Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

EEHTORIAL PAGE 1912-—A Year of Progress and Prosperity For Atlanta > 1* T. And There Is Every Good Reason to Believe That 1913 Will Witness Even Greater Strides. Nineteen hundred and twelve has proved the greatest year in the history of At lanta. A careful study of the city's progress during the last twelve months shows advancement beyond tin- dreams of the most enthusiastic. It shows, too, that with a few more years of equal prosperity, this city will take its place among the greatest municipalities of the world. An in\cstigat ion of industries, wholesale and retail business and general con ditions prove that practically all have shared in the good fortune of 1912. This adx iiu*' ol prosperity has come in a year when climatic conditions have ; e'tn mcly unfavorable. The continued rains of the spring and the earlv >iim. • brought great hardships to the farmer. Much of'his crops rotted in the gror. ii. c d his cotton was greatly impaired. "' i 'ars ago these conditions would have meant almost total destruction of ,ar i-odiiets. Bill now cultivated land is carefully drained, ami despite the I ■ n - some oi the soil that formerly would have been under water has yc, <p] • -.i fair crops. ■ • ■Io iliis and oilier scientific advances in farming methods, the crop is more than could be hoped for. and Atlanta naturally benefited by :< . mors' increased efficiency. Despite I lit gl lomy prophecies of a few years ago. Atlanta real estate has ■ ■’-d 10.-0.-r. At no time during 1912 was there a pause. The ••boom citv” ispeci of a few \ears back disappeared. Prices were fixed on solid valuation. ■ d silcs were made accordingly. Otic piece of Peachtie • street property sold for $8,200 a foot. 11 was the iighc<i I a cvei paid for property in the South—but it probably was the best •ie<-e of proper!) ever sold in the South. Other Peachtree street property brought nore than 50 per <-cni profit during the year, but the physical valuation proved hat the lasi prices paid were not too high. One tract that sold for $l5O an acre thirty years ago, recently brought $lB,- 100 an acre, and other cases equally as remarkable might be cited. Approximalt l\ *1(1.000,000 changed hands in real estate deals during the year, md several millions were spent developing suburban districts, where well-built, ((tractive homes are now springing up. Building permits are flu* recognized barometer of a city’s prosperity. At anta's record lor 1912 is $9,902,000. This compares with $6,215,000 in 1911. an in ■rea -e of *3,717,000. ' his increase can not be attributed to one specific cause. A search of the rec >rds shows permits for a larger number of homes, hotels, office buildings, facto ■ies and ap irlment houses than in former \ ears. Managers of department stores report that their business has been larger bv 11 I l>! '''‘id in 1912 than in former years and the same thing is true in other re ad lines. _________ * \llanta s health record—always fine, mainly on account of climate—has been cd since Lt-j January 1. Hygienic education has done much to bring about I ' -t re.-;dt<. ■ ; o< al 1 .ale has lalleii from 18.70 per thousand persons in 1911 to 16.25 per persons in 1912. a decrease of 2.45 per thousand. Among the whites the <"■ ; ear's death rale was, 13.46 and among the negroes 20.82 per thousand. ■ t‘ iidaih-e in Ihe city schools in 1910-1911 was 21,418. At the present time -•>..>'•! pupils, an increase oi 1,916. Before the end of the term in June, ’oil nore will be added to the rolls. \i cording to the city directory, just published, the population of Atlanta is I'he census of 1910 gave the population as 154,839. If this ratio is held >i> an lii undoubtedly will he increased —there will be between 150,000 and >OO.OOO Atlantans in 1920. Truly this is a wonderful record when it is taken into consideration that just 1 few years ago there was 110 such city as Atlanta. All of tie sc facts ami figures arc presented to give an idea of the progres 'ixi 'ie-s ol the cit\ and to stir the imagination as to its future magnitude. The nunicipal government must catch step with the citizens who are continually forging ahead. Streets must be well constructed and kept in repair: adequate sewers must •1 built: schools must he erected: the smoke must be eliminated: parks must be mproved: substations must he secured to heighten the efficiency of the police; Hid factional politics must be thrust aside whenever the welfare of the citv is involved. A new admiiiist ration is taking charge of municipal affairs, and there is an avowed intention among officeholders to work jointlv for the good of the citv and to hiirv personal prejudice. 1 ,l; citv officials making good their resolution to co-operate, with private ■ rprise and capital developing and pushing forward at the present rate, with Vil.tnian loyal to his citv and taking a personal interest in its good name ‘ " h' Hi rment. there is every reason to believe that 1913 will far surpass in po-'peiiiv and progress that wonderful yetjr just ending. The Atlanta Georgian l i'ESDAY. DECEMBER 31. 