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4 m EDITORIAL RAGE The Atlanta Georgian THE HOME PARER THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published by THE GEORGIA t I'uMI'.VM' At 20 East Alabama Si. Atlanta. Oa. £nt*r«d ■fPond-cla«?' matter at postoffirent Atlanta nmJer art of Marrh 1 *«.» Bubirrlptlon Price—Delivered by carrier, 10 rent* a week By mall, $5.00 a year Payable In Advance The College Man«=He Rarely Has “Original Ideas" and Still More Rarely “Power of Judgment." The Man Who Is Only “a Spoke" Must Be Used as a Spoke- -The Man Who Is an Orange Must Expect To Be Squeezed. (Copyright. 1913.) Editor Atlanta Georgian Sir—it would give me consid erable pleasure if roil wonld write an editorial on tbe following sub ject "THE COLLEGE MEN'S MUTT AL BENEFIT ASSOCIATION ' Nowadays business men are sur feited with greed and the desire for their own aggrandizement, with no thought of their employee, ex cept a* an hireling serving the employer's unjust ends These employers are merely spokes in a commercial wheel that may be replaced at any time. It. makes no difference whether or not (me spoke Is more polished than oth ers so long as the wheel hums, and the operator In the form of the employer or stockholder is bene fited System, or custom, or both, rules the business world. In this respect the college man. with his original ideas and power of Judg ment/is greatly handicapped Ills promotion is governed more by length of service than by merit He is bound, as it were, by the shackles of system and a machine- like existence As a concrete case, take the transportalion companies, which embody system in Its most advanced form. If seems to be an established fact that, notwithstand ing college men constitute a very large number here, yet the cleri cal forceB of these companies are the least paid of any similar forces. It is no trouble for a degree man to secure employment with these companies, but what does he re- The Vulture’s Nest James Kinney, a college graduate, a man with “a degree,” wants to form a college graduates' union to get for the gradu ates decent pay. His view of life represents the view of thousands. So we pnnt his letter in full gladly—with comment of our own not en tirely agreeing with the college graduate view. ceive for bis skill? A mere pit tance. In other words, the highest type of organization is ever crying for the college man, yet will not pay him a just wage. With few exceptions, the positions of any importance that are held by col lege men to-day have been ob tained not through merit, but through influence, political or oth erwise A fine state of affairs for him who has spent the best four years or more of his life, and thou sands of dollars besides in prepara tion. The only remedy, to the writer's mind, lies in organization. If the justification is well founded for the existence of labor unions, then why not for a college men's mutual benefit association? Both have the same thing in common—the de mand for a just wage for their services Alone the laborer or tradesman Is at the mercy of an’ employer. In unionism, however, fie finds added strength and the power to prelect Ills interests. Ho it will be with the college man when he unites with his fellow col legians in the one common cause— that of securing a just wage for his services. Assuring you that I will deeply appreciate the lull insertion of this letter in your paper, and if convenient, an editorial, thereon, and welcoming the co-operation of other collegians in the foundation of such an association. I have the pleasure to remain. Yours very truly. JAMES KINNEY About a labor union especially for college men we say NO Men are MEN, and if they are going to unite they should unite as MEN and not as separate individuals with a piece of sheepskin neatly painted It would be well, as this newspaper has often said, if the young man in the black coat and patent leather shoes holding a clerk s position had BRAINS ENOUGH TO UNITE WITH ALL HIS FELLOW CLERKS FOR MUTUAL AID AND PROTEC TION The ideal union would be a union of intelligent men at the ballot box, voting for better conditions. Strange as it may seem, now that we have a republic and nniversal suffrage, men actually COULD solve their material problem* with the ballot if they would. But we still cling to the stupid methods of the Middle Ages; we still believe that prosperity can come only by uniting in guilds, to get all we can for ourselves and give as little as pos sible to others. Let Mr. Kinney, if he has the power, start a union of men who work with their brains, clerks, et cetera, if he thinks he can make a success of it. We doubt his success. Such men lack solidarity and class consciousness As for Mr. Kinney's view of the college graduate and his superior ability, we can not agree with him. The college graduate has no ORIGINAL IDEAS as a rule. Reading for several years what OTHERS have thought, said and done does