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Compulsory Ginning - Reports
Illegal
A Test Case Should Be Made.
ER AL ginners ought to combine to
make a test case against the recent Act
of Congress which requires them to report to
the Government the amount of cotton they
gin-
This requirement is unlawful for several
reasons.
(1.) It is the requirement of service and
labor, withuot compensation.
hen a private citizen, or company, or
corporation is required to make out a report
concerning his private, or corporate business,
a service is exacted of him, a labor put upon
him, taking up some of his time, thought and
physical employment.
What right has the Government to press
you into its service? What right has the
Government to take you away from your pri
vate business for a single hour?
If the Government has the legal right to
take away from you an hour of your time,
the same principle would give it the right to
work you a whole day.
Doesn't your common sense tell you that
the Government has- no right to stop your
plow, or your mill, or your gin, and compel
you to work for the Government?
When you are made to give your time and
labor, in the making out of a ginner’s report,
you arc working for the Government,, not for
yourself.
Isn't it a part of your liberty as a citizen to
decline to work for the Government, when
you are nothing but a private citizen, en
gaged in private business?
It certainly is.
The Federal Government has no power to
compel you to become a soldier, a sailor, or a
civil officer.
The Federal Government can summon you
to its courts, as a witness, or a juror, but it
must serve a written summons on you, and it
must pay you for your time.
But the Federal Government has no con
stitutional power whatever to force you to
leave your private business, and do a minute's
work for the Government.
(2.) The taking of crop reports, and gin
reports is not properly a part of the work
which the Constitution of the United Stqtes
authorizes the Government to do.
For the purpose of apportioning the mem
bers of Congress among the States, in pro
portion to the population, the Constitution
gives the Federal Government power to count
the people once, every ten years.
The Federal Government cannot annoy the
people by compelling them to answer ques
tions about themselves and their families
every year, or every month, or every week.
That would be an intolerable nuisanceserv
ing no governmental purpose.
But the Constitution does not authorize the
Federal Government to count the horses, and
mules, and hogs, and cows, and chickens, and
eggs, and cotton bales.
Not a bit of it!
It serves no governmental purpose to tell
the speculators and the manufacturers how
many pounds of cotton have been ginned.
That kind of thing is not governmental.
The Federal Government was not created
for any such purpose; and it cannot be of
the slightest benefit to the to
know the number of bales of cotton*.
It is a benefit to the speculator, to the
manufacturer, and to the men who draw the
fat salaries, but it is a tremendous injury to
the farming class, and it is a burden upon the
ginners.
(3.) It is an invasion of State Rights for
the Federal Government to impose upon the
citizen, a duty involving unpaid labor, when
that duty cannot be derived from any of the
THE JEFFERSONIAN
powers delegated by the States to the Federal
Government.
(4.) To hold a citizen to involuntary
servitude for a single minute, is a clear viola
tion of the Reconstruction Amendments to
the Constitution of the United States.
Those Amendments were adopted in order
that the Negro might be completely his own
master, as to his condition, his time and his
labor.
The peonage decisions which punish white
men who compel negroes to work when they
don't want to, all proceed upon that idea.
Is the white man less free than the nigger?
Can the Government take away your time
and your labor, against your will?
Not lawfully.
If the .Government can conscript you for
ten minutes a week, it can do so for the whole
week.
The principle of the thing would be the
same in both cases.
Aly countrymen ! unless you pay more at
tention to your public affairs, your children
will be the serfs of the office-holders.
It will take all their net produce to pay
taxes and salaries.
In all directions, the politicians are creat
ing new offices, and new salaries for the bene
fit of their own pimps, heelers, and favorites.
This Pension business used to be a once-in
ten-years affair.
A on can remember that ten years ago we
had no Baldy Harris permanently fixed and
paid in Washington City, with an army of
subordinates, and engaged all the time, every
year .in the pretense of taking the Census.
It has all came about recently. And it has
come so gradually that you haven't noticed it,
because the daily papers won't tell you of such
things.
The Jeffersonian tries to keep you 'posted,
and it has warned you about the secret mean
ing of this espionage on the ginners.
But, my friends, you must co-operate with
me, if you expect relief.
J ou must write to your Congressmen, and
your Senators., and when you see them, you,
must talk to them, and prove to them that you.
want the spy business stopped.
Here Is a Short Sermon On Holne
Missions.
