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About The Columbia sentinel. (Harlem, Ga.) 1882-1924 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 1921)
I foL 39 Yestex’day, the Washington papers told us that the Government had given more than a thousand dollars in cash to each Choctaw In - clian. These noble Red Men live on the richest of farms, which are well stocked with horses, cattle, swine, wives, children and canines. The $1,000 will no doubt add much to the joys of Indian life, especially as they will re¬ ceive the same sum per capita, in fee simple, forever. For many years, the editors who exist on the second-hand vermicelli of other editors have laughed, wept, raved, slavered, and driv¬ elled about the miseries of Poor Lo, the Indian. That sort of thing was started by a bibu¬ lous Scotch poet, named Thomas Campbell, who never saw an Indian, and who filled the forests of Wyoming with tigers, lions, goril¬ las, and guerrillas who never were seen there until long after Thomas Campbell had taken his last tumbler of hot Scotch. Yes, the Indian “in so far” as he is still with us, is the wealthiest son of a gun in \ 'America—excepting of course the War Profi Steers and the favored bankers, who get rich Vy lending other people some of the other peo le’s money. (No banker who understands the game wer lends any of his own money.) The Indian, as I was remarking, is a well -do citizen. His farm is as level as a 23rd degree Ma son: his crops grow in spite of all he can idle; liis herd multiply in due course of nature; it is never too dry for his hogs to root: it is never too wet for his horses to graze; and, as for his wives and children, they ar-e perennials, nourished ou the annual governmental bounty. But the soldier is a forlorn, forsaken, hopeless derelict. I wish Thomas Campbell was here long enough to write him into fame. Not long ago, I broke loose in the Senate, and uttered a few moderate phrases. In my bones, 1 feel that I-am due to break Icose again, before long; and when I do, the commas will run to cover. i Don’t T remember how these young men were suddenly snatched from their.fields, their stores, their mills, their offices, in April 1917? They were not given any advance notice! They were not given any time to put the house in order! • A hasty farewell to father and mother, a kiss snatched from wife or sweetheart—and they were gone! Gone without knowledge of why they were going! Gone without knowledge of where they were going! Clothed in the light garments of a South¬ ern April or May; hastened to a concentration SPEECH OF THOMAS E. WATSON, OPPOSING DICTATION TO DOCTORS, AS TO WHAT THEY SHALL PRESCRIBE FOR THEIR PATIENTS. r f ' ! r r' t Delivered in the TJ. S. Senate July 19, 1921 r r > *-* As A )*. A. i A A. , K < A * V V /*s A, -v A .<s . Mr. WATSON of Georgia. Mr. Presi¬ dent, I do not know when the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Nelson) began his fight against the bar rooms. I should be glad to have him name the date. I can tell him when I began mine. It was when I joined the church and was buried in baptism in the waters of Sweetwater Creek, when I was 14 years old. I have been in that battle ever since, and I do not like to have any man insinuate that I am a whiskey soak or have any sympathy with U’PkVoV QAflV i2 ‘ Mr. NEI/SON. Mr. President, may I in¬ quire who has insinuated that about the Sen¬ ator from Georgia? Mr, WATSON of Georgia. The Senator made his remark as wide as this Chamber is, embracing everybody that is against this bill. Therefore, being a Member of this body, it embraced me; and I want to tell him that if he has friends who are brewers, I do not even know a brewer. There is not a single brewer of my acquaintance, as far as I know, and in this chamber I do not take orders fi-om any brewer nor from any other interest. I try to represent the right, my conscience, and my people, and to them I am accountable. Mr. President, in a few days I shall be 64 years old, and never in my life did I take Sfo (MimM 4- Price $2.00 Per Year LO!— THE POOR SOLDIER. camp not fit for well-kept dogs; exposed naked to drizzling rain, while a heartless army squirt examined them physically—he being warmly clad and covered from the cold rain by a rubber coat—these young men were inde¬ cently, inhumanly exposed to the elements when humanity and common sense might have counselled a private examination, one by one, IN DOOFS/ ^ How many of these young men were bar¬ barously murdered by tins brutality? Nobody knows: those who wei'e responsi ble for it do not dare to publish the facts. Then came the shipping of the survivors to Europe, in filthy cattle-ships, furnished by England and charged for at monstrous rates. Then came the camps in Flanders and France; the hideous trench life; the starva¬ tion, and the sickness, and the beatings! Then came nurses who did not nurse, but who in many cases, prostituted themselves to the heartless officers. Then came the everlastingly shameful steal¬ age by the Red Cross and