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12 WATSON’S GREAT SPEECH. (Continued from page 5.) of raw cotton would advance as the demand increased. That is the only natural and permanent way to get bet ter prices for cotton. Why talk such childish nonsense as that spinners are going to voluntarily give you a bet ter price for your cotton this year, or that temporary circumstances might arise by which some such sort of arrangement might be made? You don’t want a higher price of a cent or two to be doled out to you as the gift of the cotton spinners. You don’t want any other class to give you any thing. What you want is your rights under the law; what you want is just treatment under the law; what you want is a square deal under the law, and if you will go after the matter right, you will get an advance in the price of cotton, not as the gift from the cotton spinner, but as a result of unwritten, but irresistible laws which he can no more disregard than you can. Now, of course, when you lower the tariff the manufacturer will not make a profit of 28 per cent upon $lO,- 000,000,000. But he has no right to have laws so framed as to take your property for his benefit in order that he may earn such unnatural and un just profits. Why, in the year 1900, the manufacturers could have taken out of their net profits for that one year a sufficient amount of money to have paid oft the national debt, to have dug the Panama canal at its es timated cost, to have run a railroad from ocean to ocean, and then would have left to themselves a net profit of more than any ordinary, unpro tected, unprivileged man made upon his money. Such a situation is just simply intolerable, and if you don’t fight it to the death, you are untrue to yourself, to your wives and your children, to you country and your God, and future generations bound down to a hopeless serfdom, chained ever more to a heartless plutocracy, will curse your memory for the cowards that you were. Let no man believe that I am oppos ed to banks as such —for I am not. They are useful. They multiply the capital of the country, and therefore they multiply the number of industries and enterprises. Let no man suppose me narrow and bigoted enough to op pose railroads. I do not. To the full est extent I realize their importance as factors in the developing of every material interest of the country, agri culture, mining, manufacture. Let no one suppose for a moment that I am opposed to manufacturing or to min ing profits. lam not. To the fullest extent I realize the importance of pro ducing in this country everything that is necessary to our comfort, and which the law of nature seems to say that God Almighty intended that we should produce here. The point I make, is this: in our great American family Uncle Sam has had too much favoritism. He has glutted every other interest at the expense and at the sacrifice of the most important in terest of all, the agricultural interest. I do not clamor for a sweeping away * of all profits in banking, but I do con tend, as Jefferson and Jackson and Benton and Calhoun did. that the gov ernment should take back to itself the sovereign power of issuing money; that the banks should be confined to legitimate banking—discounts, ex change, loans, etc. —and that their profits should bear some reasonable proportion to the actual investment of money. As to the railroads, I consider, like wise, that as long as the government stupidly allows private corporations to exploit public franchises and pub lic highways and tax the life out of every other industry, the gentlemen who engage in it with their money, their time, their intelligence and ener gy, are entitled to a fair return and reasonable profit, but I say that this profit should be declared upon actual investment and not upon fabulous is sues of watered stock. The $10,000,- 000,000 represented as capital invest ed in railroads in 1900 was very much more than one-half watered, represent ing in honest dollars not nearly so large an expenditure. The same thing was true of the bonds. My honest opinion is that the railroads at the present time are taxing the people for net profits of at least $7,000,000,000 of fictitious and fraudulent values. In like manner as to manufacturers. I concede their right to a fair and rea sonable profit upon the actual invest ment, but I do say that it is unreasona ble, unjust for the government to pass laws giving to the manufactur ing industries special favors, special privileges, enabling them to make more than 28 per cent net profit on a ten billion dollar investment at a time when the legal rate of interest is one-third lower than that, when pri vate concerns seeking a safe invest ment cannot get one-fifth of that; when the railroad itself grabs less than one-fourth of that, and when the vast army of agricultural workers are not making any net profit at all. Study these questions profoundly, act upon them independently. As in dividuals do what you think is right. Let no subsidized editor mislead you into fighting against your own home and fire side. Let no wily politician pacify you with his lies and intimi date you with the party lash. Laws are not going to be changed so long as you leave the job to your rivals and your competitors in business. When the laws are changed, it will be be cause you yourself have brought to bear upon the law-makers the irre sistible pressure of public opinion. If you will make up your minds to it, you can govern this country. Seven hundred thousand manufacturing pro prietors organized themselves into a class corporation and are now ruling congress. You represent at least twelve million of men, and will you, the twelve million, continually bow your head to the yoke of seven hundred thousand manufacturers? You need not do it, if you don’t want to do it. You can rule this country if you will. It is indeed high time you were doing it. Our protective system has built up the most heartless aristocracy the world ever saw. De Tocqueville, the Frenchman, studying our institutions more than seventy years ago, pointed to this protective system as the door way through which aristocracy would enter upon the American people and became a danger to democratic insti tutions. In the days of slavery, the sick slave and the old slave, as well as the infant slave, were taken care of. The child was fed until it should be able to work. The sick were visited, every care used to restore them to health. In old age, when too enfeebled to work, they were cared for with hu mane treatment. That was the slave aristocracy which was so hateful