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WATSON’S EDIT OKIALS Il Holv Long Shall We Submit? Our Northern friends are smarter than we are. The Yankee is naturally keener in bus iness than the easy-going, unsuspicious man of the South. From the very first meeting of Congress down to the last, the long-headed New Englander has been on deck, running the governmental machine for the filling of his pocket. ' * ' ii ! With enormous national bounties and pre miums paid to the Yankee manufacturers, bleak New England was made rich at the ex pense of the South and the West. The Tariff confiscates what the agricultural producer makes. To the extent of countless millions of dollars, this tribute has been collected from the consumer, and handed over to the Yankee manufacturer. They called the system Pro tection, which sounds better than Legalized Robbery, but is not so accurate a term. Very soon the keen-eyed Yankee saw the possibilities of the Railroad. Freight and Pas senger rates are just so many taxes. Those who have the power to levy these taxes have a tremendous advantage over those who must pay them. If these freight rates and passenger rates are fixed upon the greedy, tyrannical principle of “all that the traffic will bear,” then you can see at once that those who have the power to levy those taxes can confiscate with out mercy the portable property of those who must pay. The Yankees saw this before we did. The people of the South and West slept over their rights. They put up the contributions of land, cash, privileges, exemptions and powers which created the railroads, and then allowed the Yankees to make off with the property. Ever since the cruel Civil War closed, the Yankees have been confiscating Southern and Western property to the limit of “all that the traffic will bear.” Just how many thousands of millions of dol lars have been squeezed out of the victims, and appropriated by the North, can’t be estimated. We gather some faint conception of the colos sal proportions of the robbery when we recall that the railroads are carrying at least six thou sand million dollars of watered stock. Some authorities say $8,000,000,000! At last the victims of this almost incredi ble rapacity are beginning to rebel. The situ ation is more galling than flesh and blood can bear. The states of the South and West are inter posing to protect their citizens from the ra pacity of the Northern corporations. Southern and Western Legislatures are rousing them selves to resist the confiscatory Yankees. But what do we see? The Northern Cor porations, working through venal lawyers, judges and Congressmen, are arrogating to themselves the right to nullify state laws. Think of the impudence of these plundering corporations in“holding up” sovereign states of the South and West! Think of the inso lence of these Yankees that come down here to fight our laws! Think of the intolerable humiliation to the states of being halted with a piece of paper, when they seek to exercise the sovereign power and duty of protecting the citizen from having his portable property confiscated by the levy- WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN A Newspaper Devoted to the Advocacy of the Jeffersonian Theory of Government. published BY SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: SI.OO PER YEAR THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON, Advertising Rates Furnished on Application. Editors and Proprietors ■ - ny t> . Entertd at Pottoffice, Atlanta, Ga., January n, IQO7, at ttcind Temple Court Building, Atlanta, Ga. dan mail mattar. ATLANTA, GEORGIA, THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 1907. ing of freight and passenger tariffs on the op pressive principle of “all that the traffic will bear.” z The greatest shame is, that so many South ern and Western lawyers and politicians are willing to enlist under the banners of the North to raid the fields and towns of the South and West. The Yankees hire our own men to fight us. During the cruel Civil War, the North hired tens of thousands of foreigners to fight us. There is no need to draw from Europe now. Apparently, the rich Yankee corporations can hire one-half the South to rob the other half. Southern judges are found who prostitute their powers to the evil purposes of Northern Cor porations. Some of these Southern Congressmen were such faithful States Rights men that, in Con gress, they voted against the regulation of railroad rates by the Federal Government; yet when they came home they sued out Injunc tions against their own mother-states to pre vent the states from regulating these same rates. Ah, the disgrace of it! They sell out to the Yankees and aid them in robbing their own people—could degradation sink deeper? How long are the people of the South and West going to submit? Flow many more Governors are going to have their Sovereign States reduced to impo tence by RENEGADES, CORRUPTION ISTS, AND JUDICIAL USURPERS? The question is vital, and the issue is upon us. Most people—whether white, black, brown or yellow—abhor foreign rule. Most men would rather die than submit to it. • We of the South used to be proud, brave, independent; but today we bend slavishly be neath the yoke that the North has fastened upon our necks. Why is this so? Because the foreign tyranny is disguised. Southern men seem to be in control of all these robber corporations and the people gen erally do not know the actual fact that it is by the use of these figure-head Southern ren egades that the Yankee corporations are plun dering the Southern States, every year, of more wealth than was taken from us by the marauding hordes of Sherman, Stoneman, and Sheridan. HOW LONG WILL WE SUBMIT TO IT? ft ft ft John Sharp Williams. The above-named gentleman is making speeches to the people of Mississippi in the interest of his candidacy for the Senate. Naturally, he now reminds himself that, dur ing his long career as Representative in Con gress, he has been one of the most toil-worn friends that the people have ever had. Stim ulating his creative faculty by reflections con cerning the things which he could and should have done for his constituents he has appropri ated to his own use the achievements of other and more faithful Congressmen—achievements with which John Sharp Williams had nothing more to do than he had with the original grouping of the Milky W*ay. Some two years ago, John Sharp made a speech in Congress in which he claimed for the Democratic Party the credit for the present Rural Free Delivery of Mail, because it was put into successful operation by William L. Wilson, the Democratic Postmaster-General. When he was making that speech John Sharp was under the disagreeable necessity of pay ing some attention to the facts. Glaring mis statements, made in the hearing of Congress men familiar with the record, would have call ed down upon his own head exposure jfind dis credit. Therefore, when he made that speech in Congress, John Sharp advanced no claims for himself as father of the R. F. D. system. Talk ing in the hearing of colleagues who would have bounced him had he prevaricated, he was forced to admit that Mr. Watson of Georgia had secured, Feb. 17, 1893, the first appropria tion that this Government ever made for the free delivery of mails to people living outside of towns, cities and villages. Nor did he dare to say then, in that presence, that my amendment to the P. O. Appropriation bill was in ans>“ way defective. He did not dare to say that the language used in my amendment left it optional with the Govern ment to use the money or not, as it saw fit. Such an allegation, then and there made, would have been answered and refuted by a production of the record, where my amendment stands in the most positive, mandatory form of legislative will. The words are, “the sum of SIO,OOO SHALL BE applied under the direction of the Post master-general to experimental free delivery in rural communities OTHER THAN TOWNS AND VILLAGES.” How much stronger could I have written it? lhe so-called R. F. D. of John Wanamak er was confined to incorporated towns, and the purpose of my amendment was to extend the benefit to people who lived in the country. And my words were, “Shall be.” There was nothing optional about it. President Cleveland simply refused to obey the law. Then Congress repeated the appropriation twice more, in the same language, and,at length the administration obeyed the law. It would seem from a letter published in an other place in this week’s Jeffersonian that John Sharp, talking for votes and to people who cannot be supposed to know the facts, has been fabricating the facts upon which he is erecting his claim for credit. Watson’s law was not written right ; there fore Watson’s law amounted to nothing. The world had to wait until John Sharp got hold of the matter ; then the law was written right, and the people got Rural Free Delivery of Mail. J According to my correspondent, that is the way in which John Sharp is stating the case to audiences in the interior of Mississippi, where he thinks he is in no danger of contradiction. Such a statement is false, and no man knows it better than the man who is alleged to be making it. To get votes upon such a plea is to obtain goods under false pretenses. And I ..make- this prediction—Mr. John Sharp Williams will not dare to repeat those statements on the floor of Congress.