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About The Columbia sentinel. (Harlem, Ga.) 1882-1924 | View Entire Issue (July 3, 1922)
I foi. 40 MOTES ER03VI UNITED STATES SENATE. The country at large will be surprised to learn that the American manufacturers, who have enjoyed the protection of tariff walls against foreign importations for more than one hundred years, are now mortally afraid of Ger man goods. At least, they pretend to be so; and the champions of these American manufacturers are making the Senate ring with alarms with reference to a deluge of cheap German goods, Bear in mind, that it was only four years ■ago when Germany seemed to be prostrated in all of her industries. Her armies had met defeat upon all fronts : her diplomacy had been thrown hack upon it self: she had been stripped of her shipping, .and many of her inl£|id inland water traffic. courses had been closed to he* own The best of her locomotives had been taken off her iron highways, and she had been com¬ pelled to dismantle nnauy of those establish¬ ments which had contributed vastly to her na¬ tional wealth. Her coal mines in the Saar Valley had been turned over to the French, and she had been re¬ quired to drive out of Germany into Belgium and France vast herds of cattle, to replace those which she herself had ruthlessly taken during the war. I am not now discussing the justice or in¬ justice of the Treaty of Versailles: I am simply stating the case as it was four years ago, in order that you may contrast it with the ease as it presents itself today. And what are the essential features of the German ease as it presents itself today! By the aid of abundant paper money, she has resurrected her industries, which were sup¬ posed to be dead and buried. Her manufactured products have gone into Switzerland and undersold those produced in that gold standard country. Her exports to all the world, in December last, were fourteen and one-half billion marks: her imports were thirteen and one-half billion marks: thus there was a balance of, trade, in favor of Germany, amounting to the stupendous ANOTHER. WORD AS TO GEORGIA STATE POLITICS. No one has the right to claim that he has been deceived by me as to my stand on State politics. I or many many years, I have persistently . ad vocated free text books for Pur school children, who are being taught the rudiments of an Eng lish education; and I have maintained that, in order to carry out the provisions of the Con Btitution of 1877, the children should have been supplied during all these long years with free scliool books. The debates in the Constitutional Conven¬ tion will show that our forefathers intended that, in the public schools, there should be no charge whatever for the teaching of the elemen¬ tary branches of an English education; but ow¬ ing to one encroachment after another, the Con¬ stitution has been nullified, and the people have been deprived of the benefits intended for them by the makers of our organic law. If any man, in office or out of office, now sets himself against the furnishing of free school books to our school children, that man deliberately puts himself in opposition to my¬ self, and he will have no one but himself to blame if a hitter fight to the finish follows. 1 take my stand for our helpless little chil¬ dren, and I will fight their battles against any man or men. This question has been temporized with, evaded, lied about, and utterly trampled under the foot of self-seeking raiders of the Treas¬ ury, until patience has ceased to he a virtue. Let the children have ivlint the highest law meant that they should have. Free the parents of these children from the extortionate exactions of the American Book Company, which charges about five times what a book is worth, and then changes that book before it has been half worn out. There is no sense in this policy of annual tribute to the Northern hook trusts, and to such lobbyists as Ed McMichael. If the lobbyists want to make themselves the target for the inveterate hatred of the peo¬ ple of Georgia, let them continue to fight the children, while I continue to fight them, and by the good Lord, somebody’s skin will hang upon a pole. ibi Cmmirioa Simitarf . Price $2.00 Per Year sum of nine hundred million marks. (A mark is about equal to our 25 cents.) Did ever a defeated country so quickly spring to its feet, as these figures show that Germany has done! If if be true, as Senator James Watson, of Indiana, Senator Smoot of Utah, and Senator McCumber, of North Dakota, say, that Ameri can manufacturers, entrenched behind the high est tariff wall that the world ever knew, arc trembling with fear at the prospect of German goods scaling the wall and capturing the Ameri canmarket, then indeed the revival in Germany is a marvel to mankind. If it be true that this almost miraculous resurrection from the death and burial of the late war has really taken place, it cannot possi¬ bly be attributed to anything but the absence of the expense of a huge standing army, and the