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W A TSON’S EDITORIALS
feyWgf WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN
Newspaper Demoted to the Advocacy of the Jeffersonian Theory of Government, 1
published BY SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: SI.OO PER TEAR JO®? I
//THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON, Advertising Rates Furnished on Application.
Editors and Proprietors Uy/£§Vr
*'?/• \Y S ' Temple Court Building, Atlanta, Ga. dan mad mattar. \r'
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 1907.
"The Union Nelvs. ”
Hon. R. F. Duckworth, President of the
Farmers’ Union of Georgia, conducts a live
wire newspaper at Barnesville.
Taking a broad and generous view of the
field in which the reform leaders are to march
their troops and fight their battles, Mr. Duck :
worth sees that the Watson publications can
do a work which the papers of the Farmers’
Union may not be quite free to do, but which
must, nevertheless, be done. Therefore, Mr.
Duckworth, writing editorially in his excellent
paper, “The Union News,” stresses that point
and urges the Union papers throughout the
country to give it consideration.
We hope that they will. Mr. Watson asks
nothing of the Farmers’ Union save the priv
ilege of enlisting for service. He wants no
office, and will never embarrass it with any
aim of personal ambition. As long as the Farm
ers’ Union stands where it does today, Mr.
Watson wants foot-room, right there. With
all his strength he will help the movement
on because he knows that it is right. He
doesn’t think anything about it—he KNOWS
that the movement is right.
Consequently, he is with it, and for it, on
principle and conviction —not for reward, or
the hope thereof.
And as Mr. Duckworth says, the Watson
publications occupy a patch of their own in*
the big field of reform. Perhaps, Mr. Watson
and Mr. Nye can attend to that particular
patch better than any Farmers’ Union paper
could do it. The Watson publications are not
hampered by any rules of any organization.
They arc foot loose and fancy free. Whatso
ever they believe it to be right and proper to
say, upon any earthly subject, they will say.
And the time will come when the useful
ness of just such publications as Mr. Wat
son and Mr. Nyc are conducting, will be uni
versally recognized.
The good wind that comes from the Un
known, sighs upon our fevered brows a mo
ment, and then goes into the Unknown again
and forever, carries the pollen that fructi
fies; and it may be that, in the mysterious ways
of God the vast corn-fields in which the gal
lant comrades of the Farmers’ Union faithfully
toil, will be laden with a harvest whose pollen
was viafted from just such patches as that oc
cupied by the Watson publications.
For, after all is said and done, unjust con
ditions cannot be changed without a change
of laws; and laws cannot be changed, in a
without a straight, brave, intelligent
march to the ballot box.
“What shall we do to be saved?”—cry the
oppressed masses.
To whom the Statesman replies, “Quit vot-
ing like fools, and go to voting like men of
sense.”
In a land where the road to the ballot-box
is open, there is no excuse for bad laws, no
excuse for thieves and rascals in office, no
excuse for dynamite and bombs and assas
sination.
The people have themselves to blame for
letting their government fall into evil ways.
The people themselves can work out their
own salvation, if they will but try.
The Farmers’ Union is on the right line—
let it grow, LET IT GROW, until its power
is established throughout the Union; until it
embraces the agricultural class of all sections;
until it destroys the class-legislation which en
ables the manufacturer to rob the farmer; until
it compels the national government to lay its
taxes upon accumulated wealth and swollen
incomes; until it breaks up the outrageous
monopoly enjoyed by the National Banks; un
til it gives us the referendum on legislation and
the right to recall the office-holder who be
trays his trust; until it gives the average man
access to money at a low rate of interest so
that Usury may no longer prey upon Industry
—denying honest labor the reward of a com
fortable living and an individual home.
The Farmers’ Union forbids partisan poli
tics. That’s right. But the Union denies no
man the right to vote —and if the organized
farmers of America don’t quit voting the tick
ets put out by the exploiters of Special Priv
ilege, they will deserve to get, in the future,
what they have been getting ever since the
Civil war—a systematic national robbery
which allows to the goose just enough to
stimulate the silly fowl to keep on laying
golden eggs.
