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PAGE EIGHT
THE JEFFERSONIAN
PUBLISHED BY
THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON
Editors and Proprietors
Tbmplk Court Building, Atlanta, Ga.
SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: - si.oe PER TEAR
Advertising Rates Furnished on Application.
Entered al Peitefice, Atlanta, Ga,, January 11, IQO7, at tecend
clan mail matter
Atlanta, Ga., Thursday January 2, 1908
The Heroism of the Farmers.
Have you stopped to think what would
have happened to the South and to the
country at large, had the farmers lost
courage when the banks did ?
Suppose every old hay seeder had turn
ed pale under the gills, when the Panic
struck us, and had rushed his cotton to
market—what would have been the con
sequence?
Prices would have slumped to eight
cents. Possibly to six. Who knows?
Nothing in the world has kept up the
price of the staple excepting the resolute
determination of the farmers to hold.
Every man who did sell got the benefit
of the heroism of those who would not
sell. Had cotton gone down to six or
eight cents, the havoc would have been
immense. Tens of thousands would have
been ruined.
I glory in the spunk of the farmers!
They deserve the thanks of the whole
country. Let those silk hat rascals of
New York who brought on the panic,
squeal for cotton and talk about the “rep
rehensible conduct” of the farmers in not
sending their cotton to Europe after gold.
Let those wolves of Wall street howl.
Most of them deserve a gibbet.
Do you hold on to that cotton. Things
will be coming your way, prettv soon.
H M *
Organized Labor ’s Mistake.
The National Federation of Labor, in
the recent Convention at Norfolk, declar
ed against the Government Ownership of
Railroads.
This was a huge, deplorable mistake.
To the country at large, it was a misfor
tune, for it deprives the reformers of allies
whose co-operation was naturally expect
ed and whose help would have been valu
able. To the Labor Unions themselves,
the vote was suicidal, for it shows that
organized labor is willing to say to the
country, “We care nothing for anything
but our self-interest; and because we
might not be able to go on a strike, if the
Government owned the roads, we are op
posed to Government ownership.”
On the 25th of March, 1906, I received
a confidential letter from a stenographer
of one of our Southern cities, in which
he said that he felt that he ought to tell
THE JEFFERSONIAN.
me of a scheme that was on foot to have
the Labor Unions declare against Munici
pal and Government ownership.
This stenographer had, served a Repub
lican emissary professionally, and had
taken dictation of letters to Vice-Presi
dent Fairbanks, and other leading Repub
licans. In these letters the whole scheme
of working the Labor Unions in the inter
est of the Republican party was set forth.
The stenographer revealed it to me in
the hope that I could expose the whole
matter and thus do something to prevent
its success.
Crowded with other matters more
pressing, I did not attach as much import
ance to the stenographer’s letter as events
have proved that it deserved.
Read the letter which is given else
where, and then remember the Norfolk
Convention of the Federation of Labor.
The scheme outlined to Fairbanks has
succeeded, and organized labor is being
made the cat’s paw of the astute Repub
licans.
It is not too late for the good and true
men of the Labor Unions to take sides
with the people, in the impending battle
against corporation greed and tyranny.
The sooner it is done, the better for
organized labor.
•J *
Look Out For Impostors.
Do-not give your subscription to peo
ple you don’t know something about.
Swindlers are constantly picking up
small sums by pretending to be canvass
ing agents.
Recently, in Florida, a man signing
himself J. P. Vincent has been taking sub
scriptions to the Jeffersonian and the Un
cle Remus Magazine.
We have no such agent, and the Uncle
Remus writes us that they have not.
Be on your guard, and don’t give your
money to a stranger unless he produces
written authority to represent us.
n H u
Federal Judges Habe Usurped.
Under the old Confederation, the sov
ereignty of the states was never in dis
pute. Each state was an independent
state, leagued to the other by the loose
bonds of Confederation.
When the Convention of 1787 met to
frame a new Constitution, there was no
intention on the part of the states to allow
themselves swallowed by a federal gov
ernment. Each state in the Confederation
was jealous of its rights, and meant to
yield only so much as was absolutely nec
essary to the creation of an effective fed
eral government.
That the states were exceedingly reluc
tant to yield the state-sovereignty prin
ciple is evidenced by the fact that the
small states, like Delaware and Rhode
Island, claimed equal representation in
the senate with New York and Virginia.
The same state-hood principle is also
shown in the choice of President in the
Electoral College.
Is it conceivable that a Convention
which was so jealous of States’ Rights
power would have been conferred upon
federal judges of inferior courts to reduce
the states to nought by setting aside state
laws?
The very idea is preposterous. Had any
member of the Convention of 1787 pro
posed that such jurisdiction should be
conferred upon the inferior federal
judges, he would have raised a storm of
protest, of ridicule, of indignant rebuke.
What? Allow every little federal court
in all the Union to disregard state laws
whenever it saw fit ?
No such proposition could have lived a
minute in the Convention of 1787.
That it was universally understood that
the Supreme Court of the United
States was the only federal court vested
with power to set aside state laws, is
shown by the Judiciary Act which cre
ates inferior federal courts. By the very
terms of that act, the courts which it
brings into existence are denied jurisdic
tion to pass on the constitutionality of
state laws.
The very act which created these infe
rior courts provided the method by which,
state laws should be tested.
The question of their constitutionality
must be raised in the state courts, carried
to the Supreme Court of the state, and
from there to the Supreme Court of the
United States.
That was the law at the beginning, and
is the law now.
By a rule of practice, universal in its
acceptance, the federal courts are bound
by the construction which the state courts
place upon a state law. This being so,
is it not strange that the federal
should follow the construction placed on
state laws by state courts, yet pay no re
spect to the law itself?
Our forefathers never meant that Gov
ernors and Legislatures should be defied,
set at naught, and the states reduced to
helpless inaction by federal judges of in
ferior courts. Never!
The Constitution meant to vest no
where else, in the federal system, the tre
mendous power of abrogating the legisla
tive acts of a sovereign state than in the
Supreme Tribunal which was established
as a sort of international Court over the
quasi separate nations composing the
Union.
Let our federal judges go back and
study the act which created their courts;
let them study the historic conditions
which prevailed when the Judiciary Act
was framed; let them note the jealousy
with which state-sovereignty was pre
served in the Senate!
They will then realize how utterly ille
gal and intolerable is the usurpation of
which such states as Virginia, North Car
olina, and Alabama have been made the
victims.
How on earth the notion got abroad
that the 14th amendment conferred on
federal judges jurisdiction expressly de
nied them in the Judiciary Act which