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EDITORIAL, PAGE THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At 20 East Alabama St.. Atlanta, Ga. Entered as second-class matter at postoffiee at Atlanta, under act of March 3. 1579 Subscription Price -Delivered by carrier. 10 cents a week. By mail. $5 00 a year. Payable tn advance. • I —— " 1 ■ r # ' ' " The Inheritance Tax Seems Just i But, As a Matter of Fact, It Is Often Unjust and Unfair. This j Is Proved By the Case of Isidor Straus and John Jacob Astor. - The inheritance on lhe estates of the late Isidor Straus and ; John Jacob Astor will amount to something like s(;.(i(Mi.(M>(> Os that sum by far the greater part will come from the accumulated millions of Astor, and only a small part comparatively from the estate of Isidor Straus. The inheritance tax is called fair and wise. But it is neither. Isidor Straus worked hard up to the last year of his life. And the sons who inherit his fortune worked beside him every day and will continue to work. They, of course, do not grudge the lax and will pay it gladly to the uttermost penny But that is not the question. The question is one of justice. And there is no justice in taxing the inheritance of Isidor Straus as heavilv in proportion as you tax the inheritance of John Jacob Astor. Astor was not a creator, a builder or a worker. He sal still and watched his vast fortune increase he got richer ami richer with the birth of every child and the arrival of every immigrant in New York City. His fortune was built up not by himself, but by other human beings, whose arrival made his land more valuable. Astor was an estimable*gentleman, well meaning, good natured. But the world would have been absolutely no better and no worse if he had never lived. If he had never lived some one else would have inherited his . fortune, some one else would have watched it grow that is all that Astor did. Isidor Straus, on the other hand, was a worker and a builder always. He organized manufacturing, purchasing and distributing en terprises, and he gave to the public, as other successful manufac turers and merchants do, a great deal more than the public ever gave to him. He gave employment to thousands of human beings, his metlf ods of merchandising added interest to the lives of hundreds of thousands of women and helped them to manage their families economically. , The work that Isidor Straus did was a necessary, useful work, i building up the country, distributing wealth, which is our great problem, providing employment, increasing prosperity. Isidor Straus was a wise, conservative and constructive finan cier He was a valuable and unselfish guide andjidviser He was active in philanthropy, which look from his fortune many times over more than the state will take in its inheritance tax. In proportion to their respective fortunes. Isidor Straus TAXED HIMSELE ON BEHALE <>E THE POOR AT LEAST A THOUSAND BEK (ENT MORE THAN ANY ASTOR EVER TAXED HIMSELE. It is unjust to tax the inheritance of the hardworking man as you tax the fortune lcl'l by the drone who receives ami produces nothing Isidor Straus, who leaves a fortune that the state now taxes, was a worker every day of his life, beginning in early manhood And the three sons who inherit his fortune have been hard workers, earnest and conscientious business men every one of them j since the day lie left college Those that were honored with the I acquaintance of Isidor Straus know that the only anxiety his boy s gave him was the extent Io which they overworked in the effort to relieve him and take the load from his shoulders There is no justice in taxing the fortune left by a man who has worked hard and been a builder as heavily as you tax the fortune i of a drone. There is no justice in taxing the inheritance of hard workers i and builders as heavily as you tax the fortune that is handed on from one drone to another. Lloyd George's system in England is the just system TAX INCOMES IN PROPORTION TO THEIR SIZE, leaving small incomes free of all taxation and increasing the percentage as the income increases. Just and sane is'the Lloyd George idea gaming ground in Europe that taxation should fall heavily with double and treble j weight upon the income I NEARNED BA HIM \V I|O RE< El VES IT Let the tax fall upon the income of the idler, the income that has not been earned by its possessor, the income that represents no ■ active, useful work. Eree from taxation or tax most lightly the income of which the dollars represent service rendered to the public and of which the ' sum total is given back to the public in work well done There would lie no trouble in doing this if we really intended in this country' to tax non-productive wealth and non producing, wealthy' individuals. A wise government would encourage with freedom from taxation wealth that is productive and constructive and that gives back to Hie nation that which it gets from the nation The contrast offered by the inheritance tax upon the fortunes of Isidor Straus and John Jacob Astor is so glarifig that it is used as a Hasis for this editorial in spite of the fact that the sons of Isidor Strati- would resent the faintest suggestion of a willingness on their par* to escape taxation or legal demands of any kind, however The Atlanta Georgian tvEiix v in v in WAITING By UAL COKEMAX. I ■- I MBs ■ < Hh It//'* [ - W I • . Wo A- / - ~~ — _ < ' _ r • "'. A \ ~ ~ H - ■ zy SKY CLAIMS TOLL Jy In Hie past It-ii days a ivoman and 'tif' 111 nine men have met death while per- 'mil llil farming aerial J ■ tuly I. Miss Harriet Quimby ami s|! < VV. A I’ Willard fell from aeroplane ’ near Boston. Benno Koenig was killed jL near Altona, Prussia. ■aiV.jwW Uil' Melvin ami Calvin Vani .