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WATSON’S EDITORIALS
IgWgf WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN
1 Newspaper Demoted to the Advocacy of the Jeffersonian Theory of Government. \ 1
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*<z Editors and Proprietors (///
Temple Court Building, Atlanta, Ga. “ *“*“■ V?f W
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1907.
Bell Telephone Arrogance.
We rejoice in the fact that the Georgian
is going after the Atlanta end of the Bell Tel
ephone corporation.
It was high time that somebody should be
calling down the high-headed gentry who
manage that public utility.
Somewhere near the head of the manage
ment, in Atlanta, is an insolent and arrogant
little autocrat who deserves to be hung up by
the thumbs on one of his own lines.
He has a mean way of “ordering out” the
Phones when people don’t do to suit him.
If you had a claim for any amount against
the Bell Telephone Company, you would have
a sweet time getting your money. The red
tape, the letters to and fro, the auditing, the de
lays long drawn out, would wear you to a fraz
zle. Unless the claim is a big bne, it will pay
you to make any of these Yankee corpora
tions a present of it, rather than try to collect
it.
If they smash your freight, or let your
peaches rot, or lose a bale of your cotton or
fail to deliver a telegram, or overcharge on
Express parcels, you find it almost impossible
to get the thing attended to, and the claim
paid.
But if you happen to owe one of these Yan
kee concerns a dollar or so —Lord, how they
make you dance! They don’t want any red
tape delaying them. They can’t wait for any
system of auditing accounts to grind their
meat into sausage.
No sirree, Bob!
You must go down into your jeans, at once,
and get that money, or something bad will
happen to you.
With the Telephone Company this “some
thing bad,” means that a little stuck-up ty
rant in the head office “orders out” your
phone.
Then your business suffers, and you are in
convenienced; and you pay the bill, which
may be wrong, rather than endure the injury.
That’s what the mean little tyrant counted
on when he “ordered out” your Phone.
It was a hold up, pure and simple; and the
morals of it are on a par with the morality
which is giving such a busy time to the pros
ecuting attorneys and the Standard Oil gang.
The Bell Telephone Company coolly moved
into my farm and set up its poles, and
stretched its wires for a mile over my land:
they never paid a cent; they had no legal right
to be there ; their legal attitude is that of TOL
ERATED TRESPASSERS. Any day that I
get ready, I can go there, chop down those
poles, AND THROW THE BELL TELE
PHONE COMPANY OFF MY PROP
ERTY.
Yet, because I wanted to wait until I could
ascertain why an unpaid February bill should
turn up in June, when I had receipted bills
down to May, my ’Phone was “ordered out,”
and my business made to suffer.
The Clerk in the office had more sense about
such matters than I have—so he knuckled
down to Gessler’s hat, and the Phone went in
again,. Had I been willing to inconvenience
thousands of innocent patrons of the Tele
phone Company, I would have given it a big
dose of its own medicine.
Those poles which it set up on my land,
without the slightest legal right to put them
there, would have been cut down and thrown
out.
I glory in the spunk of the Georgian. Let
it keep up the good fight. What we must
teach these Yankee corporations is this:
They are not private owners of private util
ities. They are operating PUBLIC UTILI
TIES. Their power is granted by the state,
in order that they may serve the people.
When the State gave them power, the State
imposed Duties. Neglect the duty, and the
power IS FORFEITED.
•t R R
Populism and Misrepresentation.
Certain newspapers have been representing
Mr. Watson as having said that he “held the
Democratic Party in the hollow of his hand.”
How can respectable editors secure their
own consent to publish such absurdities?
Mr. Watson has neither said, nor written,
nor imagined, anything of the kind.
In a cheerful and invigorating correspond
ence which he had with Bishop Candler, some
weeks ago, Mr. Watson reminded the Bishop
that it was an out-of-date impropriety to al
lude disrespectfully to us poor old Pops. The
reason why it is no longer proper to fling any
flouts in our direction is that you are likely
to hit some of the recent arrivals, who are not
used to being pelted with mud and things, as
we old Pops are.
