* * * * *
[Illustration: “Some editors make editorial music that way.”]
As to the illegal charges made by the roads, in the manner explained by
me in the 3rd specification of my article, I stand my ground, and I say
that the Supreme Court has never declared that such a discrimination
against a town on the main line was legal. On the contrary, it was held
to be illegal.
As to specification number 4, that the Corporations rob the people of the
state by compelling them to pay dividends upon fictitious capitalization,
who can deny it?
Every privately owned railroad in this state has had all the water
poured into it that it would hold. The fixed charges are based upon this
fraudulent capitalization. The people pay dividends upon it. The freight
and passenger rates are kept up, and accommodations kept down, and labor
squeezed, and safety appliances neglected, and bridges allowed to stand
till they fall beneath a load of screaming, bleeding, dying passengers,
because the Wall Street rascals who watered the stock demand dividends
upon the millions which they created out of ink and paper.
Clark Howell dares to say that the Central is capitalized for less now
than before the war.
For shame! For shame!
One must be awfully hard up for an office before he can bring himself to
make a statement like that for a railroad.
The Capital stock of the Central was $7,500,000 before the war; and
General Toombs declared that half of it was water. The Capital stock of
the Central proper is perhaps 75,000 shares, as it was before the war. It
may be even less. But that’s a matter of no consequence whatever.
The really important question is, _How much capitalization does the
Central carry upon which it has to pay revenue?_
Everybody remembers how Pat Calhoun got control of the Central, and
everybody knows how thick Clark Howell was with Pat. Wanted to put him in
the Senate, you know.
Well, Pat and his Wall Street friends slapped a debt of _sixteen million
dollars_ on the Central during the gay time they had control of it.
Then the road was wrecked in the most approved Wall Street manner, and
many a genuine widow and real orphan wept bitterly in their grief, for
they had gone to bed in comfort and woke to poverty.
It was one of the nastiest, cruelest, completest pieces of Wall Street
rascality that was ever worked upon an unsuspecting people, _and Clark
Howell could tell some queer things about it, if he would_.
The Central fell into the Federal Courts, was put through the form of
a sale, and that international scoundrel, J. Pierpont Morgan, appeared
on the scene as “reorganizer.” When the Central had been properly
Morganized, it was laden with fictitious capital to the tune of
$55,000,000; and _upon this fictitious capital the people of Georgia are
made to pay revenue_.
When Clark Howell stated that the Central was capitalized for less
than before the war, he did not, perhaps, tell a falsehood in a strict
technical sense; but, in the impression which he knew his language would
make, and which he intended it to make, he was as far from the truth
as when he pictured the railroads trotting down to Flovilla, promptly
and dutifully to build that town a nice, new depot—“one of the most
attractive and best equipped depots.”
* * * * *
As to the $10,000 campaign fund furnished by the railroads to elect
Terrell, Mr. Howell says “it’s denied by everybody involved.” Ah, indeed?
When did “everybody involved” deny it? Who are the “everybody involved”?
Will Joe Terrell go before a notary and make oath that the railroads did
not contribute $10,000, or other large sum, to his campaign fund?
Joe may not be _everybody_ “involved,” but he certainly is _involved_.
If he can make an affidavit of that sort, let him do it. His own honor
and the honor of the state demand it. Let Joe swear it was not done, and
I will publish his denial prominently in this magazine.
At the same time, however, I want him to explain to the people of Georgia
why he, their Chief Magistrate, offered a seat on our Supreme Bench to
that notorious railroad lobbyist and corruptionist, Hamp McWhorter.
I would like to have this explanation attached as exhibit A, to the
affidavit denying the railroad Campaign fund.
* * * * *
The other specifications in my article Mr. Howell meets with merely a
general denial. Of course, there’s nothing to discuss where a general
denial is made to a specific statement.
So far from the record of the Legislature showing that the railroads do
not dominate it, those records prove that very thing.
Can you pass the Anti-Free Pass bill?
No. The railroads oppose it. It is the cheapest, most effective method of
bribery, and they mean to keep it. They will keep it.
Can you pass a law compelling the railroads to equip all passenger
stations with water-closets; and to keep the waiting rooms open at night?
No. It would cost too much. They couldn’t do that, and pay dividends on
watered stock also.
If they had to spend money providing accommodations for passengers, such
“lawyers” as Hamp McWhorter and Tom Felder might lose fat corporation
fees.
No indeed; you couldn’t pass a bill requiring the railroads to treat our
wives and daughters decently at the stations where they have to wait for
trains. It would cost too much.
