CartoonLarge illustration“THE CONUNDRUM IS: WHAT WOULD BE LEFT TO UNCLE SAM, IN THE MATTER OF NATIONAL FINANCE, AFTER THE BANKERS SHALL HAVE GOT ALL THAT THEY WANT?”
Large illustration
“THE CONUNDRUM IS: WHAT WOULD BE LEFT TO UNCLE SAM, IN THE MATTER OF NATIONAL FINANCE, AFTER THE BANKERS SHALL HAVE GOT ALL THAT THEY WANT?”
Suppose that they fall due and are presented for payment. Suppose the Doctor has half the money in gold coin and the balance in silver coin. Suppose he offers the entire $100 in coin, in satisfaction of the debt.
Suppose the holder of the notes rejects the silver “coin,” and demands the entire debt in gold coin.
What would the Doctor do?
Would he hurry and scurry about, hunting for gold to satisfy the exacting creditor? I’ll bet a medium sized mouse-colored mule that he wouldn’t.
The Doctorknowsthat silver coin is legal tender, andwas contemplated as one of the coins of payment at the time the contract was made.
Consequently, he would tender the silver, and if theoffer to payin that “coin” were refused, the Doctor would simply let the creditor do what the heathen does when Christian Civilization gets after him—RAGE.
(4) Let the Doctor peruse the Life of Chase, who was Secretary of the Treasury under Mr. Lincoln, and he will realize how much he is in error.
Many other authorities might be cited.
Gold and silver had disappeared. Specie payments had ceased. The Government was about “broke.”
The daily expense account was approaching the two million dollar mark.
Spaulding, Salmon P. Chase, Thaddeus Stevens and others realized that unless the Government could float a paper currency the jig was up.
It was just about then thatLincoln expressed the opinion that some of the Wall Street bankers ought to be shot. They were manifesting every disposition to take advantage of the distress of the Government. They were showing that they meant to get rich off the war. And they accomplished their purpose.
They failed to obstruct the plan to issue paper money, but they succeeded in having Congress virtually say that while the Greenback was good enough for the soldier who was shedding his blood for his country, it was not good enough for the Bondholder who was sitting at ease in the financial Zion of Wall Street.
(5) My understanding is that the first paper money issued by the Confederate Government circulated at parwhen first issued.
The legal tender currency of any Government must depend, in any case, upon the strength, resources and credit of the Government.
Even the coin-currencysinks to the mere commodity-value of the coin, when the Government sinks.
Even now there is anartificial value in gold coin, put there by law.
No pile of a million dollars in gold coin would sell for a million dollarsas metal.
In such a heap of gold you must allow for “wear and tear.”
The lawdoes allowfor that very thing. If the gold coin is worn away to a greater extent than ten per cent, the Government will not receive it as legal tender—nor will the metropolitan banks receive it.
But anythinglessthan ten per cent loss in weight,the law makes good, by declaring thatsuchcoins arelegal tender.
Few people stop to think of that.
Therefore, every kind of money is fiat money; that is,THE LAW MAKES IT.
Now, it must be self-evident thatthe value which law puts into currencySINKS, WHEN THE LAW-MAKING POWER SINKS.
If one can conceive of such a thing as the annihilation of the United States we must know that our gold coins would at once go into the scales to be weighed and pricedas metal; our silver dollars would do precisely the same thing, and each of them would be worth less than 70 cents.
As for our paper money, it would be waste paper, and nothing else.
United States greenbacks wouldamuse the collectors of fifty years hence, just as Confederate bills do those of the present day.
Enterprise, Ala.
Hon. Thomas Watson, Thomson, Ga.:
Dear Sir:—1. What are the fundamental principles of the four parties, Populist, Socialist, Democratic and Republican?
2. Do you favor the way the United States allows the banks to use national currency without interest and then charge the people 12 per cent? If not, why not?
3. Do you think there is any likelihood of the Rural Free Delivery ever being discontinued and if so on what grounds?
4. What does the Parcels Post Bill advocate?
***
(1) The Populists believe in the Public Ownership of Public Utilities—such as Railroads, Telegraph and Telephone Lines, and Express Companies.
They look upon the iron highway as a Public Road that should belong to the Public. They believe that the tremendous power which private ownership gives to the private corporations now owning the railroads is too great,too ruinous when improperly used, to be exercised by those whose sole aim is to extract the utmost possible dollar of profit out of the franchise.
The Populists believe, also, that there should bea return to the money-system of the Constitution.
The National Banks haveUSURPEDthe function of supplying the country with a proper currency.
At the present time, when the Government has but $353,000,000 of its own paper notes circulating as money, the National Banks have the enormous sum of $583,000,000 oftheirpaper notes in circulationas money.
Populists contend that it is the prerogative andTHE DUTYof the government to createALL THE MONEY THAT CIRCULATES, and to hold unto itself the power ofregulating the supply.
Populists believe in the Tax upon Incomes, and contend that this tax should progressively increase as the Income increases. They believe also in a tax upon Inheritance.
Populists lay particular stress uponthe great principle of Direct Legislation. They believe in allowing the people to compel the law-making power to act when they, the people, want certain laws. They contend that it is no more than rightto compelthe law-makersto refer proposed legislation to those who are affected by it. This principle has worked happily wherever given a fair trial, and is usually called theInitiative and Referendum.
Populists contend, also, that all officers should be elected by direct vote of the people, and that the people should have the right at any timeto retire an officer who has forfeited their confidence.
This principle is usually referred to as theRight of Recall.
In practice it proves a most excellent method ofMAKING THE OFFICE-HOLDER “WALK THE CHALK.”
Populists also believe that we should have a system of Postal Savings Banks. These would furnish to the peopleconvenientandsafeplaces of deposit for their savings; and the system would go far to lessen the dangerous power of the metropolitan banks.
