Newspaper Page Text
Surely, the Senator Was Drunk,
(Continued from Page 1.)
(1) Cornelius A. Jackson was a signalman
on the Elevated Railway in New York Citv.
Owing to his neglect of duty, a car filled with
passengers ran off the track, September 23,
T 9°s> ar, d twelve persons were killed. Jack
son was tried for criminal negligence, con
victed and sent to the penitentiary for five
years.
(2) Percy Martin, a young man who. it
is said, had been smoking cigarettes, reading
dime novels, attempted to hold up and rob
a Seaboard Air Line train in Mecklenburg
county, N. C. He was tried, convicted and
sentenced to thirteen years in the Peniten
tiary.
Attempted, mind you! Percy did not hold
up a train, nor did he rob one.
But he got thirteen years, just the same.
A powerful corporation was after him, you
see.
Who is at the head of the Seaboard Air-
Line Railroad?
Thomas F. Ryan. How did he get it?
Stole it from Skelton Williams, of Rich
mond, Va.
Williams built up the Seaboard Air-Line
system, and after he had got it in shape to
be profitable, Tom Ryan slipped into the hen
house and made off with the poultry.
With infinite address, profound cunning,
patient diplomacy, ruthless rascality, Tom
Ryan, under approved Wall Street forms,
stole the whole Seaboard Air-Line Railroad
from John Skelton Williams.
How hell must have roared with laughter—
as Satan related to his courtiers the trial,
conviction and sentence of Percy Martin for
attempting to rob the Seaboard Air-Line
Railroad!!!
Percy attempted to hold up one of the
trains; Ryan held up the whole business—
roadbed, trains, passengers and all.
Percy stole nothing; Rryan stole the whole
outfit.
And the same papers that contained com
ments upon Percy Martin’s thirteen-year sen
tence in the penitentiary, furnished the news
item that Tom Ryan was on his way to his
country home in Virginia for his annual out
ing.
Poor Cornelius Jackson! He forgot to give
the signal—so they say—and twelve passen
gers were killed.
Five years in the penitentiary, Cornelius.
That’s your medicine.
But who were the bosses of Cornelius?
August Belmont and Thomas F. Ryan.
These gentlemen are the same who recent
ly poured water, to the extent of $108,000,000,
into the stock of their street railroad com
pany, thus robbing the public of enough
money at one shuffle of the cards, to equal
the annual output of all the gold mines of
South Africa.
They are the men who own some of our
principal railroads, and whose criminal negli
gence in not supplying their roads with effi
cient crews, safety appliances, steel bridges,
ballasted double-track, sound cross-ties,
heavy rails and expert telegraphers, causes the
loss of thousands of lives. For S7OO per mile
they could put in the. automatic block sys
tem. Then the neglect of the signal man
would not result in collisions and deaths to
passengers and crew.
But the Ryan-Belmont gang cannot spare
the money to make travel safe. Dividends
must flow to New York —no matter haw many
railroad victims have to be carted to '(the
grave-yard. Railroad murders are never
criminal unless committed by the signalman,
the telegraph operator, switchman, or engi
neer. These common law-breakers of the
lower , world, we may, and do, sometimes
punish.
But it is idle to talk of sending our kings
to jail.
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
Percy “Martins can be sent, for their bung
ling attempts to rob.
Cornelius Jacksons can be sent, for their
failure to give the signal.
But the kings who steal an entire railroad
at one grab, andjthose who can plug another
railroad for $60,000,000 at one turn of the
knife, and those whose greed for dividends
leaves the railroad in such wretched plight
that tragedies are certain 'to occur—these
kings cannot be punished.
They move in a higher sphere, as corpora
tion lawyer, Cromwell, faithfullv said.
They swindle and the public submits.
They rob, and the people endure. They mur
der, and law makes no move.
And when one lone Senator of the United
States so far forgets himself as to tell the
President that the most audacious of these
royal law-breakers should be sent to the peni
tentiary on account of a particularly glaring
and defiant case of criminal conduct, the
millionaire outlaw treats the matter as an in
cidental impertinence hardly deserving his
serious attention. With an inclination to be
amicable and conciliatory, he lets the Sen
ator off by charitably supposing that he was
drunk. -
Os course the Senator was drunk.
Editorial Notes.
Clark Howell, in the Atlanta Constitution,
is telling his brethren of the Democratic
party that thev must not repeat the blunder
of, 1904 when they come to nominate a Pres
idential candidate in 1908.
It seems that the blunder consisted in al
lowing the nomination to be bought for
Judge Parker by the Wall Street magnates
who label themselves ‘“Democrat.”
Ah, me! if Clark had only said this in 1904,
and kept on saying it as hard as 1 did, how
we “could ’a font!”
