Atlanta Georgian. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, August 15, 1913, Image 14

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J A EDITORIAL RAGE The Atlanta Georgian I THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday IK GEORGIAN CoMPAN” By the Georgian company At 20 East Alabama St. Atlanta, Oa. Entered as second-class matter at poitoffloe at Atlanta, under act of March ln<-i Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier 10 cents a week By mall, $5.00 a year. Payable In Advance. K'4 7 tv Gasoline Is a Necessity of Life 7 Because- Industry and Farming: Are Necessary to Life, and GASOLINE Is Necessary to Industry and Farming—When Will Government Investigate the Gasoline Extortion.’ (Copyright. 1913. < Every day in some part of the country the price of gasoline is increased. Men that used to buy it for six and seven cents a gallon now buy it for twenty cents, twenty-five cents, and even more. The gentlemen that control the gasoline supply need not worry about business or prosperity. They simply make up their minds just how much robbery the public will stand—and raise the price of gasoline accord ingly. They can say to themselves, ‘ With gasoline at eighteen cents we were getting so many millions. Let us sell gasoline at twenty cents and make so many millions more. Then gasoline at twenty-two cents, and make still more millions.” Only this question interests them: "Had we better take it all in a lump and run the risk of trouble, or take it slowly and cautiously?” How mamy farmers after buying agricultural implements requiring the use of gasoline find themselves unable to use them economically because of the excessive price? One trouble with the big Rumley Company, maker of agri cultural implements, was the fact that not allowing for the thiev ish inclination of those that control the price of gasoline, the company built a great number of gasoline tractors—and has them on its hands unable to sell them, BECAUSE THE FARM ERS FIND THAT THEY CAN T AFFORD TO USE THE GAS OLINE TRACTORS BECAUSE OF THE PRESENT PRICE OF GASOLINE. What is this gasoline that gives tens of millions a year to a few, through extortion from many? It is a product very simply made of crude oil pumped out of the earth. If this country had been properly managed from the start that oil WOULD BE THE PROPERTY OF THE PEOPLE, PAYING REVENUE AND PROFIT ONLY TO THE PEOPLE. This gasoline is part of the wealth stored up in the earth millions of years ago, now monopolized for a few and used as a means of extortion. k\ This country pays out millions annually to prevent robbery on a SMALL scale. Woe to the man who takes a pair of shoes, a loaf of bread or an overcoat. We are willing to spend millions to catch and punish him. Why shouldn’t we have a national police to stop thievery on a big scale, as well as the municipal police to stop the thievery on a small scale? Why worry so much about the poor devil who steals ten dol lars occasionally, and ignore calmly the very rich devil who steals ten millions or more at regular intervals? The necessities of life, the necessities of industry, should not be agents of extortion. The prices of necessities should be investigated by govern ment, regulated by government. And the gigantic organizations that are able to produce cheaply by combination and are permitted to rob wholesale should be compelled to give to the public their fair share of the economies and to sell AT A FAIR PRICE that which costs them nothing in comparison to the price asked. Th ' gasoline stealing har gone on about long enough. Government should do something more drastic about it than, loudly with the beating of drums, bring about so-called “dissolu tion” of the trust, which has simply put up the price of stocks, put up the price of gasoline and increased the prosperity of the smiling individuals who laugh at government and laugh at law. The City’s Children By PERCY F. MONTGOMERY. I WISH that all the children of the city's grimy street Were out here with these wild flowers beneath this sky of blue; I’d like to see tlielr faces ns they scampered o'er these hills— I’d like to see them happy, wouldn't you? They're stunted, maimed and weary, and their eyes are far away; The sunshine never sees them and they never know 'tis true. There's no flower in the alley and no per fume In the alr- Oh. I'd like to see them happy, wouldn’t you? “Ye did It Sorry jest to sine on Stinday, unto me,” With the children all In prison and the ereen fields far away, Noddine flowers wait their handclasp, where the sunshine cleaves the blue— Oh, I’d like to see them happy, wouldn't you? In the Movies In Real Life Laziness is the Root of Most Misery Unhappy, Are You? Do You Enjoy It (Many Do) or Are You Too Lazy To Be Otherwise? This Is Especially the Case With Women. By DOROTHY DIX. A MONG my acquaintances Is a young woman who, ten years ago, was an extraor dinarily brilliant and beautiful gill, talented in half a dozen dif ferent directions. This girl had the misfortune to marry a drunkard, or. to tell the simple truth, she did marry a drunkard in spite of all that her family and friends could do to prevent her. It Turned Out as Such Marriages Nearly Always Do. The marriage turned out as such marriages almost invariably do. and after enduring seven or eight years of untold misery she divorced her husband, and went back home to live with her two little children. This woman Is still young. She Is only 32. and In all proba bility has thirty or forty years more of life left to her. and that's a long time in which to be happy or miserable, and to make ypur- self a blessing or a curse to those about you. And she has accepted her mis ery. She has enrolled herself among the human tragedies. She Is the most haggard figure of woe that you ever saw. She has per mitted herself to turn Into one of I those cynical, bitter, disgruntled women, with a tongue with a razor edge, from which the boldest flee Her family are In very moderate circumstances, not able to support I her and her children, though they willingly divide what they have with her. Her poverty is another goad In her side, but