presence of an abundant volume of currency. Not only ha 5 the German got upon his feet industrially, but he has stolen a march upon those stupid and prejudiced Governments who refuse to recognize established facts in Russia. Germany has gone forward and made a treaty with the Soviet Government, which will give to Germany the opportunity to exploit the almost unlimited natural resources of Russia, a country more than twice as largo as this Re¬ public, and nearly forty times as large as Ger¬ many herself. While Great Britain temporized with the subject of recognizing the Russian Government, and while France was bitterly hostile to the country which gave four million lives to save France, and while the United States was obsti¬ nately and stupidly declining to see what was an actuality in Russia, the Germans, wiser in their generation, accepted facts at their face value, and have cemented a union with 180,000 > 000 people, whose resources are greater than those of any other country on earth, with the possible exception of China. During the debate iij the Senate last week, there were put upon exhibition by the Republi¬ can champions of prohibitive tariffs, certain Our State is reproached for the number of boys and girls who cannot read and write. - The fault is not with the boys and girls, nor with the fathers and mothers of these children; the fault has been with such hard-hearted men as M. L. Brittain, who knelt at the feet of the American Book Company, and kissed the foot of the Trust. That fault has been shared with just such school hook lobbyists as Ed MoMichael, and it is time the names of these traitors to the State, these enemies of our Georgia children, should be blazoned to the whole world, in order the scorn and contempt of an outraged public may whip them into silence and into retreat. Watch the votes when the Legislature con¬ venes, and see how your Representatives in the House and in the Senate vote. Don't tak£ any more excuses; don’t take ANY MORE EVASIONS; DON’T SWALLOW ANY MORE LIES. The State is able to give your children text books if the Legislature will throw off the shack¬ les of the Northern book Trust, and let your Southern children have the untold benefits of an English education. You have money enough to waste a ter of a million dollars on the overhead expens¬ es of your Highway Commission; you had mon¬ ey enough to throw away $400,000 in discount¬ ing the rent notes of the Western and Atlantic Railroad; you have money enough to support a double set of tax officials; you have money enough to pay the Big Fulbright and the hun¬ dreds of little Fulbrights that are found on the assessment boards of every County of the State, and nearly every city throughout the common¬ wealth. MR. WATSON’S APPOINTMENT AT GAINESVILLE. On the morning of July 4th, beginning at II o’clock, Eastern time, Mr. Watson will address the people, in the .open, at Gainesville, Georgia. He will discuss State and National issues, impersonally. Ladies especially invited to attend. Thomson, Georgia, Monday, duty 3, i 922. articles, said to be those of German industry, one of which was a cuckoo clock, said to have cost ninety cents in Germany. I, myself, do not believe that this cuckoo clock was produced for uinety cents, iu Ger¬ many, or anywhere else. A mere inspection of the clock convinces one that it is a physical impossibility that hu¬ man labor could have produce 1 that mechanism, with its ornamental case, for the trivial sum of ninety cents. Probably the truth about it is—the clock cost a sufficient amount in German marks to give to the laborer a support, and a comforta¬ ble one at that: because all.of the reports that come out of Germany slio'w that the laboring people are well-fed, well-clothed, and reasona¬ bly'contented, while ours are out upon savage strikes, in which crimes are committed whicj make the blood run cold. In the report made by the late lamented Mrs. Lillian Bussell Moore, she represented that throughout Germany there was a passioi * for work. Men, women and children are living a (’cord¬ ing to the gospel of labor. The law limits tlm hours to eight per day, but in every factory, almost without exception, the laborers themselves pleaded for the privi lege of working from twelve to sixteen hours, out of the twenty-four. Senator Robinson, of Arkansas, was in Ger many last summer; and on the floor of the Senate, a few days ago, lie spoke, to the same effect, of the passionate earnestness with which all Germans are rushing to work, eager to pro duce, putting into the labor a zeal of patriotism such as that which the soldier shows on the fir ing line. Germany had no gold to meet the repara¬ tions placed upon her as the price of defeat. She had to strip the whole country of every available piece of gold. What was-tdm To-do -for curre n eyntf could not issue paper money? Evidently, there would have been a money famine, and either chaos would have resulted, You have money enough to furnish law books at cost to the lawyers; you have mon¬ ey enough to keep open