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THE FITZGERALD ENTERPRISE ; THREE TIMES A WEEK By the FITZGERALD PRINTING COMPANY - ROSS E. HAMMOCK & HARRY W. BURNETT, Lesstes JESSE MERCER, Ebrror 82.00 Per Year in Advance. $2.50 il Subscription is Allowed to Lapse Entered at the Fitzgerald, Ga., P. 0. as Mail Matter of Second Class ADVERTISING RATES: Fifteen Cents per inch net cash: No advertisement for less than €1.(0. Will not contract for “position.” 5 cents per line for locals end readers. SATURDAY. APRIL 13, 1912, Adieu. I have sold TeE ENTERPRISE. This the last issue under my management and ownership. The duties of a State office requiring all of my time is the impell ing influence that forcesme to seek relief from twelve to eighteen hours of labor every day. For months I have realized that 1 could not possibly do my duty to the readers and patrons of the paper. Last December I leased the plant, retaining the editorial control. Now I have sold the paper outright—plant, subscription list, name, etc. The owners will carry out the contracts with subscribers, advertisers ~and others. Since September, 1899, with the exception of several months in 1909, I have devoted myself and this paper to what I considered the best interests of Fitzgerald, this colony and state. : With a steadfast purpose to do my whole duty for the town and the section in a material and moral sense, I have always striven shouder to shoulder with the business men and the good people, constantly sacri ficing business and arousing the emnpity of those that it has been neces sary to oppose in the fight against the uglier and immoral influences. In the facinating work, that has given me more pleasure and less profit than anything I could have done, I have had the hearty co-opera tion of the business people in the material, and the ministers of the gos pel of Jesus Christ and the good women in the continual war on vice and against the vicious, that has brought me thuusands of letters and verbal expressions of thanks and of encomium from the best men and women in the state. : . | Within the last few weeks we have devoted more effort and paid out of our slender purse more money than all the publishers of all the other papers besides in the long years we have served the people of this blessed community. The net results have been encouraging, tho they might have been much more gratifying, but for the fact that the wide open element, who believe in prostituting morals to increase business, have had an organ on which they could depend, and around which they rally in cases of pro secution. Sometimes it has been vicious and troublesome; of léte, it has been cunningly bad, and plausibly unscrupulous. The sale of the Enterprise comes in the midst of a most active and strenuous campaign against blind tigers and the saloon element that is bound to result in great geod. I regret that, for we need the Enterprise in the fight, but as long as we are right I have no fear of the results. To the good boys of the state press, GOD BLESS THEM. I say good bye, probably for all time, for 1 baven't now a remote idea of returning to the work. You have been generous with your kind words and charitable in the treatment of my frailties. To the subscribers and business people who have patronized the paper, 1 thank you; I feel under no special obligations for I be lieve your patronage has been based on business principles, and inffu enced by business reasons. I have asked no favors, nor have I adopted any policy—l despise the word. I have tried to give you dollar for dol lar, and if any man has reason to believe that he has not received value in that proportion, we are ready and prepared to make restitution ~ To the good people who want a bigger and better city, a prosper perous and Christian Community, a progressive and law abiding people, I do not say good bye, for I am with you to the end. Jesse E. MERCER. Watson, Hearst, Graves! In 1908 these arch-traitors to dem ocracy were all helping the republican party to defeat the dem ocratic ticket. In 1912 the loyal Democrats of Georgia are ask . ed to follow the leadership of these and throw their votes away ' on a candidate who has no chance to receive the nomination. In 1908 this Mafia ganged worked outside the party to knife it. In 1912 they are carrying on the work inside the party, with the help of some of those who denounced them most, and Georgia democracy is being used to further the iniquity. It is an insult to the intelligence ot Georgia democrats.