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PAGE EIGHT
THE
Weekly Jeffersonian
PUBLISHED BY
THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON
Editors and Proprietors
T»mpl® Court Building, Atlanta, Ga.
SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: - - SI.OO PER TEAR
Advertising Rates Furnished on Application.
Bnttnd nt Piittfitt, Atlanta, Ga., January It, IQO7, *t ttctnd clats mail matter
ATLANTA, GA., THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24. 1907
Why Not Let the Cat Out of the Bag ?
The following is clipped from one of the
daily papers:
“NEGRO RAILWAY MAIL CLERKS.
“So Many Colored Applicants Applying
Whites Dropping Out.
“Times-Dispatch Bureau, Munsey Building,
“Washington, D. C., Oct. 12.
“Confronting the Post Office Department is
a more or less annoying problem growing out
of the failure of white men to take the civil
service examinations for positions as railway
postal clerks. Heretofore no trouble has been
encountered in securing white men for this
service, but recently negroes have applied for
positions as railway mail clerks in such num
bers as to discourage, if not to stop, white ap
plicants from applying for positions in this
branch of the postal service.
“The immediate source of the worry now
being experienced by the Post Office Depart
ment is a report from the civil service examin
ers in a Southern city who held examinations
for positions in the railway postal service. Sev
en-eighths of the applicants were negroes, and
upon inquiry it was ascertained that white men
purposely refrained from the examinations on
account of the numerous negro applicants.”
Why does the Government beat about the
bush in this fashion? /
Why not tell the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth?
The reasons why self-respecting white men
are dissatisfied and disgusted with the Railway
Mail service are as follows:
(1) They are denied Freedom of Speech—a
right which the white man has always been
willing to fight for, and which he never willing
ly surrenders. These mail clerks are compell
ed to keep mum no matter how much railroad
rascality they see going on, and how, much
mismanagement which threatens their own
lives.
The Government forces the white mail
clerk into an attitude of guilty collusion with
Railroad rottenness, by telling such clerk that,
no matter what he sees, he keep his mouth
shut.
Now a self-respecting white knows that this
is an outrage upon him, as a free man, and
he bitterly resents it.
The nigger, of course, doesn’t care.
(2) The Government rents a cheaply con
structed pine-box car for the mail clerk to ride
in,, and puts this car near the engine. In a
wreck, this cheaply-built car is the first to be
smashed and to take fire. The mail-clerk
knows that his Government ought not to com
pel him to assume such fearful risks. He feels
the outrage and he resents it.
The nigger, of course, doesn’t care.
(3) When a white man reaches the end of
a long run, he is apt to eat at the
table where the negro mail clerk eats, and to
go to bed in the same bed from which the
negro clerk has just risen.
A self-respecting white knows that the Gov
ernment ought not to put this humiliation upon
him.
He feels that such a regulation is an out
rage, and he bitterly resents it.
The nigger, of course, doesn’t care.
WATSON’S WKIKLY JIFFKWONIWN.
If the Government does not want to utterly
degrade the railway mail service, it should
at once put all the negroes out, and treat the
white clerks like honorable men—and not like
slaves.
M H H
Whom the God's Would Destroy.
Any student of human affairs who has the
slightest gift of intuition, can see and feel that
we are at the end of one era, and at the be
ginning of another.
The huge Gulliver—the American people—is
tired of the cords with which he has been
bound by the little fellows, and he is going to
rise to his feet, snap the threads that have fas
tened him and chase the little fellows back
into their proper places.
The Corporations took advantage of the
Government during the Civil War, intrenched
themselves in Class-legislation, buttressed
-themselves with Special Privilege, and be
gan that frightful system of plundering the
many in the interest of the few which has re
sulted in such overgrown fortunes for the
favored, and such wide-spread misery for the
masses.
President Lincoln said that these heartless
marauders “ought to have their infernal heads
shot off,” but, most calamitously, it was he
that was shot.
How much the financiers whom he had
threatened, may have had to do with his as
sassination, only the Omnipotent who pierces
every mystery can know.
But Lincoln’s death was an immense benefit
to those kings of finance whose schemes he
understood and whose policies he detested.
From decade to decade, the banded Crimi
nals of High Finance have continued their en
croachments, reaching high-water-mark under
the second administration of Cleveland and the
Mark Hanna-McKinley regime.
The marauders divide, politically, in order
that they may divide the people, politically;
but the division of the marauders is stratdgjy.
Tom Ryan and August Belmont are Demo
crats who dominate the inner counsels of the
Democratic Party; and while the Republican
Party has its Harriman and its Rogers, there
was never a day when these two Republicans
deserved the penitentiary more richly than
does Belmont, who bought Parker’s nomina
tion, and Ryan, who carried the Virginia del
egation in his private car to the National Con
vention, to ratify what Belmont had done.
