Transcriber’s Note:

The cover was created by the transcriber using elements from the original cover, and is placed in the public domain.

“TOM WATSON”

is the one historian through whom we get the point of view of the laborer, the mechanic, the plain man, in a style that is bold, racy and unconventional. There is no other who traces so vividly the life of a people from the time they were savages until they became the most polite and cultured of European nations, as he does in

THE STORY OF FRANCE

In two handsome volumes, dark red cloth, gilt tops, price $5.00.

“It is well called a story, for it reads like a fascinating romance.”—Plaindealer, Cleveland.

“A most brilliant, vigorous, human-hearted story this: so broad in its sympathies, so vigorous in its presentations, so vital, so piquant, lively and interesting. It will be read wherever the history of France interests men, which is everywhere.”—New York Times’ Sat. Review.

NAPOLEON

A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE, CHARACTER,
STRUGGLES AND ACHIEVEMENTS.

Illustrated with Portraits and Facsimiles.
Cloth, 8vo, $2.25 net. (Postage 20c.)

“The Splendid Study of a Splendid Genius” is the caption of a double-column editorial mention of this book in The New York American and Journal when it first appeared. The comment urged every reader of that paper to read the book and continued:

“There does not live a man who will not be enlarged in his thinking processes, there does not live a boy who will not be made more ambitious by honest study of Watson’s Napoleon * * *

“If you want the best obtainable, most readable, most intelligent, most genuinely American study of this great character, read Watson’s history of Napoleon.”

“TOM WATSON”

in these books does far more than make history as readable as a novel of the best sort. He tells the truth with fire and life, not only of events and causes, but of their consequences to and their influence on the great mass of people at large. They are epoch-making books which every American should read and own.

Orders for the above books will be filled by
Tom Watson’s Magazine, 121 West 42nd Street, New York City.

TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE

THE MAGAZINE WITH A PURPOSE BACK OF IT

June, 1905

Application made for entry as Second-Class Matter at
New York (N. Y.) Post Office, March, 1905
Copyright, 1905, in U. S. and Great Britain.
Published by Tom Watson’s Magazine,
121 West 42d Street, N. Y.

TERMS: $1.00 A YEAR; 10 CENTS A NUMBER

TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE ADVERTISER

How to Overthrow Plutocracy

Several million people in the United States are in substantial accord with the demands of the People’s Party. A majority of all voters would welcome Government Ownership of Railroads and other public utilities. The recent great victory in Chicago for Municipal Ownership demonstrates this fact. What Chicago has done locally can be accomplished in the nation—and WILL be done as soon as the people overcome

Political Inertia

With many the voting habit becomes fixed after one or two elections. The ordinary man keeps on “voting ’er straight” long after he has discovered that his party’s actions are out of joint with his own views. Party “regularity” commands the average man’s support long after he KNOWS his party is headed wrong. Some really great men, even, have placed party “regularity” before principle.

A Great Light

on the correct principle of organization is to be found in that admirable work by George Gordon Hastings,

The First American King

A dashing romance, in which a scientist and a detective of today wake up seventy-five years later to find His Majesty, Imperial and Royal, William I, Emperor of the United States and King of the Empire State of New York, ruling the land, with the real power in the hands of half a dozen huge trusts. Automobiles have been replaced by phaërmobiles; air-ships sail above the surface of the earth; there has been a successful war against Russia; a social revolution is brewing. The book is both an enthralling romance and a serious sociological study, which scourges unmercifully the society and politics of the present time, many of whose brightest stars reappear in the future under thinly disguised names. There are wit and humor and sarcasm galore—a stirring tale of adventure and a charming love story.

Hon. Thomas E. Watson says:

“I read ‘The First American King,’ and found it one of the most interesting books I ever opened. Mr. Hastings has not only presented a profound study of our social and economic conditions, but he has made the story one of fascination. It reminds me at times of Bellamy’s ‘Looking Backward,’ but the story is told with so much more human interest, the situations themselves are so much more dramatic, that it impresses me very much more favorably than any book of that kind I have ever known.”

Interesting as the story is as a romance and as a critical sociological study, one of its vitally important points is

How to Organize

Mr. Hastings says:

“It has been suggested,” continued General Mainwarren, “that a wise course for patriotic leaders of your day would have been to have abandoned the hope of converting and securing the grown voters as a body. It would have been best for them, at a given time, to have said: ‘Beginning from today, we will pay no attention to any male who is more than fifteen years of age and who is now, or within the next six years will be, entitled to a vote. But we will direct all efforts to an entirely new body of suffragists.’ They should then have turned their attention to the women of the land, to the mothers of future generations of voters. It has been said that ‘Every woman is at heart a royalist.’ It could with equal truth be said: ‘Every woman is by nature a politician.’ ... Look at the influence exerted politically by various women of whom history speaks.”

