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EDITORIAL RAGE The Atlanta Georgian THE HOME RARER THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Exrept Sunday By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At 20 Eaat Alabama St,. Atlanta. Ga. Entered a» aerond-claee matter at poetofflre at Atlanta, under ant of M»rch 8. 18.3 Subscription Price-Delivered by carrier 10 cent* u week By mall, »o.00 a year. Payable In Advance. Poor Old England, Her Feelings Are Hurt. For a Big Country, With Big Men, She Does Some Small Thing*. (Copyright, 1913) We shall soon have a big Panama Exposition in California. More than twenty.five of the world’s nations have accepted the invitation to show at that Exposition what they are doing and what they have accomplished since the last great Exposition. But England, our respected stepmother across the water, sends word that she will keep her little dolls and toys at home and will NOT exhibit. Her feelings are hurt, if you please, because we would not arbitrate with Great Britain the question of her right to use IN HER OWN WAY the Panama Canal, which we built WITH OUR OWN MONEY. We didn't ask Great Britain to arbitrate with us regulations concerning the Manchester Canal, which she built. We don’t ask her to arbitrate her right to keep a lot of guns perched on the rock of Gibraltar, thus controlling the Mediter ranean shores. We ought to question that right, by the way, and some day probably we ’ll do away with it. But we are very nice about it just NOW. Poor old England, it seems as though we were always des tined to hurt her feelings. We had to give her a thrashing in 1776. In 1812 she had to have another. Now, Britannia's classical nose is out of joint because the United States has been so unreasonable as to decide that the United States’ SHIPS can go through a canal built with United States’ MONEY on terms different from the terms accorded to the ships of England and all the rest of the world. We don’t want to be cruel, however. We shan’t have any English exhibition, since England doesn’t want it. The whole country, the entire United States, is as much of an English exhibition as we want. Here we show what a country does when England no longer controls it. Here we show by contrast with countries that England rules what it means to escape from English rule and to GOVERN YOURSELF. In California, and on every inch of soil from New England to California, there is an exhibition of the results obtained by the descendants of the men that knew enough to get rid of Eng land’s rule a good many years ago. But, poor old stepmother, let us not speak unkindly of her. Her feelings are hurt. Let us rather wipe her tears, and while telling her firmly that she can not be permitted to boss the Panama Canal or other things American, and reminding her gently that 1776 was some time ago, let us be as kind to her as we know how. There is no fun being an Anglo-Saxon old lady, a little stiff in the joints, and to see the young folks among nations going ahead and leaving you. Adam Smith By REV. THOMAS B. GREGORY. O NE HUNDRED AND THIR TY-SEVEN year# ago, almost simultaneously with the Declaration of Independ ence. was published Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." a work that was to do for political economy what the gTeat Declaration was to do for political liberty. Of this celebrated work Buckle wrote: "Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations,’ looking at its ultimate results, is probably the most im portant book ever written, and it is certainly the most valuable contiibution ever made by a sin gle man toward establishing the principles in which government should be based. This solitary Scotchman has, by the publica tion of a single work, done more for the happiness of man than has been effected by the united ability of all the statesmen and legislators of whom history has preserved an account." The doctrines of Smith soon found their way into the House of Commons, and from there worked their way out among the people. Gradually the great truths forge^ aac*u* *£4 aiavib tout >rgeu v surely, the revolution In political economy was assured. As soon as it was seen that gold and sliver are not wealth, but merely the representatives of wealth; that wealth Itself consists In the value which skill and labor can add to the raw material; that in the absence of monopoly the benefits of trade must be recipro cal; that these benefits arise sim ply from the faculty with which a nation exports those commodities It can produce the most cheaply, and Imports those which It can produce only at great expense, but which the other, from the bounty of nature or superior skill In production, can afford to sup ply at a lower rate, the great problem was solved. When a great thinker arises who happens also to have a liv ing realisation of that universal Justice which holds for all men. he la sure to be listened to in the long run. He makes no noise, his voice Is not heard In the din of the street, but In the solitude and the silence he formulates the Idea* that are to govern the ages Such a thinker was Adam Smith, the author of the -Wealth of Ns- IkiBA" In the Movies Well, dear old Lady Albion, stay HOME with your toys and your exhibits if you must. We should like to have had you come over, with your cocoa and your Manchester hardware, your automobiles, your exquisitely funny so-called English accent and all the rest of it. But we always have an English exhibit in America, without any special contribution to the Exposition in California. If we wanted to he hard-hearted and cruel (which Provi dence forbid!) we could set apart a little spot for England at the Exposition ANYHOW, and have a nice little English exhibit of our own, including: The polo cup that England, with the pick of her whole army of India and the British Islands, can’t seem to get—although only a few score of American boys play polo regularly and sup ply our ponies. And we might have the yachting cup, that England, so-call ed ruler of the waves, has been obliged to leave over here for a considerable period. We could have quite a string of cups representing the va rious “English sports,’’ in which England always is second, when she isn’t third, fourth, fifth or worse. In Real Life DOROTHY DIX \ Oofvritfht, TO It. by Anwrkmi*>Jonrna)-Rn(oinar. S O many people—-people—In the world; So few great souls, love ordered, well begun. In answer to the fertile mother need! So few who seem The Image of the Maker's mortal dream; So many bom of mere propinquity— Of lustful habit, or of accident Their mothers felt No mighty, all-compelling wish to see Their bosoms garden-places Abloom with flower faces; No tidal wave Bwept o’er them with Its flood; No thrill of flesh or heart; no leap of blood; No glowing Are, flaming to white desire For mating add for motherhood. Yet they bore ohlldren. God! how mankind misuses Thy command To populate the earth • How low 1b brought high birth! How low the woman; when. Inert as spawn Lett on the sands to fsruli*#, She Is the meana through which the race goes on! Not so the flret intent Birth, as the Supreme Mind conoetved It meant The clear Imperious