The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1906-08-30
lndecency in Full Flower.
Charlotte Observer.

Perhaps there are ambitious youn!
men conducting small weeklies ii
small and remote towns i'm Georgit
who have had dreams of climbing al
some future time to the headship O
a big daily paper in Atlanta. W.
cannot remember time when Allan
ia papers were such as to have made
this worthy ambition but it was q
natural one since this is a prompting
which prominence and surface success
appeal to. But if these young men
still cherish this ambition, it is to be
hoped that it is accompanied by a
stern resolution in them to conduct
no big paper, if they ever reach the
rung ofithe ladder on which their
[eyes are fixed, OF any such tone or on
any such plane as those by and
through which the three Oldest dali
les OF Atlanta have-more especially
lately-brought disgrace on Southern
Journalism. 1t is not alone that two
OF them have thrown truth to the
winds, it either is to be believed as to
the other, but that they exhausted
the vocabulary of vulgarity and
scurrillity, employing language to-
ward each other and each toward the
gubernatorial candidate supported
by the other, which one associates
only with the grog-shop and the
brothel. Much of this has been dis
played on first page in type so big
and black that these papers must
have requisitioned the job Offices for
it. One can recall but one vile epithet,
but one term of insult and denuncia-
tion, which they have not applied to
each other and the candidates, and
in all the other terms of offense this
one WAS plainly implied. They could
not be all the other things they were
called, without being that, too. For
quite a period ''liar" was the favor
lite, but for long this word has been
almost abandoned as too tame; and
accompanying the torrent of written
blllingsgate have been a succession
OF cartoons so coarse and brutal that
in comparison with them the post
card showing the dangling and mu-
tilated forms of the negroes lynched
at Salisbury seems almost respeeta-
BILE. Lost to sight and memory in
this maelstrom of lurid personal and
political Language, feeble after
noon paper sought, week before last,
to attract some attention to itself by
noisy applause of the North Carolina
lynching, but the effort succeeded for
but day and last week it returned
to the charge with an offer of a re-
ward of $1 900 for a lynching in At
g8Rtdat dat,ohI i, t,r did d1it Gtt lfal nat teu5en,
it to the mark-they had done this
before it had started.
There has not been in the South in
this generation, if ever, such q de-
basement OF a profession, OF itself re-
spectacle, as that to which the two
leading of Atlanta papers have drag
ged the profession of journalism. tits
not too much to say that they have
brought it to a lower level than was
ever known before.
Why should all this interest us?
What business is it of ours? What
have we to do with it? Just this:
that all of us of the South, however
great our respect for our calling,
however scrupulous we may be in OBJ
servance of the properties, are en-
forced sharers of this shame.
1t is to be hoped that this indecent
exhibition may be compensated for
in some measure through the exer-
else OF salutary influence upon the
young newspaper men OF Georgia
with which this article started; that
they see in it warning and shrink
from this style OF journalism with
hatred and loathing. Better for
themselves, for the credit of their
State and the well-being of society
that they spend their days as pub
fishers of obscure weeklies with pat
ent oUtsides and boiler plate in
sides than that they should be Allan
ia editors with methods Of those OF
today.