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EDITORIAL PAGE THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN . Publish cm3 Hvfiry Afternoon Except Sunday By THE rjEOlUHAN' COMPANY At 20 East Alabama St.. Atlanta, Qa. Entered as arrond-class'inatter at post office at Atlanta, under art of March 3,1873 Subscriptloh Prim Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. By mall, $6 00 a year Payable in Advance. The Modern Slave-Nature To-day Great Steel Slaves Do the Work That Only Yesterday Was Done by the Feeble Hands of Man. Copyright, 1113. Until our day all the work of the world has been done pain fully by men, miserable slaves attached to the soil, stunted by labor, bodies merely fed and worked, and then worked and fed again, and at last put away in a shallow grave dug by some other working body. Where a hundred men, getting in each other’s way, bending their backs and wearing themselves out, would have worked throughout an entire day with picks and shovels, ONE MAN now sits in a big steam shovel slave, directs the work of the monster with a slight movement of his hand, and in a minute pulls up from the ea th a depth into the wagon huge rocks that men could not lift. Every minute this monster does a days work of half a dozen men. And no one suffers, no one is tired, no one is driven—science that found men slaves of each other and afraid of nature is set ting men free, free of slavery, free of superstition and terror— AND MAKING NATURE AND HER POWERS SLAVES OF MAN. That is the great accomplishment and glory of this age. Man uses nature’s forces and conquers nature. Only a short time ago nature’s forces frightened man. Civilization must progress in the years ahead of us with a rdpidity inconceivable. FOR THE MINDS AND THE BODIES OF MEN ARE SET FREE TO THINK. While men were physical slaves real thought was impossible, except to the rare man. Athens was the intellectual center of the world twenty five centuries ago, because Athenians employed slaves in great num bers. Every Athenian citizen learned to think because he had leisure. The citizens thought and developed a national intellect that no nation of our day pretends to equal. The greatest Greek thinker, Aristotle, said that civilization and progress could not exist without slavery—and he was right. But he did not dream that men one day would use the giant slave of steel and 3team. Tins century and centuries to follow will surpass the Atheni ans in intelligence and in the possession of slaves. Our slaves will be of metal, without nerves. The power of the lightning, of steam, of the tides and of the great sun itself will be the power of these slaves of civilization. Slave women spun and wove slowly the clothing of the Athenians and the Romans. Our clothing is made by slave fingers of steel. Great ma chines, untie looms, turn out in a day enough to clothe every citizen of Athens. The slaves carried their masters in palanquins in Roman days. Steam amd the lightning are the slaves that carry us to day. Huge fair skinned captives from Gaul and Germany did the digging twenty centuries ago. Go to the great steel mill at Gary, in Indiana, and there you see in wonderful perfection man's use of Nature as his slave. The great ships bring the ore down the lakes. No man’s hand has touched it. Jaws of steel have torn it from the ore bed and dropped it into the ships. At Gary other steel jaws lift it and carry it to the furnaces. It is melted and great machines pour it out. It is divided into huge ingots, and these, white hot, are carried to the first part of the rolling mill. Still no man’s hand has touched that iron. No slave has toiled under its weight. The ingot is -queezed by one machine, made longer and nar rower, squeezed again and made still longer and narrower. It starts on its journey along the rollers of the mill, squeezed, pressed, handled, turned over, and shaped as it travels hundreds of yards—no hand touching it. It "arrives at last, a red-hot steel rail, the right shape, cut the right length. Machinery turns it over, glides it on an incline. It has made the journey, changing from a shapeless ingot to a fin ished rail, handled by machinery, the machines guided and con trolled by one or two mechanics sitting aloft, pressing levers or buttons, AND WATCHING. Finished at last and almost ready, the rail slides down the incline, and for the first time a man deals with it. He is a young Scandinavian giant, six and a half feet tall, with yellow hair and a clear gray eye. With huge pincers he turns the rail, and, stand ing at one end, runs his eye along it. He is no slave, but a well- paid worker. Ten dollars a day is his pay for the use of that true eye. As he looks along the rail he sees the defects, moves the left or the right hand, and another man controlling the straightening machine straightens the rail as ordered. And there you have side by side ten rails perfectly straight, and more always coming down the incline to meet the glance of that gray eye. A man sitting in his little tower touches a button, and along overhead rails there comes gliding a great electric magnet—on a giant scale—the same as the magnet with which you