other charitable organizations of the food, the raiment, the lit¬ tle comforts and luxuries, that loving Ameri¬ can hearts had provided for the boys in Eu¬ rope. We suffered the asinine decrees of the Englishman Hoover—his tyranical wheatless days, his despotic meatless days, his searches of larders, of smokehouses, of private stores and private dwellings. We suffered his infamous Yellow Cards, like a lot of spineless cowards; and we endured his insolent espionage over every act we com¬ mitted, and his eavesdroppers’ listening to every word we spoke. And this satanic monster is the acting President of the United States! At his behest, the Federal Reserve Board is waging ruthless u-boat warfare upon the business of the country. At HooveUs behest, we are to “ refund” the ten billions of dollars that Europe picked your pockets for; and this postponement of the honest debt Europe owes you means that it will again be postponed, at the end of fifteen years—and then juggled with and put out of existence. Hoover never intends that you shall get hack a dollar of your money. At Hoover’s behest, the Shipping Board which stole or wasted four thousand million dollars of your Liberty Bond patriotism, shall have another $300,000,000 out of your Treasu¬ ry—to steal or to waste. The Railroads are to have $500,000,000 more than the billions they have already looted. But the heroic young men who were for¬ cibly sent 3,000 miles from their homes, to suf¬ fer and fight in a cause which has never yet been plainly stated, were forgotten, as soon a drink in a bar room—not even a drink of lemonade. Mr. NELSON. Mr. President The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Georgia yield to the Senator from Minnesota? Mi-. WATSON of Geoi-gia. With pleas¬ ure. Mr. NELSON. The Senator’s age is no cii-cumstance to mine. Mr. WATSON of Georgia. No; the Sen¬ ator is older than I. I wish he were youngei-. The very first and only secret oi-ganization that I ever joined before I became 50 years of age was a temperance society, and I never broke its vows. The first public speech I ever made was a temperance speech, and I doubt if any man on this floor has made as many temperance speeches as I have made. When it comes to intemperate speeches, how¬ ever, I will not make them; and when it comes to intemperate votes, I will not cast them; and when it comes to saying to a doctor who has been educated for his profession, just as I was for mine and just as my very much re¬ spected friend from Minnesota was educated for his, I would no more assume the right to dictate to him what he should do in the man¬ agement of a sick case than I think the doc¬ Thomson, Ga., Monday, August 1, 1921 as they were landed back on our shoi-es. Unable to get work, unable to re-stock a farm or a store, unable to call back the clients and the patronage lost to men who did not go abroad, these ex-soldiers are left in the most wretched condition of any host of human be¬ ings. Europe has no farther use for the private soldier, the sailor, and the marine. Europe drained them of their blood, profit¬ ed by their impassable living wall which saved Paris, Rome, and London; but Europe has not shown that it cares a red apple damn for the millions of privates who salvaged what she calls her “civilization.” The American Profiteers used these young men, coined billions out of their toil and their blood, but these despicable profiteers now say it would “bankrupt the Treasury” to give the abandoned young men another chance in life. One of the noble Senators who voted against the relief of these soldiers, said that, if they were given the cash, they’d waste it! Noble soul! If a soldier would waste his cash, might he not waste liis land ? Another noble Senator contended that cash would “commercialize and degrade” the soldier! Did it commercialize and degrade Gener¬ als Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Meade, How ard, Hancock and Raw I ing.U Did cash donations commercialize and de¬ grade Generals French and Haig? Was General Pershing commercialized and degraded when Congress created a special rank for him, and endowed it with more cash than was drawn from the Government by Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan? . When President Harding came into the Senate to kill the Soldier-Service bill, I had on my desk an amendment, ready to be of¬ fered, requiring that the $50. should be paid to every ex-service man within 90 days. This would have put the money into im mediate circulation, and the whole country would have instantly felt the benefit. And the Treasury has got the money. Why doesn’t Hoover’s Administration want this money to get into general circula tion ? Because Morgan wants it: Rockefeller wants it: Armour wants it: Gary wants it: the usurious bloodsuckers want it. That’s the whole secret. mi Tll « treasury m is so full that it has paid . . England „ , $32,000,000 xor the pestilential cow ships that carried across the seas the brave men that saved her, alter her own soldiers had