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WATSON’S EDITORIALS The Mississippi Senatorial Tight. (Continued from Page One.) When the question of the regulation of Rail road rates was up in Congress, who was it that joined hands with the Republicans to make the Rate bill as feeble and ineffective as pos sible? * John Sharp Williams. The only bill pending which would really have met the requirements of the case, was the Hearst bill; and no Republican fought it more bitterly than did John Sharp Williams, the Democratic leader. By a combination with the Republicans, Mr. Williams not only killed the Hearst bill, but emasculated that which finally passed. It was proposed to put the Pullman Palace Car Company into the Rate bill so that the In terstate Commerce Commission could regu late the outrageous charges of that enormous ly rich corporation. Mr. Williams voted with the Pullman interests and against the travel ing public. Can he tell the people why? It was proposed to put Express Companies into the bill, so that these corporations—one of which recently sliced a melon of twenty four million dollars net profits, or 200 per cent —could be brought under the super vision and control of the Commission. Mr. Williams voted against the people on that proposition, and in favor of the Express Companies. Let him tell the people of Mississippi: Why. It was a curious sight to see such a man as John Sharp Williams virtually acting as the House lieutenant of New York’s infa mous Senator Platt. It was proposed to put Telegraph and Tele phone Companies into the Rate bill; and Mr. Williams threw the weight of his influence into the scales for those ravenous vultures, also. But he did even more. He aided the cor porations to take away from the Commission the right to initiate proceedings against un reasonable rates —thus destroying, in part, the work of the great Texas Senator, Reagan. The railroads were eager to get rid of that provision of the Reagan bill, and Mr. Williams played into their hands. Any citizen can understand how much bet ter it was for the people to invest the Com merce Commission with the power to com mence proceedings on their own motion, than to put upon individual sufferers the expense and labor of instituting the contest for just rates. In stripping the Commission of that power which the Reagan bill had already given, John Sharp Williams did a mighty good thing for the railroads —and a mighty bad thing for the victims of unjust transportation charges. When a Congressman makes a record of which the foregoing is a fair sample, he can not find fault with the editor who classes him, as I do John Sharp Williams, with the cor poration doodle-bugs. WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN A Nevuspaper Devoted to the Advocacy of the Jeffersonian Theory of Government. PUBLISHED BY THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON, Editors and Proprietors Temple Court Building, Atlanta, Ga. ATLANTA, GEORGIA, THURSDAY, JULY 25, 1907. Look Out, Tinley! Week by week, the Southern Railroad con tinues to lengthen its Death roll. On July 10th, the dead man’s name was Aiken, the freight train engineer. On July 15th the victims included Labor Agent George Moore, and “six unidentified ne groes,” killed at Johnson City, Tenn.—passen ger train at 50 miles per hour runhing into switch engine. Scarcely a week passes without these re ports of persons wounded or persons killed on the Southern Railroad. It has been so for years. It will continue to be so as long as these Wall Street rascals who own the road are allowed to run it for Dividends only. • Why don’t they have first-class road-bed and bridges? , Why don’t they quit employing- cheap men to do work involving skill and responsibility? Why don’t they quit working their train crews beyond the limit of human endurance? Why don’t they adopt the automatic switch man, and the automatic block system? Why don’t they carry the railroad above, or beneath, the dirt road, and thus abolish tho death-trap at the grade-crossing? Why don’t they quit employing lobbyists and lawyers and editors to misrepresent the facts, resist reasonable reforms, and oppose needed legislation ? Why don’t they quit fighting the law, and go to obeying it? Why don’t they quit ridiculing and denounc-. ing Public Opinion, and begin to respect it as the judgment of the many? Utterly foolish is the present attitude of W. W. Finley, President of the Southern Rail road. Utterly non-sane is the state of mind of J. S. B. Thompson, assistant to Finley. Instead of listening with respect to such pa pers and magazines'as the Jeffersonian, which only asks them to obey the law and to exer cise reasonable diligence in avoiding the slaughter of human beings, these men are pos sessed by a consuming hatred of any citizen who tells them plainly that they are criminals when they violate the laws. Would it not be wiser for W. W. Finley to deal with the facts, and to recognize the fatu ous recklessness of persisting in his defiance of law and of Public Opinion? Had not J. S. B. Thompson better listen tc reason and change the methods which now prevail, before he is nabbed with a warrant charging him with the murder of some victim of his criminal negligence? Watch out, Finley! Watch out, Thompson! The Joe Terrell regime is a thing of the past, and ybu had better make a note of the fact. Let the Jeffersonian give you a piece of ad vice : Concern yourselves less about squeezing out un-Godly profits for your Yankee bosses, and pay more attention to equipping your roads and trains with those well-known life-, SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: SI.OO PER TEAR Advertising Rates Furnished on Application. Entered at Postage e, Atlanta, Ga., January 11, IQQ7, at second clast mail matter. saving appliances which ORDINARY CARE AND DILIGENCE DEMAND OF YOU— else, as sure as the world stands, you, Finley, and you, Thompson, will have to face twelve men in a box, SWORN ON THE HOLY BOOK TO TRY YOU FOR MURDER! n n »? Why Don 9 t They Plead "Confiscatory 99 ? We clip the following from The Atlanta Constitution: “SAW MILLS WILL BE SHUT DOWN TO REMAIN CLOSED A MONTH. “Georgia-Florida Saw Mill Owners Take Rad ical Action. “Atlantic Beach, Fla., July 15. —By a vote of 27 to 7 the Georgia-Florida Saw Mill Asso ciation today decided to shut down all saw mills owned or operated by members of the association for one month, beginning Au gust 1. “This action was taken on account of low prices of lumber, the mill men claiming that the high prices paid by them for tim ber lands and the prices received for their out put cause them to operate at a loss. They will endeavor to secure similar action by all other yellow pine lumber associations in the southeast.” Now, the thing which puzzles me is this, why doesn’t the Georgia-Florida Saw Mill As sociation have its lawyers go before some Fed eral Judge, point out what tax laws, tariff laws, freight rates, and other little things, prevent the lumber-men from earning net prof its, and ask the Judge to set aside these im pertinent obstructions to profits, upon the ground that they are “CONFISCATORY”? True, the mill-men refer to the high prices paid for timber land as the reason why they cannot make net earnings, but that reason is not convincing. A railroad corporation would never make its knock at thaf point. A railroad is never heard to declare that its failure to make net profits is due to anything but the law. A railroad lawver never wastes his intellect puzzling over the prices paid for crossties, steel rails, car materials, locomotives and right of wav. He never sets up as a reason for loss of profits, that he has to nav too much for any of these things. Always his plea is that the law of the state has confiscated his property because, in fixing a reasonable freight or pas senger rate, it has cut out net profits. Whv don’t the saw-mill men follow the ex ample of the railroads? Whv don’t thev hitch up their lawvers and take a drive through the statute book? Can thev not allege that when the state char tered the railroads and authorized them to tav the lumber men THESE STATUTES WERE CONFISCATORY? If not. whv not? Tax laws arc alwavs Con fiscatory; and when the state authorized a railroad corporation to tax the lumber of a Saw Mill Cornnanv. it did a thing which invested one lot of men with the power to take the profits out of the business of an other. , j If, as the railroads claim, it is a Confiscation