—Macon News. THE GOOD AND BAD OF IT. The world is growing better. By that we mean that the men in it, and the women also, are much better than they were. The improvement in our life time is immense. What we call bad men now, are simply bad by comparison. We have the fewest number of realy bad men. Of course those, who appear not to be good are merely not as good as the best. ’ Pick out the worst citizen in the community and he has many good traits, enough to overcome the bad under normal conditions, but circumstances effect, and direct in many instances, the course the in dividual pursues. But we are none too good, merely good by comparison with'the past. Compared with what we are to be—bound to be, most of us are bad because the tendency is in the direction of good, and it is the duty of every man to accellerate that tendency. : We would love to devote this paper to that thought mainly. : TOM WATSON. We have been laying off to lay it onto Tom. But we are about to miss the oppertunity; we have been quite busy with other and more important matters. Usually we poke the prod into Tom's ribs when we happen to find a leisure moment between trains, He is hardly worth one’s while if one has any one thing else to do. We were up in his town, Thomson, the other day and heard that he had said something about the State Game Commissioner not devoting all of his time to the duties of his office. We have been too busy (with the duties of the office) to see the article, but we do not doubt that he said it, for Tom, although he would h:ve you believe he is so busy that he eats his sandwich on the tripod, drinks his coffee in the saddle, changes his shirt without a bath and goes to bed without washing his feet, finds time, plenty, to attend to other people’s business. But Tom’s natural weaknessesses are lying and stealing, though he wastes much time,—devotes his greatest efforts to slandering people who are infinitely superior to him, or any of his tribe. Never a word from him against a "sorry white man.” He selects the best men for tar gets for his mud batterries. , He is king of character assassins. While his capacity for mean and unreaso.ing slander is astonish ing, his cupidity is marvelous. : He praised and boosted Hoke Smith, then because he would not pardon one of his criminal friends and henchmen, a wife murderer, we believe, he turned his serpent tongue on the governor and has never ceased to slander and lie about him. He boosted Joe Brown (mainly because of his hate for Brown's opponent), and when he refused to appoint one of his political friends and henchmen to office, he turned cn the dovernor and ridiculed his personal appearances and his physical or mental iufirmities, or alleded lack of good manners or good sense. His article of criticism and ridicale quoted in part in these columns a few weeks ago was childishly petulant, and characteristically mean. When we called attention to the peculiarly inconsist nt distribu tion of his venom he rehashed an old lie he has been using from time to time about the Boyd estate. The facts about the story: Capt. P. E. Boyd (the best man we ever knew), died July 6, 1906, leaving about two hundred thousand dollars worth of lands and mules, and directions in his will that we, as co-executor, should sell out the business and divide it between fifteen of his nephews and neices. i Some of the legatees had marri>d men we had never seen. One of them, a populist, living in Alabama, wrote to the old he-pop, otherwise Tom Watson, of Thomson, that his wife had inherited a large estate over‘ in Georgia. \ T. E. W, alias “yours tr.l.” was sc rusy filching money from ig‘norant‘ and uninformed dupes, boys and girls living on Georgia R. F. D. routes, induced to take stock in his publishing company, without ever know ing the amount of stock to be issued or the hope of getting returns from it, or the probability of having a voice in the control of the property. He turns the letters over to'W. J. Green, a good old man who had failen a victim to the dope habit, and had come down from somewhere in North Georgia and formed a co-partnership with Tom’s drunken somn, who was then in an inebriate asylum, and Mr. Green going down among the simp ler-minded heirs of the Boyd estate and boarding with them weeks and months, induced several of them to sign allegations necessary to get the Boyd estate into court. There was nothing to the case, and no excuse for it, except the fees filched from the unsuspecting victims of the right shrewd lawyer. ‘They lost in every court. Green and Watson probably knew they would from the start, but that did not cut into their fees and that is what they were after. Finally, after establishing their right to claim a fee before the court, they settled the case, taking $6,000.00 as their share, leaving their clients and dupes much less than half the money received by the other legatees at the hands of J. R. and J. E. Mercer, Executors. Then the greedy Tom Watson hogged poor old man Green, who soon went to his death bed, out of a large large share of the fee. He did not “HOG IT ALL,” but he hogged more of it than he was entitled to, after he hogged the heirs of the Boyd estate out of thousands of dollars he did not earn, in a case that an honest lawyer would have advised against. : It was a groundless suit, growing out of the greed of an unscru pulous lawyer for a fee, encouraged by the ignorance of their clients, and which they had no chance to win in any court. The clients from which Watson received thousands of dollars in fees, not only failed to receive the slightest benefit, but on the other hand lost more than half their interest in the estate. The allegations were signed by clients who never read them, and who swear they never read them, did not know the contents were libelous, fraudulent and untrue, as preven by every court up to the Supreme Court of this state, and were