not create “original ideas.” And the college man. as a rule, has NOT power of judg ment.” On the contrary, the boy out of college is usually lacking in judgment as he is in original ideas. Judgment is born of EXPERIENCE—it does not come through hearing what other men have done—although all infor mation is valuable. The ordinary boy out of college is a BOY, in the full sense of the word. He has missed four years of his manhood, having spent most of that amount of time "rah-rahing” with boys, wildly excited about football, baseball and rowing, singing about his alma mater—about as far removed from real life and real ac complishments as the Grand Llama of Thibet. If the average college boy had “power of judgment” and “original ideas” he would know better than to take a position as clerk in a transportation company. He would have judgment enough to get a job helping at something with a future. Those unable to go to college often pity themselves, but they need not do so. The four years that a boy spends in college, from nineteen years to twenty-three years of age, are as a gen- rule wasted, when nothing of worth happens. Two classes of boys may perhaps safely be sent to college, if If you saw the Kins of Carrion—a vulture—beating his wing As lie fled to his hitter eyrie and the prey from his claws aswing Was a child a little maiden—a girl—would you dare stand by Unwhipped by all human feelings ’till he vanished through clouded sky? i AH, never! X shot quick sighted—a bullet that whips and stings. | And a quick, kind death for the maiden neath the pall of the broken wings. ! it is quite certain that they have no leaning toward drunkenness, if their characters are good, and if it is not convenient to keep j them at home. The two classes that may well go to college are the very dull and those that are moderately dull. The very dull need four years to learn the very little that a boy learns in college. And the moderately dull might as well be college graduates as not— since it is probable that they will never be much. The boy of real power and ability is unjustly treated when he is sent to college. He has in his brain an active machine that under college rules is forced to go slowly. And an active brain WILL NOT GO SLOWLY; it will get into mischief if it is not kept fully oc cupied. You may say of college life, as the French proverb says of travel, that it FORMS youth, when it does not DEFORM youth. "Lck voyages forwent la jeunesse, guard Us tie la defonuent pas." The trouble with the average college boy is that he spends four years, picking up the FOUNDATION of an education—and then spends the rest of his life satisfied with the foundation. Education is not reading; education is THINKING. You might read all about all the lives of all the great men that ever lived—and you wouldn’t be any more of a man unless you had THOUGHT INTELLIGENTLY concerning what you had read. Lincoln had read perhaps a half-dozen good books. But over every word and every sentence and every idea HE HAD THOUGHT. His brain wasn't stuffed. It wasn't fed ENOUGH, it was true, but IT WAS FED. And Lincoln was able to write the Gettysburg address that no college graduate that the coun try has yet produced could equal. Even as a mere boy, express ing to the public his desire to be elected to a trifling office, he was intellectually, in power and thought and judgment, far ahead of the college graduate whom our friend describes as one possessing original ideas. Rev. Charles F. Aked Writes on “White Slave Traffic Act” a Misnomer. The Law’s Purpose Explairfed by Dr. Aked, Noted San Francisco Divine and For mer Pastor to John D. Rockefeller in Cleveland. By REV. CHARLES F. AKED Written foi' The Atlanta Georgian. When daily you see the vulture in the ranks of the underpaid— The carrion crow of low wages bearing off prey, afraid,' Cowering, tortured, screaming, doomed to a grewsome death, A death of slow-hung agony, of shame, of tortured breath. Will you fire no shot at the cause of it all ’till the pitiful price is paid, And Vice, secure in its clouded nest, feasts high on the soul of a maid’ —L. L. and. that book, and he imagines, poor little creature, that he is superior to the man who walks along the railroad track looking for loose spikes and really paying attention to his work. Unhappy are the sons of the rich who reach manhood with out being made to realize that they must work and think for themselves. Unhappy also are many of the thousands sent to college, taught to IMITATE the ways of the rich, filled with the foolish ambitions of the rich, relying for success upon the childish, easily-broken and forgotten friendships of college days—and then kicked out into the world, to find that a college gTaduate with a pen in his hand sitting at his desk is no better than any other boy able to multiply, add, divide or copy in a fair hand writing. If the college boys of this country want to form a union, let it be not