Populists are opposed to land monopoly, favor the eight-hour day in factories and similar industries, and believe that the employment of children of tender age in manufacturing establishments, mines, sweatshops, etc., should be watched with hawk-likevigilanceand regulated with a parental care which puts theWELL-BEING OF THE CHILDabove every other consideration in the case.
Populists believe inUNTAXED NECESSARIES OF LIFE, and contend that whatever tariff duties are imposed should be laid upon luxuries.
In brief, Populists strive for the adoption of those principles which would make thisa real Republic, instead of an Aristocracy ruled by a Class, or a Plutocracy in which Dollars dominate.
And during the whole time that the Politicians and Sages and Powers have been laughing at us,we have been quietly furnishing with our garments the wardrobes of such eminent Politicians, Sages and Powers as Roosevelt, Bryan and Hearst.
Bryan accuses Roosevelt of stealing the very clothesthat Bryan himself stole from us.
As for Hearst—before he fell down on that Murphy deal—his editorials and speeches were nothing in the world but the echo of James B. Weaver, Jerry Simpson and Mary Ellen Lease!
Had he kept up the lick, and not gone into that deal with Murphy,he would have been elected Governor of New York. He parted with his most valuable asset when he ceased to be an Independent.
The Socialiststhinkthey believe in the collective ownership of those things necessary to the production and distribution of wealth,but what they are actually driving atIS THE CONFISCATION OF PRIVATE PROPERTYand a jolly good division of the same, in order thatthe Have Nots will be upon an equal footing with the Haves.
That’s the inner meaning of practical Socialism, and that’s why it assumes so savage a character in our great cities.
In the hearts of the rank and file Socialists,are burning the same fierce fires as animatedthe Goths and the Huns when they bore down upon opulent Rome.
I have heard these people talk and Iknowwhat it isthey really mean.
The Democratic Party, at present, hasn’t got any principles capable of proof.
They are waiting for the next National Convention to hand out a new suit of clothes.
They are awful sick and tired of that Parker platform, which isalmostthe same as the Republican platform—as poor old Gassaway Davis said.
But they cannot “point with pride” to any other platform until the National Convention meets. Just what willthenbe done, it would take an able-bodied prophet to tell. My own opinion is that they will adopt the leading principles of Populism and put Bryan to running for the Presidency again.
The Republican Party is doing just what Alexander Hamilton thought ought to be done—running the Government in partnership with the rich, for the benefit of the rich.
The Republican rule is a Plutocracy, tempered by an occasional spasm of Rooseveltism.
(2) No. Because I do not believe in Special Privilege, nor in the confiscation of $134,000,000 of money that belongs to the taxpayers. To take away the people’s money on the pretext that the Government needs it to pay expenses, and thento deliver it over to a few Pet Banks to be used without interest,is Confiscation. And it’s a burningNATIONAL INJUSTICE AND SHAME!
(3) No. Because Congress dare not do it. The people would not stand it.
(4) The transportation by the Government, through the mails, of small packages—say one, two, three, four, five, ten, fifteen pounds—at a moderate cost, thus protecting the people from the robber Express Companies.
CONDUCTED BY THOS. E. WATSON.
Ann Boyd.By Will N. Harben. Harper & Bros., New York City, Publishers. Price $1.50.
Among the lads whose parents belonged to that great, wholesome class which Lincoln used to call “the plain people,” you would have found the creator of Abner Daniel, Pole Baker, and Ann Boyd had you gone to the little North Georgia town of Dalton, soon after the Civil War.
WILL N. HARBEN.
WILL N. HARBEN.
Two years old at the time that the deliberate treachery of William H. Seward provoked the rash Confederates into firing upon Fort Sumter,—the costly folly against which Bob Toombs protested in vain,—Mr. Harben heard and saw much of the actual marching and countermarching of the ensuing four years ofthe most utterly insane war recorded in History.
Having been given a private education, the young man embarked in business enterprises, and it was not until after 1886 that a mediocre business man was offered up, a willing sacrifice, to a first-class literary artist. Harben, the business man, means nothing to anybody, but Harben, the literary genius, means a vast deal to everybody—for he is, today, the most distinctlyoriginal and creative literary genius in America.
David Harumtook the world by storm because of its unique portrayal of a typical American business-man—shrewd, strong, persistent, humorous, rough in most places and soft in spots. Banker and horse-trader, David Harum knew human nature like a book, and was chock full of that rare article called common sense.
Abner Daniel was in all respects the equal of David Harum, without being an imitation; Pole Baker was superior, in some respects, to Abner Daniel, and Ann Boyd enters a different class altogether.
The creations of Dickens and Thackeray offer nothing better, nothing more human, nothing more symmetrically natural and fascinating,than this heroic woman—tender-hearted, pure, brave and true—whose husband forsakes her, whose child is taken away from her, whose enemies persecute her, whose friends drop away from her, but who, standing at bay and battling with the whole array,CONQUERS.
It is pathetic and it is grand.
How the proud woman covers her wounds and complains not; how the strong soul finds itselfsustained from within; how she brings a stupidly narrow, prejudiced and malicious neighborhood to confusion and utter defeat, is a story that makes one thrill with sympathy and admiration.
This number of theJeffersonian Magazinebegins the serial publication of Mr. Harben’s greatest book.
Read it carefully.
Few better books have been written.
Buff.A tale for the thoughtful. By A Physiopath. Boston. Little, Brown & Co., Publishers. Price $1.00.
Gabrielle, Transgressor.A novel. By Harris Dickson. J. B. Lippincott Company, Publishers, Philadelphia. Price $1.50.
Starting in Life.What each calling offers ambitious boys and young men. By Nath’l. C. Fowler, Jr. With 33 illustrations by Charles Copeland. Little, Brown & Co., Publishers. Price $1.50 net.
The Dragon Painter.A novel. By Mary McNeil Fenollosa. Illustrated by Gertrude McDaniel. Boston. Little, Brown & Co., Publishers. Price $1.50.
My People of the Plains.By Ethelbert Talbot. Illustrated. Harper & Bros., Publishers, New York. Price $1.75 net.
