Newspaper Page Text
PAGE TWELVE
‘Barrett’s Hot Be ply to Harbie Jordan
(The Atlanta Constitution.)
President Charles S. Barrett, of the
National Farmers’ Union, has Issued a
card which is a reply to the state
ment recently made by Harvie Jordan,
president of the Southern Cotton As
sociation, regarding “that trip to Eu
rope.” Mr. Barrett’s communication
follows:
“Mr. Jordan puts himself to a great
deal of trouble occupying two col
umns in the newspapers in trying to
convict me of having talked with him
concerning the European trip, for
which, he says, he engaged passage
for both of us. Mr. Jordan could have
saved himself a great deal of trouble
by not arguing the question, for I
would have made no issue with him on
his simple statement of facts.
“The truth of the matter is simply
this:
“According to instructions from my
people, I went to New York in re
sponse to a call from Mr. Mac Coll, who
was the president of the last confer
ence between the growers and the
spinners. Mr Jordan was there also,
and, incidental to the conference with
Air. Mac Coll, the international conven
tion at Vienna was discussed. It was
suggested that both Mr. Jordan and I
go, and in the conversation that fol
lowed I expressed my willingness to
do so.
“Mr. Jordan states that he made ar
rangements for the trip accordingly.
Tom Watson’s Vielv of the Weekly Newspaper
(The Pennsboro News.)
It has always seemed to me that the
editor of a weekly paper might make
of himself and his paper a most im
portant factor in the molding of pub
lic opinion and the shaping of public
policies. There are many advantages
incident to his position. He is in
touch with the plain, common people.
He hears what is said on the streets,
at the town meeting, in the court
house, in the market place; he is fa
miliar with every detail in the life of
the average man; his newspaper re
cords the happenings in the family of
the Browns and Smiths, among whom
he lives. If he conducts his paper in
telligently and sympathetically almost
everybody in his community sub
scribes to it. People who live in one
part of the county want to keep posted
as to what is going on in other portions
of the county. If the news service is
A REMINISCENCE.
(The Washington Post.)
The present political brainstorm re
calls Levi P. Morton’s appointment to
the French mission in 1881, and how
he got it. In the national convention
of 1880 the insurgents of the New
York delegation enabled Mr. Blaine to
defeat the nomination of General
Grant and accomplish the nomination
of General Garfield. The friends of
the latter left Chicago muttering that,
as he was Blaine’s candidate, Blaine
could elect him.
The Grant crowd sulked. The Re
publicans were overwhelmed in Maine.
It was manifest that Garfield would
be worse beaten than Greeley unless
the Grant element came to the rescue.
The negotiations were made through
Mr. Morton, and the first stipulation
was that Morton should be secretary
of treasury. Then Morton went into
the Union League Club and got the
biggest campaign fund ever heard of
up to that time. Grant and Conkling
took the stump and journeyed as far
weat as the Illinois line. The battle
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
Tells the Real Tacts About That Alleged Al
liance ar.d European Trip.
I left New York and went to the Pa
cific coast in extending the organiza
tion of the Farmers’ Union.
“Opposed to Mr. Jordan.
“The sentiment among the members
of the Farmers’ Union in every south
ern state is violently and overwhelm
ingly antagonistic to Mr. Jordan. They
have absolutely no confidence in him.
The rank and file of the association
will never get over his intimate asso
ciation with Mr. Hoadley, the Wall
street speculator, who boldly proclaim
ed that he was in constant touch with
the cotton developments in the south
through Mr. Jordan.
"The truth is, Mr. Jordan and a few
of his newspaper organs took unjust
advantage of the fact that while In
New York I treated Mr. Jordan as a
gentleman. We were both invited to
the same conference, and naturally I
conducted myself in a gentlemanly
manner toward him. The next thing I
heard was that Mr. Jordan and his
friends were plastering the whole
south with newspaper reports indicat
ing, in effect, that I had entirely re
versed my position as regards Mr. Jor
dan —for if we were going to Europe
with our arms around each other, as
pictorially presented, I could not have
been sincere in all I had said about
at all what it should be, the citizen
looks to his county paper as a record
of current local events. To those who
may have removed from the country
and gone into distant localities for du
ty or pleasure, the home paper is indis
pensable. It is a weekly news letter,
giving an account of the doings and
sayings of the loved ones who have
been left behind.
Besides this, the weekly paper has
within itself other elements of influ
ence and importance. Tn local politics
its weight should be felt, and usually
is felt. Therefore, the editor, if a
live man, is a locally important man.
If the weekly paper is honest, fear
less, conscientious and interested in
the people to whom its weekly mes
sage is delivered, it becomes a barome
ter which politicians carefully consider
before taking any steps on any public
matter. It may be too often the case
was restored. Indiana and New York
were saved. Garfield was elected.
Thon Mr. Blaine took a hand. Mor
ton in the treasury meant ruin to
Blaine’s friends in New York —Rob-
ertson, Alvord, Belden, and that lay
out. Mr. Blaine forced Garfield to
repudiate the contract. Much to Mor
ton chagrin, he was appointed to
France; much to Conkling’s disgust,
he accepted. Then the administration
proceeded to cut Conkling’s throat by
nominating Blaine’s henchman, Rob
ertson, collector of the port of New
York. Conkling fought it and had it
beaten until Garfield surrendered Ma
hone to the tender mercies of Ben
Hill. Mahone’s head was the price of
Robertson’s confirmation. We saw the
spectacle of the most truculent of ex
rebels dictating terms to James A.
Garfield and James G. Blaine.
