“Worry is one of the worst curses of modern life. I say of modern life,
not because people a thousand years ago did not worry, because as
civilization advances men become more highly strung, more sensitive, and
less capable of detachment. Thus, we often say, in a very expressive
phrase, that a thing ‘gets upon our nerves.’ Something distressing
happens to us, and we cannot shake it off. Some one treats us rudely,
harshly, or unkindly, and the word or deed rankles in our minds. We think
it over until it is magnified into a grievous and intentional insult.
We take it to bed with us, and no sooner is the light put out than we
begin to recall it, and turn over in our minds all the circumstances
that occasioned it. We sleep feverishly, haunted all the time with the
sense of something disagreeable. We wake, and the accursed thing is still
rankling in our minds. This is one form of worry, which is very common
among people of sensitive minds.
Another form of worry is the tendency to brood over past errors. The
business man, or the public man, is suddenly overwhelmed with the
conviction that he has made an awful mess of things. The worst of all
calamities is the lack of energy to grapple with calamity, and in most
cases it is worry that breaks down a man’s energy.
A third, and perhaps a more common form of worry, is the gloomy
anticipation of future calamities. There are some men who, however
happy they may be today, are perpetually frightening themselves with
the possibilities of a disastrous tomorrow. They live in terror. When
actual sorrow comes upon us, most of us discover unexpected resources of
fortitude in ourselves. But nothing sickens the heart so much as imagined
sorrow. Of this form of worry we may well say, “It’s wicked!”
I have no doubt that most of my readers know by experience what some of
these things mean. No doubt also many of them have many real causes for
anxious thought, and they will ask me how I propose to deal with it.
One of the best ways is to be content to live a day at a time. Sydney
Smith counsels us with rich wisdom to take short views of life. Each day
is an entity in itself. It is rounded off by the gulf of sleep; it has
its own hours which will never return; it stands separate, with its own
opportunities and pleasures. Make the most of them.
Another good and simple rule is never to take our griefs to bed with
us. ‘Easy to say, but how difficult to do,’ will be replied. But it is
largely a matter of will and habit.
John Wesley once said that he would as soon steal as worry, for each
was equally a sin. To worry is wasteful and foolish; we have also to
recollect that it is wicked.”—_W. J. Dawson._
[Illustration: _RECIPES, OLD AND NEW._]
_Lemon Pie (Old)_
Two lemons, five eggs, two teaspoonsful of melted butter, eight large
spoonsful of white sugar. Squeeze the juice of both lemons and grate the
rind of one. Stir together the yolks of three eggs and the white of one,
with the sugar, juice and rind, beat well, add one coffee-cup of cream
and beat well for a few minutes longer. Pour the mixture into the waiting
crust dough. Bake until pastry is done. Meanwhile beat the remaining
whites of eggs to a stiff froth and stir in four spoonsful of white
sugar. Spread on top and brown slightly. This is enough for two pies.
_Simple Pudding_
(No eggs or milk needed) Slice some good bread rather thick, cutting away
the crust. Butter on both sides, lay in a deep dish and fill it up with
molasses after seasoning with ginger, cinnamon or lemon.
_Irish Potato Pie (Old)_
Two good pints of potatoes after they are boiled and mashed. Put through
a sieve while warm. Add small cup of butter, milk enough to make a
batter. Cinnamon, lemon, spices and sugar to taste. Four eggs beaten
separately, stirring in the whites after the yokes. This is enough for
four pies.
[Illustration: _BOOKS_
_BY Thomas E. Watson._]
=The Social Secretary.= By David Graham Phillips. The
Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis.
An exceedingly clever novel, dealing chiefly with the effort of a
Congressional family to break into good society in Washington, D. C. The
Congressman is a Western man with a lot of money, and with a wife who has
lots of horse sense and a sound heart.
They need a pilot to steer them into the realms of fashion and influence.
To this position comes a beautiful, spirited and accomplished girl who
belongs to a well-known family which is eminently respectable but is in
reduced circumstances.
The campaign mapped out by the Social Secretary in behalf of the
Congressional family is finally crowned with success, and the heroine
marries the son of the Congressman, as a natural, logical result.
In the course of the campaign, the author gives us many an enlightening
glimpse of what goes on in Washington “behind the scenes.” This little
item for instance: When President Roosevelt is called away from the
dinner-table by some urgent matter which requires instant attention, Mrs.
Roosevelt, all the ladies, and all the gentlemen rise as the President
rises and remain standing until he returns.
I, for one, was quite surprised to know that our sturdy lion-hunter,
bronco-busting President had fallen into snobbery of that description. I
hope it isn’t so.
=A Maker of History.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. Little, Brown &
Co., Boston, Mass.
A book which catches hold of you and takes you right along. It is
original in its plot, dramatic in its incidents, absorbingly interesting
in its narrative.
A young Englishman, by accident, happens to witness a meeting between
the Emperor of Germany and the Czar of Russia—a meeting which elaborate
precautions had been taken to keep secret. Another accident puts into the
possession of the young Englishman a page of the secret treaty between
the two Emperors. The scheme of this treaty is that Russia shall give
England a _casus belli_, that Germany shall come to the assistance of
Russia, and that Great Britain shall be despoiled. The young Englishman
is suspected, and his footsteps are dogged by German spies. Later he
talks imprudently in a Parisian restaurant, and becomes an object
of intense interest to the French Secret Service. He suddenly and
mysteriously disappears. His sister arrives in Paris, is astonished at
the disappearance of her brother, and starts out to search for him. Then
the sister disappears.
After a time everything turns out happily for hero and heroine, but in
the meanwhile many an event of thrilling interest happens to keep the
reader wide awake and wondering what the outcome will be.
=The Greatest Trust in the World.= By Charles Edward Russell.
The Ridgway-Thayer Company, New York City.
This book is made up of the articles which were published in _Everybody’s
Magazine_, and which created such a profound impression by their calm,
relentless exposure of the most cruel and most lawless and most despotic
Trust on earth. Not even the Standard Oil Company grinds the common
people as the Beef Trust does, for the latter deals with food products
which are indispensable to life, and the Beef Trust can and does say to
the people, “Pay my price or die.”
The book treats of the might of this monopoly; of the great yellow car,
the bandit of commerce; of the manner in which the Trust intimidates the
railroads; of the manner in which the Federal Government white-washed the
Trust; of the union between rotten business and rotten politics.
It is a book that all should study.
=American Diplomacy.= By John Bassett Moore. Harper & Brothers,
Publishers, New York City.
My own impression has been that “American Diplomacy” has never amounted
to much, and I cannot say that Dr. Moore’s book has convinced me to the
contrary.
The only apparent triumph of American Diplomacy was the securing of
French aid in the Revolutionary War; and as to that most students
will agree that “diplomacy” had nothing to do with it. France saw an
opportunity to strike at her hereditary foe, Great Britain, and she sent
an emissary to the American Congress to drop certain hints which led to
the sending of Dean, Lee and Franklin to Paris. Where France was already
so eager, “diplomacy” could claim no triumph.
It is to be regretted that Dr. Moore fails to mention John Laurens in
connection with French aid. The fact is that Washington and Congress
became dissatisfied with Franklin, and that John Laurens was despatched
to France to hurry matters up. He did so. He got the money with which
Washington made the decisive Yorktown Campaign, and brought it home with
him. Surely Dr. Moore ought to have mentioned the name of John Laurens.
In the famous Jay treaty, “American Diplomacy” made a craven surrender to
Great Britain, and in the Treaty of Ghent we certainly won no laurels.
Andrew Jackson and his Southern volunteers threw the only crumb of
comfort which the situation could boast when they shot the life out of
Wellington’s veterans at New Orleans.