X * *
WATSON’S PUBLICATIONS.
We were very much gratified at the sentiment
expressed at our state convention by resolutions
passed endorsing the publications of Hon. Thomas
E. Watson.
The members of the Farmers’ Union should hold
up the hands of this chieftain by subscribing to his
publications. He is now, and has been for years
and years, fighting the people’s fight, and they should
show their appreciation of his publications by sub
scribing for them.
We were asked at our state convention if the
advocating of our people’s publications would not
reduce or lessen the circulation of the Union News.
To all who have such an idea we want to say most
emphatically that there is no excuse for its doing so.
Mr. Watson is fighting, has been fighting for years
along the lines of political reform. His positions
are sound on questions of political economy, and
while we cannot endorse the political position of
any man, we can unhesitatingly endorse Mr. Watson
as a Political Economist. The Union News is an
agricultural paper. WS are to show special
favors to agriculture and agricultural interests. We
are to discuss things that are of interest to agricul
turists from a commercial standpoint, and there is
not a farmer, according to our way of thinging, in
the south, but what woqjd be profited by reading both
publications.
We want to emphasize that it is our sincere wish
that our readers read the publications of Mr. Wat
son. —Hon. R. F. Duckworth, in Union News.
n n n
John Temple Grab 2s 9 Tditorial.
Last week we re-published one of Mr.
Graves’ most striking leaders.
That the brilliant editor of the Georgian
should express himself generously concern
ing Mr. Watson, is natural enough, for Mr.
Graves’ loyalty is of the kind that stands all
tests, and is never more conspicuous than
when some storm of abuse and misrepresenta
tion is beating upon the head of his friend.
Mr. Graves knows how the event proved thU
correctness of the position taken by himself
and ether friends of Mr. Watson in 1896, when
they warned the Bryanites that they would,
in defeat, pay the penalty for breach of faith,
if they set aside the St. Louis compromise,
and tried to snatch for Bryan and Sewall a
prize that was meant for Bryan and Watson.
Few episodes in American politics reek
with a ranker perfidy than the treatment of
the Middle-of-the-Road Populists in that
campaign.
The humiliations heaped upon the Populist
nominee, the manner in which he was insulted
by Chairman Jones of the Bryan Committee
and betrayed by Marion Butler of the Popu
list Committee, are almost unprecedented
even in the cruel records of partisan politics.
A change of a few thousand votes, in the
doubtful South-west, would have made Bryan
President. Instead of stumping these states
in company with Watson, Mr. Bryan was
amusing himself with spectacular invasions
of “the enemy’s country,” and with dallyings
with Sewall, up in Maine.
Disgusted and indignant, the Mid-Road Pop
ulists either stayed at home, or voted for
McKinley. Had Bryan stoutly held on to the
St. Louis compromise, of Bryan and Watson,
those very Populists who made McKinley’s
election possible would have made Bryan’s
election certain.
I he Republicans, themselves, were in a state
of dismay and panic immediately after the
St. Louis compromise, and they did not recover
from this discouragement until Chairman
James K. Jones published his asinine letter,
telling the Populists they “could go to the
niggers where they belonged.”
For that gross and unprovoked insult, Bryan
was made to suffer. Perhaps justly. He
could have rebuked his Chairman; or he should
have entered a disclaimer; and he might have
made everything satisfactory, without either
rebuke or disclaimer, by openly ratifying the
St. Louis bargain.
But Bryan did neither of those three pos
sible things. On the contrary, he went off to
New England to dally with Sewall —whose
own son was making speeches for McKinley.
Now the sum and substance of Mr. Graves’
editorial of last week is this:
“Don’t let us make, in 1908, the same mis
takes that gave McKinley the Presidency in
1896.”