Atlanta Georgian. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, June 04, 1913, Image 16
THE HOME RARER
EDITORIAL RAGE
THF ATLANTA GEORGIAN
Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday
By THE <JE< C< iM"A\Y
At *}o Eaet Alabama St Atlanta, (ia.
Entered a j »econd-class matt* r at p^stoflioc at Atlanta, under act of March 3,1873
8ubacrlptlon Price - Delivered b\ carrier, 10 cents a week. By mail, $5.00 a year.
Payable in Advance.
I We Get Ideals Easily from
Pictures
So Please Look at the Picture on 1 his Page of the Cheapest
Working Animal in the World It May Help You toThink.
Copyright, 1913.
What was the first animal tamed, conquered and made into
a slave by man? Men had to work a long time, probably, be
fore they got into their heads the idea of slavery for others—
an idea that has meant so much to the comfort of a few and
the misery of the rest for centuries.
As a guess, we should say that the first tamed animal was
some kind of a deer or female buffalo. Some savage woman
found it wounded, perhaps broken-legged in a pit, the young
one standing near it. The young one was killed and eaten.
The mother was hobbled and kept alive as long as possible for
her milk, given to the wild woman's children. And when the
milk gave out the mother probably* was eaten by the wild
woman and her children.
After that experiment that same wild woman, or some
other, decided that the captured animal could be kept per
manently, made gentle and used to carry a load. The women,
of course, carried all the loads at first, as they do now among
the red Indians. Probably the first domestic scene was a wom
an milking by force and violence some half wild animal in
order to get milk for her young ones.
The first animal tamed by man was probably a wolf, the
father of our present tribe of dogs, the tame wolf being used
by the man to help him hunt animals or hunt other men.
However, speculation about the first animal tamed is not
the purpose of this particular article.
We want to call your attention to the most valuable animal
that men use in their slavery, AND THE CHEAPEST ANIMAL.
That animal is a woman, working in the
factory or a sweatshop.
Since the days when the first buffalo or wolf or elephant
was tamed, there has been nothing as cheap as the woman
worker, nothing so easily obtainable, so easily kept in slavery,
so easily replaced when worked to death.
You can see in the picture on this page some of man’s
accomplishments. He teaches elephants to lift logs. He uses
little donkeys, powerful horses, oxen with big horns, but he
uses, above all THE POVERTY STRICKEN WOMAN AND
HER CHILDREN AS SOON AS THEY ARE OLD ENOUGH
TO WORK.
Isn't that a proud achievement of civilization, to find the
cheapest of all animal labor and the cheapest of all working
animals IN THE FEMALE HUMAN BEING?
The wise and great Moses, when he was teaching the Jews
to keep house without an ice-box and laying down laws that
make of the Jewish people the healthiest in the world to-day, '
that wise Moses issued this order, on the authority of the
Almighty:
"Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk."—
Exodus 34:26.
Why Moses gave the order we don’t >now. Possibly be- I
cause he thought it was bad enough to kill the mother and eat
it. but a little too bad and too heartless to take the mother’s
milk and boil her own child in that milk. Or probably Moses
issued the order because of his general opinion that meat and
milk should not be used at the same meal.
What would Moses think, if he came along now and found
a miserable, half-starved, under paid woman, working in a
factory- and found her own "kid,’’ the child of her body, tied
to some machine in the factory with her, or sitting at her feet
in a sweatshop working before it was six years of age?
Would not the old Lawgiver say, "I thought it was bad
enough in my day to boil a kid in the milk of its own mother.
"But. to take a child and work it to death in the same fac
tory that worked its mother to death is going a little farther
along the road of deviltry than I ever imagined human beings
«ould go."
Yet that is what we do.
Our system of industry takes these "cheapest of working
animals," the women, and takes their cheap children, and boils
them all down into profits in the same factory—and that is
"civilization."
You are tired, readers, of hearing about low pay for women
and girls—tired perhaps, even of the suggestion that laws
should be passed compelling employers to pay to the cheapest
working animal at least enough to keep clothes on her back
and food in her stomach.
What follows, however, you will read with interest. It is !
a brilliant Frenchman's description of woman as she lived ages J
ago. He calls it, "The First Tears."
