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Title: Watson's Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 1, March, 1906
Author: Various
Language: English
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NO. 1, MARCH, 1906 ***
[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN]
was the radical of his day. Many of the views expressed in his letters
and speeches would strike a “good Republican” of today as extremely
radical.
ARE YOU ACQUAINTED
with the great commoner’s views on political and religious liberty,
on alien immigration, on the relation of labor and capital, on the
colonization of negroes, on free labor, on lynch law, on the doctrine
that all men are created equal, on the importance of young men in
politics, on popular sovereignty, on woman suffrage?
All of his views are to be found in this edition of “LINCOLN’S LETTERS
AND ADDRESSES,” the first complete collection to be published in a single
volume. Bound in an artistic green crash cloth, stamped in gold. Printed
in a plain, readable type, on an opaque featherweight paper.
For $1.95, sent direct to this office, we will enter a year’s
subscription to WATSON’S MAGAZINE and mail a copy of LINCOLN’S LETTERS
AND ADDRESSES, postage prepaid. This handsome book and Watson’s
Magazine—both for only $1.95. Send today. Do it now.
TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE
121 West 42d St., New York City
WATSON’S MAGAZINE
THE MAGAZINE WITH A PURPOSE BACK OF IT
_THOMAS E. WATSON_ _Editor_
_JOHN DURHAM WATSON_ _Associate Editor_
_RICHARD DUFFY_ _Managing Editor_
_ARTHUR S. HOFFMAN_ _Assistant Editor_
_C. Q. DE FRANCE_ _Circulation Manager_
_TED FLAACKE_ _Advertising Manager_
March, 1906
_Editorials_ _Thomas E. Watson_ _1-28_
_Down in Georgia_—_Pinkerton’s Report to Ye Bankers_—_Wayland’s
Mistake_—_Calhoun for Public Ownership_—_Judge Du Bose’s Letter
and the Public Debt_—_Dr. Talmage in Russia_—_A Prophet Whose
Voice Was Not Heeded_—_The Highest Office_—_Editorial Comment_
_Lookin’ T’wards Home_ _Helen Frances Huntington_ _30_
_Assessment Insurance_ _Michael Moroney_ _37_
_The People_ _John P. Sjolander_ _41_
_Back to Nature—Part the Way_ _Eugene Wood_ _42_
_The Philosophy of Money_ _J. B. Martin_ _50_
_The Little Path to Peace_ _Mary Small Wagner_ _54_
_The Captain, Davy, and General Kuropatkin_ _Robert Dunn_ _55_
_Where the Road Dips_ _Henry Fletcher Harris_ _63_
_Repeal the Land Laws_ _Hugh J. Hughes_ _65_
_The Triumph of Justice_ _Clarence S. Darrow_ _69_
_A Radical Corpuscle_ _Charles Fort_ _73_
_Election Reforms_ _J. C. Ruppenthal_ _76_
_Pierre, Sansculotte_ _La Salle Corbell Pickett_ _86_
_The New Party_ _C. Q. De France_ _88_
_The Municipal Boss_ _W. D. Wattles_ _91_
_The Silence of Johnny_ _Harriette M. Collins_ _93_
_Vanished Years_ _Helen A. Saxon_ _95_
_Letters from the People_ _97_
_Putterin’ Round_ _Cora A. Matson Dolson_ _111_
_Educational Department_ _Thomas E. Watson_ _113_
_In Passing_ _Lurana W. Sheldon_ _122_
_Home_ _Louise H. Miller_ _123_
_Books_ _Thomas E. Watson_ _133_
_The Say of Other Editors_ _139_
_His Grudge_ _Tom P. Morgan_ _146_
_News Record_ _147_
_Along the Firing Line_ _C. Q. De France_ _156_
_Chastened_ _Kate G. Laffitte_ _160_
Application made for Entry as Second-Class Matter, February 17,
1906, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of
Congress of March 3, 1879.
Copyright, 1906, in U. S. and Great Britain. Published by TOM
WATSON’S MAGAZINE, 121 WEST 42D STREET, N. Y.
TERMS: $1.50 A YEAR; 15 CENTS A NUMBER
[Illustration: HONORABLE HOKE SMITH, OF GEORGIA.
Photo by Russell, Atlanta, Ga.]
_WATSON’S MAGAZINE_
VOL. IV MARCH, 1906 NO. 1
_Editorials_
BY THOMAS E. WATSON
_Down in Georgia_
CLARK HOWELL’S DEFENSE OF THE CORPORATIONS
A national magazine can do no better work than to take a hand in a local
fight, when the issues involved are national.
As explained in previous articles, the state of Georgia has been
completely conquered by a Wall Street combination. Morgan, Belmont and
Ryan are our masters. They rule Georgia through the Democratic party
just as they rule New Jersey through the Republican party, and New York
through both the old parties.
In New York, the tools of this Wall Street combination are such men as
Murphy, Pat McCarren, Judge Parker, and Bill Sheehan. In Georgia the
tools are such men as Hamp McWhorter, Joe Terrell, Clark Howell.
These men call themselves Democrats, but they work for Morgan the
Republican as earnestly as they work for Belmont the Democrat. The Wall
Street Railroad Kings rule and rob our state, and they do it by means of
the men who control the machinery of the Democratic party.
Hoke Smith is leading a great revolt against this Wall Street domination,
and he is doing it superbly. He is going to win, because the people know
he is right. He is going to win, because the people know that they are
being foully mistreated by the railroads. He is going to win because the
people can no longer be driven by the party lash. He is going to win
because the people have at last determined to vote for _what they want_.
In the January number of this magazine, I specified the wrongs which the
people of Georgia suffer at the hands of the railroads. Mr. Clark Howell,
the Corporation Candidate for Governor, tried to answer me, and probably
flatters himself that he did so.
Let us see.
I made the statement that the railroads had violated our Constitution by
“a joint ownership of competing lines, thus establishing the monopoly
which the Constitution forbids.”
That is a serious charge. If it be true that the railroads have trampled
the Constitution under foot and established a monopoly in defiance
of law, that fact alone should damn them. No man, no set of men, no
corporation, no combination of corporations, should be allowed _to make
law for themselves_ in Georgia. We should compel all persons, natural and
artificial, to respect and obey our laws.
Does Clark Howell deny the accusation brought by me against the railroads?
Does he deny that the Morgan-Ryan-Belmont interests work together in
beautiful harmony in Georgia?
By no means. On the contrary, he parries the blow by saying that if any
unlawful combination exists, Hoke Smith was the lawyer who represented
the law-breakers in court.
That’s a pretty defense for the railroads, isn’t it?
According to that kind of logic we must not enforce the law against
people who steal because Hoke Smith, as a lawyer, has actually defended
thieves. Logic of that sort would compel me to antagonize the law against
murder because as a lawyer, I defended dozens of men charged with that
crime.
Hoke Smith’s position as a candidate for governor is one thing; his
position as attorney in law cases is another; and there is no use trying
to fool the people about it. If the railroads have made an illegal
combination we must smash it, no matter who the lawyers were that
represented the railroads at that time.
* * * * *
My editorial states that the railroads treated our Railroad Commission
with contempt by refusing to obey its rules, its decisions, its orders.
As an example, I cited the case of the town of Flovilla, Georgia, where
the railroads had for two years refused to provide the accommodations for
passengers on their way to the Indian Spring.
Mr. Howell jumped on this statement with the triumphant crow of a bantam
rooster.
He had caught me telling what was not true. No wonder the little rooster
crowed. Not many men have upset statements made by me.
Like many another little rooster, Clark crowed too soon.
Listen:
Clark says: “The truth of the matter is, the Railroad Commission _ordered
the building of a new depot at_ Flovilla, and the records of the
commission show that THE ORDER WAS COMPLIED WITH.”
If the records of the commission show that, _Somebody_ has fooled the
Commission cruelly, for _there has been no new depot built at Flovilla_!
Crow again, little rooster.
* * * * *
In 1904 the railroad made an addition _to its freight room_, at Flovilla,
and stopped.
Hon. Pope Brown, Chairman of the Railroad Commission, had his talk with
me after we came back from the New Orleans Cotton Convention. I think
it was in the last week in January, 1905. It was not later than Feb.,
1905. At that time the railroads had done nothing for _the passengers_
at Flovilla. For a number of years the people of the community had been
clamoring for decent accommodations without success. The Mayor had tried,
and failed. The Railroad Commission had issued orders, and had been
treated with contempt.
[Illustration: “Crow again, little rooster.”]
Then what happened?
The thunder of the Anti-Corporation Campaign began to rumble. Hoke
Smith’s stern voice began to be heard calling the Railroads to judgment.
The Corporation law-breakers and Commission-Scorners began to tremble in
their boots.
And _in the Spring of 1905_, AFTER BROWN’S TALK WITH ME, the railroad
men got a move on and ran down to Flovilla, built a little shed for
passengers _near the old depot_ and put some water-closets in the old
depot.
_Crow again, little rooster._
EX-CHAIRMAN BROWN’S LETTER
HAWKINSVILLE, Ga., Jan. 5, 1906.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga._
DEAR TOM—Yours of the 3rd inst., just received. I have been
very busy of late winding up business of the old year and
arranging for the new year. You know this is about the busiest
time for the farmer. Therefore I have not read the papers
closely and have not seen the denial of Mr. Howell concerning
the improvements at Flovilla ordered some time ago by the
Railroad Commission. I do not recall exactly what I said to
you in regard to this matter, but I will give you the facts
according to my best recollection:
While Judge Atkinson was Chairman, the Commission, on its
own motion, seeing the necessity of improved facilities at
Flovilla, ordered that a pavilion be built like the one at
Warm Springs, if my memory serves me correctly; also that
water-closets be put in, and other improvements be made in
connection with the passenger station. It was a considerable
length of time before any attention was paid to this order at
all. After so long a time, and continual nagging on the part
of the Commission, which no doubt the records will show, the
railroad put up a little shed there, which is but a make-shift,
and called it a pavilion. Upon one pretext and another they
delayed putting in the closets, and if they have been put in at
all I do not know it.
In speaking about this matter on one occasion to a
representative of the Southern Railway, whom I happened to
meet on the train, I suggested to him that these improvements
ought to be made. His reply was, that the railroads did not
feel disposed to do anything for Butts County for the reason
that the juries were too ready to give verdicts against the
railroads. My reply to him was, that if the railroads would do
their duty by the people, the people would in turn be willing
to do justice to the railroads.
Mr. Dozier, the Banker at Flovilla, and Mr. Duke, a lawyer
representing the Southern Railway at Flovilla, and others
there, will corroborate what I have said. In my report to the
Railroad Commission about the condition of depots in the state
I called attention to several instances where the railroads had
refused to comply with the orders of the Railroad Commission,
and there has never been any denial made by the railroad people.
At Pitts, Ga., there was a little pigeon house built and
located, contrary to the orders of the Railroad Commission.
The records of the Railroad Commission will show this to be a
fact. Also it will be found by the records that while Judge
Atkinson was Chairman an order was made requiring the roads to
stop their passenger coaches at the station for the convenience
of passengers, rather than to have them stop one hundred or two
hundred feet away from the depots. This order has also been
absolutely ignored by all the railroads that have come under
my observation.
There has not been an order regulating freight rates issued by
the Railroad Commission in some time, unless it was absolutely
satisfactory to the railroads, where the railroads have
complied with it.
Mr. Ed. Baxter, who is Chief Counsel, as I understand, for
all the Southern Railways served notice upon the Railroad
Commission in the City of Atlanta before the Federal Court in
the following language as near as I can remember:
[Illustration: “Poor little rooster—crowed too quick.”]
“The Railroad Commission may well understand that they have
reached the length of their tether; henceforth we will put
ourselves under the ægis of the Federal Courts.”
In other words, whenever the Georgia Railroad Commission,
or any other State Commission, or Inter-State Commission,
undertakes to put in a rate that is not satisfactory to the
railroads, then they would appeal to the Federal Courts. Again,
and in its last analysis, the meaning is plain enough to any
man who wants to understand it, that the railroads have taken
this position, as is evidenced by their opposition to the bill
now before Congress and advocated by President Roosevelt:
“We propose to make rates without any interference from State
or Federal authority; we propose to fight any law, or any
authority to take this right away from us.”
And that, it seems to me, is the great issue overshadowing all
other issues of the present time in this state and every other
state in the Union, as to whether or not the railroads shall be
allowed to make rates without any interference from any State
or Federal authority. Whenever we give them that power they are
absolutely masters of the situation, and they know it. They can
bribe legislatures, judges and jurors, and levy tribute upon
the people themselves to pay for this corruption.
Now, the circumstances leading up to our meeting with Mr. Ed.
Baxter in the Federal Courts, are interesting and amusing. In a
few days I will give you the details in another letter. I hope
that I have not already trespassed upon your patience.
Hoping that you are entirely restored to health, with kind
regards to each member of your family, and best wishes for
yourself, I am
Your friend,
POPE BROWN.
In the letter just quoted, Hon. Pope Brown repeats the statement that
the railroads _did_ treat with contempt the order of the Commission;
and he relates a conversation he had with one of the representatives of
the Southern Railroad, in which that official gave, as a reason for not
making the required improvements at Flovilla, that _the people of that
county had given verdicts against the Railroad_.
Yet the railroad candidate for Governor has deliberately tried to deceive
the people of Georgia into believing that when the Railroad Commission
ordered a new depot for Flovilla, the railroads promptly obeyed the order
and built a new depot right away.
Poor little rooster—crowed too quick.
* * * * *
In my article, it was stated that the Flovilla case was but one out of
many that could be mentioned. Since Clark Howell undertakes to prove
to the people of Georgia that the railroads are good, law-abiding
citizens, I will mention some other instances in which they violate the
law every day of their lives, persistently, deliberately, insolently,
contemptuously.
The law requires them to post bulletins of delayed trains _at every
station in advance of the delayed train_, in order that passengers may
be put upon notice. This law is of great consequence to the traveler.
If the train is one, two, or three hours late, and the traveler can
learn that fact upon his arrival at the depot, he can dispose of himself
to the best advantage during the interval. But suppose the train is
three hours late and the passenger does not know it? Suppose he asks
the agent, and gets his head bit off with a sharp, curt, offensive,
indefinite answer? He then hangs around in the waiting room; he is afraid
to leave the depot for fear the train will come while he is away; yet he
may have to sit there, anxious and suffering, for three mortal hours;
when, if the bulletin had been posted, he could have escaped some of the
inconveniences of the situation.
The law puts a penalty of twenty dollars upon the railroad for each
violation of this rule; and there isn’t a day when hundreds of violations
of it do not occur in Georgia. Not ten per cent of the agents of the
railroads obey this law. Ninety per cent of them constantly violate it.
_Ask any drummer who travels through the state!_ Talk about obedience to
the little one-hoss Railroad Commission? Why, here is a statute of the
Code of Georgia, passed by the sovereign Legislature and signed by the
Governor, and the railroads treat it as a dirty piece of waste paper.
In his letter, ex-Chairman Brown says that the railroads have never
put into operation an order of the Commission as to freight rates,
unless that order was absolutely satisfactory to themselves. He gives
an instance, at Pitts, Georgia, where the railroads went directly to
the contrary of the orders of the Commission. While Judge Atkinson was
Chairman of the Commission, an order was passed requiring trains to quit
stopping one or two hundred feet away from the depot, and to stop at the
station, for the convenience of passengers.
Ex-Chairman Brown says that this order “_has been absolutely ignored by
all the roads_ that have come under my observation.”
In Chairman Brown’s official report, he calls attention to instance after
instance where the railroads had ignored the rules, the decisions, the
orders of the Commission.
_I challenge Clark Howell to deny the truth of that report._
* * * * *
What Georgian doesn’t remember with indignant shame the threat of the
Southern Railroad, voiced by its lawyer, Mr. Ed. Baxter, when he “served
notice” on the Railroad Commission that the Railroads were tired of being
pestered by our little one-hoss Commission?
Said Mr. Baxter: “The Railroad Commission _may well understand_ that
they have reached the length of their tether; _henceforth we will put
ourselves under the ægis of the Federal Court_.”
That was nice, dutiful language, wasn’t it?
That sounds like obedience to the Railroad Commission, doesn’t it?
Here were these Wall Street law-breakers, who had for two years been
defying the Commission on the Flovilla matter, who had ignored their
rulings on the stoppage of passenger trains, who had continually refused
to obey the law requiring them to post bulletins of delayed trains,
who, at Pitts, had acted contrary to the orders of the Commission, and
who had never accepted a freight rate decision which was not just what
they wanted—and their lawyer had the insolence to serve notice on the
Commission that if it bothered his Wall Street clients further, he
would turn his back upon it and seek that unfailing haven of Corporate
rascality, the Federal Courts!
CROW ONCE MORE, LITTLE ROOSTER!
* * * * *
[Illustration: “Some editors make editorial music that way.”]
As to the illegal charges made by the roads, in the manner explained by
me in the 3rd specification of my article, I stand my ground, and I say
that the Supreme Court has never declared that such a discrimination
against a town on the main line was legal. On the contrary, it was held
to be illegal.
As to specification number 4, that the Corporations rob the people of the
state by compelling them to pay dividends upon fictitious capitalization,
who can deny it?
Every privately owned railroad in this state has had all the water
poured into it that it would hold. The fixed charges are based upon this
fraudulent capitalization. The people pay dividends upon it. The freight
and passenger rates are kept up, and accommodations kept down, and labor
squeezed, and safety appliances neglected, and bridges allowed to stand
till they fall beneath a load of screaming, bleeding, dying passengers,
because the Wall Street rascals who watered the stock demand dividends
upon the millions which they created out of ink and paper.
Clark Howell dares to say that the Central is capitalized for less now
than before the war.
For shame! For shame!
One must be awfully hard up for an office before he can bring himself to
make a statement like that for a railroad.
The Capital stock of the Central was $7,500,000 before the war; and
General Toombs declared that half of it was water. The Capital stock of
the Central proper is perhaps 75,000 shares, as it was before the war. It
may be even less. But that’s a matter of no consequence whatever.
The really important question is, _How much capitalization does the
Central carry upon which it has to pay revenue?_
Everybody remembers how Pat Calhoun got control of the Central, and
everybody knows how thick Clark Howell was with Pat. Wanted to put him in
the Senate, you know.
Well, Pat and his Wall Street friends slapped a debt of _sixteen million
dollars_ on the Central during the gay time they had control of it.
Then the road was wrecked in the most approved Wall Street manner, and
many a genuine widow and real orphan wept bitterly in their grief, for
they had gone to bed in comfort and woke to poverty.
It was one of the nastiest, cruelest, completest pieces of Wall Street
rascality that was ever worked upon an unsuspecting people, _and Clark
Howell could tell some queer things about it, if he would_.
The Central fell into the Federal Courts, was put through the form of
a sale, and that international scoundrel, J. Pierpont Morgan, appeared
on the scene as “reorganizer.” When the Central had been properly
Morganized, it was laden with fictitious capital to the tune of
$55,000,000; and _upon this fictitious capital the people of Georgia are
made to pay revenue_.
When Clark Howell stated that the Central was capitalized for less
than before the war, he did not, perhaps, tell a falsehood in a strict
technical sense; but, in the impression which he knew his language would
make, and which he intended it to make, he was as far from the truth
as when he pictured the railroads trotting down to Flovilla, promptly
and dutifully to build that town a nice, new depot—“one of the most
attractive and best equipped depots.”
* * * * *
As to the $10,000 campaign fund furnished by the railroads to elect
Terrell, Mr. Howell says “it’s denied by everybody involved.” Ah, indeed?
When did “everybody involved” deny it? Who are the “everybody involved”?
Will Joe Terrell go before a notary and make oath that the railroads did
not contribute $10,000, or other large sum, to his campaign fund?
Joe may not be _everybody_ “involved,” but he certainly is _involved_.
If he can make an affidavit of that sort, let him do it. His own honor
and the honor of the state demand it. Let Joe swear it was not done, and
I will publish his denial prominently in this magazine.
At the same time, however, I want him to explain to the people of Georgia
why he, their Chief Magistrate, offered a seat on our Supreme Bench to
that notorious railroad lobbyist and corruptionist, Hamp McWhorter.
I would like to have this explanation attached as exhibit A, to the
affidavit denying the railroad Campaign fund.
* * * * *
The other specifications in my article Mr. Howell meets with merely a
general denial. Of course, there’s nothing to discuss where a general
denial is made to a specific statement.
So far from the record of the Legislature showing that the railroads do
not dominate it, those records prove that very thing.
Can you pass the Anti-Free Pass bill?
No. The railroads oppose it. It is the cheapest, most effective method of
bribery, and they mean to keep it. They will keep it.
Can you pass a law compelling the railroads to equip all passenger
stations with water-closets; and to keep the waiting rooms open at night?
No. It would cost too much. They couldn’t do that, and pay dividends on
watered stock also.
If they had to spend money providing accommodations for passengers, such
“lawyers” as Hamp McWhorter and Tom Felder might lose fat corporation
fees.
No indeed; you couldn’t pass a bill requiring the railroads to treat our
wives and daughters decently at the stations where they have to wait for
trains. It would cost too much.
* * * * *
Yonder sits an elderly lady on a pile of cross-ties. She is sick. She
has been brought to the station to take an early train to the city where
a specialist can be consulted about her case. It is cold. A heavy fog
almost as bad as a drizzle of rain, hangs in the air. The door of the
waiting room is locked. There is no fire, no light, no shelter at the
station. The aged woman sits upon the cross-ties awaiting the coming of
the train—sick, cold and suffering.
Is that _your_ mother, my son? No. But it might be. Just such a scene
was witnessed by a friend of mine some weeks ago; and the railroad
which treats its customers in that beastly manner is one of these same
Wall Street gangs of thieves that rob the state of Georgia through the
Hamp McWhorters, the Joe Terrells, the Clark Howells who pose as the
Democratic Party.
* * * * *
Great God! Are the people _never_ to wake up to the fact that the
machinery of the Democratic Party in Georgia belongs to a lot of Wall
Street rascals?
Don’t they _know_ that the platform of the Democratic State Convention is
never handed out till Hamp McWhorter marks it “O. K.”?
Don’t they _know_ that the majority of the daily papers belong to the
railroads and _are controlled by the railroads_?
* * * * *
The Hon. Clark Howell closes his feeble editorial by making a side-thrust
at this Magazine as “a subsidiary company to _Town Topics_.”
As to _that_, the answer is swift and to the point.
_I am this Magazine._
Not a line can go into it to which I object. Not a line can be kept out
of it to which I put my approval. My contract gives the control of the
Magazine to me completely. What more could anybody exact? That _Town
Topics_ owns a majority of the stock is true. But _Town Topics_ has no
more rights over the Magazine itself than the _Atlanta Constitution_ has.
* * * * *
Tom Lawson, or H. H. Rogers, or Judge Parker, or W. J. Bryan might buy
a majority of the stock. I could not prevent that. _But nobody can
interfere with my control of the Magazine._
I have no doubt that Mr. Clark Howell envies me my independence. It is
extremely doubtful whether he can say for himself and his paper what I
have said for myself and the magazine.
I shouldn’t wonder if he held his place upon the condition that his paper
must be _railroad_. He wouldn’t dare to have an opinion unfavorable
to _railroad_. When he sits down to write editorials, I compare him
in my own mind to the little girl going to the piano to practice her
music-lesson. She is a good little girl, and she follows the notes. She
improvises no music. She puts out her trained fingers and she touches,
one by one, with painful fidelity, the notes written down on the score.
She couldn’t think of striking any note which was _not_ written down on
the score. Dear little thing!
Day after day, month after month, year after year, the trained fingers
strike the notes indicated in the lesson. If by chance she hits a chord
not on the book, there’s a rap and a sharp word of reproof from the
authority which presides over the “practice.”
“_What’s that?_” comes the cry of the teacher or parent, and the little
girl, frightened at the false note, hurriedly gets back to the written
score.
Dear little thing. That’s the way to learn to play by note.
Some editors make editorial music that way, and the scores are written in
Wall Street.
_Pinkerton’s Report to Ye Bankers_
Accordingly to the report made by the Pinkerton Detective Agency to the
American Bankers’ Association, at its last meeting, there were arrested
and prosecuted _during the ten years preceding September, 1905_, five
hundred and fifty-four citizens who had committed crimes against these
banks. Some of these erring citizens had committed forgery, others
burglary, eleven were classified as robbers, and fourteen were called
sneak thieves. These last named probably stole the cashier’s umbrella, or
got away with the president’s gold-headed cane.
_The Law_ came down, hard and heavy, upon the citizens who had sinned
against the banks, and the transgressors were given sentences aggregating
two thousand and one hundred years in prisons, chain-gangs and
penitentiaries.
Think of it—2,100 YEARS!
The sum total of the money which the banks lost by the operations of all
these criminals, during the entire period of ten years, appears to have
been _less than one hundred thousand dollars_.
Yet the law-breakers who caused the loss must vindicate the law by a
penal servitude of more than two thousand years.
There’s JUSTICE for you.
During that period of ten years how many banks have gone to smash? How
many presidents and cashiers have looted the funds committed to their
care?
How many millions of dollars have the common people lost by the rascality
of dishonest bank officers? How many times have we seen frantic crowds of
men and women gather about the door of some busted bank—men sick at heart
because of sudden ruin, women screaming in terror because robbed of every
dollar they had on earth?
Yet when an infamous scoundrel like John R. Walsh of Chicago converts to
his use the millions of money held in his banks, Leslie Shaw, Secretary
of the Treasury, hastens into print to say that it was all right; Mr.
Walsh had done no more “than other bankers do.”
There was a Savings Bank in the holy town of Boston, Mass. It gave itself
the comfortable name of the _Provident_ Savings Bank. Trusting common
people put $200,000 of their money into it. Thieves on the inside stole
the money. At one swoop, this particular bank robbed the people of twice
as much as the whole of rascaldom had got from the Associated banks _in
ten years_!
Frank Bigelow robbed the First National Bank of Milwaukee, of $1,450,000.
_He was President of the American Bankers’ Association._
He not only looted the bank, but falsified its books. He did not commit
the crime upon impulse or sudden temptation. He did it deliberately,
systematically, colluding with his cashier to plunder the fools who had
trusted him.
[Illustration: The banker who stole $1,400,000; and a man who stole a
turkey and a duck.]
_The Law_ went through the form of giving this million dollar thief _a
sentence of seven years_. His penalty is a sham; his “punishment” a
mockery. He will be “detained” in comfortable quarters a few months; his
health will then “fail”; he will then be pardoned, and will be ready to
steal trust funds again.
So it is all along the line.
Woe to the hungry tramp who steals bread to eat. Woe to the ragged woman
who snatches food for her starving children.
Woe to the bad men who steal _during ten years_, one hundred thousand
dollars from the Members of the American Bankers’ Association. These
five or six hundred bad men will be sentenced, in the aggregate, to a
penal servitude of over two thousand years.
But let the President of the Bankers’ Association steal one million and
four hundred thousand dollars from the men and women who trusted him
with their money, and the highly-connected thief gets off with a nominal
punishment and a seven-year term which will never be enforced.
During the last twelve months, dishonest bank officers have stolen _more
than twelve million dollars_ from the depositors.
How many of these rascals have been tried and convicted?
Less than half a dozen.
Yes; Frank Bigelow, sometime President of the American Bankers’
Association, laid careful plans, in collusion with his cashier, and
_stole fourteen hundred thousand_ dollars of _Trust funds_.
Nominal sentence, seven years.
John Shannon, of Ohio, at about the same time, _stole a turkey and a
duck_; and John Shannon is now serving out in the Ohio penitentiary _a
penal sentence of five years_!
John Shannon, my jo, John!
Why _didn’t_ you wear a silk hat, and steal a million dollars _from the
inside_ of a bank?
_Wayland’s Mistake_
One of the most interesting and powerful men of this generation is J. A.
Wayland.
He is a pioneer Socialist.
He is a hard worker, a hard hitter, and a man who never quits.
For the last fifteen years he has been a wonder of the world, to me.
Henry Gronlund was not more unselfish, John P. Altgeld was not more
intense, and Arthur Brisbane is not more effectively equipped.
When I first knew of Wayland, he had come down to Tennessee to put his
beautiful dream into operation. He had founded a Colony on the basis of
Universal Brotherhood. He meant to demonstrate to mankind the ease with
which we could make angels out of one another, if we would only set about
it in the right way.
As I remember, the name of Wayland’s Happy Land was _Ruskin_—the name of
an English dreamer who wrote many beautiful things and lived one of the
saddest lives imaginable.
The vital spark in the Ruskin colony was Wayland’s paper. He called it
“The Coming Nation.” The circulation of this paper grew to be enormous,
and the soul of the paper was Wayland.
But some of the angels who had drifted into the colony became jealous of
Wayland, and they made the point that the paper should not continue to
be the property of Wayland—the man who had made it—but should become the
common property of everybody who had drifted into the colony.
If my memory serves me right, Wayland yielded to his angel-brothers, and
turned his magnificent property over to the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys who
had come into Ruskin from the four corners and elsewhere.
After this, the angels found fault with Wayland about something else and
then something else; and then some other thing: until the great-hearted,
great-minded man threw up his hands in despair.
He surrendered everything to the Colony—paper, shops, farms and all—and
went away from there, never to return.
What became of the Colony? The smart fellows who knew so much more
than Wayland ran the whole thing into the ground. The brethren had
hardly kicked Wayland out before they began to kick each other out. The
master-hand and the master-mind being absent, the small men quarreled
among themselves, and chaos ensued. The Ruskin Colony went to pieces, and
one of the remnants strayed into South Georgia. There it lived a brief,
troubled life, and there it died an unlamented death.
What became of the magnificent paper, “The Coming Nation?”
Wayland’s genius had made it; by every law of common sense and common
justice it belonged to Wayland.
His brethren did not think so. The paper was as much theirs as his. They
took it away from him. Then they didn’t know what to do with it. And it
died.
* * * * *
With a pluck which nothing could daunt, Wayland opened out in Girard,
Kansas, and modestly commenced another paper. This time he called it
the “_Appeal to Reason_,” but in spirit and purpose it was “_The Coming
Nation_” risen from its grave. Patiently, persistently, fearlessly,
Wayland hammered away at Girard until he built up a monster circulation,
and again was the owner of an extremely valuable property—the product of
_him_, the said Wayland. No other man could have made _that_ paper. No
other man could any more be Wayland, and do what Wayland does, than any
other man could be Edison, and do what Edison does.
By every sane and just rule, the _Appeal to Reason_ was Wayland’s
property. He had gone into a desert, with a handful of type and a bottle
of ink, and by the force of _his_ genius had brought forth a finished
product—a successful newspaper.
What happened to him then is only a matter of rumor. Conjectures can also
be made from some indignant, sorrowful sentences which he published over
his own signature.
But it seems clear that his Ruskin experience was repeated. His
angel-brothers made him take his own medicine in heroic doses. The men
who had not created the paper, claimed an equal share in it—or something
of that sort; and there were the usual points made against Wayland which
the small would-be leaders make against _the leader_.
Rumor had it that Wayland went through a Gethsemane of peculiar
bitterness, but just how it all was, the outside world was not given to
know. The great soldier in the cause of humanity covered the wounds his
own men had made, and was too proud to complain.
* * * * *
But Wayland is now making a mistake.
He is offering land prizes for the largest number of subscribers. He
proposes that, as a premium, in a certain competition on subscriptions,
he will convey, by deed, a farm in Florida to the fortunate Socialist who
gets the greatest number of subscribers to the _Appeal to Reason_! I can
hardly believe what I see in Wayland’s own paper.
What! Is it possible that Wayland has wickedly gone and bought a quantity
of land?
Is it possible that he has “robbed” some honest citizen of his real
estate?
And can it be true that other Socialists not only want to share in this
“robbery,” but want it so bad they will compete for it?
Dear me! I didn’t know that Socialism was like that. If it is, I believe
I’ll take some stock in it myself.
My impression has been that the Socialists were opposed to private
ownership of land. I have had forcible reminders of that fact in letters
which came hot from the enraged writers. Private ownership is “robbery”;
that’s the way they write to me. Did I not see a Socialist orator wave
his small, white hand gracefully at all the stores, factories and
dwellings in St. Louis, in the summer of 1904, and did I not hear him say
in his musical voice to the assembled laborers: “_All that is yours; go
and take it!_” Then, with a silk handkerchief he, with courtly gesture,
wiped the moisture from his marble brow, and continued: “_Don’t take a
part of it, take it all. Don’t be satisfied with a loaf, take the whole
bakery._”
Then he froze me and Joe Folk with a glare of merciless severity, and
continued, “These men”—indicating me and poor Joe, with a supercilious
gesture—“_these men_ talk to you about shorter hours of labor, and the
Eight Hour day. _I don’t want any Eight Hour day_: what _I want_ is _to
live in the best possible manner on the least possible work_.”
And now Wayland is going to spoil all this. He is going to quicken the
appetite of Socialists for private property. Instead of feeding a million
men on the definite expectation of getting a slice of the Astor Estate,
at some indefinite time, he is going to reverse the process and feed as
many as qualify, on a definite slice of Florida land _right now_.
I make this prediction: As fast as Wayland makes home-owners out of his
followers he will lose crusaders.
_Beware Capua_, friend Wayland!
A zealous Socialist, who owns nothing, but who is spurred on by that
God-given desire for private property, will eagerly compete for Wayland’s
prize and will win it. He will pocket the deed, and move to his land. He
will find, perhaps, that it does not quite come up to representation; but
it is too late to back out. He settles on his seventy acre tract. If it
has no house, he builds. If he has one already, he does all that he can
to make it more attractive. _It is his._ When the storm beats without, he
snuggles close to his fireside, and thanks God that this is _his_ shelter
from the wild night. His wife will lay her loving touches here and there,
and the house will take on a look which reflects the individuality of the
owners. Flowers in the front yard, vines clinging about the porch, bright
pictures on the wall, ferns and grasses in the vase over the mantel, a
climbing rose, perhaps, to race for the cone of the house and to throw
out its crimson colors from the roof. Toil which one loves will be freely
spent on garden and field, for the toiler is working for those he loves
best. In a few years, under the care of home-owners, the neighbors will
say, “_It doesn’t look like the same place._”
And it _isn’t_ the same place. The owners have transformed it. They have
put elements of value and beauty there which nature did not supply. They
have so directed their labor, their judgment, their good taste, their
tender interests, that the _home_ which they have created is as different
from the wild land, as the noble watch-dog at the door differs from the
gray wolf of the wilderness.
Do you suppose that this man and his wife and his children can ever be
made to believe that they have “robbed” some body of that land, and that
it is wrong for them to hold it as _private property_?
_Never in the world!_
Wayland has made a confession as well as a blunder.
By offering such a prize, he knows he is appealing to one of the
strongest human passions—the passion for home-owning.
Every full-sexed girl instinctively feels that her destiny is
Motherhood—and she plays with dolls, nurses them, kisses them, hugs them
to her little bosom, calls them pet names, fondly dresses them in every
beautiful way that her infant fancy can suggest, and rocks them to sleep
in the tiny cradle. _That is the God-given instinct of Motherhood._
Every full-sexed man, on the other hand, is born with a craving for _his
mate_, and next to that, _a home to put her in_.
_Individualism_, crying aloud to me and to you, says “_choose your mate
and make her yours_.” The idea of promiscuous mating is abhorrent.
Collective mating would be hideous. You want individual mating. You want
to separate _your_ mate from every other woman and from every other
man—and if another man invades your individual rights, _you slay him like
a dog_.
There’s the natural feeling, the natural passion, the natural
individuality—and everybody knows it.
This craving for individual mating with women, bases itself firmly on
the _individual home_. Give me _my_ mate, and let me take her to _my_
home:—and you have consistency, you have nature, you have a foundation
for home-life and all that flows from it—a foundation firm as the
everlasting hills.
But _the two_ go together. They are parts of the same system. Surrender
one, and you endanger the other.
If you are a Collectivist—your logic _will never stop at Collectivism in
property only_.
If you believe in the one wife, believe also in the _home_, which shall
be yours _individually_, just as your wife is yours, _individually_.
_Calhoun for Public Ownership_
Through the never-failing courtesy of Senator Clay, of Georgia, it was
recently my good fortune to come into possession of two bulky volumes
issued by the Government, and entitled, “Annual Report of the American
Historical Association.” The second volume of this report contains the
Private Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, and a most interesting
collection of letters it is.
Glancing through these letters hurriedly, I came upon one which Mr.
Calhoun wrote to William C. Dawson, of Georgia, in 1835, wherein he
declares himself strongly in favor of state-built railroads.
It will be remembered that at that time there was a surplus of revenues
in the Treasury.
This surplus was not given away in premiums to bond-holders as Mr.
Cleveland gave sixty million dollars a few years ago.
It was not deposited with the National Banks to be used in their business
as Mr. Roosevelt now disposes of $56,000,000 of the public funds.
In the days of Calhoun, governmental robbery of the taxpayer for the
benefit of the non-taxpayer had not been reduced to a science as it has
since been.
In Mr. Calhoun’s day, it was believed that when the Government
had collected from the taxpayer a greater sum than was needed for
governmental expenses, the excess should, as a matter of common honesty,
be returned to the taxpayer.
[Illustration: John C. Calhoun]
It being impracticable, however, to restore the money in exact proportion
to each individual taxpayer, the Government did the next best thing—it
divided the surplus pro rata, among the states.
In his letter to Dawson, Mr. Calhoun estimates the entire amount of the
surplus, extending over a series of years, at seventy or eighty million
dollars.
The share of Georgia and South Carolina, he estimates at $3,500,000.
Now what does he advise shall be done with this money which has been
drawn from the taxpayers of the two states?
_He advises that it be spent by Georgia and South Carolina in building
railroads to connect those two states with the lines leading to the West
and Southwest._
Spent in that manner, the surplus taxes of the two states would be so
invested as to benefit all the people of Georgia and South Carolina.
It wouldn’t go to fatten a handful of greedy, millionaire bond-holders.
It wouldn’t go to a few pet National banks to be loaned out as private
capital.
It being public money, it would be used for a public purpose; and the
great public roads which it would build would belong to and benefit all
the people of the two states which had paid the taxes into the Federal
Treasury.
Says Mr. Calhoun:
“To make this great fund available for so important an object, the
legislatures of the states interested ought to move forthwith. I hope
Georgia will take the lead. The action of no other state could have half
the influence.”
Mr. Calhoun, with marvelous foresight, sketched the system of railroads
which has since been built. Just where he declared in 1835 that the
railroads ought to be, they are now to be found.
Had his counsels been followed, those public highways would now be the
property of the public. Folly, stupidity, sordid franchise-grabbing had
their own way, however, and the magnificent system of highways which
Calhoun laid out for the people belongs to the corporations.
_Judge Du Bose’s Letter and the Public Debt_
MONTGOMERY, ALA., JAN. 6, 1906.
Hon. Thos. E. Watson:
Dear Sir—It is not evidence of dissatisfaction with the common
infirmities of the human lot that discussion of the characters
of men in public office assumes the latitude of warning to
society. Servility of understanding reduces the individual
to prostitution of manhood. He can no longer be free, who is
dependent in mind and thought. The duty of the American citizen
is in the defence of his prerogative of “sovereign,” and upon
this principle only may reputation in a public officer become a
convertible term with character in public office.
In the year 1769 “Junius” wrote fifty-four letters to the
_Public Advertiser_, a daily journal of London. The publisher
was indicted. “Junius” continued to write. He wrote to Sir
William Draper; to the Duke of Grafton; to the Ministry; to
King George himself. Who “Junius” was, none knew. The few
declared his writing turbulent and revolutionary; worthless for
the occasion. He held to the record. With indignant invectives
he proved the government corruptions. With high disdain he
declared he asked for no authority, when he had law and reason
on his side, to speak the truth. With keen and pungent retort
he exposed the lapse of society in the evidences of iniquity in
social leaders.
I would not offend by flattering him “who would not flatter
Jove for his power to thunder.” But the beneficiary is ever a
debtor to his benefactor. I may write with confidence where
expression is due.
The modest caption, “Editorials by Thomas E. Watson,” has
already attained to a decisive expectancy in the public mind.
In brief time the words that monthly come to us under it will
shed a wider and widening light.
Revived iniquities which inspired “Junius” are come for
exposure. History repeats itself in facts and interpreters
of facts. “Junius” in immortal energy told the people of the
Gentlemen in the House of Commons, the Judges upon the Bench,
the Lords, and the Dukes, and the Ministry and the King; of
malfeasance in office and of decay in private virtue.
The theme then is the theme now. Patrick Henry caught the
spirit of “Junius”; the “Editorials by Thomas E. Watson” draw
upon the glorious past to shed light upon the living day.
Anxiously we await some words from you upon the most insidious
consumer of free institutions—_the bonded debt of the United
States_. Please answer these questions:
1. Is not the Government interest-bearing bond the true
foundation of the “trust”?
2. Can the “trust” be eliminated from commerce before the
government bonds are paid and extinguished?
3. As long as the bonds remain and money concentrates under
their influence and protection in New York, can money so
concentrated be redistributed from New York in the sources of
industry and commerce by any other process than by “trust”
industries process?
Let me illustrate: In the Birmingham (Ala.) manufacturing
district there are three great iron manufacturers, to wit: The
Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; The Sloss-Sheffield Company;
The Republic Company and the Alabama-Consolidated Company.
Continued effort is made to merge two or all of these powerful
forces. The Pontifex Maximus in the situation, the great bridge
over which the merger, if merger there is to be, must pass,
is a bank of issue—a national bank—willing and also able to
finance the movement in transit and after consummation.
Now, the willing and capable bank in the premises must possess
an adequate supply of non-taxable, interest-bearing Government
bonds, upon which, to their full face value, it may issue paper
money equal to the exigencies of the great merged corporations.
Without the bonds, upon which to issue the money, the bank
could not finance the merger.
If the iron manufactories be merged, the necessary sequence
must be the merging of the railroads that enter Birmingham. In
order to effect the merging of the railroads financing which
would duplicate the original example, here cited, must follow.
Commerce, founded on the public debt, is founded upon
Government mortgages upon universal private industry.
Must not that kind of commerce subvert free institutions?
Yours truly,
(Signed) JOHN WITHERSPOON DU BOSE.
The writer of the letter on the public debt is the author of the “Life
and Times of William L. Yancey,” a book which is a treasure-house of
varied and valuable information.
That this Magazine has made such a favorable impression upon so able and
representative a man, is of itself a great encouragement to us who are
devoting our lives to it.
The question asked by the distinguished Alabamian is a spear-thrust
into the very vitals of our vicious system of Class-Rule and Special
Privileges.
When Alexander Hamilton set out to make our government as English as the
Constitution would admit of, he laid the foundations of his work in the
English system of Protection, the English system of Finance, and the
English system of Funding the Public Debt.
With his Protective system he meant to favor one class of industries at
the expense of others: thus rallying to the support of the government
those who shaped its laws to fill their pockets with the money which
belonged to other people.
With his system of Finance, and his National Bank of issue, he meant
to form a co-partnership between wealth and government. To the favored
few was to be delegated that tremendous power to create currency which
had always been a prerogative of the Crown until Barbara Villiers, the
harlot, wheedled from the dissolute Charles II. that concession to the
bankers.
With his system of Funding the Public Debt, Hamilton meant to mortgage
the Nation, in perpetuity, to the wealthy few, in order that they might
always hold their power over the masses, and their advantage over the
government.
William Pitt is said to have remarked cynically, when he saw our
government copying the British system: “Their independence will not do
them much good if they adopt our system of finance.”
We all remember how bitterly Jefferson combated the Hamilton measures.
We can turn to his writings now, and read the scathing terms in which he
denounced them. We can also read his predictions of the evils which would
come upon us if we allowed Hamilton’s class-law system to develop.
_Haven’t the evils come?_
The great historic renown won by the Democratic Party and its leaders was
gained in combating this class-law system of Alexander Hamilton.
Democrats, and the Democratic Party, _always_ stood in battle array
against the Protective System, contending that it was immoral, unjust,
oppressive, despoiling the many to enrich the few.
Democrats, and the Democratic Party, _always_ went up against the
National Banks to fight them, declaring that such an institution was of
deadly hostility to the spirit of republican government.
Democrats, and the Democratic Party, _always_ clamored against the
Funding System, and demanded that the Public Debt be paid off.
Those were the memorable, historic principles of Democrats in the years
preceding the Civil War—in the years when the Democrats had a mission,
a creed; leaders who had convictions, champions, who loved ideas well
enough to cherish them more dearly than office.
What was President Jefferson’s proud boast?
That he had so cut down Government expenses that the Public Debt would
soon be a thing of the past.
What was Jackson’s proud boast?
_That he paid the Public Debt._
That was the golden era of American history.
The National Bank had been abolished.
The National Debt had been paid off.
The Protective principle had been stricken out of the Tariff, and that
infamous system had been reduced to a moderate revenue basis.
There was hardly a millionaire in the whole country.
There was hardly a pauper in the republic.
The individual citizen amounted to more, _as a man_, than he does
now. Wages were low, but the money commanded a larger amount of the
necessaries of life than the higher wages of today.
Strikes and lockouts were unknown. “WE HAVE NO POOR,” was the
matter-of-fact statement made in Congress by Hugh S. Legaré of South
Carolina.
“THERE ARE NO BEGGARS,” said the English visitor, Charles Dickens.
In the whole world there probably was not a people more contented,
progressive, and generally well-off than we were in the Forties.
_Which were the naturally wealthy sections?_ The South and West.
_Which was the naturally sterile section?_ The East.
Where is the bulk of all the immense wealth that has been produced since
the Civil War? _In the East._
How came it there? _Class-law took it from the sections where it was
produced_, and gave it to those who were more cunning and selfish in
framing national statutes.
[Illustration: “I see signs of life and hope in the awakening of the
people.”]
There is no fouler chapter in the history of crime than that which is
to be written concerning the manipulation of our National Debt. How
many hundreds of millions have been made out of the government by the
rascals who juggled with the bonds, it would stagger faith to state.
The starting point, where Belmont, Rothschild, Sherman and the Bank of
England compelled Congress to depreciate the Greenback, the exchange of
bonds at par for Greenbacks at their full face value, the change of the
terms of the bond from lawful money to coin, and from coin to gold,
the huge commissions paid to favored bankers, the colossal deposits
of public funds to be used in private speculations, the sudden and
mysterious fortunes accumulated by Secretaries of the Treasury, like
Sherman, and by Senators, like Gorman, the stealthy mission of Ernest
Seyd, the covert influence of the Haggard & Buell circulars—all these are
but high-points in a long journey of national shame, legalized robbery,
ruinous prostitution of the powers of government to gorge the few on the
life-blood of the many.
Who does not know that our Public Debt could be paid off at any time if
the ruling class wanted it paid?
Who does not realize the anomaly of the richest nation on earth bearing
a bonded debt as though it were a luxury?
Who does not recognize the grim irony of wearing a bondholder’s chain as
though it were a string of pearls?
Wipe out the Public Debt and there would be no foundation for the
National Banks. One form of privilege having been abolished, the other
would follow. _And then others would follow!_ The bonds are the keystone
to the arch. The Public Debt is the nucleus of the system by means of
which Wealth runs the Government for its own benefit.
Who wants the Government to economize? Not the Privileged. By no means.
If the Government were to economize there would be such a surplus in the
Treasury that the Government, for very shame, _would have to pay itself
out of debt_.
The Privileged are determined to keep the Government in debt, and hence
there will be no economy.
The fields of expenditure shall widen, widen, and be kept on widening.
Salaries shall increase, and increase, and be kept on increasing. Offices
shall be multiplied, and multiplied, and be kept on multiplying.
The Panama Canal can get all it wants; let the Philippines cost what they
may; give more to the Navy; give more to the Army; give more to Rivers
and Harbors; give more to Pensions; give the Railroads four times as much
as it is worth to carry the mails, and then give them a special subsidy
to keep the contract; give $45,000 for carrying mail to the Island Tahiti
when the “cussed foreigner” offered to do it for $3,500; give with so
lavish a hand that even the South will get a pull at the sugar-teat, and
shall join in the Hallelujah Chorus of “O, _ain’t_ it good!”
A child ought to be able to see the profound policy which underlies the
extravagance of the Federal Government.
The Tariff must _not_ be lowered; the Public Debt must _not_ be paid off;
the reign of the Trusts must _not_ be threatened:
“STAND PAT!”
That’s the watchword of heartless Plutocracy which has erected its powers
upon the three bed-rock measures of Alexander Hamilton.
“STAND PAT!”—blares the bugle-note of Class-law leaders, for they know
that _a system_ depends upon all of its component parts. If there should
be a leak in the dike, _anywhere_, the angry ocean might come pouring in.
Where are the Democrats, and the Democratic Party?
What soldiers are pitching their tents upon the historic fields of
Democracy?
What lines of battle are forming under the time-honored banners of
Jefferson and Jackson?
Alas! The mighty strain and struggle of the Democratic Party during these
degenerate days, has been to imitate every bad habit of the Republicans.
Democrats vote with the Republicans to continue the National banks, to
continue the Public Debt, to continue the Protective system, to embark
upon an imperial colonial system, to perpetuate the rule of the Trust, to
multiply objects and amounts of National extravagance.
Where do I see signs of life and hope?
In the rapid awakening of the people to the fact that _in the name
of Party_ they are being stripped of everything that makes for the
independence and prosperity and happiness of the average citizen.
_Talmage in Russia: Fourteen Years Ago_
After the downfall of Beecher, Doctor Talmage became the most conspicuous
preacher in the United States. His sermons and his writings had an
immense audience. “Talmage’s Sermon” was a standing headline, in American
Monday morning newspapers, and they were widely known in Europe also.
No visitor to New York thought of returning home until he had attended
services at the Brooklyn Tabernacle and qualified himself to boast of
the fact that he had “heard Talmage.”
The fact that Doctor Talmage had been engaged to furnish articles to
any periodical, was sufficient to boost its circulation into the tens
of thousands. No Lyceum, no Chautauqua, no Lecture Course was complete
without Talmage. Formal banquets, in quest of oratorical attractions,
never failed to urge the attendance of Doctor Talmage.
Somehow the man became the fashion, the rage. He was the Caucasian Booker
Washington. Everybody having agreed that he was a wonderful man, the ball
kept on rolling by the law of inertia.
Nobody could tell you wherein he was great; nobody could quote anything
remarkable from his writings or his sermons; nobody knew of anything
phenomenal that he had done, or was supposed to be able to do. His
capacity for the benevolent assimilation of an indefinite number of
voluntary donations was strikingly like Booker Washington’s power in the
same direction; but beyond the fact that Talmage preached to a large
congregation, and wrote books which many people read, his greatness was
hard to define.
* * * * *
However, Talmage had his day. He was the fashion. At home and abroad
he was a man whom it was the correct thing to treat with distinguished
consideration. Foreign potentates, princes and powers knew Talmage as a
mighty man of the pen; likewise as a man of infinite capacity for talk;
also as a man who traveled with a photographic outfit. Consequently a man
to be handled with care; “this side up,” as it were.
His progress through a foreign land, was not merely an incident; it was
an event. He was greeted with dress-parade formalities. Foreign princes,
potentates and powers _knew_ that Talmage would write a book about them
when he got home; that the book would be read by hundreds of thousands;
that public opinion would be influenced by it; and that the photographs
of the princes, etc., would appear in the book. Consequently the smiling
faces which were turned toward the Talmage Camera by the helpless
potentates etc., were almost distressing in their laborious amiability.
* * * * *
As to Russia, Doctor Talmage seems to have gone there by imperial
invitation and prearrangement.
“Stepping from the Moscow train on returning to St. Petersburg, an
invitation was put in my hand inviting me to the palace.... I had already
seen the Crown Prince in his palace.... The royal carriage was waiting,
and the two decorated representatives of the palace took me to a building
where a suite of three rooms was appointed me, where I rested, lunched,
examined the flowers and walked under the trees.” Then the royal carriage
came again, took him through the magnificent and beautiful grounds to
the palace of the Czar. During his stay, officials crowded around him,
lavished attentions upon him, stuffed his ears with glowing accounts of
the lovely conditions prevailing in Russia, and made Doctor Talmage feel
good generally.
Russian autocracy laid itself out to capture Talmage, and it captured him
completely.
From a picture on page 408 of his book, I infer that Russian enthusiasm
broke from every restraint, and that he was caught up in the arms of a
delirious populace, and borne triumphantly through the streets, on the
shoulders of his worshipers. The picture represents Russian citizens
(who bear a disconcerting resemblance to New York dandies), waving their
hats wildly—(Derby hats)—and shows Doctor Talmage sitting gracefully
upon the shoulders of two elegantly dressed enthusiasts; and the silk
hat of the Doctor is held aloft in his eloquent right hand, while his
left is extended in what I take to be his favorite gesture. The picture
represents all the Russians with their mouths shut. It also represents
Talmage with his mouth shut—a fact which arouses a suspicion that the
picture is spurious. Under _such_ circumstances, Talmage could no more
have kept his mouth shut than Bryan could.
Other pictures show Doctor Talmage in the act of responding from his
carriage to a street ovation; also of rising to make a few remarks to
a grand gathering in a hall draped with the Stars and Stripes; also of
making a speech on the arrival of a ship from the United States bringing
bread to feed the Russian peasants.
There are, also, pictures showing Talmage seated on one side of a small
table and the Czar seated on the other; Talmage in the act of being
received into the family circle of the Czar; Talmage standing erect in
his carriage, hat outstretched, in the act of returning the salutes
of hat-waving crowds which pause and look pleasant, apparently, until
Talmage’s picture man can draw his focus, spring his slide, and say,
“That’ll do.”
* * * * *
I state all this to show the readers how public opinion is sometimes made
to order. The Russian autocracy knew that Talmage was the best possible
press-agent they could use. He was intensely vain, easily flattered, a
snob to the core, a man whose very soul quivered with delight under the
smile of royalty.
There had been a great deal of abuse heaped upon Russia. The newspapers,
magazines, political pamphlets had been telling the civilized world a
vast deal about the barbarities practiced by the Russian government.
George Kennan, the brave American traveler, had risked all the rigors of
Siberia to see for himself how prisoners were treated there. His reports
had thrilled the hearts of millions with furious indignation against
the Czar, and with profound pity for the victims of imperial tyranny.
Tolstoy, Stepniak, Kropotkin and many others had been heard.
Russian autocracy was in bad odor throughout the Christian world, and
if such a man as Talmage could be enlisted for the defence, it would be
a fine thing to do. His voice would carry weight throughout Europe and
the United States. Therefore, it is reasonably certain that the Russian
government had an axe to grind when it made the Talmage visit an occasion
for a series of ovations.
At any rate, the Russian government got from Talmage when he came
to write his book of travels, a chapter of the most fulsome, least
discriminating praise that you will ever read.
Russia was all right, in every respect. Travelers were _never_ subjected
to vexatious delays or examinations—for Talmage had not been delayed or
vexed. He actually carried into Russia some books which criticised the
government, and the magnanimous officials made no objection. There was no
religious persecution in Russia! On the contrary, Jews and Gentiles, of
all descriptions, could worship God in any manner that pleased them. The
Government never interfered.
If a nobleman conspired against the life of the Czar, he was arrested,
put into a carriage, blindfolded, driven about for many hours to make him
believe that he was on his way to Siberia, and he was then set down, at
his own door, safe, unharmed, free!
If a poet wrote scurrilous verses about the Empress, he was brought into
the family circle of the Czar and asked to read the lines in the hearing
of the lady. That was the worst.
Siberia was described as a country of Italian softness of climate; and
banishment to the Siberian prisons, mines, etc., was altogether better
for criminals than ordinary jails.
Doctor Talmage defended Russian autocracy, Russian police, Russian
prisons, indignantly hurling back upon the slanderers of Russia their
foul accusations.
Listen to him—Talmage:
“But how about the knout, the cruel Russian knout, that comes down on the
bare back of agonized criminals? Why, Russia abolished the knout before
it was abolished from our American navy.”
Think of reading this stuff at a time when the ears of the world are yet
tingling at the sound of the Cossack whips!
Think of reading this _when we know_ that before Talmage’s book was
written, and while it was being written, and ever since it was written,
Russian peasants, by thousands, _have been flogged every year for
non-payment of taxes_!
“The Emperor received me with much heartiness. And at the first glance,
seeing him to be a splendid gentleman, with no airs of pretension and as
artless as any man I ever saw, it seemed to me that we were old friends
from the start.”
Doctor Talmage did not visit the Russian prisons which he defended;
did not go to Siberia, which he compared to Italy; did not make any
investigations of peasant-life; did not go among the working classes; did
not talk with Tolstoy, nor any man of the dissatisfied elements. In fact,
Talmage declares, in effect, that nobody was dissatisfied.
Listen to Doctor Talmage, Page 422:
“He who charges cruelty on the imperial family and _the nobility of
Russia_, belies men and women as gracious and benignant as ever breathed
oxygen.”
Shades of von Plehve!
When we read such lines as the above and recall how that gracious and
benignant nobility have drenched Russia with blood of peasants, Jews,
city workingmen, republican agitators—littering the streets with ghastly
heaps of murdered men and women and children—we may well stand amazed at
the success with which the wool was pulled over the eyes of the Rev. T.
De Witt Talmage, D. D.
“There are no kinder people on earth than the Russians, and to most of
them cruelty is an impossibility.”
[Illustration: “Dr. Talmage did not go to Siberia, which he compared to
Italy.”]
Of the Czar, Doctor Talmage says:
“He’s doing the best things possible for the nation which he loved, and
which as ardently loved him.... Things are going on marvelously well, and
I do not believe that out of 500,000 Russians you will find _more than
one person_ who dislikes the Emperor, and so that Calumny of dread of
assassination drops so flat it can fall no flatter.”
[Illustration: “I prophecy for Nicholas the Second a long and happy
reign.”—Dr. Talmage]
According to Doctor Talmage the story that the Czar dreaded the assassin
was a base Calumny, and he, Talmage, flattened it out in his book “so
flat it can fall no flatter.”
I wonder what the present Czar would feel, think and say if he could
_now_ read Talmage’s comfortable assurances on the subject of “dread of
assassination.”
* * * * *
While in Russia, Doctor Talmage saw the Rulers, and no others. He talked
with the governing class, and no others. He saw a ship from the United
States bringing bread to the Russian farmers, but it never occurred to
his mind that a drouth in one portion of the huge Russian Empire was no
good reason why the New World should have to save Russian peasants from
starvation.
Looking only on the surface, seeing only what his “old friend” the Czar,
wished him to see, he praised the Russian government in terms of the most
unqualified eulogy.
Before the Talmage book was ready for the press, Prince Cantacuzene,
the Russian Minister Plenipotentiary at Washington, summoned Doctor
Talmage to the deck of a Russian man-of-war, in Philadelphia harbor,
and presented to the enraptured American “a complete gold-enameled tea
service accompanied by a message of love which I cannot now think of
without deep emotion, since Emperor Alexander has disappeared from the
palaces of earth to take his place, as I believe, in the palaces of
heaven.”
In behalf of the Czar, the formalities of a trial on Judgment Day, were
waived, it would seem; and the Czar went direct from Peterhof to his
mansion in the skies.
The Emperor Alexander, it is well-known, was succeeded by his son
Nicholas, the reigning Czar.
Talmage’s book was published in 1896. Here is what he predicted:
“_I prophesy for Nicholas the Second a long and happy reign!_”
That was a very natural inspiration. Talmage had delved into Russian
affairs and found conditions ideal. The government was mild, just,
progressive. The people were contented, and devoted to the Czar. There
was no cruelty in the administration, and no suffering among the
peasants, excepting the locality affected by the drought. The bread had
been sent to feed the peasants, and all would be well. The Knout had
been abolished. The serf, freed, was happy. Religious toleration was in
practice; the circulation of political literature unhampered.
There was not a cloud upon the horizon. George Kennan, Stepniak, Tolstoy,
Kropotkin had been slandering vilely the most humane Government of
Europe—a Government which Talmage compared to ours, to our discomfiture
in various respects.
With a Podsnapian wave of his hand, Talmage said to Europe, “_Let this
international defamation of Russia cease._”
With that Royal welcome fresh in his memory, with those public ovations
still ringing in his ears, with that “complete gold-enameled tea service”
gladdening his eye, with the “message of love” conveyed by the Prince
Cantacuzene still warming his heart, how could Doctor Talmage prophesy
otherwise?
The spirit of the occasion demanded prophecy, and there it stands
recorded, page 432:
“_I prophesy for Nicholas the Second a long and happy reign!_”
_A Prophet Whose Voice Was Not Heeded_
Almost in sight of where I live, there is a heap of stones that marks the
spot where stood the hut in which George McDuffie was born.
His folks were “poor folks.” Concerning his ancestry nothing is known.
When I was a boy somebody told me a story to this effect:
Little George McDuffie was at the cowpen where his mother was milking,
and he had a calf by the ears holding it away from the cow. A traveler,
in a buggy, drove up and stopped. Seeing the boy, and not realizing the
absorbing character of the boy’s job, the wayfaring man called out:
“Come here, Bubbie, and hold my horse.”
To which the lad replied: “If you’ll come here and hold my calf, I’ll go
there and hold your horse.”
According to the story, the traveler was so tickled by the boy’s
readiness of wit, that he took a fancy to him and secured him a position
as clerk in a store in the city of Augusta.
Well, George McDuffie wasn’t much of a clerk. He loved to read books
better than to wait upon customers. It came to pass that his fondness for
books attracted the attention of one of the Calhouns—_not_ John C., but
his brother, I believe—and Mr. Calhoun placed the boy at the celebrated
school of Dr. Waddell to be educated.
The balance is history. McDuffie became one of the greatest legal
advocates and political orators this country has ever known.
Later in life he became involved in a newspaper controversy which drew
him into two duels. In one of these he received a wound which injured his
spine and affected his brain.
In his melancholy decline, and not long before his death, McDuffie was
moved by a yearning to come back to Georgia and visit the spot where
his boyhood home had stood. He came from South Carolina by private
conveyance, and spent the night with my grandfather. Next day he went on
down to the Sweet-water Creek neighborhood where the McDuffie hut had
been. My father used to tell me that when they led the broken statesman
to the spot, pointed out the remaining shade tree and the dismantled
chimney, they drew away, leaving him alone with his memories. After
awhile they returned to find Mr. McDuffie sitting upon the stones of the
ruined hearth, crying like a child.
When the boy, George McDuffie, left the store in Augusta and went over
into South Carolina to go to school, he carried all of his earthly
possessions in one little pine box.
When he became a man he made much money, owned large estates and moved as
a peer among the proudest leaders of his day.
But he never parted with the little pine box. It was a souvenir of
the old days of youth and poverty. It was sacred in his eyes, and he
treasured it. When his mind was almost gone, he would put his arms about
the box, and tell again the story of how it had held all that he owned
when he came into South Carolina—a poor boy, on his way to the great
battle-field of life.
Did you know that to this almost forgotten statesman, George McDuffie,
belongs the distinction of having made the most powerful and most
prophetic speech that was ever made in Congress against our damnable
Tariff System?
Well, it does. Such men as Nelson Dingley and Joseph H. Walker were
good judges in such a matter, and they regarded McDuffie’s argument as
the strongest ever made against the New England scheme of enriching its
Capitalists by plundering other sections. Dr. Goldwin Smith should also
be a competent judge, and you will find that McDuffie’s speech is the one
he quotes from in his “Political History of the United States.”
[Illustration: George McDuffie]
Mr. McDuffie’s great speech against the protective system is too long to
be reproduced here; but in the concluding paragraphs he predicted with
such clearness of vision the reign of rotten business and rotten politics
which now afflicts us that his words read like inspired prophecy:
“Sir, when I consider that, by a single bill like the present, millions
of dollars may be transferred annually from one part of the community to
another; when I consider the disguise of disinterested patriotism under
which the basest and most profligate ambition may perpetrate such an act
of injustice and political prostitution, I cannot hesitate, for a moment,
to pronounce this system _the most stupendous instrument of corruption_
ever placed in the hands of public functionaries.
“IT BRINGS AMBITION AND AVARICE AND WEALTH INTO A COMBINATION WHICH IT IS
FEARFUL TO CONTEMPLATE, BECAUSE IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO RESIST.
“Do we not perceive, at this very moment, the extraordinary and
melancholy spectacle of less than one hundred thousand capitalists, by
means of this unhallowed combination, exercising an absolute and despotic
control over the opinions of eight millions of free citizens and the
fortunes and destinies of ten millions?
“Sir, I will not anticipate or forbode evil. _I will not permit myself to
believe that the Presidency of the United States will ever be bought and
sold._ But I must say that there are certain quarters of this Union in
which, if the candidate for the Presidency should come forward with this
Harrisburg tariff in his hand, nothing could resist his pretensions if
his adversary were opposed to this _unjust system of oppression_.”
* * * * *
“Indeed, Sir, when I contemplate the extraordinary infatuation _which a
combination of capitalists and politicians_ have had the heart to diffuse
over more than one-half of this Union—when I see the very victims who
are about to be offered up to satiate the voracious appetite of this
devouring Moloch, paying their ardent and sincere devotions at his
bloody shrine; I confess I have been tempted to doubt whether mankind was
not doomed, even in its most enlightened state to be the dupe of some
form of imposture, and the victim of some form of tyranny.