used to draw little tin ducks across the water. The magnet slides along, drops down upon the ten rails that weigh thor ands of pounds, the electrician presses a button, turns on the current, and man's electric slave glues the rails to the r met. The ten are lifted at once, as easily as a child would lift aim; they, are carried to a flat car, lowered on the car, the c a tun: :i off, releasing the rails, and the magnet travels back to get another load. To realize what progress the human race has made, remem- h t th«* race lived for more than two thousand centuries not ; u/- L se iron, and then see that giant magnet at Gary r c..r ! .eel rails, brought from an ore bed one thou- -...v. clanged from the ore into the finished rail, AKD NEVER TOUCHED BY A MAN S HAND EXCEPT AS -- - WITH THE CLEAR EYE TURNED THE RAIL AND ORDERED THE MACHINE TO STRAIGHTEN IT. i -LA'VERY, and the ideal slavery that will free the % jt, by making Nature'^power MAN'S SLAVE. ing the whole sky as red as Are. Thunderstorms broke out, and the rain that fell from, the cloud had exactly the appearance of blood. In 1847 a blood-colored rain fell at Chambery, at the foot of the Alps, while near the summit of the mountains, around the St. Bernard Pass, there fell several inches of "bloody snow." In the old days of superstition these occurrences were ascribed to diabolic influences, and there , was no one wise enough In the 1 doings of nature to offer a rea- * sonable explanation of them. Often it happens that insects, and sometimes heavier animals, as well as the seeds of plants, are ! transported long distances by the wind and deposited, alive, upon the ground. Dr. T, L. Phipson, who devoted * many years to investigation of atmospheric vagaries, believed that the sudden appearance of strange plants and Insects In lo calities where they are usually unknown is due to this cause. His Explanation. He himself observed several in stances of the kind. On one oc casion a rare plant, called “bloody-flnger grass,” suddenly began to grow m his garden, but it disappeared after a single sea son. His explanation was that Its / seeds had been brought through * the atmosphere, and that the plants, after flourishing a single summer, perished for lack of * proper nourishment in the soil. On another occasion his garden, near London, was suddenly ani mated with the presence of a species of wasp, which Is pever found In England, but abounds in the south of France. These In sects also disappeared after a single season. The fact Is that the at mosphere is a wonderful trans- / porting agent, extremely fickle inr ; its action, filled with unseen cur-* rents, and yet containing many mysteries, such as the barometrio "holes” into which aeroplane* sometimes plunge, that remain to be satisfactorily explained, GARRETT P. SERVISS. of greenstone rock near the vil lage of Rowley, in Staffordshire, several miles north of Birming ham. Such phenomena are more com mon in Southern Europe than elsewhere, and it has been proved that the Desert of Sahara is usually their source. Raised to Great Height. Colored sand and dust are raised to a great height in the atmosphere by the whirling winds and then transported across the Mediterranean Sea uptil, in pass ing over Europe, they are caught in descending rains, to which they Impart the color of blood or of sulphur, often straining any sub stance with which they come in contact. On March 14, 1S13, a "bloody cloud." which probably originated in the Sahara, passed over Cala bria and extended northward into the Kingdom of Naples, spread ing terror everywhere and color- A CORRESPONDENT writes that after a heavy storm recently he saw the pave ments of a town sprinkled with many small earthworms, appar ently lifeless, and looking as if they had been drowned, and, since It was seemingly impossible that they could have crawled there In such numbers, he wishes to know If science can throw any light on their probable origin. The phenomenon to which he calls attention has long been known, In various forms, and has sometimes been the cause of pan ic fears among ignorant or super stitious people. The so-called "blood-rains” belong to the same category. Carried Up by Wind. Most of these occurrences are believed to he due to the carrying up into the atmosphere, by whirl ing winds, of quantities of dust, the colored pollen of flowers, and even small animals, which are transported to a considerable dis tance. and then brought down to the ground during a rain storm. The power of an atmospheric whirl to lift light objects to a great elevation is often astonish ing. Such a whirlwind passing over a swamp or pond may suck up considerable quantities of water, and with It small fish, frogs and worms. These are retained in the air by the rapidity of their motion, and may be transnorted a mile, or even many miles, before they descend again to the ground. If they are caught in a shower of rain they are assembled together In multi tudes as they fall. Some very curious instances of strange rains of this kind are on record. Many years ago a shower of small green stones fell during a violent storm in the streets of Birmingham. England, causing much