Newspaper Page Text
EDITORIAL PAGE The Atlanta Georgian THE HOME PAPER
.1
THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN
Published Every Afternoon Exoept Sunday
By THE OEOHOIAN COMPANY
At 20 East Alabama St.. Atlanta, Oa.
Entered an neoond-class matter at poatofflce at Atlanta, under art of March 3,1373
Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. By mall, $5.00 a year.
Payable in Advance.
When the Wife’s Away
Who Makes the “Criminals?"
Did This View of It Ever Occur to You?
(Copyright, 1913.)
Much Interest just now in CRIMINALS.
Much horror aroused by depravity.
Many plans more or less appropriate for making the air pure.
Many good men, politicians, women and bishops who spend
the summer at the seaside are willing to spend a few days wip
ing "CRIME” off the earth.
What is CRIME? Who are the CRIMINALS? Who makes
the criminals?
Do criminals viciously and voluntarily arise among us, eager
to lead hunted lives, eager to be jailed at intervals, eager to crawl
in the dark, dodge policemen, work in stripes and die in shame?
Hardly.
Will you kindly and patiently follow the lives, quickly
sketched, of a boy and a girl?
THE GIRL.
Born poor, born in hard luck, her father, or mother, or both,
victims of long hours, poor fare, bad air and little leisure.
As a baby she struggles against fate ahd manages to live
while three or four little brothers and sisters die and go back
to kind earth.
t
She crawls around the rooms of a small house, a good deal
in the way. She is hunted here and chased there.
• She is cold in winter, ill-fed in summer, never well cared for.
She gets a little so-called education. Ill-dressed and ashamed
beside the other children, she is glad to escape the education. No
one at home can help her on. No one away from home cares
about her.
She grows up white, sickly, like a potato sprouting in a cel
lar. At the corner of a fine street she sees the automobiles pass
ing with other girls in warm furs, or in fine, cool summer dresses.
With a poor shawl around her and with heels run down she
peers in at the restaurant window, to see other women leading
lives very different from hers.
Steadily she has impressed upon her the fact, absolutely un
deniable, that as the world is organized there is no especial place
for her—certainly no comfort for her.
She finds work, perhaps. Hours as long as the daylight.
Ten minutes late—half a day's fine.
At the end of the day aching feet, aching back, system ill-
fed, not enough earned to live upon honestly—and that pros
pect stretches ahead farther than her poor eyes can see.
"WHAT'S THE CHARGE, OFFICER?”
“Disorderly conduct, Your Honor.”
There’s the criminal that Society is hunting so ardently.
THE BOY.
Same story, practically.
He plays ball in the street—cuffed, if caught by the police
man.
He swings on the awning poles, trying to exercise his stunted
muscles—cuffed again.
In burning July, with shirt and trousers on, he goes swim
ming in private ponds—caught and cuffed and handed over to
the police.
He tries for work.
“What do you know?'*
“I don’t know nothin’; nobody ever taught me."
He can not even endure the discipline of ten hours’ daily
shoveling—it takes education to instill discipline, if only the edu
cation of the early pick and shovel.
He has not been taught anything. He has been turned loose
in a city full of temptation. He had no real start to begin with,
and no effort was ever made to repair his evil beginning
“WHAT’S THE CHARGE, OFFICER?”
“Attempted burglary; pleads guilty.”
In prison he gets an education. They teach him how to be a
good burglar and not get caught. Patiently the State boards
him, and educates him to be a first-rate criminal.
There's your first-rate criminal, Messrs. Bishops, good men.
politicians and benevolent women.
Mysteries of Science^ and Nature
The Sun Is a Variable Star and Its Changes Affect the Price of a
Man’s Dinner-—What Science’s Latest Discovery Means.
By GARRETT P. SERVISS
Dear bishops, noble women, good men and scheming poli
ticians, listen to this story:
In the South Sea Islands they have for contagious diseases a
horror as great as your horror of crime.
A man or woman stricken with a loathsome disease, such as
smallpox, is seized, isolated, and the individual sores of the small
pox patient are earnestly scraped with sea shells—until the pa
tient dies. It hurts the patient a good deal—without ever curing,
of course—but it relieves the feelings of the outraged good ones
who wield the sea shells.
You kind-hearted creatures, hunting "crime” in great cities,
are like the South Sea Islanders in their treatment of smallpox.
You ardently wield your reforming sea shells and you scrape
very earnestly at the sores so well developed.
No desire here to decry your earnest efforts.
But if you ever get tired of scraping with sea shells, try
vaccination, or, better still, try to take such care of youth, to give
such dhances and education to the young, as will save them
from the least profitable of all careers—CRIME.
Scrape away with your sea shells, but try also to give a few
hore and a few better chances in youth to those whom you now
aunt as criminals in their mature years.
God creates boys and girls, anxious to live decently.
Y0U£ SOCIAL SYSTEM makes ci
and fills jails.
