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Farmers' Union Department
ROSTER OF NATIONAL AND
STATE OFFICERS.
NATIONAL OFFICERS.
C. S. Barrett, president, Atwater,
Georgia.
J. E. Montgomery, vice-president,
Gleason, Tenn.
R. H. McCullough, secretary-treas
urer, Beebe, Ark.
L. N. Holmes, chaplain, Bernice,
Louisiana.
STATE OFFICERS.
Georgia Headquarters—Barnesville..
R. F. Duckworth—President.
W. P. Quinby—Vice-President.
J. L. Barron —Secretary-Treasurer.
J. L. Lee —State Organizer.
G. M. Davis —Lecturer.
J. G. Eubanks —State Business
Agent.
Alabama —I. A. Worley, president,
Guin, Ala.; E. J. Cook, secretary-treas
urer, Pell City, Ala.
Arkansas —J. B. Lewis, president,
Jonesboro, Ark.; Ben L. Griffin, secre
tary-treasurer, Conway, Ark.
Indiahoma —J. A. West, President,
Shawnee, O. T.; B. C. Hanson, secre
tary-treasurer, Shawnee, O. T.
Louisiana —L. N. Holmes, president,
Bernice, L,; J. W. Boyett, Jr., sec
treasurer, Tanhill, La.
Mississippi—J. M. Bass, president;
Hazlehurst, Miss.; G. W. Russell, sec
retary-treasurer, Hazlehurst, Miss.
Tennessee —J. E. Montgomery, pres
ident, Greenfield, Tenn.; J. T. Brooks,
secretary-treasurer, Atwood, Tenn.
Texas —E. A. Calvin, president. Dal
las, Texas ;.B. F. Chapman, secretary
treasurer, Dallas, Texas.
South Carolina —O. P. Goodwin,
president, Anderson, S. C.; B. F.
Earl, secretary-treasurer, Anderson,
South Carolina.
“DON’T GO INTO POLITICS.”
The advice of your enemies is
GOOD!
Don’t go into politics—but make
politics come to you—you farmers,
who feed and clothe the nation.
Your work conjures up “the living
spirit within the wheels” that make
the progress and prosperity of the na
tion.
Politics is “the science of govern
ment” and the science of government
is the registration and reign of laws
that secure “equal rights and equal
opportunities to all men, and deny
special privileges to any man, or com
bination of official favorites.”
You have known all that since the
genial politicians first began to pluck
at your coat sleeve when you went to
town, or followed you home and chas
ed you around the calf lot trying to
tell you of his burning love for you
and yours!
You have known that a big ma
jority of every state legislature since
Father Adam began to caucus with
satan has been elected by the votes
of farmers.
You have known that since the
foundation of this government the
greater part of every congress has
been made up of men who never
would have warmed a seat in that
body had the farmers of their districts
refused to vote for them.
You know that ninety-seven per
cent of all directly beneficial legisla
tion, both in state legislatures and in
congress, has always been for special
interests, or to promote other forms of
Industry and commerce than farming.
The national bankers do not vote
THE POWER THAT WAITS
Dy SAN W. SNALL
I stood beside the boundless ocean spread
And saw omnipotence heave ’neath its breast —
Saw more than water, waves and deep unrest —
Saw moving there the pulse of God o’erliead !
What wonder men have never lost their dread
Os that vast pow’r whene’er it makes request?
When ships sink down, and fleets fly east and
west
To harbor lives, and mourn the myriad dead?
So stand I by the oceanic fields
That heave and billow ’tween our bord’ring seas
’Neath the strong working hands of God-like
men,
And hear them groan as singly their rich yields
Are seiz’d by law-bred thieves! I cry: “Yet these
Have pow’r to save themselves! Oh, God, but
WHEN ?”
much, for all of them bunched to
gether could not elect one congress
man. They only furnish the cam
paign boodle to buy venal votes. They
go into politics, all right, and get
what they go after!
The manufacturers who reap un
righteous millions through the protec
tive tariff, do not vote much. There
are not enough persons engaged in
manufacturing establishments in the
United States to elect thirty congress
men! But the protected manufactur
ers go into politics every time, and
furnish campaign corruption funds,
and practice damnable coercions upon
their employes “to make them vote
right!”
The transportation people of the
United States are all together far less
than half the number of agriculturists,
yet see how they go into politics and
“run the government” as their own!
Os course, “the farmers ought to
have their social organizations,” but —
“never, never go into politics!”
That would be the unpardonable sin
against God and crime against the
other interests that are in politics up
to their mouths! They keep those useful
political organs—mouths, smellers, ears
and eyes—above the tide so that they
can “catch on” to all that is going!
