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

March, 1906

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

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.

“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:

“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!

“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.

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.

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.