Newspaper Page Text
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 postoCfice at Atlanta, under act of March 3. IB7J
Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier. 10 cents a week. By mall. |5 00 a year
Payable in advance.
The Display of Automobiles
Is a Display of Human
Intellect and Progress
Man's eternal struggle has been to free himself from the powr
of gravitation, to be free, physically anti mentally, from stagnation
anti inactivity. The automobile gives man power to see anti know
the earth.
Do not fail to see the automobiles which are exhibited at the
automobile show.
to t an automobile if you can. You can get now a car that is
cheaper to buy anti cheaper to keep Ilian a good horse and buggy.
And the automobile will do ten times the work of the horse.
If yon only buy ONE automobile, BUY AN AMERICAN MA
CHINE.
The man who makes his money here in America and spends it
for a machine made abroad, instead of helping American manu
facturers, is thoughtless, or something worse.
’Hie automobile means better health for millions in the present
and for tens of millions in the future. For health is largely a ques
tion of oxygen absorbed. And the automobile is the great OXY
GEN DOCTOR.
The automobile is the blessing of the aged. No sight is liner,
more worthy of our country, than a young man, prosperous or ris
ing toward prosperity, rolling along the country roads with bis
family, including his old father or mother, or both of them, in the
ear with him.
I sually we preach economy and sticking well within your
means. But we make an exception for the automobile. If you can
buy a machine and only BARELY keep out of debt. BUY IT. Do
not wait until your parents are dead, or until your wife is too old
to enjoy the fun.
GET YOUR MACHINE NOW.
And if you are the right sort, you will get back your money in
added health, added knowledge of your country, and especially in
the true inspiration that comes from giving happiness to others.
The automobile is destined to make all human beings acquaint
ed with nature and with wide expanses of country.
‘ The automobile will free horses and other creatures from slav
ery. And the automobile will free human beings from cruelty. For
no man beats his automobile. He knows what the horse driver does
not know, that the fault is with himself.
The automobile is one of the greatest monuments to human
genius and to man’s victory over the law of gravitation, that would
keep us glued Io the same spot —if we would let it.
See tin cars, big and little, cheap and dear.
Get as good a ear as you can buy—within your means. Re
member that price does not always mean quality.
Get your car THIS year. Study it. understand it, take care
of it. add an interest to your life, give health to your family and
encourage a great American and humanitarian industry.
I *
Making Young Americans
The case of the British schoolboy of Cedar Grove. N. -J., who
respectfully saluted the flag, but was expelled from
school because he refused to swear allegiance to it. deserves
comment and reflection.
Os course, all sensible Americans will sympathize with the
boy’s father—who paid his taxes and insisted on his right to
send his son to school. And. of course, all sensible Americans
will be glad to learn that the boy has been reinstated in his
class by the overruling power of a state school board.
But what is to be said of the shrill and turbid Americanism
of the local school authorities at Cedar Grove?
Can patriotism be packed into formal oaths and imposed by
law 1 This seems to be putting the cart before the horse. Young
Americans in the public schools should be made to understand
that their patriotism does not depend upon the strength of the
law that, on the contrary, the strength of the law depends
upon their patriotism.
One could wish that it had not been left to a foreigner in
Cedar (trove to protest against the imposition of an oath upon
a schoolboy. Every American in town should have protested
against it.
It is tine to salute the flag, and to learn to freely love it and
glmw in it. Bui the American schoolboys in Cedar Grove, as
well as the young Briton, should refuse to tile an affidavit on
the subject.
Nothing could be more subversive of democratic institu
tions than this Cedar Grove kind of patriotism—which stands
on its head ami kicks its heels in the air. seeing everything
upside down.
There is ;l professional kind of patriotism that is not pa
triotism at all. Its yawp of intolerant devotion is the braying
of an ass.
Public Safety and the Trolley
Following lln great railroad growth in the I'nited States
has In cfi the spread of electric lines. At a meeting of the Amer
ican Electric Railway Association, recently held in Chicago. it
was shown that in thirty years nearly two thousand miles of (“lee
trie lines have been built annually until now there are 43,000
mihs owned and operated by 1.3i>0 railroads carrying more than
ten billion passengers a year.
11 is io lr hoped, however. that the railroads in absorbing
•icetr.c I nes will not do so at the expense of public safety. A
r eem wreck showed that the Xew Haven road has neglected
iWyde. i improvements because of tin tremendous expense of ac
quiring trolley systems.
'I lee is small sense of providing greater traveling v facili
ties |>\ trolley .f traveling by steam is to !>■ made dangerous
as a result.