* * * * *
Yonder sits an elderly lady on a pile of cross-ties. She is sick. She
has been brought to the station to take an early train to the city where
a specialist can be consulted about her case. It is cold. A heavy fog
almost as bad as a drizzle of rain, hangs in the air. The door of the
waiting room is locked. There is no fire, no light, no shelter at the
station. The aged woman sits upon the cross-ties awaiting the coming of
the train—sick, cold and suffering.
Is that _your_ mother, my son? No. But it might be. Just such a scene
was witnessed by a friend of mine some weeks ago; and the railroad
which treats its customers in that beastly manner is one of these same
Wall Street gangs of thieves that rob the state of Georgia through the
Hamp McWhorters, the Joe Terrells, the Clark Howells who pose as the
Democratic Party.
* * * * *
Great God! Are the people _never_ to wake up to the fact that the
machinery of the Democratic Party in Georgia belongs to a lot of Wall
Street rascals?
Don’t they _know_ that the platform of the Democratic State Convention is
never handed out till Hamp McWhorter marks it “O. K.”?
Don’t they _know_ that the majority of the daily papers belong to the
railroads and _are controlled by the railroads_?
* * * * *
The Hon. Clark Howell closes his feeble editorial by making a side-thrust
at this Magazine as “a subsidiary company to _Town Topics_.”
As to _that_, the answer is swift and to the point.
_I am this Magazine._
Not a line can go into it to which I object. Not a line can be kept out
of it to which I put my approval. My contract gives the control of the
Magazine to me completely. What more could anybody exact? That _Town
Topics_ owns a majority of the stock is true. But _Town Topics_ has no
more rights over the Magazine itself than the _Atlanta Constitution_ has.
* * * * *
Tom Lawson, or H. H. Rogers, or Judge Parker, or W. J. Bryan might buy
a majority of the stock. I could not prevent that. _But nobody can
interfere with my control of the Magazine._
I have no doubt that Mr. Clark Howell envies me my independence. It is
extremely doubtful whether he can say for himself and his paper what I
have said for myself and the magazine.
I shouldn’t wonder if he held his place upon the condition that his paper
must be _railroad_. He wouldn’t dare to have an opinion unfavorable
to _railroad_. When he sits down to write editorials, I compare him
in my own mind to the little girl going to the piano to practice her
music-lesson. She is a good little girl, and she follows the notes. She
improvises no music. She puts out her trained fingers and she touches,
one by one, with painful fidelity, the notes written down on the score.
She couldn’t think of striking any note which was _not_ written down on
the score. Dear little thing!
Day after day, month after month, year after year, the trained fingers
strike the notes indicated in the lesson. If by chance she hits a chord
not on the book, there’s a rap and a sharp word of reproof from the
authority which presides over the “practice.”
“_What’s that?_” comes the cry of the teacher or parent, and the little
girl, frightened at the false note, hurriedly gets back to the written
score.
Dear little thing. That’s the way to learn to play by note.
Some editors make editorial music that way, and the scores are written in
Wall Street.
_Pinkerton’s Report to Ye Bankers_
Accordingly to the report made by the Pinkerton Detective Agency to the
American Bankers’ Association, at its last meeting, there were arrested
and prosecuted _during the ten years preceding September, 1905_, five
hundred and fifty-four citizens who had committed crimes against these
banks. Some of these erring citizens had committed forgery, others
burglary, eleven were classified as robbers, and fourteen were called
sneak thieves. These last named probably stole the cashier’s umbrella, or
got away with the president’s gold-headed cane.
_The Law_ came down, hard and heavy, upon the citizens who had sinned
against the banks, and the transgressors were given sentences aggregating
two thousand and one hundred years in prisons, chain-gangs and
penitentiaries.
Think of it—2,100 YEARS!
The sum total of the money which the banks lost by the operations of all
these criminals, during the entire period of ten years, appears to have
been _less than one hundred thousand dollars_.
Yet the law-breakers who caused the loss must vindicate the law by a
penal servitude of more than two thousand years.
There’s JUSTICE for you.
During that period of ten years how many banks have gone to smash? How
many presidents and cashiers have looted the funds committed to their
care?
How many millions of dollars have the common people lost by the rascality
of dishonest bank officers? How many times have we seen frantic crowds of
men and women gather about the door of some busted bank—men sick at heart
because of sudden ruin, women screaming in terror because robbed of every
dollar they had on earth?
Yet when an infamous scoundrel like John R. Walsh of Chicago converts to
his use the millions of money held in his banks, Leslie Shaw, Secretary
of the Treasury, hastens into print to say that it was all right; Mr.
Walsh had done no more “than other bankers do.”
