Watson's weekly Jeffersonian. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1907, October 17, 1907, Page PAGE SEVEN, Image 7

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feted for sale the numerous products of farm, orchard and garden. And the farmers arc assisting each other in a way that insures success to the entire community. They are helping to bear one another’s burdens. Lopez island is one of the divisions of San Juan county. It is an ideal land of dairies, farms and orchards. Every variety of fruits and vegeta bles produced in the Puget sound ba sin grow in profusion on the island. The surplus is shipped to Seattle for a market In order that the best prices may be obtained, the farmers . are united for the common interest of all concerned. The telephone is the beginning of concerted action along all the lines of disposing of farm produce and the purchasing of manufactured articles. It marks an important era in the industries of the island, And those farmers have set a good example for other agricultural communities to follow in the work of co-operation.—Post Intelligencer. COTTON IN THE FAR EAST. Prof. IL B. Hulburt says the Jap anese are absorbing lands in South ern Corea for the purpose of growing cotton in that part of the world. The Japanese are intelligent, and they are not entering upon a cotton growing contest with nature arrayed solidly against them. They see at least a probability of success, and possibly experiments have demonstrated th° feasibility of the scheme. Corea reaches southward to the thirty-fourth degree of latitude, which is just about the latitude of Birmingham and Cen tral Alabama. There seems, therefore, to be no climatic reason why cotton cannot be grown in Corea. It is free ly grown in China, but all of the Chinese product is consumed at home. All that Japan lacks in order to control the cotton trade of the Far- East is an ample home-grown supply of raw cotton. She can spin nr/* weave it cheaper than we can, because labor is lower-priced than it if. here or in England or on the continent. She is, too, near untold millions of consumers—at least 400,000.000. She has mills, and she has the ambition to build more, and all she lacks today is the staple itself. If cotton can be grown in Southern Corea, the Japanese will assuredly grow it, and she may therefore wrest from us the entire cotton goods trade of the Far East before we can dig the canal. This, however, is one of the ups and downs of this world, and if we cannot sell goods in the Far East we can certainly sell them in South America and in some of the isles of the seas. American cotton is still in the ring. AS WORKINGMEN MUST SEE * * < IT. Are there two kinds of law ir the United States —one for the rich man and one for the poor man! Are the petty thief and the poor criminal to be promptly and adequately pun ished, while the rich thief and the powerful criminal go unpunished, save for an occasional fine during La stress of aroused public opinion! B Ire members of organized laboi to 3 prosecuted for capital crimes on ‘■abious testimony, while rich and Powerful mine-owners can bribe leg islatures, can appoint governors and ■ State supreme court judges, can openly, defiantly, and violently t rum ple under foot State and Federal WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN. laws, and with the aid of governor and militia—the latter confessedly in the pay of the mine-owners—sus pend the writ of habeas corpus, nul lify all civil law, depose civil offi cers, deport citizens, suppress news papers, destroy property, and create ‘‘lawful” anarchy—with absolute impunity and without even a pre tense of prosecution by State or Fed eral authority! From the viewpoint of organized labor and its sympathizers, those questions constituted the real issue in the Boise trial. This fact ex plains the deep and widespread sus picion and the expressed bitterness against “the State”—that is, the prosecution—in the Boise trial, and the denunciation of President Roose velt for his untimely and unfortu nate classification of the three ac cused men as “undesirable citizens.” It is dangerous and unpatriotic to minimize the industrial revelations of the trial at Boise. Yet the labor troubles in Colorado and in Idaho are different only in degree from what happened in the street railway strike at San Francisco, fiom what happened in the Homestead tragedy, in the anthracite coalmining strikes, in the railway union strike at Chica go, and in a hundred other strikes of less impression on the public mem ory. On the part of organized labor, what is the meaning of this unmis takable lack of faitn in law’ and gov ernment, of this too ready resort to primitive and barbaric methods to obtain justice—as its members see it! On the part of organized capital, what is the meaning of this generally insidious, but when necessary, fla grant and defiant vio’ation and usurpation of law and government ? Surely, it is not merely a contention between employers and employes as to whether or not wages shall be temporarily increased or reduced? Is not the present attitude of or ganized capital and of organized la bor the outgrowth of a different method of doing business on a large scale, of a different spirit in iudns trial and in commercial enterprises-- the different method and the differ ent spirit being the product of the marvelous growth of corporations, es pecially of trusts! Professedly, a trust is formed to reduce the cost of production and to establish and to maintain prices that will be just and fair to consumer and to producer alike. In reality, a trust is formed to crush out competition, to control the supply of the raw ma terial and of the finished product, to reduce wages, to make the price of the product as high as the public will stand, and to limit the disbursement of profits to as few persons as is practicable—in short, to prey on the necessities of the people, to subordi nate humanity to money. Are not the violence of labor trou bles in the last twenty-five years, and the almost universal and unanimous condemnation of the high-handed methods of railroads and all other monopolistic corporations—aie not these an expression of a profound popular discontent caused by the glaring injustice of special privilege on the one side, and of constantly lessening industrial