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fight against the trial and conviction of Hay
wood & Moyer. Watson is courageous and
honest, but labor will not love him for that
statement.”
If Brother Tobin can produce any word of
tongue or pen that Mr. Watson ever uttered,
or wrote, sustaining the above statement, we
will send him, collect, a brand new set of
Shakespeare, upon which the Southern Ex
press Company in Atlanta made one of our
innocent, but well meaning employes pay $2.50
express charges, byway of condition precedent
to taking it out of the Express Office —the set
usually (sells for $2.25, and is not dirt cheap,
even at that.
What Mr. Watson did say concerning the
Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone case was, in sub
stance, this: ‘
That the revolutionary Socialists —the fel
lows who rave at all private ownership of prop
cry, tote red flags, parade the streets howl
ing the Marseillaise and jabbering in foreign
languages, hiss the mention of the name of the
flag of the Union, tear it down and tread upon
it —had taken possession of some Labor Or
ganizations in the big cities of the North and
West, and had committed these Unions to the
lawless proposition that the accused officials
of the Western Federation of Miners should
not be put to death, even though the evidence
might prove that they were guilty of one of
the most deliberate, most cruel, most brutal,
and most cowardly murders known to the an
nals of crime!
Mr. Watson contended that those Labor
Unions who had allowed the flag-trampling
Socialists to commit them to a lawless propo
sition of that kind had gone wrong.
Don’t you think so too, Brother Tobin?
The truest friend to the working classes —
and Mr. Watson has always been their friend
—will tell them when they go wrong, just as
he will fight for them when they go right.
There are but two classes of men who never,
under any circumstances, give to the honest,
law-abiding working.men the inestimable ben
efit of wise, candid, fearless advice —the dema
gogues and the cowards.
Mr. Watson hopes he does not belong to
either class.
HMM
Homeric Nodding.
In the course of a masterly editorial against
the Pittsburg millionaire, Corey, who has re
cently bought himself a new wife at an ex
pense of some four million dollars, one of the
most brilliant editors Atlanta ever had allud
ed to Napoleon’s marriage “to the Prussian
princess.”
And then I fell off my chair, in convulsions.
What is it that gets the matter with us
sometimes, anyhow? Are there moments
when our faculties take a perverse pleasure
in teaching us our own limitations? What
imp of aggravation holds back the name which
you need to recall —a name almost as familiar
to you as your own? Why is it that the
line of poetry which you have been reciting
for years, in private, eludes you when you
would seize it in public? Did I not see one
of the most brilliant of Shakespearean schol
ars cover himself with ridicule and confusion
in an abortive attempt to quote that wretched
doggerel, the Epitaph?
Did I not myself once immortalize myself
by standing up in a public Spelling Bee, and
spelling the word “victuals” phonetically, like
the kitchen boy in “Our Mutual Friend”?
Was I not present one morning in New
York when the host, an elderly man, received
a familiar young lady friend, kissed her fond
' Iy, and then on turning to introduce me to
her, had to ask her, “What is your name, my
dear?”
Did not the great Napoleon himself forget
that it was he who gave the order which sac
rificed his cavalry at Waterloo?
But even when I consider all these exten
uating circumstances, my inclination is to deal
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
harshly with any editor who makes Napoleon
marry a Prussian princess.
Why, to do that is to miss the historical sig
nificance and psychological interest of the
whole business. Prussia had but recently
been the mere Marquisate of Brandenburg.
The Kings of Prussia had but recently been
Marquises. They were but of yesterday—•
these Hohenzollerns. Neither they, nor heir
little new-made kingdom, appealed to the
imagination of anybody.
But there was “The Holy Roman Empire”;
there was the Emperor; there was “the Daugh
ter of the Caesars,” —these were materials for
the firing of the oriental imagination of the
“Corsican adventurer,” Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Austrian alliance attracted him as a
student of history, and as a conqueror bent
upon founding a dynasty. In a shadowy way,
the Emperor of Germany had been the suc
cessor of the imperialism of Rome. The Aus
trian House had held the sceptie which, in
form, had been handed down to modern Eu
rope by the Caesars. Therefore, in the mar
riage with Maria Louisa, Napoleon dreamed
he was uniting the Present with the Past, his
newly erected throne with that which had been
longest established, his plebeian blood with
that of a long line of kings. Enveloped in
considerations like these, the greatest man the
world ever saw took by the hand the Daughter
of the Caesars, led her to the throne which his
own genius had created—and thus fell into
that “abyss covered with flowers” into which
his stupid, disloyal, shamelessly immoral Aus
trian wife never dropped a tear.
