davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

dashed onward and onward; great forests
 were laid waste; villages were swept
 away upon the tidal wave of fire; rail-
 roads were warped and twisted; trains
 burnt to the wheels; human lives by
 scores and hundreds were sacrificed, and
 the flames roared on until there was
 nothing left to burn. Oh, the crimson
 heavens! Oh, the desolated earth. Oh, the sorrow and mourning of those who had lost loved ones! And all from a few coals that held the potency of this vast destruction. There was a time when the farmers stout boot could have destroyed the destroyer: but that time soon passed, and the flames ran riot swifter than the steed of Mazeppa in his wild flight through the Ukraine. "Behold. how great a forest little fire kindleth."
 What splendors of art the museums and galleries of the Old World holdi Raphael's Transfiguraton, in the Watt can; Angelo's Last Judgment, In the Pope's chapel the Madonna-in-the- Chair, in Florence; Titian's Paradise. fin the Doges' palace at Venice; the statue of Venus de Milo. in the Louvre; Venus de Medici, in Florence; the Dying Gladiator and the Marble Faun in the old capitol on the banks of the Tiber; the Apollo Belvidere, in the gallery of the Vatican ard countless others. What a world of pleasure they have afforded. Yet. whence ceme they all? They tell us that all this wealth of artistic glory was the re- suit of young woman's love. She lived
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

as they exploded from the threats of the Sansculotte of Paris, every king in Europe looked to his throne.
 I omit many other illustrations. and now use one to introduce my last. There is a firm in this country which annually beats 21,000 gold dollars into gold-leaf. Each dolalr is beaten into a glittering sheet that will cover like a carpet. a room g feet long by g feet wide. These sheets are beaten so thin that it requires HOG of them to equal the thickness of 3 sheet of good writing paper. while if would require 2S0000 of them, piled one upon another, to equal an inch. Here, indeed, is multum in parvo
 I now shall refer to certain moral gold beating. A good woman gave little tract to a youth named Richard Baxter. He read it, and through it's influence became a Christian, and wrote famous book "A Call to the Unconverted, was it's title. Through this book, Philip Dod ridge was brought to God, and wrote his well known book, "A Practicall View Legh Richmond read Wilberforce's book and abandoned a life of wrong. and wrote ''The Dairymans Daughter" Now. from these books the following copies have been published:
 Baxter's book, 100000: Wilberforce's, 75,O0o: Dodridga's. 275,0O0; Richmonds, l. OO0,O00 Total, 100000. Two millions and fifty thousand books from little tract! A bit of gold, beaten out to this enor- nous figure What does it mean? The title of this paper tells.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

lost both legs. To his sad condition the fathers heart went out in streams of tenderness, and presently the boy went home with his father and was equipped with artificial limbs. Better than those helps was the moral help which the re- stored fellowship of his father brought to tue younger man.
 II happened at about that time that tine fether had business which took him away from the little town where he made his home, and on his return he found the lad not at home, but at the village grog shop. Filled with fear and wrath, he found that some one had persuaded him to drink again. Knowing the tragedy, someone had been base enough and cruel enough to put that temptation in the young mans way, and he had fallen. There he sat in a back room stupeied, oead drunk! It is a wonder that the teinpter was not killed by that father s righteous anger.
 Where was the social right in the ease? What measure of judgment was rational and betitinge But that same story is one of thousands and of tens of thou sands, wherein like wrongs are wrought by reason of the social element in the drink habit and the drink lure. It pois- ous friendship.
 Another social element is the waste of ifs-stuff, Of the fiber of human souls, needed in social progress. the waste of the very elements that count most in the tender relations of home, the things that He deepest in the training of the individ ual conscience to sensitive ideals
 Here, too belongs the necessity of cars- fully guarding from his own weakness the victim of debased habits CT weakened will. Society owes the weakling this pro- lection because Of his social relations and the damage he may do.
 So widely spread are these feelings and opinions that even those who are in .he business quite frequently use their influ- ence to save the victim from his own freedom, so that the necessity of ,loinr go has been even made a legal provision But further still, it Is this social sense that becomes a moral indignation against the ruin and wrong wrought by drink. a fell, blind intense, indignant anger. which will burn and burn until adequate, honor able, well considered laws have been adopted and system of careful educa- ton used as a guard for every member of society. But not every Humanitarian i sa safe legislator And vet the general anger must find vent.
 3 Hence we come inevitably to the political phase. l venture to summarize some principles which will prove para mount: Nst
 (a). It must be held that the region of individual rights is definable only bv personal intelligence In the present stage of knowledge. hard and fast pro- hibitory legislation tyrannically uses the majority to cocrce the individual. It is
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19
Bill Vines On the Modern Girl