\ , A * ' "A-■ man. George Bout iilion and ICUner ami ■ ■. .. Walter Guest were killed near Allan ' ' >. Uli I lift -j lie t’iiy when the dirigible balloon > l"' Akron exploded Mh-IOUI July 4 Tlmmas Moore, parachute ‘ jumper, killed near Bellville, N. J. x Kieut. I’asansa. of the Roumanian ' army, killed making flight at Huehar-. I T I\4 I A Insect "Scourge of God" More Terrible Than the 1 ne ivioaern /Alula Ktngofthe Hun 'By GARRETT P. SERVISS EwVKRj day the reasons for making war upon the house Hy increase in number. One of tlie latest indictments against tills disseminator of tnfei tion and death is that he i-arries about with him the germs of infantile paraly sis. as wall ns those of typhoid, consumption and other communi cable disease. It is now believed, -ays Dr. Thomas l>. Wood, in Good Housekeeping Magazine for July, tltat germs of infantile paralysis may live for 1k hours, al least, in the body of a llv. This insect Attila, whose march is more destructive titan that of tlie wourger of dying Rome, who declared that grass could not grow w fieri' fits horse had passed, docs not appear in his true character, wlwn we sec him quietly sitting in a window, caressing his sheeny wings witli his liind logs or bob bing his head while lie fondles th. Here is a pic ture of a fly re produced by per- I mission from Good House keeping Maga zine for July. This picture ac companies a val- I uable article on 'the dangers of the fly pest, i written especial ly for Good TTnnr.c •keeping by Thomas D. Wood, M D back of his neck. if he were tak ing a sunbath and hugely enjoying it. His diminutive body covers too small an aven in the Held of^the eye Io enable us to see its formid able details. We must get optical ly near him. with the aid of a mi croscope. in order to see him as he really Is. Then, when all his dimensions ale magnified many diameters, we behold a monster as terrifying fl-' 1 any of the dinosaurs of geological antiquity. Look, in the photo graph above, at the hairy body, covered with sharp spines: at the powerful fegs with thei, spreading spikes at the joints: at the huge. repul»iv< hi ad. with its gigantic hemispheres tilled with the glitter ing fae.h ~f the great compound eyes, the most extraordinary or gans of visions in tlie animal king dom: at tlie big, hairy, elublike. ex tensible feeler, with which the un clean beast explores tlie sources of its poisonous diet, and finally, at the strong wings ready spread for instant, veritiginous Hight, which enable it to carry’ the germs of dis ease that it has absorbed with ex press train speed to its destina t ion. Gibbon lias described the histori cal Attila as exhibiting tlie "genu ine deformity of a modern t'almuek. w ith a large head, a swarthy com- A common house fly magnified so that you can see how one really looks. zl > ! wy : 7 W W *mW isL . From a model in j/z the Milwaukee (Wis.) Public Museum. plexion * • - an( j a custom of fiercely rolling his eyes, as if he wished to enjoy the terror which he inspired." The description is not inapplicable to this Attila of the in sect Wo: Id. If. after all that has been said by medical science, you yet have any doubt about the duty of destroying every fly you meet, then consider, for a moment, these unquestion able facts: "On one fly as many as 6.6C0.000 disease - causing bac teria have been found, and in a re cent experiment the average num ber of germs found on the bodies of each of 414 flies was 1.250.000." Every female fly that is allowed to live usually becomes, in the course of the summer, the progenitor of 8.000.000 descendants that actually survive as carriers of disease! Keep your house clear of flies, and above all, keep them out of tlie kitchen and the pantry. Destroy, or disinfect, or cover with screens, every garbage pail or pan and every heap of refuse in which they van bleed. After all. it is not so very difficult to get rid of flies. It costs something, in time and money, but there could be no bet ter way to expend either. Because SOME flies manage to get inside, your screens, don't condemn the defenses on that account. We are now too far advanced ' Zb Z <3 upon the summer to hope to arrest Hie scourge Ivy' life slaughter of individual flies T,,n many were allowed to escape, through neglect, or through mistaken mercy, in the first warm days of spring. The personal warfa’e must still lie kept up. with ever-increasing vigor, but now the large measures must also be employed -screens. fly traps and disinfection. Still, a great deal has been gained. You will find in GOOD HOUSE KEEPING MAGAZINE directions for driving away flies from the outside of your screen doors, so that they will not even attempt the assault of your defenses. And you may gather a vivid impression of the critical necessity of ctetna! vigilance in this matter from read ing this warning of Dr. Wood's: Let everything that goes into any one's mouth spoon-, tumblers- and baby's nursing bottles RE 'AI DED aft-• a fl. has w alked on them! THE HOME PAPER Dorothy D i x Writ e s —OF— The Reckless Way We Marry Bv DOROTHY DIN a PRETTY young bride has just AA been deserted in. a hotel in New York after a honey moon that had lasted only four days. Detectives are out hunting the recreant bridegroom, who disap peared owing the hotel and an au tomobile /otieern. and even a tailor from whom he had rented a swell dress suit to be married in. and the poor little bride has gone tearfully back hoin>' to reflect, upon the un certainty of matrimony. Site is even wondering what, her name is. because she doesn't know