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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 postoftlce at Atlanta, under act of March 3, 137*. Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. By mail, $5.00 a year. Payable in advance. This Campaign Has Made People Think and Discuss Public Questions *! * That Is More Important Than Any Individual Success. Public Thought in the End Must Govern, NOT INDIVIDUALS. “Give light, and the people will find their own road.’’ The campaign which ended in yesterday’s election was a cam paign of light giving. It was a campaign of thought, of dis cussion. The old lines were broken down, one new party came to the fore, and the two old parties were rejuvenated. Discussion that, was once confined to old prosaic general top ics was broadened. Women were in the field taking pari. Protection of the lives of children. Ihe welfare of the weak and the helpless were emphasized in every platform. The bloody shirt was buried, Ihe old-fashioned, meaningless oratory had disappeared. Men, and women, too, actually said something in the cam paign. Millions of citizens had been thinking for themselves, and voted as they thought best. Party lines were broken down. Some Democrats went into the Republican party. BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE IT BEST FOR THE COUNTRY. Many Republicans went into the Demo cratic party, because they believe that that party best represents what a majority of the people want. Some Democrats and many Republicans went into the new Progressive party, looking to that party for light and better gov ernment. And a number larger than usual voted for the Socialist party, which in this, as in other campaigns, has done much to stimulate thought and compel the older and more conservative parties to deal with new questions. It was a useful campaign of enlightenment, and the nation will be the better for it. The important thing was not the success of this or that can didate or party, but continuous progress on the part of the body of the citizens. / No matter how brilliant the leader may be, no matter how elevated the principles of a party, the nation does not improve unless the inass of the voters share the qualities of the leader and sincerely adopt and believe the principles that inspire the leader. No leader, no party, no principles could make of a herd of savages anything more than a herd of savages. Cunning, com bined with force, might rule and help them, they could not be lifted above the low plane. And no principles, no leaders, no party, can do anything for this country, except stimulate thought and direct THE PEOPLE in the right road. As the people progress the country progresses. And as the people think. Ihe nation grows. Yesterday’s election settled one question, put an end to one discussioin. one struggle. The work of thinking and discussing must go on. This will really be a republic worthy of the people when the average individual shall have knowledge and interest in public af fairs, equal at least to the knowledge and interest of the best leaders today. Swift Judgment Upon the Turks The Balkan allies, righteously dripping with blood but ' flushed with an amazing victory, stand knocking at the gates of Constantinople. The people of the civilized world look upon this spectacle with sympathy and even with elation of spirit. But the chancelleries of Europe are whispering upon the wires from capital to capital, in anxious conference. It is feared that the statesmen are trying to And means to cancel the amazing vic tor?'. so far as it can be cancelled, and to build up out of the ruins of the old tyranny a new empire of blood ami tears. \The people of the United States can not ami will not repress their feeling of indignation and scorn at the endless cruelty of the European diplomats in their dealings with the Eastern ques tion. European Turkey contains less than a million real Turks, men, women and children, all told. For this handful of Tartars nominally the European powers have submitted to a century of barbarity and shame. In reality Europe does not submit. She enforces and perpetuates the barbarity and shame simply to maintain territorially a weak empire. From the middle of the fourteenth century to this present day Christian Europe has. in one form or another, paid tribute to the Turk in the blood and bones of its own children. The earlier of tribute was quite undisguised; Christian boys were turned over to the Ottoman power, to be made into Janizaries. In modern times Christian Europe has veiled its shame under a tis sue of diplomatic falsehoods, but it has never failed to pay its toll of Christian blood. For a century and more the Turkish Empire has been piti fully weak. In strictness of speech, it has been no government at all. It has been a tottering house, shored and patched into a look of wholeness by the mutual jealousy and fear of the Eu ropean Powers. In the middle of the nineteenth century Englishmen and Frenchmen fought side by side with the Turks against Russia. The Treaty of Paris closed the Crimean chapter of disgrace but it did not settle the Eastern question. Twenty-two years later. At of tile Russo-Turkish war. a congress of the powers at Berlin attempted to establish the Turk on a fresh basis of mini mum butchery, but with disastrous results, as the slaughter of our missionaries later proved. Ihe Turkish rule in Europe should have been utterh abol ■she<l long ago. Certainly it should be abolished now. The <lay of vengeance has come at last. Even the brazen fheek of European must blush at the thought that the baud of just judgment may now ly stayed. The Atlanta Georgian Will It Be Like This Some Day? r » ~ f vw,>aw AawPWI ’ \ w>9|3 aIvT- * VJF ‘ V ' ' ' ■<* ’ Wifi »- _ 0 * In this picture the artist has endeavored to depict a scene in a war of the future. Here one sees an airship hurling death-dealing bombs upon a city which has been reduced to ashes. Re cent army maneuvers in England proved that the aeroplane and airship are contenders to be se riously reckoned with, and it is not unlikely that the next war between advanced nations will show scenes as terrible as that conjured up in the artist's imagination. Monopoly Responsible For High Prices I. /-r->HE cause of the high price of j food is monopoly. All down the line from producer to consumer there are organizations of men who pass the necessities along, each knocking some profit out of it, and collecting the whole bill from the party of the last part —the man who eats the food. The fewer middlemen between producer and consumer, the cheap er is the article. Middlemeh are non-producers and profit takers. They put up toll gates, and col lect profits, coming and going. And yet with the present organi zation of society the middleman has become a necessity. It would bother a good many families in a large city to dispense with him. The Simple Way. But many a family can do so tn a very simple way. That is. by be coming their own producers. Twenty years ago, in a certain community every family used the land about the house for practical purposes, it raised ,all the vege tables required for summer and winter. In some cases it supported a cow, a pig and some chickens. Today, while the street has changed little in, other respects. It is inhabited by’ pA>ple with newer ideals. They do not trouble to do garden work. The vegetable man, the egg man. the milk man and a whole procession of men, drive up to the houses along the street, and sell the things that the land itself used to raise and can still produce. This would be entirely justifiable if wages had advanced, or if the fortunes ?f the families were such that the householder’s time could be better employed than in doing garden work. But this is not the case. In this, and in many other places, the little gaulen as an aid to family economy hii.- ijoin out of ta>hior. In the grout i \ Mod, down th« street, the men discuss political as- WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1912. By THOMAS TAPPER. • fairs, national finances and the ball game. No one talks about the maximum yield of the garden patch. The telephone and the trolley car have widened the circle of their vision, and they live in the metro politan way. City restrictions are h t’*' J W*' ; i i ' JIB nOSMii l” *| THOMAS TAPPER. throwing their tentacles of high cost w’here they have no business to reach. 11. , It Is amazing what fortune a fam ily in humble circumstances can attain to by’ developing all the re sources at hand. Thrift, labor and good management are as forceful as they were in old-fashioned times. It Is the Small Worker. Thousands of families crowd the cities and barely exist, families that could eliminate every middle man between producer and consumer, and take all the profits themselves. Why do they not move into the country Probably because t u- crowds, tiie | picture sliows and the excitement are mote interesting at a high price ' than a cabbage patch is with money in hand. State departments of agriculture and the department of agriculture at Washington have published val uable documents on all aspects of farming. Quietly It is becoming recognized that the foundation of national prosperity is not'the large farmer in Kansas; it is the small worker of the soil everywhere. These documents may be Jiacl for the asking. To read them and to learn how to make the soil under one’s feet contribute to the cost of living is, in the long run, a better proposition than living w’here you can see the trolley cars pass by. When you plant a package of radish seeds, and later on eat the radishes fresh out of the garden, you can estimate accurately what they cost. But if four other pairs of hands handle them between the garden and your table, there are four more items to be added to the expense of affording radishes, and the cost estimate is not so easy to determine. Can Eliminate Middleman. Tlie middle man has been called , all kinds of h;rrd names. He does not deserve them, for he is a product of the way we live. If we do not want to get along without him, he gets our money. If we begrudge the money he gets, we have only to begin life again as producers, enjoying the fruits of our own industry. No man, single-handed, can change the present organization of affairs. If he has to depend on the middle man that gentleman will get his price. But any man can change the or ganization of his own affairs, and cut out the middle man by becom ing a producer of the things he and his family need. Such a change, if he makes it, does not, however, sever his con nection with monopolies. Water and air will be fie. , but coal will hue. to be brought to his door by forces In can not control directly—unless the garden is lo cated over a mine THE HOME PAPER Elbert Hubbard Writes on Texas Siftings To Say That the Lone Star State Is Prosperous Is Putting It Pianissimo; It Is Microby W ith Money. By ELBERT HUBBARD Copyright, 1912, by International News Service I HAVE just completed a three weeks tour of Texas. I stop ped in twenty-one towns and cities, dispensing the oratorical ca loric, under the kindly guidance of tlie ad dubs. To say that Texas is prosperous is putting it pianissimo. Texas is microby with money. The buying power of the people is revealed by the business done in the department stores. A pioneer people buy things that are coarse and strong, and always the intent is to make the dollar go as far as that famous dollar which George Washington once threw across the