a magnificent library to those who can go to Atlanta and enjoy its splen did opportunities. You have money enough for everything that the Legislature favors—only it has not heretofore favored the little children who are the seed corn of the future. Rouse yourselves, and let your Representa tives in the Legislature know that you are aroused, and that you are not going to he put any longer with evasions, and subterfuges, and lies. As to those tax assessors, the more the question is examined, the worse the situation is seen to be. No where have they equalized values. Everywhere they have created inequalities. Everywhere Henry Fulbrightism has been arbitrary, tyrannical and unjust. There is not a section of our State that does not hate the very name of Fulbright and the very name of Fulbrightism. Such high-handed, autocratic methods were known in the State of Georgia, until the advent of Henry Fulbright. In the insolent letter, which he directed to me, but which he immediately published in those daily papers which are most hostile to me, he set out what he supposed was a complete de¬ fense of himself. Did he mention his arbitrary increase of the taxes of the merchants of Sylvania? He did not. Why should he go into one town and arbi¬ trarily increase the taxes, and not go into ev- issued Weekly or commerce would have resolved itself into the old barbaric customs of barter and change. With the same astuteness which England showed during the Napoleonic wars; with the. arne astuteness that Abraham Lincoln showed during the War between the States; Germany, taking a leaf from the book of the past, imita¬ ted the example of Great Britain and our Gov¬ ernment, issued paper money and made it ’ sgal tender. Thus sixty-five million Germans were pro¬ vided with a currency that was good for every domestic purpose. Of course, this paper currency was worth nothing iu the markets of the world, but this pa¬ per currency enabled Germany to produce those things which the outside world needed; and with this produce, sent into the markets of the world and sold for the currency of foreign countries, Germany gathered up the currency of those foreign countries, and was thus able to buy the exchange with which she made the reparations to the extent that they have been made. It seems to be almost certain that the tre mendous war indemnity placed upon Germany is going ro be reduced, From the first, there were those who said that the amount was beyond Germany’s power to pay, and beyond the limits of l’eason and humanity. There were those who remembered that our Government, as well as others, declared that " ar wa ® n< ^ being waged upon, the German P eo P le > bat tbe Riser’s military autoc¬ racy: and the promise w r as made that, when this military autocracy should have been over¬ thrown , liberal t-erins of peace would be given to £& the 'Germans, v should tUjjiadopt a republican f ' 0 ofTGov t. I ;ent forward and did this: ’ *trnr rfrurpie fflf vF acted in good faith. Why should the icholc world forever pun (Continued on Page Three.) ery other town and do the same thing? By what methods are his favors obtained for one community, and his discrimination against another? What are the motives which actuate some of these tax assessors in the Counties to dis¬ criminate against some property owners in fa¬ vor of others? Why is there such vast differences between the expense of the assessment of the taxes in one County and in another? Why is it that these so-called equalizers cannot equalize what they themselves charge to the Counties over which they are riding in such a high-horse manner ? I do not say that all the tax assessors are unjust and discriminatory, but I do say that many of them are. I do not say that in every County there are some property owner’s who are allowed to fix their own values, while others are arbitrarily raised out of proportion to their neighbors: but I do say that in many Counties this is done. There never was a crazier haphazard sys¬ tem of taxation, ill-jointed and badly balanced, as that-which now afflicts the people of Georgia. There is no harmony in its mode of action; no system which rolls equally over the whole , State; no plan which deals out equally an ex¬ act justice to every tax payer. It is a hotch-potch, a patchwork quilt, a job lot of odds and end3; one set of assessors going one way in one County, and another set going another way in another County. The very essence of a fair system of taxa¬ tion should be uniformity, impartiality, and ab¬ solute justice, to every man, black and white, rich and poor, city and country. The present system departs further from that standard than any other system that ever was imposed upon any State in this Union. The people of Georgia are being ground to powder by taxes, taxes, TAXES, and the eter¬ nal effort of the lobbyists and the politicians and the ringsters in Atlanta, to increase the of¬ fices, increase the salaries, and increase thm taxes. Henry Fulbright does not have to pay any (Continued on Page Four.) No 38