Some Successful Marriages.By Abbey Meguire Roach. Illustrated. Harper & Bros., Publishers, New York. Price $1.25.
Rich Men’s Children.By Geraldine Bonner. Illustrated in color by C. M. Relyea. Bobbs-Merrill Co., Publishers, Indianapolis, Ind. Price $1.50.
The Spirit of Democracy.By Chas. Fletcher Doles, New York. Thos. Y. Crowell & Co., Publishers. Price $1.50.
I Am Sermons.By Thos. Shelton. Published by Christian, Denver, Col. Price 50 cents.
The Teeth and Their Care.By Thaddeus P. Hyatt, D. D. S., Brooklyn, N. Y. King Press. Price 50 cents.
Sometimes “patience ceases to be a virtue” and this is one of the times.
TheRecordhas kept quiet on the subject of the disgraceful, indifferent, unwarranted and careless manner in which the Southern Railway has treated its patrons from Toccoa to Elberton, through fear of being classed as a chronic kicker.
But the thing has become so awful until this paper can keep still no longer.
Our business men here in Royston—and we suppose it’s the same way in Lavonia, Bowersville, Canon and Bowman—are losing money every day in the week through this giant corporation’s ill-treatment. Our cotton buyers have hundreds of bales of cotton stored here in every conceivable place because they can’t get cars to ship it away.
Our merchants have goods on the road which were shipped to them days, weeks and almost months ago, and are losing sales daily because they can’t get the goods delivered on time.
Sometimes there is no freight train to arrive here for two days at a time. Whose fault this isThe Recorddoesn’t know, but it must be the “Big Guns” who own the road.
Not a freight train has arrived here on time in two months. Thousands of dollars have been lost to the merchants and farmers of this section through the criminal neglect of those who are at the head of this greedy octopus, better known as the Southern Railway, which has Georgia in its power as strongly as ever a boa constrictor of South Africa encircled its victim.
How long? Oh Lord! How long, will this thing last?
Hasn’t Georgia’s Railroad Commission some power to do something for the people of Georgia in this matter? If they haven’t they might as well close up shop and go home and try and find some calling more suitable to their respective talents, provided the members of that representative (?) body have any.
The depot agent at this place is as painstaking and gentlemanly as any railroad official in Georgia, but is helpless. He is worked to death for want of sufficient help. He is doing the work of two men.
From the section boss to the highest official on the line in question—the Elberton Air Line—that’s the road we’re talking about—the pay is less by one third than it should be and not half enough help is employed in any of the departments.
If the crew on the freight train that runs on this road were animals, we could indict the authorities for cruelty to animals, but as they are only human beings there is no law to cover the case. More’s the pity. There’s something wrong with the law when it allows a greedy corporation to work its men to death.
Why not put on two freight trains per day, having them to leave Elberton and Toccoa early in the morning and returning in the afternoon?The Recordbelieves this would solve the problem and stop the congestion of freight on this line, at least.
The people of this section are broad minded and generous, and only want what is due them from any standpoint, but propose to get what is coming to them if it is gettable.
As we said in the beginning, we tried to keep still about this matter, but our hammer has begun to knock and we propose to keep it up until something is done.
The Recordwill begin, next week, to circulate a petition among our business men regarding this matter and proposes to send said petition to Vice-President Andrews, of the Southern, in Charlotte, N. C., to Mr. McMannus, in Greenville, S. C., and to the great and only Georgia Railroad Commission, in the city of Atlanta.
Will our sister cities along the Southern, from Toccoa to Elberton, do the same thing?
The Recordwill wait and see.—Royston (Ga.) Record.
The girls of these United States have always borne the name of being the most vivacious, intelligent and common sense mortals of any other nation, but as is the case in all other things, there are exceptions to the rule, and when they do depart from the record they can make the very worse breaks of any. Just think of as intelligent, cultivated girls as Anna Gould and Consuelo Vanderbilt allowing such broken down old foreign sports, gamblers and roues as Count Boni de Castellane and the Duke of Marlborough, persuading them that they were loved, not for their riches but themselves, and marrying such cattle when they could have secured good, honest, sober, loving husbands at home. One is now suing for divorce in Paris after her Frenchman has spent eight millions of her money, and the other is applying for a separation in London. If it was foreign titles these girls were seeking, they have paid dear for their little toy and really deserve no sympathy, but if they sought the men merely for their supposed merits, the two women ought to have guardians appointed over them for the remainder of their lives, for they have no idea of how to take care of themselves.—Gainesville (Fla.) Elevator.
Pope says that an honest man is the noblest work of God and Paul says to provide things honest in the sight of all men.
Webster says that honor is esteem due or paid to worth. Bacon says that some in their actions do woo, and affect honor and reputation.
In common parlance we call a man honest, if he pays his just and true debts. Is that true? If a person pays debts with money secured by extorting the widows and orphans, by pressing the poor, by selling hell and damnation to youths, is he to be called honest? Certainly not. He is neither honest nor honorable.
There is another class of folk, who think themselves honest and would resent with their strong arms even an insinuation of dishonesty on their part, that fall as far short of being honest and honorable men as thieves do of being angels. They are an ingenious sort of people, whose heads are full of tricks and schemes, and their greatest joy consists of working them upon the public. They had rather make money dishonestly than honestly. To enlist them in any cause only the whisper of the word scheme is necessary. Yet, they pay their debts and they seem to think that this alone will carry them to “heaven on flowery beds of ease.”
The honest and honorable men in a community are those, with characters so well known, as to never be approached secretly or otherwise, in behalf of screening any evil, upholding any wrong, fostering any unholy scheme. They stand boldly for right living and everybody knows it.
The clever, popular men of a community are not always the honorableand the honest. Their popularity often results from their closed lips and silent hands. They are polite, generous and liberal, but are approachable and ready participants in any sort of secret deal for a little cash. Money in their eyes looks brighter than honesty and they are neither honest nor honorable, although very clever fellows.