[Illustration: How American Capital Protects American Labor]
“Sir, in casting my eyes over the history of human idolatry, I can find
nothing, even in the _darkest_ ages of ignorance and superstition,
which surpasses the infatuation by which _a confederated priesthood of
politicians and manufacturers_ have bound the great body of the people of
the farming States of this Union as if by a spell, TO THIS MIGHTY SCHEME
OF FRAUD AND DELUSION.”
* * * * *
Bear in mind that this speech was made in 1824.
Then look around you and see how prophetically Mr. McDuffie pictured the
future.
The Presidency is bought and sold. Congress is bought and sold. The
confederated priesthood of politicians and manufacturers do dominate an
infatuated people whom it deludes and plunders.
The Trusts are nothing in the world but the legitimate children of
Privilege and Protection.
Campaign boodle-funds are nothing in the world but the sop which the
Corrupt Combination of Capitalists pay to renew the lease which they hold
on the Government.
And, as Mr. McDuffie said, the most astounding feature of the whole
diabolical system is the completeness with which the politicians and
the Privileged can dupe the victims of Protection into the belief that
_Privilege_ benefits the unprivileged.
With the doors of immigration standing wide open vomiting into our
industrial world all the cheap white labor of the universe, our Protected
capitalists are still able to convince our wage-earners that American
capital protects American labor from the competition of foreign “pauper”
labor!
Having ground down the price of factory labor to such a low point that
they can undersell foreigners in the foreign market, our Privileged and
Protected Capitalists can nevertheless convince American laborers that
the motive for high tariffs is to enable the Capitalist to pay big wages!
And they swallowed it—the wage-earners swallow it, meekly, blindly,
trustfully.
The record of a Century teaches them nothing.
The evidences of their own senses are ignored.
The very factory hands who at Fall River lived off the soup of the
Salvation Army devoutly believed that if it hadn’t been for the
Protective system they wouldn’t even have got the soup.
The factory girl who is paid five dollars per week, and who, when she
complains that she cannot live on the wage, is sardonically advised to
get a gentleman friend, actually believes that were it not for Privilege
and Protection she would not get the five dollars.
God in heaven! No wonder that George McDuffie expressed his doubt as to
whether the masses could ever be enlightened. No wonder his prophetic
speech vibrated with an undertone of despair.
Less than one-tenth of the laborers of this country own their homes; yet
_they_ have been Protected for a hundred years.
Less than a quarter million men own practically the entire wealth of the
whole United States; yet Privilege and Protection are _not_ for their
benefit.
You go to the millions of Unprivileged and Unprotected citizens and you
point out to them how they are plundered by being made to pay twice as
much as they should on every article which they buy.
They understand it; they admit the fact; but the corrupt politician has
taught them what to say.
This is the lesson:
“Yes; we pay twice as much as the goods are worth, but it is patriotic
and humane, because we thereby enable millions of American wage-earners
to get big wages.”
Fine, isn’t it?
If the man who repeats that little lesson, and believes it, would go
into the districts where Protection is and where the system has been at
work longest he will find himself in precisely the places where wages
are lowest, where Capitalists are harshest, where squalor and vice are
rankest, and where the maddened victims of our soulless wage-system are
nursing in their hearts the passions of hell.
_The Highest Office_
Let seasons come and go, let the sunlight and shadows fall where God’s
pleasure puts them—do your duty as conscience and reason reveal it to
you. Let no other man measure your work or your responsibilities; let no
artful sophistry, in favor of the expedient, veil from your steadfast
eyes the summits of Right. Let parties rise and fall; let time-servers
flop and flounder, let the heedless praise of the hour lay its withering
garlands at the feet of him who will purchase them by bending to every
passing breeze, every popular whim, every local prejudice.
Do thou look higher if joy and strength and peace and pride are to be
thine. In this brief life (hardly worth the living) know this one thing:
that a man’s honor should be just as dear to him as a woman’s virtue is
to her. Did the Roman girls not go gladly to the lions, to the bloody
death in the arena, rather than to recant their Christian faith, or to
accept a lawless lover? Did not the Armenian woman, a few years ago, leap
to death over the precipice, rather than to apostatize or to be violated?
Isn’t the ground still wet with the life-drops of poor Else Kroegler,
who let her white throat be gashed, and gashed, and gashed, by the black
devil who assailed her, till her life was gone, rather than to live
dishonored? And shall a man be less heroic than a woman? Is there nothing
within us that cannot be bought? Is there no Holy of Holies of conviction
and principle, into which the corruptor shall not enter? Is there nothing
that we hold sacred as the citadel of proud, fearless, upright manhood?
Once upon a time a barbarous peasant worked his way upward and onward,
until he wore the imperial purple of Rome; and he said: “I have gained
all the honors and none of them have value.” Did not Cæsar, himself, grow
sick at heart of the eminence he had wickedly won, and say that he had
lived long enough?
If we must bow to what is wrong, flatter what we despise, preach what
we disbelieve, and deny what we feel to be true, is success thus won
anything but a gilded dishonor?
To be a man, such a man as you know God would have you be—manly,
truthful, honest—scorning meanness, hating lies, loathing deceit,
meeting the plain duties of life, and shirking none of its plain
responsibilities—is not that the highest office you can fill?
_Editorial Comment_
The Washington Post is generally accurate in its statements of facts, but
it erred in saying that one of the legal grounds for divorce in Georgia
is insanity occurring _after_ the marriage. Our statute book is not
disgraced by a provision of that kind.
Insanity is a misfortune for which, as a rule, the victim is not to
blame. Besides, it is a disease which is often cured, or a terrible
visitation which sometimes passes away as suddenly as it came.
Suppose the Legislature deprives the afflicted wife of possibly her
only protector by granting the husband a divorce; suppose the wife then
regains her sanity—would not the situation be horrible?
When I reflect upon the shameful things the Wall Street millionaires
have led our Legislature to do, I am by no means certain that some Ryan
or Morgan, tired of his old wife, might secure from the Hamp McWhorter
machine a legislative license to go and buy a fresh one—but such a deal
has not, as yet, been consummated.
* * * * *
Congress is beginning to catch on to the enormous frauds in the weighing
of the mails. In the first issue of this Magazine, I called attention to
the notorious fact that certain Congressmen, who belong to the railroads,
were in the habit of lending to their bosses the frank whose mark on mail
matter entitles it to go through the mails without payment of postage.
For example: Suppose the Southern Railroad wants the use of the frank of
the Honorable Leonidas F. Livingston, whom “the Democratic Party” of the
Atlanta, Ga., District sends to Congress. In that case, the Honorable
Leonidas will lend his bosses his rubber stamp which, being inked and
pressed upon a sack of mail matter, leaves thereon this inscription:
_L. F. Livingston, M. C._
This inscription being placed upon the sack, the postal authorities are
compelled by law to carry the sack to any part of the United States free
of charge. The magic letters “M. C.” which stand, of course, for “Member
of Congress,” are as good as gold in the postal service. Now why does the
Southern Railroad want to use the frank of the Honorable Leonidas?
For this reason:
The Government pays the railroads for carrying the mails, at so much per
pound; to get at the “average” for the whole year, the Government weighs
the mail for ninety days; therefore it is hugely to the advantage of the
railroads to make the “average” as high as possible; and consequently the
railroads themselves crowd into the mails, _during those ninety days_,
every God-blessed piece of old junk they can lay their hands on.
See?
But if the railroads had to pay postage on that old junk, their profits
would be cut down to just that extent. They would have to pay thousands
of dollars to the Government, in postage, during the ninety days.
By getting from the Honorable Leonidas the use of his frank, the railroad
can escape payment of postage on the old junk. By the collusion of the
Honorable Leonidas, the Southern Railroad is not only enabled to swindle
the Government in the creation of a fraudulent “average,” but _they even
unload on the Government the expense of carrying the bogus mail which
constitutes the swindle_.
In the first number of this Magazine, I gave Livingston’s name as that of
one of the rascals who help the railroad swindle the people.
_I give it again._
The Honorable Leonidas is one of the unscrupulous knaves who covers the
multitude of his individual sins with the generous, rubber-coat mantle of
“the Democratic Party.”
The time is rapidly approaching in this country when a scoundrel will
be treated as a scoundrel, regardless of his being a member of the
Democratic Party or the Republican Party. Thieves and corporation
doodles will not forever escape detection and infamy by crying out “I am
a Democrat,” or “I am a Republican.”
* * * * *
The gaping world is told that the Princess Ena, of the Royal House of
Great Britain, is about to marry Alfonso, the decadent lad who is King
of Spain. The Royal House of Great Britain holds the throne upon the
Parliamentary Condition that it shall be Protestant. The Act which
recognized the Hanoverian succession reads: “The Princess Sophia and the
heirs of her body _being Protestants_.”
But the crown of Spain would not be allowed to rest upon the head of a
heretic. No, indeed! The King and Queen of Spain must be Catholics.
But King Alfonso wants the fair Princess Ena, and the ambitious Ena wants
to become Queen of Spain.
Is there any way out? Oh, yes. The Princess Ena, of the Royal House whose
Protestant faith is a matter of Parliamentary measure, being determined
to marry a King whose crown depends upon his being a rigid Catholic,
happily solves the problem by “turning” Catholic.
Very well. If to Henry of Navarre “Paris was well worth a mass,” why
shouldn’t the throne of Spain be worth as much to the fair Princess Ena?
* * * * *
And, by the way, the Princess Ena has had some illustrious examples set
her in the matter of changing one’s creed.
Did not unhappy little Anna Gould “turn” Catholic to ease the conscience
of her precious Castellane?
And did not the daughter of the American “house” of Mackay “turn”
Catholic when she became an Italian princess?
Human motives are pretty much the same everywhere, and to many people
religion is a mere matter of respectable conformity to the manners and
customs of those who make up the environment.
* * * * *
John D. Rockefeller is running about from one hiding place to another,
to keep from being found by the officers of the law. How silly. Why does
he not come into court with a shattered memory and a pack of perjuries
like some of the other high-rolling rascals who have been before the
courts recently?
As to one-third of the things which might land him in the penitentiary,
if he admitted them, he can say, “I decline to answer on advice of
counsel.”
To another third he can say that he does not remember.
To the remaining third, he can make perjured replies.
Then old John will be in line with Rogers, McCall, McCurdy, Depew and
some others who have recently figured in the New York legal proceedings.
* * * * *
While Rockefeller is hiding out like a common criminal, would it not be
appropriate for one of his high-priced preachers to come forth in another
sermon, or interview, or signed article, explaining to us common mortals,
what a good and pious, and benevolent man old John D. is?
The Recording Angel must have a busy time trying to keep straight the
accounts of some of our high-priced city preachers.
There was Bishop Potter, for instance, who choked off the Reverend Mr.
Chew when that subordinate divine wanted to give us a piece of his mind
concerning Life Insurance rottenness in New York. The high-priced Bishop
put himself in the attitude of warding off attack from the robbers of
widows and orphans.
* * * * *
The Constitution of the United States expressly declares that no money
shall be taken from the Treasury without an appropriation by Congress.
Therefore, when Lyman Gage and Leslie Shaw, Secretaries of the Treasury,
took $15,000,000 out of the Treasury and placed it in the Standard Oil
Bank in New York City they violated the supreme law of the land. The
$56,000,000 which Mr. Roosevelt’s administration has been allowing the
National Banks to hold and to use is held and used in violation of the
Constitution. What do our big men care for the law? Nothing. The law is
for the small and the weak.
* * * * *
It was not _your_ mother or sister or wife, _but it might have been_, and
therefore the thing that happened to her should stir your blood.
A lady who is every bit as good, so far as anybody knows or says, as Mrs.
Roosevelt, went to the White House to see the President on business. She
wanted to plead for her husband, who had been arbitrarily thrown out of
a good office at the instance of a very contemptible cur named Hull, who
happened to be a Congressman, and chairman of the House Committee on
Military Affairs.
A swell-head White House official named Barnes, told the lady that the
President was engaged and could not see her.
She remarked that she would wait until the President was disengaged—that
she meant to stay until she _did_ see him.
In other words, she placed herself in the position of “the importunate
widow.” She was desperately in earnest; her husband had been foully
wronged; it was a matter of vital importance to her; and her wifely heart
made her brave the rebuff of asinine Barnes.
Mr. Roosevelt had recently returned to the White House from a “progress”
through the Southern provinces, during which progress he had exhibited
himself to his admiring constituents as the most affable, approachable,
genial and generous of men. What was more natural than for Mrs. Morris to
think that a little persistence on her part would bring the gallant Teddy
to the front, beaming with that glorified grin and extending that cordial
hand which had so recently enraptured the people of the South?
Stage-play, however, is one thing and “business” is another. Teddy is
a genial democrat when playing to the grand-stand, and a bumptious
autocrat in some of his White House moods.
To cut the long story short, the lady was ordered out of the White House,
and when she kept her seat she was seized upon by three white men and one
negro and forcibly dragged out. Her silk dress was torn, her ornaments
scattered, her flesh bruised. The white men pulled her by the arms and
shoulders, the negro held her by the legs; she was dragged through the
mud to a cab, thrown into it like a common criminal and driven off to a
criminal’s resort, the House of Detention.
A more shocking outrage has never been committed at the White House. It
was indecent, it was brutal, it was despotic, it was violative of all
democratic usage and of every human consideration. The poor lady was so
terribly frightened, so rudely handled, subjected to such a public and
unprovoked humiliation that she was thrown into a fever and confined to
her bed for many days.
No—I have already stated that it was not _your_ sister, or _your_ mother
or _your_ wife whose legs were held by Roosevelt’s nigger while his three
white ruffians dragged her, screaming, through the mud, and flung her,
bruised and frantic, into a cab to be driven off as criminals are driven.
_But it might have been._
And when you consider the incident from that point of view you will
admire the courage with which Senator Ben Tillman denounced the outrage,
while you regard with utter scorn the cowardly attitude of the great
majority in both branches of Congress who were afraid to say what they
thought.
Mr. Roosevelt was not originally responsible for the outrage, but
he chose to become so by his refusal to express any regrets at the
occurrence, and by his failure to rebuke the brutes who were guilty of
such needless violence to a respectable visitor at a public office which
belonged as much to her as to anybody else on this earth.
[Illustration: _Maximum and Minimum Benefits, at Least_
_There is talk of congress adopting the maximum and minimum
tariff plan. Haven’t we something of that sort in force now._
_Bart., in Minneapolis Journal_]
[Illustration: _The Builder of the City_
_Tom L. Johnson_—“_That, sir, is the root of all municipal
mischief, and it must be dug out clean!_”
_Bengough, in The Public_]
[Illustration: “EVERYBODY WORKS FOR RYAN”
_F. Opper, in N. Y. American_]
[Illustration: Lookin’ T’wards Home
BY HELEN FRANCES HUNTINGTON]
“No, we ain’t a’needin’ any more hands right now,” said Polly Ann in a
brisk, business-like voice that discouraged prolixity on the part of the
loitering applicant whom Polly knew to be unreliable from a working point
of view, for he bore all the outward marks of shiftlessness which her
eyes had been trained to discern at one comprehensive glance.
“I reckon I’d as well wait an’ see the boss,” was the hopeful answer.
“It won’t do no good to wait, ’cause he ain’t got no work for you,” Polly
reiterated with dry patience. “’Sides, the boss is too busy to waste any
time outside o’ business.”
“Oh, well, then I’ll call again,” the applicant observed amiably. He
shuffled out, hands in pockets, and Polly Ann eased back in her chair
behind the railed-in desk that overlooked the long rows of pallid,
expressionless faces bowed over the spindles that whirred monotonously
through the dull roar of machinery. Polly was used to the noise; its
absence, during the brief Sunday rests, made her nerves ache dimly as
if their rightful functions had been forcibly suspended, for she had
grown up within the mills. Her mother had been first to succumb to the
insidious fever which sooner or later fastens upon the unsound, poorly
nourished slaves of the great White Despot known to the world as the
Southern Cotton Mill industry. Polly’s young sister had followed their
mother to her quiet rest within a year, after which the overburdened,
inadequate father “aimed” to return to the upland, clayey farm which he
had so hopefully abandoned two years before; but before he could save
enough money to cover his debts he added to his burdens by marrying a
factory widow with four pallid, old-young children. Polly lived with
them until they moved to Atlanta in hopes of financial betterment, then
she assumed the brunt of home-making for her two undisciplined brothers.
Meanwhile, her industry had increased as her thin, deft fingers became
more and more proficient. Her interest in her fellow-slaves broadened
into a mute, protective supervision which the keen-witted boss recognized
and rewarded by placing her in a position of trust which, humble though
it was, relieved her of the bitter grind of mill labor.
Spring was in the air. It looked in at the dim windows and drifted
through the open doors where the sunlight drenched the worn, splintered
floor with fine gold. Polly recognized something familiar—the sweet,
far-reaching scent of wild azaleas that grew thick and tall along the
distant Chattahoochee hill; she closed her eyes and let her fancy drift
back to the green pastures and still waters of the old haunts of her
heart’s desire, until her revery was shattered by a human appeal.
It was a sunny young voice that recalled Polly to tangible things, and
it belonged to a very young girl of the “cracker” type, with a face
of spring-like innocence, who introduced herself as “Mis’ Lomux, from
Lumpkin,” with a smile of such irresistible sweetness that Polly’s thin,
sallow face lighted with answering pleasure.
“You-all’s got a job fer me this time, ain’t you?” the stranger asked
anxiously. “I was here last Chuesday, an’ the boss said he ’lowed he’d
have a place fer me by today. I aimed to git here right soon this mornin’
so’s to start work on time, but the chillun give out in spite of all I
could do, an’ I was jest obleeged to stop along with ’em at a house
where the folks promised to keep ’em till they got rested.”
“The boss is right busy now,” said Polly in very kind voice. “I don’t
much believe he needs any more hands, ’cause he tuk in a new batch
Saturday, but you can wait an’ see what he says. Set down an’ rest
yourself till he comes along.”
“He surely will give me _somethin’_ to do,” Mis’ Lomux said hopefully,
“’cause he done promised he would.”
“Well, mebbe he will, then. Did you ever work in a mill afore?”
“No’m, but I can learn real fast. They say ’tain’t hard.”
“No, ’tain’t to say hard, but it’s turrible wearin’,” Polly answered.
“You don’t look real stout, nuther.”
“That’s one reason why I come,” Mis’ Lomux admitted frankly, “though I’m
stout a’ plenty to putter all day without restin’ any bit. Last fall I
was tuk with a spell o’ fever an’ sence then I jest ain’t been able to do
like I uster. Plowin’ an’ sech-like beats me plum out in no time. I tried
my best to take Tobe’s place after he left, but I jest couldn’t make out
no way.”
“Who’s Tobe?” Polly interrupted with deepening interest. “Your brother?”
“No’m, he’s my husband.”
“Your husband!” Polly echoed surprisedly. “You look dreadful young to be
married. How long _have_ you been married?”
“Be ten weeks on Sunday,” the bride replied unenthusiastically.
“An’ he’s left you a’ready!”
“Yes’m.” Mis’ Lomux nodded her blond head solemnly. “He done broke his
promise an’—an’ I don’t aim to live with him no more, ever.”
Polly Ann searched the flower-like face with something akin to pity. “You
ain’t a’ carin,’ are you?” she asked in a whisper.
Mis’ Lomux’s denial was emphatic, but unconvincing. “I ’lowed all
husbands was like pa,” she admitted sadly, “an’ that’s why I married Tobe
so quick after he axed me. You see when pa died that throwed me an’ the
chillun onto the county, with me not able to do fer ’em like I would
a’ been if I hadn’t had the fever. What to do I didn’t know ’cause the
chillun couldn’t work by their selves to do any good. When Tobe Lomux
sent me word that he’d tak the hull lot of us if I’d have him, I was
glad enough to marry him on that account, no matter what come. Not that
I got ary thing agin Tobe—no one ain’t fer that matter,” she interrupted
herself to say extenuatingly, “for he’s a real steady, honest person.
Tobe’s high-tempered, though. Fust thing I knowed his folks come meddlin’
round talkin’ about him havin’ to do fer a’ passel o’ lazy chilluns an’
sech-like an’ it warn’t no time fore Tobe had put the chilluns to work
like a gang o’ niggers. Me! Why, I jest couldn’t stand that not fer a
minit! I up an’ told Tobe to hire his own niggers or quit us, ’cause
them pore chillun warn’t goin’ to be nobody’s slaves. An’ he went”; she
finished, growing very white and cold.
“He warn’t much or he wouldn’t a’ acted that way,” was Polly’s stern
verdict.
The bride winced. “I aim to show ’im we can git on without him an’ his
uppidy folks,” she retorted, with a flame of delicate color. “That’s why
I come here, jest to make a livin’ fer us all till I can stouten up agin
crap-making time next spring. By that time the two little boys’ll be big
enough to help with the plowin’. Boys grows a heap in a year.”
“Did you say you brung the chillun along with you?” Polly wanted to know.
“Yes’m, we all set out together yesterday mornin’. Tain’t to say so
dreadful fur—jest eighteen miles—but they ain’t used to travelin’ steady,
an’ they give plum out early this mornin’, so I left ’em along with some
folks while I come on ahead to git work.”
Polly Ann’s interest was of a keenly personal order, which admitted of
vast concessions in favor of the second applicant for the already crowded
ranks of mill laborers. She had turned the first comer away almost at
sight, but Mis’ Lomux was different—her plaintive needs appealed to
Polly Ann’s warm, starved little heart in a fashion quite unknown to her
since her mother and sister had passed beyond her faithful care.
“Where’s your things?” Polly asked after a museful pause.
“We’re totin’ all we’ve got,” Mis’ Lomux answered frankly. “Pa didn’t
have much of anythin’ when he died an’ I sold what little there was to
git the chillun fit close to come down here in.”
Polly rose and stepped from the little platform with an air of decision.
“You set there while I go hunt the boss,” said she.
So Mis’ Lomux waited hopefully until Polly returned from the fore part of
the great building to say that there would be a vacancy in the spindle
department the very next day. “You’d better fetch the chillun right
along,” Polly advised, “’cause you’ll have to be ready to go to work at
seven o’clock tomorrow mornin’. There’s a’ empty shack at the end of
Factory Row that you can rent real cheap. I’ll see about rentin’ it while
you’re gone.”
Polly saw them pass the mills late that afternoon, a dusty, tired band of
wayfarers, each carrying small, queer-shaped bundles which contained the
sum of their meager possessions, and felt herself glow with satisfaction
as she thought of what she had contrived to put into the rough little
shack, in the way of household furnishings. She went over after work
hours to assist with the setting to rights.
By the end of the first week Mis’ Lomux and the two little boys, who were
to help with the next year’s crop, had obtained steady employment in the
mills. Their bright faces gleamed out among the listless, pallid, faded
faces of the “old hands,” with primrose freshness that attracted Polly
Ann’s eyes many, many times during the long noisy day; but soon their
morning glow waned and the difference grew less and less marked except
for Mis’ Lomux’s illuminating smile which never dimmed or wavered, early
or late, while the little loved faces turned towards hers. The delicately
rounded girlish figure grew thin, and Mis’ Lomux drooped more and more
just as Polly’s mother and sister had drooped before doom overtook them,
yet never a word escaped her patient lips. There was, indeed, no time
for self-pity, for all her thoughts were centered upon the children whom
she sheltered from every harsh word and look with a maternal zeal that
never failed of its loving purpose, in spite of the children’s wilfulness
apparent to every one but Mary Lomux. Polly realized shrewdly how it had
been with Tobe, whose judgment had lacked the softening influence of
love, for although the children were of naturally lovable disposition,
Mary had undeniably spoiled them from a man’s view-point.
Every Sunday morning Mis’ Lomux piloted her little flock away to the
hills which seemed to beckon her far beyond the noise and smoke and
grime of Factory Row to the place of her heart’s desire. Polly Ann often
accompanied her friend because the occasion afforded opportunity to add
to the meager lunches in a manner that lapped over several succeeding
meals. On such occasions the girls talked continually of the tranquil,
humble joys of home, while the children lay in the grass, too tired to
play or chatter. Mary comforted their weariness with a promise of a
speedy reprieve.
“We’re goin’ home in the spring, sure,” she would say with illuminating
smiles, “an’ when you’ve been there a day or two you’ll plum fergit about
ever feelin’ puny or tired. Jest keep lookin’ t’wards home.”
But the event seemed to recede. Summer’s golden glory paled before
autumn’s riper loveliness, and the air grew pungent with harvest
fragrance that made Mis’ Lomux’s heart sick with longing. Polly noticed
that her friend was losing ground daily, but there was no help for her at
the mills, and Mary would not hear of returning to the fallow farm before
the growing season began.
“I jest couldn’t bear to let the chilluns go to the poor farm,” she said
yearningly. “Folks’d always have that to throw up to ’em when they growed
up. An’ there’s them Lomuxes! They’d talk wuss’n anybody.”
During the late autumn one of the boys met with an accident which kept
Mary from work for several days and drained her slender savings to the
last nickle. Then winter came with its chill continuous rains, when the
mills, always dull and somber, grew doubly gloomy. Doors and windows
were kept closed and the prisoned air grew more and more poisonous as
the workers exhaled it over and over. Mary protected her boys as well as
possible. She had made herself so well-liked by her fellow-workers that
no one interfered with her many little devices for the children’s comfort
and no one manifested the ill-will which is so generally exhibited
towards favorites; for it was impossible to be harsh toward the brave
little woman who fought so desperately against losing odds. Toward spring
Mis’ Lomux was obliged occasionally to take a day off on account of
blinding headaches.
“’Tain’t nothin’ at all,” she invariably protested, in answer to Polly’s
anxious questions. “Folks that’s had the fever ginerally feel this way
every year about the same time. When the weather gits warmer I’ll be
stout as ever.”
But Polly knew better. She had seen that look of deadly weariness too
often to be deceived.
“Ain’t you never heard from Tobe?” Polly asked one evening when she sat
on the steps of Mary’s shack watching her friend’s strenuous attempts to
hold herself erect while she patched a pair of faded little trousers.
Mary bowed her head very low as she answered, “No.”
“Where’s he at?”
“In Atlanta, workin’ in the engine shops, an’ doin’ well; his maw told
Billy Sanders a while back.”
“An’ he knows you’re down here slavin’ like a nigger for all them
chillun?”
“I reckon he does, ’cause his maw writes to him.”
“Then all I’ve got to say is that he must be a turrible no-count feller
to let his wife—”
“’Tain’t his fault,” Mary flung back, lifting her deathly pale face for
a moment. “It’s them Lomuxes that made all the trouble to start with. If
his maw hadn’t found fault with the chillun he never would a’ done what
he did.”
“If you knowed that, what made you send him off?” Polly wanted to know.
“I jest couldn’t stand the thought of Tom bein’ teched by nobody. None
of them chillun ever had a hand laid onto ’em afore, an’ I couldn’t bear
that they should—ever!”
“Well, ’tain’t none of my business, of course,” said Polly drily, “but I
_will_ say that if Tobe was half a man even, he’d do his part now that
you need him so bad.”
“He couldn’t—not after what I said,” Mary protested mournfully. “I
told him never to come back no more till Kingdom-come, an’ he said he
wouldn’t—not if I begged him on my dyin’ bed!”
“My land, what a mean sperited feller he must be!” Polly exclaimed
contemptuously. “I wonder the Lord didn’t punish him for sech talk. In my
opinion, Mary, you’re a heap better off without him than you’d be with
him.”
Mary’s head drooped very low over her work, but in spite of that Polly
saw the tears that fell on the little patched garments. There was a long
silence during which Polly hated Tobe Lomux as heartily as she pitied
Mary. Then she delivered herself of a bit of advice that had burned
within her heart for weeks. “If I was you, Mary, I’d give up an’ let the
county take care of me—jest for a little spell. You ain’t able to work
another day, an’ to tell you the truth I don’t believe you’ll be let work
much longer, ’cause the boss has noticed how bad you look. I’ll git the
circuit-rider to speak a good word for you at the poor farm so’s they’ll
give you a little shack off to yourself.”
“Oh Polly, I couldn’t go—I couldn’t!” Mary cried chokingly. “For myself
it wouldn’t matter _what_ come, but the chillun—they would always be
looked down on fer livin’ at a poor farm.”
“What’s to become of ’em if anything bad was to happen to you, I’d like
to know?” asked practical Polly. “You’ve done for ’em an’ humored ’em
till they’re sorter spoiled. They couldn’t git along with strangers. The
poor farm’s the only thing, Mary. I don’t doubt but that you’ll be stout
enough by next spring to go back to the farm an’ make a crop, but you
won’t if you stay here.”
“I’ll rest up a bit,” said Mary dejectedly. “We can git along on what the
boys makes for a few days an’ by that time I’ll be stout enough to go
back to work.”
But in that surmise Mary was mistaken. On the fourth day when she resumed
her place at the reels, outraged nature succumbed completely to the long
strain, and she dropped in a dead faint among her whirling spools. That
happened the day before Polly was to go on a long advertised excursion
to Atlanta, and, although Mary was quite ill on the eventful morning,
Polly did not offer to stay with her friend but hurried through her
gala preparations in great excitement. She looked thinner and paler and
smaller than ever in her unaccustomed finery.
“I’ll fetch you a little somethin’ from Atlanta, if I git time to go to
the stores,” Polly promised, while she waited on Mary’s porch for the
hack to gather up its fluttering load along Factory Row.
Polly left the crowded train at Atlanta and hurried off in search of the
engine shops. She had little difficulty in locating Tobe Lomux, whose
industry had made him quite a favorite there. He was a sturdy, well-built
young fellow with a good, honest face and a firm undimpled chin that
bespoke a will of iron. He looked at little frail, anxious Polly as if
she were something too insignificant for serious notice.
“I’m a friend of Mary Lomux’s,” Polly began with a furiously beating
heart, for her hopes had dwindled discouragingly during her long, worried
ride, “an’ I’ve come to find out if you aim to leave her die without
doin’ a thing to prevent it.”
“Mary—die!” Tobe’s head went back with a wrench that sent the blood
bounding to his face. “What’s that about Mary?” he asked gruffly.
“Don’t you know that she’s killin’ herself at the cotton mills down at
Gainesville, workin’ for them chillun? Ain’t nobody wrote an’ told you
that, Tobe Lomux?”
Tobe ignored the question. “Did Mary send you to me?” he asked in a voice
that Polly misinterpreted.
“No, she didn’t. She’s got too much grit for that even if she is too sick
to hold up her head. I didn’t have much hopes of gittin’ any satisfaction
from you, judgin’ by the way you’ve acted, but I thought I’d try jest
onct. What I want to know, Tobe Lomux, is if you’re goin’ to let her
die—or not?”
“Me! Why, good Lord, what can I do? If Mary wanted me I’d—I’d—Well, she
don’t, that’s all.”
“Mary didn’t send for you,” Polly broke in eagerly, “but if you’re
any sort of a man you’ll drop that spike an’ take the fust train to
Gainesville. That’s what you’d do, if——”
The tool dropped from Tobe’s grimy hand, and his head and shoulders went
back defiantly. “I’m goin’ right back along with you,” he said, jerking
off his leather apron and shaking down his sleeves. “Wait till I draw my
pay. We can talk on the train.”
Polly remembered that homeward ride to her dying day, for it was the
first time in her defrauded life that she had been brought face to face
with a great passion whose very crudeness added to its strength. Tobe had
held himself with grim, fearful ardor to his labor, while his stubborn
aching heart yearned for one word of reconciliation from Mary. His
mother had written strange, slighting things relating to the blighting
factory life that Tobe abhorred, and he had waited and Mary had suffered
in silence. Before the train reached Gainesville Tobe’s busy brain had
evolved a plan which he confided to Polly while they stood on the station
platform waiting for the country stage which was to take Tobe up to
Lumpkin that very afternoon.
“I’ll be down by noon tomorrer, sure,” was his parting promise.
Polly paid a brief visit to Mary’s shack when she reached Factory Row,
fearing to stay long lest her secret should escape her eager lips. She
was tired, she explained so tersely that the sick girl felt hurt and
neglected. The following day Polly appeared at sunrise.
“I don’t aim to work today,” she announced, “so I may as well set with
you, Mary. You jest lemme fix you up on the porch where you can git the
air while I red up the house a bit.”
Mary was too listless to object, so she dragged herself out to the narrow
porch where the warm spring sunshine drenched the rough boards with a
golden flood, upon which the blossomed torches of the cypress vine made
small, dancing shadows.
“Ain’t it a turrible pretty day!” Polly exclaimed glowingly. “Makes me
think of way up in Lumpkin, don’t it you?”
“I jest can’t bear to think of it at all!” Mary wailed, with a yearning
glance toward the far, golden hills.
“I’ll bet the honeysuckles is jest thick all over them river hills by
now. Don’t you rec’lect how blue the bottoms looked along about this time
when the dog vi’lets is out full?”
“It’s time to lay off the cotton fields,” Mary murmured. “Polly, if
anything should happen to me, you’ll see that the chillun keeps together
at the poor farm, won’t you?”
“Shucks, you’re goin’ to get well—that’s what’s goin’ to happen to you,
Mary Lomux. Now lie still and rest while I straighten up the house.”
Mary lay quite still for a long, long while, looking toward home with
a great wistfulness in her weary eyes and a dark fear in her heart. By
and by a wagon turned across the bare, sun-baked flat that separated
Mary’s shack from the factory grounds and stopped at the head of
Factory Row. It was spotlessly new, even to the snowy bow-sheet, and
the household furnishings visible through the shirred opening were new,
also. Mary saw the driver spring down lightly and throw the reins over
a broken gatepost. Then Tobe stumbled up the steps, dully ashamed of
his unconquerable emotion, for he came of a race who count it unmanly
to betray any outward sign of feeling. But it was impossible for him to
speak calmly.
“I didn’t have no idee you was sick, Mary,” said he shakingly. “I’m real
glad Polly come an’ told me about it. I thought I’d drop in an’ see how
you’s comin’ on, jest to be neighborly,” he added in a voice that seemed
to come from a great distance.
Mary struggled up with a smothered cry, but fell back weakly among the
pillows and cried instead of answering, while Polly stared helpless from
the doorway and Tobe wrestled with his heart’s desire to take the poor
little woman in his arms and comfort her in love’s own way. And while
they waited a thin little voice came from the pillows.
“I ain’t a bit sick,” it said, “jest that flustered I can’t help but cry.
Don’t mind me—Tobe. I’m real—glad to see you.”
“Mary,” Tobe rose from the chair into which he had dropped and stooped
over the little trembling figure until his big, firm, strong hands rested
on her shoulders. “Mary, do you reckon you could make out to go on up to
Lumpkin with me? I’d love, the best kind to raise a crop this year.”
A cry of inarticulate joy struggled up from the pillows and after a
moment a little tear-wet, lovely radiant face looked up at Tobe. “Do you
mean—Oh, Tobe, would you take the _chillun_ too?” Mary faltered.
“Sure thing, an’ be only too glad. Land, how I’ve missed them young
’uns!” cried Tobe, every fiber of his being aglow.
Mary’s joy brimmed over. “Oh Polly, did you hear that!” she called in
sheer ecstacy. “I couldn’t be happier—no, not if I was in heaven.”
The young man lifted his head and looked straight at Polly with wet,
shining eyes. “Say, you’ve got to go long with us,” he said unsteadily,
“’cause I ain’t goin’ to leave Mary do a lick of work till she gits plum
strong agin, no matter what comes. Git ready, will you, Polly?”
“Me! My land, how pleased I’d be. Why, it’d be like gittin’ to
heaven—mighty nigh,” said Polly growing hot and cold by turns. “Now that
the boys is both goin’ down to live with pa, too. Seem like things is
turnin’ out too good to be true.”
“Don’t it! Tobe, can we go soon?” Mary asked breathlessly.
“Soon as you’n Polly can fix what you want to take along,” Tobe answered
eagerly. “I’ll go over an’ fetch the chillun from the factory while you
all git ready. We’d oughter git home by dark.”
Then he rose and strode buoyantly across the sun-baked hill to the
factory door and Mary rose, too, tremblingly, but without hesitation,
while Polly held herself in readiness to support her frail figure should
her strength desert her. But there was no further need of anxiety, for
Mary had tasted the elixir of life during that brief, transfiguring hour
when love had put to rout the dreariness of hope deferred and filled her
heart with joy unspeakable.
[Illustration]
Bobby Jonks; His Hand and Pen
Man is an animal, but you can easily detect him from the rest of them
when he has his hat on. He is of few days and full of things that the
doctors cut out if they get half a chance. My Uncle Bob is a bachelor. A
bachelor is a man who smokes in bed and burns himself up every once in
a while and goes to glory a-hollerin’, while everybody else says “Oh,
pshaw!” and “Did you ever?”
All bachelors are wise, but my Uncle Bob knows ’most everything; he
says he believes he’d be in Congress right now if it wasn’t for his
modesty—no, honesty. But, says he, there is one thing he never could
fully make up his mind about, and that is whether clam-digging is fishing
or agriculture. A hog is a quadruped; the love of money is the root of
all evil—thus we see why the motto of a rich man so often is “Root hog or
die!” A man is either a biped or a cripple, according to whether he has
messed around in a sawmill or not. The difference between a biped and a
quadruped is two legs. A three-legged stool is a tripod, and is mostly
used by country editors. A turtle is a quadruped, but he can’t climb a
tree and get off a good joke about making a noise like a nut. Neither can
some people.
On the only three occasions in a man’s history when he cuts any
particular mustard he is called “it”—when he is a baby, a bridegroom and
a corpse. And in all three instances he is said by his admiring friends
to look real natural. Man was made to mourn, but Uncle Bob says the
dad-dogged fool always thinks he can get out of it by marrying again. A
woman may be as handsome as a circus horse but she is never satisfied
to let another woman be handsome, too. It’s different altogether with a
hog—he is perfectly contented to let everybody else be hogs if they want
to. Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
_Assessment Insurance_
A HOMILY ON THE ROYAL ARCANUM
BY MICHAEL MORONEY
There is no real or true life insurance but the straight old line regular
life, where the policy is payable only at death. Term life insurance,
so called, is simply banking for the benefit of the company which takes
the risk. In regular life insurance the insured has a certain expectancy
at the time of taking out the policy. Payment for the amount he is to
receive at death is spread out over his expectancy, less four per centum
interest compounded, and he pays it in annual, semi-annual, or quarterly
installments, as may be agreed upon. If he lives out his expectancy, he
will have paid in all he is to receive at death, either directly, or
by the interest carried on his premiums. Of course there is a certain
amount of loading in the premiums he pays, but for the purposes of our
illustration, that need not be considered. In this plan, the policy
holder is really insuring himself, and when he dies his beneficiary, or
estate, simply receives back the money he has paid in. The fact that
there are so many life insurance companies and that they have become so
wealthy and powerful, illustrates the power of interest, especially when
it is compounded.
The Royal Arcanum professes to give life insurance at actual cost, which
it does not and never did. It was organized from the top down. Fifteen
persons met in Boston on June 23, 1877, and constituted themselves
the Supreme Council. Twelve of them became officers, and three were
incorporators simply. This body reserved to itself all the power of
legislation and of receiving and paying out the moneys of the order.
Provisions were made for the organization of subordinate and grand
councils of the order, but they were simply wards of the Supreme Council.
Members were received on medical examinations from 21 to 55 years of age
and paid for $3,000 insurance, one dollar at 21 years, and up to four
dollars at 55 years. The rise from year to year was from 4 to 20 cents.
The assessments were to be paid when called for, after the death of a
member. The order grew and prospered from year to year until 1898, when
the management thought it saw the necessity of increasing the rates. It
made 21 at the rate of $1.76 and 54 rate of $7.00. The rise each year was
from 6 to 44 cents. At this time the order had 195,105 members, and the
loss in membership in the order in the next six months was about 10,000.
However the order continued to prosper until after the annual meeting of
the Supreme Council in 1905, when it adopted a new table of rates, which
began at $1.89 at 21 and rose to $16.08 at 65, but from Oct. 1, 1905, all
the members were to be assessed at attained ages, whereas before that
all had been assessed at entrance ages. In other words, on Oct. 1, 1905,
each old member was required to reënter the order as a new member, and
pay at attained ages. New members after that date were to pay at entrance
ages, but all were to pay $16.08 per month on $3,000 when they reached
65 years. At the time of the making of this new rate the order had over
300,000 members. Since then it has lost 50,000 members, and a majority
of its members are opposed to the new rates.
There was no occasion for the new rates, as, under the laws of the order,
additional assessments could have been made, at any time, to provide
for excessive mortality, and the order could have been worked out on
additional assessments until it failed, as it is bound to do.
An organization within the order has been formed to contest the new
rates, and this has brought a suit in the Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts to have them declared invalid. The protestants claim that
when each member entered the order he made a contract to pay assessments
at age entrance, and that while the Supreme Council may call extra
assessments, as mortality may require, it cannot increase the rates,
or compel members to pay at attained ages. Also that the new rates are
unreasonable and will create a surplus of $3,700,000 every year, which
is contrary to the laws of the order and of the State of Massachusetts.
The Supreme Council claims that each member when he entered the order
surrendered all his rights to protest or object to any action of that
body and agreed in advance to approve any action which it might take in
regard to rates.
All of the old life insurance policies of every kind and character are
based on contract, and it was supposed that the rates at entrance in a
fraternal order constituted a contract between the member and the supreme
body of the order. Many of the courts of the several states have so
held, but it was for the Supreme Council of the Royal Arcanum to defy
reason and common sense and to claim that they were the autocrats of the
order. All insurance should be like a deposit in a savings bank, that can
hardly be lost. The Royal Arcanum, however, has depended upon lapses.
Thirty-five is the age usually taken for illustration in insurance. At
that age the average of lapses per 1,000 lives is 37 per cent plus. In
May, 1905, there were 305,083 members in the order. That would mean that
out of 305,083 members if all were of the age of 36, in any year, 111,000
would lapse. The average policy in the Royal Arcanum is $2,231.67 and
out of that there would be lost by lapse, $826.70. If all the members
were 36 years of age, on the whole $680,848,000 insurance in force there
would be lost by lapse, at thirty-six years, $251,923,760 annually. Now
in honest insurance there should be no lapses or forfeitures and in the
insurance of the future there will be nothing of the kind. But on this
plan, no matter how long one has paid, or how much he has paid in, if he
stops paying, he loses all. Misfortune or accident may compel him to stop
paying, but no matter what may be the cause, he loses, and other persons
dying quickly have had the benefit of the money he has paid in. A member
who entered in 1879 at the age of 36 will have paid in on September 1,
1905, about $800, or $30.72 per year. A person insured at the sum of
$3,000 would have to live to the age of 133 to pay that sum out at the
rate for the first 26 years. But assume the insured has paid $800 to
October 1, 1905, and remains in the order. He pays $97.20 the first year
of the new rates, $103.68 the second year and $192.96 the third year
and the same sum each year thereafter. His expectancy is 12.81 years at
63. If he lives out his expectancy, he will have paid into the order,
$3,277.12, or $277.12 more than he will receive. But suppose he should
live till 85 years of age, he will by that age pay in $5,205.72, or about
$2,205.75 more than he can draw out.
Will any man join an order of that kind where he shall forfeit all by
the failure to make a single payment? So long as he can get into a
company which will give him paid-up insurance, extended insurance, or a
cash-surrender value, he will not.
Every man insured in a fraternal association is in the condition of
Damocles. The sword suspended over his head is likely to drop at any
time. The moment confidence is lost the whole matter dissolves like a
rope of sand, and the insurance is gone. Suppose the Royal Arcanum had
ceased to do business on June 1, 1905, $680,648,000 of its insurance
would have terminated at that time, which would have been a loss of
about $2,231.67 to each member. That is, 305,083 persons would have lost
$2,231.67 insurance each. These same persons and their predecessors had
paid in $97,004,175.82 of which $94,790,627.86 had been paid out on death
losses. Since the new rates have been published the order has lost 50,000
members carrying $111,583,500 insurance. Of the sum paid in, $36,090,650
has been paid in by men who have dropped out and the balance of loss is
to be paid by the survivors. Thus it is ever with assessment companies.
They must and will fail as soon as it is demonstrated that the adopted
rates will not carry any organization for a generation. The new rates of
the Royal Arcanum have simply demonstrated the utter worthlessness of
assessment companies, and the value of regular life insurance where each
policy holder contributes a fund to pay his own policy.
The Royal Arcanum is no better than a suicide club, for it is only the
suicides and the weaklings who can have any benefit of the order. The
new rates require the members to pay greater sums in premiums than in
old line companies, and at the same time the company insists upon the
old and exploded system of forfeitures, refuses any paid up or extended
insurance, and any cash-surrender values. Who will sit down to a feast
of this character? No one but an old member who has paid in too much to
stop, and no new man will join the order. The whole scheme of the new
rates was to drive the old members out so that the order would not be
compelled to pay their death losses. The order is an autocracy. There
are twelve life members in the Supreme Council who represent no one
but themselves. Three of these are original charterers and nine are
Supreme Past Regents. There are twenty-nine officers, who as such are
members of the Supreme Council. These thirty-eight by the aid of twenty
representatives can control the Supreme Council, and there is added a
new life member every two years in a new Supreme Past Regent. No one
should be a member of the Supreme Council but some one who represents a
constituency. Yet John Haskell Butler, of 244 Washington Street, Boston,
Mass., controls the entire Supreme body. In this he is ably supported
by W. O. Robson, Supreme Secretary. How these two gentlemen of eminent
talent could be imposed on in the adoption of the new rate, which in
the case of the old member who entered at thirty-six years, compels him
to pay a surcharge of $64.18 per annum more than necessary to carry his
risk, or in his expectancy a total of $1,226.98 more than he should pay,
or 70 per centum more than his equitable share, is more than we can
understand.
The average of the surcharge on all the old members is 67 per centum,
and is 27 per centum higher than the new members pay. Naturally, if the
membership could be held together, these new rates would create and pile
up a surplus, or excess, of $3,700,000 per year over any sum that the
laws of Massachusetts permit the society to hold, which at the present
time is about $30,000,000.
However, the society has never attempted to create any surplus or reserve
over and above about $2,000,000, nearly equal to the proceeds of three
assessments. What kind of financing is this which at one fell stroke
burdens the members with paying sums which will produce $3,700,000 per
year after paying over all mortuary calls? Heretofore the order has
preached for twenty-eight years that the surplus remains in the pockets
of its members and shall so remain. Now it is to be created and placed in
the control of Mr. Butler and his one hundred and fourteen associates who
are souls with a single thought. And what for? What kind of actuaries did
the Supreme Council employ to make these new rates that such a result is
brought about and that the policy of twenty-eight years is reversed at a
single session, without any notice to the members? The members of the
Royal Arcanum, the men who pay the money disbursed by Mr. Butler and his
associates, have no voice in proposing any new legislation for the order,
nor in approving or rejecting any enacted by the Supreme Council. They
must pay whatever the one hundred and fifteen guardians ask of them or
get out of the order.
The $3,700,000 surplus exacted the first year, under the new rates,
is not to be used for paid-up or extended insurance or cash-surrender
values, but is simply to be kept on hand as a reserve. The reserve, which
has heretofore been carried in the pockets of the members, is now to be
transferred to the pockets of the Supreme Council. Why are the members
of the order, who have carried their insurance at great sacrifices, to
have an additional burden placed on them? Why must this great reserve be
created unless for the same reasons it was created in the three great
companies in New York City? What is the object of creating a reserve
when there is no paid-up or extended insurance and no cash-surrender to
be made, and when assessments are required to be called for as needed
to pay death losses? Why should any assessment company have a reserve
beyond a few assessments ahead? What kind of actuaries did the Supreme
Council have to make tables to produce such results? What fit guardians
of 250,000 people are the one hundred and fifteen members of the Supreme
Council who would adopt a table of rates producing such results? The
control of the funds must have driven these one hundred and fifteen
people mad to have produced tables which will so work. Would it not have
been better to have called extra assessments from time to time under the
authority of the laws of the order and of the State of Massachusetts,
until the order was compelled to fail, than to have adopted the new
rates, which are more expensive than old-line insurance and which if
approved in the legal contest now pending will insure the failure of the
order at once?
The only true assessment insurance is to pay the death losses as they
occur, by assessments, and which must include a fund for management and
control. When the assessments become too great the company dissolves and
that is the end of it. All those who have not died during its existence,
or who have lapsed in the same time, have lost their bets, and those who
have died have won.
I am not able to give the number who have been members of the order since
its origin. It could not have been more than 400,000. Of this number
35,000, or one-twelfth, have died. Over 33 per cent., or 133,333, have
lapsed, and if the institution fails, as it certainly will, 367,000 have
lost every dollar they have put in, in order that 35,000, or one in
twelve, might draw prizes.
Such institutions are contrary to public policy and should be suppressed.
Each state insurance department should require such statistics as will
show all the facts any one might wish to know.
If I had the exact statistics, I am satisfied the proportion of those who
pay in and lose would be much higher than I gave it.
The laws of political economy must be evolved just as we evolve those of
nature, and they are as certain when we know them, but any institution
which requires a party to live beyond his expectancy in order to pay
in the amount of his benefit certificate is a fraud. At 21 a man’s
expectancy is 45 years. Now a man at 21 who entered the order June 23,
1874, would have paid in to December 31, 1905, $404. It would take him
over 166 years to pay in the $3,000 at the same rate. As he can never do
that, his death loss must be paid by some one else, and consequently his
insurance by others is a fraud and a gambling transaction.
As eleven persons must contribute to pay the loss of the twelve and then
lose everything themselves, the whole scheme is an imposition contrary
to the interest of society. Eleven men contribute and lose $250 each
that one man’s beneficiary may gain $3,000, and these eleven men lose
every dollar they put in. After twenty-eight years of preaching to the
public that they had found the El Dorado of Insurance, that they were
furnishing insurance at cost and that the members carried the reserve in
their pockets, Messrs. Butler, Robson & Company now come to the front and
admit that all this time their scheme has been a fake and a failure. They
say the unclean spirit departed from them in May last, but I think he
returned to them with seven others worse and they have turned the Arcanum
into a madhouse.
I do not have the personal acquaintance of all the seven, but two of
them might be called Landis and Barnard, because the condition of the
Arcanum is worse than before. Now every member must pay in his $3,000 in
the period of his expectancy, and if he lives beyond it he must pay till
he dies. The new rates indicate that members must die before reaching 65
years, and if they decline, then they must be fined $192.96 per annum for
their refusal to do so.
Any man who enters the order now, in view of what he must submit to at
and after the age of 65, ought to have his sanity inquired into. It is
high time the State should intervene and protect the public from the
schemes of these fraternal orders. The fraternity is humbug, and for
every loss paid there are many more losses to society from which it
should be protected. The correct scheme of insurance has not yet been
discovered or announced, but when it is it will not be gambling or
commercialism, but will be simply indemnity—which it should have been
from the start.
[Illustration: THE PEOPLE
BY JOHN P. SJOLANDER.]
It is well with the world, my masters,
It is well with the world and you,
When we move along with a smile and song,
’Mid the tasks we are set to do.
And the song and the smile of the People
Should be ever your compass and chart.
Oh! ’tis well with you when the song rings true
That comes from the People’s heart.
It is ill with the world, my masters,
It is ill for the world and you,
When our eyes look down, and our faces frown,
’Mid the tasks we are set to do.
Beware of the frown of the People,
Lest their wrath and their patience part!
Oh! let not a wrong ever burden the song
That comes from the People’s heart.
[Illustration: Back To Nature—Part The Way
BY EUGENE WOOD.]
About once in every so often, we, as a race, all lay back our heads, shut
our eyes, and let out the shuddering shriek: “Back to Nature!” It is so
loud and heart-felt a cry that it makes you wonder why we have to go back
at all—why we didn’t stay there. If the Get-Strong-Quick professors are
right, this thing of our wearing clothes, and dwelling in houses, and
eating dainty cooked food three times a day is sheer tom-foolishness, all
the more tom-foolish in that once we led the healthy, happy life that
inevitably results from fasting three or four days in the week, then
dining on goobers and timothy hay; wearing nothing but a nose-ring and a
dash of paint, and sleeping in the hollow trees.
For most of us, “Back to Nature” is too long a road to travel—all
the way. Nevertheless, the cry is so loud, and so general throughout
the civilized world that we cannot dismiss it as impracticable and
meaningless. It betokens something. I think I know what, and if it didn’t
look so much like serious thinking for you and me, I’d write out what
I think it means. I’ll say this, though: If we judge the future by the
past this universal impulse to touch the naked earth once more, and so to
gather strength and vigor from it, means that the world is pregnant with
a great event, and we must be fortified for the labor-pains of it. A new
age is struggling to be born. Mark my words.
The timid venture, on the way back to Nature, of a two-weeks’ sitting on
the front stoop of a boarding house in the mountains or at the seashore
does not satisfy us now. Bold and daring spirits have even gone to live
in the wild woods, and have come back to tell us it was bully. We all
know it is great fun to play at being boys again, but for most of us
the problem is complicated by our having wives and daughters whom we
cannot well put in cold storage during our absence. I know that under the
pressure of the need to go back to Nature some have even taken the women
with them. I—I—I don’t know about that. It doesn’t look very alluring to
me. Mind you, I don’t know a thing about living in the wilderness except
what I have read and heard, but as near as I can come to it, there seems
to be considerable packing to be done. There’s the canoe in the first
place. If I were thinking of going into the woods, I shouldn’t stir a
stump unless I had a canoe. But you take one fifteen or eighteen feet
long, and carry it about three miles through thick-set timber, and I
should say along about the last half of the third mile you’d begin to
notice it. You’d have to have some kind of a tent, and even when they’re
made of silk, I should think they would make something of a bundle. You’d
want your gun and ammunition; you’d want your fishing tackle; you’d need
a small ax; you’d have to carry a coffee-pot, a frying-pan, a deep pot,
a plate, a knife and fork and cup; you’d need at least one blanket and
a rubber sheet of some kind; you’d need to pack your bacon and your
flour, and erbswurst, and matches, and quinine, and morphine, and rags
for bandages in case—you know—and saccharine, and whisky if there are
snakes around, and—oh, yes, tobacco; don’t let me forget tobacco—and,
oh, I don’t know what all. No women’s fixings in this partial list, you
see. I don’t know. I knew a man that took his wife along with him to the
woods—but then, don’t you see, it was on their honeymoon. Oh my! It makes
all the difference in the world when you’ve been married ten or fifteen
years. Yes, I should say so.
I once read a most fascinating series of articles by a woman who had
this delightful experience. The intention was to chirrup: “Come on,
girls! It’s perfectly elegant!” But she didn’t fool me. I could see that
whenever there was anything that was arduous, or tedious, or mussy in the
housekeeping line “the gentlemen of the party eagerly volunteered.” Yes.
M—hm. I can just see ’em. Mind you, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that a
woman in the woods is a darn nuisance. No indeed. Only—Well, I tell you.
Her husband may be eager to play Injun, but I don’t believe she would be
very keen to play squaw. That is, and “tote fair.”
There is this in favor of taking ’em along: Not every man can cook. I
know that out there in the forest, when you make camp as the shadows
lengthen after a long day’s tramp, when every muscle aches, but aches
with glad fatigue; after a day in which your lungs have drunk in the pure
air thinly fragrant with the vague odors that the glazed leaves distill,
as it were offering incense to the god of day; when you have quenched
your thirst from a spring in the bottom of whose earthen bowl the sands
are reeling and staggering in the delirium of glee; when you have
hearkened to the wild beauty of some unknown bird-call echoing through
the lofty Gothic aisles; when the western sky flames into undreamed-of
glories and then fades away until the lonely stars come out, I know they
say that you can choke down any old mess and relish it. Maybe so. I am as
good a hand at eating pancakes as anybody else, but I don’t know about
them for every meal and every day; bacon is my favorite vegetable, but
there comes a time; fish once a week is all I care for. No. It doesn’t
seem alluring to me.
They tell me hemlock boughs make a fine mattress. Yes? I know where I can
get better for less money. They tell me that sleeping on the ground with
the high sky for a ceiling is simply great. If it comes to that, I have
slept on the ground, and the morning after I knew exactly where my hips
and shoulders were. I don’t mind granddaddy long-legs tracking over my
face. They’re kind of interesting. But I have never been able to put away
the thought that if it should turn chilly in the night, and some snake
should come and crawl in bed with me, and smuggle his cool slimy body
down my back, it would probably break my rest. I shouldn’t fancy it, I’m
positive.
I tell you. I compromised the matter thus last summer. I got back to
Nature—part the way. Not so far though as to get out of touch with the
milkman. I had things cooked to suit me; I slept high and dry upon a
Christian bed, and yet I wasn’t indoors a minute of the time the whole
enduring summer. And I’m never going to be another summer under a wooden
roof if I know how to help it. I’ll tell you about it if you like.
There were five of us that wanted to live in the outdoor air for
twenty-four hours out of every twenty-four. There was the Honest Man who
went to gainful business every day; there was the Lazy Man who didn’t do
one tap the summer long, though often besought to do so, who now takes
his pen in hand to drop you these few lines; there was the Honest Man’s
wife; and there were the Lazy Man’s Wife, and his growing Daughter.
The Honest Man already had in stock a 12 × 14 tent, and a small A-tent.
The Lazy Man bought a 10 × 12 tent for himself and wife, and the next
size smaller for his daughter. Each family brought bed-clothing and
personal apparel. (It was a first-rate opportunity to wear out old
clothes.) The communal property, dishes, oil-stove, egg-beaters, and all
such were paid for half-and-half. It stood the Lazy Man for outfit just
$49.27 all told, and the outfit is now down cellar waiting impatiently
for summer to come again, when it will be as good as new and won’t cost
anything.
The summer previous, the Honest Man had gone exploring and found a spot
on the Canadian shore of Lake Erie within an hour’s ride on the steamer
from his business. A whopping big maple tree, thick and umbrageous, stood
a hundred feet or so back from the water’s edge, on a sand slope carpeted
with wild grape vines. The beach was of fine white sand, without a pebble
bigger than a moth-ball, and it slanted so slowly into the water that
breast-deep was fully a hundred yards from shore. This made it rather
poky for the men-folks when they went in swimming, but it was ideal for
the women, to whom a foot of depth is drowning depth. The lake being soft
water, nobody can adequately express the joy the women had in washing
their hair. This favored spot was a shade more than a mile away from the
steamboat pier at which, six or eight times a day, excursion steamers
unloaded revelers who sought the pallid ecstasy of a non-alcoholic
pleasure resort. (It was Canada, remember, and while you might go in
swimming on the Lord’s day, you could not ride upon the giddy-go-round.
A district attorney from the smoky city on the American side presumed to
fish on Sunday, and got sassy to the constable who said he shouldn’t.
Thereupon they snaked him off to a neighboring village to the hardware
store where the ’Squire kept court and fined him $20 and the costs.) We
were far enough away on the long board walk to miss the transients, and
by looking carefully through the trees you could just see one house from
our place, the castle of our landlord. I am aware that it’s nice to be
exclusive, and get away from common folks, but it’s so blamed expensive.
Even millionaires when they want to make sure of getting any place have
to travel with the cheap crowd. You can think that over. You will find
it’s so, although I haven’t time to work it out in detail.
The Honest Man having lived on this spot the summer before, the floors
were laid of boughten lumber, and the frames were up. Also, the private
walks, made of such bits of board as the Good Lord had pleased to
send upon the rolling waves, nailed upon saplings from the wood back
of the camp, were still in place, so that there wasn’t much to do, a
circumstance that grieved the Honest Man no little. He liked to be busy.
The Lazy Man was patient under this affliction. He did help when there
were things to do. He got the nails and handed the hatchet, and generally
fetched and carried, knowing full well what are the drawbacks incident
to being a heaven-gifted literary genius, such as not being of the least
account about a place.
Among the triumphs of the Honest Man’s saw and hammer were the tables,
prime among them being the dining-table under the same maple tree,
whereon we ate our every meal from July 2 until September 3. It is
fitting that in this public manner I should return thanks for our kind
and considerate treatment by the weather. I can cheerfully recommend
it to all and sundry. It rained at times, I won’t deny. It had to. I
can see that. But I must say it was most forbearing in the matter, and
rained only out of meal hours. Once or twice it was plain to see that it
strained a point in our behalf, for example, that time we had to have our
Sunday ice-cream in our tents, and the two or three occasions when the
breakfast dishes were practically storm-washed.
This dining-table, the serving-table, the table in the cook-tent, and
the china-closet—Oh my yes! We had a china-closet. It was made out of
a packing box, had shelves in it, and four plank legs—these articles
of furniture were covered with marbled oil-cloth, and the door of the
china-closet was of the same rich material, being secured with loops and
nails. The cook-tent reared its lofty A on a frame with a waist-high
board-wall, lined with shelves. It was so studded with nails that for
once in their lives the women were speechless of complaint that there
weren’t places enough to bestow the junk without which, so it seems, life
in the kitchen is insupportable.
Hard by the china-closet was the refrigerator, in whose construction, let
me say, the Lazy Man bore his part. He dug the hole in the sand in which
was sunk a barrel with a perforated bottom through which the melting ice
drained off. The women professed they lay awake nights listening for the
things piled upon the ice to topple over into smash. They had to worry
about something. There wasn’t a thing else for them to do but cook, and
make the beds and wash the dishes.
I suppose that cooking by a camp-fire is the extreme of picturesqueness.
It is also mighty hard upon the back, to say nothing of its blinding you
with smoke, and frying the grease out of your face, even after you have
learned that it isn’t really necessary to have a conflagration big enough
to melt the nose off the coffee-pot, but that a cupful of live coals and
a tiny bunch of twigs will do the trick. You have to stand over such a
fire to keep it going, and when it rains it is the deuce and all. So we
had a blue-flame oil-stove with an oven, and had everything cooked in the
highest style known to the art, just as it was before we started on our
way back to Nature. There was just one thing the women missed. Endless
hot water laid on. Their heaviest burden was to remember “the dying
woman’s advice.” Don’t you know what that is? “Sally,” she whispered with
her latest breath, “always put on the dish-water before you sit down to
your victuals.”
But if the Lazy Man could not bring his mind to penning deathless
Literatoor, he could at least tote water from the lake, so it wasn’t so
bad after all.
The need of cooking was great indeed. In no spirit of carping criticism I
desire to say that I have seen the Honest Man, many and many’s the time,
wolf down six big potatoes at a meal and other things accordingly. We
others did our feeble best, but we never quite compassed that. I did eat
six ears of green corn once, but you must remember that they were right
off the vines, as you might say, and you know how good green corn is when
it’s fresh.
This was no lonesome wilderness wherein we had to scuffle for our food.
The milkman came right after breakfast with the morning’s milk. The
morning’s milk remember, not the night before’s. Then came the iceman. I
want to tell you about him. I had seen him pushing the lawn-mower on a
green velvet lawn before a mansion up the beach a ways. I thought he was
turning an honest penny taking care of it for some one else. Bless your
heart, he lived there. He had a fine big farm behind it, but it was all
seeded down in grass, because the harvest of ice from the lake before him
in the winter brought him more money for less work than the rich loam
behind him could raise in summer crops. Then came the grocer from the
village back in the country. He always brought us kerosene, sometimes he
brought us groceries, and all too seldom he brought us the flat loaves
of the Italian baker in the village, flat and crusty loaves, which the
grocer scornfully called “dog-bread.” There was “the bearded lady”
that brought us home-made bread just once—just once. Evidently she had
confused the relative proportions of the yeast and flour. Then came the
old man with the broken hand, talk about which shortened the day for him
and us; also, his wife, a dear old soul, who sold us from time to time
bouquets picked from her garden, old-fashioned flowers made up so round
and hard that if a man were clouted on the head with a nosegay you’d have
to take him to the hospital. There was “the bonnet lady,” a sweet-faced
Dunkard in the habit of her faith. There were several whom we came to
know right well, and after they began to suspect that, like as not, we
weren’t as crazy as we seemed, living in tents—Did you ever hear the beat
of that?—they showed they were just folks, same as anybody else. But
the one I liked the best was the man that came on Saturdays to fetch us
eggs and butter. I aroused his interest by telling him that where I came
from they sold eggs by quarter’s worth; so many for a quarter, more when
eggs were cheap, fewer when eggs were dear. Well sir, he like to never
got over that. It was like the returned missionary, telling how the poor
heathens live in China. He was a very conscientious man. “I’m sorry,” he
would say, “but I’ve got to charge you 21 cents for them there eggs. They
ain’t worth it. No eggs is worth that much, no time o’year. They ortn’t
to be more’n 18 cents at any time. But the others is sellin’ ’em for 21,
and I s’pose I got to, too.”
One and all, as soon as ever they could in decency get round to it, had
this one question to ask: “What do you do when it rains?” They’d ask it
with such a now-I-got-you look that it was funny to see how set-back they
were when we made answer: “We do the same as you, we go in out of it.”
But on the rebound you could notice the doubt forming itself in their
minds as to whether we knew enough to do that. I’m sure they drove away
thinking we were kind of be-addled in our intellects. I’ll have to own
up to having asked: “What do you do when it rains?” in the beginning;
and also, “What do you do when it blows?” But now I am convinced that a
canvas tent well staked is equal to any weather, and I believe that if it
had a red-hot stove in it, a body might be right cozy in a tent even in
zero weather. I am going to preserve that conviction unshaken by never
putting it to the test.
I said that the grocer from the village inland stopped. You notice that
I didn’t say the butcher. He wouldn’t. You might go out and “holler” at
him: “Hay! Hay there! Hay you! I want to talk to you. Hold on a second.”
