Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

EDITORIAL PAGE THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At 20 East Alabama St., Atlanta, Ga. Entered as second-claes matter at postoffice at Atlanta, under act of March 8, 1879. Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. By mail, $5 00 a year. Payable in advance. Two Enemies of Us All r «?. r On the Road to Success Almost Every Man Meets These Two Enemies: Conquering VICE and Slothful PROCRASTINA TION. Few Succeed in Passing Them. Readers, this is such a commonplace, obvious sort of an editorial that yon will perhaps he impatient in the reading of it. Nevertheless, at the risk of seeming tiresome and fond of platitudes, we propose to discuss the enemies of mankind nfld the possibility of conquering or avoiding them. Ninety-nine out of every hundred human beings may be called FAILURES. A man may do fairly good work, he may make a success in comparison with his fellow man, and yet be A FAILURE. A man who fails to do THE BEST THAT IS IN HIM is a FAILURE, whatever he may do, no matter how he may impose upon the world with his work. Os all the failures you have known, can it not be said that VICE or PROCRASTINATION might account for every one of them ? “VICE” is a name that covers many human weaknesses. Drunkenness is a vice—one which viciously suppresses, J DROWNS the very force, THE MENTAL UNREST THAT OUGHT TO BRING SUCCESS. Self-indulgence is another vice. It makes us devote our energies in the present to our various tastes and likes, instead of controlling the present in order to provide for the future. Vanity and egotism in all its forms are vices. The vain man wastes, in self-approval, in the decoration of his person, or in foolish self-confidence, the time, thought or money that ought to be spent on improvement. Then there are all the other vices—foolish, perverted forms of human energy—that tear men down and make real growth and accomplishment impossible. Gambling, drink, love of display, lack of moral purpose—all these vices. positive or negative, meet mankind on the road to ward good results; only a few get by. Many a man able to control the actively vicious side of his character is destroyed by laziness, by the peculiar hatred of effort so hard to overcome in millions of us. The world is full of men and women who seem intelligent, WHO MIGHT SUCCEED, and yet go plodding along in their little clerkships or other little routine places. BECAUSE THEY LACK POWER TO FORCE THEMSELVES OUT OF PRO CRASTINATION’S Rl’T. They expect to begin the struggle SOMETIME, but the time never comes. Which of these two enemies of mankind is responsible for the greater number of failures? LAZINESS, lack of will power, is, in our opinion, .man’s most dangerous enemy. Vice in a man is often only ENERGY GONE WRONG. If the man can direct into channels of effort power which he has been wasting in vicious self-indulgence, success will come to him, and the monster of vice will be passed and left behind. Slot fulness, procrastination, laziness are harder to get out of the system than vice. Thev mean, unfortunately, very often AN ABSOLUTE LACK OF ENERGY. And that is a thing that should be borne in mind by all of the good, ordinarv, average, well-meaning, well-behaved people THAT CAN NOT “SEEM TO GET ALONG.” You have got to kill the vice that stands in your way. You have got to KNOW that it is there, and then fight it, realizing that UNLESS YOU CONQUER IT IT WILL CONQUER YOU. When you have rooted out the viciousness in your disposition, then go at the laziness, which is slow and sleepy and can wait until the nee is killed. What do you need in anv kind of a fight? YOU NEED A GOOD WEAPON. In a fight against yourself you need the one great weapon, which is WILL POWER. WILL POWER—the force which makes possible repeated, de termined. steady effort—is the only thing that will help you in life's fight. There are those that say that we can not change ourselveS, that we must always remain as we were made, with our weak nesses and our strength as at the beginning. BUT THAT IS FALSE. A man CAN change himself. The drunkard in the gutter can rise to the highest place. IF HE WILL TRY HARD ENOUGH. The way to bring about the change is through STEADY, DAILY. CEASELESS EFFORT. There is no use in making a violent effort, lasting a few seconds and leaving you weaker in strength than you were before. The way to get up early in the morning, for instance. IS TO GO TO BED EARLY THE NIGHT BEFORE. As long as you go to bed too late, YOU WILL GET UP TOO LATE—or if you do got up early you will be tired and your work will be of no use. Reform must be begun at the RIGHT end. If you want to get out of some vicious habit, remember that you can only do it 1U ADDING T<» YoUR STRENGTH. Good sleep, wise eating, A WELL NOLRISHED BODY, will do a gn at deal to overcome a desire for drink If your mind is given to foolish amusements. dissipation, gambling, remember that before vou can take awav that interest YOU MUST REPLACE IT WITH SOME OTHER.' Get a real interest in your WORK, begin saving vour mon ey, REALIZING THAT < \PIT\L MEANS INDEPENDENCE. Make plans, carry them • ut, TRY TO BE AS MUCH INTEREST ED IN YOUR OWN POWERS OF SELFCONTROL AS IN THE FOOLISH RUNNING 01- SOME HORSE OR THE TURNING IT OF SOME CARD. For young men unmarried MARRIAGE IS PROBABLY THE BEST POSSIBLE THING It fore- , serious thought, it brings a great interest with the children and a steadying sense of responsi bility. In proportion to their numbers UNMARRIED YOUNG MEN COMMIT TEN TIMES AS Ml CH FOOLISHNESS AS THE MARRIED MEN. The unmarried man is like a ship with no rudder, going in any direction, erratically. The Atlanta Georgian HE NEVER HAD A CHANCE That Is What Nine Men Out of Ten Who Are Failures Say. Look Out That You Don’t Say It Yourself.