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EDITORIAL PAGE THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At W East Alabama St., Atlanta, Ga. Entered as second-class matter at postoffice at Atlanta, under act of March S. 187*. Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. By mail. J 5.00 a year. Payable In advance. A “Disturbance of Big Busi ness" Might be Useful i in One Way j It Might Put Some of the Really Big Men to Doing Construct ive Work, Instead oi Merely Grafting on Established In dustries. With a president who has promised to “DO SOMETHING,” with a senate and a house Democratic, and with the tariff the chief point of attack, we may see some very big gentlemen considerably disturbed before this administration goes out of power. It isn’t, likely that the country as a whole will be disturbed. But it is quite conceivable that some of the “big men ” who have had very pleasant, times dipping money up by the bucket will have to change their methods Perhaps, in the long run, it. would be a good thing to give something of a shock to present conditions. A good many big and able men in this country are wasting their time. If they found it impossible to continue the simple method of making all the money they want by forming monopolies and charg ing more, they might go into some kind of useful work. There Is no doubt that J. Pierpont Morgan is a very powerful and able man. If ho were compelled to do it, he could build up in dustries, create new property and new values and add something to the country’s wealth. Thus far he has been able to make all the, money he wanted merely by taking three or four businesses, putting them together, giving them a new name, issuing so many pillions or hundreds of millions of stock AND LETTING THE PUBLIC PAY SO MUCH MORE AFTERWARD FOR MATERIAL CONSUMED. Os course, the old-fashioned way of getting rich in a hurry was attractive. Where you had five men working for the public, each trying to sell cheaper than the other, the people got goods cheap. Along came one big man, put the five men together, paid each of them twice as much as his business was worth, AND THEN 'MADE THE PUBLIC PAY DOUBLE WITH THE POWER OF A MONOPOLY. That has been done in gas, in coal, in iron, in sugar, in many lines. The men that have arranged these organizations and monop olies have been powerful men. The work that they have done has been thus far very useful work. Monopoly, when it, overcharges because it is a monopoly, when it uses the power of organization to rob the public, instead of using it to serve the public, is a very bad thing. But, at the same time, it is a good thing. The monopoly that robs the public today WILL BE CON TROLLED AND OWNED BY THE PUBLIC TOMORROW. The lesson that the organizers teach to the public when they prove that one single man can run the whole industry in a nation will be learned by the public, which eventually wWI make it clear that the nation itself can run that industry. The work that the big men have done in combining many busi nesses into one, and making the public pay tens and hundreds of millions of profits in a few years or months, has had its good as well m Its bad side. Now, if that thing could be checked, if monopolies could be compelled to run on a basis of fair charges—regardless of the amount of stocks and bonds that the gentlemen in charge may have ran off on their printing presses, and if the very big men of the oountry could be put to w’ork at producing instead of combining, the country might he better off. In any case, we are going to see some interesting changes. A decisive vote such as that of November 5 must be followed by action of some kind. And whatever it is it will be interesting and full of meaning. 1 r What Will Happen to At lanta When a Half-Million People Live Here? *»».*! Records of Underground Construction Work Are Now Woefully Lacking in Number and Practically Without Value. The argument between Edwin I’. Ansley and Captain Clay ton. head of the department of construction of the city, has ‘brought out many interesting things. First, and most important, there are not enoiurii records of the things that lie two feet under the surface of the streets to a man that be could dig a hole anywhere in the city with i out encountering a gas pipe, a water pipe or a sewer. The Georgian dot's not intend to take the part of Mr. Ans ley or Captain Clayton. However, just at present Atlanta L growing faster than any city of its size in the country The civic development already has been outgrown by the population. The citv has not been run as a business concern. The rec ords of what lias been done, which would be invaluable when th? work which will have to be done is started, have not been kept. T he development of a city underground is of as much im portance as the development of the city above the surface. It is time a systematic, thorough record of all that lies un der the streets of Atlanta should be started. There should be a complete record of every pipe and everv sewer. Thousands of dollars have been wasted and millions more will be thrown away under lhe present system. On many jobs started now. thre- or four grades have to be followed because the men who are digging has. no idea of what obstacles they will encounter. Every year the contliiioiis will bee >m< wins and evers s ear kthe troubles <», Captain • iayton will b>- .-i.sed until under Atlanta is explored. ■ The Atlanta Georgian **— .. -- - ZjggSagZg . _'OwiißlUja' r 7~_‘ , AV//ir‘ ". 