He never let on he heard you. I didn’t have a revolver, or I should have
held him up. I did corner him once down at the Grove, and he explained
to me he really could not be bothered with our money for his meat. He and
his two men had all they could attend to now, what with their regular
trade and the two hotels and the boardinghouses down along the beach.
If he sold to private customers, he’d have to hire more help. When I
suggested that he do that very thing and make more money, he smiled at me
as one smiles at the foolish prattle of a child. Nup. He was awful sorry
he couldn’t accommodate me, but—. And that ended it.
So for awhile, whenever we paddled down to the Grove in the canoe for the
mail we stopped at the meat-shop. The Grove was where the giddy-go-round
was; the razzle-dazzle air-ship, the whistle of whose tiny engine
squealed like a frightened pig; the cake-and-coffee shop, the “red-hot”
stand; the high-class “vawdvill,” admission ten cents, children five; the
dancing floor, patronized by youth and beauty in duck jumpers and sleeves
rolled high on red and peeling arms, ragged with strips of tissue-paper
hide, each mouth distorted with an “all-day sucker” whose pine stem
appetizingly protruded; the combination barber-shop and post-office where
they were all out of two-cent stamps for weeks together, and “Joe’s.”
I’ll get round to “Joe’s” in a minute if you’ll just be patient, but now
I must tell you about the meat-shop. He was a fine fellow, the first
butcher, much sought after when he had got into people’s confidence.
There was the landlord that rented him the shop; there was the landlady
where he roomed and boarded; there was the man he bought his meat of;
there was the man he bought his twine and paper of; the man he borrowed
$20 of and the man he borrowed $5 of—all seeking him and not finding him.
He was—and then he was not. It was one of those mysterious disappearances
you read about.
After he went away, we summer folks ungratefully conspired to ruin the
land that sheltered us. You know there is no quicker and surer way to
do that to a country than by shipping valuables into it. The more iron
and steel and wool and chinaware and diamonds—all kinds of things you
pay money for—the more of them are brought into a country, the poorer it
gets. If it were possible to cover the ground knee-deep with all that
heart could wish but brought from another country, the inhabitants would
have to give right up, and everything would go to smash. Conversely a
country which imports nothing is always immensely rich and prosperous.
You know how that is in private life. The man that raises everything he
eats; that does his own butchering, makes his own shoes, whose wife spins
all the flax and wool the family needs—such a man is always well-to-do;
he’s independent. While those who have to buy everything are always poor
and forlorn. We all know this, but such is the depravity of the human
heart, we want to buy things without asking whether they are made in
our country or not. If it wasn’t for our wicked hearts prompting us to
want things, we could easily keep out the foreign goods. So as to sort
of even up the injury we do our country, it is arranged that whenever
we thus sinfully buy foreign wares we pay a fine for it. The fine for
ruining Canada by bringing in fresh meat to eat is six cents a pound. Now
I want to tell you that when we had no butcher and the village butcher
wouldn’t stop for us, there were people so selfish that they not only
ruined Canada by bringing over fresh meat, but they smuggled it! Yes sir!
Smuggled it. And King Edward needing the money so badly, with all the
expense he is under.
The United States is just as up and coming, though, as Canada. Every bit.
We don’t propose that our fair land shall be devastated by a flood of
cheap Canadian mutton (it is most mighty good mutton; I’ll say that for
it), so there is a fine on anybody that brings it over. The Beef Trust
has expensive families to send to college too.
In response to popular demand, the baker consented to run the
butcher-shop. If you found the place locked up, you stamped on the stoop
and yelled awhile. He would come out, rolling the dough off his fingers
and cut you off some meat. Sometimes, though you’d have to wait until he
got those pies out.
He was as good-hearted a man as ever lived, but he caused me many a
sleepless night. I’ll tell you how it was. One day I didn’t go for the
meat. The Honest Man’s Wife went. She got a roast, five pounds and a
quarter it was, at 18 cents a pound. The man figured on the cost. He put
it down 70 cents, but that didn’t look quite right to him, so he set down
a figure 1.
“Dollar seventy,” he said.
Now the Honest Man’s Wife had taught school, and was right good at
ciphering.
“Would you mind,” she asked as innocent as a cat lapping milk, “would you
mind figuring that out for me?”
“Sure thing, lady,” said the baker-butcher. “Five pounds and a quarter.
There’s your 5¼, at 18 cents. There’s your 18. Five tums 8 is 40. Put
down the aught and carry 4. Five tums one is 5, and 4 is—is—er—er—Five
times 8 is 40. Put down the aught and carry—Hold on. I guess I made a
mistake. Call it 97 cents.” He smiled pleasingly.
“Seven cents,” mused she. “M—, won’t you please figure out for me how
one-fourth of 18 is 7?”
Well now. I had been paying for meat without ever figuring it out.
Considering that with his limited arithmetical powers he was certain to
make mistakes, and considering that those mistakes were equally certain
to be all in his favor, can you wonder that I have tossed and tossed for
hours upon a sleepless couch trying to recall the times I bought meat of
him, how much it weighed and what I paid him?
I promised to speak of “Joe’s.” Behold I show you a mystery. I saw a
billhead of his. His initial was M. Try my best I couldn’t make out to
spell Joe with an M. Yet everybody called him Joe. I asked the Signora,
his mother-in-law. She pressed her lips strongly together and wildly
shook her head. “Eena Cannodda dey gotta no sensea,” she exclaimed. “Eesa
nemma notta Joe. No. Eesa nemma Mike. Michaele. Seguro. Surea tinga.
Cannodda mans ee say: ‘Eh Joe? Youra nemma Joe? Eh?’ Ee know dey gotta
nuss sense a eena Cannodda. Ee say: ‘Sure a-tinga.’ Eesa neema notta Joe.
No. Eesa nemma Mike. Michaele. Seguro. Surea tinga.”
At Joe’s you could buy all things necessary to support life from ham to
hairpins, including Canadian tobacco, which needs a protective tariff if
ever anything does in this world. Not because it is a weakling though. It
biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. Funny thing about that
Canadian smoking tobacco. Sometimes it puts you in mind of sauerkrout,
and sometimes it puts you in mind of boneset. I don’t think it is quite
as bitter as boneset, though.
Shelter, and food, and water and tobacco being thus accounted for, there
remains another prime necessity of life, and that is, sleep. I don’t
believe there is one person in a hundred that knows the real luxury of
sleep. Consider the uncounted hordes that live in terror of “night air.”
Consider the more enlightened that raise their bedroom windows just a
trifle, to calk them up as soon as ever it turns a little cool. But
even when wide open, a bedroom with a window in it is not by any means
the same thing as a tent to sleep in, a tent by the lakeside, its front
all flaring open, and its sides and top working like bellowses with the
breeze. We had regular wire springs and to the wooden frames we nailed
pieces of 2 × 4 for legs. On these were mattresses and bedclothes, plenty
of them. For when we read of city folk dying of sunstroke and rolling
off their roofs where they had gone to get a mouthful of the lifeless
air, robbed of its ozone before it reached them, we were snuggling under
one and sometimes two pairs of blankets. And then, I had the pleasure (a
small and tepid pleasure you may think it, but very real to me) of trying
to prop my eyelids open every night, as I lay stretched out upon my bed,
till I could thrust my hand out between the sidewall and the baseboard,
and feel the glossy leaves of the cool grapevine, and try to unkink a
tendril before I lost consciousness. Sometimes I couldn’t get that far.
We’d stay up till all hours, nine and even ten o’clock, fighting off
sleep. It was a nightly problem with us which we’d rather do, go to bed
and get that lovely sleep, or stay awake a minute or two longer staring
at the “friendship fire.”
I have vainly tried to think which held the greater fascination for
me: The lake as it shifted its hues before my eyes from reddish brown
to vivid apple-green through leaded gray and royal purple, the farther
shore now so sharp and clear that you could see the houses on it, now
but a thin slice of pearl against a pearly sky, the water between us
and it now a floor veined and streaked like marble, and now ridgy with
billows, that practised, as it were, their scales upon the yellow beach,
their hand-backs remembering what the teacher said, “no knuckles,” and
their finger tips dancing in the white froth: or, the fire of evenings,
fluttering its ribbons of orange taffeta against the back log, snapping
its blank cartridges in sport at us, the red coals so many heaps of
glowing jewels in an Indian prince’s treasure-house. The lake enthralled
me in the day-time. It numbed my brain; it paralyzed my pen-hand, and
left me only the still and speechless joy of living. When the darkness
fell, the firelight drew me with the master-spell. From the lake I now
and then could turn my eyes. The fire was jealous. Not for a full minute
would it let me go. In its genial warmth and light our souls expanded,
and we sang the old songs that everybody knows, the songs that lie so
near the heart its strings must thrill in concord with them, but, through
all, our eyes were fastened on the fire. What magic it must be that thus
can charm unhaltingly through all the long, long centuries that have
drifted by like mist since first men gathered about the friendly flame!
The wonder of it! The wonder of it! Without the Fire there could never be
the Family, with all that means to us; no Hearth, no Home, with all that
means to us. The first priestess was she that kept the coals alive; an
altar is but a cooking-place. Lineal descendant of the first flickering
blaze fed with twigs is all our god-like industry, all that has made us
lords of earth and sea. Back to nature we may go, but farther back than
fire we dare not, lest we perish body and soul.
Perhaps it was the dumb fear of this, the heritage of pre-historic
ancestry that made us sigh when the time came to tear the logs apart and
quench them for the night.
How happy were those dear idle days! Happy, not only in the retrospect,
but each moment savoring pleasant to the taste. Once I thought that
Heaven must be rather bore-ous with nothing left to strive for, no
ambition, no anxiety. I know better now. I could live on and on forever
in that camp and never wish for anything but to live. As I write, the
pictures of the sweet, calm evenings out upon the placid lake in the
canoe return to me. It heaves in gentle swells, the umber water netted on
its ripple-crests with soft reflections of the flushed sky fading into
tints too delicate for words of color. Black against the lucent edge of
heaven march the slim poplars. The stars are struggling out, and taking
pattern from them, the riding-lights of yachts shine yellowly. The waves
plash gently on the shell that holds us, and the water gurgles against
the paddle that urges onward, or tinkles in drops like tiny bells.
Something catches in the throat. It is too beautiful, too heavenly for
earth-born. From far across the waters comes Caruso’s voice, by magic
reproduced, sweet to suffocation.
“Un regal serto sul crin possarti
Ergerti un trono vicino al sol.
Ah! Celeste Aida! Forma divina.”
On the taffrail of the departing steamer we leaned and watched the spot
until the darkness and the distance smothered the pale gleaming of the
tents where our friends lingered yet a little longer. We sighed; we could
not help it. A little more and tears would have flowed.
I want to go back there. I want to go back! Back to Nature—or at least
part way.
A Difference
“That long-whiskered, pompous gentleman over there, who is doing most of
the talking, is a prominent citizen, isn’t he?” inquired the tourist.
“Ah-nah!” pessimistically replied the landlord of the tavern at
Polkville, Ark. “He’s a member of the Legislature.”
His Identity
“Does any one know this poor fellow?” asked the Good Samaritan,
addressing the crowd which had quickly gathered at the scene of the
accident. “His mind seems to have become an absolute blank, and——”
“Trust official! Trust official!” shouted the assemblage in one voice.
“Out of his head and thinks he’s on the witness stand!”
_The Philosophy of Money_
BY J. B. MARTIN
One of our Ohio martyred Presidents, James A. Garfield, in delivering
a speech in Congress, the last one, I believe, uttered this sentence:
“Whoever controls the volume of money in this country will be absolute
master of its industries and commerce.”
A truer sentence was never uttered in our House of Representatives. But
to see clearly and forcibly its truthfulness and effects, one must have a
proper idea of what money is, by what power it is created, the factors or
elements of money, and its functions and use.
Briefly stated, money is the debt-paying instrument in all civilized
nations, whose people are actively engaged in making contracts, buying
and selling. Every contract creates a debt, hence the necessity of a
debt-paying instrument.
Barbarous nations resort to barter; that is, giving one product or
commodity for another, and yet with all of our boasted civilization we
have men—some prominent ones too—who claim that money is a commodity.
I propose dealing in facts, as they are the stern sentinels of truth.
Every nation enacts laws compelling its citizens to tender certain
things, variously called “dollars,” “pounds,” “francs,” etc., as the only
legal means of payment of debts and taxes. This is the vital point of the
whole money question. Law, and law alone, makes money. Let us see what
money is, and how it comes into existence.
Our gold, silver, and paper coins; also our nickel and copper coins, are
really made up of three distinct factors or elements, each of which may,
and often does, exist independently of the other two. This fact is one of
the central truths concerning money.
What are these three constituents? First is the denominator or namer of
the unit—Dollar. This is an ideal or abstract term given to an intangible
thing. Second, some tangible or material substance to represent the
dollar, or some multiple of it; and third, its life, the _legal tender_
function.
No two of these can make money; they must all three be named by sovereign
power, Congress, or we have no money. Sovereignty is a unit and cannot
be divided, nor can it be delegated. This is why National Bank notes are
not a legal tender; they are simply the debt of the bank circulating as a
substitute for money, so as to gratify the greed of the money sharks, and
the “Power” that is aiming to be “master of our industries and commerce.”
But we are told that Congress, sovereign power, cannot make money out of
nothing, that there must be _intrinsic value_ in our monetary tokens. Let
us analyze this proposition in the light of facts and logical reasoning.
The second factor in money is the material substance used to represent
the dollar, or some multiple of it. This material substance does not make
the dollar. Remember this.
The important factor in the dollar is its _life_—the legal tender
function—and sovereign power alone can grant this.
Under our constitution, sovereign power is placed in the hands of
the American people—the whole people, not a part of them,—and their
representatives in Congress exercise that power; so that whatever
Congress says shall be money is money in the United States. So it can be
safely affirmed that law alone creates money. The fiat or decree of law
in the United States gives us our money.
But we are told that paper money, greenbacks, is all right when they
are made redeemable in coin. The word “redeem” should never be used in
connection with our money here in the American Republic. According to our
big dictionary, redeem means “to purchase back,” “to ransom, liberate, or
rescue from captivity or bondage.” Now as we have seen, Congress issues
our money and puts it in circulation among the people. Is not Uncle Sam’s
stamp on a piece of paper just as good as it is on a piece of silver or
gold? If not, why not? Will some one please tell us? Then again I ask,
wherein is there any sense or logic in Uncle Sam, the sovereign power in
the United States, buying himself back? Where has our sovereign power
got to, that Uncle Sam must ransom, or rescue himself from captivity or
bondage?
As we have seen, sovereign power alone can issue money. That being
a fact, Congress alone should issue all our money, whether coin or
paper, and it should all be made a full legal tender; and no one kind
“redeemable” in another kind; with no state or National note circulation
as a substitute for money.
Another very important consideration is that it should be issued in
sufficient volume to effect all our exchanges on a cash basis, or as
nearly so as possible; for debt and usury, now called interest, is the
present curse of every civilized country on earth.
This accomplished, the Government should establish Postal Savings Banks
in every city having a population of two thousand or more, where the
people could deposit their surplus money, until needed, in perfect
safety, paying a small per cent. just as they do for insuring their
buildings.
There is always a ratio existing between the total volume of money, free
to flow in the channels of trade, and all things on the market for sale,
including labor. This ratio is called—price. Statistics show that we had
our largest volume of money at the close of the Civil War. In 1866 we
had $80.00 per capita. We then had high prices and every man willing to
work was employed. There were no tramps on the road begging for work or
something to eat.
The accursed policy of contraction then commenced, at the instigation
of the “Power” that was aiming to “be master of our industries and
commerce.” Contracting the money volume continued until 1878, when we had
less than $20.00 per capita. Then our roads and city streets were full of
tramps, so-called. No work was to be obtained. Shops and factories were
closed and farmers did their own work.
In 1866 there were but 520 failures in the United States with liabilities
amounting to $8,579,000. In 1878, there were 10,478 failures with
liabilities amounting to $234,383,132. Such were the effects of
contracting the debt-paying instrument of our country at the dictation of
Wall Street money tyrants.
The Rothschilds in Europe are the “Power” that controls the volume of
money in every one of the European countries, and the result is they are
the “absolute masters of the industries and commerce” of every government
in Europe.
Furthermore, it can be safely said that through their agent, August
Belmont, and his clique in New York, they are aiming to become the
“absolute masters of our industries and commerce” here in the United
States.
Can it be possible that an American President would join in this crusade
against the best interests of the American people? It would really appear
so, for Theodore Roosevelt in his recent message to Congress recommends
retiring of the greenbacks and “redeeming” the silver dollars in gold.
That means that our gold coin shall be our only perfect money, with
National Bank notes (the debts of the banks, drawing double interest,
once on the bonds deposited to secure the notes, and again on the notes;
for no bank note passes over the counter of the bank issuing it, until
interest is paid in advance), as a substitute for money; thus giving the
banks the power to increase or diminish our volume of money, just as it
may suit their sweet will and avaricious purposes.
At this point of the discussion we are told that we must have a standard
of value, and that gold is a never-varying standard of value the world
over. In reply to that I find in Sir Frederick Eden’s table of English
money, from the Conquest in 1066 down to 1601, that in 1551 gold was
worth only 4 shillings 7½ pence per ounce in London—a little over one
dollar of our money; and in Doubleday’s “Financial History of England,”
page 277, that in 1813 gold was worth 5 pounds 10 shillings an ounce in
London—twenty-seven dollars and a half in our money. Does that look as
though gold was a never-varying standard of value?
Besides, there is and can be no such thing as a “standard of value.” We
can have a standard for quantity, gravity, and extension, but not of
value. We have the gallon, the bushel, the pound and ton, the yard, rod
and mile, but where is the unit for value?
Some may say; “Why the dollar is the unit of value”—not correct. The
dollar is the unit in the expression of price; and, as we have seen,
price is the ratio, so the word dollar is not a unit of value. Not until
we can measure an idea with a quart cup, measure it with a foot rule,
or put it in the scales and weigh it, can we have a measure of value;
for remember, value is an idea, an action of the mind, and what has
civilization invented to measure an idea with?
Value is human estimation of desirable things, which are limited in
quantity, or which require sacrifice to obtain.
There we have a full, clear and scientific definition of value, “Human
estimation”—clearly an action of the mind—an idea.
Whenever there is a general inability to pay debts on account of an
insufficient or low volume of money, we call it a—panic. We have had
five such periods in the history of the American Republic, viz: in 1819,
1837, 1857, 1873 and 1893.
How much better it would have been for our Republic had our fathers, who
framed our Constitution and established the Government under it, given us
a safe, sound and scientific financial system; with all money, whether
coin or paper, issued by the Government, and in sufficient volume to
do a cash business; volume to be increased as population and business
increased; all made a full legal tender for all debts public and private,
and at no time to be a contraction or reduction in its volume. Then we
would have had none of the periods called panics and our advancement in
all branches of business and science would be far in advance of what it
now is.
It may be said, and truthfully, that our fathers had no time to devote to
the money question; but there were a few in those days who did study it
and profited by it just as there are at the present time.
If the farmers, the mechanics and wage-workers,—the creators of
wealth—in this country ever expect to get any relief from the tyranny
and oppression of this octopus that is “aiming to be master of
their industries and commerce,” they must go to work earnestly and
systematically in their various organizations—the Grange, The Farmers’
Alliance, the Patrons of Husbandry and the various Labor Unions—to
studying the money question, and if they persevere they will see clearly
as President Garfield did over a quarter of a century ago, that “whoever
controls the volume of money in this country will be absolute master of
its industry and commerce.”
There were a few men even at the time our Government was organized who
understood the money question. Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin
Franklin concurred in the theory that “good paper money, based on the
credit of the people is the best money ever invented by man.” “Equal and
exact justice to all men, special privilege to none,” was their motto.
Let me quote further from Garfield. In that same speech he said: “But
I admit freely that no Congress is wise enough to determine how much
money the country needs. There never was a body of men wise enough to do
that. The volume of currency needed depends upon laws that are higher
than Congress and higher than Government. The laws of trade alone can
determine its quantity.”
Demand for use is the natural law of money supply, and the Government
should furnish such an amount as may be legally demanded; the idea being
that the business of the country will absorb as much as it needs, and no
more.
My opinion is, the volume ought not to be less than $50.00 per capita;
and, as I believe, $100 per capita would be none too much to effect all
our exchanges for cash, which is the proper way to do a safe business.
According to the Treasurer’s Reports for 1864, 5 and 6, and Fawcett’s,
“Gold and Debt,” we had in circulation at the close of the Civil War
about $80 per capita, which was none too much. Then it was that we had
high prices and good times.
Our present Comptroller of the Currency reports $31 per capita in the
various kinds of money and substitutes for money now in circulation.
This is altogether too small an amount for the production and exchanges
required in this broad land of ours. The result is debts are being made
and credits are expanding at a fearful rate, preparing the way for our
next great panic.
As stated above, we have never yet passed beyond twenty years without
having a panic, and a moment’s thought will present to the mind the fact
that we are now on the last half of the twenty years since 1893.
It is coming, for we all know that “like causes always produce like
results;” and the cause is an inadequate volume of the debt-paying
instrument—money—to do the business with. The result is that deferred
payments—debts—must be made, and, as we have seen, a panic is a
prevailing inability to pay debts. So look out for breakers in the near
future.
Our present situation is no time to advocate commodity money, for the
defenders of hard money ought to know that hard money and hard times
always go hand in hand.
Demand for use is the natural law of money supply; and, as the demand
now is far in excess of the supply, it is safe to say, that unless more
money is put into the channels of trade, there will be a severe money
stringency; if not a genuine old-fashioned panic.
I have often wondered why $100,000,000 in gold is kept penned up in the
Treasury Building in Washington. So far as doing the people any good it
might as well be in the bottom of the ocean.
Money performs precisely the same function in the social organism that
blood does in the animal organism. Blood is the vitalizing force in
the human body, and money is the vitalizing force in the body politic.
Everybody knows that the loss of blood causes weakness in a human person,
and just so the loss of money—a contraction of the money volume—causes
weakness in a government; hence no “Power” should be permitted to control
our volume of money.
Every voter in this Republic has a head above his shoulders supposed
to contain a think-shop; and, if the “Power” now controlling our money
volume, and as a result our “commerce and industries,” is to be removed
and better times secured, every think-shop must get down to business,
with a full determination to see that our “commerce and industries” shall
not be interfered with, that the volume of money be increased enough to
effect rapid exchange of products and the payment of debts.
The difficulty in accomplishing this lies in the fact that so many
think-shops are never used, and again, some never read any newspaper
except “my party paper,” containing nothing for think-shops to work at,
and the result is—ignorance.
Thought is the mother of ideas, and ideas move the world. The reading man
will naturally be an observing man, a thinking man, always looking for
the cause of results which are transpiring around him, either in politics
or science.
The election in several States last fall indicated very clearly that more
men were using their think-shops than in previous campaigns. The good
work has commenced and may it continue until our Republic be free from
any organization that dare attempt to be—“Master of our industries and
commerce.”
_The Little Path to Peace_
BY MARY SMALL WAGNER
Save for the pewee’s plaintive cry,
Along this way all sound doth cease.
We christened it, the breeze and I,
“The little path to peace.”
The dusty highway far behind,
The vine-clad cottage as our goal,
There lies what many strive to find—
Peace for the heart and soul.
A mother’s voice drifts down the stair,
Crooning a simple lullaby.
See Mistress Puss and Fido there,
In perfect amity;
And over all the scent of flowers,
And over all the spell of home,
Though simple, for the asking ours,
Enthralling all who come.
O comrade with the restless eyes,
And greater cares than I can name,
With weariness you ill disguise,
Plodding the road to fame—
Pause—where the trees lap overhead,
Close the wee gate, nor seek release.
And hand in hand we’ll lightly tread
The little path to peace!
[Illustration: THE CAPTAIN, DAVY, AND GENERAL KUROPATKIN
A STORY OF KOREA
BY ROBERT DUNN.]
West from Ping-Yang, the old Korean capital, flows Tai-Dong River into
the Yellow Sea. Where in its mouth the flood tide weakens, and junks with
lumber slung over sides drop their brown mat sails; there, where the
clean sharp hills most beautifully are tricked with mirage and blue mist,
squats the town of Chinnampo.
Kuroki’s army landed there on the March night early in the war when the
ice, as if by magic, ground out toward China. Oiled torches spiked to
rafts bobbed on the chill stream, and the winches of blacker transports
creaked and whistled to the snowy shore. From the holds swung aloft
rice and fodder and knock-kneed, shaggy ponies. Impish guards of the
Mikado in red and green, privates in long coats and spectacles, sprang
forth rigidly on land. No noise, no fuss; the brown invasion of Asia was
furtively begun. The long barracks were ready, and they that had watched
Jap coolie sappers a-building them—beer and sweet-cake sellers from the
islands, pioneers in the new westward hegira—sat proud and bland that
night in their paper-slat doors. Meanwhile, from his desert of filth and
thatched mud huts all about, crouched cousin Korean in the darkness,
unsurprised and cynical, smoking a yard-long bamboo pipe as he dropped
soft syllables of philosophy on the vanity of effort, and with disdain
drew his wadded white robes closer.
Even when the red sun flag fluttered darkly up its pole, no cheers
followed. But from a hill overlooking the town an oath arose.
“Damn these Japs, damn their mustard bellies,” growled Captain Cyrus
Brewster, chewing a stogie on the porch of his lonely bungalow.
Isolated on his hill, the captain was just such a Yankee, thin-nosed,
blue-eyed and muffin-mouthed but with an imperishable look of youth
for all his curled gray hair, as you might find in a bungalow with a
flag-pole in front were you wrecked, for instance, off Patagonia; which
is to say he was an iconoclast, and hated the world. He shipped from
Chinnampo two million dollars a year in bullion from a gold mine near
the Yalu River, for which he was “agent;” passed white men’s food and
chemicals through the custom-house, and swore at coolies loading them on
the light-draught junks he ran to the head of navigation on the Tai-Dong,
whence carts trundled to the mines.
But worse than the world he hated the Japanese, for they militantly
coveted for barrack joists the only pine grove in the region, which
adorned his homestead. They could not seize the land without stirring
diplomatic mud, since the captain had bought his stake from the Russians,
who had eked it from Seoul in ’96, when the Jap ambassador burned the old
Empress in kerosene, and her son fled to the Slav legation. Therefore
the Islanders had threatened eviction, with smiles and insults; dickered
blandly with bows, lies, and tissue documents inkily fly-tracked, as the
captain repulsed them with a fist blow on the table, and cable blanks
inscribed with fiery messages to Washington, which he never sent.
“War news?” he’d exclaim to missionaries bound up river. “Don’t ask me,
by crotch! I don’t bother the monkeys in their damned town, and they
don’t come up here to me.”
Thus being pro-Russian and a truly brave man, Brewster felt he must
vindicate his notions in action. Having heard that a Cossack captain
near Wonsan on the west coast would be pleased to know how many men and
rice sacks landed with Kuroki, he let a young Russian travel, dressed
as a Japanese, on his junks between the lines. This fellow’s name was
Davydoff, a machinist, who patriotically had quit the mine when the war
broke out, but being lame could not enlist. In disguise, he traveled
by the name of Ikeda. I do not know how the captain squared with his
conscience in abetting a spy, but that Yankee defect is an over-worked
myth, anyhow; and a world malevolent enough to land a man, aged fifty,
alone in Korea, with a past like an erasure in a pirate’s log, should
grant indulgence.
This very hour tonight he awaited Ikeda, erst Davydoff. Now through his
night glass he searched the river, now the silent town distorted by no
flickering camp-fires, the torches, dying into iridescence, revealed
the black Tai-Dong as a covert serpent stealing across a world numb and
indifferent in white age. “Like them yeller oriental hearts, that river,”
he muttered, nodding at the stream, “reaching out acrost the world fer us
white men’s sceptres, learnin’ to smile whiles they suffer. Oh, they’ll
get the sceptres.” You see, the captain believed firmly in the Yellow
Peril. Soon he turned toward the angled thatches of the town, and a white
painted gable far from the barracks caught his eye.
His sharp features softened with recollection. “I see yer hev yer
schoolhouse lit, young missy,” he murmured. “Night school. Workin’
overtime civilizin’ Koreans.” For first the invaders had built the
barracks, then the school—copying the white man’s way in lifting a
yellow burden—which to the captain menaced a right regeneration of Korea.
The brown people thus handled the surest civilizing weapons of the white,
who were sealed meanwhile further north in their fortresses of privilege
and prejudice; so the bungalow on the hill and the schoolhouse among the
huts symbolized the passing of Asia.
“Karin San’s there,” mused the captain, and a vision of the white clad
Korean boys with long hair parted in the middle, the girls in green
silk tunics, their snub noses buried in books of English and Japanese,
uprose before him as he had seen them through the doorway, repeating the
alphabet in unison, on a day he had passed the schoolhouse. Then Karin
San had bowed low on the threshold, saying, “It is a beautiful day,
You-think-yes? I am Karin-San-the-school-teacher-of-English,” and a big
red pin had fallen from the shiny convolutions of her oiled hair, as
she bowed so low. “Great Christopher!” the captain had gasped; the same
dizziness now touched his breast as he watched.
Many times since he had visited Karin San, stealing down to the school
unknown to the Japs, or even Davydoff. He would sit beside her on her
platform, and she would turn to him for correction when her red lips
mistrusted how an English word should sound. After lessons they would
talk of Japan and America, for the captain had the reserve of age and
disappointment, and to Karin the war was no more a subject for discussion
than the coming of spring itself.
“Shame me for lovin’ you, Karin San,” he muttered now tonight. “One of
the yeller-bellies I hates. Hypocrite!” and he turned toward a gigantic
sort of dog-house under his flag-pole, where hibernated in winter and
dozed in summer, the captain’s big brown Siberian bear, Kuropatkin, which
he loved even more than his twisty pine trees. He tapped on the house
with his bamboo stick, and wished the General “Happy New Year.”
“It’s time ye waked and brushed yer teeth,” he said. “World’s a bit
livelier in these parts than when ye went to bed last year.”
The rattle of a chain told the hibernation was over, while eight hundred
pounds of shagginess squeezed into the open; tested the ground for frost
with a paw, waved its head as a man sounds a stiff neck, and as if to
say, “My! but this is early in the summer to wake a fellow!”
But the captain had stooped quickly and snatched at a red object in
Kuropatkin’s house. “Cuss them, Gen’ral!” he exclaimed, grasping a
shinbone hung with flesh. “The Japs has tried to pizen ye! Peach
kunnels,” he growled holding the meat to his nose. “But Mr. Jap
Mustard-belly ain’t so all-fired wise, and don’t know God A’mighty can’t
pizen a b’ar. He’ll learn a thing or two ’bout Rooshian b’ars some fine
day, though now he’s got the nerve and numbers to do most anything.”
Kuropatkin, cocking his head on one side, raised an ankle, and, pointing
like a setter dog into the pine-grove, let out an “Oof!”
“You see Mr. Mustard yonder?” drawled the captain, following the
General’s gaze. “You’re sayin’ you’re pretty wise, you b’ars, ain’t you?
I guess the’ ain’t no monkey law _yit_ about watch dog _or_ b’ar licenses
in this country. My timber’s lyin’ pretty loose about this hill. We’ve
likely got a vendetta on, General,” and having kicked away the poisoned
bone, the captain unhooked Kuropatkin’s ankle chain, thus freeing him.
Quite right was the Yankee about Jap nerve and a vendetta. The Islanders’
next militant move in the feud came that very night. In his French
bedstead—the only kind in Korea, with its thin iron mosquito-frame
aloft—he was wakened by a rasping, cracking sound out in his grove. Now
and then came a swish and a thump. Then——
“Yai! Yai! Eee! Eee! and a diabolical yeodle curdled the moonlight on the
hill-side. Presently a big brown object lolled from the shadows of the
pines, and stalked majestically toward the flag-pole.
“Got the fisheatin’ Japs in the act, did yer, Pat?” whispered the captain
out the window, shaking with laughter.
“Oofski!” grunted Kuropatkin, crowding into his house. Next morning
Brewster walked to his grove to find that three of his tallest pine trees
had been chopped and carted off, while two axes hung at hasty angles in a
half-felled fourth. After breakfast, Puk-Chong, his Korean “boy,” started
for the Jap headquarters with the copy of a telegram, declared in a brief
note to be then on its way to the American Minister at Tokio. Brewster
himself walked unnoticed down the hill to the cable office, which lies
far from the barracks. He actually despatched the message sent in copy
to the commandant, there being yet no war correspondents, and hence no
censorship in Korea. It was rather a more fire-eating complaint than any
he had pretended to send to Tokio before, and some time passed before he
knew the importance of his act.
After tiffin, two Jap soldiers appeared on his veranda, mutely
inquisitive in their brown leggins, yellow shoulder-straps, and high
crowned caps. They drew white gloves from their hands, smiled, and bowed
three times till their long swords clicked on the floor. The shorter,
darker soldier—he with a wispy convex mustache and eyes like a dissipated
doll—handed the captain a letter bearing the long brown Korean stamp.
The captain whistled as he opened it. It was addressed in a round,
shaded hand suggesting steel pens and primary writing books. Reading it,
he glowered; then smiled, as if he discerned something pleasant on a
mountain across the river; frowned again and more deeply, coughed, and
put the letter gently into his left-hand breast pocket, where his heart
underneath beat faster.
“So Korean postmen ain’t good enough to carry white men’s letters no
more?” demanded the captain.
“We dare no longer trust the shiftless Korean with letters to so august a
person,” explained the taller soldier, and both bowed.
“They won’t let you steam them open and read them, like you have this
one?” said the captain. “Hey?”
“Your bear,” said the doll-eye, after each had stared with polite
blankness at the captain, “is he dangerous?” and the soldier indicated
the flag-pole.
“Mebbe your pardner’s pants ken show that,” drawled the Yankee, taking
the other by the shoulder and turning him around. “Um, no,” he growled,
“but that b’ar knows pizen when he smells it.”
“Pizen?” said the doll-eye vacantly, “What you call pizen?”
“We feed it to b’ars regular in Americky,” replied the captain fiercely.
“We put it on shin bones and shove it in their kennels. It makes them
strong so they ken bust chains and plug axes inter trees.”
“Ah, so, _so_,” gasped the pair, with the Jap stare which conceals
understanding.
The captain knew the soldiers could never have called on so direct a
mission as to deliver a letter or complain of Kuropatkin’s attack; and
that to show anger to mere privates at losing his trees would yield him
only smiles of scorn and pity. What had they come for? Brewster had his
suspicions, which he started to test. He thrust his hands carelessly
into his pockets, observing that he guessed he wouldn’t “get no more
letters at all, steamed or unsteamed.” To which the emissaries replied
that he did them an injustice, that they had no desire to interfere with
the honorable foreigner’s business, but sought rather to safeguard his
privacy by official deliveries.
“_So deska_,” said the captain with falling inflection, which means,
“Well, well, now, you don’t say.” “You mean then, any Jap can bring me
mail?” he challenged.
“Yes,” said the tall one. “Indeed. Certainly. If he is in the army.”
“Then I’d like your boss’s permission,” said the captain slowly, “to
detail that Jap boy Ikeda I have traveling to the mines for me to bring
my mail.”
“Ah—he is expected back soon?” interrupted both at once, stepping
forward eagerly at mention of the spy, confirming Brewster’s suspicion.
“No,” drawled the Yankee. “No. Ikeda’s welched—gone south to Seoul to
fight for the Korean Emperor.”
“_So_,” said both with eager incredulity, “We have a great pity for you.”
“Do you think yer boss could git him back fer me?” asked the captain
sadly.
No answer.
“You are telling the truth?” said the doll-eye suddenly.
“No,” said the captain, “I ain’t—not altogether. Good morning.”
The soldiers consulted one another with clever glances. The captain
whistled easily, for he was quite sure now that they had come to arrest
Davydoff. “Good morning,” he repeated.
The pair started down the walk to the gate, but turned to bow. As they
did so, the Yankee seemed to see their stoop grow rigid. They gazed
over his head to the door of the bungalow. He turned. Behind him in the
doorway stood what seemed to be a Jap—a man wooden-shoed, in a gray
kimono, a derby hat squashed flat over his ears—Davydoff returned.
“Your boss is pretty obligin’,” called the captain to the soldiers.
“Without my askin’ he seems to have telegraphed Ikeda in Seoul to come
back and carry my letters. An’ he’s come.”
But the soldiers had started back up the garden walk on a run.
“Hi! Pat,” called the captain, “Sic ’em, Pat, _sic ’em_!” he shouted.
A chain in the big dog-house rattled, and before the emissaries had paced
ten yards, their twin brown gaiters were flying across the garden and
swinging over the rail fence, before the galumphing Kuropatkin.
“I hev a great pity fer ye,” imitated the captain. “They expect all lies
or all truth,” he observed, turning to the bewildered spy. “Mix ’em, an’
yer ken wig a yeller-belly—if ye hev an intelligent b’ar.”
The youth exclaimed, trembling; “I have heard all. The two Japanese there
know me for an informer. It is danger to remain here.”
“It’s a bullet fer ye on the bund tomorrow,” said the captain,
thoughtfully eying him, and “jail fer me.”
The boy limped dazedly to the wash-basin in the dining-room, and a black
wig fell to the floor. In a moment a blue-eyed, yellow-haired youth
sat down to tiffin opposite the captain. A whitish beard curled thinly
over his chin, and except for the roundness of his head and his hair’s
creeping low on the forehead—as in all exiles’ and settlers’ sons of the
Siberian steppe—he would have passed in America for the second generation
of a Baltic immigrant, refined and sharpened by transplantation.
“It would be but dying for my country,” he said with effort, but now
calm, after the two had eaten awhile in silence. “The great work is done.
Kosakin, the Cossack, has all the figure of the landing.”
“Yes, Davy, but Rooshia ain’t the captain’s country,” explained the
Yankee. “We got to hide you.”
The captain lapsed again into silence, listening absently to an excited
tale of suspicion, strategy, and escapes on a week’s trip from Wonsan,
told in the Russian’s queer, inverted English. As they rose from the
table, Brewster drew from his pocket the letter given him by the
doll-eyed soldier, and handed it to Davydoff. “Suppose you read this,” he
said. Davy took it, and read:
Exalted Sir? The pupils Oyama school of primary, Chinnampo,
request being you the oneman English speak, observe the
try-on of drama given bye and after Red cross aid, in the new
school house of the night you get this. Appreciation would be
subgestion and correction English spoken. Drama, Uncle Tom’s
Cabin.
Humbly to be yours,
Most Honorific Sir,
Tatso Karin.
“I guess we’ll have to take in the show,” remarked the captain, as the
boy glanced up with a queer look of amazement. “We got to go somewheres.”
“Is there no place else?” asked the boy excitedly, “I would myself
surrender rather than now to enter the schoolhouse.”
The captain met his glance intently. “It’s our one chance, Davy,” he
said, searching the boy’s eyes. “I’ll tell ye. I know thet young school
missy pretty well. Unbeknown to you, I’ve helped her hearing class. She’s
the one friend I have in town. If the game’s up with us, as I believe,
I’d like to say good-bye to her,” and the captain with bent head turned
away.
Davydoff sprang to his feet and paced up and down the room, clenching
and unclenching his hands, darting glances at the captain. “No, no,” he
cried. “Not there! Not there! Never, by my honor!”
The Yankee turned to catch his eye.
“It is ye suspicion the letter’s a trap?” he asked searchingly. “It
ain’t, I promise ye. Jap though she is, she’d never—never—” he stammered.
“Or——”
The Russian stopped short and their eyes met. “No, no,” he answered,
“I apprehend no trap, not from Karin. Only if—” he checked himself.
Understanding glimmered in his blue eyes. Then—“If she is as well your
friend, I will go. I will go to the schoolhouse with you.”
At dark, the captain followed by Davy, black-haired and derby-hatted,
with Kuropatkin swaying comfortably between, halted suddenly as they
entered the moon-lit pine grove. Looking back toward the bungalow, they
saw two-brown gaitered figures patter up the garden path and steal behind
the bear house, where one leaped monkey fashion on its roof. The other
with prehensile feet shinned the flag-pole and hurled a stone down upon
Kuropatkin’s roof. Finding he was not at home, they dashed on toward the
bungalow.
“Jes’ caught the gang-plank in time, ain’t we?” laughed the captain.
“Dodged the yeller-bellies so far.”
Emerging from the grove, they stole across frozen stagnant water, among
squalid red clay huts with tiny lattices under the thatching. Four
soldiers, singing with locked arms as they passed, kicked a fallen Korean
chimney—a tin kerosene can. Not a white-robed philosopher was in sight,
but through the huts’ straw fences, they could see long-haired hags
huddled over smoky braziers in which bubbled the head of a dog or hoof
of a bull. Through low door-ways in the haze of tiny, ill-trimmed lamps,
sore-covered children in soiled bright silks rolled on matless earth
beside chests clamped with iron.
At last the schoolhouse, white, high-gabled, and awkwardly occidental,
faced them. They chained the bear to a rail of the steps, and without
knocking entered a long empty room of half a dozen glass windows, its
plain boards lit by two big swinging kerosene lamps, and decorated with
British and Japanese flags. From the platform at the far end, behind a
drawn red cotton curtain strung on a long wire, a spiral stair wound to
the loft under the gable overhead. Chairs and benches were piled in the
corners.
Karin San tripped down the stair in her best iris kimono and big obi,
pausing at intervals as she crossed the floor to bow the glittering comb
in her black hair. Her powdered oval face resembled an enamel shell.
With half closed eyes and red lips parted, she seemed striving to speak
volumes of welcome, and to be intensely amused and overwhelmed by her
inability.
“_Kombomoi kombomoi_,”[1] she gasped and the captain responded, his heart
beating faster, but his eyes suspicious of the vacant building.
[1] “Good Evening!”
“Very sorry, very sorry, Brewster San,” pleaded the little school
mistress. “Tonight, no Uncle Tom. No show.”
Little Eva’s red shawl hung from a nail over the platform, also the gray
beard and spectacles of Uncle Tom, while on it rested a couple of buckets
filled with ice-cakes. From wondering how that spectacular scene of
Eliza’s crossing was to be portrayed—if a samisan could render the proper
jumpy music—the captain’s eyes fixed Davy’s in mute wonder.
“Military authority—Major Kumoda—just now order me no show,” Karin
apologized, again bowing with a smile in which her visitors, though used
to oriental deception, could read no duplicity. “Mebbe soldier come.”
The soft chords in her neck glistened like velvet, but again the captain
turned from them to his spy, saying, “Right you were in growlin’ to come
here. Better say yer prayers, boy, if you Rooshians is as good at prayin’
as they tell. She’s snared us for the mustard-bellies.”
“You shall not so accuse her!” burst out the spy. “May not her deed be
honorable? Did not the soldiers open and read her missive? Having not
found us on the hill, they have reason to look here at once.”
But the schoolmistress had crept to a window and was looking out, her
snub nose pressed tight against the pane. From outside came the mutter of
voices, and crunch of feet on the lingering snow.
“Damn us for fools!” broke out the captain. “And I’ve dragged ye down to
death, boy, for they dassent shoot a Yankee. Davy, blame me. I don’t ask
yer to forgive,” and his voice weakened. “I told yer I come to bid the
girl good-bye. It’s not the first time this cowardly fool heart o’ mine
hes ruined me with others. But after all these useless years o’ my life,
to find this yeller girl respond to all the stored-up sorrers—” he broke
off, gulping.
“Then I am happy to come,” said the Russian with tense slowness, “if for
your sake, my captain. It is then not the forgiveness, I owe,” he added
bitterly, with set teeth, “but—” and he burst out laughing, shouting—“So
there was no place else to hide? As well here as elsewhere might one be
taken!”
“Boy, I knew ye had no fear of death,” said the captain, laying a hand on
Davy’s shoulder. “An’ how I love her—Karin!”
He walked to the bright little figure tremblingly preoccupied by the
window, and extended his arms. The Russian could stand it no longer. With
fierce Slavic impulse, he tore off his disguise with one dash of his
arm, and, erect with blazing eyes, checked the captain.
“Captain! Fear of death? Never!” he cried. “Because the soldier
must think Karin in league with me, a vile spy, I would rather have
surrendered myself than come here to hide with her. Yet I go, because
you, my friend—dear to me—request, and jealously I think you also love
her. You confess, Captain, we have long been esteemed together, and to
you I owe more than my life; yet Karin you shall not seize from me, even
in the moment of my death. I love her better than my life or your own,
or her life. We have long loved. Yet may she love you the more. In this
hour, I leave to her to choose between us!”
With a cry, the little schoolmistress threw herself into Davy’s
outstretched arms, and was smothered in a long embrace.
The captain bent his head. “Davy, forgive me,” he whispered after a
silence. “I never guessed she was yourn a’ready, else I’d not—I do ask
yer forgiveness now.”
The spy limped toward the Yankee to press his outstretched hand, and a
stone struck the schoolhouse door. “You hear,” laughed Karin, at the
window again with woman’s tact, but losing innocence of her lover’s
danger. “Major and two soldiers afraid of him. He very brave, but I think
soon soldier shoot him. They would come arrest you! You will hide? Go, go
upstair! My room!” she cried excitedly, pointing to the spiral.
The captain looked out. “Hold yer ground, Gen’ral,” he called. “This
ain’t no picnic bitin’ wood thieves. He’ll hold on to the last, Davy. I
seen him nip the major’s sword, and wink at me—By crotch, they’re gaggin’
him!” He turned to the lovers. “Go, Davy, go! Up them stairs with her.
It’s yer one chance. I’ll face the monkeys and take my medicine. It’s
the least I owe yer,” and a vain thought of his cable message and the
American gunboat at Chemulpo a hundred miles away flashed through him.
Karin San seized the spy by the arm, and they vanished up the spiral
stairway. Immediately bayonets crashed upon the door, and it burst open.
The doll-eyed soldier and his companion of the morning, preceded by
the green-capped cavalry officer, hurled themselves into the room. The
officer seized the captain by both arms. “Brewster, American, we arrest!”
he cried, and turning to the doll-eye, delivered a rapid order to search
the house,—so judged the Yankee—for he smiled and bowed at his prisoner,
saying, “We find also you friend, Russki spy.”
But the doll-eye and his mate were checked in ascending the stair by
Karin San descending with upraised arms and her sweetest smile. The
privates paused and bowed. The three at first spoke calmly back and
forth. Then the doll-eye began shouting at the schoolmistress, once with
what the captain was certain would be an oath in English. But always she
replied to them earnestly smiling, never pleadingly, gravely shaking her
head, her hand upon her heart; always quiet, determined, arguing with
utter self-possession, calmly appealing—to what? wondered the captain, in
such fanatics of patriotism.
At length both soldiers turned and saluted the Major, uttered a short
sentence, and descended the stair.
The officer turned to Brewster, elevating his long mustachios in a
sardonic smile. “You see,” he said, “the love of country of the Japanese.
Perhaps you think it is the respect for woman, wherefore my soldier do
not search the teacher room. It is not. Boy, man, woman, all labor for
the same end, our country. No one would betray; we trust one another
absolute. It is so we exist; we fight; we win.
“We think the spy Russki enter here with you. But Karin San, as much
myself officer of the Emperor, declare he is not here,” he went on with
a self-satisfied smile. “We believe her. He has escape,” and turning to
the soldiers he gave them another sharp order—to search the town and the
hills about.
Next morning, sitting cross-legged and politely silent with his captor,
at a breakfast of sweet chicken hash and cabbage, Captain Brewster sprang
to his feet. “_Bzoo-oo-oooo!_” groaned a whistle under the glittering
hills along the river. Away dashed his manikin host without word or
glance. Between the cedar slats of the captain’s prison—the major’s house
by courtesy—the Yankee sighted the long, thin funnel and squat deck of an
American gunboat.
Two hours passed. Then the doll-eyed soldier who stood guard on the
veranda, slid open the paper house-door. Three tall Yankee tars followed
by a young lieutenant with sandy hair and a long upper lip, scraped heavy
feet on the major’s mats.
“Brewster, are you responsible for this?” said the officer, handing the
captain a pink paper oblong.
“Guess I be,” drawled the prisoner, taking the cable message. He read:
State Department orders unconditional protection for Brewster,
American, Chinnampo.
The telegram was addressed to the commander of the gunboat, dated Tokio,
and signed by the United States Minister there.
The captain whistled a moment.
“Say, what’s your state?” he inquired of his countryman.
“Maine,” replied the lieutenant.
“Aroostook County?” demanded the captain.
“No, Skowhegan on the Amonoosuc. Born in Penobsticook myself, but my
folks was raised on the Allegash,” grinned the officer.
When the captain had whistled again, he observed, “Like to be back there,
wouldn’t you, in a country where they have Christian names you can
pronounce?” And the lieutenant embellished his assent gracefully, with
expletives.
“These young Napoleons,” he began soon, indicating the little major’s
green cap which bobbed in the rear, “are interfering with my orders.
They say that you’ve been running a spy ranch. Their chiefs have pulled
out for the Yalu, so they want to dicker with Tokio before I take you
cruising and talk over the spring fishing back home.”
“Let me give you a tip on that, lieutenant,” said the captain, putting
his hand on the officer’s shoulder. Then he whispered awhile into the
young man’s ear. At first the lieutenant shook his head seriously; then
quite as gravely dug the captain in the ribs. And as the delegation,
including the manikin major, withdrew, Brewster called after to his new
friend, “Mind the boys use only blank shells. We want a bluff, not an
international war.”
And so the little cavalry officer never came back to his prisoner at all.
In half an hour, “Boom-boom!” resounded guns from the blue Tai-Dong. The
doll-eye thrust his head into the paper door. “You hear? You hear?” he
cried pointing to smoke curling about the Stars and Stripes on the river.
“America—Japan—cross—fight—so,” said Brewster, linking his two
forefingers. And the doll-eye dashed away.
The captain’s ruse of firing blank shots to force the telegram had
worked. When he believed that the coast was clear, he stepped out on the
veranda. Only the lieutenant from Maine was walking up the hill.
“I’ve got a Jap servant and his wife that I’d like to take abroad with
us,” said the captain to his savior, as they descended into the town,
where not even a Jap private was in evidence. “They’re over yonder in
that white building,” and he pointed to the schoolhouse. “And wait,”
added the captain, while the officer despatched an orderly from the
landing, “Could he fetch along my—my—pet Newfoundland dog, as well?”
Remarked the younger man from Maine, as the two watched from the gunboat
the clean hills fold over the straw roofs of Chinnampo: “If there’s
trouble from all this, that’s for the dudes in Washington to fix. Spies
is spies, but them pine trees is pine trees, and valuable, as we ought
to know. Too bad about old Kuropatkin, though most orderlies _would_ be
afraid of bears—Hello! Look!”
He pointed to the water. Aport, a black oblong rippled the surface of the
river—Kuropatkin swimming out to the vessel.
“Hi, Pat! Sic ’em, sic ’em!” shouted the captain.
When the ship had heaved to and started again, the captain’s face was
salt and wet against a shaggy brown coat.
Also wet were the faces of a light-haired youth, and a little teacher of
English as she is Japped.
[Illustration]
_Where the Road Dips_
HENRY FLETCHER HARRIS
Post-Oak and hickory talk in air,
And mutter where the roadway dips;
And tree-toads croak; and darkness drips;
And blackberries trail live fragrance there.
Ragweed and horehound, sage and mint,
And many a nameless herb beside,
Work homely magic—at one stride
The Past returns the way it went!
Chuckle of water greets the ear;
The light wind tries the brake and goes;
Far off the summer lightning shows,
But summer thunder comes not near.
This tender darkness stills the heart
As with old music; and the stars
Drop coolness where the shadow-bars
Of many branches mix and part.
A voice comes on the wind-thrilled night
Long drowned amid the roaring years;
My eyes are stung with blinding tears,
And fear and doubt dissolve in light!
[Illustration: _How Long Will We Tolerate This Outrage?_
_Westerman, in Ohio State Journal_]
[Illustration: _Why the People Love the Senate._
_McCutcheon, in Chicago Tribune_]
[Illustration: _The Man Congress Should Go For_.
_Westerman, in Ohio State Journal_]
_Repeal the Land Laws_
BY HUGH J. HUGHES
There remains something considerably less than 500,000,000 acres of
public land open to settlement. From this total amount careful and
conservative estimates deduct 300,000,000 acres as not suited to present
known methods of agriculture. The remaining 200,000,000 of the public
domain is passing into the hands of private individuals at a rate
exceeding 17,000,000 acres per year. At the present rate of diminution
the valuable public domain will be exhausted within the next decade and a
half.
The public domain lies largely in the States and Territories of Arizona,
Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming,
Colorado, South and North Dakota and California. In Texas, by virtue of
the agreement with the United States at the time of annexation, the title
to the public lands rests in the State. Liberal grants to the Western
States, of lands for school and institutional purposes, should be added
to the public domain in order to arrive at the total land available for
future settlement. These State lands are sold at prices somewhat below
the price of similar unimproved lands in the same locality, but on long
terms, and appeal about equally to the farmers and the speculators.
Their gradual disposal is placing in the treasuries of the Eastern
States a large school fund. The people are the beneficiaries under the
administration of the State land laws. A possible 50,000,000 acres of
farming land is available from this source after the National domain is
gone. It is well to note in passing that the value of the State lands
rises in proportion to that of surrounding lands. It is controlled and
disposed of with entirely different motives from those supposed to govern
the control and disposal of the lands of the general Government. It is
not free land in any sense of the word.
There are many who, remembering how the Western limit of grain raising
has crept westward across Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas, look for a
repetition, or, more properly speaking, a continuation of this phenomenon
across the remaining public domain. It is true that we are only on
the borderland of plant-breeding possibilities. Spelz, or macaroni
wheat, Kaffir corn, and other drought-resistant cereals are making a
marvelous change in Western farming conditions, and in the certainty
of crop maturity; but as was stated before, under known conditions,
only two-fifths of all this Western land is now or will ever be adapted
to agriculture. On the remaining three-fifths, grazing, limited in
amount, will continue to be profitable. Within this large area lie
the giant ridges of the Rocky Mountains. Great gulches channel their
slopes. Valleys are strewn with the debris of ages of erosion. Rain
fall is scanty. Water supplied from artesian wells has only a limited
possibility of use. Irrigation is local in application, and limited not
only by stream supply, but also by the topography of the country. We have
reached the limits of the immediate adaptation of agriculture to climatic
conditions.
The area of the valuable public domain is measurable, but it is as yet
not measured. To the eastward of the area named there is some land still
open to settlement under the homestead act. What sort of land is it?
Land covered with glacial drift, swamps, hills, sandy land—the cast away
heritage of three generations of keen-eyed farmers. Greater stress of
need will bring some of this under the plow, but the fact remains that it
is undesirable land, viewed from the standpoint of the man who desires
not only a home, but a competence.
Alaska, with unknown but probably limited agricultural possibilities, is
already beginning to attract the attention of the speculative public.
Farmers are not greatly interested in the development of agriculture in a
region so remote and where the season precludes farming on a broad scale.
This somewhat lengthy statement of present day conditions is necessary in
order to understand the danger that menaces us as a people through the
alienation of the public domain from its legitimate uses. The land open
to settlement is passing, not into the possession of makers of homes, but
into the hands of speculators who are enriching themselves in the first
instance at the expense of the farmers, but ultimately at that of the
people at large.
The vast grants to the transcontinental railroads, by means of which the
Government paid private parties royally for building roads that have,
since their construction, charged the people for services rendered “all
the traffic will bear,” threw open, wide open, the doors to the land
speculator.
Railroad lands were bought up at a low figure by companies backed by
Eastern capital, just as today similar companies are buying up and
exploiting the Canadian Northwest. Settlers were sought for and brought
in by the car load. They were located on a quarter section of Government
land, and sold as much more of the adjoining speculators’ land as they
could be persuaded to buy. Under other firm names these same gentlemen
who exploited the public and corporation lands sold horses and farm
machinery to the new settler, taking mortgages as partial security on
crops not yet grown. The lean years came, and the land companies reaped
to the full their harvests.
So passed away from the people millions of acres of land in the Dakotas,
Nebraska, Kansas and the bordering States. Today that land is selling
back to the people at prices ranging from $10 to $40 an acre—land which I
have seen sold under the sheriff’s hammer at less than $1.00 an acre.
These land agencies are, in a thousand ways, busying themselves in the
securing of further lands for speculative purposes. The days of wholesale
grants having gone by, they are turning their attention to the lands of
the individual settler, and under their tutelage clerks, teachers, town
men and women, hired laborers, men who do not know wheat from barley or
rye from flax, are filing upon the last of the tillable public lands.
Under the homestead law, these settlers are allowed six months after
entry in which to establish homes on their land. This time is taken full
advantage of. Then a board shack is built and the law complied with by
the breaking of a few acres of sod. Eight months more of (constructive)
continuous residence, and the land becomes the property of the settler
upon a cash payment of $1.25 to $2.50 an acre, according to location. The
company furnishes the commutation money and “finds” a purchaser for the
claim. The shack is boarded up or moved off. The sod grows to weeds. The
settler, having made from $800 to $2,500 by a little enterprise and a
good deal of perjury, is eliminated from the problem.
This cat’s-paw of organized land plunder is securing for his principals
a large, a very large, percentage of all the public lands passing under
private ownership. It would be safe to say that one holding out of every
four passes into speculative hands. Judged by conditions, past and
existing, in the two Dakotas, this estimate might be doubled, and yet
fall within the facts. On this point see the report of the Commissioner
of the General Land Office for 1905. The land companies immediately
list their newly acquired lands, and by an ingenious system of “booms,”
carefully nursed and let loose at the proper time, they advance the price
of their lands to a point sometimes double or treble the original market
value of the raw prairies. This is wholly, or almost wholly, a paper
increase in value. Roads, schools, markets remain as before save for the
change wrought by the actual settlers.
This is, in essence, the same thing as the watering of railroad or
other stocks, and it is done for the same purpose—that the “ins”—the
land speculators—may fatten on the “outs”—the farmers. And if the land
valuations now obtaining in the fringe of settlement bordering the public
domain be from 25 to 75 per cent water, how about its effect on the land
values in older sections—say in Iowa, or Ohio, or Illinois?
Obviously the price will be enhanced. And the immediate, discernible
effect of that is to render it more difficult for the landless man to
become an owner. I have seen land go from $25 an acre to $60 and over,
in Iowa and other States in the East. The land utility is the same as
in years gone by. It will raise no more—sometimes less than former
years. But every dollar added to the price has increased the rental, and
decreased the possibilities of a laboring man becoming owner of his own
farm.
Someone will say that this is untrue; that the returns from an acre of
land are today greater than in former years. What I mean is that an acre
of land cropped for ten or fifteen or twenty years is no more valuable
today as a producer of grain or live stock than it was then. The added
value of the crop is due to better markets, better implements, better
knowledge of agriculture. In other words it is a net gain due to labor
and intelligence, and as such should go to labor. Instead of that it is
consumed in rent. With every advance in the values of Western lands and
the consequent narrowing of the opportunities afforded the landless man
of the Eastern and Central States, the values, or rather the prices, of
these older lands advance.
And if the speculator is able at this time to force the price of land up
by leaps and bounds—if he can take raw prairie and, without adding to
its value by so much as one furrow of breaking or one bushel of ripened
grain, can make it double his money for him, how will it be when the last
of the tillable public lands are taken? How will it be when the only
desirable vacant lands are held for speculative purposes? How will it be
when there is no alternative between paying some farmer for a part of his
holding or paying some land company its price, based upon monopolistic
values?
Today, in the West, favored by cheap land—$25 to $30 an acre—I am giving
$1.30 as rental for every $1.00 I receive as tenant. Here it still is
possible for a man to start single handed and win a farm, but the crops
remain about the same, the prices are slowly bettering, the cost of the
bare necessities of living is lowering, the price of land is rapidly
advancing, the rental is going up, and my wages as a tenant are becoming
relatively less. I can still say, “Unless you give me a living chance, I
will go to the free lands and make my own home.” I still can pay for a
home for myself here. But I know that a decade hence conditions will have
changed. There will be no ‘farther West’ in the sense in which we know it
today. The increased land values will shut out a great body of men from
becoming land owners, or they will achieve their aim only at the expense
of a life-time of grinding toil. The basis of a landed aristocracy on
the one hand, and of a landless tenant class on the other will have been
laid. And you do not live so far to the Eastward, nor are you so deeply
buried in the great cities that the thrill of that new birth of despotism
shall not reach you, and be a portent of danger to your independence as a
citizen and as a man.
Repeal the land laws! Let the settlement of the public domain cease
until we know its capabilities. Better to deprive a few worthy men and
women of the advantage afforded by the laws than to throw away the
birthright of unborn millions. We do not know very much as yet about the
ability of the West to sustain population, but this we do know, that
no general land law can apply to this great semi-arid region and give
anything like equal justice. Investigate carefully the areas desired
for settlement. Make the unit of the homestead variable, according to
the amount needed to support a family. In irrigated sections but a few
acres will suffice. In even the drier districts it may well be questioned
whether more than 160 acres should be granted any one settler. We
cover altogether too much ground. Our Western farming has borne bitter
harvestings of the weed called “land hunger.” We need to concentrate.
And whatever laws may be enacted, they should be of such a character as
will stop speculation in lands intended for the people. Let the lands
be sold, and no title pass until after a reasonably long term of years,
and after actual continuous residence and actual valuable improvements
have shown beyond question that home making was the primary object of the
settler.
But the urgent present need is for repeal of the various laws that permit
this land plunder. We can settle details of future administration later
on. We cannot later on return to the people their stolen lands.
[Illustration]
_Candid_
Mrs. NEWROCKS—If there’s anything I hate it’s writing letters.
NEWROCKS—Do you?
Mrs. NEWROCKS—Yes, indeed. I wish somebody would invent an easy
substitute for spelling.
_Proof_
FIRST COMMUTER—This is a one-horse railroad, anyhow.
SECOND COMMUTER—Of course it is. Why, J. P. Morgan never tried to get
control of it.
[Illustration: THE TRIUMPH OF JUSTICE
BY CLARENCE S. DARROW.]
It was in 1850 that William Henry came to Chicago. He was then a young
man of twenty-five and fresh from his father’s farm. While William was
still in his teens it was plain that the slow life of New England would
never satisfy his ambitions and desires and so his restless nature turned
him to the great, wide West.
William had scarcely landed in the little, muddy, struggling town before
he knew that he and the city would grow up together. Even in its early
days, Chicago had that wonderful power which clings to it still—that
power of inspiring every one who touches it with absolute confidence in
its greatness and its strength.
When William Henry came to Chicago it was a little village stuck fast
in the swamp and mud that bordered the great lake, while in every other
direction stretched the endless prairie with its black soil and its
green, waving grass. But William Henry was young and Chicago was young
and even then in his imagination he saw before him the endless stone
streets and the unnumbered stores and factories and homes that the future
years would bring.
He had not long been in Chicago before he caught the spirit of its vigor
and they both marched rapidly toward wealth and power. He soon founded a
tobacco warehouse and salesroom on Lake Street, and his business steadily
increased with the growth of the city until he gained that imposing title
of dignity, influence, selfishness and narrowness, “a business man.” As
he left the busy years behind, his warehouse grew greater, and he moved
from place to place until he occupied a whole building on Lake Street
which he had bought and paid for from the incense that a generous people
was everlastingly sending up, if not to his glory, still to his profit.
William Henry had come from the farm, and with all his city life and
training he kept the inborn love for the soil, for the blue sky, the open
air and a piece of land big enough for a cottage, a garden, a barn and a
chicken house—such necessities as he had known in his younger days. These
simple surroundings of a rural life which seem hard and bare while they
are living things, because of the toil and pains that all the necessities
of life impose—these simple companions of our youth seem, somehow, to
grow into the fiber of our being, and when we look back upon them from
our artificial surroundings and our worn out feelings, the mist of the
gathering years covers them with a glamor that makes us think that our
childhood was lived in a fairyland.
So when business grew prosperous, Henry looked for a piece of land. He
did not want a twenty-five foot lot or even an acre, but he wanted a
fine, big “patch” on which he “could turn around.” He always kept a horse
and buggy, and every Sunday after his week’s work was done, he would
drive out into the country to find a “patch.” He drove out beyond the
brick stores; out beyond the houses and frame cottages; out beyond the
utmost limit of the place; out on the open prairie, covered with water
in the spring and rank with high weeds and waving grass in the summer
months, and out there in the country he found a “patch” of fifty acres
of raw prairie, which, like a herd of wild horses on the plains, had
never been subdued by man. His friends and neighbors laughed when he told
them of his “farm” clear out beyond the confines of civilization, almost
to the red man’s reservation, but he told them to wait and see. In his
prophetic brain there rose the scene of a great city, stretching out
along the lake, reaching far to the north and south and west—a wondrous
conglomeration of all the people of the earth drawn together by the magic
name “Chicago.”
In his vision, he could see railroads and street cars, stone pavements
and brick houses covering the “patch” with teeming life. Poor Henry, he
was not a fool; he was too wise. For there are two men for whom the world
never has any use; one is the fool and the other the philosopher. The
fool believes that there is nothing but today; the wise man thinks that
there is nothing but tomorrow. So the fool toils and the wise man dreams,
and the mediocre man reaps the harvest—reaps the harvest born of the poor
man’s work and the wise man’s dreams.
