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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.”