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WATSON'S OKI ALS One Brabe Soldier Dolvn ! For reasons which will readily occur to you, the name of the writer of the letter given be low is withheld. He did not intend for me to publish what he wrote. However, it is well for the people to read a private communication of this sort. It is a flash from the darkness which reveals many things. No one can read these lines and fail to realize what an up-hill busi ness it is to fight the corrupt politicians and the piratical corporations when the two pow ers unite. I think that if the people half-way understood the hardships and the discourage ments which beset the Reformers, they would not be so slow in coming to our support. The writer of the letter is the Editor of a weekly paper in the far West. He went up against the local Gang, tried to have the law enforced against well known criminals—and landed in jail himself. By accident, I saw an account of his misfortunes, and sent him some slight re lief. Having my hands pretty full of my own affairs, I made the effort to interest in the Western Editor’s behalf a millionaire who him self makes a national specialty of reform. In this effort, T failed. The letter tells the rest. May 18, 1907. Hon. Thos. E. Watson, Thomson, Ga. My Dear Mr. Watson:—Yours to hand. As to the Magazine, I have been offering it as you say. If T am here any longer, I shall put forth more effort to push it. If it were possible that Mr. —'s man would get here within a few days, I might be able to make arrangements with him, provided that they did not conflict with my convictions. But, Mr. Watson, 1 fear it will be too late. It is my opinion that under present conditions, I cannot hold out, and that next week’s issue will be the last for me. I do not yet know whether it will be a suspension or a sale. I have done what my intelligence and conscience have dictated. I have no burnings in my con science. I have nothing that makes me afraid or ashamed, in my year and five months’ work. Sen. P appears less sanguine since his last return from New York. I believe he feels that Roosevelt will be able to fool the people and get another term. He goes to Lincoln Monday to visit Bryan ; he may feel different when he returns. He is certainly bluer polit ically than I have ever seen him since 1900. lam somewhat discouraged myself. The peo ple here in this city have gone into a blind deal, and agreed to be skinned by some Chi cago “financiers,” alias robbers. I have stood by the people; I have been right and have labored day and night and at my own personal loss. lamat my row’s end. I have had “of fers” by which I might have benefited. I am not afraid of eternity on my record in the newspaper work. Even the brutal Kaufman murder case, where a brewer's wife beat her servant to death by inches, is being “post poned” to clear her, and I am arrested for libel for asking one of the attorneys who was sen tenced to two years in the pen a few questions the people of the street were all asking. It is being sold out today. I may expose next is sue. But, pardon me; I must not take up the time you need. I shall let you know the final turn. . WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN A Newspaper Devoted to the Advocacy of the Jeffersonian Theory of Government. published BY SUBSCRIPTION PRICE -. SI.OO PER TEAR THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON, Advertising Rates Furnished on Application. Editors and Proprietors Temple Court Building, Atlanta, Ga. J...., ATLANTA, GEORGIA, THURSDAY, MAY 23, 1907. I enclose you two stanzas on The Rubaiyat. For your great encouragement, many thanks. Yours, * * * The Surplus Infamy. In Great Britain, a short time ago, the na tional treasury found itself in possession of about thirty million dollars, over and above running expenses. In other words, the Gov ernment had a Surplus on its hands. What was done with it? Every dollar of it was paid out on the na tional debt. Thus the burdens of the English people were reduced. The Surplus came from all the people, in the way of taxes collected. The money went back to all the people, in the way of paying the debt which the people, as a whole, owed to the creditor class. That disposition of the Surplus was sensi ble. but not remarkably so. When an individ ual citizen is in debt and is paving interest, he generally feels like paying off the obligation and relieving himself of the burden. If he is a man of ordinary self-respect and prudence, he wants to free himself of bondage to those who hold the claims against him. Therefore, if he is honest, as well as prudent, he will apply the first surplus money that he