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EDITORIAL RAGE
The Atlanta Georgian
THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN
Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday
By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY
At 20 East Alabama St., Atlanta, a
Entered as second-class matter at poatofflre at Atlanta, under act of March 3.1S73
Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. By mall, 36 00 a year.
Payable in Advance.
Reciprocityls the Saving Grace
of Free Trade
| Absolute Free Trade Is Impossible to Commercial Prosperity With
out Reciprocity Agreements in Reserve.
A Republican newspaper up East sounds an alarm on the
tariff question which is not one whit less an alarm to the entire
commercial and consuming republic.
The Republican paper concedes, as all concede, that the
Wilson-Underwood tariff bill will be passed and become a law by
the vote of a strict partisan Democratic majority. The Repub
lican Senators are not making exhaustive speeches with the idea
of converting anybody, but just to go on the record with a vague
hope of future reactions toward the protective idea.
But the honest belief of the thinking economist is that this
comparatively free trade tariff, if passed, will steadily move to
ward a full free trade policy in the near future.
It would be difficult to conceive a more definite commercial
calamity.
Free trade would he just as distinct an evil in our national
policy as a high protective tariff, One is as bad as the other.
If protection builds a wall against our importations, free trade
gives away our markets without getting anything in return.
Absolute free trade is impossible to commercial prosperity
without reciprocity agreements in reserve.
Absolute free trade is as impossible and as impractical at
this time as disarmament and universal peace. Everybody would
like to see peace universal and the disbanding of armies. But no
nation can afford to disband its armies and strip its navies so
long as othei nations increase armies and build new battleships,
which leaves our country at their mercy.
Everybody likes the sound of free trade, but this country
can not afford to batter down its tariff walls to universal trade
so long as other nations hide behind tariff walls to prevent our
products having free passage to their trade.
There is no universal peace until the greater nations all
agree to disarm and arbitrate. There can be no free trade until
the greater commercial nations all adopt free trade.
It is only by tariff bars held in discretion that we can secure
the same trade advantages with other nations that they enjoy
with us. It is only by RECIPROCITY that the tariff bars of
other nations can be lowered to our trade. As Mr. Hearst de
clared :
“If we maintain our protective fence we can say to
foreign countries: We will lower our bars to your
products if you will lower your bars to our products.
“But if we have no tariff fence we can make no
such beneficial bargain.”
The common sense and the commercial judgment of this
country will make a mighty fight before it surrenders the golden
principle of reciprocity in any tariff we may make.
The Georgian has demonstrated how free trade on the seas
has destroyed our merchant marine.
It is just as easy to see how free trade on the land will de
stroy the equality and prosperity of our markets.
The tariff is not a sentimental question. It is a common-
sense commercial question.
THE TARIFF IS THE PRICE OF ADMISSION TO A
MARKET! Congress has no right to make our people pay a
higher price to foreign markets than foreign people pay to our
markets.
The threat of free trade is alarming. But it is not likely.
The common sense of the people will protect the country.
RECIPROCITY IS THE SAVING GRACE OF FREE
TRADE.
RECIPROCITY IS THE SAVING GRACE OF PROTEC
TION.
It is impossible to construct a more iust tariff without the
reciprocity principle.
Too Late for Archbold
Mr. John D. Archbold must view with regret the plan for
Congressmen to vote by pressing an electric button instead of
shouting “aye” or “no” when the roll is called. For Mr. Arch
bold this ingenious invention came too late.
Before the Hearst newspapers ended his control of Senators
and Representatives through the judicious use of certificates of
fiepc r I e new scheme wuold have saved Mr. Archbold much
time and trouble. It would have been easy to install a switch-
hoard in his offices at No. 26 Broadway, with a telephone con
necting with the halls of Congress. And when the roll was call
ed the present master of Standard Oil could have pushed enough
buttons to insure a safe majority for all the bills about which he
had been writing letters to his private Congressmen and Sena
But to-day the Archhold grip is broken, and it is doubtful if
member of either House would venture to permit his par
ticular voting key to be operated from the offices of the Stand
ard Oil Company,
A.
The Bubble Reputation
An Education at the Movies
THE HOME PAPER
Child Toil of
Present Age
W6rst Ever
History Has Never
Known a Slavery So
Blighting as That of
the Young Victims of
Modern Commercial
ism—Money Spent in
Bure Extravagance
Would Soon Relieve
These Children from
the Grasp of Despair.
By GARRETT P. SERVISS
I K one-half the energy that is
wasted upon impracticable
schemes of social reform and
one-tenth of the money that is
thrown away in pure extravagance
were concentrated upon the solu
tion of the problem of enfranchis
ing the children of the so-called
civilized nations from their bond
age to Oiant Despair, whose dun-
geirns echo to the pitiless grinding
of the money-making machines,
there would go up, within a year’s
time, such a paean of rejoicing
childhood as would warm the
cockles of the world’s great heart
—for tlie world has a heart, if you
can but reach it!
I have just been reading an arti
cle on “Children in Bondage,” in
the flood Housekeeping Magazine,
which ought, in itself, to start a
revolution. And it has recalled an
experience of my own bearing upon
this great question of child slavery.