This Is the Key-Note of Success

For fifteen years the People’s Party, in season and out of season, has preached “Equal Rights to All, Special Privileges to None.” It has persistently demanded that government shall attend to public matters, and that private business shall be conducted by individuals with the least possible interference—and absolutely no favoritism—by government. It has continually demanded public ownership and government operation of railroads and other public utilities. It has urged the initiative, referendum and the recall; a scientific money system; the abolition of monopoly in every form. Millions of voters—as the Chicago election clearly indicates—are in accord with the People’s Party; but heretofore the voting habit, the “vote ’er straight” political insanity, has kept them in political slavery.

Educate the Boys

Let us train up a new generation of voters—without diminishing our efforts to break up old party habits—who will have the courage of conviction and correct ideas regarding politics and economics. Let us interest the mothers, so we can have the boys taught to cast their first votes on the side of Justice. Habit will then keep them voting right.

Let Us Begin Now

Mr. Hastings’s book is a thought-provoker. It combines romance with sociology and teaches while entertaining. With “The First American King” and TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE in another 100,000 homes, our first great step will be taken toward overcoming plutocracy. With this end in view, we have made arrangements whereby we can offer a dollar book, 350 pages, and a dollar magazine one year, 128 pages monthly, both for only $1.50.

Tom Watson’s Magazine and The First American King $1.50

In order to treat all alike, the book will be sent postpaid to any present subscriber of TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE on receipt of 60 cents. No person not a subscriber can buy “The First American King” of us for a cent less than $1.00. If you have not already subscribed for the magazine, send us $1.50 today for this attractive combination, and expedite the work of building up the People’s Party of the future.

Address all orders to

TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE, 121 West 42d Street, New York

SOME POPULIST PRINCIPLES

(1) Public Ownership of Public Utilities, including Railroads, Telegraphs, Telephones, etc.

(2) Direct Legislation by the people: the Initiative, Referendum and Recall.

(3) The election of all officers by the people.

(4) Graduated Income Tax and Inheritance Tax.

(5) National Currency created by the Government without the intervention of National Banks; every dollar to be the equal of every other dollar.

(6) Postal Savings Banks; the eight-hour day, regulation of Child Labor in Factories, Sweat-shops and similar avocations.

(7) Opposition to land monopoly.

(8) Removal of Tariff burdens from the necessaries of life which the poor must have to live.

Populism seeks to put political power into the hands of the people and to work out a system of Equal and Exact Justice to all, without special favors to any.

Tom Watson’s Magazine

Vol. I JUNE, 1905 No. 4

Editorials

BY THOMAS E. WATSON

Our Creed

THE People’s Party does not attempt the impossible, or seek the unattainable.

Our young men do not dream dreams; our old men do not see visions. We are wedded to practical reforms which have been tried in civilized communities, and which have vindicated themselves by results.

We do not propose to re-create society, subvert law and order, confiscate property, or substitute a new system of government for the old.

We do not want to tear down the house in order to repair it.

We do not hope to build a perfect state with imperfect human hands, but we do intend to make the government as nearly perfect as possible, to the end that it shall represent that conception of justice which deals with all men alike, and allows to every child of Adam a fair chance in the world which God created as a home for the human race.

We believe that the government should be clothed with all the attributes of sovereignty; that the government should govern, and should not delegate to private citizens or corporations any part of its sovereign power.

The creation of a national currency has always been an attribute of sovereignty—of royalty.

In a system where the people rule the people succeed to the power of the king; and that attribute of sovereignty which the king exercised and did not delegate should be exercised by the people and should not be delegated.

Therefore, the Populists, successors to the old Greenbackers, have always clung to it as an article of faith that the Federal Government should exercise its constitutional right to create a currency, and should not delegate that power to national banks or to private citizens or corporations.

The government should supply the country with a sufficient amount of national money, every dollar of which should be equal to any other; every dollar of which should be a full legal tender for all claims, public and private, and no dollar of which should be made redeemable in any other dollar.

We believe that those things which are essentially public in their nature and their use should belong to the public, and should be equally enjoyed by all.

Just as the navigable rivers are public to the beggar and the millionaire alike, just as the Bay and the Gulf and the Harbor and the navigable Lakes are the common property of the rich and the poor, the high and low, the black and white, so we believe that the roads should be common ground upon which every citizen should be free to pass upon terms of equality, and that the iron highways of today, which were taken from the people by the exercise of the right of Eminent Domain, should be restored to the public by the same law of Eminent Domain, a fair compensation having been paid, and the property operated hereafter for the benefit of all the people.

So with the Telegraph and the Telephone and Express Companies.

In every city and town we believe that the municipality, which is a part of the state’s sovereignty, should take over to itself those public utilities which in their very nature are monopolies, and, just compensation having been paid, that these utilities should be used for the benefit of the people, to whom they belong.

We believe that the government should be supported by a system of taxation in which each citizen will pay taxes in proportion to his ability to pay.

We believe in a Tax on the Franchises enjoyed by private corporations.