* By TAD - •... ™ -- -A /yJwi - -—w 0 No. 7. ' Ynm’s job in the case held out until his voice went back a bit. The boss came up one evening and told him that “No bloke with cracked pipes could chirp there.” so Yum was given the gate and forced to seek pastures new. He was a smart young fellow, though, and knew that he could get in around the gambling district. A fellow didn't need to know the war was over to horn in there, so Yum grabbed a job as lookout and assistant stick man in a crap game. All he had to do was to watch for suspicious persons who might want to shoot craps, and then when the stick man was out be would handle the coin and call the dice. What to Do in a Thunderstorm Its Perils Can Be Eliminated If the Proper Precautions Are Taken THE season of thuftder storms has opened, and in no country ate the electric marvels of the at mosphere more imposingly displayed than in the United States. They are among nature’s most magnificent spec tacles. We should learn to look upon these without fear. They are full of danger, but their perils can be almost com pletely eliminated by proper precau tions. All fatal accidents from light ning are clue to neglect of such precau tions. Lightning rods, properly placed and cared for, furnish an all but abso lute protection for buildings. Great cities are so full of ready made tracks for electric discharges that violent thunder storms passing over them seldom cause any serious damage by lightning. The sudden gusts of wind do more harm than the electric dis charges. Statistics show that the danger is greatest in the open country, and par ticularly in hilly and mountainous dis tricts. In the year 1900. 713 j ersons were killed by lightning in the United States, and the greater number were in the Rocky Mountain district and the upper Missouri valley. In the same year 1,842 domestic animals were killed in the United States by lightning, and 1.547 buildings were struck. Cattle and sheep are apt to gather about Iso lated trees, or.along wire fences, dur ing a thunder storm, and they are sometimes killed in groups. A person caught in a thunder storm while in the open country should keep 100 yards away from any tree that may happen to stand in the field. In a dense woods he is safer if he does not place himself under some tall tree. Eight or nine persons have been killed by a single stroke of lightning while sitting under an isolated tree Such a tree invites lightning, and offers it a ready path to the ground. One should also avoid the neighborhood o's a body of water. Electrical Charges in Clouds Cause Lightning. Th- i iuse of lightning is the accurnu ! lation of electric charges in the clouds. : Thes- charges grow stronger as the parti* les of water in the cloud coalesce t * form larger drops. Electricity re on the surface of the charged par ti* les, and as they coalesce the surface increases proportionally less than the volume. The consequence is that the el< ’r>c:ty contributed by each particle I to the united mass has less space to j spread i - >’.t net than It had when the TUESDAY, JUNE 4. 1912 It was a soft job. There was really no hard work about it. Every night from 8 to 10 you ; eould hear Yum calling out: “Who shoots? There you are; hands up and money down, boys; he’s coming out! Ha! ha! he shoots a seven; that’s the old house number, boys. Get down on the line; the next man is ready. Hands up and , money down!” Yum. of course, was merely the assistant up there, but he had enough for eats and a haypile. > In his opinion, it was better than a job at S2O i per week working from 8 till 5. Yum knew; you ‘ couldn’t fool him. (To he continued.) y GARRETT P. SERVTSS particles were separate. It follows that the combined charge on the surface of the larger drop is more intense than were the charges on the separate parti cles. In other words, the “potential” of the charge is increased. The whole cloud becomes heavily charged as its countless multitudes of drops grow larger and larger. At the same time, through the ef fects of what is called “induction.’’ a charge of the opposite kind is produced on a neighboring cloud, or on the earth beneath. As these charges increase in intensity they strive to burst across the intervening air. and if the potential becomes sufficient they do so. The re sult is a lightning stroke. 