The Atlanta Georgian
The Talkers
Drawn By TAD.
Bite.n
fWWi 1
I*ll
V
The picture above shows a scene to be witnessed in many an office. Every one is interested
in the story the funny man is telling. They all see the point, but they forget that jokes
can't take the place of work. Life turns out a bitter sort of joke to those who don’t work in
working hours.
The Future of Daughters
Es VER since the beginning of
civilization men have taken
thought of their sons’ fu
tures It has been a poor father
who has not tried to educate his
boys, and to have them taught
some trade or profession, or estab
lish them in some business whereby
they could support themselves and
And some congenial interest in life.
Singularly enough, few parents
ever pursue this course with their
daughters. The girl's future is left
unprovided for, on the cheerful the
ory that site will marry, and in
matrimony find both a profession
and a livelihood.
In the past this plan has worked
out fairly well, although it has
forced tens of thousands of women
Into unwilling and unloving wed
lock, to b< the everlasting misery of
the men they married, because no
other career was open to them than
matrimony. Still, moist women did
marry, but the timu of the univer
sal bridal veil and wedding bells
for the feminine sex is over. The l
increased cost of living, the preva
lence of divorce, the multiplicity of
other interests, perhaps the gen
eral disinclination of both,sexes to
relinquish their freedom and as
sume new burdens, has caused an
enormous falling off in the number
of marriages.
Must Consider Her Future.
The plain Huth is that in the
present financial conditions many
men find it impossible to marry,
and under present social conditions
many women find it unattractive to
marry.
Therefore, the father of daugh
ters can not console himself with
the reflection that it doesn’t mat
ter about providing for his girls,
for they will before long marry,
because some of them will be sure
not to marry.
The problem, then, of the unmar
ried daughter becomes a very se
rious one. What is tills woman with
her life before her. with intelligence
and heath and energy, going to do
with herself?
of course, if the woman is the
daughter of a very rich man. or a
very poor one, the question more or
less settles itself if she is a mil
lionairess. she will find h. inter -
ests in society or philanthropy. If
she is poor, she will go to work and
be happy and useful in whatever
occupation she elects to follow.
The unfortunate woman is the
girl who belongs to the weil-to-do
class whose father is able to pro
vid- her with food and clothes so
that site does not actually have to
go out to work, but who is not rich
enough for ills wealth to give her a
career in itself
Such father-, teli-lc: ano oving
tow.-rd thei daughters, ...■sire for
affection’s sak- ..nd for pride's sake
to keep their daughters at Urine,
MONDAY, NOVEMBER Is, 1912.
By DOROTHY DIN
•• and they can not see why their
Marys and not happy and
satisfied in the family nest. Haven’t
the girls kind parents? Haven’t
they a comfortable home? Haven’t
they as good clothes as their friends
and neighbors? And haven’t they
nothing to do?
ft sounds to the harassed fa
ther. vexed at what he considers
■ x-w
DOROTHY DIX
the unreasonableness of woman
kind. that he is describing an earth
ly paradise. He can not compre
hend that there are no women on
the face of the earth more to be
pitied than the old maid daughters
in comfortable homes.
No lives are so dreary as those
of women who have no real inter
est, no real occupation, who are
stirred by no real emotions, and
who see themselves growing old
and gray and withered, wasting
thei energies on knitting tidies
and embroidering doilies when they
know themselves capable of doing
better things.
One Form of Bondage.
Yet. when they propose to go out
into the world and follow some
profession or business and make an
individual life for themselvi*. as
their brothers have done, they meet
witii such opposition from their
parents that only the boldest have
the coil age to tight tile family to a
standstill and follow their own de
sires. Tiie more unselfish and as-
fectionate yield to their fathers'
and mothers’ silly opposition and
remain at home in perpetual bond
age and vassalage, children that
never grow up, but are kept in
mental pinafores even when their
hair is gray.
The inevitable result of keeping
any able-bodied, grown-up woman
in tutelage and depriving her of a
legitimate vent for her activities is
bound to be disastrous. It is what
has made the appellation "old
maid" a term of reproach. For the
woman who has had no business
of her own. has poked her nose
into everybody elee’s business and
thereby stirred up trouble. While
on the other hand there are no
women more broad-minded, more
agreeable, or better liked, than
those unmarried women whose lives
are filled full of the absorbing in
terests of some occupation in which
they- find a compensation for what
ever they have missed in matri
mony.