< n n
Editorial Notes.
The Business Magazine, of Knoxville,
Tenn., wanted to know what harm the Steel
Trust is doing.
Will its editor please sit up and pay atten
tion while that debate goes on between the
Steel Trust magnates and the Railroad bosses?
The latter allege against the former that the
lack of competition in the making of steel rails
explains the recklessness with which the Trust
sends out defective rails to be laid on the road
bed. These defective rails cause enormous loss
of human life. They are carelessly, hurriedly
made, because there is no competition, because
the Trust has a monopoly, and because of the
greed for dividends upon that immense
amount of water which Morgan, Carnegie,
Frick, Schwab, Corey & Co. poured into the
Trust stocks at the organization of the Trust.
*
What a diabolical situation!
The Railroads, in a mad rush for dividends,
buy rails from the Steel Trust which is also in
a mad rush for dividends, with the result that
they together are strewing the earth from sea
to sea, from Lakes to Gulf, with the wounded,
the dying, and the dead—just as though
armies were on the move, fighting a pitched
battle every few weeks!
The world never saw such an era of barbar
ity in business, favoritism in legislation, outra
geous wrong-doing in the name of Govern
ment.
It
Corey, President of the Steel Trust, bought
release from his wife, bought an engagemnt
with an actress; bought a preacher to tie the
knot, and then skipped out to Europe to have
a good time. It cost the President of the Steel
Trust about four million dollars to shuffle off
the old wife and hook up with the new one—
but what does he care about the price?
lie cleared thirty-nine million dollars, in
three months, in net profits, by making the
best use of the Special Privilege which your
Congressmen allow him to keep, and which
not one of them, even now, proposes to take
away.
The preacher who was bought for about
SI,OOO to perform the ceremony of “marry
ing” Corey to his actress, got ashamed of his
share in the transaction, after he realized that
he was a ruined man, unless he repented, and
returned the bribe. He did repent and he did
return the bribe.
The Judas money became hateful to him.
But he can no more undo consequences than
Judas could.
•t
Honor to Governor Hughes of New York!
In spite of all that the corrupt Republican
boss, Raines, could do; in spite of the treach
erous aid which Democrats like Grady and
McCarren gave to Raines; in spite of the cold
water which Hearst and his papers threw up
on the reform measures—Governor Hughes
has won out, gloriously. Hereafter, the Pub
lic Service Corporations in New York will
have to walk the chalk.
Shouldn’t wonder if Hughes were President,
some day.
*
Mr. Schwab, one of the magnates of the Steel
! rust, stated that steel rails could be sold at
sl2 per ton, at a profit. The Steel Trust ex
acts $39, per ton. Taking as true Mr. Schwab's
statement that the rails could be made here for
ST2 per ton at a profit, you may readily see
what a robbery is involved in charging $39 per
ton.
No wonder the President of the Trust can
afford to spend four million dollars to get him
self a fresh young wife.
tt
“Investigation shows that the watering of
railroad stock was abandoned many years
ago.”
So sayeth The Jonesboro Enterprise.
In the New York World, Democratic, under
date of May 16, 1907, we find a special from
Albany, New York, stating that “Since Jan
uary 1, 1907, when the first work of drafting
the Utilities bill was begun, the railroad cor
porations have received the consent of the
C ommission to issue stocks and bonds aggre
gating more than fifty million dollars. The
greater part of this represents issues of stock
approved within the last month.”
In other words, the Hughes Public Utili
ties bill is intended to put a stop to the evils
of stock-watering; and the railroads were fill
ing up with water before the bill could be
made a law.
Yet here is a newspaper, in Georgia, telling
the people to be quiet and let the railroad rob
bers alone because “the watering of railroad
stock was abandoned many years ago.”
* M H
PAGES FROM MY SCRAP BOOKS.
Ever since I was a little boy it has been a
habit of mine to clip out, from newspapers,
such articles as were particularly interesting.
Therefore, at fifty years of age, I find myself
in possession of a dozen or so well-filled Scrap-
Books. Many of the clippings lost their inter
est with the passing away of the men and the
episodes to which they related, but a consider
able number are as valuable today as they
were when they were selected.
How would the readers of this paper like
to take a ramble through these old Scrap
books?
I think you would like it well. So sure am
I of this that, hereafter, from week to week,
you shall have a series of re-published articles,
under the headline of “Pages from My Scrap-
Books.”
PAGE NINE