opportunity on the other! Is not President Roosevelt’s wonderful popularity due to the fact that be has called a halt on the abuse of corporate powers, and has de manded at least the regulation of a few special privileges! Are not the bitterness of organ ized labor and the strong popular feeling against monopolistic corpo rations potent proof that the world old struggle is now being waged in this country mere openly and more fiercely than ever before —the strug gle between those who earn without getting and those who get without earning! Do not the masses of the Ameri can people plainly see that now, as never before in our history, all men are not equal before the law! It is universal knowledge that the officers of three of the largest in surance companies in the world used trust-funds for speculative purposes, opened their treasuries to the devo tees of “high finance,” to the Wall street sheep-shearers—all for greed, for private gain. Not even one of fender has been puished. The few men that autocratically control the railroads of the country have brazenly violated law and equity, have treated the public with defiant insolence, and have main tained lobbies to corrupt State legis latures and Congresses. Yet the rail roads owe their very existence to spe cial privileges granted by the people; and every dollar used to build, to equip and to operate the roads has been furnished by the people, direct ly or indirectly. These same railroad autocrats hav'. “won” hundreds of millions of dol lars by juggling railroad stocks in Wall street, while the service and the equipment of the roads were not capable of handling the freight of fered them. There is no record of any stock manipulator or railroad president being punished. “Watering stock” is a favorite pastime of “high finance.” Water ing stock is but another name f v stealing; it is taking money and giv ing nothing for it. Yet it pl nP oq ■ heavy secret tax on the American people and their posterity. All n? these hundreds of millions of fiat stock must pav dividends, and the American people will do the paying in the name of legitimate earnings, but in fact for extortionate charges. A small group of men, dealing in pub lic utilities and domestic necessaries, have made hundreds of millions by watering stock. No stock-waterer, no dealer in fictitious property, has yet seen the inside of a prison, by op eration of law. The prices of nearly all the neces saries and the commodities of life are arbitrarily fixed by trusts. As a trust means no competition—abso lute control of the supply—the American people have no other course open to them than to submit to be ing “lawfully” robbed. Notwith standing his hold-up methods of money-making, the trust magnate continues to be an eminently respect able and exemplary citizen. The American people have been plucked of hundreds of millions of dollars by means of the “Dingley bill,” a protective tariff law passed by a pre-election bribed Congress, in consideration of the munificent con tributions in the first McKinley- Bryan camnaign— a bargain and sale that has no parallel in history for its audacity in deliberately taxing all the people for the benefit of the few. After “swollen fortunes” had been taken from the pockets of the peo ple, the “Dingley bill” promoters and beneficiaries formed trusts, cre ated monopolies, and wound up by issuing hundreds of millions of stock without adding a dollar to the act ual value of the plants. By the judicious use of a small percentage of this special privilege tax, the “protective” tariff benefi ciaries have been successful, up to date, in keeping Congress in a “stand pat” attitude, and the special taxation of all the people for the benefit of the few still goes indus triously and merrily on. There is no more bitter sarcasm nor mocking humor than the tariff beneficiaries’ plea that the “protec' ive” tariff is for the protection of the American workingman. It is true that the American workingman has wrested from employers higher wages than ever before; but this is through the efforts and the sacrifices of organized labor. It is true that he is better fed, better clothed, and better housed than those of his own class and occupation in other coun tries; but he is a much more compe tent and valuable workman than the foreign wage laborer. Nevertheless the American work ingman is worried, and he has been led to do some thinking and investi gating; first, because 14,000.000 girls and women in the United States find it necessary to labor; second, be cause his share of “unprecedented prosperity” does not abide with him, but is taken from him by the greatly increased cost of living—the tariff protected trusts being the largest beneficiaries of this increased cn«t. He sees that there are two distinct classes of citizens; the producing class and the exploiting class. He sees the shining lights of “high fi nance,” of stock watering, of pub lic franchise huckstering, of special privilege, and of graft of all kinds and degrees, lined up in the front tanks of the exploiting class—the class that has added nothing to the nation’s happiness or to its material welfare, but that has debauched pri vate and public morals at home, and has disgraced the nation abroad. He sees the stock jugglers, the stock waterers, the trust magnates, the tariff tax beneficiaries, the spe cial privilege recipients, parading their evidence of unlimited wealth. He sees them contributing with princely liberality to churches, to li braries, to colleges— to popularize and to perpetuate the present system of protective tariff, trusts, and “high finance.” He sees them with their villas and their castles at home and abroad, their public post offices with in their private grounds, their pri vate cars, their yachts, their banks, their railroads, their newspapers, their lobbies in and out of the legis latures and of Congress. He sees them on intimate terms with law makers and federal judges, even hob nobbing with royalty. He sees all this, and he feels that he pays a large part of the toll, very much against his will. He is not envious of the so-called plutocrats because they have “lots of money”; but he is convinced that lots of their money is other people'- money, for which they gave no valtm and to which they have no moral right. (Continued on Page Fifteen.) PAGE SEVEN