Atlanta Georgian. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, December 16, 1913, Image 16

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EDITORIAL RAGE The Atlanta Georgian THE HOME RARER THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Publl*h*1 by THK GEORGIAN COMPANY At 20 East Alabama l*lt Atlanta, Ga Enter** «* second-e)*** matter at poatofflee at Atlanta, ur.der act of Mar«*h *. 1*7S HEARRT’8 SUNDAY AMERICAN ami THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN will be mailed to aubacrlbara anywhere In the United State* Canada • Mexico, one month for $ *0, three month* for 11.75; change of address made an often aa desired Foreign eubacrlptlon rate* on application. Christmas Is Coming Sue55 I'D beTTfew. <Jo Buy Th^iT ppesEMT roi*- Thu wire The State of Georgia is singularly well served politically at the present time. Few Commonwealths in the Republic are more ably and ac ceptably represented in Congress and the Senate, and not one of them has a more admirable Governor in the executive chair. Governor Slaton’s record from the beginning has been a progressive marvel. He has risen from the ranks to the ruling place. He fought his way up by sheer force of merit and pluck through the Legislature and the Senate to the presidency of the Senate. He has been Governor by succession, and, under well- nigh unanimous approval, has become Governor by voice of the people. He has borne himself highly everywhere. He has risen without stain, sustained himself with signal ability and force in every public emergency, met every expectation of the people, demonstrated the highest order of civic courage and judgment and character, and has fully vindicated his eminent fitness for any future preferment that he may seek. “Glamis he is, and Cawdor, and shall be more hereafter.” Senator Hoke Smith was sent to Washington with a high estimate of his ability and force. Georgians believed that he would make good in national affairs, and it is the simple truth to say that he has done so. Among the men who have been closest to the Democratic President and exercised a large in fluence in shaping Administration and Senatorial policies, Sena tor Smith of Georgia has been prominent. Before his first term is half complete he is a recognized power in the politics and pub lic sentiment of the country. There are few wiser things for a State to do than to recog nize capable and faithful public servants and to reward them. The mutations of personal politics frequently bring unworthy men to the service of the State, but the judicious people recog nize good men when they are found and hold on to them. Undoubtedly both Governor Slaton and Senator Smith ought to be kept in the service of Georgia. Both of these states men should be returned to the respective stations which they adorn. Unless, of course, they should have other ambitions. The Way a mah Doe. s HIS X'MAS. •SHOPPING MAK.E T«S Tfce LA5T (SOME 've GOT To Do 5omS SHOPPlHG- Work, Grow in Solitude Don't Be a Sheep; Be a Man. Onnrrletn, 1*18, hr Bt.*r nonpaay Do you want to succeed? Grow in solitude, work, develop In solitude, with books and thoughts and nature for friends. Then, if you want the crowd to see how fine you are, come back to it and boss it if it will let you. Constant craving for indiscriminate oompany is a sure sign of mental weakness. If you enter a village or small town and want to find the man or youth of ability, do you look for him leaning over the village pool table, sitting ou the grocery store boxes, lounging in the smelly tavern with other vaoant minds? Certainly not You find him at work, and you find him by himself. Think how public institutions dwarf the brains and souls of unhappy children oondemned to live in them. No chance there for individual, separate development. Millions of children have grown up in such places millions of sad nonentities. Two QoAlfTkR* / a encgtL GIVE ME ANOTHER a B'TS WORTH rS f ^ i AFTes. TMc.ee. HOURS (soessTuT 1 WAIT 'TIM / l ME.XT PAY I DAY J n ——A <*# ANT> Tfcfc WftY fit womaM T>Q£S IT Suppose. L COULD HAVe. MAD THesa. be liver e.D BUT ThsIYE'S SUCH A Jam ai?ouho ( chr\€Tmas Are You Starving for Air? By EDWIN MARKHAM- The Queen of the Adriatic By REV. THOMAS B. GREGORY. Here is what Goethe says: ‘‘Es bildet ein Talent sioh in der Stille, doch ein Charakter in dem Strome der Welt” (Talent is developed in solitude, char acter in the rush of the world.) You wonder why so much ability comes from the country- why a Lincoln comes from the backwoods while you, flourishing in a great city, can barely keep your place as a typewriter. The countryman hae got to be by himself much of the time whether he wishes to or not. If he has anything in him it comes out Astronomy, man’s grandest study, grew up among the shep herds. You of the oities never even see the stars, much less study them. Don’t be a sheep or a deer. Don’t devote your hours to the oompany and conversation of those who know as little as you do. Don’t think hard only when you are trying to remember a populai song or to decide on the color of your Winter overcoat or necktie Remember that