7 ' JBUBBfiMBI IBK -aw . ” What Comets Are Good For ACORRESPON DENT w h o writes a good hand asks me “What are these new com ets that I read about in the news papers good for, anyway? They seem to be popping up all around, and a great fuss is made about them, but I haven't got a telescope to look at them, and probably 1 couldn't tlnd them if I had. They are neither good to eat nor to look at; they can't lower the cost of liv ing, or put money in anybody’s pocket, so what's the use of bother ing with them'.' You astronomical sharps remind me of the old 'phil osopher' who stared at the stars until he fell into the ditch." There may be a considerable number of persons who feel like the writer of that letter. The world is full of people who never look over head, and who think that a dia mond on the ground is worth in finitely more than a star in the sky. It is for them that tills article is written. Won't Get Much Attention. It is true that the two new com ets which are now cleaving the deeps of space around the sun will probably never make enough dis play in the heavens to attract gen eral notice. \< :y likely they haven't got tts much substance in them as a Broadway skyscraper. If their heads were composed of gold nug gets or diamonds nobody could lay hfinds upon them, unless they should strike the earth, and then they would be turned Into vapor and fly away. From our point of view a comet Is worth absolutely nothing EXCEPT AS A PRO VOKER OF THOUGHT, but tor that purpose It is more valuable than a library full of books. All jtrue knowledge comes from observation, of nature. Every one of our great achievements on the e.fith is due to that alone. Books teach us nothing but what other men have thought or done. If we want to make an advance, and find out something new, we go to na tu.e Naturally enough we confine our attention principally to the phenomena of nature which are dose about us. things which we can touch and handle. But if no body had ever done anything more than that humanity would be no better than a collection of brute animals. „ The great distinctiot; between • icn and sn ,p is tuai t.ie latter ER I DAY. NOVEMBER 15, 1912. The Victors Drawn By HAL COFFMAN. By GARRETT P. SERVISS. •• think only of the grass, while the former think also of the stars. In thinking of stars man thinks of his higher nature. When he sees that there are a hundred million suns instead of one, he begins to comprehend at the same time his physical littleness and his intellec tual greatness. When he sees a new comet come sailing out of the depths of space to visit his sun, and reflects" that the inhabitants of other worlds and other systems may have gazed upon that comet long before his race began, he feels as the inhabitant of some lone island does when a ship with strange sails comes into sight over the horizon. At Home Anywhere. When he analyzes the light of the stranger, and finds that it is made of similar substances to thosß which exist on the earth, he feels that he would not be altogether lost no matter where he might wander in space. He would be at home on the utmost verge of the universe! AnJ. feeling this, lie feels, at the same time, that he is more than an inhabitant of the little earth—lie is an inhabitant of a vast Cosmos, and may live, by turns, in many worlds. Comets are the ships of space. Some of them are limited in the range of their voyages: tl’.oy skirt tht shores of our'solar system, and pass among the planets as little Last Love By ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. 'T'HE first flower of the spring is npt so fair ; *• Or bright as one the ripe midsummer brings. The first faint note the forest warbler sings Is not as rich with feeling, or so rare As when, full master of his art, the air Drowns in the liquid sea of song he flings Like silver spray from beak, and breast, and wings; The artist's earliest effort, wrought with care, IThe bard's first ballad, written in his tears. Set by his later toil, seems poor and tame. And into nothing dwindles at the test. So with the passions of maturer years. Let those who will demand the first fond flame. Give me the heart's last love, for that is best. coasting vessels travel from port to port, without venturing out upon the vast ocean beyond. Others ap pear to come from afar, across the boundless deep. They have seen strange sights; they have visited wonderful suns; they may have traversed the marvels of the Milky Way, and looked upon the riches of the great star-clouds and sun-clus ters! Trip of Comet Astonishing. What voyage so astonishing as that of a far-traveling comet! Sup pose you could embark upon one, and. endowed with endlessness of life, visit with it a hundred or a thousand suns, suns of various magnitudes, with infinitely diversi fied systems of planets revolving aroufld them! The suns exist and the comets exist, but man, in his present form, as we know him, can only follow them in imagination. But what is the meaning of that gift of imagination which enables him to follow them? Is it nut the greatest of our faculties, as far as w< have learned what our faculties are" Reason is weak, but the wings of the imagination never tire. AVars, elections, high prices, huge har vests, good times and panicky times do not constitute the true life of mail; they concern him for only a few short years which fly by and vanish like morning mists. The comets and the stars teach him what he really is. if only he will ponder upon their message. THE HOME PAPER Dorothy D i x Writes on Men s Interest / in W omen’s Views ' Vs. i Most Men Want L to Tell Their [ Troubles to Wo- 1 men, But Few ot Them Care to HearOtherFolks’ Troubles. A YOUNG woman who is en gaged to be married and who is, therefore, contemplating man at arm's length, so to speak, instead of from long range, has just discovered a masculine peculiarity that has. greatly puzzled her. It is her sweetheart's lack of In terest in her point of view, except as it affects himself, and the fact that he grows distrait and bored when she tries to talk to him about subjects that are of importance to her alone. She says she listens joyously and is absorbed while he discourses by the hour about his life, his hopes, the people lie knows and the suc cesses he makes, and the compli ments he gets from his employers, but that when she starts