Tn 1908, if Clark sees Tom Ryan corralling
the Virginia delegation and taking it to the
Convention in. his private car. as he did in
1904, I 'want Clark to be ready to help me
yell.
M « «
Just listen to Clark Howell: “Tn the face
of the ‘safe and sane’ FOLLY to which the
Democratic Party committed itself at St.
Louis three years ago,” Senator Gray, of Del
aware, is now suggested for Democratic
presidential nomination.
1?
In 1904 the Democrats “permitted Wall
Street to wheedle them into the belief that
there could be no hope save in a candidate
named with its sanction. Swallowing bait,
hook and line,” ets. etc.
So ho!
PParker was the Wall Street candidate, was
he ?
Clark Howell says so, and no one protests.
No one abuses him. No one says he was
hired by the Republicans to say it. Clark
Howell says it in 1907, and all men know that
what he says is true.
Watson said it, also —but said it in 190.1 —
and all the devils of vilification began straight
way to rend him.
And one of those who were mighty hard
down on Watson then, was the said Clark
Howell.
Let us hope he is sorry
*. r r
But what shall we do about Bryan? He
did not stop at “acquiescing” in Parker’s
nomination. Oh, no. When W. J. B. saw
that Watson was about to swing the Jeffer
sonian vote, he came tumbling out of the
tent wherein he had been sulking, and he
began to speak sixty-five times per day for
Parker.
Didn’t he vouch for Parker? Didn’t he de
clare that Parker’s ideals were his ideals?
Didn’t he assure the wavering voters that
Parker was the Moses who was to lead the
bewildered Democrats into the promised
land?
Yes, he did. How about that, Clark?
Had Bryan stayed out of it, Watson would
have received the millions of Jeffersonian
votes that were disgusted with the Wall
Street candidate, Parker. It was Bryan who
delivered them to the safe and sane Parker.
* *. r.
President Finley, of the Southern Railway,
made a lovelv impression on the /Xtlanta
Chamber of Commerce at the recent banquet
of that eminently respectable institution.
Unfortunately for Finley, the audience out
doors is always bigger than that at the festal
board; and speeches which are loudly ap
plauded by the gay revellers of the night are
often read with anger, disgust and indigna
tion by the outer audience next dav.
Linley’s deliverance seems to have been of
this latter character. Beyond unctuous plati
tudes about co-operation, harmonv, etc., the
address was about as empty a bit of pompous
self-complacency as one would care to read.
Never said a single word about disgorging
a dollar of the millions stolen from the stock
holders of the Central!
Not a word about violating our state Con
stitution by the gobbling up of competing
lines!
Not a word about the failure to spend a
reasonable proportion of the earnings in the
maintenance of the road in first-class condi
tion.
I feel sorry for Finley. He seems to be
honest in the belief that it is safe for people
to ride on the Southern Railroad. Conse
quently, he is riding around on his own road,
making speeches to Chambers of Commerce,
and other select assemblies of mollycoddles.
Os course, Finley is going to get killed.
Nobody can ride much on the Southern with
out getting killed. Quit it, Finley, quit it!
Im agin you—all along the line—but I
don’t want to see you mangled in a railroad
smash-up on the Southern.
Quit riding on your railroad! You ain’t
obliged to do it. The rest of us are. Leave
us to get killed and you take care of vour
self.
If you must have excitement, try something
not quite so deadly as riding on your railroad.
Play with dynamite, gun cotton, acetvlene
gas, Tom Lawson’s advertisements, subma
rine boats and this new detonating fuse which
Maxim has invented—but if you love your life,
quit riding on the Southern Railroad!
•GUM
The volunteer suggestion by Col. George
B. M. Harvey, of Harper’s Weeklv, that the
Democratic party should “look to the East”
for its next presidential candidate, recalled to
Democrats generally, we should think, pain
ful memories of the lemon-like taste of one
Parker in 1904.
M H
I he Republican mayoralty campaigners in
C hicago kicked mightily because William
Randolph Hearst went out to that city to
help Mayor Dunne to be re-elected as the
champion of municipal ownership of public
utilities. Yet Hearst pays out more cash dol
lars every week for labor in the Windy City
than most of his critics ever saw in one pile,
except when corporation boodle was brought
out for distribution among their kind of pa
triots.
r * •»
Governor Comer, of Alabama, seems to be
one of the “skeer’d o’ nothing” sort of new
statesmen. The railroads have gone to their
usual friends in the courts to stay the rail
way rate regulation acts passed by the Ala
bama legislature. Governor Comer is not
worrying. He has evidently decided to meet
the railway combines on their chosen field
and to* act on the Roosevelt advice: “Don’t
flinch; don’t foul; hit the line hard!”
Here’s power to the bulk of him!
9