Atlanta Georgian. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, August 18, 1913, Image 10
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EDITORIAL PAGE .IPHE Atlanta Georgian THE HOME RARER
THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN ,
Published Every Afternoon Except 5
By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY
At 20 East Alabama St Atlanta, OJa.
Entered a« eeeond-clasa matter at postofftce at Atlanta, under act of March 3 1873
Subscription Price—Delivered In' carrier. 10 cents a week liy mail, 15.00 a year.
Payable In Advance.
j What Do You Suppose Interests
Them on Board the Train?
National Affairs, Great Discoveries, News of Historical Inportance?
Not at All—Something Simpler.
“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’b
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, but 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.
The Stage Cigarette
Funny how it seems to strengthen the smoker’s nerves—in the play.
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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 civilisation. It was the monogamic barbarians, the
virtuous Saxon vandals, that drove the hardest bargains with
the Homan emperors. They preserved their rugged, healthy state
from the weakening vices of a decadent age.
Pioneers 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 ragard for the sanctity
at 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
riage relation can not be ignored without bringing counter obli
gations that gall and bind the offenders with worse cords than
those that fret the flesh.
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PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE
PERTINENT PARAGRAPHS
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 19 up
to you to quote authorities and
prove it. or else retract it. If I
knew that you were a Methodist.
1 would ted you it whs John YYw
ley, and not John Calvin, who
once held auch 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 who so be
lieved and taught.
N. B. BATHES.
Man finds his glass eye in the
street. 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. Fire Department might
have done better
• • *
Mexico is rapidly becoming a
graveyard’’ situation.
Too bad a typographical error
made the subject of the Bryan
lectures read: “The making of
the ‘mon.’ ”.
• • •
Favorable Crop Report—Uncle
Pam to slip the farmer $50,000,-
000.
* • *
Airship wrecked dodging a spec
tator. Should keep the crowds
off 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
ganised 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
extent, make the unfit mother fit
because the pension removes the
cause of her unfitness, which is
her poverty.
"It 4* the common observation
that the very fine and very fit
mother becomes comparatively unfit
td take care of her children after
a few years of hopeless struggle
with poverty.
"The mistake of organized char
ity is their allowing good mothers
of dependent children to be made
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.
Nell 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 \yere 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 mother of four chil
dren. There is no financial strain
upon 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 be 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 complainant, he was
the one reproved and publicly
placed under ban, and made to see
bow unworthy was his action.
An Institution for Brain
Building Would Also
Be Good.
Unselfishness was the religion*
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.
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
Dr. Elmer Gates’ dream of a brain
building institution into realisation,
the children of the idle rich might
stand as good a chance of becom
ing agreeable and useful citizens
as do the children of the poor to
day.
: A DEAD FIRE :
By WILLIAM F. KIRK.
T T THERE some lean trapper lingered long ago
If / 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 vain.