When William Henry bought this patch, he had a vision of a time when
relieved from business cares, he would build a house like the one his
father owned, only on a larger scale. He would have a garden, such as it
seemed to him was planted behind his father’s house. He would have a barn
with horses, and cows that gave real milk, and a chicken house where real
eggs were laid, and then, still further on in the magical future that he
knew was in store for the city that he loved, he saw his “patch” cut up
into building lots and covered with stores and factories and houses built
of brick and stone and standing firm and brave to verify his faith and
dreams.
So Sunday after Sunday he drove to his “Farm”, week by week he carried
out his neighbors and his friends. He planted trees and he dug a well. He
worked and planned and planted and dreamed out on his “patch” beyond the
great town ever reaching farther and farther toward the cherished spot.
Well, the dreams and plans of man all go for naught in the presence of
the blind forces that control the world, and one day Henry was startled
by the cry of fire. In the twinkling of an eye his warehouse was in
flames and all of his tobacco at once turned into smoke, without so
much as the aid of a single pipe. When Henry awoke from his stupor, all
Chicago was a smoldering heap of ashes, and he was a ruined man. The only
thing that escaped the flames was the little green patch so far away on
the prairies that even the fire scorned to search it out.
Henry no longer had the strength and energy of twenty years before, but
he did the best he could. He built a little cigar store in place of the
great warehouse that was once his pride. He still went back and forth on
Sundays to his patch of ground, and now he dreamed only of a little house
out there on the farm where he might keep a cow and some chickens, and
return to the simple life that his childhood years had known. But there
was one man who found his patch, and this was the tax gatherer. No land
was ever yet too far away for him. Year by year, the assessor put a value
on his farm, and the little cigar store could not yield the revenue to
pay. Of course, he never dreamed of selling the land to some one else; no
one does. Deep in the soul of man is planted the old inborn desire to own
a portion of the earth.
When Henry had no money to pay the tax, some of the “patch” was sold.
With never failing regularity the assessment came, and with almost equal
regularity a piece of the “patch” was sold to a buyer of tax-titles.
Finally, one Sunday in the early spring, Henry drove down to his little
farm. It was the first visit since the fall. Here and there a swale
filled with the rain of early spring stood in his path. Now and then the
black mud of the rich prairie held his buggy fast, but finally, after
much time and trouble, he reached the farm, and there, plain before his
eyes, was a high, tight board fence which barred him out. His first
impulse was to go back and get a gang of men to tear down the fence; his
next was to hire a lawyer. After some search he found a lawyer that he
thought would do. The lawyer knew more about the case when it was done
than when he started bravely in. Of course, Henry had no money, else the
taxes would have been paid, so the lawyer took the case on shares and
agreed to pay the costs, and then they started in to get the “patch.”
No one familiar with the courts would expect me to tell the history of
this case. It is familiar to even the common lawyer who reads the State
reports. It was about the year 1880 that Henry’s lawyer filed the first
papers in the court. The lawyer was young and full of hope—full of the
hope that is the heritage of all the young; the hope that gives courage
to live and fight and endure in the vain belief that it all counts for
something; the hope that keeps alive while years and adversity, with
their deadening, staggering blows, teach that all strivings are equally
vain. But Henry’s lawyer was young. He had the money to commence the suit
and he thought that this would be enough. Both Henry and his lawyer could
see the fence fall down and the farm platted and sold and their money in
the bank, while Henry’s life was in the early autumn and the lawyer’s in
the first green of summer time. But the days and weeks and months and
years went by.
At first they lost the case, but they were not cast down. There were
other courts that were better because they were higher up, and besides
all this, the law provided that in a contest for real estate each side
had the right to try his case twice, and the right to go each time to the
highest court of the State. Had Henry’s life been at stake he could have
had but a single chance and no right to go to a higher court, unless the
judges graciously granted him permission, and then only on the showing
that he was innocent of the crime. But land is one thing and life is
another. And this is quite right, for the amount of land upon the earth
is fixed, while there is no limit to human life.
Well, in a year or two the Supreme Court reversed the case, and then
Henry and his lawyer had another chance. In the meantime two more years
were passed in waiting and the case came on again. This time Henry won.
It was the turn of the other side to find a higher court. But the Supreme
Court found a flaw and sent it back to be tried again. Two or three more
years were spent in waiting before the case was reached. At last it
came again. Henry had grown old and white and feeble; his clothes, too,
were shabby and unkempt. His little cigar store had dwindled until only
his old comrades came to loaf and talk of the grand old days “before
the fire.” Henry never doubted that he would win. Through it all he had
held the same faith in final victory that he had ever cherished about
the future of his “patch.” He had lived to see cable cars run past his
land, to see crosstown electric cars on each side of the little farm, and
to see the elevated road stretching slowly down in anticipation of the
sub-division that would one day come.
Henry took the stand and told the story of his “patch,” of his early
years when he drove out on the raw prairie and fixed the stakes; of his
Sunday pilgrimages with his many friends; of his well, and grove and
green hedge; of the high board fence that he found on the spring day so
long ago. He looked like a patriarch as he sat bent over in the witness
chair, and his voice and story was that of some long-forgotten day.
The jury could not resist the old man’s case and again he won. Once more
the other side took it to the higher court, but found no relief. Still,
under the rules of the law, they had the right to one more trial, because
a piece of real estate was involved. So, of course, they took the last
chance that the wisdom of the law held out to them.
In the meantime, Henry’s lawyer had spent $5,000 and waited twelve long
years. He was no longer young, and most of the illusions and dreams of
early life had passed away. He was fighting now from habit, and because
he had learned that there was really not much else in life. He knew that
one fights for the sake of fighting, not for the hope of any reward that
falls to the victorious cause. Two years more dragged on. Henry, of
course, grew older and more shabby year by year; then, too, disease had
come with age; poverty and age and disease often travel hand in hand.
This is when poverty comes in the latter part of life. When it comes in
youth the lucky victim misses age. Henry had an iron will, and then he
had a life’s ambition which seemed to defy years and poverty and disease.
But time is the only warrior that never knows defeat, and it was plain
that age and sickness were to triumph even here.
Finally, one day the long-looked-for trial came. If Henry won, this would
be the end. It was now fifteen years since the first paper was filed.
The lawyer sent a carriage for Henry on this long-to-be-remembered day.
It came back empty to the court. Henry had been taken to the hospital in
the morning before the carriage came. He had protested, and asked to go
to court, but it was of no avail, so they drove him to the great brick
building and carried him slowly to the elevator and took him to the top
floor and laid him on the bed. He asked for his lawyer, and was told that
he was busy with the case, which he had concluded to try without his
client’s presence in the court.
Day after day dragged on; each night Henry asked about his case; each
day he was told that he was sure to win. The nurse knew nothing about
the case, she saw only the old sick man, as white as the spotless
coverlet that she smoothed tenderly above his wasted form. She knew that
he might as well spend his last few hours in peace, so she told him that
the case was coming along all right and that he was sure to win. Henry’s
mind was failing with his strength. The nurse could never tell when he
was asleep or awake. Sometimes he seemed to be back on his father’s farm,
a little boy. Again, he was driving out over the bare prairie looking
for his “patch.” Then he wanted to get out of bed and buy a cow and some
chickens for his “farm,” and then he sank to sleep.
In the meantime, the lawyer fought valiantly along. Finally the case
was ended, and for the last time the jury gave the land to Henry. The
lawyer waited only to hear the verdict read, then rushed to the elevator
and down to the street. He took a carriage and told the driver to go
with all speed to the hospital. He ran to the wide approach, passed the
doorkeeper, went up the stairs two steps at a time and turned down the
hall. He stopped at Henry’s door, opened it softly and went in.
The nurse was standing silent near the little iron bed. At the window
the setting sun was struggling through the smoke and grime of the great
city and painting the sky with a dull red glare. Its last beams struggled
through the dim window and fell upon the white coverlet, the worn, sad
face and the scattering hair. Henry was as still as the bed on which he
lay.
The lawyer looked down at the old, white face, and saw the eyes staring
out at the red beams of the setting sun. He could plainly see that they
rested on nothing this side of the crimson sky.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: A RADICAL CORPUSCLE
BY CHARLES FORT.]
A white corpuscle, of venerable and intellectual appearance, dug a claw
into the lining of an artery and paused.
Past him surged millions of his fellows, all intent upon doing what
they believed they had been sent into the Man to do, which was to earn
a living; tired mother-leucocytes, starting out upon the day’s work
dragging small leucocytes after them; young leucocytes, with not a
care in the world and never a thought for tomorrow; serious-looking
leucocytes, weighed down with responsibilities.
Here and there were some whose individuality would attract attention—that
old fellow with the prominent proboscis, forced along in the rush,
as others were, but at the head of an association formed by him, so
benevolent to himself that he got all the white meat, while the workers
divided pickings, of every disease germ captured. There had been battles
with an invasion of diphtheria germs, skirmishes with germs of typhoid,
small-pox, and scarlet fever. The leucocytes had overcome every enemy,
and they were a triumphant, arrogant race.
The venerable corpuscle might have clung where he was, all day,
without interfering with traffic, were it not for a peculiarity of the
corpuscles. A very hungry white corpuscle, coursing ravenously, noticed
the venerable old gentleman, and paused. Stronger than even hunger was
his feeling that he should have to learn why the old gentleman was
standing on a corner, instead of pouncing, grabbing, and struggling.
Small leucocytes, with messages to deliver, paused and gaped; and,
because they paused and gaped, such a crowd gathered that a burly
corpuscle, with a stout club, came along and growled:
“G’wan, now! don’t be blocking up this artery.”
But the wise old corpuscle had provided himself with a permit.
He began: “Fellow leucocytes——”
“Hooray!” from irresponsible, small leucocytes.
“Fellow leucocytes, I look around and see among you some who may remember
me. These may recall that a long time ago I withdrew from the activity
and excitement of our affairs, and may wonder where I have been. I
have been secluded in the land of gray soil at the upper end of our
world. In a remote convolution of this gray matter I have lived and
have absorbed something of a strange spirit permeating it—the spirit
of intelligence—and I have learned much from it. I feel that I have a
mission among you. Let me start it abruptly with a question. Fellow
leucocytes, do you know why we are placed here in this Man?”
“To get all we can out of it!” answered a sleek, shiny corpuscle.
The others laughed good-naturedly, agreeing that this was their sole
reason for being.
“Out of _it_!” cried the wise old corpuscle. “Why not out of _him_? Then
you don’t believe that the Man we inhabit is a living creature? You
think that because his life is not like our life, he has no life? And
you think that, when you can feel the element of him that we inhabit,
pulsate?”
“Oh, that’s only the tide!”
“You have never heard his voice?”
“Nothing but thunder!”
“You think he never moves?”
“Nothing but a manquake, now and then.”
“You doubt that he is kept alive by internal heat, just as we are? For,
without heat, there could not be life.”
A studious white corpuscle had become so interested that he permitted
a fine plump pneumonia germ to pass him without pouncing upon it. He
stepped forward and said, learnedly:
“Yes, there is internal heat in the world we inhabit, but we are taught
that the Man was once a ball of fire and is now gradually cooling off.
It is ridiculous to say it is alive like us. Look how fine and delicate
is our flesh; see the Man made of coarse, rough substance forming banks
along every river we navigate. Think of how tremendous its heat is, when
it is great enough to keep these teeming millions of us from perishing!
Could any living creature produce such heat? You say we can feel it move?
It must move very infrequently then, for these manquakes are far apart.
And you regard as a pulsating, the coming and going of the tide? Why, our
hearts beat thousands of times in the span of one ebb and flow of the
tide we are familiar with!”
Said the wise old corpuscle: “I say that not only is this Man alive, but
that he, and millions like him, inhabit a world as vast to him as he is
to us.”
“Oh, let the old fellow rave!” laughed good-natured leucocytes.
But the financier-corpuscle, with the prominent proboscis, coming along
with a germ under each arm, rolling half a dozen others in front of him,
muttered, savagely:
“Another of those cursed agitators!”
“This wide Man of ours,” pursued the cursed agitator, “is between five
and six feet in length, according to his system of measuring. The world
that he inhabits is twenty-five thousand miles in circumference.
Telepathy has told me so; I have been able to interpret throbs of his
intellect to mine. He calls his world the Earth. I say that he is a white
corpuscle to the Earth, as we are to him. He will not accept this belief.
He argues as do you. Flesh that he lives upon is so gross that he calls
it rock and soil; as rivers and brooks he looks upon arteries and veins.
He knows of a tide and sees it pulsate. During one ebb and flow, his
own heart beats thousands of times. He says the Moon causes the tide.
Perhaps; then the Moon is the Earth’s heart. He feels agitations similar
to those we know as manquakes. They are very infrequent. He knows that
there is heat in the Earth, but can not conceive that it is a source of
life, because of its extreme degree. He has no sense of proportion. He
can not conceive that a tremendous creature with an existence of ages
must move, breathe, and throb in proportion to bulk and longevity, and be
sustained by heat that would consume him.”
“Too deep for me!” cried a group of young leucocytes. “Oh, he’s some kind
of a fake! Start in advertising something, in a minute!” Each jumped on a
red corpuscle and went sliding down hill.
But the studious white corpuscle again stepped forward.
“Friends,” he said, “let us not deride this old person. Let us, rather,
point out his astonishing errors to him. Be tolerant, I say! Be
tolerant, by all means, even when we are opposed. Sir, we’ll admit that
there are many Men instead of only this one, and that all inhabit some
vast creature that they call the Earth. But what for? We are here for
pleasure, profit, and to store up germs.”
“Are we? For a long time it has been my theory that we are here solely
for the welfare of the Man we inhabit; that our food and our enemies are
elements inimical to him; we remove them in his behalf.”
“Vile agitator!” The financier-corpuscle, coursing round again, was so
agitated that he nearly dropped a germ.
“Let him speak!” urged the studious corpuscle. “His views differ from
mine, but I will be tolerant! I have arguments that will silence him
soon. Now, then, my friend, if our reason for being is such as you
describe, and you liken men to us, these many men you speak of must
occupy a relation to their Earth similar to ours to this Man. Do they
pounce upon and destroy every organism malignant to their creature?”
“I have no doubt of it!” cried the old corpuscle. “I believe that,
existing with those that are workers, are others, similar to them but
idle or weak, or, at any rate, of no value to the Earth. I do not say
that these worthless ones are pounced upon and eaten, but I do believe
that in some way those of no value are forced out of existence; perhaps,
besides weak and idle individuals, there are whole tribes who are being
exterminated, unable to survive in the struggle with the fit.”
“What industrious, unselfish beings these Men must be to do so much for
their Earth!” sneered a doubter.
“Now, let him speak!” urged the tolerant philosopher. “I have arguments
that will destroy his views, in a moment. Let there be freedom of speech,
by all means!”
“Industrious and unselfish?” repeated the old corpuscle. “Are we?
Industrious, yes; but unselfish, no! For our own existence we are working
in this Man’s behalf. We are not philanthropists. For the necessities
of life we perform our appointed functions, most of us never dreaming
that we are laboring in the interests of the Man we inhabit. So it is,
I believe, with them! I can’t quite imagine what their beneficent tasks
are, but perhaps they till the soil, as we till the soil of this Man,
keeping the Earth’s system in good order, doing everything in the belief
that they are working only for themselves.”
“Pursue your analogy!” cried the rival philosopher. “If we populate a
living creature, then the creature inhabited by Man must itself be a
corpuscle floating in the system of something inconceivably vaster. We
are leucocytes to Men; Men are to the Earth; then hordes of Earths are
to a Universe? You speak of many Men. Are there hordes of Earths?”
“You have expressed a thought of my own! I believe that there are other
creatures like the Earth. Perhaps they are faintly visible to the Earth.
Perhaps they revolve and have orbits and course through a system just as
we do.”
“There,” cried the old corpuscle’s opponent, “I’ve got you! Be tolerant
to him, my friends; I’ll silence him in a moment. My friend, then these
vast revolving creatures like the Earth are remote from one another? They
float in nothingness, then? But you have called them corpuscles, or tiny
parts of a whole. How can they be parts of a solid, when they are widely
separated bodies floating in nothingness?”
“Take an object of any kind,” was the answer. “Of what is it composed?
You call it a solid, but I have lingered long enough in this Man’s brain
to catch glimmers of what he calls the atomic theory. This doctrine is,
that all matter is composed of ultra-microscopic particles known as
molecules. These molecules are not stationary; they revolve; they have
orbits; in everything you think solid and dead, tiny specks of itself are
floating and are never still. A myriad worlds like the Earth, are only
molecules floating in ether, forming a solid, just as the molecules of
any substance you are familiar with form a solid. Only comparatively are
they far apart, as to a creature microscopic enough, the molecules of a
bit of bone would seem far apart and not forming a solid, at all. To the
molecules nearest to him he would give names, such as Neptune or Mars;
like Men, he would call them planets; remoter molecules would be stars.”
“Wretched nonsense!” cried the other philosopher-corpuscle. For he had no
argument left. “Subversive of all modern thought! You ought to be locked
up for promulgating your wild views! I’ll be the first to hang you, if
someone will bring a rope! You have it that all existence is a solid,
then? That a myriad worlds like your fancied Earth are molecules to an
ultimate creature? But there can, then, be no ultimate creature; he, in
turn is but a microscopic part of— Beware of him and don’t listen to him,
my friends!”
Suddenly a number of rough-looking corpuscles began to circulate through
the crowd, paid in typhoid germs by the wrathful financier-corpuscle,
who, standing farther down the artery, could not control his excitement,
as he cried:
“Vile agitator! Already there is too much murmuring against my invested
rights!”
“You tell us,” shouted a rough-looking corpuscle, “that we, the
conquering inhabitants of this Man, fresh from a war in which we were
gloriously victorious, are placed in this Man only for his welfare?”
The crowd muttered indignantly.
“Fellow leucocytes,” said the old philosopher, earnestly, “I do tell
you that! Through our own selfish motives we do our best to benefit
him, but each one of us for himself only, haphazard and without system.
Then never mind what Man’s relation to his Earth may be, and never mind
what his Earth’s relation to its Universe may be; let us think only
of our relation to this Man. Let us have done with our grabbing and
monopolizing, and study and find out just what is best for us to do in
our appointed task of taking care of this Man. With that view, let us all
work together and overcome that egotism that makes the thought of our own
true humble sphere so repellent——”
But, excited by the defeated philosopher-corpuscle and the emissaries of
the financier-corpuscle, the crowd had become a mob. Angrily it shouted:
“And he says that we, with our great warriors and leaders, our marvellous
enterprises, our wondrous inventions, are only insignificant scavengers
of this Man we inhabit? Down with him! Or, if we’re too civilized to tear
him apart, put him away where he belongs!”
And the fate of the wise old corpuscle would have been the fate common
enough in the tragedies of philosophy, were it not that a few disciples
hurried him away, seeking refuge in a tiny vein far from battle,
struggle, and selfishness.
“He says we were made for the Man!” jeered the few leucocytes who gave
the distasteful doctrine another thought. “But we know, and have every
reason to know, that this Man was made for us!”
_Election Reforms_
THE TREND TOWARD DEMOCRACY
BY J. C. RUPPENTHAL
Broadly speaking, election is simply choice. In a narrower sense the
term is limited to the choice of persons for political offices, or for
nomination to such offices, by the people, or by a somewhat numerous
body, as distinguished from appointment by a single person; or the
determination of other questions submitted by law to popular vote.
This paper seeks to present the general features of American laws in the
nature of election reform, in the narrower sense, with especial reference
to the decisions of the highest courts thereon.
When the thirteen original American Colonies revolted against the mother
country, their government was essentially that which had been evolved in
a thousand years of struggle and conflict in England. But in details,
there was as wide divergence as could well be imagined among people of
practically common origin, race, religion and language. With the more
permanent union under the Federal Constitution came an impulse to conform
much governmental procedure to a common standard. Especially was this
true in the matter of elections.
After 130 years of trial and change, nearly all of the States vote on the
same day, choose representatives in Congress and Presidential electors,
as well as most other officers in the same manner, and do not differ
very widely in methods of voting. The qualifications of Electors are
somewhat diverse, though probably less so than at the beginning, and
everywhere the right of suffrage has been widely extended. The period
of active assimilation to common standards lasted to the time of the
Civil War. Then the universal, extended and heated discussion of human
rights, the fury of partisanship, the passions engendered in the great
internecine conflict, the adoption of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments,
and following all this, the expansion of the nation in wealth and power,
together with the accumulation of colossal fortunes, and the growth
of corporate importance and influence, all these led to the trial and
testing of the most fundamental and long-established rights of man, while
every new measure in law, has had to run the gantlet from the preliminary
proposal in caucus, convention, primary, or elsewhere, to the final
decision thereon in the highest judicial tribunal. There was no final
judicial inquiry into the right of suffrage until in 1857 in New York and
in 1859 in North Carolina; but such became numerous in the reconstruction
period. From questioning new rights of black men, it was a short step to
attacking old rights of white men.
How the matter of popular elections has grown in importance may in a
degree be illustrated by the court decisions. The syllabi up to September
1, 1896, in all State and Federal cases affecting elections, occupy
553 columns of a digest; for the eight and one-half years immediately
following, up to April 1, 1905, 396 columns are so filled. Seemingly
nearly four-fifths as many points relative to the elective franchise have
been passed on in less than a decade, as in the earlier 120 years of free
government. Except in the instance of Kentucky, 1889, on the Australian
ballot for the city of Louisville, no question reached a court of last
resort prior to 1890 on such matters as the Australian ballot, factional
nominations, and nomination papers, while in that year four such cases
were decided in the New York Court of Appeals alone, and others in
Montana and Missouri.
In the earlier, simpler, primitive days an important aim was the securing
to each State its rights, real or fancied; latterly more attention has
been given to the rights of the individual to an effective share in
Government from its beginning in primary election, caucus, convention, or
otherwise, within a party or without it, and continuing until his wishes
are at last crystallized in the form of laws, and to protection against
fraud, violence and intimidation while exercising the prerogatives of an
enfranchised citizen. Not unknown are instances of denying rights already
possessed and restricting privileges long exercised. There has been
tyrannical suppression of individuals and classes. But the sweep of the
years, though slow-moving, has been in consonance with the Declaration of
Independence—“to secure these rights, to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness, governments are instituted among men deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed.”
Yet I doubt not, through the ages,
One increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of man are widened
With the process of the suns.
In the recent movement for election reforms, four lines of advance are
marked: (1)—To secure the voter, by protecting him from evil influences,
as is the object of the various “corrupt practices acts” and kindred
laws; by guarding him against fraud, intimidation and overawing, by
means of an absolutely secret ballot, as under the Australian system;
and by preventing, as with voting-machines, any manipulation of ballots
or count. (2)—To extend the franchise by reducing the qualifications
of Electors, and so making suffrage more nearly universal, as in the
15th Amendment, and the laws enabling women to vote. (3)—To increase
popular control over officials and their acts, over law-making, and over
the initial steps in making nominations, as in making offices elective
instead of appointive, in adopting the initiative, the referendum, and
the recall, and in prescribing legal forms for primary elections and
making nominations. (4)—To secure more equitable representation of
every individual, class, party or interest; to avoid the despotism of
a majority, or worse yet, a plurality; and to prevent the practical
effacement of minorities.
(1) To preserve the purity of elections, many states have “Corrupt
Practices acts” forbidding the purchase of votes, directly or indirectly,
by candidates, committees or others, with money, intoxicating liquors,
cigars, promise of office, or otherwise. Some limit the amount of
expenditures of candidates; others require detailed sworn statements of
campaign outlays to be publicly filed. President Roosevelt in at least
his last two messages urged Congress to enact stringent laws to prevent
bribery and corruption in Federal elections, and to secure publicity of
the expenses of candidates, parties and committees, and of the source of
contributions.
Voting was doubtless at first _viva voce_. In some States, particularly
in the South, elections were so conducted for many years, and in Kentucky
this was in accordance with a constitutional provision. For a number of
reasons, however, voting by ballot was adopted in all the States, either
originally, or superseding the _viva voce_ method.
The written or printed ballot was gradually perverted to such degree that
in 1857 the legislature of South Australia adopted an official secret
ballot, printed and paid for by the public, and wholly controlled and
handled by public officers. The idea was speedily carried to England,
spread over Continental Europe, and at a somewhat later date reached the
United States, where in some form, almost everywhere modified, it has
become part of the electoral machinery in every State, under the name of
Australian ballot. On first test in American courts, the system was held
to be unconstitutional, but it has later been sustained almost everywhere
as being merely regulative. The tendency of these laws has been to make
elections more formal, and less flexible. Changes on the ballot and
“scratching” are no longer possible with the ease of the old private
ballot system. But in general the voter’s choice is not restricted to
the names printed on the ballot. Constitutional guarantees of secrecy
are not impaired by those clauses which permit aid by election officers,
to the disabled or illiterate, in marking the ballot. In some States,
as Tennessee and Maryland, illiterates are indirectly or partially
disfranchised by laws which permit aid only to persons “that by reason of
blindness or other physical disability” are unable to mark their ballots.
These laws have been sustained in the highest courts. Regulations, if
not too difficult in the opinion of the court, are upheld, and likewise
provisions that require a party to have cast a certain percentage of the
vote at the last preceding election, before it may be entitled to an
official ballot. Even forcing a citizen to choose between voting under
an obnoxious party heading, or not at all, is, at least in New Jersey,
viewed as no deprivation of his rights.
In a number of States, voting machines which automatically register the
voter’s choice have been authorized, and to some extent used.
At this point mention may be made of compulsory voting, which has been
seriously discussed as advisable to bring out otherwise good citizens
who are apathetic as to their civic responsibilities. In 1898 the people
of North Dakota adopted a constitutional amendment, permitting the
Legislature to impose a penalty for failure to vote.
(2) Although the theory of the Declaration of Independence is broad,
the practice as to the “consent of the governed” was decidedly limited
at the time of the Revolution, and the ruling power in at least some
of the States was vested in so few persons as to be oligarchic rather
than popular. Property qualifications were often essential to the
right of suffrage. These no longer exist in any State. Also age, race,
sex, citizenship, residence and payment of taxes determined a person’s
eligibility either to vote, or to hold office, or both. A higher age is
set generally in Europe, but in America twenty-one years is universally
accepted as marking maturity for voting purposes. Race distinctions
were wiped out by the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the
United States. Religious tests were always few, and are probably wholly
abolished—the last effort being to bar Mormons in Nevada about twenty
years ago, but held unconstitutional. Sex is no longer considered
in Wyoming, Idaho, Utah and Colorado. While only males are fully
enfranchised in the other States, suffrage has been given to females in
many matters, particularly municipal and school. Only American citizens
may vote in a large number of States, but in others aliens also, who have
declared their intentions to become citizens by naturalization, have full
rights. In an anomalous position are Porto Ricans and Filipinos, who are
neither citizens nor aliens. Residence where the elector offers to vote
is always required, usually a year or more in the State, but sometimes
less; and a shorter time in the county and voting precinct, or city and
ward.
The extreme mobility of our population, so different from conditions
in the Old World, or even earlier America, has led to a feeling that,
in some way, the good citizen should be enabled to express his choice
in National elections, though for any reason he may have moved from
one State to another shortly before election; likewise that he save
his vote for State and district officers and measures, though crossing
county lines; and on county matters, though removing from precinct to
precinct. An effort to avert this temporary disfranchisement was made
in Kansas, by a law permitting railroad employees to vote where their
occupation happens to take them on election day. The payment of taxes has
long been a pre-requisite to casting a ballot in Pennsylvania and other
Eastern States. In the South, this requirement, as well as educational
qualifications, appears to gain ground.
(3) The extension of the subjects of popular decision has been most
marked, and the drift is increasingly in that direction. A further
innovation, rapidly growing, is the expression of a wish or preference by
the electorate where such vote is merely advisory and not binding. Office
after office, once appointive, is made elective, and when so gained by
the people is never surrendered again. In 1776-1783 only Georgia, among
the Colonies elected judges. Today thirty-one States elect them. Then
scarcely a governor was chosen by the people. At first presidential
electors were named in a variety of ways. But by 1832, the right had
everywhere been yielded to the people. The very many resolutions of
amendment offered in Congress, providing for the election of United
States Senators by direct vote, the passage of such measures repeatedly
by the House, and the persistent, reiterated requests for this reform by
various Legislatures, all show a deep-seated popular desire.
Scarcely had America copied from Australia her ballot system, when,
becoming adept as Rome in absorbing from surrounding nations, she
borrowed from the Swiss the Latin terms _referendum_ and _initiative_,
although the principles thereby expressed are as long established on this
continent as English settlements. For centuries among Germanic peoples,
there has been a steady transition of power. The right to petition the
crown grew into legislation. Final power was transferred from king to
parliament, and now in turn it is passing from the legislative branch
directly to the electorate.
None of the colonial charters, except those of Pennsylvania, had any
provision for amendment, and of the original States, only Massachusetts
and New Hampshire submitted their constitutions to the people for
ratification. By 1787, provision for amendment, thitherto wholly lacking
in all State constitutions, unless Pennsylvania’s, was added to eight
of them. The custom of amending constitutions by popular vote arose,
and is now established in every State except Delaware. Thus, changing
the organic law, upon legislative initiative, has become commonplace.
The next step—to permit the people themselves to initiate the change
and finally for them to ratify or reject and even to propose important
laws,—was slower of acceptance. Switzerland began this revolution in free
government in 1830 and by 1848 had the principle embedded in its federal
constitution. About 1886 discussions of the Swiss institutions, and
especially the initiative and referendum, as seen by American students
abroad, began to appear in leading American journals and magazines.
In 1898 South Dakota amended its constitution by adopting a provision
for initiative and referendum. In 1900 Utah followed this example. In
1902 Oregon by the decisive ratio of eleven to one in the popular vote,
adopted the most clearly expressed section yet developed in our country.
In 1904 Nevada added a similar feature to the organic law.
In April, 1901, the matter of an initiative and referendum amendment
first reached a supreme court, coming up in South Dakota, regarding
acts to take immediate effect, passed under the emergency clause of
the amendment. The court held that the Legislature is sole judge as to
what laws are “necessary for the immediate preservation of the public
peace, health or safety, or support of the State government and its
existing institutions.” The fundamental principles involved were not
questioned on either side. But in December, 1903, the initiative and
referendum amendment was directly attacked in the Supreme Court of
Oregon, and unanimously sustained. The Court, per Bean, J., said: “Nor
do we think the amendment void because in conflict with Sec. 4, of Art.
4, of the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing to every State
a republican form of government. Now the initiative and referendum
amendment does not abolish or destroy the republican form of government,
or substitute another in its place. The representative character of the
government still remains. The people have simply reserved to themselves
a larger share of legislative power, but they have not overthrown the
republican form of government, or substituted another in its place. The
Government is still divided into legislative, executive and judicial
departments, the duties of which are discharged by representatives
selected by the people. Under this amendment, it is true, the people
may exercise a legislative power, and may effect veto or defeat bills
passed and approved by the Legislature and governor but the legislative
and executive departments are not destroyed, nor are their powers or
authority materially curtailed.” Although the question of the nature of
laws initiated, or otherwise adopted by the people, upon reference to
them, was not directly before the court, it said: “Laws proposed and
enacted by the people under the initiative clause of the amendment are
subject to the same constitutional limitations as other statutes and may
be amended or repealed by the Legislature at will.”
Concerning that clause in the amendment which says: “the veto power of
the governor shall not extend to measures referred to the people,” the
court held that this applies to bills actually referred to the people,
and not to all that might be referred, and that all acts not submitted
to a referendum may be vetoed. The Utah and Nevada amendments have not
been tested in court. Indeed, that of Utah is not self-executing, and
the Legislature has not yet enacted a method of procedure to give it
effect. The South Dakota amendment specifically applies to municipalities
as well as the State. Nebraska in 1898 enacted a general initiative and
referendum statute for counties, townships, cities, villages and school
districts.
Since the time when “popular sovereignty” was a party shibboleth in the
free or slave-State controversy, so many matters are frequently, if
not habitually, submitted to a vote that such course no longer excites
comment. The charter of Greater New York was adopted upon a referendum,
which method has become the rule rather than the exception in giving
charters effect. Within the charters themselves, the Initiative and
Referendum appears with increasing frequency.
Many of the earlier acts referring matters to the people were assailed
as unconstitutional on the ground of delegating legislative power to
the people. The diverse decisions on the subject cannot be reconciled.
Beginning with Delaware in 1847 and continuing to as late date as 1902
(in Ohio), various courts have pronounced such laws invalid. On the
other hand, the Supreme Court of Louisiana decided flatly in 1853 and
again in 1854 that conditional legislation, to take effect upon popular
approval, is not unconstitutional. Then began some subtle and attenuated
“distinguishing” among decisions. Many courts came round to the position
that “while the Legislature cannot delegate its power to enact laws,
it may provide that whether or not a law enacted shall be operative,
may be made to depend upon the popular will.” An interesting fact is
that the courts in the Southern States invariably upheld reference to
the people, and that adverse decisions are very numerous in the North.
A peculiar referendum was attempted in Massachusetts, but was declared
unconstitutional. The act provided for submitting the question of
extending municipal suffrage to women, but by a special section allowed
the women to vote on the proposition of their own enfranchisement. Where
there are constitutional clauses requiring some matters to be referred to
the people, the rule of _expressio unius est exclusio alterius_ has been
invoked in opposing the submission of other laws to the people, but in
vain. The failure of the proper officers to provide for taking a vote at
the first election after the passage of a referendum law, cannot defeat
the will of the people, or deprive them of the option of acceptance or
rejection. Until accepted by popular vote, the law takes effect only
for the purpose of submission, and at a later election mandamus will
lie to require the officials to hold the election properly. In 1900 a
movement began in Australia to make it obligatory to refer the matter to
the people in case of a deadlock between the two houses on any bill or
resolution.
The latest development of the principle is the advisory referendum, and
advisory initiative. As the name indicates, these simply show to the
legislative and executive departments the will of their constituents, and
no legal obligation rests upon the officials to give form to the popular
expression. In 1901 Illinois enacted a “public opinion law.” Delaware has
pending a constitutional amendment to establish the advisory initiative
and referendum. In 1905 Texas enacted a very interesting experiment in
the way of a primary election law, which not only provides for nomination
of candidates by direct vote, but contains provision for the use of the
initiative and referendum within party lines to direct party policy, and
determine what principles shall be promulgated in the party platform.
Many city councils have voluntarily resorted to this method of learning
the people’s will. In Buffalo in the fall of 1905 three questions were to
be submitted. But the commissioner failed or refused to put the questions
upon the voting machines at the proper time. Mandamus was brought in the
Supreme Court. Thereupon Justice Krause granted the writ on one question,
that relating to public ownership of a light and power plant by the
city, but denied it on the other two, saying as to these: “They involve
questions of legislation over which the city council manifestly has no
power. Indeed, their very purpose is not to furnish information for the
guidance of the local authorities; but they are peculiarly matters for
the Legislature.”
When the Federal Constitution was submitted for ratification, many
of the conventions in the several States, dissatisfied with certain
features and more often with omissions in, the new instrument, offered
amendments. These were numerous and varied, and some were later adopted.
In New York and Rhode Island the conventions offered an amendment for
the recall of United States Senators at the will of the Legislature,
and the substitution of others. In 1803 and again in 1806, the Virginia
Legislature passed resolutions in support of such amendment for recall.
A revival and much broader application of the principle has lately been
seen. In 1903 the city of Los Angeles, California, amended its charter
by popular vote, and in addition to the initiative and referendum, it
placed in the people’s arsenal another powerful weapon—the recall. A
few words in the charter clearly define the recall. In the special
election in September 1904, the councilman whose course in voting for two
certain ordinances was not approved by his ward, was defeated by another
candidate. The incumbent then petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of
mandamus to compel the rest of the council and city government generally
to recognize him for the remainder of his term. Without deciding the
point, the court assumed the validity of the recall amendment, but
sustained the petitioner on the ground that the procedure in calling
the special election was not quite regular. Even on this point, Chief
Justice Beatty dissented. In an inferior court, the matter had come up in
another form, and Judge Ostler decided against the incumbent, holding
that the recall amendment is not obnoxious to either the State or Federal
constitution, that it was not necessary to make charges in the petition
for election, but simply to make statements of reasons to enlighten the
public; that the officer had no property in the office nor vested right
to hold to the end of his term; that it was no contract, but a mere
agency, terminable at any time by the principal, the sovereign people.
With the general adoption of the Australian ballot, whether pure or
modified, a certain rigidity and official formality was introduced, which
makes independent action, or the rejection of “regular” party candidates,
however unworthy they be, increasingly difficult. This put a premium
upon the control of conventions and party machinery, and the naming
of party candidates by whatever means. To secure a fair, untrammeled
expression of popular will in the initiatory step of making nominations,
a system of primary election laws has been evolved, and now exists in
almost every State. The early forms applied where parties voluntarily, in
primary elections, made nominations, sometimes of candidates by direct
vote, but more often only of delegates to conventions, all under party
management and control, subject to such public laws; the later forms are
mandatory, requiring all parties to nominate candidates, or delegates,
at an official primary election, under public control. The usual course
of evolution has been to hold primaries for naming delegates, and then
to assume the nomination of all candidates without the intervention of
delegates.
About 1879 or 1880 a primary election law was enacted in Kentucky, but
no obligation was imposed on any party or persons to nominate candidates
by primary election. In 1895, almost simultaneously, several States
adopted compulsory primary laws, limiting their operation at first to
one or several large cities, and later extending them over the State in
either a mandatory or an optional form. So widely do these enactments
differ, that it is hard to deduce general statements of their features.
Many have been upheld, and not a few overthrown. There has been a general
tendency to substitute mandatory for optional laws. After a bitter fight,
extending over a series of years, Wisconsin by a majority of over 50,000
adopted a mandatory primary election law in 1904, that provides for
nomination by direct vote, of almost all officers from the smallest up
to candidates for United States Senators, by all parties upon the same
day at the same polling places and with the same election officers, who
are publicly chosen from the two leading parties in the State. In 1900
California expressly recognized the primary election by a Constitutional
provision, and empowered the Legislature to prescribe conditions on
which voters may participate in such elections. The Constitution of
Mississippi, Section 247, declares that the Legislature shall enact laws
to secure fairness in primary elections. Where the primaries are official
and mandatory, all expenses are paid by the public; where they are
voluntary, the cost falls on the party holding them. Myriads of questions
have arisen out of these elections, and Legislatures have sought in a
variety of ways, to solve them. The proclivity of some voters to take
part in all primaries has been an ever-present problem in those States
that permit the several parties to hold their primaries at different
times and places.
Where it is entirely optional with a party, whether or not to nominate
by primaries, having decided affirmatively the party must conduct such
election strictly in accordance with the statutes. The first primary laws
made past acts the test of qualification to take part in a party primary
election. But later laws incline to accept future intentions instead,
while New Jersey, at least, requires both faith and works. Kentucky’s
court has held that the Constitutional provisions relating to elections,
do not apply to primary elections, but most courts that have considered
the subject, take the opposite view. Massachusetts holds that a primary
law is not unconstitutional in authorizing printing on the ballots, the
names of candidates presented by a certain number of voters, if blanks
are left for the insertion of the names of other candidates not so
presented. But Minnesota denies this poor boon to voter and candidate,
and says that no blanks need be left in which to write a name.
In many instances, only parties casting a certain percentage of the total
vote are privileged to avail themselves of the mandatory laws, and such
limitation has been upheld where ample provision is made for nominations
in other ways, by the minor parties. In some of the laws, the procedure
is minutely detailed; others are very brief and general. Some leave much
to the party rules and machinery already in existence, or that may be
provided, and even expressly declare that the party’s rules shall govern
in matters not provided for in the law. While the provisions of a primary
law may apply only to general elections, seemingly to the exclusion
of special elections, it is not therefore a special law, within the
Constitutional meaning of the term, and in all elections to which the act
does not apply, the old statutes will govern as before the passing of a
primary law. Nor is a law rendered special by requiring direct choice of
the candidates in a single ward or township, while for larger divisions,
delegates are selected to hold nominating conventions. A New York statute
distinguishes between municipal and other elections in determining party
affiliations, so that a man may claim party regularity, though voting
differently at will in city affairs. The inalienable right of the people
to call Cincinnatus and Putnam from their plows, when the office seeks
the man has been vindicated by the Supreme Court of Michigan.
(4) Ever since man first espoused the doctrine of majority rule in
popular Government, students have been perplexed by the problems
presented when three or more candidates for one office, or three or
more solutions of one question, have been before the people. Likewise,
the utter elimination of the minority from a voice in affairs, and its
treatment as a wholly negligible factor, has troubled philosophers and
statesmen who desire justice and truly representative government. In the
early history of this nation, five or more of the original commonwealths
chose their representatives in Congress on a general ticket; five chose
by districts, and this system gradually spread, until in 1842 it was made
mandatory. Numerous constitutional amendments were offered, especially
in the early days, to elect Presidential Electors by districts, and
Representatives by districts. In 1877 and again in 1888, Maish of
Pennsylvania presented resolutions of amendment dividing the electoral
votes of each State in proportion to the popular vote for the several
candidates. Many States provide for the distribution of election boards,
and some few other offices among political parties, usually between the
two leading parties. In 1870 Illinois adopted a constitution with a
section to secure proportional representation, or more properly, minority
representation, in the legislature. Quite a number of proportional
measures have been passed in the different States, but most of them have
been pronounced to be unconstitutional. In March 1889, the Michigan
Legislature enacted a law embodying the “cumulative” plan to represent
the minority. It was held unconstitutional. In the opinion, Chief Justice
Champlin discusses the matter philosophically and historically, and
describes the four plans known as the “restrictive” or “limited vote,”
the “Cumulative,” the “Geneva,” “free vote,” or “Gilpin” plan, and the
“Hare” or “single vote” system. To this there has since been added
perhaps as, fifth—the “Gove” plan.
The “restrictive” or “limited vote” plan has been used in American
elections more than any other method designed to assure representation
of a minority. The Pennsylvania Constitution prescribed the limited
vote for Judges of the Supreme Court, County Commissioners and some
other officers. The principle has been extended by simple statutory
enactment, in the Keystone State, and upheld there. But similar laws
in Ohio, New Jersey and Rhode Island, have been repeatedly pronounced
unconstitutional. In foreign countries, the system is much used. The
“cumulative” plan is much used in corporations, and some attempt has been
made to apply it in general elections, the Illinois selection of its
lower house, being the most prominent example. Beginning in 1874, Ohio,
too, used this method for a while in selecting Legislators. In 1889 it
was applied in Boston to choosing Aldermen. In Michigan the attempt so
to elect the lower house was held void, as has been stated. The “free
vote” has gained no foothold in our land, but is much used in Europe. The
Hare-Spence plan has been in use in some parts of Denmark since 1856,
also in Tasmania, parts of Australia and New Zealand.
The “preferential ballot,” which is a prominent feature of the
Hare-Spence method of securing proportional representation, has also been
used where single candidates are to be chosen to office, in order to
assure a majority choice among three or more candidates.
Even this simple survey of events shows strongly the steady advance of
the electorate in taking power into their own hands. If any mistrust the
people, if any have any misgivings lest the masses be incapable of using
wisely the powers they have assumed, he may find relief in the thought
that whereas the average mature American of the year 1800 had enjoyed but
82 days of schooling in his life, his descendant of today receives 1,034
days’ public instruction. The trend toward democracy may be the result of
men’s conscious deliberate design; it may be unconscious destiny.
States are not great,
Except as men may make them.
Men are not great, except they do and dare;
But States, like men,
Have destinies that take them.
That bear them on, not knowing how or where.
[Illustration: _Our Sword of Damocles_
_Warren, in Boston Herald_]
[Illustration: _Uncle Doesn’t Seem to be Going Anywhere_
_Wilder, in Chicago Record-Herald_]
[Illustration: _The Jolly Rogers_
_Cory, in N. Y. World_]
[Illustration: PIERRE, SANSCULOTTE
BY LA SALLE CORBELL PICKETT.]
You wonder why the world should be so fair to me today—to me, Pierre
of the People, the poor oppressed people, whose heart’s blood has been
crushed out until it rushed forth in floods that cover the streets of
Paris with a crimson stain?
Even for me the sun shines today and the flowers bloom with a fragrance
they never breathed before—the red stains that clot the dust in the
street are great crimson roses blossoming with a glory never before worn
by flowers.
“Pierre,” said Monsieur le Géneral, “you are not a traitor to France, are
you?”
“No, Monsieur,” I said sturdily, setting my teeth and giving him as
steady a look as he was bending upon me.
I told the truth. We who would free France from the rule of the
aristocrats are not traitors. Rather are they traitors who would make of
our nation a stagnant pool of slavery and corruption.
Monsieur le Géneral looked at me again, keenly.
“We may not agree upon definitions.”
“My definitions are from the book of real life, Monsieur le Géneral. They
are always in agreement with the truth. Monsieur knows, though, that he
may trust me for himself, however my definitions may differ from his
own. He has not forgotten that I saved his life once from an English
sword. I know the memory is graven upon the mind of Monsieur le Géneral
as deeply as the scar is cut in my arm.”
“I think you love me, Pierre,” he replied.
I laid my hand on my heart, bowing till my head almost touched one of the
crimson roses in the velvet of Monsieur’s carpet.
“More than my life, Monsieur.”
What could I say fairer than that, for was not life the dearest thing to
me then?
So matters stood with my lord and me on that morning when he sent me with
a missive to Mademoiselle Denise. To her or to another, what mattered
it to me? They were all young demoiselles and, as such, of far less
consequence than the silver mounting of my lord’s pistols or the flash of
his gold-sheathed sword.
As I crossed the courtyard a dark-eyed page, idling by the fountain that
sparkled in the sun, was singing:
“By the garden-wall the rose blooms red,
And lifts to the sun its royal head;
There’s never a flower of such sweet grace
As the blossoming rose on my lady’s face—
Rose-red, flower grace,
Never a rose like my lady’s face.”
With that refrain ringing in my ears, “Never a rose like my lady’s face,”
I went from the shining flood of sunshine into a hall that seemed like
dusky twilight after the outside brilliance. But in the centre was a
space where the sunlight drifted down through an open window into a
circle of radiance and in the middle of it stood Mademoiselle, a shining
figure that dimmed all other light. She was clad in white and gold, and
the long folds of her robe lay in shimmering snow along the marble floor.
Her amber hair was like a river that the morning sun-rays cross. Her eyes
shone like great sapphires set under long lashes of gold and arched over
by golden brows. It was as if the light of a thousand suns had centered
in one fair woman.
The scar, once a proud and happy place upon my arm, burned as if a coal
of fire had been dropped upon it and for one wild moment I could have
cut from me the arm that had interposed to save the life of my master.
Then I knelt before her, when she had waved her hand for my approach, and
presented the letter. She looked at it carelessly and turned her eyes
from it to me where I knelt and beckoned me to rise.
“Tell me of yourself,” she said in a voice that was like the softest
strain of a lute. “Who are you?”
Who was I? Yesterday I would have said a man. Had I not done a man’s part
in battle? Was it not a man’s right arm that had stretched itself forth
to save a great life? Now I was—nothing. There was not a grain of dust in
the streets of Paris smaller than I.
“Nothing, my lady,” I said, not daring to lift my eyes to her face, nor
scarcely to look at her hand lying like a white lily on the snow of her
gown.
“That proves you very much,” she said, “for a man never thinks himself
nothing till he has a standard of merit with which to compare himself and
the possession of such a standard is a proof of worth.”
“I am only Pierre—the servant of Monsieur le Géneral.”
With what pride I should yesterday have avowed myself the servant of so
brave a soldier and so grand a gentleman. With what hatred of him and
what contempt for myself did I make that statement today. Did not the
great gulf between the gold and white Queen of the World deepen and widen
infinitely with the significance of my words?
“Monsieur le Géneral is fortunate.”
She wrote a line on a leaf from a gold and white tablet and gave it to
me, sealed with a golden seal.
I bowed low and went out from her presence with my face toward her. At
the entrance I lifted my eyes and looked dazzled at the spot of light
in the centre of the great hall. Thus I passed out into the courtyard
flooded with sunlight which seemed dim in comparison with that supernal
radiance.
The dark-eyed page had seated himself on the rim of the basin into which
the fountain fell with a tinkling music that kept rhythm with the song he
was still singing. With the refrain yet ringing in my ears, “Never a rose
like my lady’s face,” I went back to Monsieur le Géneral with the missive
she had given me.
A little later the blood of the Paris streets spattered to the gold robes
of the court. I saw the head of Monsieur le Géneral carried by me on a
spike and the dark-faced, ragged man who bore it sang a ribald song as he
looked mockingly up into the face, one word of which would have been his
death-warrant had it been uttered when that head yet sat upon the stately
shoulders. For a moment a sorrowful thought of the days when I loved him
lay like a cloud upon my mind, but what time was there then for thinking
of love—at least of that love.
I left the crowd of raging demons and ran across the courtyard where
the fountain yet tinkled merrily down into the basin. No dark-eyed page
loitered there and sang of the red rose and his lady’s face to the music
of the falling water. I dashed past the fountain and ran into the great
hall. It was empty and there was the print of muddy feet trampled over
the marble floor. I went to the Leader of the People.
“Where is Mademoiselle Denise?”
His wicked eyes flashed vindictively.
“Ah, Pierre, if you owe a grudge to the aristocracy of France you can
feed to it now the most luxurious viands of earth. Even she is offered to
the vengeance of justice and her head will grace a pike as none other has
ever done.”
I threw myself down before him.
“Citizen, what has she done to you or to France?”
“Done? She has done nothing. She is. That is the crime of an aristocrat.”
I pleaded with him for the life of that woman whose gold and white beauty
was the fairest thing I had ever gazed upon and whose beautiful heart
looked out from eyes that showed all its goodness and truth. Citizen
Beauget had received many services at my hands in the days when I was
near the powers of the court because the favorite of the king had owed
his life to me.
“Eh!” he cried. “A citizen of France seeking to save the life of one of
the oppressors of France? Ah, I have it. If she will marry you, good
Pierre, her life is yours. Ha, the white and gold lily of the court marry
Pierre, the Sansculotte! Beautiful thought! Perhaps she will wish to save
her life.”
Then I stood up before him and looked at him with a scorn before which he
dropped his gaze.
“Citizen Beauget, Mademoiselle will marry where she loves or kiss the
cruel ‘Maiden of Liberty’ with pure lips and a brave heart.”
But I took the paper he gave me and went straight to the prison where she
stood, and even there space was bright because of her. She turned and
looked at me and the glow that comes once to a woman’s face was in hers
when her eyes fell on me.
“You have come to help me die,” she said reaching out her hand.
I took the hand and fell upon my knees and pressed it to my lips.
“Nay, not so, Mademoiselle. I come to bid you live, if I read truly what
is written on your face.”
Hand in hand we went out into the night and neither the terror of the
living nor the faces of the dead staring up into the moon-lit sky marred
the peace that filled our hearts.
_The New Party_
_What Shall It Be Named?_
BY CHARLES Q. DE FRANCE
_Secretary People’s Party National Committee_
There are phenomena a-plenty, said the _New York World_ editorially
(December 31), “which unmistakably foretell a new party and a new issue
in American affairs. It comes in a multitude of shapes and clothed in a
multitude of garments.”
Coming from the source it does, this utterance is significant. There is
no doubt about the existence of the phenomena, but your conservative
usually delights in playing ostrich. Personally I would like to question
the accuracy of the _World’s_ forecast—for I contend that we have now
more political parties than economic conditions warrant—but regard for
truth requires affirmation instead of denial. The new party is bound to
come.
“Mr. Bryan,” the _World_ continued, “has already defined it (the new
party) in terms of triple state socialism—city ownership, State ownership
and national ownership of all public utilities.”
Granting that this is correct, it is not hard to see that a new party
is superfluous, for the People’s Party now covers this ground; and the
Democratic Party has in places adopted a portion of the program.
The public mind, however, is thinking of a new party—and that settles it.
The arguments of a few feeble individuals cannot change public opinion.
So let us accept the inevitable and try to make the best of it.
The new party, it is safe to say, will pre-empt a large portion of the
ground now occupied by the People’s Party. It will declare for true
democracy. It will adopt one of two methods in making its declarations.
It may, in a few well worded paragraphs, state fundamental principles of
democracy, avoiding the peculiar isms of the various factions which will
be brought together in the new organization; or it may attempt to frame a
plank acceptable to each of the factions. It is needless to say that the
former will lay the foundation for success, while the latter will give
rise to dissensions and result, finally, in disintegration.
But I do not wish to suggest a platform for the new party. Able men will
be present at its birth, and they will know what to do. I do wish to be
heard, however, on the question of name for the infant party.
Populists well know that for the past four years I have fought
persistently against changing the People’s Party name. I have freely
admitted its faults, but have insisted that a faulty name is less
dangerous than a change. The organization of a new party presents a
different problem. A new name is necessary.
What shall it be?
Viewed superficially there are many good names which might be adopted;
but when subjected to careful analysis, the number dwindles down to a
very few. I take it that the name should indicate the predominant feature
of the party; that it should be but one word, and that word short,
preferably of three syllables, not explosive or difficult to pronounce,
but capable of being uttered easily; that whether used as noun or
adjective no change is necessary; that it should not be an unusual or a
newly coined word, but one the meaning of which, in its generic sense, is
now well understood by, or at least familiar to the public.
A year or so ago a writer in _The Public_ (Chicago) suggested Isocrat,
one who believes in equal rule; and Orthocrat, one who believes in
good rule—both charming names but violating what I believe to be very
important: that the name should not be unusual, newly coined, or
unfamiliar to the public. Isocrat, isocratic, isocracy; orthocrat,
orthocratic, orthocracy. Ingenious inventions, but hardly suited to our
purpose.
Several persons in the past few years, notably Rev. John V. Potts,
of Ohio, have made good arguments in favor of “The People’s
Democratic-Republican Party.” I shall not discuss this further than to
suggest that a 27-letter name is too long; and that to designate a member
of the party would require a hopeless amount of circumlocution.
“Home Rule,” “American,” etc., have been suggested; but a little thought
will disclose their weak points.
I suggest the good, old word RADICAL.
Nine men out of every ten today—who would likely become affiliated
with the new party—will, when questioned as to their political belief,
generally preface their remarks by declaring, “I am a radical.” Why not
give them an opportunity to say it with a capital R?
The Radical Party; a Radical; Radical measures; Radicalism.
Not so many years ago the suggestion of this name would have aroused a
storm of protest—but it is different today. Then a radical was looked
upon as a rash man, if not, indeed, a revolutionist. Men coveted the
distinction of being regarded as conservative. To put a radical in an
important public office, as Governor, for instance, would “drive capital
out of the State.” Only a “con-ser-r-va-tive” (how they did roll that r)
could prevent things from going to the demnition bow-wows.
Today it is almost criminally libelous to call a man “safe and sane,”
so great a change has come over the public mind. The words “radical”
and “conservative” have come to be understood in a new light. The
new meanings have quite obscured the old. A “conservative” is looked
upon today as the beneficiary, as principal or agent, of some special
privilege—franchise, tariff tax and the like—which gives him the
power to absorb wealth produced by others, without rendering an
equivalent therefor. Naturally, he desires to “conserve” this unfair
advantage—for civilization has by no means eliminated the wolf in man—and
is, therefore, opposed to radical change. He is a conservative, a
stand-patter, a let-well-enough-aloner.
I make no claim of altruism for the radical, and am inclined to look
with suspicion upon the man who prates overmuch about doing everything
for others and nothing for himself. Self-preservation is the first law
of Nature, and man hasn’t learned how to repeal it. Besides, it isn’t
necessary, even if we knew how. But there is selfishness and selfishness.
Conservative selfishness means to build up one’s self at the expense of
others; radical selfishness has for its motto, “Live and let live.” In
other words, by promoting the general welfare, I can best advance my own
interests.
But, for the sake of argument, let us admit that men are alike in
their selfishness; that all are wolfish, whether conservative or
radical. Common sense teaches us that only a comparative few can be the
beneficiaries of special privileges. If we all possessed equal powers
to rob, conferred by legislation, the result would be about the same as
though none of us possessed such powers. The former alternative is, of
course, impossible; for a special privilege would cease to be such if
made general. But the latter is possible. Let us frankly confess that the
radical would be a conservative if he could become the beneficiary of a
special privilege. Given the opportunity, I feel sure he would act much
as other legalized robbers do.
I believe we have indulged in too much denunciation of the beneficiaries
of special privileges, the legalized plunderers, and paid too little
attention to the criminal ignorance of the great majority who permit
themselves to be robbed. I believe we should admit that the masses have
acted as “them asses”—and resolve to quit playing the fool. That’s why I
suggest the name Radical for the new party. It means a going to the root
of the trouble and uprooting it. It means a change which will hurt the
pride of a few, because they can no longer hoodwink and rob their tens of
thousands under guise of law—a change which will benefit the pockets of
the many, because they will no longer be picked by legal enactment.
And this would be a radical change. Let it be made by a Radical party.
_A Wild Enthusiast_
“He——?”
“Oh, he is the kind of a chap that would try to blow up a balloon with
baking-powder.”
_Unfinished_
Johnny—Mamma, I was having such a nice dream when I woke up.
MAMMA—Were you?
Johnny—Yes. I wish there was some way I could go ahead with that dream.
_The Municipal Boss_
By W. D. Wattles
The present revolt against bossism and the recent destruction of several
of the strongest and best constructed machines, naturally suggest the
question as to the permanence of the results. The vital problem now is
whether the boss will rise again, or whether a new one will come in his
stead. To know the answer we must understand the causes and conditions
which bring the boss into existence.
The supposition that the boss arises by virtue of his strong personality;
that he is an organizer, a general, one born to command; that the
“machine” is the product of his skill and genius, and that no one who
does not possess the same elements of character can follow him, is wrong.
The municipal boss is an effect rather than a cause. He is the product
of certain forces, working under certain conditions, and so long as
the forces are unchecked and the conditions unchanged, a new boss must
inevitably be created to fill the place of every one the people may
dethrone.
In municipal politics, the boss comes into being at the point where the
criminal rich come in contact with the criminal poor. The criminal rich
desire franchise privileges, which are among the most productive and
valuable of all forms of property. How valuable they are may be better
understood if we remember that a recent conservative writer estimates the
franchise values of Greater New York at four hundred and fifty millions
of dollars, a staggering sum, but the real market value of actual
property which has been virtually stolen from the people. Property, too,
of great earning power as compared with most other investments, capable
of paying almost unlimited dividends; and often giving its possessors
control over all other branches of business, even over life itself. And
this property, amounting to half a billion dollars in New York alone and
to an incalculable sum in the cities of the whole United States, has been
appropriated by the criminal rich through the agency of the municipal
boss.
In order to consummate these thefts, the franchise grabbers must have
a purchasable city council. To elect and maintain a purchasable city
council two things are necessary: a division of the “good” citizens
against each other, and a boss to unify and keep solid the criminal poor
as a balance of power.
The “good” citizens—by this term I mean the great mass of fairly
well-meaning people—are kept divided by the extension of national
political interests into municipal affairs. This division is the first
condition essential to the development of the boss.
The criminal poor—meaning not merely professional criminals, but all who
gamble, get drunk, have occasional fights, and are liable to get into
trouble with the police—having with them the saloons, dives and all the
hosts of graft and shady business, hold the balance of power. The boss
maintains his hold upon them by means of his ability to help them out
of trouble. The first step of the boss must be to corrupt the police
force and the justices’ courts. This is not hard, for the police and the
justices are usually very anxious to be corrupted; it pays them much
better to be corrupt than to be honest.
So the boss comes in as a business agent between the criminal poor and
the police, enabling the criminal to escape punishment, and the police to
get rich by sharing in the profits of crime.
Under this régime the criminal poor are permitted to prey upon society
by dividing their spoils with the police. The power of the boss is in
his ability to withdraw his protection from any individual who may waver
in his political support. The boss never preys upon the poor, whether
criminal or not, he is always a friend in need, a refuge in time of
trouble to those who follow without questioning.
By means of this following he elects his henchmen to the city council;
and so it is to him that the criminal rich must come when they want to
appropriate franchise property. The boss really steals the franchise and
sells it to the rich.
Thus, under the boss régime, both the criminal rich and the criminal poor
are permitted to prey upon society.
We understand, now, that the municipal boss is the product, first, of
the political condition which keeps the good citizens voting against
each other; second, of the condition which makes possible the private
ownership and control of municipal public utilities; third, of two
forces, equally desirous of preying upon society—the criminal rich and
the criminal poor.
And it is evident that so long as the conditions continue and the forces
are permitted to operate, the creation of new bosses is inevitable.
It is only possible to hold the good citizens together in independent
organizations in a very spasmodic and uncertain fashion so long as the
party system prevails in national politics, but it is always possible to
unite them on any one question by means of the referendum. Therefore,
the first condition may be changed by the enactment of laws requiring
the submission of all franchise questions to the popular vote. On a
referendum, the good citizens of all parties, if they vote intelligently,
will present a united front to the forces of graft. This will prevent the
consummation of new thefts, but it will not restore the property already
stolen, except by the slow process of awaiting the expiration of the
present franchise grants.
The second condition may be removed by training the people in knowledge
of the practicability of the municipal ownership and operation of public
utilities. Until the people believe in municipal ownership as a practical
possibility, it is impossible; once they do believe, and are ready, it is
probable that the laws of the States for the recovery of stolen property
will be found sufficient to bring about the restoration to them of all
that is rightfully their own.
At the end, we always come to the proposition that to check the forces of
evil we must eliminate the profits of evil doing. There is no other way.
By this plan, the social problems in which the municipal boss appears
will be found easy of settlement, and possibly those connected with the
state and national boss also. For they, like their prototype of the city,
are not the great personalities we have deemed them, but merely the
products of conditions easily changed and of forces amenable to control.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: The Silence of Johnny
BY Harriette M. Collins.]
“Is the letter from Johnny, Mary _agra_?” The pathetic appeal in Mrs.
Ryan’s quavering voice, and the heart-hunger expressed in her wrinkled,
parchment-like face brought a lump to the throat of her daughter as she
replied:
“No, mother darlin’, it’s from Andy this time.”
“Why doesn’t Johnny write, an’ why doesn’t he come an’ see his poor ould
mother afore she dies?” the old woman wailed. “Och, but me heart is sore
wid the longin’ for me darlin’ boy, an’ me ould arrums is achin’ to hould
him agin! Niver a word from him this three years, come Chrisymas! It’s
not like Johnny! It’s not like Johnny at all, at all!”
“But, mother _achree_, Johnny doesn’t forget you,” Mary answered
soothingly. “An’ he never forgets to send you two pounds every three
months by Liza, or Andy, or Katie.”
“I know it, Mary. Johnny was always a ginerous boy: but it’s not his
money I want, but himself back agin! Shure I’d rather beg wid Johnny than
own the wurruld an’ all wid-dout him!” Mrs. Ryan answered. “Read Andy’s
letter for me, Mary _acushla_.”
While Mary Ryan read aloud the letter which she had just brought from
the village post-office, her mother gazed yearningly over the restless
expanse of dark blue ocean, which stretched away to the crimsoning west.
With dreamy eyes, which saw but heeded not, she watched the hovering,
screaming sea-gulls, the white-sailed fishing-smacks and the long, black
streak of smoke that, far away on the horizon, marked the course of an
outward-bound steamer.
For many years Mrs. Ryan had been in the habit of sitting on the rude
bench by the door of the cabin, that was perched high up on the rugged
hill-side, and watching the steamers as they came and went.
Four times during those weary years the mother’s heart within her had
grown numb with pain as she saw the black streak fade in the distance and
knew that one of her darlings was being borne away from her.
Andy was the first to leave the overcrowded cabin and seek work in the
grand land of plenty across the water. In a year, Andy sent the passage
money for Liza, and, in another year, Liza sent the passage money for
Katie. Then Johnny, the idol of her declining years, kissed his mother
good-bye and, with cheery, hopeful voice, promised to return to her in
two, or at most, three years. With that dumb resignation, sometimes born
of a sense of hopeless inability to cope with circumstances, Mrs. Ryan
had watched him wend his way, with many a backward glance and wave of
the hand, down the narrow zig-zag path to the village and the train for
Queenstown, where the merciless steamer waited to bear him away forever
from her loving arms. She remembered still how the sunbeams had glinted
upon his auburn hair that morning, and how handsome he had looked in his
new tweed suit and green tie. She thought of the tears that had welled up
in his blue eyes when she gave him her parting blessing, and she recalled
the silent anguish with which she had sat by the cabin door and watched
the black steamer, silhouetted against the golden sunset and slowly
disappearing in the distance. It had been hard to see the others go, but
Johnny—what would life be without Johnny?
That was five years ago. For two years Johnny had written regularly,
telling of steady work and good wages, and promising to come home for a
vacation as soon as possible. Then there came a short, badly-written note
enclosed with a letter from Andy, and after that—silence.
Andy and Liza and Katie wrote regularly and sent money for the support of
their mother and Mary. It was Mary’s mission to remain in the Old Country
and take care of the feeble, aged mother.
Every three months, Andy or one of the girls sent an order for two pounds
and wrote that Johnny sent it with his love. That was all. They never
answered the questions concerning Johnny, his doings and his whereabouts
which Mary repeatedly wrote at her mother’s behest.
“Is that all, Mary? Is there nothing at all, at all about Johnny?” Mrs.
Ryan queried in disappointed tones, when her daughter had finished
reading Andy’s letter.
“There’s not a word in it about Johnny, mother darlin’,” Mary answered
reluctantly.
