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About The Columbia sentinel. (Harlem, Ga.) 1882-1924 | View Entire Issue (May 1, 1922)
I fol. 40 NOTES FROM THE UNITED STATES SENATE. Tlie first town in the United States,to he named after George Washington, was the capi¬ tal city of the grand old county of Wilkes, (in Georgia)—the name of the county proving the admiration which Georgians had for the splen¬ did tight made in England by John Wilkes against King George lit. for the freedom of the press. During the Revolutionary War, a battal¬ ion of the Legion of Light Horse Harry Lee was commanded by Major Toombs, who, aftei the War was over, settled iu Wilkes Count} on a large tract of land which he had drawn as a bonus for his services as a soldier of tin Revolution. Major Toombs was the father of ‘Sober Toombs, who was the friend and peer of Dai iel Webster, and who served with Mr. Webste in the Senate. Having in mind the fact that George Wash¬ ington, the Marquis de LaFayette, Genera: , Greene, the Baron de Kalb, and every other Revolutionary soldier, took his bonus, in lane: for his services id the seven year war which won our independence, I am at a loss to under¬ stand this opposition to the proposed bonus for those who, in 1917, were suddenly and violently tom from their places in civil life and thrown across the seas, to fight the battles of other countries. The Revolutionary soldiers were not con scripted by the Federal Government. They were volunteers. They did not sever their, connection with homeland, with wives, with mothers, with-chil¬ dren, with sweethearts, and,with friends. They were not deprived of the right to visit their homes, to write to tlieir people, and to have a periodical furlough. They were not given frightfully severe penalties for trivial breaches of martinet dis¬ cipline. like dogs They were not shot down by swelled-hcaded young officers; there were m brutal hangings. They were not subjected to every conceiv able personal humiliation, and -they.l cw >.\k they were fighting for, and were therefore wil¬ ling to fight, for seven long years, although they were frequently on starvation rations, frequently clad in tattered rags, frequently marching - barefooted over tlie frozen roads, upon which they left traces of their feet. Nevertheless, at the end of the war, they look their bonuses, from George Washington down to the lowest private. D.o you suppose that as proud a man as George Washington would have accepted thou¬ sands of acres of land, as a bonus —if lie had thought there was anything discreditable about it? Ua Do you suppose that the Marquis de Fayette would have accepted both land and money, if he had thought the accordance of this bonus tarnished his good name, and lowered his standard of honor? Not for one moment. All this talk about capitalizing patriotism and placing the dollar mark upon one’s ser¬ vices to one’s country, is mere hogwash and tommyrot. his Did not General Pershing get bonus, when he was given a salary of eighteen thou¬ sand dollars a year, with all sorts of perqui¬ sites? Did Admiral Dewey think he lowered his flag, when he accepted, as a sort of bonus, given as a voluntary tribute from bis admirers for his services in Manilla Bay, a magnificent house, here in Washington? Heavens above! The Duke of Marlborough accepted a bo¬ nus, in the magnificent castle and estate of Blenheim. The Duke of Wellington accepted a in the huge sum of money which the Parlia¬ ment voted him for his services against France, together with tlie royal estate of Strathfield saye. General Woolseley accepted a bonus equiv¬ alent to $150,000. in our money, after tho close of the Egyptian campaign against the False Prophet of tho Soudan. ** One of the greatest soldiers of the eigh¬ teenth century, Mareehal Saxe, accepted a bonus from King Louis XV., both in money and in the lifetime use of the royal chateau of Chambord. If the officers can accept a bonus without shame, where is tlie disgrace, if the private soldier accepts one? It was the toil, the courage, and the blood ♦ 3&; if * , w i Pries $2*00 Per Year of the private that made the fame of his cap tain, and it would seem cruelly unjust to give all the bonus to the captain, and none to the private. This silly rot against the bonus, comes from the very men who coined millions ot profits out of the toil, the suffering, the cour¬ age, and the blood, of these private soldiers, When they were being persuaded or forc¬ ed into the war, they were told by everybody and in every way that, after the war, nothing! -j would be to good for them. Now that the war is over, nothing is bad for them. The high-ups have got their bonuses, and now they have the hardihood to cry shame up on the privates who have been stranded upon all the shores of American life. These ex-service men have been shameful ly treated by these Departments here in Wash¬ ington: they have been outrageously treated ia some of the hospitals, for which we have ap¬ propriated so willingly and so liberally: they have been unable to regain the positions that they were holding at the time that they were flung across the sea into a war about which they knew