In the various negotiations concerning the Northwestern boundary,
“American Diplomacy” has yielded up an Empire to British bluff and
shrewdness. During the Civil War, “American Diplomacy” ate humble pie
with a vengeance more than once; and even in the Venezuelan affair when
Cleveland’s attitude seemed so heroic, England, it would appear, packed
the arbitration board and got pretty much everything that she wanted.
In the last tilt between us and the mother country, touching the Canadian
boundary, we were assured that the arbitration was a mere matter of form,
and that Great Britain could not possibly get anything at all. Yet when
the award was made, it developed that Great Britain had got slices of
stuff all along the line—the land line and the water line.
American Diplomacy?
Bah!
Look at the manner in which Great Britain used us as her depot of
supplies during the Boer War.
She held John Hay in the hollow of her hand, and with our aid crushed the
republics of South Africa.
=Fables and Symbols.= By Clemence De La Baere, Sacramento, Cal.
Those who love truth and humor served up in the literary form of the
fable, will find this an entertaining little volume. There is much wit
and wisdom packed away in these stories; and they reveal a thorough
knowledge of human nature and of present conditions.
=Garrison the Non-Resistant.= By Ernest Crosby. The Public
Publishing Co., Chicago.
When a Southern writer eulogizes such a bitter foe to his people as was
William Lloyd Garrison, his words will bear the same discount as must be
given to the words of a Southern ex-Brigadier, when he goes North and
tells pleased audiences, “I am glad you whipped us.”
The truth is the South does not love Garrison and is _not_ glad she was
“whipped.”
When Mr. Crosby frankly states, as he does in this book, that Garrison
had no sympathy whatever for the sufferings of the white laborers of
the land, he put his finger upon the trait which caused Garrison’s great
unpopularity in the South.
He was narrow and fanatical, and while he hated slavery for its own sake,
he hated the South about as much as he hated slavery.
Wendell Phillips, after the negro was freed, went on broadening in the
scope of his sympathies and his work. He became one of the stalwart
champions of the rights of white labor. He studied its case, denounced
its wrongs, demanded better things for the millions of toilers who were
being exploited and destroyed by insatiable commercial greed.
Not so Garrison. The negro freed, the South reeking with her own
life-blood, her homes in ashes, her soul crushed in utter desolation,
Garrison was happy. His work was done. White men, white women, white
children might groan and suffer and die in a worse slavery than had
afflicted the blacks of the South, but Garrison did not sympathize—did
not lift a finger, did not utter a word in their behalf. Another trait in
Garrison’s character was just the trait to stir the dislike of a Southern
man. He carried to such an extent his doctrine of non-resistance, that
he declared he “would not defend by force his own wife in case of an
assault.” In other words, rather than forcibly resist the criminal who
sought to violate his own wife, he would stand idly by and permit the
crime to be committed. I do not know how many Northern men endorse a
sentiment of that kind. In my judgment they are few, very few. But I
do know that there is not a respectable man in the South or West, who
would not feel disgraced by the utterance of such a doctrine. Mr. Crosby
deserves great credit for his courage and candor in admitting that while
slavery was wrong, the war waged upon the South was wrong. Of course it
was wrong. The whole negro race, here and throughout the earth, were not
worth the frightful cost of the Civil War. Mr. Crosby’s book would have
been more valuable had he omitted the last two chapters. The author is a
very talented man but he cannot get to know the true status of the South
by listening to the talk of loafers in the office of the hotel where he
happens to stop.
=Sidney Lanier.= By Edwin Mims. Houghton, Mifflin & Company,
Boston and New York.
A more interesting biographical work than this it would be difficult to
name.
The author is temperate in his estimate of the genius of his subject, and
relates the life struggles of the Georgia poet with sympathetic spirit.
As the years go by the fame of Sidney Lanier will grow. That he
wrote some poems which have little merit is true; that his peculiar
and unfortunate mannerism mars the beauty of other poems which do
possess merit is also true; but after all this is conceded, it can be
confidently claimed that he sometimes rose to the heights of Keats and
Shelley, and that his art sometimes equalled the marvelous skill of Edgar
Poe.
Here and there, throughout Lanier’s poems, can be found gems of thought
and expression which in loftiness, purity and exquisite form lose nothing
by comparison with the higher work of the best English poets.
Nor will the story of his life ever lose interest. It is so full of
innate nobility; he met the most exacting duties so cheerily, so bravely;
he fought the battle for bread with such manly confidence, such sweet
sympathy for others; he gave to the world so much more than he asked from
it; he was so independent and yet so companionable; he so long held at
bay, with buoyant pluck, the ghastly White Terror, Consumption; he was
so refined and strong and lovable and valiant and nobly aspiring that
always and everywhere the simple facts in the life of this Georgia boy,
Confederate soldier, painstaking lawyer, aspiring author, heaven-endowed
musician, original poet, will move the hearts of men to respect, to
sympathy, to admiration and love.
=Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama.= By Walter L.
Fleming. The Columbia University Press, New York, Publishers.
The Macmillan Company, Agents.
All things considered, this is the most valuable contribution that has
yet been made to the literature of the Reconstruction Era.
The book contains some 800 pages, and the mass of important data is a
monument to the industry of the author.
Not only are we given a full account of the manner in which Secession was
brought about, not only do we get the story of military operations during
the Civil War and Carpet-Bag operations afterward, but we are given
illuminating pictures of social and economic conditions, the unspeakable
rottenness of negro government; the cotton frauds and stealings; the
troubles in the churches; the movements of the Ku Klux Klan (which Tom
Dixon most unaccountably traces back to the clan life of Scotland); the
struggles of the native whites to throw off the carpet-bag and negro
yoke; the upbuilding of an educational system; the gradual creation of a
new industrial system; and the final triumphant vindication of Alabama of
the right of local self-government and white supremacy.
Mr. Fleming has done a great and beneficent work in the gathering of the
mass of facts which he embodies in this volume.
Compared to his, every other book on the same subject seems fragmentary.
=Frenzied Finance.= By Thomas Lawson. The Ridgway-Thayer Co.,
New York.
No matter what Mr. Lawson’s motive may have been, he has done a public
service in the exposure of the methods of Wall Street which cannot be
overestimated. For thirty years the story which Lawson has told has been
asking for an audience. Time and again, books and magazine articles were
published warning the people of the ways of the system. As far back as
the days of Peter Cooper, loud voices of clear-eyed men were raised in
the effort to rouse public attention. The literature of the Greenback
movement, of the Farmers’ Alliance movement, and of the People’s Party
movement was full of notes of warning, full of statements of fact exactly
on line with Lawson’s revelations.
Why then did the revelations of Lawson sound like a new trumpet and rouse
the country so quickly and so universally? Because Lawson spoke from the
_inside_: because Lawson was one of the kings of finance himself: because
Lawson had played the game himself: because Lawson drew to himself that
peculiar attention which attaches to the witness who “turns State’s
evidence.” A robber who has worn the mask and ridden with the band on
many a midnight marauding foray is always listened to with breathless
interest when he enters the box and tells how the robbery was planned,
how the crime was committed, and now the spoil was divided. This is but
natural. No matter how much proof one may have to establish the guilt of
the accused, one feels, always, that there are details which none but the
criminal can supply. Here Thomas Lawson’s value is beyond dispute and
beyond price. That the methods of Frenzied Finance are substantially what
Lawson says they are, can no longer be a matter of doubt.
“=When You Were a Boy.=” By Edwin L. Sabin. The Baker & Taylor
Co., New York.
