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TON WATSON-A WASTING NIAGARA
7 “he Atlanta Constitution Treaches Hope and Optomism to the Apostle of ‘Bitterness The Nation is NOT Plunging Hell-
Ivard” — Watson's Atlanta Speech Causes Tremendous Sensation .
T IS SAID that when Edison, the wizard
of invention of electricity and power,
saw Niagara Falls for the first time, he
declared it “almost ran him crazy” be
cause of the unharnessed WASTING
POWER there. When we think of Tom
Dixon, we feel like crying: “Wasted,
wasted power!” We think of how he
went to New York ■with the opportunity
1
to be to that great city what Spurgeon was to Lon
don. But he began to break fellowship with the
leaders of Christianity. He defied deacons and
church organization. The poor, brilliant fellow drove
away the throngs that first flocked to hear him by
the belching bitterness of his volcanic spirit. He
fought without reason those who had longed to be
his friends and by and by he found himself stand
ing practically alone, unsupported by that church
organization without which he could not w r ork and
win, and acknowledging at last the fatal folly that
had wrought his religious ruin. And then came the
blighting brilliancy of a “wandering star” —and the
world knows too "well the sad story. While his
brother, A. C. Dixon, planted firmly on the Rock of
Ages, and gathering about him the faithful of God,
is breaking the bread of salvation to the hungry mul
titudes.
In the religio-political field the counterpart of Tom
Dixon is found in Tom Watson —historian, editor and
orator and champion FAULT-FINDER of the uni
verse! We say it not in unkindness —as Henry Grady
used to say, “not in bitterness but in sorrow.”
He seems to find comfort to himself in being looked
upon as the aggravated and aggregated blending of
Philistine and Ishmaelite with “his hand against
every man.”
He could have done so much good in the world if
he had only yoked n.mself to his church at home
and his optimistic friends in his fearless battle for
the betterment of his country.
There is nothing personal in this comment —we
speak of him as a character who is prominent enough
to be discussed dispassionately as an influence upon
his times without personal or partisan bias. A thous
and times when we have thought of his transcend
ent powers in literature, statesmanship and oratory,
and then contemplated that spirit of bitterness in
him, which brought upon himself the uproar that
ended his Auditorium speech in Atlanta, the other
night, and that has filched from him that wonderful
influence which a man on his intellectual throne
ought to wield, we are constrained to cry out in sor
row and disappointment: O! Watsonian Niagara!
May Heaven turn your wonderful powers into the
path of constructive good!”
The Constitution’s great editorial, which follows,
is all the more remarkable, showing the nobility of
Clark Howell’s heart—when it is remembered that
in the gubernatorial contest when Mr. Howell was a
candidate, Mr. Watson’s attacks on Clark Howell
were personal and terrific.
Hew glorious it would be if Mr. Watson would only
take The Constitution’s editorial and all kindred edi
torial utterances in the spirit in which they are
written, and “clothed and in his right mind,” so to
speak, would come unto his own in political and relig
ious influence!
He may, indeed, grow bitter again over the honest
proffer of this hand and the earnest pleading of
friendship. If he does, we can only think again of
a wasting Niagara.
But listen to The Constitution’s editorial, which is
a classic in beauty of thought and beauty of spirit:
A FEW KIND WORDS WITH MR. WATSON.
“The whole nation seems to be plunging
hellward!”
Clothed in the black hopelessness of the Styx,
that sentence supplied the keynote to the ad
dress of Thomas E. Watson at the Auditorium
last evening.
Not once a ray of light, not once the scent of
dawn relieved the gloom of the discourse, which
)ike most of Mr. Watson’s efforts of recent years,
The Golden Age for September 8, 1910.
is a lamentation justified neither by fact nor
fancy.
For the nation is not plunging hellward.
On the other hand, it is in a better condition
today than at any other period of its existence,
and never at any time since the establishment
of the republic have the masses of the people
fared better than now.
There is one thing about Mr. Watson’s ad
dress worthy of special commendation, and that
is its freedom from personal abuse.
There can be no manner of doubt that his
unfortunate tendency to criticise everybody and
everything, to smash with a club every
head that showed above the mass, has seriously
impaired whatever strength and whatever abil
ity he once brought to the service of the people.
Happily, his last night’s speech showed prog
ress over this tendency. If his discourse was
punctuated with melancholy, at least it was not
marred by invective and personal denunciation.
There is that —and it is much —for which he is
to be warmly commended.
That said, what remains? That his address
was a wail from the opening to the doxology.
He gives old Jeremiah cards and spades and
can beat him to a frazzle in the dark!
Everybody, everything, getting worse!
The world all going to h —l in a sling!
None virtuous, none honest. Nobody straight,
nobody sincere. H—l to tell the captain, and him
away from home. The train just a rattlin’ down
grade, lickety-split, with the air brakes broke
loose and the hand brakes on a strike. North,
east, south and west, goblins grinning from
the horizon, ruin closing in, the noise of top
pling houses and blasted civilization drowning
all but one sound—the offer of salvation laid
down by the speaker!
