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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 postcffice at Atlanta, under act of March 8,18 TS.
Subscription Price —Delivered by carrier. 10 cents a week. By mail, 85.00 a year
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It’s Too Easy to Kill
in Atlanta
Two men of respectable families fight in a disreputable place.
They don’t fight like men. with their fists. They use knives
and one is badly cut before they are separated.
The one that is more seriously w’ounded 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
fbe burden of proof rests, and decides that the slayer is not
fufhy.
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.
Thia newspaper is against capital punishment. Il 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 ho would
if he killed the baker who made it.
Maybe he is right. At any rate .the ease with which slay
ers escape la the main reason why Atlanta stands as the fifth
city in the Union in it. percentage of homicides.
One coward in jail is of more use to the community than
twenty at large with knives and pistols in their pockets.
! 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 onr 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
be 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 are carried in triumph to all the Euro
pean capitals.
We pay a humiliating and extortionate tribute of millions
of dollars every' 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 by’ American ships. Today’ the American ships that cross
th' Atlantic may be numbered on the fingers of a hand.
The time has come for a new era of commercial liberty ou sea
■nd 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 by’ Americans from foreign builders is futile
and fatuous. \\ 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 more a seafaring people.
The words oi Woodrow Wilson, spoken in Omaha, are an invo
cation to a regenerated Democracy. We should expand to the
width ot a wide vision; we should rise to the height of a majestic
opportunity.
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 th.- wealth of the world, so tense with universal
lite, that history can furnish no example from Bonn ,or Carthage,
or Constantinople, or any city of the storied past of the larg. ness
and splendor that shall be achieved.
The Atlanta Georgian
I The Grafters Wife
\ By I [AL COFFMAN.
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| The grafter’s wife may live in a luxurious home, but every time the telephone rings it may
> be an announcement of her husband's arrest. The grafter and his family live under a suspended
? Sword.
I he Constitution ot the United States
Can’t Turn Country Into Garden of Eden
h
' | ■'HK old colored man and his- v
1 wife were sitting on the
door step, sunning them
selves. The cabin was made of logs,
tlic chinks between tilled with clay.
The chimney stood at one end,
rickety 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 One 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 matter with the
dog, uncle?"
“Oh, nothing, suh. He’s just a
low-down, ornery hound dog."
“But, une'e, 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-hurtlng of
him some. But he's naturally too
lazy to get up, so he yells because
they keep on a-pestering him.”
“How long will lie keep it up,
uncle?’
"Till we-uns call him in for sup
per. Hey. Mandy?”
“Uh. uh,” said the old woman,
“that’s right.”
11.
The only place that seems to
have been constructed in a satis
factory manner from the bi ginning
was the Garden .>f Mi en. But the
population of that debatable spot,
failing to obey the ordinances, lost
MONDAY. OCTOBER 28, 1912.
By THOMAS TAPPER.
• the privilege of roaming in its sun- •
light glades'. From the moment the
gates closed upon them, down to
the present day. we have had to
get things by tb.e sweat of the
brow (not counting a few who get
it by the sweat of some other man's
brow).
The constitution of the United
■<
lip
BE®'’* *
S'
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 i to
know that citizens!.: > and prosper
ity arc not only wort 1 having, hit
are worth all tin sweat of the brow
•f they cost, then one. party would
I not need to curse the other for our
| misfortunes.
No president, in his inauguration
speech, has > ver 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
ns 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 citoose to
earn bls living by useful labor as
against, taking a handful of dirty
g enbacks fo< shooting four or
five holes into another man.
It is not until the Constitution
and the Law cease to be imper
sonal and become EVERY MAN S
PERSONA!. 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 tine a town New
York is. “Greatest place on earth,
sir; take it from mo!”
HI.
“What’s the matter with the av
eiage citizen, uncle?”
“Oh, nothing; he's jest naturally
lazy.”
“But, uncle, he has some sort
of a misery, hasn’t he?”
“No, suh; lie 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
he won't* get up. He just yells be
cause they keep a-pestering him."
“Well, uncle. DID YOU EVER
I’HINK OF PULLING UP THE
STINGINi4 NETTLES?"
“Who, me?"
Uli, uh." saiil the old woman,
t'.at's al) light, he means \mj_
THE HOME PAP Er
WINIFRED BLACK
Writes on
The Race Not iWjjlj
Decadent
We Rise and Our Children Will
Rise After Us, Higher and
Higher Out of the Mire of Sei-
fish Brutality That Bore Us.