But there is in every community persons, possessed of righteous consciences, with so high ideals of the right and so much hatred for the wrong, as to be unable to restrain themselves in taking brave, bold stands in every civic and religious reform.
Boys, the object of this article is to elevate manhood in Gwinnett county and the latter are the characters for your patterns. Be men.
Say, what is honor? ’Tis the finest sense
Of justice which the human mind can frame,
Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim,
And guard the way of life from all offense,
Suffered or done.—Wordsworth.—Gwinnett, (Ga.) Journal.
Divine right is still to be discovered in high finance, although not so usual as a few years ago it was. A group of minority stockholders, clamoring for an accounting from Mr. HARRIMAN, were consoled by his lawyer with the assurance that “Mr. Harriman moves in a higher world, where stockholders may not hope to enter.” The president of the Union Pacific Railroad may continue to keep stockholders beyond the battlements of his personal paradise; but the Interstate Commerce Commission, by virtue of the Railroad Rate bill, have the right to make inquisitorial entry. The rate bill became a law on August 28. The raising of the Union Pacific dividend from six to ten per cent. was effected by Mr. Harriman on August 16. If the Interstate Commerce Commission have been under embarrassment about picking a railroad which shall be compelled to lower its freight rates, the juxtaposition of dates should make them easy. A road which at once pays exorbitant dividends and charges exorbitant rates seems to need their services. It is not for the purpose of paying higher wages to his conductors and engineers that Mr. Harriman charges high rates. His operating expenses are but 52.51 per cent. of his gross receipts; whereas the average of all our railroads is 67.79 per cent. When a shipper pays Mr. Harriman one dollar, fifty-three cents goes to pay the trainmen and for the other purposes embraced under operating expenses; about two cents goes for taxes, and forty-five cents goes to paying the interest on bonds and to meeting the necessities of Mr. Harriman’s ten per cent. requirements.—Collier’s Weekly.
Our system of criminal jurisprudence is better than most, and as good as any with the possible exception of the English. But no one denies that it has monstrous faults. In New York recently one man shot another over a woman. Both men were rich and the woman beautiful—a combination that will instantly wreck the essential purpose of criminal law anywhere in the United States. Already the newspapers abundantly foreshadow what will happen. The material facts in the case—so far as concerns the purpose of the law to protect human life—were brought out by the coroner in about half an hour. Hereafter we shall hear very little of them.
Press reports assure us that a fine array of legal talent on either sideis preparing to play a splendid game of chess. If it can be shown that one of the men led a life more vicious than the other that will score ten for the side that shows it. The sorry muck-heap of the woman’s career will be raked fore and aft until it has yielded every point that will count on one side or the other. The lawyers will construct a great melodrama, with the villain, heroine and hero, to be presented to the jury. The verdict—the very life of the accused—will depend upon the skill with which the game is played and the success with which the melodrama is “put on.”
“Thou shalt not kill,” says the commandment. One can imagine a completely civilized state, in noble dignity, requiring the one man to answer whether he did kill and murder the other, contrary to its statute. It is merely an imagining, however. Our famous murder trials, with their tawdry tricks in the face of death and their rotten plays to sentiment, are pretty exclusively barbarous.—Saturday Evening Post.
Senator Bailey talks, as there is no law against his utterances. “The free negro,” he declares, in his amiable attempt to induce in his hearers a calm and rational mode of thought, “is a more serious menace to the South than the negro in slavery.” In Alabama, a couple of weeks ago, at a Republican convention, there was not a negro present—one of the details indicating a general drift of the Republicans toward leaving the negroes out of their politics. Meantime, the negroes themselves are divided sharply in their meeting of the situation. The so-called “Niagara Movement” puts out an address to the country which observes: “We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a free-born American, political, civil, and social.” The whole address is a mass of almost bombastic rhetoric on this theme. Meantime, another leader speaks: “Let constructive progress be the dominant note among us in every section of America. An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of fault-finding. The races that have grown strong and useful have not done so by depending upon finding fault with others, but by presenting to the world evidences of progress in agriculture, industrial and business life, as well as through religious, educational, and civic growth.” Without failing to make it clear that he wishes the equal protection of the law, Mr. Washington refuses to complain, to whine about social rights and aspirations, and prefers to tell his fellows the most useful things to do. He leaves white faults to white men and warns negroes against negro weaknesses. Which leader will the negroes follow, and which speaks with wisdom and with strength?—Collier’s Weekly.
What has become of all our laborers is a question which no one seems able to answer just at present, but that they are not to be had is too well known. In the cotton belt of Texas, churches and Sunday schools are organizing parties and going into the fields to save the crop; in other of the cotton growing states the women are helping the men gather the staple; immigrants are offered work almost before they have put a foot on American soil; out West two great rival railroads are scouring the woods for men; factories where child labor has been legislated out are running short-handed, and it would appear that if our prosperity did not abate a bit from other causes it would do so from lack of labor with which to carry it on. Meanwhile communities are learning the gentle art of smiling, trade is booming and not even an approaching election can offer an opening to the pessimist.—Pensacola News.
Our Statesmen tell us in one breath that the salvation of the South is in the planting of less cotton and getting more for it and, in the very next breath, they say that immigration will save us. They invite the yankee to come, and the German, and the Irish, and the Scandinavian and even the Italian.
If it be true that we are planting enough cotton, even too much, and it is true, wherein will the South be benefited by having thousands of the foreigners settle here to raise more cotton? There is but one answer. We don’t need any more cotton planters.
But it is contended that foreign immigration will settle the race question. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. The cotton patch negro hasn’t given us any trouble, nor will he, and he isn’t going to leave either. He is satisfied, his landlord is satisfied, and a German or a Scandinavian upon the scene will mean two cotton patches instead of one, one for him and one for the negro.