Another phase of the situation
that parents overlook is this, that
the income that suffices to keep
n family comfortable when they are
all together will not support the
individual members in comfort
when they go their separate ways,
and thus many a spinster is thrown
out on the world with a mere pit
tance to live on when her father
dies. She knows no way of mak
ing a living. She is an amateur at
everything because she has only
helped her mother keep house, she
has only helped her sisters take
care of the children, she has only
worked in a ladylike way at every
thing. And the result of this ama
teurishness is starvation wages.
Pale Gray Spinster No More.
The time has come when par
ents need to face the real situa
tion of woman tn the present day.
They must realize that there are
just as 'many chances that their
daughters will not marry as that
they will marry, and have their
girls taught some way of making a
living just as much as they do their
boys.
And they must realize, if their
daughters do not marry, that they
must help, not hinder, them in find
ing the kind of work that they want
to do in the world. For no human
being, male or female, can be either
good or happy who has not some
absorbing interest in life, some
worthy object.
The day of the pale gray anemic
spinster, w-ho was content with the
husks of existence, is gone by.
The modern unmarried woman de
clines to be the family martyr, and
it is time that her parents cease
trying to thrust that role upon her.
The bachelor woman doesn't propose
to lag superfluous upon the stage.
She wants to get busy, and her fa
ther and mother should help her to
THE HOME PAPER
Garrett P. Serviss
Writes on
“Modern
Wonders”
Present Achievements in Irrigation and Water
Supply Are Simply Improvements or. Un
derlying Ideas of Ancients, a,vd, on the
Whole, Progress Made in 2,000 Years
Has Been Rather Slow.
By GARRETT P. SERVISS.
T I THEN New York’s immense <
Yy new aqueduct is completed
it will rank very high
among the engineering marvels of
the world, and will measure up to
the civic magnitude and impor
tance of the future metropolis of
the earth. In some of its details it
is unmatched in human achieve
ment. The great siphon, carrying
an imprisoned vlver under the bed
of the Hudson at the Highlands,
and the supply tunnels that are to
come up 700 feet out of the rocks
underneath the city afe' works
worthy of the hand of nature her
self. In their grandeur they recall
geological phenomena.
Where We Are Great,
But while we indulge a justifiable
prlde*ln admiring these things, we
are In danger of exaggerating their
importance. We are apt to think
that such achievements are pecu
liar to our age and time. We be
come unjust and contemptuous to
ward antiquity, which is a foolish
state of mind, because It leads us
to the erroneous conclusion that we
are incomparably greater than were
the men who built empires ai|<l
cities thousands of years ago.
As a matter of fact we are great
er onlj- in the mastery which ad
vancing science has given us over
certain details. We are greater in
some things and smaller in others.
Even In our own chosen field of
mechanical science we must not
boast too heedlessly. Suppose that
some proud old Roman—let us say
of the days of Diocletian—could
tread the soil of the New World and
examine our new aqueduct. We
should look in vain for any sign of
amazement in his eyes when he
saw a vast city supplying itself
with water by bringing it from the
mountains many miles away. The
carrying of the water beneath the
bed of a broad river might interest
him, but he would not be surprised.
He would say:
“This you have accomplished be
cause you have a better way of
making cement and better ma
chines for penetrating the rocks
than we had. But did not the Ro
mans, centuries before my time,
drive a tunnel 6,000 feet through
the lava rock of Mount Albanus to
let the waters out of its great
crater? I see nothing essentially
astonishing in what you have done.
We could, anfi would, have done
similar things if we had had the
advantage of two thousand years
of progress. Upon the whole, I
think you have been rather slow.
Still Defy Imitation.
“Consider what we had accom
plished before the barbarians de
scended upon us. We carried wa
ter to Rome from the mountains
forty miles away, and we built
nine great aqueducts, three of which
are still bearing water to Rome,
Battle of Sentinum
By REV. THOMAS B. GREGORY.
THE battle of Sentinum, fought
2,?C7 years ago. had as many
great issues hanging upon it
as any battle recorded in history.
Had the battle resulted otherwise
than it did it is certain that the
whole course of human history
would have been radically different
from what it is today.
The struggle of the Romans with
the Samnites and their allies,
which began B. 328, for the po
litical supremacy of the Italian
peninsula, ended at Sentinum 33
years later with victory for Rome.
Allied with the powerful Sam
nites were pretty nearly all the
peoples of Italy, and more than
once during the struggle was
Rome brought close to the brink
of destruction. At the Caudine
Forks the Romans were made to
drink to the very bottom of the cup
of humiliation, and so great was
the depression among the future
masters of the world that all but
the most heroic of them felt that
the day of doom had surely come.
But the victory at Sentinum
more than atoned for all the rest.
In this epoch-making battle about
170.000 of the finest fighters then to
be found on the earth took part,
about equally divided between the
Romans and the allies.