spondulicks, and falleth in love with a millionaire floor walker with a pink tie and green socks She can eat $4 worth of bonbons in one inning, and chew gum 36 hours per day. Round home in her loung ing robe she is sum ''F'rost,' but when she puts on her glad rags and takes to the "Ryalto" she's a Pippin. What! She dreams of marrying Duke with long line of moldy ancestors, and if she sue ceeds she gets 'sprominent mension" when she goes to Reno--if she marres the floor walker she has to take her divorce from a Justice of the Peace She is a loud screen at the horse show, but she pass eth up the camp meeting and the forrain missionary society. When the crows feet get so heavy she can't fill up the cracks with sealing wax she gets 'sHunch' that woman's rites demand her persunal super vission and she begins riding horseback with divided skerts, and smoking cigar rettes, and making 'short talks'' at wimmin's clubs After while she gets to barking Votes for Wimmin'' at enny and all public gatherings, and verrily she be- ' eums a newsance.
 Morral-We can't know what the nor ral is, but If we was woman we had rather be wart or frozen Irish potatoe than a sufferagett.
 t
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

of that splendid address the sage oi Chelsea said:
 This is the thing man is born to in all epochs. He is born to expend every particle of strength that God Almighty has given him, in doing the work that he finds he Is fit for; to stand up to it to the last breath of his life and do his best. We are called upon to do that; and the reward we all get-which we are all perfectly sure of if we have merited it-is that we have got the work done, OR AT LEAST THAT WE HAVE TRIED TO DO THE WORK. For that is great blessing in itself, and I should say there is not very much more reward than that going in this world. If the man gets meat and clothes, what matter it whether he buys those nec- essaries with seven thousand year, or with seven million, could that be, or with seventy pounds year? He can get meat and clothes for that; and he will find intrinsically, if he is a wise man, wonderfully little real difference"
 All of my first guesses about this mans personality were wrong. He didn't have
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

discussion which may easily miss their due prominence. Who attacks temper ance? Who defends intemperance? Ger tainly a few renegades and relics Of a pagan past may still be found to 1uslily what they describe as "a good drunk, , much to the delusion of the young ana foolish These are they who overrate the element of personal freedom, denying the authority of the community to invade that freedom to the extent of forbidding the individuals authority over his own stomach and it's poisons. The vast ma iority of modern men, however, frankly, absolutely. deny the right of any man to become intoxicated. Has ne then the right to use intoxicants? There is one point at which debate still runs strong granting that no man can be allowed the privilege of drinking to the point of in toxication, may the community invade his freedom so far as to deny him all access to the intoxicant?
 On this question of personal ethics. as shadowed by community rlghts two things must be admitted:
 fa). The drink habit however slightly ipdulged. is a process of nerve poisoning. Iris is not doctrinaire opinion. but scien- tific fact The published results of care full experiment in German psychological laboratory proved this, and any man may test the statement without much ap2a- ratus. It was shown that slight amount of alcohol as represented by glass of wine, gave a worker the impress sion that he was working faster, and for a very short time actually accelerated the sreed of work. But the gain in speed was offset by a loss of accuracy, and by a pioportionately greater decrease in speed which soon supervened. When, at the end of a certain period. a new stirnila- ton was used to overcome this reaction tho offset was more quickly lost. More severe tests by means of ardent spirits may easily be shown to result in the same way.
 ib) Here therefore. arises the enor- nous danger of recurrence to the liduor for renewed spur and stimulation. Wise men recognize this dreadful peril and avoid it. Tn every land, even in Germany. where wine and beer are national pev- erages, increasing numbers Of statesmen and publicists, including Emperor William himself are ranged against even the moderate use of these substances. and for these very reasons.
 (c). But inasmuch as man is clearly the prime master of his own fate. it must be observed that the value Of tenn pcrance or of total abstinence largely de- Compulsory total abstinence is not to the taste Of free men. and makes for moral confusion. Your modern. man is not a pig, but yet he refuses to be driven. It is q historic fact that large numbers of men four years ago. woke up to a sense of outrage when they learned that
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