T HE recently announced cnl-
elusion of Professor Frost,
(he head of the Yerkes Ob
servatory, that the sun is a vari
able star i* in accord with what
has been said repeatedly in these
columns. It is a tremendously im
portant fact, and its demonstra
tion is mainly due to th^ labors of
Messrs. C. G. Abbott and F. E.
Fowle, of the Smithsonian Insti
tution. Their statements have
been confirmed by the observa
tion of astronomers in Europe.
The sun has♦not suddenly Da-
come variable; it has been vari
able for ages, but not until now
has any measurement of its vari
ability been obtained. It has
taken ten years to eliminate all
the possible sources of error in
the work, one of the principal dif
ficulties being to discriminate be
tween the effect of changing con
dition^ of the earth’s atmosphere
affecting its ability to transmit
the radiation from the sun to the
surface of the globe, and changes
occurring in the sun itself.
Minor Changes in the
Sun Affect the Earth’s
Temperature.
It seems now to be certain that
the intensity of the rays which
the sun Pends to the earth often
vary at least as much as five
per cent in periods of only a
week or ten days. These varia
tions, of course, directly affect the
temperature and the character of
the weather. Then there are vari
ations of a much longer period,
and of greater general extent, in
dicated by the waxing and wan
ing of black spots on the sun’s
disk.
When there are many and large
spots on the sun. its radiation is
not diminished, but increased,
and when they are few and small,
a? at ihe present time, the radia
tion. in general, falls off. But
at all times, apparently, minor
changes are going on in the sun,
which produce quite sudden al
terations in the temperature of
the earth.
As has just been said, we are
now* at a period of minimum in
the sun spots, but in about four
years from now they will be nu
merous again, and then a general
increase of the solar radiation is
to be expected. It takes, on the
average, about seven years for
the sun spots to decline from a
maximum to a minimum, and
about four years for them to rise
again from a minimum to a maxi
mum. Meanwhile the radiation
is not steady at any time, except
f<y a few days.
The practical importance of the
recent studies of these things is
seen in Professor Frost’s an
nouncement that the time is near
at hand when it will be possible
to foretell the general character
of the seasons long in advance.
He thinks that that may be
achieved within about twenty-five
years.
Then, if the present promise is
kept, It will be possible for farm
ers and growers of all kinds of
crops to know in advance what
they have to expect, and to gov
ern their sowings and plantings
accordingly.
The sun will be recognized as
the great dictator in agricultural
affairs, and they will b£ the most
successful cultivators w T ho heed
the hints which he gives of im
pending changes in his humor.
They will watch his face, with
the aid of the astronomers, as
Time’s Changes
By MINNA IRVING.
I CHANTED to meet old Father Time,
It does not matter where;
He wore a leather coat and cap,
And had a jaunty air. i
A pair of goggles hid his eyes,
His boots were furred Inside:
I viewed the change with much amaze,
“Where is your scythe?” I cried.
"It can not he that you at last
Xo longer mean to mow
I'nhappy mortals like the grass
Before you as you go?”
“The scythe," the ancient spirit sighed,
“Is slow and out of date,
I use an aeroplane instead
To do the work of fate.”
Xero’s courtiers watched the play
of their tyrant's features.
But the mere fact that those
who have been conducting these
researches think it possible to
foretell the varying effects of the
solar radiation upon the earth
shows that even in his most
variable moods the sun is sub
jected to a law which he cannot
violate. It is what that law is
and how it operates in order to
forsee its effects. Much still de
pends upon a better knowledge
of the earth’s atmosphere, for
when a sudden change takes
place in the solar radiation the
effect is not immediately felt on
the earth. The atmosphere acts
as a kind of buffer, and takes up
the shock, afterward distributing
it in a more gradual and gentle
manner.
Change in Solar Radia
tion Might Bring About
an Indian Famine.
A graphic illustration of the
' importance of this matter to
every human being is given in a
remark of Professor Langley’s
which Professor Frost has quot
ed :
"Though the most unformed
nebula may hold the germs of fu
ture worlds, yet for us these pos
sibilities are but interesting con
jectures, for every nebula might
be wiped out of the sky to-night
without affecting the price of a.
laborer’s dinner, while a small
change in the solar radiation may
conceivably cause the deaths of
numberless men in an Indian
famine."
Professor Langley's forecast
has been fully justified by the re
cent investigations, and we may
now say that the price of every
man’s dinner is affected by
changes in the sun that had not
been discovered ten years ago,
Divorce
By ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
Copyright, IMS, by Star Company.
rn HIXKIXG of one thing all day
Rut when I wept too long you turned
I long, at night
away.
A I fall asleep, brain weary
And I was hurt, not realizing then
and heart sore;
My grief was selfish. I could see the
But only for a little while. At three,
change
Sometimes at two, o’clock I wake
Which motherhood and sorrow made
and He,
In me;
Staring out into darkness; while my
And when I saw the change that
thoughts
came to you,
Begin the weary treadmill-toil again,
Saw how your eyes looked past me
From that white marriage morning
when you talked,
of our youth
And when I missed the love tone
Down to this dreadful hour:
from your voice,
I see your face
I did that foolish thing that women
Lit with the lovelight of the honey-
do:
moon;
Complained and cried, accused you of
1 hear vour voice, that lingered on
neglect,
my name
And made myself obnoxious In yovur
As if it loved each letter; and I feel
sight.
