Newspaper Page Text
of many subjects was entered into. —Birming-
ham News. ‘
Hitchcock as Taft Manager.
Washington, D. C., January 10. —First As
sistant Postmaster-General Hitchcock will re
sign his position in the department soon after
congress finishes the postoffice appropriation
bill, it is understood, to devote himself to the
management of the Taft boom in the South
and West. It is believed that the decision of
Mr. Hitchcock to take charge of the boom of
the war secretary means that the South will
cast a solid Republican vqte for Taft in the
Chicago convention. It is denied that Mr.
Hitchcock was disloyal to the administration
in secretly working for the nomination of Sec
retary Cortelyou, while ostensibly seeking to
have third term delegates sent to the con
vention. But it is admitted that he has built
up a powerful organization in the South. If
he uses this organization for Secretary Taft,
giving all his time to the work, it is well
nigh certain that Secretary Taft will capture
practically all the Southern delegates. It is
said that Kentucky and Alabama are in worse
shape than any other of the Southern States.
It is admitted by the Taft men that many of
the most influential Republicans of Kentucky
are opposed to Taft, and in Alabama great
pressure is being exerted to make Booker
Washington declare for Foraker, and it is
probable these efforts will be successful.
President Roosevelt predicted today that
Secretary Taft would be nominated to the
presidency on the first ballot. The President
told a caller today that Secretary Taft would
have in the convention a solid South, a solid
West and probably a solid New England; that
he would have many votes from the Eastern
States; that he would have probably a ma
jority of the New York delegation.
Chas. Scott, Republican referee from Ala
bama, who arrived here this morning, says
Taft will have the delegation from that state;
that Booker Washington is for Taft. —Nash-
ville Banner.
SAYS ROOSEVELT IS “IDEAL HOST.’’
(Continued from Page One.)
for the reason that the acts of 1862 and 1863
are still in force. These give the President
the authority to issue $450,000,000 in green
backs. As we now have only $346,681,000 of
greenbacks the President could at once issue
$103,500,000 of real money and thus go far
toward the relief of the country.
“Isn’t It Amazing?”
“Isn’t it amazing that anybody should ex
press a fear that a flood of government notes
will ruin the country? For years and years
the country has been flooded with bank paper
of various kinds, which has not only caused
the whole financial system to become rotten,
but which has poured compound interest by the
hundreds of millions into the coffers of these
pet banks. Yet they have the infinite cheek
•to talk about flooding the country with irre
deemable paper I ’ ’
“No,” said Mr. Watson, in reply to a ques
tion, “I can’t tell you what the President
said. That wouldn’t be right. ’ * —N. Y. World,
TH® JWFBW3SOAN.
I
THE NATIONAL FINANCES DISCUSSED.
Pleasant Shade, Tenn., Dec. 16, 1907.
Hon. T. E. Watson, Thomson, Ga.:
Enclosed you will find a list of subscribers
for the Jeffersonians—Weekly and monthly.
Now, with your permission, I would like to
say something about the results of the best
banking system on earth. Let us take a sur
vey of our glorious country, a country of natu
ral resources, that can not be equalled on the
globe. We can produce all the necessaries and
comforts of life in a sufficient quantity to sup
ply dur own wants, with plenty to spare to
ship to foreign nations, for our less fortunate
brethren. Our mines can not be excelled. We
can give to the world the output of our pre
cious metals, coal, iron, copper, lead; and just
think of our natural resources. How rich,
how bountifully supplied we are. With proper
diligence every man could have a plenty and
some to spare. The laborer, in his cottage,
the farmer, under his own vine and fig-tree,
the mechanic, the merchant, the artisan, and
men in every walk of life, should be in a con
dition to praise the great Giver of all good
for the bountiful gifts that he has bestowed
upon us. I say that this should be the case.
But is it the case? Let us look around, and
what do we find? We find factories shutting
down, throwing thousands of men out of em
ployment with nothing in view but charity.
We find thousands of immigrants returning
to their old homes, where they think they can
do better than they can here in this glorious
country, where we are so bountifully blessed
by nature. We find commerce at a stand
still. Merchants, both retail and wholesale,
are unable to meet their bills. The banks are
unable to give back to the people the money
intrusted to their care. The farmer, the bone
and sinew of the whole thing, finds at least
25 per cent of the value of his property gone.
He can not meet his contracts; he has to
economize and do a barter business in order
to get along.
The common people will have to economize
for the winter; they will have to wear their
old clothes and old shoes longer than they
anticipated; they will have to do without the
many comforts they anticipated, and a great
many who have contracted for homes will have
to give them up. This is a sad picture, but
it is a true one. All of this has occurred right
in the midst of plenty. Our country is full of
the products of the farms, the factories and
the mines. According to Secretary Wilson’s
report, our farmers were never in a better
condition. We have been wonderfully blessed
in the way of crops. Our factories could not
fill their orders. It was impossible to obtain
labor at a reasonable wage.
Now then, there is a. cause for all of this
trouble, and what is it? Is it in the adminis
tration of our government, or did it come by
chance? Who is to blame for it? It is not
the farmer. He certainly does not want to
cut his own throat by a 25 per cent decline in
values. It is not the laborer. He doesn’t want
to be thrown out of employment and depend
upon charity. It is not the merchant. He
wants things to go on smoothly, so that he can
supply his customers and meet his bills. So
we must look somewhere else for the cause.
Let us see who is profited by the present
panic. You see stock of all kinds going to
half their real value; you see liquidation going
on at a heavy rate, that means that property is
sold at a sacrifice. Who is it that is buying
this property? Why, those large capitalists
and coiporations, of course. Morgan took over
one of the finest pieces of mining and manu
facturing properties in the South (The Ten
nessee Coal & Iron Co.) and added it to the
Steel Trust. We do not know how many more
they have gobbled up, but we feel sure that
when this all subsides and everything is bal
anced up, corporate capital will have made
more money by the rake in than they have
made i nten years previous.
I say that the present conditions are mainly
attributable to the present financial system. It
is a known fact that the national banks con
trol the financial system of the government.
If that is true, and no informed man will deny
it, are they in business for themselves, or for
the common good of the country? Everybody
knows, without being told, that they are in
business for themselves, and today they have
87.000,000 people bound hard and fast, lying
prostrate at their feet; while they proceed
to enrich themselves from their hard earnings.
. Now, the question is, What are the people
going to do about it? Or they still going
to continue this system, or do they intend to
change it ? The Republican party doesn’t want
to change it. If they did, they could have done
so long ago. There ras not been a financial
measure passed by congress since the war, but
what they have approved. Mr. Bryan (who
seems to be the whole Democratic party) does
not want to change it. He said in his Madison
Square Garden speech, that there was no fight
now on the money question; that all seemed
to be agreed on that point. He now proposes
to give them a better hold on the people than
they ever had, by making the government se
cure all their deposits. (My God! That would
be frenzied finance with a vengeance.) Now, I
think that there should be some radical changes
in the financial system. I think the govern
ment should issue every dollar of our money
direct from the treasury, every dollar a full
legal tender, without the intervention of na
tional banks; and I believe if that question
was put before the American people, stripped
of partyism, that it would be the choice of a
large majority of them.
But the question is, Will they vote for it
against their party? I believe they would,
with the proper instruction. If I did not be
lieve this I would not have any faith in the
perpetuity of our government. I believe that
if the radicals of the East and West (The In
dependence League), and the Populists, who
meet in St’. Louis in April, will unite their
forces and go to work, they can drive the
Democrats and Republicans together before
the election in November.
I must quit. I guess you will consign this
to the waste-basket.
R. H. CLEVELAND.
Forty-four states’ soldiers to meet in Bos
ton, January 13. Every state in the Union
but two, will have a representative, A
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