whether the man she married was named what he said lie was or not. as she has found out that he was not rich, as she supposed, or con nected with a big hospital, as he told her. nor had he ever been heard of at a famous medical school where he professed to have grad uated. These Marriages Could Have Been Prevented. The girl and her family are doing a. lot of investigating now into the pedigree and record of the ex-hus band. but it's a trifle late after all the harm has been done, it's like locking the stable door after the horse is stolen. All of the good they can get out of finding out about this scurvy villain will be the gratification it will afford their curiosity, but if they had spent one tithe of the effort in turning tlte spotlight on the gentleman's let old before marriage the poor girl would have been saved from making her fatal mistake. This ease, does not stand alone as an illustration of the monumental folly with which people marry with out taking the trouble to find out a single tiling about the individ ual with whom they propose to spend the next thirty or forty years, and on w hose good faith and worth iness their whole happiness and welfare depend. Ever.' day ws read in the papers about girls who have married bogus noblemen or bigamists with another wife in the next block, or ex-eonvicts. or men whom they believe to be prosper ous and who are swamped in debt and have no way of making a liv ing. or men who have some terrible mental or malady, or men who have some hideous blot on 'heir past that easts its sinister shadow over the w hole Ilves of their w ives. The tragedy of these marriages is that almost et erj one of them could have been prevented had the girl and her parents used as much ordi nary prudence in the matter as they would about acquiring a new horse, instead of a new member of the family. Will Let. Girl Marry and Not Know Man's Family. They would not have bought a S2OO horse without finding out what sort of stock it came from, w Ito had raised it. who was its former own er. w hat sort of a temper and dis position it had, and getting a vet erinary's certificate that it was sound in wind and lintb. But people will let a girl marry a man without making a move to find out what kind of family he be long* to. whether Ills people are honest or jail birds; whether he has tainted blood in his veins or not: w hether he has got a wife somewhere else or not; whether he Is a drunkard or a gambler or not; whether he has any .settled and honest way of supporting a family or not. '.'f course |t'.7 cgiv enough to DOROTHY DIX. why a girl with no experience of life, and infatuated with a man - agreeable personality, might think that it didn't make any difference who lie was. o: what he had don* She might be willing to buy a pig In a poke, as it were, and marry a man without any investigation of his standing and character, but there is nothing else on earth amazing as the indifference of fa thers on this subject, and that a father would permit his little, unso phisticated daughter to marry a man of whom he knew absolutely nothing. Yet they’ do it continually. Many a man sees his prospective son-in law for the first time when ths youth comes to go through the meaningless form of asking for Mamie’s hand in marriage. For Mamie has told papa to say “yes." and papa is so busy and so carelc that he hands over Mamie, soul and body, w ith every’ one of her po tentialities for misery or happiness, to the stranger, with as littl® thought as he would a pound of tea across the counter. Worse; H* wouldn't let the stranger have th* tea unless he could show that he could pay for it. but lie lets him have Mamie without finding out w hether lie can support her or not. And this isn’t because father ha ■ such respect for Mamie’s judgment. He wouldn't trust her in make ' thousand-doilar investment alone. If stie had that much money to pui into a stock or real estate or to lend lie would take upon himself the task of looking up the title or security and seeing that It waa gilt-edge before he permilted her to part with her money, without bothering to see if she is swindled and gold-bricked in the trade or not. No Excuse Can Be Offered For This Attitude. In this day’ of telegraphs and tel ephones and newspapers, we all live in the glare of publicity, and thete is no difficulty whatever In finding out all that it Is necessary to know about anybody else. I postal card written to the hospital with which the young man men tioned at the beginning of tills ar ticle said he was connected would have brought out the truth about him. but none of the girl * family took the trouble to write it. A da v spent in a man's home town a ten minutes talk with his employer 1 few judicious inquiries among hi« friends would show any father whether the man who wanted to marry bis daughter would make her a good husband or not An in quiry through Dun or Bradstre*t will give accurate information a.® tn any young fellow 's past and pre sent performance.- and abilities *o support a w’ife. With these sources of information at hand, is it not simply incredible that any father would be so crimi nally negligent as not to at lea f find put what sort of a life part ner his daughter is getting when she marries? No possible excuse can be offered for their attitude in the matter. Before a father gives his consent to his daughter's marriage he should have gone over the young man's record with a magnifying glass and a search warrant. It ” his business to protect his littl* giri, and he * , ignally fails to do it unless lie does his best to keep her from making a mistake in th° mo»< i important a*’t of her life.