All day long and until well into
the night the opposing forces
fought like demons, each side
seeming to realize that it was to be
the great decisive struggle of the
war. The Samnites were as valiant
by nature as the Romans, and their
allies were all splendid soldiers,
and more than once during the day
it seemed impossible to forecast the
result.
On the Roman right the allies
were holding their ground in splen
did fashion, while on the left the
terrible Gauis were beginning to
play havoc with the children of
Romulus, when, all at once, the
i|-
iftll
• while their huge lines of masonry
with their mighty arches di .1
even your powers of imitation. All
over the world, wherever we
marched and planted cities. «■,.
constructed roads and aqueducts
that remain today, some almost as
good as when they were built.
"Comparing the tools that a a ad
witli yours, and the state of prac
tical science in our time with what
it is today, I can not feel abashed
in your presence. On the contrary.
I am rather surprised that you
have done so little. You are still
following in the track we marked
out. Your great engineering in
ventions are nothing more than im
provements. The underlying ideas
are all ours.”
Then, out of the Elysian Fields,
might come a shade to rebuke the
Roman, one of the engineers who
served the great Amenemhat of
Egypt, who would say:
“Proud Roman, sneer no more at
these fledgling Americans. Look to
your own laurels. YOU brought
water from the mountains to Rome,
though the Tiber flowed at your
feet: WE, in Thebas, drank the
mighty Nile to satisfy our thirst
and the thirst of our teeming land.
You talk of your masonry and your
aqueducts! Look at ours! So far
from improving upon them, you did
not equal them."
What We Mustn’t Assume.
Then, from all over the ancient
world, and from the most distant
tracts of time, would flock the en
gineers of the past, and one would
say: “King Solomon built aque
ducts for Jerusalem;” and another:
“Semirainis made Babylon glorious
with sparkling waters,” and anoth
er, “Zenobia, the Palmyian queen,
turned Tadmor of the desert into
a garden of roses,” and from the
far-off land of Confucius would
come ( one who would say: “Thou
sands of years before Greece or
Egypt or Chaldea was heard of,
we Chinese had seized the waters
of the great yellow rivers that flow
down from the roof of the world and
begun the vastest system of irriga
tion that is known to man.”
So, it will not do to assume, as
we are too prone to do, that these
tilings are the inventions of our
time. The most that ue can eiaini
for ourselves is that wv have made
good use of our opportunities. We
are still working along the old lines,
and neither when we train rivers
into new courses, or bore boles
through mountains, or draw v. ater
from the rocks beneath, or nay
streams over long arches of ma
sonry, or construct artificial lakes,
or honeycomb the soil beneath ou’.
cities with conduits, are tve doing
anything that would astonish our
predecessors of 20, or 40, or > ven
80, centuries ago. As far as we ■an
see their brains were as good as
ours, but our hands have acquhed
• more cunning.
consul bado the priest devoi. to i
the infernal gods both the head of
the Roman general and the arm, of
the enemy; and, plunging into the
thick of the tight with his smdi'i'.s
the Hauls wore scattered lil<" ch
Disheartened by the High; of me
Gauls, tiie rest of the allies g '
way. and the battle was over. V
thousand of the flower of the lie
man youth lay dead upon the field,
and twice that number of the bi-st
a.nd bravest of the opposition ay
with them.
Il was a costly victory, but it
was worth, all that was paid for st.
The army of the coalition was > i--
solved, and with it the coalie ’
itself.
The Romans were now the unms
puted masters? of Ita’y. and i.ul
made the first great step toward
the conquest of the world. The
city of Romulus was now 48<> > 1 irs
old, and the national domain
tended from the Cimmean Wood in
Etruria to the middle of the 1 !
pania. It was called the Ag. r Rf>-
anmus (the Land of the Romans 1 ,
and had st population of 290.n00
capable of bearing arms.
Ten years after the crowning '
lory of Sentinum the celebrat™
King Pyrrhus landed in Italy >'i“-
a great army of invasion, but.
though owing to his remarks
military genius. Pyrrhus for a tint
made some trouble for the Roman?,
he was soon disposed of. and
with tiie whole Italian penin-m
as a secure base, the Romans hr*
gan to reach out for the w..rl‘
empire which they finally se.-m
All thoughtful people ar. •
vlnced that, as conditions
were, it was well that that ■ >
was established. It was n.-wss
that the warring tribes and m
should be unified and taught li"
great principles of law and 0r...
The Romans did that; and
were able to do it only becau.' 1
they beat the Samnites and their j
allies at the battle of Sentinum.