“Andy said Nancy Quin is comin’ home on the boat that gets in Saturday,
didn’t he?”
“Yes, mother,” Mary replied, “Nancy is comin’ to spend a month with her
people.”
“An’ Nancy Quin lives out in the same family as Liza?”
“Yes, mother; she’s parlor-maid where Liza’s cook.”
“Then, plaze God, Mary, when Nancy comes to see me I’ll larn the truth
about the onnatural silence of Johnny! Och, but he was the darlin’
boy—always so gay and pleasant!”
There was a brief silence, after which the old woman drew a worn and
yellow sheet of paper from beneath the plaid woolen kerchief that was
folded across her bosom.
“Read it for me, Mary _agra_,” she said sadly, “read it for me agin—the
last letter from Johnny. God bless him, wherever he is, this day an’
night!”
Mary held the frayed and faded sheet before her eyes. The writing was
almost illegible and the paper was worn into holes where it had been
folded, but she knew the words by heart and, as if conning a familiar
lesson, repeated them slowly:
“Dear Mother. Don’t fret if I don’t write. I will sind money
to you now an’ agin by Andy an’ the girls. Mebbe if it’s God’s
will we’ll meet before long. God bless you, mother darlin’.
Goodbye from Johnny.”
“Three years an’ niver a word from him!” sighed the old woman, as she
again laid the long-treasured note in its accustomed place over her
heart. “Och, but me ould eyes is achin’ for a sight of him—me darlin’
boy!”
The sunbeams were glittering upon the wide, heaving expanse of ocean
which lay between Mrs. Ryan’s cabin and the great Western world whither
her children had gone.
Sitting upon the beach by the open door, the aged woman watched Nancy
Quin laboriously climbing the steep, zig-zag path which led to the
cottage. When the visitor reached the door and the usual salutations had
been exchanged, Mrs. Ryan steadfastly fixed her eyes upon the girl’s face
and asked:
“In the name of God, Nancy Quin, why doesn’t Johnny write an’ why doesn’t
he come home?”
“Arragh, thin, Mrs. Ryan, darlin’, how should I know that? I haven’t
laid me eyes on Johnny these three years.” Nancy answered evasively, but
her embarrassment and the compassion in her voice were not lost upon her
questioner.
“Don’t lie to a poor, ould woman, Nancy _acushla_,” Mrs. Ryan entreated,
“but tell me, God’s truth, where me boy is an’ why he doesn’t come to me?”
For a moment Nancy Quin looked with infinite pity into the anxious,
wrinkled, pleading face, then, dropping her eyes before the old woman’s
wistful gaze, answered brokenly:
“Don’t fret yourself about Johnny, Mrs. Ryan _agra_. You’ll soon see
poor Johnny; you’ll be wid your boy before long,” and turning away with
a stifled sob, she entered the cabin in search of Mary, while Mrs. Ryan
sat very still upon the bench and gazed with tearless, unnaturally bright
eyes out upon the bounding, white-crested waves of the Atlantic.
“Oh, Mary _acushla_, she’s read it in my face!” Nancy cried in remorseful
tones, “an’ I promised I’d keep it from her.”
“Keep _what_ from her?” Mary asked, anxiously. “Is it anything about
Johnny, Nancy _agra_?”
“Yis, Mary,” Nancy answered sorrowfully, “Sure an’ it wrings me heart to
tell you. Poor Johnny was killed—run over at a crossin’ three years ago.”
“An’ why didn’t they let us know?” Mary sobbed, “Where was the use of
deceivin’ us?”
“It was the poor boy’s wish,” Nancy replied tearfully. “They took him to
the hospital and kept him alive for a day, an’ before he died, he made
Andy an’ the girls promise they’d never let his mother know of his end.
He had a hundred and fifty dollars saved to take him home an’ he bade
them sind it to her a little at a time wid his love. His last words were
‘Don’t let poor mother know! It would kill her! Don’t let poor mother
know!’”
There was a long silence, broken only by the subdued sobbing of the
girls. At last Mary said, wiping her eyes with her apron:
“By the help of God, Nancy, we must still keep it from mother. She’s not
long for this world, an’ Johnny, poor boy, was the light of her eyes!”
Going out of the cabin, they found Mrs. Ryan still seated upon the bench.
“Mother darlin’,” Mary said softly, “it’s growin’ cold, an’ you’d better
come in for your cup of tay.”
There was no answer. A smile of ineffable peace lingered upon the aged,
care-worn face. In the faded blue eyes, whose unseeing gaze was fixed
upon the merciless ocean which had taken her darlings, one by one, from
her arms, shone the wondrous light “that never was on sea or land.”
To his mother, the silence of Johnny was no longer a mystery. He had not
come to her, but she had gone to him.
_Vanished Years_
BY HELEN A. SAXON
She sitteth in the sunshine, old and gray,
Her faded kerchief crossed upon her breast,
Her withered form in sober colors drest,
Her eyes, deep-sunken with far memory,
See not the eager children at their play
But look beyond them to the crimsoning west,
And still beyond where everlasting rest
Remains to crown and close her little day.
Yet all the fragrance of the vanished years
Is at her heart, and time hath left its trace
In lines engraved by joy no less than tears
Upon her tranquil and unconscious face.
For Youth, quick-flying, left his dearer part,
Imperishable love, within her heart.
[Illustration: _King John Refusing to Sign the Magna Charta_
_Bart., in Minneapolis Journal_]
[Illustration: _Perhaps some treatment of this kind would cause Mr. Roger
to answer questions in court_
_Handy, in Duluth News-Tribune_]
[Illustration: _The Man from Missouri_
_Donahey, in Cleveland Plain Dealer_]
[Illustration: _Letters From The People_]
Our readers are requested to be as brief as possible in their welcome
letters to the MAGAZINE, as the great number of communications daily
received makes it impossible to publish all of them or even to use more
than extracts from many that are printed. Every effort, however, will
be made to give the people all possible space for a direct voice in the
MAGAZINE, and this Department is freely open to them.
* * * * *
_John Nill, Watertown, N. Y._
Your criticism on prevailing evil conditions is justly and emphatically
to the point. But I would call your attention to the world’s experience
that at no time has a reform taken place unless new ideas, new methods
for reform comprehensive to the public for relief and improved conditions
were introduced at the same time when the old deplorable affairs were
condemned. To excite the multitudes without a proper and thorough
education on social and national relations calculated to promote peace,
harmony and prosperity, is dangerous. Look at Russia. If you will add
as many correct and direct advices to the general public as you do
criticism, you may be successful in initiating a reform that may far
surpass any in the past ages.
* * * * *
_J. B. Phillebaun, Mountain Grove, Mo._
To say that I endorse the principles advocated by the magazine puts
it mildly. The old parties must be checked or we are politically and
financially ruined. You have started in the direction. You have got the
people thinking and that is half the battle. Push the good work already
started and I hope victory will crown your effort. I want to go on record
as a firm believer in _Tom Watson principles_.
* * * * *
_J. F. Winterbottom, Washington, Ind._
I have received every copy that has been printed. Just as soon as I have
read them I let others have them. I am well pleased with the Magazine.
* * * * *
_W. J. Alford, Molena, Ga._
The Magazine is fast eliminating political ignorance throughout America,
which, in fact, is the pillow upon which rests the great evils we suffer.
* * * * *
_William Putnam, Downing, Tex._
Your Magazine is a wonderful power because all classes of our people read
it, and its truth is so plain and reasonable no one can reject it, let
their politics be as they may.
* * * * *
_J. W. Oliver, Kissimmee, Fla._
I have read each issue of your Magazine and _all_ in each issue.
Sometimes I do not agree with you but you are trying to keep on the right
track, and come very near to staying in the “middle of the road.” I am a
native Alabamian and a Democrat of the “Moss Back” kind.
Go ahead. I am with you and if _necessary_ will vote with you,
independent of my party.
* * * * *
_Edgar J. Hadley, Arkwright, R. I._
Have taken your Magazine from the first number and would not be without
it at any price. As an educator it is A No. 1. I wish that every wage
earner could be gotten to read it. No one can read the splendid articles
it contains without becoming a more intelligent citizen.
The only alteration I would suggest is a little better cover.
* * * * *
_E. Simmons, Mt. Leonard, Mo._
I have read every number from the first number. I shall never vote either
of the old party tickets again. I am 83 years old next Tuesday. My health
is failing. I think we ought to unite with Prohibitionists, for the sale
of intoxicants is about as big an evil as we have and we have got the
great whiskey interest to overcome before we can get into power for both
the old parties are their friends. Yes, my dear brother, I am with you.
With my little influence I will do what I can.
* * * * *
_H. D. Cope, J. P., Rogers, Ark._
I received your copy of TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE and think she is a dandy.
I hope you succeed. I see some of the Pittsburg papers kicking on it and
asking why it is allowed to pass the mails.
* * * * *
_J. W. Murphy, Grove Hill, Ala._
I think TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE is a good one. The editorials are the
biggest things I ever saw. I don’t like such stories as “The Gray Weed,”
“The Tiger God,” etc., etc., but I like Tom Watson and all that I have
read from his pen. My wish is that Tom Watson may live long to ring that
“Liberty Bell” until the people shall awake and rise in their might and
throw off their shackles.
* * * * *
_Panola Watchman, Carthage, Tex._
We appreciate your magazine very much, especially the articles from the
pen of Mr. Watson and, while he lambasts the party to which we belong,
much of it is deserved and we hope he will continue to lay on until
prevalent evils are corrected.
* * * * *
_Sam J. Hampton, Durant, I. T._
I have been reading your magazine ever since the first issue and I think
it the clearest boldest and most fearless journal in America. I shall
continue to read WATSON’S.
* * * * *
_T. J. Anderson, Blossom, Tex._
I have never had the pleasure of meeting you personally, but have known
of you ever since you entered Congress in 1892. Since that time I have
eagerly sought to read all you have said and written. Being strictly in
accord with your political views, I greatly admire the firm stand you
have taken in alleviating the burden from the masses of people, your
honesty of purpose and the plain and outspoken way you have in presenting
your views. I have had the pleasure of voting for you twice and yet hope
to see you elected our national executive. The crowning act of your life
was your work in the last election when you took our banner from the dust
of fusion and confusion and unfurled it to the breeze, and fought the
battles of reform practically alone. May you yet receive your reward.
As to your Magazine, I subscribed for it before it was ever printed.
Am well pleased with it. Have no improvement to suggest. I quit the
Democratic Party in 1890. Have only made one mistake since and that was
when I voted for Bryan in 1896.
* * * * *
_L. P. Sullivan, Emmet, Ark._
I like it splendidly and it gets better every copy. I could not do
without it.
Long life to you.
* * * * *
_F. M. Martin, Mt. Moriah, Ark._
To say that I like the Magazine is only putting it lightly. It is the
only political gospel I know of being published at present. Love to
have it read in every home in the United States. Then have every one
act upon its teachings. I know of no way of making it better unless
advocating return to Africa by American Africans. That subject seems to
be neglected, though I don’t know that I could write on that subject to
any advantage.
Go on with the great work. It will eventually accomplish the desired
result.
* * * * *
_Edward H. Hotchkiss, Seattle, Wash._
I am very much pleased with your Magazine. I have got it from the
news-stand from the first copy to the present. I don’t know how I would
get along without it for every number is better than the last. I think
it’s the best book of Education that is published. Its principles are
right and just to all, and I wish both of the old parties would take a
few doses of the medicine prescribed in your book. I think they might be
cured of some of their corruption.
* * * * *
_K. D. Strickland, Carlton, Ga._
I think TOM WATSON’S Magazine contains more profitable and really
more necessary information for the American citizen than any other
publication. It is a regular monthly feast to read his pieces. In reading
his pieces, I am made to feel as though I was communicating with the
supernatural.
I wish to call Mr. Watson’s attention through his Magazine to his
physical health. Take care of your health, Mr. Watson. We need your
wonderful mental power with good health behind it. You are so completely
absorbed and enthused in your great work for the people, you might
over-tax the brain and bring on a collapse: that would be a national and
incalculable misfortune.
* * * * *
_Amos H. Edwards, Bentonville, Ark._
I think it a very able and valuable Magazine.
* * * * *
_Frank Holland, Cement, Cal._
Yours of recent date received. As I wrote to you some time ago, I am a
migratory cuss, and therefore rely upon the news-stands for my magazine.
I read WATSON’S, _Everybody’s_ and _McClure’s_, regularly, and any others
that in glancing over, interest me. I have no time to read stories. What
I want is political and scientific.
I like WATSON’S. Prize it highly and after reading it, treat it as I do
all the others, i. e., hand it to someone else to read. I cannot suggest
any way in which your work can be improved. I will do what I can to
induce others to read your Magazine.
* * * * *
_S. M. McDougal, Arkinda, Ark._
I think it all right. Just what we need. I don’t see that I can add
anything better to it. I am doing all I can for you.
I am 60 years old, and have been a reformer ever since Tilden ran for
President. I said then there wasn’t a hair’s length difference in the old
parties.
* * * * *
_John S. Van Dyck, Van Dyck, Tenn._
Your Magazine is simply grand, glorious, rich and racy. It makes ’em
wiggle.
I consider Tom Watson the grandest, greatest and most brilliant man of
this or any other age, and may God grant him strength to continue the
fight for human liberty and human right until the fight is won.
* * * * *
_C. E. Skinner, Modoc, Ind._
I am very much interested in the wave of reform that is sweeping over our
country as indicated by the recent elections. Keep hammering away, Bro.
Watson, you have my entire sympathy and support.
* * * * *
_M. E. Rose, South Rutland, N. Y._
I think your Magazine is doing a great deal of good in waking up the dull
minds of the common people, which I hope in 1908 will sweep the cussedest
set of rascals into—well, say the penitentiary.
* * * * *
_George S. Harley, Laurel, Ind._
I think it is “just about right.” It just suits me. I can’t see how it
could be made any better. The last number (December) is worth the price
of a year’s subscription. It is full of good things.
* * * * *
_E. E. Ropes, Deland, Fla._
I am a Massachusetts Yankee, a Republican. I served under Jim Lane in
Kansas; under Sherman in Georgia. When I first received your magazine I
told your old school-mates Alex and Lee Morris that I might vote for you
for President. It seems, however, that you oppose protection. That lets
me out. I believe every honest, intelligent, patriotic American is a
protectionist.
* * * * *
_Jonas Welch, Oakdale. La._
I do not think that it could be improved. All it needs is for the people
to read it more and educate themselves on the reforms that the Populists
advocate.
* * * * *
_A. H. Ellis, Hayward, O. T._
I have been a reader of your splendid Magazine from the first issue. I
saw by the papers prior to the time you commenced your publication that
you were going to edit a magazine. I immediately began to plan to stop
the circulation of a 50-cent dollar long enough to get it to you for one
year’s subscription, but son beat me to it, he having no taxes to pay,
nor no overalls to buy, went barefooted, wore a seven cent straw hat and
a thirty cent hickory shirt and saved his money and sent it in to you
while I was sweating blood trying to pry a money lender loose from one of
his idols.
I’m glad to know that I am not disappointed in the character and make-up
of your magazine. You call a spade a spade. You did that while you
were in Congress and it is a reproach to the grand old Commonwealth of
Georgia that a hide-bound, moss back, clay-eating democracy could not
have been broad enough to have let you stay in Congress. Who was the man
that defeated you? I don’t know. I doubt if his name is known outside of
the Congressional District. Georgia has produced but four men that have
challenged the serious attention of the people of the country. Viz:—Old
James Oglethorp, Alexander Stevens, Bob Toombs and Thomas E. Watson.
I see that many of your correspondents hope to see you President. No,
Thomas, you will never be President of the United States. Why? First, you
are too big, have convictions and the honesty and courage to express
them. Second, too many fools (with an adjective prefixing “fools”).
Your editorials are very fine. I have seldom read anything finer than
“Dropping Corn,” “A Tragedy in a Tree-top.” Then there is your insurance
policy which is a source of joy. “Monarchy Within the Republic” by Mr.
Fox was instructive. The cartoons are superb. The McCurdy family, in your
last, conveys the idea that the McCurdy’s are “agin” race suicide, but
you must remember that sapsuckers are more numerous than eagles. You very
skillfully put the good to Bryan, but say what you will, he stands head
and shoulders above any other Democrat of this day. Compare him, if you
please, to Alton B. Parker. When I hear the name of Bryan, I think of the
American Eagle soaring the blue ether of Heaven. When I hear the name of
Parker, I think of a tomtit sitting on a watering trough.
Best wishes for THOMAS WATSON’S MAGAZINE and a long life for its brainy,
honest and fearless editor.
* * * * *
_Orlando K. Fitzsimmons, Buffalo, N. Y._
I have taken your magazine from the first number and am much pleased with
the good work you are doing.
* * * * *
_Warren Beebe, Burlington, Ia._
Of several magazines which I read, I like yours the best.
* * * * *
_Katharyne Clarke, North McGregor, Ia._
I have read every issue of your Magazine since the beginning and would
like to say a word of praise. Your work and efforts are casting seed that
will surely cause “two blades of grass to grow where before there was
only one.” Success to you.
* * * * *
_H. V. Hill, Kell, Ill._
I like your Magazine above all others. Keep up the good work.
* * * * *
_An Old Reformer._
Your magazine read and reread in my home every month by myself and
five grown sons. We all admire the principle set forth in your grand
editorials and know that what you say is truth, but I do think that
you are a little too harsh and a little too personal when you speak
of Cleveland, Rockefeller, Ryan, Belmont, Morgan, McCarren, Taggart
and others of that class. You know that poor human nature is the same
the world over and if we were to kill out these men whom you handle so
roughly, others would soon take their places. So then the system which
brings this state of affairs about in our government is to be blamed more
than these men. Therefore, let’s strive (in the right spirit) to remove
the evils which beset us as a Christian people. “Vengeance is mine, saith
the Lord.” And besides, I want you to live long and lead this grand fight
for reform, but when I read your cutting editorials I shudder for fear
some of these people may have you assassinated.
I address you as “dear comrade” because I am getting to be an old man now
and enlisted in this movement for reform away back in the palmy days of
the Grange, and myself on the “Ocala Platform”, believing it to be just
and in line with the principles later on, under the Alliance banner,
planted our Revolutionary sires fought for, and I am proud to say that
out of fifty odd Congressmen who were elected on that platform, Tom
Watson is the only one who remained true, and I admire every red hair on
your head for your loyalty and bravery, and have always voted for you
when an opportunity was offered, and if I were called upon to make a
national ticket of men whom I believe to be true, it would be,
Tom Watson,
Theodore Roosevelt,
Gov. Folk,
Frank Burkitt,
Gov. Vardaman,
Scott Hathorn,
W. R. Hearst.
* * * * *
_D. L. Anderson, Soochow, China._
My son was on a visit to the States last summer and he sent me your
books—“The Story of France,” “Napoleon” and “The Life of Thomas
Jefferson.” The books reached me during the summer holidays, and as new
books are somewhat scarce out here and yours moreover looked so inviting,
I began to read the day after their arrival, and day after day this
reading continued until I had gone through the four volumes.
On finishing the last volume I purposed to write and thank you for the
pleasure you had given me through your books, but the fall term of the
University opening about that time I was very busy and so did not write.
But now I wish to thank you for a very pleasant summer, for the enjoyment
and instruction I received from your excellent books. New light has
been thrown on France and her relations to the other powers of Europe,
especially to England. Napoleon becomes, to me at least, a new man in
your hands. Your “Thomas Jefferson” is a much needed antidote to much
of the history that has been written and gives a clear view of the man
and his times. Especially would I thank you for your statements with
reference to the formation of the Constitution of the United States, also
for your explanation of the “Genet Affair.”
In one or two allusions that you make to affairs out here, you have
evidently been misled by the newspapers. In your “Napoleon,” page 215,
you say:
“In the year 1900 Russians, Germans and other Christians invaded China to
punish the heathen for barbarities practiced upon Christian missionaries.”
I don’t think that you state correctly the real object of this invasion
of China. The missionary’s part in this Boxer affair was to suffer. Not
only were many murdered, but both those who were murdered and those who
escaped were made the “scape goats” in the eyes of the world. I enclose a
slip that recently appeared in one of the Shanghai papers that gives the
true genesis of this Boxer trouble. The armies of the different nations
did not “invade China to punish the heathen for barbarities practiced
on Christian missionaries,” but they came to rescue their respective
ministers, who by their blundering policy had gotten themselves shut up
in Peking. If these officials had not been in Peking the armies would
never have come. I don’t know of any Government that cares quite that
much for a missionary, though they all seem quite ready to use a murdered
missionary to advance their land-grabbing schemes.
Again on page 218 you mention that Admiral Seymour ordered his wounded
killed, etc. This was published in the papers at the time, but there
never was any truth in it. It was simply one of the many horrid stories
that went out from Shanghai during those dark days—manufactured in
Shanghai.
And now, Mr. Watson, I trust that you will pardon me for inflicting you
with this, but I felt that I ought to write and thank you for those
books. I trust your pen will not rest. I sincerely wish that you would do
for Germany or for Italy what you have done for France.
* * * * *
_W. E. Brown, Gainesville, Fla._
It is a splendid work you are doing. Your Magazine is a live wire and
you are a powerful dynamo. The good you and Bryan are doing can never
be reckoned or measured. You are right, and right is the most powerful
force in existence, because God himself is the author and is behind all
right. May you live to see your work crowned with success. While touching
up other things, don’t forget we poor farmers of Florida. Between high
freights and commission merchants we catch it. I am what you might call
a one-horse farmer, but every year I pay the railroad $2,000 to $3,000
freight on stuff I make to get it to market to say nothing about the
freight I pay on what I buy. I would like to make a trade agreeing to
give one-half my stuff to get the other half to market and sold. And when
on account of delays or for want of ice or any cause not traceable to
downright negligence our truck arrives in bad condition and is sold for
freight the railroad takes it all. I had one year 102 baskets shipped
over one line and 15 over another. The 15 sold for $3.00 per basket, the
102 were refused because the car was not properly iced on the way to New
York and arrived rotten, and I never got a penny. A piece of negligence,
but could not be proved. This is by no means an unusual case and every
truck farmer in the state, I guess, could make such a complaint or one
equally unjust to the shipper. But the railroad agent for the A. C.
L. at this place, so it is commonly talked on the streets, absconded
with $2,000 of rebate paid to him by the railroad to be paid to a big
phosphate concern here, and there is nothing doing. They say he won’t
even be arrested and, of course, the railroad and the receiver of stolen
money will not be punished, although I was told by an attorney of this
city that the railroad commissioners were notified of the facts in the
case.
So I say, God speed you, and may you be the means of accomplishing great
good for this, our glorious country—too good to be wrecked by sordid
greed.
* * * * *
_J. S. Pearson, McEntyre, Ala._
I had a sack of one bushel of oats (32 lbs.) price 75 cents and 20 cents
worth of seed (all in one cash) sent by express from Birmingham, Ala.
to Thomasville, Ala. (a few hours run by rail). I had to pay $1 charges
and part of the oats were eaten (I suppose) by rats. I shipped a box of
pears (50 lbs.) from Thomasville, Ala., to Braidentown, Fla. I was told
by clerk or agent the express charges were $2.00. I told him I would not
pay such a charge. Another clerk or agent looked in a book and said the
charges were $1.00. I paid it. That was on Friday. The pears reached
Braidentown, Fla. Tuesday. They should have been in Selma or Mobile
Saturday morning, and where they were from then until Tuesday we know
not. A letter saying the box had been opened and a part of the pears
taken out was received yesterday. Have I no redress? I wrote to the Mayor
of Birmingham to know if such thieving was allowed in his city.
* * * * *
_N. W. Rogers, N. Y. City._
I have read, with increasing interest, all the issues of your very
excellent Magazine, and it gives me pleasure to express my appreciation
of the effort you are making to educate the public.
The task of one who is endeavoring to expose corruption and corporate
greed is, as I know from personal experience, a discouraging one;
nevertheless I have a firm conviction that justice must finally be
meted out to the smug respectability that has been robbing the whole
country. The loathsome and criminal devices resorted to by our would-be
aristocracy, in their greedy desire to acquire money, merits a more
active opposition than that brought about by a public exposure of their
crimes. Complete restitution of all funds wrongfully acquired in the
exercise of an extortionate monopoly would be but a small punishment.
I wish you all success in your endeavors and only regret that I cannot at
the present time take an active part in the campaign.
* * * * *
_F. Schweizer, Woodlawn, Nebr._
Even Diogenes with his lantern would in vain search justice in this
country. To tell the truth in this country is punished as lese-majesty.
Therefore I may be hung for lese-majesty, but I don’t care.
I was born and raised in free Switzerland and I will die as a free man
who dares to express his honest opinions. If I am wrong, show me my
errors. It really seems that people never will hear and accept the truth,
until some fellows have been hung for telling the truth.
Let us be honest and acknowledge that our so high praised Christian
civilization is a total failure. Might is right. The greatest hypocrite
and most brutal beast is the absolute master, who dictates the terms by
which he will rule. Their mottos are:
“Everyone for himself and the devil takes the hindmost and—The people be
damned.”
* * * * *
_F. Hodgman, Climax, Mich._
I find in the literary department much to commend and little, if
anything, to find fault with. In the editorial and political department,
I can not say as much. You advocate many things which men of all
parties have always been agreed on—that is, honest men of all parties.
If you could only get the people to take you seriously and make the
ten commandments a partisan issue, you would win out hands down, for a
big majority of the people are honest in principle and want an honest
Government. I dissent from very much that you are trying to teach in the
way of political economy and you make many assertions and statements
which I believe to be errors. But that does not count. The greatest
fault I find with it as a magazine is the tendency toward being a common
scold—with a good deal to denounce and little or nothing to commend.
* * * * *
_C. E. Hedgpath, Centralia, Mo._
Mr. Watson, allow me to say that while I admire your talent and much more
your honesty, I cannot agree with you that the “great middle class” are
the only ones needing protection. There is a party in the field fully
organized and standing for “all the people”. “Government ownership”,
with the Government as it now stands, would only add to our burdens. But
first—Let the people own the Government. For this the Socialist Party
stands.
* * * * *
_O. E. Samuelson, Kiowa, Kan._
I have received two numbers of your Magazine and have studied them when
I could spare time. I was in the Populist movement one time. It was
all right in its time, but its time is past and now we have something
better—Socialism. So your Magazine is not enough revolutionary.
* * * * *
_P. R. Richardson, Gardi, Ga._
“Hon. Hoke Smith, Atlanta, Ga.
“Dear Sir: There are so many high-flying silver-feathered
Democratic office-seekers that unless a man is well posted
he can never tell the real man from the political tool. But
seeing that Thomas E. Watson has promised you his support for
Governor of the great State of Georgia, it explains away and
clears up all doubts. So around our fireside cane-grindings we
will talk and drink to your health, and when the day of the
primary comes along we will roll in our votes.
“Yours very truly,
“P. R. RICHARDSON.”
Being a subscriber to the Magazine, I offer the above letter for
publication in the Magazine.
* * * * *
_D. C. Pryor, Uvalde, Tex._
I send you a “legal tender,”
A thing you have often seen,
For which, please send to me, “dear Tom,”
Your splendid Magazine.
Whilst I am a Democrat
Its ranks I’d hate to leave,
But I’d vote for you, “dear Tom,”
Before I’d vote for Cleve.
* * * * *
_Dr. H. P. Boyce, Los Angeles, Cal._
Your editorial “Peonage in Panama” published in the December number,
was read by me with a great deal of interest, as I have lived for seven
years in Central America and am thoroughly familiar with labor conditions
there, having during my residence there had constantly in my employ on
plantation work from 15 to 50 laborers, or mozos, as they are called.
Of course, I do not know the exact conditions under which these laborers
were contracted in Martinique, but am confident the conditions were
similar to those under which all labor in that country is contracted.
The employer of labor signs up a number of men and the men ask for,
expect and receive an advance of money against their future services of
an amount equal to from two to four months’ wages. There is a form of
contract signed in which the laborer acknowledges the receipt of so much
money paid him for future work to be done by him under the contract,
by which he also agrees to work for the employer for a specified time
at the rate of so much per month. This is the general custom in those
countries and with the class of labor available is the only way in which
the employer can be reasonably certain of securing and retaining his
laborers, as the law forces the mozo to live up to his contract and also
makes him secure in obtaining his money after he has worked out the
amount advanced.
It was unquestionably the case with the Martinique negroes that they
had all received advances of money against their future services, and
that the money had all been spent before leaving their homes and, such
being the case, where would the employer have found himself if he had
submitted without any resistance and allowed the laborers to nullify
their contracts and return home?
The Martinique and Jamaica negroes are as a rule a very unruly,
unreliable and impertinent class and it requires strenuous measures to
keep them in subjection and make them live up to their contracts. They
cannot be compared to the American negro, who is much easier to manage.
I appreciate your feelings in the matter, but do not think you thoroughly
appreciate the conditions of affairs as they exist in regard to the
relations of employer and employee.
When the Martinique negro claims he does not know conditions as they
exist at Panama, or other points on the Central American coast, he is
lying, as they are all of them more or less familiar with the entire
coast from personal visits to it or information acquired from friends who
have been on the coast.
I know nothing from personal observation of the Peonage system in the
Southern States but I do know that the contract labor system is the
only way to handle labor in Panama, for you cannot get them without the
advance of money and if you do not protect yourself by the contract, the
chances are 9 out of 10 that your man will never show up to work it out.
A gang of those negroes numbering 500 or 600 are not easily handled by
any means, and force must be used at times, or at least a strong display
of it made or discipline would not be maintained twenty-four hours.
Conditions are altogether different from anything existing here and
matters must be judged differently. Existing conditions must dictate the
line of action to be pursued in any given case and from my knowledge
of the character of the men and the conditions, I do not see how the
authorities could have acted otherwise than in using force, if necessary,
to persuade these negroes to disembark. You certainly would not consider
it just that these negroes take the contractors money, spend it, have
their fare paid on the steamer to Colon and then on arrival deliberately
say they would not land and work out what they had already been paid, but
were going to return home. There would be no justice in such a course and
if the employer had to use force to obtain what was coming to him, the
man’s labor in exchange for his money which the man had already spent,
it seems to me he was entirely within his rights. These laborers owed
this money to the employer just as much as a man owes money that he has
borrowed from another and given his note for, and, just as much as the
borrower should expect to pay his note, just so much should this laborer
expect to give his services in payment of the money advanced to him. As I
have stated before, the laws of these countries recognize this condition
of the field of labor and uphold the employer just as our laws recognize
a man’s liability when he signs a note agreeing to repay money advanced
to him. When the laborer has repaid by his services the money advanced to
him he can no longer be held to his contract, but just so long as the
laborer demands the advance of money before doing any work, just so long
must he expect to be forced, if necessary, to carry out his agreement,
and his services as laborer being his only asset he must give those
services.
In those countries you only have your laborer as long as you keep him in
your debt, for as soon as he gets a month’s wages in his pocket, he is
ready to loaf and get drunk.
I think if you were thoroughly acquainted with conditions there, as I am,
you would take a different view of the matter. I have been a constant
reader of your Magazine since the first issue and enjoy it very much, but
felt I must give you my views on this question.
* * * * *
_John C. Sanner, Redding, Cal._
“Who Are The Rabble?”
It is _de rigeur_ nowadays for a “genteel” personage travelling along
a country road in a buggy or automobile to address any casually met
pedestrian as “my man” when seeking local information. This seems boorish
to my old fashioned notions. We are evidently becoming very aristocratic
along with our tremendous increase in national wealth. It is a very
great exhibition of gall for a large employer to so bespeak an humble
subordinate.
I will present to the editor of the TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE, if he can find
space, an article addressed mainly to the uneducated and unthoughtful
hard working men and voters of our United States. The writer is an
uneducated man and a life-long hard toiler and acquainted with grief,
sorrow and adversity and has lived over three score and ten years. My
mother being left a widow with four little dependent children, she
was forced to hire me at seven years old for bread and hence I feel
interested in millions of men, women and children that are dependent
and in grief and sorrow, that if they had equal rights and justice in
this government, they would be a prosperous and happy people, and a
just principle that presides in my heart prompts me to write an article
addressed to that dependent, unthinking army of men in this government.
Though I am forced to write from the hand of an uneducated man or from
the language of my mother’s tongue, I hope my position will be understood.
In the first place I want to draw your minds to the man that has no equal
in this government to wit: Thomas E. Watson. The day before the national
election of 1901 I heard him make a speech in the city of Gainesville,
Ga. He said that there was no chance for the Populists in this election,
but that he would commence the fight the next day after the election
for 1908 and now you see he is true to his word. He has begun with an
educational school by offering his school-book or magazine in the house
of every family in the United States that wants it, when each monthly
book or magazine is worth more than the year’s subscription to any
thinking man, and I feel greatly astonished that every workingman of the
nation does not take it, for I am sure it is the greatest educator as
to how the world has moved on in the great governmental ways since the
creation until the present day, and especially the last forty years of
the government of the United States. Then I earnestly beg and solicit
all men to take the magazine, and especially the workingmen, that you
may learn that this little delicate man, Tom Watson, is the workingman’s
friend and is making a fight for you and your weary wife and children
that they may be freed from slavery and brought from under the greedy
law of the privileged few that are now corporated into a thievish and
robbing body, that they may steal and rob the workingman of his hard
earnings. Yes, he has taken this greedy lion or corporation by the throat
with a cry that he surrender to the working people their rights and that
they must be equal to you. Then, my brother workingman, I appeal to you
with all my earnest and honest heart to rally to this honest and brave
man, Watson, and stand by him and vote for him and aid him to devour the
greedy lion that you may have your liberties and rights for yourself,
wife and children. Now, in conclusion I will say I have been a hard
laboring man all my life and I am now standing on the bank of Jordan and
may, before you read my little message to my brother working voters that
I am so much interested in, be across the river. Though I am in eternity
at the election of the next President I have three sons and seven
sons-in-law and grandchildren that will vote for the hero, Watson, for
the interest of workingmen.
* * * * *
_J. N. Hale, Cairo, Ga._
Forty-eight years ago I was born a Democrat and I have been one ever
since. I love true democratic principles now, but find it impossible to
work and vote for these principles and remain true to the party as it is
now organized and run. I have been a member of the State Dem. Ex. Com.,
was Chairman of the 5th Congressional Committee when you were being
cursed, abused and robbed and was glad of your defeat because I thought
you wrong. I thought the fight for reform should have been made within
the party; but, alas! there is no reform and never will there be reform
so long as the Belmonts, Gormans, Clevelands and other trust tools are in
control.
I now believe that you are right. The only hope for the people is to
rise up and hurl from their rotten pedestals both of the old parties and
take the reins of government into their own hands. Never before were
the people more ready to act. Here in the new County of Grady, which
was “officially born” today, the people are overwhelmingly in favor of
cutting loose from the old parties and marching under a new banner. I
will advocate in my paper which I have just started, new, clean methods,
and fight for democracy as you see it and so ably preach it.
The people are now with you and pure democracy is going to win.
* * * * *
_J. F. Laman, Arp, Tenn._
I have been a subscriber to TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE from first to last and
expect to continue as long as the light holds out to burn and I believe
it is getting brighter. I hope and pray for Tom Watson to live to see the
good day when he can realize that his work has been crowned with complete
success.
You ask me to give my views concerning the Magazine. I know it is the
best I ever saw, and I have seen a good many. As to improvement, I have
no suggestions to submit in regard to the make-up of the Magazine, but I
do suggest that you make it hotter, if possible, for the scoundrels who
rob honest toil of the fruits of its labor.
I have been a Populist as long as anybody I know of and the older I
become the deeper my belief is in the justice of our cause and our
principles. I was an admirer of Tom Watson when he was a member of
Congress years ago and I am for him now and will remain for him as long
as he travels in the road he is now in and I have no fear that he will
apostatize.
With best wishes for you and all your co-workers, I remain your friend to
the end.
* * * * *
_T. A. Thompson, Guntown, Miss._
1 am a Populist and have been one since 1880 and opposed to Fusion
first, last, and all the time. I have been receiving your Magazine since
November. I have three brothers that live in Alabama that have been
voting the Democratic ticket all their lives, and I want them to read
something that will open their eyes for I consider them politically
blind; and I want to help you in your gallant fight for the right. I
like your Magazine. I wish I was able to send you 100 dollars to have it
sent to men that think that they cannot afford to spend one dollar for a
paper. But the trouble with them is that they don’t think at all. They
use their heads to hang their hats on only. In the Presidential election
of 1876 I voted my last Democratic vote for President. I hope to live to
see a reformer elected President of our Government. I believe that time
is near when the people will get their eyes opened. Bossism is dying
slowly but surely. Populism is not as dead as the two old twin parties
would like to see it.
Success to your Magazine and to the People’s Party and its principles.
A Happy New Year to you.
* * * * *
_J. W. Waite, So. Hadley, Mass._
I have much enjoyed the Magazine; but have for sometime been in doubt as
to whether I should be warranted in letting you continue to send it. Its
good strong meat has not disarranged my digestion; it’s not that, but it
comes near—very near—to being a lack of circulation of the life current
of the country on the little corner I occupy.
I was a railroad man over 20 years and was discharged, not for
incompetency, but for propagating Populist doctrines. Vocally and with
the pen I spread the words of Jefferson, Lincoln and many others. I
posted them on bulletin boards and wrote some articles for the Dedham
_Transcript_—near Dedham, Mass. I was laboring the last few years of
my railroad service. However, my story is not so interesting as that
of many. I have three sons railroaders—all scattered, and I have been
living here alone on a little corner belonging to the oldest, locomotive
engineer for the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. He reads your
Magazine occasionally and I send one occasionally to the others.
* * * * *
_A. C. Hillman, Salina, Kan._
I am one of the nineteen that voted for you in the 3rd ward of our city
in the last Presidential election. I am of the same opinion still.
* * * * *
_J. H. Vandegrift, Branchville, Ala._
I desire to say to you that I have been reading your Magazine carefully
ever since it was put in print and I am proud to say that it is a great
eye-opener to our common laboring people.
Now, I will say to you that I am 78 years of age, was born in St. Clair
County, Ala., was raised a farmer and I certainly know how to sympathize
with our laboring farming people all over the country.
I am proud to see that we have such patriotic men as Thomas E.
Watson going over our country educating our people in the cause of
righteousness. Now I am happy to know that the people are waking up
to know that justice and righteousness will prevail against fraud and
rascality. I feel happy to believe that Tom Watson will be our next
president. Now let us all get to work by showing up the light of truth to
our misguided laboring people. Our forefathers taught us the principles
of self-government—equal rights to all and special privileges to none.
I would say that every voter should read WATSON’S MAGAZINE and vote for
Watson for President.
* * * * *
_W. V. Edwards, Lewisburg, Tenn._
It is the best paper published. I don’t know how you could improve it. I
have been handing out my paper so you see I have obtained four old yellow
dog subscribers. I hope to send more soon. I am one of the Old Guard. I
am for Tom Watson against all comers. Tom and Hearst would make a team,
so put me down for them.
* * * * *
_J. R. Murdock, Dallas, Tex._
TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE is the best educator that I read. I learn more by
reading it than I do from all the daily papers I can get. Mr. Watson’s
editorials are worth the subscription price. I believe Tom Watson is
the greatest and grandest statesman in America today. With Watson for
President we can smash the present National Banking system and abolish
corporate railroad robbery and regain our freedom stolen from us through
corrupt legislation both State and National. I am for Watson in 1908 for
President. Can vote for him with a clear conscience without fear of ever
regretting casting my vote. I am still proud I voted for him November,
1904. Give it to old Grover and the wiggle tails and trust. As ever I am
for Watson and Liberty.
* * * * *
_J. E. Reed, Collinsville, Tex._
I have read every number of your most wonderful Magazine. I say wonderful
because it has no equal in championing the cause of the people and in
denouncing the big thieves who go scot free because they have plenty
of money with which to bribe both judge and jury. For the last decade
there has been a huge suspicion in the minds of the masses that both the
old parties are dominated by the same Wall Street influences and your
brilliant editorials have confirmed this suspicion. There was a huge
suspicion that the leaders of the so-called Democratic Party in 1904
betrayed the people into the hands of Wall Street, and your editorials
have certainly confirmed this suspicion. Indeed the “magazine with a
purpose back of it” is having a mighty influence with every honest and
fair-minded man. The literary features of your Magazine are excellent.
The “Educational Department” alone is worth more than the subscription
price. In fact your Magazine has no peer for the price in America.
Dear Tom, we trust your health will continue good, that you may continue
to expound those sacred principles that have emanated from the Sage of
Monticello.
* * * * *
_J. R. P. Wall, Rutland, Fla._
I desire to express my appreciation of your superb Magazine. I have read
every number and shall continue to read it as long as you are at the head
of it. The only way to improve the Magazine is to put more of your own
writings in it—say “The Life and Times of Jefferson” in serial form.
May your health be preserved that you may continue the good work.
* * * * *
_T. A. Calhoun, Mansfield, Ga._
“The Life Worth Living” expresses my opinion of your Magazine. It teaches
the true idea of scholar, statesman and patriot. Let us make a sacrifice
of ourselves for the good of mankind and then we will be led out of the
wilderness.
I have been in the fight 39 years and will be to the end. I am for
principle and not party.
* * * * *
_Hart Henley, Dallas, Tex._
Public opinion should be so modified that a man desiring peace could
remain peaceable without being branded coward. Had such been the case,
young Branch’s life might have been spared.
Deduced from the papers it seems a dread of opprobrium had as much to do
with young Merriweather’s acceptance of Branch’s challenge as irritation
or resentment.
Have read your Magazine. Admire it very much and like the way the
opinions of the people are voiced. Being one of them, I send you an
opinion to voice.
* * * * *
_T. L. Wheeler, Staunton, Ind._
I like your Magazine and realize that you are doing a great work for the
people.
* * * * *
_L. D. Riggins, Clanton, Ala._
I consider that TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE is doing a Godly work for humanity
in teaching them to know how to discriminate between a democratic and an
aristocratic government.
* * * * *
_A Subscriber, Petaluma, Cal._
My husband and I have read your Magazine since its first issue, and we
would not be without it. There is often a conflict as to who shall read
it first though perhaps half a dozen other new magazines are lying about
unread, for we take many. My husband, busy high-school teacher, says Tom
Watson refreshes him after his hard day’s work. As he reads it, I can
hear him chuckling occasionally, sometimes laughing heartily. We enjoy
the editorials, especially, but it is all good. The fiction is of a high
order. I hope to see your Magazine in our public library. Many more would
like it if they knew of it, and a great many do most of their reading
here in the public library.
My husband has his life insured in the Equitable—I hate the word. He did
it to protect me and the children in case of his death. But now we are
undecided whether to keep up the thing or not. Do you think the Equitable
might fail to fulfill the contract in case of death? I should like to
know your opinion. We have just paid three premiums and another will be
due next spring. I have two little children and if my husband should be
taken we should be in a dreadful plight. But we are trying to make other
provisions. It is simply outrageous the way the people are treated. It
fills one with helpless rage.
I was interested in the article “Phases of the Peonage Question.” Was the
planter who “had to kill a negro” ever tried for it? I would like to know
that planter’s name and address, so that I can follow his suit when it
comes off. I am interested in this question. Won’t you request the author
to give me this information, if you cannot give it. I prefer to have it
through the pages of the Magazine. With best wishes for your success in
trying to bring about more just conditions.
* * * * *
_Charles Burbage, Row, I. T._
I have read and reread every copy of TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE from cover to
cover and like each number better than the proceeding one. It is far the
best of the fifteen magazines that I read each month and I would not do
without it for twice the price.
Your editorials are convincing. Just keep on pumping the hot shot into
the trusts and corporations for, if they are let alone, they will soon
be taking the house and lot while the old man and boys are at home. They
would not wait for the old lady to become a widow.
* * * * *
_Matilda Magley, Green Ridge, Mo._
I have been one of your true friends, since I got acquainted with you as
a Congressman. I love your style of calling things and people by their
right names. Your paper is doing a noble work now, while the people are
being confused over the late insurance frauds, railroad and banking
scandals, trust, corporations and thefts from the honest common laborer,
and they see it is worth while to do a little of their own thinking. I
hope the day will soon dawn, when people will see the folly of relying on
other men’s views not in accord with true reform.
Yours till victory is won.
* * * * *
_W. O. Robinson, Smyrna, Ga._
I regard your magazine as one of the grandest magazines of the day and
I, with many other loyal Georgians, regard it as a great privilege to do
honor to the illustrious name of Tom Watson as the South’s Greatest Son.
I voted for Watson for President, and am proud of my vote.
* * * * *
_G. S. Ward, Island, Ky._
I regard Tom Watson’s Magazine as one of the best magazines published
today for truth telling and divulging the hypocrisy of high official men.
It now has plenty of cartoons. In fact it is the best I ever read.
* * * * *
_G. W. Crook, Camden, W. Va._
I have a fixed arrangement with our news-dealer, T. P. Wright and Co.,
of Weston, by which I get it promptly; but for that, of course I would
subscribe. I think, as some others do, that it is all right to encourage
news-dealers, as many copies in this way pass into the hands of persons
who otherwise would not become readers of it.
I have no suggestions to offer as to improvement. Tom will attend to
that. What he don’t see “ain’t” worth discussing. His last reply to
Keely, was worth to me all the magazine has cost me from March to January.
My chief regret is that Tom and W. J. B. are not pulling the same line.
Hope they will soon.
* * * * *
_George G. Bryson, Gallatin, Tenn._
I was among the first subscribers to your magazine. If spared by Father
Time, will be among the last of its readers. Nothing better in point
these days than Tom’s editorials.
* * * * *
_George Heywood, Binghamton, N. Y._
I think 15 cents more appropriate price and think most who read it at
all, or buy it, feel the same way. I would like to be on your list, but I
move about so I must get it at news stands.
Seemingly few people have time for anything but getting a living. It
is such a “bread and butter” world, do you wonder at the enthusiastic
Socialists? There is plenty produced and the distribution is so unjust
and cruel.
* * * * *
_C. C. Edmonson, Grand View, Ark._
Populist is the synonym of right. Success to your magazine.
* * * * *
_John Medert, Indianapolis, Ind._
The million and a half of voters who were freed from party thralldom by
the Populist movement have made it impossible for the Democratic Party to
get back to Clevelandism, or for the Republican Party to “stand pat” on
anything. The Senators who “grinned like Cheshire cats” at Senator Allen
when he made charges against them, are having troubles of their own. The
outlook is hopeful, and the law of disintegration is still at work.
* * * * *
_Thomas Wybrants Lodge, Ha Ha Tonka, Mo._
I am, and intend to remain, a regular subscriber and reader of your
fearless and honest Magazine, which, along with Post’s _Public_, are
the only papers I care to read, and see you also consider Post’s paper
“excellent.” I do not think you are just to Tolstoi, and so enclose
you his own letter of April 27, 1894. In your editorial of October you
confound “ownership” with “possession.” If you will read chapters XVIII
and XIX of “Social Problems” the great essential difference will be
clear to you. Neither George nor Tolstoi ever proposed any division or
partition of the land—nothing of the sort. George indeed, in chapter
II, book VIII of “Progress, and Poverty” makes this most plain, saying
“I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate private property
in land.” But surely, Mr. Watson, if you have not, carefully, without
bias read these incomparable works, you ought to do so; he expressly
disclaims his “fundamental reform” as being any “panacea;” he fully
recognizes and so does Tolstoi “that even after we do this, much will
remain to do.” I am an old and very poor man of 73. Had I the means I’d
buy and send you George’s “Condition of Labor.” No honest Christian after
reading that little, but truly logical and ethically admirable “Open
Letter to the Pope,” could say, much less maintain, that Nature (God)
did not intend the Rent of Land—Land values—for the use and the support
of human Governments. I hope you will honestly “read, mark, learn and
inwardly digest” George’s works. You then would see and own that “The
Land Question is the Labor Question” and far more important than “The
Money Question,” serious though that certainly is. I subscribe myself
your earnest and true admirer.
* * * * *
_Dorrance B. Currier, Hanover, N. H._
Frankly—I enjoy reading TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE, especially his editorials,
more than anything else I read, for I agree with them and have for the
past thirty years advocated them.
If the Magazine can be improved you know how to do it better than I do,
but we readers should supply you the means by a united effort to double
your subscription list. Whatever may be the alignment of political
parties two years hence, the principles advocated by Mr. Watson will
be represented by one of them. To you, then, reader of this letter
in California, Florida, Minnesota or among the granite hills of New
Hampshire, what will you do to help and do it NOW?
I will pay for four copies.
One for my self to read over and over.
One to be placed in the local barber shop, to catch the eye of a waiting
customer.
One for Dartmouth College’s reading room.
One for my farmer friend, with the request that he lend it to his
neighbor.
As nothing succeeds like success, please inform your readers of it, from
time to time, for the cause is quite as much ours as yours.
* * * * *
_D. T. Mitchell, Woodlandville, Mo._
I have always been an admirer of Tom Watson and am yet, as I am of W. J.
Bryan. But while I am an admirer of these men I have no faith in their
proposed remedies for the ills, both political and social, from which the
proletariat of this great nation are suffering.
They both lean, and in a certain sense lead, in the right direction, as I
think, but, alas, stop short of any effective measures for the permanent
and general well being of the great mass of wealth creators in this great
big trust-governed nation.
The leaning and leading of these men that I admire is in the primer of
Socialism. But there it stops, and as long as it stops there it will,
in my humble judgment, eventuate in no permanent good to the great body
of our citizenship today so sorely in need of deliverance from the
wealth-absorbing institutions and processes of these U. S. of Trustdom.
Equality of opportunity to grow and develop the very best there is in
each child born into this world ought to be the certain inheritance of
every American born child, and that you can never have with our present
system of inheritance. Every worker ought to have free access to nature’s
store house of wealth and then be guaranteed in the certain possession
of what he brings therefrom and this can never be had with individual
ownership of land.
Yours for Truth and Justice.
* * * * *
_George R. Murray, Greenwich, Conn._
I have been reading your Magazine since your first issue and I can assure
you it is like good wine—it improves with age. You have got the right
spirit of independence and you are putting practical issues before the
public in a manner never before attempted. Keep up the good work and your
efforts will soon be appreciated by the toilers who have been blind to
their interests in the past, and kindly devote as much of your valuable
time and space to organized labor and their interests as possible, and I
can assure you it will be highly appreciated by a large number of your
admirers, “union men.”
Yours for Right and Truth.
* * * * *
_John S. Iszard, Georgetown, S. C._
I have been reading your Magazine for three months and I find it is the
best one that I have ever read and I will continue reading them. Of all
the magazines that sell for ten cents, give me TOM WATSON’S.
* * * * *
_Mrs. George Peters, Prescott, Ariz._
I have just finished reading in your valuable Magazine, “Is Money to Rule
Us?” a subject that greatly interests me. What is money? It is nothing
more than a little glittering dirt, taken from the bowels of the earth
by man, rolled in little flat round pieces, and given the name of money.
And we, who consider ourselves civilized, allow that glittering dirt to
influence us far more than principle.
* * * * *
_A. D. R. Hamby, Ava, Mo._
I have one of your first copies and would not enter any serious
objections, but as to my own taste there are some of the fictitious
articles that are not conducive to good information and might be
substituted with better literature. I believe that the people have too
many fancy fictitious falsehoods and long and tedious explanations which
could be reduced to plain and simple facts.
I am a native of Georgia and I like the name Tom Watson and the cause he
espouses a great sight better. Here is my motto: “Unity, Unity, Unity,
Unity.”
* * * * *
_Robert Heriot, Little Rock, Ark._
I have read each number of TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE since its
publication—buying it at the book store.
Being a Democrat in politics, of course, I think it is the most
interesting periodical published in the United States. I don’t know which
to admire most—the principles it advocates or the brilliant manner in
which they are presented. I hope some day to be able to read “The Life of
Napoleon,” “The Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson,” and “The Story of
France” by the editor of the Magazine. I will say though, that I believe
if all the reforms advocated by the Populists (who are nothing more or
less than real Democrats) and the best plank in the platforms of the two
old parties that do not conflict with the former, were adopted into law,
that the condition of the lower strata of society would be benefited very
little.
The reasons therefor would take up too much space in this letter but
they are ably set forth in “Progress and Poverty” by Henry George, and
in chapter nine, Social Statistics. In one of the early editions by
Herbert Spencer, George’s remedy, explained in a few words, provides
for confiscating rent for the purposes of governmental expenses and
abolishing all taxation on labor. If anyone thinks the above change
would hurt the farmer, he should read what Tom Johnson, the Mayor of
Cleveland, O., has to say on the subject. A perfect monetary system and
a transportation system run at cost, would only make much more wealth to
be absorbed by the earth owners. The writer has been a loyal member of
organized labor (Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers) since 1872, and he
has come to the conclusion that no permanent relief can be expected in
that direction even without taking taxation from productive effort.
* * * * *
_M. C. Read, Tampa, Fla._
All your editorials are well suited in style to interest the masses—all
stubborn facts beyond contradiction. If the masses could be properly
politically educated the great difficulty would be removed. In the way
of reformation there are many obstacles to change our governmental
affairs by a vote of the people. They seem to be hypnotised by the great
money power of corporations. The press is almost entirely subsidized.
The reader gets but one side of the question discussed by writing or
orations. Each candidate of his party makes his speeches without joint
debate, generally, and the result—but very few have but a vague idea of
present conditions. Today is my birthday. Born the 9th of January, 1820,
but I hope and trust I am to pass another Presidential election and I
assure you, sir, it would be the grandest desire of my long life to see
you seated in the Presidential chair in 1908.
* * * * *
_From T. E. W., Ohio._
In the January number of WATSON’S MAGAZINE, among the items of home news
from November 9 to December 7, I notice that the Standard Oil Co. raised
the price of refined oil ½ cent a gallon. That is equivalent to 21 cents
a barrel. That was only one half of the story. They dropped the price of
Crude Oil at the same time 3 cents a barrel, or from $1.61 to $1.58 per
barrel, and not a paper or a magazine in the country as far as I have
seen has a word to say about it. I do not think it of any use to comment
on it to you. I have no idea you knew of it, or you would have been after
them with a hot stick.
On page 268 in commenting on John D., you say he is the man who compelled
the railroads, etc. It has always been a surprise to me that some of our
statesmen as well as Ida Tarbell, Tom Lawson and other writers, talk
about the Standard Oil Company compelling the railroads. I have had
twenty-five years’ experience in the business and I say it is nothing of
the kind. _The railroads are the Standard Oil Co._ Rockefeller, as far
as the oil business and the railroads are concerned, is only a _stool
pigeon_. If you want proof of it look at Pullman. When Pullman was alive
everything was Pullman. When he died it was found he had only a one-sixth
interest. If he could make the money he did on his one-sixth interest,
what must the gang back of him have made? Now oil can be carried cheaper
for long distances by rail than by pipe-line. What is the use of talking
about the railroads being compelled? I do not believe this country has
any more idea of what it is up against than a lot of babies.
I should like to see you. I know you are in New York often. Some time
when I am in the city I will call at your quarters and see if you are
there.
* * * * *
_Reddin Andrews, A. M., Tyler, Tex._
I have read every number of WATSON’S MAGAZINE. It is immense. There is
nothing like it in the whole realm of literature. It is the only magazine
dealing with political, social and economic questions, that tells the
whole truth. It is the only one that is in position to afford indulgence
in such a luxury as telling the whole truth.
It seems to me that WATSON’S MAGAZINE has met with greater favor than you
could have anticipated. I wish that it had a million subscribers. I do
not now take time, nor tax your patience by reading further, to mention
some special excellencies of the Magazine.
* * * * *
_A. C. Ditty, Appleton City, Mo._
Am still a Populist, but Populists are few here. The most of them got
such a dose of Bryanism in ’96 that it killed the most of them and that
was just what Bryan and his bunch wanted, and it worked well in these
parts; yet some of the fools say Bryan is a good Populist. If Bryan is a
Populist, I am not—no, not by a d—n sight! He stands for anything to get
a big name and make a big blow. That’s all, and if the Populists ever
expect to do anything they must let such cattle as W. J. alone. Nothing
in him but wind and not Pop wind either. He is plumb full of plut. wind
and that isn’t good for a Populist; or that is my view of the orator from
the Platte. I hope to see a new revival along Populist lines in the near
future.
I will try to convert some of the old fellows. They all admit we are
right, but yet they still vote the old ticket. That is mighty poor logic.
The great trouble, as I see it, is this. The prejudice that grew out
of the War still sticks in the people, and as long as the Democrats and
Republicans can hold the reins, just so long will that prejudice remain
with the people either one killed. I was a Confederate soldier but I have
no love for either of the old parties. I claim it was the war Democrats
that licked us Johnnies—no, not licked, but overpowered us.
* * * * *
_H. N. Holmes, Hemple, Mo._
I am one of the charter members of your Magazine and I have been handing
it out to some mighty good men for them to read. I am forty-eight years
old and have read a heap and I believe that I will be inside of the truth
when I say that there is more good sound sense in one of your Magazines
than in all of the newspapers that I ever read outside of the _Missouri
World_ and the paper that you used to publish. I took it as long as you
ran it. I have followed you ever since you were in Congress. I got a
couple of your campaign books at that time, voted for you every time I
got a chance to. I would rather cast ten thousand votes for Tom Watson
than one for the sainted Bryan. I wouldn’t give Tom Watson for all the
Bryans that could stand on Nebraska soil. I don’t think he is good stuff
for reform, or for the plutocrats either. I will close by saying that I
think TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE is the finest in the world, and I have never
seen anything that would equal it for an educator. Give it to them, Tom.
I believe the boys are leaning your way.
* * * * *
_J. L. Reynolds, North Augusta, S. C._
I thought enough of your Magazine to send you a renewal of my
subscription which will carry me through to April, 1907. I have always
admired Mr. Watson as a writer, and as long as he writes as well as
during these last two or three years I shall continue to read his stuff.
I admire some of his politics but am not a third party man, nor am I
populistic in my views. I am an independent, I presume, or “on the fence”
ready to fall in line with an honest party, one foreign to the present.
I see no reason why the Magazine should not reach into the millions. It
is good enough, fair enough, bold enough, and honest enough to give each
and every one a fair deal. Tell Tom to hit Roosevelt and he’ll please me.
* * * * *
_F. C. Gibbs, Waterville, Minn._
You are doing splendid work with the Magazine. I was chairman of the
State Central Committee of this State in 1896, the year Bryan ran the
first time, and the year he destroyed the People’s Party. When he
swallowed the gold standard, Parker, gold telegram, boots and all, he
lost the last vestige of respect I had for him. He has been weighed in
the balance and found wanting.
* * * * *
_S. A. Hauser, Winston-Salem, N. C._
I have never stated to you my position on the money question. You say
“Mr. Hauser seems to think that there is substantially no difference
between the Socialist position on money and that taken by the Populist.”
Yes, there is some difference. The Pops are wedded to the legal tender
system which is the only sane system, too safe and sound and just
for the exploiters. I am a Socialist and my position is this on the
money question. I would have legal tender only till the co-operative
commonwealth is established. Then I would use labor checks to denote the
price of a given article. For instance, if it took John Smith 30 minutes
to make a hat, 30M. would be the cost in labor, and hence would be the
price of the hat. So Dick Jones, who labors 30 minutes and makes a pair
of shoes, could take his time check and exchange it for the hat. In Rev.,
18 chap. and 11 verse, you will find this: “For no man buyeth their
merchandise any more.” That time is coming and it looks as if it was
nearly here. The Ethics of Socialism are the same as the Bible and are
therefore right. Therefore Socialism is irrefutable.
I know the Pops and Soc. ought to unite, but whether they will or not is
the question. If the Pop Party represents the workingman’s interest then
the working people in that party and the working people in the Soc. Party
should harmonize their differences. When they become sensible enough they
will. The capitalists have laid the example for the workingman. He must
do or be done forever.
* * * * *
_Charles R. Long, Bedias, Tex._
I want to work to get all the plain people to concentrate forces
regardless of party lines.
Hurrah for Tom Watson, Tom Lawson, Tom Paine and Tom Jefferson.
* * * * *
_A. M. Brannan, Guy, Ark._
I reckon the Lord only knows how much I rejoice while reading the
_Missouri World_ and WATSON’S MAGAZINE, and in each of them see that we
yet have men who have the wisdom and ability to turn on the light and are
not afraid to do it. Yes, men who are veteran patriots, worthy of all
the honor that has ever been conferred on them and to whom this American
government will owe lasting praise and gratitude for its salvation.
Now, sir, I don’t believe I have said too much so far and what I say
more than this is real. I now feel like repeating the words of Paul
Jones when asked if he was not ready to surrender, “I have just begun to
fight,” and I tell you the truth when I say that I have been saying this
for thirteen years. But let me tell you, and all who may see this, the
meanest, dirtiest thing I have done politically in all these thirteen
years. Right now some of the Old Guard are ready to say “He voted for
Bryan and Fusion.” Well, yes, I did. The fact is I didn’t know as much
then as I do now and I wanted relief, and I got it. Yes, got relieved of
a chance to vote for reform until the last Presidential election when I
got to vote, and not only to vote but work also for the election of our
gallant, patriotic, country-loving, people-serving and never-surrender
Thomas E. Watson. And if it is the Lord’s will I pray that he may not, as
our brave L. L. Polk, fall before the great battle is fought, or rather
finished, but that he may live to see his ambition realized and all the
down trodden and corporation ridden laborers and producers once more free
and enjoying the fruits of their labors, and this government once more in
the hands of the people.
I have just returned from Foulkner Co., a county south of where I live,
and while there I met one of my old Populist friends and he began to tell
me about receiving one of Watson’s Magazines, and, said he, “It is the
best thing politically I ever saw,” and, “In a short while after that
they registered my name as a subscriber and I have been reading it ever
since.” He then went on to say that Dr. Snoddy of Saltillo has received
the November number, and said the doctor says it is the richest and
ablest political magazine he ever saw. So I see how much good we all may
do by sending out Populist literature among the people.
Ed. J. Chastain, and I went to work and got 5 subscriptions for that
champion of the people’s cause. If I was able to I would send, or
have sent, TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE to 20 men here in this country. Yes,
and I believe if Congress was creating money and regulating the value
thereof as the Constitution says they should, I would be able to do
this. Yes, and not only that, but 20 men would have the money if we had
a just division of the wealth that we produce, but when I ask a man to
subscribe for the Magazine he says, “I would love to have it but I am
not able,” and so it is. So now, you poor man, see where we are at.
The money changers and money creators have got us now where we can’t
afford to spend a little of the little money, we can get for something
that will tell us how to find where we are at. I believe the day is now
dawning on our American land. Our great chiefs and hypocritical leaders,
who have been looking across the briny deep with pitying eyes, are now
beginning to feel a little muddled and puzzled at the turn things are
taking on this side, and I feel like the dirt will be finally scraped
off deep enough so that enough of the deceived wealth producers, real
government supporters, can see the greatness of our (Populist) claims and
the injustice of the favoritism that does now exist as shown up by our
noble watchmen, and elect men to steer the ship of state once more so as
to save this one glorious American government to the people who pay the
tax to run it. And now, in conclusion, let me say that it seems like we
are doing nothing here in Arkansas; at least it appears so to me. Yet I
think if we had an organizer to go ahead, that many of the bewildered
Democrats, and Republicans too, would fall into line and march with us
to victory. I see that Benty has been appointed national organizer. If he
should see this I hope he will let us know when we may expect him in our
part of Arkansas. I live in Van Buren County.
I am aiming to take and read and study the inestimable TOM WATSON’S
MAGAZINE just as long as I can raise a dollar to pay for it, and I am
going to get all to subscribe for it I can, and sometime in the future I
want to write something for the benefit of preachers, as there is much
depending on them just now.
* * * * *
_Owens Miller, Gatesville, Tex._
I have been purchasing the Magazine from our news agent since the
publication began, and have all the back numbers up to and including the
November issue. I can’t afford to lose a single issue as I desire to keep
them for reference in the future. Our news agent sold all of his December
supply before I called.
I quit the Democratic party when Cleveland demanded and compelled
a Democratic Congress to finish the Republican financial policy by
repealing the Sherman Silver law, and selling bonds to supply a gold
reserve in the treasury, and I have been a Populist from that day to this.
Of course, I have been left almost alone since W. J. B. and his followers
appropriated the bulk of our platform timbers and in that way captured
and allured thousands of our good reformers back into the so-called
Democratic fold, and things have looked gloomy and lonesome around the
old camp-fires most of the time, but I can’t get my consent to undertake
to keep up with the shifting peregrinations of the Democratic band-wagon
under its latter-day leadership. So I am content to remain with the
faithful mid-roaders who have had the courage to resist the allurement of
the fleshpots of modern Democracy.
I am by profession a lawyer and while I voted the old party ticket and
supported all of its nominees, regardless of their fitness for the
positions they were running for, I had a good patronage and was doing
fairly well, but when I threw off the shackles and refused to obey
the party lash, scores of my old friends withdrew their patronage and
suddenly concluded that I had lost my influence with the courts and
juries of the county, and joined in a hue and cry to ruin my business
and by this means to force me to at least be quiet in reference to my
political convictions. Some of my ancestors were Irish and some Scotch
and I was born and grew to manhood in Kentucky, and of course the blood
that runs in my veins and the atmosphere that I breathed in my young life
combined has developed a disposition that revolts at coercion in matters
of conscience and the right to speak and vote as I see the right to be.