We believe that the Income Tax would be the fairest of all taxes, because it would take for the support of the government, not the property of the citizen, but a portion of the income which the citizen derives from that property, or from his individual exertions, and the tax would be proportioned to the income.

That property or that salary could not be enjoyed without the protection and the advantages which flow from government, and it is eminently fair, where the government has protected me, or where it affords me such opportunities, that I can receive a large income from any source whatever, I should pay to the government, in return for its protection and its advantages, a fair share of that which I could not have made without that protection and those advantages.

Under our present system a man like John D. Rockefeller pays no more Tariff tax when he buys a hat than a doctor or lawyer or preacher pays when he buys a hat. So with the shoes, the clothes, the crockery on the table, the furniture in the house. Many a citizen whose income does not amount to ten thousand dollars per year pays fully as much Tariff tax in the purchasing of necessary articles of clothing, furniture and food as John D. Rockefeller pays, whose income is counted monthly by the millions of dollars.

The same thing is true of Carnegie, Morgan, Hill, Harriman, Gould, Cassatt, Vanderbilt. Many a farmer whose income from his farm may not do more than give his family an actual support, after the operating expenses are paid, contributes annually a greater sum in Tariff tax to the Federal Government than is paid by the fabulously wealthy beneficiaries of class legislation.

It has been said that the People’s Party dodges the Tariff issue. This is not true.

One of our earliest platforms, which has been repeatedly reindorsed, declares:

“We demand the removal of the Tariff tax from the necessaries of life which the poor must have to live.”

This is precisely the principle announced by Thomas Jefferson, who declared that the taxes should be so laid that the luxuries of life would bear the burden of government, and that his ideal was a system in which the poor would be entirely relieved from the crushing weight of taxation.

Furthermore, we have said that legislation should not be so framed as to build up one business at the expense of another.

If the People’s Party platform were enacted into law, there could be no such thing as a Trust in the United States.

In order that the people should become the victims of such tyranny as that exercised by the Trusts two things are necessary: Foreign relief must be made impossible, and domestic relief made impracticable.

The Tariff wall keeps the foreigner from interfering; the railroads and the national banks supporting the Trusts make it impossible for domestic dissatisfaction to assert itself effectively.

If the people should put upon the free list those articles which are made the subject of the Trusts, the foreigner could at once invade the market, and destroy the monopoly upon which the Trust is based.

If the Populist principles of finance and of transportation should be carried into effect, the Government abolishing national banks and private ownership of transportation lines, the rebate would be impossible, discriminations would cease, equality would prevail, and there would be no collusion between the national banks and the railroads by which Trusts are made invincible as they are now invincible.

We believe in direct Legislation—putting the power of making laws and choosing rulers back into the hands of those to whom it belongs—and the election of all officers by the people.

The people should not be made to await the pleasure of the Legislature or of Congress. They should not be kept in ignorance of what the law is until legislative acts become known through the newspapers. There should be in every case the right to initiate those laws which they want, and to veto, through the Referendum, any law which they do not like.

When an officer whom they have elected shows by any vote or act that he is not the man they took him to be, they should not have to wait till the expiration of his term to get a better man. They should have the right to recall the officer the moment he betrays his trust.

We believe in the eight-hour day for labor in Government works, in factories, workshops and mines.

We believe in the regulation of child labor in factories, workshops and mines, to the end that children of tender age shall not be made to slave out their lives in order that corporations shall have cheap labor and large dividends.

Saturn, the old fable tells us, devoured his own children: Christian civilization does the same thing.

As long as we permit children of ten and twelve years to labor from eight to fourteen hours per day in our mills and workshops modern civilization is another Saturn. We are devouring our own children.

We believe that the land, the common heritage of all the people, should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, or by alien ownership, but that legislation should be so shaped as to encourage to its full extent the right of every man born into this world to till the soil and make a living out of it.

And one of the principal reasons why we favor a graduated income tax, which increases by geometrical progression as the income increases, is that it automatically keeps the wealth of the country in a constant sort of redistribution, and acts as a check upon that excessive accumulation which is recognized by all intelligent thinkers as one of the most serious perils and intolerable evils of our present era of class legislation.

These are the most important articles of our faith. It is for these principles that we have struggled ever since 1891—with never a doubt that they were sound, that they would constantly gain converts, that they would ultimately win.

When I founded the People’s Party Paper in Atlanta, Ga., in 1891 (which paper lived and toiled for these principles until the fusion movement of 1896 killed it, as it killed twelve hundred other Populist papers), I announced the same purpose which I announced in the prospectus of this magazine.

My faith was as firm in 1891 as it is today, and I had as little doubt then as I have now that Populism is just as sure to triumph as the sun is to continue to warm the world.

The reforms will be effected because the country needs them. It cannot stand much more of the present system. It will not accept Socialism. Occupying the middle ground of radical, but practical reform, Populism is inevitable.

