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Commentaries On The Week’s Nelvs The Bryan-Beveridge Debate. The second installment of the Bry an-Beveridge debate on “The Problem of the People” is in the April number of “The Reader” magazine. Mr. Bry an’s differentiations of state rights and federal interstate authority are not as satisfactory as he might have made them. He answers Senator Beveridge quite completely on the issues of state police powers over the negro questions in the south and the Oriental ques tions on the Pacific slope, but he yields too much in the matter of fed eral power over state industries and labor legislation. He rather leans to the Knox-Beveridge doctrine that in certain cases of general necessity pub lic sentiment will sanction the doing of things by the federal government indirectly that it has no constitution al power or right to do directly. If Mr. Bryan is to prove himself an ac ceptable champion of the Democratic doctrine of state’s rights he must stick to his last and not shape the shoe to fit abnormal corns and bunions on the feet of Federalism. Bob Lowry’s Hired Views. Col. Robert Jehu Lowry, a national banker and accomodation Republican, of Atlanta, has found space in the pal ace car columns of “The Atlanta Geor gian (and News)” to publish his views on “how to save the nation.” Os course, the awful pain-in-the-neck that the "whole country has had for so long a time waiting and rubbering for these views of Col. Robert Jehu Lowry, should now be soothed. The fault was evidently due to the slowness of com position or bad handwriting of the gen tleman who supplied the views that Col. Robert Jehu Lowry utters or prints to the public. For fear the aforesaid views may have been surreptiously copyrighted by the real author, we refrain from reprinting any of them. Suffice it to say that if anybody wants to walk into the parlor of the Skin-’em-a-comin’-and agwine Association he would do well to get full directions from the article which Col. Robert Jehu Lowry has so boldly signed with his own driving hand. Has Them Coming Across! Hon. Bowdre Phinizy went up against a strong proposition when he tackled the run-down and rotten con dition of the Georgia Railroad. He had to put in a lot of personal hard work, walk the track, test the ties, pluck up loose spikes and at the same time furnish plenty of personal sand to make good on his charges. But he hit the delinquent managers on the raw and they hiked up to the railroad commission squealing to beat the band. Bowdre Phinizy met them there with the physical witnesses and the commission decided to put an expert on the case. In the meantime how ever, Captain Scott, and not the coon, came down out of the tree of self complacency. That gentleman blew his assembly call down the line and the bed of the old Georgia Railroad is getting a dressing up that is mak ing the natives along its length smile as audibly as Tallulah Falls. The Unwritten Law. A Virginia legislator will introduce the following bill into the next ses sion of the Virginia legislature: “That in all criminal trials involv ing a charge of assault and battery, assault with intent to maim, disable. WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN. President Phinizy Protests A PERSONAL EXPLANATION I HAT WILL BE CONSIDERED IN OUR NEX'I ISSUE Augusta, Ga., March 26, 1907. My Dear Mr. Watson: I read a few days ago in the Weekly Jeffersonian of March 21st an article headed, “The Case Against the Geor gia Railroad.” I, of course, presume you wrote the same. I am very much surprised that a man of your genius and great ability should allow his feelings and prejudices to com pletely warp his judgment and lead him into gross error. Mr. Scott, general manager of the Georgia Railroad is not a New Eng land Republican, but a Southern man born in Alabama and reared in that state, and received his railroad train ing there. He came to the Georgia Railroad from a railroad in Alabama, and, in my opinion, has made the best manager the Georgia Railroad ever had. If he has ever voted the Republican ticket I am not aware of the same, but in the event that he has it was probably in the case of McKinley, when a great many south ern Democrats voted that ticket. As to the charges made by Bowdre Phinizy against the Georgia Railroad, I have been over the railroad with an expert and do not hesitate to say that Bowdre’s charges are not in accord ance with the facts and the opinion of the expert. There are some defective and un sound ties in the roadbed, as you will find in all railroads, but they are being removed as this is the season of the year for doing this work. In regard to the engines’ using ker osene lights, it is considered by com petent and experienced experts that disfigure and kill, or homicide, in which it is proven that the person upon whom such assault was commit ted had been guilty of a wrong upon the person of the wife, mother, sister or daughter of the accused, the jury shall be the judges of whether such provocation was sufficient to justify such assault, and may, if such assault was justified, find a verdict of acquit tal.” That sort of an act would do some thing to hold the spoliators of women and safeguard home life and purity a whole lot. What Do You Think of Him? Here is a Republican candidate for congress in a Kansas district who talks to his fellow-citizens in a tongue that sounds very foreign to the doc trines usual in his party. He says: “I desire to be your representative in congress as one who believes there are things to be done which can best be done by men who are given the power and opportunity of congression al office. I am oposed to corporation rule —to trusts of all kinds —to unfair tariffs. The man who can make the strongest efforts to correct the evils the people feel most should be the nominee of our party. I hope to be that man.” As