Potomac. In the Texas department stores you will find the latest fashions— modes from Paris and styles from London. Texas has passed out of the pioneer stage. The thing that has caused the ■welling waters of prosperity to flow is the demand for cotton. Cotton is king. Cotton clothes the world. Texas produces one-third of the cotton crop of the United States. Cotton is raised in Texas at a less cost per bale than anywhere else in the world. In most states you hear of “cot ton patches,” but in Texas there are cotton fields—fields seemingly limited only by the horizon. Source of Its Prosperity. The discovery that cotton will grow on the prairie is a new one. Texas, in this year of grace, 1912, is producing four million bales of cot ton. This cotton, including the va rious products of cotton seed, is worth three hundred million dol lars. And yet cotton is only one of nine great products that Texas pro » duces. However, only half of the people are engaged in farming in Texas. And about one-half of these raise cotton. The result when figured up would show that in some districts whole families will receive in cash a thousand dollars for each mem ber of the family. At one place of a thousand in habitants I counted over two hun dred teams that had come to town with loads of cotton. A wagon load is anywhere from one bale to five; so each farmer went back home with from sixty to three hundred dollars in cash, or its equivalent. The tendency of the cotton farm er is toward the small farm, simply because labor conditions are such that the farmer has to do the work himself, and with his own imme diate family. As for hiring a great number of men and systematizing the business, this is getting more and more of a problem. The help ers are not to be had. A big fam ily in Texas is an asset. Cotton pickers get a dollar and a quarter a hundred pounds. When they were hired by the day they picked a hundred pounds of cotton a day. And so the idea of piece work came in, and a dollar and a quarter was fixed as a fair rate for picking a hundred pounds of cot ton. The result has been that piece work has quickened the process. I saw girls of twelve that would pick a hundred pounds a day, and here In Texas in the country all the children work. And working out of doors, with plenty to eat, in a sa lubrious climate, they are healthy and well and strong brown, bronzed, happy. They can sleep all right, and they certainly eat. Some expert women pickers do their 300 pounds a day. and I saw a few men who could pick 400 pounds a day. A great number of negroes make from $3 to $5 a day. I ■ • When pay day comes, and they get SIOO apiece, there is a great temp, tation to go to town and rest up. This vast amount of cash being distributed through Texas for her cotton crop is not without its drawbacks. Comparatively nothing is being put b|ck into the sol] in the way of fertilizer. How long the black dirt will produce a year ly cotton crop no one knows, but there must be a limit. No Sectional Lines. There was a time when the Texas steer held the center of the eco nomlc state. Now the value of the entire number of cattle i n Texas Is about $150,000,000, and the number of cattle shipped out of Texas brings back in cash, annual ly. say approximately $30,000,000. At Fort Worth are immense packing plants conducted by the Armours and the Swifts. These concerns, I saw, were paying East ern prices for hogs, cattle and* sheep. That is to say. the price# the farmers receive In Fort Worth for hogs and cattle were the Iden tical prices being paid by Jacob Bold & Co. in Buffalo. I saw carloads of ham and ba con being unloaded at these pack ing houses. And when I asked where this came from they said: "It is shipped in here from Kansas City and Chicago.” So, behold the curious fact of Texas depending on Illinois, Missouri, lowa and Kansas for food products. I saw mules sold In the stock yards at Fort Worth at from S3OO to S6OO a pair—bought by farmers who had the good cash to pay for them. Good horses brought S2OO, and ejtra choice gaited saddle horses sold for S7OO and SBOO apiece. Texas Is neither North nor South. European Immigrants, and the Influx from the North, have broken down sectional lines. You get a good deal of the hustle of Denver in Dallas. Yankee enter prise is everywhere noticeable. Long years ago we were told that Texas lacked two things—society and water. You will find both of thefee here now in abundance. The two things that Texas really lacks are transportation and labor. There are no double-track rail roads In Texas. Melons, peaches, yams, sweet potatoes have been rotting in the fields for lack of transportation. The black dirt means fertility of soil, but it also means impassable roads at certain seasons. It cost# big money here even to get the product from the farm to the rail road station, and just now there is a dearth of freight cars. Suffers From Over-Legislation. Texas has suffered from over legislation. The provincial mind fears big business. Much of this fear is temperamental, and ha* come down to us from the remote past, when power was polite pil lage—and not always especially po lite. Texas laws have made it ditto cult for the railroads to butld »«*• operate. The railroads have been overtaxed, oversupervised, and sub jected to many harassing and ex- I asperating exactions. The tide seems to have turned. , however, and the people of Texas now realize that the prosperity o the state turns ou being broad ai generous rather than small suspicious. Texas Is an empire in herself bu: her resources will be practically ui guessed until the state joins hai ■ with big business—say as Cana 1; aoet—and then, indeed, will desert blossom like the rose, the waste places be made gr»*n. Texas could feed the world.