There’s our strenuous President who can’t
sleep soundly at night unless he has busted
another Trust during the day—isn’t he mighty
close to where we old Pops fought, bled and
died? Then there’s William J. Nebraska, who
is so eager to measure up to our standard that
he is worrying his guardians, guides, philoso
phers and friends, immensely, by preaching
what old Judge Culbertson of Texas plaintive
ly asked me about, in 1892: “Watson, what is
this here d—d Initiative and Referendum?”
Then there is our brand new Governor of
Georgia, who meant to be a good old Pop,
himself—only his friends in the Legislature
wouldn’t let him; nevertheless, he is moving
toward camp as fast as liis accoutrements will
permit.
So, you see, if you go to chunking mud
balls at us old Pops, you are apt to bespat
ter some mighty nice folks.
The fact is-—everything is coming our way.
What we said about wrongs and abuses fif
teen years ago, is being recognized as alarm
ingly true. What we said about the necessity
of putting some of the big criminals behind
the bars, is now being repeated by Cabinet Of
ficers and College Presidents. What we said
about the enormities of class-legislation, is
now being accepted at its face value.
Good men, of all parties, are seeing more
clearly every day that they misunderstood us.
And they misunderstood us because their
newspapers misrepresented us. And their
newspapers misrepresented us, because the pol
iticians and the corporations that had a cinch
on the situation did not want to loosen the
band. *
p
What Mr. Watson did say, in the last let
ter of the Candler correspondence, was that
“POPULISM holds the Democratic Party
in the hollow of its hand.” In other words,
the principles have triumphed.
One of the last editorials Mr. Watson wrote
for The People’s Party Paper, in 1898, put his
friends upon notice that in his judgment noth
ing further could be done by party organiza
tion.
Fusion and the Spanish War had knocked
us out —as a political party.
Mr. Watson predicted, in that editorial, that
the Principles would survive, would come
again, and would win their way.
He us£d the expression then, in 1898, which
Clark Howell used in the editorial which he
wrote for the Constitution and which stirred
up such a variety of comment:
“Populism will hereafter do its work as a
leaven to the loaf.”
Few political predictions have been more
completely verified.
r r r
Judge Hines 9 Appointment.
In selecting James K. Hines to represent the
people of Georgia before our new Railroad
Commission, Governor Hoke Smith has chosen
a capable man, an honest man, and a deserv
ing man.
For seventeen years, Judge Hines has been
one of the most prominent, useful and level
headed leaders of the Reform movement which
at last triumphed in the election of Governor
Smith.
We do not claim that Col. Peek was elect
ed when he was candidate for Governor in
1892; nor that Seab Wright was elected in
1896; but we know that Hines was elected in
1894. He was kept from serving as Governor
just as Mr. Watson was kept from going back
to Congress. In Watson’s’ case, Boykin
Wright stuffed the ballot boxes of Augusta
with twelve thousand bogus ballots; in Hines’
case, the Atkinson managers held back the Re
turns until they could be doctored.
Every well-informed man in Georgia knows
that Maj. J. C. C. Black had no moral or legal
right to represent the Tenth District in Con
gress. Every well-informed man knows that
W. Y. Atkinson had no legal or moral right to
the Governorship in 1894.
We say this without bitterness, but we say
it, nevertheless. It is good to have the people
reminded of actual facts.
The Democratic managers who incited ir
responsible and hot-headed boys to pelt Gen
eral James B. Weaver with rotten eggs in
Macon, and to howl Watson down in Augusta
and Atlanta, WERE RECEIVING CAM
PAIGN FUNDS FROM THE SAME NEW
YORK GANG WHICH ORDERED BRYAN
AND THE NEBRASKA DEMOCRATS TO
CAST THEIR BALLOTS FOR THIS
SAME JAMES B. WEAVER.
Political managers who were capable of
ordering Bryan to vote for Weaver in Nebras
ka, while they encouraged the disorderly
youngsters to rotten-egg him in Georgia, were
capable of anything.
And there was little, in the way of political
crime, they did not do.