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EDITORIAL PAGE THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday Ry THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At 20 East Alabama St., Atlanta, Ga. Entered as second-class matter at postoflice at Atlanta, under act of March 8. 187*. Subscription Price —Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. By mail, $5.00 a year Payable In advance. It’s Too Easy to Kill in Atlanta Two men of respectable families tight in a disreputable place. They don’t tight like men. with their fists. They use knives and one is badly cut before they are separated. The one that is more seriously wounded subsequently returns and cuts the other to pieces. The slayer is held in bail ludicrously small. For months he has been free. The district in which the killing was done is now wiped out. Practically all the witnesses against him have been driven out of town. The chances are he will never be tried. Here is another case: Two policemen quarrel. One draws a revolver and shoots the other in the back. This time the slayer is tried in a few weeks. The jury hears all the evidence, asks the judge on whom the burden of proof rests, and decides that the slayer is not guilty. There is no presumption here that he is guilty. Neither is there any’ presumption that the man who killed the other in the disreputable place is guilty. These cases are cited merely to show that IT IS TOO EASY TO KILL IN ATLANTA. This newspaper is against capital punishment. It is also against the man whose one idea of attack or defense is to shoot or cut some one. A newcomer here has deduced that he would probably get a heavier jail sentence if he stole a loaf of bread than he would if he killed the baker who made it. Maybe he is right. At any rate .the ease with which slay ers escape is the main reason why Atlanta stands as the fifth city in the Union in it percentage of homicides. One eoward in jail is of more use to the community than twenty at large with knives and pistols in their pockets. I Wilson for a Maritime America “Today our commercial development, outside the United States, is at the convenience and at the dictation of our rivals. As long as that is true we are going to be at a hopeless disadvantage. We have got to develop a merchant marine, or else keep within the con fines of our domestic development.’’ These words, spoken to the business men of Omaha by Gov ernor Wilson, bear upon a political issue so vast that it can not he comprehended without an effort of the imagination—so im portant that it is apt to be overlooked. On the sea the United States is a serf-nation. It is a depend ent province exploited by foreign satraps. The spoils of Amer ican oversea commerce arc carried in triumph to all the Euro pean capitals. We pay a humiliating and extortionate tribute of millions of dollars even- year to a foreign shipping supremacy that has driven our own ships from the sea. Wilson’s administration may be expected to introduce a new era of commercial independence, through the establishment of re ciprocal tariffs with European and Latin-American countries, and through the restoration of our old-time commercial navy. The tradition of the Democratic party is a maritime tradition. The Federalist party was scattered and dissolved in 1816 because it had opposed the war with England that vindicated the sea-rights of the new republic. In that war thirteen hundred British ships were captured by American privateers. These privateers were armed merchant ships. They numbered 517 and carried 2,893 guns. The years from 1817 to 1825 were the golden age of maritime America. They were the years of a triumphant Democracy, master of land and sea —the years of the Monroe administration, “the era of good feeling.’’ In 1825. 92 per cent of our commerce with other countries was carried on hy American ships. Today the American ships that cross the Atlantic may be numbered on the fingers of a hand. The time has come for a new era of commercial liberty on sea and land. Thomas Jefferson said: “For a navigating people to purchase its merchant ships of foreigners would be a strange speculation. Such a people would always be dependent on foreigners. We must build our ships for ourselves.’’ The recent legislation of congress permitting the American reg istry of ships bought hy Americans from foreign builders is futile and tai nous. \\ e must, indeed, build our own ships. We must raise up a new race of sailormen. We must put boldly out to sea. We must become once mon* a seafaring people. I he words ot Woodrow Wilson, spoken in Omaha, are an invo cation to a regenerated Democracy. We should expand to the width of a wide vision; we should rise to the height of a majestic opport unity. Our present estate upon the sea is a starveling to what our estate has been. But our past estate—proud and magnificent as it was—is no measure of the future. In the new era of commercial liberty, in the coming days when we shall reconquer the domain of the seven seas. New York should become so rich in the wealth of the world, so tense with universal hie. that history can furnish no example from Home, or Carthage, or Constantinople, or any city of the storied past—of th- largeness and splendor that shad be achieved The Atlanta Georgian Fhe Grafter’s Wife By HAL COFFMAN. J J ' !l - t Jr ~ f iI o - ~ nr I v'/S a/ ii iy| m I U 4 & « M i j | iii P 'I ■ . I •• i Ulll I j II- II ’ \ C;' '■ A 1 r l!l I i rI v . ftffl L - I eWwJ : c-- afl jg. 111« ' I £■» d 1W- '.QBHI , iLT . -' \| ■ l ! II I 1 - AC- ■ BS ' '\ \ , ■■ VA A , -A- A\ ' - 'At. x v,- w- <! ■ / The grafter's wife may live in a luxurious home, but every time the telephone rings it may be an announcement of her husband 3 arrest. The grafter and his family live under a suspended Sword. I he C onstitution of the United States Can’t. 1 urn Country Into Garden of Eden 1 I. | 'TWE old colored man and his I Jl wife were sitting on the door step, sunning them selves. I he cabin was made of logs, the chinks between filled with clay. The chimney stood at one end, : ickety and leaning. There was a little corn patch at the side of the cabin. The old couple were prob ably worth Seven Dollars or so—in things they could sell if they had to cash in; but they looked to be worth (>ne Hundred Thousand Dol lars in general contentment. Near, the cabin a hound dog was crouching in the sunshine and yell ing as if he owned One Hundred Thousand Dollars’ worth of unhap piness. “What is the matte: with the dog. uncle?’’ “Oh, nothing, suh. He’s just a low-down, ornery hound dog.” "But, uncle, he must have a mis ery of some sort, or he wouldn’t yell so.” "No. suh, he ain't got no misery. He's jest naturally indolent.” "He sure looks indolent, uncle. Does he yell like that all the time?” “No. suh, jest part of the time.” “Don't you think, uncle, he has a misery, after all?” "No, suh; you don’t appear to understand that hound dog. He ain't got no misery. You see, it's this a-way: He comes out with me and the old woman here, and goes • to squat down in the sun. Being jest a fool hound dog. he goes and ■ lays himself in a bed of stinging nettles. And they is a-hurting of him some. But lie's naturally too . lazy to get up, so he yells because they keep on a-pestering him.” “How long will he keep it up, uncle?” “Till we-uns call him in for sup per. Hey, Mandy?" “I’h. uh," said the old woman, “that’s right." 11. The only place that seems to have been constructed in a satis factory manner from th< beginning was the Harden of I. -m Hut tin population ■ i' that delei-iab.c spot. ‘ tailing to obey t n ordinances, lost MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1912. By THOMAS TAPPER. •J* the privilege of roaming in its sun light glades, From the moment the gates closed upon them, down to the present day. wft have bad to get things by the sweat of the brow (not counting a few who get it by the sweat of sonr other man’s i brow). The constitution of the f’nited —- n.' ■w : 4 "Wwy g dr? THOMAS TAPPER. States and the statute laws are powerless to turn our glorious country into a Garden of Eden. Even if this power were invested in them, somebody would be-devil the. situation and we should be turned out. Constitution and laws are not impersonal things. It is because so many of us think they apply to the other man and not to us that our Garden of Eden is so mussed up. If we had enough sense (not a lew of us, but every one of us) to know that citizenship and prosper ity are nor only worm having, but a ’< worth all tin- nw<a. of the brow ’•* the) cost, then one party would not need to curse the other for oar misfortunes. ' No president, in his inauguration speech, lias ever had the nerve to promise all citizens a pass-book to . the savings bank. But this coun try of outs offers every' man an opportunity to own a savings bank book if he wants it. A lot of us, however,’ do not want it as much as we want some other things. The constitution, the statute laws and the president have no power to make a man choose be tween saving his money and giving it to the barkeeper. They have no power to make a man choose to earn his living by useful labor as against taking a handful of dirty greenbacks for shooting four or five holes into another man. It is not until the Constitution and the Law cease to be imper sonal ami become EVERY MAN’S PERSi )NAL CONCERN that a city like New York will be purged of underworld scandals. For these