However, I have lived these things down in a measure, and am still
earning a living for myself and family in spite of persecutions, and I
enjoy the privilege of occasionally reminding the hide-bound Democrats
of their inconsistencies and of asking them what position their party
occupies today and what its position will be in 1908. Of course they
don’t know just where they are at now and no prophet could afford to
predict where they will be even next year, and so they are mute and can
only reply by a sickly smile.
I often wonder how much longer this rotten fabric can hold together. Of
course a party with no fixed principles or common policies, can never
succeed in gaining control of the government machinery and they ought
not to, for no one can foresee or even surmise what the results would be
with such a mass of inharmonious elements undertaking at the same time
to steer the course of the ship of state. The Populo-Democrats would
pull hard on the oars in one direction and the Republico-Democrats would
strive to pull the vessel in the opposite direction, and of course the
results would be “confusion worse confounded.”
I can see but one way of hope and that comes from the wide-spread
disposition to condemn crimes in high places, and to break away from
partisan bossisms throughout the land. This may be the breaking of old
party chains that will ultimately result in independent political thought
and action, and culminate in an era of honesty in the administration of
public affairs and also in private dealings among men. At least I hope
so.
[Illustration: PUTTERIN’ ROUND.
BY CORA A. MATSON DOLSON.]
“Pretty old for work, I am!
Though I used to till my ground
In good shape as any one—
Now, I only putter ’round.
Way I used to swing a scythe
Was a caution, tell you, though!
Down my acre any day—
But I’m gettin’ old and slow.
Still, I keep the burdocks out,
And the grapevines up and trim;
And this great-grandson of mine—
Takes my time a-watchin’ him.
He’s the cutest little chap,
Like his Grandpap, and his dad—
And that boy of mine I lost
When he was an eight-year’s lad!
I make out to split the wood,
Like this—little at a time.
There’s that baby, top the gate!
Beats all, how the feller’ll climb!
“Here, let’s stay with Grandpa now;
Build a cob house on the ground,”
“Keeps me pretty busy?” Yes,
Guess it does, a-putterin’ ’round!”
[Illustration: _Should the Publicity Bill Pass?_
“_There should be a law passed to absolutely forbid corporation gifts to
political parties_”—_President’s Message_
_Kemble, in Collier’s Weekly_]
[Illustration: _That’s the Question_
_The Investigated_—“_What we want to know is, who’s going to investigate
Congress?_”
_Bart., in Minneapolis Journal_]
[Illustration: _Educational Department_]
* * * * *
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, COLO. DECEMBER 29, 1905.
_Honorable Thomas E. Watson_,
DEAR SIR:
(1) Are the Greenbacks all retired, and if so, when retired?
(2) Are the Greenbacks legal tenders?
(3) Are National Bank bills legal tender paper, and if not, on
what basis do they have circulation?
(4) What is meant by “free coinage” as advocated by silver men?
(5) Could the holder of greenbacks during the War convert them
into Government bonds at their face value?
(6) Did the United States Government ever propose to pay the
National Debt in silver or gold at its option, and when? If
not, why not?
(7) If silver coin is not a legal tender, why do silver dollars
pass current at their face value, and why do National Banks pay
out their silver at their counters and refuse to exchange them,
as is usually the case, for gold?
(8) Who determines the value of foreign coins?
Yours,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
(1) No. $346,000,000 still circulate, much to the annoyance of the
National Bankers.
(2) Yes. Except for Import dues and interest on Bonds.
(3) The law declares that they are “money” and guarantees their payment;
hence they pass as money, but are not, strictly speaking, Legal Tender.
The basis of their circulation is the Credit of the Government. The
people have to pay taxes to meet the interest on the bonds in order that
the National Bankers shall have the vast profit and power of using the
Government Credit for their private gain.
(4) The privilege of taking silver bullion to the mint and having it
turned into coin on the same terms that are granted to the owners of gold
bullion.
(5) Yes.
(6) The Public Debt, at the time it was contracted, was payable in lawful
money. The same motives which led the money-Kings to impair the credit of
the Greenback with the “Exception Clause,” led Congress to change the law
to the effect that the bonds should be payable _in Coin_. This of course
meant either silver or gold, at the option of the Government. Another
step was taken and the bonds are now payable in gold.
(7) Because, under the rulings of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Gold
Reserve can be drawn upon to keep silver and paper currency up to the
Gold Standard. I presume that National Bankers prefer to keep their gold
because it is the money of final payment.
(8) Commercial usage, and the banks. Foreign coins have no legal status.
Their value and currency is a matter of private agreement.
NEW YORK, DECEMBER 24, 1905.
* * * * *
_Honorable Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga._
DEAR SIR: In your “A Call to Action” in January issue, you have
forstalled my wish, in part only.
As soon as a reasonable number respond by sending their names
to Mr. Forrest, I want you to sink all personal desires by
asking Messrs Hearst, La Follette, Folk, Douglass of Mass.,
Johnson of Minn., Garvin of R. I., and such other men as you
know to be loyal and true, and insist upon their coming to the
conference, as it is high time that all good men and true,
combined to destroy the Grafters.
This meeting should be held about the time of debate on the
question of opening of the ballot boxes in New York and having
a fair count; this will give us a chance to hang the members of
the Legislature who refuse to give us an honest count of the
ballots cast on November 7th last.
Every leader like Hearst, Folk, La Follette, and possibly
Watson—et al, has the Presidential Bee in his bonnet, and each
is afraid that the other fellow will get it; but do you not
agree with me, that in a issue like this, all personal feelings
should be secondary? Let us by some means get all of these men
to line up at the conference.
Sincerely yours,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
Yes: I fully agree with you. The Presidential Bee which buzzes in my
bonnet is a feeble little thing, and with the help of a few stalwart
friends I think it can be controlled.
I am willing to line up any time.
Yes: I looked into your book and think it is great. As you say it is the
only book which intimates that there are two sides to Fire Insurance.
I have been thinking here of late that it is highly probable that some
Fire Insurance Companies are grander rascals than some Life Insurance
Companies. Your book deepens that suspicion. $25.00 is little enough for
the book.
* * * * *
MILLEDGEVILLE, GA.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga._
DEAR SIR: Will you please answer the following in the
Educational Department of your Magazine?
(1) Where can I get a McEllicott’s “Debater?” I have been to my
book store and they haven’t got it, and do not know where to
order it from.
(2) I want to be a first class lawyer, and I want to know if
it would be better to go on and get a High School and College
education, and have all of those dead languages to learn, or
get a High School education and read and learn all necessary
studies at home, and state what books and where I can get them,
which to study first, second, third and all the rest until I
have finished my course.
Yours for success,
⸺ ⸺.
P.S.—Is there any use of studying ancient history?
ANSWER
(1) I find that McEllicott’s Debater is out of print, but if you will
send fifty cents to F. E. Grant, 23 West 42nd street, New York City, he
will mail to you an excellent, up-to-date book which covers about the
same ground as the McEllicott Debater.
Mr. Grant is an unwearied, indefatigable, never-say-die bookseller, and
he makes a speciality of getting all sorts of books for all sorts of
people.
(2) Get a thorough High School Education and let the dead languages go
to thunder. If you want to learn any other language than English, study
French.
P.S. Yes: there is a good deal of use in studying ancient history. It is
worth a great deal for a man to have a clear general idea of what was
done on this earth before he got here.
You don’t want to feel bad because of your ignorance when gentlemen with
whom you may be talking refer to Semiramis, Alcibiades, Cyrus, Alexander,
Cæsar and the rest of those ancient celebrities. Oh, yes: read up on
history, ancient and modern, so that when you associate with intelligent
people you will know what they are talking about.
* * * * *
BELFAST MILLS, VA., Jan. 1, 1906.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga._
DEAR SIR: What are some of the distinguishing features of the
“Code Napoleon?”
Which do you consider the half-dozen most important and
significant events in the history of the world in 1905? Ditto
in the history of the United States for 1905?
Who were the ten or twelve greatest statesmen in the South
during the Reconstruction Period?
Dividing the history of the United States from 1860 to 1905,
into epochs, what periods would you name?
Does not Roosevelt’s administration mark a new period or epoch?
Yours truly,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
(1) To answer with any fulness would require more space than we can now
spare. The Code Napoleon follows, in a general way, the Roman Civil Law,
while most State Codes in the United States are founded upon the Common
Law of England.
(2) The war between Russia and Japan; the separation of Norway and
Sweden; the defeat of Clericalism in France; the quasi-alliance between
Great Britain and France; the overthrow of the Tory ministry in England
and the appointment of a Labor Agitator as a member of the Cabinet; the
“butting in” of the German Emperor in Moroccan affairs; the labor and
peasant revolutionary movements in Russia.
(3) The Hearst campaign in New York City; the Roosevelt peace; the Life
Insurance revelations; the Lawson articles on Frenzied Finance; the
President’s declaration for Federal regulation of railways; the set-back
to political Bossism in the State and City elections last Fall; the
establishment of this Magazine.
(4) Zebulon Vance of North Carolina; George G. Vest of Missouri; L. Q. C.
Lamar of Miss., John. T. Morgan of Ala., Benj. H. Hill of Ga.; James Z.
George of Miss.; Roger Q. Mills of Tex.; James B. Beck of Ky.
(5) The War Period is a distinct epoch; the Reconstruction Period is
another, and this period may be said to have ended when President Hayes
withdrew the troops from the South.
The election of a so-called Democrat (Cleveland) over a Republican
(Blaine) may also be said to have marked the advent of another epoch.
The McKinley-Mark Hanna dispensation was also an epoch and will take
its place in history as the high-water mark of class-legislation, Trust
making and rotten politics.
Yes; Roosevelt seems to be making himself an epoch—just what sort of one
neither he nor anybody else seems to know.
* * * * *
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson_,
DEAR SIR: Would you kindly inform me through your Educational
Department:
Whether there has been adopted by any nation the 8 hour law?
And what change would have to be made in our Constitution to
put such a law into effect in this country?
Thanking you in advance for the desired information.
Respectfully,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
New Zealand has what is practically the 8 hour law. In other words, from
one end of the colony to the other 8 hours is recognized as the Standard
Working Day, both in public and private service.
In the United States, 8 hours is the legal working day on public works.
No change would have to be made in our Constitution to make such a law
general in this country.
Congress and the States have just as much legal right to make an Eight
Hour Day as they have to make a Thanksgiving Day, or other Holiday.
* * * * *
ROCKHAM, S. D., Jan. 1, 1906.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, New York._
DEAR SIR: There it is, in WATSON’S MAGAZINE for January 1906,
page 276. Report of Wm. H. English; “a large sum to our credit
for lost and destroyed bills.”
Now the question I would ask—tried to ask once before,
but failed to make it plain—is: By whose authority and to
what extent or per cent. do National Banks profit by bills
_supposed_ to be destroyed through the carelessness of you and
I and others, not accustomed to handling money?
We know many bills _are_ lost, and it seems to me that, if the
value cannot be restored to the original losers, it ought to
result in profit to the general public, the Government. Why
should the bank get any credit, did I not have to pay them for
my loan?
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
Referring to page 108 of November number of the Magazine, I find that our
correspondent was informed that the Government made good to the National
Banks all old notes which were worn out, mutilated or destroyed, and that
this was done by virtue of Section 24 of the National Bank Law.
I really do not know how to give a plainer answer.
Old bank notes which become worn out, mutilated, or destroyed are
replaced by new notes. The Comptroller of the Currency issues the new
notes under and by virtue of the law. The entire National Bank act is a
disgrace to the Statute Book, and section 24 is simply one of its clauses.
* * * * *
PASSAIC, N. J., DECEMBER 17, 1905.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, New York._
DEAR SIR: Every month your Magazine grows better and your
editorials are great in their unborrowed simplicity, power and
naturalness, and in their humble consciousness of truth and
right.
(1) _But how do you manage to call Napoleon a Democrat?_ I
reverence the word Democrat, it is my religion as well as
my politics, and I don’t like to hear such an unquestioned
authority as you call him a Democrat. It will be an interesting
article, I think, if you answer my objection.
(2) In an answer to a correspondent in regard to the best
English histories _you omit the favorite_—my favorite—and I
think the best—John Richard Green’s _Shorter History of the
English People_. _Why did you omit it?_ Another interesting
article.
(3) I can’t understand what you mean by saying that the “cry
of the people ground down by their masters, was what brought
Napoleon back from Elba.” I have read your history of Napoleon,
too. _Was it not solely his ambition, and he saw in the
disaffection of the people a chance to swell his armies?_
Let me congratulate you on Clarence Darrow’s story. It has the
element that made Burns and Wordsworth.
Please accept my congratulations. Wishing you a Merry Christmas
and you and your Magazine a Happy and Prosperous New Year.
Yours very truly,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER.
(1) I call Napoleon a democrat because he made war upon caste and
privilege, upon Kings and aristocracies, and because he favored universal
education, equal opportunities for all, and equal rights for all.
In judging any man, great or small, you must allow for environment.
Born in Corsica, and coming to France to be educated for the army in a
royal school, Napoleon could hardly be the kind of democrat the average
American boy so naturally becomes.
France was ruled by a King and aristocracy, just as other European
nations were. Monarchical institutions, hundreds of years old, stood on
every hand.
The Revolution crashed through them all, and prostrated them all, but
the Revolution could not sustain itself. Reaction set in, and there was
danger of a Bourbon restoration.
Napoleon struck in at “the psychological moment,” and became the people’s
King. Personally he became despotic, but _his work_ was always democratic.
I call him a democrat because he made it possible for the poorest boy in
France to advance to the highest pinnacle of glory; because he lifted
the boycott against men of obscure birth and made _merit_ the test of
distinction; because he abolished the outrageous privileges of feudal
nobility in every part of Europe which came under his control; because
he rebuked the bigotry of priesthood and punished a clerical Ass who
had insulted the corpse of an actress; because he scornfully repulsed
the flatterers who wished to “make up” a fine ancestral tree for him,
and proudly dated _his_ nobility from the date of his first great
achievement; because he studied to improve the condition of the common
people; because he tried to make school-teaching practical—that is he
tried to have his schools fit every boy for the career which _that_ boy’s
talent was suited for; because he equalized taxation; because he based
his administration and his Code upon the broad righteous principle of
“Equal Rights for all and special privileges for none.”
(2) An oversight. Green’s “Short History” is a classic and every library
should contain it.
(3) The Bourbons had broken the pledges which they had made as a
condition precedent to their being restored. Not until Talleyrand and the
other traitors had besought the help of the Czar Alexander, would Louis
XVIII even go through the form of granting the reforms which had been
promised.
When the Allied armies withdrew, the Bourbon reaction set in with a
headlong rush. The veteran soldiers of the army were affronted brutally
by young aristocratic officers who had never smelled gunpowder.
Napoleon’s officers who had won renown on scores of battle-fields were
contemptuously maltreated. The _wives_ of the officers were snubbed by
the high-born dames of the old nobility.
The revolutionary and Napoleonic system was being uprooted in various
directions, and _the people_ of France realized that the Bourbons
meant to restore the Old Order with all of its brutal inequalities and
injustice and oppression. _The people_ saw that the Bourbon restoration
meant once more the galling chains of _the noble and the priest_. Hence,
when Napoleon came from Elba, the masses of the French hailed him wildly.
They followed him with mad cries of “_Hang the priests!_” _The Masses_
clamored for arms, asking to fight and die for _The Man_, Napoleon. Even
after Waterloo, they clung to him frantically, tumultuously rallying
to him, and begging him to give them guns. Had Napoleon frankly thrown
himself into the hands of the masses of the French people, he could have
hung the Talleyrands, Fouchés and Marmonts, and driven the Allies out of
France.
But Napoleon was a soldier of the Military Academy. He had no faith in
the fighting quality of “the mob.”
Another hundred years had to elapse before the Boers of South Africa
could show to the world that if your mob is the right sort of mob, and
has the best guns, and can shoot with the best aim, it can knock your
painfully disciplined army into a cocked hat.
Yes: Clarence Darrow is a writer of marvelous power. Read his “An Eye for
an Eye,” and you will realize that the Chicago lawyer has all the genius
of Tolstoy when it comes to making a story of thrilling interest out of
the commonest human materials.
* * * * *
VAN DYCK, TENN.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson_,
DEAR SIR: I have seen it stated that the working people of
this country make or create $7 worth of wealth for each day
in the year. For every man engaged in gainful pursuits do the
statistics justify such a statement. If so, we do not get our
share. My father is a very great Populist and I aim to make
some speeches in the future and will take it as a very great
kindness if you will let me know if I will be perfectly safe in
making that declaration.
Thanking you in advance I remain your great admirer.
ANSWER
There are 29,000,000 people in this country engaged in gainful pursuits.
An author (Bolton Hall) who has devoted much study to our economic
situation states these producing citizens annually create wealth to the
amount of $19,000,000.
You can figure out for yourself how much each worker creates. Ten per
cent of our population get almost all the annual production of wealth.
* * * * *
GRAND PRAIRIE, TEXAS, JANUARY 1, 1906.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga._
MY DEAR SIR: A Republican here claims that the tariff shuts
out the cheap labor of the European countries and on that
account, the laborers here in our factories get high prices.
He says that the factories of England pay their laborers
twelve to fifteen cents per day on account of free trade in
England. He says children work for five cents per day, and
railroad engineers get only $4 per month. He says that if
this country were to adopt free trade, the factories of the
European countries could come over here and buy our cotton and
raw products, ship them to England, manufacture them, ship them
back here and sell them cheaper than our factories could do it,
and the result would be that our factories would be compelled
to close down, thus throwing thousands of people out of
employment. I think his claims are extravagant. I want you to
explain this fully. I want to be loaded for him the next time
I meet him, and if I can get “loaded up” on your ammunition, I
will dead sure knock him out.
I have read all you have written about the Bank system and am
prepared to put up a very fair argument. I don’t understand
this, Mr. Watson. In a recent issue of your Magazine, you say
there is no reason on earth why the Government should not loan
the money direct to the people instead of the 5000 bankers.
Please explain fully just how this could be done. How much
per share did Cleveland get for the bonds that he sold on the
midnight deal? I have heard it said that he sold them for $125
per share.
Thanking you for the great work you are doing for the common
people and with kindest regards to you personally,
I am, very truly,
⸺ ⸺.
P. S.—I am a Georgian. I met you personally on two occasions
at Athens. Perhaps you have long since forgotten me. I would
consider it an honor to be known by you, and to know you as a
personal friend. In ’96 I wrote you from Athens for a copy of
the P. P. P. I had misplaced my copy wherein you showed up the
littleness of Bill Arp’s school history of Georgia. You sent me
a copy from Thomson; I have it yet.
ANSWER
The Republican who told you those things about English wages did not know
what he was talking about. The idea of a railroad engineer getting four
dollars per month, and factory hands being paid five cents per day! The
figures are so ridiculous that even a Protection-soaked Republican ought
to know better.
If high Tariffs benefit the laborer, why is it that workmen get better
wages in free-trade England than in high-Tariff France, Italy and
Germany? If high-Tariffs give the benefit to the laborer why is it that
the Salvation Army had to save the factory hands at Fall River, Mass.,
from starvation, by ladling out free soup? The best paid laborers in the
United States are the negroes of the South who raise cotton, a free trade
product. The laborer gets a larger share of the cotton he produces than
any employee in any protected industry.
In England the wages paid to factory hands are at least equal to those
paid in the United States when the amount of the wage is compared with
the amount and quality of the product.
Ask your Republican friend if he does not know that his great Apostle,
James G. Blaine, made this assertion some twenty years ago.
The statement was not denied then and cannot be denied now.
There is a huge army of the poor and the unemployed in England, but it
is not due to Free trade.
It is the natural result of three things.
(1) Land monopoly.
(2) A diabolical financial system.
(3) The host of non-producers who use the government as a means of
getting their support and their wealth by oppressing the producers.
The Government could easily establish a Bureau of Loans, and could adopt
a business-like system of lending money direct to the people.
This principle has been put in successful operation in Great Britain,
Norway, Greece and other foreign countries.
Not long ago, the firm of N. A. Harris & Co., of Chicago, New York and
Boston, put out a Circular offering for sale “Sanitary District of
Chicago” bonds to the amount of $500,000. As a recommendation of these
bonds, Harris & Co., declared in the Circular that the United States
Government had accepted the bonds as security for Government deposits.
In other words, the National Banks have been borrowing the people’s money
out of the Treasury on the faith of these bonds. Of course, the banks
paid no interest.
Now does it not occur to you that the Government could as well lend
some of that money to you at four or six percent interest upon security
equally good, as to lend it to a favored few without interest?
I do not believe that Mr. Cleveland profited personally by the sale of
the bonds. He acted stupidly and he acted in violation of law. The whole
transaction had an ugly look because Morgan had recently been his client
and Stetson (who drew the contract) had recently been his partner. But I
do not think he acted corruptly.
Mr. Cleveland did not get 125 for the Bonds.
Oh, no. He sold them for 103½, and Morgan, Belmont, Rothschild & Co.
_immediately realized_ 112¼.
* * * * *
SAVANNAH, GA., December 18, 1905.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson._
DEAR SIR: I have been a constant reader of your eminent
Magazine from the first issue and have become converted to your
Populist principles of which I will stand by as long as I have
the liberty of voting.
Tonight we have organized a club in the city of Savannah, Ga.,
principally of working men, so that we might study politics,
and thoroughly understand how to cast our ballot intelligently,
and for the best of our interest; we think the day is fast
approaching when if the workingman doesn’t wake up and take
hold of the reins of government, he will find in the near
future that his liberties have flown never to be regained. My
object in writing to you is for information in your Educational
Department. How would you advise as to the most intelligent way
to do this?
They don’t seem to understand how to get together, and I
believe you can give us the desired information.
Respectfully,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
I would advise the reading, by the members of the club, of such books as
the following: “Politics in New Zealand,” “Poverty,” by Robert Hunter;
“The Menace of Privilege,” by Henry George; “Letters and Addresses of
Thomas Jefferson,” recently published by The Unit Book Publishing Co.,
New York, “Bossism and Monopoly,” by Spelling.
These books will not cost a great deal, and they will give you a very
complete survey of our political and economic condition.
* * * * *
WASHINGTON, D. C., January 17, 1906.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, New York._
DEAR SIR: As you will notice in the wording of the question
printed above, which we shall debate with the University of
Cincinnati, the entire discussion will probably hinge on the
term “Capitalistic combinations called trusts.”
In order to get the consensus of authoritative opinion as to
what capitalistic combinations are called trusts by those
who are most competent to use the term intelligently, we are
taking the liberty of asking the editors of a dozen of the most
prominent monthlies, weeklies and dailies in the United States
to give us their definition of this term.
Will you, therefore, be kind enough to sacrifice enough of your
time to state briefly what capitalistic combinations, in your
opinion, should be called trusts.
Very respectfully,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
My conception of a Trust is: A combination of individual or corporate
capital which practically establishes such a monopoly that it can control
the output, dictate the price, and crush competition.
* * * * *
BLUE HILL, NEB., November 29, 1905.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson._
DEAR SIR: I am a regular reader of your Magazine, having bought
the first one ever sold in our town. I like it very much. It
speaks my sentiments better than I know how to express them
myself. I have never heard but one thing said against your
Magazine—one party thought you were a little hard on the darky.
I want to ask one question. If you were elected President of
the United States, and had a House and Senate of your own
faith and political belief, and you were to abolish the gold
standard and the national banks, what effect would it have upon
the country? Would not the banks totter and fall and ruin many
depositors? Banks have become a necessity. In your message to
Congress, what kind of banks and what kind of money would you
recommend?
At present, corn husking is the issue of the day, but that will
soon be over. Then I will take your subscription blanks and
go out among the farmers and see what I can do for the best
Magazine on earth.
Yours respectfully,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
(1) I don’t think I have been “too hard on the darky.”
Doctor Booker Washington, spoiled by too much praise, got too gay in his
statements concerning the rapid progress of the negro in civilization.
The Doctor’s idea seemed to be that as soon as you caught a young
African, washed him, combed him, put clothes on him, and taught him how
to read, write and cipher, he was at once civilized.
I knew better than this, and the Doctor does now. He will be more
particular how he claims superiority for the negro race, hereafter.
Especially since his brethren in Santo Domingo have given that “Republic”
another push hellwards.
On that island, one of the most favored spots on the globe, the negroes
had the advantage of beginning with an elegant civilization which the
French had taught them.
The negroes expelled the French, set up a government of their own, and
the record of their _republic_ has been one of the foulest blurs on the
history of the human race. They get worse and worse and worse. There are
not a sufficient number of whites in Santo Domingo to keep the negroes
straight: in this country there are. _That makes all the difference._
(2) If I were President and could do away with the Gold standard,
restoring the currency to the constitutional status, depriving the
National Banks of the privilege of creating paper currency, and
exercising that power directly by the use of Treasury Notes, why should
the banks “totter and fall?”
A good many of them have tottered and fallen; many more of them are going
to “totter and fall.” Why? Because the system is rotten. Thousands of
individual banks and bankers are as sound as gold dollars, but the system
isn’t, for the reason that too much bank-made currency, of various sorts,
is afloat; the line of credits has been lengthened until it is about
to snap; wild-cat speculation is rampant; and thousands of banks are
dabbling in business which isn’t legitimate banking.
I am in favor of Banks of Deposit and Discount—so long as we cannot get
Postal Savings Banks.
But I am opposed to Banks of Issue—that is, banks which issue their
promises to pay and get rich on what they owe. These are the National
Banks. Render to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; restore to the
Government the sovereign power of issuing paper currency.
Depositors would not be endangered by our policy of expanding the
currency; the more money in circulation, the more certain the depositors
would be to get paid.
(3) In my Message to Congress, I would recommend Postal Savings Banks,
for the reasons stated in the December issue of this Magazine, page 231.
The kind of money I would recommend would be that which the Fathers fixed
in the Constitution, and which the practice of a hundred years seemed
to render “irrevocable”—a system which had the sanction of Washington,
Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Monroe, Jackson and Lincoln.
The Constitutional system of currency, as shown by the law and the
practice of Presidents, and the decisions of the Supreme Court, is
_Silver_, _Gold_, _Treasury Notes_, and the silver dollar was _the unit
of money_.
Congress sold itself to Bank of England agents, and changed our system of
currency to suit European financiers.
Mr. August Belmont, of New York, could tell you how much Rothschild money
his bank spent to bring about the change.
_And I hold in my desk sworn evidence that Ernest Seyd, Bank of England
Agent, spent $484,000 for the same purpose._
The fight for reform will never stop till you have wiped out that shame,
and have put our financial system back on the sound basis built by the
Fathers.
If the Corn husking issue has been settled, please hustle for those
subscriptions if you would make us happy.
* * * * *
WESTMINSTER, S. C., Jan. 3, 1906.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thompson, Ga._
DEAR SIR: I am very much interested in the Educational
Department of your excellent Magazine, and glean much valuable
information from it.
The inductive or interrogatory style, so often and
advantageously used by yourself in your editorials, is the
best method of teaching on any subject. Questions are easily
asked—any one can do this.
Answering is sometimes more difficult.
(1.) If National Banks should be abolished, and the Government
issue the money used by the people, how would it be put in
circulation?
(2.) If the National Banks were abolished, would it not be a
matter of convenience in business transactions, be necessary,
to have private banks?
(3.) Can you furnish back-numbers, from the beginning of your
paper?
These questions are frequently asked by the common people, and
some of us are puzzled to know how to answer satisfactorily.
Grover Cleveland, I think, once said, that however money
might be created, the middle-man, by trusts, monopolies, and
speculations, would take the advantage and oppress the poor and
needy, just the same.
If you think the above questions worthy of notice, please
answer in your February number.
I am glad to note the contemplated improvement in your
Magazine. I will do my best to get you more subscribers.
Yours respectfully,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
The National Banks now have outstanding notes to the amount of
$550,000,000 in round numbers. If the privilege of issuing these notes
as money were taken away from the National Banks, the paper money now in
circulation would be reduced to $550, 000,000. Suppose the Government
should issue an equal sum in its own notes to take the place of the
National Bank notes—how could the Government put its own notes into
circulation?
(1) It could _immediately_ put the entire amount in circulation by
applying it to the part payment of the public debt. We are the richest
nation on earth: the richest that history knows anything about—yet we
keep ourselves mortgaged with a perpetual National Debt because the
favored few demand bonds to bank on. If National Banks were abolished, as
real Democracy always sought to do, there would be no further excuse for
keeping the Bond-Mortgage on the National estate.
(2) It could put the entire amount $550, 000,000, in circulation
_gradually_ by paying the national expenses with it.
(3) It could put the money in circulation by building Government
railroads with it.
(4) And my opinion is that the whole sum could be benevolently
assimilated by that Panama Canal business which the sleek Cromwell and
his Varilla unloaded on the impulsive Roosevelt.
Second Question: Yes. We wage no war on private banks. As long as banks
confine themselves to legitimate banking, loans, discounts &c., they
are not a source of national danger. It is only when a certain class of
bankers, like the National Bankers, usurp the Governmental function by
supplying the country with money, that they are, as Jefferson said, more
dangerous to Republican institutions than standing armies.
Question 3: Yes.
* * * * *
MEMPHIS, TENN., Nov. 30, 1905.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, New York._
DEAR SIR: I am a regular reader of your Magazine, which I find
very interesting and instructive. I believe in the Public
Ownership of Public Utilities, but fear that does not go far
enough to cure the land of the evils that now curse it. With
Government banks, Government railroads, Municipal Ownership of
Public Utilities, there would still be that awful strife of
the many for bread and butter. If we may ride cheaper on the
“Railhighways,” if we get our Water, Gas, and Electric Light
cheaper, will not the wages of the workers go down as the cost
of living decreases? Will not then as now, the “iron law” of
wages be operative?
Please answer in your Educational Department.
Yours,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
As the cost of living decreased, the purchasing power of wages would
increase, and every dollar now paid to Labor would command for the
laborer a greater quantity of necessaries, comfort and luxuries of life.
How could you suppose that the wages of workers will go down when the
masses of the people wrest the Government out of the hands of the
plutocrats? Public ownership of public utilities cannot be brought about
until the people rout the Privileged Few at the polls, when that day
comes do you fear that _the people_ will cut down _their own wages_ as
the Privileged Few have done?
Not many weeks ago the price of cotton advanced. The farmers of the South
had suffered so long and so much from low prices that they organized. The
result was a rise in the price of raw cotton.
How did the Protected Manufacturers of New England meet this increase in
the cost of raw material?
The Government reports show that the manufacturers have been earning
twice as much on their invested capital as the farmers had earned. It
was fair for the farmers to contend for a juster division. Hence their
organization.
The manufacturers saw that they would lose a part of the unjust profits
which they were reaping from the Protective system, and they promptly cut
down—their fat dividends? Heavens! No. They cut down the wages of the
factory boys and girls, men and women, who are _protected_ by our blessed
Tariff.
Now if _the people_ ruled this country, if there was no Privilege, no
Monopoly, no taxing of some to enrich others, no granting of Governmental
powers to private Corporations, no corrupt alliance between Commerce and
Government, you may bet your bottom dollar that _fat dividends would be
cut_, before men, women and children would be desolated by a reduction of
wages.
* * * * *
GALION, OHIO, Dec. 21, 1905.
_Watson’s Magazine_,
GENTLEMEN: Please give me some suggestions in your interesting
Educational Department on the negative side of this question:
Resolved, that the United States is retrograding in morality
and righteousness.
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
The negative side of that question might draw arguments of facts from
“Social Progress” by Dr. Josiah Strong, “The History of the People of the
United States” by McMaster. To keep your mind clear from haunting doubts,
however, avoid such books on the other side as “The Tramp at Home,” by
Lee Meriwether, “American Pauperism,” by Isidor Ladoff, “The Menace of
Privilege,” by Henry George, “Poverty,” by Robert Hunter.
It would be well also, _not_ to read of the Life Insurance revelations,
nor the facts which disclose how corporations corrupt and control the
politicians.
* * * * *
TEMPLE, GA. Dec. 8, 1905
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga._
DEAR SIR: Please answer the following questions in the
Department of Education.
Would you advise me to study the following books with the hope
of getting a thorough knowledge of law?
1. How to Study Law.
2. Constitutional Law, Federal and State.
3. Personal Rights and Domestic Relations.
4. Contracts and Partnerships.
5. Agency and Bailments, including Common Carriers.
6. Negotiable Instruments and Principal and Surety.
7. Wills and Settlements of Estates.
8. Personal Property and Equity or Chancery Law.
9. Public Corporations and Private Corporations.
10. Real Property and Pleading and Practice.
Very truly yours,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
There are ten different books indicated in this formidable list, whereas
the subjects enumerated are all treated with sufficient fullness in the
text-books which I have heretofore suggested to law students, viz:
(1) Blackstone’s Commentaries,
(2) Kent’s Commentaries,
(3) Greenleaf on Evidence,
(4) The State Code.
* * * * *
DYSON, WILKES CO. Ga.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, New York._
DEAR SIR: Will you please tell me in your Magazine the
principal object you had in leaving the Democratic party and
going into the People’s party?
Have the Republican or Democratic parties ever advocated the
Government ownership of public utilities? If so, which one and
when? Has that question ever been agitated in Europe? When and
who by?
Truly yours,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
My election to Congress was due to my support of the Ocala Platform of
the Farmer’s Alliance, and when the Indianapolis Convention of 1891
instructed all Congressmen so elected to stand by the principles of the
Alliance regardless of the Caucus dictation of political parties, I
declined to enter the Democratic Congressional Caucus in Washington.
(1) I was immediately denounced in the bitterest terms by nearly every
Democratic paper in Georgia; yet I could not have done otherwise without
betraying the Alliance-men who had elected me.
I did not join the Alliance as so many time-servers did; I remained
on the outside, but they trusted me so implicitly that I received the
solid Alliance vote. How, then, could I walk into the Caucus trap, to be
silenced and tied by a majority vote which was dead against the Alliance
demands?
During the summer of 1891, I had held a series of great public
meetings throughout my District, and these Conventions of the voters
overwhelmingly and enthusiastically instructed me to stand by the
principles rather than the party, if the time came when it was necessary
to choose the one course or the other. Then came the organization of the
People’s Party, after it had become plain that neither of the old parties
meant to give the people relief.
I went with the People’s Party because my election had been due to those
principles, and because the same overwhelming majority of Democrats who
had elected me had gone into the People’s Party, and because I had no
hope whatever of getting the reforms inside the Democratic Party.
(2) Neither the Republican nor the Democratic party has ever advocated
“Government Ownership of Public Utilities.”
In Europe the principle is almost universally recognized and _practiced_.
Government ownership of Railroads is the rule on the Continent. In
England the Imperial Government owns the Telegraphs and Telephones. The
Government Parcels Post does the work of an Express Company. Municipal
railroads, telegraphs, telephones, lighting plants, water systems,
laundries, bathing establishments, bakeries, etc., etc., are in operation
all over Great Britain and all over Europe.
_We_ are the laggards, we smart folks of the United States. We are the
only nation of civilized cattle on earth which the Corporations find easy
prey.
* * * * *
MILLEDGEVILLE, GEORGIA, December 18, 1905.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thompson, Ga._
DEAR SIR: TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE contains more sound principles
and good common horse sense, (just what the people need) than
any other paper published in the United States, and I wish you
would answer the following questions, to wit:
(1) Does it not look like the North, East and West are
determined to adhere to their hellish, reconstruction policy to
the end of time?
(2) What material difference does it make to Georgia, or the
Common people in her limits whether she has six or eleven
representatives in Congress?
(3) Is it not true that the only material benefit in being
represented at all in these times, accrues to the fellow who
draws the five or six thousand salary annually?
(4) Is it not true that the Northern, Eastern and Western
Democrats vote as a unit with the Republicans whenever any
question affects the South is the issue?
(5) Why is it that the Southern Democrats do not stand as a
unit and vote for whatever is best for the whole country,
regardless of party, and thereby hold the balance of power in
the Government?
(6) How can the North, East and West be convinced and made to
understand that the negro lives in the South, is part of the
South, and that the white people of the South are going to say
and dictate what the negro’s political and social status shall
be while he remains in the South?
(7) Are there not thousands of white people in every State of
the Union who are as incompetent to cast a vote intelligently
as the negro is, and why not reduce the representatives in
Congress from each State accordingly?
ANSWER
My opinion is that a majority of the people of the North, East and West
have become satisfied to let the South exercise the same right to settle
her domestic affairs that they practice in settling theirs.
Only a minority—some members of which try to make up in noise what it
lacks in numbers—cling to the old prejudices, passions, and policy of
interference. Mr. Ernest Crosby—a hot partisan for negro rights—has
recently published a “Life of Garrison,” and very boldly admits that
while Slavery was wrong the war which was waged upon the South was also
wrong.
Ten years ago such a sentiment would have drawn volleys of protest from
the North, the East and the West.
There are no protests now; and I shouldn’t wonder if a majority of the
intelligent people of those sections would admit that while Slavery was a
moral wrong, that it had been practiced by both sections, given a solemn
Constitutional sanction as a condition precedent to the Union, that the
South had a right to withdraw from a voluntary compact whose terms had
not been kept, and that the war which was made upon her to force her back
into the Union was a colossal mistake and wrong.
(2) None whatever.
(3) It is.
(4) If it is a question where sectional interest or feeling is
aroused—yes.
(5) Because of the tyranny of party name and party organization. Southern
Democrats dare not vote independently.
(6) I think they begin to understand it. The more they see of the negro
_in Mass_, the better they will realize our problem. As long as they seem
to think that all the Southern negroes are as nice and wise as Booker
Washington, they will, of course, find it difficult to get our point of
view of the race question. But they will gradually come to see that there
is only one Booker Washington and that _he_ isn’t doing anything more
than running a large school which any ordinary white College President
could run on one half the money which Doctor Washington rakes in—why
opinion will change. The doings of the negroes in San Domingo—where there
are no mean Southern whites to beat, cheat, or lynch them—will also have
influence in opening the eyes of the world as to what the negro, _in
Mass_, actually is.
The idea that the negro is merely a white gentleman whom the Almighty
inadvertently painted black will disappear, in time.
(7) The “suppressed vote” in some of the states of the Union appears to
be quite large and the number of illiterate, criminal and incompetent
voters is likewise great. A square deal would demand that whatever rule
is applied to the South should be applied to the others.
* * * * *
IDALIA, COLO., December 29, 1905.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, New York._
DEAR SIR: Will you kindly print in your next issue of your
Magazine the names of Presidential candidates of the Democratic
and People’s party of 1896 and 1900.
Most respectfully,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
1896, Democratic Candidates, Bryan and Sewall. People’s Party Candidates:
Bryan and Watson.
1900, Democratic Candidates: Bryan and Stevenson. People’s Party
Candidates: Barker and Donnelly.
* * * * *
GILMORE CITY, MO., December 2, 1905.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson._
DEAR SIR: I am a reader of your Magazine and am highly
entertained by its editorials especially, also by its
Educational Department. Am a member of the Old Guard and I take
the liberty to ask you a few questions in the line of Populism.
(1.) Does England call her navy to a certain point from
thousands of miles distant to fire a salute on George
Washington’s Birthday, or that of any of our noted Presidents,
as we did eighteen vessels a month ago for King Edward? How
ridiculous for a republic!
(2.) Why has not the Census of 1900 been given to the public,
as were former ones, within two years after being taken? It was
the disclosures of the 1890 Census that tripled the Populist
vote in ’92.
(3.) Has the $900,000,000 of farm mortgage indebtedness been
increased or diminished in the ten years following 1890?
(4.) Are the free holdings of the people increasing on a ratio
with the increase of population in these U. S.?
Yours very truly,
⸺ ⸺.
ANSWER
(1) No.
(2) You can get the Census Reports of 1900, by spurring up your
Congressman.
(3) The “encumbered” homes show an increase, as do the “hired” homes.
(4) No. Concentration of wealth in the hands of a few goes on at a more
frightful rate than ever. _Five thousand men_ now own one-sixth of the
entire wealth of the Union. One man, J. D. Rockefeller, could buy the
State of Georgia, give it away, and then have enough to buy it back.
* * * * *
COOLEDGE, TEXAS.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson._
DEAR SIR: I received your August number of Magazine. I don’t
know exactly what it is you propose. It is perhaps the dull
apprehension of an old hayseed from down at the fork of the
Creek.
(1.) Is the money you propose for the Government to issue to be
redeemable Treasury Notes, or is it to be absolute Fiat money?
(2.) Do you propose the free and unlimited coinage of gold and
silver at 16 to 1? If not at that ratio, what ratio do you
propose?
(3.) Is it not a fact that from 1792 to 1834 we were
practically on the silver standard and that after 1834 we were
practically on the gold standard, and that this change was the
effect of the change of ratio, made by the act of 1834? Why
was it that in 1853 the Government coined fractional silver of
lighter weight in proportion to value than the standard dollar?
(4.) You claim for the Government the power to create money. If
that be so, why clamor for gold and silver only? Let us suppose
that the United States Treasury is now full of such money as
you propose, Gold, Silver or Fiat. I want some of it. How am I
to get it?
I agree with you heartily that the making of our Federal
Government is all out of joint, and I think that it is the
unwarranted meddling with affairs over which it has no rightful
control. The remedy, as I think, is _not_ in enlarging and
extending its powers, for every step taken in that direction
makes worse conditions possible. Let us say to her in plain
language: “Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther. Get back to
the track marked out for you and stay there.”
What is here written is in all honesty and in a controversial
spirit and should you see fit to refer to them, I will be glad
to have the number.
I am not a subscriber now. May be soon.
Best wishes.
ANSWER
(1) Money that is “redeemable” in other money is not my idea of money.
A dollar is not redeemed by swapping another dollar for it. The only
redemption of the dollar which amounts to anything beneficial is when a
debt, public or private, is redeemed by paying it off in legal tender. I
redeem my promissory note by paying the amount of money it calls for: I
redeem all my other dues and debts in the same way. Nothing is redeemed
when a gold dollar is given for a silver dollar, or a metallic dollar
exchanged for a paper dollar. That method of fooling the people will go
out of fashion as the people become educated. All money is absolute fiat
money. That is, the law makes the money. God made no money. Nature made
no money. Evolution made no money. The law takes raw material and makes
money out of it, just as the lumberman takes a log and makes plank or
shingles out of it.
The Government fiat makes gold money, makes silver money, makes nickel
money, makes copper money. It would with equal ease and certainty make
iron or paper _money_.
Whenever _the law_ says that a paper dollar shall go just as far, as _a
legal tender_, as the gold dollar goes, the paper will suit me and you
just as well as the gold.
(2) Yes.
(3) No. See page 275, January issue of this Magazine.
(4) I do not clamor for gold and silver only. We demand the money of the
Constitution which has been taken away from us by venal Congressmen who
were bribed by Wall Street and the European financiers.
How could you get some of the fiat money?
This is but another form of the old question of getting the paper money
into circulation.
There are several ways.
(1) The Government could pay off the National debt.
(2) The Government could build new railroads, or buy those already built.
(3) The Government could pay current expenses with it.
(4) Could build the Panama Canal with it.
(5) Could establish a Department which would lend it to the people,
direct, at a low interest, as is done in Europe.
In Norway and Sweden the Government lends money to the farmers on
their land, on long time, at low interest. These banks have been most
beneficial and successful.
In France and in Russia the Government makes loans upon produce.
In Germany the Government bank lends money on land security, directly to
the land-owner.
In Greece, the farmers can get money from the Government banks.
In Great Britain, the Government lends money to the citizen to buy land.
The only reason in the world why our people cannot secure similar
advantages, is that we are cruelly oppressed by corporation tyranny and
greed.
_In Passing_
BY LURANA W. SHELDON
A nod, a smile, perchance a word,
Where road meets road on life’s broad way;
The pilgrim’s heart with joy is stirred;
More brightly glows the weary way.
A word, a glance, a subtle thrill
Of sympathy for brother woe,
And from the fount of human ill
The sweetest drops of pleasure flow.
Though nevermore our paths may meet,
Nor heart greet heart with welcoming kiss,
An instant makes the sad world sweet;
One passing fills the soul with bliss.
[Illustration: _HOME_
_BY Mrs. Louise H. Miller._]
Last month I spoke of how easy it is to let a light day tire you as much
as a heavy one. If you can do three-thirds in one busy day why does it
take all another day to do two-thirds and tire you about as much in one
case as in the other? Why didn’t you have a third of it for your own
amusement or improvement? What became of that third? It is all just
another proof that it pays to do a thing with all your heart, with all
your mind, and with all your body. If you had worked as earnestly the
second day as you did the first, you would have done the day’s work,
had a third of it to yourself, and been no more tired than you were the
first. It wasn’t because you were lazy—you just “had the time” and put it
all on the daily work instead of taking some of it for yourself.
I can hear a small chorus of objections to the above. Wait a minute. No
one knows better than I that the housework for one day is often different
in kind and amount from that of the day before; that one’s strength is
often not the same two days in succession; that there are extras and
specials and interruptions; that the baby may sleep most of one day and
cry most of the next; that many things depend on the mother; that some
women really have all they can do day in and day out and year after year
and work at high speed all the time until they die of it; that often what
fits one case does not fit another. I know all that. _But the principle
is true!_ And nine times out of ten that principle applied to your own
case would help you physically, mentally and morally. And those about you.
“I know all that,” says some one. “There’s nothing new in that.”
I venture that this person, however well she knows it, hasn’t been
_applying it_. No there’s nothing new in it. That’s just where the danger
lies—it is so old a principle that we forget all about it.
“Yes,” say a dozen more, “you are right. That person ought to apply it
and profit by it. If we had work like hers we could accomplish a lot by
it. But we haven’t, more’s the pity, and _our_ work is such that we can’t
do that way with it.”
There lies the real trouble. As in everything else, we can see how
_others_ can make an improvement, but when it comes to our own case,
why, that is quite different, because this and because that and because
the other. The funny part of it is that these other people, while they
are blind about themselves as we are about ourselves, can see very easily
how we could improve matters. Of course other people generally think they
could improve our methods much more than they really could, but it is
equally true that we think they could improve it less than they really
could. Two heads are better than one, and it does help to see ourselves
as others see us.
I don’t believe many busy women can save as much as a third from their
lighter days, but I do firmly believe that nearly every one of you can
save some part of it. Maybe it is only half an hour, but much can be done
in even that little space several times a week. What we need in our daily
work is more generalship. Your body is like an army blundering around
without a leader unless you guide it with your head. That is what your
head is for—to save your body and help it accomplish more. The trouble
is that we all get into a rut too easily and go on doing our work in the
same old way for years. We quit thinking, quit using generalship.
What each of us needs to do many times a year is to sit down and
carefully consider her own work. Does too much time go to one thing and
too little to another? Can we omit any of it without harm to anybody?
Is there some way of doing this duty more quickly without slighting it?
Would such a simple thing as changing the height of the sink, the kitchen
table, the wash-bench, save time, strength and aching back? Will a plain
shelf or two along the kitchen wall make work easier? Would an hour
spent on a carefully planned rearrangement of the kitchen utensils and
supplies save many hours during the coming months? There is no end to the
useless things one can buy for a kitchen, yet there are many appliances
and arrangements that, some in one household, some in another, will pay
for themselves many times over in a year. Read advertisements, papers,
magazines—you can glance through the advertisement pages in a very few
minutes—perhaps go to demonstrations by agents of practical devices for
lightening housework. Notice what your friends are using. Look much and
buy little. But keep yourself awake to new ideas, and now and then when
you are sure of your ground adopt some of them. Where there is no outlay
of money necessary try frequent experiments, but not many at a time. If
any of your family or friends are of an inventive turn of mind, call them
in for consultation. The most valuable inventions are the simplest ones.
You cannot believe all you read or hear about, but you can generally
believe your own eyes if you use them carefully. Go to those of your
friends who seem to manage their work well. If they have any utensils
or appliances that actual experience has proved good investments, note
them carefully. Maybe you or some of your family can make something that
answers the same purpose. If not, sleep on the question and if your
judgment still says that it will pay in the end to get it, try hard to
raise the money. Even on a basis of dollars and cents it may pay in the
long run. And it is generally a question of more than money—a question of
body, mind and soul.
Note carefully how other good housekeepers manage their work. There is a
practical study for you! You have probably watched them many times before
this, but now watch them with seeing eyes.
Turn your attention to the tasks that burden you heavily. Here reforms
are needed most. You will hardly be ready to assert that you are doing
these tasks in the very best way in the world. Find out why not, and then
try to improve on the old method.
After you have thought over your work in general sit down some evening
and plan out the duties of the next day as far as you know them. Forget
how you used to manage. Maybe you will be able to make only one or two
small changes the first time. That is a good beginning. Try again later.
Keep your wits about you and your thinking-cap on all the time. It will
pay.
As the world grows older it accomplishes more in a given time than it
used to do. They can make a hundred things now in the time it took to
make one fifty years ago. Are you a part of the world and its progress or
are you something left behind in the onward march? Not your fault? Well,
you can be pretty sure that it is _partly_ your fault and that you can
remedy some of it if you only will.
* * * * *
_FREE SUBSCRIPTION_
_Besides the prize for the best story of “heroism at home,” every month
another free year’s subscription will be given for the best item or
paragraph of any kind for the Department. The two subscriptions will not
be given to the same person. The subscription may begin with any number
you please._
* * * * *
Someone says that the world’s progress doesn’t concern her off in her
little corner—that she has her work to do and that’s all there is to it.
Well, perhaps it doesn’t in one way of speaking, but her life is both
less happy and less useful than if she let the world’s progress concern
her a little. She says it wouldn’t help her any in making biscuit or
sweeping the floor if she did know some of the stories of history, how
the revolution in Russia is getting on, about the great writers and
painters, about anything outside her work. Well, it wouldn’t—in a way.
The biscuits wouldn’t be any better nor the floor any cleaner. But any
one that isn’t half-witted can learn to sweep a floor or even to bake
biscuits. You are, or ought to be, more than a cook and a housemaid. You
are a _home-maker_, and though good biscuits and clean floors are very
necessary things in any house, they are _not_ enough to make a _home_
out of it. In a true _home_ there must be mental and moral, as well as
physical, comfort. You are still something more. You are a woman and a
free human being. You have your duties to other people, as everyone has,
but, like everyone, you have a duty to _yourself_. You were given a brain
and a soul, as well as a body. You can easily see the need of feeding
your body: the need of feeding your brain and soul are equally necessary.
Why were they given to you? To starve?
No pen, however powerful, no voice, however eloquent, can present in
the full force of its true colors the value of intellectual and moral
development to the housewife, the woman, the home-maker. Religion is
not a subject for our Department. The matter of creed is for each one
to settle for herself. But in those questions of ethics and social
morals that arise in any household and generally have, after all, their
foundation in religion, and in all those questions of intellectual living
and growth, this Department of ours does have its field and its purpose.
Why? Because, as I said, a _home_, a _real_ home, has its moral and
intellectual sides as well as its material side. Because even its
material side, the everyday round of duties, cannot be made what it
should be unless brain and soul are made fit to direct the body. Because
as wives, mothers, daughters, sisters we are responsible for the members
of our family, and for ourselves as human souls. It is not enough to
bring a child into the world and then feed it, wash it, dress it, give
it a place to sleep, and one day say to it: “We have raised you. Go
forth and make your living.” Of course not. We all know that, though
goodness knows there are plenty of people who don’t do even that much.
It is not enough to furnish a clean, warm house and three meals a day
to the bodies of your husband, parents, brothers or sisters. They could
get that much at a boarding-house or hotel. They, and you, must have
moral and mental food, baths, clothes and beds as well as physical ones—a
_home_—not merely a house. We cannot give what we don’t have. To furnish
these things to them we must first get them ourselves.
Then we should give heed to moral and intellectual living and growth
because it is our _duty_. There is another reason—because it is for our
own happiness and pleasure.
It was once my privilege to go over a thousand or two letters from people
who, after becoming members of a great and good system of education by
correspondence, had written in the fullness of their hearts to tell how
it had made their lives brighter and happier and to thank the school,
not as much for the knowledge they had acquired from their reading
and study at home, but for the great pleasure and joy the _having_ of
this knowledge had brought them—for the _new intellectual, social and
moral life_ that had come to them with it. The letters came from all
over the English-speaking world, but I was most struck by the fact that
a large part of them came from housewives. The following is a fair
sample of hundreds from farmers’ wives, laborers’ wives, clerks’ wives,
business-mens’ wives:
“Life has been a new thing to me since I took up your course.
My housework used to be an awful drudgery—a never-ending grind.
Now it is easy and I do it better, for my mind has _something
outside to think about_ and be interested in.”
The wording wasn’t alike in any two, but, in every one of the hundreds
written, there was the same idea—“something outside to think about and be
interested in.” This was the note sounded in nearly every one of all the
letters from men and women both. Some were women living many miles from
the nearest neighbor, some were bed-ridden invalids, some factory girls,
some servants, a few fashionable “society women,” some of the men, lonely
sheep-herders on the Western plains, some naval officers, some this, some
that, but one and all gave thanks from grateful hearts for a lift out of
the rut of daily drudgery, for a broader horizon, for greater usefulness.
I cried over some of those letters. They came straight from the heart if
ever anything did.
That was the voice of _experience_, not the voice of theory. What they
could do, we can do. We are not going to have any study courses or any
lessons to learn. There will be nothing any of us _has_ to do. But I
believe each of us is going to think things over, talk it over and then
make herself some spare moments, if she hasn’t some already, and set to
work to make life a better thing for herself and those dear to her by
getting “something outside to think about.”
How am I going to bring this about? Oh, _I_ am not going to do
it—_we_ are! I have no idea of going into any house and saying, “Do
that this way, and do this that way.” All of us are going to help by
making suggestions, by giving experiences, by offering interesting
bits of information. It is for you to decide which of these _you_ can
use. The thing to be desired above all others is that each of us may
learn to _think for herself_. Many think for themselves very keenly
already—perhaps more keenly than I do—and these are the very ones that
can help the rest of us most; but we can all think better, if we all
think together.
By the next number, April, which will come out March 25, there ought to
be a fair number of questions and suggestions from our readers. Don’t
forget that the best suggestion or bit of information sent in each month
entitles the sender to a year’s free subscription, to any name and
address desired. And remember that another free year’s subscription goes
every month to the person, man or woman, who sends us the best true story
of heroic living in common everyday life. The notices elsewhere in our
Department give the particulars.
How are we going to get “something outside to think about?” Well, there
are plenty of things outside and there are plenty of ways of bringing
them into our lives. Each of us will find some things and some ways—all
by herself if she will try and then she can tell the rest of us about
them—but in our Department each month we can take one set of things, see
whether there isn’t something of value there for us, ask questions, make
suggestions, try experiments, offer bits of information, talk about it
with our families, think about it while we are working and while we are
resting or amusing ourselves, bring new things into our lives. I am not
going to set up as a teacher and there isn’t going to be any course of
study. There is only one thing I claim to know that some of you don’t
know—that we, any of us, can make our lives brighter and more valuable by
feeding our minds as well as our bodies. I know this by experience—not
only by my own experience and that of my two daughters but also by the
experiences of scores and hundreds of other women I have known and,
perhaps, helped a little. I never talked to anyone in print before, but
for many, many years, ever since one golden day when I discovered that I
was actually making my own life happier and fuller and less ugly by an
effort to feed my starving mind in my few spare moments, I have never
missed a chance to do what I could to show other women how they could
get the same blessing for themselves.
In this number we will talk and think about reading and what it can do
for us if we go about it right. Next month we will consider woman’s
interest in politics. After that there are many more subjects—flowers,
trees, gardens, stock, other animals, history and women in history,
business and women in business, painting and women artists, women’s
clubs and study circles, customs of other nations, food, correspondence
courses, music and women musicians, and hundreds of other subjects. I
want you to help me select the subjects as we go along.
* * * * *
_IS READING WORTH WHILE?_
“In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in
literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always
modern. New books revive and redecorate new ideas; old books
suggest and invigorate new ideas.”—_Bulwer._
What is reading worth to a busy housewife? “Well,” says one, “it may be
worth a good deal, but I haven’t time to find out.” If this woman knew
there was a twenty-dollar gold-piece to be picked up at the end of a few
minutes walk, would she have time to stop her housework long enough to go
and get it?
What can we get by reading? Maybe only rest, amusement and a “change.”
Maybe this and also some knowledge. Maybe some valuable experience. Are
any of these worth taking time from housework for?
There is surely no need of saying that rest, amusement and change are
necessary in the long run for any kind of work. You save time by taking
a vacation. Somebody has said that anyone can do twelve months work in
eleven, but that no one can do eleven months’ work in twelve, meaning
that we can accomplish more in a year by devoting one month of it to a
sensible vacation.
There can be no doubt that we can gain much knowledge from books. It is
one of the chief sources from which the world gets all that it knows. But
is any of this knowledge worth while for a housewife? If anyone doubts
it, stop and think. How about the Bible, the newspapers, the cook-book?
Is this the only reading from which we can profit? In your own experience
surely you can recall at least a few other books that told you something
you were glad to know.
How do you get _experience_ from reading? Isn’t it safer to learn human
beings and their ways by studying them direct? Yes, and no. It depends on
the book. Perhaps the author can tell you in a few hours more real truth
about men and women than you can learn alone in years.
We have heard so many queer things about “literature” that we are likely
to think of it as fancy things written by a lot of delicate, long-haired
men and masculine women and having very little to do with our own
everyday lives. Well, there are many over-cultured and over-educated
people who would define literature that way. But they are mightily wrong!
The _best_ literature is generally simple, not “fancy.”
Literature is the spoken or written record by which each generation
of mankind is enabled to preserve the knowledge and experience of the
generations before it and to begin where the last one left off instead of
having to begin all over again.
It doesn’t matter whether it is written or only spoken. Indeed, before
man invented the alphabet or even learned to transmit his ideas and
feelings by crude, rough pictures there wasn’t any literature except what
was spoken or recited. The “Iliad” and “Odyssey” of Homer were sung or
recited, long before they were put down on parchment. Our fairy-stories
and legends generally date back hundreds and hundreds of years and were
preserved only by each generation telling them to the next. In later
days, especially during the Middle Ages, many valuable poems and stories,
and even more of history, would have been lost to us forever if wandering
bards and minstrels had not recited or sung them and taught them to
others. There is no way, except literature, by which we can learn from
the past. Did you ever think that our generation has, by itself, added
only a very, very tiny bit to the knowledge existing in the world when
our generation was born? All our great inventions would be impossible
without this previous knowledge.
Of course, literature in its stricter sense is more limited than all the
material covered by the definition above. A dictionary, for example, can
hardly be called literature. A bit of writing or talking to be literature
must show the imprint of the author’s personality and it must have in it
something valuable enough to make it worth preserving. But, in general,
the definition as given gets at the root of the matter, and that is all
we need be concerned with. It shows that literature is not a fad or an
amusement of too highly cultivated people, but one of the biggest and
most valuable things in the world. _We_, no matter who or where we are
or even whether we can read or write, are dependent on literature in our
everyday lives.
How can we tell good literature from bad? Well, it is often pretty hard
to tell about the books and stories of today, but there is a very easy
way of telling about what was written a hundred or a thousand years ago.
Nowadays, when most people can read and write and the printing-press
makes it possible to produce great numbers of books and papers, there
are thousands of people writing all the time and naturally a lot of them
write very poor stuff. We talk about the “best selling books” and go wild
over some new novel. We did the same last month and we’ll do the same
next month.
“What is the most popular novel this month?”
“Oh, ‘So-and-so’ by So-and-so. It’s simply grand!”
“What was the most popular novel last month?”
“Let’s see. Oh, yes—‘So-and-so,’ by So-and-so. It’s a perfectly charming
story.”
“What was the most popular novel a year ago?”
“A _year_ ago? Mercy, I don’t know! There are so many novels now.”
There it is. All the time people are raving about the “latest” book. Like
as not in a year they can’t even remember its name. Why is that? Because,
hardly any of these books are really _good_ literature. Many of them are
interesting and amuse us while we read them, but that’s all. In a year,
or less, we have forgotten them.
Then what _is_ good literature? We can find out this way. Consider
all the books that were written a thousand, a hundred, fifty or even
twenty-five years ago. How many of them are read now? Comparatively very,
very few. Now _why_? Because they weren’t good enough. There is a sure
test for you—if a book lives on after its author is dead and buried you
can be pretty sure that it is good literature. It had something to say
that did more than amuse people for a month. The author had put into
it some little bit of _human nature_, of _human life_, that is as true
for people a hundred years later as it was for those who first read it.
(Mind you, I am talking about novels, stories and plays, about fiction
and poetry, not just about such things as histories which are generally
preserved anyway because of the cold facts in them.) The authors of such
novels or poems have written into them some of their own experience and
observation of _life_. The characters in them are real human beings, and
the feelings, thoughts, passions, sentiments, actions of the characters,
or those expressed by the author without the aid of his characters,
are, in general, the same feelings, thoughts, passions, sentiments and
actions that you and I and our acquaintances have in us today. Therefore
we understand the people in those books and sympathize with them, even
though they may have lived centuries ago, in a foreign land, dressed
in strange clothes, bound by strange customs and outwardly having very
little in common with us. There is only one thing that people are
_always_ interested in—human nature. It is according to whether a book
gives us a true picture of human nature that it lives or dies, that it is
good literature or bad.
With new books now appearing by thousands it is almost impossible to tell
which will live and which will die, which are really good and which are
not. Time is the only sure test. The men talk about Dr. Conan Doyle’s
“Sherlock Holmes” stories now and some of us women like these tales
equally well, but will they be alive in 1975 or not? Emile Gaboriau died
only twenty-three years ago. His detective stories are better ones than
Dr. Conan Doyle’s, but they are no longer read except by the few. Wilkie
Collins wrote novels that made you hold your breath with interest and
were widely read. He has been dead only seventeen years, yet already “The
Moonstone,” “The Woman in White” and his other books are of the past.
Both Gaboriau and Collins have some real merit and will probably always
be read at least slightly, but what of the thousands of other authors who
wrote books twenty-five years ago and whose very names are forgotten?
Among the books that have come down to us from the past we can choose
pretty safely. If they have lived this long we can be sure there is
something worth while in them. I know a few sensible women, some of them
with both time and money, who make it a rule never to read any book until
it has been published a year. If at the end of that period it is still
interesting other people, then they buy it, being pretty sure that it
must have at least some small merit. They say it is surprising how very
few books do remain in the public attention that long.
Now I know just what will happen. Some of you know all I have been saying
as well as I do, but some one is sure to say:
“Oh, yes, that’s all true enough, I suppose, but when I find time to
read, I don’t want to wade through anything heavy.”
Nobody asked you to. Books aren’t “heavy” just because they are good.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s “Marjorie Daw” and “The Story of a Bad Boy,”
Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer,” “Huckleberry Finn” and “Innocents Abroad” are
certainly far, far from being heavy; so are Charles Kingsley’s “Water
Babies,” De Foe’s “Robinson Crusoe;” so are Dr. Brown’s “Rab, and His
Friends,” Ouida’s “A Dog of Flanders,” though both bring tears to the
eyes; so are the poems of Robert Burns and Longfellow; so are Æsop’s
“Fables,” the stories of Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page; so
are hundreds of others. Yet all these just named are good literature.
If by “heavy” you mean only things that are dull or hard to understand,
the list of good books that are not “heavy” grows tremendously, and
there are still others that may be hard to understand in places but are
nevertheless interesting enough to “amuse” you all the way through.
Shakespeare, George Eliot, Hawthorne, Poe, Tennyson, Stevenson, Dickens,
Thackeray, Whittier, Helen Hunt Jackson, Hugh Conway, Bret Harte,
Augusta J. Evans, Louisa M. Alcott and scores besides are more than
“worth while.” If there are now and then dull or difficult pages in some
of them yet they are all the world away from being “heavy.”
Reading for amusement only is much better than not reading at all. We
need amusement. But there is one danger. If what we read for amusement
happens to be poor literature it is _not true to life_ and you are
learning things about yourself and others that are not true and may lead
you into mistakes some day. You know what dime novels—Wild West and
detective stories—will do to young people. It isn’t only because they
are exciting and deal with crime, but because they give false ideas of
life and false ideals. There are thousands of books, apparently harmless
enough, that will hurt grown people as much as dime novels hurt the
children. There are plenty of books you can read “just for amusement”
which are also very good literature and very good teachers of life. Why
waste time on the poor ones?
When I say a book is good or bad I am not referring to its morals but to
its merit as literature. A hopelessly poor piece of literature may have
excellent morals, and a book that is good literature may be very unsafe
from a moral point of view. The relation of literature to morals is too
big a question for me to discuss. Each of us must steer her own course
in regard to this question. It is, however, helpful to remember that if
the purpose and main lesson of a book are morally good, even though it
may deal a little with questionable subjects, its reading may tend toward
good rather than evil.
_SHOULD WOMEN BE INTERESTED IN POLITICS?_
Next month in the April number we will take up woman’s interest in
politics. Is there any reason for her being interested in them? What
effect do city, state and national laws and law-makers have on her own
personal welfare or that of her family? If she raises children what
effect does that have on future politics? What two great questions now
before the country bear directly on the price she pays for food and
clothing and on the price her husband receives for what he sells or for
his labor? What about the men the voting members of your family help
elect to the state legislature or the national Congress or White House?
(Perhaps if you live in Colorado, you vote for President yourself.) What
about the wives and children of these men? What about the candidates who
were not elected and their families? If there is an election on, ought
you to know which of the candidates are rascals, which represent wrong
principles, which will vote for measures that will make the things you
buy more expensive? Ought you to use your influence against such men?