nothing. In thousands of cases, these neglected ex GEORGIA AFFAIRS. They seem to be in a bad way. Another two years, like the last two, and it will be a gone fawnskin with ns. Our magnificent State Railroad, which Stephens and Toombs originated, and which Governor Joseph E. Brown operated with perfect success before the War between the States, has at last become the prey of the sharks. It was a State-owned competitive line, and the State ran it, before and during the War. Then came, the lease-system, beginning with -a scandal, .and ending with. .01104 The Louisville and Nashville wolves long chased it, and, last year, ran it down. Dr. William H. Felton made a heroic fight, in the Legislature of the Eighties, and saved it from the monopolists; but Governor Hard¬ wick lias virtually surrendered what Dr. Fel¬ ton rescued. Had candidate Hardwick even hinted his intention to repeal the law which dedicated half the rental of the State’s best property to the education of our school children, he would not have carried a single county. Not a word did he say of his secret pur¬ pose to hire Hoke Smith’s law-firm to fake , sham case before the Supreme Court, as a pre¬ lude to surrendering the L. & N.’s rent notes to the L. & N. fiscal agent in Atlanta. By that tranaetion, the school children lost two hundred thousand dollars, and the State treasury lost an equal amount. T 11 other words, the children were bobbed of an amount sufficient to have supplied every school-house with free text books for the pri¬ mary grades, provided the books were not bought from Brittain’s boss—the American Book Company. It was an astounding event—this land¬ lord spending four hundred thousand dollars for the privilege of letting the tenant get pos¬ session of the rent notes. Did you ev6r before hear of such a thing? What was the excuse given for this be¬ trayal of the State —this robbery of the school children? The reason assigned was, that the State had to have more money. But teas the State rich enough to give the lawyers and the noty-sliavers four hundrcc thousand dollars? Governor Hardwick thought so, evidently, for that’s what he did. Who authorized him to do it? The legislature) you will be told. But who authorized the legislature? Nobody. Had any candidate for the House or the Senate told his people that he meant to rob the State and its children of four hundred thousand dollars, ho would not have received a handful of votes. If the State needed more money—and I assume that it did—the necessary amount should have been raised by taxing property which has not heretofore borne its share of Thomson, Georgia, Monday, May ?, 1922. Service men have fallen on the streets and on the highways, exhausted by pain and hunger: iii thousands of cases they have, in their de¬ spair, taken their own lives. It is a disgrace to the Union: it is an ever lasting reproach upon those propagandists who used these poor boys; and who, after having used them, threw them aside to “Live or die, sink or swim, survive or perish. Did not this Republican Administration demand of Congress a gift to the war profiteer, to the extent of $495,000,000, a gear, in taxes they were paying on the excessive pro fits they made out of the war?—profits some running up to a thousand per cent, upon invested? Yes: President Harding did that, with jhe assistance of the rubber stamps that he has in the Senate and in the House. Did not he find $25,000,000. to pay, as an entrance fee, for the Standard Oil Company into coveted riches of Colombia! Did he not find $20,000,000. to give to the charity brokers of Herbert Hoover—men ant women who draw fancy salaries out of these charity funds, and who—some of them—spend their time touring Europe and the Orient, in automobiles and iu yachts? the State's expenses. I mean promissory notes, mortgages, liens, trust-deeds, bills of sale to secure loans, shares of stock, and the bonds of corporations. Why shouldn’t this property be as fully uncovered as are horses, cows, automobiles, saw-mills, ginneries, and farms? At present, the honest man does give in that kind of property at its fair value; but the dishonest man doesn’t—and every body knows it. !•• * Now, iny proposition is this—• Provide ■ the • tax collector with a small machine, similar to that used in a bank; and let stamp these words on every note, mort¬ Taxes paid, 1923. John Smith, T. C. Let the law provide that without this stamp, no such piece of property shall have a legal status. That is to say, it cannot be sued on, fore¬ closed, offered in evidence, sold, or bequeathed .by last will and testament. Then you will see the hidden bugs come crawling from under the chips. Then, the State will get all the money 'she could possibly want for any legitimate pur¬ pose, including the $2,700,000. necessary t< match an equal amount provided by the Feder¬ al Government for tlie building of good roads and bridges. The longer I think about it, the more I condemn the proposition to overwhelm this generation and the next by a stupendous issue of $75,000,000. of bonds. I am almost inclined to believe that that proposition had its birth in the Atlanta Cham¬ ber of Commerce, or in the