un derworld scandals sometimes thrust themselves up into other worlds and make us take notice. Then for a few days we stop bragging to stran gers about how fine a town New j York is. "Greatest place on earth, sir; take it from me!” 111. “What’s the matter with the av erage citizen, uncle?" “Oh, nothing; he’s jest naturally lazy." "But, uncle, he has some sort of a misery, hasn't he?” “No, suh; he ain't got no misery.” "But what has happened to him, uncle? He seems to be yelling as if he had a real misery." "No, suh; he ain't got no misery. He’s just a-crouching in a bed of stinging nettles, and he’s that lazy lie won't get up. He just yells be cause they keep a-pestering him.” "Well, uncle, DID YOU EVER THINK OF PULLING L’P THE STIN< '-ING NETTLES" "Who, me’." "Uh. uh," said the old woman. ; "that's all light, hr means you” THE HOME PApg WINIFRED BLACK! Writes on The Race Not Decadent We Rise and Our Children Will Rise After Us, Higher and Higher Out of the Mire of Sel fish Brutality That Bore Us. cause of the decadence j of the human race is not hard to And,” said a lectur er the other night. “Marrying for love has done the work.” The lecturer was a dried-up, mincing little person, with large round spectacles, enormous ears, and hands and feet that really—it was plain to see that no one would ever encourage him to help the human race to deteriorate. “There is only one thing the mat ter with the human race today,” announced a woman I know that ■same evening, “and that's the cig arette. Wipe them out and we’ll be all right.’’ “We’ll never pull ourselves to gether as a race again until we stop the baseball craze and the turkey trot fad,” writes a holier than-thou evangelist. And so ride, gallop, trot, pace, walk, the hob bies all go marching by. It’s tobacco, it’s whisky, it’s too much starch in the food, it’s too much work, it’s not work enough, it’s the bachelors, it’s the married men, it’s the babies. Over and over, and round and found, and under and about, and through and past, they talk, and write, and preach, and tell what it is that makes us so decadent, and all the time 1 keep on wondering whether we really are decadent at all or not. I can’t see that we are. Can you ? Where Is the Blame? Was vour mother a failure in life compared to your grandmother? How would grandma do if she had to live as you do now ? You take a bath every day; grandma was. considered a trifle fussy if she wanted more than one complete bath a. week. In your grandfather’s time the preacher used to come to the log rolling and go home the worse for liquor, and no one thought any the less of him for it, either. Have you ever seen the rector of your parish ever so little under the weather? Forty years ago if you were a -Democrat and lived in a Republican community yofl might expect to wake up and And your barn burned and your stock set loose as a gentle hint to you to go where you were welcome. If you were a Republi can you never even dreamed of try ing to live in peace with Demo crats: you knew it was. no use. Don’t you think we’ve gone a lit 41e ahead of that sort of thing? When I was a little girl, not so awfully long ago, people used to give a litter of kittens to the chil dren and * '! them to go and drown them, ano when we cried at the idea the grown people laughed. Any one who would ask a growing child to do a cruel thing like that today would be sent to the juvenile court for Investigation, and quite right, too. When my grandmother died the neighbors came and sat in the room with her and watched every symptom of her agony with a kind of grewsome interest, and went home and told the children all’ about it. Civilized! —they weren't even partially so. The Last of the Incas By REV. THOMAS B. GREGORY A TAHI’ALLPA, the last of the AA Incas, was executed by the. scoundrelly Pizarro August 29. 1533. Than the condemnation and execution of the Peruvian king there is no blacker crime in the whole course of history. Many times have men been infamously unjust, but never to a greater extent than the Spaniards were in the case of Atahuallpa. Twelve charges were brought against the Inca, every one of them trumped up for the occasion and, from beginning to end, outrageously false. Convicted as of course he was sure to be by the packed tri bunal, the prisoner was sentenced to be burned alive. When informed of his fate the Inca, turning to Pizarro, exclaim ed: “What have I done, or my children, that 1 should meet such a fate? And from your hands, too, you who have met with friendship and kindness from my people, with whom I have shared my treasures', and who have received nothing but benefits at my hands.” Villain as he was. Pizarro was visibly affected, and, conscience smitten, turned to the