Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

EDITORIAL RAGE THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Except Hunday By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At iO East Alabama St., Atlanta. Ga. Entered as second-class matter at postofflce at Atlanta, under act of March 3,1873 Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. By mail, $5.00 a year. Payable in Advanoe. The Atlanta Georgian THE HOME PARER Who Makes the “Criminals?” Did Thi* 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 yon 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 and manages to live while three or four little brothers and sisters die and go back to kind earth. 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 se®. "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. 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. 1— No desire here to decry your earnest efforts. But if you ever get tired of scraping with sea sheik, try vaccination, or, better still, try to take such care of youth, to give such chances and education to the young, as will save them from the least profitable of all careers—CRIME. Scrape away with your sea sheik, but try also to give a few ore and a few better chances in youth to those whom you now as criminak in their mature years. God creates boys and girk, anxious to live decently. YOUR SOCIAL SYSTEM makes criminak and filk jaik. \ When the Wife’s Away 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 T HE recently announced con clusion of Professor Frost, the head of the Yerkes Ob servatory, that the sun is a vari able star is in accord with what has been said repeatedly in these columns. It is a tremendously im portant fact, and its demonstra tion is mainly c|ue to the 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 be come variable; it has been vari able for ages, but not until now lias 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 ditions of the earth's atmosphere affecting Us 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 tpots on the sun’s disk When there are many and large spots on the sun. its radiation is not diminished, but increased, r.nd when they are few and small, at- at the 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 take?, 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 for a few days. The practical importance of the recent studies of these flings 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 be the most successful cultivators who heed the hints which he gives of im pending changes* in his humor. They will watch hip face, with the aid of the astronomers, as l ime’s Changes By MINNA IRVING. I CHANCED to meet old Father Time, It does not matter where; He wore a leather coat and cap, And had a Jaunty atr. A pair of goggles hid his eyes, His boots were furred iuside; 1 viewed the change with much amaze. “Where Is your scythe?” I cried. “It can not be that you at last No longer mean to mow Unhappy 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." Nero’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 meet 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 W’hen 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 i* 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. Div( )rce By ELLA WHEELER WILCOX Copyright, 1913, by Star Company. f-i—i HINKING of one thing all day ] long, at night I fall asleep, brain weary But when I wept too long you turned away. 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 lie, 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 lovellght of the honey- do: moon; Complained and cried, accused you of I hear your yoiee, that lingered on neglect, my name And made myself obnoxious in your 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 mr mirror, mad The anguish of such memories with With anger at my pallid cheeks, my tears, dull But cannot weep; the fountain has Unlightened eyes, mv shrunken moth- run dry. er-breasts, We were so young, so happy, and And wept, and wept, and faded more 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 your 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 Yet 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. And then our children came. Deep My God, my God, how have I borne It all! in my soul. From the first hour of conscious Yet since she had the power to make 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 Nor do I blame you; it was not your A look of disapproval in your eyes. fault; But with the coming of our precious You gave me all that most men can give—love child, Of youth, of beauty, and of passion; The lover’s smile, tinged with the fa- and ther’s pride, X 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 ill, US. Or old, and unattractive from some Another, and another birth, and cause, (Less close than was my service unto 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. rTr> HE battle of Solferino, won J by Napoleon JII and the Zurich, which, among other things, wrested Lombardy from Sardinian King from the Austria, thus materially weaken- Austrians fifty-four years ago, lng her among the family of Eu- was one of the costliest of vie- ropean nations. 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 But the weakening of Austria carried along with it the strength ening of Prussia. If there was a time when Bismarck laughed more heartily than ever before, it was when the news came to him of that Lombardy matter. The great Chancellor must have laughed himself well-nigh mortal, for he saw just what It meant. He saw in advance the war of 1866, the struggle between Austria and Prussia for the leadership 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 W’as more to the point, he saw the Germans “marching ail one way" on to Paris, to humble France much worse than France had humbled the Hapsburg. f