State Sanitarium at Milledgeville. I hope our people will fix their minds firm¬ ly 'on this question, and deafen their ears to any plausible propagandists, financed by th automobile associations, who are thinking about laying out interstate tourist routes, in¬ stead of building the highways and bridges most needed for local travel and traffic. A few nights ago, Congressman Wright told me that his home county of Coweta—one of the best in the State—issued bonds to the amount of $500,000., and got eleven miles of road. When I return to the dear old red hills of Georgia, I intend to indulge in the luxury of a trip ovei that eleven miles of road, wbic’ cost tlie taxpayers of Coweta Comity a half million dollars. ' It must be a superb stretch of road.. At that rate, one would suppose that all the roads and bridges needed by the good peo¬ ple of Coweta would cost about $10,000,000. What is the matter with our people, any¬ way ? Have they grown so ravenously fond o' debt and of taxation that they never get enough? Are they willing to be bled white, and stripped to the bone? Are they willing to bequeath, to their (Continued on Pago Four.). Issued Weekly Did he not find nearly $200,000,000. to pour into the insatiable maw of the rotten (Shipping Board, which squandered $3,01)0, 000,000. during the war, ancl which never placed as many as a thousand soldier-, or a single ship, on the other side of the sea.’ Did he not propose to iind for the Bab • road Companies an enormous sum of money— $500,000,000.,'as l remember to make good to them their alleged losses? These railroads are charging such pro¬ hibitive freight rates that, it is impossible for the growers of Georgia yams, as good a potato as ever grew in the ground, to place them on the Washington markets. These transportation companies arc kil¬ ling the goose that would lay the golden eggs. They have almost destroyed the melon in¬ dustry, and the peach industry, and they have made it impossible for us to develop the po¬ tato growii g industry, which might have been expanded into gigantic proportions. will One of our large Georgia, yams sus¬ tain the life of a man, a whole day. The yam contains every necessary element of food needed for the nutrition of the human body. It is «..~e of the eatables most easily cooked, and it ecu be cooked in more different ways than almost any other article of food. If millions of Chinese and Japanese can live and do manual labor on a handful of rice: if millions of Irishmen in Ireland can sustain life on the Irish potato, which is far inferior in food value to our own, what could not be done with ours, if we had cheap and fast transpor¬ tation from Georgia and other parts of the South into those markets where these misera¬ ble little potatoes from the North and East monopolize the field? i It is not strange that this Republican Ad ministration can find so much money for nearly everybody except the private soldier, who did the real work for this country in tho World War? Tho ideal plan for paying the soldiers :t bonus, is to luivo the Government create as much paper money as was called in au(J de¬ stroyed by the diabolical Federal Reserve Board. If these $2,000,000,000!, whose destruction destroyed, the prosperity of our couutry, wera replaced by an equal amount of notes issued directly from the Treasury, and paid directly; to the soldiers as a bonus, it would be like a current of electricity, running from Washing-* ton to the remotest village and hamlet of the Union, from Lakes to. Gulf, and from sea to sea. The money would penetrate every com¬ munity, would find almost every home, would travel every rural route, would speed away; on almost every train, would travel by every express car, would send money orders flying to every neighborhood'in the Uni in; and with¬ in a few days after this was done, every bank would be strengthened, every store would take on new life, every farm would feel the happy effects. Unemployed labor would take up the tools with which it works. Tho wheels of mills long idle .would begin to turn, and the smoke, from the funnels of factories long shut down, would begin to curl once more toward the skies. There would be such au Easter of rebirth and new life, as this sadly stricken country of ours has not known since the War between the States, Think of this: England is paying her sol¬ diers a bonus and doing it, in part, with the money we loaned her, and which she will not repay. France is paying her soldiers a bonus, doing it partly with the money which we loaned her, and which she refuses to pay. Italy is paying the most liberal bonuses to her soldiers, and doing it,, in part, with our money, which she refuses to repay. Is it not. almost incredible that we have not asked England, France, and Italy to pay the interest on what, they owe us, when, if we had collected that interest, we could have paid our boys a royal bonus? The interest on that foreign debt amounts to more than $1,000,000,000. Were that sum collected and. divided among the soldiers who saved England, France, and Italy from ruin, our boys would have a bonus equal to that paid by Euglaud (Continued on Pago Four.) r.a» /Vo 29