she accepts this, as she does her other sorrow, as just another drop of bitter in her cup, and another thing to wail over. This woman has just one pleas ure In life, and that Is that she lives In a perfect debauch of self pity. She keeps herself drunk on her own tears, and drugged with the thought of her own troubles until she Is just as dulled and lethargic as any man that ever wallowed in a gutter, or lay stupe fied In an opium joint. Ndqe of her friends ever speaks of her except as "poor Sadie," but for my part, I always feel like screeching “Coward! Quitter! De serter!” at her, for in my eyes there is no more contemptible fig ure In **-•' world than that of the man or woman who refuses to fight the battle of life, who sur renders in the very first 'skirmish, and before the fight is really on. Of course. It’s a terrible thing to make a mistake In marriage. I am not minimizing that sorrow. ! though it has always seemed to me that a woman who married a man knowing that he d-rank. was in honor bound to stand for a drunken husband, but in this en lightened age people are not bound forever to the cross of their matri monial mistakes. Divorce Is Unpleasant; So Is the Knife of the Surgeon. Divorce is also unpleasant, but it is like a surgeon's knife that cuts away a festering sore, and the clean wound It leaves Is a thousandfold more endurable than the dally nagging and gnawing of a sorrow that feeds on your heart like a worm on a rose. At any rate, having made an un fortunate marriage and having di vorced an unworthy husband, the Incident Is closed so far as the woman Is concerned, and she should put the affair out of her 1 life. She certainly does herself no good by sitting up and brooding over what might have been. That is with the past, and her business is with the future. She can’t change what has been one iota by thinking about it, or weeping over it, or regretting it, but she can make what is to be full of happiness and content, and brightness, if she will. No One Need Be Miser able Unless He or She Enjoys It. Nobody need be perpetually miserable unless they really enjoy It and unless they get more fun out of crying than they do out of laughing. Plenty of people do. They are built that way, especially women who are most naturally of a sort of half mourning com plexion. This woman of whom 1 am writ ing—and there are thousands like her—has accepted misery, and de pendence, and poverty as her lot In life. And she needn't endure this melancholy existence for an other hour If she has the back bone of a fishing worm. She’s strong, and healthy, and young. She is Intelligent enough to learn how to do anything on earth If she’d put as much energy into it as she does to mourning over her fate, and as much thought as she does in dwelling on her troubles. All that she needs Is to say to herself. "I am not going to be mis erable. I am not going to have my life wrecked by one mistake that I made when I w*as a foolish young girl. I am not going to be a dependent. I am not going to be poor. I am going to roll up my sleeves and go to work, and fill my life so full of fresh Interests and occupation that I won t even have time to remember that I’ve got a past. I’m going to make money to buy the things I want, and to give my children the ad vantages they would have had if they had had the right sort of a father, and I am going to be happy because 1 am going to be of some use to my fellow creatures.” Just the grit to make the fight is all that stands between this woman and happiness, and be tween every other woman of the weeping willow type and the sun shine. The time was when there was nothing for the unhappy wom an to do but to sit down and weep and lament, but that time has gone by, thank God. If a woman misses the trail to con tentment In one direction now, she can face about and go the other way and arrive at the same goal. The reason most people are mis erable Is because they are lazy. They are too indolent to make an effort to secure happiness for themselves, and this is especially the case with women. Happiness Is for Us All If We Have the En ergy to Get 11. Women are sick because they are too lazy to take enough exer cise to keep them healthy; they are dependent because they are too lazy to get up and hustle for themselves; they are poor be cause they are too lazy to do the hard work that it takes to earn money. Happiness Is for us all If we have only the energy and deter mination to reach out and take it, and for us to succumb to misery is a confession of weakness for which we deserve to be ostracized by our friends instead of being pitied by them. the: home paper DR. PARKHURST Writes on Ways of Living The City and Country Are in Constant Warfare, He Says. The Trend Always Toward Large Centers of Population. Written For The Georgian By the Rev. Dr. C. H. Parkhurst D r. JOSIAH STRONG’S new book, “Our World," the first of a projected series of three volumes, commends Itself to the attention of those who are Inter ested in the trend of present events and in the social crisis which we all somehow suspect to be ap proaching. The general purpose of the book is to show that the current of the general life, here and abroad, is reaching the point where It can no longer be held within the chan nel that it has worn for itself, nor restrained by the barriers with which it has been artificially dammed. The author is temperate in his statement of the situation and thoroughly optimistic In his an ticipations, but puts the case strongly and illustrates his posi tion clearly and in terms in which hesitation finds no part. The closing chapter occupies It self with the new problem of the city. The author has no faith In, and little patience with, the cry of “Back to the Land.” There has always been a drift cityward. Somewhat of the urban Impulse came to Its expression as early in human history as the building of the Tower of Babel in the plain of Shinar, as recorded in the Old Testament narrative. Men are gre garious. like sheep, and tend to live in herds. Obstacles To City Life Have Been Over come. This disposition was formerly somewhat discouraged by the great mortality Incident to condensed population because of unsanitary conditions, an obstacle which has now been largely overcome by im proved methods. Formerly, also, the size of a city was limited by Imperfect means of transporting, a sufficient supply of water and of food material. Steam and civil engineering have now gotten the better of these difficulties also, so that un der those changed conditions there Is no necessary limit set to aggre gations of population. Consequent ly the gregarious impulse can now have allowed to It perfectly free scope. 9o that, although the constant effort is being made to get people out of the city into the country, and although title Government has brought pressure to bear In the same direction, and during the 50 years following 1860 had put nearly half a billion acres of land at the free dispeeition of the peo ple, the urban population continued to increase more rapidly than the rural—three timee as rapidly be tween 1880 and 1900, as is reported on the basis of the national cen sus. All of this seemed sufficient evi dence of the fact that there Is a current setting In the direction of the city, having Its source in the very nature of things, and mov ing w r ith a momentum which neither humanitarian effort nor governmental discouragement will suffice to resist. Opposing the Cityward Trend Like Tr ying to Bottle the Wind. That this drift cityward has its origin In other than local and tran sient causes and inheres in eco nomic conditions and tri man's na tive disposition, is proved by the fact that for hundreds of years fruitless efforts have been made to prevent people from leaving the fields for the town. Dr. Strong quotes the appeals made by Aris totle, Cicero and Virgil and the legal measures to the same end adopted by Justinian and Queen Elizabeth. Opposing the tendency would, therefore, seem to be vary much like trying to imprison the wind or like taking up arms agninst the tide. If this movement is to con tinue, and at Us present rapid rate of increase, and if our population is going to bulk Itself fit urban centers, the prospect is fraught with practical and serious conse quences. We have to think what -will be its effect upon human physique and human character. We look to the country for physical sturdiness. It Is by recruits from the country that the city maintains a certain moral determination and strenu- ousness that seem not to germi nate and thrive so readily in urban soil. Whatever may be the rea son for it, such undoubtedly re mains the fact. Perhaps it Is be cause the country furnished more that is real, the city more that is ficticious. Editor The Georgian: In The Georgian of August 9, Ella Wheeler Wilcox has an ar ticle, “Live First—Talk After wards," in which she classes Universal Life Principle, Vibra tion, Mental Science, New Thought and Christian Science as kindred subjects. The writer being a student of Christian Sci ence desires to dissociate Chris tian Science from these so-called relations and show that It has nothing In common with any of these doctrines. In Science and Health, page ill, Mrs. Eddy says, “The principle of divine meta physics Is God; the practice of divine metaphysics is the utili zation of the power of Truth over error; its rules demonstrate its Science.” The method of apply ing this rule in Christian Science is to yield thought to the divine will or Influence, in trust and confidence. This is the faith or understanding which the Apostle Paul designates as "the sub stance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Jesus proved this rule in all of His wonderful works. He said. “Of Myself 1 do nothing; not My will but thine be done; as the Father worketh hitherto, I work." Mental Science, New Thought, Mental Suggestion, and Kindred Subjects, confuse the action of the human will or carnal mind with the divine will or law, hence their failure. Out of this confu sion, or lack of misunderstand ing. comes the inability of cer tain types to illustrate by “their faces,” their manner, "their work." that they have found a panacea for human Ills. "Row to control Destiny,” “How to grow success.” "How to attain self-mastery,” “How’ to be well and prosperous" are sub jects not one of which appear in any of Mrs. Eddy’s writings or in any of the periodicals pub lished by the Christian Science Association. These subjects in dicate and suggest the effort of the human will. Christian Science follows the admonition of Jesus: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God aod all these things shall be added unto you." The human will, impelled by its own force or volition, consumes its vitality and is self-destruc tive. This destruction manifests Itself in physical and nervous breakdown; hence its weakness and failure to heal either itself or another. Christian Science re lies on Its divine principle, speaks the word, as Jesus did, and trusts this word to fully accomplish that " hereunto it Is sent. “The Word of God is quick and powerful." It demonstrates Itself in health, har mony, Joy, peace, love and good will to those who rely on it On page 446 "Science and Health,” by Mrs. Eddy, are these words: The exercise of will brings on a hypnotic state detrimental to health and integrity of thought." Mrs. Wilcox says, "Wait until you succeed before preaching suc cess. If those who have achieved great success in any department or life had followed this line of thinking, the world would have known little success. “Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you,’’ are spiritual admonitions coming down the ages from Him whom the world recognizes as the greatest suc cess. Seek under divine guidance and the way to success is already open. Christian Science opens wide its arms of love to all “dissatis fied souls.” and they com e to it from all classes of society, seek ing solace for their wounds, heartaches and disappointments. Some are “unkempt, nervous and erratic;" for this reason they need the tender sympathy, the patient instruction ofTered in this haven of rest by those who have gained through this great revelation some understanding of how to love our neighbor as ourself. \ E. H. CARMAN. '