Friar Vicente de Valverde to know what he should do. As might have been expected, tile friar, without hesitation, voted for the Inca’s death. That settled it, and Atahuallpa was led forth in chains to be executed. On the way the friar worked hard to convert the Inca to Christianity, but the monarch, straightening himself, replied in haughty tones: "Your God died on a cross, at the hands of His own creatures, but my God (pointing to the sunt rides in glory and majesty through the heavens, and Is beyond the power of any man to kill. Nevei will I for- By WINIFRED BLACK. t It was only fifty years ag c , : J the insane were locked in ~J’ k B and starved and beaten bv th B own families. Forty years :IRO , could whip a horse to death in'- h B streets of the biggest cities ot AB i world, and no one could do a :hin t ß to make you stop y our want H j cruelty, so long as the horse wa.B yours. Forty years ago they UM S : to take little helpless children out -fB asylums and farm them out >B drudges to people who worked theniß to death, and if you had dared :oB make a fuss about any such ca«B you would have been laughed aiß for your pains. M And Folks Were Cruel. B We do some of these same today, but were ashamed <4 th.em,B anyhow. Our grandfathers ArtH not at all ashamed of them. aodH would have given you a. good AiH to think of if you had tried toH make them so. "Decadence of the race!" stutt and nonsense. We are not decading, we’re rising- slowly, slowly. yij 3er . ably slow, faltering, not sure -t the strange ground, .slipping back every now and then—but rising, risi;,,,| n . evitably, irresistibly. Dominating the beast, conqtiwjng the animal, beating down the brutal Impulses, higher, higher we rise. ir e rise, thank the good Gti.r of hon est endeavor and true-hearted de sire to be better. Decadence of the rare! Go to the old countries just for six week- See some of the old prisons that pol lute the free air of heaven, even to stand there empty. Go through some of the old castles we think <0 romantic. See how the noble hrde and ladies lived, like dogs in a ken nel. without air. without light, without clean water. Step into one of the cages they used to hang in the court yards. Prett.v things, those cages. They were made just big enough to hold a man crouching, and he crouched there in the rain and the snow and in the beating, blistering sun. and starved. And the women and chil dren came to see him and laughed at his moans. When a child of iiigh degree tret'- teii his lady mother took him up to the courtyard and let him witch a starving man writhe in his agony. Ami then some troubadour wrote verses about her lily hands and heavenly eyes, and she Imrlu't had» bath for a year and wore h< r cuaret under-linen till it dropped off. We Don’t Deteriorate. Grand gentles, these, fine sprigs of nobility! The plainest clerk in : the humblest shop in our city today wouldn't sit at the same table with I • one of them any more than he I would dine with a growling, mum bling. hone-craeking. paw-biting monkey. No. no—we do not deteriorate, w rise, we rise, and our children rise after us, higher, higlier. out w' the mire of selfish brutality that bore us. Higher, higher, see to J ta r -shines in the far, far East, the long night of sleeping conscience is al most ready to break into rosy dawn Det us be on our knees t" welcome -j. it. • sake my god for yours ’ But, later on, in pr- sence stake that* threatened to consume, the Inca's mind weakened (as " it might), and he was "con ’■ In consideration of his conver sion, the form of death was kindly changed from burning to strang ling; and after being baptized un der the name of “John, in of John the Baptist, on whose "day the event took place, the unoffeu - ing king was choked to death the cold-blooded twisting 1 <• about his neck. History is full of irony hut would be hard to find * more bitter piece of iron' given "in the words of the chronicler, Xerez: “Thus he t- ' a huallpa) paid the penally of 1,14 rors and cruelties, for he " a; greatest butcher that the ever saw!" All of w hich is a " < pU‘* lie. made up for the . v „ pose of covering up on< infamous crimes that w.t mitted by the strong a weak. „ , «as As a character, Ata l)ne head and .shoulders to be found among b - Handsome, of magnili ’ uUS gentle and refined. ! ~„„ r ,or and just, he was infinit' ( to the brutes who desi ■■■ u kingdom and took awn.' ‘ , ~g for Pizarro, he will ever - with Torquemada. ' ' ~.n t Second, and others, m line <>f the world's wo it is really refreshing , ,f that Pizarro finally got , v his own medicine: that ' ' ( h ,,. came home to him. fore he had reached hi- if , b> year his own head was ‘ one of his rivals In 1 - blood and plundei |Ay 'Oau I