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WATSON’S LDIT ORIALS Labor Leaders Going Wrong. Like the rest of us, the men who are placed at the head of industrial organizations are hu man. Labor leaders make mistakes, just as we all do. At this time, it seems to The Jeffersonian that the men who are in control of certain la bor unions are making very serious blunders, and are piling up against themselves an amount of resentment that will count heavily in the day of trial. For example, what possible excuse can those labor leaders of Macon give for throwing themselves on the side of the New York mil lionaires in the struggle which the Farmers’ Union is making to have passenger rates re duced? Why should the local union of Macon butt in, and try to head off a benefit to the whole state? What patriotism can there be in such a course? What fraternal spirit actuates any such narrow and selfish line of conduct as they have chosen to pursue? Upon the unsupported statement that their wages will be cut down if passenger rates are lowered, they take their place beside the New York corporations and against the people of the South. Upon a bare fear of injury to themselves, they turn against the common people and enlist under the banners of the mil lionaires. Instead of making common cause with the toilers of the towns and the fields, these labor leaders of Macon virtually declare that they don't care a continental . how much the plutocrats oppress other workers, so long as good wages are paid to themselves. If this position of tire Macon labor leaders meets the approval of the Labor Unions gen erally, The Jeffersonian would like to know it. For some years the leaders of the city Un ions have been making friends with the Farm ers’ Unions. We have heard much talk about brotherly love, mutual interest and fraternal co-operation. Farmers’ Union delegates pa raded with Labor Unions on Labor Day, to emphasize the alliance between the two rep resentative organizations of the toilers. Leaders of the Farmers’ Union were warned to be careful, were told that some of these Labor Union leaders were as selfish a set of men as could be found anywhere, and that these men would work the Farmers’ Union for all it was worth —giving nothing in re turn. The action of the Macon Laboi leaders is therefore significant. In January, 1907, the Labor leaders came to Atlanta and asked the great Farmers’ Union convention to endorse their “Eight Hour Day.” The Convention did so, and the La bor Unions got the benefit of that strong en dorsement. Yet, within three months afterwards, these same Labor Leaders are found, in public, on the side of the Beneficiaries of Special Priv ilege and FIGHTING THE FARMERS’ UNION LEADERS, who are asking our rail roads of the South to do what many railroads of Western and Northern states have already done —give the people lower rates. Why should not the State of Georgia have a Two cent passenger rate as well as Nebraska? Why should Pennsylvania enjoy lower rates than we can get? If Missouri, Wisconsin and WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN A Newspaper Devoted to the Advocacy of the Jeffersonian Theory of Government. PUBLISHED BY THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON, Editors and Proprietors Temple Court Building, Atlanta, Ga. ATLANTA, GEORGIA, THURSDAY, MAY 2, 1907. half a dozen other states can succeed in wrest ing concessions from the Wall Street corpora tions, why should we be powerless to do it? Virginia has just been given a 2-cent rate on trunk lines —why not Georgia? In Nebraska, the Labor Unions did not declare war upon the common people. In Pennsylvania the leaders of organized labor did not put themselves in a position of selfish antagonism to the toilers in other fields of industry. Nowhere, excepting Georgia, have the railroads been able to get the labor leaders to stoop to the work of raking chestnuts out of the fire for the railroads. Wages arc in no danger, and everybody knows it. Wages are going up in obedience to natural laws. You could no more reduce wages, now, than you could put down the price of heart-pine lumber. They Wall Street railway king, George Gould, is against the proposed reduction of passenger rates, just as the Macon labor lead ers are, but George Gould puts his opposition upon solid ground. He says he is unaltera bly against the Two-cent rate, BECAUSE IT WOULD LESSEN DIVIDENDS. There you have the secret. High freight and passenger rates have enabled such men as George Gould to earn dividends upon fraudu lent issues of stock. The manner in which Gould watered the Western Railroad of Mary land was precisely similar to the methods that J. P. Morgan employed on