The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1917-03-29

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tie of life, if somebody would give him q
start.
How many an Alexander III. Stephens
might glorify humanity, if a few golden
hearted Christian took him by the hand, and
led him to the Academy
How many a Mildred Rutherford, Cora
Harris, and Rebecca FELTON, might illumine
the generation in which they move, if the
Charity brokers could unlock their eyes off
China and Belgium, for short while?
But the rays of reason strive in vain to
enter the mind of the fanatic thunder and
lightning can't move him: an archangel from
on High couldn't arrest him.
For 200 years the Christian lands of Europe
sent men and money into the East, on a
chimerlcal Crusade against the 1nfdel she'd
ding torrents of blood to win a tenantless
tomb, and leaving unrelieved the poor the
oppressed, the ignorant multitudes at home.
Our folly is equal to that of the papal
crusaders, and we have now been squandering
lives and resources in it for 100 years, to the
detriment of nearer and dearer interests here
at home.
In the Christian Herald of March Z, 1917,
there is an article 10y Arthur Hoag Harland
entitled
NEW YoRK's FooD R1oTs''
Let me quote a few lines:
One after another the women told~of the sharp
priVation Of their own and their neighbors' fami-
lies. One woman said that bottle of milk was
all her family had had for breakfast that day.
This she had weakened with the same amount of
water to make it go farther.
Abraham Plotkin, urged the mayor to heed the
plea OF the Mothers League to appropriate mil
lion dollars to relieve the immediate need.
70 all these pleas Mayor Mitchell replied that so
far as he knew, the city did not have the legal
right to grant the relief begged for.
Then came Saturdays pitiful demonstration at
Madison SQuare-pitifu in the distress evidenced,
yet not pitiful in its earnestness, it's solidarity,
it's vigor, its bigness Score by score women and
children and men marched past the waiting crowds
on the street at the edge OF the park-pale, worn,
sad, discouraged, defeated, HUNGRY. From the
lower East Side from Harlem from the Bronx,
from Williamsburg, from Brownsville they
marched, two by two, with banners telling their
grief and calling for justice. Crowd after crowd
Of boys and girls who ought to be red-cheeked,
smiling, hearty-pale and weak and heavy-eyed
and listless. There is not a doctor in the land
who on looking at them closely as they filed by,
would not state that they were undernourished.
A bystander said: They look if they had not
had a square meal in weeks" He might have
said 'in months"
They crowded near the wagons drawn up to
serve as speakers stands, hoping for word
that was capable of being translated into that
word that filled their thought-FOOD!
1t was sight never to forget: the packed mass
Of bOdies--probably hundred thousand in
(many of these were passersby who stopped to
see and hear; but there thousands packed
together, pale, suffering, wstful-yet hardly dar-
ing to hope for better things.
The crowds broke up in some confusion There
was to have been a more formal march Fifth
Avenue, but this idea abandoned. COM
mttee set out to find the Governor who happened
to be in town. The crowd itself went to another
hotel, and there became frantic at the sights of
LUXURY and plenty all about them.
Meanwhile the committee was seeing Governor
iSp6 to eli
empowering the city to purchase food
In the meantime, Mayor Mtchels semi-oficial