National Politics and Policies

There is a saying that the difference between a wise man and a fool is that the wise man never makes the same mistake twice, while the fool continues to make it without limit.

It is of supreme importance that those who will act as political leaders during the next four years should think clearly in order that they may act wisely.

We have not, as yet, discovered any brighter lamp with which to guide our footsteps than that which Patrick Henry named the Lamp of Experience.

If I felt that our national leaders were about to repeat a disastrous mistake and adopt a policy which seems the continuance of the reign of class legislation and special privilege, I should be false to my own sense of duty if I did not at this early day point out that error and warn the Jeffersonians against it.

I say Jeffersonians because, after all is said and done, there are but two great differences of political thought in the United States—never have been but two; never will be but two.

On the one hand are those who believe that legislation should be dictated by the interest of the few; that the powers and the benefits of good government should be monopolized by the few; that the blessings and the opportunities of life should be the heritage of the few; that wealth and privilege and national initiative should perpetually be the legacy of the few.

On the other hand is the Jeffersonian idea that the human family are all alike the children of God; that the earth and all it contains was created for the benefit of this human family, and that any system of law and government which gathers into the hands of the few an unjust proportion of the common estate, to the exclusion of the vast majority, is an infamous invasion of the natural rights of man.

Now, what is it that endangers the cause of the Jeffersonians?

What is it that seems to me to be so certain to insure the continuance of the rule of the few over the many?

It is the continued existence of the political alignment of the great mass of the people in two political parties, each of which, in its heart of hearts, is wedded to the rule of the few.

Neither one of these parties wants any material change in our present system of legislation or of administration.

Both of them are absolutely dominated by the same interests.

In the ranks of each of these parties are found the powerful railroad kings, the irresistible trusts, the indispensable national banks, the vastly influential insurance companies.

As a matter of fact, nearly every board of management of every predatory corporation against which the people are rising in revolt is made up half and half of Democrats and Republicans, in order that, no matter which party wins at the polls, the corporation will have influence at court.

It is so clear to me that the only possible hope for the people is to drive these two parties together while the people unite under another standard.

In vain does Judge Parker talk about the difference between his Democracy and the Republicanism of Mr. Roosevelt. During the campaign he was unable to state any difference, and there is, in fact, no difference.

Between Belmont’s ideas of government and those of Mark Hanna there is not the slightest difference.

Between the Democratic corporation and the Republican corporation it is absurd to claim that there is any difference.

Between Democratic manufacturers and Republican manufacturers no human being of intelligence will expect any difference or find any.

In other words, the millionaire beneficiaries of class legislation control both of the old parties, and the battle which they wage year after year, decade after decade, is a mere sham battle. The strategy of the corporations consists in keeping the people divided in order that the corporations may rule.

Believing this to be true, I am painfully impressed with the fact that Mr. Bryan is making a huge mistake.

The pity of it is, he has already made that mistake twice, and is now making it for the third time.

What is the mistake?

It consists of the effort to get radical reform out of a party which has always been dominated and always will be dominated by conservatives. When the currency was contracted just after the Civil War and ruin brought upon so many thousands of people in this country, it took the joint action of both the old parties to do it.

When the revenue taxes were taken off railroads, manufactures, insurance companies, bank checks and express companies, soon after the close of the Civil War, it took the joint action of both the old parties to do it.

When the Income Tax was lifted from the burdened shoulders of the rich, it took the joint action of both the old parties to do it.

When Silver was struck down and the Gold Standard forced upon us, it took the joint action of both the old parties to do it.

When our National Bank System was enthroned, and that terribly unjust system was chartered to prey upon the people, it required the joint action of both the old parties to do it.

When Congress, over the protest of Thaddeus Stevens and others, obeyed the command of the Rothschilds (delivered at Washington personally by August Belmont, the father of the present Boss of the Democratic Party), and declared by legislative enactment that the banks should be paid in gold while the soldier at the front should be paid in greenbacks, it required the joint action of both the old parties to do it.

There has never been a necessary act of Congress—necessary to the rule of the few, necessary to carry out the Hamiltonian ideal—that did not rest for support one foot on the Republican Party and the other on the Democratic Party.

The man who does not know this to be true is unfamiliar with official records.

The time has been when Mr. Bryan held the same opinions which I am expressing now. The time has been when he declared, in speech and writing, that there was no hope for reform in the Democratic Party.

In 1896 Mr. Bryan, in the Omaha World-Herald, editorially asked:

“Can a National Convention harmonize the discordant elements of the Democratic Party? Impossible.

“Suppose the advocates of bimetallism control the National Convention and nominate a Free Silver Democrat upon a free coinage platform, will Cleveland, Carlisle, Olney, Morton, et al. support the ticket? Of course not. They say that the free coinage of silver means individual dishonesty, commercial disaster and national dishonor, and if they believe what they say they ought not to support the ticket, because their duty to their country is higher than their duty to their party organization. If, on the other hand, the convention nominates a Gold Standard Democrat on a platform indorsing the gold standard, gold bonds and national bank currency, should the nominee be supported by those who believe the gold standard to be a conspiracy of the capitalistic classes against the producers of wealth—a crime against mankind? Who says they should?