There was a Savings Bank in the holy town of Boston, Mass. It gave itself
the comfortable name of the _Provident_ Savings Bank. Trusting common
people put $200,000 of their money into it. Thieves on the inside stole
the money. At one swoop, this particular bank robbed the people of twice
as much as the whole of rascaldom had got from the Associated banks _in
ten years_!
Frank Bigelow robbed the First National Bank of Milwaukee, of $1,450,000.
_He was President of the American Bankers’ Association._
He not only looted the bank, but falsified its books. He did not commit
the crime upon impulse or sudden temptation. He did it deliberately,
systematically, colluding with his cashier to plunder the fools who had
trusted him.
[Illustration: The banker who stole $1,400,000; and a man who stole a
turkey and a duck.]
_The Law_ went through the form of giving this million dollar thief _a
sentence of seven years_. His penalty is a sham; his “punishment” a
mockery. He will be “detained” in comfortable quarters a few months; his
health will then “fail”; he will then be pardoned, and will be ready to
steal trust funds again.
So it is all along the line.
Woe to the hungry tramp who steals bread to eat. Woe to the ragged woman
who snatches food for her starving children.
Woe to the bad men who steal _during ten years_, one hundred thousand
dollars from the Members of the American Bankers’ Association. These
five or six hundred bad men will be sentenced, in the aggregate, to a
penal servitude of over two thousand years.
But let the President of the Bankers’ Association steal one million and
four hundred thousand dollars from the men and women who trusted him
with their money, and the highly-connected thief gets off with a nominal
punishment and a seven-year term which will never be enforced.
During the last twelve months, dishonest bank officers have stolen _more
than twelve million dollars_ from the depositors.
How many of these rascals have been tried and convicted?
Less than half a dozen.
Yes; Frank Bigelow, sometime President of the American Bankers’
Association, laid careful plans, in collusion with his cashier, and
_stole fourteen hundred thousand_ dollars of _Trust funds_.
Nominal sentence, seven years.
John Shannon, of Ohio, at about the same time, _stole a turkey and a
duck_; and John Shannon is now serving out in the Ohio penitentiary _a
penal sentence of five years_!
John Shannon, my jo, John!
Why _didn’t_ you wear a silk hat, and steal a million dollars _from the
inside_ of a bank?
_Wayland’s Mistake_
One of the most interesting and powerful men of this generation is J. A.
Wayland.
He is a pioneer Socialist.
He is a hard worker, a hard hitter, and a man who never quits.
For the last fifteen years he has been a wonder of the world, to me.
Henry Gronlund was not more unselfish, John P. Altgeld was not more
intense, and Arthur Brisbane is not more effectively equipped.
When I first knew of Wayland, he had come down to Tennessee to put his
beautiful dream into operation. He had founded a Colony on the basis of
Universal Brotherhood. He meant to demonstrate to mankind the ease with
which we could make angels out of one another, if we would only set about
it in the right way.
As I remember, the name of Wayland’s Happy Land was _Ruskin_—the name of
an English dreamer who wrote many beautiful things and lived one of the
saddest lives imaginable.
The vital spark in the Ruskin colony was Wayland’s paper. He called it
“The Coming Nation.” The circulation of this paper grew to be enormous,
and the soul of the paper was Wayland.
But some of the angels who had drifted into the colony became jealous of
Wayland, and they made the point that the paper should not continue to
be the property of Wayland—the man who had made it—but should become the
common property of everybody who had drifted into the colony.
If my memory serves me right, Wayland yielded to his angel-brothers, and
turned his magnificent property over to the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys who
had come into Ruskin from the four corners and elsewhere.
After this, the angels found fault with Wayland about something else and
then something else; and then some other thing: until the great-hearted,
great-minded man threw up his hands in despair.
He surrendered everything to the Colony—paper, shops, farms and all—and
went away from there, never to return.
What became of the Colony? The smart fellows who knew so much more
than Wayland ran the whole thing into the ground. The brethren had
hardly kicked Wayland out before they began to kick each other out. The
master-hand and the master-mind being absent, the small men quarreled
among themselves, and chaos ensued. The Ruskin Colony went to pieces, and
one of the remnants strayed into South Georgia. There it lived a brief,
troubled life, and there it died an unlamented death.
What became of the magnificent paper, “The Coming Nation?”
Wayland’s genius had made it; by every law of common sense and common
justice it belonged to Wayland.
His brethren did not think so. The paper was as much theirs as his. They
took it away from him. Then they didn’t know what to do with it. And it
died.