It is, perhaps, as good a description as has been written of
the appearance of the first woman, in the days when she drank
from the horn of a bison, and kept her rainwater in the skull of
an elephant. It is the woman of the days before men had
learned to conquer fire. It is worth reading:
•‘On the retl of the cliff the branches of a‘ thicket parted and an
urn. i «boulder, then the entire form of a living being, veiled with
towny hair, appeared, came forth, and stood like a hunted animal,
glancing to right and left—a primitive woman, with arched shelving
brows broad (tanks, short solid log*, splayfeet and thick fat hands.
.. K u f f ining hair, starting f^bm th«- crown <*f her long skull,
framed her face with a somber red-brown aureole. A short, loose neck
ro e from her full shoulders, strong teeth glittered in her red jaws, and
a double furrow ran from jaw to brow to divide the formless nose from
the cheek bones.
•*A , the creature breathed her mobile nostrils drew' back to take
the re elutions of the wind. Sheltered by the low retreating forehead,
two jutting arcades fell to form eiverns tor the restless eyes. At
tiroes :he wrinkled eyelids straightened, the eyes widened, and an e\-
prersion of appealing softness appeared, then vanished to give place
k '•*■!< nf a v. rr.ed beast.
W "The time was tile dawn of humanity y hen Man was an animal
w
The Cheapest Working Animal
She is cheaper by the day, the hour or the whole lifetime than any of the different beasts that labor for men.
(SEE EDITORIAL.)
tion to hide from the cold in caves. The skeletons of giant saurians
were petrifying in the upper strata of the trust, and mammals were
moving in to the valleys to take their places. Great * pachyderms and
long-haired ruminants waded in the mire of the valleys, and beasts of
prey dogged their steps. Among the animals rare beings foreshadow
ing Man crept nuked, timid, feeling their way, hiding from the beasts
of prey.
“In the low light of the primeval springtime, in silence broken only
b\ the tramp of padded hoofs and by th<* lap of water against the
mire, a man searching for berries saw' a woman running to escape
him. ran after her. caught her and carried her away.
“The man vanished, and for the first time in her hunted life the
woman felt the loneliness of the solitude that had been her best condi
tion. and a pang like the yearning of hunger awofte in her.
“She wandered along the hedges, through the wat fields, under the
dark sky. searching for the one who had mastered her; and when af
ter long quest, she saw him. she ran to hfm with inarticulate cries. He
gave no answering sign; but. when he sat down to eat his fistful of
acorns, she sat down beside him, and when he lay down to sleep she.
too, lay down. So the law of life gave the woman to the man.
“At first he tolerated her; then, when she served him and was use
ful to 1dm, he made her his habit.. Her relative weakness gave her
quick premonitions of their need uf food. His indifterence to her and
her dependence upon him gave him superiority. His silent acceptance
of her presence aroused in her dull brain i feeling akin to tenderness,
and in that feeling, humble and submissive, she withdrew' when he had
beaten her."
That description was written by Edmond Haraucourt.
It goes on to say that the primitive man called the woman
Hock. ’ ’ And the woman called him ‘ ‘Daah, ’ ’ a name which the
French gentleman thinks was "an appeal soft as a caress." This
primitive married couple had two other words, one for hunger,
‘ ‘ Mah, ’ ’ and another for danger, ’ ‘ Heugh. ’ ’ Whatever else they
had to say they told in gestures.
Primitive times were they not—those days of three or four
hundred thousand years ago?
But how much worse was that primitive woman, short-
legged and ugly and beaten by the brute that she liked, than
the woman of to-day ?
The woman of to-day is better made, she has a forehead
where the other had none. She has feelings of which the other
never dreamed.
Is she any better off—SHE, THE CHEAPEST WORKING
MACHINE THAT MAN EMPLOYS; SHE, THE LOWEST-
PRICED ANIMAL, THE CHIEF BEAST OF BURDEN OF
THE WORLD, CHEATED OF HER RIGHTS FROM BEGIN
NING TO END, CHEATED AS WAS THIS WOMAN OF
NEARLY HALF A MILLION YEARS AGO?
