Newspaper Page Text
'ZfeeemAer 7, 1994
OS 7~ Ff\'S by John Ryan Seawright
Labor and Lunacy in Old Atlanta:
Jim and Ben Osborne. — Part 2.
James Osborne, 25-year-old house
painter, Congregationalist minister and la-
bor organizer, returned to Atlanta from the
west in the summer of 1893. Thousands of
Atlantans were fearful of layoffs and wage
cuts as the nation's economy slowed, and
many of them turned out to hear Osborne’s
speeches in behalf of the People’s Party,
which was reaching out from its rural base
to Georgia’s urban proletariat. The Atlanta
police finally forbade Osborne the use of the
city well, the city’s
customary site for
public speaking, but
Osborne announced
that he would speak
as planned on the
night of Sept. 13 on
the topic M Christian
Aspects of the Labor
Problem."
At 7:30 Osborne
climbed atop the wall
around the well to
loud cheers from a
crowd of several
thousand. Atlanta
Police Chief
Connolly appeared at
his side, shook hands,
and reminded him
that he would be ar
rested if he tried to speak. Osborne replied,
"I believe 1 have a right to speak here and
will proceed.”
Two sentences into the speech Connolly
interrupted, saying "Consider yourself under
arrest." Osborne and his captor went down
Marietta Street, the crowd close behind,
cheering for Osborne. At police headquar
ters Osborne said he would post bond but
would not promise not to speak at the well.
Chief Connolly immediately ordered him
jailed. Interviewed in his cell, Osborne said
he was prepared to appeal his case to the
federal courts. The Journal also reported that
Osborne had said that he could have incited
the crowd at the well to riot if he had so
chosen.
Osborne appeared in Atlanta police court
the next afternoon. The courtroom was
packed with workingmen who cheered
Osborne’s lawyer, W. C. Glenn, as he made
a passionate oration on free speech. The
judge threatened the entire audience with
30 days in the stockade and imposed a 5100
fine on Osborne for obstructing a public
street.
The Journal had been fairly sympathetic
to Osborne up until this time, but he had
objected to their claim that he had threat
ened a not. The Journal stood by its story
and launched a campaign of ndicule against
the young agitator. They began by noting
that Osborne had only one eye They pnnted
an unflattering drawing of his eyeless nght
profile, quipping that "It is always the policy
of The Journal to give both sides of a ques
tion.” They also claimed that Osborne owned
a glass eye, but that he inserted it only for
court appearances. These slurs were de
nounced by a large meeting of workers, the
Journal responding with huffy editorials pro
fessing its love of labor and denouncing
Osborne as a charlatan.
On Sept 26 Osborne delivered hts inter
rupted speech on "The Christian Aspect of the
Labor Movement” to 500 people at DeGive’s
Opera House. The meeting opened with a
prayer by a Reverend Mr. Hopkins who told
the crowd “1 am a Methodist, and we never
have a meeting of this kind without a collec
tion," whereupon he appointed a committee
to take an offenng
The speech cov
ered a lot of ground
Osborne endorsed
giving women the
vote, but opposed the
same privilege for Eu
ropean immigrants.
He denounced the
wage system and
called for the aboli
tion of rent, interest
and profit, and for the
redistnbution of land
to those who worked
it. Denouncing capi
talism as opposed to
the sptnt of Christian
ity, Osborne con
cluded: "It is no sin for
the working people to
be discontented. There is but one way to make
a change, and that is for the great labor and
farmer organizations to join into one indus
trial and political body.” The meeting ended
with the singing of the Doxology.
Two weeks later the Journal reported that
Osborne had had his youngest brother, Ben,
arrested on a charge of lunacy The Journal
neglected to get the labor organizer’s version
of the story. Instead, they interviewed Ben in
his cell at the police station Ben Osborne told
a tale of persecution at the hands of James’s
wife, who, he claimed, sneaked into his room
and secretly rearranged his books, then blamed
him for putting jelly on the floor, when the
culprit was actually one of her own children
He said that Mrs. Osborne threatened to whip
her husband if he would not punish Ben for
the jelly incident. This, Ben concluded, was
the cause of his arrest "I’m no more crazy than
they are 1 flatter myself that 1 have more sense
than the whole shooting match." The Journal
reported that the police agreed and concluded
by descnbtng Ben as "a fine-looking, muscu
lar young man (who| talks perfectly rational."
a verdict they would, in time, have occasion
to reconsider
James Osborne soon had more trouble from
another quarter The president of his union,
The Brotherhood of Painters and Decorators,
wrote from Chicago to the Atlanta local say
ing that he had never authorized Osborne to
act as an organizer and instructed the local to
demand Osborne's membership card in order
to ascertain whether he was actually still a
member Osborne refused to surrender his card
and the local unanimously passed a resolution
repudiating him.
Continued Next Week.
<01994, John Ryan Seawright.
James &. Osborne
as seen by the Journal
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