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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 FUBLJSH£D B * SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: SI.OO PER TEAR t/m^W > THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON, Advertising Rates Furnished on Application. *<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.