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The publisher of a disreputable sheet in New York, which makes its living
by holding up society and dishing out scandal about men and women, has
sued that splendid and fearless paper, Collier’s Weekly, for libel,
the occasion of the exposure by Collier’s was a venomous attack by the
sheet aforesaid upon the President’s daughter. Collier’s, with its
characteristic ability, laid the sheet open to its knife, showing how it
held up people for hush money and lived in the gutters of things bad. For
all of which it was sued for $100,000 by the aforesaid sheet. In a recent
editorial on the subject, Norman Hapgood, the able editor of Collier’s,
says: “Men submit to blackmail to protect their wives and sisters from
such sheets as this, for in the North the pocketbook has replaced the
pistol.”
The South, to people who do not know her, has many faults. One of these
is the quickness and certainty with which her men have always meted out
tragic justice to the brute, black or white, who tears down the barrier
between his own vile passions, whether of malice or murder, and a woman’s
purity. Nor has any court or any jury ever convicted the man who used his
pistol to protect the name of his women. In such cases, the law considers
the man to be temporarily insane, at the sudden destruction of his home
and happiness, and though it also recognizes what is called “cooling
time” for such frenzy, an old Georgia judge years ago expressed the
sentiment of the entire South on this subject when he declared in such a
case that “cooling time with this court means ninety-nine years.”
Many sheets of the kind mentioned have tried to build their foul nest
in the South, forgetting that here the pocketbook is not the god it is
where people live only for money. Its end is invariably the same and
the curtain drops to the rapid fire of pistol shots, “and the rest is
silence.”
This has come from the old South which taught that money was not all of
life, that a man’s word was his bond and a woman’s good character her
crown. And words being bonds, men were careful of them, for the man who
has to redeem his words with his pistol instead of his pocketbook is more
careful how he uses them. We wish Collier’s a speedy vindication. Indeed,
we predict the trial will prove something of the same kind of a farce as
that of the windy Prof. Trigg, of the Chicago University, who taught the
classes that Rockefeller was greater than Shakespeare, that our hymns
were all doggerel and much else that was false. He was unwise enough
to bring suit for libel against a New York daily which held him up to
ridicule. On trial he proved by his own testimony that he was even more
ignorant and ridiculous than the defendant had supposed.
* * * * *
And we appreciate greatly the letter below from so distinguished a source
as Mr. Spillman, in the Bureau of Plant Industry, Washington, D. C.:
Mr. John Trotwood Moore, care Trotwood Publishing Co.,
Nashville, Tenn.
My Dear Sir: Your favor of October 19 has remained unanswered
thus long on account of my absence from the office.
I have read the copy of Trotwood’s Monthly with a great deal of
interest, and wish to congratulate you on its high character.
You are certainly striking out in a new line compared with our
present agricultural literature. None of our farm papers have
heretofore attempted the literary excellence of Trotwood’s
Monthly, confining themselves more particularly to the
instructional side of farming. I am much interested in your
venture and hope that it may meet with the highest success. Our
farmers have been a little too much inclined to look at the
financial side of their business and they need something that
will help in other directions. This you seem to be able to give.
While reading your magazine I was struck by the fact that my
own work has nearly all been directed toward the financial side
of farming, but you have given me a new idea and one which I
hope will have its effect upon my future work. I shall take
pleasure in sending you once in a while anything I may be able
to write which I think will be of interest to your readers.