“If to continue Mr. Cleveland’s financial policy is to declare war against the common people, what friend of the common people would be willing to enlist in such a warfare, even at the command of his party?

“The Democratic Party cannot serve God and Mammon; it cannot serve plutocracy and at the same time defend the rights of the masses.

“If it yields to the plutocracy it ought to lose, and it will lose, the support of the masses; if it espouses the cause of the people, it cannot expect either votes or contributions from the capitalistic classes and from the great corporations.”

In pursuance of this very correct line of reasoning, Mr. Bryan resolutely declared that if the Democratic Party adopted the gold standard, “I promise you that I will go out and serve my country and my God under some other name, even if I must go alone.”

Again Mr. Bryan said, in his book called “The First Battle,” Chapter III, page 124, “In that speech I took the position which I have announced since on several occasions, namely, that I would not support for the Presidency an advocate of the gold standard.”

Again Mr. Bryan said: “Does the individual member of a party at all times reserve the right to vote against the nominee of a party, and to abandon his party entirely whenever in his judgment his duty to his country requires it? He may abandon the party temporarily, as, for instance, when an unfit candidate is nominated, or the voter may abandon his party permanently, either when he himself changes his opinion upon a paramount public question or when his party changes its position.”

Now let the reader compare the present attitude of Mr. Bryan with the political ethics expounded by him in his book.

He was then the idol of the radicals; he was then the Tribune of the People.

He was the strong and stalwart foe of every plutocrat, every Wall Street interest, every beneficiary of class legislation.

The people hailed him with an enthusiasm which had not been known since the days of Henry Clay. So great was their faith in him that he swept into his movement in 1896 the Free Silver organization and the great bulk of the Populist Party.

Who is it that cannot see how loftily he held his flag in those days? Who is it that does not realize how sadly it droops today?

From the noble stand of 1893 and 1896, what a falling off is there! Boldly he declared that he would never support for the Presidency an advocate of the gold standard. Yet, when Judge Parker slapped his face in public with the Gold Telegram of 1904, the dauntless Bryan turned the other cheek, like a very meek Christian indeed.

He had said that a Democrat might bolt his party temporarily upon the nomination of an unfit candidate; he had said that Judge Parker was an unfit candidate, but he did not bolt the nomination, even temporarily.

He had said that the voter might abandon his party permanently when that party changed its position upon a paramount public question; yet when the Democratic Party, with extraordinary suddenness, changed its position upon more than one paramount question in 1904, Mr. Bryan did not bolt his party permanently.

He had said that if the Democrats took up the Republican financial policy, which meant the slavery of the debtors of this country and the impoverishment of the people, he would go out and serve his country and his God under some other name, even if he had to go alone. Yet when his party did come over to the Republican financial policy, and came by telegraph at that, Mr. Bryan did not go out to serve either his country or his God under some other name.

He had said to his brother Democrats: “If you are ready to go down on your knees and apologize for what you have said” (abuse of the Republicans and the gold standard), “you will go without me.”

Yet when the Democratic Party, at the St. Louis Convention in 1904, went down on its knees, in effect, to apologize for the abuse which they had heaped upon the Republicans for eight years, they did not go without Mr. Bryan. The knees of Mr. Bryan hit the floor in timely cadence with the knees of all the others, and when he filed out of the convention hall the dust was there to show it just as it was there to show it on the knees of all the others.

Bryan himself asked the question in 1896: “Can a National Convention harmonize the discordant elements of the Democratic Party?” He answered his own question in the comprehensive word, “Impossible.”

The event of the campaign of 1896 showed that he was right, for the Cleveland-Carlisle-Belmont element knifed him.

In the campaign of 1900 they knifed him again. In the campaign of 1904, when the convention nominated a gold standard Democrat on a platform indorsing the gold standard, gold bonds and the gold bank currency, the people refused to support the sell-out of the National Democratic Party to Wall Street, just as Mr. Bryan, in 1896, prophesied that they would, in spite of the fact that the prophet of 1896 had become the gold standard nominee’s most earnest advocate in the campaign of 1904.

In other words, the people had become so inoculated with the true gospel of Bryan, the Tribune of 1893 and 1896, that they refused to follow the change of heart and the change of conduct which came over Bryan, the Parkerite of 1904.

Will not Mr. Bryan reflect upon this and draw a lesson from it? He himself has declared that he is attempting the impossible in trying to harmonize the discordant elements of the Democratic Party.

What is the real statesmanship demanded at this time?

That those who believe in Jeffersonian ideals, whether they are now in the Republican, Democratic, Populist or Socialist parties, should come together without prejudice for party names, and should unite in the common cause of driving from power the beneficiaries of class legislation, no matter whether those beneficiaries are called Democrats or Republicans.

