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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