NEW YORK, Dec. I,—During the busy season
last year, of 1 5,000 women workers in this
city, 8,000 received less than $0.50 a week as
wages, according to Howard B. Woolston, director
wage investigation of the State factory in
vestigating committee, who today summed up the
findings on wages in New York City at the first
of the preliminaiy hearings of the commission to
be held here.
“Half the wage-earners throughout the State
investigated by the State factory commission get
less than $8 a week,’’ said Mr. Woolston. “Out
of a total of 101,000 persons, one-eighth earn less
than $5, one-third less than $7; two-thirds receive
$lO or less, and only one-sixth make sls or more.
Small Margin for Toilers.
“It is difficult to see how a girl manages to live
properly on $6 or $7 a week. A typical weekly
budget shows how near the ragged edge many
exist: Clothes, $1.50; room, $2; food, $2.50; car
fare, 30 cents; incidentals, 20 cents.
“Our figures show that at a, mature age and
after years of experience in the business, half the
women do not attain $lO nor do the majority of
men reach $18.”
Social Pleasures Through Men.
“There can be but the scantiest provision for
laundry, medical care, insurance, or recreation
upon such a slender margin,” said the report.
“Slack work or sickness means debt. Social
pleasures must be secured through gentlemen
friends. This is a dangerous situation lor a girl
alone in our cities.”
New Edition of “Napoleon,” by Thos. E.
Watson. Just off the press. One volume,
$1.50.. Handsomely bound, profusely illus
trated. This book is regarded as standard by
the French readers and scholars. The Jeffer
sonian Publishing Co., Thomson, Ga.
Another Phase oi Gur Glorious
Success la Foreign
Missions.
IN the good old days, when long-headed New
1 Englanders were loading our Southern an
cestors with newly-caught Africans, the out
going ships from saintly Boston used to be
stocked with Bibles and Rum.
Times have changed. Necessarily, men had
to change when the times did.
We now load the outgoing ships with Bibles
and guns.
We have a good old darkey in Thomson
who once prosecuted another negro for steal
ing his revolver. I was present, as an inno
cent bye-stander, when Houston, the prose
cutor. was asked to identify the stolen ord
nance, and to describe when ai d where he had
last seen it.
The black man —a pions old person—ans
wered with emphatic seriousness:
“I seen dat pistol jus' befo’ I started to
church, las' Sunday mornin'.
It wuz in my trunk, Ivin' rigid on top er
my Bible.”
Every time I see that ancient negro. I go
to laughing, and so does he.
He doesn't know what makes me laugh, and
I am in the same fix. as to him.
This makes it all the merrier.
But really, what struck me as being so
funny .when old Houston spoke of keeping
his pistol right on top of his Bible, was, that
he. in his small way. had lx?en doing what the
nations-of Christendom have set the example
for doing.
Modern Christian civilization keeps its gun
on top of its Bible!
Isn't it so?
The more churches we build, the more bat
tleships we seem to need.
The finer our cathedrals, the bigger our
cannon.
The larger the rolls of membership in the
Christian the greater the num
ber of men who must be brought up in the
trade of shooting to kill.
The louder we preach the gospel of “God
is love.' the more active are we in proving
that ours is the God of lb«r.
Isn't it so? . t
When our preachers go into their pulpits,
and glorify God's doings in this horrible
European war. and undertake to demonstrate
that God is doing all of that frightful work,
we might as well disown the Prince of Peace,
and erect temples to Alars, and Thor, and Bel
lona, as the ancient pagans did.
From the Illinois Staats of Nov.
25th, 1914, I clip the following:
“Daily the United States of North America is
pictured as the land from which are shipped can
non, rifles, pistols, gun-powder, high explosives
and other articles which are intended to be used
by human beings to kill other human beings.”
Our Secretary of the Navy. Josephine Dan
iels, has ordered that the English song “Tip
perary” shall not be sung by the American
marines.
The stirring music of this song has been
made the favorite march of the British army.
Josephine Daniels holds that the singing of
“Tipperary” violates neutrality.
Yet the same Democratic Administration
that wages a jackass campaign, on a harm
less song, closes its eyes shut when our Tariff
made Trusts feed the European war with
American guns and ammunition !
Thus, on the one hand, we spend $20,000,000
a year to convert foreign nations to Christ,
while, upon the other, we send them the very
best death-dealing supplies that our money
and our genius can create.
In this manner, we continue to keep our
pistol right on top of our Bible.
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