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RARER EDITORIAL RAGE The Atlanta Georgian THE HOME THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Publ'.&heri Every Afternoon Except Sunday By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At 20 East Alabama St., Atlanta, Ga. Entered as reoond-claee matter at poatofflce at Atlanta, under act of March 3.1*73 Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. By mall, 16 00 a year. Payable in Advance. r— — — - • — 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 Senato-s 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 be 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. mM —- Everybody likes the sound of free trd.de, 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 : The Bubble Reputation An Education at the Movies 71* CAOV Does fur like Him . - Mas .IV E Pap MAN/ VWHAT THAT . .SAS POP’ THAT.S MV OF A 6000 FATHER- nevee gets ti red OF rELLiw6 TW6 ; gDV THiA'G’-S SHSS map hp h Pop Vi HAT THAT SAV POP "> VIKOHIM POP ’ . :ruyr 'V TIME what that ■SAH POP 7 U.‘ • » J » v-v THI-S Pluv\ HAS OGEV PASSED SV THB WATIOWAL BOARD OF CETMSOR Sri IP as THoV PASieD THE FL(m “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 just 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 deposit, the uew 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 tors. to-day the Archbold grip is broken, and it is doubtful if of either House would venture to permit his par voting key to be operated from the offices of the Stand Oil Company. . f 1 Child Toil of Present Age Worst Ever History Has Never Known a Slavery So Blighting as That of the Young Victims of Modern Commercia 1- isin—Money Spent in Pure 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 uiton the solu tion of the problem of enfranchis ing the children of the so-called civilized nations from their bond age to (liant Despair, whose dun geons 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 the 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 lias recalled an experience of my own hearing upon this great question of child slavery. Some years ago I went on a lec turing tour in the South. T stopped , one night in one of the busiest of ! those industrial cities which have j 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. ; 'Hie 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 all enterprise, and gladly spent money to keep it go ing. invited me to visit his mill. It was near noon wtien T 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 the edge of the pavement to have a bag of meal hung over his ueck, with his nose thrust into it! My Interest in the sights that O NE 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. Jean Jacques Rousseau was at the time loafing around the coun try estate of a rich French wom an who had taRfen' a fancy to him, and on the day in question he was strolling through the woods feeling greasy depressed. He made up his mind that he was worthless, and that the best thing h e 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 -"hole 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- ciale (Social Contract), and the Contrat Sociale made the French 1 Revolution. For the political stu dent Rousseau’s book is one of the most curtous in the world. Historically it is null, logically j the mill might have to offer was al ready chilled, but, nevertheless, I went in. I retnemliemi how de lighted the owner had tieen to see so many of “his people” listening to a lecture on astronomy the night bef< re! 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 Paces Obliterated Thought of Marvels of Machinery. I could not admire the marvelous machinery, coflld /pay no attention to the wonderful statistics that were poured into my ears about the incredible number of this, that or tlie other tilings that could lie turned out in a single minute, for T really saw 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 the inhuman hum of the mechanical monsters that were devouring those young lives! I have always regretted that there was an occasion when 1 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 are too often moral cowards. However. I never think pleasantly of the name of that town, although it had listened very flatteringly to what I did say —hut that was about the stars and when you talk about them you can hurt no man’s “business.” Such Conditions Prevail Throughout the En tire Country. Of course such things are not confined to the South. 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 tikis nefarious business of killing \ off the young of the 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! it is full of gaps and flaws;" as a piece of reasoning it 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 mor e 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 perish than live en in a world where such things can be." If Hamlet is right when he de clared that "there is a special providence in the fall of a spar row.” then surely we are mightily tempted to feel that all the provi dences were directing the stone that Rousseau threw at the tree in Madame Warren's park at , Chambery. r The Toss of a Stone By REV. THOMAS B. GREGORY.