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PAGE TWO
'Public Opinion Throughout the Union
OVER IN GEORGIA.
The great state of Georgia suc
ceeds lemarkably well in keeping
something interesting going on in the
way of politics, as well as otherwise.
The meiuoiy of the gubernatorial
campaign lias scaicely gathered any
dust, and yet here comes some inter
esting news in winch the llonoiable
Hone bmnh and the Honorable lorn
\Vatsun, eislwhile culaboiers in the
cause of reform, are both prominent
figures.
ft seems that Governor Smith is
auxiuus to go to the tinted oiates
Senate, ami ins desire Lu uuii the
toga is so strung tiiai lie is willing to
quit tue guveiiiui s man.Muu wnh on
ly une term ul service, ibis is com
mendable, in a Uugiee; but Air. Wat
son clues nut LiiniK it advisable to
manage Luings just this way.
Now, .Ur. Smitu s election to the
ollice of governor was due in no small
measure vu toe power ul Air. vvaison
wuu tuiew ms strength lo tue ex
secretaiy ul tue imenur m ins usual
wnoic-Ueai Led way. an. Watsons
nmuence in lavui us the prudimiion
law wmcu was lecentiy passed by the
G-uigia legislature was one ul the
saiient lacturs in its success, in
face, the independent, feariess man
ner of Air. Watson, combined w>th his
outspoken stand, - wuetuer right or
wrung, un every question that hat.
two smes, has secured for him a
must enviable puml ul vantage with
the Georgia electorate, and lie may
almost be said Lu bold the balance of
power in that Slate.
Mr. Watson believes, it seems, that
Mr. Smith owes it to the people of
Georgia to govern the State m the
interests of the reform element whicu
elected him, for two terms, and then,
if he has done well, be may seek the
toga as a higher leward. As one
contemporary expresses it, Mr. Wat
son hates a side-stepper and a quit
ter. He has a “most annoying wav
of insisting that politicians in of
fice keep the pledges made during
lhe campaign for the same.” He does
not mince words in expressing his
conviction that Mr. Smith should re
main in the governor’s chair until
he has accomplished some of the re
forms which were promised in re
turn for his election and which
have not vet materialized. Whether
Mr. Smith will he independent of the
Thomson statesman’s view’s, and
break with him, remains to be seen;
but in the meantime there is likely
to be either a second term for Mr.
Smith as governor, or some mighty
interesting reading coming out from
Thomson. Georgia.—The Spartan
burg, S. C., Herald.
ROOSEVELT THE DESTROYER.
R<>r«ove!t has destroyed billions of
stock market values. Candur above
all *hings! Dire as have been the re
enlt- of his utterances let them be
confessed. He has attacked long
rec »gni zed business irethods end the
established customs of our most suc
cessful financiers. Scores of the most
daring stock speculators have been
ruined. The cloud of dishonor has
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
fallen upon some of the country’s
best known family names.
This impetuous man could not con
tent himself with stopping railroad
rate discrimination, dissolving nu
merous trusts, reclaiming millions of
acres from land grabbers, recovering
vast tracts from timber thieves, pro
tecting our grazing ranges from de
vastation by outlaw’s, cementing Eu
ropean friendships, opening new ave
nues for our commerce in South and
Central America and Asia, and safe
guarding the peace of the world at
Portsmouth and The Hague.
With all these occupations provid
ed, he has refused to be content. He
has persisted in going up and down
the land preaching and teaching a
nerve-racking, confidence-shattering
doctrine, new to most men now living.
Unmindful of the feelings of those
who have amassed great fortunes by
the most approved rules of latter-day
finance, he has aroused the masses
and arrayed them against the system
which has made those men rich.
His attacks hav efallen with crush
ing force upon Wall street, which,
by common consent, has been the de
pository of the country’s ready cash.
The consequent collapse of quotations
has amounted to a butchery of brok
ers to make a Roosevelt holiday.
There seem to have been no bounds
to the President’s inflammato»y end
revolutionary declarations. Here are
some of them and their sad sequels:
Roosevelt said: “Honesty is the
best policy.”
A panic in Wall street precipitates
a financial stringency so far-reaching
that distress is still felt in the New
port Casino and the restaurants of
upper Broadway.
Roosevelt said: “No innocent cor
porition need fear the law. But tLe
guilty, rich or poor, shall be prose
cuted.”
Thousands of shares held by the
strongest banking houses and insur
ance companies are thrown upon the
market, and quotations are marked
down $50,000,000 in a single day.
Roosevelt said: “Railroads are
public highways, and all shippers
should have equal rights.”
John D. Rockefeller immediately
gives out an interview predicting ca
lamity and financial chaos. This is
a signal for Standard Oil banks to
throw overboard large blocks of high
class securities, creating another pan
ic. The stock market statisticians
show the losses to be $200.000.00<>.
Roosevelt said: “All men in this
country shall have the same right be
fore the law.”
Wall street bank presidents de
nounce the President as an anarchist,
stocks slump, alt loans are called
from legitimate business houses and
accommodations are icfnsed to every
concern engaged in honest commerce.