you are an individual, not a grain of dust or ■ blade of grass. Don’t be a sheep; be a man. It has Taken nature a hundred million year* to produoe you. Don’t make her sorry she took the time. Get out in the park and walk and think. Get up in your haE bedroom, read, study, write what you think. Talk more to your self and less to others. Avoid magazines, avoid excessive news paper reading. There is not a man of average ability but could make a strik ing career if he oould but WILL to do the best that is in him. Proofs of growth due to solitude are endless. Milton's great est work was done when blindness, old age and the death of the Puritan government foroed him into completest seclusion. Beethoven did his best work in the solitude of deafness. Bacon would never have been the great leader of scientific thought had not his trial and disgrace forced him from the company of a grand retinue and stupid court to the solitude of his own brain. “Multum insola furt anima mea.” (My spirit hath been much alone.) This he said often, and lucky it was for him. Loneliness of spirit made him. Get a little of it for yourself. Drop your club, your street corner, your gossipy boarding house table. Drop your sheep life and try being a man. it nraj improve you, • . j S AMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS, of the American Medical As sociation, In "The Health Master,” Just from the press of Houghton Mifflin Company, offers a hook of Importance. It is the account of a family who adopted the old Chinese plan of retaining a doctor to keep them well, In stead of taking chances on being 111 and then calling in the doctor. Lessons on pure milk, infec tions, care of eyes, etc., are given under the guise of lively Action, and I commend the book to my follow-citizens. Here is an ex cerpt showing the tenor of the pages: ” ‘You can pick your air to some extent, so it's worth while to know where it's good and where it’s bad. *‘ ‘Don’t tell me that New York is unfit to breathe In!’ said Mrs. Clyde, with a woman’s love for the metropolis. " ’Thus far It’s pretty clean. The worst thing about New York is that they dry-sweep their streets and throw all the dust there Is right In your face. The next worst Is the subway. When analysis was made of the tube’s air, the experimenters were sur prised to find very few germs. But they were shocked to find the atmosphere full of tiny splinters of steel. It’s even worse to breathe steel than to breathe coal. " ’Look at the modern sleeping car—heavy plush seats, soft hangings, thick carpets, fripper ies all as gorgeous, vulgar, ex- pensive, tawdry and filthy as the mind of man can devise. Add to that windows hermetically seal ed in the winter months, and you’ve got an ideal contrivance for the encouragement of mor tality. Never do I board a sleeper without a stout hickory stick in my suit case No matter how low the temperature is, I prv the window of my lower berth open und push the stick under. ” ’I remember in my college days that the winter term was considered to be the most diffi cult in every year. The curricu lum didn’t seem to show it, but every professor and every un dergraduate knew it. Bad air, th it’s all. The recitation rooms were kept tightly closed. The hu man brain can’t burn carbon and get a bright flame of intelligence without a good draft, mid the broatliiiijr U the <ir«£u Non, on the evidence of Charley’s teach er, when winter comes percent ages go down, although the les- «ons are the same. So I asked her about the ventilation, and found that she had a supersti tious dread of cold.’ ” ** 'I remember Miss Benn’s room,’ said Julia, thoughtfully. ‘It used to get awful hot there. I never liked that grade anyway, and Bobs got such bad deport ment marks.’ " ‘Both of the twins had colds all the winter they were in that room,’ contributed Grandma Sharpless. “ 'When will the substitute mothers and fathers who run our schools learn about air?’ he cried. ‘Air! It’s the first cry of the newly bom baby. Air! It’s the last plea of the man with the death rattle in his throat. It’s the one free boon, and we shut it out.’ " ’Rut you wouldn’t have them study with all the windows open bn a zero day?’ protested Mrs. Clyde. "’Wouldn’t I? Far rather than choke them in a close room! Why, In some schools the sickly children have special classes on the roof, or In the yards, all through the cold weather. They study in overcoats and mittens. And they learn. Not only that, but they thrive on it.'" I T was 108 years ago that the "Queen of the Adriatic” was robbed of the crown that she had so proudly worn for more than twelve centuries. By the terms of the Treaty of Presburg, as dictated by that creator and destroyer of kings and kingdoms, Napoleon the Great, the ancient republic was blotted out. The glory of the City of the Doges was no more. Like a veritable fairy tale is the story of Venice. Away back in the year 452, when Attlla, the "Scourge of God,” was ravaging Europe, families from the main land took refuge in the lagoons and started the little settlement which was destined to become the Venice of historic and poetic