It seemed impossible that another successful book on school-life and
boyhood days could be written, but the author has shown how easily
one may be mistaken about a thing of that sort. Here is no story of a
fascinating but impossible “Little Lord Fauntleroy”; here is no coarse,
witless, stupid “Stalky & Co.,” here is no “Huckleberry Finn” or “Tom
Sawyer,” or “Tom Brown,” or “Peck’s Bad Boy,” or “Master William Mitten.”
The hero of “When You Were a Boy”—is you. The author has looked into his
own heart and drawn your picture to life. You had your little “fist and
skull” fights—and here they are in this book. You had a pet dog who did
all sorts of funny, aggravating, endearing things, and then died while
you were off from home; and the author tells of it, intimately. Your
first experience with your father’s shot-gun, your savage rapture over
the first thing you killed—here it is in the book. And the first fishing
trip, the first “party” you attended, the first girl you “saw home,”
the first sweetheart—it is all put down, accurately, vividly. Even that
time—you mean little whelp!—when you determined to punish your parents by
“running away from home,”—the author found it out on you, and you will
hang your head once more, and your eye will dim, as you read about it,
in the book. The author does not preach and does not prose, and does not
sentimentalise—but “When You Were a Boy” is one of the most life-like
delineations of the American boy—his character, his feelings, his habits,
his fun and frolic, his passions, his standards—that has ever been put in
a book.
=Bossism and Monopoly.= By Thomas Carl Spelling. D. Appleton &
Co., New York.
An exposition of the evils of the twins—Bossism and Monopoly. Mr.
Spelling brings the record of trust robbery and boss despotism down to
date, and while he necessarily has to treat the same facts and conditions
which so many other writers have handled, none of them has a firmer grip
upon the subject than he—nor have any of them produced a more essentially
useful book. He is the only writer who has seized upon and utilized the
tremendously important facts set forth by Albert Griffin in the financial
articles which he wrote for this MAGAZINE some months ago. What Mr.
Griffin calls Hocus Pocus Money another may call fictitious values,
unsupported credit, wild-cat inflation, or any other name, but the fact
as first pointed out by Mr. Griffin is that the Privileged Few in the
Banking world are taxing the people to an enormous amount for the use of
bogus money.
Mr. Spelling also deals with the Railroad problem in a masterly way,
advocating, as all sane men will soon be found doing, Government
Ownership.
=The Coming Crisis.= By Gustavus M. Pinckney. Walker, Evans and
Cogswell Co., Charleston, S. C.
This is a book to read closely and to think about. It is full of solid
fact and sound reasoning. Its tone is calm, but its thought is deep, and
it deals with matters of gravest import.
A quotation will give some idea of the scope of the work:
(1) “Society under government naturally tends to fall into two parties,
one attached to the consumption of taxes and increase of power, the other
attached to the decrease of taxes and to the limitation of power.
(2) The tendency of the first party is to absorb the rights and property
of the second: the tendency of the second is to resist the process.
(3) Remaining unchecked, the first will steadily encroach and absorb
until the second is compelled in self-preservation to resist by tendering
the issue of force.”
That’s a clear bold statement and a true one.
Illustrating the method by which the one party appropriates the property
of the other, Mr. Pinckney cites our infamous Tariff System.
“The amount of prices advanced under a 40 per cent. tariff and
_transferred from one private pocket to another_, would ... soon extend
to figures to _dwarf the national debt_.”
Some one has calculated that from Independence to 1861, the amount thus
transferred from private pockets to other private pockets, without
consideration, was something like $2,770,000,000.
The sum so stolen from private pockets by the damnable Tariff, since
1861, and put into other private pockets is a great deal more than the
colossal figures mentioned above.
Mr. Pinckney likewise takes up the National Banker and shows how the
Government allows him advantages over his fellow man that are “utterly
without right, reason, or justification.” After explaining the juggle
which takes place over the bonds, and the notes, he sums it up thus:
“_The people are taxed in order that the privilege of issuing money may
be farmed out to the banks._”
Nobody has ever summed up the iniquity of the National Banking System in
a more startling sentence, and a good Democrat, like Mr. Pinckney, must
have been sorely grieved when he saw every Democratic Senator and every
Democratic Representative unite with the wicked Republicans in 1893-1894
to renew the charters of the National Banks for twenty years.
Space forbids the extending of these comments further. I will only add
that no student of present conditions can afford to miss Mr. Pinckney’s
book.
=Letters and Addresses of Thomas Jefferson.= Edited by Wm.
B. Parker, of Colombia University, and Jonas Viles, of the
University of Missouri. The Unit Book Pub. Co., New York.
When two college professors start out to give the world a new book on
_Thomas_ Jefferson, the world has a right to expect an unusually valuable
book.
Professors Parker and Viles did not undertake an original composition.
Theirs was the simpler task of making a good selection from the letters,
State papers and addresses of Mr. Jefferson. That such a selection should
be a success, it was necessary that the compilers acquaint themselves
intimately with all that Jefferson wrote, and that the selections made
should fairly represent _Jefferson himself_—Jefferson the man, the
scholar, the farmer, the builder, the inventor, the advanced thinker, the
man of bold speculative ideas, the statesman, the student of social and
industrial problems.
Have our learned professors done this?
Mr. Jefferson’s book, “Notes on Virginia,” contains more than 300
pages. It is full of his most characteristic thinking. It displays the
working of his mind on matters great and small, social, racial, historic
practical and speculative.
Our Professors quote eight pages from the book, wherein Mr. Jefferson
discusses Religion, Slavery and American Genius—three subjects only.
These are important quotations, but what a pity it is that the Professors
did not quote Jefferson’s profound study of the Indians, their physical
and mental peculiarities, their mode of life, their love of their
children, their fortitude under suffering, their undying loyalty to
friends, their skill and bravery in war, their eloquence in council,
their system of tribal government. Mr. Jefferson wrote nothing more
interesting than this account of the Indians of Virginia. It was in this
that he reproduced and handed down to posterity that gem of oratory which
we boys used to “speak” at school—“Logan’s speech” sent to Lord Dunmore.
On page 166 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson gives a concise and
comprehensive statement of the wrongs which the colonies suffered at
the hands of the King. Inasmuch as we have developed a school of Tory
historians who make light of the American grievances, it might have been
a good thing had the Professors quoted Mr. Jefferson’s summary of those
grievances.
On page 172 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson makes a remarkable prediction
of the manner in which abuses will creep into our Government, and he
solemnly warns his countrymen to combat these abuses “before they shall
have gotten hold on us.”
Inasmuch as the abuses which Mr. Jefferson dreaded have gotten hold on
us, his prophecy, published more than a hundred years ago, deserves a
place in any collection of Jefferson’s works.
On page 216 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson has a word to say on popular
self-government which every American boy should read as soon as he
becomes a voter. I am sorry the Professors left it out.
The most powerful chapter in the “Notes on Virginia,” is that beginning
on page 228 and ending on page 235. As it stands written, it is a
masterpiece. To spoil a good thing is easy; and the Professors spoilt the
best chapter in Jefferson’s book by cutting out only a portion of it for
use, and not the best part at that.
On page 240 of the “Notes” is Mr. Jefferson’s splendid tribute to the
working classes of the rural communities—but the Professors seemingly
attached no value to it.
What could have been more timely than the re-publication of Mr.
Jefferson’s magnificent plea against War, and against Militarism, which
covers pages 253, 254, and 255 of the “Notes”? The Professors could not
have embraced in their collection anything of greater intrinsic and
eternal value than this, and they have given much space to matter which,
compared to this, is mere trash.
I have neither the time nor the patience to compare the letters which
these Professors have collected with those which they have left out.
If they selected the letters in the same spirit that they culled from
the “Notes,” their compilation is just as far from doing justice to Mr.
