100 Years Ago in Macon: City deemed ‘educational capital’; pistol-toting a ‘great evil’

A peek at a copy of The Telegraph from a century ago today turns up front-page news that an educational institution, the Chautauqua of the South, would make its permanent home in Macon.

The development was lauded as a coup for the city, according to an article in the Jan. 6, 1917, edition of the paper.

One speaker at a Hotel Dempsey luncheon to announce the news said, “Macon may never be the capital of Georgia, but she will be the educational capital of the south, and that will have a very great effect upon her chances for getting the state capital, for the law of gravitation is relentless.”

Another item of note in that day’s paper was a reprint of an opinion piece from the Montgomery Advertiser, which mentioned a Macon proposal to impose a $1,000 licensing fee on hardware stores that sold revolvers:

It is desired to reduce the number of pistol-owners, and ultimately pistol-toters. ... Pistol-toting is a great evil. It is a vicious practice, long since abandoned by most law-abiding citizens except in cases where the law-abiding citizen has reason to fear that he is in need of greater protection than he could give unarmed.

A dispatch in the back pages told of soldiers returning from El Paso to Georgia in cattle cars.

“The boys out on the border don’t want Pullman cars to come home in,” Capt. E. Julian Peacock of the Floyd Rifles said. “Cattle cars will do. They make splendid transportation, the boys think. ... The Macon boys haven’t quit talking about the wonderful generosity of the Macon people.”

Peacock was referring to Christmas gifts sent to the soldiers from folks back home.

This story was originally published January 6, 2017 at 1:17 PM with the headline "100 Years Ago in Macon: City deemed ‘educational capital’; pistol-toting a ‘great evil’."