drawn for the purpose of extracting a fee from the dupes and clients of the Thomson fraud, who -is thriving and growing rich on the money he takes from people who do not know his true character. THE REAL ATLAS. ; Through all antiquity Atlas bears the world on his shoulders, <aid to be a punishment for rebellion against Zeus, the god of broad daylight. From this mythological fable there has originated the theory that Atlas, having no real existence, represented Man. “Man,” the men of old declared. “bears on his shoulders the burden of the world and its progress. Without him it would fall and chaos re sult.” s | The women of old had no voice. If they had, it would have been ‘a weak approval of the declaration of their masters. The centuries have told a different story in fact, but the picture of Atlas remains the same. The world of today is borne on the shoulders of the women, but the men point to Atlas and claim the credit. In the early days the squaw trailed after the “brave,” bearing on her shoulders the pole of the wigwam. | In a crude way, she bore the burden of the home, and in every part of the world Wears that burden today. With her back aching with the burden of her miniature world, she has found time and strength to bear the burdens of the world outside. Beginning with the desire to lighten the burden ot -the-man she loves, she has gradually edged her shoulders under the world Atlas cai ries until now more than half its weight rests on her back. : With no voice in public matters, and with a vision that beholds a Promised Land for all the inhabitants of the world if she can some day have her say, she calls the attention of the world to her share in the world’s work, and asks for recognition. It is a day of getting away from, old ideals and old ideas, and ac cepting the new. The new ilea recognizes the burden, the brain, the fitness of wo man; the right'to have a voice in the control of that world she carries on Ler back. <N “Tan, A HAPPY g HOME B HO e a i) I[N REACH ee e £ joy \ ki.",,f.-__ 2 ~ v F AL . AND ST ’:'s%4\ % SICKNESS = “a.“ 488 DON'T CHURM ' - W o L TO BE HAPPY KEEP WELL V & USE ORNLY i DR. KING’S VTN NEW DISCOVERY /(s roucHhT) l ~TO CURE L 30Y ! COUGHS AND COLDS \ TO : t WHOOPING COUGH \_ paillions / | AND OTHER DISEASES OF ) N P o E?HRQAT AND LUNG& Price 50c and $5.00 SOLD AND GUARANTEED BY ERNFREUSICRuETEE DENMARK DRUG COMPANY - SUMMEROUR’S SEED FOR SALE At Planters’ Warehouse and Bakers’ Supply Co. We offer for sale at $3.00 per bushel the seed from eight bales raised last year, the returns of which are as follows: Date Ginned Pounds Seed Cotton Pounds Lint 9-13-11 1240 530 9-19-11 1432 : 625 9-20-11 1420 ; 618 9-21=11 1300 560 9-22-11 1430 628 9-26-11 1225 545 10-11-11 iy 1180 490 ANNOUNCEMENT. “To the Voters of the Third Congressional District I have the ambition to represent the Third district in congress. As to my fitness and worthiness, I propose to submit that to the vo ters of the district, along with the other gentlemen who may aspire to the honor, in a democratic primary. “I am a farmer, was born and reared on a farm in this dis trict, and have contributed all that I possibly could to the ad vancement of the farming interests of my section of the coun try. “As a member of congress I would be controlled largely by the same desires and purposes that have actuated me as a pri vate citizen in advancing the farming interests of the state and county, which ultimately is the interest of every person, wheth er merchant, lawver, doctor, banker, mechanic or citizens fol lowing other callings. - ; “T shall be glad to meet the voters face to face in every coun ty of the district before the day of election.” Sincerely, JouN R. MERCER. ! - Noticer h Notice is hereby given to the public that if no good and sufficient lcause is shown to the contrary, the !Commissioner of roads and revenues !will on the first Tuesday in June {pass an order establishing a public ;road as follows: Commencing at the Southeast corner Ten (10) acre ‘Tract number twenty three hun dred and ninty three(2393), thence west to the Southwest corner of Ten (10) acre tract numbor Twenty ‘four hundred and thirty five (24359 Said road having been formerly laid out by the American Tribune Soldier's Colony Company, and to be known as “Inglewood” road. Thisroad is to run Letween Ten acre tract numbers 2393, 2406, 2407, 2420, 2421, 2434, 2335 in Land Lot number 86 in the 3rd. Land Dis trict on the North, and Ten (10) acre tracts 2491, 25904, 2505, 2518, 2619, 2532, 2533 in Liand Lot num- ber 65 in the 3rd. Land District on the South. : 'By order of County Commissioners this March 15. 1912. f J. G. Minshew, | H. M. Warren, Wesley R. Walker, R. L. King, Clerk County Com. | . RHODE ISLAND RED EGGS—From pen of 10 extra fine color and shape pullets and grand cock bird $5.00 per 15. From my } next best pen headed by a excep ‘ tionly fine cock $3.00 per 15. From pen of 40 good hens and 4 very large, fine strong ~ cockerels, on free range $1.60 for 15, $4.60 for 60, $B.OO for 100. Eggs from a fine flock White Leghorns $2.25 for 15. Satisfac tion guarenteed. T. L. MARCHANT, 42-4 t-W. : Milan, Ga. Carbon papéer and typewriter ribbons at the Enterprise office.