Jefferson as “The True Thomas Jefferson,” by W. E. Curtis, was from the
truth. There is no American book of the same size that contains more
errors than Curtis’s “True Jefferson;” and when I saw that these two
Professors had named that book as one of their authorities—well, you can
see for yourself how it stimulated my attention.
=Democracy in the South Before the Civil War.= By G. W. Dyer,
M. A., Pub. House of the M. E. Church South. Nashville, Tenn.
The author modestly calls this a compendium of a more comprehensive work
which will be published later.
It is an exceedingly valuable study. The author has dug up a lot of
buried treasure. His refutation of many unfounded opinions concerning
social economic and political conditions in the South prior to the Civil
War is supported by a diligence of research that gather all the necessary
evidence.
Among other facts of importance which Mr. Dyer establishes, Prof. John
Bach McMaster to the contrary notwithstanding, are:
(1) There was no land monopoly in the South. On the contrary there was a
better pro rata distribution of land than in the free States.
(2) Manual labor was not a badge of disgrace. On the other hand, the
white population of the South was engaged in all kinds of manual labor,
excepting menial service.
(3) The South had a larger number of miles of railroads in 1860 in
proportion to her free population than the rest of the country.
(4) In 1860, Southern people were engaged in almost all kinds of
manufacturing.
(5) In 1860 the South was the richest section of the country, and her
wealth was increasing with greater rapidity than that of the other
sections.
It will be remembered that in one of his great speeches in Congress
William L. Yancey demonstrated this truth.
(6) Wages were higher in the South than in the North in 1860.
So they are even now. The laborer who produces that free trade product,
cotton, gets nearly one-half of the value of the cotton produced. In the
Protected industries of the North the laborer does not receive an average
of twenty-five percent of the product of his labor.
Mr. Dyer proves another fact worth mention:
The idea of a State fund for the education of those who were not able to
pay their tuition originated in the South. In other words, the present
American system of State free public schools was born in the South. If
Mr. Dyer’s more comprehensive work increases in value as it increases in
size it will deserve to be a most successful book.
“=Sonnets to a Wife.=” By Ernest McGaffey. William Marion
Reedy. St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. McGaffey makes his Sonnets a continuous hymn of the beautiful in
Nature. The clean atmosphere of the open world is in every sonnet. All
the airs of heaven blow pureness about these lovers. The spiritual
significance of the great Nature, of which husband and wife and their
love for each other are a part, is always strongly suggested, and this
without cant either of orthodoxy or of the dolorous minor poet lamenting
the loss of himself to the world.
=The Eternal Spring.= A Novel. By Neith Boyce. Fox, Duffield &
Co., New York, $1.50, postpaid.
The story opens at an Italian villa, overlooking Florence. Elizabeth
Craven is wearing “second mourning” for a deceased husband who was too
old for her, and who had never satisfied her womanly cravings for male
companionship. Elizabeth is thirty-eight years old, but is still in the
flush of health and strength and beauty. Hers is the villa, and to her
comes Barry Carlton, who has been stock-gambling for several years in
Chicago, and has quit because he had won a modest competence and had
brought himself to the brink of nervous collapse.
Barry Carlton had known Elizabeth intimately five years before and had
become warmly attached to her. Poor Elizabeth! She had loved Barry all
the while, and she loves him yet.
She is radiantly happy as she welcomes Barry to her villa. She knows that
he has come from America to ask her to become his wife. He is thirty
years old, and while worn down to a painful thinness she has no doubt
whatever that rest and loving attention will soon restore his robust
youth.
_Then_ she will live. She has never known life; she has been cramped and
confined all these years; when she marries her young lover, she will know
the passion of _living_.
But alas! Barry wooes tamely. Elizabeth is coy, expecting more heat.
Barry cannot give it, the wooing lags, no engagement occurs, and then
comes the shipwreck of Elizabeth’s hopes. Barry falls in love with a
divinely gifted and lovely young creature who is also a guest at the
villa.
A strange thing happens to the reader. Elizabeth has won _his_ heart,
and she holds it to the end. She is so womanly in her devotion to Barry;
so womanly in her grief at losing him, so majestic in her renunciation
of her own hopes, so beautifully generous and helpful to the man and the
girl who have broken her own heart, that the reader feels himself about
to say:
“One Elizabeth were worth a dozen Claras.”
For the reader does not fall in love with Clara. She is a bit unnatural
and uncanny.
Her mother, the bad but magnificent Mrs. Langham, is far more real and
interesting.
As to Barry himself, the reader never does quite understand why the women
find him so irresistible. It does not appear that he is very handsome, or
very accomplished, or very anything else, excepting that he is abominably
selfish in his dealings with Elizabeth. The women who fall in love with
him rave about his “honesty,” but that is a quality which seldom carries
women off their feet. Decidedly Elizabeth remains the heroine and next
to her in interest comes the bad, beautiful Mrs. Langham. The author
tells the story with superb art. There are no incidents, no thrills, no
dramatic climaxes, and yet there is not a dull page in the book.
_Cause for Joy_
“Well, now, which do you think is correct, ‘measles is’ or ‘measles
are’?” chucklingly inquired the landlord of the Torpidville tavern.
“Also, would you say, ‘The Glee Club are’ or ‘the Glee Club is’?”
“D’know!” replied the patent-churn man, shortly. “Those old
catch-questions don’t interest me a little bit. But what I’d like to know
is why everybody looks so pleased and smiling today? Is there a picnic or
celebration or something of the sort on the tapis?”
“No, skurcely that. It’s the relief that is tickling ’em, not
anticipation. You see, the Glee Club of the village Academy was going to
give a concert and cantata tomorrow night, assisted by our best local
talent, and now the measles have, or has, as the case may be, broken out,
up there in the temple of learnin’, and every member of the Glee Club
have, or has, got it, or them, good and plenty and the entertainment has
been indefinitely—haw! haw!—postponed.”
[Illustration: _The Say of Other Editors_]
The Democrat has no axe to grind, no scores to settle nor heads to whack
in advancing the erection by the city of an electric lighting plant. From
every standpoint it is right.—_Grand Ireland (Neb.) Democrat._
* * * * *
Paul Morton, president of the Equitable, says he is not going to pay any
more money to legislators to protect his insurance company. This reminds
the _Syracuse (N. Y.) Herald_ of the story of the old darkey, never
regarded as being at all particular about how or where he gathered up a
penny, who dropped his pocketbook in a crowd one day. As the nickels and
dimes scattered about, the old man began to scramble for them, shouting,
“Befoh de Lawd! Let evahbody be honest now.”—_Leeton (Mo.) Times._
* * * * *
Democracy means always independence of thought, and unless the party
leaders treat the people fairly they will find it also means independence
of action. This was fully demonstrated last year in both National and
State campaigns, and it is time the Democratic leaders in Missouri should
heed the warning.—_Ozark (Mo.) Democrat._
* * * * *
Congress is now asked to appropriate $16,500,000 in one lump to the
Isthmian Canal. This nice little sum will only serve to grease the
skillet for a short time.—_Panola Watchman, Carthage, Tex._
* * * * *
It has been only a few weeks since Mr. McCall of the New York Life
Insurance Company was standing on his dignity and trying to make a joke
of the insurance investigation—just as Mr. Rogers of the Standard Oil
Company tried to make a joke of the investigation in New York last week.
But today Mr. McCall is a disgraced man in the public eye, and another
man signs as president of the New York Life. And it may be only a short
time until Mr. Rogers is holding an unenviable seat with Mr. McCall and
a lot of other unscrupulous fellows who a short time ago imagined that
they were practically the whole financial show. These money grafters are
up against an aroused public sentiment which in America today spells
destruction for whatever it may be directed against. In America there
is no system that can stand against the will of the people, and Mr.