1912. Ready For the New Page \ By UAL COFFMAN. x>--d,..; w ■ N 'w \\ A\ ; ■ f - a'-'T.y f j ■ The Mother -m-Law as Trouble-Maker i . —"'"' ' " - - ' By DOROTHY DIX HAVE you noticed that the mother-in-law joke is dead? That the cartoonist and the humorist have ceased to exhaust their wit in depicting a fat and fussy old lady, descending like a. prestilence on ati unwilling house hold ? You have noticed it? And you suppose that the ancient jest had perished of old age, didn't you? Not at all. It is because xxe have suddenly recognized that the moth er-in-law is not a thing to make merry over. She is tile greatest menace there is to domestic peace and happiness. She is no longer a comic figure. She is tragedy in carnate. A few days ago a distinguished and conservative jurist who tries so many divorce cases that he Is called a divorce judge, declared that over 75 per cent of the men and xvomen whose matrimonial difficul ties he was called on to settle would have gotten on well enough to gether if it had not been for their in-laws. Sometimes it was the man's mother who made the trouble; sometimes it was the woman's mother, but everywhere it was tile mother-in-laxx who was the first aid to divorce. This is an appalling state of af fairs, and it is time tiiat women faced the fact tiiat the divorce evil is not going to be cured by preach ers, nor sociologists. nor laws, nor lawyers, but it is in the hands oi’ mothers, anti they iftust sei tie it, if it is ever settled. A Divorce Coupon. Os course, any young couple wiio get married and who go to live w with either mother-in-law could save money' and xvorry by buying a marriage license with a divorce coupon attached to it. for unless the whole family of them are pin rt’athered angels— which most peo ple aren't—they ate foreordained to bickering and jealousies, and every known species of the fifty-seven vai ieties of domestic misery Nobody knows why, but no house was ever yet built that was big enough for a mother-in-law ami a daughter-in-law to live in togeth er in peace, and a mother-in-law and a daughtc r-ln-law would be forever treading on each other's toes, although they had all the room of the Waldorf to moxe about in. NA hen a xvomati's children mat i y sh< should make a east iron r. solve never, under any < < umsiam es. i . live under the same root with them, not to visit them too often, never to interfere in their family affairs, and to refrain from giving advice, even though she has to bite her tongue off to keep from doing it. The responsibility of mothers for their children's divorces max end with their keeping their fingers out of their married sons' and daugh- I ters’ pies, but it doesn't begin there. | It commences in the . radio, and 1 can think of nothing on earth that, is so piteous as that every mother iti the land could provide some woman with a good husband, or some man with a good wife, and site doesn't do it. She could save the broken hearts, the misery, the tears, the wrecked homes, the little children that are made motherless, or fatherless, and homeless, and she doesn't do it. Surely' if there is one thing that is past even the mercy of Ood to forgive, it is this. What Her Mother Can Do. There is no mother who pillows a little baby girl's head on her breast that can not aise that girl up to be a true, good, sensible woman. She can teach her to control her temper, to be reasonable and practical, and to have some sense of responsibil ity, and some idea of her duty to others. She can teach iter hoxx to make a home, and make of herself tile kind of a wife tiiat is a bless ing instead of a curse to the man who gets her. We Own the Canal Editor The Georgian: ' I want to commend your position on the Panama canal, and especial ly to congratulate you on the edi torial in Thursday afternoon's pa per. and hope that you will con tinue the good work. It is evident a fexx people who are interested in English shipping have subsidized some of our pa pers and are trying to create a sentiment that win benefit them financially. "I'ncle Sam' bought this land and is completing this great work tor the prime benefit of his people, and it would he a reflection on the Intelligence of our congress and an outrage on its citizens to grant the request of Great Britain or permit tile question to be submitted to The Hague. 1 hope that you will continm to kel p this qmstion before the lieo , L. A. REDWINE THE HOME PAPER I he e is not a mother with a lit tle son standing at her knee who i can not teach that boy to be chival rous and tender to women. She can teach him to show every wom an reverence and respect. Site can teach him how to treat a wife, hoxx to be generous to her, ami unselfish, and tender and affectionate; how to be the kind of a husband that will make a woman bless her stars ev ery day she lives that she was lucky enough to get him. It is the mothers who turn out the wives and the brutal, neglectful husbands. They furnish the raw material out of which matrimonial misery is made, ami they are re sponsible for the ensuing divorce Nor does the mother's aid to di vorce end with having supplied so one poor, unfortunate man, oi woman, a wife or husband that nothing but a martyr could stand. Mother throws fresh fuel on the lire in tile shape of backing up het son or daughter in their domestic qua rrels. When Mary comes running hmm to mother with her tale of woe about some little matter in which “he and John have disagreed, mother begins pitying her for a poor, persecuted angel instead of saying to her. “Go home and forget it. 1 am asliamed of you for being such a little coward as to come whining back the first time any - thing goes wrong. What did you think marriage was—a picnic'. W ell. it. isn't. It's a profession, a ■■' Ung, <x hei. you shut yt>u te< t and do your duty ami make the best of things.'’ Mothers Hold Solution. Ninety-niji. times out'of a hun dred mothers could stop a divorct in the very beginning if they would only hold their sons and daughters up to perfo'niing the obligations they have talon upon tiiemsdvis. But they doll Th* y side with their own, they sympathize with their own's injury and magnify the other's fault until they widen the b each between husband and w if« past all biidging. and are thus ac cessory to the crime of br. aking up a home. These are bald words, but they a e Hue on’ -. p, i- the mothers who hold the solution of the divorc, question in theii hands. There would be no more unhappy riages and nobody would want ~ divorce, if only mothers did their dut.x and xx tre a little busier b< f,, < their children's ma:rlag< and .< q. . Garrett P. Serviss Writes on Sound « It Is a Marvellous <'aleulator of Distance, .f You Only Knew How to Ise It. By Its Waves One (’an Tell How Far Avvav a Thunder Storm Is. By GARRETT P. SERVISS. X TOO can make youv head an j arsenal of innver if you wil’ simply remember eeltail facts that have the quality of bringing out other facts. Talc sound, for instance. It is a mar vellous measurer of distance, if only you know how Io use it. Sound consists of waves, or vt biatlons. which travel through th • air. at ordinary temperatures, with a speed of 1,14'1 feet per second. At lower temperatures the speed is slightly decreased, ind at high r temperatures increased, but the he mes given are sufficiently exact for common purposes. them you can. for instance, tell in a mo ment how far away from you a thunder storm is raging. You hav<» only to count the number of sec onds that elapse between tho flash of the lightning and the sound pf the thunder, and multiply that number by 1,140. which will give you the distance of the cloud from which th< discharge took place. The light travels more than 90".- "Oii times as fast as the sound, so that the latte’- has hardly got started before the former reacli>-= your eye. Since there a"-- S.t'oi feet in a mile, it is evident that the sound of thunder, or any othe sound transmitted through the air takes about four and two-thii'-s seconds to go a mile. Travels on Heels of Light. The lightning bolt tr.-r, -o on tie heels of the light, so that it. too. - far outstrips the sound that if it struck you. you would neve lie:, the thunder. Even we. however. re able t-> send death-dealing bo''s fast, than tile sound that urcompanii their discharge. A sv. ift rill hu’- let goes twice as fast as tin ■ r.o-k "f the exploding cartridge. Another useful fact to km- ! s that sound travels faster in "rmr than in air, in tin proportion of s' least four feet to one. In some ex periments sound has been trans mitted through the water of a riw ’ at the rate of more than a miie second, bin its avetage velocity . water is about 4,70" feet per seeon 'l'he sound of a bell warning a so to keep away from a dangerous shoal would require about 23 s. - onds to go five miles through th air. while the same sound coulo - transmitted through the wate in about five and a half s v eon> s There are imaginable ci-cum-i.u" - in which the eighteen seconds tims saved might suffice to prevent a shipwreck. Still more remarkable is the dif ference between the speed of sound in air and in solid bodies. In tie Heavier metals, such as lead gold, sound travels at nearly the same velocity as in water, but in nore elastic metals, like iron mri -ted. its -peed suddenly Flute;,- > to more than three miles per s. . - mid. which is six or spy* n lim .- rapid as the flight of a bullet. In wood sound travels about as last as in iron, provided that t! e direction in which its waves move is the same as that in which the libels of the wood run. but if d"' sound is transmitted across the gram oi riie Wood its speed is re duced to frqm a half to a quarter ■d what ii is in the other directf-'n, the amount of change varying for din op, nt species of wood. Waves of Sound Differ. Von can hear the sound -f eratching on a wooden fence al . n astonishing distance, if your ear ii i opens to be close to the wood, - r it your head touches the fence. And so quickly is the sound condu< leil teat, although its point of origin max be a quarter of a mih away. sit. it you are unaware of the manner in which it has been brought to your ear. you max be completely deceived, thinking tl .a it musi have originated but a fi- > rods ~ti. one might easily make a kind of telegraph of a wood’n fence, conveying messages by taps upon it. litis suggestion is de d eated to writers of ingenious sto ries of adventure. How. long .-ire the waves of sound in the air? They differ according to the pitch. I lie average male voice, in ordi nary eonvei sation, produce- wavs varying in length from eight to twelve feet, white those of a wom <in s voice are only from two 'o four feet long. Waves sixty r seventy feet in length, vibrating at the rate ol sixteen times p i sec ond. produce a very grave ottnd w hich is scarcely perceptible by th* human ear. w hile wax < - only ii tlf an inch in length, vibrating be tween tW’-ni- and thirty thousand times per second, produce n sound SO shrill that It. too. pass.-- beyond the range o' our bi aring. although it may seen, as hoaisi- an the roar of thundei to th- hearing upparati s o' ins < is. All sounds, wheth r -. 'x . o -| a ..... i r,.,., at