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PAGE EIGHT
THE
Weekly Jeffersonian
PUBLISHED BY
THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON
• Editors and Proprietors
Tbm?le Court Building, Atlanta, Ga.
SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: - - SI.OO PER TEAR
Advertising Rates Furnished on Application.
Bftttni at frittfti, Atlanta, Ga., January 11, IQO?, at nttnd dan mail mat Hr
ATLANTA, GA., THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21,1907
Gob. Smith 9 s Unfortunate Speech.
In the address delivered by Gov. Hoke
Smith, in Telfair county, last week, occurs the
statement,
“I have no adverse criticism to place upon
the legislature which met last summer.”
This is a declaration which will surprise ev
erybody excepting those who have been notic
ing a certain tendency in certain quarters
to create the impression that the campaign
pledges of last year have been virtually' re
deemed, and that it is now time to sit down
and chew the cud of contentment.
Ever since Dick Gray got back from Europe,
the Governor’s organ, the Atlanta Journal, has
been putting on brakes. It has grown cold, and
wants others, also, to ice the car. It has de
clared itself in favor of the most profligate
scheme of bank-paper currency that was ever
devised, and it has taken the position that an
extra session would be foolish thing.”
Yet the illegal combination of the Central
and the Southern, or of the Central with some
unknown road, still exists, and when the Rail
road Commission demands of Maj. J. F. Han
son, dummy President of the Central, to know
what the facts are, that influential Republican
treats Governor Hoke Smith’s new Commis
sion with absolute Contempt.
Is not this a situation with which an extra
* session could deal?
It was supposed that we needed legislation
to break up the corrupting system of lobby in
fluence which in the State of Georgia, as in
Alabama, Tennessee and Florida, has been so
notoriously effective in controlling the action
of state
Governor Hoke Smith was as fully commit
ted on that subject as upon Disfranchisement.
According to the Hoke Smith programme a
drastic anti-lobby measure was to be the very
first that the legislature was to pass. Such a
law would at once put an end to the corrupting
power of the professional lobbyist of the Hamp
McWhorter type. Such a law would restore
Home Rule to the people. Such a law would
shake off the Wall street despotism. Such a
law would lay the axe to the very root of the
evil from which we are suffering. The vital
importance of such a law was recognized by
the makers of the Constitution of 1887, and
they prescribed it as a legislative duty that
such a law should be framed and put in force.
Thirty years have come and gone, and the
paid lobbyist still mocks the Constitution and
controls legislation.
Could not an extra-session of the legislature
deal with this evil, which such men as Rob
ert Toombs and Charles J. Jenkins considered
so formidable?
The anti-pass bill was considered quite im
portant last summer.
Is it no longer so?
Not long ago, the new Commission required
the railroads to make a report showing who
were the men of this state that are riding about
on free passes. The report was made and to
the astonishment of everybody, one of the
Commissioners told a newspaper reporter that
the report was not for the public!
Then, why the report?
What’s the good of knowing who has been
using this form of railroad favors if the thing
is to be kept seewt?
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
What right has the Commission to be deal
ing in secrets?
A public tribunal like that is supposed to
have no objection to publicity, and it is as
suredly very surprising to hear one of our
brand new Commissioners saying that the pub
lic shall not have the benefit of information
acquired, at public expense, by this public trib
unal.
Not a thing has been done to compel the
railroads to provide for the health and comfort
of passengers who come to the stations to
take night trains. Winter and bad weather are
almost on us, yet nothing is done.
The wives and daughters of those city gen
tlemen don’t have to stand around, by the hour,
in the wind and rain and cold, waiting for the
train, as our wives and children have to do.
Those city gentlemen have decent accommo
dations—waiting rooms lighted and heated,
and retiring ropms for necessary purposes.
This being so, these city gentlemen are not
worrying because our wives and children are
treated worse than decent people treat their
cattle.
We heard somewhat of an Income or Li
cense Tax which would compel these foreign
corporations to pay a just proportion of our
taxes.
We don’t hear a whisper about it, now.
The Hardeman Resolutions were meant to
lay the foundation for legal proceedings to
break up the illegal relations which the Central
and the Georgia railroads have entered into,
and to obtain the necessary evidence to forfeit
the charters of those two corporations.
Those Resolutions were, at the last moment,
laid on the table; they could be taken off the
table and passed at the extra session.
But the Journal said that an extra session
would be “a foolish thing,” and that settled
it.
We wllknot have any extra session and we
are not going to get very much of anything
else.