Rogers and his Standard Oil crowd will yet live to see the day—and that
soon—when they will put off their arrogant airs in answering a criminal
investigation by the legal representatives of a great state.—_Darlington
(Mo.) Record._
* * * * *
The Department of Agriculture is now undertaking to show the farmers how
they can raise better tobacco. What the farmers would much prefer would
be for Secretary Wilson to show how to get more than 34 cents for it from
the Tobacco Trust.—_Tarboro (N. C.) Southerner._
* * * * *
The steamer _America_, from Honolulu for San Francisco, carried $750,000
in coin sent by registered mail by local bankers, in order, it is
alleged, that the money might be at sea, and beyond the territorial
jurisdiction on December 31st, when a tax of one per cent. is levied on
all money on deposit by the banks on that date. It is understood that the
money will be returned immediately. Deducting the charges of shipment,
the saving made will be approximately $7,000.—_Argonaut, San Francisco._
* * * * *
The attention of the public is unpleasantly attracted to the position
of Henry H. Rogers, active head of the Standard Oil trust, in relation
to the testimony sought by the supreme court of Missouri. The Missouri
court, in seeking the enforcement of the anti-trust law of that State,
has undertaken to procure testimony upon the allegation that the Standard
company is violating the law. Among the witnesses is Mr. Rogers. He
dodged service of the subpoena until outwitted by an officer and in the
witness chair he refuses to answer questions propounded by the attorney
general of Missouri. He refuses with a supercilious air that asserts his
contempt for such humble affairs as courts and officers of the law. The
world’s greatest trust, the world’s richest men, tell the world that they
are not amenable to the regulations to which the balance of the world is
bound to conform. This is the anarchy of wealth. Recently representatives
of the oil trust told Commissioner Garfield that the Standard Oil was
greater than the government; that John D. Rockefeller was a bigger man
than the President of the United States; that he owned the Senate and
the House and was able, by the mere passing of the word, to cause the
removal of Secretary Metcalf and Commissioner Garfield. A few years back
in history the Standard Oil corporation defied the Supreme Court of Ohio
and caused the political defeat of the presumptuous attorney who brought
an action against it and won because his case was just. Now comes Henry
H. Rogers, second to John D. Rockefeller, bristling with defiance because
a Western court proposes to make him and his associates obey the same law
that common persons have to obey. It is greatly to be feared that the oil
magnates are invoking a test of strength—feared because some one is going
to be roughly handled should there come a popular adjustment between
the forces of wealth and government. The American people have been very
patient and are still patient. But if they are called upon to pass upon
certain points raised by the contumacy of Mr. Rogers and the rest, the
controversy will be short, sharp and decisive.—_Howard (S. Dak.) Advance._
* * * * *
Let those with a sense of humor laugh now, while the game is barely on,
at such naïve expressions of alarm as those of Secretary Taft in a recent
speech wherein he feared that the “dangerous classes,” such as populists
and socialists, might succeed in arraying the masses against capitalism
to the injury of the latter. Secretary Taft fears that the ninety per
cent of our population are going to demand the right to rule. Awful,
isn’t it?
This fat sow of the system with its nose in the trough, its distended
guts groaning and still filling, sounds the warning that the razor-backs
are preparing to assume control of the swill. Wough! Secretary Taft
believes that this country is only safe when every bank, the House, the
Senate, every State legislature, and every public office is manned and
controlled by a McCall, McCurdy, Hyde, Armour or Rockefeller; that is,
safe for the system. We say this country is not safe when ten millions of
its inhabitants live in dire poverty and two hundred and seventy thousand
people fill its jails.
We say there is something radically wrong with our educational and
economic systems. We say the multi-income grafters must be hurled back
to one man power, for there is not a banker nor so-called financier in
America that has not for years been in collusion with Hyde, McCall and
McCurdy, and consciously participated in their stealing.
Come, now, Secretary Taft, would men who have been brought up to do
real work be any more dangerous in high places?—_Parker H. Sercombe in
To-Morrow._
* * * * *
And now it is announced that all three of the big life insurance
presidents in New York are down with nervous prostration. Sounds from
testimony as though it ought to be the policy holders.—_Alma (Neb.)
Record._
* * * * *
With the arraignment of Standard Oil officers, life insurance fakirs,
Panama Canal investigations, United States senators losing their
dignity, and being tried like other criminals, and all manner of “big
bugs” having to shudder at the majesty of the law, we are made to wonder
what is going to happen next.—_Durant (I. T.) Farmer._
* * * * *
Announcement is made of another donation by John D. Rockefeller to the
University of Chicago. This time it is $1,450,000. Where did he get
it?—_Granville (Ia.) Gazette._
* * * * *
Rockefeller may fire Rogers for talking too much. Rogers admitted that he
knew his own name and had heard of Standard Oil.—_People’s Voice, Norman,
Okla._
* * * * *
Now that railroad passes are abolished and the franking privilege is to
be stopped, what will Congressmen do, poor things? They have been sending
their soiled clothes back to their district and having them returned
free, have been getting beef, butter, eggs, and vegetables in the same
way, and to cap the anticlimax of their perquisites Hon. Shepard of
Arkansas has discovered that their mileage allowance of twenty cents
per mile made in the old stage-coach era, is a gross over-allowance
and has introduced a bill to cut it down to six cents a mile, which is
quite enough for the Pullman car accommodations nowadays.—_Luck (Wis.)
Enterprise._
* * * * *
The State of New York which has a population of 8,000,000 and wealth far
in excess of any state in the Union has had no representative in the
Senate since the holiday opening of Congress. Its two Senators, Platt and
Depew, are prevented by ill-health from attending the sessions and it
is not known when they will be able to take their places in the Senate
Chamber. Senator Platt with his new wife is at Virginia Hot Springs,
looking in vain for the fountain of youth. He is palsied with age and he
is so feeble that he cannot walk about unsupported. On the daily drives
and outings that Mrs. Platt is obliged to take to maintain her vigorous
health she is never accompanied by the aged Senator, who remains in his
room nearly all of the time. The situation with Senator Depew is scarcely
more agreeable. Instead of the triumphant, jovial Depew of old he is now
a man broken in health and spirit by the revelations of the New York
insurance companies which have placed him in such a questionable light
before the public.—_Kiowa (Colo.) Record._
* * * * *
As this country becomes more and more a manufacturing country, it
needs to give more heed to this fundamental problem. Urged by purely
selfish motives, commerce and industry are ever tending to exploit the
labor of the child because it is low priced, and to oppose restraining
legislation. This, observes the _Chicago Tribune_, is why the child
labor laws of England are considerably less stringent than those of
progressive countries on the Continent. The latter, pressing upon
each other’s frontiers, realize that child labor impairs the military
efficiency of a nation. Military considerations may not weigh so heavily
with the people of this country as they do with continental Europe.