True, there are many of our ambitious farmers who can’t secure enough laborers to make enough cotton to get rich as fast as they would, but they’ll get rich quick enough in using our present available labor, thereby raising less cotton, getting more for it, and, at the same time, either resting their lands or sowing it in small grain. And when these wealthy farmers plant less cotton, they benefit every poor fellow, standing between the plow handles, in the entire South.
And this one or two horse farmer is the ideal citizen, anyway. The best communities are those made up of small farmers. The churches, schools and social conditions in a community, in which one man owns all the land and runs forty plows, are not as good as one with forty land owners. Oglethorpe county would, no doubt, be a better county today, if Jim Smith had never been born, and this is not said with the spirit of criticising a single act of his life, either.
It’s all right for immigrants to build our cities, our railroads, our manufacturing enterprises or to labor in the cities, on the railroads, in the factories or even take servants’ places, but the South doesn’t need any more cotton raisers.—Gwinnett (Ga.) Journal.
The railroad magnates have divided up the lines in this country among nine families of plutocrats, who by controlling transportation of passengers and freight, can control the Government. They are divided as follows:
That is three-fourths of the mileage of the country and the control of the main lines in every state and territory. It puts into the hands of these men a greater power than was ever exercised by any group of kings, lords and dukes who ever formed a community of interests. In all past history, to overthrow such a power as that, a resort to long and bloody wars was the only recourse. It remains to be seen whether the great peace movements of the last few years, for which Andrew Carnegie has built a temple at The Hague, will produce a sentiment strong enough to settle this question peaceably. Would Andrew Carnegie encourage anarchistic disorders if he thought there was a dangerof a reduction of the tariff on steel? Railroad combination and robber tariffs are only another manifestation of what we once called the “money power.”—Omaha (Neb.,) Investigator.
Whatever may be the future of the People’s party, whether it is doomed to pass away and give place to some other party that will present its principles, or whether it may yet rise as it deserves to do and get control of the Government, remains yet to be seen.
One thing is certain. It has already accomplished more in this Government in the last fifteen years in the way of creating public sentiment and political conviction than both of the old parties.
Fifteen years ago the two old parties were discussing nothing but Tariff. The Money question, the Railroad question and the Trust question were entirely ignored by them. Not because the leaders of the two old parties did not know the magnitude and importance of these questions; but they got their campaign boodle from these rich corporations and they were willing to accept the money and let the common people perish.
When the Populists came on the scene they began to “cry aloud and spare not.”
They showed that the same laws of supply and demand that regulated the prices of other commodities, also regulated the price of money, that when money was plentiful, prices were high, all kinds of business prosperous and labor fully employed and well paid. While on the other hand when money was scarce it was high; all industries paralized, men out of work and their families suffering for bread.
They showed that the great railroad corporations had secured the public franchises and were taxing the people without their consent and without mercy.
They showed that their great corporations, growing enormously rich were combining together and forming “Trusts” and that they will eventually control all prices, and as completely own and control the country as did the Barons under the Feudal system.
Their cry and their plea was invincible.
Their arguments could not be answered.
Ridicule and abuse might serve to keep them down for awhile, but the just indictment against the two old parties was destined some day to be sustained.
Today the Populist looks on with pleasure and sees his principles growing in public favor every day.
The Republican president and the Democratic leader are endorsing the very doctrines that were fifteen years ago considered the most radical.
All honor to the Populists.—Nevada County (Ark.) Picayune.
Can there be such a thing as a radical conservative? John Temple Graves thinks Col. Pleasant Stovall, of theSavannah Press, fits that kind of a job. We believe that a trimmer—if that is what Col. Graves means to call Col. Stovall—is the most decent citizen that afflicts human society. He stops rushing things when a sense of the proprieties tells him that a thing has been rushed far enough to make it coarse or common (use which word you prefer), and the result is that his hair does not grow too long, nor his ears too puritanically short.
Yes, sir, the medium grade takes the cake. Except in an occasional storm, the radicals may overrun all opposition; but it don’t last, and the fellow that wins on an extravagant moral issue may be found in the ditchdead drunk as soon as public sentiment gets normal and resorts for a season to common sense arrangements of its ethics and politics.
Yes, the men who make an over-display of honesty for the season always get left as soon as the folks get back to their normal qualities. Common sense controls when the excitement has passed.—Cordele Rambler.
Hearst got beat for Governor of New York while the balance of the State ticket he was on got elected. A few of the successful candidates are Independence League men, but most of them are straight Democrats. Thus Hearst’s reform work was turned to the benefit of corrupt and foul Tammany. We hope this lesson in fusion will be enough for the League. Hearst was defeated by about 60,000, while the other State candidates on the League-Democratic fusion ticket were elected by small pluralities. Tammany scratched Hearst. The Wall Street element of the Democratic party either scratched him or voted the Republican ticket. We are inclined to think well of Hearst because of those who scratched him. Hearst says the fight for the rights of the people is still on. With his great daily papers he can do a vast work toward overthrowing the rule of the money power, if he gets into the middle of the road and stays there. But if he endeavors to work within the old party he will do more to prevent the success of the people than forty Clevelands could do. Maybe the thing wasn’t hardly ripe and he had to back out, which he did by fusing with the Democrats after the League had nominated a straight ticket. We are guessing that Hearst will be in the middle of the road supporting Tom Watson for President in 1908.—Missouri World.
Whatever may be said of W. R. Hearst’s individual sincerity and integrity of purpose, the vote which almost landed him in the governor’s chair of New York State—a position which is next to the presidency—is the vote which is dissatisfied with corporation conditions. It is a significant vote. And the strong anti-Hearst sentiment among the “upper ten” all over the South is also significant. Everywhere men are, consciously or unconsciously, taking their positions along lines of economics.—Farmers’ Journal, Abilene, Texas.
Tom Watson is back in Georgia, where he belongs. He is too warm, too impulsive, too frank and too honest for New York—cold, calculating, deceitful, hateful New York.—Farmers’ Journal, Abilene, Tex.
Lucian L. Knight, Los Angeles, Cal.