9 Lightning Stroke Is From 1 to 10 Miles Long. The spark from an electric machine is a baby lightning stroke. As the disk of the machine is turned, more and more electricity accumulates on the polished knob, called the conductor, until the surrounding air can no longer resist the strain, and then a spark passes between the knob and some ob ject placed near, on which a contrary charge has been produced by the cu rious property of induction. But the spark from the most power ful electric' machine is but a few inches in length, while a lightning stroke may be from a mile to ten miles long! No sudden phenomenon of nature, except pe/haps a volcanic explosion, is more startlingly suggestive of terrific power than a bolt of lightning. Considering the immense number of strokes that fly from cloud to cloud and from cloud to earth during a severe thrunder storm, it seems wonderful that lightning is not more destructive than experience has proved it to be Our relative security is due to the fact that most of the dis charges take -’ace between clouds, and that when the lightning strikes earth ward it usually has an infinity of points presented to it, which offer ready ways for its escape and dissipation. This is why isolated objects, especially if they are long and pointed at the top. are the most liable to be struck. Tall, pointed objects, especially if thev are metallic, serve to draw off the electricity from the clouds without an explosive dis charge. The danger from lightning at sea was greater in the old days of wooden ships. Then serious damage, or even destruc tion from lightning was not a very un common occurrence It has beer, thought that some cases of the disap pearance of ships at sea may have beer, due to lightning A British ship, the Resistance, was struck by lightning in the Straits of Malacca, the powder magazine exploded and every soul was lost except three sailors. If that had occurred in the middle of the ocean, no doubt the ship would have been added to the list of the mysteriously missing. Modern iron and steel ships are in little danger. They present a broad, conducting surface for the escape of the electricity. The latter, like water is only dangerous when it is, so to speak, crowded into a narrow channel, with a steep descent and no ready way to escape. The flood that conies down from a broken reservoir through a nar row ravine destroys everything in its path; but it spreads out harmlessly the moment it enters a broad plain. So a charge of electricity dissipates itself without violence if many ways of es cape are presented to it. Thunder Increases Grandeur of Electrical Storm. The grandeur of an electric storm is vastly increased by the thunder. Many persons find that more terrifying than the lightning. Thunder is due to the rush of air to fill partial vacancies made in the atmosphere by the sudden ex pansion produced by the passage of the lightning. The heated air expands with great force, and immediately; the vacan cies are filled again, thus producing at mospheric waves, which impress the ear as sound. If the stroke occurs near by, the thunder follows almost instantly, in a sharp clap. If the lightning is at a distance from the observer, the thunder follows the stroke at an interval .de pending upon the distance. Sound travels in the air about 1.100 feet per second. The distance of the lightning stroke can easily be calculated by ob serving the number of seconds which elapse before the thunder begins. It is only necessary to multiply this number by 1.100 in order to have approximately the distance of the lightning. Success ive peals of thunder following a single ’ stroke are due to the successive arrival of different sound waves produced at varying distances from the observer by the passage of the lightning. As we have said, a lightning stroke may be miles in length. Variations of density in the air tend to separate the sound waves and make them arrive in peals instead of in a continuous roll. It is an old adage that “thunder sours milk." If there is any effect of this kind it must be due to the electric state of the air rather than to the thunder The great heat which often accompa nies a thunder storm may cause a sud den development of ferments in the | milk. THE HOME PAPER Dr. Parkhurst’s Article on /IriSfc What the Voters Must F *v Now Decide —and— Public Opinion as a <■ A Moving Force Written For The Georgian By the Rev. Dr. C. H. Parkhurst ... _ . X _ ..ma.~ — fha LTHOUGH the American mind is liable to violent spasms of 44. Tita turn 11X7 Stfltmd A’ hysteria, it is naturally souna in its operations and ordinarily re turns pretty promptly to its normal condition. It may do a good deal that is ir rational and silly while its intelli gence is out of commission, but is a -thing that is, on the whole and in the long run, to be trusted. At any rate, that has been the case in times past. A whirlwind campaign, like that through which we have recently been passing, in which the two most conspicuous figures in our national life have met in combat as critical as that of David and Goliath of Gath, has been as fran tic as it has been barren of sub stantial results, and has thrown the general mind into a turmoil of distraction, absolutely disqualify ing it for reaching well-thought out conclusions. A man can not think and shout at the same time. The case is like that of a certain big locomotive, said to have been built for one of the Southern rail roads, In which the