The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1901-01-23

there are forty times as many bur
Slarles, larcenles and shooting scrapcs
Ihe number of suicides does not ap
pear in the courts, but the increase il
not less than hundred to one. JEFF
ferson said that the influence of grca
cities was pcstilential to good morals
Just think of it, In the little city o
Atlanta there were over 10, 900 arrests
during the past year. The nineteenth
century leaves us this record as q
legacy and our great concern is, what
are we going 10 do about il. Oul
lamcntation is that the people have
gotten used to it and rcconclled to its
continuance. 1t is looked upon as the
normal condition of public morals and
human affairs.
Old men, old editors and old preach
ers cry aloud and spare not, but the
young generation do not seem to be
greatly concerned. Young men, young
women and even old women commit
suicide somewhere every day and the
editors tell us of it in the press dis
patches and pass on without comment.
what an awful condition of mental dis
treSs 1t must be that provokcs the de-
llberate sacrifice Of ones own life. c
tear we are getting hardened TO thI
presence of crime-hardcncd by daily
contact with it; hardened like the rich
OF New York are to the misery and
crime In her tenement houses and to
the miserable bcggars OH her streets
they see them every day and pass
them by without sign, but they send
LARGO monies In,vn hama 10 n,l,n
lot of lazy negroes they have never
seen. What a fool, what fanatic,
what hypocritc is human nature.
This reminds me to answer a letter
of inquiry from an old Democrat who
lives IN New Hampshire. lie wishes
to know who was responsible for the
slave trade that pcoplcd this country
with negroes. Ssmc of his ncghbors
insist that the South did it, while the
North protested against it and New
England was especially hostile TO it.
" How long, ah Catalina, wilt thou
abuse our paticncc?" How long will
the descendants of the Purltans cover
up their own iniquty? My friend will
md III Appleton's American Cyclope-
dia, fourteenth volume, the best his
tory of slavery and the slave trade ever
published. In that he will find that
slave traders from Portugal brought
lhe lrst cargo of twenty negroes and
landed them at jamestown, in Vir-
glnia, iii 1920. Shortly after this most
OF the Northern colonies engaged in it
ana Indians were cnslavcd as well as
neglocs. The son of King Philip was
sold as slave at Plymouth in the year
1856. The slave trade between tie
Northern colonies and Africa was
carried on with vIgor until l776. In
mat year it was resolved by the Con.
tinental Congress that no more slaves
should be imported. In l7SS Congress
extended the traffic to 1SOS, but the
State of Georgia refused to ratfy the
extension and in 1893 enacted the most
prohibitory laws against it.
The feeling against the traffic was
stronger in the Southern States than
in the Northern. Some of the North
crn States continued to carry it on long
after it had been prohibited. And as
late as 1S4l Judge Stony, of Massa-
chusetts, charged the grand jury OF
Boston that their people were "steeped
up to their eyebrows in the infamous
slave trade with Africa" But New
England could not make the service of
the slaves profitable and so sold them
to Virginia and the Caroinas and to
South America as late as lS47. When
her ships could no longer dodge the
pursuer" from England and France
the traffic came TO an end and then
began the howl of the abolitlonists
against the South for keeping them in
very negroes whose an
cestors they sold to us. This is his
tory, and it is also history that after
l77G never did slave ship land on a
Southern coast save once, and that
was the case fo the 4" Wanderer,n who
tried to land a cargo of 800 near
Savannah and was seized and con-
tiscatcd
This is enough of slavery and those
responsible for it.. The nineteenth
century has left us some good, some
signal blessings, and chief among them
Is the great advance in the social con-
dition OF woman and the general re-
cognition of her equality with man in
most all civil rights. Unless she chains
herself to brute she is no longer a
slave, but stands up side by side with
her husband. Her demands for her
self and her children now lind a re-
spectful audience IN courts and lcgis-
latures (cXccpt, perhaps, that last mis-
cradle abortion called the Georgia Leg
islature). and no great newspaper could
pass without giving good part of its
columns for their plposuro and ,on,
Tort. Woman is fast coming to the
front as mistress of the situation. In
every calling she has proved herself as
intelligent and as progressive as man
and Infinitely his superior In public
morals and private virtue. When she
does come fully to the front she will
control legislation and then whisky.
the curse of the country, will be for
ever banished. Whisky is woman's
greatest foe, the cause of nearly all
the tyranny, iniidelity and crime that
makes her existence miserable. She
will not have to beg Leg stature to
protect the factory children, for then
the children will have sober fathers to
protect them.
a good mother writes me from
Atlanta about the muliny at the Tech =,
and says that the trouble with the bows
of this day is the lack of discipline nj
home. They arc not taupht obedience
IN their early youth and they grow up
without restraint and imagine they
know as much or more than parents or
teachers. That is so, of course. and
every parent knows it, and that ac-