I cannot silence without gratifying the impulse which prompts me to write you at once after reading what you have to say about that superlative scoundrel, Mann. As a friend who holds you in loyal and affectionate admiration, I resent with all my heart the treatment which you have received at the hands of one who is man in name only and who in nature is half jackal and half hyena. I am aware how true it is that the most insignificant of insects may vex even the noble lion. Mann may be a millionaire, but I warrant his shillings are dirty. How miserably poor the wretch is when the only assets he has in the world are the millions which lie in the bank!
I know how little things have annoyed me at times and I know how much I have appreciated an impulsive word of sympathy, even from “the least of these.”
I am sorry I could not get the extracts you were to send me in time for Vol. I of the Reminiscences which will be ready for publication within the next few weeks; but I hope to get them in time for Vol. II. The work will require two volumes. I have met with so much encouragement that I am warranted in beginning at once upon Vol. II. Disappointed in other cherished plans and prospects, I am now putting my life’s ambition into this work which I trust to be able to make of literary and historic value to Georgia.
W. H. Eddy, Los Angeles, Cal.
Can you explain what quality there is in human nature, that prompts some specimens of the race to the doing of things which are admirably adapted to the hindrance of all that they profess to be in earnest support of? Now, for instance: inThe Appeal to Reasonof October 27th, is an unsigned article headed, “Populism and the Pap.” Being unsigned would indicate that it came from the pen of J. A. Wayland, or that of F. D. Warren, the present Managing Editor. Now, both of these men have been earnest workers for several years, or at least for what they conceive to be the cause of socialism. It would seem as though, when two men are associated in a work which each of them has advocated and written signed articles in favor of, lauding it as a movement opposed to dishonesty, deceit and all the baser tendencies of the depraved mind, that when he takes a notion to stultify himself, descend to the lowest practices of the gutter blackguard, he would have consideration enough for his associate to sign his name, so that decent people who may be so unfortunate as to peruse it, and such of the patrons of the paper as have both decency and brains enough to resent it, might not blame the innocent party inadvertently.
If socialism is anything, or is to be anything in human history which is to make for the betterment of humanity, then it must rest upon the fundamental principles of honesty,justice and truth. All those who would not be cursed by its adoption to-morrow, by reason of their lack of development and their consequent lack of capacity to appreciate its meaning and the obligations inherent in it, assert that brotherly love, the golden rule, and the Sermon on the Mount, are also corner-stones in the foundation of its most noble structure.
But let us leave the latter out of consideration for the present. It is not conceivable that there can be dug up in the office of theAppealone individual so low in the scale of human development as not to concede honor, truth and justice as being the beginning, the very A B C of socialism. What must we think, then, of the estimate that the one who penned the abominable article referred to, places upon the intelligence of his readers, to say nothing of the hundreds who have drawn from the little stock of their earnings which are really needed for the comfort of themselves and family, to assist this poor degenerate in distributing his venom and flaunting his idiocy in the faces of a nation of intelligent people, to the disheartenment of thousands of advocates of socialism, and the great glee of those who aver that the animus of socialism and of all socialists is such as “Breathes the hot breath of brutal hate, and riots as it runs” through the two columns of the “Appeal?” To those who have not been unfortunate enough to read it, suffice it to say that it is a wholly uncalled for, unsocialistic, and, from every point of view, rascally, assault upon Hon. Thomas E. Watson, and to make it, if possible, more pusillanimous, it is given publicity just at a time when, on account of Mr. Watson’s having been grievously misused by his former business associates in theWatson’s Magazineenterprise, Mr. Watson is deserving of the sympathy of every person who possesses a spark of decency. It is cowardly in the extreme to strike a person when he is down or crippled.
Mr. Watson’s life history is now an open book to anyone, not an absolute ignoramus, in this broad country. He has his prejudices. He has his own political ideas, which, at the test of the ballot box, have been shown to be largely in the minority, but, to his honor be it said, the fact that they were not the winning card, has never caused him for one moment to falter in devoting time, money and energy in their advocacy, a fact which of itself would give the lie to the baseless, senseless and hypocritical charge of treachery and double dealing, which, by their own statements, finds 250,000 duplications in this issue of the Appeal.
It is doing too much honor to quote from it, but the readers of progress will excuse the presentation of some short samples. “Tom appears to have a grudge against whatever tends toward progress.” Think of that in reference to the father of the rural free delivery postal system which carries tens of thousands of copies of this very diatribe of lies to the farmers of the country, in whose interest Watson succeeded in having this system established, as theCongressional Recordwill bear witness. Again, “But he has been repudiated by the respectable democratic press of his state—as witness the merciless exposure of his methods by theAtlanta Constitutionand theMacon Telegraph!” Respectable! TheAtlanta Constitutionand theMacon Telegraph! Socialists of intelligence, what have you to say of the creature so lost to decency as to, in the columns of the leading socialist weekly paper of America, if not of the world, so far as circulation goes, laud theAtlanta Constitutionand theMacon Telegraph, notoriously the most mercenary and most thoroughly corporation-serving papers of the entire South, and for no other reason—for he can plead no other—than becausethey are fighting Tom Watson, who happens to be under the ban of his displeasure?
And why are the ultra corporation journals fighting Tom Watson? Because honest Tom Watson is sacrificing his private interests in a determined effort to defeat the machinations of the Walter Parkers, the Herrins and the Abe Ruefs of his beloved state.
Again: “That Watson received the price for his perfidy is not for a moment to be doubted.” Whoever penned those lines either knew that he was penning a most villainous lie or he is too ignorant to be worthy of the contempt of a chimpanzee. There isn’t a person with intelligence enough to write connectedly on truth, or any part of the scurrilous rot this creature did, but knows perfectly well that if Tom Watson had been corruptible, he could have received ten times more to have sold himself to the very forces this creature is supposed to be fighting, than it has ever been claimed he did get. That is just as true of Tom Watson as it is of ’Gene V. Debs. Everyone, including the writer of that malicious screed,knowsthat they both could be rolling luxuriously in wealth if they had but followed the course of these very papers which he is pleased to declare “respectable.”
