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as were never before reaped in legit imate industry. We have made it possible for one man to amass rich es until his wealth is greater than that of King Solomon. We have been blindly voting to support a system which enables the poorest section of the union to become the richest, while the richest section in natural wealth has become the poorest. “We have gone like fools to the polls and held up with our ballots a system which gives the one privil eged corporation—the Steel Trust— greater net profits than can be earned by ten million workers on five mil lion farms. “We have reeled in political drun kenness as we followed leaders who made us vote for a system which gives to the privileged few, engaged in manufacturing, net profits, every year, of 6 per cent on the invest ment, and two billion dollars be sides; whereas the ten million work ers in agricultural pursuits have made no net profit at all. “This, and more of the same sort, is disclosed by the government itself in its statistical abstract. What are you going to do about it? Farmers Should Take Lead. “You, whose year-round toil pro duces the food and raiment of the world, live within a few days of des titution, and your children are often clad in tattered rags. You, who real ly produce the wealth of the union, are allowed to have enough to live on, and that’s all. You haven’t got any surplus. Many of you are in debt. You can’t school your children as you want to do. Your wives and daughters live harder lives than they ought to live, and they are broken in health and beauty at an age when they ought to be’ in their prime. There is the pinch of poverty in yor.r homes, when there ought to be com fort and plenty. God never meant that a few should grind, oppress ard plunder the many. Nature has no such law anywhere in all the myriad leaves of her great book. Such laws are made by men—men who are grasping and cruel, men who have no proper sense of justice, men whose selfishness knows no rule of right, men whose god is gold, men who would trample the light out of a mil lion cottages to illuminate some New port or New York palace. “But what about you? “Who shall be able to sum up in words the immensity of your own folly? You are the men who are to blame for the fix in which you find yourselves. You are the men whose ballots did the business. “Who killed Cock Robin? Who slew your prosperity? You did it. You did it by your fanatical devo tion to party names; your blind ad herence to sectional prejudices, your refusal to use your own eyes to see actual facts, your boundless credul ity in believing all that the political leaders told you. “Do you tell me that you can’t price raw cotton when you sell, nor manufactured cotton when you buy? “My answer is, ‘Nobody’s .to blame but you.’ “When I was at school I soon learned that if I didn’t want every blessed boy in the bunch to run over me I had to do some fighting. Each of you had the same experience, I guess. What is true of the individ ual is true of the class. A man who is too weak to stand up for his own rights is not permitted to have any. A class that is so unwise as to let every other class exploit it will go hungry and naked into a permanent hopeless degradation. Organization Imperative. “To advance their class interest, capitalists throughout the world are organized, and whenever the thing which organized capital wants is in politics, organized capital goes into politics after it. “To advance the class interest, la bor throughout the world is organ ized, and whenever the thing which labor wants is in politics, labor goes into politics after it. “The federal government could never bring itself to see the eight hour law, which I hoped to pass in 1392, until Samuel Gompers, the pure, able, patriotic leader, went right into politics with the matter. “Then Uncle Sam saw the law mighty plainly, and went to enforc ing it. “Along the lines of class interest *he agricultural millions have never been fully organized, and the conse quences are that the agricultural class is the beast of burden for all the oth ers. “What better slaves could the ex ploiters of labor want than the agri cultural workers are? You men of the farms—do you not produce larger crops of cotton and corn than your slave niggers ever did? “And you don’t get much more.out of it than the niggers got. You, a*, a class, work for your victuals and clothes. And when you fall sic’-, those who exploit you don’t eve i have to send the doctor to you, as you sent one to the sick nigger. “Modern commercialism neither takes care of its wounded nor buries its dead. ‘No quarter’ is its terri ble watchword, and besides its year’; piles of slaughtered men, women and children the bloody harvest of Get tysburg seems insignificant. And you are to blame for it. “You could have voted for good laws, instead of bad; good men, in stead of bad; prudent, economical administration, instead of the mad dest extravagance and waste in na tional and state affairs. “B t you are going to do better in the future. God grant it! You couldn’t do much worse if you tried. “Well, what are you going to do? Organize, build warehouses, estab lish newspapers, send out speakers, fix the price of what we sell and so forth. “All of that sounds well. But. look here! Suppose while you are fixing the price of what you sell the other fellow is fixing the price of what you buy—how about that? Can he not slide his figures up as fast as you slide yours? Fifteen cents for cotton and a dollar or two for wheat are refreshing, but suppose we have to pay more for all wo buy, in pro portion to the advanced price of cot ton and wheat? In that case, w« move about a good deal, but we don’t go anywhere. We are active, but not progressive. Like mules in the old-fashioned gin, we walk all day, but we don’t travel, and, when night comes, our path is beaten into a very nice circle, but some other fellow has gotten away with the lint. We