As soon as Robertson was confirmed
Conkling and Platt resigned, and the
rest Is history. The thing had its
sequel in the defeat of Blaine in 1884.
He lost enough Republican votes Ik
the small city of Utica, Onalda Con#
ty, N. Y. —Conkling’s home —to have
him previously.
“No Common Cause.
“I have not one word to retract in
anything I have heretofore said about
Mr. Jordan. I reiterate every state
ment. There is no common cause be
tween the Southern Cotton Associa
tion as at present officered and the
Farmers’ Union. Ours is an organiza
tion of farmers banded together for
the single cause of getting the best
results possible out of the products of
our toil. Theirs is a nondescript or
ganization of speculators, spinners and
apparently everybody else who wants
to join. It is naturally to the interest
of the spinners to buy their cotton
as low as they can get it. It is to our
interest to sell for the highest price
we can get for it. While we propose
to be fair with the spinners, we see
no common cause that would justify
us in letting them fix the price at
which we are to sell and they are to
buy. If we had listened to them a year
ago the farmers of the south would
have lost millions and millions of
dollars, further, the Southern
Cotton Association begged and
entreated us to fix 10 cents
as the maximum price for which cot
ton was to be held. We insisted upon
11 cents, positively and firmly refus-
that weekly papers follow after the
great city papers and thus become
mere echoes. Just the reverse should
be the case. No weekly newspaper
should become a mere sounding board
for city editors. The importance and
usefulness of the weekly paper is in
exact ratio to its fearless and intelli
gent independence.
Indeed, a weekly paper is much bet
ter situated to speak and act intelli
gently than the greater number of tn>-
metropolitan papers. Nearly every
one of the latter is subsidized, di
rectly or indirectly, by this interest
or that interest, by this corporation or
that corporation, and, therefore, the
editorial department has very little
real independence. The editor is
eternally watching the countenance of
the business manager for smiles of ap
proval or frowns of condemnation. If
the editor writes articles which injure
overcome Cleveland’s plurality in the
state.
Grant is gone, Garfield is gone,
Conkling is gone, Blaine is gone; but
politics is politics, and little different
in our time to what is was in theirs.
Elections, too, practice the old habit of
inclining to the side with the heaviest
boodle fund. *
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH.
(The Boston Transcript.)
Jamestown and Plymouth will ever
be associated historically, and both by
comparison and contrast. They were
both settled by bands of Englishmen
who were proud of their allegiance to
their “dread sovereign lord, the king,”
and but thirteen years intervened be
tween the arrival at Jamestown and
the landing at Plymouth. Allegiance
to the king was almost the only thing
that the two parties of colonists had in
common. They represented different
English parties, for while the claim of
Virginians to descend from a peculiar
ly aristocratic stock is not justiljabe
by research, the earlier settlers of
Jamestown were in sympathy with the
ing to be led into the 10-cent trap,
which, in our opinion, was set by Mr.
Hoadley. We stood for 11-cent cotton,
and the result is that every cotton
farmer in the south has had an op
portunity to get 11 cents for his cot
ton, and today it is far above that.
“Will Not Be Along.
“I have nothing more to say in ref
erence to the matter of Mr. Jordan’s
European trip. He is welcome to take
it if he wishes to do so, but I will
not be along.
“There is not a cotton farmer in the
south who is not ont® Mr. Jordan’s
game, and it is no wonder that the
record of the past year has been
enough to practically annihilate his
organization and drive it out of Geor
gia, where Mr. Jordan is best known.
It is today nothing more than a mem
ory, and the farmers of the south are
coming to the Farmers’ Union so fast
that it is difficult for us to keep up
with its enrollment. They know we
are not fooling them and that we are
an organization of farmers standing
for the interest of the farmers. That
is the fundamental principle of our
plan of action, and the life of no organ
ization was ever more justified by
events than ours has been. Its rec
ord speaks for itself, just as does that
of the officers of the Southern Cotton
Association speak for it.
“C. S. BARRETT.
“Atwater, Ga., May 6, 1907.”
*ic h
the business department, re r . ats of
one sort or another will f T a cause
him to change his tone. ,A<o weekly
editor is under any such intimidation.
If he is coerced it is his own fault. It
is within his power to speak what he
honestly thinks is the truth and thus
to gain and hold that powerful influ
ence which comes to the man whom
the people believe to be sincere in all
that he says and docs.
The weekly paper is the hope of the
country. If every editor of the coun
try press would but realize what would
be the irresistible power of a com
bined propaganda, a harmonious edi
torial preachment through the weekly
press, there would be a ground swell
in America that would reduce the
metropolitan dailies to impotence and
the triumph of the common people
w’ould be assured.
THOS. E. WATSON.
English Conservatives of their day,
whereas the Pilgrim Fathers were
Non-Conformists, even if non-conform
ity had not become a “burning issue.”
The distinction was wide and deep and
the two colonies never coalesced in
policy until George 111 forced Ameri
cans to forget sectional differences in
the face of a great common peril.
Until that crisis there were two diver
gent linos of political-social thought
in the British American colonies, re
spectively typified by New England
and Virginia. New England became
more and more democratic; Virginia
remained aristocratic in tendency up
to the outbreak of the Revolution, and
then her devotion to the American
cause became a striking illustration
of the occasional truth of the old say
ing that it takes an aristocrat to be
tho best Democrat.
The Charleston News and Courier
sneers that “for the first time in its
life London is enjoying a visit from
Hoke Smith.” But no place on earth
was ever known to enjoy a visit from
a South governor.