Newspaper Page Text
fttontmber 30, 1994
T FFY by John Ryan Seawright
Labor and Lunacy in Old Atlanta:
Jim and Ben Osborne. — Part 1.
The Osborne brothers are forgotten
today, but a hundred years ago they were as
famous — or notorious — as any set of
siblings in Georgia. One or the other was
rarely out of the public eye from 1893 until
1899, when both disappeared from the
state
James B. and Benjamin H. Osborne
were the first and last of the four children
of James M. and Mary E. Osborne of
Atlanta Their father, the son of a Union
County farm family,
left the mountains
around the time of
the Civil War and
came to Atlanta to
work as a carpenter
and machinist.
When he was in his
late thirties he
marned Mary
Sample, a young
widow with two
children. He bought
a house at 156
Chapel St. where the
family would live for
the next 30 years.
Their children, bom
at two-year intervals
starting in 1868,
were James, Edward,
Ann and Benjamin.
When James B. Osborne graduated from
high school he went to work as an appren
tice house painter and was ordained a
minister in the Congregational Church.
Congregationalism was brought south by
New England missionaries after the Civil
War Most white Southerners saw it as a
dangerous influence, and, indeed, its
Southern clergy, both black and white,
have a long tradition of political activism;
Ambassador Andrew Young and radical
poet and labor organizer Don West (like
Osborne, of Union County heritage) are
two 20th-century examples. After his
ordination Osborne went out to California,
where he worked as a house painter and
became an active union member and
organizer
In May 1892 James Osborne repre
sented his local at the statewide labor
convention in San Francisco The conven
tion chose him as a delegate to the
California People’s Party convention
Populism was largely a farmers’ movement,
but many of its tenets, including public
ownership of transportation and utilities,
and free coinage of silver to increase the
money supply, appealed to the urban
working classes
Osborne joined the Populist Party and
was appointed state lecturer for California,
traveling throughout the state as a speaker
and organizer. Within a year he had moved
to Colorado, where he continued to work
in behalf of the Populists and his union,
the Brotherhood of Painters and Decora
tors. In July 1893 the Colorado labor
convention chose him as a delegate to the
Chicago silver convention, a national
Jamee 3. Osborne
meeting to support currency reform
After the convention was over Osborne
returned home to Atlanta. Atlanta’s
factories were laying off thousands of
workers and the rapidly growing Populist
Party was looking for allies among the
unemployed for their battle against the
conservative Democrats On the night of
Aug. 12, Osborne addressed over 2,000
people at the public artesian well on “The
Relation of Silver to Labor." Three days
later he gave what
the Journal described
as “a strong talk” at
Atlanta’s Industrial
Council Hall
Two days later he
addressed a mass
meeting of business
men and laborers at
the Fulton County
courthouse The
meeting was meant
to be a pleasant one
stressing the
essential unity of
interest between
capital and labor and
calling for everyone
to fight the eco
nomic ensis by
buying more locally-
made goods The proceedings followed the
chummy script until James Osborne took
the floor. He addressed his audience as
“Fellow citizens, fellow laborers, fellow
slaves.” “Talk that way!” and ’Talk bread!’’
came cries from the floor. “Bread! Bread!"
bellowed Osborne, “The reason 1 haven’t
got much bread is because some sucker
would work for 50 cents less a day than I
would and because I am willing to pay 50
cents more for protecting labor than some
of you scabs ”
Two nights later Osborne was again at
the artesian well addressing a crowd of
unemployed workers. He spoke frequently
at the well. Atlanta’s traditional arena for
public speaking, and his speeches, often
announced in Tom Watson’s People’s Party
Paper, drew larger and larger crowds
Atlanta’s police force grew alarmed at
the sue and frequency of these gathenngs
They banned David Marion, aka “Doctor
Swamp Angel," an eccentric patent
medicine salesman and Populist speaker,
from the well. Police Chief Connolly sent
Osborne a letter saying “you will not be
permitted to address a meeting at the
artesian well on Wednesday or any ocher
night. If you intend having a meeting you
must hold the same in some hall, as the
streets of the city is noc the place to have
these meetings " Osborne announced that
he would not be scared off from addressing
a peaceable public gathering and put out
word that at 7 p m Sept. 13 he would
speak at the artesian well on “Christian
.Aspects of the Labor Problem."
Continued Next Week.
C1994. John Ryan Seawright.
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