* * * * *
With a pluck which nothing could daunt, Wayland opened out in Girard,
Kansas, and modestly commenced another paper. This time he called it
the “_Appeal to Reason_,” but in spirit and purpose it was “_The Coming
Nation_” risen from its grave. Patiently, persistently, fearlessly,
Wayland hammered away at Girard until he built up a monster circulation,
and again was the owner of an extremely valuable property—the product of
_him_, the said Wayland. No other man could have made _that_ paper. No
other man could any more be Wayland, and do what Wayland does, than any
other man could be Edison, and do what Edison does.
By every sane and just rule, the _Appeal to Reason_ was Wayland’s
property. He had gone into a desert, with a handful of type and a bottle
of ink, and by the force of _his_ genius had brought forth a finished
product—a successful newspaper.
What happened to him then is only a matter of rumor. Conjectures can also
be made from some indignant, sorrowful sentences which he published over
his own signature.
But it seems clear that his Ruskin experience was repeated. His
angel-brothers made him take his own medicine in heroic doses. The men
who had not created the paper, claimed an equal share in it—or something
of that sort; and there were the usual points made against Wayland which
the small would-be leaders make against _the leader_.
Rumor had it that Wayland went through a Gethsemane of peculiar
bitterness, but just how it all was, the outside world was not given to
know. The great soldier in the cause of humanity covered the wounds his
own men had made, and was too proud to complain.
* * * * *
But Wayland is now making a mistake.
He is offering land prizes for the largest number of subscribers. He
proposes that, as a premium, in a certain competition on subscriptions,
he will convey, by deed, a farm in Florida to the fortunate Socialist who
gets the greatest number of subscribers to the _Appeal to Reason_! I can
hardly believe what I see in Wayland’s own paper.
What! Is it possible that Wayland has wickedly gone and bought a quantity
of land?
Is it possible that he has “robbed” some honest citizen of his real
estate?
And can it be true that other Socialists not only want to share in this
“robbery,” but want it so bad they will compete for it?
Dear me! I didn’t know that Socialism was like that. If it is, I believe
I’ll take some stock in it myself.
My impression has been that the Socialists were opposed to private
ownership of land. I have had forcible reminders of that fact in letters
which came hot from the enraged writers. Private ownership is “robbery”;
that’s the way they write to me. Did I not see a Socialist orator wave
his small, white hand gracefully at all the stores, factories and
dwellings in St. Louis, in the summer of 1904, and did I not hear him say
in his musical voice to the assembled laborers: “_All that is yours; go
and take it!_” Then, with a silk handkerchief he, with courtly gesture,
wiped the moisture from his marble brow, and continued: “_Don’t take a
part of it, take it all. Don’t be satisfied with a loaf, take the whole
bakery._”
Then he froze me and Joe Folk with a glare of merciless severity, and
continued, “These men”—indicating me and poor Joe, with a supercilious
gesture—“_these men_ talk to you about shorter hours of labor, and the
Eight Hour day. _I don’t want any Eight Hour day_: what _I want_ is _to
live in the best possible manner on the least possible work_.”
And now Wayland is going to spoil all this. He is going to quicken the
appetite of Socialists for private property. Instead of feeding a million
men on the definite expectation of getting a slice of the Astor Estate,
at some indefinite time, he is going to reverse the process and feed as
many as qualify, on a definite slice of Florida land _right now_.
I make this prediction: As fast as Wayland makes home-owners out of his
followers he will lose crusaders.
_Beware Capua_, friend Wayland!
A zealous Socialist, who owns nothing, but who is spurred on by that
God-given desire for private property, will eagerly compete for Wayland’s
prize and will win it. He will pocket the deed, and move to his land. He
will find, perhaps, that it does not quite come up to representation; but
it is too late to back out. He settles on his seventy acre tract. If it
has no house, he builds. If he has one already, he does all that he can
to make it more attractive. _It is his._ When the storm beats without, he
snuggles close to his fireside, and thanks God that this is _his_ shelter
from the wild night. His wife will lay her loving touches here and there,
and the house will take on a look which reflects the individuality of the
owners. Flowers in the front yard, vines clinging about the porch, bright
pictures on the wall, ferns and grasses in the vase over the mantel, a
climbing rose, perhaps, to race for the cone of the house and to throw
out its crimson colors from the roof. Toil which one loves will be freely
spent on garden and field, for the toiler is working for those he loves
best. In a few years, under the care of home-owners, the neighbors will
say, “_It doesn’t look like the same place._”
And it _isn’t_ the same place. The owners have transformed it. They have
put elements of value and beauty there which nature did not supply. They
have so directed their labor, their judgment, their good taste, their
tender interests, that the _home_ which they have created is as different
from the wild land, as the noble watch-dog at the door differs from the
gray wolf of the wilderness.
