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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