The clinging of your arms about my
form,
And often, after you had left my
Tour kisses on my cheek—and long
side,
to break
Alone I stood before my mirror, mad
The anguish of such memories With
With anger at my pallid cheeks, my
tea rs,
dull
But cannot weep; the fountain has
enlightened eyes, my shrunken moth-
run dry.
\
er-breasts,
And wept, and wept, and faded more
We were so young, so happy, and
jfi and more.
so full
How could I hope to win back wan-
Of keen sheer joy of life. I had no
dering love,
wish
And make new flames in dying em-
Outside vour pleasure; and you loved
bers leap
me so
By such ungracious means?
That when I sometimes felt a worn-
'
an’s need
And then She came,
For more serene expression of man’s
Firm bosomed, round of cheek, with
love
such young eyes,
(The need of rest in calm affection’s
And all the ways of youth. I, who
bay
had died
And not sail ever on the stormy
A thousand deaths in waiting the re-
main),
turn
Tet would I rouse myself to your
Of that old love look to your face
desire;
once more—
Meet ardent kiss with kisses just as
Died yet again and went straight into
warm;
hell
So nothing I could give should be
When I beheld it come at her ap-
denied.
proach.
My God, my God, how have I borne
And then our children came. Deep
It all!
in my soul,
Yet since she had the power to make
From the first hour of conscious
that look—
motherhood,
The power to sweep the ashes from
I knew I should conserve myself for
your heart
this
Of burned-out love for me. and light
Most holy office; knew God meant
new fires.
it so.
One thing remained for me—to let
Yet even then, I held your wishes
you go.
first;
I had no wish to keep the empty
And by my double duties lost the
frame
bloom
From which the priceless picture had
And freshness of my beauty; and
been wrenched.
beheld
Xor do I blame you; it was not your
A look of disapproval in your eyes.
fault;
You gave me all that most men can
But with the coming of our precious
give—love
child,
Of youth, of beauty, and of passion?
The lover's smile, tinged with the fa-
and
ther’s pride,
I .gave you full return; my woman-
Returned again; and helped to make
hood
me strong;
Matched well your manhood. Yet
And life was very sweet for both of
had you grown 111,
US.
Or old, and unattractive from some
cause,
(Less close than was my service unto
Another, and another birth, and
you)
twice
I should have clung the tighter to
The little white hearse paused be-
you, dear;
side our door
And loved you, loved you, loved you
And took away some portion of my
more and more.
youth
With my sweet babies. At the first
I grow so weary thinking of these
you seemed
things;
To suffer with me, standing very
Day in, day out; and half the awful
near;
nights.
Solferino .
By REV. THOMAS B. GREGORY.
T
HE battle of Solferino, won
by Napoleon III and the
Sardinian King from the
Austrians fifty-four years ago,
was one of the costliest of vic
tories, a boomerang, the like of
which is but seldom found on the
pages of history.
Napoleon III, the Don Quixote
of sovereigns, went far out of his
way to interfere in the quarrel
between Austria and Sardinia, and
bitterly was he paid for It.
Within itself Solferino was a
splendid triumph. Some 120,000
French and Sardinians beat to a
finish some 170,000 Austrians, and
the Emperor’s cup of glory was
sparkling to the brim! Solferino
was well calculated to remind
men of Austerlitz and Marengo
and of the great captain whose
genius had for so long led the
soldiers of France from victory to
victory as though they had been
an army of demigods.
So far so good. But there was
coming, all unseen by the victory
of Solferino an aftermath of woe
and misery.
Solferino precipitated a meet
ing between Napoleon and Joseph
(July 11, at Villafranca), the re
sult of which, was the Treaty of
Zurich, which, among other
things, wrested Lombardy from
Austria, thus materially weaken
ing her among the family of Eu
ropean nations.
But the weakening of Austria
carried along with it the strength
ening of Prussia, If there was a
tinle when Bismarck laughed
mpre heartily than ever before, It
was when the news came to him
of that Lombardy matter. The
t
great Chancellor must have
laughed himself well-nigh mortal,
for he sa-w just what it meant. He
saw in advance the war of 1868,
tjhe struggle between Austria and
Prussia for the leadersfilp of the
German States, the weakened
state In which Austria would have
to contend against the greatly im
proved condition of Prussia, and
the final Prussian triumph at
Konigratz.
But the clear-eyed Bismarck
saw even farther than that. He
saw Austria humbled and dis
missed from the stage; he saw
Prussia at the head of a united
Germany; and, what teas more to
the point, he saw the Germans
"marching all one way” on to
Paris, to humble- France much
worse than France had humbled
the Hapsburg.