Let the Belmonts and Morgans get together in the same party so that we can fight them both at the same time.

As long as we cling to party differences and party names our efforts will come to naught, as they did in 1896, 1900 and 1904.

Mr. Bryan wants the reform movement to stop and wait for him, while for four years he struggles to get the better of the plutocratic element of his own party. If they were able to wrest control from him when he had so much more advantage than he has now, how can we expect him to take that control from their strong hands?

But, suppose he does succeed in defeating the Belmont-Cleveland element in the convention of 1908, does he not know that they will fulfil his prediction again and knife him as they have done twice already?

On the other hand, suppose they conquer him in 1908 as they did in 1904, will he not submit tamely to kiss the hand that smote him as he did in the last convention? Most assuredly he will.

He lost his opportunity to fly the flag of revolt when he failed to resent the Gold Telegram of 1904. That opportunity passed, never to return.

Absolutely the only hope of radical reform lies in a straight-out, aggressive and fearless fight upon both the old parties, which in turn have had control of the Government, and which have played into each other’s hands in forging the chains of class legislation which now bind and burden the Common People.

Is It Paul Jones’s Body?

Have they found the body of John Paul Jones?

The experts say that they have.

To the legal mind, the fact that experts had to be called in to pass upon the question of identity is sufficient to arouse suspicion and provoke investigation.

As stated in a former number, I was certain they would find Paul Jones—in their minds—for that was what they were looking for.

Whenever, for instance, the medical expert starts out to find arsenic in the human stomach, arsenic generally shows up all right enough.

In like manner French experts were called in to identify a certain corpse as that of Paul Jones, and, after the most elaborate and beautifully regular formalities, they solemnly pronounced the verdict which they knew was expected and which they were predisposed to find.

“This is Paul Jones, isn’t it?” asks General Porter, most suavely, not to say persuasively.

How could the politest experts of the politest people on earth say nay?

The case was pitiful.

The search for Paul Jones’s body had reached a crisis. Only four leaden coffins had been found in the old graveyard, and one of these had to be Paul Jones, because he had been buried in such a coffin, and the other three bore name-plates which showed they could not be his.

The fourth bore no name-plate; therefore it must be Jones’s coffin.

The necessity of the situation required it.

Consequently, polite French experts measure, compare, incubate, decide and bring in the verdict desired.

Looking at the matter as a lawyer, I should say that there is not sufficient legal evidence offered, as yet, to establish the identity of the dead body.

The cemetery in which Commodore Paul Jones was buried was closed by law in 1793.

A canal was afterward cut through it.

The great sea-fighter was buried, as Napoleon was, in uniform.

In the Life of him—“Great Commanders’ Series”—by Cyrus Townsend Brady, the statement is made that Paul Jones was buried in the American uniform, and that a sword and other articles were placed in the coffin.

The body which General Porter has found was not clad in uniform.

There was no sword, or other article, found in the coffin.

Commodore Jones died of dropsy, which had swollen his body to such an extent that he could not button his waistcoat.

Yet the French experts declare that all the measurements tally exactly with those of the living Jones.

Should They Do So?

Awful changes take place after death, and they are greater with some than with others.

Should the measurements of a corpse which had been entombed more than a hundred years correspond exactly with those of the same body when alive?

Most biographers put the height of Admiral Jones at “about five feet and eight inches.”

Won’t you find a greater number of men—in France especially—whose height is “about five feet eight inches” than you’ll find at any other figure?

And will you not find more corpses of about that length?

Yet in these measurements consists the whole of the testimony which has been offered to the American people to convince them that the body of Paul Jones is at last to come home.

Unless the matter of the uniform and the sword be cleared up, it is impossible to accept the conclusion arrived at by the experts.

This corpse may be, as already stated, a good enough Jones for that $35,000, but it has not yet been shown to be John Paul Jones, the naval hero of our War of Independence.

Is the Black Man Superior to the White?

With statistics one can prove many things—the conclusion arrived at depending, in all cases, considerably upon the man behind the figures.

This time the man behind the figures is Doctor Booker Washington—may his shadow never grow less!

In the course of a recent lecture, the learned Doctor laid down the proposition that the black man is superior to the white, and he proved it—proved it by statistics.

He said that there is 85 per cent. of illiteracy among the Spaniards, while there is only 54 per cent. of illiteracy among the negroes; therefore the negroes are clearly more advanced in civilization than the Spaniards.

Poor old Spain!

The learned Doctor further demonstrated that there is 65 per cent. of illiteracy among the Italians; therefore the negroes are far ahead of Italy. Russian illiteracy being 70 per cent. the black man takes precedence of the land of Peter the Great, Skobelef, Gorky, Turgenef and Tolstoy. South America, having an illiteracy of 80 per cent., falls far to the rear of the negro—and Castro must add this additional kick to the many he has already received from North America.