Poor old Jeremiah! Compressing in his lamen
tations the woe, the pessimism of all sacred and
profane history, he occupied the shining emi
nence of typifying the One Great Grouch of
humanity’s story.
Mr. Watson has him “lashed to the mast,”
and “faded to a finish.”
Tut, tut, Mr. Watson, the nation isn’t plung
ing hellward,” and if you would only change
your viewpoint you would see things in a differ
ent light!
The world is getting purer, better, brighter,
and civilization is achieving more every hour
and every day.
Here and there are plague-centers, rotten spots,
weak points. They’ll be there, too, until the
millennium, just as they have been there in
infinitely greater degree since Adam and the
Apple Tree!
Despite the tide of crime; despite the vice
that will flourish as long as men and women
are fallible flesh and blood; despite the graft
that is revealed by the lancet of the civic sur
geon; despite selfishness, demagogy and ineffic
iency often found in high places—
The nation and the world are better, more
advanced, more hopeful today than at any time
in the history of either.
Never at any time within the last two thous
and years have the people, the masses, had more
vital participation in government?
Never at any time within two thousand years
has the average man fared better than he fares
today?
For two thousand years the drift has been
steadily upward from 'serfdom, slavery, oppres
sion, despotism, to the broad tableland of inde
pendence, political and individual, on which to
day the country is planted.
Today the poorest man is nearer a plane of
equality with the richest man than ever in our
history, and the levelling process still moves
on. Wrongs are yet to be righted, and changes
are yet to be wrought, but that will be so until
the end of time.
Mr. Watson is the victim of an unfortunate
habit. What he neds is the sunlight, the clean,
sweet breeze of the mountain tops, whence one
sees things in their proper perspective, not
merely one narrow, gloomy corner, from which
he regards and misappraises the universe.
The man with the ability to tell that mar
velous “Story of France,” to put together the
crackling, glowing genius of “Napoleon,” to
wring admiration and homage from the most
censorious critics, to reconstruct whole eras of
dead history with a verisimilitude, justice and
accuracy that compel admiration, to put into the
scales of his powerful intellect the days and
deeds and peoples that now are dust —demon-
strates his own genius—more than that, his
greatness.
It is a national, an international loss, that the
man with these gifts straight from Omnipo
tence should not remain in that channel in which
he so nobly started, giving epics strong and in
spiring to the world, writing, perhaps, the epic
of our own country, for no man is better qualified
to do that than himself.
With the facts of humanity’s epochs at his
fingers’ ends, with a tremendously creative imag
ination and a vocabulary unexcelled in the writ
ing craft today, with faculties of logic clear and
forceful —
Is it not a thousand pities that these magnifi
cent gifts should be diverted to the sordid,
picayunish, indescribably petty arena of billings
gate and fish-mongering politics?
Hardly a ward heeler of Atlanta would trouble
himself with the passing trivialities that have
absorbed the talents of Mr. Watson for the past
few years. And yet on these mites of politics
and ecomonics he wastes with lavish hand col
umn upon column of tirade, week after week of
precious strength and power of spirit and mind,
that could so much better be employed in nobler,
more permanent tasks.
In the literary world, in economics, a thousand
inviting paths open to him today, and at the end
of each is splendid human service, and after that
—if kept the straight line—an immortality in the
minds of a grateful and admiring people. What
a pity that he continues to barter this wonder
ful heritage for the pottage of petty personal
bickerings that lead nowhere but to public for
getfulness and that do not add one inch to hu
man happiness or human efficiency!
The Constitution then refers to Mr. Watson’s
lambasting of the Hoke Smith registration law, which
Mr. Howell had honestly opposed, but says that even
in that he “overleaped the perspective.”
Mr. Howell nobly extends the olive branch over
past differences, and concludes, as follows:
“What Mr. Howell is doing now, and what he
proposes to continue to do, is to publish a
straight-out newspaper, giving all the news, in
dependently and without bias, shaping all its
policies so that they may redound to the up
building of Georgia, and aiding every Georgian
to bring out the best that is in him, in justice
to himself and to the glory of his State.
If, in the process of upbuilding Georgia, of
encouraging every Georgian to add his quota to
the State’s development, we can convince Mr.
Watson of the error of dwelling with the frogs
in the cave of Adullam, our efforts will not have
been misspent.
If we can persuade him to forsake the croak
ers and the “night-birds,” to come out into the
sunlight amid the songs of birds and the cheer
ful hum of crickets, to forswear allegiance to
Jeremiah, even for a little while, our effort will
have been well expended.
If we can make him see the awful Injustice to
himself and his people in throwing away his
priceless heritage by tilting at the vanishing
shadows of wind-mills —we shall that day have
wrought a splendid stroke for Georgia and for
Mr. Watson, for which we would be duly thank
ful,”