gets his hands on to the payment of his debts. Among right thinking people, there are few terms of reproach which imply a more discred itable record than the saying, “He is a man that won’t pay his debts.” The disgrace commences when, the debt be ing a just obligation, the man who owes it has the money to pay it, and then refuses to do it. Nations are but collections of individuals, and the same rules of common sense, common honesty and common justice which apply to the individual citizen should apply to the na tion. When a nation can pay out of debt, the failure to do so is a national disgrace. Great Britain’s huge debt grew mainly out of the wars waged by the English aristocracy against the democratic movement of revolu tionary I'rance. All the long, bloody, expen sive struggles to compass the overthrow of Napoleon had their secret motive in the settled purpose of Kings and aristocracies to check the progress of “the Principles of the French Revolution.” Those dreaded principles were simply the democracy for which George Mason and Thomas Jefferson stood. Burdened with this tremendous debt, the English people pay it off as fast as they can, It is not often that they have a surplus but, when they do have one, it gives them no em barrassment whatever. To reduce the debt with it is such a logical, common sense propo sition, that it is adopted as a f matter of course. How differently we do things! When we have a Surplus, we give it to the National Bankers, and allow the public debt to run on. When Mr. Cleveland was President, it is true, the Surplus was applied to the bonds. But the bonds were not due, and the world; was amazed to see the Democratic President make a gift of sixty million dollars, in Prem iums, for the privilege of paying 4 per cent bonds that were not due. The money should have been disposed of in one of three ways: It should have returned to the people, as the surplus was returned in the days of President Andrew Jackson; or it should have been loaned out at interest until the bonds fell due; or it should have been used to buy the controlling interest in trunk-line railroads. Congress could just as easily have author ized either of these statesmanlike methods of getting rid of the surplus as it did authorize that gift of $60,000,000 to the bondholders. But if the Democratic President, Cleveland, was most unwise, unjust and undemocratic in making a donation of a huge Premium to the favored few, when he took the Surplus into the market and bought bonds that were not due what shall we say of the Republican Pres ident. Roosevelt? The disposition which is now being made of the Surplus is the most shameful misuse of public money that has ever been known in the history of our Government. Year in and year out, the National Banks keep and use an average of more than one hundred and fifty million dollars of the peo ple’s money. For the use of this they pay no interest at'all. THE GOVERNMENT SIM PLY TAXES THIS ENORMOUS SUR PLUS OUT OF THE POCKETS OF THE TAX-PAYING MASSES AND MAKES A GIFT OF IT TO A NON-TAX-PAYING CLASS! The national banks, practically, pay no na tional taxes whatever, yet the money of those who do pay the taxes is taken out of the treas ury to the extent of $150,000,000 and given in perpetual use, free of charge, to these pam pered pets of the Government. Can there be any law for taxing 85,000,000 people for the benefit of 5,000 national bank ers? The question answers itself. Yet that is just what the Democrats, under Mr. Cleve land, did on a small scale and what the Repub licans, under Mr. Roosevelt, are doing on a large one. Cleveland gave the pet banks, con stantly, some forty million dollars: Roosevelt has simply increased the donation. But the ugly feature of the Roosevelt sys tem of favoritism is this: Bonds are now fall ing due, and we have the money to pay these debts, but in spite of that fact he proposes to renew the note (refund the bonds) and let the debt run on at interest, instead of taking a por tion of that $171,000,000 which the pet banks are using and paying off the debt with it. Thus the people will be burdened for an other term of years with an interest-bearing debt, while a few pet banks continue to use, without interest, a huge Surplus, one-third of which would pav off the maturing notes. IT IS A SHAME! n * * Quote the Poet Correctly, "Brother Tobin. 'l'he Indiahoma Union-Signal is a most in teresting and ably conducted paper, but its ed itor, like the rest of us, sometimes jumps at conclusions too hurriedly. For instance, he writes an editorial para graph to this effect: “Tom Watson says that labor is making a great mistake to put up such a determined II