a union for compelling employers to pay them more than they pay somebody just as good as themselves. Let the college graduates form a union FOR THE CONTIN UATION OF THEIR EDUCATION, WHICH WAS ONLY BE GUN AT COLLEGE. Let the boys determine to finish, in their hours of leisure, at I about the age of seventy, the education of which the foundation was laid during the college years. Such a union would be a benefit to boys, and, above all, it might be of use to the nation. We really need in this country men WITH ORIGINAL IDEAS AND POWER OF JUDGMENT, and we have very few of them, indeed. And of these few, a very trifling and insignificant minority come from the colleges. The greatest curse that can be inflicted upon a young boy is the curse of conceit. Unfortunately, college and the reading of a few books fills with conceit a great many of the boys who amount to little—and they are a majority. The graduate comes out of college, having read this book * 1 Our friend says some college graduates are only spokes in a wheel. So they are. But that is not the employer's fault. It is the fault of the human spoke. If a man IS a spoke, he must expect to be USED as a spoke. If he is a human orange, with only a little juice in him, he must expect to be squeezed. Spokes are for wheels and oranges are for squeezing. This is a practical world. Better civilization will give better opportunity—beginning before birth, and the Eg wi<i »r*«ves will be fewer. T il t: worst tiling about the “white slave traffic act” is its title. No such phrase ought to have been employed. It is Inaccurate and misleading. It throws a person off the track in discussing the rights and the wrongs of it. And in such cases as those of Diggs and Caminetti it en ables a eaviler to say they are prosecuted under a law which was never intended to apply to offenses like theirs. It supplies Caminetti, if he is correctly reported, with a reason for saying, “I am not a white slaver and I will not plead guilty to such a charge.” Mr. Mann, the author of the act, is to blame for giving such a title to tbe statute. Every man in Con gress who voted for it is to blame. It is strange that such a phrase was allowed to pass the officials of Congress. Section 8, the final section of the act, reads: “That this act shall he known and referred to as the white slave trafvc act.” But the description of the act with which it opens—as every act of Congress opens—is vastly different: An act to further regulate interstate and foreign com merce by prohibiting the trans portation therein for immoral purposes of women and girls, and for other purposes. That is a sane statement, tine can understand it. And it does not misrepresent the purpose of the statute. Diggs is not a white, slaver, and it is absurd to say that he is. Caminetti wonld not plead guilty to White slavery, and a plea of guilty under this statute would not lie so interpreted except by uninformed persons who have not read the act and have been carried away by its unfortunate title. |The Real Purpose. The real purpose of the act needs to lie better understood. And the details of the Athanasaw case ought to be widely known. Good men and women ought to know wliat. powers the United States Government has taken to itself. And the other kind of men and women do well to ponder the risks they run. The case of Louis Athanasaw was carried on appeal to the Su preme Court of the United States. And the language of the Supreme Court flings a blazing light upon the amazingly wide comprehensive ness of the new law. These are the facts: An Atlanta girl saw an adver tisement for chorus girls. She ap plied and was taken on at a salary of $20 a week, with board and room in the theater. She was sent from Georgia to a place in Florida —and this armed the United States for her protection. She came within the reach of a law which deals with “interstate commerce.” She arrived at the Florida town in in the early morning, and at lunch on the first day. she testified, there was “smoking, cursing and such language that I couldn’t eat.” In the afternoou Athanasaw, the man ager of the theater, came to her room and made improper proposals to her. At night she was required to go into the “boxes.” Here again she found “smoking, drinking and cursing.” There were four boys in the l>ox where she sat. One saw that she was both Innocent and frightened. He had pity on her; threatened to go for a policeman, and got her out of the place un harmed. This is the whole story, and upon these facts the jury found Athana saw guilty. The judge sentenced him to six months’ imprisonment. The instructions given by the judge to the jury included these striking words: The question here is of in tent : what was the intent with which defendants brought her here? That she should live an honest, moral and proper life? Or that she came and they en gaged and contracted with her for the purpose of her enter ing upon a condition which might be