Atlanta Georgian. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, August 07, 1912, FINAL, Image 18

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EDITORIAL PAGE THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN rtJrt'.'-hed Every Afternoon Except Sunday By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At 20 East Alabama St.. Atlanta. Ga. Entered as second-class matter at postotlice at Atlanta, under act of March 3. 1879. Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier. 10 cents a week. By mail, J 5.00 a year. Payable in advance. To Those Who Write Ad vertisements You Have a Chance to Help Your Employers and the Public at Large at the Same Time. The writing of advertisements is becoming, more and more, a really scientific and LITERARY profession. The gentleman who writes little stories for magazines, or lit tle poems that do not get printed, looks down upon the writer of advertisements. He would be horrified at the suggestion that one who writes advertisements could be called “literary.’ But, as a matter of fact, the literary quality of a good adver tisement writer ought to be—and very often is—-first class. Such a writer must combine in himself those characteristics which do most to make real literary success. First of all. HE MUST BE CONVINCING, and there is noth ing more important in good literary work. Second. HE MI ST HAVE IMAGINATION—not the kind of imagination that distorts facts, but the kind of imagination that makes common, every day facts INTERESTING. Third, HE MUST BE BRIEF WITHOUT BEING UNINTER ESTING, for each word lie writes is more highly paid for than a word of the greatest literary man—only the writer, instead of the publisher, pays for it. Wt should like to interest the writers of advertisements and the big merchants who employ the clever advertising writers, in this suggestion— MAKE YOUR ADVERTISEMENTS MORALLY USEFUL TO TTIE PUBLIC, AND EDUCATIONALLY USEFUL TO THE PUBLIC, AS WELL AS MATERIALLY USEFUL. The other day, for instance, a certain very intelligent writer of advertisements wanted to impress upon people’s minds the fact, that they often pay too much for a hat because of the name that is in it. Ho quoted briefly and effectively an old Heidelberg pro fessor whose opinion of himself was so high that he lifted his hat reverently WHENEVER HIS OWN NAME WAS MENTIONED. The writer of the advertisement then went on to draw con clusions favorable to his own hats and unfavorable Io those that charge for a name. That is the sort of advertising that lingers in the memory—that makes one writer of advertising better than another. The idea of apt. quotations that spread information through advertisements can be carried much farther. One of the soap advertisements, for instance, does good by reminding the public of the importance of keeping open the pores of the skin, telling just how many millions of those pores there are. It has fixed many minds upon the value of cleanliness, be sides selling one particular kind of good soap. Another advertiser, calling attention to a certain periodical for women, begins as follows: “Ont in Wyoming, whore the women vote, the politicianshave a new proverb. It is this: ‘A candidate of whom women disap prove is dead in the shell.’ ” There could not be a better way of attracting the attention of ■women, or men either. That brief and truthful statement as to the power of women’s opinion is an excellent thing to put before millions of readers. Some of those who advertise standard remedies include in their advertisements very simple, honest and intelligent state ments as to the proper care of the health. This could well be carried much farther, with most, beneficial results. Os this every merchant and every advertising writer may be sure: If the advertisement appeals to a man’s INTELLECT, his mental approbation, if it interests him seriously. IT WILL LING ER IN HIS MEMORY, AND THE ADVERTISER WILL LING ER WITH IT. It is evident that, as Ihe years go by. a constantly increasing amount of advertising will he spread before the public. A great deal of good can be done if the writers and promoters of adver tising take a real pride in the moral and educational features of their advertisements. Recognize Republican China W ithout Delay Last February congress passed the resolution congratulating the people of China upon the establishment of a republic. That was a legislative act and all that congress could do. It was understood at that time that the president would offi cially recognize the Republic of China. That is an executive function and the president should do it. He should have done it long ago. Why this long delay? Is the great Republic of China being held up to please the money lenders of the world? Is it not an anomaly that China ms anxious io borrow money, and can borrow money, it' the six powers will permit her to do so? However, they refuse to allow ac; to borrow money unless she borrows it from them and on ;h<Lr terms. What are the terms. First. That China must borrow $300,000,000. Second. That the money must be spent as the lenders direct. Third. That they must have the spending of it- in other words, they demand that this loan shall be expended by some official they designate. We know that patriotic America wishes tin- president to rec ognize China officially. It ought to have been done lontr ago. We have never delayed so long in ant other case, so far as the records go. The great Republic of the United States should be the first to recognize the establishment of a sister republic in any part of the world. This is especially so regarding China, she needs our help. She is exceedingly friendly to us. It would be a crime to have China lapse back into a monarchy. The Atlanta Georgian People of the South Pole EXTRAORDINARY BIRDS THAT RESEMBLE LITTLE FAT MEN AND ARE GREAT FISHERMEN