But child labor should be prevented in America with a view to securing
for children that better preparation for life and that worthy type of
ultimate citizenship which American ideals demand. In the interest of
social and civic efficiency, and so of our national future, the rising
generation, both North and South, should be protected against premature
toil.—_Bath (N. Y.) Plaindealer._
* * * * *
The new officials in Philadelphia should see that their predecessors get
their just dues—a long term in the penitentiary.—_Winona (Minn.) Leader._
* * * * *
When the People’s Party first submitted its platform of principles to the
people, the soundness of its principles was questioned and doubted by
many, and even by some who recognized the soundness of the principles,
yet had not lost hope, or were not convinced, that reforms could not
be brought about swifter through their old parties than through a new
party organization, and for this reason never aligned themselves with
the People’s Party; but the last ten years of endeavor to secure reforms
through the old parties has convinced them that reform through the old
parties was like tracing the rainbow to find a pot of gold hanging on the
end of it.—_People’s Voice, Norman, Okla._
* * * * *
The state legislators certainly cannot now have any reason for flinching
on the question of railroad rates. The Pennsylvania road showed that
while one third of their passengers rode on passes they were able to
pay a nice dividend to stockholders. Now that nobody rides on passes
the public certainly should secure the benefit by a reduction to two
cents per mile for travel. The law makers can also consider the right of
eminent domain for the trolley lines, as well as the right of electric
lines to carry freight. The latter propositions would mean thousands of
dollars in the pockets of the people. Instead of the discontinuing of
the passes being a detriment to the people, it will undoubtedly become a
benefit.—_Roscoe (Pa.) Ledger._
* * * * *
Hon. Ezekiel S. Candler, Jr., a member of Congress from Mississippi,
recently delivered a speech before the House of Representatives in which
he favored legislation that would abolish hazing in the United States
Naval Academy at Annapolis. Mr. Candler very justly ridicules the idea
that hazing is necessary to make a boy courageous and keep him from being
a “sissy boy.”—_Grand Cane (La.) Beacon._
From what can be learned of the dispatches concerning the punishment
of grafters under the present administration, it seems that those who
were brought in guilty, have invariably been men who were opposed to
some of Roosevelt’s pet hobbies. Burton of Kansas, you must remember,
strenuously opposed Roosevelt’s plan to reduce the duty on Cuban raw
sugar, and made a brilliant speech in opposition to it. Poor old Senator
Mitchell, of Oregon, also opposed some of Teddy’s pet schemes. He was
pursued unmercifully and maliciously, yet the beef trust goes unpunished.
Teddy’s investigators are now busy defending them. Those men arrested in
Nebraska for the illegal fencing and use of Government land received but
a nominal fine and a sentence of six hours in the custody of the United
States Marshal. Secretary Shaw, another of Teddy’s proteges, has declared
that John Walsh of Chicago is innocent of any statutory crime, and has
only done what many other bankers have done. Just as soon as the failure
of the Walsh banks was wired to Washington, plans were at once set on
foot to protect them, also to protect Walsh. Teddy will have to shift his
bearings a little or the people will soon begin to believe that he is not
the Simon-pure reformer, graft crusher and trust buster that the press
agents are claiming him to be.—_Ex Porte, Florence, Colo._
* * * * *
The grain trust of Nebraska fixes the price of every bushel of grain in
the state. Not an elevator in the state pretends to begin operations
till the price of grain fixed by the trust comes, and it comes every day
very early in the morning. Supply and demand! Who said supply and demand
regulate prices?—_Broken Bow (Neb.) Beacon._
* * * * *
Germany is putting the tariff question squarely before the “stand pat”
Republican clique in the Senate. That country proposes to bar American
goods by a prohibitory tariff unless this country reduces the Dingley
tariff for Germany. This is a fair proposition and one that the people
generally in this country would gladly welcome, but the eight or nine
Republican bosses would rather see this country sink than give an inch on
the present tariff.—_Vandalia (Ill.) Democrat._
* * * * *
H. Clay Pierce, president of the Waters-Pierce Oil company, who has been
holding up the people of the Indian Territory and Texas for a great
many years past, pays $25 a day for seven rooms the year round at the
Waldorf-Astoria, one of New York’s big hotels.—_Rush Springs (I. T.)
Landmark._
* * * * *
The Standard Oil Company has during the past year gobbled up about
twenty gas plants in various parts of the country. Having an income of
about forty millions a year. John D. Rockefeller must put his money into
something that will bring him more interest.—_Delphi, (Ind.) Citizen
Times._
Senator Burton has dismissed his private secretary, because there was
nothing for him to do. There is also very little for poor Burton to do
unless it is “doing time.”—_Princeton (Ky.) Chronicle._
* * * * *
The Congressman, who, with his wife, aunts, and mother-in-law, franks
their clothes home once a week to be washed, is going to be the
loser by the investigation of the Congressional franking privilege
pending.—_Delton (Mich.) Graphic._
* * * * *
Tom Watson wants to know if Bryan will try to buy the throne of Peter
the Great or the second-hand coat of Peter the Great. Mr. Bryan set the
entire Japanese nation against him when he tried to buy the “war chair”
that Togo had sat in, and the Watson inquiries suggest nothing more out
of place than this foolish and very improper episode.—_Rushville (Ind.)
American._
* * * * *
The reply of Thomas E. Watson to Clark Howell is such a long letter that
we cannot get it in this issue of the Rambler, but will give it Tuesday.
The weakest of all the weak things that Howell’s advisers have let him do
is the stirring up of Watson.—_Cordele (Ga.) Rambler._
* * * * *
And so “I am a Democrat, D. B. Hill” has also been receiving a large
sum of money ($5,000) each year for a long time from the Equitable Life
Insurance Company. Mr. Hill says his salary was for his services as a
lawyer and not for his political influence. Mr. Hill may have thought so,
made himself think so. But to a man up a tree the salaries the insurance
companies paid Hill, Depew and other men of great political influence
were to make friends of them so that the graft of the insurance officers
could continue. We presume most of the men of great political influence
in the ruling parties are on the pay roll of one or more of the big
grafting corporations. A list of the congressmen, governors, etc., who
are getting salaries as attorneys for the railroads, trusts, etc., would
be very interesting reading.—_Missouri World._
* * * * *
The Georgia gubernatorial campaign has reached the letter-writing stage,
apparently, though it must be confessed that the man who sprung the
trigger isn’t profiting very much by the result of his action. The secret
of the Sibley correspondence was carefully guarded until the Columbus
debate, and then thrown upon the public in the form of a bombshell, the
expectation being that Mr. Smith would be swept from his feet by the
explosion.
The result was anything but what was anticipated. While Mr. Smith knew
nothing of what was coming, he did exactly as he has done in the face of
all the charges that have been brought against him—made no explanation
whatever, because he had nothing to explain.
The matter was explained, however, and by the man who knew more about the
whole business than any one—excepting, of course, Mr. Howell, and that
man was Hon. Thomas E. Watson. And Mr. Watson’s explanation does just
what it was intended to do—it explains.
Attempts have since been made by Mr. Howell to give further enlightenment
on the Sibley and McGregor episodes by publishing the entire
correspondence, but like a man in quicksand, every struggle to extricate
himself only sinks him the deeper.
At no time has it been shown that Mr. Smith sought an alliance with Mr.
Watson, or that one was ever made. Mr. Watson has no political ambition
at the present time, and, in fact, states in one of his letters that
instead of seeking the election to the United States Senate, he is
supporting, and will cast his vote for Hon. John Temple Graves for the
same reason that he is supporting Mr. Smith—because Mr. Graves stands for
the same principles Mr. Watson has always advocated.—_Dublin (Ga.) Times._
* * * * *
Howell and McGregor are trying hard to make it appear that Tom Watson
and Smith made a firm trade before Smith announced for Governor; and in
the next breath Clark says Sibley offered him Watson’s support six weeks
after Smith announced. Funny how he could support both of them!—_Bullock
(Ga.) Times._
* * * * *
Mr. Howell is lustily calling to the “Loyal Democrats” to save him
from Tom Watson and the bow-wows. Loyal to what? To Clark and the
corporations? But a few weeks ago “Boss” Murphy was calling (and buying)
both “Loyal” Democrats and Republicans to save him from Hearst and the
penitentiary. Honest Democrats, by the Eternal, be loyal to yourselves,
your wives and children, and to the God that made you.—_Dalton (Ga.)