Bv WINIFRED BLACK.
cause of the decadence
I of the human race is not
hard to find,” 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 dheourage 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 v,e
stop the baseball craze and the
turkey trot fad,” writes a holier
than-thou evangelist. And so rjde,
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
round, 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 T 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 your 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 you might expect to
wake up and find 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
tle 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 tell them to go and drown
them, and 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
symptoni 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.
< TAHVALLPA, 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 1 done, or my
children, that I should meet such a
fate? And from your hands, too,
you who have met with friendship
and kindness from my people, with
whom 1 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.
Un 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 sun) rides In
glory and majesty through the
heavens, and is beyond the power of
any man to kill. Never will I for
It was only fifty years ago th
the insane were locked in cellars
and starved and. beaten by thr
own families. Forty years ago you
could -whip a horse to death in the
streets of the biggest cities of the
world, and no one could do a thine
to make you stop your wanton
cruelty, so long as the horse was
yours. Forty years ago they used
to takd little helpless children out of
asylums and farm them out for
drudges to people who worked them
to death, and if you had dared to
make a fuss about any such case
you would have been laughed at
for your pains.
And Folks Were Cruel.
We do some of these same things
today, but we’re ashamed of them
anyhow. Our grandfathers were
not at all ashamed of them, and
would have given you a good deal
to think of if you had tried to
make them so,
“Decadence of the race!” stuff
and nonsense. We are not decading,
we’re rising slowly, slowly. Miser
ably slow, faltering, not sure of the
strange ground, slipping- back even
now and then—but rising, rising, in
evitably, irresistibly.
Dominating the beast, conquering
the animal, beating down the brutal
impulses, higher, higher we rise, we
rise, thank the good Giver of hon
est endeavor and true-hearted de
sire to be better.
Decadence of the race! Go to the
old countries just for six weeks 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 so
romantic. See how the noble lords
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
Pretty 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 high degree fret
ted his lady mother took him up to
the courtyard and let him watch a
starving man writhe in his agony.
And then some troubadour wrote
verses about her lily hands and
heavenly eyes, and she hadn’t had a
bath for a year and wore her coarse
under-linen till it dropped off.
We Don’t Deteriorate.
Grand gentles, these, flne sprigs
of nobility! The plainest clerk in
the humblest shop in our city todaj
wouldn’t sit at the same table with
one of them any more than lie
I would djne with a growling, muin
; bling, bone-cracking, paw-biting
monkey.
No, no—we do not deteriorate, we
rise, we rise, and our children will
rise after us, higher, higher, out o'
the mire of selfish brutality that
bore us.
Higher, higher, see the star
shines in the far, far East, the long
night of sleeping conscience is al
most ready to break into rosy da"ii.
Let us be on our knees to welcome
- it.
sake my god for yours.”
But, later on. in presence of
stake that threatened to consume
the Inca’s mind weakened (as "
it might), and he was "converted.
In consideration of his con' I '-
sion, the form of death was kindly
changed from burning to strang
ling: and after being baptized un
der the name of “John,” in l"’i |P '
of John the Baptist, on whose day
the event took place, the unoffen
Ing king was clicked to death W
the cold-blooded twisting of a r ‘
about his neck.
History is full of irony, but,
would be hard to And any'
more bitter piece of irony than .
given in the words of the I,l '
chronicler, Xerez: "Thus I
huallpa) paid the penalty of his e
- and cruelties, for he " a
greatest butcher that the '®‘
ever saw!" All of which is ag'
lie, made up for the express P
pose of covering up one ol
infamous crimes that was'' 11 t | lß
mitted by the strong agai
weak.
As a character, Atahua•• , ls ,
head and shoulders
to be found among hi* "■ ' t
Handsome, of magmli'> i JS
gentle and relined niag, :o r
and just, he wax isduutek )lis
to the brutes who desp " \. s
kingdom and took away m ...
for Pizarro, he will evers- '■ ,
with Toripiemada, 'J'
Second, and other-,
line of the world’s worst a- ■
it is really refreshing '
that Pizarro finally g"' " ~1 . .i !v
his own medicine; tr•<
came 'mine to him; m" ' ;
fore Iw h id reached In
year his own head wio u- u s
one of his rivals in tic
blood and plunder
