order to main tain the dignity of authority, and not only that, but is quite likely to prove, in th» long run. the finest ■ form of mercy. That is the fact in the case of a father dealing with his child. The time is almost certain to come when the young boy. realiz ing that he has a will of his own. sets it in opposition to his. fath er's w ill Now. Ihere are two parental pol icies that under such circumstan' es can be pursued. The child can be coaxed into obey ing, and perhaps have some privilege allowed him in return for obedience. Or the father can then and there settle the question for al! time as to which of the two to be .mas ter—a result that is never reached by lollypop or any processes of barter. A conflict to be decisive may wring the heart of the father and be full of cost to the body of the child, but when it is once done it is done for always, and one thorough whipping may save the path inci dent to a hundred half-way whip pings The current polley of affixing small fines to the violation of cer tain statutes Is another case Where the'desire to be merciful results in ten times the hardship that would result from the resolution to be severe. A part of this is the fault of the laws, and a part of it chargeable to the uncalculating sentimentali ty of the magistrates. Dealing out petty fines both im pairs the dignity of the law* and tempts to its violation. Automobiles have, during the past two years, been driven in such away in New York as to result in 263 deaths. Petty Sentence for Speeding Causes Death to Innocent. Now undoubtedly so far as those deaths have been the result of care less driving, at least a half, if not three-quarters, of such mortality « ould have been avoided if the first violations of auto statutes had been dealt with in a manner propor tioned to the enormity of the crime. As a rule, people who can afford to own an automobile have so much money as to care no more for a fine of ten dollars than a rhinoearos cares for a pin-prick. The pettiness of the sentence en courage? speeding, so that judicial sympathy with the criminal is the author of death to the innocent. This "slaughter of tlje innocents” would have a stop very promptly put to it if a scale of fines ade quate to the criminality of the of fense were established legislatively, and if our magistrates would agree to put their warm sympathies in cold storage and deal with offenses with a severity commensurate with the seriousness 6f the offense arid the just demands of the general public. Safe Hits A girl thinks' a young' man who spends his money freely is the whole thing - but if she marries him and finds he has spent it all she changes her mind. - ’ • Once in a while a woman buys some thing at a bargain sale, only to dis cover after she gets home that it was just what she wanted. When a man begins by saying, “Os course, it is none of my business"—you may as well stand aside and let him butt in. Perhaps the time may come 'when a vast army will strike in the midst of a great battle for more pay and shorter hours. A man's w ife is always willing to agree with him—when he declares he has the best wife in the wbrld. It's usually much easier for a man's fool friends to get the best of him than it is for his enemies. It takes a woman th tell other women how she trusts her husband, just as if she really did. If a book bores you it's an easy mat ter to 'hut it up—but it's different with a human bore. Instead of laughing at the mistakes of others, try to profit by your own. A man always has well trained chil dren—if his wife attends to it. We are al] entitled to something in this world, if it's only a lemon. You may have noticed that a kickel is usually headstrong also His satanic fiiajesty-tores to fish in troubled waters.