Herald._
* * * * *
Why should ex-Populist Hon. Thomas E. Winn be allowed to use the columns
of the only Democratic paper in the state, the Constitution, to advise
ex-Populists to vote for Howell, and Hon. Thomas E. Watson be refused to
say whom he is for and why. Tell us, Clark.—_Lawrenceville (Ga.) Journal._
* * * * *
H. Clay Pierce, of the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, a branch of the
Standard, has been in hiding at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, in New York,
to prevent the serving of a summons to appear before Attorney-General
Hadley, of Missouri. Pierce has had his private yacht steamed up for
days, ready to leave the country at a moment’s notice. Old John D.
Rockefeller is also dodging around, keeping out of the way of the
officers. The fact that the Standard Oil fellows are afraid to go into
court, and are continually on the lookout for officers, ought to be
sufficient proof to the people that they are guilty. Honest people are
not afraid of law or officers.—_Garnett (Kan.) Independent Review._
* * * * *
It seems that conditions down on the isthmus, where the Government is
engaged in digging a big canal, will not stand much probing. A Republican
paper, friendly to the administration, sent a representative down there
to report on the conditions, and his report has caused an investigation
to be begun by Congress. President Roosevelt will be fortunate if he
saves himself from this Congress, and he can afford to keep on friendly
terms with the Democrats.—_Malad (Idaho) People’s Advocate._
* * * * *
The Federal Senate of the United States is becoming more and more like
the House of Lords in England. It is clearly not of the people. Wealth
is the title that makes membership possible. A man without money, in
these later days, can no more enter this American House of Lords than a
camel can pass through the eye of a needle. No matter how a man may have
acquired his riches, even though every one of his dollars be tainted,
this “honorable” position as the head of our Government is his—providing
he has the “dough to go around.” Oh! the shame of it all! Why is it that
the common people, the masses, those who earn their bread by the sweat
of their brow—and they are in the majority—do not rise up in their might
and make this office an elective one by all the people instead of a few
subsidized purchased legislators, that it might come from the people,
and in coming from them, represent them instead of the selfish money
interests of the country?—_Detroit (Mich.) Courier._
* * * * *
Common mortals have an awesome fear of the majesty of the law, but not so
with Rogers, the Standard Oil lord lieutenant. They are regarded by him
as but minions of the people; something far beneath his lofty station.
Let’s hope he is taught a wholesome respect for courts of justice before
this Standard Oil rottenness is all suppressed.—_Prescot (Wis.) Tribune._
* * * * *
Of all the thin political tricks that have been attempted to be put off
on the people of Georgia, that Sibley-Howell correspondence, sprung by
tricky Clark in the Columbus debate, was the thinnest. Why they didn’t
have sense enough to date their letters two months earlier, so as to
antedate Hoke Smith’s announcement, is an evidence of the weakness of
political trickery. There was never a meaner nor more transparent job,
for it could deceive only fools.—_Sparta (Ga.) Ishmaelite._
* * * * *
It is said that the various corporations of the country have employed
and almost monopolized all of the best legal talent of the land. Be
that as it may; no lawyer that is, or for the last ten years has been,
employed by a corporation should ever be elected or appointed to a
public office. Especially should they not be sent to Congress or state
legislature.—_Cass (Tex.) Sun._
* * * * *
Two insurance companies that have defied the state law requiring licenses
and who have other charges laid at their doors have been taken into the
civil courts by the State Insurance Department. It is to be hoped that
they will not escape upon any technicality as they did in the criminal
action. It’s time the insurance companies were made to understand that
the laws, weak and incomplete as they are, must be enforced.—_Cortez
(Colo.) Journal._
* * * * *
The year 1906 is an off year in politics. No National tickets will be in
the field; but National issues will be emphasized and direction given
to the next campaign. It will be well for us to look the field over and
examine our bearings. For many years we have trusted the great political
parties to make up the issues that we, by ballot, are to decide; but
experience has taught us that political parties make up blind issues,
in which the people are not interested. The great issue before the
people of this Government today is the enforcement of the law. The great
monopolies, who are law defying in their tendencies, must be compelled to
obey the law. The law-defying elements that are moved by selfish motives
alone, must be made to bend to the will of the people.—_Lockwood (Mo.)
Times._
* * * * *
Berlin, the capital of Germany, has solved the vexed sewage problem in
a way that should commend itself to American cities, where we are away
behind in the disposal of harmful and polluting refuse. The municipality
of Berlin purchased thousands of acres of unproductive sand land near
the city and fertilizing this with the sewage, raises big crops for the
city’s benefit. Of course the plant is costly, but the proceeds of the
farm repay all cost, besides a good profit.—_The American Farmer._
* * * * *
The Citizen regrets very much the domestic infelicity which seems to
exist under the roof of the _Atlanta, Ga., News_. It is unfortunate.
Hon. John Temple Graves, as the Rome Tribune puts it, “is the Atlanta
News.” We would not give a thrip of our finger for it without him. He is
the life of it, and his brain and energy have made it. He has kept it
free from furtherance of his political ambitions, and has made it these
years the impartial commentator of men and affairs. The whole trouble is,
no doubt, the result of corporate greed, and the desire on the part of
certain influences to control its policy.—_Dalton (Ga.) Citizen._
The next political campaign in this county will be more than interesting.
Neither party has a “walkover” any longer. No candidate has a “cinch,”
but those who win will have to work and satisfy the people. Moreover, our
people are not going to vote for men they know to be bad, merely because
nominated by their party. The object of our system of ballots is to give
every voter a chance to exercise his individual opinion and our people,
Democrats and Republicans, will do it.—_Bloomfield (Mo.) Courier._
* * * * *
If there are 80,000 populists in Georgia, Clark Howell had just as well
come out of the race, for his attack on Tom Watson is an attack on each
of them, and the result will be that every one of them will vote with
him. They follow him wherever he leads with that same spirit of loyalty
exhibited by the grenadiers who followed the matchless Napoleon. It is
a bad political move to disturb this sleeping lion, who is, perhaps,
the matchless master of the Queen’s English in Georgia. His store of
information seems inexhaustable, and his logic irresistible. True,
regardless of his politics.—_Marietta (Ga.) Courier._
Right, you are, neighbor. Watson’s reply to Howell on the Sibley letter
was the hottest, the strongest, the most cutting and most biting
political epistle that we have ever read.
Every word in it was as sharp as a two-edged sword and went as straight
to the mark as a rifle ball.
We care but little what some writers say about us, but there are two
people in Georgia, Mrs. Felton and Tom Watson, with whom we hope forever
to keep on terms.
And Tom Watson is a man of convictions. He isn’t afraid of abuse when it
comes to taking a stand for what he considers right.
Smart as he is, he sees through the political scheme being worked in
Georgia to defeat Hoke Smith and he denounces it in no uncertain terms.
Listen to him: “If Hoke Smith succeeds, if the people will but realize
that Hoke Smith is the only anti-ring candidate in the field, if they
will but realize that the candidacies of Clark Howell, Jim Smith, Dick
Russell, J. H. Estill, Jack Robinson, and Hiram-Fat-and-Go-Last all
tend to the same object; if they will but realize that these different
candidates are jumping-jacks which Hamp McWhorter has strung upon the
same string, and that when Hamp strikes the string with the straw they
all dance in the most diverting and uniform manner: if the people will
but use their common sense and refuse to be divided, then Hoke Smith’s
triumph is assured.”
