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I THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At 20 East Alabama Ht. Atlanta, Ga. Entered aa second-class matter at poetofflce at Atlanta, under act of March 3, 1873 Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier. 10 cents a week By mall, $5.00 a year. Payable in Advance. What DoYou Suppose Interests Them on Board the Train? National Affairs, Great Discoveries, News of Historical Inportance? Not at All—Something' Simpler. »■■ ' ■ ' 1 "*" **it hath not yet been shown what we shall be” is a fine sounding sentence, descriptive of our future greatness. ' It hath not yet been shown what petty, little human mice we are is a sentence that would describe pretty well the human race of to-day. You have only to observe the mental occupations of your fellow passengers on Pullman coaches running between Atlanta and New York to be convinced of the vacuity of human minds, their absence of thought, their aversion to study. Here are men traveling nearly a thousand miles, propelled by force buried in the coal several million years ago. They travel in rooms lighted with the electric power that flashes in the clouds, on rails and wheels of steel. Their journey is the result of millions of years of the earth’s development, and hundreds of thousands of years in the develop ment of human intelligence, AND THEIR MINDS ARE ON GAMES OR AMUSEMENT OR FOLLIES OF ONE KIND OR ANOTHER. You see solemn old men and distressed old women reading— novels usually vapid or vulgar—when they are not playing bridge or solitaire. % If you see someone interested in a newspaper, what do you suppose most attracts his attention? Let us look over his shoul der and see. No, gentle or fierce reader, he has not been reading import ant news of the Balkan war. He hasn’t wondered whether the United States would spread as it should all the way down this continent and stop just south of the Panama canal—for the present. He hasn't been reading bulletins of scientific discovery, or news of importance in the world and its history. He has been reading the important fact that Sommers “pitched” and Graham “caught” for Chattanooga, while Dent “pitched” and Dunn “caught” for Atlanta. He has been reading the numbers of runs, hits and errors— if you know what they are—and finding out who won in various games of baseball throughout the country. The human race has not grown up to its possibilities. It is a race of children, easily tired, incapable of concen trated, earnest thought. It is a race of men who work like beavers, or ants, or prairie dogs through the day, each in his own little direction, indiffer ent to the others, and who unite in intellect in the evening, not upon any subject worthy of the brain of a man, hut in intense interest in some poor little make-believe game. These men, “heirs of all the ages,” have their magnificent minds concentrated on a childish game that could have been played and was played in another form by the savages that lived here before language was perfected. Many a weary century must pass before the human mice of the present day will be really MEN. Woes of “Affinity” Earle’s Soul'Mates. The folly of certain “advanced ideas” on marriage, that rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of dead loves, comes with fresh proof in a London cable telling of a suit for divorce by the third wife of Ferdinand Pinney Earle, the New York artist, who has been in the limelight for years because of his love affairs. The unsophisticated daughter of an English architect, Mrs. Earle No. 3— the loveliest, sweetest, dearest of them all”— said she knew nothing of the American “affinity” advocate when she married him, two months after their first meeting. Now the mother of his child, she seeks her freedom on the ground of cru elty. Thus it was with Emilie Fischbacher and Julia Kuttner, both of whom Earle married and later lost. Advocates of a nondescript affection may conjure up new forms of wedlock as an improvement on the old-fashioned vows, but such theories are like “silly moths that singe their wings and fall into dust. Discord and strife are the invariable ac companiments of defiance of the laws of decency and honor. It is a fact that monogamic races have made the greatest progress in civilization. It was the monogamic barbarians, the virtuous Saxon vandals, that drove the hardest bargains with the Roman emperors. They preserved their rugged, healthy state from the weakening vices of a decadent age. Picmeers who have cut the hard granite, hewn the tall trees, conquered the wilderness and forwarded the arts and sciences— who have made America the greatest miracle in the annals of the nations—all have had a wholesome regard for the sanctity of the marriage covenant. They rarely entered lightly into wed lock. Enemies of the free love that feeds on empty promises of a superfine conjugality, they were ever loyal to the lesson of Cana in Galilee. Artist Earle 's marital misfortunes are the common lot of all so-called idealists who set their own opinions against the ex periences of the centuries. The religious element of the mar- ^B^e relation can not be ignored without bringing counter obli- ^^^tions that gall and bind the offenders with worse cords than ^those that fret the flesh. The Stage Cigarette Funny how it seems to strengthen the smoker’s nerves—in the play. i Barred Out Editor Georgian: Your recent statement. “The Presbyterian teaching of infant damnation seems to us horrible.” is a gross misrepresentation, to say the least of it. And it is up to you to quote authorities and prove it. or els*r retract it. If I knew that you were a MethodM. 1 would tell you it was John Wes ley, and not John Calvin, who once held such a belief. I come of Presbyterian ancestry dating back about two centuries, and claim to know something of the denomination at large. But I have never read or heard of one Pres byterian of anv note w ho so be- .ieved and taught N. B. A1ATHES. Man finds his glass eye in the stre* No telling where they’ll wander in these days of diapha nous gowns. • * * Police are unable to find man who hunted gas leak with a match. Eire Department might have done better • * * Alex; 1*0 i< rapidly becoming a “graveyard” situation. Too bad a typographical error made the subject of the Bryan lectures read: "Tne making of the ‘mon.’ * * * Favorable Crop Report—Uncle Sam to slip the farmer $50,000,- 000. * * * Airship wrecked dodging a spec tator. Should keep the crowds oif the ground. Ella Wheeler Wilcox Writes on Unfit Mothers Poverty Does Not Make Them So, as Many Are Rich. Criticism Committees Should Be Established Every where. Written for The Atlanta Georgian By Ella Wheeler Wilcox Copyright, 1913, by Star Company. HE unfitness of mothers of dependent children, complained of by ‘or- ' ganized charity’ is in my opinion all caused by poverty. “The Mothers’ Pension law re cently enacted by the legislatures of eighteen States will, to a great ertent, make the unfit mother fit because the pension removes the cause of her unfitness, which is her poverty. “It is the common observation that the very fine and very fit mother becomes comparatively unfit to take care of her children after a few years of hopeless struggle with poverty. “flie mistake of organized char ityI is their allowing good mothers of dependent children to hr mode unfit by the poison of poverty, the poison of hopelessness, the poison of overwork in trying to earn the living for their children at hard work and give proper care to their children at the same time. “Organized charity contends that a mother should have her children taken away from her be cause poverty has made her tem porarily unfit. “The real friends of the poor, the advocates of mothers’ pen sions. believe that the mother should have the cause of her un fitness removed and not her chil dren. HENRY NEIL." Unfit Mothers Caused by Poverty Open to Doubt. M OTHERS’ pensions now ex tend from coast to coast. One can now travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean going through mothers’ pension States only, starting on the coast of New Jersey and going through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Mich igan. Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Col orado^ Utah, Nevada to the coast of California. Other mothers’ pension States are Washington, Oregon, Idaho, South Dakota, Minnesota, Massa chusetts, New Hampshire—eigh teen in all. Three cities that have local mothers’ pension laws are Kansas City, St. Louis and Milwaukee. Meantime the statement of Mr. Neil that the unfit mothers are caused by poverty is open to doubt. Some of the most unfit mothers to be found on earth are women of wealth. , Two little girls on board a large ocean liner were the daughters of a New York banker, and their mother was an educated woman, and their father was a man of parts; yet there were never seen on earth more insufferably dis agreeable children than these. They were ill-mannered, imperti nent, unkind and ungracious. The chief steward in the dining salon was obliged to rebuke them for / their impertinence and their an noying treatment of other pas sengers. The children she had should have been taken away from such < parents and placed under wise and worthy instructors. A woman who has been reared with excellent opportunities for culture is the mothpr of four chil dren. There is no financial strain <1IK)U the family, yet the children have never been taught any of the gracious and lovely traits which help to build a worthy character and a pleasing personality. Every School and Church Should Have a Criti cism Committee. Loud, harsh voices, flat contra dictions, continual quarreling and the most disagreeable qualities distinguish this family. Such parents are certainly* unfit to bring up families. A fund for the erection of a large scientific institution, such as Dr. Elmer Gates has always longed to see established, would be a bene fit to the world, an institution • where the brain cells of vulgar ' and disorderly children, as well as the perverted and viciously in clined, could he developed into constructive qualities. Every school and church in the land ought to have a ‘‘criticism committee,” such as existed in the Oneida community years ago. To this committee every person who had a complaint to make of the manners or conduct of an other member of the community went, and the committee called the offending person with the complainant, and the whole sub ject was calmly and thoroughly investigated. And reproof was ad ministered where it belonged, and if it was proven that any personal or selfish or jealous feelings prompted the complainaut, he was the one reproved and publicly placed under ban, and made to see how unworthy was his action. An Institution for Brain Building Would Also Be Good. Unselfishness was the religious keynote of the society, and had it let sex problems alone it would have been one of .the greatest fac tors for bettering the world which ever existed in America. f If our schools and colleges and churches could adopt this excel lent idea of the Oneida com munity and established the “Criti cism committee” and then carry I Dr. Elmer Gates’ dream of a brain building institution into realization, the children of the idle rich might stand as good a chance of becom ing agreeable aqd useful citizens as do the children of the poor to day. : A DEAD FIRE : By WILLIAM F. KIRK. y T THERE some lean trapper lingered long ago I// To make himself secure against the, night, ’ * It stays a scar whereon no blade will grow, Its old. cold ashes sifting to and fro, Its charred sticks black where once was leaping light. All green and lovely lies the forest floor Around this patch of ever-barren soil; Nearby the pinks and daisies bloom once more Abundantly as in the years before, Watching the queer gray serpents writhe and coil. In all the world of grim and ghostly sights There is no sight more like to lasting pain, Suggesting hopeless days and long, sad nights; It is the ashen wraith of past delights— It is the heart of one who loved in rain. i f