The so-called educated and superior classes have the im
pertinence to laugh at the women who at last have had the
courage and the intelligence to make a stand for their rights, to
demand a share in the making of laws that will protect them
against the brutality that has lasted a half-million years.
Saving Humanity’s “Seed Corn”
By REV. T B GREGORY.
T HE foundation of the first
real reform school, at Mett-
ray. France, seventy-four
years ago. marks the beginning of
one of the most vitally important
institutions that are at work
among us at this time for the
uplift of the race.
The honor of starting this most
effective propaganda for the sal
vation of the young, who may well
be called the “seed-corn’* of hu
manity. belongs to M. de Metz, at
• me time a great lawyer in Paris.
Dangers to Youth.
In the Ga\ City Metz witnessed
the temptations and dancers to
which young boys? and girls were
exposed; he saw them falling by
multitudes into the way of evil,
and. what was more to the point,
he observed that even the worst
of ; ^^dtieois never quite
succeeded in totally demoralizing
themselves, and that most of them
were redeemable if approached in
the right spirit and assisted by
the proper environment.
Set Himself the Task.
With this conviction deep set
in his mind the ex-councillor set
himself to the task of putting
his faith to the test of actual ex
periment. Putting his hands into
his own pockets, and into the
pockets of as many of his friends
as would allow it, he soon had a
considerable amount of cash, and
upon ground given bv the Vicomte
de Courcelles the Reform School
was built and put into operation.
The result* more than justified
the good man s dream; and when,
some years later. M. de Metz lay
upon his deathbed, he was com
forted with the happy conscious
ness that he hud w^roufht nobly
and permanently for the Humani
ty he loved so well.
The Mettray School set the
world a-thinking, and it was not
long before other countries were
establishing similar institutions.
Great Britain. Germany. Austria,
Italy, the United States fell into
line, and the idea of saving the
boys and girls from becoming
hardened criminals became almost
a passion.
To-day—less than a century
after the foundation of the school
at Mettray—the institutions for
the moral uplift of juvenile delin
quents are to be numbered by the
thousands. They have ramified
not only throughout Christendom,
but are to be found in the so-
called "Pagan" lands of the earth,
where Christianity , as an organi
zation, is but little known.
Wherever humanity is found
there in the midst of it is^the
spirit of the Paris lawyer—which
is, of course, but a reflection of
the spirit of the Great Brother of
us all—working to save the youth
of the race, to redeem fallen boys
and girls from the grip of the de
stroyer and to restore them to th&
ways of decency and peace.
If all the youth who have been
reached and lifted up to a sense
of self-respect and happiness by
these reform schools could be got
together what a procession they
would make!
Needs No Monument.
The temptation is strong to ask
the question: Has M. de Metz a
monument? But how foolish, after
all, the question would be. He
needs no monument. This same
mighty army of redeemed youth
is his monument and he requires
no other.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Writes on
This World
—
It Is Getting Better All
1" J
the Time, She Declares,
r *% y
So Do Not Worry and
- , - > '
v
Fret,but Improve Vour-
i
self and Push Ahead.
i
J
I
Written For The A tlanta Georgian
Bv Ella Wheeler Wilcox
T
Copyright, 1913,
AHERE are hundreds of other
wise sensible and good men
and women in the land to
day who are wasting precious
vital force, and losing great op
portunities for achievement, in a
useless and foolish worry and de
spondency over the industrial sit
uation of the country.
Food it* high; rents are high;
fuel is high, and the trusts and
monopolies are carrying things
from bad to worse.
YET ALL THE TIME THE
WORLD IS IMPROVING. And
all the time we are going toward
a better era.
Work for Improvement.
Great men and great women are
thinking and working to bring
about an improved system of life
and labor; and more work is be
ing done for the uplifting and en
lightenment of the race than ever
before since the earth came out
of chaos.
So do not dwell too much on the
troubled social conditions of the
day and grow bitter and pessi
mistic over them.
The situation is one which calls
for all your optimism and cheer
fulness.
The world has been wagging on
for millions of years, and will con
tinue to wag. and humanity has
been slowly improving and will
continue to improve slowly for
many millions of years.
The first mportant thing for
you to do is to improve yourself,
and that you can not do if you
grow bitter and despondent and
harp continually upon the evil of
the world.