Listen again to this patriotic paragraph: “And in my purpose there is a
motive so dominant, and a plan so full of the promise of glorious results
for Georgia and the South, that I shall not allow the rigid limits of
party lines to tie my hands; but shall hold myself perfectly free to
serve my people in the best way that circumstances allow, and as duty
directs.”
And nobody will close Watson’s mouth. On that score he says: “One-horse
politicians devoted to the ring need not think that their permission is
necessary for me to advise with the people of Georgia. Their consent will
not be asked. As a Georgian I have a right to be heard. My people came
here when the Indians still roamed in the woods, and have been a part of
Georgia ever since, serving her dutifully in the time of peace, fighting
for her manfully in the time of war. There never lived a man who was
more devoted than I to the best interests of my state and of the South.
As a Southern man, I resent from the depth of my heart the political
degradation into which our state has fallen, and I am going to do my
level best to help Hoke Smith redeem it.”—_Lawrenceville (Ga.) Gwinnett
Journal._
* * * * *
The bankers want more “currency”—so did the farmers a few years ago. At
that time it was a crazy scheme—today it is sound finance!—_Penns Grove
(N. J.) Record._
* * * * *
Senator Depew is reported to be in failing health, owing to the storm of
criticism which has forced him from many places of honor, and which may
lose him his Senate seat. And this is the witty Chauncey who was wont to
laugh away opposition and carry his points so easily! “Great will be the
fall thereof.”—_Hogansville (Ga.) News._
* * * * *
We move to amend Secretary Shaw’s motion for an elastic currency by
striking out elastic and substituting adhesive.—_Republican City (Mo.)
Ranger._
* * * * *
Secretary Shaw’s scheme for an elastic currency is to authorize the
national banks to strike from their notes as now issued the words
“secured by United States bonds deposited with the treasury of the United
States,” and to issue 50 per cent more notes whenever the demand seems
to exist. Thus, if the National City Bank of New York had issued all the
notes it could against Government bonds, and a big stock gambler asked
for a loan of $1,000,000, the bank would issue notes in that sum, charge
him, say 10 per cent, retire the notes when the loan was paid, and pocket
the interest in excess of the 6 per cent tax to the Government. Very nice
arrangement that for the national banks. Little wonder that Wall Street
takes kindly to the candidacy of Mr. Shaw for the presidency.—_Rushville
(Ill.) Times._
* * * * *
Let’s see: Does this country lead the civilized world in progress?
Well, hardly, since every other civilized country on the face of the
earth, with the exception of Honduras and Costa Rica, own and operate
their own telegraph lines and give a far more satisfactory service to
the public for a far less consideration than it costs the dear people
in this country of progress, where corporations, have, by robbing the
people, accumulated untold wealth with which they are enabled to evade
such laws as prove obnoxious to them, and can buy law-makers and have
odious laws repealed and new ones made, giving them all the powers they
seek.—_Cloverdale (Ind.) Graphic._
* * * * *
The Standard oil magnates have been again showing their contempt of law.
Their attitude hatches more anarchists than all the Herr Most brand of
incubators. The lawless rich and powerful are the real enemies of the
republic.—_Pennsboro (W. Va.)_ News.
* * * * *
The _American_ agrees most heartily with Dr. Charles W. Eliot, president
of Harvard University, when he says the great movement of the world is
toward democracy. This is the natural result of an advancing civilization.
America overthrew the false doctrine of the divine right of kings to rule
when she wrote the Declaration of Independence and declared that all men
were born equal. Since then we have created by law a person as great, as
arrogant and tyrannical as the king—the Public Corporation.
How can all men have an equal footing in law when we give special
privileges to the corporate person and enable that person to levy tribute
at will on the wealth of the nation?
How can all have equal rights, when the corporate person can spend
millions of dollars to corrupt our city councils, our state legislatures,
our Congress and our courts?
The movement against these legalized law-created individuals is the
awakening of the spirit of democracy, and it means the eventual wiping
out of these public service corporations which occupy relatively the
same position in this country that the king does in a monarchy. It
means that genuine democracy, the rule of the people, will supplant the
rule of the corporation. It means the public ownership of all public
utilities.—_Creston (Ia.) Morning American._
* * * * *
Whatever is said of Tom Watson, no one will deny that he has convictions
and the nerve to stand by them. He knows no party lines when it comes to
fighting for the principles he has so long advocated, and that is the
reason he is now supporting Hoke Smith.—_Dalton (Ga.) Citizen._
* * * * *
The Philippine tariff is a characteristic act of the present régime. We
first shot and beat the poor savages into submission. We then took away
the market for their goods and compelled them to sell to, and buy of, us.
We followed this with the Dingley tariff both coming and going. The fact
that this was simple highway robbery did not shame us. At the point of
a gun they are compelled to stand and deliver. The House has now passed
a bill providing that we will stop robbing these “wards” of ours except
the poor Sugar Trust and Tobacco Trust and they shall only continue their
robbery until 1909. And do you know that some Republicans are actually
claiming some credit for such a law as that?—_Frankfort (Ind.) Crescent
Standard._
* * * * *
The author of our “Washington Letter” slops over this week in fulsome
praise of Paul Morton, who at one time admitted his long-continued
violation of the anti-rebate law—a crime which no honorable man would
commit under any circumstances. The _Herald_ approves of no such
condoning of crime on the part of any man from the President down to the
lowest.—_Waseca (Minn.) Herald._
* * * * *
Burton cares not who makes the laws of the country, provided he gets his
salary and mileage.—_Cumberland (Md.) Independent._
* * * * *
By stepping inside of the door of the Senate chamber so that the journal
clerk could view him for half a minute, Senator Burton of Kansas was
enabled to claim attendance on the 59th Congress and draw $1,000 mileage
therefore. No, Senator Burton will not resign while he can draw his
salary of $5,000 a year and mileage, even though his reputation does rest
under a cloud. That cloud has a silver lining.—_Alva (Okla.) Renfrews
Record._
* * * * *
A few years ago there was considerable riot in the subsidized press about
the “disgrace” that had been heaped upon Kansas by the “Pops.” All manner
of fun was poked at Peffer’s whiskers—but he was never sent to jail. This
country had a good deal of fun over “Sockless Jerry,” but he was never
accused of working any get-rich-quick concern. No “Pop” state officer has
ever involved the state in such a scandal as has been hanging over the
state treasury for the last three years. The “Pop” state secretary never
loaded the state school fund up with a batch of worthless bonds. Honest
now, how much has the reputation of Kansas been improved by the crowd
that “redeemed it from Populism.”—_Mankato (Kan.) Advocate._
* * * * *
It is an honor, not a crime, to hold a public office. It is a proper
reward for activity in politics, but he who accepts an office should
never forget that the moment he enters upon the discharge of his duties
he becomes then an officer for all the people, not only those who
voted for his election, but those who opposed it.—_Indianola (Miss.)
Enterprise._
* * * * *
As an evidence of the wide extent of the reform sentiment among Oregon
voters of today, one has but to notice how anxiously eager the would-be
candidates for Congress are to get into the reform band-wagon. At least
two of the Republican aspirants are old-time ring politicians and
probably care but little for most of the reforms demanded by the people
further than to ride into office on the reform wave. But reform is in
the air, gentlemen, and if you keep in the swim you will have to join the
throng, and be honest about it, too.—_Scio (Oregon) Santian News._
* * * * *
H. H. Rogers of the Standard Oil Company the concrete expression of the
rank insolence of a hundred millions of ill-gotten wealth.—_Rush Springs
(I. T.) Landmark._
* * * * *
All cities which have adopted municipal ownership of their lighting
plant are glad they did it, and would not think of going back to private
ownership. Why should Grand Island be a back number in the progress of
the world?—_Grand Island (Neb.) Democrat_.
_His Grudge_