whistling ap paratus was so immense and re quired so much steam to fill it that when the engineer w-anted to whis tle he had to stop the engine. It wouldn’t whistle and go at the same time. The nominating stage of the cam paign is now nearing completion, and it is to be expected that the general condition of exhaustion consequent upon the performances of the past month will be followed by a lull precedent to the election eering campaign proper. Time to Think, Now That Engine Is Silent. And now that the engine has sus pended its whistling and the people their shouting, it. is devoutly to be hoped that conditions of political feverishness will be so far abated as to allow for a brief season, at any rate, of temperate and serious thinking. Enthusiasm is not a state of mind to be utterly decried; at the same time, great and complex problems require for their solution delibera tion that is quiet, careful and free from heat and passion, and that is something which we have had little or nothing of. We can not suppose that the great majority of our citizens are so destitute of patriotism as not to desire what is best for the country, or so intense in their personal likes and dislikes as not to be willing to take into serious consideration the revolutionary and turbulent temper of the times the world over, and in view of that situation to candidly inquire whether a leadership that is itself effervescent and revolution ary or one that is deliberate and self-poised is the safest Snder which to place the vast and com plicated interests of the country. Any man who supports a candi date for the presidency of the United States for no other reason than that he likes him is not fit to have an opinion or to cast a ballot. Now Is the Time For Voters to Use Their Brains. Whatever conclusion a patriotic citizen may arrive at, this, at any rate, is obligatory upon him—that he do some solid thinking, that he . break free from the constraints of mere personal preferences, and— now that there is no more ap plauding just at present required of him—that he avail of the oppor tunity to face the question in a manner of cool calculation com- porting with the urgency of the crisis. We are not pleading for or against either candidate of either party, but are urging that in view of the unsettlement of mind just now prevailing in regard to almost every great question, a blunder committed at this juncture is cer tain to be a momentous blunder and liable to be fraught with in calculable disaster. If a man has brains, now is the time to use them, and if he has a /‘a conscience, now is a good time to set it to work. * • • NEWSPAPER criticism was passed the other day upon Police Commissioner Waldo A' of New York for giving to the pub lic his information regarding the delinquencies of certain of our courts, instead of putting that In formation in the hands of the bar association or of other parties qual ified to take action in the premises. To criticise the commissioner's policy in the matter is to forget that it is public sentiment really that is the moving force in all civic operations, a force that extends it self to the three departments of administration—legislative, judi- cial and executive. In a country like our own, any movement that can be named, hav , ing for its object the enactment* of law, its interpretation or its ex ecution, will succeed if it has pub lic sentiment behind it. It is the people really that gov ern, and if at times it seems to be otherwise, it is because such sen timent has not been put forward with that unanimity or insistence that constitutes it a practical force to be respected and taken ac count of. So that while, as it appears, the bar association is shaping its own investigation in away to lay a foundation for possible definite ac tion, the commissioner, by exploit ing his own information, is creat ing a force of public opinion that will promote and give efficiency to . the bar association’s action should it see its way clear to take action. In that way any man, official or otherwise, can become a definite and productive factor in the com munity in the way of giving di rection to the course of events and giving complexion to the color of administration. And not only is that true of any man. but also of any woman. At omen are liable to forget that power does not RESIDE in bal lots. Votes are simply the way by which power registers itself and has its measure computed. The power exists prior to the, registration. Women Better “Sentiment 1 Makers’’ Than Men. The thing is settled before the votes are cast. It is settled by the condition of public sentiment as that sentiment exists, even prior to going to the polls; and the point at which wom ei> in all these years past have been recreant has been in their failure to assert their prerogative as sentiment-makers, a prerogative belonging to them as much as to the other sex, and one also which, if they will., they can probably exer cise more effectively than the oth er sex. The practical question which con fronts them, and to which they do not seem to have given specific at tention. is whether, in the exercistf of that prerogative, tfie vote is go ing to help them or to hinder them.