consternation among the inhabitants. Investigation by a geologiat showed that they had been torn by the a ragged range “ 1 he Perfect Age” in a Woman’s Life By ELLA WHEELER WILCOX (Copyright, 1913, by American-Jour- nal-Kxamincr.) T O the simple question, “At what age tioea a woman reach her greatest perfec tion, physically and mentally?” there must be a complex answer. The woman, the environment, the climate, must All he consider ed. The horse, the dog, the cat have their stated period of per fect development, subject to few variations. Man himself can be relied upon for certain conditions at certain ages. Ho is in the pin-feathered period at fourteen and despises all girls; adores mature ones at eighteen, knows everything at twenty, begins to realize that he knows nothing at thirty, is de lightful and dangerous at thirty- five and charming at fifty. Wom an. more variable and elusive in all things, eludes and evades clas sification in these matters. A Circe at Fourteen. She may be a Circe at fourteen, with amazing wit and charm, or she may remain an undeveloped anaemic until twenty-five and then bloom into a glorious womanhood. 1 have seen in one family the two extremes—the young girl of sixteen, who was at the perfection of her physical womanhood, and an older sister just coming into her heritage of voluptuous beauty at twenty-four. The Southern girl matures sooner and fades sooner than her sisters in temperate climates, just as Southern roses bloom and fall earlier than in the north; and as with the roses, her bloom is more brilliant, her beauty more daz zling while it lasts. Lovely as early youth is, there ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. comes a later time in the life of a perfect woman when heart, brain and soul unite to render her a thousand-fold more attractive than she was in her early morn ing. As the perfume to the flower, so is the expression of the inner nature shining through a wom an’s face. At Her Best. There must be something more than the hope and animation of youth to produce this expression; there must be feeling, already ripened by some of life’s maturer experiences, and sympathy al ready awakened regard for hu manity. Unless her early youth has been marred by ill-health or disaster to her nervous organization, our American woman psually reaches the perfection of her physical de velopment at about the age of twenty-eight. She is in full possession of all the charms of early teens, her bloom is unimpaired, her eye is full of luster, her figure retains its slender roundness. But added to these charms is the subtle fascination of a heart beginning to experience the deep- * er joys and sorrows of life, a soul beginning to reach forward to the invisible and a mind beginning to contemplate the serious questions of life. It is after her twenty-fifth year that the average American wom an begins to attain her physical and mental perfection, and for a period of eight or ten years she seems to retain her undiminished charms. Art of Preservation. Then’ begins an almost imper ceptible change. It Is the curled edge of the rose, scarcely notice able to the casual observer, but it is the remorseless forerunner of decay. It may be a period of years, even a decade, before any eye but her own will discover It, so skill ed Is she in the art* of preserva tion of her charms, yet all these years she carries that saddest of all sad secrets In her heart, that her sun has crossed the zenith and that her long day ot beauty is on the wane. Happy is she who, when the ad miration of the multitude is no longer to be expected, can fall back upon the respect and affec tion of her friends; happy is she who uses her noontime of life to prepare for a calm and peaceful evening. The Atlanta Georgian the: home: paper Teaching the Young Idea How to Chute Caijyrtgkt, 1013, fcjr Star Company. M*CA,Y„ Here is a young man, capable of earning a place in the world, getting his first lesson from the spirit that is always ready to help a beginner, and who has many accomplished pupils on their way to cemeteries, penitentiar ies and insane asylums. It is not a pleasant spirit, but the young man can only see what it has to teach, and that seems pleasant enough. One day, after he has broken his mother’s heart and made his own life so wretched that none save himself can even imagine its wretchedness he will see the spirit face to face. But that will be too late, for by that t ime he will have learned the lesson so well that he can never forget it. Mr. McCay, who drew the cartoon, suggests that it pictures the act of “teaching the young idea how to chute.” Rev. John E. White on ‘‘The Battle in the Air The Sudden Popping of Small Arms and the Clatter of Loud Talk in the Direction of Chief Beavers, He Says, Was Not a Premedi tated Outbreak of Hostilities.. Written for The Georgian by REV. JOHN E. WHITE, Pastor Second Baptist Church. T HE sudden popping of small arms and the clatter of loud talk in the direotlon of Chief James Beavers was not a premeditated outbreak of hos tilities. It was an Indiscretion not in the plan of campaign, and it has created much confusion. Natural ly, the desire Is very great that the