When the Governor takes the position that
the Legislature did about all that was promised
—as, he virtually did in his Telfair speech—
he gives the enemies of reform good reason to
rejoice, and he creates consternation among the
friends who were fighting his battles last year.
it M
Stand Your Ground, 'Farmer!
Hold your cotton, Farmers! Don’t allow
those Wall street thieves and plunderers to
bluff you.
They abused you and ridiculed you, when
you asked the Government to create real mon
ey, to the amount of SSO per capita. You
knew that what the country needed was a
larger volume of real money. But they laughed
at you, lied about you, cheated you out of your
votes, and never rested until they got the
Constitution amended by a Treasury ruling
and an Act of Congress, and thus fastened the
single Gold Standard on you.
Then, when the Sound Money gentlemen
had shrunk the volume of money of final pay
ment, they flooded the country with a deluge of
bank paper, rested ten credit dollars on every
single one of the real dollars, and feasted sump
tuously on compound interest on their own
debts.
Then, one fine day, somebody got scared,
and wanted real money. His fright scared
everybody else, and then everybody wanted
real money.
But ten men were clamoring for each one of
those real dollars, and ten, demands for it were
made, at the same time and place.
Result, Panic.
But, Farmers, stand firm! •
Let those silk hat thieves and plunderers,
who laughed at you and robbed you, sweat
awhile.
One of them has already shot his head off.
If the rest of them would do the sama thing
the Panic would become popular,—so much
so, indeed, that we would even become fond of
these cheap and funny looking little things
that they call Clearing House Certificates.
From The Staff Officer Who Carried
General Lee's Letter to General
Grant At Appomattox.
Roanoke, Va., November 8, 1907.
Hon. Thomas E. Watson,
Thomson, Ga.
Dear Sir:
Your letter of the 6th just received.
I note what you say about the pleasant mo
ments we spent together a few years ago.
Now, about giving you a talk about Appo
mattox, and sending you my photograph as
a soldier boy and as an old Vet., I am sor
ry to say that I had a photograph of myself
when I was a young soldier boy, but I lost it.
But some time in the near future I will have
one taken of me as an old Vet and send you
one. And I will also write you an account of
our trying times on the retreat from Richmond
to Appomattox, and give you as well as I
am able all that occurred there at the meeting
of General Lee and General Grant, and tell
what part I took in the action.
If you ever come to Virginia, be sure to
see me, and I will be glad to have you in
my home.
I have your magazine in which you wrote
nne up years ago when you and your friend
were drinking that mint julep over in the
Valley, which I prize highly.
I will say, now, that years ago I was invited
to go to New York and give an account of the
retreat from Richmond to Appomattox, and it
was printed in the newspapers. I saw an ac
count they gave, and I knew it was not correct,
and I took it up with them, and it was pub
lished. But I have lost the papers, as years
ago I had my home burnt, and nearly all of
my valuable papers went up in the fire.
Your old friend,
(Signed) C. C. TALIAFERRO.
P. S.—Did you ever get a good farm in Vir
ginia? I think we could get you a good one if
you have not already done so. C. C. T.
(Note: Now, Colonel, do you want to ruin
my fair fame? Don’t you know that - your
“mint julep” reference is calculated to do for
me what those cocktails did for our great Vice-
President, Mr. Fairshanks?
Colonel, you read it wrong. I was not the
man who was with those fellows that were
drinking mint juleps. What is a mint julep,
anyhow, Colonel? Mel Branch is the man who
said he saw some men drinking mint juleps
in the verandah of the old Tavern on Mt. Top.
Yes, I got me a farm in Virginia, all right.
Had to do it to cure the “Virginia fever.” It
came high, but the fever was high, also.
My Virginia farm is on the top of the Blue
Ridge Mountains and consists mainly of a
good garden spot, a small orchard of delicious
apples, and a big pasture of blue-grass and
clover.
This is the farm I invite politicians to visit,
when I don’t want to see them on politics. De
tails will be furnished you by Clark Howell.
A mighty nice boy Clark is until a campaign
starts up, and then Clark is a sight.
When I get gay, I sign myself “The Laird
of Mountain Top,” and then the politicians
become more heathenish than ever, and they
fairly rage. .
Colonel, you must write out the story of
how you carried General Lee’s letter to General
Grant, at Appomattox.
Don’t keep putting it off, Colonel. Every
reader of the Jeffersonian will want to see your
“piece”—especially such brave old relics of the
Union Army as Capt. Addison Titus, of Ohio.
But I am real worried about that mint julep
reference. You must get straight on that,
Colonel. It wasn’t me—no Sir!