a “pure food” Republican, isn’t he a peach? Gray of Delaware. Uncle Henry Gassaway Davis, who pattered along behind the impossible Judge Parker of 1904, now chirps up and says that Judge George Gray, of they are much safer than electric lights. To give an example, the fact that the electric lights on the statue of Liberty in the harbor of New York have been removed and kerosene sub stituted for the reason that the sea men objected to the electric lights. It is stated that the electric lights while brighter are only good for throwing the light a greater distance. The elec tric light is very confusing and very dazzling. As to the weight of the rails used by the Georgia Railroad, there are more than sixty miles of eighty pound steel rail, and the balance sixty-five pound, which are in good condition and heavy enough for the traffic. There will be about thirty miles of eighty pound rails laid this summer. xThe road is ballasted for 130 miles with cinders and rock, leaving about forty miles of the main line to be bal lasted; this is a good record for the present management. When the road was leased there was practically no ballast. Now as to what you say about Ma jor Cumming. This gentleman is too well known throughout the state for me to attempt to defend him. I feel satisfied that you know him as well as I do. I do hope you will carefully look into these questions and get right on the same. Yours very truly, JACOB PHINIZY. . (Editor’s Note —We believe in fair play, and therefore publish Hon. Ja cob Phinizy’s letter. In the next is sue of The Jeffersonian President Phinizy’s letter will receive some edi torial comment.) Delaware, is the proper man for the Democrats to put up for the presiden cy in 1908. Uncle Hen is too rich to be committed to a looney-ass-ilum, but his friends ought to muzzle him. If he doesn’t know that good Democrats know that Judge Gray is one of the salaamites to King Belmont and a pot-boiler for plutocrats, then he is In his second childhood. Judge Gray is even more impossible as “the candi date of a Democracy” than was the Swimmer of Esopus! They Are Coming South. Recent statistics show that 200,000 northern people have come into the southern states for permanent resi dence during the twelve months of 1906. The high price of corn and wheat lands in the north and west is driving the small farmers ‘down south” and this sort of immigration and in such volume seems to make all our assisted European immigration look like the traditional thirty cents along side a bushel of gold double-eagles. Their Books to Be Opened. The president has determined that the interstate commerce commission shall have experts examine the ac counts of the railroads of the United States and get at the truth of their Investments, values and the true In come they should be allowed to earn by freight and passenger rates. There will be some splendid kicking done by the railroads before they submit to that sort of police searching and Bertillon measurements! Cummins Stands Four-Square. Governor Cummins, of lowa, ex plains that he has not abated a jot or title of his devotion to tariff re form. He says he omitted mention of it during his recent re-inauguration because weightier matters of state railway and corporation legislation demanded his attention. He still be lieves that the tariff furnishes too many broad shelters for trusts and that revision of these special bounty schedules is absolutely a paramount issue of our current politics. Evident ly, from the tone of his letter, he is going to make oodles of trouble in the Republican camp before the June round-up of next year. Doctored School Books. The Tampa Evening News charges and shows by comparisons that the same northern publishing house issues two sets of school books, one for northern and one for southern schools. It exemplifies that the full text of even the geographies are full of sneers and slanders on the climate, soil, peo ple and manners of the south, and that such statements are merely cut out of the second edition and the mutilated product sold to southern school boards for the children of this section to use. Galusha Grow is Dead. Hon. Galusha Grow, of Pennsylva nia, is dead of old age. He was first elected to congress in 1857 and was elected speaker of the house in 1861. After the war he lived some time in Texas and was one of the builders of the International and Great North ern Railroad in that state. His last term in congress was served only a few years ago. He Withdrew His Case. A Florida negro who appealed his case against the “Jim Crow” car law in that state to the United States supreme court, has suddenly with drawn his appeal. He refuses to give his reason—but it is thought Senator Foraker knows why. Was he afraid of the court? The Greene-Gaynor Case. The argument in the Green-Gaynor case, for conspiracy to defraud the United States in Savannah harbor work, was begun in New Orleans on Monday. They were convicted before Judge Speer in Savannah. Paper Fortunes Uncertain. At the dinner of the Massachusetts Real Estate Exchange, a statement was made by one of the speakers that “two presidents of large railroad cor porations, dying within 20 years, left large fortunes in stocks and bonds, which fortunes were wiped out of ex istence by foreclosure and reorganiza tion.” What Ernest Crosby Says. Our senators could at a single ses sion break up the steel trust by reduc ing the tariff, the express trust by establishing a parcel-post, the tele graph and telephone trsuts by adding these analogous services to the post office. They could thus go a great way toward diverting the flow of wealth from the pockets of the people into those of the monopolists. Why don’t they do it? Because they are the servants, not of the people, but of the monopolies. Away with the oli garchy! Let the people elect their senators. —The Cosmopolitan. 5