think which can thrive and develop upon foreign soil.
 That sense which can reconcile an en- vironment, though it find little of conge- niality in it's bounds will not loathe it. Somehow certain order will evolve il life has foreplanned it so. In Gods nane he will be no marionette: will say yea or nay at no mans bidding; will fawn or cringe not at all. Still there must be some weary hours and the path at mo- ments shall seem long.
 What then? And wherein shall he be reconciled?
 In that he has fallen. in the midst of striving souls, each on the quest it cares most for, like you and me, confident that sooner or later he too will come to his true work in the world. We may be sure that not all these whom we meet are on the Great Quest. For the most of these in their lives express a dssatisfac- tlcn, a petulance, rather than a striving. Castes, comparisons, false standards of living, retard in great measure self-ex- amination--the initial stride toward the exercise of one's best powers.
 Great heroic examples have doubtless done much toward the ennoblement of
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

of that gibberish Joe Bailey taught it,. that democrats who favor free raw ma terials would continue protection on the finished product. That is mendacity that is below the level of islander. The man ufacturers would swiftly raise an annual slush fund of s2O.OOO,OOO to impregnate the southern mind with that virus. It was Dean Swift that opined that the extrem- est felicity to which one of us mortal can attain is to be a fool among knaves Of course I am too much of a lady to be so i'll hammered as to suggest that the Fort Worth Record is of either of those classes, but in common decency it ought to quit talking about the tariff unless it moves to Rhode Island or Pennsylvania.
 Now I am going to introduce my dead man. John Sherman, who from the pro- lection standpoint, knew the difference between a hawk and a handsaw, said this:
 ''The dogma Of some manufacturers that raw materials should be admitted free of duty is far more dangerous to the protective policy than the opposition
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19
MEN WHO HAVE MADE AABAMA-SRAEL PICKENS-By F. Riley

N NE of the great commonwealth builders of the southwest was O Governor Israel Pickens, the third Governor of the state. As state build CT he came on the scene just at a time when his constructive genius was most needed. His two predecessors, the broth CTS, Governors William w. and Thomas Bibb, had together served the state lit- tie more than two years, the former dying while in office and the latter, as president of the senate succeeding him and filling his unexpired term. Both these had wrought well under raw and cha otic conditions, but the utmost that could be done within so short a time was that of projecting plans for the future of the infant state. While the foundation was we'll begun, the superstructure still stood unbuilt.
 On Governor Israel Pickens was inn posed the task of the real erection of Alabama into state. It was an organi-
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

All these saints in the democratic Val halla favored free raw materials. am going to confront this Forth Worth un- learned Theban with Moses and the prophets, and then I am going to con found him with the testimony of one risen from the dead.
 The Record assumes to speak for the manufacturers and tells us that all they want is tariff for revenue strictly on the finished product. We would have that sort of a tarff now if the manufacturers did not insist on tariff strictly for pro- lection. And we will have a protective tariff as long as the south gives heed to such parrot talk as this Fort Worth ed- flor gives us.
 It is morally and historically demon- strated that there are men in the na- tional legislature who are bribed to say what the Forth Worth Record says. I do not believe that paper is grafter but if it were it would say precisely what it does say, for as long as the manufac- turer is compelled to pay tariff duty on raw materials he will be accorded pro-
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