broKen and ran before the Geimans. This Hoover Government would not even offset the $32,000,000 against the $5,000,000 r 000 that England owes you. The British Foreign Office is represented in the present Cabinet by Herbert Hoover; and tor ought to do in dictating to us the manage¬ ment of a law ease. Mr. President, I grew up in the old-fash¬ ioned life of the southern plantation, where nearly every landowner made his peach brandy and his apple brandy and his beer, and I never saw any drunkenness on the plantation during the whole of my youth—never. You might hear of a whiskey soak in the commu¬ nity, but he was ostracised. He was not a welcome visitor to anybody’s house. He was an exception. The gentleman took his mint julep befox-e breakfast; he took his glass of whiskey at dinner; he took his nightcap at night. The adage was, “three drinks a day; no more and no less”; and when the preacher came in tired from his week’s woi’k, hi# ar¬ duous toils in the pulpit and his visiting, he was asked if ho would not have a toddy from the decanter on the sideboard, and I never knew him to fail to take it, and it seem¬ ed to do him good. It genialized him. In those days there was a barroom in nearly every grocery store. Just as Andrew Jackson sold Negroes into slavery when it was the habit in the South to do it, Abraham Lincoln sold whiskey over the bar when it was the habit in the W est to do it. (Times change and customs change jyith Issued Weekly his diabolical subserviency to his British mas¬ ters—and his British investments—is prolong¬ ing the war in Poland, in Silesia, in Asia Mi¬ nor, and in Arabia. It was Hoover whose covert influence pre¬ vented the services Senate from fitly recognizing the splendid and the fearful sufferings of our soldiers. Those ex-service men—I don’t mean the Hofficers of the dictatorial American Legion— those ex-soldiers need help/ When they voluntarily enlisted or were harshly conscripted, their departiu-e from their home towns was made the occasion of flam¬ boyant celebrations. There were fulsome speeches made to them. There were banquets spread for them. There were bands playing for them. There were flowers and gay banners for them, Where arc non) those fervent oratorsf Where are the banquets, the bands, and the flowersf As dead and gone as are the red lips that Kissed Goodbye to the gallant wearer of the Confederate grey-jacket, in the summer days of 1861. We never knowingly let a Confederate soldier want for bread, begging his way from door to door. Out of our poverty we paid our share of the Union Soldier’s pension, and then we gave a living and a yearly thanksgiving to our own. One of the noble Senators who voted against relief for the soldier—and this noble Roman had been absent for two months draw ing his $20. a day from a long distance—de dared that every man who wanted work could get it. That is not the tale told in the daily news. That, is not the tale that fits the truth. Millions of men, able and willing to work, can’t get jobs because there is no money for wages, When the Grand Rascals of the Federal Reserve Board withdraw from circulation two thousand million dollars of paper money, and pile up in the treasury twenty-four hundred million dollars in gold, the natural famine for money starves business. Another noble Senator who always listens f° ? is ° wn speeches and never to those of any body else, T said that, it the Committee could work out a Vould lau for <‘i and settlement” for the soldiers ] le support it Can a penniless soldier buy a horse or mu [ e> and the necessary farm equipment, and the necessary seed—eveti if he can do all the farm-work himself? Land settlement! How many citizens have had to abandon their lands, or see them sold for the stupen dous taxes laid upon them? them, but principles ought not to change, and this mad rush of prohibition has now become more dangerous than almost any other form of legislation; and the first thing we know we will have somebody telling us how we ought to dress, what we ought to pay for a suit of ' clothes, and how much we ought to eat, and when to eat it; and perhaps somebody ought to have told the 129 girls who got sick the other night from eating too much or eating the wrong thing, at one of the Government hotels. In the Legislature of Georgia in 1882 and 1883 I was chosen by the temperance commit¬ tee to close the debate in favor of the local option bill. Local option was as far as any¬ body dreamed ongoing then, letting any coun¬ ty say by local vote whether that county would close its barrooms. I always was opposed to the open saloon, and this Anri Saloon League, so far as it goes beyond that, is sailing under false, colors and has gotten support un¬ der false colors and has gotten support under false pretenses. It calls itself an Anti-Saloon League, and as long as it was that and no more I was fervently in favor of it'. I did close the debate in 1882, answering those who opposed the bill in the Georgia - ^ Con tinued on Page Three.), j,< ' r *• < A lo 42
