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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. Rntared as second-class matter at postoffice at Atlanta, under act of March S, I«7> Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. Ry mall. $5 00 a year Payable In advance. The Farmer’s Wife and the Outcast Hired Man ppp It’s an Old Story, But One Which Will Be Told and Retold Many, Many Times. A middle Georgia farmer's wife, 35 years old. the mother of several children, a tireless church worker. begins to feel sorry for one of her husband’s hired men. He is an outcast He has done nothing with his life. He has no friend in the world. The woman lias been accustomed to comforting others. Since her marriage, when she was a girl of Hi. she has been making those around her happy. As a matter of course, she sympathizes with the outcast. Before she realizes it she is lost. Her life's great work —that of being a good wife and a good mother —is blotted out. She is no longer either. The one misstep leads to a hundred others. Nothing is as easy as back-sliding. The husband whom she has worshipped for nineteen years is in the way. He is nothing more to her than an unromantie toiler. To gel rid of him would mean to collect the insurance on his life and to gain her own freedom. The more romantic outcast suggest- the means. All the good in her has been stifled and she agree-. She allows her husband to lie poisoned. Sin watehes h;s suffering ami waits for his death. She thinks of this still faithful, unsuspecting man as her life partner and the father of her children. For a moment the wife and the mother in her triumph. She knows the poison that is killing him and she knows the antidote. In an instant she has saved his life. Then comes the final struggle in her heart. It is brief. Months of evil have left her pitifully weak, and the good impulse is quickly crushed. All of her longing to be rid of him returns. She hates herself for having saved him. She allows the other man to follow him into the woods, snatch his gun away and shoot him to death. There was never a more harrowing story. Every detail in it is revolting: and yet. it is a story that must be told and retold. The moral in it began with the world. Thousands of times it has been re-enacted. Worse still, it will be re-enacted thousands of times again. A Bill Excluding Good Moth ers From the U. S. A bill forbidding the admission of immigrants to this coun try if UNABLE TO READ IN SOME RECOGNIZED LAN GUAGE, has been passed by the House of Representatives. Just what “a recognized language” is WE DON’T KNOW. We do know, however, that the phraseology of this bill is as foolish as it is vague, and that the bill is criminal and unworthy even of the men that passed it. Are the congressmen who voted for this bill aware of the fact THAT IT WOULD HAVE KEPT OCT THE MOTHERS OF MEN WHO HAVE ATTAINED GREAT PROMINENCE IN THE UNITED STATES HAD THEY ARRIVED HERE AS IM MIGRANTS? Do the eminent congressmen realize that what we need in tins country is GOOD men and women rather than educated men and women’ We have plenty of worthless human beings over here able to read and write, some of them in even more than one ‘‘recog-, nized language.” We might well trade dozens of them for some well-built strong woman of good character, good purposes, fond of children, WILLING TO BEAR CHILDREN, able to contribute something to this nation. It is to be hoped that this bill will be vetoed by the president of the United States, if it ever reaches him. It is a hill that would exclude, for instance, more than three-quarters of the population of Spain. For in Spain not one-quarter of the pop ulation is able to read or write. This does not mean, how ever, that we ought to keep out Spanish men and women of good character because of lack of education. On the contrary, we need their blood, their energy. We have here the public school system, the greatest institution of this re public. The children of the immigrants will read. And they will make better citizens in many cases, because thev come of parents LACKING IN EDUCATION, BUT WITH THE COUR AGE, ENERGY AND ENTERPRISE TO CROSS THE OCEAN AND COME TO THIS DISTANT COUNTRY Congressmen and senators that pass bills to keep good men and Aomen out of this country are like dogs in the manger, un able to utilize one-tenth of the possibilities that the country possesses, yet unwilling to let others come in and share. What are we ALL but immigrants or the descendants of im migrants? How many of the men in congress are descended from immigrants able to read? NOT ONE IN TEN Inability to read does not mean lack of character, lack of usefulness, but simply LACK OF OPPORTI NITY This country calls itself the country of opportunity. What a disgrace to shut out those most in need of our op portunity, those that have been deprived in their childhood of the chance that the public schools offer to all children here! We beg to tell the congressmen that it is not READING that makes useful citizens. BUT THINKING. And many a man ami woman in Europe, unable to read, but able to think, and long ing for opportunity in a free country, would make better citi zens for America than the man with all possibilities within himself and no energy to make him utilize it. You may be sure that the peasant mother of Leonardo Da Vinci could not read. But if we could bring one hundred thou sand such women to this country we