N YERRILY in this day and time the av- " verage girl is sum different frum
 the way her muther was. By the time she climmeth thro' the ninth grade, the double rule of three looketh to her like sanskrit does to 'rednecll'' and the trip pie extract of Greek verb like a Chinese puzzle Yet on hobble skerts and ostrich blooms she could rite an essay of sum class. A symphony frum Bethoven gives her a hedache, and if you ask her to try throw at making corn meel tlunovvers she wouldn't know whether to put in it ben sote of soda or ruff on rats, but she is rite up to now on the chemmistry of a moddern complexion, and when it cums to the ap- plication of same she can make Maud Adams seem rank failure.
 She cannot SOW a button on pair of dis corraged trowsers, or make up bed, but she can dance IA hours with a Noodle Bug'' if he wares a spike coat. She can quote Bertha M Mudd by the yard, but she knows less about Shakespeer than China man does about infant baptism. She spends much time in parading the streets in high heeled shoes and no time at all in dustin the furniture. She playeth bridge whist till 2:3Q p. m. In the summer she goeth to the seeshore, if her dad has the
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

lection for his finished product. Nelson w. Aldrch and Joseph W. Bailey are In exact agreement with the Fort Worth Record on the tariff question and the Fort Worth Record is preaching the very stuff that J, G. Cannon and John Dalzell would have it teach. If it were respectable to be a republican in Texas the Fort Worth Record would be sn avowed, as 1t is an actual republican or gan.
 A tariff on wool is a league with tuper- oulosis and a covenant with pneumonia. It is the ally of pain and disease and want and misery and squalor and death And ours is the only government ir either hemisphere north of the equator that taxes wool. Not q great while ago some millionaire shepherds of the far west had powwow on the Pacific slope. To them came millionaire weavers from the east, who preached that the direst calamity that could befall them and the rest of mankind is free wool. And yet this Fort Worth editor tells us that free raw materials is all that the manufac- turer desires. If the manufacturer wanted
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

1 an undue invasion Of his rights unless he | is wise enough not to see that they arc 1 invaded. Men generally are not willing to say that a glass of beer or glass of wine is a sin, aluring and deviiish (b). Very largely the ethics of the case turns upon the actual damage done by the substances in debate General intel l ligence has apparently reached the point where it will say by large majorities that whisky is a deadly thing, real enemy of
 ren. The voice of science is echoed by popular opinion and experience. The
 case against beer is suspended in tho court of popular opinion.
 R Co. Hence there are multtudes who vote against prohibition only because it lacks discrimination, failing to distinguish between the lesser and the greater evil. They would join as heartily as the ladies of the w. c. T. U. in a campaign against whisky. They would swell the majority for prohibition to overwhelming num- bcrs If highly alcohoized distilled liquors were the quarry of the hunters. So far has human intelligence travelled. To this degree individual freedom is ready to sur render itself for the social good. verv large majority are willing to banish spirits.
 td). But when approximately half the people, whether in Maine or Alabama. are against prohibition, not only does the measure fail. but it ought to fail. Morally It Is undefensible, since politically 1t cam not be wise or just to outweigh? the rights of the individual with the stolid mass of a majority Large major:ties
 may, perhaps, be pardoned for infringing the individual conscience. When small or bare najorities do that they are an lr1pertinence
 But on the other hand it follows that when half the people in Maine or Ala bama are in favor of prohibition, but slightly outvoted at the polls, then tho wide-open saloon is morally indefensible. Here on social grounds, as there on per- sonal grounds. the rights of the minority are sacred For all suffer by the social evil inextricably blent with the liouor traffic. Some way of agreement for an overwhelming majority of voters must be found.
 What then is the conclusion in all this irritating, divisive. embittered debate? am aware that one voice more or less may seem q negligible quality. But each must Loyalty report what ilis own intclli- gence perceives. s. tH
 The choice seems to me to be n very simple one. Either the method proposed by Senator Hugh Morrow, permitting light drinks and barring distilled liouors. or else--free trade! The way sto sociai temperance in this matter of drink is not so difficult. We can get 1t. Only the vast profits of the business promote .hN business Unrestricted trade. the aboli-
 CONTINUED ON PAOE sol
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