Let us each see who can send in the best reason for a woman’s being
interested in politics. The answers must be very short, and they must
reach our office before March 10, for the April number, as you know,
appears March 25, and by March 10, at the very latest the printer should
be working on whatever is to go in it. This seems like working a long
ways ahead of time, but the Editor tells me that most magazines by that
time, will be all done with the April number and working on May or June!
So you see you will have to write very quickly to be in time.
[Illustration: _THE INTEREST OF EVERYDAY THINGS._]
We had a glimpse last month at some of the interesting things connected
with bread and bread-making. The house is full of things we have known so
long that we scarcely think of them except as parts of the daily routine,
but which, if we turn our attention to them, prove veritable mines of
information, history, travel and even romance. This month we’ll consider
some of the things concerned in bread-making.
_Wheat_
Wheat, for example, takes us all over the earth and back to the days
before there was any history at all. Wheat, like our other grains,
belongs to the Grass Family and its scientific name is _Triticum
vulgare_. It is the most valuable of all the cereal grasses and, next
to maize, or Indian corn, the most productive. Rice is really its only
rival as a human food. It is generally supposed that it originally came,
like so many of our grains and fruits, from the plains of Central Asia,
but it has been found that a certain wild grass of Western Asia and the
Mediterranean regions, can be cultivated into what we call wheat. It
is the bread-food of most European nations (who, by the way, call it
corn) and is supplanting maize in America. In our country alone 40 or 50
million acres are devoted to it every year, and the yield is a million
or so over half a billion bushels. Generally, one-fifth to two-fifths
of this is sent to other countries. Russia, Canada and other countries
produce large quantities of it.
Wheat was widely grown in the pre-historic world. As far back as there
is any record of languages there was a word for wheat. We know that
the Chinese (who knew about gunpowder, printing, glass, spectacles
and many other things centuries before we “invented” them) cultivated
wheat as far back as 2,700 B. C., and regarded it as a direct gift from
heaven. The Egyptians attributed wheat to their heathen goddess Isis.
The Greeks believed that Ceres, their goddess of agriculture, gave it to
her favorite, Triptolemus, and lent him her miraculous chariot to drive
over the earth and distribute the new grain to the sons of men. There
is a pyramid in Egypt, which scientists estimate was built 3,359 years
before Christ was born, more than 5,000 years ago, and in one of the
bricks of this pyramid they found imbedded a little grain of wheat. How
much that single grain told the world! The lake-dwellers of Switzerland
and Italy also left traces showing they knew the use of wheat, as did the
inhabitants of what is now Hungary, in the Stone Age.
There are more cultivated varieties of wheat than of any other grain, the
number running up into the hundreds. New varieties are generally secured
by taking the pollen from tiny flowers of one variety and putting it on
the pistil of another, so that the resulting seeds, while they take after
both parents, produce a new variety unlike either of them. This process
of cross-breeding has been made to produce marvelous results not only
in other grains, but in fruits, nuts, flowers and trees, as any of you
who are familiar with the work of Mr. Luther Burbank, the “California
Wizard,” know.
_Flour_
Flour, being generally a product of wheat, has had much the same history,
but the process of milling has a little story of its own. The earliest
mills consisted merely of two stones, one round, the other hollowed
out. The grain was placed in the hollow and then crunched into small
bits by the round stone. Later on, man thought of putting a handle on
the round stone, making something like a mortar and pestle. Another and
later way of improving this crude mill, was to groove the round stone
and make it fit into a fairly deep hole in the under stone, with a place
for the ground meal to come out. This is called a quern. You have heard
of someone’s being “caught between the upper and nether mill-stones.”
In Deuteronomy (XXIV, 6,) we find this: “No man shall take the upper or
nether mill-stone to pledge, for he taketh a man’s life to pledge.” In
Numbers (XI, 8), “ground it in mills or beat it in a mortar” shows that
the children of Israel, knew both kinds of mill, and other passages show
that they had at least two kinds of meal or flour.
The Romans used only the mortar and pestle, and until 173 B. C. the poor
woman did all the work. Then baking became a regular occupation, and the
bakers were called _pistores_, which means “pounders.” When the Romans
conquered Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Britain
they took their customs with them. The hand-mill was followed by one
with animal power, and later by one with water-power. As late as 1800 A.
D. there were to be found in remote parts of Scotland and Ireland crude
mills made of two large stones ground against each other by running or
falling water.
The wheat grain is really not a seed, but a fruit, for it is composed
not only of the true seed, but of the seed and its husk or covering. The
two considered together, make what botanists call a “fruit.” In modern
milling this husk is generally separated from the seed and made into
bran, while the seed becomes flour. When the two are mixed we have “whole
wheat” flour.
Good flour, should be a pure, uniform white powder, only faintly tinged
with yellow, free from grits and lumps, should show some adhesiveness
when pressed, should have no smell of damp and moldiness or any acidity
of taste.
Most flour now, is “new process” flour, made by a gradual crushing
between sets of rollers revolved by water-power, steam or electricity.
The “new process” originated in Hungary and France and began to be
generally adopted about 1880.
_Yeast_
Yeast is a vegetable. Strange as it may seem, yeast is a tiny fungus
growth, though it takes a microscope to see it. In brewing (particularly
with hops), in wine-making and in any other process of fermentation
where the liquid contains some sugar and some albuminous matter, the
clear liquid becomes “muddy.” Then the minute things that made it muddy
collect into a foaming, bitter mass which is yeast. This yeast has the
power of setting up fresh fermentation when put with other things. It is
fermentation that makes bread-dough “raise.” Oh, yes, there is alcohol
in bread-dough, but it doesn’t stay there. As I told you last month,
12,000,000 gallons of alcohol are made and lost in bread-making every
year in Germany alone! Some day scientists will learn how to save it.
_Hops_
We generally think of hops when yeast is mentioned. I wish any of you who
can tell us the story of hops would send it in to our Department.
_Salt_
How could we cook, or eat, or live without salt? It is an absolute
necessity for people and animals. Also, it is very valuable as a
fertilizer, and was used as such centuries and centuries ago by the
Hindoos and Chinese. Further than this, soda is derived from salt, and as
soda is necessary in making both glass and soap, these two useful things
could not be made if it were not for salt. Most of our modern textile
fabrics are more or less dependent on chlorine, which is made from salt.
We all know how valuable salt is as a preservative for butter, meats and
other animal food, and now they are learning a way to preserve timber
with it. We know, too, its use in freezing ice cream, but may not realize
how much it is used for refrigerating other things. In short, even if we
could live at all without it, life would be pretty miserable.
The chemists call salt _chloride of sodium_ and use this symbol for it—Na
Cl, which shows what it is composed of, but doesn’t mean anything to me.
We get salt in three ways—from rock-salt mines, from natural brine
springs and from evaporating sea water. The world’s biggest rock-salt
mines are in Gallicia, upper Austria, Bavaria, Hungary, Transylvania,
Wallachia; at Vic and Dienze, France; at Bix, Switzerland; at Cadrona,
Spain, and at Cheshire, England. That at Wieliczka in Gallicia is a mile
long, three-fourths of a mile wide and over a thousand feet deep. Some
of its chambers are 150 feet high—as high as a sky-scraper—and one of
them is fitted up as a chapel to St. Anthony, the altar, statues and
everything being solid salt. In this mine is a lake 650 feet long and
40 feet deep. There are horses there that have never seen the light of
day, and men, women and children who live in salt houses and never see
the outside world above their heads. It is a small village buried down
under the ground. When the emperor and his family visit the mine, it is
brilliantly illuminated and a grand festival is held in a great hall.
In Africa are large beds of salt land, beds of rock-salt and a lake
covered at times with a shining white crust of pure salt two feet thick.
France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and some Mediterranean islands are the
chief producers of sea-salt. In China there are salt wells of great depth
and number.
In Spain, France and other countries salt is a government monopoly, and
no one else can sell it. Travelers tell me they have seen salt lakes in
Spain where the people living along the shores were prevented by the
_guardia civile_, or national police, from picking up the salt deposited
in large quantities at the water’s edge. They had to buy it of the
government. The poor use salt sparingly over there even now, and you may
remember that the heavy tax on salt was one cause of the awful French
Revolution.
In our country nearly every state has salt deposits of some kind.
Virginia furnishes lots of rock-salt. The most important salt springs are
in Onondaga County, New York, and furnish nearly half of what the country
uses. The state owns them and gets a royalty of one cent a bushel.
Michigan produces about twenty million bushels a year.
[Illustration: _VARIOUS HINTS._]
_Removing Grease Spots_
To remove a grease-spot from cloth, lay a piece of clean blotting paper
over the spot and then pass a hot iron back and forth over blotter. As
the grease is melted and soaked into the blotter, cover the stain with a
fresh part of the blotter and continue the operation until the stain has
disappeared.
_Dish-Mop_
The little dish-washing mop is a comparatively recent invention, but its
use is increasing as its advantages are learned by experience. It is
merely a handle about ten inches long with a miniature mop, smaller than
your clenched fist, at the end. With very little trouble a home-made one
can be arranged, which is practically as good as the store ones, though
the latter can be bought for ten or fifteen cents. The little mop saves
the hand from going into the water so much, answers every purpose of the
old dish-rag, and can, like the cloth, be cleaned by vigorous boiling.
_Spice Cabinets_
The little tin or wooden cabinets, now on sale in large quantities at the
bigger stores, with from four to twelve small drawers for spices, are
great space-savers and time-savers. The only objection is that, despite
the label on each drawer, the busy cook is sometimes likely to get hold
of the wrong one.
_Soup-Stock_
If soup-stock is put to cool in an earthware vessel, instead of a metal
one, much better results are obtained. It is claimed that this is one of
the secrets of the excellent soups the French are famous for.
_A Fuel Saver_
If one uses a gas stove, a single burner can be made to do several
times its ordinary work by means of a thin sheet of iron, about a foot
square, placed directly over it. The flame spreads out against this sheet
and renders its whole area available for cooking, so that two, three
or even four small vessels can get from this one burner enough heat
to boil water, or at least to keep the contents warm against the time
for serving. No more gas is used than when a single vessel is allotted
to each burner. It is possible to buy a sheet of iron, an eighth or a
quarter of an inch thick, made expressly for this purpose, the edges
being turned down to raise it about half an inch from the surface of the
stove.
_Table Mats_
Asbestos, bought in large pieces, cut into round, oval or square mats,
and either covered daintily or placed under regular table-mats, makes
not only an economical protection for a polished table against hot
dishes, but a very sure one.
_Coal Oil and Gasoline_
If you are in the habit of starting a fire by pouring coal-oil on the
kindling, break yourself of it. You may do it safely fifteen hundred
times and be blown up the next. Coal-oil will not even burn if you drop
a match in a barrel of it, but if you spread it out in any way (as on
a lamp-wick) it will not only burn but the gas thus formed will often
explode with terrific force. Never fill a coal-oil lamp while it is
burning.
Gasoline is still more dangerous. If the fire insurance inspector finds
out that you keep even a small bottle of it in the house, he will have
your policy cancelled immediately, unless you have paid extra for a
special clause permitting you to keep a small amount on the premises.
I knew a physician who was killed and blown clear across the street by
the explosion of gasoline in a saucer, which was being used for cleaning
spots on the carpet of a house he was visiting. The vapor caught fire
from an open grate two rooms away from where the saucer had been left.
Gasoline is an excellent cleaner, but if you use it, do so out of doors.
Let no one come near with a lighted match or cigar, and throw away any
of the liquid that may be left. As an explosive, gasoline is much more
powerful than gunpowder.
_A Cheap Shower Bath_
Five feet of rubber tubing and a ten-cent spray will make as good a
shower-bath apparatus for the bath-tub as any one could ask. The stem
of the spray will twist into one end of the tubing and if the bath-tub
faucet has the right kind of attachment it will twist into the other end,
making a long flexible shower-spray that will prove an unending comfort.
If the faucet hasn’t the right kind of nozzle to fit a hose, one can be
purchased from the plumber or hardware store for very little. Besides
the pleasure and comfort a spray gives, there is the added satisfaction
of thoroughly cleaning the body with perfectly clean water before drying
with the towel.
_A Warmer Bed_
If you continue to feel cold in bed even after piling on a mountain of
covers, turn your attention underneath. A feather-bed lets no cold reach
you from below, and a box-mattress is often nearly as good a protection,
but an ordinary mattress, even a good one, is very likely to let the cold
through. If you don’t use a comforter under the sheet, for the sake of
the mattress and for greater softness to the body, put one there for
warmth. If this is not enough, spread several layers of newspaper or
wrapping paper between this comfort and the mattress. It will crackle
under your weight for a time, but it will keep you warm and cosy.
_Hanging Pictures_
If you are hanging a picture from a nail in the wall instead of from the
picture-molding, you can save the wall by using a very small, thin wire
nail. If it is driven in without “wobbling” and downward at a narrow
angle with the wall a small nail will hold a surprisingly large picture.
_Save your Eyes_
Do not sleep with a strong light shining into your eyes. In sleep the
eyes are relaxed and, closed though they are, suffer from too strong
a light. The sun shining into them before you wake in the morning is
especially bad. Never read or put the eyes to a strain before breakfast.
_To Reduce Weight_
A physician gives the following foods as a broad and common-sense diet
for those wishing to reduce their flesh: lean mutton and beef, veal and
lamb, soups not thickened, beef-tea and broth, poultry, game, fish and
eggs, bread in moderation, greens, cresses, lettuce, etc., green peas,
cabbage, cauliflower, onions, fresh fruit without sugar.
_Peeling Onions_
It is said that if when peeling onions one holds a needle or any small
piece of polished steel between the teeth, the steel will attract the
acid fumes of the onion and save the eyes.
_To Keep Lemons_
1. Cover with buttermilk or sour milk and change once a week. This will
also freshen dry lemons.
2. Put in clean white cask or jar, cover with cold water, change every
other day and keep in a cool place. This method will keep lemons fresh
for months.
_To Clean Knives_
Many are unfamiliar with this old-time method: Take even portions of fine
coal ashes and soda, mix with a little water, rub the knives briskly with
the preparation, wash in tepid water without soap, and wipe dry.
_Floor Polish_
One quart turpentine, six ounces yellow beeswax, four ounces white resin.
Melt the beeswax and resin together over a _slow_ fire and when partly
cool add the turpentine. Bottle for use.
[Illustration: _HEROISM AT HOME._]
_A PRIZE FOR THE BEST TRUE STORY._
_Every month the Department will publish a little story of heroism in
the home—not any one act of heroism, but the tale of how some one lived
heroically, lived self-sacrifice, in everyday life. It must be true and
must be about somebody you know or have known or know definitely about.
It must not have over 500 words. The shorter, the better. Whoever sends
in the best story each month will not only have it printed but will
receive a year’s subscription to WATSON’S MAGAZINE sent to any name you
choose. Tell your story simply and plainly._
[Illustration: _THE MONTH’S MEMENTO._]
The Wickedness of Worry
“Worry is one of the worst curses of modern life. I say of modern life,
not because people a thousand years ago did not worry, because as
civilization advances men become more highly strung, more sensitive, and
less capable of detachment. Thus, we often say, in a very expressive
phrase, that a thing ‘gets upon our nerves.’ Something distressing
happens to us, and we cannot shake it off. Some one treats us rudely,
harshly, or unkindly, and the word or deed rankles in our minds. We think
it over until it is magnified into a grievous and intentional insult.
We take it to bed with us, and no sooner is the light put out than we
begin to recall it, and turn over in our minds all the circumstances
that occasioned it. We sleep feverishly, haunted all the time with the
sense of something disagreeable. We wake, and the accursed thing is still
rankling in our minds. This is one form of worry, which is very common
among people of sensitive minds.
Another form of worry is the tendency to brood over past errors. The
business man, or the public man, is suddenly overwhelmed with the
conviction that he has made an awful mess of things. The worst of all
calamities is the lack of energy to grapple with calamity, and in most
cases it is worry that breaks down a man’s energy.
A third, and perhaps a more common form of worry, is the gloomy
anticipation of future calamities. There are some men who, however
happy they may be today, are perpetually frightening themselves with
the possibilities of a disastrous tomorrow. They live in terror. When
actual sorrow comes upon us, most of us discover unexpected resources of
fortitude in ourselves. But nothing sickens the heart so much as imagined
sorrow. Of this form of worry we may well say, “It’s wicked!”
I have no doubt that most of my readers know by experience what some of
these things mean. No doubt also many of them have many real causes for
anxious thought, and they will ask me how I propose to deal with it.
One of the best ways is to be content to live a day at a time. Sydney
Smith counsels us with rich wisdom to take short views of life. Each day
is an entity in itself. It is rounded off by the gulf of sleep; it has
its own hours which will never return; it stands separate, with its own
opportunities and pleasures. Make the most of them.
Another good and simple rule is never to take our griefs to bed with
us. ‘Easy to say, but how difficult to do,’ will be replied. But it is
largely a matter of will and habit.
John Wesley once said that he would as soon steal as worry, for each
was equally a sin. To worry is wasteful and foolish; we have also to
recollect that it is wicked.”—_W. J. Dawson._
[Illustration: _RECIPES, OLD AND NEW._]
_Lemon Pie (Old)_
Two lemons, five eggs, two teaspoonsful of melted butter, eight large
spoonsful of white sugar. Squeeze the juice of both lemons and grate the
rind of one. Stir together the yolks of three eggs and the white of one,
with the sugar, juice and rind, beat well, add one coffee-cup of cream
and beat well for a few minutes longer. Pour the mixture into the waiting
crust dough. Bake until pastry is done. Meanwhile beat the remaining
whites of eggs to a stiff froth and stir in four spoonsful of white
sugar. Spread on top and brown slightly. This is enough for two pies.
_Simple Pudding_
(No eggs or milk needed) Slice some good bread rather thick, cutting away
the crust. Butter on both sides, lay in a deep dish and fill it up with
molasses after seasoning with ginger, cinnamon or lemon.
_Irish Potato Pie (Old)_
Two good pints of potatoes after they are boiled and mashed. Put through
a sieve while warm. Add small cup of butter, milk enough to make a
batter. Cinnamon, lemon, spices and sugar to taste. Four eggs beaten
separately, stirring in the whites after the yokes. This is enough for
four pies.
[Illustration: _BOOKS_
_BY Thomas E. Watson._]
=The Social Secretary.= By David Graham Phillips. The
Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis.
An exceedingly clever novel, dealing chiefly with the effort of a
Congressional family to break into good society in Washington, D. C. The
Congressman is a Western man with a lot of money, and with a wife who has
lots of horse sense and a sound heart.
They need a pilot to steer them into the realms of fashion and influence.
To this position comes a beautiful, spirited and accomplished girl who
belongs to a well-known family which is eminently respectable but is in
reduced circumstances.
The campaign mapped out by the Social Secretary in behalf of the
Congressional family is finally crowned with success, and the heroine
marries the son of the Congressman, as a natural, logical result.
In the course of the campaign, the author gives us many an enlightening
glimpse of what goes on in Washington “behind the scenes.” This little
item for instance: When President Roosevelt is called away from the
dinner-table by some urgent matter which requires instant attention, Mrs.
Roosevelt, all the ladies, and all the gentlemen rise as the President
rises and remain standing until he returns.
I, for one, was quite surprised to know that our sturdy lion-hunter,
bronco-busting President had fallen into snobbery of that description. I
hope it isn’t so.
=A Maker of History.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. Little, Brown &
Co., Boston, Mass.
A book which catches hold of you and takes you right along. It is
original in its plot, dramatic in its incidents, absorbingly interesting
in its narrative.
A young Englishman, by accident, happens to witness a meeting between
the Emperor of Germany and the Czar of Russia—a meeting which elaborate
precautions had been taken to keep secret. Another accident puts into the
possession of the young Englishman a page of the secret treaty between
the two Emperors. The scheme of this treaty is that Russia shall give
England a _casus belli_, that Germany shall come to the assistance of
Russia, and that Great Britain shall be despoiled. The young Englishman
is suspected, and his footsteps are dogged by German spies. Later he
talks imprudently in a Parisian restaurant, and becomes an object
of intense interest to the French Secret Service. He suddenly and
mysteriously disappears. His sister arrives in Paris, is astonished at
the disappearance of her brother, and starts out to search for him. Then
the sister disappears.
After a time everything turns out happily for hero and heroine, but in
the meanwhile many an event of thrilling interest happens to keep the
reader wide awake and wondering what the outcome will be.
=The Greatest Trust in the World.= By Charles Edward Russell.
The Ridgway-Thayer Company, New York City.
This book is made up of the articles which were published in _Everybody’s
Magazine_, and which created such a profound impression by their calm,
relentless exposure of the most cruel and most lawless and most despotic
Trust on earth. Not even the Standard Oil Company grinds the common
people as the Beef Trust does, for the latter deals with food products
which are indispensable to life, and the Beef Trust can and does say to
the people, “Pay my price or die.”
The book treats of the might of this monopoly; of the great yellow car,
the bandit of commerce; of the manner in which the Trust intimidates the
railroads; of the manner in which the Federal Government white-washed the
Trust; of the union between rotten business and rotten politics.
It is a book that all should study.
=American Diplomacy.= By John Bassett Moore. Harper & Brothers,
Publishers, New York City.
My own impression has been that “American Diplomacy” has never amounted
to much, and I cannot say that Dr. Moore’s book has convinced me to the
contrary.
The only apparent triumph of American Diplomacy was the securing of
French aid in the Revolutionary War; and as to that most students
will agree that “diplomacy” had nothing to do with it. France saw an
opportunity to strike at her hereditary foe, Great Britain, and she sent
an emissary to the American Congress to drop certain hints which led to
the sending of Dean, Lee and Franklin to Paris. Where France was already
so eager, “diplomacy” could claim no triumph.
It is to be regretted that Dr. Moore fails to mention John Laurens in
connection with French aid. The fact is that Washington and Congress
became dissatisfied with Franklin, and that John Laurens was despatched
to France to hurry matters up. He did so. He got the money with which
Washington made the decisive Yorktown Campaign, and brought it home with
him. Surely Dr. Moore ought to have mentioned the name of John Laurens.
In the famous Jay treaty, “American Diplomacy” made a craven surrender to
Great Britain, and in the Treaty of Ghent we certainly won no laurels.
Andrew Jackson and his Southern volunteers threw the only crumb of
comfort which the situation could boast when they shot the life out of
Wellington’s veterans at New Orleans.
In the various negotiations concerning the Northwestern boundary,
“American Diplomacy” has yielded up an Empire to British bluff and
shrewdness. During the Civil War, “American Diplomacy” ate humble pie
with a vengeance more than once; and even in the Venezuelan affair when
Cleveland’s attitude seemed so heroic, England, it would appear, packed
the arbitration board and got pretty much everything that she wanted.
In the last tilt between us and the mother country, touching the Canadian
boundary, we were assured that the arbitration was a mere matter of form,
and that Great Britain could not possibly get anything at all. Yet when
the award was made, it developed that Great Britain had got slices of
stuff all along the line—the land line and the water line.
American Diplomacy?
Bah!
Look at the manner in which Great Britain used us as her depot of
supplies during the Boer War.
She held John Hay in the hollow of her hand, and with our aid crushed the
republics of South Africa.
=Fables and Symbols.= By Clemence De La Baere, Sacramento, Cal.
Those who love truth and humor served up in the literary form of the
fable, will find this an entertaining little volume. There is much wit
and wisdom packed away in these stories; and they reveal a thorough
knowledge of human nature and of present conditions.
=Garrison the Non-Resistant.= By Ernest Crosby. The Public
Publishing Co., Chicago.
When a Southern writer eulogizes such a bitter foe to his people as was
William Lloyd Garrison, his words will bear the same discount as must be
given to the words of a Southern ex-Brigadier, when he goes North and
tells pleased audiences, “I am glad you whipped us.”
The truth is the South does not love Garrison and is _not_ glad she was
“whipped.”
When Mr. Crosby frankly states, as he does in this book, that Garrison
had no sympathy whatever for the sufferings of the white laborers of
the land, he put his finger upon the trait which caused Garrison’s great
unpopularity in the South.
He was narrow and fanatical, and while he hated slavery for its own sake,
he hated the South about as much as he hated slavery.
Wendell Phillips, after the negro was freed, went on broadening in the
scope of his sympathies and his work. He became one of the stalwart
champions of the rights of white labor. He studied its case, denounced
its wrongs, demanded better things for the millions of toilers who were
being exploited and destroyed by insatiable commercial greed.
Not so Garrison. The negro freed, the South reeking with her own
life-blood, her homes in ashes, her soul crushed in utter desolation,
Garrison was happy. His work was done. White men, white women, white
children might groan and suffer and die in a worse slavery than had
afflicted the blacks of the South, but Garrison did not sympathize—did
not lift a finger, did not utter a word in their behalf. Another trait in
Garrison’s character was just the trait to stir the dislike of a Southern
man. He carried to such an extent his doctrine of non-resistance, that
he declared he “would not defend by force his own wife in case of an
assault.” In other words, rather than forcibly resist the criminal who
sought to violate his own wife, he would stand idly by and permit the
crime to be committed. I do not know how many Northern men endorse a
sentiment of that kind. In my judgment they are few, very few. But I
do know that there is not a respectable man in the South or West, who
would not feel disgraced by the utterance of such a doctrine. Mr. Crosby
deserves great credit for his courage and candor in admitting that while
slavery was wrong, the war waged upon the South was wrong. Of course it
was wrong. The whole negro race, here and throughout the earth, were not
worth the frightful cost of the Civil War. Mr. Crosby’s book would have
been more valuable had he omitted the last two chapters. The author is a
very talented man but he cannot get to know the true status of the South
by listening to the talk of loafers in the office of the hotel where he
happens to stop.
=Sidney Lanier.= By Edwin Mims. Houghton, Mifflin & Company,
Boston and New York.
A more interesting biographical work than this it would be difficult to
name.
The author is temperate in his estimate of the genius of his subject, and
relates the life struggles of the Georgia poet with sympathetic spirit.
As the years go by the fame of Sidney Lanier will grow. That he
wrote some poems which have little merit is true; that his peculiar
and unfortunate mannerism mars the beauty of other poems which do
possess merit is also true; but after all this is conceded, it can be
confidently claimed that he sometimes rose to the heights of Keats and
Shelley, and that his art sometimes equalled the marvelous skill of Edgar
Poe.
Here and there, throughout Lanier’s poems, can be found gems of thought
and expression which in loftiness, purity and exquisite form lose nothing
by comparison with the higher work of the best English poets.
Nor will the story of his life ever lose interest. It is so full of
innate nobility; he met the most exacting duties so cheerily, so bravely;
he fought the battle for bread with such manly confidence, such sweet
sympathy for others; he gave to the world so much more than he asked from
it; he was so independent and yet so companionable; he so long held at
bay, with buoyant pluck, the ghastly White Terror, Consumption; he was
so refined and strong and lovable and valiant and nobly aspiring that
always and everywhere the simple facts in the life of this Georgia boy,
Confederate soldier, painstaking lawyer, aspiring author, heaven-endowed
musician, original poet, will move the hearts of men to respect, to
sympathy, to admiration and love.
=Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama.= By Walter L.
Fleming. The Columbia University Press, New York, Publishers.
The Macmillan Company, Agents.
All things considered, this is the most valuable contribution that has
yet been made to the literature of the Reconstruction Era.
The book contains some 800 pages, and the mass of important data is a
monument to the industry of the author.
Not only are we given a full account of the manner in which Secession was
brought about, not only do we get the story of military operations during
the Civil War and Carpet-Bag operations afterward, but we are given
illuminating pictures of social and economic conditions, the unspeakable
rottenness of negro government; the cotton frauds and stealings; the
troubles in the churches; the movements of the Ku Klux Klan (which Tom
Dixon most unaccountably traces back to the clan life of Scotland); the
struggles of the native whites to throw off the carpet-bag and negro
yoke; the upbuilding of an educational system; the gradual creation of a
new industrial system; and the final triumphant vindication of Alabama of
the right of local self-government and white supremacy.
Mr. Fleming has done a great and beneficent work in the gathering of the
mass of facts which he embodies in this volume.
Compared to his, every other book on the same subject seems fragmentary.
=Frenzied Finance.= By Thomas Lawson. The Ridgway-Thayer Co.,
New York.
No matter what Mr. Lawson’s motive may have been, he has done a public
service in the exposure of the methods of Wall Street which cannot be
overestimated. For thirty years the story which Lawson has told has been
asking for an audience. Time and again, books and magazine articles were
published warning the people of the ways of the system. As far back as
the days of Peter Cooper, loud voices of clear-eyed men were raised in
the effort to rouse public attention. The literature of the Greenback
movement, of the Farmers’ Alliance movement, and of the People’s Party
movement was full of notes of warning, full of statements of fact exactly
on line with Lawson’s revelations.
Why then did the revelations of Lawson sound like a new trumpet and rouse
the country so quickly and so universally? Because Lawson spoke from the
_inside_: because Lawson was one of the kings of finance himself: because
Lawson had played the game himself: because Lawson drew to himself that
peculiar attention which attaches to the witness who “turns State’s
evidence.” A robber who has worn the mask and ridden with the band on
many a midnight marauding foray is always listened to with breathless
interest when he enters the box and tells how the robbery was planned,
how the crime was committed, and now the spoil was divided. This is but
natural. No matter how much proof one may have to establish the guilt of
the accused, one feels, always, that there are details which none but the
criminal can supply. Here Thomas Lawson’s value is beyond dispute and
beyond price. That the methods of Frenzied Finance are substantially what
Lawson says they are, can no longer be a matter of doubt.
“=When You Were a Boy.=” By Edwin L. Sabin. The Baker & Taylor
Co., New York.
It seemed impossible that another successful book on school-life and
boyhood days could be written, but the author has shown how easily
one may be mistaken about a thing of that sort. Here is no story of a
fascinating but impossible “Little Lord Fauntleroy”; here is no coarse,
witless, stupid “Stalky & Co.,” here is no “Huckleberry Finn” or “Tom
Sawyer,” or “Tom Brown,” or “Peck’s Bad Boy,” or “Master William Mitten.”
The hero of “When You Were a Boy”—is you. The author has looked into his
own heart and drawn your picture to life. You had your little “fist and
skull” fights—and here they are in this book. You had a pet dog who did
all sorts of funny, aggravating, endearing things, and then died while
you were off from home; and the author tells of it, intimately. Your
first experience with your father’s shot-gun, your savage rapture over
the first thing you killed—here it is in the book. And the first fishing
trip, the first “party” you attended, the first girl you “saw home,”
the first sweetheart—it is all put down, accurately, vividly. Even that
time—you mean little whelp!—when you determined to punish your parents by
“running away from home,”—the author found it out on you, and you will
hang your head once more, and your eye will dim, as you read about it,
in the book. The author does not preach and does not prose, and does not
sentimentalise—but “When You Were a Boy” is one of the most life-like
delineations of the American boy—his character, his feelings, his habits,
his fun and frolic, his passions, his standards—that has ever been put in
a book.
=Bossism and Monopoly.= By Thomas Carl Spelling. D. Appleton &
Co., New York.
An exposition of the evils of the twins—Bossism and Monopoly. Mr.
Spelling brings the record of trust robbery and boss despotism down to
date, and while he necessarily has to treat the same facts and conditions
which so many other writers have handled, none of them has a firmer grip
upon the subject than he—nor have any of them produced a more essentially
useful book. He is the only writer who has seized upon and utilized the
tremendously important facts set forth by Albert Griffin in the financial
articles which he wrote for this MAGAZINE some months ago. What Mr.
Griffin calls Hocus Pocus Money another may call fictitious values,
unsupported credit, wild-cat inflation, or any other name, but the fact
as first pointed out by Mr. Griffin is that the Privileged Few in the
Banking world are taxing the people to an enormous amount for the use of
bogus money.
Mr. Spelling also deals with the Railroad problem in a masterly way,
advocating, as all sane men will soon be found doing, Government
Ownership.
=The Coming Crisis.= By Gustavus M. Pinckney. Walker, Evans and
Cogswell Co., Charleston, S. C.
This is a book to read closely and to think about. It is full of solid
fact and sound reasoning. Its tone is calm, but its thought is deep, and
it deals with matters of gravest import.
A quotation will give some idea of the scope of the work:
(1) “Society under government naturally tends to fall into two parties,
one attached to the consumption of taxes and increase of power, the other
attached to the decrease of taxes and to the limitation of power.
(2) The tendency of the first party is to absorb the rights and property
of the second: the tendency of the second is to resist the process.
(3) Remaining unchecked, the first will steadily encroach and absorb
until the second is compelled in self-preservation to resist by tendering
the issue of force.”
That’s a clear bold statement and a true one.
Illustrating the method by which the one party appropriates the property
of the other, Mr. Pinckney cites our infamous Tariff System.
“The amount of prices advanced under a 40 per cent. tariff and
_transferred from one private pocket to another_, would ... soon extend
to figures to _dwarf the national debt_.”
Some one has calculated that from Independence to 1861, the amount thus
transferred from private pockets to other private pockets, without
consideration, was something like $2,770,000,000.
The sum so stolen from private pockets by the damnable Tariff, since
1861, and put into other private pockets is a great deal more than the
colossal figures mentioned above.
Mr. Pinckney likewise takes up the National Banker and shows how the
Government allows him advantages over his fellow man that are “utterly
without right, reason, or justification.” After explaining the juggle
which takes place over the bonds, and the notes, he sums it up thus:
“_The people are taxed in order that the privilege of issuing money may
be farmed out to the banks._”
Nobody has ever summed up the iniquity of the National Banking System in
a more startling sentence, and a good Democrat, like Mr. Pinckney, must
have been sorely grieved when he saw every Democratic Senator and every
Democratic Representative unite with the wicked Republicans in 1893-1894
to renew the charters of the National Banks for twenty years.
Space forbids the extending of these comments further. I will only add
that no student of present conditions can afford to miss Mr. Pinckney’s
book.
=Letters and Addresses of Thomas Jefferson.= Edited by Wm.
B. Parker, of Colombia University, and Jonas Viles, of the
University of Missouri. The Unit Book Pub. Co., New York.
When two college professors start out to give the world a new book on
_Thomas_ Jefferson, the world has a right to expect an unusually valuable
book.
Professors Parker and Viles did not undertake an original composition.
Theirs was the simpler task of making a good selection from the letters,
State papers and addresses of Mr. Jefferson. That such a selection should
be a success, it was necessary that the compilers acquaint themselves
intimately with all that Jefferson wrote, and that the selections made
should fairly represent _Jefferson himself_—Jefferson the man, the
scholar, the farmer, the builder, the inventor, the advanced thinker, the
man of bold speculative ideas, the statesman, the student of social and
industrial problems.
Have our learned professors done this?
Mr. Jefferson’s book, “Notes on Virginia,” contains more than 300
pages. It is full of his most characteristic thinking. It displays the
working of his mind on matters great and small, social, racial, historic
practical and speculative.
Our Professors quote eight pages from the book, wherein Mr. Jefferson
discusses Religion, Slavery and American Genius—three subjects only.
These are important quotations, but what a pity it is that the Professors
did not quote Jefferson’s profound study of the Indians, their physical
and mental peculiarities, their mode of life, their love of their
children, their fortitude under suffering, their undying loyalty to
friends, their skill and bravery in war, their eloquence in council,
their system of tribal government. Mr. Jefferson wrote nothing more
interesting than this account of the Indians of Virginia. It was in this
that he reproduced and handed down to posterity that gem of oratory which
we boys used to “speak” at school—“Logan’s speech” sent to Lord Dunmore.
On page 166 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson gives a concise and
comprehensive statement of the wrongs which the colonies suffered at
the hands of the King. Inasmuch as we have developed a school of Tory
historians who make light of the American grievances, it might have been
a good thing had the Professors quoted Mr. Jefferson’s summary of those
grievances.
On page 172 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson makes a remarkable prediction
of the manner in which abuses will creep into our Government, and he
solemnly warns his countrymen to combat these abuses “before they shall
have gotten hold on us.”
Inasmuch as the abuses which Mr. Jefferson dreaded have gotten hold on
us, his prophecy, published more than a hundred years ago, deserves a
place in any collection of Jefferson’s works.
On page 216 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson has a word to say on popular
self-government which every American boy should read as soon as he
becomes a voter. I am sorry the Professors left it out.
The most powerful chapter in the “Notes on Virginia,” is that beginning
on page 228 and ending on page 235. As it stands written, it is a
masterpiece. To spoil a good thing is easy; and the Professors spoilt the
best chapter in Jefferson’s book by cutting out only a portion of it for
use, and not the best part at that.
On page 240 of the “Notes” is Mr. Jefferson’s splendid tribute to the
working classes of the rural communities—but the Professors seemingly
attached no value to it.
What could have been more timely than the re-publication of Mr.
Jefferson’s magnificent plea against War, and against Militarism, which
covers pages 253, 254, and 255 of the “Notes”? The Professors could not
have embraced in their collection anything of greater intrinsic and
eternal value than this, and they have given much space to matter which,
compared to this, is mere trash.
I have neither the time nor the patience to compare the letters which
these Professors have collected with those which they have left out.
If they selected the letters in the same spirit that they culled from
the “Notes,” their compilation is just as far from doing justice to Mr.
Jefferson as “The True Thomas Jefferson,” by W. E. Curtis, was from the
truth. There is no American book of the same size that contains more
errors than Curtis’s “True Jefferson;” and when I saw that these two
Professors had named that book as one of their authorities—well, you can
see for yourself how it stimulated my attention.
=Democracy in the South Before the Civil War.= By G. W. Dyer,
M. A., Pub. House of the M. E. Church South. Nashville, Tenn.
The author modestly calls this a compendium of a more comprehensive work
which will be published later.
It is an exceedingly valuable study. The author has dug up a lot of
buried treasure. His refutation of many unfounded opinions concerning
social economic and political conditions in the South prior to the Civil
War is supported by a diligence of research that gather all the necessary
evidence.
Among other facts of importance which Mr. Dyer establishes, Prof. John
Bach McMaster to the contrary notwithstanding, are:
(1) There was no land monopoly in the South. On the contrary there was a
better pro rata distribution of land than in the free States.
(2) Manual labor was not a badge of disgrace. On the other hand, the
white population of the South was engaged in all kinds of manual labor,
excepting menial service.
(3) The South had a larger number of miles of railroads in 1860 in
proportion to her free population than the rest of the country.
(4) In 1860, Southern people were engaged in almost all kinds of
manufacturing.
(5) In 1860 the South was the richest section of the country, and her
wealth was increasing with greater rapidity than that of the other
sections.
It will be remembered that in one of his great speeches in Congress
William L. Yancey demonstrated this truth.
(6) Wages were higher in the South than in the North in 1860.
So they are even now. The laborer who produces that free trade product,
cotton, gets nearly one-half of the value of the cotton produced. In the
Protected industries of the North the laborer does not receive an average
of twenty-five percent of the product of his labor.
Mr. Dyer proves another fact worth mention:
The idea of a State fund for the education of those who were not able to
pay their tuition originated in the South. In other words, the present
American system of State free public schools was born in the South. If
Mr. Dyer’s more comprehensive work increases in value as it increases in
size it will deserve to be a most successful book.
“=Sonnets to a Wife.=” By Ernest McGaffey. William Marion
Reedy. St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. McGaffey makes his Sonnets a continuous hymn of the beautiful in
Nature. The clean atmosphere of the open world is in every sonnet. All
the airs of heaven blow pureness about these lovers. The spiritual
significance of the great Nature, of which husband and wife and their
love for each other are a part, is always strongly suggested, and this
without cant either of orthodoxy or of the dolorous minor poet lamenting
the loss of himself to the world.
=The Eternal Spring.= A Novel. By Neith Boyce. Fox, Duffield &
Co., New York, $1.50, postpaid.
The story opens at an Italian villa, overlooking Florence. Elizabeth
Craven is wearing “second mourning” for a deceased husband who was too
old for her, and who had never satisfied her womanly cravings for male
companionship. Elizabeth is thirty-eight years old, but is still in the
flush of health and strength and beauty. Hers is the villa, and to her
comes Barry Carlton, who has been stock-gambling for several years in
Chicago, and has quit because he had won a modest competence and had
brought himself to the brink of nervous collapse.
Barry Carlton had known Elizabeth intimately five years before and had
become warmly attached to her. Poor Elizabeth! She had loved Barry all
the while, and she loves him yet.
She is radiantly happy as she welcomes Barry to her villa. She knows that
he has come from America to ask her to become his wife. He is thirty
years old, and while worn down to a painful thinness she has no doubt
whatever that rest and loving attention will soon restore his robust
youth.
_Then_ she will live. She has never known life; she has been cramped and
confined all these years; when she marries her young lover, she will know
the passion of _living_.
But alas! Barry wooes tamely. Elizabeth is coy, expecting more heat.
Barry cannot give it, the wooing lags, no engagement occurs, and then
comes the shipwreck of Elizabeth’s hopes. Barry falls in love with a
divinely gifted and lovely young creature who is also a guest at the
villa.
A strange thing happens to the reader. Elizabeth has won _his_ heart,
and she holds it to the end. She is so womanly in her devotion to Barry;
so womanly in her grief at losing him, so majestic in her renunciation
of her own hopes, so beautifully generous and helpful to the man and the
girl who have broken her own heart, that the reader feels himself about
to say:
“One Elizabeth were worth a dozen Claras.”
For the reader does not fall in love with Clara. She is a bit unnatural
and uncanny.
Her mother, the bad but magnificent Mrs. Langham, is far more real and
interesting.
As to Barry himself, the reader never does quite understand why the women
find him so irresistible. It does not appear that he is very handsome, or
very accomplished, or very anything else, excepting that he is abominably
selfish in his dealings with Elizabeth. The women who fall in love with
him rave about his “honesty,” but that is a quality which seldom carries
women off their feet. Decidedly Elizabeth remains the heroine and next
to her in interest comes the bad, beautiful Mrs. Langham. The author
tells the story with superb art. There are no incidents, no thrills, no
dramatic climaxes, and yet there is not a dull page in the book.
_Cause for Joy_
“Well, now, which do you think is correct, ‘measles is’ or ‘measles
are’?” chucklingly inquired the landlord of the Torpidville tavern.
“Also, would you say, ‘The Glee Club are’ or ‘the Glee Club is’?”
“D’know!” replied the patent-churn man, shortly. “Those old
catch-questions don’t interest me a little bit. But what I’d like to know
is why everybody looks so pleased and smiling today? Is there a picnic or
celebration or something of the sort on the tapis?”
“No, skurcely that. It’s the relief that is tickling ’em, not
anticipation. You see, the Glee Club of the village Academy was going to
give a concert and cantata tomorrow night, assisted by our best local
talent, and now the measles have, or has, as the case may be, broken out,
up there in the temple of learnin’, and every member of the Glee Club
have, or has, got it, or them, good and plenty and the entertainment has
been indefinitely—haw! haw!—postponed.”
[Illustration: _The Say of Other Editors_]
The Democrat has no axe to grind, no scores to settle nor heads to whack
in advancing the erection by the city of an electric lighting plant. From
every standpoint it is right.—_Grand Ireland (Neb.) Democrat._
* * * * *
Paul Morton, president of the Equitable, says he is not going to pay any
more money to legislators to protect his insurance company. This reminds
the _Syracuse (N. Y.) Herald_ of the story of the old darkey, never
regarded as being at all particular about how or where he gathered up a
penny, who dropped his pocketbook in a crowd one day. As the nickels and
dimes scattered about, the old man began to scramble for them, shouting,
“Befoh de Lawd! Let evahbody be honest now.”—_Leeton (Mo.) Times._
* * * * *
Democracy means always independence of thought, and unless the party
leaders treat the people fairly they will find it also means independence
of action. This was fully demonstrated last year in both National and
State campaigns, and it is time the Democratic leaders in Missouri should
heed the warning.—_Ozark (Mo.) Democrat._
* * * * *
Congress is now asked to appropriate $16,500,000 in one lump to the
Isthmian Canal. This nice little sum will only serve to grease the
skillet for a short time.—_Panola Watchman, Carthage, Tex._
* * * * *
It has been only a few weeks since Mr. McCall of the New York Life
Insurance Company was standing on his dignity and trying to make a joke
of the insurance investigation—just as Mr. Rogers of the Standard Oil
Company tried to make a joke of the investigation in New York last week.
But today Mr. McCall is a disgraced man in the public eye, and another
man signs as president of the New York Life. And it may be only a short
time until Mr. Rogers is holding an unenviable seat with Mr. McCall and
a lot of other unscrupulous fellows who a short time ago imagined that
they were practically the whole financial show. These money grafters are
up against an aroused public sentiment which in America today spells
destruction for whatever it may be directed against. In America there
is no system that can stand against the will of the people, and Mr.
Rogers and his Standard Oil crowd will yet live to see the day—and that
soon—when they will put off their arrogant airs in answering a criminal
investigation by the legal representatives of a great state.—_Darlington
(Mo.) Record._
* * * * *
The Department of Agriculture is now undertaking to show the farmers how
they can raise better tobacco. What the farmers would much prefer would
be for Secretary Wilson to show how to get more than 34 cents for it from
the Tobacco Trust.—_Tarboro (N. C.) Southerner._
* * * * *
The steamer _America_, from Honolulu for San Francisco, carried $750,000
in coin sent by registered mail by local bankers, in order, it is
alleged, that the money might be at sea, and beyond the territorial
jurisdiction on December 31st, when a tax of one per cent. is levied on
all money on deposit by the banks on that date. It is understood that the
money will be returned immediately. Deducting the charges of shipment,
the saving made will be approximately $7,000.—_Argonaut, San Francisco._
* * * * *
The attention of the public is unpleasantly attracted to the position
of Henry H. Rogers, active head of the Standard Oil trust, in relation
to the testimony sought by the supreme court of Missouri. The Missouri
court, in seeking the enforcement of the anti-trust law of that State,
has undertaken to procure testimony upon the allegation that the Standard
company is violating the law. Among the witnesses is Mr. Rogers. He
dodged service of the subpoena until outwitted by an officer and in the
witness chair he refuses to answer questions propounded by the attorney
general of Missouri. He refuses with a supercilious air that asserts his
contempt for such humble affairs as courts and officers of the law. The
world’s greatest trust, the world’s richest men, tell the world that they
are not amenable to the regulations to which the balance of the world is
bound to conform. This is the anarchy of wealth. Recently representatives
of the oil trust told Commissioner Garfield that the Standard Oil was
greater than the government; that John D. Rockefeller was a bigger man
than the President of the United States; that he owned the Senate and
the House and was able, by the mere passing of the word, to cause the
removal of Secretary Metcalf and Commissioner Garfield. A few years back
in history the Standard Oil corporation defied the Supreme Court of Ohio
and caused the political defeat of the presumptuous attorney who brought
an action against it and won because his case was just. Now comes Henry
H. Rogers, second to John D. Rockefeller, bristling with defiance because
a Western court proposes to make him and his associates obey the same law
that common persons have to obey. It is greatly to be feared that the oil
magnates are invoking a test of strength—feared because some one is going
to be roughly handled should there come a popular adjustment between
the forces of wealth and government. The American people have been very
patient and are still patient. But if they are called upon to pass upon
certain points raised by the contumacy of Mr. Rogers and the rest, the
controversy will be short, sharp and decisive.—_Howard (S. Dak.) Advance._
* * * * *
Let those with a sense of humor laugh now, while the game is barely on,
at such naïve expressions of alarm as those of Secretary Taft in a recent
speech wherein he feared that the “dangerous classes,” such as populists
and socialists, might succeed in arraying the masses against capitalism
to the injury of the latter. Secretary Taft fears that the ninety per
cent of our population are going to demand the right to rule. Awful,
isn’t it?
This fat sow of the system with its nose in the trough, its distended
guts groaning and still filling, sounds the warning that the razor-backs
are preparing to assume control of the swill. Wough! Secretary Taft
believes that this country is only safe when every bank, the House, the
Senate, every State legislature, and every public office is manned and
controlled by a McCall, McCurdy, Hyde, Armour or Rockefeller; that is,
safe for the system. We say this country is not safe when ten millions of
its inhabitants live in dire poverty and two hundred and seventy thousand
people fill its jails.
We say there is something radically wrong with our educational and
economic systems. We say the multi-income grafters must be hurled back
to one man power, for there is not a banker nor so-called financier in
America that has not for years been in collusion with Hyde, McCall and
McCurdy, and consciously participated in their stealing.
Come, now, Secretary Taft, would men who have been brought up to do
real work be any more dangerous in high places?—_Parker H. Sercombe in
To-Morrow._
* * * * *
And now it is announced that all three of the big life insurance
presidents in New York are down with nervous prostration. Sounds from
testimony as though it ought to be the policy holders.—_Alma (Neb.)
Record._
* * * * *
With the arraignment of Standard Oil officers, life insurance fakirs,
Panama Canal investigations, United States senators losing their
dignity, and being tried like other criminals, and all manner of “big
bugs” having to shudder at the majesty of the law, we are made to wonder
what is going to happen next.—_Durant (I. T.) Farmer._
* * * * *
Announcement is made of another donation by John D. Rockefeller to the
University of Chicago. This time it is $1,450,000. Where did he get
it?—_Granville (Ia.) Gazette._
* * * * *
Rockefeller may fire Rogers for talking too much. Rogers admitted that he
knew his own name and had heard of Standard Oil.—_People’s Voice, Norman,
Okla._
* * * * *
Now that railroad passes are abolished and the franking privilege is to
be stopped, what will Congressmen do, poor things? They have been sending
their soiled clothes back to their district and having them returned
free, have been getting beef, butter, eggs, and vegetables in the same
way, and to cap the anticlimax of their perquisites Hon. Shepard of
Arkansas has discovered that their mileage allowance of twenty cents
per mile made in the old stage-coach era, is a gross over-allowance
and has introduced a bill to cut it down to six cents a mile, which is
quite enough for the Pullman car accommodations nowadays.—_Luck (Wis.)
Enterprise._
* * * * *
The State of New York which has a population of 8,000,000 and wealth far
in excess of any state in the Union has had no representative in the
Senate since the holiday opening of Congress. Its two Senators, Platt and
Depew, are prevented by ill-health from attending the sessions and it
is not known when they will be able to take their places in the Senate
Chamber. Senator Platt with his new wife is at Virginia Hot Springs,
looking in vain for the fountain of youth. He is palsied with age and he
is so feeble that he cannot walk about unsupported. On the daily drives
and outings that Mrs. Platt is obliged to take to maintain her vigorous
health she is never accompanied by the aged Senator, who remains in his
room nearly all of the time. The situation with Senator Depew is scarcely
more agreeable. Instead of the triumphant, jovial Depew of old he is now
a man broken in health and spirit by the revelations of the New York
insurance companies which have placed him in such a questionable light
before the public.—_Kiowa (Colo.) Record._
* * * * *
As this country becomes more and more a manufacturing country, it
needs to give more heed to this fundamental problem. Urged by purely
selfish motives, commerce and industry are ever tending to exploit the
labor of the child because it is low priced, and to oppose restraining
legislation. This, observes the _Chicago Tribune_, is why the child
labor laws of England are considerably less stringent than those of
progressive countries on the Continent. The latter, pressing upon
each other’s frontiers, realize that child labor impairs the military
efficiency of a nation. Military considerations may not weigh so heavily
with the people of this country as they do with continental Europe.
But child labor should be prevented in America with a view to securing
for children that better preparation for life and that worthy type of
ultimate citizenship which American ideals demand. In the interest of
social and civic efficiency, and so of our national future, the rising
generation, both North and South, should be protected against premature
toil.—_Bath (N. Y.) Plaindealer._
* * * * *
The new officials in Philadelphia should see that their predecessors get
their just dues—a long term in the penitentiary.—_Winona (Minn.) Leader._
* * * * *
When the People’s Party first submitted its platform of principles to the
people, the soundness of its principles was questioned and doubted by
many, and even by some who recognized the soundness of the principles,
yet had not lost hope, or were not convinced, that reforms could not
be brought about swifter through their old parties than through a new
party organization, and for this reason never aligned themselves with
the People’s Party; but the last ten years of endeavor to secure reforms
through the old parties has convinced them that reform through the old
parties was like tracing the rainbow to find a pot of gold hanging on the
end of it.—_People’s Voice, Norman, Okla._
* * * * *
The state legislators certainly cannot now have any reason for flinching
on the question of railroad rates. The Pennsylvania road showed that
while one third of their passengers rode on passes they were able to
pay a nice dividend to stockholders. Now that nobody rides on passes
the public certainly should secure the benefit by a reduction to two
cents per mile for travel. The law makers can also consider the right of
eminent domain for the trolley lines, as well as the right of electric
lines to carry freight. The latter propositions would mean thousands of
dollars in the pockets of the people. Instead of the discontinuing of
the passes being a detriment to the people, it will undoubtedly become a
benefit.—_Roscoe (Pa.) Ledger._
* * * * *
Hon. Ezekiel S. Candler, Jr., a member of Congress from Mississippi,
recently delivered a speech before the House of Representatives in which
he favored legislation that would abolish hazing in the United States
Naval Academy at Annapolis. Mr. Candler very justly ridicules the idea
that hazing is necessary to make a boy courageous and keep him from being
a “sissy boy.”—_Grand Cane (La.) Beacon._
From what can be learned of the dispatches concerning the punishment
of grafters under the present administration, it seems that those who
were brought in guilty, have invariably been men who were opposed to
some of Roosevelt’s pet hobbies. Burton of Kansas, you must remember,
strenuously opposed Roosevelt’s plan to reduce the duty on Cuban raw
sugar, and made a brilliant speech in opposition to it. Poor old Senator
Mitchell, of Oregon, also opposed some of Teddy’s pet schemes. He was
pursued unmercifully and maliciously, yet the beef trust goes unpunished.
Teddy’s investigators are now busy defending them. Those men arrested in
Nebraska for the illegal fencing and use of Government land received but
a nominal fine and a sentence of six hours in the custody of the United
States Marshal. Secretary Shaw, another of Teddy’s proteges, has declared
that John Walsh of Chicago is innocent of any statutory crime, and has
only done what many other bankers have done. Just as soon as the failure
of the Walsh banks was wired to Washington, plans were at once set on
foot to protect them, also to protect Walsh. Teddy will have to shift his
bearings a little or the people will soon begin to believe that he is not
the Simon-pure reformer, graft crusher and trust buster that the press
agents are claiming him to be.—_Ex Porte, Florence, Colo._
* * * * *
The grain trust of Nebraska fixes the price of every bushel of grain in
the state. Not an elevator in the state pretends to begin operations
till the price of grain fixed by the trust comes, and it comes every day
very early in the morning. Supply and demand! Who said supply and demand
regulate prices?—_Broken Bow (Neb.) Beacon._
* * * * *
Germany is putting the tariff question squarely before the “stand pat”
Republican clique in the Senate. That country proposes to bar American
goods by a prohibitory tariff unless this country reduces the Dingley
tariff for Germany. This is a fair proposition and one that the people
generally in this country would gladly welcome, but the eight or nine
Republican bosses would rather see this country sink than give an inch on
the present tariff.—_Vandalia (Ill.) Democrat._
* * * * *
H. Clay Pierce, president of the Waters-Pierce Oil company, who has been
holding up the people of the Indian Territory and Texas for a great
many years past, pays $25 a day for seven rooms the year round at the
Waldorf-Astoria, one of New York’s big hotels.—_Rush Springs (I. T.)
Landmark._
* * * * *
The Standard Oil Company has during the past year gobbled up about
twenty gas plants in various parts of the country. Having an income of
about forty millions a year. John D. Rockefeller must put his money into
something that will bring him more interest.—_Delphi, (Ind.) Citizen
Times._
Senator Burton has dismissed his private secretary, because there was
nothing for him to do. There is also very little for poor Burton to do
unless it is “doing time.”—_Princeton (Ky.) Chronicle._
* * * * *
The Congressman, who, with his wife, aunts, and mother-in-law, franks
their clothes home once a week to be washed, is going to be the
loser by the investigation of the Congressional franking privilege
pending.—_Delton (Mich.) Graphic._
* * * * *
Tom Watson wants to know if Bryan will try to buy the throne of Peter
the Great or the second-hand coat of Peter the Great. Mr. Bryan set the
entire Japanese nation against him when he tried to buy the “war chair”
that Togo had sat in, and the Watson inquiries suggest nothing more out
of place than this foolish and very improper episode.—_Rushville (Ind.)
American._
* * * * *
The reply of Thomas E. Watson to Clark Howell is such a long letter that
we cannot get it in this issue of the Rambler, but will give it Tuesday.
The weakest of all the weak things that Howell’s advisers have let him do
is the stirring up of Watson.—_Cordele (Ga.) Rambler._
* * * * *
And so “I am a Democrat, D. B. Hill” has also been receiving a large
sum of money ($5,000) each year for a long time from the Equitable Life
Insurance Company. Mr. Hill says his salary was for his services as a
lawyer and not for his political influence. Mr. Hill may have thought so,
made himself think so. But to a man up a tree the salaries the insurance
companies paid Hill, Depew and other men of great political influence
were to make friends of them so that the graft of the insurance officers
could continue. We presume most of the men of great political influence
in the ruling parties are on the pay roll of one or more of the big
grafting corporations. A list of the congressmen, governors, etc., who
are getting salaries as attorneys for the railroads, trusts, etc., would
be very interesting reading.—_Missouri World._
* * * * *
The Georgia gubernatorial campaign has reached the letter-writing stage,
apparently, though it must be confessed that the man who sprung the
trigger isn’t profiting very much by the result of his action. The secret
of the Sibley correspondence was carefully guarded until the Columbus
debate, and then thrown upon the public in the form of a bombshell, the
expectation being that Mr. Smith would be swept from his feet by the
explosion.
The result was anything but what was anticipated. While Mr. Smith knew
nothing of what was coming, he did exactly as he has done in the face of
all the charges that have been brought against him—made no explanation
whatever, because he had nothing to explain.
The matter was explained, however, and by the man who knew more about the
whole business than any one—excepting, of course, Mr. Howell, and that
man was Hon. Thomas E. Watson. And Mr. Watson’s explanation does just
what it was intended to do—it explains.
Attempts have since been made by Mr. Howell to give further enlightenment
on the Sibley and McGregor episodes by publishing the entire
correspondence, but like a man in quicksand, every struggle to extricate
himself only sinks him the deeper.
At no time has it been shown that Mr. Smith sought an alliance with Mr.
Watson, or that one was ever made. Mr. Watson has no political ambition
at the present time, and, in fact, states in one of his letters that
instead of seeking the election to the United States Senate, he is
supporting, and will cast his vote for Hon. John Temple Graves for the
same reason that he is supporting Mr. Smith—because Mr. Graves stands for
the same principles Mr. Watson has always advocated.—_Dublin (Ga.) Times._
* * * * *
Howell and McGregor are trying hard to make it appear that Tom Watson
and Smith made a firm trade before Smith announced for Governor; and in
the next breath Clark says Sibley offered him Watson’s support six weeks
after Smith announced. Funny how he could support both of them!—_Bullock
(Ga.) Times._
* * * * *
Mr. Howell is lustily calling to the “Loyal Democrats” to save him
from Tom Watson and the bow-wows. Loyal to what? To Clark and the
corporations? But a few weeks ago “Boss” Murphy was calling (and buying)
both “Loyal” Democrats and Republicans to save him from Hearst and the
penitentiary. Honest Democrats, by the Eternal, be loyal to yourselves,
your wives and children, and to the God that made you.—_Dalton (Ga.)
Herald._
* * * * *
Why should ex-Populist Hon. Thomas E. Winn be allowed to use the columns
of the only Democratic paper in the state, the Constitution, to advise
ex-Populists to vote for Howell, and Hon. Thomas E. Watson be refused to
say whom he is for and why. Tell us, Clark.—_Lawrenceville (Ga.) Journal._
* * * * *
H. Clay Pierce, of the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, a branch of the
Standard, has been in hiding at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, in New York,
to prevent the serving of a summons to appear before Attorney-General
Hadley, of Missouri. Pierce has had his private yacht steamed up for
days, ready to leave the country at a moment’s notice. Old John D.
Rockefeller is also dodging around, keeping out of the way of the
officers. The fact that the Standard Oil fellows are afraid to go into
court, and are continually on the lookout for officers, ought to be
sufficient proof to the people that they are guilty. Honest people are
not afraid of law or officers.—_Garnett (Kan.) Independent Review._
* * * * *
It seems that conditions down on the isthmus, where the Government is
engaged in digging a big canal, will not stand much probing. A Republican
paper, friendly to the administration, sent a representative down there
to report on the conditions, and his report has caused an investigation
to be begun by Congress. President Roosevelt will be fortunate if he
saves himself from this Congress, and he can afford to keep on friendly
terms with the Democrats.—_Malad (Idaho) People’s Advocate._
* * * * *
The Federal Senate of the United States is becoming more and more like
the House of Lords in England. It is clearly not of the people. Wealth
is the title that makes membership possible. A man without money, in
these later days, can no more enter this American House of Lords than a
camel can pass through the eye of a needle. No matter how a man may have
acquired his riches, even though every one of his dollars be tainted,
this “honorable” position as the head of our Government is his—providing
he has the “dough to go around.” Oh! the shame of it all! Why is it that
the common people, the masses, those who earn their bread by the sweat
of their brow—and they are in the majority—do not rise up in their might
and make this office an elective one by all the people instead of a few
subsidized purchased legislators, that it might come from the people,
and in coming from them, represent them instead of the selfish money
interests of the country?—_Detroit (Mich.) Courier._
* * * * *
Common mortals have an awesome fear of the majesty of the law, but not so
with Rogers, the Standard Oil lord lieutenant. They are regarded by him
as but minions of the people; something far beneath his lofty station.
Let’s hope he is taught a wholesome respect for courts of justice before
this Standard Oil rottenness is all suppressed.—_Prescot (Wis.) Tribune._
* * * * *
Of all the thin political tricks that have been attempted to be put off
on the people of Georgia, that Sibley-Howell correspondence, sprung by
tricky Clark in the Columbus debate, was the thinnest. Why they didn’t
have sense enough to date their letters two months earlier, so as to
antedate Hoke Smith’s announcement, is an evidence of the weakness of
political trickery. There was never a meaner nor more transparent job,
for it could deceive only fools.—_Sparta (Ga.) Ishmaelite._
* * * * *
It is said that the various corporations of the country have employed
and almost monopolized all of the best legal talent of the land. Be
that as it may; no lawyer that is, or for the last ten years has been,
employed by a corporation should ever be elected or appointed to a
public office. Especially should they not be sent to Congress or state
legislature.—_Cass (Tex.) Sun._
* * * * *
Two insurance companies that have defied the state law requiring licenses
and who have other charges laid at their doors have been taken into the
civil courts by the State Insurance Department. It is to be hoped that
they will not escape upon any technicality as they did in the criminal
action. It’s time the insurance companies were made to understand that
the laws, weak and incomplete as they are, must be enforced.—_Cortez
(Colo.) Journal._
* * * * *
The year 1906 is an off year in politics. No National tickets will be in
the field; but National issues will be emphasized and direction given
to the next campaign. It will be well for us to look the field over and
examine our bearings. For many years we have trusted the great political
parties to make up the issues that we, by ballot, are to decide; but
experience has taught us that political parties make up blind issues,
in which the people are not interested. The great issue before the
people of this Government today is the enforcement of the law. The great
monopolies, who are law defying in their tendencies, must be compelled to
obey the law. The law-defying elements that are moved by selfish motives
alone, must be made to bend to the will of the people.—_Lockwood (Mo.)
Times._
* * * * *
Berlin, the capital of Germany, has solved the vexed sewage problem in
a way that should commend itself to American cities, where we are away
behind in the disposal of harmful and polluting refuse. The municipality
of Berlin purchased thousands of acres of unproductive sand land near
the city and fertilizing this with the sewage, raises big crops for the
city’s benefit. Of course the plant is costly, but the proceeds of the
farm repay all cost, besides a good profit.—_The American Farmer._
* * * * *
The Citizen regrets very much the domestic infelicity which seems to
exist under the roof of the _Atlanta, Ga., News_. It is unfortunate.
Hon. John Temple Graves, as the Rome Tribune puts it, “is the Atlanta
News.” We would not give a thrip of our finger for it without him. He is
the life of it, and his brain and energy have made it. He has kept it
free from furtherance of his political ambitions, and has made it these
years the impartial commentator of men and affairs. The whole trouble is,
no doubt, the result of corporate greed, and the desire on the part of
certain influences to control its policy.—_Dalton (Ga.) Citizen._
The next political campaign in this county will be more than interesting.
Neither party has a “walkover” any longer. No candidate has a “cinch,”
but those who win will have to work and satisfy the people. Moreover, our
people are not going to vote for men they know to be bad, merely because
nominated by their party. The object of our system of ballots is to give
every voter a chance to exercise his individual opinion and our people,
Democrats and Republicans, will do it.—_Bloomfield (Mo.) Courier._
* * * * *
If there are 80,000 populists in Georgia, Clark Howell had just as well
come out of the race, for his attack on Tom Watson is an attack on each
of them, and the result will be that every one of them will vote with
him. They follow him wherever he leads with that same spirit of loyalty
exhibited by the grenadiers who followed the matchless Napoleon. It is
a bad political move to disturb this sleeping lion, who is, perhaps,
the matchless master of the Queen’s English in Georgia. His store of
information seems inexhaustable, and his logic irresistible. True,
regardless of his politics.—_Marietta (Ga.) Courier._
Right, you are, neighbor. Watson’s reply to Howell on the Sibley letter
was the hottest, the strongest, the most cutting and most biting
political epistle that we have ever read.