would elevate the country considerably. You may be sure that the tanner's daughter who became the mother of William the Conqueror was unable to read. But SHE WAS ABLE TO HAVE A PRETTY GOOD SON, And what this country wants from women js not so much ability to read as a combination of the ability to think and to raise children. Ihe senate can not too quickly send to the waste basket the criminal bill which the house has thoughtlesslv and ignorantly Qi passed. The Atlanta Georgian Rapid-Fire Gunning on a Warship '' ■' A V Jib ■U -^^3^ * Man’s Gallantry and Love of Lucre AMAN who is violently opposed to woman suffrage has writ ten me a letter in which he says that the reason women have to stand up in street cars is be cause they want to vote, for men will never show any chivalry to women as long as women demanti their rights. This is an ancient argument of the antis, and it always strikes the funny bone of a person with any sense of humor. It is easy to an- I swer it by pointing out that if women had the ballot it wouldn’t be necessary for men to give them their seats on the street cars, be cause the women could pass laws that would force the street car companies to put on enough cars to carry everybody comfortably, in stead of herding people together, as is now done, in cars that are pack ed worse than cattle cars. Os course, men, having the weapon of the ballot in their hands, could institute that reform right now if they would take the trouble to do it. They' don’t, however. Perhaps they don’t object to being packed like sardines in a box. Per haps they don’t mind standing, or they don't mind seeing women stand, or they don’t object to hav ing their clothes half torn off them by their fellow victims pushing and squeezing and climbing over them as they try to get out at a station. Her First Reform. But women's shoes are not. built for standing in: women's clothes cost a lot of money and are ruined by being pawed over, and women do object to having S3O hats knocked out of shape by being squeezed Into the market baskets of the women next to them. So about the first thing women would do if they had the ballot would be to enact laws that would secure to every pas senger the decent transportation that he or -he pays for on street ears. It is also to laugh when a man gravely assures you that men will never show chivalry to women as long as women demand their rights. What sort of chivalry is it that de nies a woman her rights? It's rather a contradictory statement, isn't it? Plain, simple justice would give to woman her rights, and chivalry’ is supposed to go a step beyond justice, and give to a woman some thing more than her rights—her rights with frllis on them, so to speak. How absurd then to deny a woman what is honestly and justly coming to Iler, and then have the nerve to talk of chivalry’ in the same breath! In reality there is nothing in the world so absurd, and so utterly untrue, as the way people glorify the chivalry of the men of the past, and hold them up as models to the men of tjie present, who are ac cused of being brutal and uugal latit to women. "Look how men treat women! < liivalry is dead," they cry. Age of True Gallantry. Nonsense. Women were never treated so well In the whole history of the world as they are today. Men were never so truly knightly, and as for chivalry being deini, why, just any ordinary business man could make the whole of the Round Table look like pikers when it comes to showing true gallantry to a woman. The chivalry of the past! Con- MONDAY. DEI'EMBER 30, 1912. By DOROTHY DIN. • sider it, please. No woman could walk alone on the streets without danger of being insulted by every man she met. She had to be kept locked up in her father's house, as in a jail, to protect her. Now any decent, well-behaved girl, who will keep her eyes before her, can walk the city unmolested at midnight, and travel from one end of the country to the other without re ceiving anything but kindness and consideration from every man she meets. Southern Laws Worse. The chivalry of the past! It was so very tender to a female that it robbed her of every cent she had. A father left all of his money to his sons, with a vague understanding that they would look out for their sisters, which they gem rally failed to do. When a girl married evqry dollar of her property went to he)' husband, and he might drink it away, or throw it away, or spend it on other women. She had no con trol over a nickel of it, and couldn’t help herself. When it comes to a tight be tween money and the idealities, money is mighty apt to win out. and the gallantry of man hasn’t been wholly able to triumph over the love of lucre yet. The married woman still gets a cold deal about her property in most of the states, but men are getting more and more gallant all the time, and every year better property laws for women are enacted. It’s significant to note in this con nection that in the South, where men have the reputation of being the most gallant, the laws for wom en are the worst, and bear the hard est on them. In Louisiana and Texas, for instance, a married woman is nothing but a chattel, and her husband owns even her clothes. If she is a wage-earning woman, he ‘can collect her salary and spend it as he pleases, and if she owns property she can not even :: Realism in Art :: By MALCOLM DOUGLAS. Mike angelo m’CANN Was a famous painter-man; His works, agreed the critics, were .ideal; Just an humble onion grew With a skilful touch or two On his canvas till it actually smelled real. He would paint a bosky dell With a stack es hay so well That the cattle to his easel close would stray; If Mike Angelo McCann From his picture frightened ran. They were always sure to lick from it the hay. He would paint a spray of tlow'rs So that in a few short hours A swarm of bees to all the petals elung. And Mike Angelo would beat An undignified retreat From his studio for fear of getting stung. A still-life he would make Os a juicy, well-broiled stVak. Sliced tomatoes, and of radishes a bunch. And his wife was nor at fault When with pepper and with salt She would serve it to the family for lunch! C%J $3 C& npHIS photograph shows j A' the modern way of sight- $ ing a quick firing gun on a < battleship. On each side of the ghn s is an arrangement resem- < bling greatly a pair of huge opera glasses., while out on < top of the muzzle is a finder ? similar •in appearance to s those used on cameras of < certain types. A platform for the range- • finder to stand on is placed ? on each side of the cannon S near the base. < The platforms swing with j the gun while the sighting is ! going on. This form of sighting ap- i paratns allows a gunner to > become as proficient a ? cannon of this size as with j a. hunting rifle. z and has re- 5 suited in some wonderful S shooting records. %<3 • rent a house without taking to the agent a written permission from her husband. In Jennessee a man takes full possession of his wife’s property on the wedding day, and may spend it as he pleases, and if the wife ap plies for a divorce, no matter what the husband has done, the court will only allow her what it sees fit out of her own property. Now, it takes the real, genuine, bona fide brand of chivalry to make a man willing to legislate himself out of a soft snap, yet the modern man has proved his gallantry by do ing this very thing and passing laws that give women their own rights to their own property. Men have also shown their gal lantry by opening up th 5 doors of gainful occupations to women, so that a girl can make a living for herself if she needs to, instead of being forced Into the legalized har lotry of unloving marriage, which was the only way a poor woman had of avoiding starvation in the past. Height of Gallantly. The chivajry of the past! Don’t mention >t in comparison with the chivalry of today: Every man who gives a woman honest work to do and pays her an honest price for doing it, who treats every woman he meets as he would want some other man to treat his sister, and who deals fairly by his own wife, could put Sir Galahad in the gal lantry kindergarten class. And in ten states where knight hood is really In flower the men have given the women an equal share in government with them. The man who talks about women killing chivalry by demanding their rights doesn't know what the word chivalry means. It means more than giving a woman a seat in a street car. Give us the ballot, and we’ll attend to the street car busi ness ourselves. And we'll see that you get a seat that you don’t have • • to give up to anybody, Mr. Man. THE HOME PAPER Garrett P. Serviss Writes on The Earth’s Earliest Men Artists Not Only Did They Carve /Pictures on Tusks, But They Modeled in Clay Ages Ago. By GARRETT P. SERVISS. ONE of the most surprising dis coveries ever made about pie-historic man is that ot Count Begouin, made last fall in a . cavern in the foothills of the Py renee near St. Girons. Pushing his way into the heart of the hill, accompanied by his two sons, who aid him in his archaeo logical explorations. Count Begouin, after traversing a long upper gal lery. in the rock, and after being compelled to break a passage through stalagmite pillars, formed by the dripping of lime charged water for uncounted ages, came upon a recess, where he saw. to his amazement, two clay sjgtues, rep resenting, respectively, a male and a female bison, each something over two feet in lehgth. and modeled sb that the difference of sex, as well as the species of the animal, was unmistakably indicated. * They were true statuettes, in a walking attitude, the male follow ing the female. They stood on a slope of clay talus, to which they remained attached. A third unfin ished figure, the nature of which could not be made out, was found in the same place. Around them, and elsewhere in the galleries com posing the ancient cavern, were the footprints of the men.who had made them, or had seen them made, and these were superimposed upon the footmarks of cave bears which had .evidently Inhabited the cavern con temporaneously with the human beings? or immediately before they took possession of it as a dwelling place. Skeletons of the cave bear were also found and from these the canine teeth had been removed. Man’s Contemporaries. The significance of this discovery lies in the fact that it proves, for the first time, that some of the very earliest representatives of our race had learned to model in clay. These men belonged to what is called the paleolithic age, which means the Old Stone Age. from the Greek words palaios (“ancient”) and lithos ("stone”). At that time the weapons and utensils shaped by men were made of stone. They had not yet learned To employ metals. Afterward came the Bronze Age, and later the Iron Age. The enor mous antiquity of that time is shown by the single fact that then