But the last quotation is manly as compared with this one: “It is said that he has been up for sale before, and was knocked down to the highest bidder,” etc., “It is said!” The language of the conscienceless gossip, the method of the footpad, with the sand-bag, or the gas-pipe who strikes you out of the dark. Again: “John M. Barnes, a man for whose veracity many stand ready to vouch, etc.” Very good, Mr. No-name. Mr. Barnes is good enough authority to use in an effort to injure your brother man, Mr. Thos. Watson. Would you accept Mr. John M. Barnes’ statement as to the offices you, your associates and theAppeal to Reasonare performing in America, and would you abide by and endorse them in your own case? Never! And that very fact impeaches your honesty in quoting, as against Tom Watson, the slanders of corporation hirelings and political hacks, whom you know are fighting him for what there is in it. No! no! When you go straining a point, you alwaysprove too much.
Be something like a man, and bid him God speed in his task of awakening the people to their dangers, even if he does leave them short of being full-fledged socialists.
Tom Watson’s opinions are not in all respects mine. In fact, there are many points on which we do not agree. But if I have outgrown the tenets of Populism, and he has not, or if he sees so many falling away from the mere party organization of populism as to be heart-sore and discouraged, and chooses to advocatethe same principlesunder the name of Jeffersonian Democracy, he is still entitled to the respect of friend and foe alike, until he sacrifices principle to greed or puerile hatred.
L. A. Benson, Clay Center, Kan.
I write to inquire as to the truth or falsity of the rumor that you have severed your connection with the Magazine which bears your name. I have been a voting Prohibitionist since 1885. I bought the first issue of “Tom Watson’s” and read it, and have hungered for its appearance ever since. I have read every line of Editorial and other matter which came from your pen. I was beginning to think myself so much of a Populist that I could “keep step.” From 1894 until 1901 I lived in Philadelphia, Pa., and judging the Populists from the caricatures appearing in Eastern papers I felt surprisedto find that I have all along possessed just such views as constitute the essence of Populism. I find myself unwilling to give up the opportunity to follow your pen. I will regard it as a matter of genuine kindness to me if you will put me in connection with the Magazine which takes your copy and spreads it among your many disciples and admirers. I regard the work which you are doing asfundamental, and I am aware that you, like all leaders in reforms which touch the money-king, will suffer. If it be in the power of “Old Plute” to crucify you, he will not be too tender. He will not be lacking in heartless cruelty. But while you are bidding high for the hate and vengeance of “Old Plute” you are winning the glorious title of “friend” and “brother” to those who are crushed ’neath the heel of this heartless, greedy foe. Toopposehim and tostand the loving helperof men, is to trace the footsteps of the Man of Galilee, up a modern Calvary. In plain language, it is the essence of pure and undefiled religion. Here’s my hand, brother, and may God bless and prosper you.
N. B. McDowell, Ronceverte, W. Va.
In reply to your question inWatson’s Magazineof August: “Is it true that railroad corporations insure the lives of the railroad mail clerks?” I cannot speak for the railroad corporations, but it was developed in court here that the St. Lawrence Broom & Manufacturing Co., the largest corporation in this section, has the lives of its employes insured for its benefit. This company employs a large number of men and boys and has never made any provisions for their protection against the inclemency of the weather, or the many dangers of machinery that might be averted.
I was an employe of this company for fifteen years and have seen a number of men and boys mangled and maimed for life, but it was not known until quite recently that the corporation received insurance for every employe that got crippled. A boy got his hand cut off and sued the company for damages and it was clearly proven that the employes were insured for the benefit of the company.
D. H. Chamberlain, Harriston, Miss.
A few days ago I saw in the MemphisCommercial-Appealthat you had severed your connection withWatson’s Magazine. I am a subscriber and have taken the Magazine solely on account of your Editorials, which I regard as the finest and most forceful I ever read in any Magazine. My subscription is about run out and if you are no longer connected with the publication I do not care to renew. This is my reason for making this inquiry, and I will be glad to hear the report is untrue. If it is correct let me know if it will be your purpose to edit a similar periodical. In that event you can count on me as a subscriber, even if the subscription price should be increased to $5.00 per annum.
I think you are doing a great and necessary work in your attempts to arouse the people to the dangers that now menace the liberties of this unhappy land, “to hastening ills a prey.”
There is one point on which I am constrained to criticise you and that is your ill-advised attacks on W. J. Bryan, which is something I am utterly unable to understand.
Why do you do this when you both stand for the same things? It seems to me unfortunate, to say the least, that soldiers of the hosts of Reform should turn their artillery upon each other when so much ammunition is needed to fight the cohorts ofPlutocracy, and in this connection nothing will ever be accomplished in the way of bringing this Government again into the possession of the people if any such suicidal policy is pursued. The reformers must get together if this Republic is to be preserved, if it is not even now too late to save it. Of this I am certain: we have no time left us for internal dissensions, and I hope that so splendid a soldier of the common good as yourself, will, in the future, refrain from stirring up discord in the ranks of Reform, and reserve your ammunition entirely for our enemies.
R. W. Barkley, New York City.November 12, 1906.
I note that you are proposed as President of the Cotton Association. I have read your Magazine from the first number until Mann got it, and I know your desire to benefit the South. I control the patent rights on a cotton gin which works on a new principle and which leaves the cotton in natural lengths, thereby enhancing the price to the planter by one to five cents per pound. The gin can be run by hand, or by power, and a few farmers can own one in common and thereby earn money by ginning their own cotton. The gin consists of “mechanism for gradually opening and loosening the cotton fibres while still attached to the seeds, with means for thereafter removing the seeds.” Just take a little cotton and gradually pull the fibres apart, without, however, separating them from the seed, until you have a large puff ball and then see how easily they come off at the seed. Well, that is what this machine does. No “gin cut” cotton in it. Seed practically unhurt, also. Am looking for money wherewith to build a large machine, (the inventor made the working model by hand himself); it does the work fairly well, but it is getting to be ram-shackle for demonstration purposes, and then for capital wherewith to work the gin commercially. Such a gin ought to interest you and also the Cotton Association.