The Farmers’ Union and all other
faimers’ organizations should surely
keep out of politics —for the farmer.
But did you ever have one of your
Democratic politicians tell you to keep
out of his Democratic politics?
Did you ever have a Republican poli
tician tell you how unbecoming and
fatal to you it would be to keep out of
hi* Republican politics?
Say, Farmer, can you see through a
ladder?
If you can, why stand still looking
through It?
WHY NOT GET ON TO IT AND
CLIMB? S. W. S.
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
THE SPIRIT OF THE FIGHT.
Having put their hands to the plow
in this business of enforcing the just
treatment of their rights, the farmers
of the South and of America should
neither look nor turn back from their
appointed way.
The saying is trite that “everybody
works the farmer.” It is the uncon
scious, when not corrupt, rule of ac
tion of everybody with whom the
farmer has to deal, from the field hand
to the high financiers of Wall street
and the New York Cotton Exchange.
Co-operation is the modern giant of
prosperity. It has made rich and pow
erful the national bankers, the insur
ance conspirators, the manufacturers’
trust and the railway buccaneers of
the land.
Co-operation, with the like selfish
sincerity and fraternity loyalty, can
make the farmers of America the real
dictators of honest government and
honest business in this nation.
Farmers are not lacking in faith.
They show it supremely when they
plow, harrow, sow and cultivate, and
then trust God and His seasons.
Farmers are not lacking in courage.
They show it when the country needs
defenders, and the bulk of our armies
come forth from the fields and forests
rather than from parlors, offices and
club rooms.
Farmers are not lacking in honesty.
They show it in the simplicity of their
dealings with each other and with the
world, selling the products of their la
bor —the natural outgrowths of all es
sential wealth from the soil —for what
ever the market will pay.
If the farmer lacks any of the prime
elements of perfect success in his call
ing they are the wisdom of co-opera
tion and the spirit of justice for his
claims and his rights. Abolish our
farms, and by that work we abolish
civilization, government and end the
history of humanity with famine and
death. The farmer, then, holds the
first and the final claims on civiliza
tion, government and universal jus
tice.
What the farmers of the south, espe
cially, and of the nation, generally,
need today is to get into the fight for
their rights.
They must no longer be “dumb,
driven cattle” of the merchants, the
railroads and the brokers. Many ef
forts have been made in the past to
organize the farmers for self protec
tion and for the self husbanding of
their proper share of the wealth they
develop. What if the efforts have not
yet been fully successful —they have
been schooling and effective education.
The present effort, or the next, or
another yet, may be the crystallization
and the conquest so long sought and
prayed for!
Today it is the duty of every farmer
who has brains enough to know his
rights and courage enough to defend
them to unite with the Farmers’ Edu
cational and Co-Operative Union to
bring to pass that condition wherein
the farmers can compel the world to
meet them on the highest levels of
commerce and deal with them on the
plainest principles of right and equity.
S. W. S.
THE KEY TO VICTORY.
General Robert Toombs resigned
from the cabinet of President Jeffer
son Davis early in the Civil war,
chiefly because his plan for financing
the “war-born Confederacy” was not
adopted.
That plan was to have the Confed
erate authorities purchase the surplus
cotton crop of the south with Confed
erate money or bonds, ship the cotton
out to England and warehouse it there,
to be sold for gold at prices that the
English spinners and those of the con
tinent would have to pay for other cot
ton and for ours!
Professor Shaler and other eco
nomic writers since the war have de
clared that had the Toombs plan been
adopted the Confederacy “would not
have perished from economic exhaus
tion!” They freely admit that our
cotton in England would have been
an increasing basis of credit, and the
Confederacy could have bought all the
munitions it needed and compelled
open ports. They say, with those
things assured, Beecher’s evangelism
against slavery would have failed in
England, and the north never could
have conquered the south.
But that is not the story we want
to employ ourselves with now. We
cite it to exhibit a principle.
The north and the world at large
need the cotton of the south more to
day than between 1861 and 1865. They
must have it —for they cannot afford
to go three-fourths naked all the time!
In this day we command the world
supply of cotton, and we CAN control
the price. The warehouse at home in
stead of in England is the key to the
whole situation!
Make the Farmers’ Union the cot
ton confederacy, deposit your surplus
cotton in the warehouse use your
receipts for collateral, lending your
cash assets among yourselves, and it
will not be long before the whole pack
of parasites who have played you for
“easy marks” in the past, robbed you
of your legitimate profits and laughed
at your poverty, will be begging for
cotton at your front doors, and saying,
“Yes, Boss!” when you name your
Price- S. W. S.