unfortunate attacking party should return to camp, put up their guns, take up their spades and get back on the Job sub rosa. The last thing In the world our friends the enemies of the po lice department want at this time Is an open Issue and an open fight. The Battle Picture. The real conflict In Atlanta be tween Law and Morals and Law lessness and Immorality is an In visible conflict. It brings to mind a famous battle picture which represents the army of Atllla en gaged with the army of the Holy Roman Empire In the fifth cen tury. During the day the armies have met in battle and have wrestled until the night comes on. The great artist takes up the battle at that point and dTaws a picture of weary horses and worn-out sol diers of both armies lying asleep on the ground. But In the night, amidst perfectly physical quiet, the spirits of horses and horse men are represented above the battlefield still engaged In fierce encounter. Their shadowy forms dash and surge against each other, while on the battleground below flesh and blood are seemingly at rest. Eight months ago, when the day of sharp battle was brought to quiet, and night and silence settled down on the Tenderloin, the conflict by no means ended. The captains of the underworld were beaten, but not conquered. The situation became an array of Invisible influences grappling In the dark. In the street*, in the saloons, in the "ool rooms and In private of fices the unconquerable power of evil held their councils of war and set in motion all the subtle energies at their command to re claim their lost strongholds. The Issue and the Line-up. It will be so to-morrow when this recent open collision has dis appeared from the news columns and everything gets quiet. What appears to the public as a retreat from an uncomfortable and an unfortunate engagement will be no retreat at all. The battle will go on in the air, but out of eight. The sullen protest and the se- REV. JOHN E. WHITE. cret plotting will still maintain its invisible head and front. What is this struggle in Atlan ta about? What is the Issue and the Une-up? What are the in terests, principles and desires behind CJiief Beavers and the Police Department, and what be hind his enemies? The question Is not difficult. On one side Is the law of the State, which the police have ex ecuted and are executing. On the other side Is a mixed line-up, but unavoidably Identified with the idea that the law should not be executed and that officers of the law should accommodate their conscience to favor its vio lation. On one side are the people, fortunately in a majority, who maintain an unbending hostility as citizens against the social evil of prostitution, gambling and drunkenness. On the other side are the people, fortunately in a minority, who are disposed to compromise with these evils. On one side In positions of leadership are citizens who have made an Intelligent study of so cial diseases and public dealing with them In other cities and throughout the world, and who knqw that the Judgment of In telligence has reached a verdict In favor of the policy of abso lute suppression and of honest, uncompromising execution of the law, Is the sensible method of dealing with public evils. On the other side are those who maintain a dead tradition to the effect that such evils are neces sary, and who shut their eyes and their ears to all the testimony of experience and scientific In vestigation. On one side the conscience of religion, the ideals of Christian ity, and the foundation principles of churches, schools and homes, which are bound Inexorably In hostility to degrading vices, and which as Institutions can not Justify their existence, except In war against them. On the other hand, the loose conscience of lrreligion, the low ered Ideals of society, and the foundation principles of the un derworld, the brothel and the sa loon, which, as institutions, can have no existence except as they organize to maintain the vices which prey upon humanity. On Which Side. By no means all who are op posed to Chief Beavers would confess themselves inside an im moral category. There are some people be witched by their own opinions, who stand on the side lines watching the conflict, with un friendly eyes for his execution of the laws. But it ought to be very clearly Indicated that the Inter ests unfriendly and positively hos tile to the closing of the "Houses in our Midst" have created an issue which challenges the in stinctive sympathies of the people of Atlanta to one side or the other of the controversy. The petty ambitions of politi cians, whether on this side or that, will not obscure the issue. It is a vain hope If anybody Im agines that a political muddle will re-establish tolerated tvlce In Atlanta. The real ground of Its hope lessness Is not in Chief Beavers or the police department, but the law of Georgia and In the ac cess of one Citizen alone to hon orable judges on the bench who hold in their hands the consti tutional power backed up by the sovereignty of the State of Geor gia to abate by Injunction a law less nuisance. The battle In the air will go on, but Atlanta need not be afraid. Strange Things From the Sky