Editor’s Note.—Having just been run through one new and improved gin—known asTown Topics—and having been badly “gin cut” myself, have but slight inclination for new inventions of the gin variety.
S. R. Sikes, Ocilla, Georgia.
I have your card of November 10th, advising me of your withdrawal fromWatson’s Magazine, and of your intention of publishing in the near futureWatson’s Jeffersonian. I desire to express my sympathy for you in your recent trouble with the New York publication, and to assure you of my friendship and best wishes for you in your new enterprise, “The Jeffersonian.”
I feel sure that you have been treated very unfairly by those New York people, and I feel a spirit of resentment for you, and I am to-day writing them to discontinue mailingWatson’s Magazineto me, and to erase my name from their list of subscribers. (Copy of letter enclosed.)
I would feel worse for you over this transaction than I do if it were not for the fact you have been unfairly treated and falsely accused so many times during the last ten or fifteen years, until I suppose you have to some extent become toughened so that you can stand such treatment better than the average man, and I see very plainly now, and have seen for quite a while past, that the current of public sentiment is rapidly drifting your way. I desire to offer you all the encouragement I possibly can in the noble work you are doing—educating the common people of the country onthe public issues that are now facing the American people, and in this connection I will state to you that I have been with you, so far as my ability extends, in this battle, and on some occasions have been severely criticised for taking your part and standing by the principles of original democracy in the days when the Democratic Party was seeking to destroy the principles upon which our government was founded. Of course I will subscribe for theJeffersonian. I want the first copy that is printed and each succeeding issue. Mail me a few sample copies, and I think I can induce some others to subscribe.
(Copy.)
November 14, 1906.
Editor Watson’s Magazine, New York.
Dear Sir:—After reading and carefully considering the recent differences between you and the Honorable Thos. E. Watson, I wish to say to you that I think Mr. Watson has been treated very unfairly. I am a great admirer of Mr. Watson and his writings, and this led me to subscribe to the Magazine in its beginning. I have been highly pleased with it, and especially so with Mr. Watson’s editorials, but as he has been forced to sever his connection with the Magazine, and as his writings were the principle things which induced me to subscribe to the Magazine, I write to request that you erase my name from your list of subscribers. If I remember correctly, my subscription is paid up to March 1st, 1907, but under the circumstances I do not wish another copy mailed to my address.
Very respectfully,S. R. Sikes.
V. L. Anthony, Jr., Hurtsboro, Ala.
I subscribed forWatson’s Magazineon account of your connection with it. Now, as you are no longer with it, I wish your new Magazine when you start it.
D. J. Henderson, Sr., Ocilla, Ga.
When the stockholders of theWatson’s Magazineattempted to restrict you as Editor and Manager, causing you to sever your connection with it, they struck, what I call, a death blow to the Magazine. All of its readers who believe in pure Jeffersonian Democracy felt the insult as keenly as you. I enclose you copy of a letter I sent last week to DeFrance, ordering mine discontinued. I am a subscriber to the WeeklyJeffersonianand will be to the Magazine you contemplate starting in Atlanta as soon as the first issue is out.
The editor of theOcilla Star, whom I asked you some time back to exchange your Magazine with, has, since that time, “passed over the River to rest in the shade.” The paper will be continued by his two young sons, who, I know, if not doing so, will be pleased to exchange withThe Jeffersonian.
May the blessings of Heaven be upon you and yours.
(Copy.)
Ocilla, Ga., Oct. 24, 1906.
Mr. C. Q. DeFrance, New York City.
Dear Sir:—Please strike my name from the list of subscribers to theWatson Magazine. I learn the stockholders endeavored to place restrictions on Mr. Watson as Editor and Manager, and he, for that reason, severed his connection with it. Thank God for that. I am glad to know he had so much manhood about him. Tom Watson is one among the greatest statesmen the United States has. It is a source of satisfaction to know that he will neither speak nor write with a corporation muzzle on. Whenthe stockholders attempted to restrict Mr. Watson in his Editorials for the Magazine, they didn’t only insult him, but they insulted every reader of it who believes in the pure Jeffersonian principles which Mr. Watson so ably advocates and defends. I would be proud of Tom Watson were he from any other section of the Union. He being a Southern man and a Georgian at that, I am exceedingly proud of him. I fear somebody has been taken upon the Mount and shown the glorious things the railroads will do if they will only fall down and worship them. Ifno Watsonis with the Magazine thenno Magazine for me.
Respectfully,D. J. Henderson, Sr.
Chas. D. Hunt, Gueydan, La.
Reading with interest your valuable editorials in the October number and the most striking and interesting subject, “It Would be a Noble Charity”—here you have treated a subject in a light that any person could not help from shielding with an honest heart, with a strong desire in mind to spread the cause of charity, but you have almost been selfish with your subject. What of the territory bordering along the Gulf of Mexico? That is, the extreme portion.
Here we have settlers of almost ancient times. They are not altogether uncivilized, but are not able to meet the demands of our educated requirements. Hence are we to still keep them back or are we to give them a helping hand? These people know nothing of education and its help in life, but toil with an earnest heart to maintainmerelyascant livingand to bring the younger class up in their own path.
I think if the Humane Society would stop and think deeply in regard to the young boys and girls that spend their school days in hard labor out of school there would be something done to protect them and give them a chance for a better future than is now before them.
It would be surprising to anyone who has had the advantages of education andreallyfelt itsreal valuein life to stroll along the prairies and see just how many bright young boys and girls are out of touch with the educated world. Why? Their parents are not able to aid them to secure an education, but are more than willing.
Do you not think much could be done in both mountain and prairie territories?