Every word in it was as sharp as a two-edged sword and went as straight
to the mark as a rifle ball.
We care but little what some writers say about us, but there are two
people in Georgia, Mrs. Felton and Tom Watson, with whom we hope forever
to keep on terms.
And Tom Watson is a man of convictions. He isn’t afraid of abuse when it
comes to taking a stand for what he considers right.
Smart as he is, he sees through the political scheme being worked in
Georgia to defeat Hoke Smith and he denounces it in no uncertain terms.
Listen to him: “If Hoke Smith succeeds, if the people will but realize
that Hoke Smith is the only anti-ring candidate in the field, if they
will but realize that the candidacies of Clark Howell, Jim Smith, Dick
Russell, J. H. Estill, Jack Robinson, and Hiram-Fat-and-Go-Last all
tend to the same object; if they will but realize that these different
candidates are jumping-jacks which Hamp McWhorter has strung upon the
same string, and that when Hamp strikes the string with the straw they
all dance in the most diverting and uniform manner: if the people will
but use their common sense and refuse to be divided, then Hoke Smith’s
triumph is assured.”
Listen again to this patriotic paragraph: “And in my purpose there is a
motive so dominant, and a plan so full of the promise of glorious results
for Georgia and the South, that I shall not allow the rigid limits of
party lines to tie my hands; but shall hold myself perfectly free to
serve my people in the best way that circumstances allow, and as duty
directs.”
And nobody will close Watson’s mouth. On that score he says: “One-horse
politicians devoted to the ring need not think that their permission is
necessary for me to advise with the people of Georgia. Their consent will
not be asked. As a Georgian I have a right to be heard. My people came
here when the Indians still roamed in the woods, and have been a part of
Georgia ever since, serving her dutifully in the time of peace, fighting
for her manfully in the time of war. There never lived a man who was
more devoted than I to the best interests of my state and of the South.
As a Southern man, I resent from the depth of my heart the political
degradation into which our state has fallen, and I am going to do my
level best to help Hoke Smith redeem it.”—_Lawrenceville (Ga.) Gwinnett
Journal._
* * * * *
The bankers want more “currency”—so did the farmers a few years ago. At
that time it was a crazy scheme—today it is sound finance!—_Penns Grove
(N. J.) Record._
* * * * *
Senator Depew is reported to be in failing health, owing to the storm of
criticism which has forced him from many places of honor, and which may
lose him his Senate seat. And this is the witty Chauncey who was wont to
laugh away opposition and carry his points so easily! “Great will be the
fall thereof.”—_Hogansville (Ga.) News._
* * * * *
We move to amend Secretary Shaw’s motion for an elastic currency by
striking out elastic and substituting adhesive.—_Republican City (Mo.)
Ranger._
* * * * *
Secretary Shaw’s scheme for an elastic currency is to authorize the
national banks to strike from their notes as now issued the words
“secured by United States bonds deposited with the treasury of the United
States,” and to issue 50 per cent more notes whenever the demand seems
to exist. Thus, if the National City Bank of New York had issued all the
notes it could against Government bonds, and a big stock gambler asked
for a loan of $1,000,000, the bank would issue notes in that sum, charge
him, say 10 per cent, retire the notes when the loan was paid, and pocket
the interest in excess of the 6 per cent tax to the Government. Very nice
arrangement that for the national banks. Little wonder that Wall Street
takes kindly to the candidacy of Mr. Shaw for the presidency.—_Rushville
(Ill.) Times._
* * * * *
Let’s see: Does this country lead the civilized world in progress?
Well, hardly, since every other civilized country on the face of the
earth, with the exception of Honduras and Costa Rica, own and operate
their own telegraph lines and give a far more satisfactory service to
the public for a far less consideration than it costs the dear people
in this country of progress, where corporations, have, by robbing the
people, accumulated untold wealth with which they are enabled to evade
such laws as prove obnoxious to them, and can buy law-makers and have
odious laws repealed and new ones made, giving them all the powers they
seek.—_Cloverdale (Ind.) Graphic._
* * * * *
The Standard oil magnates have been again showing their contempt of law.
Their attitude hatches more anarchists than all the Herr Most brand of
incubators. The lawless rich and powerful are the real enemies of the
republic.—_Pennsboro (W. Va.)_ News.
* * * * *
The _American_ agrees most heartily with Dr. Charles W. Eliot, president
of Harvard University, when he says the great movement of the world is
toward democracy. This is the natural result of an advancing civilization.
America overthrew the false doctrine of the divine right of kings to rule
when she wrote the Declaration of Independence and declared that all men
were born equal. Since then we have created by law a person as great, as
arrogant and tyrannical as the king—the Public Corporation.
How can all men have an equal footing in law when we give special
privileges to the corporate person and enable that person to levy tribute
at will on the wealth of the nation?
How can all have equal rights, when the corporate person can spend
millions of dollars to corrupt our city councils, our state legislatures,
our Congress and our courts?
The movement against these legalized law-created individuals is the
awakening of the spirit of democracy, and it means the eventual wiping
out of these public service corporations which occupy relatively the
same position in this country that the king does in a monarchy. It
means that genuine democracy, the rule of the people, will supplant the
rule of the corporation. It means the public ownership of all public
utilities.—_Creston (Ia.) Morning American._
* * * * *
Whatever is said of Tom Watson, no one will deny that he has convictions
and the nerve to stand by them. He knows no party lines when it comes to
fighting for the principles he has so long advocated, and that is the
reason he is now supporting Hoke Smith.—_Dalton (Ga.) Citizen._
* * * * *
The Philippine tariff is a characteristic act of the present régime. We
first shot and beat the poor savages into submission. We then took away
the market for their goods and compelled them to sell to, and buy of, us.
We followed this with the Dingley tariff both coming and going. The fact
that this was simple highway robbery did not shame us. At the point of
a gun they are compelled to stand and deliver. The House has now passed
a bill providing that we will stop robbing these “wards” of ours except
the poor Sugar Trust and Tobacco Trust and they shall only continue their
robbery until 1909. And do you know that some Republicans are actually
claiming some credit for such a law as that?—_Frankfort (Ind.) Crescent
Standard._
* * * * *
The author of our “Washington Letter” slops over this week in fulsome
praise of Paul Morton, who at one time admitted his long-continued
violation of the anti-rebate law—a crime which no honorable man would
commit under any circumstances. The _Herald_ approves of no such
condoning of crime on the part of any man from the President down to the
lowest.—_Waseca (Minn.) Herald._
* * * * *
Burton cares not who makes the laws of the country, provided he gets his
salary and mileage.—_Cumberland (Md.) Independent._
* * * * *
By stepping inside of the door of the Senate chamber so that the journal
clerk could view him for half a minute, Senator Burton of Kansas was
enabled to claim attendance on the 59th Congress and draw $1,000 mileage
therefore. No, Senator Burton will not resign while he can draw his
salary of $5,000 a year and mileage, even though his reputation does rest
under a cloud. That cloud has a silver lining.—_Alva (Okla.) Renfrews
Record._
* * * * *
A few years ago there was considerable riot in the subsidized press about
the “disgrace” that had been heaped upon Kansas by the “Pops.” All manner
of fun was poked at Peffer’s whiskers—but he was never sent to jail. This
country had a good deal of fun over “Sockless Jerry,” but he was never
accused of working any get-rich-quick concern. No “Pop” state officer has
ever involved the state in such a scandal as has been hanging over the
state treasury for the last three years. The “Pop” state secretary never
loaded the state school fund up with a batch of worthless bonds. Honest
now, how much has the reputation of Kansas been improved by the crowd
that “redeemed it from Populism.”—_Mankato (Kan.) Advocate._
* * * * *
It is an honor, not a crime, to hold a public office. It is a proper
reward for activity in politics, but he who accepts an office should
never forget that the moment he enters upon the discharge of his duties
he becomes then an officer for all the people, not only those who
voted for his election, but those who opposed it.—_Indianola (Miss.)
Enterprise._
* * * * *
As an evidence of the wide extent of the reform sentiment among Oregon
voters of today, one has but to notice how anxiously eager the would-be
candidates for Congress are to get into the reform band-wagon. At least
two of the Republican aspirants are old-time ring politicians and
probably care but little for most of the reforms demanded by the people
further than to ride into office on the reform wave. But reform is in
the air, gentlemen, and if you keep in the swim you will have to join the
throng, and be honest about it, too.—_Scio (Oregon) Santian News._
* * * * *
H. H. Rogers of the Standard Oil Company the concrete expression of the
rank insolence of a hundred millions of ill-gotten wealth.—_Rush Springs
(I. T.) Landmark._
* * * * *
All cities which have adopted municipal ownership of their lighting
plant are glad they did it, and would not think of going back to private
ownership. Why should Grand Island be a back number in the progress of
the world?—_Grand Island (Neb.) Democrat_.
_His Grudge_
BY TOM P. MORGAN
“The Ladies’ Aid Society of the church have undertaken the task of
collecting half a mile of pennies,” said the Old Codger’s niece, “for the
purpose of sending our pastor on a vacation trip.”
“Humph!” answered the veteran, with all the suavity of a hyena.
“A row of cents half a mile long,” persisted the lady, “will amount, so
Sister Eunice Tubman has figured out, to $420.00, and—”
“I don’t care what they amount to!” doggedly declared the venerable
curmudgeon. “While I’ve got any sense nobody will get any cents out o’
me for any such purpose! I don’t care a contaminated drat whether ‘our
pastor’ stays at home or goes to the Whangdoodle Islands—whatever he does
won’t be at my expense, lemme just rise to remark!”
“But, Uncle, you know the laborer is worthy of his hire, and—”
“Yuss! And the less they labor the higher they want their hire to be!
Labor!—_huh!_ If more preachers would—aw, well, I won’t give an inch of
that ’ere half mile of cents, and that settles it!”
“Why, Uncle, how _can_ you talk so? You are generally ready to give to
good causes, and—”
“Ah-yah! But _his name is Bertram_!”
“To be sure, it is! And he is in every way such a worthy young man, and
so intellectual, too! What possible grudge can you have against him?”
“Just told ye!—his name is Bertram! He also says ‘eyther’ and ‘nyther’,
which pronunciations cheat me out of all the good his sermons might
otherwise do me. I could overlook that, though, if his name wasn’t
Bertram. For years that’s been pretty nearly a fighting word with me.
When I was a freckle-nosed schoolboy in the old Head-o’-the-River
district, there was a boy named Bertram there, who had a swifter sled
than mine, and didn’t have to wear his Pa’s cut-down-to-fit-him clothes
like I did, and who spelt me down the last day of school, and took from
me the bashful affection of the pantaletted little girl who was all the
world to me at that particular time. I couldn’t get even with him then
for he could lick me, and did. And ever since I’ve—”
“But, my goodness! This isn’t the same Bertram!”
“No, but he’s a Bertram, and somehow all Bertrams have looked alike to me
ever since. All these years I’ve been hostile to Bertrams, and have never
been able to conquer the feeling, try as I might. Any Bertram affects
me the same way—a Bertram is a Bertram, to me, and I simply can’t help
it. The Lord loves a cheerful giver, and as I couldn’t any more give
cheerfully to this or any other Bertram than I could sing a hymn while
sitting down on wet ice, I won’t add a cent to that ’ere half-mile of
pennies. That’s all there is to it.”
[Illustration: _News Record_]
FROM JANUARY 8 TO FEBRUARY 8, 1906
_Home News_
January 8.—Senator Rayner, of Maryland, attacks President Roosevelt’s
attitude on the Santo Domingan question. He declares the President has
twisted the Monroe Doctrine into a “Roosevelt Doctrine.”
President Roosevelt transmits the report of the Panama Canal
Commissioners and the Panama Railroad directors to the Senate.
The reports are accompanied by a letter from the President in
which he challenges an investigation of the canal work.
Senator Bacon, of Georgia, introduces a resolution in the
Senate asking President Roosevelt why the United States is
mixing in the quarrel over Morocco, which threatens to bring
about a European war.
A resolution is introduced in the House for a committee to
investigate the treatment of Mrs. Minor Morris at the White
House. On Jan. 4, Mrs. Morris was forcibly ejected by order of
Secretary Barnes.
Standard Oil interests organize a Glucose Trust to control the
entire glucose business of the country.
H. H. Rogers again testifies in the investigation of the
Standard Oil Co. brought by the State of Missouri. He follows
his tactics of refusing to answer questions, and expresses
contempt for the laws of Missouri, and the Missouri Supreme
Court.
A landslide at Haverstraw, N. Y., kills 22 persons.
January 9.—The treatment of Mrs. Minor Morris at the White House
brings severe criticism on Mr. Roosevelt. Prominent senators and
congressmen condemn the President’s treatment of them at the hands of his
secretaries. The newspaper correspondents claim that he exerts a press
censorship over the Departments and allows nothing to be given to the
press except what suits him. Many acts of misconduct in the Departments
have been kept a secret. A large force of secretaries and secret service
men prevent officials from seeing the President on official business,
unless the President cares to attend to such matters.
The House Committee on Postoffices and Post Roads requests
Postmaster General Cortelyou to supply the Committee with all
information he may have on the franking abuses.
The National Bank of Commerce, New York City, drops J. H. Hyde,
J. W. Alexander, Senator Depew and Richard A. McCurdy from its
board of directors.
Judge J. H. Paynter is elected United States senator from
Kentucky to succeed Senator Blackburn.
The Senate accepts the President’s challenge, and orders an
investigation of the Panama Canal affairs.
Speaker Cannon succeeds in winning John Sharp Williams’s
support for the Philippine Tariff bill. This insures its
passage.
A judge of the New York Supreme Court issues a writ ordering
H. H. Rogers to show cause for not answering the questions
of Attorney-General Hadley, of Missouri, in the Standard Oil
investigation.
January 10.—Secretary Taft replies to Poultney Bigelow’s charges of
maladministration in Panama. He virtually calls Bigelow a liar, but
admits that negro women were sent to the Isthmus to be distributed as
wives among the laborers. The charge that a boat-load of negroes from
Martinique were clubbed is also admitted.
The Federal Grand Jury at Utica, N. Y., indicts the New York
Central and Delaware and Hudson railroads for rebating.
Mrs. Minor Morris, the woman who was ejected from the White
House, is in a critical condition.
Dr. William R. Harper, President of the University of Chicago,
dies at his home in Chicago.
January 11.—The Senate committee, which has the Panama investigation in
charge, subpœnas Poultney Bigelow to testify about mismanagement of the
Canal affairs.
President Roosevelt declares that it will be the fault of
Southern senators if the treaty with Santo Domingo is not
ratified.
Ramon Caceres, who succeeded Morales as President of Santo
Domingo, declares that he favors the Roosevelt treaty, and
that peace will soon be restored.
Senator Bacon’s resolution of inquiry into the Moroccan
question is shelved.
January 12.—The House and Senate leaders reach an agreement to meet the
retaliatory legislation of foreign countries with a maximum and minimum
tariff. The minimum tariff is to be the Dingley law. The maximum is a 25
per cent. addition to the Dingley schedule.
Congressman Longworth, of Ohio, addresses the House on the
Philippine tariff bill, and declares the Philippines to be a
shiftless, worthless lot of people.
The Insurgent Congressmen, that is, the Republicans who
oppose Speaker Cannon on the joint statehood bill, claim that
they have 51 votes and will defeat the bill. Two of them are
from Missouri. The President sends for the entire Missouri
delegation and tries to whip the two members into line, but
fails.
Mrs. Cassie Chadwick begins her term of imprisonment in the
Federal Penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio.
Congressman McCall, of Massachusetts, warns his Republican
colleagues that they must revise the tariff, or the Republican
Party will be defeated at the next election.
District Attorney Jerome, of New York City, prepares to
prosecute the guilty officials of the big life insurance
companies.
The Clyde Line steamship _Cherokee_ goes ashore on Brigantine
Shoals, off Atlantic City, N. J. Tugs and life-saving crews
have gone to the aid of the passengers and crew.
January 13.—President Roosevelt holds a conference with prominent New
York Republicans with reference to ousting Odell from the leadership of
New York State.
The President has a conference with Representative Hepburn and
indicates that he favors the Hepburn bill on railroad rate
regulation.
The notice to make H. H. Rogers testify in the Standard Oil
investigation is argued before Justice Gildersleeve in the New
York Supreme Court.
The debate on the Philippine tariff bill continues in the House.
Troops in the Philippines are being held in readiness to sail
for China in case the feelings against Americans cannot be
controlled by the Chinese Government.
Attorney General Mayer, of New York, prepares to bring suit
against the McCurdys and the directors of the Mutual Life
Insurance Co. for the restitution of illegal salaries and
commissions.
January 14.—All of the passengers and a part of the crew are rescued from
the stranded steamer _Cherokee_. The captain, two mates and the ship’s
carpenter refused to leave the vessel.
According to statistics gathered by insurance men, 17,700
persons were killed or wounded in the factories and steel
plants in Allegheny County, Penn., in 1905.
January 15.—Private Secretary Loeb denies that the President stated,
while trying to whip the Missouri delegation into line on the Statehood
bill last Friday, that money was being freely used by corporations to
defeat the bill. About the time the denial is made, a delegation from
Arizona returned from the White House, and stated that practically the
same charge was made to them.
Secretary Taft declares that the Southern Pacific Railway,
through its ownership of the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., is
responsible for the congestion of freight on the Isthmus of
Panama, and consequent hindrance of canal work. The steamship
company refuses to move the freight on the Pacific side, hoping
to keep the blockade on the Atlantic side so great that no
Government boats can land there with more supplies. This will
force shipment via the Southern Pacific to San Francisco, and
from there to Panama via the Pacific Mail Steamship Co.
The captain with the remaining members of his crew abandons
the _Cherokee_. The rescue of passengers and crew was made by
Captain Casto, of Atlantic City, N. J., with his crew in his
schooner _Alberta_.
The debate on the Philippine tariff bill is brought to a close
in the House of Representatives.
The President prepares a message to Congress, favoring a lock
canal. The Canal Commission asks for $5,000,000 to continue the
work during the balance of the present fiscal year.
January 16.—Marshall Field, Chicago’s millionaire merchant, dies of
pneumonia in New York City, at the age of 70.
The Panama Canal Commission decides to build the Canal by
contract. The President has approved the plan.
Congressman Hermann, of Oregon, who is under indictment for
participating in land frauds, takes the oath of office, and
begins to draw his salary.
January 16.—The House of Representatives passes the Philippine tariff
bill. The bill admits goods the growth or product of the Philippines
into the United States free of duty, except sugar, tobacco and rice, on
which a tariff of 35 per cent of the Dingley rates is levied. Philippine
goods coming to the United States are exempted from the export tax of
the islands. The bill further provides that after April 11, 1909, there
shall be absolute free trade each way between the United States and the
Philippines.
The vote on the Statehood bill is indefinitely postponed
because Speaker Cannon fails to secure a sufficient number of
pledges to make its passage certain.
The annual meeting of the United Mine Workers of America is
held at Indianapolis.
The Senate debates the question whether Congress has the right
to delegate to the courts its power to fix railroad rates.
The resolution introduced in the New York State Senate, asking
Senator Depew to resign, is lost by a vote of 34 to 1. The
Democrats refused to vote on the resolution.
January 17.—Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, bitterly attacks
President Roosevelt on account of Mrs. Minor Morris’ treatment at the
White House. Senator Hale, of Maine, alone makes a protest, and that on
the ground of propriety.
The House of Representatives passes 166 private pension bills.
Ex-Senator David B. Hill, of New York, asks that his connection
with the Equitable Life Assurance Society be investigated by
the New York State Bar Association.
Three midshipmen are dismissed from the United States Naval
Academy at Annapolis for hazing.
The 200th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin is
celebrated in Philadelphia and Boston.
Suits for $2,000,000 are filed by the city of Chicago against
two street railway companies for running cars overcrowded with
passengers.
January 18.—Poultney Bigelow refuses to answer questions about conditions
as described by him in an article on the Isthmus of Panama, before
members of the Senate Committee. He is arrested for contempt, but is
later released.
Secretary Root states that the United States has no political
interest in the Moroccan conference, but has a trade interest,
and for that reason the United States is represented.
Senator Tillman’s resolution, calling for an investigation of
the expulsion of Mrs. Minor Morris from the White House is
tabled.
Secretary Taft advocates the construction of a direct cable
connecting the United States with Panama. The Secretary
declares this cable indispensable to the military control of
the Gulf of Mexico in time of war.
Eighteen miners are killed by an explosion at Paint Creek, W.
Va.
Congressman Sulzer, of New York, introduces a bill to increase
the President’s salary to $100,000 and the Vice-President’s to
$25,000 per year.
The Keep Commission, appointed by the President to investigate
the method of gathering statistics for crop reports, recommends
that the reports on the cotton crops be restricted to monthly
reports showing the condition of the growing crop during the
growing season. The acreage planted and the ginning statistics
of the Census Bureau should be the only Government reports on
those matters.
January 19.—Luke E. Wright, former Governor of the Philippines, is
appointed first Ambassador to Japan.
Representatives of the insurance departments of several states
confer with Armstrong Committee, which conducted the recent
insurance investigation in New York, with a view to bringing
about uniform insurance laws.
January 20.—The Senate Committee on the Philippines takes under
consideration the Philippine tariff bill.
Robert H. Todd, Mayor of San Juan, Porto Rico, appears
before the House Committee in behalf of the Larrinaga bill
to reorganize the Porto Rican civil government. He declares
that American members of the executive council are doing the
insular Government a great injustice by occupying as residences
Government buildings needed for the housing of courts and
departments of the Government.
January 21.—Eighteen negroes are killed and fifty injured in a stampede
following the discovery of fire in a church in Philadelphia.
The thermometer registers 86 degrees in Pittsburg. One person
is overcome by the heat. Cities all over the country report
much suffering from the heat.
Congressman Sulzer, of New York addresses a mass-meeting of
citizens at Washington, D. C., and declares that the Powers
must end Russian cruelty. Congressman Rainey, of Illinois, in
addressing the same meeting, said that the United States had
saved Russia from the victorious Japanese and ought now to save
her from herself. Congressman Towne, of New York, introduced a
resolution thanking the President for his efforts in bringing
about a cessation of the unspeakable crimes against the
oppressed people of Russia.
January 22.—Senator Burton, of Kansas, who has been convicted of
malfeasance, appears in the United States Senate for thirty seconds. This
entitles him to collect his $1,000 mileage.
Secretary Taft denies that any member of the Philippine
Commission or any army or naval officer owns directly, or
indirectly, any lands in the Philippine Islands.
January 23.—Senator Spooner, of Wisconsin, attempts to defend the
President’s Santo Domingan policy in the Senate. Senators Tillman, of
South Carolina, and Culberson, of Texas, make strong replies.
Both Republican and Democratic members of the House Committee
on Interstate and Foreign Commerce unanimously agree on the
railroad rate bill introduced by Congressman Hepburn, of Iowa.
The bill will be sent back to the House for passage at once.
Chief Engineer Stevens, of the Panama Canal Commission, appears
before the Senate Committee, and advocates a lock canal.
The Government opens its case against the Beef Trust at Chicago.
Kansas oil refiners appeal to Commissioner Garfield against
impositions of the Standard Oil Co.
A plot of anarchists to assassinate some of the leading men
of the country is unearthed at Washington, Pa. Governor
Pennypacker was one of the doomed number.
January 24.—Senator Lodge, of Massachusetts, addresses the Senate in
defence of President Roosevelt’s Moroccan and Santo Domingan policies.
A rule for consideration of the Joint Statehood bill is passed
by the House of Representatives. This practically assures the
passage of the bill.
The Imperial Chinese Commissioners visiting this country are
received at the White House by President Roosevelt.
State Senator Raines, introduces a bill in the New York
Legislature providing for a recount of the vote cast in the
recent New York City mayoralty election.
January 25.—The Joint Statehood bill, providing for the admission of
Oklahoma and Indian Territory as the State of Oklahoma, and New Mexico
and Arizona as the State of Arizona is passed by the House.
Senator Mooney, of Mississippi, criticises President
Roosevelt’s Moroccan and Santo Domingan policies.
Attorney General Hadley, of Missouri, who is in Cleveland,
Ohio, taking testimony in the Standard Oil investigation,
charges the Standard’s officials with forgery committed in New
York City, and offers to submit the proof to District Attorney
Jerome in order that he may prosecute.
General Joseph Wheeler dies at the home of his sister in
Brooklyn, N. Y.
Stephen Decatur, great-grandnephew of the famous Stephen
Decatur, is expelled from the United States Naval Academy, at
Annapolis, for hazing.
Stuyvesant Fish, of New York, President of the Illinois Central
Railroad Co., declares that corporations need the knife of
reform.
January 26.—President Roosevelt makes a public statement that an attorney
for the Beef Trust paid a Chicago newspaper reporter to write accounts of
the Beef Trust Trial favorable to the trust.
The members of Wisconsin’s legislative committee to investigate
life insurance companies visit New York to confer with members
of the Armstrong Committee about points to guide them in their
investigation.
Luke Wright, former Governor of the Philippines, appears before
the Senate Committee on the Philippines, and advocates the
passage of the Philippine Tariff bill, recently passed by the
House.
Chairman Shonts of the Panama Canal Commission appears before
the Senate Interoceanic Canal Committee and tells what work
is being done on the Canal. He declares that a great amount
of work in the way of improving sanitary conditions and
building houses has been completed, and that the actual digging
will begin about July 1. Mr. Shonts admits that he is still
President of the Clover Leaf Railroad, at the salary of $12,000
per year.
Mayor Billock and the chief of police of Monongahela, Pa.,
request Gov. Pennypacker to send troops to that place to aid
in the capture of a band of anarchists. This is the same band
which planned the assassination of Gov. Pennypacker and many
other prominent men.
Attorney General Hadley, of Missouri, examines men engaged
in the independent oil business at Cleveland, Ohio, in the
investigation of the Standard Oil Co. by the State of Missouri.
The New York Legislature proposes investigation of the
banking system similar to the insurance investigation made
by the Armstrong Committee. The Iowa Legislature proposes an
investigation of Iowa insurance companies.
January 27.—The Panama Canal Commission decides in favor of a lock canal.
The final decision will be made by Congress.
The House passes the Urgent Deficiency bill making the
appropriation to meet the present demands of the Panama
Commission. The eight hour law is eliminated so far as foreign
labor is concerned.
Insurance Commissioner R. E. Polk, of Tennessee, notifies all
of the insurance companies which made contributions to campaign
funds to return such funds or discontinue their business in
Tennessee.
Counsel for the Beef Trust denies the statements that money
was paid newspapermen to write accounts of the present trial
favorable to the Trust.
William H. Van Shaick, who was captain of the steamer _General
Slocum_, which was burned in the East River, New York City,
on June 15, 1904, causing the death of more than one thousand
persons, is found guilty of neglect of duty and sentenced to
ten years in the penitentiary.
January 29.—The House of Representatives passes the following resolution:
“That the President is hereby requested to report to the House all
facts within the knowledge of the Interstate Commerce Commission which
show or tend to show that there exists at this time, or heretofore
within the last twelve months has existed a combination or arrangement
between the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, the Pennsylvania Company, the
Norfolk and Western Railway Company, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
Company, the Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad Company,
the Northern Central Railway Company and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway
Company, or any two or more of said railroad companies, in violation of
the act of July 2, 1890.” The resolution was introduced several days
ago by Mr. Gillespie, of Texas, and had been referred to a committee
which had failed to make a report on it. Seeing that a majority of the
railroad congressmen were absent from their seats, Mr. Gillespie put the
resolution before the House and had it passed before the railroad men
could be rallied.
Senator Heyburn charges that a press agency is maintained at
Government expense in the Forestry Bureau. He also states that
mining and agricultural interests are being interfered with in
Idaho by the Forestry Bureau.
Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, calls up his resolution
asking for an investigation of the Chinese boycott. The
resolution is referred to a committee.
Secretary Taft asks for a reserve army of 50,000 men, at a cost
of $2,000,000 per year. The reserves are to consist of men who
have served one term of enlistment in the regular army. They
are to be allowed to live wherever they wish in the United
States, but to be subject to call by the President of ten days
each year for instruction, and on the outbreak of a foreign war
to be called into active service.
Attorneys for the Beef Trust testify that Commissioner of
Corporations Garfield promised members of the Trust immunity
from criminal prosecution if they would give certain
information about Trust methods.
At Ormond Beach, Florida, an automobile is driven two miles in
58⅘ seconds.
General Wheeler’s body is buried at Arlington, the National
cemetery near Washington, D. C.
The Senate Committee on Territories reports favorably on the
Joint Statehood bill.
Secretary Taft states that it will be several years before any
contracts for Canal work are let.
January 30.—In response to Congressman Gillespie’s resolution, President
Roosevelt asks the Interstate Commerce Commission for a report on the
Pennsylvania Railroad merger.
The Hepburn Railroad Rate Regulation bill is taken up by the
House of Representatives. A vote on the bill is expected by
February 6.
A resolution is introduced in the New Jersey Senate directing
the Attorney General of that state to bring suits to forfeit
the charters of the Standard Oil and its subsidiary companies.
The earnings of the Steel Trust for the quarter ending December
31, are $35,278,688.
Edward Morris, of Nelson Morris Co., testifies that
Commissioner Garfield promised the beef packers immunity from
prosecution when he inspected their secret accounts. Samuel
McRoberts, Treasurer of Armour & Co., testifies to the same
effect.
January 31.—Senator Patterson, of Colorado, a Democrat, makes a speech in
the Senate in support of President Roosevelt’s policies in Santo Domingo,
Morocco and railroad rate regulation.
The debate on the Hepburn railroad rate regulation bill is
continued in the House of Representatives.
Justice Gildersleeve, in the New York Supreme Court, hands
down a decision in which he refuses to make H. H. Rogers
answer certain questions asked by Attorney General Hadley, in
the investigation of Standard Oil methods, until the Missouri
courts have decided on a similar case.
February 1.—Republican Senators deny that the President has issued an
ultimatum to them on the railroad rate question.
The House of Representatives passes a resolution calling on the
Director of the Census for all cotton statistics.
The debate on the Hepburn bill continues in the House.
Lieutenant General Adna R. Chaffee retires from command of the
U. S. Army. Major General John C. Bates is nominated to succeed
him.
The Democratic Senators are alarmed by Senator Patterson’s
speech in favor of the Santo Domingo treaty, and call a caucus
for Saturday.
February 2.—The President holds several conferences with Senate leaders
on a compromise railroad rate regulation bill. Some of the Republican
Senators are opposed to the Hepburn bill which is now before the House.
The Democratic senators threaten to bar all Democrats from
future caucuses who support the Santo Domingan treaty.
The joint conference of coal operators and miners, held at
Indianapolis, adjourns without reaching an agreement on a wage
scale. The failure to reach an agreement is almost sure to
result in another great strike, beginning April 1.
The Government wrings an admission from the Beef Trust that the
National Packing Co. is simply a “holding” concern. It buys all
the cattle, but does all of its business through constituent
corporations.
February 3.—The caucus of Democratic senators at Washington adopts a
resolution that it is the duty of every Democratic senator to oppose the
Santo Domingan treaty.
The National Executive Board of the United Mine Workers decides
on a plan to raise $5,000,000 with which to carry on the strike
of the coal miners, beginning April 1.
The Panama Canal Commission decides on an 85-foot level lock
Canal. It is estimated that a lock Canal will cost $100,000,000
less than a sea-level canal.
February 5.—John F. Wallace, former chief engineer of the Panama Canal
Commission, appears before the Senate Committee and explains why he
resigned. He claims that incapable men were given greater authority than
the chief engineer.
The leaders of the Pennsylvania coal miners are divided on the
question of ordering the great strike.
The Democratic members of the House Committee on appropriations
make a minority report opposing the appropriation of $600,000
for fortifying Manila and other cities in the Philippines.
The report of the Interstate Commerce Commission shows that the
Pennsylvania Railroad really controls the Baltimore and Ohio
and several other roads.
February 6.—President Roosevelt urges a modification of the hazing laws
at the United States Naval Academy.
Thos. W. Lawson asks Gov. Cummins, of Iowa, to serve on a
committee of five to vote New York Life and Mutual Life
insurance proxies, given to Lawson by policy-holders.
There seems to be general dissatisfaction among the coal miners
over the proposed strike. The miners ask the resignation of
the president of the Pittsburg district, and the National
President, John Mitchell, is called on to settle the dispute.
The mine owners are laying up a reserve supply of 6,500,000
tons to meet the demand in case the strike takes place.
The House of Representatives continues to discuss the Hepburn
Railroad Rate bill.
District Attorney Jerome orders witnesses to appear before the
New York City Grand Jury with a view to criminal prosecution of
the officials of life insurance companies.
The Standard Oil Co. is considering a plan to increase its
capital stock from $100,000,000 to $600,000,000.
February 7.—A large number of amendments to the Hepburn Rate Regulation
bill are rejected. The bill stands as the House Committee reported it.
The Senate hears evidence against Senator Reed Smoot, the
Mormon from Utah. Professor Wolfe, a former Mormon, testifies
that the Mormon oath contains the “seed of treason.”
M. Taigny, former French chargé d’affaires who was forced to
leave Venezuela, reaches New York City.
Senator Patterson, of Colorado, who bolted the Democratic
caucus on the Santo Domingan treaty, introduces a resolution
declaring party caucus dictation unconstitutional. Senator
Bailey, of Texas, replies to Senator Patterson, and severely
criticises the President, the senator and the treaty.
February 8.—John A. McCall, former President of the New York Life
Insurance Co., is seriously ill at Lakewood, N. J.
Richard A. McCurdy, former President of the Mutual Life
Insurance Co., plans to leave the United States and make his
home in Paris.
The New York Life Insurance Company’s “house cleaning”
committee reveal that Judge Andrew Hamilton has received
$1,347,382 from that company since 1892. This is $283,383
in excess of the total payments disclosed by the Armstrong
Committee. The committee recommends legal action against John
A. McCall for the recovery of the amount.
Senator La Follette, of Wisconsin, introduces a bill in the
Senate making it a penalty for any Government officer, official
or employee to accept a railroad pass or franking privilege
over telegraph lines.
By a vote of 346 to 7 the House of Representatives passes
the Hepburn Railroad Rate Regulation bill just as it came
from the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce and
declared by Chairman Hepburn to be exactly in accordance with
recommendations of President Roosevelt on the subject.
The House of Representatives passes the General Pension bill
for the year ending June 30, 1907. The bill appropriates
$140,245,000. Congressman Gardner, of Michigan, declares
that when the last pensioner on account of the civil war has
disappeared from the rolls, $12,000,000,000 will have been
expended.
_Foreign News_
January 8.—Another plot to kill the Czar of Russia is discovered.
The massacre of Jews in Russia is denounced at a public meeting
in England.
King Edward dissolves the existing parliament, and orders the
polling for the new one to begin January 13 and end January 27.
Negotiations for a settlement between the Bermudez Asphalt Co.
and Venezuela again fail. Secretary Root will probably ask
Congress to settle the dispute.
A few minor disturbances occur in Russia. Many arrests are made
by the police.
St. Pierre-Miquelon agrees to aid Newfoundland in her campaign
against American fishermen.
January 9.—A general uprising in Siberia is feared by the Russian
Government. Martial law is being extended to more provinces. The peasants
continue to burn and pillage in the Baltic provinces. Russia pledges some
of her railroads to secure a loan from Paris bankers.
The Japanese Government plans to give $75,000,000 in pensions
and bonds to the soldiers and sailors who fought in the war
with Russia.
January 11.—The cost of the Russo-Japanese war to Russia reaches
$1,050,000,000.
Premier Witte states that the Government will not yield to the
revolutionists’ demand for transforming the National Assembly
into a Constituent Assembly for the purpose of formulating a
constitution.
Russian troops kill 65 revolutionists who attempt to wreck a
military train in Livonia. The revolt in Esthonia ends.
The feeling against foreigners is growing stronger in the
Southern part of China.
Dispatches from Madrid, Spain, state that there is little fear
of a serious difficulty between Germany and France over the
Moroccan question.
January 12.—General Morales resigns as President of Santo Domingo, and
prepares to leave for Cuba on the U. S. gunboat _Dubuque_.
Venezuela and France sever diplomatic relations. France
will push her claims against Venezuela until they are fully
recognized.
The worst of the insurrection in Siberia seems to be over.
The leading members of the Warsaw revolutionary committee
are arrested. Cossacks shell an Armenian seminary at Tiflis,
killing more than 300 persons.
German Socialists prepare to hold meetings in Berlin to
commemorate the Red Sunday in St. Petersburg, and to protest
against suffrage restrictions in Prussia.
Dispatches from London state that the European Powers will
aid France in her contentions against Germany on the Moroccan
question.
January 13.—A. J. Balfour, former Premier of England and leader of
the Unionist party is defeated for re-election to Parliament by T. G.
Horridge, Liberal and Free Trader. So far the Liberals and Labor Party
have gained eighteen seats over the Unionists in the present election.
Fears prevail in Paris that the Emperor of Germany will be too
aggressive in the Moroccan dispute.
January 14.—France recalls her Minister from Venezuela. The French
interests are placed in the hands of the American Minister.
The delegates are gathering at Algeciras, Spain, for the
conference on the Moroccan question.
Carlos F. Morales, former President of Santo Domingo, reaches
San Juan, Porto Rico. He declares in favor of the treaty
between Santo Domingo and the United States now before the
Senate for ratification.
The Santo Domingan troops rout the rebels in a battle at
Guayubin, Santo Domingo.
M. Durnovo is made Minister of the Interior by the Emperor of
Russia.
General Nogi is enthusiastically welcomed home by the people of
Tokio.
January 15.—The election of members of the British Parliament up to
date shows a landslide. The Liberals have elected 132 members while the
Unionists have elected thirty.
The peasants are said to be committing all manner of horrible
crimes in Orel, Russia. Maj. Gen. Lisooiki is assassinated
at Penza. Assassins kill three sergeants of police at Riga.
The revolutionists continue to resist the Government in the
Caucasus.
Dispatches from Paris state that France will send warships to
coerce Venezuela into paying France’s claims.
The Czar starts a movement to reorganize the Church in Russia.
January 16.—The Moroccan conference begins at Algeciras, Spain. The Duke
of Almodovar, Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, is elected President
of the conference.
The Liberals continue to gain over the Unionists in the
election now being held in England. John Burns, President of
the Local Government Board and a prominent labor leader, is
re-elected by 1,800 majority.
St. Petersburg Police raid a meeting of the Workman’s Council
and capture 22 members. Revolutionary documents, correspondence
and the headquarters from which propaganda is conducted to
the army and navy are discovered. In the Caucasus the rebels
continue their resistance to the Government.
January 17.—Joseph Chamberlain and his seven candidates are returned to
Parliament from Birmingham, England.
M. Fallières, President of the French Senate, is elected
President of the French Republic to succeed M. Loubet.
Venezuelan officials prohibit M. Taigny, the French chargé
d’affaires, from landing in Venezuela. The heads of the French
cable officers at Caracas and La Guayra are also expelled.
January 18.—Delegates to the Moroccan conference agree that the shipping
of contraband arms into Morocco must be stopped.
After giving M. Maubourguet the Venezuelan chargé d’affaires,
his passport, the French Government has him escorted to the
Belgian frontier by special police.
Serious riots occur in Hamburg, Germany, between the police and
Socialists. About 20 policemen and 15 Socialists are wounded
when the police attempt to disperse a crowd of Socialists
erecting a barricade in the street.
The Constitutional Democrats of Russia meet in convention in
St. Petersburg.
Trouble continues in the Baltic and Southern Provinces, and the
Czar is still afraid to leave his palace.
January 19.—The Constitutional Democrats of Russia vote to take part in
the elections to the duma.
Dispatches state that three French warships have appeared off
the coast of Venezuela.
The insurgent forces capture Quito, the capital of Ecuador.
Vice-president Baquerizo Moreno assumes executive power and
will appoint a new Cabinet.
According to advices received at the Japanese Embassy, at
Washington, 680,000 persons are starving in the Northern
Provinces of Japan. The condition is due to the short rice
crops, which is only 15 per cent of the average.
January 20.—The new Government of Ecuador lasts one hour. Baquerizo
Moreno is overthrown and General Eloy Alfaro made President. About two
hundred persons were killed or wounded during the fighting.
The Venezuelan Government continues to garrison the ports and
collect supplies for the troops.
January 22.—Two hundred and twelve men were killed and thirty-six injured
by an explosion on the Brazilian warship _Aquidaban_.
After winning a battle in which three hundred men were killed
and one hundred wounded, General Alfaro is recognized by all
factions as president of Ecuador.
January 23.—The United States leaves France free to act as she sees
fit in the Venezuelan case. French warships are reported under way to
Venezuela.
The Powers are all using their influence to bring about a
reconciliation between France and Germany over the Moroccan
dispute.
The steamship _Valencia_, from San Francisco, is driven ashore
on the coast of Vancouver Island. Grave fear is felt for the
ninety-four passengers and crew of sixty, as the storm is too
severe for any vessel to go to the rescue.
Fighting continues in the provinces of Southern Russia, where
the rebels are holding their own.
January 24.—Reports state that 139 persons lost their lives in the wreck
of the steamer _Valencia_ near Cape Beale, Vancouver Island.
Reports from Algeciras, Spain, indicate that the Powers are
inclined to favor Germany’s contention.
The Russian troops are restoring order in the Caucasus, Black
Sea and Sidonia district.
The returns of the English elections show 578 members elected
to the House of Commons. Of the total, the Liberals returned
312, the Laborites 48, the Nationalists 81, and the Unionists
137.
The revolution in Ecuador spreads. Two provinces are in the
hands of the revolutionists.
January 25.—President Castro, of Venezuela, claims that the French
Minister, M. Taigny, violated the laws of port in denying Venezuelan
police and boarding a French vessel for protection.
Report from the Russian Baltic provinces show that the
revolution is by no means suppressed. As soon as the troops
capture one town, fighting breaks out in another.
January 26.—General Selivanoff, commander of the Russian troops at
Vladivostok, is seriously wounded. The revolution has taken on new life
at that place. Count Witte opposes giving any more concessions to the
people.
The Cuban Senate appropriates $25,000 with which to buy Miss
Alice Roosevelt a wedding present.
Dispatches from French West Africa state that the Sultan of
Morocco is endeavoring to get the natives of the Soudan to
organize a holy-war against France.
Thirty-seven persons are saved from the steamer, _Valencia_,
which was wrecked near Cape Beale, Vancouver’s Island. All 154
persons left on board the vessel were drowned.
The revolution in the Russian Caucasus continues to spread.
France decides to boycott all Venezuelan products before making
a naval demonstration.
French and German envoys to the Moroccan conference are holding
meetings in hopes of reaching an agreement on the points in
dispute.
January 27.—Reports from Vladivostok show that the revolution has not
been crushed. St. Petersburg dispatches claim that the revolution in the
Russian Baltic provinces is drawing to a close. A fight between troops
and revolutionists takes place at Gomel and the town is burned.
Discussion of the dispute of Germany and France continues at
Algeciras, Spain.
Twenty-five members of the diplomatic corps at Caracas send a
note to the Venezuelan Government disapproving of the treatment
of M. Taigny, the French Minister.
Fighting between Raisuli and the Anjera tribesmen is renewed
near Tangiers, Morocco.
January 28.—General Linevitch reports that the mutinous sailors at
Vladivostok have been disarmed. Reports from Viatka show that school
children held a fort against a battalion of Russian soldiers for fifteen
hours.
Fighting continues in Morocco. The rebels are victorious in
several fights.
January 29.—King Christian IX of Denmark dies suddenly at Copenhagen.
The King was the father of Crown Prince Christian Frederick, of Denmark,
Alexandra, Queen of England, Dagmar, Dowager Empress of Russia, King
George, of Greece, Thyra, the Duchess of Cumberland, and Prince Valdemar
of Orleans. He was the grandfather of the Czar of Russia and of King
Haakon of Norway.
The Russian authorities again claim that the Vladivostok
trouble has been terminated.
President Castro is making active preparations for a war with
France.
January 30.—The Russian revolutionists assassinate Gen. Griaznoff, Chief
of Staff of the Viceroy of the Caucasus at Tiflis. Tiflis is placed under
martial law. Fighting is said to be in progress between the Armenians and
Tatars in the Caucasus.
Frederick VIII, eldest son of the late King Christian, is
proclaimed King of Denmark.
January 31.—Japan urges England to reorganize her army.
1,000,000 persons are reported starving in Japan
Fierce fighting continues in the Caucasus between Tatars and
Armenians.
Russia is seriously divided over the elections to the Duma.
Censorship of the press is rigidly enforced.
February 1.—Serious fights take place in Paris between the police and the
congregations of Roman Catholic churches. The operation of the new law
separating the Church and State causes the trouble.
British policy-holders in the Mutual Life Insurance Co. pass
resolutions demanding representation, and that the company
increase its securities in that country.
The conference on the Moroccan question continues at Algeciras,
Spain.
The entire Italian Cabinet resigns because the Chamber of
Deputies refuses it a vote of confidence. A new Cabinet will be
formed at once.
Fire destroys buildings in Panama valued at $500,000.
February 2.—Church riots continue in Paris. China is reported on the
brink of a revolution. Anti-foreign feeling grows, and trouble is feared.
The Czar of Russia receives a deputation of peasants and
promises them assistance.
February 3.—Reports from Venezuela state that President Castro has
ordered any French warship seen in Venezuelan waters to be fired upon.
The German Government declares that the failure of the
Algeciras conference to reach an agreement on the Moroccan
question will not lead to war between Germany and France.
Dispatches from Santo Domingo indicate that absolute peace has
been restored.
Chinese loot the home of Rev. Dr. Beattie at Fati, China.
Fights over the separation of Church and State continue in
France.
February 4.—The boycott of American goods continues in China, and another
massacre of foreigners is feared at Canton.
Japan plans to increase the tonnage of her navy to 400,000 tons
by the end of 1908.
February 6.—The agitation against Americans increases in China.
The elections to the Russian National Assembly are set for
April 7. The opening session will be held April 28.
Advices from Vladivostok show that the Russian revolution has
not been stamped out.
February 7.—The Emperor of Corea asks the Powers to exercise a joint
protectorate over Corea in respect to her foreign affairs.
Conditions in the Eastern provinces of Russia show little
improvement. Fighting continues.
Fifty men are killed in a riot at Oruro, Bolivia.
Recent events in China led the Powers to reconsider withdrawing
their troops acting as legation guards.
Chinese revolutionists loot missions at Changpu, near Amoy. The
missionaries escaped to the home of the local Governor.
The betrothal of King Alfonso, of Spain, to Princess Ena, of
Battenberg, is officially announced at Madrid.
Dispatches from Algeciras, assert that the Moroccan conference
will reach an agreement. It is understood that Germany will
concede most of France’s claims.
Yin Tchang, the Chinese Minister to Germany, states that the
anti-foreign outbreaks in China are evidence of the awakening
of a new national spirit. He says China will no longer tolerate
foreign aggression, and will not allow the Chinese abroad to
be treated as an inferior race. The Minister thinks no one
power will care to force a war with China, as she can now put a
modern army, of 200,000 men, in the field.
_Along the Firing Line_
BY THE CIRCULATION MANAGER
There isn’t much to say this month about circulation work except that
results have been highly satisfactory. We appreciate the loyalty and
energy of our friends, and extend sincere thanks for their help. January
was our best month, but at this writing (Feb. 8) the indications are that
February will be still better. A great many subscriptions expired with
the February number. Some weeks ago we sent out a postal card notice
asking for renewal and one new subscriber. The prompt replies to this
card made us throw up our hats and give three cheers for the Old Guard.
Nearly every one who replied sent one to four new subscriptions with his
renewal.
* * * * *
Remember that the subscription price is now $1.50, but as a favor to our
present subscribers we will accept renewals and new subscriptions at the
dollar rate until March 31. Get in before the time limit expires.
* * * * *
I made reference last month to Mr. Forrest’s advertisement and the
results up to January 4—only a few days after the January number was
placed on sale. Since then Mr. Forrest has received several thousand
coupons, and more are coming in every mail. He writes me that the
conference is assured, and that it will be a grand success. Mr. Bentley’s
club organization movement is going right along and he expects to call
a conference at St. Louis about May 1. I have suggested that he and Mr.
Forrest join forces and hold but one conference. I can give no details of
Mr. Bentley’s work, except that he is in touch with Populists in 1,800
counties out of some 2,800.
* * * * *
Organizations on a smaller scale are springing up all over the country.
In Pennsylvania the Referendum Party is beginning active operations. A
preliminary committee on organization has been appointed, consisting of
the following gentlemen:
Clarence V. Tiers, chairman, Pittsburgh, Pa.,
Clement V. Horn, Wilkinsburg, Pa.,
H. F. Lea, Bellevue, Pa.,
H. W. Noren, Allegheny, Pa.,
Walter Becker, Allegheny, Pa.,
John C. Innes, Pittsburgh, Pa.,
George D. Porter, Philadelphia, Pa.,
John E. Joos, Allegheny, Pa.,
Nathaniel Green, Swissvale, Pa.,
J. Ludwig Koethen, Jr., Pittsburgh, Pa.,
Hon. W. F. Hill (Master State Grange), Chambersburg, Pa.,
James William Newlin (Member of Constitutional Convention 1873),
Philadelphia, Pa.
Headquarters are located at Pittsburgh. Address communications to Lock
Box 305, Pittsburgh, Pa. The Referendum Party requests the active
co-operation and financial support of all who favor:
First.—The calling of a Constitutional Convention to revise the
State Constitution;
Second.—Granting to the people the right to veto unjust laws or
ordinances by direct vote; this right to be exercised only if a
vote is demanded on any law or ordinance, by petition signed by
two per centum of the voters of the State or locality affected.
Third.—Granting to the people the right to enact, by direct
majority, needed laws which their Legislature fails or refuses
to enact.
Regarding candidates it is announced that—
It is the intention of the Referendum Party to nominate for the
election of November 6, 1906, a complete state ticket including
candidates for the Legislature (Senators and Representatives)
but the State Executive Committee suggest that, unless
exceptionally strong, aggressive, independent candidates for
either branch of the Legislature can be nominated, it would
be advisable for local committees to indorse (by filing
nomination papers) candidates of some other party who would
pledge their support to the principles of the Referendum Party
as stated above.
After the election the Referendum Party will be entitled to a
regular place on official ballots in every district where it
polled two per centum of the largest vote cast. For this reason
it is most desirable that it nominate a candidate in every
Legislative district within the State. The forming of local
organizations in the Referendum Party should therefore begin at
once.
* * * * *
The People’s Party State Central Committee of Kansas met at Topeka,
February 2, and directed Chairman Babb and Secretary Fowler to call a
State convention some time in July. Chairman Babb and some other members
of the committee favored the organization of a voters’ league to question
and secure pledges from candidates on the old party tickets, making
no third party nominations—something on the plan devised by George H.
Shibley, editor of the _Referendum News_, Washington, D. C. The committee
was not, however, a unit on this point, several of the members insisting
upon making straight People’s Party nominations. This, it seems likely,
will be done.
* * * * *
“Union for the Common Good” is the name of a new organization just
starting in Kansas. Rev. O. H. Truman, La Crosse, is one of the moving
spirits. In the manifesto sent out by this new aspirant for political
honors the committee say:
_Whereas_, undisputed proofs of corporate greed, unscrupulous
and law-defying, have recently multiplied; and certainties
that “Boss” domination has largely prevailed in city and state
politics, frequently dictating to the people from low resorts,
encouraging graft and other corruptions to fester and flourish;
and also the great exchanges for disposing of stocks and bonds
and grain have long displaced the law of supply and demand
by their gambling methods, resulting in frequent failures,
suicides, and loss to all but the unscrupulous few; and
_Whereas_, the people, at last aroused and indignant, are now
demanding redress and prevention of further wrong;
_Therefore_, we deem it timely to organize into a society those
having a strong definite purpose to reclaim all monetary,
political, and other rights and interests from the greedy grasp
of the few to the promotion of the Common Good.
Civilization advances by evolution and revolution. Evolution
makes slow progress over a long period of time, while
Revolution advances rapidly in a short space of time.
Revolutions are caused by giant evils which must be overthrown
suddenly or not at all.
America has passed through two revolutions, and we are now
entering a third, equal in importance and greater in character
than either of the others.
The great evils that now threaten our existence are
intemperance, trusts, and political corruption.
We are to choose between Socialism and Christian Government;
nothing else is presented and nothing else is worthy of our
attention.
Socialists have gathered much valuable information; but their
leadership would dethrone God from our nation and overturn all
our history.
Christian Government would fulfill prophecy in giving Christ
the kingdom of this world, and would be in line with national
experience.
Socialism is an ideal as yet untried, without a code of morals
to preserve from corruption. In Christian Government the
legislative, executive and judicial powers would be directly
tested by the teachings of Christ.
The demands of complete Socialism are too radical for this
crisis or for any single movement. Masses of men can be moved
only so far at any one time; and revolutions are no exception
to this universal rule. To attempt more is to cause reaction
and loss.
Christian Government would accept the possible while striving
for the Christ ideal of perfection.
Nearly all revolutions have resulted in war and we believe that
complete Socialism for this crisis would be no exception to
that rule.
The Christian and moral sentiment of the nation is now
sufficiently strong, if aroused and united, to accomplish its
work by the moral power of the ballot without resorting to war.
What measures do we propose for the present crisis, and what
remedies do we suggest for existing evils?
American society may be roughly divided into three great
classes: A small, wealthy class at the top; a great mass of
laborers at the bottom; and a medium Christian and moral class
in the middle. The church middle class thus holds the balance
of power, and is responsible for safe leadership and moral
results.
The Christian and moral forces of the nation must now be
organized into a moral society for the express purpose
of leading this reform movement and developing Christian
Government.
At the outset of our organization we need consider only those
remedial measures to which all research and all demands are
now pointing; and our specialty as a society is to urge and
aid the careful testing of the best means of relief from a
dangerous condition, and also to aid in fullest adoption and
application of measures approved after trial. The key phrases
or watch words for our organization are these: “Thorough
Testing” and “The Common Good.”
We favor a fair and safe trial of municipal and other Public
Ownership, as it seems to be in harmony with the destiny of our
country and the spirit of the age.
State incorporation having been tested and found wanting, we
urge national incorporation instead, including reasonable
restrictions, and also liability to forfeiture if lawless.
We favor the election of United States Senators by direct vote
of the people; also a thorough test of the initiative and
referendum and the imperative mandate.
Any person of good moral character may become a member of this
society by accepting the constitution and paying one dollar
a year to the national society, or a life membership fee of
twenty dollars.
Each member of the society shall have a vote, by mail or
otherwise, for all officers of the national society, and on all
principles and policies adopted.
O. H. TRUMAN
J. M. McARTHUR
J. ORVILLE WALTON
BELLE FORD WALTON
E. H. H. GATES
Committee.
Men and women are requested to send names and fees for
membership. The money will be used for organizing and reported
to the society. Direct to
O. H. TRUMAN, La Crosse, Kan.
* * * * *
Our Advertising Manager, Ted Flaacke, is one of the Old Guard
greenbackers; but not until recently could I convince him that _some_
advertisers would “turn him down” because of the politics of WATSON’S
MAGAZINE. Even then I didn’t do the convincing—but Ted knows now that I
was right. He tried to get an ad. from a certain baking powder concern
that was mixed up in a scandal over in Missouri not so long ago. Its
product is claimed to be “absolutely pure,” but the Missourians were
“shown” that some of its agents couldn’t truthfully say as much of
themselves or their concern.
I’m right glad Ted got the icy stare. We need the money, no doubt—but
“alum baking powders” won’t seriously impair our digestion. And we’ll
feel better not to have had the ad., after all.
“Why, Flaacke,” said the man who places the advertising, “if WATSON’S
MAGAZINE had a million circulation and the rate was a dollar a page, I
doubt if we would use it.”
Yet some poor, simple souls still think business men—big, brainy,
successful business men—never mix politics and business. They do. And I
trust our people will not forget it.
* * * * *
Ever notice how a late train keeps falling behind and getting later and
later the farther she goes?
Well, we had an experience similar last month with the February number.
A combination of circumstances made it certain that we should be a few
days late—say two or three. But in our wildest dreams we never imagined
being over two weeks late. One after another something new arose to still
further delay us.
I can sympathize now with the railroad station agent who is obliged to
tell passenger after passenger that “No. 23 is 40 minutes late.... Yes,
she’s due here at 11:44.... Yes, that would bring her here about 12:24.”
And so on and on and on. From Mr. Watson’s editorials, however, I take
it that station agents on the Southern Railway give out no information
regarding late trains. Maybe they will after Hon. Hoke Smith is
inaugurated governor.
* * * * *
Anybody inquire why the February WATSON’S didn’t come? My dear friend,
you would think so if you could see the stacks of letters and postal
cards which poured in—hundreds and hundreds; yes, thousands, I believe.
It made us a great amount of additional work and worry, but—
On the whole, we’re rather glad the February number was late, because it
gave us conclusive proof of the high esteem in which WATSON’S MAGAZINE
is held. People don’t worry and write postal cards and letters about
publications in which they are not interested, that’s a cinch.
A few of the Old Guard were frightened. They thought we’d suspended!
I can’t blame them for that. It has always been a rocky road for any
radical publication, and especially so if it advocates Populism. But
WATSON’S MAGAZINE will be an exception. Nothing but the accomplishment of
the reforms for which it stands could kill it. That might, by removing
the necessity for such a magazine, but not necessarily. The discontent
of the masses is too great now not to furnish a most fertile field for
Mr. Watson’s teachings—and his influence is growing at a tremendous pace.
Even his enemies admit that. And that means a pronounced success for
WATSON’S MAGAZINE.
* * * * *
Thanks to the Old Guard, Watson’s Magazine gets subscribers at less
cost than any other publication. Everywhere these old veterans are
plugging away for subscribers and scarcely one of them will take a cent
of commission for his work. Some of the other magazines are spending a
fortune in newspaper advertising, and, of course, building up big lists;
but we are well satisfied with a slower growth of subscriptions that will
stay with us year after year. February is forging to the front in fine
style and we shall more than double our list by the end of March.
* * * * *
“Figures won’t lie,” asserts the oracle. “Thet’s so,” retorts the plain,
old, common-sense man, “but liars kin figger.” And the old fellow is
right. Witness some of the stunts done by Carroll D. Wright as to the
increased cost of living, and young Garfield’s showing of a net profit
to the Beef Trust of a dollar, “marked down to 99 cents,” on each steer
slaughtered.
My old colleague, T. H. Tibbles, Mr. Watson’s running mate in 1904, and
now editor of a 25-cent-a-year Populist weekly at Omaha, Neb., _The
Investigator_, was editor of the _Nebraska Independent_ when young
Garfield made that justly famous report. As I recollect, Tibbles figured
that the Beef Trust must have a secret railroad (not a rebate) to Mars
and had smuggled in countless thousands of beef cattle from that little,
old red planet, contrary to the Dingley Bill “in such case made and
provided,” because—
There weren’t enough beef steers on this old earth of ours—and haven’t
been since the days when Christ drove the “System” out of the Temple—to
account for the Beef Trust’s fortune at 99 cents per.
I have never examined Tibbles as to his proficiency in arithmetic,
but I’m willing to bet a hat—a wide-brim “Cady” (Eugene Wood, please
analyze)—that Tibbles either made a Sherlock Holmes “deduction” regarding
that Martian railroad, or—
Perish the thought, that the martyred President’s son—well, had been
doing some “figgerin’” and other things.
* * * * *
I’ve been doing some real hard figgerin’. The P. O. D., which means in
proper spelling, Post Office Department, insists that because we change
to WATSON’S MAGAZINE, dropping the “Tom,” that we must apply for a new
entry as second-class matter. Of course, as a matter of fact, as our
legal friends remark—no, I won’t say that, in view of what Abe Hummel
did and what Jerome is failing to do—our _lawyer_ friends, rather, we
never have been “second-class.” That’s a way Madden has of irritating
publishers. TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE always was _first-class_—now, wasn’t it?
At any rate, we have to tell the P. O. D. how many subscribers we have;
how many we sell at news-stands, etc. Of the subscribers, we must show
how many came direct, how many took a premium, how many subscribed
through an agent or a newspaper clubbing with us.
It’s a big job to get this correct, because right now we’re swamped with
new subscriptions and renewals. I think I got it right, however, and as
the figures may interest you, I shall give you an idea what each State is
doing.
Georgia still keeps far in the lead. Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Nebraska,
New York, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Illinois and Kansas follow in
the order named, ranging from two to fifteen per cent of the total.
Florida, North Carolina, California, Louisiana, Indiana, South Carolina,
Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oklahoma—in the order named—have
less than two and one or more than one per cent. of the total.
Washington, Virginia, New Jersey, Minnesota, Michigan, Colorado, West
Virginia, Montana, Massachusetts, Indian Territory, Idaho, Wisconsin,
Oregon, North and South Dakota (tied), Connecticut, New Mexico, Maine,
Arizona, Maryland, District of Columbia, Wyoming, Nevada, New Hampshire,
Vermont, Canada and Rhode Island follow in the order named, each with
one-tenth of one per cent. or more up to nine-tenths of one per cent.
And three-tenths of one per cent. of the total goes to Alaska, Cuba,
Delaware, Hawaii, Mexico, Panama, Philippine Islands, Porto Rico, Utah
and a number of European countries. WATSON’S MAGAZINE is not only
national but international. Up in Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and Northwest
Territory the radicals are enthusiastic over it. Uncle Sam’s soldiers and
sailors are taking it in the far corners of the earth. The War Department
has asked for subscription rates.
Yet WATSON’S MAGAZINE reaches more people in the Sunny Southland than
most any other magazine, whether published south of Mason and Dixon’s
line or north of it.
And it will bring business for the advertiser who wishes to break into
the Southern field, because every subscriber and news stand buyer has
confidence in Mr. Watson. Oh, dear, I forgot. Advertising isn’t my line
at all. See Ted Flaacke about that. He knows. But I know I’m right,
nevertheless.
[Illustration: _C. Q. de France_]
_Chastened_
BY KATE G. LAFFITTE
I knew no love but hers, nor cared to know,
She grieved and did not hide from me her grief that this was so.
I shut my heart with jealous care about her glowing face,
Her voice, her eyes, her lips, her woman’s sweet and tender grace.
I snatched her hands away when she caressed a wounded dove,
I envied all she looked on, grudged each smile, and called it love.
She died, I saw her lying there so still and cold and sweet.
Her roses flung their fragrance unheeded at her feet;
I laid my face against her own, her white soul spoke to mine
And warm across my frozen heart a bright light seemed to shine.
With aching arms I drew a suffering world into my life
And, chastened, learned too late that I had never loved my wife.
* * * * *
Of Vital Importance to Patriotic Citizens
National Documents
a collection of notable state papers chronologically arranged to form a
documentary history of this country. It opens with the first Virginia
Charter of 1606 and closes with the Panama Canal Act of 1904, and
comprises all the important diplomatic treaties, official proclamations
and legislative acts in American history.
Settle All Disputes Intelligently
You can trace from the original sources the development of this country
as an independent power. Never before have these sources been brought
together for your benefit. The volume contains 504 pages and a complete
index enabling the reader to turn readily to any subject in which he may
be interested. Bound in an artistic green crash cloth, stamped in gold.
Printed in a plain, readable type on an opaque featherweight paper.
[Illustration]
_As a Special Offer to the readers of WATSON’S MAGAZINE, we will send
this book postpaid and the Magazine for one year for $2,20._ Your order
and remittance should be sent direct to =TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE, 121 W.
42d St. N.Y.=
[Illustration]
* * * * *
LEARN HOW TO EARN FROM $3,000 TO $5,000.
YEARLY IN THE REAL ESTATE BUSINESS
$20,000 earned by one Chicago graduate last November. Another in North
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or others are successful, and we will be pleased to send you their names.
This proves you can make money in the REAL ESTATE BUSINESS.
We want to teach you by mail the best business on earth (REAL ESTATE,
GENERAL BROKERAGE AND INSURANCE) and help you to make a fortune.
By our system you can make money in a few weeks without interfering with
your present occupation.
All graduates appointed special representatives of leading real estate
companies. We furnish them lists of readily salable properties,
co-operate with them, and assist them to a quick success.
All the largest fortunes were made in Real Estate. There is no better
opening today for ambitious men than the Real Estate Business.
The opportunities in this business constantly increase as proven by a
glance at the newspapers and magazines. Every business man engaged in or
expecting to engage in the Real Estate Business should take this course
of instruction. It will be of great assistance to persons in all lines of
business, especially those dealing or investing in real estate.
Our _Free Booklet_ will tell you how you can make a success in this
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* * * * *
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A chain of testimonials from dentists in practice attests the unequalled
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will send you free a sample tube of Dentacura and our booklet, “Taking
Care of the Teeth.” Write at once. Offer expires Apr. 15th, ’06.
Dentacura may be had at most toilet counters. Price 25c. If your dealer
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* * * * *
MENNEN’S BORATED TALCUM TOILET POWDER
When March Winds Blow
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and the complexion clear. A positive relief for =Chapped Hands, Chafing,
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*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Watson's Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 1, March, 1906" ***
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