call of mate to mate And the clear answer. Only thus and then Are fine, well-ordered, and potential lives Brought Into being. Not by church or state Can birth be made legitimate, Unless. Love In Its fulness bless. Creation so ordains Its lofty laws That man, while greater in all other things, Is lesser In the generative cause. The father may be merely man, the male; Yet more than female must the mother be. The woman who would fashion Souls, for the use of earth and angels meet. Must entertain a high and holy passion. Not rank, or wealth, or influence of kings Can give a soul Its dower. Of majesty and power. Great love to that great hour. Writes on Parental Authority There Is a Limit to It, She Declares. Grown Children, She Says, Should Have Right to De cide for Them selves. By DOROTHY DIX. parental H OW far does parental au thority go? To what extent should a grown-up man or woman sacrifice his or her liberty of action, and possibly his or her success In life in order to gratify the whim or prejudice of an old father and mother? I have a letter from a young woman who puts this question In a very pertinent fashion. My cor respondent w-rites that her parents are well-to-do, even rich, country people, and that she prepared hep self to be a milliner, and is an ex pert hat trimmer, capable of earn ing a good salary. Her father and mother refuse, however, to let her go and take a position in a shop where she could make the money to gratify her desires for good clothes and innocent pleasures, and they also refuse to provide her with the money for these luxuries. They give her nothing hut her board In return for the work she does about the farm, and she has to make the money for the few clothes that she has by taking in ill-paid sewing and trimming hats for the neighboring farmers’ wives. This young woman wants to know if she would not be justi fied in asserting her own inde pendence and going away from home and accepting one of the many offers she has had to make her living in the way that is most congenial to her and best paid. There Is a Limit to the Authority of Parents. Inasmuch as she says that she Is twenty-seven years old and has arrived at years of discretion, if she is ever going to get there, I should say that she has a perfect right to follow her own judgment and inclination, and as long as she does only those things that are true and honorable and of good report to live her own life in her own way. There is a limit to the authority of parents, and while the sacred obligation to honor your father and your mother never ceases, there is no reason why the pros pects of the young should be blighted by a blind yielding to the tyranny of the odd just because they happen to stand In a certain relationship. When their children are very young parents assume the attitude of oracles to them. They are wiser than the babe, more capable of de ciding its little problems . than it is, and the trouble Is that this en genders in most fathers and mothers a conceit that makes them believe^to the end of time that they still are wiser than their children and perfectly capable still of set tling every question that comes up In their offsprings’ lives. Nothing in the world Is further from the truth than this. Nature plays strange pranks In families, and many a dull, commonplace man and woman begets children that are brilliant, mercurial, rest less, full of strange talent, and no more like their progenitors than champagne is like dishwater. How are such parents able to decide anything for such children? How are eucH parents to know what Is best for such children? What folly for such children to be bound down by the narrowness and prejudice of such parents, their ambitions thwarted, their careers ruined because a stupid father and mother will not consent to a gifted son or daughter doing something which they never want ed to dol Yet we all know men whose lives have been rained because when they desired to be doctors or lawyers their fathers forced them behind grocery counters. We have known girls that God himself made actors, or singers, or artists^ whose genius was lost to the world be cause their provincial parents thought that a woman’s "sphere" was in the kitchen. The Parents of To-day Are Unfitted to Direct Children. We have all known miserable men and women whose parents had separated them from the wo men and men they loved and mar ried them to somebody they didn’t love because the father and mother were so certain that they knew the kind of a husband or a wife that Mary and John needed better than Mary and John knew them selves. The truth Is that there have been so many changes In the con ditions of life and the point of view in the last twenty years that the parent of to-day is absolutely unfitted to decide the problems of life for the young man and woman of to-day. Tills Is particularly the case with women, because the whole economic and social position of woman has been revolutionized since mother was a girl. Things that were considered bad form then are good form now. Senti ments that were daring then are commonplace conventions now. An amount of education that made a girl a blue stocking then renders one only moderately well, informed now. Mother will not consent to her gifted daughter going on the stage, where she could make name and fortune, because In mother’s nar row prejudice the stage and im morality are synonymous terms, when the modern view Is that morality is a matter of morals and not of environment. Mother doesn’t think that her daughter should go Into business because when she was young the working woman was looked down upon, when now It la Just as much a matter of course for a woman who needs money to work as It Is for a men Men and Women Have the Right to Decide for Themselves. Mother thinks that her daugh ters should marry to please her, Instead of gratifying their Indi vidual tastes In husbands, and she forgets that It Is the daughters who are going to have to Bve with the men, not she. All of this makes It utterly Im possible for parents to judge for their children, and It Is not right that the old should lay restrictions upon the young. Therefore, it seems to me that, after a girl or boy comes to man’s and woman** estate, they have a right to decide things for themselves. Whatever mistakes are made, they must pay for them, and they should at least have the privilege of trying to do the things they want to do. Age does not always bring wis dom. It just as often augments and confirms stupidity and pig headedness. PERTINENT PARAGRAPHS The actions of the late allies must make the Sultan feel like doing the turkey trot these days. • • * ■ • When a man begins to feed on flattery comoliments become the necessities of life. • • • A? a rule we prefer to make' intelligent people the targets for criticism. • • • Good intentions often inspire t ha ma-a. tti at tLlA Ifnnclfan What our octogenarians seem to need most is not old-age pen sions, but easier divorce law a • • • Venezuela’s army is sent to capture Castro. Horrors 1 Sup pose he's armed? • • • John D. Rockefeller says bO*l still a boy at 73. Wonder if he’s "kidding?" • • • Autos and airships make a ay- floM a I