Some years ago I went on a lec
turing tour in the South. 1 stopped
one night in one of the busiest of
those industrial cities which have
sprung up within a couple of dec
ades in that wonderful part of our
country.
Chief Promoter of Lec
ture Showed Writer
Thro’ His Mill.
Tlie next morning the owner of
a great mill, who was one of the
chief promoters of the local lecture
course, and who took great satis
faction in his connection with so
commendable an enterprise, and
gladly spent money to keep it go
ing, invited me to visit his mill.
It was near noon when I ap
proached its formidable walls, and
was admitted within its guarded
gates, and I stopped amazed at the
first sight of human life that my
eyes fell upon there.
It was a long row of little boys
and girls, pale-faced and haggard,
and clothed in the flimsiest and
poorest garments, with tin pails
on their arms—waiting in line to
carry their dinners to their broth
ers and sisters who were haltered
to the treadmills within. Some of
them glanced quickly about, at the
least sound, with a scared expres
sion. as if they expected a lash!
Evidently there was no time in
that busy place for human beings
to stop to eat, otherwise than as
the overworked dray horse stops
at tlie edge of tlie pavement to
have a bag of meal hung over his
neck, with his nose thrust into it!
My interest in the sights that
the mill might have to offer was al
ready chilled, but, nevertheless. 1
went in. I rememiiered how de
lighted tlie owner had been to see
so many of "liis people” listening
to a lecture on astronomy the
night before!
I shall not try to describe* what
I saw. No doubt it was a sight
that ought to have made me thrill
with admiration for the practical
application of the great principle
of "efficiency” which I saw before
me. but In fact it only made me
sad and depressed.
Pale Faces Obliterated
Thought of Marvels
of Machinery.
I could not admire the marvelous
machinery, could pay no attention
to the wonderful statistics that
were poured into my ears a limit
the incredible number of tills, that
Ftr tiie other things that could Is*
turned out in a single minute, for
1 really saw T nothing but pale,
drawn faces, bent over the ma
chines, not daring to look up for a
moment, and white, bony fingers
doing perilous feats with the dart
ing shuttles, and I heard only tlie
inhuman hum of the mechanical
monsters that were devouring those
young lives!
I have always regretted that
there was an occasion when I had
not the courage to say what I
thought. But we all meet many
such occasions. One reason why
the world does not improve more
rapidly is because we arc too often
moral cowards. However. I never
think pleasantly of tlie name of
that town, although it hud listened
very flatteringly to what I did say
—but that was about the stars and
when you talk about them you cuu
hurt no man's “business.”
Such Conditions Prevail
Throughout the En
tire Country.
Of course such things arc not
confined to the Ki/th. In fact it is
to be feared that New England
taught the lesson. Read the arti
cle to which I have referred if you
want a host of other facts about
this nefarious business of killing
off the young of tlie race, killing
them soul and body, in order to
swell the bloated carcass of Mam
mon ! Then think seriously about,
what you have read, and, having
thought, act: for modern civiliza
tion is doomed unless this unholy
thing be destroyed!
The Toss of a Stone
By REV. THOMAS B. GREGORY.
O NS hundred and eighty-one
years ago a young man
threw a stone at a tree. If
the stone had missed its mark the
most thrilling page of human
history might never have been
written.
.lean Jacques Rousseau was at
the time loafing around the coun
try estate of a rich French wom
an who had taken a fancy to
him. and on the day in question
he was strolling through the
woods feeling greatly depressed.
He made up his mind that he
was worthless, and that the best
thing he could do would be to
commit suicide. However, he
would gamble a little on it. So
picking up a stone and fixing his
eye on a tree some little distance
away he resolved that should he
hit the tree he would brace up
and live. He hit it and lived—
and the result of his living was
the social, political and economic
revolution of France and, indi
rectly, of the whole world.
In 1762—thirty years after--he
threw the stone at the tree in the
park at Chambery—Rousseau
gave the world the Contrat So-
eiale (Social Contract), and the
Contrat Sociale made the French
Revolution. For the political stu
dent Rousseau’s book is one of
the most curious in the world.
Historically it is null; logically
it is full of gaps and flaws;” as
a piece of reasoning jt is a
wretched failure; but it did the
work. It carried the multitude.
It made the revolution that made
a new France, a new Europe and
a new humanity. *
It was Rousseau, as John Mor-
ley well put it, who first in our
modern time sounded a new
trumpet note for one more of the
great battles of humanity. He
makes the poor very proud. It
was truly said: “It was in Rous
seau that polite Europe first
harkened to strange voices and
faint reverberations from out of
the vague and cavernous shad
ow in which the common people
move. The race owes something
to one who helped to state the
problem, writing up in letters of
flame at the brutal feasts of kings
and the rich that civilization is
as yet only a mockery’, and did
furthermore inspire a generation
of men and women with the stem
resolve that they would rather
peri»*f“than live on in a world
where sfcch things can be.”
If Ha^filet is right when he de
clared'' that “there is a special
prowdence in the fall of a spar
row,” then surely we are mightily
tenfipted to feel that all the provi
dences were directing the stone
that Rousseau thr^w at the tree
in' Madame Warren’s park at
Chambery, _ - . ^