Do you suppose that this man and his wife and his children can ever be
made to believe that they have “robbed” some body of that land, and that
it is wrong for them to hold it as _private property_?
_Never in the world!_
Wayland has made a confession as well as a blunder.
By offering such a prize, he knows he is appealing to one of the
strongest human passions—the passion for home-owning.
Every full-sexed girl instinctively feels that her destiny is
Motherhood—and she plays with dolls, nurses them, kisses them, hugs them
to her little bosom, calls them pet names, fondly dresses them in every
beautiful way that her infant fancy can suggest, and rocks them to sleep
in the tiny cradle. _That is the God-given instinct of Motherhood._
Every full-sexed man, on the other hand, is born with a craving for _his
mate_, and next to that, _a home to put her in_.
_Individualism_, crying aloud to me and to you, says “_choose your mate
and make her yours_.” The idea of promiscuous mating is abhorrent.
Collective mating would be hideous. You want individual mating. You want
to separate _your_ mate from every other woman and from every other
man—and if another man invades your individual rights, _you slay him like
a dog_.
There’s the natural feeling, the natural passion, the natural
individuality—and everybody knows it.
This craving for individual mating with women, bases itself firmly on
the _individual home_. Give me _my_ mate, and let me take her to _my_
home:—and you have consistency, you have nature, you have a foundation
for home-life and all that flows from it—a foundation firm as the
everlasting hills.
But _the two_ go together. They are parts of the same system. Surrender
one, and you endanger the other.
If you are a Collectivist—your logic _will never stop at Collectivism in
property only_.
If you believe in the one wife, believe also in the _home_, which shall
be yours _individually_, just as your wife is yours, _individually_.
_Calhoun for Public Ownership_
Through the never-failing courtesy of Senator Clay, of Georgia, it was
recently my good fortune to come into possession of two bulky volumes
issued by the Government, and entitled, “Annual Report of the American
Historical Association.” The second volume of this report contains the
Private Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, and a most interesting
collection of letters it is.
Glancing through these letters hurriedly, I came upon one which Mr.
Calhoun wrote to William C. Dawson, of Georgia, in 1835, wherein he
declares himself strongly in favor of state-built railroads.
It will be remembered that at that time there was a surplus of revenues
in the Treasury.
This surplus was not given away in premiums to bond-holders as Mr.
Cleveland gave sixty million dollars a few years ago.
It was not deposited with the National Banks to be used in their business
as Mr. Roosevelt now disposes of $56,000,000 of the public funds.
In the days of Calhoun, governmental robbery of the taxpayer for the
benefit of the non-taxpayer had not been reduced to a science as it has
since been.
In Mr. Calhoun’s day, it was believed that when the Government
had collected from the taxpayer a greater sum than was needed for
governmental expenses, the excess should, as a matter of common honesty,
be returned to the taxpayer.
[Illustration: John C. Calhoun]
It being impracticable, however, to restore the money in exact proportion
to each individual taxpayer, the Government did the next best thing—it
divided the surplus pro rata, among the states.
In his letter to Dawson, Mr. Calhoun estimates the entire amount of the
surplus, extending over a series of years, at seventy or eighty million
dollars.
The share of Georgia and South Carolina, he estimates at $3,500,000.
Now what does he advise shall be done with this money which has been
drawn from the taxpayers of the two states?
_He advises that it be spent by Georgia and South Carolina in building
railroads to connect those two states with the lines leading to the West
and Southwest._
Spent in that manner, the surplus taxes of the two states would be so
invested as to benefit all the people of Georgia and South Carolina.
It wouldn’t go to fatten a handful of greedy, millionaire bond-holders.
It wouldn’t go to a few pet National banks to be loaned out as private
capital.
It being public money, it would be used for a public purpose; and the
great public roads which it would build would belong to and benefit all
the people of the two states which had paid the taxes into the Federal
Treasury.
Says Mr. Calhoun:
“To make this great fund available for so important an object, the
legislatures of the states interested ought to move forthwith. I hope
Georgia will take the lead. The action of no other state could have half
the influence.”
Mr. Calhoun, with marvelous foresight, sketched the system of railroads
which has since been built. Just where he declared in 1835 that the
railroads ought to be, they are now to be found.
Had his counsels been followed, those public highways would now be the
property of the public. Folly, stupidity, sordid franchise-grabbing had
their own way, however, and the magnificent system of highways which
Calhoun laid out for the people belongs to the corporations.
_Judge Du Bose’s Letter and the Public Debt_