And High Finance criminals who appear
to divide, for a campaign, are always united
in purpose, plan and procedure.
Roosevelt is a shrewd observer. He saw that
a vast upheaval of the masses was preparing.
He saw that the wisest policy which conserv
atism could adopt, was that of frankly taking
the leadership of the radicals, and directing the
popular uprising toward practical, reasonable
reform, and away front the chaotic communism
proposed by the Socialists.
Such men as those at the head of the great
banking institutions, manufacturing establish
ments, and transportation companies ought to
have had sense enough to see that their salva- *
tion depended cn sanctioning the President’s
demand for a square deal and obedience to
law.
But they have been blind to the invincible
rapidity with which reform sentiment has
grown. Populism, which is nothing more than
the revival of Jeffersonian democracy, was set
back ten years by the idiotic Spanish« War; but
it reached its lowest ebb in 1904, when Fusion
in Nebraska and Kansas and Colorado had ab
sorbed the Populist machinery. So low had it
sunk that Belmont and Ryan thought it sate
to go into the market and buy the nomination
of Parker. This was their plan for getting rid
of both Hearst and Bryan, at the same time.
Their one risk was, that Bryan and Hearst
would raise the standard of revolt. But Bryan
“bowed his crested head and tamed his heart
of fire.” Bryan became a most earnest and
active Parker man.
As to Hearst, he went through the motion
of submitting to the Belmont-Ryan scheme,
but Parker did not gain many votes through
William Randolph Hearst.
The heart of Hearst was with Watson; and
the Hearst papers did so much for Watson
that Parker’s managers were kept in a more
or less blasphemous temper throughout the
campaign.
The election was no sooner over than every
one could see that Radicalism was taking on
new life. And it has grown steadily ever since.
This accounts for the attitude of Mr. Roose
velt.
Now, what are the banded Kings of High
Finance doing?
They are tempting fate.
They are daring the lightning.
They are acting as insanely as the leaders
of the slave-owners acted before the war.
They are defying the Public Opinion of the
world.
They are combating the spirit of the age.
They are fighting the moral sense of the
country.
They are insolently violating the fundament
al laws of Justice.
They are arousing against themselves irre
sistible forces which will grind them to pow
der.
“Whom the Gods would destroy, they first
make mad.”-
•tun
SAYS MR. WATSON WAS PURPOSELY SLIGHTED.
The allegation of Thomas E. Watson, of Thomson,
that he had been slighted by the R. F. D. convention
here, has brought forth voluminous correspondence
from all quarters. J. C. Flanigan, of Lawrenceville,
lawyer, wrote The Journal Thursday further on this
subject. , . \
Mr. Flanigan says Mr. Watson was purposely slight
ed. He refers to the fact that President Lindsay, of
the carriers, has an editorial connection with the
Constitution. Mr. Flanigan also waxes sarcastic on
that mortgage on Mr. Lindsay’s home. His let
ter follows:
“Lawrenceville, Ga., October 17, 1907.
“Editor The Journal: Just why the Hon. Thomas
E. Watson was not invited to make an address at
the national convention of rural carriers, recently
held in Atlanta, is an Interesting question.
“That he was purposely slighted no one can for
a moment doubt. That it was an oversight, as some
want to explain It, no one who understands the sit
uation can believe.
“Mr. course, is the originator of the
rural mall system in America. There are a few, per
haps, who would rob hlm-of this honor, and it may be
that such a motive prompted the officials of the na
tional association to let Mr. Watson alone.
“It is well known that Mr. Lindsay, president of
-the national association, is editor of the R. F. D.
department of the Atlanta Constitution, and rides on
free passes all over the country. It is also known
that Mr. Clark Howell sent the Georgia delegation
to the national convention In 1906. It is Mr. Lindsay’s
daily talk that when imaginary ruin was about to
come to the rural mail carriers some months ago,
that he mortgaged his “little home” at TutSker and
went to Washington. He made a grandstand play
of his so-called patriotic work, and soon the rural
carriers from every section of the country began
to send him money to pay off that fifteen-hundred
dollar mortgage on that little home. Now, the writer»
is reliably Informed that Mr. Lindsay has never had
a hotne in Tucker, but has been paying, and Is now
doing so, the sum of $9 per month rent to a prom
inent citizen of Gwinnett county on the ‘home’ he
lives in. How could he mortgage his home when he
was but a tenant In another man’s house?
“These facts are freely talked about In this coun
ty, where the president happens to be known. And
since he, a Georgian, refused to have Mr. Watson,
a Georgian, and the man who has given Lindsay
and the other forty thousand carriers a job, at the
convention, has put the people to thinking.
“Mr. Livingston, the rival claimant of Watson’s
honor, was present and made a speech. It was a
smart trick, though—-a conspiracy, if you please—on
the part of Livingston, Howell and Lindsay, to have
Livingston present end proclaim him as the man
who originated the rural mail system, so that the