Proud of his statistics, Doctor Booker Washington exclaims: “The negro race has developed more rapidly in the thirty years of its freedom than the Latin race has in one thousand years of freedom.”

That’s a bold statement, Doctor.

To say nothing of its accuracy, may it not have been an unwise thing for you to claim that the black man has risen during thirty years more rapidly in the scale of civilization than the whites have risen in a thousand?

True, you confine yourself to the Italians, the Spaniards, the Russians and the South Americans, but when you say the darkest of all the colored races is superior to that great section of the white race named by you, does it not occur to you that you may create a feeling of resentment among all the whites?

You have thousands of true friends throughout the entire country—white men who have most generously helped you in your work, helped you with money, with moral support and with a certain amount of social recognition. Your admirers refer to you as a great man. They allude to your work as a great work. The South helps you with appropriations, just as the North helps you with donations. We want to see you succeed in building up your race.

But have you a single white friend who will indorse your statement that the black race is so superior to the whites that it can do in one generation what it required the whites a thousand years to do?

Do you imagine that your friends, President Roosevelt, Mr. Carnegie, Dr. Hart, Bishop Potter, and others, will like you better when they hear you putting forth a claim to race superiority? Doctor, you have overshot the mark.

Whenever the North wakes up to the fact that you are teaching the blacks that they are superior to the whites, you are going to feel the east wind.

What do you mean by racial development, Doctor?

Apparently your standard of measurement is illiteracy. That is to say, if a greater number of negroes than of Spaniards can read, then the negro has achieved a higher plane in civilization.

Is that your idea? Does the ability to read constitute race development?

According to that, a million negro children attend school twelve months and become “civilized” because they have learned to spell “Baker” and to read “Mary had a little lamb.”

Does it not strike you, Doctor, that such a measure might be delusive?

In making up your tables of illiteracy, why didn’t you include all the negroes, as you included all the Italians, all the Spaniards, all the Russians?

Why leave out your home folks in Africa, Doctor?

Why omit Santo Domingo and Haiti?

If you will number all the negroes, Doctor, your percentage of illiteracy among the blacks may run up among the nineties, and knock your calculation into a cocked hat.

In the West Indies God poured His blessings with lavish hand upon the island of Haiti. The French went there and built up a civilization. The Revolution of 1789 freed the negroes who were held in slavery by the whites, and civil war soon followed.

The blacks outnumbered the whites and the climate was their ally. Yellow fever did for them what frost did for the Russians when Napoleon struck at their liberties. They achieved freedom, and they have had it, not for thirty years, but for a hundred years.

What have your people done with their freedom in Santo Domingo, Doctor? Back, back into barbarism, voodooism, human sacrifice, social and political anarchy they have plunged; and their history is one long blood-stained record of backsliding from the standard which the French had already established. Even now your black brethren in Santo Domingo are beseeching the white man of the United States to do that which they are unable to do—administer national affairs. In self-defense this Government may have to treat Santo Domingo as Great Britain treats Jamaica, both governments acting upon the demonstrated fact that the blacks, left to themselves, are incapable of self-government and race development.

But before entering into a comparison of racial progress, Doctor, it is in order to note the fact that you accredit the negro with only thirty years of freedom. Why, Doctor, the negro race, as a race, has enjoyed just as long a period of freedom as the Celts, the Latins, the Anglo-Saxons and the Slavs.

The black race in Africa was as free as the Indian race in North America.

During the thousand years in which the whites were painfully creating the civilization which you now enjoy, your race, in its native home, was doing pretty much the same things which the red race was doing in North America. Your people were running about in the woods, naked, eating raw meat, eternally at war—tribe with tribe—steeped in ignorance, vice and superstition, with an occasional lapse into human sacrifice and cannibalism.

Your race, as a race, is free now in Africa, as it has been since the dawn of history:—where is the civilization which it worked out for itself? It does not exist; it never did exist.

The negro has been absolutely unable to develop as a race when left to himself. Nowhere, at any time, has he developed a system of agriculture, or commerce, or manufactures, made headway in mining or engineering, or conceived a system of finance. Never has he produced a system of laws, institutions of state, religious organization, or worked out a political ideal. Never has he created a literature, or developed original capacity for the fine arts. His foot has never even crossed the threshold of the world of creative painting, sculpture, music, architecture Into the realms of science, in the domain of original thought, in the higher reaches of mental power where the human mind grapples with vast problems, material and spiritual, the problems of time and eternity, the negro has never entered. No word has ever fallen from his lips that was not the echo of what some white man had already said. He has sometimes put his foot in the white man’s track, but that is the best he has ever done.

Compare this imitative race with the great Latin stock—a stock from which sprang Rienzi and Garibaldi, Cavour and Napoleon, Da Vinci and Galileo, Savonarola and Leo the Tenth, Titian and Bellini, Raphael and Michelangelo.

The Latin race, whether in Spain, Italy or South America, has developed systems of agriculture, finance, commerce, manufactures, education, religion, government—has created literature, laws and institutions of state, has evidenced capacity in science and art.