termed debauchery or might lead to a condition of debauchery ? Intent Important. The Supreme Court found that these instructions were perfectly proper. In the view of the high est court of the United States a nmn is guilty under this so-called white slave traffic act when he places a girl in conditions which are likely eventually to lead her into immoral conduct—if he cross es a State line to do it. and has the full intention of his acts. And the Supreme Court went further and added these striking words: • Granting the testimony to be true, of which the jury was the judge, the employment to which she was enticed was an effi cient school of debauchery of the special immorality which the xtatule was designed to cover. Small wonder that the court de clared the act to have a “more, comprehensive prohibition” than that which we call “white sla very!” Induce a girl to take a position as chorus girl, or waitress, or anything else where she has to put up with “smoking, drinking and cursing,” where she has to go around with boys out on the spree, where she has to resist improper proposals—and take her across a State line to this end—and the law can now pounce down upon you! While this is the scope of the act, and while this is the carefully thought-out design and purpose of the act, it is ridiculous to call it a white slave traffic act, and still more ridiculous for persons to go on saying that it ought not to be invoked against such offenses as those of which Diggs and Cami- netti are accused. “Segregation” Failure. The exceeding breadth of the act illustrates a world-tendency. In every country in the world there is dissatisfaction with conditions which allow of the exploitation of women for the passions or the profit of meu. “Segregation.” for instance, it is now recognized, has failed In every city on earth. And every thinker knows that as a pol icy it has failed. The change that has come over human thought is embodied in the newest legislation of a score of widely separated na tions. The best brains and the largest hearts in our own city see this clearly. During an interval in the Diggs trial the other day, the ablest lawyer in court whis pered to me: “Can you rea 1 l.v grasp the changed attitude of the public mind toward offenses like this? Try to imagine such a trial as this five and twenty years ago!” Due can not imagine it. But it is part of a movement wide as the civilized world. Eng!and“Tnoves along with the rest of the nations. The white slave act which the British Par liament lias passed is what it pro fesses to be—an act directed against the real white slaver. And Great Britain has brought back the whipping post. The man who entraps and holds or sells a girl and makes his profit out of her is n°w tied up and lashed with the “cat.” There was a stormy debate in Parliament when this was pro posed. Men of the “Oh-make-the- scoundrets-happy” school cried out against the inhumanity of it. One of them asserted that no jailer or prison warder would he found to brutalize himself” by carrying out such a sentence. And sturdy Will Crooks, a labor member, and the idol of hundreds of thousands of British workingmen, arose in his wrath. It is a matter of com mon knowledge that many of the men who engage in this nefarious trade in London are natives of the south and southeast of Europe. Crooks shouted: “If there is no jailer willing to do it, you can send for me. And if I’m on my summer holiday I’ll pay my expenses home for the pleasure of putting my mark on the back of some infamous foreign scoundrel who enslaves English girls. And when I’m through with the job I’ll find a hundred honest workingmen who’ll take it up without any pay but the satisfaction of protecting the Eng- lish home.” Flogging Revived. It was a Government measure, and the bill as introduced provided flogging as a punishment on the second conviction only. Parlia ment took the matter out of the Government’s hands, amended the hill to include flogging for the first offense, and carried it by a great majority. My friend Philip Snow den, membsk of Parliament for Blackburn, one of the most bril liant men in the House, “the prophet of the labor movement,” voted for the flogging clauses. His not less brilliant wife, when she was here in America a few months ago, declared against the flogging clauses for which her husband had voted. And she did it on the ground that under the law only men are to be flogged—not women guilty of the same offense. She feared that such a provision would tend to throw the trade in girls into the hands of women. Whether Mrs. Snowden would flog the wom an-fiend, the frightful creature who joins with men in running down girls and in debauching them, was not made clear. Will the day come in America when we shall be willing to flog men for this hateful crime? And even discuss as a possibility the wisdom of flogging women, too? IF THE LAWS THAT WE HAVE ARE ENFORCED. THE NEED WILL NEVER ARISE: