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the JEFFERSONIAN
Vol. 111. No. 29.
Thos. T. 'Watson’s Speech of Acceptance
One of the most fearful statements that was
ever made is that “history repeats itself.” Take
the words lightly, and they make no very great
Impression; study them deeply, and you stand
appalled.
The clash of armies, the horrors of war, the
carnage which spared neither age nor sex —
history is full of it, and when “history repeats
itself,” the slopes of another Gettysburg will
run red with blood, the fiery broom will sweep
other Shenandoah valleys, and other Atlantas
and Columbias will be fed to the flames on
some other “Sherman’s march to rue sea.”
The conquest of human reason by the priest;
the reign of religious intolerance, with its dun
geon, its rack, its stake for the independent
thinker, history is full of it; and when “his
tory repeats itself,” the world will have once
more lost its liberty of conscience, will again
hear the shrieks of the victims of inquisition,
will again shudder with fear and horror as
some other Philip of Spain slaughters his
tens of thousands, some other Charles of
France fires the signal gun for a massacre of
St. Bartholomew.
The establishment of the political oligarchy,
the use of legislative machinery by one class
to rob the others, the exploitation of the unpriv
ileged by the privileged, history is full of it;
and when “history repeats itself,” we shall
again have the rule of the few over the many,
the confiscation of the property of the unpriv
ileged under forms of law, and the giving to
systematized pillage the sacred name of gov
ernment.
Let us go back to one of the tragic chapters
in the annals of the past. It may be that a
study of that chapter will arouse us to an
appreciation of the dangers which have come
upon us. We return to the year 44 B. C. The
aristocracy which had declared war on Julius
Caesar had been overthrown. For six months
this great soldier and lawgiver of antiquity had
been at work reforming the Roman system,
but now the Ides of March had come, the Ides
of March against which the Soothsayer had
warned him —the Ides of March had come! —
and the daggers which the senatorial conspira
tors had been whetting for him were ready.
Dull is the imagination which can not picture
the scene as Caesar enters the Senate cham
ber, goes, without suspicion, to his accustomed
seat, is surrounded by the assassins, every one
of whom he believes to be his friend, and
every one of whom had, a few days before,
taken a solemn oath to defend his life; is
stabbed from behind, and springs to his feet,
to fight, looks around him and finds that he,
unarmed, is girlded by armed and relentless
men; is pierced and slashed till twenty-three
wounds are spilling his life-blood; realizes that
the end has come; scorns to gratify his mur
derers with a word or sign of fear, covers his
face with his mantle, and sinks to die at the
foot of Pompey’s statue.
Why did Roman aristocrats kill Julius
A Weekly Paper Edited by THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON.
Atlanta, Ga., Thursday, July 16, 1908.
Caesar? What had he done to Rome that the
Roman nobles should take bis life?
He had abolished imprisonment for debt
and by this act had deprived the Roman cap
italist of his power to keep his debtor in slav
ery.
The long Civil war had brought about a
great fall in prices, for the rich had hoarded
their money. Caesar declared that no creditor
should seize the property of those who owed
him, unless it was taken at the same price
it would have brought had it been put upon
the market before the decline in values set in.
In Rome, the burdens of government rested
most heavily on those who got the least out
of it, and most lightly upon those who monopo-
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THOS. E. WATSON.
lized its advantages. Wise, just and fearless,
Caesar put high taxes upn the luxuries of life,
leaving the necessaries untaxed.
In Rome there were usurers who did noth
ing but lend money and collect interest. They
engaged in no other business, made no invest
ments, paid no taxes, contributed nothing to the
wealth and well-being of the state. Caesar
wished to free the republic of these parasites.
Under his law the money-lender was forbidden
to lend more than twice the amount which he
had invested in real estate; thus the usurer
was forced into the class of investors and tax
payers. »
Great landed estates, cultivated by slave
gangs, were the curse of Italy. Caesar com
pelled every proprietor to employ free labor,
to the extent of one-third of all those who
worked for him.
Besides this, he adopted a homestead policy.
He not only divided out the public domain
among the citizens who had no homes, but
inaugurated the policy of buying lands with
the public funds for the purpose of giving
homes to the homeless.
Roman cities were thronged with the unem
ployed. Three hundred thousand of the poor
were fed from the public granaries. Caesar
cut off 150,000 names from the lists of free
grain distributees, and said to them, in effect:
“Yonder is a piece of land offered you by
the state; go to it; stay on it; work it, and
learn to eat bread in the sweat of your face.”
Brutus was one of the assassins who cut
Caesar down, and Brutus was a money lender
who had been fattening on 48 per cent inter
est. There were many of these high-born
usurers, and their wrath was intense when
Caesar decreed that the rate of interest should
not exceed 12 per cent, and that there should
be no such thing as the compounding of
interest.
Caesar revived the law against hoarding.
Any capitalist who kept out of circulation a
greater sum than $3,000 became a criminal,
subject to severe penalties. The idea was,
that money should circulate, that it was
created for no other purpose, and that who
ever hoarded it, thus diminishing the available
supply, causing inconvenience and loss to
others, committed an offense against his fel
low-man and a crime against the state.
Oh, that we had had a Caesar in the White
House last October, when those Wall street
rascals drew into New York City all the avail
able cash of the country, hoarded it, and
created the panic, which swept this continent
like a withering simoom!
it was on account of his reform measures
that the Roman aristocrats plotted against
Caesar; hating the reforms, they murdered the
reformer.
Byway of parenthesis, let me say that
Caesar was the leader of the political party
whose members were called the “Populares.”
The Latin word “Populares” has the same
meaning as the two Greek words, out of which
the name Democrats was coined. If you were
asked to put into English the exact political
classification of Julius Caesar, you would call
him a Democrat, or a Populist, it being left to
you to say which classic derivation you pre
ferred—the Latin or the Greek.
“History repeats itself,” and today we have
in our own Republic every abuse against which
the Roman “Populares” made war.
Our public domain has been preyed upon by
millionaire plunderers and land-grabbing cor
porations until the American people have been
stripped of a territory larger than that over
which soars the black eagle of Germany. Tim
ber thieves, apparently with the connivance
of the government, ■ have been allowed to
devastate such mighty forest areas that the
losses, to us and to our children’s children,
direct and indirect, defy human computation.
In all directions the terrific energy of the cor
poration has driven the public off the public
Price five Cents.