The negroes superior to the Latins?

Heavens above!

During the thousand years which Doctor Washington says that the Latins have done less than the negroes have done in thirty, Spain rose into world-power, dominated the European Continent, shook England’s throne to its base, broke the Turkish scimiter in the great sea-fight of Lepanto, evolved a splendid literature, reached the highest development in the Fine Arts, launched Columbus upon his voyage into unknown seas to test the suggestion of another Latin—Toscanelli—and thus took the first daring step in that marvelous chapter of Discovery whose sober facts are grander and stranger than Romance.

Has the learned Doctor ever studied the history of Mexico—the Latin country south of us?

Since a foreign yoke was thrown off and Mexico “found herself,” what country has made nobler progress?

The negro in Santo Domingo has had a hundred years of freedom; Mexico scarce half so many; yet compare the Mexico of today with the Santo Domingo of today. Left to themselves, the Latins of Mexico have built up a magnificent civilization.

Left to themselves, the negroes of Santo Domingo have destroyed what the French had already built.

In Mexico conditions get better, year after year.

In Santo Domingo conditions grow worse, year after year.

If the learned Doctor wants to make a study in contrasts, let him first read “Where Black Rules White,” by Hesketh Prichard, and then read “The Awakening of a Nation,” by Charles F. Lummis, and I venture to say that some of his cocky self-complacency as to the superiority of the negroes over the whites will ooze out of him.

As to Italy—can it be that Italy has done less in a thousand years than the negroes have done in thirty?

The greatest man that ever lived was of Italian extraction. Taine says that Napoleon was a true Italian in character and intellect. If that be true, then the two greatest men the world ever saw were Latins. Wherever the civilized man lives today his environment, his thoughts, his ideals, his achievements are more or less influenced by the life and work of Cæsar and Napoleon.

If any two men may be said to have created the material modern world those two Latins did it.

If modern Europe is any one man, it is Napoleon. His laws, schools—social, political, financial, educational institutions—have wrung from rulers ever since the homage of imitation.

In literature how illustrious is Italy?

It was Petrarch who was “the Columbus of a new spiritual atmosphere, the discoverer of modern culture.”

It was he who broke away from monkish medievalism, created the humanistic impulse, treated “man as a rational being apart from theological determination,” modernizing literature.

The “short story” writers of fiction—Edgar Poe, Guy de Maupassant and Kipling—had their teacher in Boccaccio and his novella.

Modern history traces its methods, its spirit and its form to Villani, Guicciardini, and that wonderful type of Latin genius, Machiavelli.

The whole world goes to school to the Latins!

No painter hopes to excel Correggio, Paul Veronese, Antonio Allegro, Tintoretto, Velasquez, Murillo. No sculptor expects to eclipse Niccola Pisano, Orvieto, Orcagna or Luca della Robbia.

No worker in gold, silver and bronze believes he can surpass Ghiberti, Cellini and Donatello.

Architects the world over despair of rivaling Alberti, Bramante, Giulo Romano, Palladio.

These masters were masters to their own generation, four and five hundred years ago; they have been masters ever since; they are masters still.

Wherever civilization extends its frontiers these deathless Latins are in the van—teaching what Truth and Beauty are, refining the thoughts, elevating the ideals, improving the methods, inspiring the efforts of man.

The negroes have done more than this, and in thirty years?

You had forgotten the Renaissance, hadn’t you, Doctor?

Asia was decaying, Africa was in its normal state of savagery, Europe lay torpid under the weight of ignorance and superstition. Where learning existed at all its spirit was dull, its form heavy, its progress fettered by ancient canons and cumbrous vestments.

Suddenly the Angel of Light—her face a radiance, her presence an inspiration—puts a silver trumpet to her lips and blows, blows, till all the world of white men hears the thrilling notes.

And lo! there is a resurrection! What was best in the learning of the past becomes young again, and ministers to the minds of men.

Literature springs to life, throws off antiquated dress, and takes its graceful modern form. The fine arts flourish as never before; the canvas, the marble, the precious metal, feel the subtle touch of the eager artist, and give birth to beauty which is immortal. The heavy prison-castle of the Frank, the Goth, the Norman, the Anglo-Saxon, retires abashed before the elegant, airy, poetic palace of the Renaissance.

Nor does the revival of learning limit itself to literature, architecture, painting, sculpture. It extends to law, to commerce, to agriculture, to religion, to education.

Whence came the Renaissance, Doctor Washington? Whence came that mighty revival of intellectual splendor which still influences the world? From the Latin race, which you affect to despise. From these Italians whom you say are so inferior in development to the negro.

Italy led the modern world in almost everything which we call civilization—she is today one of the world’s most inspiring teachers, nor will her power for good be gone till the Christian religion is repudiated, the voice of music hushed, the wand of literature broken, the force of law defied, the witchery of art lost to the minds, the hearts and the souls of men.