the Central of Georgia. By these stock manipulations, such men as Gould and Morgan steal millions of dollars from the public. To make these wa tered stocks salable, it is necessary that div idends be earned upon them, and consequent ly high rates must be charged. When we lower the rates, these watered stocks lose their dividends, and are no longer salable. They ought not to be salable. They rep resent nothing but greed and ink and paper and the Special Privilege which enables the few to rob the many. Now, when George Gould declares himself against Two-cent fares, giving as his reason the prediction that a Two-cent rate would les sen dividends, his position is rational. From his point of view, he is right. The Usurer al ways objects to Interest Laws; and the Faro bank expert hates the statute against gamb ling; and the thief would probably vote against all punishment for Larceny. When Mr. Gould attacks the Two-cent rate, he frank ly says, “I am against it because it will keep money out of my pocket, WHICH OTHER WISE I WOULD GET.” Mr. Gould makes no threat to reduce the wages of his men. He knows better. His father went through the horrors and the crimes and the losses of one great strike in his Southwestern lines, and George, the son of Jay, hasn't the slightest idea of treading any such wine-press himself. No! Wages will not suffer; they arc safe; they arc up and will stay up. The Dividends on inflated capitalization is what will suffer— and they deserve it. Let the leaders of Union Labor range them selves. CONSISTENTLY, on the side of the general public in this world-wide struggle against Special Privilege. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: SI.OO PER TEAR Advertising Rates Furnished on Application. Enttrtd at Poitoffict, Atlanta, Ga., January 11, IQO7> at ttcond tlau mail matttr. " We Must Obey the Lalv.” To this effect spoke M. E. Ingalls, acting Chief of the Big Four Railroad system. Mr. Ingalls was speaking to his brother railroad men at a meeting in Pittsburg. These things are particularly significant: 1. Mr. Ingalls’ admission that the Railroads have not been obeying the law. 2. That they must get at it, right away. 3. That not a single railroad man present rose to remark that the railroads have been spraining their loins trying to obey the law. 4. That Ingalls admitted the right of the public to control the management of the roads, and the further issue of stocks and bonds. 5. That Ingalls boldly declared that here after the railroads must realize that they were engaged in a public business for the benefit of the public, and that therefore the property must be managed with reference to the rights of the public. 6. That nobody present ventured to quote from President Finley's Memphis address to the effect that the capitalization of railroads was none of the public’s business. 7. That most of the metropolitan dailies are singing rapturously, as though the Millen nium was at hand, just because one railroad President gives it as his opinion that “we must submit to the Law.” If the people greet with such shouts of ap plause a railroad president who says that his crowd ought to quit their wickedness and live in obedience to the laws, what sort of Roman Triumph would we give to the rail road President who would actually practice what Ingalls preaches? mum Holv Trusts Could Be Destroyed. One cf the platforms of the Farmers’ Al liance declared: “We demand the removal of the Tariff tax from the necessaries of life which the poor must have to live.” I his is precisely the principle announced by Thomas Jefferson, who declares that the taxes should be so laid that the luxuries of life would bear the burden of government, and that his ideal was a system in which the poor would be entirely relieved from the crushing weight of taxation. Furthermore, the Alliance said that “legis lation should not be so framed as to build up one business at the expense of another.” If these principles were enacted into law, there could be no such thing as a Trust in the United States. In order that the people should become the victims of such tyranny as that exercised by tlie Trusts two things are necessary: For eign relief must be made impossible, and do mestic relief be made impracticable.’ . 'The Tariff wall keeps the foreigner from interfering; the railroads and the national banks supporting the Trusts, make it impos sible for domestic dissatisfaction to assert it self effectively. II the people should put upon the free list hose articles which are made the subject of the I rusts, the foreigner could at once invade the market and destroy the monopoly upon which the Trust is based. F If the Populist principles of finance and of Il