in the eyes of New England. Today, New England has an aristocracy of her own tenfold more hateful than anything ever seen in the south. The children per ish in the great tenements for lack of fresh air and food. Thousands die like flies, and the plutocracy takes no account of it. The weaver may fall faint at the loom, may be carried home to linger for weeks upon a bed of sick ness. New England plutocracy takes no account of the sick. Another hand is put in the place of the one w’bo has fallen by the wayside. If the sick recover all right; if the sick do not recover, away with them to the Pot ter’s field. Plutocracy takes no ac count of the too old to work, the too sick to work, the too young to work. In fact, the modern slave system takes the child almost out of the cradle and grinds up its little bones into divi dends. By the law of nature, New England was sterile. No wealth by any natur al process was ever intended hers. On the other hand, the south and the west received at the hands of the Creator boundless sources of natural wealth. The traveler coming to this country one hundred years ago and inspecting New England, would have said, “New England is condemned to perpetual scarcity, if not perpetual poverty.” The same traveler examining the con dition of the south and the west, would have said, “‘Here is the seat of the empire of wealth. Here the hand of nature has been absolutely opened out prodigally and every bountiful gift bestowed.” Yet today, if we could picture the same traveler returning, we could understand his amazement when he saw that New England had gathered into her own lap almost ill the wealth of the south and west; and THE WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN. that the soujh and the west had sim ply become tributary provinces, roll ing up to New England every year royal tribute, making her rich “be yond the dreams of avarice.” As a southern man, my blood boils with in dignation when I consider the injus tice of these conditions, and the con sequent poverty of the south. The poverty of the south is law-made. The wealth of New England is law-made. Those who wrote the statutes deliber ately intended to confiscate the prop erty of the one class and the one sec tion and give it under the forms of law to the other class and the other section. Farmers of the south, rouse your selves! Shake off the apathy of dis couragement. Look upward to the high purpose of making the future re deem the past. Once upon a time the country home was the delight of American life. Make it so again. This going to the cities has not been done of your own free will and accord. Conditions drove you to do it. Change those conditions. Make it possible to live safely and happily in the country, and let the cry of the future be, “Back to the country home!” What is the dream of the prosper ous man of the city, who has grown rich in the city, and who looks about him to see how he shall enjoy his wealth? Is it not to have an ideal home in the country? Your Rockefellers, your Goulds, your Vanderbilts, each and every one of your millionaires dream of the ideal country home, and no matter how lavish may be their expenditures in their city palaces, it is the loving touch that they put upon their coun try homes. Why can’t you now, with out going to the city to get rich, have the ideal country home? What is necessary in order that you may have it? To get a fair price for the prod ucts of your toil and to receive from the law-making power a square deal. Given these, and the anxiety, the wear and tear, the squalor and the misery, the strain and struggle will pass away from the farmer’s life and into it will come some of the ease, the leisure and the comfort which would make the south the happiest country in the world. I cannot bring myself to believe that the glory of the south is a thing of the past. It is impossible for me to abandon the hope that there is life in the old land yet.. We have had farmers’ movements in the past which promised great things. They did not entirely succeed. They fell apart and died away. That is no reason why you should not rise and come again. Let your failures in the past teach les sons that will insure you success in the future. To the extent of my power to aid you, count on me. Heart and soul I am with you. You shall never be embarrassed by my candidacy for any office. I have no axe to grind. When a younger man, the ambition for place and power was natural to me, as it is to most young men. All that is gone. There is not an office which I would accept. There is not one that I could afford to accept. My work calls me and keeps me in a different field. Loving that work as I do, it will not be abandoned. There is not money enough on this earth, nor a position so high as to make me lay down the pen. My mission for the future is to wield a good influence upon public opinion to the end that better conditions be brought about. To the extent of my ability I want to help you to better your conditions. I want to help you make strong and useful men out of your boys. To the extent of my ability, I wish to hold up before the eyes of your daughters that standard of living, that standard of conduct, which made their mothers and grandmothers the purest, sweet est and truest type of womanhood that ever graced the earth. The only reward which I expect, the only re ward which I hope for, is that the worthiness of my effort may be recog nized, and that my name shall be held in kindly esteem by those whose cause I have so long served. We are told in the books that the original peoples of China held agri culture in such high esteem that once a year the emperor himself was com pelled to come down from the throne, put on the garments of the plough man, take hold of the handle of the Davison and Fargo COTTON FACTORS AUGUSTA, GA. LARGEST AND FINEST WARE HOUSE IN THE CITY. PROMPT AND CAREFUL ATTENTION TO ALL BUSINESS. GEORGIA RAILROAD BANK. Augusta, Ga. Capital $200,000.00 Undivided Profits $298,000.00 We Give Attention to Small as Well as Large Accounts. || BMi //fl jyj' L C. SMITH Visible Typewriter Writing' in Sight Is in Line of Progress See Our 1907 Models H. M. ASHE CO. Ground Floor Y. M. C. A Building ATLANTA, - GEORGIA Bell Phone 1541 & 1896 Standard Phone 296 We have 88,000 worth of our competitors’ standard machines which we will sell at less than half price. REAL ESTATE. Those desiring to move to South Georgia, the most prosperous section of the state, can secure bargains in city property, farm lands, saw mill or turpentine sites, by writing to C. C. TYLER, Box 272, Moultrie, Ga.