Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

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 postofflce at Atlanta, under act of March 3, 187 J Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier. 10 cents a week. By mall, 35.00 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 power of gravitation, to be free, physically and mentally, from stagnation and inactivity. The automobile gives man power to see and know the earth. Do not fail to see the automobiles which are exhibited at the automobile show. Get an automobile if you can. You can get now a car that is cheaper to buy and cheaper to keep than a good horse and buggy. And the automobile will do ten times the work of the horse. If you 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. Tim automobile means better health for millions in the present and for tens of millions in the future. Eor 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 finer, more worthy of our country, than a young man, prosperous or ris ing toward prosperity, rolling along the country roads with his family, including his old father or mother, or both of them, in the car 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. Eor no man beats his automobile. He knows what the horse driver does not know, that the fault is with himself. Tin* 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 to the same spot if we would let it. See the cars, big and little, cheap and dear. Get as good a car 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 familv and encourage a great American and humanitarian industry. Making Young Americans The case of the British schoolboy of Cedar Grove, X. J.. who respectfully saluted the American Hag'. 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 bis 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? 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 Grove to protest against the imposition of an oath upon a schoolboy. Every American in town should have t protested against it. It is tine to salute the flag, and to learn to freely love it and glory in it. But the American schoolboys in Cedar Grove, as well as the young Briton, should refuse to file 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 and kicks its heels in the air, seeing everything upside down. There is a professional kind of patriotism that is not pa triotism at all. Its yawp of intolerant devotion is the braying of an ass. Public Safetv and theTrollev Following the great railroad growth in the United States has been the spread of electee 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 elec tric lines have been built annual!' until now there are 43,000 miles owned and operated by 1.300 railroads carrying more than ten billion passengers a year. It is to be hoped, however, that the railroads in absorbing electric lines will not do so at the expense of public safetv. A recent wreck showed that the Xew Haven road has neglected modern - improvements because of the tremendous < xpense of ac quiring trolley systems. There is small sense of providing greater traveling facili ties by trolley if traveling b\ steam to be made dangerous The Atlanta Georgian ! Wftlf w! ■ i W* It Wife \ ; WWHWII 'J|W t Ihe 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. Phe Future of Daughters I"~x VER since the beginning of d civilization men have taken thought of their sons’ fu tures it has b en a poor father who lias 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 find some congenial interest in life. Singularly enough, few parents eve- pursue lids course with their daughters. The gin s future is left unprovided for, oh the cheerful the ory that she 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 be the everlasting misery of the men they married, because no other career was open to them than matrimony. Still, most women did many, but the time of the univer sal bridal veil and wedding bells for the feminine sex is over. The increased cost of living, th- 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 otT in the number of marriages. Must Consider Her Future. The plain truth is that in the prest nt financial conditions many men find it impossible to marry, and under present social conditions main 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 this woman with her life before her, with intelligence and health and energy, going to do with herself? Os 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 her’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 well-to-do class, whose father is able to pro vide her with food and clothes so that she does not actually have to go out to work, but who is not rich enough for his w ealth to gi'e her a career tn itself. Such father-, tender and loving towaid tliei. daughters, desire for iff--••tivn s s.m and for pride's sake to keep their daughters at home. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18. 1912. The Talkers Drawn Bv TAD. By DOROTHY DIX *t* and they can not see why their Marys and Janes are 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? It sounds to the harassed fa ther, vexed at what he considers a* I A 'W* MHa / -180 J DOROTHY DIX. the unreasonableness of woman kind. that b." 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 their energies on knitting tidies and embroidering dollies 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 themselves, as their brothers have done, they meet with such opposition from their parents that only the boldest have the courage to fight the family to a standstill and follow their own de sires. The more unselfish and aX- * fectionate yield to their fathers’ and mothers’ silly opposition and remain at home in perpetual tiond 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 else’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 th!F 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 in 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, who 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, nd her fa ther and mother should help her to J* THE HOME PAPER J Garrett P. Serviss Writes on “Modern Wonders” Present Achievements in Irrigation and Water Supply Are Simply Improvements on Un derlying Ideas of Ancients, and, on the Whole, Progress Made in 2,000 Years Has Been Rather Slow. By GARRETT P. SERVISS. WHEN New York's immense 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 river 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 are 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 pride in 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 and cities thousands of years ago. As a matter of fact we are great er only 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 f<*et 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, and 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,?'7 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. C. 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 Caudirie 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 dfiy- 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. tin the Roman right the allies were holding their ground In splen did fashion, while on the left the terrible Gauls were beginning to J»lmV ••■?»»» * - , h s ’' 3 Os Ttomuius, when, all at once, the -JU I —- i* while their huge lines of masonry with their mighty arches defy even your powers of imitation. All over the world, wherever we ■ marched and planted cities, we constructed roads and aqueducts I that remain today, some almost as I good as when they were built.’ “Comparing the tools that we had with 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. V might come a shade to rebuke the I 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. r Then, from all over the ancient I. world, and from the most distant V tracts of time, would flock the en- I gineers of the past, and one would 1 say: “King Solomon built aque ducts for Jerusalem;” and another: “Semiramis made Babylon glorious with sparkling waters,” and anoth er, “Zenobia, the Palmyian queer, 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 yelloiv 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 things are the Inventions of out time. The most that we can claim for ourselves is that we 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 holes through mountains, or draw water from the rocks beneath, or carry streams over long arches of ma sonry, or construct artificial lakes, or honeycomb the soil beneath ou cities w’ith conduits, are we doing anything that would astonish our predecessors of 20, or 40, or ever 80, centuries ago. As far as we can see their brains were as good as ours, but our hands have acquired • more cunning. • f consul bade the priest devote to the infernal gods both the head of the Roman general and the army of the enemy; and, plunging into ths thick of the fight with his soldiers, the Gauls were scattered like chaff. Disheartened by the flight of the Gauls, the rest of the allies gave way, and the battle was over. Nir thousand of the flower of the K< man youth lay dead upon the fleb” and twice that number of the b--st and bravest of the opposition ay with them. It was a costly victory, bus it was worth all that was paid for it. The army of the coalition was ab solved, and with it the coalition Itself. The Romans were now the undl puted masters of Italy, and had made the first great step toward the conquest of the world. The city of Romulus was now 480 years old, and the national domain ex tended from the Cimmean Wood in Etruria to the middle of the Cam pania. It was called the Ager Ro anmus (the Land of the Romans), and had a population of 290,000 men capable of bearing arms. Ten years after the crowning vic tory of Sentinum the celebrated King Pyrrhus landed in Italy with a great army of invasion, but, a - owing to his remarkable military genius, Pyrrhus for a time made some trouble for the Romans, he was soon disposed of, and then, with the whole Italian peninsula as a secure base, the Romans be gan to reach out for me world empire which they finally secured. All thoughtful people are con vinced that, as conditions then were, it was well that that emplP was established. It was necessary that the warring tribes and nation? should be unified and taught the great principles of law and order. The Romans did that; and the; were able to do It only because tiny beat the Samnites and their allies at the battle of Sentinum.