reindeer, cave bears (a species long since extinct), the bison, the mam moth and other animals that have vanished were contemporaries of man In southern Europe. It had been known for a long time that the men of that age were en dowed with artistic instincts. They carved the figures of animals on the tusks of mammoths, and they made rude paintings on the walls of their caverns, but now we know that they had also learned to shape ■ 1 Bismarck’s Great Mistake By REV. THOMAS B. GREGORY. ONE of the worst mistakes aver made by a really great man was when Bismarck, jn a speech in the German parliament, 28 years ago. declared: "Germany does not want colonies." It is said that Homer sometimes "nodded," and it is as certain as anything can be in this world that great chancellor was in the midst of one of the most terrific of nods when he. delivered that now historic speech. The “German Colonization socie ty” had been organized but a short time before at Frankfort-on-the Main, and as is now proved were wise in their generation, and it was in the attempt to throw cold water ui>on the plans of that organization that the Man of Blood and Iron uttered his famous obiter dictum. Only a little more than a quarter of a century has passed since Bis marck made that speech, and addle pated.lndeed is the German who does not realize most keenly that Germany's one great pressing need today is colonies—colonies where white men can live and prosper. The situation in Germany is rap idly becoming a.most serious one. The German people must soon reach Iff they have not already readied) the critical point where the population begins to overbal ance the means of subsistence, when the mouths to be fed and th* I •j* figures in clay, an achievement ; which has always been regarded as marking a much later stage in hu man progress than they were sup posed to have attained. As Profes sor .George Grant MacCurdy re marks: "The clay figures found by Count Begouin are unbaked, to be sure, but they prove that only the accident of firing stood between the Magdalenlan races and one of the great inventions of all time." It is easy to picture in the imag ination the feelings of the discover er of these statues, which had been hidden away in the depths of the hills so long that it is Impracticable to reckon their age in centuries, or even in periods of thousands of years. They so far antedate al! the nations ot history that Chaldea and Egypt and Rome seem but things of yesterday in comparison. The history of those times we shall never know. But the mark of hu man genius was put upon the earth even then. They Were True Artists. Here is a fact which science will be called upon to explain, if it can. Those early men were artists. They lacked skill, they had only the rudest kind of tools, they could not produce masterpieces, but they had .the gist of the matter in them. I hey were no mere animals. They possessed the supreme gift of im agination. Why did they model those figures of bisons in their cave and leave them there! It is not likely that they were idols. They saw those animals about them and knew what they were, knew that they were inferior to themselves. They modeled them in clay because to do so was to ex ercise a talent of which they were proud. 1 he makers of those images may have been looked upon as we look upon great artists today. The fig ures themselves may have excited as muel| admiration as the bronzes of Rodin do among us. Sparkling eyes, gazing out of hairy counte nances, saw with wonder these products of human art, gleaming in the faint light of the cavern fires Tlje simple fact that they were carefully preserved, to remain un touched for perhaps tens of thou sands of years, until Nature herself took a hand in their preservation by covering their hiding place with a screen of limestoAe, proves the regard in which they were held. But the mystery behind it all is the question: “Whence came this artistic instinct, this inborn desire to MAKE THINGS—not merely things that would appeal to the im agination and surround life with purely ideal creations of man’s own hands and brain! All subsequent human progress I was foreshadowed in those clay ini * ages. r bodies to be clothed are too numer ous for the capabilities of the so , and unless an outlet is provided for the threatening human surplus, t ie most dire consequences are inevi table. An illustration well describes he situation in which Germany flndt itself. The area of the whole Ger man empire is 208,00 square miles, and its population is nearly seventy millions; while the single state of Texas has an area of over 265,0<>" square miles, with a population of some three millions. If this does not prove that Ger many wants Colonies, then it would be difficult to _say what it does prove. Germany wants colonies and wants them badly. She has considerable territory in Africa, but it happens to be territory such as can not be permanently and profit ably occupied by German people. The climate is against them, and against them in away that can not be helped by German science. A law greater and stronger than the best science has decreed that I certain parts of the earth the white man can live only at his peril—a very great peril, too, and one that is sure to come if invited. Verily, the statesmen of the "Ka therland” have a tremendous prob lem before them, and it does nor yet appear, even to the most dl cerning minds, how it is to b« solved.