in to tell him something about herself, her business, her plans and hopes and successes he yawns in her face. He Does Love Her. She knows it isn’t because the man doesn’t love her, because he does. She knows it isn't because they are not congenial, because they have the same tastes, and he Is keenly interested as long as the conversation keeps to topics in which they are mutually concerned. It's only when she talks of things that belong to herself alone that his attention wavers and he begins to look at his watch. The girl wants to know why this is thus, and if this attitude on the part of her sweetheart indicates any lack of affection in him. Certainly not! And It Isn’t an eccentricity of her particular man. It’s a sex characteristic- All men are biqlt that way, and there Is no other jar in life that a woman gets that so completely knocks her ego tism into smithereens as the knowl edge that no man ever loves her enough to want to know the real woman inside of her—the woman that Is made up of her past life and her innermost thoughts and feel ings. Decline of the Turk By RtlV. THOMAS B. GREGORY. THE Turkish power never re covered from tho blow that it received at the siege of Vien na, in 1683, at the hands of So bieski, of Poland, and when on the back of that disaster there came to it, Jn 1717, the loss of Belgrade, it was already as good as settled that its doom was sealed. It might lin ger for generations, but its virility was gone. It was no longer a se rious menace to the white man’s rule in Europe. Between the insurrections of Ja nissaries and Mamiliikes at home and the batterings from French men. Englishmen and Russians from the outside, the Turks were forced to witness the slow, but steady and inevitable decline ot their once tremendous power in Eu rope. Piece by piece the sultan’s Euro pean territory was taken from him, and by 1854 it would have been easy for the powers to have put a quietus for good and for all upon the troublesome importation. The "Sick Man" was completely at the mercy of the quartet of nations— France. Russia, Austria and Great Britain —but, instead of doing their duty, they resolved that the alien institution which had for so long a time disturbed Europe should not be ended. The document in which this hypocritical and foolish agreement was set forth is known as the “Treaty of Vienna." which was signed by the diplomats April 8, 1854. Few proceedings more infamous ever disgraced the pages of his tory. For hundreds of years the ' Turks had been breeders of dis cord among the peoples of Europ*’. Religious fanatics, polygamous in their domestic life, and in pretty By DOROTHY DIX A man is contented with a sur face view of a woman. He takes her at what she Is, or what he thinks she is. He has no desire to know what has made her what she is, and no curiosity about what ex periences she has passed through unless he suspects them of having been evil ones. Doesn’t Want to Hear He doesn’t want to hear any sto ries about her childhood, or her school days, and if she tries to tell him about the time when she was a little glr! in pinafores with her hair in pigtails, or relates to him the thrilling adventures she had a s boarding school, he Is sure to re member a pressing engagement that calls him away from the talk fest. On the contrary, there is nothing under the sun that has ever ha.o --" pened to the man she loves that ie not of burning, throbbing heart In terest to a woman. She will sit up. spellbound, by the week while her sweetheart monologues along about the time when he was a little freckle-faced boy with warts on his hands, and of how he used to go to the old swimming holes, and snare birds, and so on. She wil! thrill over his college escapades, and aim Ply sit up and beg for more while he maunders on about his busi ness, and what he said to the book . keeper and the bookkeeper said to him. She is Flattered. No man hesitates to take up the time and attention of any woman friend by telling her of his troubles or of his achievements, and the woman Is flattered and pleased by this evidence of the man's confi dence. And she's Interested, too. but no woman would be foolish enough to expect any man, who wasn't her lawyer or her doctor and paid to listen to her affairs, to give ear for more than five minutes to her tale of woe, or to rejoice with 4- her in any success. nearly every respect the very oi posite of Europeans, they had beei a thorn in the side of the conti nent from the day on which thej had squatted upon its soil. Not only so, but, predisposed by their fatalistic faith to look will contempt upon all modern progress they acted the part of the dog h the manger, doing nothing them selves and unwilling that, others should do anything for them. There Is a chance now forth« "powers” to atone, in part at leas; for their silly and unwarranted ac tion in 1854. Once again the “Sic 4 Man” is in their hands, and it they will they can permit him to dio It looks as though, conscience smitten in their thought of the past they" were going to do just thai thing. The gallant little nation; who have most severely felt th* Turk’s atrocities have about driver their ancient enemy to the wall and the opinion is abroad that th* big nations are going to permit th* victors to reap the full reward oi their valor by driving the Turl hack to his old stamping grounds in Asia. By the time this appears in print Constantinople may have fallen and, after a period of four hun <lred> and fifty-nine years, passe* back again into the hands of th* Eastern Christians. And then I wilj appear whether the diplomat have or have not outgrown thei; old-time hypocrisy and greed. If they have, it will soon appea that the day of the Turk in Eu rope is over, if not, then the oli farce will be repeated, and war and rumors of wars, wounds am bloodshed and trouble genera l !.' shall continue over a matter tha should have been settled genera tions ago.