If you allow your mind to dwell
upon the scarcity of fuel and its
high price, you will not increase
the supply of fuel or lower the
price, and you will exhaust your
own vital forces, which might,
properly conserved, fire you with
ambition enough to go forth and
invent some new fuel.
Help by Example.
Try in the moments of greatest
gloom to realize that out of suoh
strife and chaos as exist just no*
new conditions are formulated
and in time are materialized. Be
by Star Company.
ready to meet these new condi
tions and he worthy of them.
It is useless to ask for a fetter
social system unless the people
who form it are belter.
A government is made by the
people. If it is faulty, it is be
cause the people are faulty.
If it is to be bettered, the peo
ple must become better.
Begin with yourself. Keep
wholesome, and hopeful, and rea
sonable, and industrious, and
economical.
Help others to do so—not en
tirely by advice, but by example.
Try to save a little of what you
earn to meet -the emergency
that may come. You think you
can not, but if you once realize
how little you really need to sus
tain life and keep well and strong
you will find you can economize.
Half the food we now consume
is more than enough! And the
things which cost more are al
most invariably the things we
need least.
Consume fresh air. breathe deep
and develop your muscles with
outdoor exercises or room calis
thenics. Look on the philosophi
cal side of life and think cheer
fully. Believe progress is back of
all this chaos, just as you know
the torn-up conditions of the city
streets Indicate future comfort
and convenience for the people.
Everything will settle down by
and by. Be ready to settle, down
with it, a healthy, hopeful, useful
citizen.
It’s Not a Theory.
Do not allow yourself to go to
pieces with old conditions.
If you want to know some very
interesting things which are be
ing done for humanity get some
leaflets and pamphlets describing
the Single Tax propaganda.
There is something in the
movement and the work being
done for the whole world of
thinking people.
The soul of Henry George is
marching on, after his body is
mouldering in the grave.
It will convince you that Single
Tax is not a theory, but a great
and wonderful Fact—and that in
its principles lies the lifting of
the race from slavery to inde
pendence.
One fault to be found with
“September Morn” is that it en
able a lot of professional re
formers to get free advertising
next to pure reading matter.
* * •
Pride is a state of mind which
impels a man to congratulate
himself whenever his thermome
ter registers more degrees of heat
than his neighbor’s.
* * *
Sitting on th*' bank of the
Chattahoochee, fish pole in hand,
one experiences all the delights of
fishing except that one does not
catch fish.
* * *
When Luther Burbank gets
around to it, we hope he will
evolve a hookless gown.
* * *
Handsome woman and happy
home do not always go together.
Ambassador Page will not wear
knee breecres, but there is some
doubt as to whether it is due to
patriotism op* the shape of his
legs.
• • *
If Colonel Roosevelt were to
accept a job a* King of Albania
he would be the bass drum in the
concert T)f powers.
• • *
Everybody feels like congratu
lating a cripple when he feels
strong enough ( o throw away his
crutch.
i * *
“Baseball shatters the nerves,"
says a Boston scientist* who evi
dently has been watching the
Cubs.
• * *
The man vho perpetrated the
first rabare' Is the man who put
the harm ir harmony.
U
I Wonder How Much for a Hat? 1
By George Keller
“$2,500 per annum for clothes is sufficient.”—NEWS ITEM.
■ T
WENTY-FIVE HUNDRED a year for clothes!
Gee, Bill, just think of that—
Twenty-five hundred for notLtpg but clothes!
I wonder how much foe- * hat?
Why, Daddy works like a slave.
An’ h£ can’t get no such clothes, he can’t.
An’ those ’at he does get are all worn out,
An’ come as a gift from my aunt.
Twenty-five hundred ! Whew, what a pile!
An’ figurin’ on ten bones a suit—
Why, two hundred and fifty new suits each year-
Gosh, that gink must he a beaut'!
Dad brings in six hundred a year,
An’ on that we live an’ pay rent.
Why can’t my daddy have plenty of dough?-
Ain’t he as good as that gent?
Twenty-five hundred a year for clothes!
Gee. Bill, just think of that!
Twenty-five hundred for nothing but clothes!
1 wonder how much for a hat?