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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.