And still Roosevelt refused to cease
his incendiary utterances. He heap
ed fuel on the fire by declaring that
“no man shall be permitted to ac
quire or to use a vast fortune by meth
ods or in ways that are tortuous or
dishonest.”
J. J. Hill refuses to “ent a melon”
that had been expected by Northern
Pacific stockholders, and the whole
stock list makes low records for the
year.
Roosevelt said: “I will do every
thing I can do to help business con
ditions except anything that is
wrong. ’ ’
Two railroads announce the aban
donment of proposed improvements
owing to the administration’s war
against wealth.
Roosevelt said: “If a man does
well, if he acts honestly, he has noth
ing to fear from this administra
tion.”
New York traction companies go
into the hands of receivers, and
Rothschild, whom Belmont represents
in this country, declares our doom
because Roosevelt is “hissing at cap
ital.”
Roosevelt said: “Crimes of fraud
and cunning shall be prosecuted ns
relentlessly as crimes of brutality
and physical violence.”
A surgical operation is ordered for
E. H. Harriman. Wall street has an
other relapse, and all widows and or
phans resume deep mourning.
It is an awful thing to have a fire
brand in the White House! —The
North American.
WORLD WAR PLANNED TO EX
TERMINATE RATS.
Danish Society, Backed by the Gov
ernment, Preparing for
Slaughter.
(Special Cable.)
London, Oct. 26. —While the dele
gates at The Hague were passing res
olutions in favor of universal peace,
a society in Copenhagen, aided and
abetted by the Danish government
and legislature, was perfecting the
machinery for a war which will ulti
mately embro’l the whole civilized
world. ‘lt will end only with the ut
ter extermination of the enemy. It
will be fought with all the aids that
the ingenuity of man can supply; the
enemy will be shot, trapped, poison
ed, and a price will be set on his
head.
That, at any rate, is the avowed ob
ject of the society engineering this
war. Its title is “L’Association In
ternationale pour la Destruction Ra
tionelle des Rats.” Though it has
only been in existence a few years,
it has already exercised great influ
ence, not only in Denmark ,but also
in other countries. When a society
aiming at ine destruction of rats has
a membership of 2.000 men of stand
ind and known influence; when it is
supported by every health commit
tee, every scientific institution, every
agricultural society, every bank, ev
ery shipping form and maritime in
surance company in the country;
which it can persuade the govern
ment to bring in. and get passed, a
bill financing a national campaign
against the rat; when we see the Rus
sian, German, and Japanese govern
ments obtaining information from tn»s
society and adopting its system for
lhe destruction of rats in their re
spective countries, we cannot deny
that we ars here face to face with a
movement the economic and hygienic
importance of which has not been
hitherto realized in Great Britain.
The Man Who Started the War.
It is not so very long ago that even
in Copenhagen the seriousness of the
problem was far from being under
stood by the man in the street. But
one man did understand the rat and
all its. evil ways, and worked the bet
ter part of a lifetime to make them
understood by others. He was a civil
engineer, called Zuschlag, whose hob
by was the study of economic zool
ogy, in paiticular the life history of
man’s enemies in the animal world.
He noted that, while other pests
“specialized,” as it were, confining
their unsolicited attention to certain
circumscribed spheres, the rat was
übiquitous. Agriculture and ship
ping, industries and trades, country
mansions and farm cottages, palaces
and slums —all suffered from the
depredations of the rat. He began to
gather statistics, and found that the
rat appeared to be everywhere, to
eat everything, to destroy everything,
excepting alone stone and iron. His
information told of whole acres of
corn laid iow, of raids upon poultry
farms, of nightly devastations in gro
cers’, bakers’, and butchers’ shops;
of waterpipes gnawed through and
places, in consequence, flooded, caus
ing hundreds of pounds of damage.
He was enabled to state that the rats
cost his country every year at least
400,000 pounds in preventable dam
age.
But there was another side to the
“rat problem,” of far greater im
portance than the economic. Trich
inosis, while a matter of small con
cern in this country, is a very real
danger in Denmark and on the conti
nent generally, where much raw or
partly smoked pork is eaten. Having
consulted all the authorities on the
subject, Zuschlag came to the con
clusion that the rat —Mus decumanus,
that is, the brown rat —is the main
cause of this disease being still ram
pant, in spite of the most elaborate
precautions exercised to prevent the
sale of trichinous pork.
“The authorities.” he said, “com
mence their preventive measures too
late. Instead of preventing the sale
of trichinosed pork protect the pig
against becoming trichinosed! Kill
off the rats! The rat is undoubtedly
the primary host of trichina spiralis,
the parasite which causes trichinosis.
Pigs are contaminated by eating
trichina-harboring rats, and man con
tracts the disease by eating trichi
nosed pork. Eggo: kill off the rats!”
This view was recently accepted by
the German government, for in a
rescript by the imperial chancellor
to the various allied states it is re
quested that in future the rats arc
to be exterminated in any district
where a case of trichinosis has oc
curred.
How Plague is Spread Abroad.
The last count in Zuschlag’s indict
ment against the rat is the terrible
part played by it in the dissemina
tion of bubonic plague. He published
his views in 1903 in a book which
(Continued on Page Fourteen.)