never been surpassed, if indeed equalled. That he succeeded to the fullest In the accomplishment of his difficult task is the verdict of posterity Other execu- tives since may have possessed more shining qualities, others still may have been more profound, while yet the deeds of others may have been more spectacu- lar. but all who have succeeded Israel Pickens derived the benefit of that so ahly done by him.
 When he entered the gubernatorial of flee conditions were necessarily in an in- ehoate form. Rudeness and crudenesS characterized the initial conditions on every hand Valuable as the service of his predecessors had been his lot was to raise into symmetrical proportions with every part perfectly adjusted a nightly commonwealth, ready to enter on its career worthily. alongside the older states. Existing conditions were incl dent to the emergence of a wilderness territory into the dignity of statehood.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

But when Governor Pickens retired from office as the states chief executive the structure was complete in all it's parts. In the recent work of F large vol tunes, "The South in the Building of the Nation." issued under the auspices of the Southern Historical Publication society of Richmond. Va, Governor Pick ems is alluded to as "one of the great state builders of the southwest
 Nor did his career end with the ex- pration of his terna of office as gover nor. The year following his retirement from the gubernatorial chair he was ap pointed a United States senator by Gov ernor Murphy. Almost simultaneously with this appointment came the offer of the federal judgship of Alabama from President John Quincy Adams, but the latter offer was declined and Governor Pickens entered the federal senate.
 But MT. Pickens was destined to enjoy senatorial honors but q short while. In the latter part of the same year of his
The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-19

"IERE is an advantage in unanimits
 and a great crowd. How far the J cause of temperance Is furthered and how far it is endangered by the great ness of It's crowd and it's unanimity may perhaps be wisely questioned But at least none may dare deny either the crowd or It's common agreement. Ever since the invention of that machine en- titled the Antl-Saloon league the crowd las won both increase of numbers and increase of practical unanimity.
 But because there has been so much fierce controversy, from Alabama to Maine, and because great volumes or printed words have been put forth and much eloquence and much fervor and much honest zeal have found expression, and much political scheming and much mixed good and evil generally, the SUI dent of affairs has heard and read many things that in good time need to be con sidered. A certain deadly hysteria, in deed. developed. but in these days Of po- litical calm one may venture to look sgain at the stricken field and record the lessons.
 Broadly stated the conclusion must be that every cause depending on force and legislative enactment has the roots of weakness and defeat already hidden in itself; that nothing is settled until it is Sett!e0 accOrQ1ng to eterHil pTluctpitS, and that the Grace Divine Is mightier even in social movements than the laws of Moses or the laws of any external au- thority soever. Nothing has been done except what stands approved in the court where freedom, personal dignity, spiritual grace and truth and power sit in judg- ment. Those tons of literature that were issued were surely not all read Those many speeches were not all remembered. But amid much debate for four years this Jefferson county did actually shut out the legal sale of liquor. During much of the same period the whole state followed suit. Meanwhile the illegal sale increased, officers failed to enforce the law, legal importation of the banned substance con tnued. and gaunt Hypocrisy grinned at every corner. Now, at the end of the sea- son this county and some other portions of the state have gone back to the legal fze6 sale. few people are satisfied with the conditions of the change. and hence we lack the sense of permanence and of continuity in our social development.
 s'Ad nauseam" the discussion has gone forward. Personally have been a rather rarcful abstainer from the heated debate. But in this time of the political doldrums, when fierce winds no longer blow, may not even an inexpert outsider make few suggestions looking toward new set dement's? For nothing is so sure as that The present condition is being challenged and must again go to trial in new politi- kal battles.
 \ l. There are personal aspects of the