re nown. With the solitary exception of the Hollanders, no people ever established a state under more adverse conditions. The untilln- ble and salt-incrusted soil pos sessed no mineral wealth; the few thickets had no serviceable tim ber; even drinking water was at a premium; sti 1 ’ the Venetians succeeded in establishing them selves upon a firm soil and in rearing thereon a state which w r as for ages the strongest in the WHEN MOTHER WEEPS By HARRY BAKER. T HE earth seems sad, the skiee are gray When Mother weeps. Her tears, they blind the light of day The aim has not one beaming ray When Mother weeps. world. From the very necessi ties of the case Venice became a sea powder, and by her merchant marine and navy she controlled the destinies of empires for more than a thousand years. It was Venice that furnished transports for the hosts of the Crusaders. It was Venice that inaugurated the trade between East and West. It was Venice that, later on, supplied the ships and sailors that beat the Turks back from Europe and finally an nihilated their sea power at Lepanto. The Bank of Venice, estab lished in 1157, was the financial center of the world, and when the glorious revival of letters came, followed almost at once by the invention of printing, it was Venice that led the world in the output of books and the spread of the knowledge which made possible the freedom and prog ress in which we are to-day re joicing. In a time when superstition and servitude w< . > almost uni versal Venice boldly stood forth to champion the cause of enlight enment and liberty, and greater than all her banks and doges, than all her palaces and navies, .was -that Paul Sarpe of hers, that pale-faced little man who, in the defense of Venetia’s liberties, suc cessfully defied the mightiest po tentates and powers of the earth. A glorious history was that which the "Corsican adventurer” so unceremoniously brought to a close on that December day, 1805. Stars and Stripes When Mother weeps I feel sad too. When Mother weeps All things are wrong; spoiled is the rlew And everything about looks blue When Mother weeps. A Mother's tears—how much they mean! When Mother weeps My heart Is touched, no Joy I glean. Bach boy must feel the same. I ween. When Mother wewpa. As each tear falls all jov Is slain When Mother weeps. Those tears that fall like dewy rain— For peeling onions causes pain; bo ,'wuUt —- l k S-H-O-P E-A-R-L-Y! * * • Poisoned needle eclipses poi soned pen. * • • Even President Wilson must envy Huerta and his Congress. * * * Why bother with slavery in the Philippines when they offered $25,uOO for Joe Tinker? * * • Italian sculptor says Ameri can women have fat hands and big feet. A game sculptor, any way. ... Do your Christmas shopping early. May as well get it over. Save time to buy six Christmases ahead. * * * Bomb made of dynamite wrapped in a stocking. Expect almost anything i_ tt stocking at this time of iwa Ella Wheeler Wilcox —ON— White Slavery—Twenty-five Years Ago English Girls Could Be Abducted at ThirteenWith- out Fear of Punishment—Late W. T. Stead, Titanic Victim, Brought About Much Needed Reform. By ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. Copyrighted 1913 by Star Co. T WENTY - FIVE years ago any girl of thirteen could be trapped and led Into vile houses, and there was no law to protect her. The law of England, as It stood at that time, recognized that a girl one day over thirteen years of age was legally a woman, and was fully compe tent to consent to her own un doing. The law as It then stood put a positive premium upon the corruption of very young chil dren by refusing to let them give evidence against men un less they could satisfy the judge and Jury that they under stood the nature of an oath. As soon as the child was over thirteen years of age she could be Inveigled Into an Illegal house without any possible hope of redress, because If she had consented to go Into the house she was held to have consented to everything else, althongh she might at that time be, and prob ably was, absolutely ignorant of what vice meant. The law to-day protects girls to the age of sixteen; It has raised the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen, admits the evidence of children, even If they are not able to satisfy the Judge and Jury that they under stand the nature of an oath, and It has increased the pains and penalties Inflicted upon all those who attack girls, whether by ab ducting them abroad or attack ing them at home. This change In the laws came about through one man. W. T. Stead, who died on the Titanlo. The White Slave Traffic Is a world-wide trade in young girls for immoral purposes, out of which enormous profits are made. They are captured by false advertisements offering employment as governesses, sec retaries, companions, servants, etc., and by making acquaint ance with girls alone in streets or trains or busses. Only 5 Girls in Every 100 Know What They Are Doing. It is estimated that only five girls In every hundred know what they are doing; the remaining ninety- five are girls who never heard of such things, girls Just like