By GARRETT P. SERVISS. rpHE strangest Inhabitants of J the Antarctic continent are the birds called penguins. A company of them, seen at a dis tance on the polar snows, bears so striking a resemblance to an as semblage of human beings that ex plorers. unaccustomed to their ap pearance, have often been startled by the momentary belief that they had come upon a tribe of short, stout men, dressed in black, or blue and white, and greeting their visi tors with the most extraordinary gesticulations. There is one species of these re markable birds, known as the Em peror Penguin, because it seems to mimic the well known figure of Na poleon, in his white vest and trousers and gray coat, which sometimes attains a height of be tween three and four feet and a weight of 80 or 90 pounds. Walk ing erect on his short legs, the Emperor makes a salute by lower ing his long beak on his round breast, and then begins a long dis course in his strange, raucous lan guage, and if there is no response, he repeats t-he performance again and again, expecting each time an answer. This exiled image of hu manity, inhabiting his lone snow covered and icebound continent, seems astonished, and offended, as well he may be, by the impolite ness of his visitors, who usually answer his hospitable greetings with uncivil laughter, or blows of a stick! In thus receiving strangers in his country the Emperor follows an Invariable rule of conduct, which has governed the intercourse of his kind from time immemorial. When ever two groups of these penguins encounter, the chiefs advance and salute, in the same manner already described, and, having exchanged compliments, with appropriate speeches, they make a circular sweep in the air with their beaks, indicating that the ceremony is ended, and after that the two par ties either separate or continue amicably on their way together. An Old Family, The penguins, of tvhich there are • several species, are believed by naturalists to have inhabited the Antarctic continent from the be ginning of the Tertiary age, so that they are among the oldest families of the animal kingdom, and they have always kept to their own quarter of the world. While they are unmistakably birds, they differ from all others in many particu lars. Their wings are mere rudi ments, covered not with true feath T ers, but witlr something more near ly resembling scales. They do not attempt to fly with them, but when they are driven to increase their speed of locomotion they fall flat on the surface of the snow and propel themselves along rapidly with their short wings and stumpy legs. Ordinarily they walk erect, presenting a comical appearance, like supernaturally "grave and rev erend signors.” Their food consists of small fish, and especially small shellfish, and they are very expert swimmers and divers. They place their rookeries on high points of rock and go in companies to the shore of the sea to fish. One of the illustrations above shows how picturesque is the appearance of one of these companies when they assemble on a rock overhanging the water, and from it plunge, one after another, into the sea, making great splashes as they strike the water. Having finished their fishing op erations, they return to their rook eries, which are often situated at a considerable distance. They carry back fish to feed their young, which are left in the nests on the rocks, and naturalists who have seen them in their native haunts € MUSIC AT MEALS By ELBERT HUBBARD. Copyright, 1912, by International News Service I T was once considered a won derful thing to agitate the cat-, gut, pound the piano and toot the B-flat horn while folks were feeding. The introduction of London mu sic hall features in hotel dining rooms is only about lifteen years old. The innovation came in with the bizarre, the loud, the blatant. It matched the plaster ftaris gold leaf figures on the wall. All of the modern hotels about that time had a balcony built for the musicians. We gulped our soup to waltz time, did. the entree to a two-step and disposed of pie to Chopin's Funeral March. You bawled across a three-foot void to your vis-a-vis, and if the music suddenly stopped you found your self addressing the audience. It was a wonderful thing. Wo got tile concert free, and we had to have a dinner, anyway! Tho concert was given as a sort of pre mium. And at that time the air was full of octaves and the idea of getting something for nothing. The hotels and restaurants ad vertising music at meals caught the great unwashed, who hypno tized themselves into the belief that they had broken into good society with a social jimmy. Tiie first protest that I know of WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7,1912. Zz - -cz Z , '-fan (■gyi --Tnrr~T-< » - . ' . ... ’ i ‘ d ■ ' '■ :ii -' ■ ' " ;'D '• <. 2_ - - ( r ' ■■ -<>■?•'?' ... ’ ■■ ■ ————■ ——- J I 'M- 'B: (Top Picture) Penguins going fishing; observe the splashes made by those that have already made the plunge; (center) Penguins returning from a fishing expedition; (bottom) tracks of Penguins in the Antarctic snows. ascribe to them a great deal of par ental tenderness and care and an apparent fondness for family life. During the Antarctic winter they abandon their rookeries and go far ther north, in order to find water not covered with ice in which to fish. With the return of summer theyA’esume their life at the rook eries, which sometimes constitute veritable cities, with a population of several hundred thousand indi viduals. It has been observed that the same birds apparently return to the same rookeries season after season. Very Clean. These curious birds are very careful of the cleanliness of their persons and rookeries. When they first encounter men they show no fear, mistaking them, possibly, for another race of their own kind, with which they are willing to fra ternize. A row of them, marching slowly and solemnly over the snow, in single file, like Indians on a trail, presents a most extraordinary came from Richard Mansfield, who walked into the Grand Central ho tel at Oshkosh, followed by his faithful valet carrying two big grips. The tragedian took four strides from tiie door ts> the desk, and, leaning over, in one of those half confidential stage voice asides that reach to the topmost gallery, said: "Ah, have-you-music-ai- meals?” And the clerk adjusted the glit tering glass on his bosom, smiled serenely, and said: “Oh, yes, surely so; yes, we have music at all meals." And Mansfield turned to his va let, who was resting his hands from carrying the heavy valises, and said: “Oho, oho, James! Look you to our luggage! To our luggage!” And tour more strides took him to the door, and the actor and the valet disappeared, engulfed by the all-enfolding nigUt. Everything is beautiful in Its time and place. Sociability at meals is right and natural. We talk as we eat, and exchange confidences. Friendship is hygienic. Sociability and eating go togeth er. But music is, or should be, a collaboration between the listener and the performer. Music demands an atmosphere. But it is impos sible to get an atmosphere in a public dining room to a jingle of parent awkwardness, they possess much agility, and one of them may be seen making a perpendicular leap of six feet or more from the water in order to land upon the surface of a rock. Following one another in single file through the snow, they plow furrows which, as shown in one of the accompanying photographs, presents a very singular appear ance. They are peacable, and will only fight in defense of their young. The noise made by their voices in a large rookery is some times deafening, and it is not quite safe to attack them when they are assembled in great numbers about their young. Ordinarily, it is easy for a sailor to knock one over with a stick. They toll off parties to go fish ing, leaving some at home to guard the nests, and upon the return of the first party others set out for a fishing trip. Upon the whole these singular feathered people of the Great White South exhibit man ners that men might not be dishes and a. buzz of conversation. In tlie music halls people eat, drink, laugh and talk while the singing is going on, or a man is making a speech. Nero fiddled while Rome burhed, but surely we do not want to lletcherize to fire works, or to be fiddled at while we feed. Just note the musicians, and see how they bang it off in true union labor style, and' hand us back the indifference that we have given them They play not for the love oT it, but for 50 cents an hour and to get even with capitalism—darn it! Music at meals is all right for convicts, where the silent system prevails. But in hotel dining rooms there should not be too much dis play of art, either mural or musi cal. Neither should there be either gaudy or noisy things in sleeping rooms, devoted to rest, sweet peace and dreams. There are bookworms who prop a book up in front of them as they nibble; and we are all familiar with the sociable party who eats break fast and reads the morning paper at the same time. These are mere ly individual preferences, but if art in the mass is to be tired at peo ple. as they dine, then by all means let some one read from the Essay on Silence. THE HOME PAPER Dr. Parkhurst’s Article This Inadequate Civiliza- t tion of Ours —and— What Its Finest Prod- gBOI uct Is Written For The Georgian By the Rev. Dr. C. H. Parkhurst rpHE finest product of civiliza- i tion is a man who is healthy in body, clear in intellect and warm and pure in his affections. Let this once be understood and one can realize, in away otherwise im possible, how utterly inadequate is our present form of civilization to the production of the best results. That is not the kind of commod ity that the social machinery is turning out, nor is it, except in very limited degree, the end to ward which the social machinery is being worked. Very few people prize a beautiful life as something that is beautiful in itself, and more beautiful by far than anything . which the admirable powers exer cised by that life may be able to gain or achieve. Once in a while, when a great man dies, a man whom we know to have been thoroughly fine all through, physically hale, big in his thinking, sweet and generous in all his feeling and loving, the public comes to its senses in the matter, forgets .all about what he has said and done, and thinks only of the splendid thing that he himself was. Rounds of Ladder Whose Top Is Never Reached. Under ordinary circumstances, however, the public does not get down to its best judgment in such matters. Powers of body, mind or heart, that are required, are usual ly prized, not for the value that in heres in them in themselves con sidered, but only for what they may be able to secure, exactly as the money-getter values his thousand dollars, not for any worth that may inhere in it, but only because he can invest it, and by that means get some more of the same kind. In the same way the finer ac quisitions are not valued and en joyed for their intrinsic beauty, but only as rounds in the ladder whose top Is never reached. It is like a tourist traveling to some distant region, reputed to be surpassingly beautiful, but neglecting all the lesser beauties that lie along the way, and finally dying before reaching the region toward which his quest was directed. Children, youth, young men, go to school, college or the university, but only a very small minimum of them attach any value to their ac quired knowledge as they go along or pursue their studies with the idea that to be educated is what a man is made for, quite apart from the uses to which he will put his education, and that without cul ture he just so far fails short of the destiny to which he was appointed, be the results large or small, that he is able to achieve in the world without the aid of culture. It would be interesting to know how many of the boys in Columbia, for instance, ever think of it that their daily acquisitions are so much addition to their personal worth, and that to be personally worth something is greater, greater in the sight of God and of reasonable men, than to be thereby possessed of the means of filling large posi tions in the social, economic or financial world. The statement made at the be- Letters From the People PURPOSE OF THE SOCIALIST. Editor The Georgian: In Dr. Parkhurst’s unique criti cism of our present civilization, which appeared in a recent issue of The Georgian, it would appear tnat he could find nothing in our indus trial system upon which to base his criticism except the fact that work ers become mere machines. There is no question about bis represent ing the workers as mere machines and ignorant in order to try to make it appear that workers, as a rule, are so ignorant they need masters and leaders, and would not be competent to exercise their own powers and judgment in a free, democratic, co-operative common wealth. According to the F(ev. Mr. Park hurst’s minimizing process, the ig norance of the mere machines (the workers) is the only thing wrong in our present industrial system, but he utterly fails to offer any remedy. He also tries to show that the Socialist could not take over the industries in a co-operative commonwealth on account of the enormous sum required to pay for them, which the people would not be able to pay, but he neglects to show how much more the people would be able to pay when relieved from the great amount that is taken as profits by capitalists who own everything. The truth of the matter is, the Socialist does not ad- ginning of this article, that fine manhood is the choicest product of our civilization, is often repeated, but it is not practically adopted into the life, and the very men and women that repeat it will hurry their children through their school days in order that they may sooner be put to work, established in busi ness and be making for themselves a name and a fortune. It is simply pathetic the way In which even the children are in this way taught to believe that simple manhood —that combination of all that is finest in body, mind and heart —is of little account in com parison with what they are going to be able to get in the world by means of the small smatterings of manhood that their ambitious par ents give them time to acquire. And we ought to mention here all those hundreds of thousands and millions everywhere through out our country who never have the opportunity to become fine in their physical, intellectual and emotional life; the millions who are condemned to mediocrity and inferiority by the conditions of life that are forced upon them by our material civilization, which thinks everything of the dollar and little or nothing of the man—a civiliza tion that grinds up the many tn or der to make food for the few as the insensible grindstones of the miller turn corn into meai. These are things to talk and write and preach about. Think of the little boys and girls that are drafted into the sweatshops, the factories and the mines. What chance have they to become the beautiful men and women that it is their divine right to become—a right that is denied them by those poor apologies of men who are able, by the enormity of their worldly possessions, to administer society in the interest of the few at the sacrifice of humanity, and whose worst achievement is that they propagate among all classes the notion that to get ahead Is a man’s one proper ambition, and that what deserve to be known as the spirit ual and eternal values are to be taken account of only as they are convertible into material commod ities, available for the comfort, luxury and pride of an affluent minority. Only a Few Have Chance To Become Healthy. So long as only a comparatively’ few have the opportunity to be come healthy in body, cultivated in mind, and pure and refined in all sweetness of affection, our civili zation, with all its pretense and glitter, has nothing of which it can reasonably and honorably boast. If all these millions who are sick ly and ignorant and vicious were so because it is not in their nature and constitution to be anything else, or if they were simply a su perior order of cattle, the above criticism would be inapplicable. But once grant that they are hu mans, our criticism stands, and the guilt of the situation lies at the doors of those who have Christian sense enough to appreciate the sit uation and faculties for doing something at least toward better ing it. vocate the taking over of all the industries at one clean sweep. He proposes to begin in a sensible and systematic way by taking over only the industries necessary to give the workers regular employment with the full product of their labor be yond necessary expenses, and then go on taking over one industry and public utility after another as most necessary and practicable until all public utilities and means of pro duction and transportation shall be utilized by a co-operative and dem ocratic commonwealth. J. H. JENKINS. Thomasville, Ga. PLAYGROUNDS AND CHILDREN Editor The Georgian: The playgrounds for Atlanta’s children have been doing many things for the little ones this sum mer, such as keeping them well physically, mentally and morally— thus decreasing the spread of the most fatal disease the world knows —tuberculosis. How have thev been doing this? Through good, wholesome play. -Soon the play ground rally will be held and on that day hundreds and hundreds of city children will gather together to show the t city fathers how to X?"*' actl,e,y ' MARY E. BARNWELL, . Supervisor. Atlanta, Ga. *