ar<* the mules, mighty patient mules at that; and we keep going round and WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN. round, all the days of our lives, and we are thankful when the horn blows for dinner, just as the mules used to be. “As a class, we get just what the mules got—regular feed in return for pulling the machinery which turns out wealth for our masters. “No ginhouse that was ever built was put together with a stronger pur pose to benefit the owner of the mules—him, and not the mules! — than was our system of class legisla tion constructed for the definite pur pose of enabling the beneficiaries of special privilege to get rich and stay rich at the expense of the agricul tural classes. “Leave this class legislation like it is, and your Farmers’ Union will be like the quack doctor who tries to cure impure blood by putting salve on the sores. “Never in the world will our gov ernmental system restore normal and happy conditions to our people until we are given constitutional treatment. We must remove the source of the disease. We must drive from the body the cause of the sickness. Iniquitous Class Legislation. “What is the cause? “It can be summed up in one word, class-legislation. “We have legislated in favor of those who asked something special, and in every ease where the govern ment has granted a special privilege it has been done, necessarily, at the expense of the common weal. The government has nothing of its own to give away, and therefore when it legislates in favor of some, giving them advantages not possessed bv all. there is something gained by those who are favored and lost by those not favored. Equitable Taxation a Necessity. 1. An equitable system of national taxation is surely a prime necessity. “Have we got it? No! “One of the most extravagant gov ernments the world ever saw is sup ported in its wastefulness bv a svs tetm of national taxation which is al most incredibly unjust. It does not tax accumulated wealth. It does not tax large incomes. It does not tax vast landed possessions, gorgeous pal aces, mines of silver and gold, or any other form which tangible values take. “It does not tax the collossal cor porations whose revenues exceed those of the government itself. Tt exacts no tribute from insurance companies, express companies, bank ing companies, telegraph and tele graph and telephone companies, tail road and Pullman car companies. “What the government does is to make ns pay the tax when we buy the necessities of life, and under such a system the rich pay less than the poor. ’’ “A more infamously unfair p”- rangement never had the respectable name of law. Sound Financial System Needed. “2. A sound financial system is certainly another absolute necessity. “Have we got it? No. “The monev of the constitution is no longer good monev. Those wh.i favor a restoration of the system of Jefferson, Hamilton, Washinvto’-*. Jackson and Benton are c»ll.>d ‘cranks.’ Who calls us that? Whv. the spokesmen and writers who rep resent the organized bankers. These gentlemen assure us that gold is the only good money for final payment; that paper money is dishonest, cheap and nasty, when issued by the gov ernment, but nice and clean and cor rect when issued by themselves. “Furthermore, that the government acts justly and wisely when it taxes a hundred million dollars surplus out of the pockets of the people and gives it to a few pet bankers to use it in their business. “The Farmers’ Union could not do better than to plant themselves on the ‘money of the constitution’ as their demand, and to educate and agitate for a system that will be something more than a trap in which the favored few catch all the bal ance of us. Equal Control of Business. 3. That no man’s business should be legislated into an advantage over the business of other men is surely a correct principle. “ Equal and exact justice to all men,’ applies to every relation exist ing between the government and the governed. “Have we got it? We have al ready seen how the exploiters of the special privileges have made laws to their own advantage, with ruinous consequences to the unprivileged. “That the Farmers’ Union will combat, by resolution and vote, the injustice of our protective system there can be no doubt. Their own self-preservation demands it. “Not until you get broader mar kets will your products command bet ter prices. Not until you wage war upon the wall-builders and breach those walls, will you have broader markets. Not until you make an en trance for the stranger who wants to compete with the wall-builders can you prevent those robbers from run ning up the price of what you buv, to offset any advance of price in what you sell. “Out of many more matters that might be discussed I will select but one more. Public Ownership. “4. It is the matter of public util ities. That which is essentially pub lic in its nature should be owned and controlled by the public. We can allow the private alley, but we could never tolerate the private ownership of our main streets. We are willing to respect the owner’s rights to the private road through his place, but we cannot allow private ownership of the public road. You may own the creek, but not the navigable riv er. The boat is mine, but the deep water lake belongs to us all. The ship is yours, but the ocean belongs to mankind. “In this day of marvelous develop ment along certain lines, we have got things mixed. Individuals like Har riman and Morgan and Gould are in control of public utilities—such as railroads, telegraphs and telephones. All these public utilities must be fairly assessed, honestly paid for and taken over by the public for the use of us all on equal terms. “Witness the breakdown of pri vate ownership of these public utili ties. Part of the railroads are defy ing the states. The president is try ing to bring the Harriman crowd in to respect for the law, while a num ber of southern governors are trying (Continued on Page Fourteen.) PAGE SEVEN