your own daughters, who, but for the White Slave Traffic, might have become happy wives and mothers. If they wanted to he bad there would be no neces sity for this trapping system. Twenty-five years ago It was regarded as Improper, unclean and highly indecorous to speak about the White Slave trade in polite circles. To-day, kings and queens, princes and princesses attend conferences for the discus sion of this question. Before Mr. Stead died hs wrote a pamphlet, "Why I Went to Prison In 1885.” It 13 Inter esting reading. Known as a great philanthropist and re former, he was urged by good people to try to bring about a change in the laws of England on this subject. A commissioner of the House of Lords had reported upon the question and strongly recom mended that an Act of Parlia ment should be passed to cope with the two cancers that were eating into the body politic. Mr. Gladstone's Ministry—Sir Will iam Harcourt being then Home Secretary—recognized the urgency of the demand, and Introduced a bill giving effect to the recom mendation’s of the committee, but there was no motive power behind it It was strongly op posed by a small group of men who seemed almost to have a personal Interest in preventing the strengthening of the law against the corruption of weak and innocent girls. Neither po litical party saw any means of making capital out of It, and the result was that session after ses sion the bill was Introduced in due course and then included in the massacre of the Innocents at Iht; f&4 the session. Then the plot was laid to biH* such disgrace on the laws of Eng land that a change would be foroed by public censure. So Mr. Stead was induced to act the part of a procurer; and a weak and wicked mother sold her daughter aged thirteen to him, tor three pounds—fifteen dollar#—believ ing that her daughter was to go into an infamous house. The daughter was Indeed taken to a house and witnesses and trained nurses and physicians were on hand to rescue her and attest to her leaving the house as chaste as she entered it; but the story was published in full In the Pall Mall Gazette, in an article by Mr Stead called “The Maiden Trlb ute of Modern Babylon.” It brought a perfect storm upon the heads of all concerned, but a worse storm of censure on Eng lish lavra. Mr. Stead meantime sent the rescued girl away from her wicked mother and he was therefore arrested for abduction and Imprisoned. Late W. T. Stead Told of His Conviction in This Famous Case. Mr. Stead says of this incident: "After a long trial, for which the , Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardi nftl Manning and Bishop Temple, John Morley, Mr. Bal four, Lord Loreburn (then Sir Robert Reid), Mr. Labouchere, Mrs. Butler, and many others were subpoenaed for the defence, I was convicted, together with my colleague, Mr. Mussabinl. Mr. Bramwell Booth and Madame Combe were acqnitted. Madame Mourez was sent for six months to prison, where she died. The trial, which was reported in aH the leading papers of the world, brought, out all the facts of the case, so that every statement which I now make can be veri fled by reference to the files in the British Museum. The mo ment I was convicted there was n great agitation set on toot. The Government was besieged with petitions and protest*. Tel egrams rained in upon the Home Office, the Prime Minister and the Queen, and after I had been three days in Coldbath Prison Lord Salisbury, on his own mo tion, without waiting for the con sent of the Judge who had sec tenced me, ordered me to be transferred at once to Holloway as a flrst-claes misdemeanant. The remainder of my sentence—two months and four days—I served out at Holloway, where I edited the Pall Mall Gazette from No vember, 1885, to January, 1886.” Mllllcent Garrett Fawcett, has issued an appeal to all friends of Mr. Stead and to all friends of clean womanhood to use their influence to help pass the Crim inal Law .Amendment bill now proposed. It is well known that this Mil deals with the White Slave Trade and provides . additions' moral protection tor the young. A deputation about the bill waited on the Home Secretary a few weeks ago; he expressed approval of the measure, but held out no hope that the Government would take it up. Question One of Urgent and, Also, National Importance. She doses her appeal with these words! "It le a question of urgent national importance The bill, if passed, would pro tect and shelter the weak against moral injury, quite as truly as the lifeboats sheltered them, on April 15, against physical injury If our countrymen can and do rise to heroism in the face of physical danger, surely they can rise to a trifling sacrifice of Par liamentary time. It would be the finest of all memorials to Mr. Stead and the other men who have sacrificed themselves in the Titanic, if Parliament passed this bill to save children and young women from worse than death. "I respectfully and earnestly appeal to men in the constitu encies to lose no time in writing to their members, to urge them to Induce the Government to take up the bill and pass it during t-ha igbAWfi,- —-•